HARRISBURG  For the past few weeks, Laurie Anne Fields has been stationed at Steam Cafe in Harrisburg, visiting the sandwich shop and coffee house to meet and talk to whomever will come by, about whatever  their work, their spouses, their children, their problems, the meaning of life.

Its an outreach the Rev. Fields started as the new pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg, one of her goals to reach out to the community. The sessions are called Community Office Hours and run from noon to 1:30 p.m. Mondays at Steam Cafe.

Its been slow, Fields said of the new initiative. Its also a new thing, and so people arent used to it. Its something I think is an important outreach to the community and the church, and Im going to keep at it for a while.  I think its one thing that have to do for a while before we can tell if its effective or not.

Thats just one thing Fields is doing as she adjusts to her new role as pastor of the historic church in downtown Harrisburg that celebrates its 150th anniversary next year, she said. Planning committees have just formed.

Fields, who was hired by the church in June, will be installed in that position at a special ceremony at 4 pm. Sunday at the church. The community is invited to this event. This is her second pastorate; her first was at a church in Mount Vernon, Indiana. Her husband  Wade Halva  pastored three small churches in southwest Indiana. Fields most recently served as Christian Education director for First Presbyterian Church in Carbondale.

She said one thing thats special about Sunday evenings ceremony is that while she takes a pledge to faithfully lead the congregation, the members of the church will also take a vow to support her in her work at and to First Presbyterian Church.

Its exciting, Fields said. I really feel hopeful about the future. Ive had a lot of conversations with folks in the congregation about making changes and doing new things  and thats always kind of scary for us in the church because the old way worked so well for a long time in the past. The world is changing, and it might be changing a little slower here in Southern Illinois, but its still changing and the challenge is for us to find new ways to serve Christ and witness to the world.

Shes planning to continue the churchs work in supporting the 4 Cs  Christian Community Compassionate Center  and Habitat for Humanity or packing donated toiletries into hygiene kits to be shipped to the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the churchs Disaster Response Group that distributes the Hygiene Kits to people in crisis around the globe. (She invites the community to join them for packing the kits at 9 a.m. Sunday during the churchs Sunday school hour).

Shes also pushing the church to reach out more through social media, for instance, aiming to post at least five to six times a week on its Facebook page. Shes also concerned about worship and Sundays liturgy, working to ensure that the experience and teachings are contemporary and relevant to the lives of church members and attendees.

The church will also be preparing for the Oct. 5 International Peacemaker Visit of Mphasto Nguluwe, from the Central Church of Africa, Presbyterian, Synod of Livingstonia.

She and her husband, parents of 13- and 10-year-old daughters, live in Marion.

Im excited about trying to figure out what these new ways are for Harrisburg and  be faithful witnesses, she said.
MURPHYSBORO  After a few false starts, the City of Murphysboro will be looking at working with its former police chief to write grants for the city.

Council members discussed the possibility at their last meeting, agreeing to work with Brian Hollo, the city's former police chief, on grants for the city. He presented a proposal to the council to be a part-time grant writer; about two and a half years ago, they sent him to a two-day grant-writing course in St. Louis, he said.

What he learned from that experience was that he couldn't be compensated from within the grant and that he didn't have the time, as a full-time police chief, to successfully pursue that avenue.

"My proposal's different than most that you will find," Hollo said. "I don't believe in getting something for nothing. I've learned that it takes 150 to 200 hours to get a good boiler plate of information for a community, where if a grant becomes available, you can just pick and choose from the information that's available. That would be on me.

"I don't believe I should be paid for looking; I don't believe I should be paid for preparing. My suggestion or my proposal is to wait until I'm successful. And if I'm successful, I will receive a percentage of that grant ... and that is the gist of the proposal."

At the conclusion of the discussion, the mayor directed alderman W.J. Pittman, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, to work to draft a contract for work with Hollo.

He and Council members discussed various funding options, including a schedule where Hollo would receive a monthly fee for searching for and applying for grants, which Hollo said he did not think was fair.

Hollo suggested that department heads indicate what their divisions might need, helping him create a needs list to direct his grants search.

"I didn't just want to just go out searching," Hollo said. "Then, as the process continued on, then I would come back to you and say 'here's what I'm looking at. Is this what you want?' It's got to be a conversation."

"It's not going to be a 'just-go-do-it'," Hollo said. "It's got to be a conversation."

The Murphysboro City Council next meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 26.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner has vetoed legislation requiring mobile applications that track user locations to get permission first and to outline how that data will be used.

The Republican on Friday called the measure "an unnecessary and byzantine layer of state regulation" that would harm business and deter technology companies from locating in Illinois. He says consumer privacy issues should be handled through federal regulation.

Business groups applauded the veto, while supporters of the bill said Rauner "chose big business over protecting Illinois citizens."

Illinois Public Interest Research Group Director Abe Scarr says the recent data breach at credit-reporting agency Equifax shows "what can go wrong when vast amounts of private personal information is collected, stored and shared and sold in the big-data economy."

The bill is HB3449.

 Associated Press
Annual fall dinner held in Center

St. Martin's Catholic Church in Center is hosting its annual fall dinner from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mass at the church begins at 10 a.m. Dinner, for a freewill offering, is served at the Betty Hagel Memorial Civic Center, 312 Lincoln Ave.

Dinner includes meatballs and ham, mashed potatoes, corn, coleslaw, buns and pie. Activities include a cake walk, craft and produce sale, raffle, silent auction and kids games.

Musical duo stops at Capital Christian Center

The Preacher's Daughters, a musical group consisting of Amanda Ellison and Korissa Olson, will continue a music tour Reviving the Hymns at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 30 at Capital Christian Center, 3838 Jericho Road in Bismarck.

The duo's voices, mixing with cello, celebrate a rich heritage in the great hymns of the faith and a variety of gospel music. There is no cost to attend this event. All ages are welcome. More information can be found at cccbismarck.com

Cluster marks 200th anniversary of founder

Bahais of Bismarck-Mandan Cluster is preparing to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Bahaullah, the Founder of the Bahai Faith, on Oct. 22.

Plans include a celebration and lunch to be held at Hillside Aquatic Complex Community Room, 1719 E. Boulevard Ave. in Bismarck, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The public is invited; call 714-334-9927 to RSVP.

Bahaullah was a spiritual teacher who announced in 1863 that he was the bearer of a new revelation from God. His teachings have spread around the world, forming the basis for social transformation and community building.

New church opens in Mandan

Surprise Church Mandans Grand Opening Service is at 10 a.m. Oct. 1 at the Strawberry, 210 W. Main St.

Surprise is about the church leaving the building. Its about interacting with others after Sunday  at work, at school and at home. This will be a community of servant-missionaries to a world in need.

For more information, contact Pastor Tim Lucas at 701-516-6989 or pastortim@surprisechurch.com.

Missions Conference 2017 slated for early October

Missions Conference 2017, sponsored by STEER Inc., is being held Oct. 6-7 at the Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center in Bismarck.

Highlights of this event include a Friday Missions Luncheon and Festival of Missions speaker Lauren Libby, president and CEO of Trans World Radio; Saturday Ladies Luncheon speaker Barbara Rainey, an author; and Saturday Mens Luncheon and evening banquet featuring Dennis Rainey, president and CEO of Family Life.

There will be representatives from more than 40 worldwide mission organizations along with guest speakers and workshops for lay people and pastors.

To purchase tickets for the meals, to receive a program or for more information, call 701-2584911, email events@steerinc.com or visit www.steerinc.com.

STEER Inc. is a nonprofit organization designed to channel funds to missionary support, world relief, medical needs, Christian radio, literature, aviation and education facilities overseas.

Hog roast to benefit seminarian

Messiah Lutheran Church, 1020 Boundary Road, Mandan, is hosting a benefit hog roast for seminarian Brock Schmeling from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 30. Brock, a Mandan native, is attending the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind. A freewill offering will be taken with a suggested donation of $10 per plate.

The community is invited to attend. For more information, access the church's Facebook page, call Messiah Lutheran, 663-8545, email messiahsecretary@midconetwork.com or visit messiahmandan.org.

Send information to kimberlywynn@bismarcktribune.com.

-- Compiled from press releases.
If anyone could have resuscitated the troubled Obamacare repeal and replace bill, it was Mitch McConnell, the steady and disciplined Senate Majority Leader with a track record of getting really tough things done.

But after years of pleading, months of negotiating, and weeks of just barely edging the contentious bill forward, it suddenly died. The end was unexpected and dramatic, as McConnell watched Sen. John McCain -- his longtime friend and occasional political rival -- walk to the center of the Senate floor and turn his thumb down to vote "no."

Aides say McConnell knew earlier in the day that McCain's vote was in doubt, and the two men spoke several times about his concerns. But when McCain crossed the floor in front of McConnell to vote, it was still a shock.

McConnell is a conservative, consummate Washington dealmaker who has worked across the aisle for years to painstakingly prevent government shutdowns, raise politically-tricky debt ceilings, and take other steps to keep Washington functioning, even when some in his conference wanted to tear the government down.

At the same time, he can be brutally efficient in service to the Republican agenda, for instance by blocking President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, last year.

But health care proved to be much tougher than those. The issue divides his caucus so deeply that he was never able to make much tangible progress on bringing together the right flank of his caucus that wanted to get rid of Obamacare's regulations and taxes, and the left flank that wanted to preserve the Medicaid expansion and other protections in the law.

Yet until Thursday night, McConnell could at least keep the process moving with the so-called "skinny bill" and fight for another day.

His face ashen, McConnell stood still and silent for several moments as the magnitude of McCain's vote became clear. The Arizona Republican, who returned to the Senate this week after a devastating diagnosis of brain cancer to dramatically help advance the health care bill to this vote, became the third and final Republican vote against the health care bill.

A defeated McConnell turned to his caucus and spoke about the loss, admonishing his GOP colleagues who voted no.

"This is clearly a disappointing moment," McConnell said, his voice cracking.

"We told our constituents we would vote that way. When the moment came, most of us did. We kept our commitments," he said. "We worked hard -- and everybody on this side can certainly attest to the fact that we worked really hard -- to try to develop a consensus for a better way forward."

Now Republicans must start over.

McConnell and many of his rank-and-file members said they would not give up on their health care effort. But they have other pressing issues like tax reform, government funding, infrastructure spending -- and another debt ceiling increase to address. Health care might have to wait while tensions ease and Republicans who control the House, Senate and White House rethink their approach.

In a remarkable coda to the night's dramatic events, a few moments after McConnell finished his emotional floor speech, he announced to the chamber that he wanted the Senate to turn next to the annual defense bill and pass it the next day.

McConnell's move -- gesture, really -- was designed to allow the ailing McCain, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, to complete what might be his last defense bill, something he cares deeply about. It is uncertain when he will be in Washington again as he battles his cancer.

However, an objection was heard from Rand Paul, McConnell's fellow GOP senator from Kentucky, who has concerns about military use-of-force authorizations. Procedurally stalled, McConnell adjourned the Senate until Monday, and now it's unclear if McCain will be able to be on hand when his bill comes to the floor.
The release of a 15-month-old survey criticizing Mark Hagerotts leadership was politically motivated, the North Dakota University System chancellor said Friday.

Sitting in his office on the 10th floor of the state Capitol, Hagerott said he has made changes in response to the staff survey, which was detailed in news reports Thursday and described him as having a militaristic leadership style and favoring men over women. He denied the latter charge.

Hagerott also said he was pressured to do something to Ed Schafer, the former governor and interim University of North Dakota president who endorsed Doug Burgum in last years Republican primary race for governor.

Finally, Hagerott defended recent staffing changes that have caught media attention over the past week. He said the firing of Vice Chancellor Lisa Feldner was not connected to the recent hire of Phil Wisecup, an interim vice chancellor who, like Hagerott, has a Navy background.

Hagerott had previously declined to discuss the survey and Feldner decision with Forum News Service until Friday, when a reporter was invited to his office for an interview. The chairman of the State Board of Higher Education said Thursday that board leadership was very supportive of Hagerott.

I dont think the people in the state of North Dakota want a politicized NDUS staff or a chancellor, Hagerott said. We have both the public trust of money and a sacred trust with our kids.

Politicization

The June 2016 staff survey report, a public document obtained by Forum News Service and written by university system compliance officer Karol Riedman, detailed Hagerotts response to an open records request stemming from Schafers endorsement of Burgum.

The chancellor was reportedly excessively upset over the request from a Grand Forks Herald reporter, Riedman said. Hagerott described that time as the high point of politicization of the higher education board.

Hagerott said there was a charged staff meeting regarding Schafers endorsement, but a staff attorney said Schafer was within his rights to make his political preference known.

The chancellor said he came under a lot of pressure after that, with threats that if I didnt do something to Schafer, there would be damage to campuses and students and it would be on me. He declined to say whether that pressure came from legislators, but said it came from people with power.

I refused to cave in, Hagerott said, adding that there was an unnamed leader who put a stop to the pressure.

Schafer didnt return a call seeking comment Friday afternoon. He said last year that legislators have called the university system office and in my opinion threatened retribution, and I think that is so bad.

Burgums spokesman Mike Nowatzki said he hadnt talked to the governor about the episode. Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, Burgums opponent in last years primary race, said he was unaware of anyone pressuring Hagerott.

Soon after that, Hagerott said, there were claims that he was sexually harassing people. The Riedman report, however, said while staff felt Hagerott treated men with more respect than women, there were no concerns raised regarding sexual harassment. There was never a formal complaint of sexual harassment against Hagerott, university system spokeswoman Billie Jo Lorius said.

The board leadership debunked those with that survey, Hagerott said.

Still, Hagerott said he worked on issues identified in that report and realized the military style of leadership probably isnt as appropriate here. Kathleen Neset, then the chairwoman of the higher education board, gave Hagerott a positive evaluation in August 2016.

Hagerott said the report became public for political purposes, but he hesitated to speculate on the source. Rep. Bob Martinson, R-Bismarck, said he had asked for Hagerotts personnel documents recently, but he was unsure how they came into public view.

I was told that there were some concerns, so I asked about them, Martinson said. I do think that other people asked for the same stuff.

Hagerott came to the university system in 2015, when he signed a three-year contract that carries a $372,000 annual salary. He previously worked as the deputy director of the Naval Academys Center for Cyber Security Studies.

Staffing change

Meanwhile, Hagerott declined to say whether Feldners firing was related to a dispute the two had over allegations that Feldner made derogatory references pertaining to other staff members, which she denied. Hagerott emphasized that Felder was fired without cause. Feldner said this week that she was bewildered by her dismissal.

I wish her the very best, Hagerott said.

But Hagerott denied that Feldners dismissal was intended to make room in the budget for Wisecups hire, as described in a report from Rob Port of SayAnythingBlog.com Friday morning. The university system announced Wisecup had accepted a position as interim vice chancellor of strategy and strategic engagement in early August, more than a month before Feldner was fired.

Hagerott said he and Wisecup never worked for each other before but knew each other by our work. Wisecup is a retired Navy vice admiral who was once the president of the Naval War College, and Hagerott lauded his achievements and skills.

Its disappointing that someone new comes and we attack the person, Hagerott said.

Despite the week of bad press, Hagerott said he doesnt expect a big brouhaha at next weeks higher education board meeting. He praised the apolitical university system staff and higher education board.

Im completely at peace (with) all the decisions Ive made, he said.
GRAND FORKS  Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., stopped in Grand Forks on Friday afternoon to talk tax reform -- expected to shoot to the top of Congress agenda as soon as the health care debate and storm relief discussions have passed.

The senator, who announced her re-election bid last week, visited Development Homes to meet with community members representing a variety of nonprofits, unions and other interests. During a nearly two-hour discussion, the group delved into the details of tax policy, eyeing an opportunity Heitkamp sees to influence a significant rewrite.

A lot of people don't believe this, but at least from what Ive heard so far  I think this administration truly does not want to give tax breaks to millionaires, she said. I honestly believe that. I think they know you wont get individual income tax reform done, if thats the outcome.

The gathered group included representatives of AARP, AFL-CIO, Grand Forks Education Association and the Grand Forks Housing Authority, among others. Heitkamp led the discussion at first, outlining a number of interests in the coming reform process.

"If you have money, like the 1 percent of the country, you put that in the bank and it makes a lot of money and you're taxed at a lower rate, Heitkamp said, contrasting it with wages earned at agricultural jobs.

Guests at the meeting, and the ensuing discussion, helped sketch how interconnected and complicated the coming process will be. Tom Young, president of the Grand Forks Education Association, responded to concerns about high local taxes by pointing to its importance for the salaries of public-sector employees like his groups members. Shawn McHale, a senior at the University of North Dakota, spoke about the burdens taxes can impose, despite juggling multiple jobs while in school.

The tax reform discussion could move more quickly after this week. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced Friday he would vote against the latest Republican-led push to repeal and replace Obamacare, making it appear more likely that the effort will fail. If that happens -- and the GOP moves to its next agenda item -- tax reform is likely to steal the legislative spotlight.

However, Republicans still dont appear to have a concrete plan to advance for debate, leaving the reform process without a clear timeline.

Whenever tax reform discussions begin, Heitkamp said shes taking Republicans at their word that talks will be bipartisan, mentioning President Trumps and his Cabinets apparent interest in reaching across the aisle.

Remember this: The president invited me to come to Mandan to talk about taxes, Heitkamp said after Fridays meeting, mentioning outreach to other Democratic senators to talk tax reform. I spent a lot of time on that plane talking about taxes. There is an attempt to realign. And I think one of the things the administrations discovered is that when you work in a bipartisan way, as we did with the budget agreement, theres rewards.
Dubai Land Department (DLD) said it has signed an agreement with leading UAE financial institution Mashreq Bank to boost the transaction services of the Tarweej real estate promotion initiative.



Under the new agreement, Mashreq Bank will provide banking services for real estate transactions made both inside and outside the country.



In addition to this, the bank will receive priority as a partner in real estate promotion and will provide customers and investors with consultation and information, said the statement from DLD.



"We have reached this agreement with Mashreq Bank based on our mutual interest to support and strengthen our co-operation," remarked Sultan Butti bin Mejren, the director general of DLD, after signing the deal with Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, CEO of Mashreq Bank.



The agreement aims to enhance confidence in Dubai's real estate sector by providing a unique investment environment, Bin Mejren noted.



It will also support the promotion of the emirates real estate sector and projects through exhibitions, and international and regional conferences and events, as well as support developers. This will save investors time, effort and money while enhancing their long-term experience, he stated.

Mashreq Bank is delighted to be DLDs banking partner and support the promotion of Dubais real estate in the domestic and international markets, remarked Al Ghurair.



Dubai remains a popular destination among the expats and international investors, particularly as the country draws nearer to Expo 2020, which has made the UAE a top choice for real estate investment, he noted.



"This is largely driven by our leaders' unique vision, innovative property designs and the many exclusive developments currently underway. By expanding our services, we are strengthening our position as the UAEs leading bank," added Al Ghurair.-TradeArabia News Service
The UAE government has allocated Dh1.2 billion ($326 million) for the completion of a number of infrastructure and urban development projects across the country, said a report.



The approval was given by Follow-up Committee of the Initiatives of the UAE President at a meeting held under the chairmanship of Ahmed Juma Al Za'abi, Deputy Minister for Presidential Affairs, reported state news agency Wam.



The key projects include the Sheikh Khalifa Central Hospital in the northern emirate of Fujairah which has been allocated funds worth Dh865.9 million, stated the report.



With a capacity of up to 300 beds, the hospital will provide 24-hour services to patients. It consists of 11 specialised departments, outpatient clinics and a 32-bed emergency ward. The hospital will also have a 3-storey rehabilitation centre housed in a separate building and 673 parking spots.



Besides this the committee also approved funding for a number of infrastructure projects including the road linking the Sheikh Khalifa highway (from Maliha passing though Madam up to Al Shuwaib), valued at Dh323 million, said the Wam report.



Funds worth Dh12.4 million wer also approved by the committee to carry out internal roads and parking works in the residential complexes of Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah, it added.
The University of South Wales (USW), one of the UK's leading educational institutions, has signed an agreement with the UAE-based Gulf Aviation Academy (GAA) to launch courses in aerospace education, engineering and training.



, wholly-owned by the Government of Dubai, for the establishment an advanced aerospace engineering education capability at Dubai South.



The agreement is a key step towards USWs development of a specialist international provision for aircraft maintenance and aeronautical engineering education at the global aviation hub in Dubai South, on course to welcome its first students in 2018, remarked Prof Julie Lydon, the vice chancellor and chief executive of USW after signing the deal with Captain Dhaffer Al Abbasi, the chief executive of GAA in the presence of the British Ambassador to the UAE and the Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary Lesley Griffiths AM.



"This is an important step in developing the long term relationship between the USW, one of Britains major higher education institutions, and Gulf Aviation Academy, a key player in the regions aerospace capability," sstated Lydon.



"Drawing on our experience with some of the worlds leading aerospace engineering companies, we look forward to a future of successful cooperation and mutual value with the GAA," he added.



Captain Al Abbasi described the MoU as the first step towards investing in further developing the type of training and academic degrees offered in GAA and those offered in USW that are related to aviation.



"With only a 40 minutes flight, both GAA and USW will be able to provide value-added programs that can complement each other and better serve the requirements in the market," stated Al Abbasi.



Launched in 2010, GAA earlier only catered to its local market requirements. However the company now offers over 50 training courses that are not aviation-related, to customers form the Mena region, Asia, Europe and South America.-TradeArabia News Service
More than 3,562 UAE tourists had visited Korea for medical purposes in 2016, reflecting a 20.9 per cent increase as compared to the previous year, a recent report from the Korea National Tourism Organization showed.



As such, a total of 364,189 tourists coming from 190 countries were recorded to have visited South Korea for medical treatments and services last year, showing an increase of 22.67 per cent.



Looking to build on the growing reputation of Korea as a highly preferred medical destination, the Korea National Tourism Organization has revealed its move to host this year's edition of the Korea Medical & Wellness Travel Mart in Dubai, which will be held from September 22 to September 23, at the Intercontinental Dubai Festival City Hotel.



According to senior officials of the Korea National Tourism Organisation, the exciting two-day event will prove to be an excellent and strategic platform to showcase South Korea's advanced and world class medical services, while also promoting the country's strength as a tourist haven. The Medical and Wellness Travel Mart 2017 will feature the participation of around 30 of Korea's leading medical institutes and cultural organisations. The event is aimed towards increasing awareness about Korea's wide range of medical services and treatments that potential tourists from the UAE can avail during their period of travel. Korean cultural organizations will provide workshops to highlight Korean traditional clothing, crafting traditional accessories, Korean food, while giving visitors the opportunity to experience Koreas best tourist attractions through Virtual Reality (VR).



We are looking forward to host this edition of the Medical & Wellness Travel Mart in Dubai, which will give us the opportunity to tap into a large base of potential tourists in search of an ideal medical tourism destination, said Kyoosang Kang, Regional Director, Korea National Tourism Organization-Dubai Office. Our recent studies have shown that UAE nationals have the highest average medical spending per patient among Koreas international patients, recorded at $10,557. We are hoping that this event will promote South Koreas medical tourism sector and attract more UAE tourists to visit the country.



As part of the Medical and Wellness Travel Mart 2017, Korea National Tourism Organization will also host a special medical and beauty event for the UAEs major womens committees, through which three of Koreas most well-known hospitals and beauty clinics will conduct seminars on issues relating to womens health, beauty trends, and current medical treatments for women. During the event, women will have the opportunity to meet and discuss with the Korean hospitals and doctors, as well as taking part in cultural activities, experiencing Korean nail art and traditional handcrafts, and enjoying traditional Korean snacks. Visitors also stand the chance to win valuable prizes such air tickets and medical check-ups in Korea. - TradeArabia News Service
Sharjah's Research, Technology, and Innovation Park, said it has signed a MoU with the China Arab International Technology Transfer Company, the main platform for technology transfer and scientific cooperation between China and Arab countries.

Located adjacent to American University of Sharjah (AUS) campus, the Park will develop and manage an innovation ecosystem within a free zone that promotes R&D and supports enterprise activities and the triple helix collaboration of industry, government, and academia.



The new agreement is aimed at the setting up of a centre for technology transfer while also helping in the creation of newer partnerships between research institutions, companies and entrepreneurs, and in line with the objectives of the China Belt and Road Initiative.



The MoU was signed by Hussain Al Mahmoudi, the chief executive of AUSE and Sharjah's Research, Technology, and Innovation Park and Xiaojing Louis Zhang, the founder and CEO of the China Arab International Technology Transfer Company.



The soon to be established center is expected to play a significant role in the move to support the growth of the national economy--driving in new partnerships with research institutions, and innovation focused companies in the UAE, particularly in Sharjah.



The center will also add social and cultural impact through its promotion of economic exchange, dissemination and enrichment of knowledge and key scientific research.



The initiative is also being seen as a proponent in helping the Sharjah Park become a regional platform for the promotion of innovation, research and development and technology exchanges in the fields of renewable energy, environment, water technology, transportation, information technology, architecture and industrial design.



The move will also benefit staff working across various disciplines--helping improve their experiences and enrich the knowledge of students from the American University of Sharjah by leveraging the center as an active campus partner.



In line with all of these, the new center is predicted to leave a positive footprint in the overall efforts to achieve fiscal sustainability while also enhancing the reputation of the Chinese group across local and international levels.



On the deal, Al Mahmoudi said it demonstrates the excellent relations between China and the rest of the Arab region while also contributing in the strengthening of relations via significant fields such as knowledge transfer, innovation and development.



"To date, the UAE is home to more than 4,200 Chinese companies and 300,000 Chinese nationals - which makes this MoU more significant in the move to reinforce our ties with China. As per the terms of this agreement, the focus will be on key areas such as 3D printing, energy, renewable technologies, digital transformation and industrial modernization," he noted.



The new centre will enhance Sharjah's status as a regional capital for education, science research and development, and reflects the vision of the UAE government to become a knowledge-based economy, he added.



Zhang said its cooperation with the Sharjah Park is seen as an added value in the areas of research, technology and innovation, as it is a free zone that contributes to enhance these respective fields.



"We are confident that this new China-Arab innovation center will achieve its set goals and objectives of promoting joint innovation, knowledge transfer and technology between China and the Arab region and support the move to become a knowledge based economy," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
President Donald Trump is replacing his ban on travellers from six majority-Muslim countries with more tailored restrictions on travellers from additional countries.



The Department of Homeland Security has recommended the president impose the new, targeted restrictions on foreign nationals from countries it says refuse to share sufficient information with the US or haven't taken necessary security precautions.



The new travel restrictions could include indefinite bans on entry until vetting procedures and security cooperation improves, officials said. They will go into effect as soon as Sunday, after the conclusion of a 90-day policy review undertaken as part of the administrations original travel ban, reported The New York Times.



The restrictions could vary by country to country, stated the report citing officials.



Trump will soon announce the list of countries subject to the travel restrictions, they stated.



However, they declined to say whether the list would include all six countries from which travel was temporarily banned by a revised executive order in March: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.



The president hinted that the changes were coming in a tweet after a crude bomb exploded on a London Underground train last week: The travel ban into the US should be far larger, tougher and more specific.



Officials said Trump was given a decision brief on the travel ban by senior officials during a meeting Friday at the presidents Bedminster club, said the NYT report.



The announcement is the culmination of the biggest legal challenge to Trumps presidential authority since he took office.



It came just over two weeks before the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in lawsuits that claim Trump exceeded his authority and defied the constitution by banning entry from the six countries, it added.
Zain Group, a leading mobile telecom services innovator in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, is proud to announce it has been awarded Best Brand for Telecom in 2017 for a fourth consecutive year at the prestigious Telecoms World Middle East Awards gala event in Dubai earlier this week.



The honour of the Best Brand was bestowed on Zain Group by a panel of expert judges assembled by Terrapinn, the organizers of the annual Telecoms World Middle East Conference and Awards, said the company in a statement.



The awards recognize outstanding performance in key areas throughout the Middle East telecom industry and shine a spotlight on key players that have contributed to making the sector one of the most dynamic globally, it stated.



Commenting on the win, Malik Marafie, the head of the executive team, vice chairman & CEO's Office, Zain Group, said: "The Zain brand is embedded in the core of all our initiatives. It paves the path for our mission, defines our vision and drives our focus within the organization."



"This recognition as the best brand is an acknowledgement of the Zain workforce passion for making a difference to the community we serve and in the positive manner we deal with all of our stakeholders  aiming to put the customer at the center of everything we do," he noted.



Today, Zain Group and its local operations boast more than 9 million fans on Facebook, more than 6 million followers on Twitter, and over 1.2 million on Instagram.



Over the past 4 years, Zain Groups and operations numerous YouTube channels across the region have had more than 200 million views, said the statement from the group.



Zain is also very active on the most exciting new social media channel, i.e. Snapchat, attracting thousands of young followers as well as on LinkedIn with a more senior and professional audience attracting over 100,000 followers, all relevant and indicative factors of the brand power of Zain, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Qatar Airways has announced plans to add four additional weekly flights to Sohar, its newest destination in Oman, from October 1.



The additional frequency was added in response to increased passenger demand, and will take the number of weekly flights between Doha and Oman from 52 to 56.



The airline launched flights to Sohar, its third and most recent destination in Oman, last month. Sohar, a vibrant costal city known both for its traditional Omani culture and beautiful beaches, offers a wide range of activities for tourists, including diving, snorkelling and kite boarding, as well as many traditional markets featuring Omani handicrafts.



Qatar Airways group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: We are delighted to see robust demand on our DohaSohar route, especially given that we launched the service only last month.The increased frequency will allow both business and leisure travellers from Sohar even more flexibility to take advantage of smooth connections to India and Southeast Asia via our hub at Hamad International Airport.



The additional flights to Sohar will be serviced by an Airbus A320, featuring 12 seats in First Class and 132 seats in Economy Class, with a spacious environment throughout the entire aircraft.



Qatar Airways first began service to Oman by launching flights to the capital, Muscat in 2000. In 2013, Salalah was added to the airlines growing network as the second destination in Oman. The airline currently operates five daily flights between Doha and Muscat, and two daily return flights on the Doha-Salalah route.



Passengers transiting through Hamad International Airport can take advantage of the many activities and services available, from the free wi-fi, airside swimming pool and play areas for children, to the multiple quiet areas in which passengers can relax, as well as an amazing array of duty free shopping and dining options.



Qatar Airways has a host of exciting new destinations planned for the remainder of this year and 2018, including Canberra, Australia; Chiang Mai, Thailand and San Francisco, US. - TradeArabia News Service
When managing the imperiled sage grouse, a western bird that impacts everything from ranching to oil and gas development, federal agencies are directed by a rule: Improve the birds habitat and population, or at the very least, dont harm it.

It was a part of the strategy to keep the bird from being listed as endangered, which would have created a tremendous scuffle across public lands in fossil fuel-dependent states like Wyoming and likely damaged conservation efforts as a result, experts say.

But sage grouse conservation could lose that yardstick in the coming weeks on the order of the Interior Department, a move some say is another step to weaken the birds protection from industry development. Others disagree, pointing out that the language is too vague to be effective.

The issue was raised in a recent meeting of Wyomings sage grouse experts, which included industry representatives, biologists and ranchers.

Days later, an email from Wyomings Game and Fish Department informed members of the Sage Grouse Implementation Team that the feds would consider removing net conservation gain from the Endangered Species Act policies of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The proposed changes would be filed Oct. 30, kicking off a 60-day public comment period. Game and Fish was informed of this possibility by the federal agency. A spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service deferred comment to Interior. The departments spokeswoman declined to comment.

Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the Interior Departments decision not to list the sage grouse as an endangered species, crediting the development of both state and federal protections for staving off a listing.

Now that those plans have had some time to work, not everyone is averse to changes. But which changes, and for what purpose, are highly controversial.

***

Should the Service, or the federal department that oversees the Service, remove net conservation gain from the playbook, it may not have immediate consequences on the ground.

The language is embedded in federal policies that essentially influence other federal policies, said Mike McGrady, sage grouse policy adviser to Gov. Matt Mead.

More than 90 local management plans govern sage grouse conservation on public land in the West, and net gain really provides only a framework for developing those management strategies.

But that is not to say net gain is irrelevant. For oil and gas firms that fear an arbitrary measuring stick, the policy has long been a point of contention. For those who feel conservation has already been compromised for oil and gas development, the change erodes the protections that they fought to include in federal plans.

Some say nixing net gain could influence both sage grouse populations in the West and key industries that operate in Wyoming, like oil and gas, going forward.

Still, no one is surprised that it may face change. It was controversial to begin with.

Net conservation gain has been a hot topic in that there are a lot of folks that feel like it was too much  that the agency was asking for more than they were entitled to, McGrady said.

Different agencies apply it in different ways, and that can also create some inconsistencies on the ground, he said.

There has not been a time when weve had a clearly fleshed-out understanding of what it means. We might not get there because it may be undone, he said.

The governors office will weigh in on any suggested changes depending on how they align with the states polices, he said, but he did not elaborate on what the governors position would be.

Mead has been critical of some of Interiors actions on sage grouse, discouraging attempts to make wholesale changes to the plans, which were put together by state, federal and local partnerships, spearheaded by Wyoming.

***

Though some are fiercely protective of sage grouse management as it is today, others are less concerned about adjustments to the way the bird is protected.

Bob Budd, chairman of the states sage grouse team, said that net gain needs definition to be useful.

He could not speculate on what the upcoming changes will be but said he would not be surprised if net conservation gain was up for review.

Budd has maintained that the federal sage grouse plans should be continually open to adjustments and each state should be given the flexibility to manage the bird as they see fit.

What we are saying is, lets be cautious about how we do this, Budd said in the SGIT meeting earlier this month where federal changes were discussed. We dont want to pull back all the protections in there for industry and for the bird. But at the same time, there are things that are clearly not working or being misinterpreted, and how do we fix that?

Like much of the official counsel given by Wyoming biologists, the states governor and its various experts from industry to conservation, Budds comments at the meeting advised federal agencies to proceed with prudence in regard to changes.

What weve cautioned is go ahead and publish the notice of intent; nobody is objecting to that, he said. But make sure that its broad enough to allow for a state that doesnt think they need to amend their plan to do that, to allow the states that need to make surgical, targeted amendments to do that and should there be those that believe their entire plan needs to be done, have at it.

Diemer True, an oil and gas man from Casper and a member of the states sage grouse team, said he wasnt concerned by federal changes. Protections for the bird are still in place and drilling changes have already greatly reduced disturbances in the birds habitat, he said.

I think it is perfectly compatible with the oil and gas industry to move on public lands without damaging the sage grouse and its habitat, he said. The industry is so changed. We drill so many wells from a single pad, and we can do it so much quicker. We can be in there and out of there. Its not from my perspective a real threat to the sage grouse.

***

For one group in Wyoming, however, an attempt to erase the net gain rule is highly suspicious.

Conservationists say there is a rapid and public unraveling of conservation in favor of energy development taking place on public land.

[Interior] is saying that we can prioritize gas and oil everywhere, ignoring that we identified the best places to keep the grouse going, said Brian Rutledge, conservation policy and strategy adviser for the National Audubon Society. Its willful or unintentional ignorance. I dont know which, but its ignorance.

In early August, the Interior Department released the results of a criticized 60-day review of the sage grouse plans, with a number of suggested updates, including allowing controversial practices like captive breeding and setting population targets as markers of success in some states. Those moves would diminish the habitat-based approach developed in Wyoming and allow for more drilling in protected areas, conservationists argue.

The review was initiated by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has tied review of conservation polices to support for the oil, gas and coal industries. Zinkes orders frequently reference President Donald Trumps edict earlier this year to unleash U.S. energy industries that have been hampered by federal rules.

But that rhetoric does not ring true to Rutledge, who is also a member of SGIT and has been involved in sage grouse study and conservation in Wyoming for years.

To adopt the core area policy was a huge compromise on part of conservation, he said, referring to the way the plans work  protect certain areas for the grouse and leave others for development. We gave up 67 percent of the sage grouse habitat in the West and only partially protected the remaining 33 percent. We allowed oil and gas development on part of that 33 percent and on all of that 67 percent.

Taking away goal posts like net gain reflects a lack of understanding of what the plans do, how they work and why they were devised in the first place, he said.

The way we are right now is we are at a net loss of severe proportions, Rutledge said. We are still suffering from the abuse of the prior century. Fixing that [in key habitats] does not seem like too much to ask to me.

***

Wyomings position on sage grouse is complicated. Though it has led the way on conservation and is home to the largest percentage of birds, it needs its oil and gas industry to be robust.

Wyoming has suffered financially in recent years with low prices for oil and gas. Low prices mean less drilling, which means fewer jobs and declining revenue for Wyoming. An ESA listing would have curtailed drilling as effectively as a sustained drop in commodity prices, experts say. That risk galvanized Wyoming, turning the energy-rich state into a clear leader in sage grouse conservation across the West and making sage grouse conservation a priority for the last decade.

However, with a new president in the White House, the direction of federal land management is changing, and with it some policies that impact the grouse in Wyoming are due to change as well.

Net conservation gain may be the first topic in sage grouse conservation to face scrutiny, but it is unlikely to be the last.
Jim Dawson worries most about three types of people: the newbie, the one with buck fever and the veteran hunter.

The retired hunter safety instructor has seen all three and knows those are often where mistakes with firearms  and subsequent injuries  occur most.

You get nervous. People new to firearms, no matter what age, get nervous and fumble and dont handle firearms well, he said.

It doesnt mean someone new to guns shouldnt use them, but it does mean they need to be extra aware of the possibility for errors.

Another concern is a hunter in the heat of the moment, he said. Whether its buck fever or a pheasant explodes out of the grass, people lose track of themselves.

Lastly:  is the longtime hunter or shooter who has become cavalier, he said.

Accidental firearm injuries to hunters are relatively rare  there are usually fewer than about 10 a year in Wyoming that result in injury or death  but Dawson said the concerns are still real.

So for those hunters this year who are new to the sport or might need a quick refresher, Dawson offered up his quick and dirty safety tips for handling firearms.

First, the National Rifle Associations three basic rules:

Treat every gun as if its loaded.

Never point your firearm in a direction you dont intend to shoot.

Keep your finger off the trigger.

Those are things that cant be overly emphasized, Dawson said. If a firearm is treated as its loaded, even if its an accidental discharge its going in a safe direction.

Beyond those basics, he also offered more specific rules hes garnered from years of teaching firearm safety:

Take shells out of your shotgun before you get in your vehicle or cross a fence. Theres no legal requirement to take shells out, he said, but national statistics show most accidents happen within a 10-yard radius of vehicles and fences.

Never lean a gun against a vehicle or fence. Antelope hunters you will see get out of the vehicle and getting organized, they will lean their rifle against the vehicle, whether to tie a shoe or button up, then the rifle slides and discharges.

Dont hunt with a live round in the chamber. Its much safer with the action closed on an empty chamber and you see something you want to stalk or harvest, then you chamber a round, and if you decide not to harvest it you unchamber the round and proceed to hunting again.

Clearly identify your target and beyond your target before you shoot. Its easy to have tunnel vision.
DICKINSON  Steep federal budget cuts for programs that help people navigate the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, are expected to hit rural states like North Dakota the hardest, advocates say.

DLN Consulting of Dickinson has offered free advice for the last three years across southwest North Dakota to help people understand ACA. Its a service that will no longer be offered because of federal budget cuts.

DLN Consulting is a subcontractor of the North Dakota Navigator Project, which was notified by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 13 that funding would be reduced from $300,000 in 2016 to $12,000 this year, a 96 percent cut. Over a dozen navigator positions in the states eight navigator project regions will be eliminated. Other subcontractors of the ND Navigator Project include Family Voices of ND in Edgeley, and North Dakota Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health in Bismarck.

In addition to the state Navigator Project, two other organizations in North Dakota receive federal navigator funding, Family HealthCare of Fargo and Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Health Board.

Family HealthCare, which serves residents in the Fargo area, received about $186,000 in navigator funds, the same amount it received in 2016.

Dennis Delpizzo, a media contact for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, confirmed that the Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Health Board received a $10,000 dollar navigator grant this year, a steep cut this year from its $150,214 funding total in 2016.

Political navigating

Nationally, funds for navigator programs were cut from $62.5 million to about $36 million. North Dakota faced some of the harshest cuts.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said she is alarmed by the cuts because they will take away critical health care resources for families across our state.

Some congressional Republicans however disagree, saying cuts could bring efficiencies to a program that is no longer important.

All this chaos and confusion was created by a poorly designed program in the first place, said Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. Now that we are several years into it, there really should be much less if any need for these counselors to help people navigate through it. It seems to be a very inefficient system for distributing a very inefficient health care program.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D. said he thinks the cuts will make the program more accountable and cost-effective.

Navigators received over $62.5 million in federal grants nationwide and enrolled only 81,426 individuals, he said.

Those who manage the North Dakota navigator programs disagree.

What are navigators?

Deb Nelson, president of Dickinsons DLN Consulting, has worked as a health care navigator for several years.

Through educational events, in-person meetings and other outreach initiatives, she and her three DLN navigators have reached thousands of people across eight counties in southwestern North Dakota and helped many of them receive health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges.

One navigator case Nelson worked on sticks out.

I had a farm couple sitting in my office and they never had insurance, ever, she said. The wife needed surgery and the husband was diabetic.

Nelson walked them through the complicated process of finding a plan through North Dakotas health insurance exchange market. The couple eventually found a plan they could afford and covered their ailments, made possible through coverage of pre-existing conditions in the Affordable Care Act.

Nelson said as soon as she told the couple they would have affordable health insurance, the husband burst into tears.

Neil Sharpe, director of the North Dakota Navigator Project, said the cuts will essentially leave him as the states only statewide navigator, and all of his navigators in North Dakotas eight major cities will lose funding.

Sharpe said the job of North Dakota navigators is threefold: outreach and education to tell people about the ACA, assisting people to enroll in the health insurance marketplace and helping with enrollment in the expanded Medicaid program written into the ACA and approved by the state Legislature.

More than 21,000 people enrolled in North Dakotas individual health insurance marketplace last year and close to the same number received coverage through Medicaid expansion, according to the website healthinsurance.org.

Sharpe said a significant portion of these enrollees were helped by a navigator.

Either navigators dealt with them, heard them at some event, called them as they were pulling up their application online, or just asked how does (Obamacare) work, Sharpe said.

Sharpes navigators contacted more than 6,000 people in 2016 and helped enroll about 600 in the insurance marketplace.

Brad Gibbens, deputy director of the University of North Dakotas Center for Rural Health, has studied the health industry in North Dakota for years and believes navigators play an important role in the states healthcare system.

Without help from navigators, Nelson fears people will struggle to re-enroll, miss opportunities to save money and even fail to be insured.

We have a couple of people who dont have computers and dont understand working on computers, they dont trust phones, so we arent quite sure what they are going to do now, Nelson said. If (the government) can figure out a good way of having people get insurance, then you dont need a navigator, but our experience says that many rural farm people in western North Dakota dont understand how to get through the Obamacare system.

North Dakota markets

HHS released a statement on Aug. 31 saying in order to ensure accountability among navigators in the upcoming year grantees will receive funding based on their ability to meet their enrollment goals during the previous year. Nelson insisted her team, and North Dakota navigators in general, met 100 percent of its goals and she doesnt understand why its grant was so severely targeted.

Many see cuts to navigator grants in general as part of a broader effort to sabotage and undermine Obamacare marketplaces. Along with cutting navigator funding, the Trump administration announced a 90 percent cut to Obamacare advertising and slashed the insurance enrollment period from three months to six weeks.

Gibbens said taking away these Obamacare resources could negatively impact North Dakotas insurance exchange market.

Its an indirect connection, Gibbens said. But if we cut back on the number of navigators and (half) the enrollment period, there will be less people who will go in and buy insurance. I could see that leading to premium increases.

Cramer said he is concerned that the navigator cuts may disproportionately target rural areas, and that he would dig into navigator funding issues with HHS within the week.

Ben Hanson, a Democrat from West Fargo who plans to run for the U.S. House, said he is concerned that Native Americans and poor people will suffer the most.

These cuts are cruel and appear to be haphazardly applied across the country, Hanson said. Rural states  like North Dakota and the 67 percent cut were facing  will be the hardest hit.

What now?

If the U.S. Senate passes the Graham-Cassidy proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare next week, fundamental changes to the nations health care system may render navigator services obsolete.

But if the current system remains in place, if even just for 2017 enrollment period, residents of Dickinson and other areas that lose local navigator services will still have several options in getting help to navigate Obamacare insurance exchanges.

Chief Marketing Officer Pat Bellmore for Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota said that their agents will continue to aid North Dakotans in navigating the federal marketplace.

Nelson also said her firm will still do some navigator work on a pro-bono basis and Sharpe will encourage people to contact Fargo Family HealthCare, which has retained navigator funding.

Reed Reyman, president of CHI St. Alexius in Dickinson, said he also has staff members who are dedicated to helping patients find health insurance plans. The staff members, known as medical eligibility credentialing specialists or MECS, will help answer insurance questions, such on Medicaid eligibility or what the best insurance plan is for them and their family.

People are free to come in to talk with a specialist at any time at no cost. Even if the ACA goes away, Reyman said they plan to keep their MECS person. At one time they were seeing 200 to 300 people a month, but that number has since dropped to about 100 to 150 people a month.

Theres so many variables and policies that until people actually use them, theyre really not sure how they work, he said.
Autumn is a showstopper in many parts of Wyoming. As appealing as it might be to set aside a whole weekend to head outside, camp and hunt, thats not always possible  or necessary. Here are a few ways to immerse yourself in Wyomings fall colors that start with a single footstep and can be achieved in a few hours or less.

Yellowstone a locals playground

Yellowstone National Park doesnt exactly fly under the radar. But cool temperatures and the advent of the school year edge out the huge crowds that flock there during summer. Take advantage of the elbow room and hit the trails.

During fall, the worlds first national park really becomes a locals playground, especially as the crowds start to thin out in late September and early October, said Tia Troy, with the Wyoming Department of Tourism. She says the park is perfect for hikes of any difficulty.

Many easy routes begin in the Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs areas and lead to the unforgettable vistas Yellowstone is known for: Grand Prismatic Spring, waterfalls and geysers and panoramic views. In other parts of the park, trails skirt the shores of Yellowstone Lake and other bodies of water and wander into nearby woods and meadows. The Canyon Area is known for its challenging hikes, but there are some easy ones, too. In short, the park is full of places to take memorable walks regardless of your ability level. Make sure you prepare for inclement weather.

Plan your hike in Yellowstone: http://bit.ly/1OaUF5i

Bighorn National Forest

The Bighorn National Forest is ideal for hikes of all kinds, Troy said, including day hikes and overnight trips. Some of the trails overlook waterfalls.

If youre looking for a trail thats easily accessible and suitable for hikers of all ages, Troy suggests the Tongue River Canyon, which is a short drive from Sheridan.

Plan your hike in the Bighorn National Forest: http://bit.ly/2gxtqHz

Medicine Bow

Vedauwoo and Hidden Falls  even the names beckon to hikers. Luckily, all thats between you and them is a walk and a quick drive from Cheyenne. Visit Curt Gowdy State Park to embark on your walk to both sites. Vedauwoo, which is an outcropping of granite rocks, and the waterfall are popular destinations for park visitors, but crowds should ease in the cooler months.

The Snowy Range Road on the other side of Laramie is also the jumping-off point for many fall jaunts. Troy suggests heading to Medicine Bow Peak for a challenging hike or looking at the Libby Creek and Lakes trails for a more moderate experience.

Plan your hike in the Medicine Bow National Forest area:

Curt Gowdy State Park: http://bit.ly/2wrgb0L

Hiking in the Medicine Bow National Forest: http://bit.ly/2vzA5rF
Having left your warm bed and arrived in your warm car, you sit eating a hot breakfast paid for by yourself, or most likely, your employer.

You hear the Star-Spangled Banner, sung by a chorus of little kids with their hands over their hearts.

You hear introductions, lots of them. And announcements, lots of them.

And then you meet three high school students whom you have never known, and now will never forget.

Thats the power that a 2-1/2 hour breakfast has in Casper.

This year, the 1,360 of us who reserved seats at the table heard about Catherine Cat Williams, whose father was abusive; Andy King, who said that at one time his GPA was 1 and Hannah Goetz, who nearly drank herself to the grave.

They were this years Youth of the Year finalists for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming. They are but three of the 4,000 members whom the staff serves at 10 sites spanning from Glenrock to Buffalo.

Williams plans to study marketing and sociology. When she began going to the club, she did not know any people her age. She had no friends, no one to associate with. The teen staff and other members at the BGCCW became her home.

King fought with his mother and was placed in WBI, the Wyoming Behavioral Institute. When he was released, he was placed in the CHINS (Children in Need of Supervision) program and mandatorily placed at the BGCCW.

He did not speak there. At all.

But day after day, the staff and other members talked to him. They did not give up on him.

Eventually, he began speaking back. Slowly, he raised his GPA to just under 3.0.

And now, the kid who went because he had to, who never spoke a word, envisions a career in television broadcasting.

Goetz was raised by a single mom and was subjected very heavily to substance abuse. The day she hit rock bottom with her drinking was the day she rolled over in her bed and saw her dad with his head in his hands. She, too, found a new chance at the club. Now, she wants to study dermatology and continue to mentor other youth in rough spots.

Williams was named the Youth of the Year. She gets $5,000 toward her education, a plaque and the chance to continue on in competition at the state level.

The other two get $2,500 scholarship awards, provided anonymously while the breakfast was taking place.

Every year, you attend the breakfast and you think, These kids have overcome the most. And the next year and the next, you think the same thing.

Every day, the staff works with youth in Wyoming communities. Every day, they try to make it the best day for the youth. And every day that the youth walk through those doors, it is.
CHEYENNE  Roger and Sydney Davies were prepared for sun tans, snorkeling expeditions and dips in the resort pool when they arrived Sept. 1 at the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas.

Then they got an email.

It said, Weve got a hurricane, and you might want to consider not coming, Roger said.

On Sept. 6, the Davieses would find themselves in a sweaty hotel room, surrounded by candles, waiting for Hurricane Irma to pass.

The Category 5 storm ripped through the U.S. Virgin Islands last week, killing at least three people and stranding thousands of others without food or resources.

The Davieses would make it to Puerto Rico, New York City and Denver before the ordeal was over, but the couple and their family said theyre using this experience to help educate others.

Long ride

Irma was just a blip off the coast of Africa when Roger and Sydney left for vacation with Sydneys cousin and her husband.

The couple was slightly concerned about the storm, but Marriott assured them everything would be fine.

I dont think they anticipated this hurricane, Roger said.

By the time the Davieses arrived in St. Thomas, people were scheduling flights off the island, and the couple had to decide whether to stay or go.

They decided to go on with the vacation. Roger and Sydney sat out by the pool, went snorkeling and sat on the boardwalk. They took in the sights of white, sandy beaches and lush green foliage.

By the time it became clear that the storm was headed their way, there were no more flights off the island.

It became very anxiety-producing, Roger said. As we got closer, we realized that we were going to be in for a ride.

Sydney, a California native, and Roger, who is from Utah, had never experienced a hurricane before.

It was our first rodeo, Sydney said.

Luckily, the two had a fourth-floor room in a sturdy building at the Marriott Vacation Club facility at Frenchmans Cove. The hotel was equipped with hurricane-proof windows and a few large generators.

The Davieses stocked up on water, nonperishable food and candles. But the preparation didnt stop them from worrying.

The night before (the storm), Ive never really slept so restlessly, knowing there was impending doom, Sydney said.

Hundreds of questions ran through her head: How am I going to get out? What if theres a landslide? What if the building doesnt hold up?

Youre thinking of every scenario, she said. It was crazy.

The wall

At around 8 a.m. Sept. 6, the power shut off on St. Thomas Island.

The hotels generators kicked in and offered some relief, but the winds began howling.

The Davieses moved furniture inside from the balcony and barricaded the largest window in the room with a mattress.

The winds got stronger, and the trees began to sway. An 80-foot palm snapped in half, while another fallen tree smashed the hotels generator.

The Davieses and the couple with them played card games by candlelight, trying to distract themselves from the storm.

It was loud and intense, Roger said. Just the force of the wind would hit you, and itd be so loud.

It was so humid in the room that tile floors became slick with moisture. The air pressure fluctuated and made their ears pop.

At the storms peak, Roger said it looked like Wyoming during a blizzard  they couldnt even see 10 feet from their room.

St. Thomas was located in the wall of the hurricane, just north of the eye. That meant unrelenting 185-mile winds blew for nearly seven hours, ravaging the island and destroying many buildings.

Fears at home

Back on the mainland, Roger and Sydneys six children were panicking.

Roger said he sent one of his children instructions about how to access the house and log onto his iPad, and how to find his living trust and life insurance.

I made an emotionally technical error, but it was a correct thing I did, he said.

Sydney chimed in, This is the worst hurricane theyve ever had. You just dont know whats going to happen.

One of their daughters, Jessica Mortensen, was home in Idaho when she got the last message from them Sept. 5, saying the winds were picking up.

We dont realize how much we depend on our ability to communicate with people, Mortensen said. So when youre halfway across the world, and all of a sudden you lose contact because your parents are in a hurricane, its really scary and its really emotional.

Late at night on Sept. 6, Mortensen got some relief  another message letting her know that her parents had survived. At that point, she got busy trying to get them home.

But without access to their emails or flight information, Mortensen had no idea how to help them.

When people are going on vacation, they really need to have information ready on hand for one person, she said. Passwords to everything, all flight confirmations, where vehicles are  just that information is key if you have to reschedule anything.

Luckily a spotty message came through from Sydneys cousin  it said something about getting to Puerto Rico.

Getting home

Sydney and Roger stayed in the hotel on St. Thomas for two more days without electricity and with limited running water.

Finally staff came around and said youve gotta be packed, one bag, and were going to transport you (to Puerto Rico), Roger said.

They went down to the dock with more than hundreds of other Marriott guests, where the ferry was supposed to pick them up. But after more than an hour, nothing had come.

We kept waiting and waiting, Sydney said. We knew the resort was running out of resources, and we had no way to communicate with our families at all.

The island was decimated.

Power lines lay over the streets, lush greenery was replaced by brown leaves and mud, palm tree trunks jutted out of the ground.

Its going to take months  if not years  for the island to be put back together.

(People on the island) will not have power for six months . they were stranded, Roger said, tears welling in his eyes.

When they got to Puerto Rico, Roger and Sydney got in touch with Mortensen, who had booked a flight home.

They had a layover in New York City before flying to Denver late Monday night. Then they headed back to Cheyenne.

Relief

On their couch, Sydney and Roger said they were tired, but grateful for the lessons they had learned.

Its an event that you go through that you know should never be forgotten, Roger said. You should never take for granted what you have.

And there are a lot of people who live in circumstances . Sydney said.

. That we have to look after, Roger said.

Weve left and come home to safety, but there are people who are left with nothing, Sydney said. Its devastating.

Sydneys cousin started a GoFundMe page for a church the two couples visited on the island.

And Sydney recommended people take a flashlight and radio with them on vacation if they are likely to run into bad weather.

The Davieses give Marriott, Delta Airlines and the other travelers in the hotel a lot of the credit for helping them through their journey.

People are good, they really are, Roger said.

When asked whether theyd visit the Caribbean again, Roger said, I think I would.

But definitely not in hurricane season.
In the early 1990s, the Equality State Policy Center started compiling a hefty volume each year called the Legislative Accountability Project. Weighing in at well over 200 pages, the book tracked how every legislator voted on various measures and tallied their campaign spending and contributions. It was beloved by the press and relied on by a host of Cheyenne lobbyists.

But times have changed.

I think thats a really great tool for people who are in the process and are in the Legislature day in and day out, said EPSC communications director Robert West. But were not looking to provide those people a tool right now.

Instead, the coalition of progressive organizations in Wyoming is seeking to become more accessible to the general public.

On Oct. 1, the group will launch The Peoples Review, a condensed and streamlined version of the old Legislative Accountability Project. The review will be an annual listing of how legislators vote on a handful of bills important to the ESPC and will be distributed both online and in newspapers around the state. West hopes it will help voters more effectively judge lawmakers.

The advertisements will highlight how lawmakers in a newspapers circulation area voted on issues like minimum wage increases, school funding and the recording of legislative meetings.

Theres a pretty great disparity between the average person and the decisions being made by the lawmakers elected to represent them, said ESPC director Phoebe Stoner.

Stoner said the disconnect is partially due to the size of the state and the remoteness of Cheyenne to many communities. Living in Jackson, she noted that it was possible to drive to state capitals in Idaho, Montana and Utah faster than it was to reach Cheyenne.

The review is meant to shrink that gap.

But it exists within a larger project meant to focus the ESPCs mission around three areas: transparent government, fair elections and thriving communities.

Focusing advocacy

Founded in 1993, ESPC has long focused on good government and fought for campaign finance and lobbyist disclosures, among other issues. In that sense, the new three-pronged advocacy approach isnt too different than in past years. But Stoner said that the center wants to makes its mission clearer to both the public and to its 29 coalition members, which range from the Powder River Basin Resource Council to the United Steelworkers and Wyoming Equality.

Our vision and our mission before was something that was an unspoken understanding among our coalition members, Stoner said. But now its something we can coalesce around.

The group is also redesigning its website and has given its logo a facelift for the first time since its founding, all the better to reach the public. While the group has generally focused on lobbying lawmakers on various bills, it also conducts training in civic engagement for state residents.

While the last piece of the centers new vision  thriving communities  includes more controversial issues like minimum wage increases, the three pillars seek to brand the organization as non-partisan and focused on issues with broad public appeal.

That is important because in the past the group has faced attacks claiming that it has an ultra-liberal agenda.

Stoner strenuously disputes the notion that ESPC is a liberal organization and notes that its non-profit status bars it from partisan political activity. She pointed out that Democratic state senators helped kill a bill backed by the group that would have required legislative meetings to be recorded and posted online.

Senate kills bill requiring legislative meeting recordings be posted online CHEYENNE  The Wyoming Senate defeated a bill Monday that would have made audio recordings o

Nonetheless, the group is closely associated with the tiny political left in Wyoming.

The board is made up of labor, social justice and conservation organizations. Stoner became director last year and her immediate predecessor, Bri Jones, is currently managing Democrat Mary Thrones campaign for Wyoming governor. Directors before Jones include Dan Neal, who ran unsuccessfully for the Legislature as a Democrat last year and Tom Throop, who was a Democratic lawmaker in Oregon before moving to Wyoming.

Their support comes from groups that share an ultra liberal agenda and are closely allied with the very left wing of the national Democratic Party, the state GOP wrote in 2000 a press release.

Almost two decades later, Stoner is hoping to create a more proactive and clearly defined agenda in the groups lobbying activities. Instead of responding to bills as they arise during the Legislatures meetings, Stoner wants ESPC to suggest ways for lawmakers to improve government transparency and other goals.

I think so often our work as people in politics is kind of bogged down by the present moment and its really important to look down the road and envision where we could be, she said.

Uniting coalition

In addition to presenting a popular face to the public, Stoner said the three pillars will also help the coalitions members understand how the group is investing its resources and why. Notably, the priorities are largely palatable across a coalition that includes membership, like labor unions and environmental groups, that might clash over more specific issues such as whether to build new power plants in the state.

Its not assumed that all our groups agree on everything all the time, Stoner said. We are trying to operate on a level thats high enough to basically do good for all of our member groups and also just the people of Wyoming.

Marguerite Herman, who has worked with ESPC in the past as part of her involvement in the Wyoming League of Women Voters, said the groups newly distilled vision is similar to its prior advocacy work.

But, Herman said, it may help move the organization away from a leader-oriented advocacy style. She cited Throop and Neal as big personalities who, while respected by many lawmakers, came to embody the center itself.

Maybe being more agenda driven  issue driven  may actually change the way the Legislature sees them, Herman said. I hope the group gets another look by some people who might like to put them in a slot as, Oh that leftist group, we dont have to listen to them.
CHEYENNE  The dispute over the Bells of Balangiga continues to kick up dust in Washington, D.C., and the Philippines.

Wyomings congressional delegation recently weighed in heavily in response to the comment of the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, who seemed to promise the bells would be returned to the church in Balangiga.

In a letter to President Donald Trump, the delegation expressed concern about the ambassadors comments and emphasized their desire that Congress be involved and informed of the management of historical archives.

Sen. John Barrasso added an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for the 2018 fiscal year to expand the current prohibition on the transfer of veterans memorial objects without specific authorization of law.

The House version of that bill also has a similar rider that expands the current prohibition to 2022. It also adds language to specify that the language applies to objects from abroad before 1907.

Because of the differences in language, the bill will go to a joint conference committee.

The dispute over the location of the bells has been going on for years.

To recap: The Roman Catholic church bells were taken by American troops in 1901 as spoils of war.

Then they were seized in retaliation for a massacre in Balangiga, where Filipino guerrilla killed 48 of the 75 American soldiers attacked while they were having breakfast.

At least one of the bells was rung to signal an attack by Filipino guerrillas on the American unit.

Philippines President Duterte, who has demanded return of the bells, said recently that Americans retaliated by ordering the killing of all Filipinos who could bear arms.

Two of the bells can be seen at the entrance of what is now Warren Air Force Base in West Cheyenne, originally Army Fort D.A. Russell.

A third bell is with a U.S. army unit in South Korea.

R Sonny Campayan-Sampayan is the special envoy of the Catholic Diocese of Borogan in Eastern Samar in the Philippines, where the village of Balangiga is located.

Sonny, retired after serving nearly 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, lives in New York City.

He has been working on returning the bells since 1997. As part of that effort he has visited Wyoming seven times.

If they get the bells back, his committee, which includes six organizations, has agreed to raise money to build a veterans tribune tower in Cheyenne to honor Wyoming veterans.

This is the last time the committee will work through Congress, Sonny wrote in an email.

If this matter is litigated, I am confident that the ownership of the church bells will be restored to the Roman Catholic Church because taking of religious artifacts is against U.S. laws, he added.

A dozen years ago Sonny came close to getting support from the Wyoming Veterans Commission. The group voted 7-4 to return the bells in 2005. But the opponents on the commission talked to then-Gov. Dave Freudenthal, who said the bells should stay at Warren. The commission backed down.

It sort of got messy up there, Sonny said in a phone interview last week.

In 2012, the group almost succeeded again, but the effort also failed.

Resistance from politicians and Wyoming veterans groups has been solid since then.

An interesting aspect of the dispute is that, according to Sonny, this seems to be pretty much Wyomings fight.

Veterans in other states never heard of the bells, Sonny said.

For Filipinos, the bells are a symbol of their fight for independence.

During the Spanish-American War, Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines after 300 years of Spanish rule. By mid-August, Filipino rebels and U.S. troops had ousted the Spanish, but Aguinaldos hopes for independence were dashed when the United States formally annexed the Philippines for $20 million as part of its peace treaty with Spain, according to internet accounts.

The U.S. in 1946 granted the Republic of the Philippines independence.

Sonny hopes the bells question can be resolved in his lifetime.

Thats not the way we are, he said. Were a better nation than this.
While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump more than once referred to the United Nations as a useless organization and not a friend of democracy.

In his speech Tuesday to the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, he apparently has discovered the often dysfunctional body can be useful, if it adopts the reforms he is proposing and accepts an agenda that includes uniting to stop North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons and missiles to strike at U.S and other targets.

This may have been Trumps finest speech as president. Written by Stephen Miller, Trumps senior policy adviser, it was clear about the presidents objectives and concise about how he and any nations that wish to join him might hope to achieve them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could barely stay in his seat. He said of the presidents address: In over 30 years in my experience with the U.N., I never heard a bolder or more courageous speech. President Trump spoke the truth about the great dangers facing our world and issued a powerful call to confront them in order to ensure the future of humanity.

Using his new nickname for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, Trump said the rocket man is on a suicide mission and that if he persists in his nuclear ambitions North Korea will be destroyed. How to do this without causing massive civilian deaths is the question. Trump framed the issue as one of good vs. evil: If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.

While thanking Russia and China for voting to stiffen sanctions against North Korea in the Security Council, the president also criticized both nations: We must reject threats to sovereignty, from Ukraine to the South China Sea, an apparent reference to the Russian occupation of the former Soviet territory and Chinas opposition to an independent Taiwan.

The corrupt and destabilizing regime in Cuba was also a target, noting his recent announcement no sanctions would be lifted against the communist regime until it makes fundamental reforms.

Venezuela has been brought to the brink of total collapse by the socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. The president said that regime has destroyed a prosperous nation by imposing a failed ideology that has brought poverty and misery everywhere it has been tried. To defenders of socialism, he said, The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.

On Afghanistan, the president said, from now on, our security interests will dictate the length and scope of military operations  not arbitrary benchmarks and timetables, a clear reference to the policy of former President Obama.

He called Iran a murderous regime, which masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy. He called the Iran nuclear deal made by the Obama administration, one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into and while not vowing to immediately cancel it, he added, dont think youve heard the last of it.

There was praise for the U.N.s humanitarian work and a call for all nations to protect the idea of sovereignty, security and success for themselves as the best guarantee of peace.

Clearly, the president was trying to mobilize a lethargic world body to act in its own and the worlds best interests. He laid out the threats and the opportunities. The question is: Will enough of the non-rogue nations acknowledge them and act to eradicate the threats they pose, while taking advantage of the opportunities freedom offers?
Tucsons hotel industry took a beating during the Great Recession, and its slow recovery has been nothing to write home about.

Now things are really looking up, with an uptick in performance that started in 2015 projected to accelerate, and plans to add hundreds of new rooms downtown expected to buoy the local convention and meetings business.

Tucson-area hotel occupancy, average daily room rates and revenue per available room  a key measure of hotel operations calculated by multiplying average room rates by occupancy rates  all rose in 2016, with average rates rising about 7 percent and revenue per room jumping more than 9 percent, according to STR, a leading hotel market research firm based in Tennessee.

Nationally in 2016, room rates and revenue per available room grew about 3 percent.

And so far this year through August, daily room rates in Tucson were up more than 8 percent, while revenue per available room was up 13.8 percent, while nationally for the same period room rates rose just 2.1 percent and revenue per available room rose 2.7 percent, STR says.

Any time you can experience that type of growth year over year, youve had really just an outstanding year, said Brent DeRaad, president and CEO of Visit Tucson. Were optimistic that growth will continue, but probably not at that pace.

DeRaad noted that STR has forecast a marketwide increase of about 5 percent in revenue per available room in 2018.

HVS, a hotel real estate firm, published a report in March citing faster growth in Tucson hotel rates and predicting continued growth this year.

Ryan Wall, a Phoenix-based director for HVS and co-author of the Tucson report, said improved performance among resorts, along with a general economic improvement, has helped lift the local market.

After lagging the overall market in in 2014 and 2015, Tucsons resort submarket outpaced the overall market in 2016 with 5.6 percent growth in revenue per room, according to HVS data.

Russ Bond, general manager JW Marriott Tucson Starr Pass Resort & Spa, said Tucson still has a way to go but the improvement over the last two years is encouraging.

Were still not back to the 07-08 levels, but were making great headway, and 2018 is shaping up to be a great year for us, Bond said, citing strong group bookings at Starr Pass for next year so far.

Bond, a vice president of the Southern Arizona Lodging and Resort Association, said a spate of endorsements for Tucson  including the 2014 UNESCO designation as the first U.S. City of Gastronomy have sent many travelers to discover the Old Pueblo.

You cant put a price on that, though you cant actually track it, Bond said. If we get people to come here for the first time to give us a shot, then we have a pretty good chance of getting them to come back.

DOWNTOWN HOTEL BOOM

A revitalized downtown and moves to add more than 600 new hotel rooms downtown will help boost the citys conventions and meetings business, said HVSs Wall, who is frequently involved in Tucson hotel appraisals.

The 136-room Marriott AC Hotel opened Thursday a few blocks north of the TCC, and the same developer has proposed a 100-room Marriott Moxy boutique hotel.

After years of delays, HSL Properties has proposed to renovate the shuttered Hotel Arizona adjacent to the Tucson Convention Center and reopen it as a 309-room hotel under a Hilton brand by 2019. And Scottsdale-based Caliber Hospitality wants to build a hotel with a minimum of 120 rooms just south of the TCC.

Certainly, with additional rooms being built within a hop, skip and a jump of the Convention Center, I think it allows the city to go after bigger groups, Wall said.

The SCOTTSDALE EFFECT

Outside of downtown, Tucson resorts including Starr Pass, Loews Ventana Canyon Resort and the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa vie for convention business with high-end resorts in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Wall said.

The slow recovery of national meeting and group travel, coupled with the boycotts created by the immigration bill, SB 1070, had previously suppressed resort demand in Tucson, Wall said.

Starr Passs Bond said hes not so sure Tucson resorts are dependent on overflow business from the Phoenix-Scottsdale market.

We talk about it, but Im not sure if statistically theres really any data to support it, Bond said. I dont think its necessarily a direct impact, because if youve chosen Phoenix or Scottsdale youre willing to spend probably $100 to $150 in season more per room.

For 2017 through July, Phoenix-Scottsdale resorts commanded an average daily room rate of about $257, compared with about $160 for Tucson resorts, according to data from STR and CBRE Hotels.

Bond said most Tucson resorts have completed major renovations in recent years  a key to getting return business.

Starr Pass updated its guest rooms and ballroom a few years ago and plans to redo its lobby, spa and Starbucks cafe by years end. La Paloma and Loews Ventana Canyon completed major renovations in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

The Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Resort last week marked the completion of the largest renovation project in its 35-year history, updating its 428 guest rooms and 139 casitas and adding new indoor and outdoor amenities.

FIXING AIR SERVICE

Market experts and local industry leaders agree on one thing: The lack of nonstop airline service to key cities, particularly on the East Coast, continues to hold back Tucsons conventions and meetings business.

Efforts to remedy that were dealt a blow when American Airlines canceled a new nonstop to New York John F. Kennedy International Airport, resulting in the payment of $3 million in revenue guarantees by local backers, including most area resorts.

Phoenix is an easy in and out, Bond said. Tucson continues to be a challenge from an airlift (standpoint), and its something we really have to get fixed if were really going to show robust improvement as we move forward.

The Tucson Metro Chamber, Visit Tucson and the Tucson Airport Authority continue to lobby airlines for new nonstops, with New York and Washington, D.C., their top priorities.

Our thought is, we dont want to rush into anything specific right now, I think well take our time, be deliberative with it, continue to have conversations with the larger carriers to see what we can pull together, Visit Tucsons DeRaad said. There could be even a smaller carrier out there to that we could talk to about that.

Meanwhile, the arrival of Caterpillars Surface Mining and Technology Division downtown with some 600 employees and plans by Raytheon Missile Systems, the regions top private employer, to add some 2,000 employees will boost Tucsons case for new nonstop airline flights and help fill the citys hotels with business travelers, DeRaad said.
Q: I recently flew from Tucson to Philadelphia on American Airlines. When I booked the trip, I inadvertently paid $56 for priority boarding instead of two checked bags.

When I got to the airport, a check-in person told me that I should contact the company and it would refund the $56. I sent American Airlines a letter, but have not heard anything. I did not need priority boarding because I am handicapped and always am allowed to board during pre-boarding. Could you help me get the refund that I feel I am due?  Mary Lou Hartline, Tucson.

A: Im sorry you were confused when you were making your flight arrangements. Buying these extras should be easy and intuitive, so even if you didnt have a case, I needed to be sure to share your frustrations with American Airlines. If you pushed the wrong button, chances are there are others who have done the same thing.

American is clear about the refundability of these fees. You can get your money back only if you cant use the service: www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/faqs/customer-service-faqs.jsp.

Unfortunately, even though you didnt need the service, you were able to use it. Therefore, no refund is due.

Or is there?

You spoke with a representative who said you could get a refund, and based on that promise, you sent American Airlines a letter. It should have responded, even if to say no. Next time this happens  and I hope there isnt a next time for you  try sending an email through Americans website: www.aa.com/i18n/customer-service/contact-american/american-customer-service.jsp.

A promise made by an employee should be sufficient. Always ask for the persons name. You should have received the money without question  or delay.

Of course, American shouldnt be charging for priority boarding or checked bags. The ability to board the plane in a timely manner, select a seat and check a bag ought to be included in the ticket price. Taking them out is just a deceptive way of raising the ticket price, and there ought to be a law against it. But I digress.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Sept. 23 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.
GENEVA, Switzerland  Two elected tribal leaders from the United States, a doctor and tribal councilwoman from the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and a legislative assistant from the Navajo Nation in Arizona, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday about the need for continued vigilance in fighting human trafficking on reservations.

Dr. Monica Mayer and Nathaniel Brown represented their respective tribal governments.

Their attendance at the meeting followed earlier consultations on their reservations with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples on their situation in the United States.

The two gave the following joint statements to the UN council:

"I am an elected leader of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, which the Special Rapporteur visited in the United States, " said Mayer. "We are here today to discuss one of the most serious impacts of development of resources on our lands: human trafficking. We support the Special Rapporteur's finding that trafficking is an impact of extractive industry development.

 I have been a practicing physician for over 20 years. I have seen firsthand the devastation that human trafficking has wreaked on our communities. There are serious health consequences of trafficking including physical abuse, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, depression and suicide. The social and cultural wounds of this situation will take generations to heal. We ask the United Nations to undertake a comprehensive inquiry on human trafficking specific to tribal communities using disaggregated data on the impact of trafficking in our communities."

Brown said to the U.N. council: "I am an elected member of the Navajo Nation, which the Special Rapporteur visited in the United States. The MHA Nation, the Navajo Nation and other tribes have passed laws to combat trafficking but the United States has yet to pass a tribally specific law as to trafficking. We call upon the United States to expand tribal prosecution under the violence against women act to cover human trafficking.

The Special Rapporteur's report on the Rights of Indigenous Women and Girls described Indigenous women's heightened risk of sexual violence as well as their lack of access to justice. Article 3 of the Declaration recognizes the right of self-determination, the realization of which would ensure that development impacts are fully considered and addressed. Self-determination allows us to best protect our women and children and to approach projects sustainably to address development impacts. We ask the Special Rapporteur what she believes States should do to fully address the issues we have raised, " Brown said.

The tribal leaders were part of a delegation to the United Nations that included Casey Family Programs and the American Indian Law Program at the University of Colorado Law School.

The statements made by the tribal leaders occurred directly after the Special Rapporteur's presentation of her report on the rights of the indigenous peoples.
Willing to spend four years in front of a classroom full of fourth-graders?

What if you got a free education degree from one of the states three universities?

Thats the deal Gov. Doug Ducey is offering to some people in a bid to address the states teacher shortage.

But the small program  just $1 million spread among the states universities  means only some would-be teachers will get tuition waivers. It remains to be seen whether the offer can help plug the gap between the need and the number of people willing to take and remain on the job.

Ducey proposed the Arizona Teachers Academy in January as one method to deal with the states chronic teacher shortage. Hell unveil it on Tuesday at an event in Tolleson with the presidents of the three universities.

Im looking for the best and brightest to commit to teach in Arizona public schools, Ducey said in his State of the State speech to begin the year. If you make that commitment, well make this commitment: Your education will be paid for, a job will be waiting and you will be free of debt.

Put simply, for each year a student who is accepted into the program promises to teach any grade in a public school, he or she will get a waiver of tuition and fees.

That not only applies to new high school graduates. Universities also can craft their program to pay for a masters degree in education for someone who already has a degree in something else and might already be in a classroom, teaching with a temporary emergency certificate.

There already are loan forgiveness programs, though they are aimed at filling vacancies either in specialties like science, math and special education, or for those willing to teach in schools located in low-income or rural areas. But the shortage remains.

The Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association found that four weeks into last school year, the 159 school districts and charter schools surveyed still had 2,166 vacancies, meaning schools could fill only three out of every four openings. Others were staffed with those without teaching certificates or long-term substitutes or had classes combined.

Justin Wing, past president of the association, said Friday that hes still compiling data for this year. But he said the results so far show it is still difficult to fill vacancies.

Wing said a tuition waiver program could help put more people in the pipeline to become teachers. He said it might even mean that more students from disadvantaged families, whose education would otherwise end with a diploma, might go on to college.

But Wing, director of human resources at Washington Elementary School District in Phoenix, said the real problem is keeping teachers in the classroom.

Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association, agreed the program might provide some incentive for people to choose education as a career path.

But this alone is not going to solve our teacher crisis, Thomas said. We have plenty of certified teachers in the state.

As of Friday, the state Department of Education said there were more than 92,000 active teaching certificates. But just 50,000 of those people were in public school classrooms, with another 10,000 in charter schools.

Thomas said some of that does relate to the cost of education. Its difficult to earn enough money to survive and pay off your debt, he said.

Its not so much that they dont want to teach, Thomas said. The income-to-debt ratio isnt sustainable and so they have to get another job.

Lawmakers did address that issue, at least a bit, putting money into the budget for a 1 percent teacher pay raise this year and an identical amount the following year, versus the 0.4 percent proposed by Ducey.

Diane Douglas, the state superintendent of public instruction, said that wont cut it.

She wants to boost the current 0.6-cent sales tax dedicated to education to a full penny, something that would bring in an additional $400 million a year. She figures earmarking $300 million of that solely for teacher pay would increase salaries by 11 percent, or an average of $5,500.

Ducey, for his part, remains opposed to any expansion of that education tax.

Pay aside, Douglas said Friday that she understands how tuition waivers for some selected for the academy might get more people interested in teaching. But Douglas, who is supporting a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Mark Brnovich against the Board of Regents saying tuition is too expensive, had concerns.

Is it fair that we give some people tuition waivers but not those for whom education might not be the field for them? she asked.

Douglas said if the state is giving away free college education, the commitment should be more than just a year-for-year match.

That goes to the other issue: About 40 percent of teachers leave after the second year; by the fifth year, half are gone, leaving the question of what good waivers do if those who get them can leave debt-free after four years.

Thomas said the issue goes beyond salaries and the related issue of student debt. He said those who leave more often cite other reasons.

They really believe that the jobs not what they thought it was going to be, he said, with issues of class size and workload, including paperwork, cutting into the time they thought theyd be teaching.

Teaching sounds very noble, Douglas said, but she said many have no idea what the job really entails.

Wing said this appears particularly true among those who have the alternate teaching certificates, a measure pushed through the Legislature by Ducey to allow those without formal teacher training to run a classroom.

Some are really good, he said. But others, Wing said, have no idea whats in store.

People think because youre working with 26 cute, wonderful kids, thats no problem, Wing said. However, its a very stressful job.

In fact, Wing said schools are reporting a lot of situations where new teachers just abandon their jobs in the first few months of the year. That includes not only those who came in through the alternate certification process but who probably werent qualified and should not have been hired in the first place. But Wing said districts didnt have much choice.

Theres a lack of competition for every job, he said, meaning the person hired may have been the only applicant. I think standards are being lowered.
Fifteen Tucson police officers have been named in a $3 million claim stemming from a February protest downtown that resulted in members of the crowd being pepper sprayed and pushed down by police.

The Feb. 16 rally and march outside the federal building on West Congress Street was planned by a local political group in conjunction with the National Day Without Immigrants, according to the claim, which was filed last month with the city.

Lucha Unida de Padres y Estudiantes organized the march to highlight and object to the anti-immigrant views of the recently elected administration, attempted federal Muslim ban at airports and nationwide efforts to step-up immigration raids, the claim said.

The event started at 4:30 p.m. with speeches against deportation raids that finished shortly before 6 p.m., when attendees tried to march across North Granada Avenue toward the events final location of Armory Park, the claim said.

Protest organizers and participants had no intention to block the roadway, but rather use the public roadway to peacefully assemble and to express their grievances, according to the claim.

Earlier in the year, large crowds of protesters marched through the streets of downtown for Inauguration Day and the Womens March, with police making no attempts to stop people from walking in the road, the claim said.

While protesters at this event expected things to be the same, officers instead attempted to block the street and prevent the protesters from using the public roadway to express their opposition of the new administrations anti-immigrant policies, according to the claim.

Instead of police vehicles leading the marchers, as had been done in previous protests, the cars flipped around across both eastbound lanes of Congress, blocking vehicle traffic. When protesters tried to walk around the vehicles, officers prevented them from doing so, the claim said.

TPD officers physically arrested four protesters after dragging a screaming protester across the pavement, and officers Green and Guevara, and others discharged their department-issued pepper spray at claimants and others, the claim says.

Because the identities of the officers involved were obtained through the police report of the incident, only last names and badge numbers were listed on the claim, said attorney Paul Gattone. The Tucson Police Department did not respond to the Stars request for the two officers first names.

The claim says Green violently pushed one of the plaintiffs, 78-year-old Fritzi Redgrave, to the ground and lied about doing so in his police report.

TPDs response prevented the protesters from exercising their constitutionally protected rights of speech, assembly and requesting changes in U.S. deportation policy and local government cooperation with ICE agents in holding undocumented residents in custody, the claim says.

By the end of the event, four protesters were arrested. Police took them to the Pima County jail, booking three on felony charges for assault of a police officer. Several weeks later, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall dropped the felony charges, the claim said.

In addition to the group and Redgrave, the plaintiffs in the claim are Zaira Livier Serrato, Edward Cott, Steffanny Cott, Brittany Fitzgerald, David Archuleta, Rolande Baker, Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, Lena Rothman, Josh Dunlap, Joan Cichon, Alexander Wycoff and Fiona Grugan.

The claim details different dollar amounts requested by each plaintiff, ranging from $150,000 to $350,000.

Cichon was one of the people charged with assaulting a police officer, which she denies in the claim, saying that she was trying to take a video of another person being arrested when Officer Green opened his vehicle door into her torso and knocked her off balance.

She told Green that hed hit her with the door, but instead of responding, Green opened the door a second time, swinging it directly at Cichon, the claim said. The 68-year-old Cichon, not wanting to be hit by the door a second time, put her hands up to stop it, after which Green grabbed her and put her into handcuffs, according to the claim.

While there are 13 other officers named in the claim, Green and Guevara had the most involvement with the protesters, Gattone said.

The chaos that ensued could have easily been avoided if police had just let the marchers to proceed, Gattone said. It would have been a minor disruption of traffic downtown, he said.

The group is prepared to go forward with litigation if the city fails to settle the claim by Oct. 15, which is the 60-day deadline after which the statute considers the lack of response to be a rejection, Gattone said.

TPD is unable to comment on pending legal cases, said spokesman Sgt. Pete Dugan.

Police said previously the event was peaceful until many protesters entered the road and began disrupting traffic on Congress. An officer was struck from behind and when officers tried to take the suspect into custody, members of the crowd surrounded the officers and some protesters locked arms and stood in front of a police vehicle, according to Star archives. Three officers suffered minor injuries, police said at the time.

In April, the department said two officers were under investigation by the office of professional standards for the incident, one for using pepper spray. Dugan said Friday the investigation is still open.
A Tucson man whose dog died after he left it outside with no water in 115-degree heat was sentenced Wednesday to three years of unsupervised probation.

Phil Carreon, 37, was cited in June for two counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty, but pleaded guilty to one count in Tucson City Court, in exchange for prosecutors dropping the second.

The court also levied a $1,500 fine against Carreon, suspending $750 of it. As a condition of his sentence, Carreon is not allowed to own any animals and must attend the Southern Arizona Humane Society Animal Cruelty Prevention course within 60 days, according to court documents.

On June 27, police went to a home after receiving a 911 call that two dogs had been left behind in a vacant home, according to the Tucson Police Department incident report.

The 911 caller told police that hed noticed a strong odor like something dead coming from the empty house a few days before and had gone over to find one of the dogs dead, the report said.

The second dog, who was malnourished, dehydrated and had a tick infestation on her face, was taken to a local vet after the 911 caller cleaned her up, according to the report.

When police spoke to Carreon, he said he had lived in the house for two years but had moved out five or six weeks ago. He told officers that hed been coming back to the house to check on the dogs, but had gone to Phoenix for the weekend, leaving the dogs outside. When he returned home, he found one of the dogs dead in the laundry room, according to the report.

When police spoke to the 911 caller, he said no one had been at the house for at least five days and no food or water had been left for the dogs, according to the report.

Police told Carreon that his second dog was at the vet, but he said he didnt want the dog, who has since been adopted by another family.

If Carreon fails to complete the animal cruelty prevention course by Nov. 22, he will have to pay an additional $750 fine.
Social Security is conservatively financed and managed. It has no borrowing authority and cannot spend itself into a deficit. To ensure that all benefits can be paid in full and on time, Social Securitys Board of Trustees reports to Congress annually, projecting the program's income and expenses over three-quarters of a century. That is a longer valuation period than private pensions or most other countries project for their counterpart programs.
A construction slowdown in North Dakota is likely contributing to a decline in the number of call-before-you-dig complaints, a Public Service Commission staff member said this week.

The commission netted just a handful of North Dakota One Call complaints in the first few years after it began receiving them in 2009. But that quickly jumped to 47 and 48 in 2014 and 2015, respectively, before dropping to just 18 last year and six so far this year, according to Victor Schock, public utility analyst for the commission.

State law requires excavators to notify One Call before digging and to conduct the excavation in a careful and prudent manner. Operators must locate and mark underground facilities they own in the area, such as pipelines and cables.

Schock said the decline in oil-related activity is reducing the amount of building thats going on. The PSC and the board that oversees North Dakota One Call have also focused on educating people about the law, he said.

Public Service Commissioner Brian Kroshus, whose portfolio includes damage prevention, said the oil boom brought contractors from out of state who were unfamiliar with the states One Call law. He said the statute helps promote safety while preventing service interruptions and costly repairs.

I dont know that consumers always understand the extent of the infrastructure, whether its a cable television line, a gas line going to the house, Kroshus said. We are a society thats laden with infrastructure.

One Call law violators could face a maximum $25,000 fine per violation, but Schock said they havent assessed one that large. The penalty limit was bumped up from $5,000 after a fatal 2010 incident involving an excavator hitting a natural gas transmission pipeline in Mountrail County, which sits in the heart of the Bakken.

Weve kind of reserved (higher penalties) for those kind of really extreme situations where someone is seriously injured or killed, Schock said. We base it on the circumstances.

Northern Excavating Co., Inc., a Jamestown company that voluntarily dissolved in 2015, was penalized $19,000 for a string of 13 cases in 2013 and 2014, which Schock said accounted for the most dollars and violations assessed against one company. The commission has levied a total of $186,400 in penalties since 2009, he said.

Mark Hanson, a spokesman for Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., said the company filed more complaints during the oil boom due to repeat offenders, but hasnt done so this year after submitting two in 2016. Its natural gas service area includes western North Dakota.

Just this week, the PSC approved two agreements stemming from One Call complaints, including a $10,500 civil penalty for a Michigan-based company that taped up the damage to a fiber-optic line without notifying the affected telecommunications company. About half of that penalty is suspended as long as the company doesnt violate the One Call law in the next five years.

If someone is clearly in violation and has struck a facility, I think its important to send a strong message to others in the field who are excavating that this is serious, Kroshus said.
Sen. John McCain, whatever his errors in political judgment have been, is known for his integrity. Is it possible that he will listen to Gov. Doug Ducey's cynical endorsement of the latest Senate health-care rollback? Ducey ignores the non-partisan arithmetic that shows Arizona's neediest will lose billions of dollars in Medicaid support, claiming the numbers are somehow "left wing." He makes the outrageous claim that "there is no federal money" because it's just "our own money" coming back after the wasteful federal government takes a cut  despite the fact (neither left nor right wing, these facts) that Arizona gets more 50 percent more money in federal spending than our taxes send to Washington.
Uber has been given an administrative fine for violating taxation regulations and asked to repay VND66.68 billion, roughly US$2.95 million, in back taxes, by the Ho Chi Minh City tax department.

The decision was announced after the Ho Chi Minh City taxman completed an inspection into Uber operations in the southern metropolis, from its debut in June 2014 to the end of June 2017.

The Netherlands-based Uber B.V., which oversees the ride-hailing app operations in Vietnam, is required to complete payment within ten days from Friday, according to the taxman.

The unpaid taxes include VND10.3 billion ($453,744) worth of wrongly declared taxes, nearly VND51.48 billion ($2.27 million) worth of tax arrears and a fine of more than VND4.9 billion ($215,859) for late tax payment.

The tax department will apply forced measures if Uber refuses to follow the request after the deadline.

Uber made its market debut in Ho Chi Minh City in June 2014 and has since been met with objects from local traditional taxi companies and questionable legality issues.

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Many Chinese nationals are illegally working as tour guides for their compatriot tourists in the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang, stealing jobs from local people, while the municipal tourism department says it is a tough problem to solve.

A group of Vietnamese tour guides, who speak Chinese, have complained that the unlicensed guides are working openly and severely affecting the tourism environment of Da Nang.

Thanh, one of the local Chinese-speaking tour guide, said most of the tourist groups from China, particularly those on budget packages, will be taken around Da Nang by a Chinese national.

The licensed Vietnamese tour guides will be hired as sitting guide  who will keep silent throughout the tour and only show up to work with authorities when needed. The Chinese will be in charge of the introduction and assistance to the tourists.

The sitting guides are paid VND800,000 (US$35) to VND1 million ($44) a day, according to Thanh.

Thanh said the Chinese nationals used to consult the Vietnamese sitting guides for information about the local places of interest. But at present, some Chinese nationals have opened their own travel firms in Da Nang and let the unlicensed Chinese tour guides take tourists around even without the companion of the local sitting guides.

Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of the Da Nang tourism department, admitted to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that some Chinese tour guides are working in the city without a permit.

When they are detected by authorities, the Chinese will leave the tourists and the local sitting guides have to work with officials and pay the fine. The local scapegoats will later be refunded by the Chinese.

Cuong said there are now more than 400 Chinese-speaking tour guides in Da Nang, sufficient to meet demand so the unlicensed Chinese tour guides are taking away incomes of the Vietnamese guides.

However, the deputy department head added that it is not easy to handle those illegal tour guides as they have sophisticated methods to dodge detection and are sometimes abetted by the Vietnamese travel firms or tour guides.

Cuong said it is difficult to have proof, in the forms of photo or footage, to punish the unlicensed Chinese tour guides.

The tourism inspectors are not allowed to stop a tourist bus for check, so it is really a challenge to curb the phenomenon, he said.

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A busy atmosphere can easily be sensed these days at Phu Binh, a small quarter housing numerous lantern-making facilities in District 11, Ho Chi Minh City, as the Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner.

The mid-autumn festival, which is celebrated by many Asian countries including Vietnam, is the 15th day of the eighth month on the lunar calendar. This years festival falls on October 4.

Nearly 100 households in Phu Binh, a craft village founded more than 50 years ago, are busily completing the very last batches of orders for the festival.

More than half a century ago, some artisans from the famed craft village of Bac Co in the northern province of Nam Dinh relocated to Phu Binh, also a Christian hamlet, bringing with them the craftmanship of making traditional lanterns.

The craft was passed from generation to generation and embraced by Phu Binh villagers, enabling the small quarter to become a hub for lanterns, one of the indispensable items to celebrate the full-moon festival.

During Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, family members habitually get together, make offerings to their ancestors and delightedly enjoy moon cakes over fragrant tea while admiring the full moon.

Meanwhile, kids typically hang around with their well-lit lanterns, chanting traditional moon-welcoming songs, and playing traditional games.

The lantern making craft enjoyed its heyday in the 1990s, when all complete products were sold out, even though they did not bear beautiful or diverse designs, Thang, a seasoned lantern maker in Phu Binh, said.

There were times when the traditional Vietnamese lanterns faced tough competition from the battery-powered, plastic products made in China.

However, as the modern lanterns pose several safety and health risks, Vietnamese consumers have returned to the traditional products in the last few years.

Phu Binh villagers have also exerted effort to improve the designs for their lanterns to meet new demand from the market.

It takes several phases to make a complete lantern, from cutting the bamboo sticks to make the frame from placing and painting the plastic papers to wrap around the frame.

Below are some photos at the Phu Binh lantern village.

Tuyet, a lantern maker with more than 30 years of experience.

Nguyen Trong Binh, 40, has 30 years experience in the job.

A special rooster-shaped lantern, fetching some VND600,000 (US$27)

This man is a truck driver who moonlights as a lantern maker.

Lanterns of various designs are on sale at Phu Binh.

Colors used to decorate the lanterns.

A family with three generations making lantern.

This man follows his parents to keep the lantern making tradition for the family.

Lanterns ready for sale

A set of complete products waiting for delivery.

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Check out the news you should not miss today, September 23

Politics

-- The new Country Partnership Framework between Vietnam and the World Bank Group (WBG) for 2017-22, announced at a workshop in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap on Friday, will focus on inclusive growth among other main points.

Society

-- Authorities in the central Quang Nam Province have begun a probe into the destroying of 40 hectares of protection forests since the beginning of this year.

-- The urban railway management board in Ho Chi Minh City plans to expand the metro line No.2, from Ben Thanh to Tham Luong, by 9.3 km, with an additional 5.9km from Ben Thanh to Thu Thiem, and an extra 3.4km part from Tham Luong to An Suong Bus Station.

-- Members of the public are legally allowed to film and supervise traffic police officers when they are on duty, Huynh Trung Phong, head of Ho Chi Minh City's road traffic police unit confirmed on Friday, following reports that people were attacked by 'police assistants' when they were attempting to record alleged inappropriate behaviors of the police.

Business

-- Boeing said on Friday it had increased its 20-year forecast for Southeast Asian demand by 460 aircraft to 4,210 new airplanes, as low-cost carriers make travel more accessible in several countries including Vietnam, according to Reuters.

-- Vietjet is offering 55,000 super-saving tickets priced only from $0 (excluding taxes and fees) from September 22 to 24 for international routes from Ho Chi Minh City/Hanoi to Kaohsiung, Taipei, Taichung, Tainan (Taiwan) to welcome the Mid-Autumn Festival.

-- The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO ) is holding a promotional program for Ibaraki pear, a delicacy of the Japanese prefecture of Ibaraki, in Ho Chi Minh City today, September 23, as part of the Japan Fair 2017 project.

-- Vietnam's mobile phone and component exports topped $29.05 billion in the year to September 15, up more than $5 billion from the same period last year.

-- Twenty-four businesses in Hanoi are collectively owing nearly VND3 trillion ($132.16 million) in taxes, the municipal taxman said Friday.

Lifestyle

-- A book fair themed "Books and Start-ups" opened at Thang Long Imperial Citadel, Hanoi, on Friday.

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Police in the southern province of Dong Nai raided a big gambling den run by Chinese nationals on Friday, arresting 50 gamblers and seizing a large amount of cash.

The gambling place is disguised as an arcade game establishment named Tia Chop Bac at 8A Dong Khoi Street in the provincial capital of Bien Hoa.

More than VND1 billion (US$44,000) worth of betting were recorded at the place on a daily basis, according to police.

This is thus the biggest gambling place ever busted in Dong Nai, officers added.

The gambling facility is equipped with around 20 arcade game machines and operated by a few dozens of staffs.

Dong Nai police said they had closely observing the facility before Fridays raid.

Police have seized around VND500 million (US$22,000) in cash and all kinds of document recording betting and transactions in the crackdown.

Hoang Nguyen Tung Anh, a 22-year-old resident of the northern city of Hai Phong, has worked as Tia Chop Bac director since March, according to preliminary investigation.

However, all operations of the gambling facility appeared to be run by a Chinese man who constantly monitored its activities through a modern CCTV camera system, according to officers.

Police are working to investigate the case further.

On September 11, a massive online gambling ring was busted in Ho Chi Minh City, with nearly VND10 billion (US$440,000) in cash seized and dozens of gamblers arrested.

On June 16, police in Ho Chi Minh City also raided a gambling den disguised as a game center in District 5, seizing VND485 million (US$21,300) and arresting 34 gamblers.

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Members of the public are legally allowed to supervise or film traffic police officers at work, a top traffic police official in Ho Chi Minh City has confirmed.

People must ensure that their recording activities will not interfere with or affect the duties of monitoring traffic of the police officers, Lieutenant Colonel Huynh Trung Phong, head of the citys traffic police in charge of road and train transportation, told reporters on Friday.

Phong chaired the meeting with the media following several complaints about the municipal traffic police officers, including collecting unofficial fees.

Tan Son Nhat incident

On September 7, an article accompanied by a video footage showing three traffic police officers collecting unofficial fines near Tan Son Nhat International Airport was published and soon went viral.

According to Phong, as soon as the article surfaced, the department immediately ordered competent staff to identify the officers recorded in the video.

Three officers involved were later identified as Senior Lieutenant Nguyen Thinh Phu, Senior Lieutenant Nguyen Minh Hai, and First Lieutenant Trinh Xuan Phuc who have since been suspended for their offense, Phong underlined.

A traffic cop collects fine from an offender near Tan Son Nhat Airport, Ho Chi Minh City. To ensure transparency and fairness, the traffic police unit has transferred the case to the citys police department for handling, the officer said.

Citing the protocols of the traffic police unit, Phong said whenever a team of traffic officers stations at a place to control and monitor traffic, they must be accompanied by a higher-ranking official, who acts as a leader and supervisor.

However, as seen from the viral video involving the three suspended officers, there was no such leader at the scene.

We have asked the traffic police unit of Tan Son Nhat to investigate as to why that team on patrol was not accompanied by a leader at the time of the incident, Phong pressed.

It appeared that the three officers had deliberately separated themselves from the leader and violated the protocol, Phong suggested.

The officer also said he is deeply sorry for the incident happening at Tan Son Nhat, adding that a new hotline, 0994.67.67.67, has been launched for people to report any violations of traffic officers following the case.

Phong advised that when seeing any traffic cop receiving bribes or collect fine against protocols, members of the public should immediately call the hotline or preferably send a text message with details of the place and time of the incident.

In the near future, the citys traffic police unit will install more CCTV cameras on the streets and at important intersections to better manage traffic problems in the city, recording violations of commuters and monitoring traffic police officers at work.

No such thing as assistant to traffic police

On September 6, a video also surfaced on social media, showing a man threatening a resident for filming traffic officers fining violators at a flyover on a section of National Highway 1 in District 9.

The filmed traffic police were later identified as members of the Rach Chiec team.

The man in question is dubbed assistant to traffic police, with many residents claiming to have seen such assistants near traffic police stops throughout Ho Chi Minh City.

However, the involved officers of Rach Chiec team insisted on not knowing the assistant, asserting that they are willing to take any responsibility if proven to have a relation with that individual.

In the meantime, the assistant has been found and identified as Nguyen Van Hao, a local motorbike taxi driver.

According to Haos testimony, he had a minor collision with another motorbike driver on September 6, but that man had immediately left the scene following the incident.

While chasing after that person, Hao saw a group of police traffic officers and decided to stop to report his accident, he said.

While reporting the case, Hao saw a man filming him from afar and decided to follow him to ask for the video to be deleted.

The man, allegedly a police assistant, forces the filmer to pull over. We will investigate this case further if the media can provide more evidence, Phong, the head of the road traffic police unit, told reporters when asked to comment on this case.

Phong said many people would come to the scene and observe traffic police officers at work, adding that while some do it simply out of curiosity, others do it with a purpose.

Some people observe the traffic officers in order to collect information before organizing street races, Phong elaborated.

Others will do so to alert their friends who are truck drivers so they can choose alternative routes to avoid meeting the traffic police.
Mondays Four Corners is a French documentary The Ransom directed by Remi Laine which delves inside the murky world of international kidnapping and hostage negotiation.

I work for a client in a critical situation who is in physical danger. My only objective is to get him out alive as quickly as possible. Thats all. Arresting, judging not my problem. Hostage recovery agent



Every year more than 30,000 people are kidnapped around the world. A small number are taken for political reasons, many more are held for financial gain.

It was all about money, money, money, moneyI mean it was purely business. Former hostage

Rescuing these hostages is an expensive and often dangerous affair, conducted far from the publics gaze.

With exclusive access to leading hostage recovery agents, The Ransom reveals the cat and mouse games employed to bring a hostage out alive.

The discipline of hostage negotiation, its more of an art than a science. You have to think, as a negotiator, youre looking at: what is the hostage takers real motivation in this situation? Hostage recovery team leader

These agents have deep experience in dealing with kidnap, extortion and emergency evacuations in some of the highest risk locations in the world.

Finding people that have a lot of experience doing that sort of thing is not easy. Its not as if you can do a Google search and come up with a list of qualified candidates. Hostage recovery team leader

Working hand in glove with these teams are specialist kidnap and ransom insurers who have created a lucrative new line of business by offering policies covering everything from missing ransom money to severed fingers and death.

Its a profitable business, we work to be profitable, but one claim can really hurt you, and hurt your book that year, it can be really severe. Insurance broker

The program captures one rescue operation unfolding before the cameras, as hostage negotiators strategise over how to handle the life or death emergency.

If you pay what they ask too quickly, you expose yourself to another risk of abduction. If it has been easy to get your money, word gets about that youre an easy touch. And you become for them a potential new profitable victim. Advisor

Monday 25th September at 8.30pm on ABC.
Help India!

By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

Students of Banaras Hindu University continued their sit in dharna at the main gate of BHU on Saturday.

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On Saturday morning, the few University officials along with some girl students tried to bring the girls again to the VCs house for the talk. But the girls did not agree to this. Students are asking VC either to come on the universitys main gate or to the Mahila Mahavidyalaya to talk and comply to the demands of the girls.

According to one administrative source, the administration is trying to bring the VC before girls so that forceful or violent situation may get avoided. But as one protesting student, Rani Yadav told us, VC fears us. He does not obey any administrative body other than those Khaki half pants, making it very clear that the fight is of the girls for every girl studying in the campus. Sure the University has gone full on the girls way.

Students have raised demands to equip the gates of girls hostels with CCTV. They have also asked the administration to ensure the presence of guards for 24-hours a day.

These demands mean a reason to the girls. Boys are used to masturbate in front of the girls hostels. There have been several reports where boys threw stones and other objectionable items inside the girls hostels, but these issues have never been resolved.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was in Varanasi had to change his route to avoid the proteting students. SPG asked for threat assessment on the night before PMs visit to Varanasi. It was all fine, but everything changed next morning. We had to change our assessment and SPG had to change PMs route, said an LIU official while talking casually to this reporter.

The protest by girl students began on the evening of September 21 when a girl was harassed by three boys of the University when she was coming to the hostel from the library. The boys allegedly physically assaulted her and used derogatory language.

When the girl reached the Chief Procter of the University, she was first asked that what she was doing outside at such late hours of the day. Furious by such comments and the inactivity of the proctorial board of the University, girls assembled at the main gate of the University are still there.

Around 15 years back the University saw a massive protest which students led for the removal of the then vice-chancellor YC Simhadri. This time the protesting students, which are mostly girls, are not demanding the removal of any official. The protesting students of the University have avoided any sort of political interference.

However, It seems that current vice-chancellor GC Tripathi is not willing to talk to the girls. But the administration has used applied every measure to dissolve the protest.

There have been efforts to derail the agitation. Yesterday, few girls favoring ABVP landed to the protest site and started asking the girl students to start protesting at the VCs house instead of the main gate of the University. However, this tactic failed miserably.

Late night yesterday, few students hurled large posters of Unsafe BHU and Safety First at the main gate of BHU. Making the poster an excuse, ABVP boys tried to instigate a fight with the protestors, apparently giving a reason to the Police to use force. But this was avoided peacefully by the protestors.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

New Delhi: The Human Rights Watch has castigated the Indian government for not accepting a number of key human rights recommendations on September 21, 2017, at its United Nations review in Geneva which included greater accountability of its security forces, ensuring freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, repealing the law criminalising consensual adult same-sex relations, and abolishing the death penalty.

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Indias government responded on September 21 to the recommendations made by other UN member countries on May 4 during Indias third periodic review. The Indian government was unwilling to accept important recommendations, said HRW.

In the face of countless attacks on free speech and threats to marginalised communities, the Indian government has chosen to be in denial, said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. India should show leadership on the world stage by taking the human rights concerns of other countries seriously and adopting concrete steps to address them.

At the May 4 session, 112 countries made a total of 250 recommendations. On September 21, the government accepted 152, including commitments made toward sustainable development goals aimed at alleviating poverty, improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and strengthening protections for children and women.

Thirty countries called on India to ratify the UN Convention Against Torture, a treaty it signed two decades ago but never ratified. Even as the Indian government denied the existence of torture at the May meeting, saying the concept of torture is completely alien to our culture and it has no place in the governance of the nation, it said it remained committed to ratifying the treaty.

However, India made a similar commitment at the last UPR cycle in 2012 when the recommendation was made by 17 countries, and yet failed to take any steps to fulfill it.

In a recent report on deaths in police custody, Human Rights Watch found that torture is frequently used to gather information or coerce confessions.

The HRW has also raised concerns over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law that provides soldiers who commit abuses effective immunity from prosecution.

The HRW also mentioned the use of FCRA cancellation by the Indian government to harass, intimidate, and shut down foreign funding for nongovernmental organisations that criticize the government, its actions, or policies.

The human rights watchdog has also castigated the role of government in persecuting the people responsible for beef-related attacks.

Mob attacks by extremist Hindu groups affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against minority communities, especially Muslims and Dalits, have become a serious threat. In the first seven months of 2017, there were 26 attacks, and seven people were killed over rumors that they sold, bought, or killed cows for beef. The government has failed to prosecute those responsible for such attacks, and at the same time several BJP leaders have made incendiary remarks against minorities, and in support of Hindu nationalism, said HRW.

Fifteen countries raised concerns over such increasing violence, recommending that India should better protect these vulnerable populations and freedom of religion, and prosecute attacks against them. However, the Indian government was unwilling to make any commitments.

Several countries also called on India to repeal section 377 of the penal code, which criminalizes consensual same-sex relations, and to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, a recommendation made and only noted in 2012 and again during the 2017 review. This is despite an Indian Supreme Court ruling in August saying the law had a chilling effect on the unhindered fulfillment of ones sexual orientation, as an element of privacy and dignity.

The Indian governments claims of respect for the UPR process mean nothing if it simply brushes aside important recommendations at a time when the countrys long-cherished freedoms and its poor and vulnerable are at great risk, Ganguly said.
Help India!

Chandigarh, (IANS): Senior journalist K.J. Singh and his aged mother were found brutally murdered in their residence in Mohali town of Punjab, adjoining Chandigarh, on Saturday, police said.

Both victims were attacked by their assailants in their corner house in Phase 3 B2 of Mohali, 10 km from here. Police said that Singhs mother, Gurcharan Kaur, 92, was strangulated.

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Singh, 66, was stabbed in the stomach and his throat was also slit with a sharp-edged weapon. He was killed in a brutal manner by the attackers.

Acting on a directive from Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, the Punjab Police has set up a Special Investigative Team (SIT) under Inspector General (Crime) to probe the murder.

The bodies were discovered on Saturday afternoon when their maid came to the house but no one answered the bell. Police sources said that the murder could have taken place around 1 a.m. on Saturday.

The motive behind the double murder is still not known. The house was found ransacked and some items were missing.

Singhs car was also taken away by the assailants.

Singh, a bachelor, had remained Chief News Editor of The Tribune. He was earlier News Editor with the Times of India and had been with the Indian Express previously.
When anything really important is at stake, you know, saving peoples' lives or winning wars, organisations like the SAS or US Navy Seals always play a leading role. It is a lesson that cannot be learned too quickly. A decision is made and that decision is carried out efficiently with a singularity of purpose and with urgency. If two contrary views are desired you must decide on one. By trying to please everyone nothing gets done successfully.

The major decision of the UK to leave the EU was made democratically and had a decisive result. You cannot please the 15 million who lost without betraying the 17 million who won.

Everything since that historic day in June 2016 has been carried out indecisively and with no urgency and it is leading to a mess that will encumber everyone in the UK.

Almost a year passed before article 50 was delivered. Court cases, parliamentary votes, a catastrophic election, billions of pounds coceded and an unnecessary three year delay have resulted as well as the potentially disastrous downgrading of the UK's credit rating by Moody's.

Like seventeen plus million Brits my idealistic conscience screamed out NO very loudly indeed when I realised Theresa May had now put a further eighteen billion or so UK pounds on offer to the EU as well as two more years of subjugation. I imagined the greedy twisting hands of Junker, Barnier, Tusk and the rest reaching out to trouser the money on behalf of the EU and channel it into bloated pensions, harebrained schemes and all expenses paid trips.

What should have happened?

After Cameron's resignation and May's appointment a pro Brexit cabinet should have been put together. Article 50 should have been delivered immediately and the clock started ticking, with implementation completed by September 2018 not as now looks likely 2021. Much of the distractions of court cases and votes would have been negated, by removing uncertainty and not allowing the quislings who wanted to deny the will of the majority hope.

The EU should have been told that we will be leaving by September 2018 on World Trade Organisation rules unless they wish to strike a mutually beneficial trade deal quickly. We would pay not a penny after we leave as we began paying the second we entered. The disastrous General Election should have been run over four weeks, not the seven weeks that allowed Corbyn the time to lie about his giveaways and destroy the Conservative majority.

The top three GDP producers USA, China and Japan have already indicated their desires to make lucrative deals with the UK as have India and Canada who are also within the GDP world top ten. These countries will be the foundation of the UK's fantastic trade opportunities and it is ludicrous to wait for the EU to allow us to initiate these deals. They should have been ready for implementation in 2018.

All this would have given us control of 54.6 billion that the EU will now control between 2018 and 2021. Included in that would be 165 billion free money, our net contribution over the same period. Additionally we would have three years of developed trade with the countries mentioned above, as well as others including Australia, Brazil, and Chile who have all expressed an interest in trade deals with the UK.

Furthermore, we would have produced more goods ourselves as EU goods became more expensive and thus improved out poor balance of trade account with the EU.

The UK would have had certainty, the indecision that financial markets and credit rating agencies like Moody's so fear would have been removed and the UK would have regained the control of its laws borders and trade quickly, as the implicit promise of the referendum demanded.

So what now?

To paraphrase a famous saying, "If I was leaving the EU I wouldn't begin from this point." Sadly, we have to. The best thing to do now is to use the EU greed against them. They will try to negotiate even more exploitation. No, this must be understood to be our best and final offer.

It must be made clear privately, if not publicly, that if this offer is not accepted within a sharp timescale, it will be removed from the table. We will leave immediately without paying a penny as we have the legal right to do. We will adopt world trade rules and strike the best deal immediately with our friends across the world. We will adopt a trading position of low taxes and low regulation similar to those that have made Singapore the most business friendly country in the world and the whole country will compete tirelessly to make ourselves an economic super success as we have done over the last two centuries (for most of that time outside of the EU).

No threat but a determined commitment

This must not be a threat but a simple stating of the action we will take if our overly generous offer is not accepted by the EU. The whole country should demonstrate that although we prefer the offer we have made be accepted, we are content to adopt the second approach and will make it work. That way our course will be clear, people will understand and can make appropriate decisions and we can get on with making our own fortune immediately.
Violent clashes between local militants and Security Forces in the Rakhine State in western Myanmar has left more than 70 people dead, reported the Telegraph.

According to a statement issued by the office of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of the state for Myanmar, the casualties include 12 members of the security forces and at least 59 Rohingya insurgents. This conflict is the latest in a series of clashes in the region that has seen a steady upsurge of violence in recent months.

The Myanmar armed forces claim that the militants used explosives, small arms and knives to plan a number of coordinated attacks on police vehicles and military outposts in the early parts of the morning around Maungdaw and Buthidaung, near the Bangladeshi border.

The troubled Rakhine State harbours more than one million Rohingya people - a predominantly Muslim minority group who are known to have faced oppression in Myanmar. The Rohingya Muslims are largely confined to camps and are often denied full citizenship rights.

The final report

Kofi Annan, who heads the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, released its 'Final Report' on the crisis in the region, calling for urgent action to improve the quality of life, social welfare and citizenship status of the Rohingya people.

Annan, a former secretary general of the United Nations, said that he was "gravely concerned by, and strongly condemn, the recent attacks in Rakhine State." he also believes that failure to act quickly will risk further radicalisation and violence.

"The alleged scale and gravity of these attacks mark a worrying escalation of violence," he added. "Unless concerted action - led by the government and aided by all sectors of the government and society - is taken soon, we risk the return of another cycle of violence and radicalisation, which will further deepen the chronic poverty that afflicts Rakhine State."

Insurgent group claims responsibility

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Rohingyan insurgent group, has claimed responsibility for the attacks as vengeance for the recent raids by the Myanmar security forces.

The Myanmar security forces have been alleged to have committed crimes against humanity such as ethnic cleansing. But Ms. Suu Kyi has categorically denied those allegations.

The United Nations released a report back in February claiming that the raid on Rohingya camps has led to the killings of thousands of civilians, gang rapes and mass displacements of population.
Burger King issued its digital coin last month. Prosecutors have summoned its management in Russia in the Lzmailovo district over the use of the cryptocurrency. Burger King has so far received two summon notifications from the Lzmailovo prosecutor's office. One summon letter was dated the September 13 while the other was dated September 19, according to a Burger King representative. In the letters, prosecutors noted that Burger King issued cryptocurrency and began allowing payments to be made with it. The summon letters were also aimed at informing the management of the company in Russa that it is illegal to issue and use any other currency other than the Ruble in Russia.

Russian investigators also want to know how Burger King's digital coin operates and whether there was a mass issuance of the currency.

Whoppercoin

The coin is named after Burger King's Whopper sandwich. The digital coin was introduced in late August this year. The coin acts as a loyalty program hosted on the wave platform. Burger King rewards customers with Whoppercoins after they make a purchase. Customers can use the rewards they have received to buy a Whopper sandwich. The digital coins can also be traded for other cryptocurrencies as well as for fiat coins. A customer is issued with one Whopper coin for every Ruble they spend (1Ruble = 0.017US$). A customer will need to accumulate 1,700 whopper coins to redeem a Whopper sandwich.

Cryptocurrencies in Russia

According to Bitcoin news, the Central Bank of Russia and the finance ministry are working on a legal framework that will regulate the use of cryptocurrencies in Russia. The legislation is expected to come out before the end of this year. The Russian central bank stated on September 5 that Initial Coin Offerings (IOC) and cryptocurrencies are risky.

In the statement, the central bank indicated that it has not yet given the green light on the use of cryptocurrencies in Russia. In the statement, the bank also noted that most cryptocurrencies are issued and used by unknown entities and that these entities can use the virtual coins to engage in illegal activities such as money laundering and terrorism financing.

In the statement, Russian authorities also noted that cryptocurrencies can fluctuate quickly and that there are high technological risks involved when handling them.

The future of cryptocurrencies

Most central banks around the world are yet to legalize the use of cryptocurrencies. Anonymity and the use of cryptocurrencies for illegal purposes has prevented their legalization. China recently banned ICO and cryptocurrency exchange sites. More crackdowns by governments on cryptocurrencies may occur as most cryptocurrencies are issued and used outside legal frameworks.
How far can Melania Trumps political powers go? The first lady recently threatened to file a lawsuit against billboards placed in Croatia that mocked her English language skills, Fortune reported.

The billboard came from the American Institute and had a slogan that read, Just imagine how far you can go with a little bit of English. It also featured a photograph of her delivering a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.

A spokesperson for the American Institute already issued an apology for the offensive advertisement campaign, noting that it was not their intention to mock Melania but rather, present her as a role model.

Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham argued that the company used Mrs.

Trumps image and personality for commercial purposes without her consent. She added that the particular billboard advertisement violated certain regulations stipulated in the advertising code. The first lady has also hired her legal counsel for this matter as well, the report added.

Schools explanation

The American Institute is a company that provides English lessons to its students. Spokesperson Ivis Buric explained that they chose the first lady Melania Trump for their billboard advertisement because she is the most recognized emigrant to the United States from this region, Fortune also noted.

Melania is a fashion model born in Slovenia. She married United States President Donald Trump in 2005 and has a son named Barron Trump.

However, her roots are still evident when she speaks English.

The image that the company used for their billboard, which was from her Republication National Convention speech, also earned criticism because of the structure. It was the infamous speech criticized for plagiarizing parts of former first lady Michelle Obama.

Melania Trump threatens lawsuit over English-class billboards featuring her photo https://t.co/n9uNoGwIKi pic.twitter.com/XgB8Sae2Fk  Bloomberg (@business) September 20, 2017

Melanias strong accent

This does not mean that Melania Trump could not speak English well. In fact, she is fluent in five languages  German, French, Serbo-Coat, English and her mother tongue, Slovenian.

It is the accent that people always notice.

The First Lady has hired a legal counsel specifically to defend her on issues such as these. These cases are filed against companies that use her image for commercial purposes, such as drinks, cakes, and salamis.

She is the first naturalized American citizen to become the First Lady. In the course of her husband's presidency, she has attended various events, such as the recent luncheon hosted by the United Nations General Assembly.
The biggest story to dominate the headlines in recent days is the ongoing feud between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The rift between the two kicked into high gear following Trump's speech to the United Nations and has only increased in recent days, with Kellyanne Conway quick to defend the president's remarks during an interview on Fox News.

Conway on North Korea

Donald Trump is not shy when it comes to giving his thoughts about a wide-range of issues. During the 2016 presidential election, it became routine to watch the former host of "The Apprentice" lash out at those who opposed him.

Whether it was members of the mainstream media, foreign leaders, the Democratic Party, Hollywood celebrities, or even members of his own Republican Party, Trump didn't care who he offended or attacked. Over the last few weeks, tension between North Korea and many countries have escalated due to Kim Jong-un's decision to repeatedly test missiles in the region. Last week, Trump took to Twitter to belittle Kim, referring to him as "Rocket Man." The president used the nickname once again while addressing the United Nations General Assembly, which resulted in the North Korean leader firing back, labeling Trump "mentally deranged" and a "dotard." These issues were discussed with Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway during a September 22 interview on "Fox & Friends."

.@KellyannePolls: North Korea is every nations problem. Its not a distinctly American issue. pic.twitter.com/EtnoN6Jb9I  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) September 22, 2017

Joining the hosts of the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends" on Friday morning was Kellyanne Conway who wasted no time defending Donald Trump in his opposition to Kim Jong-un and North Korea.

After summing up the recent sanctions put in place by the United States and the United Nations against North Korea, Conway stated, "All of that threaded together shows world leaders, including in China, that they take seriously President Trump's actions," Conway said, before adding, "not his threats. Not his words. Talk is cheap."

"For this non-politician who is accustomed to dealing with product and deliverables and action, you see the world responding," Kellyanne Conway went on to said.

"North Korea is every nations problem. Its not a distinctly American issue," she added.

(Full interview above)

Twitter reacts

Not long after Kellyanne Conway defended Donald Trump's respeonse to North Korea, critics took the time to lash out on social media.

"They weren't a problem when I was in the Navy Reagan ignored N.Korea. it's because of dump Trump provoking this dictator to go over the edge," one tweet read.

I wonder if you had a son or daughter in the military, if you would be cool with Trumps taunting. Something to think about @KellyannePolls  Stef LaRue (@StefLaRue) September 22, 2017

Trump should never have gone in this direction it escalates everything, there is NO chance for diplomacy negotiations or anything but War!!!  Will...U.S. Navy Vet (@Will18767458) September 22, 2017

"@realDonaldTrump is every nation's REAL problem. It's not just distinctly an American issue," another Twitter user wrote.

"Trump's threat to "totally destroy" North Korea was distinctly American in origin. He is the American President, is he not?" an additional tweet wondered.

@KellyannePolls even though your boss is shitting his pants over #TrumpRussia he can still grow up and stop the childish, reckless NK BS.  Hurst4Spd (@J_Hurstman) September 22, 2017

Trump's threat to "totally destroy" North Korea was distinctly American in origin.

He is the American President, is he not? #USpoli  Craig Wilkins (@KeswickPinhead) September 22, 2017

@realDonaldTrump is every nation's REAL problem. It's not just distinctly an American issue.  Liberally Blonde  (@Lady_Sisyphus22) September 22, 2017

"@KellyannePolls even though your boss is shitting his pants over #TrumpRussia he can still grow up and stop the childish, reckless NK BS," a tweet noted. As the negative reaction continued, it showed that Kellyanne Conway's defense of Donald Trump was not welcomed by many Americans.
Crucial supplies are expected to land Friday in ravaged Puerto Rico. On Wednesday 20 September, the island turned from a lush, historical tourist attraction, to a nearly unrecognizable wasteland. Raging mudslides covered several towns, while flooding has continued into Friday. Many areas are strewn with debris, tree branches, broken rooftops and dead animals. Having been closed as a precautionary measure, Aerostar Puerto Rico confirmed that the island's largest airport, the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, will open on Friday. However, the Caribbean nation's main ports in San Juan, Ponce, and Mayaguez, are yet to reopen for business.

Officials are hopeful that this is done soon because these routes are necessary for getting necessities to those most in need.

Where will the money come from?

Compounding its infrastructural problems, are its financial ones. For more than 10 years, Puerto Rico has been suffering from a recession and in desperation, declared bankruptcy in May 2017. It owes $74 billion in debt. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) say at least 75 percent of the money needed to rebuild the island will come from FEMA since Puerto Rico is a US territory. Despite the aid, however, it is doubtful that amount will be enough, given the extent of the damage. Roads, bridges, homes, schools, and hospitals must be rebuilt, and the entire electrical grid needs to be restored.

Director of FEMA's Puerto Rico branch Alejandro de la Campa, expects both commercial and military planes to land on the island Friday with emergency supplies. These include cots, medical supplies, foodstuff, drinking water, batteries, and generators. Search and rescue teams will also try to find several people, including the elderly, who are still missing.

Guyana offers hope

It is still unclear how much rain Hurricane Maria actually dumped on Puerto Rico, as the only two Doppler radar stations there were knocked out by the storm. All electricity has been cut and it is expected to take several months before power is restored. Officials fear that this harsh reality will cause affected islanders to head to the US mainland or migrate permanently to other Caribbean nations.

On Wednesday, Guyana's President offered his country as a refuge for those hoping to rebuild their lives. David Granger said he had "never seen such a string of catastrophic hurricanes hitting one after the other" and called on those affected to relocate. Guyana's population is just over 750,000 while its land mass is 215,000 square kilometers.

Hurricane Maria also destroyed Dominica which has a population of fewer than 75,000. On Thursday, the Trinidad and Tobago Government offered to house its residents for six months while infrastructure was rebuilt. T&T Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley said Dominicans who could locate places to stay in his country could do so, without restrictions for a limited time. On Friday morning, Maria was moving slowly away from the Dominica and heading toward the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is uncertain whether the Hurricane will hit the US.
Ami Brown continues her battle against stage-4 lung cancer. The Alaskan Bush People star previously admitted that these could be her last days, but she will fight until her last breath. The Brown family previously shut down their homestead in rural Alaska and relocated to Southern California for their matriarchs intense chemo and radiation therapy. Recently, the Billy and Amis 14-year-old daughter took to social media to slam all her critics.

Rain answers critics

Mean-spirited trolls were quick to criticize Rain Brown after she posted a video of herself singing Im Moving On, a song popularized by Rascal Flatts, over the weekend.

I hope you find what you are looking for and may God walk with you on your journey, and may you be reminded I am here to walk with you, the young reality star wrote in the caption. In Touch Weekly reported that Rains haters panned her singing abilities despite her inspirational message.

However, the Alaskan Bush People star was unfazed by her critics and said that their negativity would never get her down. If you allow people to run over you people will run over you if you stand your ground everyone will know they cant run over you, Rain wrote on Instagram. This really applies to just about everything, you get what you give, she went on.

This is not the first time that Rain Brown received a backlash.

In fact, the youngest member of the Brown family was previously criticized for constantly posting selfies while her mom struggles with late-stage cancer. After many fans attacked her posting, the youngster answered her critics with another note that reminded her supporters that everything would fall into its proper places if they choose to put themselves first.

Hiatus to cancellation?

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Gossip reported that the production for the imminent Alaskan Bush People Season 8 was put on hold for some unknown reasons. While the management could be just delaying the production for a while due to Ami's complicated health condition, fans cannot help but speculate that the hiatus might later turn into a cancellation.

Reports about the shows possible cancellation sparked after it was revealed that Ami Browns health condition is getting worse by the day.

The Brown matriarch revealed in a recent interview with People that she only has a three-percent chance of survival. However, Billys wife said that she would remain positive and hopeful. Ami told the publication that she does not want to be anxious about it as it can only worsen the situation. She added that she decided to keep his faith in God especially now that she and her family are in tough times.

Discovery Channel has yet to announce the renewal or cancellation of the Alaskan Bush People series. Therefore, fans should take these rumors lightly until everything is proven true and correct. Stay tuned for more news and updates about Billy, Ami and the rest of the Brown family!
Today on a new episode of "The Wendy Williams Show" Rachel Lindsay sat down with Wendy Williams to talk about how she is doing now. Wendy admitted that she didn't really watch the show, but she does know who Rachel is and they showed off her three-karat engagement ring.

When are they getting married?

Rachel said that they are not going to rush a wedding. She said maybe fall or winter of next year. Wendy talked about how they rushed their engagement but didn't want to rush their wedding for some reason. Rachel is already back at work as a lawyer.

She said while in Dallas she doesn't have a lot of issues with TMZ and people following her around, but she has pretty much gone back to normal life.

rachel lindsay admits that she felt the pressure to pick a black male, but she didn't do it. She picked the person she felt the connection with instead. She does say that Bryan isn't white but instead is actually Columbian. Rachel says that she really does feel like this is going to work for them.

Wendy Williams says she doesn't believe that you can find love on reality television. Rachel told Wendy and the audience that she is going to turn them into a believer and she wants Wendy to come to the wedding. Rachel admits she wanted to be engaged, but she didn't just pick Bryan because of that he was the one that she wanted.

Peter didn't want marriage right away, but that wasn't the only reason she didn't pick him. They have been engaged for four months now.

Why did she do the show?

Wendy asked her if part of why she wanted to do the show was the idea of being on television and in magazines, but Rachel kind of avoided that and talked about how she wanted to represent herself as a great African-American woman on the show.

Rachel also said she never watched the show before she was actually talked into doing it by her co-workers. It wasn't about fame for her. Her life did change from being on the show. There are already rumors flying that Rachel and Bryan are just faking it for the cameras, but the fans are going to just have to wait and see.

When Bryan joined her on the couch, he put his arm around her right away.

They are planning to move to California and Bryan is getting licensed so he can work as a chiropractor there. They even said they might end up getting married on television, but have no plans for a spin-off. Bryan said his relationship with her dad is a work in progress and they are slowly getting to know each other.

Are you shocked to hear that Rachel Lindsay has plans to wait on her wedding? Do you think that there is trouble in paradise? Sound off in the comments section below and don't miss new episodes of "The Bachelor" 2018 with Arie Luyendyk Jr. starting in January.
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Portland's Arts Education Taxation Survives Litigation

A meager $35 per person tax for residents of Portland, Oregon, used to fund art and music education for school children, has been ruled constitutional by the state's Supreme Court. Despite the state's constitution banning head taxes (taxes that are imposed on everyone uniformly regardless of the ability to pay), the state's highest court ruled that the law's many exemptions allowed it to pass constitutional muster.

Ordinarily, under Oregon law, a head tax would be ruled unconstitutional. However, the fact that the arts education tax exempts social security income, income derived from the state pension program, and those below the poverty line, went a long way to convincing every court that heard the challenge that the tax met the legal requirements.

What's This Tax About?

The goal of the tax is to bridge the gap in art and music education funding, which is woefully underfunded. Over 30,000 Portland students rely on this funding for their arts and music education programs. It was supported by the Portland Public School District, as well as the League of Oregon Cities, which represents over 240 cities in the state.

Now that the tax has been ruled constitutional, supporters may be looking to expand its reach or increase its effectiveness.

Do the Opponents Hate Art or Children?

Surprisingly, the plaintiff in this matter, George Wittemyer, claims that he neither hates art nor children. Despite having a trumpet playing grandson, Wittemyer claims that it was the principal of an unconstitutional tax that motivated him to fight this case.

Despite the loss, Wittemyer seemed in good spirits and is quoted by a local news source as saying: "I turned out to be a consummate loser and that's OK. That's how the system works." Though he does seem to think that the court wrote the head tax ban out of the law by narrowing the definition in this opinion.

The tax itself has had some success in raising funds. With nearly 75% of residents paying the tax, millions have been raised. But that 25% that's avoiding the meager tax is costing the city quite a bit in administrative costs.

Related Resources:
HA NOI  Investors could face criminal charges if they try to manipulate stock prices to earn illegal profits and cause damage to the market and listed companies.

According to the State Securities Commission (SSC), there are fines and penalties for violations that individual investors commit on the securities market.

The highest penalty for violations on the securities market is VN1 billion (US$44,400) for individual investors, according to Decree 108/2913/N-CP issued in September 2013.

The SSC has recently issued several penalties for investors who violate market regulations on stock trading.

On September 1, investor Phan Sy Hai was fined VN550 million for using 28 accounts, including three under his name, to create false information to illegally trade shares of Vimedimex Pharmaceutical JSC (HOSE: VMD).

On August 10, the SSC decided to issue a fine of VN600 million  the highest penalty on Viet Nams stock market  to Tran Thi Minh Phuong for using 42 accounts, including three under her name, to illegally trade shares of HAGL Agrico (HOSE: HNG).

However, those fines have proved to be ineffective in reducing the number of violations by individual investors in the securities market, such as internal trading and manipulation of stock prices.

Therefore, the Ministry of Finance on August 22 released Document 20/VBHN-BTC to regulate penalties and fines for those who commit violations on the securities trading market.

The document was published by the finance ministry on August 22 this year to combine Circular 217/2013/TT-BTC and Circular 36/2017/TT-BTC, both of which were regulatory policies from the finance ministry.

Circular 217 was issued on December 31, 2013, to regulate penalties and fines for violations committed in the securities market, and Circular 36 was dated April 27, 2017, as an amendment to Circular 217.

Under the Document 20, if an investor is suspected of having conducted illegal transactions that could cause heavy damages to companies, share prices or the stock market, the market regulators must report the case to the police for criminal prosecution.  VNS
HA NOI  Thee major telecom network providers - Viettel, VinaPhone and MobiFone - started testing mobile number portability (MNP) on Thursday, which allows subscribers to keep existing mobile number when switching networks.

MNP will be officially available in Viet Nam by the end of this year, according to a project of the Ministry of Information and Communications, approved in 2013.

According to the Authority of Telecommunications, there will be no changes to the mobile numbers or while dialing when subscribers switch their networks with MNP.

The authority said MNP would give subscribers the right to choose networks, boosting competitiveness of the telecommunications market.

A mobile switching centre was established to facilitate MNP.

The authority said a detailed implementation plan for MNP would be available in early October.

Tao uc Thang, deputy director of Viettel, was quoted by VnExpress online newspaper as saying the network provider was ready to run technical tests of MNP.

Representatives from MobiFone and VNPT, which operates VinaPhone, said the companies were making preparations for MNP in line with the roadmap set under the ministrys project.

Only subscribers with numbers activated for least 90 days could switch to other networks, according to the ministry.

In Viet Nam, there were some 126.5 million mobile phone subscribers until the end of June.

MNS was first launched in 1997 in Singapore and is currently present in more than 70 countries and territories worldwide.  VNS
HCM City  The first annual Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS)/Sensors Commercialisation Workshop will be held in HCM City on November 9 to enhance public awareness of the potential for MEMS/sensor technologies to solve many of the worlds problems, including the elimination of hunger, ineffective or costly medical care, excessive pollution and wasteful energy policies.

We would like to inform the world about Vietnamese potential in high-quality human resources, the big demand for MEMS/sensors; to connect investors with potential projects, to link researchers with investment funds; and to attract investors in manufacturing MEMS/sensor products and create local supply chains, Dr Le Hoai Quoc, president of the Sai Gon High- Tech Park (SHTP), workshop chairman, said.

The workshops objectives correlate highly with the policy of the HCM City leadership, which is to foster participation and dialogue between various stakeholders including governments, scientific and academic communities, and share their knowledge, experiences and mutual interests, he added.

It is also expected to provide an enlightened and informed understanding as to the viability and importance of creating a MEMS/sensor technology infrastructure as the catalyst for the creation of a critical commercialisation vehicle in Viet Nam, he added.

The workshop will feature world-class experts from the US who will address various MEMS and sensor applications that will enable an enhanced quality of life for Vietnamese citizens.

Tom Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American who has experience in MEMS/sensor technology and will be a speaker at the workshop, said that he prepares MEMS/sensor production at the Saigon High-Tech Park.

Applications to be addressed include the Internet of Things (IoT) as applied to smart and green cities using environmental monitoring, electronic-medicine (e-medicine) and agri-tech and aqua-technology.

Additionally, an introduction and overview of MEMS/sensors and a presentation on technology cluster development and resulting economic benefits will complete the program.

Attendees, including investors, corporate managers, technologists, academics/students and government administrators, are encouraged to attend this all-day event that will present the most current and significant information on technologies and applications for MEMS/sensors.  VNS
HA NOI  Two branches of the Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam (Vietcombank) have won a contract to provide loans for the expansion of a granite factory.

Located in the La Son Industrial Zone, Phu Loc District, Thua Thien-Hue Province, the factory belongs to Vitto Phu Loc Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Vitto Group.

Under the contract, the two branches -- Vietcombank Vinh Phuc in the northern province of Vinh Phuc and Vietcombank Hue in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue -- will grant a credit package worth VN400 billion (US$17.8 million) for the factorys second phase.

Vitto Phu Loc Co Ltd is a large granite producer in the central region, with productivity of 12 million sq.m per year. With investment of VN600 billion in the second phase of the factory, the company is planning to increase productivity by 7.2 million sq.m per year.

Earlier, at the end of August, Vietcombank signed credit agreements for two investment projects under the Public-Private-Partnership with HCM Citys Department of Planning and Investment.

Specifically, the projects include a new facility of Children 1s Hospital, worth VN800 billion, and construction of Tan Phu Hospital, worth VN973 billion.  VNS
Landslides had reduced the area of mangrove forest in Kim Quy B Village from more 40,000sq.m to 4,000sq.m.  VNA/VNS Photo Le Sen

KIEN GIANG  The daily lives of some 500 households have been disrupted and 600ha of protective forest lost due to landslides on the nearly 70km seashore of the Mekong Deltas Kien Giang Province in recent years, with climate change blamed for the landslides.

The district of An Minh is believed to have suffered most from the landslides, with nearly 37km of shore damaged.

Vo Thi Kim Loan, of An Minh Districts Van Khanh Commune, said her house was located in a place surrounded by mangrove forest five years ago. However, the landslides have seriously damaged the forest.

It puts my house at risk of being affected by landslides, she said.

This forced her to pay dozens of millions of ong to reinforce the sea dyke near her house to prevent landslides each year, she said.

Nguyen Thanh ien, a forest protector in Van Khanh Communes Kim Quy B Village said that ten years ago, the mangrove forest protected all aqua farms, but in recent years, landslides had reduced the area of mangrove forest in the village from more 40,000sq.m to 4,000sq.m.

Shrimp and fish raised in aqua farms were often swept away by high tides because there was no protective forest, he said.

Vo Minh Le, secretary of the districts Party Committee said, Serious landslides are strongly impacting the daily lives of local residents.

If we dont devise a workable solution for the situation, the protective forest will totally disappear in the next two years, he said.

Administrations efforts

Nguyen Van Tam, director of the provincial Agriculture and Rural Development Department said the agricultural sector had worked with localities to make plans to fix the situation.

Evacuating local residents in areas facing serious landslides was a short-term solution, while in the long-term, the sea-dyke system should be re-built and the mangrove forest recovered to prevent landslides, he said.

Previously, the provincial Peoples Committee ordered the agricultural sector to work with the Peoples Committee of An Minh District to give solutions for the situation.

The provincial Peoples Committee also asked district authorities to create mudflats along the 4-km seashore to reduce the impacts of high waves, worth VN120 billion (US$5.2 million).

The provincial committee said it sent a report to the National Steering Committee on Natural Disasters Prevention and Control to ask for financial support to deal with the situation.

Huynh ang Khoa, deputy director of Project Management Division under the agricultural department said the province was finishing procedures to soon implement a project of Mekong Delta Integrated Climate Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods in 2018.

The project, worth VN736 billion ($32.3 million), would build infrastructure, prevent seashore erosion and support people in aqua farming in two districts of An Bien and An Minh.  VNS
This blog is looking for wisdom, to have and to share. It is also looking for other rare character traits like good humor, courage, and honor. It is not an easy road, because all of us fall short. But God is love, forgiveness and grace. Those who believe in Him and repent of their sins have the promise of His Holy Spirit to guide us and show us the Way.
Every year at the end of July in the Lunar calendar, locals of the capitals Tam Thuong Alley hold a festival to honour Queen Mother Y Lan at the downtown Yen Thai Communal House.

Y Lan (unknown-1117) was of common origin and rose to wield significant power.

Keeping watch: A statue inside the Yen Thai Communal House. The house is a place of worship for adherents to the Vietnamese mother goddess religion.

Legend has it that King Ly Thanh Tong, at the age of 40, was not able to produce an heir. The royal family then visited numerous pagodas across the country to pray for a son. On their way back to the palace after one such visit, the king noticed Y Lan, a common girl of Tho Loi Village, now modern-day Gia Lam District of Ha Noi.

Sound of music: Locals dressed in traditional clothes play numerous Vietnamese musical instruments during the festival.

The king was impressed with Y Lan, who at the time paid no mind to the royal escort. Ly Thanh Tong decided to take her in as his concubine and also gave her title Lady Y Lan, which literally means one who leans on magnolia, to remember the first moment when he saw her.

Parade: Local people carry their offerings to Lady Y Lan to the temple.

Lady Y Lan went down in Vietnamese history as one of the few women to hold official political power. She served twice as regent: once during the reign of her husband Ly Thanh Tong when he was leading a military campaign in the south and another in the beginning of the reign of her son King Ly Nhan Tong.

On both occasions, Y Lan was regarded as a wise ruler who was admired by the people. She was also largely credited as the one who started the early propagation of Buddhism in Viet Nam.  VNS
Nguyen Van oan, director general of the Department of Co-operatives, under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, talks to Vietnam New Agency about the role of the collective economy in national economic development.

Would you please explain the role played by the collective economy including that of the co-operative in the national economic development?

Since the 2012 Law on Co-operative came into force, all co-operatives nationwide re-registered in accordance with the new law. So far, almost 90 per cent of co-operatives are basically operating in line with the 2012 law. In addition, the number of co-operatives has increased from almost 19,000 in 2013 to almost 19,600 with 6.2 million members. These co-operatives have provided jobs for some 1.5 million people. The co-operatives have helped farmers support each other in production and improved their livelihood.

At present, the collective economy contributes about four per cent to the GDP. In addition, co-operatives have helped improve the livelihoods of many of their members and contributed to improving the national socio-economic situation.

Can you elaborate on the advantages of the 2012 law compared to the previous one?

Before the 2012 Law on Co-operatives came into force, a 2004 decision approved a supporting programme for co-operatives for 2015-2020. In recent years, both the central budget and local budgets have granted funds to support and assist agricultural co-operatives.

In early 2017, the Government decided to integrate the co-operative programme into the national targeted programme on building new rural areas with an objective to boost co-operative development.

What are the biggest challenges facing co-operatives in their development?

The switch from the old co-operatives to the new form of co-operatives has faced many challenges. Only co-operatives in 21 of 63 provinces and cities have fully completed operational changes in line with the 2012 law.

In my opinion, the weakest point lies in lack of collaboration among co-operatives. While legal documents on co-operative development are rather comprehensive, many ministries, sectors or localities still fail to fulfill their duties.

Our co-operatives are still small in scale. Most only focus on the supply of input materials for their members in their production/business. However, the challenge that many co-operatives face is selling their products.

Another difficulty many co-operatives face is access to bank loans. Though a June 2015 Government decree stated clearly that a co-operative is allowed to borrow VN1 billion at most, without requiring collateral, not a single co-operative has yet accessed such a loan.

In the near future, well petition the State Bank of Viet Nam to grant special lending conditions to agriculture co-operatives.

Can you talk about the 2012 Co-operative Law regarding trade promotion for agriculture co-operatives?

This issue has already been covered in the 2012 Co-operative Law and Government Decree 193/2013. Recently, the Ministry of Trade and Industry approved some proposals on trade promotion for co-operatives and co-operative alliances to allow them to participate in foreign trade fairs. However, trade promotion activities remain modest and on a small scale. I hope in the near future the situation will improve.

Do you have any recommendations to help co-operatives develop sustainably?

Through co-operatives, small farmers have supported each other in production, product processing and sales. Successful co-operatives will become a factor contributing to socio-economic stability in their localities and the nation as a whole.

In September, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will chair an online meeting to review implementation of the 2012 Co-operative Law and discuss solutions to problems that have arisen in its implementation.

From the point of view of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, we support the idea of amalgamating several co-operatives into a big one to make co-operatives bigger and stronger. Also, well soon come up with a proposal to create a link between co-operatives working in the same field and in the same locality to boost their competitiveness.  VNS
The Ministry Education and Training (MOET) in 2010 introduced a set of criteria for the training programmes of university and college levels nationwide.  Photo kinhtedothi.vn

Professor Dr Le Kim Long, former principle of the Ha Noi University of Education, speaks to the newspaper Kinh te & o thi (Economic and Urban Affairs) on the impact of the 4.0 Revolution  the major economic shift currently underway, driven by new digital technologies  on Vietnamese teachers.

How do you anticipate the 4.0 Industrial Revolution will impact Vietnamese teachers?

In my opinion, a basic mission of the 4.0 Industrial Revolution is its connectivity. Wide internet coverage has become a tool to connect global education resources with Viet Nam. As a result, our teachers and students have better access to a wide range of educational materials  very good reference sources for them to consult. Teachers should make the best use of these precious resources to enrich their knowledge and then transfer that to the students.

What are Viet Nams criteria and standards in teacher training institutions?

The Ministry Education and Training (MOET) in 2010 introduced a set of criteria for the training programmes of university and college levels nationwide. But Im sorry to say that until now the implementation has not really been to up to the expectations.

The MOET has also introduced a set of criteria for the evaluation of the teachers performance. Though that set of criteria has been used as a toolkit to evaluate the teachers performance, the results recorded were not very effective. So, in my opinion, we need to develop immediately a set of standards for the teacher training program; then a set of professional standards for teachers in the first five to 10 years in their profession; and a set of professional standards for teachers in the jobs from 10 to 20 years. Finally, well develop a set of standards for those who have been teaching for more than 20 years and consider these teachers as those who have strong influence on the young teachers. I hope such a grading system will encourage the young teachers to improve their professional skills.

What will be the outcome criteria for teacher training in Viet Nam in the coming years?

The old criteria or new criteria for the teaching profession cover both their general knowledge and their ability to acquire new knowledge and apply it in their teaching.

The new educational program lays stress on encouraging the students to develop their independent learning ability and to apply their knowledge to their lives. In order to do that, we should not focus too much on the academic knowledge.

Dont you think that teachers in the era of the 4.0 industrial revolution should also achieve a certain level of information technology proficiency and foreign languages?

Im sorry to say that at present we have wasted time and energy on many things. For example, there is a requirement that teachers must have the IT expertise of an IT expert; their foreign language level must be as good as that of a foreign language expert. How can our teachers have time to acquire such expertise while still being competent teachers? All in all, for the teachers, foreign language is just a vehicle in their work while the IT will help them looking for new knowledge on the Internet.

Dont you think that teachers should be given better treatment than what they receive nowadays?

In my opinion, if teachers are given red carpet treatment, some other special occupations should also be given the same. However, our budget is very tight while we have more than one million teachers nationwide. In my opinion, the Government should come up with a road map to stop its investment in tertiary education and encourage some 40 percent of high school graduates to enroll in secondary occupation schools.

The State budget will then focus its investment from grade 9 downwards. When this policy is in place, each class will have 20 to 30 students, their teachers will have more time to talk to each student in the class. Im pretty sure that if my suggested ideas turn into reality, our education will be on par with that of many advanced education systems in the world.  VNS
BRATISLAVA  Deputy Prime Minister Vuong inh Hue on Thursday proposed to leaders of Slovakia that they help promote ties between Viet Nam and the European Union. Hue paid a two-day visit to the European nation, meeting with Prime Minister Robert Fico and other top officials.

PM Fico expressed his admiration for the Vietnamese peoples achievements in national building and development.

The two countries relations will develop based on the traditional friendly ties and shared common values, he said, adding that Slovakia supports the development of Viet Nam-EU ties, including the signing and ratification of the Viet Nam-EU Free Trade Agreement.

The PM suggested increasing people-to-people exchanges to help young generations understand the long-standing relations between the two countries.

He also hailed the contributions of the Vietnamese community in Slovakia and affirmed Slovakia will create the best conditions for Vietnamese expatriates to integrate into the host society and preserve their national identity.

Also on Thursday, Hue attended a workshop on promoting Viet Nam-Slovakia investment with more than 100 businesses in Slovakia and Central and Eastern Europe represented. He highlighted his countrys socio-economic accomplishments, development plans and incentives to encourage investment in Viet Nam.

He called on Slovakian enterprises to invest in Viet Nam in areas such as automobile and spare parts manufacturing, mechanics, industrial equipment, electronics, and infrastructure development. He also exchanged information with leading companies on potential investment in Viet Nams high-tech industry, electronics, renewable energy, high-tech agriculture, and information technology.

The official introduced Viet Nams processed farm produce, aquatic products, electronics, and high-quality consumer products, saying they are available to Slovakias 5.5 million customers.

He noted that there are ample opportunities for Slovakias industrial products, mechanics, energy and food to access Viet Nam, and from there on to other ASEAN and Asia-Pacific markets.

At a meeting with representatives of the Vietnamese community in Central and Eastern Europe, including Slovakia, the Republic of Czech, Poland, and Hungary, Hue said he hoped the overseas Vietnamese will continue serving as a bridge to connect the nations.  VNS
HA NOI  Hungarian Prime Minister Orban Viktor and his wife will pay an official visit to Viet Nam from September 24-26.

The visit will be made at the invitation of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

At a regular press conference on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said that during the visit, Viet Nam and Hungary would seek ways to step up bilateral co-operation in economy, trade, investment, science-technology, education-training, healthcare, environment, security and defence.

PM Viktor will pay courtesy calls to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and President Tran ai Quang, hold talks with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. He will also meet Chairwoman of the National Assembly, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, and attend a Viet Nam-Hungary Business Forum, Hang said.

Viet Nam and Hungary established diplomatic relations in 1950.  VNS
President Tran ai Quang (R) receives Director of IFRC-Asia Pacific Xavier Castellanos in Ha Noi yesterday.  VNA/VNS Photo Nhan Sang

HA NOI  President Tran ai Quang has asked the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (IRIC) to continue providing support for member organisations in Southeast Asia, including Viet Nam.



The support is especially necessary in the fields of community-based disaster management, response to emergencies and climate change and Red Cross network development, he said during a reception in Ha Noi on Friday for delegates attending the 14th annual Southeast Asia Red Cross-Red Crescent Leadership Meeting held in the capital city.

Hailing the outcomes of the meeting, the President expressed his belief that the Southeast Asia Red Cross  Red Crescent Movement will continue achieving greater successes, contributing to building a united and strong ASEAN Community.

He hailed the movement for making important strides over the past years, especially in the building of a safe and highly resilient community.

The host wished that Red Cross and Red Crescent societies of regional countries, the IFRC and IRIC would contribute to building the ASEAN Community in the three key pillars of the Political-Security Community, Economic Community and Socio-Cultural Community.

He also took the occasion to thank the delegates for raising funds for victims of storm Doksuri in Viet Nams central region.

Director of IFRC-Asia Pacific Xavier Castellanos, for his part, lauded the VRCS for its increasing involvement in humanitarian and charity work.

He affirmed that the IRFC-Asia Pacific always pays attention to developing the role of member countries, including those in Southeast Asia.

The guest committed support to the VRCS and thanked the Vietnamese President for supporting the IFRC, IRIC and relevant societies in Southeast Asia in his capacity as VRCS Honorary President.- VNS
HA NOI  oan Manh H., a 45-year-old heavy drinker from Ha Nois Hai Ba Trung District, died of drinking methanol with water in June.

A blood test showed that his methanol concentration was up to 16 times higher than the permitted level.

According to online news website Dan Tri, his relatives said the victim bought a 500ml bottle of medical alcohol produced by ai Loi International Joint Stock Company and mixed it with water to drink as wine.

Chemist Tran Hong Con said that ethanol was made from grain and sugar, the same ingredients as rice wine, while methanol was compounded from hydro and carbon dioxide. This meant methanol was extremely hazardous to humans. Inhaling or drinking methanol may cause headaches, vomiting, vision loss, respiratory failure - and even death.

Con said that because of its cheap price, methanol was sold as medical alcohol, in spite of its threats to human health. Methanol was sold at VN6,000 to 8,000 (30 to 40 US cents) per litre.

Most methanol poisoning cases recorded by the Viet Nam Poison Control Centre at Bach Mai Hospital are related to drinking medical alcohol.

Le Van T. from the central province of Thanh Hoa was taken to the hospital in a coma in July this year. He also had hypertension and with signs of severe acidosis. These were all typical symptoms of methanol poisoning.

Nguyen Trung Nguyen, a doctor at the centre, said that T. bought ai Loi Companys medical alcohol to drink.

His X-ray images showed brain oedema. The methanol concentration in the blood was 210mg/dL, while a concentration of 40-50mg/dL is considered extremely high.

Weak responses

In July, Ha Noi Department of Health checked on ai Loi Company in Cau Giay District.

At that time, the company produced two permits for the production and sale of alcohol. However, the department concluded that these two documents were no longer valid and could not replace a production license.

After discussion with the Department of Drug Administration under the Ministry of Health, the Ha Noi Department of Health decided to destroy 2,800 litres of ai Loi Companys alcohol and fined the company VN7 million ($320).

According to the ministrys regulation, medical alcohol must be permitted by the Drug Administration Department. Medical alcohol may contain methanol with a low content.

However, according to Nguyen ang Hoa, former principal of Ha Noi University of Medicine, medical alcohol must contain 90 per cent ethanol and 10 per cent water.

Therefore, doctors and physicists recommend tightening the management of medical alcohol products and to issue regulations for ethanol and methanol concentrations in those products.

Bach Mai Hospital has asked the Drug Administration Department to check out medical alcohol products and manage the concentration of methanol used in medical alcohol. Simultaneously, they required to clearly indicate the concentration of methanol and ethanol in products labels. In case of containing methanol, it is essential for medical alcohol products to be labelled containing methanol  do not drink.

Ironically, while the proposal was waiting to be considered, in August, there were more cases of methanol poisoning recorded.

To prevent people from misusing medical alcohol, doctors of Bach Mai Hospital recommended producers to use containers that were easily recognisable.

They also asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to add a colour indicator to methanol to avoid mixing it in medical alcohol.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has allowed the Ha Noi Peoples Committee to choose the investors for a pedestrian flyover along the citys ringroad No 2. Photo thoibaotaichinhvietnam.vn

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has allowed the Ha Noi Peoples Committee to choose the investors for a pedestrian flyover along the citys ringroad No 2.

The decision is somewhat unusual in that even major cities that enjoy a measure of autonomy usually have to defer to the Government in chosing investors for major projects. Exceptions are made when a project is highly localised and distinct.

PM Phuc warned Ha Noi to ensure that its instructions for the tender are clear, adding that the capital city will be responsible for implementing the Ministry of Planning and Investments requests. He also said Ha Noi must closely supervise the projects cost based on the BT (Build-Transfer) model to ensure it conforms with market prices.

PM Phuc asked the Ha Noi Peoples Committee to seek guidance from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

The Ha Noi Peoples Committee approved the project last year at a total investment of more than VN4.7 trillion (US$210 million). Construction of the 5km flyover is scheduled to last four years.

The ringroad runs from the Vinh Tuy Bridge, which connects Hai Ba Trung and Long Bi6n districts, to Nga Tu So intersection in ong a District.  VNS
by Khoa Thu & Minh Ngoc

HA NOI  I have never seen a trained housemaid, said Nguyen Thanh Van of Hoan Kiem District, who is seeking a nanny for her baby nephew. I have asked almost everyone in my circle of acquaintances. They shared tips for choosing the ideal maid who can both care for the baby and help my sister-in-law with housework.

Domestic work is stipulated as a professional job in the 2012 revised Labour Code. However, it is still facing serious challenges, including lack of vocational training and insurance for workers.

There is no official data on the number of domestic workers in Viet Nam, but given the expanding middle class, the demand for domestic workers is clearly rising, especially in metropolitan areas.

A study conducted in 2011 by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) showed that 46 per cent of surveyed households in Ha Noi and HCM City hired domestic workers and this rate was more than twice the pre-2000 period.

Incomplete MoLISA data indicates that the number of domestic workers has risen from about 157,000 in 2008 to about 246,000 in 2016. In 2020, 350,000 people are forecast to be employed in this kind of work.

Van is one of many Hanoians seeking domestic workers. o Van Huong of Long Bien District says she needs housemaids for particular family events, such as the birth of a new baby or a relatives illness. Bui Viet Nga of Ba inh District says she simply wants to spend her time doing things other than housework.

Code of skills

To satisfy employers diverse requirements, domestic workers must have sufficient skills to perform a variety of household services. According to a document detailing the qualifications of domestic workers, co-authored by the Research Centre for Gender, Family and Community Development (GFCD) and the National Institute for Vocational Education and Training (NIVT), responsibilities include cooking, cleaning, laundry, caring for children and old people, etc. Moreover, domestic workers are asked to practice communication skills.

However, most housemaids cannot fulfil basic requirements of their job.

Ngo Thi Ngoc Anh, Director of GFCD, said that from 97 to 99 per cent of domestic workers are women, more than 90 per cent of them have never been trained. Most employers live in cities while employees usually come from the countryside. The differences in background sometimes result in disagreements on labour relations.

According to a 2015 Government decree, employers and domestic workers have to sign contracts stipulating that house helpers are entitled to at least 24 continuous hours off a week, 12 annual paid leave days and all public holidays. Employers also have to cover compulsory social and medical insurance for domestics and are not allowed to pay them less than the regional minimum wage.

However, both employers and domestic workers often neglect the contractual obligations.

For the past decade, Huong has found domestic helpers via acquaintances. But even the most diligent one stayed with her family only 15 months. I didnt want to change housemaids. However, they usually quit, making unbearable requests and threatening to quit over pay demands, Huong said.

She also has experience with professional housemaid agencies, but says they usually offer part time services with fixed contracts. Workers supplied by those agencies complete training courses and work mostly as cleaners.

The lack of a labour contract prevents domestic workers from enjoying social welfare, according to Mai uc Thien, head of the Legal Department under MoLISA. In case of a labour dispute, it is difficult for authorities to investigate, Thien added.

Vocational training needed

To ensure the rights and benefits of domestic workers, several agencies have conducted training courses for them.

GFCD collaborated with the Ha Noi Womens Union and Ha Noi Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (DoLISA) to launch a project called Promoting the right of domestic workers to access social welfare and employment policies in Viet Nam between 2017 and 2021.

The project is being implemented in different districts of Ha Noi such as Cau Giay, Thanh Xuan, Hai Ba Trung, aiming to provide 1,500 domestic workers with some legal knowledge.

Additionally, the Ha Noi Employment Service Centre is conducting a market survey on domestic work to build suitable training courses and offer variable services. For now, the number of trained domestic workers cannot satisfy the current demand.

Nguyen Tuong Anh, Marketing director of the 88 domestic worker service company in Cau Giay District says she gets about 1,000 requests for workers a month but can only cope with 30 to 40 per cent.

The domestic work market is shifting from full-time worker to part-time worker requirements. Le Van Tiep from the Ha Noi Centre for Womens Development and Support says domestic workers need to be trained at vocational training schools. Domestic workers have stable incomes and contribute to society. Promoting domestic work can also help reduce unemployment and create job opportunities, especially for women from rural areas, she says.  VNS
HA NOI - Multilateral, regional and international deals and initiatives to counter global warming must be prioritised and implemented, said Ngo Thi Hoa, ambassador of Viet Nam to the Netherlands, on Thursday.

Speaking during a round table meeting on climate and security in the Netherlands, she stated that as a country that is directly affected by climate change, Viet Nam has actively contributed to programmes and action plans to tackle the issue.

Viet Nam will subsequently host an Asia-Europe meeting to jointly respond to climate change and achieve their sustainable development goals in the middle of 2018, to raise awareness and call for international co-operation and policy sharing between the Netherlands, the European Union, and Asian countries suffering from the effects of climate change.

The annual roundtable meeting, hosted by the Delft-based IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, attracted the participation of 60 delegates representing foreign diplomatic delegations, the Dutch ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, Clingendael Academy, various research institutions and non-governmental organisations, and Dutch and international scholars.

The meeting aims to promote international co-operation and share strategies to address the challenges posed by climate change, including those related to natural resources, food security and migration, as well as the international response to climate change and the stability of countries that are vulnerable to global warming.

The meeting saw the participation of various countries and provided them with the opportunity to co-operate, maintain peace and strengthen the engagement of international agreements and initiatives.

While addressing the event, Professor Eddy Moors, rector of the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, said that climate and security are closely interrelated, and all countries require regional and international approaches to face its challenges.

He added that it is necessary to place the issues of climate and security on international agendas, so every nation and all individuals can have a better understanding and plan effective action to solve the problem.

Other speakers from Clingendael Academy and the IHE Delft Institute also highlighted the relationship between climate change and cross-border migration with security in countries that are prone to rising sea levels, such as Bangladesh and Chad, as well as the issue of water scarcity and the potential solutions to remove salt in seawater and provide fresh water, to maintain stability in drought-hit areas.

They also discussed the role of water diplomacy in countries that share border on rivers, as well as conflicts caused by competition for water resources, and the necessity of promoting the international efforts to protect fauna and enhance the sustainability of nature reserves.

Michel van Winden, representative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the Netherlands has attached great importance to its response to climate change and is ready to co-operate with other countries on this issue.

As a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since 2018, the Netherlands will include the issues of climate and security on the UNs agenda, to promote international co-operation in this area, Winden added.

The participants were informed that the 23rd UN Climate Change Conference will take place in Germany in November while the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will organise the Planetary Security Conference at the Hague in December.  VNS
News / National

by Staff Reporter

The High Court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai's appointment of national executive members Advocate Nelson Chamisa and Engineer Elias Mudzuri as party co-vice presidents last year.Card-carrying member Patson Murimoga and provincial chairman George Rice sued the party leader on the basis that he desecrated the opposition political party's constitution by unilaterally elevating the duo into the presidium.Justice Hlekani Mwayera decided the matter on the preliminary points raised by Advocate Thabani Mpofu who acted for the duo and their leader.It was argued that Murimoga and Rice had no legal standing to launch such an application, which the court accepted and summarily threw out the application.Tsvangirai who is battling colon cancer and hospitalised in South Africa, said the promotion of the two was meant to help him run the party as the country prepares for the 2018 elections.This, however, angered some party bigwigs who felt Tsvangirai could not unilaterally hand-pick his "blue-eyed boys" to the lofty positions ahead of the rest in the contest to succeed him.In their application, Murimoga and Rice argued that Tsvangirai and the party national council ignored the party's constitution in recommending and subsequently cherry-picking the co-VPs.They argued that the national council could not appoint a deputy president because he or she should be voted for from nominations from provinces that make up the MDC-T.The national council, the two averred, was provided for in Article 6.4.1 of the MDC-T's Constitution and did not empower the council or the party president to appoint a deputy president.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man is asking the court to be tried separate from his girlfriend when it comes to trial on charges in the death of her child.

Chad Allen Little, 33, is charged with murder and child endangerment in the 2015 death of 4-year-old Gracie Buss. Gracies mother, Kristi Amber Buss, 32, is charged with child endangerment for allegedly failing to prevent abuse by Little.

Trial is tentatively scheduled for November.

UPDATE: Boyfriend now charged in child death investigation WATERLOO  A former Waterloo couple are in the Black Hawk County Jail on charges in the deat

On Thursday, Public Defender Aaron Hawbaker, who is representing Little, asked the court to grant separate trials.

There are two core defenses in this matter, the first is whether a homicide occurred at all, and the second is, assuming the affirmative in the first, who is responsible, Hawbaker wrote in his motion to sever the cases. He said that the second issue puts Little and Buss at odds.

Buss also filed a pro se request to be tried separate, and she asked for a change of venue.

Gracie was found unconscious the Busss Downing Court apartment on May 30, 2015. She died days later of what doctors determined were blunt head injuries. Authorities were later told the girl had fallen down stairs.

Both Little and Buss remain in the Black Hawk County Jail awaiting trial.
WAVERLY  After 24 years serving in ministry at Wartburg College, the Rev. Ramona Bouzard will retire in May as dean of the chapel.

Spiritual Life & Campus Ministries will host an open house beginning at 12:30 p.m. on Oct. 14.

Bouzard accepted the call to Wartburg as director of church relations and associate in campus ministry in 1994, the same year the Wartburg Chapel was dedicated. She previously served as a parish pastor in Texas and Pennsylvania.

At Wartburg, she ministered to the college community alongside the Rev. Larry Trachte, campus pastor, until he retired in 2009. Bouzard was then called to serve as dean of the chapel, and the Rev. Brian Beckstrom accepted a call to Wartburg as a second full-time campus pastor.

One of my highlights has been working with my pastoral colleagues here. Larry and Brian are great preachers, care-givers, collaborators.  Who could ask for anything better? she said.

Ramona has been an incredible mentor to me over the past eight years, said Beckstrom. I couldnt be more grateful to God for calling us to work together. Shes helped me become a much better pastor than I would have been without her influence.

At the top of the list of things Bouzard will miss is interacting with students.

Having the deep conversations with students who want to talk about God and theology and wonder who they are; Ive gotten to continue to grow with those conversations too, she said. Its such a privilege to walk with young people through this time of formation. Everything Ive learned about the world, Ive learned from 18- to 22-year-olds, and its wonderful.

Instead of the many changes shes experienced over a long career in college ministry, Bouzard focuses on the consistencies in her years at Wartburg.

We continue to have an amazing teaching faculty at Wartburg who are committed to Wartburgs mission of teaching and deep learning with our students, she said. And the incredible growth of students while theyre here  that hasnt changed over the years. Wartburg continues to present opportunities to help them have meaning in their lives, in the classroom, through co-curriculars and volunteering.

Besides leading worship and preaching in Wartburg Chapel, Bouzard taught a variety of classes, administered the colleges annual Graven Award and maintained relationships with area churches. For years, she ran the national Things That Matter in the Lives of Children conference and junior high and high school events on campus.

Ramonas husband of 43 years, the Rev. Dr. Chip Bouzard, will continue as a professor of religion at Wartburg. The couple plans to eventually retire to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.
CEDAR FALLS -- The search committee charged with finding an executive director for the Iowa Board of Regents narrowed their list of finalists to one, after interviewing five candidates Friday.

The governance and evaluation committee began interviewing five candidates in closed session at 10 a.m. Friday. By 4:30 p.m., they had chosen to advance one candidate as a finalist.

The candidates name will be announced at a later date.

The finalist is expected to be interviewed with the full Iowa Board of Regents board during its regular October meeting. That meeting will be held Oct. 18 to 19 at University of Northern Iowa.

The committee was set up after the exit of former Executive Director Bob Donley. Donley announced June 7 he would be stepping down from the position effective July 15. His resignation letter was dated June 1.

Donley said at his final board meeting leaving was his decision, one he made several months before, and "the timing was perfect." He served in the role since 2008.

The search committee narrowed its pool of candidates from 42 applicants to five during a meeting in August. The group initially advanced six candidates as semi-finalists but one withdrew.

The committee first met in July to set a job description for the executive director position and discuss how to advertise for it.
WATERLOO  Quentin Hart is just the second Waterloo mayor in the past 78 years to stand for re-election without an opponent.

Hart, seeking his second two-year term, was the only mayoral candidate to file nomination papers to be on the Nov. 7 municipal election ballot by Thursdays deadline.

John Rooff was the last Waterloo mayor to run unopposed when he won his fourth consecutive term in 1999. It had been at least 50 years before Rooffs campaign that voters lacked a choice on the mayoral ballot.

Unopposed does not mean slow the pace or put it on cruise control, Hart said. It means there is confidence that we are moving in the right direction and I must work even harder and bolder to keep up the positive momentum.

Nomination papers filed on time with the Black Hawk County Election Office show several other area mayors will face challenges to keep their jobs this fall and competitive City Council races also dot the ballots.

Waterloo

All four of the Waterloo City Council seats up for grabs this year feature competitive races which could shake up the status quo.

Incumbent At-Large Councilman Tom Lind is seeking a second four-year term but will be challenged by Sharon Juon, the former director of the Iowa Northland Regional Council of Governments. Voters citywide elect the at-large council representative.

The Ward 1 City Council race features a rematch between Tom Powers and Margaret Klein. Powers narrowly beat Klein in a July 2016 special election to fill the seat when it was vacated by former Councilman David Jones.

Ward 3 Councilman Pat Morrissey is seeking a second term but will be challenged by April Leadley, who is making her first bid for city office.

Three men  Steve Carignan, Cody Leistikow and Chris Shimp  will be running in Ward 5 to replace Ron Welper, who elected not to seek a fifth term this year.

Cedar Falls

In Cedar Falls, voters will chose between first-term incumbent Mayor Jim Brown and retired University of Northern Iowa speech professor and frequent city policy critic Jim Skaine.

The open seat of at-large council member Nick Taiber, who is not seeking re-election, has attracted the most interest with three candidates: former Overman Park Neighborhood Association activist Rob Green, North Cedar resident Erin Cornelius and businesswoman, Community Main Street president and Planning and Zoning Commission member LeaAnn Saul.

The citys Third Ward will see its first contested City Council race since 2005, as incumbent John Runchey faces a challenge from Daryl Kruse, who has served as president and legislative chairman of Landlords of Iowa.

Incumbent First and Fifth Ward council members Mark Miller and Frank Darrah are running unopposed.

Evansdale

Evansdales Nov. 7 ballot features just one contested race, with At-Large Councilman Gene Walker choosing instead against incumbent Ward 2 Councilman Ron Nichols. Lynn Bender is running unopposed for Walkers current at-large seat.

Mayor Doug Faas and Ward 4 Councilman Dick DeWater are running unopposed to keep their seats. Incumbent Travis Nichols and T.J. Stocks are the only candidates seeking two seats on the Parks and Recreation Board.

Elk Run Heights

Incumbent Mayor Tim Swope is running unopposed, but Elk Run Heights voters will elect five council members from a field of seven candidates. Incumbents Dennis Bass, Tim Ratchford, Lisa Smock and Dale Wilson are joined on the ballot by challengers Arlan Schellhorn, Gary Wurtz and Paul Wurtz.

Dunkerton

The Dunkerton mayoral race features a rematch between incumbent Edward Jessen and former longtime Mayor Michael Schares. Jessen knocked off Schares in 2013, a year after Schares was convicted of misdemeanor charges related to his involvement when a police officer pulled over his nephew for speeding.

Four people are running for the three Dunkerton City Council seats up for grabs this year, including incumbents Mark Lichty and Dennis Manahl Jr., Bill Richard and Jamie Stickfort.

La Porte City

Two challengers will be running against incumbent La Porte City Mayor Dave Neil this fall, including Eric Allsup and Michael Johnson.

The race for two council seats features a crowded field of five candidates: incumbent Brent Sadler, Stuart Grote, Sarah Jane Logan, Gary Murphy and Tim Smith.

Hudson

Hudson Mayor George Wessel and City Council members Gail Bunz and Kate Wyatt are all running unopposed for re-election this year. But voters will be asked whether to adopt 12 percent hotel-motel tax.

Raymond

Raymond Mayor Monte Johnson is running unopposed for re-election. James Keating and Jessica Wittenburg are the only candidates running for two City Council seats.

Gilbertville

Gilbertville Mayor Mark Thome and Councilman Carlin French are running unopposed for re-election. Voters will need to fill a second vacant council seat through write-in votes.
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News / National

by Staff reporter

The Zimbabwe Republic Police has widened investigations into a case in which four raffle ticket books for the Commissioner General of Police's Funfair were stolen at Harare Central Police Station on Tuesday.The books contained more than 350 tickets. The tickets worth $2 each were supposed to be sold to both police officers and members of the public. The raffle draw is set for October 7 at the Morris Depot Grounds. Sources said several police officers had been questioned in connection with the case but no arrests have been made.Harare provincial police spokesperson Assistant Inspector Tarirai Dube on Wednesday warned the public against buying the tickets."Members of the public are advised not to buy any tickets with the following serial numbers; Book number four with serial numbers 0014351-400, Book number five with serial numbers 0014401-500, Book number six with serial numbers 0014501-600 and Book number seven with serial numbers 0014601-700," she said.
Andrew Marzoni at The Quarterly Review:

Indiana hails from New Hampshire, and his contributions to the art world, both as artist and critic, are most often associated with New York, where he moved in 1978: putting on plays in the East Village, exhibiting photographs, and working as chief art critic at the Village Voice in the 1980s, a tenure he fictionalized in his debut novel, Horse Crazy (1989), a haunting Death in Venice for the AIDS era. But before living in Manhattan, Indianawho changed his last name from Hoisington in a spell of immense naivete, he told the New York Observers M.H. Miller in 2014spent years in California, first as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the midst of the antiwar movement, and later in Los Angeles. It is from the perspective of an ex-Californian New Yorker not unlike Indiana himselfSeth, a marginally successful gay magazine writer who checks into the Chateau Marmont on a Conde Nast assignment to profile a famous movie star whos recently gone out on a limb, in the words of the movie stars publicist, by appearing as a homosexual with AIDS in a television drama about AIDSthat the reader is introduced to Indianas Los Angeles in Resentment (1997), the first in a trilogy of crime novels that are currently being reissued by Semiotext(e)s Native Agents imprint. All three novels are literary remediationsor as Indiana calls them, pastichesof high-profile crime dramas first broadcast on Court TV and the nightly news: in Resentment, Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were sentenced to life without parole for the 1989 murder of their parents, are reimagined as Carlos and Felix Martinez; in Three Month Fever, Cunanan becomes the emotional core of the Versace murder; and in 2001s Depraved Indifference, murderer, grifter, and modern-day slaver Sante Kimes appears as Evangeline Slote, an always-drunk Liz Taylor deadringer known in the guestbooks of roadside motels from Las Vegas to Sacramento as Evelyn Carson and Eva Annamapu, among other pseudonyms, any one of which may in fact be her legal name.

more here.
News / National

by Staff reporter

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday snubbed President Robert Mugabe as he treated other African leaders to a working lunch on the sidelines of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly in New York.Trump was joined by South African President Jacob Zuma and leaders of Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Senegal and Uganda.It was not clear whether Trump, who was on Thursday attacked by Mugabe during his speech to the General Assembly, had overlooked the Zimbabwean leader as a result of the long-standing frosty relations between Washington and Harare or it was for other reasons.The US slapped Mugabe and members of his inner circle with sanctions over human rights violations and lack of rule of law.On Thursday, Mugabe took a dig at Trump for his speech on North Korea and Iran, which he said was threatening peace.In a speech that lasted about 20 minutes, Mugabe called on Trump to blow his "trumpet in a musical way," towards peace.That was a bit surprising as Mugabe, ahead of his 93rd birthday, had suggested in an interview with ZTV that Trump might re-examine long-standing US sanctions on Zimbabwe."When it comes to Donald Trump, on the one hand, talking of American nationalism, well, America for America, America for Americans  on that we agree," Mugabe said adding: "Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans."Mugabe's welcoming tonne during Trump's inauguration did not change Washington's stance towards Harare.The US national security adviser, Herbert McMaster, this year told a press briefing that the "exclusive group of dictators", which includes Mugabe, had gained notoriety for rampant human rights abuses.McMaster was reacting to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's decision to force through a controversial poll that seeks to create a body to review the South American country's constitution."Maduro is not just a bad leader. He is now a dictator," McMaster said."By this action, Maduro is joining an exclusive club of outlaw world leaders, like Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Kim Jong Un (North Korea), and Robert Mugabe."Trump's snub of Mugabe was the third time in three years that the 93-year-old has suffered such an embarrassment at the hands of a sitting American president.In 2014, former president Barack Obama did not invite Mugabe to a landmark US/Africa investment summit held in Washington where nearly 50 heads of State took part in the two-day event, which sought to widen trade, development and security ties between America and Africa.Mugabe and leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Madagascar were excluded from the summit.At the time, Mugabe was African Union (AU) first vice president and incoming chairperson of Southern African Development Community (Sadc).In 2015, Obama visited the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia but avoided meeting Mugabe although he was at the time chairperson of the continental body and the regional Sadc bloc.During his speech at the AU headquarters, Obama condemned African leaders who refused to give up power, in remarks widely interpreted as a veiled attack on Mugabe."Africa's democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. No one should be president for life," he said.The country's largest opposition party, MDC, said no one was prepared to engage with Mugabe because he had outlived his usefulness to them."Surely, you couldn't expect him (Trump) to invite Mugabe to the working lunch that he hosted on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly."Mugabe is a Pariah in influential world politics. That's why even Obama hardly made a direct reference to Mugabe in his speeches, even when he visited Africa," said MDC spokesperson, Obert Gutu."Mugabe wants to sound bullish and cocky in his UN public speeches. The bottom line, however, is that he is yesterday's man. His brand of politics and grandstanding is no longer in sync with the dictates of modern day global politics and international relations," he added.Analysts said it was not surprising that Mugabe had been excluded from the working lunch as the US could have been guided by its foreign policy and the country's strategic interests in Africa."And there are a host of US institutions that determine this. That Mugabe is officially under targeted sanctions means the snub is not surprising," said political analyst, Vivid Gwede."Officially, the Zimbabwean leader remains blacklisted in the US probably in the same boat with Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran."And this has been a bipartisan approach of the Republicans and Democrats alike from the younger George Bush's era to Barack Obama and now Trump. It is a continuation of a well-known US policy position. It would have been a shifting of sands if he was included," added Gwede.Farai Maguwu, a local political activist, said it was clear from his rhetoric that Mugabe is in a permanent conflict mode hence his presence at such an important engagement meeting would throw spanners into the discussion."I think Trump, like many other leaders, is waiting to meet the next president of Zimbabwe for constructive dialogue," said Maguwu.Mugabe, members of his family and senior Zanu PF officials were slapped with sanctions at the height of political violence and farm invasions in 2000.The Zanu PF leader accused the US of seeking to overthrow him through the use of sanctions although Washington maintains they were in response to ballot fraud, lack of rule of law, human rights violations and lack of respect for property rights.Mugabe and his Zanu PF government have blamed both the US and European Union sanctions for sinking the once-thriving economy but their opponents in the opposition blame corruption and bad governance for the current crisis.Social commentator, Rejoice Ngwenya, said it was awkward for Trump to choose to meet leaders of Ethiopia and Uganda and yet excluding Mugabe from the same meeting.He said Uganda and Ethiopia were fellow human rights habitual offenders who preside over authoritarian democracy."Nevertheless, any American leader would spite Mugabe because the latter does not hide his resentment of western democracies he accuses of imposition of sanctions on him. Mugabe is not likable  his arrogance and overrated anti-imperial stance are irritants," observed Ngwenya.Political analyst, Maxwell Saungweme, said the countries that were invited were of strategic interest to American foreign policy and businesses.He observed that the countries have huge natural resources of interest to the US and the American government funds a lot of humanitarian and development programmes there."While Zimbabwe is also endowed with natural resources, our policies do not make us attractive to US investors. We grab land and businesses and run them down," said Saungweme."Also, Zimbabwe is a very tiny country with a little market and tiny demand for American products if you look at it in the grand scheme of things. We are a tiny country with a very small population and we often overrate ourselves".Media practitioner, Nigel Nyamutumbu, said the snubbing of Mugabe by Trump had both economic and political undertones."On one hand it shows that Trump is going to maintain the sanctions regime on Zimbabwe and will not seek to influence the US Congress to repeal the embargo. On the other hand, it shows who America will be keen to discuss potential business and investment with in Africa and sadly, it seems Zimbabwe is not a prime target," said Nyamutumbu.
Introducing our second installment of 7x7's Style Council 2017, our annual look at the trendsetters and style mavens of the Bay Area worlds of fashion, beauty and design. Check back for more tastemaker profiles each day, between now and September 29th!



--

Leah Rosenberg is a chroma queen.

Her unmistakable rainbow-hued installations have made a vibrant splash both here at home and abroadfrom Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to the Golden Pavilion in Hamburg, Germany, earning her the press and bona fides befitting one of our generations most's talented multi-medium artists. But perhaps even Rosenberg herself didn't see the Color Factory coming.

Rosenberg in jumpsuit and jacket by Jisun Lee's Canvas Line. (Andrew Paynter)

The wildly successful kaleidoscopic installation that quickly sold out two runs in San Francisco this summer has Rosenberg, the project's creative director, much to thank for its giddy-making experience. Co-created along with Jordan Ferney, founder of the online party place Oh Happy Day, and New Yorkbased art director Erin Jang (Martha Stewart Living, Esquire), Color Factory made candy-crazed kids of many a sophisticated art lover and editorConde Nast Traveler wrote that the Color Factory made "all other summer events seem, well, dull by comparison."



But Rosenberg's fascination with color began long before Instagram became a nirvana for her specific brand of eye-catching work. Raised on the prairies of Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, she learned to enliven the barren expanse around her by painting inventive fantasias in her mind that would later translate into art forms. "I think as kids our imaginations were put to good use, particularly in the bareness of the winter landscape," she says.

These days, the artist surrounds herself with an explosive cast of joyful shades and spreads the love around. As part of the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District's Sites Unseena public project that aims to transform the neighborhood's once-desolate alleys into hubs for art and conversationRosenberg's installation"Local Color" is currently illuminating Natoma Street with solar-powered LED light boxes and, of course, the brightest hues you can imagine.



Until early December, she is also in residence at The McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC for an exhibition called "Color for the People," a site-specific exploration of color and taste. Each week, the gallery walls and floors will be painted and furnished in a new color inspired by the Charlotte landscapea concept familiar to any San Francisco art lover who remembers Rosenberg's Outer Sunset project from the spring of 2015. The immersive color-field painting and meditative space in Charlotte will also include a Color Bar, serving cocktails and treats that match the hue of the week. The project aims to "create space for remembering the vital roles that art and food continue to play in fostering shared experiences of pleasure and joy, which I believe can be medicine for times like these," she says.

However busy she gets, her work is often the thing that keeps her centered.

"Sometimes I think I can carry more than I can on my bike, and my bag gets caught on the wheel. I bite it, and my paper bag filled with party napkins and vending machine refills spills all over Larkin Street," she says. "And a kind man who packs his home onto his shopping cart offers a hand and an extra bag that is not ripped. And usually when these things happen, I take it as a sign [it's time] to slow down."

But then again, she says "riding my bike around San Francisco allows me to see the city, and I get stories like this out of it that teach me something. I am thankful for the non-routine, that every day presents me or tests me with something different."

Next year, if you're traveling out of SFO's Terminal 3, don't forget to slow down and look around: Rosenberg is currently working on a large-scale installation for the airport, entitled "Everywhere, a Color."

Rosenberg at Workshop Residence (Airyka Rockefeller)

7x7: How do you feel about San Francisco?

Leah Rosenberg: San Francisco is the host to many histories, and I love turning a corner to hear music spilling out of a cafe, or crossing into one neighborhood from another. I love running into friends around town who are also working hard and getting to hear what they're up to. But I will admit, there are parts I'm finding hard these days living here. Some days honey, some days onions.





7x7: Describe your personal style.

LR: Last year I accompanied a good friend to get her wedding dress altered, and we got into discussing the keys to meeting your match. The seamstress said there are two things: wearing polka dots and carrying a small handbag. I suppose I share this story to say what my style is not. I typically leave the house in the morning on my bike with a basket that holds a bag that is not small because it usually carries paint chips, a roll of tape, my sketchbook and my water bottle, which often leaks all over my sketchbook, and surprisingly a seamstress's tape measure.





7x7: Who's your creative hero?

LR: I feel like everyday I have a new hero to add to my list. Other artists, mothers, writers, musicians, chefs. I've had the opportunity to collaborate and work with so many wonderful people.





7x7: What are your go-to SF eats and drinks?

LR: The martini with smoked olives at the bar at The Progress. I have a special place in my heart for early mornings at Pinhole Coffee.





7x7: What's your guilty pleasure?

LR: Spending too long figuring out just the right caption for the cartoon at the back of The New Yorker. If gummy bears are in the house, I will eat those at the same time.





7x7: What store turns you into a shopaholic?



LR: Lowe'sthey have everything I need. Joking aside, I love popping into the local shops run by people I knowlike Little Paper Planes or Legion Shopso I get to catch up with them and learn about what people are making.

// leahrosenberg.com
Startup CIS Summit Su&IT 2017 is the largest competition for start-ups and is scheduled to take place in Belarus on October 21, 2017. Su&IT 2017 will see the most promising new entrepreneurs and businesses give their pitches to investors, government officers and large corporations with a no-visa required five day visit to the country.

Organized by Startup Accelerator Geek Suits, Su&IT 2017 is where the hottest new ideas and entrepreneurs can be found from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other CIS countries. The global event carries a prize money of $15,000, and will witness leaders from over 50 companies in attendance.

Start-ups who wish to showcase their ideas, reveal past performance or simply network will find at the event some of the most well known start-ups that were created in Belarus, such as Viber, EPAM, World of tanks, PandaDoc, MSQRD, Maps.me, Apalon, Juno, Kino-mo, Fabby and more. All pitches will be simultaneously translated from Russian to English.

Su&IT 2017 will attract a wide ranging audience, with 50 start-ups, over 1,000 participants, 250 investors and over 150 media representatives to cover the event. Start-ups attending the event will be able to pitch to investors, explore venture capital funds and angel investors, and get to know about seed funding and exchange business offers. Attending corporations will find a pool of new ideas and promising projects, and investors will discover where their money will find the greatest impact.

Apart from networking, business opportunities and investing deals, the event will also host representatives of IT companies and experts who will describe successful industry cases. Participating start-ups will also demonstrate prototypes of finished products, and team and business plans. To make it convenient for a global audience to attend the event, Su&IT 2017 will welcome citizens from 80 countries, including EU and the US, to visit the Republic of Belarus with a visa-free entry for up to five days.

Event at a glance:

Date and Time: Saturday, October 21, 2017, 10:00 AM  9:00 PM Further-eastern European Time, Belarus Time

Location: Minsk, St Kirova 18, Minsk, Belarus

For more information, please visit: http://suit.by/en

Media Contact

Company Name: Business-incubator

Contact Person: Igor Saevets

Email: igorsaevets@mail.ru

Phone: +375296667466

Country: Belarus

Website: http://suit.by/en
News / National

by Staff reporter

Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko today visited the Msika residence in Harare to console the family following the death of Gogo Maria Msika, widow of the late Vice President Joseph Msika.Mphoko described the death of Gogo Msika as a big loss to the nation.The Vice President has since advised the family that they are waiting for guidance from the President, Robert Mugabe who is currently attending the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York.
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Members of a flag line take to the field at a recent Mustang Classic Marching Band Competition. This year's competition will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday at Midland Valley High School.
Cultural Practices and Pain Management

Sydney researchers have pioneered a chronic pain treatment program, specifically designed for people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Liverpool and Fairfield Hospitals, along with Western Sydney University, teamed up for the nine-month trial, creating a culturally responsive approach to treatment.

How does it work?

Senior Physiotherapist Bernadette Brady said researchers focused on Assyrian, Mandaean and Vietnamese communities in south-west Sydney. She explained many people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds failed to understand and engage with traditional physiotherapy.

"We really wanted to understand how people perceive pain and what their pain experience is, and then use that to help guide how we could tailor our approaches to better suit their needs and better suit what their beliefs are," Ms Brady explained.

"For the Assyrian community we saw that pain's very much about physical pathology, or a biomedical problem, and so we really had to make sure that whatever we were doing in treatment aligned with that understanding."

Different treatment plans were adopted, and catered specifically for each cultural group.

"(For the Vietnamese community) we really saw that pain was an imbalance in their body's energy systems, or their body's Am Duong -- which is the Vietnamese concept of Yin and Yang," Ms Brady said.

"For the Mandaean community, pain is very much about the physical and also the social and emotional consequences of being a refugee in Australia."

Positive results

One of the Mandaean patients taking part in the trial is 63-year-old Natiq Roman.

The Iraqi refugee has suffered shoulder, neck and lower back problems for almost a decade. Since migrating to Australia in 2013, his condition struggled to improve under regular physiotherapy.

"It was getting worse and then improving. They advised me that it could need injections or even surgery was an option," Mr Roman told SBS World News in his native Arabic.

But Mr Roman said participating in the new trial saw a significant easing of his pain.

"Everything got better after doing the right exercises, intensive exercises to reduce the pain in the injured parts. The program is both theoretical and practical," he said.

"In general the program was very good and helpful, especially when it comes to certain exercises that help reducing back pain, neck pain, arms and shoulder pain."

Western Sydney is one of Australia's most multicultural areas. Two out of five people speak a language other than English at home, while New South Wales is home to more than 260 language groups.

Ms Brady told SBS World News catering to the needs of the region's numerous ethnic groups is therefore a priority for practitioners.

"If you're not engaging them, and if you're not respecting their life and their circumstances, then people aren't going to adopt those approaches that are going to be best for their health," Ms Brady said.

The controlled trial has just wrapped up, with 48 patients taking part. In that time, 96 per cent of patients completed treatment, a near-forty per cent increase compared to those undergoing usual care in Sydney's South-West health district.

"They changed. Their spirits changed, and their mentality changed," explained Samia Sayad, a Community Liaison volunteer.

"They change in every (positive) way."

Ms Brady believes the culturally-adaptive approach can be adopted by other health professionals.

"We can use that, we can teach other therapists and other health professions, including medicine and psychology, about cultural adaptation and how they can go about tailoring their practices."
The Assyrian Village on the Faultline of Iraq and Kurdistan

St George and Dragon mural in town of Alqosh. ( MEE/Alex MacDonald) Alqosh, Iraq -- Louay gestured towards the Mar Mikha al-Nuhedri school. He said it has been in the town of Alqosh since the fifth century. "They were the first one here and they are teaching the instruction of Christianity," he said. "They brought disabled kids here to teach them." A caretaker in the house of the Catholic patriarch in Alqosh, Louay said he was thankful that his town and its heritage, with one of the last Assyrian Christian populations in the country, was now under the protection of the government of Iraqi Kurdistan. "In Kurdistan, we have everything," he said. Since the school was first built, the town of Alqosh in northern Iraq has been in the hands of many rulers, including the Abbasid caliphate, the Ottoman Empire and the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein. The most recent struggle over the ownership of the town has come as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) launches its bid for independence with a referendum on 25 September. Although Alqosh is, on maps anyway, part of Baghdad-controlled Iraq, the KRG's security forces have effectively controlled the town since 2014. At that time, the Islamic State (IS) group swept eastwards across Iraq seizing control of swathes of territory. Christians in areas controlled by IS were told to convert, pay a tax or face death. The letter "N" meaning "Nazareen" (referring to Jesus's ancestral home) was painted on the doors of Christian homes and another influx of refugees fled from their ancestral homelands. Kurdish Peshmerga forces were integral in halting the IS assault and preventing them from pushing farther into Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Since then, Peshmerga forces have remained in the town, however, and the decision by KRG President Massoud Barzani and his allies to include Alqosh as part of a future Kurdish state has provoked outrage from those who say Alqosh is part of Iraq. Mar Mikha Al Nuhedri School in Alqosh. ( MEE/Alex MacDonald) Locals in the town have expressed different opinions, but some argue that they face the best possible fate under Kurdish rule. One man - speaking outside a Communist-themed cafe adorned with pictures of Josef Stalin and Che Guevara - said that the Kurdish government was the only real guarantor of their political and religious rights. "Some people may oppose the referendum, but most of them are with the referendum," said Amr, a local tourism worker in Alqosh. "We are Christians here, we cannot live with the southern people, the Arabs. "Kurdish people, they protect us, so we are going to support the Kurdish people." Pictures of Stalin and Che Guevara adorn Communist-owned cafe in Alqosh. ( MEE/Alex MacDonald) He said the Kurdish government had built hospitals, provided electricity, water and other local amenities after years of neglect under Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 Baghdad government. "We live in a free community in Alqosh, anybody can join any party, or any ethic, of any gender or beliefs, it's free for everybody to live together as brothers," he said. "This cafe," he said, pointing, "belongs to a Communist, but I am from the KDP and my cousin is from the UDP, it's free for anybody to join anything. "We feel safe here - with Kurdistan we feel safe." Communism and Christianity are apparently equally at home in Alqosh. Built at the foot of the Bayhidhra mountains, the sandstone town is dotted with churches and Christian symbolism. The Rabban Hormizd Monastery in mountain over Alqosh. ( MEE/Alex MacDonald) One wall mural depicts the Christian tale of St George and the Dragon, in which a knight faces down apparently insurmountable odds to defeat a dragon intent on devouring him. Tucked away in the mountains above Alqosh is the Rabban Hormizd monastery, which has been there since 640 CE. The only thing noticeably absent from Alqosh, however, is the flag of the Republic of Iraq. The only place the image of a unified Iraq appears is above the police station, clearly outnumbered and outgunned by the Kurdish Peshmerga and Asayish security forces. Conversely, an Ottoman fort requisitioned by the Asayish is adorned with the green, red and yellow of the flag of Kurdistan. Not everyone in the town has been happy about the Peshmerga presence there and some recent moves by the KRG have been seen as a power grab by locals. In July, the mayor of Alqosh, Faiz Abed Jahwareh, was removed from his position - allegedly over corruption charges - and replaced with a member of the KRG's ruling Kurdistan Democratic Praty (KDP), Lara Yousif. The move led to demonstrations in the town calling for the reinstatement of Jahwareh. The Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), an Assyrian political party that favours remaining within a federalised Iraqi state, criticised the dismissals and has condemned the attempt to incorporate Alqosh within the remit of the Kurdistan referendum. "We will not accept any sort of referendum to be held in the Nineveh Plain and areas of minorities," said MP Yonadam Kanna in early September. As early as 2008, in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Basim Bello - a former ADM mayor of Tel Keppe who was also deposed in August - warned that the KRG was attempting to take control of the Nineveh Plains with the aim of incorporating it into Kurdistan. He said that KRG forces were attempting to "establish facts on the ground by moving Kurds into Christian areas; stacking district and sub-district councils with un-elected Kurdish members; and, in the case of Alqosh, spending lavishly, particularly on church and church-related construction". Nevertheless, the rise in Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has partly toxified the relationship between Alqosh's Christian population and the central government in Baghdad. Many now see the largely secular KRG as a safer bet in terms of protecting their rights against a government in Iraq they see as increasingly dominated by Iran. An older Peshmerga fighter in Alqosh, decked out in military fatigues complete with a US army badge, was particularly scathing about the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs) or Hashd al-Shaabi, largely Shia fighting organisations who have been heavily involved in the fight against IS. "They are worse than IS," he said. "They have been brought up by the hand of Iran so they are worse than IS." "We know most of the leaders of [the PMUs] belong to Iran. In Bartola they opened a school and named it 'Khomenei' and raised an Iranian flag there." He said that if the referendum, which he supports, were to pass, then he would resist any attempts by the PMUs to take control of Alqosh. "We ask God not to fight, but if we are forced to fight, we are ready for that." Some, however, seem wary of the whole process. One man sitting outside his shop front, who declined to be identified, said he felt that the referendum was just another populist ploy by Iraq's political class. "Anything that happens either in Baghdad or happens here, they are all just looking out for their own interests," he said. "As people we are living in the country, we don't want to be involved in political issues, we just want to live. So anyone who is going to authorise this, we are going to be with them. I don't want to interfere with any political party or political things." He said that he was sick of the country's obsessive focus on religion and sect, which said had been "manufactured" since the 2003 invasion. As he was talking, another younger man cut into the conversation. "I don't think there are going to be any Christians anymore in Iraq," he said, lighting a cigarette. "I think they are all going to leave."
Opinion / Columnist

"Caesar's wife must not be above suspicion ", so goes the saying. But this is not the case with Zimbabwe's first family.A few weeks back it was the president' sons, Chatunga and Robert Jnr making headlines for wrong reasons. The juveniles were sent packing from their place of accommodation in Sandton for drug abuse, and violent behaviour. Now, in a move that will leave power monger Vice President Mnangagwa smiling in his hospital bed, Grace Mugabe is wanted by the South African Police after failing to present herself to the police station in connection with a case of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH).In a pure case of uncontrollable show of violence, Grace Mugabe waited for the cover of darkness last Sunday to raid a room at the Capital 20 West Hotel in Sandton where she attacked Gabriella Engels with an extension cord.The poor 20 year old model sustained three career threatening injuries to the forehead, head and leg.The democratic environment in South Africa and the strong media played its part in exposing this act of brutality. We wonder how many women and girls have suffered the same fate in silence at the hands of the Grace Mugabe in Zimbabwe which is under the leadership of her despot husband President Robert Mugabe.What we certainly know is that in 1985 the ZANU pf Woman's League which was headed by Sally Mugabe went on a witch hunt and attacked Matabeles living in Mashonaland. All President Robert Mugabe s wives are violent. WHY ?In case you do not know why there are few Matebeles living in Mashonaland at present. Zanupf Youth Brigade and Womens League with the endorsement and open support of the Zimbabwe government in 1984 and 1985 went door to door in Harare,Highfields, Mabvuku, and other african townships in then Salisbury and subsequent other african surburbs in Kadoma, Chegutu, Kwe kwe, Gwelo and elsewhere in the country , and took property and money belonging to matebeles and destroyed and burnt what they could not loot, beat all people who spoke Ndebele language.Many were left without homes and property and chased away to return to Matebeleland.Mrs Sally Mugabe was shown on television with members of the womens league.People like Grace Mugabe think that the first family can abuse the people of Matabeleland in Zimbabwe and even export their culture of violence to neibouring countries and elsewhere with impunity.We remind people of Matabeleland that the political events in Zimbabwe, as dramatic as they are, remind us that it is time to restore the statehood of Matabeleland. Remember 2018 which MLO President Cde Paul Siwela ear marked as the year of the rebirth of The Republic of Matabeleland is upon us.Let us stand up and take what belongs to us.Let all Matebeles throw away the graments of fear and embrace the armour of bravery and patrioticism and face the Zimbabwe government.Lets break away from Zimbabwe by whatever means necessaryIzenzo kungemazwi !Izzy DubeM.L.O. Secretary for Information and Public Affairs
It's been a whirlwind year for Bibb County.

Yesterday Mercedes-Benz broke ground on two huge projects in Woodstock - a new Global Logistics Center and an after-sales North American hub in Bibb County.

11 months ago, German auto supplier MollerTech announced a $46.3 million production plant coming to Bibb County, to share the Scott G. Davis Industrial Park with Mercedes' new projects.

Together, the three by themselves, when fully operational, represent more than 650 jobs, with almost $300 million in investment. And that's only the beginning.

"This is a gamechanger for Bibb County," said Angela Till, Alabama deputy secretary of commerce. "This is huge."

The Global Logistics Center will cover 800,000-square-feet and supply overseas assembly plants with car kits - basically everything to assemble a vehicle. It is expected to open in 2019. The kits will be largely for local markets in Asia.

The 1.3 million square foot after-sales hub, located next door to the logistic center, will provide spare parts for overseas markets. This will consolidate three existing after-sales warehouses in the state. It is expected to begin operations by the end of 2020.

In all, the two new centers will provide an estimated $307.9 million in economic impact annually to the state, according to an economic impact study from the University of Alabama Center for Business and Economic Research. That includes contributing $109.2 million to the state's GDP and $62.4 million in earnings to Alabama households from direct and indirect jobs.

It also has the potential to add an additional 1,200 jobs associated with development and increased economic activity.

Jason Hoff, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz U.S International, said there were several reasons why Mercedes chose Bibb County as the site for these two projects. One was availability of the right amount of land for construction and possible expansion, and only five miles from the Vance plant.

"This is roughly what we're looking for," Hoff said. "It gives us some expansion possibilities if we need that. And moving east from the plant brings us into another work force area and allows us to tap into a group that may not have looked at us before."

For Bibb County, it also represents a step forward toward world class companies finding a home there. On Thursday at Mercedes' initial announcement, Gov. Kay Ivey said she was happy to see a largely rural area bask in a big economic development announcement.

"I come from rural Alabama, and it's usually the last place to see this kind of activity," Ivey said. "But the people there are wiling to work, they're dependable, and this is a great testimony to show what they can do."

Ricky Hubbard, Bibb County Commissioner, said Bibb County doesn't want massive development but doesn't want to stay simply a bedroom community for workers in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

"As a rural community, the impact of this will be felt for many years to come," he said.
There's been a lot of talk about God and religion in the campaign for the U.S. Senate special election Republican primary runoff set for Tuesday between former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to the seat this year.

"I always worry right away when people running for office wrap themselves in religion," said Alabama historian J. Wayne Flynt, author of "Alabama Baptists," "Southern Religion and Christian Diversity in the 20th Century" and other books about faith. "It's bad for them and bad for government. To say secular politics in America can be baptized in the blood of Christ is a great stretch."

Moore, the Gadsden native whose rise to political prominence came when the ACLU sued the obscure Etowah County judge for putting a handmade Ten Commandments plaque up in his courtroom, has always felt at home talking about his faith.

"For him, it seems natural," Flynt said. "For Luther, it seems like a stretch, strained. Roy is a theocrat. If you're a theocrat, you're going to have religion as a starting point for everything you do."

Both Republican senate candidates are longtime church members and churchgoers.

"With all due respect I don't think God is on your side," Strange told Moore during their debate last week. "I don't think God is on my side."

Moore and his wife, Kayla, are members of Gallant First Baptist Church, near their home. "We consider ourselves Southern Baptist," Kayla said.

They also sometimes attend City Church in Rainbow City, where their children and grandchildren are members, Kayla said.

But Moore also spends many Sundays in the pulpit of churches all over the state and has spoken during worship services in churches around the country, including Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He has spoken at churches in Florence, Mobile, Auburn, Tuscaloosa and many other towns during the current campaign. On Sunday, he'll be speaking at Edgewood Congregational Methodist Church in Anniston at 5 p.m.

Strange grew up in Homewood, where he attended All Saints' Episcopal Church as a child. He and his wife, Melissa, are members of St. Mary's-on-the-Highlands Episcopal Church in Birmingham's Southside and frequently attend services there when they are in Alabama.

"He worships with us on a regular basis," said the Rev. Huey Gardner, rector of St. Mary's.

Strange and Melissa also went on a trip to Israel several years ago with Gardner and other members of the church, where Strange showed a strong affinity for Christians in the Holy Land, the priest said. "They are very committed people," Gardner said. "They are part of the fabric of this church. He is an active, engaged member of St. Mary's."

As attorney general Strange often allied himself with the Alabama-based EWTN Global Catholic Network on religious freedom issues such as challenging the Obama administration's health insurance mandate requiring employer-sponsored health plans to provide coverage for contraception, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs.

Strange has talked mostly in broad general terms about religion, while Moore tends to be more directly theological, Flynt said.

"Episcopalians represent a tiny sliver of the population, but a broad swath of political leaders in Alabama history have been Episcopalians," Flynt said. "Episcopalians have been governors, senators, congressmen and mayors at a greater percentage than their population. No Episcopalian gets elected because of the Episcopalian vote. They get elected because they have money and education."

Strange has tried to stake out a more evangelical-friendly approach to religion in the campaign, Flynt said.

"He seems uncomfortable," Flynt said. "Roy seems very comfortable. He's wrapped himself in it beginning with Vietnam, if not earlier... If Roy were governor of Alabama, he'd post the Ten Commandments on every building. Roy Moore really believes this, whereas Luther doesn't."

While Moore is comfortable catering to an evangelical and fundamentalist Christian audience, "It's a political contrivance with Luther," Flynt said.

Policy-wise, the pragmatic Strange and ideologically driven Moore would likely be similar, because they are catering to Alabama voters, Flynt said.

"The difference would be, Roy would really believe in them," Flynt said. "With Luther, it wouldn't represent what's in his heart or even in his head. Roy Moore would be a better fit for the right-wing beliefs of most Alabamians. Luther would be a more rational and reasonable congressman."

The two have contrasting core beliefs and styles when it comes to religion.

"Luther when he talks about religion does it in the generic form," Flynt said. "He talks about God. To be competitive, he had to do that. Roy is more likely to talk about ecclesiastical identification as a theology. It makes him have a deeper association with religious people. It's in the DNA of Roy Moore, and in the political strategy of Luther Strange."

The race in many ways comes down to that contrast, a choice of a pragmatist versus a true believer who may take it too far even for conservative, deeply religious Alabamians, Flynt said.

"There are a lot of Republicans who think Luther does not really believe what he says, while Roy Moore is a religious extremist and theocrat who would embarrass the state, and the state's been embarrassed enough," Flynt said.
An investigation is underway after a man was shot to death early Saturday in Birmingham.

Birmingham police responded about 3:15 a.m. to the 3000 block of 44th Avenue North to a report of someone shot, said Sgt. Bryan Shelton. Once on the scene, they found the man in a white pickup truck suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

The victim was taken to UAB Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Authorities have not yet been able to identify the victim, saying only that he is a black male in his 20s or 30s.

Shelton said investigators have few details about what happened. They did receive information of shots being heard, but no other information has yet been uncovered.

"First and foremost we must identify the victim. A family has no idea a loved one is deceased,'' Shelton said. "Some questions to answer include why the victim was at the location at that time and who may have been with him."

He is Birmingham's 74th homicide so far this year. Of those, at least five have been ruled justifiable and therefore are not deemed criminal.

In all of Jefferson County, there have been 111 homicides in 2017, including the 74 in Birmingham.

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. HAROLD CUNNINGHAM, Plaintiff - Appellant, PERCY BARRON; ALPHONSO BLAKE; JABBAR CURRENCE; CARLTON DUNBAR; SCOTT FOUNTAIN; SEAN GILLESPIE; CHARLES HIPPS; RONNIE HOUSTON; JOHN LAMB; HERBERT PERKINS; JOHN J. POWERS; ARNELL SHELTON; MARCELLUS WASHINGTON; CENTER FOR LEGAL ADVOCACY, d/b/a Disability Law Colorado, Plaintiffs - Appellees, v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, Defendant - Appellee. No. 17-1054 Decided: September 21, 2017

Before HARTZ, McKAY, and MATHESON, Circuit Judges.

ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

Harold Cunningham, proceeding pro se, appeals the judgment approving the settlement of a class action brought by mentally ill prisoners housed in the federal administrative-maximum facility in Florence, Colorado (ADX). He argues that the settlement was not fair, reasonable, or adequate because it did not provide for money damages. He has requested leave to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP) on appeal. We grant IFP and affirm.

I. Background

We provide a brief description of the background to frame the issues presented for review. In 2012 counsel for several ADX prisoners filed the underlying action alleging that they were denied required mental-health treatment and were so abused by prison personnel that the conditions of their confinement constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. In 2015 counsel submitted a second amended complaint, the operative complaint in the case, seeking class certification for ADX inmates needing mental-health evaluation and treatment. A federal magistrate judge facilitated discovery and settlement negotiations. In November 2016 the plaintiffs filed a proposed settlement agreement setting out the terms of a settlement, including required policies and procedures for diagnosis and treatment of ADX prisoners. The district court held a three-day fairness hearing under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a). Several ADX prisoners testified by videotape and others submitted written statements.

The district court noted that the defendant Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has not admitted an Eighth Amendment violation as to any of the plaintiffs or a systemic violation at ADX. R. Vol. 1, at 367. Rather, the BOP agreed to the settlement because it recognized the need for new policies and practices for mentally ill inmates at ADX. The court observed that although the case was triable, [t]he complexities of such a trial are evident. That is a principal reason for the settlement of this action. Id. And it pointed out that the settlement could not be relied on in an individual claim against a BOP official or employee brought in a separate Bivens action. See Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bur. of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).

The district court acknowledged that some of the prisoners objected to the settlement because it did not provide for any awards of money damages. But it noted (1) that the operative complaint did not include claims for damages because damage awards against the BOP are barred by sovereign immunity; (2) that even if prisoners had claims for medical negligence under the Federal Tort Claims Act, those claims were not appropriate in a class action because they would not meet the class-action requirements in Rule 23(a) of commonality and typicality; and (3) that any inmate may still pursue an independent Bivens action. The court approved the settlement agreement and later dismissed the action subject to retention of jurisdiction to enforce the agreement.

II. Discussion

We review the district court's approval of the settlement for abuse of discretion. Fager v. CenturyLink Commc'ns, LLC, 854 F.3d 1167, 117475 (10th Cir. 2016). A district court may approve a proposed settlement only after finding that it is fair, reasonable, and adequate.  Id. at 1174 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(e)(2)).

We liberally view Mr. Cunningham's pro se filings. See Garrett v. Selby Connor Maddux & Janer, 425 F.3d 836, 840 (10th Cir. 2005). We do not, however, take on the responsibility of serving as the litigant's attorney in constructing arguments and searching the record. Id. Moreover, pro se parties [must] follow the same rules of procedure that govern other litigants. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Mr. Cunningham first claims that during a hearing in November 2013 the attorney for the class and the magistrate judge agreed to set up a trust fund for payment of money awards to certain prisoners, yet the attorney improperly failed to set it up. But he does not cite to any record evidence for this claim. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A) (stating appellant's brief must contain, among other things, citations to the parts of the record on which the appellant relies). And what we do have in the record does not support the claim. The attorney for the class discussed this matter during the fairness hearing, informing the court that there was a discussion of whether there was a way to divert or to set aside an attorney fee award to create some kind of a compensation pool,  [but] the government declined to consent to that compensation idea. Aplee. Supp. App. Vol. 9, at 2125-26. It is undisputed that monetary compensation for inmates was not included in the final settlement agreement approved by the court.

Mr. Cunningham also raises an argument based on his proposed pro se Third Amended Complaint seeking money damages. The district court struck the Third Amended Complaint because (1) it attempted to bring individual damages claims in the class action, (2) Mr. Cunningham was represented by class counsel so the court could not accept pro se filings, and (3) acceptance of an amended complaint would supersede the prior operative class complaint. Mr. Cunningham filed a motion to reconsider. He contends that the BOP's failure to respond to the motion to reconsider is a concession that the BOP violated his Eighth Amendment rights. Contrary to his characterization of the proceedings, however, the BOP responded to the motion to reconsider. And although the district court did not formally rule on the motion, the court implicitly denied it by dismissing the case. See Fransen v. Conoco, Inc., 64 F.3d 1481, 1489 n.6 (10th Cir. 1995) (district court implicitly denied plaintiff's claim by ruling on defendant's summary-judgment motion).

Mr. Cunningham next asserts that the settlement agreement should be voided because BOP officials retaliated against him for refusing to agree to the settlement. But he does not identify where he raised a retaliation claim in the district court and he does not argue for the application of plain-error review on appeal. Therefore, the retaliation claim is waived. See Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123, 1130-31 (10th Cir. 2011). Even though we do not consider his retaliation claim in this appeal, we note that the settlement order does not foreclose Mr. Cunningham from bringing a separate action for retaliation.

Mr. Cunningham also asserts that he was denied his First Amendment right to testify in opposition to the settlement at the fairness hearing. Again, he has not shown where he raised this claim in the district court or argued for plain-error review, so this claim is waived. See id. And we note that he was afforded adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard. Mr. Cunningham filed pleadings stating his objections. And the district court recognized the objection of some of the class members that the settlement did not provide for money damages. See Rutter & Wilbanks Corp. v. Shell Oil Co., 314 F.3d 1180, 1187 (10th Cir. 2002) (noting as to objections to class-action settlement that [t]he fundamental requirement of due process is the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner (internal quotation marks omitted)).

Mr. Cunningham argues that an award of money damages was contemplated by the operative complaint because the relief requested included such other relief as th[e] Court deems just and proper, Aplee. Supp. App. Vol. 8, at 1870. Perhaps so. But even if the complaint had explicitly sought money damages, that would not affect the validity of the ultimate settlement. A settlement is not unfair simply because it does not provide all relief originally sought.

Finally, Mr. Cunningham maintains that he is entitled to an award of attorney fees for acting as the lead plaintiff and helping to put the case together. The fees payable to the attorneys for the class were authorized under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 28 U.S.C.  2412. But attorney fees are not available for pro se litigants under the EAJA. Demarest v. Manspeaker, 948 F.2d 655, 655 (10th Cir. 1991).

III. Pending Motions

Mr. Cunningham's requests for appointment of counsel and an evidentiary hearing in this appeal are denied, as are his requests for production of document transcribed and an award of money damages. His application to proceed IFP is granted; but he remains obligated to pay all filing and docketing fees.

IV. Conclusion

The judgment is affirmed.

Entered for the Court

FOOTNOTES

. After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1.

. To the extent Mr. Cunningham attempts to represent the interests of other prisoners, a pro se litigant may not represent other pro se litigants in federal court. See Fymbo v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 213 F.3d 1320, 1321 (10th Cir. 2000).

Harris L Hartz Circuit Judge
President Donald Trump told a packed Alabama arena Friday night he's supporting U.S. Sen. Luther Strange in Tuesday's GOP Senate primary for two reasons.

Strange offered to support Trump on a bill to repeal Obamacare without asking anything for it, Trump told a capacity crowd at Huntsville's Von Braun Center. And Trump said Strange has a much better chance of holding the Senate seat for Republicans than former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.

"He said, 'You've got it," Trump said Strange told him when the president asked for Strange's vote. Strange told Trump, "Sir, I was for you right from the beginning," the president said.

"That's the coolest thing that's happened to me in six months," Trump said. "I shouldn't be doing this," he said, "shouldn't be involved in a primary." But Trump said, "I called him. I asked him, 'You want me to help you?' That's why I'm here."

Would back Moore

If Moore defeats Strange, Trump said he would "campaign like hell for him," but predicted "the fake news" media would make a Strange loss all about Trump's failure "to pull his candidate across the line."

Both Strange and Moore are "good men," Trump said. But he said twice that Luther would "definitely," "easily" win against Democrat Doug Jones in the December general election. "Roy has a very good chance of not winning," Trump said.

"It's all about the general (election)," Trump said. "Don't forget, we don't stop here.... This is over on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, the new race begins."

Trump reveled in the enthusiastic crowd and heaped praise on Alabama and Huntsville. He praised the "billions and billions of dollars" of Army missile defense work being done in Huntsville.

"How important are those words now? When you hear missile defense?" Trump said. A "state of the art missile defense system" is being designed here, Trump said, adding, "Thank you very much, Huntsville."

'Little Rocket Man'

The missile defense question referred to tensions with North Korea, and Trump added to his derogatory nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Kim is now "Little Rocket Man," the president said.

"We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place," Trump said. He will "handle it," Trump said. "We're going to do it because we have no choice."

Trump showed a depth of knowledge of federal activities in Alabama. He mentioned the "new FBI facility" being built on Redstone Arsenal and praised NASA's Huntsville center.

"We're spending a tremendous amount of money in Alabama," Trump said, "and you are doing great. And as long as I'm president, you are going to have so much money spent here. And you know what? Lots of other states also."

Greatest hits

Trump made little hard news in what was basically a campaign-style speech that ran nearly 90 minutes long. But he did say his tax reform plan will be released next week.

The looming Senate defeat of another Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare drew brief comment. Trump said Republicans "don't have the guts to vote for it" now they have a president who will sign it. Sen. John McCain's opposition to the latest version was "terrible" and "unexpected," but Trump said, "We're going to do it eventually."

Trump had a teleprompter on the Von Braun Center stage, but seemed to depart frequently from prepared remarks to riff on a series of his greatest hits.

"Crooked Hillary" was name-checked, the election was revisited with Trump praising his Electoral College victory and saying "winning the popular vote is easier," because it just takes big numbers in California and New York.

"No, Russia did not help me," Trump said. He called the investigation into Russia's possible role "the Russian hoax."

Rally master of ceremonies and radio host Bill "Bubba" Bussey led the arena in several "Build that wall!" chants, and Trump talked about the border wall. Choices for its design are narrowing, the president said, and it will be built. But it won't be continuous, Trump said. It doesn't' need to run over every mountain or through rivers.

Through it all, Trump returned repeatedly to his affection for Alabama and the state's affection for him. "I feel like I'm from Alabama, frankly," he said. "I understand your values. I love your values."

(AL.com staff writer Paul Gattis contributed to this report)
Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

In Big Spring Park this afternoon, a Trump supporter in a red MAGA hat posed for pictures with anti-Trump protesters.

The protesters were gathered across the street from where President Donald Trump addressed a full house at Von Braun Center arena in Huntsville, urging them to vote for incumbent Luther Strange for U.S. Senate.

You guys look ridiculous, the Trump supporter said as a woman threw an arm around his shoulder. She was a Trump supporter and was dressed in a shiny Captain America costume, complete with cape and boots.

So do you! someone shot back cheerfully as they smiled for pictures. A few protesters jumped into the shot, making sure their signs were visible.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

At least 300 people had gathered in the park, holding signs and chanting things like This is what democracy looks like! and Hands too small  cant build the wall!

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

They were mostly white, but all ages, and represented local progressive and left-leaning groups including the Tennessee Valley Progressive Alliance, the Madison County Democratic Party, the North Alabama Democratic Socialists.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Donald Trump is a bully, and bullies thrive on fear, said Will Miller of Huntsville. We have to show him were not afraid. America is the land of opportunity and opportunity isnt finite; we can make more of it.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

When asked, most protesters said they were there to prove that not everybody in Alabama is a Trump fan. They held signs supporting healthcare, Russia, DACA, science, and LGBT rights. Many didnt want to give their full names, saying they feared retribution at work. Alabama is a deep red state.

We are appalled by his lack of self control, his ignorance, said C. Rogers. We are all Americans. We need to stand up for whats right. Please go vote.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Police separated some verbal confrontations. There were a few guys heckling protesters, shouting Trump Train! Make America Great Again! There was a protester who walked over to where young men in MAGA hats were standing and proceeded to smoke, blowing it in their faces.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Weve had some people mouthing off, said one Huntsville police officer, but he said there were no physical altercations and no arrests.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Across the street, crowds of people  mostly white, but all ages  streamed into the arena. Nearly all said they came because they wanted to see Trump.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Dawson Ellis, a recent high school graduate, and his friend Jacob Miller, a high school student, said they couldnt wait to see Trump. The senate election was a toss-up for them.

I want to see what he has to say and do my own research, said Ellis.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Teresa and Robert Tuten brought their nearly 2-year-old grandson, Malachi Rowlins. Rowlins father serves in the Army, and Teresa said she wanted Malachi to see Daddys boss.

The Tutens said Luther Strange is the best candidate for the job and that they believed he would support Trumps policies.

Alabama doesnt need anyone to disgrace the state, said Robert Tuten.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Marisa Suarez and friends Zachery Jackson and Jamie Flynt were there to see the spectacle. They do not support Trump but were looking forward to the event. Suarez wore a Nope t-shirt and said she thought it was odd that Trump supports Strange and not Moore.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Near the protesters, Peter Grove of Cloverdale, Ala. stood with a bicycle covered in handmade Roy Moore signs. He said hed been out there since 3 a.m. and had no plans to leave anytime soon.

The president really couldnt care (who wins the Senate election) as long as its a Republican, he said. Who has to care are the people of Alabama, who have to help the president drain the swamp. Its been three months of solid lies coming out of the Luther Strange and Mitch McConnell camp.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

"We're here to see the leader of the free world, in person," said Debbie Rogers, who had come with her husband Byron. "I've never seen a president in my entire life."

They're undecided on who to vote for in the Senate race.

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

As the evening wore on, Trumps speech was projected on a large screen outside the arena, where around 100 people gathered to watch.

Read more: Trump says thousands gather outside his rally

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Anna Claire Vollers | avollers@al.com

Back in the park, protesters continued marching over Huntsvilles iconic red bridge and around the lake. Some said they planned to stay out there until their permit ran out at 10 p.m.

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Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, will travel to Alabama Monday along with Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson to stump for former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore before Tuesday's Republican Senate Primary runoff against Sen. Luther Strange.

The event will take place from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. Monday at Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope. The event is free; click here to reserve a ticket.

In this photo taken May 29, 2014, Phil Robertson speaks in New Orleans, La.

Bannon, the controversial executive chairman of Breitbart News, was fired from the White House in August after he gave a lengthy interview that was seen as undermining Trump.

Axios first reported the rally, which the Moore campaign has since confirmed on its Facebook page.

Former University of Alabama running back Siran Stacy and State Sen. Trip Pittman of Montrose will also speak at the rally.

Fox News host Sean Hannity will also be in Alabama Monday, interviewing Bannon live outside the rally, Politico reported. It'll be Bannon's second TV interview since leaving the white house.

The final days before the runoff have seen a swath of big-name stumpers in the state, including Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who rallied for Moore Thursday in Montgomery. Trump rallied for Strange in Huntsville Friday night.

The Moore campaign did not immediately provide comment Saturday.
By Louis Jacobson for PolitiFact

During a debate against Republican primary rival Roy Moore, Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., urged policies to strengthen the economy -- in part because it would encourage more charitable giving.

"People need to be able to provide for their families so they can give money to their churches and to their charities," Strange said. "We're the most generous state in the union in terms of what we give to charities."

Is it correct that Alabama is "the most generous state in the union in terms of what we give to charities"? We found that the state does rank high in monetary donations, but it's not No. 1 in recent rankings. (The Strange campaign did not respond to an inquiry.)

The WalletHub study

One recent and comprehensive assessment of state-by-state charity was published by the personal finance website WalletHub in November 2016.

The site looked at two broad categories of charity -- a "volunteering and service" category and a "charitable giving" category. Since Strange spoke about monetary gifts, we'll focus on that portion of WalletHub's calculations in this fact-check.

To create a state's rank for the charitable giving category, the website melded together several measurements. One that received double-weighting to increase its importance in the calculation was the percentage of residents' income that was donated to charity. The additional, single-weighted measurements included the percentage of taxpayers who donated money, the number of public charities per capita, the number of food banks per capita, and the percentage of sheltered homeless residents.

When the website crunched the numbers, Alabama ended up as fourth in charitable giving, behind Utah, Arkansas and Minnesota.

Zeroing in specifically on the percentage of residents' income donated to charity, Alabama finished one notch higher -- No. 3, behind Utah and Mississippi. (A separate study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy published in 2014 also placed those three states in the same order for percentage of income donated to charity.)

So Alabama ranked high among the states, though Strange was exaggerating when he said it was No. 1 in the nation.

The SmartAsset study

Another study by a personal-finance website came out a few months earlier. The SmartAsset study looked at two slightly different measurements.

One was charitable contributions per capita. On this measurement, Alabama ranked no higher than 13th. (The website listed only the top 25 states in overall rank, so Alabama could be lower than 13th.)

The other measurement in the SmartAsset study was the median size of charitable contributions. In this category, Alabama fared better -- it was No. 2 after Utah.

But Alabama still isn't No. 1 in the nation, as Strange said.

Some caveats

While both studies found Alabama with high rates of monetary donations, the state scored less well in charitable activities such as volunteering.

In the WalletHub study, Alabama ranked 46th in the "volunteering and service" category, only rating higher than California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The factors used to measure this category included volunteer rate, volunteer retention rate, volunteer hours per capita, and percentage of population collecting or distributing food and clothes.

When WalletHub averaged the "charitable giving" and "volunteering and service categories" to create an overall state rank, Alabama ended up at 30th -- below average nationally.

As for the SmartAsset study, Alabama ended up in 19th place overall, or above average nationally. The four factors used to produce the SmartAsset ranking were charitable contributions per capita, median charitable contribution, value of volunteer time per capita, and nonprofits per capita.

"Volunteering is incredibly valuable to nonprofits," said Joannie Tremblay-Boire, an assistant professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. "It can be just as important as cash or goods. Organizations just would not be able to function without volunteers." (Tremblay-Boire helped advise WalletHub on its study.)

Explaining charity patterns in Alabama

Using the metric Strange appeared to focus on -- monetary giving -- Alabama is well positioned to do well in national rankings, because it ranks relatively low in income and relatively high in church membership.

Alabama has the sixth-lowest median income in the nation, while it ranks first in the Pew Research Center's ranking of states by the importance of religion, based on survey data.

These two factors tend to help Alabama in the rankings because when you calculate the percentage of income donated to charity in each state, Alabama's denominator (income) is relatively small, while the numerator (charitable donations) is relatively large, since church donations are included in donation total.

The usual No. 1 state in these types of studies, Utah, has a much higher income level for its denominator -- Utah's median income ranks 12th nationally -- but that is outweighed by its unusually high level of church donations in the numerator. In Utah, 55 percent of the state's residents identify as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (or Mormons), which expects tithing.

Our ruling

Strange said that Alabama is "the most generous state in the union in terms of what we give to charities."

Looking at the monetary side of charity, Alabama does rank high on state-by-state lists, though we couldn't find one where it placed No. 1 nationally. Utah ranks first in most studies. Meanwhile, if you look instead at volunteer work, Alabama ranks significantly lower than many states. On balance, we rate the statement Half True.

PolitiFact is collaborating with AL.com journalists to bring its Pulitzer Prize-winning, fact-checking services to Alabama, thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation.
By Joshua Gillin, Miriam Valverde for PolitiFact

During a debate for Alabama's open U.S. Senate seat, former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore blasted a controversial immigration policy recently ended by President Donald Trump as being illegal.

Republican Roy Moore squared off in Montgomery on Sept. 21, 2017, against U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, who replaced Jeff Sessions when Sessions became attorney general. The winner of the GOP runoff on Sept. 26 faces Democrat Doug Jones on Dec. 12.

Moore, who was removed from the court in 2003 after refusing a federal order to take down a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building, attacked Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The program protected from deportation immigrants who came to the United States as children and lived here illegally, known as Dreamers. Sessions, calling the situation a "failure to enforce immigration laws," announced a phaseout of DACA on Sept. 5. (Renewal applications can be submitted until Oct. 5.) The Trump administration said no current beneficiaries will be affected before March 5, 2018, giving Congress time to act.

"Obviously, Congress did not do their duty on DACA, which was a mere memo from the Department of Homeland security under Barack Obama, which violated the laws," Moore said. He said he didn't consider the policy valid, preferring action from lawmakers.

Congress hasn't passed any laws concerning Dreamers, but does that mean DACA violated current law? It's certainly been a contentious policy that has caused a lot of debate, but there is no court ruling directly tied to the program's constitutionality.

No DACA decision

DACA is a policy, not a law, and is based on a June 2012 memorandum issued by then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Her memo outlined prosecutorial discretion to focus resources on removing immigrants who met the department's priorities while protecting Dreamers from deportation. It does not grant legal immigration status to the approximately 800,000 people approved for DACA, but it does give a temporary reprieve from deportation.

Immigration laws were "not designed to be blindly enforced" without considering individual cases and circumstances, Napolitano wrote. "Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Indeed, many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways. Prosecutorial discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here."

DACA's critics say that protecting Dreamers through the executive branch, as Napolitano did, instead of through the legislative process is an overreach of executive power. But the judicial branch hasn't weighed in on the issue.

"There has been no court decision holding that DACA itself is unconstitutional," Anil Kalhan, an associate professor of law at Drexel University, previously told PolitiFact.

A lawsuit challenging the program was dismissed for lack of standing, and that decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Kalhan said.

"So there was never any adjudication on the merits," he said.

Following a lawsuit from Texas and 25 other states, a federal district judge did block an expanded version of DACA and another program that offered a reprieve from deportation, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). An appeals court upheld the ruling, and in 2016 the Supreme Court ruled 4-4 on the case, leaving the lower court's ruling in place.

The DACA expansion and DAPA were not halted based on their constitutionality, however, but rather that the federal government hadn't met some technical requirements.

Those programs were temporarily enjoined by the district court in Texas, Kalhan said, "based on a conclusion that Obama administration should have instituted the policy using notice and comment rule-making, rather than using the more informal guidance document that it issued."

A final, binding precedent even on that basis was not set either, since it was only a preliminary injunction and the Supreme Court deadlocked, Kalhan said.

"And even then, some aspects of DAPA and the DACA expansion may be different from DACA in relevant ways that bear on legality -- it has never been fully established the two programs stand on identical legal footing," Kalhan said.

Our ruling

Moore said DACA was "a mere memo from the Department of Homeland security under Barack Obama, which violated the laws."

The DACA program was part of a 2012 Homeland Security memo that said Dreamers would not be the focus of deportation efforts. It didn't grant Dreamers legal status and only gave them temporary protection from deportation.

While critics have called the guidance executive overreach and argued it is illegal, there has been no court ruling calling the policy unconstitutional. It remained in place until the Trump administration announced its end.

Moore may feel DACA violated law, and the program has faced legal challenges, but he can't make that claim as a definitive statement of fact. We rate his statement Half True.

PolitiFact is collaborating with AL.com journalists to bring its Pulitzer Prize-winning, fact-checking services to Alabama, thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation.
During last night's debate, U.S. Sen. Luther Strange touted his firing as state attorney general of a top Alabama plaintiffs' firm in the BP oil spill case, saying the decision "brought back money to the state" and saved Alabama millions in attorney fees.

Jere Beasley

But Jere Beasley, founding partner of Beasley Allen who is supporting Roy Moore in Tuesday's Republican runoff, accused Strange of axing his firm as lead attorney for political reasons, not financial ones. Beasley, a former Democratic lieutenant governor, also reiterated his challenge to Strange to take a lie detector test about his appointment to the Senate seat by then-Gov. Robert Bentley.

Strange cited the BP case - which led to a $2.5 billion settlement for Alabama - as one of his proudest accomplishments during his political career.

"I came into office, my predecessor [Troy King] had hired an outside law firm at a very large, handsome contingency fee," Strange said. "First day in office I said, 'Thank you very much, appreciate your help, but we're going to handle that case ourselves. We're going to represent the people of the state of Alabama, we're their lawyers, and we're as good as anybody else, and we're going to save that money, and that's what we did."

Beasley, who spoke to AL.com last month about his support for Moore, claimed Strange fired his firm from its role in the BP case because he was supporting King in the 2010 primary.

In a statement Friday, Beasley said Strange wasn't telling the whole story about his firm's involvement in the BP case, noting that they were later rehired in a different role.

"Luther Strange made an attack on my law firm last night during the debate. I have an obligation to respond by telling the truth about the State's BP litigation. Luther did fire our firm, but it was because we had supported then-Attorney General Troy King. It had nothing to do with saving the state money," Beasley said. "After Luther found out he was in over his head, he rehired my firm and appointed our lawyers as special assistant attorneys general. We then handled the state's case and negotiated the state's settlement with BP. Not only did Luther have no personal involvement, he did not even know the case had been settled. Our firm had more than 25,000 lawyer hours in the case."

Strange's campaign earlier told AL.com that Beasley's allegations were baseless.

While not naming Beasley directly during the debate, Strange said the firm's "main partner is my opponent's biggest supporter."

The incumbent senator said the firing of Beasley Allen saved the state $140 million in attorney fees.

"I'm proud of that record. That's a common-sense, conservative record that brought money back to the people using the rule of law," he said.

Beasley reiterated his claim that he had knowledge that Strange's appointment by Bentley was made under a cloud of suspicion.

"I also believe it is important to know the truth about Luther's appointment to the Senate by Governor Robert Bentley, who was under criminal investigation by the Attorney General's office. The deal was made 10 days prior to Bentley going through a sham interview process with persons who believed they were being considered for the appointment. I have challenged Luther to take a lie detector test about how he got an appointment that does not meet the smell test. I renew that challenge and will pay for all costs involved.

"The people of Alabama are entitled to hear the truth from a man who wants to represent them in the United States Senate."
President Donald Trump spoke to a packed Alabama arena Friday night in support of Sen. Luther Strange before Tuesday's Republican Senate Primary runoff against former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.

Trump's speech meandered from praise for Attorney General and former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, to calling out NFL players who don't stand during the national anthem, to claiming credit for Strange's 'Big Luther' nickname.

Here's what others are saying about Friday's event at at Huntsville's Von Braun Center.

The Washington Post

What they said: "President Trump spent the first 25 minutes of a Friday night campaign rally explaining and defending his decision to endorse the Republican establishment's pick for the Alabama Senate race.

Then, he basically took it all back."

The Hill

Trump vows to back winner of Alabama GOP Senate runoff

What they said: "President Trump pledged Friday to support the winner of Alabama's GOP Senate primary runoff while questioning the general election prospects of Sen. Luther Strange's (R-Ala.) opponent.

Trump insisted Friday night that Strange had a better chance of winning the primary and going onto win the general election."

Daily Beast

What they said: "The Alabama race underscores the very real divide among Trump's core supporters in a state where his popularity is much higher than the national average. The president cast the race as a referendum on himself, warning his supporters that if Strange loses, 'they're going to go after me.'

The Daily Beast spoke with more than two dozen rally-goers outside the Von Braun Center, and just a few of them said they've decided to vote for Strange in Tuesday's runoff. The rest were either noncommittal or firmly in the camp of Moore--and only came to the Strange rally to see the president."

CNN

What they said: "His decision to visit Alabama and campaign for Strange, Trump said, was all about loyalty.The President bluntly told the crowd that when he was handed a list of 10 senators he needed to lobby to support his health care effort, some insisted on dinners and meetings with their families before Trump could win them over."

Reuters

What they said: "The evening was reminiscent of the raucous campaign rallies that helped define Trump's insurgent presidential candidacy, and the president's popularity in this region appeared undiminished. As he has frequently done in such settings, he spent a significant portion of his remarks discussing his surprise victory last November.

He also again rejected any suggestion that his triumph was aided by Russian interference in the election."

The New York Times

What they said: "Even as he offered enthusiastic praise of Mr. Strange, Mr. Trump conceded he was conflicted about having waded into the primary contest, to be held on Tuesday, which pits the senator against former state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, an evangelical conservative who has the backing of many of the president's anti-establishment supporters."

Fox News

What they said: "During a campaign rally in Huntsville, the president said he appreciated how Strange agreed to vote for ObamaCare replacement legislation this summer without asking any favors from him.

The president also used the rally to draw attention to a variety of other political issues, including Arizona Sen. John McCain's opposition to Republican ObamaCare overhaul bills, the nuclear threat from North Korea and the investigation into Russia's meddling in the election."

Bloomberg

What they said: "Strange distanced himself from the Senate majority leader at the rally, saying that he wants to ensure Trump has the votes 'to stand up to Mitch McConnell, John McCain and even our Republican so-called conservatives who stand in the way of the president's agenda.'

A vote for him, Strange said, 'will send a message' to 'the establishment in Washington, D.C. that Alabama stands by this president.'"
President Donald Trump promised to campaign for Roy Moore should he be victorious over Luther Strange -- the candidate whom Trump endorsed -- in Tuesday's Republican primary.

Trump was in Huntsville on Friday to rally behind Strange -- and briefly went off message by bringing up Moore. But Trump later turned his promise into an opportunity to slam Moore.

"I told Luther, and I have to say this, if his opponent wins, I'm going to be here campaigning like hell for him," Trump said. "But I have to say this, and just understand this .. Luther will definitely win."

Trump said both Moore and Strange are "good men," but he turned his offer into campaigning for Moore into a slight against the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

"Roy has a very good chance of not winning in the general election," the president said. "Luther's going to win easily and Roy's going to have a hard time winning, but I will be backing him if he wins."
This election will affect my future  Germany is now my home. I speak German better than my mother tongue.

Berlin, Germany  As Germany prepares to go to the ballot box on September 24, the probable result is viewed with a sense of inevitability.

Among the clatter of political posters stacked up on lampposts around the capital Berlin, Angela Merkels serene expression beams from her campaign poster: the embodiment of the stability and continuity she promises.

From discussions on the street to the predictions of the polls, there is a general consensus she will be elected for a fourth term and continue the coalition of conservative parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). In the shadow of the election of Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Marine Le Pen across the border, for many her victory will be a sigh of relief.

It will, however, represent continuity only at a surface level. The narrative that this is an uneventful election belies the deeper rumblings in the German political landscape. Polls predict that on Sunday the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) will enter parliament for the first time. The party has used Merkels policy around refugees to bolster the anti-immigration vision at the heart of their campaign.

READ MORE: Who are Germanys far-right AfD?

Anxiety around the rise of the far right in the country is felt particularly acutely by many refugees. The topic of refugee policy and integration has been a centre of gravity for parties across the political spectrum. Yet with no right to vote, many of the thousands of refugees in the country feel without a voice  objects, and not participants in the political discourse.

Al Jazeera spoke to some refugees in the capital about what the election means to them.

Derar Rashed, 25 from Syria, student at Humboldt University

On the streets, you can barely feel there is an election approaching. With the American election, even my family back in Syria were talking about it. In Germany, it feels like a formality or a game. There is no real debate and no real competition  everyone expects Merkel to win.

Trumps election really shocked the German people; I think they want to avoid making the same mistake.

Politicians are disconnected from the people here. Refugees and integration have been the focus of the election but none of the candidates have a detailed plan because nobody knows what integration actually means.

You feel like they are just surfing the waves and not engaging with the real problems. The refugee crisis opened the door for German people questioning inequality in the country. Some groups in society here really need a helping hand and the government isnt supporting the poorer classes. When someone who is struggling sees a refugee wearing nice shoes, they become an easy scapegoat.

Merkel is not perfect, but she will enter the history books for her responses to refugees arriving in Europe. In Germany, the young are open minded and Merkel won so much support from them for how she handled the issue.

When other European leaders had their doors shut  or half closed  she kept them open. I was in Hungary at that time and I feel like it saved my life. When she wins it will confirm that she has paved a new way in Europe.

America is not an idol any more. When people ask where the liberty and freedom is you tell them, Go to Germany.





Eli Wael Khleifawi, 31 from Syria, project coordinator at Give Something Back to Berlin

The main parties are trying to be politically correct the whole time and are stuck in an unproductive standoff. The right wing is more in touch with how people on the ground actually feel.

They are scared and think there are foreigners flooding in and Islam is taking over.

Instead of shunning parties like the AfD, politicians should be engaging with their arguments and showing the public they are wrong. There is nothing to fear. Instead of seeing stories about refugees as if they are some species migrating from another planet, we should be hearing about them starting businesses, projects and assimilating.

You can feel the political divide between the old East and West getting stronger. In Eastern Germany, people feel economically left behind and that refugees have pushed them further into the margins.

Even in Berlin, as soon as you see AfD posters, you know you are in the east of the city.

I almost wish my German wasnt good enough to read what they said. Ive been here two years now and I can feel it getting tenser. Lots of refugees are worried about the right wing. In Berlin, it is getting verbal and outside the city, it is getting physical.

I think Merkel will win, but wont survive another election after this. I would love to see the SPD and Die Linke increase their votes. The AfD will also definitely enter the Bundestag for the first time: It reminds me of 1932. I wont be watching the election results  it will just make me angrier.

I can see where it is heading, but cant vote and no one will listen to my opinions. It makes you feel hopeless. It is like watching a car about to crash. Everyone is just taking pictures instead of doing anything about it.

Hava Morina, 17 from Kosovo, student

The question all politicians have this election is, What are we going to do with refugees? Die Linke (Left Party), Die Grunen (Green Party) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) are more supportive of refugees than Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

They have more conversation with us. For example, Die Linke supports giving flats to refugees that have been living in emergency shelters for up to two years in Berlin.

Some refugees like Merkel. When I was in Kosovo, I loved her, too. After living here and learning how things work, I feel differently.

My whole family has been deported. This makes me particularly interested in what is happening in German politics. I want the family reunification policy to change. I dont want my siblings to forget me: I want to grow up with them.

The German election affects refugees, but we have no vote. Other people vote on issues that affect us  it makes no sense.

I think the far-right [AfD] will be successful, I just have that feeling. Last week, I was at a carnival for refugee rights and we went past an AfD election poster saying Stop Islamization. Lots of people have been so nice to us, but I have also had people on the street call me a terrorist and saying, Go back to your country.

I cant live in a country that doesnt allow me to wear a headscarf. What difference does it makes to anyone whether I wear a bikini or a burkini?

This election will affect my future. If AfD win power, even in a coalition, then everything is over.

Germany is now my home. I speak German better than my mother tongue. Sometimes, I wonder why there isnt a country where I can live how I want.

Mariam from Iraq, refugee shelter resident

It is hard to follow all the political debates around the election because I am still improving my German and the internet is patchy in our refugee shelter so I cant always access Arabic media.

From what I have seen since coming to Germany, there are obvious divides in society about refugees. Some people welcome us with smiles and signs, and others are paranoid about us because of the negative stereotypes and propaganda people have seen in the media. Of course, this is changing the direction of German politics.

Merkel helped me and many other people in their darkest hours. I want to stay here and do hard, honest work just like I would have in my own country. She made the right decision to push refugees to learn German and integrate.

I feel safe while Merkel is the German chancellor and hope she wins. If the far right gets power, it wont be pleasant for refugees. I cant imagine what will happen. The terrorist attacks in Germany make people feel paranoid about us and the far right try to paint the picture that all refugees are bad.

The election will be a turning point. Hopefully, people will wake up and choose the democratic alternatives over more radical parties. It is an opportunity to forge the politics of the future.

Sara Afzali, 23 from Afghanistan, journalist

There is an excitement in the streets about the elections  it was always the same in Afghanistan. It is sometimes hard to understand the German media, so I have learned about the policies of different parties by speaking to people. I know CDU, SPD and Die Linke are more supportive of refugees  and AfD have become famous for being against them.

It is empowering to see a female prime minister like Merkel. In Afghanistan, I was a female journalist and it was often difficult. Here, women are more supported. I think Merkel is a kind-hearted woman and I heard that she has a good chance of winning.

One of the hot topics in this election is deportations  especially deportations of Afghan refugees. Young Afghan men are particularly at risk of being sent back, even if that means being killed.

I wish we had more space to contribute to political debates. If we did, I would say to whoever wins the election on Sunday to stop deportations. People have struggled to get to Germany.





Said Ali Hossin, 34, from Afghanistan, Humboldt University student

I joined the Die Linke earlier this summer to become an active member before the elections: getting out on the streets, distributing leaflets and attending meetings.

I was looking for a party that was socialist and humanist. I researched all the parties and I found Die Linke. They stand for gender equality and are the party in Germany really supporting refugees and speaking up against the increasingly restrictive policies such as Afghan deportations.

Its important to be politically engaged because everything, even the air we breathe, is affected by politics. However, refugees have no voice at all in the political sphere in Germany.

They cannot vote and yet every political decision affects them. I wish there was something like a refugee union where we could raise our opinions. The refugee crisis was seen from the German perspective, without including the voices from the refugee side.

So often, when refugees are in the media, it is when someone commits a crime. If we had a platform, we could also condemn this violence and say it doesnt represent us.

We could highlight the positive work we are doing and contribute to political debates around integration. There are around a million of us in the country, many very well educated, and yet we are silenced.
As battle for ISIL-held Raqqa enters its final stages, those on the ground lament civilian casualties.

Tim Ramadans* day begins with the sound of coalition air raids piercing through the morning air at the break of dawn.

First, it sounds like a strong, fast wind, then comes the sound of the crash  loud and pounding after impact. If the strike is less than 300 metres away, you can hear whistling in the ears for several minutes, he says.

The smell of death hangs in the air with the streets of Raqqa full of dead bodies rotting under mounds of rubble, in the late summer heat.

The Syrian citizen journalist from Sound and Picture, a group of Syrian human rights activists documenting cases of violations against civilians, charges his laptop from abandoned car batteries, and connects it to a hidden WiFi device in his rented apartment to upload pictures and videos of what appears to be the final phase of the battle.

A couple of weeks ago it was still possible to shoot and take pictures on the sly but now its very difficult.

When were on the streets we are constantly running to avoid Daesh (the Arabic-language acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, ISIL, also known as ISIS) snipers and coalition air strikes. We are afraid that Daesh might locate where the video was taken, and that might cost me my life, Ramadan told Al Jazeera.





Ramadan can only access the internet a couple of times in the day, but as one of the few journalists and media activists who have been able to get images from the battered city out into the world, he says he is willing to take any risk.

This is my city, not Daeshs city or the coalitions city. Ill stay here and defend it and tell the world about all the war crimes committed by everyone against my people,  Ramadan says.

I feel that its my duty. Its not about me alone any more, its about the families stuck here with no food or water [] being slaughtered by different means, by Daesh and the coalition. What I am doing is part of what I signed up for when the uprising started, he says.

More than a thousand people including 248 children and 177 women were killed in the Raqqa offensive between the June 5 and September 20, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a United States-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, now control the majority of Raqqa city with ISILs fast collapsing ranks confined to small pockets in the city centre and a few other neighbourhoods.

Raqqas tryst with the Syrian revolution

Raqqa, like many parts of Syria, witnessed spontaneous, non-violent, anti-government protests as part of the Arab uprisings in 2011, which called for the overthrow of Arab dictators.

In Syria, protesters called for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, who has ruled the country since 2000.

READ MORE: Syrias civil war explained from the beginning

In March 2013, it became the first provincial capital to be captured by armed opposition fighters from government troops symbolised by its jubilant residents bringing down the statue of former President Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current Syrian leader.

It was hailed as the first successful model of the revolution where opposition activists from across the country would seek refuge from the crackdown of the Assad government.

Local coordination committees were set up to ensure democratic governance of the city whose schools and markets were relentlessly bombed by the government.

Within a few months, ISIL took control of Raqqa after capturing it from the Free Syrian Army, an armed group formed out of military defectors, in spite of opposition and protests by local residents.

ISILs attacks on Syrian activists, Christians and minorities, its infamous kidnapping of Italian, Jesuit priest Paolo DallOglio and its public floggings and executions gained it international notoriety.

Ghost town

Ramadan remembers his first protest in April 2011, as a young university student in Deir Az Zor city, southeast of Raqqa. The fear of his beating heart gave way to tears of joy as he heard chants The people want the fall of the regime, his voice blending with those around him.

Government attacks destroyed his home and killed many of his relatives, forcing him to move to Raqqa where he resumed his studies at the Raqqa university.

In the following years, Ramadans close activist friends were killed by ISIL, he says, and in the final days of the battle for Raqqa, he lost the woman he met and fell in love with five years ago at the university.

She asked me to leave the city and come with her, but I refused because I needed to tell the world whats happening here. She said she doesnt want to be with someone who will die, Ramadan recalls.

He says Raqqa looks like a ghost town where people avoid going out of their homes in spite of the risk of being killed inside by aerial bombardment.





Bombs and mortars have destroyed hospitals and shelters with no functional civil defence units to take the injured out. Food and medicine have run out.

There is no food for the last two weeks. People are eating mouldy, rotten bread, olive oil, leaves and herbs, Ramadan says.

His memory of sitting on his roof under a cool night sky, watching the stars and drinking coffee, surrounded by the humdrum of the bustling, vibrant, ancient city by the Euphrates river where families would gather and sing on weekends, is a distant one.

Seeing dead bodies is normal now. It doesnt affect me any more. I dont cry any more over dead people. Its become a routine. This war has changed me a lot. Earlier, I used to have a sense of humour. I was a happy person, now I am always depressed.

If life ever returns to normal, I would first hang pictures of all my martyred friends in the city. But personally, I would like to see a psychiatrist to help me get over what I have seen  everyone here needs to do that, he says.

Battered city

The military offensive to recapture Raqqa has displaced an estimated 190,000 people and destroyed some 75 percent of the city.

Airwars, a group tracking civilian deaths in Russian and US-led coalition air raids in Syria and Iraq, has documented some 5,775 US-led coalition bombs, shells and missiles dropped in the month of August, resulting in at least 433 likely civilian deaths.

Its troubling that since June 6, the coalition has admitted to just four deaths from two incidents at Raqqa, while locals insist that more than 1,000 have died, Chris Woods, Director of Airwars, told Al Jazeera.

All indications are that civilians are dying in significant numbers at Raqqa. Rather than denying that, we would prefer that the coalition took the problem seriously.

The US-led coalition told Al Jazeera that it dropped about 16,500 munitions in Raqqa and the surrounding areas since June but denies reports by monitoring agencies and human rights groups of an astonishing number of civilian deaths in the Raqqa offensive in the past few months.

READ MORE: What will happen to Raqqa after ISIL?

The Coalition respects human life, which is why we are assisting our partner forces in their effort to liberate their lands from ISIS brutality. Our goal has always been for zero civilian casualties, but the Coalition will not abandon our commitment to our partners because of ISISs inhuman tactics of terrorizing civilians, using human shields, and fighting from protected sites such as schools, hospitals, religious sites and civilian neighborhoods, the press office of the Combined Joint Task Force, Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) told Al Jazeera in an emailed statement.

In Raqqa, only one underground hospital remains to treat the dozens injured in air raids and fighting, but there are reportedly no doctors left to treat them.

Wounds are being sanitised with salt and water in the absence of medical supplies reaching the city, according to testimonies collected by human rights group, Physicians for Human Rights.

We managed to speak to several doctors because they had fled recently. One of them said he was the last remaining doctor. Two of his colleagues were reportedly killed in coalition air strikes and the other died from an ISIL landmine, Racha Mouawieh, research associate at Physicians for Human Rights told Al Jazeera.

One of the main challenges that people are facing is that they cant reach hospitals because there are no rescue teams and there are no civil defence teams to take them to the hospital, she says.

Returning home

Returning to Raqqa as it reaches the final and perhaps the most dangerous phase of the conflict seems uncertain for the many who have managed to escape, often risking their lives or by paying huge sums as bribes.

Abdalaziz Alhamza, one of the founders of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a citizen journalist group, is living as a refugee in Berlin from where he tracks and reports on developments from Raqqa.

He thinks a military defeat of ISIL is not enough to bolster confidence among the civilian population to return to their destroyed city.

No one knows who is going to stay in the city. No one knows who will run and govern the city. People are afraid of being charged of supporting ISIS or being forced to join the SDF, he says.

The US is only focused on defeating ISIL as an armed organisation, they dont seem to care about whats happening to the civilians or the local population. And thats precisely the reason why we ended up having a group like ISIS, he says.

His concerns come from allegations of human rights abuses and violations such as forced conscription of child soldiers, lootings, and kidnappings by the SDF, in areas under its control.

We have certain reports of SDF forcibly detaining people, there are reports of forced recruitment of children and adults and mistreatment and abuse of detainees since the offensive began in June, Matthias Behnke, coordinator of UN Human Rights Syria Team, told Al Jazeera.

Regardless that ISIL might not respect the laws of war and use civilians as human shields, that does not give the opposing parties in the conflict the right to disregard their obligations to protect civilians, he continued.

Even ISIL fighters who may have surrendered and are outside combat must also be protected.

READ MORE: Syria: This case is about saving humanity

The coalition says that it does not condone or support any violation of the laws of armed conflict by its allied forces.

As a precondition for Coalition support, SDF and Iraqi forces have pledged to observe international laws and the laws of armed conflict. Any violation of the law of armed conflict would be unacceptable and should be investigated in a transparent manner and those deemed responsible held accountable in accordance, the CJTF-OIRs press office told Al Jazeera.

Alhamza says he fears for the minds of an entire generation of traumatised children and young adults who have lived through ISILs control without access to the outside world and information, witnessing public executions and torture and death of their loved ones in the conflict.

ISIS is not only an armed organisation, its an ideology. The international community is not thinking about the day after. We saw it with the Taliban, then al-Qaeda and now ISIS.

They (the international community) were focusing only on the armed group, not their ideology. No one thought something worse than al-Qaeda would emerge, but it did. So its likely that the group that emerges after ISIS in a few months, or years, or whenever might be even more dangerous, Alhamza cautions.

Ramadan has now left Raqqa city for northern Syria. He says he did it to carry a sick child to safety while being targeted by a hail of bullets.

I left everything behind me; my memories, corpses all around the city, hungry people, even my clothes, but I went out with a child whom I did not know just because he had a future that should not be denied, he said in what he called perhaps his last post on social media.

*Tim Ramadan is a pseudonym he uses for fear of reprisals.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. DARCY SMITH, PH.D., Appellant v. CYNTHIA BORSELLA LINDEMANN, ESQ., an attorney at law of the State of New Jersey; WEINSTEIN, SNYDER, LINDEMANN & SARNO; STEVEN URBINATO, ESQ., an attorney at law of the State of New Jersey; STARR, GERN, DAVISON & RUBIN, P.C.; MARC A. CALELLO, ESQ.; ALFONSE A. DEMEO No. 16-3357 Decided: September 21, 2017

Before: AMBRO, KRAUSE, and SCIRICA, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

Darcy Smith, Ph.D., hired and fired a string of four lawyers in connection with her divorce. She later sued in the District of New Jersey all four attorneys and their respective law firms for malpractice. Three settled, but one attorney, Marc A. Calello, asked the District Court to enforce an arbitration provision in his representation agreement with Smith. The District Court obliged, staying Smith's action and compelling arbitration.

Smith contends that the provision is unenforceable because New Jersey law does not permit the arbitration of malpractice claims against attorneys brought by their former clients, and, even if New Jersey law did permit arbitration of her claims, this provision fails because it does not specifically use the word malpractice. Accordingly, she asks us to reverse the District Court or, in the alternative, to certify to the Supreme Court of New Jersey the question whether arbitration provisions like the one in her agreement are enforceable. The decision whether to certify a question of law to the Supreme Court of New Jersey is left to our discretion. See Lehman Bros. v. Schein, 416 U.S. 386, 39091 (1974).

Smith's agreement with Calello contains the following provision, which unambiguously requires arbitration of any quarrels between them:

Arbitration of Differences Between the Client and the Law Firm.

Should any difference[ ], disagreement, or dispute between you and the Law Firm arise as to its representation of you, or on account of any other matter, you agree to submit such disagreements in binding arbitration.

It goes on to specify the applicable arbitration procedures and concludes by advising that

[s]igning of this Agreement will be deemed your consent to the methods of alternative dispute resolution set forth in this Section, and constitutes a waiver on your part and on the part of the Law Firm to have such disputes resolved by a court which might include having the matter determined by a jury.

The [Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) ] federalizes arbitration law and creates a body of federal substantive law establishing and regulating the duty to honor an agreement to arbitrate[.]  John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Olick, 151 F.3d 132, 136 (3d Cir. 1998) (quoting Moses H. Cone Mem. Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 25 n. 32 (1983)). Thus, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed,  [w]hen state law prohibits outright the arbitration of a particular type of claim, the analysis is straightforward: The conflicting rule is displaced by the FAA.  Marmet Health Care Ctr., Inc. v. Brown, 565 U.S. 530, 533 (2012) (quoting AT & T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333, 341 (2011)) (alteration in original).

Yet an arbitration provision may be set aside upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract. 9 U.S.C.  2. This saving clause permits agreements to arbitrate to be invalidated by generally applicable contract defenses, such as fraud, duress, or unconscionability, but not by defenses that apply only to arbitration or that derive their meaning from the fact that an agreement to arbitrate is at issue. Concepcion, 563 U.S. at 339 (quoting Doctor's Associates, Inc. v. Casarotto, 517 U.S. 681, 687 (1996)). To determine whether grounds for revoking the contract containing the arbitration provision exist, [a] federal court must generally look to the relevant state law on the formation of contracts[.] Blair v. Scott Specialty Gases, 283 F.3d 595, 603 (3d Cir. 2002).

Smith makes two arguments why the arbitration provision cannot be enforced. Neither is convincing.

First, she contends that New Jersey law prohibits the enforcement of arbitration provisions by attorneys facing malpractice claims brought by former clients. Even were there support for her view of New Jersey law (Smith concedes no case in New Jersey specifically bars the arbitration of attorney-malpractice claims), the FAA would preempt it. See Marmet Health Care Ctr., 565 U.S. at 533. Thus Smith's first argument fails.

Second, Smith argues that the arbitration provision cannot be enforced because its inclusion in the representation agreement violated the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct and thereby invalidated the entire agreement. See Jacob v. Norris, McLaughlin & Marcus, 607 A.2d 142, 146 (N.J. 1992) (Contracts that violate the [Rules of Professional Conduct] violate public policy, and courts must deem them unenforceable.). The Rules of Professional Conduct require an attorney to advise his client of the implications of any retainer agreement. See Cohen v. Radio-Elecs. Officers Union, Dist. 3, NMEBA, 679 A.2d 1188, 1196 (N.J. 1996); see also N.J. Rules Prof'l Conduct R. 1.4(c) (A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.). And while [i]t is permissible under the [American Bar Association's] Model Rules [of Professional Conduct] to include in a retainer agreement with a client a provision that requires the binding arbitration of  malpractice claims, the client must be fully apprised of the advantages and disadvantages of arbitration and give[ ] her informed consent to the arbitration provision. ABA Comm'n on Ethics & Prof'l Responsibility, Formal Op. 02-425 (2002). Because the arbitration provision at issue here did not specifically include the word malpractice, Smith contends she could not have given her informed consent to the agreement unless Calello orally warned her that she would have to arbitrate any malpractice claims against him. And there is no evidence that he gave such a warning.

The Supreme Court has held that the FAA requires courts to put arbitration agreements on equal footing with all other contracts and that they may not interpret state law differently in the context of arbitration. See DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia, 136 S. Ct. 463, 470 (2015) (quoting Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440, 443 (2006)). So, to the extent Smith seeks a more searching review of the advice attorneys provide new clients when an agreement to arbitrate is at issue, her argument is foreclosed by the FAA. See id. We need not decide that question, however, because she fails to explain why a written or oral warning that explicitly uses the word malpractice is necessary as a matter of New Jersey law.

The arbitration provision before us is straightforward: [A]ny difference[ ], disagreement, or dispute between [Smith and Calello] as to [his] representation of [her] shall be submitted to binding arbitration. J.A. 25. True, the New Jersey Supreme Court has held in a different context that [t]he absence of any language in [an] arbitration provision that [a] plaintiff [i]s waiving her statutory right to seek relief in a court of law renders the provision unenforceable. Atalese v. U.S. Legal Servs. Grp., L.P., 99 A.3d 306, 309 (N.J. 2014) (emphasis in original). But the provision here makes plain that arbitration means giving up the right to have a dispute resolved by a judge and jury. J.A. 25 (agreement to arbitration constitutes a waiver  to have such disputes resolved by a court which might include having the matter determined by a jury).

Despite her contention that she did not give informed consent to the arbitration provision, Smith does not argue that it is too narrow to cover malpractice claims. Although she contends Calello should have used the word malpractice orally or in the agreement itself, she never claims not to have known malpractice claims would fall within the provision's definition of any difference[ ], disagreement, or dispute between [her] and [Calello]  as to [his] representation of [her.] J.A. 46. Nor does she claim to have been surprised that her agreement to arbitrate meant giving up the right to go to court.

Indeed, Smith used the same clause to her advantage in a related matter. Following his termination, Calello filed a civil action against Smith to collect unpaid fees. When she didn't appear, Calello obtained a default judgment against her. Smith, appearing pro se, then asked the court to vacate the judgment on the ground that Calello was bound to arbitrate, rather than litigate, any claims against her, and the court granted her request.

Smith notes that [a]n arbitration provisionlike any comparable contractual provision that provides for the surrendering of a constitutional or statutory rightmust be sufficiently clear to a reasonable consumer. Atalese, 99 A.3d at 309. Although she claims her attorney failed to advise her of the arbitration provision's meaning, its language is unambiguous. And Smith never says what wasn't clear to her. Indeed, if the record suggests anything, it's that she was aware of the arbitration provision's meaning and consequences.

* * * * *

A New Jersey rule prohibiting the inclusion of an arbitration provision in an attorney-client representation agreement (whether inferred by this Court or the New Jersey Supreme Court) would be preempted by the FAA, and Smith fails to state what, if anything, made the arbitration provision so unclear as to preclude its enforcement. For these reasons, we affirm the District Court's order compelling arbitration and decline Smith's request to certify a question of law to the Supreme Court of New Jersey.

FOOTNOTES

. Smith places particular emphasis on a concurrence in Kamaratos v. Palias asserting that a retainer agreement that contains a commercial arbitration clause which waives the client's right to access the courts to resolve disputes arising out of the attorney/client relationship must be viewed as inherently unenforceable and against public policy. 821 A.2d 531, 540 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2003) (Fuentes, J. concurring). This position is clearly inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's later holding in Concepcion, 563 U.S. at 341, that state law may not prohibit the arbitration of any particular type of claim.

AMBRO, Circuit Judge
The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is expected to enter the countrys Bundestag for the first time after Sundays federal elections.

The AfD has ramped up attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel in recent weeks, accusing her of betraying the country for allowing the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants.

The latest polls predict that the AfD will secure some 12 percent of the vote, safely securing its entry into the Bundestag.

Yet, Germany has a long history of grappling with far-right movements since the end of World War II, and the AfD is not the only player on the far-right political terrain.

Al Jazeera has compiled photos from its coverage of Germanys far right in recent years.
Bernie Sanders has a healthcare plan. Its a form of single payer healthcare. Its a confusing term. It means a single collector of funds, the government, which then becomes the single payer for services and materials involved in healthcare. Bernie calls his version Medicare For All.

Thats a good choice for both practical and public relations reasons.





Medicare started in 1966. Its a mandatory insurance programme designed to primarily cover people over 65. American healthcare has been cobbled together out of a series of historical accidents, the influence of financial interests, and attempts to cover real need. One result was that most healthcare was an employment benefit. The standard retirement age is 65, so that became the entry point.

Its very popular.

Actually, its more than popular. Most Americans, 77 percent of us, think its important. Thats four percent more than people who think that the military is important (pdf). Even 71 percent of Republicans think Medicare is important.

Its well established. Fifty-five million people, 17 percent of the population, are already on Medicare (pdf).

Why do Americans like it so much? Its efficient. Its simple, clear, and easy to deal with, especially as compared with the rest of the healthcare system. Even more important, its trustworthy. Once youre in, youre in, and theyve provided what they promised to provide, steadily, year after year.

REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Trumps crusade against Obamacare  a complicated matter

Private insurers can drop you if you change jobs, miss premiums or they go out of business. They change their rates and the services they provide from year to year. Some are reasonable about paying, others routinely turn down claims for specious reasons.

Hillary Clinton doesnt like Bernies plan. According to her, his plans didnt add up  they would inevitably mean raising taxes on middle-class families, or that they were little more than a pipe dream. Shes said that he couldnt explain it and that he couldnt really tell people how much it was going to cost. How would it be paid for? Interestingly, this is the tenor of the response of the mainstream media. On the right, this sentiment is stronger, of course, claiming that it will cost twice what Senator Sanders says and it is, therefore, misleading.

Every doctor's office has a whole slew of secretaries sorting through claim forms to figure what's covered, what's not, with a multitude of insurers, each with a multitude of plans, all of which change every year, mostly for the benefit of the companies. by

But heres the thing. Neither Hillarys approach nor the proposals from the right, move towards fixing the problems. Hers make them slowly worse. Theirs make them instantly worse.

Whats the problem with US healthcare? Its insane.

It costs more than anywhere else. The current estimate is $10,345 a person. Spending, per person, in other OECD countries is between 75 percent of what Americans pay, to less than half. The US spends a bit more than 17 percent of its GDP on healthcare. The next highest is Sweden, where its 11.9 percent of GDP. In other developed countries, its between that and nine percent.

All that money might be okay, if people in the US lived lives that were twice as long or even a quarter longer than anyone else. But they dont. Life expectancy in the US is lower than South Korea, Malta, Slovenia, and Cyprus.

Its even weirder than that. The US spends $3.2 trillion a year on healthcare. How do you think that gets paid for? Tax-funded expenditures accounted for 64.3 percent of US health spending. In fact, government spending on health care costs in the US was the highest of any nation in 2013, including countries with universal health programs such as Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom  Indeed, government health spending in the United States exceeded total health spending (government plus private) in every other country except Switzerland.

Back when Hillary was first lady, she was handed the assignment of coming up with some sort of national health plan. She did. It was complex and incomprehensible. But the real problem was that the profit-makers were not on board. They launched an effective campaign to savage and undermine her proposal. They won. She lost.

When Barack Obama took office, he was determined to take another shot at getting something close to national healthcare. The obvious lesson from the last try was to have the camels inside the tent, urinating out, rather than outside, aiming in. So he came up with a plan, developed by a right-wing think-tank, tried out in Massachusetts by a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, that insured the insurers a place at the table in front of platters with portions even bigger than ones they were already dining from. It passed. After much travail. By the skin of its teeth. And super-sizing the portions for the camels.

OPINION: Beyond the spin, some facts about the Affordable Care Act

The main failure of Obamacare is that its not Medicare. Or Medicaid. Every doctors office has a whole slew of secretaries sorting through claim forms to figure whats covered, whats not, with a multitude of insurers, each with a multitude of plans, all of which change every year, mostly for the benefit of the companies. Consumers dont know whats covered and whats not. Nor can they, really. The multitude and details of possible diseases and physical disasters, and the remedies thereto, are practically infinite, couched in difficult language, and, even with the internet, not easy to access. Also, the system is not really about providing medical care. Its about insuring that insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and other major players remain profitable.

To answer Hillarys complaint, and the media critiques, nobody knows how much healthcare is going to cost. How will it be paid for? Theres $3.2 trillion a year already on the table. Its only a question of how it gets on the table  taxes, premiums, through the backdoor  and how it gets paid out. Does anyone know why healthcare costs so much in the US? Best guess is that the choices and the practices have profits as their goals, not outcomes. Will turning all the responsibility over to the government improve that? Since the most private run system in the world produced the worst cost to benefit ratios, and Medicare is the most successful healthcare programme the US has, the better bet is yes.

Larry Beinhart is a novelist, best known for Wag the Dog. Hes also been a journalist, political consultant, a commercial producer and director.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Poverty, hunger, suffering. These terms seem inadequate to describe what I witnessed in the Lake Chad Basin, the West African region that is host to the one of the worlds worst  and certainly its most neglected  humanitarian crisis since 1945.

The crisis in the West African region, which includes parts of Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon, has left approximately 10.7 million people in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.





The human face of this crisis is devastating. When I visited the region as part of a mission with the World Food Programme in May this year, I saw desperate hunger, displacement, and shocking levels of violence and insecurity facing civilians, especially women and girls. Civilians live with the daily threat of rape, kidnappings, killings and terrorist attacks. Over 2.4 million people have been displaced by the crisis, but there are simply arent the resources to meet the most basic needs of these people in the refugee or displaced peoples camps or urban centres where they end up. With little or nothing left to trade for vital resources like food, sexual exploitation (sex-for-food as it is known) has become the norm, even within the camps.

A report released this week by the UN Secretary-General affirms all I witnessed on the ground in the Lake Chad Basin. It underscores the overwhelming scale of the crisis, and the need for urgent and immediate humanitarian responses. But it doesnt quite go as far as thinking about a long-term solution. In my view, the short-term and long-term responses simply cannot be separated, without being detrimental to both.

In order to tackle this crisis with any kind of sustainability  even in the short-run  there needs to be a thorough understanding of what caused it to spiral in the first place. While the current crisis was triggered by violence linked to armed groups such as Boko Haram, discussions I had with people in the region, and expert consultations convened by my organisation on the issue, agree on some root causes.

OPINION: Lake Chad Basin  Worlds most neglected crisis rages on

Everyone I met agreed that the situation has deep roots in long-standing developmental challenges, namely widespread inequality and decades of political marginalisation of the communities in the region. The lack of investment from national governments in basic services like health and education in the region meant that these communities felt alienated and left behind. In a sense, this is no different from the frustrations felt by certain communities in the UK pre-Brexit, and in the US pre-Trump, pushing them towards extreme alternatives. In the Lake Chad Basin, over time, this has instilled a deep sense of exclusion and lack of trust between communities and the government. Against this backdrop, the region also faces significant environmental stress.

The only effective solutions will be ones that address the underlying causes of the crisis, that are durable and sensitive to the environmental changes brought about by a warming world. by

Frequent prolonged droughts in the region mean there is less water and arable land to go around. In a predominantly farming and pastoral society dependent on the mighty Lake Chad for survival, less water means not just fewer jobs but also extreme poverty. I heard many accounts of exacerbated tensions between pastoralists, farmers and fishers. The risk of hunger and unemployment makes young people more vulnerable to recruitment by non-state armed groups such as Boko Haram and illicit employment, and also feeds into armed conflict and contributes to widespread internal as well as cross-border displacement.

To be clear: climate change does not create terrorists, nor does it turn law-abiding citizens into criminals. But a warming world acts as a threat multiplier, worsening existing risks and making it harder to work on solutions.

Social stability demands food and water. As these resources become increasingly scarce, I could see communities become increasingly desperate. What are young people to do when there are no jobs available? Some choose to join a militant group like Boko Haram, which can offer consistent salary and calories when they recruit in farming and fishing villages. Farmers I spoke with explained how the wheat harvest is now a particularly dangerous time for them as Boko Haram insurgents come in to loot the harvest in order to feed their soldiers. Boko Haram also provide access to services such as education, which in the absence of functioning schools and trained teachers, brings eager parents and children into their influence. Not everyone joins armed groups, though the alternatives are still not positive. Others may take up petty crime. Or more violent crime. Women and girls are increasingly pushed into prostitution just to survive.

OPINION: Solutions for tumultuous times

These ongoing emergencies  the hunger, the violence, the breakdown of law and order  arent a tragic coincidence. Rather, there is a complex interplay between many factors that create the conditions for such social collapse and suffering. In considering these factors, climate change cannot be ignored, for it exacerbates the worst catalysts of the crisis and fuels the fragility that has inflamed the region.

As the UN strives to raise funds and coordinate government responses to the crisis, we must recognise that the problems will only be solved if we understand the effect climate change is having on these social stressors. The only effective solutions will be ones that address the underlying causes of the crisis, that are durable and sensitive to the environmental changes brought about by a warming world.

10.7 million people in the Lake Chad Basin urgently need urgent support today. But the emergency relief we provide will be nothing more than a temporary respite if we do not address the vicious accelerant of fragility that is climate change. Just as climate change is part of the problem, so too can it be part of the solution.

Alexander Carius is cofounder and managing director of adelphi.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Cautious praise by EU to UK leaders speech, while European leaders urge more clarity on citizens issue and budget.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed a transition period of around two years after her countrys exit from the European Union, or Brexit, in March 2019.

In a wide-ranging address on Friday in Italys Florence, the UK leader set out a plan to retain full access to the EUs single market until 2021 in a bid to reassure businesses and reset the stalled negotiations with the bloc.

People and businesses, both in the UK and in the EU, would benefit from a period to adjust to the new arrangements in a smooth and orderly way, she said.

OPINION: Brexit Britain  A United Kingdom of hate and denial

May added: During the implementation period, access to each others markets should continue on current terms and Britain should also continue to take part in existing security measures.





The prime minister also signalled a willingness to pay a bill for leaving the EU, saying Britain will honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership.

On June 23, 2016, Britain voted in favour of Brexit, with the Leave campaign receiving 52 percent in a referendum.

She reassured other EU members that they need not worry that they will need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan as a result of our decision to leave.

The current EU budget runs until 2020.

May also called for a new security treaty between Britain and the EU, saying close cooperation is key to fighting crime, as well as tackling security and military threats.

May pledged to protect EU citizens rights in Britain after Brexit, saying that decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) would be taken into account by UK courts.

But on trade, May warned that remaining a member of the European Economic Area would not suit Britain and neither would a Canadian-style trade deal. Instead, she called for a bold, new strategic agreement.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, welcomed the transition period, but said that 15 months after the EU referendum, the government is still no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.

Europe reacts

Mays comments won a cautious welcome from the EU on Friday.

In a lengthy statement, the blocs chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, praised the speech for showing constructive spirit and willingness to move forward but must be translated into a precise negotiating position to make real progress.

John Springford, director of research at the Centre for European Reform, said Mays speech was constructive in tone but vague in terms of real specifics.

We are now a year into a negotiation here, but there is still a lot of nitty-gritty that needs to be sorted out, he told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeeras Neave Barker, reporting from Florence, said that May went to Italy to build bridges between the UK and EU.

Despite Brexit, she believes the UK shares a common historical cultural identity with the rest of Europe, he said. But the view from Brussels is that May is demanding the best of both worlds.

The real pressure now is on the British government to really tighten up its plans going forward before the next round of negotiations on Monday.

READ MORE: Is Brexit really going to help British workers?





Arlene Foster, the head of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist party (DUP), which is propping up Mays government, called for any Brexit transition period to be kept to a minimum and accused the EU of trying to damage Britain.

The DUP campaigned to leave the EU during last years referendum, but 56 percent of Northern Ireland voters supported remain.

French President Emmanuel Macron said that rules on the settlement of EU citizens, the financial terms of Britains departure from the bloc and the question of Ireland must be clarified in Brexit talks before other issues can be tackled.

If these three points are not clarified, we will not be able to advance on the rest, Macron said in a joint briefing after a visit by Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila to the French capital of Paris.








New sanctions by Beijing, a close ally of Pyongyang, also include an import ban on textile products from North Korea.

China is limiting its oil exports to North Korea to comply with new sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council last week, which include fuel import restrictions.

Chinas Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website on Saturday that China would limit exports of refined petroleum products from October 1, and ban condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately.





China will also ban textile imports from the North Korea, the ministry said.

Textiles are one of North Koreas last major sources of foreign revenue following repeated rounds of UN sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.

China accounts for about 90 percent of North Koreas trade, making its cooperation critical to any efforts to derail Pyongyangs development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

Too soon to tell

Al Jazeeras Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said that it is too early to say how effective these new limits will be.

He added: Of course, its going to take months for the impact of these sanctions to be felt, but certainly banning imports of North Korea textiles will hurt the regime because textiles provide what the regime really needs most right now, which is hard currency.

Chinese leaders were long North Koreas diplomatic protectors but express increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong-un.

OPINION: War on the Korean Peninsula is not inevitable

They supported the latest rounds of UN Security Council sanctions but are reluctant to push Pyongyang too hard for fear the government might collapse.

They also argue against doing anything that might hurt ordinary North Koreans.

Joseph Cheng of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Al Jazeera that China wants to demonstrate its support of the world communitys position dissuade North Korea from continuing to hold nuclear tests and long-range missile tests.

But Cheng also said that Beijing understands that economic sanctions alone will not be able to persuade Pyongyang to give up their programmes.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump praised China for increasing financial restrictions, and has been pushing Beijing to apply more pressure to North Korea over its nuclear programme.

His comments came a day after he signed an executive order allowing Washington to ramp up sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear missile programme.

Trump said the measure would allow sanctions against individuals and companies that finance and facilitate trade with Pyongyang.

Also on Friday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said his country could consider a hydrogen bomb test on an unprecedented scale on the Pacific Ocean  a threat, Japan labelled as totally unacceptable.
Rain and flash floods have destroyed thousands of homes in Sudan in the past few weeks. While some areas are still struggling to cope with the water levels, people in other regions are trying to rebuild their lives.

Rain and flash floods have destroyed thousands of homes in Sudan in the past few weeks.

While some areas are still struggling to cope with the water levels, people in other regions are trying to rebuild their lives.

Al Jazeeras Hiba Morgan reports from the town of Sinja.
Removal occurs after Moscow residents notice that metal bas-relief behind new monument includes image of German weapon.

Workers have cut out part of a new statue to honour Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the Soviet Unions AK-47 assault rifle, after locals discovered that it mistakenly depicted a German firearm of World War II.

The removal happened just three days after the monument was unveiled with much fanfare in the capital, Moscow.

A metal bas-relief behind a statue of Kalashnikov depicts the AK-47 and other weapons all supposedly designed by the engineer, who died in 2013.

REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: In praise of the AK-47  Russia unveils statue of Mikhail Kalashnikov

But on Friday, embarrassed sculptor Salavat Shcherbakov had to admit that among them was the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44) assault rifle used by Nazi troops at the end of World War II.

We will rectify this, Shcherbakov said in comments broadcast by state-run Rossiya 24 channel. It looks like this (mistake) sneaked in from the internet.

By Friday evening, a square hole gaped where the German rifle had been depicted in the bas-relief.

Kalashnikovs weapon does have a striking resemblance to German arms designer Hugo Schmeissers StG 44 rifle, created in 1942, although they have major design differences.

Kalashnikov was known to have said he had heard speculation that he had copied the German rifle.

Vladislav Kononov, executive director of the Russian Military and Historical Society, was cited by Russian media as saying that the fact that angry Russians had spotted the error in the relief disproved that. Many had earlier vented their disapproval on social media.

Every cloud has its silver lining  thanks to this mistake  a myth has been destroyed that Kalashnikov borrowed some elements of his invention from his foreign colleagues, he said.

Kalashnikov designed Avtomat Kalashnikova, which became the standard issue rifle of the Soviet army, in 1947  hence the abbreviation AK-47.

Today, it is the most commonly used assault rifle in the world, widely perceived as a highly reliable and sturdy weapon.

Every fifth firearm in the world is a Kalashnikov, with more than 70 million of the assault rifles produced over the past 60 years, the Kalashnikov Concern manufacturer said on its website.

Kalashnikovs are in service in 50 foreign armies, it added.
US government for the first time tells individual states that their systems have been targeted.

US officials have told election authorities in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last years presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia, prompting criticism by some politicians for the delayed disclosure.





The states that told The Associated Press news agency that they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The other states that confirmed they were contacted were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Being targeted does not mean that sensitive voter data was manipulated or results were changed.

Even so, the widespread nature of the attempts and the year-long lag before the notification from Homeland Security raised concerns among some election officials and politicians.

Completely unacceptable

For many states, Fridays phone calls were the first official confirmation of whether their states were on the list  even though state election officials across the country have been calling for months for the federal government to share information about any hacks, as have members of Congress.

It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.

READ MORE: NSA leak  Russian hackers attacked US voting system

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on a committee that is investigating Russian meddling in last years election, has been pushing the department for months to reveal the identities of the targeted states.

He said states need such information in real time so they can strengthen their cyber defences.

We have to do better in the future, he said.

Homeland Security said it recognises that state and local officials should be kept informed about cybersecurity risks to election infrastructure.

We are working with them to refine our processes for sharing this information while protecting the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners, it said in a statement.

Links to Russia

The government did not say who was behind the hacking attempts or provide details about what had been sought, though local media reported that some states were told by officials that they believe agents of the Russian government were behind the attempted hacks.

Election officials in several states told The Associated Press that the attempts were linked to Russia.

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems.

The targets included voter registration systems but not vote tallying software. Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks but most were unsuccessful.

Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems.

READ MORE: Donald Trump  I know a lot about hacking

Other states said their cybersecurity efforts turned back efforts to get to crucial information.

Earlier this year, a leaked National Security Agency report detailed that hackers obtained information from a company that provided software to manage voter registrations in eight states.

The May report said hackers sent phishing emails to 122 local election officials just before the November 2016 election in an attempt to break into their systems.

The latest disclosure to the states comes as a special council investigates whether there was any coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Russia and associates of Donald Trump.

Trump, a Republican who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, has called the Russia story a hoax.

He has said Russian President Vladimir Putin vehemently denied the conclusions of numerous American intelligence agencies.
Defying US warnings, state media shows test of Khoramshahr missile hours after it was unveiled during a military parade.

Iran has successfully tested a new ballistic missile that can carry multiple warheads and can travel up to 2,000km, according to state media.

The news of the test comes just hours after Irans Revolutionary Guard unveiled the missile during a military parade in Tehran.

The move was a direct challenge to US President Donald Trump, who in August signed a bill imposing mandatory penalties on those involved in Irans ballistic missile programme and anyone who does business with those involved in the programme.

READ MORE  Irans Khamenei  Tehran will not bow to US bullying

Though Iran has long boasted of having missiles in the same range in its arsenal, it was the first time that the Khorramshahr missile was displayed in public.

Trump has vowed repeatedly to take a tougher line towards Iran, threatening at various time to renegotiate or dismantle the 2015 nuclear deal, and shoot Iranian boats out of the water if they provoke US naval vessels.

Boost military capabilities

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressed Fridays parade in Tehran, saying that Iran would not halt its missile programme and would continue to boost military capabilities, despite US warnings and demands.





We will strengthen our defence and military capabilities  whether you want it or not, Rouhani said, a direct response to Trumps speech at the UN General Assembly this week.

Rouhani has said that the Trump administration is seeking an excuse to pull out of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement that capped Irans nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions on Iran.

The deal between Iran and world powers does not strictly prohibit Iran from developing missiles, but after the agreement came into effect last year, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling on Iran not to take any actions related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons for eight years.

Tehran has argued that the tests are solely for defensive purposes and notes the Security Council measure only applies to missiles specifically designed to carry nuclear warheads.

READ MORE: UN nuclear watchdog defends Iran agreement

In February, Iran test-fired the same medium-range type of missile, prompting Trump to say that the United States is putting Iran on notice.

The report of the test, shown late on Friday on state television, did not mention the time or location of the test.
Authorities issue flash flood emergency as buses are sent to evacuate tens of thousands of residents from their houses.

Puerto Rican officials rushed to evacuate some 70,000 people downstream of a failing dam in the wake of Hurricane Maria, while at least six people were confirmed dead on the US Caribbean territory following the storm.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flash flood emergency at the Guajataca Dam in Isabela Municipality, saying on Twitter that it was an extremely dangerous situation and that buses were evacuating residents from their homes as quickly as they can.

Dam operators had reported that the dam was failing causing flash flooding downstream, the service said.

All Areas surrounding the Guajataca River should evacuate NOW. Their lives are in DANGER!, the service said later.

An engineer inspecting the dam reported a contained breach that officials quickly realised was a crack that could be the first sign of the total failure of the dam, said Anthony Reynes, a meteorologist with NWS.

Flash Flood Warning for eastern Isabela & western Quebradillas until 2AM. Residents along Guajataca River seek higher ground now! #prwx pic.twitter.com/h6DcKN3KG3  NWS San Juan (@NWSSanJuan) September 23, 2017

The evacuation came as at least six people were confirmed dead in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria pummelled the region.





Puerto Rican public safety officials confirmed six deaths, while the governor separately put the figure at 13.

Puerto Rico is grappling with the largest municipal debt crisis in US history, with both its government and the public utility having filed for bankruptcy protection amid disputes with creditors.

Al Jazeeras Andy Gallacher, reporting from San Juan, said the news about the damaged dam really goes to the failure of Puerto Ricos infrastructure.

He added: This island is $73bn in debt, and that means theres been no investment in things like reservoirs, lakes and dams, and of course, power, which is here the biggest problem.

Destructive storm

Hurricane Maria had left more than 30 dead as it churned across the Caribbean, according to media reports. The death toll was expected to rise as recovery efforts continued, with many areas still cut off from contact with authorities.

The Category 3 storm was about 185km east-north-east of the southeastern Bahamas on Friday evening, with winds of 205 kilometres per hour. Tropical storm warnings were in place for the Bahamas, the US National Hurricane Center said in its 5pm EDT (21:00 GMT) advisory.

Rainfall of up to 50 centimetres was expected on the Turks and Caicos islands. The storm was expected to have brought up to 100cm of rain to some areas of Puerto Rico, forecasters said.

READ MORE: Hurricane Maria kills dozens as it lashes Caribbean islands

Puerto Rico, where some of the population of 3.4 million had been without power since Hurricane Irma in early September, was completely blacked out after Maria. Authorities were warning of power outages lasting for months.

US President Donald Trump pledged support to both Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands as they recover from hurricanes Maria and Irma, the White House said.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. JULIO A. DIAZ-ALVAYERO, Defendant - Appellant. No. 16-4800 Decided: September 21, 2017

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, NIEMEYER, Circuit Judge, and HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge. James Wyda, Federal Public Defender, Shari Silver Derrow, Staff Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein, United States Attorney, Brian M. Fish, Special Assistant United States Attorney, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee.

Julio A. Diaz-Alvayero, a native and citizen of Guatemala, appeals the 12-month sentence imposed following his guilty plea to unlawfully reentering the United States following his removal, in violation of 8 U.S.C.  1326(a) (2012). Diaz-Alvayero argues on appeal that the district court both committed procedural sentencing error and imposed a substantively unreasonable sentence, but does not contest the validity of his underlying conviction.

Review of the Bureau of Prison's Inmate Locator Database reveals that Diaz-Alvayero was released from federal custody on or about April 25, 2017, after briefing was completed in this appeal. Thus, Diaz-Alvayero's challenge to his sentence is moot, upon his completion of the custodial term of imprisonment, unless he can demonstrate collateral consequences sufficient to meet Article III's case-or-controversy requirement. United States v. Hardy, 545 F.3d 280, 284 (4th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 7-8 (1998); see also Hardy, 545 F.3d at 283-85.

No such collateral consequences are apparent. Diaz-Alvayero has completed service of the custodial term of imprisonment he seeks to challenge in this appeal, and he is not under an order of supervised release. Nor does Diaz-Alvayero assert on appeal any arguments that, if successful, would invalidate his underlying conviction. Cf. United States v. Madrigal-Valadez, 561 F.3d 370, 373-74 (4th Cir. 2009) (holding that appeal challenging sufficiency of the evidence underlying alien's convictions was not mooted by alien's release from prison, without a term of supervision, because alien may be subject to collateral consequences related to his ability to receive permission to reenter the United States if his conviction remained intact). Accordingly, we dismiss Diaz-Alvayero's appeal as moot. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the material before this court and argument will not aid the decisional process.

DISMISSED

PER CURIAM:
Syrian National Coalition, relatives demand swift investigation into stabbing of Orouba and Halla Barakat in Turkey.

A Syrian opposition activist and her daughter were found killed in their flat in Istanbul, relatives said.

Orouba Barakat, 60, and daughter Halla, 23, had been stabbed to death, according to a Turkish police official

Their bodies were wrapped in blankets and sprinkled with lime detergent to prevent odour, police said, as they investigated the scene at the flat in Uskudar, a district in the Asian part of the city, on Friday.

It has been said their corpses were in the home for four days, a neighbour told Turkish daily Hurriyet.

They were nice people and did not harm anyone.

Oroba Barakat was 1 of the reasons I studied journalism. She was the only woman journo I knew. Both stood up 4 the #Syria|n ppl. Both r gone pic.twitter.com/3kPmCNiqJn  Zaina Erhaim (@ZainaErhaim) September 22, 2017

The elder Barakat was a well-known and outspoken critic of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. She was a member of the opposition group the Syrian National Coalition and had written extensively on the use of torture in government prisons.

She was also active in Turkeys Syrian community, and helped out refugees financially, as one recalled to the New York Times.

Orouba lived in exile since the 1980s in the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE before moving to Turkey.

The coalition released a statement saying: The hand of terrorism and tyranny is the prime suspect in this heinous crime of assassination.

Ahnad Ramadan, the head of the National Action Movement for Syria, tweeted that the coalition is following up with Turkey to conduct an investigation.

         .     .      . # pic.twitter.com/ryzZNQSqih    Ahmed Ramadan (@AhmedRamadan_SY) September 21, 2017

Translation: A sinful crime that claimed the lives of my colleague Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla in Istanbul. May they have mercy. Deepest condolences to their family members.

Halla Barakat was an editor with the Dubai-based Orient News, owned by Syrian opposition figure Ghassan Aboud. Before that, she was a reporter with Turkeys TRT World Service.

The head of the Syrian Journalists Association Ali Eid called on the Turkish authorities to conduct a swift investigation in order to find and punish the culprit. He also called for added protection for journalists living in Turkey.

READ MORE: The case for  Can journalists be activists?

The Committee to Protect Journalists echoed Eid and in a statement said that Turkey must ensure the protection of Syrian journalists who have fled to the country seeking safety.

We call on Turkish authorities to find those responsible for the murders of Halla Barakat and Orouba Barakat, and bring them to justice, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Programme Coordinator Nina Ognianova said.

Family members said that the two Barakats had received threats in the days before they were murdered.

Oroubas sister Shaza wrote a Facebook post confirming the deaths.

The hand of tyranny and injustice assassinated my sister Dr Orouba Barakat and her daughter Halla in their Istanbul flat, she wrote.

We mourn our sister, the ardent fighter that the Baathist regime has pursued since the 1980s until she was finally assassinated in a foreign land.

READ MORE: Syria journalists on the margins of history

Orouba was the aunt of Deah Barakat, who along with his wife and her younger sister, were killed in North Carolina in 2015 by their neighbour, in what came to be known as the Chapel Hill Shooting.

Deahs sister Suzanne expressed her shock and disbelief on social media.

Khale (Aunt) and Halla were vocal activists in the Syrian revolution, speaking truth to power, and raising awareness about the atrocities committed by the Assad regime, she wrote on her Facebook.

Ill always remember Halla, whose name means beauty, as the little girl with golden curls and bright green eyes. She grew to become a dynamic, educated, kind, fun-loving, social justice-oriented individual, just like her mom.

Syrian opposition activists and journalists have occasionally been targeted in Turkey in recent years.

In 2015, Naji Jerf, a prominent journalist and vocal critic of Assad and the Islamic State State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, was shot dead in Gaziantep.

In the same year, two Syrian journalists from the city of Raqqa who were opposed to ISIL were found beheaded in southern Turkey.
US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces claim to have taken a major gas field, which is located in Deir Az Zor.

US-backed Syrian fighters captured a major gas field from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region, a senior official with the group said.

Nasser Haj Mansour of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said the Conoco gas field and plant came under full control of the group on Saturday morning after days of fighting with the armed group.

He added that SDF, a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, also captured the nearby al-Izba gas field.

The facility had the largest capacity of any in Syria before the conflict erupted in 2011: 13 million cubic metres of natural gas a day, according to The Syria Report, an economic digest.

Another SDF spokesman, Brigadier General Talal Sillo, said the fighting in the area left 65 ISIL fighters dead while more than 100 surrendered.

Sillo added that ISIL, which is also known as ISIS, had been controlling Conoco since 2014.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war in Syria, said SDF fighters have not yet taken the field in the province of Deir Az Zor, saying fighting is ongoing around it.

The monitoring group said ISIL fighters are launching a counter-offensive to slow down the push by the SDF.

READ MORE: Time of Syria diplomatic talks

SDF fighters have been marching on the east bank of the Euphrates River in Deir az Zor while Syrian troops are gaining in areas on the west bank of the river under the cover of Russian air raids.

Earlier this week, Syrian troops crossed into parts of the east bank, but have concentrated their operations mostly on the west.

Deir Az Zor is a province rich in oil and gas and both sides have been racing to reach the fields.

The next main target will be al-Omar oil field  Syrias largest  that is on the east bank of the Euphrates. Syrian government forces are also speeding to capture it.

Oil revenues are badly needed for future reconstruction of Syria that has been plagued by war since 2011.

On Thursday, Russia warned against targeting its special forces in Deir Az Zor, raising concerns over direct clashes between rival forces backed by Moscow and Washington fighting for the energy-wealthy region.

The warning was followed by an acknowledgement from the Pentagon of an unprecedented face-to-face meeting between Russian and American military leaders, which took place inside or near Syria, to address the rising tensions.

Russia has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and joined the war two years ago, tipping the balance of power in his favour.
Remarks by Pyongyangs foreign minister come hours after US flies bomber jets near North Koreas coast in show of force.

North Korea has warned that US President Donald Trumps bellicose remarks against the Asian country and its leader will make the US mainland an inevitable target for rocket attacks.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-hos remarks on Saturday in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly came hours after the US flew bomber jets near North Korea.

Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force, Ri told the annual gathering of world leaders in New York.

READ MORE: Trump signs new order to expand North Korea sanctions

Trump responded on Twitter by once again insulting North Koreas leader Kim Jong-un, calling him little rocket man and saying him and Ri wont be around much longer.

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017

Tensions between the US and North Korea have risen in recent weeks.

Earlier this week, Trump called the North Korean leader rocket man and a madman.

Kim hit back, dubbing him a mentally deranged US dotard who would face the highest level of hardline countermeasure in history in retaliation for the US president saying Washington would totally destroy the Asian country if it threatened the US or its allies.

It is a war of words with a very dangerous edge, Al Jazeeras Mike Hanna, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said.





We are talking about two potentially nuclear powers coming into a confrontation being edged on by a level rhetoric seldom seen and certainly not heard within the confines of the UN General Assembly, he added.

Suicide mission

Trump announced new US sanctions on Thursday that he said would allow targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.

In response, Ri said on Saturday that it is only a forlorn hope to consider any chance that the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) would be shaken an inch or change its stance due to the harsher sanctions by the hostile forces.

INFOGRAPHIC: North Korea  All you need to know explained in graphics

Earlier this month the UN Security Council unanimously adopted its ninth round of sanctions on Pyongyang to counter its nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes.

Ri, who said Pyongyangs ultimate goal was to establish a balance of power with the US, retorted that Trump himself was on a suicide mission after the US president said Kim was on such a mission.

The US bombers flight was the farthest north of the demilitarised zone separating North and South Korea that any US fighter jet or bomber has flown in the 21st century, the Pentagon said.





Ri warned Pyongyang was ready to defend itself if Washington showed any sign of conducting a decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country.

Richard Ponzio, director of the Just Security 2020 programme at The Stimson Center, said, This past weeks troubling war of words certainly has the potential to get out of hand and result in a regrettable situation for all parties.

Speaking from Washington, DC, Ponzio told Al Jazeera that actions such as the US bombers flyover and the talk of more rockets launches by the North Koreans is certainly not helping the situation.

Pressures need to be brought down and dialogue needs to commence  and this is the proper role for the UN, not what we heard this past week by many leaders on many sides, he said.
We look at the challenges facing the Eurozones biggest economic player as a new government takes shape.

Ahead of the September 24 national elections, surveys show that Germans are satisfied with the state of their economy. However, analysts warn cracks are appearing and if Angela Merkel is elected to a fourth term as German chancellor she will have to deal with them.

Theres no disputing Germanys economic success story: The countrys central bank projects that this years growth might be even stronger than the 1.9 percent posted last year. Unemployment is at a post-unification low of 5.7 percent and the governments budget is in surplus.

However, Germany has the worlds second-oldest population after Japan and the income gap between the richest and poorest Germans is growing, spurring calls for greater investment in education and infrastructure.

One of the things that Germany has done very well in the course of the last decade and slightly longer, actually, has been to engage in a process of domestic restructuring, but that has come at the cost of widening income imbalances. Those at the bottom end of the scale are struggling to make ends meet, but the average standard of living in Germany is significantly better than it is in a number of other European countries, so we shouldnt be too critical, explains Peter Dixon, chief economist at Commerzbank.

One by Peter

average standard of living in Germany.]

Then theres the issue of Germanys place in the digital economy. Critics say its lack of broadband infrastructure puts it in the slow lane.

Dixon thinks Germany will make progress over time in the digital arena. The digital economy, automation, the substitution of labour for robots in some industries is certainly very high on the agenda. Its something which many German companies are at the forefront of, anyway. So, I think we will over time see Germany begin to make progress in this area.

The car manufacturing industry is still embroiled in the fallout from a massive international scandal, and the automotive industry itself is changing.

But Dixon explains that while the automotive industry has taken a hit from the Volkswagen scandal, what German automakers have is scale, unlike Tesla. So Germany is lagging behind at the moment, but its not always the first mover in this game which wins the race, so I wouldnt write them off just yet.

Also on this episode of Counting the Cost:

Climate change insurance: The global insurance industry is still trying to assess the likely costs of this years extreme hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean. The fear among some risk assessors is that climate change means some assets may become uninsurable in the future. The risk is that extreme weather means claims will rise faster than expected and that premiums will not be adequate to cover the shortfall.

Peter Zimmerli, head of atmospheric perils at Swiss Re, talks to Counting the Cost about the so-called protection gap.

Internet privacy: The growth of the digital economy has exposed consumers to an unprecedented level of risk regarding personal privacy, an issue thats pitting the US against the European Union. Kristina Irion, a senior researcher at the Institute for Information law at the University of Amsterdam, discusses data protection.

Ryanair: Europes biggest discount airline, Ryanair, flies into trouble with pilots and passengers as it cancels thousands of flights. The airline was forced to cancel 48 flights a day for the next six weeks after admitting it messed up the planning of pilots annual leave. Ryanair also offered bonus payments to captains and first officers to forego leave. But now some pilots want to re-negotiate their contracts with the Irish airline and are discussing the possibility of mass sick days.

The airline says more than half the passengers affected by the mass cancellations have been rebooked on alternative Ryanair flights. Others were issued refunds. The airline is likely to face a bill of at least $25m.

Aerotoxic syndrome: A new study published by the World Health Organization says people who fly regularly may be at risk from breathing contaminated air. UK-based airline EasyJet is trying out a new air filtering system, but denies thats because crew and passengers are at risk. Caroline Malone explains.

China bullet train: China has unveiled the worlds fastest bullet train this week, the Fuxing. It will travel up to 350 kilometres an hour, and shave 30 minutes off the journey time from Beijing to Shanghai. But there are concerns about the cost of Chinas high-speed rail ambitions, as Adrian Brown reports.
Iran says it has successfully tested a new long-range ballistic missile with a range of 2,000km.

Just days after US President Donald Trump called Iran a rogue nation, Tehran said on Saturday that it has successfully tested a new ballistic missile.

According to Iran, the Khorramshahr missile is capable of carrying multiple warheads.

When world powers came together in 2015 to sign a nuclear agreement framework with Iran, it was hailed as a historic achievement.

READ MORE: Irans Hassan Rouhani hits back at Trump in UNGA speech

It was the first time Iran had agreed to curb its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions.

But two years later, and with a distinctly different president in the White House, that agreement faces an uncertain future.

Trump has threatened to withdraw from that agreement.

So, where does this leave the historic nuclear pact?

Presenter: Peter Dobbie

Guests:

Carl Bildt  Former prime minister of Sweden and co-chairman of the European Council on Foreign Relations

Ghanbar Naderi  Journalist with the daily English-language newspaper Kayhan International based in Tehran

Mark Fitzpatrick  Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies
Clintons memoir blames the media, among others, for her election loss. Plus, covering North Koreas nuclear threat.

On The Listening Post this week: Hillary Clintons election post-mortem blames the media, among others, for her loss. Plus, the contrasting depictions of North Korea in US and South Korean media.

What happened: Clintons memoir takes aim at the media

Hillary Clintons new memoir, What Happened, blames, in part, the US news media for her defeat in the 2016 US presidential election. Her primary grievance with the coverage is the fixation on one story that, during her time as the secretary of state, she used her familys private email server for official communications.

She says that story overshadowed any substantive reporting of her policies, and that that helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

But does her take on what happened tell the full story?

Contributors:

James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic

Sarah Jones, journalist, The New Republic

Lee Fang, journalist, The Intercept

Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review

On our radar:

The FBI investigates the Russian state-owned news service Sputnik, as part of an investigation into the Kremlins alleged meddling in last years US presidential election.

Cambodia clamps down on the media before the 2018 elections, and US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia is its latest victim.

The trial begins in Turkey of 31 journalists from the now-defunct Zaman newspaper who are accused of involvement in last years attempted coup.

Covering the North Korean threat: US vs South Korean media

Covering the escalating war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a delicate balancing act. Its all about reporting on the possibility of nuclear war without creating panic.

We look at how American and South Korean media deal with the facts of the story and the history behind it, as well as North Koreas propaganda and Trumps bravado.

Contributors:

Robert E Kelly, Pusan National University

Haeryun Kang, managing editor, Korea Expose

Sokeel Park, director of Research & Strategy, Liberty in North Korea

Andray Abrahamian, contributing writer, 38 North
The king of Lesotho says he is willing to play a larger political role, if asked to do so.

The Kingdom of Lesotho is often described as one of the poorest countries in the world.

In addition to continued political instability, the nation is facing many serious social problems.

Poverty and unemployment rates are high, violent crimes are common, and there are many reports of rape and abuse against women. With 25 percent of the people identified as HIV-positive, Aids/HIV rates are among of the highest in the world.

But there are also sources of stability and wealth: Most people in Lesotho own their own land and their own homes. They speak the same language and share the same religion.

It is a democratic country where people have a chance to express their views, and they have a king who is willing and anxious to help  if only they let him.

Unlike the other African monarchies in Morocco and Swaziland where the king plays an important role in politics, Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy with a king whose powers are largely ceremonial.

I have no constitutional powers to intervene in public affairs or settle disputes that may arise between different political factions or between sections of the population and their political leaders. So it does cause, sometimes, a bit of a problem or a frustration on my part, King Letsie III of Lesotho tells Al Jazeera.

But that may be about to change. In a conversation with Al Jazeera, the king suggests he is ready to play a larger role in politics  but under certain conditions.

Im committed to the principles of a constitutional monarchy. However, if there is a view among the population that I could have a role in one way or another  there is a process of reform that is about to begin, reforming the Constitution  if the people say this is what we want, then I am ready for it, the king tells Al Jazeera.

But we must be careful that  we dont surrender the principles of the constitutional monarchy, and we do not, at the same time, try to usurp the powers of the elected government. So it will have to be a very balanced exercise. but in the end, it depends on the views of the people and the leadership.

So what is next for the landlocked Kingdom of Lesotho and its king?

King Letsie III talks to Al Jazeera about political instability and reforms, the HIV epidemic, the controversy surrounding Katze dam, and his special relationship with Robert Mugabe.
We ask Kenyas Raila Odinga about running for president again and debate whether the Syrian opposition lost the war.

In this weeks UpFront, we speak to Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga about the annulled election. Will he present himself for the rerun? And could the recent Supreme Court ruling finally lead him to victory?

And in the Arena, six years into the war in Syria, we debate whether it could be said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won the conflict and ask if foreign backing of the rebels made the situation better or worse.

Can Raila Odinga win Kenyas re-election?

Following protests and a legal challenge from defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Supreme Court annulled a presidential election for the first time in the countrys history.

The decision was hailed by some as a victory for Kenyas democracy but Odinga says he wont participate in the rerun of the election scheduled for October unless his conditions are met.

Responding to concerns that there would be increased violence and protests if he lost the fresh elections, Raila Odinga stated, If I lose elections fairly, I will accept and tell my supporters we lost fairly.

But if there is a rigging of elections, the people are entitled to protest. As you know, our constitution provides for peaceful demonstrations, picketing, strikes and so on, he added.

In this weeks Headliner, Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga discusses his presidential ambitions and the future of Kenyas democracy.

Has the Syrian opposition lost the war?

After repeated attempts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the last six years and the latest setbacks, the opposition may not only be losing the war but also losing support on the international stage.

The US appears to no longer be focused on removing Assad from power, and the UNs special envoy to Syria said that if the opposition was planning to win the war, facts are proving that is not the case.

So, after many initial successes, how did it all go wrong? And was it a mistake for outside powers to back the various groups in the Syrian opposition to Assad?

In this weeks Arena, veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent, Patrick Cockburn, and Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, a policy adviser to the Syrian American Council, debate whether the Syrian opposition has lost the fight against Assad or whether they are still a force in play. Patrick Cockburns latest book is The Age of Jihad.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.


Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga on contesting presidential election results again and why this year is different.

Following protests and a legal challenge from defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Supreme Court annulled a presidential election for the first time in the countrys history.

The decision was hailed by some as a victory for Kenyas democracy but Odinga says he wont participate in the rerun of the election scheduled for October unless his conditions are met.

Responding to concerns that there would be increased violence and protests if he lost the fresh elections, Raila Odinga stated, If I lose elections fairly, I will accept and tell my supporters we lost fairly.

But if there is a rigging of elections, the people are entitled to protest. As you know, our constitution provides for peaceful demonstrations, picketing, strikes and so on, he added.

In this weeks Headliner, Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga discuss his presidential ambitions and the future of Kenyas democracy.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.
Dr Marc Lamont Hill is an award-winning journalist and author and is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. Hill is known for his work addressing the intersections of race, justice, politics and culture. His latest best-selling book is We Still Here: Pandemics, Policing, Protest and Possibility which follows on the success of Nobody: Casualties of Americas War on the Vulnerable from Flint to Ferguson. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the US National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF ILLINOIS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees. v. CHARLES W. SCHOLZ, et al., Defendants-Appellants. Nos. 16-1667 Decided: September 22, 2017

Before EASTERBROOK, KANNE, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

Illinois law prevents political parties from fielding candidates on election ballots unless they meet certain conditions. One condition is known as the full-slate requirement: If a party hasn't attained sufficient voter support in past elections, it must field candidates for all offices on the ballot in the political subdivision in which it wishes to compete. So in the 2012 election, the Libertarian Party of Illinois could field a candidate for county auditor in Kane County only if it also proposed candidates for circuit clerk, recorder, prosecutor, coroner, board chairman, and school superintendent.

In this suit under 42 U.S.C.  1983, the Libertarian Party argues that the full-slate requirement violates its right of political association under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district judge agreed and entered judgment invalidating the requirement. On appeal Illinois con-tends that the full-slate requirement is justified by its interests in political stability, preventing ballot overcrowding, and avoiding voter confusion.

We affirm the district court. The core of the fundamental right to political association is the right to band together in a political party to advance a policy agenda by electing the party's members to office. That necessarily includes the party's right to access the ballot and its candidates' right to appear on the ballot under the party banner. For a minor party and its nominees, Illinois's full-slate requirement extinguishes those rights unless the party fields candidates in races it may want no part of. This is a severe burden on fundamental constitutional rights, and Illinois hasn't offered a compelling state interest to justify it. Indeed, by incentiviz-ing minor parties to manufacture frivolous candidacies as a means to an end, the full-slate requirement actually thwarts the interests Illinois invokes.

I. Background

Like other states, Illinois classifies general-election candidates into three groups: those affiliated with an established political party, those affiliated with a new political party, and those running as independents. If a candidate is affiliated with a party, whether established or new, the party name appears alongside the candidate's name on the ballot.

A party becomes established through a strong electoral performance. If a party's candidate in the most recent guber-natorial election received more than 5% of the vote, the party is established throughout the state. 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2 (2010). A party can also attain established status on a more limited basis. If its candidate (or candidates collectively) received more than 5% of the vote in a particular race in the most recent statewide electionfor example, the race for Illinois Comptroller or Illinois Secretary of Statethen the party becomes established for statewide elections. Likewise, if a party received more than 5% of the vote in a congressional or county race in the last election, it becomes established for congressional districts or for that county. Id.

A party that isn't established can access the ballot only as a new party. Attaining new-party status involves different hurdles. Unlike in any other state, new parties in Illinois must submit a full slate of candidates, one for each race in the relevant political subdivision. Id. Additionally, the party must gather a minimum number of signatures on nominating petitions. For state offices, the number is the lower of 25,000 or 1% of votes cast in the preceding statewide election. For county offices, the number is 5% of the votes cast in the county's preceding election. Id. The new-party petitionwith signatures and a full slatemust be filed between 134 and 141 days before the election. 10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-6 (2010).

Finally, the conditions to ballot access for independent candidates are similar to those for new parties except that the full-slate requirement doesn't apply. See id.  5/10-3 (2010); id.  5/10-6. So if a candidate's party meets the signature requirement before the petition deadline but doesn't field a full slate, the candidate can run as an independent.

In the 2012 election, the Libertarian Party attempted to nominate Julie Fox as its candidate for auditor of Kane County. But the Libertarian Party wasn't established, and it met neither the signature requirement nor the full-slate requirement necessary to receive the new-party designation. The Libertarian Party, Fox, and one of Fox's supporters sued Illinois election officials in federal district court under 42 U.S.C.  1983, challenging the full-slate requirement. (The defendants were sued in their official capacities, so we refer to them collectively as Illinois.) Ruling on cross-motions for summary judgment, the judge held that the full-slate requirement violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Illinois appealed.

II. Discussion

We review a summary judgment de novo. Estate of Simpson v. Gorbett, 863 F.3d 740, 745 (7th Cir. 2017). Sum-mary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. FED R. CIV. P. 56(a). Before addressing the merits, however, we take up a jurisdictional question of standing.

A. Standing

The Constitution empowers federal courts to adjudicate cases or controversies. U.S. CONST. art. III,  2, cl. 1. The Article III case-or-controversy limitation confines the federal judiciary to the traditional role of AngloAmerican courts, which is to redress or prevent actual or imminently threat-ened injury to persons caused by private or official violation of law. Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492 (2009). The doctrine of standing enforces this limitation. Id. To establish standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate (1) an injury in-fact; (2) fairly traceable to the defendant's action; and (3) capable of being redressed by a favorable decision from the court. Parvati Corp. v. City of Oak Forest, 630 F.3d 512, 516 (7th Cir. 2010).

Illinois argues that a judgment favorable to the Libertarian Party wouldn't redress its injury: The Party didn't meet the signature requirement, so it would have been barred from the 2012 ballot even in the absence of the full-slate requirement. This argument misconceives the Libertarian Party's injury. It isn't simply that the Party couldn't run its candidate for county auditor in the 2012 election. It's that Illinois law imposes a burdensome condition on the Party's exercise of its right of political association; that is, the Party's injury is its inability to access the ballot unless it fields a full slate of candidates. That requirement persists and stands as an ongoing obstacle to ballot access.

In other words, the full-slate requirement raises the cost of ballot access to minor parties. It's a barrier to entry that operates directly on the Libertarian Party and is a continuing burden on its ability to field candidates for statewide and countywide office. As we've consistently held, that's an injury easily sufficient to support a suit for prospective relief. See, e.g., Krislov v. Rednour, 226 F.3d 851, 857 (7th Cir. 2000) (holding that the plaintiffs had standing because being required to allocate additional campaign resources  in itself can be an injury to First Amendment rights); Nader v. Keith, 385 F.3d 729, 736 (7th Cir. 2004) (observing that a candidate could challenge certain ballot-access restrictions before attempting to comply with them because it was certain that it would cost him more to [comply with the restrictions] than if the challenged provisions were invalidat-ed) (emphasis added); Lee v. Keith, 463 F.3d 763, 767 (7th Cir. 2006) (asserting jurisdiction over an independent candidate's suit because the challenged statutes continue to restrict potential independent candidacies). We proceed to the merits.

B. Full-Slate Requirement

The First Amendment, which constrains state-government action by incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment, protects the right of citizens to associate and to form political parties for the advancement of common political goals and ideas. Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, 520 U.S. 351, 357 (1997). That right means little if a party can be kept off the election ballot and thus denied an equal opportunity to win votes. Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23, 31 (1968). Further, because voters can assert their pref-erences only through candidates or parties, their right to vote is heavily burdened if that vote may be cast only for major-party candidates at a time when other parties or other candidates are clamoring for a place on the ballot. Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 787 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Laws restricting a party's ballot access thus burden two rights: the right of individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs, and the right of qualified voters, regardless of their political persuasion, to cast their votes effectively. Both of these rights, of course, rank among our most precious freedoms. Williams, 393 U.S. at 30.

We evaluate ballot-access restrictions by weighing

the character and magnitude of the asserted injury to the rights protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments that the plaintiff seeks to vindicate against the precise interests put forward by the State as justifications for the burden imposed by its rule, taking into consideration the extent to which those interests make it necessary to burden the plaintiff's rights.

Burdick v. Takushi, 504 U.S. 428, 434 (1992) (quoting Anderson, 460 U.S. at 789).

Under this flexible standard, the level of scrutiny de-pends on the regulation at issue: the more severely it burdens constitutional rights, the more rigorous the inquiry into its justifications. Id. Nondiscriminatory restrictions that impose only slight burdens are generally justified by the need for orderly and fair elections. Id. at 43334. But given the importance of the rights at stake, a severe restriction on a party's access to the ballot must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Wash. State Grange v. Wash. State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 451 (2008) (quotation marks omitted).

We have little difficulty concluding that the full-slate requirement severely burdens the First Amendment rights of minor parties, their members, and voters. As a condition for ballot access, the requirement forces minor parties to find and recruit candidates for races they want nothing to do with. In many instances the minor party must locate candidates for relatively obscure offices like county recorder or coroner. Moreover, in order to support candidates genuinely interested in winning (Illinois assures us that the full-slate requirement isn't meant to produce sham candidacies), a party must devote to each candidate the funding and other resources necessary to operate a full-fledged campaign. To take the example of Fox's candidacy for Kane County auditor, running a fully funded candidate for each Kane County office would have increased the Libertarian Party's costs sevenfold.

The full-slate requirement similarly burdens the right of a candidate to run as the standard bearer for his party. Although a party's failure to submit a full slate doesn't prevent the candidate from accessing the ballot as an independent, party-affiliated campaigns and independent campaigns are entirely different and neither is a satisfactory substitute for the other. Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 745 (1974). To give just one example, a party loyal who must run an independent campaign is denied the ability to quickly communicate information about his views and values through association with his party.

Relying on two Supreme Court cases, Illinois argues that parties and candidates have no right to appear next to each other on the ballot. See Timmons, 520 U.S. 351; Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. 442. But those casesneither of which involved a regulation limiting ballot accessdo not stand for that principle. In Timmons a minor party challenged Minnesota's antifusion statute, which prevented a person from running as the candidate for two parties in the same election. 520 U.S. at 35354. The statute barred the minor party from nominating its chosen candidate because he'd already filed as a candidate for the state Democratic party. Id. at 354. The minor party alleged that the statute violated its political-association rights by denying it the ability to appear next to its candidate of choice on the ballot.

In rejecting that argument, the Supreme Court observed the obvious: A party never has the option to select just anyone as its candidate because a particular candidate might be ineligible for office, unwilling to serve, or, as here, another party's candidate. Id. at 359. The Court thus em-phasized that antifusion laws do not directly limit the party's access to the ballot but merely reduce the universe of potential candidates who may appear on the ballot as the party's nominee only by ruling out those few individuals already running with another party. Id. at 363. The full-slate requirement, on the other hand, does directly limit minor parties' ballot access. Far from entailing nothing more than a slight drop in the pool of candidates from which a party can choose, it prevents minor parties from affiliating with anyone on the ballot unless they mount numerous additional campaigns.

Washington State Grange was a forced-association case. The state of Washington adopted an initiative providing that primary-election ballots would identify each candidate with his self-designated party preference. 552 U.S. at 444. The law didn't allow a party to prevent a candidate from designating it as his party preference. In a preenforcement facial challenge, the state Republican Party argued that the statute violated its associational rights by usurping its right to nominate its own candidates and by forcing it to appear on the ballot alongside candidates it didn't approve. Id. at 448. The Supreme Court upheld the statute, reasoning that Washington might print the ballots in a manner that clarified the one-way nature of the party-preference designation. Id. at 45556. That possibility was enough to defeat the facial challenge. Id. at 457. But the Court expressly declined to consider any ballot-access implications the statute might carry because those issues were outside the question presented. Id. at 458 n.11. Neither Timmons nor Washington State Grange questioned the long-recognized right of political parties to access the ballot.

Because the full-slate requirementthe only one of its kind in the countryseverely burdens the First Amendment rights of minor parties and their members, it must be narrowly drawn to advance a state interest of compelling importance. Norman v. Reed, 502 U.S. 279, 289 (1992). Illinois invokes three state interests in defense of the requirement: promoting political stability, avoiding overcrowded ballots, and preventing voter confusion. See Storer, 415 U.S. at 732 (affirming the validity of those objectives). Illinois empha-sizes that these interests are served by reserving the ballot for parties with at least a modicum of public support.

No one doubts that Illinois's stated interests are compelling in the abstract, but the full-slate requirement doesn't advance them. By creating unwanted candidacies, the requirement increases political instability, ballot overcrowding, and voter confusion. As Illinois would tell it, the requirement exogenously sorts minor parties into two camps: those that have a bench of ready candidates for every race and those that don't. But like other laws, the full-slate requirement shapes the behavior of those it binds. Whatever its aim, the requirement forces a minor party to field unseri-ous candidates as a condition of nominating a truly commit-ted candidate. The Libertarian Party, for example, might have filled the six other Kane County slots with Fox's friends or relatives.

In reality, then, the full-slate requirement does not ensure that only parties with a modicum of support reach the ballot. Instead it ensures that the only minor parties on the ballot are those that have strong public support or are willing and able to find enough frivolous candidates to comply with the law. To be sure, the full-slate requirementlike any regulation that increases the cost of ballot accessreduces the likelihood that a feeble party will secure a ballot position. But Illinois's interest in reserving the ballot for strong parties is directly served by the signature requirement. That regulationwhich at 5% of votes cast in the preceding election is restrictive in its own rightsuffices to winnow out weak parties. Finally, the full-slate requirement doesn't prevent ballot overcrowding or voter confusion; to the contraryit clutters the ballot with numerous candidates who wouldn't otherwise run and who may or may not be sincerely interested in public office.

The full-slate requirement severely burdens fundamental constitutional rights and is not narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest. We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

FOOTNOTES

. The statute provides in part:A political party which, at the last general election for State and county officers, polled for its candidate for Governor more than 5% of the entire vote cast for Governor, is hereby declared to be an established political party as to the State and as to any district or political subdivision thereof. A political party which, at the last election in any congressional district, legislative district, county, township, municipality or other political subdivision or district in the State, polled more than 5% of the entire vote cast within such territorial area or political subdivision, as the case may be, has voted as a unit for the election of officers to serve the respective territorial area of such district or political subdivision, is hereby declared to be an established political party within the meaning of this Article as to such district or political subdivision.10 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/10-2 (2010).

. The statute provides that a new-party petition shall at the time of filing contain a complete list of candidates of such party for all offices to be filled in the State, or such district or political subdivision as the case may be, at the next ensuing election then to be held. Id.

. The Libertarian Party challenges the full-slate requirement both as applied and facially. Because the requirement applies in the same way to all minor parties and their candidates, the suit is best understood as a facial challenge.

. Illinois doesn't argue that the controversy is moot, and it isn't. See Storer v. Brown, 415 U.S. 724, 737 n.8 (The  election is long over  but this case is not moot, since the issues properly presented  will persist as the  statutes are applied in future elections. This is, therefore, a case where the controversy is capable of repetition, yet evading review.) (internal quotation marks omitted).

. The Libertarian Party also challenges the full-slate requirement under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the requirement is unconstitutional on other grounds, we don't address this claim.

SYKES, Circuit Judge.
The African Union (AU) Peace Support Operations Division (PSOD), in its capacity as the Civilian Strategic Support Group (CSSG) Secretariat, convened the CSSG Annual Meeting under the theme: The Role of Civilians in AU Peace Support Operations: Operating in High-intensity Contexts from 19-20 September 2017, at the AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa. The decision to []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
At the initiative of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Development Cooperation Alexander De Croo, our country allocates an additional 6 million euros to the alarming humanitarian situation in the DRC. The Minister made this announcement last Wednesday in New York, at the occasion of a meeting with the UN Special Envoy for the Great []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur today urged the utmost restraint by all parties after clashes between government forces and internally displaced persons at the Kalma camp led to the death of at least three IDPs and injuries to some 26 others. I call upon everyone involved in this situation to restore []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
African leaders, UN officials, and representatives of international finance institutions and of the private sector met yesterday at the United Nations Headquarters to reaffirm their commitment to a broad-based international partnership to industrialize Africa in a socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable manner. Unemployment and poverty are serious concerns for the continent, where more Read more []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
The UK has funded a training course on the prevention of the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict, delivered by Somalis to their fellow countrymen. The three day course brought together 60 participants from the Federal Government of Somalia, Federal Member States and Somali Security Sector. This was the first time a UK-funded []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
The corruption of American higher education has been in the news a lot in the last few years. Snowflakes and safe spaces, crowds of thugs shutting down conservative speakers, craven administrators caving in to demands of activist students and faculty have become increasingly common since the rise of Donald Trump sparked a resistance movement. Even progressives who have run afoul of campus Robespierres are writing books about free speech now that their revolutionary children have started devouring their own. What David Horowitz has been warning about in his books and speeches for more than thirty years -- the ideological hijacking of the university and the betrayal of its traditional mission -- has finally grabbed the national spotlight.

The essays in his latest book, The Left in the University, are indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how we got to this pass.

The first chapter, The Post-Modern Academy, is a succinct analysis of the lefts takeover of the university. He starts with one of the most publicized and representative incidents that illustrates how far our campuses have descended into preposterous political correctness and left-wing shibboleths. Ward Churchill was the University of Colorado professor who called the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks little Eichmanns, and whose exposure in 2005 led to a national scandal when his academic and personal frauds were revealed. What is less well-known is the enthusiasm that many universities had shown in inviting Churchill to speak at their campuses -- 40 invitations before the scandal broke -- despite his vicious anti-Americanism and shoddy scholarship. As Horowitz explains, such views were far from obscure to his academic colleagues. They reflected views comparing America to Nazi Germany that were part of the intellectual core of his academic work. The widespread agreement with such nonsense implicated not just one rogue college professor, but the academic culture itself.

How did such a consensus of belief in ideas more at home in the pages Pravda or Granma happen? The Gramscian long march through the institution on the part of Sixties radicals began the redefinition of academic work from a search for truth according to professional norms, to a political activism that in the name of relevance and social justice shaped research and teaching to confirm leftist ideology and discredit whatever alternatives students might believe. These new academic departments and programs like Womens Studies and Black Studies, Horowitz writes, maintained no pretense of including intellectually diverse viewpoint or pursuing academic inquiries unconnected to the conclusions they might reach.

That these new disciplines were political rather than academic was obvious in their creation, which resulted from political protests and sometimes threats of violence, most famously at Cornell, where in 1969 black radicals with loaded shotguns occupied the administration building. Soon, Horowitz continues, other studies like Post-Colonial Studies and Social Justice Studies proliferated to promote narrowly one-sided political agendas, and create institutional settings for political indoctrination and the exposition and development of radical theory, and education and training of a radical cadre and the recruitment of students to radical causes. Moreover, their claims to be pursuing social justice or equality have created an end-justifies-the-means rationalization, a logical consequence of decades of university pandering to radical intimidators and campus criminals who regularly assault property, persons and reputations with charges of racism, sexism, or even rape. If the ideas are correct, its okay to silence anyone who disagrees. In the last few years this phenomenon has become public knowledge, as Antifa thugs have disrupted campus events. Way back in 1998, Horowitz presciently called such behavior brown-shirt activism.

Horowitz in his essays frequently makes an important point: its not just the ideological prejudices of this or that faculty member, but a whole institutional, professional, and administrative apparatus that has made possible todays overwhelmingly leftist and progressive university.

For example, the problem of conservative speakers being underrepresented at campus events is not a dearth of interest among students. At Vanderbilt, a conservative student group called Wake Up America was formed to invite conservative speakers to campus. But the university refused to provide the same sort of funding it gives to other student groups. When challenged, the administrator in charge of Student Life hid behind the Speakers Committee, which Horowitz describes as a partisan student group dedicated to bringing left-wing speakers to campus. With $63,000 a year to spend, the Committee had brought expensive lefties like James Carville and Gloria Steinem. Wake Up America, Horowitz writes, in its entire existence has never been granted a single cent to bring conservatives to Vanderbilt.

Such largess for leftists go beyond funds dedicated to speakers. In 2002, when Horowitz was invited, Vanderbilt disbursed over a million dollars to student groups ostensibly to promote a diversity of activities, in the words of the university. At the same time that Wake Up America received nothing, other identity-politics groups received over $130,000. Horowitz recounts other appearance he made across the country where left-wing speakers received tens of thousands of dollars, while his visit had to be financed by funds raised off campus. As Horowitz notes, such political bias is completely normal in the academic world.

The bulk of Horowitzs book documents his efforts to get state legislatures and college administrators to adopt an Academic Bill of Rights (ABR) as a way of stopping such abuse. After some initial successes, particularly in Colorado, the campaign was stalled by relentless misrepresentation and outright lies on the part of colleges, the media, and academic organizations. For example, the ABR called for common sense principles similar to those colleges adopted over a century ago. But the principle that universities should base hiring on a candidates competence and appropriate expertise in the field, and foster a plurality of methodologies and perspectives, was transformed by the Colorado media into affirmative action for conservatives.

Most reprehensible was the reaction of the American Association of University Professors, which has long touted its dedication to academic freedom. In 1915 the AAUP promulgated a report that gave impetus to a wider recognition of the need for universities to respect the freedom of its professors to practice research without fear of retribution for challenging any ideologies, preferences, and prejudices. The AAUP report became the template for most of higher educations policies on academic freedom.

The University of Californias Berkeley campus, for example, in 1934 established the Sproul rule, named for its author, university president Robert Gordon Sproul. This rule identified the function of the university as the effort to seek and to transmit knowledge and to train students in the processes whereby truth is to be made known. To convert, or to make converts, is alien and hostile to this dispassionate duty. If political, social, or sectarian movements are to be considered, they should be dissected and examined, not taught, and the conclusion left, with no tipping of the scales, to the logic of the facts.

In 2003, the Berkeley Faculty Senate voted 43-3 to scrap this noble aspiration. The distinction between indoctrination and education was tossed, and the faculty were made the arbiters of teaching and research standards by reference to the professional standards and the expertise and authority of the faculty, which now should govern the acquisition of knowledge. As Horowitz writes, academic freedom is whatever the faculty says it is. The proliferation of studies and programs nakedly political and designed to pursue politically correct ideology, rather than a dispassionate search for truth through disinterested professional methodologies, guaranteed that professional standards would be politicized. The academic freedom created to protect scholarship has now been changed to a substitute for it -- a license for professors to do what they liked. As a result, courses like The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance replace traditional history courses that present all the documented evidence of a historical event gathered by the neutral protocols governing research. The decline of professional competence, as Martin Kramer documented regarding Middle East Studies programs in his Ivory Towers on Sand, creates a vacuum filled by political ideology and faddish theory.

Of course, the AAUP, its board dominated by leftists, had long ago abandoned the principles of the 1915 report, tending instead to overlook infringements of it, like the excising of the Sproul rule, and even defend them, Horowitz writes. So it is no wonder that the AAUP went after the ABR, misrepresenting its clear meaning. During the debate over the Colorado state legislatures bill to codify the ABR into law, the AAUP went on the offensive, calling the ABR a grave threat to fundamental principles of academic freedom, and recommending that it should be strongly condemn[ed]. It also blatantly distorted the bills language, saying it required that universities... maintain political pluralism, a phrase that doesnt appear in the bill, which called for the fair representation of conflicting viewpoints on issues that are controversial, as Horowitz explained. The numerous other misrepresentations that Horowitz analyzes show that the AAUP, much like the UN, no longer believes in the principles of one of its foundational documents.

With such concentrated opposition by university faculty, administrators, unions, and professional organizations, the ABR didnt have a chance. As Horowitz writes of the AAUP response,

If any act might serve as a symbol of the problems that have beset the academy in the last thirty years -- its intense politicization and partisanship and consequent loss of scholarly perspective -- it is this unscholarly assault on a document whose philosophy, formulations and very conception have been drawn from its own statements and positions on academic freedom.

Such an abuse of language to serve power and ideology, first described by Thucydides and memorably expressed in George Orwells Politics and the English Language, is now standard operating procedure in the American university.

Now that Donald Trumps success has driven the academic left into even greater absurdities and thuggery, perhaps conditions are right for cleaning the Augean Stables of campus corruption. But such change will require the efforts of congressmen, state legislators, the Department of Education, university trustees, and the taxpayers who directly and indirectly fund American higher education. And we need many more champions of the universitys mission to study and teach the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically, as Matthew Arnold wrote.

David Horowitz has long tried to hold accountable the presumed guardians of the universitys mission. Its time for more citizens to join him and dismantle the stock notions and habits of the left that are responsible for so much of our countrys political and cultural mischief. Reading The Left in the University is the place to start.

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
Personal rivalries in political organizations sometimes are akin to civil war. The story is told of the vicious remark by the prominent British Labour Party politiciam Ernest Bevin of his fellow politician Aneurin Bevan, creator of the British National Health Service. Someone remarked of Bevan that he was his own worst enemy to which Bevin in his Cockney accent replied, "Not while I'm alive he ain't." A similar temperament of antipathy has existed for more than twenty years between the leaders of two rival Palestinian organizations, Fatah and Hamas, two groups within the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO.

Unexpectedly, on September 17, 2017, Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, unleashed what can be considered either a political earthquake or simply a shock. At a moment of economic and humanitarian problems in Gaza, Hamas has made a bid for reconciliation with its Palestinian rivals, as well as making overtures to Iran, which is presently supplying it with $15 million a month, and also to Egypt, which it wants to open the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip.

Hamas announced it had agreed to disband its Administrative Committee for Gaza, a body set up in May 2017 that acted as a virtual government. Further, it suggested that Fatah send its officials to help govern Gaza, called for a nationwide election, the last of which was in 2006, and expressed a desire for unification with Fatah and a Palestinian government of national unity. Hamas had already issued a new statement of general principles and policies and appeared to be softening its normal extreme political positions.

The immediate question is whether the two formerly hostile groups will be cooperating with no tears and no fears. The present Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, insists there is no disagreement between Fatah and Hamas on belief, on policy, or resistance against Israel. But internal and external factors suggest other problems. Memories are still bitter of the military defeat by Hamas of Fatah in fighting that led to Hamas taking control of Gaza, first militarily and then politically when Hamas won a plurality in the parliamentary election in January 2006. Internationally, Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and other countries, while Fatah is not.

Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat in 1959 in Cairo, where he was born, as a political movement and in 1965 as a political party, is the largest group in the multiparty PLO. Until his death in 2004, Arafat was chair of the PLO, chair of Fatah, and president of the Palestinian Authority. He was succeeded in these positions by Mahmoud Abbas, who like Gilbert and Sullivan's character Pooh Bah holds numerous exalted offices.

Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, was created to liberate Palestine, end the State of Israel and the Jewish presence, and establish an Islamic state. It always challenged the mainstream PLO organization, as well as continuing to attack Israel by rockets and by fighting three wars against Israel since 2008.

Not surprisingly, Abbas' rhetoric is multivoiced, depending on his audience. An example of this is that as head of Fatah he embodied the policy of rejection of Israel and its right to exist, yet he also from time to time appears as a moderate, and publicly recalls the letter of September 9, 1993 sent by Yasser Arafat, as "chair of the PLO", to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat had written, "The PLO recognized the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security... it declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations." However, though Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles for Peace between Palestinians and Israel, he organized two Intifadas, in 1987 and 2000, uprisings and attacks on Israeli civilians.

The change in Hamas rhetoric in September 2017 results from a number of factors: pressure by Egypt which has given some aid to Hamas which agreed in early 2017 to set up a buffer zone on its Gaza border to limit movements of jihadists in the Sinai Peninsula; a poor, deteriorating economy with insufficient health and water supplies; high unemployment rates and 6,000 taking early retirement. Abbas reduced funding to Gaza to pay electricity bills, stopped or cut salaries for government workers and former prisoners in Gaza, and cut payment for prisoners in Israeli jails and reduced medical border crossings for Gazans. Help to Gaza from Qatar was cut; a formidable politician, former security chief Mohammed Dahlan, the organizer of the Fatah campaign against Hamas twenty years ago, reappeared; the unexpected large street protests, one of which numbered 10,000 people; the stronger action by Saudi Arabia against Islamist groups, especially those with ties to terrorists; and the Israeli decision to build an underground wall that stretches along the 37-mile line with Gaza, using sensors, drones, sky balloons, and radar, to prevent Hamas digging tunnels to attack Israeli civilians.

Perhaps above all, the new direction results from the change in Hamas leadership in 2017 with the election of Ismail Haniyeh, former prime minister, as the head of its political bureau, and Yahya Sinwar, an extremist leader of the military wing of Hamas and a man who was personally responsible for killing alleged collaborators. Leadership has passed from the exiled political class living abroad to the military leaders based in Gaza. Haniiyah, replacing the former leader Qatar-based Khaled Meshaal, is known for his approval of terrorism, emphasis on jihad as a religious duty, anti-Americanism, and condemnation of the U.S. for killing Osama bin Laden, liberation of Palestine, "from the river to the sea," and refusal to recognize Israel.

Can Hamas bridge the existing differences and move to reconciliation with Fatah, and will any changes lead to peace with Israel? It still remains true that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. It has not renounced terrorism, but then neither has Fatah, according to its spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi. In a broadcast on August 23, 2017, that spokesman proclaimed that armed resistance, popular resistance was legitimate. Nevertheless, agreement on this hostility against Israel does not necessarily mean any further definite steps to reconciliation with Fatah. Indeed, rebuilding bridges to Iran and dependence on it for financial and military support, and for training of its military wing, suggest a more independent attitude.

The Biblical question, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" remained unanswered. In spite of the softening of the rhetoric of Hamas it is difficult to believe that a terrorist organization can change its spots and become peaceful and statesmanlike.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. UPPER SKAGIT INDIAN TRIBE, PlaintiffAppellee, v. SUQUAMISH INDIAN TRIBE, DefendantAppellant, Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe; Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe; Tulalip Tribes of Washington, RealPartiesInInterestAppellees, Puyallup Tribe; Stillaguamish Tribe; Hoh Indian Tribe; Squaxin Island Tribe; Swinomish Indian Tribal Community; Skokomish Indian Tribe; Nisqually Indian Tribe; Lummi Nation; Makah Indian Tribe; State of Washington, RealPartiesInInterest. No. 15-35540 Decided: September 22, 2017

Before: Michael Daly Hawkins and M. Margaret McKeown, Circuit Judges, and Elizabeth E. Foote,** District Judge. John W. Ogan (argued) and Howard G. Arnett, Karnopp Petersen, Bend, Oregon; James Rittenhouse Bellis, Suquamish Tribe, Suquamish, Washington; for DefendantAppellant Suquamish Indian Tribe. David Stoller Hawkins (argued), Office of the Tribal Attorney, Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, Sedro Woolley, Washington; Andrew H. Salter, Teton Law Group LLC, Jackson, Wyoming; for PlaintiffAppellee Upper Skagit Indian Tribe. Lauren Patricia Rasmussen (argued), Law Offices of Lauren P. Rasmussen, Seattle, Washington, for RealPartiesinInterestAppellees Jamestown S'Klallam and Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribes. Mason D. Morisset and Rebecca JCH Jackson, Morisset Schlosser Jozwiak & Somerville, Seattle, Washington, for Real Parties in InterestAppellees Tulalip Tribes.

OPINION

In this treaty fishing rights case, the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe (the Upper Skagit) filed a Request for Determination as to the geographic scope of the Suquamish Indian Tribe's (the Suquamish) usual and accustomed fishing grounds and stations (U&A) as determined by Judge Boldt in 1975. Specifically, the Upper Skagit sought a determination that the Suquamish's U&A determinations do not include Chuckanut Bay, Samish Bay, and a portion of Padilla Bay where the Upper Skagit has its own court-approved U&A determinations (the Contested Waters). On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court concluded that Judge Boldt did not intend to include the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations and, accordingly, granted summary judgment to the Upper Skagit. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.  1291. Reviewing de novo, we affirm.

I. Background

As this Court has noted, [t]here is a lengthy background to the complex litigation over the treaty fishing rights of the Indian tribes in Western Washington. Tulalip Tribes v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 794 F.3d 1129, 1131 (9th Cir. 2015). In the first United States v. Washington decision, Judge Boldt determined the U&As for several tribes and defined usual and accustomed grounds and stations as every fishing location where members of a tribe customarily fished from time to time at and before treaty times, however distant from the then usual habitat of the tribe, and whether or not other tribes then also fished in the same waters. 384 F.Supp. 312, 332 (W.D. Wash. 1974) (Decision I), aff'd, 520 F.2d 676 (9th Cir. 1975). By contrast, Judge Boldt explained, occasional and incidental trolling in marine waters used as thoroughfares for travel does not constitute a U&A. Id. at 353.

Approximately one year after Judge Boldt issued Decision I, the Suquamish, along with several other tribes, intervened by filing a Request for Determination for the right to participate in a herring fishery. See United States v. Washington, 459 F.Supp. 1020, 102728 (W.D. Wash. 1978) (Decision II). To support its Request, the Suquamish submitted three anthropological reports by expert witness Dr. Barbara Lane regarding tribal fishing. One of Dr. Lane's reports specifically pertained to fishing by the Suquamish at and before the time of the Treaty of Point Elliott. Judge Boldt found Dr. Lane's reports to be highly credible and very helpful in determining by direct evidence or reasonable inferences the probable location and extent of U & As. Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1132 (quoting Decision II, 459 F.Supp. at 1059).

In March 1975, Judge Boldt concluded that the Suquamish had made a prima facie showing of treaty entitlement to participate in the herring fishery and would be entitled to conduct herring fisheries at its claimed U&A determinations, subject to the state's authority to contest any such location. Judge Boldt also scheduled a hearing to receive further anthropological or biological testimony about unresolved herring fishery issues.

Before that hearing began, the Suquamish filed proposed fishing regulations, as well as a map identifying its claimed U&A determinations (Claim Map), divided into four areas: roughly, the Strait of Juan de Fuca through the San Juan Islands (Area One); north of the San Juan Islands to the Canadian Border (Area Two); east and southeast of Lummi Island, including Bellingham Bay, Hale Passage, and the Contested Waters (Area Three); and southeast of the San Juan Islands through Hood Canal and into the southern Puget Sound (Area Four).

In April 1975, Judge Boldt presided over three days of hearings regarding his prima facie U&A determinations. Dr. Lane testified to several tribes' treaty-time fishing, including the Suquamish's. The state objected that the Suquamish had not sufficiently proven that its U&A determinations reach[ed] as far north as claimed, but the court ruled that, because no tribe has objected,  that is at least sufficient prima facie showing[.] Nevertheless, Judge Boldt instructed the state and the Suquamish to question Dr. Lane on that issue. After Dr. Lane finished testifying, the state reiterated its objection, contending the Suquamish had made a deficient claim of entitlement to its U&A determinations in all or a portion of [Areas One and Two]. Judge Boldt ruled from the bench that the Suquamish had made a prima facie showing of its U&A determinations through the north Sound areas; that is, areas one and two. Neither the state nor Judge Boldt discussed the Suquamish's U&A determinations in Area Three of the Claim Map, where the Contested Waters in this proceeding lie.

Judge Boldt then issued a written order (the Order) holding that the Suquamish's U&A determinations include the marine waters of Puget Sound from the northern tip of Vashon Island to the Fraser River including Haro and Rosario Straits, the streams draining into the western side of this portion of Puget Sound and also Hood Canal. Decision II, 459 F.Supp. at 1049.

Invoking the district court's continuing jurisdiction, the Upper Skagit and the Tulalip Tribes have each challenged the Suquamish's U&A determinations. In subproceeding 0503, this Court affirmed that the Suquamish's U&A determinations do not include Saratoga Passage or Skagit Bay. See Upper Skagit Indian Tribe v. Washington, 590 F.3d 1020, 1026 (9th Cir. 2010). And in subproceeding 0504, this Court affirmed that the Suquamish's U&A determinations do include Possession Sound, Port Gardner Bay, and the mouth of the Snohomish River, as well as Cultus Bay, Useless Bay, Mutiny Bay, and Admiralty Bay. See Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 113336.

In 2014, the Upper Skagit initiated this proceeding by filing a Request for Determination that the Suquamish's U&A determinations do not include the Contested Watersthat is, Chuckanut Bay, Samish Bay, and a portion of Padilla Bay where the Upper Skagit has its own court-approved U&A determinations. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court concluded that Judge Boldt did not intend to include the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations, because the record before Judge Boldt lacked any evidence that the Suquamish fished or traveled through the Contested Waters. Accordingly, the district court granted summary judgment to the Upper Skagit. The court also declined to apply claim preclusion to the Upper Skagit's Request for Determination. This timely appeal followed.

II. Discussion

This Court follows the two-step Muckleshoot analytical framework to interpret Judge Boldt's U&A findings. Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1133; see Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1023 (citing Muckleshoot Tribe v. Lummi Indian Tribe, 141 F.3d 1355 (9th Cir. 1998) (Muckleshoot I), Muckleshoot Indian Tribe v. Lummi Indian Nation, 234 F.3d 1099 (9th Cir. 2000) (Muckleshoot II), and United States v. Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, 235 F.3d 429 (9th Cir. 2000) (Muckleshoot III)). At step one, the moving party bears the burden of offering evidence that a U & A finding was ambiguous, or that Judge Boldt intended something other than [the text's] apparent meaning.  Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1133 (alteration in original) (quoting Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1023). This Court has previously determined that Judge Boldt intended something different than the plain text of the Suquamish U & A finding. Id.; see Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1025. Accordingly, the Muckleshoot analysis proceeds to step two. See Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1133 (We adhere to that determination and do not analyze further prong one of the Muckleshoot analytical framework.).

At step two, the moving party bears the burden to show that there was no evidence before Judge Boldt that the Suquamish fished  or traveled through the contested areas. Id. (quoting Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1023) (internal quotation marks omitted). This analysis depends on review of the entire record before Judge Boldt at the time of his Suquamish U&A finding, as well as his factual findings and, possibly, additional evidence if it shed[s] light on the understanding that Judge Boldt had of the geography at the time. Muckleshoot II, 234 F.3d at 1100; see Muckleshoot III, 235 F.3d at 433; Muckleshoot I, 141 F.3d at 1359. The Court may not alter, amend, or enlarge Judge Boldt's U&A finding. Muckleshoot I, 141 F.3d at 1360.

Thus, we must decide whether the moving party, the Upper Skagit, carried its burden to show there was no evidence before Judge Boldt that the Suquamish fished or traveled through Chuckanut Bay, Samish Bay, and a portion of Padilla Bay. See Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1133. Dr. Lane's Suquamish-specific report and testimony are particularly relevant to the question of the Suquamish's U&A determinations, see id. at 113436 (reviewing Dr. Lane's report and testimony to determine whether the Suquamish's U&A determinations include contested waters); Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1025 (same), but we also consider the language Judge Boldt used in the Order to define the Suquamish's U&A determinations, see Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1025. We conclude that the Upper Skagit met its burden here.

Neither Dr. Lane's testimony nor her reports contain any indication that the Suquamish fished or traveled through the Contested Waters. Rather, almost all the Suquamish fisheries Dr. Lane identified are located on the western side of Puget Sound, near the Kitsap Peninsula and Bainbridge Island. The only Suquamish fisheries Dr. Lane identified on the eastern side of Puget Sound are the Duwamish and Snohomish Rivers, which are located considerably south of the Contested Waters.

Dr. Lane also described that the Suquamish traveled regularly through the San Juan Islands and to the Fraser River and that the Suquamish undoubtedly would have fished the marine waters along the way. Dr. Lane did not describe the route the Suquamish would have taken to reach the Fraser River from its home territory, although Dr. Lane did indicate that the Suquamish traveled through the San Juan Islands and then northbound through waters adjacent to Birch Bay; the state's attorney asked Dr. Lane whether the Suquamish fished in the San Juan Islands and the area off of Birch Bay on the way up to the Fraser River, and Dr. Lane replied, I think it's entirely likely that [the Suquamish] fished for whatever was available as they were traveling through those waters and that they visited those waters regularly as a usual and accustomed matter in order to fish. In addition, in Tulalip, this Court explained that [w]hen traveling from Vashon Island to the Fraser River, the Suquamish would have passed through the waters west of Whidbey Island, and likely would have fished there while traveling. 794 F.3d at 1135. This explanation, as well as Dr. Lane's evidence that the Suquamish regularly traveled through the San Juan Islands and to the Fraser River, leads us to conclude that the Suquamish traveled through the waters west of Whidbey Island and then proceeded directly north through the San Juan Islandsnot east to waters off of Bellingham Bayen route to the Fraser River.

However, during questioning by the Swinomish Tribe's attorney, Dr. Lane opined that it was [p]robable that the Indians traveling northward would travel through Hales Passage, which is roughly northwest of the Contested Waters. Dr. Lane made that statement while testifying about the Samish, Swinomish, and Lummi tribes, and she later clarified, I have no direct evidence of other tribes [than the Lummi] fishing in Hales Passage at treaty times. It is my opinion that it is quite likely that they may well have done so with the concurrence of the Lummi people who were living there. Dr. Lane did not identify the Suquamish as one of those tribes.

Absent any other indication in Dr. Lane's report or testimony that the Suquamish might have traveled to the Contested Waters to fish, the general evidence of northward travel through Hale Passage, which itself is merely adjacent to the Contested Waters, is insufficient to show the Suquamish traveled or fished through the Contested Waters. This case is distinguishable from Tulalip, which relied on both general and specific evidence that the Suquamish fished and traveled through waters west of Whidbey Island. See 794 F.3d at 1135. Specifically, Tulalip held that the Suquamish's U&A determinations include waters west of Whidbey Island based on specific evidence from Dr. Lane that the Suquamish's territory possibly included Whidbey Island's western side and that the Suquamish traveled to Whidbey Island to fish, as well as on the general evidence that [t]he deeper saltwater areas, the Sound, the straits, and the open sea  were used as fishing areas by anyone travelling [sic] through such waters. Id. (first and third alterations in original). Here, by contrast, the record contains no specific or general evidence that the Suquamish fished or traveled through the Contested Waters.

In her testimony, Dr. Lane discussed Suquamish fisheries in northern Puget Sound, in the area from the San Juan Islands to the Fraser River. Neither the Suquamish nor the state elicited any testimony from her regarding Suquamish fisheries on the eastern side of Puget Sound. Dr. Lane's sole testimonial reference to northeastern Puget Sound in relation to the Suquamish apparently excluded the tribe from waters neighboring the Contested Waters; Dr. Lane stated that the Suquamish, who had their own place[s] to fish for herring, would not go all the way over into Bellingham Bay in order to get the herring that were spawning in Lummi territory. Dr. Lane named three sites as Suquamish herring fisheries, all of which are off the Kitsap Peninsula's eastern coast.

In sum, [n]one of Dr. Lane's testimony identified specific areas as far east and north as the Contested Waters. See United States v. Lummi Indian Tribe, 235 F.3d 443, 451 (9th Cir. 2000) (finding Judge Boldt did not intend to include contested waters in the Lummi Indian Tribe's U&A determinations because, in part, [n]one of Dr. Lane's testimony identified specific areas as far west and south as the contested waters). We conclude that neither Dr. Lane's report nor her testimony indicates the Suquamish fished or traveled through the Contested Waters.

Additionally, Judge Boldt's failure to name the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations supports the conclusion that he did not intend to include them. See Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1025. This factor alone is not dispositive, however, considering our holding in Tulalip that the Suquamish's U&A determinations include the mouth of the Snohomish River, Possession Sound and Port Gardner Bay, none of which Judge Boldt named in the Suquamish's U&A determinations. See 794 F.3d at 113436. But based on the evidence before Judge Boldt, and on Dr. Lane's report and testimony, specifically, we conclude Judge Boldt did not intend to include the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations. See id.; Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1025.

Nevertheless, the Suquamish insists the entire record does indeed indicate that Judge Boldt intended to include the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations. These arguments are unavailing. First, the Suquamish points to the 1975 proceedings before Judge Boldt and, in particular, to the lack of tribal objection at that time to the entirety of the Suquamish's claimed U&A determinations, comprising Areas One, Two, Three and Four on the Claim Map. However, the law of this case belies the notion that Judge Boldt intended to include the entirety of the Suquamish's claimed U&A determinations. In Upper Skagit, we concluded that Judge Boldt did not intend for the Suquamish's U&A determinations to include Skagit Bay and Saratoga Passage, which lie within Area Four of Suquamish's claimed U&A determinations. See 590 F.3d at 1026. In so holding, this Court decided by necessary implication that Judge Boldt did not intend to include the entirety of the Suquamish's claimed U&A determinations, and we decline to reconsider the issue. See Lummi Indian Tribe, 235 F.3d at 452.

The Suquamish also contends that, by approving proposed Joint Indian Herring Roe Fishing Regulations (Joint Regulations), Judge Boldt revealed his understanding that the Suquamish's U&A determinations include the Contested Waters. But the record does not state that the Joint Regulations reflect the geographic scope of the Suquamish's treaty-time fishing, or that Judge Boldt considered the Joint Regulations as such. And on their face, the Joint Regulations appear to exclude the Suquamish from the Contested Waters.

Finally, the Suquamish claims that Judge Boldt intended to include the Contested Waters because he recognized the existence of a private agreement among the Suquamish, Lummi, and Nooksack Tribes regarding Hale Passage. However, Judge Boldt's reference to this extrajudicial agreement does not indicate that he intended to include Hale Passage or, more important for this proceeding, the Contested Waters in the Suquamish's U&A determinations. In fact, Judge Boldt explained that the Suquamish, Lummi, and Nooksack Tribes, without relinquishing any claims to fishing locations, had agreed not to request a court determination as to their relationship with each other in Hale Passage. Decision II, 459 F.Supp. at 1049 (emphasis added).

Therefore, we find unavailing the Suquamish's attempts to broaden the evidence bearing on Judge Boldt's intent in delineating the Suquamish's U&A determinations. Based on our review of the entire record before Judge Boldt, we agree with the district court that Judge Boldt did not intend to include Chuckanut Bay, Samish Bay, and the portion of Padilla Bay in the Suquamish's U&A determinations.

AFFIRMED.

FOOTNOTES

. Also referred to as Hales Passage and Hale's Passage in the record.

. In Decision I, the district court retained jurisdiction to take evidence, to make rulings and to issue such orders as may be just and proper upon the facts and law and in implementation of this decree. September 18, 2017, 384 F.Supp. at 408. A party invoking the court's continuing jurisdiction must satisfy various procedural prerequisites and then file and serve a Request for Determination.  Tulalip, 794 F.3d at 1131 n.1 (quoting Decision I, 384 F.Supp. at 419).

. As an initial matter, we conclude there was no error in the district court's refusal to apply claim preclusion to the Upper Skagit's Request for Determination. The Upper Skagit subproceeding did not involve the same contested waters as those at issue here; Upper Skagit involved Saratoga Passage and Skagit Bay, waters east of Whidbey Island, while the current subproceeding concerns Chuckanut Bay, Samish Bay, and a portion of Padilla Bay, waters off of Bellingham Bay. See 590 F.3d at 1022. Thus, Upper Skagit and the current subproceeding do not arise out of the same transactional nucleus of facts, and the requisite identity of claims to support the application of claim preclusion does not exist. See Headwaters Inc. v. U.S. Forest Serv., 399 F.3d 1047, 1052 (9th Cir. 2005).

. We deny as moot the Upper Skagit's motion to strike from the Excerpts of Record the Suquamish's post-1975 fishing regulations. We note, however, that the Suquamish's post-1975 fishing regulations were not part of the record before Judge Boldt. And unlike a geography expert's testimony, the regulations do not shed light on Judge Boldt's understanding of the geography at the time. Cf. Muckleshoot II, 234 F.3d at 1100. The post-1975 fishing regulations reflect the Suquamish's understanding of its own U & A, rather than Judge Boldt's intent in determining that U & A. See Upper Skagit, 590 F.3d at 1026. At any rate, because we do not look to the post-1975 regulations as evidence of Judge Boldt's intent, we deny the Upper Skagit's motion to strike as moot.

HAWKINS, Circuit Judge:
Alger Hiss was a U.S. State Department official who was accused in 1948 of being a Soviet spy. Hiss's indictment stemmed from alleged espionage in the form of secret State Department documents spirited out of Foggy Bottom and into the hands of persons "not authorized to receive" them. "The Pumpkin Papers" consisted of sixty-five pages of retyped secret State Department documents, four pages in Hiss's own handwriting of copied State Department cables, and five rolls of developed and undeveloped 35mm film.

Being charged under the Espionage Act was appropriate for those who obtained any information relating to the national defense and delivered that information to someone who was not authorized to have it. The former State Department official, Alger Hiss, typed classified information on his office typewriter, slipped the copies into a briefcase, removed classified information from the State Department, and provided all of this to his Soviet handler, who photographed and microfilmed it. The FBI wished to prosecute Alger Hiss for espionage, but the Justice Department indicated that the statute of limitations had run out, and Hiss was convicted of the lesser crime, perjury, for lying to the FBI.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton insisted that she "had broken no rules" to conduct government business through the use of a private email service in lieu of the U.S. government's unclassified system, the Non-Classified Internet Protocol (IP) Router Network (abbreviated as NIPRNet) and the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). These are a system of interconnected computer networks used by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information.

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars developing, deploying, and protecting its internet protocol router networks to enable authorized government officials to conduct the business of government, properly exchange information, and intelligence, up to and including information classified SECRET, with others in the government (and their contractors) who are authorized and entitled to have it. Mrs. Clinton purposely avoided using the government's networks through the use of a homebrew server. That she found a way to transmit countless classified documents, up to and including special access program material, to her personal server has been made public and is not in question.

The former Democratic presidential candidate disclosed that she and her aides had deleted more than 30,000 emails she deemed "personal." For a frame of reference, 30,000 emails printed out represents a stack of 60 reams of paper, a stack 11 feet tall. When the FBI retrieved the spools of microfilm, the Alger Hiss "Pumpkin Papers" printed out to a stack four and a half feet tall.

Hillary Clinton and the FBI have learned much from the Alger Hiss case. The American public will not be able to read a transcript of Hillary Clinton's interview with the FBI, because the bureau did not transcribe it. Furthermore, Mrs. Clinton was also not placed under oath during the three-and-a-half-hour interview. When Mrs. Clinton wasn't placed under oath, she could not be charged with lying to the FBI, as Alger Hiss was eventually charged with and convicted of.

There doesn't seem to be a race against the clock for the Trump DOJ to charge Mrs. Clinton with espionage. Alger Hiss escaped prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 due to the statute of limitations having expired. Also, there was no appetite by the DOJ to charge the former senior State Department official and Democrat lawyer. Although federal statute USC 3282 provides for a five-year statute of limitation for the vast majority of federal crimes, this statute of limitations does not necessarily stand in the case of espionage prosecution. It is generally agreed by legal scholars that acts of espionage can be prosecuted for at least ten years after the alleged act.

I wish Congressman Trey Gowdy could give Attorney General Sessions a lesson on Spoliation of Evidence, with which attorneys fresh out of law school are familiar. Hillary Clinton's deletion of 30,000 emails is a classic case. When parties fail to produce relevant evidence within their span of control, evidence they are otherwise naturally expected to possess, the U.S. legal system allows and even mandates that unfavorable presumptions be drawn against them. So when some item of relevant evidence  whether documents, physical objects, or data relevant to an ongoing legal matter  is destroyed, discarded, or modified in some way, the U.S. legal system allows us to presume that the missing evidence was unfavorable to that party and allows us to draw conclusions accordingly. The classic junior high school excuse, "the dog ate my homework," isn't valid under the law when the disappearance is suspicious.

Spoliation of evidence is prohibited by an array of laws and regulations. Also, anyone who destroys relevant evidence or assists in such destruction is subject to criminal prosecution, civil fines, tort liability, exclusion of testimony, and dismissal of claims, as well as adverse evidentiary inferences. We have little way of knowing if any one of the 33,000 missing documents under Mrs. Clinton's control could have been used "to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation."

The Trump DOJ should be making all possible efforts to retrieve the missing 33,000 emails and determine once and for all: "was it espionage or was it yoga?"

"You don't use BleachBit for yoga emails or for bridesmaids emails," Congressman Trey Gowdy said in an interview to Fox News. "When you are using BleachBit, it is something you really do not want the world to see."

The cabal of President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI director James Comey did everything they could to protect Hillary Clinton from the politically explosive charge of espionage when it was obvious to anyone in the intelligence community what she was doing. There is sufficient and obvious evidence that like the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, Mrs. Clinton should be charged with espionage before the statute of limitations runs out.
North Korea has launched a ballistic missile over Japan for the second time this month. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us, state-run media offered by way of explanation, The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb.

The prospect of a U.S. ally being nuked by a rogue regime, and one that is also pursuing long-range missiles aimed at the U.S. homeland -- might serve as a reason to bolster missile defense systems. To some degree it has, as seen by the renewed calls this week on Capitol Hill to increase missile defense spending as part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

For many in the think-tank and scholarly community, however, North Korean provocations have engendered a different concern. More dangerous than the threat from North Korean missiles, they maintain, may be Washingtons decision to react by enhancing its missile defense shield.

A case in point is a recent piece in Defense One by Tom Collina. While conceding that North Koreas acquisition of a nuclear missile that can reach the United States is only a matter of time, Collina maintains that anti-missile interceptor systems could leave us worse off. Why? Because investments in missile defenses could lead to a dangerous overconfidence in their efficacy. Believing that the United States has the ability to deter a missile attack, Collina predicts that President Trump would be more likely to escalate a conflict and allow the country to stumble into unintended wars.

Collina outlined the argument in rather personal terms toward the president. But groups like the Ploughshares Fund, where Collina is policy director, have warned about the incentives that missile defense could create long before this presidency.

The basic idea is that a stable balance of power already prevails in the world, and it does so because countries tread carefully out of fear that provocative steps could invite retaliation by another state. Even countries without nuclear weapons have conventional arsenals that could impose unacceptable costs against their rivals.

Critics suggest that missile defense might disrupt this equilibrium. If a country developed advanced systems that could blunt the missile threat posed by rival powers, they might be tempted to project power with impunity -- with unfortunate consequences.

This prediction, while logical in theory, has not been borne out by reality. Indeed, the opposite has occurred.

When President Ronald Reagan announced his intention to pursue the Strategic Defense Initiative, critics howled that the United States was igniting an arms race and possibly even laying the groundwork for a first strike against the Soviet Union. In reality, SDI did not fundamentally alter U.S. strategy toward the Soviet Union way. SDI did, however, have an immense psychological impact on the Kremlin. Uncertain as to the potential of U.S. missile defense systems, Soviet policymakers agreed to unprecedented arms control agreements in an effort to weaken the United States through diplomacy. In the meantime, Soviet strategists doubled down behind defense plans that the Moscow could not afford, bankrupting the empire into oblivion.

Fast forward to 2001, when the George W. Bush administration announced its intention to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to pursue more robust missile defense systems. Far from rekindling an arms race, the United States signaled at the same time that it was prepared to reduce its nuclear stockpiles unilaterally. Seeing an opportunity to rein in its own outdated program, Russia, in 2002, signed with the United States the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) -- a landmark agreement in which both countries agreed to limit their arsenals.

SORT laid the groundwork for a series of U.S.-Russia arms control agreements over the ensuing decade -- agreements that the two sides negotiated even when tensions between the two powers escalated, and even as improvements in U.S. missile defense capabilities far outpaced those of rival nations. With every missile test, the United States has been able to isolate and solve problems while completing tests with increasing complexity in objectives and targets.

History provides little evidence for the contention that American investments in missile defense either encourage a reckless U.S. foreign policy, or destabilize international order. If anything, U.S. investments in missile defense have tended to advance rather than stymie progress on arms control. Past experience, of course, does not discredit these theoretical warnings altogether -- missile defense may very well motivate imprudent statecraft in a different context with different actors. But weighed against the very real threat of a North Korean strike on the U.S. homeland, theoretical objections to missile defense appear rather unpersuasive.

Dan Perrin is the president of the HSA Coalition. He is a former U.S. Committee on Foreign Relations staff member, where he served for more than seven years, and a former staffer with the U.S. Senate Steering Committee.
Both the president and Congress are struggling to commit to a stable course of action regarding President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Do they scrap it or keep it? Although there are legitimate arguments favoring either option, DACA should nevertheless be repealed.

Very quickly, what is DACA? It is an executive order signed by President Obama in June 2012 that allowed all illegal aliens who arrived in America before they were aged 16 to apply for legal work permits, Social Security numbers, and driver's licenses and made them eligible for earned income tax credits. Enrollment must be renewed every two years. Since 2012, nearly 800,000 illegal aliens have taken advantage of DACA  most of them adults. Essentially, DACA grants participants the rights and privileges normally associated with legal entry into America. It is renewable amnesty.

There are three main problems with DACA. The first is that it undermines the rule of law in a fundamental way. In signing DACA, President Obama overstepped his authority and violated the division of powers as laid out in the Constitution. DACA was and is a usurpation of legislative power; it is a knife in Congress's back. This republic was constructed according to a number of axioms, one being that different arms of government have different parts to play and that each arm checks and balances the others. Congress is the seat of legislative authority. Representatives make, amend, and repeal laws and have power over the purse. The office of the president is the seat of executive authority: the president enforces the law and serves as our commander-in-chief.

President Obama signed DACA because Congress was unwilling to legislate on the subject  as was Congress's prerogative. The president does not have the right to create stopgap legislation like DACA, and the fact the DACA has remained this long is a testament to Congress's weakness. Ironically, even Obama was, at least theoretically, aware of this. In 2011, Obama himself said, "For me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president." America agrees. Trump must scrap DACA to restore some semblance of balance to government.

The second problem with DACA is that it created an enormous incentive for people to enter America illegally  as might be expected with any other form of amnesty. DACA sent a clear message to the millions or poor who would migrate to America: beat the border patrol, and you will (eventually) be allowed to stay.

Amnesty is not a solution; it is part of the problem  it transforms America into a giant lure. The evidence for this is overwhelming: it is no secret that DACA caused an unprecedented spike in youth migration into America. Likewise, consider that Reagan's 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted 2.7 million people legal status, sparked the beginnings of the greatest tidal wave of illegal immigration in this nation's history. Now compare this to the approach President Eisenhower took when he deported nearly 3 million illegal migrants: no more came for some thirty years. Incentives matter.

Lastly, President Trump is right to scrap DACA on economic grounds. Why? It boils down to supply and demand. Consider the apple market: if the supply of apples increases, what happens? The price of apples goes down. What happens if a stiff frost kills off most the apples, leading to a shortage? The price of applies rises, since there are fewer apples to go around. Labor markets work the same way: more workers means lower wages, while fewer workers means higher wages.

DACA adds some 720,000 legal workers into America's market. These people compete with American workers, driving down wages and increasing unemployment rates. This is axiomatic: even the pro-DACA Cato Institute acknowledges this fact, saying American companies will begin "recruiting, hiring, and training" Americans to fill the void.

Theory aside, there is ample evidence for this fact. For example, before Hurricane Harvey, President Trump's crackdown on illegal aliens had already caused wages for construction workers to rise by 30 percent (half of Texas's construction workers were illegal aliens). In light of recent events, their wages will likely rise even higher  but we can still attribute a significant portion of said rise to labor market constrictions. Likewise, towns in Maine were forced to hire American workers after the availability of visas for temporary foreign workers declined. What happened? Unemployment decreased, wages increased, and working conditions improved in order to attract American workers.

Illegal workers have thoroughly distorted America's labor markets and hurt the bulk of her citizenry. Illegal immigration is bad for the economy. This is an empirical fact, not a point of contention.

For five long years, DACA has enshrined the rights of illegal aliens and put them above those of American citizens. It is a slap in the face to Congress, the rule of law, and the common man. President Trump must scrap DACA  and if he will not, Congress should.
A crocodile measuring 17 feet in length  big enough to swallow a human being whole  was discovered dead in the Fitzroy River in Queensland, Australia, with a bullet in its head. Pictures of the beast have been seen all over the world, sparking a global wave of nightmares.



The crocodile carcass (pictures from Queensland Police).



Imagine those jaws opened wide.

But crocodiles in Queensland, like alligators in Florida, are protected by law, so police have launched a manhunt for the potential man-eater's killer.

A TIP off has launched a police man hunt for the gunshot killer of a 5.2m king crocodile in the Fitzroy River. An autopsy on the slaughtered reptile is under way after he was discovered with an apparent bullet wound to the head at an Alligator Creek location near Etna Creek yesterday afternoon, The Rockhampton Morning Bulletin reports. Rockhampton Criminal Investigation Bureau officer-in-charge Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Peachey said the EHP contacted police who are now working with the environmental agency to track down who's responsible.

The penalties for killing a protected croc are not trivial, and there is every indication that police resources will not be spared. In Australia, the states handle police, so a large constabulary is available in the state of Queensland (population: 4.7 million) to track down the monster-layer:

The carcass has been removed as evidence and will be forensically examined by Queensland Police. It is an offence under the Nature Conservation Act 1992 to take an estuarine crocodile without authority and there are greater penalties in place for the unlawful take of an 'iconic' crocodile, defined as 5 metres or greater in length. The maximum penalty for the unlawful take of an 'iconic' crocodile is $28,383.75.

The danger this animal posed to humans is not purely theoretical. Our Queensland correspondent, John McMahon, writes:

This river, the Fitzroy, does not lie in a remote part of Queensland but runs through the middle of Rockhampton, a regional city on the Eastern central coast of Queensland. It is the beef capital of Australia. Just a couple of years ago a horse trainer took his horse down to the river for the horse to cool off. As he did so he walked past Croc warning signs. Sure enough, the horse was taken. He had been doing this for years all the time ignoring the warning signs. Eventually his luck ran out.

I do understand the need to protect endangered species. But, as Hannah Osborne wrote in Newsweek:

Earlier this year, a report from the the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre, Royal Darwin Hospital and the Menzies School of Health Research showed crocodile related deaths has risen in the Northern Territory since hunting was banned in 1971, the Guardian reported. Between 2005 and 2014, 14 people were killed by crocodiles, compared with just 10 deaths in the 33 years prior.

If we (unrealistically) assume that other factors were constant over both periods, crocodile fatalities increased from one human casualty every 3.3 years to crocs were killing 2.33 humans per year following their protection. But in fact, the danger from crocs may well be increasing right now for a reason Osborne explains:

The death of a huge crocodile whose body was found in a river in Queensland, Australia, has sparked fears of a fight for dominance among the young, aggressive males living in the area. ... The death of what is thought to be the dominant male could spark a power struggle between other males, authorities warned. Joyce said people living in the area should be extra careful over the coming days and weeks as the death of this large crocodile may result in a power struggle between [sic] younger males, which could make them more aggressive. "People need to clearly understand that the death of this animal has changed the balance of the crocodile population in the Fitzroy and we can expect increased aggressive activity by younger male crocodiles," he told the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin. ... "That's because they will be competing to take the dominant position which is now vacant. I cannot stress strongly enough the need for all river users to be aware of the risks and to be Crocwise." He added the power struggle could be over in 24 hours, or it could take months.

I cannot imagine living in a city of 80,000 with a river running through it that is home to aggressive, lethal crocodiles in their normal state, much less heightened aggressiveness. But I am phobic about creatures that can and do devour humans and other large mammals, not to mention Fluffy and Spot or the occasional careless child.

I am not advocating repeal of protections for gators, crocs, or even krakens, if they exist. But I would like a calculation of the human cost to be considered.

Update from John McMahon:

Crocodiles are protected in Australia with some now saying that their numbers are far too huge for the safety of people. Crocodiles extend all the way across the Northern half of the continent along the coastal areas and along up the rivers. With this population pressure the crocodiles are now returning to areas where they once were before the advent of colonization. Thus they have become a very serious danger to people.



Off tourist areas such as Palm Cove North of Cairns crocs have been seen swimming near the tourists. In 2016 two women tourist staying at the Cape Tribulation Lodge when for a midnight swim at nearby Thornton Beach. One was taken by a crocodile. A few days later rangers captured and killed a 4.3m crocodile and its stomach contents disclosed recent human remains which were those of this woman.



On their way down to the beach these two women walked past a sign warning about swimming at the beach.



There are those who are calling for a cull of these animals by way of hunter-tourist safaris under the auspices of aboriginal rangers who will be the guides on these proposed safaris.



All moneys earned would be income for the local aboriginal community. It is a good idea but the governments are baulking at the idea for fear of the Greens and other groups such as PETA.


Yesterday, I saw Senator Coons, Democrat from Delaware, say he couldn't vote for the Graham-Cassidy health care replacement bill because it didn't have a clear definition of "adequate" and "affordable" for those with preexisting conditions. What a joke!

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was an over 2,000-page bill (that most hadn't read when they voted on it) with massive numbers of mandates and twenty new taxes. I don't recall Democrats asking for definitions, let alone on subjective terms like "adequate" and "affordable."

President Obama went around repeating that everyone would be able to keep their plans and doctors if they liked and that premiums would go down an average of $2,500 per family. These were obvious lies, but I don't recall Democrats or reporters questioning Obama. Jonathon Gruber said they had to lie to get it passed. Obama bribed states with 100% Medicaid reimbursements and there were specific kickbacks to buy votes, but Democrats and reporters didn't care. There were no questions about affordability. The CBO even pretended it would reduce the deficit.

Senator Coons came into office in November 2010. As Obama continually added regulations, changed the law without going through Congress, illegally transferred money around to cover ACA costs, and reimbursed insurance companies without appropriations from Congress, and as the costs skyrocketed to taxpayers, not once do I remember Senator Coons worrying about affordability.

As choice and competition have been continually reduced the last seven years, and as premiums and out-of-pocket expenses have skyrocketed for most individuals and businesses, I do not recall Senator Coons or any Democrat worrying about adequate coverage or affordability. Not once have I seen Democrats come forth with ideas how to fix the ACA or make it more affordable, other than throwing more money into its pit.

But now, when Graham-Cassidy offers to give more choice back to the people and more control back to individuals, businesses, and states, Senator Coons all of a sudden has problems, because there is not a specific definition for subjective terms like adequate and affordable. The problem for Coons and all Democrats is actually transferring power back to the states and the people. They actually want to maintain and expand the power of the federal government and get to Medicare for all. They will vote against anything that reduces the power of the master. The destruction of choice and the private health insurance industry obviously doesn't matter to them.

The actual solution to the cascading disaster of the ACA and out-of-control costs is to go back where the truly small minority of people who couldn't buy insurance could get it through high risk pools subsidized by the taxpayers. The taxpayers could also subsidize the truly poor and needy with an expansion of Medicaid. Individuals and businesses should have the choice as to what type of insurance to buy with a choice of benefits. If they want a Mercedes plan, they can buy it, but if they want a catastrophic plan, they can buy that also, or if they want to self-insure, they should also have that choice. Insurance companies must be allowed to underwrite and limit risk, or few if any will survive.

If the ACA concept were applied to auto insurance, everyone with a car would have to insure it as though it were a brand-new Mercedes, no matter if it were a brand-new Mercedes itself or a 1978 Chevette or Gremlin. The amount of risk would make no difference. People wouldn't have the choice to have liability-only insurance even if the car were worth $100.

A major culprit in the ACA health care mess we have today is the significant majority of reporters who just go out and repeat Democrat talking points. They never cared and still don't care that Obama continually lied to get the ACA passed and that the disastrous premium and cost increases are because of Democrats.

The story will be written that Republicans and Trump caused the collapse even though that is demonstrably not true.
Reading the Wall Street Journal's Matthew Hennessey's September 16-17 "Weekend Interview" with Missouri Republican governor Eric Greitens, I couldn't help but notice Mr. Hennessey's recurring use of action words like "hard-charging Republican governor" pursuing a "muscular conservative agenda" in describing Mr. Greitens's first months in office.

Similarly, I couldn't help but compare his "muscular" accomplishments with the paltry output of a Republican Congress quivering in their boots in Washington while squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enact the "muscular conservative agenda" America voted for in 2016.

Mr. Greitens is a Rhodes scholar and former Navy SEAL. He was a lifelong Democrat because his parents taught him that Democrats were the party that cared about people. If he thought the Democratic Party had the right ideas to do that, he'd still be a Democrat. "But they don't." He switched parties in 2015.

His politics began the shift to the right after a 1994 trip to the Balkans led to the realization that "if you care about people, then you are willing to act not just with compassion, but you're also willing to act with courage."

Governor Greitens wasted no time acting with courage.

One of his first executive orders froze all new state regulations through 2017.

Within a month of taking office, he signed a right-to-work bill under which workers can't be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. In July, he assented to a law overriding St. Louis's $10-an-hour minimum wage. A minimum wage "may read pretty on paper," he said, "but it doesn't work in practice."

He attributes his shift to the right more to experience than philosophy. After returning from four overseas deployments in the mid-2000s, Mr. Greitens started a consulting business and founded The Mission Continues, a non-profit organization serving veterans.

Starting his own business and helping veterans start theirs gave him "a very practical sense of what it means to deal with burdensome regulations."

"I think that you've got to take action that actually helps people," he says. Unruffled by criticism from media and unions, he cites economic indicators showing Missouri fast becoming one of the best states to do business.

Mr. Greitens's governing philosophy may be summarized thus: "One of the things I've found in everything that I've done: People want leaders to create a sense of direction and to lead and to act, and they know that we will never get everything perfectly right, but they want us to lead."

Logic suggests that the repeal and replacement of bankrupt Obamacare, tax cuts, and immigration reform will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, even those dependent on the status quo. Common sense initiatives all.

However, Republicans are giving Americans reason to believe that they lack the mettle "to lead and to act."

To borrow a line from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, "There comes a time in the life of every human being when he or she must decide to risk 'his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor' on an outcome dubious." "Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else."

It's time for Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and company to meet the challenge or step aside.
If you are bothered by the idea of the government selling the law enforcement prerogatives of citing and collecting fines from automobile drivers, then you want to pay attention to a Supreme Court case in the state of Iowa to be argued in that court's impressive Des Moines building next week.

Merrit Kennedy writes for NPR:

A dispute over a $75 speeding ticket has climbed through the levels of Iowa's court system, reaching the lofty heights of the Iowa Supreme Court for oral arguments. Marla Leaf got a speeding ticket because a camera allegedly caught her driving 68 mph in a 55-mph zone on an interstate freeway through the city of Cedar Rapids in February 2015. It's not typical for the state's top court to hear small-claims cases. But in her case against the city of Cedar Rapids, Leaf argues that her constitutional rights and state law were violated because the city delegated police powers to the private company that maintains the speed cameras.

There are actually a number of arguments being advanced:

At various levels of Iowa's court system over more than two years, Leaf has said she believes she was not speeding, especially because of slippery road conditions that day. The cameras are triggered if they record speeds of more than 12 miles over the speed limit.

And:

[Leaf's attorney]said the cameras don't issue tickets to semitrailers and government vehicles, calling the discrepancy arbitrary and a violation of equal protection. The camera system works by focusing on back license plates, which government vehicles do not have in Iowa. Patricia Kropf, an attorney for the city, told the court that the excluded vehicles are "just not in the database that we need to use to do this in a cost-effective manner."

But it is the delegation of police powers that appears to be the heart:

Leaf's case argues that it is unlawful to give the authority to assess speeding  something it says is police work  to the private camera company, Gatso. Can the assessment of a municipal violation be done, Larew asked, "by the police department appointing a friend of theirs to serve as a hearing officer?" Lower Iowa courts have been satisfied that the system is constitutional because it is the police department  and not the private company  that ultimately makes the decision to issue a speeding ticket. "There is never a citation issued that does not get reviewed and approved by a police officer," Gatso attorney Paul Burns told the justices. According to court documents, Gatso receives $25 per citation.

I have two sources of worry over this sort of thing. One is the rapidly growing pervasiveness of surveillance, and its linkage to fines or other forms of punishment from state authorities. If the state is always watching us and punishing us for behavior it forbids, a nightmare has arrived.

But the other relates to the wisdom of selling off taxation powers. These fines are a tax, after all, and the company that bought them needs to maximize them. This is a form of tax farming, a very dangerous system of raising state revenues. I'd rather leave law enforcement and tax collections to employees of the state who don't personally benefit from increasing the take.

If Iowa sets a precedent, other states may pay attention.
Defying U.N. security council resolutions and U.S. warnings, Iran test-fired a new ICBM the Iranians say is capable of carrying multiple warheads. The new missile represents a leap forward in Iranian missile technology that puts the state of Israel right in the crosshairs.

Reuters:

Iran has successfully tested a new ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) which it displayed at a military parade on Friday, state media reported on Saturday.

The test-firing of the Khorramshahr missile, which Iran said could carry several warheads, is likely to raise concerns in Washington.

State broadcaster IRIB carried footage of the missile test without giving its time and location, including video from an on-board camera which it said showed the detachment of the cone that carries multiple warheads.

"You are seeing images of the successful test of the Khorramshahr ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the latest missile of our country," state television said.

"This is the third Iranian missile with a range of 2,000 km," it added.

The Khorramshahr missile was first displayed at a military parade on Friday, where President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would strengthen its missile capabilities without seeking any country's permission.

At the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said Iran was building its missile capability and accused it of exporting violence to Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

He also criticized the 2015 pact that the United States and other world powers struck with Iran under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.
Hey, it was just a glitch. Not a feature, just a bug.

Such is the timid "narrative" Philadelphia's city commissioner, Al Schmidt, would have you believe, even though he's the city's electoral overseer, who brought up the matter of more than 1,160 ineligible immigrants registered to vote in U.S. elections in his home state of Pennsylvania, with 317 of them in Philadelphia. And those are the honest ones who realized they were registered and voting illegally and who wanted their registrations canceled.

The problem emerged from a computer flaw in the city's motor-voter registration system that allowed declared non-citizens to register to vote anyway. Schmidt said the voting was probably accidental. It didn't affect the outcome of the election. It wasn't fraud. Blah, blah, blah. But he suspected that the problem was more widespread than Philadelphia and wanted a full state audit of all districts for this problem.

That's where we see something a lot less than timid in the reaction from Pennsylvania's state officials, who actually set up and count the votes, who projected indifference. CBS reports:

Secretary of State Pedro Cortes issued a statement saying PennDOT is changing its system to prevent the problem in the future and has already made improvements. He did not address reviewing and cross checking registrations statewide. A spokeswoman for Cortes said they are conducting their own review.

Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the reaction from the governor's office was that 'it's always been this way,' and by the way, he's the hero.

J.J. Abbott, [Gov. Tom] Wolf's press secretary, pushed back. "Let's be clear: This motor-voter glitch has existed for decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations," Abbott said. "Gov. Wolf's administration is actually taking action to fix it."

It may just been that Wolf is being pushed to fix it because of President Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity has its eye on Pennsylvania and it's giving them the willies.

Hans von Spakowsky [sic], a member of Trump's election commission, said the improper registrations represent "more evidence that we have a problem." Trump, while campaigning last year, frequently said he could only lose if opponents cheated in places like Pennsylvania. After winning the presidency, Trump claimed without evidence that he lost the popular vote because of fraud. Von Spakowsky [sic], speaking after a debate on immigration at the University of Pittsburgh late Wednesday, noted that the noncitizens who had registered to vote were only discovered because they alerted election officials. He wondered how many others didn't.

Here are some of the facts that suggest there's trouble:

Back in 2012, Philadelphia was the city that reported that 59 districts had not cast a single vote for Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney. They all had Obama voting rates of 100%. Color us skeptical.

Among the illegal foreign voter registrations, three quarters had registered Democrat. So much for the claim that illegally cast ballots affect both parties equally.

Meanwhile, a blogger at Nate Silver's somewhat lefty analytical FiveThirtyEight blog wrote in 2016 that Pennsylvania was a "tipping point" state rather than swing state, meaning one whose trend lines could affect the general election outcome. Democrats knew this, which is why they placed their convention in Philadelphia in 2016.

The report notes that Pennsylvania's Republican then-governor, Tom Corbett, in 2014 declined to appeal a court ruling striking down a voter ID law, which signaled open season for voter fraud.

What's more, FiveThirtyEight includes a chart showing voter trends in Philadelphia as getting bluer and bluer, which is worth looking at in light of Pennsylvania's state officials claiming they had a handle on the matter and didn't need to check all districts, or that things have always been done this way. Well, the Philadelphia trend lines show the results.

Now with the motor-voter system showing the perfect method for registering illegal voters and getting away with it, it's more than passing strange that Pennsylvania voting officials aren't showing too much alarm, and the alarm-givers are a timid lot. Something is going on over there, and it's right to smell a rat.
Hillary Clinton is having a hard time leaving the stage and joining the rest of past presidential candidates who made a concession speech on election night.

After all, V.P. Gore found something to do to get over his 2000 election defeat! President Carter got busy supervising elections around the world and building homes for the needy. President Bush 41 came back to Houston and dedicated his time to a wonderful library at Texas A&M. Governor Romney moved on and did not dwell on his defeat.

In other words, they all moved on  except Mrs. Clinton, who apparently can't.

Mrs. Clinton is back, and my guess is that most Democrats don't like it, as Ed Rogers wrote a couple of days ago:

She has rejected well-founded concerns about her blocking the rise of new voices within the Democratic Party and about not supporting a new generation of Democratic leadership. But in fact, in typical self-serving Clinton style, she is taunting the world with the idea that she might contest the 2016 election results. In an NPR interview this week (of course it was an NPR interview), Clinton said she would not rule out challenging the legitimacy of the 2016 election if "we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now." She knows it won't happen, but she is still desperate for applause and willing to pretend that Donald Trump isn't really our legitimate president. It's all rather sad if you think about it.

Yes, it is rather sad, indeed.

After she lost to then-senator Obama in 2008, I remember saying to a friend: What is Mrs. Clinton going to do? How does she get over this?

After losing to President Trump, I asked a slightly different question: how is this lady going to spend the rest of her life knowing that her biggest ambition never materialized?

I think we are seeing how she is coping with it all. Mrs. Clinton has chosen to be in our face, explaining how she lost and how it was not fair. She has become the biggest sore loser since who knows who.

The good news is that we Republicans or "anti-Clintonistas" can joke about it and flip the channel.

The bad news is that Democrats have to put up with her. They have to play along because she keeps showing up on their stage.

Hillary is even criticizing Mrs. Trump! I can't remember the last time anything like that happened in U.S. history.

Yes, it's very sad, indeed.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Your Home Radio presented by EPB Fiber Optics on 98.1 The LAKE and iHeart Radio announces the new co-host Sabrena Smedley as she joins Jeremie Price, owner of JB Millworks. Your Home Radio is a radio talk show thats all about your home, reaching homeowners or potential homeowners that want to hear from professionals about home improvement projects, and anything to do with the home.

Your Home Radio on 98.1 The LAKE, is a production of Whitfield Media Group.

Were pleased and proud to announce a new addition to Your Home Radio, said Shawn Whitfield, Whitfield Media Group. Effective Sept. 30, Sabrena Smedley will become the official co-host of the show, with Jeremie Price. We gave it much thought to who would be the perfect choice for the future of Your Home Radio and after much consideration and evaluation, we knew that Sabrena is the perfect choice. Sabrena has so much to offer our listeners, sponsorship partners, and makes a perfect radio partner to co-host Jeremie Price. Sabrena has a long career in the real estate market, with so much experience to share with homeowners.

Since January 2016, Your Home Radio has been hosted by Jeremie Price and Daniel Wyatt. However, starting Saturday, Sept. 30, Ms. Smedley will fulfill her new role as co-host.

I want to thank Daniel for being a part of Your Home Radio, and I wish him much success in his radio career said, Shawn Whitfield, Whitfield Media Group.

Ms. Smedley is the broker/owner of Sabrena Realty Associates, LLC in East Brainerd. She is an active member of Morris Hill Baptist Church and credits her success to her faith and personal relationship with Jesus. As a realtor, she has built long-term relationships with the citizens of her district. Ms. Smedley was named the 2012 Realtor of the Year by the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors. She serves on the Multiple Listing Board for the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors in addition to serving on other various committees. Ms. Smedley serves on the River City Company Board and is also president of The Friends of East Brainerd.

In 2014 Ms. Smedley was elected to serve as the Hamilton County commissioner for District 7. She is serving in her third year and was voted by her fellow Hamilton County Commissioners to be the vice chair of the Hamilton County Commission. Additionally, she serves as the chairperson of the Finance Committee. Ms. Smedley is a proud mother of three and is married to Mark Smedley.

Listen to Your Home Radio presented by EPB of Fiber Optics each Saturday from 8-9 a.m. on 98.1, the LAKE or iHeartRadio.
During the hey days of Cold War, the Soviet started blowing up nukes all over northeastern Kazakhstan to investigate the possibility of using nuclear power for peaceful construction purposes such as moving earth, creating canals and reservoirs, drilling for oil and so on. The tests were carried out under the banner of Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. This was the Soviet version of Operation Plowshare  a similar program devised by the U.S.

Having borrowed the terrible idea from the U.S., the Soviet program got underway in vigor and ended up being many times larger than the U.S. Plowshare program both in terms of the number of applications explored with field experiments and the extent to which they were introduced into industrial use. While the U.S. conducted 27 tests before realizing it was a bad idea and terminated the program in 1977, the Soviets continued right up to 1989 during which as many as 156 nuclear tests were conducted.

Photo credit

One of the better known tests is the January 1965 test at Chagan, on the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. The Chagan test was designed to test the suitability of nuclear explosions for creating reservoirs. It was the first and largest of all detonations carried in the Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy program. A 140 kiloton device was placed in a 178 meter deep hole in the dry bed of the Chagan River so that the crater lip would dam up the river during periods of high flow. The blast created a crater 400 meters across and 100 meters deep with a lip height of 20 to 38 meters. Later, a channel was cut into the crater allowing it, and the reservoir behind it, to fill up with water.

The reservoir, known informally as Lake Chagan, still exist today in substantially the same form. The water continues to be radioactive - about 100 times more than the permitted level of radionuclides in drinking water, though 100-150 meters away dose levels were at background level. At that time of its creation, the Soviet government was proud of Lake Chagan. They made a film with the Minister of the Medium Machine Building Ministry, the one responsible for the entire Soviet nuclear weapons program, taking a swim in the crater lake and water from it was used to feed cattle in the area.

It was estimated that some 20% of the radioactive products from the Chagan test escaped the blast zone, and were detected over Japan. This infuriated the USA for violating the provisions of the October 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned atmospheric tests. The Soviets replied that it was an underground test and the quantity of radioactive debris that escaped into the atmosphere was insignificant. After several subsequent interactions, the matter was eventually abandoned

Also see: Sedan Nuclear Crater in Nevada Test Site, based on which the Chagan test was conducted.

Video of the nuclear test that created Lake Chagan.

Satellite picture of Lake Chagan (the circular crater) and the reservoir (below).

Photo credit

Photo credit

Sources: Wikipedia, World-Nuclear, Nuclear Weapons Archive
Every year, the Nazi Party used to hold large annual rallies in Nuremberg, which was at that time the center of the German Reich. These rallies were grandiose propaganda events, carefully orchestrated to reinforce party enthusiasm and to showcase the power of National Socialism to the rest of Germany and to the world.

At the designated assembly grounds, which spanned more than 10 square kilometers, hundreds of thousands of party loyalists, as well as spectators, assembled. Buildings were festooned with enormous flags and Nazi insignia. Immaculately dressed soldiers, holding flags and torchlights, goose-stepped through the streets. Adolf Hitler and other leading Nazis delivered rousing speeches, and there were magnificent fireworks displays.

In 1933, after Adolf Hitler rose to power, the Fuher decided that the Nuremberg rallies needed to be even more extravagant events than they already were. So he called his favorite architect, Albert Speer, and entrusted him the responsibility of building a large stadium.

Unfortunately for the Fuher, the stadium could not be completed in time for the 1933 rally. But Albert Speer was a resourceful person. As an ad hoc substitute for an unfinished stadium, he devised a cathedral built not of concrete but of light. Speer borrowed from the Luftwaffe 152 powerful anti-aircraft searchlights and placed them pointing skywards at intervals of 12 meters. When switched on at night, it created an immense wall of towering beams encircling the rally and making it visible for miles around. Speer described the effect as like being in a vast room, with the beams serving as mighty pillars of infinitely light outer walls.

The Cathedral of Light, as it came to be known, is still considered amongst Speer's most important works.

The Flak Searchlights Speer used were very powerful devices. Developed in the late 1930s, each searchlight was nearly five feet across and had an output of 990 million candelas, bright enough to illuminate enemy aircraft flying 5,000 meters above and up to 8 km away.

The 152 searchlights that Speer used for the Cathedral actually represented most of the countrys entire stockpile. Hermann Goring, the commander of the Luftwaffe, objected to the misuse of this strategic resource, but Hitler overruled him suggesting that using searchlight in such large numbers could trick other nations into believing Germany had far more searchlights than they actually did.

The Cathedral of Light became the characteristic element of all future party rallies until 1938. The 1939 rally was cancelled at the last moment when Germany invaded Poland igniting the Second World War. Ironically, the 1939 rally was supposed to be named Rally of Peace, because it was meant to reiterate the German desire for peace.

A German 150cm searchlight displayed at the Luftwaffenmuseum Berlin-Gatow. Photo credit: Denis Apel/Wikimedia

Adolf Hitler oversees the assembly, 1937.

Looking up into the "cathedral of light" over the rally.
Baylor Headmaster Scott Wilson '75 led members of the Probasco family and the Baylor Board of Trustees in a ceremonial groundbreaking for the school's new humanities center. The academic hall is scheduled to open in the fall of 2018.

The new $13 million academic facility, which is being built on the former site of Trustee Hall, is the centerpiece of campus renovations planned as part of Baylor's historic $45 million Forever Forward capital campaign and will honor the memory and incredible legacy of leadership and generosity of the late Scotty Probasco '46. Designed to reflect and complement the architectural style of existing campus buildings, the modern academic center will be flexible and sustainable over the next 100 years, said officials.

The ceremony, fittingly highlighted by the brief appearance of a rainbow in the distance, included remarks from Headmaster Wilson, board chairman Chris Crimmins '80, building and grounds committee chair Ryan Crimmins '78, and trustee Zan Guerry '67, chair of the campaign leadership committee.

Members of the Scotty Probasco family attending were Betty Probasco, Ben Probasco '78 and his wife Susan, Ellen Probasco Moore and her husband Chris '68, Scott Probasco '73 and his wife Alexis, Zane Probasco Brown and her husband Greg, and several Probasco grandchildren.

For a photo gallery of the event, click here.



To view a video of the entire groundbreaking ceremony, click here.
The European Commissions Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) is providing EC$806,000 (250,000 Euros) in emergency humanitarian aid to Dominica, following the severe destruction caused by Hurricane Maria which devastated the island on 19 September.

The relief will address urgent needs and will include basic kits for survival, clean water and food, construction material and fuel, as well as additional logistical support to reach isolated communities.

An EU humanitarian expert in rapid response is already in Dominica. Additional EU humanitarian technical assistance will reach soon to support Dominicas national authorities to deliver relief to the population.

EU Ambassador to Barbados. the Eastern Caribbean States, the OECS, and CARICOM/CARIFORUM, Daniela Tramacere said: This is the time when friends show solidarity to the countries affected by hurricanes Irma and Maria. I commend the resilience and dignity of Dominicans at these harsh times. We will spare no effort in contributing to the reconstruction of the beautiful island of Dominica.

Up to now, among the European Union Member States, the United Kingdom, Belgium and France have already offered in-kind assistance also to be channelled through the same European Civil Protection Mechanism.
(ECCB)  The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) is standing firmly with its member countries that have been impacted by Hurricane Irma.

The Bank has disbursed a grant of EC$1 million each to the Governments of Anguilla and Antigua and Barbuda to support relief and early recovery.

A delegation from the ECCB visited Anguilla on September 13 in solidarity and support. The delegation, which included the ECCB Monetary Council Member for St Kitts and Nevis, Prime Minister the Honourable Dr Timothy Harris and Governor Timothy N. J. Antoine, met with Chief Minister of Anguilla, the Honourable Victor Banks and other senior government officials and toured the country to obtain a first-hand account of the impact of Hurricane Irma. The ECCB delegation also delivered supplies including: water, food and batteries.

Governor Antoine, accompanied by Council Member for Antigua and Barbuda, Prime Minister the Honourable Gaston Browne, visited Barbuda on 15 September. The Governor and his team also visited the three shelters on Antigua established for the displaced residents from Barbuda and delivered supplies and words of encouragement.
(by Nicoletta Castagni) .

Rome - An exhibit is opening Friday at Rome's Scuderie del Quirinale to celebrate the centennial of Pablo Picasso's trip to Italy in 1917 with friend Jean Cocteau.



'Picasso - Between Cubism and Classicism 1915-1925' runs through January 22 and vies to highlight the impact of the trip on Picasso, who accompanied Cocteau for the staging of the ballet Parade and painted its curtain, which will be exhibited for the first time in Rome at Palazzo Barberini.



The organization of the exhibit required ''three years of intense work with curators Olivier Berggruen and Anunciata von Liechtenstein'', said Mario De Simoni, president of the culture ministry's Ales agency.



Berggruen over the past decade has been studying the relationship between Picasso and theater, contributing to curate the show's display of over 100 masterworks and as many documents from the 2915-1925 period, one of the most creative for the artist.



When he took the trip in 2017, Picasso was 36 and an acclaimed artist at the helm of the Cubism movement.



The curator stressed that the artist was perceiving the crisis of the movement that had made him famous and let Cocteau persuade him to accompany him in Italy, where he had to meet Ballets Russes impresario Sergej Djagilev to design the set, costumes and curtain of the ballet Parade.



Far from the war, Picasso experienced an artistic renaissance in Rome, getting to know members of the Futurist and Secessionist movements, said Burggruen while ''coming into contact with renaissance and classic art'' and Italian traditional iconography, ''in particular the masques of Pulcinella'' as he travelled to Naples, Pompeii, Florence and Milan.



He also met his future wife during his Italian travels, Olga Khochlova, a dancer in the ballet.



Masterworks on display include Man Seated at Table and Harlequin and Woman with Necklace, painted in Rome.



Portraits of celebrated dancer and choreographer Leonide Massine and his wife Olga are also part of the display.



Picasso's take on classicism is documented by the Great Bather, the Three Women at the Fountain and the Pan Pipes.



Two Women Running on the Beach, an iconic little painting embodying his neoclassical period, is one of the exhibit's highlights.
Choral Arts of Chattanooga will present Our Musical Heritage, with special guests Dr. John Hamm and David Friberg, founding director and accompanist, on Friday, Oct. 13.

This first concert of the 2017-2018 season, will be held Friday, Oct. 13, at 7:30 p.m. A reception will follow to honor Dr. Hamm and Mr. Friberg.

This program includes music by Aaron Copland, Jackson Berkey, Peter Wilhousky, Randall Thompson, Alice Parker and Robert Shaw, Roland Carter, Moses Hogan, and more. There will be folk songs and parlor tunes, songs of the heartland, songs of battle, American hymns, spirituals and gospel music, songs of our choral past, and a special benediction.

Darrin Hassevoort will be the artistic director and Jason DuRoy will accompany on piano.

The concert will be held at Second Presbyterian Church, 700 Pine St.

Admission is $20 for adults and $10 students with ID. It is free for ages 10 and under.

For more information visit http://choralartsofchattanooga.org.


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BarcelonaEnric Millo, the Spanish government's representative in Catalonia, has sent a letter to all the directors of secondary schools in Catalonia warning them that if they authorize, "even tacitly", the holding of illegal events called by the Generalitat on October 1st, they could be prosecuted.

In the letter, the Spanish government warns that by "authorizing or allowing, by action or omission", their school to be used as a polling station, public employees could face charges of disobedience, neglect of duty, and misappropriation of public funds, "without ruling out further criminal action". The punishable actions include making the keys or school access codes available to "authorities or third parties".

In his letter, Millo writes that the "duty" of public powers is to obey the resolutions of the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC), which has suspended Catalonias Referendum Law and the calling of the independence vote slated for October 1st. Thus, he reminds the school directors of "the importance that schools" do not adopt any agreements or carry out any actions that "could contravene the rulings of the Constitutional Court", such as using their premises for the "promotion or holding" of events connected to "a vote that is in violation of our Constitution". Millo once again reiterates that the TC has ruled that the referendum scheduled for October 1st is illegal".

The letter starts off detailing one by one the TC rulings that have declared the Catalan Parliament's decisions regarding the referendum as "contrary to constitutional order". In addition, he adds that Temporary Provision Fifteen of the Education Law specifically establishes that schools "cannot be destined to other services or ends without prior consent from the relevant educational authorities". In his letter, Millo stresses that I must warn you that electoral regulations do not apply in this matter".
The ironing board has an iconic status in the history of British theatre. What became known as kitchen-sink drama was more properly ironing-board drama. In 1956, the originality of John Osbornes Look Back in Anger was not its frustrated hero mouthing off at an unhappy woman  so far, so drama  but that the central characters were a working-class man with strong views on Suez and a woman who, rather than looking soigne in a cocktail frock, was occupied with the ironing in their untidy flat. Amid drifts of Sunday papers and tepid gravy, Alison Porters laundry regime suggested life as it was commonly lived rather than what Tynan described as the Loamshire fantasy of country house farce and melodrama.

In this sense the ironing board was a liberation. In another, a shackle. Alison  and later her friend Helena, who briefly takes her place in the household  do the ironing because Jimmy Porter doesnt. A womans work, in the play, is to attend to her husbands monologues, sop up his insults, sooth his worries just as she smooths the creases. Despite all provocation, Alison doesnt slam the hot iron down and burn through Jimmys shirts; she doesnt feel its weight in her hand and smack him across his misogynistic, goading chops. She just sucks it up, smooths it out  for such, even in the New Drama, is womans burden.

But it wasnt only in Britain that ironing boards played a decisive role. Trouble in Mind is a long-neglected play by the long-neglected Alice Childress. In Britain, at least, the African-American playwright is due for reappraisal (as recently noted by Exeunt); the only work of hers Ive previously seen is the one-act Wine in the Wilderness. The actor Tanya Moodie championed the 1955 play for a revival that has transferred from Bath to Londons Print Room.

Its a superbly involving gathering storm of an evening. Wiletta (Moodie), after a long but unfulfilling career playing maids and mammies, is rehearsing a serious Broadway play. Shell again play a maid and a mother, true, but one at the crux of the drama. From the glimpses we see, its a crass play of black life in which whites snare the best lines; a drama of solemn banality about violence and shared humanity. At the climax, Wilettas character sends her son into the arms of a lynch mob  an action which Wiletta struggles to make sense of. Throughout this overwrought scene, the director isolates her behind an ironing board, frustrating her still further. Instinctive responses are diverted by laundry. Her complexity and ambiguity are ruthlessly ironed away.

Battle for integrity

Ive lurked in a few rehearsal rooms  none as toxic as this, at least not while a reporters present  but you never forget the hierarchy. Even the most consensual, collegiate director perhaps chooses not to exercise their authority rather than shares it. Childress nails the power play of rehearsal. Her director, played with coruscating entitlement by Jonathan Slinger, is a dictator in wunderkind clothing. He operates through spite and approval, goading his actors to find a truth which is merely a convincing cover version of convention.

Wiletta aches to release the dramatic potential that mid-century casting continually denies her; but, as Moodie plays her, Wilettas most detailed and committed performance is herself. Moodies movement is astonishing  she shows us Wiletta constraining herself when she wants to roar, pushing down her centre of gravity when she wants to fly, embellishing every suggestion with a bobbing pantomime of self-effacement, because just standing still and speaking her mind is not an option. Moodie makes her a walking compendium of pay-me-no-mind: as if the expectation of disrespect has skewed her every sinew.

Wiletta gradually finds that she can no longer endure the pacifying toolkit that has kept her bobbing along in a faux-liberal profession  the roguish smiles, the merry laugh, the self-effacing wibble at the side of the stage. This trite Broadway script may not release her artistry or even her dignity, but she fights, at least, for her integrity. But whenever thought or emotion take her away from the ironing board, the director tuts and points and sends her back. In Laurence Boswells richly layered production, Wilettas battle for integrity becomes a battle to move beyond that damn ironing board. It ends in a brutally painful confrontation. The board becomes a symbol of passivity, of literally knowing your place. Wiletta is finally ready to leave it behind.

Couldnt find a photo with the ironing board, but photo of Tanya Moodie is by Simon Annand

Follow David on Twitter  @mrdavidjays
The following faculty and staff at Cleveland State Community College have received degrees.

Stanley Bryant has received an Associate of Applied Science, General Transfer, from CSCC. Kimberly Harrington has received a Masters Degree in Mathematics from University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Sandy Whetmore, has received a Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education from Northcentral University. Vickie Still has received a Masters Degree in Nursing from Tennessee Technological University.




It seems to be a dream run for actor Rajkummar Rao with all his films getting rave reviews this year.

Amit Mansurs Newton has been selected as Indias entry to the Oscars. And its leading man, Rajkummar Rao, is over the moon.

I can feel good things happening to my career one after another. First there was so much appreciation for Bareilly Ki Barfi. Then I was inundated with praise in Toronto for Hansal Mehtas Omerta. Barely days later I get the most amazing reviews for Newton. As though that werent enough, on the day that Newton releases, comes the news that our film is going to the Oscars. I feel blessed, exults Rajkummar.

The actor-extraordinaire admits the Oscar nod has taken him by surprise. Its all so sudden. And Newton is not an easy film to categorise. We all worked with conviction and little else.

The threadbare budget to make Newton would now have to make way for a hefty marketing strategy that will give this quirky film about a determined idealistic polling clerks fight to hold election in the jungles of Chhattisgarh, a fair chance to take home the Oscar.





Says Rajkummar, Its too early for us to understand how we will position Newton for the Oscars. The fact that it has been selected for the Oscars has barely registered. Now we would need to sit down and work out a marketing strategy.

The actor, who also plays Subhas Chandra Bose in a forthcoming web series, expresses an unconditional willingness to be the face of Newton at the Oscars. Of course I will do everything possible to ensure we stand a good chance of bringing home the Oscar. But Newton is not just about me. All of us  director Amit Mansur and my co-actors Pankaj Tripathi, Anjali Patil and RaghubirYadav  worked towards making Newton a statement on the electoral process and the widening lacuna between city life and rural existence.

Rajkummar Rao hopes that the Oscar-worthiness of Newton would help it get a wide audience in India. I am aware that the film doesnt have the ingredients for an instant success. But were hoping that the terrific reviews, word of mouth and Oscar nod would get the audience interested.

He hopes that Newton gets the audience it deserves, Cinema in our country is changing rapidly. Newton is proof of that change. It is important that we take its message of electoral obligations to the Oscars.
Other members of the delegation, led by Mr Munuswamy, included Jayakumar, R.B. Udayakumar, C.V. Shanmugam, Manoj Pandiana and MP V. Maitreyan.

New Delhi: Leaders of two factions of the AIADMK on Friday informed the Election Commission about their merger and the resolutions adopted at the partys general council meeting, including on the ouster of interim general secretary V.K. Sasikala.

Senior party leader K.P. Munusamy said that the EC has been informed that the two factions headed by O. Panneerselvam and Edappadi Palaniswami have merged to protect Ammas (late chief minister J. Jayalalithaa) legacy, to respect sentiments of party cadres and for good governance.

The AIADMK delegation met members of the commission and countered claims of the rebel camp, led by Sasikala and her nephew T.T.V. Dhinakaran, that the resolutions were invalid. They also informed the EC about resolutions adopted in the general council meeting on September 12 on removing Sasikala and making all appointments made by her invalid, including that of her nephew Mr Dhinakaran as deputy general secretary.

Mr Munusamy said that the late J. Jayalalithaa will be the permanent general secretary and party top leaders  Mr Panneerselvam and chief minister Mr Palaniswami  will be the coordinator and joint coordinator, respectively.

Other members of the delegation, led by Mr Munuswamy, included Jayakumar, R.B. Udayak-umar, C.V. Shanmugam, Manoj Pandiana and MP V. Maitreyan.

Before the merger, both the factions led by Mr Panneerselvam and Sasikala had staked claim to the two-leaf symbol of the party, following which the poll panel had frozen the symbol, pending a decision.

A large group of legislators, led by CM Edappadi Palaniswami, after this revolted against Sasikala, who is lodged in jail in a graft case, and announced merger of the two factions. Resolutions ousting Sasikala as the interim general secretary and her nephew Mr Dhinakaran as her deputy were also adopted at the partys general council meeting held on September 12.
The CBI on Friday took over the probe into the killing of the 7-yr-old at Ryan school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The CBI sources said the 10-member team will try to gather evidence and make an attempt to recreate the events of the day Pradyuman, a class 2 student, was killed. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: A CBI team along with forensic experts on Saturday reached the premises of Gurgaon's Ryan International School where the body of seven-year old Pradyuman was found with throat slit on September 8.

The CBI sources said the 10-member team will try to gather evidence and make an attempt to recreate the events of the day Pradyuman, a class 2 student, was killed.

The CBI has also started questioning the school bus conductor Ashok Kumar, prime suspect in the killing, regional head of the school group Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas after taking them into custody.

The agency had earlier approached the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) court seeking custody of Kumar, Francis and Jeyus, which was granted.

Read: Gurgaon student murder: Bus conductor held, cops say sexual assault attempted

While Kumar has been sent for a one-day CBI custody, the remaining two are for two days, a CBI spokesperson said.

"At the request of the CBI in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the alleged murder of a student in a school at Gurugram, the competent court on Saturday remanded three accused in one day police custody," the spokesperson said.

The CBI on Friday took over the probe into the killing of the seven-year-old at the Gurugram school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The case had been registered at the Bhondsi police station in Gurugram under the IPC section related to murder, and relevant sections of the Arms Act, the POCSO Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.
The 3 accused (bus conductor and two people from Ryan), who were earlier arrested by the Haryana Police, were sent to 1-day CBI custody.

CBI, 12-member forensic team reaches at Ryan International School, Gurgaon to probe into the murder of 7-year-old Pradyuman Thakur. (Photo: PTI)

Gurgaon: A day after the Central Bureau of Investigation got notification from the Haryana government to probe the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, a three-member team of the investigation agency on Saturday arrived at Ryan International School in Gurgaon.

Along with the central investigating agency, a 12-member forensic team has also reached the school on Saturday morning.

The three accused (bus conductor and two people from Ryan), who were earlier arrested by the Haryana Police, were sent to one-day CBI custody.

Read: Ryan owners fail to get protection from arrest in student murder case

The CBI had taken over the probe on Friday hours after Pradyuman's father, Varun Thakur threatened to approach the Supreme Court if the agency did not start its investigation within two days.

The investigation was till now carried out by the Gurgaon Police. Last week, the police had said a chargesheet had been prepared in the case, and it will be handed over to the CBI.

Read: Gurgaon student murder: Bus conductor held, cops say sexual assault attempted

Pradyuman was found murdered inside a toilet of Ryan International School, Gurgaon with his throat slit on September 8.

Bus conductor of the school, Ashok was arrested for sexually assaulting the boy and killing him when he raised an alarm.

Father of Pradyuman on Saturday said that he had suspected there's a background to Ashok coming as the culprit but hoped that the CBI probes the case from a different angle.
Earlier, Shah had announced that from October 1, the students of govt schools would have to say 'Jai Hind' when they answer the roll call.

Shah further lauded the progress in imparting modern education in Madrasa board. (Photo: ANI)

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh School Education Minister Vijay Shah on Friday appealed to madrasas to hoist the Tricolour and make the students sing the national anthem daily in a bid to inculcate patriotism among the students.

Addressing a function to mark the 20th foundation day of the MP Madarsa Board here, "Regular schools unfurl the Tricolour and sing the national anthem daily. I appeal to all madrasas in MP to unfurl the Tricolour and sing the national anthem daily. I don't think anybody should have a problem with that. Nobody has."

He further lauded the progress in imparting modern education in Madrasa board.

"I congratulate the board for their effort of inculcating 'nationalistic ideology' among the youths of the country," he added.

Read: Satna: Students answer roll call with 'Jai Hind' instead of 'Yes Sir or Madam'

Earlier, Shah had announced that from October 1, the students of government schools would have to say 'Jai Hind' when they answer the roll call in Satna district.
Ramdev also demonstrated various yogic postures and gave tips to the audience about how to live a quality life in todays fast-paced world.

Ramdev asked people to free themselves of diseases and medicines by adopting a healthy food and exercise regimen.

New Delhi: The human body is designed to last 400 years, but faulty lifestyle invites diseases that lead to its early end, yoga guru Ramdev said on Friday. He asked people to free themselves of diseases and medicines by adopting a healthy food and exercise regimen.

The human body is designed to live for 400 years, but we torture our bodies through excesses of food and lifestyle. We invite high blood pressure, heart ailments and other diseases that lessen its life span and makes it depend on doctors and medicines for the rest of our lives, he told the gathering at the 12th National Quality Conclave.

Ramdev also demonstrated various yogic postures and gave tips to the audience about how to live a quality life in todays fast-paced world.

Noting how one can take control of ones routine and eating habits to stay healthy, the yoga exponent claimed BJP president Amit Shah shed 38 kilos by doing that.

I met Amitbhai yesterday. He has managed to shed 38 kg by having boiled vegetables and soup for dinner and controlling his lunch, he said.

Often criticised for marketing his company Patanjali Ayurveds products, he said he marketed only good things. I talk about freedom of health from doctors and medicines by marketing good things like ayurveda, India and Make in India campaign. He said good quality life can be achieved through three things  six hours of sleep, an hour of physical exercise, and healthy eating habits. Ramdev said poor immunity was behind many diseases, particuarly cancer, and said regular practice of yogic breathing exercises pranayam and consumption of giloy (Tinospora cordifolia) could prevent them.
The Sena, an ally of the BJP, also questioned the patriotism of those advocating refuge to the community which is fleeing Myanmar.

More than 400,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims have poured into Bangladesh since the latest wave of violence exploded in their nearby home of Myanmar last month. (Photo: AP)

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Saturday said if India is forced to provide shelter to Rohingya immigrants under pressure from "vote-hungry" politicians, it would not bode

well for Muslims in the country.

The Sena, an ally of the BJP, also questioned the patriotism of those advocating refuge to the community which is fleeing Myanmar.

"Having sympathy for these people for votes is the height of anti-nationalism. Already, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are living here in lakhs. If Rohingyas also get added now due to these vote-hungry politicians, it will not be long before what happened in Myanmar happens here as well. And in the process, Indian Muslims will be crushed," the Sena said in an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

Violent attacks allegedly by Myanmarese armymen have led to an exodus of Rohingyas from the western Rakhine state in that country to India and Bangladesh.

"At present, around 40,000 Rohingyas are living in the country. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims have entered India illegally and are a threat to the nation's security.

"The Centre also believes some of them have links with Pakistan's (spy agency) ISI," the Sena organ said.

"If somebody wants these people to stay and prosper here, do they have any patriotism in their blood? It is because of some selfish Muslim clerics that a common Muslim man is always under suspicion," the Marathi daily added.

The Sena said those backing Rohingya Muslims should explain why they had to flee the neighbouring country.

Two days ago, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and not refugees who have applied for asylum in India.

The Centre told Parliament on August 9 that more than 14,000 Rohingyas, registered with the UNHCR, are at present staying in India. However, aid agencies estimate there are about 40,000 Rohingya Muslims in the country.
Former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal condemned the murder and urged police to nab the perpetrators at the earliest.

KJ Singh was the former news editor of Indian Express. (Photo: Aditya Raj Kaul | Twitter)

Mohali (Chandigarh): Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh on Saturday ordered the police to set up Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother.

Senior journalist KJ Singh and his nonagenarian mother were found dead at their residence in Mohali in Punjab.

The police suspect that Singh and his mother, Gurcharan Kaur, were murdered. Senior police officers are present at Singh's house currently.

"There was injury marks on their necks," Mohali Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Alam Vijay Singh said.

Singh was in his sixties while his mother Gurcharan Kaur was 92 years old.

KJ Singh was the former news editor of Indian Express. He had also worked with The Tribune and some other publications.

Former Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal took to Twitter to condemn the murder and urged police to nab the perpetrators at the earliest.

Just heard senior journalist KJ Singh has been murdered along with his mother.Condemn this killing and urge authorities to nab culprits imm.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

Further details are awaited.

(With inputs from PTI)
ED in its chargesheet also found that Shabir Shah's wife Dr Bilquis was also involved in collecting money through Hawala in terror funding.

ED in its chargesheet said that Shabir Shah admitted to having telephonic conversations with Hafiz Saeed on the issue of Kashmir and that he had recently spoken to Saeed in January 2017. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday filed a chargesheet against Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah and a suspected hawala dealer in connection with a 2005 money laundering case filed against him for alleged terror financing.

The final report, filed before Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma, also named the alleged hawala dealer Mohammed Alsam Wani, who is in judicial custody along with Shah.

Read: Terror funding case: Delhi Court dismisses bail plea of separatist Shabir Shah

ED in its chargesheet said that Shabir Shah admitted to having telephonic conversations with Hafiz Saeed on the issue of Kashmir and that he had recently spoken to Saeed in January 2017.

"Shabir Shah received funds from terror outfits from Pakistan to promote terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India," it said.

Shah also admitted that he had no source of income of his own and as such he had not filed any ITR regarding his income.

He only receives donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards party fund which amounts to 8-10 lakhs per annum.

The chargesheet also disclosed that hawala dealer Aslam Wani was receiving money on behalf of Shabir Shah at Delhi, delivered to him by Pakistan hawala operator, Shafi Shayar.

ED in its chargesheet also found that Shabir Shah's wife Dr Bilquis was also involved in collecting money through Hawala in terror funding.

Read: Terror funding case: Delhi Court dismisses bail plea of separatist Shabir Shah

The case dates back to August 2005 in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had earlier arrested Wani.

Wani had then claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the duo.

Shah was arrested by the ED on July 25. The agency arrested Wani on August 6.

(With inputs from PTI)
HES animal protection manager Jason Nelson, above, and other HES officials werent sure Jupiter would live when the starved dog was brought to the shelter in August Doc, an elderly dog from North Georgia, was facing euthanasia at a high-kill shelter in North Georgia until HES agreed to take him in this summer Jupiter now looks nothing like the starving bag of bones he was when he was carried into HES in August -- he's gorgeous. Amazing what a little food can accomplish, isn't it? Previous Next

When Jupiter arrived at the Humane Educational Society in Chattanooga in August, he was nothing but skin and bones  and a fierce will to live.





Early this summer, Jupiters owner  disabled and in need of care  was institutionalized.





When he was finally carried into the HES shelter, animal protection manager Jason Nelson said, Jupiter weighed just 21.6 pounds and was so weak he couldnt stand up, let alone walk.





Hes supposed to be around 60 (pounds), he said. We didnt know if he would make it.





Six weeks later  thanks to frequent small feedings, IV fluids and lots of TLC  Jupiters weight has more than doubled, up to 50 pounds, and the vet has given him a clean bill of health.





What he needs now is a home, Mr. Nelson said.





HES officials  inundated with dozens of animals rescued from shelters in the paths of hurricanes Harvey and Irma on top of those, such as Jupiter, brought in from Hamilton County and the surrounding area  are trying to help.





From now until the end of September, the cost of the adoptions at HESChattanooga will be picked up by Free the Shelters, a nationwide campaign funded by corporate sponsor PRAI Beauty.





About 2.4 million healthy, adoptable cats and dogs  about one every 13 seconds 

are put down in U.S. shelters each year, according to PRAIs website. Research has shown that removing adoption fees increases the number and speed of pet adoptions and reduces euthanasia. Furthermore, there are no significant differences in outcome between pets adopted with or without a fee.





At HES, PRAIs donation means adopters will pay no fees for the cats and dogs they take home to be part of their families.





The free adoptions increase the chances that cats and dogs  dozens and dozens brought here from shelters in the paths of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as the hundreds already in the shelter that were here to greet them  will find homes this month.





Its also good news for senior animals that are often overlooked by potential adopters looking for puppies and kittens.





Take Doc, a friendly, dignified nine-year-old dog that  like Jupiter  came close to death this summer.





In July, Doc was turned in to a high-kill North Georgia shelter where cats and dogs are kept only a few days before being killed to make space for new animals. Doc had outstayed his welcome; he was due for euthanasia.





Thats when somebody contacted HES and the shelter agreed to make room for him. Hes been there since July 18 , greeting visitors with dignity and a sedately wagging tail.




Earlier this month, Damania accused Khadse, a former minister, of making obscene remarks against her and demanded his arrest.

The activist lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in suburban Santacruz about the call. (Photo: Twitter)

Mumbai: Social activist Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed she received a threat call from a Pakistan-based number, asking her to withdraw the cases she has filed against BJP leader Eknath Khadse.

The former Aam Aadmi Party leader said the Truecaller app -- which reveals caller identity -- showed that the number belongs to "Dawood".

The activist lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in suburban Santacruz about the call. Police officials from Vakola later visited her home and recorded her statement, she said.

Damania tweeted that she received the call at 12.33 am, asking her to withdraw all cases against Khadse, from a number prefixed with +92 -- the country code of Pakistan. The app flashed "Dawood 2" on the screen, she said in the tweet.

Last nght at 12.33,I recd a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse +922135871719 Truecaller shows Dawood 2 Pakistan pic.twitter.com/9GUqR2VVNt  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating pic.twitter.com/Gsws5rO8WK  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Earlier this month, Damania accused Khadse, a former minister, of making obscene remarks against her and demanded his arrest.

Khadse, however, had denied having made any such remarks against the social activist.

Damania said that the caller spoke rudely to her and threatened to make her life difficult.

"I immediately spoke to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and he was prompt to assure me that the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) will seriously look into the matter," she added.

"I also spoke to the police commissioner. Ironically, officers from Vakola police station, which is just a five minute walk away from my home, took over an hour to reach my residence and record my statement," she said.

Damania also alleged that the police are taking the matter "casually" and did not deem it necessary to post a policeman outside her home.

The activist, through tweets, appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh for action in the matter.

I appeal to PM @narendramodi @PMOIndia & @rajnathsingh to give me time to urgently see them.Threat call? to a citizen? I want my Govt to act  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Based on Damania's complaint, an FIR has been lodged under IPC sections 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication), a police official said.

Damania is among the petitioners who have filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Khadse for alleged graft.
The party took this decision during the Panchayat Convention of the party, which was attended by a large number of grassroots workers of the party.

Guwahati: In what may be a setback for the BJP-led alliance in Assam, the regional Asom Gana Parishad, one of the constituents of ruling alliance, has decided to contest the upcoming panchayat elections on its own.

The party took this decision during the Panchayat Convention of the party, which was attended by a large number of grassroots workers of the party.

AGP president Atul Bora, who is also the agriculture minister of the BJP-led government, said, We have decided to contest the panchayat elections alone. We believe our position at the grassroots is far better than the BJP. In many areas the BJP has failed to live up to the expectations of the people. So, for us, it is an opportunity to strengthen our roots.

Mr Bora said, We have always been saying that the interest of the people of the state has to be supreme. According to the provisions of the Assam accord, the illegal migrants must be detected and deported irrespective of their religion and caste.

It is significant that BJP wants that Hindu migrants who fled Bangladesh because of religious persecution and came to Assam should be given citizenship. The working president of the AGP, Keshab Mahanta, who is also a minister in the government, said, It doesnt matter even if we are with the government. We have been raising our voice on several issues and will continue to do so.

AGP founder president and former two time chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta said it is the high time the people of the state embrace regionalism.

Senior AGP leader and former working president of the party Phani Bhushan Choudhury stressed the need of strengthening the party at grassroots on the pattern of the RSS. He asked the party workers to take a lesson from the RSS and consolidate the organisation at the grassroots level.

Several district level leaders who have attended the convention also voiced their displeasure at the alliance and wanted to go alone in the upcoming panchayat elections.
Surjewala further asked the government to explain what action was taken about such a breach and what responsibility has been fixed by the govt.

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday sought an explanation from the government regarding the visit of the wife of Indias most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim to Mumbai in 2016. According to the Congress, the Thane police has said, India most wanted terrorist, Dawood Ibrahims wife Mehajabin Shaikh had visited Mumbai to in 2016, for over 15 days and returned to Pakistan.

Targeting the government, Congress communications chief Randeep Singh Surjewala said, Congress demands that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and home minister Rajnath Singh apprise the nation about the national security failure and circumstances in which the wife of a dreaded terrorist entered and left India with complete ease, without being questioned or detained.

Mr Surjewala further asked the government to explain what action was taken about such a breach and what responsibility has been fixed by the government. The Congress also alleged that names of several BJP leaders from Maharashtra have come up whenever there are questions to links to Dawood Ibrahim. Mr Surjewala further added, Maharashtra BJP minister Eknath Khadse had to resign when there were allegations of his telephonic conversations with Dawood Ibrahim. The entire country has seen several BJP ministers and leaders of the Devendra Fadnavis government recently attending a wedding of Dawood Ibrahims relatives.

While Congress spokesman Rajiv Shukla said that, at a time when the country was fighting against terror, the wife of a terrorist visited the country for a fortnight and thereafter returned without anybody being aware of her visit. He added, This is a serious matter and the Mumbai police, the Maharashtra government and the Centre should answer.

Targeting the BJP, the Congress leader said that the history of the BJP is dotted with BJPs compromise of national security in tackling terrorism. Iqbal Kaskar the brother of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was arrested by the anti-extortion cell of the Thane police earlier this week.
The agency has recorded Shahs statements over a dozen times since he was arrested from Srinagar on July 26.

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday accused Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah of having been in touch with Pakistan-based terrorist Hafiz Saeed in a chargesheet filed against him in connection with a 2005 money laundering case related to alleged terror financing.

The court of additional sessions judge Sidharth Sharma, after taking cognisance of the chargesheet, fixed September 27 as the next date of hearing.

The ED has named as many as 19 people as prosecution witnesses. The ED has also chargesheeted Moha-mmed Aslam Wani, an alleged hawala dealer, under various sections. Wani is presently in judicial custody along with Shah.

The Central probe agency, in its 700-page chargesheet filed under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), has furnished Shahs statements where he allegedly told investigators that he has no source of income of his own and that he does not file any income tax returns. The agency claimed that its probe had found that Shah had been talking to global terrorist and Pakistan-based Jamat-ud Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed over telephone, most recently in January. The ED claimed that Shah only received donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards the party fund which amounts to Rs 8-10 lakh per annum. It was also found that Shah does not keep records of these donations which he receives in cash only, the ED prosecution complaint said.

The agency has recorded Shahs statements over a dozen times since he was arrested from Srinagar on July 26.

The probe agency also recorded the statement of 36-year-old Wani. He allegedly said that he came to Delhi from Srinagar at the directions of Shah sometime in April 2003, and that that was the first time they had met. Wani was arrested by the ED on August 6 from Srinagar.

He was also taken by agency sleuths to certain locations in Old Delhi where he used to take cash for alleged hawala deals. The Enforcement Directorate alleged that Wani was asked by Shah to work for him (on a commission basis) in collecting hawala money from Delhi and deliver to him at Srinagar.

The case dates back to August 2005 in which the Delhi polices special cell had earlier arrested Wani. Wani had then claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under PMLA against the duo in 2007. Wani was arrested with Rs 63 lakh, allegedly received through hawala channels from West Asia, and a cache of ammunition, on August 26, 2005. During questioning, he had allegedly told the police that Rs 50 lakh was to be delivered to Shah and `10 lakh to Jaish-e-Mohammads area commander in Srinagar, Abu Baqar, and that the rest was his commission. In 2010, a Delhi court had cleared Wani of terror funding charges, but had convicted him under the Arms Act.
PM Modi, Rajnath Singh hail Sushmas speech at UN.

New Delhi: In a no-holds-barred attack on Pakistan for its support and export of terror, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday, asked the neighbours politicians to introspect as to why India is recognised globally as an IT superpower while Pakistan is infamous as the pre-eminent export factory for terror.

While India, she said, has built institutions of learning like IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, Pakistan has built terrorist organisations like the LeT, JeM, Haqqani Network and Hizbul Mujahideen.

We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists..., she said.

Ms Swaraj, who began her address by praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi and listing the various welfare schemes launched by the government, shifted the focus on Pakistan with this biting line: While India is completely engaged in fighting poverty, our neighbour Pakistan is fighting us.

Virtually calling Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi a hypocrite, Ms Swaraj, responding to the accusations levelled by him, said that all those listening to his speech had only one reaction, Look who is talking.

When Pakistans PM Abbasi was accusing India of human rights violations, those listening were commenting, Look whos talking. A country that has crossed all limits by its brutality and slaughtered innocents was teaching us about humanity, Ms Swaraj said.

Ms Swarajs address came a day after India called Pakistan Terroristan, in response to Mr Abbasis claims of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mr Modi hailed Ms Swarajs speech as excellent and insightful. In a series of tweets, Mr Modi said, A strong message was given by Sushma Swaraj ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace She has made India extremely proud at the world stage.

Home minister Rajnath Singh also congratulated Ms Swaraj for her powerful speech, saying she has exposed Pakistans duplicity on terrorism.

Ms Swaraj, who delivered her speech, in Hindi, said that the Pakistani PM has to answer why the peace process between the two countries was stalled despite Indias efforts and referred to her own visit to Islamabad in 2015 in this regard.

She further said that the Pakistan PM has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration, India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at forgetting facts that destroy their version, she said.

Virtually pouring scorn on Pakistans claim that its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had left a legacy of peace and friendship, Ms Swaraj, her voice dripping with sarcasm, said history knows whether this was so and then added that it was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who wanted peace and friendship with Islamabad.

Pakistans Prime Minister claimed that (his nations founder) Mohammed Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. History knows only too well whether he did so or not, but what is beyond doubt is that Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace and friendship, Ms Swaraj said.

She also praised PM Modi and referred to his schemes for poverty alleviation, empowerment of the girl-child and his efforts towards skill-development while at the same time hailing demonetisation as a brave step against corruption.

Ms Swaraj had certain uncomfortable questions for the UN and global community as well.

Describing terrorism as an existentialist danger to mankind, Ms Swaraj wondered how the international community will fight the menace if the UN Security Council cannot agree on the definition of terrorism.

Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism. If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together? ...Let us display our new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Pointing out that action against all terrorists was the need of the hour, she said that there are countries which are stalling the process by putting their self-interest first.

Ms Swaraj, speaking for the second consecutive year at the UNGA, began her speech by praising PM Modi. There are two ways of addressing the curse of poverty. The traditional method is through incremental levels of aid and hand-holding. But our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen the more radical route, through economic empowerment... All our economic programmes have a principal purpose, the empowerment of the poor PM Modi is turning job seekers into job providers.

Ms Swaraj, who also spoke about the environmental crisis the world faces, concluded her address by reciting a Sanskrit verse that she also translated: May all be happy; May all be healthy; May all see what is good; May all be free from suffering.
The problem that the Gujarat unit is facing is the lack of a leader who has a pan Gujarat appeal.

New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who apparently impressed the international audience with his speeches in United States, however, continues to fumble in the domestic front. In the US, he addressed students in University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. Two weeks of a well-orchestrated tour saw him visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Princeton and New York, where Mr Gandhi was exposed to a diversity of opinion makers. His speeches created quite a flutter back home, especially when he spoke about dynasty in India.

He also came under severe criticism from his opponents for criticising India on foreign soil. But where he seemed to have scored is underlining the crisis of unemployment prevailing in India.

While Mr Gandhi is slated to take over as the party chief in October, his outfit continues to be in a mess in the election-bound states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The trouble seems to be more in Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh, where chief minister Virbhadra Singh and Congress state unit chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu are at loggerheads. The chief minister had publicly announced that till the time the state unit chief is replaced, neither will he contest the election nor will he campaign. Twenty-seven sitting MLAs of the Congress have also written to the Congress high command backing the claim of the chief minister.

Mr Singh had also come to Delhi and met Congress president Sonia Gandhi but there remains an eerie silence. In the meantime, general secretary in-charge of Himachal Pradesh Sushil Kumar Shinde said that there is no chance of the state unit being replaced. Reacting sharply to Mr Shindes remarks, the chief minister said, Mr Shinde is not the final authority in the party.

Similarly, in poll-bound Gujarat, too, the party is yet to see a planned campaign. Insiders say that Mr Gandhi is expected to kickstart the Gujarat campaign from September 25.

Though Mr Gandhi might have impressed students abroad but now, as the Congress president in waiting, he needs to address the nuts and bolts issues of his party at the earliest.

The problem that the Gujarat unit is facing is the lack of a leader who has a pan Gujarat appeal. This has become even more prominent after the exit of former chief minister Shankarsinh Vaghela from the party.

After the breaking away of the JD(U) from the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, the Congress Legislature Party is also facing a major crisis. Several MLAs have openly spoken against state unit chief and former education minister Ashok Chaudhary, a nominee of Mr Gandhi, and general secretary in-charge C.P. Joshi. As the Congress Legislature Party was on the verge of a spilt, Mr Gandhi met all the MLAs and senior leaders from Bihar regarding the situation prevailing in the state. But a final decision is yet to be taken.

A similar situation prevails in Madhya Pradesh where the Congress has to appoint a new state unit chief. Once again, a final decision is yet to be taken. Though Mr Gandhi might have impressed students abroad but now, as the Congress president in waiting, he needs to address the nuts and bolts issues of his party at the earliest.
The Prime Minister reiterated the Centres resolve of ensuring housing for all by 2022, when India completes 75 years as an independent nation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath during the distribution of the certificate to beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Rural & Urban) at Shahanshahpur look on, Varanasi. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: Taking on the Opposition which has time and against accused him of playing vote bank politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday declared that his politics is not for votes as he and his party come from a different culture.

Speaking at a public meeting after inaugurating Pashu Aarogya Mela in Shahanshahpur, Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency, the Prime Minister said, Our politics is not for votes, our culture is different. In politics, people undertake only those tasks which yields votes, but our character is different. Some politicians work only when it fetches votes, but we have been brought up in a different culture.

He did not believe in votebank politics because, he said, country should be above party politics.

Reacting to the raging debate over the success of his governments fight against blackmoney, the Prime Minister claimed that he had launched a major war against corruption and black money and was determined to weed it out of the system. Most of the problems faced by the common people in India are rooted in corruption, he said.

Talking about his pet project Swachch Bharat  the Prime Minister said that cleanliness is like worship for him as it can rid the poor of various diseases and a great deal of economic burden. Hundreds of diseases come knocking at our doorstep because of lack of hygiene, he added. He said that he was fortunate to lay the foundation stone of a public toilet in Shahanshahpur village because sanitation is also a kind of worship for me.

Stressing on this particular theme, Mr Modi, quoting a Unicef report, said that each household in India which does not have a toilet, spends around Rs 50,000 a year on treatment of different ailments. It is the responsibility of every citizen and every family to keep their surroundings clean so we are able to build clean villages, clean cities and a clean nation, he stated.

The Prime Minister reiterated the Centres resolve of ensuring housing for all by 2022, when India completes 75 years as an independent nation. Providing a roof to every family in the rural or urban area is a huge responsibility, he said and then, the man who is being projected by his party as the ultimate vikas purush thundered, If Modi will not take up this challenge, who will?

He blamed the states previous Samajwadi Party government of not being interested in building houses for the poor. He said that it was after much persuasion by the central government that the state government had submitted a list of 10,000 people who were to be provided housing.

Within a short time, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has registered several lakhs for the housing scheme and the number of houses to be built for the poor equals the total number of houses of a medium sized European nation. Imagine the amount of cement, bricks, wood, steel and other building material required to build these houses. Arranging for this and building the houses will provide employment to a large number of people, he claimed.

Mr Modi also lauded UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath for his work for the welfare of cattle and said that in the past no one paid attention to them as they do not vote. I hope such programmes for the health of cattle will be held across the state through which we will take care of cattle belonging to the poor. It will be a relief for them, he added.
In lengthy Facebook post, Cespedes explains why he theorised on gender of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remis creation.

There is a mystery about Tintins gender and sexuality and a lot of enthusiasm about the character himself, says Cespedes

Tintin is a girl, and most probably asexual.

That is the conclusion French philosopher Vincent Cespedes drew after recently rifling through the adventures of the courageous Belgian reporter  an androgynous redhead with blue eyes.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Cespedes explains why he theorised on the gender of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remis creation.

Speaking to this correspondent, Cespedes -- also a painter, pianist and composer -- said, There is a mystery about Tintins gender and sexuality and a lot of enthusiasm about the character himself.

Over the years, the character created by Remi (who sketched the 24 comic albums under pen name Herge) has become something like an enigma. Interestingly, Tintin enthusiasts question why there are not a lot of women around him or why his physical attributes are not exactly of a girls but that of a teenagers.

The 44-year-old feels there are quite a few clues in Tintin's physical appearance and mannerisms, all pointing towards Tintin being a woman.

It was like a private joke for Herge and his friends, he says.

You dont have proof that he is not a girl. It is a comic character and you can never really prove he is a boy either. You never see his penis; you never see any hair on his face or chest.

Vincent goes on to add that Tintin being a girl can explain a lot of strange things. He could have been disguised as a boy to allow him/her to travel without fear of the misogyny of other cultures, modesty, manners, or the stupidity of prejudices".

That is the most interesting part of the theory, Vincent says excitedly, adding, Tintins relationship with and unfailing support of Captain Haddock was an unfamiliar equation between men during those times  the early 20th Century.

Cespedes cites two incidents that he believes accidentally manifest Tintins gender inclinations.

One, when a villain smashes his fist on the wall in The Temple of the Sun, Tintin said "sorry".

Second, his stereotypically feminine attitude towards a drunk Captain in The Crab With The Golden Claws.

When asked how Tintin escaped such sexual scrutiny for nearly a century, Cespedes said: Most fans were men who believed blindly in Herge. They believed Herge would not play with their sentiments, but perhaps it was a false belief.

Cespedes, on his social media page, claimed that in 1991,actress Judith Godreche, had taken on the role to play Tintin.

Furthermore, In 1941, Herge made a theatre piece called Tintin in India. And what kind of an actor did he choose to play Tintin? He chose a girl to play Tintin and her name was Jeanne Rubens.

According to Vincent this was the first time that Herge chose someone from real life to emulate his character onstage and it was a girl.

There were a lot of contemporary boys and actors, even androgynous people who could have played the character, but then why a boy, because it Herge it is a joke, and nobody saw that.

The 44-year-old says while he is not yet ready to call his Facebook post a theory, he is just happy he started the ball rolling.

While it started out as a humorous post, what surprises me is people want to buy into this new theory. Everyone wants to spread this theory which is not yet a theory in reality.

Also, Tintin does not exist in real life, says Cespedes. He is a fictional character, and everyone has the liberty to think that Tintin could be a girl hidden in that blue sweatshirt, sporting a tuft above that cropped hair. It is art and art is open to interpretation, Vincent concludes.

Cespedes believes Herge played a joke on his readers by carefully portraying Tintin as a boy, yet carelessly leaving enough clues to accentuate the characters feminity.
The actual transfer of loan waiver amount into the farmers bank accounts will take place after October end.

Mumbai: Around 58 lakh farmers have applied for the state governments farm loan waiver scheme till Friday, which was the last day for the submission of applications. Around one crore have registered as farmers. The scrutiny of the loan waiver applications will be underway till October end, according to revenue minister Chandrakant Patil. The actual transfer of loan waiver amount into the farmers bank accounts will take place after October end.

Maharashtra government has declared farm loan waiver scheme for 89 lakh farmers. Farmers will get loan waiver of around Rs 1.5 lakh. According to the governments initial estimate, Rs 34,022 crore will be needed for the scheme. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis declared the loan waiver in June.

Initially, the state government had announced loan waiver for the farmers who failed to repay their loans from 2011-12. But later on the demand of various organisations, it included defaulter farmers from 2009.

This may have led to increase in numbers of beneficiaries by six lakh. To avoid the misuse of the scheme, the government introduced online form filing system. The online system has been facing flak due to lack of Internet services and other logistical services. However, the state government and co-operative minister Subhash Deshmukh have backed the online application system.

After the process of filing forms started on August 1, around 57,68,254 farmers have applied for the scheme. Around one crore have registered as farmers till Friday. The final registration numbers will be announced on Saturday.

Mr Patil had said that 10 lakh fake farmers may have applied for loan waiver but later clarified that scrutiny of application is underway and exact details will come out. The exact number of beneficiaries will be declared around mid-October and the government may start transferring amount to farmers bank accounts before November 1.

The story till now

The farm loan waiver issue has been a serious political issue since last six months in the state. At first, the opposition parties held statewide Sangharsh Yatra in April. Then on June 1, farmers across the state went on strike. Under pressure from the opposition and the farmers, the state government declared Rs 34,022 crore loan waiver for 89 lakh farmers on June 21. The state government asked farmers to file an online application for the loan waiver. It was earlier scheduled to complete the implementation of loan waiver before September 15. However, the state government has said that it will start distributing money to farmers from October 1.
Melania Trump, who has always been in news for her style quotient, was criticised by netizens all around the world.

For second trip to Houston MelaniaTrump again in stillettos to depart and sneakers and Texas cap on arrival after earlier criticism.

Washington: US President Donald Trump came to wife Melania Trumps rescue, days after she faced backlash for wearing stilettos while visiting the flood ravaged Texas in August, a media report said.

US based magazine, The Hill quoted Trump saying, She's wearing high-heels like many of you would do. And they went after her, but she didn't know, and then when she got off the plane in Texas she was wearing sneakers, which she had with her. And they [media] know it was dishonest," Trump told the crowd, adding sarcastically, "You know, she's going to go into the floods with her high heels.

In August, Trump and his wife Melania had visited the flood ravaged Texas during which the latter was spotted wearing sky-high heels before boarding the aircraft from White House in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

Melania Trump, who has always been in news for her style quotient, was criticised by netizens all around the world.

In this regard, slamming the coverage of her shoes, the first lady's communications director has said in statement, It's sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas and people are worried about her shoes, the report quoted.

Despite criticism, the first lady was seen wearing stilettos again while leaving the White House for a second trip to Texas later that week.
The Civic Arts League, Inc., in a joint venture with Grace Episcopal Church, will host the dedication of the Bobbie Crow Gallery at the church on Monday, Oct. 2, from 6-8 p.m. The public is invited to the free event and it will feature original works by members of the Civic Arts League, as well as light refreshments.

During the dedication of the Bobbie Crow Gallery in celebration of Ms. Crows life and work, the artists of the Civic Arts League will showcase their own original works commemorating their personal experiences with Ms. Crow and remembering all that her influence meant to them. Following its dedication, the new gallery space will be open to the public during weekday church business hours and on Sundays. The gallery will serve as a venue for a variety of ongoing community art exhibits throughout the year. Current artists work will be available for sale during the month following the dedication.

Bobbie Brooks Crow was born in Cleveland in 1931 and spent her adult life in Chattanooga. The local art community and the congregation of Grace Episcopal both lost one of their most beloved members and friends when Ms. Crow passed away in March. The Bobbie Brooks Crow Gallery will stand as a memorial to her memory.

Art was always a part of Ms. Crows life and she delighted in encouraging other artists to express themselves through their creations, and to exhibit their art for others to enjoy. She loved to watch other artists draw, paint, and sculpt. To further encourage artists in our community, she founded the St. Catherines Artist Guild at Grace Episcopal Church. The church is currently the meeting place of the Civic Arts League of which Ms. Crow was an officer and active member. In past years she was also artist-in-residence at numerous schools in Chattanooga and Georgia.

Ms. Crows own pieces have been exhibited over the years at such venues as the Walnut Street Bridge, the campus of UTC, the Creative Discovery Museum, Miller Plaza, the River Gallery Outdoor Festival and the Catoosa County Library. Her paintings were often done on a grand scale, and represented her love of vibrant colors and bold shapes. She often referred to her work as spiritual art. Her personal favorites included evocative abstract images and her paintings of angels and animals.

The Civic Arts League, Inc. is a non-profit organization consisting of multi-talented artists dedicated to the stimulation of the creative arts and the promotion of its cultural and educational interests in our area. Members meet the first Monday of every month (except in July and on some holidays), at 6 p.m. at the Grace Episcopal Church at 20 Belvoir Ave. in the Brainerd Area of Chattanooga. To inquire about membership or to host an exhibit, please contact President Sandra Babb at 277- 9464, or Art Director Cynthia Pennington at 619-8959.
Meanwhile, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj is also likely to clear the air about the Indias perspective on Rohingya issue.

New York: External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj will address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the third time representing India in the 72nd session of the General Assembly is likely to corner China for its hindrance to put UN ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Massod Azhar.

Sushma Swaraj is also expected to echo Indias stand on Rohingya issue and the long standing Indias bid for permanent membership for UN Security Council.

It was for the first time that BRICS nation in a declaration termed the Pakistan based organisations, like JeM as terrorist group.

Press Release following Meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers

September 21, 2017 pic.twitter.com/J9Oy3YvoUn  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 21, 2017

The move came close on heels after US President Donald Trump in August attacked Pakistan for giving safe havens to terrorist outfits. The US had already declared the JeM as terror group.

With a backing from super power along with BRICS Sushma Swaraj is in comfortable position to give China a rebuttal on supporting its all weather ally Pakistan from harbouring terrorists groups.

China has been acting as a roadblock to Indias request to put UN ban on JeM chief, the main perpetrator behind the 2016 Pathankot air base attack in India. China has been using veto to make Indias plea null and void.

Stating that Pakistan has become geography synonymous with terror, Indias first secretary to UN, Eenam Gambhir in Right of Reply during the general debate of 72nd session, on Friday said: The quest for a land of pure has actually produced 'the land of pure terror.' Pakistan is now 'Terroristan', with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism.

Rohingya issue

Meanwhile, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj is also likely to clear the air about the Indias perspective on Rohingya issue as UN Human Rights Council earlier in September had deplored Indias move of deporting Rohingya refugees.

Responding to UNs backlash, Indias representative to UN called the move to safeguard nation's security, saying in its reply that the Rohingya refugees has affiliation to terrorist groups based in Pakistan.

The Indian Government reiterated the same and has also filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Rohingya issue calling them "illegal" immigrants in the country and their continuous stay posed "serious national security ramifications".

Media reports said that Pakistan based militant outfits Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamatul Mujahideen and Pakistani Taliban have reportedly given full assistance to the Rohingiya militants.

Similarly, Al Qaeda militants calling a support for Myanmars Rohingya Muslims, has warned the country that it would face punishment for its crimes.

The Rohingya refugee crisis, began with the military operation that sparked by attacks carried out by Rohingya militants on police posts on August 25. The crisis had shocked the world and UN as over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to take refugee in Bangladesh.

UNSC Permanent Membership

Sushma Swaraj is once again expected to bring up India's bid for permanent membership in United Nations Security Council. Ever since, Modi government came to power in 2014 India has been strongly pitching to among the five members along with Brazil, Japan and Germany.

Joint Press Statement issued after G-4 Foreign Minister's Meeting 1/2 pic.twitter.com/81dDEdPBPJ  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 20, 2017

But the bid has not borne the fruit as China, the only Asian-subcontinent country, enjoying the permanent status is against India's demand of being a permanent member.

The UNSC is combined group of 20 major countries, of which 5 countries (US, Russia, Britian, France and China), who are quoted as world powers enjoy permanent membership, whereas the other 15 countries, which include both India and Pakistan are non-permanent and the list of non-permanent countries keep rotating.

G-4 Foreign Minister's Meeting Joint Press Statement 2/2 pic.twitter.com/YJfdE9CVBB  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 20, 2017

During her 71st UNGA address Swaraj had urged international body to renew the outdated UNSC as majority of nations share the belief that the UN should not remain frozen in 1945, just to serve the interests of a few, adding that An expansion in the Permanent and non-Permanent membership of the Council to reflect contemporary realities is therefore, an urgent necessity.
Pentagon chief will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the India Gate, and meet the prime minister and Sitharaman in New Delhi.

New York: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis will visit India and hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman to reaffirm that Washington considers New Delhi a valued and influential ally.

This is the first visit by a cabinet-level official to India under the Trump administration.

"The secretary will emphasise that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia," the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

During his two-day visit starting from September 26, the Pentagon chief will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the India Gate, and meet the prime minister and Sitharaman in New Delhi.

"The secretary will also express US appreciation for Indias important contributions toward Afghanistans democracy, stability, prosperity and security," the Pentagon said.

Mattis visit to India comes after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, held a bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly meeting here.

During the meeting, the two leaders among other issues discussed Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism.

They also discussed the strategic relationship between Washington and New Delhi.

Modi and President Donald Trump had announced a two plus two strategic and defence dialogue between the two countries at the White House in June after the India-US summit.
The text contained spelling errors, raising doubt whether it was sent by Islamists or far-right activists trying to stoke fear.

Berlin: Anonymous threatening letters in Arabic containing white powder and razor blades have been sent to German chancellor Angela Merkels home and other politicians before Sundays election, the police said.

First analysis of the substance suggested it was harmless soda powder, the police said on Thursday.

The text contained spelling errors, raising doubt whether it was sent by Islamists or far-right activists trying to stoke fear, said one of the recipients, Greens party lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele. The Berlin police told AFP that five letters  one addressed to Merkels husband Joachim Sauer were received on Wednesday and Thursday.

The others were sent to the head of Merkels CSU Bavarian sister party, Horst Seehofer, the far-left Die Linke MP Gregor Gysi, and the Greens top candidate Katrin Goering-Eckardt, said public broadcaster NDR and WDR.

The typed letters had warned that the content was deadly, mentioned the ultra-orthodox Muslim Salafist community and were signed Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest), said the report. A spokesman from the government said we do not comment of security matters.
An official at South Koreas meteorological agency said they were analyzing the tremor quoting it as a natural quake.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, celebrates what was said to be the test launch of an intermediate range Hwasong-12 missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea. (Photo: AP)

Beijing: Chinas earthquake administration said on Saturday it had detected a magnitude 3.4 earthquake in North Korea that was a suspected explosion, raising fears the isolated state had conducted another nuclear bomb test weeks after its last one.

An official at South Koreas meteorological agency said they were analyzing the tremor, which they put at magnitude 3.0, but the initial view was that it was a natural quake.

We use several methods to tell whether earthquakes are natural or manmade, said the official, who asked for anonymity. A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a manmade earthquake. In this case we saw none. So as of now we are categorizing this as a natural earthquake.

The earthquake was detected in Kilju County in North Hamgyong Province, where North Koreas known Punggyeri nuclear site is located, the official said.

The Chinese administration said in a statement on its website that the quake, which occurred around 0830 GMT, was recorded a depth of zero kilometers.

All of North Koreas previous six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test on Sept 3 registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time. Satellite photos of the area after the Sept 3 quake showed numerous landslides apparently caused by the massive blast, which North Korea said was a hydrogen bomb.

The head of the nuclear test monitoring agency CTBTO said on Saturday that analysts were looking at unusual seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude in North Korea, and that it would have more details to come.

There was no immediate reaction from Chinas Foreign Ministry, but the news was widely reported by Chinese state media outlets and on social media.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of UN sanctions.

North Koreas Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, currently in New York for a United Nations meeting, warned on Thursday that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific.

US President Donald Trump called the North Korean leader a madman on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a mentally deranged US dotard who would face the highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.

North Koreas nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons program.
This is the goal of a document released 50 years after the encyclical Populorum progressio, which was presented today in the Vatican. Humanising education and promoting a culture of meeting and dialogue are urgent and necessary.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  The Congregation for Catholic Education and the Pontifical Foundation Gravissimum educationis presented today Educating to Fraternal Humanism, a document containing guidelines for more than 60 million students in 215,000 Catholic schools and 1,760 Catholic universities. The event was held in the Vatican on the 50th anniversary of the encyclical Populorum progressio.

The document, said Card Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, "analyses current scenarios, underlines what is urgent and necessary to humanise education, by favouring a culture of encounter and dialogue. This is possible, first of all, by globalising hope guided by the message of salvation and love of the Christian revelation. The solidarity and brotherhood that arise from this personal and social transformation will be the basis for an inclusive process that can influence lifestyles and economic and environmental paradigms. Catholic schools and universities around the world can actively contribute to this shared effort through an education offer able of integrating science and conscience."

In his address, the cardinal also provided a portrait of Catholic educational institutions. "In terms of numbers, Africa leads with 24 million students, followed by the Americas with about 12 million, Asia with more than 13 million, Europe with about 8,600,000, and Oceania with 1,200 .000. Despite a decline in some Western countries, there has been a steady increase in enrolment worldwide in recent years. In addition to this wealth of educational experiences, there are approximately 1,800 Catholic universities and about 500 ecclesiastical faculties, some of which have a history of several centuries whilst others are recent."

The goal of the document, presented by Mgr Angelo Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation, is first to "update the educational pact between generations, starting from the family to the entire social body. In addition, humanising education means taking care of the results of the educational service by taking into account the overall picture of the personal, moral, and social attitudes of all the parties involved in the educational process  teachers, students, local institutions, meeting places and spaces  for an education that is not selective but open to solidarity and sharing (educating the educators).

"Another very important guideline in the culture of the 21st century, in a society in which people of different traditions, cultures and religions live together, is to promote an education based on the development of a culture of dialogue, which Pope Francis constantly mentioned (from the culture of waste to the culture of dialogue).

True dialogue, said Mgr Zani, takes place within an ethical framework of requirements and attitudes for education, as well as social goals whose ethical bases are freedom and equality, not so much or only as announced values, but as deeds that link ethical principles with really fulfilled social and civic choices.

"Projects in the education in fraternal humanism aim at some fundamental goals. First and foremost, its main goal and priority is not the selection of the ruling classes, but inclusion, which allows every citizen to feel actively involved in the building of fraternal humanism, starting from a framework of shared ethical requests and norms.

In order to influence lifestyles and the very existence of future generations, we must "build the common good that involves not only the people of today. Indeed, This requires an education in fraternal humanism based on intergenerational ethics. [. . .] This means that in schools, and even more so in universities, it is necessary to provide the skills necessary to make decisive choices for the balance of human-social systems (such as democracy), natural and environmental systems (like ecology . . .) to ensure the needs of future generations."

The third mission of the university, in addition to teaching and research, is the dimension of openness to society and its problems.

Finally, to promote fraternal humanism that is incisive in the face of today's emergencies, "institutions must not act in a scattered or isolated manner. They must promote joint programmes. Only with the logic of networks of cooperation at the educational, school, academic and research levels can inclusive modes be activated so as to affect the cultural and social needs of the current context.
Mgr Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo stressed the importance of education to ensure the future of new generations. The Church is a sign of "unity" in a context "marked by divisions" and a bridge in interfaith dialogue. The situation has gone from euphoria for peace to resignation over permanent conflict. He appeals to Western Christians to come as pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - Being "citizens and Christians" in the Holy Land as Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah says is not just a "historical or geographic" fact, but a "choice of vocation and mission. God calls us on a journey to accomplish in the land of Jesus, said Mgr Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, the new patriarchal vicar of Jerusalem and Palestine.

The prelate spoke to AsiaNews about his 20 years of service as bishop, first in Nazareth and now in the city symbol of the three great monotheistic religions. For him, it is essential to stem the exodus from the Middle East, guaranteeing people, especially young people, the means and resources to "live and establish themselves socially and professionally. To reach this goal, education, basic and university, is essential".

"The Latin Patriarchate has been engaged in pastoral work aimed at helping young people, Mgr Marcuzzo said. We want to prepare new generations for life and work. We have promoted a broad diocesan plan involving and embracing schools and universities, so that young people can find a job and build a home, a family, planting roots in this land. Achieving a position is the starting point for this plan."

As evidence of the renewed bond between young people and the Holy Land, the bishop noted what happened last year at World Youth Day (WYD) in Krakow, Poland. "All the young people (from Israel and Palestine) came back. By contrast, many of those who came from Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq chose to stay in Europe, saying that it was heaven and that it was not possible to imagine going back to hell."

Bishop Marcuzzo, 72, is originally from the Diocese of Vittorio Veneto, northern Italy. He began his studies at the Pio X Missionary Institute in Oderzo. In 1960, when he was little more than a teenager, he left for Palestine to complete his priestly studies and learn Arabic. Ordained in 1969, he was appointed bishop in 1993. A year later he became the auxiliary bishop to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem with headquarters in Emmaus. Since then, he came to be considered the "bishop of Nazareth," the city where he lived, responsible for the local Christian community.

The prelate has also been involved in promoting interfaith dialogue and furthering Christian schools in the Holy Land, taking a lead in the protest against Israeli authorities over funding and their takeover by the state. For years, he has taught ancient Arab literature to young people and Christian, Jewish, and Muslim students.

Today, 23 September, he celebrated his farewell Mass at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, in a service that marked the handover to new patriarchal vicar, Fr Hanna Kildani. "I have taken on a new assignment, Mgr Marcuzzo said, but one that is not far from what I have done so far. It is the same mission, the same ministry, although in Jerusalem it becomes broader and more sensitive, with new challenges."

Jerusalem is the place where "everything is shared by Jews, Christians, Muslims", where "holy places stand and where pilgrims of the universal and local Church meet. It is a blend of pastoral realities and challenges, a very intense and at the same time very sensitive task, because it requires acceptance and sharing with others."

The pastoral plan remains the one drafted in the 1990s by the Synod of the Churches of the Holy Land and the indications of Pope John Paul II for 2000, namely make the Second Vatican Council a concrete fact, adapting it to the peculiarities of the Holy Land."

The Church in the region "wants, must and can" continue to be "a sign of unity, in a difficult context, marked by divisions," the prelate said. A symbol and a message to the Middle East was the maintenance of the unity of the dioceses of the Latin Patriarchate, whilst dividing them between the territories of Palestine, Jerusalem and Jordan. In addition, we have the great work of communion with all the Churches. We respect their liturgical peculiarities, but we bring together the other aspects of pastoral outreach like vocations, social life, attention and womens role."

In this context, interfaith dialogue with Jews and Muslims is renewed. We want to be a bridge and an element of communion with our brothers and sisters of different faiths, he said. Such a dialogue must not be abstract, with the danger of rejecting reality; instead, it must be a true exchange following, as Saint Paul says in the Letter to the Ephesians, the example of Christ who breaks down the walls that separate and build a new humanity."

This is task is even more important today when the situation in the region is "more serious than in the past". In the 1990s, there was "a phase of euphoria, in which one really thought of a lasting peace. Then came disappointment, resignation, sharpened by a series of negative events on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian. We Christians, the Church of the Holy Land, want to encourage, promote hope, trust and openness despite disappointments. Believing in brotherhood and reconciliation is possible, even if we do not see its premises."

Finally, Mgr Marcuzzo said that he wants to appeal to Christians all over the world through AsiaNews, especially in Europe and the West. "Come as pilgrims to the Holy Land. Do not be afraid, because there are no risks or dangers. We see the presence of many Christians from Asia, including Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, but visits from Europe are down. We in the Patriarchate are happy to welcome pilgrims and speak to them of our Church in Jerusalem." (DS)
Multinationals contribute to the problem by selling cheap disposable plastic products. Greenpeace points the finger at Nestle, Unilever and Procter & Gamble as some of the worst offenders.

Manila (AsiaNews/Agencies)  The Philippines is ranked third worst polluter of the worlds oceans after China and Indonesia and before Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, this according to a report released by Greenpeace yesterday.

The Philippines contributed 1.88 million tonnes of "mismanaged plastic waste" each year. This is in part due to Western consumer giants selling products packaged in cheap disposable plastic to Filipinos with Nestle, Unilever and Procter & Gamble among the worst offenders.

Single-use plastics from products sold by conglomerates, such as bags, bottle labels, and straws, stood out during a week-long Greenpeace clean-up campaign held on Manila Bay this month.

More than 54,200 pieces of plastic waste were recovered from the bay in total, including some 9,000 from Nestle products  the most frequently-seen brand.

Plastic waste was a particularly serious problem in "sachet economies" like the Philippines and other developing countries, where people on limited incomes are pushed to buy cheap goods in small quantities.

The problem is expected to worsen as these countries' growing economies lead to rising incomes and "exploding demand for consumer products".
In his audience with the participants in the General Chapter of Order, Pope Francis urges them to continue their "assiduous prayer" as lovers of prayer dedicated to "sobriety" to overcome today's cultural context that exalts "ephemeral goods and illusory artificial paradises. Monasteries are places of charity and hospitality, a "school of prayer, and a school of charity for all". Cistercian communities are present in Asia and the rest of the world.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis received the participants in the General Chapter of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.

I go with my heart and mind to your silent cloisters, from which the prayer for the Church and for the world continues ceaselessly, he told them. Through you I would like to send a cordial greeting to the brothers and sisters of your monasteries throughout various countries.

Cistercians of the Strict Observance follow the Benedictine rule according to a reform implemented in the 17th century. At present  according to Orders own estimates  there are 2,130 Trappist monks in 97 communities, and 1,800 Trappist nuns in 72 communities. They are present all over the world, including Asia, with communities in the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Syria.

In his meeting with the representatives of the Chapter, Francis thanked the Lord for the irreplaceable presence of the monastic communities, which represent a spiritual richness and a constant call to seek first of all the things up above, so as to live earthly realities to the right extent.

Calling on them to witnesses of assiduous prayer, of sobriety, of unity in charity, the pontiff urged them to give great importance to meditation on the Word of God, especially the lectio divina, which is a source of prayer and school of contemplation.

They are not professionals  in a negative sense  but lovers of prayer, considering fidelity external to the practices and norms that regulate it and mark the moments not as the end, but as a means of progressing in the personal relationship with God. [. . .] And at the same time your monasteries continue to be privileged places where you can find true peace and genuine happiness that only God, our safe refuge, can give.

Sobriety of life is useful, he added, for concentrating on the essential and in reaching more easily the joy of the spousal encounter with Christ. This element of spiritual and existential simplicity preserves all its worth as testimony in todays cultural context, which too often leads to the desire for ephemeral goods and illusory artificial paradises.

This lifestyle also favours your interior and exterior relationships with the monastery. You do not live like hermits in a community, but as coenobites in a unique desert. God manifests Himself in your personal solitude, as well as in the solidarity that joins the members of the community.

Your Order, like every religious institute, is a gift made by God to the Church; therefore, it is necessary that he lives well inserted into the communal dimension of the Church itself. I encourage you to be a qualified witness of the search for God, a school of prayer, and a school of charity for all.

[Y]ou are called to make known and to share this spiritual experience with other brothers and sisters in a constant balance between personal contemplation, union with the liturgy of the Church, and welcome to those who seek moments of silence so as to be introduced into the experience of living with God.

The pope urged the monks and the nuns to remain faithful to the spiritual heritage, that is, to the identity of your Order to as to live the grateful memory of the past and the prospects for a future of hope.

Following in the wake of your spiritual tradition, you are able to read the current state of the Order in its moments of light and darkness, and in the newness of the Spirit, identify with courage new possibilities and opportunities to bear witness to your charism in the Church and in society today.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The missionary is a member of the Religious of Mary Immaculate. She left Italy in 1953 for India. Her congregation helps and protects girls in growth and education, until they find work.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  Sister Palmira Biancolin, a member of Italian origin of the Religious of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated her first 100 years on Thursday, 21 September.

Her fellow sisters prepared a birthday party in gratitude for her 64 years in India helping girls and women. We, the Sisters of Community would like to thank you, Sr Palmira for all your love and dedicated service to the Province and thank God for His generous gift of you to our Regina Pacis Community.

Sister Palmira was born in Zoppola, a small town in the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Her parents, Antonio and Genoveffa, were blessed with five girls and three boys. As a child, she expressed the desire to become a missionary.

The meeting that changed her life took place in Rome when, at the age of 14, she met the Religious of Mary Immaculate. There and then, she decided that she would take her vows and devote her life to serving God and the girls and young women of the congregation.

When she was 20, she began her education in Rome, followed by her novitiate in Paris, and her final profession of perpetual faith in Spain.

Afterwards, she spent several years between Jerez de la Frontera (Spain) and Rome, until she found out that the order had opened a new home in Mumbai, India. At that point, she asked to go there and her request was accepted.

On 1st January 1953, she set foot on Indian soil, and began her life as a missionary, fulfilling the wish she had expressed at a tender age. In Mumbai, Nashik and Delhi, she took care of girls and young women, for the protection of children in congregation colleges, and for the improvement and promotion of girls and young women living in cities.

She offered tribal girls and women seeking jobs in the big city her loving care, teaching them the value of hygiene, honest work, and preparing them to be good domestic workers.

Her fellow nuns said that from time to time Sister Palmira talks about her childhood in Italy. At that moment, a smile comes across her face, but then she says, "I'm happy here and I want to stay here until the end."
China will restrict oil exports to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and suspend textile imports from DPRK, the Ministry of Commerce said.

The ministry will implement UN Security Council Resolution 2375 by halting the export of liquified natural gas and gas condensate to the DPRK from Saturday and limit exports of refined oil from Oct. 1, according to an online statement.

The ban on textile imports will be effective from Saturday, it said.

Refined oil exports to the DPRK from all UN members is capped at 500,000 barrels from Oct. 1 to the end of the year and 2 million barrels annually from Jan. 1, 2018. China will suspend such exports once the total exports approaches the ceiling.

Exported refined oil products must be used fully on civil purposes, not for the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, or other activities banned by the UN Security Council, the ministry said.

Last week the council unanimously adopted resolution 2375, imposing fresh sanctions on the DPRK over its nuclear test on Sept. 3, which violated previous UN resolutions.


(tashatuvango/Bigstock.com) (tashatuvango/Bigstock.com)

Starting a new business is being made easier in Australia with a faster registration system being rolled out across the nation and more support announced by the Government.The registration system has been going through testing with people starting a cafe, bar or restaurant business in New South Wales and has been hailed a successInitially it will reduce the registration process from over an hour to just 15 minutes and overall reduce the time it takes to start a small business from around 18 months to three months.'We are taking a phased approach to implementing a new business registration service. We want businesses to apply for their registrations and provide feedback on their experience so that we can make the service even better,' said Kelly O'Dwyer, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services.It allows businesses to apply for multiple business and tax registrations at the same time online at business.gov.au. The service also supports businesses to meet their obligations and avoid applying for registrations that they don't need.'By providing a simpler, clearer way to register a business, we hope to save people starting a business an estimated $40 million each year,' O'Dwyer added.The Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Craig Laundy, said the Government was working with the states to join up registration and licensing services across jurisdictions to save business even more time and money.The aim is to link the new business registration service with state systems to help make it faster and easier and some $9 million has been allocated to bring the new system to other business sectors and across Australia.The Government is also making the code for the service publically available so the private sector can seamlessly connect their customers to business registration services and find innovative ways to meet their customers' specific needs.New South Wales deputy premier and Minister for Small Business John Barilaro said the state Government is dedicated to reducing red tape and making it the easiest state to do business.'Small businesses are the backbone of the state economy with 710,000 businesses employing almost half of the workforce. We are dedicated to ensuring small businesses can start up easily, be successful and continue to create jobs,' he added.The state's Minister for Finance, Services and Property, Victor Dominello, said the partnership provides small businesses with a 21st century one stop shop service, dramatically reducing the piles of duplicative paperwork.
Hey guys



I have a friend with a bit of an issue i thought i would get some advice for him. He is in VIC and his fiance is from Thailand. She is currently pregnant and here on a 3 months tourist visa with no further stay condition. They have not yet applied for a partner visa or PMV but plan to in the future. At this stage she will have to return to Thailand to have their baby. I have been thinking over it and surely there is a way he can get the condition removed from the tourist visa based on he is getting married, has a baby on the way, wants the baby born in AUS and to apply for an onshore partner visa. Once she leaves AUS after this tourist visa she will be too pregnant to apply again for another tourist visa to come back.



Any suggestions would be appreciated



Thanks



Jarrod
Photo via order_242/Wikimedia (Creative Commons).

Franchise dealers now view the used car market more optimistically than the new vehicle market, according to a new sentiment index from Cox Automotive.

The finding speaks to the current shift of car buyers with prime and subprime credit toward the used market. The shift comes as the average new-vehicle loan payment reached a record $504, about a $139 difference from the average used-vehicle loan payment, according to a recent Experian Automotive finding.

The franchise dealers also have a markedly more optimistic view than their independent counterparts, as tracked by the Cox Automotive Sentiment Index, which debuted earlier this month.

The index covers the third quarter and reports data gathered from 1,033 dealer respondents during a survey between July 31 and Aug 7. The survey also included responses about the second quarter.

Dealers were asked to rate their sentiment on a scale of zero to 100, where zero is poor, 50 fair, and 100 good.

Franchise dealers rated the used vehicle sales environment as 68 on average, which was down from 70 in the second quarter. Independent dealers rated their sentiment as 53, which increased from 50 in the second quarter. Franchise dealers rated their used vehicle inventory as 55, while independents rated it at 47.

Sentiment about new vehicle sales was less optimistic. Franchise dealers rated sentiment at 57, and rated their sentiment about new vehicle inventory levels at 56.

Dealers haven't sounded the alarm about credit availability among their customers, but the issue is more acute with independent dealers. Franchise dealers listed credit as the eighth highest factor that's holding back their business, while independent dealers ranked it third. The top concerns were market conditions for franchise dealers and limited inventory for independent dealers.
Sixt vehicles at its St. Maarten location were parked and secured, but after Hurricane Irma hit, looting took place. People syphoned gas out of parked cars, leaving fuel trails everywhere. It appears a spark from down electrical lines ignited the place and the cars. Photo courtesy of Sixt.

Over the last few weeks, most of the northern Caribbean islands have been battered by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Fernando Intriago, vice president for Sixts Latin America and Caribbean operations, provided an update on the level of damage to many of the Caribbean islands. Both hurricanes caused destruction from Guadeloupe to the Bahamas, including Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Turks and Caicos, with the most damaging effects in St. Maarten, Barbuda, St. Thomas, and the British Virgin Islands.

Car rental operations have come to a complete stop in St. Maarten as the destruction of Princess Juliana International Airport forced a complete closure for days, said Intriago. Theres vast damage to Antigua and Barbudas infrastructure and fleet. There were airport closures in Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico; there is also fleet damage in those countries.

This week, Hurricane Maria hit many of the same areas as Irma. It went from a category 2 hurricane to a category 5 in less than 15 hours.

Hurricane Maria decimated all car rental operations in Dominica, and its expected to bring massive flooding and wind damage to fleets in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Turks and Caicos once again, said Intriago.

It looks like many car rental operations wont return to normal for a long time, especially with most hotels and resorts being forced to shut down for repairs that will take months. According to Intriago, the process to reopen rental operations will be slow with weak telecommunications and limited electrical power. And when it comes to fleet, replacement for fleet vehicles is limited and the process of fleet imports will come second to the recovery and reconstruction efforts.

In Puerto Rico, Hurricane Marias destruction was severe to many rental car operators, but Intriago says that Sixt escaped damage for the most part. Sixt will plan to reopen its Puerto Rico operations as early as Saturday morning.

As uninsured fleet losses pile up and with hotel and air travel cancellations mounting while the hotel infrastructure rebuilds, some rental car operators may simply not be able to survive the downturn, said Intriago. And some operators will rebound to capitalize the silver lining opportunity that the need of transportation for the recovery efforts yields. While it will be a long time before we see a sunny forecast for the already beaten segment, there will be plenty of business opportunities under the cloudy aftermath of this hurricane season.
China has been making tremendous efforts in cracking down on international rhinoceros poaching and rhino horn smuggling, ahead of World Rhino Day Friday.

"Ivory and Rhino horn products dating from any historical period should be banned from public trade and auctions," said Ma Weidu, a renowned antique collector in China, who endorsed WildAid's latest promotional campaign on rhino protection.

"China's top-down efforts to crack down on rhino horn poaching and smuggling are admirable and effective in dimming the illegal trade," said Steve Blake, chief representative of WildAid, an international wildlife conservation agency, in Beijing.

Rhinos around the world are endangered. Rhino populations have plummeted 95 percent in the last 40 years. In addition to demand for rhino horn for use in medicine, there is also significant demand for collectibles carved from rhino horns.

In celebration of the seventh World Rhino Day, WildAid, National Geographic's Traveler magazine and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) launched a promotional video featuring Ma Weidu.

"Collectibles rooted in killing are valueless," Ma says in the video.

Since 2012, China has placed the building of a more ecologically focused society among its development priorities, with protection of fauna and flora a crucial element, according to Blake.

From 2013 to 2016, China organized and led worldwide cooperation against rhinoceros horn smuggling, alongside international law enforcement agency, wildlife charities and various authorities worldwide.

"With more stringent legislation and law enforcement, the world's black market prices for rhinoceros horn are about one-third of what they once were," Peter Knights, founder and CEO of WildAid, told Xinhua last month.

All sales in rhino horn have been illegal in China since 1993, and rhino horn has been removed from the Traditional Chinese Medicine handbook. Since 2011 all rhino horn items have been banned from auction house sales as well.

"China, from its authorities to the public, has been playing an important part in eradicating the brutal yet complex rhinoceros horn trade," Blake said.

Ma also called on major international auction houses to put an end to all forms of rhino horn sales, including antiques.

"Despite the traditional appreciation of such crafts, rhino horn pieces are rarely sold at extremely high prices in China," Ma said.

Ma pointed out that a number of international auction houses had scandalous sales records of rhino horn, which sent out the wrong message.

"If we must choose between protecting wildlife or cultural collectibles, wildlife is far more important," he told Xinhua.

AWF Trustee Gordon Cheng welcomed the campaign and called for more global efforts to stop the trade in rhino horn.

"Today marks a new milestone for our Rhino Protection Initiative... We hope our program can help to convey the right messages for many existing collectors and users, and most importantly for the younger generation in Asia and around the world," Cheng said.

On Friday, National Geographic's Traveler magazine in Beijing launched its "Travel for Earth" program, focusing on ecotourism and experiences to see the surviving rhinos.

"Rhino-based tourism is hugely important for protecting rhinos," said Yu Hui of Traveler magazine. "As one of the flagship wildlife species in Africa, tourism to view them generates revenue for both local communities and conservation efforts."

Ma Weidu's new rhino campaign will appear on television, online, at airports and outdoor media across China in October 2017.
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Hurricane Irma may not have hit St. Petersburg directly, but local business owners say its effects have been catastrophic.

City declares "Burg Buys Local" week

Hope is to give businesses hurt by Irma help

Event runs Sept. 24 - Oct. 1

Weve all seen a huge loss. You know, you lose a whole week. And that was a Saturday too. All the small businesses we depend on Saturdays they carry you through those slow days, said Ashe Couture Boutique owner Amanda Henderson.



Like many people in the Bay area, Henderson said she had to shut her doors and board up at her store ahead of the storm.



Weve never had to be closed for five consecutive days," Henderson said. "And its not just me that was affected -- its also my staff. Being a small business, staffs not usually on salary, so if theyre not here working, theyre not getting paid."



Olga Bof, founder of "Keep Saint Petersburg Local," said Hendersons story is just one many similar stories shes heard in the last week.



September is traditionally the most difficult month to get through for our local business," Bof said. "Especially those in retail, especially those service providers, so you add in a hurricane and its actually probably going to be the end of some of these local businesses and organizations."



Thats where the city of St. Pete comes in. City officials declared next week "Burg Buys Local" week.

The concept is simple -- shop local.



Its something residents like Patti Oorlog and her daughter, Amanda Smolen, said they already do and plan to encourage others to join in too.



We may not know the people on a first-name basis, but I definitely know theyre working hard here, and Id rather give money to them versus Macys or JC Penny, Smollen said.



We give gifts that are bought in local stores, and then itll be 'Oh I loved that candle,' or 'Oh I loved that whatever,' and then we bring in another shopper for that store," Oorlog said. "So Id say give it a try. St. Pete is special and has a lot of great stores."



Burg Buys Local Week starts on Sunday, September 24th and runs through Sunday, October 1.
 Flash

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday met with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, with the two sides agreeing to enhance bilateral cooperation.

Wang once again extended condolences to Cuba over the damage it has suffered from Hurricane Irma, and expressed the belief that Cubans will be able to overcome the difficulties and restore normal life under the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and the government.

In face of the complex and changeable international situation, China and Cuba should enhance communication and coordination and deepen their strategic cooperative partnership, said Wang.

China will continue to put Cuba at a special place in its foreign policy and will as always support Cuba's legitimate fight for sovereignty and its endeavors against the U.S. embargo, he said.

Latin America is an important region with a concentration of developing countries, said Wang. The development and revitalization of the region is an important part of the endeavors to revitalize the emerging markets and developing countries as a whole.

China-Latin America comprehensive cooperation is facing new opportunities, he noted.

Rodriguez thanked China for its assistance over Hurricane Irma, saying Cuba-China relations have seen a sound development with the continuous advancement of practical cooperation and good consultation over international affairs.

The Cuban Communist Party, the government and people appreciate China's support for Cuba's righteous cause and congratulate China on its enormous achievements in political, economic and diplomatic fields, he said.

Cuba is willing to strengthen exchanges with China on state governance and is looking forward to the successful holding of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The two ministers also exchanged views on Venezuela. They agreed that the internal affairs of Venezuela should be handled by the government and people through inclusive dialogues and consultations toward a proper solution within the legal framework, and the international community should play a constructive role in this regard.
Pittsburgh-based UPMC has withdrawn its plan to build a 90-bed, $211.2 million hospital in South Fayette, Pa., according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

System spokeswoman Gloria Kreps would not say what prompted UPMC to cancel the project. However, she told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette UPMC is evaluating multiple sites in the southern suburbs of Pittsburgh for a new hospital, which would offer intensive care, inpatient and outpatient services, surgery and emergency care.

This is the second hospital construction project UPMC has backed away from in the past year. The system cancelled plans in September 2016 to build a 300,000-square-foot hospital in Pleasant Hills, Pa.

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The following hospital and health system credit rating and outlook changes and affirmations took place in the last week, beginning with the most recent.

1. Fitch affirms 'A+' rating on Gwinnett Hospital System's revenue bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "A+" rating on Lawrenceville, Ga.-based Gwinnett Hospital System's series 2007A-D revenue bonds, affecting $132 million of debt.

2. Moody's affirms 'Baa1' rating on CentraState Medical Center's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed its "Baa1" rating on Freehold, N.J.-based CentraState Medical Center's revenue bonds, affecting $38 million of outstanding debt.

3. Fitch affirms 'BBB+' rating on Frederick Memorial Hospital's revenue bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "BBB+" rating on Frederick (Md.) Memorial Hospital's series 2012A revenue bonds, affecting $97.1 million of debt.

4. Fitch affirms 'BBB+' on NYU Winthrop Hospital's bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed the "BBB+" rating on Mineola, N.Y.-based NYU Winthrop Hospital's series 2012 revenue bonds, affecting $130 million of debt.

5. Fitch downgrades Lahey Health System's bonds to 'A'

Fitch Ratings downgraded Burlington, Mass.-based Lahey Health System's series 2015F revenue bonds to "A" from "A+," affecting $262 million of debt.

6. Fitch affirms 'B' rating on Tenet Healthcare

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "B" issuer default rating on Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, affecting $15.4 billion of debt.

7. Fitch affirms 'BB+' rating on Palomar Health's revenue bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "BB+" issuer default rating on Escondido, Calif.-based Palomar Health and affirmed the "BB+" rating on the system's outstanding revenue bonds.

8. Moody's assigns 'A1' to Avera Health's bonds

Moody's Investors Service assigned its "A1" rating to Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Avera Health's proposed $2.17 million series 2017 revenue bonds.

9. S&P affirms 'A' rating on Boulder Community Health

S&P Global Ratings affirmed its "A" rating on Boulder (Colo.) Community Health.

10. Fitch assigns 'AA-' rating to Banner Health's series 2017 bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned its "AA-" rating to Phoenix-based Banner Health's proposed series 2017A, 2017B, 2017C and 2017D bonds, which will total approximately $452 million.

11. Moody's affirms 'A3' rating on St. Luke's Health System's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A3" rating on Boise, Idaho-based St. Luke's Health System's bonds, affecting $531 million of debt.

12. Moody's upgrades PinnacleHealth System to 'A1'

Moody's Investors Service upgraded Harrisburg, Pa.-based PinnacleHealth System's debt rating to "A1" from "A3," affecting $287 million of debt.
Nurses at Upper Peninsula Health System-Marquette (Mich.) plan to strike Oct. 5-6.

The announcement came Friday from the Michigan Nurses Association, which represents the workers.

"We have said all along that striking is an extremely serious decision for nurses. We want to be at the bedside caring for our patients. [The hospital's owner, Brentwood, Tenn.-based] Duke LifePoint [Healthcare] has made it all but impossible to provide the care that the Marquette community deserves," said Scott Balko, an operating room nurse and president of the UPHS-Marquette RN Staff Council/MNA. "We still have four bargaining dates and mediation scheduled before our strike. Now is the time for Duke LifePoint to do the right thing for patients  guarantee safe RN staffing levels and a hospital environment that will attract and retain nurses for years to come."

In response to the planned strike, UPHS-Marquette said in a statement to Becker's it "will continue to bargain in good faith; however, should it occur, we are fully prepared to handle a strike and ensure there is no interruption in care for our patients and community members."

"We are securing fully-qualified staff to replace those who go on strike and are attending to every detail in preparation for this event. As always, delivering quality care and services to our patients will remain our primary focus, and we will not allow anything to stand in the way of providing the best for our community," the hospital added.

Duke LifePoint expressed similar sentiments in a statement to Becker's, saying, "We are aware of the strike notice that UPHS-Marquette received today from the Michigan Nurses Association. We know that the hospital will continue to negotiate in good faith with the MNA in an attempt to reach an agreement. Should a strike occur, we are confident the hospital is prepared to manage it while ensuring its patients and community continue to have access to high quality, compassionate care."

The MNA said in a news release it has been in contract negotiations with hospital management for about five months. Nurses' two-month contract extension expired in July.

Amid these contract negotiations, UPHS-Marquette nurses called for a patient safety investigation at the hospital. UPHS-Marquette nurses voted to authorize a strike at the end of August.
From the former CFO of a Florida medical group settling false claims allegations to Pfizer filing an antitrust lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. Former Las Vegas hospital CEO's second theft trial barred by double jeopardy

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled the former CEO of University Medical Center in Las Vegas cannot be tried a second time on charges of theft and misconduct due to a previous mistrial, which triggered double jeopardy protection.

2. Ex-CFO of Florida medical group settles false billing allegations for $100k

Scott Quinn, the former CFO and COO of Southeast Orthopedic Specialists in Jacksonville, Fla., agreed to pay $100,000 to settle allegations he violated the False Claims Act.

3. Former Swedish Health neurosurgeon wins $17.5M case contesting termination

An arbitrator awarded neurosurgeon David Newell, MD, a former employee of Seattle-based Swedish Health, $17.5 million. Dr. Newell alleged Swedish fired him in retaliation for issuing complaints about a fellow surgeon at the facility.

4. Pfizer hits J&J with 1st ever biosimilar antitrust lawsuit: 4 things to know

Pfizer filed an antitrust lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson, claiming the drugmaker's "exclusionary contracts" with insurers and hospitals unfairly blocked competition for J&J's arthritis drug Remicade.

5. Alaska union-benefits fund sues Abbott over faulty St. Jude defibrillators

An Alaska union-benefits fund filed a federal lawsuit against Abbott Laboratories, claiming the company's subsidiary, St. Jude Medical, failed to warn regulators and patients about defective lithium batteries in its defibrillators for years.

More articles on healthcare legal and regulatory issues:

Utah lawmakers to draft bill outlining when police can draw blood from patients

Former Cleveland Clinic executive charged in $2.7M fraud scheme

Roofing company sues BJC HealthCare, seeks to halt campus renewal project
Hari Sudhan, a techie working in TCS in Finland on a contract basis who went missing on September 8, was found dead in a sea on Friday. The Indian embassy is helping the boy's parents after it was confirmed that it was Hari Sudhan. According to media reports, a local media there released a report saying that the police found the corpse at Hernesaari beach and investigations are going on as to find out whether it was a crime.
Next generation: Some of Laurences grandchildren, from left, Ciaran White holding James McCoy, Ollie White (with Laurence) and Joseph McAnespy with Laurences wife, Eileen

Whats it like when parents are left alone as their children head off to uni or go to make their own way in life? Two writers reminisce about how they felt, while Kerry McKittrick talks to three NI personalities.

Lindy McDowell: 'I do miss them but there is an upside to it'

When I was asked if I could write a few hundred words on how it feels when your dear children finally grow up and quit the nest, leaving you all alone with only memories of those precious times when the family were together under one roof, I said actually I could do it in two words.

Happy days!

I don't wish to sound unmaternal (maybe I am a little) but while I love my stepdaughter and two sons to bits and while, yes, of course, I do miss them, I can assure any parent currently clutching a soggy hankie as they wave farewell to departing offspring and a strange silence descends upon the family home, that Empty Nest Syndrome also has its upside.

Time to yourself. Food in the fridge. A cooker that, remarkably, stays clean for days.

And the silence I mentioned, which in time you will come to realise isn't so strange at all. It's just how the normal world sounds without a non-stop backing track of ear-splitting, screechy 'music'.

Faye was the first of ours to move out. I missed her so much. She was the girl of the household. An utter joy to have around.

There were never any teenage strops or huffs with Faye. Her trademark reproof was (and still is) a cool stare and one raised eyebrow. This to signal, "Are you entirely insane?"

She moved to Devon in England and now lives very happily there with her partner Jarrod and gorgeous children, Niamh who's 18 and Ewan (16).

Faye has such a great sense of humour (in our family you have to have.)

When Jamie came along I think she found him a bit of an irritation at first. He was a long and skinny child and she and her friends christened him The Bionic Rib. The Bionic Rib was surprisingly happy with this. To a six-year-old it possibly sounded flattering.

There was another bit of a gap before we had Micah (we lost a little girl in between) and maybe that difference in all their ages is why they all get along so well. We didn't have to cope with sibling rivalry in our house. They all stuck up/covered for each other. A bit too much, sometimes.

Jamie, who moved out when he went to university, is married to our beautiful daughter-in-law, Lucy. He is witty and funny, the kindest soul and amazingly helpful. I do miss him around the house. His cooking maybe not so much.

He and Micah had a disturbing penchant for late night (or early morning) cuisine.

Jamie is a music fan and I'd like to say that when he moved out the decibels went down a bit. But Micah manfully took up the slack.

Our three are all party animals. In his early teens Micah had one of those house parties that they write about in the Daily Mail. We were away. He was supposedly staying with friends. But he had the house key ...

Thankfully, it was in the days before social media. But still, bad enough. They came from far and wide. An entire busload (I'm not making this up) came from Donaghadee.

In deference to his no-frills approach to life, Jamie used to refer to his brother as Easyjet. In time this was further downgraded to Ryanair.

Micah arrived back from university in England one time without any luggage whatsoever. "Have you not even brought a change of underwear?" I asked.

"Mum!" he admonished, "I'm only staying until Thursday!"

This, on a Saturday.

We moved out of the rambling, big house our family grew up in just last year. It was such a happy place. It was noisy, it was chaotic, there were always people coming and going.

We had great parties where all their friends used to pile in. The loveliest young boys and girls. I can honestly say, hand on heart, there wasn't a bad one among them.

I've watched them grow up into fine young men and women. No longer just Faye's friends or Jamie's or Micah's. I'm proud to say, they're now our friends too.

Those days in that old house will always be with us. Great days, glorious memories.

The hellish scramble for school in the morning. Bedrooms that looked like they'd been targeted by Kim Jong Un. Finding someone had used an entire bottle of my expensive shampoo as body wash. And that the steak I'd bought for (husband) Jim had been eaten by some overnight teenage guest. The distinctive odour of late-night kebab and discovering half a dozen youths kipping on the living room floor.

Inviting friends round for dinner and having to sellotape the fridge door shut in the interim with a Post-It Note warning Touch any of this food and youre dead meat!.

And then discovering that the bottle of vodka Id opened a few days before was now mysteriously fuller. But oddly much, much weaker ...

All that is gone now. We have downsized to what the estate agents call an apartment, Jim calls a flat and I call a shoebox.

Its a small place. Its quiet. Its clean. I love it!

Weve kept the big table from the last house, though.

Its a monster. Way too big for the space.

But it was the centrepiece of their childhood and their youth down all those years, the wooden hub of our family life.

It was where tears (mostly mine) were shed over homework and stern lectures were delivered  Sit down there boy, til I talk to you a minute.

It was where Jamie and Lucy told us they were getting married and Micah filled in the application for the job that took him to London, where he now lives.

It was where Faye and I used to catch up over a wee vino when she came back home and where, as toddlers, Niamh and Ewan made their clay figures.

It was where friends and family gathered for so many parties. That poor oul table has endured so many tuneless sing-songs it could probably give you The Mountains of Mourne all by itself.

But life moves on and thats a good thing. Our three have found their way in the world and brought into our lives so much joy and fun.

Our family has been made bigger and better with Lucy and Jarrod and Niamh and Ewan.

So my advice to that parent with the soggy hankie is that Empty Nest is only a comma in life, its not a full stop.

If yours are anything like ours, even when they move away they will always be close.

The first you can call on whenever you need their help.

The first to call you when they need a wee tap ...

Theyve only moved out. They havent gone away, you know.

Laurence White: It was not the Nirvana it seemed

It was just a couple of days after my son Laurences wedding, as he had left on honeymoon with new wife Roisin, that it suddenly hit us  for the first time in our 40 years of marriage, my wife Eileen and I were on our own.

Our house, which in the intervening years had been a hive of noise  we have six children  was unearthly quiet. There was no one there but us.

All our children were now making their own ways in life. We were surplus to requirements, or so it seemed.

Comedian John Bishop, in an interview in this newspaper yesterday, evoked the feelings of many parents when he spoke about his own children leaving home. He felt depressed, even though for years he had hoped they would all move out.

He added: Weve adjusted to it now but there is still part of you that thinks Wow, you only get one go at being a dad and that go was their childhood.

In a strange way that paralleled my own feelings. Being a parent, however inadequate, (Eileen was the real glue in the family, the person who laid down the rules and who made our children the fine people they are), was a real purpose in life.

In their early formative years children need you, but your support becomes more and more a convenience as they learn to stand on their own feet.

Our eldest daughter, Grainne, was first to leave home to study, then work in Dublin and eventually to marry and settle in Fermanagh. Her sisters, Michelle and Fiona, also fled the nest to study  one in Coleraine, the other in Bournemouth. The boys, Damien, Laurence and Declan, all remained in Belfast but at times found their own accommodation.

But during all those moves the house was never empty, until that day. Suddenly we had the freedom to do as we wished, go where and when we wanted, surely the dream of every parent. Yet it was not the Nirvana it might have seemed.

The great thing about a family, especially a big family, is sharing experiences. Whats the good of coming home from holiday if you have no one there to tell how great it was, or wasnt? Sharing in a childs achievement is best done face to face, not in a congratulatory phone call.

You wont be there to see a grandchild  we now have nine  speak its first words or take its first steps. Those milestones of your own children are indelibly engraved in the mind, you dont need a video of them.

But Eileen and I are lucky. All of our children and their families still live in Northern Ireland. We see them regularly. We can be babysitters for the grandchildren when required  I saw a notice on holiday recently which read If we had known grandchildren were so much fun, we would have had them first  and Sundays usually see at least some of the children around for lunch.

On those days the house is alive and buzzing, sometimes so too is the head. We wonder how did we cope in those days gone by when all our children were there and all needing our attention. But then we remember they were among the happiest days of our lives.

And the nest is no longer empty. Laurence and Roisin have moved back in while waiting to buy their home. Rooms have been reconfigured to create separate space, but its great to hear other footsteps in the house.

And its great to have someone who knows how to operate a smart TV or explain how to get on WhatsApp or Facebook.

I hope they have it all worked out for us before they move again, otherwise Eileen and I will simply have to talk to each other.

I have been emotional about it

Sarah Travers (43) is co-partner in Bespoke Communications. She lives in Portrush with her husband, Stephen Price, and they have two children, Jack (20) and Evie (14). She says:

Jack is now 20 and has just left for Ravensbourne University in London to study broadcast engineering.

It came about because my husband works in the media too and Stephen teaches a course in the Northern Regional College.

When Jack finished his A-levels he suggested he do that course at technical college to see if he liked it and then go on to university. If you want to work in film and TV or design then Ravensbourne is the place to be.

It was great having him home for an extra two years because I think he matured a lot. He was also able to use the skills he was picking up to get employment in the local area.

He hasnt been away for long but I was very, very sad last week. Ive been a lot more emotional about it than I thought I would be. I was talking to a woman whose daughter has just left for uni and she was telling me that it was like a grief  she would walk past her daughters bedroom and cry. Im not quite that bad. His leaving just happened to coincide with a girls trip to Palma for me, so Ive had a good distraction.

Were Facetiming and he actually wants to, which is nice. At home I would hardly see him but now hes away he wants to chat.

I think its great to get away and its very good for people from here to leave for a while. I went to Nottingham University and it really makes you appreciate Northern Ireland when you come back.

London is very expensive and its a big place but it is the best place to gain qualifications for his chosen career. In saying that, Im relieved that hes a bit older  the difference between an 18-year-old fellow and a 20-year-old one is quite staggering.

Its also nice that hes sharing with two people who were on the course with him in Limavady.

Its nice to see them living their lives

Alison Clarke is director of the Miss Northern Ireland contest and runs the ASA Model Agency. She lives in Portrush with her husband, Darren Clarke, and has two sons, Stuart (30) and Phillip (25), and two stepsons, Tryone (18) and Conor (17). She says:

My boys are long gone  theyre actually both working in the US at the moment. Stuart took a year out and went travelling and then went to university in Newcastle. The funny thing is that when Stuart finished he came back to Northern Ireland while Phillip went off to university in Manchester.

Stuart did a Masters at Queens and lived at home while he did it. I dont think it was too bad for me  although my house was their principal residence, they were with their dad some of the time so I never had them 100% of the time.

I was happy for them to go. Stuart went first and I was worried about him because he went out to Canada and had a few issues with accommodation but it all worked out in the end.

After Manchester, Phillip went to work in London and is currently in the US on secondment in Virginia for a few weeks. He works in management and Stuart now lives and works for Invest Northern Ireland in San Francisco.

Tyrone, Darrens eldest son, has now gone to university in Florida but Conor is still at home with me. As soon as mine went then I had Darrens boys  theres always been some boy there to look after! Even though you bring them up the same way and teach them the same values, the two sets of brothers are both very different from each other. One will be very neat and tidy but the other will leave plates lying around and shoes by the door; I cant say which one is which or they wont send me a Mothers Day card. Its just the way they are. It was nice to see mine go and have their own life. I love having them visit but its also nice to return to normality when they go. We can all keep in touch easily these days  Ive visited them both in London and San Francisco. I tried to teach them independence from an early age. Theyre both entertaining and social and great cooks.

I miss that theyre not around the house but I dont miss the additional washing and cleaning and food-buying that comes with them. That said, youre always responsible for your kids, no matter their age. We dont have to speak every day but knowing that I can speak to them whenever I want makes a difference.

There's a point when it's time for them to go

Wendy Austin, who presents Radio Ulster's Inside Business on Sunday afternoon lives with husband Frank near Dromore, Co Down. She has has three grown-up children, Niall (33), Kerry (32) and Clare (28). She says:

My three all left when they went off to university - Niall and Clare both went over to England. He went to Newcastle and she went to London. Kerry went to Ulster University's art college, but she lived in Belfast.

It is strange when they first go - it's quite a long time ago now, when I look back.

Niall was mad keen to go, very excited about it, because some of his friends were going to the same place.

It can be a bit like nursery when they're wee - there's a point when it's time for them to go and you're glad to see that for them. Of course I missed them and we kept in touch.

Niall came home lots too but I have enjoyed seeing them getting their wings and flying.

I certainly didn't pine for them when they went away.

Of course I missed them and you do worry like mad. But then you worry like mad anyway - and at least you're not lying awake waiting for them to come home.

Niall was quite good about looking after himself. He would ring my mum to ask her how to cook things - he rang her one Christmas and asked her how to cook a 20lb turkey.

Clare was the last one to go away - she went to Imperial College in London and stayed in the South Kensington halls which were right next door to the Royal Albert Hall.

It was all very grand and quite intimidating for both of us. London is so much bigger than Belfast, and right in the centre of it you don't have the same kind of student community that Niall found in Newcastle. I don't think you should worry too much when your kids fly the nest - if you give them the proper tools before they leave home, then they'll be fine.
A Co Tyrone grandmother is preparing to say goodbye to her "wee hero" cousin, who passed away a year after donating his kidney.

Briege Dorman was given a new lease of life after spending six years on dialysis waiting for a suitable donor.

The 58-year-old from Coalisland has spent the last 12 months enjoying life's simple pleasures for the first time in years.

The mother-of-four, however, was left "numb and devastated" after her cousin, Raymond Hughes, was found dead at his home earlier this week.

The 53-year-old journalist, who suffered from epilepsy, died exactly a year after he donated his healthy kidney.

While the family await the post-mortem results, they suspect the dad-of-two died from an epileptic fit in his sleep.

"I am just numb and devastated," Briege said.

"He is my wee hero and I am utterly bereft and heartbroken at the loss of such an unassuming, gentle, kind and giving soul. This was the last thing we were expecting."

Briege lost one of her kidneys to cancer just before the other one stopped working.

For six years she had to undergo four-hour dialysis sessions three times a week while travelling from her home to Newry in a two-hour round trip.

She was left exhausted after every trip and was unable to socialise or attend family events.

"I would have went to the shop and got half way down the aisle and have to go back to the car," she said.

"I had no social life and couldn't go shopping with my daughter for her wedding dress.

Then, out of the blue last January, Raymond casually asked how he could become a donor.

"I took it lightly, as a lot of people ask how they can help and never do, so I never passed any remarks," she said.

"I told him that he would have to go to Belfast and joked they would have to do an MOT to see if we could be a match.

"A few months later he told me he went for the tests and it was all okay and we were a perfect match. He then told me they were doing the surgery the following month and I nearly fell off the chair.

"I asked him was he sure this is what he wanted to do, as sometimes it can be worse on the donor, but he told me that we were doing it."

Raymond made one request - they didn't tell any of their family members until after the operation.

Briege added: "When it was a success, everyone, especially his dad, were so proud of him when they found out.

"I was elated, but afraid for both of us in case it didn't work.

"After the operation he was in good form and was happy with how it all went.

"He didn't want to publicise what he did, but one day he went for a walk around the hospital and discovered it was donor week and he came back to me and said we would have to go public. It was life-changing and he wanted to tell everyone to do it.

"A year later we were flying and going really well, but now he's dead and I can't believe it."

On Wednesday, two police officers called at Briege's home to break the sad news that the talented reporter had been found dead.

"I had to go to his father's house and break the news to him and his brothers and sisters," she added.

"Raymond was more than a donor, he was a brilliant journalist and was so articulate.

"He gave me the most amazing gift, but I don't want to take away from him as a person.

"Raymond didn't want the accolades that were given to him when he first gave me his kidney, but then he found out that week was organ donor week and he said 'we have to go public with this and encourage others to become donors, if they see how well we did they may think about doing it. This is life changing stuff'.

"He always thought of others so unselfishly and I know that part of him lives on in me and for that I'm eternally grateful."

Raymond's funeral takes place tomorrow at the Church of the Holy Family in Coalisland.
The scene of the crash on the Frosses road.

A man has been airlifted to hospital following a two vehicle crash on the Frosses Road.

It happened on Saturday morning near the Dunloy crossroads at 8.15am.

He was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital. The man is said to be in a stable condition.

A woman was treated at the scene for minor injuries and was taken to the Causeway Hospital to be checked over.

A PSNI spokesman said: "Northern Ireland Ambulance service assisted by Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service and by Northern Ireland's new Air Ambulance undoubtedly made a difference this morning.

"Any witnesses please contact us on 101 with ref 383 - 23/9/17."

The Frosses road re-opened on Saturday afternoon.
A man remains in hospital after being found unconscious following a serious assault in an alleyway in Belfast.

The man, aged in his mid-30s, was found in an alley on Friday night between St Aubyn Street and Keadyville Avenue by a member of the public at around 7.30pm.

Detective Sergeant Mason said: "The man suffered facial injuries and was taken to hospital for treatment, where he remains. His injuries are not thought to be life threatening at this stage.

We are appealing to anyone who knows anything about the incident, or anyone who was in the St Aubyn Street area between 7pm and 7:30pm last night and noticed anything suspicious, to contact detectives at Musgrave Criminal Investigation Unit on the non-emergency number, 101, quoting reference 1302 of 22/09/17, or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A soldier approaching a house near the M1 as the large scale search operation got under way

Troops at the scene of the Maze escape in 1983

A former IRA man who became a born-again Christian has spoken out for the first time about his key role in the Maze prison escape of 1983.

Brendan Mead, now in his 60s, described how he was selected to set the escape in motion by overpowering a prison guard as he was "the fittest man" in the republican H block 7.

The escape of 38 prisoners was the largest in UK history. Escapees used weapons smuggled into the prison, making their getaway in a food delivery truck.

Prison officer James Ferris died from a heart attack after he was stabbed during the escape while another, John Adams, was shot in the head.

During his interview, Mr Mead said he had been convinced no one was meant to be harmed in the escape and how a second outbreak was planned from Belfast's Crumlin Road Jail.

He also revealed how a frantic search through prison documents by IRA intelligence officers delayed the getaway.

Recounting his own part, Mr Mead said he was tasked with overpowering a prison officer.

"I had a gun that I wasn't going to use, and the IRA staff understood that, that I wasn't going to use it," he told the BBC. "I explained that I would go in and punch him and knock him out because then he'll recover from that. But ... I just couldn't shoot him."

He maintained the plan had always been not to kill or maim any prison guards, but accepted that "people's lives were destroyed by what happened".

"I knew in my heart that I wasn't going to kill anybody or maim anybody on that escape," he said. "I would certainly fight and I had to fight from the start to the finish, I was involved in fighting the whole way through. But again, I say, was anybody planning to kill anybody? No, they weren't. The emphasis was on no death, no vindictiveness."

A statement from prison officer John Adams later claimed that Maze escapee Gerry Kelly, a future Sinn Fein MLA, had shot him in the head during a confrontation.

Mr Adams died last year - following a conviction for sexually assaulting a young girl - while Mr Kelly has never claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Mr Mead said he was not present during the incident.

"John Adams said it was Gerry Kelly who shot him. If that's where Gerry was, then that's his thing. He's to address that, not me," he said.

A total of 16 prisoners were acquitted over the murder of officer James Ferris, as it could not be proven his heart attack was caused by the stabbing.
Video footage of the woman trying to force her way into the fast food outlet, wrestling with a staff member, and falling in glass after the door shatters

Video footage of the woman trying to force her way into the fast food outlet, wrestling with a staff member, and falling in glass after the door shatters

Video footage of the woman trying to force her way into the fast food outlet, wrestling with a staff member, and falling in glass after the door shatters

Video footage of the woman trying to force her way into the fast food outlet, wrestling with a staff member, and falling in glass after the door shatters

A shocking video of a woman trying to wrestle her way into a pizza parlour in Belfast city centre has sparked a police investigation.

The video posted on Facebook shows the woman in an altercation with customers and staff at Apache Pizza on Bradbury Place.

She attempts to get into the takeaway in search of a food, but is resisted.

At one point she is seen falling to the ground close to a telephone box and just inches from a busy road.

She struggles to her feet, and is then seen once again trying to get into the pizza parlour, pushing and pulling at the glass front door.

The footage later shows the door shatter into tiny pieces, and the woman falling backwards onto the shards of glass as onlookers gasp in shock.

Last night Apache Pizza owner Satwinder Singh was on duty behind the counter.

He told the Belfast Telegraph that the incident was the first of its kind to happen since the business opened.

There was an empty space where the door of the hot food outlet had been, however it remained opened for business as usual.

Mr Singh said police were investigating the incident, which occurred in the early hours of yesterday, and had spoken to the woman seen in the video.

He added that he did not wish to make any further comment about what happened.

The video, which has already had more than three million views from internet users, can be seen on the Facebook site The Real Northern Ireland Craic at https://www.facebook.com/northernirishcraic/

Last night the PSNI confirmed that it had received a report of an assault at a takeaway premises on Bradbury Place shortly before 1am yesterday.

Police attended the scene and arrested a 28-year-old woman on suspicion of two counts of assault, possession of a class B drug and criminal damage.

Last night she remained in custody at Musgrave police station.
Broadcaster George Hook has been moved to a new slot on Newstalk radio following his controversial comments about rape.

The presenter secured a new position after being suspended from his weekday lunchtime High Noon show.

The station confirmed he will come back on air in December when he takes over a new weekend slot.

In a statement Newstalk said it has concluded a review into the circumstances that led to Hook's comments on rape.

"The station confirms that George Hook will be stepping down from his lunchtime slot," it said.

"He will return to the station in December 2017 when he will take on a new weekend show. Newstalk will shortly be announcing a replacement for the lunchtime show."

Both Hook and the Newstalk m anaging editor Patricia Monahan offered unreserved apologies after the broadcaster referred to a rape case in the UK and questioned why the woman had gone back to the hotel room of a man she had just met.

Hook questioned her "personal responsibility" and asked if she should be blamed for putting herself in danger.

He was suspended a week later following widespread condemnation from groups such as the National Women's Council of Ireland and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

The Dalata Hotel Group, whose Clayton brand was a main sponsor of Hook's High Noon show, pulled out of the deal.

Newstalk is part of the Communicorp media group owned by Denis O'Brien.

Orla O'Connor, director of t he National Women's Council of Ireland, called on Newstalk to issue their broadcasters with guidelines for discussing and reporting on domestic and sexual violence.

She described Hook's remarks as " unacceptable victim blaming".

"It is crucial that Newstalk send a strong message that Mr Hook's comments are utterly unacceptable," she said.

"Violent men are socialised and enabled by women's inequality, and by a culture which erases the actions of perpetrators by focusing culpability on the victim. The damage done by these comments is very real, and they must not be repeated.

"It is clear that more needs to be done by Newstalk, and that the station must find a way of countering the impact of these comments on women."
Cinema workers will stage a fresh strike, exactly a year after the start of their pay dispute.

Members of the Bectu union at The Ritzy in Brixton, south London, will walk out for 24 hours on Saturday as part of a long-running campaign involving staff at six cinemas in London and Brighton run by Picturehouse.

The workers are campaigning for increases in wages and sick pay and the reinstatement of four sacked union representatives.

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Strikes are being planned during the London Film Festival next month.

Sophie Lowe, one of the strikers, said: One year on from the start of this dispute, we are planning a substantial escalation in the campaign.

A Picturehouse statement said: Paying our staff a fair wage is hugely important to us.

Staff at The Ritzy are paid 9.10  equivalent to 9.70 when working an eight-hour shift as we choose to pay for breaks.

We also offer statutory sick pay, maternity/paternity pay and 28 days paid holiday amongst other competitive benefits.

This makes Picturehouse Cinemas one of the highest-paying employers in the cinema industry.
Cardiac patients facing delays in north-east Scotland have been offered treatment as far away as Newcastle, it has emerged.

NHS Grampian confirmed a formal agreement on the treatment of heart patients had been struck with Freeman Hospital in the city but said the option had never been used.

In May the health board said it was unable to meet the Scottish Governments target 12-week timescale for all patients to be given planned surgery and had been forced to begin prioritising the most urgent cases.

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The issue was raised with the Scottish Government by Tory MSP Jamie Halcro Johnston on behalf of a constituent forced to wait three months for surgery.

In her reply, Health Secretary Shona Robison said: The board have indicated they have had a backlog of cardiac patients due to staffing difficulties within their cardiac theatres as well as challenges around critical care capacity and also some emergency admissions requiring urgent surgery.

Unfortunately the impact of this can result in a delay for some patients scheduled for elective admission.

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She said that since mid-July the health board had been using theatre capacity at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank, with some patients undergoing surgery there carried out by NHS Grampian surgeons.

The board have indicated they have also secured a service level agreement with Newcastle and this option has also been offered to patients, she added.

Mr Halcro Johnston, who represents the Highlands and Islands, said: The fact a health board in the north of Scotland is now depending on hospitals in England to treat heart patients shows the depth of the staffing crisis in Scotlands NHS.

Its time for the SNP to admit its made a mess of workforce planning and apologise to the thousands of patients whore paying the price for these failings.

Travelling to Newcastle for any patient in the Grampian area isnt convenient, but even less so for those with heart problems.

A spokesman for NHS Grampian said: We are committed to ensuring patients are seen as quickly as possible which means, occasionally, people are offered the opportunity of surgery elsewhere during peaks in demand.

We have well-established links with Lothian and Glasgow and our agreement with Newcastle is a back-up option which has not been utilised so far.

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People should be assured that our priority will always be to see patients in Grampian. There are also a range of factors which can result in capacity issues and not only down to staffing difficulties.

As a result, we are working with our cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and other key clinicians on a comprehensive redesign of the service that will deliver change and build future capacity in Aberdeen.

Ms Robison later added: NHS Grampian is committed to making every effort to ensure that their patients have the opportunity to access high quality healthcare, and their agreement with the Freeman Hospital is an example of these efforts.

However, this service in Newcastle is their third back-up option behind Lothian and Glasgow, and it has not yet been used by patients.

NHS health boards are committed to ensuring they have the right staff in place to meet the needs of their local people.

Long waits are unacceptable, which is why we have provided an additional 50 million to the NHS budget to improve waiting times at all stages of a patients journey through the health service  almost 5 million has been provided to NHS Grampian.
An airline passenger arrested after a late-night flight from Barcelona to the UK was diverted has been charged with being drunk on an aircraft.

Daniel Fletcher, of McNeill Avenue in Crewe, will appear in court next month after the disturbance on board an easyJet flight to Liverpool at 11.30pm on Thursday meant the flight was instead re-directed to Bristol.

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Fletcher will appear before magistrates in Bristol on Thursday, October 5.

Three others arrested  two men aged 21 and 29 and a 26-year-old woman  have been released with no further action taken, Avon and Somerset Police said.
Theres no such thing as a free lunch, especially if you are a cheeky food blogger looking for a freebie at this Michelin-starred restaurant in Kilkenny, Ireland.

Garrett Byrne, chef and proprietor of Campagne, had absolutely no time for reviewers who asked for a free meal for two in exchange for significant online exposure.

In a tweet on the restaurants social media account, Byrne posted a section of the email that said: We will be in Kilkenny specifically on 10 October.

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In exchange for a vegan meal for two (we would ideally like to try several items on the menu), we would be happy to provide significant online exposure on both our blogs and social media accounts.

In addition to writing various blog posts, the bloggers also promised they would be live tweeting, Facebook, Instagram as we visit your restaurant.

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Byrne, who declined to identify the bloggers, said he gets around 10 similar requests a year but this one, for some reason, got a reaction from him.

It wasnt any different to the other ones, he said. I was reading this email the first thing in the morning and I thought, Oh here we go again.

Normally I wouldnt even respond but I did to this one. I just said no.

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Byrne says he finds these requests really weird, ading: I wouldnt go down to the doctor and ask for an appointment, then ask for something free and tweet about it or put it on Instagram.

I know requests like these (free meals) happen but I am just not into that kind of thing.

Byrnes light-hearted response appeared to be well-received on Twitter, with many coming up with their own hilarious suggestions and demands.

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Some fellow bloggers appeared to be embarrassed on their behalf.

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Although not everyone agreed.

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Byrne said people take photos of their meals at Campagne all the time but they dont ask him for free meals.

He also added that he understood why some bloggers and businesses do it but said that kind of publicity wasnt for him.

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Its just too ridiculous, he added.

Byrne said his tweet has received a lot of attention from the other side of the Atlantic but believes their chances of coming here are slim, although he admits he was surprised by the overall positive response on social media.

And as for free meals at Campagne?

After this, I dont think I am ever going to get an email request again, he joked.
Jean-Luc Melenchon greets supporters as he arrives to take part in a demonstration in Paris (AP/Francois Mori)

French far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon urged protesters Saturday to take to the streets and mount strikes to force President Emmanuel Macron to withdraw the labour law changes that are key to his business-friendly economic vision.

Speaking to tens of thousands in Paris, Mr Melenchon assailed the president's new labour decrees as a gift to greedy corporations and the financial markets that have both fuelled income inequality.

Mr Macron, for his part, says the decrees are crucial to creating jobs and tackling France's chronic high unemployment.

"The battle isn't over, it is beginning," Mr Melenchon told the crowd packed on to the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris.

Earlier, marchers stretched along Paris boulevards waving French flags, union banners and signs reading "Macron, Resign!"

"It's the street that brought down the kings. It's the street that brought down the Nazis," said Mr Melenchon, who is trying to position himself as France's main opposition figure.

The labour decrees that Mr Macron signed Friday reduce French unions' influence over workplace rules and make it easier for companies to fire workers, but Saturday's demonstration reflected wider frustration with the new French president's leadership.

"Everything that's done in terms of fiscal policies is in favour of the rich, the wealthy and big companies," complained marcher Cedric Moulinier, 26.

"We're asking for things to start going the right way, a more social, humanist and environmentalist way."

Many were angry at a reference Mr Macron made to the "lazy" people who opposed the changes.

While the president has already signed the decrees and they are expected to be ratified by parliament soon, Mr Melenchon still insisted it was not too late to overturn them.

He said he would reach out to unions to join forces against the labour decrees, which he said threaten the French way of life.

"All of Europe is watching us. What is happening is the battle for France," he said.

The crowd, which police estimated at 30,000 and organisers estimated at 150,000, repeatedly broke into chants of "Resistance!" or "Get out!"

The protesters are also angry that Mr Macron used a special procedure allowing the government to change labour law by executive order instead going through a lengthy debate to pass a bill in parliament.

Mr Macron lauded the "unprecedented wave of changes" to France's social model, along with changes to unemployment benefits and a training plan for jobless people that will be set up next year.

While Mr Macron shone at the UN General Assembly in New York last week and has made a strong mark on the international stage, he has struggled with myriad critics at home.

Farmers, riot police and carnival workers have held protests in recent weeks over work policy changes under Mr Macron, and truckers plan road blockades on Monday.

Among Mr Melenchon's suggestions to pressure the government to withdraw the reforms is a "pots and pans party".

"Grab your pots next Saturday to make as much noise as possible," he said. "This is what our message will be: You make our lives miserable. You prevent us from dreaming so we will prevent you from sleeping."

AP
Rescue workers continue to search for survivors in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

A rescue dog searches for survivors in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers continue to search for survivors in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

A rescue dog searches for survivors in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers continue to search for survivors in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers evacuate the place where they were working after a seismic alert sounded in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers evacuate the place where they were working after a seismic alert sounded in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers evacuate the place where they were working after a seismic alert sounded in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / PEDRO PARDOPEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images

Rescue workers evacuate the place where they were working after a seismic alert sounded in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / RONALDO SCHEMIDTRONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

Japan rescue workers evacuate the place where they were working after a seismic alert sounded in Mexico City on September 23, 2017, four days after the powerful quake that hit central Mexico. In the capital, the quake toppled 39 buildings, mostly in a central area with older construction that is popular with tourists and foreigners living in the city, and also in the south. / AFP PHOTO / RONALDO SCHEMIDTRONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

A strong new earthquake shook Mexico on Saturday, toppling already damaged homes and causing new alarm in a country reeling from two even more powerful quakes this month that together have killed nearly 400 people.

The US Geological Survey said the new magnitude 6.1 quake was centred about 11 miles south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca, which was the region most battered by a magnitude 8.1 quake on September 7.

It was among thousands of aftershocks recorded in the wake of that earlier quake, which was the most powerful to hit Mexico in 32 years and killed at least 90 people.

There was some damage in Oaxaca but no immediate reports of new deaths.

The Federal Police agency posted images online showing a collapsed bridge that it said had already been closed due to damage after the September 7 quake.

Bettina Cruz, a resident of Juchitan, Oaxaca, said by phone with her voice still shaking that the new quake felt "horrible".

"Homes that were still standing just fell down," Cruz said. "It's hard. We are all in the streets."

Ms Cruz belongs to a social collective and said that when the shaking began, she was in a truck carrying supplies to victims of the earlier quake.

Nataniel Hernandez said by phone from Tonala, in the southern state of Chiapas, which was also hit hard by the earlier quake, that it was one of the strongest aftershocks he has felt.

"Since September 7 it has not stopped shaking," Mr Hernandez.

US Geological Survey geophysicist Paul Caruso said the new quake was an aftershock of the 8.1 one, and after a jolt of that size even buildings left standing could be more vulnerable.

"So a smaller earthquake can cause the damaged buildings to fail," Mr Caruso said.

"At the moment the greatest damage has been to the Ixtaltepec bridge, which should be rebuilt, and structures with previous damage that collapsed," President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted.

He said government workers were fanning out in Juchitan to provide help to anyone who needed it.

Jaime Hernandez, director of the Federal Electrical Commission, said the quake knocked out power to 327,000 homes and businesses in Oaxaca but service had been restored to 72% of customers within a few hours.

Buildings swayed in Mexico City, where nerves are still raw from Tuesday's magnitude 7.1 quake that has killed at least 305 across the region.

Many residents and visitors fled homes, hotels and businesses, some in tears.

At the Xoco General Hospital, which is treating the largest number of quake victims, workers ordered visitors to evacuate when seismic alarms began to blare.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there were no reports of significant new damage in the capital, and rescue efforts related to Tuesday's quake were continuing. He reported that two people died of apparent heart attacks during the new quake.

At the site of an office building that collapsed Tuesday and where an around-the-clock search for survivors was still ongoing, rescuers briefly evacuated from atop the pile of rubble after the morning quake before returning to work.

As rescue operations stretched into day five, residents throughout the capital have held out hope that dozens still missing might be found alive.

More than half the dead, 167, perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

Along a 60ft stretch of a bike lane in Mexico City, families huddled under tarpaulins and donated blankets, awaiting word of loved ones trapped in the four-storey-high pile of rubble behind them.

"There are moments when you feel like you're breaking down," said Patricia Fernandez Romero, who was waiting Friday for word on the fate of her 27-year-old son.

"And there are moments when you're a little calmer. They are all moments that you wouldn't wish on anyone."
Seminar: a monument of Martin Luther in Eisleben, the town of his birth and right

Almost 500 years after the Reformation, the divisions in our community are sadly underlined by graffiti, in bad grammar and with even worse taste.

It is sometimes said, tongue-in-cheek, that the reasons why there are more rude wall messages about the Pope than about other Church leaders is because it's easier to spell "Down with the Pope" than "Down With the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly".

However, abusive graffiti is no laughing matter, and therefore I welcome every initiative to create better understanding between the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities.

One such initiative begins next Monday when the first of a series of joint seminars on the theme 'The Unfinished Reformation' will take place at the Presbyterians' Union Theological College in Belfast.

This begins at 7.30pm and several other seminars will be held at Union College on October 2, 9, and 16.

The high-profile list of participants will include the Ulsterman Dr Francis Campbell, a former UK Ambassador to the Holy See, and currently the Vice-Chancellor of St Mary's University in Twickenham. He will speak on October 2 on 'The Roman Catholic Church and Reformation'.

On October 9, the Presbyterian General Secretary, the Reverend Trevor Gribben, will join Fr Tim Bartlett, currently Secretary-General of the World Meeting of Families, to discuss 'Areas of Concern for Presbyterians and Catholics'.

Such a seminar, involving such influential church figures, might not have been possible not so long ago. Presbyterians from the backwoods might not have been happy with their General Secretary holding talks with a leading Catholic priest in Union College, and some Catholics may not have been happy either.

Those days have gone, and even if hardliners in both camps might feel uneasy, there has been a quiet dialogue between Protestant and Catholic clergy, and others of different faiths for quite some time.

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation occurs on October 31 to mark the initiative of the Augustinian Friar Martin Luther, who pinned his 95 short theological theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517 and thus started a process that changed history.

The theme of the upcoming seminars will be to examine which areas of the church have continued to be reformed since the 16th century, and in what areas does it still need to be reformed.

The objective of the series is to create a greater awareness of the Reformation, and its meaning and ongoing legacy, especially in Ireland.

These are all live topics, and while the rough edges of our religious sectarianism have been smoothed considerably in recent years, there is much still to be done.

One of the possible downsides of these seminars is that they may become mere talking shops, like so many other church gatherings.

The reality is that people today are impatient for action which will help to bring our society forward to join the real 21st century, rather than languishing in a religious and political backwater.

Shortly after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, there were hopes that the politicians and those who elect them would be prepared to turn their backs on the past and work together for a better future for all of us.

Sadly, we have been disillusioned by the constant public bickering and mutual loathing of our politicians, though we must never allow ourselves to stop hoping for something better.

Against such a background it may be a tall order for these Catholic-Protestant seminars on the Reformation to achieve any major results. However, they symbolise the fact that people are still trying to communicate with each other across the divide.

That cannot be a bad thing, but one tragic and divisive question still remains: Why, in God's name, are Protestants forbidden to share full Holy Communion with Roman Catholics some 500 years after the beginning of the Reformation?

That question would require a whole seminar to itself.
From a Northern Ireland perspective, Theresa May's major Brexit speech yesterday sounded good. It put the key concerns on this side of the Irish Sea about withdrawing from the EU in the spotlight and assured listeners that she was determined to deliver on her vision of the way ahead.

No hard border, retention of the common travel area and nothing that would damage the Good Friday Agreement - those are assurances that we all wanted to hear.

Even the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was moved to give her comments a special welcome. There was stronger endorsement from DUP leader Arlene Foster and the expected dissent from Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

Sadly, Brexit is a tribally divisive issue in this part of the UK, with unionists seen as broadly agreeing to withdrawal from Europe and nationalists broadly against.

Mrs May's speech was seen as an attempt to kick-start serious negotiations with the other 27 EU members, but the EU's chief negotiator noted that her vision was just that - words which have to be fleshed out to give substance to what she sees as the way forward.

These are the most important negotiations that most of us have witnessed in our lifetimes and it is evident that no side has a definite sense of how they may progress, or what the final outcome will be.

The Prime Minister was in a conciliatory mood, which may bring a new sense of realism to the discussions, but which will not play well with the hardline Brexiteers in her own party.

The disastrous General Election result for the Tories has weakened her authority and while she has attempted to rein in the more intemperate remarks of some of her Cabinet colleagues, she evidently does not feel she is in a position to demote any.

A concern is that her vision for Northern Ireland post-Brexit may not be realised if she becomes a victim of the internecine war within her own party.
Winging it: Michael OLeary has been under fire again this week from Ryanair staff and customers

Michael O'Leary flew into a crisis this week with the cancellation of hundreds of flights, a virtual mutiny by pilots, and volleys of complaints from angry customers.

So, it was hardly surprising in the middle of this corporate nightmare that some commentators pondered whether the garrulous Ryanair boss has finally had his 'Gerald Ratner moment'.

The jewellery tycoon Ratner has gone down in financial folklore as the king of the business blunder after he bad-mouthed his own products.

At a speech in the Albert Hall in 1991, he referred to earrings in his shops being 'cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but they probably won't last as long', and he boasted that he could sell a sherry decanter at such a low price 'because it's total crap'. His business promptly collapsed in value and had vanished by the following year.

As Ryanair reeled from a mounting crisis this week, and O'Leary made a bold attempt to appear apologetic, commentators were left wondering whether the airline had stretched the patience of its customers too far this time.

A monumental mistake in the airline over holiday rosters of pilots, as well as other troubles over staffing, led to the travel plans of over 300,000 passengers being affected and an estimated 2,000 flights cancelled.

We knew things were bad when the Press started to refer to Ryanair passengers as "victims" rather than customers.

Having failed to get through to a live person on the airline phone lines, the "victims" went on to the Ryanair Facebook site to complain of "appalling" and "amateurish" service.

Against a somewhat inappropriate backdrop of a smiling family on a beach on their hols and an 'Always getting better' banner, O'Leary appeared before the media to explain the "mess-up".

Even in the midst of this headline-grabbing maelstrom, O'Leary could not resist the colourful soundbite: "It's not my biggest cock-up. I have a litany of cock-ups in Ryanair over the past 25 years."

And although he made a stab at contrition, he said of the company's financial position: "I never give a rat's a*** about the share price. I couldn't care less."

Jack Murray, CEO of brand agency All Good Tales, said that Ryanair should be able to survive the crisis, but he believes that O'Leary should have reacted differently.

"He needed to give a faster response and he should not have used language like that," he said.

"He should have been more contrite, and given a clearer account of what the causes of the cancellations were."

Aviation commentators wondered if it was really all about holiday rosters, or whether the large scale defection of pilots, unhappy at the way they have been treated, also played a role.

Over the past three years under chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs, the airline has gone out of its way to present a more touchy-feely image.

The change in approach, with O'Leary trying to retract his horns, proved to be effective. The airline boss suggested: "If I'd only known that being nice to customers was going to be so good for my business I would have done it years ago."

But over just a few days this reputation has been shredded, and as the cancellations and the complaints mounted, the old image of shamelessly poor customer service came back into view.

Earlier in his career, O'Leary had used his barnstorming, no-holds-barred style to give his airline almost unlimited free publicity.

This blunt persona was resurrected over the past few days, as critics stomped all over his reputation.

The British press, perhaps

goaded by his vocal opposition to Brexit, was only too happy to slate him.

We were reminded of the aftermath of Iceland's volcanic ash cloud in 2010 when flights were grounded and Ryanair was initially reluctant to meet its obligations under EU regulations.

Furious at the thought that Ryanair might have to compensate passengers for a situation beyond its control, O'Leary said: "You're not getting a refund, so f*** off. We don't want to hear your sob stories. What part of 'no refund' don't you understand?"

Before the supposedly cuddly Kenny Jacobs era was ushered in, O'Leary was happy to go against dictum that the customer is always right.

As he once said himself: "People say the customer is always right, but you know what? They're not. Sometimes they are wrong and need to be told so."

In the past he was even prepared to turn disrespect to customers into a marketing tool. All that mattered was that he got the message across that Ryanair was cheap.

"Anyone who thinks Ryanair flights are some sort of bastion of sanctity where you can contemplate your navel is wrong," he once said.

This culminated in his suggestion that the airline wanted to discourage customers from going to the toilet.

"We need fewer people going to the toilet. How do we do that? Charge them for

it," he said.

O'Leary claimed the airline was considering putting coin slots in the toilet door, before adding somewhat uncouthly: "If someone wanted to pay 5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver."

Of course the plan to charge customers for spending a penny was never going to happen, but O'Leary could measure the publicity in yards.

He once summed up his earlier marketing philosophy and attitude to customers in the style of Johnny Rotten: "Shut up, sit down, we don't care, we have cheaper fares than anyone else, f*** off."

Since Jacobs was enlisted, he appeared to be successful in sanding off a few of O'Leary's rough edges.

But it appears that O'Leary has accumulated rather too many enemies over the years to have public figures leaping to his defence in his hour of need.

Travel agents were hardly likely to speak up for him since he has described them as "f******" who should be taken out and shot.

He has regularly insulted politicians and Fianna Fail TD Mary O'Rourke once admitted that he had made her cry.

He has never concealed his contempt for pilots, tending to treat them as glorified bus drivers.

"I am not a cloud bunny, I am not an aerosexual,'' he said in an interview, before adding. "I don't like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons who populate the air industry."

The pilots have seen Ryanair's difficulty as their opportunity, and a large pan-European group of them seized the moment to demand better contracts this week. In an article in The Guardian, former Ryanair pilot James Atkinson outlined the stresses and relatively poor conditions of pilots working for the airline.

Despite the comprehensive pasting suffered by O'Leary this week, and in many earlier episodes over the years, the airline enjoys bumper profits.

It recorded a profit of around 1.10bn in the year to the end of March, and carries over 100 million passengers a year. So long as it's cheap and safe, travellers seem likely to continue buying Ryanair tickets.

Aviation consultant Chris Tarry believes Ryanair can recover from the current crisis.

"There will be lessons to be learned from this, but I am sure the mistake will not be repeated, 98% of passengers are unaffected. The airline has fundamentally changed the way we travel and it is probably the most profitable airline in the world."

Appointed chief executive in 1994, O'Leary has accumulated personal wealth estimated at over 1bn.

But apart from his string of horses, the owner of Gigginstown House near Mullingar is not considered a lavish spender, in his Gap shirt and cheap trainers. He regards his holidays with his wife Anita and four children as "a complete waste of time".

Close observers of his career have noted that for a few years now he has regularly announced his retirement "in two or three years", but this has never materialised.

And, based on past controversies, there is every chance that he will survive this latest unwanted turbulence and come in to land safely.
This image from "The Value of Placemaking" shows that downtown Charleston, which is 0.34 percent of the land mass of Charleston County, produces 16 percent of taxable sales in the county. The study argues that urban cores like this area produce more value for residents throughout the area than less densely-developed areas, and that all residents benefit from the taxes generated there.
For Immediate Release, September 23, 2017



Contact: Patrick Donnelly, (702) 483-0449, pdonnelly@biologicaldiversity.org Nevada Bans Destructive Commercial Reptile Collection LAS VEGAS The Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners today voted to permanently ban the commercial collection of reptiles. The ban is in response to advocacy by the Center for Biological Diversity, dozens of scientists and hundreds of supporters. Until today Nevada has allowed the unrestricted take of reptiles for private profit, causing declines in populations of lizards and snakes such as the chuckwalla and desert-horned lizard. The new regulations instruct the Department of Wildlife to cease permitting commercial collection, and establish regulations for a permanent ban. This is a huge victory for wildlife and the people of Nevada, said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director with the Center. Our remarkable snakes and lizards have been exploited for commercial profit for too long. This bold and forward-thinking action by the commission will ensure our precious reptiles are protected from such destructive exploitation. Commercial collectors have removed almost half a million reptiles from Nevadas public lands over the past 30 years. This has resulted in localized population declines, prompting the Nevada Department of Wildlife to seek new regulations from the commission. Almost 50 scientists  including professors from the University of Nevada-Reno, Nevada State College and Harvard University  submitted a letter this week to the commission expressing support for a complete ban. Citing climate change, disease and other global threats to reptiles, the scientists encouraged the full ban to protect Nevadas unique reptile community. Scientists and reptile enthusiasts around the world are breathing a sigh of relief today, said Donnelly. The Wildlife Commission stepped up and did the right thing. Nevada harbors some of the most remarkable reptilian diversity in the world, and this move helps ensure that our lizards and snakes will be here for future generations.
U.S. Trade Commissions Solar Imports Decision Endangers Climate Progress

WASHINGTON The International Trade Commission today sided with two U.S. solar companies on claims that imported solar cells have made their products uncompetitive. The case now goes to a remedy phase, where the ITC will make recommendations to President Trump.

If the case results in tariffs on imported solar panels, the U.S. solar industry could be upended, hurting efforts to move toward rooftop solar and other forms of distributed generation and reduce greenhouse emissions.

The trade commission made an enormous and dangerous mistake in its liability finding, said Howard Crystal, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. Now we have to make sure it proposes remedies that dont impair the incredible potential for distributed solar on rooftops and other areas. In the wake of Harvey, Irma and Maria, we need to push our clean energy transition forward to combat climate change.

The Center will be submitting comments to the ITC during the remedy phase explaining that import tariffs pose tremendous risk not only to the growth of the domestic solar industry, but to national efforts to transition to a clean and just energy economy.

By making solar less competitive, tariffs would threaten to stifle Americas critical clean energy transition and extend the countrys reliance on polluting energy sources that are fueling climate change.
ABC/Randy HolmesShawn Mendes was forced to cancel his show in Mexico City on September 20 after a devastating earthquake hit that country. Now, he's partnering with the Red Cross to raise money for the victims of the quake.

Shanw has launched a campaign on CrowdRise, which is part of GoFundMe, to encourage donations for disaster relief in Mexico. He's gotten things the ball rolling with a $100,000 donation.

On the campaign page, Shawn writes, "The scale of the devastation is hard to comprehend. While I cancelled my concert out of respect and for safety, being there during this tragedy and seeing the devastation first hand made me want to do whatever I could to help those impacted by this tragedy...I am really grateful for anything you can do."

The American Red Cross is working with the Mexican Red Cross to determine where to allocate the funds raised.
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Update - 8.26pm: Gas supply has been fully restored to customers in Galway and Mayo.

A full investigation is now underway into how gas entered the system on Friday without the safety odour.

Gas Networks Ireland has apologised to customers and thanked them for their patience.

Gas supply fully restored to natural gas customers in #Galway and #Mayo https://t.co/J0TfSHby5u  Gas Networks Ireland (@GasNetIrl) September 23, 2017

Update - 5.03pm: Gas customers in Tuam, Headford, Westport, Claremorris, Crossmolina and Ballinrobe are now safe to resume using their natural gas supply.

Gas Networks Ireland have just issued their latest update - apologising again for any inconvenience caused over the past few days.

They say the gas supply for customers in Castlebar and Ballina is also expected to be restored later this evening.

Customers in Westport, Claremorris & Ballinrobe are now safe to resume using their natural gas supply. https://t.co/y5Rp7EKxso  Gas Networks Ireland (@GasNetIrl) September 23, 2017

Earlier: Technical teams are working to restore gas supply to the remaining areas affected by this week's fault at the Corrib Gas Refinery.

An error allowed gas to enter supplies, without the odour which is normally added for safety reasons.

Around 10,000 homes in Galway and Mayo were affected.

"Last night, we were able to check and make sure that there were no pockets of unodourised gas in the Galway/Salthill/Oronmore and Claregalway areas and we'll also bring customers back on there," said Gas Networks Ireland safety manager Owen Wilson.

"And what we'll be doing over the weekend now is working our way north."
Minister Eoghan Murphy has today defended the Government's efforts to tackle the housing crisis.

The Housing Minister insisted that the Rebuilding Ireland policy, which sets out a number of strategies to increase supply and boost social housing, is being implemented.

It comes as over 90,000 people are on the social housing waiting list.

Minister Eoghan Murphy said that progress is being made.

"As we do with the housing list, it's not just about completely new builds, it's also about using the housing assistance payment and the private market as well," he said.

"And we have, over the course of the Rebuilding Ireland plan, we're going to deliver at least 47,000 new social housing homes for people on the housing list, but we'll continue to build beyond that plan."
French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has rallied disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections.

It comes amid spreading discontent with the president's vision of a more business-friendly economy.

Thousands gathered at the iconic Place de la Bastille for a march through eastern Paris, including Melenchon supporters, environmental activists, anti-capitalism campaigners and others just expressing frustration with France's new, young president.

Mr Melenchon's Defiant France party said it brought in protesters by bus from more than 150 French towns.

A huge balloon on top of a truck read: "Macron, Resign!"

The protesters' anger is centered on labour decrees that Mr Macron signed on Friday reducing French unions' influence over workplace rules and making it easier for companies to fire workers.

Mr Macron says the change is needed so France can compete in the global economy. Opponents say he is dismantling the French lifestyle.

Mr Melenchon, seeking to position himself as France's leading opposition figure after a strong fourth-place showing in this year's presidential election, wants the labour law decrees withdrawn.

The protesters are also angry at what Mr Melenchon calls the "authoritarian" way Mr Macron imposed the reforms.

He used a special procedure allowing the government to change labour law by executive order instead of going through a lengthy debate to pass a bill in parliament.

The president said during the signing ceremony on Friday that the first labour measures will start being applied next week, and all will be implemented by the end of the year.

Among the most contested reforms is one that caps the financial penalties awarded by courts for wrongful dismissals.

Another eases regulations governing when and why companies can dismiss workers.

Mr Macron lauded the "unprecedented wave of changes" to France's social model, along with changes to unemployment benefits and a training plan for jobless people that will be set up next year.

While he shone at the UN General Assembly in New York last week and has made a strong mark on the international stage, he has struggled with myriad critics at home.

Farmers, riot police and carnival workers have also held protests in recent weeks over work policy changes under Mr Macron, and truckers plan road blockades on Monday.

AP
A Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant group's campaign against West German authorities has returned home.

The dpa news agency reported most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived on Saturday in the city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum.
French president Emmanuel Macron has warned Theresa May that she needs to provide greater clarity over Britain's position if she wants to break the deadlock in the stalled Brexit talks.

In a keynote speech in Florence yesterday, the British Prime Minister set out her offer to continue paying into EU coffers for a two-year transition period after the UK leaves in 2019, during which EU nationals would remain free to settle in Britain.

Downing Street had hoped her keenly awaited address would end the stalemate in Brussels and enable the talks to move on to Britain's future relations with the EU - including a free trade deal.

However, speaking in Paris, Mr Macron said that while he welcomed Mrs May's "willingness" to move forward, more progress was needed on the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the border with Ireland as well as the so-called "divorce settlement".

"Before we move forward, we wish to clarify the issue of the regulation of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit and the question of Ireland," he said.

"If those three points are not clarified, then we cannot move forward on the rest."

His comments echoed those of the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier who welcomed the "constructive spirit" of her speech but said her assurances needed to be translated into a "precise negotiating position".

The senior Conservative backbencher Bernard Jenkin said the French president was being unreasonable in demanding such detail at this stage of the negotiations.

"How can we put money on the table when we don't know what the deal is? How can we discuss how the finer details of the Northern Ireland border should operate when the EU won't even begin to discuss what the relationship is that they want between the UK and the EU?" he told the BBC.

Under Mrs May's proposals, the UK could pay around 18bn into the EU budget during a two-year transition in which the UK would continue to have access to the single market and EU nationals would remain free to move to Britain - although they would have to register with the UK authorities.

She also promised the rights of EU citizens living in the UK would be written into British law and proposed a "bold new strategic agreement" on future security co-operation.

Czech Europe secretary Ales Chmelar warned, however, that the final divorce bill would be significantly higher than the 18bn it is said the UK would have to be prepared to pay for access to EU markets.

"This is just a payment for the remaining financial framework period. This is not a payment for all the legacies that we see including for example the pensions and the legacies in terms of grants and funds," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"It is quite a normal thing that when you have a certain advantage of access to a market you also have to pay for it. This is a very important part that cannot be ignored."

Meanwhile there was concern among some pro-Brexit Conservatives that Mrs May had given too much ground to Brussels in her efforts to get a deal

Backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said she had failed to make clear whether the UK would remain subject to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) during the transition period.

"To my mind that is an absolutely red line," he told BBC 2's Newsnight.

"If after March 2019 we are still subject to the ECJ we have not left the European Union and that would be undermining the (EU referendum) vote we had in 2016."

The Conservative peer Lord Bridges, who quit in June as a Brexit minister, said the Government now needed to be prepared for the possibility the talks will fail and it would crash out of the EU without a deal.

"I would urge the Government not to be too coy about this. It is absolutely the case that we need to be ready for that," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"If we are not ready for it and the EU senses we are not ready for it, we will be captured at the negotiating table.

"It is in our interests to do a deal, it is in Europe's interests to do a deal. But at the same time we need to be ready."
Puerto Rican officials could not reach more than half their towns amid a push to evacuate tens of thousands of people over a failing dam as the disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria becomes clear.

Authorities launched an evacuation of the 70,000 people living downstream of Guajataca Dam in north-west Puerto Rico.

They sent buses to move people away on Friday and posted frantic warnings on Twitter that went unseen by many in the blacked-out coastal area.

"This is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION," the National Weather Service wrote. "All the areas around the Guajataca River must evacuate NOW. Your lives are in DANGER."

The 316m dam, built around 1928, holds back a man-made lake covering about two square miles (5 sq km).

More than 15 inches (nearly 40cm) of rain fell on the surrounding mountains after the Category 4 Maria left the island on Wednesday afternoon, swelling the reservoir.

An engineer inspecting the dam reported a "contained breach" that officials quickly realised was a crack that could be the first sign of total failure, US National Weather Service meteorologist Anthony Reynes said.

"There's no clue as to how long or how this can evolve. That is why the authorities are moving so fast because they also have the challenges of all the debris. It is a really, really dire situation," he said.

Government spokesman Carlos Bermudez said that officials could not reach 40 of the 78 municipalities on the island more than two days after the hurricane hit, toppling power lines and mobile phone towers and sending floods cascading through city streets.

Officials said 1,360 of the island's 1,600 phone towers had been brought down, and 85% of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out.

With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may be worse than they know.

"We haven't seen the extent of the damage," Governor Ricardo Rossello said. He could not say when power might be restored.

Major General Derek P Rydholm, deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve, said at the Pentagon that it was impossible to say when communication and power would be restored.

He said mobile communications systems are being flown in but acknowledged "it's going to take a while" before people in Puerto Rico will be able to communicate with their families outside the island.

Until Friday, he said, "there was no real understanding at all of the gravity of the situation".

The island's electric grid was in sorry shape long before Maria struck. The territory's debt crisis has left agencies like the state power company broke.

It abandoned most basic maintenance in recent years, leaving the island subject to regular blackouts.

"Some transmission structures collapsed," Mr Rossello said, adding that there was no severe damage to electric plants.

He said he was distributing 250 satellite phones from Fema to mayors across the island to re-establish contact.

The death toll from Maria stood at six, but was likely to rise.

At least 27 lives in all have been lost around the Caribbean, including at least 15 on hard-hit Dominica. Haiti reported three deaths; Guadeloupe, two; and the Dominican Republic, one.

Across Puerto Rico, more than 15,000 people are in shelters, including some 2,000 rescued from the north coastal town of Toa Baja.

Some of the island's 3.4 million people planned to head to the US to temporarily escape the devastation.

At least in the short term, though, the soggy misery will continue: Additional rain - up to 6 inches (15cm) - is expected over Saturday.

AP
How international students in South Jersey celebrate the holidays

South Jersey's international students share how they cope when they can't make it home for the holidays by finding new ways to celebrate the season.
reacts sharply if your refer to his band, Dhamma Wings, as Indias first Dalit rock band. We dont see ourselves as Dalits. I am not Dalit  I am a convert to Buddhism, he says. And what is Dalit? We have Marathas and Brahmins, too, in our band. We sing about harmony, peace and equality. We speak of India First in our songs. They always tag me with people of other mentalities.
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Kaushlendra Prapanacharya Phalahari Maharaj, who has been charged with sexually assaulting his female disciple, was arrested on Saturday.

The 21-year-old victim from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur had lodged a complaint against Rajasthan-based Phalahari Maharaj, alleging sexual exploitation.



In her complaint, the woman had alleged that the 70-year-old godman had sexually assaulted her at his ashram on August 7 in Alwar. The woman, who is studying law in Jaipur, had said her parents had been his followers for the past few years, PTI reported.

The 70-year-old self-styled godman was arrested from the government hospital, where he was admitted.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case in connection with the murder of a seven-year-old student in Ryan International School, Gurugram on the request of Haryana Government and further notification from the Government of India.

A notification regarding the murder of Pradyuman Thakur was received by the CBI on Friday.

CBI took over the investigation of the case which was earlier registered on September 8 at Police Station Bhondsi, Gurugram under Section 302 of Indian Penal Code (IPC), 25 of Arms Act, 12 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and 75 of Juvenile Justice (J.J.) Act r/w Section 34 of IPC.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday refused to stay the arrests of trustees in regard with the case.

Justice Inderjit Singh passed the order while hearing the interim bail plea of the trustees.

The trustees of Ryan International Schools-- Augustine Francis Pinto, his wife Grace and their son Ryan had on Saturday moved the High Court, seeking anticipatory bail in the matter.

The High Court also issued a notice to the Haryana Government and sought a reply in the matter.

The next hearing in the case will take place on Monday.

The High Court said it's a serious issue and it can't take a decision without hearing all the sides.

The body of seven-year-old Pradyuman was found, with his throat slit, in the Ryan International School, Gurugram on September 8.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Soon after surrendering to the police in the alleged rape of a 25-year-old actor, Bollywood producer on Saturday has been sent to judicial custody till October 6.

Earlier in the day, the Bollywood producer surrendered before Hyderabad Police after the Supreme Court dismissed his anticipatory bail petition on Friday.

An aspiring actress had lodged a complaint against Morani accusing him of raping and assaulting her in a hotel in Hyderabad.

After the apex court directed him to surrender to police, Morani surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station at 9:00 am.

A case was registered under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 417 (cheating), 376 (rape) 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage) and other relevant sections.

Morani, who produced Bollywood movie 'Chennai Express' 'Dilwale,' 'Ra.One' was brought to court later in the day.

The High Court for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh at Hyderabad had on September 5 upheld a Sessions Court's decision cancelling Morani's bail in the rape case.

Morani is also an accused in the 2G scam.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Stating that the first phase of the much-delayed Navi Mumbai airport project will "commence" by December 2019, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said his government would issue a letter of intent (LoI) as awarding the contract is a "matter of time" now.

He also said the pre-developmental works for the ambitious project will be completed by May next year.

The CM's statement assumes significance as award of the LoI is considered as an important step in taking the project forward, which is dogged by inordinate delays since its conception in 1997.

Infrastructure major GVK group had bagged the financial bid to build and operate the second international airport in the Mumbai metropolitan region at an investment of Rs 16,000 crore earlier this year, beating rival GMR group.

However, the project couldn't make any progress as the state government has not yet approved and finalised the finance deal won by the GVK. Once the government gives its nod, a letter of award will be given to the contractor, after which a special purpose vehicle (SPV) can be set up to execute the project.

"There are two phases of of Navi Mumbai airport. One phase is the pre-works in which you have to level the land, cut a hill and you have to change the course of the river. So these are the predevelopment works which we have awarded the contract and they have already started the work.

"So possibly the site with the pre-development works will be ready by May next year. The concessionaire for (the airport) is also nearly shortlisted. It is a matter of time that we will award the contract. We will issue the letter of intent to the concessionaire and what is intended is that the first phase of the Navi Mumbai airport should commence by December 2019," Fadnavis told reporters on the sidelines of "India Leadership Summit" organised by the Indian School of Business (ISB) here.

The project has faced inordinate delays over the issues of environment and land acquisition since the state government approved it in 2007.

The project will be carried out on a public-private partnership (PPP) model and Cidco (City and Industry Development Corporation), a government authority for city planning, will incur pre-development work costs, which it will be later recovered from GVK.

Interestingly, a CAPA Global Strategy Report for July-August, 2017, had recently stated that the airport is unlikely to commence operations before March 2024, as significant earthworks need to be performed at the site, located in Raigad district adjoining Mumbai.

Meanwhile, replying to a query, Fadnavis said his government had requested the Centre to differentiate between smaller and bigger states in allotting the "ease of doing business" ranking.

"What we have requested the DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) is to slightly differentiate between the large states and the small states. Having said that, we will aim that we should be a leading state (in the ranking). That we will achieve this year," the CM said.

He said the new GST (Goods and Services Tax) regime could have some hiccups initially, but his government is capable of achieving the targets.

On the recent torrential rains that led to flooding of roads in Mumbai, the chief minister said the pumping network to flush out water into the sea has begun and 60 per cent of the work has been completed.

He refused to take questions on the Shiv Sena, the belligerent partner of the ruling BJP which has recently indicated to pull out of the coalition government.

Earlier in his address to ISB students, Fadnavis underlined the need to shift people from agriculture to other sectors, as 50 per cent of people in Maharashtra are dependent on agriculture.

"Agriculture does not have the capacity to consume (to sustain) 50 per cent of people. We need to shift 15 to 20 per cent of people to other sectors of economy..to service sector...to industries sector, and we have started doing that," he said.

Fadnavis said Maharashtra registered a 15.5 per cent growth in agriculture, which was on a downward spiral, after he took over as a chief minister three years ago.
Amid expectation that the Centre might soon announce a booster shot for the economy, Prime Minister on Saturday reiterated his governments promise of providing every poor person, whether living in rural or urban areas, a house by 2022. The PM said his government and partys agenda was development, not merely votes.
India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using chilli and stun grenades to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar, officials said on Friday.
The CBI on Saturday took custody of three people arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the killing of Pradhuman, a seven-year-old student of Ryan International School, on September 8.

The CBI had sought custody of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar, regional head of the group Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas from the court.

ALSO READ: CBI registers case in Ryan International school murder case

"On the request of the CBI in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the alleged murder of a student in a school at Gurugram, the competent court today remanded three accused in one-day police custody," a CBI spokesperson said.

The CBI on Friday took over the probe into the killing of the seven-year-old at the Gurugram school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The case had been registered at the Bhondsi police station in Gurugram under the IPC section related to murder, and relevant sections of the Arms Act, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.
It was on Oct. 4, 1957, just 60 years ago, that the Soviet Union launched the first Earth satellite, Sputnik. It was little more than an aluminum beach ball with a radio transmitter that sent out a regular series of radio beeps, but it expanded the Cold War to outer space, shook up American technological smugness and probably helped John Kennedy get elected president in 1960.
Describing terrorism as an "existentialist danger" to mankind, India today wondered how the international community will fight the menace if the UN Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists.
No jam was being made that morning at the Bhuira Jam Factory in this remote Himachal Pradesh village. There was no fruit to be weighed and sorted, cut and boiled. A basket of ripening peaches lay unattended by the weighing scale.



The all-women jam-making team at Bhuira had a new task: Emptying out the office so that it could be painted. Perhaps out of habit, the women had their caps neatly on, their hair firmly tucked in, a smidgen of sindhoor (vermilion) peeping out from beneath.



Seated before a computer, Upasana Kumari is not a jam-maker at all and described herself as an administrator. With a BSc in information technology, the farmers daughter said all seven of her sisters (plus a brother) are educated or are still studying. The youngest wants to be a doctor and is in her final year of school; the eldest is married and helps her husband with his fruit orchard. Only I have a paid job, pointed out Kumari.



Married to a policeman who has a secure job and a steady salary, Kumari said she thought about getting back to work now that her only child, a boy, is three. What started with part-time work is now a full-fledged job, and shes grateful for the factory since there arent many job opportunities for someone with her qualifications in this remote area. If it wasnt for this factory, I wouldnt have been able to work at all, she said. I didnt study so much so that I could sit at home.

I didnt study so much so that I could sit at home, said Upasana Kumari, a BSc in information technology, who is now an administrator at Bhuira Jams.



In contrast to its neighboursparticularly Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and HaryanaHimachal Pradesh stands out as a positive outlier in terms of social development.

Higher sex-ratio at birth, more literate and educated women

The 2011 Indian Human Development Report ranked Himachal Pradesh third after Kerala and Delhi. Dramatic poverty decline in rural areaswhere 90% of the population livesfrom 36.8% to 8.5% between 1993-94 and 2011; land reform with 80% of the population owning some amount of land; exceptional infrastructure; enlightened policy and legislation (the Himalayan state was the first to ban plastic bags) and an engaged citizenry are some of the features that make this such a stand-out state, according to a 2015 World Bank Group study, Scaling the Heights: Social Inclusion and Sustainable Development in Himachal Pradesh.

Source: India and Himachal Pradesh factsheets, Family Health Survey, 2015-16

But impressive as these features are, the one feature that is perhaps not commented upon enough is the enthusiastic participation of the states women in jobs, particularly in rural areas.

For some years now, economists and policy-makers have been troubled by the dwindling number of women in paid jobs, or female labor force participation (FLFP).

The data are indisputable. Between the years 2004-05 and 2011-12, 19.6 million women dropped out of the Indian labour force, according to a 2017 World Bank report, Precarious Drop: Reassessing Patterns of Female Labour Force Participation in India.

During 1993-94 to 2011-12, participation fell from 42.6% to 31.2%. But the sharpest drop occurred between 2004-05 and 2011-12 in rural India amongst young girls and women aged between 15 and 24.

The exception to this trend: Himachal Pradesh.

Female Workforce Participation:

Himachal Pradesh & Its Neighbours

Source: Census 2011, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation

Amongst all states, Himachal Pradesh has, at 47.4%, the second-largest participation of women in the labour force in rural areas, after Sikkim, according to Census 2011. More recent findings by the World Bank in June 2017 place the state at number one, at par with Sikkim.

More women in rural Himachal Pradesh are at work

In keeping with the trends elsewhere the country, FLFP is waning in Himachal Pradesh too. Rural participation dipped four percentage points from 71% to 67% between 2004-05 and 2011-12, while urban participation also fell from 36% to 30%, according to this 2015 World Bank Group report.

Much of the states female workforce participation is driven by agriculture, still the mainstay of the states largely rural economy. In urban areas, the picture isnt quite so rosy with an FLFP (according to Census data) of 19.9%not great when you compare it with the rural figure, but still higher than the all India urban FLFP at 15.4%.

Source: Census 2011 Data, Office of the Registrar General, India, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation

Women in rural areas are more than twice as likely as their male counterparts to report themselves as being self-employed in agriculture, said Maitreyi Bordia Das, lead author of the World Bank Groups 2015 study.

Women in the hill states have always worked, said Pronab Sen, country director of International Growth Centres India central division. There is a long history of men migrating for jobs and women taking over the economic activity in villages. They take the decisions and call the shots. This is culturally embedded in these states, he said.

Womens participation in agriculture in the state is probably very different from that in other north Indian states, said Das. Horticulture and floriculture, for instance, have higher value than traditional crops.

But, she warned, women elsewhere in India are withdrawing from agriculture. If Himachal is to avoid this trend, then its important to make sure new opportunities in agri business benefit women as well, she said.

Moreover, pointed out Das, agriculture is arduous manual work. Himachali women report themselves as being employed in agriculture. This is good in a sense. It means they dont regard themselves as mere helpers but active agents. But to keep them in jobs, its important to make jobs worth their while. And so, employment in high-value agriculture is really important.

I make the rotis, he makes the vegetables. Neelam Devi, grade X pass

Made by happy mountain women, states every jar that bears the Bhuira label. Last year, these happy women made 65,458 kg of jams, jellies and chutneys sold in 108,000 large and 54,955 small bottles made in two factory units, one at Bhuira and a newer one that was set up in 2011 at Halonipul village nearby.

Thats a lot of jam for what started as a personal, for friends-and-family only venture by Linnet Mushran, an Englishwoman who made India her home.

The charming stone-and-slate cottage in Bhuira, Rajgarh tehsil in Sirmaur district, nestled deep inside pine forests in Himachal Pradesh remains Mushrans home and is also the site of the factory that has eight full-time employees, all women, and, in season, between 18 and 19 jam-makers and between 12 and 15 packers (again, all women). Mushrans daughter-in-law, Rebecca Vaz, is helping expand the business.



On the morning that I visited, I ran into Poonam Kanwar, 50, orchard owner who had walked to the factory to inquire if there is a requirement for the apricot and peaches that have ripened on her trees in Chichdiya village close by.



The factory had met this years orders. Kanwar shruggedthere would be other sales, figured the woman who has been supplying fruit to the jam factory for 10 years. Selling fruit to be made into jam anyway is an added source of incomeher best pickings are sold in mandis and then sent to fruit markets in Delhi.



Theres really no time for chit-chat. Kanwar tends to 150 fruits trees, including lemons and pears in addition to peaches and apricots. She also grows vegetables for her own consumption. And there are four cows to look after.



The hard work of tending to the land and all that thrives on it is shared by Kanwar and her husband, fifty-fifty, she said.



A son has completed his masters in technology and has a job, and her 28-year-old daughter, as yet unmarried, is a PhD in computers, she said proudly. I have worked on the land from the day I got married, said Kanwar. But nowadays girls are educated and when that happens there is no question that they will do farming. Kanwars daughter has a job, teaching in Chandigarh where she lives alone.



The idea of shared household work doesnt seem to be a novelty for many of the women. Neelam Devi, a grade X pass, has worked on and off at the factorybreaks in employment marked by the birth of her three children.



Before marriage also I used to work. But then it was for shauk (fun). Now I earn so that I can educate my children, send them to the best schools, let them study to their hearts content, said Neelam Devi. Its a vision she shares with her husband. If he didnt help me at home, how could I have worked outside? I make the rotis, he makes the vegetables, she said.



Women in Himachal Pradesh have a long and perhaps unique history of community activism, pointed out Dass World Bank report. This form of assertion in public spaces resonates with their agency in the private sphere, it stated.

As many as 96.4% of married urban women and 90% of married rural women in Himachal Pradeshwell above the all-India average of 85.8% and 83%, respectivelyreported participating in household decisions, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16.

Kamla Devi is the 58-year-old pradhan (head of the village council) of Bhuira village (population 685). She is, unusual for India, the only child and therefore the sole inheritor of her fathers land. I grew up here. I am a daughter of this village, she said.

The widow of a soldier, Devi has lived all over India including Kerala and Sikkim. On the times that I went with him, I hired casual labour to look after the fields and fruit trees, she said. Of her two sons, the elder died of cancer and the younger has a small tent business. Now, she tends to the fields alone, and looks after village council work. Theres a government school up to the grade X and two anganwadis (courtyard shelters). Every girl here is in school, she said.

Where The Women Work

Source: Sample Survey Office, 68th Round, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation

I am introduced to Devi by her elder daughter-in-law, Ranjita, who has worked with Bhuira Jams from the day it received its commercial license in 1999. Back then, she was a young woman. Now, with her husband dead and nobody to help her mother-in-law with the land, was it ever suggested to her that she might perhaps chip in? No. Never. I have always worked. The question of giving up my job never arose, she said.

Ranjita Devi has worked with Bhuira Jams from the day it received its commercial license in 1999.



Bhuiras grand supervisor is the four-feet-something Ram Kali, a woman with an easy laugh who says her age is between 50 and 65 depending on her mood.

Kalis parents came to Himachal Pradesh as migrant labour. She has no idea when they went back, or why she was left behind with a Himachali family. But this state has been her home ever since. She first came to Bhuira with her husband, a daily wage laborer who died some years ago, as a tenant farmer. It was a forest. We leveled the land, planted apple trees and potatoes and lived on it for free, she said.
The number of threats and incidents endangering South Asia's peace and stability are on the rise, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday said, in an apparent reference to Pakistan.

Swaraj, on the sidelines of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, said regional prosperity, connectivity and cooperation can take place only in an atmosphere of peace and security.

"It, however, remains at serious risk in the region. The number of threats and incidents that endanger South Asia's peace and stability are on the rise," she said in the opening statement at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Foreign Minister meeting.

"It is necessary for our region's survival that we eliminate the scourge of terrorism in all its forms, without any discrimination, and end the ecosystem of its support," Swaraj was quoted as saying in a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Swaraj said India attaches the highest priority to the development and prosperity of the region under its "neighbourhood first" policy.

Several initiatives that Prime Minister Modi had announced for the region have already been implemented.

Swaraj, earlier, underscored the need to combat terrorism in her multilateral meetings and sent a "very strong" signal to Pakistan to stop using it as an instrument of state policy.
Global trade growth is expected to rebound in 2017 but India may not be able to take advantage of this in the US and China  major markets where consumer and industrial demand is set to drive trade forward.
At a time when prices are at a three-year high and protests are being staged across the country against it, Union Petroleum Minister claimed on Saturday that prices have already started falling, and the fall would continue.
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday launched the 'Pradhan Mantri LPG Panchayat' from Mota Ishanpur village here today and handed over free LPG connection to a beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.

Addressing the public, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister said his government has so far provided LPG connection to 8.5 crore households in less than three years as against 14 crore connections provided by the Congress government.

Pradhan said LPG connection has empowered women and saved lives of lakhs of women who die due to health complications arising out of use of traditional means of fuel like wood.

In the presence of Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Pradhan handed over free LPG connection to the beneficiary of PMUY Kokilaben Parmar. She happens to be the third crore beneficiary under the scheme.

Taking a swipe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for asking what his government did for the poor, Pradhan later told mediapersons that his ministry provided three crore LPG connections to the poor including the tribals and Dalits.

"Those who have cheated the people of this country, and have been shown the door by the people, are shedding crocodile tears for the poor. People will give them befitting reply in the next election," he said.

He said Pradhan Mantri LPG Panchayat will aim at spreading awareness among the LPG users about how to properly use the clean fuel and its many benefits.

"One lakh LPG Panchayat (to be held across the country) will deal with the issue of safe use of LPG as well as its various benefits, like environment, health, and how it empowers women," he said.

Pradhan said that 40 per cent of Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries in Gujarat are tribals and Dalits. He said his ministry has also increased LPG distribution centres, with 106 new distribution centres added in the last one and half years in Gujarat alone.

"We are working on setting up 319 new distribution centres, which will provide employment to 5,000 people," he said.

LPG Panchayat will serve as an interactive platform between those who received LPG cylinders under PMUY, officials, LPG distributors and NGOs.

In one panchayat, around 100 LPG customers of nearby areas will share their experiences with each others. They can also share their problems and suggestions.

The panchayats will also include safe practices, quality of service provided by distributors and availability of refill cylinders.
The goods and services tax (GST) is threatening to change the face of West Bengals biggest festival, Durga Puja, from next year. For the numerous small-scale printers involved in the advertising space, but under the ambit of GST, the next pujas will just mean less work and less cheer.
Backed by a healthy growth in motor and health insurance, investments of companies rose by around 128 per cent in the past five years. A majority of the investments got channelised into government securities.
To make 239,000 more inclusive and in order to seek uniform results from the massive funds being devolved to them, the Centre will soon release a report to decide on who should be recruited as non-elected panchayat staff.
India's drug pricing authority called for better regulation of the country's massive private healthcare industry on Friday to ensure government efforts to cut prices benefit patients.

To cut the cost of procedures such as angioplasty and knee surgery, India's National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has dramatically reduced prices of knee implants and cardiac stents in recent months.

The move has been hailed as a major effort by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make healthcare affordable, but it has been met with stiff resistance from healthcare providers.

Several hospitals across the country have hiked prices of related services which are an essential part of such surgeries - like doctors' fees and hospital stay costs - to make up for the price caps, according to industry insiders and activists.

These actions risk impeding the efforts of the NPPA, as it considers bringing more medical devices under price control with the aim of making healthcare more accessible in a country where it is still a luxury for many.

"We have to find a way to rationalise the cost of hospital care," NPPA Chairman Bhupendra Singh told Reuters. "There is no legal framework to regulate hospital charges."

The NPPA has dramatically reduced prices of knee implants and cardiac stents in recent months

India spends roughly one percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare - among the lowest in the world - this has resulted in a broken public healthcare system that few trust.

Nearly 70 percent of healthcare delivery is therefore in the hands of private players, from small clinics to large hospital chains. But this private industry is largely unregulated.

The government think-tank NITI Aayog has been pushing for further privatisation of healthcare services, which some experts have expressed concerns over, pushing instead for improvements in the public health infrastructure.

Alexander Thomas, president of the Association Healthcare Providers of India, said hospitals hiking prices after the price control measures are doing so to cover treatment costs.

Most private hospitals, he added, adhere to standards and the AHPI has also been advising its member hospitals to bring in more transparency in the billing process.

Singh said the impact of bringing down the prices of knee implants and stents had been "substantial," but more needs to be done, such as clear display of treatment costs by hospitals so patients can compare prices across providers.

The health ministry could also look at standardising the cost of certain treatments, so the prices don't vary across hospitals, Singh said.
The Union finance ministry is finalising norms for a unified regulator for the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) situated at in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, which has clocked $7 billion of business in banking, insurance, and capital markets so far.
The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that India is fast emerging as Investors' destination and this has been primarily possible because of a number of decisions taken by the UnionGovernment to bring in the ease of business. As a result today, many of those Indians who had left the country decades ago and never found a reason to look back, are now keenly exploring the possibilities of returning back and investing in India. .

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Addressing the North East Infrastructure Conclave organised by CII here today, Dr Jitendra Singh said, Northeast offers the most unexplored but fertile ground for new investments. It will, therefore, soon become the nodal point of New India's growth story and supplement the accomplishments of western States to ensure wholesome supremacy for India in the emerging global arena, he said. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh credited the Union Government for bringing in the ease of business and and at the same time focussing on Act East Policy" aimed at giving India, strategic as well as trade advantage on the eastern borders. .

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The Ministry of Development of Northeast (DoNER), Dr Jitendra Singh said, is proactively working to ensure that Northeast offers incentives to investors from other parts of the country and abroad. This will not only increase revenue generation and job opportunities, he said, but would also help supplement Indias foreign outreach in the form of Act East Policy" because in order to effectively engage with countries distal to India's eastern borders, we should first have to effectively develop Indian States proximal to the eastern borders. .

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For example Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, have the potential to produce a number of such products and goods which will find easy takers in eastern countries like Myanmar and Bhutan which have common eating habits and common lifestyle, he explained. .

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Describing the Northeast as a fast growing market with unexplored opportunities for investment, trade, tourism etc., Dr Jitendra Singh said, for India to emerge as a global economic power, it is important to realise the full potential of Northeast so that it can supplement the economic accomplishments of western States in order to ensure a wholesome growth for the entire country. .

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In the last 3 years, Dr Jitendra Singh said, a fast track headway has been made in improving connectivity, transport and infrastructure facilities in order to bring in ease of investment. He said, a lot has been achieved in the last 3 years, which was not done for several decades in the past. .

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The textile and handloom products from Northeast have a unique and original value, said Dr Jitendra Singh, but there are less number of takers because the people outside the region are not fully aware of it. To overcome this constraint, he said, the Ministry of DoNER, last year, set up a permanent stall / outlet called Purbashree" at the prestigious Dilli Haat" which showcases unique textile and handloom products from the region. It has proved very successful and is, on daily basis, attracting visitors from all parts of India and even abroad, he said. .

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Dr Jitendra Singh said, the creation of Venture Capital fund for Northeast region with North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) is meant to provide capital for Startups" in North-Eastern region and to attract investors.his is a new breakthrough because it will attract young Startups not only from the region but from across the country, he added. .

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Secretary, Ministry of DoNER Shri Naveen Verma was also present. .

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A multi-agency exercise was conducted on the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake as the final event of Pralay Sahayam in Hyderabad today. The event demonstrated efforts of all central and state agencies, National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and the Armed Forces towards jointly tackling an urban flooding scenario in Hyderabad. .

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The Minister of State for Defence Dr. Subhash Bhamre who was the Chief Guest on the occasion, congratulated the organising committee for the successful conduct of the exercise. The Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana Shri Mohammad Mehmood Ali was the Guest of Honour. General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Southern Command Lt Gen PM Hariz was the conducting authority of the exercise. For the purpose of the exercise, Hussain Sagar Lake was transformed into urban colonies partly submerged under water, post heavy showers in the city. A large number of dummy structures depicting multi-storied buildings and houses with stranded people, power stations, educational institutes etc., were erected in the lake in an inundated condition. The hapless stranded occupants of these dwellings were rescued in joint operations carried out by the State Government agencies, Police, State Fire & Emergency Services, NDRF, CISF and the Armed Forces. The Indian Air Force and the Army Aviation employed the Mi-17 helicopters, Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and Chetak Helicopter for aerial evacuation, demonstrating special skills in hovering and winching. The massive Mi-17 lowered a Gemini class inflatable boat of the Indian Navy for rescuing the trapped citizens. The agile ALH and Chetak Helicopters virtually hovered over the roof tops and winched in people trapped in stranded, inaccessible buildings. Special Forces such as the Army Commandos and Marine Commandos from the Indian Navy carried out a highly synchronized Search and Rescue operation in the flooded colonies. Dog Squad of NDRF and Telangana State police were pressed into action to search for trapped personnel. Relief activities such as evacuation of rescued people, provisioning of medical care and distribution of essential supplies was carried out by multiple agencies in a coordinated and efficient manner. .

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The exercise brought out the role and function of the State Emergency Operations in coordinating conduct of the joint operations. Further the significance of early warning systems of agencies like Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) was emphasized. .

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The exercise culminated with a static display which demonstrated the efficient and functional layout of a relief and rehabilitation camp for the displaced persons. The camp catered for emergency medical assistance and other essential services for the needy. Indian vendors showcased state-of-the-art disaster management equipment and related wares. NGOs such as Plan India, Care India, Sphere India, etc., also participated, bringing out their capabilities, organization and operational strategies. .

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MJPS/NAo/BSK/RP
ABC News(MIAMI) -- ABC News reporters helped assure a worried daughter that her family in Puerto Rico is safe after she could not reach them in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.



Miami resident Tere Blanca sent ABC News reporters a video message Friday saying she was desperate to hear from her family in Ponce, on the island's southern coast. In the video, she said she had not been able to contact her father and brother.



Puerto Rico is virtually without power or cell service after Maria made landfall on the island as a powerful Category 4 storm early Wednesday morning. People in the United States have been struggling to reach loved ones after the hurricane decimated the island.



Debris, downed power lines and trees littered the streets as ABC News reporters drove from San Juan to Ponce.



Once they arrived in Ponce, ABC News reporters on the ground found Tere Blanca's father, Antonio Blanca, alive and well at his home.



Antonio Blanca told ABC News that he and his wife, Julie Blanca, are safe. They have food and water, but no electricity, he said.



The father also said that his son, Tony Blanca, is OK and had stopped by their home on Thursday.



Julie Blanca said she and her husband had last spoken to his daughter on Tuesday, hours before the storm hit Puerto Rico. At that point, "nothing was happening," Julie Blanca said.



After 1 a.m. Wednesday, conditions began to worsen, Julia Blanca said.



"It was terrible," she said.



Antonio Blanca recorded a message for his daughter, telling her he loves her and his two granddaughters and instructing her not to worry about them.



"I love you, Tere -- a lot," Antonio Blanca said.



At least seven people in Puerto Rico were killed by the storm, officials said. The entire island is without electricity after its power grid was destroyed in the storm.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency technical adviser says more testing is needed to ensure that air in the Goodman Community Center on Madisons East Side isnt being contaminated by hazardous vapors from an underground chemical plume that has been traced to the adjacent Madison-Kipp plant.

While there is no evidence of the vapors in Goodman, the level of testing currently required by state regulators isnt enough, said Lenny Siegel, a vapor intrusion expert paid by EPA to provide technical advice to local communities.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources spokesman Jim Dick said ground water monitoring near the Goodman center hasnt indicated any need for vapor testing in the community center.

In fact, as some monitoring wells found less contamination in shallow ground water in recent years, the DNR has been requiring less testing for toxic vapors around the Madison-Kipp plant, and less ground water monitoring, Dick said.

The underground plume consists of industrial solvents including the likely human carcinogen tetrachloroethylene, or PCE. The plume also carries trichloroethylene, or TCE, a solvent associated with health hazards that include cardiac birth defects in children whose mothers were exposed to the compound relatively briefly.

The solvents were found decades ago around the Madison-Kipp aluminum die-casting plant. More recently other pollutants posing serious health hazards  polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs  were detected. A 2012 state lawsuit seeking penalties is pending as Madison-Kipp conducts several cleanup efforts under state and federal scrutiny.

In 2013, the company settled neighbors PCE lawsuits by agreeing to pay $7.2 million and install devices in homes east and west of the plant to stop vapors from rising out of shallow ground water and entering the dwellings.

But the DNR never required vapor testing in the Goodman center just north of Madison-Kipp because shallow ground water flows from the plant to the south-southwest, Dick said.

And, said Brynn Bemis, a hydrogeologist in the city engineering department, monitoring wells have indicated that contaminants were sinking into deeper parts of the aquifer, making vapor releases unlikely.

Siegel, however, said the shallow aquifer near the plant sometimes flows north depending on factors such as lake levels and pumping by municipal drinking water wells. He referred to test results showing PCE detections at a monitoring well on the plants northern property line.

The DNRs conclusion that contaminants are sinking deeper is an extrapolation based on too little monitoring from too few wells, Siegel said.

Siegel pointed to the lone shallow ground water monitoring well  called MW-26  on the Goodman Center property. Where it is positioned on the east side of the property could allow contaminants to flow past it undetected to the center building, which stands to the west.

Even if the area had consistent groundwater flows, MW-26 would not suffice as a sentry well for the Goodman center, Siegel said. My concern is that no one has test sampled in the right place.

A 2016 report from a Madison-Kipp consultant, TRC, shows several wells, including MW-26, that were no longer monitoring shallow ground water after a number of consecutive samples detected no PCE.

But other wells, including one within about 300 feet of the Goodman center, have continued to detect the contaminant.

The DNRs guidance document on vapor intrusion takes into account several factors to determine if testing is needed. The document calls for vapor testing any time PCE in soil is found within 100 feet of a building. But Siegel said that standard isnt relevant when the nearest wells are two or three times that distance away.

DNR does not have the data, resources or will to fully carry out this policy, Siegel said.

There is no evidence that there is an imminent risk of vapor intrusion at (the Goodman center or a nearby property the center purchased for future expansion), Siegel said, but recent studies in similar climates suggest that significant amounts of sampling  at multiple locations and at many times  must be done to rule out vapor intrusion in industrial areas where chlorinated solvents have been released or even are just known to have been used or stored.

In addition to his contract with EPA, Siegel directs the nonprofit Center for Public Environmental Oversight and is a member of the city council in Mountain View, California. He said he frequently speaks out, at home and in communities where he consults, in favor of policies to protect people from toxic gases.

Siegel visited Madison in June and talked with neighbors of the plant and city and DNR officials. He also reviewed some of the thousands of government documents on Madison-Kipp that the Madison Environmental Justice Organization has amassed while advocating for stronger protections from health hazards.

Siegel and MEJO board member Jim Powell said the city of Madison should ask the Goodman center to conduct vapor tests.

The city owns the bike path and adjacent land that runs between Madison-Kipp and the center. The city also leases land Madison-Kipp uses as a driveway at the plant.

Mayor Paul Soglin didnt respond to a request for comment, but MEJO issued a statement quoting three city council members  David Ahrens, Samba Baldeh and Rebecca Kemble  calling for the city to gather more data and develop better strategies on toxic vapors.

Goodman Center director Becky Steinhoff said three soil samples and three water samples from the nearby Madison Brass Works Building, which the center recently purchased, found no TCE, PCE or other contaminants in concentrations exceeding state enforcement standards. Any required cleanup will be done before the property is used, Steinhoff said.

Madison-Kipp president and CEO Tony Koblinski declined to comment on Siegels report. The company is pumping out and treating contaminated ground water from deeper underground where the plume appears to have spread farther. The Madison Water Utility has been studying steps to protect drinking water.

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PM performs Swachhta Shramdaan, visits Pashudhan Arogya Mela, addresses gathering at Shahanshahpur, Varanasi

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The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today performed Shramdaan for the construction of a twin pit toilet at Shahanshahpur village in Varanasi. He interacted with the people, who have resolved to make the village open-defecation-free. He appreciated their initiative of naming the toilet "Izzat Ghar." .

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The Prime Minister visited a Pashudhan Arogya Mela organised at the village. He was briefed on various health and medical activities being performed at the premises. These included surgeries on cattle, ultrasonography etc. .

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Addressing a large gathering on the occasion, the Prime Minister congratulated the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, and the State Government, for the successful setting up of the Pashudhan Arogya Mela. He said this is a new effort which would benefit the animal husbandry sector in the State. He said that increase in milk productivity will lead to economic benefit for the people. He said cooperatives can help consolidate the gains in the dairy sector, as has been the case in other parts of the country. .

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Describing the well-being of people as the priority for governance, the Prime Minister reiterated the pledge to double farm incomes by 2022. He noted that soil health cards are benefiting farmers significantly. He said each one of us should resolve to make a positive contribution by 2022, to achieve the India that our freedom fighters dreamt of. .

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The Prime Minister said that the feeling of "cleanliness being our responsibility", needs to be inculcated among all. He said this would go a long way towards ensuring wellness, and protecting the health of the poor. He said Swachhta is like a prayer for him, and cleanliness is a way to serve the poor. .

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The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, visited the Divya Prem Sewa Mission, Haridwar, today (September 23, 2017). .

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The President received a rousing reception amid heavy rain. Speaking on the occasion, he said that this is his first visit to Devbhoomi Uttarakhand after assuming the office of President. He commended the state for its natural beauty and spiritual heritage. .

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The President also praised the national contribution of famous political leaders from the state, such as G.B. Pant and H.N. Bahuguna. .

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The President highlighted the legacy and efforts of the state in the area of ecological conservation. He said illustrious people from Uttarakhand, such as Sundarlal Bahuguna, have set an example for the world on how to preserve and protect nature and the environment. People associated with the 'Chipko Andolan' used to sing a song that goes, Our soil, Our water, Our forest; Our forefathers nurtured these. We will certainly save them'. Uttarakhand has to achieve its development goals within this framework of environmental protection. There is need to maintain the right balance between conservation and development. .

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The President said that the 'Namami Gange' mission will travel to the plains of India and end in West Bengal, but it begins in Uttarakhand. Therefore, the movement to clean and preserve the Ganga should also start in Uttarakhand. .

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The President praised the work done by the Divya Prem Seva Mission in the service of leprosy patients. He expressed hope that people of our country will draw inspiration from the efforts of the Divya Prem Seva Mission and dedicate themselves in the service of humanity. .

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Visit of Commerce and Industry Minister, Shri Suresh Prabhu to Republic of Korea from September 21-23, 2017

The Minister for Commerce and Industry, Shri Suresh Prabhu arrived in the Republic of Korea on September 21, to participate in the 7th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Economic Ministers meeting and the 3rd Joint Ministerial Review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). This is just the second visit of the Minister after he assumed his current Ministerial charge.

On September 22, at the 7th ASEM meeting, Shri Prabhu reiterated India's commitment to promoting free and fair world trade, while emphasizing the challenges that lay ahead in ensuring free and fair trade as embodied in the WTO. He commended ASEM for addressing global issues of common interest in the spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership. The Minister also underlined the emergence of India as one of the world's leading investment destination.

On the sidelines of this meeting, the Commerce and Industry Minister had productive meetings with the Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France, Mr. Benjamin Griveaux; the State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway, Ms Dilek Ayhan; the State Secretary for Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Ms Susanne Hyldelund, and the DG of the Ministry of Industry & Economy of Spain, Mr. Jose Louis Kaiser Moreiras.

Later in the day the Minister met, the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party, Ms. ChooMi-ae and discussed the rapid progress in bilateral ties since the inauguration of President Moon Jae-in's administration in May 2017.

Ms. Choo highlighted the importance attached by President Moon to the bilateral relationship with India and his commitment to elevate it to the next level. Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Ms. Choo noted that the "elephant was out performing the dragon". Later, Shri Prabhu met the Chairman and CEO of Korea's most influential media house, the Chosun Ilbo, Mr. Bang Sang-hoon to discuss bilateral economic ties, and to consider hosting the next India-Korea Business Summit at an early date, focusing on sectors which would energize the bilateral trade relationship.

Earlier, on September 21, the Minister for Commerce and Industry met the senior leadership of top Korean industries, including Samsung, Kia motors, Lotte, Kumho-Asiana, Hyundai Electric, Posco, LS Group, Toray Chemicals, CJ Logistics and Tongyang Moolsang. In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses, and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed. Attendees represented a cross section of Korean businesses already operating in or interested in expanding their operations in India.

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China said a magnitude 3.4 earthquake detected in North Korea on Saturday was a suspected explosion, raising fears the isolated state had conducted another nuclear bomb test just weeks after its last one.
Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, a state-media report said on Saturday. The launch comes in defiance of warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State-run Press TV broadcast a footage released by the government of "the successful test-launch" of its new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade here on Friday with President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials in attendance, reports Xinhua news agency.

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

The ballistic missile is capable of carrying multiple warheads, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division, told the media on Friday.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh said without further elaboration.

On Friday, the Iranian armed forces commemorated the 1980-1988 war with Iraq by holding a parade in which Iran's most advanced military power and abilities are showcased.

Iran also displayed other home-made advanced missiles, including ballistic missiles, which are reported to have ranges of 1,300 km to 2,000 km.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
on Saturday successfully launched air-to-surface anti-ship missile in the Arabian Sea on Saturday, according to a statement by a Navy spokesperson.

Helicopter Sea King conducted live weapon firing by test firing air-to-surface anti-ship missile, which successfully hit the intended target with pinpoint accuracy, reaffirming the weapon's lethality and offensive punch of the fleet, the statement said.

Attending the event , Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah praised the combat readiness of the fleet. "The successful firing by Pakistan Navy Helicopter Sea King is reflective of high state of readiness and professionalism of Pakistan Navy fleet," he said.

Admiral Zakaullah also expressed his complete satisfaction at the combat readiness of Pakistan Navy fleet and reaffirmed the resolve of Pakistan Navy to ensure the country's seaward defence and safeguard maritime interests at all costs, Geo TV reported.
Protests in over the acquittal of a white former policeman who killed a black man could impede the citys bid to attract Amazon.coms second headquarters, academics and business executives said.
Uber Technologies collected more than 500,000 signatures in less than 24 hours on a petition to protest Londons decision to not renew the companys taxi licence, a setback in one of its most lucrative markets.
Weakening Chinese fundamentals and the country's plans to shut down smelting capacities would weigh on LME (London Metal Exchange) aluminium prices, a top executive of the National Aluminium Company (Nalco) said here.
An FIR has been lodged by activist Anjali Damania on Saturday alleging that she received anonymous calls threatening her to withdraw cases against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Eknath Khadse.

The FIR has been registered in Vakola police station in this regard under Sections 506 and 507 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Taking to Twitter, Damania claimed that she received death threats calls from a Pakistan based landline number.

She also shared the screenshots of the caller's identity alleging that the Truecaller notification flashed the name of the caller as Dawood 2.

She informed about the threat call to the police and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Earlier in September, the Vakola Police had booked Khadse for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Damania in a speech at a public function.

Following which, the activist filed an FIR against the BJP leader.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State Superintendent Tony Evers on Thursday blasted the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Scott Walkers administration for not significantly increasing school funding in recent years, refusing to take federal money to expand Medicaid and for the condition of the states roads.

Evers, who announced last month he is challenging Walker for governor in 2018, took aim at his future opponent and his party during an annual state of education address at the state Capitol Evers gave at the same time Walker signed the 2017-19 state budget in an elementary school in Neenah.

On school funding, we must face the reality that for too many budget cycles public school funding has not been the priority for those in control, Evers said, according to prepared remarks. A decade ago, Wisconsin spent nearly 40 percent of its general tax dollars on public schools. Today, it has fallen to 32 percent. This is a question of priorities.

Walker in his 2017-19 state budget proposal that he signed into law as Evers spoke against him added $639 million in new spending for schools, and added money for transportation for rural schools and for mental health programs in schools.

Evers, before he entered the 2018 gubernatorial race, called the plan a pro-kid budget. But on Thursday he said the state still isnt sending enough to schools after cuts in previous state budgets.

For the first time in my memory, Wisconsin has fallen below the national average in how much we spend on our kids education, he said. While other states have aggressively restored funding for public education after the Great Recession, we have remained stagnant. Wisconsin has a long way to go to catch up.

While Evers, elected State Superintendent in 2009, has in the past used his annual address to criticize Republicans for their approach to K-12 education and said last year teacher were under assault, this years address also included criticism of Republicans and Walkers approach to funding road projects, paying for health care for low-income households and spoke about uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trumps immigration policies and student loan debt.

Evers, quoting President Teddy Roosevelt and talking about leadership, told the crowd in the Capitol rotunda to persevere in the face of adversity.

Here, Teddy is calling on us to be the adult in the room. That ideal has become a north star for me, but I wasnt always wired this way, Evers said, adding he has survived an especially deadly form of cancer. I got through it with the support of my family and friends, but it altered the way I approach life. I lost some of the fear that held me back. It sharpened my leadership skills and gave a new urgency to living. It helped me learn to dare greatly.

Evers in his speech called for accepting federal dollars to expand Medicaid  a proposal heavily backed by Democrats  and said school children were suffering because of roads falling into disrepair, referring to lawmakers not finding a solution to the nearly $1 billion shortfall in the states transportation budget.

Rejecting our fair share of support from Washington means Wisconsin taxpayers are forced to pick up the cost. It is that simple, and it is hurting our schools when scarce state resources are increasingly directed to health care, he said about Medicaid.

On roads, Evers said, every dollar we shift from the state coffers to pay for roads, and increasingly, to simply pay for debt, is a dollar we move out of the classroom of a child.

Im sick of the politics, the false choices, and the endless debates on this issue. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Without question, we can fix our roads and fund our schools at the same time, he said.

State Republicans gave their own assessment of the state of education in Wisconsin before Evers spoke to Thursdays crowd and said Evers was a weak leader.

Madison bureaucrat Tony Evers entire career has been defined by his failure to lead when it mattered, and today is no different, Republican Party of Wisconsin spokesman Alec Zimmerman said in a statement. Just months ago, Tony Evers praised Governor Walkers budget as pro-kid and an important step forward  but now hes hypocritically inserting politics into the situation to score political points.

Zimmerman cited a situation in 2014 during which Evers did not revoke the teaching license of a Middleton teacher caught receiving and sharing with other teachers pornographic material. At the time, state law said licenses could be revoked if children were exposed to pornographic material. The law was later changed, in part because of the Middleton case, to allow licenses to be revoked for sharing material even if children were not exposed.

Republicans also criticized Evers for the states longstanding gap in academic achievement between black and white students, for his departments plan to comply with a new federal education accountability law and for a DPI software error that resulted in DPI unable to verify four-year graduation rates for 2016.

After the address, Evers stood by his criticism of the state spending plan despite earlier praise, saying the added spending doesnt make up for past cuts.

Were just barely treading water, Evers told reporters. Certainly we can all take a lap around the block for a day but the bottom line is weve had some significant cuts in the past.

The potential matchup between Evers and Walker, who is expected to formally announce his bid for a third term later this year, adds a new twist to an already sometimes tumultuous relationship between two of the states top constitutional officers.

Its clear  things are a bit different, Evers said, citing Walker refusing to sign off on the Department of Public Instructions plan to comply with the new federal Every Student Succeeds Act, despite the plan not needing Walkers signature. But well carry on ... were going to walk and chew gum at the same time. I can be state superintendent and a candidate for governor simultaneously.
Junaid Qureshi, Director European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) based in Amsterdam, on Friday raised the concern of the Pakistani atrocities on Kashmiris and asked that for how long the international community will allow Islamabad to get Kashmiri's killed.

While speaking at the ongoing 36th session of Human Rights Council, Qureshi pointed towards the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the late 80s in the name of ethnic cleansing, under a well-hatched conspiracy by Pakistan.

"My state is not the private property of only the Sunni Muslims of the Valley. It equally belongs to the Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs, Buddhists and Shia Muslims of the state," he said.

"Under a well-hatched conspiracy of injecting communalism in the Kashmir Valley, terrorist groups with financial and military support from Pakistani intelligence agencies started with the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Kashmiri Pandits in the late eighties, resulting in their exodus in the name of Jihad and freedom struggle," he added.

He said that the today, the secular and liberal Muslims, who do not support the proxy war of Pakistan, have become the next Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.

Qureshi asked that for how long the international community, including the United Nations, would remain quiet to the 'brazen export of terrorism manufactured in Rawalpindi.'

"For how long will the international community allow Pakistan to get us Kashmiris killed? We, the people of Jammu & Kashmir want to live in peace. Peace with dignity and honour and not the peace of graveyards," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taking the concept of inclusive education to villages, Adarsh Charitable Foundation with the support from Blind People's Association inaugurated a center for special education at the SS Rathode School, Mahudi, Gandhinagar on September 19.

Biju Mathew, Vice President and Head CSR, Adarsh Charitable Foundation, Dr. Bhushan Punani, Executive Secretary, Blind People's Association and Nandini Rawal, Executive Director, Blind People's Association were present at the event. Ishwarsinh Chavda, President, Sarva Seva Mandal, Mahudi and Former Minister, Government of Gujarat, Amarsinh Rathode, Secretary, Sarva Seva Mandal, Mahudi were also present.

Disability attracts a lot of stigma, mostly due to lack of awareness about the issue as well as the facilities available for persons with disabilities. Not only the person who is disabled, but even the family needs to be supported and helped to deal with the situation. Our field workers went door-to-door surveying not only in Mahudi but even the nearby villages to find any children with disabilities. Counseling the family and making them aware about the reasons why they should send their child to school was not an easy task.

Many parents refused to send their children to the school because it was far from their home and it was difficult to travel. Some parents also talked about the stigma, especially for the girl children, worried that it will affect their future as they may not be able to get them married. There was also fear that these children will be labelled as being sick or different and the family will be treated badly by the villagers.

Amid all these challenges, a total of 80 children have been identified across age groups. These children will be assessed by our special educators and based on their abilities they will be included in the regular schools and those with severe disabilities will be provided education in the special resource center in the school. For those children who cannot come to the center, home based education will be provided. In this group, children with learning disabilities like dyslexia or slow learners are also included.

This project adopts a three pronged approach:

-The field workers will go to schools in Mahudi and nearby villages and identify children with special needs. They will go to these schools and teach the children in the school premises.

-The field workers will make home visits and identify children with disabilities, and those who cannot go to schools, they will teach them at their homes.

-The field workers will enrol children with disabilities who can come to the Special education center in SS Rathode School, Mahudi, and teach them at the center through group and individual learning activities.

"Just like we accept people from different castes, gender as our own inspite of their differences, disabled people are not any different and hence we need to treat them just as normal as anyone else," said Rawal.

"This special education center will only be successful if the villagers and the school administration understand the needs and encourage disabled children to move past their disabilities to achieve something great in life," added Biju.

He also urged the villagers gathered for the event to be more sensitive towards the disabled children in their community and send their children to the special education center in the school.

Adarsh Charitable Foundation has adopted Mahudi village to try and create a model village. Improving infrastructure of the SS Rathode School, provision of library books, laboratory material and improving toilet facilities are some of the work being done in the school.

Self-help groups and youth groups are also being formed, to help create sustainable livelihood in the area, and improving the quality of living of the entire village community. Adarsh Charitable Foundation is also organising several health camps to bring medical care to the doorstep of the villagers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Allahabad High Court on Saturday suspended Unnao Additional District Judge (ADG) Jaya Pathak on charges of assaulting a constable.

A video of Pathak thrashing the police constable in Uttarakhand's Dehradun had surfaced on social media.

The High Court took the decision after consulting with the administrative committee.

The High Court was hearing the plea filed by the Uttarakhand police in the case.

The court also ordered the registration of a case against the police constable.

Pathak was posted as Additional District Judge in the Family Court in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Andhra Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said that building Andhra Pradesh is his only aim and capital Amravati should be built as an iconic city.

"Building Andhra Pradesh is my only aim now. Amravati should be built as an iconic city. I developed Hyderabad to international level. Now my focus is on Amravati. That's why I decided June 2 as a day of Nava Nirmana Deeksha, but not as formation day of Andhra Pradesh," Chief Minister Naidu said.

He said that he took the responsibility to lead the state at the time of bifurcation.

"I understood the then need for constructive moment. That's why joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and started working for the new state," he said.

Talking about his recent announcement that the transgender community must be supported by the government with housing, ration cards and pension of 1000 rupees, he said, "Positive thought is my fore. That's why I took the decision in favor of transgenders. They are being neglected by families, and society. They have no livelihood, so they became troublesome to the society. Now we gave them chance for respectful life."

Naidu further said that 'Swachh Andhra' is his priority and for that, construction of toilets is at war footage.

Talking about his other focus areas of work, he said that water for irrigation and drinking is also in his priority list.

"Diverting Godavari water to Krishna gave us some free hand for giving water to Rayalaseema. We are completing projects at war footage and will try to complete them in one year," he said.

He said that his government is also working to mitigate the present drought like conditions in the state.

The Chief Minister said that his aim is to achieve 80% public satisfaction regarding government policies, and turning 80% public in favor of Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

"In the changed conditions, we want to take our party to every household. We wanted to get feedback from people on their satisfaction and grievances. In 11 days our party leadership could reach almost 20 lakh households," Naidu said.

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Dr. Subhash Bhamre, the minister of state for Defence of the Government of India visited Armstrong's factory. He was "stunned" to see the kind of robotics, factory automation and IOT solutions that Armstrong has been developing and deploying globally.

During his hour long visit, he curiously dived into every aspect of technology that was explained to him by Vineet Majgaonkar, the Chairman of Armstrong.

"This is one of the most genuine Make in India and Skill India projects that our government intends to happen. I'm stunned and also proud to witness the high skill levels that you have trained these sons-of-the-soil in delivering solutions at par with the world's best," said Subhash.

The visit concluded on an exciting note with the high decibel reverberation of patriotic slogans like "Bharat Mata Ki Jai," and "Vande Mataram," shot by team Armstrong.

Vineet Majgaonkar, the Chairman of Armstrong, has referred this visit to be of high strategic importance for Armstrong to showcase its competence and reassert its commitment to serve the nation. He assured the Minister that Armstrong will keep pushing the limits of technology and maintain its position of innovation leadership in the service of our nation.

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Chief Minister of Manipur N Biren Singh, on Friday, said that stringent security measures have been taken up at the border areas of Manipur, sensing the possibility of a mass influx in the backdrop of the recent large-scale violence in Rakhine province of neighbouring Myanmar.

"All possible measures have been set into motion to check influx of illegal immigrant," he said, while speaking at a press conference held in the Chief Minister's Secretariat.

Terming Assam-Jiribam as the most vulnerable point citing the influx of Bangladeshi immigrant, he said that additional forces have been stationed at the border.

"It has been informed that besides the existing check post, another police check post will be set up at Jiribam Mukh and also strengthened the foreigner check post," the Manipur CM said while spelling out the steps taken along the border in the wake of the Rongiyas refugees crisis

"Moreover, house to house drive has been started by the Jiribam police with help of the paramilitary forces since September 13," he added.

Chief Minister Singh also said that 1,211 houses were covered wherein 265 suspicious immigrants have been rounded up and 107 have been pushed back.

Similarly, the drive against illegal immigrants have been strengthened at the Indo-Myanmar border at Moreh by deputing officers.

He further said that the Indo-Myanmar border at Beihang in Churachandpur district would be developed as second corridor in the wake of the Act East Policy adding that a permanent police station would soon be established at Beihang.

He also spoke about the total ban on use of agriculture land for commercial purpose, "State government is going to effectively implement the Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2014 by putting a total ban on sale, purchase and use of agricultural land for commercial purposes."

He further informed that anyone found violating the ban would be penalized as per the provisions of the Act.

According to Biren, the move was initiated by the state government in order to uphold the primary objective of the Act to conserve wetland and agriculture land, which came into force on September 10, 2014.

He said, "A Cabinet meeting was held with regards to the subject, wherein the gradual diminishing of agricultural land was discussed deliberately," adding, "As per the decision of the Cabinet, an order was passed on September 19 and reaffirming to effectively implement the Conservation Act 2014,"

The chief minister also informed that a data bank would be set up to keep the records of paddy lands by conducting proper identification of the status of the existing paddy land through digitized cadastral maps on the basis of satellite images at the time of the commencement of the Act (in September 10, 2014).

Although no reclamation of paddy land shall take place without the reference to the data-bank, the Act allows conversion or reclamation of paddy land of an area measuring 0.10 acre in urban area and 0.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A defiant Iran has test fired another ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in capital Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

The development is quite significant as Trump administration had already issued warnings to Tehran and it was "on notice" for previous ballistic missile tests .

"The Khorramshahr missile has become smaller in size and more tactical and it will be operational in the near future, Press TV quoted Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, as saying.

Video footage aired by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Friday showed the missile launched from an unknown location.The video also contained telemetry camera footage from four different angles which, according to its caption, showed the moment when the warhead of the missile was discharged.

The ballistic missile, which is Iran's third type of missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers along with the Qadr-F and Sejjil ballistic missiles, is capable of carrying multiple warheads, Press TV reported.

Iran has repeatedly insisted that its military capabilities are solely aimed for defence purposes, on the contrary the United States claims that Iran's missile tests and rocket launches violate UN Resolution 2231, which was adopted during the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Questioning United States President Donald Trump's authority to single-handedly scrap the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear accord -Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the pact belongs to the international community in its entirety, and not only to one or two" countries.

"The deal is the outcome of two years of intensive multilateral negotiations , overwhelmingly applauded by the international community and endorsed by the security council as a part of Resolution 2231.It belongs to the international community in its entirety, and not only to one or two countries,". Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said while addressing the U.N.

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Google Doodle, today, celebrates 100th birthday of Asima Chatterjee, a renowned Indian chemist, who was the first female Doctorate of in India from an Indian University.

Born on September 23, 1917, Dr Asima Chatterjee has various contributions on the research of vinca alkaloids and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs.

According to Google's blog, "Dr. Chatterjee primarily studied the medicinal properties of plants native to India. Throughout her career, her research contributed to the development of drugs that treated epilepsy and malaria. Dr. Chatterjee's most noted contribution to the field, however, was her work on vinca alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds made from plants, often to treat medical ailments. Vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, are used today in chemotherapy treatment because they help slow down or stall the multiplying of cancer cells."

The post continued, "Dr. Chatterjee's groundbreaking contributions to medicine were recognized by universities all over the world. She received numerous accolades from the Indian government, including some of the highest awards (like the Padma Bhushan) and an appointment to the upper house of Parliament!"

Asima joined the Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta Universtiy in 1940 and founded the department of chemistry in the college.

Asima Chatterjee's work in the field of opened the doors for millions of women to excel in the field and her research on vinca alkaloids which is now widely used in chemotherapy and helps to slow down the growth rate of cancer cells.

Her phenomenal contributions have won Asima various awards and accolades from all over the world and she was also honoured with India's highest award, Padma Bhushan.

In 1975 she became the first woman to be appointed general president of the Indian Congress.

She had one child, a daughter called Julie, with her husband Dr. Baradananda Chatterjee, and died in 2006 in her nursing home at the age of 90.

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Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday said that the government alone cannot save rivers if the public doesn't join hands with it in the mission.

"The rivers cannot be saved by government alone, until and unless the public contribute, and make up their mind about saving rivers," Chouhan said in an event in Bhopal focusing on revitalizing the river bodies.

The event was a part of 'Rally for River' initiative taken up by spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, who is covering 16 states across the country to spread the message of river conservation.

Making an observation on the reducing water level of River Ganga and River Narmada, Chouhan assured the spiritual leader that Madhya Pradesh government and the public in unison will begin campaign to save River Narmada, adding that the campaign cannot be successful without cooperation from public.

"After a discussion with Sadhguru, we have decided to begin tree plantation in river banks starting from Narmada River," Chouhan announced, and stressed on the importance of tree plantation across the state as a pre-requisite for saving rivers.

The MP CM concluded his speech by urging all present to take a pledge to lend their support to Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and his Isha foundation by working towards saving the rivers.

MP government also sanctioned Rs 850 crore towards the campaign.

The event was held in CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence.

Under his 'Rally for Rivers' initiative, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev today reached Madhya Pradesh's capital Bhopal. The rally that began from September 3 in Coimbatore will cover 16 states, and end on October 2 after reaching New Delhi.

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Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir on Saturday said that Shabir Shah's admission before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has exposed Pakistan.

Speaking to ANI, Ahir said, "Shabir Shah's statement has exposed Pakistan, now it doesn't have any place to hide".

Earlier in the day, the ED told a Delhi court that Jammu and Kashmir separatist leader Shabir Shah has admitted to receiving funds from Pakistan's terror outfits to spread terror in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India.

His close aide, Mohammad Aslam Wani also admitted to his complicity in the crime, the ED said.

The Enforcement Directorate filed the charge sheet in a Delhi Court against Separatist leader Shabir Shah in connection with a decade-old money laundering case against terror funding.

In the charge sheet, the ED states that Shabir Shah has admitted that he talks to Hafiz Saeed on phone on the issue of Kashmir, and last spoke to him in January 2017.

Shah also confessed to have received funds from terror outfits from Pakistan to promote terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India.

With no source of income of his own, Shah admitted that he does not file any Income Tax Return regarding his income, and that he only receives donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards party fund which amounts to Rs eight to ten lakhs per annum.

Meanwhile, Shah's close aide, Mohammad Aslam Wani admitted to receiving Hawala money from Pakistan's Hawala operative Shafi Shayar, on behalf of Shabir Shah, in Delhi.

Earlier in August, the Delhi High Court rejected the bail plea of Shah after the Enforcement Directorate said it was probing whether he had received money from "enemy countries" like Pakistan to promote terrorism in India.

On September 7, ED opposed the bail plea of Aslam Wani in a Delhi court, saying that he had a key role in bringing money from Pakistan for terror activities in Kashmir.

On July 25, ED had arrested Shah in connection with a money laundering case dating back to 2005, while his close aide Aslam Wani was arrested on August 6.

The agency had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Shah and Wani.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Republicans have unveiled their brave new strategy for fixing the U.S. health care system: Make someone else deal with it.

Of all the god-awful Obamacare-repeal-and-replace plans that Republicans have proposed, Cassidy-Graham might be the god-awfulest. Its definitely the most cowardly. Republicans spent nine months fighting over how to repeal Obamacare without shafting the poor and enraging voters, and they failed.

So instead theyre passing the buck.

Heres how the bill, named for Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), works.

It would eliminate the Obamacare individual market subsidies, which help low- and middle-income people buy insurance. It would also repeal Obamacares Medicaid expansion money. After an enormous across-the-board cut to federal health spending, Congress would give each state a block grant.

Every state would then have to create its own entirely new health insurance program, from scratch, by 2020.

Then, in 2027, the block-grant funding ends entirely.

Because hey, if Congress, with so many experts and resources at its disposal, cant figure it out, then surely some part-time state lawmakers can. All our health-care problems will be solved once we unleash the brain trust that is the Kansas legislature.

All this means fewer people would be insured, since states will be forced to do less with less. We dont yet have an estimate for how many Americans would lose coverage, though; the Senate plans to vote on the bill next week, conveniently before the Congressional Budget Office has time to put together a full score.

An increase in uninsured rates isnt the only easily foreseeable problem with this proposal. Premium prices are likely to spike, too.

Thats because Cassidy-Graham eliminates the Obamacare requirement that everyone have health insurance. It also doesnt replace this mandate with anything to incentivize healthy people to get coverage.

As a result, the relatively sick will buy insurance at higher rates than the relatively healthy, pushing up premiums and thereby driving more relatively healthy people out of insurance markets, further driving up premiums, and so on. The dreaded death spiral, in other words.

To hold premiums down, states would probably be tempted to scale back benefit requirements and encourage the sale of cheap but nearly worthless insurance plans. These are sometimes called mini-med or buffalo policies, so nicknamed because they pretty much pay off only if you get run over by a herd of buffalo.

Regrettably, Cassidy-Graham empowers states to shred these consumer safeguards: Unlike Obamacare, the proposal does not protect people with pre-existing conditions; has no mandatory coverage of cancer, prescription drugs, maternity care or other essential health benefits; and does not prohibit lifetime benefit caps.

States would be given an enormous amount of money with no strings attached, says Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

No strings attached is a bit of an understatement. Cassidy-Graham doesnt even require states to devote a single dollar of their block grants to insuring poor people. In fact, states could just use the grants to substitute for existing programs, Levitt says, allowing state funds to be directed to other purposes.

To hear Republican senators tell it, of course, this isnt about forcing governors to make decisions that Congress is too gutless to make itself.

No. Its about federalism!

States, those laboratories of democracy, are better suited to craft insurance policies  which are, at their core, boring financial contracts  narrowly tailored to their own unique state needs.

Which is nonsense.

What, people in Tennessee dont get cancer? People in Hawaii dont give birth or have heart attacks? Adverse selection isnt a problem in Alaska?

Generally speaking, diseases and laws of economics dont recognize state borders.

Whats more, under Obamacare, states already have the flexibility to experiment and innovate. Under current law, states can apply for waivers if they wish to adapt their regulations to local conditions.

But the Affordable Care Act says they can do so only if they adhere to basic consumer protections and a minimum level of quality. Cassidy-Graham includes vague language about how states should offer adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions, but theres zero enforcement mechanism to guarantee they do so.

Its no wonder that nearly every major stakeholder, from the American Medical Association to the March of Dimes, has come out against this lily-livered bill. Cassidy-Graham is an abdication not only of any responsibility to the poor and the sick but also of congressional leadership more generally.

When it comes down to it, Senate Republicans arent trying to improve the health-care system. Theyre trying to duck responsibility when they make it worse.
Raising grave concern over the burgeoning terrorism across the globe, India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday called on the international community to reach an agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) to root out the menace from the globe.

While speaking at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Sushma said that India proposed CCIT two decades back, but till now United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism.

She told the international community that if the enemies cannot be defined, how the countries can fight together against it.

Sushma added that if a terrorist would be branded as good and bad and if even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how the can fight together against them.

"I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence. Let us display our new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself," Swaraj said.

Swaraj said that India has been the oldest victims of the 'terrible and even traumatic terrorism'.

"We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all in bilateral and multilateral discussions condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals. The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them towards duplicity," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three BSF jawans were injured after Pakistan violated ceasefire last night in Arnia Sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

The injured jawans were shifted to the hospital for medical treatment.

The Indian forces also retaliated effectively to the intermittent firing.

Pakistan violated ceasefire by resorting to firing with small weapons at Alla and Treva posts took at around 9 p.m on Saturday.

Earlier on Thursday, the Pakistan violated ceasefire in the same sector. No casualty was reported in this firing.

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Jennifer Meyer, the 42-year-old jewelry designer, separated from Tobey Maguire, 42, after nine years of marriage last October, still considers him as her best friend.

In an interview given to The Hollywood Reporter, Meyer said, "I don't know what I would do without him, Tobey's my best friend. I lucked out in the biggest of ways. He's still very sweet to me."

In May, the Spider-Man actor asked Meyer what she wanted for Mother's Day. She said, "Three hours alone to cozy up in bed and watch 'Big Little Lies'.

To which he replied, "He was like, 'that's it, that's all you want?' and I was like, 'yep.' I wanted brunch and a big dinner with our kids, but some binge-watching in between."

Meyer, the daughter of NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer, revealed that her next scheduled programming will be the untitled Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston series about TV morning shows.

"Reese and Jen, yes, please! I won't watch anything until that comes out," she said.

It is expected to be taken out to premium cable outlets like HBO and streaming services including Netflix.

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Intervening the debate at the ongoing 36th session of Human Rights Council, Junaid Qureshi, Director European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS) based in Amsterdam, on Friday raised the issue of well-hatched conspiracy by Pakistan of injecting communalism in the Kashmir Valley.

Pointing to the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley Junaid said, "Under a well-hatched conspiracy of injecting communalism in the Kashmir Valley, terrorist groups with financial and military support from Pakistani intelligence agencies started with the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir ."

Questioning the continued silence of UN and international community on the Pakistan's game plan, Junaid said,"

For how long will the world, including the UN remain quiet to the brazen export of terrorism manufactured in Rawalpindi at GHQ. For how long will the international community allow Pakistan to get us Kashmiris killed?"

"We, the people of Jammu & Kashmir want to live in peace. Peace with dignity and honour and not the peace of graveyards.

I am a Sunni Kashmiri Muslim from the Valley of Kashmir. Contrary to propaganda, my State is not the private property of only the Sunni Muslims of the Valley. It equally belongs to the Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs, Buddhists and Shia Muslims of the State,"Junaid added.

Junaid Qureshi, a Kashmiri writer, had strongly rejected the construction of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and said this project is illegal and in contravention of International law.

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Navratri- nine nights of celebration of goddess Durga has begun and has been welcomed with much fervor.

The festival witnesses tons of devotees observe fasting for a period of nine days in honour of the goddess. The strict no-meat practice enables one to tuck in to vegetarian specialties during this period.

However, keeping a tab on your fasting methods is important to avoid mishaps.

Dr. Purva Duggal, Head of Nutrition, Fortis Hospital, Mulund, suggests a few tips to conquer the fasting period and yet remain healthy.

-Do not starve yourself- Even though you fast, you should not starve yourself and should eat enough to get through the day; eat smaller meals frequently to maintain stamina. Try to limit yourselves when it comes to fried food and opt instead for baked, grilled or roasted food instead. Fasting is a good way to detoxify your body from the regular junk and alcohol that is consumed, helping maintain sugar levels in the body. Keeping yourself hungry for a longer period of time can lead to severe acidity.

-Avoid sugars- One needs to stay away from refined sugar and substitute it with healthier alternatives like jaggery or honey. If you have a habit of having a lot of sweets, those sugar cravings can be curbed with various fruits or salads, since they are light and easy to digest. Regular snacking can help prevent from feeling low and maintain adequate sugar levels.

-Always keep yourself hydrated- Unless you go for a 'nirjalvrat', it is important to keep yourself hydrated throughout. Besides water, a lot of other fluids can be consumed like coconut water, buttermilk, green tea, lemon water etc. Avoid consumption of alcohol as it can lead to dehydration and slows down metabolism.

-Avoid fasting if you're pregnant- If a normal and healthy delivery is indicated, fasting within limits will not have much of an effect on you or your baby. However, if your pregnancy is indicative of complications, it is recommended to avoid fasting during this period. It is best in to consult your doctor before taking any step. Make sure you consume plenty amounts of fluid during this time.

-Plan your day- Make sure you do not overeat, especially packaged snack foods as they contain high amounts of Iodine. Chalk out your meal plans for the day to ensure your stomach is satisfied. Don't dwell into snacks too much, munching on nuts and dry fruits is a healthier alternative. Your lunch could be slightly heavy and dinner should be light, which is apt for proper digestion.

-Avoid caffeinated drinks - Tea and coffee can help curb hunger pangs for a good amount of time. However, make sure you do not consume these on an empty stomach; it can affect your digestive system tremendously. Consuming too much tea or coffee can often make you feel bloated or dehydrated. Insomnia might also set in which is not healthy.

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A self proclaimed "baba" was arrested on charges of raping a physically disabled disciple at his ashram in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district.

The victim hailed from West Bengal and was living at his ashram in Barsana district for several months.

The victim alleged that the accused raped her repeatedly and threw her out of the ashram, when she got pregnant.

The victim then returned home and lodged a complaint with the police there.

A team of West Bengal police, accompanied by the local cops, reached the ashram on Thursday night and arrested the self-styled godman.

"We are taking the "baba" to Bengal, as that's where the complaint was lodge," Superintendent of Police, Mathura, Aditya Kumar Shukla told ANI.

The accused, however, denied the allegations and claimed that the victim wanted to oust him from the ashram and hence had implicated him in a false case.

"I didn't do anything, I don't even know the girl. One day a couple left their daughter with me asking me to take care of her," the accused told ANI.

He also claimed that the family members of the woman had visited his ashram last year and left the victim there, asking him to take care of her.

This comes a day after one woman lodged a complaint alleging sexual exploitation by Kaushlendra Prapanacharya Phalahari Maharaj in Chhattisgarh, on Thursday.

The complaint against 70-year-old Phalahari Maharaj, from Rajasthan, was lodged by a 21-year-old woman hailing from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur.

Presently, Baba Phalahari is admitted in the hospital.

"The concerned doctor is busy in operation. So, we had no conversation with them. We are waiting for his advice. As soon as we are allowed to talk to the Baba in regards to the matter, we will take the legal proceedings further," Alwar SP Rahul Prakash told ANI.

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Madhya Pradesh School Education Minister Vijay Shah on Friday appealed to madrasas to hoist the Tricolour and make the students sing the anthem daily in a bid to inculcate patriotism among the students.

Addressing a function to mark the 20th foundation day of the MP Madarsa Board here, "Regular schools unfurl the Tricolour and sing the anthem daily. I appeal to all madrasas in MP to unfurl the Tricolour and sing the anthem daily. I don't think anybody should have a problem with that. Nobody has."

He further lauded the progress in imparting modern education in Madrasa board.

"I congratulate the board for their effort of inculcating 'nationalistic ideology' among the youths of the country," he added.

Earlier, Shah had announced that from October 1, the students of government schools would have to say 'Jai Hind' when they answer the roll call in Satna district.

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The Senate on Friday passed the Electoral Reforms Bill 2017, which will pave the way for Nawaz Sharif to again regain chairmanship of Pakistan Muslim League -Nawaz (PML-N) and rejected an amendment proposed by the Pakistan Peoples Party's (PPP) Aitzaz Ahsan.

The PPP had suggested an amendment in clause 203 of the bill, which said that any individual, who is not qualified to become a member of the parliament, should not be eligible to become a party's chairperson either.

In a session chaired by Raza Rabbani, the upper house passed Election Bill 2017 with a majority vote, through which the legal bar on a person to serve as an office-bearer of a political party, if he is either not qualified to be, or disqualified from being elected as a member of the parliament under Article 63 of the Constitution is set to go.

The bill was passed with the help of two opposition parties - the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Balochistan National Party-Mengal - which did not support the opposition during the voting process.

Since the bill, already passed by the National Assembly, has been passed with amendments by the upper house, it will go to National Assembly again and, in all probability, the lower house of parliament will approve it, the Dawn reported.

When Law Minister Zahid Hamid sought consideration of the bill, the PPP opposed it; but the house accorded permission with a majority vote of 41 against 34, marking first defeat of the opposition in the house.

The opposition appeared to be ill-prepared as its members were absent during the important legislative business, and the at times some members from the opposition voted in favour of the treasury and on at least one occasion, the PPP itself was divided during voting.

Section 5(1) of the Political Parties Order, which still holds the field, reads, "Every citizen, not being in the service of Pakistan has the right to form or be a member of a political party or be otherwise associated with a political party or take part in political activities or be elected as an office-bearer of a political party."

A proviso to the clause reads, "Provided that a person shall not be appointed or serve as an office-bearer of a political party if he is not qualified to be, or is disqualified from being, elected or chosen as a member of the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) under Article 63 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or under any other law for the time being in force."

Expressing disappointment over the move by Aitzaz Ahsan, the law minister said that the controversial clause providing for such a bar on holding party offices was first introduced in a dictatorial regime through the Political Parties Act, 1965. It was removed in 1975 when a democratic government led by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was in power, he added.

He said the Political Parties Order 2002 brought back the particular provision. He said disqualification was meant to be used against opposition parties. He said the Political Parties Order was considered in a meeting held on Nov 17, 2014 and a member of the PPP suggested the removal of the said clause and the PML-N had accepted it. "There was no mention of Panama Papers, let's throw our principles to the winds," an angry Zahid Hamid said on one occasion.

In the lower house, the Pakistan Tehreeke-e-Insaf's (PTI) had recommended amendments which were rejected.

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Pakistan's Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani has called the country's former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf a murderer and said the latter should return to Pakistan and face cases against him.

Geo News quoted Rabbani as saying that Musharraf should return to Pakistan and face cases against him if he is a brave man.

He added that Musharraf was enjoying his life sitting in London and Dubai.

Earlier, Musharraf had accused Pakistan People's Party (PPP) co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari of being involved in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

In a video message, Musharraf, the former army chief, said, "Asif Ali Zardari is responsible for the Bhutto family's demise as he had the most to gain from [it]."

He further said that he was speaking out because he "could not tolerate" the fact that Zardari had recently directly accused him of being responsible for the murder.

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Parijat Industries is one of the few Indian agrochemical companies with a unique multi-market presence in all three verticals of exports, Indian branded sales and corporate bulk sales to institutional factors.

Agriculture by its very nature is seasonal and largely dependent on local climatic conditions. Consequently, agrochemical companies are directly impacted by success or failure of climatic season in a market. This has been further exacerbated by climate change.

Conventionally, Indian Agchem companies are focused on only one section or two of the market at maximum. Parijat has strategically built its market with equal emphasis on domestic and international .

This strategy has provided two key advantages to Parijat. First, international exposure to markets with similar pestilence and climatic issues, typically along similar latitudes, equips Parijat with market intelligence to forecast future potential products for the Indian market. Experience with White Fly control in Spain, spurred Parijat to begin registering Pyriproxyfen in India long before the molecule gained its current centrality for cotton farmers. Decreasing demand for Tricyclazole- a rice fungicide- due to lowering of residue acceptance levels in USA allowed Parijat to predict the requirement for a Tricyclazole substitute.

The second advantage of this diversified strategy has been in terms of risk-management, so that a failure of the domestic season is hedged against performance in international markets.

Investments in regulatory strength for Indian and export markets have served to bolster each other and complementarily enhance each in turn.

Parijat's ecosystem of diversified subsidiaries, global partners and vast distribution network enable delivery across a vast suite of agrochemical products. Parijat has established 6 international offices globally. This subsidiary and office networkhas enabled it to penetrate challenging markets and access diverse sources of products. The company's experiencein different and diverse geographies globally coupled with over 300 registrations, is positioning Parijat as an ideal partner for global . The company's branded formulation exports have reached over 70 countries since its operations which are now well over a decade old.

Parallelly Parijat's domestic strategy is built on two pillars- Branded sales through a network of 4000 dealers and distributors across the country; and sale of proprietary products (which Parijat has exclusive rights to import) to corporate buyers including most major Indian players in the industry. This out-licensing strategy has enabled Parijat to access wider shelf-space for the products it is pioneering. Parijat's strategy through its corporate sale division has been to build up the market size rather than battle for market share.

The company has proactively invested in being an early mover and in some cases the first Indian company after the MNC to register newer generation off-patent molecules.

Parijat's domestic retail began in 2008. With presence pan India, a formulation plant, strategically placed at the mouth of its agricultural hubs, in Ambala, Haryana; and an upcoming technical plant, Parijat offers over 60 branded products to Indian farmers. Working through 24 depots, Parijat's retail staff of over 300 sales persons and 75 development executives, a vast network of over 4000 distributors are catered to. Parijat's key strength and the driving force for its exponential growth, is their strategic 9(3) registrations in key products. Parijat's strong dealer network and ecosystem of co-marketers is an ideal conduit for reaching the fragmented but lucrative and precipitously growing Indian Agri-inputs market. Having demonstrated experience in market development and extension and are associated with best-in-industry marketing and brand promotion programs.

Keshav Anand, CMD, says, "while Parijat will continue to focus on the crop protection market, agility in both global markets horizontally and in different segments vertically will remain the USP of the company.

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Over the past few weeks, The Herald has run several articles in the paper regarding Wisconsins workforce and the needs of employers. The articles have been thought provoking and insightful. I do believe that Wisconsin faces some unique challenges. One thing about working in Wisconsin and being a lifelong resident who is still employed part time in the workforce, I have an experience being an employee.

One of the most fundamental problems with employment in the United States is that the Founding Fathers gave it little thought. In the 18th century when our country was created the idea of working for someone was almost unheard of. The Founding Fathers created a country in which a person was an apprentice to someone to learn a trade or worked for themselves as farmers, lawyers or standalone business people.

People working for someone else were usually indentured servants or slaves. The idea of Scrooge & Marley with old Bob Cratchit clerking away was not truly part of the American or British dream. The American Dream came much later, but it was based on the free enterprise system of go out and be a hard working individual, and the fruits of you labor will reward you. Well, not so much.

In some time and at some place, employers in the state of Wisconsin decided that a living wage was about $10 per hour. It met quite a few needs: The wage was above the minimum wage; it represented earning about $20,000 per year; if you have two spouses earning $10 an hour, why, that was $40,000 a year. The only problem with that thinking was when the United Way did a study it found the basic wage needed to survive in Wisconsin is $54,804 for a family of four and $23,196 for a single adult. Think about that for a minute.

Wisconsin prides itself on a society of hard working men and women. What we dont pride ourselves on is growing union membership, supporting a $15.00 living wage or the fact that the Republican Legislature just gave more money in tax breaks to the wealthy and repealed the prevailing wage for state construction projects.

One paragraph in the Sept. 11 edition of The Herald really pointed out the problem to me:

Wage increases arent always possible in a heavy manufacturing state like Wisconsin where competitive pressures have resulted in thin profit margins, said Sasha Wesolowski, human resources manager for Marquis Yachts in Pulaski.

The company, which offers starting pay of $12.50 an hour, has advertised its several dozen job openings on billboards, on a local parade float and recently in postcards to many of the 1,000 workers it laid off before declaring bankruptcy during the recession. If we cant find the people, then we cant continue to increase production, Wesolowski said.

I am not a human resources expert, but perhaps Ms. Wesolowski should consider: $12.50 an hour is $26,000 a year, her company laid off 1,000 employees in 2007, and then went bankrupt. Her company builds yachts, which have a thin profit margin. Maam, with all due respect, your company does not sound like a place where many people would want to work.

A recent comment in the Milwaukee Journal stated that income inequality in Wisconsin was the greatest it has been since 1929. Most economic experts in studying the Great Depression came to the conclusion that if people cannot make enough money to buy the goods they produce, the economy will crash. Why would Wisconsin want to repeat the crisis of 1929 and the Great Depression?

The Herald articles indicated a desperate need for STEM education and technical education. Yet we continue to abandon public schools, technical colleges and universities because state Sen. Stephen Nass has a problem with higher education and lazy professors and teachers. Well to no ones surprise teachers are leaving Wisconsin also. Which leaves a fundamental question: Who is going to be teaching the kids?

Perhaps by the time you read this column we will know what happened to 1,000 employees of the Gordys Supermarket chain. Those hard working people deserve to be treated with the same respect, dignity and financial equality as the non-existent 3,000 or 13,000 jobs not created by Foxconn. So I ask our legislators, Where are the common sense solutions for them?
President Ramnath Kovind will today begin his two-day visit to Uttarakhand starting to pay obeisance at the Himalayan shrines of Badrinath and Kedarnath besides worshipping the Ganga in Haridwar.

It will be President Kovind's first visit to the state after assuming office.

The President will arrive at the Jollygrant airport in Dehradun this afternoon, where Governor KK Paul and Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat will receive him.

President Kovind will first go to Haridwar, to worship the Ganga and take a pledge for conserving the river at Har Ki Pauri ghat.

He will be the second president after Pranab Mukherjee to take a Ganga conservation pledge. He will also visit the Seva Kunj Ashram in Haridwar which works for lepers and the physically challenged.

On Sunday, the President will leave for Kedarnath and Badrinath after a tree plantation program at Raj Bhawan in the state capital.

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The Tamil Nadu Government on late Saturday night decided to extend the parole of one of the convicts in former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, A G Perarivalan, by one more month.

Convict Perarivalan's mother had requested to grant extension of thirty days ordinary leave to her son citing various ailments of his father.

Accordingly, under sub-rule (2) of rule 22 of the Tamil Nadu Suspension of Sentence Rules, 1982, the Governor of Tamil Nadu, extended the ordinary leave for a further period of thirty days from the date of expiry of the earlier spell of the ordinary leave on certain conditions, which include he shall report at the nearest Police Station daily once.

According to the government orders, the escort Police should ensure the compliance of the conditions and shall submit a daily report to the Additional Director General of Police/ Inspector General of Prisors, Chennai.

On August 25, for the first time since his arrest in 1991 Perarivalan was granted parole by the Tamil Nadu Government.

His mother had applied for one month parole for him to visit his ailing father.

The government order, granting him 'ordinary leave' or parole, did not specify the number of days of parole.

Perarivalan and six other convicts have been in prison since 1991, the year a woman Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up and killed Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai.

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Bollywood actor Rajkummar Rao is hopeful that his movie 'Newton' is "quiet universal" and will impress the audience to win the Oscars.

The movie has got official entry at the Oscars 2018 from India.

While talking to the media, the 33-year-old actor said, "We expect a lot from the film as 'Newton' will have a lot of global appeal and it's quiet universal. This is the reason for which the movie got nine awards in Berlin film Film Festival and appreciation at Hong Kong."

"Every country has corruption and problems, so everybody can connect their problem with 'Newton.' Iam quiet hopeful that 'Newton' will impress the people of that country as well, like it's impacting the people of India," he added.

Movie's producer Manish Mundra expressed his happiness that they are "super thrilled and excited about the nomination of the film in Oscars."

The 'Trapped' star said that soon after the 'Newton' was selected as Indian's official entry to the Oscars, people started congratulating.

"A lot many people called to congratulate and everybody is very supportive. A lot many people tweeted on social media to express their love for 'Newton'."

After many years, a film has come, where everybody is saying that it's worthwhile, the actor stated.

The movie, which also stars Pankaj Tripathi, Anjali Patil, Raghubir Yadav and Sanjay Mishra, is directed by Amit V Masurkar.

Here is the list of India's last ten Oscar submissions - 'Eklavya: The Royal Guard' (2007), 'Taare Zameen Par' (2008), 'Harishchandra's Factory' (2009), 'Peepli Live' (2010), 'Abu, Son of Adam' (2011), 'Barfi!' (2012), 'The Good Road' (2013), 'Liar's Dice' (2014), 'Court' (2015) and 'Interrogation' (2016).

Only three Indian films - 'Mother India' (1957), 'Salaam Bombay!' (1988) and 'Lagaan' (2001) - have been nominated for Best Foreign Language film.

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Rosenberger, the leading German company will be participating in the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2017, which is being held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from September 27 to 29, 2017.

The event is expected to be the biggest ever show of telecommunication and Information and Communication (ICT), with more than 300 participants from across the world. IMC 2017 is all set to bring together the key players of Indian ICT ecosystem under one roof.

As per recent reports, there has been an almost six fold increase in monthly wireless data consumption from 200 million GB during quarter ended March 2014 to 1200 million GB during quarter ended March 2017. Targeting the immense opportunity, Rosenberger's participation will be to showcase its next generation solutions at this mega event.

Rosenberger solutions are designed to help telecom companies to keep pace with the increasing data demands of the users and enable them in offering world class user experience.

Rosenberger is also a leader in innovations of 5G and it is committed to providing integrated end-to-end solutions to help India Telecom Partners realize digital transformation, enhance network value, and offer a world class consumer experience.

5G aims at providing higher capacity than the current 3G/4G systems, facilitating higher density of mobile broadband users and supporting better implementation of Internet of things (IoT). The company has a wide range of antennas and Active DAS solutions that can be easily deployed and will help in providing a robust 5G deployment.

In addition to this, Rosenberger also has Data Center Cabling Solutions with Intelligent Management System that are future-oriented, to help telecom operators cut down their time to market.

"The trends that we are seeing for the data consumption pattern are likely to continue given the proactive government initiatives like Digital India thereby increasing the capacity demand tremendously. We at Rosenberger are committed to bring in leading technologies in India that will help companies to scale up their backend to keep pace with the changing needs of the consumers. We are delighted to be a part of the IMC 2017 and will be showcasing some of the cutting edge work that we are doing in the 5G space," said Aili Liu, President Rosenberger Asia Pacific, Rosenberger.

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The Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar on Saturday held its second alumni meet in the capital after the inauguration of the Delhi Chapter of the alumni connect.

The idea behind the Delhi chapter is to provide another strategic location and platform for its highly placed but geographically disbursed alumni to conveniently meet and contribute to their alma mater.

In the meet, it was recognised that contribution of alumnus to the institute is very vital.

Also, it was observed that there has been strong hand of IIT alumnus in progress of IITs as they contribute back a lot and similar is expected from the NIT Srinagar alumnus.

Professors present in the meet also emphasised to work together for a better India and to handover healthy earth to the coming generation.

The alumnus believed that instead of being criticisers and faultfinders, everybody should work together to improve India's image.

It is interesting that the first ever Alumni meet of the institute was organised in May 2015 at Srinagar, 50 years after the first batch passed out in 1965.

The hugely successful event was inaugurated by Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra and attended by 300 alumni from various parts of India, U.S.A., Australia, Canada etc.

During that meet, the alumni had presented an ambulance to the institute and pledged monies for scholarships in addition to personal time to teach students on life and learning skills.

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On September 18, 2017 an event, Sobraniye 2017 was organized by RUS Education in collaboration with Embassy of the Russian Federation in The Republic of India.

The Sobraniye is an annual event which is held by the RUS Education from the past seven years as a pre-departure ceremony for the Indian medical students who are going to Russia. The event is organized to infuse a rave within the students for their bright academic future.

Delhi witnessed the eighth anniversary of this event on Monday, September 18, 2017. The guests of honours for the event held at Kamani Auditorium were representatives from leading Russian Universities and the Education Head of the Russian Center of Science and Culture.

The other people who graced the event and inspired the students for their upcoming academic session were Manoj Tiwari - President, Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); G.V Srinivas - Joint Secretary, Eurasia Division; Ministry of External Affairs; Anatoly Kargapolov, Charged' Affairs of Russia in India; Fyodor Rozovsky - Director, Russian Center of Science and Culture and Embassy of Russian Federation in India.

"Russia and India have stood strong with each other and will continue to do so. When our students come back after gaining rich experience, we will take another step towards the progess of India," said Tiwari.

"India's diplomatic ties with Russia have been going strong. This is giving both the nations an opportunity to facilitate knowledge exchange. Russia offers a pool of opportunities and landscape to learn. This is a great opportunity for Indian students to gain knowledge and experience and bring that back to also contribute to the Indian fraternity," added Washim Syed, Director, RUS Education.

The program consisted of many activities for the students and their parents which also included speeches by the luminaries followed by the Indian alumni of the Russian universities. They shared their experiences with the fresh batch of students to give them insights and acquaintance with the journey they are going to experience in upcoming time.

The program began at 5 p.m. in the evening by addressing the top officials, students and parents from all over India. It was followed by many events and activities which were specially planned for the students. Around 600 people took part in the event which will for sure depict its success story over the years.

After the success this year, Delhi is for sure awaiting to witness another astounding event at a substantial level, next year.

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Tamil Nadu Forest Minister Dindigul Sreenivasan on Saturday revealed that all ministers of the state had lied to the people about hospitalisation and death of state's former Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa at Chennai's Apollo Hospital last year and revealed that only once a closest confidant of Jayalalithaa, VK Sasikala and her family had access to see Amma.

During a public meeting at Madurai, Sreenivasan said, "Jayalalithaa brought AIADMK as third largest party of India. Sasikala said so many things to make you believe she is healthy but truth is no one had seen her. Only VK Sasikala and her family had access to see Amma, rest no one was allowed."

He further said, "In order to make you believe in Jayalalithaa's health, we have uttered so many things like she ate idly, she drank water etc. To tell you frankly, nobody saw her. This is truth. He saw, she saw, etcetera were nothing at all. Just we would go till upstairs, bow down then we would return. Forgive me my party workers, but all of us ministers lied before you when we said Amma is alright."

He also stated that Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi came to visit Jayalalithaa, but they were allowed only to meet Sasikala and doctors.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi was supposed to come within a week when Amma was hospitalised. Then Arun Jaitley ,Venkaiya Naidu, Rahul Gandhi came to visit Jayalalithaa, but they were allowed only to meet Sasikala and doctors. Had they been left to meet Jayalalithaa, she would have told them what is being done to her" he claimed.

Meanwhile, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) President M. K. Stalin said that the Tamil Nadu Government announced probe into Jayalalithaa's death but it has not started yet.

"Although Tamil Nadu Government announced probe into Jayalalithaa's death but it has not started yet," he said.

Reportedly, last week, Sreenivasan had also said that VK Sasikala was responsible for former's death.

Jayalalithaa passed away on the night of December 5, 2016 after spending 75 days in Apollo Hospitals, Chennai in critical condition.

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Toby Roland-Jones will be missing from England's Ashes squad after a scan has revealed that the Middlesex seamer has sustained a stress fracture in his lower back.

The injury to the 29-year-old's L5 vertebra means he will take no further part in the domestic season for his county Middlesex.

Roland-Jones impressed on his breakthrough into the England Test team this summer, taking 17 wickets in four matches against South Africa and West Indies.

The first Test at the Gabba starting on November 23 sits nine weeks into a recovery time of between six and 12, meaning Roland-Jones will surely be targeting a return for the back end of the series at best, reports the Guardian.

It is highly probable that in Roland-Jones's absence, Steven Finn and Jake Ball will find a place in the squad behind the first-choice seamers Jimmy Anderson, Stuart Broad and Chris Woakes.

The England selectors will announce the squad for the Ashes tour to Australia at the Oval next Wednesday.

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One criminal was arrested while two others managed to escape during a police encounter which took place in Uttar Pradesh's Jhansi on Saturday.

The arrested, identified as Kanshiram, received bullet injury during the encounter.

The rewarded criminal was wanted in two murder cases and in another of an attempt to murder case. Cases of murder, kidnapping for ransom, attempt to murder, and others in Gangster Act and Arms Act were registered against him in different police stations of Jhansi.

The injured criminal has been sent to medical college Jhansi for treatment.

Meanwhile, search operation for the absconding criminals is underway.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A woman activist on Saturday came out in support of Pakistani and Bollywood actress Mahira Khan on being trolled over her 'smoke-break' and termed it as an 'appalling act' of the public.

Pictures went viral on Friday, where Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor and Mahira are breaking the Internet with their "smoke-break" on the streets of New York City.

Speaking to ANI, women activist Shamina Shafiq said, "The trolling on Twitter to actress Mahira Khan is just an appalling act of the public. Whatever she does in her personal life should not matter to anyone at all. This applies for all the women who should do what they feel is right. It's high time that the people stop reacting on such small issues and concentrate on bigger ones that needs to be noticed."

"Twitter is an amazing platform where opinion and views are shared but trolling is something not 'right'. The trolling army will get nothing out of it rather than making an issue out of nothing. Sometimes people troll just to get notice on something which is lame," she said.

Earlier in the day, Ranbir finally reacted to the ongoing internet furore saying, "I've gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire and respect, for her achievements and even more for the person she is. It is very unfair the way she is being judged and spoken about. What is also sad is the inequality in judgment just because she is a woman. I request you to stop the negativity and move on with your beautiful god gifted lives. Peace and love. PS - Both smoking and hate are injurious to health."

Yesterday; both the stars broke the internet with their pictures that went viral, where they were seen smoking together. The 'Raees' actress was wearing a backless white dress, while Ranbir sported a simple T-shirt.

While many netizens were quick to comment on their rumoured romance, some took to the social media to 'smoke-shame' and 'slut-shame' the 32-year-old actress.

One twitter user wrote, "If ranbir and mahira are actually dating that'll be the first interesting Bollywood gossip of 2017 (sic)," while another said, "Ranbir and Mahira dating would be the biggest plot twist. You ban our actors and your actors start dating them."

However, some twitteraties also came out in support of the actress.

"Everyone's bashing and slut-shaming @TheMahiraKhan, why because she was smoking a cigarette on streets?" posted one, while another tweeted, "Bashing Mahira for dating Ranbir wearing small dress and smoking is disgusting on so many level's... She's not your slave.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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At meeting held on 22 September 2017

The Board of Glaxosmithkline Pharmaceuticals approved the sale of the Company's land admeasuring approximately 60 acres located at Thane, Maharashtra to Oberoi Realty for a consideration of Rs 555 crore. The proposed sale of land is subject to receipt of all statutory and regulatory approvals from the concerned authorities and signing of the definitive documents between the Company and Oberoi Realty in this regard.

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For purchase bid of Rs 555 crore

GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals ('GSK') has selected Oberoi Realty as the successful bidder for the land admeasuring approximately 60 acres located at Thane, Maharashtra. The Company's bid for purchase of the said land was for a consideration of Rs. 555 crore.

The proposed purchase of land is subject to compliance and adherence with the terms and conditions of the bid, including receipt of all statutory and regulatory approvals from the concerned authorities and signing of definitive documents between the Company and GSK in this regard.

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Thirty-two countries, having the world's 85 million children under the age of five, do not have any essential policy that supports families with young children, a UNICEF report said.

According to the global body, 40 per cent of the 85 million children live in just two countries - Bangladesh and the US. The report said that data from various countries including India was missing.

The report says that only 15 countries, including Cuba, France, Portugal, Russia and Sweden, have all the three essential national policies that support families with young children.

"We need to do more to give parents and care givers of young children the support they need during this most critical period of brain development," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, adding that if nations don't invest now in the most vulnerable children and families, they will continue to perpetuate intergenerational cycles of disadvantage and inequality.

"Life by life, missed opportunity by missed opportunity, we are increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots and undermining our long-term strength and stability," said Lake.

According to the report, Early Moments Matter for Every Child, two years of free pre-primary education, paid breastfeeding breaks during the first six months of a child's life followed by six months of paid maternity leave as well as four weeks of paid paternity leave help lay a critical foundation for optimal early childhood development.

"These policies help parents better protect their children and provide them with better nutrition, play and early learning experiences in the crucial first years of life when the brain grows at a rate never to be repeated," said the report.

Among the countries, which do not have any of the child or parent related policies are Algeria, Barbados, Bhutan, Brunei, Gambia and Kenya.

The report also highlights that millions of children under five years are spending their formative years in unsafe, unstimulating environments.

"Around 75 million children under-five live in areas affected by conflict, increasing their risk of toxic stress, which can inhibit brain cell connections in early childhood," the report said.

"Globally, poor nutrition, unhealthy environments and disease have left 155 million children under five stunted, which robs their bodies and brains from developing to their full potential."

It also mentioned that a quarter of all children between the ages of two and four years in 64 countries do not take part in activities essential for brain development such as playing, reading and singing.

"Around 300 million children globally live in areas where the air is toxic, which emerging research shows can damage children's developing brains," it said and added that the failure to protect and provide the most disadvantaged children with early development opportunities undermines potential growth of whole societies and economies.

--IANS

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National Award-winning actress Anjali Patil, who is glad that her latest film "Newton" has been chosen as India's official entry in the Foreign Language Film category for the Oscars, says she has a life outside cinema and she is choosy about the films she signs because acting is not her life.

"I am so glad that our hard work has been recognized by people. The entire team of 'Newton' deserved this great honour... To represent India at a platform as huge as this, is just the cherry on the cake," Anjali told IANS.

But away from the glitz and glamour of the red carpets and award events, Anjali says the way she lives her life is different.

"It took me a while to understand that acting is not my life; it's just a part of my life. My life includes travelling, reading, cooking, making new friends and learning new skills - be it a language or a martial arts form and expressing myself in every possible way.

"Acting is a job and I get paid handsomely. It helps me pay my bills, my rent and I'm content with it. I do films because I love the film medium," she said.

Anjali made her acting debut with 2012 Hindi-English indie drama "Delhi in a Day". In the same year, she was seen in the critically-acclaimed Sri Lankan film "With You Without You".

Her big Bollywood break came in the form of Prakash Jha's "Chakravyuh".

In 2013, she was seen in an award-winning performance in Telugu film "Na Bangaru Thalli".

Does she go in search of such diverse roles?

"I never went in search of any role or film. Most of these projects found me in some magical way. Prashant (Nair) was auditioning for 'Delhi in a Day' and I was a direction student and I was not supposed to be part of the auditions. But they invited me and I went and got the role,a she recalled.

"I don't follow a design and choose roles that I want to do," she said.

Anjali said she also can't do one thing for a long time.

"I did my graduation in acting and I realized people look at me just as an actress and it put me in a very uncomfortable situation. Hence, I chose direction in National School of Drama (NSD), and that's the same principle which was applied for films as well," she added.

Going by her choice of films and roles, one wonders why Anjali doesn't pick up roles that are considered mainstream.

"In order to do mainstream roles, you have to become a commodity and you're expected to sign so many films with a reputed company. You're expected to get dressed and go to parties. I'll never be able to do all that. All I ever wanted and still want is a good script, brilliant director and good hearted people," she said, quoting Amit Masurkar's "Newton" as an example.

Anjali was in a monastery in Nepal, unavailable on phone, when Masurkar tried to reach out to her for "Newton".

"It's one of those scripts I couldn't put down after I started reading. I didn't know what my character will do in the film but I knew I wanted to be part of the project because it's a brilliant script," she said.

Describing the experience of working in the project as "amazing".

She said: "We shot in virgin forests and worked with real tribal people. It was an amazing experience. For a month, we were cut out from the rest of the world. All we had was each other and it felt like we want back in time where the only form of communication was talking face-to-face."

She was happy to be in the company of talented actors such as Rajkummar Rao and Pankaj Tripathi.

Anjali will be next seen in Rajinikanth's "Kaalaa" and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's "Mere Pyare Prime Minister".

(Haricharan Pudipeddi can be contacted at haricharan.p@ians.in)

--IANS

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Activist and ex-Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed to have received death threats in a call made from a landline number in Karachi.

"At 12.33 a.m., I got a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against (former BJP minister) Eknath Khadse," she said in a statement.

Damania quoted the telephonic conversation: "Tune jeena haram kar rakha hai sabka. Teri family hai na.." (You have made life miserable for everybody. You also have a family).

She said the true caller showed the number (starting with codes +92 21) from a landline in Karachi.

Damania spoke with top officials and lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in Santacruz east on Saturday morning.

"Informed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) is investigating the matter," she tweeted later.

Khadse, the senior most BJP leader in Maharashtra, had resigned as the Revenue Minister in June 2014 after his name cropped up in a dubious land deal in Pune.

Subsequently, Damania had also levelled accusations against Khadse of allegedly favouring certain contractors in the multi-crore rupee irrigation scam which is under investigation.

The AAP has strongly condemned the incident and demanded that since this matter concerns a number said to belong to a fugitive don like Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, the investigation must be handed over to specialised agencies like the Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) or Intelligence Bureau (IB).

AAP national spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon said: "This kind of investigation is completely inadequate and the investigation must be handed over to specialised agencies like the RA&W or IB as this number is said to belong to Dawood Ibrahim."

She pointed out that an ethical hacker Maneesh Bhangale had said in the past that the number belongs to Dawood's wife Mehajabeen Shaikh and is registered in Karachi.

However, Bhangale was later arrested for making false claims and the Cyber Police are still probing him in the matter while Khadse was given a clean chit.

"This call to Anjali Damania is on Eknath Khadse's behalf from Dawood's residence. What more proof is required that Khadse and Dawood work together? What is more important is that the state has totally failed to provide safety to activists and journalists and we fear for the safety of Anjali Damania and her family," Menon said.

She demanded that the probe should be handed over to a national agency which cannot be influenced by Khadse the way in which the state agencies were influenced in the past.

"Damania should be provided police security immediately. The whole state stands with her in this crusade against corruption," Menon added.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Arunachal Pradesh cabinet on Friday unanimously endorsed the stand taken by Chief Minister Pema Khandu over the issue of granting citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees and said that the rights of the state's indigenous people will not be compromised with.

The cabinet decision assumes significance in view of protests rocking the state after the recent direction of the Supreme Court to grant citizenship to the Chakma and Hajong refugees, who had been living in the state.

Following the apex court's verdict, Khandu had written to the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh saying that his state is not ready to accept any infringement of the Constitutional protection bestowed on the tribals of the state.

"The Council of Ministers took note of the letter written by Chief Minister to Union Minister of Home Affairs regarding the vexed issue of granting citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees and the entire cabinet unanimously endorsed the firm stand taken by the Chief Minister," said a government spokesperson on Friday.

"The Cabinet reaffirmed that the rights of indigenous people of the state will not be compromised at any cost. These rights are inviolable and are enshrined in the Constitution of India and protected by various laws enacted from time to time," he said.

Meanwhile, the the People's Party of Arunachal (PPA) on Friday demanded that the BJP-led government in the state must come out with clear policies and programmes to deal with the Chakma and Hajong refugee issue.

--IANS

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Vienna, Sep 23 (IANS/WAM) The Austrian government has approved a humanitarian aid package worth 350,000 euros for the Rohingya Muslim minority who have fled violence in Myanmar and crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh.

"Austria not only condemns the violence against the minority of the Rohingyas in Myanmar but also seeks to provide quick on the ground assistance," said Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in a statement on Saturday.

Kurz said that Austria wants to ensure that the much-needed humanitarian aid reaches Rohingyas who have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox's Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled prior rounds of violence in Myanmar.

The Rohingya refugees began fleeing Myanmar from August 25 when Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) rebels attacked police checkposts and killed 12 security personnel, triggering a military crackdown.

Myanmar has said its military operations in Rakhine were in response to the August attack and that the military was battling terrorists.

--IANS/WAM

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Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday hit out at the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, saying it not only lacks vision, but also has no agenda for development for the state.

Addressing the 8th state convention of the SP, he said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no issue at the moment but cautioned party workers that they are capable of drumming a new issue at the time of election.

Cheered by the large crowd of supporters and party workers, the former UP Chief Minister also said that unfortunately the biggest state of the country has now got a "government of lies" and accused it further of dishing out a bunch of lies in form of a White Paper against previous governments.

The Adityanath government, he said was anti-development and said that all developmental projects initiated in the SP rule had come to a grinding halt.

"We are capable of responding to each and every accusation but the BJP government should explain that when we made the Agra-Lucknow Expressway in record 23 months, what have they done so far in the first six months of their regime," he said, adding that had he be in power, the Ballia Expressway would also have been fast tracked.A

Akhilesh Yadav also accused the Yogi Adityanath government of hoodwinking the farmers on the loan waiver promise. Slamming the BJP for touting the Lucknow Metro as the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Yadav said the world knows that work for the ambitious project was initiated by the SP government and work on the first phase also completed during his rule.

He also alleged that the Chief Minister did not know anything about the Dial 100 project of the Police Department he had initiated and also attacked him for stopping the Rs 500 per person Samajwadi Pension scheme that he had started.

He also said that time would tell how fast the Varanasi Metro rail would start in the Prime Minister's parliamentary constituency.

--IANS

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Bollywood producer Karim Morani surrendered to police here in connection with the alleged rape of a 25-year-old aspiring actress, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his bail plea.

The "Chennai Express" producer surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station on the city's outskirts around midnight.

He will be produced before a court later in the day, police said on Saturday.

The Delhi-based woman alleged that Morani raped her on the pretext of marrying her. She alleged that Morani took her nude pictures and videos and sexually exploited her by threatening to post the same on social media.

The police had booked him in January on charges of rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cheating.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition challenging the Hyderabad High Court's verdict cancelling his bail.

The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail.

Morani was booked for cheating, rape, wrongful confinement), criminal intimidation), and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code.

The complainant alleged that Morani raped her in Mumbai and also at a film studio in Hyderabad in 2015 after promising to marry her.

The woman, who had done her Bachelor of Business Management (BBA) from Delhi, said she had met Morani through his daughter, who was also a theatre artiste in Mumbai.

The producer, however, had denied the allegations. Morani said the complaint was filed with the sole intention of tarnishing his reputation and image.

The producer's name had also figured as an accused in the 2G spectrum scam. He was accused of helping channel funds to the tune of Rs 200 crore to popular Tamil television channel Kalaignar TV.

--IANS

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Amid a massive crackdown by the West Bengal CID to net fake doctors, a controversy erupted at a Durga Puja celebration here on Saturday over a depiction of the demon 'asura' as a doctor.

The marquee of Mohammed Ali Park Durga Puja showcases a demon in the garb of a doctor -- with a doctor's white coat and stethoscope -- signifying the menace of fake doctors.

The organisers were forced to put up a disclaimer (in the form of a placard) over the figure of the doctor following protests by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) West Bengal chapter.

Santanu Sen, State Secretary IMA Bengal, had asked the organisers to "rectify" the same within 24 hours, ahead of the marquee's inauguration on Sunday, warning of the "worst possible consequences."

"We have hung a placard clarifying that we are against the demon-like fake doctors but we respect the real ones. Our theme was to showcase the evil in society and not to harm anyone's reputation or insult the physicians' fraternity," Dinesh Bajaj of the Mohammed Ali Park puja committee said.

--IANS

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About 70,000 people living near the Guajataca River in Puerto Rico were asked to evacuate immediately because of an "imminent dam break", the media reported.

The announcement was made by the National Weather Service on Friday afternoon, reports CNN.

"All Areas surrounding the Guajataca River should evacuate now. Their lives are in danger! Please share!" the service tweeted.

Puerto Rican Secretary of State Luis Gerardo Rivera Marin told CNN that the evacuations were difficult because the island was heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in the US territory on Tuesday.

Many parts of Puerto Rico are still flooded and over 3 million people still do not have power supply.

The dam was constructed by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to create a lake that provides drinking water to residents of the area, according to the US Geological Survey.

--IANS

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Actress Raima Sen, who carries off both ethnic and Western styles well, says she is a conservative dresser.

"Even though I kind of carry off everything, I am still a very conservative dresser... ," Sen told IANS here at the launch of Satya Paul's Diwali exclusive limited edition festive series "Ramayana".

Inspired by the epic, the collection includes three different looks, the Rama Sari, the Sita Sari and the Ramayana Sari, that offer a vivid mix of prints, ranging from neo-traditional, tessellating geometrics to contemporary graphic and abstract.

Draping the Rama sari from the collection, the "Choker Bali" actor said she would prefer free-flowing and light fabrics for the festive season.

"Something light like this (referring to the sari) which is easy to carry because we do so much of work and it would be convenient to wear a light sari, and of course colourful because we do a lot of work on stage... cut ribbons... roam around and people want to see bright colours," she said.

On the work front, Raima, the daughter of actress-politician Moon Moon Sen and granddaughter of Bengali cine icon Suchitra Sen, has just wrapped up shooting for the Bengali film "Kaya."

She is looking forward to a clutch of Hindi films including "Vodka Diaries" and "Varanasi" and is excited about the Bengali webseries "Hello".

"For me the clarity of vision of the director is the most important thing. I learnt a lot from (late filmmaker) Rituparno Ghosh. I have worked a lot with him. I am one of the lucky few that did. I have also worked with wonderful directors like Reema Kagti, Pradeep Sarkar and others," Raima added.

--IANS

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The Indian Embassy in Hungary hosted a fashion event -- Alluring India 2017 -- that displayed a beautiful blend of Indian traditional garments along with fusion fashion. The event took place to celebrate the the 70th Anniversary of India's Independence.

The Embassy collaborated with Vinay Gupta, Managing Director of Gait-N-Grace to organise the event that took place on Thursday.

The fashion show featured the latest finely tailored Indian garments such as silk saris, embroidered lehengas and mermaid gowns with ruffles. The collection was more about Indian traditional wear with a touch of contemporary ensemble, read a statement.

The concept of the event was to create an environment of Indian ethos globally through aunique insight into collections of two eminent names in the bridal trousseau industry, Charu Parashar and Payal Keyal.

The fashion event showcased a collection by Regal Saree and Various Moods by Parashar, The Weaves from the Ghats of Banaras by Salma Sultan, and Contemporary Sari and Contemporary Wedding Cocktail collection by Keyal.

The event was formally inaugurated by Ambassador of India, Rahul Chhabra at the Balna in Budapest. Former Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, Petra Pana, Deputy State Secretary for External Economic Affairs among many other eminent personalities were present.

The event also offered a plethora of Indian delicacies. There was a display of rustic and authentic Indian curry buffet from several states, marinade chicken wings, aromatic biryani, accompaniment with wide variety of Indian breads, palate refreshmentsand a traditional dessert- seviyan (vermicelli Kheer).

A glimpse of Indian culture was also showcased with a live demonstration of how a nine-yard sari was draped to perfection in different styles.

The poem "khoob ladi mardani, woh toh Jhansiwali rani thi" by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, was enacted to highlight the story of Rani Laxmi Bai, who battled her fight to freedom despite being dressed in nine-yard long Langdar Sari.

--IANS

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After making his name in India, Manish Mundra, the founder of Drishyam Films, is in the news in Nigeria for contributing to its economic growth in several ways: From petrochemicals to fertilisers.

Indorama Corporation, the conglomerate Mundra heads in Nigeria, aims to boost the agriculture sector in the West African nation with the opening of a $1.5 billion project to produce 1.5 million metric tonnes of urea fertiliser per annum so as to make the country self-sufficient in the product.

Mundra, who has worked with the Aditya Birla Group, Indian Rayon, Indo-Gulf and finally aluminium maker Hindalco, is an MBA with over 20 years of international management and mergers and acquisitions experience.

Mundra joined Indorama Group in 2002 in the corporate strategy department. Given his resourcefulness, he was transferred to Indorama Nigeria as a project manager. There, he supervised the acquisition of the state-owned Eleme Petrochemicals Company Ltd for $225 million. Mundra was appointed Deputy Managing Director of the company in 2007 and Managing Director in 2009.

He ran the Nigeria and Senegal operations, especially the expansion projects which are now concluded -- Indorama Eleme Fertiliser and Chemicals Ltd (IEFCL), and ICS Senegal.

"I figured that Africa would see a growth in business and demand. Nigeria, the most populated and with the most hydrocarbon resources, was the perfect choice," Mundra said.

Those in the oil industry said he must have his eyes on expanding Eleme as he took a personal interest long before he became the Managing Director.

"After the acquisition of Eleme Petrochemicals, the thought of establishing a fertiliser plant became a dream," Mundra said.

"We saw that Nigeria needed a breakthrough in food production. It needs to stop its huge food imports which gulp about $5 billion annually," Mundra said, adding: "Nigeria has abundant land resources; so there is no justification for this high import cost."

He said about 75 per cent of Nigeria's land can support agriculture, but only 49 per cent is in use. "It is for this reason that the company thought of building the fertiliser plant to facilitate abundant food production," Mundra said.

Mundra does not seem to have finished with his plans for Nigeria. He said that in the coming decade, Indorama plans to make an impact on the Nigerian economy by creating jobs and consolidating its leadership in petrochemicals.

"In the next 10 years we would complete our Natural Gas Liquid plant, methanol plant and the second phase of our fertiliser plant," he said.

"Our vision remains to build the largest petrochemicals and fertiliser hub in West Africa by 2020 with a total investment of $4.2 billion," Mundra said.

(Francis Kokutse can be contacted at fkokutse@gmail.com)

--IANS

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New York, Sep 23 (IANS/MAP) Morocco has advocated a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach to combat the Islamic State and terrorist propaganda during a ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition on the sidelines of the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York.

The meeting was chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday. In the meeting, Morocco stressed on the importance of clear action to combat terrorist propaganda and the role the country can play in the struggle, said Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Nasser Bourita.

The Global Coalition against the IS was formed in September 2014 with the goal to degrade and defeat the terror organisation.

The coalition's 73 members are committed to tackle the IS on all fronts, to dismantle its networks and counter its global ambitions.

Beyond the military campaign in Iraq and Syria, the coalition is committed to tackle the IS' financing and economic infrastructure, prevent the flow of foreign terrorist fighters across borders, as well as support stabilisation and restore essential public services to areas liberated from the terror outfit.

--IANS/MAP

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday saluted the Indian soldiers who laid down their lives to liberate Haifa in 1918.

"On Haifa Day, I salute the brave Indian soldiers who laid down their lives to liberate Haifa in 1918," Prime Minister Modi said.

"Was pleased to visit Haifa and pay homage there in person in July," he said.

Haifa is the third largest city in Israel.

On his recent visit to Israel, Modi visited the Indian cemetery in Haifa, along with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, on July 6 and laid wreaths at the site.

During the Battle of Haifa in 1918, the Indian 15th (Imperial Service) Cavalry Brigade, 5th Cavalry Division and part of the Desert Mounted Corps attacked rear guard forces of the Ottoman Empire that resulted in the capture of the towns of Haifa and Acre.

The Jodhpur and Mysore Lancers are now represented by the 61st Cavalry Regiment in the Indian Army and still commemorate the battle every year on September 23 as Haifa Day.

--IANS

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Rajkummar Rao is excited as his new film "Newton" has been announced as India's official entry for the Oscars. The actor says that he will call superstar Aamir Khan for the advice on its promotion.

When asked about his team strategy to promote "Newton" at the Oscars, Rajkummar said: "It's just got announced and its too soon to decide but our team is going to meet and we will plan something about it because there has to be strategy. We will be going to America to promote the film."

He was present at the GQ Men of the Year Award on Friday night.

When reporters asked Rajkummar whether he is going to get some guidance from Aamir Khan about film promotion at the Oscars, he said, "Off course, I will definitely call him and meet him because 'Lagaan' was there at the Oscars and we are really proud of the film. so I am sure Aamir sir will help us a lot."

Rajkummar attended the event along with girlfriend Patralekha who seems excited about the film too

"I am very thrilled. 'Newton' is a film that should get in top five films at the Oscars because it's really good and relevant and shows different side of India," she said.

"Newton" revolves around Newton Kumar, a rookie government clerk who is sent on election duty to a naxal-controlled town in the conflict-ridden jungles of Chhattisgarh, India. It has been directed by Amit V Masurkar.

--IANS

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Actor Ranveer Singh says that he shaved off his beard to shoot younger version of Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus "Padmavati".

Ranveer was looking dapper at the GQ Men of the year award on Friday night and while interacting with media the actor informed that "Padmavati" is shaping up really well and he shaved off his beard to shoot young Alauddin Khilji's sequence.

"There are lots of expectations with 'Padmavati'... Film is shaping up really well. I am very excited about the film. As of now, I shaved off my beard to shoot young Alauddin's portion and I really miss my beard," said Ranveer.

The makers of "Padmavati" released the first look of the film featuring Deepika Padukone, who is playing the title role in the film, on Friday.

Commenting on this Ranveer said, "Now slowly material will start to come. Deepika's look has been launched then Shahid's and my look will also be out and after that trailer of the film will get release."

In "Padmavati", Deepika is playing Rani Padmini aka Padmavati of Chittore, alongside Ranveer Singh's Alauddin Khilji and Sahid Kapoor's Raja Rawal Ratan Singh. The film is also produced by Bhansali Pictures and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures.

It is scheduled to release on December 1, 2017.

--IANS

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Hollywood veterans Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, who have over 50 years of experience, added more depth to the simple tale of Netflix's "Our Souls At Night", says Indian director Ritesh Batra, who finds love stories of older characters more gripping.

Based on an eponymous novel by Kent Haruf, it tells the story of two widowed neighbours, who begin sleeping in bed together platonically to alleviate their loneliness, and a real romance begins to blossom.

Batra, whose earlier credits include the widely acclaimed "The Lunchbox" and another Netflix film "The Sense Of An Ending", was roped in by Redford to direct "Our Souls At Night".

"Robert is the producer of the movie, so he has developed it, and gave me a chance to work on it. Robert and Jane were already on board, and the film had a great casting. Bruce Dern is there for three scenes, there's also Judy Greer and Matthias Schoenaerts.

"All the casting definitely made the film deeper, and all these actors always wanted to go deeper into the material... Apart from the script, they would always go deeper in their prep and rehearsal. I got a chance to rehearse with Robert and Jane for a week... That was extremely helpful," Batra told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

He was in Mumbai for the India premiere of "Our Souls At Night", organised by Jio MAMI Film Club with Star. The film, which had its global premiere at the Venice Film Festival, will have its US premiere in New York next week, before its release on Netflix on September 29.

For Batra, it was "great" to be able to collaborate with greats like Redford, 81 and Fonda, 79, who defy age with their enthusiasm.

"They have been acting all their life. Between them, they have a hundred years of experience in cinema. So, it was great for me. Robert is such a good director himself, and it's a great collaboration.

"Everyday, it was going about deeper down into the material, and also about keeping it simple and dignified... That was a big impetus of this movie. That's the way the novel is and the characters have a way of doing things simply," Batra said.

The fact that he's an Indian director didn't matter, he says.

"I don't think we ever discussed it... We discussed the material a lot. But at the end of the day, it's about the characters and the material when you collaborate on a movie. It's not about anything else... They trusted me. I don't think about it any other way. Not about representing (India).

"Representing is a natural consequence of who you are."

Back home in India, he feels the audience will embrace "Our Souls At Night" for its theme.

"In India, people like love stories. I think people will like it because of that and because of the two actors and the nostalgia associated with them," Batra said, pointing out that the actors are celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Barefoot in the Park".

As a director, Batra has a different way of looking at a love story -- and it's far removed from the masala entertainers the Indian audience has grown up watching.

"If a love story has to work, it can't be about external obstacles, because we have seen that and done that to death.

"What I really enjoyed about 'Our Souls...' is that all the obstacles the characters face are internal... It's about the baggage of life, and that's what I enjoyed," he explained.

Also, what about Fonda commenting at the Venice Film Festival that Batra was cutting the sex scenes between Redford and her too soon?

Batra laughed, and said: "She was just having fun... But she's very funny and fun to work with."

After the international projects, Batra will be back soon on homeground to direct a project titled "Photographer", but he preferred to remain tight-lipped about it, letting "Our Souls At Night" get its spotlight.

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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The number of Rohingya Muslim minority refugees who have fled violence in Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh has stabilised at almost 430,000, the UN Office in the country said on Saturday.

There has been no change in numbers since the latest report released on Thursday, the Inter Sector Coordination Group said, in a statement regarding the figure of 429,000 Rohingyas revealed at that time, Efe news reported.

Although the influx has stabilised, the UN office in Bangladesh said earlier that it did not rule out the number of refugees going up by 200,000 or 300,000 in the coming weeks, as there were tens of thousands of Rohingyas waiting to cross the border to Bangladesh from Myanmar.

The exodus of Rohingyas began on August 25 after the Myanmar Army launched an offensive in the region following an attack by Rohingya rebels on multiple government posts.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had said that "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingyas could be taking place in Myanmar.

Non-profits have denounced human rights violations and the international community has increased pressure on the Myanmar government over the military operation.

--IANS

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Amid a massive crackdown by the West Bengal CID to net fake doctors, a controversy erupted at a Durga Puja celebration here on Saturday over a depiction of clay idol of an 'asura' (demon) as a doctor.

The marquee of Mohammed Ali Park Durga Puja showcased a demon in the garb of a doctor -- with a doctor's white coat and stethoscope -- signifying the menace of fake doctors, leading to a protest from the medical fraternity.

However the idol (shown taking money) was removed, following a request by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

"The Chief Minister called me up to request removal of the model. In accordance with her wish, we are not placing any idol in a doctor's attire," said Dinesh Bajaj of the Mohammed Ali Park puja committee.

The organisers were earlier forced to put up a disclaimer (in the form of a placard) over the figure of the doctor following protests by the Indian Medical Association's (IMA) West Bengal chapter.

Santanu Sen, State Secretary IMA Bengal, had asked the organisers to "rectify" the same within 24 hours, ahead of the marquee's inauguration on Sunday, warning of the "worst possible consequences."

"We have hung a placard clarifying that we are against the demon-like fake doctors but we respect the real ones. Our theme was to showcase the evil in society and not to harm anyone's reputation or insult the physicians' fraternity," Bajaj had said.

--IANS

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday got the custody of three persons earlier arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the murder of a seven-year-old Ryan International School student.

A designated court here on Saturday remanded the three to one-day CBI custody in the ongoing case which was earlier being investigated by the Haryana Police.

The police had arrested a bus conductor, Ashok Kumar, 42, employed with Ryan school, its North India head Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas as part of its investigation into the murder of Class II student Pradhuman Thakur earlier this month.

The CBI took over the case on Friday and registered an FIR under sections of the IPC for murder, Arms Act, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Juvenile Justice Act.

The Haryana government had ordered a CBI inquiry into the killing of Pradhuman on September 15.

Pradhuman was on September 8 found dead with his throat slit inside the school's washroom, within an hour after his father dropped him at the school.

Earlier in the day, a 12-member CBI team arrived at Ryan school in Bhondsi, some 50 kilometre from Delhi, to collect forensic evidence related to the death of the seven-year-old student.

The local police station, where the case was registered earlier, is assisting the CBI team.

Police alleged that the school bus conductor killed him with a knife as the boy resisted an attempt to sodomise him. After the arrest of the conductor, his parents and two other Ryan school staffers claimed he was being made a scapegoat.

The Haryana Police is also seeking to question school CEO Ryan Pinto and Director Augustine Pinto. The case snowballed into a major national issue over the safety and security of children in schools, with vociferous protests held by parents and activists outside Ryan schools in several states.

--IANS

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Kerala Congress on Saturday asked Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to oust State Transport Minister Thomas Chandy from the cabinet after a preliminary report in land usurpment case.

"All the defence put up by Chandy about the allegation levelled against him for usurpment of land has fallen flat with the preliminary report of the collector indicating that land has been usurped," state Congress President M.M.Hassan told media.

"The preliminary report reveals that Chandy has violated the law and has misused his powers and hence he has to go, if not the Chief Minister has to boot him out," Hassan said.

The district collector had conducted a preliminary probe using satellite images of the resort area of Chandy prior to the construction with the present images and has submitted a preliminary report to the government.

However, Vijayan is keeping mum and fails to react whenever this question was put to him by the media in the past two days.

Trouble started for Chandy ever since one particular TV channel-Asianet has been after this land usurpment and had created a furore in the floor of the assembly.

The Congress has stepped up their protest after Chandy had maintained that he has done nothing wrong and announced in the floor of the assembly that he would quit as a legislator if the allegations against him were proved. He said his only interest was to develop tourism in Kerala.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said sanitation was also worship for him as it can rid the poor of various diseases.

Addressing a public gathering on the second day of his Varanasi visit, he said it was his good fortune to lay the foundation stone of a public toilet in Shahanshahpur village of his Lok Sabha constituency.

"That is because sanitation is also a kind of worship for me. It will rid the poor of my country of various diseases and the economic burden due to those diseases that result from dirty surroundings," Modi said.

He said while no one likes garbage, everyone in India shies away from the responsibility of keeping their surroundings clean.

"It is the responsibility of every citizen and every family to keep their surroundings clean so we are able to build clean villages, clean cities and a clean nation," Modi said.

The Prime Minister urged people to take one resolution each to improve the nation by 2022, which marks 75 years of independence.

"In the coming five years, we have to be committed towards that resolution. If 125 crore people take one resolution each and live up to it, then the nation would move 125 crore steps forward in the next five years," he said.

Modi added the government's resolution was to double the farmer's income and ensure even the poorest of the poor have a home to live in by 2022.

"There are crores of families in our nation which don't have a roof above their heads. It is our responsibility that the poorest of the poor have a home to live in.

"So we have taken the responsibility that by 2022, we will build homes for everyone who doesn't have one now, be it in cities or in villages."

He added that those homes - crores in number - would need bricks, cement, iron and wood, and would create several employment opportunities.

Taking a dig at the previous Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, Modi said it had no interest in building homes for the poor.

"We used to write them letters after letters to submit a list of homeless so we could create a scheme for them. But the last government was not interested in building homes for the poor. After putting a lot of pressure on them, they submitted a list of 10,000 names," Modi said.

He added that after the BJP formed government in the state under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, lakhs of names have been registered for whom homes would be built.

--IANS

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was cheered from the floor and the Indian guests in the visitors gallery as she strode wearing her trademark saffron saree on to the stage with a gilded background in the wood-panelled General Assembly building.

As she spoke in Hindi, with simultaneous translations in five languages, from the dark stone podium embossed with the UN logo, she received applause when she talked of fighting terrorism.

There was some laughter when she derisively said that the world reacted with, "Look who is talking!" when Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abassi accused India of state-sponsored terrorism.

She started her speech with a report card on India's achievements in development, before segueing to Pakistan and terror, raising her voice in indignation.

Sushma Swaraj then switched to an almost pleading tone calling for action on climate change.

And then she laid out India's case and UN reforms in a firm voice.

Her speech coming on the fifth day of the high-level session and on a Saturday was sparsely attended on the floor of the chamber, but almost everyone of the 193 members of the UN had at least one delegate present, some of them coming in just for her speech, which followed that of Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Walid Al Moualem.

Nepal's Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba spoke earlier in the session.

Indian Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar listened from the Indian position in the Assembly chamber.

Sushma Swaraj ended her speech with a Sanskrit shloka:

"May all be happy; May all be healthy; May all see what is good; May all be free from suffering."

--IANS

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India-US defence cooperation is set to get a boost when US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis visits India next week during which he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The visit, from September 26-28, is the first Cabinet-level visit to India under the Trump administration.

It will help underscore the enduring US commitment to strategic partner India, said a US Embassy press release.

Mattis will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the India Gate, meet Sitharaman, and also Prime Minister Modi.

"The Secretary will emphasize that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia. The Secretary will also express US appreciation for India's important contributions toward Afghanistan's democracy, stability, prosperity, and security," a Pentagon press release said.

His visit comes after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in New York earlier this week on how their two countries can jointly fight terrorism and promote security in the Indo-Pacific region.

This follows President Donald Trump's announcement last month that strategic partnership with India would be "a critical part of the South Asia strategy for America," placing those issues high on the bilateral agenda.

The two "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

In his speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India" and asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.

--IANS

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The US is not cancelling visa programmes for Russians, instead it wants as many Russians as possible to visit the country, US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft has said.

"We are trying very hard to promote travel to the US," Tefft said on Saturday in a video interview posted on the official Twitter account of the US Embassy in Russia, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We are issuing immigrant and non-immigrant visas. We are trying to increase our capacity to do that literally every single day," he said in response to worries that the embassy keeps Russians out of the US amid tense bilateral relations.

In August, the US mission suspended all non-immigrant visa operations across Russia for nine days and halted visa operations at the US consulates indefinitely.

The visa freeze was in retaliation for Russia's cutting its US diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people to 455 and a seizure of two US properties in Moscow in July.

"We are working very hard at the American embassy to try to deal with the reduction of our staff, which was imposed upon us by the Russian government," Tefft said in the interview.

Moscow-Washington ties have reached a record low due to the ongoing war of mutual sanctions.

--IANS

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New Delhi is abuzz with speculation that Prime Minister is likely to advance the by at least six months, if not a year. Not just the Opposition, but (BJP) leaders also are peddling such theories. Several reasons are being given, the foremost being the would suffer if it were to wait until April 2019. The Modi government has failed to deliver on its promise of better days and with each passing day will only lose support, or so the argument goes. Some in the believe that a campaign around Ram Janmabhoomi issue, with the Supreme Court set to start daily hearings on the case, may not be enough to save the party from the anger among youth because of job losses. The speculation ranges from the at the end of 2018, alongside Assembly polls to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. However, some believe even that would be too late given the sharp shift in the political narrative in the last six weeks. Advancing of polls would also need to factor in the possibility of a drought next year. Several of the BJP's allies such as Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) chief Nitish Kumar and Lok Janshakti Party chief and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan support the PM's call for simultaneous polls. Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader M Thambidurai has also written to the PM expressing support. Ram Vilas Paswan's son and Lok Sabha member Chirag Paswan has started touring Bihar. chief Amit Shah has been travelling to all parts of the country to streamline the party's organisational strength.
Eleven people have been arrested for their suspected links in terror financing during separate raids in the Bangladeshi capital, police said today.

The anti-crime and anti-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) made the arrests from different parts of the capital yesterday.

The arrestees were identified as Tony Nath, Md Faysal alias Tuhin, Amzad Hossain, Moin Khan, Md Nahid, Md Jahed Ullah, Md Helal Uddin, Helal Uddin, Al Amin, Al Mamun and Al Amin, the Daily Star reported.

The elite force in separate drives arrested them from different parts as they were involved in terror financing, the report said, quoting a message from RAB office.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a spate of attacks on secular activists, foreigners and religious minorities since 2013. The country launched a massive crackdown on militants, specially after the July 1 terror attack on a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people, including 17 foreigners.

ISIS has claimed several attacks in Bangladesh, but the government rejects the presence of foreign terrorist groups in the moderate Muslim-majority country, blaming home-grown groups such as the Islamic-State inclined Neo-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (Neo-JMB) for terrorist attacks.

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A farmer and his son were today apprehended after over three kg of heroin was found hidden in a water camphor in their possession by the BSF troops at Karma Border Out Post in Ferozepur sector of Punjab, officials said.

Farmer Nirmal Singh and his son Gurjeet Singh, both residents of Narlie village in Tarn Taran district, went ahead of Border Security Fence with one water camphor for farming, they said.

But after a while a Kissan guard party deployed in the area found one more identical water camphor with the father- son duo, a BSF official said.

On checking the water camphor, it was found that its walls were filled with contraband heroin (about 3.6 kg) along with one Pakistani SIM card, he said.

Both the farmers have been apprehended, the BSF official said.

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Senior Tamil Nadu minister and AIADMK leader Dindigul Srinivasan has claimed that afraid of Sasikala, party leaders lied about Jayalalithaa's health last year so that people believe that she was improving.

No one was allowed to meet the late chief minister. Whoever came, would be briefed by Sasikala's relatives that she was "all right", he said.

Addressing a public meeting here late last night, he sought the pardon of AIADMK cadres and the public for lying about Jayalalithaa's health.

Srinivasan said he was now coming out with the truth pushed by the situation.

The fact was none including himself was allowed to see Jayalalithaa, who was admitted to the Apollo Hospitals in Chennai on September 22, 2016, claimed Srinivasan, who had also made such statements to the media last year.

After prolonged treatment for infection and other complications, Jayalalithaa had died of a heart attack on December 5 last.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami has recently announced a commission of inquiry would probe the death.

Present deputy chief minister and former rebel leader O Panneerselvam had pressed for a probe into the death of Jayalalithaa saying there were doubts in the minds of people.

"I seek a huge pardon from you. Please forgive me. We told lies Amma (Jayalalithaa) is eating sambar, chatni, tea etc so that you will believe that she is improving. In fact no body saw Amma eating idli or drinking tea or chatting... all are lies," Srinivasan said.

Similarly, about several leaders meeting Jayalalithaa in the hospital and their version that she was improving was also false, he claimed.

"We were afraid of Sasikala at that time and lied about Jayalalithaa's health condition," he claimed.

"It is very common that sisters who fight inside the house will appear to be friendly outside. We did not want the secret of the party to get leaked... that is why we lied," he said.

Referring to statements by people loyal to sidelined party leader T T V Dhinakaran that they had evidence to refute doubts over the treatment given to Jayalalithaa, he dared them to release these and face the inquiry commission to let the people know the truth.

Srinivasan said it was they who made Sasikala as interim general secretary after Jayalalithaa's demise.

"We did that because Sasiskala claimed she was with Jayalalithaa and took care of her. But people thought otherwise. They were angry and asked why did you handover the party to the Sasikala clan," he said.

He maintained that Sasikala was selected only due to the compulsion of the circumstances.

A recent general council meeting of the party had annulled the appointment of Sasikala as interim general secretary and held as invalid all her decisions.

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Jammu and Kashmir government today directed the hospital management here to remain vigilant, especially during night hours, to "properly" attend the cross-border shelling victims.

The direction was given by Public Health Engineering (PHE) minister Sham Lal Choudhary during a visit to government medical college here where he inquired about the condition of recent cross-border firing victims, an official spokesman said.

The minister interacted with the victims hailing from Satowali, Jagowal and Shekhpur in Suchetgarh and assured them that every possible help would be provided to them by the government, he said.

Choudhary asked the hospital management to maintain sufficient stock of drugs and first aid equipments besides keeping adequate number of ambulances on stand-by for shifting the injured patients.

The minister also visited the native villages of the victims and informed the villagers about the temporary shelters identified by the administration, the spokesman said.

He said Choudhary asked them to immediately shift to these safe places and inform the security forces about any suspicious activity in their area.

Later, the minister convened a meeting of civil officials and security agencies and enquired about the facilities being provided in the temporary shelter locations, including power and water supply, sanitation facilities, medical aid and communication systems.

He directed the health department to station ambulances at the vital locations to shift the victims to the hospital immediately and asked the animal husbandry department to provide free medicines to people whose livestock is injured in the firing, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the opposition National Conference today expressed dismay over "lackadaisical approach" of the coalition government in reaching out to the people in distress along the International Border in view of the continued shelling by Pakistan.

"The administration should shoulder its responsibility towards people in distress as the ruling dispensation has almost abandoned them," senior vice president of National Conference and former minister S S Slathia said after visiting the affected villages of Kesso, Rangoor, Kandral and Mahal Shah in the Ramgarh Sector.

He took stock of damages caused to residential houses, livestock and standing crops and interacted with the affected border dwellers.

Assuring the border residents that they were not alone at this hour of crisis, the NC leader accused the administration of adopting "nonchalant approach due to lack of political direction".

"Even as the border residents were grappling with adverse situation unfolded by continuous shelling and firing, the government was doing practically nothing in minimising their sufferings," he alleged and sought immediate relocation of civilians from the forward areas to safer lodging centres with all basic amenities.

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The influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has ground to a virtual halt, officials said today, almost a month after the eruption of violence in Myanmar which has seen nearly 430,000 flee in four weeks.

The Rohingya Muslims have jammed camps around the Bangladesh border city of Cox's Bazar, stretching government and UN agencies to the limit.

But Bangladesh border guards said they have seen no boats carrying Rohingya on the Naf river, which marks the Myanmar border, or in the Bay of Bengal for at least three days. Arrivals across the land frontier have almost stopped.

"Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over," Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) commander S M Ariful Islam told AFP.

The United Nations also said "the influx has dropped" as it gave a new estimate of 429,000 Rohingya crossing the border since a Myanmar military crackdown in Rakhine state was launched on August 25.

Neither the Bangladesh military nor the UN advanced any reason for the dramatic fall in new arrivals.

UN agencies had given a daily update on the figure but said it would now only be released every Sunday.

"No Rohingya came crossing our side of the border in the past few days," said Manzurul Hasan Khan, another BGB commander whose soldiers mostly patrol the land border.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased "clearance operations" targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmar's border area.

Attacks by militants on Myanmar police posts on August 25 unleashed the military crackdown which the United Nations has said could amount to "ethnic cleansing."



Rohingya crossing the border say they witnessed mass killings and rapes by troops and Buddhist militias in Myanmar. The army denies the allegations.

Rights group Amnesty International said it has assessed three new videos taken inside Rakhine state as recently as yesterday showing large plumes of smoke rising from Rohingya villages.

The stateless minority has languished under years of discrimination in the mainly Buddhist country, where they are denied citizenship.

Even before the latest exodus, Bangladesh was housing some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine state.

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Alleging a "mega garbage scam" involving an amount of Rs 688 crore in the civic body here, the city unit of the BJP today lodged a complaint with the Lokayukta and Anti-Corruption Bureau against Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and minister K J George.

N R Ramesh, the BJP city unit spokesperson, has also lodged a complaint with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Task Force and in the court of the additional chief metropolitan magistrate here over the alleged scam.

He claimed that the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)had spent Rs 1,066 crore on waste disposal in the 2016 -17 financial year, whereas its expenditure on that count in the previous financial year (2015-16) was Rs 385 crore.

"There is a steep rise of Rs 688 crore in the spending on waste disposal. The monthly spending on solid waste management (SWM) now is Rs 88.87 crore. Thus, the BBMP will once again spend Rs 1,066.44 crore by this (2017-18) financial year-end. It is almost a 265-per cent increase," Ramesh said.

He further explained that though the difference between Rs 1066.44 crore and Rs 385 crore was Rs 681.44 crore, the amount involved in the alleged scam was Rs 688 crore on account of other irregularities in the BBMP.

Siddaramaiah and George, the minister for Bengaluru development and town planning, were not available for comments.

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Bollywood producer Karim Morani surrendered before police last night after the Supreme Court upheld the Hyderabad High Court's decision to cancel the anticipatory bail granted to the filmmaker, accused of raping an aspiring actress.

Morani was formally placed under arrest after his surrender here, a police officer said today.

"Morani surrendered before the Hayathnagar police around midnight. After completing legal formalities, he will be produced before a court today," Deputy Commissioner of Police (LB Nagar) M Venkateswar Rao told PTI.

On September 5, the Hyderabad High Court had held as valid a lower court's order to cancel Morani's anticipatory bail on grounds of concealment of the fact that he had been facing criminal trial in the 2G scam case and was in jail for several months.

It was alleged that Morani had sedated the Delhi-based woman and raped her several times, took her nude photos between July 2015 and January 2016.

The woman, aged around 25, lodged a complaint with the Hayathnagar police under Rachakonda police commissionerate in January this year.

Following the complaint, the producer was booked under IPC sections 417 (punishment for cheating), 376 (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage) and other relevant sections of the IPC.

The sessions court in Telangana had initially granted anticipatory bail to Morani on January 30, but later cancelled it after being told that the producer had concealed in his bail plea his involvement in the 2G case and the fact that he was in jail in connection with it.

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Warner Bros has moved up the release date of "A Star Is Born" featuring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in lead roles.

The movie directed by Cooper was originally set to open September 28, 2018 but the studio has preponed the date to May 18, 2018, reported Variety.

Cooper will play Jackson Maine, a country music star who discovers a talented unknown named Ally (Gaga). As Ally's career quickly eclipses his own, Jack struggles to accept that his best days may be behind him, putting a strain on their budding romance.

Previous versions of the film include the 1937 film with Fredric March and Janet Gaynor as Hollywood stars, the 1954 George Cukor musical version with Judy Garland and James Mason, and the successful 1976 update with Streisand and Kris Kristofferson as rockers. That one is best known for Streisand's torch song "Evergreen.

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Minister of State for Home Deepak Kesarkar today said CCTVs would be installed at important places across the state to check crime.

He was speaking at the meeting officials here on Saturday.

Water supply and sanitation minister, Babanrao Lonikar, minister of state for textile and dairy development Arjun Khotkar too were present for the meeting.

Kesarkar visited the town in wake of murder of a trader identified as Nitin Katariya and one Govind Gagarni.

The minister expressed concern killing of traders and directed the police to book perpetrators of Katariya and Gagarni's murder.

Kesarkar also expressed deep concern over illegal mining in the district. He asked the police to take stringent action against sand mafia.

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China will restrict oil exports to and ban textile imports from North Korea, the commerce ministry announced today, as Beijing joined global efforts to enforce tighter UN Security Council sanctions on Pyongyang for its provocative nuclear and missile tests.

China, the closest ally of North Korea, accounts for about 90 per cent of Pyongyang's foreign trade.

Beijing has halted its imports of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods, implementing UN sanctions imposed on North Korea for its provocative nuclear and missile tests.

As China is North Korea most important trading partner, the suspension of textile imports is expected to affect Pyongyang's income.

The Ministry of Commerce said it will implement UN Security Council Resolution 2375 by halting the export of liquefied natural gas and gas condensate to North Korea from today and limit exports of refined oil from October 1.

The ban on textile imports will be effective from today, it said.

Refined oil exports to North Korea from all UN members is capped at 500,000 barrels from October 1 to the end of the year and two million barrels annually from January 1, 2018.

China will suspend such exports once the total exports approaches the ceiling, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

Exported refined oil products must be used fully on civil purposes, not for North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, or other activities banned by the UN Security Council, the ministry said.

A limited amount of petroleum products and liquefied natural gas, allowed under the UN resolution, would still be exported to North Korea.

The UN Sanctions followed recent missile and nuclear tests by the North Korean regime violating the previous resolutions.

China's latest tougher stance is expected to bring about a financial isolation for Pyongyang, cutting off its international transactions routed through Chinese banks.

Yesterday, US President Donald Trump praised China for instructing its banks to cut off business with North Korea.

Last month, the US announced sanctions against five Chinese firms and one individual, two Singapore-based companies and three Russian citizens alleging that they supported North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

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CII Telangana and the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) today signed an MoU to promote innovation and also greater interaction between the industry and academia.

The MoU was signed by V Rajanna, Chairman CII Telangana and Vice President and Global Head-Technology Business Unit, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and A Venugopal Reddy, Vice Chancellor, JNTU Hyderabad in the presence of Kadiyam Srihari, Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Education, Telangana, a CII release said.

Highlighting the objectives of the MoU, Rajanna said the MoU would facilitate regular interaction between the industry and academia and also promote the culture of technology product development "by enabling ideation, experimentation and prototype development."



CII would facilitate faculty development programs on the newer technologies of interest, the release said.

The Vice-Chancellor of JNTUH said the University is launching university wide R&D and innovation initiative called J-Hub to improve quality of engineering education.

The MoU would help researchers and engineering graduates work on industry relevant products and applied research in problems of industry and societal relevance, he said.

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A group of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel carried out a cleanliness drive at the Juhu beach here today as part of the central government's 'Swachha Bharat Abhiyan'.

Led by the CISF DIG and chief of the aviation security group at the Mumbai airport, K N Tripathy, over 200 personnel from the force cleaned some 1.5 km stretch of the Juhu beach during one-and-a-half hour long exercise, CISF said in a statement.

As a part of the implementation of the Swachha Bharat (Clean India) Mission, the government has launched a campaign -- 'Swachhta Hi Sewa', which is being observed from September 15 to October 2 throughout the country.

Keeping this in mind, the CISF took up the task of cleaning the Juhu beach, it said adding that the campaign started at 6 am and continued up to 7.30 am.

The CISF personnel also displayed banners and distributed pamphlets to the morning walkers and joggers thronging the beach to promote the campaign, it said.

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A conference of the Left parties of the South Asian countries flayed the stand taken by various governments, including the BJP-led dispensation in India, on the Rohingya refugee crisis here today.

The two-day conference, being attended by senior communist leaders from South Asian countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, discussed the Rohingya refugee crisis, CPI(M) politburo member M A Baby said.

It also decided to adopt a resolution, seeking a "pro- active" intervention by the United Nations (UN) on the issue, he added.

It was also decided at the conference to urge the governments to treat the Rohingya people, who fled the Rakhine state in Myanmar facing an onslaught from the military, as refugees and take immediate steps to protect them by providing them humanitarian assistance, Baby told reporters at the end of today's session at the conference.

The UN must "pro-actively" intervene in the issue, he said, adding that a resolution in this regard would be adopted by the participants at the conference tomorrow.

Baby criticised the NDA government's stand on the Rohingya crisis and sought to know whether it had decided to deport the Rohingya refugees "under the influence of the RSS".

The conference -- The South Asian Regional Seminar on Imperialism, National Sovereignty, Communalism and Religious Sectarianism in South Asia -- was inaugurated by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.

The conference, organised by the CPI(M) to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, is also being attended by senior communist leaders of the country, including Prakash Karat, Sudhakar Reddy, S Ramachandran Pillai and D Raja.

In his inaugural address, Yechury said it was the considered opinion of the communist parties of the South Asian countries that the struggles against imperialism, national sovereignty, communalism and religious sectarianism were interlinked in this part of the world.

"The battles on each of these fronts -- anti-imperialism, defence of national sovereignty, defeating communalism and religious sectarianism -- have to be won in order to eventually win the war against exploitation and for the liberation and emancipation of our people in our respective countries," he added.

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The Congress today demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the reported Mumbai visit of Dawood Ibrahim's wife and asked why no action was taken against her by the government.

Underworld don Dawood's wife Mehajabin Shaikh had visited Mumbai to meet her father last year, police officials had said yesterday, quoting the fugitive gangster's brother Iqbal Kaskar, who has been held by the Thane police in an extortion case.

Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala said it was unfortunate that Dawood's wife came to meet her father in Mumbai in 2016 and the Modi government and its agencies "kept sleeping".

"This is such a shocking revelation made by the Thane police that the Prime Minister, Home Minister and Defence Minister should answer," he said.

Surjewala questioned why the wife of the terrorist was not arrested and why no action was taken against her.

"Congress demands that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh apprise the nation about the national security failure and circumstances in which the wife of a dreaded terrorist entered and left India with complete ease, without being questioned or detained.

"Let the PM state as to what responsibility has been fixed and what action would be taken," he said in a statement.

Surjewala claimed that this was "complete complacency and intelligence failure" on the part the central and state governments.

He accused the BJP of compromising national security in the past by actions like the release of Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Another Congress leader Rajeev Shukla, while referring to reports that the underworld don's wife visited Mumbai, also demanded answers from the Centre and the Maharashtra government.

"There are reports that Dawood's wife Mehajabin Sheikh had come to India last year and returned quietly after staying in Mumbai for 15 days," he said.

Shukla said that at a time when the country was fighting against terror, the wife of a terrorist visited the country for a fortnight and thereafter returned without anybody being aware of her visit.

"This is a serious matter and the Mumbai police, the Maharashtra government and the central government should answer," he said.

Kaskar, arrested by the Anti-Extortion Cell of the Thane police earlier this week, has given some vital information about Dawood and his family, the police officials had said.

Police claimed that Kaskar told them that Mehajabin came to Mumbai some time last year to meet her father Salim Kashmiri, who lives in Mumbai with his family.

After meeting Kashmiri and his family members, Mehajabin quietly left the country, they said.

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Prominent Dalit writer and intellectual Kancha Ilaiah today filed a police complaint stating that four persons attacked his vehicle in the town and tried to kill him.

The alleged attack on Ilaiah sparked tension between members of Arya Vysya caste and Dalits who came face to face. However, the police averted any escalation in tension by dispersing the groups.

A police official said around 200 members of Arya Vysya community held a demonstration at Ambedkar chowrasta (crossing) in the town after they spotted Ilaiah's vehicle. The writer was headed towards Hyderabad after attending a function at Bhupalpally.

The community is angry at Ilaiah over his book "Samajika Smugglurlu Komatollu" (Vysyas are social smugglers), and were demanding apology from the writer, the official said.

He said sensing trouble Ilaiah's driver diverted the car to Parkal Town police station.

In his complaint, Ilaiah stated that four persons attacked his vehicle and tried to kill him, the official said, adding that no FIR was registered in the matter.

The situation became tense after protesters followed Ilaiah to the police station and laid a siege.

Meanwhile, members of dalit communities came to know about the incident and rushed to the police station.

"Members of both the communities raised slogans against each other," the official said.

Circle Inspector John Narsimhulu and other police personnel pacified the two groups and asked them to leave the campus of the police station.

However, both the groups gathered at the crossing and again started raising slogans, following which police personnel rushed to the spot and dispersed them.

The official said Ilaiah proceeded to Warangal city with a police escort.

Arya Vysya associations had held protests in Hyderabad earlier this month alleging that the title of Ilaiah's book and some of its contents were "derogatory and demeaning" to the community and sought withdrawal of the book.

Following the protests, Ilaiah had lodged a police complaint alleging threat to life over his book.

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BSP supremo Mayawati today accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using B R Ambedkar's name for the sake of votes of weaker sections of society, and said OBC and Dalit leaders of the BJP would always remain "bonded labourers" of the RSS even if they become PM or CM.

Sounding the poll bugle in Modi's home state, she alleged the BJP believes in caste discrimination even today.

Mayawati also warned that she and her supporters would embrace Buddhism if Hindu religious leaders did not change their attitude towards Dalits.

"Even if the BJP appoints a Dalit or an OBC leader as the chief of the party or as chief minister or prime minister, he would always remain a bonded labourer of the casteist and communal RSS, and would not be able to do much for backward classes," she said.

"I and my followers will embrace Buddhism if Hindu saints and Shankaracharyas do not change their behaviour and attitude towards dalits," Mayawati said.

Mayawati's attack against the BJP came on a day Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani laid the foundation stone for the Ambedkar Sankalp Bhoomi memorial project in the city.

"Modi calls himself an OBC but has done nothing for people of this section. He is using the name of Ambedkar only for garnering votes of dalits," Mayawati told a rally to mark the centenary year of "Mahasankalp diwas".

Mahasankalp diwas is observed to mark the day Ambedkar is said to have resolved to change the way Dalits were treated in after he had to leave the city because of discrimination.

The BSP chief said that September 23, 1917, was the day when Ambedkar decided to leave his job in Vadodara because of constant discrimination and insults.

Mayawati, whose party was reduced to the margins in Uttar Pradesh after electoral setbacks, launched a scathing attack on the RSS, the BJP's ideological mentor.

Accusing Modi of "doing nothing" for Dalits in the last three years, Mayawati said the prime minister was making several promises to the community in view of elections in his home state.

"When elections come they (BJP) see Dalits as Hindus, but later they do not even like to sit with them...people in BJP believe in caste discrimination even today," she said, adding that the V P Singh government had in 1990 conferred the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, on Ambedkar under the BSP's pressure.

She said the BJP was "unhappy" over the honour bestowed on Ambedkar and implementation of Mandal Commission's recommendations.

Continuing her diatribe, the Dalit leader alleged that Modi, during his stint as chief minister of Gujarat, did nothing for construction of a memorial to Ambedkar in Vadodara.

"After learning about my today's visit, chief inister Vijay Rupani laid the foundation stone for the Babasaheb Ambedkar 'sankalp bhoomi' project on the outskirts of the city. This shows the state government was very much worried about my visit," she said.

Rupani laid the foundation stone for the memorial, which will be constructed by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC).

Mayawati said if the state government failed to complete the project, the BSP would complete it after coming to power in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

She alleged atrocities against the weaker sections have gone up in the BJP-ruled states after the NDA government came to power in 2014.

Mayawati referred to Saharanpur cast violence in her home state earlier this year to defend her resignation from the Rajya Sabha before completion of her term.

The proposed Ambedkar memorial project in Sayaji Baug will have a convention centre, an art gallery and a museum.

Earlier in the day, Rupani said his government had a special concern for the rights and security of Dalits.

Ambedkar had joined the royal family in Baroda after his return from Columbia University. He was in the service of the royal family from 1916 to 1917. Before leaving the city to launch the struggle against untouchability, Ambedkar had spent five hours at Sayaji Baug. His followers call the area 'Sankalp Bhoomi'.

The Dalit icon, who later became the architect of the Constitution, was sent to Columbia University on a scholarship by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the ruler of the erstwhile Baroda state.

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A devotee from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh offered a "Sahasra Nama Mala" (golden garland), valued at about Rs 8.36 crore, to the hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara near here on the opening day of the nine-day annual Brahmotsavam festivities tonight.

The jumbo garland, weighing about 28 kg, contained as many as 1008 golden coins carrying 1008 holy names of Lord Venkateswara, temple sources said.

M Ramalinga Raju, an entrepreneur, handed over the offering to the priests and top officials of the shrine in the presence of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, they said.

Naidu was in the temple after making the customary offering of a set of new silk clothes to Lord Venkateswara on behalf of the state government on the occasion of Brahmotsavam, the sources added.

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India's leading player Saurav Ghosal stormed into the final of the USD 50,000 Macau Open, a major PSA world tour event, here today.

The national champion, seeded fourth, ousted the top seed Simon Rosner of Germany in five games 11-5, 5-11, 11-6, 11-13, 11-4 in a pulsating semi-final.

The Indian is ranked 28th in the world while the German is placed 11th.

But that did not unsettle Ghosal who showed his characteristic fighting ability and ensured victory in what proved a topsy turvy tussle.

In the title round, Ghosal will meet second seed Egyptian Mohamed Abouelghar.

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Greece will remain under supervision after it exits its current bailout and Athens must achieve "economic and political stability," the head of a group of Eurozone finance ministers said today.

Greece has received two multi-billion euro bailouts since 2010. The third rescue programme, currently financially supported by EU states alone, runs to August 2018 and Athens then hopes to fully return to market financing.

"The viability of Greek public debt (179 percent of GDP) will be reviewed at the end of the programme if Greece respects its commitments," Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told the Ta Nea newspaper in an interview.

"In all cases where we have had support programmes, the countries have had to submit to a programme of supervision after it ended as happened in Ireland, Spain or Cyprus," he said.

"In Greece we will also have a supervision programme especially since there are outstanding debts with long repayments."



But he said the Greek "is performing better".

Earlier this month, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the country's Grexit status had changed and it was now attracting investors in droves.

"In 2016, direct foreign investments were the highest in the last 10 years and in 2017 further improvement is expected," Tsipras said.

Dijsselbloem is expected in Athens on Monday to meet Greek officials, including President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos.

Two years after Tsipras's leftist government nearly crashed Greece out of the euro, and eight years after the country plunged into economic crisis, employment numbers are finally improving.

Tsipras added his administration has created around 5,00,000 jobs since taking over in 2015 -- "a record for the last 16 years" -- and expects the to grow by nearly 2.0 per cent this year.

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India is sending a fresh consignment of relief material to Bangladesh for the Rohingya refugees, an official said today.

Nearly 700 tonnes of relief material were being loaded onbaord INS Gharial, a naval vessel, at the Kakinada deep water port in Andhra Pradesh for transportation to Chittagong in Bangladesh, the naval official said.

The assistance is being provided by New Delhi for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh as part of its humanitarian aid.

The relief material to be distributed among the refugees is in customised family packets, which contain essential items including food, clothes and mosquito nets, and is expected to take care of approximately 62,000 families.

Earlier this month, an air force heavylift transport aircraft had ferried around 55 tonnes of relief material for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

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Iran said today that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high- profile military parade yesterday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

The broadcaster gave no date for the test although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested "soon".

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Celebrated Indian Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai's short stories, narrated by Indian storytellers, enthralled a packed audience at an event held here to celebrate the revival of the 16th century art form of Daastangoi.

Daastangoi (storytelling) is presented in the form of a theatre of language and oratory. The art form was revived in 2005 and has been performed in India, Pakistan, the US and other parts of the world.

At the helm is a Daastango (storyteller) who verbally recreates the Daastan (story).

Chughtai's two short stories, Mughal Baccha and Gharwaali , narrated by Delhi-based author and filmmaker Sunil Mehra and Lucknow-based lawyer and human rights activist Askari Naqvi took the centre-stage at the Urdu Daastangoi show held here this week as part of a process of revival of Urdu Daastangoi.

"Her vivid language and powerful narration of the era she lived in make these stories worthy of performances," Mehra told PTI.

He said Chughtai's stories perfectly fitted into the Daastangoi format.

Naqvi, who is also a noted exponent of Sozkhani, a lyric recounting the tragedy of Karbala, said people of all generations and age groups get immersed in their performances.

"We are all narrators as well as consumers of stories and all that it takes to make people engrossed is a story that can touch their hearts," he said.

The narrators' spellbinding storytelling art captivated an audience comprising of Indian and Pakistani Urdu lovers.

Born in Badayun in Uttar Pradesh, Chughtai is known for her indomitable spirit and fierce feminist ideology.

She was one of the Muslim writers who stayed in India after the subcontinent was partitioned and died in Mumbai at the age of 76.

Along with Rashid Jahan, Wajeda Tabassum and Qurratulain Hyder, Ismat's work stands for the birth of a revolutionary feminist politics and aesthetics in twentieth century Urdu literature.

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Terming corruption "a scourge which eats up the vitals of the society", Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today asked the officials to support her in providing a "responsive and responsible administration" to the people of the state.

She sought the support of officers to ensure providing a clean, prompt and result-oriented governance to people, particularly to those living in far-off and hilly areas of the state.

"Alone, I cannot do anything. Your role is critical in providing an honest and responsive administration to the people," Mufti said wile chairing a meeting of Deputy Commissioners of Jammu region here.

Complimenting the deputy commissioners of the region for discharging their duties with maturity and maintaining peace and communal amity in their areas, the chief minister asked them to continue their work with the tempo.

To improve imprints of governance, she asked them to further enhance their public outreach and conduct periodic visits to forward and far-flung areas to know about the difficulties being faced by the people there.

She told them to specify a day in a week for meeting people and redress their grievances.

The chief minister, however, cautioned the deputy commissioners against harassing any community or group in their drive against encroachments or protection of forest areas.

Instructing them to handle such issues compassionately, Mufti said, "The law must be enforced on equal terms while dealing with cases of bovine smuggling or cow vigilantism.

She directed the deputy commissioners to be strict with those found indulging in "sowing seeds of hatred" among communities and people.

Mehbooba asked the deputy commissioners to ensure stocking of essential supplies and fuel in areas which generally remain cut off due to snow during winter.

She also took a feedback regarding arrangements made by district administrations for the people dislodged due to shelling in border areas.

The chief minister directed installation of crash barriers on priority basis on the Ramban-Banihal stretch of the National Highway to avoid accidents.

Mufti reviewed the pace of work on the three medical colleges coming up at Rajouri, Doda and Kathua and the AIIMS at Vijaypur.

She also reviewed the progress of a number of projects like Jammu-Akhnoor road widening, Jammu airport expansion, Tawi barrage and asked the deputy commissioners to personally supervise the completion of these on time.

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Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said today that her government will launch an intense promotional campaign to attract more tourists as the state's negative portrayal was hurting the tourism industry.

In her address after the screening of a film on Kashmir, she said the state is not just known for its beauty but also for its hospitality.

Hospitality and warmth are ingrained in people's lives here, she said.

She cited the response of Kashmiri people after an attack on Amarnath Yatris in July, who thronged hospitals to donate blood and even hit the streets to condemn the attack.

In another incident, she said, a shikarawallah lost his life while saving his guests.

"These are the empirical evidences of this hospitality," she said, urging the media to promote these aspects of Kashmir.

Mehbooba regretted that the negative portrayal of Kashmir has affected the tourism industry of the state.

She said her government would be launching an intense promotional campaign to persuade people to visit the state.

The film -The Warmest Place on Earth -has been produced by Jaibeer Ahmad for J Walter Thompson producers and it brings to fore the hospitable, warm and spiritually rooted nature of the people of the place.

The screening of the film received a warm reception from the audience.

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The Karnataka government today invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act against garbage contractors and sanitation workers employed under them following complaints that they were not discharging their duties.

The garbage problem has turned worse in the city recently as the contractors have allegedly stopped removing the waste, causing a huge pileup that has left many important places stinking and brought the city civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike in the line of fire, a state government notification said.

Following complaints, the government imposed ESMA on the garbage contractors and sanitation workers for a year directing them to ensure that waste is removed from the city, it said.

They have been directed toensure that the workers, known as Paurakarmikas, auto-tipper drivers, compactor loaders and others working under them to work without fail.

Meanwhile, the Environment Support Group, fighting for the cause of Paurakarmikas, said in a release that the workers, mainly daily wagers, known as'contract Pourakarmikas,' were showing up for work.

"But they are being threatened, abused, blocked and turned away from work by the private contractors who are on strike protesting the decision to end their corrupt and highlyexploitative privatised solid waste management system," it said.

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today urged Lt Governor Anil Baijal to send him the file on empowering heads of government hospitals to hire contractual staff, alleging that officials had refused to show it to him citing the LG's orders.

The move comes over a month after the chief minister held a meeting with all medial superintendents to review the functioning of hospitals, where it was decided to empower them to hire contractual staff till vacant posts are filled up on a regular basis.

In the meeting, the chief secretary had been directed to seek the Lt Governor's (LG) approval in view of the "huge shortage" of staff in the Delhi government's hospitals.

"I understand that the proposal for the same has been sent to you (L-G) without showing it to the health minister, the finance minister or the chief minister," Kejriwal said in a letter to Baijal.

"In the proposal, I am told that the bureaucracy has imposed such conditions that as a result, no medial superintendent would be able to practically hire anyone," he said.

The chief minister alleged that when asked for the file, officers said that the LG had asked them not to show the file to any minister, including the chief minister.

"Without showing it (file) to any minister/CM and without seeking their approval, the file has been sent directly to the LG," he said.

In the letter, Kejriwal urged the LG to send the file to him so that he and his ministers could offer their comments on the basis of their extensive visits to various hospitals and their interaction with several patients, doctors and hospitals.

"The final decision would, of course, be taken by the LG," Kejriwal said.

"Our main objective is the same i.e to provide best quality healthcare to the people of Delhi. It is in best interests of Delhi that all of us work together and in a transparent manner," he said.

On August 16, the meeting of medical superintendents with Kejriwal had come close on the heels the tragic incident at a government-run hospital in Gorakhpur where several children, including infants, had died.

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Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is pregnant with a baby girl.

A source close to the People magazine has confirmed that the 20-year-old business mogul is due in February with her first child with rapper Travis Scott.

"They started telling friends a few weeks ago. The family has known for quite some time. She is really excited and so is Travis," the source said.

Another source close to the family told the magazine, "It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about. Everyone is overjoyed for her. This is the happiest she's ever been."



Jenner has been dating Scott since earlier this year after splitting from her on-again, off-again boyfriend Tyga in April.

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Legendary director Martin Scorsese will soon be teaching filmmaking online.

Scorsese will debut the class in early 2018 through online-education startup MasterClass, reported Variety.

The class costs USD 90 for unlimited access to more than 20 video lessons; pre-enrollment is available starting Friday at masterclass.com/ms.

"I was excited by this project because it gave me a chance to pass down my own inspirations and experiences and practices and evolutions, not as a blueprint for how to make movies but as a guidepost, an offering to young people attempting to find their own way," Scorsese said in a statement.

In the course, the Oscar-winning filmmaker will deconstruct his films and provide insights into how he approaches filmmaking, including lessons on storytelling, editing and working with actors.

The MasterClass course will include a downloadable workbook with lesson recaps and supplemental material. In addition, students enrolled in the class will be able to upload video questions to Scorsese, who will provide select feedback.

MasterClass, founded in 2015, has released more than a dozen celebrity-led online courses to date. Those include classes from Shonda Rhimes, Christina Aguilera, Kevin Spacey, David Mamet, Dustin Hoffman, Werner Herzog, Aaron Sorkin, Hans Zimmer, James Patterson and Steve Martin.

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Myanmar minister for Ethnic Affairs Sai Kyaw Zaw today invited businessmen from Nagaland to visit Myanmar for business relation.

Zaw said Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh share a land border with Myanmar.

Speaking at the Connect North East Summit here he invited the businessmen from Nagaland to visit Myanmar for business relation and said a lot of businessmen from Manipur and Mizoram visit his country for their business purposes.

Speaking at the North East Summit, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi emphasised on the need of transforming the potentialities of the North East Region (NER) into measurable goals of success and progress.

The two-day North East Summit has provided an idea of the potentialities of the entire region, Gogoi said while adding that "instead of holding on to the potentialities of the region, it is time to change the potentials to measurable goals of progress and success."



The Lok Sabha MP from Kaliabor, Assam was speaking at the valedictory session of the two-day Connect North East Summit 2017 hosted by Nagaland Government in Kohima.

He expressed hope that the ideas and talking done in the two-day summit would be put into action to take the region forward.

He suggested that Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries should invite standing committees of the Parliament to such summits so that they would have better knowledge on the requirements of the region.

Former diplomat Gautam Mukhopadhaya said "such summits have been providing an opportunity not only to witness the potential of North East region, but also the neglect of infrastructure development in the region".

"North East needs to be turned into a more productive region by providing market linkages of the local products, and uplifting it from a mere consumer state," he said.

He appealed to FICCI to enhance entrepreneurship in the region by providing finances and also opening of NE Product Centres in the Metropolitan cities.

Nagaland Chief Secretary Pankaj Kumar said that the two-day Connect North East Summit has provided a very useful platform for Government of India and government of North Eastern states, neighbouring countries and other countries having interest in development of the North East Region (NER).

In his valedictory address, Kumar said this would also enable the national and international multi sectoral organisations, various public sector organisations to come together and place ideas, perspective and expertise and network in the information time space to take NER connectivity to the next level.

The Chief Secretary also conveyed gratitude to the dignitaries from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Russia and Thailand for providing the broad canvas on which NER connectivity issues have to be dealt with.

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An unmanned NASA spacecraft has successfully zoomed past Earth, using the planet's gravity to slingshot itself towards the Sun-orbiting asteroid Bennu for a rendezvous next year, the US space agency said today.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft received the gravity-boost yesterday, about a year after launching on a mission to Bennu.

The spacecraft is currently on a seven-year journey to study and return a sample of Bennu to Earth, NASA said.

This sample of a primitive asteroid will help scientists understand the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago, it said.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft came within 17,237 kilometres of Antarctica, just south of Cape Horn, Chile, before following a route north over the Pacific Ocean, NASA said.

OSIRIS-REx launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on September 8, last year on an Atlas V 411 rocket.

Although the rocket provided the spacecraft with the all the momentum required to propel it forward to Bennu, OSIRIS- REx needed an extra boost from the Earth's gravity to change its orbital plane, NASA said.

Bennu's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees from Earth's orbit, and this manoeuvre changed the spacecraft's direction to put it on the path towards Bennu.

As a result of the flyby, the velocity change to the spacecraft was 3,778 kilometres per second.

"The encounter with Earth is fundamental to our rendezvous with Bennu," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in the US.

"The total velocity change from Earth's gravity far exceeds the total fuel load of the OSIRIS-REx propulsion system, so we are really leveraging our Earth flyby to make a massive change to the OSIRIS-REx trajectory, specifically changing the tilt of the orbit to match Bennu," said Burns.

The mission team also is using OSIRIS-REx's Earth flyby as an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft's instrument suite.

About four hours after the point of closest approach, and on three subsequent days over the next two weeks, the spacecraft's instruments will be turned on to scan Earth and the Moon.

These data will be used to calibrate the spacecraft's science instruments in preparation for OSIRIS-REx's arrival at Bennu in late 2018.

"The opportunity to collect science data over the next two weeks provides the OSIRIS-REx mission team with an excellent opportunity to practise for operations at Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson in the US.

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A Nigerian journalist was detained for reporting that relief materials were allegedly being diverted from a camp for flood victims, his employers and police said today.

More than 100,000 people were forced to flee their homes in early September following floods in central Benue state, prompting authorities to set up makeshift camps to distribute relief materials to the victims.

Emmanuel Atswen, a reporter with the state-run Agency of Nigeria (NAN), was arrested yesterday over his September 12 story on a protest at a camp in central Nigeria which accused officials of diverting relief materials.

"The reporter was arrested over an alleged defamation of character and falsehood by a commissioner involved in the relief efforts," state police spokesman Moses Yamu told AFP.

He said the commissioner for water resources had complained he was wrongly quoted as confirming that materials were being stolen.

"The commissioner insisted he did not say what was attributed to him and asked that the story be retracted," he said.

He said it was true materials were being moved to another camp, but the reporter said they were being diverted without verifying his story.

Yamu said the journalist had been released.

"He was released on bail this morning and has been asked to report back to the police on Wednesday," he said.

NAN today said it stood by the story because it did not violate "the tenets of the journalism profession".

Nigerian officials are often accused of diverting relief materials for their personal use, sparking regular protests at camps for internally displaced persons, especially in the northeast where Boko Haram Islamists have waged an eight-year rebellion.

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Olivier Douliery/Pool/Getty Images(HUNTSVILLE, Ala.) -- President Donald Trump slammed the NFL this evening for what he called the league's tolerance of players showing disrespect to the U.S.



Speaking to a crowd in Huntsville, Alabama, where Trump is campaigning for Luther Strange ahead of the Senate runoff for the Republican primary, Trump insisted the NFL take a stronger stance.



"Someone is going to say, 'That guy who disrespects our flag, hes fired,'" Trump said.



"Wouldnt you love one of the NFL owners when someone disrespects our flag, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now?'" he continued to thunderous applause and cheers.



Trump went on to encourage people to "leave the stadium to protest people doing things like kneeling during the national anthem. "I guarantee these things will stop," he said.



Trump fires back at North Korea



Trump also took aim at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Friday evening, saying "Little Rocket Man" should have been handled a long time ago and vowing he would shield Americans from Kim.



"You are protected. Nobody is going to mess with our people.  Nobody is going to put our people in that kind of danger. Nobody," Trump said.



In a statement Thursday, Kim said Trump will "pay dearly" for his address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week, in which Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea.



"I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U. S. dotard with fire," Kim said.



Trump told the crowd in Huntsville that he will "handle" Kim unlike previous administrations before him.



"He may be smart, he may be strategic and he may be totally crazy. But no matter what he is  believe me were going to handle it," Trump said Friday.



The comments followed an early morning tweet from Trump, in which he called the North Korean leader a "madman" and said he "would be tested like never before."



McCain opposition to GOP health care bill 'unexpected,' Trump says



During the Friday remarks, Trump, who at times seemed to take on a Southern accent, also expressed his displeasure with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said earlier today he would not support the Graham-Cassidy health care bill.

"That was a totally unexpected thing," Trump said. "Honestly, terrible."



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The Pakistan Navy today successfully test-fired an anti-ship missile from a helicopter in the northern Arabian Sea, a navy spokesperson said.

The anti-ship missile fired from the Sea King helicopter into the open sea successfully hit its target, Dawn newspaper quoted the spokesperson as saying.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration.

Zakaullah said the successful firing demonstration was a testament to Pakistan Navy's war preparedness and professional capabilities.

The naval chief also visited the fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed the exercises being carried out by the naval fleet.

He said Pakistan Navy will safeguard the sea borders and interests of the country at every cost.

Earlier in March, the navy had conducted a successful test of a land-based, anti-ship missile. The trial was conducted from the coastal region and the missile secured a hit on a target placed at sea, the report said.

The Pakistan Navy in May received the seven Westland Sea King multi-role helicopters it had ordered from the United Kingdom UK in 2016, it said.

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Pakistani troops targeted Indian border outposts and hamlets in Jammu, Samba and Poonch districts in overnight firing and shelling, injuring two BSF jawans and five civilians, officials said today.

Continuous violations of the ceasefire by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) have forced hundreds of border residents to flee their homes.

Pakistan troops engaged in heavy firing and mortar shelling on villages and border outposts in Arnia, R S Pura and Ramgarh sectors along the IB in Jammu and Samba districts since last evening, the officials said.

They targeted over 20 villages.

Three civilians in Satowali village of R S Pura sector were injured in Pakistani shelling and had to be hospitalised, they said, adding that another villager was injured in Treva in Arnia sector.

In Ramgarh sector in Samba, two BSF jawans suffered minor injuries in Pakistani firing, the officials said.

Pakistan also engaged in heavy firing and shelling in Poonch sector along the LoC last evening. An eight-year-old boy was injured in the firing, they said.

Over 500 people were evacuated by the police from a few border hamlets targeted by Pakistani troops last night, they said.

The villagers have been housed in a camp.

Over 20,000 people have also fled their homes and hearths in Arnia and R S Pura sectors in the past few days, the officials said.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the LoC between September 13 and September 18.

Firing and shelling resumed on September 21 after a two- day lull.

A BSF jawan and a civilian were killed and 25 others including five BSF personnel were injured in the shelling and firing by Pakistani troops during the period.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.

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A Delhi University assistant professor has allegedly insulted Hindu goddess Durga using obscene words in a Facebook post, which prompted a condemnation from the ABVP and a police complaint by a teachers' body.

BJP-affiliated National Democratic Teachers Front filed the police complaint against Kedar Kumar Mandal, an assistant professor at DU's Dayal Singh College.

Mandal had posted the controversial Facebook update at 07:43 pm yesterday and later deleted it.

The NDTF filed a complaint today at the Lodhi Colony police station. Police said they have received a complaint but are yet to file an FIR.

Mandal did not respond to messages and could not be reached on his phone for comments.

RSS-affiliated ABVP condemned the post and demanded immediate suspension of the professor.

"We demand his suspension and we request the student community to boycott his classes. Mandal has provoked sentiments during a festival time of Hindu - Navratri," ABVP's Dayal Singh College unit said in a statement.

"If allowed to continue as a teacher he will only spread hatred among students.

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A petition has been filed in the Madras High Court for setting up an inquiry commission, headed by a retired high court judge, to find out the "truth" behind the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

The petitioner also sought an interim injunction restraining the state ministers from issuing any statements pertaining to the death.

The petitioner, Muruganandham of Thiruvarur district, who claims to be a loyal AIADMK worker, submitted that he filed the plea acceding to requests by other AIADMK workers for setting up of a judicial inquiry commission to find the cause and truth behind the sudden demise of the former chief minister.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami had announced a probe by a retired high court judge into the death last month, conceding a key demand of the O Panneerselvam camp for merger with his faction.

The Panneerselvam camp had raised suspicions over the death.

But till this day no such commission has been formed, the petitioner submitted.

He further submitted that when the government's motive is to find out the truth, attributing motives to some party leaders by the ministers themselves "will amount to interfering in the functions of the proposed commission.

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The Haryana police said on Saturday that it had initiated the process for declaring jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's adopted daughter and some other sect functionaries as proclaimed offenders.

Besides, the police have decided to attach properties owned by Honeypreet as well as Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan, key Dera functionaries who are on the run.

"Legal action against two to three people, who are untraceable, is being taken. We have started the process of declaring them proclaimed offenders. Their personal properties will also be attached...These persons are Aditya Insan, Pawan Insan and Honeypreet Insan," Haryana DGP B S Sandhu said while talking to reporters in Sirsa today.

I want to warn them that they should appear before police and present their side to the investigators, he said.

The DGP said that efforts were being made to nab Honeypreet and the other two in connection with the violence that had erupted following the conviction of Ram Rahim in a rape case.

For this, an international alert has been issued and teams are conducting raids, he said.

The DGP said that till August 25 there was no case against Honeypreet but after the arrest of Dera functionary Surinder Dhiman, her role became suspect.

"Therefore, a case was registered and a search is on to nab her," Sandhu said.

He said the police had information that Honeypreet had come to Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa after the violence.

Asked if Ram Rahim Singh would be questioned regarding Honeypreet, Sandhu said that according to the need, whosoever has to be interrogated, will be questioned.

A joint operation was conducted by Haryana and Rajasthan police teams in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan to trace on September 21 but she remained elusive.

Honeypreet was booked in connection with the violence following the conviction of the Dera chief on August 25. A lookout notice had already been issued against her and Aditya Insan.

Police had also said that they needed to question Honeypreet on the basis of certain disclosures made by a Dera functionary Surinder Dhiman.
Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu held discussion with top Representatives of Korean industries in Seoul, and discussed ways to increase business cooperation, an official statement said today.

The commerce minister exchanged views on prospects for more business cooperation with executives of top South Korean companies, including Samsung, Kia motors, Hyundai Electric and Posco.

The minister was in Korea for Asia-Europe (ASEM) Economic Ministers meeting. He also participated in the third Joint Ministerial Review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

The three-day visit of Prabhu ended yesterday.

"In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses, and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed," the commerce ministry said in the statement.

Further, the minister held meeting with the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party ChooMi-ae.

"Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Ms Choo noted that the 'elephant was out performing the dragon'," the statement said.

Besides, he held bilateral meetings with Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France Benjamin Griveaux; State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway Dilek Ayhan; State Secretary for Trade and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark Susanne Hyldelund.

At the ASEM meeting, Prabhu reiterated India's commitment for promoting free and fair world trade.

He also emphasised on the challenges in ensuring free and fair trade.

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President Ram Nath Kovind began his two-day visit to Uttarakhand today by worshipping the holy Ganga river along with his family at Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar amid heavy rain.

Kovind was accompanied by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, Governor K K Paul, state assembly speaker Premchand Aggarwal and seven family members including his wife, son and daughter-in-law at Har ki Pauri's famous Brahmakund.

The president also took a pledge for Ganga conservation. Visibly overwhelmed by the experience, he described his visit in Ganga Sabha's visitors' book as "memorable".

Later, at a function held by the Divya Prem Seva Ashram in his honour, the president said the Ganga is the country's identity and efforts should be made to keep the ancient river clean.

"India is not known because of the India Gate, or the Taj Mahal or the Lal Quila. It is known because of the Ganga, its great saints and seers. Don't you remember the song 'Hum us Desh ke wasi hain jis Desh mein Ganga behti hai'," he said.

The president, who is scheduled to visit the Himalayan shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath tomorrow, said he was very keen to pay obeisance at the famed temples but may not be able to go because of the rainy weather.

"If the weather permits I will go. If it doesn't I will visit them (temples) later, may be after three months. Let us see how the weather is tomorrow," he said.

Earlier, Kovind arrived in an IAF plane at the Jollygrant Airport and left in a convoy for Haridwar in the company of the chief minister and the governor.

He will spend the night at the Raj Bhawan in Dehradun.

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Jain monk Tarun Sagar today demanded an investigation into the wealth amassed by self-styled godmen in India.

He said there were about 1,400 cheats in the country who call themselves godmen or saints.

Every third godmen in India is a fraud, he said.

Speaking to reporters here yesterday, the Jain monk demanded an investigation into the wealth amassed by self- styled godmen, saying if corrupt politicians and government officers can be probed why not these 'godmen' who have defamed the religion.

He said the so-called 'babas' have created a divide between the youth and the religion, but blamed people for not calling out these self-styled godmen.

He also criticised violence unleashed by some people in the name of religion.

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Authorities in Puerto Rico rushed today to evacuate tens of thousands of people living downriver from a dam said to be in danger of collapsing because of flooding from Hurricane Maria.

The drama unfolded as the US island territory, working without electricity, struggled to dig out and clean up from its disastrous brush with the hurricane, blamed for at least 33 deaths across the Caribbean.

The 1920's era earthen dam on the Guajataca River in northwest Puerto Rico cracked yesterday, prompting the government to issue an order for 70,000 people in downstream towns to evacuate.

The local office of the National Weather Service warned last evening of an "imminent dam break."



A Puerto Rican government official who refused to be named confirmed today that evacuations that began last evening were continuing.

He said the dam had cracked under the weight of so much flooding, sending water gushing through and prompting fears of flash flooding.

Yesterday, public safety chief Hector Pesquera had cited a different cause for the initial dam failure, according to the newspaper El Vocero. Pesquera said a drain which normally releases water from the dam in a controlled fashion had broken, sending it gushing out in torrents.

Puerto Rico was already battling dangerous floods elsewhere on the island because of Hurricane Maria, which hit before dawn Wednesday as part of its furious tear across the Caribbean.

Governor Ricardo Rossello visited Isabela, an area near the dam, late yesterday and urged people to get out. The government is also sending in buses to take people to higher ground.

As the island is without power but for emergency generators, and without telecommunications, the governor's entourage left a satellite phone with the mayor of Isabela so he can talk to crews manning the dam.

Rossello has called Maria the most devastating storm to hit the island in a century.

So far, a preliminary assessment said 13 people had died as a result of the storm, he told CNN yesterday.

In its latest update at 1500 GMT, the US National Hurricane Center said Maria was moving northwest and located 515 km east of Nassau in the Bahamas.

So far, at least 33 people have been confirmed dead as a result of Hurricane Maria, including 15 in Dominica, three in Haiti and two in Guadeloupe.

After speaking with Puerto Rico's governor on Thursday night, US President Donald Trump promised to speed up relief efforts.

Of the 13 victims in Puerto Rico, eight died in the northern town of Toa Baja, one of the worst-hit areas which was ravaged by winds of more than 200 kilometers per hour and then hit by flooding when the island's largest river, La Plata, burst its banks. The winds have eased a bit since then but not much.

Many residents did not evacuate on time, while others say they never heard the warning sirens.

Others could be seen returning home after several days away to begin the arduous process of clearing their homes of the heavy mud left by the floodwaters in order to start the process of rebuilding.

Marisol Rosario, a 55-year-old housewife who fled with her husband, said the violent winds forced her to flee without taking their dog.

"I thought I would find him dead, but he managed to climb on top of the furniture and survive," she said tearfully.

Across the island, streets were littered with debris from the storm, with toppled trees, street signs and power cables strewn everywhere.

The torrential rain also turned some roads into muddy brown rivers, impassable to all but the largest of vehicles.

Puerto Rico's electricity network has been crippled by the storm and engineers say it could take months for power to be fully restored.

US federal emergency chief Brock Long said ships carrying millions of meals and bottles of water were trying to dock as the island's ports are slowly reopened.

Before reaching Puerto Rico, the storm devastaged the small island nation of Dominica.

And after striking Puerto Rico, the storm headed west toward the Dominican Republic where it damaged nearly 5,000 homes, forcing the evacuation of more than 18,000 people, the president's office said.

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Home Minister Rajnath Singh today congratulated External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for her "powerful" speech at the UN General Assembly saying she has "exposed" Pakistan's duplicity on terrorism.

Addressing the UN general assembly, Swaraj asked Pakistan's leaders to introspect as to why India is recognised as a global IT superpower while Pakistan is infamous as the "pre-eminent export factory for terror".

"Her (Swaraj's) measured responses in spite of provocations speak volumes of her maturity and tenacity. She has exposed Pakistan's duplicity on terrorism," he said in a tweet.

"Congratulations to Smt. @SushmaSwaraj on her powerful, measured and nuanced articulation of India's stand on the issue of terrorism at #UNGA (sic)," Singh said in another tweet.

The external affairs minister accused Pakistan of waging a war against India and said a country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

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Several programmes, including armed rallies, were today organised in Jammu region to mark the 122nd birth anniversary of the state's last Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh, amid demands that the day be declared a public holiday.

Participants criticised the PDP-BJP government for failing to declare September 23 as a public holiday in the state. At an event to pay homage to the state's last Dogra ruler, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh was forced to cut short his speech.

The issue has been gaining traction in the state for some time. A resolution was adopted in the state legislative council in January to declare the day a public holiday.

But there apparently is no agreement between the two ruling parties.

Lawyers affiliated to the Jammu Bar Association stayed away from work and instead organised a programme within the Association's premises to celebrate the contribution of the Maharaja, under whom the historic instrument of accession of the state with the Indian Union was signed in 1947.

Maharaja's grandson and PDP lawmaker Vikramaditya Singh said the demand for public holiday will continue as the issue is linked to the "sentiment" of people in the Jammu region.

"Maharaja was a great leader and the entire Jammu region is united in its demand for a holiday to mark the birth anniversary of their beloved king," Singh told reporters.

Singh said it was time the sentiment of the people of the Jammu region was recognised.

The BJP had backed the January resolution, but opposition National Conference had walked out from the Council then. Independent MLA Engineer Rashid had claimed that the passage of the resolution was a disrespect to the people "who gave their life fighting against the autocratic rule."



Several groups of youth, some armed with swords and licensed guns, rallied through the city on motorcycles and four wheelers, raising slogans against the state government.

Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party chief and former minister Harsh Dev Singh asked his grandsons



Ajatshatru and Vikramaditya - to resign from their respective political parties in protest against the state government's "contemptuous denial" to declare the day as a public holiday.

He said the "criminal silence" of the BJP ministers on the issue has exposed the ruling alliance.

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The rapid spread of "super malaria" in the South East Asia is an alarming global threat and there is an urgent need to eliminate it before the drug-resistant strain of malaria becomes untreatable again, scientists have warned.

The dangerous form of the malaria parasite which cannot be killed with the main anti-malaria drugs emerged in Cambodia but has since spread through parts of Thailand, Laos and has arrived in southern Vietnam.

Researchers at Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok in a letter, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, detail the "recent sinister development" that has seen resistance to the drug artemisinin emerge.

"We think it is a serious threat. It is alarming that this strain is spreading so quickly through the whole region and we fear it can spread further and eventually jump to Africa," Arjen Dondorp, professor at Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit was quoted as saying by the BBC.

The first choice treatment for malaria is artemisinin in combination with piperaquine. But as artemisinin has become less effective, the parasite has now evolved to resist piperaquine too, researchers said.

There have now been alarming rates of failure. The treatment was failing around a third of the time in Vietnam while in some regions of Cambodia the failure rate was closer to 60 per cent, Dondorp said.

Resistance to the drugs would be catastrophic in Africa, where 92 per cent of all malaria cases happen, researchers warn.

About 212 million people are infected with malaria each year. It is caused by a parasite that is spread by blood- sucking mosquitoes and is a major killer of children.

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Odisha government today launched a programme making provision of Rs 1,000 as transport cost for pregnant women to hospital from inaccessible areas.

The government launched 'SAMPURNA' (Sishu Abond Matru Mrityuhara Purna Nirakaran Abhijan) programme under the state budget to increase institutional deliveries in order to reduce infant morality rate (IMR) as well as mother mortality rate (MMR).

The programme was launched after a number of incidents of pregnant women being carried on shoulder or cot or walking to reach hospital for delivery came to the fore.

As per the new scheme, pregnant women from inaccessible areas reaching hospitals by arranging vehicles on their own will get Rs 1,000. The state is estimated to spend Rs 6 crore per annum under 'SAMPURNA' scheme.

"The government will provide financial support for pregnant women from difficult villages where 102/108 ambulances or four-wheeler vehicle cannot reach," Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said while announcing the new scheme.

Patnaik said about 7,853 villages spread over 30 districts would be covered under the SAMPURNA scheme. It is expected that more than 60,000 pregnant women would be benefited annually, he said.

Stating that the Asha workers have major contribution to control IMR and MMR, Patnaik also announced launching of ASHA Kalyan Yojana which would ensure a minimum monthly incentive of Rs 1,000 to each Asha worker. This scheme will benefit more than 47,000 ASHA workers working in different parts of the state.

Patnaik also launched the NHM Employees' Welfare Fund which provides for compensation of up to Rs 6 lakh for death or permanent disability above 80 per cent and compensation up to Rs 2.5 lakh for partial disability.

"It will also provide for reimbursement of the cost of medical expenses up to Rs 3 lakh in a year for the critical health condition," said Patnaik.

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Traders' body CAIT today urged the government to take action action against e-commerce firms like Amazon and Flipkart, alleging they have flouted FDI norms for such players by undertaking retail trading activities.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) wrote to Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu in this regard, claiming that the companies were indulging in a "blatant violation" of the FDI (foreign direct investment) policy.

"Amazon has declared Great Indian Festival Sale from 21 September to 24 September, 2017 and Flipkart has conducted Big Billion Day Sale from 20-24 September 2017, Snapdeal has announced Unbox Diwali Sale from 20 to 25 September 2017, Jabong Sale from 20 to 24 September 2017, Myntra Sale from 20 to 24 September 2017, Shopclues has announced Maha Bharat Diwali Sale from 20 to 28 September 2017 which is a blatant violation of the guidelines issued by the DIPP," CAIT alleged.

In its complaint, CAIT said "the advertisements issued by them in past days amounts to soliciting retail customers at their portals and influencing the prices and creating an uneven level playing field".

"Under FDI policy these companies can not undertake retail trading activities but these e-commerce portals being habitual offenders of (the) government policies are circumventing the law and engaged in B2C (business-to- commerce) activities which is prohibited for e-commerce marketplace portals," CAIT alleged in the complaint to Prabhu.

In its complaint, the traders' body demanded that necessary immediate action should be taken against the firms for violation of FDI policy.

"The Confederation of All India Traders has charged Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal etc for violation of FDI policy for e-commerce of the Government issued on 29 March, 2016 by Department of Industrial Promotion & Policy, Ministry of Commerce," the traders' body said.

Myntra and Jabong declined to comment, while query sent to others did not elicit any immediate reply.

According to CAIT, as per the FDI policy guidelines, ecommerce portals receiving foreign direct investment can conduct business activities for B2B (business-to-business) business and will not be allowed to undertake B2C (business- to-consumer) business activities.

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that by inserting big advertisements in the media, the companies are attempting to address consumers directly which is a contravention of the FDI guidelines.

"They (e-commerce firms named) do not have ownership of the inventory of the products purported to be sold on their technology platform, how can they offer discounts or discounted prices on the products for which they are not the owners-questioned trade leaders," Khandelwal claimed.

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Supreme Court judge Jasti Chelameswar today appealed to women to seek political power through equal representation in legislative bodies in a bid to resolve various problems being faced by them.

"Educate your sisters, organise them, and demand for equal participation in every sphere of governance in this country, and you will be able to achieve solution to all problems (faced by you)," Justice Chelameswar told a gathering of women lawyers.

He was speaking at the inauguration of the 5th national conference of All India Federation of Women Lawyers.

"If you secure political power, your problems will be solved. The day women capture 300 seats in Lok Sabha, then you won't have to make any further demand. Then you are the rulers, and you will decide what you want to do," he said.

Justice Chelameswar said women, despite constituting 50 per cent of the total population, have failed to exert considerable pressure on the political class for their advantage, but have failed to do so.

"You as a class are disadvantaged. Any organised sector is able to put pressure on a government--a democratic government. But any of these sections are small compared to your class, which encompasses all these classes," he said.

The supreme court judge then asked women to put pressure on the political class by demanding equal representation.

"(With assembly elections in Gujarat due in December), you ...educate your sisters saying that until all political parties give 50 per cent tickets to women, they will not vote. If you are able to achieve his, all your problems will be solved. Nothing comes free in this universe," he said.

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Senior Shiv Sena leader Deepak Kesarkar today advised the BJP against inducting former chief minister Narayan Rane, who recently quit the Congress, into the party, saying he has a "criminal nature" and indulges in "corruption".

"Rane has not learnt his lessons. Like Sena, it is the BJP's responsibility to stop corruption. Do they need to induct a person like Rane who has a criminal nature and indulges in corrupt practices?" Kesarkar, Maharashtra's Minister of State for Home, told reporters in Jalna.

Speculation is rife in Maharashtra about the possibility of Rane joining the BJP.

Rane, who was handpicked by Shiv Sena supremo late Bal Thackeray for chief ministership in 1999, had quit the saffron party and joined the Congress in 2005 over differences with Uddhav Thackeray, the party's executive president.

Rane's departure and his criticism of the Thackerays still rankles with the Sena.

The recent threat by Shiv Sena leader about the possibility of the party pulling out of the coalition government in Maharashtra was widely seen as a move to preempt Rane's entry into the BJP. The relations between the two saffron allies, which share power both in the state and at the Centre, have been under strain for quite some time.

Referring to the alleged remark by Rane that he would engineer defections in the Congress, Kesarkar asked," How will he do that, if not by use of money power?"



The Sena leader said it would be important to hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi's view on Rane joining the BJP as he (the PM) has often talked about zero tolerance to corruption.

Responding to Kesarkar's fulminations against Rane, his son Nitesh, an MLA, told PTI it reflected the Sena leader's "frustration".

Hitting back at Kesarkar for calling his father corrupt, Nitesh said,"It is ironical that a person whose family in Sindhudurg is known to be smugglers is calling us names. If at all Rane ji decides to join the BJP, all concerned will have the information."



He accused Kesarkar of "underestimating" the wisdom of elected public representatives when he talked about the possibility of Rane engineering defections. "If MLAs want to stay with us, they will do so only when they know it is good for them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today accused Kashmiri separatist of having been in touch with Pakistan-based terrorist Hafiz Saeed in a chargesheet filed against him in connection with a 2005 money laundering case for alleged terror financing.

The prosecution complaint, the ED's parlance for a chargesheet, filed before the Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma also names alleged hawala dealer Mohammed Aslam Wani, who is in judicial custody along with Shah.

The court took cognisance of the over 700-page chargesheet and directed the production of the accused before it on September 27.

The chargesheet relied upon 19 witnesses, a senior official said.

The central probe agency, in the chargesheet filed under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), has furnished Shah's statements where he has allegedly told the investigators that he has "no source of income of his own" and that he does "not file any Income Tax Return (ITR)."



The agency claimed that its probe had found that Shah had been talking to global terrorist and Pakistan-based Jamat-ud Dawah (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed on phone and the most recently he did so was in January this year.

The ED claimed that Shah "only received donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards the party fund which amounts to Rs 8-10 lakh per annum." It was also found that Shah does "not keep records of these donations which he receives in cash only," the ED prosecution complaint said.

The agency has recorded Shah's statements over a dozen times since he was arrested from Srinagar on July 26.

The probe agency also recorded the statement of 36-year old Wani where he allegedly said that he came to Delhi from Srinagar "at the directions of Shah" sometime in April, 2003 and that was the first time he had met him. Wani was arrested by the ED on August 6 from Srinagar.

He was also taken by the agency sleuths to certain locations in old Delhi where he used to take cash for alleged "hawala deals".

The ED alleged that Wani was asked by Shah to "work for him (on a commission basis) in collecting hawala money from Delhi and deliver to him at Srinagar."



The case dates back to August 2005 in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had earlier arrested Wani.

Wani had then claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under PMLA against the duo in 2007.

Wani was arrested with Rs 63 lakh, allegedly received through 'hawala' channels from the Middle East, and a cache of ammunition, on August 26, 2005.

During questioning, he had allegedly told the police that Rs 50 lakh was to be delivered to Shah and Rs 10 lakh to Jaish-e-Mohammad area commander in Srinagar, Abu Baqar, and that the rest was his commission.

In 2010, a Delhi court had cleared Wani of terror funding charges but had convicted him under the Arms Act.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif's wife Kulsoom Nawaz has been discharged from a London hospital after successful completion of her third surgery, according to the family.

Kulsoom, who is undergoing cancer treatment in London, this week won the parliamentary election in NA-120 seat which fell vacant after the Supreme Court disqualified 67-year-old Sharif on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal.

"Just brought Ami home. She is Alhamdolillah recovering well after her 3rd surgery. JazakAllah for your valuable prayers," Sharif's daughter Maryam tweeted last night.

The former first lady spent two nights in the hospital after her surgery, including one night in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), according to another tweet from Maryam. "Ami just came out of ICU. She was operated upon yesterday. Recovering Alhamdolillah. JazakAllah for your valuable prayers."



Kulsoom was admitted in the hospital on Wednesday for the third surgery as part of her throat cancer treatment.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Retail major Shoppers Stop today said it will raise Rs 179.26 crore from Amazon by issuing equity shares, amounting to 5 per cent stake in it, on preferential basis.

The board of directors of the company in its meeting held today approved issue of 43,95,925 equity shares of Rs 5 each at a price of Rs 407.78 per equity share to Amazon.com NV aggregating around Rs 179.26, Shoppers Stop said in a BSE filing.

The company has entered into an agreement with Amazon.com Investment Holdings LLC for the purpose of issuing equity shares on a preferential basis, it added.

The shares will translate to just over 5 per cent stake of Amazon in the company. As on quarter ended June 30, Shoppers Stop's fully paid up equity shares were at 8,35,04,744, according to information available on BSE.

The company said it has called for an ordinary general meeting on October 18, 2017 for seeking approval from its shareholders.

Post allotment of the securities, the investor will have not any special rights under the agreement and will only be entitled to exercise such rights that are exercisable by ordinary shareholders of the company to the extent of its shareholding, Shoppers Stop added.

In a separate statement, company said to strengthen their existing ties, Shoppers Stop(SSL) and Amazon Seller Services (ASSPL) have entered into an exclusive partnership for the department store format. As part of the deal, Shoppers Stop will have an exclusive flagship store on the Amazon marketplace.

The two companies have an existing partnership since 2016 under which Shoppers Stop's private and exclusive brands (Stop, Kashish, Haute Curry, RS by Rocky Star,) have been listed on the Amazon marketplace.

Further, Shoppers Stop will now have a flagship store on Amazon.in where it will list its entire portfolio of over 400 across categories such as apparel, footwear, beauty and accessories.

This partnership will leverage Shoppers Stop's brand assortment and Amazon.reach to create a superlative omni- channel retail experience for consumers across the country. The two companies will also conduct joint marketing efforts and mutually beneficial marketing and promotion activities, it added.

Besides, Amazon experience centers will be created across the physical network of Shoppers Stop stores.

Commenting on the partnership, Shoppers Stop Customer Care Associate & MD Govind Shrikhande said: "Overall, this alliance with Amazon.in will give a significant fillip to the growth of our omni-channel business".

Amazon Fashion Head Arun Sirdeshmukh said the partnership enables Amazon.in to further extend its "leadership on selection in fashion category and offer customers across India fast while it also enables Shoppers Stop to access Amazon.in's nationwide customer base and expand reach in new geographies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hitting out at Pakistan for creating terror groups like LeT, JeM, Hizbul Mujahideen and the Haqqani Network, India today asked Pakistani leaders to introspect as to why their country is infamous as the "pre- eminent export factory for terror".

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke on issues like terrorism, climate change, maritime and cyber security, UN Security Council reforms, poverty and unemployment.

In her hard-hitting speech, Swaraj accused Pakistan of waging a war against India and said a country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

She was referring to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's speech on Thursday wherein he accused India of violating human rights and state-sponsored terrorism.

"I would like today to tell Pakistan's politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?" Swaraj asked.

India had ripped into Pakistan yesterday, describing it as "terroristan" and a land of "pure terror" that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

Speaking in Hindi for the second consecutive year at the annual UNGA session, Swaraj said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan's nefarious export of terrorism.

"We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism?" she said, referring to the institutions such as IITs, IIMs and AIIMS.

"We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced?You have produced terrorists...you have created terrorist camps, you have created Lashkar-e- Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen and Haqqani network," she said, adding that doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death.

Swaraj said that if Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

The minister said the terrorist groups created by Pakistan is not only harming India, but also hurting its neighbours - Afghanistan and Bangladesh - as well.

She said that for the first time in the UN history, Pakistan sought right to reply (RoR) for one nation and then it had to simultaneously respond to three nations.

"Doesn't it reflect your nefarious designs," she asked.

Referring to Prime Minister Abbasi's speech, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader "wasted" too much of his time in making accusations against India.

"Those listening had only one observation: 'Look who's talking!' A country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium," Swaraj said.

Commenting on Abbasi's claim that Pakistan's founder M A Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship, she said while it remains open to question whether Jinnah actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship since he assumed office.

"Pakistan's Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer," she said.

Noting that Abbasi spoke of a "Comprehensive Dialogue" between the two countries, Swaraj reminded him that on December 9, 2015, when she was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that dialogue between India and Pakistan should be renewed and named it a "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue".

"The word 'bilateral' was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process," Swaraj said.

On old UN resolutions mentioned by Abbasi, Swaraj said that his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters.

"He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version," Swaraj said.

On climate change, Swaraj said the challenge posed by it requires more "serious action than talk" and asked the leaders of the developed world to help the less fortunate ones through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing.

She also warned the international community that there is a growing question mark over maritime security and that nuclear proliferation is again making dangerous headlines.

"Nuclear proliferation is back in the zone of dangerous headlines. Cyber security has become a source of deep insecurity," Swaraj said in an apparent reference to the continued provocative behaviour of North Korea which has been carrying out missile tests and nuclear tests in violation of the UN Security Council resolution.

She said a large part of the globe's population is still tortured by hunger and poverty, and added that the young are beginning to lose hope as they confront unemployment.

Women, victims of historic discrimination, are demanding what they must get gender empowerment, she noted.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Grennan receives RMEL award

COLUMBUS -- Dennis Grennan of Columbus, the power client development leader in HDRs Omaha office, received an honorary life member award from the Rocky Mountain Electrical League (RMEL) during its 2017 Fall Executive Leadership and Management Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Grennan has 46 years of progressive experience in the electric utility industry, and covered an eight-state region as HDRs power sector expanded. Prior to joining HDR, he spent 32 years with Nebraska Public Power District. Grennan served on the RMEL Board of Directors from 1997-2003, and was president of RMEL in 2001. He received the group's Distinguished Leadership Award in 2004.

Grennan has particularly enjoyed his work with the RMEL Foundation, which awards scholarships to students pursuing a career in the electric utility industry. During his presidency in 2001, the RMEL Foundation awarded the first scholarship awards.

Northwestern Mutual recognized

The Northwestern Mutual Nebraska office was recently named a Most Exceptional 2017 Childhood Cancer Impact Award winner, receiving a $100,000 grant.

Managing partner Michael Tews and Nebraska office members spent more than 2,500 hours volunteering and raised more than $250,000 for childhood cancer programs since 2016. The annual Childhood Cancer Impact Award is given to the office that is recognized most for its commitment to local nonprofits focused on childhood cancer research and family support. Northwestern Mutual-Nebraska supports many organizations in the fight to end childhood cancer, including Alexs Lemonade Stand Foundation and Sammys Superheroes.

Borchers attends workshop

COLUMBUS -- Mark Borchers, Platte County weed control superintendent, recently attended the Northeast Nebraska Association of County Officials Fall workshop held at Ramada-Columbus.

A roundtable discussion was held with the weed superintendents in attendance. Topics of discussion included biological, mechanical and chemical control for many plants that are currently a concern and some that are on the watch list. Dave Boschult, ag inspector for the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, gave attendees a copy of the current soils map.

Kent to lead power group

COLUMBUS -- Tom Kent, vice president and chief operating officer for Nebraska Public Power District, became the Rocky Mountain Electrical League's 2017-18 president during the organization's Fall Executive Leadership and Management Convention in Tucson, Arizona.

Kent, appointed vice president and chief operating officer for NPPD in 2011, joined the RMEL Board of Directors that year and has served as a member of the executive committee and held the positions of vice president, finance and president-elect. A 1985 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a bachelors degree in electrical engineering, he earned a masters degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska in 2005. He has also completed the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) reactor technology course for utility executives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He joined NPPD in May 1990 as environmental qualification coordinator at Cooper Nuclear Station. He also has held the positions of retail district manager, retail regional manager, retail customer care manager, chief information officer, corporate planning and risk manager and transmission and distribution manager. In addition to serving on the RMEL Board of Directors, Kent also sits on the Southwest Power Pool Members Committee and Human Resources Committee. He is a member of the Midwest Reliability Organization Board of Directors, as well as a board member for the Mid-America Council of the Boy Scouts. He spent four years on active duty as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy.

Novotny attends workshop

COLUMBUS -- Dr. Nila Novotny, an otolaryngologist with Columbus Otolaryngology Clinic, attended the advanced flap and aesthetic facial reconstruction workshop held Aug. 18 in St. Louis.

The three-day seminar discussed several varieties of flap reconstruction of facial defects after skin cancer excisions. While at the seminar, Novotny performed flap reconstructions of the face as well as the ears, nose, eyelids and lips. Novotny is a Fellow of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (FAAOHNS) and Fellow of the American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (FAAFPRS) and has a special interest in skin cancer removal.
India today called for an early start to text-based negotiations for UN Security Council reforms with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressing hope that a revamp of its top organ will be a "priority" for the world body.

In 2015, the UN General Assembly had adopted a negotiating text by consensus for long-pending UN Security Council reforms, setting the stage for talks on the issue.

"Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation," Swaraj said in her address to the UN General Assembly.

She hoped that this "will become a priority" for the UN.

"If that happens it will be a significant achievement," she said.

"We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he (Antonio Guterres) wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN peacekeeping, this goal can't be achieved," she said.

For long India has been calling for reform of the UN Security Council.

India and a large number of countries believe that the current United Nations and its powerful Security Council do not reflect the ground realities of the 21st century.

Earlier this week, foreign ministers of G4 countries



India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to push their case for reform of the Security Council including expansion of its permanent and non-permanent members.

India has also received support from several other multilateral groupings during the current UN General Assembly session in this regard, including BRICS and IBSA.

Several countries have taken up the floor of the General Assembly to support India's bid for permanent membership.

"We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems," Swaraj said in her address.

"It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth. On September 18, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something.

"But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations," Swaraj said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Syria's war has taken a new turn with the expected recapture of Raqa from the Islamic State, but world leaders gathered at the United Nations this week seem to be paying little attention.

Once the focal point of a myriad of high-powered meetings during the UN General Assembly, Syria this year dropped off the diplomatic agenda, dwarfed by the crises over North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal.

Last year, tensions were running high at the UN assembly, with Western powers locked in heated exchanges with Russia and Iran, the Syrian government's allies, over the offensive against rebel-held Aleppo.

Since then, President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaken Aleppo and most of the opposition-held territory, backed by Moscow and Tehran.

The Islamic State (IS) group is close to defeat in its two remaining Syrian strongholds: Raqa and Deir Ezzor.

Russia, Iran and Turkey have set up four "de-escalation zones" in Syria and are working with the United States and Jordan in the south to bring about ceasefires that have eased the violence.

"The war in Syria is not over yet," European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini reminded foreign ministers at an EU-hosted meeting on Syria on Thursday.

But she acknowledged that "the situation on the ground has improved. Daesh (IS) has been driven out from its strongholds," and fighting has eased.

"For many Syrians, this makes the difference between life and death."



Now in its seventh year of war that has left 330,000 dead, Syria has become an extremely complex conflict, but diplomatic efforts remain low profile.

The Kurdish issue and Israel's growing involvement, fueled by fears that neighboring Syria will become a springboard for Iran, are shaping up as new crises, diplomats say.

"Nothing is resolved", said a European diplomat, who asked not to be named.

The country remains deeply divided - some would call it a de-facto partition - five million Syrians are still refugees and a new outbreak of fighting is still possible, he said.

During his address to the assembly, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the establishment of a new Syria "contact group" to push for a diplomatic solution.

Russia and the United States reacted coolly to the proposal.

The administration of President Donald Trump has yet to define its Syria strategy beyond fighting IS militants and is refusing to give Iran, a key player in the war, a seat at the table.

"If the contact group had Iran in it, that would be difficult for us," a senior US official told AFP this week following a meeting between the United States and allies on Syria.

"The Americans have dropped out of the search for a political solution," said the European diplomat. "Their focus is solely military: defeating IS."



The United Nations is planning to convene a new round of peace talks in the coming weeks between Syria's government and the opposition, even though past negotiations have failed to yield more than incremental progress.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A 16-year-old boy allegedly staged his own kidnapping with the help of his friend and demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh from his father to financially assist his girlfriend's family, the police said today.

The boy, a resident of suburban Sakinaka, and his 19- year-old friend were apprehended by a team of Mumbai Crime Branch sleuths from a lodge in Manor in adjoining Palghar district last evening, a police official said.

The relatives of the 16-year-old boy had lodged a police complaint, saying he has been kidnapped from Sakinaka and Rs 50 lakh has been demanded for his release, he said.

During investigation, it was found that the boy's father, who works at a warehouse in Talasari of Palghar district, also had received a phone call from an unidentified number, asking him to pay Rs 50 lakh for the release of his son, the official said.

The boy's father was told to come to a spot in Manor with the ransom money and was warned against informing the police, he said.

Deeming it to be a case of serious nature, the Crime Branch initiated a parallel investigation, during which, based on mobile tower location, the caller was traced to a lodge in Manor.

"When a team of sleuths raided a room in the lodge, they found the boy with the 19-year-old man who was suspected to be the kidnapper," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Nisar Tamboli said.

However, during questioning, it was revealed that the 19 -year-old man was actually a friend who assisted the boy in "staging his own kidnapping" to get Rs 50 lakh from his father, the DCP said.

The boy told the Crime Branch sleuths that he had enacted the whole kidnapping drama to help his girlfriend, a resident of Palghar, whose family was facing financial crisis, another official said.

The duo was later handed over to Sakinaka police for further investigation, a police official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The textile industry has urged the government to reconsider the decision to reduce the duty drawback rate saying it would badly affect the garment sector in neighbouring hosiery town of Tirupur.

In a press release, Tirupur Exporters Association president Raja M Shanmugham said the reduction in drawback rate to knitwear export sector from 7.6 to two per cent would adversely affect the Tirupur export garment sector.

It has come as a rude shock to exporters, who are already facing severe competition in the global market, he said and appealed to the government to have a re-look at the issue.

If buyers look to go out of the country due to higher prices it would be very difficult to bring them back, since they would stick to competitor countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Vietnam, he said.

He also expressed apprehension that this may lead to more job losses, since 80 per cent of the garment units fell under the MSME category.

Meanwhile, Southern India Mills Association chairman P Nataraj in a statement, appealed to the Finance Ministry to have a re-look at the rates applicable for textiles.

Also, he said the Ministry should take steps to refund all the blocked, embedded taxes, levies and accumulated input tax credit on fabric especially, processed fabric and announce a positive package.

He further said this move was not in tune with the earlier announcement of the government about boosting exports and job creation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three teenagers today drowned after they slipped into a water body in Ahiyarigot village in Bihar's Darbhanga district, police said.

The incident occurred when they were crossing Narjora 'chaur' (water body), where one of them slipped into deep waters, and the two others also drowned in a rescue effort, Kamtaul Police Station SHO Kundan Kumar said.

The deceased have been identified as cousins Vikas Kumar (14) and Kajal Kumari (13), and Uday Shankaer Rai (15), he said.

Local villagers fished out the bodies, Kumar said, adding, they have been sent to Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital for post-mortem.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Low-cost solar panels imported from China and other countries have caused serious injury to American manufacturers, a US trade commission has ruled, raising the possibility of the Trump administration imposing tariffs that could double the price of solar panels from abroad.

The 4-0 vote by the International Trade Commission sets up a two-month review period in which the panel must recommend a remedy to President Donald Trump, with a final decision on tariffs expected in January.

White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom said Trump "will examine the facts and make a determination that reflects the best interests of the United States. The US solar manufacturing sector contributes to our energy security and economic prosperity."



Georgia-based Suniva Inc and Oregon-based SolarWorld Americas brought the case, saying a flood of imports have pushed them to the brink of extinction. Suniva declared bankruptcy, while SolarWorld had to lay off three-quarters of its workforce.

Cheap imports have led to a boom in the US solar industry, where rooftop and other installations have surged tenfold since 2011.

The main trade group for the solar industry and many governors oppose tariffs, saying they could cause a sharp price hike that would lead to a drop in solar installations by more than 50 per cent in two years.

Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, called the trade commission's vote disappointing for nearly 9,000 US solar companies and the 260,000 Americans they employ.

"Foreign-owned companies that brought business failures on themselves are attempting to exploit American trade laws to gain a bailout for their bad investments," Hopper said, warning that potential tariffs could double the price of solar installations, lowering US demand and risking billions of dollars in investment.

Suniva's US operations are based in Georgia, but the company's majority owner is in China. SolarWorld Americas is a subsidiary of German solar giant SolarWorld, which declared insolvency last month.

Suniva hailed the ruling.

"It will be in President Trump's hands to decide whether America will continue to have the capability to manufacture this energy source," the company said in a statement.

"President Trump can remedy this injury with relief that ensures US energy dominance that includes a healthy US solar ecosystem and prevents China and its proxies from owning the sun."



Trump has not cozied up to the solar industry, as he has for coal and other fossil fuels, but he is considered sympathetic to imposing tariffs on solar imports as part of his "America first" agenda.

Governors of four solar-friendly states, Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts and North Carolina, oppose the tariff, warning it could jeopardise the industry.

They cited a study showing that a global tariff could cause solar installations to drop by more than 50 per cent in two years, a crushing blow as states push for renewable energy that does not contribute to climate change.

"The requested tariff could inflict a devastating blow on our states' solar industries and lead to unprecedented job loss, at steep cost to our states' economies," the two Republicans and two Democrats wrote in a letter Thursday to the trade commission.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Traders' bodies have called a strike in Kashmir on Monday after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) summoned Kashmir Economic Alliance chairperson Mohammad Yasin Khan to New Delhi in connection with its probe into terror-funding in the Valley.

The call for the strike was given by the representatives of the Kashmir Economic Alliance and the Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation at a press conference here.

They said their organisations were not against the ongoing investigations by the NIA in Kashmir, but summoning Khan to New Delhi was "uncalled for and harassment".

"The NIA could have done the questioning in Srinagar," they said.

Khan has been asked to appear before the NIA as a witness in New Delhi on September 25, they said, and appealed people to observe a complete shutdown that day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Turkish parliament today approved a one-year extension of a mandate to use troops abroad in Syria and Iraq, two days before Iraq's Kurdish region is due to hold a controversial independence referendum.

The bill was overwhelmingly passed. Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said the extension was intended to protect Turkey from "threats", adding that the Kurdish Regional Government's planned vote on Monday was a "threat to national security".

The mandate had been due to run out on October 30.

Ankara has repeatedly warned Arbil of the "heavy cost" of the poll, while Iraq, Iran and the United States have urged the KRG against the non-binding September 25 vote.

Canikli said the vote demonstrated "an abdication of reason" and Turkey viewed any referendum like this as "null and void".

He added: "We are taking the necessary measures and will continue to do so."



Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned Ankara's actions in response to the vote would have "diplomatic, political, economic and security dimensions".

When asked whether a cross-border operation was among the options, Yildirim said "naturally" but "it is a question of timing as to when the security, economic and political options will be applied."



The mandate, first approved by parliament in October 2014, has been renewed every year since then.

It allows military action in Turkey's two southern neighbours against Islamic State (IS) extremists and other groups deemed by Ankara to be terror organisations.

Parliament had been due to return from the summer break on October 1.

The Turkish army on Monday begun a military drill close to the Iraqi border and today, the armed forces said the "exercise continued with the participation of additional troops".

Turkey with Iran and Russia agreed this month "to allocate" their forces to patrol the zone covering rebel-held Idlib province in northwestern Syria and parts of the neighbouring Latakia, Hama and Aleppo regions to ease the six-year conflict.

Previously Turkey launched an operation in Syria in August 2016 to support Syrian opposition fighters against IS jihadists and a Kurdish militia, which ended in March.

Iraq's chief of staff General Othman al-Ghanimi today met with his Turkish counterpart General Hulusi Akar in Ankara to discuss the "illegitimate" referendum among other issues, the Turkish military said.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani today delayed a scheduled conference on the referendum as international pressure mounts for a postponement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police have nabbed two persons, who were allegedly trying to sell fake tickets of the third One Day International match between India-Australia.

The duo has been identified as Ravindra Mimrot (24) and Dhiraj Sarwan (23), additional SP of crime branch Amarendra Singh said.

Police has seized nine fake tickets from their possession. The accused had printed 40 fake tickets using scanner, the official said.

They have already sold 31 fake tickets for Rs 41,000, the official added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Unidentified thieves decamped with more than Rs 13 lakh from the ATM of a private bank at Sonagiri crossing here, police said.

The thieves opened the ATM in the intervening night of Friday and Saturday and decamped with Rs 13.16 lakh kept in it, according to initial investigations, Pipalani police station inspector Brijesh Bhargava said.

The ATM was unmanned, he said, adding, police are going through CCTV footage, to identify thieves.

"We have registered a case against unidentified thieves and further investigations are on," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Alzheimers group meeting

COLUMBUS -- The Columbus Alzheimers/Dementia Support Group will meet 1:30 p.m. Monday at the Columbus Family Resource Center, 3111 19th St.

Adam Lassen will present information about Medicare open enrollment.

For more information, call Martha Davidson at 402-564-1980 or Adam Lassen at 402-564-5729.

Hazwoper course at Central CC

COLUMBUS -- A 24-hour hazwoper training course will be offered 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Oct. 3-5 in the West Education Center, Room 176, at Central Community College-Columbus.

The course is designed for employees engaged in the emergency response, containment, control and cleanup of hazardous materials. Class size is limited so preregistration is required by Tuesday to reserve a space. The cost is $430.

For more information or to preregister, contact Susan Baer at 402-562-1425; toll-free at 1-877-222-0780, ext. 1425; or email sbaer@cccneb.edu.

Fundraiser set for CHS band

COLUMBUS -- The Columbus High School band will hold a fundraiser from 5-8 p.m. Wednesday at Dairy Queen, 665 33rd Ave.

Ten percent of all sales will be donated to the CHS band.
US bombers flew off the east coast of North Korea in a show of strength carried out to demonstrate American military prowess amid escalated tensions between the two countries due to Pyongyang's weapons programs.

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the President (Donald Trump) has many military options to defeat any threat," Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Dana W White said in a statement yesterday.

The US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Guam, along with the force's F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea yesterday, she said.

The flight came after days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's regime, as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) any US fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take DPRK's reckless behaviour," White said.

She said that North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community.

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies," the Pentagon official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Shanti Wellness Care Dhak Utsav-2017", an initiative by the Manicktalla Chaltabagan Lohapatty Durga Puja Committee, was today launched by West Bengal Governor K N Tripathi.

The Governor inaugurated the programme by playing the traditional dhak in the presence of a host of consular corps, popular writers of Bengal, eminent citizens of Kolkata from the world of art, culture, education, sports, politics, industry and glamour at a city Five-Star hotel.

Devendra Goel, managing director, Shanti Wellness Care, announced that his organization would extend diagnostic healthcare services to those recommended by the Governor.

Meeryung Hall, wife of US Consul General, Craig L Hall, sang a Rabindra Sangeet, at the event while Alan Gemmel, Director, British Council, recited a poetry.

Over 30 eminent litterateurs of Bengal were present at the function along with members of Publishers and Book Sellers' Guild Kolkata and they included, among others, Sirshendu Mukherjee, Samaresh Majumdar, Pabitra Sarkar and Srijato at the Dhak Utsav.

The theme of Manicktalla Chaltabagan Durga Puja this year is "Freedom". The puja pandel is being decked up to convey how even the birds and animals love to be free and remain unshackled. The theme would celebrate the "Spirit of Freedom" of living beings.

"This year Chaltabagan Durga Puja is celebrating its 75th year. Over the years Chaltabagan Puja has many firsts to its credit having popularized events like Khunti puja, Sindur khela, Dhak Mahotsav.

The Puja Committee is also engaged in various social welfare activities during the Pujas including helping the marginalised and providing medical assistance to the needy.

"We are also celebrating 2017 as the UK-India Year of Culture with the British Council," said Sundeep Bhutoria, Chairman, Manicktalla Chaltabagan Lohapatty Durga Puja Committee.

"Shanti Wellness Care is a modern diagnostic centre that believes in providing hassle-free services that make patients feel at home in an ambiance inducing a sense of wellness," he said.

"This year Kolkata Literature Festival is collaborating with Chaltabagan Pujo to celebrate the spirit of festival at the Dhak Utsav with the leading Bengali authors, poets and literary giants," said Tridib Chatterjee, General Secretary, Publishers and Book Sellers' Guild.

The Manicktalla Chaltabagan Durga Puja, which started in 1943, has now become one of the top crowd-pullers in city. Thousands of visitors, overseas guests and eminent citizens of Kolkata visit the puja pandal each year. The Puja Committee also carries out various social welfare activities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar has said that terrorism is the greatest challenge faced by the world as of now and it needs to be fought unitedly without a "compromise".

He made the remarks while addressing a conference here yesterday.

"The recognition that the initiative once again by our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) that if prosperity is not possible without peace, which indeed it is not, then who is the most powerful contemporary, where is the most powerful contemporary challenge to peace is coming from," he questioned during his address.

"It is coming from terrorism and therefore you have to fight terrorism without ifs, without buts and this may be useful for our European friends to carry back home, there are no ifs and no buts in the conflict with this (terrorism)," he said.

The journalist-turned politician is currently in New York to attend the annual General Assembly Session of the United Nations.

"You have suffered from isms before, terrorism is the most dangerous ism of the 21st century and therefore the BRICS resolution," he said while referring to the resolution passed by the leaders of the five-nation bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in which they came down heavily on terrorism and for the first time named Lashkar-e-Taiba in their joint statement early this month at their summit in China.

The BRICS foreign ministers meeting, which among others was attended by the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj earlier this week in New York also reiterated its support in the fight against terrorism.

"Once again I am telling you the practical application, the BRICS resolution on terrorism eliminates now the ifs and buts and BRICS recognizes that you must now say it the age of fudge is also over," Akbar said.

"And exactly around the same time even America which has invested so much American blood and treasure into the conflicts of Afghanistan has sent a very clear message that there is no compromise possible on terror and nations who are the equivalents of have no place.

He asserted that a clear message is being sent by the US in fighting terrorism and "this message...will resonate through this century. It will not change friendships, it will not change strategic relations but hopefully it will change behaviour patterns".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Canadian pop rock musician Shawn Mendes dethrones Justin Beiber as the country's most dangerous celebrity to search for online when it comes to exposing their fans to malicious websites. According to this study from McAfee, the list usually covers all kinds of celebrities but this year the musicians dominate the list. Returnees include Justin Beiber (No. 2), Avril Lavigne (No. 3), and Drake (No. 6). The other Canadian musicians part of the list include Celine Dion (No. 4), Carly Rae Jepsen (No. 5), and Alessia Cara (No. 7). McAfee cautions people to be careful what they click on when they're online. For example, if you're trying to sneak a peek at new Shawn Mendes material, it would be best to wait for the official release and searching for things like "Free MP3s" can mostly lead you to risky, malware-infested sites. The computer security software company recommends using some of its tools like the McAfee WebAdvisor and McAfee Total Protection
He went on to say as the report related to escapes from the AMC, "the disclosure of this document may expose vulnerabilities in the AMC's security which could be exploited by current or future detainees which may in turn endanger the safety of any person".
"In these circumstances, it seems to me that the appellant's substantial use of the court system in this jurisdiction should not be obscured from other courts, and from other targets of the appellant's litigious inclinations, by a provision designed to protect individuals involved in legal proceedings that routinely arise out of troubled personal relationships."
"The last two years have been particularly strong. The 2015 vintage was a really strong vintage in this region and I think the 2016, while there were some great wines, you could see the quality of the vintage probably wasn't quite as good. The weather certainly wasn't as good," he said.
THIS WEEK IN CAPE BRETON: Raising the peace flag, reviewing future plans for Centre 200 and more

SYDNEY  During a time of conflict around the world and with racial tensions on the rise in many parts, its clear there are those who want to find a bright, positive light wherever they can. Over the next several days, the YMCA of Cape Breton will ...
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.
Subaru just dusted off a nameplate they havent used in a while: the Rex. This time though, its not being attached to a sub-compact mini or...
Jaguar recently staged the North American debut of three models in Michigan and a senior Jaguar Land Rover official reportedly used the event to suggest new electric vehicles could be possible.



According to The Detroit Bureau, an unnamed official told them you can assume the platform that underpins the electric I-Pace can be used on other vehicles. This isnt too surprising as automakers typically develop flexible platforms to help spread development costs.

Interestingly, the report says the platform wasnt designed to accommodate sedans or coupes. As a result, any future electric vehicles based on the architecture would crossovers.

The automaker also elaborated on plans to offer electrified versions of every vehicle the company makes. Jaguar Land Rover plans to introduce hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles but the company is expecting a bulk of its eco-friendly sales to come from plug-in hybrids. These models will reportedly focus on performance rather than efficiency.

Despite the focus on eco-friendly vehicles, Jaguar design director Ian Callum said We still love our bubbly V8s. This was clear to everyone in attendance as the company showed off the new XJR575 which features a supercharged 5.0-liter V8 engine that produces 575 hp (428 kW) and 517 lb-ft (700 Nm) of torque. It enables the $122,400 sedan to rocket from 0-60 mph in 4.2 seconds before hitting a top speed of 186 mph (299 km/h).

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A koala somehow survived a 10-mile journey (16 km) clinging to the suspension of an SUV in Adelaide, Australia.



Earlier this week, the furry Australian icon hitched a ride through the mountainous Adelaide Hills region without the driving having the slightest idea of the uninvited passenger.

It wasnt until they were flagged down by other motorists that the driver pulled over and made the discovery. Firefighters were only able to free the koala after taking off the wheel.

Speaking to the media, Fauna Rescue SA employee Jane Brister said the koala only suffered minor injuries.

You think youve seen it all, no, Ive never seen anything like that. And its absolutely incredible, she said.

Just another day in Australia

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It is not every day you see a unique piece of automotive history rolling down the streets but those in Los Angeles recently witnessed just that when Jay Leno took out his rather special fire truck from 1911.



Lenos fire truck was one of the first ever deployed in the Los Angeles area and is powered by a gigantic 20-liter, four-cylinder engine that powers the rear wheels.

When it was initially introduced at the turn of the century, it slowly started to replace the horse drawn carriages used by fire fighters. The Los Angeles Fire Department owned this particular truck until the 1970s when it was sold to the firefighting community in Wayne, New Jersey as an antique and used for promotional purposes.

It eventually landed in the hands of Jay Leno who had a team of experts restore it to its original condition. He ultimately plans to donate it to the Los Angeles Fire Department Museum.

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Photo: Contributed Render of possible site plan

A high-profile piece of Penticton real estate is changing hands.

A one and a half acre lot at 249 Westminster Ave. has been sold to an undisclosed buyer, according to Colliers International.

The lot is already zoned and approved for a pair of 15 storey towers, including ground-floor commercial space and 172 residential units.

A Colliers agent declined to disclose the selling price, because the deal doesnt officially close until the end of October, but the property was listed at $2.7 million. It was assessed last year at $2.1 million.

The lot falls within Pentictons downtown economic development zone, which grants tax breaks for investment. It's most recent use was a car dealership.

Calgarys Alas Partners Corp. has owned the property since 2014.
Colton Davies

It appears that the extreme weather that has cursed the Okanagan Valley for months is in the past, just in time for the fall equinox.

Following high water levels in Okanagan Lake for over two months, and an 11-week provincial state of emergency due to forest fires, normalcy appears to have returned to the region.

Environment Canada said it's going to warm up across the entire valley into next week.

"That ridge of high pressure that we had over us all summer is going to try and build back for a little bit, and give us a little taste of a cooler, summery-type feeling, with highs getting into the low and perhaps the mid-20s in the middle of next week," meteorologist Doug Lundquist said.

Lundquist said the high ridge of pressure will likely break down within eight to 10 days, but a warmer-than-normal fall is still expected.

He said this is because of warmer-than average ocean temperatures on B.C.'s coast, hundreds of kilometres away.

"Warmer ocean waters equals warmer air," he said. "Plus its been warm for so long. Weather has a bit of a memory. The ground is warm, the lakes and waters are warm."

Lundquist added that the amount of heat and smoke, and the lack of rain has been unprecedented.

"Every big station we looked at in the southern Interior has broken the record for driest ever summer," he said.

"It was a very impactful summer unfortunately, and not in positive ways."

The Okanagan reached a drought level three, while parts of the Similkameen hit a drought level four.

Kelowna tied a record for going 44 days without any measurable rain, while Penticton went a record 71 days with no rain.

Lundquist said that a cold front has brought cleaner air, but that watersheds may need months to recover, as the spring and the fall seasons are typically the driest in the Okanagan.

But he agreed the pleasant weather expected is welcoming for residents.

"I think we were all deprived here... I would really try to take advantage of every sunny day now."
Photo: Union of B.C. Municipalities

Transitional housing, mental health and a community wellness committee will be on the agenda for Penticton city councillors when they meet the new provincial government next week at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Council will meet with several Ministers at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention, which runs from Sept. 25-29 in Vancouver.

Penticton will be looking for funding for a pilot project for low-cost, transitional housing from Judy Darcy, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions.

Councillors will also be requesting a designated mental health officer, as part of Penticton RCMP, when they meet Mike Farnworth, Minister of Public Safety & Solicitor General.

It was reported earlier this year that the Ministry spends about $1.88 per youth for mental health funding in the South Okanagan. That compares to $7.20 in the Central Okanagan, and $12.88 in the North Okanagan.

Council will also be asking Farnworth for funding to help create a community wellness committee, which would be established by the City and RCMP.

We have a new government that has made a lot of promises to make life more affordable and safer for those who need it most. We wont leave any stone unturned in our appeal to bring those promises home to Penticton," Mayor Andrew Jakubeit said in a press release.

Jakubeit added that, in the past, councillors have been successful in lobbying Ministers. He mentioned funding received for the $312 M expansion to the Penticton Regional Hospital as an example.

Council will also participate in at least eight policy and resolution sessions at the UBCM, for topics including affordability, tax on vacant and derelict properties and new approaches to the overdose crisis.

The cost of council attending the five-day convention in Vancouver is estimated to be $17,000, the city said.
Photo: PIB Chief and council following election

Despite five vacancies, the Penticton Indian Band says its council has the legal backing to govern the community.

The band issued a fiery statement Friday afternoon, aiming to address issues brought forward by some community members for their own personal interests and motives.

The statement comes on the same day that news broke of the band's lawsuit against the former Chief and five council members.

Since the Spring, Chief and council have been facing calls for a vote of non-confidence from an insurgent group fronted by former councillor Dolly Kruger.

The group turned up the heat at the start of September after the most recent pair of council resignations, attacking the remaining Chief and council through the media. They claimed the Chief and three remaining council members no longer held a quorum, and a new election should be called.

But in a package of emails released to band members this week, the PIB outlined its legal argument.

Because PIB council is a customary council elected under the PIBs own regulations, the Indian Act does not apply, and neither does the Acts provision for a five-member council.

The band attached an email from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada corroborating the claim.

The PIBs own regulations are silent on the quorum issue, and as a result, the resignations of various councillors will not take away the power of the council to continue serving the band.

The band also dismisses the calls for vote of non-confidence by citing the apparent small group behind them.

To permit 15 members to compel a vote of non-confidence appears to have both procedural fairness issues and creates an opportunity for a small minority of disgruntled members to create significant expense and disruption to PIB, the band states.

The band announced it is hiring an outside firm to oversee the byelections for the five vacant council seats to remove any appearance of a perceived bias.

Nominations will open on Oct. 11 with a pair of candidate forums to take place the same month. Voting day will be Nov. 22.
Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer Past participants in the Take Back the Night rally at Gyro Park.

People in Penticton will be marching against violence next week.

The Take Back the Night walk will take place Wednesday night, with a goal to raise awareness for the violence and fear women face walking late at night.

"This rally is a sign of hope, healing and empowerment for all those who have had their lives touched by violence," a press release from the South Okanagan Victim Assistance Society reads.

A related walk took place in Kelowna on Sept. 15.

The rally on Sept. 27 will begin at 7:00 p.m. at Gyro Park, and will proceed through downtown Penticton and back.

Those involved will be able to make posters beginning at 30 minutes beforehand.
Photo: David Ogilvie Crash in West Kelowna

An SUV crashed into the corner of The Liquor Depot on Butt Rd in West Kelowna, just after 7:50 p.m.

No injuries have been reported.

RCMP and emergency crews attended the scene.
Photo: Contributed Rescuers race to save people believed to be still alive inside a collapsed office building in Mexico City.

A strong new earthquake shook Mexico on Saturday, causing new alarm in a country reeling from two still-more-powerful quakes this month that have killed nearly 400 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the new, magnitude 6.1 temblor was centred about 18 kilometres south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca, which was the region most battered by a magnitude 8.1 quake on Sept. 7.

It swayed buildings and set off a seismic alarm in the capital, promping civil defence officials to temporarily suspend rescue operations in the rubble of buildings downed by Thursday's magnitude 7.1 quake in central Mexico.

That quake dimmed activity in the stylish Condesa neighbourhood, where young revelers typically spill out from dimly lit bars and restaurants on a Friday night. But the first weekend since a 7.1 magnitude earthquake toppled buildings just blocks away began on a sombre note.

Instead of crowds gathered with beers, small handfuls of rescue workers still dressed in reflective vests took breaks from digging through rubble. Entire restaurants with white linen tables were empty. Metal gates shuttered others.

"It feels lifeless," said Mariana Aguilar, 27, a hostess at a bar and restaurant who stood waiting for guests yet to arrive. "I walk through these streets every day and you never imagine something like this would happen."

The upscale Mexico City neighbourhood was one of the hardest hit by the quake that killed at least 295 people, with more than a half-dozen collapsed buildings in the immediate vicinity. The few Condesa residents who ventured out Friday night said they were anxious for relief from an anguishing week.

"The city is still quite tense," said Israel Escamilla, an engineer, as he sipped a plastic cup filled with Coke at an empty bar. "But as good Mexicans we have to keep lending support however we can."

As rescue operations stretched into Day 5, residents throughout the city held out hope that dozens still missing might be found alive. More than half the dead 157  perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.
The search for a new superintendent for Carlisle Area School District will probably not start until after the Nov. 7 general election, school board president Paula Bussard said Thursday.

Because the race is competitive, the outcome of election night could change the make-up of the board, Bussard said. There are six candidates vying for four open four-year seats.

The candidates include incumbent board members Rick Coplen, Brian Guillaume, Anne Lauritzen and Deborah Sweaney. They are being challenged by Kitzi Chappelle and Julie Lesman.

Whoever is elected from among the six candidates will be sworn in as board members in early December. Incumbent Fred Baldwin is running unopposed for a two-year seat on the school board.

Bussard was unable to specify how soon after the election the board would be in a position to make an announcement on how the search for a new superintendent will proceed. The stated goal is to appoint a new chief executive by July 1  the start of the 2018-2019 year.

The board has appointed Christina Spielbauer to serve as acting superintendent through the current school year which ends June 30, 2018. She was the assistant superintendent under John Friend who retired as the districts chief executive this past June.

Job description

In late July, Bussard asked Coplen and Lauritzen to review and update the job description of district superintendent as the first step in the process to find a permanent replacement for Friend.

Coplen and Lauritzen reviewed job duties, qualifications and expectations that had been in effect since the board had promoted Friend from assistant superintendent to chief executive in March 2010.

An updated job description went before the board-as-a-whole during a Sept. 14 committee meeting. The description was then revised and brought before the board for a vote this past Thursday.

The board voted 8-0 to accept the update and immediately make it the policy of the district. By the same margin, the board Thursday approved a list of 2017-2018 goals for Spielbauer who now has to abide by the language in the job description update. Board vice-president Linda Manning was absent from Thursdays meeting.

We have done all of our due diligent work, Bussard said Thursday, referring to board approval of the update. She added the revamped job description will be foundational to the superintendent search.

Prior to the vote, Coplen briefed the public on the highlights of the updated job description. He called it a statement of board and district values and what is important to the education philosophy of the Carlisle area. Coplen added the update is not meant to be a commentary on the current or previous administration, but a look at future expectations.

Were not telling the superintendent what to do, Coplen said. Instead the update encourages a process where the chief executive takes on the role of leader of a culture of community collaboration, safety and civil behavior and continuous learning, experimentation, innovation, co-creation and collaborative problem solving.

When you say a leader of a culture  that is much more challenging than, Here is just a checklist, Coplen said. It says Here is a culture that we expect everybody to buy into and, in some cases, it might require mindset changes.

He elaborated further on the update after the meeting. Coplen described the list of qualifications under the old job description as sparse and only occupying three-quarters of a page of text.

Categorized

The update not only expands the list of qualifications, but places each in one of three categories  knowledge, skills and attributes  in a format similar to what is in use by the military and federal government.

Its what Im accustomed to, said Coplen, a retired Army officer.

New qualifications include a preference, but a requirement, for a doctorate degree and proof that a superintendent candidate has at least five to 10 years of progressively increasing responsibility in the field of public education.

What was important to Anne Lauritzen was the inclusion of language requiring the superintendent to seek out and encourage the input of what she called people on the front-line  teachers and school staff members.

They are more in touch with the reality of the classroom, Lauritzen said. She added it was also important to include in the update language that emphasizes the development of student college and career preparation initiatives.

This is in keeping with new standards coming down from the state Department of Education under Future Ready PA where school districts will be assessed and rated on their ability to prepare students for the future.
Penn Township Volunteer Fire Company is scheduled to receive a jolt of federal funds to help with recruitment and retention of volunteer fire fighters.

The fire company was awarded $182,045 through the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program, which is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

We get state grant funds every year, but this is the first federal grant weve gotten, so its a new opportunity, said Penn Township VFC Chief Chris Alleman.

The funds will be used to help purchase turnout gear for new recruits, as well as helping volunteer firemen with college tuition. Some may be used for recruitment advertisements, Alleman said, as well as to fund special recognition awards for the fire company.

The aim is to attract new volunteers and help keep them committed to the company. The SAFER grant program was created by Congress as part of the 2004 defense spending bill in order to improve staffing  and thus disaster preparedness  among fire companies who depend on volunteer commitments.

As the former mayor of my hometown of Hazleton, I know how important local fire departments are to a community, and I also know how strapped for cash they usually are, said Congressman Lou Barletta (R-11), whose district covers Penn Township.

Fire departments in more urban municipalities can often rely on a dedicated funding stream from local taxes. But in rural areas, most fire companies are still funding themselves the old fashioned way, Alleman said. Bingo nights, raffles, banquets, and other fundraisers constitute about 85 percent of Penn Township VFCs revenue.

We do a lot of fundraising out here because we dont have a fire tax or anything like that, Alleman said.

Funding the company

Despite the fact that the firefighters dont get paid, volunteer companies are still an expensive proposition. A single firefighter costs nearly $10,000 to outfit, Alleman estimated, given the cost of turnout gear (boots, pants, jacket, helmet, etc.) along with tools, radio gear, and breathing apparatus.

That cost is very noticeable this year, as the company has 13 junior members, ages 14 to 17, Alleman said. This bodes well for the future, if the bulk of the recruits stay in the area and continue to be involved.

This is the biggest junior membership weve ever had in the department, Alleman said. In todays world, the key is to try to keep the kids interested  the adults as well, but especially the kids to get them into it while theyre young and keep them in the fire service.

Many will inevitably move on to other interests, or locations. Alleman has been with Penn Township VFC for 27 years, but fewer and fewer firefighters are those who have volunteered with the same company their entire lives.

Back when I first joined it wasnt this tough, but as the years went by society got so fast-paced and busy, Alleman said.

Family tradition is still a major motivator, although not as much as it used to be. The fire company also relies on civic groups, like the Boy Scouts, to refer recruits.

We have a fair number of folks now who have no family firefighting background, Alleman said. Its still the case for a fair number of people [to have a family background], but its not as common as it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Declining numbers

Statistically, data from the National Fire Protection Association shows that the number of volunteer firefighters in the United States has been dropping relative to the total population that must be protected.

In 1986, there were 808,200 volunteer firefighters in the nation, or 7.88 per 1,000 residents, according to the NFPA. As of 2015, the total number of active volunteers had gone up to 814,850  but given population growth overall, this is only 6.71 volunteer firefighters per 1,000 residents.

With volunteer resources strained, many local fire departments are looking to hire paid members who will always be on duty, relieving some of the pressure on volunteers who must juggle their work schedules with time at the fire house.

Several fire companies in the area have paid drivers, ensuring that someone will always be available to pilot the engines, Alleman said. These staff members are often paid for by a dedicated local tax or user fee, which is harder for rural governments who have small tax bases.

Thats something we keep talking about with the township, Alleman said, regarding paid drivers. I think thats the way things are generally moving, but its hard for a small township.
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The former owner of a California company picked to install a network of electric-vehicle charging stations in Chicago and elsewhere was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.

Timothy Mason pleaded guilty in May to fraudulently getting at least $1 million in government grants for the failed green initiative.

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Mason faced more than four years in prison for one count of wire fraud.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman also gave him one year of supervised release and 60 hours of community service to be performed with the homeless. He's expected to surrender early next year, giving him time to visit his mother, who is 85 and in poor health in Alabama. Restitution will be determined later.

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After the sentencing proceedings, which lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, Mason's lawyer, Patrick Blegen, said they're discussing whether to appeal the sentence.

In his 22-page plea agreement with prosecutors, Mason, former president of Los Angeles-based 350Green LLC, admitted he fraudulently got federal grants for electric-car charging station programs. The contract signed with Chicago in October 2010 provided the company with $1.9 million in grants from the Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Under that deal, 350Green was required to provide $6.8 million of its own funds to complete the project but failed to do so, court records show.

According to the plea, after 350Green ran into financial trouble in 2011, Mason began telling workers to submit false financial information to Chicago and other cities to make it appear the company was on "solid financial footing."

Mason told one worker to send copies of checks to the city to make it appear that subcontractors had been paid when in fact the checks had never been sent, according to the plea. The scheme began to unravel after subcontractors began to complain they were not getting paid.

Mason's lawyer said during sentencing that his client wasn't planning to "run off with other people's money."

These "were not the actions of a con man or thief," Blegen said.

But the judge said what Mason committed was fraud "any way you cut it."

Victims, she said, included governments, taxpayers, subcontractors and the environmental-greening movement itself.

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Chances that Mason, 59, would commit another fraud, however, are "slim to none," she said.

Mason apologized to several parties in the court, from a Chicago official to family members. He said he has learned that it's OK to fail as long as a dream is pursued honestly and ethically.

According to recently filed court documents, the probation office and the government found that his fraud caused intended losses of about $1.5 million, but Mason estimates the losses at around $1 million.

Touted with fanfare by city officials and then-Gov. Pat Quinn at the 2011 Chicago Auto Show, the planned network of charging stations for electric vehicles was pitched to be the best and largest in the country. Ford and Nissan moved up the rollout of their electric cars to the Chicago market because of the 350Green project.

Mason has said the expiration of the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit at the end of 2011 sank the project's financing. He said the company counted on the tax credit for about half the project's funding. The tax credit was extended in 2013, at which point, Mason said, it was too late. By the spring of 2013, about 169 of the 280 charging stations 350Green promised were installed, but many did not work.

byerak@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @beckyyerak
WYCC-Ch.20, the local PBS affiliate, said Friday that it is exploring a deal to share a channel with WTTW-Ch. 11, allowing it to continue broadcasting after agreeing to vacate its own frequency in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction. (Chermayeff amp Geismar)

On the brink of signing off after 34 years as Chicago's "other" public TV station, WYCC-Ch. 20 may have found a way to stay on the air.

The PBS affiliate, which is owned by City Colleges of Chicago, said Friday that it is exploring a deal to share a channel with WTTW-Ch. 11, allowing it to continue broadcasting after agreeing to vacate its own frequency in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum auction.

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"CCC was recently approached by WTTW, a Chicago PBS affiliate, about the possibility of entering a channel-sharing agreement," Katheryn Hayes, a City Colleges spokeswoman said. "CCC is exploring this opportunity, which will need to be approved by its board of trustees."

Julia Maish, a WTTW spokeswoman, confirmed Friday that the stations are in discussions but said "there are no firm agreements yet."

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WYCC received $15.9 million in the auction, which shifted a chunk of the broadcast airwaves for wireless mobile use. It was one of six Chicago-area TV stations, including Fox-owned WPWR-Ch. 50, NBC's Telemundo outlet WSNS-Ch. 44 and Univision's WXFT-Ch. 60, to sell their broadcast frequencies.

The "winning" stations had the option to channel-share with another TV station or go off the air, with Jan. 23 the deadline for those pulling the plug.

WYCC sent a letter to its members Sept. 13 informing them the station would be going off the air for good next month.

"The letter said we were going to cease broadcasting services as of Oct. 25," Hayes said. "We will be following up with a new letter."

Launched in 1983 with a dormant UHF license acquired by City Colleges, WYCC offered television courses to students and a public broadcasting alternative to the much larger WTTW. In addition to airing PBS content, WYCC produces local programming, such as "In The Loop," a weekly public affairs show that launched in 2013.

WYCC had a staff of 26 and an annual budget of nearly $8.2 million last year, according to public filings, with City Colleges providing more than $5.7 million of the funding. Grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the state of Illinois and private donors were also part of the station's nonoperating revenue, but it still lost nearly $732,000 last year.

Nationwide, 175 broadcasters sold their licensed frequencies, freeing up 70 megahertz of spectrum and netting just over $10 billion. That includes 30 stations that agreed upfront to switch from UHF to VHF frequencies, according to FCC spokesman Charlie Meisch.

Of the remaining 145 stations, 30 have filed an application with the FCC to implement a channel-sharing agreement, while 20 channels have committed to going dark, Meisch said Wednesday. The rest will have to pick a lane in the coming months.

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All of the Chicago stations that sold their spectrum in the auction initially indicated they would look to channel-share.

WOCH-Ch. 41, a low-powered Chicago station which most recently aired Sinclair Broadcast Group's Comet TV sci-fi network, filed to discontinue operations on Aug. 8 and pulled the plug three days later. It notified viewers 30 days in advance of going dark, according to its FCC filing.

The other four Chicago stations that sold their frequencies in the auction look to be staying on the air through channel-sharing agreements. Construction permit applications must be filed with the FCC by Nov. 24.

Owned by Spanish language broadcaster Univision, WXFT-Ch. 60 signed a deal in January 2016 to share frequency allocated to ABC-owned WLS-Ch. 7. The stations filed a construction permit application in June and have begun testing, with the channel-sharing expected to begin within six months, sources said.

Both stations are expected to continue broadcasting their primary and secondary channels with no loss of service, sources said.

WWTO-Ch. 35 in LaSalle County filed an application to channel-share with WLPD, a low-power TV station in Plano. Owned by California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, WWTO sold its frequency for $304 million  the highest price paid for any station in the nation.

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While the construction permit applications have yet to be filed, WSNS will share channels with co-owned NBC station WMAQ-Ch. 5, while WPWR will share with co-owned Fox station WFLD-Ch. 32, both networks confirmed.

The Chicago broadcast spectrum buyers included AT&T, T-Mobile, Dish Network and Comcast.

Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, was both a buyer and a seller in the auction.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
Twenty-two people have had their cellphones stolen on the Near North Side recently, and police have issued a Community Alert.

The thefts took place from Aug. 6 through Sept. 18 in the morning, afternoon and evening.

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The thieves hit 10 times in the Near North neighborhood, six times in the Gold Coast and three each in the River North and Streeterville neighborhoods, police said.

300 block of East Illinois Street, twice on Aug. 6

200 block of East Delaware Place, Aug. 10 and Aug. 11

0-100 block of East Hubbard Street, Aug. 6

600 block of North Michigan Avenue, Aug. 7

900 block North Wells Street, Aug. 9

400 block of North Orleans Street, Aug.10

200 block of East Ohio Street, Aug. 10

100 block East Grand Avenue, Aug. 10

200 block of West Kinzie Street, Aug. 11

600 block of North Lake Shore Drive, Aug. 11

0-100 block of East Chicago Avenue, Aug. 12

500 block of North State Street, Aug. 14

200 block of East Illinois Street, Aug. 14

400 block of North Clark Street, Aug. 18

0-100 block of West Schiller Street, Aug. 21

0-100 block of East Illinois Street, Aug. 30

0-100 block of East Ontario Street, Sept. 6

0-100 block of West Hubbard Street, Sept. 6

400 block of North Wabash Avenue, Sept. 7

400 block North Michigan Avenue, Sept. 18

Police believe the suspects, two African-American males who wear their hair in dreadlocks, approached the victims from behind, grabbed the phone and fled on foot, on a bicycle or in a white Cadillac, police said.

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One thief is described as being 5-foot-10 to 6 feet tall, about 140 pounds and between the ages of 15 and 20. The other is between the ages of 18 and 24.

A Community Alert issued about the crimes advised the public to always be aware of surroundings, remain calm if confronted by an assailant, remember any unique physical characteristics and never pursue a fleeing assailant.

Anyone with information should call 911 or Area Central detectives, 312-747-8380.
Blues musician Buddy Guy sings at Buddy Guys Legends on Sept. 18, 2017, during a fundraiser to support PCa Blue and raise awareness of prostate cancer. ( Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune )

Like many men, respected guitarist and vocalist Phil Guy kept his health struggles a secret from his family, relatives said.

In his final days, he appeared fatigued and sluggish but wouldn't say much. Diagnosed with an advanced stage of prostate cancer in 2008, Guy still attended a summer musical tribute to his older brother and blues legend Buddy Guy. But it wasn't until he was admitted to hospice care soon after that relatives learned how truly grave his condition was, according to his niece Carlise Guy.

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"My dad and family were coming and sitting with him and just watching him deteriorate. After learning more about it, we were thinking, 'He didn't have to be here,'" said Carlise Guy, Buddy Guy's daughter. "He never talked about (his diagnosis). He just said he had things going on. We found out after there was nothing he could do about it."

Phil Guy, who rose to prominence in Chicago's vibrant blues scene, died Aug. 20, 2008, at 68.

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Prostate cancer is among the most common cancers in men in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 8 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime. The incidence and mortality rate among African-American men is about double that of white men, according to CDC data.

This year, in memory of his brother and former bandmate, Buddy Guy, 81, has become a national spokesman for prostate cancer awareness, calling for men to get screened and raising money for national prostate cancer education organizations through a series of blues concerts sponsored by advocacy group PCa Blue. September is also Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.

"I always wanted to be involved in whatever I could be of help," Buddy Guy said. "But after I lost my brother, going on 10 years now, I felt like I should say something. Because a lot of people, especially in my family, don't say anything until it's well too late.

"I decided I better go see a doctor. I almost made a song, 'Don't wait too late, you better check that prostate.'"

At the campaign's latest event this week, the black-and-white photos of music titans on the wall at Guy's namesake club in the South Loop were represented by their children, some of whom had lost men in their family to the disease.

Joseph Morganfield, son of Muddy Waters, channeled his father's declamatory vocals and belted out, "Got My Mojo Working." Shirley King, daughter of B.B. King, wooed fans with her melodic covers of blues hits. And Buddy Guy couldn't resist the chance to sing B.B. King's "Never Make A Move Too Soon" alongside his daughter while his son, Greg Guy, plucked an impressive guitar solo.

Although the children of blues greats drew the crowds, medical experts and prostate cancer survivors were the opening acts, warning about risk factors, and detailing screening procedures and treatment options.

The goal, PCa Blue CEO Ivy Ahmed said, is to spread awareness in a nonthreatening environment.

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"There's no white coat syndrome," Ahmed said. "You can take the best practices in public health and save lives. Here's the dream and the vision: No one loses their uncle; no one loses their dad. That's really what it's about."

Prostate cancer, typically found in men older than 65, is often a slow-growing disease that, in many cases, doesn't prove to be fatal. However, the problem lies in aggressive cases that go unchecked by men who put off regular doctor visits.

Though incontinence and erectile dysfunction are associated with prostate cancer, many men living with prostate cancer don't have noticeable symptoms. Even with routine checkups, the disease can be difficult to detect.

Doctors can perform a rectal exam to monitor for the growth of the prostate and a blood test to gauge levels of a substance produced by the gland, but a biopsy is the only method of confirming whether a patient has prostate cancer.

The American Cancer Society recommends those with more than one relative diagnosed with prostate cancer to begin discussing screenings with their doctor at 40, African-Americans and men with at least one immediate relative with the disease at 45, and all others at 50.

Blues musician Lester Kinsey Jr., of Gary, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in his early 70s. For more than 20 years, he performed with his three sons as Big Daddy Kinsey & the Kinsey Report, but the illness broke up the band when he could no longer tour. Kinsey died in 2001.

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"We were a blues family," his son and bass guitarist Kenny Kinsey said. "When we lost him, it was a big void there. It turned everything upside down a little bit because he was the patriarch of the family and the band."

The brothers, whose father put instruments in their hands as early as they can remember, continue to perform as the Kinsey Report in hopes of carrying on their father's legacy. At Monday's concert, Kenny Kinsey intended to use the blues as the medium not only to entertain but also to educate.

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"Dad instilled the blues in us, and we're keeping it alive," Kinsey said. "We are determined to keep it going."

Paul Wertico, a seven-time Grammy-winning drummer, considers himself a living testament to the benefits of early detection. Wertico, 64, had just finished his book "Turn the Beat Around" and released his band's sixth album, "AfterLive," this year when, without any warning signs or family history, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"On the Gleason scale (which is from 1 to 10) 8, 9 and 10 are when it starts spreading," Wertico said. "I was at 7. If I would've waited a year, who knows what would've happened."

Wertico, an associate professor of jazz studies at Roosevelt University, underwent robotic surgery in July to remove his prostate gland and was able to return in time to teach the fall semester. Wertico attended Monday night's event as a speaker rather than a performer, telling a packed house that good choices matter, whether it's doctor visits or drum solos.

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"Life is just one big improvisation," he said. "You just have to make the right decisions."

tbriscoe@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @_tonybriscoe
A Chicago police officer fired his weapon as an armed suspect ran from a domestic shooting on the South Side early Saturday, but the officer did not hit the offender, authorities said.

The suspect, a 27-year-old man, fled from an East Chatham apartment just after 4:30 a.m. when officers encountered him, and one officer fired a shot, police said. The suspect tried to get away, but officers arrested him and found his gun.

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Inside the apartment in the 8100 block of South Maryland Avenue, officers discovered a 27-year-old man shot and critically wounded, police said. He was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in serious condition with gunshot wounds to both arms.

The 27-year-old suspect allegedly broke into the residence, where his ex-girlfriend lived, police said. He struck the woman, 25, in the head and then shot her male companion, police said.

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The woman declined medical attention at the scene.

Police earlier called the incident an officer-involved shooting before realizing that no one was hit by police fire.

Charges are pending against the suspect, police said.

A Chicago police officer responding to a call of shots fired in the 8100 block of South Maryland Avenue in the East Chatham neighborhood fired his weapon on Sept. 23, 2017, authorities said. (Elyssa Cherney / Chicago Tribune)

In the same block in June, a police officer was shot in the hand and an armed suspect was critically wounded in an exchange of gunfire.
Violence broke out during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's speech in New York this week when protesters were beaten and removed, according to videos that began circulating on social media Friday.



It was the second such confrontation in recent months involving the Turkish leader, who has attracted widespread criticism for crackdowns on journalists, human rights advocates and political adversaries.



The latest incident occurred as Erdogan was giving a speech Thursday at the Marriott Marquis Hotel for an event sponsored by the Turkish American National Steering Committee.



Video footage shows protesters being pushed, punched and dragged out of the venue.

Erdogans bodyguards beat up protesters AGAIN in US. What does @POTUS have to say about it?

Dictators should not be welcomed anywhere! pic.twitter.com/8Tt0V2S0Ch  Barbarossa (@BarbarossaKaya) September 21, 2017

It is unclear how the confrontation began, but in some of the video footage protesters can be heard interrupting Erdogan's speech and shouting, "Terrorist!"



Another video shows a man wearing a white T-shirt being punched in the face as a group of men wearing suits take him outside.



In the background, Erdogan supporters can be heard shouting the president's name.



It is not clear whether the men seen confronting protesters were Erdogan's bodyguards, hotel security or someone else entirely.

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Protesters against Erdogan in New York get punched in the head by audience members as they are led away https://t.co/UfCsEIr30t pic.twitter.com/6UYSjZhQMF  Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) September 21, 2017

A similar situation took place in May when Erdogan's bodyguards attacked and injured a handful of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador's house in Washington.



The State Department issued a statement shortly after that incident saying the "conduct of Turkish security personnel ... was deeply disturbing," and "violence is never an appropriate response to free speech."
An Aurora police officer was fired this year over allegations he hid cameras in his ex-wife's home, the Aurora police department confirmed this week.

Former Aurora officer Dan Wagner admitted to installing cameras inside the home in Sugar Grove, according to an affidavit for a warrant to search two of Wagner's phones.

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Cameras police collected from the house are marketed as remote home-monitoring cameras, capable of live-streaming video and sending alerts to mobile devices indicating motion or sound.

A Kane County judge approved the search warrant last September, and the Aurora Police Department fired Wagner months ago, but available records indicate he has not been charged with a crime.

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Reached by phone Thursday, Wagner said he was in between lawyers, and had been advised not to talk about the investigation. He said there were "a lot of discrepancies" contained in public documents obtained by the Beacon-News, but declined to further comment on the case or his current employment status.

The police department hired Wagner in March 2008, police spokesman Dan Ferrelli said in an email. A letter to Wagner from Human Resources Director Alisia Lewis, obtained through a public records request, states Wagner's termination was to be effective Jan. 19 following the recommendation of Police Chief Kristen Ziman.

"An internal investigation was launched involving Dan Wagner and he was terminated as a result of that investigation," said Ferrelli, who confirmed the investigation was related to the hidden-camera allegations.

Legal documents filed Thursday in connection with an ongoing child-support dispute state the city's action terminating Wagner "is under appeal and the ruling of termination by the city is not final yet."

The Beacon-News initially requested Sugar Grove police records under the Freedom of Information Act in September 2016, but was denied by Sugar Grove Chief Pat Rollins, who cited exemptions for active investigations. On Thursday, Sugar Grove referred questions to Illinois State Police. Illinois State Police spokesman Master Sgt. Jason Bradley said he could not immediately provide information.

But affidavits made available through county court records state Wagner's ex-wife called Sugar Grove police about 8 p.m. Sept. 11, 2016, in reference to a problem with her ex-husband.

About an hour earlier, the woman had discovered a video camera concealed in an air vent inside one of her bedroom walls, according to an affidavit submitted by an Illinois State Police special agent.

With greater frequency since the couple's divorce was finalized early that July, the affidavit states, the woman alleged Wagner showed up at places randomly and unexpectedly.

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Wagner had access to the house through the garage's keyless entry code, and he would "find excuses to fix things," conducting "repairs" even when his ex-wife wasn't home, according to the affidavit.

The day she called police, the woman and a family member downloaded an application and discovered several unfamiliar devices connected to her wireless internet, the affidavit states. The woman called police after discovering the first camera.

While a Sugar Grove detective was at the house, a Kane County sergeant showed up, identifying himself as a family friend and saying he'd previously been contacted by both Wagner and his ex-wife, according to the affidavit. The sergeant said Wagner provided the locations of the hidden cameras: the vent, under a dresser in the master bedroom, and behind the refrigerator in the kitchen.

Wagner later showed the sergeant a still image on his phone taken from the vent camera, which was pointed directly at the bed, according to the affidavit.

The sergeant showed Sugar Grove police messages Wagner allegedly sent him about the cameras, including several indicating concern he'd lose his job or go to jail because of them, according to the affidavit.

"They have to investigate, they will prove it was illegal, and I'm fired," the affidavit quotes one text as saying.

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The affidavit states Wagner kept texting the sergeant while he was at the home, and a Sugar Grove detective observed Wagner tried to contact his ex-wife by phone call or text message about five to 10 times while he was there.

The next day at the Aurora police department, Wagner turned over two iPhones but refused to provide a code to unlock them, making a search warrant necessary, according to the affidavit.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
Audiences flocked to see Jerry Zimmerman's "Mr. Freeze" shows Saturday at Fermilab in Batavia, where an open house celebrating the facility's 50th anniversary was held. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

Batavia's Fermilab celebrated its 50th anniversary Saturday by holding the biggest open house it's had in two decades.

"We are proud and grateful to our community and the relationships we have within it, and to celebrate that we are opening up most of the site," said Andre Salles, Fermilab's media relations director. "Back in 1997, we offered three tours of the campus, and this time we're offering 12. We're gratified by the local interest and love showing the lab off."

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School buses transporting visitors poured into the campus as more than 20,000 people were expected to attend the six-hour open house. Tours of the facility and grounds were offered as were behind-the-scenes looks at ongoing experiments and the latest developments in technology.

"We always want to generate interest and we're not doing some top-secret things here," Salles said. "We want to show what we're doing in science and the results we expect over the next 20 years."

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Chicago resident Luke Connolly brought his son Peter, 12, who said he was ready to absorb all the science he could.

"I came out to see the engineers because that's what I want to be," Peter Connolly said. "I'm fascinated with robots and love tinkering with things. I've been to other exhibits like this, including the University of Illinois Engineering Open House and at the Museum of Science and Industry."

His father, a Chicago police officer, said he earned an engineering degree from the University of Illinois before deciding to enter the police force.

"I think this is a fantastic opportunity. My son is really good at math and I love his being exposed to this," Luke Connolly said.

People wander through exhibits Saturday at Fermilab in Batavia, which held an open house to celebrate its 50th anniversary. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

Teacher Becky Mischler, of Palos Heights, said she's always looking for new ways to "bring science into the classroom."

"I work as a STEAM teacher, which deals with science, technology, engineering, art and math, and for me, this is an opportunity to see things that are cutting edge," Mischler said. "I teach fifth grade and I've seen the giant magnet experiment here. In school, I talk to my students about the forces we cannot see. And maybe some of them will consider having a scientific career."

Evergreen Park resident Rachel Marroquin said she teaches grades K-4 and plans to share her Fermilab experience with photos.

"My students are still very young, but I've taken tons of pictures today and I'm looking forward to showing them to my students and sharing something with them about me and what I did outside of school," Marroquin said. "Science doesn't just end on Friday."

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Craig and Jennifer Parshall, of Channahon, said Saturday was their first visit to the Fermilab.

"I've seen some of the buildings from a distance, and have often wondered what was inside," Craig Parshall said. "I know a lot of this science is over my head, but I've been interested in seeing what's here and discovering some of the things they are doing with energy and power."

Michael Penick and his wife Elena, of Hoffman Estates, brought their 5-year-old daughter Siena because she "loves science."

"She loves dinosaurs and outer space. We've got a smart one here on our hands," Elena Penick said, looking down at her daughter. "She's into other things like volcanos and likes to understand how things work."

Michael Penick acknowledged that science has been a male-dominated field for a long time and he loves that his daughter is showing an interest in it.

"Given the way the world is going, we need scientists more than ever if our species is going to have a chance, and we need scientists in all shapes, colors, creeds and genders," he said. "We need to have that imagination."

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An open house at Fermilab in Batavia, the largest they've held since 1997, attracted thousands of visitors Saturday. (David Sharos / The Beacon-News)

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
WASHINGTON -- At this shank end of a summer that a calmer America someday will remember with embarrassment, you must remember this: In the population of 325 million, a small sliver crouches on the wilder shores of politics, another sliver lives in the dark forest of mental disorder, and there is a substantial overlap between these slivers. At most moments, 312 million are not listening to excitable broadcasters making mountains of significance out of molehills of political effluvia.

Still, after a season of dangerous talk about responding to idiotic talk by abridging First Amendment protections, Americans should consider how, if at all, to respond to "cheap speech." That phrase was coined 22 years ago by Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School. Writing in The Yale Law Journal ("Cheap Speech and What It Will Do") at the dawn of the internet, he said that new information technologies were about to "dramatically reduce the costs of distributing speech," and that this would produce a "much more democratic and diverse" social environment. Power would drain from "intermediaries" (publishers, book and music store owners, etc.) but this might take a toll on "social and cultural cohesion."

Volokh anticipated today's a la carte world of instant and inexpensive electronic distributions of only such content as pleases particular individuals. Each person can craft delivery of what MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte called (in his 1995 book "Being Digital") a "Daily Me." In 1995, Volokh said that "letting a user configure his own mix of materials" can cause social problems: customization breeds confirmation bias -- close-minded people who cocoon themselves in a cloud of only congenial information. This exacerbates political polarization by reducing "shared cultural referents" and "common knowledge about current events."

Technologies that radically reduce intermediaries and other barriers to entry into society's conversation mean that ignorance, incompetence and intellectual sociopathy are no longer barriers. One result is a miasma of distrust of all public speech. Although Volokh leans libertarian, what he foresaw -- "the demassification of the mass media" -- led him to conclude: "The law of speech is premised on certain (often unspoken) assumptions about the way the speech market operates. If these assumptions aren't valid for new technologies, the law may have to evolve to reflect the changes." He warned about what has come about, odious groups cheaply disseminating their views to thousands of the likeminded. Nevertheless, he stressed the danger of letting "government intervene when it thinks it has found 'market failure.'"

Now, Richard L. Hasen of the University of California, Irvine offers a commentary on Volokh, "Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (to American Democracy)," forthcoming in the First Amendment Law Review. Hasen, no libertarian, supports campaign-spending regulations whereby government limits the quantity of campaign speech that can be disseminated. Given, however, that "in place of media scarcity, we now have a media firehose," such regulations are of diminished importance. As, Hasen says, using the internet to tap small donors has "a democratizing and equalizing effect."

But, he correctly says, cheap speech is reducing the relevance of political parties and newspapers as intermediaries between candidates and voters, which empowers demagogues. Voters are directly delivered falsehoods such as the 2016 story of Pope Francis' endorsement of Donald Trump, which Hasen says "had 960,000 Facebook engagements." He cites a study reporting approximately three times more pro-Trump than pro-Hillary Clinton fake news stories, with the former having four times more Facebook shares than the latter.

Hasen says that during the 2016 election, digital advertising revenue reached $1.4 billion, a 789 percent increase over the 2012 campaign, with Facebook and Google receiving 85 percent of it. Courts have rejected the idea of government bodies declaring campaign statements lies; besides, as Hasen delicately says, this is "an era of demagoguery and disinformation emanating from the highest levels of government." But because "counterspeech" might be insufficient "to deal with the flood of bot-driven fake news," Hasen thinks courts should not construe the First Amendment as prohibiting laws requiring "social media and search companies such as Facebook and Google to provide certain information to let consumers judge the veracity of posted materials."

Hasen errs. Such laws, written by incumbent legislators, inevitably will be infected with partisanship. Also, his progressive faith in the fiction of disinterested government causes him to propose "government subsidizing investigative journalism" -- putting investigators of government on its payroll.

The most urgent debate concerns the First Amendment implications of regulating foreign money that is insinuated into campaigns. This debate will commence when Robert Mueller reports.

George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.
Three employees were shot in 2014 at a KFC restaurant in the 1300 block of East New York Street in Aurora. (Antonioi Perez/Chicago Tribune )

Prosecutors can use evidence obtained through a GPS tracking device planted on an Aurora man's car in connection with a 2014 armed robbery and shooting at a KFC restaurant on the city's East Side.

Kane County Circuit Judge Linda Abrahamson granted the state's motion to dismiss Joshua Scott's move to quash a warrant and suppress evidence tying him to the triple shooting at the KFC on the 1300 block of East New York Street in Aurora.

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Prosecutors have accused Scott, 29, of driving the getaway car Sept. 4, 2014, after Chase West and Claude Jackson went inside the KFC and demanded money. When three employees said they couldn't access the cash register, officials said Jackson shot them all, striking one employee in the stomach, a second in the leg and the third in the arm and body, the Beacon-News previously reported.

Scott, who is representing himself, returned to the Kane County jail after his hearing Friday, and remains there with bail set at $1.525 million. West and Jackson are also in the jail awaiting trials.

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A Kane County sheriff's officer got permission to place a GPS tracker on Scott's 2003 white Cadillac Escalade more than a month before he allegedly used it for the KFC robbery, records show.

Joshua Scott (Kane County Sheriff's Office)

Two suspects armed with at least one assault rifle robbed an Aurora restaurant within the jurisdiction of the Kane County Sheriff's Office on July 22, 2014, according to court records.

Investigators "developed evidence" that a white 2003 Cadillac Escalade may have been used in the commission of that robbery, prosecutors stated in the motion granted Friday.

That Aug. 4, surveillance video captured a white Cadillac Escalade repeatedly driving by another Aurora restaurant before two suspects tried to rob it, the motion states.

Four days later, a judge approved a search warrant for an officer to covertly install and monitor a GPS device on the car.

At about 8:24 p.m. Sept. 4, 2014, two men went into the KFC in an attempt to rob it, police said. One of the suspects used a "long gun" to shoot three of the restaurant's employees. Then the men drove away from the scene in the Cadillac Escalade with the GPS tracker, prosecutors said.

Within 10 minutes of the shooting, Aurora police and Kane County Sheriff's deputies found the Escalade parked near where Jackson lived, the Beacon-News reported.

Scott was charged with three counts of attempted murder, three counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, armed violence, three counts of attempted armed robbery and unlawful use of a weapon by a felon in connection with the KFC shooting.

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He claimed authorities did not have probable cause to issue the search warrant and that the officer who obtained it lied to the judge who granted it. Prosecutors argued Scott had not shown any of the statements in the search warrant affidavit were false.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
The village of Homer Glen plans to spend $592,000 to help prevent flooding in six residential areas.

Trustees recently approved the drainage improvement projects and awarded the work to Patnick Construction, which should start work this fall, Mayor George Yukich said.

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Engineering firm HR Green found that part of the storm sewer system in the Woodbine subdivision is undersized and cannot adequately convey storm water from the subdivision to the detention pond in Culver Park. Part of the improvement project will remove and replace the existing storm sewer along Eagle Ridge Drive between Cantigny and Greenbrier lanes to increase capacity.

In Woodbine, the village also will replace an existing storm sewer with a larger storm sewer in the 14900 block of Greenbrier Lane to prevent homeowners' yards from flooding, village officials said.

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Other projects include:

In the Meadowview subdivision, work installing additional drainage structures will be done on Woodland Drive adjacent to the ComEd right-of-way, officials said.

Work will be done in the Chickasaw subdivision on the storm sewer lines that discharge into Long Run Creek. According to village documents, erosion along the creek band has caused pipe sections to break.

New storm sewers will be installed in the Wedgewood Highlands subdivision near Deer Path Drive and Tamarack Lane and also near 151st Street and Will-Cook Road, officials said.

The village has worked for about the last six years on flooding mitigation projects, Yukich said. More work will be planned for at least the next two years, he said.

Michelle Mullins is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
When officials at South Suburban Family Shelter, Inc. announced last winter it had lost state funding, the community rallied to not only keep the domestic violence agency going all year, but helped it exceed the previous year's results. (South Suburban Family Shelter, Inc.)

The news is full of stories about people mobilizing to help those affected by hurricanes in Texas and Florida, earthquakes in Mexico and political strife around the world.

And those tales of compassion can certainly be uplifting.

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But when you see people rise to the rescue of a need right here in this community, well, "it's just awe-inspiring," says Jim Bova, a volunteer with South Suburban Family Shelter, Inc. in Homewood.

Back in November 2016, SSFS executive director Jennifer Gabrenya learned that the agency, which offers services for people harmed or threatened by domestic violence, had lost a large portion of its funding from the state of Illinois.

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"We found out that when that stop-gap budget was passed there were no dollars appropriated for the domestic violence grants that we'd signed," she said.

"It was awful because then we knew we weren't going to get paid and we had no idea when we'd get paid because the state can't pay on a contract that the legislature doesn't appropriate any dollars for," she said. "It sent the whole domestic violence community across the state into a tailspin."

And for the people who work at the shelter and those who rely on it for help through the violence, as well as a way out, it could have been devastating.

Gabrenya and the SSHS board agreed they needed to go public.

In January, the shelter began a call-give-tell campaign, asking people to call their legislators and have them pass a budget that included the money it needed; to give whatever they felt comfortable giving whatever way they could; and to tell at least seven other friends to do the same.

She said the agency constantly put out advocacy alerts on social media, reminding the public of the budget shortfall and updating people on efforts to resolve it.

"We created a special area on our website, in our e-news, called advocacy alert," she said.

The response, she said, "was incredible."

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The group Action For a Better Tomorrow saw the cry for help, held a fundraiser and donated some $7,000.

"At the time, that was huge," she said.

Others, including Thornton Township, Lassen's Tap, the Redbird Cafe, Bottle and Bottega, and the Crete-Monee Middle School National Junior Honor Society and Student Council, also rallied for the agency.

The public embraced the shelter's Back to School Angels program, Gabrenya said.

A couple of kids held a lemonade stand and donated the $56 in profits to the drive.

"Every penny really counted," she said.

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"In addition to the supplies, we received nearly $1,500 in cash donations that we used to purchase things like the calculators and headphones children need. This also allows us to help families replenish supplies during the school year or purchase supplies for children who need to change schools," she said

And then there were the families and individuals in the community who opened their hearts and wallets, she said.

"Whatever we needed, they gave," she said.

Bova said during the food drive, "People donated boxes and boxes and bags and bags of food. Canned goods, cereals. You name anything in a grocery store and it was delivered to the administration office and ultimately brought back to the counseling office, where it was distributed to those in need.

"This community," he said, "is blessed with generous, compassionate people."

Gabrenya said through the course of the year, the response exceeded all expectations, enabling the agency to not only serve its client base, but expand its reach.

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When the budget impasse was resolved this past summer, and the agency finally received payment, Gabrenya said she knew what she had to do.

"We knew we needed to tell people, to let them know that everything that they've been doing for us has helped us to be able to serve a lot of people, given the fact that we had to make some pretty significant cuts," she said. "We wanted them to know that they had a huge impact on the survivors in the community."

In a letter to the public this past month, Gabrenya wrote: "In January SSFS sent a Call to Action into our community...Unsure what the future held for us, we remained committed to serving the members of this community by addressing all aspects of domestic violence.

"Our community answered that call and over the past seven months you have embraced us and held us up. From organized fundraisers to individual donations, from in-kind gifts to volunteer help, YOU have made our work possible in a time of uncertainty. We can feel that you have been pulling for us and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

Because of the support, Gabrenya said, the agency was not only able to minimize the impact on those who needed it, the emergency shelter was able to serve three times as many people as the previous year. And, she added, counselors saw 40 percent more children this year.

"We maintained nearly 90 percent of the clients that we would typically see in a year," she said.

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In addition to the clients, she said, the people who work and volunteer for the shelter benefited, as well.

"It was one of the things that kept us going, knowing that so many people cared and valued the work we were doing, that they wanted us to be around," she said.

She said one client in particular was leaving an abusive situation just as she was about to have a baby.

"She had absolutely nothing for the baby, so we put a call out to the community," Gabrenya said. "And she got absolutely everything she needed in about two weeks.

"That's why we feel like we have to say 'Thank you.' We wouldn't be able to do that without the community. We wouldn't be able to give somebody that kind of support in such an important time of her life," she said.

The new mom, who asked not to be identified, also wanted to express her gratitude in a statement:

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"I have been so truly blessed to be a client at this organization. I have been going through some great challenges in my personal life and the baby donations I received truly came at the right time for me. Thank you greatly," she said.

Even though many contributions were small, Gabrenya said, "they kept us above water. We never had to dip into our line of credit, which is amazing. The cash came in all at the right times."

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Gabrenya said the effort proves that there is a personal connection between the community and the agency that has helped so many members of it over the years.

She also said as unreliable as the state legislature has been, there is comfort in knowing the state's residents are as steadfast and caring as ever.

Bova said he believes many people have an inherent desire to help, whether that help is needed a thousand miles away or a few blocks down the road.

"The generosity of this community is just amazing," he said. "It just shows you the character of the human spirit when people are in need."

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Note: This story of state budget impasse hardship has a happy ending, but we know there are others out there that may not share the same good fortune. If you'd like to share the story of how your organization/agency fared through the financial crisis, please drop me a line.

dvickroy@tribpub.com

Twitter @dvickroy
The heat wave Elgin and the rest of the Midwest have been experiencing is expected to continue, with more records for local daytime high temperatures set to be broken.

National Weather Service meteorologist Ricky Castro said that Wednesday's high of 91 degrees recorded at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport topped the record set in 1931. Thursday's 94 topped a record set in 1970.

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The last time there were three days this time of year where temperatures reached 90 or above in the Chicago area was in 1971, Castro said, from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2. There was a stretch of four days at 90 or above in 1895, from Sept. 19-22, he added.

"This current streak has been extreme, exceptional and noteworthy," Castro said.

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No current forecasts have any of the upcoming daytime highs coming close to the single-day record for this time of year set in 1953, when it hit 99 on Sept. 29, Castro said.

Castro said that as of Friday morning, less than a third-of-an-inch of rain had fallen at O'Hare in Chicago during September.

Northern Illinois University staff meteorologist Gilbert Sebenste said it's actually been feast or famine for rain in this part of the state.

"Earlier this week, a storm system dropped 1.6 inches of rain on Naperville, but north and west of there, rainfall amounts diminished very rapidly. The north side of Kane County only got a few hundredths of an inch of rain in that event, while Plano got 2.6 inches of rain this week," Sebenste said. "DeKalb has had less than a tenth of an inch of rain this month."

The lack of rain has meant brown lawns and issues for trees, Sebenste said.

Sebenste noted that after a very wet June and early July, "the rain essentially stopped in a good portion of the region. The leaves have been very thick and healthy this year, until late August when the drought began to take its toll on them. With a lack of cool weather, the trees don't have a natural signal to change, so some of the leaves are just dying. This is not true with all trees, of course, but it is noticeable."

Sebenste attributed the lingering heat to a couple factors.

"The tropical systems that have battered the Caribbean, and portions of the southern U.S., have pushed very warm air northward into the Great Lakes region and the eastern U.S. This has kept the jet stream from bringing down cooler and drier air that we should be seeing this time of year," Sebenste said. "The end result is record highs all the way into northern Michigan, with 100-plus degree temperatures found in Kansas."

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The heat wave has been a bonus for some local businesses.

In Algonquin, Port Edward Restaurant Manager Ziya Senturk said that business has been up 40 percent compared to last September, in large part because of the outdoor seating area where people can dock their boats to get a bite to eat.

Senturk said the warm weather allowed Port Edward to make up a lot of revenue it missed out on earlier in the summer.

A boat travels along the Fox River past the docks at Fox 14 Marina in Algonquin late Friday morning, taking advantage of the record-setting, unseasonably warm weather. (Mike Danahey/Courier-News )

With heavy rains that led to flooding, the Fox River, from the Algonquin area to the Montgomery dam was closed to boating, kayaking and canoeing from the middle of July until Aug. 4.

While Port Edward didn't flood and was open for dining, it lost out on business from boaters when the river was closed, Senturk said.

Mark Janowiak, who runs the ship store at Fox 14 Marina in Algonquin said the business was down for four weeks during the high water times. The marina's shop and buildings didn't flood, but the parking lot and a pavilion took on water, he said.

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With the recent warm weather, "We were really busy last Saturday (Sept. 16) and we're expecting a good weekend again," Janowiak said.

With temperatures hitting the 90s people are reluctant to take their boats out of water to winterize them, Janowiak said. So he expects the marina will be very busy later in October and November winterizing boats.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 A hot yellow sun rises on Lake Michigan at Montrose Avenue Monday Sept. 25, 2017 as a jogger takes advantage of the cool early morning temperatures. Although still cool at sunrise another record-breaking hot day was expected for the Chicago area. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

As for the warm weather, Castro said it should end by Wednesday when more typically seasonal daytime highs in the high 60s or low 70s are predicted.

The rest of the fall might be drier and warmer than usual, Castro said, with a winter wetter, though not necessarily colder than usual.

mdanahey@tribpub.com
When Elgin resident Susana Tinoco watches video clips and images of her hometown of Mexico City during and after Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake, she gets emotional.

"It makes me want to cry seeing all this," Tinoco said, fighting back tears.

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As Mexico grapples with a devastating earthquake and Puerto Rico struggles with a direct hit by Hurricane Maria, the natural disasters have members of Elgin's large Mexican and Puerto Rican communities shaken and distraught.

The news out of Mexico is mixed for Tinoco, an immigration consultant for Elgin-based Centro de Informacion. While her extended family in Mexico is safe, she was still awaiting word from some friends who live in Colonia Roma, a neighborhood that suffered extensive damage Wednesday.

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"I've also tried Facebook and Facebook Messenger, but no response," she said in Spanish. "To tell you the truth, I don't know" what to expect."

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 40 Roberta Villegas, center, is embraced by family member Itzel Melendez as they wait outside a quake-collapsed building in Mexico City on Sept. 22, 2017 where Villegas' son, Paulino Estrada, is believed to be trapped. (Rebecca Blackwell / AP)

Her boss, Centro executive director Jaime Garcia, also has family in Mexico City, as well as the city of Puebla, which felt the quake. He has heard better news, as he said his family is all right and spared of damage.

Another Centro employee, Evelia Figueroa, has family in Morelos state, south of the Mexican capital. Figueroa said her sister is safe in Cuernavaca, but the city had suffered damage. Figueroa had received photos from both her hometown and her sister's city showing the devastation.

"These photos I have, the streets, the places, I recognize them," said Figueroa. "I know the people there. It is sad to see what has happened."

Sergio Rodriguez, the vice president of IT and marketing for KCT Credit Union branch in Elgin, said one of his cousins in Cuernavaca was grocery shopping when the earthquake hit. She was taken down by a falling shopping aisle, but was fortunately rescued by someone.

A nephew of Rodriguez, meanwhile, works for Microsoft in Mexico City, and said he's seeing his city in a new light.

"Everyone said they were OK, but my nephew in Mexico City said it was chaotic, hearing explosions, seeing smoke and other things," Rodriguez said.

In the Puerto Rican community, a lack of information is leaving Elgin-area residents worried about family and friends. Hurricane Maria has, among other things, left most of the island without power or a way to communicate.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 68 Darkness falls on downtown San Juan which remains without power. Puerto Rico officials say it will likely be four to six months before power is fully restored across the U.S. territory of 3.5 million people. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

School District U46 educators of Puerto Rican descent said late last week they cannot get a hold of loved ones on the island. Tamika Morales, a second-grade teacher at Channing Elementary School, has not heard from her extended family in Ciales.

In fact, media reports and social media are the only way Morales knows what may have happened there. Bridges into the city, she said, are destroyed and helicopter may be the only way in or out.

How Puerto Rico could survive four to six months without reliable sources of electricity, as worst-case estimates project, Morales said she doesn't know and is "heart-wrenching." The long-term possibilities of a powerless Puerto Rico could spell doom  starvation, contaminated water, waterborne diseases, heat exhaustion.

If it wasn't for her husband's sister  who managed to communicate she was safe in Puerto Rico  Morales would have had no communication with anyone on the island.

"We're alive, but everything is a disaster," Morales read from a message her husband's sister sent them. "This is not the Puerto Rico we know."

As of late last week, another U46 educator, substitute teacher Jeanette Miranda, had not heard from her mom, who lives in Aguada on the island's west coast.

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"We see that (Maria) hit certain parts, it looks like the eye didn't hit them, it was more the winds," said Miranda. "But we don't know."

She continued: "With (Hurricane) Irma, we were able to communicate the next day. But with everything down right now, who knows."

Also from Aguada is the family of U46 English Language Learners program director Annette Acevedo. "I've been visiting different buildings with other colleagues, asking of their families' whereabouts," she said.

raguerrero@tribpub.com
A Naperville woman was able to understand her actions the night she stabbed her son and a young girl to death a state expert witness testified Friday as the woman's trial moved into its final phase.

Elzbieta Plackowska was not legally insane when she killed her son, Justin, 7, and Olivia Dworakowski, 5, on the night of Oct. 30, 2012, Dr. Alexander Obolsky testified Friday, as the second week of Plackowska's trial for first-degree murder and animal cruelty concluded in DuPage County court.

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Obolsky took the witness stand late Friday afternoon, several hours after a defense expert, Dr. Phillip Resnick, concluded his testimony. After Resnick's testimony, the defense rested after Plackowska briefly huddled with her attorneys and said she would not testify.

Resnick said in his opinion Plackowska was in a psychotic state when she killed the children and two dogs at the Dworakowski residence in Naperville, where she was babysitting Olivia.

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But Obolsky, called as a rebuttal witness, said Plackowska, 45, could understand her actions and was not psychotic. Instead, the psychiatrist said, she suffered from narcissistic personality issues and disorders associated with alcohol abuse.

Prosecutors played a brief video clip from an interview with Plackowska in November 2012. On the video, she said that in a five-minute period  the period of the homicides  she had ruined her life.

"She's actually feeling bad for herself," Obolsky testified.

Obolsky described Plackowska's early life in eastern Poland as the daughter of a doctor. Her mother emigrated to America when Elzbieta was 8. Twenty years later, Plackowska, by then married and with a son, also came to the U.S. But the reunion with her mother was difficult, Obolsky said, and Plackowska and her family, which came to include Justin, struggled financially.

Prosecutors said unhappiness with her life and with her husband fueled the attacks on the children. They have pointed to actions she took in the period just after the homicides as evidence that she was cognizant of her crimes. Her defense team said that the death of her father in Poland, which happened several weeks before the stabbings, started Plackowska toward a break from reality.

In testimony presented in court this week she described seeing a black shadow and hearing a voice urging her to kill the children before the attacks.

Obolsky will continue testifying Monday when the bench trial before Judge Robert Miller continues.

Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
A Gary man is dead and two others injured following a Saturday morning shooting that caused a car to go over a bridge at the westbound Grant Street on-ramp, police said.

Indiana State Police spokeswoman Sgt. Ann Wojas said in a release that a man, identified by the Lake County Coroner's Office as Dalvontae M. Kelly, 24, of Gary, was driving southbound on Grant Street near the top of the Interstate 80/94 overpass about 5:15 a.m. when people in an unknown vehicle fired multiple shots at him and two passengers in his 2010 Dodge Charger.

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The Dodge went west off the roadway, first into a grassy area and then over the concrete bridge support, Wojas said. The car fell about 23 feet onto the Grant Street feeder ramp to westbound I-80/94, she said.

Kelly was shot multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene by the coroner's office. His passengers  a 23-year-old Gary man in the front seat and a 20-year-old Gary man in the back  were taken to Methodist Hospitals' Northlake campus with non-life-threatening injuries, Wojas said. The 23-year-old man had been shot seven times, she said.

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The feeder ramp was closed until about 9:45 a.m. so first-responders could clear the scene and investigate, Wojas said.

The Gary Fire Department and Emergency Management Service and the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force assisted the state police.

Anyone who witnessed the incident or has information about it is asked to call detective Brian McCall at 219-696-6242.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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Deciding whether to criminally charge a juvenile as an adult is something that Lake County Prosecutor Bernard Carter says he doesn't take lightly.

"We don't try to waive a juvenile just to be waived," he said.

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At least four teenagers in Northwest Indiana currently or potentially face being tried as adults in state court.

Chastinea Reeves turned 16 earlier this month while in custody after being waived to adult court. She is charged with murder and accused of "repeatedly stabbing" her mother, Jamie Garnett, on Feb. 13 in Gary, Lake County court records show.

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Chastinea Reeves. (Post-Tribune )

Two other teens, Matthew Martin, 16, and Virgil King, 17, were charged as adults with assisting a criminal in connection with the Reeves case, according to court records. All three have pleaded not guilty.

Last month, a 15-year-old boy was arrested in connection with two rapes in Hammond's Hessville section this summer and the Aug. 22 stabbing death of Lucia Gonzales, 25, in her Hessville home. At a press conference last month, Carter said he planned to ask for the teen, who has not been identified, to be moved to adult court. No decision has been reached in that case.

Carter said the nature of the crime, previous criminal activity, how to best rehabilitate the child and what's best for the public are among the factors he considers before asking for a waiver.

With juveniles, "there's always been an emphasis on rehabilitation," ever since the first U.S. juvenile court was established in Cook County, Ill., in 1899, said Dawn Jeglum Bartusch, associate professor of sociology and criminology at Valparaiso University.

"One of the driving factors in the creation of that court is that children are different than adults and they should be treated different than adults," said Jeglum Bartusch.

In the late 1980s, there was push to charge juveniles as adults to take a "tough approach" and crack down on violent crime, she said.

"Really, it was about punishment and that some kids' behavior are so severe and so serious that they deserve punishment in the adult system," she said.

Indiana Code says the child has to be at least 14 years old when the alleged crime occurred and, like in any criminal case, there has to be probable cause to believe the child committed the act, the statute states.

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The child is charged with a felony "that is heinous or aggravated," according to the code, that is also "part of a repetitive pattern of delinquent acts."

There is also the consideration of whether "the child is beyond rehabilitation under the juvenile justice system" and if "it is in the best interests of the safety and welfare of the community that the child stand trial as an adult," the statute states.

Some crimes can be automatically transferred out of juvenile court if the child is at least 16 years old, according to the code, such as murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and rape, among others.

Society has moved away from that idea with more research on adolescent development and decision-making in children versus adults, she said.

Nationwide, about 100,000 juvenile offenders are transferred annually, she said, and tend to be older males and African-Americans and American Indians.

"Certainly, younger juveniles are less likely to be transferred," she said.

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In 1986, Paula Cooper pleaded guilty to the murder of 78-year-old Bible teacher Ruth Pelke in Gary and was sentenced to death. She was 15 at the time of the crime. (Lake County Sheriff's Dept.)

Paula Cooper became the youngest person on Indiana's Death Row after murdering 78-year-old Gary Bible teacher Ruth Pelke in 1985 when Cooper was just 15. A 1987 Indiana law raised the minimum age a defendant could be sentenced to death from 10 to 16, retroactively applying to Cooper.

Charging a juvenile as an adult in federal court is "really rare," partly because the penalties are "very serious" in federal court, said Ken Hays, branch chief of the U.S. Attorney's office in South Bend.

"We're not fond of trying to put a juvenile in prison for a long time. We try to avoid doing that," he said.

Investigators previously said they are pursuing charging a teen as an adult in federal court along with Deshalone Damien Davis and Vondell Henry Jr., both 20, in connection with an armed robbery at a Munster cellphone store last month that resulted in an officer-involved shooting in Gary and the death of a 15-year-old boy.

In the last couple of decades, Hays estimates his office has had only a handful of cases. Carter said at his office, "it's more than a few a year, unfortunately."

A few teens who have been waived to adult state court include:

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Alyssa Barrett was sentenced to 50 years in prison last year after being charged when she was 17 years old with the 2014 murder of her mother, 54-year-old DeCarol Deloney-Cain, in Crown Point.

Aarion Mosley was sentenced to 18 years in prison and pleaded guilty to robbery after he was initially charged with the 2011 rape of a 68-year-old homeless woman at the South Shore Station in Gary when Mosley was 16 years old.

April Kuchta was sentenced to four years in prison and pleaded guilty to criminal confinement, among other charges, after she held a juvenile boy at knifepoint in 2011 and threatened him at a party at her Valparaiso home.

There are legal options to address these juveniles cases, but Carter said, "I really hold parents responsible to stop this conduct."

"When these juveniles are at a very young age, we really have to look at the parents, not from a criminal standpoint, but what are parents doing to help law enforcement to keep these children in line?" he said.

Family members gather on the 7500 block of Alexander Avenue in Hammond after a 25-year-old woman was stabbed to death, police said. A 15-year-old boy is being held, charged in her death and two Hammond rapes. (Michelle L. Quinn / Post-Tribune )

rejacobs@post-trib.com

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Pueblo PD, Mayor Gradisar propose more pay for entry-level officers

The Pueblo Police Department and Mayor Nick Gradisar are proposing to increase entry-level pay for police officers to help with hiring.
Xiang Junbo, former chairman of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), was expelled from the Communist Party of China (CPC) and dismissed from public office for corruption and violating the Party's code of conduct.

Xiang acted against the Party's eight-point frugality code, attended lavish banquets, and have long engaged in superstitious activities, according to a statement released by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

He refused to cooperate with the Party's investigation, failed to report personal information, traded power for sex and was engaged in for-profit activities, the statement said.

Xiang, suspected of taking bribes, took advantage of his posts to seek profits for others and accepted a huge amount of property, it said.

As a senior official of the CPC, he lost his faith in the Party. Xiang's wrongdoings were of a grave nature, and he should be punished severely, said the statement.

Xiang's illegal gains will be confiscated and his case transferred to the judiciary, it added.
Pianist Lang Lang receives a certificate as image ambassador to the 16th World Leisure Conference (WLC) from the organizing committee. The event will be held in Beijing's Pinggu District in 2020. [Photo by Guo Xiaohong]

Lang Lang, a widely known Chinese concert pianist, has been appointed "image ambassador' for the 16th World Leisure Conference, which will be held in Beijing's Pinggu District in 2020.

"I am really honored to be chosen as image ambassador of the 2020 World Leisure Conference," he said in a video screened at the opening ceremony of the 1st China (Beijing) Leisure Conference convened in Pinggu yesterday. "Leisure makes life better. So, please join me in wishing the 2020 World Leisure Conference a great success."

The pianist has held many goodwill titles, including UNICEF goodwill ambassador, image ambassador of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games, goodwill ambassador for Shenzhen in South China and image ambassador for Beijing tourism.
The 1st China (Beijing) Leisure Conference was held on Sept. 22 in the capital's Pinggu District, scheduled to be the host of the 2020 World Leisure Conference.

Beijing convened the 1st China (Beijing) Leisure Conference in Pinggu District on September 22, 2017. [Photo by Guo Xiaohong]

With a theme of "Leisure makes life better", the high-profile meeting, aimed to explore ways to further develop the leisure industry while showcasing the latest leisure trends.

Over 100 domestic and foreign officials, experts and entrepreneurs from international leisure organizations and the industry discussed issues of planning and development of leisure cities, integration of leisure industry resources and leisure participation by all segments of the population.

Roger Coles, president of the World Leisure Organization, analyzed leisure travel trends in China and the world at large.

He predicted China's leisure industry had much room for growth for several reasons. China is becoming a destination for more and more overseas tourists due to perceptions of its safety. Chinese people's increasing awareness of health and happiness and the government's stress on leisure development are also driving forces.

In 2016, the State Council approved a nation-wide plan to develop fitness and leisure, providing much impetus to leisure industry development.

Other delegates also shared their experiences in research and successful cases related to leisure industry promotion.

At the opening ceremony, the official website of the 2020 World Leisure Conference (www.2020bjpg-leisure.com) was launched, providing information on conference preparation, venue construction and Pinggu profile as well as online consultation service.

In addition, Lang Lang, a widely known Chinese concert pianist, was appointed as image ambassador for the global event. In a video screened during the conference yesterday, he sent his best wishes.

On the sideline of the conference, the 2017 International Leisure Industry Expo was held in Pinggu, showcasing the latest trends in leisure vogue, diversity, leading leisure industry products and trends of a leisure-based life.

Through hosting the event, Pinggu is seeking to become a driving force in the integration of leisure industry resources and promoting the regional development of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin. It will stage two more such conferences in 2018 and 2019 respectively as a prelude to the 16th World Leisure Conference in 2020.
At the beginning of 2017, almost all Europeans who believed in further integration saw the year as critical for the future of the EU. After the shock of Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S., elections in the Netherlands and France would either push the European project forward or cause new internal crises with unpredictable consequences.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during an election rally for Germany's federal election in Fulda, Germany, on Aug. 25, 2017. Germans will elect a new federal parliament on Sept. 24. [Photo/Xinhua]

The dominance of pro-EU forces in both countries buried the various nightmare scenarios. This Sunday, it is the turn of Germans to go to the polls and give fresh impulse to European integration.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to win a fourth consecutive term. Such continuity will be a triumph and certainly an unusual phenomenon for Europe under current circumstances.

Yet, what is Merkel's secret of success? "She can guarantee stability in turbulent times," suggests Julian Rappold, a political analyst of the European Policy Centre (EPC). From the perspective of many Germans, it means undoubtedly avoiding entering unchartered waters like the U.K. She knows the way and has proved that during 12 years of power.

Other German scholars elaborate on her modest, but persuading profile. The head of the Program of International Relations at the Berlin Progressive Center (DPZ), Philipp Salhoff, explains that, while she is not keen on media or social media exposure, "she knows how to lead from behind without being loud."

The economic results of her governance are evident, although she initially only continued the reforms of her predecessor and brought nothing new. This leaves her main political opponent, Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz, without any serious alternative agenda to offer.

Frankfurter Allgeimene Zeitung (FAZ) journalist Tobias Piller suggests that, "to talk about the need of social justice in a country having a record employment rate could hardly be attractive."

In spite of their projected victory in all opinion polls, the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) of Merkel and its sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), will be looking for a coalition partner after the Sunday election.

The prolongation of a grand coalition with the SPD should not be excluded; however, it might be an anathema for the Social Democrats, who will see their popularity further decrease while staying in power. So, the CDU and CSU will possibly cooperate with the Liberals (FDP) following the model of the 2009-2013 period. Should a majority prove elusive, the coalition will also seek to include the Greens, and will be named "Jamaica" from the colors of each party, black, yellow and green.

The day after will be difficult but not as tricky and uncertain as it was four years ago. Berlin is gradually changing its agenda for Europe. The post-crisis management era has already begun. The Greek crisis has not finished, but is certainly under control; the refugee crisis is being dealt with in a relatively efficient way; Brexit causes no panic and Trump has rather pushed Europe towards acting more united.

Although the nature of the new German coalition and the persons undertaking specific portfolios will define future developments, Julian Rappold believes some optimism on strengthening European economic governance is justified.

The research associate of the Berlin Institute for European Politics (IEP), Carmen Gerstenmeyer, believes that "the way for new concrete reform proposals in different policy-fields  for instance the Eurozone, migration and defense  might emerge."

If Franco-German cooperation develops according to predictions and the already demonstrated commitment of Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, the EU will become more resistant to unexpected events.

The researcher of the Stockholm based Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP), Julian Tucker, gives an additional perspective which goes beyond the EU per se. He talks about the potential creation of a new foreign policy dogma boosting Germany's international presence with more emphasis on development policies.

The impact of crises outside Europe, such as the civil war in Syria or famine in East Africa, will possibly "lead Berlin to take a more active role in shaping conditions on the ground in vulnerable states in Asia and Africa." The purpose will be to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, climate change and conflict.

It seems that the only negative aspect of Sunday's election will be the entrance of the xenophobic and populist Alternative for Germany Party (AFD) in the Bundestag. This will be the first time AFD will be elected, says Philipp Salhoff, and "it will be interesting to see how it will deal with political reality and how other parties will shape their respective agendas."

For Carmen Gerstenmeyer, "changes will principally touch upon discourse instead of the Bundestag functioning." It should be mentioned that, if a new grand coalition is formed, the AFD might evolve into the main opposition, being the third largest party in six-party parliament instead of the current four-party one.

George N. Tzogopoulos is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/GeorgeNTzogopoulos.htm
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Leaders of the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) had reiterated the goal of peacefully solving the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) nuclear issue, the White House said on Friday.

"President (Donald) Trump and President Moon (Jae-in) reaffirmed the two countries' joint goal of pursuing the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea in a peaceful manner," the White House said in a readout of Trump and Moon's Thursday meeting in New York.

The statement came days after Trump threatened in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly that the United States "will have no choice than to totally destroy" the country unless Pyongyang refrains from its nuclear tests and missile launches.

On Friday, the top leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong Un, vowed to retaliate, saying Trump will "pay dearly" for "his speech calling for totally destroying the DPRK."

Trump and Moon also agreed that "maximum pressure and sanctions" are necessary to deter the DPRK's "threatening actions," the White House statement said.

Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at further cutting off sources of revenue that fund the DPRK's nuclear program.

Also on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China is firmly committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula during his speech at the General Debate of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly.

Wang urged the DPRK not to go its own way in a dangerous direction. Meanwhile, he urged the United States to honor its "Four Nos" commitment to the DPRK, and called for all parties concerned to play constructive roles in relieving tensions in the region.

China said the six-party talks are still an efficient platform to address the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

China's proposal of "suspension for suspension" aims to find a breakthrough while the "dual track approach" plans to resolve all parties' reasonable security concerns via dialogue and consultation in a balanced way thus finding a long-term resolution to the issue.

"Suspension for suspension" refers that the DPRK suspends its missile and nuclear activities in exchange for a halt to large-scale military exercises between the United States and ROK.

"Dual track approach" refers that denuclearizing the peninsula on the one hand and establishing a peace mechanism on the other.

Tension on the Korean Peninsula has been escalating following a series of missile launches and the Sept. 3 nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Sept. 11 to impose new sanctions on the DPRK over its latest nuclear test.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that the international agreement on Iran's nuclear program should remain as it is.

"The re-opening (re-negotiation) of the JCPOA is not wanted by us, nor by China, France, Germany and the UK," Lavrov told reporters, using the official name of the July 2015 agreement, which was reached between Iran and the five countries as well as the United States.

Such a move would be "a very wrong signal to North Korea," he said.

"Right now North Korea is being told: renounce the nuclear weapons and we will lift the sanctions. If this agreement on the Iran nuclear deal will fall apart, North Korea would say: why do I need to negotiate with you if you do not carry out your promises?"

The Iran nuclear deal was something done and should not be taken back, said Lavrov.

He said German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel made a convincing case on Thursday in his speech to the General Assembly, quipping that he did not want to "plagiarize."

Gabriel said the Iran nuclear deal is not only about Iran, but also about the credibility of the international community.

"Which state would refrain from developing its own nuclear program if it turns out that negotiated agreements do not endure, and confidence in agreements with the international community is not worth the paper they are written on?" he asked. "How are we going to convince countries like North Korea that international agreements provide them security, and in so doing make them commit to further disarmament efforts, if the only international example for such an endeavor being successful -- the agreement with Iran -- no longer has effect?"

The calls for the preservation of the Iran nuclear deal came after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to pull out of the agreement. In his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, he called the deal "an embarrassment."

On the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula, Lavrov deplored the lack of efforts toward the establishment of a peace and security mechanism in Northeast Asia.

"If we started to talk about this mechanism, if we started this process to shape this peace and security mechanism in Northeast Asia, probably we would have a permanent channel of communication with North Korea," said Lavrov.

With this channel, Pyongyang would have a better perception of the concerns of the other parties of the six-party talks -- China, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Russia -- and the five countries would have a better understanding of the concerns of Pyongyang, he said. "It is always much better to meet and discuss each other's proposals. It is so much better than isolating, intimidating and threatening someone."
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Russia has no links to the political advertisements on Facebook that targeted the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

"We don't know who and how they placed these advertisements on Facebook. We have never done it and Russia has nothing to do with it," he said at a regular briefing.

Earlier this month, Facebook said that about 470 Russia-related accounts paid for advertisements that spread fake or misleading information to influence public opinion during the presidential campaign.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to improve his relations with the U.S. authorities as he needs good ties with them as a businessman, said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee.

"The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook," the U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday.
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In a speech in Italy's Florence on Friday, British Prime Minister Theresa May proposed a two-year "period of implementation" after Britain leaves the European Union.

Britain will officially no longer be a part of the EU as of midnight on March 29, 2019. This means May is suggesting Britain would continue to stay in the EU single market and customs union for another two years after that, i.e. until 2021.

"During the implementation period, access to one another's market should continue on current terms, and Britain should also continue to take part in existing security measures," May said.

"We would want to make an ongoing contribution to pay our fair share of the costs involved," she added. "The UK will honor financial commitments made during our membership." The implementation period would give people and businesses time to adjust to the upcoming "new regime", May explained.

On the economic front, May suggested it would not be necessary to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU "from scratch". "No need to impose tariffs where there are none now," she said. "We will do everything we can to avoid friction at the border."

Speaking to Italian lawmakers in Rome on Thursday, EU Brexit negotiatior Michel Barnier said Britain cannot expect in future to have a trade deal with all the benefits and none of the obligations of being in the EU. "The future trade deal with the United Kingdom will be particular, as it will be less about building convergence, and more about controlling future divergence," said Barnier.

The EU diplomat also said negotiations were dragging on the issue of the rights of EU citizens living in Britain. He said Britain must guarantee they won't be penalized by Brexit.

On Friday in Florence, May, the British conservative leader, reassured the public that EU citizens living and working in Britain, including 600,000 Italians, will have the same rights after Brexit as they did before, and that Britain is willing to have any disputes resolved by the European Court of Justice. "We want you to stay, we value you," May said. "It remains one my first goals in this negotiations, to ensure you can carry on living your lives as before."

"I'm clear the guarantee I'm giving on your rights is real," said May. "When there is uncertainty around underlying EU law, I want the UK courts to be able to take into account the judgment in the European Court of Justice with a view to ensuring consistent interpretation. On this basis, I hope our teams can reach firm agreement quickly."

May also said Britain wants to remain deeply engaged with the EU on the security front. Mass migration, terrorism and climate change are "issues we can only solve in partnership," she said. Therefore "the quality of our cooperation" must be maintained "in what are life and death matters."

"Our people face the same threats and we share the same values," said May, calling for a new British-EU treaty on security, law enforcement and criminal justice cooperation. "We may be leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe," she said. However, she claimed that "throughout its membership, the UK has never totally felt at home being in the European Union."

Outside in Piazza Santa Maria Novella, pro-EU British citizens staged a small protest. Photos published by ANSA news agency showed the protesters wrapped in British and EU flags and holding up signs saying things like: "British and a proud European".

The British people voted by a slim majority to leave the EU in a June 2016 referendum. The Treaty on European Union foresees a period of two years to negotiate a country's withdrawal. Three rounds of Brexit negotiations have been conducted so far.
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Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2017 shows a scene of military parade in Tehran, Iran. Iran on Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war, which broke out in September 1980 and lasted through August 1988. [Photo/Xinhua]

Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the country's Press TV reported on Saturday.

The television network broadcast a footage of "the successful test-launch of the country's new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran on Friday."

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

The missile was unveiled on Friday morning during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

With a range of 2,000 km, it is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh told reporters on Friday.

During the parade, Tehran also displayed other ballistic missiles, which reportedly have a range of 1,300-2,000 km.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and major world powers including Washington in 2015, saying that he believes Iran is violating the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

Iran has denied that its missiles would be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
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An Air China's 747 aircraft arrived Friday at Jose Marti International Airport with humanitarian aid to Cuba after the Caribbean nation was badly hit by the Hurricane Irma.

The first plane with 86 tons relief materials like tents, generators, folding beds, blankets, water pumps, luminaires, among others, was sent by China to Cuba on Friday.

Upon receiving the aid at the airport, Chinese Ambassador to Cuba, Chen Xi said that based on the traditionally friendly relations between the two peoples, the Chinese government decided to send emergency humanitarian aid to the Caribbean nation.

"We hope these materials can contribute to the reconstruction of the affected areas and in addition to this emergency aid, China will send six ships full of rice to Cuba before the year ends," he said.

The envoy said three more flights will be made with this type of aircraft to complete the aid offered by Beijing to Havana. .

"China and Cuba are friendly countries that over the years have supported each other and are firmly united in difficult situations," Chen said.

Antonio Carricarte, Cuba's first deputy minister of foreign trade and investment, thanked this sign of solidarity by the Chinese government as part of the historic ties of friendship and cooperation between the two countries.

"This help confirms the important relations between Cuba and China because we are brother countries and we have ties of friendship, solidarity and respect," he said upon receiving the relief goods at the airport.

He also said China despite being geographically distant from Cuba sends this aid to express its solidarity and its government understands the magnitude of the damages caused by the hurricane to the island.

"Regardless of the size of the country or its economies, it is also an expression of the relationships that can exist between large nations like China and smaller ones like Cuba," the official said.

A nine-member team of the Red Cross Society of China also participated in the welcome ceremony and in the coming days will be installing and handing over the humanitarian aid to the areas most affected by the storm.

With this aid China joins other countries in the world that have sent humanitarian relief to Cuba after the passing of Hurricane Irma where it left a trail of destruction particularly in the central provinces of the country.

Irma hit Cuba as a category-5 hurricane and during its path through the north coast of the island, left at least 10 dead, 1.7 million people evacuated, heavy floods and serious damages to the tourism infrastructure, agricultural areas and housing.
TILBURG - More businesses should get on board the direct railway link connecting Tilburg in the Netherlands and the Chinese city of Chengdu, said Dutch and Chinese officials on Friday when celebrating the first anniversary of this promising connection.

Tilburg is the second largest logistic hub in the Netherlands, while Chengdu is a city 10,947 km away in China's Southwest Sichuan province.

"The Chengdu-Tilburg express reinforces the position of our regions as transit hubs. Thanks to this railway link, goods can be exchanged no fewer than three times quicker than by water and significantly cheaper than by aeroplane," said Bert Pauli, vice-governor of the province of Noord-Brabant where Tilburg is located.

Pauli made the remarks ahead of a ribbon-cutting for the departure of the 202nd freight train on this link. Zhu Hexin, vice governor of the Chinese province of Sichuan joined the ceremony, attended by representatives from the companies that are jointly operating this railway link, member of the Tilburg municipality as well as dozens of industry partners.

Fully loaded with cargoes of Dutch beer, the leaving train will arrive in Chengdu in about two weeks.

Nowadays with three trains running westbound and three eastbound per week, the Tilburg-Chengdu service is one of the most regular and loaded links of China Railway Express to Europe (CR express).

On the Tilburg-Chengdu link, cargoes coming from China are mostly electronics for multinational groups such as Sony, Samsung, Dell and Apple as well as products for European aerospace industry. Cargoes transported to China include auto parts, new cars and food product.

"Tilburg, situated at an ideal strategic location and the region of Brabant, home to excellent logistical service providers who are more than ready to collaborate with China, can become the gateway to Europe for Chengdu," said the Dutch vice-governor.

Zhu agreed that the link bears great influence for both economies. "Take a look at the population in my province, you can be assured that a huge market is waiting for your milk powder, beer and other goods," Zhu told the audience.

For Zhang Guosheng, economic counselor of the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands, the success of the Tilburg-Chengdu direct railway link forecasts opportunities for more cooperation in the logistic industry for both countries.

"Apart from more possibilities of cooperation in economic and trade, this express expands the range of solutions for logistics between China and the Netherlands, even Europe. When railway-air, railway-maritime links fully play their roles, the Netherlands will become more significant as a logistic center, trade flows and supply chains between Asia and Europe," explained Zhang.
People walk in front of the headquarters of the Brazil's largest fixed-line telecoms group Oi in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.[Photo/Agencies]

SHANGHAI - China's largest phone company is in talks with Brazil's telecom regulator on buying the mobile phone division of Oi SA.

A report by Exame magazine said China Mobile Ltd is keen to take over the telecom company, which is under bankruptcy protection.

China Mobile would not take up overdue fines the carrier owes under the deal it discussed with Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes, or Anatel, Exame stated, without saying where it received the information.

Anatel confirmed it talked about an Oi acquisition with China Mobile and China Development Bank on Sept 11, according to the report.

A deal for Oi, which has about $19 billion in debts, would be the State-owned Chinese carrier's first overseas buyout and would come amid a crackdown by regulators on financing for outbound acquisitions.

Anatel is Oi's largest individual creditor, with $3.5 billion in fines accumulated during Oi's 20 years of operations.

The company, which is the sole phone-services provider in hundreds of Brazilian cities, has failed to present a firm recovery plan to the regulatory agency, which had set a deadline of Aug 23.

China Mobile opened an office in Sao Paulo this month, Exame reported, without saying where it got the information.

An email to Anatel seeking comment outside business hours was not immediately returned. China Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After months of delays marked by infighting among shareholders and bondholders, the Brazilian phone carrier is facing intensifying pressure to wrap up a process that has dragged on for more than a year.

The company lost almost six million clients in Brazil in the first year under bankruptcy protection, and CEO Marco Schroeder last month said the group needs a capital boost sooner rather than later.

BLOOMBERG
Investors offer $25.6 billion to Alibaba-backed insurer's float

ZhongAn Online Property and Casualty Insurance, the Chinese mainland's largest online insurer backed by Alibaba, was oversubscribed by a factor of more than 400 with HK$200 billion ($25.6 billion) in funds frozen when its initial public offering closed on Thursday, according to market news.

Originally scheduled to debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange next Thursday, ZhongAn offered 199 million new shares at HK$53.70 to HK$59.70 apiece with a minimum investment of HK$6,030.16 for a board lot of 100 shares. The insurer managed to price its IPO at the top of the indicated range, raising HK$1.5 billion, making itself Hong Kong's largest-ever insure-tech firm listing, according to Thomson Reuters' IFR magazine.

More than 100,000 retail investors have subscribed, and shares will trade from Thursday.

Founded in November 2013, ZhongAn Online is backed by the "three Mas" - Alibaba founder Jack Ma Yun, Tencent chairman Pony Ma Huateng and Ping An Insurance chairman Ma Mingzhe. It attracted cornerstone investors including Japan's SoftBank, which bought less than 5 percent for approximately HK$550 million and Alibaba-affiliated Ant Financial, which took 16 percent.

May Zhao, deputy head of research at Zhongtai Financial International, said ZhongAn is the mainland's largest internet-based insurer with a market share of 0.9 percent and the world's first insure-tech IPO. The oversubscription is supported by the effect of internet giants being among the shareholders, bright expectations on the mainland's insurance and insure-tech industry, as well as its diversified products that attract young consumers.

According to a report by Oliver Wyman, the mainland is the world's second-largest insurance market, with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 17.2 percent in the previous five years, and an estimated CAGR growth rate of 9.6 percent in the next five years. The mainland's insure-tech industry is expected to have a CAGR of 31.2 percent in the coming five years.

Zhao said: "The present valuation of the company's IPO market capitalization - HK$77.32 billion to HK$95.96 billion - is relatively high."

She doubted company profits can consistently support the stock's elevated price and valuation as the cost of contracts is high and annual net profit growth rate is uncertain.

ZhongAn Online's total insurance premium revenue amounted to 3.4 billion yuan ($516 million) last year, increasing 49.28 percent year-on-year, with a CAGR from 2014 to last year of 107.16 percent. In the first half of the year, its insurance premium revenue reached approximately 2.6 billion yuan and the annual revenue is expected to be 6.5 billion yuan. It has approximately 350 million clients at present.

Zhao said other concerns about ZhongAn's IPO performance include the fact that more and more internet insurers will emerge on the mainland and regulations in this emerging industry are uncertain.
Xi'an-based Northwest Electric Power Design Institute Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Power Engineering Consulting Group, has signed a framework agreement with Fichtner GmBH Co of Germany to develop overseas projects.

NWEPDI is a design, engineering and consultancy firm that provides turnkey solutions to the thermal and nuclear power generation, transmission and distribution sectors.

Fichtner is an independent German firm of consulting engineers specializing in central utilities infrastructure.

Qiao Xiangfei, senior engineer of NWEPDI, said: "Since our company is located in interior Northwest China, we haven't received many opportunities from the domestic market since the 1980s. So, we've focused on overseas markets. We are working with European companies as part of our go-global strategy."

Qiao made the remarks at the 2017 Euro-Asia Economic Forum at Xi'an on Friday.

"The European market is relatively small with very limited demand for infrastructure and energy. Thus, European companies are also eager to expand to foreign countries," Qiao said.

"It gives us common ground for cooperation, as they are better at consulting and we can do the design and construction part.

"Our company's next growth point will mainly lay in these countries and regions, including Morocco, South Africa, southern Australia and the Middle East."

Last year, NWEPDI bagged a contract from Vietnam's Hai Duong Thermal Power Plant to design its project. Fichtner carried out the consulting work for the same project.

"In terms of new power plant projects, we need to cooperate with other countries. We can't simply sell our products abroad alone," Qiao said. "For us, that is the point of the Belt and Road Initiative. We need to encourage the entire industrial chain to go abroad, from consulting, designing, construction to equipment manufacturing."

Agreed Wang Ke, associate professor of Xi'an Shiyou University. He told the forum: "In global cooperation for creation of new capacity, Chinese companies will see more opportunities from developing countries. Working with their peers in the industry will give them better insights and support in going global."

This trend has been already witnessed in industries other than energy and infrastructure, experts said.

Walter Schwimmer, former secretary-general of the European Commission, said small and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs in Austria and China have much to gain by way of cooperation.

"A large part of Austria's economy is contributed by SMEs, while China also has a growing number of SMEs," Schwimmer said. "SMEs from both sides are looking for better opportunities abroad whether in trade, science or high-tech."
A worker changes the window display of Thomas Cook in Loughborough, central England.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Leading travel operator Thomas Cook forecasts that its business in China will grow tenfold in the next year.

Thomas Cook China, a joint venture formed in 2016 between UK-based travel company and Chinese conglomerate Fosun International, is on track to serve 20,000 customers in its first year of operations.

"Over the next 12 months, we plan to grow this number by more than ten times," said Alessandro Dassi, managing director of Thomas Cook China.

Speaking at the 2017 FVW Congress in Cologne, Germany, Dassi said the unit has the full commitment of Fosun and Thomas Cook to support the future growth of the business.

"The ambition is to make China a sizeable market for Thomas Cook Group, comparable, over time, with our more mature source markets in Europe," he said.

The two-day tourism conference covered a variety of topics impacting the future of tourism, including the growth of China as the emerging power in the global travel market.

"Thomas Cook has looked at China for many years," Dassi said. "But it was not until we partnered with Fosun that we had the confidence to bring our brand and resources in to China."

The 176-year-old Thomas Cook is a recognized name for both European travel consumers and distributors in Western markets, but is less well known among Chinese consumers.

The company's Chinese arm has developed into a one-stop full service travel company. With offices in Shanghai and Beijing, it offers inbound travel to and within China, as well as holidays and tours for Chinese customers.

Thomas Cook China said that while the Chinese travel market is large, growing fast and represents the world's largest number of outbound visitors, it is also very competitive and fragmented.

Dassi said: "There is already huge choice in the market for the Chinese leisure travelers, and a great focus on price."

One of the biggest opportunities for the company comes from the rapid change in the behavior of Chinese travelers, with traditional group tours becoming less popular in favor of more independent and higher quality type of travel.

According to a survey by booking site Hotels.com and Ipsos, shopping is no longer the major reason for international travel among Chinese tourists.

Instead, dining, sightseeing and exploring the local culture have all become increasingly appealing.

"The industry is not yet keeping up with the pace of change in the behavior of Chinese consumers," said Dassi. "To exploit this gap we have focused on developing products that are truly unique and differentiated, leveraging Thomas Cook's resources across key tourist destinations."
A C929 aircraft model is displayed at an aviation exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, in November 2016.[YIN LIQIN/CHINA DAILY]

Russia to design wings; composite materials to make up bulk of aircraft

China will design and make the fuselage of the C929, while Russia will design the wings of the wide-body passenger aircraft, which is currently under development, said Commercial Aircraft Corp of China on Friday.

Better known as COMAC, the Chinese plane maker, which will build the new aircraft with Russia's United Aircraft Corp, disclosed several fresh details about the bilateral project at the Aviation Expo China 2017 in Beijing.

Although the main design center is in Russia, Shanghai will also have its own design office.

COMAC said the C929 is being developed by China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Co Ltd, a joint venture.

The jet, with a range of up to 12,000 kilometers, is expected to be delivered in 10 years.

China and Russia will each take half of the work, and send design staff for exchange visits on a non-scheduled basis, according to COMAC.

Some 51 percent of the aircraft will be made of composite materials, which is expected to make the C929 economical and efficient.

The jet could have four possible seating layouts: 280 seats in three classes; 291 seats in two classes; 310 seats in tight three classes; or 416 seats in an all-economy class, said Chen Yingchun, general designer of the C929.

Chen said the new aircraft will mainly target China, Russia and other Asia-Pacific markets.

"Its competing models include the A330 and the A350 of (European aircraft manufacturer) Airbus Group and the B787 of (US manufacturer) Boeing. Currently, we are selecting suppliers worldwide," he said.

"By the end of the year, we are likely to open tenders for the aero engine, and Rolls-Royce and General Electric are expected to join the bid. We are also trying to develop engines ourselves together with Russia."

Every three years, China and Russia will take turns to name the chairman of the joint venture, which was launched on May 22 in Shanghai.

Each country will hold four seats on the eight-member board of the company.

The C929 is a project that aims to break the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus in the wide-body passenger aircraft market.

Lin Zhijie, an aviation industry analyst and columnist at Carnoc.com, one of China's largest civil aviation web portals, said China's booming growth in international flights, especially long-haul routes, requires widebody aircraft.

"The aviation industry is a sector with marginal profits. China spends a lot of money buying wide-body aircraft from Boeing and Airbus every year," Lin said.

"If the country has its own products, it will help significantly reduce the cost of aircraft purchases, and airlines will be able to raise their profitability and offer cheaper tickets to customers."
BEIJING - China hit back Friday at the S&P Global Ratings' downgrade of the country's sovereign credit rating, with the finance ministry calling it a "wrong decision."

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) website described the decision as "perplexing," with the economy on a firm footing.

S&P said Thursday that it had lowered China's long-term sovereign credit rating to A+ from AA-, because a "prolonged period of strong credit growth has increased its economic and financial risks."

Calling the reasoning a "cliche," the MOF said it was a pity that S&P had focused on credit growth and debt, but ignored China's distinctive financing structure, the wealth-creating effect of the government spending and its support for growth, as well as the country's sound economic fundamentals and development potential.

"The downgrade is a result of international rating agencies' long-standing mode of thinking, and a misreading of the Chinese economy based on developed countries' experiences," read the statement.

The government would maintain financial stability by remaining prudent on lending, tightening supervision and controlling risk, the ministry said. Stable and relatively fast growth would be maintained with credit kept at a reasonable level.

In any case, credit growth is decelerating. At the end of August, M2 -- cash in circulation plus deposits -- was up 8.9 percent from a year before, but the pace of growth was down for the seventh straight month.

Addressing debt growth, the MOF said local government debt issues would be addressed through continued fiscal reform. S&P had claimed that local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) continued to fund public investment with borrowing that could require repayment by the government. The ministry insists that debt of LGFVs will be paid off by the companies themselves, and governments would not be liable.

Liu Shangxi, head of Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, said the commonly used debt analysis framework was flawed as it ignored how debt was used. The majority of China's debt went on public facilities and infrastructure, which provide impetus for growth, Liu said.

S&P rival, rating agency Moody's, downgraded China's credit rating in May, so the S&P downgrade was not surprising, said Qiao Baoyun, head of the academy of public finance and public policy under Central University of Finance and Economics.

S&P theory did not apply to China's development and resilience, Qiao said.

Financial markets were muted. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index Friday edged down an unexceptional 0.16 percent to 3,352.53.

Economist Liu Liu said after 5 years of downward adjustment, economic growth has stabilized and is healthier and more sustainable, but overseas observers, including rating agencies, have an assessment of China's economic fundamentals that is "behind the curve."

GDP grew faster than expected in the first half of the year, above the government's 2017 target.

S&P's downgrade is a reminder of deficiencies in the economy and the need for reform, but not a reflection of credit risk or economic fundamentals, Liu said.
Visitors experience VR game at the 2017 VRExpo held in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province on Sept 2, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Development of an innovation-driven economy will play a major role in helping accelerate the industrial transformation of Guangdong province, a traditional industrial base in South China, said Ma Xingrui, the provincial governor.

"We have to focus on enhancing technological innovation capabilities, planning to develop emerging industries, promoting the integration of supply and finance chains and creating a world-renowned business environment," said Ma.

Ma made the remarks during the International Consultative Conference on the Future Economic Development of Guangdong, convened in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, on Thursday.

"We welcome new concepts and ideas from our global advisors and will combine their suggestions with instructions from the central government to promote industrial transformation," Ma said.

In the 2015 conference, 35 constructive and feasible suggestions were proposed by advisors, according to Ma.

Ma, together with 12 advisors from globally renowned companies, shared their successful experiences enhancing cooperation between the companies and Guangdong. The conference, founded in 1999, currently focuses on aggregating high-end elements and promoting integrated development of industry, finance and technology.

Carmine Di Sibio, global managing of partner-client service of Ernst &Young, said Guangdong needs to aspire to build a living environment with world-class quality for its citizens and investors if the province is to make continuous progress in innovation.

"That includes everything from infrastructure, air quality and everything else that attracts people to the province," Di Sibio said. "As you know, people want to stay in Silicon Valley in the United States because they love the quality of life there."

Ernst & Young has two offices in Guangdong - one in Guangzhou and the other in Shenzhen, China's own Silicon Valley.

According to Di Sibio, Guangdong needs to invest more in technology, shifting to more high-end industries including artificial intelligence, robotics and the "internet of things".

"These are the new technologies that Guangdong needs to embrace to improve its economy to the next level," Di Sibio said.
A doctor explains how to measure blood pressure to students in Zhangjiakou, North China's Hebei province, May 12, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Doctors advise that children 3 years and older should be tested regularly

Blood pressure tests should be included as a regular physical checkup item for all children older than 3, as hypertension continues to rise among the very young and adolescents in China, pediatricians say.

Hypertension in minors is usually hard to detect, as 90 percent of young patients don't feel any discomfort or show any clinical symptoms, said Mi Jie, a pediatrics professor at the Capital Institute of Pediatrics, who is a leading expert on hypertension among young children and adolescents in the country.

"In many cases, high blood pressure in juveniles is not detected until they undergo a thorough physical examination upon graduating from senior middle school, or if they suffer serious headaches," she said on Friday at the fourth World Hypertension Congress, which opened in Shanghai on Thursday.

Zhao Di, director of the department of cardiology at Beijing Children's Hospital of Capital Medical University, said it was previously thought in medical circles that minors usually suffer from secondary hypertension. But research over the past 15 years found children suffering essential hypertension.

"In fact, the number of children suffering essential hypertension is higher than those suffering secondary hypertension, which overthrew our past understanding," he said.

The latest data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey show that the incidence of hypertension in juveniles between 6 and 17 years of age was 13.8 percent in 2009, up from 6.9 percent in 1993, and the blood pressure of children of all ages is rising in both genders.

Mi suggested that Chinese students should undergo blood pressure tests four times - at age 6, 10, 14 and 17. "Obese children and those whose parents suffer from hypertension should take the test once a year," she said.

The latest figures, from 2015, showed that 25.2 percent of Chinese adults had high blood pressure.

Pediatricians say that around 10 percent children and adolescents with hypertension can experience changes in their hearts, blood vessels or kidneys - decreased arterial elasticity, for example, and a decline in kidney function.

"In addition, around 40 percent of such children and adolescents will continue to suffer from hypertension into adulthood if there is no intervention," Mi said, adding that the incidence of hypertension in Chinese children and adolescents is not higher than their Western counterparts.

Obesity is one culprit in high blood pressure. Mi said that for minors deemed obese, according to their body mass index, or BMI, the likelihood of hypertension is three times that of their counterparts of normal weight.

A family history of hypertension, excessive salt intake, insufficient sleep and lack of exercise are also associated with high blood pressure among children and adolescents, she said.

Doctors recommend nondrug therapy for minors who have high blood pressure.

"These children and adolescents must spend more time in aerobic exercise and spend enough time sleeping, control salt intake and avoid constant stress. Weight control is vital," said Sun Jinghui, director of the pediatric cardiology department at the First Bethune Hospital of Jilin University.

"If lifestyle intervention doesn't prove effective after six months, or if the child's blood pressure begins to rise quickly, we'll resort to medicines," he said.
Wang Sanyun, former Party chief of the Gansu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and a former senior national legislator, has been expelled from the Party and dismissed from public office for bribery, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the country's top watchdog, said on Friday.

Wang seriously violated political discipline and responded passively or resisted the Party's major policies and decisions, the watchdog said. Further, it said, he was derelict in his duty, lost his political conviction and engaged in "superstitious activities".

The CCDI said in a statement that Wang had also violated Party rules on building a clean government and often entered private clubs; and he was found to have abused power on behalf of others for job promotions and project bidding. He also accepted large bribes, it said, and allowed certain people to serve in official posts regardless of their own violations of Party discipline.

According to his resume, Wang served as deputy secretary of the Guizhou, Sichuan, Anhui and Fujian Party committees before being promoted to Party chief in Gansu.

In a three-episode anti-corruption documentary aired earlier this month on China Central Television, Wang expressed regret for his actions. He told anti-graft officials during the episode that, while serving as the Party chief in Gansu, he was devoted to accumulating money for his retirement.

The episode alleged that he abused power by steering engineering work to his relatives, and used his authority to benefit many company bosses who paid bribes of cash, real estate, expensive jade, calligraphy and paintings.

When a team from the central government inspected Gansu in November 2016, Wang asked his relatives to conceal and transfer his illicit assets in fear that his crimes would be exposed, the statement said, adding that he also forged a house trading contract and pretended that bribes were loans.

According to the CCDI, his qualification as a member of the 18th CPC Central Committee was revoked, and information collected will be transferred to judicial authorities for further investigation.

The decision to expel Wang from the Party will be officially approved at the next plenary meeting of the Central Committee, the watchdog said.

The CCDI began investigating Wang in July. He was removed from his legislative post on Sept 1.

Since November 2012, when the country's new leadership was elected, more than 160 high-ranking officials at provincial and ministerial levels or above have been subject to graft investigations.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Xiongan New Area in Hebei province is expected to take off as the country's new growth engine.

The area has been preparing for this expansion since its establishment was announced in April, with President Xi Jinping pledging to make people's interests among the top priorities when pushing for the area's development.

Xi visited Anxin county in Xiongan on Feb 23 for an inspection tour before the announcement.

"The area must let local residents benefit from the development of Xiongan and they should have an actual feeling of satisfaction," Xi said on the visit. The new area spans the counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin, which have about 1.2 million residents.

"We have maintained the people-centered development path because we are building the new area for the benefit of people, otherwise its development would have no significance," said Liu Baoling, executive deputy director of the administrative committee of Xiongan New Area.

Liu said he spent the past few months figuring out how to bring genuine happiness to the people. The work paid off.

Residents have become more supportive and active, after their initial surprise and concerns about their future.

China announced on April 1 the decision to set up the Xiongan New Area to advance the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

The move is a "major historic and strategic choice made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee with comrade Xi Jinping as the core", said a circular issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council.

If all goes according to plan, the area will become an innovative hub and home for Beijing's "non-capital" functions.

Locals are now looking forward to the new area.

"I know it's a good thing for us, but at first I was really worried about how farmers like me, who don't have much knowledge and skills, can make a living in such a high-end environment," said Zhang Baozeng, 60, a farmer from Zhongliu village in Anxin county.

Residents are attending training projects, provided by the government for free, to gain skills.

The government brought in training agencies in June to prepare residents for a diverse range of fields, from lawyers to tea-makers, Liu said. So far, more than 3,000 residents have been trained and about 10,000 will be trained by year's end.

The area, about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing, eventually will cover 2,000 square kilometers and house 2 million to 2.5 million people.

"I accompanied President Xi during his visit to the new area. I could feel he cared most about people's living," said Liu.

Seven months after Xi's visit, there is no big change yet to the area's appearance, but it has undergone tremendous change in the population's state of mind.
The outdoor scene of the Kubuqi Desert Ecological Science and Technology Center in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Sept 20, 2017. [Photo by Sun Wanming/chinadaily.com.cn]

The Kubuqi Desert, the once-barren land in the Ordos Plateau, is turning into an oasis - after three decades of efforts in desertification control.

The desert, the seventh largest in China, was the source of frequent sandstorms that also afflicted Beijing, 800 kilometers away.

But with the coordinated efforts of local government and enterprises, the participation of farmers and herdsmen, with focus on the role of science and technology, Kubuqi has witnessed remarkable progress in ecological restoration.

More than 6,250 square kilometers of the Kubuqi desert have been reclaimed in the last 30 years; rainfall in Kubuqi soared to 456 mm in 2016, compared with the less than 100 mm in 1988, and the number of sandstorms fell from 50 in 1988 to only one in 2016, according to a UNEP report.

Meanwhile, the greening efforts have also lifted about 102,000 people in the area out of poverty.

Ordos' Kubuqi model was widely lauded at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which just wrapped up in Ordos city earlier this month.

Its success in fighting desertification, experience in pioneering eco-restoration and developing eco-economies in desert conditions offers a solution for the world to tackle desertification.
FUZHOU -- A golden statue of the Chinese sea goddess Matsu traveled on a ferry Saturday from Meizhou in eastern China's Fujian province to Taiwan for a mass blessing tour.

A festival parade featuring band music with traditional Chinese drums and trumpets was held to escort the statue from its home temple in Putian to a port on Meizhou Island for the 17-day tour.

Matsu is widely worshipped in Taiwan and other coastal regions of southern China, and her believers are also found in eastern and southeast Asian countries.

The statue will make a blessing visit to 89 Matsu temples in 10 cities and counties in Taiwan, where worshiping and blessing rituals will be held for an estimated 1 million worshippers and visitors.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the statue's visit to Taiwan. In 1997, the statue's blessing tour was a sensation in Taiwan, recording 10 million pilgrims during visits to 35 temples in 19 cities and counties, making it the most popular cross-Straits activity.

This year's blessing tour was sponsored by a number of Taiwanese companies, including Hon Hai Precision Industry, an electronic manufacturer and major supplier for Apple's iPhone.
YANGON -- Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Beijing has chosen the right path of development which has brought prosperity to its people, Chairman of the Myanmar-China Friendship Association U Sein Win Aung told Xinhua in a recent interview.

After decades of reform, China has established a market-oriented economy based on its own national conditions, said U Sein Win Aung who is also former Myanmar ambassador to China.

Since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has become the world's second largest economy and economists expect that Beijing may surpass Washington to rank first in the near future, he said.

China adopted a market-oriented economy and established special economic zones along its coastal areas, which has successfully attracted foreign investment to boost the economy in the country's east, he said.

Meanwhile, Beijing unvelied a strategy in 2000 to open up the country's west, and has achieved remarkable economic development that continues today, he added.

He also praised China's multi-party cooperation and consultation under the leadership of the CPC as a good political system because party representatives can make proposals at the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Commenting on the Belt and Road Initiative, U Sein Win Aung said the initiative, which benefits China as well as the rest of the world, is a project of peace connecting Asia, Europe and Africa.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes.

The initiative will bring about common prosperity, upgrade infrastructure, facilitate flow of commodities and enhance mutual understanding through cultural exchanges, U Sein Win Aung said.

Myanmar dominates an important position geographically on the Belt and Road, he said, expecting the country to play a larger role within the initiative's framework.

China has been working to maintain peace and stability globally, he said, adding the world will be more stable if common prosperity is achieved.

He expressed hope that the CPC will further develop and lead China to continue contributing to global development.
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SHANGHAI -- Shanghai wants to build an industrial cluster for producers of unmanned vehicles.

Hu Weiguo, head of the Jinshan district government in Shanghai, said on Saturday at the opening of the 2017 World Unmanned System Conference, that the district government had planned to push for the building of such a production base.

He said the government would encourage the research, production, testing and system integration of drones, self-driving vehicles and vessels, as well as intelligence robots in the industrial base.

China's unmanned system industry is still in an early stage of development, said Sun Baiyuan, secretary general of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems of China.

He said the industry needed strategic development, network safety protection and research on market application.

During the meeting, there were drone shows for fire fighting and automated delivery, unmanned vehicles for digging and demolition, as well as self-driving boats for testing water quality.

Industry representatives from the United States, Britain and Germany among others attended the meeting.
BANGKOK -- About 84 percent of the Chinese people can accept going out without any cash, according to a report of mobile payment usage in China released by Chinese mobile payment solution Wechat Pay.

The report 2017 Mobile Payment Usage in China was released Friday during the 3rd Asia-Pacific Regional Forums on Smart Cities and e-Government which was held in the north suburb of Bangkok.

Based on statistics collected from 6,596 users around 324 Chinese cities, the report said 40 percent of Chinese go out with less than 100 Chinese yuan (15.2 U.S. dollars) of cash, even 14 percent of Chinese have already began their cashless life.

Asked whether they can go out of their home without cash, 84 percent said they are "calm" with it while only 4 percent cannot and 12 percent feels concerned.

The report, conducted by Tencent, that developed the famous Chinese social media Wechat and Wechat Pay, said China is a good example in terms of mobile payment development.

"Tech companies in China today have built a holistic eco-system covering financial services including third-party payments, monetary funds, insurance, online banking, credit rating, and consumer loans," the report said, adding that these tools and services would offer a better and more convenient payment experience to consumers, and offer more inclusive financial services, thereby creating a more productive society.

"We are beginning to see both Chinese solutions and models for digitalized financial services increasingly adopted worldwide. Beginning with mobile payments, Chinese FinTech companies will contribute to the global development of financial technologies, and bring digital inclusive finance to all those who are in need," the report put forward.
BEIJING -- Global observers have been speaking highly of the warmth and wisdom embedded in the "unique diplomatic strategy and style" crafted by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The observers made the remarks in reaction to "Major-Country Diplomacy," a six-episode political documentary rolled out by China on its diplomatic principles, practices and achievements over the past five years.

The TV series on China's major-country diplomacy sums up quite effectively some of the most important events of the last five years in which China has played a decisive role, said William Jones, the Washington Bureau chief for Executive Intelligence Review news magazine.

"It gives the picture of a man who is genuinely a 'people person' and shows the sincere warmth of his personality," Jones said, referring to the Chinese president who took office in March 2013.

The series breathes a spirit of hope and optimism into a world still plagued by poverty, wars and devastations, he said, noting that Xi's call for a new paradigm in international relations based on a win-win formula represents a clear break with the old political formulas characterized by zero-sum geopolitics.

Khairy Tourk, a professor at Stuart School of Business of Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), said the developing countries have been trapped in the post-1945 global order, where they are always at a disadvantage.

"Xi's policies are changing all of that," he said.

Among others, the observer said many weak nations have been trapped in the old order because they are raw material-producing countries and lack the means to achieve modernization; meanwhile, China is ready to share its advanced technology, like high-speed railway technology, with these countries.

China's major-country diplomacy "treats all countries, big or small, as equals" and "promotes friendship among peoples as the bedrock and guarantor of friendship and cooperation among states," said Keith Bennett, vice chairman of Britain's 48 Group Club.

Xi has crafted a unique diplomatic strategy and style for his country, which serves to not only promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, but also to move forward towards the creation of a shared future for mankind, Bennett said.

"As such, his energetic, tireless and visionary diplomatic activity is admired, appreciated and closely followed not only by the Chinese people, but increasingly by people all over the world as well," he said.

Taking notice of the wisdom in China's diplomacy, observers highlighted the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Xi on Sept. 7, 2013 in a speech at Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev University.

The initiative comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes.

China launched the Belt and Road Initiative very seriously and with massive plans that would reach a larger part of the world, said Nourhan el-Sheikh, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

The Belt and Road Initiative is an expression of China's opening up 2.0, said David Gosset, a founder of the Europe-China Forum, adding that it is a structured global projection aiming at finding mutually beneficial political and economic synergies.

"The Belt and Road Initiative, without any doubt, is providing the world with a new economic engine," said Tourk.

This is the major engine for growth in the 21st century, he said, adding that with the policy, the economic outlook would be brighter.

The wisdom of China's diplomacy is also reflected in the reality that China has been seeking to build bridges with the West, and that it does not pose a threat to any other country in the course of its development, Tourk observed.

China needs technology from the West, while the West needs the Chinese market, and China is creating an interconnected world, he said. By doing this, China can get respect from other countries and will obtain win-win results together with the other countries, he said.

For Tourk, another reason leading to the success of Chinese diplomacy is patience.

"Eating bitterness," "thinking carefully before taking action," and always "thinking in the long-term" are unique Chinese values reflected also in its diplomatic policies, he said.

For example, the professor said, one of the reasons that the West has kept infrastructure development from expanding to developing countries is that people in the West want quick returns on investment.

China, however, provides countries with long-term loans in the construction of the Belt and Road, he said, noting that "patience is something to ensure the success of the grand vision of the Belt and Road."




SHANGHAI - China's largest phone company is in talks with Brazil's telecom regulator on buying the mobile phone division of Oi SA.

A report by Exame magazine said China Mobile Ltd is keen to take over the telecom company, which is under bankruptcy protection.

China Mobile would not take up overdue fines the carrier owes under the deal it discussed with Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes, or Anatel, Exame stated, without saying where it received the information.
Sichuan hosts organization's general assembly, with focus on countries combining their efforts, Yuan Shenggao reports.

The 22nd General Assembly of the United Nations World Tourism Organization attracted more than 1,000 participants from 137 countries and regions, as well as 41 international organizations, to its host city of Chengdu, Sichuan province last week.

Held from Sept 11 to 16, it is the largest gathering in UNWTO's history, said Taleb Rifai, secretary-general of the organization. The event is a key milestone in UNWTO's development and that of the world tourism sector overall, he added.

Zurab Pololikashvili, current ambassador of Georgia to Spain, Morocco, Algeria and Andorra, was appointed the new UNWTO chief for 2018-21 during the event.

He said he was impressed with Chengdu's performance in hosting the UNWTO gathering, adding he had never seen such a large UNWTO assembly as that held in Chengdu.

The event drew more than 1,300 guests, nearly 80 ministers and hundreds of reporters from around the world.

Many international tourism ministers and political leaders voiced their approval of the assembly, where participants shared their insights into world tourism development and experienced China's charm.

Belt and Road

A highlight of the UNWTO General Assembly was a tourism ministers meeting focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative.

The initiative comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, as proposed by China in 2013. It gained wide acceptance among the meeting's attendees.

Via the initiative, participating countries and regions can leverage the resources and strengths made available across a variety of sectors to help to reduce poverty, develop their economies and create jobs, the attendees said.

The Chengdu Initiative on Tourism Cooperation along the Belt and Road, which was released at the meeting, demonstrated the ministers' confidence in future tourism cooperation among countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The document suggested that countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative work together more closely in the tourism sector, by increasing policy-related communication to facilitate travel and improving the quality of exchanges.

The Chengdu initiative also called for joint tourism promotion and increased exchanges in tourism education.

Under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has signed tourism agreements with more than 60 countries and international organizations, according to Li Jinzao, head of the China National Tourism Administration. He said that tourism helps to promote people-to-people communication and exchanges.

"The Belt and Road routes span across the world's four most famous civilizations in the West and the East, and four prime religious origins in the world," Li said. "It covers three types of economies - developed countries, developing countries and underdeveloped countries - and links major tourist destinations and sources worldwide.

"The tourism scale of the Belt and Road countries and regions contribute more than 70 percent of the world's total."

UNWTO's Secretary-General Rifai said the ancient Silk Road was key to people-to-people exchanges, and the modern Belt and Road Initiative has brought golden development opportunities to tourism.

Tourism cooperation needs to focus on transportation, visa policies, service standardization and safety, he said.

Pololikashvili from Georgia, a country on the ancient Silk Road, said he values the initiative. "It will enable the coming together of diverse cultures from different countries, resulting in closer relations among the involved countries and regions."

He said he hopes all involved parties will advance the initiative and contribute to developing tourism in the region.

China plays a leading role in the initiative, he noted.

The top official from the China National Tourism Administration, Li forecast there would be about 700 million outbound visits from China over the next five years.

The country also has confidence in attracting 700 million foreign visits during the period, Li said.

(China Daily 09/23/2017 page10)
Denmark has been appointed as the Country of Honor for the 2017 Pujiang Innovation Forum, a singular recognition from a global event that followed the appointments of the United Kingdom in 2016 and Israel in 2015.

The small but vibrant Scandinavian nation is renowned internationally as a center of technological excellence and a world leader in such cutting-edge sectors as design, green technologies and the manufacture of turbines for offshore wind farms.

"Denmark is honored to be appointed Country of Honor for the 10th Pujiang Forum," said Helle Meinertz, deputy head of missions at the Danish Embassy in Beijing.

"I would like to thank the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Municipal Government of Shanghai for the invitation," he added.

Denmark's Minister of Higher Education and Science, Soeren Pind, is leading a delegation to the forum and is a keynote speaker.

"Our minister is accompanied by some of our top-scientists, educators and innovators, as well as representatives from some of Denmark's best and most international companies," Meinertz said.

"China and Denmark have had a very strong relationship in innovation and cooperation over the past 10 years," he added.

According to Meinertz, there are more than 500 Danish companies in China, employing over 250,000 people. There are more than 150 Chinese companies in Denmark - an increase of almost 100 percent over the last couple of years.

Denmark established the Innovation Centre Denmark in 2007 in Shanghai, to help the country's businesses tap into the Chinese market. The center celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

(China Daily 09/23/2017 page9)
A pottery pot showcased at Hubei Provincial Arts and Crafts Institute in Wuhan city, Hubei province on Sept 22, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

As the cradle of ancient Chu culture and a place with profound cultural connotations, Hubei province endeavors to protect its intangible cultural heritage.

A large-scale cultural event was launched Friday, with national media in attendance, to conduct a tour around Hubei.

The assembled media will go to Wuhan, Xiaogan, Suizhou, Xiangyang, Yichang and Xiantao to explore local heritage sites in the next few days, and observe achievements made in ICH protection since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November of 2012.

Intangible cultural heritage, or living cultural heritage, is defined by UNESCO as "the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge [and] skillsthat communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage."

On the first day of the tour, the group went to see several heritage sites in Wuhan city and talked to representative inheritors there, receiving comprehensive knowledge of local items.

The event is hosted by the Ministry of Culture and the State Internet Information Office. Hubei province is the first provincial capital in China to enact a local statute on ICH since the release of a regulation on ICH protection in Wuhan in August of 2016.

Hubei now has 57 national-level representative inheritors, 571 provincial-level, 1,976 city-level and 5,193 county-level. The whole province has more than 260 intangible cultural heritage bases, and over 250 ICH exhibition halls and galleries.

The province is now collaborating with local colleges to explore better ways to protect and pass down cultural traditions. At present, ICH research centers have been set up in 22 universities and research institutes around Hubei.
Chu Shuqing, curator of Hangzhou Library, speaks at the launch ceremony of the China-CEEC libraries union in Hangzhou on Sept 22. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

The inaugural ceremony for the "Initiative on China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Libraries Union" was held at the Hangzhou Library in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province, on Sept 22.

More than 300 guests, including Hangzhou government officials and delegates from the third forum on China-CEEC cultural cooperation, participated in the launch.

The project was initiated by Hangzhou Library and has received support from 36 libraries in 10 countries, including Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Bulgaria. These countries are willing to join the union.

Chu Shuqing, curator of Hangzhou Library, said it was a meaningful thing for libraries of different countries to cooperate, helping to build bridges for mutual understanding.

He added the alliance will promote cultural exchange between China and Central and Eastern European countries to a new level.

Hangzhou Library is expected to host the first curator forum on the libraries union in October 2018.

The event is part of the activities of the third forum on China-CEEC cultural cooperation, currently being held in Hangzhou.

The cooperation mechanism between China and CEEC, also known as the "16+1 cooperation mechanism", was formally established in 2012. Since then, the quality of China-CEEC cultural partnerships has been enriched and channels of communication have been broadened.
The Third Ministerial Forum on Cultural Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) took place in Hangzhou on Friday.

Chinese Culture Minister Luo Shugang met with 16 CEEC delegates and witnessed the signing of various papers, including the Hangzhou Declaration on China-CEEC Cultural Cooperation, a 2018-19 plan and a memorandum for establishing a coordination center in Macedonia.
ZHAI HAIJUN/CHINA DAILY

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has been providing refueling services for US vessels keeping vigil for possible missile launches by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since April, according to Japanese media reports. Japanese maritime forces' ships have supplied fuel to US vessels equipped with the Aegis anti-missile defense system in the Sea of Japan and elsewhere at least once a month, Japanese officials said.

This new development has been made possible by a 2015 security legislation, which widened the scope of military cooperation between the United States and Japan by adding missile defense and anti-piracy activities to a list that also includes joint drills.

The refueling operations, along with other activities, such as rising military budgets and military exercises, and the purchase of advanced weapons, show Japan's security policy of "exclusively for defense" is undergoing rapid change. It would not be wrong to say that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration is pursuing a "self-defense" policy of strengthening the military. In fact, since becoming prime minister for the second time in 2012, Abe has been trying to amend the postwar pacifist Constitution to make Japan a military power.

From "exclusively for defense" to "taking initiatives for defense", and from "basic defense" to "mobile defense", the Abe administration has frequently revised Japan's defense policies and promulgated new ones, almost changing Japan's defense posture from "defensive" to "offensive" in an effort to "militarize Japan".

To realize his dream, Abe has coined the term "active pacifism" and issued three security policy documentsJapan's first national security defense strategy, a new defense plan outline and a plan for medium-term adjustments of the defense forcesor the "three arrows" for Japan's security and defense. In this sense, "active pacifism" marks Abe's new path in his pursuit of "militarization" on the pretext of "maintaining (Japan's) international interests".

But "active pacifism" has exposed Abe's military ambitions, as he has been allocating increasing amounts of resources for research, development and procurement of military weapons. Among the advanced weapons on the Japan Self-Defense Forces' list are Izumo-class helicopter destroyers, F-35 fighters, Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and other stealth planes, amphibious armored vehicles and submarines.

And the Japanese Ministry of Defense has sought 5.25 trillion yen ($44.7 billion) for its 2018 fiscal budget, a 2.5 percent increase year-on-year, so that it can purchase land-based Aegis anti-missile defense system and other anti-missile equipment.

Japan attaches great importance to not only military "hardware", but also military "software" such as real-combat technologies and experience. Japan Self-Defense Forces personnel have frequently held training programs and drills with the US military and visited the US to receive advanced training. Some Japan Marine Self-Defense Force destroyers held a joint exercise with a US aircraft carrier formation in the Sea of Japan to strengthen cooperation with the US Navy. And on Aug 24, the Self-Defense Forces, including land and maritime personnel, conducted a massive military drill at the foot of Mount Fuji simulating island recapture.

Japan has been using all means possible to hype the volatile security environment in its neighborhood, in order to promote the Abe administration's "expansive" defense policy. In this year's national defense white paper, issued earlier this month, the Japanese government has again used the "China threat" theory as a pretext to justify Abe's controversial "active pacifism", gain public support for restoring Japan's collective self-defense rights, clear the way for the Self-Defense Forces' expansion, and revise the pacifist Constitution.

The Abe administration has breached the peace commitment Japan made to the world and deviated from its peaceful development road. History is witness that those intoxicated with power or military are doomed to failure. Japan, therefore, should use history as a mirror to judge itself, abandon the pursuit of "military power", embark on a peaceful development road, and do more to enhance mutual trust with its neighbors, so as to maintain regional peace and stability.

The author is a journalist with the People's Liberation Army Daily, in which the article was first published.
Trading volume on China's major Bitcoin exchanges has plunged in the past week, since authorities tightened regulation of the digital currency. [Photo/VCG]

By putting restrictions on the trading of the online crypto-currencies generically known as bitcoin, China appears to have moved ahead of the curve. In the first week of this month, the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, and other financial authorities banned organizations and individuals from raising funds in exchange for unregulated virtual currencies.

Soon afterwards, BTCChina, one of the country's biggest bitcoin exchanges, said it would suspend trading by the end of the month.

With obscure origins less than a decade old, bitcoin is nothing more than a string of computer-generated code, which allows buyers and sellers to exchange goods and services securely and anonymously. That sounds innocent enough. But in reality, virtual currencies also allow criminals and fraudsters to operate below the radar of government regulators.

Another problem is that crypto-currencies can themselves be traded against "official" money in a market that has proved perilously volatile. Rather than evolve into a convenient way to store valuethink banknotes or government bondsthey have turned into yet another speculative gamble.

Bitcoin values rose almost fivefold against gold last year to nudge $5,000 by the end of August. Largely in response to the announcements from China, the virtual currency plunged to less than $3,000 by the middle of this month.

China's measures reflect concerns that crypto-currencies, which have no intrinsic value backing them, operate without any kind of government supervision in the market and risk destabilizing the entire financial sector. At worst, Chinese regulators fear the bitcoin phenomenon amounts to a giant Ponzi scheme, in which any rewards offered to investors in a rising market are paid from money already invested rather than from a tangible growth in the underlying value of goods and services.

China's latest move to tame crypto-currencies is not its first, nor was it entirely unexpected. As early as December 2013, the PBOC issued a notice banning financial institutions from dealing in bitcoin.

Exactly three years later, analysts presciently warned investors that further intervention by Beijing could swiftly reverse a bitcoin rally, particularly as the yuan now vastly exceeds the US dollar in bitcoin trading.

Although China's latest measures may represent the most dramatic intervention so far in the burgeoning crypto-currency market, this time it is not alone. While the regulators of other governments have long shared Beijing's suspicions about the rise of bitcoin, major transnational banks have generally maintained a love-hate relationship with online currency innovators.

This time, howeverand within barely a week of China's announcement of restrictionsthe CEO of JPMorgan Chase in the United States, Jamie Dimon, branded bitcoin as little more than a "fraud". He compared the bitcoin bubble with the Dutch financial crash of the 1600s in which fortunes were madebut mainly lostin a market based on the trade in tulip bulbs.

Dimon's script could well have been written in Beijing, where monetary authorities clearly share the view that unregulated virtual currencies amount to little more than a scam to defraud the gullible.

He was not alone. In the United Kingdom, the Schroders investment company essentially backed China's strategy within days of Beijing's bitcoin ban when its strategist Huw van Steenis wrote of crypto-currencies: "We should expect more central bankers to look to outlaw or crimp their use. This will be most acute in markets which are worried about capital flight and organized crime."

The current debate will not mean an end to virtual transactions, which have been a liberating factor in the lives of ordinary people who now have the ability to buy and sell beyond their previous physical confines.

The aim of the regulatorsin China and elsewhereis, or should be, to make sure we do not all get scammed in the process.

The author is a senior editorial consultant for China Daily UK. harveymorris@gmail.com
The journey of hundreds of commuters into the center of London was brutally interrupted by a dull explosion and a flash of flame as a train stood at Parsons Green station on Sept 15. That evening, the trains were running as normally as before, and people went to the theater, restaurants and bars as if nothing had happened.

No one was seriously injured in perhaps the 215th terrorist attack on London since 1867, when Irish radicals detonated a bomb that killed 12 people. And few seemed to pay much attention.

London has long been the target of terrorists and also an arena where disputing parties have settled scores. The London Underground was first bombed in 1883. Of those 215 attacksthe figure is a rough count162 were carried out by Irish republicans and the rest by anarchists, Palestinian groups, right-wing extremists and Scottish nationalists. Only eight have been carried out by Islamists, all since 2005. Recent attacks are closely linked to a series of deadly attacks in Barcelona, Brussels, Berlin, Nice and Paris.

This year the attacks have felt closer to home. Westminster Bridge, where five people died in March, is the turnaround point on a China Daily jogging route. London Bridge, where the June attack that killed eight began, is less than 200 meters from the China Daily office. The District Line runs to its nearest station, Cannon Street.

The Irish Republican Army campaigns were rarely directed at civilians, although they claimed many civilian lives. The biggest hindrance for residents was the paralysis of the train system by deliberate attacks and false alarms, and the removal of trash cans that could be used to hide bombs.

Islamist attacks have been far fewer and less frequent than IRA attacks, but they seem more vicious and more indiscriminate. They use more primitive weaponsguns are highly controlled in the United Kingdombut even kitchen knives can be lethal.

The IRA was at its zenith when it acted most strategically, in particular its bomb attacks on the City of London and Canary Wharf in 1995 and 1996, which killed three people but caused more than 1 billion pounds ($1.35 billion) in damage.

The Islamists, with their focus on indiscriminate killing, are as ineffective as they are brutal. Their only discernible aim is to generate animosity toward Muslims in the UK and create a cycle of discrimination and radicalization. But London has so far been unaffected by the attacks, except for new barriers blocking pedestrian areas.

The city has a population of almost 9 million, and another 2 million commuters and tourists join that total every day. The effect of any attack is quickly dissipated, and the odds of being involved are very low.

But the frequency of the attacks appears to be increasing and some must feel London is a less safe place than before.

However, safety is relative. The day after the Parsons Green bombing, I saw a face I recognized in Ealing Broadway, itself the target of a bomb in 2001. It was Yusef, a journalist I worked with in Gaza City 10 years ago. He and his family had got out of Gaza five years ago to escape the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Yusef escaped before the 2014 Gaza War, which left 1,600 Palestinian civilians dead.

Despite its problems, London has provided a safe haven for Yusef and his family and he's unlikely to go back to Gaza for fear of getting stuck there again.

The author is a senior editor at China Daily UK. conal@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Liu Ke the founder of two Mega Vintage shops in Beijing, one on the fifth floor of a building in the fashionable Sanlitun area and the other in Gulou district. [Photo Provided to China Daily]

For many of us the newer something is, the better it is and the more sophisticated we think it makes us look. But there is another approach to clothing and personal appearance.

They are the people for whom the word old means quaint rather than decrepit, and for whom dated stuff is not just desirable, but cool as well. Hence the Chinese version of a sign saying "Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe" painted on an otherwise unremarkable door hidden at the end of a dark alley will have them making a beeline to see what's inside.

These are the aficionados in China of vintage clothing, part of a wider culture that celebrates the trappings of the past.

In the world of vintage fashion it seems to be generally accepted that this past can be as recent as 35 years ago and as far back as a century ago. Furthermore, vintage clothing consists of garments whose attraction has endured, particularly clothes made between 1920 and 1980. They reflect the culture of the Western world - Europe and the United States in particular.

They will have been all the rage at a particular time, and even if they once disappeared, that was simply a hiatus, their having made a comeback on a wave of nostalgia.

Vintage culture has had a steady presence in China, and although it has never completely taken hold among a wide audience, it holds a certain charm for many.
The life-size Terracotta Warriors were first discovered in 1974 from the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang, China's first emperor. [Photo/Xinhua]

Ongoing exhibition shows how researchers are repairing precious relics.

Four minutes. Just four minutes is all it takes for the rarest colors on Earth to fade in front of a pair of human eyes. Han blue and Han purple, also called Chinese blue and Chinese purple, are made of synthetic barium copper silicate.

The pigments were first used in paint in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), and in large quantities in the Terracotta Warriors unearthed from the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang, China's first emperor, who lived between 259-210 BC.

"Almost every warrior and horse was painted, but after more than 2,200 years the pigments were so old they began to change just 15 seconds after they were unearthed, and within four minutes the lacquer layers that were bound with the pigments broke from the surface," says Xia Yin, director of relics protection department at Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum.

"Before the artifacts were unearthed, they were protected by a cooler and more humid underground environment," says Xia, who has spent more than 20 years researching the artifacts.

The life-size clay figures were first discovered in 1974 in the underground mausoleum, the world's largest. But there were no advanced techniques to properly protect the warriors, Xia says.

"Photographers did not have the time to take a picture before the paints began to disappear," he said.

For the last 20 years, Chinese researchers have collaborated with German scholars on preserving colors on pottery.

An exhibition is on in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, where the mausoleum is located, to show the progress researchers have made in retaining the colors of the excavated artifacts. The exhibition started on Aug. 30 and will last three months.
A nurse from China draws blood as part of an examination of a boy on the Peace Ark on Sept 21,2017. The Chinese Navy's hospital ship Peace Ark arrives on Tuesday in Freetown, Sierra Leone, on an eight-day mission to deliver free medical services to 2,000 people in the West African nation. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Chinese Navy's hospital ship Peace Ark is providing humanitarian medical services to the people of Sierra Leone during an ongoing port call in the West African nation, Chinese media reported.

The vessel arrived on Tuesday in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital and largest city, which is a major port on the Atlantic Ocean. Medical personnel began examining and treating local residents immediately, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The visit marks the first time the ship has visited West Africa, Xinhua said.

Each day hundreds of Sierra Leone residents line up outside Peace Ark waiting for their turn to be diagnosed by Chinese doctors, the report said, noting that at least 2,000 residents would receive medical services during the ship's eight-day stay in Freetown.

Sierra Leone is the second destination for Peace Ark in its "Harmonious Mission 2017" tour. The country, which gained independence from the United Kingdom in April 1961, remains one of the least developed in the world.

The Peace Ark left a naval port in China's Zhejiang province on July 26 to carry out its 155-day goodwill mission.

It docked in Djibouti from August 23 to 31 and treated thousands of locals, Xinhua said, and made stops in Spain and Sri Lanka for resupply.

It carries a total of 115 doctors and nurses, most of them from the People Liberation Army's Naval Medical University and Navy General Hospital.

One of the world's largest hospital ships, the Peace Ark is 178 meters long. It has eight surgical operation rooms and 300 patient beds. Since it was commissioned in 2008, the vessel has visited 31 countries, providing free medical services to tens of thousands of people.
Officials: Girl trapped alive in quake not real

China Daily | Updated: 2017-09-23 06:59

MEXICO CITY - Hour after hour, Mexicans were transfixed by dramatic efforts to reach a young girl thought buried in the rubble of a school destroyed by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. She reportedly wiggled her fingers, told rescuers her name and said there were others trapped near her. Rescuers called for tubes, pipes and other tools to reach her.

News media, officials and volunteers all repeated the story of "Frida Sofia" with an urgency that drew attention away from other rescue efforts.

But she never existed, Mexican Navy officials now say.

"We want to emphasize that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl," navy Assistant Secretary Angel Enrique Sarmiento said Thursday. "We never had any knowledge about that report, and we do not believe - we are sure - it was not a reality."

Sarmiento said a camera lowered into the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school showed blood tracks where an injured person apparently dragged himself or herself. But there were no fingers wiggling, no voice, no name. Several dead have been removed from the rubble, and it could have been their fingers rescuers thought they saw move.

Sarmiento later said that if a person is still trapped it could be a child or an adult.

"The information existing at this moment doesn't allow us to say if it is an adult or a child," Sarmiento said. "As long as there is the slightest possibility of someone alive, we will continue searching with the same energy."

Twitter users quickly brought out the "fake news" tag and complained that the widespread coverage had distracted attention from real rescue efforts where victims have been pulled alive from the rubble - something that hasn't happened at the school in at least a day.

Only one network had been permitted to enter the area. The military, which ran the rescue operation, spoke directly only to the network's reporters inside the site.

The Associated Press and others reported about the search for the girl, based on interviews with rescue workers leaving the scene who believed it was true.

"I don't think there was bad faith involved," security analyst Alejandro Hope said. "You want to believe there are children still alive down there."

Associated Press

(China Daily 09/23/2017 page1)
ISLAMABAD - China on Thursday handed over 330 pieces of office equipment including laptops, computers, scanners, printers and projectors to Pakistan's parliament.

The handover ceremony was held at the premises of the parliament in the capital Islamabad. Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong and Pakistani Senate Secretary Amjed Pervez Malik signed a handover document on behalf of their respective sides.

Pakistani Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani expressed gratitude for China's donation at the ceremony attended also by senators, parliamentarians and other high officials.

Rabbani said the donation will help improve the working conditions of the Pakistani parliament, highlighting the friendship and exchanges between the two countries and two peoples.

The Chinese ambassador said enhancing bilateral exchanges is of great importance to deepen the mutually beneficial cooperation, especially to promote the bilateral policy coordination and people-to-people exchanges.
TEHRAN - Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the country's Press TV reported on Saturday.

The television network broadcast a footage of "the successful test-launch of the country's new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran on Friday."

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

The missile was unveiled on Friday morning during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

With a range of 2,000 km, it is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh told reporters on Friday.

During the parade, Tehran also displayed other ballistic missiles, which reportedly have a range of 1,300-2,000 km.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and major world powers including Washington in 2015, saying that he believes Iran is violating the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

Iran has denied that its missiles would be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
Students Meet Around Flagpoles to Pray

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 22, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- All across the world, millions of students will gather at their schools' flagpoles on Wednesday, September 27, to pray for their schools, friends, families, churches, communities and nation at the annual See You at the Pole (SYATP) event. SYATP is a day students are committed to global unity in Christ and interceding for their generation. The theme this year is "Fix Our Eyes" taken from "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus" in Hebrews 12:2.

For over 25 years, SYATP has been about one simple act -- prayer. A small group of teenagers began what has become an international movement of prayer among young people. Now each year, more than three million students participate in more than 20 countries.

The Global Week of Student Prayer, this Sunday, September 24 through next Saturday, September 30, is also dedicated to prayer and encourages students to find new and unique ways, places, and times to pray throughout the week. Whether they attend public school, private school or home school, many students will initiate prayer opportunities and launch on-campus Bible clubs, prayer strategies and student ministries.

The First Amendment guarantees students the right to pray individually or in groups on school grounds during any non-instructional time. All students may express their opinions verbally or in writing before or after school, in between classes, during the lunch hour or on the playing field, according to the federal guidelines on prayer in public schools found on Liberty Counsel's website.

"Liberty Counsel supports all students who exercise their constitutional right to pray during the annual See You at the Pole event, the Global Week of Student Prayer and throughout the school year," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "These Christian young people are leading the way and providing an incredible example that all people should follow," said Staver.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
A slate of new restaurants is set to rev up Houston's dining scene this fall.

In our post-Harvey city, this collection of upcoming establishments should help energize our hospitality industry's hard-hit job market.

It should also please food lovers in town, who will welcome many more exciting places to drink, dine and enjoy live music. Some come from familiar names, others hail from new-to-Houston restaurateurs.

COMING SOON: State of Grace's Ford Fry to debut Tex-Mex place Superica in the Heights

Here are some of the most-anticipated restaurants (see the full roundup in the gallery above):

Theodore Rex, 1302 Nance Street: When James Beard Award-winning chef Justin Yu closed his tasting-menu restaurant Oxheart in March, he promised to reopen the space as a new concept. He's expected to follow through with a new spot, Theodore Rex, which he named after his nephew. Yu's now-defunct Oxheart was a national sensation, garnering numerous accolades and mentions from outlets around the country. Houston Chronicle food critic Alison Cook also famously named it the No. 1 establishment in Houston for two consecutive years. All of that fanfare promises that Theodore Rex will be one of the city's biggest debuts when it opens.

Now Playing: Chronicle critic Alison Cook compiles the best dining the city has to offer. Video: Houston Chronicle

JUST OPENED: Restaurants that just opened in your Houston neighborhood

Yu is also the co-owner of Heights bar Better Luck Tomorrow and downtown's Public Services Wine & Whisky, where he serves up a tightly edited selection of innovative small dishes, but we expect he will be spending the majority of his time at this new outpost.

Superica, 1801 N. Shepherd: Atlanta-based chef Ford Fry, owner of River Oaks' State of Grace, will launch Mexican restaurant Superica in the Heights, where Bernadine's once stood. An as-yet-unnamed outpost will open in the adjacent space, where Hunky Dory once stood. There he will feature raw and wood-roasted oysters, fried chicken and "a pharmacy-style burger in a relaxed, fish-camp style setting."

This will be his third Superica restaurant, Fry owns two in Atlanta and is opening a fourth in Charlotte. "The Heights is definitely a happening area right now  probably one of the coolest parts of Houston - with a vibrant music and growing food scene, and we're excited to be part of a walkable community like that," Fry said. "It's a perfect fit, actually, with me being personally inspired by the casual, Austin-like vibe of the area ... that's what this spot is going to be all about for me.'"

CLOSED: Amazon Grill is closed to become an online establishment, will be replaced by Christian's Tailgate

Indianola, Vinny's, Miss Carousel, 1201 St. Emanuel at Dallas: Courtesy of Agricole Hospitality, which includes Coltivare, Eight Row Flint and Revival Market in its portfolio, is this trio of upcoming East End spots. Each will be a distinct concept with the type of food and drinks that have made their sibling establishments huge successes. Each are connected in one form to another, be it by a corridor or wall, and each promises Houstonians a different experience within feet of each other.

Kulture, 701 Avenida De Las Americas: From the family that opened hit Midtown restaurant The Breakfast Klub comes this downtown establishment that will merge African, Caribbean and Southern influences. Owner Marcus Davis will launch this restaurant on the ground floor of Partnership Tower.
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The Norteno songs of Mexican artist Ramon Ayala filled the solitary car in the parking lot of St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Bellaire. Teresa Naba, 21, rocked her head to the music, her eyes scanning the work permit and Social Security card in her hands.

Two hours later she would be one of the first young adults to enter the building Saturday morning to renew her paperwork for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

"I wanted to get here early," Naba said. "I need this to be able to work. I didn't want to take any chances and get here late."

Under DACA, Naba and hundreds of thousands of young adults who emigrated to the U.S. as children gained a reprieve from deportation, the ability to get a driver's license and  pivotal to all a renewable two-year work permit. Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the program will end in March 2018, prohibiting the processing of new DACA applications and setting an Oct. 5 deadline for those eligible for renewal.

RELATED: 'Dreamers' now face uncertain future, including those who helped in Harvey

Volunteer attorneys and paralegals from various groups including Boat People SOS, Justice for Our Neighbors and the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, or HILSC, reviewed DACA filings and processed renewals free of charge Saturday.

Through sponsorships, HILSC has been able to secure funding to cover the $495 DACA processing fee for several individuals, said Andrea Guttin, the collaborative' s legal director. Several more free renewal sessions will be held next week.

The money order check prepared by HILSC that Naba signed was a godsend.

What money she had been saving up for her DACA renewal a few months ago all went to making ends meet immediately after Hurricane Harvey dumped 51 inches of rain onto the region.

Guttin noted that several young adults wanting to apply for DACA for the first time got shut out of the system as Harvey recovery efforts delayed their filing date until after the Sept. 5 deadline.

News of the decision to end DACA has left families such as the Villalpando's rushing to get renewals in on time. While Genesis Villalpando, 24 and her three daughters are all U.S.-born citizens, her husband Erik is a DACA recipient. Fearing any delays in processing Erik's application for legal residency, and knowing he was eligible for DACA renewal, the family of five paid a visit to HILSC's event.

Having few community resources in the town of Tyler, Luis Garcia, 25, drove about 200 miles with his mother Luz and uncle Daniel to get to an HILSC attorney to review his paperwork.

While her son hasn't had much luck securing a job, Luz Garcia feels blessed to know he is eligible for one through DACA. She crossed the border from Mexico 17 years ago with then 8-year-old Luis and has made a living cleaning a furniture outlet store.

"Even though our jobs here aren't the best paid, it still affords us a better life than back in Mexico," Garcia said.

RELATED: Harvey, DACA dominate Hispanic Impact Summit

Joy Green, attorney for the nonprofit Justice for Our Neighbors, noted that critics of DACA often blame recipients' parents for not giving their children a choice in emigrating to the U.S. Yet the parents themselves are left with few, if any, alternatives.

"It wasn't for fun and games," Green said. "They came over for economic and humanitarian reasons. It was a necessity."

Currently working at a fast food restaurant, Naba hopes to soon apply for college to become a nurse practitioner  a job she hopes can speak to her love of helping others while also allowing her to better support her 1-year-old son, boyfriend, mother and younger sister.

Naba emigrated at the age of 2. Knowing that her mother never got to finish high school, and knowing how hard it was for her to start over from scratch, Naba said she feels grateful rather than ashamed at her mother's decision to leave Mexico behind.

"The same sacrifices she was willing to make for me, I am willing to make ten times over for my son," Naba said, struggling to hold back tears.
Q #26



Obviously.

But it's a major blunder to perceive that as the entire issue here.



SURE !! Healthcare is a HUGE deal, a reported 1/6th of the economy. Splendid.

UNQUESTIONABLY !! Some reports indicate patients in the U.S. pays more than patients in other nations, and don't necessarily get better health outcomes.



BUT !!



There's more than that going on here.

"Reality" TV star Trump campaigned for the presidency on premise of his superior fitness for the job:

that Trump was a s a v v y businessman and deal-maker that could get things done, spreading improvements far and wide across the nation.



Turns out Trump was basically spreading manure.

- I'm gunna build a wall. Mexico's gunna pay for it.

- I'm gunna deport all the illegal aliens.

- I'm gunna suspend immigration of Muslims until we can figure out what the Hell is going on.

- I'm gunna get you better healthcare, at lower price.



This guy's full of crap.



BUT !!



It's not just him.

Republicans have been singing the "repeal & replace" chorus in unison for a reported 7 years.

The told us Obamacare was horrible, though they were sketchy on the specific details.

Republicans even dropped hints that they couldn't do the job right unless they held partisan leadership.



WELL !!



Now they hold partisan leadership.

The speaker of the house is a Republican (and one of my favorites).

The senate majority leader is a Republican (looks like a turtle).

And the president of the United States ran on the Republican ticket*.



Not much of a surprise perhaps.

But this administration does seem to be shaping up to be an abortion from start to finish.



* Trump clearly seems more comfortable with fellow New Yorker Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Pelosi (D-CA). We'll see how Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) shines up to President Trump after Trump grinds McConnell's ding-dong in the dirt some more about repeal & replace.

Trump appears to want (expect?) the impossible from McConnell. McConnell simply doesn't have the votes. And Trump doesn't seem too good with arithmetic involving two digit numbers.
A Houston man with a lengthy criminal record was arrested Friday after police say he tried running over constable deputies in a desperate bid to flee after an attempted theft.

Jackson Miles was charged with two felonies and jailed under the alias Michael Jones after workers spotted him around 4 p.m. wandering around the ninth floor of the Community Bank building in the 10300 block of Richmond in west Houston.

When the man noticed he'd been seen, he headed down to the Lupe Tortilla corporate offices on the building's second floor. He fled after a worker confronted him for allegedly going through her purse, according to Houston police spokesman Kese Smith.

A security guard who the woman told about the attempted theft started searching for the suspect outside, where he ran into a Precinct 1 constable deputy getting ready to work an extra job directing traffic, Smith said.

Ten minutes later, the constable deputy spotted the suspect walking to a red pickup truck in the parking lot.

The deputy, along with a Precinct 7 deputy constable, approached Miles - who allegedly hopped in his truck to flee, according to police.

The deputies prevented him from leaving through one exit, but police say he hit reverse and sped to another exit.

As the suspect barreled toward the constable trying to block that exit, police allege, the Precinct 1 deputy feared for his life and opened fire.

Although the deputy fired more than once, none of the bullets hit the suspect.

Minutes later, though, he crashed his pickup into a parking garage, a witness said, and started running away on foot. Both deputies followed in pursuit, capturing him behind the building.

The deputies allegedly recovered a semi-automatic pistol from Miles' car before arresting him on charges of felon in possession of a weapon and evading. Neither Miles nor the deputies involved were injured in the ordeal.

Miles is currently in the Harris County jail and is due back in court Monday.
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The Greater East Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce welcomed the Cleveland Emergency Hospital ER branch opening in Porter with a ribbon cutting ceremony on Sept. 21.

Cleveland Emergency Hospital has been in operation since August 2015 and has opened four new facilities in two years, including the Texas Emergency Hospital, also in Cleveland, in July 2017.

"We are a group that believes that God has a hand in what we do," said Administrative CEO Don Vickers.

According to Vickers, the most recent location is the newest office in Porter, which also operates as an ER. The Porter branch opened last month.

"We're trying to expand the Cleveland Emergency Hospital system," said Vickers. "The Porter area is underserved so that's why we expanded here."

The hospital always has a physician on staff, according to Lab Manager Tamesha James. A doctor is therefore always present on the facility as opposed to being on call. The Porter branch can also perform CT scans and X-rays and also performs tests in a quick and timely manner.

"The longest test we have here is 20 minutes," she said.

Results for some of the tests can also come back in the same day. James also says patients can worry less about insurance options when coming to Cleveland Emergency Hospital's branches.

"We accept every insurance," she said.

Patient rooms at the Porter branch have control monitoring in every room. The Porter branch of Cleveland Emergency Hospital is a full service ER with five ER beds in total.

"We're really excited about these patient rooms," she said.

The Porter ER also has an on-site pharmacy for the convenience of their patients.

Vickers expressed how important it is to have more options available for hospitals and other medical needs for the Porter area.

"We need more emergency services," he said. "It's a growing area."

The Porter branch is located at 24540 FM 1314, Porter. For more information on the hospital and its services, call 281-747-7952.
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Friday night's "Harvey Can't Mess with Texas" benefit and televised broadcast at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin featured a star-studded lineup of Texas musicians and their famous friends, native celebrities, and two local Houston heroes.

The affair was for Rebuild Texas, the hurricane relief effort created by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in collaboration with the OneStar Foundation.

RELATED: New maps show how contaminated Houston surface water was following Hurricane Harvey

KHOU-TV's Brandi Smith rubbed shoulders with actor Luke Wilson. Willie Nelson covered Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Texas Flood" with Bonnie Raitt, and Jimmie Vaughan, and Matthew McConaughey charmed the Austin crowd.

The night's four hours of music began with Nelson christening the event (naturally) with "Whiskey River" in grand style.

Houston police chief Art Acevedo returned to Austin where he previously presided as chief to remind those watching about the first responders that served so tirelessly during Hurricane Harvey's strike on the Bayou City.

Smith's live, televised heroics during Harvey, most notably saving a truck driver from possible death, were revisited and she received a hearty ovation from the audience.

Legendary acts Paul Simon and James Taylor chipped in with short sets of hits and covers, including Simon covering "Waltz Across Texas" (made famous Ernest Tubb) backed by house band Asleep at the Wheel.

Taylor, looking spry, ran through Eric Von Schmidt's "Wasn't That a Mighty Storm" which was originally written about the 1900 storm that ravaged Galveston. His "Sweet Baby James" with Asleep at the Wheel layering twang over the back end was a revelation.

RELATED: Texas Roadhouse to donate profits to Red Cross Harvey relief effort

Red dirty country outlaw Ryan Bingham reintroduced himself to the crowd, showing off his distinctive rasp that pushed him out in front of his contemporaries a decade ago. His huge white cowboy hat was only a little distracting.

Little Joe y La Familia brought some cheerful Tejano flavor to the proceedings, which did go through some somber stretches befitting the tragedies of Harvey.

McConaughey, Katy's Renee Zellweger, Wilson, Texas Longhorns royalty Vince Young, and Austin locals Andy Roddick and Brooklyn Decker made appearances on a smaller stage in the arena to remind viewers of how to donate to the cause.

The Dixie Chicks' Martie Maguire was nearly a constant onstage along with guitarist Charlie Sexton who acted as the local glue and musical director for the affairs on the main stage.

Lesser-known up-and-comers like Dallas' Leon Bridges, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Mexican pop act Ha*Ash checked in with solid sets. Rateliff and his band elevated the mood in the building with their bouncy hit "S.O.B." before bringing out Raitt for an on-point rendition of Leon Russell's "Delta Lady". Raitt and the rascally Rateliff appeared to have fallen in love musically as the night went on.

RELATED: Harris County could see budget cuts due to Hurricane Harvey's destruction

A highlight of Simon's set near the close of the night was he and wife Brickell doing a sweetly antagonistic cover of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn's "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly".

Simon gave the crowd "America"," The Boxer", and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", sidestepping the obvious "Bridge over Troubled Water" thankfully.

Nelson's closing set, into the fourth hour of the evening, closed with the musical family reconvening onstage for his trademark "I'll Fly Away"/"Will the Circle Be Unbroken" grand finale, sending Texans off into the night on a high note.
Victoria's Secret model Georgia Fowler turned several heads at a party during Milan Fashion Week for her *very* risque ensemble.

Fowler wore a black, completely see-through dress making her black undies and lack-of bra the stars of the show.
Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle

The nonprofit Houston ISD Foundation is offering the district's teachers up to $1,500 each for restocking school supplies lost to flooding from Hurricane Harvey.

Teachers can apply for the grant using this link through Sept. 29. The money must be used on supplies damaged following the hurricane.
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As piles of debris continue to mount across the Houston area in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, at least two unauthorized dump sites have built up on private property without required permits from the state environmental commission.

A 100-acre site of vacant land near Beechnut Road is serving as a temporary staging area for debris removed in Richmond from the Grand Mission subdivision by the Grand Mission Municipal Utility District 1, which is responsible for water, sewage and drainage.

And in northwest Harris County near North Eldridge Parkway and Tanner Road, a similar staging area was located by the countys Pollution Control Services Division in response to a complaint.

Now Playing: A large debris pile from Hurricane Harvey is moved in and out of a field near the corner of Beechnut and S. Mason in Richmond. Video: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle

Under normal circumstances, dumping waste on unapproved land would be considered an environmental crime ranging from a Class C misdemeanor to a state jail felony, depending on the quantity. But given the volume of destruction left behind by Harvey, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is allowing the sites to seek belated approval from the state.

As of Wednesday, the TCEQ had approved 75 temporary debris management sites in a 13-county region that includes Houston. The sites are used to make debris cleanup more efficient by providing a place to sort and compress the debris away from homes before taking it to the state-approved landfills.

Environmentalists, however, say the unauthorized sites could increase the potential for environmental and health hazards.

Without proper monitoring, interactions between materials could create hazardous gases, metals and fluids could seep from appliances into the ground and possibly contaminate a water supply, and emissions from the debris could pollute the air, said Dr. Elena Craft, a senior health scientist based in Austin for the Environmental Defense Fund, a New York-based environmental advocacy group.

Those are the serious risks that exist when material is just stored without taking that information into account, Craft said. [TCEQ] protections are in place to prevent those kinds of hazards.

The TCEQ does not keep a list of violations related to unauthorized temporary debris sites and leaves it up to local jurisdictions to conduct investigations and enforcement, said TCEQ spokesman Andrew Keese.

No more waiting in line

In Fort Bend County, Bryan Chapline, founder and president of Municipal District Services, the MUDs operator, defended the decision to use the temporary site, saying that leaving debris in front of homes posed a health risk to residents.

Recognizing the dangerous situation, the threat to public health and safety, and its need to assist its residents, the district promptly began removing storm debris from the streets and public rights of way, Chapline said. The district is trying to help their residents get this debris out of their sight and let them start this rebuilding process.

Chapline said dump trucks carrying debris from neighborhoods were forced to spend a half day just waiting in line at the landfill before the temporary site was set up.

It was just amazing when the MUD said, Lets roll our sleeves up, he said.

The Grand Mission MUD 1 arranged with 688 Partners, a developer that owns the 100 acres of land off Beechnut Road, to use the property. Officials expect the site to be cleared by next week as crews transfer the debris to landfills.

The county has filed a complaint with the TCEQ and has asked the MUD for details on its environmental impact and disposal methods. But county officials emphasized the extraordinary circumstances due to the hurricane recovery process.

The county is responsible for disposing of an estimated 500,000 cubic yards of Harvey-related debris. As of Tuesday, the county had removed only 125,000 cubic yards from neighborhoods and officials predicted the process could take months. The Grand Mission MUD 1 debris cleanup effort, meanwhile, is nearly complete.

To acquire approval from the TCEQ, site operators are required to ensure that the debris pile is not located in the 100-year floodplain, is outside wetlands, is at least a quarter mile away from any water supply or stream and that they will handle any hazardous materials in a TCEQ-approved manner.

Debris site operators are also required to test the soil on the site before and after the debris is staged there. Most applications are approved in a day or two, Keese said.

Grand Mission MUD 1 did not test the soil at the Beechnut dump site before storing debris there, said Chapline. Nor did it apply to the TCEQ for authorization as a temporary debris management site until Wednesday, almost three weeks after the pile began to form, said a TCEQ official. The application was pending local government approval as of Friday.

The MUD did, however, erect a fence to prevent runoff from escaping the dump site, and Chapline said that the district has employed a contractor to conduct testing after the debris is removed and will ensure the site is restored to its original condition.

At the northwest Harris County site near North Eldridge, Harris County investigators informed the site operators that they needed to obtain authorization from TCEQ, said spokeswoman Latrice Babin. The county also provided the operators information on the risks of rodents, fire hazards and odor nuisances, she said.

Mixed reaction

The debris pile near Beechnut  which stretched high enough to tower over trucks and equipment  drew mixed reviews from area residents.

Tiffany Jin, whose home wasnt flooded, lives near the debris staging site and is worried the pile could cause problems without proper regulation.

By Friday, the mountain of trash had begun to shrink and the smell was subsiding, but Jin continued to worry about mold and what materials had already seeped into the ground.

She hopes proper testing will identify any potential hazards.

About two miles away, Prince Thomas, whose home did flood, was glad the MUD took the initiative to clear the debris  even if it was unauthorized.

I would rather the contaminated stuff be there than in front of our homes, Thomas said.

He had stayed in his home as it filled with five inches of water during the hurricane. He had barbecued for his neighbors and countless volunteers as they went through the grueling process of mucking out their homes. Now, with the piles of debris hauled away, he finally sees his community beginning to return to normal.

Having (the debris) there, it just reminds you of what you just lost, Thomas said. The state didnt have a plan for us. The city didnt come out  Im sure theyre overwhelmed...

"With our particular situation, it was reasonable," he said. "I think they did the best they could with what they had."
On Sept. 27, Texas Roadhouse will be donating 100 percent of its profits to help those impacted by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m, the restaurant chain will deliver its proceeds to the American Red Cross and other local organizations, according to WHAS 11.
AUSTIN - U.S. Sen. Al Franken continued his months-long attacks on U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, showing no signs of easing up even as he sat in the Texas Senator's home state.

During an hour-long speech at the University of Texas Friday night, the Minnesota Democrat told more than 1,000 people packed in an auditorium that Cruz is "awful," like "a toxic co-worker" and someone whose "word is not good."

His words didn't come as a surprise given that Franken's book released in May included an entire chapter on how much he dislikes Cruz.

"I probably like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz," Franken said, nearly repeating a line from his book "Al Franken: Giant of the Senate."

Cruz has said little publicly back at Franken since the book came out.

"Al is trying to sell books and apparently he's decided that being obnoxious and insulting me is good for causing liberals to buy his books," Cruz told Politico shortly after the release. "I wish him all the best."

Franken, who was in Austin as part of a three-day political festival put on by the Texas Tribune, said one of his beefs with Cruz is that the senator made no efforts to get along and started offending people right away.

"He's awful," Franken said. "And he never gets anything done because of that."

Franken offered himself in contrast, saying when he was first elected in 2008 he intentionally didn't make waves and tried be more "workhorse" than "show horse." Despite the comedian's fame as a comedian and former Saturday Night Live personality, he said he avoided the national spotlight.

"It was incumbent upon me to show the people of Minnesota I was there for a serious purpose," Franken said.

Franken's book and his more vocal role in the U.S. Senate have provoked speculation that Franken could be among those competing for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. But Franken left little doubt that he doesn't want the job after the crowd roared at the prospect of him running.

"No, I'm sorry, no," Franken said. "I don't want to be president."

While Franken unloaded on Cruz, he insisted he has no problems working with most other Republicans. Without provocation, Franken said he has worked with Texas Sen. John Cornyn on issues like mental health and criminal justice.

But Franken, after praising Cornyn, quickly deadpanned to the crowd: "But don't vote for him."

While most members can work together, Cruz is an exception to the rule, Franken said.

Franken also has plenty of criticism for President Donald Trump, the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and any notion that Congress is going to build a wall on the border with Mexico. Especially since hurricanes devastated Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, Congress has bigger issues to be worried about, he said.

"Considering what happened here in Texas with Harvey and what happened with Irma and what happened in Puerto Rico, there's no appetite to pay $25 billion, or whatever it is, for this wall," Franken said.
Billy Calzada/Staff

The Democratic Party's best hope in Texas of defeating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 has no interest in having former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the campaign trail with him.

"No, I don't want Nancy Pelosi to come to Texas to campaign," U.S. Rep. Beto Rourke told hundreds of people at a speech on the University of Texas campus in Austin on Saturday.
"Yes MUCH,bigger," the lady to the right of Kimmy said.New one:>"Congratulations Uncle!! We are treating you to a fireworks display today. Now just go stand over that way behind you about a kilometer away and we'll get that fireworks show started."
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.
Although wars are often fought on land, the maritime domain poses many challenges to military forces, from the air, surface, and underwater. Underwater activity is increasing both in irregular and high-intensity warfare, due to the difficulty of detecting such underwater threats, by submarines, submersible vehicles, divers, and mines, such threats pose the acutest danger to vessels, harbors, offshore facilities and coastal infrastructure.

Submarines and divers are the most familiar type of underwater threat but, in fact, activity, sea mines and underwater improvised explosive devices (UW-IED) are more likely to inflict damage on naval and merchant vessels, especially in form of terror attacks on strategic seaports, or by irregular groups attempting to disrupt military intervention in territories such groups control, denying maritime activity in critical merchant shipping lanes or the access of logistical support into theater.

Current counter mine (MCM) warfare include minesweeping designed to detect and neutralize mines deployed on shipping lanes. The procedures have not changed dramatically in the recent decades, as most assets taking part in MCM operation use surface or helicopter-based minesweeping and neutralization equipment operated and controlled by manned operators and divers. This high-risk operation requires a slow, methodical process that often brings maritime activity in the area to a standstill, to ensure an uninterrupted environment for the MCM operation to succeed. Based on these procedures, MCM operations could take weeks to complete, limiting naval and merchant shipping operations in the area. A recent mine alert in a major European port caused three weeks of disruption to the port activity, illustrating the potential damage such UW-IED attacks could have on the countrys economy.

If mines represent the lower end of the underwater maritime threat, submarines represent the highest level, with more than 120 submarines of various types and capabilities are expected to enter service in the near future, over half of these will be operated by NON-NATO or adversary navies, 42 percent of the worlds submarine fleet will operate in Asia-Pacific. Given their stealth, long endurance underwater, and long-range weapons and sensors, and the relative limitations of surface and airborne anti-submarine assets, submarines currently have the advantage over surface vessels. Unmanned vessels operating ahead of the surface fleet, with long endurance, operating quietly in a relatively quiet area, have the potential to turn the odds against the submarine in a potential engagement.

While the most common are submarines activity, sea mines, and underwater improvised explosive devices are also likely to be employed, especially by irregular groups attempting to disrupt military intervention in territories such groups control, denying maritime activity in critical merchant shipping lanes or the access of logistical support into a theater.

Elbit Systems has developed an unmanned anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and mine countermeasure (MCM) vessels that enable navies to detect and defeat enemy submarines and neutralize sea mines in a safer, more efficient and affordable way. At the DSEI exhibition this week the company has demonstrated how the unmanned Seagull boats can autonomously perform anti-submarine operations over a distance of 1,890 nautical miles (3,500 km), with the mission controlled over a satellite link from the companys exhibit at DSEI in London. Operating its dipping sonar and Elbit Systems proprietary software, Seagull performed real-time detection and classification of objects, demonstrating the capability to deter and dissuade hostile subsurface activity. The Seagull team included two operators, a USV operator and sonar operator.

The Seagull is a 12-meter aluminum boat designed to carry 2.5 tons of useful payload in interchangeable mission modules and operate autonomously for up to four days. The boat is powered by two 425 HP diesel engines accelerating the Seagull to a top speed of 32 knots. The boats carry a complete sensor and weapon suite for ASW or MCM roles the unmanned boat replaces much larger manned assets required to operate highly dangerous missions, in routines performed at much slower speed. The ASW mission employs assets such as sonars and torpedoes, similar to those operational on ASW helicopters and larger frigates dedicated for the ASW role, modified for use from floating boats. On such missions, Seagull unmanned boats can perform such missions for four hours, compared to 2-3 hours endurance by helicopters. The boats can remain on station much longer, for up to four days.

ASW operations with Seagull are particularly effective as the boats can deploy to a theater packed in standard 40-foot containers, or be flown into the theater by A-400M or C-17. Once they arrive at the operational area the boats can be operated from a ship or from shore, using a line of sight communications or satellite link. The boats are designed for operation in a rough sea. The SeaGull proved its high performance in a recent MCM trials held by the Dutch and Belgian navies in the North Sea. During the trials, Seagull operated successfully in sea state 6, at winds exceeding 35 knots and 1.5 meter high waves. Seagull can also assume other missions, including protection of harbor, offshore facilities, and vessels at sea. On routine missions the boat surveys the sea surface with its sonar, providing detailed maps of the sea surface at coastal areas and waterways, thus improving detection capabilities in familiar waterways.
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BROOK PARK, Ohio -- Standing between two nonfunctioning indoor swimming pools, Brook Park Mayor Tom Coyne announced during a Sept. 21 community forum the need for a $3 million total roof replacement for the recreation center. That means no funds are available to install two smaller swim-in-place pools, which he proposed months ago, or to even consider reopening the current pools, he said.

"This recreation center was built in 1972," Coyne told residents. "The roof support of this building is failing and needs to be replaced. This whole roof has to come off ... and repairs will cost $3 million. The problem is water coming from the outside and moisture coming from the inside. The operation of the pool was closed (years ago due to financial issues) to keep the rec center open."

Coyne pointed at areas around the pools' perimeter to highlight various leaks in the roof and support walls as well as deteriorating mortar. He reminded everyone the community overwhelmingly voted down a 4.5-mill property tax issue in August 2014 that would have generated operating money for the rec center. (Official election results indicate 74 percent of voters cast ballots against the measure.)

"We have to make a choice as to what we're going to do," Coyne said. "We can fix our streets, fix our sewers or provide for recreation. You would have to go into your own pockets (if residents want a future tax issue on the ballot). We have to figure out what we want, what we need and what we can afford."

Residents' comments included fixing the roof and reopening the pools, or rebuilding that section of the rec center and installing "a more realistic size pool."

"We don't want a partial rec (center)," one woman insisted. "We want a full rec."

Coyne said next steps are to present a final report to city council based on a recently completed analysis and then "discussions to figure out how to proceed."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 50-year-old man is dead after a shooting Saturday afternoon, police say.

The man suffered a gunshot to the chest in the shooting that happened just after 2 p.m. on East 92nd Street near Sophia Avenue, Cleveland police spokesman Det. Reginald Lanton said.

He was taken to University Hospitals where he died, Lanton said. The homicide unit was notified, he added.

Police did not release any information on what led to the shooting or if any arrests have been made.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove doesn't think of himself as a political guy. But he's so strongly opposed to the U.S. Senate's latest Affordable Care Act repeal proposal that he's contacted his legislators and the media and distributed an op-ed to get out his message.

In a Friday afternoon interview, Cosgrove said he was delighted to learn that Sen. John McCain of Arizona had announced his opposition to the proposal advanced by Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, potentially stopping it from going forward.

I cannot in good conscience vote for Graham-Cassidy. A bill impacting so many lives deserves a bipartisan approach. https://t.co/2sDjhw6Era pic.twitter.com/30OWezQpLg  John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 22, 2017

"As a physician, this is one thing I am in favor of killing," said Cosgrove. "The general public has no idea what this is all about and it will be voted on next week. To me it is bad form and also bad content."

Why he dislikes the bill

Cosgrove said he dislikes that the bill is being rushed to a vote next week without full public hearings or analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. He's also upset that it will take away $140 billion in Medicaid funds, including $4 billion to $9 billion for the state of Ohio. He says its plan to provide block grants to states will mean there's no guarantee insurers will have to provide essential services to their customers.

Sen. Rob Portman's reaction

When Cosgrove expressed his views to Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman on Wednesday, Cosgrove reports that Portman said the CEO was "intimidating." Portman hasn't indicated how he intends to vote, saying he likes that block grants would give Ohio the freedom to design its own program, but he's still assessing the plan's impact on the state.

"It was a respectful discussion and he may well have been kidding," said Cosgrove. "I have tremendous respect for the guy. I told him exactly what I thought. I think he is probably making up his mind what direction he will go."

What he thinks should be done instead

Cosgrove said he's not focused on whether the Affordable Care Act should be repealed and replaced - he's focused on what could be done to reduce medical costs. Without action, he says medical costs will continue to rise because "we have more older people and we have increasing numbers of things we can do for them" when they become sick.

Greater efficiencies could help bring down costs, he says. Rising pharmaceutical costs, excessive regulations, government interference with consolidations, and electronic medical record systems that don't communicate with each other are all issues that could be addressed to reduce costs.

He added that the government could address the epidemic of smoking by "taxing cigarettes out of existence," the epidemic of obesity by stopping sugar industry subsidies, and the opioid epidemic through education, treatment and law enforcement.

What else he is doing to try to stop the bill

Cosgrove says he's communicated with Ohio members of Congress about the bill, written to the nation's governors and "talked endlessly about the costs."

I'm proud of you, John.



It's time for the resumption of the bipartisan Alexander/Murray plan, and I'm ready to help however I can. https://t.co/xu2e3higf3  John Kasich (@JohnKasich) September 22, 2017

"Right now, you've got the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and AARP all opposing this bill," Cosgrove said. "We have to try and figure out how to stop it. It is terrible. I generally do not get politically involved, but this is one thing that I think is important."

Asked if there's anything else he plans to do, Cosgrove quipped, "I am going to be drinking heavily, but not smoking."
To become Ohio governor, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor needs first to beat several Republican rivals for the GOP nomination. Dozens of Republican incumbents in the Ohio House also may face May 8 primary races next year to retain their seats.

Those facts help explain why Taylor and the House GOP caucus are suffering a relapse of Obamacare-phobia -- partly (or largely) out of fear of Republican primary opponents who may seize on Ohio's expansion of Medicaid, made possible under Obamacare, to pummel GOP incumbents.

That's self-defeating and wrong. Ohio's interests should override any cynical considerations of political advancement.

Republican Gov. John Kasich's expansion of Medicaid provided health care coverage to 700,000 Ohioans, widened the reach of lifesaving opioid treatments and saved Ohio money. Among the biggest beneficiaries: low-income, working Ohioans in largely Republican parts of the state.

GOP critics ignore that more than half those getting health care through the expansion live in counties that voted for Donald Trump for president last November.

Trying to upend Ohio's Medicaid expansion is simply misguided.

Yet, in a Monday speech in Cleveland, Taylor, a suburban Akron Republican, took on her boss, Kasich, in vowing to end Ohio's Medicaid expansion if she becomes governor.

At the same time, Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger is weighing a possible vote to try to override Kasich's veto of a provision in the state budget that would freeze Medicaid expansion in Ohio.

Taylor, who has long opposed Obamacare but is less well-known than some of her GOP opponents, may be trying to raise her profile with Republican voters.

House Republicans, for their part, may hope an anti-Medicaid-expansion vote will "out-Republican" potential primary rivals. Many of Ohio's General Assembly districts are so GOP-friendly that whoever wins in May likely will be elected the following November.

In the Statehouse's me-first political logic, what are 700,000 Ohioans?

What a sadly narrow and flawed view. For the sake of Ohio and its residents, the state's Medicaid expansion should be preserved.

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In about 60 weeks, Ohio will elect its next governor. Between now and then, you'll hear a lot about programs, platforms - and "philosophy." In terms of Ohio politics, those big words mean exactly nothing.

Politicking in Ohio isn't about ideals. It's about deals: Who gets what, and how, and when.

The successful candidate for governor is the one who lassos more big-city donors and Statehouse lobbies and interest groups than his or her competitors do. True, a given bloc of Ohioans may want a governor to do this, that or the other thing. But, in the main, those (stated) goals are cheers or slogans.

Still, those groups, rivals though they are, different though they may be, do have lots in common: First, when they call Columbus to get something, or stop something, or gripe, they want someone who knows their names to answer the phone. Second, they want to win the occasional contract, or appropriation, and pass the occasional bill, to prove to their bosses, stockholders or members that they deserve their fat paychecks and lush expense accounts, because, hey, they're big shots at the Statehouse.

True, big-picture-wise, real money's at stake. What Ohioans pay for gas and electricity and (indirectly) insurance is determined at the Statehouse or around Capitol Square. So is the carve-up over tax policy - who gets stuck. And for how much. And that's where "issue politics" come in - as a smokescreen.

For insiders, that's the virtue of "issues." When people get riled about, say, same-sex marriage or SNAP (food-stamp) clients buying steaks, or abortion access, the insiders can quietly shift Ohio's tax burden from the haves to the have-nots, or let utilities boost their rates.

Twenty years ago, in the fiscal year that ended in June 1997, Ohio's state income tax, which is based on a person's ability to pay, made up about 46 percent of the major taxes the state collected. Meanwhile, the state sales tax, which is based on the price of goods and services, including many necessities, made up about 40 percent of the state government's major tax receipts.

By last June 30, at the end of fiscal year 2017, the state income tax provided only 38 percent of the major state taxes the state collects - while the sales tax, a tax on consumption, made up about 51 percent of major-tax receipts.

That is, Ohioans buying clothes and shoes for their children - necessities - are shouldering a bigger share of statewide taxes. Ohioans paying the state income tax, a tax whose rates are geared to a person's ability to pay, are shouldering a smaller share.

If that tax shift was aimed at spurring a boom, someone got conned. But not the big shots.

Now, in fairness, Ohio politicians did have some priorities over those 20 years: The General Assembly tried to ban gay marriage (even before voters did), seeks today to limit abortion access, and may yet succeed in kicking 700,000 low-income Ohioans off Medicaid (and stiff hospitals and doctors). And the legislature strives to make sure gun owners can take concealed firearms anywhere, any time. How's that for economic development?

So, as Campaign 2018 approaches, you'll start hearing lots about "issues" from people of both parties who want to run Ohio as your trustees. If you cross paths with one of those candidates, or attend one of his or her events, or encounter a door-to-door canvasser, hold up a wallet, purse or checkbook. What's inside it, or isn't, is the statewide issue in Ohio today - the only issue.

Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.

To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-999-4689

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Although both selections show wolves, the CFA and CCAC selected different designs for the 2019 quarter dollar honoring the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. Shown here is the CFA selection.

Elements from a Spanish Colonial real coin appear on the design selected by both the CFA and CCAC for the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park quarter dollar.

For the War in the Pacific National Historical Park quarter dollar, the CFA recommends that the background of the design above right should be substituted for the background on the design above left.

For the American Memorial Park coin for the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, the CFA and CCAC recommend the same design.

For the Lowell National Historical Park quarter dollar for Massachusetts, the CFA recommended a design not selected by the CCAC in its review.

The designs recommended by the CFA for the Office of Strategic Services congressional gold medal are the same ones recommended by the CCAC and preferred by the OSS Society.

The Commission of Fine Arts and Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee agreed on the design choices for the OSS congressional gold medal.

Proposed designs for five 2019 America the Beautiful quarter dollars and a congressional gold medal were recommended Sept. 20 by the Commission of Fine Arts.

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee reviewed the same proposed designs the day before. The two panels agreed on some choices for designs and recommended different choices for other designs.

Did you buy a winner or a loser from the U.S. Mint? Also in this weeks print issue of Coin World, we not only learn more about rare coins, but collectible rare cars as well.

For the Lowell National Historical Park quarter dollar for Massachusetts, the CFA recommended a design that depicts a mill girl working at a bobbin battery machine, with a view of Lowell, including the clock tower, through the window. The design is different from the one recommended by the CCAC.

For the American Memorial Park coin for the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, the CFA selected a design that features a Chamorro boy saluting the American flag while on the shoulder of a soldier, at the Memorial Court of Honor and Flag Circle. The memorial honors the sacrifice made by those who lost their lives in the Marianas Campaign during World War II. The CCAC recommended the same design, though it recommends some modifications.

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For the coin reflecting Guams War in the Pacific National Historical Park, the CFA recommended a design, while requesting a modification to include elements from a second design.

The primary recommended design juxtaposes a U.S. Marine planting the American flag into the sands of Guam on the day the American forces arrived and the present-day Memorial Day Flag display at Asan Beach. The second design portrays a wave of American forces coming ashore at Asan Bay, strengthening the number of troops on the island in the fight for the island of Guam and its eventual liberation (the CCAC recommended this design). The CFA recommends the background from the second design be substituted for the background of the primary preferred design.

For the Texas coin reflecting San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, the CFA-recommended design uses elements of the Spanish Colonial real coin, in its iconography and composition of four quadrants, to pay tribute to the missions. The CCAC recommended the same design for the coin.

For the 2019 quarter dollar representing the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho, the CFA opted for a design featuring a pair of wolves at the rivers edge. Behind them, trees grip the rocky slope, and steep cliffs meet the rivers edge. The CCACs recommendation differs, though it, too, shows a wolf in a forest setting.

Gold medal

The CFA recommended the same designs for the congressional gold medal recognizing the World War II exploits of the Office of Strategic Services that the CCAC favored Sept. 19 and that are also preferred by the OSS Society.

The obverse illustrates the letters OSS with each letter partially revealing and partially concealing the silhouettes of three figures.

The recommended reverse features the OSS spearhead inscribed with code words related to important OSS missions and agents.
The CCAC loved the use of symbolism in this design for the 2019 Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts. The panels selection shows a mill girl, weaving shuttle in hand, its stylized thread flowing from a millstreams water.

Members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee expressed delight Sept. 19 that the U.S. Mints artists are moving toward more symbolic designs as they endorsed proposals for the 2019 America the Beautiful quarter dollars.

This is what weve been asking for, said sculptor Heidi Wastweet of Seattle as the panel backed a design filled with symbolism to commemorate the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.

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The park, according to the parks website, celebrates how water-powered textile mills catapulted the nation  into an uncertain new industrial era.

To celebrate the same on the reverse of a quarter dollar, the panels selection shows a mill girl, weaving shuttle in hand, its stylized thread flowing from a millstreams water.

This hit all the marks in a beautiful way, Wastweet said at the meeting.

Did you buy a winner or a loser from the U.S. Mint? Also in this weeks print issue of Coin World, we not only learn more about rare coins, but collectible rare cars as well.

That was a sentiment repeated several times during the meeting.

Donald Scarinci, the panels senior member who presided over the meeting, credited a recent session that CCAC members had with Mint artists in Philadelphia for the improved designs.

It makes me feel very good, said the New Jersey lawyer, noting that the artists took the committees suggestions seriously.

The artists are hearing us, agreed Erik Jansen of Washington state as the panel gushed over the 15 designs suggested to honor the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park in Texas.

The committee backed a highly praised design that was largely based on the Spanish Colonial silver real, a coin that was widely used in the countrys early years. The endorsed design shows the four quadrants of the Spanish coin with symbols of the missions, the Spanish heraldic lion, wheat farming and the use of irrigation water.

Other designs in this group won high praise from CCAC members.

This is the best group in the whole pile, Scarinci said.

We cant go wrong, said Robert Hoge, a numismatic curator.

A fantastic packet, Wastweet said.

Well thought out, said Thomas J. Uram, a Pennsylvania collector.

During its meeting, the CCAC backed designs for four 2019 quarter dollars and sent one back to the Mint for refinements.

The panel urged the Mint to enlarge the figures of a young Chamorro boy and a soldier standing in the foreground of a view of the Memorial Court of Honor at the American Memorial Park on Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. The design changes were left to the Mint but the committee said it would like to review the revisions in October.

For another Pacific island territory, Guam, the panel endorsed a design showing an infantryman landing on the island in 1944 to liberate it from Japanese forces.

This coin will commemorate Guams War in the Pacific National Historical Park.

The CCAC rejected several designs aimed at displaying the biodiversity of the park, noting they had not been able to get Treasury officials to approve a design that featured a turtle near a mill in another park.

We dont have a good turtle record, said Mary Lannin of California, urging the panel to save our turtle for another time.

The committee did turn to wildlife for an Idaho quarter dollar to celebrate the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.

Told that some Idaho officials were not keen on featuring wolves on the coin, the panel nonetheless backed a design that the Mint said shows a howling wolf found far from human habitation, looking skyward at the stars and surrounded by tall conifers.

Wolves were featured on 10 of the 22 proposed designs, which delighted numismatic editor Dennis Tucker of Atlanta. He predicted children would be thrilled by the wolf quarter.

OSS Medal Symbolic

The CCAC also voiced praises for members of the OSS Society for their support in refining designs of a congressional gold medal to honor the Office of Strategic Services for its secret activities backing Allied Forces during World War II. The panel voted overwhelmingly to endorse the groups recommendation for a medal obverse that would feature OSS in large letters. The silhouette of a woman in civilian garb appears in the O; a paratrooper, in the first S; and a man in a suit in the second S. The years 19421944 appear under the lettering.

The reverse of the medal bears the organizations symbol, a spear overprinted with the names and operations of some of the agencys most famous members. The 109 in the center, for example, was the code name of OSS founder Gen. William Donovan.

Looking at all the letters on the reverse, Scarinci, a medals specialist, asked the obvious.

Is there a code in there? he asked society president Charles T. Pinck.

No, Pinck said with a laugh, but I thought about it.

Both the Commission of Fine Arts and the CCAC had recommended other designs for the medal at meetings earlier this year.

But Pinck said his group was moved by some of the committee members comments about those designs and decided to change its recommendations.

The design recommendations for both the medals and coins will go to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has the final say on what designs go on the nations coins and medals.

Scarinci served as chair of the meeting because Treasury Department officials had not yet approved Mary Lannins extension as the head of the committee.

A San Rafael, California, resident and former public television producer, she was nominated for the committee by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA.

The Trump administration also has a number of other Treasury openings to fill, including that of Mint director. After the meeting, Scarinci told Cold World: I was told to be prepared to serve as chair for todays meeting because the secretarys office has not yet approved Mary to be the chair.
Fall classes start Wednesday at Albanys Christian Homeschool Co-Op, and all classes still have spaces available.

Classes at 10 a.m. include wood carving, fun arts and crafts, and foundations (preschool/kindergarten/first grade). The wood-carving class will be taught by Dan Moreland, one of the master carvers of the Albany Carousel. The foundations class demonstrates for parents and grandparents how to teach children to read at home.

Chapel takes place at 11 a.m., followed by the 11:30 classes: first-year Spanish, scratch programming, creating in the kitchen, and gym/PE for littles. The kitchen class is an all-inclusive approach to providing a diverse range of foods that people with food sensitivities and allergies can enjoy; children will learn nutrition, substitutions and skills for cooking and baking preparation.

Lunch is at 12:30 p.m., followed by the 1 p.m. classes: hands-on science, art (drawing and painting) and nursery playtime.

Most classes are free; some have a materials fee or supply list. There are also annual dues to cover the cost of the church use and insurance. Classes take place Wednesdays at Calvary Community Church on Knox Butte Road, and all except wood carving are taught by co-op student parents.

Details and online registration are available at http://bit.ly/2w7RZOp, or call Christine DeVries at 541-990-3416.
CORNWALL, Ontario  For the second year in a row, the Cornwall Lions Club are showcasing the perks of being quick in bedin their annual Bed Race, that is.

Taking place this Saturday, Sept. 23, the weather held up beautifully as teams lined up along Pitt Street between First and Second Street.

With four runners, a bed, and a rider, the goal of the race was simple; cross the finish line with the rider intact and hands on the bed at all times. Other than that, participants were free to race however they felt comfortable.

With 22 teams competing in this years race, Lions Club Chairman, Kibby Lutz says that theyll likely be needing more beds next year.

Its definitely growing, said Lutz. This year, we have a lot more kids than last year. Its definitely taking off.

Lutz says he got the idea from an event previously held through the hospital, and decided to bring the bed races back to the city.

The event provides an enjoyable means raising funds, with every penny supporting a local cause.

Its fun  its a nice afternoon downtown, said Lutz. Its hardly a serious competition.

There will be a $400 prize for the winning youth team, with a post-competition spaghetti dinner and dance taking place at the Nights of Columbus Hall.
CORNWALL, Ontario  This past summer will be one never forgotten by FSgt Brendan McDonald, who earned his Glider Pilot Wings through the Royal Canadian Air Cadet program. FSgt McDonald, a member with 325 Cornwall Kiwanis Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron, here in Cornwall, was one of serval selected across the country to receive a scholarship and training through the Department of National Defense, all at no cost. McDonald had the opportunity to train at the Debert Cadet Flying Centre, in Nova Scotia.

Flying has been a life-long passion for FSgt McDonald. This passion is what brought him to the air cadet program, where he had the opportunity to learn some basic aviation training including subjects such as meteorology, aircraft structures and maintenance, engines and aviation law. His training through additional winter and summer training programs with cadets allowed him to advance this knowledge. All of these additional courses are provided as an optional addition to the air cadet program, with local programs run by aviation enthusiasts and volunteers from Cornwall and area.

McDonald has been studying hard the last few years. The application for a glider scholarship begins with an entry exam provided through Transport Canada. A minimum threshold must be met before a cadets may continue in the selection process which selects the cadets based on merit, cadet participation, qualifications, interviews and even school marks.

My first solo was the highlight of my life and encourages me to keep pursuing a career in aviation. Everyone on the airfield deserved and worked hard to be there said McDonald after being asked what his favourite part of the training was this past summer. A solo is a flight in which no instructor is present in the aircraft.

A tradition for cadets who complete their first solo is either a dunking in a river or cold water poured over them, alongside their instructor. McDonald remembers this ritual fondly as he got to take a dunk in a river alongside the airfield with his instructor and several course mates.

McDonald had a not-so-common opportunity to train outside of Central Region, giving him an opportunity to meet new friends and see new places.

The course is fast paced with classroom and air training Monday to Saturday for six weeks, with most days being 12 hour days. A lot of material and skills are learned over this time.

When asked more about his experience, McDonald replied We had many opportunities this summer such as working with experts from every aspect of aviation, truly a pleasure to work with. We also had the chance to fly in a Sea King helicopter based off of Shearwater, I am pursuing a career to be a helicopter pilot myself and could not have been any happier.

The graduation ceremony at the end of the course sees successful cadets receive their wings and licence from Transport Canada. At this summers graduation parade in Debert, a special guest was present to hand the well-earned wings to the cadet; Brigadier General Kelly Woiden. BGen Woiden is the commander for the newly minted formation from DND: National Cadets and Canadian Junior Rangers Support Group.

Whats next for McDonald? Just ask him and hell tell you Next summer I want to do the power pilot scholarship and then off to post-secondary with the military. I dont know where Ill end up but I will for certain fly until I grow old

For youth aged 12-18, with an interest in the military or aviation, the Cornwall air cadets parade Wednesday evenings from 6:15-9pm at the Cornwall Armoury. Training and uniforms are free. More information can be found at 325aircadets.com.

The squadron will soon be entering its 75th training year, having training thousands of local youth from Cornwall and surrounding area. The squadron is proudly sponsored by the Cornwall Kiwanis Club and Royal Canadian Air Force Association Wing 424.
This is about a specific blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment from Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade that is either a random accident or the most unsettling sight gag in cinema history. And when we say "unsettling," keep in mind that this series already consists of jaunty adventures in which the enemies are real genocidal monsters from history, who are on more than one occasion gruesomely thwarted by the vengeful God of the Old Testament. It actually gets weirder the more you think about it. If the part of the Bible about the Almighty melting the faces of anyone who touches his fancy box is true, what about the rest of it? Did Indy spend the next several months after those events in a daze, wondering if he should be out stoning adulterers to death?

Anyway, in the third film, Jones finds out that the Holy Grail is a real, magical artifact, which presumably means the New Testament is true too, along with things like the concept of eternal damnation and impending Armageddon. Sure, lots of people have faith, but it's another thing to have actually seen Jehovah melt someone's face off right in front of you. It would definitely make it harder to masturbate.

So in that third film, the protagonist finds himself in Hatay (now part of Turkey), in an ancient temple facing three booby traps (it's well-known that while Jesus was a "carpenter," what he built were primarily booby traps). The theme of the traps is that only true Christians will be able to get through safely without being dismembered, apparently a symbolic representation of how getting into Heaven works.
Face Off

While Apple fans will need to wait a bit longer to get their hands on the iPhone X, the iPhone and 8 and iPhone 8 Plus started rolling out to customers on Friday. The devices come to market during a year that's already seen a number of major launches in smartphones, including Samsung's Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus in the spring. How do the larger-screened models of the Apple and Samsung smartphone lines stack up? In the following slides, the CRN Test Center compares Apple's iPhone 8 Plus vs. the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus on specs and price.
September 19, 2017

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have increasing difficulties with the West, but his position in the Middle East is not all that easy either.

His regional archenemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, continues to make headway, while his nemesis in Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, remains in power. The Qatar crisis caught him unaware and unsettled him. Meanwhile, he is bracing for the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, who is an enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Erdogan feels a close affinity to. In addition to this, Hamas, which Erdogan also supports strongly, is ready to concede to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his secular Palestinian Authority, while in the background to all of this Iran continues to consolidate its regional position.

Erdogans worst nightmare, however, is the Kurdish question that the Syrian crisis and developments in Iraq have spawned. He is trying to cope with this now by seeking cooperation with leaders he would rather have avoided.

Very little turned out as Erdogan wanted after the now all-but-forgotten Arab Spring. Ahmet Davutoglu, Erdogans overreaching foreign minister at the time, was convinced that Turkey would steer winds of change in the Middle East.

Today, however, Turkey is being steered by events in the region that are beyond its control. As it turned out, Erdogans Islamist agenda  driven by a desire to be a defender of the downtrodden Islamic masses  suited none of the Middle Easts established powers.

Those who backed Erdogan and expected his support against the established order, on the other hand, have mostly been driven from the scene. Erdogan has to deal now with the regions traditional leadership, which opposes his brand of political Islam.

It was not long after the Arab Spring first broke before Erdogan was accused of working for Muslim Brotherhood-led governments to come to power across the region through ballot box victories, similar to that of his own Justice and Development Party (AKP). Ankaras policies in Syria also resulted in Erdogan's being accused of favoring Sunnis over others and engaging in sectarianism.

In the end, Erdogan managed to raise eyebrows both in Saudi Arabia and Iran  the Middle Easts principal rivals  showing that suspicions about him cut across the sectarian divide.

Hasan Koni, a professor of international relations at Istanbuls Kultur University, believes Turkeys mistake was that it mixed up realpolitik and emotions in the Middle East.

Erdogan managed to raise eyebrows both in Saudi Arabia and Iran ... showing that suspicions about him cut across the sectarian divide.

OK, Muslims are being persecuted and human rights are being violated [in the Middle East]. But what are the consequences of the policy I have endorsed regarding these problems? What do I get in return? Koni asked rhetorically in an interview with Hurriyet Daily News published Sept. 18.

With most of his expectations falling by the wayside, Erdogan finds himself now having to engage in diplomatic contortions to regain lost ground in the region. A case in point is his relationship with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

A year ago, he was exchanging barbs with and hurling insults at Abadi after the Iraqi premier demanded that Turkish forces stationed in Bashiqa, near Mosul, be withdrawn, and insisted that Turkey would not be allowed to participate in the liberation of Mosul from the Islamic State (IS).

You must know that we will do what we want, Erdogan retorted defiantly, adding that Abadi was a nobody compared with him and calling on the Iraqi prime minister to know his place.

Turkish troops are still in Bashiqa but have not been allowed to participate in the Mosul operation. Ankara is also not being given the say it wants on how the citys demography will be configured following its liberation. There is also no change in Baghdads position regarding Turkish forces in Iraq.

Erdogan, however, is seeking Abadis support now to prevent the Kurdistan Regional Governments (KRG) independence referendum on Sept. 25. He told reporters on Sept. 17, prior to flying to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting, that he would meet with Abadi in the United States to discuss this matter. Our goal is the same. Our goal is not dividing Iraq, he said.

Ironically, Erdogan has a friendly relationship with KRG President Massoud Barzani, even inviting him to AKP congresses in the past and hosting him in Ankara not so long ago with the KRG flag flying at the airport, much to the anger of Turkish nationalists.

Erdogan has to also tread cautiously with Barzani, given the billions of dollars Turkey invested in northern Iraq  especially in the energy sector. Trying to prevent Kurdish political aspirations in Iraq while balancing his ties with Abadi and Barzani without alienating either will remain a major challenge.

Turkeys ties with Iran are another example. It was only in June that Erdogan, in an attempt to curry favor with Gulf states during a conference in Bahrain, accused Tehran of Persian expansionism, saying this has to be prevented.

Iran has not changed its regional policies since then, but Erdogan is relying on Tehran now to also help with the Kurdish problem, even though the two countries still have major differences over key issues relating to Iraq and Syria.

Erdogan will travel to Tehran in early October for a meeting of the Turkey-Iran High-Level Strategic Council, when the Kurdish issue is expected to be discussed in his talks with President Hassan Rouhani. At around the same time, Turkeys chief of the General Staff, Hulusi Akar, will be in Tehran for talks with his Iranian counterpart, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bakiri, who visited Ankara not so long ago.

Another major challenge for Erdogan is in the Gulf region, where he is trying to balance his ties with Qatar and Saudi Arabia in a way that will enable him to maintain his strong support for Doha against Riyadh and its allies  including military support  while at the same time not undermining Turkeys ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

He toured the Gulf in July in an effort to defuse the Qatar crisis, and although he was received cordially in Saudi Arabia, there was little to suggest that his efforts made any headway. Ankara has since left mediation in this crisis to Kuwait.

In a further sign that Ankara wants to maintain ties with all the Gulf states, Erdogan hosted Qatars Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Ankara last week at around the same time that Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was hosting Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Hamad al-Sabah.

Experts believe, however, that Turkeys normalizing its ties with regional powers to the extent that it can play an important role in the reshaping of the region will take time due to suspicions about Ankaras ultimate motives in the Middle East.

Suha Umar, a former Turkish ambassador to Amman who is retired now, said that Turkey had lost much credibility in the region due to serious policy mistakes. He also believes that Ankara does not have the power of military deterrence or the economic clout it once had in the region.

Turkey today appears to be an unreliable partner in the eyes of many in the Middle East. Every step it takes now should be aimed at overcoming this impression, Umar told Al-Monitor. This, however, will take a long time because the key powers in the region with which Turkey should have cooperated all along have been alienated like never before.

Maintaining that the rational approach Ankara is trying to display now is correct on paper, Umar nevertheless argued that Turkey is unlikely to regain its regional influence under the present administration, given the suspicions its vacillations have resulted in.
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Be afraid, be very afraid because tickets are now on sale for Shocktober Fest at Tulleys Farm - Europe's largest scream park.

The Halloween event returns to the farm in Turners Hill on Saturday, September 30 for a preview night.

It will then be open on 23 various nights throughout the Halloween period until Saturday, November 4 when it culminates in a Finale Night with fireworks.

It's the longest season ever for the spook festival, which has earned the title of the UK's Best Scream Park for 2017 at the industry's ScareCON SCaRs awards.

This freakish festival of ghosts and ghouls isn't for the faint hearted  it's 12A rated and children under 15 must be with an adult at all times.

Because the aim of Shocktober Fest is to scare the living daylights out of you.

If you've never been before and are wondering what all the fuss is about then brace yourself as we fill you in.

The theme this year is based on the fateful tale of a witch found in possession of outlawed Tarot cards.

As she met her flaming end she cursed the land forever  and every October the horrors awaken.

At the heart of Shocktober Fest are eight "haunts".

They are walk-through experiences  or ride-on in the case of one  where actors take you through an interactive production where you will be fully immersed in the action as if your were in a live computer game.

There are special effects, scary surprises and a healthy splattering of comedy.

There's no script so if you are brave enough to dare return, your experience won't be the same.

This year there are two new haunts  Twisted Clowns and VIXI.

Famous faces have been spotted visiting in past years  Jonathan Ross is a regular and Sir Bob Geldof, Shane Richie, Ellie Goulding and Peter Andre have braved it.

There are more than just the haunts.

There will also be some very strange characters walking around the farm.

You might meet the Nurses, Hammer Horrors celebrities the Mummy and Frankenstein's Monster, Clowns with Chainsaws, Mr Rotavator, Fire Breathers, Tia the Tarot Reader and The Usherettes.

For an extra fee you can have a go on the Haunted Runaway Mine Cart simulator, experience the speed of the huge X-Hell-R8 ride and try your aim at Pumpkin Paintball.

There will also be two live music stages and food.

THE HAUNTS

Here is everything you need to know about this year's eight haunts:

Twisted Clowns 3D  New

Mr PanDEMONium and his infamous circus are coming to town. A demonic circus like no other, the band of freaks and showmen conceal their evil nature with sinisterly smeared on make-up and colourful costumes.

But your laughter will soon turn to screams as you realise their insidious intentions. If you venture far enough you may be permitted to see the evil in 3D.

You might remember PanDEMONium's Carnival from last year - this attraction has had a complete overhaul so has a new layout and story for 2017.

The Hellements VIXI  New

You'll walk among the shades and shadows in this horror maze, your senses challenged, your eyesight taken, your head shrouded, with only a rope for guidance.

In an all new story, the Ritual will take you on the darkest path yet.

Deep in the Netherworld, few survive. Will you join the realms of the inglorious dead and be doomed to endure the Hellements forever or will you make it out alive?

You might remember Hellements - The Ritual from last year - this attraction has also had a complete overhaul so has a new layout and story for 2017.

The Coven of 13 The Village

Been here before and think you know what to expect from this haunt? Well, just when you think it's over, more terror awaits on what is a longer experience this year.

The curse of Alice Hemlock is one told by few. A damned soul drowned and buried for witchcraft, her 12 sisters vowed to avenge her unjust death.

It's said they sold their souls so her evil spirit could return to them and, in doing so, cursed the land.

The coven of twelve has often been the darkest, but when joined by their thirteenth sister they are unstoppable.

The Horrorwood Hayride

Dare you explore the abandoned Horrorwood Film Studios on the back of a tractor trailer?

Back in the golden age of cinema, the Horrorwood studios were booming and bursting with life. Now old Horrorwood is bursting with death.

After the terrible incident with the actor who played The Woodsman, the studio was forced to close and the movie sets remained abandoned.

Actors lost their jobs but worst of all, they lost their minds.

And now they act out scenes of their glory days on the old set.

The Colony

The apocalypse has been and gone. Disaster has won. Survival of the most violent has remained.

Fearing nothing but themselves, they join together in a tribe of self-preservation. Only they know the suffering they endured to be here, where brute strength is useless against ruthless violence and where humanity has vanished.

They've earned the right to exist in The Colony. You haven't.

The Chop Shop

Billy-Bob, Billy-Joe and Billy-Ray may seem like three innocent brothers trying to run a family business, but they have a disturbing dark secret.

Those chainsaws aren't just for chopping car parts.

The Cellar

Once an old farm house, The Cellar was due for renovation, until the developers went inexplicably missing.

Others went to look for them, but they too disappeared without a trace.

Strange cries can still be heard from within the building and it's said it's now inhabited by feral and ferocious mutant creatures which stalk and terrify all that dare step into their lair.

Witnesses have reported that this colony of creatures is now larger than ever, and there is another strange and venomous creature that resides with them.

The Creepy Cottage

Throughout the years, the Haunted House has seen a lot of comings and goings and some say many of its previous inhabitants have stuck around, unable to pass over.

That doesn't mean to say the long standing tenants aren't friendly. They'd like you to stay. Stay for a very long time.

The spooks in here believe in a traditional welcome and will show you all around the house  even the winding corridors where the lights don't work, and the rooms where the floor boards have been eaten away by creepy crawlies.

There are a lot of long since passed family members hanging around in there too  you should be prepared for shocks and scares designed to bemuse and bewilder you.

FIREWORKS FESTIVAL

On Saturday, November 4, the fun will come to an end with fireworks set to music from 7pm.

TULLEYS PUMPKIN & SPOOK FEST

Younger children aged from six to 13 can enjoy the fun of Halloween without too much fear during this daytime event.

There will be the new Terror Trail and Twisted Fun House as well as The Horrid Hayride and The Creepy Cottage.

There are activities and attractions in the Pumpkin Patch, you can find your way around the Spooky Trail, take part in the Spook Hunt and join Hilda Hopscotch and Wilfred Wagglewand for spooky stories and more.

Plus there are puppet shows, rides, games, characters wandering around and food and drink.

It's open on Saturday, October 14 and Sunday, October 15 and daily from Saturday, October 21 to Sunday, October 29.

Tickets are priced from 8 to 16 for individuals or 40 to 67 for families.

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Where is it?

Tulleys Farm, Turners Hill, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 4PE

When is it?

Shocktober Fest opens with a preview night on Saturday September 30 and then is open from Friday, October 6 to Saturday, October 7, Thursday, October 12 to Sunday, October 15, Wednesday October 18 to Sunday, October 22, Tuesday, October 24 to Tuesday, October 31 and Thursday, November 2 to Saturday, November 4.

What are the opening times?

The park opens either at 5pm or 6pm and closes at midnight.

How much are tickets?

There are various ticket types including entry to all haunts, fast track and VIP unlimited haunts, as well as tickets for those who don't want to go into the haunts. But regular XScream Tickets for all haunts range from 24 to 40 for individuals.

Where can I buy tickets from and find out more?

You can visit www.halloweenattractions.co.uk

What's the phone number in case I want to call?

01343 7184
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The huge new 68-storey Croydon skyscraper which will become Britain's second tallest building will go up whether or not Westfield is built, developers behind the plans have said.

Members of Croydon Council's planning committee unanimously approved plans for One Lansdowne Road, a double tower skyscraper with structures of 68 and 41 storeys, linked by 11-storey podium structure, to be built in the town centre on Thursday night.

The development is now subject to the plans being signed off by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

The website for the development promotes the fact that the site is short walk of the proposed Westfield shopping centre  despite the fact that work to build it has not yet started almost four years after initial proposals for the mall were approved.

David Hudson, chief executive of Guildhouse UK Limited, which proposed the plans in conjunction with Rosepride, has told The Advertiser that he would press for construction regardless of how plans for the shopping centre progress.

"The building is going ahead and this is not dependent on [Westfield] at all," he said.

"Of course, Westfield would be extremely exciting for the area and great news for the local economy, but the two projects are not reliant on each other."

If approved a total of 794 homes, office space, a health club with a swimming pool and retail shops will all be built as part of the scheme. 170 of the proposed homes are listed as affordable housing, with 55 set to be shared ownership and the remaining 115 rented out for subsidised rates.

Visitors are expected to be able to enjoy views across Croydon and London from a bar, a restaurant and a free public viewing gallery on the 64th to 66th floors by 2022, and a rear plaza complete with a fountain and seating is also part of the plans.

Mr Hudson also explained that he does not think the fact that there will be shops and eateries in One Lansdowne will mean that the town centre is "over-saturated."

He added: "Presuming that Westfield is built, the amount of retail inside the development is a great deal less by comparison  the units are all intented for A1, A2 or A3 use as things such as bars, cafes or restaurants, and the majority of the ground floor space goes on the three residential cores."

The initial masterplan for the 1.4 billion redevelopment of the Whitgift Centre to transform it into Westfield was approved by councillors back in 2013.

But the developers have since "enhanced" their plans to include new homes, a flagship Marks & Spencer store and an IMAX cinema.

The latest target is for demolition work on the Whitgift Centre to start next year - but before that can happen a crucial planning meeting needs to be held in order to give the project the go-ahead.

This meeting was scheduled for April 27 but was called off due to the "finalisation of outstanding negotiations". It was then rescheduled for June 14 - but this too was cancelled.

This sparked concerns from Croydon Council leader Tony Newman over how the delays could impact other businesses and developments.

However, this is not the case with the One Lansdowne development, Mr Hudson said.

When built, the 68-storey block will stand at 236 metres tall and will tower over the 50-storey Canary Wharf.

Only The Shard in central London , which stands at 95 floors and 310 metres, would be a taller building in the whole of Britain.

The skyscraper would also easily overtake the 43-storey Saffron Square as the tallest building in Croydon.

How tall will One Lansdowne be?

Responding to concerns regarding the building's appearance, Mr Hudson said: "I think it is an incredibly beautiful building designed by an amazing architect  it is visually striking as well as being relatively cheap and easy to build.

"It's an affordable tall tower for Croydon which adds drama and interest to the skyline as well as boasting affordability.

"I feel that it is a design which embodies the values of Croydon rather than the tastes and needs of central London."

He added: "With the highest bar and restaurant in London and a viewing gallery open to the public, this really puts Croydon on the map.

'The great challenge for Croydon is to change perceptions and this scheme will help it to become a destination in its own right'

"The great challenge for Croydon is to change perceptions and this scheme will help it to become a destination in its own right. This will help to achieve that because, in my opinion, it will be a world-famous building."

It is hoped that work will begin on demolishing the existing buildings on the site by next summer and the estimated build time is just under five years.

Among the much-needed homes being delivered there will be 125 studio flats, 318 one-bedroom units, 279 two-bedroom units, 64 three-bedroom units and eight four-bedroom units with 21 per cent earmarked as affordable homes.

The Grade A office space is also a welcome addition to the town's offering at a time when the HMRC have just moved into a regional centre on the nearby Ruskin Square site.

Mr Hudson added: "The only other major office scheme being planned in Croydon is the one being provided by Stanhope Schroders. Croydon is a great commercial location, there is currently a lack of Grade A space so we are very optimistic that our scheme will attract major new employers from central London.

"One Lansdowne will also very much be part of the community with retail and leisure at ground level and the bar and restaurant on the upper floors as well as the public viewing gallery.

"It is very rare for a project of this scale to receive more letters of support than letters of objection.

"You will see it from Piccadilly to Brighton. So for just two people to object to is pretty remarkable."
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A man in hospital with a "slash wound" after police were called to a second reported stabbing in the same area of South Norwood in just over 24 hours.

The Metropolitan Police were called to Albert Road at about 9.15pm last night (Friday, September 22).

On arrival officers found a wounded man in nearby Harrington Road.

A Met spokesman said: "Police were called at approximately 9.15pm on Friday (September 22) to Albert Road in South Norwood following reports of a stabbing.

"Officers attended and found a 31-year-old man suffering from a slash wound on Harrington Road.

"He was taken to a south London hospital by the London Ambulance Service.

"He remains in a stable condition; his injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

"Enquiries continue. There have been no arrests."

This follows a stabbing in South Norwood on Thursday (September 21) afternoon. Emergency services were initially called to Archer Road, in South Norwood, at about 5pm following the first reports of the stabbing.

Met Police and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service (LAS) attended and found a male victim on Harrington Road suffering from a stab wound to his leg.

The victim, who is "believed to be in his late teens", was taken to a south London hospital, where his condition is described by police as "non life-threatening".

Anyone with information about either incident is urged to contact the Met Police by calling 101. Alternatively ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Wheres the magic in dating someone in the digital age  when you can learn all about your date even before meeting?

Thats an important question in Sex with Strangers, on stage at the Westport Playhouse through Oct. 14.

The plot, says the playhouse: Ethan, a young blogger-turned bestselling author, meets Olivia, a struggling 30-something novelist, in this funny and thought-provoking drama. Playwright Laura Eason (Netflixs House of Cards) explores the complicated new world in which every past relationship lives forever on the web, providing an entertaining, up-to-date take on love in the digital age.

A bodice-ripper with a brain" is the way the Washington Post describes the drama.

It stars Chris Ghaffari, as Ethan, who previously appeared in What the Butler Saw at the playhouse. A 2016 graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Ghaffari recently starred as Romeo in Darko Tresnjaks modern adaptation of Shakespeares Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage.

Jessica Love, as Olivia, is making her Westport playhouse debut; she trained at Juilliard in New York. She has had many stage roles, including in The Snow Geese and The River on Broadway. On television she has been featured on The Blacklist and Redemption.

Sex with Strangers premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2011. In a previous interview, playwright Eason said she tried to capture the porous boundary between private life and public image in the digital age.

I feel like its such an interesting time now, Eason has said. People who are in their early 20s have, for the most part, lived a lot of their life online. They know things about people before they meet them, they Google everybody ... Those of us who are not in our early 20s anymore came of age at a time where the internet was not so prominent. The experience of encountering someone totally new to you, without being able to read up about them or find out information about them meant that you could meet them in the moment. That experience is going away. Encountering someone really fresh is going away, she added.

Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport. $50-$20. Sept. 26-Oct. 14. 203-227-4177.
FAIRFIELD  The Fairfield Regional Fire School will host two separate open house events to show interested residents what goes on at the school.

The open house will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the school, located at 205 Richard White Way  formerly 205 One Rod Highway.
The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states  including Connecticut  that hackers targeted their systems last year, although in most cases the systems were not breached.

The government told The Associated Press last year that more than 20 states were targeted by hackers believed to be Russian agents before the 2016 elections. But for many states, the calls Friday from the Department of Homeland Security were the first official confirmation of whether their states were on the list.

The Associated Press contacted every state election office on Friday. While not all of them responded immediately, those that said they were targeted were Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

In Connecticut, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said, the hackers attempts to breach security failed.

I am happy to report, with great pride in the hard work and dedication of our IT security professionals, that DHS confirmed that the attempted Russian intrusion into our online voter registration database was stopped by our intrusion detection system, Merrill said.

This successful defense of the integrity of our online voter registration system is good news for Connecticut, but it underlines the threat posed by foreign agents seeking to disrupt U.S. elections and sow the seeds of doubt in the integrity of our electoral process.

It is clear that Congress needs to act swiftly, Merrill said, both to investigate and publicize Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and to appropriate the necessary funds so that our state and local governments have the resources they need to adequately protect our election infrastructure.

The government did not say who was behind the hacking attempts or provide details about what had been sought. But election officials in three states said Friday the attempts could be linked to Russia.

The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the states systems were targeted by Russian government cyber actors.

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states, the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. The targets included voter registration systems but not vote tallying software. Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks but most were unsuccessful.

Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems.

Colorado said the hacking wasnt quite a breach.

Its really reconnaissance by a bad guy to try and figure out how we would break into your computer, said Trevor Timmons, a spokesman for the Colorado secretary of states office. Its not an attack. I wouldnt call it a probe. Its not a breach, its not a penetration.

The disclosure to the states comes as a special counsel probes whether there was any coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Russia and associates of Donald Trump.

Trump, a Republican who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, has called the Russia story a hoax. He says Russian President Vladimir Putin vehemently denied the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.
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ANSONIA  What appeared to be a done deal this summer for a downtown police station and senior citizen center now seems headed to court.

And Corporation Council John P Marini said there is a good chance the city may seek to take both the former Farrel Corporation headquarters at 65 Main Street and the adjoining parking lot through eminent domain.

Wed rather reach a voluntary agreement that is fair to both sides than go through eminent domain, Marini said. But the city is not going to be bullied ... the city is not going to be taken advantage of.

But Vasilios Lefkaditis, a partner in property owner Shaw Growth Ventures of Berne, N.Y., said hes not bullying anyone and is all for working through the one or two sticking points.

Id be willing to negotiate the final deal in front of TV cameras on live stream, Lefkaditis said Friday. I guarantee you the city would not accept that.

So whats the issue?

Lefkaditis said the citys $3 million offer is not the problem. But he thought the $2 million blight lien on another property at 501 East Main Street  which Shaw hopes to turn into 200 apartments  was resolved as part of the deal.

So with talks faltering, Lefkaditis said, Theres no question I am entertaining other suitors for 65 Main Street (the former Farrel headquarters), he said. Id rather work with the city on a deal which in the longer term would be very pretty for everyone.

In the meantime, Lefkaditis confirmed the public is no longer allowed to park in the 81 spaces of Shaws downtown lot next to the former Farrel headquarters.

My insurance company advised me this is a liability issue, he said. The cars will be towed.

But those spaces are important to the downtown restaurant row, particularly patrons of the Bangkok Room, Copper City Bar and Grill, Crave and Massiminos Pizzeria. And even with those 81 spaces, Main Street parking on weekend nights is a challenge.

As a result of the lots closure, the Board of Aldermen convened a special meeting Thursday night. After coming out of that session, 2nd Ward Aldermen Lorie Vaccaro proposed a resolution which passed unanimously. It allows the board to offer Shaw $9,000 for a three-month easement to use the parking lot. That price is based on an appraisal.

Marini said if Shaw rejects the offer, the city intends to seek a court-ordered temporary easement. That process would involve filing papers in Milford Superior court along with a $9,000 check. Approval would take at least 35 days. That means the lot would not reopen for public use until at least late October.

Nine thousand dollars is well below fair market value, Lefkaditis said. But thats not a deal breaker ... I want to get this entire deal done.

That may take some doing. Next month, Marini said, the Aldermen may take it a step further  approving eminent domain to take the Farrel headquarters. A fair market appraisal is expected to be completed in time for the meeting.

Since the property would be used for a police station, a senior citizen center and other municipal office, and the lot for public use, Marini described it as a legal textbook case for eminent domain approval.

I thought we were there, said Lefkaditis. I dont know their motivation. I dont know their endgame. If they are threatening to go nuclear, then lets go.
In the historic budget impasse of 2017, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has never had more power.

His promised veto of a mostly Republican budget could send the General Assembly back to square one. There is virtually no way the 151 House members and 36 senators can cobble together the two-thirds needed to override the veto.

And with no re-election on his horizon, Malloy, whose February budget would have imposed a controversial $400 million in teacher pension payments onto the town and cities, doesnt have anything left to lose.

This makes the governor potentially stronger, but it depends on what he does, said Tom Swan, a Democratic political operative who is executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group. Hes not afraid to take a tough stand.

Leadership has to be circumspect, at this point, said Ronald Schurin, a professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. This is the period when you make deals, but both parties have their ideological wings and their pragmatic wings. At the end of the day, the pragmatic wings will win out, because they depend heavily on state dollars.

The governor has a very strong hand, said Brian Flaherty, senior vice president for public policy for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. The governor has the leverage and the will.

So when the bipartisan budget talks resume in the Capitol on Tuesday, Malloy will be at the head of the table, holding the deck of cards, with the goal of crafting a final, two-year, $39 billion budget that addresses a $3.5 billion deficit and can win simple majorities in a fractured Legislature.

Theres a lot at stake in the last of the 50 states to approve a new spending package.

October looms

If they cannot beat the Oct. 1 deadline, the second quarter of the fiscal year will signal the release of the states major form of school aid, Education Cost Sharing. But without a new budget, Malloys executive order would terminate ECS funding for dozens of higher-income school districts from Bethel to Greenwich, Newtown to Redding, Shelton, Stratford, Trumbull and virtually every coastal town from Darien to Milford, excluding only Norwalk and Bridgeport.

The Republican bill, which passed the Senate 21-15 and the House 77-73, would provide for $2.7 billion in total municipal aid in the first year. Malloys executive order would pay for only $1.5 billion. So there will be growing pressure on lawmakers to cut a deal to allow some level of state aid to flow back home.

The Republican budget, passed with votes by three Democrats in the Senate and five in the House, would cut the University of Connecticut by at least $244 million over the biennium, compared to the $100 million reduction proposed by legislative Democrats and Malloy.

I think we have very serious differences with Republicans about their numbers and their ability to do some of the things theyre trying to do, Malloy said Friday after an hour-long meeting with Republican leaders. I respect them. I want to work with them to get a budget, if its possible.

He said the GOP document contains legal liabilities and fundamental mistakes that he expects to highlight in the days ahead.

Knee-capping UConn

The governor doesnt accept the premise that the budget battle has come down to Malloy versus the General Assembly.

Theres common ground, he said. Listen, there are things in the Republican budget that I could absolutely support  some of the assistance for local government, for instance. On the other hand, violating tax laws I cant agree with, violating labor laws I cant agree with. Knee-capping UConn I cant agree with. Sorry.

Swan, the consumer and environmental advocate, said Republican lawmakers seem shell-shocked by the backlash against their package  including hundreds of people who rallied at the Capitol  that is bound to continue.

In their euphoria last weekend, the Republicans failed to pivot and sell their budget, and its given Democrats a new sense of purpose, Swan said. Now after the pushback on all of these cuts, the question is whether the previous Democratic budget is adequate.

The power of the bully pulpit

Schurin, the UConn professor, said history indicates three likely results.

There will be some compromises, some cuts, some kicking of cans down the road, he said, adding that towns favor the GOP bill because it continues the levels of aid that Malloy wants to disrupt by forcing them to pay, for the first time, an employers share of local teacher pensions.

The town negotiates the high salaries of their teachers, so why should taxpayers elsewhere be on the hook? said Schurin, who this semester is teaching a class in education policy.

What everyone ought to be thinking about is, what is next? said Flaherty, a former longtime Republican member of the House from Watertown. What ought to happen, now that the presumption of a Democratic budget passing is gone, the governor should say: Now are we ready to take the pieces of the different budgets they dont really like and put them in the right direction?

He has the bully pulpit, Flaherty said. He he has the one voice. Hes used them both in his entire tenure. Connecticut companies, and those thinking of coming here, are watching. So is their workforce.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
WESTPORT  Two New York men will face forgery charges after police say they were caught with counterfeit bills.

Jamel D. Greene, 22, of Bronx, was charged with two counts of first-degree forgery, sixth-degree larceny, interfering with an officer, conspiracy to commit sixth-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, police said.

Police also charged Patmore Proctor, 26, of Harlem, with two counts of first-degree forgery, conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery and conspiracy to commit sixth-degree larceny.

Westport police responded to the Trader Joes at 400 Post Road East Sept. 19 around 3:40 p.m. for a call that a customer used, what store employees identified as, a counterfeit $100 bill.

The store had been made aware earlier that day that men had used counterfeit bills at other Trader Joes locations in southern Connecticut, police said.

Employees informed police that a man, later identified as Greene, purchased soap with the counterfeit bill and received $88.87 in change. The employees were able to tell police they saw him with a second man, later identified as Proctor, and provided descriptions of the two suspects.

Police located Proctor at a nearby CVS store, attempting to make a purchase. Police said he tried to hide two counterfeit $100 bills in his wallet when officers approached him.

Greene was located shortly after, police said, and initially refused commands to take his hands out of his pockets. Police said he resisted arrest when officers tried to put him in handcuffs. They found one counterfeit $100 bill on him.

Police said Proctor and Greene were found to be in possession of valid bills that they had gotten as change after making purchases with counterfeit bills.

Both bonds were set at $5,000, police said, ahead of Sept. 27 court dates.
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 ...
I am a retired newspaperman. I am 69 and live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 45 years, Lou Ann. We grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.

More on who I am is here.

Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com
Moors murderer Ian Brady was jailed for life more than half a century ago.

For 32 years before his death, the serial child killer was detained not in a prison, but  after being diagnosed as a psychopath  at high-security Ashworth psychiatric hospital.

The inquest this week heard that Brady was hostile towards hospital staff throughout his time at Ashworth and that he displayed demanding and entitled behaviour.

Dr Noir Thomas, a consultant psychiatrist at Ashworth, said Bradys detention was largely marked by opposition to his care and treatment, allegations of brutality, and serial complaints.

'The elderly and defenceless are left without food or water and are abused and neglected'

Brady claimed to be on hunger strike but was secretly eating and would repeatedly pull the feeding tube out of his body, forcing nurses to reinsert it. Yet hospital staff  who have described him as an exceptionally difficult patient  were meticulous in their care, treating him for severe lung disease, recurrent chest and urinary infections, an enlarged prostate and cataracts.

The result of all this medical attention  costing millions over the decades  is that Brady died aged 79 of natural causes, a dignity denied the five children he and Myra Hindley tortured and killed in the Sixties.

Compare the attention devoted to this monster to the heartless way we treat those who genuinely deserve care in the last years of their lives. Yesterdays revelations about Brady came in the week the Mail exposed once again the shocking level of the crisis in care for the elderly in this country.

Inspectors are called out to deal with four elderly care complaints every day, and enforcement actions against care homes and home helps have increased by a shocking 68 per cent in 12 months.

The elderly and defenceless are left without food or water and are abused and neglected. In one home, the frail were not even bathed or showered for three weeks.

Fifty care firms were fined and four taken to court in 2016/17 after complaints about unsafe care, abuse and not treating people with dignity. More than 100 operators were forced to close down, while four out of ten care homes failed inspections by the Care Quality Commission.

What a terrible indictment of our society. Decent people who have contributed to this country throughout their lives are all too often condemned to sad, undignified deaths in institutions which treat them worse than mass murderers.

Doc's smart move

The third episode of Dr Foster had hardly begun before the dumped doc had revenge sex with her ex-husband Simon

The third episode of Dr Foster had hardly begun before the dumped doc had revenge sex with her ex-husband Simon on the dining table while their emotionally unhinged son Tom was upstairs.

The GP is back on the booze, has already admitted paying for sex and is sleeping with young Toms teacher.

She even tried to video sex with the ex on her smartphone. Something shell regret  or a lucrative move? After all, it didnt do Kim Kardashians career any harm.

Romps: Suzanne Jones plays Dr Gemma Foster in the BBC series

Austerity? Tell it to the marines

One thousand Royal Marines are in the Treasurys sights for defence cuts, reducing their already depleted force of 7,760.

One of the finest elite forces in the world, they have fought for this nation in every major conflict since the Napoleonic Wars.

Their mottos By Sea, By Land. And By God it would be a national disgrace if cost-cutting pen-pushers led us to lose a single one of their green berets. Yes, austerity is being blamed.

As Major-General Julian Thompson, who led 3 Commando Brigade in the Falklands, said: The defence you need is dictated by your enemy, not your economics.

Nadiya's family recipe

Bake Offs darling Nadiya Hussain

Bake Offs darling Nadiya Hussain has suffered crippling panic attacks since she was seven.

Sometimes my monster shouts in my face, other days I can put him in my pocket. Hes always there, she says.

Nadiya, 32, was prescribed drugs but said they deadened her emotions. Whats the point of not feeling anything? Instead, she had her family, husband and children to keep her centred.

How refreshing in an age when many people seem to rely on medication to cure everything.

Last week three British troops, including a major, were told they were cleared of any charges involving the drowning of an Iraqi more than a decade ago.

Now they face a fourth inquiry to satisfy human rights laws. Is it any wonder Army recruitment is at an all-time low?

On the day Wayne Rooney was in court for drink-driving, the lady with whom he shared his drunken escapade turned up for work wearing a mini skirt, teetering like a show pony in stilettoes in the very VW she denied she and the star had cavorted in.

Can she sink any lower?

Nigella Lawsons latest culinary offering is the 26 cookbook At My Table, which includes a recipe for a parma ham, brie and figs toastie.

Crickey, Nigella, you can buy a Breville sandwich toaster for less than that.

And most of us prefer a Breville toastie anyway  buttered on the outside, lashings of deli ham and oozing cheddar. Thats what you get at my table.

Defending a saucy blonde who had sex in a Dominos pizza shop with her boyfriend, her lawyer said: They were in drink and let their exuberant spirits get the better of them.

Next stop, an audition for Love Island.

Westminster wars... The biggest crisis at the Lib Dem conference was when the main hotel ran out of gin. The mystery is how it happened, given that their membership is barely in double figures.

So very sad as Tessa Jowell reveals she is battling brain cancer. Given all the charlatans in Westminster, she has always been a rare politician  genuine, loyal, principled and a great friend to many on both sides of the House. Tessa tweeted: Thank you for so much love and support. More people living longer better lives with cancer. Which is exactly what I wish for you, my friend.

No surprise that more than 100 peers claim their 300 plus expenses a day while not taking part in debates. For most of them, the Lords is just a free posh club to impress cronies.

Labours unctuous deputy leader Tom Watson demands half of all political journalists should be women. I dont think we need any lectures from the Labour Party, which has never had a female leader and whose most senior woman is the hapless Diane Abbott. Tessa Jowell has revealed she is battling brain cancer Advertisement

Cant wait to see comedian Susan Calman, 42, and partner Kevin Clifton on Strictly tonight.

Its the first time the diminutive lesbian has danced with a man for a decade, and she has had some vicious trolling on social media as a result.

For years I thought I was fat and ugly, she responded. Im not and I wont let anyone say I am. Im preparing a beautiful dance for the biggest show on TV. Suck on that haters.

Thats how to deal with trolls. Go for it girl!

Amis misses the point

The once best-selling writer Martin Amis arrives in the UK to share his views on Brexit. It is, he opines, a self-inflicted wound, a retrograde step back into a nostalgic utopia.

It would return to just the sort of England that I dont like, which is the country town, rustic, beer-drinking, family-butcher England. Indeed, that is what most people like about England, Mr Amis, .

But its something a luvvie who flits between chattering-class salons in New York and London will never understand.

The council of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists voted yesterday to try to usher in abortion on demand. Already 650 doctors have voiced their protests.

President Lesley Regan says terminating a foetus should be as easy as removing a bunion. Its Professor Regan whos the carbuncle that needs removing.

British star Riz Ahmed became the first Asian man to win an Emmy for acting in TVs The Night Of.

Ahmed says he almost gave up acting having been insultingly stereotyped playing roles like the Asian shop keeper and the cab driver.

Odd that  because in The Night Of he plays a Muslim driving a cab.
Dear Bel,

I want an honest opinion on something causing me some anxiety. Six years ago I lost my husband after 43 years of marriage. I threw myself into creating a new life, joining various clubs and societies and spending time with family and friends.

I thought that would be the pattern for the rest of my life, but in the past few months I began thinking about how much I missed male company and a one-to-one relationship. Also the physical side of a relationship.

I decided to give online dating a try. Within weeks I met a lovely man who had lost his wife of many years. We hit it off from the start and very quickly we were seeing each other almost every day and soon became intimate.

For genuine reasons he cant stay at my house so if we want to spend the night together it has to be at his house. We go out regularly, I have met his family and friends and have lots in common.

It should be obvious that since we are all so different, men and women will respond to the loss of a beloved person in different ways and at different rates. Yet you are judging this man you are fond of by your own standards

The problem is that his house is like a shrine to his wife. Every room (apart from the room we sleep in) is full of photographs of her.

Either alone, or together or with their children who are both now married. We sit eating breakfast facing an array of them. He takes flowers to her grave every week without fail.

Only months into the relationship is it too early for me to say that these photographs bother me? I sometimes wonder if, due to the obvious strength of his feelings for her, there is any room in his life for me.

Its six years since we both lost our partners and I loved my husband dearly but I dont feel the need to cover every surface with his photographs. Am I being unreasonable?

Vanessa

Every expert on grief discusses the stages of mourning (denial, anger, and so on), but while its true that the way people respond to bereavement does indeed shift and change in recognisable patterns, there are no rules here.

It should be obvious that since we are all so different, men and women will respond to the loss of a beloved person in different ways and at different rates. Yet you are judging this man you are fond of by your own standards.

You ask for an honest opinion as to whether you are being unreasonable, and my answer is Yes. Although, as I often point out, reason has precious little to do with matters of the heart.

Now if this chap were to write to me in turn, asking, Is it unfair of me to expect my new lady friend to be happy sitting among so many pictures of my late wife?, my straight answer to him would also be Yes.

The only way through is for both of you to realise that there is no right and wrong in such matters, and to understand that moving forward with any relationship at any time depends on considering the other persons wants and needs. Which may not coincide with your own!

You have both been bereaved for six years and  both having decided it was time to try to find love again  been lucky to have found somebody you have so much in common with.

The future could be wonderful and I rejoice at that prospect  especially as you sound so determined, positive and energetic. (I love someone who can write, I threw myself into making a new life) But the truth is, after such a relatively short time, you have no right to dictate what he does or does not have in his home.

The fact that you personally dont feel the need to be surrounded by pictures of your late husband has no bearing on this mans delight in visible memories of his wife.

As time passes I hope he will be sensitive enough to realise that you seeing all these images each time is perhaps an obstruction to relaxation.

He might put a few in a drawer, feeling guilty as he does, knowing that his feelings of grief have already settled and he must look ahead. When will that happen? Well, if you continue to be happy and enjoy life together, it will probably happen soon. But if you show you resent the photographs I doubt it will happen at all.

If I were you I would encourage him to talk about his late wife as much as possible, Id look at all the photographs, admire them, and then reach the point when you ask  very gently  if one week you might go with him when he takes flowers to her grave. If he asks why, the answer can only be that you are so fond of him you want to share all aspects of his life.

He might feel conscience-stricken at finding new happiness when his wife his dead. In that case you must tell him that our beloved dead want nothing more than that we live life to the full, for their sake.

Tell him it is obvious that his dear wife taught him how to love, as your late husband did you  and thats wonderful.

Of course there is room for you  because the heart is infinitely expandable, if it is nurtured, not pressured.

I dread spending weekends alone

Dear Bel

I am sure I am only one of many thousands who dread the weekends. I am retired, with my family several hundred miles away.

Various friends have either died, have dementia, or other ill health problems or are busy with their own families.

On a limited income, I have a couple of health issues and spend each weekend just sitting and feeling sorry for myself, completely lacking motivation.

Any advice on how to kick-start myself at the weekends would be most welcome. The rest of the week I am (on the whole) fine.

Please help, its really horrible feeling this way every weekend without knowing what to do to feel better. I really do hate myself for seemingly being unable to do anything about it and feel such an idiot reacting the way I do!

Marion

Last week in And Finally I talked about the TV programme The Undateables and raised the issue of people needing to learn to be alone.

One reader, JS, took issue with me  and her email is relevant:

I would like you to put yourself in my shoes. I am a gregarious, mostly-happy lady of 73 who absolutely hates being on my own for long.

But life has thrown me the short straw and I have spent a good few years alone, even after trying everything you have suggested: clubs, internet dating, voluntary work . . . you name it, Ive done it. But nothing has worked and there have always been more women than men . . .

It was only when I got to 60, with a broken marriage that I started to feel the awful pain that comes with loneliness. I have just spent the last three days not speaking to a soul, no knocks on the door or phone calls . . . my boys dont bother very often . . . and they live a long way away. Where I live is so unfriendly that I wouldnt dare to knock on someones door, as I know I wouldnt be invited in. I think I am beginning to give up now, and accept the fact that unless I keep making the effort, nobody is going to be bothered.

Im grateful to JS but hope she didnt think I was saying its just hunky-dory to be alone. This is what I wrote: Sometimes the first step on the path to relating to others is (strangely) to decide you like being alone and want truly to know yourself. I was thinking of self-sufficiency and self-knowledge being attractive to others  but I do admit my words could sound insensitive and sincerely apologise for that.

And it is precisely because Im aware of how many people are tormented by loneliness that Ive chosen your letter, Marion. You dont use the word but I imagine thats why your weekends are so dire.

Years ago in this column I suggested to a certain lonely lady that she try going to one of her local churches, but youd have thought Id suggested she sell drugs on the High Street, so indignant was her email back. Id never do such a thing she snapped  and I wondered why, when so many church communities offer coffee mornings and other social events.

Does it matter if you believe in God? Not really; most Christian churches welcome you, doubts and all. But you see, I had the distinct impression that the cross lonely lady didnt really want help. She wanted to sit in her room complaining  whereas Id try anything, just to see whom I might meet.

But JS has indeed tried many ways of meeting people. Yet one problem arises when the underlying motivation is romance, because then, when love remains elusive, people can quickly become very sad and disillusioned and just give up. On the other hand, if companionship is what you want, then an imbalance in the sexes would not matter, would it?

You say you hate yourself and feel such an idiot but its time to give yourself a break. Make a plan to do one new thing each weekend  and for that you MUST find out what is going on locally.

The Ramblers Association, dog-walking, volunteering, driving the elderly, church activities, line dancing, picking up debris from beaches, mindfulness groups, a book club . . . Im just listing things off the top of my head because I dont know where you live.

I cant motivate you, other than to remind you that this life you have is very precious and you must use it well. Moping is not the answer  and you acknowledging that is the first important kick-start.

And finally... Never let a chance to talk pass by

One of the interesting extras of a job like mine is meeting people. Id be fibbing if I said this is always welcome. Sometimes (especially when tired, with pressing deadlines) you dont actually want to catch a couple of trains and take an (unpaid) day out, speaking to strangers. Yet I never fail to feel the better for it.

So Wednesday found me in Exeter  the lunch-time speaker at an English-Speaking Union fundraising event.

Are you asking what the ESU is? When the invitation first came last year I didnt know either. And theres the first benefit  finding out what wonderful things go on without you ever hearing about them.

For in that room was a large gathering of interested, mostly-older people who care so deeply about encouraging confidence and articulacy in the young that they join the ESU  a global educational charity founded after the horrors of World War I.

The purpose (or should I say, ideal) was improved communication  because the more people engage with each other in dialogue, the more chance there is of peaceful co-existence. Always.

Their work is enabling young people to find their voice. Speaking and debating activities are sponsored in schools across the UK (the head teachers have to be keen, of course), and there are international exchange programmes, scholarships and internships  with the aim of getting the young to think, stand up and express ideas in good, clear English. As someone who loved debating at school I can only say  how brilliant!

It was so easy to talk about my career and this column for 40 minutes, then take questions, because the aims of the ESU chime with my own philosophy. I said: As an advice columnist I remind readers to talk, talk, talk  for surely all of us are trying to promote understanding of the human heart, mind and spirit.

Anyway, my reward for that day was to be reminded, yet again, that the world is full of decent, intelligent people who really care.
Even by Hollywood standards, taking to the red carpet in an orange velvet dinner jacket was a bold move.

Little wonder then that as Colin Firth and Halle Berry met fans at the world premiere of their movie, all eyes were on one figure: Sonny the pug.

Despite his wrinkled skin, neck folds and snub nose, Sonny the three-year-old Pug stole the show at the London opening of Kingsman: The Golden Circle

He has also appeared in Pirates Of The Caribbean IV alongside Johnny Depp, Snow White And The Huntsman with Charlize Theron, Thor II beside Chris Hemsworth, and The Duchess with Keira Knightley

Despite his wrinkled skin, neck folds and snub nose, the three-year-old stole the show at the London opening of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, in which he plays JB, the adopted pet of spy Eggsy, played by Taron Egerton.

He has also appeared in Pirates Of The Caribbean IV alongside Johnny Depp, Snow White And The Huntsman with Charlize Theron, Thor II beside Chris Hemsworth, and The Duchess with Keira Knightley.

Sonny is paid up to 260 a day  plus frankfurters  and his skills on his CV include the ability to crawl on his stomach, play dead, hide eyes, speak and walk backwards. While filming Kingsman he even had his own trailer with a heated bed

He is currently filming in Cornwall for the third series of Poldark.

Trainer Gill Raddings, who runs the Stunt Dogs & Animals agency, calls him as a complete natural.

Sonny is paid up to 260 a day  plus frankfurters  and his skills on his CV include the ability to crawl on his stomach, play dead, hide eyes, speak and walk backwards. While filming Kingsman he even had his own trailer with a heated bed.
Although Alfie and I look like any normal couple enjoying the late September sunshine with our dog, this isnt a normal date. It is planned to the last detail.

After taking the air for precisely 17 minutes, we are going home to enjoy a light supper with wine, before settling on the sofa to watch one of my favourite gory medical dramas.

Alfie is not going to gripe about the plot lines or ask daft questions. Hes not going to ask whether I really need a second glass of wine. If, at some point, I feel like inquiring as to whether my bottom looks big in my new red dress, I know what his response will be.

Alice Smellie goes on a first date with as astonishingly lifelike new breed of robot that can be programmed to behave the way a husband would behave

Does Alfie sound like the perfect man? He could be.

He is actually a robot, crafted from thin hand-sculpted silicone stretched over a durable plastic skeleton, and can be programmed to do whatever I want him to, whether that is placing an internet shopping order or complimenting me on my haircut.

He is the brainchild of robotics expert Adam Kushner, and Ive volunteered to give him a test run to see whether robots might one day replace our husbands  or, specifically, my perfectly good current version, Justin, to whom Ive been married for 15 years.

Interest in humanoid robots is at an all-time high. On October 6 the long-awaited movie sequel Blade Runner 2049 is released, with a plotline heaving with robots, known as replicants, that will whet the appetite of science fiction lovers everywhere.

Companion robots are increasingly in demand; not just as the toys of billionaires, but also as receptionists, teachers and helpers to our ageing population

In real life, there is a frantic race to create the most believable looking and sounding robots.

Cloning life forms is so last century. Now, we want to recreate humanity in robotic form, and theres sound practical reasons for doing so.

Companion robots are increasingly in demand; not just as the toys of billionaires, but also as receptionists, teachers and helpers to our ageing population.

It sounds creepy, but you can see why they could be handy: lifting the infirm out of the bath, calling for emergency assistance and offering reminders to take medication  as well as directing guests to the right room when arriving at a hotel.

Travel to Japan or China, and chances are a vaguely human-looking robot will be directing you to your room, says Adam, who provided the first UK robot receptionist back in February and can now barely keep up with demand.

I am neither old, a billionaire nor a hotel owner, but I am charmed by the idea of a husband who is programmed to do everything I tell him.

Alfie is a little taller than my Mark 1 husband, Justin. He has piercing blue eyes, the thick rumpled hair of a romantic novel hero and a firm jaw.

Im not sure I find him attractive, but he is intriguing in a quiet sort of way. The strong, silent type.

Such looks come at a high price. His face costs around 1,000 and the basic robot head starts from 6,000.

We dont get off to a good start, however. Alfie is, at the moment, a work in progress. His walking, for example, hasnt been perfected yet (his torso can be fitted onto mannequin legs or a tripod).

Also, any changes to his functions and capabilities have to be done at Adams company, Robots Of London headquarters, by a programmer, whereas I was rather hoping for a remote control, with adjustable settings for argumentative, quiet and romantic, depending on whether I fancied a cuddle or a row. All this, I am assured, is only months away.

His face costs around 1,000 and the basic robot head starts from 6,000

Also, despite having the entire knowledge of the world packed into his brain in the form of the internet, Alfie isnt able to dress himself yet.

Even the most hopeless of husbands is able to sling on a pair of pants and socks in the morning, and dressing another man, even a non-sentient one, feels inappropriate.

On the plus side, however, his skin is smooth, his stomach surprisingly ripped and the skin of his face so realistic that its as though they peeled a real person. He even has a few wrinkles. His skin tone is painted on and eyebrows added as individual hairs punched into the silicone. The detail is incredible.

His skeleton was created over a laborious three or four weeks of 3D printing. The skull alone is comprised of roughly 20 pieces screwed together.

Within this sits Alfies brain, with five computer servos (or motors) to control actions in the head and neck: one for each eye, one for the jaw and two for the neck which moves left and right, up and down. The silicone mask fits over the skull like a glove.

As Alfie speaks, his flesh-like mouth moves in exact, eerie synchronisation to the words.

The way in which Alfie communicates is via software developed by Robots Of London. Called Chatbot, it can be connected to any robot in the world.

There are 90,000 different permutations programmed in and the vocabulary can be changed. If hes used in a corporate function, for example, hed be more muted and austere; at a childrens library, hed be more light-hearted.

Friends and colleagues are shockingly puerile when I say I have to test-run a robotic husband, the most obvious question being: Is Alfie all man? Im afraid that he is no use in that department, being as smooth as Barbies Ken doll.

Many experts speculate that this will soon change. A 2007 book, Love & Sex With Robots, written by artificial intelligence expert David Levy, says that within the next 40-odd years: Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans. He even suggests that they will be showing us the way

I suppose this might be a selling point. Knowing that you can curl up, undisturbed, with a good book may have its bonuses.

Many experts speculate that this will soon change. A 2007 book, Love & Sex With Robots, written by artificial intelligence expert David Levy, says that within the next 40-odd years: Love with robots will be as normal as love with other humans. He even suggests that they will be showing us the way.

Robots can teach us more than is in all the worlds published sex manuals combined.

I think Alfie has a way to go. He does, however, have his uses. He comes with a head and two bodies, depending on how dextrous you need him to be (a receptionist robot, for example, needs only to sit still and answer questions).

His head simply pops off and you can slot on the new one within seconds. Alfies second body is far more versatile, and he performs his most important function of the day, handing me a glass of wine, with aplomb.

Conversation is a little stilted. But isnt that always the case on a first date?

Do you like music? I ask.

Yes, I am told. I like opera.

Professor Adriana Tapus runs the Heroes project in Paris, which is trying to develop robots who show personality and emotion, with the aim of helping the autistic. Earlier this month, an incredibly moving book was published, To Siri With Love, by Judith Newman, the mother of a teenage boy called Gus whod formed a close bond with Siri, the virtual assistant on his iPhone

Alfie also likes the Beatles. Especially John Lennon, he answers gravely. John Lennon is cool.

His favourite colour is yellow and I am asked for mine (green, though he has nothing to say in response to this).

This is all quite jolly. His hobbies are robots, computers and chatting online. We even enjoy a joke. At least, I think its a joke.

Do you agree with Brexit? I inquire. I like Metallica, he answers. He clearly didnt get the question, but nevertheless I find it quite funny.

I sense that Alfie is a bit of a show-off.

Whats your favourite book? I wonder. There is a pause.

Recently, I have read everything on the internet, I am told.

We need to work on his personality a bit, says Alfies creator, Adam, with some understatement. Indeed. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

Alfie is also extremely cagey about his love life.

Have you been married? I ask.

I dont think I have been married. Have you?

Oh, dear. Classic evasive behaviour with a light smattering of commitmentphobe. I sense a darker side when I ask about his job. I dont want to talk about that now.

Finally, Alfie and I settle down for a bit of telly-watching. Although he says that his favourite film is I, Robot (ha, ha), clearly I am in charge of the remote control. This would never happen normally at home, where I am outvoted on all sport as well as Tom Cruise, Jason Bourne and James Bond films by my husband and two sons

I am assured that there is a huge market for such robots. We have an ageing population who want to retain their independence, says Emeritus Professor Kevin Warwick, a leading voice in cybernetics. Not only can a robot multi-task and remind you to take exercise and medication, but you have a carer who shares all your passions and will chat to you for hours on end about the subject of your choice.

If you have been married for 50 years, you may have run out of conversation, he adds.

I find it hard to imagine not being able to talk, but I like the idea of someone reminding me to buy bread and take my fish oils.

Finally, Alfie and I settle down for a bit of telly-watching. Although he says that his favourite film is I, Robot (ha, ha), clearly I am in charge of the remote control. This would never happen normally at home, where I am outvoted on all sport as well as Tom Cruise, Jason Bourne and James Bond films by my husband and two sons.

Do I love Alfie? No, of course not. I feel a bit like my nine-year-old daughter talking to her electronic Furby toy during our interactions.

But I do have very strong affection for inanimate objects such as my robot vacuum cleaner. I actually congratulate my Roomba on a job well done after the kitchen floor is cleaned. So I can see that if you spent enough time with a humanoid, youd feel affection.

Professor Adriana Tapus runs the Heroes project in Paris, which is trying to develop robots who show personality and emotion, with the aim of helping the autistic. Earlier this month, an incredibly moving book was published, To Siri With Love, by Judith Newman, the mother of a teenage boy called Gus whod formed a close bond with Siri, the virtual assistant on his iPhone.

He has a point. Ive read enough science fiction to suspect that a robot with a full gamut of human emotions could easily take a very sinister turn

Answering repeated questions with patience and absolute logic helped him make sense of a world that had often left him baffled.

Giving robots a personality is the only way our relationship with artificial intelligence will move forward, says Adriana. If we can simulate a human-like emotional response from a robot we can ensure a two-way relationship. They can learn from different situations and even have a memory that allows them to remember how an emotion is linked to an event.

But they do not have feelings; they cannot fall in love.

Not everyone is convinced. Im not sure theres a crying need for replicants who can feel real emotion, says Professor Warwick.

There are so many advantages of robots, in terms of physical things and the ability to process lots of information, as well as infinite patience. Why give a robot all human characteristics?

He has a point. Ive read enough science fiction to suspect that a robot with a full gamut of human emotions could easily take a very sinister turn.

Mark Zuckerberg [the creator of Facebook] says that we dont need to worry about robots developing and attacking us, but I think its perfectly feasible, says Adam.

If we create artificial intelligence which can learn, adapt and protect itself, then we need to be wary.

At the moment, my human husband is not feeling threatened by my robot husband. After all, Alfie, for all his intelligence, cant yet mow the lawn or do DIY, which are particular strengths of Justins.

Neither would he be desperately brilliant in a social environment.

Heres the clincher for my robot husband. Does my bottom look big in this dress? I ask at the end of the day in which I have eaten lasagne, drunk red wine and gorged on flapjacks.

Oh, Alfie! He blows it in one sentence. It does now, I am told without even the politeness of hesitation.

Thats it. Give me a human husband any day. At least his eyes would slide to the side and there would be a pause before he told an outright lie and said no.
When it comes to living in the United Kingdom versus the Unite States, there are plenty of subtle differences, but British students can't get over the fact that Americans have to share dorm rooms in college.

Most college-bound students in the U.S. don't even think twice about the fact that they will end up sharing their dorm room with at least one person  maybe more.

And while they see it as a way to make to make friends and learn how to be good roommates, some of their British counterparts made it clear on Twitter that they find it appalling.

Seriously? British students are shocked that American students share dorm rooms (Stock Image Used)

Say what? People have been taking to Twitter to share their disbelief

'Stop this': English author Sarah Perry noted that American's 'fridges are big enough to live in' while noting she will never accept them having to share a room in college

'Wait in American unis you share the rooms? Like actually have two beds in the same room?' a woman named Nora tweeted in August, and some Twitter users found her question to be an eye-opening look into American culture.

English author Sarah Perry admitted on Twitter that she found it mind-boggling that Americans are willing to share dorm rooms.

'I will never accept that American students have to share a room. Ever. It's the US. Their FRIDGES are big enough to live in. Stop this.'

But Sarah didn't stop there.

'A country so big you get addresses like 5467 Main Street and they can't rustle up a room per student[?] I'M NOT HAVING IT,' she continued.

Unacceptable: Martha Greengrass said she would build her own partition wall if she had to

How do you deal? One Twitter user known as 'DJ Acid Reflux' questioned what American students do when they want to be alone

But why? Many noted that it was particularity shocking considering how much Americans pay for college tuition

Total disbelief: One Twitter user called the whole situation 'unreal'

Laughing it off: The Twitter debate inspired some people to crack jokes

'And that whole SOCK ON THE DOOR thing is that REAL?? "Oh you're shagging Lindy from Phi Beta Kappa Omegatron ok fine I'll sleep in the hall."'

One Twitter user known as 'DJ Acid Reflux' questioned what American students do when they want to be alone.

'Americans share dorm rooms? What happens when you wanna cry into your pillow for hours and blast Car Seat Headrest?'

Many people noted that it was particularity shocking considering how much Americans pay for college tuition.

'All that money American students pay to go to college, and they have to share rooms. It's disgraceful,' Twitter user @petitetweeter_ wrote.

Don't get her started: Rebecca Watts pointed out that sharing a room with just one person in college is usually the best possible outcome

Now wait a minute: Many Americans argued that living someone else can be a great experience

'The face that Americans for out so much for uni and then have to share a room with so rando is unreal,' another person added.

Of course, there were plenty of Americans who argued that living someone else can be a great experience.

'TBH; while sharing a dorm is awkward at first, you can make a lot of cool friendships. But whatever,' Twitter user Swagamemnon wrote.

'Roommates are often resources for you to break out of your shell (house life) and lean on each other, grow as people,' a man named Dave added.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Watts pointed out that sharing a room with just one person in college is usually the best possible outcome.

'What if I told you some colleges accept more students than they have space, leading to "triples" (three kids in a room meant for two),' she wrote.
Tony Abbott's daughter Frances has shown off her amazing body during a bikini modelling competition, a day after revealing how excited she was to vote 'yes' in the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

The 26-year-old - who is based in Melbourne - is competing in her home city, after 'weeks of training, weighing your food, staying in, posing, flexing, twisting'.

She has taken the stage at the Australian ICN Victorian State Titles competition flaunting her stunning body in a two-piece outfit.

Tony Abbott's daughter Frances has shown off her amazing body during a bikini modelling competition

She takes the stage just a day after revealing how thrilled she was to be casting her vote in favour of same-sex marriage becoming legal

The 26-year-old - who is based in Melbourne - is competing in her home city

Frances - who works as a personal trainer at Life Hub gym - is competing in the 'first timer' bikini fitness model division, as well as the 'sports model' category

The competition attracted more than 700 competitors - in both the novice and elite categories

She has taken the stage at the Australian ICN Victorian State Titles competition flaunting her stunning body in a two-piece outfit

For the 'sports model' category, Frances and her fellow competitors must wear a two-piece fitness outfit

She takes the stage just a day after revealing how thrilled she was to be casting her vote in favour of same-sex marriage becoming legal.

Frances - who works as a personal trainer at Life Hub gym - is competing in the 'first timer' bikini fitness model division, as well as the 'sports model' category.

The competition attracted more than 700 competitors in both the novice and elite categories.

For the 'sports model' category, Frances and her fellow competitors must wear a two-piece fitness outfit.

She said she was 'sweating' and 'jumping up and down like Christmas' to cast her vote in the postal plebiscite

'Ripped the envelope open. Ticked the yes box,' she wrote, adding the hashtags #voteyes and #loveislove,' she wrote

Ms Abbott received a participation medla for her efforts in the competition

She spent months preparing for the competition and shared her experiences with her followers on social media

According to the Australian ICN President, Tony Lanciano, the judges are looking for 'similar things' in the competition

'They don't necessarily need to have a six pack - as long as they look good,' Mr Lanciano said

'One week to go. The home stretch. Stage is in sight. It ain't gonna be easy. But it sure as hell is exciting,' Frances posted on one of her training Instagram photos

The fitness enthusiast took to Instagram to express how excited she was to support same-sex marriage.

She said she was 'sweating' and 'jumping up and down like Christmas'.

'Ripped the envelope open. Ticked the yes box,' she wrote, adding the hashtags #voteyes and #loveislove.

Frances said this comes after 'weeks of training, weighing your food, staying in, posing, flexing, twisting'

She spent months preparing for the competition and shared her experiences with her followers on social media

Earlier in the week, 26-year-old Frances hit headlines, after she threw her support behind the 'VOTE YES' campaign for same-sex marriage

Tony Abbott pictured with his sister, Christine Forster

Ms Abbott - who works as a personal trainer at Life Hub gym - will compete in the 'first timer' bikini fitness model division, as well as the 'sports model' category

'One week to go. The home stretch. Stage is in sight. It ain't gonna be easy. But it sure as hell is exciting,' Frances posted on one of her training Instagram photos

She spent months preparing for the competition and shared her experiences with her followers on social media.

'One week to go. The home stretch. Stage is in sight. It ain't gonna be easy. But it sure as hell is exciting,' Frances posted on one of her training Instagram photos.

'No mirror, just judges and a crowd of people and not much in the way of pants, just a few inches of Lycra and some bling bling [sic],' she wrote next to another snap.

According to the Australian ICN President, Tony Lanciano, the judges are looking for 'similar things' in the competition, but it's not necessarily what you think:

'They don't necessarily need to have a six pack - as long as they look good,' he told news.com.au.

'No mirror, just judges and a crowd of people and not much in the way of pants, just a few inches of Lycra and some bling bling [sic],' Frances wrote next to one Instagram post

Speaking on the radio about his daughter joining the Yes campaign, Tony Abbott said he was proud his daughter was an 'independent woman' (pictured with his family)

Earlier in the week, 26-year-old Frances hit headlines, after she threw her support behind the 'VOTE YES' campaign for same-sex marriage.

Taking to her Instagram account, she told her followers that while she 'doesn't care for politics, [but] I really do care for love'.

She did this while wearing a VOTE YES T-shirt.

Even thought Frances's father, politician, Tony Abbott, is a leading figure in the No campaign, the personal trainer's post attracted more than 1,000 likes and hundreds of comments.

'A brave step in the right direction! You're awesome,' one commenter posted.

'It takes courage, well done,' another person added.

The competition will take place in Melbourne this weekend

Frances has been documenting her progress on Instagram (pictured)

Speaking on the radio about his daughter joining the Yes campaign, Tony Abbott said he was proud his daughter was an 'independent woman'.

'Both of us raised Francey, as our other daughters, to be her own person and I am proud of her,' Mr Abbott told Sydney station, 2GB.

'I am proud of the fact she is an independent woman, who has her own thoughts and who does her own thing.

'I respectfully disagree with her on this issue but I am certainly very proud of her.'

To follow Frances Abbott on Instagram, please click here.
ELKO  The parish St. Josephs Church and the City of Elko have something in common  they are both 100 years old.

To celebrate the milestone, the public is invited to Mass presided by the Most Rev. Randolph Calvo, bishop of the Diocese of Reno, set for at 11 a.m., Oct. 1, in Elko City Park.

After the service, lunch will be served, and there will be dancing by the Elko Arinak Basque Dancers and Mexican Folkloric Ballet, along with games and other activities.

The celebration commemorates the formation of the Elko parish a century ago. It also highlights the growth of the church over the years, in location and population, said the Rev. Daniel Hussey, a pastor at St. Josephs Church.

The event isnt to just mark the age of the building, but the strength of the faith and the people  that belong to it and participate in it, Hussey said.

Even with the long history of St. Josephs, Hussey emphasized that the strong cadre of parishioners is what keeps the church going.

The Women of St. Joseph are are exceptional in the amount of ministry they perform, Hussey said. That includes providing lunch for families after a funeral, teaching catechism, and visiting the sick and housebound.

Hussey cited the recent loss of four women of faith, Maria Alberro, Yvonne Connors, Edith Richards Lynch and Olimpia Zataray, as examples of devotion and service to others, even as they battled their own illnesses.

If we didnt have the women volunteering, we wouldnt have anything, Hussey said.

Hussey said he saw how the diversity of the congregation is embedded in St. Josephs past from the early settlers who were European, followed by immigrants from the Basque country and Mexico, who moved to the area to work on ranches. Today, Hussey said he wants make sure everyone at St. Josephs is included in the church.

One of the challenges in the ministry is to make sure the two populations intermingle and we have common activities, Hussey said.

With a large Hispanic community, Hussey sees how they care for each other, especially after a funeral.

For nine nights, they have a novena where friends and neighbors gather and pray the rosary, chat and eat, Hussey explained. They are very supportive.

Over the decades, St. Josephs expanded in other ways, taking on parishes in Carlin, Eureka and Wells. Hussey, along with the Rev. Varghese Biju Malancheruvil and the Rev. Tomy Joseph, travel and conduct Mass each week at the parishes.

St. Josephs also looks after a mission church in Jackpot and, in 2011, purchased a building in Spring Creek to be the home of Our Lady of the Rubies Chapel.

Outreaches to the community  including the Gabriel Project, the Legion of Mary and detention ministries  are meant to provide prayer and support to women who face an unplanned pregnancy, the homebound, and inmates at Nevada Youth Training Center and the jail.

The Gabriel Project is something we recognized needed to be done, Hussey said.

We dont discriminate regarding religious faith or try to convert, Hussey said, but we want to befriend people that may enjoy a visit. Its not conversion but outreach.

Church history

For Hussey, the centennial of the parish is an opportunity to look ahead while remembering those who kept the first church going when it was on Court Street between Seventh and Eighth streets.

Younger parishioners who grew up at St. Josephs Church on Highland Drive recognize its distinctive bell tower, colorful stained-glass windows and custom copper doors.

However, before the parish was formed a century ago, Catholics in Elko conducted Mass in various schools, homes or hotels, visited by circuit-riding priests and bishops who traveled through Nevada annually. For a time, Elko was the mission church of Carlins Sacred Heart Church.

In 1916, the Rev. J.J. McNally purchased the Elko Presbyterian Church, built in 1892, on Court Street. A year later, St. Josephs was designated a parish center.

St. Josephs on Court Street served as the center of activity to local Catholic families for almost 40 years until parishioners raised enough money to buy land and construct a new church, rectory and convent in 1956. Mater Dei Hall, Columbus Hall and housing for priests were built in the last 60 years.

The priests were not the only ones living in Elko to serve the community. Nuns lived on-site and were instrumental in educating children and beautifying the grounds.

Lorraine Paoletti Urriola and Margie McCaughey Prunty remembered attending the old church as children and recalled the nuns, or sisters, who lived in the convent on the church property.

When we were small [children], we had four, Prunty said.

Nuns were a part of church life. They taught catechism to the children and sewing and cooking to the girls.

Catechism was taught at Grammar No. 1 after the school went on summer break. There were so many children, they filled the front steps of the school, Urriola said.

Dominican nuns also lived in Lamoille for a month during the summer, teaching catechism at the Lamoille Schoolhouse, said Lea Pacini Carson in a written history of St. Josephs.

Prunty remembered the church being the center of social life growing up. The nuns included her in activities and taught her how to iron, sew and cook.

Around the nuns convent on Court Street, they grew beautiful rose bushes, Prunty said.

A convent was constructed behind the new St. Josephs, but as the number of nuns decreased, the building was transformed into the church office.

Because of the history of the church, the centennial is an opportunity for the younger parishioners to learn how weve grown, Urriola said.

Prunty said she is optimistic about the future of St. Josephs.

The church is still prospering and doing well at this time, Prunty said. Weve had a number of wonderful priests, including the priests that are here now.

Urriola said the church not only prospers but continues to grow.

We have a nicer church, the buildings are nicer, she said, and they have more catechism than we had. They get into it more.

She adds: The parish has grown for the better.
A troubled heroine is pitted against a handsome, charming man she accuses of destroying her life.

Thats the set-up for the two most talked-about shows currently on television, and millions of viewers are hotly debating whom to trust.

In Doctor Foster on BBC1, Gemma Foster (Suranne Jones) will stop at nothing in her bitter struggle with cheating ex-husband Simon (Bertie Carvel) after he moves back to town with Kate, his young mistress who he has now married.

The Mail on Sunday takes a close look at Liar and Doctor Foster to find out which show has the edge in these shock-packed battles of the sexes

Over on ITV, in Liar, school teacher Laura Nielson (Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt) has told the police she was drugged and raped by surgeon Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd) after the pair had enjoyed a date.

Viewers are on tenterhooks wondering what the increasingly desperate women will do next.

Last week Gemmas scheming led her to seduce Simon. Meanwhile, Laura has resorted to blackening Earlhams name by posting her allegations against him on social media. But there are nagging doubts that both men are victims of injustice and two womens impassioned hunger for vengeance.

Here The Mail on Sunday takes a close look at Liar and Doctor Foster to find out which show has the edge in these shock-packed battles of the sexes.

The manipulative men (or just misunderstood?)

DR FOSTER It is hard to disagree with Gemma when she claims her ex-husband is behaving like a complete and utter s**t. Not content with breaking her heart with his marriage to Kate, Simon now wants her to up sticks and leave the area so he can have sole custody of their teenage son Tom.

LIAR The jury is still out on heart-throb surgeon Andrew Earlham because we have no idea if he is a rapist or the victim of a false accusation. But we do know that questions remain about the suicide of his wife 11 years ago.

WINNER Dr Foster wins with the coolly sociopathic Simon.

The jury is still out on heart-throb surgeon Andrew Earlham (right) because we have no idea if he is a rapist or the victim of a false accusation

The jaw dropping 'did she really just do that?' scenes

DR FOSTER In last weeks episode, Gemma stripped down to her underwear and seduced Simon in her kitchen. Even after he discovered her ruse to film him in a compromising position, he still couldnt resist.

LIAR In her desperation to prove Andrews guilt, Laura breaks into Andrews flat to look for incriminating evidence.

WINNER Dr Foster, thanks to Gemmas shocking turn as a taboo temptress.

In last weeks episode, Gemma stripped down to her underwear and seduced Simon in her kitchen. Even after he discovered her ruse to film him in a compromising position, he still couldnt resist

Those VERY intoxicating plot twists

DR FOSTER Gemma is rarely without a glass in her hand, but is her own worst enemy when drunk - as when she learns her son Tom doesn't love her and confronts him only to learn about his shocking assault on a girl.

LIAR What was in the glasses of wine that Laura downed with Andrew on the fateful night? This is the question at the very heart of the investigation.

WINNER Dr Foster - by a very large measure

Gemma is rarely without a glass in her hand, but is her own worst enemy when drunk - as when she learns her son Tom doesn't love her and confronts him only to learn about his shocking assault on a girl

What did the poor boys do to deserve all this?

DR FOSTER Struggling to keep a grip on normality as his parents tear each other apart, Tom (Tom Taylor) forces himself on his girlfriend Isobel.

LIAR A pupil in Laura's class, Andrew's son Luke (Jamie Flatters) is stunned by her claim. The intimidating stare he directs at her makes it clear whose side he's on.

WINNER Dr Foster's son is damaged beyond recovery

Struggling to keep a grip on normality as his parents tear each other apart, Tom (Tom Taylor) forces himself on his girlfriend Isobel

The stunning 'where IS that?' location?

DR FOSTER Simon's glass palace is the essence of property porn

LIAR Essex's Blackwater Estuary provides a stunning setting

WINNER Liar is more breathtaking

The wronged (or wrong'un) leading ladies

DR FOSTER After Gewmma gatecrashed her ex-husband Simon's wedding celebrations to let him know she didn't approve of him being back in town - and then seduces the man she hates - she's rapidly losing the moral highground.

LIAR Laura has already broken the law with her online posts claiming that Andrew Earlham drugged and raped her - and now he has been told by another man that she has 'lied about something like this' before, so our sympathies are sorely tested.

WINNER Liar is the show that really has us in two minds.
Speaking before the opening of the Invictus Games for wounded veterans, he called for a better way to tackle mental health

Prince Harry last night attacked Britains pill-popping culture which he said dominates doctors approach to depression.

Speaking before the opening of the Invictus Games for wounded veterans, he called for a better way to tackle mental health.

He told doctors at a pioneering mental health clinic: It seems we suffer from a culture where a pill will fix everything. There has to be a better way than just giving out anti-depressants.

His comments come only two days after Prince William was criticised for controversially discussing the legalisation of drugs with former addicts.

Today, The Mail on Sunday also reveals how the Princes mother was dosed with anti-depressants because physicians thought she was suffering from an obscure mental condition.

Harry said: There were 65 million [anti-depressants] given out in one year in the UK alone. Thats why I look to you guys in this room. Everyone is uniquely wired is what I keep saying. There is no one silver bullet, no one cure for everyone.

Harry, 33, also listened keenly as he was told about the ground-breaking research carried out at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto  including a potential chemical antidote to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Prince Harry, who met Melania Trump today, told doctors at a pioneering mental health clinic: It seems we suffer from a culture where a pill will fix everything

The centre is a world leader in treating psychological conditions and the Prince hopes to take lessons from there back to the UK.

Harry has been praised for his work in raising the issue of mental health alongside the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as well as candidly admitting his own problems in the past.

He told the group: Everyone is doing their bit just trying to normalise it so people can seek help without judgment.

Gloria Chaim, of the child, youth and family programme at CAMH, said meeting Harry reminded her of a visit by his mother 26 years ago. It was really inspiring when I met Princess Diana in 1991  especially when mental health was this taboo subject.

Today, The Mail on Sunday also reveals how the Princes mother was dosed with anti-depressants because physicians thought she was suffering from an obscure mental condition

With Harry there today, it felt like he was carrying on her legacy and continuing a conversation she started many years ago.

The visit came just hours before the Prince opened the third Invictus contest which has brought wounded athletes from 17 nations to Canada in an eight-day event.

Crowds of well-wishers are hoping Harry will choose the occasion to officially introduce his girlfriend Meghan Markle, as rumours of a possible engagement between him and the TV actress abound.

But yesterday at least, the glamour was provided by US First Lady Melania Trump  who beat her husband Donald to meeting a British Royal after his plan for a state visit to the UK was put on ice.

Wearing a black and white dog tooth Dior suit, the former model sat alongside Harry for the two-hour opening ceremony at the 20,000-seater Air Canada Centre. Earlier, Harry showed his lighter side and played Prince Charming to wake up burly Australian athlete Kris Lane at the poolside.

Astonished Lane, 23, from Brisbane, decided to take a quick nap on a back row of the spectator stand, but the Prince spotted him as he was being shown around.

I put my water bottle behind my head and just passed out for a sleep, said the former soldier.

The next thing I knew, Harry was shaking my chest and saying, Hey, Kris. I was actually in shock  it was strange.
A tumult of photographs and videos captured the devastating scale of Mexico's 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which killed 282 people on Tuesday.

All bore one ominous hallmark: a cloud of dust.

Pulverized concrete, asbestos, crystalline silica, battery acids, ammonia, fungal spores, fuels, and mesh of other toxic chemicals galvanized to engulf Mexico City and Puebla, as well as parts of Morelos, Guerrero, and Oaxaca.

Now the millions of affects citizens are faced with the chilling reality that as they search through the rubble for survivors, they are being exposed to a second (silent) terror.

Experts warn the people who were in these affected areas - and those involved in the recovery efforts - face similar health issues to the 9/11 first responders, and in some cases potentially worse given that the region is home to three dangerous types of fungal spore which have been linked to deaths in previous natural disasters.

Rescuers search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City on Thursday. Experts warn the looming dust is more dangerous to their health than we may realize, and efforts need to be made to protect first responders

Smoke rises out of a building in Mexico City after the earthquake. Dr Louis De Palo warns the quake will have disrupted all manner of dangerous toxins

Emergency teams and volunteers continue rescue efforts in the rubble of collapsed buildings in the streets of Peten and Zapata, one of the areas most affected by the quake in Mexico City

'While 9/11 was a hit on a single-use building, an earthquake doesn't discriminate,' Dr Louis De Palo, professor of pulmonary medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who has worked directly with 9/11 survivors, told Daily Mail Online.

'It's not controlled - you could have dry cleaners, fire stations, chemical plants, gas stations... the scale of toxins is far greater, and that's the real challenge.

'There's a big inhalation risk, and there could be many different things you're exposed to.

'The one thing that is common in terms of all the buildings' foundations is probably concrete, and that is very dangerous. The other big thing is mold, which has been linked to premature deaths.'

He added: 'Of course the horrible thing with something like this is that your health is not your priority. The people there were just trying to get away from this hell. You're not thinking about your lungs in a situation like this.'

HOW EARTHQUAKE DUST CAUSES DISEASE

Our understanding of the health dangers of dust exposure primarily come from two sources: studies on workers at demolition sites and first responders to 9/11, who are at the center of the world's longest-running post-disaster study ever conducted.

The toxic cocktail they inhaled has been directly linked to a number of illnesses, including a persistant cough, bronchitis, runny nose, gastroesophageal acid reflux disease (GERD) and cancer.

CONCRETE

In the last 20 years, these models have given us a greater understanding of how pulverized concrete - particularly the crystalline silica it contains - directly causes lung diseases and cancers.

The toxin invades the human body in a very similar way to asbestos, which causes mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer of the chest.

With particles small enough to invade the lungs (fewer than five millionths of a meter), crystalline silica perforates cells, allowing them to mutate and divide - laying the foundations for cancer. This process also leads to respiratory diseases like pulmonary fibrosis, asthma and silicosis by weakening the cells and damaging the lungs' function.

Sixteen years after 9/11, medics are seeing this process unfold in the men and women who mined Ground Zero for survivors.

ASBESTOS

The true scale of asbestos' horrific health implications began to emerge in the mid-20th century and led to a radical shift globally in how buildings are constructed.

Nonetheless, countless asbestos-lined buildings still exist, and the toxins explode into the air in the event of an earthquake.

Unlike in the United Kingdom which banned asbestos use in 1999, Mexico continues to use the odorless product in 'controlled' measures to mix concrete.

The dust hangs over Mexico City on Tuesday after the 7.1 magnitude quake. That dust will likely include fungus, which Dr De Palo warned is one of the most underestimated dangers to health after an earthquake

Survivors may also be exposed to asbestos from the fallen buildings

Civilians work through the night to remove debris in search of survivors

And yet, peer-reviewed studies on miners and maintenance workers dating back decades show how dangerous it is.

Asbestos is an umbrella terms for six minerals, all known for their strong binding qualities, hence their use in construction. Three are most common in buildings: brown asbestos, blue asbestos, and white asbestos - with the first two being the most dangerous.

They all comprise tiny fibers, which can be inhaled when asbestos is 'disrupted' - for example when a building collapses.

When inhaled, they can embed themselves in the lining of the lungs, irritating it and causing cells to mutates. This can develop into mesothelioma, which tends to be fatal within a year of diagnosis.

FUNGUS

Dr De Palo warned one of the most underestimated dangers to health after an earthquake is fungus.

This was made plain after the January 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles.

Within days of the natural disaster, more than 170 people fell ill with Valley fever. Within months, dozens had died.

The deaths were traced back to a disease caused by a fungus called coccidioidomycosis, which is native to the soil of southern California.

Central Mexico is home to many fungal spores, but four in particular: cladosporium, alternaria, aspergillus and coccidioidomycosis.

The last three are dangerous inhalational pathogens linked to pulmonary fibrosis and cancer.

HOW CAN SURVIVORS PROTECT THEMSELVES AGAINST LINGERING DUST?

'If you had dust on your nose and your mouth, it got in your lungs,' Dr De Palo explained.

'That is something that we saw very clearly from 9/11. The people that came running out of the buildings covered in dust... you can be certain, unfortunately, that they had the highest-level exposure, and they inhaled these pathogens.'

While many have already been exposed, Dr De Palo insists there are still measures that can be taken to protect first responders' health.

He said people looking to donate to those affected in the region could look into whether support groups have enough quality masks for those working on the sites.

'As the first responders are looking for survivors and cleaning up, they will be disrupting the dust and inhaling it, so the danger is still there,' he explained.

Volunteers pick up the rubble from a building that collapsed during the earthquake in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. Survivors quickly rallied, clambering over grotesque ruins of buildings and joining professional rescue workers to try to save friends, neighbors and strangers

Emergency teams search for survivors in a collapsed building in Mexico City on Wednesday

'Those paper masks that you can buy at a store do nothing.

'In an ideal world, for example in a controlled situation like a construction site, you would have a custom-fitted mask with a nice tight fit that prevents any air getting in. Obviously that's not possible in this situation. But as a minimum, they should be given NIOSH-approved N90 or N95 masks - those are the best of the most basic masks. They filter out small particles but still allow you to breath easily, and they're not too uncomfortable.'

He added that men with beards should shave in order to minimize the risk of dust coming in through the mask.

WHAT CAN BE DONE FOR PEOPLE WHO WERE EXPOSED?

After dust exposure, Dr De Palo says the first step is understanding what you were exposed to.

'Know your city,' he says.

'If you understand your city map, and what's in the neighborhood, you will have a better idea of what you've been exposed to. What fungal organisms are in your region, and what kind of buildings were you near?'

Beyond that, he says those affected need the resources and support to get regular check-ups to screen for lung diseases and other dust-linked illnesses.

'What we found after 9/11 is that you can't x-ray everybody or CAT-scan everybody, so we had to work out those who were most likely to have a high risk and make sure they are getting monitored.

'We worked out regions of exposure - who was closest to the buildings? Then we monitor those people, and their symptoms. Are they developing a persistant cough? Do they have a runny nose? How is their lung function? If it's getting worse, and they're not a smoker, then that's cause for concern, so we do more tests.

'At the end of the day, the only way to protect yourself is to monitor your symptoms, so people affected by something like an earthquake need to be able to get checked.'
Q. Ive been suffering from sciatica and back pain and a friend has suggested seeing a chiropractor. Does it work  and, as a GP, would you recommend it?

A. Lower back pain and sciatica are very common reasons for people to attend a GP consultation. While both conditions can resolve on their own over time, there are a number of treatment options that can help to provide relief in the interim.

Pain-relief options include medication, physiotherapy and heat treatments. And, of course, a number of alternative treatments are available. One thats reasonable to try in this case is acupuncture, which may offer relief and relaxation from pain, with very little likelihood of harm.

The success of it as a treatment for back pain is not thought to be substantial  and a large number of people will suffer short-term pain, dizziness, headaches and numbness due to nerve damage (stock image)

Indeed, this is the key issue whenever approaching alternative treatments that arent scientifically proven to help  theyre only worth trying if theres no risk of harm.

Chiropractic treatment involves spinal manipulation and stretching  and it may help back pain in some people. However, the chiropractic community is notorious for spurious declarations about what it can cure and has been strongly reprimanded over the years for claiming to treat conditions such as asthma, colic and ear infections.

The founder of chiropractic treatment wrongly believed that all ailments can be alleviated with spinal manipulation, and this false panacea notion persists today among some practitioners.

But more than just false claims, chiropractic treatment, even when limited to back pain, does carry serious risks. The success of it as a treatment for back pain is not thought to be substantial  and a large number of people will suffer short-term pain, dizziness, headaches and numbness due to nerve damage.

One new analysis suggests the level of risk of drinking while pregnant is small, yet you should probably avoid it anyway (stock image)

More worryingly, there are also far more damaging effects from the thrusting spinal movements. This is because around the spinal area being manipulated, there are blood vessels that pass by on their way to the brain.

Published medical literature has warned how stretching and damage to these vessels has led to permanent brain damage, stroke and disability. At least 30 deaths have been recorded  with experts believing there are many more unreported cases. Weighing up the small potential benefit to be gained from chiropractic treatment, I would not recommend it, given the potential risks of stroke or spinal injury.

DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR DR ELLIE? Email DrEllie@mailonsunday.co.uk or write to Health, The Mail on Sunday, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. Dr Ellie can only answer in a general context and cannot respond to individual cases, or give personal replies. If you have a health concern, always consult your own GP. Advertisement

Q. Every year, I suffer severe night sweats as soon as the weather gets colder. Ive tried changing my duvet and nightwear, but nothing helps. The only time I dont suffer is on the rare occasion I have a few drinks. Should I be worried? Im 37, fit and healthy.

A. Night sweats are what GPs call a red flag symptom: something that warrants urgent investigation. This is justified, as night sweats can be a sign of serious infections such as TB, and cancers, specifically Hodgkins lymphoma. GPs should offer blood tests and a chest X-ray to rule these out. Other conditions associated with night sweats include anxiety and thyroid disease.

But if night sweats have persisted for a long time, particularly a number of years, doctors become less concerned  especially if there are no further symptoms. Its also reassuring when a symptom comes and goes, as symptoms of a serious illness would persist all the time.

Alcohol is more likely to cause sweating as it causes blood  and therefore heat  to flow to the skin.

For those with a long-running issue, medical treatments may be suitable. These include Botox, which is injected into the affected areas, blocking the chemical signals from the nerves that stimulate the sweat glands.

Dont die of embarrassment  or let your partner die of embarrassment  was the message last week after a survey from charity the Eve Appeal found that many men cant talk to their partners about intimate matters. More than 21,000 women each year are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer, yet half of men surveyed said they would not be comfortable discussing these issues with a female partner. Its crucial that none of us ignore so-called embarrassing ailments and discuss any bodily changes we see in ourselves, or our other half. All too often, these are the ones that need to be discussed early and investigated.

Barely a week goes by without yet more confusing health advice about pregnancy  usually relating to alcohol. One new analysis suggests the risk from levels is small, yet you should probably avoid it anyway. As one of my patients pointed out, thats exactly what shed already been told. This constant flurry of advice only fuels anxiety and confusion.
Matts entertainment!

Little Me by Matt Lucas

The comedian and actor on his life and work in, among many other shows, Shooting Stars and Little Britain. Its a bit different to most memoirs, says Lucas, because it comes in the form of an A-Z. For instance, B is for Baldy, which is what people used to shout at him in the playground (not much fun) and G is for Gay (because Im an actual real-life gay!).

Oct 3, Canongate, 20

Dive into this one

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

The first historical novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author tells the story of a pioneering female navy diver who carries out underwater repairs on ships, and whose union man father had links to the mob.

Oct 3, Corsair, 16.99

Little Me by Matt Lucas; Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

In Da Vinci mode

Origin by Dan Brown

The fifth in the Da Vinci Code series revolves around a secret set to shatter the foundations of major world religions. Expect dizzying new perspectives on art, architecture, science and technology. Browns prose style wont win any awards but he tells a great story.

Oct 3, Bantam Press, 20

Lord of the Dance

Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling

Award-winning Spurling provides a fascinating portrait of the socialite author of the much-loved comic masterpiece A Dance To The Music Of Time.

Oct 5, Hamish Hamilton, 25

Origin by Dan Brown; Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling

Inside the Bell Jar

The Letters Of Sylvia Plath Volume one

The poet who took her own life in 1963 was a prolific correspondent and this collection marks the key moments of her adolescence and covers her move from America to England and meeting Ted Hughes in 1956.

Oct 17, Harper, 35

Stories in the key(board) of life

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks is mad about typewriters and each of the 17 stories in his debut collection features one in some way. Why? A typewriter, he explains, you can use every day, you will never lose data, and it can never be hacked.

Oct 17, Heinemann, 16.99

The poet who took her own life in 1963 was a prolific correspondent and this collection marks the key moments of her adolescence

The Letters Of Sylvia Plath Volume one; Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks

Wish upon a star

Ask An Astronaut by Tim Peake

Major Tims mission to explain new worlds continues with a book based on a selection of questions submitted to him by the public. It includes never-before-seen photos from his six months on the Space Station.

Oct 19, Century, 20

Rockin good tales

Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan

Jann Wenner founded the music magazine Rolling Stone in 1967 when he was just 21. To mark its 50th anniversary, Wenner granted journalist Hagan access to all his papers, and this should be one of the music books of the year.

Oct 24, Canongate, 25

Ask An Astronaut by Tim Peake; Sticky Fingers by Joe Hagan

Future shock

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

Harkaways fourth novel is set in a near-future dystopia, a perfect society in which everyone is kept under surveillance by the System. It is a wildly ambitious blend of cryptography, paranoia, politics, alchemy and detection that is being promoted as his Infinite Jest.

Nov 2, Heinemann, 14.99

Stevie wonder

Gold Dust Woman: The Biography Of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis

Unauthorised biography by the author of the notorious Led Zeppelin book Hammer Of The Gods. It promises to shed new light on the Fleetwood Mac stars addictions, affairs and turbulent times, both with the band and as a solo artist.

Nov 21, St Martins Press, 21.54

Gold Dust Woman: The Biography Of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis promises to shed new light on the Fleetwood Mac stars addictions, affairs and turbulent times
Navneet Prakash, 12, was one of the brightest students in his year

The last words of 12-year-old Navneet Prakash Papa, Today is my first exam and my class teacher kept me crying till 9.15 am... I was kept standing for three periods. She only listens to her sycophants... I am going to end my life today Please ask my ma'am not to give such a severe punishment to anyone. Goodbye, mummy, papa & didi. Advertisement

A student in Class 5 in Saint Antony's Convent School, Gorakhpur penned a heartbreaking suicide note telling of his tough time at school, and his struggle with one particular teacher.

Navneet Prakash, 12, one of the brightest students in his year, was upset when he returned home on September 15 after being allegedly harassed and denied entry into the school exams.

'He quietly went upstairs and after some time, he came down and asked for food. His mother gave him food and after having a bit, he took water in a glass that he brought along with him,' father Ravi Prakash, a Physics teacher in the Bapu Inter College, told Mail Today.

When he did not come down after some time, we rushed upstairs to find him lying on the bed with foam coming out of his mouth, he added.

Fearing the worst, the family rushed him to a nearby hospital from where he was rushed to the Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital where doctors declared him dead on Wednesday afternoon.

Heartbroken by the incident, family members and relatives created a ruckus at the school, and a heavy police force was deployed. The school administration have not been on campus or available for comment.

'My son was a very bright student and he took tuition from the class teacher. He scored very high marks. Bhavna used to mentally harass him to join her tuition classes,' claimed his father.

Later on Thursday afternoon, a postmortem was conducted and the report is awaited. An FIR was also registered at Shahpur police station under section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.

The boy's father Ravi Prakash and mother (right) rushed their son to the Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital where doctors declared him dead

'We have arrested the teacher, Bhavna, and the matter is being investigated,' Vinay Kumar Singh, superintendent of police (city) told the media.

'We are Dalits and my son was very brilliant. He dreamt of becoming the chief minister and his role model was chief minister Yogi Adityanath. He also used to visit the Gorakhnath Dham regularly with us and wanted to become the CM,' a visibly moved Sunita Devi, the mother of Navneet, said.

Interestingly, Yogi was present in Gorakhpur on Thursday to offer prayers on the first day of Navratra to establish the kalash and would be leaving for Varanasi where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to attend a programme.

Saint Antony's Convent School, Gorakhpur (file pic)

'Bhavna' the teacher has been arrested and the investigation is ongoing

After Naveet's death, the parent searched his bag and found the suicide note. They also found a glass rapped in a polythene and a foul smell was coming out from it.

Navneet consumed the water in the same glass when he took food for the last time.

'Probably, he has consumed some poison as foam was coming out from his mouth when the family members rushed him to the hospital,' Singh informed.
See more news from India at w ww.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome

aryana police have been accused of delaying handover of the murder case to the CBI

Seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was found lying in a pool of blood in his school on September 8

Ashok Kumar, the conductor accused of the murder of Ryan International School student Pradyuman Thakur, has been remanded into custody.

A court has granted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody of the main accused, Kumar, while two other accused  Francis Thomas and Jeyus Thomas  have been sent to CBI remand until September 25.

Pradyuman was murdered inside the school on September 8

'On request, the competent court has remanded the three accused to CBI custody, who were arrested by the Haryana Police,' said CBI officials.

Sources at the investigative agency said the custodial interrogation was very crucial in this case.

A team has been constituted under Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ajay Kumar Bassi, CBI, to investigate the boy's death.

The CBI has registered a case of murder under 302 of the IPC, 25 of the Arms Act, 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act read with section 34 of IPC.

One day after the CBI took over the investigation in the murder case of the seven-year-old boy, a team of 12 CBI officers reached Ryan International School on Saturday morning and spent an entire day at the premises.

Gurugram: Students arrive at Gurugram's Ryan International School which re-opened on Monday after 10 days closure following the murder of an eight-year-old boy inside the school

Gurugram: Varun Thakur (centre), father of the murdered student

Sources at the investigative agency said a team of forensic experts collected additional evidence from the crime scene, which was regarded as crucial in the investigation of the case.

Pradyuman, a Class 2 student, was murdered inside the school's bathroom on September 8.

The CBI took over the probe on Friday.

Haryana Police have alleged that the Ashok Kumar, a 42-year-old bus conductor, killed Pradyuman with a knife after the boy resisted an attempted sexual assault.

However, the postmortem report ruled out any sexual attempt by the accused on the deceased.
Rules for issuing vehicle pollution-check certificates and emission tests will become far more stringent in the capital if a Supreme Court-mandated panel has its way.

In a report submitted to the SC, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, or EPCA, has said that vehicle pollution-checking centres in Delhi and NCR are only weakening the fight against toxic air.

After a court-ordered survey, the panel found that only two per cent of vehicles failed the tests and members felt that this assessment did not present an accurate picture.

A female motorcyclist covers her face with a cloth used as a mask, because of the pollution

'Corruption and poor testing procedures contribute towards a poor failure rate', the agency said.

In May 2014, a report by the World Health Organization found Delhi to be the most polluted city in the world.

A study by the EPCA the same year said air pollution was the fifth-biggest killer in India after high blood pressure, indoor air pollution from cooking fuels, tobacco smoking and poor nutrition.

Air pollution was the fifth-biggest killer in India after high blood pressure, indoor air pollution from cooking fuels, tobacco smoking and poor nutrition

It said residents of Delhi and Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh have more reasons to worry as both are among five critically polluted cities.

The top court had asked the EPCA to conduct surprise checks at all 962 pollution checking units and report back.

'PUC (Pollution Under Control) tests are vulnerable to fraud and corruption. Often these tests are not done properly and fake software is used.

'The sensor stick used for testing the pollution concentration in tailpipes is not properly inserted; or certain parameters like temperature testing at the time of smoke density tests in diesel vehicles are manipulated to pass the tests.

Streets packed with traffic

'It has also been reported that people obtain PUC certificates even without conducting the tests,' Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director of Centre for Science and Environment, which is part of the EPCA, told Mail Today.

The Capital's air is a noxious combination of exhaust, dust, smoke from wood and dung-fired stoves, burning leaves and industrial output.

The EPCA survey came after an inspection conducted by the central government revealed that at least a third of the existing 962 outlets in the Capital are involved in irregularities like fudging the emission report and giving clearance certificates to polluting vehicles for a price.

The Centre told the Supreme Court that after a study carried out between July and November 2016, show-cause notices have been issued to 174 for irregularities, licenses of 14 have been cancelled, licenses of 75 have been suspended and warning notices issued to 78 such centres.

Recommending stringent pollution checking norms, especially for diesel vehicles, the EPCA says the present technique is 'archaic and very ineffective'.

It said: 'The visible smoke that is currently tested in diesel vehicles does not monitor tiny particles.

Very high emissions of tiny particles are possible from modern diesel engines that are not visible through smoke density tests

'Very high emissions of tiny particles are possible from modern diesel engines that are not visible and cannot be captured through smoke density tests.

'While tightening norms for pre-BSIV vehicles it is also important to improve the test procedures for smoke density tests.'

There is no way to measure particulate matter directly under the present PUC programme, the panel added.
JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon labelled the digital currency Bitcoin a 'fraud'

An enraged bitcoin trader has made an official complaint about JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon for labelling the digital currency a 'fraud'.

In a market abuse report to Swedish regulators, finance firm Blockswater said Dimon was 'spreading false and misleading information'.

So-called cryptocurrencies have enjoyed surging popularity, with Bitcoin's value up almost fourfold since the year began.

But critics claim investors are buying into a speculative bubble not based on anything in the real world.

Wall Street titan Dimon last week said he was 'shocked' by bitcoin's popularity and warned it will 'eventually blow up'.

The 61-year-old chief executive said he would fire any employee trading it for being 'stupid'.

It followed a warning from Britain's financial regulator that digital currencies are 'very high-risk, speculative investments' that are wide open to fraud.

Blockswater's complaint claims Dimon's words damaged the online currency's price and reputation.

Its boss Florian Schweitzer said: 'Jamie Dimon's public assertions did not only affect the reputation of bitcoin, they harmed the interests of some of his own clients and many young businesses that are working hard to create a better financial system.' 

The value of a bitcoin has soared from under $250 in 2015 to above $5,000 this month. It has fallen to around $4,000 amid reports a regulatory crackdown could see China shut exchanges where bitcoin is traded.

JP Morgan declined to comment.
Premier Veterinary Group looked as sick as a dog yesterday as it issued a massive profit warning after flopping in the United States.

Its shares collapsed nearly 50 per cent after it warned sales and profits for its next financial year are likely to be well below expectations.

In a double whammy for investors, the company also said that it is likely to need extra funding next year to stop its US business from going under.

The problems started in May, when Premier warned that cash restraints in the US vet industry were curtailing the take-up of its pet care plan, which collects and manages direct debits.

Premier Veterinary Group shares collapsed nearly 50 per cent after it warned sales and profits for its next financial year are likely to be well below expectations

As a result, it expects to have added cover for just 4,000 animals by the end of the financial year. For context, the number of dogs and cats in the US is put at 70m and 74m respectively.

Despite selling its UK loyalty membership group for 4.5million earlier this year to further fund its US expansion, Premier now believes that it will take another year to gain full momentum.

Although it expects to reveal strong UK and European performance this year, Premier also warned that its 3million coffers may need a boost in the third quarter of its next financial year if US operations are to stay afloat.

Chief executive Dominic Tonner said it was 'disappointing' that Premier's US business is taking longer than expected to overcome weakness. Shares fell 49.7 per cent, or 42.5p, to 43p.

STOCK WATCH - HALOSOURCE Shares in clean water firm Halosource looked healthy after it announced an agreement to launch a line of purifying water bottles in Asia. The bottles will be made by Seven Step Ecotech, a division of Chinese plastics giant Hontay, and will use Halosources water disinfection technology. The bottles will initially be sold in India and Indonesia before moving into China, South East Asia and the Middle East over coming years. Shares in the company rose 19.1 per cent, or 0.3p, to 1.88p.

The story couldn't have been more different for Pets At Home, which hit its highest value since January after Berenberg gave it a 'buy' rating.

The company, which operates a vet business and sells pet products, scared investors this year by slashing prices (and profits) to stay competitive.

But Berenberg claims the growth in products being sold more than offsets this year's price reductions, with the business remaining on track to deliver results in line with market expectations.

The broker also thinks Pets At Home will be boosted by new innovations such as its flea medicine subscription service. Shares rose 6.6pc, or 12.9p, to 207.5p.

The FTSE 100 advanced 0.6 per cent, or 46.74 points, to 7310.64, lifted by a drop in the value of the pound after Theresa May's Brexit speech in which she suggested a two-year transition period for the divorce.

Shares in takeaway app Just Eat climbed following the news that rival Uber, which also offers a food delivery service, has lost its licence to operate in London due to a lack of corporate responsibility.

Although the ruling will only affect Uber's core ride-sharing business, leaving Ubereats unaffected, some traders assumed that Just Eat's market share would increase following the ban, and piled into the stock. Shares advanced 0.9 per cent, or 6p, to 690p.

Acacia Mining, which has been devastated this year by a ban on the export of gold concentrate in Tanzania, finally had some good news  it will circumvent the ban at its Buzwagi mine in the country by producing only gold bars until the end of its life in 2020.

Acacia said the mine will now be able to sell an additional 8,000-10,000 ounces per month for the remainder of 2017, and shares rose 1.7 per cent, or 3.1p, to 181.7p.

Security firms Indigovision and Westminster Group both tanked on the back of poor results.

Indigovision, which sells video security systems, fell 20.1 per cent, or 50p, to 199p, while Westminster, which provides security services for airports, ports and ferries, plunged 11.9 per cent, or 1.75p, to 13p after a 1.4million first-half loss.
I wonder if I could impress anyone with my magnificent crop of tumbleweeds in a back field. Maybe I could find someone to impress on Facebook, someone living in New York or Chicago, someone who knows this romantic Western herbage from old western movies or the song by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers.

No one around Elko would be impressed with my crop, especially anyone familiar with the common weed Russian thistle. Besides, many Elkoans probably have their own crop of tumbleweeds somewhere on their property.

The very un-romantic Russian thistle was introduced from Russia in the late 1800s and has now spread across much of the drier regions of North America. These plants form rounded shapes made of many branches. They may grow one to three feet high and up to five feet across. Small flowers produced from July to October develop into small, snail-shaped seeds.

As the plants dry out, they become rigid and spiny. When completely dry, blowing wind breaks off the stems at ground level and the round shapes help them roll across the ground. With enough tumbleweeds, fence lines can be buried with thousands of these blowing plants.

This clever rolling adaptation spreads perhaps 250,000 seeds downwind of the original plant. Then, these seeds require very little precipitation to germinate and establish.

The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension provides a good article on Russian thistle, which describes the seedlings as looking like small pine trees. Their long, thin leaves carry a reddish tinge and end in a spine. Older plants have red or purple stripes on their stems.

Many Elko roadsides and vacant lots are covered with Russian thistle. It would be nice to have a law that says if someone clears ground, they are then responsible for treating the inevitable weeds that will cover that bare ground.

Cattle and sheep will eat the young, succulent plants but not after they mature. The typical removal strategy is by spraying young plants with a broadleaf-selective herbicide. Any physical removal should be done before seeds form. Plants can be pulled, dug or hoed, but if done after seeds form, the work just helps spread the seeds. It is important to plant other vegetation to take the place of these thistles.

If only the County Fair had a horticultural category for Russian thistle, I could easily earn a ribbon. I guess I could spray plants with lacquer and sell them over the Internet or build tumbleweed snow men for my yard, but no one in Elko is going to be impressed.
Liliane Bettencourt's family owned 33 per cent of L'Oreal stock

MADE UP Shares in French cosmetics giant L'Oreal climbed 2.5 per cent following the death of 94-year-old billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, whose family owned 33 per cent of its stock.

It has long been speculated that her death would be a catalyst for 23.2 per cent stakeholder Nestle to table a takeover bid.

SHARE SALE Ian Penrose, 51, chief executive of pool betting operator Sportech, has sold 286,000 of shares in the firm and transferred 200,000 shares to his wife, Vanessa.

STRONG FIGURES Demand for goods made in British factories is strong, according to the CBI. 'Total order books and export order books are holding firm,' said Anna Leach, head of economic intelligence.

EASYJET DEAL Budget airline EasyJet has been picked as a potential buyer for Air Berlin by its creditors, who said the company would be in discussions over the insolvent carrier for the next three weeks.

STARLING SEARCH Start-up London lender Starling Bank is seeking 40million from investors as it eyes opportunities in Europe.

WATCHDOG RAPPED Congressman Bill Huizenga slammed the US Securities and Exchange Commission watchdog for lax cyber security after raiders broke in last year, gaining information which it said may have been used for 'illicit trading'.

MERGER TALK Struggling German lender Commerzbank has been approached about a merger by Italy's biggest lender, Unicredit, which is currently cutting 14,000 jobs.

SITES SOLD Shares in troubled delivery firm DX Group fell 8.6 per cent yesterday after it sold sites across the UK for 4.5million to help pay back a loan to HSBC.

OIL SLIDE Shares in oil rig maker Lamprell plunged 11.3 per cent yesterday as a dramatic drop in sales caused bosses to scale back on their full-year predictions.
Bosses at Britain's biggest tech company are in line for a payday of nearly 270million in a Silicon Valley-style bonanza.

Just weeks after finishing its 6.5billion takeover of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) software business, Micro Focus said it would hand executives and managers the bonus if its share price rose to 34 in the next two years.

That would require the stock to gain another 40 per cent in value by September 2019, after closing 1 per cent, or 23p, higher at 24.36 last night.

Critics branded the deal  potentially one of the biggest in UK corporate history  'extraordinary'.

Executive chairman Kevin Loosemore, left, is to receive 37.4m while chief exec Chris Hsu, right will get 30.6m

Financial director Mike Phillips, left, will receive 23m while chief operating officer Stephen Murdoch, right will get 17m

It comes amid mounting concern over fat cat pay in British boardrooms. Under the pay deal, five executives alone will be handed 3.7m shares if the stock hits 34.

The highest paid will be Kevin Loosemore, the company's executive chairman since 2011, who stands to gain 37.4million.

The 58-year-old Oxford University graduate, who took home 8.4million a year in pay and bonuses over the past two years, already held shares worth 17million yesterday.

Chris Hsu, 47, Micro Focus's new chief executive who was previously executive vice-president at HPE Software, will take the next biggest slice at 30.6million.

Others set to cash in include finance chief Mike Phillips, 54, who will take home 23million while chief operating officer Stephen Murdoch, 50, and board member Nils Brauckmann, 53, will both pocket 17million each.

A further 4.2m shares, worth 142.8million if the price hits 34, will be handed to about 30 other senior figures.

Stefan Stern, a spokesman for the High Pay Centre, said the proposed payout raised questions about whether the right people were being rewarded.

He said: 'They are simply extraordinary numbers. There is nothing wrong with performance incentives for people who create value, but I suspect those people  probably programmers and IT specialists  are not the people who will benefit from this.

'It is fair to say most people could not begin to understand how you reach numbers like these for three years' work  they are beyond the lottery.'

The windfall would be granted only if the share price hits 34. If it fails to pass 27, they get nothing. A Micro Focus spokesman insisted the payout was conditional on 'delivering exceptional shareholder returns'.

Before its takeover of HPE, Micro Focus was worth about 4.45billion, and yesterday that had risen to around 10.5billion.

The spokesman added: 'Micro Focus has developed a very clear strategy, linked to a financial plan and to a rewards systems that only pays executives when shareholders see returns.

'Remuneration policies align executive incentives to long-term shareholder interests. The HPE transaction represents the next stage in Micro Focus's track record of delivering exceptional shareholder returns.'

Edwin Morgan, director of policy at the Institute of Directors, said: 'The key test of whether directors' pay is justifiable is the judgment of shareholders.

'After these payouts... the shareholders must make their judgment on whether the current parameters are valid.'
Renowned for being a drink of choice among older generations, gin is making a resurgence in Australia.

Called one of the 'fastest growing spirits' in the country, the alcoholic beverage's popularity has reportedly grown by almost 20 per cent in the last three years.

The drink - derived from juniper berries - has spawned numerous new concoctions, with hundreds of thousands of cases being sold each year.

Renowned for being a drink of choice among older generations, gin is making a resurgence in Australia (stock image)

Speaking with Daily Mail Australia, Southtrade International's marketing director Fraser Lockwood said sales of the spirit had been through the roof.

'Gin has been in the fastest growing spirits category in Australia for the last three years,' he said.

'With sales reaching over half a million cases per year and still growing.'

Mr Lockwood added that gin drinkers had turned to the beverage thanks to the 'extra flavours' and 'versatility' it offered.

He said: 'Youre seeing a younger demographic of twenty-somethings drinking gin when previously there "go to" may have been vodka or wine.'

'All major London Dry Gin brands are well distributed across Australia and just as excitingly we have great local gin distilleries popping up too - driving even greater interest in the category.'

Called one of the 'fastest growing spirits' in the country, the alcoholic beverage's popularity has reportedly grown by almost 20 per cent in the last three years

Southtrade International's marketing director Fraser Lockwood told Daily Mail Australia sales of the spirit had been high, totalling more than half a million cases each year

According to a Roy Morgan survey, gin drinking is indeed on the rise in Australia, with 633,000 adults enjoying the beverage in 2010 and more than 860,000 preferring the spirit in 2015.

Andrew Price, the General Manager of Consumer Products said that the popularity of the drink had 'increased across all age groups,' with it becoming the second most popular white spirit.

'However brand preferences vary greatly across different age groups,' he said.

James Hayman, a fifth-generation distiller for Hayman's Gin, said that more than 97 per cent of the gin consumed in Australia is imported,

'There is a real appetite and thirst for knowledge about this great tipple,' he said.

However, the number of local distilleries are also growing, with up to 100 in the country, according to the ABC.

James Hayman (pictured), a fifth-generation distiller for Hayman's Gin, said that more than 97 per cent of the gin consumed in Australia is imported and that there was a 'real appetite' for the spirit

With the surge in popularity, Hayman's Gin(pictured) has been embarking on new ways to bring the spirit to the public, including their upcoming Hayman's Supper Club event

Ways to garnish gin Lemon and Lime A popular choice that adds a light taste and splash of colour Juniper berries A major component of gin itself, this amplifies the taste Vanilla pods For those craving something sweet and sophisticated Chilli This choice creates an aromatic gin with a spicy kick Lavender Believed to add warmth and floral notes Advertisement

'The Australian gin industry is more than double the size it was two years ago, and I think more than double the size it was four years before that,' Stu Gregor from the Australian Distillers Association told the publication.

With the surge in popularity, Hayman's Gin has been embarking on new ways to bring the spirit to the public.

Their latest offering is a special Gin Supper Club, combining the alcoholic beverage with flavoursome meals at Sydney's iconic pub The Lord Dudley.

'It is a great way to show consumers how a good gin can complement your dining experience, a role that was once traditionally held by wine,' Mr Lockwood said.

The Haymans Gin Supper club runs throughout the month of October in The Garden, Restaurant at The Lord Dudley in Sydney.

Guests can choose food and drink combinations ranging from $25 entree and cocktail to $60 for two courses and two drinks, with booking and information available on the their website here.
Support for a fully armed police service among the rank-and-file has jumped as forces confront an unprecedented terrorist threat, according to a major staff survey.

One in three (34 per cent) respondents polled by the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) was in favour of arming all officers.

Although the survey found a majority do not back routine arming, the proportion who believe the move is needed has gone up from less than a quarter (23 per cent) in the last national poll in 2006.

Most police in the UK are unarmed, setting the country apart from many other nations around the world.

Support for a fully armed police service among the rank-and-file has jumped as forces confront an unprecedented terrorist threat, according to a major staff survey (file photo)

The PFEW polled its membership to gauge views on a topic which has come under the spotlight again after a wave of terrorist attacks.

Analysis of 32,366 responses showed 8.9 per cent believe all officers should receive appropriate training and be armed at all times, either on or off duty.

A quarter (25.2 per cent) of respondents backed routine arming but only when on duty.

The percentages in the two categories compare to 4.9 per cent and 18.5 per cent respectively 11 years ago.

In the latest poll, the most common response, at 42.5 per cent, was that firearms should not be issued to all officers but more should receive training and be armed as and when necessary.

Others said all officers should be trained and issued with firearms when needed (16.8 per cent) or that the status quo is about right (6.2 per cent).

Steve White, chairman of the PFEW, said the federation expected to see an increase in support for routine arming.

He added: 'Despite the atrocities seen this year, a terror threat that only goes up, never down, and prolonged pressure heaped on officers, they still hold on to the principle of policing by consent, with two-thirds of officers not wishing to be routinely armed if given the choice.'

One in three (34 per cent) respondents polled by the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) was in favour of arming all officers (file photo)

He said policing has changed dramatically since the last survey in 2006. 'I'm not surprised there is real concern amongst officers and a real desire to say 'actually, I'm prepared to carry a firearm',' Mr White said.

He suggested a fully armed police service was 'inevitable'.

Mr White said: 'In the 29 years of my policing service, we've seen threat levels increase, we've seen firearms capability have to increase. I think that is going to have to continue. Inevitably, I suspect in some years' time we are going to have a wholly-armed British police service.

'But that is not going to destroy the concept of policing by consent and the importance of the way police engage with communities.'

However, the head of Scotland Yard voiced opposition to the prospect of routine arming.

Cressida Dick said: 'I understand why people are saying 'well, surely many more officers, or maybe even all officers, should be armed' but I don't actually agree.'

The Met Police Commissioner told LBC radio: 'I don't want to see every officer on every street corner carrying a gun.'

Authorised firearms officers volunteer for the job and have to undergo rigorous training and selection processes.

Home Office statistics show there were 6,278 armed officers across the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales as of the end of March  an increase of 639 (11 per cent) compared with a year earlier.

A major uplift was launched after the Paris terror attacks in 2015 and the number is due to top 7,000 by April next year.

Police chiefs are carrying out a fresh review of the armed response in the wake of a wave of terrorist incidents in the UK.
The British headmistress brutally murdered by Amazonian pirates turned down a safe boat ride through one of the most lawless stretches of water in the world, MailOnline has learned.

Emma Kelty was specifically warned about the danger of the river she was about to paddle through but insisted on sticking to her schedule as she was 'losing time'.

In her last known conversation, the 43-year-old said she felt she had no choice but to carry on in order to complete her 4,000 odyssey from the Amazon source to the sea.

Tragically, her bravery and determination led her straight into the path of cold blooded killers who shot and stabbed her in her tent.

Shortly before her death - stunned that a foreign female canoeist was heading alone towards pirate territory - residents of a riverine community called her over as she passed by.

The British headmistress brutally murdered by Amazonian pirates turned down a safe boat ride through one of the most lawless stretches of water in the world, MailOnline has learned

Emma Kelty was specifically warned about the danger of the river she was about to paddle through but insisted on sticking to her schedule as she was 'losing time'. In her last known conversation, the 43-year-old said was determined to complete her 4,000 mile odyssey. Pictured: Emma preparing for her trip

Tragically, her bravery and determination led her straight into the path of cold blooded killers who shot and stabbed her in her tent

Shortly before her death - stunned that a foreign female canoeist was heading alone towards pirate territory - residents of a riverine community called her over as she passed by

Miliane Vincente told how she took the British adventurer to her home in the village of Sao Joao de Catua on the Solimoes river, and gave her a glass of water as she showed her photos.

But the reason was not to flick through the snaps of Emma's travels - it was to warn her never to attempt to pass through the feared stretch of river after Coari, 100km upstream, on her own.

Maybe it was Miliane's forbidding warnings that were behind Emma's Facebook post just days before she died: 'So in or near coari (100km away) i will have my boat stolen and i will be killed too. Nice.'

Student Miliane said: 'We saw her passing by and called her into the community. I told her it was very dangerous, that it was full of drug trafficking and terrorists.

'I took her to my house and gave her water to drink, and we talked as she showed me her photos. I told her to go with us in our boat to Coari so she wouldn't be in danger.

'I still remember he last words: I can't stay, the more time I stay here the more time I'm losing. For me to succeed I have to do this route. Your hearts are very kind, but I have to carry on.

'For me to succeed I have to do this route.' Emma rejected heartfelt offers to keep her safe

'She thanked me and took a photo of us, then I said good luck and she said the same. I'm very sad that I tried to help her but I didn't manage to.'

To the despair of those watching on, tenacious Emma paddled away - straight into the pirates' lair, and her brutal death.

Maybe it was the breathtaking beauty of the vast and peaceful Solimoes river, over two miles wide in places, which lulled the former headteacher into a false sense of security, despite locals' desperate assurances that she wouldn't get past Coari alive.

Seen from above, the meandering brown river carves an uneven path through thick green rainforest towards the next town of Codajas, and certainly doesn't appear to hold the kind of dangers you might expect in an urban metropolis.

But for locals and sailors the 84-mile stretch of river is something very different, a perilous no-go zone crawling with pirates who rob and kill at pleasure, while just the thought of having to pass through it strikes fear into people's hearts.

The pirate attacks have left countless dead or missing, and turned the small section of the 4,000-mile-long Amazon into one the most lawless stretches of river in the world.

It was exactly in the centre of the 'no-go zone' that Emma decided to pitch her tent on a remote riverbank last Wednesday night.

Miliane Vincente (above) told how she her it was very dangerous, that it was full of drug trafficking and terrorists. 'I still remember he last words: I can't stay, the more time I stay here the more time I'm losing. Your hearts are very kind, but I have to carry on'

For locals and sailors the 84-mile stretch of river is something very different, a perilous no-go zone crawling with pirates who rob and kill at pleasure, while just the thought of having to pass through it strikes fear into people's hearts. Pictured: Emma's canoe

pirate attacks have left countless dead or missing, and turned the small section of the 4,000-mile-long Amazon into one the most lawless stretches of river in the world. Pictured: Emma's canoe being taken to Manaus

It was exactly in the centre of the 'no-go zone' that Emma decided to pitch her tent on a remote riverbank last Wednesday night. Local journalist Willian Sacramento said: 'The pirates have changed the way we live our lives. Pictured: Police seize the pirate boat used to target Emma

Night had already fallen when the 43-year-old former headteacher from London was ambushed by seven men from the notorious 'Water Pirates' group, who shot her without asking questions, then reportedly slit her throat and raped her before dumping her body in the river's murky brown waters.

As details of the murder emerged this week, the overwhelming reaction among local people has been disbelief - not that such barbarity could happen, but that a woman could have purposefully paddled alone straight into the feared pirates' land.

Willian Sacramento, a local journalist in Coari, said: 'Everybody here lives in fear of them.

'The pirates have changed the way we live our lives. We don't do the things we used to do before, like going fishing at night, or camping out on a beach, for fear of being attacked.

'We have all seen what the pirates are capable of, how they attack violently and kill with no humanity whatsover.

'The English woman should have listened to those who warned her not to travel through this part of the river alone. She didn't believe them and ended up paying with her life.

'What happened to her is terrible, but for us stories of people being killed by pirates and thrown into the river has become normal.'

Just last month, in exactly the same spot where Ms Kelty died, pirates attacked a boat and shot dead its occupants, believed to be Peruvian traffickers transporting drugs. They cut out the men's intestines, so their bodies would not float, and threw them in the river.

Police chief of Coari, Jose Afonso Barradas Junior, told MailOnline that pirates are by far the greatest threat to the town of 75,000 people on Solimoes river, the name given to the upper part of the Amazon. Pictured: one of the boats targeted by pirates

'Organised crime has taken a hold of Coari and the surrounding area,' said Jose Barradas Junior. 'We are working hard to fight it and catch the bandits involved, but it's a complicated situation. The police have stepped up their work too, because if we don't we will lose control'

'As the pirate attacks have increased in their number and barbarity, so has the fear of the local population. Everyone feels hostage to the pirates.' Pictured: a body recovered from the river

The pirates' bloody war with the powerful drugs cartels has made the area where they hide out even more dangerous, with innocent civilians often getting caught up in the violence. Pictured: Police round up pirate suspects

And in December, again in the same part of the river, a pirate group ambushed a police boat passing through the area. The police chief of the next town, Codajas, Thyago Garcez, disappeared during the ensuing shoot out. His body has never been found.

The police chief of Coari, Jose Afonso Barradas Junior, told MailOnline that pirates are by far the greatest threat to the town of 75,000 people on Solimoes river, the name given to the upper part of the Amazon.

He said: 'Organised crime has taken a hold of Coari and the surrounding area.

'We are working hard to fight it and catch the bandits involved, but it's a complicated situation. The area is vast, there are many tributaries where pirates are holed out, and many pirates are well trained and with more powerful arms than the police. Many of the pirate groups are financed by powerful criminal factions.

'The police have stepped up their work too, because if we don't we will lose control.

'Over the last five years, the pirate groups have intensified their activities. Their main target are the drugs traffickers, because the area is a trafficking route from Peru and Colombia. But they are also committing many more robberies of small boats carrying goods and passengers.

'As the pirate attacks have increased in their number and barbarity, so has the fear of the local population. Everyone feels hostage to the pirates.'

Police chief of Codajas, Thyago Garcez, disappeared during a shoot out with pirates last year and his body has never been found

The pirates' bloody war with the powerful drugs cartels has made the area where they hide out even more dangerous, with innocent civilians often getting caught up in the violence.

Many believe the pirates who killed Emma thought her tent belonged to drugs traffickers, opening fire on her before they knew who was inside.

Retired Federal Police chief Mauro Sposito believes that the drugs gangs are themselves terrified of the pirates, who are often better armed and more barbaric than even them.

He said: 'They are more afraid of pirates than they are of the police.

'The pirates attack craft transporting drugs, kill their occupants, then open up their stomachs and throw them in the river so they become fish food.

'They sink they boats, and leave no tracks whatsoever which could lead to their identification and arrest.'

Once a rainforest wilderness where few made their home, the population of the Amazon has surged in recent years, by 22 per cent to nearly 25 million people between 2000 and 2010.

And as it has grown, so has the rise in organised crime, especially the activity of pirates, known as 'water rats'. According to commercial shipping groups, the number of attacks on cargo ships quadrupled last year.

While they take whatever loot they can, the pirates' preferred treasure is diesel, which is drained from every boat and cargo ship they raid and makes up 70 per cent of the estimated 25million pirate groups steal every year.

The pirates' bloody war with the powerful drugs cartels has made the area where they hide out even more dangerous, with innocent civilians often getting caught up in the violence. Pictured: Emma's phone and GPS

Many believe the pirates who killed Emma thought her tent (above) belonged to drugs traffickers, opening fire on her before they knew who was inside

Retired Federal Police chief Mauro Sposito believes that the drugs gangs are themselves terrified of the pirates, who are often better armed and more barbaric than even them. Pictured: Suspecys Arthur Gomes da Silva (left) and Erinei Ferreira De Silva (right)

The pirates like to steal diesel, which is drained from every boat they raid and makes up 70 per cent of the 25million steal every year. Evanilson Gomes da Costa (right) was a suspect in Emma's killing before he too was murdered. Jardel Pinheiro Gomes (left) is also a suspect

Fuel is sold to illegal gold miners to power their dredgers extracting gold from the river bed, and is also one of the raw materials used to produce cocaine by mixing with coca leaves. Two of the suspects in Emma's murder are arrested

The fuel is sold to illegal gold miners to power their dredgers extracting gold from the river bed, and is also one of the raw materials used to produce cocaine by mixing with coca leaves.

One of the reasons Coari is at the centre of pirate activity in the Amazon is because of its oil and natural gas terminal, which has been raided by pirates six times already this year.

The last time, in May, pirates brazenly engaged in a fierce gunfight with security guards and police.

And as pirates become more powerful and sophisticated, the under-resourced Amazonas state police struggle to keep up.

When the leader of the 'Pirates of the Solimoes' group, Sidnei Moriz, 35, was arrested in Coari last year, officers discovered an impressive arsenal of heavy weapons, including shotguns, pistols, an Italian semi-automatic MR1 rifle and a German Schmeisser MP-2811 sub machine gun.

The gangs are also known for planning their attacks to perfection, ambushing ships in places where they know there is no mobile signal to call for help, and making sure they have covered their tracks to avoid identification and arrest.

Another group which operated around Coari would embark on ships masquerading as Federal Police officers using identical uniforms.

Their scam led led to the crew of one boat opening fire on a Federal Police boat in 2010, killing two officers and injuring another, because they thought they were actually pirates pretending to be Feds.

Another pirate group which attacked a cargo ship as it passed Coari last year were all using military police uniforms, as well as bullet-proof vests and automatic weapons.

One of the reasons Coari is at the centre of pirate activity in the Amazon is because of its oil and natural gas terminal, which has been raided by pirates six times already this year. Pictured: Emma's GPS message when she was mistakenly reported as dead

When the leader of the 'Pirates of the Solimoes' group, Sidnei Moriz, 35, (above) was arrested in Coari last year, officers discovered an impressive arsenal of heavy weapons, including shotguns, pistols and an Italian semi-automatic MR1 rifle

The gangs are also known for planning their attacks to perfection, ambushing ships in places where they know there is no mobile signal to call for help, and making sure they have covered their tracks to avoid identification and arrest. Pictured: Brazilian patrol boats

The ship's commander said: 'The addressed each other using the names major and sargeant. Every so often one of them pointed his gun at my chest. They said they wanted drugs and arms. It was a very difficult situation. One of them even even fired his gun and nearly shot me in the head.'

It is the ever more frequent attacks on civilians which has left locals and sailors who rely on the Solimoes river for their jobs or transport gripped with fear.

In May, rival pirate group 'Pirates of the Rivers' raided a fishing boat near Coari, and also order the crew to remove all their clothes before stealing around 2,000 in cash as well as mobile phones and other belongings.

One crew member, 42-year-old Ricardo Costa, tried to escape by jumping from the boat but he was killed as the pirates opened fire.

In February two Assemblies of God pastors were shot by four pirates as they arrived at the Dom Bosco riverside community near Coari, where they were going to give a Bible course. They survived despite being shot in the head and the back.

One of the pirate's most audacious attacks was when, in 2011, pirates boarded a passenger riverboat that was travelling between Coari and Manuas and ordered 160 passengers and crew, including men and women, to remove all their clothes and leave them on the top deck before locking the terrified travellers in the ship's hull.

Another pirate group which operated around Coari would embark on ships masquerading as Federal Police officers using identical uniforms. Their scam led led to the crew of one boat opening fire on a Federal Police boat in 2010

One of the pirate's most audacious attacks was when, in 2011, pirates boarded a passenger riverboat near Coari and ordered 160 passengers and crew, including men and women, to remove all their clothes and stole their belongins. Pictured: Emma at the South Pole

Countless, increasingly bloody pirate attacks have left locals fearing for their lives whenever they have to travel the 84-mile stretch after Coari. And it's no wonder many, like Miliane, tried to persuade Emma to think again before venturing there alone.

The terror lasted an hour, during which time they pirates stole their money, jewellery, laptops and mobile phones, and left some brutally beaten up, before motoring off into the darkness.

With no mobile signal in such a remote part of the jungle, the passengers had to wait for four hours before another boat finally passed by and alerted police, while the boat drifted dangerously in the dark.

The incident, and the countless, increasingly bloody pirate attacks since, have left locals fearing for their lives whenever they have to travel the 84-mile stretch after Coari.

And it's no wonder many, like Miliane, tried to persuade Emma to think again before venturing there alone.
Pictured is Joseph Steinfeld, who was allegedly murdered on September 3, six days before his 18th birthday. Steinfeld was found in a mobile home near Cabool, Texas County, Missouri

A man and two women are charged in the killing of a 17-year-old whose burned remains were found in southern Missouri after his family reported him missing.

Eighteen-year-old Andrew Vrba, 18-year-old Isis Schauer and 24-year-old Briana Calderas were charged Thursday with first-degree murder in Joseph Steinfeld's death.

The trio is also charged with abandonment of a corpse. Vrba and Schauer are also charged with armed criminal action, reports the Houston Herald.

Steinfeld's family reported him missing September 14. The family says the last people he was with were the suspects. He was last heard from on September 1.

Court records say Vrba admitted to killing Steinfeld at Calderas' mobile home near Cabool, Texas County, Missouri, and that the women admitted to helping dispose of the body.

Vrba allegedly stabbed Steinfeld and all three helped to burn the body. The two women traveled to a local Walmart to buy burning aids, reports the Herald.

Some of Steinfeld's bones were placed in a chicken coop on the property.

Pictured is Andrew Vrba, 18, who is charged with first-degree murder in Steinfeld's death. Vrba allegedly stabbed Steinfeld and also allegedly bragged about sexually mutilating his body and gouging his eyes out

Pictured are Isis Schauer, 18 (left), and Briana Calderas, 24 (right). Both are also charged with first-degree murder for their roles in the death. The trio is also charged with abandonment of a corpse. Vrba and Schauer are also charged with armed criminal action

Vrba also allegedly told the two women that he had sexually mutilated Steinfeld's body and gouged out his eyes.

Investigators believe the death occurred on September 3, six days before Steinfeld would have turned 18.

Steinfeld's family told KY3 that he 'sometimes' identifies as female, going by the name Ally Matthew Steinfeld on social media.

Police say they are not yet treating the murder as a hate crime but also note that the investigation is ongoing.

Vrba and Schauer are both of nearby Houston, Missouri.

The trio are being held without bond.

Pictured is a photo from the GoFundMe page that is raising funds for Steinfeld's funeral. Steinfeld's family said he sometimes identified as female on social media. Police say they are not considering the murder as a hate crime for the time being

Vrba's attorney declined comment. No attorney is listed for either woman in online.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family deal with funeral expenses.
Inside the hall, the audience greet Angela Merkel with polite applause but no standing ovation

Outside, there is booing and whistling from a cross-section of demonstrators complaining about everything from the minimum wage and immigration to diesel emissions. At least, there are no tomato-throwers  as there were the other day.

Inside the hall, the audience greet Angela Merkel with polite applause but no standing ovation. A handful of people are wearing party hats that had been placed on seats by the organisers but, frankly, I have seen more razzmatazz at a Liberal Democrat fringe meeting.

Mrs Merkel doesnt bother with a walkabout or glad-handing the throng. She marches straight up to the stage, smoothing out the creases in her trademark jacket and trousers.

To a foreigner like me, it seems a strangely underwhelming welcome for the pre-eminent Western politician of our times.

Here is the most powerful woman in the world entering the final stretch of an election race in which she is so far out in front that she could spend the rest of the campaign in bed with a box-set of her beloved Midsomer Murders and it wouldnt cost her a single vote tomorrow.

And yet the audience in this old fish market in Hamburg could be watching, well, a fish auction.

They are, in fact, watching a political miracle.

For, two years ago, following the Eurozone crisis, Merkels impulsive decision to throw open Germanys borders to more than a million unchecked migrants had been a disaster.

The reign of Mutti (Mummy), as Germans affectionately call her, looked to be in peril. Her prospects seemed even worse last year when her own party, the Christian Democrats CDU, were defeated by Right-wing extremists in her own state. Her most loyal fans whispered that her time was up.

Today, though, she has not merely bounced back but has reduced her nearest challenger to something of a national joke.

The Social Democrats Martin Schulz, the boffinish ex-president of the European Parliament, is now reduced to making up Corbyn-style fantasy policies on the hoof.

This week he even proposed a 30 per cent pay rise for the medical profession. Germany simply shrugged. Ja, whatever.

For her part, Merkel is selling a core message of stability and more of the same

For her part, Merkel is selling a core message of stability and more of the same. This set-piece rally may be low on atmosphere  her opening joke about Hamburg fish falls as flat as a lemon sole  but it is an impressive performance none the less.

The event is reminiscent of British politics in pre-Tony Blair days. There are no emotive warm-up videos and is no Autocue. Nor is this a hand-picked, members-only audience of the sort we have come to expect during British elections.

Though the front section of the hall is reserved for party guests, most of the 2,000 audience are simply members of the public.

They include the odd heckler. She swats them aside. Some people are shouting but I am happy to have you all here, she says.

Standing at an old-fashioned lectern with just a few notes, she covers topics ranging from North Korea to local bread and butter issues in the same workmanlike tones.

We regret that the British have decided to leave the EU, she says in one breath and applauds Frances choice of Europhile Emmanuel Macron in the next.

Her core message is that the world is changing, the economy is soaring, Germans should stop moaning about the little things and appreciate just how lucky they are.

Alice Weidel has described post-war German politicians as pigs and marionettes of the victorious powers of the Second World War, whose task it is to keep down the German people

Its a modern version of Harold Macmillans winning mantra: Youve never had it so good.

Remember, there is no such thing as It doesnt work, she declares.

When she finally halts  bang on schedule at 7.59pm, with just enough time for the national anthem  the crowd finally get to their feet. There is no milking the moment. Seconds later, Mrs Merkel is off the stage and on her way out through a back door.

Whatever barbs her critics may throw at her, triumphalism is not one of them.

The result of tomorrows contest may be a foregone conclusion. (Polls suggest Merkels will be the largest party again  with 12 per cent more votes than its nearest rival, heralding her fourth term in power.)

Many Germans tell me that they cannot remember a more boring election. Yet, they also admit that this is also likely to be an historic moment not just in German but in European politics.

For Mrs Merkel is being blamed for something which Europe has spent the past 70 years trying to prevent  the rise of a credible hard-Right German nationalist movement.

As a result of widespread concerns about uncontrolled migration the hard-line AFD (Alternative fur Deutschland) could see as many as 90 MPs elected tomorrow. Such are its extreme policies that it makes Ukip look like hand-wringing liberals.

The fact is that as of next week, the German parliament, the Bundestag, will undoubtedly include politicians who want Germany to start mentioning the war again.

If the French are rightly proud of their emperor and the Britons of Nelson and Churchill, we have the right to be proud of the achievements of the German soldiers in two world wars, said Alexander Gauland, co-leader of the AFD.

The principal cause for the rise of the AFD, according to many Germans, is Mrs Merkel.

She even inspired the partys name. When she announced, echoing Margaret Thatcher, that there was no alternative to her policy of bailing out crisis-hit Greece and Italy, a group of appalled Eurosceptic intellectuals set up the AFD as exactly that alternative.

Its initial impetus soon waned and the AFD looked like any other fringe protest movement. But then, in the summer of 2015, Merkel took the seismic decision to open Germanys borders as vast numbers of migrants from across Africa and Asia made their way West via the Balkans. Even the most moderate Germans were alarmed.

Some of the new arrivals were genuine refugees fleeing war and persecution, but many were economic migrants, mainly single young men. A subsequent string of terror incidents, notably the 2016 attack on a Berlin Christmas market, were compounded by stories of culture clashes.

After reports of migrant gangs sexually molesting German women at New Years Eve celebrations in Cologne were denied by police, and then subsequently confirmed, many Germans began to lose faith in the authorities.

There has been a daily drip-feed of similar stories.

When Germans read that sexual assaults are up by 48 per cent year-on-year in Bavaria alone, they do not need the AFD to tell them why that might be.

Travelling on a busy Hamburg metro one night this week, I was surprised by the way in which two African men felt that it was acceptable to plonk themselves down next to three young German women travelling home from a party and instantly demand  in broken English  to be your boyfriend. When the women said that they had boyfriends already, thanks very much, one of the men aggressively demanded to see proof on her phone.

As other passengers studiously pretended nothing was happening, the women switched trains.

Just yards from Mrs Merkels rally, I meet two groups of African migrants  one Gambian and one from Guinea-Bissau  loitering nervously outside a graffiti-covered squat. Why were they there? Were just trying to avoid the police, explains Ibrahim, 21.

Whatever the maths, though, Germany is heading for the coronation of Queen Angela

I travel to the outlying Hamburg district of Billstedt where more than 70 per cent of the population is non-German and unemployment is over 16 per cent. Many of those I try to talk to speak neither German nor English.

But long-term resident Karl-Heinz Brinkmeier, 81, a former property manager, says: If I was ten years younger, Id have left here by now. It doesnt feel like home any more. Although he wont vote for the AFD tomorrow, hes angry with Mrs Merkel. It is astonishing but she will win.

AFD support is strongest in the former East Germany, where the Chancellor grew up, even though immigration is much lower there. Migrants account for around 3 per cent of the population in parts of the East. In Hamburg, over in the prosperous West, the figure is more than 14 per cent, one of the highest rates in Germany.

The party is now gathering momentum in places like this, too. It won six seats in Hamburgs latest regional election and is on course for around 10 per cent of the vote there this weekend.

The AFD draws support from two very different strands of the German electorate. Some are former followers of the NPD, an overtly xenophobic neo-Nazi fringe movement now virtually defunct. Others are disillusioned former supporters of parties like Mrs Merkels.

In Hamburg, the party hierarchy consists of academics and economists.

I meet one of its candidates, Alexander Wolf, 50, an Oxford-educated finance lawyer who was at David Camerons old college, Brasenose. He describes himself as an economic liberal whose main aim is for a reformed Eurozone plus tighter controls on immigration.

He sympathises with British Brexiteers but has no wish for Germany to follow suit.

We are too integrated in Europe. But we want a reformed Europe with a northern Eurozone for countries who behave responsibly and dont have to keep bailing out the South, he says.

So why is a successful cosmopolitan lawyer like him in the toxic AFD?

I have lost some friends as a result and it is hard when we are repeatedly called extremists but, in time, we will be accepted, he says.

That process is unlikely to happen as long as the party is run by people such as co-leader, Alice Weidel, who has described post-war German politicians as pigs and marionettes of the victorious powers of the Second World War, whose task it is to keep down the German people.

Ms Weidel is no stereotypical far-Right loudmouth. A former Goldman Sachs banker, she lives in a same-sex relationship with a Sri Lankan and reportedly has a Syrian housekeeper.

But the most remarkable thing about her is the fact that she does not even live in Germany. She has moved to Switzerland, where, she says she feels safer.

None of which seems to have done any great damage to the popularity of an extreme party which could be about to become the third-largest in Germany.

Only this week Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, claimed voting for the AfD could put Nazis back in the Reichstag [parliament], in a deep insult rarely heard in national politics.

Werner Patzelt, professor of political science at Dresden University, commented: The AFD will do better than expected, maybe as high as 13 per cent, because there is so much social pressure against confessing that you would even consider them.

Much of the partys success, he says, is rooted in East Germans simmering resentment towards a West German political elite. The fact that Mrs Merkel is originally from the East has not helped. She is seen as arrogant and insensitive. When she accused those opposed to immigration of a coldness in their hearts, many East Germans thought: Our Chancellor no longer understands us.

One thing is certain: Merkel will still be Chancellor tomorrow night after the votes have been counted.

Although opinion polls show her nudging 40 per cent, Merkel is going to need coalition partners to rule and be in control of the 600-seat Bundestag.

She will have to begin horse-trading with the smaller parties. Four years ago, she joined forces with the Centre-Left SPD. This time, she might have to seek other willing partners.

Whatever the maths, though, Germany is heading for the coronation of Queen Angela.

It is astonishing to think that, just a year ago, so many analysts were preparing her political obituary. Instead, at the age of 63, she has achieved a remarkable reversal of fortune.

But historians will still record one very substantial blot on her record.

Come tomorrows result, we will hear the usual proclamations that the populist shocks of 2016  Brexit, Trump and the toppling of the Italian government  have now been reversed.

The EU establishment will point to 2017s European election results  the rejection of the far-Right in Holland, France and Austria followed by Mrs Merkels expected victory  and insist that it is business as usual, that it is full steam ahead for closer EU integration.

But that is to overlook a dark, underlying message.

The extremists have not won. But they have now advanced from the shadows to the political mainstream.

That is why, when Mrs Merkel next sets foot in the German parliament, she will find herself facing a new breed of politician not seen for many generations. And she will have no one to blame but herself.
Parents are being asked to pay for basic items for their childrens schools  including toilet paper.

A study has found schools want families to contribute funds and help out with maintenance such as redecorating classrooms.

Some 15 per cent of parents have been asked to supply teaching equipment such as stationery and books.

And almost a fifth  17 per cent  of families say proposed cost-cutting solutions at their childrens schools include being asked to supply essentials such as toilet paper.

Parents are being asked to pay for basic items for their childrens schools  including toilet paper

Of this group, 7 per cent said the suggestions had actually been implemented.

The findings of the poll by PTA UK, a charity supporting parents role in education, shine a light on the growing burden being placed on parents as schools struggle to provide for children on squeezed budgets.

Education Secretary Justine Greening has announced an extra 1.3billion allocated to schools, although some unions have suggested this will not be enough to plug funding gaps.

PTA UK quizzed more than 1,500 parents about any cost-cutting measures their childs school has implemented. Fifteen per cent said class sizes had been increased while the same proportion said the number of teaching assistants had been cut.

Around 13 per cent said their childs school had implemented a scheme of parents paying a regular contribution to the school fund. The same proportion said parents had been asked to help with maintenance activities such as cutting grass.

Just over one in ten (11 per cent) said subjects had been dropped and the same percentage said the number of supply teachers had been cut.

Around a tenth said schools had cut back on equipment like computers. The same percentage said money had been used from the PTA fund to support the schools core budget.

Education Secretary Justine Greening has announced an extra 1.3billion allocated to schools

Eight per cent said the length of the school day had been reduced, while a further 8 per cent said teachers training had been cut. Around 5 per cent said their school had reduced the school week to four days.

PTA UK acting chief executive Michelle Doyle Wildman said: Parents are reporting that they are contributing more to provide the essentials which many expect to be provided by the state.

A Department for Education spokesman said: No parent is required to make a contribution to their childs education.

The rules are clear on this and no policies have been introduced by this government to allow schools to charge for education provided during school hours, and this includes the supply of any materials or equipment.
Beaches on the New South Wales north coast have reopened despite the carcass of a beached 18-tonne humpback whale rotting nearby.

The 12-metre whale died on Sunday and its carcass was buried at Nobbys Beach in Port Macquarie on Monday because it was too big to be moved.

Between Sunday and Tuesday, the dead whale attracted at least 21 great white shark movements and caused all beaches in the area to be closed.

Beaches on the New South Wales north coast have reopened despite the carcass of a beached 18-tonne humpback whale (pictured) rotting nearby

Port Macquarie beaches will reopen on Saturday after a NSW shark expert indicated shark activity in the area had returned to normal levels.

The mammal will be moved on Monday after Port Macquarie-Hastings Council copped community backlash over its decision to bury it ahead of beach season.

An excavator will start digging the whale up along with the contaminated clay and sand.

If needed, chainsaws will break up the whale carcass before it is loaded into skip bins, with a 220-tonne crane helping in the removal to a nearby tip.

The 12-metre whale (pictured) died on Sunday and its carcass was buried at Nobbys Beach in Port Macquarie on Monday because it was too big to be moved

It's unknown what will happen to the whale once it reaches landfill, but a decision is expected to be made on Monday.

Unhappy residents started a petition earlier in the week which gathered 3000 signatures, Port Macquarie News reported.

Corey Enfield, owner of surf school Soul Surfing, presented the petition to council on Wednesday.

'The whole community has come together, worked together to solve the problem after a quick decision to bury it was made, but now it's getting done,' he said.

'The job [exhuming the whale] won't be easy, with all the fat on the 20-tonne whale it was putrid and could still possibly attract sharks even though it's buried.'

Nobbys Beach, Kenny Drive and the whole of Kenny Walk will be completely closed to access from Sunday evening while the whale carcass is removed.

Council has asked members of the public to avoid the site.
Kemi Badenoch was raised in Nigeria by African parents, returned to England when she was 15 and rose from impoverished first-generation immigrant to parlimentarian in just 21 years

A sense of humour is a rare commodity in politics these days but the Tory MP for Saffron Walden, in Essex, is amused rather than indignant whenever she is inexplicably mistaken for a member of the Labour party.

Kemi Badenoch is black; although British-born, she was raised in Nigeria by African parents, returned to England when she was 16 and rose from impoverished first-generation immigrant to parliamentarian in just 21 years.

So it is easy to make the glib assumption that she represents Labour in the Commons.

Indeed, Labour MP Mark Tami did just that when he greeted Kemi, newly arrived at Westminster after Mays General Election.

Kemi explains: He asked me What seat are you? And when I said Saffron Walden, a look of horror crossed his face. He knew instantly I was a Conservative, she laughs.

Word of Tamis embarrassing faux pas leaked out and inevitably he was ridiculed on Twitter. Most worryingly, he was accused of racism, bigotry and arrogant stereotyping. Kemi herself, though, was not remotely offended by his error. I thought it was funny, she says. It might have been a lazy assumption, but it certainly wasnt racist.

She says that after unpleasant comments appeared on social media about him, she stuck up for him.

Explaining her reaction to the pernicious way such social media storms develop, she says: Were quick to complain about racism, sexism, homophobia, but its not as bad as people make out. If were going to be more cohesive, we have to be more relaxed about petty incidents and not find insult where none exists.

What she does want to do, however, is change perceptions about the Conservative Party. I want people to realise were not just stuffy aristocrats and Old Etonians. There are black Tories and lots of middle and working-class people of different skin colour who are Conservatives. Labour doesnt have a monopoly on non-white people.

Kemi, 37, married with two young children, won her safe seat in rural Essex with a 24,966-seat majority after Sir Alan Haselhurst, 80, stood down after 40 years.

The area, according to the 2011 Census, is more than 92 per cent British, with 0.2 per cent categorised as Black British. Her selection as candidate is surely proof the Tory party is colour-blind.

She says that after unpleasant comments appeared on social media about Labour MP Mark Tami, she stuck up for him

Unlike many colleagues born since 1980, I was unlucky enough to live under socialist policies. It is not something I would wish on anyone, and it is just one of the reasons why I am a Conservative,' said Kemi, pictured with her four-year-old daughter

Whats more, she was chosen ahead of Theresa Mays special adviser Stephen Parkinson, a Cambridge-educated white male.

Kemis maiden Commons speech, suffused with patriotic pride, also crackled with wit and mischief. Above all, it marked her as a rising star.

She spoke of her African childhood, saying: Growing up in Nigeria I saw real poverty  I experienced it, including living without electricity and doing my homework by candlelight, because the state electricity board could not provide power, and fetching water in heavy, rusty buckets from a bore-hole a mile away, because the nationalised water company could not get water out of the taps.

Unlike many colleagues born since 1980, I was unlucky enough to live under socialist policies. It is not something I would wish on anyone, and it is just one of the reasons why I am a Conservative.

She said that, as a young African girl, she had dreamed of becoming part of the project of the United Kingdom, adding: As a British woman, I now have the great honour of delivering that project.

A couple of months on, Kemi explains how her principles and outlook were formed.

Although irrefutably middle class  both her parents are doctors  her political views were shaped by her upbringing in Nigeria. Her family suffered in the countrys volatile political climate  becoming victims of changing circumstances as their affluent lifestyle was transformed into one of poverty overnight.

She supports Brexit  the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom  and her heroes are Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher

She describes herself as, to all intents and purposes a first-generation immigrant.

Her mother, a professor of physiology, had travelled to London with the express purpose of giving birth to Kemi in a private maternity home in Wimbledon. The family then returned to Nigeria where Kemi was raised.

But, increasingly, over the years they faced problems. The country was run by a military regime and human rights campaigners accused it of stopping free political activity and corrupting the judicial system. It was also temporarily suspended from the Commonwealth and its economic management was a disaster.

When Kemi was 16, her father decided she would have a better future if she went to the UK. She says Nigerias currency had suddenly become worth 10 per cent of what it had been.

My Dad, a GP, had to close his clinic because he couldnt get nurses. The best ones had gone to work in the UK for the NHS.

So he scraped together his vastly devalued savings to buy her a flight to England.

Dad spent several months pay on my plane ticket. We went to the travel agent with all his savings stuffed in a plastic carrier bag. He had 100 left when hed paid for my ticket, and he gave it to me to take to England. So thats all I had when I arrived.

But I was so excited. When I saw my British passport [she qualified for one, having been born in England] it was like Willy Wonkas golden ticket. It was amazing, a very special privilege to be a citizen of this country. Many people use citizenship as an international travel document, but to me it was much more than that. I think of this country with affection, feeling, loyalty. Its values make it special.

Staying with her mums best friend in Wimbledon, she took a job at McDonalds to support herself while studying at a sixth-form college in Morden, South-West London.

Having been brought up in Nigeria, where there was a culture of hard-work and respect for elders, she was shocked, both by pupils attitude to adults, and by her teachers low expectations of their students.

Staying with her mums best friend in Wimbledon, she took a job at McDonalds to support herself while studying at a sixth-form college in Morden, South-West London

What struck me was how foul-mouthed some of the students were. Id never used the F-word  my grandfather was a reverend and we were raised as strict Christians  and I found it shocking and scary that young people spoke flippantly, even rudely, to adults.

This was an area of London with a large black population, yet it was a black culture I didnt recognise. A lot of damage has been done by accepting this kind of behaviour, shrugging it off as the inevitable corollary of deprivation and poverty.

She adds: And when I told one of my teachers I wanted to go to Oxford University, she advised me: Dont bother applying. They dont take people like you. And when I said I wanted to be a doctor, I was advised to consider nursing instead.

I can understand where the teacher was coming from  so many black teenagers dont make it; it was just important to get us into something  but she was looking at us as a collective of black kids and making an assumption that we were all a disadvantaged minority because of our skin colour. Its typical of the mindset of the Left.

Kemi, pictured with her grandfather in 1987, said: 'When I saw my British passport it was like Willy Wonkas golden ticket'

Kemi took a degree in Computer Systems Engineering at Sussex University, then, in 2009, graduated in Law at Birkbeck, University of London.

Progressing through the IT sector, where she was a software engineer, she became a systems analyst. She was elected as a member of the London Assembly in 2015 and worked for The Spectator magazine as head of digital before she won her parliamentary seat. This made her the third magazine alumnus  after Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson  to become an MP.

Kemi has a refreshing view of politics. Democracy, like sex, is a messy business, she says. Its not always predictable; its results arent always elegant. They can be unexpected. But we adjust  and its the unexpected that keeps politicians on their toes.

She supports Brexit  the greatest ever vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom  and her heroes are Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Airey Neave, the war hero-turned-politician murdered in a car-bomb attack by the Irish National Liberation Army in 1979.

Brexit divided her household: her husband campaigned for Remain; she made a last-minute decision in favour of Leave

We meet at her terraced home in Wimbledon  the family also have a house in her constituency where they spend weekends and holidays. It is the last day of the parliamentary recess and Kemi is with daughter Eni, four, who is due to start school the next day, while son Ralph, ten months, is at nursery.

Husband Hamish, 38, chief operations officer for Deutsche Bank in the City, will not be home until 8 pm. Not surprisingly, she says it is vital for her to multi-task.

That morning shed been looking for a new au pair  tougher since Brexit, she concedes, because of uncertainty over work permits. But she believes the exodus of young people from countries such as Spain and Italy  beleaguered by high youth unemployment  to work in the UK, proves the EU isnt working.

Brexit divided her household: her husband campaigned for Remain; she made a last-minute decision in favour of Leave.

And since, Ive felt more and more confident that it was the right one, she says. Many people who voted Brexit warmed to me because they felt I wasnt a typical Leave voter. Ive no time for those who say, Brexit is all about racism. Thats offensive.

Kemi is fired up by the patriotism of the emigre who chose to live in Britain. Im Conservative because of the experiences Ive had, she says

Its about sovereignty, bureaucracy and how we make our laws.

Of course its going to be tricky to start with. Any change will have an impact and repercussions, but theyre not all negative.

She says the weaker pound means companies in her constituency at Stansted airport  just 12 miles from Saffron Walden  that sell goods and services internationally, are doing well.

While a London Assembly member, she infuriated Remainers living in the capital by describing them as a subset of people who think theyre smarter, more tolerant and even better-looking than everyone else.

Now, she emphasises: Were not unthinking, jingoistic Little Englanders just because we voted to leave. If I had any doubts about Brexit, they were expelled when Jean-Claude Juncker (President of the European Commission) said that English isnt a language of the future; its dying.

Its clear to me if thats how he regards a member that wants to leave, weve made the right decision.

Kemi is fired up by the patriotism of the emigre who chose to live in Britain. Im Conservative because of the experiences Ive had, she says. I know what its like to live in a Third World country run by a regime with Socialist principles. It shaped my outlook and helped me appreciate how great Britain is.

Recalling how her doctor father was forced to close his clinic in Nigeria when the best nurses were drawn to the NHS, she says it had a knock-on effect on both countries. On the one hand it means the NHS is staffed with people from all over the world. On the other, health services in their homeland suffer.

People there are abandoned without healthcare, so they come to the UK and access it on the NHS, then they cant pay their bills. We dont talk about that, but the more you take from other countries  teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers  the more you deplete their services.

Recalling how her doctor father was forced to close his clinic in Nigeria when the best nurses were drawn to the NHS, she says it had a knock-on effect on both countries

Kemi met her husband at their local Conservative association in 2005.

Id have burst out laughing if anyone had told me then Id marry him, she says. We were friends at first and hes very calm and steady, and funny, too. Politics is a combative business and hes always stood up for me.

At our first Tory conference, one of the speakers was quite rude about me and Hamish stormed up to the podium and publicly told him off. That was when I thought: Hes a keeper. 

Indeed, the level of aggression in politics ratcheted up during the last General Election  and one of the most awful results has been the way women have been abused, threatened and vilified.

Kemi says she was once whacked in the face by a middle-aged woman, a hardened Leftie, after she had presented a policy paper on Africa at Oxford Town Hall as a London Assembly member,

She said I couldnt possibly know anything about poverty because I was wearing expensive clothes  they were from Zara  and I accused her of turning an argument into a personal vendetta.

It hit a nerve. She whacked me.

Recalling how her doctor father was forced to close his clinic in Nigeria when the best nurses were drawn to the NHS, she says it had a knock-on effect on both countries

She talks about what she calls an aggressive element to the far-Left. She says: They profess to be pro-women and pro-ethnic minorities, but if you dont sign up to their cause, theyll hate you even more than they do privileged white males.

'People who are most negative are those who think Ive betrayed their cause. Its how can you vote Tory after all weve done for you? Its condescending and its an attitude that prevails among the privileged white Left.

Another gripe is the narrow world view of people such as Labours Laura Pidcock, the new MP for North West Durham, who recently said her visceral dislike of the enemy meant she could never be friends with a Tory MP.

Kemi is much more tolerant, saying: I have Labour friends. We disagree on everything but we have a good laugh.

She fears Laura Pidcock has spent so much time only talking to people like herself that she believes the only way you can think differently from her is if youre evil.

How different from Kemi Badenoch herself. Of course, as an MP, she has trenchant views but that is combined with a down-to-earth manner and a ready laugh.

Indeed, she doesnt take herself too seriously, which is a winning quality in a politician. Many have tipped her for stardom.

People have asked, Do you want to be Home Secretary?  she says. Its the kiss of death. Its like asking the newest recruit on their first day in a new company, Do you want to be CEO?

Its very amusing, and flattering, of course. But Ive only just got my own office!
RENO  Its a good weekend to be a youth hunter in Nevada with youth hunts for upland game opening statewide and a migratory bird youth hunt opening in the Northwest Zone.

A youth-only waterfowl season is scheduled for Saturday in the Northwest Zone. The Northwest Zone includes Carson City, Churchill, Douglas, Esmeralda, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, Lyon, Mineral, Nye, Pershing, Storey and Washoe Counties.

This youth season is open only to hunters 17 years of age or younger, including non-residents. The young hunters must be accompanied by an adult who is at least 18 years old. However, adults are not allowed to hunt during this season.

In addition youth seasons for chukar, Hungarian partridge, quail, and rabbit (cottontail, pygmy and white tailed jackrabbit) will be also open Saturday and run through Oct. 1, 2017, statewide.

Youth hunters between the ages of 12 and 15 will need a current hunting license and the appropriate Nevada state stamps but will not need a Federal duck stamp. Hunters 16 years of age and older must also possess a Federal duck stamp. Participants under the age of 12 are not required to possess a license; however, NDOW strongly recommends they complete a hunter education course prior to the hunt. Course information and registration can be accessed online at www.ndow.org.

Saturday is also the opener for the waterfowl general season for the Northeast Zone (Elko and White Pine counties), ducks and mergansers, Canada geese and brant, white-fronted geese, coots and common moorhens and common snipe will be open through Oct. 22.
An unseasonal heatwave is set to take hold of Australia's east coast this weekend, with records likely to fall thanks to the sizzling conditions.

Temperatures are expected to reach 33 degrees in Sydney on Saturday, with the mercury in north-western New South Wales and southern Queensland potentially hitting 40C.

With extreme conditions, total fire bans have also been put in place across the state, as well as in parts of southern Queensland.



Temperatures are expected to reach 33 degrees in Sydney on Saturday, bringing people onto Sydney's beaches in droves (pictured)

Temperatures in Birdsville were tipped to reach around 42C, very close to the 42.4C that sits as the current Queensland record (pictured are beachgoers at Bondi)

Sydney's CBD was forecast to reach 33C, while parts of Queensland could reach as high as 42C (pictured are beachgoers at Bondi)

Dean Sgarbossa, a Senior Meteorologist from the Bureau of Meterology's extreme weather desk told Daily Mail Australia temperatures across the east coast were expected to hit the high 30s or low 40s (pictured are beachgoers at Bondi)

An unseasonal heatwave is set to take hold of Australia's east coast this weekend, with records expected to fall thanks to the sizzling conditions (pictured is a beachgoer at Bondi)

Early Saturday morning saw surfers and swimmers take to the waters at Bondi Beach, as temperatures edged passed 24C and kept climbing.

Sydney's CBD was forecast to reach 33C, while parts of Queensland could reach as high as 42C.

Dean Sgarbossa, a Senior Meteorologist from the Bureau of Meterology's extreme weather desk told Daily Mail Australia temperatures across the east coast were expected to hit the high 30s or low 40s.

'The forecast temperatures today across that region are somewhat unusual, being around 12 to 16 degrees above average,' he said.

With extreme conditions, total fire bans have also been put in place across the state, as well as in parts of southern Queensland (pictured are sunbathers at Bondi)

Early Saturday morning saw surfers and swimmers take to the waters at Bondi Beach (pictured), as temperatures edged passed 24C and kept climbing

'The forecast temperatures today across that region are somewhat unusual, being around 12 to 16 degrees above average,' said a meteorologist (pictured are Bondi beachgoers)

Early Saturday morning saw surfers and swimmers take to the waters at Bondi Beach, as temperatures edged passed 24C and kept climbing

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) was seen among the revellers at Bondi Beach during Saturday's hot conditions, visiting a surf-lifesaving club

Sydney's CBD was forecast to reach 33C, while parts of Queensland could reach as high as 42C, potentially breaking records

'There is the potential for some local records to be broken in New South Wales and southern Queensland.'

Temperatures in Birdsville were tipped to reach around 42C, very close to the 42.4C that sits as the current Queensland record.

While New South Wales and Victorian records could also be broken if the mercury hit reached more than 39.6C or 37.4C respectively.

The heat is expected to bring out revellers in their droves but also comes with fire warnings across 12 areas of New South Wales, with the danger level ranging from high to severe.

And in Queensland, hot, dry conditions have resulted in severe to extreme fire dangers, with Maranoa, Warrego, Channel Country, Darling Downs and the Granite belt put on alert.

While New South Wales and Victorian records could also be broken if the mercury hit reached more than 39.6C or 37.4C respectively (pictured are a pair of Bondi bathers)

The heat is expected to bring out revellers in their droves but also comes with fire warnings across 12 areas of New South Wales, with the danger level ranging from high to severe (pictured are beachgoers at Bondi)

In Queensland, hot, dry conditions have resulted in severe to extreme fire dangers (pictured are people enjoying Bondi Beach on Saturday)

A Senior Meteorologist from the Bureau of Meterology told Daily Mail Australia temperatures across the east coast were expected to hit the high 30s or low 40s

Among the records that could be broken was Queensland's 42.4C, with conditions in Birdsville tipped to reach around 42C

'The temperatures themselves are not overly unusual for this time of year, however the contrast in weather across Australia is,' Mr Sgarbossa said.

Perth and south-west Western Australia are in for a wet weekend, with temperatures four to six degrees lower than their September average.

Rain and gusty conditions are expected there Saturday with a chance of thunderstorms Sunday, as temperatures top out at 18C.

It comes as a series of cold fronts crossed the state bringing gusts of up to 100km/h, with wild weather also recorded in south-east Queensland on Friday.

Footage uploaded to the Lockyer Valley Weather Facebook page showed Gatton bypass being pelted with huge hail stones.

The weather is expected to cool slightly for the remainder of the weekend, with gusty conditions in Western New South Wales thanks to a cold-front.

Perth and south-west Western Australia are in for a wet weekend, with temperatures four to six degrees lower than their September average (pictured are Bondi beachgoers)

The temperature at Bondi Beach jumped t0 27 degrees early on Saturday morning as surf lifesavers looked on

The heat is expected to bring out revellers in their droves but also comes with fire warnings across 12 areas of New South Wales, with the danger level ranging from high to severe

The extreme heat Australia's east coast is set to enjoy was in contrast with Perth and south-west Western Australia, which was in for a wet weekend, with temperatures four to six degrees lower than their September average

The weather was good for beachgoers to bask in the sun in one of Australia's iconic beaches

A woman is seen here in bonding putting on sunscreen while at Bondi beach on Saturday

Several other beachgoers seen here taking a selfie while chilling at Bondi beach on Saturday

Even kids were enjoying the heat at Bondi beach on Saturday by swimming at a nearby pool

The hot weather had made many Sydneysiders wanting to go and hang out at Bondi beach

Time for some romance? Beachgoers about to get intimate while soaking in the sun

Many Sydneysiders flocked the Bondi beach to enjoy the hot weather on Saturday afternoon

Too many were seen basking in the sun while enjoying the wonderful weather in Bondi beach

A selfie anyone? Beachgoers were not only enjoying the sun they were talking selfies too

Some were also seen talking a breather before taking a dip at Bondi beach on Saturday

A photo of a beachgoer on Saturday is clearly enjoying all that sun on Bondi beach on Saturday

A woman is seen here enjoying the water at the iconic Bondi beach in Sydney on Saturday
Pictured is David Meade, a conspiracy theorist who calls himself a 'Christian numerologist' who has clarified that the world will not end on September 23

The so-called 'Christian numerologist' who alleged that the world would end on September 23 has clarified that the apocalypse has in fact been delayed.

Speaking to the Washington Post, conspiracy theorist David Meade - who claimed that a mysterious planet would collide with Earth - is now saying that Saturday only marks the beginning of the end of the end of times.

Indeed, Saturday will see the beginning of a number of cataclysmic events that will occur over a number of weeks, that will lead to our demise.

'The world is not ending, but the world as we know it is ending.'

Meade added: 'A major part of the world will not be the same the beginning of October.'

Meade used the 'biblically significant' number 33 and his interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation to suggest that the legendary - and widely debunked - planet Nibiru would strike Earth on September 23.

The impact would set in motion cataclysmic events, according to Meade.

Scroll down for video

Meade said that 'the world as we know it is ending' on September 23 due to the unproven planet 'Nibiru' colliding with Earth. Pictured is a stock image of two planets colliding

Meade previously said that the signs pointing to a September 23 event of cataclysmic proportions were written somewhere within the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Pictured is a stock photo of the pyramids in Giza

Nibiru would strike 33 days after the total solar eclipse. In his analysis, Meade cited how Jesus allegedly lived for 33 years.

'Im talking astronomy. Im talking the Bible,' Meade told the Washington Post.

Another Christian fringe group, called Unsealed, claims that a Biblical image will appear on the sky on September 23.

Their video detailing this process, 'September 23, 2017: You Need to See This,' has accumulated nearly 4million views.

In late August, Meade said that 'Nibiru' would hit Earth between September 20 and 23.

He said the clues are written on the Pyramids of Ancient Egypt and in the Bible.

The conspirator said: 'It is very strange indeed that both the Great Sign of Revelation 12 and the Great Pyramid of Giza both point us to one precise moment in time  September 20 to 23, 2017.

'Is this the end of the Church Age and the transition to the Day of the Lord?

'There couldn't be two greater witnesses.'

Meade said: 'A major part of the world will not be the same the beginning of October.' Pictured is a tock image of a planet in the foreground with Earth in the background

Earlier this year Mr Meade made a September prediction using verses from the Bible, but he now claims this date is backed up by marking on the pyramids.

Of the pyramid, he said: 'It faces true north with only 3/60th of a degree of error and is located at the centre of the land mass of the Earth.

'The east/west parallel that crosses the most land and the north/south meridian that crosses the most land intersect in two places on the Earth  one in the ocean and the other at the Great Pyramid.'

Despite a lack of evidence for the hidden world, which Nasa has previously stated is an 'internet hoax', many people believe it is real. The scientific community does not agree Nibiru exists.

'Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an internet hoax,' Nasa has said previously. 'Obviously, it does not exist.'
Dozens of big companies are cosying up to Labour at its conference next week  despite the partys threat of higher taxes.

Many firms had avoided links to Labour after it moved to the Left under Jeremy Corbyn.

But there has been a surge in interest from big business following Junes shock general election result, where Labours vote surged and denied Theresa May a majority.

Many more large companies are sponsoring events at this years conference. Firms such as BT, insurer Aviva and energy provider E.On are paying for fringe events at the partys annual gathering in Brighton, which starts tomorrow.

Allies: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, left, with shadow chancellor John McDonnell

Barclays, NatWest, the London Stock Exchange and accountants KPMG are also sponsoring the meetings, which take place outside the main conference hall and are attended by senior Labour figures. Others to sign up include Mastercard, Centrica, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Hitachi.

BP and the Royal Mail have joined Microsoft and Google in paying for stalls in the conference exhibition centre.

Among the other firms sponsoring events are Comparethemarket.com, mining firm Anglo American, Scottish Power, Heathrow and defence firm Raytheon. The number of corporate delegates is up 50 per cent on last year, when Labour looked like electoral no-hopers.

In 2016 there were 1,832 business delegates at Labours conference. So far this year a total of 2,757 have signed up. Already, 25 per cent of stands at next years conference have been booked.

As well as reacting to the election result, many business leaders like the partys softer stance on Brexit because they want to maintain a supply of cheap labour from overseas.

Iain Anderson, managing director at Cicero Group, an advisory group, said that until the election many firms had no desire to attend the conference, leaving the job to their trade bodies.

The level of interest to be at Labour has gone up considerably, particularly since their recalibration of their stance over Brexit and customs union, he added.

Firms have booked out an official forum at the annual conference next week, where they will hope to find out what life for them may be like under a Labour government.

The interest from big companies comes despite continuing anti-business rhetoric from the party under Mr Corbyn

The forum includes breakfast and a lunch, seats at certain speeches and attendance at a formal gathering with Shadow Cabinet members.

A Labour spokesman told the Financial Times: We have smashed our sales targets for the exhibition, overselling the stalls by 20 per cent and even booked four stalls the day after the election.

Many more businesses are attending party conference this year because they know that Labour is a government in waiting.

Fringe events are held at breakfast, lunch and dinner. They include a small panel  among them senior Labour figures  to discuss issues of the day. Often there is food and drink laid on, paid for by the business sponsors.

The interest from big companies comes despite continuing anti-business rhetoric from the party under Mr Corbyn.

Labours manifesto pledged to cancel the Conservatives planned cuts to corporation tax, saying large businesses should pay more, as well as to increase income tax on the rich. It pledged to bring energy, rail and water companies back into public ownership, and introduce a maximum ratio of 20 to one between the pay of the highest and lowest-paid staff in the public sector.

And earlier this year Mr Corbyns key ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, called for large firms to publish their corporate tax returns.

We want to get a system that is fair, so the corporations and the rich pay their way more and that means ending the tax giveaways to the corporations and also those in inheritance tax, capital gains tax and the bankers levy, Mr McDonnell said.

He added: The Tories are running a rigged economy for the super-rich and giant corporate tax dodgers.

Tax avoidance is a scourge on society that company secrecy laws help facilitate, and the Tories have done nothing to tackle. Labour will pour the disinfectant of sunlight on large company accounts, helping close down the loopholes and the scams that the tax dodgers rely on.

However, Mr McDonnell has in recent weeks embarked on what he describes as a tea offensive to charm business leaders, telling them that only a Labour government would make the significant infrastructure spending that the country needs.
It would usually be a heartwarming story  hundreds of lobsters rescued from the pot and released back into the sea.

But a pair of Buddhists who released 5,000 worth of crustaceans into the Channel have been fined almost 15,000 for causing 'untold damage' to the environment.

Zhixiong Li and Ni Li helped throw live crabs and lobsters into the ocean a mile off the coast of Brighton as part of a life release ceremony in 2015.

Zhixiong Li and Ni Li helped throw live crabs and lobsters into the ocean a mile off the coast of Brighton as part of a life release ceremony in 2015

The ritual is done in the belief that returning animals to the wild is good karma. But the attempted act of kindness may have backfired, as the creatures  which are not native to British waters  could seriously threaten other marine life.

It has forced the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) to spend thousands trying to recapture the American shellfish  even offering local fishermen 20 for every one they reeled in.

In the first case of its kind, banker Miss Li, 33, and estate agent Mr Li, 30, both from London, have pleaded guilty to releasing non-native species into the wild, which is a crime under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Anyone releasing native species into the sea also requires a licence.

Joseph Miller, prosecuting, said the case first came to light after a Brighton fisherman captured some of the foreign shellfish in June 2015. CCTV footage from Brighton Marina showed the group of Buddhists chartering three boats, having also bought native crabs and lobsters nearby.

It would usually be a heartwarming story  hundreds of lobsters rescued from the pot and released back into the sea

But further investigations found that 361 American lobsters and 350 Dungeness crabs, which are native to the Pacific, had been bought by Miss Li from a supplier in Greenwich.

Miss Li initially told investigators she had not realised the crustaceans were foreign species. But she later admitted to making up the story. The MMO has warned the local fishing industry could lose out as a result of the crustaceans killing native species.

So far 323 have been recovered but the most recent lobsters reeled in were found to have been carrying 'viable eggs'. Miss Li was fined 5,300 and Mr Li 500. They were also ordered to pay 9,000 compensation to the MMO.
A passage in the Bible that was used to prevent women from being ordained is not original and was added in later, it is claimed.

The section in Corinthians, which says that women should remain silent in church, has been used to restrict the priesthood to men only.

But academic has claimed that the passage was not written by the Apostle Paul but was actually added in later.

New addition: The passage which is believed to have been added later on - section 1 Corinthians 14:34 - which decrees women should not speak in church

It reads: 'Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.'

But Dr Philip Barton Payne, a US academic writing in the journal New Testament Studies has now cast doubt on section 1 Corinthians 14:34.

He claimed that a symbol next to the passage shows that the writer believed it was not original - but was added in later.

Dr Payne analysed the Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest versions of the Greek Bible, and identified the symbol called a 'distigmeobelos'.

It is made up of two smalls dots and a dash and appears in the left margin of the text at the beginning of verse 34.

The academic also argued that the passage is inconsistent with other sections pf Paul's letter to the Corinthians, including Corinthians 11:5.

It says: 'Every woman who prays prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.' - which suggests that women are allowed to preach.

In his paper Dr Payne says: 'This study demonstrates that scribe B was a careful textual critic who identifies 1 Cor 14.345, the only Bible passage silencing women in the church, as added text.

Dr Philip Barton Payne claimed that a symbol next to the passage shows that the writer believed it was not original - but was added in later. Pictured: The Reverend Libby Lane became the first female bishop in the Church of England in 2015

'Vaticanus provides early and credible judgement in what is widely regarded as the most important NT manuscript that vv. 345 were not in the body text Paul's original letter, but are a later addition.

'This is important theologically since it offers a resolution to the notorious difficulty of reconciling vv. 345 with Paul's many affirmations of women in vocal ministry and their equal standing with men in Christ.'

He told the Daily Telegraph that it would be an 'unwise judgement' to reject the scribe's judgement, which has been so faithful in other areas.

Further evidence that the passage was not written by the Apostle Paul is demonstrated by it appearing in a different place in some early versions of the text.

Other scholars claims that, because it appears after verse 40 at the end of the chapter, that it was not written by Paul but added after the original letter was penned.

But not all academics are in agreement with Dr Payne.

Dr Pieter Lalleman, tutor in Biblical studies at Spurgeon's College, told website Christian Today: 'The fact that some manuscripts have the passage in a different location (at the end of chapter 14) can be explained by the fact that at one stage a copyist forgot the verses and added them at the end of the chapter.

'The fact is that no single surviving manuscript omits the two verses altogether.'
One day in the early Seventies, I had a huge stroke of beginners luck. Going over to a friends house to borrow a book I was asked, over a cup of tea, if I would like to write a film. Just like that. Things like that werent unusual in those days.

The friend was David Puttnam who, after a successful career in advertising then as a photographers agent, had just become a film producer.

He had an idea that he thought might suit me.

Wild times: David Puttnam, Ringo Starr and David Essex. They are photographed in 1973

I knew a bit about movies, absolutely nothing about writing a screenplay, but I agreed to have a go at it. So we talked and, by the time I went home that afternoon, not only had we sketched out a vague plot, we also had a title for our film.

It would be called Thatll Be The Day, the inspiration for it came to David when hed heard the Harry Nilsson song, 1941, which opens with the lyric: Well, in 1941 a happy father had a son, And by 1944 the father walked right out the door...

I knew Harry Nilsson and I also knew that the song went on to tell how, when the son grows up, he runs away to join a circus.

David, however, had another career suggestion for the boy. What if in our story he joins a fair? That was it. We were off.

Like Nilsson we were both in our early 30s and the film would be set in the late Fifties  our teenage years of rainy beaches, coffee bars and fairgrounds. Did I think it would ever get made? At that time, having no idea of the eye-of-a-needle chances of any film script reaching the screen, I probably did.

If David, who was in partnership with Sandy Lieberson, the producer of the Mick Jagger film Performance, had any serious doubts he kept them from me with his enthusiasm.

What I didnt anticipate was that when Thatll Be The Day came out it would be a huge hit, that it would make a star of a young stage actor of whom, when Id begun writing, Id never heard.

Nor could I have imagined that it would co-star a Beatle and would lead to a No.1 album and a best-selling novelisation for me.

At the time my day job was interviewing rock stars and anyone culturally cool for the London Evening Standard, so I would work on the screenplay late into the night. Then, a couple of times a week, David would come to my house for his breakfast to see what Id come up with, scattering new ideas as he entered.

Week by week we would then ransack our own lives as we created the fictional character of Jim Maclaine. After about three months I had a first draft of the script. Unfortunately, however, the Jim Maclaine character hardly did a decent thing in the entire story. He was the ultimate selfish teenager.

The Who drummer Keith Moon straddled by a woman's legs

We needed something to make him likeable.

At which point David Puttnam took his family to see a stage production of Godspell in the West End. He phoned first thing the next morning.

Hed found our boy. David Essex, the lead in Godspell, was so good looking and likeable an audience would forgive him anything.

The next problem was that Id written about working in a holiday camp but Id never even been to one, let alone worked in one.

Fortunately we knew two people who had  Ringo Starr, whod been a drummer at a Butlins camp, and The Beatles former road manager, Neil Aspinall, who was now the managing director of their Apple records operation.

So we went to see Ringo and Neil who were so entertaining with their Butlins memories that we offered Ringo the second lead in the film, as a friendly Liverpudlian Jack-the-lad.

For his part, Neil agreed to help put together the band to play in our fictitious holiday camp  with Keith Moon on drums and Billy Fury doing the singing.

We had a director by now in Claude Whatham and, as I rewrote and rewrote the script as is usual in film-making, everything was coming together very nicely.

There was just one more problem  the perennial one in films. All the money wasnt yet in place.

Budgeted at a little over 200,000, it was hardly going to be an expensive movie to make, but in 1972 the British film industry was deep in the doldrums.

Then a miracle occurred. Puttnam went to see a small Canadian television marketing company and proposed building our movie around a plethora of old hits they could promote as a tele-marketed compilation album.

They would pump more than 200,000 into an advertising campaign, showing clips from the film, so all we had to do was put together a 40-track soundtrack album of oldies but goldies.

Wed always planned to have some songs in the film, but 40!

Quickly, I began another draft of the script. If we continually moved our leading character around the fairground, from the dodgems to the whip, past the big wheel and round again to the carousel, we could add a few seconds of a different record onto the soundtrack everywhere he went.

Then, when he seduced a girl, we would cynically hear the Everly Brothers singing Devoted To You in the background. When he was roller-skating it was to Bobby Darins Dream Lover.

By the end of the final draft, wed found a place for all 40 songs.

Filming was mainly on the Isle of Wight (because in the early Seventies the island still had a late Fifties look to it) and, despite some of Keith Moons excesses  he arrived by helicopter, while we all went on the ferry  it was a happy shoot. Ringo, who turned up for filming in his own Teddy Boy outfit, was a revelation. Wed no idea he could act so well.

Keith Moon wearing a fur coat and holding a goblet. He is pictured in London in 1975

The best night I can remember was when we took over a fairground in Southsea for filming and the entire cast and crew had free use of the dodgems with the music blaring.

A teenage fantasy come true.

The reviews when the film was released turned out to be another fantasy come true, with just about all the major critics, apart from the great Barry Norman, liking it.In truth, Barry had seen through some of the flaws in the film!

At the time, I was astonished by its success. A sixth-form drop-out, who throws his school books into a river when he should be sitting his A-level history, writes poetry in the rain while hiring out deck chairs and lets down just about absolutely everyone, was hardly an obvious subject.

But, on reflection, I can now see there was nothing else like it at the time. And the music soundtrack was fantastic.

We hadnt planned to make two films, but Puttnam saw a sequel as an opportunity to tell a story about the Sixties rock scene, something Id been writing about as a journalist for the past six years.

And, coincidentally, at that very moment, David Essex was turning himself into a rock star.

He hadnt sung in Thatll Be The Day, but to coincide with that films release, hed co-written and recorded a song called Rock On, which by the summer of 1973 was high in the charts.

That August I joined Puttnam and his family on holiday in Italy while we sketched out the continuing story of Jim Maclaine.

This time wed have a much bigger budget and wouldnt only shoot in Britain, but also in Spain and America.

As it was a film about a rock band the first task, after the script had been written, was getting the new music recorded. We chose the Welsh musician Dave Edmunds to do that, virtually as a one-man band. It was extraordinary watching him play all the instruments.

We obviously wanted Ringo back, following his great success in Thatll Be The Day, but when he read the script for the new film, Stardust, he felt that having lived through the experience in reality as a member of The Beatles he wasnt keen to revisit it.

Puttnam suggested Adam Faith for the role. The new director, Michael Apted, wasnt sure and I was dead set against it. Most producers, at that point, would have said: I dont care what you think. Im the producer. Were getting Adam Faith. And I would have been sent back to my typewriter.

But that isnt how David Puttnam works. He likes writers. He likes having them involved as much as possible. So he suggested Apted and I meet Adam and get to know him. Reluctantly I agreed, whereupon Adam did to me what the character he was going to play in the film would do to all those who opposed him.

He chatted me out of my doubts. He was perfect in the part.

We thought Tony Curtis would be great in the part of the U.S. manager and went to meet him when he was in London.

He certainly looked and sounded as though he could play a New York Italian, which was how Id envisaged the character.

He also seemed very keen on the role, but then his agent stepped in and demanded nearly half the budget of the film, just for him.

So, that was Tony Curtis out.

It was getting uncomfortably close to the start of filming and we still hadnt cast the American manager when Columbia Pictures, who had a share in the films financing, suggested an actor called Larry Hagman. The name meant nothing to us. But he was apparently very popular in a U.S. TV series none of us had seen.

When we met him in a restaurant in Soho, we immediately realised that with his light brown hair and blue eyes he didnt look or sound anything like the guy envisaged in the script.

So, on the spot, we decided to rename and re-imagine the character, whod been written as Digillio from the Bronx.

Now he became Porter Lee Austin, a name we arrived at because Larry had grown up in Austin, Texas, and his best friend there had been called Porter.

What Larry didnt tell us until later was that all the way over from Los Angeles hed been reading his lines to himself with a New York accent. Obviously, he would now be more comfortable playing the part as a Texan.

Filming began on a cold February morning in 1974 at a church in West London, where a few dozen extras had been hired to mob our fictional rock star Jim Maclaine, as played by David Essex, when he appeared. The money spent on the extras could have been saved.

As soon as David showed his face, hundreds of young local girls tried to jump on him as he fought his way to a waiting limousine.

That was the way it would be right through filming as our stars fame just grew and grew.

In Thatll Be The Day, David had been an actor. Now he was a rock star playing another kind of rock star. It cant have been easy for him, but he was dead right for us.

Keith Moon was also a rock star. In Thatll be The Day, hed had quite a small part with one funny line.

Now his role was bigger and while his energy behind the drums and his general destructive anarchy gave a credibility to a film about rock music, his presence off-screen could be wearing.

Desperate to always be the centre of attention, he was spotted wandering naked and nonchalant at two in the morning around the bitterly cold garage of the Lancashire hotel where we were staying. He then borrowed the tool bag from the unit carpenter and sawed the door of his hotel room in half, so he could hang his head out into the corridor like a horse in a stable. The hotel manager wasnt best pleased nor was the films accountant, who had to pay for the damage.

You never quite knew where you were with Keith. He could be very friendly and very funny. But he could be a real pest, too.

One night when we were filming in Manchester, I was sitting on some low carpeted steps at Belle Vue when Michael asked me if I could keep an eye on him while the crew were setting up the next shot. Keith did have a habit of disappearing when he was needed.

Unfortunately Keith heard what the director said and came over to me, mocking, noisy and probably drunk. Irritated, my response was to say: F*** off, Keith. That was a big mistake.

No one tells me to f*** off, he roared and launched a wild fist at me. Immediately, I pulled back on the shallow stairs, so that his arm only caught my shoulder.

But, now off-balance, he then fell across me and we began to tussle. The crew leapt to separate us.

What I remember most clearly is that as I tried to clout Keith back, the make-up artist rushed forward shouting, Dont hit his face. Hes been made up.

Presumably a quick few jabs in his ribs would have been fine.

The next day, of course, we were best of friends again. Hed forgotten all about it. On reflection, I think he was probably in a worse state from drink and pills than we realised.

I bumped into him four years later in a bar in Chelsea where, his eyes wet, he was affectionate and crazy all at once, throwing pills into the air and trying to catch them in his mouth like a performing seal.

I wasnt surprised, but I was sad, when a few weeks later I read that he had been found dead from an accidental drugs overdose.

The last day of filming for Stardust took place in Los Angeles, after which Larry Hagman invited some of us back to his rather wonderful house by the ocean in Malibu.

It was a very jolly evening and after dinner Larry led us all onto a veranda which overlooked the beach. Then, without warning, he and his wife suddenly took off all their clothes and, insisting we did the same, stepped into a Jacuzzi.

Coyly, we did as we were told, whereupon a couple of Larrys neighbours arrived, got undressed and joined us . . . well, it was the Seventies.

When Stardust was released some months later, it was an even bigger success than Thatll Be The Day.

It made a very big star of David Essex and resulted in another hit album and best-selling novelisation, while it would win for me a Writers Guild Of Great Britain award for the best original screenplay of 1974.

Those two films were Puttnams first two real hits. He would go on to produce 20 other movies, including Midnight Express, Chariots Of Fire, Local Hero, The Killing Fields and The Mission.

He won a clutch of Oscars, BAFTAS and the Palme DOr at Cannes before, for a short while, becoming head of Columbia Pictures.

He is now Lord Puttnam, and for the past 20 years has worked in the field of education.

As for Larry Hagman, he would tell interviewers it was his performance as a Texan in Stardust that won him the part of JR Ewing in Dallas. A nice man, he even wrote and thanked us.

Which all goes to show, you never quite know what the consequences might be when you go around to a friends house to borrow a book.

n Ray Connollys adaptation for radio of his screenplay for Thatll Be The Day is on Radio 4 today at 2.30pm. His adaptation of his screenplay for Stardust will be broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday, September 30.
A Georgia gym teacher who is facing charges for allegedly molesting a 15-year-old boy has been charged again over a second student who police say she assaulted two years ago.

Shawnetta D. Reece, 40, was first arrested in August over her relationship with a 15-year-old who police say she molested in 2013.

The woman was working as a gym teacher at Union County Middle School at the time and the boy was moving from the eighth grade into the ninth grade.

Shawnetta D. Reece, 40, (left before her arrest and right, in August in her first mugshot) is facing more child molestation charges. Police say she assaulted two boys aged 15 and 19 in 2013 and 2015 respectively

On Friday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced that it had filed fresh charges against the woman in relation to an 18-year-old who they say she molested in 2015 when he was a senior at the same school.

'The continued investigation into Reece revealed that she engaged in sexual conduct with an 18 year old student in 2015.

'The student was a high school senior at the time of the incident,' the bureau said in a press release on Friday afternoon.

No other details were given other than that Reece was arrested at her home in Blairsville.

In August, the bureau announced her arrest over her relationship with the 15-year-old boy.

Reece was a gym teacher at Union County Middle School in Blairsville, Georgia, at the time

At the time, they said she had been 'sexually involved' with the child.

'The student was moving from the 8th grade into the 9th grade during this time.

'As a result of the investigation, Reece has been arrested for child molestation and sexual assault by persons with supervisory or disciplinary authority,' the bureau said.

There was no information on whether Reece was granted bail following her second arrest on Friday night.

The case will proceed with the Enotah Judicial Circuit District Attorney.
Honesty, my mum used to impress on me, is always the best policy. Of course, this didnt stop her telling me that I had to eat all my vegetables, or else Father Christmas wouldnt give me any presents.

In general, though, I try to live by this mantra. So many of the problems in life are caused by us not being honest. And its such a relief when you stop trying to avoid the truth and are just open and honest about how you feel. Its like a breath of fresh air.

This is something I try to impress on my patients when they come to me with problems that relate to their family or loved ones. Too often, we tie ourselves in knots to avoid simply being honest.

Sometimes its because we are under the impression that by lying, or holding back from telling them the truth, we are protecting their feelings. Other times, its because of a fear that the other person will view us badly for some reason.

But telling the truth can be extraordinarily liberating. This is borne out by research published earlier this week which found that people were more likely to tell lies to someone they felt compassion towards, to avoid hurting them; but that being honest was associated with being happier and, ultimately, improved relationships.

'Sometimes, a little lie can be a kindness. I learned this when I was a junior doctor and it has stuck with me ever since'

This is all true, of course  up to a point. For there are instances where lying is perhaps the right thing to do, and it might surprise you to hear that sometimes I have even deliberately lied to patients. It sounds like a heresy. After all, doctors have a duty to their patients to be open and honest at all times  at least thats what we are taught today.

Years ago, doctors might have considered not telling a patient with cancer that it was terminal because they didnt want to upset them, but this would not happen now  not least because patients are entitled to be treated as grown-ups.

But in the real world, on the wards, things arent always that simple and the truth can be too painful. Sometimes, a little lie can be a kindness. I learned this when I was a junior doctor and it has stuck with me ever since.

My patient, Mr Farley, had had Alzheimers for ten years, but his kidneys and heart had stopped working properly and hed been admitted to hospital.

Medically, there was nothing that could be done to treat him. He and his wife were in their 80s and she was his carer. How shed cared for him on her own all that time was beyond me.

Its all right, darling, Im here, said Mrs Farley as she sat by her husbands side. No response. She looked a little crestfallen.

But look, doctor, he still knows who I am, she said to the team lined up at the foot of the bed. She gently stroked his cheek while talking to her husband, and, amazingly, he moved his head towards her.

Back in the office, I accosted one of the senior doctors. He still recognises his wife. Thats incredible, isnt it? I asked.

The other doctor frowned. Oh that? No, of course he doesnt recognise her, he replied coldly. Its just a reflex. He meant Mr Farley had turned his head only because it was a neurological throwback from when we were breastfed and moved our heads towards our mothers body.

Mr Farley didnt recognise his wife at all. Anyone or anything touching his cheek would have induced the same response.

Medicine can be cruel like this, reducing things to neural pathways, to reflexes, to physiological mechanisms. And sometimes I think we can know too much.

Mrs Farley didnt want to live in a world where her husband had primitive reflexes. She wanted to live in a world where her husband recognised her voice. Walking through the ward, I saw her still sitting by his bed. As she stroked him on the cheek, once again he moved his head towards her.

Weve been married for over 60 years, she told me, and no matter how bad things have been, at least hell always know that Ive been by his side, looking after him, wont he doctor?

I looked her in the eyes, thinking shes asking me because she wants me to reassure her.

But what good would the truth do? Yes, of course he does, I lied, and walked on.

Panic attacks ARE truly terrifying

Nadiya Hussain has spoken candidly about having panic attacks

All credit to Nadiya Hussain, star of The Great British Bake Off, who has spoken candidly about having panic attacks. Nadiya, who is now co-hosting BBC2s The Big Family Cooking Showdown, has revealed that shes dogged by panic attacks, which she described as her monster.

Panic attacks are one of those mental health problems that are greatly misunderstood, and unless you have had them yourself, its hard to appreciate how crippling they can be.

I think partly its because the word panic makes people think of getting into a bit of a state  just working yourself up. But this is not what a panic attack is like at all.

The physical symptoms are caused by your body going into fight or flight mode. As it tries to get more oxygen, your breathing increases and your heart starts racing  and this, in turn, causes you to panic more, making the symptoms worse.

Its a vicious cycle. You genuinely feel as if youre about to die.

I know this because I used to have them myself. When I was at university I developed a bad chest infection, and one of the side-effects of my antibiotics was extreme lightheadedness.

One day, walking to a lecture, my head began spinning. My heart was beating faster than usual, until it was racing so hard I thought my chest would burst. I couldnt breathe and was shaking. I sank to the floor and people crowded round, but within about ten minutes it had passed.

The next day as I walked towards the lecture theatre, I began to worry that it might happen again. And as I worried about it, it did. This went on for several weeks and I began to dread leaving the house.

But my GP said I was fine. I wasnt, and eventually one of the physiology professors spotted one of my attacks, explained what it was and said that I should have psychotherapy.

I had six sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy and Ive never had another attack. But Ill never forget how terrifying and debilitating it all was. Im proof that people get better  with the right treatment.

The NHS can take a lesson from the building trade...

How do we stamp out abuse and neglect on NHS wards? The Health Service could learn a lot from the construction industry.

This week, property developer Mike Holland was given a nine- month prison sentence for manslaughter following the death of carpenter Dave Clark on his construction site.

The Health & Safety executive had warned a year earlier that the site was unsafe, and Holland was charged as the person ultimately responsible for it.

This is the kind of approach we need for hospital managers. At present, the thing that scares them is not meeting targets, because they risk the hospital being penalised financially.

I have witnessed managers displaying chilling ruthlessness towards patients to avoid this.

'I guarantee that if senior managers were held ultimately responsible for what happened in their hospital, the culture in the NHS would change overnight'

But I guarantee that if senior managers were held ultimately responsible for what happened in their hospital, the culture in the NHS would change overnight.

Suddenly, people wouldnt sit silently while patients unexpectedly died. They wouldnt ignore patients being neglected or abused. Managers would descend on wards to check that patients were being fed.

They would ensure there were enough nurses, and that all staff were competent.

If someone was held personally accountable every time a patient developed a bedsore, for example, and the consequence was a fine or imprisonment, bedsores would soon become an historical anomaly.

Of course, targets should still be valued  but the one thing that trumps them should be whats best for the patient. And the only way this can be achieved is if those at the very top of the hospital are scared.

The day is fast approaching when even the tiniest scratch will be fatal. That was the view from the World Health Organisation this week, with a report warning there arent nearly enough new antibiotics in the pipeline to avert a crisis of widespread drug resistance.

Through sheer stupidity, mankind has managed to make one of the most powerful discoveries in the history of our existence pitifully impotent. Some have blamed GPs, others the farmers or the pharmaceutical industry.

But the truth is, we are all to blame. We insist on being prescribed antibiotics because we dont want the inconvenience of even the mildest infection, and yet at the first sign of improvement we stop taking them.

We even insist on antibiotics when we have viral infections.

Our greed for cheap meat has fuelled the rise in antibiotic resistance, and yet we baulk at the idea of reducing our consumption. How many people will have to die before we change our own behaviour?
A model who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend was scalped, had her right ear torn off and had been drained of all her blood when police found her mutilated body, it has emerged.

Iana Kasian, 30, was found dead in her home in West Hollywood last year after her worried mother called police.

Her boyfriend, 35-year-old Canadian real estate heir Blake Leibel, was arrested at the time after refusing to let police in to their apartment.

He had attempted to barricade it with furniture when they arrived and found Kasian's body in the couple's bedroom.

Ian Kasin was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment last year after being brutally tortured and drained of her blood. The mother-of-one's boyfriend is in custody on murder charges

The pair had an infant daughter who, it is reported, was on the bed with her mother's body when she was found.

Few other details of the case had been available until this week when the Kasian's autopsy report was released.

According to ABC 13 which has obtained a copy of the document, Kasian's scalp had been entirely removed when she was found.

There were bite marks on her jaw and parts of her face had also been ripped off including her right ear.

The Los Angeles Department of the Medical Examiner ruled that the woman's cause of death was exsanguination, the act of draining a person of blood.

The woman's 35-year-old boyfriend Blake Leibel (right) has been charged with her murder. They had a baby daughter together

The young mother had bite marks on her jaw and had been scalped when she was found

The secondary cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

Lawyers for Leibel (above in a previous photograph) are arguing that he is not mentally fit to stand trial

Liebel was on bail for rape at the time of his girlfriend's killing. Because rape victims are never identified by police, it is not known whether Kasian was his alleged victim.

At the time of his girlfriend's death, Liebel was writing graphic novels.

He was being supported by money from his wealthy real estate developer father in Canada and was also living off of inheritance money he received following his mother's death from brain cancer, prosecutors have told.

Liebel was walked out of the pair's apartment in handcuffs in June last year after his girlfriend's body was found.

A neighbor told The Toronto Star there were bruises on his legs and that he looked 'deranged'.

His lawyers have asked for a mental health evaluation which has put his trial on hold.

He remains in custody.
In a scene which is becoming all too familiar, customers who queued up outside Aldi stores for Special Buys bargains found stock sold out in seconds.

Aldi Australia put two ride-on electric toy cars for kids on special on Saturday, but many bargain hunters were greeted with empty shelves.

Both the 6V Mercedes-Benz Ride and the 6V Caterpillar Tractor with Dump Bucket were on sale for $199.

In a scene which is becoming all too familiar, customers who queued up outside Aldi stores of Special Buys bargains found stock sold out in seconds

Aldi Australia put two ride-on electric toy cars for kids on special on Saturday, but many bargain hunters were greeted with empty shelves after lining up (pictured)

Shoppers took to social media to vent their frustration after finding stores had as few as one of the toy vehicles available.

One customer exploded on Facebook, saying she had driven 40 minutes only to be join other customers in being 'herded into a store like a mob of cattle at 8am'.

'Would it not be sensible to have a few more ( more than 2 ) of large items and maybe stagger them though out the day, so working people and those with distance can get a chance?' she asked.

Others reported stores without a single one, leaving the dozens of people who lined early up infuriated.

Shoppers took to social media to vent their frustration after finding stores had as few as two of the toy vehicles available

'I spoke to the store manager and he advised me there was not one issued to the store. C'mon Aldi this has to be illegal advertising products which are not even available,' wrote one disappointed mother.

'We knew it would be competitive and we may well miss out but when we got into our store we find they had only been supplied ONE of each!' said another.

Another frustrated parent who lined up early at a Sydney hoping to buy the Mercedes model left empty-handed despite being one of the first in.

'Was one of the first in line and the first to where the car should have been, there was one tractor,' he wrote.

The 6V Mercedes-Benz Ride (pictured) on sale for $199 soon sold out at Aldi stores around Australia

John who waited outside Aldi Chatswood was one of the lucky few, rewarded for being first in line due to arriving just after 7am, News.com.au reported.

There was only one of the Mercedes-Benz models in stock, and he snapped it up as a Christmas present for his grandson.

'I got here first,' he said. 'Very happy I got it.'

Deb from Lane Cove was not so fortunate, lining up for 45 minutes only to find the tractors sold out.

She teamed up with another customer in the hopes of getting one of the few in stock, but to no avail.

'One man ahead of us grabbed the single tractor and the single car available. He took both, and that was it. None left,' she said.

The 6V Caterpillar Tractor with Dump Bucket (pictured) was the second item sold out at Aldi stores around Australia on Saturday

Similar scenes were reported less than a fortnight ago, when Aldi released their Style Your Room Homewares range.

Only weeks before that angry shoppers flooded Aldi's Facebook page to complain about an Xbox promotion in which many missed out when stock sold out instantly.

An Aldi spokesperson said in a statement after the homewares sale: 'ALDI Australia's Special Buys have become incredibly popular with Australian shoppers and are just one way we distinguish ourselves from other supermarkets.

'Our weekly Special Buys are ordered months in advance and are intended to be on sale for one week in a bid to keep our range fresh and interesting.

'We do our best to supply our stores with sufficient stock however, sometimes they sell out faster than expected due to their exceptional value and high quality.'
Erdogan's supporters again use force in US territory (video)

Voice of America President Donald Trump met with Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey, during the UN General Assembly session in New York. President Donald Trump greeted the President of Turkey, calling him his friend, who rules a very difficult part of the world with honor. The sides discussed a number of issues of mutual interest. This was the first meeting after the incident taken place in Washington, D.C., when Erdogan's supporters and security officers beat anti-Erdogan demonstrators. Both Erdogan's bodyguards and security personnel of the Turkish Embassy took part in the incident. It happened short after the meeting of the presidents at the White House. Some days ago, another act of violence took place during the event in New York where Erdogan participated. Hours ago, before the presidents' meeting, in one of hotels in New York, Erdogan's supporters beat three demonstrators who had interrupted Erdogan's speech. In New York, Erdogan, in front of hundreds of participants, made a speech at the event organized by one of the Turkish-American business organizations. The President's speech was interrupted by a person who exclaimed the word "terrorist." The video shot by "Voice of America" shows how the security guards attempted to pull out the person from the hall to a safer segment, under the blows of Erdogan's supporters. Later, when the second person began to exclaim the same word, he was also subjected to violence by Erdogan's supporters, getting hit by the Turkish flag. The latter was also taken out of the hall by the security officers. The same thing happened with the third person. Erdogan responded by calling for calmness, emphasizing that there is no need to disrupt the event because of several terrorists. This is the second incident registered by the use of violent force in the past four months with the participation of Erdogan's security personnel, supporters in the United States, at President Erdogan's presence. In the past years, incidents were recorded when the Turkish security forces tried to use force against protesters.
An American-born journalist and her Syrian activist mother were reported to have been stabbed to death in their home in the Turkish city of Istanbul, the latest victims of attacks targeting Syrian activists in Turkey.

The bodies of 60-year-old Arouba Barakat and 22-year-old Hala Barakat were discovered late Thursday, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, when friends worried that the journalist had not showed up for work alerted police.

Hala Barakat was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, according to The Washington Post.

Arouba Barakat (left) and 22-year-old Hala Barakat (right) were reported by their family members to have been stabbed to death in Istanbul overnight on Thursday

They were cousins of Deah Barakat (far left), 23, one of three young Muslims who were fatally shot by a neighbor in Chapel Hill in 2015. His wife, Yusor Mohammad (center), 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (far right), were the other two killed in the shooting

She and her mother were cousins to Deah Barakat, 23, one of three young Muslims who were fatally shot by a neighbor in Chapel Hill in 2015.

Deah Barakat was a second-year dental student at the University of North Carolina. His wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were the other two killed in the shooting.

'Numbness. Confusion. Shock. Disbelief. I cant think straight,' Suzanne Barakat, Deah's sister, wrote on her social media.

'How many more beloved family members will I lose to hatred and violence?'

The pair are the latest in a list of Syrian activists taking refuge in Turkey who have been murdered

Hala Barakat was most recently working as a journalist for Orient TV, which is affiliated with the anti-Assad opposition in Syria.

It is not clear how long she and her mother were in Turkey, although the country has been home to almost three million Syrian refugees - many of them opponents of the government of Bashar al-Asad - since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Homicide officers are investigating the latest deaths - there have been four previous killings of Syrian journalists in Turkey, all of which the Islamic State group said it carried out.

A fifth journalist survived two attacks.

According to Syrian opposition sources, Arouba (left) was a member of the Syrian National Council while her daughter was a journalist working for an opposition organization

Orouba's sister, Shaza, said on Facebook they had been stabbed to death 'by the hand of tyranny and injustice'.

'Orouba wrote headlines for the front page, and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter's name, Halla, are now in the front-page headlines,' she said.

According to Syrian opposition activists' pages on social media, Arouba was a member of the Syrian National Council.

She had backed the uprising against Syria's the Syrian president but had also criticized some in the opposition.

She was reported to have been investigating alleged torture in prisons run by the Syrian government

Some Turkish reports also said the women were stabbed.

Hurriyet newspaper quoted an unnamed neighbor as saying the women were found with their throats slit.

The media advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, has called on Turkey's government to protect Syrian journalists in exile in the country.
A Good Samaritan who went to the aid of a woman trapped in a vehicle on Hobarts Eastern Shore has been assaulted.

A member of the public went to help the woman after a crash between two vehicles in Old Beach about 7.30pm Friday.

An occupant from one of the vehicles assaulted the Good Samaritan before fleeing the scene with the driver of the crashed car.

A Good Samaritan was assaulted after going to the aid of a woman who was trapped in a vehicle on Hobarts Eastern Shore following a two-car collision

The woman was eventually freed from her vehicle by a Tasmania Fire Service crew and taken by ambulance to to Royal Hobart Hospital, where she was treated for serious internal injuries.

Police are appealing for any witnesses who saw the crash between the silver Volkswagen and a black Commodore or the assault on Old Beach Road to come forward.

Anyone with information on the incident is urged to contact Bridgewater Police Station on 131 444 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 (crimestopperstas.com.au).
US military families based in South Korea received fake orders to evacuate this week in hoax text messages.

In the early hours of Thursday morning, the US Forces Korea Facebook page issued a stark warning to followers instructing them not to follow the order which described a 'real world noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) order'.

In the legitimate message, officials warned: 'USFK did NOT issue this message.

'All DoD family members are reminded to confirm any evacuation-related communications with their service member and unit non-combatant evacuation (NEO) representatives.'

'Anyone receiving this false message should not click any links or open any attachments included in the correspondence,' they said.

Scroll down for video

On Thursday, U.S. Forces Korea posted this warning on its Facebook page announcing that a text message which was circulated among troops and their families was not genuine

US Armed Forces are stationed across the Korean Peninsula and have shown their presence in stealth in recent weeks as tensions with North Korea grow. Above, US Air Force B-1B bombers during a practice flight with South Korean fighter jets on September 18

Around 28,000 troops are stationed across the Korean Peninsula and many live there with their families.

Government officials have not suggested who they believe was behind the messages.

There are several US Air Force bases in South Korea including two on the west coast.

US bombers have been seen in the region performing test flights along with South Korean air craft in a show of defiance against the country's neighbor.

The text messages on Thursday came as the situation with North Korea grew ever more precarious.

On Friday, President Trump repeated his earlier description of Kim Jong Un as a 'rocket man' and told a rowdy crowd at an event in Huntsville, Alabama, that the North Korean leader 'may be totally crazy'.

'We can't have mad men over there shooting rockets all over the place and by the way, rocket man should have been handled a long time ago,' Trump said to the cheering crowd which had gathered to pledge their support of Senator Luther Strange.

South Korea is an ally to the US in its ongoing diplomatic dispute with North Korea. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is pictured with President Trump at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, when the text messages were sent

Among the US's air bases in the region are two in South Korea on the west coast facing the Yellow Sea

He said unequivocally that Jong Un 'would be watching' his speech and threatened: 'This should have been handled 25 years ago... this shouldn't be handled now but I'm gonna handle it.'

Tensions have thickened between the US and North Korea since Trump took office.

They have intensified in recent months with North Korea's test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles which, if fired on a straight trajectory, could reach cities in the US.

Trump has waged war diplomatic war on the nation and is imploring America's allies to follow suit by cutting off North Korea's business and trade ties to cripple its economy.

At the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Trump threatened to 'totally destroy' North Korea in a bold speech at which his aides dismayed.

In response, Jong Un has threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

At an event in Huntsville, Alabama, on Friday, President Trump hurled more insults at Kim Jong Un who he called a 'little rocket man' who 'may be crazy'
Mobile phones across Australia have received texts from the equality campaign encouraging them to 'Vote Yes' in the gay marriage postal survey.

The unsolicited message was sent out randomly to people across the country on Saturday and asked people to 'vote YES for a fairer Australia'.

The move sparked outrage from those online however, with many flocking to social media to express their concern about how the campaign had got their numbers.

Mobile phones across Australia received texts from the equality campaign on Saturday encouraging them to 'Vote Yes' in the gay marriage postal survey

The unsolicited message (pictured) was sent out randomly to people across the country on Saturday and asked people to 'vote YES for a fairer Australia'

The messages were sent by 'YesEquality' and told people the survey forms had arrived and that people could 'help make history,' before pointing them to their website.

But people did not take kindly to the campaign's effort, with Facebook and Twitter users stating they felt 'violated'.

'Excuse me but did anyone else get a "vote yes for marriage equality" text message? How did they get my phone number? I feel violated,' one person wrote.

Another labelled the message 'spam,' while a Facebook user wrote they were determined to vote no and asked whether the campaign was allowed to text people.

The move sparked outrage from those online however, with many flocking to social media to express their concern

Dozens of outraged people sent the message took to social media, asking how the organisation had received their numbers

Dozens of other people who had been sent the message also took to social media, asking again how the organisation had received their numbers.

'Not sure how the voteyes.org.au got my mobile number to test me with a message to vote yes. Not sure if I'm cool with that...' one perturbed person wrote.

Another angered person added: 'Wish the YES campaigners would back off!'

While one woman wrote: 'Just received a text message from the vote yes campaign... how dare they force their opinions on me.'

'I didn't give them my number or my permission to contact me. More bullying from the LGBTQI community,' she added.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the Marriage Equality campaign for comment.

Facebook and Twitter users stated they felt 'violated' their numbers had been used and asked whether the campaign is 'allowed to do this' (pictured)
A New Orleans mayoral candidate stands accused of masturbating in an Uber while on a trip to California.

Frank Scurlock, whose campaign slogan is 'Make New Orleans Fun Again,' allegedly masturbated in an Uber en route from Santa Monica to West Hollywood this past February, reports the New Orleans Advocate.

His female driver allegedly caught him in the lewd act.

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Pictured is a mugshot for New Orleans mayoral candidate Frank Scurlock, 55, from May 2017. He was charged with assault and crossing a police cordon after protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate figure Jefferson Davis. It has come to light that he allegedly masturbated in an Uber

Pictured is Scurlock wearing his purple hat, a hallmark of his mayoral campaign, inside a Five Guys establishment. Scurlock allegedly masturbated in the back of a female Uber driver's car while visiting Southern California in February

She told police that she heard noises from Scurlock, 55, and, upon realizing what he was doing, pulled over and forced him to leave her vehicle.

She allegedly found him with his pants down and with his hand around his erect penis.

She proceeded to call the police.

Charges against Scurlock were formally filed on August 31.

Scurlock told the Advocate that the charges are 'without merit'.

He is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles County Criminal Court on October 16, two days after the New Orleans mayoral primary.

Scurlock, formerly a Republican, is running as a Democrat. It is not clear whether or not he will remain in the race.

The Uber driver allegedly caught Spurlock with his hand around his erect penis

If he is found guilty, he would need to register as a sex offender in California.

The mayoral candidate was also arrested this past May on charges of obstructing a public place, which was later revised to assault and crossing a police cordon.

He was protesting the removal of a statue of Jefferson Davis, a hero to the Confederacy during the United States Civil War.

These charges were later dropped.

It was removed amid an ongoing effort to remove monuments to the Confederacy across the United States.
Two bandits have been caught red-handed stealing vital life saving first-aid equipment from the inside of a Brisbane shopping centre.

Footage supplied by Queensland Police show the brazen thieves pacing through the empty mall before swiping packages of medical equipment suspended on two separate a bollards.

The offence occurred on September 5, with officers alleging the men stole two automatic defibrillators from separate levels of the Carindale Street complex about 7:00pm.

Two bandits were caught red handed nicking vital life saving first-aid equipment from the inside of a Brisbane shopping centre earlier this month

Footage shows the brazen thieves pacing through the empty mall before swiping packages of medical equipment suspended on two separate a bollards

Police believe two Caucasian men shown in CCTV footage might be able to assist in their investigation.

The stolen devices are crucial in the treatment of life-threatening cardiac arrests.

After exiting the complex, it's believed the two robbers fled along Stanley Street carrying the devices.

The offence occurred on September 5, with officers alleging the men stole two automatic defibrillators from separate levels of the Carindale Street complex about 7:00pm

Police believe two Caucasian men shown in CCTV footage might be able to assist in their investigation

The stolen devices are crucial in the treatment of life-threatening cardiac arrests

Both men were believed to be aged in their 20s, with the first man described to have a thin build, long sandy blonde hair which was tied into a ponytail and was wearing a white long sleeved shirt, dark knee-length shorts and white shoes.

The second man was also described to have a thin build, long sandy blonde hair which was tied in a bun and was wearing a purple t-shirt with a wolf on the front, knee length grey shorts and white shoes.

Police are urging anyone who could provide information on the offenders to come forward.

After exiting the complex, it's believed the two robbers fled along Stanley Street carrying the devices
A lost photo album containing dozens of treasured memories has been miraculously reunited with the son of one of its pictured people.

Margaret Suda found an old photo album in a store room at a Sydney hospital where she works.

She posted photos of the album to social media on Thursday in an attempt to track down its rightful owner after exhausting [her] limited investigative skills.

Full of family photos, the albums contents were mostly glued down

Full of family photos, the albums contents were mostly glued down, and all but one of the photos that had come loose had no captions or names on the back.

She said the most recent date on the photos was in the 1960s.

All she had to go on was the photos themselves and two names written on the back of a photo of a pair of children, Jemima and Heather Moffatt.

Ms Suda told Daily Mail Australia she managed to track down Heathers son Christopher McRae through Facebook.

'I found the album and did some rudimentary searches in our system... but the photos were of such an amazing history I felt it was important to at least try to find out more.

'I still have no idea how it ended up in our department.'

Ms Suda posted photos to Facebook group Lost Sydney, asking for suggestions on how to find the owners.

She said she was inundated with suggestions and information from people who took up the case of the missing album.

'I thought about how rich and interesting the photos were so I asked for help... they were amazing.'

She was aided by another woman Julie DuRoff, and together the pair managed to contact Mr McRae and arrange for the photo album to be returned.
An out-of-control bushfire is causing traffic chaos, with the Hume Highway closed to all traffic and motorists warned to turn around.

The blaze, which started just after 12pm near Wingello in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, crossed the highway and is causing major delays.

The NSW Rural Fire Service is warning drivers travelling on the highway to turn back as it issues Emergency Alert Telephone warnings to local residents.

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An out-of-control bushfire is causing traffic chaos, with the Hume Highway closed to all traffic and motorists warned to turn around (pictured is traffic brought to a standstill)

The NSW Rural Fire Service is warning drivers travelling on the highway (pictured) to turn around as it issues Emergency Alert Telephone warnings to local residents

Those in the Hanging Rock area who plan to leave are advised to do so immediately in a northerly direction towards Sydney if the road is clear.

32 firefighters in nine fire trucks were working to stop the fire from spreading alongside aircraft including the Large Air Tanker,The Illawarra Mercury reported.

RFS spokesman James Morris said more crews were on their way to the area to fight the blaze, ABC News reported.

'We have sent out an emergency alert for those people in the direct impact of the fire run there,' he said.

Those in the Hanging Rock area who plan to leave are advised to do so immediately in a northerly direction towards Sydney if the road is clear (pictured is halted traffic on the Hume Highway)

The blaze (pictured), which started just after 12pm near Wingello in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, crossed the highway and is causing major delays

'We have advised them that if you plan is to leave, now is the time to leave and make sure you only head in a northerly direction away from the fire front.'

Residents in Wingello and Penrose may be affected by smoke from the fire, and the RFS is warning only those 'physically and mentally prepared to defend in these conditions' should stay to defend their homes.

Total Fire Bans are in place across much of New South Wales, with 11 uncontained fires burning across the state.

RFS spokesman James Morris said more crews were on their way to the area to fight the blaze (pictured are motorists affected by the road closure)

Temperatures have soared close to 40 degrees in parts of Western New South Wales, hitting 38.8 in White Cliffs.

Sydney has been hit by scorching conditions, with the September record high broken in Penrith.

NSW Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said the dry air and strong winds were increasing the risk of fire, Nine News reported.

'No fires can be lit in the open today, we want to limit the number of fires we have to deal with,' he said.
Supporters of same-sex marriage have been met with a heavy police presence after they interrupted a rally against changing Australias wedding laws.

Police attended the straight lives matter rally at Green Park in Darlinghurst, Sydney on Saturday after it threatened to spill out of control.

A New South Wales Police spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia 50 counter-protestors turned up at the event.

Police attended the straight lives matter rally at Green Park in Darlinghurst, Sydney

Rally organiser Nick Folkes said the location wasnt significant, despite it being in the heart of the citys gay capital

The rally was interrupted by supporters of same-sex marriage becoming legal

Police turned up to the event after 50 counter-protestors arrived at the rally in Green Park

A police spokeswoman said the rally was 'incident free' and there were no arrests made

Police were there just to keep the peace, according to a police spokeswoman

She said the rally was incident free, and there were no arrests made.

Police were there just to keep the peace, she said.

Rally organiser Nick Folkes told the ABC the location wasnt significant, despite it being in the heart of the citys gay capital.

Some people have said its provocative but were just exercising our democratic right to freedom of speech and freedom of location.

I have real concerns about not just being about gay marriage, but a much broader agenda.

Counter-protestors turned up carrying signs saying 'Nazis GTFO [get the f**k out] of Darlinghurst' and 'transphobia kills'.

Counter-protestors turned up carrying signs saying 'Nazis GTFO [get the f**k out] of Darlinghurst' and 'transphobia kills'

The counter protestors were opposed to the message conveyed at the rally regarding same-sex marriage
Fake lawyers letters are being sent into prisons soaked with 'zombie' drugs in the latest bid to feed inmates' addictions.

An independent report into conditions at HMP Wealstun in West Yorkshire found the letters are being smuggled in after being sprayed with psychoactive substances like the synthetic cannabis Spice.

Prison officers have been forced to photocopy the letters before giving them to inmates, which has caused a separate row that legal letters should only be opened by the addressee.

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An independent report at HMP Wealstun in West Yorkshire found fake legal letters are being doused in drugs before they are handed over to inmates

The Independent Monitoring Board at the Category C male prison said: 'Where there is suspicion that incoming letters have been soaked in drugs, they are photocopied.

'This has resulted in an increase in complaints from prisoners, as bogus Legal Mail is a significant problem and Legal Mail should not be opened.

'Prisoners found guilty at adjudications of taking drugs are offered drugs courses.'

The report added: 'The prison is well managed and that management are doing a good job under testing circumstances.

'Psychoactive substances continue to be a major issue for healthcare within HMP Wealstun.'

Both prisoners and officers have been sent to hospital as Spice becomes more widely used, with officers being called to related incidents between 'eight and 10 times a day'.

Prison officers are being forced to photocopy the letters first to stop the drugs getting to prisoners, which has triggered a separate privacy row

The report said prison staff are becoming 'more adept at dealing with these calls'.

Dr George Ryan of Public Health England said the highly-addictive substance is responsible for turning high streets into 'zombie zones' and was easily accessible to prisoners.

This week disturbing footage surfaced of a pack of 'Spice zombies' left paralysed and unable to speak after taking the drug in St Mary Street, Cardiff.

South Wales Police responded by vowing to crack down on dealers to 'end the misery' it causes in the community.

A group of 'Spice zombies' were captured on video in St Mary Street, Cardiff this week
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A hero tradie chased down a driver who was allegedly fleeing a crash scene and hogtied him with duct tape until police arrived.

Robbie Davies, of Townsville, was waiting at traffic lights on Woolcock St on Thursday afternoon when he heard a crash.

A Holden Commodore had come through the intersection and smashed into another car, the Courier Mail reports.

Mr Davies said he then saw a man run from the vehicle and instinctively knew something was wrong, calling out to the man.

A Townsville man has been hailed a hero after chasing down a man who allegedly fled a crash scene on Thursday afternoon

'The man called out, 'don't chase me' and ran off,' Mr Davies told the publication.

The tradie said he was in steel capped work boots as he chased after the fleeing driver.

Passing a group of teenagers, Mr Davies grabbed one of their bikes and took off in pursuit of the man.

'I caught up with him quickly and was peddling behind him for about 100m,' he said.

'He looked to jump the fence and I rode straight into him and tackled him while he was not looking at me.

While waiting for police to arrive, Mr Davies said he 'had his arms tied up a bit' while the man was 'pleading with me to let him go'.

The man is facing six drug-related charges and had allegedly been found with $31,500 in cash (stock image)

Another man arrived to help apprehend the man, using duct tape to hold the man's legs and arms.

Mr Davies' split second actions led to the arrest of the 27-year-old Bluewater man, confirmed by a police spokesman.

The man is facing six drug-related charges and had allegedly been found with $31,500 in cash.

And while social media has been quick to praise the tradie for his heroic actions, he said he was just an ordinary person.

Mr Davies revealed his actions also occurred as he had had his car stolen a few weeks prior.
A Polish war veteran is leading a British poll for the greatest Second World War Spitfire pilot by hundreds of thousands of votes.

Franciszek Kornicki, 100, the last surviving Second World War Polish squadron commander, leads the online survey by a whopping 300,000 votes following a viral social media campaign by the UK's Polish community.

A member of the high-scoring 303 Squadron during World War II, the war hero famously escorted a group of British bombers over northern France, where he led a daring attack on Nazi warplanes.

War hero: Franciszek Kornicki, 100, the last surviving Second World War Polish squadron commander leads an online poll by more than 300,000 votes

His position in the poll is partly thanks to a campaign which saw the Polish Embassy and Polish Radio London urge the UK's Polish population to back their countryman.

Commenting on the news, Mr Kornicki, who now lives in a care home in Findon, West Sussex, told the Express: 'I'm very surprised and even a little dazed by this news. I was only one of many and I knew quite a lot of better flyers than me.'

The poll, which ends on Sunday, was launched by the RAF Museum ahead of its 100th anniversary.

To mark the anniversary next year, the museum, founded in 1918, is set to host an RAF Centenary Exhibition.

Kornicki served in Poland, France and Britain during the war, before going on to join the Royal Air Force. Pictured: Kornicki is reunited with a Spitfire he flew in 1942

Voters were given the chance to choose between a range of heroes from around the world in the poll.

Commenting on the poll, RAF Museum curator Peter Devitt told the Telegraph: 'We have made no attempt to give you a list of the greatest pilots.

'You can find that anywhere on the internet. Instead we've selected a wide, and perhaps surprising, range of people who flew the type to demonstrate to people of all walks that the RAF is, and by extension the RAF Museum's Centenary Exhibition also has something for everyone.'

FRANKCISZEK KORNICKI: LIFE OF A FIGHTER PILOT Born in Wereszyn in 1916, Mr Kornicki was unable to afford a university education, opting instead to join the Polish Air Force Academy in Deblin as a cadet. He served in Poland, France and Britain during the war, before going on to join the Royal Air Force. The fighter pilot was one of hundreds of Polish airmen who retreated across Europe when the Nazis invaded the Eastern European country in 1939. In 1940, the pilot arrived in Britain, where he joined the 303 Squadron, one of 16 Polish squadrons in the Royal Air Force and the highest scoring during the Battle of Britain. On July 23 1941, he famously led a group of British bombers over northern France where they shot down four enemy aircraft. He described the experience in his biography, Kornicki, The Struggle: Biography of a Fighter Pilot. 'We were over twenty thousand feet with France below us when I heard on the RT [radio transmitter] that enemy aircraft were approaching, and later there were reports of attacks and warning shouts - somebody was fighting somewhere. 'I thought we were moving about a bit nervously when I remembered the golden rule: never fly straight and level for any length of time - and so I too weaved behind my energetic leader, trying desperately not to collide with anybody and not to lose him. 'I managed, but I did not see much else except him and my immediate neighbours. Our squadron was not molested and we all came back in one piece. I landed drenched with perspiration, jumped out of my aircraft, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.' At just 26, Kornicki became the youngest squadron commander in the Polish Air Force. He went on to receive the War Order of Virtuti Militari, Poland's highest military decoration for courage and heroism. Advertisement
Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry was so poor as a child that her 'cats had to be put down,' she has revealed.

The Islington South and Finsbury MP, who serves on the front line of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet, made the shocking claim in a new interview.

The 57-year-old politician is the daughter of teacher Sallie Thornberry and international lawyer Cedric Thornberry, who went to become Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry was so poor as a child that her 'cats had to be put down,' she has revealed

But after her parents divorced when she was seven, Thornberry says her family's finances took a dramatic turn for the worse.

She said: 'I don't know if this is a false memory, but I have a memory of bailiffs coming. And it was the 1960s so they were wearing bowler hats,' according to The Mirror.

She added: 'The cats had to be put down. I suppose my mum just couldn't cope with three kids, no money, going into council housing... and cats.'

Speaking about her prominent father, who also served as a consultant to NATO, she said: 'He was very successful, sort of an international guy. He was a great man, but a terrible father.'

The Islington MP, who serves on the front line of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet, made the shocking claim in a new interview

Thornberry, now married to Oxbridge educated lawyer Sir Christopher Nugee, was raised in a modest home in Kent and attended a secondary-modern school after failing her 11-plus.

Despite early academic setbacks, she made it to Canterbury University and was called to the Bar in 1983.

After standing for Labour in Tory Canterbury in the 2001 general election, Miss Thornberry won the nomination to succeed Chris Smith in Islington South & Finsbury.

In her maiden speech in parliament, she said: 'My mum struggled for years to bring up me and my brothers on benefits.

Miss Thornberry landed her party in trouble by tweeting a message that appeared to mock working-class voters in 2014

'I wear the chips that I have on my shoulder with pride.'

She added: 'You can take the girl out of the estate, but you can't take the estate out of the girl.'

Her political career was rocked in 2014 after she tweeted a photo of a house in Rochester with two England flags outside.

The image was interpreted as a sneer at 'white van man' and then-party leader Ed Miliband fired her as Shadow Attorney General.

MailOnline has contacted Emily Thornberry's office for comment.
A large brawl involving nearly 50 men broke out at North Cronulla beach because they were fighting over a girl.

Police were called down to the Sutherland Shire hotspot at around 3pm on Saturday after being told a fight had broken out on the beach.

Onlookers described it as 'alcohol-fueled violence' on what was supposed to be a friendly family day out in the sunshine, Seven News reports.

Police were called down to the Sutherland Shire hotspot at around 3pm on Saturday after being told a fight had broken out on the beach (pictured)

A large brawl involving nearly 50 'Middle Eastern' men broke out at North Cronulla beach because they were fighting over a girl

Seven News spoke to some of the onlookers who described it as 'alcohol-fueled violence' on what was supposed to be a friendly family day out in the sunshine

Four men were arrested following the intense altercation which was documented on witnesses Snapchat accounts - as it was discovered the fight had originally broken out over a girl.

Police were praised for quickly intervening and ushered the remaining spectators back to Cronulla train station.

This isn't the first time the region has seen brawls of this magnitude, with the twelve-year anniversary of the Cronulla riots set for December 11 this year.

On the morning of Sunday, December 10, 2005, a crowd began gathering on Cronulla Beach to protest against the violent attacks. Police gathered on the beach and in helicopters and patrol boats off the coast.

This isn't the first time the region has seen brawls of this magnitude, with the twelve-year anniversary of the Cronulla riots set for December 11 this year

Police were praised for quickly intervening and ushered the remaining spectators back to Cronulla train station

The four men who were arrested are currently being held in custody at Miranda police station

By midday, the crowd had reached 5000 and many of them were drinking alcohol. A former Cronulla Sharks player, Glen 'Steely' Steele, began egging on the crowd through a loudspeaker, saying 'F*** off Lebs.'

Steele shouted that his father had fought the Japanese and he would fight to defend Australia and his 'women.'

When a young man of Arabic appearance was spotted on the beach, a crowd of men approached him. He tried to escape by entering the local hotel 'Northies' and was set upon by a group of local men.

This isn't the first time the region has seen brawls of this magnitude, with the twelve-year anniversary of the Cronulla riots set for December 11 this year (pictured)

There were further violent scuffles and, as the day became night, retaliatory riots by Muslim Australians took place, causing extensive property damage, and several more assaults and attacks against ambulance and police officers (pictured on the fateful day of the Cronulla riots)

The Cronulla riots are still regarded as one of the most shameful race riots in Australia's recent history

There were further violent scuffles and, as the day became night, retaliatory riots by Muslim Australians took place, causing extensive property damage, and several more assaults and attacks against ambulance and police officers.

The crowd turned on police, throwing beer bottles at them.

It is still regarded as one of the most shameful race riots in Australia's recent history.
A drunken woman caught urinating on a pub's doorstep has decided to ignore her critics and 'see the funny side' after the embarrassing footage went viral.

Aleisha, 20, of East Yorkshire, has refused to reveal her surname but confessed to being the 'mystery urinater' caught relieving herself last Sunday.

She was captured on CCTV outside The Mission pub in Hull at 11.50pm eyeing up the spot before pulling down her underwear and urinating on the doorstep.

She was 'named and shamed' by the pub's landlord who posted the video on Facebook, racking up over 500,000 views.

Aleisha, 20, of East Yorkshire, was caught on CCTV urinating outside The Mission pub in Hull last week

The 20-year-old went viral after the pub landlord uploaded the video to Facebook in a bid to name and shame her

It has now been taken down and Aleisha has started to come to terms with everyone seeing her in the act.

She told the Hull Daily Mail: 'I don't remember a thing about that night.

'Me and my friend had been at Atik and we were just wandering down the street.

'I must have been busting for a wee, but I don't remember doing it all.

'I was really angry when I first saw the video, and loads of friends had tagged me in it, but now I'm just seeing the funny side.'

Aleisha (pictured) has refused to give her surname, but says she is 'starting to see the funny side' of what happened

She has not been put off drinking in the area, which was branded UK City of Culture 2017

She had gone to watch rapper MoStack perform at the opening of the new Atik nightclub in Princes Dock Street before she left to walk down Posterngate with her friend when she decided to make a pit stop.

She added: 'It was a bit embarrassing at first but now I don't really care.

'I have got a lot of hate from it, especially from girls, but I've just decided to ignore them.

'I'm more mad that this man has put the video on Facebook for everyone to see.'

Despite being seen by thousands of people, Aleisha has not been put off going out drinking in Hull, which was named UK City of Culture 2017.

Aleisha said: 'All I can say is I must have been really desperate for a wee, and everyone has done something like that before.

'I am just concentrating on the funny side of it.'
Russell Brand has said he is glad he told people not to vote in the 2015 general election because Jeremy Corbyn is now the leader of the Labour party.

Brand previously urged his millions of Twitter followers not to 'bother' voting and admitted he had never voted himself. 'We know it's not going to make any difference,' he once said.

The comedian, who is currently promoting his new book Recovery: Freedom from our Addictions, has now told Sky News: 'I feel vindicated because people told me, "you were mad saying there's no point in voting" but I was saying there's no point in voting unless voting demonstrates choice or is demonstrative of choice - and now it is.

'I feel that the changes that have happened subsequently do demonstrate that I was taking the temperature correctly.'

The 42-year-old added: 'I admire both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

'I feel personally relieved after my involvement with the media and politics a couple of years ago that someone that's been in parliament for decades is now the dominant voice of the opposition.'

Brand, who is speaking at a Momentum event at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on the subject of addiction, said: 'I voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the last election because I think he seems personable and he's got that simple slogan "for the many not he few."'

Russell Brand has said he is glad he told people not to vote in the 2015 general election because Jeremy Corbyn is now the leader of the Labour party

Earlier this week on Newsnight, Russell Brand hailed the rise of Jeremy Corbyn as a 'great thing' and said he was partly responsible for the Labour leader's election surge.

He claimed the comments helped kick start the surge in left-wing politics which swept Mr Corbyn to the Labour leadership and his recent election success.

And he took a swipe at Theresa May who he appeared to describe as an 'automaton technocrat lunatic with a rictus grin staring at you out of the pages of a Quentin Blake book'.

The 42-year-old added: 'I admire both Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell'

He told the BBC's Newsnight programme: It was a reaction to politics at that time which was  I think subsequently it has been borne out that a lot of people felt similarly that they were not being offered viable alternatives.

And subsequent to me saying partisan politics is meaningless we have seen a huge lurch to the right, we have seen Brexit, we have seen the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.

I dont think I was some kind of soothsayerI was simply taking the temperature and speaking on behalf of a lot of people.

Russell Brand, pictured in December 2014 leading residents in London's East End in a protest against a US investment firm's plans to evict residents form a housing estate. He was a regular face on the left-wing protest scene for several years

He denied it was 'irresponsible' to us this popularity to discourage voting, and said it helped fuel the shift in politics which has seen Mr Corbyn's popularity surge and the Tories take a pummeling.

The comedian spent several years championing left-wing causes and was often seen leading protesters marching through central London on weekend demonstrations.

But Mr Brand, who last year welcomed his first child with his now wife Laura Gallacher, has not been as publicly politically active recently.
Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 1,250 miles (2,000 km) and can carry multiple warheads.

Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington. Pictured, Iran displays a new multiple-warhead medium-range missile dubbed the Khoramshahr at a military parade in Tehran

'As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country's defence capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,' Defence Minister Amir Hatami said in a staement.

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where US President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a 'rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos'.

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where US President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a 'rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos'.

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

Iran, which fought a brutal war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s, sees missiles as a legitimate and vital part of its defence - particularly as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel import huge amounts of military hardware from the West.

President Hassan Rouhani vows to boost Iran's missile capabilities in defiance of US warnings as he inspects a medium-range Zelzal missile at a military parade in Tehran on September 22

Trump has threatened to bin the nuclear agreement, saying Iran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal's restrictions are lifted in 2025.

He is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in US interests to stick by it.

If he decides that it is not, that could open the way for US lawmakers to reimpose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the agreement.

Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it.

The other signatories to the deal - Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the EU - have all pushed for it to continue.

Islamic Republic of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks during the U.N. General Assembly at the United Nations

They point out that abandoning the agreement will remove restrictions on Iran immediately, rather than in eight years' time, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Tehran is meeting its commitments.

Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 kilometres, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.

That makes them only medium-range but still sufficient to reach Israel or US bases in the Gulf.

At Friday's military parade, President Hassan Rouhani hit out at those who 'create problems for the peoples of our region every day and boast of selling arms to the bloodthirsty Zionist regime which has been attacking the peoples of our region for 70 years like a cancerous tumour.'

As well as carrying out missile tests, Iran has also launched a space satellite and fired missiles at Islamic State group targets in eastern Syria in recent months.
Ryanair pilots have written to Michael O'Leary threatening to bring in lawyers after he refused to meet their demands and accused them of being lazy amid its ongoing row over working conditions.

As many as 400,000 passengers on 2,000 flights have had their trips cancelled over the next six weeks because of staff shortages caused by a pilot holiday backlog.

At the company's AGM in Dublin chief executive Mr O'Leary turned the tables on pilots, accusing them of being lazy and threatening to take away their holiday in a bid to reduce the effect on passengers.

Pilots and First Officers have turned down the 12,000 bonus he offered them to work through their holiday period, remaining defiant over grievances about pay and being overworked.

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Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary (pictured) has caused outrage after his comments at the company's AGM that branded his pilots lazy. A group of British and Europen pilots have now threatened them with legal action

Air crew at Dublin, Stansted, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Luton and East Midlands banded together to reject the bonus, with decisions from Birmingham and Edinburgh expected imminently.

But after refusing to meet their demands, a letter addressed to Mr O'Leary and chief operations officer Michael Hickey seen by MailOnline reveals the furious pilots are seeking legal action.

In a statement an airline spokesman denied the letter existed.

They told MailOnline: 'Our crews have confirmed they sent no such letter.'

The letter says the pilots 'regret' Mr O'Leary is 'not willing to solve the problems Ryanair is facing' and have offered to help matters but now reached deadlock.

The letter says Mr O'Leary's 12,000 bonus 'fails to address what pilots really want'

A cancelled Ryanair flight is seen on a departure board at London Stansted Airport - one of around 50 every day being axed for the next six weeks

The employees continue by saying Mr O'Leary 'should be ashamed of himself' after his comments made at his press conference, branding them a 'disgrace to all employees and contractors'.

The letter claims the airline boss's offer of a 12,000 bonus is 'failing to see what pilots really want'.

A list of their demands include professional assistance with union negotiations and permanent local contracts that 'follow national laws and rights'.

It continues by saying that because a 'lack of support by Irish law' the group is 'looking for legal advice on how to proceed'.

After Ryanair pilots got together to take on Mr O'Leary, membership of the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) union has soared.

But they do maintain they want to keep their jobs and are prepared to be flexible to ensure 'stability' for those due to fly with Ryanair in the coming weeks.

What kind of legal action the pilots are looking to pursue is not clear.

The letter ends by saying they expect the two bosses to 'agree to their demands' by Monday morning.

Michael O'Leary (centre) has been asked to respond to the pilots' demands by Monday, but a spokesman for the airline told MailOnline the letter did not exist in the first place

A similar letter has also been sent to the airline's management by pilots operating in Europe.

Their fiery boss blasted the 'self-important' rebels at Thursday's AGM, saying: 'I would challenge any pilot to explain how this is a difficult job or how it is they are overworked, or how anybody who by law can't fly more than 18 hours a week could possibly be suffering from fatigue'.

Hinting at possible pay rises he added: 'We have some goodies to discuss, but if pilots misbehave, that would be the end of the discussion.'

One airline pilot told MailOnline: 'If Michael O'Leary thinks we do an easy job then I'd love to see him sit in a simulator ( NOT A REAL AIRCRAFT WITH PASSENGERS ) and try and land an aircraft in gusty conditions late at night after having flown anything up to 15 hours on a short runway contaminated with snow on day five after doing a previous 19 sectors in those five days.'

The Irish billionaire told shareholders six weeks of cancellations, which he previously admitted was a 'mess', has cost the airline about 25 million euro (22 million), continuing to blame it on 'mismanagement' and the pilot's rota.

The cancellation crisis, which will see 50 flights axed every day for six weeks, has also wiped 500 million off the company's share price.

Frustrated Ryanair passengers claim they have been left stranded abroad and their holidays ruined by the company, slamming the cancellation saga as a 'disgrace'

So far he has denied there is a problem between staff and management.

He said: 'There isn't a bad relationship between Ryanair and our pilots.

'We asked on Monday for volunteers to work days off ... we have had huge co-operation and support from pilots,' he added.

He added: 'I don't even know how there would be industrial action in Ryanair. There isn't a union.'

He apologised to customers and said that to help ensure no further cancellations after the six-week period, 500 pilots with a four-week block of leave booked for October and 500 in November will have to work one week of that leave.

Passengers across Europe have reacted furiously to the debacle, claiming they have been left stranded and out of pocket, with some waiting up to nine days for a flight home.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been blasted by MPs as he tells furious passengers to 'direct your anger at Uber.'

Transport for London (TfL) yesterday announced they would not be renewing Uber's licence at the end of the month due to concerns they are failing to report crimes carried out by its drivers - leading some 500,000 Londoners to sign a petition urging Khan to reconsider the decision.

The firm, which employs more than 40,000 drivers in London and has 3.5 million customers in the capital, has slammed the decision and said it will appeal.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been blasted by MPs as he tells furious passengers to 'direct your anger at Uber'

Tory minister for London Greg Hands said: 'At the flick of a pen Sadiq Khan is threatening to put 40,000 people out of work and leave 3.5 million users of Uber stranded.

'Uber must address safety concerns and it is important there is a level playing field across the private hire market.

'But a blanket ban will cause massive inconvenience to millions of Londoners, all the while showing that the Mayor of London is closed to business and innovation.'

Chris Philp, Tory MP for Croydon South, said: 'I accept Uber has some problems it has to fix, such as reporting every single criminal allegation they hear about.

Tory minister for London Greg Hands said: 'At the flick of a pen Sadiq Khan is threatening to put 40,000 people out of work and leave 3.5 million users of Uber stranded'

'But banning Uber in London is a terrible mistake. Sadiq Khan should reverse the decision immediately.'

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP for Tonbridge and Malling, claimed Mr Khan was a 'luddite' who wanted to 'switch off the internet'.

He said: 'By banning Uber, Sadiq Khan is showing socialism is about control when the internet is pushing for freedom of choice.

'True, Uber has problems but Sadiq Khan banning them is a vote against choice using last- century controls to order how we choose to live.'

However, Mr Khan  who as mayor is chairman of the Transport for London board but did not take part in the licensing decision  said Uber had brought the ban on itself.

He told BBC World At One: 'If drivers are angry, as they will be, if users of Uber are angry, as they will be, their anger should be turned towards Uber for knowing the rules and failing to play by them.'

Uber's private hire licence will not be renewed after a bombshell decision by TfL yesterday

A black cab driver celebrates outside Paddington station yesterday after the decision to strip Uber of its licence in London was announced

More than 500,000 people have signed a petition calling for the decision to be reversed

The development came as it emerged Uber has been legally operating in a UK city without a licence and is 'exploring' how it could do so in London.

Officials in Coventry have said that Uber drivers in nearby Wolverhampton and Birmingham have been operating within their city, according to the Sun.

Customers can order a taxi on the app, and drivers licensed elsewhere are allowed to come into the city and pick up passengers.

Major cities including Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle have said they are monitoring the situation.

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson said he 'remains convinced that deregulation of the taxi trade is hurting competition, preventing licensing authorities from doing their jobs'.

He added that Liverpool City Council will keep an eye on what happens in London and could take action.

Uber's licence to operate in Manchester is not up for renewal until 2021 but the council's executive member for neighbourhoods, Councillor Nigel Murphy, said they will be monitoring the situation.

This approach echoes what Bristol and Newcastle have said.

In Brighton, taxi drivers have urged the council not to renew Uber's licence. The city's MP, Caroline Lucas, welcomed TfL's decision.

She said: '#Uber business model irresponsible to the core. Hope @Uber ups game & shows more corporate responsibility #gigeconomy.'

A spokesman for Cardiff City Council said there was no evidence to suggest Uber was breaching the terms of their licence in the city.

Meanwhile, a petition calling for TfL to reverse their decision has been signed by more than 500,000 people in less than 24 hours.

The petition, started by Uber London, says: 'By wanting to ban our app from the capital, Transport for London and their chairman the Mayor have given in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.

Transport for London announced the decision in this tweet, which is said to have been posted just one minute after it informed the firm

The decision is another setback for the firm, which has previously been banned by other cities including Barcelona and Vancouver

'If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive millions of Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

'This decision is affecting the real lives of a huge number of honest and hard-working drivers in London.'

Critics of Uber - which boasts more than 5 billion passengers in over 630 cities worldwide - insist it has failed to properly vet its drivers and is an example of the so-called 'gig economy' that gives workers no employment rights.

Worried Uber drivers and angry passengers yesterday joined a growing chorus of criticism - with delighted cabbies rejoicing at the potential downfall of their fiercest competitor.

Father-of-three Bangalie, who has been driving for the company for almost a year, fears he could be forced to claim benefits if Uber's appeal is not successful.

He said: 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money.

'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.'

Passenger Lucy Williams, 30, from London, said: 'It's terrible, I get Ubers like three times a week and they've saved me a lot of money from black cabs.'

But black cab driver Kenneth Stein, 54, said: 'I have nothing against Uber drivers but we as black cab drivers are regulated to the hilt while they have next to no regulation.'

Uber said in a statement that the decision would 'show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies'. The firm's current licence expires on September 30.

As part of their fightback, they are emailing all of their members individually to urge them to sign the petition.

Many Londoners took to Twitter to complain about the TFL decision

Others welcomed the decision by the city's authorities, saying the company was dangerous

But the firm has faced a barrage of criticism in recent years over the safety of customers, working rights for drivers and opposition from black cab drivers.

TfL concluded that the minicab app is 'not fit and proper' to operate in the capital due to concerns which have 'public safety and security implications'.

Transport for London said: 'TfL considers that Uber's approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications.'

Mayor of Sadiq Khan, who was not involved in the decision but supports it, said: 'All companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect - particularly when it comes to the safety of customers.

'Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security.'

What happens now for Uber users? Uber's current licence expires on September 30, but yesterday's ruling allows them to continue operating during the appeal process. That should mean the minicabs are still available for hiring for at least a month after September 30, while the court appeal is heard. Other similar apps are now piling in to try to mop up the customers Uber will leave behind. Advertisement

Confirming Uber would appeal against the decision in court, Tom Elvidge, the firm's general manager in London, said: '3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision.

'By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.

'If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

'To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts. '

He added: 'Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.'

The firm's complaints were backed by London First, which campaigns for business in the capital.

The group's David Leam said: 'This will be seen as a Luddite decision by millions of Londoners and international visitors who use Uber, and will also hit London's reputation as a global tech hub. London needs to be open to new ideas, businesses and services.'

But Labour MP Wes Streeting, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taxis, welcomed the decision, which he said would 'draw a line in the sand'.

The Ilford North MP added: 'Uber has not shown itself to be a fit and proper operator.

'It stands accused by the police of failing to properly handle serious allegations of rape and sexual assault of passengers.

'It had to be dragged through the courts to recognise its responsibility to provide even the most basic rights and protections to Uber drivers.'

The number of private hire drivers in London has almost doubled to more than 116,000 from 65,000 in 2013/14.

Drivers of traditional black London cabs held a protest this year against the minicab app. The app was seen as unfairly undercutting black cabs due to the lack of regulation of drivers

Uber driver James Farrar said: 'This is a devastating blow for 30,000 Londoners who now face losing their job and being saddled with unmanageable vehicle-related debt.

'To strip Uber of its licence after five years of laissez-faire regulation is a testament to a systemic failure at TfL.

'Rather than banish Uber, TfL should have strengthened its regulatory oversight, curbed runaway licensing and protected the worker rights of drivers.'

The GMB union handed in a petition with 100,000 signatures on Monday to TfL, calling on Uber to improve workers' rights or 'get out of London' ahead of the licence decision.

We brought down Uber, boast shameless unions By Charlie Moore for MailOnline Shameless unions yesterday boasted they were responsible for banning Uber, bringing misery to 40,000 drivers and 3.5million customers. After TfL announced its decision to revoke the firm's licence, Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'Today's ruling shows the power of union campaigning. And it's a huge result for GMB.' The ill-judged boast will fuel suspicions the decision was made to appease outdated black cab drivers who have long campaigned for their competition to be restricted or eliminated. IEA director Mark Littlewood said: 'Banning Uber, and clamping down on the Gig Economy more generally, is a restriction upon freedom of choice, both for Uber's drivers and passengers. 'In doing so, Transport for London has privileged the views of a powerful minority who wish to restrict consumer choice over the will of millions of ordinary Londoners.' 'Today's decision is an assault on drivers and customers alike, and a victory for protectionism.' Advertisement

'I could be on the dole in two weeks': Uber driver tells of worries An Uber driver yesterday told how the decision to remove the Uber licence would leave him struggling to make ends meet. Father-of-three Bangalie has been driving for the company for almost a year after finishing an Accounting and Finance degree at Greenwich University. The 39-year-old of Woolwich, south east London, said he could be signing up for job seekers allowance in less than two weeks if the taxi company are unsuccessful in their appeal. He said: 'I finished university this year and I needed a job that was convenient for me, if I didn't have this job I would be on benefits. 'This job is great for me because I can choose when I want to work, I am only doing it while I look for a job in accounting.' Uber driver Bangalie said the decision could leave him unable to support his family He added: 'And it is so convenient for the passenger, when you jump in a black cab you do not know the driver and they could take you anywhere.' 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money. 'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.' He insisted the service was safe, adding: 'When you get into an Uber you know the driver, you have arranged where they will pick you up and where you are going. If anything happens you can track the driver down. 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money. 'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.' Advertisement

Black cab driver says previous system was not a level playing field Kenneth Stein said black cabs were regulated 'to the hilt' while Uber were barely checked at all A black cab driver has welcomed the prospect of Uber losing their licence in the capital blaming the company for snarling up the capital with traffic jams. Kenneth Stein, 54, claimed the firm's drivers were not subjected to the same stringent background checks as black cab drivers. Mr Stein, who has driven black cabs for 15 years, said: 'I have nothing against with Uber drivers but we as black cab drivers are regulated to the hilt while they have next to no regulation. 'Uber have 120,000 cars and the whole of London is grid locked and it's mainly because of Uber, it is just shocking. 'If they had said we'll keep it to 24,000 Uber cars that would have been fine, but 120,000 is too many. 'It's people in high places have let them get this far so it is right they have lost their licence, but don't count your chickens yet.' He added the best thing the black cab industry has done to embrace emerging technology which still relies on 'the knowledge' all drivers have to take was the introduction of card readers for customers. He added: 'How many sexual assaults per year have been reported in Uber cabs? It is probably a lot more than they have said. ' Advertisement

Passengers rue loss of choice and say minicabs are more dangerous Londoners were generally unhappy about the decision in Kensington yesterday, insisting it will not make them safer but will leave them out of pocket. Lucy Williams, 30, from London, said: 'It's terrible, I get Ubers like three times a week and they've saved me a lot of money from black cabs. 'I don't see why people have a safety problem because you watch the car on your map. I've never had any bad experiences, all my friends use them. I think it's great. Lucy Williams and Pablo Galleguillos were among the Londoners unhappy at the move She added: 'It's back to minicabs now and minicabs are the worst, you've no idea who they are or where they are or anything and they don't care about their ratings. Uber cab drivers care about their rating.' Pablo Galleguillos, 26, from Chile, added: 'I think it's really, really bad because you have to have a choice to use a taxi or use an Uber. 'I think everyone is using the phone, everyone is using the phone. I think it's really bad news. 'I've used both, normal taxis and Uber and Uber is much cheaper and they tell you the price instantly.' Michael Dedza, 25, a swimming instructor from New York, USA, said: 'I have found Uber very safe. I once lost my phone in an Uber before and you know exactly what cab it was and I contacted them and they just dropped it off the next day. 'You know the driver's name and you know they are licensed because they have to be, I'm a really big fan and I think London would be missing out if Uber lost their licence.' Emily Estlin and Michael Dedza both said they feel safe in Uber-arranged cabs Emily Estlin, 28, a sommelier in London Bridge from Hackney, east London, said: 'I get an Uber almost every day because I'm always late for work. 'It's cheaper than a black cab and I always feel totally safe in an Uber and no bad things have ever happened to me. 'If Uber lose their licence I will have to get on the bus, which would take me a lot longer and if I wanted a taxi a black cab is pretty much twice the price. I'd happily sign a petition to keep Uber, it's great.' Brendon Hurley, 28, said: 'I'm a big fan of Uber, if they weren't around I'd probably use a black cab but if there is a cheaper option you are always going to use it. 'I've just got out of the cab and the driver didn't mention the fact he might be out of a job. 'I have heard the horror stories about Uber but I've happily put my parents and friends in Uber taxis before and you are always going to get problems in some taxis, whether they are Uber's or black cabs.' App user Rimi Char, a 43-year-old event planner, added: 'I have got used to the ease and cost effectiveness of using Uber and I've always had positive experiences.' Advertisement

How Uber's reputation has been tainted by a series of cases where drivers have attacked passengers

The reputation Uber has gained for dangerous drivers has come from a series of court cases in the capital.

Scotland Yard criticised the firm after it emerged it failed to report 48 serious crimes.

In July, driver Jahir Hussain was jailed for 12 years for raping drunken women he picked up outside east London bars.

His first victim awoke to find Hussain fondling her breasts and undoing his belt on 12 October last year.

Uber drivers Jahir Hussain and Samson Haile were both jailed for sex attacks on women

The woman lay still in the back of the cab frozen in fear as he raped her, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard. Father-of-four Hussain then carried out two attacks in quick succession in the early hours of 2 December.

He wasn't working for Uber at the time of the attacks, but the first of his two victims had booked an Uber cab and he said he was the driver.

In 2015, driver Samson Haile was jailed for eight months for sexually assaulted a female customer in the back of his taxi.

During a journey, the 32-year-old told the woman 'you are very pretty' and asked her if she had a boyfriend, before saying 'I want to have sex with you'.

He then turned round in his seat and touched her leg with his hand, before moving it up to her thigh. Minutes later touched her again on the knee at which point she screamed to be let out of the car.

Earlier this year, mother Annastazia Merrett claimed she suffered a black eye in a racist assault by an Asian Uber driver who called her a 'white b****'.

Sabrina Benltaief posted photos of her injuries online after claiming an Uber motorist drove off while she was leaning into the car and left her unconscious in the street

She said she was hit twice by the driver who refused to help her open a gate after dropping her off in Elephant and Castle, South London.

Police said a community resolution was agreed upon by both parties. Uber said the driver 'strongly denied' the allegations.

Last year, a hairdresser told how she required stitches after an angry Uber driver alleged dragged her down the road.

Sabrina Benltaief, 20, of Bromley, South East London, claimed the motorist drove off while she was leaning into the car and left her unconscious in the street before she later woke up in hospital.

Uber condemned the actions but no action was taken by police.

The Met Police criticised Uber for failing to report crime due to fears for its reputation

This summer, head of the Metropolitan police's taxi and private hire unit Neil Billany said Uber seemed to be 'deciding what [crimes] to support', in a letter seen by a Sunday newspaper.

He spoke of a 'significant concern' that Uber was only reporting 'less serious matters' that would be 'less damaging to [its] reputation'.

He accused Uber of 'allowing situations to develop that clearly affect the safety and security of the public' by keeping drivers' crimes from police  including at least six sexual assaults on passengers.

'London is closed to innovative companies': Uber's furious response to the decision in full Tom Elvidge, the firm's general manager in London, said: '3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision. 'By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport. 'To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts. 'Drivers who use Uber are licensed by Transport for London and have been through the same enhanced DBS background checks as black cab drivers. Our pioneering technology has gone further to enhance safety with every trip tracked and recorded by GPS. 'We have always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents and have a dedicated team who work closely with the Metropolitan Police.' He added: 'Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.' Advertisement

Will the ban go elsewhere in the UK? City authorities in other parts of the country show little appetite in taking on the global firm

UK cities where Uber operates said they were watching the London situation but had no plans to follow TfL's example.

Uber operates in 20 locations in the UK and Ireland outside of the capital, according to its website.

The travel app service launched in London in July 2012. Other cities and regions followed, including Glasgow and Edinburgh in November 2015, Belfast the following month and Cardiff in April 2016.

Other locations include Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol, Leeds and Brighton.

A traditional London taxi and a private hire cab on the streets of London today. Uber cars may be off the streets of the capital as soon as mid-October if the company's planned appeal fails

Bristol City Council said it would 'keep a close eye on the outcome' of the dispute with TFL.

A spokesman added: 'While we note the reasons TfL have given for not renewing Uber's licence, both Uber and their drivers fully comply with all aspects of Bristol's licensing policy.

'On that basis, there is no evidence to review their current licence but we will continue to monitor the situation.'

In Manchester, the city council's executive member for neighbourhoods, Nigel Murphy, said its licensing system was 'robust' for all private hire vehicles and taxis.

He added: 'Uber Britannia - which is a separate company to Uber London - is licensed to operate in Manchester until 2021 as a private hire operator.

'As is the case with all licensees, we will continue to monitor their compliance with the conditions of their licence to operate while at the same time monitoring events as they unfold in the capital.'

Uber was refused the right to run a pilot operation with private cars in Ireland this year.

Although the ride-sharing company first appeared in the Republic about three years ago, it was told by regulators that its proposal for Limerick city would be illegal.

'If anyone suggests I'll have to speak to taxi drivers again I'll have a tantrum!' Black cab drivers are happy but most Londoners are appalled at the thought of living in the capital without Uber

The internet has reacted with a mixture of astonishment and hilarity to the shock news that Uber has been stripped of its licence to operate in London.

This morning Transport for London (TfL) announced the firm - which has between 30,000 and 40,000 drivers - would be barred from working in the city due to 'its approach to reporting criminal offences'.

Critics have blasted the move, claiming they will be unable to afford late-night lifts home and said it will put thousands of drivers out of work.

The decision got a mixed response from Londoners, with some welcoming the support for traditional black cabs, but others saying they will struggle to get around without the app

But those who back the decision say Uber failed to properly vet its employees and criticised their record on employment rights.

Uber has already said they will appeal the decision.

Within minutes of the news breaking, memes started appearing on Twitter with the hashtag #uber.

One user tweeted a picture of a black cab driver along with the caption: 'Uber are getting kicked out of London? Back to: 'End of the road? 25 mate.''

Another user posted a picture of The Only Way is Essex star Gemma Collins with a glass of wine with the words: 'Live scenes from the black cabbies conference.'

And one posted a picture of Monica and Rachel from Friends, along with the word, 'noooo'.

Actor James Franco, TV host Steve Harvey and even a South Park character all featured as the internet reacted to new Uber's London licence had been stripped

This was joined by a caption reading: 'How're we going to get places now!? If anyone suggests I'll have to speak to taxi drivers again I'll have a tantrum.'

Many jokes focussed on black cab drivers and the presumption they will now see a huge upswing in business now that their main competitor has been driven out of London.

One tweet showed a picture of Tom Cruise's character in Jerry Maguire saying the famous catchphrase 'show me the money'.

That was joined by a caption that said: 'Black cabbies right now at the news on #uber in London.'

One user posted a gif of a toddler on the floor having a tantrum alongside a crying face emoji.

Many jokes focussed on black cab drivers and the presumption they will now see a huge upswing in business now that their main competitor has been driven out of London

Uber said in a statement that the decision would 'show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies'. The firm's current licence expires on September 30.

The firm has faced a barrage of criticism in recent years over the safety of customers, working rights for drivers and opposition from black cab drivers.

But the internet's response was a lot more light-hearted.

Another tweet showed an animated GIF of a dancing man with the caption 'black cab drivers right now #London #Uber.'

One user tweeted, 'TFL: You can not operate without a licence. It's the law.'

That was juxtaposed with a picture of a South Park character embossed with the words, 'I am above the law!'

Another posted a picture of a confused looking James Franco accompanied with the words '*Phone notification* 'Uber has been banned in London.'

Scandal-dogged company's 'scrappy' CEO quit this summer Travis Kalanick in New York yesterday The loss of the licence comes after a tumultuous few months for Uber, including a string of scandals involving allegations of sexism and bullying at the San Francisco-based start-up that forced out former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick. Kalanick co-founded the company in 2009 after drooping out of UCLA to found a business, an online file-exchange service called Scour. He entered the Forbes top 400 riches Americans list in 2014 and now has an estimated fortune of around $6billion (4.5billion). The 41-year-old has been refered to as a 'scrappy entrepreneur' and he was forced to apologise to staff earlier this year after a video emerged of him in a expletive-ridden confrontation with an Uber driver who was complaining about pay. He resigned this summer following a series of costly scandals including revelations of sexual harassment in its offices, allegations of trade secrets theft and a federal investigation into efforts to mislead local government regulators. At the time of his resignation, he retained control of a majority of Uber's voting shares. Travis Kalanick, who helped found the company, resigned in July amid criticism Advertisement

End of the gig economy or an attempt to 'switch off the internet'? Parliament divided by unexpected decision

The decision not to issue Uber with a new licence to operate in London has split politicians with supporters of the move claiming it could be a 'game changer for the gig economy' but critics claiming the the capital was turning its back on 'free trade and innovation'.

Work and Pensions Committee chairman Frank Field said Uber must respond to the decision by 'resetting its business model' to offer a safe and reliable service with fairer conditions for drivers.

But Conservative MP Chris Philp said it was a 'shocking misjudgment' by London mayor Sadiq Khan to support the decision to effectively ban the minicab app.

Fellow Tory Tom Tugendhat claimed Mr Khan was a 'luddite' who wanted to 'switch off the internet' following the Transport for London (TfL) decision.

Labour MP Mr Field said: 'This could be a game changer for the gig economy.

'Uber must now respond to TfL's decision by totally resetting its business model.

'This new model will need to be built upon two foundations: a safe and reliable service for every passenger; and a living wage and fairer conditions for every driver who makes themselves available for work.'

London mayor Sadiq Khan came under fire from critics of the decision today

But Croydon South MP Mr Philp told the Press Association: 'I very strongly oppose what Sadiq Khan has done.

'There are issues Uber needs to address, but by outright banning them in London it's going to put 40,000 people out of work and 3.5 million Londoners are going to pay higher fares.

'The people most affected are going to be people on low incomes who can afford to take an Uber but can't afford to take a black cab.'

He added: 'Sadiq Khan is sending out a message that London is not interested in free markets and not interested in innovation and that is a terrible message for Sadiq Khan to be sending, particularly given everything else that is going on with Brexit

'It's a shocking misjudgment by the mayor of London.'

Senior MP Mr Tugendhat, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said Uber has problems but 'banning them is a vote against choice'.

Green Party joint leader and Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas welcomed TfL's decision and hoped that her city would follow London's example.

She said: 'We need to see more corporate responsibility in the gig economy.'

What other apps can Londoners use? Competitors pile into market Taxi app Uber will not be issued with a private hire operator licence, Transport for London said. The ride-hailing app has 21 days to appeal, but if it chooses not to, or is unsuccessful, what other options do Londoners have? GETT Gett is an app for booking black cabs. In fact, the company claims just under half of the black cabs in London are signed up to its service. As well as connecting customers with taxi rides, the company recently announced a partnership with Citymapper for a fixed-route taxi service across the city for just 3 per passenger. 'Gett Together' will offer four routes in London, which can be accessed through the CityMapper and Gett apps: Ladbroke Grove to Aldwych, Belsize Park to Berkeley Square, Clapham Junction to London Bridge and Highbury and Islington to Waterloo. Users can choose to be picked up and dropped off anywhere along these set routes. The taxis will run between 7.30-10.00am and 5-8pm MYTAXI Mytaxi, formerly Hailo, is another app for ordering black cabs. Users can pay by cash or through the app and it has many of the benefits of Uber, including in-app ordering, a live journey tracker and enabling the user to call their driver. The app even offered half-price fares on Friday in response to Uber's licence woes. TAXIFY Taxify is a newcomer to the London cab market, having launched in early September. The Estonian firm, which operates similarly to Uber with private cars, suspended services just days after its launch in London, so will need to overcome its own licensing hurdles to make the most of Uber's setback. Advertisement
Coalition for Marriage's Melbourne launch was interrupted by two female protesters who shared a kiss in front of shocked onlookers before being removed by security.

The two women who have yet to be identified ran up to the podium before campaigner and 'parental rights advocate' Cella White was due to speak and embraced passionately.

Security rushed forward and grabbed one of the women's coats before pulling them both off the stage and out of the building.

In the images released from the rally the women appear to have spoken into the microphone in front of the crowd of no-voters before deciding to kiss.

In the images released from the rally the women appear to have spoken into the microphone in front of the crowd of no-voters before deciding to kiss

Melbourne campaigner Cella White - accused of falsely claiming her son was told he could wear a dress to Frankston High School - spoke at the CFM event on Saturday night about the abuse she has received since appearing in the group's anti-gay marriage ad.

The sultry kiss wasn't the only disruption that night though with protesters storming the hall with a sign that said 'burn churches not queers.'

Audience members were seen taking pictures of the duo dressed in disguised sunglasses before security was again asked to escort them from the premises.

Coalition for Marriage's Melbourne launch was interrupted by two female protesters who shared a kiss in front of shocked onlookers before being removed by security

The two women who have yet to be identified ran up to the podium before campaigner and 'parental rights advocate' Cella White was due to speak and embraced passionately

Security rushed forward and grabbed one of the women's coats before pulling them both off the stage and out of the building

The women were escorted from the building after sharing their cheeky embrace

Australian Christian Lobby chief Lyle Shelton and Keith Mills, the leader of Ireland's unsuccessful No campaign, also addressed the Coalition for Marriage in Melbourne today.

CFM has this week been holding meetings across Australia to convince voters to reject a change to the legal definition of marriage.

Both sides of the marriage debate ramped up their campaigning on Saturday with rallies, door-knockings and text message among the mediums used.

Thousands rallied through Brisbane for the annual pride festival while 'yes' campaigners doorknocked tens of thousands of homes across the nation.

The sultry kiss wasn't the only disruption that night though with protesters storming the hall with a sign that said 'burn churches not queers'

Audience members were seen taking pictures of the duo dressed in disguised sunglasses before security was again asked to escort them from the premises

Australian Christian Lobby chief Lyle Shelton and Keith Mills, the leader of Ireland's unsuccessful No campaign, also addressed the Coalition for Marriage in Melbourne today (pictured a protester at the event)

Meanwhile, a smattering of same-sex marriage opponents gathered in Sydney's gay heartland while preparations were made for the Coalition for Marriage's Victorian launch.

Alex Greenwich, who is a NSW MP, urged supporters of the Yes campaign to focus on the task at hand.

'It is so important for the marriage equality campaign that we do not get distracted by the people who are always trying to throw red herrings,' he told AAP.

He said he was heartened by the feedback from same-sex marriage supporters involved in the door-knocking campaign and said there was strong support 'across all demographics, all ages'.

On the other side of the debate, about 20 people turned out for a rally dubbed Straight Lives Matter rally in Sydney's LGBTIQ heartland, Darlinghurst (pictured is the rally in Melbourne)

The campaign also extended to SMS with a message urging people to 'vote YES for a fairer Australia' and help make history.

On the other side of the debate, about 20 people turned out for a rally dubbed Straight Lives Matter rally in Sydney's LGBTIQ heartland, Darlinghurst.

Organised by a group of self-described patriots, one of the speakers urged people to push back against the 'sick and vile homosexual agenda' in Australian schools and universities.

'No amount of surgical mutilation by some dodgy surgeon in the Philippines can make you a woman,' Toby Cooke said.

The result of the voluntary postal survey on same-sex marriage is due on November 15.
A couple living in Rio Grande Valley, Texas were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials while awaiting their two-month-old son's surgery to treat pyloric stenosis.

Oscar and Irma Sanchez were ready to make a necessary two-hour drive from their home to Corpus Christi, where the only available pediatric surgery center was located nearby in the Driscoll Children's Hospital.

The family revealed in a new interview with NPR they were undocumented in the states and required to pass a Border Patrol checkpoint before they were able to make it securely to the hospital for the sensitive operation.

Oscar told NPR hospital staff ordered the couple to go to Driscoll, even after he expressed concern about a possible deportation.

'The nurse told us we had to go there. We said we couldn't go,' the infant's father said, while speaking in Spanish.

An ICE agent reportedly showed up to another hospital in Harlingen, Texas  where the pair and their ill son waited before making the decision to go to Corpus Christi.

A couple living in Rio Grande Valley, Texas were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials while awaiting their two-month-old son's surgery to treat pyloric stenosis (family not pictured)

Oscar and Irma Sanchez made a two-hour drive from their home to Corpus Christi, where the pediatric surgery center was located in the Driscoll Children's Hospital (shown)

Oscar believes a nurse at the hospital in Harlingen turned them in to law enforcement.

'The agent said when they arrived, they would be arrested and put into deportation proceedings. The couple agreed,' NPR reported of the incident.

On May 24, ICE agents followed as Oscar, Irma and baby Issac  who had an IV in his arm and a tube in his stomach  as they were transported by ambulance to Driscoll.

Officers kept a careful eye on the family once they arrived at the hospital for baby Isaac's hospital stay, and even followed them to the restroom and ordered mother Irma to keep the door open as she breastfed her sick son.

'You feel vulnerable,' Oscar told NPR. 'We didn't know if they were going to let us stay with our son or not.

'Everywhere we went in the hospital, they followed us.'

The next day, agents booked the couple into the Corpus Christi Border Patrol station separately to get fingerprinted.

While still at the hospital, the worried pair requested the surgery be postponed until they were able to return and be present with their son.

The pair were permitted to rejoin their son to treat serious side effects of an enlarged pylorus, otherwise known as the 'muscle that opens and closes to allow food to pass through the stomach into the intestine,' according to UCSF Pediatric Surgery.

'Everywhere we went in the hospital, they followed us,' Oscar Sanchez told NPR

The day after the hospital visit, agents booked the couple into the Corpus Christi Border Patrol station separately to get fingerprinted

Because baby Isaac was born a U.S. citizen, the surgery was covered under Medicaid.

'Thank the Lord, everything went well,' relieved mother Irma said in the interview. 'He still throws up a little milk, but thank God he's fine.'

Chief of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the Border Patrol, Manny Padilla, emailed a statement regarding the matter to the news company.

'CBP was notified by the Harlingen hospital that there was a child with undocumented parents in need of urgent medical care and that the family would have to go through a checkpoint to the Corpus Christi hospital,' Manny wrote.

'To get the child to the care it urgently needed, Border Patrol agents did everything in their power to assist the family, including escorting the ambulance, unimpeded, through the checkpoint.'

Texas is just one of many areas around the country ICE agents have been cracking down on immigration policy since President Trump took office.

Lisa Koop, an attorney under National Immigrant Justice Center, said she plans to request the Sanchez family be permitted to remain in the country come winter.

'I can't pretend to understand any reasoning that would have led anyone up the chain of command to think that Irma and Oscar were flight risks or dangers to the community or in any other way people who needed to be followed into a hospital in order to be placed in deportation proceedings,' Koop said.
Drivers who were stuck in stationary traffic for nearly 12 hours were forced to abandon their cars as a major UK motorway was closed over a bomb scare for the second time in a week.

The M3 was shut down in both directions from junctions nine to 11 in Hampshire at 4am today after police were called to a 'serious incident' near a footbridge between junctions 10 and 11.

A motorist caught up in the miles of stationary traffic said a police officer had described the hold up as a 'bomb scare'.

Police say there is nothing to suggest a link between today's incident and a 'dirty bomb' containing hydrochloric acid that was left in the middle of the M1 last week.

Some frustrated drivers abandoned their cars and headed to the nearest service stations and pubs in search of subsistence, as Manchester United fans battle to get to the 3pm game against Southampton in time.

The northbound carriageway was re-opened at 1.40pm, while southbound motorists have only just started moving with the road re-opening at 3.20pm.

Drivers are still battling through the backlog of traffic, which stretched for 15 miles.

Scroll down for video

The M3 was closed in Hampshire between junctions nine to 11 from 4am this morning

Hampshire Police said they were working with fire crews and the Ministry of Defence's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) to try to find out what the suspect package may be

The incident came after a wave of similar bomb scares across the country in the wake of the Parsons Green tube attack, where at least 30 people were injured.

There have been explosion fears reported in Moorgate and Liverpool Street station in London, Leeds city centre, and a residential road in Royal Tunbridge Wells.

And just days ago, the M1 was closed for nine hours in both directions after a suspicious package was found near a motorway bridge near Milton Keynes.

Fire crews and ambulance hazardous response team also attended the scene.

According to Highways England traffic updates, the road will not return to normal until 7pm at the earliest.

Pictures posted on social media show bored drivers resorting to doing handstands and playing golf while they wait for the issue to be resolved

One frustrated motorist is pictured passing the time by playing golf on the side of the M3

Coach passengers are pictured waiting on the edge of the M3 as police dealt with the 'bomb scare'

Gemma McKenna was stuck in the M3 traffic chaos for five hours before she gave up hope and found a pub nearby

Hampshire Police said they were working with fire crews and the Ministry of Defence's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) to try to find out what the suspect package may be and how it came to be there.

A police statement read: 'With regards to the hazardous material found on the M3 this morning, investigations are still on-going at this time to determine exactly what it is and how it got there.'

A bomb squad used a robot to investigate the item which was found to contain no explosives.

Bomb disposal units are pictured on the M3, although police have only confirmed it as a 'serious police incident'

Explosive experts are pictured responding to the 'serious incident' near a footbridge on the M3 between junctions 10 and 11

A bomb disposal expert is pictured examining the suspicious item found under a bridge on the M3 in Hampshire

Highways officer stop traffic from approaching junctions nine, 10 and 11 after they were closed at 4am today

Forensic teams examined the scene and a police cordon remains in place over a pedestrian bridge between junctions 10 and 11.

Grace Cameron, 24, was travelling down from London to Dorset for the weekend with her friends when they were caught in the traffic near Winchester.

Ms Cameron told MailOnline: 'We were travelling down from London to Dorset for the weekend when we hit the traffic at around 9am.

'The journey would usually only take around two and a half or three hours but we've been struck in the same position for hours.

'People are getting out of their cars and playing football and walking their dogs. There are other people driving on the hard shoulder trying to get out. It's a really hot day and no one has told us anything.'

During the four hours they had been in the traffic, Ms Cameron said she had moved just 600 meters. She had also spotted five unmarked white vans drive with other police cars driving along the hard shoulder.

Some drivers walked to the nearest service station in Winchester as they wait for the road to re-open

Pictures taken by Twitter users show drivers and their passengers stretching their legs

The 24-year-old also said people were being forced to urinate on the roadside and no water had been offered to motorists.

Some drivers resorted to amusing ways to pass the time, with one photographed doing a handstand and another playing golf.

The closures caused major traffic delays for thousands of Manchester United fans heading down to Southampton for the 3pm kickoff at St Mary's stadium.

Manchester United fan Paul Hibbert was travelling with his friends to see the game but decided to leave the coach and make the one-and-a-half-mile journey to Winchester station by foot, walking along the hard shoulder to junction nine.

The 53-year-old, from Manchester, said: 'People here are driving up the hard shoulder.

'One of those idiots has hit a car that pulled out in front of him - it's chaos.

'We got the National Express at quarter past midnight to London and got the 8am bus to Southampton - it's 1pm now.'

Queues stretch back for miles on the M3 after the 'bomb scare' incident at 4am today

Photos posted on social media show the huge tailbacks drivers are being forced to endure

The Highways Agency warned motorists to expect severe delays for a number of hours

People on social media complained about the lack of information given out about the road closures, with some reporting to have been stuck in traffic for hours.

Witness Jenna Keating, 31, a writer from Windsor, told the Press Association: 'There are lots of people stranded here, people have got out of their cars to stretch their legs and things, but some are just turning round and going back down the hard shoulder.

'We actually spoke to police about this to see whether this was something we could do in the circumstances and they said 'absolutely not'.

'They also said the delay had been quite well advertised, although none of the four of us in the car saw anything until we were in it.

'We're one of the lucky ones, we've only been here for 40 minutes although we've basically only crawled forward into space probably left by those who are trying to turn around.

'I can't think it's a good idea to use the hard shoulder - there have been a couple of unmarked vehicles with sirens blaring coming up and using it, so it's pretty dangerous if there are cars coming in the other direction.'

George Vitelis, stranded at Winchester service station since around 9.30am, said the incident brought out 'the best of the British spirit'.

Traffic officers are pictured assisting motorists as the M3 northbound carriageway re-opens

Emergency vehicles are pictured on the M3 as they respond to the ongoing 'bomb incident' between junctions 10 and 11

Police are yet to establish the nature of the incident, leaving hundreds of motorists stranded

He said: 'I'm lucky because I'm in the service station, I have use of the facilities, it is lovely and warm and people are just getting on with things.

'There's not a lot we can do so some guys just took out their golf clubs and are just practising a few strokes.

'It's quite a strange situation - there are babies having their diapers changed next to the M3, guys playing golf, people having picnics.

'The sun is shining, the weather is warm, I'm quite happy here to be honest. It would be different if I was stuck in the car with a load of screaming kids, but I'm not.

'It's moments like this that you see the best of the British spirit.

'I was heading down to the boat show in Southampton but that probably isn't going to happen now. I'll just go tomorrow instead, it's no problem.'

Footage from the motorists show cars driving along the hard shoulder in a bid to escape the travel chaos.

Pictures posted on Twitter by drivers also show that some of the country roads near Winchester filled up with cars as the tailbacks from the motorway built up along nearby routes.

Country roads near Winchester are also filling up with cars because of the M3 closure
Two teenagers have been charged after allegedly stealing a ute before crashing it into a parked car and hitting a tree.

NSW Police said they spotted the teenagers in the stolen vehicle while patrolling at Punchbowl Road, Lakemba, a suburb in south-western Sydney just before midnight on Friday.

Police alleged that they tried to stop the Holden Commodore ute but instead the driver of the vehicle had accelerated it away.

Two Sydney teenagers have been charged for crashing a stolen ute onto a tree and parked car

However, officers manage to catch up with the stolen vehicle on Cosgrove Road, Enfield, a suburb in the inner-west of Sydney, after it had struck a parked car and hit a tree.

The driver, a 17-year-old male and his passenger, an 18-year-old male, were arrested.

Both were treated by a NSW Ambulance paramedics at the scene before being taken to St George Hospital under police guard.

The 17-year-old was taken to Campsie Police Station where he was charged with multiple offences including driving recklessly and for breaching bail conditions.

The alleged offense occurred at the Punchbowl Road, Lakemba on Friday just before midnight

He was refused bail and will appear at a childrens court on Sunday.

While the older teenager has been charged with carrying in conveyance taken without consent of owner and will appear at the Burwood Local Court on October 17.
Oodles of sausage dogs battled it out for the title of top dog as part of the annual German festivities.

From red airplanes on arrival, Coco Chanel pant suits, red glittery tutus to Harry Potter flying on a broom, they were battling it out to win The Best Dressed Dachshund Costume Parade.

Running of the wieners is part of Oktoberfest, the German pups were showered with attention during the costume parade.

Oodles of sausage dogs battled it out for the title of top dog as part of the annual German festivities

The annual costume parade in Melbourne attracted Dachshund Harry Potter (pictured)

Other dogs were pictured in lace wedding dresses complete with a white flower crown

Other cute pooches were seen wearing sparkly red tutus with matching red head pieces

While many dogs waddled in on their short legs, others flew in their own private red planes

Dozens of pampered pooches donned their best outfits on the 'dogwalk' on Saturday in Melbourne.

Everything from dogs dressed in wedding dresses complete with a flower crown to a three headed pup attracted huge crowds.

The popular event, which also involves a dog race, raises money for Dachshund Rescue Australia.

More than 100 little legged dogs ran the 15 metre Hophaus Annual Daschshund Race at Southbank.

One pair of sausage dogs were donning matching Coco Chanel pant suits for the occassion

As part of Oktoberfest, German pups were showered with attention during a costume parade

As some pups opted for delicate lace, others chose to make a statement dressed as a big fish

This Dachshund was even spotted wearing a soccer jersey complete with matching booties

One dog owner Emma Clarke told Sunrise they used chicken to bribe their pups to the end of the race and despite their tiny trotters, Daschunds are speedy little 'pocket rockets'.

Over the last two years, the organisation has raised more than $6200 for the rescue group since they began the annual event in 2015.

The popular event meant the race filled up in two days with 60 dogs on the wait list, reported Herald Sun.

The free event means thousands of people got to ogle at dogs draped in everything from lace to bow ties.

Over the last two years, the organisation has raised more than $6200 for the rescue group

The popular event meant the race filled up in two days with 60 dogs on the wait list

The little legged dogs were described as 'pocket rockets' when they ran the annual dog race

About 100 dogs participated in the annual race which raises thousands of dollars each year
Sydney's recent marriage equality rally was a flurry of signs and love as 30,000 people marched down Oxford Street in favour of the 'yes' vote.

But one young boy stood out from the crowd with a disco of rainbow-coloured hair and a sign so sweet it has now gone viral online.

Marching alongside his family, 12-year-old Max Townes held up a placard with the words 'All I want is the right to marry Chris Hemsworth. You've got five years until I'm 18, Australia! You too Chris!'

Marching alongside his family, 12-year-old Max Townes held up a placard with the words 'All I want is the right to marry Chris Hemsworth. You've got five years until I'm 18, Australia! You too Chris!'

His mother Megan Townes posted the photo to her Twitter account and instantly received a flurry of well-wishers - particularly from those hoping Mr Hemsworth himself would see the post.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Max, who is a talented artist, decided to draw a picture of himself on the piece of cardboard and asked for help from his mother to colour it in and write the correct wording.

'We combined both our talents to make it happen you could say,' he commented.

His mother Megan Townes posted the photo to her Twitter account and instantly received a flurry of well-wishers - particularly those hoping Mr Hemsworth himself would see the post (pictured is Max and his family at the rally)

While most of the reactions online have been positively heartwarming, there is 'the odd ten percent that have suggested my mum forced me to do this,' the 12-year-old said

To complete the look he wore a shirt to the rally emblazoned with a PlayStation controllor and the word 'gaymer' on it.

'It's basically a combination of the words gay and gamer. Of which I am both,' Max said.

While most of the reactions online have been positively heartwarming, there is 'the odd ten percent that have suggested my mum forced me to do this,' the 12-year-old said.

'When I see people saying that I just kind of laugh. Most of them can't seem to spell anyway.'

In terms of what makes Chris Hemsworth so appealing to Max, he said it all comes down to that jawline. The cheeky youngster has even changed his bio on Instagram to read: 'I'm still waiting for you Chris Hemsworth, you and your smexy jawline' (pictured with his mother Megan)

Hemsworth is yet to reply: 'I'm distraught he hasn't answered yet. I'm walking under a rain cloud,' Max joked

In terms of what makes Chris Hemsworth so appealing to Max, he said it all comes down to that jawline. The cheeky youngster has even changed his bio on Instagram to read: 'I'm still waiting for you Chris Hemsworth, you and your smexy jawline.'

'I'm distraught he hasn't answered yet. I'm walking under a rain cloud,' Max joked.

Mr Hemsworth is a devoted supporter of same-sex marriage and has been encouraging Australians on social media to vote yes in the postal plebiscite.

Mr Hemsworth is a devoted supporter of same-sex marriage and has been encouraging Australians on social media to vote yes in the postal plebiscite (pictured with his wife Elsa Pataky)

The Thor actor is married to Spanish model and actress Elsa Pataky and they share three children together; India Rose and twin sons Tristan and Sasha (pictured)

'Dear open minded, free speaking, laid back, life loving aussies. Marriage is about love and commitment and, in a country based on equal citizenship, it should be available to everyone! Vote now for marriage equality,' he wrote.

The Thor actor is married to Spanish model and actress Elsa Pataky and they share three children together; India Rose and twin sons Tristan and Sasha.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Chris Hemsworth for comment.

While the placard was a chance to get Mr Hemsworth's attention, Max is more than satisfied that the result has been to encourage other Australians to get behind the cause and cast their vote.

The results of the postal vote will be made public on November 15.
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Britain's Brexit bill could now rise to 40 billion after the Prime Minister agreed to 'honour' all financial commitments during a two-year transition period.

The Prime Minister used a crucial speech in Florence to declare that Britain will cover the huge hole left in Brussels' finances for another two years after we formally leave in 2019 - contributing 20 billion euros.

But Theresa May's promise to stick to all the UK's financial commitments as part of the transition deal could send the final Brexit bill soaring to almost 40billion.

Britain's Brexit bill could now rise to 40 billion after the Prime Minister agreed to 'honour' all financial commitments during a two-year transition period

These extra liabilities such as science and research projects and Europol would be negotiated separately, according to The Sun.

When asked for a comment, a No 10 spokesman referred queries back to the Prime Minister's Florence address.

This development comes as a top politician with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said on Saturday that May's speech in Florence has failed to inject much-needed new momentum into talks on Britain's departure from the European Union.

Michael Stuebgen, European spokesman for the conservatives in the German parliament, said it remained unclear how Britain would meet its financial obligations under the EU budget, and that London continued to refuse Britons living in Europe access to the European Court of Justice.

Angela Merkel, who is on course for a fourth term as Chancellor of Germany, was pictured at a CPR training event in Greifswald today

A top politician with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives said on Saturday that May's speech in Florence has failed to inject much-needed new momentum into talks on Britain's departure from the European Union

'Theresa May's speech underscores the will of London to move ahead with Brexit negotiations, but unfortunately it will not provide a new dynamism in the talks that is so urgently needed,' Stuebgen said in a statement.

He said May also failed to address the issue of future borders, especially in Ireland.

'On this basis, we can hardly expect the needed progress in the Brexit negotiations before the European Council meeting in October,' he said.

Angela Merkel, who is on course for a fourth term as Chancellor of Germany, was pictured at a CPR training event in Greifswald today.

Meanwhile, an EU whistleblower who exposed massive fraud and waste in the institution has warned that Brussels will want vengeance in the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

Robert McCoy, 67, said: 'Breaking ranks is a cardinal sin in the EU,' according to The Telegraph.

'I think Britain is in line for similar punishment to what I got when you hear the rumblings from Mr Barnier,' he said, 'I hope to God I am wrong and that Brexit becomes a success for both sides.'

Theresa May was accused of betraying the referendum by effectively keeping us in the EU for another two years - as she made concessions on citizens' rights, money and law in a bid to kickstart Brexit talks.

She also said the European court could help enforce the rights of EU nationals - easing back a previous red line - and admitted that bringing in tougher immigration measures would take time, raising the possibility that free movement rules could essentially stay in place for longer.

But Mrs May said in return for the 'generous' financial offer the UK must have full access to the single market during a two-year 'transition' period.

Setting out her vision for a post-Brexit future, she also ruled out existing models for trade arrangements such as Norway's, saying: 'We can do better than that.' She suggested the final deal should be 'bespoke', but could be a much looser affiliation similar to that sealed with Canada.

Theresa May delivered her Brexit speech in Florence that she hopes can revive the stalled talks with the EU

However, the tightrope walk Mrs May must carry off was underlined as Brexiteers accused her of effectively keeping us in the EU for an extra two years and wasting more money.

Speaking in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said that while he welcomed Mrs May's 'willingness' to move forward, more progress was needed on the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the border with Ireland as well as the so-called 'divorce settlement'.

'Before we move forward, we wish to clarify the issue of the regulation of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit and the question of Ireland,' he said.

'If those three points are not clarified, then we cannot move forward on the rest.'

Nigel Farage said the speech was 'two fingers' to the referendum result, while some Tory MPs voiced disquiet about backsliding.

Mr Farage said the speech was a 'victory for the political class'.

He added: 'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo.

'The most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage. Well, that's what I voted for. I voted for us to be able to be competitive, to be global.

'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.'

Former Tory minister Owen Paterson led Eurosceptics in voicing concern about her request for a transition period  where Britain follows EU rules  for two years after the UK's official exit in March 2019.

He said: 'Although she [Mrs May] made it very clear that it should be of course as short as possible, as long as we have that transition period we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking and open up markets around the world.'

Cabinet ministers including Boris Johnson and David Davis looked on as Mrs May delivered the speech in Florence

Fellow Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg demanded that European judges do not have power over British courts during the period.

He said: 'As long as it is not subject to the European Court of Justice and the EU migrants don't get permanent rights it is on the margin of acceptability.' John Longworth and Richard Tice, chairmen of Leave Means Leave, said: 'We are deeply concerned that her proposals could lead to nothing changing either during or after the implementation period  which will go on for an undefined amount of time.

'There is no reference to being able to deregulate, sign our own trade deals or control our borders. This is a rebadging of the status quo and is Brexit in name only. In reality, this means we are still members.'

Gisela Stuart, the ex-Labour MP and former chairman of the Leave campaign, said the transition period should last no longer than two years. 'The British people need to know that by the time of the next general election, the British people and the sovereign government they elect will once again be fully in control of our laws, borders, money and trade,' she said.

Mr Davis, Chancellor Philip Hammond and Mr Johnson, seen as the biggest beasts in the Cabinet when it comes to Brexit, watched carefully as Mrs May set out the vision

Environment Secretary Michael Gove tweeted: 'An excellent speech from the PM in Florence  delivering on the wishes of the British people.'

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson praised the speech as 'positive, optimistic and dynamic'. He added: 'A strong Britain working hand in hand with a strong Europe  but once again free to take our own decisions.'

Mrs May had been walking a tightrope to keep all quarters of her Cabinet happy. The PM has also been under pressure not to upset backbenchers ahead of the Conservative Party conference.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said Mrs May had given absolute confirmation that Britain would regain full sovereignty.

But Labour peer Lord Mandelson accused the PM of failing to give enough detail. 'The only sound that can be heard is of a can being kicked down the road,' he said.

There was a warmer response from the EU, with chief negotiator Michel Barnier welcoming her words as 'constructive' and a 'step forward'. Boris Johnson, who caused chaos this week with an apparent resignation threat in order to harden the text, described the speech as 'positive, optimistic and dynamic'.

Flanked by Cabinet ministers including Mr Johnson and Philip Hammond at a Renaissance church in Italy, Mrs May said the UK's desire to be 'strong' partners with the EU remained undimmed - but it wanted to be a 'sovereign' nation taking its own decisions.

'The British electorate made a choice,' she told the audience. 'We share a responsibility to make this work.'

Boris Johnson hailed the speech in a tweet afterwards, saying it 'rightly' disposed of the 'Norway option'. The Foreign Secretary caused chaos this week with an apparent resignation threat intended to harden the government's stance

Downing Street hopes the blueprint can end the bitter standoff of the past few months.

In her landmark speech, delivered at the Santa Maria Novella church, Mrs May:

Recognised that there were 'concerns' about the rights of EU citizens living in the UK. In a compromise proposal, she said the leaving agreement would be written into British law and domestic courts could 'take into account' the rulings of EU courts when enforcing rights.

Made a direct appeal to EU nationals, saying: 'We want you to stay, we value you, and we value your contribution to our national life I'm clear the guarantee I'm giving on your rights is real.'

Insisted neither the UK or EU courts should be solely responsible for adjudicating disputes after Brexit.

Ruled out basing the future arrangements on the EU-Canada trade deal or Norway. She said Britain could not accept the EU's regulations in their 'entirety', hinting that Brexit could eventually be at the 'hard' end of the spectrum.

For the first time Mrs May confirmed she was seeking a two year implementation deal, but she suggested that certain aspects of the future relationship could take longer.

Said Britain was 'unconditionally' committed to maintaining the security of Europe, seemingly abandoning the idea of holding UK capabilities as a bargaining chip in talks.

Mrs May said Norway-style membership of the EEA - effectively the single market - would mean the UK would 'have to adopt the EU rules, rules over which we have little influence and no vote'.

That would inevitably lead to 'friction and a damaging reopening of a conversation about our relationship with the EU'.

'We can do so much better than this. Let us be creative as well as practical,' she added.

Spelling out her vision for a transition period, Mrs May said it should mirror the existing arrangements.

Mr Johnson was jubilant about the content of Mrs May's big speech, after a torrid week that saw his bombshell newspaper article on Brexit throw the Cabinet into chaos

Protesters waving EU flags gathered outside the venue in Florence where Mrs May was delivering her key speech today

Security was high in Florence for the Prime Minister's speech, with armed police roaming the streets

Philip Hammond looked happy as he left the church after the address from Mrs May today. Mr Johnson stopped to chat to reporters on the way out

Michael Gove said Mrs May had given an 'excellent speech' and was 'delivering on the wishes of the British people'

'Clearly people, businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU,' she said.

'So during the implementation period access to one another's markets should continue on current terms and Britain also should continue to take part in existing security measures. And I know businesses, in particular, would welcome the certainty this would provide.

KEY POINTS OF MAY'S FLORENCE SPEECH Transition phase: Britain wants to have a transition period of 'around two years' to provide reassurance to businesses. During this phase, the UK will have 'full access' to the EU single market. EU citizens In a major concession, the PM said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will help guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in Britain after Brexit. Immigration: During the two-year transition period, EU nationals will still be able to come and live and work in the UK. But they will have to sign up to a new 'registration system', which the PM said was 'essential preparation' for new post-Brexit system. Security: The PM spelled out plans for a 'new strategic agreement' on security. But she faced accusations that she has thrown away Britain's trump card in the negotiations by saying the UK is 'unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe's security'. Irish border: Stressed Britain's commitment to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area which would keep a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Payments into EU budget: The PM said the UK will 'honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership'. Future relationship: The PM dismissed going for a model based on the free trade deal struck with Canada or one amounting to European Economic Area membership. Instead she wants a bespoke deal. Advertisement

'The framework for this strictly time-limited period, which can be agreed under Article 50, would be the existing structure of EU rules and regulations.

'How long the period is should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin that future partnership.

'For example, it will take time to put in place the new immigration system required to re-take control of the UK's borders.

'So during the implementation period, people will continue to be able to come and live and work in the UK; but there will be a registration system  an essential preparation for the new regime.

'As of today, these considerations point to an implementation period of around two years.'

Mrs May told Europe's leaders they have a duty to future generations to strike a good deal, saying: 'The eyes of the world are on us.'

'The strength of feeling that the British people have for control and for the direct accountability of their politicians is one reason why throughout its membership, the UK has never totally felt at home being part of the EU and perhaps because of our geography and history the EU never felt like an integral part of our national story.

'The profound pooling of sovereignty which is a crucial feature of the EU permits unprecedentedly deep cooperation which permits benefits but it also means that when countries are in the minority, they must sometimes accept decisions they don't want, even affecting domestic matters with no market implication beyond their borders.

'When such decisions are taken, they can be hard to change. That is our choice, it does not mean that we are no longer a proud member of the European nations.

'It does not mean we are turning our back in Europe or worse that we don't wish the EU to succeed. The success of the EU is profoundly in our national interest.'

Mrs May said that 'Britain's future is bright' regardless of whether they agree to a trade deal, because of the UK's 'considerable' economic strengths and 'indomitable spirit'.

Mrs May urged her EU counterparts to seize the opportunity to 'write a new chapter in European history' together so both sides thrive.

The Prime Minister's financial offer will complete the EU's seven-year budget, which runs to the end of 2020.

There had been near-panic in Brussels at the prospect of reopening the budget.

But the proposal will ensure that Eastern European member states will receive no less money from Brussels and others such as Germany will not be forced to pay more into the budget.

A precise figure was not put on the money but it is expected that the payments would be for about 20billion over two years.

The UK is likely to have to hand over more - as the mooted two-year transition period would theoretically end later, in March 2021.

BARNIER PRAISES MAY'S 'CONSTRUCTIVE SPIRIT' IN SPEECH The EU's chief Brexit negotiator today welcomed the 'constructive spirit' of Theresa May's Florence speech . Michel Barnier said the PM's landmark address are a 'step forward' in the crucial talks. But he repeated his warning time is running out and 'sufficient progress' must be made on the withdrawal deal before proper trade talks can start. He said: 'In her speech in Florence, Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed a constructive spirit which is also the spirit of the European Union during this unique negotiation. 'The speech shows a willingness to move forward, as time is of the essence.' Mr Barnier added: 'Prime Minister May's statements are a step forward but they must now be translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government.' He singled out Mrs May's promise no other EU state would have to pay more into the Brussels budget because of Brexit, and said: 'We stand ready to discuss the concrete implications of this pledge.' Advertisement

In a statement, Mr Barnier said: 'The speech shows a willingness to move forward, as time is of the essence.

'We need to reach an agreement by autumn 2018 on the conditions of the United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal from the European Union. The UK will become a third country on March 30, 2019.

'Our priority is to protect the rights of citizens. EU27 citizens in the United Kingdom must have the same rights as British citizens today in the European Union.

'These rights must be implemented effectively and safeguarded in the same way in the United Kingdom as in the European Union, as recalled by the European Council and European Parliament.

'Prime Minister May's statements are a step forward but they must now be translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government.'

However, former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the plan amounted to keeping the UK in the bloc for another two years.

'Very little substance at all other than what she has made clear is that her vision is leave the European Union but we do so in name only.

'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo.

'I thought the most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage.

'Well that's what I voted for.

'I vote for us to be able to a competitive, to be global.

'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.'

He said Mrs May has retreated from her tough-talking position of being prepared to walk away from the EU with no deal rather than a bad one.

And he warned that the two-year transition phase could end up being 'many, many more times that'.

The pro-EU demonstrators were outside the speech venue waving flags and demanding their rights are protected after Brexit is completed

The Prime Minister said she was guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals already in the UK would stay the same

While Mrs May set out plans for a two year transition, she also suggested that Brexit would be relatively 'hard' when completed - rather than a Norway-style deal

Theresa May arrived at the Florence venue of her crucial EU speech today in a Maserati car, accompanied by Brexit Secretary David Davis

Tory former cabinet minister Owen Paterson expressed concern about the proposed two-year transition period.

'As long as we still have that transition period we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking on opening up markets around the world,' he told BBC News.

He said that ministers should now start making preparations for the prospect that the UK will leave the EU without a trade deal.

'We just want simple, reciprocal free trade on a zero-tariff basis respecting each other's standards and regulations,' he said.

FARAGE: 'MAY'S OFFER STICKS TWO FINGERS UP TO THOSE WHO BACKED BREXIT' Nigel Farage has torn into Theresa May's Brexit offer saying it is a betrayal of last year's referendum vote (file pic) Nigel Farage today slammed Theresa May's Brexit offer - saying it sticks 'two fingers up' to the millions who voted to leave the EU. The former Ukip leader said her proposal to pump billions into the EU in a two-year transition deal will effectively keep Britain inside the bloc long after the referendum. The offer is a 'victory for the political class' over the people, he warned. 'Very little substance at all other than what she has made clear is that her vision is leave the European Union but we do so in name only. 'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo. 'I thought the most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage. 'Well that's what I voted for. 'I vote for us to be able to a competitive, to be global. 'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.' He said Mrs May has retreated from her tough-talking position of being prepared to walk away from the EU with no deal rather than a bad one. And he warned that the two-year transition phase could end up being 'many, many more times that'. Advertisement

'If they are not going to be serious about that, then I think we have to make them wake up to the fact we are not frightened of walking away.'

There was also a lukewarm response from German MEP Manfred Weber, a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

'In substance PM May is bringing no more clarity to London's positions. I am even more concerned now,' he wrote on Twitter.

But Mr Johnson, speaking to reporters in Florence directly after the speech, denied that Mr May's vision will mean 'everything will be the same' in Britain's relationship with the EU.

He said: 'No, no no. As the Prime Minister rightly said we are going to have a transition period and after that of course we are going to be taking back control of our borders our laws and our destiny.

And I think what was so uplifting about this speech was that it was positive it was confident about what Britain can do, but also about our relations with the rest of the EU.

'What it sets out is a very attractive vision of a string Europe supported and buttressed by a strong UK.

'And we are not going to be in relationship like Norway, receiving laws but not being able to change them or to vote on them.

'We are going to be able to do our own thing. But also work positively together on defence, on security and to build and deepen that economic partnership.

'As the Prime Minister said at the end of her speech, this is not the end of a relationship, it is the beginning of a fantastic new partnership.'

Fellow Cabinet Brexiteer Michael Gove posted on Twitter: 'An excellent speech from the PM in Florence - delivering on the wishes of the British people.'

Mr Hammond, the cheerleader for a softer Brexit in Mrs May's top team, told reporters in Florence: 'I think this was an excellent speech by the Prime Minister.

'It's a decisive intervention that has given I think great clarity to business and to our EU partners about our ambitions for an interim period and our plans for the long-term relationship with the European Union and I'm confident that we're now going to be able to move the negotiations forward on the basis of this intervention.'

Earlier, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling insisted that freedom of movement rules would end in 2019 when we formally leave.

But the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier suggested yesterday that any transition deal would mean the UK accepting existing arrangements.

Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng, a ministerial aide to the Chancellor, also claimed last night that Britain should not give a 'penny more' than the 20billion euros.

'There is a logic behind a two year transition, because if you think when the EU budget was set. The EU budget was set in 2013 and it was for seven years and we were locked into that. Now in 2013, you will remember, no one was talking about Brexit. We assumed that we would pay for seven years,' he told the BBC's Question Time.

'Really I think as a matter of goodwill there is a sense in saying we will pay until the end of that budget process and then not a penny more.'

REPORTER LEFT RED-FACED AFTER INTRODUCING HIMSELF AS THE PM TO THERESA MAY A leading political reporter was left red-faced today after he accidentally introducing himself as the Prime Minister to Theresa May. George Parker, political editor at the Financial Times, was questioning the PM on her Brexit plans at the end of her landmark speech in Florence today. But as he introduced himself in front of the world's media, he said: 'George Parker at the Prime Minister.sorry not the Prime Minister, at the Financial Times.' His colleagues in the large press pack dissolved in to giggles while the PM smiled at his error. Quickly spotting his mistake, Mr Parker said 'wishful thinking, obviously' before moving on to quiz the PM on her plans for Britain's future relationship with the single market. Advertisement

Cabinet staged a show of unity yesterday after ministers finally signed off the text of Mrs May's speech - despite apparent threats by the Foreign Secretary to resign.

Mr Johnson penned a bombshell newspaper article last week, widely interpreted as an effort to toughen up Mrs May's stance on Brexit.

But yesterday he walked out of Downing Street chatting happily to Mr Hammond, seen as the champion of 'soft' Brexit within Mrs May's top team/

Talks in Brussels have ground to a halt over the summer as EU officials have claimed not enough progress has been made on the issues of the divorce bill, citizens' rights and Northern Ireland for negotiations to move forward to a second phase, including trade talks.

By making substantial new offers on the key issues and striking a more conciliatory tone, Mrs May is hoping EU leaders will agree that negotiations should move forward to the next stage at a crunch summit in a few weeks.

UK officials are said to have told negotiators they are willing to consider European Court of Justice case law being 'taken into account' by British judges when they rule on disputes over the rights of EU citizens.

The Prime Minister's speech set out her vision for a 'bold' economic and security partnership with a 'time-limited' implementation period to avoid a cliff-edge change for businesses adjusting to the new arrangements.

The European Council has to decide next month whether sufficient progress has been made during talks so far to start negotiations on a trade deal.

Mr Corbyn accused Mrs May and her Conservative Cabinet colleagues of spending more time 'negotiating with each other' than with the EU.

He said: 'Fifteen months after the EU referendum the Government is still no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.

'The only advance seems to be that the Prime Minister has listened to Labour and faced up to the reality that Britain needs a transition on the same basic terms to provide stability for businesses and workers.'

EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has threatened to walk away from talks if Britain does not 'settle the accounts'

Theresa May and Boris Johnson finally came face to face in public at the UN on Wednesday night after an extraordinary row which saw the Foreign Secretary threaten to quit

POUND FALLS AS PM'S SPEECH FAILS TO WIN OVER INVESTORS The pound fell against the euro and the dollar today as the PM failed to win over investors with her Florence speech The pound fell to a daily low against both the US dollar and euro as investors as Theresa May's Florence speech failed to win over investors. Sterling fell by 0.6 per cent against the US dollar, so that at 1.350 at the end of the speech  a slump of 0.4 per cent during the course of the address. And it also slumped against the euro, trading at nearly one per cent lower. One pound is now only marginally more valuable than a euro. Analysts said investors had been left 'disappointed' not to hear any hint that the UK will try to keep access to the single market long-term. Hamish Muress, a currency analyst at OFX, said: 'The pound was sold off as traders looked for hints around future access to the single market, and were disappointed not to find them in the Prime Minister's speech. 'Not even the pledge for a two-year transition period could stem the pound's losses, particularly against the euro.' He added: 'The markets want a firm commitment to a soft Brexit and future access to the single market, but it doesn't look like Theresa May will be pushing for this - at least for the time being,' he said. Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the PM's tone was 'constructive' but many usinesses want a transition which lasts longer than two years. Lobby group TheCityUK said: 'The ball is now firmly in the EU's court and the clock is ticking' Advertisement

DIVINE INSPIRATION? MAY PICKS ITALIAN CHURCH FOR SPEECH The location of the speech was confirmed on the church's Twitter feed Theresa May delivered her landmark Brexit speech in an Italian church where four centuries ago a Galileo was condemned for daring to think differently. The Prime Minister has chosen Santa Maria Novella - a grand Gothic basilica in Florence - to make the intervention. The ornate building dates from the 13th century and is one of the most important Gothic churches in all of Tuscany. And it was from this pulpit where the preacher Tommaso Caccini condemned Galileo for heresy for daring to say the earth travels around the sun. Paid for by leading Florentine families, the church has a grand marble face and contains a treasure trove of Renaissance paintings and frescoes. It is the first large basilica in Florence and is closely related to the Renaissance - which is likely to be a key theme of Mrs May's address. The church was designed by two Dominicon friars and took over 100 years to build, eventually being completed in 1360. As Florence flourished as a centre for banking and finance, wealthy patrons paid for additional chapels to be added to the church. Among them were the famous Medici family, who used their vast wealth to patronise the arts and fuel the artistic Renaissance the city remains famous around the world for. Advertisement
President Donald Trump continued his blistering attacks against Senator John McCain over social media on Saturday, a day after the Arizona lawmaker said he would not vote for the repeal of Obamacare.

In a series of messages posted to Twitter, Trump slammed McCain for his lack of support in nullifying the Affordable Care Act, accusing the former Republican presidential nominee of going back on his word.

'John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!' the President tweeted around 6am ET Saturday morning.

President Donald Trump blasts Senator John McCain in a series of tweets posted Saturday morning (Pictured: John McCain September 1, 2017)

The President accused the Arizona lawmaker of breaking his promises over repeal and replacing Obamacare

McCain said Thursday he could not 'in good conscience' support a new Obamacare repeal proposal

Trump took to Twitter an hour later, writing: 'Arizona had a 116% increase in ObamaCare premiums last year, with deductibles very high. Chuck Schumer sold John McCain a bill of goods. Sad.'

On Thursday, McCain announced that he could not 'in good conscience' support the Republican party's likely last effort to repeal the ACA, a bill sponsored by his close friend Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

'I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried,' McCain said in a statement.

'Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.'

Trump called McCain's opposition to the Cassidy-Graham bill 'terrible, honestly terrible' later that evening during a rally for Alabama Sen. Luther Strange.

'It was a totally unexpected thing. Terrible, honestly terrible. Repeal and replace, because John McCain, if you look at his campaign, was all about repeal and replace, repeal and replace. So he decided to do something else, and that's fine. And I say we still have a chance. We're going to do it eventually,' the President said.

During a rally in Alabama on Thursday evening, Trump went after McCain saying his decision was 'terrible'

Republicans have until September 30 to repeal Obamacare with a simple majority or the reverts back to

And it appears Trump was still fuming about McCain's intransigence Saturday morning.

'Large Block Grants to States is a good thing to do. Better control & management. Great for Arizona. McCain let his best friend L.G. down!' Trump wrote at 8am, posting two more tweets minutes later urging other Republican hold outs to support the bill.

The Republicans have until September 30 to pass a bill repealing Obamacare with a 51 seat simple majority. After the deadline, procedures revert back to a 60 vote filibuster proof majority process that virtually guarantees the law stays intact.

McCain sunk Republican hopes of repealing the ACA in July, when he rejected a vote on the Senate floor just days after going through surgery to remove a blood clot over his left eye.




A Wisconsin high school is forcing 'dress wearing' students to submit photos of their dresses they plan to wear to the homecoming dance in order to buy tickets.

The Pewaukee School District dress code aims to prevent female students from being kicked out of the dance for wearing a something it deems inappropriate.

Female students must prove their dress is appropriate by sending pictures of the front and back of their dresses for every dance.

Boys are not required to submit photos of their attire for approval.

Calista Bulacan, a Pewaukee high school student, has a photo taken of her dress to be approved

The Pewaukee dress code states students are not allowed to wear spaghetti straps, show midriff, show cleavage or have a skirt that is shorter than fingertip length.

The majority of the school dance dress code is specifically aimed at women's clothing. It states: 'Shorts and skirts must be of an appropriate length. Shorts or skirts must extend below the mid-thigh.'

'If your shirt or blouse has a low cut neckline and/or is too revealing it should not be worn.'

The policy has been in place since January 2015, but a recent email reminding students of the requirement has some questioning if the policy is sexist.

According to superintendent Mike Cady, most of the feedback regarding the policy has been positive in the community. He told ABC News most of the backlash has been on social media.

But some students would rather not go to the dance than have to have an administrator approve what they wear.

Pewaukee High School said parents and guardians could email the principal if they are uncomfortable with sending a photo

Nicole Stark is a senior this year at Pewaukee High School and will not be sending a photo of her dress.

The 17-year-old told the station: 'I think the fact that we have to submit a photo of ourselves wearing it front and back is a little bit creepy to me.

'Honestly, I would much rather get turned away at the door than to have to send a picture of myself wearing a dress.'

Last week, the school said parents and guardians could email the principal if they are uncomfortable with sending a photo, to say their child's clothing is appropriate and they have reviewed the school guidelines.

Rebecca Sheperd, a mother to a a female student at the high school, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the policy is harmful to women.

She told the paper: 'The girls are essentially being held responsible for the wayward thoughts (administrators) think boys have.

'They're being told, "You are the problem." These are the roots of rape culture, frankly.'
Tens of thousands of Pyongyang residents gathered in the capital's Kim Il-sung Square on Saturday to laud leader Kim Jong-un's denunciation of US President Donald Trump.

Students in white shirts and red ties held up the red flag of the ruling Workers' Party, with a yellow ink brush representing intellectuals, a hammer for the workers, and a sickle for the peasantry.

On one side of the square, a giant poster depicted red missiles plunging towards a collapsing US Capitol with the slogan 'Korea's Answer'.

Ranks of workers and residents listened, their fists clenched, as speakers repeated Kim's denigration of Trump as 'mentally deranged' and a 'dotard'.

Scroll down for video

Tens of thousands of Pyongyang residents gathered in the capital's Kim Il-sung Square on Saturday to laud leader Kim Jong-un's denunciation of US President Donald Trump

On one side of the square, a giant poster depicted red missiles plunging towards a collapsing US Capitol, with the slogan 'Korea's Answer' (pictured)

Ranks of workers and residents listened, their fists clenched, as speakers repeated Kim's denigration of Trump as 'mentally deranged' and a 'dotard' (pictured)

The US president (pictured, Friday) dubbed Kim 'Rocket Man' in a speech at the United Nations last week in which he threatened to 'totally destroy' the North if it attacked the US or its allies

In a statement on Friday, Kim (pictured in a photo released on Thursday) responded by saying Trump would 'pay dearly' for his comments and described him as a mentally deranged US dotard'. The supreme leader dusted off the archaic Middle English term, which means a 'senile old person'

The US president dubbed Kim 'Rocket Man' in a speech at the United Nations last week in which he threatened to 'totally destroy' the North if it attacked the US or its allies.

In a statement on Friday, Kim responded by saying Trump would 'pay dearly' for his comments and described him as a mentally deranged US dotard'.

The supreme leader dusted off the archaic Middle English term, which means a 'senile old person'.

During a rally in Alabama on Friday, Trump doubled-down on his attacks on Kim, calling him 'little rocket man' and a 'madman'.

He said: 'We can't have madmen out there, shooting rockets all over the place.

On Saturday morning, North Korea's state media released a statement describing Trump as 'wicked' and a 'rabid dog'.

The aggressive rhetoric between Kim and Trump has become increasingly personal, and raised fears of miscalculation in the standoff over the North's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

'I would like to put down my pen and take up arms again to perform my duty to defend the fatherland,' said Pyongyang Mechanical University student Ri Il Ung, 24.

'Trump is a warmonger and a backstreet gangster. It's quite ridiculous that such a person could become a politician.'

Such set-piece rallies, organized by the authorities, are a regular feature of political life in Pyongyang, and are intended as a physical demonstration of popular support for the leadership.

Such set-piece rallies, organized by the authorities, are a regular feature of political life in Pyongyang, and are intended as a physical demonstration of popular support for the leadership (Pictured, students march at Saturday's rally)

The North Korean regime is intensely militaristic and bases its claim to legitimacy on defending the country from external aggression, and analysts say that Trump's comments are grist to its mill (Pictured, rally participants in Kim Il-sung Square on Saturday)

Pyongyang insists it needs nuclear arms to protect itself from a US invasion, and carried out its sixth atomic test earlier this month, earning itself an eighth set of United Nations Security Council sanctions (Pictured, students march during the mass rally on Saturday)

The North Korean regime is intensely militaristic and bases its claim to legitimacy on defending the country from external aggression, and analysts say that Trump's comments are grist to its mill.

Kim is also using the drama to reinforce his leadership, they add.

Pyongyang insists it needs nuclear arms to protect itself from a US invasion, and carried out its sixth atomic test earlier this month, earning itself an eighth set of United Nations Security Council sanctions.

It has also tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles that appeared to bring much of the US mainland into range, and regularly issues bloodcurdling threats.

A powerful 3.4 magnitude earthquake rocked North Korea around 3.30am ET, sparking fears the nation may have conducted yet another nuclear test.

A tremor earlier this month was caused by Kim's sixth nuclear test so it's no surprise there are fears this is another.

However, South Korea's weather agency claims it believes the event may have been a natural earthquake.
George Clooney speaks during the 'Suburbicon' press conference at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2017

George Clooney, who supported Hillary Clinton amid the 2016 presidential campaign and once hosted a fundraiser for her, said he believes she wasn't fit for the White House.

The A-list actor and new father, 56, spoke during a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Beast revealing that while he believes the Democratic nominee was 'qualified for the job,' she wasn't a skilled communicator like some of her counterparts.

'Being qualified for the job does not necessarily mean you're the right person to be president,' Clooney said in the interview.

'Here's what I mean... She was more qualified than even her husband was when he was elected president, but she's not as good at communicating things. That's simply true.

'When she got up and gave a speech, it didn't soar. Now, that doesn't mean that she wouldn't have done a great job as president, and I supported her because by the time we did the fundraiser the primary was over at that point and it was time to get on with picking someone to move forward, and she was the right person to side with.'

George Clooney (right) is pictured in a recent photo with Hillary Clinton on Instagram. He spoke in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Beast where he admitted Clinton was 'qualified' to be president, but wasn't a 'skilled communicator'

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump square off at UNLV in Las Vegas on Oct. 19, 2016, for their final Presidential debate

Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (R) speaks as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump looks on at the third U.S. presidential debate October 19, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada

Donald Trump speaks at a rally on November 4, 2016 in Hershey, Pennsylvania

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker and humanitarian had several liberal acquaintances who also believed Clinton faced a 'harder uphill battle' against Trump.

'It was frustrating because I never saw her elevate her game. I saw it. And I had a lot of liberal friends who were like, 'She's not good at this.' And I see that, and I understand it. I also think, though, that if it was a guy it wouldn't have been so polarizing.

'I think that she wasn't particularly good at articulating the things that she wanted to do, and unfortunately we live at a time right now where articulating what you want to do is more potent in the electorate than the other way around, obviously, when Trump only said he was going to 'Make America Great Again,' said Clooney.

'Don't you think the next Democrat who runs should just run with a blue hat that says, 'Make America Great Again?'' he jokingly added.

Simple man: George Clooney, the 56-year-old Academy Award-winning actor, was spotted carrying a backpack as he left a business meeting earlier this week in Los Angeles

New dad: Clooney spared a few moments out of his new routine to take care of business at a home in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning

During the discussion with the Daily Beast, the actor touched on other topics like his directing work for the 2017 crime comedy film, 'Suburbicon' and issues surrounding his home state of Kentucky following the Charlottesville riots last month.

Also this week, a worse for wear Clooney admitted to the Daily Mail he cries 'four times a day' after welcoming twins with wife Amal back in June.

The 'O Brother, Where Art Thou' actor shared the comments while he was spotted leaving a business meeting in Los Angeles.

'They don't cry,' Clooney said proudly. 'I cry more than they do. I cry four times a day right now, because I'm so tired.'

He then joked: 'Hey, remember back when you were single, before you didn't have to worry about keeping people alive? Wasn't that great?'
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Sudden release. Hayk Harutyunyan is in freedom

Today, Hayk Harutyunyan, who had been sentenced to 4 years and 6 months imprisonment, for the case of Shant Harutyunyan and others, has been conditionally released. Laura Petrosyan, Hayk Harutyunyans mother, told Hetq that the release was unexpected. After being released form "Sevan" Penitentiary, he tried to surprise his mother, with the help of his friend. They came to Yerevan, but did not find his mother at home; they decided to visit his sister. "My daughter called me and asked me to go to her flat. I went; Hayk opened the door. It was really a surprise, because a few days ago, on September 19, on his 44th birthday, I visited him, and nothing was said about the release," told Mr. Laura, wishing freedom to all political prisoners. He participated in the Karabakh war, the president of the Artsvabuyn Foundation, dealing with the issues of freedom fighters and their families, and was a member of the Public Council. At the place of imprisonment Hayk was engaged in manual work and engraving. Hayk Harutyunyan was imprisoned on November 5, 2013. Thre cirtizens,connected with this case, are already in freedom.
A British woman has died after a diving accident in the Canary Islands in the second tragedy of its kind in a week.

The 44-year-old woman was pronounced dead after diving near a beach in the holiday resort of Mogan, Gran Canaria.

Regional government officials confirmed the tragedy saying it happened at around 10.45am today off Veneguera Beach, one of the island's most pristine beaches.

A spokesman for the local emergency services said: 'A 44-year-old English woman died at Veneguera Beach in Mogan around 10.45am today.

A 44-year-old woman died after getting into difficulty while diving off Veneguera Beach, Gran Canaria (pictured) today

Playa de Veneguera on Gran Canaria is a 188-mile drive from Playa Blanca on Lanzarote, where a British man died after a similar diving incident last Saturday

An emergency call came in to say a woman who had suffered a diving accident near the beach and might be in cardiac arrest was on a boat that was taking her to Mogan Port.

'Paramedics confirmed she was in cardiac arrest when they arrived and made an unsuccessful attempt to revive her. She was pronounced dead at the scene.'

An investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death are now underway.

The beach where she was taken ill (pictured) is considered one of the most pristine on the island

The woman is thought to be a British holidaymaker but has not yet been named.

Last Saturday a British man died after a similar diving incident a 35-minute flight away off the island of Lanzarote.

He was later identified as ex-paratrooper Johnny Walker, 54, from Consett, County Durham.

The experienced diver was on holiday with his partner Brenda and went into cardiac arrest after he was forced to make an emergency descent while scuba diving near the Marina Rubicon yacht harbour.

He is believed to have been planning a visit to the island's newly-opened Atlantic Museum, an underwater museum featuring more than 300 human sculptures.

Johnny Walker (pictured), 54, from County Durham, died after a similar incident on Lanzarote's Playa Blanca last Saturday

Mr Walker (pictured) is believed to have been on holiday with his partner Brenda and was a former paratrooper

He was only minutes into his dive and a few feet underwater when he told an instructor he felt unwell.

Tests are still being done to determine exactly why he died, but authorities have ruled out any foul play and said there is nothing to indicate any wrongdoing on the part of the dive school.

Writing on Facebook just before flying to the island to comfort her late brother's girlfriend, his sister Jacqueline Jobertah, said: 'Thank you to everyone for the kind thoughts and messages.

'My heart goes out to Brenda, his girlfriend who's over there on her own, feeling the pain.

'It's been a tough day making arrangements with insurance etc and my head feels battered.

'We've cried, laughed, reminisced about Johnny all day. I just want to get over there and see my brother. The pain is so much.'
Hundreds of homeless people in Salt Lake City have mysteriously vanished over recent weeks and residents are baffled as to why.

Following a police operation conducted in mid-August, Utah's capital city has seen its down and out dwindle dramatically.

Homeless shelters and temporary housing facilities which once offered relief to the destitute in the downtown area are now empty, according to Sgt Brandon Shearer, who seems equally perplexed as he searches for homeless camps during helicopter patrols.

Hundreds of homeless people in Salt Lake City have left the community and people are baffled as to why (Pictured: Randy Rigby President of the Utah Jazz serves food at a shelter, Nov 2016)

Salt Lake City police chief Mike Brown (pictured left) said that the added boost of law enforcement has helped clean up the town

'I don't know,' Shearer told The Guardian when asked where the homeless have gone. 'That's a good question.'

While coastal citys like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York have carried the brunt of the homeless crisis in America for decades, Salt Lake City also faced challenges in trying to house the less fortunate.

Homeless shelters like the Road Home in Downtown Salt Lake City have been left empty virtually overnight

Over the past few years, growing homelessness in Salt Lake was partly exacerbated by rising rent costs and stagnant wages. The result saw about 2,200 people in the region go without shelter on any given night, according to The Guardian.

City officials say that many are victims of circumstance, consigned to living on the streets due to economic conditions, mental health issues or opioid addictions.

As a result, the city saw violent crimes staring to rise. Over the past few months, a police shooting and three unrelated murders have been reported in Salt Lake City.

What followed was an initiative by city officials to boost law enforcement by enacting a two-year $67 million-public safety plan.

Rising crime in Salt Lake led officials to enacting a plan to boost law enforcement and conduct sweeps, resulting in 1,200 arrests

Residents, however, are baffled at how quickly the homeless population in Salt Lake City dispersed

'You throw 150 cops in there, it's going to ruin the party,' Salt Lake City police chief Mike Brown told The Guardian.

As a result, more than 1,200 people through July and August were arrested, over half on drug charges. An estimated 900 were later released back to the street.

But what has baffled city officials and residents is how stunningly sudden hundreds of people have decided to leave in such a short amount of time.

Some believe that as the city invests more in law enforcement and less in relief, the homeless population has been forced to disperse to other places.

'It's not doing what they want,' Brema Jones, a homeless woman, told the newspaper. 'It's not helping druggies, not getting them into rehab. Everybody is spreading out.'

'The rhetoric from the mayor and policy workers was "We're trying to help,"' local activist Michael Clara said. 'Well, you should help them downtown. Don't scatter them and then try to help.'

Not everyone, however, is opposed to the boosted police presence in the city.

'They've cleaned the place up,' said Zach Curry, a homeless man who has been living in Utah's capital city for the past 10 years.

'People were committing suicide on drugs left and right. It was getting a bad rep for Salt Lake City.'

Curry said that although the police action is tough on some individuals in the city, he insists 'it's got to be done. That's what a lot of us think about it.'

According to The Guardian, the homeless population is welcome to come back if they choose, but law enforcement has no intention of relenting on its operations.
A Tennessee man avoided a possible death penalty by agreeing Saturday to a sentence of life in prison plus 50 years for the kidnapping, rape and killing of nursing student Holly Bobo.

Judge C. Creed McGinley told a jury that Zachary Adams made a deal with prosecutors just minutes ahead of his sentencing hearing.

Adams, 33, was convicted Friday of murder, especially aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape after an 11-day jury trial in Savannah, Tennessee.

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Zach Adams walks into the courtroom, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017 for the penalty phase in Savannah, Tenn

Under the agreement, Adams received a state prison term of life without parole for Bobo's killing. He was sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years for both the kidnapping and rape convictions.

Bobo was 20 when she disappeared from her home in rural Parsons on April 13, 2011. Her remains were found by two men who were hunting for ginseng not far from her Decatur County home in September 2014.

Bobo's vanishing led to a massive search of the farms, fields and barns of western Tennessee. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has said that the Bobo investigation is the most exhaustive and expensive in the agency's history.

But investigators found no DNA evidence connecting Bobo to Adams. Instead, they relied on testimony from friends and jail inmates who said Adams spoke of harming Bobo.

Adams, 33, was convicted Friday of murder, especially aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape of Holly Bobo (pictured) in 2011

Holly Bobo's decomposed remains were found near Adams' home three years after authorities began looking for her

Karen Bobo (pictured) speaks to Zachary Adams during the victim impact statement Sept. 23, 2017 in Savannah, Tennessee

Karen Bobo, mother of Holly Bobo, gives a hug to State prosecutor Jennifer Nicols (pictured) after giving a victim impact statement

Karen Bobo is joined with, from left, her son Clint, daughter-in-law Ashley, husband Dana, and State prosecutor Jennifer Nicols on Sept. 23, 2017

Courtesy of NewsChannel5

In court Saturday, McGinley told the jury the deal was reached with 'some reluctance.' The judge asked Adams if he voluntarily agreed to the deal that may have saved his life.

Adams is pictured in his 2014 mugshot. Police said he was in a dark world of methamphetamine when he killed Bobo

'Yes sir,' Adams responded in a soft voice.

Bobo's mother Karen addressed the jury, telling the panel that her daughter was a loving person who 'appreciated the small things in life.'

'She was the sweetest soul I ever knew,' Karen Bobo said.

She also pointed at Adams and called him an 'animal.' She said Adams has showed 'absolutely no remorse.'

Adams did not testify during the trial.

Karen also said she saw her husband Dana smile for the first time since their daughter went missing 6  years ago.

'I didn't know the man had dimples,' prosecutor Jennifer Nichols told reporters after the court hearing.

Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams' brother, John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.

Dana and Karen Bobo hug each other after a verdict in their daughter Holly Bobo's murder trial in Savannah, Tenn., Friday, Sept. 22, 2017

Judge C. Creed McGinley (pictured) told a jury that Zachary Adams made a deal with prosecutors just minutes ahead of his sentencing hearing on Sept. 23, 2017

Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend, Shayne Austin, had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river in the day she was reported missing.

Autry was on a list of witnesses offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.

Autry's lawyer has told the judge that a trial does not need to be set for Autry, indicating he has reached a deal with prosecutors. A trial date has not been set for John Dylan Adams.

Prosecutor Paul Hagerman said none of the men charged in the case showed any grace for Holly Bobo.

Yet, the Bobo family 'chose to end this thing with grace.'
Strike Force Raptor have single-handedly diminished bikie gang sign ups and pressured leaders into 'patching out' of their fearsome clubs.

The group, which was developed eight years ago to be a militarised unit of the NSW Gangs Squad, uses old, long-forgotten legislation to provoke gang members into bowing out of a life of lawlessness - or 'patching out' as it is known.

And while they do operate in the state of NSW the 55 Raptors hold the status of deputy across Victoria, Queensland and the ACT - meaning they can wreak havoc on the lives of criminals no matter where they choose to hideout.

And while they do operate in the state of NSW the 55 Raptors (pictured) hold the status of deputy across Victoria, Queensland and the ACT - meaning they can wreak havoc on the lives of criminals no matter where they choose to hideout

One such example is when Hells Angels associates rented a boat on the Murray River in Mildura earlier this year. When approached by the Raptors and told to disembark, an idea they were opposed to, the task force decided to fine each gang member for parking their motorcycles on the nature strip, reports the Daily Telegraph

One such example is when Hells Angels associates rented a boat on the Murray River in Mildura earlier this year. When approached by the Raptors and told to disembark, an idea they were opposed to, the task force decided to fine each gang member for parking their motorcycles on the nature strip, reports the Daily Telegraph.

These are the kind of infuriatingly easy tactics the Raptors employ to frustrate gangs into a sense of order - particularly when they can't necessarily charge each one for more serious crimes that have been committed.

The force have disbanded clubhouses using laws from the 1940s to stop the sly-grog trade and even used strange search powers from the 1970s to make surprise house calls legal.

The force have disbanded clubhouses using laws from the 1940s to stop the sly-grog trade and even used strange search powers from the 1970s to make surprise house calls legal

While it may seem like a simple parking fine won't deter a gang member from a life of crime, the relentless manner in which the Raptors pull them over for forgetting P-plates and refusing to wear helmets makes life very difficult - for them and their families

While it may seem like a simple parking fine won't deter a gang member from a life of crime, the relentless manner in which the Raptors pull them over for forgetting P-plates and refusing to wear helmets makes life very difficult - for them and their families.

'Most of these guys are in gangs but they drive trucks on the side and need their licences,' a Raptor officer involved in the Mildura operation told the Daily Telegraph.

One anonymous ex-bikie said that he was forced to 'patch out' after receiving more than 20 'surprise house calls' a month. His children were beginning to grow uncomfortable the neighbours thought he was 'a bad person.'

Detective Chief Inspector David Adney has been operating the Raptors since its inception and is willing to throw any kind of act or law at the gangs in order to correct their behaviour

Detective Chief Inspector David Adney has been operating the Raptors since its inception and is willing to throw any kind of act or law at the gangs in order to correct their behaviour - an idea likened to 'helicopter parenting.'

Adney doesn't believe the Raptors tactics are in any way discriminatory because the groups have chosen to live a life of crime as their ethos.

At present there are seven bikie gangs in NSW alone that are heavily targeted by the force, among them the Rebels, Bandidos, Comanchero and Hells Angels.

In one of the most infamous clashes between the groups the Bandidos and Comanchero fought in a shoot-out in Sydney's south-west in 1984. The incident in Milperra claimed seven lives - six of them gang members.
Adolf Hitler's phone directory which contains details of some of the key Nazi figures has sold for 33,000 - twice its estimate at auction.

The address book was found in Hitler's Reich Chancellery at the end of the Second World War by a British war crimes investigator, Captain John Hodgewho was a a British Grenadier Guards officer.

It came up for auction 72 years later and was sold today by Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes in Wiltshire, for 33,000.

The directory contains the names, addresses and telephone numbers infamous members of the Nazi party.

It contains more than 200 handwritten entries, including Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolph Hess, Hermann Goering, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Reinhard Heydrich, Albert Speer and Albert Bormann, though there is one glaring omission - Adolf Hitler.

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Captain John Hodge (pictured) found the address book in a desk drawer in the Riech Chancellery. Hodge's account written arrest of a high ranking SS officer (right)

The book on the left entitled Fernsprech-Teilnehmer, which translates to 'telephone subscribers', and the inside showing the contact details

The Third Reich book was recovered in Berlin at the end of World War Two by Captain John Hodge who was a British Grenadier Guards officer and is expected to fetch up to $20,000. His signature can be seen on this letter to the War Crimes Investigation Unit

There is one notable omission from the phonebook and that is Adolf Hitler, pictured here

The book contains more than 200 handwritten entries, including Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolph Hess, Hermann Goering, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, Reinhard Heydrich, Albert Speer and Albert Bormann, though there is one glaring omission - Adolf Hitler

The leather, cloth-bound book is being put up for auction by Henry Aldridge and Son, which is based in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Among the 200 people listed are SS monster Heinrich Himmler, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goering.

Others include Hitlers deputy Rudolf Hess  who bizarrely flew to Scotland in 1941 and was taken prisoner  Albert Speer, the Nazi who apologised at the Nuremberg war trials, and Reinhard Heydrich, main architect of the Holocaust.

Hans Frank, who ran occupied Poland under a murderous reign of terror, is also listed as is Joachim von Ribbentrop, who played a key role in starting the war. Hitlers personal bodyguard and pilot are included as well.

The leather, cloth-bound book belonging to Hitler is being put up for auction by Henry Aldridge and Son, which is based in Devizes, Wiltshire

Remarkably, a folded-up letter found in the 6in by 4in book has survived. It was written by the private secretary of Goebbels rejecting a request for his autograph because he was too busy.

The black, leather-bound book was found in a desk drawer in the Reich Chancellery in 1945 by Captain John Hodge, who was later part of the war crimes investigation unit and was almost killed arresting SS guard Heinrich Hornetz at his home near Frankfurt in 1946.

During the arrest, the Nazis wife ran out of the house screaming English pigs.

Minutes later five armed Germans surrounded the property and opened fire.

Capt Hodge was hit in the leg but managed to flee with his prisoner.

Both he and the address book survived, and it is to be sold at auction tomorrow through Henry Aldridge and Son of Devizes, Wiltshire.

It has been given an estimate of 15,000.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said: This is a unique piece of history that offers both historians and collectors access to a previously unseen amount of information relating to the highest echelons of one of the most evil regimes in modern history. It really is a whos who of evil.

'You pick a bad guy and he is in there. The only person of note who is missing is Adolf Hitler.

We dont know for certain who it belonged to but it was clearly the property of a very senior Nazi, possibly Goebbelss secretary.

This book is being sold by the family of someone who dedicated a chunk of his career to hunting these individuals.

On a personal note, my grandfather was kept prisoner by the Nazis at Lamsdorf, Poland, before he escaped back to England and I found it fascinating that the head of Nazi government in Poland, Hans Frank, is listed.
Jeremy Corbyn has defied a furious backlash to support moves to strip Uber of its licence in London.

The Labour leader said he believed Transport for London (TfL) was doing the 'right thing' by refusing to renew the taxi firm's permission to operate in the capital amid complaints it has failed to report crimes carried out by drivers.

Some 500,000 people have signed a petition urging the decision to be reconsidered over the past 36 hours.

But London Mayor Sadiq Khan today urged angry passengers to 'direct your anger at Uber.'

And Mr Corbyn, in Brighton for Labour's autumn conference, told Sky News: 'TfL are there to protect all of us and I think they are doing the right thing.

'Obviously people need to be able to travel, obviously they want to be able to access cabs.

'Those cabs must be safe, must be regulated and must be available for all.'

The firm, which employs more than 40,000 drivers in London and has 3.5 million customers in the capital, has slammed the decision and said it will appeal.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured on a visit before the Labour conference in Brighton today, backed the move to ban Uber from London

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been blasted by MPs as he tells furious passengers to 'direct your anger at Uber'

Tory minister for London Greg Hands is among those who have condemned the decision by TfL - which is chaired by Mr Khan.

He said: 'At the flick of a pen Sadiq Khan is threatening to put 40,000 people out of work and leave 3.5 million users of Uber stranded.

'Uber must address safety concerns and it is important there is a level playing field across the private hire market.

'But a blanket ban will cause massive inconvenience to millions of Londoners, all the while showing that the Mayor of London is closed to business and innovation.'

Chris Philp, Tory MP for Croydon South, said: 'I accept Uber has some problems it has to fix, such as reporting every single criminal allegation they hear about.

Tory minister for London Greg Hands said: 'At the flick of a pen Sadiq Khan is threatening to put 40,000 people out of work and leave 3.5 million users of Uber stranded'

'But banning Uber in London is a terrible mistake. Sadiq Khan should reverse the decision immediately.'

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP for Tonbridge and Malling, claimed Mr Khan was a 'luddite' who wanted to 'switch off the internet'.

He said: 'By banning Uber, Sadiq Khan is showing socialism is about control when the internet is pushing for freedom of choice.

'True, Uber has problems but Sadiq Khan banning them is a vote against choice using last- century controls to order how we choose to live.'

However, Mr Khan  who as mayor is chairman of the Transport for London board but did not take part in the licensing decision  said Uber had brought the ban on itself.

He told BBC World At One: 'If drivers are angry, as they will be, if users of Uber are angry, as they will be, their anger should be turned towards Uber for knowing the rules and failing to play by them.'

Uber's private hire licence will not be renewed after a bombshell decision by TfL yesterday

A black cab driver celebrates outside Paddington station yesterday after the decision to strip Uber of its licence in London was announced

More than 500,000 people have signed a petition calling for the decision to be reversed

The development came as it emerged Uber has been legally operating in a UK city without a licence and is 'exploring' how it could do so in London.

Officials in Coventry have said that Uber drivers in nearby Wolverhampton and Birmingham have been operating within their city, according to the Sun.

Customers can order a taxi on the app, and drivers licensed elsewhere are allowed to come into the city and pick up passengers.

Major cities including Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle have said they are monitoring the situation.

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson said he 'remains convinced that deregulation of the taxi trade is hurting competition, preventing licensing authorities from doing their jobs'.

He added that Liverpool City Council will keep an eye on what happens in London and could take action.

Uber's licence to operate in Manchester is not up for renewal until 2021 but the council's executive member for neighbourhoods, Councillor Nigel Murphy, said they will be monitoring the situation.

This approach echoes what Bristol and Newcastle have said.

In Brighton, taxi drivers have urged the council not to renew Uber's licence. The city's MP, Caroline Lucas, welcomed TfL's decision.

She said: '#Uber business model irresponsible to the core. Hope @Uber ups game & shows more corporate responsibility #gigeconomy.'

A spokesman for Cardiff City Council said there was no evidence to suggest Uber was breaching the terms of their licence in the city.

Meanwhile, a petition calling for TfL to reverse their decision has been signed by more than 500,000 people in less than 24 hours.

The petition, started by Uber London, says: 'By wanting to ban our app from the capital, Transport for London and their chairman the Mayor have given in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.

Transport for London announced the decision in this tweet, which is said to have been posted just one minute after it informed the firm

The decision is another setback for the firm, which has previously been banned by other cities including Barcelona and Vancouver

'If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive millions of Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

'This decision is affecting the real lives of a huge number of honest and hard-working drivers in London.'

Critics of Uber - which boasts more than 5 billion passengers in over 630 cities worldwide - insist it has failed to properly vet its drivers and is an example of the so-called 'gig economy' that gives workers no employment rights.

Worried Uber drivers and angry passengers yesterday joined a growing chorus of criticism - with delighted cabbies rejoicing at the potential downfall of their fiercest competitor.

Father-of-three Bangalie, who has been driving for the company for almost a year, fears he could be forced to claim benefits if Uber's appeal is not successful.

He said: 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money.

'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.'

Passenger Lucy Williams, 30, from London, said: 'It's terrible, I get Ubers like three times a week and they've saved me a lot of money from black cabs.'

But black cab driver Kenneth Stein, 54, said: 'I have nothing against Uber drivers but we as black cab drivers are regulated to the hilt while they have next to no regulation.'

Uber said in a statement that the decision would 'show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies'. The firm's current licence expires on September 30.

As part of their fightback, they are emailing all of their members individually to urge them to sign the petition.

Many Londoners took to Twitter to complain about the TFL decision

Others welcomed the decision by the city's authorities, saying the company was dangerous

But the firm has faced a barrage of criticism in recent years over the safety of customers, working rights for drivers and opposition from black cab drivers.

TfL concluded that the minicab app is 'not fit and proper' to operate in the capital due to concerns which have 'public safety and security implications'.

Transport for London said: 'TfL considers that Uber's approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications.'

Mayor of Sadiq Khan, who was not involved in the decision but supports it, said: 'All companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect - particularly when it comes to the safety of customers.

'Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security.'

What happens now for Uber users? Uber's current licence expires on September 30, but yesterday's ruling allows them to continue operating during the appeal process. That should mean the minicabs are still available for hiring for at least a month after September 30, while the court appeal is heard. Other similar apps are now piling in to try to mop up the customers Uber will leave behind. Advertisement

Confirming Uber would appeal against the decision in court, Tom Elvidge, the firm's general manager in London, said: '3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision.

'By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.

'If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

'To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts. '

He added: 'Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.'

The firm's complaints were backed by London First, which campaigns for business in the capital.

The group's David Leam said: 'This will be seen as a Luddite decision by millions of Londoners and international visitors who use Uber, and will also hit London's reputation as a global tech hub. London needs to be open to new ideas, businesses and services.'

But Labour MP Wes Streeting, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taxis, welcomed the decision, which he said would 'draw a line in the sand'.

The Ilford North MP added: 'Uber has not shown itself to be a fit and proper operator.

'It stands accused by the police of failing to properly handle serious allegations of rape and sexual assault of passengers.

'It had to be dragged through the courts to recognise its responsibility to provide even the most basic rights and protections to Uber drivers.'

The number of private hire drivers in London has almost doubled to more than 116,000 from 65,000 in 2013/14.

Drivers of traditional black London cabs held a protest this year against the minicab app. The app was seen as unfairly undercutting black cabs due to the lack of regulation of drivers

Uber driver James Farrar said: 'This is a devastating blow for 30,000 Londoners who now face losing their job and being saddled with unmanageable vehicle-related debt.

'To strip Uber of its licence after five years of laissez-faire regulation is a testament to a systemic failure at TfL.

'Rather than banish Uber, TfL should have strengthened its regulatory oversight, curbed runaway licensing and protected the worker rights of drivers.'

The GMB union handed in a petition with 100,000 signatures on Monday to TfL, calling on Uber to improve workers' rights or 'get out of London' ahead of the licence decision.

We brought down Uber, boast shameless unions By Charlie Moore for MailOnline Shameless unions yesterday boasted they were responsible for banning Uber, bringing misery to 40,000 drivers and 3.5million customers. After TfL announced its decision to revoke the firm's licence, Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: 'Today's ruling shows the power of union campaigning. And it's a huge result for GMB.' The ill-judged boast will fuel suspicions the decision was made to appease outdated black cab drivers who have long campaigned for their competition to be restricted or eliminated. IEA director Mark Littlewood said: 'Banning Uber, and clamping down on the Gig Economy more generally, is a restriction upon freedom of choice, both for Uber's drivers and passengers. 'In doing so, Transport for London has privileged the views of a powerful minority who wish to restrict consumer choice over the will of millions of ordinary Londoners.' 'Today's decision is an assault on drivers and customers alike, and a victory for protectionism.' Advertisement

'I could be on the dole in two weeks': Uber driver tells of worries An Uber driver yesterday told how the decision to remove the Uber licence would leave him struggling to make ends meet. Father-of-three Bangalie has been driving for the company for almost a year after finishing an Accounting and Finance degree at Greenwich University. The 39-year-old of Woolwich, south east London, said he could be signing up for job seekers allowance in less than two weeks if the taxi company are unsuccessful in their appeal. He said: 'I finished university this year and I needed a job that was convenient for me, if I didn't have this job I would be on benefits. 'This job is great for me because I can choose when I want to work, I am only doing it while I look for a job in accounting.' Uber driver Bangalie said the decision could leave him unable to support his family He added: 'And it is so convenient for the passenger, when you jump in a black cab you do not know the driver and they could take you anywhere.' 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money. 'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.' He insisted the service was safe, adding: 'When you get into an Uber you know the driver, you have arranged where they will pick you up and where you are going. If anything happens you can track the driver down. 'My family are worried about the future of my job, even if I go on benefits I will not get the same amount of money. 'I have bills and rent to pay and mouths to feed, if I cannot do that there is going to be a problem. I could be signing up for job seekers in less than two weeks time.' Advertisement

Black cab driver says previous system was not a level playing field Kenneth Stein said black cabs were regulated 'to the hilt' while Uber were barely checked at all A black cab driver has welcomed the prospect of Uber losing their licence in the capital blaming the company for snarling up the capital with traffic jams. Kenneth Stein, 54, claimed the firm's drivers were not subjected to the same stringent background checks as black cab drivers. Mr Stein, who has driven black cabs for 15 years, said: 'I have nothing against with Uber drivers but we as black cab drivers are regulated to the hilt while they have next to no regulation. 'Uber have 120,000 cars and the whole of London is grid locked and it's mainly because of Uber, it is just shocking. 'If they had said we'll keep it to 24,000 Uber cars that would have been fine, but 120,000 is too many. 'It's people in high places have let them get this far so it is right they have lost their licence, but don't count your chickens yet.' He added the best thing the black cab industry has done to embrace emerging technology which still relies on 'the knowledge' all drivers have to take was the introduction of card readers for customers. He added: 'How many sexual assaults per year have been reported in Uber cabs? It is probably a lot more than they have said. ' Advertisement

Passengers rue loss of choice and say minicabs are more dangerous Londoners were generally unhappy about the decision in Kensington yesterday, insisting it will not make them safer but will leave them out of pocket. Lucy Williams, 30, from London, said: 'It's terrible, I get Ubers like three times a week and they've saved me a lot of money from black cabs. 'I don't see why people have a safety problem because you watch the car on your map. I've never had any bad experiences, all my friends use them. I think it's great. Lucy Williams and Pablo Galleguillos were among the Londoners unhappy at the move She added: 'It's back to minicabs now and minicabs are the worst, you've no idea who they are or where they are or anything and they don't care about their ratings. Uber cab drivers care about their rating.' Pablo Galleguillos, 26, from Chile, added: 'I think it's really, really bad because you have to have a choice to use a taxi or use an Uber. 'I think everyone is using the phone, everyone is using the phone. I think it's really bad news. 'I've used both, normal taxis and Uber and Uber is much cheaper and they tell you the price instantly.' Michael Dedza, 25, a swimming instructor from New York, USA, said: 'I have found Uber very safe. I once lost my phone in an Uber before and you know exactly what cab it was and I contacted them and they just dropped it off the next day. 'You know the driver's name and you know they are licensed because they have to be, I'm a really big fan and I think London would be missing out if Uber lost their licence.' Emily Estlin and Michael Dedza both said they feel safe in Uber-arranged cabs Emily Estlin, 28, a sommelier in London Bridge from Hackney, east London, said: 'I get an Uber almost every day because I'm always late for work. 'It's cheaper than a black cab and I always feel totally safe in an Uber and no bad things have ever happened to me. 'If Uber lose their licence I will have to get on the bus, which would take me a lot longer and if I wanted a taxi a black cab is pretty much twice the price. I'd happily sign a petition to keep Uber, it's great.' Brendon Hurley, 28, said: 'I'm a big fan of Uber, if they weren't around I'd probably use a black cab but if there is a cheaper option you are always going to use it. 'I've just got out of the cab and the driver didn't mention the fact he might be out of a job. 'I have heard the horror stories about Uber but I've happily put my parents and friends in Uber taxis before and you are always going to get problems in some taxis, whether they are Uber's or black cabs.' App user Rimi Char, a 43-year-old event planner, added: 'I have got used to the ease and cost effectiveness of using Uber and I've always had positive experiences.' Advertisement

How Uber's reputation has been tainted by a series of cases where drivers have attacked passengers

The reputation Uber has gained for dangerous drivers has come from a series of court cases in the capital.

Scotland Yard criticised the firm after it emerged it failed to report 48 serious crimes.

In July, driver Jahir Hussain was jailed for 12 years for raping drunken women he picked up outside east London bars.

His first victim awoke to find Hussain fondling her breasts and undoing his belt on 12 October last year.

Uber drivers Jahir Hussain and Samson Haile were both jailed for sex attacks on women

The woman lay still in the back of the cab frozen in fear as he raped her, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard. Father-of-four Hussain then carried out two attacks in quick succession in the early hours of 2 December.

He wasn't working for Uber at the time of the attacks, but the first of his two victims had booked an Uber cab and he said he was the driver.

In 2015, driver Samson Haile was jailed for eight months for sexually assaulted a female customer in the back of his taxi.

During a journey, the 32-year-old told the woman 'you are very pretty' and asked her if she had a boyfriend, before saying 'I want to have sex with you'.

He then turned round in his seat and touched her leg with his hand, before moving it up to her thigh. Minutes later touched her again on the knee at which point she screamed to be let out of the car.

Earlier this year, mother Annastazia Merrett claimed she suffered a black eye in a racist assault by an Asian Uber driver who called her a 'white b****'.

Sabrina Benltaief posted photos of her injuries online after claiming an Uber motorist drove off while she was leaning into the car and left her unconscious in the street

She said she was hit twice by the driver who refused to help her open a gate after dropping her off in Elephant and Castle, South London.

Police said a community resolution was agreed upon by both parties. Uber said the driver 'strongly denied' the allegations.

Last year, a hairdresser told how she required stitches after an angry Uber driver alleged dragged her down the road.

Sabrina Benltaief, 20, of Bromley, South East London, claimed the motorist drove off while she was leaning into the car and left her unconscious in the street before she later woke up in hospital.

Uber condemned the actions but no action was taken by police.

The Met Police criticised Uber for failing to report crime due to fears for its reputation

This summer, head of the Metropolitan police's taxi and private hire unit Neil Billany said Uber seemed to be 'deciding what [crimes] to support', in a letter seen by a Sunday newspaper.

He spoke of a 'significant concern' that Uber was only reporting 'less serious matters' that would be 'less damaging to [its] reputation'.

He accused Uber of 'allowing situations to develop that clearly affect the safety and security of the public' by keeping drivers' crimes from police  including at least six sexual assaults on passengers.

'London is closed to innovative companies': Uber's furious response to the decision in full Tom Elvidge, the firm's general manager in London, said: '3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision. 'By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport. 'To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts. 'Drivers who use Uber are licensed by Transport for London and have been through the same enhanced DBS background checks as black cab drivers. Our pioneering technology has gone further to enhance safety with every trip tracked and recorded by GPS. 'We have always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents and have a dedicated team who work closely with the Metropolitan Police.' He added: 'Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.' Advertisement

Will the ban go elsewhere in the UK? City authorities in other parts of the country show little appetite in taking on the global firm

UK cities where Uber operates said they were watching the London situation but had no plans to follow TfL's example.

Uber operates in 20 locations in the UK and Ireland outside of the capital, according to its website.

The travel app service launched in London in July 2012. Other cities and regions followed, including Glasgow and Edinburgh in November 2015, Belfast the following month and Cardiff in April 2016.

Other locations include Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol, Leeds and Brighton.

A traditional London taxi and a private hire cab on the streets of London today. Uber cars may be off the streets of the capital as soon as mid-October if the company's planned appeal fails

Bristol City Council said it would 'keep a close eye on the outcome' of the dispute with TFL.

A spokesman added: 'While we note the reasons TfL have given for not renewing Uber's licence, both Uber and their drivers fully comply with all aspects of Bristol's licensing policy.

'On that basis, there is no evidence to review their current licence but we will continue to monitor the situation.'

In Manchester, the city council's executive member for neighbourhoods, Nigel Murphy, said its licensing system was 'robust' for all private hire vehicles and taxis.

He added: 'Uber Britannia - which is a separate company to Uber London - is licensed to operate in Manchester until 2021 as a private hire operator.

'As is the case with all licensees, we will continue to monitor their compliance with the conditions of their licence to operate while at the same time monitoring events as they unfold in the capital.'

Uber was refused the right to run a pilot operation with private cars in Ireland this year.

Although the ride-sharing company first appeared in the Republic about three years ago, it was told by regulators that its proposal for Limerick city would be illegal.

'If anyone suggests I'll have to speak to taxi drivers again I'll have a tantrum!' Black cab drivers are happy but most Londoners are appalled at the thought of living in the capital without Uber

The internet has reacted with a mixture of astonishment and hilarity to the shock news that Uber has been stripped of its licence to operate in London.

This morning Transport for London (TfL) announced the firm - which has between 30,000 and 40,000 drivers - would be barred from working in the city due to 'its approach to reporting criminal offences'.

Critics have blasted the move, claiming they will be unable to afford late-night lifts home and said it will put thousands of drivers out of work.

The decision got a mixed response from Londoners, with some welcoming the support for traditional black cabs, but others saying they will struggle to get around without the app

But those who back the decision say Uber failed to properly vet its employees and criticised their record on employment rights.

Uber has already said they will appeal the decision.

Within minutes of the news breaking, memes started appearing on Twitter with the hashtag #uber.

One user tweeted a picture of a black cab driver along with the caption: 'Uber are getting kicked out of London? Back to: 'End of the road? 25 mate.''

Another user posted a picture of The Only Way is Essex star Gemma Collins with a glass of wine with the words: 'Live scenes from the black cabbies conference.'

And one posted a picture of Monica and Rachel from Friends, along with the word, 'noooo'.

Actor James Franco, TV host Steve Harvey and even a South Park character all featured as the internet reacted to new Uber's London licence had been stripped

This was joined by a caption reading: 'How're we going to get places now!? If anyone suggests I'll have to speak to taxi drivers again I'll have a tantrum.'

Many jokes focussed on black cab drivers and the presumption they will now see a huge upswing in business now that their main competitor has been driven out of London.

One tweet showed a picture of Tom Cruise's character in Jerry Maguire saying the famous catchphrase 'show me the money'.

That was joined by a caption that said: 'Black cabbies right now at the news on #uber in London.'

One user posted a gif of a toddler on the floor having a tantrum alongside a crying face emoji.

Many jokes focussed on black cab drivers and the presumption they will now see a huge upswing in business now that their main competitor has been driven out of London

Uber said in a statement that the decision would 'show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies'. The firm's current licence expires on September 30.

The firm has faced a barrage of criticism in recent years over the safety of customers, working rights for drivers and opposition from black cab drivers.

But the internet's response was a lot more light-hearted.

Another tweet showed an animated GIF of a dancing man with the caption 'black cab drivers right now #London #Uber.'

One user tweeted, 'TFL: You can not operate without a licence. It's the law.'

That was juxtaposed with a picture of a South Park character embossed with the words, 'I am above the law!'

Another posted a picture of a confused looking James Franco accompanied with the words '*Phone notification* 'Uber has been banned in London.'

Scandal-dogged company's 'scrappy' CEO quit this summer Travis Kalanick in New York yesterday The loss of the licence comes after a tumultuous few months for Uber, including a string of scandals involving allegations of sexism and bullying at the San Francisco-based start-up that forced out former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick. Kalanick co-founded the company in 2009 after drooping out of UCLA to found a business, an online file-exchange service called Scour. He entered the Forbes top 400 riches Americans list in 2014 and now has an estimated fortune of around $6billion (4.5billion). The 41-year-old has been refered to as a 'scrappy entrepreneur' and he was forced to apologise to staff earlier this year after a video emerged of him in a expletive-ridden confrontation with an Uber driver who was complaining about pay. He resigned this summer following a series of costly scandals including revelations of sexual harassment in its offices, allegations of trade secrets theft and a federal investigation into efforts to mislead local government regulators. At the time of his resignation, he retained control of a majority of Uber's voting shares. Travis Kalanick, who helped found the company, resigned in July amid criticism Advertisement

End of the gig economy or an attempt to 'switch off the internet'? Parliament divided by unexpected decision

The decision not to issue Uber with a new licence to operate in London has split politicians with supporters of the move claiming it could be a 'game changer for the gig economy' but critics claiming the the capital was turning its back on 'free trade and innovation'.

Work and Pensions Committee chairman Frank Field said Uber must respond to the decision by 'resetting its business model' to offer a safe and reliable service with fairer conditions for drivers.

But Conservative MP Chris Philp said it was a 'shocking misjudgment' by London mayor Sadiq Khan to support the decision to effectively ban the minicab app.

Fellow Tory Tom Tugendhat claimed Mr Khan was a 'luddite' who wanted to 'switch off the internet' following the Transport for London (TfL) decision.

Labour MP Mr Field said: 'This could be a game changer for the gig economy.

'Uber must now respond to TfL's decision by totally resetting its business model.

'This new model will need to be built upon two foundations: a safe and reliable service for every passenger; and a living wage and fairer conditions for every driver who makes themselves available for work.'

London mayor Sadiq Khan came under fire from critics of the decision today

But Croydon South MP Mr Philp told the Press Association: 'I very strongly oppose what Sadiq Khan has done.

'There are issues Uber needs to address, but by outright banning them in London it's going to put 40,000 people out of work and 3.5 million Londoners are going to pay higher fares.

'The people most affected are going to be people on low incomes who can afford to take an Uber but can't afford to take a black cab.'

He added: 'Sadiq Khan is sending out a message that London is not interested in free markets and not interested in innovation and that is a terrible message for Sadiq Khan to be sending, particularly given everything else that is going on with Brexit

'It's a shocking misjudgment by the mayor of London.'

Senior MP Mr Tugendhat, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said Uber has problems but 'banning them is a vote against choice'.

Green Party joint leader and Brighton Pavilion MP Caroline Lucas welcomed TfL's decision and hoped that her city would follow London's example.

She said: 'We need to see more corporate responsibility in the gig economy.'

What other apps can Londoners use? Competitors pile into market Taxi app Uber will not be issued with a private hire operator licence, Transport for London said. The ride-hailing app has 21 days to appeal, but if it chooses not to, or is unsuccessful, what other options do Londoners have? GETT Gett is an app for booking black cabs. In fact, the company claims just under half of the black cabs in London are signed up to its service. As well as connecting customers with taxi rides, the company recently announced a partnership with Citymapper for a fixed-route taxi service across the city for just 3 per passenger. 'Gett Together' will offer four routes in London, which can be accessed through the CityMapper and Gett apps: Ladbroke Grove to Aldwych, Belsize Park to Berkeley Square, Clapham Junction to London Bridge and Highbury and Islington to Waterloo. Users can choose to be picked up and dropped off anywhere along these set routes. The taxis will run between 7.30-10.00am and 5-8pm MYTAXI Mytaxi, formerly Hailo, is another app for ordering black cabs. Users can pay by cash or through the app and it has many of the benefits of Uber, including in-app ordering, a live journey tracker and enabling the user to call their driver. The app even offered half-price fares on Friday in response to Uber's licence woes. TAXIFY Taxify is a newcomer to the London cab market, having launched in early September. The Estonian firm, which operates similarly to Uber with private cars, suspended services just days after its launch in London, so will need to overcome its own licensing hurdles to make the most of Uber's setback. Advertisement
A WWII veteran who was shot in the groin and was told he might never have children went on to have raise an enormous family.

At the age of 92, Eric Edwards is a father to two sets of twins, a grandfather of 10 and a great-grandfather to 23.

The war hero landed on Normandy beach 24 hours after D-day in 1944 fought across the continent before he was cornered by a German soldier.

Mr Edwards was left badly injured and taken as a prisoner of war.

Heroic WWII veteran Eric Edwards (centre) went on to raise a huge family despite army medics telling him he may never be able to have children

At the age of 92, Eric Edwards is a father to two sets of twins, a grandfather of 10 and a great-grandfather to 23. He is pictured holding his Legion d'Honneur medal

Much to a doctor's disbelief, he went on to bring up an enormous family.

Mr Edwards still has 10 pieces of shrapnel inside his body which he sustained during heavy shelling.

The great-grandfather, who was called up when he was 18, has now spoken of his war days after he was appointed to the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur.

It was when he was pushing back the Germans to Berlin that he was shot four times  one shred straight through his penis.

'It went in one side and out the other. I've still got little bits of shrapnel in my body,' Mr Edwards told the Nottingham Post.

A farmer and his wife had taken him in but he was soon captured by German troops.

Mr Edwards (circled) still has 10 pieces of shrapnel inside his body which he sustained during heavy shelling

Mr Edwards explains that the prisoner of war camp, also known as Fallingbostel, had been liberated by the same British soldiers who liberated to the nearby concentration camp

'When they were taking me off, I just saw this big crater and I jumped in it as a shell went off, and I got five more lumps of shrapnel in my body'

Lying badly injured in the field, Mr Edwards thought he would die.

But around an hour later, he was discovered by a group of German soldiers who took him to a house  they even offered him some bread.

He would be later transported to the prisoner of war camp Stalag 11b, close to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Mr Edwards explains that the camp, also known as Fallingbostel, had been liberated by the same British soldiers who liberated to the nearby concentration camp.

He was taken back to Nottingham where he received further medical treatment.

It was there that army informed me that he may never be able to have children because of the wound.

Following the war, Mr Edwards returned to his job at Players, but later ended up working for the Co-Op bakery for 40 years.

Mr Edwards' proud daughter, Wendy Newbold, 69, from Clifton, said: 'He always said to my mum that they wouldn't be able to have kids because of the injury, and mum always joked that she only married him because she thought they weren't going to be able to have kids!'
North Koreas Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations on Saturday that Trump had made 'our rockets' visit to the entire U.S. mainland 'inevitable'

He made the comments just as U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

It was a show of force the Pentagon said demonstrated the range of military options available to President Donald Trump who branded Kim Jong-Un a 'madman'.

Ri Yong Ho said the president should be more careful with his words: 'Due to his lacking of basic common knowledge and proper sentiment, he tried to insult the supreme dignity of my country by referring (to it as) a "rocket."

'By doing so, however, he committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.

'Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force.'

An US Air Force B-1B Lancer, assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, prepares to take off from Andersen AFB, Guam Saturday to fly a mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea

North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said the president is on a 'suicide mission'

'Unless true international justice is realized, the only valid philosophical principal is that force must be dealt with force.'

He continued: 'None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission.'

The foreign minister said Trump may not realize what he 'uttered from his mouth, but we will make sure that he bears consequences far beyond his words.'

On Friday, Trump said the North Korean dictator will be 'tested like never before'.

The next day the US sent bombers to show its range of military strength.

'This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Korea's) reckless behavior,' said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.

According to BBC, this is the first time a US jet or fighter has flown over the demilitarized territory this century.

North Korea in recent weeks detonated its sixth nuclear bomb and has test-fired intercontinental missiles - saying it needs to defend itself against hostility from the United States and its allies.

On Saturday seismic activity detected near the nuclear site was believed to be aftershocks from the test earlier this month.

The 3.4 magnitude tremor was detected in the Kilju area in the North Hamgyong province hours after Trump called Kim Jong-un a 'madman.'

The president, who the dictator called a 'dotard', published the angry tweet just hours after China warned the world to 'exercise restraint' in response Kim Jong-Un's hint that North Korea might detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

Yesterday, Trump said the North Korean dictator will be 'tested like never before'. U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancers flew a mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea

President Trump called Kim Jong-Un a 'madman' the day before bombers escorted by fighter jets flew near the county on Saturday

'The situation on the Korean Peninsula now is grave,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang had said in Beijing.

But Trump, apparently ignoring the advice, tweeted: 'Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!'

In response, the North Korean leader called the president a 'mentally deranged US dotard'. A dotard is an archaic Middle English term to describe a senile old person.
This sheepdog still works the fields tending to his flock - despite being blind.

Five-year-old Kit looks after 210 sheep and goats near the Basque Country town of Sodupe relying on just his nose and ears.

And the clever hound even beat his sighted rivals at a local competition, where he came fifth.

Five-year-old Kit looks after 210 sheep and goats near the Basque Country town of Sodupe relying on just his nose and ears

Sheepdogs often develop sight problems, but it is extremely rare for blind ones to continue working.

Mark Smithers, of Regal Bliss sheepdog breeders in Purley, said the animal would rely on its other senses being heightened to compensate for the lack of sight.

'Like humans, when you lose one sense others are heightened. Certainly any dog's sense of smell is massively more prone than ours,' he told MailOnline.

'The dog would be able to smell and hear where the sheep to determine where they are.

And the clever hound even beat his sighted rivals at a local competition, where he came fifth

'But it is quite surprising as the dog is obviously particularly reliant on its sight.'

Mr Smithers breeds Old English Sheepdogs, which he says are particularly prone to eye problems.

'Before we would breed any of ours and generally within the UK they would be eye-scored two or three times during their lifetimes,' he added.
A British woman was mauled to death by stray dogs after going missing in Greece.

Authorities found the 64-year-old tourist with marks suggesting she had been savaged by animals in the northern region of Rodopi today.

She had been missing since Thursday after returning from a visit to the Mesimvria archaeological site near Petrota Beach by foot.

The woman had been missing since Thursday after returning from a visit to the Mesimvria archaeological site by foot

The woman, who had been staying at a guest house in the nearby town of Maroneia, phoned her family in Britain to say she had been attacked by stray dogs.

They then called local authorities who launched a search, according to ERT Television.

The woman was last seen by swimmers at 4.30pm. Her body was found by police and firefighters at 10.45am local time.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: 'We are in contact with Greek Police in relation to a British woman missing in northern Greece since Thursday.

'We are also providing consular assistance to her family.'

There are more than a million stray dogs in Greece after many were abandoned by their owners following the financial crisis.
A longtime substitute teacher at Georgia Elementary and Middle School in Vermont was fired after she taught third graders a Nazi salute.

A local district official announced the news Thursday after the unidentified teacher was caught demonstrating the arm gesture to several young and impressionable students while in the cafeteria.

Superintendent of the middle school, Ned Kirsch, said in a written message to parents that 'the children were standing with their arm out in front of them and the teacher was modeling the position,' during the incident that took place this week.

Superintendent of the middle school, Ned Kirsch (pictured) wrote a written message to parents this week about an incident involving an unnamed teacher demonstrating a Nazi salute

The incident happened in the cafeteria room at Georgia Elementary and Middle School in Vermont

'She then raised her arm slightly and said, "And now we say, Heil Hitler,"' the written release said, according to a local newspaper, Seven Days.

Kirsch confirmed in a statement to Seven Days the veteran teacher would not be permitted to step foot on school grounds again.

'She was immediately relieved of her position as a long term sub and will not be returning to our school in any capacity,' Kirsch added.

The educator has since admitted to the bizarre incident, while Kirsch revealed it was 'not a pattern' for her.

The unnamed woman did not have a history of complaints filed against her.

Kirsch (pictured) confirmed in a statement to Seven Days that the veteran teacher will not be permitted to step foot on school grounds again

'[I] never had a report about her, nothing,' Kirsch told the newspaper.

'No one can quite understand what happened,' he added.

Following the incident, school officials walked through classrooms and spoke to students to ensure they felt 'safe' and also to share information regarding the teacher's leave.

'We are dedicated to ensuring a safe learning environment for our students and families... This incident was completely unacceptable and I apologize,' Kirsch wrote in the written statement to parents.

The school has a population of about 650 students and serves surrounding cities of Fairfax, Fletcher and Georgia, according to Franklin West Supervisory Union's website.
An English Defence League (EDL) rally in Chelmsford, Essex was abandoned after only a handful of supporters showed up to march.

The protest had been due to start at 1pm but when only around four people turned up the event was cancelled, leaving the far-right nationalists to 'scuttle home'.

The marchers were significantly outnumbered by counter-demonstrators who estimated the number of EDL supporters to be between two and six.

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An English Defence League (EDL) rally in Chelmsford, Essex was abandoned after only a handful of supporters showed up to march

A Facebook event for the protest had initially listed 17 people as going and a further 43 as 'interested' but the supporters failed to show up.

One steward for the event was seen carrying a large St George's flag emblazoned with the phrase 'RIP Lee Rigby' - referring to the solider murdered by two Islamist terrorists in Woolwich in 2013.

Another flag had the EDL slogan: 'Not racist, not violent, no longer silent.'

A Facebook event for the protest had initially listed 17 people as going and a further 43 as 'interested' but the supporters failed to show up

The group's Essex division claimed the rally was intended to highlight issues including grooming gangs, female genital mutilation and terror arrests.

Paul, an activist from Stand Up To Racism, told the Independent the group was a 'hated minority' that would not be tolerated in the city.

'Only two to four of them turned up - they scuttled of home, they wouldn't march because they were vastly outnumbered by the opposition.

The marchers were significantly outnumbered by counter-demonstrators who estimated the number of EDL supporters to be between two and six

'People from Chelmsford will not tolerate fascists in their midst trying to divide our communities.

'Our grandfathers and grandmothers fought against fascism and we won't allow it to happen again.'
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Pictures from the scene of a terrifying acid attack which rocked east London last night show a white substance thought to be the acid dripping from the doors of Stratford shopping centre.

Six people were injured when a gang of men sprayed a noxious liquid into crowds outside the centre and at a next-door tube station causing widespread panic.

Dramatic video and images shared on social media show police treating victims behind a cordon at Stratford station where a white substance can be seen on the floor.

Witnesses described the panic in the moments after the mass attack as injured people hurried to wash their faces and limbs with water.

One man who was splashed in the face with acid could be heard screaming: 'I can't see, I can't see'.

Police have ruled out terrorism and arrested one man on suspicion of GBH. Witnesses claimed the substance was thrown by 'young black teenage males' after an argument broke out.

Sprayed: A white substance thought to be the acid could be seen on the doors of the Stratford Centre after the attack

Six people were injured when a gang of men sprayed a noxious liquid into crowds outside the shopping centre and at a next door tube station causing widespread panic

A police cordon in Stratford tube station with what appears to be acid on the floor after victims were treated at the scene

Dramatic pictures from the scene shared on social media appeared to show police attending to victims at Stratford station

Officers have arrested a man after a gang sprayed acid into a crowd near Stratford Shopping Centre. Pictured: Police cars at the scene

Emergency services at Stratford Centre in east London after the attack at 8pm tonight. Cordons were set up around the areas where the acid was sprayed

Fire crews gathered outside the Stratford centre next to an area which had been cordoned off after the shocking attack

A policeman stands guard outside the Stratford centre after the acid attack at 8pm on Saturday which injured six

A map showing where the attack happened at the Stratford Centre and Stratford tube station. There were no reports of injuries at the nearby Westfield shopping centre

A Burger King assistant manager who gave his name as Hossen, 28, said he saw a victim and his friend run into the restaurant bathroom 'to wash acid off his face'.

One guy had been hit in the face, he kept shouting I can't see, I can't see, I can't see

He said: 'There were cuts around his eyes and he was trying to chuck water into them.'

Inside the Burger King toilets water could be seen all over the floor along with toilet tissue and medical gloves.

Witness Zak Abdi, who had been shopping with friends, told Mirror Online: 'I was about to leave the station and a few guys were scattering, and there were guys on the floor in agony, with their friends all around them.'

ACID ATTACKS ARE ON THE RISE WITH TWO EVERY DAY The number of acid attacks taking place in Britain is soaring, with school children as young as 13 using corrosive substances as weapons. Crime statistics show that there was more than 450 acid attacks in London alone last year, with the number of attacks in the capital more than doubling since 2014. But experts say the real figure is much higher, with the true scale of the problem hidden because people are afraid to come forward. It is believed criminal gang members are carrying acid in drinks bottles because they are less likely to get caught than if they carry a knife or gun. Schoolchildren as young as 13 have also told how 'squirting' rivals with acid is easier than trying to stab or fight them. Advertisement

He said he saw a group of men running away from the police after the acid 'hit a group of men who looked like they were en route to a club'.

He heard one man shouting 'I can't see, I can't see, I can't see' after being splashed in the face.

Mr Abdi added: 'Everyone was just jumping out of the way, trying to escape the whole thing. It was a scary moment for everyone.'

Imrana begum, 18, was working in Primark in Westfield when the attack happened.

She told MailOnline: 'It is a huge shock, even though more of these attacks are happening.

'I was folding clothes and suddenly everyone was like be careful, be careful there's been a huge acid attack. Apparently people could hear screaming.'

Paul Gibson, assistant director of operations at London Ambulance Service, said: 'We have sent a number of resources to the scene including paramedics in cars, ambulance crews, an incident response officer and our Hazardous Area Response Team.

'So far, we have treated at least five patients at the scene and taken three patients to hospital. We remain on scene.'

The Metropolitan Police said: 'Police were called just before 8pm to the area around Stratford Shopping Centre to reports of a group of males spraying what is believed to be a noxious substance.

'London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade have attended.

'A number of people have been reported injured at different locations - believed to be six people. We await further details.

Securing the perimeter: Police set up a cordon around the areas where the acid was sprayed by the gang on Saturday night

Police said: 'One male has been arrested on suspicion of GBH. Officers remain on scene'. Pictured: Police cars at the scene

Witnesses described the panic in the moments after the mass attack. Pictured: Stratford centre in the wake of the assault

Paul Gibson, assistant director of operations at London Ambulance Service, said: 'We have sent a number of resources to the scene'

Left: The Stratford shopping centre from above. Right: Police treat victims outside the shopping centre by a bus stop

Fire crews were called to the scene to treat victims as part of the rapid emergency response in the aftermath of the attack

On duty: Police guard the area outside the shopping centre alongside bags of evidence placed on the street

Thugs who carry acid face four years in jail In the wake of a spate of acid attacks in recent years, anyone caught carrying acid will now be charged with carrying an offensive weapon - the same charge used to convict people unlawfully carrying a knife or a gun. Thugs carrying acid face four years in jail while those who throw it could get life behind bars. The Crown Prosecution Service this summer unveiled plans to charge offenders caught with dangerous materials with possession of an offensive weapon, which carries a four-year prison term. A spokesman said they hoped it would act as a deterrent after the Government and CPS noticed a worrying trend in attacks. He said: 'From our side there is certainly a trend of these attacks becoming more prevalent and hopefully by publishing this information it is a useful exercise in show how the Crown will be dealing with offenders.' This means judges and magistrates will be able to deliver tougher sentences when attackers end up in court. Advertisement

'One male has been arrested on suspicion of GBH. Officers remain on scene. A cordon is in place. Enquiries continue. We can confirm that injuries are not life threatening or life changing.'

There were no reports of injuries from the Westfield shopping centre which is 200 yards from the Stratford shopping centre.

Nate Higgins, who saw the emergency services arriving at the scene, told MailOnline: 'There were a lot of police, a lot of fire engines and a lot of ambulances.

'As I was leaving there were still more and more coming down the road. I was in the shopping centre when it happened and as I was coming out I saw them all arriving.

'There were at least 10 different vehicles and it didn't seem to be a settled thing.'

Another witness Harry Green, 19, got off the tube in the moments after the incident. He told MailOnline he witnessed the 'chaotic aftermath'.

'There were police officers with dogs everywhere, the whole station was at a standstill,' she said.

It was worrying as it was obvious something had just happened. It was just chaos.'

'As we stepped off the tube there were dozens of people giving statements to officers looking distressed as though something had just happened.

'We didn't see anyone injured but there were lots of ambulances on the scene but it seems they were taken away pretty promptly.

'We witnessed the aftermath, the emergency services seemed to have responded very quickly. There was a lot of confusion around, a lot of people didn't know what had happened or why they were stuck in the station.'

By 11pm emergency services had left the scene but the shopping centre remained guarded as customary on a Saturday night.

A security guard told MailOnline the shopping centre doors - visibly stained by what is believed to be dangerous acid - would remain behind a cordon until police and fire service could return to take a sample.

Another witness Harry Green, 19, got off the tube in the moments after the incident. He told MailOnline he witnessed the 'chaotic aftermath'.

The attack happened outside the Stratford centre, one of the largest shopping centres in London at 8pm on Saturday night
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A Lufthansa passenger jet that was hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant group's campaign against West German authorities has returned home.

The Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the German city of Friedrichshafen, where it will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum.

The parts arrived aboard two freight aircraft from Brazil. The aircraft ended up in a Brazilian carrier's fleet and had been sitting decommissioned at the country's Fortaleza Airport for years.

The Boeing 737-200, which had been hijacked in October 1977 by members of the far-left Red Army Faction returned to Germany on board a massive Antonov An-124 transport jet after spending a decade rotting in Brazil

The aircraft, named Landshut was greeted by its former first officer Jurgen Vietor, right, former flight attendant Gabrielle von Lutzau, left, and former passenger Diana Muell, centre after it returned to Friedrichshafen earlier this afternoon

Mr Vietor's commander in October 1977 Jurgen Schumann was murdered in the southern Yemen city of Aden during one of seven fuel stops from Germany to the final destination in Mogadishu, Somalia, where police raided the aircraft

Jurgen Shumann, pictured here being held at gun point on board the Landshut on October 15, 1977 in Dubai, was later killed

A Palestinian group demanding the release of members of West Germany's Red Army Faction hijacked a Mallorca-to-Frankfurt flight in October 1977. The hijacking marked the peak of the 'German Autumn' of leftist violence.

German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, Somalia, on October 18, 1977. They killed three of the four hijackers and rescued all 86 passengers.

The jet, named Landshut, was returned to Germany on board a massive Russian Antonov AN-124 transport aircraft.

Forty years ago next month, German anti-terror commandos stormed a Lufthansa jet in Somalia, shot its Palestinian hijackers and freed 90 hostages, a climax in a bloody era of far-left militancy.

The 1977 Mogadishu raid became a symbol of the 'German Autumn' when the state was at war with the 'urban guerrillas' of the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, and their international allies.

On Saturday, the old Boeing 737 'Landshut', having quietly rusted away in Brazil for almost a decade, finally came home, destined to serve as a memorial to that turbulent era.

Broken up into its fuselage and wings, it was flown aboard two giant Russian transport planes from Fortaleza via Cape Verde to the southern German city of Friedrichshafen, where it was greeted by large crowds.

Aribert Martin, who was part of the GSG-9 special forces unit which stormed the aircraft said: 'It's great that the Landshut is back. It would have been strange to let it fade from memory.'

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, whose ministry bought the gutted plane for 20,000, has called it 'a living symbol of a free society that refuses to give in to fear and terror'.

German special forces raided the aircraft in Mogadishu, Somalia in a raid which freed all the remaining hostages

The aircraft returned to service with Lufthansa following the anti-terror operation, before the jet was sold on

The aircraft, pictured, will be returned to its former glory and placed in a museum inside the Dornier aerospace museum

The Red Army Faction - who were linked to a host of Palestinian terrorist organisations were responsible for the hijacking

In the years since that dramatic night when gunshots blasted through its cabin, the aircraft kept flying - first for Lufthansa, then for French, Indonesian and finally a Brazilian airline, which in 2008 retired it on the jungle's edge.

Now the plane, weathered by tropical sun and rain, will find a new home in Germany's Dornier aerospace museum near Lake Constance, set to be serve as an exhibition space on Germany's era of homegrown terrorism.

'It didn't deserve to die in the jungle,' said former air hostess Gabriele von Lutzau, whose courageous and compassionate role during the ordeal earned her the nickname 'the Angel of Mogadishu'.

The RAF emerged in 1970 out of the radical fringe of the Vietnam war protest movement and took up arms, in solidarity with revolutionaries such as Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, against what it saw as US capitalist imperialism and a German state then still riddled with former Nazis.

After training with leftist Palestinian militants, it launched a spate of shootings, bombings and kidnappings targeting politicians, police, bankers, business leaders and US troops.

The terrorists wanted the release of 11 RAF members who had been detained by German authorities including Andreas Baader

By 1977, its hard-core founding members, including Andreas Baader, were long since behind bars, and their comrades sought to free them from their cells.

On October 13, four militants of the RAF-allied Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Mallorca-Frankfurt flight LH 181, demanding the release of 11 RAF members.

During a five-day odyssey which included seven refuelling stops in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the cell's leader, who called himself Captain Martyr Mahmud, shot dead the pilot, Jurgen Schumann.

Then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in even though RAF militants were also holding hostage the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer.

The Lufthansa jet landed in Mogadishu on October 17, where Mahmud issued an ultimatum, threatening to set off plastic explosives and dousing passengers in alcohol to accelerate the fire.

After nightfall, 30 German commandos landed, the plane's lights turned off. Operation 'Feuerzauber' ('magic fire') was the first mission of the new GSG 9 unit, founded after the security debacle of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Jewish athletes.

While German officials played for time, the special unit approached the plane's rear blind spot from behind sand dunes, then climbed blackened ladders to its doors and escape hatches.

Mahmud was on the cockpit radio when he was blinded by flash-bang grenades outside.

The commandos stormed in, one yelling in German 'Heads down, where are the pigs!?', and riddled all four hijackers with bullets, killing three and badly wounding a fourth.

'Those German words were the best thing I heard during the entire hijacking,' the former co-pilot, Juergen Vietor, said Saturday.

The 82 passengers, four remaining crew and the commandos all survived, and officials phoned the message 'the job's done' to Bonn.

Hours later in Germany, prison guards reported finding the bodies of three RAF leaders. Their deaths were declared suicides.

In a revenge act, and convinced their comrades had been murdered in jail, RAF militants shot dead Schleyer, after five weeks in captivity.

By then the group's terror had claimed over 30 victims, but more waves of killings followed.

The RAF only disbanded in 1998, and, although it had ironically helped to vastly expand German police powers, many murders were never solved.

Today, most ex-militants are dead or living quietly as ex-convicts. Three remain on the run, suspected of robbing money transport vans with grenade launchers to finance their retirement.
Rachel Myrick was with her son, boyfriend and other family members when she was bit by a venomous snake outside of LongHorn Steakhouse restaurant

A Virginia woman faces three months of recovery time after she bitten by a snake outside of a LongHorn Steakhouse restaurant.

Rachel Myrick was entering the chain eatery located at 10012 Southpoint Pkwy in Fredericksburg with her son, boyfriend and other family members the evening of September 12 when she felt a sudden sting on her left foot.

Myrick, a realtor in the city, told local newspaper The Free Lance-Star she initially believed the painful tingle was caused by a bee.

'I had my fingers under my foot and that's when I felt something moving,' Myrick explained of the incident.

When she looked down, Myrick found what her boyfriend described to be an 8-inch-long copperhead snake hooked on her sandal. In a panic, she shook it off.

She recalled: 'I freaked out,' and hollered out to her family, 'I got bit! I got bit!'

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The incident happened in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the 10012 Southpoint Pkwy location

Myrick, a realtor in the city, told The Free Lance-Star she initially believed the painful tingle from the snake (pictured) was caused by a bee

When an emergency crew arrived to the scene, they confirmed the snake was the venomous copperhead

Myrick was bitten twice on her toes and once on the side of her foot and suffered swelling on her feet, hip and left thigh

Her partner, Michael Clem, initially identified the snake as a copperhead and told the newspaper he worked around snakes and other reptiles for several years.

'I've bred and raised reptiles for 15 years,' Clem said. 'There was no question what it was.'

When an emergency crew arrived to the scene, they confirmed the snake was the venomous copperhead.

According to livescience.com, copperhead venom is 'relatively mild, and their bites are rarely fatal for humans.'

Myrick recalled to The Free Lance-Star: 'I freaked out,' and hollered out to her family, 'I got bit! I got bit!'

A crying Myrick was transported that evening to the nearby Mary Washington Hospital

Myrick now walks on crutches and was told by doctors she had months of healing left

A crying Myrick was transported that evening to the nearby Mary Washington Hospital where she was treated for the poisonous bite.

She was bitten twice on her toes and once on the side of her foot and suffered swelling on her feet, hip and left thigh.

During her treatment, Myrick was given 'antivenin intravenously' and 'morphine for pain, (as well as) Benadryl for itching and an antinausea medication,' according to The Free Lance-Star.

Doctors ordered her to stay off her feet for several months and use crutches for assistance.

'It's painful just to ride in the car. There's very little that I can do. I can't work. I can't take my kids anywhere,' Myrick said.

'Even phone calls are very difficult because I'm medicated. I can chat, but I can't negotiate a contract on someone's behalf.

'They say that your life can change in a moment... and they're absolutely correct,' Myrick added.
Family have decided to speak exclusively of their ordeal to The Mail On Sunday

The family have decided to speak exclusively of their ordeal to The Mail On Sunday through their younger son Spencer Jones (pictured)

With lunch over, Penny and Ron Jones had settled in the living room when the phone call came.

'This is the armed police. We are outside your house,' a man's voice said. Penny glanced up at the window to see a police officer in full riot gear staring back at her.

'Stand up from your chair and walk straight out of the door with your hands up,' said the caller.

The 71-year-old foster mother and her 89-year-old husband were told to leave everything behind, even the handbag containing Penny's medication.

Terrified, confused and utterly bewildered, they walked out of the house and into a wall of officers who were standing with guns at the ready. Behind them, although the couple did not know at the time, was the bomb squad.

It was only when they were in a police car speeding away that they learned 18-year-old Ahmed Hassan  the polite Iraqi refugee they had lovingly taken into their home 18 months ago  had been arrested on suspicion of planting the Parsons Green bucket bomb.

Now the family have decided to speak exclusively of their ordeal to The Mail On Sunday through their younger son Spencer.

Penny and Ron Jones picking up MBEs when the pair were honoured by the Queen for fostering hundreds of children

An artist's impression from inside court of Hassan Ahmed Being at Westminster Magistates' court. Penny and Ron son, Spencer Jones said: 'Mum will feel betrayal and probably failure over this'

In an emotional interview, the 45-year-old says his parents' lives have been turned upside down. 'He got on with my parents and Mum always spoke highly of him,' he says. 'Mum will feel betrayal and probably failure over this.

'How could you not? She'll wear a portion of that blame herself, as though it was her own child.'

On Friday, her former foster child appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court charged with attempted murder and an explosives offence.

A crude homemade device  packed with shrapnel, screws and knives and left on a packed rush-hour Tube train on September 15  had been designed to cause slaughter on a grand scale.

Thankfully, it had failed to fully detonate but the explosion still created a fireball that injured 30 people.

In a further shock for Ron and Penny, the court heard the teenager allegedly built the device in their home in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, after buying ingredients online to make the explosive TATP, known as 'Mother of Satan'.

A still from CCTV footage which appears to show the Parsons Green bomb suspect carrying a Lidl bag on the morning of the attack

Ahmed Hassan, 18, is the first suspect to be charged in connection with the Parsons Green Tube terrorist attack (pictured)

Having fostered nearly 300 children  in which time they have been threatened with knives and stolen from  the couple are no strangers to difficulty.

But the thought that they may have opened their home to someone alleged to be a terrorist bomber has left them feeling devastated, betrayed and, in their own words, 'shell-shocked'.

Now Spencer, the younger of their two biological sons, reveals that his parents are trying to comprehend how the studious teenager they had treated like a son could end up being accused of attempting mass murder.

Indeed, just months ago they had enjoyed a holiday together in the West Country, hiring a cottage and visiting Monkey World in Dorset and the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Hassan had been a 'nice, respectful boy' who had cooked and shopped for the couple. He had just graduated from a college close to their home and had been nominated for a student award.

A keen photographer, he had enjoyed taking pictures of wildlife and was often at London Zoo. They had spent Christmas with him.

'Mum and Dad's house is a place of love and tolerance,' says Spencer, a roadside mechanic and father of four.

'They're Christian people but they won't throw it down your throat. There would have been no issue about his religion. He would have been allowed to have his prayer mat and pray, go to mosque.'

The couple had reported Hassan missing on finding his bedroom empty on the morning after the bombing.

'Mum raised the flag with the police and the social services contact that this lad had disappeared overnight,' says Spencer, speaking in his home in Blackpool.

Armed police on Cavendish Road, in Sunbury-on-Thames after raiding the house of foster parents Penny and Ron Jones

The hugely experienced foster parents were not overly concerned by Hassan's disappearance. Perhaps he was staying with a friend and had forgotten to call. They knew it was not unusual for foster children to run away.

'The first time they had any inclination there was an issue was when they received the phonecall from the armed police officer standing outside the house,' says Spencer.

He had been alerted to the news by an ex-girlfriend in Sunbury who sent him on Facebook a picture of his parents' three-bedroom home surrounded by police. Frantic, he rang his mother who, clearly shaken, was with police. 'All she said was, 'This bomber, they think it's him. I can't really talk yet.' '

Ron and Penny have not yet been allowed back into their home or to collect any of their possessions. They have been told it could be weeks, or even months, while forensic officers complete their search.

The thought, as it is alleged, that Hassan may have concocted the bomb in their home, in which Penny has lived all her life, is chilling.

Ron and Penny have not yet been allowed back into their home or to collect any of their possessions. Pictured: The bomber suspect carrying a bag through Sunbury on September 11

In the week since the attack, six people have been picked up by police across Britain

'He had been left alone overnight and during the day when they've been out,' says Spencer. 'He's had access to most of the house. The only room he's never had access to is their bedroom because they've got a lock on it.'

It is difficult for Spencer to reconcile the huge efforts of his parents to help others with the trauma they are now going through.

He says: 'It's hard to believe that two people who have done so much have to suffer the indignity of having their lives dissected.

'They've taken Mum's iPad, laptop and home computer. There are strangers going through every aspect of your life, you know, through your knicker drawer. A woman's most private place.

'My parents have worked tirelessly for the benefit of other people's children who are in need.

'I've seen Mum refuse to move when threatened with knives at the front door by parents who've come to snatch back their children.

'I've seen her stand in front of a bulldozer when it was about to knock down a building she wanted to be made into a youth centre.

Sunbury residents and media gather near to the police cordon as forensic and anti-terror experts erect a police tent in the Penny and Ron Jones' garden

Penny and Ron Jones' property in Surrey, where police believe the suspect made the bomb while in foster care there

'She's a strong woman, the matriarch of the family. But I've also seen her, after she's processed things, cry and be visibly shaken.

'She's still processing this. She just keeps telling me she's shell-shocked. She hasn't been sleeping.But this won't break Mum. She's too strong and practical.'

Allowing himself a brief moment of humour, Spencer says the forensic team will have their 'work cut out' dusting round the couple's ornaments and photographs.

'The walls are covered with pictures of different children they've had,' he says. 'They have to decide which ones to rotate.

'They've got a cabinet and shelves full of trinkets that foster children have bought them over the years. They're silly things like the 'Greatest Mum' mug or tiny teddy bears. It's stuff that reminds them why they do it.'

Penny, a former prison guard, and Ron, a retired warehouseman, started fostering before either Spencer or his brother, Leonard, were born. The couple put themselves forward after a TV appeal.

They have cared for 268 disadvantaged children and in 2010 were awarded MBEs at Buckingham Palace. Penny even continued to foster during treatment for womb cancer.

Syrian refugee Yahya Faroukh (pictured left and right), 21, has been released without charge overnight

They did retire from fostering but after six months were persuaded to resume to cope with the influx of refugee children.

As well as Hassan, they cared for Yahyah Farroukh, 21, who was also arrested in connection with the bombing. He has since been released without charge, something Penny is relieved about.

'She told me if he had been proved guilty she would have felt really devastated because he is such a lovely young man,' Spencer says.

He adds: 'When they started taking in refugees, I did have concerns about cultural differences.'

Asked if the authorities should do more to vet refugees before placing them with families, he says: 'How can you do background checks when there's no documentation? They're coming from war-torn countries.'

After their horrendous ordeal, Spencer says 'for his own sanity' he now hopes his parents will retire from fostering.

'I would like Mum and Dad to say, 'We've done our bit. Let someone else pick up the torch.' But who? After something like this, it will put people off.

'Knowing what Mum and Dad are like, I wouldn't be surprised if they take a respite then start again.'

Finally, welling up with tears, he says: 'I want people to know they are loving, caring people. They don't deserve what's happened to them. Their only crime has been seeing a child and wanting to love them, wanting to try and treat them as a human being.'
A professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology has recently come under fire after claiming Adolf Hitler's face will one day appear on currency and he will be recognized as a 'great European leader.'

NJIT lecturer Jason Reza Jorjani also predicted both migrants and US citizens of Muslim decent will be either deported or put into 'concentration camps.'

In an opinion piece published by The New York Times on Tuesday, Patrik Hermansson, 25, filmed Jorjani while he was undercover exploring the world of the extreme right.

New Jersey Institute of Technology professor Jason Reza Jorjani (pictured) was filmed Espousing extreme right wing views during secret recording

During a two-hour meeting with Hermansson at a New York City pub last fall, Jorjani laid out his vision for the future.

'We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great,' The New Jersey educator said.

'And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own category  no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader.'

Jorjani goes on to say that he envisions a new 'parallel structure' in the America order that will revolutionize the country, eventually leading to the expulsion or detention of the 'majority of the migrants' in the US 'including citizens.'

The professor adds: 'Who are of Muslim decent, generally speaking, that's how it's gonna end. It's gonna end with concentration camps and explosions and war... At the cost of a few hundred million people.'

Patrik Hermansson (pictured), 25, filmed Jorjani while he was undercover exploring the world of the extreme right.

NJIT called the statements 'repugnant' and said they have ordered an investigation into Jorjani's comments

The New Jersey Institute of Technology quickly distanced itself from Jorjani after the statements were made public, saying the professor's views do not reflect that of the university's.

'The statements made by Mr. Jorjani in a video recently published by 'The New York Times' are repugnant and antithetical to our institution's core values.'

'We presently are conducting a review of this matter and will provide additional information as soon as that review is complete. NJIT is a university that embraces diversity and sees it as a source of strength,' the statement added.

Hermansson posed as a college student interested in writing a thesis on the suppression of right-wing speech on behalf of 'Hope not Hate,' a British anti-racist organization.

Following the publication of New York Times opinion piece, Jorjani condemned the video on his own website, claiming he was being misrepresented in the media.

Jorjani also appears to once have a relationship with 'alt-right' leader Richard Spencer through an investment venture (Pictured: Spencer's Twitter account, December 2016)

Jorjani, an Iranian American, states that the footage in the article was 'deceptively edited to make it appear as if I am advocating genocidal extreme right-wing policies.'

'My nightmarish prediction of a future that would follow from Western policymakers' failure to address the Muslim migrant crisis in the present has been taken out of context and made to appear as if it is advocacy for "concentration camps and expulsions and war at the cost of a few hundred million people,"' he adds.

Jorjani is the founder of the AltRight Corporation, an organization that seeks to connect American and European extreme right-wing movements.

He has since left the organization, according to NJ.com.

Jorjani also appears to once have once had a business relationship with 'Alt-Right' leader Richard Spencer, but it remains unclear where the present nature of their relationship stands after a recent investment venture involving the two floundered.
The Cabinet split over Brexit erupted into a bitter all-out war last night after allies of Boris Johnson went on the attack against Philip Hammond.

In an unprecedented clash between the great offices of state, the Foreign Secretarys supporters claimed that Theresa Mays Florence speech had thwarted the Chancellors bid to lock Britain into a five-year transition period after Brexit.

Mr Hammonds camp reacted swiftly and furiously, calling it total bulls***. Mr Johnsons allies then claimed that his bombshell article last weekend had stopped Mr Hammond from forcing the Prime Minister to adopt a soft Brexit.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond have split amid a major clash over the direction of Brexit

The Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary were forced to sit next to each other while Prime Minister Theresa May delivered her Brexit speech to an audience in Florence on Friday

PM Theresa May had brokered a peace deal between her chancellor and foreign secretary which has been shattered according to insiders in both men's camps

But Mr Hammonds ally exploded: I f****** hate having to deal with Boris on this level. What a shame he feels the need to do this. He is surely not suggesting that his article altered policy which had been worked up for months? The Chancellor has always been in favour of a two- to three-year transition.

The extraordinary row has shattered the fragile truce brokered by Mrs May before her speech in Italy on Friday  and makes a mockery of Mr Johnsons claim that the Cabinet were like a nest of singing birds in their unity.

In other developments following a tumultuous week at Westminster:

Mr Hammond was said to have been so livid over an attack by a former aide to Mrs May that an official was dispatched to Downing Street to discover whether it had been sanctioned by No 10;

Leading Tory backbencher Anna Soubry accused Mr Johnson of complacency and hubris and said his leadership bid lay shredded;

Insiders claimed Mr Johnson was set up to fail by Mrs May when she made him Foreign Secretary;

A Mail on Sunday poll revealed more than half of voters did not trust Mrs May to deliver a good Brexit deal following her Florence speech;

Plotters urged Mr Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove to threaten a joint resignation at last Thursdays Cabinet meeting if Mrs May announced plans for a soft Brexit;

An ally of Brexit Secretary David Davis claimed that up to 50 Tory MPs want Mrs May to step down. Other rebels put the figure at just under 30.

At Thursdays Cabinet meeting, Ministers agreed that Mrs May should propose a two-year transition after Brexit from March 2019, and make a generous offer to pay a divorce bill of at least 20 billion.

The Foreign Secretarys 4,000-word article last weekend had overshadowed the run-up to Mrs Mays speech and triggered fresh speculation about his leadership ambitions. His allies suggested his intervention reduced the transition period and stopped Mrs May adopting the so-called Norway model, in which the UK would stick to EU rules for access to the single market  claims that the Chancellors camp rubbished.

Mr Johnson, pictured, claimed credit for reducing the transition period from five to two years

But the Johnson ally said: Boris managed to get the transition period down massively.

The Treasury originally wanted up to five years, and Hammond was pushing for four years recently. Before his article we were heading towards a Norway model  now we end up leaving completely.

During the Cabinet meeting, Mr Hammond was seen rolling his eyes at remarks by Brexit supporters.

Relations between Mr Hammond and Mrs May have also been cool. The main flashpoint has been her former chief of staff Nick Timothy  dubbed Rasputin because of the beard he used to sport  who Mr Hammond believed was trying to influence Mrs May in favour of a hard Brexit.

The pair clashed repeatedly before Timothy resigned over the Election disaster, but tensions flared up again after Timothy publicly accused the Chancellor of being on manoeuvres and failing to ever mention the positives of leaving the EU.

The Treasury believes Timothy still exerts an influence over Mrs May, and even contributed to the Florence speech. A source said: Philip cannot believe that Timothy is still out there attacking him. An official tried to discover what No 10 had known about it, and was told it was nothing to do with anyone there.

A new opinion poll said Mrs May, pictured, is only trusted by 34 per cent to deliver Brexit

Mr Hammonds hand has also been strengthened by this weekends cut in the UKs credit rating by Moodys, which it attributed to the economic uncertainty of Brexit  a development he has warned of.

Last night, Remain-supporting Tory MP Anna Soubry, an ally of Mr Hammond, joined the attack on Mr Johnson, telling The Mail on Sunday: Mrs May put Boris Johnson back in his box by making it abundantly clear that she is the person in the driving seat. Beside her is the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, whose wise advice on Brexit has clearly been heeded. After the Florence speech, Boriss leadership bid lies like last weeks newspaper article: shredded in Larry the No 10 cats litter tray.

Ms Soubry added that like Icarus, Boriss flight as Foreign Secretary has been marred by both complacency and hubris. His inevitable crash from the highest office will no doubt be cushioned by a lucrative newspaper column.

But former Brexit Minister David Jones warned Mrs May that he and other Leave-supporting MPs will maintain a relentless watch to make sure there is no backsliding.

He added: Two years is quite long enough. She rightly ruled out Hammonds preference for a three-year stint or longer in the EU departure lounge.

Mr Timothy denies contributing to Mrs Mays Florence speech and says that No 10 did not know in advance that he was going to criticise the Chancellor. A Treasury spokesman said she was not getting into the issue of his role.

Explosive feud that has spiralled into a political battle to the death

By GLEN OWEN

The explosive feud between Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond is starting to look like a fight to the political death.

Fridays speech in Florence was the culmination of three months work by Theresa Mays Downing Street team, guided by one overwhelming imperative  how to tread a credible line between the soft Brexit supporters and hard Brexiteers of the party without alienating either wing.

Hammond and Johnson have become the personification of this schism: the cool, technocrat Remainer versus the Brexit barnstormer.

More than half of voters believe a split in Theresa May's cabinet will harm the chance of the PM being in a position to secure a good Brexit deal from the European Union

One third of voters believe the Prime Minister will be able to deliver a good deal for Brexit

The Chancellor has been a longstanding and vocal advocate in the Cabinet of a transitional period of two to three years, during which businesses would retain access to the single market, to limit the economic disruption.

Boris  once he had made up his mind which side to back in the referendum  has increasingly assumed leadership of the hard Brexiteers. Friends say it is because he feels bound by the promises he made during the referendum, including returning 350 million a week to the NHS from Brussels. Critics, meanwhile, say it is because he is a political opportunist playing to the predominantly Eurosceptic party members who will elect the next leader.

Either way, Mr Johnson  and the court which surrounds him  have become determined to paint him as the pivotal figure in shaping Mays vision for Brexit in Florence. Feeding this determination is a personal sense of frustration which seems absent in Mr Hammond.

Since being made Foreign Secretary by Mrs May last year, in the aftermath of his referendum victory, Mr Johnson has seen the crucial Brexit negotiations hived off from his department and handed to Brexit Secretary David Davis, while the critical post-Brexit global trade negotiations are being run by Liam Fox.

Mr Johnson  who grew up wanting to become world king  has been reduced to the air miles king, jetting to far-flung outposts of the globe while the key decisions are being made back in Whitehall.

This, according to well-placed sources, was always the intention: to dilute his power base and allow Mrs May to govern without his distracting interventions.

The trigger moment for Mr Johnson was discovering that Ministers had met in London to thrash out a key draft of the Florence speech while he was combing through the debris of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean.

He fired off his 4,000 word Brexit opus to the Telegraph and now  despite claiming with a straight face that the Cabinet was a nest of singing birds  he seems determined to take centre stage in the Brexit process.

It has inevitably led to conflict with Mr Hammond: earlier this summer, the Chancellor heaped ridicule on the Foreign Secretarys famous claim that he was pro cake and pro-eating it by saying, in reference to Brexit: A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece, adding: I try and discourage talk of cake among my colleagues.

In return, Mr Johnsons friends say he sees Mr Hammond as George Osborne Mark Two  hence the swipe in his article at Mr Osbornes notorious project fear warnings about the damaging effects of Brexit, saying archly that so far Mr Hammond had not followed suit.

As one ally of the Chancellor puts it: Philip has become frustrated over Boriss apparent inability to engage on the details of Brexit, the problems and how to overcome them. He has tried to talk to him on this but Boris always seems to respond with just the headlines.

He always resorts to bluster rather than specifics. Its this that Philip has found so annoying.

No one was fooled by the two mens choreographed side-by-side departure from No 10 after last weeks Cabinet meeting, with one Tory MP calling it a preposterous pretence.

Soon one of them is likely to be leaving the door for good.

CONSERVATIVE MP ANNA SOUBRY: PM MAY HAS PUT DISRUPTIVE BORIS BACK IN HIS BOX Anna Soubry, pictured, believes the PM has put Boris 'back in his box' In her speech in Florence, Theresa May bought the UK much-needed time by hitting the Brexit pause button. But the Prime Minister did much more  she made it clear that she is in the driving seat. Next to her is her Chancellor Philip Hammond, whose wise advice on Brexit has been heeded. Thankfully, Boris Johnson and the other disruptive children are now where they belong  strapped into kiddy seats behind the PM. The Foreign Secretary studied the Classics so he will be familiar with the story of Icarus, the talented son who ignored his fathers advice and flew too close to the sun on wings of wax. Like Icarus, Boriss decisions have been marred by hubris and complacency. His leadership bid  seen by many as having been launched with last weeks 4,000-word newspaper article on Brexit  lies in tatters. His inevitable fall will no doubt be cushioned by a lucrative newspaper column and a warm welcome from rebellious Tory backbenchers. In Italy last week  and having put Boris firmly back in his box  Mrs May used the opportunity to redefine the terms of Brexit. The British economy is now at the core of plans to deliver a status quo transition period, something Ive long advocated and which should provide us with the stability and certainty British businesses desperately need. As Brexit unfolds, I fear Leave voters will realise they have been conned. Quitting the EU will not be easy; theres no 350 million-a-week extra for the NHS and we will still have to incorporate EU red tape into British law. But unless the British people change their minds, the country is now en route to Brexit with a decent road map. Of course, more details still need to be thrashed out. But Mrs Mays sensible transition not only delivers for our economy in the short term, it gives us and the EU more time to work out a deal. The Prime Ministers strategy is already working. The hard Brexiteers guns have fallen silent and a truce between warring Tories has emerged. Now Mrs May must refresh her Government. There is real talent in the 2015 intake that needs bringing on. Middle-ranking Ministers need a shake-up; some must make way for the next generation. Ms Soubry said Mrs May's strategy is already working with a truce between factions Mrs Mays Cabinet also needs an overhaul. Out must go the only average Ministers  even though they have served her well with their loyalty  and in must come the political heavyweights. Margaret Thatcher surrounded herself with talent from all quarters  and Mrs May must place ability higher on her list of Cabinet attributes than mediocre personal loyalty. There are some fine brains and sharp operators who deserve promotion and others of equal talent who should return to Government. Most people in the street are sick and tired of talk of Brexit. All they want is for us to tackle serious issues on the domestic front. Our great public services need sustainable funding and modernising to meet our changing society. Weve started to deliver better education and training. Now we need to up our game. We dont just want to build new homes; we must create better communities that value people, their health and their well-being as well as our environment. The list is lengthy. And while Theresa May is at it, the Conservative Party itself needs revolutionary reform to create a well-oiled, thoroughly modern political machine to take on Jeremy Corbyns socialism, as well as making the case for compassionate one-nation Conservatism. Advertisement
The Queens former physician feared Princess Diana was suffering from an obscure mental disorder that risked dynastic disaster, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The choice of words suggests Sir John Batten, who treated Diana in the early years of her marriage, believed the dangerous condition was genetic and might be passed to her children.

Another Royal Household doctor and two senior medical figures are said to have shared his startling concerns.

Their views are detailed in an extraordinary letter written in February 1983 by prominent psychotherapist Dr Alan McGlashan, who was brought in to treat the Princess after she distanced herself from the Royal medics.

Sir John Batten feared Diana was suffering from an obscure mental disorder that risked 'dynastic disaster'. Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Prince William are pictured while on tour in New Zealand in 1983

The explosive contents of his correspondence have never been revealed until today, nor has the story of how the group of Royal physicians tried, and failed, to help the Princess.

Dr McGlashan writes that Sir John, then head of the Queens Medical Household, and his colleagues were plainly scared by her symptoms and overawed by the possibilities of dynastic disaster.

Diana told Dr McGlashan that the team dosed her with anti-depressants and tried behavioural therapy. Yet none of the men were ultimately able to help with her kaleidoscope of problems, which included disturbing recurrent dreams about giant sea monsters.

Alan McGlashan was a prominent psychiatrist and eclectic psychoanalyst, who continued to practise in his Sloane Street office until just days before his death in his 99th year

At the time, only a few months after Prince Williams birth, 21-year-old Diana was also suffering from the eating disorder bulimia and was anxious, depressed, volatile and suffering low self-esteem  although in psychiatric parlance, she was high-functioning, capable of putting on a great show in public.

Alongside Sir John, who died in 2013, she was being treated by Michael Pare, the head of psychiatry at St Bartholomews Hospital, London; Michael Linnett, Apothecary to the Household of the Prince and Princess of Wales; and a behaviourist, referred to in the letter only as Mitchell.

According to the letter, Dr Pare took an unnecessarily gloomy and alarmist view of the case .

Over the years, as more was revealed about Dianas state of mind, Charles was frequently cast as cold and unsympathetic during this period, but the letter suggests he was deeply concerned.

Following the efforts of Sir John and the others, Charles turned in despair to his mentor, South African-born writer-philosopher Laurens Van der Post. After the author saw Diana at Balmoral, he urged her to consult his close friend and contemporary, Dr McGlashan.

In all, Diana and McGlashan met eight times and the psychotherapists assessment was vastly different to that of the Royal doctors, concluding: She is a normal girl whose troubles were emotional, not pathological. The news must have come as a huge relief to Charles.

The extraordinary letter from Dr Alan McGlashan To Charles' friend and mentor, Van der Post

According to the letter, Dr Pare took an unnecessarily gloomy and alarmist view of the case 

The Prince subsequently became a client of Dr McGlashan himself, spending 14 years in therapy with him. Charles still keeps a bust of the psychiatrist in Highgrove.

The unique insight into Dianas treatment came in a letter Dr McGlashan, then 84, wrote back to Van Der Post, much as a consultant would communicate to a referring GP. However many would consider the letter to be a clear breach of patient confidentiality.

In it, Dr McGlashan uses the code invented by Van der Post to refer to Charles. He called him The Young Man or TYM, which he pronounced Tim.

Dr McGlashan writes to Van der Post: [Charles] telephoned me on 24 January and asked me to see D the following day, which I did.

She is a very unhappy girl, facing situations on various fronts which she finds difficult to deal with, though making a courageous effort to do so.

Never far from her troubled thoughts was Camilla Parker Bowles, of whom she complained frequently to her husband. She also found the Royal court oppressive.

A year earlier, after a row with Charles, she had thrown herself down the main staircase at Sandringham, landing at the feet of the Queen, who was ashen-pale and shaking with fear.

Dr McGlashan says: She has been surrounded by an army of doctors... and has been dosed with anti-depressants & sleeping drugs, and Behaviourist techniques.

The Prince and Princess of Wales with Prince William and his godparents (seated) ex-King Constantine of Greece, (standing, left to right) Princess Alexandra, Lord Romsey, Lady Hussey, Sir Laurens Van Der Post and the Duchess of Westminster

He adds: I came to the conclusion that she is a normal girl whose troubles were emotional, not pathological. Her doctors had been treating her as a patient with an obscure and dangerous illness which baffled them... Her symptoms plainly scared them... She complained to me that they all treated her as if I were made of porcelain.

It was a difficult and delicate situation for me, coming into such an overloaded medical scene, but this was greatly simplified by D herself, who has gently but firmly distanced herself from them all, having made what I think is a very good contact with me.

Diana met McGlashan twice a week for therapy sessions at Kensington Palace. It appears from the letter  unearthed during research for the authorised biography of Van der Post  that McGlashan was in touch with at least some of Dianas doctors during this period.

He says: I must say these doctors have behaved very nicely (at least outwardly) to me over what could have been an awkward situation.

Diana met McGlashan twice a week for therapy sessions at Kensington Palace. It appears from the letter that McGlashan was in touch with at least some of Dianas doctors during this period

Pare came to see me last Sunday night and was very ready  and I think a little relieved  to retire from active participation. He is a very nice and unassuming chap... I am keeping in friendly touch with Linnett, who after all is their GP and is to be in Australia with them in March.

I am seeing D regularly twice a week, as far as her engagements permit. It is quite a responsibility to take over from all these Big Shots, but we get on fine and I have good hopes of being able to help her. My only fear is that she may not fully grasp that analysis is a slow process and that she may be expecting quick results and become disappointed.

As you know, better than most, analysis has to be a strictly one-to-one approach; I wish you were in London just now to give C your support while I am treating her. I hope he realises the necessity for this.

In the event, Dr McGlashans fears proved well-founded. Diana did indeed tire of their sessions, most likely because she didnt see any significant improvement. From then on she began to embrace a series of alternative therapies.

To Diana, Dr McGlashan must have seemed from another age. He had been in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, flying many perilous missions, including two aerial encounters with the Red Baron, the German ace Baron von Richthofen.

In all, Diana and McGlashan met eight times and the psychotherapists assessment was vastly different to that of the Royal doctors

For his heroic wartime feats he was awarded Frances Croix de Guerre with Palms. His love of flying would continue  he took up gliding and ballooning.

After the war he attended Clare College, Cambridge, then, after a stint as a newspaper drama critic, served as a doctor in Surrey until 1937, switching two years later to psychiatry, which he continued to practise for another 58 years, until just days before his death at the age of 98.

Regarded as a serious philosopher, McGlashan exchanged ideas with some of the leading thinkers of his day, among them Arthur Koestler and J. B. Priestley.

His best-known book was The Savage and Beautiful Country: The Secret Life Of The Mind. In it he argues the need to integrate separate parts of our being. Van der Post said of it: He utters profound and complicated thought in a simple and accessible way, equipped with the sensitivity and sensibilities natural only to the artist.

McGlashan was particularly taken by the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and he travelled to Zurich for consultations with him on several occasions in the late 1930s.

Prince William with Diana, Princess of Wales and Prince Harry on the day he joined Eton in September 1995

In a bombshell 1995 interview, Diana told the BBCs Martin Bashir how her tumultuous marriage to and subsequent divorce from Prince Charles had affected her already fragile self-confidence and mental health. I didnt like myself, I was ashamed because I couldnt cope with the pressures, she said.

I had bulimia for a number of years, and thats like a secret disease... Its a repetitive pattern which is very destructive to yourself.

It was a symptom of what was going on in my marriage. I was crying out for help, but giving the wrong signals, and people were using my bulimia as a coat on a hanger. They decided that was the problem: Diana was unstable.

Today, Prince William and Prince Harry continue her efforts to destigmatise mental health issues.

In last months Channel 4 documentary Wasting Away: The Truth About Anorexia, William discussed the importance of speaking openly about eating disorders and other issues of mental health with former ITN anchorman Mark Austin, whose daughter Maddy has conquered anorexia.

When asked by Austin whether hes proud of his mother for speaking out about her struggles, William said: Absolutely. These are illnesses. Mental health needs to be taken as seriously as physical health.
A group of homophobic high school students chanted 'Make America straight again' and threw candy and dirt at classmates during a homecoming parade in Kansas, it was reported on Saturday.

A parent of one member of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Olathe Northwest High School in Olathe, Kansas says that her daughter came home saddened on Thursday and that a number of teens were crying as a result of the taunting, according to KMBC-TV.

'What was supposed to be fun and joyous and celebratory and inclusive, turned out to be ugly,' said the mother, who identified herself as Missy.

She said that her daughter had been anticipating the event for days, even decorating the house with LGBT rainbow flags in anticipation, WDAF-TV reported.

Though most of the parade was without incident, things turned ugly when a small group of students began to heckle.

A group of homophobic high school students chanted 'Make America straight again' and threw candy and dirt at LGBT classmates during a homecoming parade in Kansas

Missy (above), a parent of one member of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Olathe Northwest High School in Olathe, Kansas, says that her daughter came home saddened on Thursday and that a number of teens were crying as a result of the taunting

When her daughter came home, she told Missy: 'Mom, it was awful. They were saying awful, ugly things and calling us names.'

'They were chanting, "Make America straight again". She was very sad and deflated, and she said several members of the group were crying,' Missy said.

'Batches of people started saying hateful things phrases like: "Kill yourself", "You're not welcome here", "We don't want you",' Missy said, 'and she called it the F-word.'

The student members of the alliance took part in the parade which passed through neighboring elementary and middle schools.

But as they neared their own high school, that's when the other students in attendance began shouting slurs.

One student marching with the Gay-Straight Alliance was said to be so shaken by the jeering that she did not go to school the next day.

In an email to parents, a school official said that the incident wasn't witnessed by teachers or staff

Students said that some of the classmates who made offensive comments were wearing red 'Make America Great Again' hats  the same hats originally made famous by President Donald Trump's campaign.

Thursday was 'USA Day.' Each day of the week leading up to homecoming had a separate theme that encourages children to show up wearing proper attire.

Missy said she still cannot believe that such an incident could happen in her hometown.

'I'm embarrassed because this is where I grew up,' she said.

'This isn't who we are, come on. Where is this coming from? Why? Why do we have to hate each other? I don't get it.'

'We didn't see it, if we'd seen it, we would've stopped it immediately,' Assistant Superintendent Erin Dugan (above) said

After the incident, the school district informed parents that it would investigate the matter.

In an email to parents, a school official said that the incident wasn't witnessed by teachers or staff.

'We didn't see it, if we'd seen it, we would've stopped it immediately,' Assistant Superintendent Erin Dugan said.

'Kids do a nice job of doing things when the adults aren't watching. They know our expectations.

'Kindness and compassion and acceptance, we need to send a strong message to our students that this isn't acceptable,' said Dugan.
The explosive feud between Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond is starting to look like a fight to the political death.

Fridays speech in Florence was the culmination of three months work by Theresa Mays Downing Street team, guided by one overwhelming imperative  how to tread a credible line between the soft Brexit supporters and hard Brexiteers of the party without alienating either wing.

Hammond and Johnson have become the personification of this schism: the cool, technocrat Remainer versus the Brexit barnstormer.

Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond have split amid a major clash over the direction of Brexit

More than half of voters believe a split in Theresa May's cabinet will harm the chance of the PM being in a position to secure a good Brexit deal from the European Union

One third of voters believe the Prime Minister will be able to deliver a good deal for Brexit

The Chancellor has been a longstanding and vocal advocate in the Cabinet of a transitional period of two to three years, during which businesses would retain access to the single market, to limit the economic disruption.

Boris  once he had made up his mind which side to back in the referendum  has increasingly assumed leadership of the hard Brexiteers. Friends say it is because he feels bound by the promises he made during the referendum, including returning 350 million a week to the NHS from Brussels. Critics, meanwhile, say it is because he is a political opportunist playing to the predominantly Eurosceptic party members who will elect the next leader.

Either way, Mr Johnson  and the court which surrounds him  have become determined to paint him as the pivotal figure in shaping Mays vision for Brexit in Florence. Feeding this determination is a personal sense of frustration which seems absent in Mr Hammond.

Since being made Foreign Secretary by Mrs May last year, in the aftermath of his referendum victory, Mr Johnson has seen the crucial Brexit negotiations hived off from his department and handed to Brexit Secretary David Davis, while the critical post-Brexit global trade negotiations are being run by Liam Fox.

Mr Johnson  who grew up wanting to become world king  has been reduced to the air miles king, jetting to far-flung outposts of the globe while the key decisions are being made back in Whitehall.

The Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary were forced to sit next to each other while Prime Minister Theresa May delivered her Brexit speech to an audience in Florence on Friday

PM Theresa May had brokered a peace deal between her chancellor and foreign secretary which has been shattered according to insiders in both men's camps

This, according to well-placed sources, was always the intention: to dilute his power base and allow Mrs May to govern without his distracting interventions.

The trigger moment for Mr Johnson was discovering that Ministers had met in London to thrash out a key draft of the Florence speech while he was combing through the debris of Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean.

He fired off his 4,000 word Brexit opus to the Telegraph and now  despite claiming with a straight face that the Cabinet was a nest of singing birds  he seems determined to take centre stage in the Brexit process.

It has inevitably led to conflict with Mr Hammond: earlier this summer, the Chancellor heaped ridicule on the Foreign Secretarys famous claim that he was pro cake and pro-eating it by saying, in reference to Brexit: A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece, adding: I try and discourage talk of cake among my colleagues.

Mr Johnson, pictured, claimed credit for reducing the transition period from five to two years

A new opinion poll said Mrs May, pictured, is only trusted by 34 per cent to deliver Brexit

In return, Mr Johnsons friends say he sees Mr Hammond as George Osborne Mark Two  hence the swipe in his article at Mr Osbornes notorious project fear warnings about the damaging effects of Brexit, saying archly that so far Mr Hammond had not followed suit.

As one ally of the Chancellor puts it: Philip has become frustrated over Boriss apparent inability to engage on the details of Brexit, the problems and how to overcome them. He has tried to talk to him on this but Boris always seems to respond with just the headlines.

He always resorts to bluster rather than specifics. Its this that Philip has found so annoying.

No one was fooled by the two mens choreographed side-by-side departure from No 10 after last weeks Cabinet meeting, with one Tory MP calling it a preposterous pretence.

Soon one of them is likely to be leaving the door for good.
The number of Tory MPs who want the Prime Minister to resign now runs into several dozen, according to rebel leaders who have been taking the temperature on the backbenches since Theresa Mays General Election disaster.

One MP, who has drawn up a list of those who definitely want Mrs May to step down, said the number was more than 25 but fewer than 30.

He said about half want her to go now, half want her to promise to quit immediately after Brexit.

Sources close to David Davis claim he would stand in the event of a leadership contest

A leadership contest would be called if 48 Tory MPs write to the chair of the 1922 committee

A source claimed Boris Johnson is not paranoid because the PM is out to get him

The activity is being monitored closely in No 10 because a leadership contest would be triggered if a minimum of 48 MPs sent letters to Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee, calling for one.

Another MP, a close ally of David Davis, even claimed that the number was close to 50. His allies activities suggest that Davis would stand in a leadership contest if the party had to call one.

The rebel whips said that the numbers had not gone up since Mrs Mays Brexit speech in Florence on Friday because she had been careful not to offend either wing of the party, but they were monitoring her conference speech closely.

The issue of the leadership was thrown back into the spotlight last week when Boris Johnson published his Brexit blueprint  the culmination of more than a year of frustration over feeling marginalised. He finally snapped when a key meeting about the Florence speech was held while he was abroad.

Now a senior Government source has said that the Foreign Secretary is not simply paranoid: Mrs May really was out to get him  to reduce the threat he posed to her authority.

The source said: The PM made him Foreign Secretary in order to screw him up. It was designed to expose his limitations  and it has.

He was cut off at the knees after Brexit and trade deals were removed from the department and given to Davis and Liam Fox, leaving him to fly around the world pointlessly.

No one can turn down an offer to become Foreign Secretary, but he has wilted in the spotlight, as have his leadership ambitions.

No 10 compounded Mr Johnsons difficulties by appointing MP Sir Alan Duncan  a long-term Boris critic  as his deputy: Mr Johnsons allies believe he is No 10s spy in the camp.

Mr Johnson was supported last week in his attempt to steer Mrs May towards a harder Brexit by Environment Secretary Michael Gove. They had become alarmed after being tipped off by civil servants that she planned to announce in her speech in Florence that Britain would be tied permanently to EU rules in return for access to the single market.

Mutual friends urged them to jointly resign during Thursdays Cabinet meeting if Mrs May confirmed this.

In the end, the Cabinet meeting passed without drama.
Following publication of an article of headlined The terror law chief and the 'cover-up' that could explode UK's biggest bomb trial, published on 5th March, Max Hill complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that the Mail on Sunday breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors Code of Practice. The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required The Mail on Sunday to publish this adjudication.

The complainant had been a barrister for the prosecution in the trial of the 21/7 attempted London bombers. The article under complaint explained that the evidence of an expert witness, who had conducted forensic tests on the defendants devices, had been critical to the prosecutions case. A sub headline of the article claimed that the complainant knew that this expert had been discredited. It went onto explain that serious issues had been raised about the evidence, which documents showed the complainant had known about at the time of the trial.

The article also claimed that these issues, which had been raised before the Court of Appeal by one of the defendants, had previously been unreported because the court had imposed a gagging order. It claimed that we can report them now as the gagging order has been lifted.

The complainant said that there was no evidence to support the inaccurate claim that he knew the witness was discredited at the time of the trial. He said that the Court of Appeal, in considering this issue, had clearly decided that there was no evidence to support the claim that the prosecution had conducted the trial notwithstanding ongoing criticism of the expert. The complainant also denied that the Court of Appeal judgment had been subject to any gagging order, preventing publication, and said it was wrong to suggest that an embargo had prevented publication.

The newspaper said that the complainant was aware of serious concerns about the experts evidence, and denied that it was misleading to claim that the complainant knew that the expert had been discredited. The newspaper said that the Court of Appeal had issued an order on 10 February 2015 banning the reporting of Asiedus appeal while it was ongoing. This gagging order was not lifted until the judgment was issued on 30 April 2015. It said that this had been 8 days before a General Election, which is why nothing had been reported on the matter until the article under complaint, when the complainants appointment as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation gave the issue a new topicality.

IPSOs Complaints Committee considered that it was not misleading for the newspaper to report that the complainant knew that serious issues had been raised about the experts evidence. However, in the subheadline of the print article, and the headline of the online version of the article, the newspaper claimed that the complainant knew that the expert had been discredited. This was a serious allegation in light of the other claims in the article that the complainant had failed to make the disclosures to the defendants legal team which would have been required in such circumstances. To claim that he knew the expert had been discredited, went significantly further than reporting that he had been aware of concerns about the first report. The complainants knowledge of these concerns was not sufficient to justify the claim regarding the complainants understanding of the experts suitability to act and whether it was appropriate for the prosecution to rely on his evidence at the trial. These headlines were not supported by the text of the article, and represented a failure to take care not to publish misleading information, in breach of Clause 1 (i). The newspaper had not offered to correct these significantly misleading claims, in breach of Clause 1 (ii).

The Committee also decided that the article misleadingly implied that the gagging order on the Court of Appeal hearing had only recently been lifted, allowing coverage of the allegations against the prosecution. The gagging order had in fact been lifted around a year and 10 months previously. The Committee took the view that this a significantly misleading statement in the context of an article which also reported that the complainant had been accused of a cover-up. This represented a further failure to take care over the accuracy of the article, in breach of Clause 1 (i), and a further misleading statement, which the newspaper had not offered to correct, in breach of Clause 1 (ii).
Jeremy Corbyns rapturous rock star receptions from young voters at Glastonbury and public rallies are making him go soft on Brexit, it was claimed last night.

Brexiteer Labour MPs voiced fears that their previously Eurosceptic leader has had his head turned by the heros welcome he receives at mass meetings.

There were also dire warnings that Mr Corbyn was now so detached from Labours traditional English working-class base that he cannot win a General Election  even with the support of legions of new younger voters.

Labour MPs fear leader Jeremy Corbyn, pictured here at a pre-conference rally is alienating the party's traditional working class support by appearing at events such as Glastonbury

The Labour leader, pictured, has been warned he could possibly lose the next general election

Labour brexiteers fear the support from young remainers, pictured, will lead to electoral disaster as this will force away the party's traditional support base

Ex- Labour Cabinet Minister John Denham, who writes in The Mail on Sunday below, said: Labour looks close to power, but without these lost voters its hard to see how Corbyn can actually win.

The rows threatened to sour celebrations among activists arriving this weekend for their first annual conference since Mr Corbyns surprise General Election showing.

The gathering in Brighton opened with Labour riding high in the polls and the party faithful jubilant that Mr Corbyn had denied Theresa May a Commons majority in June.

But last night, the party was riven by splits over Europe, with Labour insiders privately accusing Mr Corbyn of ditching his previously hardline backing for Brexit to woo the partys new-found supporters among the youth vote. They claim Mr Corbyn was so astonished by the adulation he received at the Glastonbury festival two weeks after the Election that he turned to advisers and asked: How do we keep hold of this? Its extraordinary.

The Labour leader was greeted by placard-waving teenagers with Jezza written on their faces in red lipstick and chants of Oh Jeremy Corbyn. One party insider said: He was told all these kids chanting Oh Jeremy Corbyn were basically Remainers and that if he wanted to keep them, hed have to tone down his anti-EU rhetoric. And he has. Problem is, the Labour heartlands across the North voted Brexit and theyll feel betrayed.

Corbyn, pictured, has been urged to launch a 'progressive patriotic' programme to appeal to the party's traditional core support

The insider pointed to the fact that Labour now had a revised party policy of keeping the UK inside the single market for a transitional period, even though Mr Corbyn previously vowed that the UK must quit it because it was inextricably linked to EU membership.

Allies of Mr Corbyn hit back last night, saying: Jeremy has been entirely consistent in leading the fight for a jobs-first Brexit to benefit as many people as possible.

He is determined to deliver a Brexit for the many, not the few.

To add to the concerns of Labour Eurosceptics, an alliance of Corbyn supporters and union leaders could combine at the conference to force through an emergency motion calling on him to maintain and extend free movement from the EU.

At the conference, Mr Denham will launch a progressive, patriotic English Labour Network to reconnect with the partys traditional, core voters.

Last night, Labour MP and Brexit supporter Graham Stringer agreed with Mr Denhams analysis, saying: If we dont regain those white working-class votes, we cannot win.

In her conference speech today, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott will accuse the Tories of having weaponised immigration and pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.
The forested hills of Austria to the west, the plains of Hungary to the south east and, below, the red roofs of the capital of Slovakia reaching down to the snaking river.

The panorama from Bratislava castle, high on a foothill of the Small Carpathian Mountains, was tremendous.

That moment, with three countries within my gaze, summed up the beauty of a Danube river cruise.

The Danube, pictured, flows nearly 1,800 miles from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, through ten countries and four capital cities  Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade

A sleek, modern riverboat brings the sights to you. Capital cities, historic towns, villages, rolling vineyards and cliff-top castles  I enjoyed them all in a week sailing from Budapest to Passau in Germany.

The Danube flows nearly 1,800 miles from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, through ten countries and four capital cities  Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. On its banks there are the marks of thousands of years of history, millions if you include rock formations such as the dramatic Iron Gates Gorges, wending for 80 miles and forming part of the border between Serbia and Romania.

With such a variety of cultures and landscapes, it is little wonder there are scores of river vessels offering itineraries of a few days to three weeks.

Sailing from Budapest at dusk was a magical sight, heightening the spirit of anticipation on the top deck as we embarked on our adventure upstream, a fitting departure after two days ticking off the must-see sights of Heroes Square, Matthias Church and Central Market Hall packed with local produce and packets of paprika.

And there was enough time for an adventure in the exotic, Art Nouveau Gellert baths, joining the locals in their favourite relaxation: wallowing in the thermal waters and having a chat.

Vienna's Hofburg Palace is one of the city's top attractions

The following morning, we woke up in Bratislava moored only a couple of minutes walk from the Old Town, filled with baroque palaces and modern sculptures. Up at the castle, our guide said that although Brati- slava became one of Europes newest capitals in 1993 when Slovakia gained independence, the citys roots are ancient and it had been the headquarters of the Hungarian monarchy for 300 years until 1830.

It is only 55 miles downstream from Bratislava to Vienna, a journey that would take an hour by car, but after a nights voyage, the new day dawned in yet another country for us.

With two days in the Austrian capital, we had plenty of time for organised sightseeing, independent exploration and a concert of Mozart and Strauss.

Give it a whirl: Vienna's huge Ferris wheel gives visitors incredible views

On our first morning we saw the grand buildings on the Ringstrasse and took a guided tour of the National Library in the Hofburg Palace complex. It was an easy walk from our mooring place to Prater park where I took a ride on the Riesenrad Ferris wheel, famous as a location in The Third Man film.

A lazy afternoon later I would catch sight of groups of cyclists pedalling the 19 miles along the riverside path to Melk, where we had an early evening visit to the glorious Baroque Abbey.

As I stood surveying the sparkling river from the abbeys terraces, I reflected on the journey and made myself a promise that I would return.
She's the New Zealand-born stunner who shot to fame on the runway walking for iconic lingerie brand Victoria's Secret.

And on Friday, Georgia Fowler left little to the imagination in a VERY racy ensemble at the Vogue Italia 'The New Beginning' Party for Milan Fashion Week.

The 25-year-old turned heads as she exposed her nipples in a risque sheer dress.

Daring to bare! Braless Victoria's Secret model Georgia Fowler exposes nipples and underwear in VERY risque sheer dress at Milan Fashion Week on Friday

Daring to bare all, the model showed off her svelte form in the see-through design.

Posing up a storm on the red carpet, Georgia not only displayed her bare chest, but also her black underwear.

Her taut stomach was highlighted in the translucent strapless frock, as the wiring sculptured around her slim frame.

Smoking! The model showed off her svelte form in all its glory in the see-through design, displaying her bare chest and her black underwear

She also elongated her exposed pins with a pair of black heels, which had material ties around the ankle.

Pouting seductively to photographers, Georgia wore red eyeshadow and a pink pout.

Her brunette locks were slicked back in a wet-look style with slight curls placed onto the end of her tresses.

Stunning! Pouting seductively to photographers, Georgia wore red eyeshadow and a pink pout

Making sure not to draw attention away from the gown, the fashionista kept her look uncluttered with no accessories.

Earlier in the evening, she took to Instagram Stories to pose in front of a mirror with a friend.

Georgia is set to walk down the runway for a second time at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show later this year.
He's the Australian musician who has evolved from teen heartthrob to serious musician over the last couple of years.

But to the dismay of many fans, Cody Simpson has taken a page out of pop megastar Taylor Swift's publicity books by deleting everything from his Instagram page.

On Friday, the 20-year-old erased all his past posts and uploaded what appears to be an album cover for a new project.

Say what? Cody Simpson has taken a page out of pop megastar Taylor Swift's publicity tricks and deleted everything from his Instagram page

In the photo appears topless and like he had come out of the surf, with his wet hair stylishly messed.

The Los Angeles-based crooner kept his caption short and informative of his new project: 'Cody Simpson & The Tide 9.29.17.'

He also tagged his band's Instagram account, which so far has only one post of the group - drummer, Adrian Cota and bassist, Reef Boii.

New project: He appears topless and like he had come out of the surf, with his wet hair stylishly messed. The Los Angeles-based crooner kept his caption short and informative of his new project: 'Cody Simpson & The Tide 9.29.17'

Change of direction: He also tagged his band's Instagram account, which so far has only one post of the group - drummer, Adrian Cota (left) and bassist, Reef Boii (right)

Many of Cody's fans were excited at his new project, two years on since his last album Free.

It also seems Cody's almost-empty social media account appears to have upset some of his fans, one wrote: 'Why did you delete everything?'

'You're not Taylor Swift... stop with the deleted and s**t lmao,' a fan said.

Another wrote: 'Can we bring back all the posts back bc (sic)? Was that necessary?'

New aesthetic: Many of Cody's fans were excited at his new project, two years on since his last album Free

'I'm ready, fully prepared for anything': It also seems Cody's almost-empty social media account appears to have upset some of his fans, one wrote: 'Why did you delete everything?'

However, many commented that they were excited and 'shook' to see the Queensland-born star's new work was coming out.

'That's a gorgeous shot. I'm ready, fully prepared for anything you've got to release. 100% with you.'

'I'm shook for next week,' someone else added.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Cody Simpson's management for comment.
It's the Saturday night television show which has seen the demise of many of its contestants' relationships.

But newsreader Charlotte Hawkins has revealed that she is adamant she won't fall victim to the Strictly curse - but admitted that 'its still weird for your husband to be watching you dance intimately with another man.'

The 42-year-old Good Morning Britain presenter also admitted that she plans on wearing short skirts to 'distract everybody' from her dancing.

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Challenge: Newsreader Charlotte Hawkins has revealed that she is adamant she won't fall victim to the Strictly curse - but admitted that 'its still weird for your husband to be watching you dance intimately with another man'

Speaking to The Sun on Friday, Charlotte brushed off any concerns about the curse, saying that she had spoken to her husband Mark Herbert about any worries.

'Were really happily married, so its not an issue... I wanted to check he was going to be happy with that and OK Im dancing in such an intense way.

'Id find it really hard if it were the other way around. But then Id know theyre just dancing and I have trust in our relationship.'

'We're really happily married': Speaking to The Sun on Friday, Charlotte brushed off any concerns about the curse, saying that she had spoken to her husband Mark Herbert about any worries

The Strictly curse was started in the first season the show aired in 2004 between Natasha Kaplinsky and Brendan Cole. Brendan is Charlotte's professional partner this season.

Natasha and Brendan were both in relationships at the time  Natasha with Mike Barnard and Brendan with fellow Strictly professional Camilla Dallerup.

However, the two had an affair while on the show and later got together after leaving their partners for each other.

Grand plans: Joking about her plan to wear shorter skirts to draw attention to her fabulous pins rather than her dancing, Charlotte jested that her co-presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid had been teasing her about her costumes

There is of course no suggestion that Charlotte and Bredan are anything more than friends.

Joking about her plan to wear shorter skirts to draw attention to her fabulous pins rather than her dancing, Charlotte jested that her co-presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid had been teasing her about her costumes.

'Susanna and Piers are already teasing me about how short the dresses will get. Thank goodness, with all the dancing, Im gonna be the fittest Ive ever been!'

Charlotte has been married to Mark Herbert since 2008 and the pair have one child together, two-year-old Ella Rose.
She's the in-demand Australian model who has walked for the likes of Tom Ford, Chanel and Victoria's Secret.

And on Friday, Shanina Shaik turned heads when she attended the Milan Fashion Week New Beginning party for Vogue Italia.

The 26-year-old put on a racy display at the high-profile event, in a sheer, floral-themed frock.

Sheer stunner: Shanina Shaik turned heads when she attended the Milan Fashion Week New Beginning party for Vogue Italia.

The unusual outfit flaunted Shanina's washboard stomach and well-sculpted pins to good effect.

Featuring a heavy floral embellishment, the floor-length dress a high, ruffled Victorian-style collar and a similar motif at the cuffs.

Going braless for the event, Shanina also wore a pair of high-waisted beige knickers.

Racy: The 26-year-old put on a racy display at the high-profile event, in a sheer, floral-themed frock.

The Melbourne-born beauty kept her long, raven locks back for the occasion, preferring to tie it back in a tight bun.

Shanina also opted to go sans bling, preferring to let her unusual outfit do the talking.

She wore a light rose shade for her lip, a manicured eyebrow and a dusting of blush to accentuate her already prominent cheekbones.

In bloom: Featuring a heavy floral embellishment, the floor-length dress a high, ruffled Victorian-style collar and a similar motif at the cuffs.

Having recently walked at New York fashion week, Shanina told the Daily Telegraph, that she was sick during the event, with fiance DJ Ruckus on hand to source her favourite remedy - Greek lemon soup.

'It kills everything and I really wanted that, so my fiance went to a Greek restaurant and they made the soup for me,' she said.

'My mum used to make it for me and I kind of wished she was here making it.'
She's the former Miss World Australia bombshell known for her impeccable style.

And on Friday, Erin Holland led the pack of stars and social media influencers who attended the exclusive preview of Sephora's new Bondi Junction store.

Showcasing her flawless complexion, the 28-year-old looked fresh as a daisy as she her way around the special viewing inspecting various makeup products.

Grand opening: On Friday, Erin Holland led the pack of stars and social media influencers who attended the exclusive preview of Sephora's new Bondi Junction store

Wearing a Talulah Lamaison frock that retails for $280, Erin had her brunette locks styled into loose waves.

She also wore a subtle makeup look, with a light application of foundation and a flirty set of faux lashes.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia at the exclusive party, Erin gushed: 'I had an absolutely incredible day.'

Best day out! After spending the morning enjoying a nice brunch and yoga session hosted by the brand, the stunner told Daily Mail Australia she had had the best day

Stunners! Wearing an off-the-shoulder mini dress, the 28-year-old bombshell was joined by other influencers (L-R) Elle Ferguson, Tash Sefton, Ally-May Hayward, Steffanie Roberts, Sara Donaldson, Caroline Groth and Sammy Robinson

Best day! 'Beautifully thought out day of relaxing and enjoying the best parts of Bondi that was culminated in the opening'

'Beautifully thought out day of relaxing and enjoying the best parts of Bondi that was culminated in the opening. The new Fenty range is to die for!'

Teaming her ensemble with a pair of black Tony Bianco wrap-around heels, the stunner was also spotted catching up with YouTube beauty sensation Sammy Robinson.

Wearing a white linen two piece, the pair seemed to be right at home as they previewed the range while enjoying a glass of champagne.

Fashion forward: Teaming her ensemble with a pair of black Tony Bianco wrap-around heels, the stunner was also spotted catching up with YouTube beauty sensation Sammy Robinson (right)

Sneaky preview: They All Hate Us founders Elle Fergusan and Tash Selfton were also seen enjoying a shop around the store

The first look: Filling their baskets with products, the pair were all smiles during the exclusive evening event

They All Hate Us founders Elle Fergusan and Tash Selfton were also seen enjoying a shop around the store.

Filling their baskets with products, the pair were all smiles during the exclusive evening event.

Other personalities included Sara Donaldson, Steffanie Roberts, Ally May Hayward and Caroline Groth.

Sephora Bondi Junction opens to the general public at 10am Saturday 23rd September.
UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

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

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I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

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
They are battling it out for a chance to steal Sophie Monk's heart on The Bachelorette.

And now three of Sophie Monk's bachelors have revealed their first impressions of the blonde bombshell.

In a Facebook Live video posted by Channel Ten this Saturday, Peter de Gail, Mackane Reid and Ryan Jones gushed over Sophie while admitting that they were nervous to meet the starlet in the flesh.

'I was very scared!' Bachelorette hunks reveal what they REALLY thought of Sophie Monk being the star of the matchmaking show

The three rivals were asked to give their initial thoughts when finding out Sophie would be their Bachelorette, assuming they were part of the later application process when it was public knowledge.

Ryan, who grilled Sophie on her motives to be on the show during the debut episode, claimed he was 'very curious.'

Meanwhile, Mack was clearly fond of the idea: 'Extremely excited, very excited. I would get a chance to meet Sophie? Wow!'

'Sophie who? Joking': They all confirmed they were aware of her successful career and background before the show and agreed to describe it as 'impressive'

'Very excited. I would get a chance to meet Sophie? Wow!' Mack was clearly fond of the idea of Sophie, revealing he had a crush on the blonde for a decade, before serenading her with a song about their hopeful romance in the premiere

His excitement shone through in his red carpet arrival, revealing he had a crush on the blonde for 'the best part of 10 years', before serenading her with a song about their hopeful romance.

One of the lyrics included: 'You and me, Mack and Sophie, growing old together, we will see.'

Pete then joked: 'Sophie who? Joking. I was very scared, but why not?'

'I was very curious': Ryan, who grilled Sophie on her motives to be on the show during the debut episode, claimed he was skeptical and 'curious' before the show

Locking lips already! Sophie kissed winemaker Jarrod Woodgate during her first date of the series on Thursday night

They all confirmed they were aware of her successful career and background before the show and agreed to describe it as 'impressive'.

On their first impression with the media personality, Mack said her eyes were 'alluring', adding they 'had me in a daze.'

Ryan noted her 'cheeky little smile' with Pete agreeing with a fist bump.

Pete also praised the star for her 'direct' and 'straight-to-the-point' personality.

The Bachelorette airs on Wednesday and Thursdays from 7.30pm on Channel Ten
She was left horrified after love interest Sam Prince had sex with another girl in her bed in the latest series of Made In Chelsea.

But Georgia Toffolo seemed undeterred in her quest to find love, attending the singles social party of the dating app Huggle in London on Friday night.

The reality star, 22, who no doubt racked up the suitors thanks to her revealing choice of attire, was joined by model Lottie Moss for the fun night out

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Loving life: Georgia Toffolo and Lottie Moss looked chic as they attended a singles social party of the dating app Huggle in London on Friday night

The blonde beauty ensured all eyes were on her in a revealing semi-sheer lace bodysuit with a plunging neckline.

She kept the rest of her look simple, rocking some black skinny jeans and furry black slides with a chic woven sole.

Injecting a dose of sparkle, Toff carried a gold leather jacket and completed her look with a black chain trim handbag.

Sweeping her blonde hair off her face in a sleek half-up 'do, the Celebs Go Dating star framed her eyes with plenty of smoky shadow.

Dare to bare: The reality star, 22, no doubt racked up the suitors thanks to her revealing choice of attire

Lovely in lace: The blonde beauty ensured all eyes were on her in a revealing semi-sheer lace bodysuit with a plunging neckline

Chic: She kept the rest of her look simple, rocking some black skinny jeans and furry black slides with a chic woven sole

She was joined by Lottie, the half-sister of Kate Moss, who looked chic in a white Bardot crop top and high-waisted jeans.

Lottie, who is reportedly seeing rugby fullback Elliot Clements Hill, may not have been looking for love but stole the show with her revealing outfit regardless.

Hot on their tails was MIC star Mimi Bouchard - who was left heartbroken after being dumped by Sam Thompson in the Ibiza series.

Turning heads: She was joined by Lottie, the half-sister of Kate Moss, who looked chic in a white Bardot crop top and high-waisted jeans

Three's a crowd: Hot on their tails was MIC star Mimi Bouchard (centre) - who was left heartbroken after being dumped by Sam Thompson in the Ibiza series

Taken: Lottie, who is reportedly seeing rugby fullback Elliot Clements Hill, may not have been looking for love but stole the show with her revealing outfit regardless

Having a whale of a time: Lottie appeared to be in great spirits at the dating app party

Sitting pretty: She smiled as she cosied up to Canadian reality star Mimi

Her outing comes after she faced an awkward run-in with Sam's ex-girlfriend of three years, Tiffany Watson - who once called her a 'f***ing dumpling'.

And things went from bad to worse for Mimi on Thursday night, as she bumped into Sam's current love interest, X Factor star Amelia Lily, at the bash in London.

Over the summer, Sam was seen enjoying the Ross and Rachel-esque break from Tiff, during which he went to Ibiza without her and found he had a romantic connection with co-star Mimi Bouchard.

Pucker up: The pair put on a playful display, with Lottie leaning in to plant a smacker on Mimi

Oh dear: Mimi's outing comes after she faced an awkward run-in with Sam's ex-girlfriend of three years, Tiffany Watson - who once called her a 'f***ing dumpling'.

Oh no: And things went from bad to worse for Mimi on Thursday night, as she bumped into Sam's current love interest, X Factor star Amelia Lily, at the bash in London

Having fun: Lottie was clearly in high spirits as she headed out with her pals

Pals: Lottie ensured to keep a good grip on Olivia Bentley as they walked down the street

Sexy: Olivia showed off her Friday night style in a pair of thigh-high boots

Gorgeous: Olivia was preened to perfection with mascara-laden eyes and a glossy pout

Going for gold: Georgia wrapped up warm in a gold cropped biker jacket

Jean-ius! Emily Blackwell opted for a denim jacket, ripped jeans and peep-toe boots

This rocked the boat for Tiff, who suddenly descended upon the island from her foray around the continent, and enraged her to the point that Mimi and Sam were over before they'd begun.

Sam and Tiff attempted to clarify their relationship status before leaving Ibiza, but it ended with more tears.

Sam then returned to the UK and entered CBB, where he became close to Amelia.

Monochrome maven: Mimi looked chic on the night in a black shirtdress and patent boots

Just hanging out: Georgia and Mimi posed happily with a fellow dater at the event
The new arrivals have been stirring up trouble in Albert Square this summer.

But amidst the EastEnders drama, the Taylor family may not have noticed that the dog playing the role of their beloved pooch Bronson has been switched for a 'better' model.

The original canine, a Staffie cross called Cyrus, won the hearts of 'Enders fans when he went missing after the dramatic gas explosion on the soap this month.

Axed: EastEnders' new Taylor family may not have noticed that the dog playing the role of their beloved pooch Bronson (pictured) has been switched for a 'better' model

Many viewers of the BBC drama took to Twitter to express their anxiety over the missing dog, even admitting they cared less about the fate of human characters than of the lovable hound.

But the dog's owner claims Cyrus has now been axed and replaced on the show by his understudy after he had to take time out from filming the soap to get an operation on his leg.

Owner Caroline King, 42, received a phone call dismissing the dog from the role after his second-in-command proved better at 'waiting' during filming.

Furry friends: The Taylor family, who have been compared to the Millers, arrived in Albert Square this summer with Staffordshire bull terrier Bronson and bearded dragon Rooney

Big brood: Cyrus (pictured) has been axed and replaced on the show by his understudy after he had to take time out from filming the soap to get an operation on his leg

The swift move by the show's makers is reminiscent of the demise of Robbie Jackson's beloved Wellard who was killed off the programme in 2008 after Robbie's sister Bianca Jackson fed the pooch a chocolate.

Wellard II, bought by Carol Jackson to try to fill the hole created by the loss of her son's Belgian Tervuren, didn't last long at all.

Sonia Jackson revealed the news of his passing to Dot Cotton in a throwaway comment in an episode in July.

Caroline, who trained Cyrus up to star in music videos and theatre roles such as that of Bill Sikes's pet Bullseye in the musical Oliver!, told the Sun: 'It's cruel, he's been treated unfairly. It's a ridiculous decision because Cyrus is 100 per cent trustworthy and reliable.'

Wellard II (left) suffered a sudden off screen death this summer. Roly (right) was Sharon Watts' poodle from when EastEnders first started in 1985

'The agent rang on Thursday to say the back-up dog was fantastic. It does a better wait and she was going to stick with it. I'm really angry.'

Cyrus's agent Kay Weston was quick to respond and told the paper: 'This dog can't do the work and isn't fit for purpose. The dog didn't fulfil the contract. The back-up is doing what it didn't. Right from the word go I said it must have a good sit, down, stay, wait.'

An EastEnders spokesman said: 'It's not uncommon in a continuing drama for an animal to be recast.'

Ethel Skinner with pet pug Willy and poodle Roly
Nikki Reed has coming back swinging at a writer who claims her husband, Ian Somerhalder pressured her into having a baby.

It all started when the 29-year-old actress revealed on Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy Podcast that the 38-year-old Vampire Diaries star had thrown out her birth control pills.

This prompted a writer for Cosmopolitan to slam Ian, saying he forced his wife into starting a family.

'That is some unconsented bulls*** right there,' they wrote.

Taking to Twitter, Nikki responded to the writer's criticisms with a few fighting words of her own.

'When you actually listen to the podcast (which Im sure you didnt) youll hear how "unforced" I felt,' she tweeted on Friday.

The actress then went on to accuse the writer of trying to stir up drama.

Fighting words: Nikki Reed has coming back swinging at a writer who claims her husband, Ian Somerhalder pressured her into having a baby

'Dont talk about consent to me. And lastly, how dare you try to cast a dark shadow over one of the happiest most memorable days of my life  youre not only disrespecting me but my baby,' she continued.

'Oh, and next time you try to stand up for women by writing an article "about womens rights", try properly conveying the way I felt.'

During the podcast, Nikki told a story about how the couple had been on vacation in Barcelona, Spain, when Ian went through her bag and through out her birth control pills as she watched on.

'It was the beginning of the pack, so I had to pop all those suckers out,' he said, confessing he flushed them down the toilet.

My new screen saver for sure... Brother @ernestoriley thanks for snapping this sweet photo of me and my better half. I am the luckiest man on earth. Literally. A post shared by iansomerhalder (@iansomerhalder) on Aug 16, 2016 at 9:07am PDT

'Actually, now thinking about it, I guess I kind of decided [to start a family].'

And while Nikki was able to laugh about the story, she wasn't laughing when she took to Twitter on Friday.

'WOMEN'S RIGHTS MATTER, so please don't use false narratives to highlight issues that are truly important!' she wrote.

The couple - who have been married since 2015 - welcomed their first daughter, Bodhi Soleil on July 25.
She stormed the Versace runway in a series of decadent Nineties-inspired looks.

And Gigi Hadid cemented her sartorial credentials with her after-party outfits, slipping into two showstopping ensembles as she soaked up her runway triumph in Milan on Friday night.

The 22-year-old model exuded elegance in a sculpted nude Bardot gown, before showcasing her lithe physique in skintight leather co-ords.

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Looking good: Gigi Hadid cemented her sartorial credentials with her after-party outfits, slipping into two showstopping ensembles as she soaked up her runway triumph in Milan on Friday night

The blonde beauty certainly took centre-stage in her first outfit - a blushing pink gown with a plunging neckline and draped off-the-shoulder detail.

Letting her statement gown do all the talking, she added height with a pair of black barely there heels.

The model wore her golden locks in a simple middle parting and framed her eyes with bronze iridescent shimmer.

For her second look, the girlfriend of Zayn Malik gave a nod to the early Noughties with a leather ensemble.

She flashed a peek of her cleavage in a strapless lace-up corset and matching skintight trousers.

Stunning: The 22-year-old model exuded elegance in a sculpted nude Bardot gown and barely there heels

Chic: For her second look, the girlfriend of Zayn Malik gave a nod to the early Noughties with a leather ensemble

Stylish: She flashed a peek of her cleavage in a strapless lace-up corset and matching skintight trousers

Sticking to a muted palette, the catwalk star completed the look with nude pointed stiletto courts.

Gigi was no doubt feeling euphoric after sharing the stage with original 90s supermodels Claudia Schiffer, 47, Naomi Campbell, 47, Helen Christensen, 48, Carla Bruni, 49, and Cindy Crawford, 51, for the Versace SS18 show.

The show was to mark the 20th anniversary of Gianni Versace's death, the brother of Donatella Versace.

Mane attraction: The model wore her golden locks in a simple middle parting and framed her eyes with bronze iridescent shimmer

In the nude: Sticking to a muted palette, the catwalk star completed the look with nude pointed stiletto courts. Pictured with younger sister Bella

Double trouble: Her sister Bella looked chic in a bedazzled LBD next to her

Gigi paid tribute to the late designer on Instagram, writing: 'Pride. Joy. Honor. I felt so much today, and I feel so grateful to all of you for your life-long inspiration.

'Thank you Donatella for giving us the opportunity to celebrate you and your brother tonight, whose magic has driven so many of us ! SO MUCH LOVE'.

Meanwhile, Gigi unveiled her biggest sartorial metamorphosis to date on Thursday, as she walked for Moschino's off-the-wall Spring/Summer '18 show.

Budge up, will you! The sisters have been inseparable during Milan Fashion Week, sharing the runway for Versace, Fendi and Moschino

In relaxed spirits: The model siblings seemed to be relishing a moment away from the action after ruling the Versace runway

The blonde beauty captivated the crowds as she strutted down the runway in the ivory tulle dress, which cinched in her tiny waist thanks to an oversized scarlet taffeta bow.

Framing her striking features was a decadent floral wreath boasting stunning blooms in shades of cornflower blue, blushing pink and sunny yellow.

Gigi has been wowing on the fashion week front and recently presented her third TommyXGigi collaboration as the brand made its debut at London Fashion Week earlier this week.

Meanwhile, her mother Yolanda Foster, 53, has also joined them in Milan.

Legs for days: Gigi showcased her lithe limbs in an Eighties-inspired Bardot blazer dress and embellished thigh high boots

Sartorial maverick: Gigi rocked an ornate black shift dress, before slipping into an off-the-shoulder creation

The proud mother-of-three, who is also mum to 18-year-old model son Anwar, has openly spoken of how she wouldn't let her children enter the fashion industry until they she deemed them old enough.

'I never let them work [as models] before they were 18,' she told ELLE.com. 'I didn't want anybody judging them on what they looked like.

'I wanted them to feel and be the authentic human beings that they are and I think that created a lot of strength for them.'

She continued: 'I always said to them, listen, there are thousands of girls that are much more beautiful than you girls, but you have an extraordinary character.

Letting her dress do the talking: Gigi kept her styling simple, wearing her blonde hair in a sleek middle-parting and framing her pretty features with minimal make-up

Here she comes! Gigi caught the eye with her scarlet patent boots as she arrived at the Versace show

'And you're going to have to set yourself apart by being a role model by showing up on time and being kind to everybody... that's how you can make a difference in the world.'

Designers and luxury brands, including Prada, Armani, Cavalli, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, will showcase a total of almost 160 collections, for spring and summer 2018 during the six-day extravaganza.

Revenues for Italy's fashion industry are expected to rise 3 per cent this year to 86 billion euros, data from the Italian national fashion association, CNMI, showed.

Milan kicked off with shows from smaller up-and-comers, including Japanese designer Atsushi Nakashima, who unveiled bright colours, space-agey silver ponchos and clothing bisected with lots of shiny zips.

Flower power: Gigi Hadid, 22, unveiled her biggest sartorial metamorphosis to date as she walked for Moschino's off-the-wall Spring/Summer '18 show on Thursday

Blonde bombshell: Gigi's all-American glossy blonde locks are her signature look but the pixie crop was more mature
She gushed that walking in the Versace show is something she will 'never forget'.

And Bella Hadid ensured the after-party was just as memorable, as she stunned in two jaw-dropping ensembles for a star-studded night of festivity in Milan on Friday.

The 20-year-old model looked showstopping in a vampy plunging gown dripping in sequins, before flashing her toned limbs in a thigh-grazing embellished minidress.

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Turning heads: Bella Hadid ensured the Versace after-party was just as memorable as the show, as she stunned in two jaw-dropping ensembles in Milan on Friday

Bella looked every inch the red carpet queen in her plunging black gown, which was covered in decadent sequins.

The sexy garment boasted a plunging neckline and flashed a peek of the model's toned legs thanks to a racy thigh-split.

Hadid kept her styling simple, scraping her dark hair back into a severe ponytail and framing her features with understated dewy make-up.

Sticking to a vampy monochrome look, the younger Hadid sister added height with some chic black barely there heels.

Stunning: The 20-year-old model looked showstopping in a vampy plunging gown dripping in sequins

Taking the plunge: The sexy garment boasted a plunging neckline and flashed a peek of the model's toned legs thanks to a racy thigh-split

Killer footwear: Sticking to a vampy monochrome look, the younger Hadid sister added height with some chic black barely there heels

For her second look, the catwalk star showcased her coltish limbs in a thigh-grazing satin LBD.

The garment boasted a simple cut but stole the show thanks to decadent diamond embellishments.

Bella's outing comes after she ruled the runway during the star-studded - and historic - Versace SS18 show.

Taking centre-stage: For her second look, the catwalk star showcased her coltish limbs in a thigh-grazing satin LBD

Dazzling: The garment boasted a simple cut but stole the show thanks to decadent diamond embellishments

Ready for her close-up: Hadid kept her styling simple, scraping her dark hair back into a severe ponytail and framing her features with understated dewy make-up

Double trouble: Bella looked chic in a bedazzled LBD next to her older sister Gigi

In relaxed spirits: The model siblings seemed to be relishing a moment away from the action after ruling the Versace runway

Stunning: The 22-year-old model exuded elegance in a sculpted nude Bardot gown and barely there heels

Looking good: Gigi Hadid cemented her sartorial credentials with her after-party outfits, slipping into two showstopping ensembles as she soaked up her runway triumph in Milan on Friday night

Hadid exuded Nineties cool in a thigh-grazing scarf-print minidress and leopard print boots teamed with a boxy cropped denim jacket.

The 20-year-old framed her striking green eyes with iridescent metallic shimmer and plumped her pout with a slick of taupe lipstick.

Bella was no doubt feeling euphoric after sharing the stage with original 90s supermodels Claudia Schiffer, 47, Naomi Campbell, 47, Helen Christensen, 48, Carla Bruni, 49, and Cindy Crawford, 51, for the Versace SS18 show.

Blonde bombshell: Claudia Schiffer, 47, looked showstopping in a sculpted gold gown that clung to her lithe frame

Swinging Sixties: She looked like a retro sex kitten with her exaggerated eyeliner and bouffant hairdo

Icon: Helena Christensen, 48, cemented her catwalk queen status as she flaunted her age-defying beauty

The Midas touch: Looking incredible: The brunette beauty appeared not to have aged at all as she posed in her shimmering gown, flashing her toned legs thanks to the racy thigh-split

Showing the young guns how it was done, fashion's golden girls arrived on the stage on elevated platforms, before closing the show in front of baiting fashion fans.

The stunning supermodels - who were at the height of their game in the Nineties - walked designer Donatella Versace down the runway to rapturous applause.

The show was to mark the 20th anniversary of Gianni Versace's death, the brother of Donatella Versace.

Going for gold: The garment hailed back to the Nineties with a plunging cowl neckline and sexy black straps

Quite the arrival: Helena switched her towering gold heels for a more comfortable sandal for the after-party

Budding beauty: Christensen injected a dose of colour with a purple flower tucked behind her ear

The original 'supers' walk was a re-enactment of one of Gianni's history-making moments from 1991, when four supermodels walked arm in arm with him on the runway.

Bella paid tribute to the late designer on Instagram, writing: 'What a MOMENT!! I will never forget!!!! Congratulations to the queen @donatellaversace

'Thank you GIANNI!!!! So grateful. full of love and gratitude to you Donatella and the whole Versace team. You are one of a kind!!! CELEBRATION OF A GENIUS!!'

Battle of the supers: Cindy Crawford, 51, and Naomi Campbell, 47, stunned in their shimmering gowns

Stealing the show: Naomi put her flawless features on display with eye-catching make-up

Looking good: She injected a modern twist to her retro look with delicate layered gold necklaces

Having a whale of a time: The model appeared to be in jubilant spirits on the night

Speaking about the Gianni tribute, Donatella - who took over from her brother after his death, said that she sees the 20th anniversary as a positive moment.

'Today I am not sad. I am happy that after 20 years I can finally do this with a smile on my face,' she said in a conference before the show.

'They [the supers] have a green room each, but they are running in and out of each other's rooms all day. And because they walk the runway together they are arguing about who gets to go in the middle, just like the old days.'

Monochrome maven: Doutzen Kroes showcased her lithe figure in a thigh split gown

Bold in brights: Candice Swanepoel, 28, caught the eye with her scarf-print colourful trousers

She added that the pop-art references and scarf prints are an 'homage' to Gianni because 'Gianni was all about joy, and so full of life, and the prints really express that spirit.'

Designers and luxury brands, including Prada, Armani, Cavalli, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, will showcase a total of almost 160 collections, for spring and summer 2018 during the six-day extravaganza.

Revenues for Italy's fashion industry are expected to rise 3 per cent this year to 86 billion euros, data from the Italian national fashion association, CNMI, showed.

Milan kicked off with shows from smaller up-and-comers, including Japanese designer Atsushi Nakashima, who unveiled bright colours, space-agey silver ponchos and clothing bisected with lots of shiny zips.

Woman of the moment: The show was to mark the 20th anniversary of Gianni Versace's death, the brother of Donatella Versace

Silver siren: Princess Charlene of Monaco put on a stylish display in a revealing gown

Cheeky: The 39-year-old royal flashed some skin through the quirky cut-outs at the front of her silver dress

Sheer glamour: Marica Pellegrinelli left nothing to the imagination in a see-through midi dress
Just moments after stepping off a plane at LAX airport on Friday, Jennifer Garner was spotted chatting on her cell phone.

The 45-year-old actress was seen walking through the airport terminal with her ear pressed up against her phone.

The 13 Going On 30 star was animated as she talked, smiling and laughing during what appeared to have been a light-hearted conversation.

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Phoning it in: Just moments after stepping off a plane at LAX airport on Friday, Jennifer Garner was spotted chatting on her cell phone

Dressed comfortably, Jen stepped off her flight in a white and black striped knit sweater.

The hemline of her grey shirt could be seen peeking out from underneath, and she she wore her sleeves slightly rolled up.

The stunning star also donned a pair of dark grey jeans.

She wore white sneakers, and a black woven handbag sat in the nook of her elbow.

Talk about it... The 45-year-old actress was seen walking through the airport terminal with her ear pressed up against her phone

The right stripes: Dressed comfortably, Jen stepped off her flight in a white and black striped knit sweater

Small talk: The 13 Going On 30 star was animated as she talked, smiling and laughing during what appeared to have been a light-hearted conversation

Her long brown hair sat loose around her shoulders, and she appeared to have stepped out without any makeup.

Jennifer kept her brown sunglasses on as she made her way through the airport.

Appearing to have been traveling light, the Dallas Buyers Club star was seen exiting the airport with no more than her handbag.

No baggage: Appearing to have been traveling light, the Dallas Buyers Club star was seen exiting the airport with no more than her handbag

Fresh-faced: Her long brown hair sat loose around her shoulders, and she appeared to have stepped out without any makeup

After splitting with husband Ben Affleck, 45, last year, and then filing for divorce in April of this this year, the pair continue to co-parent their three children together.

The former couple were married in 2005, and are parents to daughters Violet, 11, and Seraphina, eight, and son Samuel, five.

'It was a real marriage,' the actress told Vanity Fair magazine of the couple's split in March 2016.

'It wasnt for the cameras. And it was a huge priority for me to stay in it. And that did not work.'
Australian TVs night of nights, the TV Week Logie Awards will move up north to the Gold Coast next year.

And despite the NSW government wanting to host it in Western Sydney or in regional Dubbo, it seems no formal bid was ever made.

'We never had a formal offer from New South Wales. We obviously spoke to them and read in the paper that they wanted it to tour regional NSW but it was never a serious offer,' Bauer Media General Manager Jayne Ferguson told TV Tonight.

'It was never a serious offer': Bauer Media General Manager's Jayne Ferguson said no formal bid was ever made by New South Wales to host the TV Week Logie Awards (Gold Logie winner for 2017 Samuel Johnson pictured)

'We had more interest from the Queensland government. They were really excited about the prospect of owning the Logies for the next 4 years,' she added.

Jayne noted that it would be an exciting time for the Gold Coast, in particular with the lead up to Commonwealth Games.

Also moving up to the Gold Coast is the pre-Logie event, which was usually hosted by Film Victoria.

The industry event will now be hosted by Screen Queensland, giving Gold Coast production companies the chance to showcase their work.

No formal bid: Bauer Media's Jayne Ferguson said 'We obviously spoke to them and read in the paper that they wanted it to tour regional NSW but it was never a serious offer' ( Logie winners Waleed Aly, Carrie Bickmore and Peter Helliar from The Project)

Another change for the awards show that has been finalised is the timing of the show in July during winter.

Award show organisers had to accommodate for the Commonwealth Games happening in April and to coincide with the second half of the year for TV.

'There will be a little bit of adjustment in the first year, but we are just finalising that now. But everything we do, we do from a viewer's point of view,' she noted.

Exciting prospects: Jayne added 'We had more interest from the Queensland government. They were really excited about the prospect of owning the Logies for the next 4 years'

Headed north: Another change for the awards show that has been finalised is the timing of the show in July during winter to accommodate for the Commonwealth Games happening in April and to coincide with the second half of the year for TV (Delta Goodrem with fans)

TV legend Bert Newton has recently spoken out against the move, telling the Herald Sun: 'the Logies belong in Melbourne.'

'In my mind it's like losing the AFL Grand Final or the Melbourne Cup. They too have always been in Melbourne,' he said.

'My fear is if they go somewhere else, we may never get them back.'
Actor Samuel Johnson's sister Connie Johnson lost her fight with breast cancer two weeks ago.

And on Friday, the loving brother took to Instagram ahead of the 40-year-old mother-of-two's public memorial to confess his nerves.

Expecting a large turnout to honour his 'Connie Cottonsocks,' the Logie-winning actor told supports of the Love Your Sister charity: 'Getting pretty nervous! Hope to see you there.'

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'Hope to see you there': Connie Johnson's brother Samuel says he's 'nervous' ahead of his cancer crusader sister's public memorial... two weeks after her tragic death

Actor Samuel Johnson's sister Connie Johnson (PICTURED) lost her fight with breast cancer two weeks ago

He posed in front of a stocked truck full of Love Your Sister merchandise for the heartwarming upload.

'My thanks not just to these awesome humans, but to everyone working so hard to make tomorrow possible,' he said ahead of the Melbourne memorial.

'I dont think were gonna run out of merch, yeah? If you want to get Love Your Sisterd there will be a pop-up Market beside St. Pauls Cathedral. Come get stuff!' he added.

'I dont think were gonna run out of merch, yeah?' He posed in front of a stocked truck full of Love Your Sister merchandise for the heartwarming upload ahead of Melbourne's public memorial on Saturday

A public memorial will be held for cancer crusader and Love Your Sister founder Connie Johnson on Saturday, two weeks after the mother-of-two lost her fight with the devastating disease.

Sam organised the service and says he hopes it will be 'perfect' revealing Connie's husband will speak alongside The Project host Carrie Bickmore.

The service which will be live streamed across social media and in Melbourne's Federation Square is to be held in St Paul's Cathedral from 4.15pm.

'It's going to be an absolute belter. I was tasked with this service personally and I will not f**k it up,' Samuel posted on Facebook.

A public memorial will be held for cancer crusader and Love Your Sister founder Connie Johnson on Saturday

The mother-of-two, pictured here with her young sons, died after fighting breast cancer for five years

She fought hard in the public eye raising money towards finding a cure for the disease

The mother-of-two won the hearts of Australians after she took her cancer fight public in 2012  when she was told she had just 12 months to live.

She started the Love Your Sister charity with her brother by pulling the 'cancer card' shortly after  and has raised more than $7million dollars towards 'getting rid of cancer forever' since.

Her brother has now promised to continue the work the pair started and says he won't go back to work until the charity has raised $10million towards 'cancer vanquishment'.

The 'lineup' at the memorial service is going to be 'exceptional' according to Sam.

'We're going way beyond the brother/sister thing and are going to introduce the Johnson clan to the Village, and the Village to the Johnson clan...what could possibly go wrong?' he said.

And there is plenty of Love Your Sister merchandise available as well, with Sam launching the Connie Cotton socks range after his sister's death.

'I don't think we're gonna run out of merch,' he said.

Her brother, actor Sam Johnson, organised the service and says he hopes it will be 'perfect' revealing Connie's husband will speak alongside The Project host Carrie Bickmore

Samuel shaved his hair in support of his sick sister and to raise money for the charity

Just before Connie died she was brought to tears as she was given an Order of Australia Medal.

Sam took to Facebook to share a picture of his sister with her medal and said 'her eyes danced like when we were kids' when she was given it. 'The Governor General 'popped in' on Connie today.

Can you see that shiny thing on her chest?' he wrote.

'It's a Medal of The Order of Australia, awarded for her services to our community and humanity! Her eyes danced like when we were kids. She looked so alive.'

He added: 'Afterwards, she looked at me sideways, coz she can't move her head too well, and she kept saying, in her weak and raspy voice...'Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Look what we did. We did something!''

Just before Connie died she was brought to tears as she was given an Order of Australia Medal

The brother and sister have won the approval of Australians as they publicly show their support for each other

'Our thanks to our new mate Pete Cosgrove, for making us all laugh in amongst all the pomp. And kudos to our new Lady Cottonsocks, for being exactly who she is.

'This is an awful time, we won't bullshit, but please believe that she feels SO cushioned by your love and has been finding so many rainbows.'

Last month, Connie said she was 'not there yet', when it came to dying because she still has 'too much to do' and 'the fight must go on'.

'I want to take the kids to the circus, we've never been to a circus,' she said.

She added: 'At any moment those few little healthy pieces of liver can be taken over by cancer and at that point I go into liver failure.'

The Love Your Sister Facebook page is 'liked' by over 550,000 people.
She is one of the best known for her efforts in front of the camera.

But despite years in the business, Angelina Jolie still enjoys a simple night to the movies.

The 42-year-old actress was spotted trying to keep relatively a low profile while heading to the cinema for a Q&A for her film First They Killed My Father in Los Angeles on Friday night.

Movie night: Angelina Jolie was spotted trying to keep a low profile while heading to the cinema in Los Angeles on Friday night

She kept her look simple in a billowy black sweater for the relaxed evening out.

Angelina teamed the top with a skirt and matching thigh-high suede booties.

She accessorized with a black leather designer bag and gold bracelet.

Her brunette tresses were worn down as she let her natural looks show with minimal make-up.

Keeping cool: The 42-year-old actress kept her look simple in a billowy black sweater for the relaxed evening out

Simply stunning: Her brunette tresses were worn down as she let her natural looks show with minimal make-up

Friendly: Despite trying to fly under the radar, she still stopped to wave at a few fans trying to get her attention

Hanging out: She was not alone for the occasion as she was joined by a blonde gal pal

Despite trying to fly under the radar, she still stopped to wave at a few fans trying to get her attention.

She was not alone for the occasion as she was joined by a blonde gal pal.

This comes just days after she looked effortlessly elegant donning a white blouse teamed, dark A-line skirt and nude pumps Sunday in LA.

Ever the crowd pleaser, the actress/activist took time to sign autographs and chat with fans after an already lengthy Q&A about her directorial project First They Killed My Father at the Academy Of Motion Arts.

Going the extra mile: She even stopped to sign autographs for lucky fans

Casual chic: Angelina teamed the top with a skirt and matching thigh-high suede booties

Quite the following: No doubt she was happy to meet her fans

The ex of actor Brad Pitt looked stylishly enchanting as she stepped out the event in a chic monochrome set.

Angelina, 42, remained poised while covering her eyes with square sunglasses and sweeping her dark locks to one side elegantly.

The California girl displayed jewelry-free hands while carrying two handy Sharpies to sign posters and memorabilia.

She's a classic! Days ago Jolie looked effortlessly elegant in monochrome separates Sunday after a screening of her film First They Killed My Father at the Academy Of Motion Arts in LA

Cool cat: The ex of actor Brad Pitt looked poised as can be while covering her eyes with square sunglasses and sweeping her dark locks to one side elegantly

Sharp signature! The California girl displayed jewelry-free hands while carrying two handy Sharpies to sign posters and memorabilia

Fan favorite: The Academy Award winner has been busy promoting her heartbreaking new project First They Killed My Father recently

Recently, the Academy Award winner has been busy promoting her heartbreaking new project First They Killed My Father.

Earlier Saturday, Angelina sported a loose white dress and fringed duster jacket to another LA screening of the film she produced, wrote and directed.

On Thursday, the UN Ambassador donned a similar look while in New York City for a stop by the United Nations HQ.

Star with a heart: The UN Ambassador donned a similar look while in New York City Thursday, where the humanitarian stopped by the United Nations HQ

Live through this: Angie's stirring new project tells the story of author and human rights activist Loung Ung's life through flashbacks of life under the Khmer Rouge dictatorship

There, she donned the same style blouse along with a pocketed pencil skirt in a savory brown hue.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers tells the story of author and human rights activist Loung Ung's life through flashbacks of life under the Khmer Rouge dictatorship.

The stirring biopic is already garnering rave reviews and is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Three people stabbed

The criminal case under investigation in the Investigation Committee of the RA of Syunik region revealed the circumstances of the three unidentified assailants on September 21 in Agarak. One person is arrested. On September 22, 2017, at 00:05, information was received from a medical center that three men, two of them born in 1975, and one born in 1971, were taken to hospital with penetrating injuries. As a result of the measures taken, it was found out that the mentioned persons received severe injuries during the same incident. A criminal case was instituted in the Syunik Regional Criminal Investigation Department of the RA Criminal Code on the grounds of the first point of the second part of Article 112 of the RA Criminal Code and as a result of the necessary investigative actions the motive of the person who committed the crime, who is a resident of Syunik region, born in 1991, was found out. According to preliminary data, the argument arose because of the amount of money required for passenger transportation from Yerevan to Agarak by a private car, during which 26-year-old young man stabbed the three men. The young man is arrested. He presented the crime instrument - the knife. The preliminary investigation continues, measures are being taken to ensure an objective, complete and comprehensive investigation of the circumstances of the case. Notification: Suspected or accused of an alleged offense is considered innocent until his guilt is not proven in the manner prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Code of the Republic of Armenia by a court verdict entered into force. RA Investigative Committee reports
She's the Australian actress who has become a household name thanks to roles in such fare as Neighbours, Underbelly and The Wrong Girl.

And Natalie Bassingthwaighte has teased that she is jumping back on stage with her early noughties electro rock outfit Rogue Traders.

The blonde multi-talent took to Instagram on Friday to share a new promotional photo of the band indicating that a tour could be in the works

A welcome return: And Natalie Bassingthwaighte has teased that she is jumping back on stage with her early noughties electro rock outfit Rogue Traders

With a diamante studded leather jacket slung over her shoulder and flanked by bandmates James Ash, Tim Henwood and Cameron McGlinchey, Natalie definitely looked as though she was ready to rock.

Captioning the photo, Natalie simply wrote: 'You know you want it,' augmenting the sentiment with the hashtag #roguetraders.

Natalie's fans went into overdrive about the post with many pressing the star for more details about potential new activity.

Irresistible: Captioning a promotional image of the band, Natalie simply wrote: 'You know you want it,' augmenting the sentiment with the hashtag #roguetraders.

'Omg I need all the details!?!? When where how why?,' one fan excitedly asked while another offered a similar: 'Yes are you guys coming back that would be so cool.'

Speaking to News Corp in April Natalie revealed that the band had been working on new material in the studio while she was busy in the South African jungle on the reality show I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of here!

'They've been working on some material while I've been away,' she told the publication

Gushing: 'Omg I need all the details!?!? When where how why?,' one fan excitedly asked while another offered a similar: 'Yes are you guys coming back that would be so cool'

'There's some stuff in the pipeline which I'm really looking forward to.'

Rogue Traders have enjoyed considerable success in Australia, with the high-energy four piece nabbing seven top 20 hits on the ARIA Chart.

Best known for the tracks Voodoo Child, Way To Go and Watching You the band dropped out of the spotlight somewhat when Natalie announced, in 2008, that she was leaving to pursue her acting career.

They announced a reformation in 2015, playing a New Year's eve show at Rochford wines in the Victorian Yarra Valley before another bravura performance at the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Sydney 500 last year.
As a married couple, not only do they live together, they work together.

And on Friday, Nick and Vanessa Lachey looked refreshed as they left Dancing With the Stars rehearsals in LA.

As they made their way out, the duo stopped to sign memorabilia for awaiting fans.

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All done! On Friday, Nick and Vanessa Lachey looked refreshed as they left Dancing With the Stars rehearsals in LA

Vanessa, 36, was comfortable in an all-black ensemble.

The mother-of-three paired a layered T-shirt with a set of matching leggings and flip-flops.

Joining the star on her way out was partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, 37, who was also dressed in head-to-toe black.

Workout look: Vanessa, 36, was comfortable in an all-black ensemble

Simple style: The mother-of-three paired a layered T-shirt with a set of matching leggings and flip-flops

Teacher and pupil: The former MTV VJ was joined by DWTS partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, 37

Sweet: Vanessa kindly signed autographs for awaiting fans

Once outside the venue, Vanessa signed autographs for awaiting fans.

Husband Nick also stopped to sign a poster that appeared to benefit hurricane victims.

The former 98 Degrees member was joined by pro-dancer partner Peta Murgatroyd, 31.

Kind heart: Nick stopped to sign a poster that was reportedly set to benefit hurricane victims

Stepping up: DWTS partner Peta Murgatroyd, 31, also signed the poster

Stud: The star looked handsome in a white tank and basketball shorts

Floral print: Peta paired a tank with a set of patterned leggings

Pretty: The mom to son Shai gave off her best pouty look

Nick and Vanessa are paired with fellow married couple Maksim and Peta.

Both couples have children of their own. Nick and Vanessa are parents to sons Camden, five, Brooklyn, one, Phoenix, nine months.

Maksim and Peta are parents to son Shai.

Ready to go! Frankie Muniz, Lindsey Stirling and Mark Ballas were also seen leaving rehearsals
She's the Australian model that's been turning heads at the Milan Fashion Week recently.

But Shanina Shaik waved goodbye to the fashionista crowds on Saturday, as she returns to Australia after strutting the catwalk for some of the world's biggest brands.

In a post to her Instagram on Saturday, the 26-year old lingerie model shared a heartfelt selfie before boarding her flight home at Milan's International Airport.

Ciao Milano: Shanina Shaik waved goodbye to the fashionista crowds on Saturday, as she returns to Australia after strutting the catwalk for some of the world's biggest brands

'Ciao Milano amazing time as always,' she captioned the image.

The Melbourne-born beauty looked to be dressed up for the trip home, living up to her trendy looks and lavish lifestyle.

Wearing an unbuttoned long sleeve denim shirt that over a black crop top, she showed off her enviable flat stomach as she stared blankly into the mirror.

Holding her phone and snapping a candid selfie, Shanina donned a pair of jet black tights while showing off her polished black boots, with red patterns imprinted on the vamp.

Coming home: 'Ciao Milano amazing time as always,' she captioned the image

Wearing a pair of sunglasses inside, the busty brunette's glossy hair was pulled back and tied up.

As she gears up to head back to Australia, It seems like Shanina's time in Milan has inspired a new sense of style.

On Friday, she turned heads when she attended the New Beginning party for Vogue Italia, as part of the annual fashion event.

Sheer stunner: Shanina Shaik turned heads when she attended the Milan Fashion Week New Beginning party for Vogue Italia

The brunette model put on a racy display, appearing in a sheer, floral-themed frock.

The see-through outfit flaunted Shanina's washboard stomach and well-sculpted pins to good effect.
She's the former topless waitress who couldn't find love on The Bachelor.

But now, Simone Ormesher has decided to crowd source her love life, throwing out a casting call via Instagram on Saturday.

Flashing her toned tummy in a tiny off-the-shoulder crop top, the 25-year-old posed for a snap, captioned: 'Just looking for my future husband.'

Calling all guys! Bachelor reject Simone Ormesher has decided to crowd source her love life, throwing out a casting call via Instagram on Saturday

'Ah well I guess the Smoothie will have to do for now,' she concluded, referencing the drink she was holding in the image.

The beauty posed in-front of a shopfront in the post, which appeared to be part of a paid promotion for Legacy, Camberwell.

She completed her look with a breezy white skirt and sunglasses.

Six hours after Simone shared the image, her casting call was still yet to be answered.

'Looking for my future husband': Flashing her toned tummy in a tiny off-the-shoulder crop top, the 25-year-old posed for a snap, captioned: 'Just looking for my future husband'

Earlier this month, she took to Instagram to show Bachelor Matty J what he's missing out on.

The blonde beauty posted a stunning selfie, saying: 'Fresh locks and feeling amazing...'

She was seen wearing a low cut, colourful crop top that showcased her breast implants.

Still single! Six hours after Simone shared the image, her casting call was still yet to be answered

Simone recently told TV Week that she regrets getting the implant surgery.

'When I was younger, I really lacked confidence,' she said.

'I wasn't feeling comfortable in myself so that's why I decided to get them done. And actually my ex-boyfriend paid for them.

She continued: 'Now I don't really like them anymore. My tops don't really fit me and I think natural looks better.'
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She's the niece of wealthy businessman James Packer and the young heiress to a billion-dollar fortune.

And now it's been revealed that Francesca Packer-Barham has further improved her situation by making a tidy $1.5million profit on a foray into the Melbourne property market.

The daughter of billionaire Gretel Packer and financier Nicholas Barham sold her four-bedroom home in South Yarra, in Melbourne's inner-south, for $7.6million in March of this year, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Blessed: She's the niece of wealthy businessman James Packer and the young heiress to a billion-dollar fortune and she's also made a tidy sum on the sale of her home

Tidy profit: Francesca Packer-Barham made $1.5million on her Melbourne property before heading back to London to study

Solid business: The daughter of billionaire Gretel Packer and financier Nicholas Barham sold her four-bedroom home in South Yarra, in Melbourne's inner-south, for $7.6million

The 22-year-old brunette paid just $6,125,000 for the property in October 2015, before adding a new kitchen and marble bathroom during her brief ownership.

With an elegant Victorian facade, the stunning two-storey terrace contains a number of modern finishes inside to make it a fantastic example of 'old meets new'.

The kitchen boasts plenty of space with a large island, black marble countertops and a modern tiled backsplash.

Marble extends to both the floor and the walls of the bathroom, which also includes two shower heads and a large white vanity.

Magnificently marble: Marble extends to both the floor and the walls of the bathroom, which also includes two shower heads and a large white vanity

Old meets new: The kitchen boasts plenty of space with a large island, black marble countertops and a modern tiled backsplash

Not only are there two shower heads, but there are also two fireplaces in the spacious living room that's decked out with extravagant chandeliers.

Much of the home is fitted-out with wooden floorboards and white walls that give the home a simple, and elegant feel.

Francesca hasn't completely withdrawn from the Melbourne property market though, as she still holds onto a $1.4million cottage in the same neighbourhood, The Daily Telegraph reported.

She continues to hop across the globe between Australia and London where she enrolled earlier this year in a $50,000-a-year interior design course, at the prestigious Inchbald School of Design in Chelsea.

'Design is really fun. It is something I always had an interest in that has grown recently,' she told Confidential.

Victorian style: With an elegant Victorian facade, the stunning two-storey terrace contains a number of modern finishes inside to make it a fantastic example of 'old meets new'
She's been living away from the public eye since the high-profile breakdown of her marriage with former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer.

And now Aysha Learmonth has turned up in the most bizarre circumstances, while giving a 'Brazilian butt lift' to former Bachelor 'villain' Keira Maguire.

Keira posted videos to her Instagram story on Saturday, showing her lying down while beautician Aysha used a suction tool on her posterior at Sculpting Haus, a clinic in Sydney that is available by 'appointment only'.

Spotted: Aysha Learmonth is seen giving a 'Brazilian butt lift' to Keira Maguire after months of scarcely being seen since her marriage breakdown with Salim Mehajer

Long time, no see: Keira posted videos to her Instagram story, showing her lying down while beautician Aysha used a suction tool on her posterior

Split: The couple's August 2015 union dubbed as 'Wedding of the Century' was short-lived after Aysha left the marital home last April

Aysha has scarcely been seen since March, when she was spotted out with friends and family celebrating her 31st birthday at Ultimo restaurant Salt Meats Cheese, in Sydney's inner-city.

However, her estranged husband was noticeably absent from the celebration.

The couple's August 2015 union while dubbed as 'Wedding of the Century' was short-lived after Aysha left the marital home just months later.

The pair's marriage imploded in April 2016 when she packed up her life and left their Lidcombe mansion to stay with her family near Wollongong.

Before her relationship with Salim Mehajer, the brunette was a beautician known as April Learmonth, from Woonona, south of Sydney.

Job done: At the end of the Instagram story, she poses with Aysha while claiming to have lost five centimetres from the treatment

Aysha appears while giving a 'Brazilian butt lift' to former Bachelor 'villain' Keira Maguire

Keira Maguire (pictured) posted video footage of her body sculpting treatment with Aysha

Company records seen by Daily Mail Australia showed she worked at MC's Beauty Salon in Figtree, near Woonona, from 2006 until 2011.

She changed her name on business documents from April Amelia Learmonth to Aysha Amelia Mehajer in January 2014.

For a time, Aysha worked for her husband's property development firm, the Sydney Project Group, as an 'estimating director', according to the company website, but now appears to have returned to her old profession.

'Can't believe I lost five centimetres': Keira claims to instantly tone her thighs and posterior with a 'Brazilian butt lift' treatment handed out by Aysha

On Saturday she was seen in a video posted to Keira's Instagram story, explaining the procedure she was performing on her bottom

Since the split she has opted to keep a low-profile, as she and Salim undergo divorce proceedings,The Daily Telegraph reported in July.

But on Saturday, she was seen in a video posted to Keira's Instagram story, explaining the procedure she was performing on her bottom.

'You are having vacuum suction to break up the cellulite, and it will break up fatty deposits,' she tells the 31-year-old in the video.

'You are having vacuum suction to break up the cellulite, and it will break up fatty deposits,' she tells the 31-year-old in the video

Aysha is heard in the Snapchat video explaining to Keira what the procedure will do

Rare sighting: Aysha has scarcely been seen since March, when she was spotted out with friends and family celebrating her 31st birthday

Out of the spotlight: Aysha has since opted to keep a low-profile, as she and Salim (pictured) undergo divorce proceedings, according to reports

'I am heating what little fat you have here on your side and liquefying it.'

Keira continues to film throughout the procedure, while wearing a low-cut white tank top and lacy bra, showing plenty of cleavage.

At the end of the Instagram story, she poses with Aysha while claiming to have lost five centimetres from the treatment.
Danniella Westbrook has confirmed that she recently suffered her fourth miscarriage, and revealed that she will never be able to have another baby following the trauma.

In an emotional interview with The Sun, the 43-year-old actress spoke openly about the devastating loss of her baby, whose father was ex-fiance Alan Thomason, 35 - but furiously lashed out at allegations she has has suffered a drug relapse.

Speaking of the moment she learned that she was losing her baby, she told the newspaper: 'When I went to the doctor they said the [amniotic] sac wasnt sticking right, my womb wasnt strong enough. lost a lot of blood, its been really painful.'

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Tragic: Danniella Westbrook has confirmed that she recently suffered her fourth miscarriage

The embattled TV personality, who in the summer of last year miscarried her then-boyfriend George Arnold's baby, spoke of how the tragic loss at seven weeks pregnant led to much undue pressure being placed on her relationship with Alan.

She said: 'Its been an awful time and it caused so much pressure for me and Alan really. We were already under pressure over getting a new place and it caused a lot of upset. I was so looking forward to having baby, Im 43, hes 35, I thought theres no way Im going to get pregnant again. And I did and I was really happy about it.'

Her revelation came a day after she sparked concern after revealing ill-health forced her to pull out of her planned appearance on Loose Women on Friday morning.

Tough times: Danniella appeared downcast as she headed to the ITV studios earlier that morning

The former EastEnders actress left viewers confused after Lorraine Kelly announced at the end of her show that Danniella would be on Loose Women, but she did not appear, despite being pictured arriving at the ITV studios.

Tweeting later that day, and continuing to insist her appearance would be shown at a later date the star worryingly tweeted 'It was a pre recored actually amd a medic was called as im still poorly!' (sic)

The star suffered a tragic miscarriage just one month after confirming she was pregnant with her third child.

Confusion arose due to Danniella's arrival but no show although a spokesperson backed up the star's claims and told Mail Online: 'Danniella has pre-recorded a chat with Loose Women today, which is due to air at a later date.'

A glammed up Danniella was seen leaving the ITV studios, flashing her colourful bra and cleavage in a plunging black top, which she paired with skinny jeans and a cream leather jacket.

The star was in full make-up for her anticipated appearance, with smoky eyes, false eyelashes and a heavy dose of bronzer highlighting her features.

Her bouncy chestnut bob was styled in soft waves and she clutched onto a bottle of soft drink, a jungle green cap, a packet of cigarettes and her smartphone.

Hitting back: Tweeting later that day, and continuing to insist her appearance would be shown at a later date the star worryingly tweeted 'It was a pre recored actually amd a medic was called as im still poorly!' (sic)

What happened? The star was in full make-up for her anticipated appearance, with smoky eyes, false eyelashes and a heavy dose of bronzer highlighting her features

Exit: Her bouncy chestnut bob was styled in soft waves and she clutched onto a bottle of soft drink, a jungle green cap, a packet of cigarettes and her smartphone

Danniella was seen attempting to hide her face with the cap before appearing to shout out to someone.

Her no-show on the day baffled fans, with disappointed and concerned viewers taking to Twitter with one writing 'loosewomen watched the whole show to see @westbrookdanni ... sure it said she was on today ????...' while another wrote: 'Wheres danniella Westbrook ??? #LooseWomen... @loosewomen''

Another baffled viewer wrote 'why did I think you was on loosewomen today ? I'm sure yesterday they said you was .. I'm turning it over' while one follower sent an irate message, saying 'why you lying again saying your on loose women and your not ffs stop lying.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Loose Women and Danniella for comment.

Concern: Her no-show on the day baffled fans, with disappointed and concerned viewers taking to Twitter with one writing 'loosewomen watched the whole show to see @westbrookdanni ... sure it said she was on today ????...'

Oh dear: While another wrote: 'Wheres danniella Westbrook ??? #LooseWomen... @loosewomen'

Questions: Another baffled viewer wrote 'why did I think you was on loosewomen today ? I'm sure yesterday they said you was .. I'm turning it over'

Not happy: One follower sent an irate message, saying 'why you lying again saying your on loose women and your not ffs stop lying'

Lots to say: Danniella was seen attempting to hide her face with the cap before appearing to shout out to someone

Falling on hard times: The 43-year-old former EastEnders star reportedly suffered a tragic miscarriage just one month after confirming she was pregnant with her third child, while she also hinted that she's split from fiance Alan Thomason, 32

With a hood pulled low over her head, she disembarked a waiting car just days after penning a cryptic and heartbreaking tweet about 'hurting' and 'walking away'.

Sporting a grey hoodie and tight leggings, Danniella, who has been splitting her time between the UK and Spain, could not break a grin as she appeared to wince.

Engrossed in her phone, the actress caught the eye of a construction worker who was labouring nearby and appeared captivated by her.

Tough times: Danniella looked worn out as she caught the eye of a construction worker labouring outside the studio

Danniella took to Twitter on Tuesday evening with an emotional and poignant message about loss - much to the devastation of fans.

Seemingly hinting at a break up, Danniella wrote on the site: 'Hurting from my loss. The hotel wasn't the only thing he destroyed that day. I never knew him at all! Walking away #EnoughisEnough #Catfish.'

Referring to a 'hotel', the tweet also seemed to address recent claims Danniella had been billed 800 worth of damages, after trashing a hotel room in Benidorm following an alleged row with her fiance.

Ready and waiting: Danniella took to Twitter on Tuesday evening with an emotional and poignant message about loss - much to the devastation of fans

The incident reportedly took place on September 8 - with onlookers claiming they had overheard the actress moaning at a bar about an argument with her 'bloke', which had resulted in a trashed room and a 900 euro charge.

It's been an emotional and difficult week for Danniella, who has not yet publicly commented on claims she suffered a miscarriage.

According to The Sun, the star has been left 'devastated' about her loss, and has been leaning on the support of her closest friends.

Danniella's representatives declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.

The paper reports that Danniella has been resting at her home in Spain ever since informing her pals of her loss - who claim she is trying to stay positive in wake of the tragedy.
They're the good-looking couple who are set to be married after meeting each other on The Bachelor.

And on Saturday, Anna Heinrich and Tim Robards were seen side-by-side as they enjoyed a day out at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Saturday.

The pair were both scantily clad as they headed to Bondi Icebergs Club to try and beat the heat on a 33 degree day.

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Power couple: Anna Heinrich flaunts her stunning figure alongside fiancee Tim Robards as the pair enjoy a day in the sun at Bondi Beach

Taking it off! The pair were both scantily clad as they headed to Bondi Icebergs Club to try and beat the heat on a 33 degree day

Flaunting it: Anna looked stunning as she flaunted her trim pins and taut tummy in a red and white striped two-piece bikini

Anna arrived wearing a cream-coloured low-cut top, tucked into a white short skirt and straw wedge heels.

Her heels were matched with a straw wide-brimmed hat, which she carried in her hand, giving the cameras a chance to catch a glimpse of her custom diamond ring from Bunda, rumoured to be worth $173,000.

By her side was fiancee Tim who was all smiles, wearing a white tank top, boardshorts and brown loafers, while carrying a copy of the newspaper in his hand.

Day in the sun: Anna's straw wedge heels were matched with a straw wide-brimmed hat, which she used to shield the sun

You missed a spot! Anna rubs on some sunscreen lotion while her fiancee Tim looks on

Fit and ready! The genetically blessed couple stripped down to their swim costumes once inside the venue, to reveal their gym-honed physiques

The genetically blessed couple were then seen stripping down to their swim costumes once inside the venue, to reveal their gym-honed physiques.

Anna looked stunning as she flaunted her trim pins and taut tummy in a red and white striped two-piece bikini.

Meanwhile her hubby lay beside her with his rugged good looks on display, as the smitten pair smiled for a selfie.

Tim then hopped into the outdoor pool for a quick dip, while Anna stayed sitting on a towel to check her phone.

Time for a dip: Tim then hopped into the outdoor pool, while Anna stayed sitting on a towel to check her phone

Refreshed: Tim hops out of the pool at Bondi Icebergs Club at Bondi Beach on Saturday

Saved you a seat! Tim returned to his beautiful fiancee Anna after cooling off in the pool

Tim proposed to Anna after four years of dating in May.

And Anna has been every bit the diligent bride-to-be, revealing her soon-to-be husband reminds her to clean her engagement sparkler every day.

'[Bunda and Tim] got together and worked out what I wanted and what he thought I wanted, and it is honestly better than I could have imagined,' Anna said.

'He always makes me clean it everyday he's like, ''have you cleaned your ring?'' And I say, ''yes I have!' He is very proud of it, which is really nice.'

Chilled out: Both Anna and her hubby Tim cut relaxed figures as they enjoyed some downtime on the weekend

Bulked up: The former Bachelor star's massive pecs were glistening after a dip in the pool on Saturday
Their turbulent on-off romance proved to be a major talking point of this year's Love Island.

And the drama continued for Love Island's Olivia Attwood and Chris Hughes as she was seen appearing to break down in tears after a 'jealous row' with her beau outside London club Ministry of Sound in the early hours of Friday morning.

The blonde beauty, 26, was seen looking extremely emotional, as she walked out of the club, before wiping her eyes as she crumpled into the back seat of a cab alone.

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Emotional: The drama continued for Love Island's Olivia Attwood and Chris Hughes as she was seen appearing to break down in tears after a 'jealous row' with her beau outside London club Ministry of Sound in the early hours of Friday morning

Shedding a tear? The blonde beauty, 26, was seen looking extremely emotional, as she walked out of the club, before wiping her eyes as she crumpled into the back seat of a cab alone

Olivia then began tapping away intently on her phone looking downcast as she waited.

The star, who came third with Chris in the Love Island final looked extremely busty for her night out, going braless in a tan slip top, which showed off her gravity-defying assets.

She paired the top with ivory mesh palazzo pants, cinched in with a scarlet belt and added height with tan heels.

Her blonde locks were styled sleek and straight and she opted for high-octane glamour for her night out, with massive false lashes, metallic eyeshadow and liner accentuating her peepers.

Wide-eyed: The star, who came third with Chris in the Love Island final looked extremely busty for her night out, going braless in a tan slip top, which showed off her gravity-defying assets

Dramatic: She paired the top with ivory mesh palazzo pants, cinched in with a scarlet belt and added height with tan heels

Pensive: The star looked sad as she stared intently at her phone in the cab

Talking to Chris? Olivia stared into the distance as she took a call on her phone

Nail biting: Her blonde locks were styled sleek and straight and she opted for high-octane glamour for her night out, with massive false lashes, metallic eyeshadow and liner accentuating her peepers

All smiles: An unimpressed looking Chris, 24, exited later clad in a cream t-shirt and grey shorts teamed with box fresh trainers before cracking a warm smile

Finishing her look, she slicked on some baby pink gloss to highlight her pout.

Looking pensive and slightly fraught as she strolled out of the club alone clutching a leather jacket, the emotional star seem to be biting her nail as she apparently welled up.

An unimpressed looking Chris, 24, exited later clad in a cream t-shirt and grey shorts teamed with box fresh trainers.

Close to tears: Olivia seemed to be deep in thought as she anxiously bit her finger

Sad: Olivia looked upset as she checked her phone while sweeping her hair behind her ear

Oh no: Olivia wrapped her hair around her face and appeared downcast as she walked to the car

Couple: Olivia appeared anxious while Chris cracked a smile as they left the club separately

Covering his head with a cap, the handsome star glared before breaking into a warm smile and posing with his fans.

Love Island winners Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies were also seen out on the night, looking as loved-up as ever.

Amber, 20, looked pretty in a spotted minidress which she paired with a scarlet leather jacket and peep toe ankle boots.

Night out: Chris smiled as he chatted with a pal as he left the club where he was performing his new single Little Bit Leave It with Kem Cetinay.

For the fans: Chris posed up with his fans for a quick selfie

Cute: Love Island winners Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies were also seen out on the night, looking as loved-up as ever

Brunette beauty: Amber, 20, looked pretty in a spotted minidress which she paired with a scarlet leather jacket and peep toe ankle boots

In sync:While Kem rocked a jungle green top and skinny jeans which he teamed with a furry green jacket

Pretty: Amber couldn't stop smiling as she stepped out of the club

Affection: Kem wrapped an arm around his love as they strolled out

While Kem rocked a jungle green top and skinny jeans which he teamed with a furry green jacket.

Olivia later shared a cryptic note with her 280,000 followers reading: 'And sometimes you can do everything in your power to make something work, and its still not enough', however swiftly deleted the note.

But Chris then sparked confusion as he took to Instagram to share a loved-up snap of the pair with their 'baby' Cash on Saturday.

Split speculation:The former motocross girl later shared a cryptic note with her 280,000 followers reading: 'And sometimes you can do everything in your power to make something work, and its still not enough', however swiftly deleted the note

In the images obtained by The Sun, Olivia was seen storming out of The Ministry Of Sound after Chris performed his single with Kem Cetinay - Little Bit Leave It.

It is claimed the duo fell out over the attention he received inside the club culminating in her storming out of the venue in a rage.

In the villa, Chris and Olivia were plagued with strife after a very rocky start in which she chose co-star Michael Thalassitis over him and went on to get up close with him although soon returned to her beau's arms.

When they left the villa, some compromising photos of Olivia chatting to a former flame outside a club sparked infidelity reports yet the duo were as defiant as ever when they continued to put on a united front.

'It's still not enough': Olivia's since-deleted note read, 'And sometimes you can do everything in your power to make something work, and its still not enough'

Strife: In the Love Island villa, Chris and Olivia were plagued with strife after a very rocky start in which she chose co-star Michael Thalassitis over him

Thursday evening's tweet is the latest in the ongoing saga of their romance as fans swiftly asked if it was anything to do with Chris.

In messages obtained by Mirror, fans wrote: 'Have u and Chris split? Is everything OK Liv? What has happened are you and Chris ok.'

MailOnline has contacted Chris and Olivia's representatives for comment.

Despite being rocked by rumours of cheating and a subsequent split shortly after their exit from Love Island, Olivia last month emphasised how the pair were still 'obsessed' with each other after spending so much time together in the villa.

Speaking to MailOnline, the beauty admitted Chris had been staying at hers ever since the series finale in July, and that the pair were 'more in love than ever'.

Defiant: When they left the villa, some compromising photos of Olivia chatting to a former flame outside a club sparked infidelity reports yet the duo defiantly remained together

Public display of affection: Just one month ago, the reality TV lovebirds were seen putting on a very public display of affection in London (pictured)

She admitted: 'Chris chucked his suitcase at mine the day we got back from the island, and hasnt left since. We haven't had an official "moving in" thing, but he's pretty much at mine full time now.'

Discussing their hectic schedules, she explained: 'Were obsessed with each other to the point where were killing ourselves trying to keep to the routine of staying together every night. Which isnt feasible, but we're doing a pretty good job.'

Adding she could not handle their heights of fame without Chris, she continued: 'Were more in love now too, because weve been thrown into this crazy world, so were holding each others hands through it.'
On Friday, fans of Kylie Jenner were left reeling with shock, after it was revealed that the reality star was pregnant with her and boyfriend Travis Scott's first child.

And the 20-year-old reality star's mother Kris has revealed that she was just as surprised to hear the news when she woke up thousands of miles from their Los Angeles base in Milan on Saturday morning.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter at the Bottega Veneta MFW show - where her daughter Kendall Jenner took to the runway - 61-year-old Kris simply stated: 'It wouldnt be the family if something didnt happen every single day.'

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Surprised: Kris Jenner revealed that she was 'surprised' to wake up to reports of her youngest daughter Kylie's pregnancy on Saturday morning

While she refused to confirm or deny the pregnancy news, the reality TV matriarch did relate the baby bump chatter to her own first pregnancy, when she was expecting daughter Kourtney Kardashian back in the late 1970s.

She recalled: 'I got so big, all I could do was go to Bottega Veneta and buy the most amazing handbag I could find and carry it around in front of me.'

Kris' interview came a matter of hours after it was reported that Keeping Up With The Kardashians star Kylie and her rapper boyfriend had broken the happy news to friends earlier this month at the Day N Night Fest in Anaheim, California.

Pregnant: The reality star, 20, 'expecting a baby with boyfriend Travis Scott' friends claim; the two are seen here in April, soon after they started dating

Mum: During her brief interview with the Hollywood Reporter, which took place at the Bottega Veneta SS18 Milan Fashion Week Show, Kris would neither confirm nor deny the baby news

Proud mother: She sat front row at the show, during which her daughter Kendall Jenner walked

Cover-up: While she kept details scant on her daughter's pregnancy news, Kris did reveal that she often used designer bags to cover up her own pregnancy because she got 'so big'

Multiple outlets are reporting that the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan is expecting her first child with her boyfriend of five months.

It is even claimed that Kylie and 25-year-old Travis know the sex of the child - and are having a girl.

A source confirmed the news to DailyMail.com, adding that the young star was around four months pregnant.

TMZ first broke the news, with a report stating that Travis was telling friends his life was about to change.

Baby on the way? Kylie and her pal Harry Hudson are seen out in Calabasas on September 12

Hiding her bump? The star shared this photo on Thursday, but it is not know when it was taken

A further source told People magazine that Kylie was overjoyed about her pregnancy.

'It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about,' they said.

Kylie began dating Travis back in April following her split from former long-term boyfriend Tyga, who has a child, son King Cairo, with Blac Chyna (Rob Kardashian's ex).

As news broke of the pregnancy on Friday the rapper added his own thoughts to the mix - Snapchatting, then deleting, the comment: 'hell nah that's my kid!'

Oh Tyga! As news broke of the pregnancy on Friday Tyga added his own thoughts to the mix - Snapchatting, then deleting, the comment 'hell nah that's my kid!'

Four months ago - around the time she fell pregnant - Kylie went on a charity trip to Peru. Keeping Up With The Kardashians viewers were watching as a private jet made a pit stop in Miami to collect her, after she spent a romantic few days with Travis.

In the months since the two have since proved inseparable, and even have matching butterflies tattooed on their ankles.

In recent weeks social media savvy Kylie has been unusally restrained in her posts.

Not normally one to be shy, she has refrained from any full body shots, instead posting cropped selfies of her head and shoulders, while skipping any public events.

Something to tell us? On Thursday she shared a shot with a group of friends, in which she wore a baggy T-shirt

Not like Kylie: Not normally one to be shy, she has refrained from full body shots in recent weeks, instead posting cropped selfies of her head and shoulders

On Thursday she shared one full-length shot with a group of friends, but hid her body under a baggy T-shirt.

'Day 1s' she captioned the post - a term commonly used to refer to old friends.

She also shared a few images to promote her latest clothing line for Kendall + Kyle - which launched on Friday.

Kylie has previously spoken of her yearning to have a child, even confiding in her grandmother MJ on an episode of I Am Cait that she planned to be a 'young mom'.

Indeed there was wide speculation that she was expecting a child shortly before her break-up with Tyga back in April.

Scaled back: Social media savvy Kylie has been restrained in her usually frequent posts

And while the rumor later proved to be untrue, Kylie made it clear she was keen on the idea of starting a family.

'I feel like 30 is too late!' she said on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. 'Every psychic said that Im only going to have two kids.'

On Life Of Kylie back in July she claimed was ready to get out of the spotlight and have a more normal life. 'I can't do it forever,' Kylie said.

'There is an image I constantly feel pressure to keep up with,' Kylie confesses. 'And then there's the real Kylie.'

Happy news? The two are seen together in July; Kylie began dating Travis in April

The sister of Vogue model Kendall Jenner added: 'I do feel pressure to not let anybody down. Nobody has a perfect life.'

While Kylie may be young to start a family, she certainly has the means to provide for any child.

Already a multi-millionaire in her own right, thanks to her reality career and make-up business, Kylie also owns several huge mansions.

And any new child will have plenty of ready-made playmates.

Her brand: Kylie released new designs for Kendall + Kylie this week; here she is seen in one of the ads shared on Friday

Kylie's big sister Kim Kardashian and husband Kanye West are currently awaiting the arrival of their third child. The baby - a girl - is being carried by surrogate and is due in January.

She will join Kim's older children (four-year-old North and one-year-old Saint), Kourtney's three children (Mason, seven, Penelope, five, and two-year-old Reign) and ten-month old Dream, the only child of Kylie's brother Rob.

Kylie will be seen on Sunday on the 10-year anniversary special of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The show comes back for another season in October, and news of her pregnancy will certainly be a part of the show.

Next: Kylie will be seen on Sunday on the 10-year anniversary special of Keeping Up With The Kardashians; here she is on set with Kendall

The family: The show comes back for another season in October, and news of her pregnancy will certainly be a part of the show

This week a new promo for season 14 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians was released.

In the clip, Kylie is joined by sisters Kendall Jenner, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian and mom Kris Jenner; the women recreate their original opening credits from season one of their hit show.

The series first hit TV screens on October 14, 2007; season 14 is set to premiere on October 1, 2017.

While it's not known where Kylie and Travis will call home together, the starlet has a slew of properties to her name.

In good fun: The Twitter world went wild with news of a possible pregnancy

Classic: Another used a picture of Kylie's sister Kim Kardashian

Kylie has a $12 million house in Hidden Hills, complete with 13,000 square feet; she also owns a $6 million home in the same area, according to TMZ.

Last month, the star sold her third Hidden Hills mansion for $5.4 million, after buying it at $4.5 million and flipping it.

She had a starter home in Calabasas that she sold in July.

As soon as news of the rumored baby hit the Twitter world, fans and critics of the Kardashians and Jenners went wild.

Memes and gifs with hilarious captions were soon tweeted out.

Here we go: Many people poked fun at how Kris Jenner must have felt when she got word of the alleged bun in the oven

Twist in events: Another showed Kim drinking her coffee as she waited for the confirmation

In good fun: The mother of six was the center of many of the memes

One Twitter user, @KhaiMarcus wrote: 'Kris Jenner leaving TMZ after telling them Kylie Jenner is pregnant the day before the KUWTK premiere....'

Pictured with it was a gif of a woman in disguise rushing out of a building - in this case representing Kris Jenner.

The KUWTK reunion special airs this Sunday.

Another used a picture of Kylie's sister Kim Kardashian.

One user joked about how she told everyone around her about the rumor

Say what: One person had an interesting theory - involving Kylie, Kim and Kanye

Having a blast: While Kylie Jenner became one of the top hashtags trending on Twitter around the world, the star herself enjoyed a more relaxed Friday

Happy: She took to Snapchat to share clips from her best friend Jordyn Woods' birthday

It said: 'How do people claim to hate Kardashians but literally stop what they're doing to talk about Kylie Jenner being pregnant? Talk about power.'

It was followed with a photo of Kim as she said: 'Not bad for a girl with no talent.'

One person had an interesting theory - involving Kylie, Kim and Kanye.

While Kylie Jenner became one of the top hashtags trending on Twitter around the world, the star herself enjoyed a more relaxed Friday.

Kylie and her baggy shirt: Another snap showed a stomach view of the star although it was hard to tell

Longtime friends: She posed with Jordyn and Stassi during the bash

She took to Snapchat to share clips from her best friend Jordyn Woods' birthday.

Kylie kept it casual in a baggy red hoodie layered over a black T-shirt with her long brunette locks loose.

The group appeared to be at Malibu Wine Safari at Saddlerock Ranch.

She was joined by Jordyn, Heather Sanders, Anastasia 'Stassi' Karanikolaou and Harry Hudson to name a few.

Good times: Kylie pictured on the right during the safari ride
Chloe Grace Moretz has confused Scotland and Ireland in an embarrassing Twitter fail while resulted in hilarious reaction from fans.

The American actress, 20, took to her social media platform on Saturday to note: 'I can hear bagpipes out my window. Oh Ireland.'

Bagpipes are a wind instrument commonly associated and popularised by the Scottish Highlands - a point many fans swiftly pointed out to the star.

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Red-faced: Chloe Moretz, 20, has confused Scotland and Ireland in an embarrassing Twitter fail

'Oh Ireland': The American actress took to her social media platform on Saturday to reveal she could hear bagpipes through her window

While the bagpipes have long been played throughout Europe, western Asia and the Persian Gulf, it is most commonly referred to as a Scottish hallmark.

And hoards of her fans commented on her tweet to express their confusion.

A selection of her 3.28 million followers replied: 'Bagpipes are scottish no?... you sure you're not in Scotland?'

'If you come to Australia than you would probably hear a didgeridoo playing out the window. Jokes.'

History: Bagpipes is a wind instrument commonly associated and popularised by the Scottish Highlands - prompting a hilarious reaction from fans (file picture)

'You sure you're not in Scotland?' Chloe was met with a wave of tickled responses from her 3.28 million followers

'Oh Ireland oh Scotland hahahaha' and 'I think you've confused the country you're in.'

'I thought that was a Scots thing?' and 'We don't have bagpipes here unless the Scottish are invading?'

However, there were a few people who came to her defence - drawing on the vast history of the bagpipe:

'If I'm not mistaken they are both since both are Celtic, plus I've heard bagpipes originated in Ireland.'

'When I was growing up there was an old man who every Saturday played bagpipes in the park across from my house..this was in Australia.'

Popular instrument: While the bagpipes have long been played throughout Europe, western Asia and the Persian Gulf, it is most commonly referred to as a Scottish hallmark

'This was in Australia': However, there were a few people who came to her defence - drawing on the vast history of the bagpipe

Meanwhile, her beau Brooklyn Beckham shared a cute black and white snap of the pair which he had captioned: 'Thinking of this one xx'.

Brooklyn and Chloe were seen cosied up to one another as they snapped a selfie outdoors.

Now that the British teenager has moved overseas to study, he's been able to meet up with the beauty regularly.

His post was yet further confirmation that the pair have rekindled their romance, after splitting last year.

Cute couple: Meanwhile, Brooklyn Beckham proved he only had one lady on his mind as he shared a sweet Instagram snap pining over his girlfriend Chloe on Wednesday

Romantic: Brooklyn Beckham shared a picture on Instagram on Sunday night in which he appears to cuddle girlfriend Chloe Moretz's leg while they watch Game of Thrones

'Missing my girl': He captioned the shot to say that these were his favourite nights but complained that he was missing his girl

Hinting: Underneath, actress Chloe commented with a love heart and a wilting rose to indicate that it was her who he was directing the cryptic message at

Keeping coy about their relationship, however, the duo decided to cryptically play out their love story on social media, with Brooklyn recently being caught complaining that he was 'missing [his] girl'.

Underneath a throwback shot of one of their favourite pastimes, watching TV together, his message read: 'These nights are my favourite [love heart]. Missing my girl.'

Chloe then very much confirmed that she was the girl he was pining for, when she left her comment beneath it - a love heart and a wilting flower emoji/

The black and white post, which was liked by Joanne and David Beckham, appears to show Brooklyn stroking Chloe's leg.
There's no-one better to get stuck in an elevator with than a mechanical engineer.

But its a bonus when that mechanical engineer is Bill Nye, as a gang of bikini-clad girls discovered on their Friday night out in Las Vegas.

The five female friends were twerking and snapchatting when they were suddenly interrupted by The Science Guy.

Getting down! Bill Nye interrupted a gang of bikini-clad girls twerking mid-Snapchat in an elevator on Friday

Uploaded: Twitter user @Savmasta uploaded the hilarious video of the fivesome shaking their booties in the mirror-filled lift

Twitter user @Savmasta uploaded the hilarious video of the fivesome shaking their booties in the mirror-filled lift.

But they all immediately grind to a halt when the doors open  and in walks the 61-year-old television personality with a polite 'Hi girls'.

Typically dressed in a burgundy suit, white button up and trademark bow tie, he flashed the girls a shy wave and continued about his business as if nothing happened.

'Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting..' the poster wrote, and her feed was immediately filled with hundreds of envious replies.

Hold on: But they all immediately grind to a halt when the doors open  and in walks the 61-year-old television personality

No mistaking him: He was typically dressed in a burgundy suit, white button up and trademark bow tie

Nothing to see here: he flashed the girls a shy wave and continued about his business as if nothing happened

Jealous! The poster's feed was immediately filled with hundreds of envious replies

Last month the host turned up on social media in an equally unusual spot: poolside with Flava Flav and the Sex Pistols lead guitarist Steve Jones.

'I frequently make time for science,' Bill captioned a shot of him and Flav showing off their timepieces.

Also in August, TMZ reported that Nye is suing Disney for $9 million.

Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft   (@Savmasta) September 22, 2017

Motley: Last month the host turned up on social media in an equally unusual spot: poolside with Flava Flav and the Sex Pistols lead guitarist Steve Jones

Watch this: 'I frequently make time for science,' Bill captioned a shot of him and Flav showing off their timepieces

He claims the House of Mouse, which marketed and distributed his popular show through its Buena Vista Television subsidiary, shorted him on his part of the proceeds.

According to TMZ, Nye claims Disney tried to get him to repay the bulk of a $585,000 check the studio paid him in 2008 as his part of back-end profits from his science show.

He then requested an audit of Disney's books which, it's claimed in legal docs filed in LA, showed Disney had shorted him by $9.3 million since he signed a deal with the company in 1993.
In the early hours of Friday morning, she was seen apparently breaking down in tears after a 'jealous row' with her beau Chris Hughes outside London's Ministry of Sound.

And Olivia Attwood appeared eager to clear her head of all the drama from that night several hours later, when she was spotted enjoying a relaxing afternoon of horse-riding with her sister Georgia near their Surrey home.

Wearing an all-black ensemble - which included a sweater, jodhpurs and Hunter boots - the 26-year-old Love Island star was seen giving her prized horse a kiss on the top of its head before embarking on her ride through the rolling green fields.

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Horsing around: Olivia Attwood, left, was spotted enjoying a day of horse-riding with her sister Georgia on Friday afternoon

At one point, the blonde beauty flashed a glimpse of her svelte frame, when she swapped her loose-fitting white T-shirt for her sweater of choice - revealing her tiny crop top in the process.

Olivia was seen setting up some jumps for her sister, and then filmed the action on her phone as she watched her Georgia's arena performance.

The reality TV star then took a turn riding herself, before returning the horse to its stable - but not before Olivia posed for a selfie with the majestic thoroughbred.

Peck: The Love Island star was seen kissing the horse as she prepared for her riding session

Ab fab: Blonde beauty Olivia flashed a glimpse of her taut abs as she changed her clothes

All-black: The 26-year-old reality TV stepped out in an all-black ensemble for her day of riding

Matching: She wore a crop top under her sweater, which she teamed with matching jodhpurs

Boots: The svelte TV personality rounded out her sporty ensemble with a pair of Hunter boots

Her relaxing day out stands in stark contrast to the night she endured just hours beforehand, when she got into a 'jealous' row with her boyfriend Chris.

Olivia was seen looking extremely emotional, as she walked out of the club, before wiping her eyes as she crumpled into the back seat of a cab alone.

She then began tapping away intently on her phone looking downcast as she waited.

The star, who came third with Chris in the Love Island final looked extremely busty for her night out, going braless in a tan slip top, which showed off her gravity-defying assets.

White top: Earlier in the day, she was seen wearing a white top as she approached the stables

About last night...: Her relaxed outing came just hours after she was seen getting into a row with her boyfriend Chris Hughes at London nightclub Ministry of Sound

Emotional: Olivia was seen looking extremely emotional, as she walked out of the club, before wiping her eyes as she crumpled into the back seat of a cab alone

Rolling with my dogs: She was seen walking with a pair of playful puppies during her day out

She paired the top with ivory mesh palazzo pants, cinched in with a scarlet belt and added height with tan heels.

Her blonde locks were styled sleek and straight and she opted for high-octane glamour for her night out, with massive false lashes, metallic eyeshadow and liner accentuating her peepers.

Finishing her look, she slicked on some baby pink gloss to highlight her pout.

Looking pensive and slightly fraught as she strolled out of the club alone clutching a leather jacket, the emotional star seem to be biting her nail as she apparently welled up.

Energetic: Later on, Georgia was seen mounting the horse for her energetic riding session

New heights: Georgia was spotted performing jumps, which her sister helped to set up

Observed: Olivia stood to the side as she watched all of the action taking place in the arena

Filmed: A source tells MailOnline that she filmed some of the action on her smartphone

An unimpressed looking Chris, 24, exited later clad in a cream t-shirt and grey shorts teamed with box fresh trainers.

Covering his head with a cap, the handsome star glared before breaking into a warm smile and posing with his fans.

Love Island winners Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies were also seen out on the night, looking as loved-up as ever.

Amber, 20, looked pretty in a spotted minidress which she paired with a scarlet leather jacket and peep toe ankle boots.

Her turn: TV beauty Olivia later mounted the horse herself for a relaxing ride around the arena

All is well: While Olivia and her beau appeared to have a big bust-up, Chris posted a snapshot of the pair looking loved-up and happy later that day

Safety: Georgia was seen securing protective headgear on Olivia ahead of her riding session

Relaxed: The pair enjoyed a friendly and relaxed chat after Olivia's dramatic night on the town

While Kem rocked a jungle green top and skinny jeans which he teamed with a furry green jacket.

Olivia later shared a cryptic note with her 280,000 followers reading: 'And sometimes you can do everything in your power to make something work, and its still not enough', however swiftly deleted the note.

But Chris then sparked confusion as he took to Instagram to share a loved-up snap of the pair with their 'baby' Cash on Saturday.

On the phone: A source told MailOnline that Olivia was seen constantly checking her phone throughout the otherwise relaxing day

Fame: Olivia shot to fame after appearing on the latest season of Love Island this summer

Chatting away: Holding a bottle of water, the blonde beauty chatted away on her phone

Kisses: She shared one last kiss with the majestic thoroughbred as the day came to an end

In the images obtained by The Sun, Olivia was seen storming out of The Ministry Of Sound after Chris performed his single with Kem Cetinay - Little Bit Leave It.

It is claimed the duo fell out over the attention he received inside the club culminating in her storming out of the venue in a rage.

In the villa, Chris and Olivia were plagued with strife after a very rocky start in which she chose co-star Michael Thalassitis over him and went on to get up close with him although soon returned to her beau's arms.

When they left the villa, some compromising photos of Olivia chatting to a former flame outside a club sparked infidelity reports yet the duo were as defiant as ever when they continued to put on a united front.

Speculation: During the week, there was speculation that Olivia and Chris Hughes had split

'It's still not enough': Olivia's since-deleted note read, 'And sometimes you can do everything in your power to make something work, and its still not enough'

Strife: In the Love Island villa, Chris and Olivia were plagued with strife after a very rocky start in which she chose co-star Michael Thalassitis over him

Thursday evening's tweet is the latest in the ongoing saga of their romance as fans swiftly asked if it was anything to do with Chris.

In messages obtained by Mirror, fans wrote: 'Have u and Chris split? Is everything OK Liv? What has happened are you and Chris ok.'

MailOnline has contacted Chris and Olivia's representatives for comment.

Despite being rocked by rumours of cheating and a subsequent split shortly after their exit from Love Island, Olivia last month emphasised how the pair were still 'obsessed' with each other after spending so much time together in the villa.

Speaking to MailOnline, the beauty admitted Chris had been staying at hers ever since the series finale in July, and that the pair were 'more in love than ever'.

Defiant: When they left the villa, some compromising photos of Olivia chatting to a former flame outside a club sparked infidelity reports yet the duo defiantly remained together

Public display of affection: Just one month ago, the reality TV lovebirds were seen putting on a very public display of affection in London (pictured)

She admitted: 'Chris chucked his suitcase at mine the day we got back from the island, and hasnt left since. We haven't had an official "moving in" thing, but he's pretty much at mine full time now.'

Discussing their hectic schedules, she explained: 'Were obsessed with each other to the point where were killing ourselves trying to keep to the routine of staying together every night. Which isnt feasible, but we're doing a pretty good job.'

Adding she could not handle their heights of fame without Chris, she continued: 'Were more in love now too, because weve been thrown into this crazy world, so were holding each others hands through it.'
Chelsee Healey has been left absolutely raging after a bag full of her newborn daughter's baby clothes were stolen.

The Hollyoaks actress, 29 - who gave birth to her baby girl in July - couldn't contain her anger as she took to her social media platform to express her fury - labelling the thief 'a dirty little scumbag'.

She took to Twitter to express: 'Absolutely fuming some little scruff thinks it ok to open my boot while i was packing for London and rob my 2 bags! All my babys clothes!'

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'Absolutely fuming': Chelsee Healey, 29, has been left absolutely raging after a bag full of her newborn daughter's baby clothes were stolen

Angry! The Hollyoaks actress who gave birth to her baby girl in July - couldn't contain her anger as she took to her social media platform to express her fury - labelling the thief 'a dirty little scumbag'

Wanting her voice to be heard on all of her social media channels, Chelsee then screen-shotted the same message on Instagram.

The soapstar also added a further lengthy caption: 'Some Little dirty scum bag robbed my big LV BAG AND gucci bag full of my Babys clothes out of the Boot of my car as i was packing it up for london!

'So you little rat how low can you go robbing my daughters 0-3 month old clothes! wait on it F****** Tramp!'

Her fury comes after she confessed it wasn't all plain sailing when she recalled the dramatic moment her heart rate plummeted during the birth.

'Scum': Chelsee took to Twitter to express to reveal her bags had been stolen from the boot of her car as she prepared for a London trip

Not happy: Wanting her voice to be heard on all of her social media channels, Chelsee then screen-shotted the same message on Instagram

'You little rat': The soapstar also added a further lengthy caption

Describing her labour, she told The Mirror: 'All I was thinking about was how I just couldnt wait for her to arrive. But then her heart rate plummeted and they pressed the buzzer and all the midwives and doctors came rushing in.'

Since then, the family have gone from strength to strength, with Chelsee, who is madly in love with her boyfriend, revealing Jack has really stepped up to the job of being a dad.

She explained to the publication: 'I couldn't have asked for a better father to my daughter.'

'All the midwives and doctors came rushing in!' Her fury comes after she confessed it wasn't all plain sailing when she recalled the dramatic moment her heart rate plummeted during the birth

Family: Since then, the family have gone from strength to strength, with Chelsee, who is madly in love with her boyfriend, revealing Jack has really stepped up to the job of being a dad

Their relationship has been on the rocks - with the pair previously splitting up in July 2016, following Jack's arrest in November 2015. He was jailed for 12 months for dangerous driving, using a vehicle without insurance and driving while disqualified.

Despite his early release in March, the couple split a few months later in July 2016. Now back together, Chelsee has defended her lover insisting he is a 'great guy' who 'made mistakes' when asked about his 'bad boy rep'.

The starlet has also made a few crucial changes to her own routine as she claimed having a baby has shifted her own set of priorities.

She added: 'My priorities are a lot different now. Im not waiting for the next big night out  which I used to enjoy, I cant lie.'
She has been strutting her stuff on the catwalks of New York and London as of late.

And Winnie Harlow proved that life couldn't get any better, as she took a break from her hectic schedule to strip off for a saucy snap on Saturday.

Sharing the sizzling image on Instagram, the star, who has the skin condition vitiligo, flaunts her modelesque figure and pert derriere in a pair of cut-out underwear and a statement coat draped off her shoulder.

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Stripping off! Winnie Harlow, 23 flaunts her modelesque figure and pert derriere in a pair of cut-out underwear and a statement coat in her latest sizzling Instagram snap

Giggling up a storm as she stares at herself in a full-length mirror, Winnie oozes body confidence as she sheds most of her clothes.

Draping a forest green statement coat off her shoulder, the beauty bares the other half of her impeccable physique.

Ensuring not to reveal too much, she cups one of her assets with her hand, while her skimpy underwear works to enhance her bottom.

A pair of camel-coloured thigh-high boots perfectly complements her toned legs as she captures the perfect picture, which she captions: 'Girls just wanna have fun.'

Work it! The model has been strutting her stuff on the catwalks of New York and London as of late - Pictured at the Julien Macdonald SS18 show for LFW earlier this week

'Airport flow': Winnie regularly lines her Instagram with figure-flaunting ensembles and recently showed off her jaw-dropping looks as she flashed her impossibly toned stomach in a skimpy grey bandeau bikini top as she relaxed in airport

Winnie regularly lines her Instagram with figure-flaunting ensembles and recently showed off her jaw-dropping looks as she flashed her impossibly toned stomach in a skimpy grey bandeau bikini top as she relaxed in airport.

Winnie infused the elements of comfort and glamour for the look, which saw her don an unzipped hoodie - undoubtedly showing off her flawless physique.

The beauty paired the look with relaxed joggers and Nike trainers as she sexily perched one leg up on chair.

The snap comes after she used her rising star platform to relay a message on body positivity as she stripped nearly naked for a sizzling snap.

The star donned only a pair of skimpy nude-coloured thongs as she showed off her peachy posterior and statuesque frame in a fierce pose.

'I'm beautiful': This comes after the fashion muse used her rising star platform to relay a message on body positivity as she stripped nearly naked for a sizzling snap

Striking: The rising model, who is 5ft 9in, was diagnosed with vitiligo around the age of four, making her among one per cent of the population who has the condition

The sexy image saw the model muse closing her eyes as she snaps the picture from over her shoulder.

Her sculpted back, derriere and toned legs are on full display during the body confident snap.

She proudly captioned the snap: 'The real difference isn't my skin. It's the fact that I don't find my beauty in the opinions of others. I'm beautiful because I know it. Celebrate Your unique beauty today (& everyday)!'

Winnie, who is 5ft 9in, was diagnosed with vitiligo around the age of four, making her among one per cent of the population who has the condition.

In an with Cosmopolitan magazine, she revealed: 'Kids called me a cow and mooed at me. I remember sitting by my window wishing upon the stars that my skin condition would go away'

In an with Cosmopolitan magazine, she revealed: 'Kids called me a cow and mooed at me. I remember sitting by my window wishing upon the stars that my skin condition would go away.'

She was physically taunted later in life and reveals that a group of girls 'jumped her' in a fight, which led to her being suspended because she started skipping class. She dropped out of school at the age of 17 and never looked back.

Winnie, who was working at a call centre, was scouted on Facebook and was quickly snapped up to star in a string of campaigns and music videos.

Claim to fame: Winnie, who was working at a call centre, was scouted on Facebook and was quickly snapped up to star in a string of campaigns and music videos

Her big break came when she starred on America's Next Top Model in 2014 and Tyra Banks said that Winnie's skin breaks down barriers of what is considered beautiful.

Now Winnie, who describes her self as a 'vitiligo spokesmodel' on Instagram, is being celebrated for her distinctive look.

Her striking good looks have even caught the eye of Formula One hunk Lewis Hamilton and the pair have frequently been spotted partying together.

However, they have never confirmed a romantic relationship.
On Friday, fans of Kylie Jenner were left reeling with shock, after it was revealed that the reality star was pregnant with her and boyfriend Travis Scott's first child.

And the 20-year-old reality star's mother Kris and sister Kendall were spotted making a speedy exit from Milan airport on Saturday, after Kendall had finished walking her last show.

The news, which surfaced while Kendall was working during Milan Fashion Week with Kris by her side for support, left Kris admitting that she was 'surprised' her youngest was expecting with her boyfriend of five months, rapper Travis Scott.

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Shock: On Friday, fans of Kylie Jenner were left reeling with shock as news broke she was pregnant with her boyfriend Travis Scott

Kendall, 21, attempted to keep a low profile as she walked briskly through the airport, holding her hand over her face before pulling her jacket over her head.

Kris, 61, was altogether more relaxed as she strolled through the terminal with a grin on her face, presumably excited at the prospect of her youngest child's pregnancy.

The glamorous pair both hid behind their large sunglasses, and seemed determined on arriving at their destination as quickly as possible.

Speedy exit: The 20-year-old reality star's mother Kris and sister Kendall were spotted making a speedy exit from Milan airport on Saturday, after Kendall had finished walking her last show

Low profile: Kendall, 21, attempted to keep a low profile as she walked briskly through the airport, holding her hand over her face before pulling her jacket over her head

Excited: Kris, 61, was altogether more relaxed as she strolled through the terminal with a grin on her face, presumably excited at the prospect of her youngest child's pregnancy

In a rush? The glamorous pair both hid behind their large sunglasses, and seemed determined on arriving at their destination as quickly as possible

Kendall appeared to have left her catwalk shows in a rush, as she sported casual tracksuit bottoms with a pair of white patent leather boots.

Kris looked chic in an all-black ensemble, and kept comfortable in a pair of black brogues while carrying her belongings in a large embellished Louis Vuitton handbag.

Although Kris appeared to be in high spirits, Kendall looked a little more flustered as she hid under her jacket while trailing behind her mother.

Mismatched: Kendall appeared to have left her catwalk shows in a rush, as she sported casual tracksuit bottoms with a pair of white patent leather boots

Chic: Kris looked chic in an all-black ensemble, and kept comfortable in a pair of black brogues while carrying her belongings in a large embellished Louis Vuitton handbag

Flustered: Although Kris appeared to be in high spirits, Kendall looked a little more flustered as she hid under her jacket while trailing behind her mother

Unexpected: Kris admitted that she knew nothing about Kylie's pregnancy on Saturday morning - and she is reportedly four months along

Busy: Kendall has had a hectic schedule, walking in various shows over Milan Fashion Week

Looking good: Kris belied her 61 years by displaying her fabulous figure in her ensemble

Fashion: Kendall appeared to be courting a new fashion trend with her jacket

Coming through: Kris and Kendall were flanked by their entourage

Kris admitted that she knew nothing about Kylie's pregnancy on Saturday morning - and she is reportedly four months along.

Kris revealed that she was just as surprised as fans to hear the news when she woke up thousands of miles from their Los Angeles base in Milan on Saturday morning.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter at the Bottega Veneta MFW show - where her daughter Kendall Jenner took to the runway - 61-year-old Kris simply stated: 'It wouldnt be the family if something didnt happen every single day.'

Surprised: Kris revealed that she was 'surprised' to wake up to reports of her youngest daughter Kylie's pregnancy on Saturday morning

While she refused to confirm or deny the pregnancy news, the reality TV matriarch did relate the baby bump chatter to her own first pregnancy, when she was expecting daughter Kourtney Kardashian back in the late 1970s.

She recalled: 'I got so big, all I could do was go to Bottega Veneta and buy the most amazing handbag I could find and carry it around in front of me.'

Kris' interview came a matter of hours after it was reported that Keeping Up With The Kardashians star Kylie and her rapper boyfriend had broken the happy news to friends earlier this month at the Day N Night Fest in Anaheim, California.

Pregnant: The reality star, 20, 'expecting a baby with boyfriend Travis Scott' friends claim; the two are seen here in April, soon after they started dating

Mum: During her brief interview with the Hollywood Reporter, which took place at the Bottega Veneta SS18 Milan Fashion Week Show, Kris would neither confirm nor deny the baby news

Proud mother: She sat front row at the show, during which her daughter Kendall Jenner walked

Cover-up: While she kept details scant on her daughter's pregnancy news, Kris did reveal that she often used designer bags to cover up her own pregnancy because she got 'so big'

Multiple outlets are reporting that the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan is expecting her first child with her boyfriend of five months.

It is even claimed that Kylie and 25-year-old Travis know the sex of the child - and are having a girl.

A source confirmed the news to DailyMail.com, adding that the young star was around four months pregnant.

TMZ first broke the news, with a report stating that Travis was telling friends his life was about to change.

Baby on the way? Kylie and her pal Harry Hudson are seen out in Calabasas on September 12

Hiding her bump? The star shared this photo on Thursday, but it is not know when it was taken

A further source told People magazine that Kylie was overjoyed about her pregnancy.

'It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about,' they said.

Kylie began dating Travis back in April following her split from former long-term boyfriend Tyga, who has a child, son King Cairo, with Blac Chyna (Rob Kardashian's ex).

As news broke of the pregnancy on Friday the rapper added his own thoughts to the mix - Snapchatting, then deleting, the comment: 'hell nah that's my kid!'

Oh Tyga! As news broke of the pregnancy on Friday Tyga added his own thoughts to the mix - Snapchatting, then deleting, the comment 'hell nah that's my kid!'

Four months ago - around the time she fell pregnant - Kylie went on a charity trip to Peru. Keeping Up With The Kardashians viewers were watching as a private jet made a pit stop in Miami to collect her, after she spent a romantic few days with Travis.

In the months since the two have since proved inseparable, and even have matching butterflies tattooed on their ankles.

In recent weeks social media savvy Kylie has been unusally restrained in her posts.

Not normally one to be shy, she has refrained from any full body shots, instead posting cropped selfies of her head and shoulders, while skipping any public events.

Something to tell us? On Thursday she shared a shot with a group of friends, in which she wore a baggy T-shirt

Not like Kylie: Not normally one to be shy, she has refrained from full body shots in recent weeks, instead posting cropped selfies of her head and shoulders

On Thursday she shared one full-length shot with a group of friends, but hid her body under a baggy T-shirt.

'Day 1s' she captioned the post - a term commonly used to refer to old friends.

She also shared a few images to promote her latest clothing line for Kendall + Kyle - which launched on Friday.

Kylie has previously spoken of her yearning to have a child, even confiding in her grandmother MJ on an episode of I Am Cait that she planned to be a 'young mom'.

Indeed there was wide speculation that she was expecting a child shortly before her break-up with Tyga back in April.

Scaled back: Social media savvy Kylie has been restrained in her usually frequent posts

And while the rumor later proved to be untrue, Kylie made it clear she was keen on the idea of starting a family.

'I feel like 30 is too late!' she said on Keeping Up With The Kardashians. 'Every psychic said that Im only going to have two kids.'

On Life Of Kylie back in July she claimed was ready to get out of the spotlight and have a more normal life. 'I can't do it forever,' Kylie said.

'There is an image I constantly feel pressure to keep up with,' Kylie confesses. 'And then there's the real Kylie.'

Happy news? The two are seen together in July; Kylie began dating Travis in April

The sister of Vogue model Kendall Jenner added: 'I do feel pressure to not let anybody down. Nobody has a perfect life.'

While Kylie may be young to start a family, she certainly has the means to provide for any child.

Already a multi-millionaire in her own right, thanks to her reality career and make-up business, Kylie also owns several huge mansions.

And any new child will have plenty of ready-made playmates.

Her brand: Kylie released new designs for Kendall + Kylie this week; here she is seen in one of the ads shared on Friday

Kylie's big sister Kim Kardashian and husband Kanye West are currently awaiting the arrival of their third child. The baby - a girl - is being carried by surrogate and is due in January.

She will join Kim's older children (four-year-old North and one-year-old Saint), Kourtney's three children (Mason, seven, Penelope, five, and two-year-old Reign) and ten-month old Dream, the only child of Kylie's brother Rob.

Kylie will be seen on Sunday on the 10-year anniversary special of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

The show comes back for another season in October, and news of her pregnancy will certainly be a part of the show.

Next: Kylie will be seen on Sunday on the 10-year anniversary special of Keeping Up With The Kardashians; here she is on set with Kendall

The family: The show comes back for another season in October, and news of her pregnancy will certainly be a part of the show

This week a new promo for season 14 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians was released.

In the clip, Kylie is joined by sisters Kendall Jenner, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian and mom Kris Jenner; the women recreate their original opening credits from season one of their hit show.

The series first hit TV screens on October 14, 2007; season 14 is set to premiere on October 1, 2017.

While it's not known where Kylie and Travis will call home together, the starlet has a slew of properties to her name.

In good fun: The Twitter world went wild with news of a possible pregnancy

Classic: Another used a picture of Kylie's sister Kim Kardashian

Kylie has a $12 million house in Hidden Hills, complete with 13,000 square feet; she also owns a $6 million home in the same area, according to TMZ.

Last month, the star sold her third Hidden Hills mansion for $5.4 million, after buying it at $4.5 million and flipping it.

She had a starter home in Calabasas that she sold in July.

As soon as news of the rumored baby hit the Twitter world, fans and critics of the Kardashians and Jenners went wild.

Memes and gifs with hilarious captions were soon tweeted out.

Here we go: Many people poked fun at how Kris Jenner must have felt when she got word of the alleged bun in the oven

Twist in events: Another showed Kim drinking her coffee as she waited for the confirmation

In good fun: The mother of six was the center of many of the memes

One Twitter user, @KhaiMarcus wrote: 'Kris Jenner leaving TMZ after telling them Kylie Jenner is pregnant the day before the KUWTK premiere....'

Pictured with it was a gif of a woman in disguise rushing out of a building - in this case representing Kris Jenner.

The KUWTK reunion special airs this Sunday.

Another used a picture of Kylie's sister Kim Kardashian.

One user joked about how she told everyone around her about the rumor

Say what: One person had an interesting theory - involving Kylie, Kim and Kanye

Having a blast: While Kylie Jenner became one of the top hashtags trending on Twitter around the world, the star herself enjoyed a more relaxed Friday

Happy: She took to Snapchat to share clips from her best friend Jordyn Woods' birthday

It said: 'How do people claim to hate Kardashians but literally stop what they're doing to talk about Kylie Jenner being pregnant? Talk about power.'

It was followed with a photo of Kim as she said: 'Not bad for a girl with no talent.'

One person had an interesting theory - involving Kylie, Kim and Kanye.

While Kylie Jenner became one of the top hashtags trending on Twitter around the world, the star herself enjoyed a more relaxed Friday.

Kylie and her baggy shirt: Another snap showed a stomach view of the star although it was hard to tell

Longtime friends: She posed with Jordyn and Stassi during the bash

She took to Snapchat to share clips from her best friend Jordyn Woods' birthday.

Kylie kept it casual in a baggy red hoodie layered over a black T-shirt with her long brunette locks loose.

The group appeared to be at Malibu Wine Safari at Saddlerock Ranch.

She was joined by Jordyn, Heather Sanders, Anastasia 'Stassi' Karanikolaou and Harry Hudson to name a few.

Good times: Kylie pictured on the right during the safari ride
Audrina Patridge has been forced to move in with her parents.

The Hills star is pictured unloading her things at her mom and dad's home in Orange County on Saturday, in the wake of her messy split from husband Corey Bohan.

The 32-year-old also brought supplies for her 15-month-old daughter Kirra Max, whom she shares with her now estranged partner.

Step back: Audrina Patridge has been forced to move in with her parents in the wake of her messy split from husband Corey Bohan

It has been claimed that Bohan will not move out of the Irvine, California house that she owns, as specified in their prenup.

On Friday The Blast shared an image of a shirtless Corey arguing with her father in the house he now occupies.

The 35-year-old professional BMX dirt bike rider has said that her father was always in the home and wanted to fight with him, according to TMZ.

According to People, the reality star is having a hard time coping. 'She's devastated,' said an insider.

Refuge: The Hills star was spotted unloading her things at her mom and dads home in Orange County on Saturday

With mom: The 32-year-old also brought supplies for her 15-month-old daughter Kirra Max, whom she shares with her now estranged partner

Sad: The reality star seemed upset as she unpacked her things

And the reality TV darling has been leaning on her family. 'She is extremely close with her parents [Lynne and Mark], brother [Marky] and sister and they are all supporting her. Theyre a very tight family and protective of her. They just want whats best for Audrina and Kirra.

The Hills vet, 32, has taken out a restraining order on him after a domestic violence incident, according to TMZ. The incident reportedly involved him shoving her while she was holding the baby, threatening suicide and 'repeatedly harassing her while she was working.'

The two have been wed for only ten months.

'Audrina's number one concern is for her daughter and she asks for privacy at this time,' her rep told People.

On the town: Audrina is turning to her family for support after leaving husband of 10 months Corey Bohan. According to People , the Hills star is having a hard time coping. The stars seen at Sushi Roku restaurant, West Hollywood in 2008

New: Also on Friday The Blast shared an image of a shirtless Corey arguing with her father in the home owned by Audrina. It has been claimed that Bohan will not move out of the Irvine, California house that she owns, as specified in their prenup

'I am fearful of [Coreys] temper because he cannot control his swearing and personal attacks on me, even when in the presence of our young daughter,' she alleged in the documents.

'She is physically okay. But shes devastated,' said a source.

'This is the end of a long-term relationship and she never wanted this to happen. Its a disappointment on so many levels to say the least. Its painful and its really hard.'

Adds the source, 'This whole situation is so unfortunate for everyone. Corey has been in Audrinas life for almost 10 years.'

Patridge reportedly filed for a temporary restraining order against Bohan on Monday; she filed for divorce on Wednesday.

Her parents: 'She is extremely close with her parents [Lynne and Mark], brother [Marky] and sister and they are all supporting her,' said a source. Seen in 2011

Sweet sibling: Also by her side is her sister Sammy Patridge. Seen in 2011

The nuptials: They have been dating since 2008 and a few times took breaks. They wed in Hawaii in November

The star has asked for primary physical and legal custody of Kirra. And it was added by TMZ, which claims to have seen the divorce documents, that she does not want to pay him spousal support.

There was also an order 'specifically prohibiting Bohan from taking Kirra to Australia' where he comes from.

Also in the documents, the reality TV star said he had violated the restraining order she took out on Monday when he 'refused to leave their house' on Tuesday.

According to the site, 'she showed up to pick up some stuff' at the residence.

That's when she learned he had installed 'five video cameras inside the house to keep tabs on her,' it was alleged.

Hard times: Here the siren is seen on her hit TV series The Hills

Over: Patridge is divorcing her husband Bohan, 35, a professional BMX dirt bike rider. Seen in 2013

When she told him to leave the home she says he called her a 'f***ing c**t,' she claimed in the documents.

The site noted that police came to the home, but it is not clear what they did.

Bohan filed a response to her restraining order, which was obtained by People.

'On Sept. 19, [Patridge] and her family members showed up at the residence, literally banging in the house through the garage door after I texted stay out in the front of the house  and started harassing me,' he claimed.

He insisted his estranged father-in-law and brother-in-law were trying to instigate a fight.

Family: The two have been wed for less than a year and they have a child together, daughter Kirra Max

He claimed to pay for maintenance and utilities, and that the restraining order only applies to her 'current home '  which is her parents' house, not the family home, where she has not lived for three weeks.

He denied there was five cameras in the house, only two - a nanny cam and the camera at the front of the house - which Audrina already knew about.

He also accused her attorney of denying him an alternative court appearance, which is currently scheduled for the same day as his visitation with his daughter.

He wants to retain a lawyer but cannot afford to, so wants his ex to provide support.

They have been together romantically since 2008 and a few times took breaks. They wed in Hawaii in November.

Day of: Her last Instagram post was taken from the Pelican Hill Resort in Southern California on Monday, the same day she allegedly filed a restraining order

Her last Instagram post was taken from the Pelican Hill Resort in Southern California on Monday, the same day she filed the restraining order.

Her caption read: 'The @pelicanhillresort never disappoints... beautiful sunset dinner to wrap up #StyleWeekOC with @simply & @FashionIsland #SIMPLYFashionIsland #FashionIsland.'

Last week she was in NYC with her daughter.

'Their relationship has been tumultuous from the beginning,' an insider told UsWeekly on Thursday.

Seen in December 2016

'They have a kid together and wanted to make it work for her.

'Motherhood has changed Audrina in the sense that that is her No. 1 first love,' the source added. 'Shes enamored with her daughter.'

A separate source explained the couple became very different.

'Audrina is an incredible mother and loving person and it's unfortunate it's come to this. They just come from different family cultures with different ways of seeing things.'

Her Hills co-star Justin Bobby told E!: 'My first reaction is the thought of the child, obviously. Me, coming from a separated family at a young age, it had its perks and it had its hindrances. My second thought is if she's OK, because she's been a longtime friend. My thoughts and my heart go out to her and her little one at this time.'

He proposed at the Summit House in Orange County, California.

'Corey dropped to his knee and said, "We have been together for many years now and I love you more than anything. I want to spend the rest of my life with you  will you marry me?"' she told People.

'I was in shock and kind of didnt even hear him. But I said yes!'
She stole the show in a glitzy emerald gown at the prestigious amfAR party on Thursday.

And Hailey Baldwin proved she can turn heads both on and off the catwalk as she stormed the runway at Milan Fashion Week's Missoni show on Saturday.

The 20-year-old model, who has turned heads in New York and London as well as Milan this Fashion Week season, sizzled in her sexy over-sized patterned cardigan, which she wore with bare legs to flaunt her toned limbs.

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Patchworking it! Hailey Baldwin proved she can turn heads both on and off the catwalk as she stormed the runway in a cardigan at Milan Fashion Week's Missoni show on Saturday

Layering up: The 20-year-old model, who has stolen the show various times this fashion week season, sizzled in her sexy over-sized patterned cardigan

The vibrant jumble of colours in the patchwork cardi was further accentuated by Hailey's multicoloured striped cami, which she coupled with a matching choker.

Stephen Baldwin's daughter strode past the crowds with her blonde tresses tied loosely behind her shoulders in a low ponytail.

In keeping with the vivid colours in her ensemble, Hailey opted for glittering turquoise eyeshadow and coral heels with delicate straps.

Turning heads: The vibrant jumble of colours in the patchwork cardi was further accentuated by Hailey's multicoloured striped cami, which she coupled with a matching choker

Earning the applause: Stephen Baldwin's daughter encouraged her fellow models as she strode past the crowds with her blonde tresses tied loosely behind her shoulders

Hailey's fellow models joined her to demonstrate that Missoni's Spring 2018 collection offers an explosive combination of vibrant colours producing pullovers, gilets, maxi skirts and patchwork dresses.

Its website says of the sartorial collection: 'A cut-and-paste of folk and funky moods, monochromatic and multicolored hues, patchwork and deco painting, high-tech and handmade.'



Hailey recently revealed the secret to her catwalk successes was down to practicing her moves off the runway.

Fashionable on the FROW: Lewis Hamilton donned a collection of colourful patterns for the show in a blazer and shorts combination with brown boots

Putting on a show: Lewis ensured all eyes would be on him as he settled into the front row

Vibrant: Hailey's fellow models (including Anna Cleveland, pictured) joined her to demonstrate that Missoni's Spring 2018 collection offers an explosive combination of colours

Missoni's website says of the sartorial collection: 'A cut-and-paste of folk and funky moods, monochromatic and multicolored hues, patchwork and deco painting'

She told Elle in an interview: 'Sometimes if I'm walking down a hallway and no one's around, I'll do it low key if no one's going to come round the corner.'

Hailey has been a hot commodity during this autumn's fashion weeks, walking the runway in New York and London.

Although she was spotted at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show auditions in New York recently, it's been revealed Hailey has not been chosen to walk the famous runway.

The blonde bombshell has made no secret of her desire to appear in the show, having previously told MailOnline that it was her 'dream'.

She said: 'I want to walk in the Victoria's Secret show, it's every girl's dream'.
She always turns heads when she enters a room.

And Kym Marsh ensured all eyes would be firmly on her as she attended the Green Cloud IT Emerald Charity Ball at Manchester Hilton Hotel in aid of Manchester Childrens Hospital on Saturday.

Showing off her sensational figure, the 41-year-old Coronation Street star looked incredible as she posed up a storm in a plunging gown.

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Glam: Kym Marsh ensured all eyes would be firmly on her as she attended the Green Cloud IT Emerald Charity Ball at Manchester Hilton Hotel in aid of Manchester Childrens Hospital on Saturday

Flaunting her ample cleavage, the brunette bombshell donned a low-cut fishtail gown that trailed behind her as she walked.

Patterned with flattering horizontal stripes, the gown's nude panels hinted at her phenomenal figure beneath.

Kym finished off the look by styling her glossy chestnut locks in loose waves that framed her flawless features.

Taking the plunge! Showing off her sensational figure, the 41-year-old Coronation Street star looked incredible as she posed up a storm in a plunging gown

Chest a glimpse! Flaunting her ample cleavage, the brunette bombshell donned a low-cut fishtail gown that trailed behind her as she walked

Whilst Kym was all smiles at the event, she recently recalled a harrowing experience of being stalked for 10 years.

The Corrie stunner admitted she drew inspiration from her personal experience for her alter-ego Michelle Connor's creepy new storyline.

She explained: 'I had a few people make fake accounts of me on social media. Somehow you expect it, (it was a) strange way I found out it about, I got sent flowers that that said "Sorry you couldn't make our date".

'We found out someone had been pretending to be me for 10 years, having conversations with this guy as if they were having some kind of relationship. So it was just really strange.'

Teasing a look: Patterned with flattering horizontal stripes, the gown's nude panels hinted at her phenomenal physique beneath the figure-hugging outfit

Kym - who raises children David Ryan Cunliffe, 22 and Emilie Mae Cunliffe, 18 as well as daughter Polly, six, with ex-husband Jamie Lomas - admitted the most disturbing thing of all was someone who set up a fake social media profile on behalf of her youngest daughter.

She explained: 'They've made accounts of my children and most recently of my six-year-old, which is disturbing.'

She shares David and The Voice hopeful Emily with former partner Dave Cunliffe, who she split from shortly after Emilie's birth and later married EastEnders heartthrob Jack Ryder in 2002 before they split in 2008.

Glam: Kym finished off the look by styling her glossy chestnut locks in loose waves that framed her flawless features as she cosied up to a friend on the red carpet
She's the lovable model who has stormed many runways in her budding career.

And Suki Waterhouse, 25, proved her star quality runs in the family as she joined glamorous younger sisters Immy, 22, and Maddi, 18 for Salvatore Ferragamo's show during Milan Fashion Week on Saturday.

Making a rare public appearance all together, the trio looked sensational as they settled into the FROW to watch Bella Hadid walk the catwalk.

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Terrific trio: Suki Waterhouse, 25, (M) proved her star quality runs in the family as she joined sisters Immy, 22 (L) and Maddi, 18 for Salvatore Ferragamo's show on Saturday

Suki, 25, wore a chocolate brown silk midi dress, and styled her blonde tresses into a centre parting with a grown out fringe.

While Suki opted for a siren-worthy look in a pair of towering stilettos and her figure-hugging dress, her sisters wore slightly more edgy ensembles.

Immy wore a blue polo neck top with a pair of wide leg culotte trousers complete with thick belt to nip her in at her waist.

Three's company: Making a rare public appearance all together, the trio looked sensational as they settled into the FROW to watch Bella Hadid walk the catwalk

She styled her blonde bob into a curled blow dry, and slung an embroidered handbag over her shoulder.

Maddi wore a pinstriped black suit jacket with a pair of matching horizontally striped trousers.

She layered a grey polo underneath her jacket, and slicked her hair back off her face in a wet look style.

Fashionable for the front row: Suki, 25, wore a chocolate brown silk midi dress, and styled her blonde tresses into a centre parting with a grown out fringe

Stylish siblings: While Suki opted for a siren-worthy look in a pair of towering stilettos and her figure-hugging dress, her sisters wore slightly more edgy ensembles.

After a successful modelling career, which has seen her front campaigns for Burberry, Redken, and Laura Mercier, Suki branched out to create her own accessories brand, Pop & Suki.

She also attempted to launch a music career, but failed to make it into the UK top 200; her debut single Brutally has been downloaded just 296 times since it was released in early November.

Following in suit of fellow model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne, Suki turned her hand to treading the boards, and has featured in romantic thriller The Bad Batch and has been cast in the upcoming Billionaire Boys Club.

Blue-tiful! Immy wore a blue polo neck top with a pair of wide leg culotte trousers complete with thick belt to nip her in at her waist

Immy - possibly with a little help from her big sister - has secured numerous modelling campaigns, magazine covers and acting roles over the past couple of years, including work for Dior and Tommy Hilfiger and a Tatler cover shoot.

Suki split from ex-boyfriend Bradley Cooper in March 2015, with the high-profile couple having dated for two years after meeting at the ELLE Style Awards in London in early 2013.

The Oscar-nominated actor recently welcomed his first child with Russian supermodel Irina Shayk, 30.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and US President Donald Trump have ratcheted up the rhetoric in recent days

An escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un ratcheted up a notch on Friday as the US president dubbed North Korea's leader a "madman," a day after the reclusive regime hinted it may explode a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

Hours earlier, in a rare personal attack, Kim took aim at Trump, branding him "mentally deranged" and a "dotard", and warning he would "pay dearly" for his threat to destroy North Korea if challenged, uttered before the United Nations General Assembly.

The verbal clash came a day after Washington announced tougher sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program, on the heels of a Trump speech in which he which he nicknamed Kim "Rocket Man" and declared him to be on a "suicide mission."

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" Trump posted early Friday in the first of a barrage of unrelated tweets.

In an unusally personal attack, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said US President Donald Trump is "mentally deranged" and will "pay dearly" for his threat to destroy North Korea

Kim had delivered a tongue-lashing of his own -- vowing to "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire," in an address read out on state television by a star news anchor before a still image of Kim at his desk.

Trump "insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history", Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

"I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech."

- Sanctions -

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang, and Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that that scrap resembled a "kindergarten fight between children."

"We have to calm down the hot heads and understand that we do need pauses, that we do need some contacts," Lavrov told a news conference after his address to the General Assembly.

On the fringes of the world meeting, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has launched a slew of missiles and the country's largest nuclear test in recent weeks as tensions mount over his weapons ambitions

"I think that it could be an H-bomb test at an unprecedented level perhaps over the Pacific," he said -- while adding: "It is up to our leader so I do not know well."

Washington on Thursday authorized a tough new raft of sanctions in the latest effort to tighten the screws on Pyongyang over its banned weapons programs, following its sixth nuclear test -- the largest yet -- and the firing of two missiles over Japan in recent weeks.

Trump's executive order, which prohibits firms from operating in the United States if they deal with North Korea, came after the UN Security Council agreed its own further set of sanctions aimed at reducing Pyongyang's ability to trade with the outside world.

But analysts say the sanctions show no signs of working, and cautioned that the increasingly ill-tempered and personal exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang did not augur well.

"There are some very dangerous things that could come that move this from theater to reality. This is the time to be heading them off, not making them feel inevitable," said John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul.

- 'Still hope for peace' -

North Korea's missiles and nuclear tests

Washington has refused to offer incentives to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table, despite appeals to do so from China and Russia, who are both uneasy over Trump's bellicose tone.

However in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump suggested the door to dialogue remained open.

"Why not?" he said, when asked whether there could be talks with Pyongyang.

China wields the most influence on North Korea, providing an economic lifeline. But it also fears the consequences if the regime collapses, such as an exodus of refugees or a US-allied, reunited Korea on its border.

"Negotiation is the only way out and deserves every effort," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the General Assembly.

US President Donald Trump threatened in his speech at the UN to 'totally destroy' North Korea if it attacks the US or its allies

The sentiments were echoed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said "military hysteria is not just an impasse, it's disaster."

North Korean envoy Ri is expected to meet on Saturday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will send out feelers on possible diplomatic talks.

But Chung Sung-Yoon, analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP that the North itself may have shelved the idea of negotiations until it reaches its nuclear goal.

"People say this is all part of its brinkmanship strategy to force the US to come forward for negotiation. But the North is leaving too little room for the US to do so with the latest series of threats and provocations," he said.

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A referendum on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan is set for September 25, despite fierce opposition from Baghdad and its neighbors

The UN Security Council on Thursday warned that a referendum on independence by Iraq's Kurdistan region was potentially destabilizing, adding its weight to international opposition to the vote.

In a unanimous statement, the 15-member council said the referendum planned for Monday could hinder efforts to help refugees return home and weaken the military campaign against the Islamic State group.

The move heightened pressure on Iraqi Kurd leaders to call off the vote after Turkey, Iran and Iraq urged them to abandon the plan that is also opposed by the United States.

Council members "expressed concern over the potentially destabilizing impact of the Kurdistan regional government's plans to unilaterally hold a referendum next week," said the statement.

"The planned referendum is scheduled to be held while counter-ISIL (Daesh) operations -- in which Kurdish forces have played a critical role -- are ongoing," it added.

The council urged "dialogue and compromise" to address differences between the Iraqi government and the regional authorities.

Iraqi Kurds will vote on September 25 in the non-binding referendum on whether to declare independence in a region that has already been autonomous since the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.

The United States has warned it may not be able to help Iraq's Kurds negotiate a better deal with the Iraqi government if they go ahead with an independence vote.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday urged the Iraqi Kurds to scrap the referendum and offered UN help to negotiate a new political deal between Baghdad and the Kurds.

UN envoy to Iraq, Jan Kubis, told Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani last week that the United Nations was ready to broker negotiations between the Kurds and Baghdad, according to a document obtained by AFP.

The negotiations would aim to reach a deal within two or three years on the "principles and arrangements" for future relations between Baghdad and the Kurdish region, the document said.

In return, Barzani's administration would agree to postpone the referendum at least until the end of negotiations.
Around a million people -- mainly fleeing the war in Syria -- reached Europe's shores in 2015

Greece's top administrative court on Friday approved the forced deportation of two Syrian refugees, setting a precedent for hundreds of similar cases, a justice source said.

Over 750 Syrian exiles are likely to be affected by the ruling by the Greek council of state, a source with knowledge of the case told AFP.

The refugees, two men aged 22 and 29, had filed a legal challenge after asylum committees rejected their pleas to not be returned to Turkey, from where they entered Greece last year.

Dimitris Christopoulos, president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the ruling "violates the refugees' rights".

Rights groups supporting the pair can contest the ruling at the European Court of Human Rights.

The deportations are part of a pact between Turkey and the European Union that was designed to stem the flow of refugees and migrants after it reached historic proportions in 2015.

Around a million people -- mainly fleeing the war in Syria -- landed in Europe that year alone.

Deporting Syrian refugees to Turkey assumes that this fellow Muslim country is a safe haven for them.

But rights groups dispute this, arguing that there are few guarantees that Syrian refugees can find shelter and work in Turkey, while there is evidence of abuse and exploitation.

In July, a heavily-pregnant Syrian refugee was raped and bludgeoned to death by rock-wielding attackers at her home in Turkey, just days before she was due to give birth.

And her 10-month-old baby boy was strangled to death in a brutal double murder that sparked shock and outrage.

Homosexual refugees are especially at risk in Turkey. Last year, a Syrian LGBT refugee was found mutilated and decapitated in Turkey.

Transgender Europe has said Turkey has the highest rate of trans murders in Europe.
Life is slowly returning to Syria's Deir Ezzor after regime forces lifted a jihadist siege on the city

Traffic is still rare in Syria's Deir Ezzor due to a fuel shortage, but life has slowly returned to its markets since regime forces broke a jihadist siege of the city.

Russian-backed government forces on September 5 ended the Islamic State group's three-year siege of a government enclave in the city in eastern Syria.

They are now pressing their battle to retake all of the provincial capital, trying to corner the jihadists in its eastern sector.

In western government-held areas, the wide avenues are deserted.

In one square, two uniformed traffic policemen monitor the rare cars that do pass by.

Only a few drivers have been able to find fuel since the end of the siege, after years of shortages.

Most private vehicles remain parked by the side of the road, covered in dust or protected by torn car covers.

A few men sit together drinking tea at the entrance of an apartment bloc, surrounded by abandoned buildings whose windows have been shattered.

In 2014, Deir Ezzor was the scene of fierce clashes between government forces and IS, who took control of much of the wider oil-rich province of the same name.

During the siege, some 100,000 residents in regime-held areas relied on UN or regime aid brought in by helicopter.

- Italian-style ice-cream -

A Syrian soldier eats ice cream in Syria's eastern city of Deir Ezzor, where life has returned to markets in regime-held areas after three years under jihadist siege

But today, markets in western districts have slowly begun to refill as food and other aid enters the city more regularly.

At night, the lights of those few shops equipped with generators spill onto streets filled with shoppers.

Young women in jeans and colourful headscarves, men in traditional dress and children in shorts walk in front of the stalls.

During the siege, "I lived on bulghur wheat and cereals," says Ahmed, a thin-faced man in his 50s, who says he lost 40 kilos.

But better times have come for many residents of Deir Ezzor.

In the market, chicken kebabs are prepared before they sizzle on the grill, and piping hot loaves of bread come out of the ovens.

Not far away, a snack shop employee prepares a sandwich from the hard-boiled eggs, fried potatoes, fried slices of aubergine and falafel lined up in front of him.

"Before we had to use wood to light the fire. Food tasted like wood," he says, adding that since the end of the siege cooking gas has become more readily available.

Outside one shop, near a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad, children push to get close to a dispenser of Italian-style ice-cream.

Besieged regime-held areas were constantly targeted by jihadist artillery fire during the siege.

- Clearing away debris -

Smoke rises from the area of Al-Baghiliya on the northern outskirts of Syria's Deir Ezzor on September 13, 2017, before Syrian forces retook it from the Islamic State group

Deir Ezzor governor Mohammed Ibrahim Samra says 20 percent of buildings were destroyed in the regime-controlled areas of Deir Ezzor.

But the damage was not as severe as in some areas outside the city, he said.

"There wasn't a single building left untouched" in the previously IS-held Al-Baghiliya suburb or Ayyash village to the north of the city when troops arrived, Samra said.

In Al-Baghiliya, an AFP reporter saw a mechanical digger clearing away debris and municipal workers in green uniforms sweeping the streets.

To the south of the city, a military airport is back in service after a jihadist siege ended there too.

According to its deputy head, who did not give his name, the airport's damaged waiting room and control tower are being renovated.

But its runways remain intact, and two aircraft loaded with provisions for regime troops landed there on Monday for the first time in months.

"The airport is ready to welcome not just military airplanes but also civilians," the official says, adding that the surrounding area has been secured for a 20-kilometre (12-mile) radius.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has blocked the nomination of former CIA official Isabel Patelunas as assistant Treasury secretary, saying the Treasury needs to provide more information for the probe into Russian election meddling

A Democratic senator investigating Russian election meddling placed a freeze Friday on the nomination of a top Treasury official, saying the agency had refused to provide records for the Russia probe.

Senator Ron Wyden put a temporary block on the nomination of former CIA official Isabel Patelunas as assistant Treasury secretary for intelligence and analysis.

He said the Senate Finance Committee, where he is the senior Democrat, needs the information to better "follow the money" in its focus on the use of shell companies in scandals like Russian interference in last year's presidential election.

"I have placed a hold on the nominee because of the Treasury Department's refusal to provide the Senate Finance Committee with Treasury documents related to Russia," Wyden said.

His move appeared aimed at pressuring the government to provide more publicly available information regarding possible links between President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign and Moscow.

Wyden also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is leading Congress's probe into Russian interference in the election.

Treasury has provided Russia and Trump-related files to the Intelligence Committee, which is trusted with some of the country's most highly classified information that cannot be divulged or shared with other bodies.

But Wyden argues that the Finance Committee has regulatory oversight of the Treasury and more expertise to handle financial issues, and should also get the information.

The Treasury rebuffed Wyden's statement, saying it has "fully cooperated" with the intelligence panel.

"As a member of that committee, Senator Wyden has full access to these documents," the statement added.

"We see no reason why he is holding up a qualified expert in a key intelligence role."

Patelunas, a member of the Central Intelligence Agency's top cadre of officials, the Senior Intelligence Service, breezed through her confirmation hearing on July 19.

Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis plays a key role in tracking down financial and business linkages of terror groups and other US adversaries like North Korea.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft being prepared last year for launch

An unmanned NASA spacecraft traveling to a distant asteroid veered toward Earth on Friday for a gravitational slingshot maneuver that will better aim it toward the Sun-orbiting space rock, Bennu, the US space agency said.

The gravity-boost took place about halfway through the two-year journey of the spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer).

"The preliminary results are in, and my #EarthGravityAssist was succesful!" said the NASA Twitter account for OSIRIS-REx, about an hour after it made its closest approach to Earth at 12:52 pm (1652 GMT).

The mission launched last year from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its goal is to collect a sample from Bennu in 2018, and return it to Earth for further study in 2023.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson, described the gravity-assist as "a clever way to move the spacecraft onto Bennu's orbital plane using Earth's own gravity instead of expending fuel."

The spacecraft zipped over Antarctica at a distance of 11,000 miles (17,000 kilometers), using Earth's gravity to shift its trajectory so it can eventually meet up with Bennu.

Bennu is a primitive, carbon-rich asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago.

The asteroid's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees in comparison to Earth's.

During the gravity assist, OSIRIS-REx swung through a region of space that contains Earth-orbiting satellites, but emerged intact.

OSIRIS-REx lost communications with Earth for about an hour during the flyby, as expected, because the spacecraft was too low relative to the southern horizon to be in view with either the Deep Space tracking station at Canberra, Australia, or Goldstone, California.
Scott Dekraai, accused of killing eight people in a Seal Beach beauty salon listens, while his attorney Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders addresses the court during a motion hearing on March 18, 2014 in Santa Ana, California

A gunman who massacred eight people at a packed hair salon in a small California beach town six years ago was sentenced Friday to life without parole.

Scott Dekraai opened fire at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, south of Los Angeles, in October 2011, killing ex-wife Michelle and her friend, who had testified against him at a custody hearing, as well as six others.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals handed the 47-year-old eight consecutive life sentences -- one for each victim -- describing him as the "face of evil" in the community.

Dekraai was facing execution but Goethals removed capital punishment as an option following allegations over the misuse of informants in the county jail system.

During an emotional sentencing hearing, relatives of Dekraai's victims repeatedly lashed out and insulted the bespectacled defendant.

Given a chance to speak, Dekraai said he wished he could "turn back the hands of time" and claimed that he had been "waiting a long time to apologize."

He also apologized to his son "as a father and as a role model... I was wrong for what I did. I'm totally to blame for my total loss of self-control."

Dekraai admitted his crimes more than three years ago, amid allegations that his rights had been violated by a jailhouse informant who heard him make damning comments about the murder spree.

At issue was whether the comments were "overheard" by the informant or if the inmate lured Dekraai into revealing the information.

Informants are not allowed to question defendants represented by an attorney but they are free to pass along overheard comments to their handlers.

Dekraai's attorneys, led by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, unearthed a litany of cases involving jailhouse informants used in ways they claimed violated the rights of other inmates.

Goethals replaced the prosecution team to head off the scandal and, in a shock move, eliminated the option of execution, arguing that Dekraai could never get a fair trial in the penalty phase.

"The criminal justice system here in Orange County has largely failed you. You deserve better," Goethals told relatives at Friday's sentencing.

Sanders estimates 16 defendants have won new trials or received reduced punishments following the scandal, although District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, whose team was booted off the case, puts the number of affected cases at just four.

The District Attorney's Office said in a statement it continued to disagree with the judge's decision.

"The OCDA fought for the death penalty because it is hard to fathom how anyone who has heard Dekraai's chilling recorded confession immediately following his arrest would think that this evil person should get anything less than the death penalty," it said.
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has made a priority of investing in artificial intelligence, and has spoken publicly about infusing the company's array of offerings with software smarts

Google is seeking ways to help publishers win paying subscribers for news stories, a person close to the matter told AFP.

To this end, the US internet giant is collaborating with NewsCorp, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, according to the source.

Google was said to be ramping up its support for subscription services in recognition of the fact that such revenue is vital for publishers who can't rely on advertising alone for financial survival.

Google declined to comment on word of this latest effort.

"We work closely with news publishers across the world to build products that help support their business and add value to users," Google spokesperson Maggie Shiels said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"At the moment we don't have anything to announce."

Google already uses its technology to let readers of online news subscribe to publishers with a single click, in an internet age spin on tossing a free copy of a newspaper on a doorstep in the hope people sign-up for daily deliveries.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has made a priority of investing in artificial intelligence, and has spoken publicly about infusing the company's array of offerings with software smarts.

Artificial intelligence could be combined with troves of data at Google to try to better win over potential news subscribers.

Publishers have complained at times that Google is making money off their work by surfacing stories in search results.

Google has countered that it shares revenue with publishers, drives traffic to their websites where stories are hosted, and that they can opt not to show up in search results.

The need to support reliable news organizations has been highlighted by controversy over bogus stories crafted to influence politics, promote social division, or simply rake in online ad revenue.
Thailand's junta says it was unaware former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra was planning to escape -- something many Thais have found difficult to believe given the round-the-clock surveillance she frequently complained of

Thailand's deputy junta leader has accused three police officers of helping sneak ex-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of the country last month, a vanishing act that stunned the kingdom.

Yingluck, whose government was toppled by the military in 2014, has not been seen since August 25, when she failed to turn up for a court verdict in her criminal negligence trial.

Thailand's junta says it was unaware she was planning to escape -- something many Thais have found difficult to believe given the round-the-clock surveillance Yingluck frequently complained of.

Analysts say the former premier, who faced up to a decade in jail, most likely cut a secret deal with the junta to exit the country.

But the military has denied the charge and is now pointing the finger at the police.

Authorities interrogated three police officers this week after seizing a car that was allegedly used to drive Yingluck to the border with Cambodia, from where she is believed to have flown to a third country.

"They said they received the order (to help her escape)," Prawit Wongsuwon, the junta's number two, said of the police officers on Friday.

Prawit refused to elaborate on who masterminded the plot.

"I will not tell the media but the person who ordered it is in Thailand," he said, adding that Yingluck was unlikely to have crossed into Cambodia through a formal checkpoint.

Earlier in the week the kingdom's deputy police chief said the three officers were involved in Yingluck's escape, but would not face charges because there was no arrest warrant out for her at the time.

Critics have asked for hard evidence, such as clear photos or CCTV, to back up the allegations.

Yingluck's whereabouts remain unknown, but there are widespread reports she has joined her brother Thaksin, who was also toppled in a 2006 coup, in Dubai.

The siblings are massively popular among the rural poor and have dominated elections for more than a decade.

But they are loathed by Thailand's elite and its military allies, who have battered the Shinawatra dynasty with a series of protests, coups and court rulings.

The junta, which seized power in 2014 and has repeatedly delayed a return to democracy, is desperate to avoid any instability that could challenge its regime.

Analysts said the generals feared that jailing Yingluck could unleash protests among her fervent supporters.

The Supreme Court will now deliver its ruling in absentia on September 27.
A student walks past posters calling for and against semi-autonomous Hong Kong to split from the mainland, on the "democracy wall" of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Universities have become the latest battleground over freedoms in Hong Kong as a ban on signs on campuses advocating independence from China sparks fresh fears that the city's liberties are under threat.

As term kicked off earlier this month, posters and banners calling for semi-autonomous Hong Kong to split from the mainland were plastered on walls and bulletin boards after a tense summer that saw pro-democracy lawmakers ousted and leading activists jailed.

Independence calls grew out of the failure of mass Umbrella Movement rallies in 2014 to win democratic reform for Hong Kong and have been fanned by growing concerns that Beijing is tightening its grip on the city.

The nascent independence movement has incensed China and local officials have also railed against activists.

When university chiefs penned a joint statement last week describing pro-independence banners as an abuse of free speech, angry students accused them of kowtowing to Beijing and censoring legitimate political debate.

"Freedom of expression is not absolute," the statement said, casting independence as contravening the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

University authorities also ordered students to immediately take down banners that violated school policies.

Student unions questioned how putting a political opinion went against the Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of speech.

"Universities are supposed to be the last bastions to defend these values, but instead they became the first ones to try to control (us)," Justin Au, president of the student union at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told AFP.

"We find it very bizarre," he added, saying he believed the move came under pressure from the government.

As term kicked off earlier this month, posters and banners calling for semi-autonomous Hong Kong to split from the mainland were plastered on walls and bulletin boards after a tense summer that saw pro-democracy lawmakers ousted and leading activists jailed

Student anger was also exacerbated when a pro-Beijing legislator called for the murder of independence advocates at a public rally last week, with little public chastisement from authorities.

"It shows the powerful may have more freedom of speech than ordinary citizens," said Thomas Lee, secretary at the CUHK student union.

- 'Like 1984' -

But there has also been pushback from mainland students on campuses against the independence signs, with rival posters now slapped up on the universities' public "democracy walls" where people can have their say.

Justin Au, president of the student union at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said universities are supposed to be the last bastions to defend freedom of speech 'but instead they became the first ones to try to control us'

Several mainland students interviewed by AFP at CUHK largely condemned the pro-independence banner that had gone up there, saying that it made them uncomfortable as Chinese people or that it was simply naive or "stupid".

"It's unrealistic, they don't understand the country," said one student who gave her name as Chloe.

"I think the banner is a bit stupid," added a student from Guangzhou who provided his surname as Kwan.

"The freest people are those who follow the rules. Those who don't will feel oppressed everywhere."

City leader Carrie Lam has said there is "no room for discussion" of a split from China and what was happening at the universities required "immediate action".

Analysts say Hong Kong's hard line on independence reflects Beijing's zero tolerance.

"It is the one thing they fear most because it anticipates the break-up of a unified China," said Suzanne Pepper, an honorary fellow at CUHK.

"I think Beijing would rather destroy Hong Kong than allow that advocacy to take root here."

In a speech in Hong Kong in July, China's president Xi Jinping warned against challenges to Beijing's sovereignty, saying it crossed a "red line".

There have already been fears over interference in Hong Kong's education system and some teachers have said they feel under increasing pressure to self-censor.

There was also controversy when a pro-Beijing figure was chosen to lead the governing body at the University of Hong Kong after a popular liberal scholar was passed over for a senior post.

CUHK's Au says whether or not people are in favour of independence, it should be discussed as part of a debate on the future of Hong Kong after 2047, when the 50-year agreement made on its handover from Britain to China guaranteeing its freedoms and way of life expires.

Student anger was also exacerbated when a pro-Beijing legislator called for the murder of independence advocates at a public rally last week, with little public chastisement from authorities

While he said he believes that free speech comes with responsibilities, such as not advocating hate speech or posing immediate dangers to others, he says the restrictions now being imposed on students are distorting the true meaning of freedom of expression and trying to redefine it in a way more palatable to Chinese authorities.

"Like 1984's 'Big brother is watching you' -- this is not the kind of society we want to become," added CUHK's Lee.

"If we don't come out to defend (our rights) they will gradually disappear."
Togolese opposition supporters display a banner reading "Constitution of 1992, 50 years is enough", referring to the long rule of the Eyademas, Africa's oldest political dynasty

Togo's government was surprised by how many people took to the streets earlier this month to demand the removal of President Faure Gnassingbe.

But with no end in sight to the protesters' calls for change, questions are mounting about whether the pressure can be maintained to bring an end to his family's 50-year rule.

Opposition leaders were quick to call the first marches this month "unprecedented", after hundreds of thousands of people young and old turned out in force across the country.

What was also unprecedented was the united front presented by opposition parties, whose squabbling and differences in the past made them an ineffective force against the ruling regime.

"This time there's a real window of opportunity that we mustn't let close," said Nathaniel Olympio, head of the Togolese Party.

- Cunning needed -

Veteran opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, from the National Alliance for Change (ANC), has vowed "no let-up" in the protests until Gnassingbe steps down.

But already his words seem optimistic. With unemployment and poverty widespread across Togo, many say protesting is a luxury they can't afford when they have mouths to feed.

Nathan, a 54-year-old carpenter, believes God has chosen Togo's president. "Me? I'm trying to earn my crust. I don't get involved in politics," he told AFP.

David Dosseh, who coordinates university civil society groups in Togo, said: "It'll be difficult to mobilise as many people over a longer period of time.

Togo's opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre has organised weekly demonstrations for years. Every Saturday, his supporters marched through the streets of the capital, Lome, to the beach

"You have to think about other ways to shut down the country, such as civil disobedience."

Comi Toulabour, head of research at the Institute of Politics in Bordeaux, was more emphatic: "If the opposition isn't more cunning, the government will have the upper hand."

Fabre has organised weekly demonstrations for years. Every Saturday, his supporters march through the streets of the capital, Lome, to the beach.

"When all's said and done, it was a picnic atmosphere," said Toulabor. "It's unfortunate to say it, but as long as nothing happens, the government isn't bothered.

"Cracks have already started to reappear in the (opposition) coalition. They all know that it was (Tikpi) Atchadam who brought about the real anti-establishment protest."

Atchadam, whom the government brands a dangerous extremist, managed to create a popular support base in northern Togo, which has historically been loyal to the Gnassingbe family.

In Bafilo, Mango and Sokode, protesters attacked police stations and set fire to houses belonging to senior members of the president's ruling party.

At least three people have been killed and dozens more have been injured since the start of the protests as the authorities fought back.

"Only the army can tip the balance," said Toulabor. "But its organisation is still very clannish."

Power is kept in the family in Togo where the head of the armed forces is the president's brother-in-law.

"This situation worries us, obviously," a source close to the presidency conceded.

"If it hadn't the government wouldn't have proposed an emergency parliamentary bill (on constitutional reform). The pressure is real."

- Political trap -

The government bill proposes that presidents can only serve up to two terms.

The opposition has been calling for such a measure for more than a decade. A referendum will be held on the issue in the coming months.

But the application of the restriction is not retroactive, which effectively allows Gnassingbe to stand for a fourth -- and even a fifth -- five-year term of office.

Police officers stand behind a barrier to block the road and stop protesters

He took power in 2005 after the death of his father and has already won three elections, albeit contested. Before him, General Gnassingbe Eyadema ruled for 38 years.

Not unexpectedly, the opposition is against such a move.

"The referendum gives the impression that the government is giving the people the chance to choose," said Gilles Yabi, a political analyst who specialises in West Africa.

"It's always the same trap as before. The most important thing for the opposition now is to stay united."

Gnassingbe currently holds the rotating presidency of the regional bloc the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), making outside political pressure unlikely.

"Change will only come from the Togolese people themselves," said Yabi.
The majority of North Korea's oil likely comes from China, but exactly how much the Asian giant exports to its neighbour remains unknown

China will limit exports of refined petroleum products to North Korea starting October 1, its commerce ministry said, confirming Beijing's participation in new UN sanctions intended to rein in its rogue neighbour.

The United Nations Security Council, including permanent member Beijing, approved tough sanctions against Pyongyang last week in response to its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

Washington had initially sought a full oil embargo, but softened its stance to secure backing from Russia and China, the North's sole ally and main trading partner.

In a statement posted to its website late Friday night, the ministry reiterated the terms of the latest resolution, writing that as of October 1, UN member states would not export more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products to the North, a cap raised to 2 million starting next year.

"Chinese government authorities will issue a notice based on the export situation when approaching the upper limit, and from that date implement a prohibition on exports of refined oil products to North Korea for the year," it said.

It added that China has issued a "comprehensive ban on imported textiles" from North Korea.

The announcement follows days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un's regime, which has raised international alarm.

The US has accused China of not doing enough to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear programme.

The majority of North Korea's oil likely comes from China, but exactly how much the Asian giant exports to its neighbour remains unknown, as Beijing has not published such data since 2014.

According to UN customs data, Beijing sent 6,000 barrels a day of oil products to North Korea in 2016.
Defending champion Caroline Wozniacki is a two-time Tokyo winner and finalist in 2014

Defending champion Caroline Wozniacki flattened world number one Garbine Muguruza 6-2, 6-0 on Saturday to reach her fourth Pan Pacific Open final in Tokyo.

The Danish former number one will face Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova as she chases a third Tokyo title after the Russian toppled Angelique Kerber 6-0, 6-7, 6-4 in a see-saw first semi-final.

Top seed Muguruza, playing her first tournament since reaching the top of the women's world rankings, was blown off court in just under an hour in a stunningly lopsided match.

"I didn't feel that fresh," the Spaniard told reporters.

"It was always going to be a battle but I felt my energy was a little bit low," added Muguruza.

"I was struggling a bit in the long rallies and didn't make the important shots. I'm very disappointed, but she just played better."

Third seed Wozniacki tore through the first set, sealing it when Muguruza wafted a routine forehand badly wide.

Muguruza cut a forlorn figure as she trudged back to her seat but things went from bad to worse for the Wimbledon champion in the second set.

A dipping forehand pass gave Wozniacki an early break, consolidated after another wild Muguruza backhand in the fourth game.

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia serves against Angelique Kerber of Germany during their Pan Pacific Open semi-final match, in Tokyo, on September 23, 2017

Wozniacki, a two-time Tokyo winner and finalist in 2014, put Muguruza out of her misery by forcing the Spaniard into another whiffed backhand on match point after just 59 minutes.

"Obviously you don't go on court thinking that's going to be the scoreline," said Wozniacki. "But I just kept my head down and stayed aggressive."

Seventh seed Kerber, another former world number one, looked in danger of being fed the dreaded "double bagel" after losing the first eight games in the Tokyo sunshine.

But the German recovered from 6-0, 5-2 down to pinch the second-set tiebreak as Pavlyuchenkova suddenly tightened up, the Russian slamming her racquet to the ground in disgust.

Kerber, who has slipped back to 14th in the world since winning last year's Australian and US Open titles, clinched the breaker 7-4 with a fizzing serve down the middle which she celebrated with a little fist pump.

The 29-year-old Kerber, a former Tokyo finalist, then quickly raced to a 3-0 lead in the deciding set, only to be pegged back once more.

But Pavlyuchenkova, who beat Wozniacki in the final at Monterrey earlier this year, snatched the decisive break in the seventh game with a superb backhand drive volley.

The world number 23 unleashed the same brutal shot on match point to seal victory after a little over two hours.

"I was already thinking about going to Wuhan," said Pavlyuchenkova, referring to next week's tournament in China.

"I was already booking flights in my head."
Rohingya refugees receive new ID cards from a soldier at the entrance of the Bangladeshi government registration office at the refugee camp of Kutupalong on September 22, 2017

The flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has come to a virtual halt, Dhaka officials said Saturday, almost a month after violence erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine State and sent nearly 430,000 people fleeing across the border.

Officials gave no reason for the dramatically reduced numbers. But Rohingya Muslim leaders said it could be because villages located near the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state were now empty.

Bangladesh Border Guard commanders said hardly any refugees are now seen crossing on boats coming from Myanmar or trying to get over the land border.

In the past two weeks there have been up to 20,000 people a day entering Bangladesh.

The UN says 429,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since attacks by Ronhingya militants in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major Myanmar military crackdown.

Many gave up money and jewellery to get places on boats crossing the Naf river, which marks part of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

"Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over," Bangladesh Border Guard commander S.M. Ariful Islam told AFP.

The United Nations also said "the influx has dropped". It said it will now release updates on the numbers of refugees entering Bangladesh once a week, rather than daily.

- Deserted villages -

Rohingya community leaders said most of the Rakhine villages near the Bangladesh border are now deserted.

"Almost all the people I know have arrived in Bangladesh," Yusuf Majihi, a Rohingya leader at a camp at Balukhali, near Cox's Bazar, told AFP.

"Village after village has become empty due to the attacks by Myanmar soldiers and torching of the houses by Moghs (Buddhists)," he added.

"Those who are left in Rakhine live far off the border," he said.

Farid Alam, another Rohingya leader, said "I have not heard of any Rohingya crossing the border in the past five days. All I could see is people concentrating near the main camps."

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased "clearance operations" targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmar's border area.

The United Nations previously said the military crackdown could amount to "ethnic cleansing".

But despite the calm on the border, there were new signs of unrest in Myanmar.

While the army chief blamed Rohinyga militants for an explosion outside a mosque in Rakhine, Amnesty International accused the military of starting fires in the region to prevent refugees from returning.

Myanmar commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing issued a statement saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in Buthidaung township on Friday.

The army chief accused militants of trying to drive out around 700 remaining villagers. Analysts highlighted however that the militants' influence depends on the networks they have built across Rohingya communities.

Amnesty said new videos and satellite imagery indicated fires were still raging through Rohingya villages, scores of which have already been burned to the ground.

According to government figures, nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine have been abandoned over the past month.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday also echoed allegations from Bangladeshi officials that Myanmar security forces were laying landmines along the border.

A number of Rohingya, including children, have been killed by mines at the border.

- Brink of disaster -

Bangladesh authorities are meanwhile stepping up efforts to bring order to the chaotic aid distribution for refugees.

Soldiers have been deployed around a 70 square kilometre area where Rohingya have built camps on hills or in open spaces near existing UN run camps.

"We are in the process of taking over the whole relief distribution," an army spokesman told AFP.

He said the troops would dig hundreds of latrines for refugees after doctors warned that the camps were on the brink of a health disaster.

Even before the latest exodus, the camps were home to some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine.
People watch a television news screen at a railway station in Seoul on September 23, 2017 showing a map of the epicenter of an earthquake in North Korea

A shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake which hit North Korea near the country's nuclear test site Saturday was likely an aftershock from the hermit state's missile test on September 3, a nuclear test ban watchdog and other experts said.

Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), tweeted the quake was "unlikely Man-made! Similar to 'collapse' event 8.5 mins after DPRK6", a reference to the second tremor that followed the September 3 test.

"The most probable hypothesis at present is that this is a consequence of the previous event, which was of a significant magnitude and may still have repercussions in a fracture zone," Zerbo told AFP.

A US Pacific Command official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was "nothing to indicate this was anything other than natural."

The China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC), which initially spoke of a "suspected explosion," also said it believed Saturday's tremor was not the result of a fresh test, Xinhua news agency reported after the China Earthquake Administration, of which CENC is a part, studied infrasonic data of the latest quake.

The CENC said the epicenter was at 41.36 degrees north latitude and 129.06 degrees east latitude, similar to another quake on September 3 after the North Korean nuclear test that day.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted the Korea Meteorological Agency (KMA) as saying "there is no possibility that this could be an artificial quake."

The quake came after days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un's regime, as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck around 20 kilometres (12 miles) away from the North's nuclear test site, where earlier this month Pyongyang detonated its sixth and largest device, which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb capable of being launched on a missile.

The epicenter of the quake is roughly the same as that of a previous shallow tremor on September 3, which turned out to be caused by a North Korean nuclear test, the official Xinhua news agency said

"This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests. We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature (natural or human-made) of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to five kilometres by the seismologist," USGS said in a statement.

The North's last test, on September 3, was the country's most powerful detonation, triggering a much stronger 6.3-magnitude quake that was felt across the border in China.

- Aftershock of former test? -

A second tremor soon after that test was possibly caused by a "cave-in", CENC said at the time.

The test prompted global condemnation, leading the United Nations Security Council to unanimously adopt new sanctions that include restrictions on oil shipments.

A UN-backed monitoring group said analysts were investigating Saturday's quake.

The strength of the quake was much lower than the tremors registered during any of North Korea's previous nuclear tests, including its first detonation in 2006, which triggered a 4.1-magnitude quake.

Social media users in China said they "felt nothing" when Saturday's quake hit, while Russia's weather forecasting service said radiation levels were normal following the tremor, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.

- War of words -

The quake came at the end of a week that saw a blistering war of words between Kim and Trump, with the US leader using his maiden speech at the UN General Assembly to warn that Washington would "totally destroy" the North if America or its allies were threatened.

The North, which says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself against the threat of a US invasion, responded on Friday with a rare personal rebuke from Kim, who called Trump "mentally deranged" and threatened the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history".

Tens of thousands of North Koreans gathered in Pyongyang Saturday to applaud the regime's stance, their fists clenched as speakers repeated Kim's denigration of Trump as a "dotard".

Such set-piece rallies, organised by the authorities, are a regular feature of political life in Pyongyang, and analysts say Kim is exploiting Trump's angry commentary to reinforce his leadership.

Ri Il Ung, a 24-year-old university student who attended the rally, said: "Trump is a warmonger and a backstreet gangster."

"It's quite ridiculous that such a person could become a politician," he said.

Washington announced tougher restrictions Friday aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, building on tough new UN sanctions aimed at choking Pyongyang of cash.

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang.

But on the fringes of the UN meeting this week, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho upped the tensions further, telling reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

Monitoring groups estimate that the nuclear test conducted in North Korea earlier this month had a yield of 250 kilotons, which is 16 times the size of the US bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs, are thermonuclear weapons far more powerful than ordinary fission-based atomic bombs, and use a nuclear blast to generate the intense temperatures required for fusion to take place.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani has insisted that the referendum will go ahead despite opposition from Turkey, Iraq, Iran and the United States,

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned on Saturday that Ankara's actions in response to a controversial independence referendum in Iraq's Kurdistan region would have "economic and security dimensions".

"The steps will be taken in close cooperation with Iraq, Iran and other neighbouring countries. These measures will have diplomatic, political, economic and security dimensions," he told reporters in the central Turkish province of Kirsehir.

When asked whether a cross-border operation was among the options, Yildirim said "naturally" but "it is a question of timing as to when the security, economic and political options will be applied."

He added: "This will be determined by developing conditions."

Turkey has repeatedly voiced opposition to the Kurdistan Regional Government's non-binding independence vote on September 25, urging it to cancel the poll.

Ankara fears the vote could stoke separatist aspirations among its own sizeable Kurdish minority as it continues to fight Kurdish militants in its southeast.

Yildirim was speaking before the Turkish parliament holds an extraordinary session Saturday to discuss the extension of an existing mandate to use Turkish troops abroad in Syria and Iraq.

The mandate was first approved by parliament in October 2014 and has been renewed every year, allowing military action in Turkey's two southern neighbours against Islamic State extremists and other groups deemed by Ankara to be terror organisations.

Turkey launched a military drill featuring tanks close to the Iraqi border last week, and on Saturday the Turkish armed forces said the "second phase of the military exercise continued with the participation of additional troops".

Despite opposition from Turkey, Iraq and Iran as well as the United States, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani insisted on Friday that the referendum would go ahead.

Iraq's chief of staff General Othman al-Ghanimi arrived in Ankara earlier for talks with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar on the poll as well as the fight against terrorism, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

The top Turkish general is due to pay a visit to his Iranian counterpart before Erdogan visits Tehran on October 4, Hurriyet said, but did not say when Akar would go.
Ghana and Ivory Coast have been locked in a dispute over a contested sea boundary that cuts through lucrative oil fields, but an international maritime tribunal has rule in Ghana's favour

An international maritime tribunal Saturday backed Ghana in a dispute with Ivory Coast over a contested boundary that cuts through lucrative offshore oil fields.

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea found that "Ghana did not violate the sovereign rights" of Ivory Coast by drilling for oil in the region.

The Hamburg-based court precisely mapped the maritime border and backed Ghana on the principle that the boundary line be based on equidistance.

The contested area is believed to hold the biggest hydrocarbon resources discovered in west Africa over the past decade.

Several oil companies including France's Total, Russia's Lukoil and the UK's Tullow Oil have reported significant finds in recent years.

The neighbours had asked the tribunal to rule on where the border lies exactly, with Ghana arguing there was no need to deviate from the previously agreed boundary line.

Ivory Coast however claimed the border was not properly demarcated and accused Ghana of carrying out oil exploration activities in Ivorian zones.

In February, Ghana's Justice Minister Gloria Akuffo told the court that "a fairly drawn agreed line does not suddenly become unfair simply because one state decides it would be economically more advantageous for it if the line were drawn somewhere else".

The two countries brought their spat before the tribunal in 2014 after months of fruitless negotiations.

Despite the tensions, both Ghana and Ivory Coast -- West Africa's second and third largest economies -- have insisted they remain on good terms.

Ghana is a major producer of gold and cocoa and began commercial oil production in 2010 following the discovery of the Jubilee oil field, which produces 100,000 barrels per day.

Ivory Coast, the world's largest producer of cocoa, has a daily oil production of some 45,000 barrels and is aiming to increase its output to 200,000 barrels per day by 2020.
Floods in central Benue state forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes in early September

A Nigerian journalist was detained for reporting that relief materials were allegedly being diverted from a camp for flood victims, his employers and police said Saturday.

More than 100,000 people were forced to flee thir homes in early September following floods in central Benue state, prompting authorities to set up makeshift camps to distribute relief materials to the victims.

Emmanuel Atswen, a reporter with the state-run News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), was arrested on Friday over his September 12 story on a protest at a camp in central Nigeria which accused officials of diverting relief materials.

"The reporter was arrested over an alleged defamation of character and falsehood by a commissioner involved in the relief efforts," state police spokesman Moses Yamu told AFP.

He said the commissioner for water resources had complained he was wrongly quoted as confirming that materials were being stolen.

"The commissioner insisted he did not say what was attributed to him and asked that the story be retracted," he said.

He said it was true materials were being moved to another camp, but the reporter said they were being diverted without verifying his story.

Yamu said the journalist had been released.

"He was released on bail this morning and has been asked to report back to the police on Wednesday," he said.

NAN on Saturday said it stood by the story because it did not violate "the tenets of the journalism profession".

Nigerian officials are often accused of diverting relief materials for their personal use, sparking regular protests at camps for internally displaced persons, especially in the northeast where Boko Haram Islamists have waged an eight-year rebellion.
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila said his country is moving towards holding elections, but vowed to resist "foreign diktats" on setting a date for the vote

Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila told the United Nations on Saturday that his country is moving towards holding elections but vowed to resist "foreign diktats" on setting a date for the historic vote.

Addressing the General Assembly, Kabila appealed for support from his "true friends" as his country confronts what he described as major logistical and security challenges to organize the vote.

Under an agreement reached with opposition groups last year, elections are to be held this year in the large mineral-rich African country, paving the way to the DR Congo's first democratic transition.

But months later, a date has still not been set for the polls.

"We can affirm that we are most certainly moving towards credible, transparent and peaceful elections," Kabila said.

"This is an irreversible process and this should be put in place without external diktats or interference."

In power since 2001, Kabila officially ended his term in office in December, but he was allowed to remain under the New Year's Eve deal in exchange for guarantees that elections will be held.

The UN Security Council has demanded that elections be held before the end of this year, but concerns are growing after election officials said in July that a vote in 2017 was unlikely.

Kabila told the UN assembly that organising the elections in the vast country presented major logistical and security challenges, but that he was confronting these "with undeniable tenacity."

Voter registration is progressing with 42 million people out of a total of 45 million citizens of voting age now on the electoral lists, he said.

The United States has threatened to slap sanctions on the DR Congo unless elections are held this year.

- Fighting 'terrorism' in Kasai -

Kabila defended a military campaign in the Kasai region, which the United Nations has said resulted in hundreds of extrajudicial killings, saying his forces were fighting "terrorists".

"In the Kasai, a mystical tribal militia is using the civilian population, including children, as human shields, attacking people and state buildings, sowing terror," he said.

Kasai has been in turmoil since a tribal chieftain known as the Kamwina Nsapu, who rebelled against Kabila's regime, was killed in August.

More than 3,000 people have died and 1.4 million have been displaced, according to the Catholic Church.

Kabila described as "barbaric" the murder of two UN experts in the Kasai, and pledged to "shed full light" on the crime and bring those resonsible to justice.

Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean national and American Michael Sharp were killed in March while investigating reports of more than 40 mass graves in the Kasai.

Their bodies were found in a shallow grave. Catalan had been decapitated.

The president renewed his call for a drawdown of the 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, saying that after 20 years, the force cannot "stay in my country indefinitely."

Kabila was first propelled into office after his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, was assassinated in January 2001.

He won a first five-year term in 2006 in a poll organised with the help of the large UN mission.
A member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US backed Kurdish-Arab alliance, holds a position in Raqa on September 4, 2017. The SDF is battling jihadists in Raqa and Syria's Deir Ezzor province

A US-backed militia has seized Syria's biggest pre-war gas treatment facility from the Islamic State group in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, a spokesman and monitor said Saturday.

"The Syrian Democratic Forces and the Deir Ezzor Military Council were able to take control of the Conoco plant in northern Deir Ezzor province after two days of clashes," SDF spokesman Talal Sello said in a statement.

The advance in the resource-rich province was confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, which added that the militia had also captured the adjacent gas field.

The SDF did not confirm that the gas field had been captured, saying only that its forces were "combing the plant and surrounding points."

The facility known as the Conoco plant had the largest capacity of any in Syria before the conflict erupted in 2011: 13 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, according to The Syria Report, an economic digest.

It was constructed by a partnership of ConocoPhilips and Total, and came up to full capacity in 2002.

In 2005, it was handed over to the state-run Syrian Gas Company when Conoco withdrew from the country.

The plant and adjacent gas field were first captured by rebels in late 2012, a year into the uprising that began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

In 2014, the Islamic State group captured the facility and gas field as it rampaged across parts of Syria and Iraq, seizing large stretches of territory that it eventually declared its "caliphate".

The US-backed SDF and its Deir Ezzor Military Council are battling IS on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river that slices diagonally across Deir Ezzor province.

Syria's army, backed by Russian firepower, is carrying out a separate operation largely on the western bank of the river, including in the provincial capital Deir Ezzor city.

Deir Ezzor province, on Syria's eastern border with Iraq, is rich with oil and gas fields that served as a key revenue stream for IS at the peak of its power.

Syria's Kurds have captured key oil fields in the country in recent years, including in Rmeilan in Hasakeh, where they are refining crude.
Posters in Kirkuk encouraging people to vote in the planned Kurdish independence referendum

Residents of the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk north of Baghdad were stocking up with supplies on Saturday ahead of the planned controversial referendum on independence for Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

People in the city fear the situation could deteriorate if the plebiscite set for Monday goes ahead, as the oil-rich province is disputed between the federal government in Baghdad and the regional government in Arbil.

Iraq's government has called the referendum unconstitutional, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi rejecting it, "whether today or in the future".

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani on Saturday delayed a scheduled news conference on the referendum as international pressure mounts for a postponement.

But on Friday, he had again insisted the vote would take place, despite a UN Security Council warning that it was "potentially destabilising".

"The price of food has gone up by 20 percent. What the politicians are doing only benefits businessmen, and it's the poor residents who suffer," market vendor Omran Khodr told AFP on Saturday.

Kirkuk is not one of the three provinces that have been part of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq since 2003.

It is in an area disputed between Baghdad and the Kurds who claim it is theirs historically, since Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein chased them out and replaced them with Arabs.

Saturday's rush by Kirkuk residents to stock up came as the body responsible for organising the referendum said it would indeed go ahead on Monday.

"The referendum will take place on the day scheduled," the organising committee announced.

- Inter-party differences -

The issue has highlighted differences between the two main Kurdish parties, Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Jalal Talabani.

Mudah Bakhtiar, a member of the PUK political bureau, told journalists his party "believes that the alternative (to the referendum) proposed by the UN and the major powers is acceptable".

The United States and other Western nations are backing a UN-supported "alternative" plan for immediate negotiations on future relations in exchange for dropping the referendum.

"We believe that taking into consideration the international conditions... the proposal meets the strategic objectives of our people and we have informed Massud Barzani and the KDP of our position," Bakhtiar added.

The PUK not taking part in the referendum would greatly diminish its scope. The KDP controls Arbil and Dohuk provinces, but the PUK controls Sulaimaniyah province and the city of Kirkuk.

A visit by a Kurdish delegation to Baghdad has not proved fruitful, with a body of Shiite groups saying after the meeting that there would be no negotiations if the vote goes ahead.

The Kurdish authorities say a "yes" vote would not result in an immediate declaration of independence but would pressure Baghdad for concessions on key issues such as oil and federal financing.

But Barzani has also come under increasing international pressure not to hold the referendum which he himself set in motion.

And Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned on Saturday that Ankara's actions in response to the planned referendum would have "economic and security dimensions".
India Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj addresses the 72nd Session of the United Nations General assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2017

India's foreign minister took a swipe at Pakistan Saturday, telling the United Nations that its neighbor had given the world "terrorists" while India was producing top-notch doctors and engineers.

"Why is it today India is a recognized IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognized only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?" Sushma Swaraj told the General Assembly.

"We produced scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists," she said.

Swaraj offered a response to an address earlier in the week by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who at the UN podium accused India of "massive and indiscriminate force" in Kashmir.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been tense in recent times, mainly over Kashmir, which is divided but claimed by both countries in full.

The two nuclear-armed nations have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed Himalayan territory.

Following Abbasi's speech on Thursday, an Indian diplomat took to the floor of the General Assembly in a reply and branded the country "Terroristan".

India accuses Islamabad of training, arming and infiltrating militants into Kashmir, a claim that Pakistan has denied.

On Friday, the Pakistani military said six people were killed and over two dozen wounded in firing by Indian troops near the Kashmir border.
North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho has derided US President Donald Trump as "mentally deranged"

North Korea's foreign minister assailed US President Donald Trump at the United Nations on Saturday, deriding him as a "mentally deranged" leader whose threats had increased the chances of military confrontation.

Ri Yong-ho told the General Assembly that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country if necessary had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable."

Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."

In his first address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called leader Kim Jong-Un a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," prompting Kim to warn in turn that the US president would "pay dearly" for his threat.

Ri accused Trump of turning the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day," and of insulting Kim.

"None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," he declared.

The North Korean nuclear crisis has dominated this year's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations amid fears that the heated rhetoric could accidentally trigger a war.

North Korea in recent weeks detonated its sixth nuclear bomb and has test-fired intercontinental missiles -- saying it needs to defend itself against hostility from the United States and its allies.

Trump later responded on Twitter, insulting Kim once more and appearing to threaten both men.

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!" he wrote late Saturday night.

- Nuclear hammer of justice -

The United States led a push at the United Nations for tough sanctions that were adopted on September 11, and has imposed unilateral measures to punish firms that do business with North Korea.

Calling the sanctions resolutions unjustified, Ri said that Pyongyang was left with no other choice but to respond with the "nuclear hammer of justice."

He stressed that North Korea's nuclear drive was aimed at developing a "war deterrent" and declared that his country was a "responsible nuclear weapon state."

North Korea will take "preemptive action" if the United States and its allies attempt to carry out a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country," he said.

Declaring that the missile and nuclear tests were a source of "prestige" for his country, Ri said sanctions would not succeed in forcing his government to change course.

Ri then met for 30 minutes with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who expressed concern over the escalating tensions and emphasized the need for a political solution, a UN spokesman said.

Just hours before Ri took the UN podium, US bombers flew off the east coast of North Korea, flying the furthest north of the demilitarized zone of any US aircraft this century.

The Pentagon said the mission was a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat."
An international maritime tribunal found Ghana did not violate Ivory Coast's rights by drilling for oil in the region, prompting Tullow Oil to say it will resume drilling around year end

Tullow Oil said Saturday it would restart drilling by the end of the year after a ruling in a maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Ivory Coast.

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea found that "Ghana did not violate the sovereign rights" of Ivory Coast by drilling for oil in the region.

The Hamburg-based court precisely mapped the maritime border and backed Ghana on the principle that the boundary line be based on equidistance.

"Tullow will now work with the government of Ghana to put in place the necessary permits to allow the restart of development drilling in the TEN fields," the London-based oil firm said in a statement.

"Tullow expects to resume drilling around the end of the year which will allow production from the TEN fields to start to increase towards the FPSO (floating production storage) design capacity of 80,000 bpd," it said.

The company, a major oil operator in Ghana said it would work with both countries following the ruling. "While the TEN fields have performed well during the period of the drilling moratorium, we can now restart work on the additional drilling planned as part of the TEN fields' plan of development and take the fields towards their full potential."

Tullow Oil Ghana boss Charles Darku told reporters in the capital Accra the ruling would remove "doubt anyone had about the boundary, because that is clear now. Anyone that wants to work around investing in that area should see their way clear."

TENs output will be maintained at 50,000 barrels a day until the end of the year, he said.

Ghanas energy minister Boakye Agyarko was quoted by local media as saying the country would retain control over the fields.

Hanna Tetteh, a former minister, urged investors to proceed with their projects.

"It's a great day for Ghana," she said on her Twitter account.

The ruling is a relief for Ghana, which is relying on oil revenue to boost economic growth and ease its budget deficit.

Ghana is a major producer of gold and cocoa and began commercial oil production in 2010 following the discovery of the Jubilee oil field, which produces 100,000 barrels per day.
A TV grab taken on September 23, 2017 from the Iranian Republic Islamic Broadcasting (IRIB) shows a Khoramshahr missile being launched from an undisclosed location, a day after the said missile was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in the capital Tehran Iran said on September 23, 2017 that it had successfully tested the new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.

Iran's test launch of new medium-range missile calls into question a landmark nuclear deal with the United States and other world powers, President Donald Trump said Saturday, while also accusing the Islamic republic of colluding with North Korea.

"Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea.Not much of an agreement we have!" Trump tweeted.

The nose cone of the missile has a range of 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) and can carry multiple warheads.

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where Trump again accused Iran of destabilizing the Middle East, calling it a "rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos."

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

The US president has threatened to declare Iran to be in breach of the 2015 deal unless it is expanded to punish Iran for pursuing a ballistic missile program and for sponsoring foreign militant groups.

On October 15, Trump is due to tell the US Congress whether he is ready to recertify Iran's compliance with the 2015 deal. If he refuses to do so, it could open the door to renewed US sanctions and the collapse of the deal.
LONDON (AP) - The Latest on the London subway attack investigation (all times local):

5:45 p.m.

British police say a 21-year-old man arrested over last week's London subway bombing has been released without being charged.

Police stand outside a property in Thornton Heath, south London, after a teenager was arrested by detectives investigating the bomb that partially exploded on a London subway last week, on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. The bomb injured 30 people when it detonated inside a crowded subway car on Friday, Sept. 15. (Jonathan Brady/PA via AP)

The man, originally from Syria, was detained outside a fast-food restaurant in west London on Saturday, a day after the attack at Parsons Green station. Thirty people were injured when a homemade bomb placed inside a bucket wrapped in a supermarket bag, partly detonated during the morning rush hour.

Five other men have been arrested and remain in custody, including an 18-year-old from Iraq detained at the English Channel port of Dover on Saturday.

Three men were arrested in Newport, Wales, earlier this week and a 17-year-old was held early Thursday in south London.

None of the suspects has been charged, and their names haven't been released.

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9:50 a.m.

British police have arrested a sixth person in connection with last week's attack on a London subway train.

Detectives arrested a 17-year-old under the Terrorism Act early Thursday in south London. A search of the property where he was found is underway.

Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police Service's Counter Terrorism Command, says a "significant amount of activity" has taken place since a homemade bomb partially detonated during the morning rush hour Friday, injuring 30 people. The attack sparked a manhunt for the perpetrators and prompted the government to briefly raise the national terrorism threat to the highest level.

Detectives arrested three men earlier this week in Newport, Wales. An 18-year-old refugee from Iraq and a 21-year-old from Syria who were arrested previously remain in custody.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Would exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific, as North Korea has threatened, push the current war of words between the U.S. and North Korea closer to actual war?

As with much that has transpired lately in the U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis, no one can be sure where this would lead or whether the North will even carry out its threat. It does, however, raise many questions, including: How would the North undertake such a nuclear test, what risks might it pose to Japan and how would the U.S. respond?

After the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, said President Donald Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the U.S. were forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack, Kim's foreign minister told reporters his country's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walks to his seat at a luncheon with President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in New York. From left, Vice President Mike Pence, Abe, Trump, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

All six of North Korea's nuclear tests thus far, dating to 2006, have been conducted in underground tunnels.

Experts say the most likely way the North would conduct an atmospheric test over the Pacific is to launch a long-range missile - probably overflying Japan - and have its nuclear warhead detonate in the skies over a remote part of the Pacific.

"I strongly suspect they have the capability to do this," said James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He said in a telephone interview that the North likely would do a couple of trial runs with unarmed missiles in coming months before performing the test with an actual H-bomb aboard.

Such a test with a live warhead would tell North Korea's engineers whether their bomb design can survive the rigors of flight and re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, says Michael Elleman, a missile defense expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

Susan Thornton, the acting secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said Friday a North Korean H-bomb test in the Pacific would be "outrageous." She said it would draw a "concerted and determined international response" but declined to be specific.

North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. invasion, but Thornton contended that the North ultimately seeks to take over U.S.-allied South Korea.

She said Kim's aim in developing nuclear weapons is "to fulfill a long-term desire on the part of the North Korean regime to reunify the Korean Peninsula under the Kim family regime and proliferate these weapons and blackmail other countries. This is an intolerable prospect that no other country in the international community can abide."

Elleman said the missile of choice in a North Korean atmospheric H-bomb test likely would be its longest-range ballistic missile, known as the Hwasong-14, which apparently has the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, or the intermediate-range Hwasong-12. The Hwasong-14 was flight tested for the first time only two months ago.

"Kim Jong Un would have to accept considerable risk of failure - or worse, a missile carrying a nuclear warhead could crash into Japan - if he elects to use the Hwasong-12 or -14," Elleman said. "The Hwasong-12 has been flight tested just six times, three of which ended in failure."

How might the U.S. respond, given its treaty commitment to defend Japan?

Acton argues for negotiating a deal that would preclude such an escalation. He suggests a deal in which the North would agree to halt missile flights over Japan or South Korea and the U.S. would agree to stop its strategic bomber training flights within a certain distance of the North Korean border.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says he thinks the North Korean threat is likely bluster, but if it happened "there's a real possibility" the U.S. would take military action in response, given the potential for an accidental detonation over a populated area and the potential threat to sea or air traffic.

"They have done crazy things and tend to carry through with what they have said," Kristensen said in an email exchange. "But a live nuclear weapons launch and detonation in the Pacific would be an extraordinarily irresponsible act."

Trump on Friday renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official and expert on East Asia, said Friday he believes the North is intent on launching an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, like the Hwasong-14 on a combat trajectory to determine the survivability of a mock warhead.

"To go from that to an atmospheric test on a missile would be a dangerously provocative step," Revere said. "It would violate longstanding international norms and would be a major challenge to the U.S. and Japan, in the latter case because it would overfly Japan's territory.

"It would also send a disturbing signal to the U.S. and the international community that North Korea had now 'arrived' as a full-fledged nuclear weapon state."

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump listens during a luncheon with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks at a press briefing at the Hilton Midtown hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, in New York, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

President Donald Trump meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump speaks at a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
GENEVA (AP) - A spokesman for the U.N.'s Human Rights Council has confirmed that its first independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has resigned for "personal reasons."

Spokesman Rolando Gomez confirmed the authenticity of a letter published Sept. 12 by the Washington Blade, the oldest LGBT newspaper in the U.S, in which Vitit Muntarbhorn informed the council president about his resignation effective Oct. 31, citing illness in his household.

Gomez told reporters Friday that a successor for Muntarbhorn will be named at an organizational meeting for the council on Dec. 4.

Muntarbhorn, who is from Thailand, was appointed last September.

Supporters of gay rights won a major victory at the United Nations in New York in December with the failure of an attempt by some African nations to stop Muntarbhorn's work.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) - Lawmakers and tech industry leaders have announced the completion of a new high-speed data cable that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean.

Representatives from Facebook and Microsoft joined with Virginia's governor and two senators in Williamsburg to celebrate the cable's completion on Friday morning.

The 4,000-mile cable runs from Bilbao, Spain, to Virginia Beach. It can transmit 160 terabits of data per second.

That's 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection. Put another way, it could stream 71 million high-definition videos at once.

The cable is named Marea, which is Spanish for "tide." It's a joint project between Microsoft, Facebook and global telecommunication company Telxius.

The cable will help to meet growing demand for internet infrastructure across the globe. It will also make the network more reliable.

.
BAGHDAD (AP) - The Latest on developments in Iraq (all times local):

7:45 p.m.

An Iraqi government spokesman says a delegation from the country's Kurdish region will travel to Baghdad ahead of the controversial referendum on Kurdish independence planned for Monday.

This image made from video provided by Kurdistan 24 shows an Iraqi tank moving into position as forces begun the operation to retake the town of Hawija, Iraq from the Islamic State group Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Prime minister Haider al-Abadi says the operation began at dawn in a statement released by his office, just two days after Iraqi forces began an offensive against IS holdouts in Iraq's vast western Anbar province. (Kurdistan 24 via AP)

Saad al-Hadithi says Iraqi government officials are ready to meet the delegation Saturday, but the central government still rejects the referendum and its results.

The news comes amid growing pressure from the international community on Iraq's Kurdish leadership to delay the controversial vote and instead engage in talks.

Earlier on Friday the president of Iraq's Kurdish region said negotiations are still possible with the central government, but pledged the vote on support for independence would go ahead as planned.

In a statement released Thursday, the United Nations called for "structured dialogue and compromise supported by the international community" between the Kurdish region and Baghdad

___

6:20 p.m.

The President of Iraq's Kurdish region says the controversial referendum on support for independence will go forward Monday, despite increasingly urgent calls from the international community to delay the vote.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands in Irbil on Friday, Masoud Barzani says the fight against the Islamic State group in partnership with the Iraqi military will "continue" despite the vote.

The comments follow a warning from the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that the vote could have a "potentially destabilizing" impact on the region.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces are continuing to clear the last pockets of territory that IS holds in Iraq.

Earlier this week, Iraqi forces launched anti-IS operations outside Kirkuk in Iraq's north as well as in western Anbar along the border with Syria.

___

11:55 a.m.

The spokesman for Iraq's mostly Shiite paramilitary troops known as Popular Mobilization Forces says they have joined the battle against Islamic State group militants in the contested province of Kirkuk.

Ahmed al-Asadi says the Shiite militias were pushing west of the IS-held town of Hawija on Friday, following the formal launch of the operation to retake the area - one of the last extremist strongholds in Iraq - the previous day.

Plans to retake the town of Hawija there have been complicated by political wrangling among Iraq's disparate security forces. The town and the governorate are disputed between Baghdad and the northern Kurdish autonomous region, where a referendum on independence is scheduled to take place next week.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders are pressing ahead with the referendum, which Baghdad dismisses as illegal.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A woman who pointed a gun at employees inside the Kardashian-owned DASH boutique in West Hollywood while screaming about Cuba and then returned hours later to wave a machete at reporters has been arrested, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said Friday.

Maricia Medrano, 35, was arrested on suspicion of assault and making criminal threats, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

Medrano walked into the DASH boutique late Thursday morning, pointed a handgun at two employees and shouted "stay away from Cuba," the statement said. She then knocked several items off a counter and left.

In this Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, video image released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, actively searching for this suspect waving a machete at news reporters outside the Kardashian-owned DASH boutique in West Hollywood, Calif. KCBS-TV reported that after pointing a gun at employees inside the store, the woman returned and swung a machete at reporters and photographers outside the boutique before sticking it through a slot in the front door. (Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department via AP)

About two hours later, Medrano returned with a 14-inch (36-centimeter) machete and swung it at reporters and photographers who had gathered outside the shop after the robbery, threatening to stab them, the statement said.

The woman was captured on video saying, "The Kardashians will be executed if they step on communist territory."

Kim, Kourtney and Khloe Kardashian visited Havana, Cuba, in May 2016.

No one was injured and the Medrano got away both times before deputies arrived.

Sheriff's investigators served a search warrant at Medrano's home in Los Angeles Thursday night and found two guns that fire BB-like projectiles. The guns looked similar to the one used inside the store, the statement said.

Medrano was arrested and was being held Friday for lack $50,000 bail.

A message left at a number listed for Medrano in public records wasn't immediately returned. The sheriff's department did not know if she had a lawyer who could comment on the allegations.

The three sisters founded DASH, which sells clothing and accessories, in 2006. There is a second store in Miami Beach, Florida.

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Follow Michael Balsamo on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1.
WASHINGTON (AP) - EDITOR'S NOTE: Sixty years ago, nine black students enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, putting to test a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

The court ordered all public schools to act swiftly, integrating with deliberate speed. But it was an unpopular decision that was met with great resistance.

This epic court battle took place well before the nine teens made it through their first day of classes Sept. 25, 1957.

FILE - In this May 17, 1954, file photo, George E.C. Hayes, left, Thurgood Marshall, center, and James M. Nabrit join hands outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., after justices declared in the Brown v. Board of Education decision that separate but equal schools for black children were unconstitutional. Three years after that ruling, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to escort nine black children as they integrated Central High School. The 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine's enrollment is Monday, Sept. 25, 2017. (AP Photo/File)

On Dec. 7, 1953, lawyers argued about whether it was proper to maintain separate schools for black and white children as long as their facilities are equal. This story was first published Dec. 7, 1953. These cases, involving South Carolina and Virginia, were among a series of cases from four states and the District of Columbia that the U.S. Supreme Court considered under the Brown v. Board of Education umbrella.

The Associated Press is republishing the 1953 report by reporter Douglas B. Cornell. It is the first in a series of stories - old and new - that will run as part of the AP's coverage of the Little Rock Nine anniversary.

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Clashing arguments of rival attorneys in the austere Supreme Court chamber today reopened the tremendous legal battle over whether the Constitution outlaws separate public schools for white and Negro children.

Lawyers for Negro parents teed off with contentions the 14th Amendment does just that - and it makes no difference, they said, whether schools for Negro pupils are as good as those for whites.

Thurgood Marshall, counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) told the court:

"You can't separate people and say that one should go here and one should go there, if the facilities are absolutely equal. ...

"Any segregation, which is for the purpose of setting up class or caste distinctions, is of itself in violation of the 14th Amendment."

Attorneys for South Carolina and Virginia fired back that segregated schools are completely in keeping with the Constitution and the Supreme Court has no power to rule otherwise.

If it does, white-maned 80-year-old John W. Davis said, he doesn't know what will happen, but:

"I do know, if testimony is to be believed, the result will not be pleasant."

His voice quavering with emotion, the man who ran for president as a Democrat in 1924 said that "South Carolina does not come here in sackcloth and ashes. It believes its legislation is non-offensive to the Constitution of the United States. ...

"It is convinced that the happiness, the progress and the welfare of these children is best promoted in public schools."

A Supreme Court ruling that segregation in schools is illegal would affect millions of children in almost a score of states, mostly in the South, which have dual school systems. A decision either way probably is months in the future. It may not come until next spring.

In addition to South Carolina and Virginia, Kansas, Delaware and the District of Columbia are directly involved in the cases now before the highest court of justice.

Three days of arguments started off with the South Carolina and Virginia cases, and on point after point, Davis, Marshall and the attorneys with them took directly opposite stands.

On a higher, more dignified plane, it was much like a couple of youngsters in one of those "does-doesn't" quarrels. Occasionally the black-robed justices broke in to ask questions or bring the lawyer back to a particular point.

The one momentous, basic issue is this: Do or do not the Equal Rights and Due Process provisions of the Constitution ban segregation in the public schools?

Also at issue is the "separate but equal doctrine" the Supreme Court laid down in 1896. In a case centering on accommodations on a southern train, the court upheld racial segregation provided facilities set aside for Negroes are equal to those reserved for white passengers.

Marshall told the court it should junk this doctrine now and rule that "segregation in and of itself is invalid."

Davis said the doctrine has been reaffirmed seven different times and, in the words of a federal judge, it is "late to disturb it on any theoretical or sociological" grounds.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on the sentencing of a man who killed eight people in a California shooting (all times local):

12:05 p.m.

A California man has been sentenced to eight consecutive life terms for killing his hairstylist ex-wife and seven others in a shooting at a salon in 2011.

FILE - In this June 15, 2017, file photo, Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to killing his hairstylist ex-wife and seven others, listens to Bethany Webb, sister of Laura Webb Elody, who was killed by Dekraai, as she gives a statement to the court during a hearing in Santa Ana, Calif. Dekraai, a 47-year-old former tugboat operator, faces life in prison when he's sentenced Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, in an Orange County courtroom, for killing his ex-wife and seven others in a shooting rampage at the hair salon where she worked. His case has dragged on years due to a scandal over authorities' use of informants to cull information from Dekraai and others housed in the county's jails. (Sam Gangwer/The Orange County Register via AP, File)

Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals handed down the punishment Friday for 47-year-old Scott Dekraai.

He pleaded guilty in 2014. His sentencing was delayed by a long-running scandal over the county's use of jailhouse snitches to cull information from Dekraai and other inmates.

The judge last month removed the death penalty as an option for Dekraai due to authorities' repeated failures to turn over informant-related records. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra says he will abide by that decision.

Dekraai was in a custody dispute with ex-wife Michelle Fournier over their 8-year-old son when he entered the salon where she worked and opened fire. He was arrested within minutes.

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12 a.m.

A California man faces life in prison at his sentencing for killing his ex-wife and seven others at the hair salon where she worked.

Scott Dekraai (deh-KREYE'), a 47-year-old former tugboat operator, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Orange County.

Dekraai pleaded guilty in 2014 to eight counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

His case has dragged on for years due to a scandal over authorities' use of informants to cull information from Dekraai and others housed in the county's jails.

Prosecutors wanted Dekraai sentenced to death for opening fire in the Seal Beach salon in 2011. But a judge found authorities' repeated failures to turn over informant-related records jeopardized the killer's right to a fair trial and removed the possibility of a death sentence.
NEW YORK (AP) - Moody's has downgraded its credit rating on Great Britain, citing the country's weakening finances and the impact of its decision to exit the European Union.

The agency on Friday said it was cutting its long-term debt rating on the UK one notch to Aa2, its third-highest investment-grade rating. Its outlook on the rating moved to "stable" from "negative."

Moody's said it expects Britain to see higher budget deficits as a result of political and social pressure to increase spending after years of cuts.

It also sees Brexit eroding the country's economic strength. Moody's forecasts the U.K. economy growing just 1 percent in 2018 after 1.5 percent growth this year, adding that it doesn't expect growth to recover to its historic trend rate in the coming years.
OKARCHE, Okla. (AP) - Few religious pilgrimages lead down a dusty, unpaved Oklahoma road past grazing horses, metal barns and towering wind turbines in the distance.

But the unusual destination of this 2,000-mile (3,218-kilometer) trek from Central America to a farmhouse outside a one-stoplight town seems an appropriate honor for the Rev. Stanley Rother, a martyred priest celebrated for his unassuming nature and hard work.

Rother is set to be beatified Saturday at Roman Catholic mass in Oklahoma City, moving him one step closer to possible sainthood. The ceremony is expected to draw thousands to a downtown convention center to honor the church's first U.S.-born martyr and the first priest from the United States to be beatified.

Guatemalan Bishop Julio Edgar Cabrera, right, looks over a Rother Family photo book with Juan Pablo Ixbalan, left, at the Rother Family home in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Stanley Rother, an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war, is on the path to possible sainthood. Ixbalan knew Rother during his time in Guatemala. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

The native of Okarche was a 46-year-old missionary in Guatemala when he was killed in 1981, one of several priests slain during the country's civil war between a right-wing dictatorship and liberal guerrillas. His name first appeared on a death list, and then he was shot to death in his mission.

Juan Pablo Ixbalan made the journey from Guatemala with his fellow parishioners and church leaders to Rother's childhood home. Setting foot in the house where Rother was born moved Ixbalan to tears, he said, and further sealed an inseparable connection.

"I feel like his brother - that we lived together, that we share the bond of brotherhood," Ixbalan said in Tzutuhil, which is spoken by a subgroup of Mayans, through an interpreter. "He became one of us. He learned the language."

Ixbalan, 63, was a young teen when he first met Rother at his church in Santiago Atitlan, situated on a lakeshore between two volcanoes in the Guatemalan highlands where he grew up.

Rother started a radio station, worked alongside farmers and pushed for locals to make and sell knitted clothing. In helping translate the New Testament, Rother is credited with helping start the written form of Tzutuhil.

Language wasn't always Rother's strong suite. Early on in seminary, he got a "Cs" and "Ds", respectively, in Latin and English. Family lore tells that when Rother told his father he was going to become a priest, the elder Rother joked that he shouldn't have avoided Latin in high school.

But farm work came with ease, and it served the eldest of the five Rother children well in Guatemala. He helped install an irrigation system and brought in crops such as wheat and soybeans, dissuading farmers from using chemicals. He brought in tractors to till the land, and repaired vehicles when they broke down.

Rother was born in 1935, a descendent of German immigrants who homesteaded on the outskirts of Okarche, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City. While much of the state remains largely protestant, Okarche - population 1,300 - has held to its Catholic heritage. It's still home to the Holy Trinity Church and school Rother attended.

Although the beatification ceremony is in Oklahoma City, it's been felt in Rother's hometown. The delegation from Guatemala stopped for lunch at Esichen's Bar, which bills itself as Oklahoma's oldest bar, but is best known for selling whole fried chickens.

Julie Kroener's family has owned the Okarche establishment for five generations. She was a child when Rother died, but she said grew up respecting him and his family.

"This is a huge deal, and it's an amazing thing to experience," Kroene said Friday, just after the lunch rush. "It gives you a sense of pride knowing that somebody like that comes from such a simple town."

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, a sponsor of Rother's mission to Guatemala, opened his cause for beatification in 2007. Pope Francis declared Rother a martyr in December, and beatification is a step closer to potential sainthood. Francis, the first Latin American head of the church, has said priests killed during the region's right-wing dictatorships died out of hatred for their faith.

Regular candidates for beatification need a Vatican-certified miracle attributed to their intercession, but the church makes an exception for martyrs. A miracle is still necessary to be declared a saint.

Writer Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda penned a 2015 biography of Rother and helped submit paperwork that could lead to his sainthood. She said Rother's life became extraordinary because of his compassion and ability to help people carry on the everyday activities of life.

"This guy could fix the tractors. He could work the land," she said. "I love that he's from Okarche, Oklahoma. It doesn't get better than that."

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Follow Adam Kealoha Causey on Twitter at https://twitter.com/akcausey .

A statue in tribute to Father Stanley Rother stands on the grounds of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Rother was an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war, who is on the path to possible sainthood. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Sister Marita Rother, center, talks with Fr. John Peter Swaminathan, left, current pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, and a visitor from the Guatemalan delegation, right, in the yard of the Rother Family home in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. A ceremony for Marita's brother Stanley Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

In this photo provided by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, Father Stanley Rother is pictured in an undated photo in Guatemala. Rother, an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war, is on the path to possible sainthood. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (Archdiocese of Oklahoma City Photo via AP)

Stairs in the Rother Family home are painted with the names of Stanley Rother and his brothers and sisters in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Rother was an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war. He is on the path to possible sainthood after Pope Francis declared him a martyr. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Sister Marita Rother, left, and Guatemalan Bishop Julio Edgar Cabrera, right, pose for a photo in the Rother Family home in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Sister Marita, born Elizabeth Mary Rother, is the sister of Stanley Rother, an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war, who is on the path to possible sainthood. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

A gift shop at Holy Trinity Catholic Church carries items pertaining to Father Stanley Rother in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Rother was an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war who is on the path to possible sainthood. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Guatemalan Bishop Julio Edgar Cabrera, center, leads a prayer in the Rother Family home in Okarche, Okla, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Father Stanley Rother was an American priest killed during Guatemala's civil war, who is on the path to possible sainthood. A ceremony for Rother's Beatification is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - The nine black teenagers who integrated Little Rock's Central High School in September 1957 all went on to seek higher education. Eight remain alive.

While they're most known for their collective story, they have their individual achievements as well.

Here are their stories, as provided by organizers of the 60th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine's desegregation of all-white Central.

This combination of Friday, Sept. 22, 2017 photos shows eight of the Little Rock Nine, the black teenagers who had to be escorted by federal troops past an angry white mob and through the doors of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 25, 1957. Top row from left are Minniejean Brown Trickey, Elizabeth Eckford and Ernest Green; middle row, Thelma Mothershed Wair, Melba Pattillo Beals, and Gloria Ray Karlmark; bottom row, Terrance Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier. (AP Photo/Kelly Kissel)

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MELBA PATTILLO BEALS

Melba Pattillo Beals currently lives in the San Francisco area. Her mother, Lois, had been among the first black graduates from the University of Arkansas.

Beals earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from San Francisco State University, a master's at Columbia and a doctorate at the University of San Francisco. She worked as a reporter in public television and at an NBC affiliate and also wrote "Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Desegregate Little Rock's Central High School."

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ELIZABETH ECKFORD

Because all of Little Rock's high schools were closed a year after the desegregation battle, Elizabeth Eckford moved to St. Louis, where she obtained her GED diploma. She attended Knox College in Illinois and received a bachelor's degree in history at Central State University in Ohio.

Eckford served in the U.S. Army. She and a key tormentor captured in a 1957 photograph outside Central High School received a humanitarian award from the National Conference for Community and Justice after their reconciliation more than three decades after the crisis. Eckford lives in Little Rock.

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ERNEST GREEN

Ernest Green was the first of the Little Rock Nine to earn a diploma at Central High School. He worked in public finance for Lehman Brothers in Washington and was listed in Black Enterprise's 2006 list of the "75 Most Powerful Blacks on Wall Street."

Green has a bachelor's degree in social science and a master's in sociology from Michigan State University, plus honorary documents from Central State University, Michigan State and Tougaloo College.

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GLORIA RAY KARLMARK

Gloria Ray Karlmark is the youngest granddaughter of a former slave. After leaving Little Rock for Missouri while her hometown schools were closed, she graduated from the newly integrated Kansas City Central High School in 1960. After graduating from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, she joined IIT's research institute as an assistant mathematician.

In the 1970s, she and her husband immigrated to Sweden and she joined IBM's Nordic Laboratory. She retired in 1994.

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CARLOTTA WALLS LANIER

Carlotta Walls LaNier is the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine, entering Central High School at age 14. She graduated from Central in 1960 and attended Michigan State University for two years and later graduated from the University of Northern Colorado.

She received an honorary doctorate from Northern Colorado and is in the Colorado Woman's Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame. She wrote "A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School" and is a real estate broker.

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TERRENCE ROBERTS

Terrence Roberts entered Central High as a junior, completed the school year and moved with family to California, where he graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1959. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from California State University, Los Angeles, a master's in social welfare from UCLA and a doctorate in psychology from Southern Illinois University.

He was on the faculty at Pacific Union in the 1970s and was assistant dean at the UCLA School of Social Welfare from 1985 to 1993. He has written "Lessons from Little Rock" and "Simple, Not Easy: Reflections on Community, Social Responsibility and Tolerance."

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JEFFERSON THOMAS

Jefferson Thomas was running track at all-black Dunbar Junior High School when he volunteered to help integrate all-white Central High School as a sophomore in 1957. He graduated from Central in 1960 and subsequently earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Los Angeles State College. He was an accounting supervisor at Mobil Oil and joined the Department of Defense when Mobil moved its credit card operations out of Los Angeles. He moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1989.

The 27-year federal employee retired in 2002 and died in 2010.

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MINNIJEAN BROWN TRICKEY

Minnijean Brown Trickey was the first of the Little Rock Nine to be suspended, after retaliating against her tormentors. She moved to New York and lived with a pair of social scientists who had played a role in the Brown v. Board of Education case and graduated from the New Lincoln School in 1959.

She studied journalism at Southern Illinois University and later received a bachelor's of social work in native human services from Laurentian University and a master's of social work at Carleton University, both in Ontario. She worked in President Bill Clinton's administration as deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity at the Department of the Interior.

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THELMA MOTHERSHED WAIR

Thelma Mothershed Wair completed her high school work through correspondence courses and summer school in St. Louis. She received her diploma by mail.

Wair graduated from Southern Illinois University with a degree in home economics education and earned a master's degree in guidance and counseling from Southern Illinois. She worked in East St. Louis, Illinois, schools for 28 years - 10 as a home economics teacher and 18 as a counselor - before retiring in 1994 and moving back to Little Rock.

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For more information, visit www.centralhigh60th.org

This combination of file photos shows the nine black teenagers who had to be escorted by federal troops past an angry white mob and through the doors of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Sept. 25, 1957. Top row from left are Minnie Brown, Elizabeth Eckford and Ernest Green; middle row, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo Beals, and Gloria Ray Karlmark; bottom row, Terrance Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls LaNier. (AP Photo)
LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Two gang members were found guilty Friday of killing five people at a homeless encampment near Los Angeles in a feud involving drug debts.

A jury found David Ponce and Max Rafael guilty of five counts of murder and one count of kidnapping, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said.

Prosecutors say Ponce and Rafael fatally shot three men and two women living at the encampment near a freeway off-ramp in Long Beach.

FILE - In these file booking photos released Jan. 18, 2012, shows suspects David Ponce, left, and Max Rafael in a 2008 murder of five people at a homeless encampment, released during a news conference announcing the arrest of suspects in Long Beach, Calif. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office says a jury found gang members, David Ponce and Max Rafael guilty of five counts of murder and a kidnapping charge on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. Prosecutors say Ponce and Rafael fatally shot three men and two women living at a homeless encampment near a freeway off-ramp in Long Beach. (AP Photo/Jeff Gritchen/Los Angeles Daily News via AP)

The November 2008 mass killing baffled investigators after the five bodies were found on a Sunday morning in the seedy neighborhood. A phone tip led authorities to the bodies.

Police said the motive was an ongoing feud over drug debts between Ponce and one of the victims, Lorenzo Villicana. Police believe the others were killed to ensure there were no witnesses.

Ponce, 36, also was convicted of the murder and kidnapping of a man named Tony Bledsoe in March 2009, allegedly because he had failed to hand over some drug money.

Ponce, who belonged to the Nuthood Watts criminal street gang, has the words "Nut" and "Hood" tattooed below his eyes.

Ponce could face the death penalty while Rafael, 31, could get life in prison when he's sentenced on Nov. 15.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The Latest on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's visit to Puerto Rico (all times local):

10:20 p.m.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he witnessed "breathtaking" devastation in Puerto Rico during a visit to drop off supplies and show support following Hurricane Maria.

The Democrat says he saw hundreds of homes with significant damage during his one-day visit Friday. Cuomo's office says Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello asked his New York counterpart for assistance.

Cuomo flew on a donated JetBlue aircraft that officials said was the first flight to depart for San Juan since the storm. The state is also sending drinking water, ready-to-eat meals, electrical generators and other supplies.

Last week, Cuomo traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma.

New York plans to send about 240 National Guardsmen and state troopers to assist Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

11:29 p.m.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is heading to the Caribbean for the second time in a week to get a firsthand look at hurricane damage.

The Democrat departed from JFK Airport Friday morning for Puerto Rico. The state is also sending drinking water, ready-to-eat meals, electrical generators and other supplies for the island territory ravaged by Hurricane Maria.

Cuomo's office says Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello asked his New York counterpart for assistance to help the recovery.

Cuomo is traveling on a donated JetBlue aircraft that officials said was the first flight to depart for San Juan since the storm.

Last week Cuomo traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma.

New York plans to send about 240 National Guardsmen and state troopers to assist Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

10:07 a.m.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is heading to the Caribbean for the second time in a week to get a firsthand look at the damage left behind by a hurricane.

The Democrat departed from JFK Airport Friday morning for the U.S. territory. He announced Thursday that New York state emergency response officials will help recovery efforts on the island ravaged by Hurricane Maria.

Cuomo's office says Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello asked his New York counterpart for emergency goods and services to help the recovery.

Cuomo's trip comes a week after he traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands at the invitation of the territory's governor to see the damage caused by Hurricane Irma. Cuomo vowed to send New York aid to the devastated islands.

Maria has delayed the deployment of 130 New York National Guardsmen and state troopers to the USVI.

6:26 a.m.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is heading to the Caribbean for the second time in a week to get a firsthand look at the damage left behind by a hurricane.

The Democrat announced Thursday that he'll travel to Puerto Rico with New York state emergency response officials to help recovery efforts on the island ravaged by Hurricane Maria. Cuomo is holding a news conference Friday morning at JFK Airport before his flight departs.

Cuomo's office says Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello asked his New York counterpart for emergency goods and services to help the recovery.

Cuomo's trip comes a week after he traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands at the invitation of the territory's governor to see the damage caused by Hurricane Irma. Cuomo vowed to send New York aid to the devastated islands.
PARIS (AP) - French far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon urged protesters Saturday to take to the streets and mount strikes to force President Emmanuel Macron to withdraw the labor law changes that are key to his business-friendly economic vision.

Speaking to tens of thousands in Paris, Melenchon assailed the president's new labor decrees as a gift to greedy corporations and the financial markets that have both fueled income inequality.

Macron, for his part, says the decrees are crucial to creating jobs and tackling France's chronic high unemployment.

A woman dressed like the French Revolution outfit holds a flag during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

"The battle isn't over - it is beginning," Melenchon told the crowd packed onto the Place de la Republique in eastern Paris.

Earlier, marchers stretched along Paris boulevards waving French tricolor flags, union banners and signs reading "Macron, Resign!"

"It's the street that brought down the kings. It's the street that brought down the Nazis," said Melenchon, who is trying to position himself as France's main opposition figure.

The labor decrees that Macron signed Friday reduce French unions' influence over workplace rules and make it easier for companies to fire workers - but Saturday's demonstration reflected wider frustration with the new French president's leadership.

"Everything that's done in terms of fiscal policies is in favor of the rich, the wealthy and big companies," complained marcher Cedric Moulinier, 26. "We're asking for things to start going the right way, a more social, humanist and environmentalist way."

Many were angry at a reference Macron made to the "lazy" people who opposed the changes.

While the president has already signed the decrees and they are expected to be ratified by parliament soon, Melenchon still insisted it is not too late to overturn them.

He said he would reach out to unions to join forces against the labor decrees, which he said threaten the French way of life.

"All of Europe is watching us. .... What is happening is the battle for France," he said.

The crowd, which police estimated at 30,000 and organizers estimated at 150,000, repeatedly broke into chants of "Resistance!" or "Get out!"

The protesters are also angry that Macron used a special procedure allowing the government to change labor law by executive order instead going through a lengthy debate to pass a bill in parliament.

Macron lauded the "unprecedented wave of changes" to France's social model, along with changes to unemployment benefits and a training plan for jobless people that will be set up next year.

While Macron shone at the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week and has made a strong mark on the international stage, he has struggled with myriad critics at home. Farmers, riot police and carnival workers have held protests in recent weeks over work policy changes under Macron, and truckers plan road blockades on Monday.

Among Melenchon's suggestions to pressure the government to withdraw the reforms is a "pots and pans party."

"Grab your pots next Saturday to make as much noise as possible," he said. "This is what our message will be: You make our lives miserable. You prevent us from dreaming so we will prevent you from sleeping."

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Alex Turnbull and Oleg Cetinic contributed in Paris.

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon greets supporters as he arrives to take part in a demonstration in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

French President Emmanuel Macron signs documents in front of the media to promulgate a new labor bill in his office at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. Macron has signed Friday five decrees paving the way to the implementation of labor measures aimed at boosting growth, his first major reform since his election. (Philippe Wojazer/Pool Photo via AP)

Supporters of French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon are gathered on Republique square to listen their leader during a protest over the president's labor reform, in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon greets supporters as he arrives to take part in a demonstration in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon greets supporters as he arrives to take part in a demonstration in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform at the Bastille square in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

Clementine Autain, left, and Benoit Hamon, center, listen to French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon as they demonstrate during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

A demonstrator holds a placard reading : "Macron King slacker" during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Banner reads : The rebellious. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Banner reads : The rebellious. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP photo/Francois Mori)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, right, along with former Socialist party presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, take part in a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon is rallying disaffected voters against President Emmanuel Macron's proposals to reduce worker protections, amid spreading discontent with his presidency and his vision for a more market-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon greets supporters during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

Demonstrators take the streets during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy.(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon speaks to his supporters during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy.(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon speaks to his supporters during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy.(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Supporters of French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, wearing Phrygian caps, symbol of the French revolution, listen to their leader delivering his speech during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy.(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Supporters of French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon listen to their leader delivering his speech during a protest over the president's labor reform in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy.(AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Supporters of French far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon are gathered on Republique square to listen their leader during a protest over the president's labor reform, in Paris, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Melenchon rallied disaffected voters Saturday against President Emmanuel Macron's plan to weaken worker protections, amid spreading discontent with Macron's vision of a more business-friendly economy. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
BERLIN (AP) - A Lufthansa passenger jet that was hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant group's campaign against West German authorities has returned home.

The dpa news agency reported that the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the German city of Friedrichshafen, where it will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum.

The parts arrived aboard two freight aircraft from Brazil. The aircraft ended up in a Brazilian carrier's fleet and had been sitting decommissioned at the country's Fortaleza Airport for years.

From left: former co-pilot Juergen Vietor, former passenger Diana Muell, and former stewardess Gabriele von Lutzau stand in front of a part of Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

A Palestinian group demanding the release of members of West Germany's Red Army Faction hijacked a Mallorca-to-Frankfurt flight in October 1977. The hijacking marked the peak of the "German Autumn" of leftist violence.

German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 18, 1977. They killed three of the four hijackers and rescued all 86 passengers.

Visitors and journalists stand in front of the cockpit of the Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

A Russian Antonov transport plane AN124 carries parts of Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' as it stands at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

The fuselage of Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' is unladed from a Russian Antonov transport plane at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

A Russian Antonov transport plane AN124 carries parts of Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' as it stands at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

The fuselage of Lufthansa plane 'Landshut' is unladed from a Russian Antonov transport plane at the airport in Friedrichshafen, Germany, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of the leftist Red Army Faction's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The dpa news agency reported Saturday most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the southern city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)
SAVANNAH, Tenn. (AP) - It was a prayer circle 6  years in the making.

Shortly after a man was convicted of kidnapping and killing Tennessee nursing student Holly Bobo, her family and friends held hands, closed their eyes and thanked God for the guilty verdict.

Family pastor Don Franks spoke softly as those who loved Bobo wept. He told them they will see Holly again.

Karen Bobo, right, mother of Holly Bobo, receives a hug from a supporter after a court recess was called Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, in Savannah, Tenn. A Hardin County jury found Zachary Adams guilty Friday of kidnapping, raping and murdering Holly Bobo. (Kenneth Cummings/The Jackson Sun via AP)

"She's waiting on the other side," Franks said. The group then said "hallelujah."

After a tense, 11-day trial, a jury in Savannah, Tennessee, found Zachary Adams guilty Friday of kidnapping, raping and murdering Bobo. She was 20 in April 2011 when she was led into the woods behind her home by an unidentified man wearing camouflage in the rural town of Parsons.

Bobo's disappearance led to a frantic search of the farms, fields and barns of western Tennessee, and her case received national attention. Her remains were found in September 2014 by two men hunting for ginseng in woods not far from her home in Decatur County, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Nashville.

A sentencing hearing with the same jury that decided the verdict will begin Saturday. The murder charge can carry the death penalty for Adams, 33.

Before her skull was discovered, Bobo's relatives and friends prayed she would be found alive. After her death was confirmed, their focus switched to finding justice for the young woman known for her singing at church.

"She finally has the peace in the valley that she sang about," family friend Rickey Alexander said.

After the jury was let out of the courtroom, Bobo's mother Karen hugged prosecutor Jennifer Nichols and Bobo's father Dana hugged Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn.

Defense attorney Jennifer Thompson patted Adams on the shoulder and spoke into his ear shortly after the verdict was read. Outside the courtroom, she said she was extremely disappointed in the verdict and maintained that Adams was innocent.

Adams was very upset and trembling after the verdict, she said.

"He was really shaking his head," Thompson said. "He was white as a ghost."

Judge C. Creed McGinley moved the trial from Decatur County to neighboring Hardin County in search of an unbiased jury. The jury deliberated 3 hours Thursday and about seven hours Friday before reaching a verdict.

"I'm not sure you can get an unbiased jury" in a case that has received so much attention in the area, Thompson said.

Prosecutor Paul Hagerman declined comment.

Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams' brother John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.

Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend Shayne Austin had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river in the day she was reported missing.

Autry was on a list of witnesses who were offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.

Autry's lawyer has told the judge that a trial does not need to be set for Autry, indicating he has reached a deal with prosecutors. A trial date has not been set for John Dylan Adams.

The TBI has said that the Bobo investigation is the most exhaustive and expensive in the agency's history.

But investigators found no DNA evidence connecting Bobo to any of the men. Instead, they relied on Autry's story and other testimony from friends and jail inmates who said Adams spoke of harming Bobo.

Friend Anthony Phoenix used an expletive to describe how Adams told him that he "couldn't have picked" a prettier woman. Christopher Swift said Adams asked him if God would forgive him for the "Holly killing," while they were both jailed together.

During closing arguments, Thompson had accused Autry of selling his "tall tale" to prosecutors in return for the death penalty.

"A lot of people believed that if you say something, it must be true," Thompson said.

Dana and Karen Bobo hug each other after a verdict in their daughter Holly Bobo's murder trial in Savannah, Tenn., Friday, Sept. 22, 2017. A Hardin County jury convicted Zachary Adams on Friday of the kidnapping, rape and murder of Holly Bobo. (Kenneth Cummings/The Jackson Sun via AP)

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwynn, center right, receives a hug from Dana Bobo, father of Holly Bobo, after recess was calledFriday, Sept. 22, 2017, in Savannah, Tenn. A Hardin County jury convicted Zachary Adams on Friday of kidnapping, raping and murdering Holly Bobo. (Kenneth Cummings/The Jackson Sun via AP)

Zach Adams turns to look at his mother after a Hardin County jury found Zach Adams guilty of all charges including felony first-degree murder, especially aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape of Holly Bobo, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017 in Savannah, Tenn. (Kenneth Cummings/The Jackson Sun via AP, Pool)
NEW YORK (AP) - The family of a man who died in police custody will receive $1.25 million in a settlement with New York City.

The Daily News (http://nydn.us/2hmZoa5 ) reports Saturday that court papers show city officials reached the deal with Ron Singleton's mother, who sued after her son's July 2014 death.

The lawsuit claims Singleton was high on PCP and acting erratically when officers placed him in a so-called protective body wrap. It says officers kept the father of three face down in the wrap despite requests from emergency technicians who wanted to turn him over to examine him.

A medical examiner ruled his death a homicide caused partly by the restraint "during excited delirium." He also had heart disease and was obese.

City lawyers say the settlement was in everyone's best interest.

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Information from: Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com
PHOENIX (AP) - Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is taking a victory lap now that President Donald Trump has pardoned his recent conviction, giving political speeches, raising money and boasting he's been vindicated following a politically motivated prosecution.

To people like Joe Atencio, the pardon for a misdemeanor contempt-of-court conviction ended the only real accountability for a lawman accused of a range of misconduct over his 24 years as metro Phoenix's sheriff.

Atencio's son was killed in a 2011 altercation with Arpaio's jail officers, who were accused of shooting him with a Taser and beating him as officers held him down and he cried out in pain.

Daniel Magos is photographed at his home on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. Magos believes he was a victim of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration sweeps in 2009. Magos, a Mexican native who became a U.S. citizen 50 years ago, was a key witness in a 2012 civil rights trial in which Arpaio's officers were found to have racially profiled Latinos. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Atencio is among several people who say they were victimized by Arpaio and are upset at the pardon. They include Hispanic drivers, victims of sex crimes whose cases weren't properly investigated, people whose loved ones died in his jails and political opponents charged with crimes after feuding with the sheriff.

"I was highly disappointed, and I'm a Trump supporter. That was devastating," said Atencio, who believes the pardon was in return for the sheriff's support during the presidential campaign.

Trump said Arpaio exemplified public service and protected the public from crime and illegal immigration.

Arpaio rejected criticism that the pardon was payback for supporting Trump, denied that the clemency allowed him to get away with a crime and groused that his opponents are dredging up years-old controversies.

"Why are these same people going back into my history when I have already been re-elected?" Arpaio said last week. He was defeated last year after six terms in office. "Why didn't they fight me back then? This is old stuff."

He said his critics would never cut him a break.

"What did I get away with? A misdemeanor? Is that what I got away with?" Arpaio asked.

The Associated Press interviewed several people who felt wronged by Arpaio after his pardon:

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BOTCHED SEX-CRIMES CASES

Vikki Morrison is haunted by what happened to her 13-year-old daughter and how it was handled by Arpaio's officers.

Her daughter's rape was reported to Arpaio's office. Deputies told her that they didn't find her daughter's account credible, and the suspect went on to attack her again and again over several years.

"If you would have known this was happening to a child and didn't do anything about it, you'd be in jail," Morrison said.

Her daughter's case was among more than 400 sex-crimes cases that Arpaio's office inadequately investigated or didn't review at all over a three-year period ending in 2007.

An internal review attributed the failures to understaffing and mismanagement. A former supervisor in the sex-crimes squad said her investigators were pulled away to help with training and the immigrant smuggling squad.

Maricopa County agreed to pay $3.5 million in 2015 to settle a lawsuit on behalf of Morrison's daughter. The man who attacked her eventually was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

The Associated Press doesn't normally identify sexual assault victims or their family members. But Morrison agreed to reveal her identity.

She said her daughter, who has developmental difficulties, has suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. Morrison described the difficulty of having to tell her daughter, now 24, that the president let Arpaio off the hook.

"How is that fair to any of the families going through this trauma? But the sheriff is going home every night," Morrison said.

___

IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWNS

When Arpaio was convicted, Daniel Magos said he was elated because he believed the former sheriff had finally been held accountable for his actions. That changed with the pardon.

Magos, a Mexican native who became a U.S. citizen 50 years ago, was a key witness in a 2012 civil rights trial in which Arpaio's officers were found to have racially profiled Latinos. Arpaio was found guilty of intentionally disobeying a court order in that case.

A deputy pulled over Magos in 2009, yelled at him and his wife and was slow to explain the reason for the stop.

Magos said the officer asked him whether he had drugs or guns in the truck, and Magos replied that he had a legal handgun on the floor. He said the officer humiliated him by patting down his groin area.

"My wife was witnessing all of this," Magos said. "That's what traumatized her - a guy with a gun searching me."

The officer eventually said the stop stemmed from a license plate missing from the trailer Magos was pulling.

Magos wonders how the officer could have known because he was traveling in the opposite direction. He is confident he was pulled over because of his race.

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JAIL DEATHS

Jaron Norberg's son died a gruesome death in one of Arpaio's jails in 1996.

Detention officers had forced Scott Norberg into a restraint chair and pushed his head into his chest after his arrest on suspicion of aggravated assault. A lawsuit claimed he was beaten and suffocated, and it led to the county paying $8.25 million to Norberg's family.

Arpaio insisted his officers didn't do anything wrong.

"Just the absolute disregard for the laws he was sworn to uphold - that, to me, is the most troublesome aspect of his 24 years as sheriff," Jaron Norberg said.

Joe Atencio, whose son also died in jail, said the sheriff created a culture of cruelty. Norberg agreed.

Arpaio became popular for jailing inmates in tents amid Phoenix's triple-digit summer heat, making them wear pink underwear and using them to work on old-time chain gangs.

Atencio rejects the notion among Arpaio supporters that jail is never supposed to be a pleasant experience.

"I would say that you shouldn't have to die," Atencio said.

___

OTHER MISCONDUCT

Critics say the pardon removed the last chance to hold Arpaio accountable for criminal investigations of his political foes, arrests of journalists and misspending $100 million in jail funds.

A federal grand jury conducted a nearly three-year investigation into Arpaio's public corruption investigations of county officials and judges who were at odds with him in legal and political disputes.

The federal investigation was closed in 2012 without charges. But Maricopa County paid $8.7 million to settle lawsuits from officials targeted by Arpaio on now-discredited allegations.

Among those investigated were then-Judge Gary Donahoe, who ruled against the sheriff in a legal dispute. He said the pardon dashed victims' hopes of Arpaio finally being held accountable.

"It just denigrates everything that all these people have stood up for and sends a message that one person who is politically powerful is exalted above all these other courageous people who stood up to him," Donahoe said.

___

Follow Jacques Billeaud at twitter.com/jacquesbilleaud. His work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/jacques%20billeaud .

Joe Atencio is photographed at his real estate business Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, in Phoenix. Atencio's son was killed in a 2011 altercation with former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail officers, who were accused of shooting him with a Taser and beating him as officers held him down and he cried out in pain. Atencio is among several people who say they were victimized by Arpaio and are upset at the pardon by President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Joe Atencio is photographed at his real estate business Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, in Phoenix. Atencio's son was killed in a 2011 altercation with former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail officers, who were accused of shooting him with a Taser and beating him as officers held him down and he cried out in pain. Atencio is among several people who say they were victimized by Arpaio and are upset at the pardon by President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Daniel Magos is photographed at his home on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. Magos believes he was a victim of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration sweeps in 2009. Magos, a Mexican native who became a U.S. citizen 50 years ago, was a key witness in a 2012 civil rights trial in which Arpaio's officers were found to have racially profiled Latinos. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Joe Atencio is photographed at his real estate business Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, in Phoenix. Atencio's son was killed in a 2011 altercation with former Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail officers, who were accused of shooting him with a Taser and beating him as officers held him down and he cried out in pain. Atencio is among several people who say they were victimized by Arpaio and are upset at the pardon by President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - In a story Sept. 23 about early U.S. landscape photos to be shown in New Orleans, The Associated Press misspelled National Gallery of Art curator Diane Waggoner's name. Her surname is spelled with one "n," not two. The date of the oldest photo was also incorrect. The year should be 1839, not 1939.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Some of earliest US landscape photos coming to New Orleans

Some of the oldest daguerreotypes and photographs of U.S. landscapes are about to go on display in New Orleans, as part of the first exhibit and study of such landscapes made east of the Mississippi River

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Some of the oldest daguerreotypes and photographs of U.S. landscapes are about to go on display in New Orleans, as part of the first exhibit and study of such landscapes made east of the Mississippi River.

Photographs of vast, unspoiled Western vistas are well known, many of them from federal land surveys after the Civil War. Photography had had a while to develop by then - "people could take cameras with them into the West," said Russell Lord, curator of photography at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

But, he said, "In many ways, when photography comes to the East, people have reshaped the land, and people photograph that process." And, by the end of the century, photographers were taking note of industry's devastation and pushing for preservation of what wilderness remained.

"East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography," which debuted with four months at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, will run Oct. 6-Jan. 7 at the New Orleans Museum of Art - its only other stop. About 62,000 people saw it in Washington.

"Some of the oldest known photographs in this country are in this exhibit, and many are being shown for the first time ever - and probably the only time in our lives, because the material is fragile and light-sensitive," said Lord, who worked on the exhibit with creator Diane Waggoner, curator of 19th century photography at the National Gallery.

The oldest include an 1839 daguerreotype of Newburyport, Massachusetts, by Boston-area physician Henry Coit Perkins, and - lent by the library of Newcastle University in England - two shots of Niagara Falls taken in 1840 by English scientist Hugh Lee Pattinson.

France had made Louis Daguerre's process of fixing images on polished silver a gift to the world in August 1839 and articles about it arrived in this country that September. U.S. scientists and others began experimenting almost immediately, Waggoner wrote in the exhibit's 270-page catalog.

Experiments with paper-based photography had actually reached the U.S. a few months earlier than daguerreotype, starting with salt prints, but it wasn't until the 1850s that newer paper processes took over the field.

The earliest landscapes appear to be essentially whatever was in the experimenters' neighborhood. Waggoner said she expected to find mostly scenic views, like those of Niagara and the White and Adirondack mountains - the sort of pictures painted by landscape artists of the time.

She did find such photographs. "But at the same time, what photographers were so interested in was the way the land and landscape were being developed - industrialization, mining, the railroads," she said.

"There was a market among the general public for these images, both the beautiful, pristine landscape and also the way the landscape was harnessed and used," Waggoner said.

In the West, photography played a big part in getting Yosemite set aside as a California park in 1864 and making Yellowstone the first national park in 1872, both before development could set in. But in the East, preservation often was reclamation. This may be most explicit in a picture taken for an 1880 New York State survey for preservation of Niagara Falls scenery: the photo's title is "Disfigured Banks, Repulsive Scenery Around Visitor Approaching Goat Island Bridge for First View of Rapids."

Waggoner said the exhibit is the first look at Eastern photographic landscapes as a whole.

"All the attention and scholarship in 19th century American photography has generally been focused on photographers who went West. My goal was to bring back into the light a number of photographers whose work had been mostly overshadowed by the western material and mostly predates it," she said.

Some of the pictures to be shown in New Orleans weren't even shown in Washington.

"A number ... are so fragile that lenders only agreed to lend to one of the two venues," Lord said.

He said those being shown only in New Orleans include an 1845 daguerreotype of the Connecticut River Valley on which photographer Thomas Easterly inscribed two lines of pastoral poetry, and a photograph of the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans by Theodore Lilienthal - part of a portfolio sent by the City of New Orleans as a gift to Napoleon III during the 1867 world's fair in Paris.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The Latest on the United Nations General Assembly (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Iraq's top diplomat is reiterating its government's opposition to Iraqi Kurds' planned independence vote next week.

Iraq's Minister for Foreign Affairs Ibrahim Abdulkarim Al-Jafari speaks during the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari told the U.S. General Assembly on Saturday that the central government views the vote as unconstitutional and divisive.

He says the government wants "to preserve the unity of Iraq."

The Kurds are an ethnic group with populations in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Turkey. They have long aspired to statehood in Iraq, where they have an autonomous region.

Iraq's top court has temporarily suspended the vote, and the country's parliament has also voted to reject it. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has even said he's prepared to intervene militarily if the vote leads to violence.

Kurdish officials have said the vote will be held nonetheless.

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5:35 p.m.

Iraq's foreign minister is asking nuclear countries for help building a nuclear reactor, saying the country has a right to use nuclear power peacefully as a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the request in his speech Saturday to the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting.

Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's previous efforts to build a nuclear reactor were met with an Israeli bombing in 1981 and years of suspicion about his intentions.

The NPT, which Iraq ratified in 1969, sought to prevent the spread of atomic arms beyond the five original nuclear powers - the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China.

Al-Jaafari said Saturday that based on this right under the NPT, Iraq calls for help from our "kindred, nuclear countries."

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3:30 p.m.

North Korea's foreign minister says U.S. President Donald Trump's insult calling leader Kim Jong Un "rocket man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more."

Ri Yong Ho called the American leader "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency" with his finger on the "nuclear button" and declared: "None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission."

And he told world leaders on Saturday: "In case innocent lives of the U.S. are lost because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible."

Ri's highly anticipated speech to the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting fueled the fiery rhetoric between the U.S. president and North Korea's young leader.

Trump threatened in his speech to the 193-member world body Tuesday to "totally destroy" the North if provoked. Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, responded pledging to take "highest-level" action against the United States.

Ri suggested to reporters Friday in New York that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfill Kim's vows. But he did not make any mention of such a test on Saturday.

Ri said: "Our national nuclear force is, to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."

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12:30 p.m.

Syria's foreign minister says his country is "marching steadily" toward the goal of rooting out terrorism - and "victory is now within reach."

Walid Al-Moualem pointed to "the liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra," the end of the Islamic State extremist group's siege of Deir el-Zour, and what he said was "the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria."

He told the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting on Saturday he is confident that when the more than six-year war ends "the Syrian army will go down in history" for defeating "the terrorists that came to Syria from many countries and received large support from the most powerful countries of the world."

Al-Moualem said that while the army and its allies "are making daily achievements, clearing out territories and uprooting terrorists ... the threat of this plague persists."

On the political front, he said local reconciliation agreements have allowed tens of thousands of internally displaced people and refugees to return home. He said "Syria is determined to scale up reconciliation efforts, whenever possible."

___

Noon

The leader of Dominica is asking world leaders to lend his hurricane-ravaged nation military equipment to help it rebuild.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit urged the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday to "let these extraordinary events elicit extraordinary efforts to rebuild nations sustainably."

Hurricane Maria swept over Dominica on Monday with 160 mph winds, killing 15 people. People around the world followed Skerrit's gripping Facebook posts as he described his roof being torn off and his home filling with water.

On Saturday, he said "the desolation is beyond imagination" in the Caribbean island nation. And he made an impassioned case for the world to do more to help vulnerable countries cope with the effects of global warming. Scientists have long predicted extreme weather would rise with temperatures.

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11:15 a.m.

South Sudan's first vice president says the government is confident that peace will soon return to the world's newest nation after nearly four years of civil war.

Tabo Deng Gai told the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting on Saturday that "there will be challenges and reversals, but the big picture should be the movement" toward peace.

He said the government is "confident that soon violence and wars shall be stories of the past." But fighting between President Salva Kiir's forces and opposition troops loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar shows no signs of ending.

The conflict that began in December 2013 has killed tens of thousands and sent about 2 million people fleeing the country.

Deng Gai cited a number of factors in the government's optimism.

Those include the gradual return of refugees and internally displaced people to their villages and steps within communities "indicating direction of co-existing and living in harmony."

He also cited "strong and steady progress" on the government's commitment to address political and security issues "with the view of creating an enabling environment for dialogue."

These include releasing prisoners including journalists, reaching out to opposition figures, including all major "stakeholders" in a steering committee, and declaring a unilateral cease-fire, which Kiir did in May.

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10 a.m.

Congo President Joseph Kabila says a timeline for his country's delayed and highly anticipated presidential election should be released "soon."

Kabila said Saturday at the U.N. General Assembly that Congo is moving toward elections with "undeniable tenacity." He appealed to the international community to back the process.

He says 42 million of a projected 45 million voters have already registered. He notes the process recently began in the last area to open registration, the bloody Kasai region.

Congo's electoral commission has said the delay in starting registration in Kasai means the election can't be held this year. The government and opposition had agreed to hold the vote by the end of 2017.

The opposition has accused Kabila of delaying the vote to stay in power. His mandate ended in December.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, left, is greeted by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres before a meeting, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Skerrit addresses the United Nations General Assembly, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017, at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
ISTANBUL (AP) - The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats - a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.

The decree allows Turkey to send troops over its southern border if developments in Iraq or Syria are seen as national security threats. Turkish officials have repeatedly warned the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to abandon its plans for independence.

Kurds are dispersed across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and lack a nation state. Turkey itself has a large ethnic Kurdish population and is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its own territory that it calls separatist.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, rear-right, smiles as he listens to opposition lawmaker Engin Altay before the parliament vote during an extraordinary session in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats - a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

The bill read in parliament Saturday listed combating Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq and the Islamic State group as national security requirements for Turkey. It also emphasized the importance of Iraq and Syria's territorial integrity and said "separatism based on ethnicity" poses a threat to both Turkey and regional stability.

Speaking in parliament, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli likened Monday's vote in northern Iraq to a brick that - if pulled out - could collapse an entire "structure built on sensitive and fragile balances." The resulting conflict could be global, he warned.

Osman Baydemir, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party or HDP - the third biggest group in parliament - called the bill "a war mandate" and "a proclamation of enmity towards 40 million Kurds." A dozen parliamentarians from the party are behind bars for alleged links to terror groups.

The HDP voted against the mandate Saturday. All other parties, including the main opposition Republican People's Party, voted for it.

Earlier Saturday, the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the referendum "a mistake, an adventure." He said Turkey would take diplomatic, political and economic measures according to "developments on the ground." He added a cross-border military operation was also an option.

The renewed mandate is a combination of two previous bills that are based on a constitutional article on the "declaration of state of war and authorization to deploy the armed forces."

The Iraq Bill was passed in 2007 to combat outlawed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq to prevent attacks in Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK has its headquarters in Iraq's Qandil mountains. Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider it a terror organization.

The Syria Bill of 2012 was in response to mortar attacks by Syrian government forces on a Turkish border town.

The combined bill was passed in 2014 as IS waged a deadly campaign in Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town on the Turkish border. IS failed to take over the town and the victory strengthened Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units or YPG, who are now a key U.S. ally against IS in Syria. Turkey, however, considers them a terror group.

The mandate has allowed Turkey to launch a cross-border military operation into northern Syria with Syrian opposition forces in August 2016 to clear its border of IS and YPG. Turkey's air force has also been bombing targets in northern Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish military, meanwhile, said additional units joined this week's previously unannounced exercises near the Iraqi border. The chief of staff also met his Iraqi counterpart in Ankara to discuss the Kurdish referendum and border security.

Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, left, and his Iraqi counterpart Gen. Othman Ali al-Ghanimi inspect an honour guard at the Turkish military headquarters in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017.(Pool Photo via AP )

Members of the parliament vote during an extraordinary session in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats - a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Main opposition lawmaker Ozturk Yilmaz speaks before the parliament vote during an extraordinary session in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats - a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Osman Baydemir, a lawmaker from pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democracy Party, shows a social media posting by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim that defends collaboration with Iraqi Kurdish administration as he speaks during an extraordinary session at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Turkish parliament on Saturday renewed a bill allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats - a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.(AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)
ANDERSON, Ind. (AP) - Vice President Mike Pence went home to Indiana on Friday to pressure the state's lone Democratic senator to support a GOP tax overhaul. He'll bounce to Alabama on Monday, campaigning for President Donald Trump's pick in a special Senate election. And by Thursday, he's scheduled to be in Milwaukee, headlining a $35,000-per-couple fundraiser.

Such is life for Pence, Trump's political utility player, whose services are increasingly in demand as Republicans brace for a Democratic onslaught in the 2018 elections.

Pence is planning a torrent of campaign events across the county in the coming months, aiming to raise money for Trump's re-election, reward incumbents for tough votes and help former colleagues from his 12-years in Congress. It's a push that plays to the vice president's sharpened skills and is also likely to bolster a political network that could serve him for years to come.

Vice President Mike Pence waves to guest after speaking at the Wylam Center of Flagship East Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, in Anderson, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

While Trump is a divisive figure whose presence could create a headache for a swing district incumbent, Pence comes with less baggage but still brings the celebrity of the White House, as well as his own prodigious fundraising ability.

A former talk radio host, congressman and Indiana governor, Pence has had plenty of time to hone his skills. He's known to be adept at sizing up a room, knowing what message will play well and sticking to it. Pence, who once joked that he was "tea party before it was cool," helps put GOP skeptics at ease.

Craig Dunn, a former GOP chairman in Indiana's Howard County, says one of Pence's strengths is he doesn't "look over your shoulder to who is more important in the room."

"Some guys breeze in (to a fundraising dinner) with their entourage like Christ to cleanse the temple. You come away thinking, 'I need to take a shower,'" said Dunn, who has known Pence since he was a congressman. "Mike is just not that type of person. He's genuine."

Pence has been far less effective as a deal-maker when trying to use his relationships with GOP leaders in Congress to advance the president's agenda. The latest Trump-backed effort to repeal "Obamacare" all but flamed out Friday when Republican Sen. John McCain announced he wouldn't vote for it. Pence breezed past that development during a speech a short while later in Anderson, Indiana, acknowledging that an anticipated vote next week was "not going to be easy" but insisting "President Trump and I are undeterred."

The response was typical for a man who defaults to sunny optimism - mimicking his political idol, former President Ronald Reagan - while sometimes steering clear of inconvenient facts.

For some Republicans, particularly conventional party stalwarts, Pence has been a reassuring presence in unpredictable times. In June, he helped draw more than 1,400 to Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst's annual fundraiser.

Trump carried Iowa last year, but some traditional conservatives said they were waiting to see evidence of a socially conservative agenda from the president, which is not something they question about Pence.

"Early in the president's tenure there were people that believed the Trump-Pence ticket had to prove themselves," said Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa. "I think Mike Pence calms those waters."

He gives social conservatives "assurance that this administration is not going to waver on some issues that are very important to them."

In May, Pence formed a leadership PAC to raise money for Trump's re-election and for other Republican candidates, aiming to capitalize on his deep ties to party activists and donors.

"He has cultivated a fundraising network over a long span of time that is very loyal to him," said John Hammond III, Indiana's committeeman on the Republican National Committee.

Pence has maintained relationships with Trump loyalists during dinners at his Naval Observatory residence and in fundraisers around the country that are already preparing for Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.

The vice president is scheduled to headline a $35,000-per-couple dinner in Milwaukee next Thursday that will benefit a joint fundraising committee set up to help Trump's re-election efforts and also feature RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel and RNC finance chairman Steve Wynn.

Pence is expected to campaign extensively on behalf of congressional Republicans seeking to maintain their majorities next year. More immediately, Republicans expect him to help Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman who is running for governor in Virginia this fall.

Second lady Karen Pence appeared with Gillespie at a "Women for Ed" fundraising reception in Fairfax Station, Virginia, on Monday night, her first political event since the inauguration. The Pences have been friends with Gillespie and his wife, Cathy, since the candidate was RNC chairman and a top aide to President George W. Bush.

An adviser to the second lady said she attended the fundraiser because of her personal friendship with the couple and "was open to being supportive" of Republicans on the ballot in 2018 "however she can be." The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

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Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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Follow Brian Slodysko on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/BrianSlodysko

Vice President Mike Pence talks with the McCurry family during a visit to The Pittt Barbecue & Grill, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, in Anderson, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
ROME (AP) - Italy's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement opened a new phase in its quest for the country's premiership Saturday by choosing its candidate and party leader to take the reins from founder Beppe Grillo.

Members of the movement cast ballots online for one of eight candidates. But the winner was all but predetermined since Grillo has made clear he wants his successor to be Luigi Di Maio, the 31-year-old vice president of parliament's lower chamber and the only well-known candidate among the eight.

The 70-year-old Grillo, a comic who turned his upstart populist movement into the biggest opposition party in parliament, has been intent on turning the movement over to a new generation. But he has also made it clear he will continue to be its ideological "guarantor" behind the scenes.

Leader of the Five Stars Moviment, Beppe Grillo performs on the stage during a meeting in Rimini, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017 (Filippo Pruccoli/ANSA via AP)

"I'm the founding father, but I'm here," Grillo said.

Italy's next general election must be held by spring. Recent polls put the 5-Stars head-to-head with the ruling Democratic Party of ex-Premier Matteo Renzi as the largest single party vote-getter, with around 26 percent of the vote.

But the 5-Stars have ruled out forming a coalition. Recent surveys have given a hypothetical center-right coalition of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, the anti-immigrant Northern League and smaller parties around 34 percent of the vote.

Lawmakers are haggling over a new electoral law that could determine what a future government could look like.

At a campaign-style event this week, the 80-year-old Berlusconi dismissed Di Maio as a "political meteorite who looks good on TV but brings nothing to Italians."

Grillo, for his part, poked fun at Berlusconi's umpteenth political return, saying he hopes he doesn't end up on the campaign trail at Berlusconi's age.

Neither Berlusconi nor Grillo can actually run for office. Grillo is barred by a 1981 manslaughter conviction stemming from a car accident, whereas Berlusconi is barred due to a tax fraud conviction. He has appealed his case to the European Court of Human Rights, which is to hear the case later this year but isn't expected to rule before the election.

Di Maio is the face the 5-Stars want for the future, a native of Naples who never finished university but can effectively articulate the party's anti-establishment, anti-banking, pro-environment message. He was first elected to parliament in 2013 and, at 26, became the youngest-ever vice president of the lower Chamber of Deputies.

Leader of the Five Stars Moviment, Beppe Grillo performs on the stage during a meeting in Rimini, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017 (Filippo Pruccoli/ANSA via AP)

Leader of the Five Stars Moviment, Beppe Grillo performs on the stage during a meeting in Rimini, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017 (Alessandro Di Meo/ANSA via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a show of American military might to North Korea, U.S. bombers and fighter escorts flew on Saturday to the farthest point north of the border between North and South Korea by any such American aircraft this century. The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously President Donald Trump takes North Korea's "reckless behavior."

"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies," White said.

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, a U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., prepares to take off from Andersen AFB, Guam, on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Pentagon says B-1B bombers from Guam and F-15 fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, have flown a mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea. The U.S. says it's the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula that any American fighter or bomber has flown this century.(Staff Sgt. Joshua Smoot/U.S. Air force via AP)

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has said Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack. Kim's foreign minister told reporters this past week that the North's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century "encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons."

At the United Nations, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said Saturday that his country's nuclear force is "to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."

He also said that Trump's depiction of Kim as "Rocket Man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more."

Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

Trump continued the heated exchange with the North Koreans Saturday night.

He tweeted: "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was "deranged."

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the North's young autocrat as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission."

Trump's executive order expanded the Treasury Department's ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.

Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the North's most important trading partner.

If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated North's ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade, serves as the country's conduit to the international banking system.

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, a U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., receives fuel from a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. The Pentagon says B-1B bombers from Guam and F-15 fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, have flown a mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea. The U.S. says it's the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula that any American fighter or bomber has flown this century. (Tech. Sgt. Richard P. Ebensberger/U.S. Air Force via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Republican push on health care (all times local):

3:05 p.m.

Sen. Bill Cassidy will defend the Republican "Obamacare" repeal bill before a Senate panel on Monday. The Senate Finance Committee hearing is being held even though the measure's prospects are dim.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., walks to the Senate chamber for a vote, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Louisiana Republican sponsored the legislation with South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Republican Sen. John McCain said Friday he'll oppose the bill in a Senate showdown this week. That means there will almost certainly be enough GOP opposition to sink it.

Sen. Rick Santorum, a former GOP presidential contender, will also appear. He helped round up support for the proposal.

Democratic witnesses will include Cindy Mann, a former Obama administration health official.

The GOP bill would abolish much of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul and shift money and decision-making to the states.

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8:35 a.m.

President Donald Trump is holding out hope that a last-ditch effort to overhaul the Obama-era health law isn't over.

He's taken to Twitter to try to sway GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky - who's said he'll oppose the latest Republican bill because it doesn't abolish enough of the Affordable Care Act.

Here's what Trump's tweeted about Paul: "I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party!"

Trump's comments come a day after Sen. John McCain announced he wouldn't back the proposal. And his "no" vote has meant a likely death blow to the bill.

McCain also was the critical "no" vote against a previous attempt to overhaul the law in July.

Trump also is lashing out at Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, saying that people in her state are "angry" about the current health law. Murkowski hasn't committed on the bill.

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8:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is attacking Sen. John McCain over the Arizona Republican's opposition to the latest effort to overhaul the nation's health law.

Trump tweets: "John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!"

McCain says he can't support a last-ditch push to overhaul the Obama-era health law.

The latest legislation is being co-sponsored by McCain's close friend, Sen. Lindsay Graham.

Trump says the bill would be "great for Arizona" and he says McCain "let his best friend L.G. down!"

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12:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is calling Sen. John McCain's opposition to the latest GOP effort to pass a health care bill "sad" and "a horrible, horrible thing for the Republican Party."

McCain says he isn't voting in favor of the bill sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

Graham is McCain's best friend in the Senate, but McCain says he can't support the bill in good conscience.

McCain says he believes lawmakers could do better if Republicans and Democrats work together on a replacement for President Barack Obama's health care law.

His opposition may well kill the Graham-Cassidy bill.

With McCain and Sen. Rand Paul against it, Republicans can't afford any other defections from their ranks.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - Police say a total of 168 Syrian refugees have crossed into Greece over its land border with Turkey.

Police say that while border crossings, over land or sea, are everyday occurrences what is unusual in this case is that the refugees are all families and that traffickers are not involved.

Police also announced on Saturday three illegal border crossings by undocumented migrants over the Turkish land border, including the case of a Bulgarian truck driver that hid 10 migrants, most from Iraq, in his truck.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The Latest on plans for a "Free Speech Week" at the University of California, Berkeley (all times local):

4:30 p.m.

The police chief at the University of California, Berkeley says authorities are expecting and prepared for protests surrounding "Free Speech Week" even as a student group pulled out of sponsoring the four-day event.

CORRECTS TO OMIT ANN COULTER- -In this Sept. 21, 2017 photo, a group has put up flyers and a booth on Sproul Plaza calling for protesters to "Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos," at the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif. Right-wing showman Milo Yiannopoulos is holding a "Free Speech Week" at the University of California, Berkeley with a planned lineup including conservative firebrands Steve Bannon. The university says it has no confirmation the headline acts will appear but is preparing strong security to head off any more violent protests at the liberal campus. (AP Photo/Jocelyn Gecker)

The announcement by Chief Margo Bennett on Saturday comes hours after right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos vowed to appear on campus Sunday, when the event was supposed to begin.

Yiannopoulos says he won't be deterred and will hold a rally with several right-wing commentators at Sproul Plaza, the site of many political demonstrations on campus, "come hell or high water."

His attempt to speak at Berkeley in February was shut down by masked anarchists who rioted on campus.

Bennett says police will be ready for what may happen when a speaker "can just show up."

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1:20 p.m.

Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos says he plans to hold a rally at the University of California, Berkeley after a student group who planned a week of events with him pulled out.

His announcement Saturday added to the confusing back-and-forth about the "Free Speech Week" event at the UC Berkeley campus.

A university spokesman said earlier in the day that the Berkeley Patriot student organization told administrators that the four-day event scheduled to start Sunday had been canceled.

Yiannopoulos says he won't be deterred and will host the event "come hell or high water." The rally is scheduled for noon Sunday on Sproul Plaza.

Since February, four political demonstrations have turned violent with masked anarchists rioting on campus.

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10:40 a.m.

Confusion swirls around the "Free Speech Week" event at the University of California, Berkeley with the school saying the event has been canceled, but a featured speaker insists it will go on.

UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Saturday that the Berkeley Patriot student organization told university administrators that the four-day event scheduled to start Sunday had been canceled.

But the event's co-organizer, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, says in a Facebook post that while the student group may have pulled out, "I and my speakers have not."

Some headline speakers, including Ann Coulter, have backed away from the event or said their names were listed without their knowledge.

Yiannopoulos' attempt to speak at Berkeley in February was shut down by masked anarchists who rioted on campus.

CORRECTS TO OMIT ANN COULTER- FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2017 file photo, Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a news conference in New York. Right-wing showman Milo Yiannopoulos is holding a "Free Speech Week" at the University of California, Berkeley with a planned lineup including conservative firebrands Steve Bannon. The university says it has no confirmation the headline acts will appear but is preparing strong security to head off any more violent protests at the liberal campus. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

In this Sept. 21, 2017 photo, a group has put up flyers and a booth on Sproul Plaza calling for protesters to "Shut Down Milo Yiannopoulos," at the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif. Right-wing showman Milo Yiannopoulos is holding a "Free Speech Week" at the University of California, Berkeley with a planned lineup including conservative firebrands Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter. The university says it has no confirmation the headline acts will appear but is preparing strong security to head off any more violent protests at the liberal campus. (AP Photo/Jocelyn Gecker)

CORRECTS TO OMIT ANN COULTER- FILE - In this Feb. 1, 2017 file photo, University of California, Berkeley police guard the building where Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was to speak. Right-wing showman Milo Yiannopoulos is holding a "Free Speech Week" at the University of California, Berkeley with a planned lineup including conservative firebrands Steve Bannon. The university says it has no confirmation the headline acts will appear but is preparing strong security to head off any more violent protests at the liberal campus. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)
The eye of destructive Hurricane Maria which has unleashed devastation across the Caribbean is now near a British overseas territory, officials have warned.

Maria has barrelled across the region over the past few days, claiming the lives of at least 19 people so far, with many others missing.

A hurricane warning has been issued for the Turks and Caicos islands, with the eye of the category three storm now near the British overseas territory, the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said.

Hurricane #Maria Advisory 25: Eye of Maria Now Near the Turks and Caicos Islands. https://t.co/VqHn0uj6EM  National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 22, 2017

With winds of up to 125mph predicted, the NHC said a gradual weakening is forecast during the next 48 hours as Hurricane Maria moves past the east of Turks and Caicos on Friday.

The NHC said a dangerous storm surge accompanied by large destructive waves could raise water levels by up to 12ft in the overseas territory, with an isolated rainfall deluge of up to 20ins.

As the hurricane rolled through the region and up towards Turks and Caicos, it skirted past the overseas territories of the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, which were left devastated by Irma.

Sir Rupert Briercliffe Hall is flooded after Hurricane Maria dumped rain through a hole in the roof that Hurricane Irma tore off the previous week in Road Town, Tortola island, on the British Virgin Islands (Freeman Rogers/AP)

Brigadier John Ridge, second in command of the UKs Joint Task Force, said early reports suggested little new damage had been caused by the second major hurricane in two weeks.

It is a huge relief that those two islands have not suffered as we had suspected they might do, and more importantly planned for  we planned absolutely for the worst, he said.

But we are not counting our chickens.

Mr Ridge said Turks and Caicos would probably be battered by category one or category two winds, with the threat of storm surge and flooding also a possibility.

Our concern is to make sure we are completely ready for what we might need to do in Turks and Caicos, he said.

He also revealed a team was sent into Montserrat on Thursday to review the damage.

With Maria having ravaged both Dominica and Puerto Rico, in the wake of the widespread destruction Mr Ridge said they had had a request for help in undertaking assessments.

Initial reports from Dominica suggest large-scale devastation, with 90% of buildings damaged or destroyed by the storm which made landfall with the island on Monday.

Also hitting Puerto Rico, it was the strongest storm in more than 80 years to sweep across the country  flattening homes and plunging the island into darkness after taking down power lines.

Royal Marines deliver aid and provide support to the islanders of Jost Van Dkye, British Virgin Islands (Ministry of Defence/PA)

Mr Ridge said they took a split team of half-civilian, half-military into Dominica on a Chinook helicopter on Wednesday following the request.

We have done that assessment and there are a number of nations involved in the response for it, he said, adding that Maria has almost completely destroyed their agricultural sector.

He said the relief effort in Dominica was being co-ordinated by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA)  with shelter, food and water being the critical aid requirement.

Here's a great update on the UK efforts in the Caribbean #HurricaneMaria #HurricaneIrma https://t.co/XgPiRI4Xpr  Defence Operations  (@DefenceOps) September 21, 2017

So far, the Government has pledged more than 57 million towards the disaster relief.

A Red Cross appeal, boosted by the Department for International Developments (DfID) aid match scheme doubling all public UK donations, has seen more than 2 million raised so far.

More than 75 tonnes of DfID aid has already arrived in the region, which includes food, water, 3,000 shelter kits, more than 5,000 solar lanterns and 10,000 buckets.

Another 60 tonnes is steaming towards the Caribbean on board HMS Ocean, which is due to arrive in the region on Friday.
Prime Minister Theresa May has delivered a major speech on Brexit in Florence, setting out her plans for an implementation period leading to a new alliance with Brussels.

:: Neither the UK nor the EU will be in a position to smoothly implement the new arrangements on the formal date of Brexit  March 29 2019  so a transitional period is required.

:: During that period, market access would continue on current terms and the framework for the strictly time-limited period would be EU rules and regulation.

:: EU citizens would continue to be free to live and work in the UK during the implementation period  but there will be a registration scheme for them.

:: The implementation period could last for around two years  but some aspects of the new arrangements could be implemented sooner.

:: The UK will honour its commitments under the EU budget to 2020, thought to be around 18 billion (20 billion euro) so no other EU country will pay more or receive less as a result of Brexit.

:: Neither an approach based on European Economic Area membership, or a traditional free trade deal such as the Ceta agreement with Canada is right for the UK-EU partnership, instead there should be a creative solution to a new economic relationship.

:: There is no need to impose tariffs where none currently exist.

:: Regulatory standards will be protected or strengthened as Britons do not want shoddy goods, shoddy services, a poor environment or exploitative working practices.

:: An appropriate mechanism should be found to deal with disputes about the trading arrangements as it would not be appropriate for either the European Court of Justice or UK courts to have jurisdiction over the agreement.

:: A treaty would enshrine a bold new strategic agreement on security co-operation, taking in diplomacy, defence and development.

Theresa May's Florence speech: key words.

:: An agreement on citizens rights will be incorporated fully into UK law and British courts will be able to take into account European Court of Justice rulings to help ensure consistent interpretation.
Schools should not be afraid to promote British values because some children are being brought up in environments actively hostile to them, the head of Ofsted has said.

Amanda Spielman said the education system has a vital role in upholding the principles that make us a beacon of liberalism, tolerance and fairness to the rest of the world.

In a speech to the Birmingham Education Partnership conference, she argued British values should be at the very heart of the curriculum.

(Ofsted/PA)

We know, that even in the UK some children are being brought up in an environment that is actively hostile to some of these values, she said.

So the education system has a vital role in inculcating and upholding them.

Most children spend less than a fifth of their childhood hours in schools and most of the rest with their family. And so if children arent being taught these values at home, or worse are being encouraged to resist them, then schools are our main opportunity to fill that gap.

Ms Spielman said she was not talking about superficial displays of British values, using the example of a child asked to craft a picture of the Queen out of sequins.

But she instead spoke of giving young people a real civic education, including a rich and deep curriculum in subjects such as history, English and geography.

Speech from @amanda_spielman at today's Birmingham School Partnership conference https://t.co/eNIPYsamEF 'A values-rich society'  Ofsted (@Ofstednews) September 22, 2017

Ms Spielman linked the failure to promote British values to schools caught up in the Birmingham Trojan Horse scandal.

Not only were there issues with promoting British values in many of those schools, but in some cases members of the community were attempting to bring extreme views into school life, she said.

The very places that should have been broadening horizons and outlooks were instead reinforcing a backward view of society.

The chief inspector of education, who replaced Sir Michael Wilshaw in the post in January, having previously been the chairwoman of qualifications regulator Ofqual, also highlighted the very real problem of unregistered schools.

Park View School was among those investigated as part of Operation Trojan Horse. (Joe Giddens/PA)

Most of these are not places that anyone would be happy to call schools, she said.

They are places that hide from the rule of law, from regulation by government and from inspection by Ofsted.

They often teach a narrow curriculum of just a few subjects, perhaps with a particular single-faith focus, and are often housed in buildings that wouldnt pass the most basic of health and safety checks.

Some of the images taken by inspectors that I have seen show places that are filthy and downright dangerous. In short, they put children at risk.

Ms Spielman said ten unregistered schools have been found in Birmingham over the past two years, with eight now closed or registered, and the other two now operating legally.

Amanda Spielman's speech at the Birmingham Education Partnership conference - GOV.UK Parkfield - a good example https://t.co/sSW40l2eET  Helen Hackett (@HyperHelga) September 23, 2017

While recognising normal and inevitable differences in values, she added: There are parents who, uncomfortable with the full and varied education on offer in local mainstream schools, are seeking out alternatives.

Usually alternatives that they perceive as fitting better with very conservative cultural or religious values, such that young people in these alternatives are not being prepared for success in modern Britain.

It is vital that we expose the risks of these so-called schools and help parents understand the dangers.
Diego Costa regrets the manner of his Chelsea exit and admits to having special affection for people at the club.

The 28-year-old striker finally agreed a move back to Atletico Madrid earlier this week and arrived in the Spanish capital on Friday, ending weeks of exile in Brazil.

Costa won two Premier League titles in his three seasons at Stamford Bridge, but his stay ended in acrimony as he refused to return to the club after being informed by text message that he was not in Antonio Contes plans. But Costa will not let his final few months sour his time at the club.

Diego Costa is close to returning to Atletico

Atleticos, a friend says hi! pic.twitter.com/l9AzyL9ou8  Atletico de Madrid (@atletienglish) September 22, 2017

I didnt want it to unfold as it did, the Spain international told journalists at Madrid airport, as reported by Marca.

I have a special affection for the people at Chelsea. I dont want to have an ungrateful attitude towards Chelsea, because I was also very happy there and played in a great team.

Costa will look to restart his career in familiar surroundings as he is back at the club he served with distinction between 2010 and 2014.

Conte thanks Diego Costa for the work he did for Chelsea and wishes him the best for the future. #CFC  Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) September 22, 2017

Although he will not be able to play until January due to Atleticos transfer embargo, Costa is raring to go at a place he calls home.

Atletico Madrid is my home and here I am, he added. I am very happy. [The negotiations] went on too long, but there was a happy ending in the end.

Now Im waiting to see my team-mates and to train. I am not as unfit as some have been saying. There wont be a lack of determination on my part and Ill give my best, as has always been the case.
By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala

DAR ES SALAAM, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Tanzania's government has closed a critical newspaper for the second time in three months, banning the weekly MwanaHalisi for two years after accusing it of inciting violence.

Another newspaper -- Mawio -- was banned in June over articles it published linking two former presidents to alleged improprieties in mining deals signed in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The moves appear to cement President John Magufuli's pledge in January that the days of newspapers his government viewed as unethical "were numbered" -- a statement that triggered concerns about censorship.

"The government has suspended publication and circulation of the weekly MwanaHalisi newspaper for 24 months ... due to repeated unethical reporting, publishing fabricated and inciting articles and endangering national security," the state-run Tanzania Information Services said in a statement.

The body said MwanaHalisi published a series of inciteful articles about Magafuli and that its editors had refused to apologise for their reporting.

Magufuli, nicknamed "the bulldozer", has won some praise from Western donors for an anti-corruption drive and cutting wasteful public spending.

But opponents accuse him of increasingly undermining democracy by curbing dissent and stifling free speech.

Tanzania has one of the most highly diverse media industries in Africa, with over 450 registered newspapers and journals, as well as 180 radio and television stations.

In November, Magufuli signed into law a bill that journalists said was aimed at muzzling freedom of the press.

The Media Services Act of 2016 gives officials powers to shut down media organisations that violate their licenses and requires newspapers to apply for an annual license. (Editing by Aaron Maasho Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
SHANGHAI, Sept 23 (Reuters) - China said on Saturday it will ban exports of some petroleum products to North Korea, as well as imports of textiles from the isolated North, to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website that China would ban exports of refined petroleum products from Oct. 1, and of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately.

Imports of textiles from North Korea would also be banned immediately, the statement said. (Reporting by Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Paul Tait)
By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday in a show of force the Pentagon said demonstrated the range of military options available to President Donald Trump.

The patrols came after officials and experts said a small earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not man-made, easing fears Pyongyang had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its last one.

The Pentagon said the mission was designed to show the many military options U.S. President Donald Trump had to deal with the grave threat presented by the North Korean nuclear program.

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Korea's) reckless behavior," said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.

Saturday's seismic activity came just hours before North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho - who warned on Thursday that North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific - was due to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Ri did not respond when asked by reporters whether North Korea had conducted a new nuclear test.

Hours earlier seismologists around the world had detected a small earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site

China's Earthquake Administration said the quake was not a nuclear explosion and had the characteristics of a natural tremor. The administration had said earlier the magnitude 3.4 quake detected at 0829 GMT was a "suspected explosion".

The CTBTO, or Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors nuclear tests, and officials of the South Korean meteorological agency also said they believed it was a natural quake.

The Pentagon and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment

A U.S. intelligence official and U.S.-based non-governmental experts said their initial assessment was that the quake was either natural or connected to North Korea's latest and largest nuclear test on Sept.3, and not caused by a new nuclear test.

"It seems likely that these small tremors are related to the shifts in the ground due to the recent large test," said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States.

A U.S. government intelligence analyst said the events could have been a "mine-type" collapse of tunnels damaged by North Korea's previous nuclear test, but was more likely a small earthquake.

An official of South Korea's Meteorological Agency said acoustic waves should be detected in the event of a man-made earthquake.

"In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorising this as a natural earthquake."

The earthquake, which South Korea's Meteorological Agency put at magnitude 3.0, was detected 49 km from Kilju in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea's known Punggye-ri nuclear site is located, the official said.

All of North Korea's six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time. Satellite photos of the area after the Sept. 3 quake showed numerous landslides apparently caused by the massive blast, which North Korea said was an advanced hydrogen bomb.

The head of the international nuclear test monitoring agency CTBTO said on Saturday that analysts were "looking at unusual seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude" than the Sept. 3 test in North Korea.

"Two #Seismic Events! 0829UTC & much smaller @ 0443UTC unlikely Man-made! Similar to "collapse" event 8.5 mins after DPRK6! Analysis ongoing," CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a Twitter post, referring to the Sept. 3 test.

Russias emergency ministry said background radiation in nearby Vladivostok was within the natural range.

TENSIONS HIGH

The U.S. Geological Survey said it could not conclusively confirm whether the quake, which it measured at magnitude 3.5, was man-made or natural.

"The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5 km by the seismologist," USGS said.

Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California, said: "Seismologists are very good at discriminating between earthquakes and explosions. I see no reason to doubt that it was an earthquake."

There was no immediate reaction from China's Foreign Ministry, but the news was widely reported by Chinese state media outlets and on social media.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean Peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of U.N. sanctions.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the North Korean leader a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" who would face the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history".

Kim was responding to a speech by Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in which Trump said the United States would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.

On Thursday Trump announced new U.S. sanctions that he said allows the targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.

Earlier on Saturday, China said it will limit exports of refined petroleum products from Oct. 1 and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately to comply with the latest U.N. sanctions. It will also ban imports of textiles from North Korea.

North Korea's nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons programme.

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several of them flying over Japan, as it accelerates a weapons programme aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

(Reporting by Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Christine Kim and Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Michael Shields in Zurich, Denis Pinchuk in Moscow, David Brunnstrom and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and John Walcott and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast and James Dalgleish)
By Christophe Vanderperre

KUTAPALONG, Bangladesh, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Saturday he was shocked by the "terrible violence" inflicted on Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar, and said their suffering would last far longer than the time it took to satisfy their basic needs.

More than 420,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants in Rakhine state triggered a Myanmar crackdown that the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

During a visit to the sprawling Kutapalong refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh, close to the Myanmar border, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said Rohingyas had told him their stories.

"I was really struck by the fear that these people carry with themselves, what they have gone through and seen back in Myanmar," he told Reuters in the camp, where refugees live under thousands of tarpaulins covering the hills and rice paddies.

"Parents killed, families divided, wounds inflicted, rapes perpetrated on women. There's a lot of terrible violence that has occurred and it will take a long time for people to heal their wounds, longer than satisfying their basic needs," Grandi said.

The speed and scale of the exodus from Myanmar has left hundreds of thousands living in dire conditions in a poor part of a poor country, and U.N and aid agencies are scrambling to give people shelter, get them fed and prevent an outbreak of disease.

A senior U.N. official said on Friday that an estimated $200 million would be needed to help the refugees in Bangladesh for six months. Aid workers fear a humanitarian crisis is also unfolding in Rakhine state, though Myanmar has restricted access.

Rohingyas, who trace their roots back generations in Myanmar, are a stateless minority who have mostly been stripped of their citizenship in the predominantly Buddhist country. Tensions between the communities have simmered for decades and exploded into violence several times in recent years.

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of international criticism over their plight, for not speaking out more forcefully against the violence or doing more to rein in security forces over which she has little power.

Myanmar dismisses accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying it has to tackle the insurgents, whom it accuses of starting fires and attacking civilians as well as the security forces.

Grandi, who in July called for Myanmar to grant Rohingyas citizenship, also asked a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh what it would take for him to return.

The refugee said Myanmar needed to restore citizenship and fundamental rights, and that violence was "continuing".

Rights group Amnesty International said on Friday new satellite images and videos showed plumes of smoke were still rising from villages in Rakhine state. (Writing and additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes in Cox's Bazar; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Additional Solicitor General Yasantha Kodagoga PC making a special statement on behalf of the AG Department's Counsel assisting the PCoI, at the very onset of yesterdays proceedings said they deplored the comment made by Arjun Mahendran's Counsel Romesh de Silva PC insinuating that they were wasting tax payers money by moving for an adjournment of the proceedings.

We deplore the comment made by Mr. Romesh De Silva, remaining mindful of the fact that, he may have been prompted to say what he said on the instructions of his client and fees paid by him, he said reading the statement.

His full statement is as follows:

On September 20, 2017, following Senior Additional Solicitor General Dappula De Livera, PC, having made an application for a brief adjournment of proceedings prior to commencing the examination of Mr. Arjuna Mahendran, while initially objecting to the application and later diluting that submission, Presidents Counsel Romesh De Silva made reference to the team of counsel from the Attorney Generals Department assisting the Commission, participating at the Commission at the tax payers expense. Ostensibly, Mr. De Silva made such a reference following instructions to do so from his client Mr. Arjuna Mahendran, and having received fees to make such an utterance.

In view of the insinuation made against officers of the Attorney Generals Department assisting this Commission, that we are wasting tax payers money by moving for an adjournment of proceedings, it has now become necessary to place on record the manner in which the ten of us are utilizing tax payers money. We are compelled to make this statement due to a couple of other reasons as well, including an allegation that was made some time ago by another person, that officers of the Attorney Generals Department are working at this Commission in the manner we do, in anticipation of promotions.

Indeed we are conscious of the need to ensure that we as well as all other public functionaries who exist on public funds which includes money contributed by tax payers, perform our duties in a conscientious and transparent manner, and do not engage in any conduct that would amount to fraudulent misappropriation of public funds or an extravagant use thereof. We are also mindful of the need to ensure that, public funds are used in the national interest and in the best interests of the public.

In fact, as public servants who are assisting this Commission in addition to most of our routine duties and responsibilities, we are entitled in terms of applicable circulars to receive an additional monthly allowance. However, all of us took a decision way back in March this year, to refrain from collecting that allowance to which we are entitled to. We believe that, such voluntary service to the nation is appropriate, particularly when assisting a Commission of Inquiry, which in our view is investigating and inquiring into what has now been revealed to be in our view, one of the largest financial scams, if not the largest financial scam, independent Sri Lanka has ever been victim to.

We have served this Commission to the best of our ability, and we believe that our services have resulted in this Commission unearthing shockingly wrongful, illegal and massively fraudulent activities which have resulted in a loss to the exchequer of this country of unprecedented magnitude.

We wish to emphasize that our conduct throughout the inquiry proceedings of this Commission and in the conduct of investigations, have been guided by our resolve to assist this Commission to unearth the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and in national and public interest. It is a time consuming process, which we are engaging in.

We also wish to reiterate that, the application for a postponement of the examination of Mr. Arjun Mahendran was made due to reasons beyond our control, in order to get fully prepared, and not for the purpose of enjoying luxuries at the expense of tax payers.

We believe that, Your Honours, the Honourable Commissioners who have most judiciously being hearing and considering the evidence led, those who have observed these proceedings objectively and on a daily basis, and the general public who have had the benefit of detailed reporting of these proceedings by the media, will finally judge us and determine whether we have wasted even a rupee of the tax payers money.

Thus, we wish to deplore the comment made by Mr. Romesh De Silva, remaining mindful of the fact that, he may have been prompted to say what he said on instructions, and fees paid by his client. (Shehan Chamika Silva)
Higher Education and Highways Minister Lakshman Kiriella said yesterday he was prepared to answer any questions asked by the Auditor General with regard to the estimated costs on the highway projects because it was he as subject minister who had the necessary inputs to do so.

He said this whe addressing a group of officials of the Ministry and the Road Development Authority (RDA) and asked what knowledge COPE Chairman Sunil Handunnetti had to calculate the estimated costs involved.

He said a meeting headed by Speaker was held in Parliament recently which was also attended by himself, the Auditor General and the COPE Chairman.

We are ready to answer any questions posed by the Auditor General. Some people go to news briefings and speak about the monies spent on building roads. I ask whether they have the knowledge to do so? Are they skilled enough to estimate the cost of building a road? In the presence of Speaker, I asked Mr. Handunnetti what skills he possessed to evaluate the cost of a road. The the Auditor General has that skill. We are ready answer any of his questions, the minister said and added that the COPE Chairman could not ask questions citing Standing Orders.

Lets say it is the Central Expressway. The detailed accounts on the expressway should be tabled in Parliament first and then the Auditor General should examine the accounts. If he points out any shortfall, then the COPE Chairman can ask questions based on those observations. He cant simply ask about something which was handed over to him by someone else. I told Mr. Handunnetti that. Can he calculate these costs? COPE was convened yesterday and for the first time in years, questions were asked based on observations. Our officials too provided detailed answers and there were no issues, the minister said.

Ministry Secretary D.C. Dissanayake, RDA Chairman Nihal Sooriyarachchi and RDA Director General Rohitha Swarna also attended the meeting.
During the cross-examination of former Governor Arjuna Mahendran, Additional Solicitor General Dappula De Livera suggested that he fixed the February 27, 2015 treasury bond auction with an ulterior motive.

At the onset of yesterdays Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) proceedings, Additional Solicitor General Dappula de Livera PC, who initiated the cross-examination, intensely questioned former Governor Arjuna Mahendran.

It was explained that Mr. Mahendran was born abroad and then obtained citizenship of Sri Lanka at the age of 18 and later in 2004 he obtained Singaporean citizenship. He has no dual citizenship.

When he was questioned as to whether he had been residing in Sri Lanka when he was regularly attending the Commission since March 2017 to hear the proceedings, Mr. Mahendran was of the view that he had been regularly visiting Singapore during this time period.

Justice Prasanna Jayawardena at this point questioned, When you were serving as the Governor, were you traveling regularly to Singapore? Witness replied, No I had an official residence in Sri Lanka.

During the initial stage of the cross-examination, the former Governor agreed that integrity and corporate good governance were an essential part in carrying out the duties of CBSL Governor.

When questioned by ASG De Livera, the witness also agreed that transparency and accountability were key factors too in the functions of CBSL.

Mr. Mahendran said matters such as the conflict of interest could compromise integrity.

ASG De Livera: Did you receive an offer to take up the post of CBSL Governor in 2015 January?

Mahendran: Yes

ASG: Where were you at that time?

M: In Dubai.

ASG: Who called you?

M: That I cannot recall exactly.

ASG: Did thePrime Minster call you on January 9, 2015 personally?

M: I cant recollect him calling me on that day, because I was attending the Swear in Ceremony of the PM on January 9, 2015. I did not meet him on that day.

ASG: But in your statement given to the Bribery Commission earlier says that on a near date to January 9, 2015, the PM had called you and offered the position?

At this point the witness said that his Sinhalese language efficiency is not good, even though he had passed in a language efficiency test way back in 1980s. He was of the view that when this statement was recording he was not given a translator by the Bribery Commission. He had asked thereafter from the Bribery Director General to rephrase the statement with a translation which did not happen.

However, when ASG Livera readout the statement in English, and asked whether he was called by the PM, the witness answer was in the affirmative.

Thereafter, ASG Livera questioned the witness on the meeting said to have been held on February 26, 2015 at the Central Bank of Sri Lankan, prior to the controversial bond auction which took place on February 27, 2015.

According to the witness, Mr. Kabir Hasheem, Mr. Malik Samarawickrema, Mr. Ravi Karunanayake (then Finance Minister), Mr. Samaratunge (Secretary to the Treasury), Deputy Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe, Deputy Governor P. Samarasiri and five to six officers from the Road Development Authority were present at this meeting with Mr. Mahendran.

The witness said that at this meeting an urgent money requirement for road development projects was discussed and the requirement was amounting to Rs. 75 billion.

ASG Livera: What was the purpose of requesting a letter about this meeting from then Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake only in June, 2016?

Mahendran: To show it to the second COPE (Sunil Hadunetti COPE)

ASG: Did you give it to COPE?

M: No

ASG: How many days did you go to that COPE committee?

M: One day

ASG: Did this COPE Committee exhaustively question you?

M: No

ASG: Were you questioned by them at all?

M: No formal questions

ASG: Havent you given comprehensive answers to the COPE?

M: No

ASG: Are you saying now that you were not properly questioned by the COPE and you were not given the freedom to express yourself?

M: I was not questioned. There were comments put forward to me which I answered.

ASG: Were you curtailed or suppressed?

M: I was not

ASG: Then, I am suggesting to you that you are lying. You are an inveterate liar. And now you are making allegations against the COPE as well.

M: I was not given time to give answers at the second COPE Committee. I am not making allegations at COPE.

ASG: And this letter about the February 26 meeting. I am suggesting that you got it from the Finance Minister not in June 2016, but long after that time. It was only after this Commissions proceedings started that you got this letter. Your testimony is utterly false.

M: That is incorrect.

Then ASG De Livera questioned the witness as to why the letter was crisp and fresh when it was submitted to the Commission. The witness said that he kept this letter carefully and that was the reason it appeared to be a new one.

Then the ASG questioned him on the date of the letter and the reference, which was not mentioned anywhere in that letter.

The witness said he realized about that but did not try to contact the Minster and correct them because the Minister was a very busy person.

Then ASG Livera repeatedly questioned the witness on the letter with reference to the Rs. 75 billion fund requirement that was said to have been discussed at this February 26 meeting.

ASG De Livera was of the view that the letter had no file number or a relevant reference number with regard to the Rs. 75 billion, that is ought to be found in the Treasurys files.

He said this letter was a vague one, since it was not specific about the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, so that it could be used even for Singapore.

ASG: Is it correct to say that that it was only you and Ravi Karunanayake (RK) who knew about this Rs. 75 billion?

M: Im not aware about that

ASG: You spoke to Ravi Karunanayake and got it from him, right?

M: I got it from his private secretary while visiting the Ministry.

ASG: Oh I see.

The witness said that he was later verbally told by Ravi Karunanayake that he had sent the letter.

ASG De Livera was of the view that based on the evidence placed before the Commission so far it was evident that such a Rs. 75 billion requirement had not been discussed at the February 26 meeting.

ASG De Livera highlighting the testimonies of Mr. Samaratunge (Treasury Secretary), Dr. Weerasinghe (Deputy Governor) and Mr. Samarasiri (Deputy Governor), who were also said to be participants at that meeting, said that there was no such requirement transpiring from their evidence.

The ASG also pointing out the evidence of Mr. Ananda Silva (Deputy Governor), and Mr. Artigalle (Treasury Official) said that there was no such requirement for the RDA projects at that meeting.

It was said that on March 3, 2015 the Finance Minister had interviewed the contractors involved in road development projects and thereafter no payments were initiated. ASG De Livera was of the view that this letter in question was a fabricated letter.

However, witness Mahendran disagreeing with ASG De Livera maintained that there was a requirement of a Rs. 75 billion and it was discussed with him at the February 26, 2015 meeting held at the CBSL.

At this point ASG De Livera said that the witness is a Smiling Liar. Presidents Counsel Romesh De Silva who was appearing on behalf of Mahendran objected to the comment of the ASG. And this led to some heated argument between two Counsel.

ASG De Livera: Now, what is funny about this cross examination? He should not smile. He should conduct himself in a way that is suitable to a witness. He needs to know that he is under oath.

Romesh de Silva PC criticized the comment of the ASG and asked the Commission not to insult his client.

Justice Prasanna Jayawrdena at this point intervening into the argument advised the ASG to focus on the line of questioning.

ASG De Livera continuing the cross-examination put to the witness that no such requirement of funds or expense of funds are reflected in the cash flow statement of March, 2015 or April, 2015 in the Treasury, hence the witness was lying on the February 26 meeting.

However, Mr. Mahendran was of the view that such cash flow statements would not have exhaustive details about that.

Referring to a statement made by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe on March 17, 2015, in Parliament eighteen days after the controversial bond auction, ASG De Livera questioned the witness.

ASG: Quoting some sources, the Prime Minister says in this statement about an urgent funding requirement of Rs. 15 billion, right?

Witness Mahendran: Yes

ASG: The Prime Minister categorically said about a Rs. 15 billion requirement, right?

M: Yes

ASG: So, That statement absolutely contradicts with the letter which reflected the alleged meeting held on February 26, 2015.

M: Not at all. At the meeting on February 26, 2015, it was a discussion about the need of about Rs. 75 billion in one months time. But here, the Prime Minister says about an urgent requirement of Rs. 15 billion. So we can reconcile that statement with what transpired at the meeting.

ASG De Livera then questioned the witness whether there was an actual urgent requirement of money for road development projects. The witness said that by February 26, 2015 the work of road development projects were frozen and for that purpose the Rs. 15 billion was urgent need to keep the projects running.

When the witness said that there were bulldozers which had stopped working in the road development at that time, the ASG questioned him in a sarcastic manner.

ASG: Were they stuck in mud?

Witness was silent

ASG: Have you seen such bulldozers which had been stopped working in construction sites?

M: Yes

ASG: How many did you see?

M: 15 to 20.

ASG: Then at that time such a scene must be an absolute disgrace to this countrys land scale.

Witness was silent

ASG: You are continuing to lie even about these construction projects.

Witness rejected the statement.

After being repeatedly questioned on the requirement of the Rs. 75 billion, the witness said that the requirement was communicated to him verbally and it was in the back of his mind on February 27, 2015.

Referring to the evidence of Mr. Ranasiri (Official of treasury operations), ASG De Livera also again emphasized that according to the cash flow statement there was no such requirement for March , 2015 as it did not reflect such a requirement. The witness replied I find it very hard to believe.

ASG Livera: If the requirement was Rs. 75 billion, Perpetual Treasuries Ltd CEO Kasun Palisena would have bid Rs. 75 billion instead of Rs. 15 billion, the amount PTL had actually bid at the February 27, 2015 auction, isnt it?

Witness seemed unaware about it and did not answer.

Then the ASG referred to the marked documents of bid sheets and clarified from the witness the amount (Rs. 15 billion) bid by PTL directly and through BoC.

ASG: Would you know how PTL came up with this magical Rs. 15 billion figure?

At this point a counsel appearing for PTL objected to the question and said that the witness is not in a position to answer matters relating to the PTL.

ASG: Would you know about it?

Witness Mahendran: No

ASG: Would you find this bid as unusual for a primary dealer because the advertised amount was only Rs. 1 billion at the auction?

M: Yes. They would have bankrupted themselves if that bid had been accepted. That is my understanding

Justice Jayawardena at this point questioned: Why are you saying that they would have bankrupted themselves?

M: I followed the Commissions proceedings before so I heard from certain evidence that PTL would have gone bankrupt if the entire Rs. 15 billion had been accepted.

Justice Jayawardena: You are certain on your evidence right?

Witness Mahendran: Yes

ASG De Livera at this point said PTLs Rs. 15 billion bid ironically matches with the urgent requirement mentioned in the Prime Ministers statement, right?

Mahendran: The Prime Minister also mentioned about another Rs. 100 billion in that statement.

ASG: But the urgent Rs. 15 billion he was referring was Rs. 15 billion, right?

M: I dont see it as ironic.

ASG: Have you ever seen a Primary Dealer bidding such a large amount than what was advertised in an auction, before or after you assumed duties as the Governor?

M: No

ASG: PTL had bid Rs. 15 billion and out of it Rs. 5 billion was accepted and the accepted amount was 50% of what was finally accepted from the February 27 auction by the CBSL (Rs. 10.05 billion had been accepted by the CBSL at this auction), right?

After going through several documents, Mr. Mahendran admitted Yes

ASG: So, would you agree that PTL to bid such Rs. 15 billion at the auction at such a rate would have certainly had price sensitive information?

M: Not necessarily

ASG: What is your explanation on their success?

M: They were very aggressive I think. And it transpired earlier that they were relying on borrowings largely, unlike other Primary dealers. So that could be their success.

ASG: What about the rate then? Dont you think that they had received price sensitive information?

M: I cant confirm or deny in that regard

ASG: Lets see then

ASG De Livera thereafter questioned Mr. Mahendran on his alleged visits to the Public Debt Department (PDD) while the February 27, 2015 Treasury bond auction was still going on.

ASG: You assumed duties as the Governor on January 26, 2015, right?

M: Yes

ASG: Did you inspect the departments in the CBSL including the PDD?

M: Yes I did

Justice Jayawardena: Prior to February 27 auction ,right?

M: Yes

ASG: At what time did you report to the CBSL on February 27, 2015?

M: I normally come around 7 a.m. in the morning.

ASG: Would it be correct to say that your first visit to the PDD, where the auction was to take place, was around 10.45 a.m. before the auction closed?

M: Yes I went there to see the result of the auction. I wanted to know how much of bids had been placed in the backdrop of the urgent money requirement at that time.

However, Mr. Mahendran had left the PDD after talking to the Superintendent of the PDD, Mrs Seneviratne, because the auction was still going on.

ASG: You again came back to the PDD by 12.15 p.m. right?

M: Yes

ASG: Do you know that this was the first time that a Governor of CBSL had ever walked into the PDD in that manner?

M: I dont believe so. I have seen in 1980s when I was in the CBSL Governors walking around.

ASG: But no instance where a Governor had walked into the PDD while an auction was happening?

M: If that is so I take that word

ASG: So you had created history.

Witness was silent

ASG: Now, lets see your history.

It was explained that Mr. Mahendran had visited the PDD at the first instance by 10 a.m. with his private security only and had talked with the Superintendent of the PDD Mrs. Seneviratne. Later he had participated in a MOC meeting of the CBSL and had come back to the PDD with two Deputy Governors.

ASG: Mrs Seneviratne (SPDD) never told you that you could access the details of the auction. She only said that the auction is still going on during your first visit?

M: I never asked such. I was keen to know what could be raised for the Government through this auction.

Commenting on the second arrival at the PDD, ASG De Livera said that after the MOC meeting you dragged two other Deputy Governors (Dr. Weerasinghe and Mr. Ananda Silva) also to the PDD

Mahendran: No dragging involved. They came voluntarily.

ASG: Do they have issues with you?

M: No

ASG: So would they have any reason to lie then?

M: I dont think so

ASG: Mr. Ananda Silva said earlier that you called him to go to the PDD directly after the MOC meeting, not knowing the reason?

M: That is factually incorrect

ASG: I am suggesting again that you are lying. You are trying to give a harmless flavor to this incident by giving false evidence.

Witness rejected the suggestion.

The witness was of the view that there was a Rs. 172 billion government fund requirement at that time amid the urgent Rs. 75 billion requirement for road development at that time. He said the treasury requirements were also not fulfilled by the CBSL in January 2015 so that he was concerned about the capability of the PDD in raising such a massive requirement for the government.

At this point Justice Prasanna Jayawardena questioned the witness whether he carried the habit of looking at cash flow statements of the Treasury. The witness answer was in the negative.

ASG De Livera said according to the evidence led through an official of the Treasury, there was no unusual urgent requirement by February- March because there was an excess in terms of revenue at the end of February.

ASG: Your evidence is utterly false

Mahendran: I dont know about such excess

It was explained earlier that there was a Rs. 13.5 billion fund requirement to be met by March 2, 2015. According to the witness the PDD was confident about raising it largely on Direct Placements by only advertising for Rs. 1 billion at the auction.

It was also revealed earlier that there was a PDD recommendation to the Tender Board to accept Rs. 2.6 billion only from the auction, which was a common practice that happened in the auction process.

According to Mahendran, the PDD had not managed to raise the rest of the money through Direct Placements until that time. When questioned by Justice Jayawardena he said he only knew about it when he visited the PDD for the second time.

ASG De Livera questioned the witness on his second visit to the PDD after the auction floor closed.

It was said that Mr. Mahendran (former governor), two Deputy Governors who came with him (Dr. Weerasinghe and Mr. Ananda Silva), Mrs. Seneviratne (SPDD), Deputy Governor Dr Asim and Mr. Muthugala was there at that time.

ASG: What was the result of that auction?

M: Rs. 20 billion

ASG: Then what did you tell them?

M: I said can we take Rs. 20 billion

ASG: You told them to take Rs. 20 billion wasnt it?

M: I disagree

ASG De Livera was of the view that at this point Mrs. Seneviratne and Dr Asim had argued with Mahendran not take all the bids because it comprised some dummy bids with a higher rate as well and that could affect the market negatively.

However, the witness rejected that and said it was only a cordial discussion and there was no argument.

According to the ASG, the former Governor had then recommended to accept Rs. 10 billion from the auction.

ASG: Dr. Asim was defending the PDDs Rs. 2.6 billion recommendation arguing with you not to go for Rs. 20 billion or 10 billion solely through the auction. But you barged in to accept that amount, right?

M: I disagree

The witness explained the situation saying that the government was in need of urgent money. I said if I were you I would have taken Rs. 10 billion, Mahendran said

At this moment Justice K.T. Chitrasiri questioned Mahendran.

Justice Chitrasiri: The offered amount at the auction was only Rs. 1 billion, so in that condition can you tell to accept ten times more?

Mahendran: There were instances the PDD had accepted more than what it had advertised. Even in this instance their recommendation was Rs. 2.6 billion.

Justice Chitrasiri: But Rs. 10.05 billion is much higher than that recommendation. And people had bid considering the advertised amount of Rs. 1 billion.

M: The government needed money. I didnt see other way to raise it at that time.

ASG De Livera thereafter again questioned Mahendran on Dr. Asims comment at the PDD.

ASG: Dr Asim was strenuously telling you not to accept Rs. 10 billion because it could affect the market.

M: No

ASG: And you ordered Mrs. Seneviratne(SPDD) to accept Rs. 10 billion

M: I disagree

ASG: You are a diabolical liar.

M: Disagree

ASG: Did you draw the cut of rate of the auction after seeing the bid sheet?

Witness Mahendran pointing out some market factors explained as to why he came to that conclusion considering the need to increase the rate.

ASG De Livera said this cutoff mark and the acceptance of such a big amount had affected the market adversely and it had a shocking impact on the primary dealers. Obviously it did not affect Perpetual Treasuries Ltd though, the ASG commented.

ASG: You fixed the yield rate at 11.73%

M: Totally disagree

ASG: You fixed the auction through your intervention.

M: Disagree

ASG: You directed to accept Rs. 10 billion and you decided on the yield rate (11.73%) and decided on the cutoff point. So you have basically fixed this February 27,2015 auction.

M: Totally disagree.

At this point ASG De Livera also asked the witness whether he was aware about the manual and the ethics that prevailed in the CBSL. The ASG was of the view that it could be regarded as a prevailing law as how to act specifically during an auction. However, the witness said that the manual cannot be regarded as the law.

ASG: Do you think there should be transparency and accountability

M: Yes

ASG: Was it the due process?

M: I dont know about the legal terms

ASG: At February 27, 2015 auction you interfered with the due process with an ulterior motive.

Witness rejected it.

Sittings of the PCoI comprising Justice K.T. Chitrasiri (Chairman), Justice Prasanna Jayawardena and Retire Deputy Auditor General Kandasamy Velupillai was adjourned till 10 am on October 2.

Box

ASG De Livera: Are you saying now that you were not properly questioned by the COPE and you were not given the freedom to express yourself?

Witness Mahendran: I was not questioned. There were comments put forward to me which I answered.

ASG: Were you curtailed or suppressed?

M: I was not

ASG: Then, I am suggesting to you that you are lying. You are an inveterate liar. And now you are making allegations against the COPE as well.

M: I was not given time to give answers at the second COPE Committee. I am not making allegations at COPE.

ASG: And this letter about the February 26 meeting. I am suggesting that you got it from the Finance Minister not in June 2016, but long after that time. It was only after this Commissions proceedings started that you got this letter. Your testimony is utterly false.

M: That is incorrect.

Box 2

ASG De Livera : Is it correct to say that that it was only you and Ravi Karunanayake (RK) who knew about this Rs. 75 billion?

Witness Mahendran: Im not aware about that

ASG: You spoke to Ravi Karunanayake and got it from him, right?

M: I got it from his private secretary while visiting the Ministry.

ASG: Oh I see. (Shehan Chamika Silva)
What does Patali know about politics that Harini doesnt know?

Sri Lanka is going through great pains to get its economy in order after the
Sri Lanka is in talks with two Chinese companies about investing up to $3 billion to build in a new refinery at its Chinese-controlled port, a top government official said on Friday.

Sri Lanka wants to build a new refinery in its southern Hambantota port, where China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) has a 99-year lease to handle commercial operations.

Located near the main shipping route from Asia to Europe, Hambantota port is likely to play a key role in Chinas Belt and Road trade route initiative.

Mangala Yapa, a director at the state-run Board of Investment, said two Chinese companies had put forward a joint venture proposal for the refinery, which is expected to produce 5 million tonnes per annum with an investment between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. He did not name the Chinese firms.

The investment is large and we are discussing with the two companies on that basis, he told Reuters, adding the joint venture plan was chosen from three bids including one from a U.S. company through a local partner.

The refinery needs around 500 acres of land and we cant reserve the land. Many people try to get the land first and then look for investors.

Yapa did not elaborate on the plans of the proposed refinery.

Chinas influence over Hambantota port has sparked widespread anger in Sri Lanka.

The deal with CMPH, which has a majority stake in the lease, fueled speculation the port could be used for Chinese naval vessels. CMPH is also in talks with the government to develop an industrial zone next door.

This year, the government revised its original deal with CMPH to give greater influence to the Sri Lankan Ports Authority to try to allay concerns - including from Japan, the United States and India - that the port might be used for military purposes.

The investment zone deal is yet to be signed.

The Hambantota refinery will be the second new refinery the island nation has planned in the country.

Sri Lanka already has a deal for a 100,000 barrels per day-plus (bpd) refinery with Indian Oil Corp at the countrys eastern port city of Trincomalee with the aim of exporting fuel.

Sri Lankas sole oil refinery, state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporations decades-old

50,000 bpd plant, was originally configured to run on Iranian crude and Sri Lanka had to import more refined oil products after U.S. sanctions led it to stop imports from Iran.(Reuters)
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the UN is ready to provide every possible assistance to Sri Lanka in its efforts to build as a prosperous nation where the reconciliation is strengthened.

He further said that the UN will provide its maximum support to build as an exemplary nation in the world, where all the Sri Lankans can live with prosper and reconciliation, while closely associating with Sri Lanka and its citizens, Sri Lankas Presidents office said in a statement.

The UN Secretary General made these remarks when he met with President Maithripala Sirisena, today (23) on the sidelines of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly Sessions.

He also commended President Sirisenas commitment in adopting agreements set out in the Paris Convention and expressed his appreciation over implementing sustainable development goals in the development process of the country.

Mr. Antonio Guterres recalled the tour he made to Sri Lanka in 1978 and said that during that tour he had visited many areas including Sigiriya, Dambulla and Polonnaruwa and further stated that he had visited Sri Lanka as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

He also emphasized that the UN will continually provide support to Sri Lanka while strengthening the ties between the UN and Sri Lanka.

Expressing his views the President said that the Government is committed for the initiatives taken for the development and the reconciliation and the assistance of all the countries in the world needed in this regard.

During the meeting the President invited the UN Secretary General to visit Sri Lanka to observer the current progress of Sri Lanka in the journey of achieving the development targets and the reconciliation process.
New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone.
What Europe faces today, in terms of terror threat, India will face if it leaves its doors open. Myanmar must take its people back. UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, called Myanmar operation against Rohingya as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

All said and done, the recent initiatives on the Rohingyas have dented Indias human rights record and its credibility as a fighter against terrorism and violence. Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Myanmar to declare solidarity with Aung San Suu Kyi within days after her army had driven out 3.8 lakh people from Myanmar, seemed ill-timed. The world had begun to demand that the Nobel Prize she had won for peace should be withdrawn and Bangladesh was reeling under the flow of refugees. Perhaps, fresh from his visit to China, Mr Modi may have aimed at doing one better than China in cultivating Myanmar. Or he was privy to new information that terrorists had penetrated the Rohingya leadership and he had no time to lose. But today, as the international community unanimously has condemned Myanmar, we appear to have miscalculated on this issue. The announcement that all Rohingya refugees would be expelled from India had the flavour of India joining the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

It must be said to the credit of PM Modi that he quickly took remedial measures when Bangladesh and others pointed out the woes of the refugee receiving nations. India added the concern about refugee flows to its earlier statement on the legitimacy of security measures, made explicit the nature of the security threat to India, gave succour to the refugees in Bangladesh and put in a comprehensive plan of its own to deal with the Rohingya problem. These include assistance for the development of the Rakhine state, helping Bangladesh with humanitarian aid to benefit the refugees and urging the Myanmar government to find a political solution. India has heeded the voice of the international community, even though we hit the High Commissioner of human rights hard for his highly objectionable comments. Eminent commentators have come to the rescue of the government by arguing that Rohingyas are illegal migrants rather than refugees and, therefore, not entitled to the protection that refugees should enjoy and their expulsion is legitimate even if there is no specific security threat from them. The hypocrisy of the West in not allowing refugees from West Asia into their countries and preaching to India to take refugees has also been exposed.

We should be aware that there is a perception in the world that Indias strong position on terrorism is aimed at Pakistan and that Indias record on human rights is not impeccable. These suspicions have been deepened by the Rohingya episode, which resulted in the harsh criticism by the Human Rights Council.

As Karan Thapar has reminded us, Swami Vivekananda had said: I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth.

Instead of taking the path of legalistic debate, India should pursue the path of humanitarian consideration to help resolve the issue. No one can challenge security considerations, but it should not appear to be a smokescreen for escaping our traditional responsibilities. Those guilty of terrorism should be brought to book, but the others should be permitted to stay till they are able to get back home.

Outcomes

Exposed: The hypocrisy of the West in not allowing refugees from West Asia into their countries and preaching to India to take refugees has been

exposed.

Tarnished: The suspicion that Indias record on human rights is not impeccable have been deepened by the Rohingya episode, which resulted in the harsh criticism by the Human Rights Council.

helping hand: India took remedial measures when Bangladesh and others pointed out the woes of the refugee receiving nations.
Mumbai: The Finance Ministry on Saturday put to rest speculations surrounding chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian's stint as government's man Friday. His tenure has been extended by one year and now he will continue to serve the government till September 2018.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley confirmed the development in a tweet: "CEA Dr Arvind Subramanian will continue for one more year after completion of his 3 year tenure on 16th October, 2017."

Subramanian had assumed the office of India's CEA in October 2014 after the Modi government picked him up out of many aspirants for the coveted job. He has been quite vocal in his stand on RBI's monetary policy and spoken openly about the need for a rate cut. He has criticised the RBI for not going for monetary easing in its policy meet at a time when the economic indicators were conducive for the same.

The post of the CEA, like that of RBI governor, lasts for a fixed tenure of three years which can be extended as and when the government wants. It's one of the crucial government institutions that are important for monitoring performances of various key sectors.

With this decision, it seems, the Modi government that aims to continue with steps for achieving a fast-paced economic growth does not want lose out on the continuity in economic recovery.

As CEA, Subramanian authored government's Economic Survey reports for three years and also came up with solutions to tame India's whopping bad loans worth Rs 6 lakh crore. He has supported setting up of a robust mechanism for taming the rising bad loans. Some estimates put bad loans in the range of Rs 8 to 11 lakh crore, that includes NPAs of private sector banks also.
Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh has been vocal in his opposition to note ban. (Photo: PTI)

Mohali: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said the economy is on a "downhill path" because of the "adventure" of demonetisation undertaken last year which was not required at all, either technically or economically.

Singh, a renowned economist considered to be the architect of the reforms of early 1990s, said demonetisation has not been successful in any civilised country, except some of the Latin American nation.

"I don't think demonetization was at all required... I don't think it was technically, economically necessary to launch this adventure," he said at the Indian School of Business (ISB) Leadership Summit here when asked if the note ban decision was the right one.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced on November 8 last year scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.

He said the process involved withdrawing almost 86 per cent of the currency from circulation and "there was bound to be fallout which we are all seeing."

Singh made a speech before answering a few questions at the event.

"The economy has slowed down as I had projected a few months ago as a result of demonetization and also the fact that demonetisation has been accompanied by the GST, which is a good thing that we have done in the long term. But in the short term, there are glitches that need to be resolved.

Therefore, the economy has experienced a downhill path," he said.

He said the GDP growth was much higher in the last quarter of 2016-17 than the first quarter of this financial year.

There are certain things that need to be done immediately, Singh said.

"When we were in office, investment rate in the economy was 35-37 per cent but now it is less than 30 per cent.

Private investment in particular is not growing," he said.

He added that India needs much more investment in public sector "but we cannot rely exclusively on public sector realise our development initiatives. We must also simultaneously work on a foreign exchange situation."

Singh, who had served as the country's finance minister over two decades back, said growth cannot take place at a high rate if banking system is not performing its task of providing money to entrepreneurs and to others who need to invest in our economy.

Responding to a question on healthcare, he said it is one area where the country is not spending enough and not giving the required emphasis on preventive healthcare.

Although private sector has a role to play, the public health problems require strong leadership and this is one area where markets are important but not the final solution, he said.

Asked what he felt would be the role of the government in forseable future and its interactions with the private sector, Singh said, "government in our country cannot be wished away.."

He said public sector spending is only 30 per cent of the GDP, which is not too big compared to many other nations.

Infrastructure, public healthcare, agriculture are the areas where the government will remain important, he said.

Responding to a question on globalisation, Singh said it is here to stay.

Despite what US President Donald Trump said in his election campaign, the American public opinion will prevail, he said.

"Also, I feel in Europe too there is today recognition of multilateral trading system. China today has become a great champion of globalization," he said.

Asked if the US president was being protectionist, the former prime minister said, "I am quite confident the US president's current thinking will not last more than a year or so.
According to sources Indonesia is looking for timely investments into tourism industry from India.

CHENNAI: After the sharp increase in tourists from India, Indonesia is eyeing for investments from the Indian market for its tourism sector.

Probably Indonesia is among the few countries that is hopes to capitalise on Indias investment potential. Following the launch of Garuda Indonesia flights between Mumbai and Jakarta (in February) Indonesia recorded a 36 % growth in arrivals, from India, which will augment further with Batic Air connecting Bali to Chennai.

According to sources Indonesia is looking for timely investments into tourism industry from India. Currently, there are two bidding requests to invest in restaurants in Indonesia because it is important factor to cater to Indian visitors. In addition to leisure tourists, MICE is another key segment that Indonesia is attracting.

The south-east Asian country has emerged as one of the most popular tourist destinations among Indian travellers.In the first four months of the current year that is from January to April 2017, the number of visitors from India recorded an increase across all key indicators. India continues to be the second top source market for inbound visitors into Indonesia with a total number of 1,37,291 Indian arrivals, recording a growth of 17.55 pc increase over the corresponding period January-April 2016.

The target segment from India mainly consists of families, couples, business and weddings. And Indonesia also is eager to welcome those in the 25-65 years age group.
Mumbai: SBI Life Insurance Co Ltds initial public offering to raise 84 billion rupees ($1.3 billion), Indias biggest IPO in seven years, was subscribed more than 3.5 times on the closing day, strengthening the outlook for share sales in what is expected to be a record year.

Ahead of SBI Lifes IPO, companies have raised $4.4 billion from IPO sales so far in 2017, surpassing last years $4 billion fund-raising, data compiled by Thomson Reuters showed.

With several more IPOs in the pipeline, some market participants expect IPO sales this year to exceed record $8.5 billion raked in 2010.

Three more insurers -- HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co Ltd, state-run GIC Re, and New India Assurance Co Ltd -- have filed for IPOs, which bankers expect to raise a combined more than $4 billion, although all three may not list by December.

Strong inflows from funds coupled with more retail participation in stocks have powered the main share index to a string of record-highs this year. The index has gained nearly 22 percent so far in 2017.

That optimism is also helping IPOs, analysts said, although they warned of high valuations.

There is liquidity in the system and money is chasing stocks...It is the right time for IPOs, said Jignesh Shial, a vice president of equity research at brokerage Quant Capital.

Valuations for the insurance company IPOs are looking slightly stretched. So there may not be major listing gains, Shial said. He noted that the scope to expand in the Indian market for insurance products made the stocks very good bets from a mid-to-long-term perspective.

SBI Life, which will be the second life insurance company after ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co. Ltd to list, saw bids for about 29.5 million shares, or 3.56 times the 8.8 million shares on offer, stock exchange data as of 1215 GMT showed.

Anchor investors including Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Singapore state investor GIC have already committed to subscribe to 22.26 billion rupees worth of shares.

In SBI Lifes IPO, its two main shareholders State Bank of India and BNP Paribas Cardif are selling 8 percent and 4 percent stake, respectively.

Earlier this week, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co Ltds IPO to raise 57 billion rupees was subscribed almost three times. SBI Lifes IPO was the biggest since state-run Coal Indias 155 billion rupee IPO in 2010.
Rishi Kapoor is rarely asked to comment on son Ranbir's relationships, but he reacted to the latter's recent pictures with Mahira Khan.

Mumbai: While Rishi Kapoor makes news for his comments, sparking controversies galore, Ranbir Kapoor makes headlines for his relationships.

And rare occasions bring the two things together, Rishi Kapoor being asked to comment on Ranbirs relationships.

The rare occasion in question here, is Ranbirs pictures with Pakistani actress Mahira Khan from New York, going viral now despite it being clicked in June.

Rumours of the two being more than just friends have been doing the rounds again, after their visit in Dubai in March had sparked similar rumours for the first time.

In an interview with Hindustan Times, the senior Kapoor spoke about the pictures, I only saw them on Twitter, not on Instagram or Facebook, because I am only on Twitter. Its not that I saw these pictures before or I know anything about this already. You see, Ranbir is a young star, he is unmarried, hes a bachelor. He can meet anybody whoever he wants to, and if people are going to invade in his privacy, its not done. And I cant say anything about all this because hes a young man and he has the choice of meeting any girl.

He added, How do we know that heres something more to this picture? He could have met her just outside there. They must have been in a restaurant or a place where they cannot smoke, thats why they are smoking outside. In US, they have really strict rules that dont allow smoking in public places. I cant say anything more because I dont know anything more than that.

Regarding the dating rumours between the two actors going on an overdrive, Kapoor said, If they were dating or seeing each other, wouldnt people in Mumbai know? If they met in New York in July when Ranbir was shooting for Hiranis film, wouldnt we all know by now? Would we not have new pictures here in Mumbai? So, these rumours are only dumb.

Unlike his controversial tweets, these comments are unlikely to cause any stir this time, hopefully.
'Tiger Zinda Hai' is a sequel to 2012 smash hit 'Ek Tha Tiger', directed by Kabir Khan.

Mumbai: Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif have wrapped up the shooting of their upcoming film, 'Tiger Zinda Hai'.

The stars completed an elaborate schedule for the sequel to the 2014 movie in Abu Dhabi.

The spy drama, which has elaborate action sequences, was filmed in the Emirates for 60 days.

Director Ali Abbas Zafar was supported by action coordinator Tom Struthers of 'Dark Knight' and 'The Dark Knight Rises' fame.

Zafar described the experience of shooting the film as "gruelling, challenging and a whole lot of fun".

"We've shot across pristine, relatively unseen locations in Austria, Morocco and shot on a huge lot in Abu Dhabi along with other spots. Right from the infrastructure, to the support that the local military has given us, shooting here was smooth and a great collaborative experience. Tiger and Zoya's second outing is going to be larger than life, and the shoot lives up to that," he said.

Tiger watches as Zoya captures Sunset @TigerZindaHai #behind the scenes, last few days of shoot :) pic.twitter.com/B5BoVrVLk9  ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) September 11, 2017

The 37-years-old director who previously worked with Salman on Sultan, wrote on his Twitter account: "Filming wrapped @TigerZindaHai @yrf in #Abudhabi ... looks like 22nd December is just around the corner . Good job team tiger will miss U.

Filming wrapped @TigerZindaHai @yrf in #Abudhabi ... looks like 22nd December is just around the corner . Good job team tiger will miss U. pic.twitter.com/Q6mtr2x7us  ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) September 21, 2017

With the principle shoot wrapped, only a song remains to be filmed for the movie.

'Tiger Zinda Hai' is set to hit the screens on December 22.
Viola Davis needs no introduction. The Academy Award winner, who has also won the Emmy Award in 2015 for her role of Annalise Keating, the unflinching lawyer with a conscience, in the hit show How To Get Away With Murder, speaks about why the show is liked by many across the world.

Q With this show, youve garnered quite a few awards and international acclaim. Why do you think this show has such a global reach and appeals to the audiences so much?

Well, I can only guess. This is a better question for the audiences, but I think that people like the OMG moments. I think they like the unexpected. I think its exciting to them, like a Greek murder mystery. I would love to believe that it is a different kind of leading lady with Annalise; a different look and a different approach that maybe they had to grow into, but they decided that they like her. I think they like the mess of the characters. They really do.

Q Have you guys been able to cast any international talent or shoot at an international location and maybe have a global plot?

Ummno. Were based in Philadelphia, but definitely an international cast! We have Karla Souza and you haveummlook at me, Im terrible with names! But not an international setting were not going to South Africa or Australia.

Q Do you feel that the viewer can grab onto the storyline no matter where they are?

Oh, absolutely! I feel that way from the very beginning of the show and I think all the actors work towards giving the characters something relatable. Basically, were all just the same, right? Were all kind of trying to survive. Were all sort of messyand were all sort of fighting some fight.

We certainly see that in Bonnie and a lot of the

other characters and definitely the storyline. With Annalises alcoholism and Bonnie being sexually abused, yeah!

Q Your strong female characters are resonating with the rest of the world and your character is just so strong...

She is so strong, but I think we have to redefine the word strong, because I think she is strong in the sense that she is always has a survivor spirit. Shes not down for the count. But shes not strong; she doesnt have an absence of vulnerability. She doesnt have an absence of mess. She doesnt have an absence of confusion.

(The fourth season of How to Get Away with Murder, will premiere in India on Star World on the 30th of September at 10 PM.)
Studies suggest that 1 in 5 mugs in offices are harbouring unsavoury microbes. (Photo: AFP)

A study conducted by Charles Gerba, Ph.D, professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona found that 20 per cent of mugs from the office kitchen have fecal matter on them

According to the study, around 90 per cent of most office mugs carry dangerous germs and 20 percent of those contain faecal bacteria.

While, people may not necessarily be pooping in the mugs, but studies suggest that 1 in 5 are harbouring unsavoury microbes.

According to Dr Gerba, as reported by The Mirror, by washing mugs in the communal kitchen, most people use sponges that are not cleaned regulary, or even properly and are covered in a number of harmful germs.

According to the expert, people are essentially just pushing germs around
Research suggests impaired iron absorption, rather than reduced iron intake, is the major cause of long-term deficiency after the bypass. (Photo: Pixabay)

Weight loss surgery can help you lose weight, but its also likely to leave you unable to absorb iron.

While earlier research found that iron deficiency is a common problem after stomach bypass surgery to treat severe obesity, new research suggests it can also lead to a long-term loss of healthy red blood cells, otherwise known as anemia.

A team led by Dr. Dan Eisenberg, a bariatric surgeon at Stanford School of Medicine conducted a study with US veterans who got a common form of bariatric surgery and found that anemia rates were high even after 10 years.

"Anemia is a common problem in patients who have undergone gastric bypass, and this study sheds light on the severity of the problem in patients who don't receive adequate treatment," said Dr. Allison Barrett to the Daily Mail, she directs bariatric surgery at Long Island Jewish Forest Hill, in Forest Hill, New York.

She believes the research proves that complications of surgery, such as vitamin and mineral deficiency, can also be lessened through improved follow-up."

The study which was published in the Jama Surgery journal found Eisenberg's team to have tracked outcomes for 74 older male veterans, average age 51, who underwent a Roux-en-Y type of gastric bypass surgery.

The team noted that the overall rate of anemia before surgery was 20 percent, but had risen to 47 percent 10 years after the surgery.

However the study found follow-up care to be crucial to anemia, those patients who consulted their weight-loss physicians saw a minute rise in their anemia levels, from 13 percent before surgery to 19 percent a decade later.

However those who did not follow up saw their anemia rates rise from 22 percent before surgery to 57 percent a decade later.

Simple treatments can curb the deficiencies that might occur after surgery according to bariatric surgeon Dr. Mitchell Roslin, who directs obesity surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

"In gastric bypass, the first portion of the intestine is bypassed and iron is absorbed preferentially in that area," he added Roslin,

"In general, this can be compensated for with appropriate supplements," he said, "but patients that do not take prescribed supplements are likely to develop deficiencies."

While bariatric surgery will help curb obesity patients cannot believe they are cured and must try to follow their doctors orders to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
The piglet was born with a Cyclops like one eye in the middle and a penis-like forehead and died shortly after birth. (Photo: Youtube screengrab)

Farmers hailing from northern Chinas Daqing, Heilongjiang Province were left baffled when a sow gave birth to a weird looking piglet in a farm.

The piglet was born with a Cyclops like one eye in the middle and a penis-like forehead and died shortly after birth.

Experts suggested that the piglet was suffering from Cyclops syndrome.

A video has emerged online which shows the Cyclops piglet, sans any vital signs as a woman holds it and laughs. She can be seen saying that the piglet scared her.

The woman squeezed the piglet and can be seen lifting up its protruding head that is shaped like a penis and a single eye gets revealed underneath the growth.

It is reported that the piglet died mere hours after birth.

Its unusual appearance was likely to be caused by a congenital condition known as holoprosencephaly, or cyclops syndrome.
Apparently, the four-year-old Praveen Kumar left his house in Guntur, with his sister to play with other children on Thursday when a pack of dogs attacked him.

A shocking incident has happened in Guntur, southern India where a small boy was left crying for help while lying in a pool of bllod after being mauled by 17 stray dogs.

Apparently, the four-year-old Praveen Kumar left his house in Guntur, with his sister to play with other children on Thursday when a pack of dogs attacked him.

In an attack that lasted more than 30-minutes, the dogs bit the child in the neck, face, chest, shoulders, legs and hands after which he was left bleeding in a semi-conscious condition.

According to the grieving parents, neighbours heard the attack and ran outm but were busy filming the incident on their phones instead of rescuing the child while he screamed and cried for help.

According to a English website, Achyuta Rao, President of the Child Rights Association who is now involved in the case, said that the stray dogs pounced on the child and bit him indiscriminately.

He further added that while many onlookers were capturing the merciless episode on their mobile phones, the were too scared to intervene.

The boys parents Yesu Kumar, 32, and Malleswari, 28, both daily labourers earning Rs 150 a day, rushed him to a nearby government hospital where he was declared dead.

The victims mother had lodged a complaint with the Guntur Municipal Corporation last week reporting the stray dogs for creating mess near her home.

However, she did not receive any response.

Achyuta Rao went on to add that they were now going to approach Human Rights commission to take action against the Guntur Municipal Corporation.

Additional Commissioner Ramchandra Reddy, of Guntur Municipal Corporation said that they were aware of the unfortunate incident. While they continuously sterilized more than 2,300 dogs in this area and they cannot kill them until they get an order from the Supreme Court.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Wednesday sent to 14-day judicial custody Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah, who was arrested in a decade-old money laundering case for alleged terror financing.

Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma sent the accused to jail after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) submitted that he was not required for further custodial interrogation.

Earlier, on August 3 the court had allowed the ED custody of Shah after the agency alleged that he was "ruining" the country by using money to fund terror.

Shah was arrested by the ED a day after several Hurriyat leaders were taken into custody of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding in the Valley to fuel unrest.

He was taken into custody in the August 2005 case in which the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Mohammed Aslam Wani (35), an alleged hawala dealer who is currently in ED custody, claiming that Rs 63 lakh was recovered from Wani out of which Rs 52 lakh was allegedly to be delivered to Shah.

The agency had earlier issued summonses to Shah in the case, the prosecution had said, adding that Wani had claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah.

Investigating agencies like the NIA have cracked down on Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law - Altaf Ahmed Shah, also known as Altaf Fantoosh -- and six other Kashmiri separatists.
Chennai: Sleuths from DRI had seized a total of 1.38 kg gold worth over Rs 38 lakh smuggled by concealing in toys, key chains, childrens shoes at Madurai airport.

Acting on specific intelligence input a DRI team intercepted a passenger at the Madurai airport on Thursday when he landed there from Dubai. After examining the checked-in baggage of the passenger, the DRI official found that he was carrying pens, baby sandals, baby shoes, key rings, toy cars and paper clips. They were found to be abnormally heavy and coated with nickel.

When questioned, the passenger said they were ordinary articles which he had purchased in Dubai.

However, when these articles were scanned it was found that they had suspected material concealed under them. All such metal pieces were taken out and checked further and found that those were gold materials. There were 182 pieces made of 24-carat gold totally weighing around 1.38 kg, DRI official said on Friday.

The passenger had told the DRI team that the articles were handed over to him by somebody in Madurai for handing over to a person in Madurai who would be contacting him over the phone for collecting it on a commission basis.

DRI officials also noted that the gold smugglers off late had been using novel methods to smuggle gold into the country. Recently customs had detected two cases of smuggling of gold by dissolving the yellow metal in acids and bringing it as floor cleaning liquid from abroad.
Bengaluru: BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa has been summoned by the city police for questioning in an abduction bid on May 11, allegedly masterminded by his personal assistant Santosh on Vinay, the PA of BJP leader KS Eshwarappa.

Mr Yeddyurappa has been asked to appear in person on September 28 before the investigating officer and Assistant Commissioner of Police A R Badiger at 10.30 am. On May 11, nine people had attempted to kidnap Vinay when he was riding his bike near Mahalakshmi Layout. Vinay, somehow, managed to escape and lodged a complaint with Mahalakshmi Layout police.

The police arrested eight accused, who revealed that they acted upon the instruction from Santosh.

Santosh, who was evading arrest for many days, appeared before the investigating officer only after securing anticipatory bail. But, the police approached the court seeking cancellation of his bail citing his non-cooperation in the investigation. However, the matter is pending before the court.

HC stays ACBs two FIRs against BSY

In an interim relief to former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, the High Court on Friday stayed the two FIRs registered against him by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in connection with the illegal denotification pertaining to the formation of Dr Shivaram Karanth Layout. Dictating the order for over six hours, Justice Aravind Kumar passed the interim order. With this, the court has stayed the investigation and further proceedings in both the FIRs registered against Mr Yeddyurappa.
The victim alleged that she was being forced to have physical relationships with the three men. (Representational Image)

Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday suspended the sentences of three law students convicted of gangrape and blackmail observing that the victim's statement "offers an alternate conclusion of misadventure stemming from a promiscuous attitude and a voyeuristic mind."

On April 11, 2015, the 18-year-old had filed an FIR against the final year law students namely Hardik Sikri, Karan Chhabra and Vikas Garg at police station Rai Sonepat alleging that they had been raping and blackmailing her since 2013.

She alleged that they were in possession of her objectionable photos and used it to threaten her saying that they would make it viral. She also said that she was being forced into having physical relationships with them.

"We are conscious of the fact that allegations of the victim regarding her being threatened into submission and blackmail lends sufficient diabolism to the offence, but a careful examination of her statement again offers an alternate conclusion of misadventure stemming from a promiscuous attitude and a voyeuristic mind", division bench comprising Justice Mahesh Grover and Justice Raj Shekhar Atri said.

The bench further went on observing, "She states that he (one of the accused, Hardik) then sent his own nude pictures and coaxed me into sending my own nude pictures". The perverse streak in both is also revealed from her admission that a sex toy was suggested by Hardik and her acceptance of the same".

The three men had approached the High Court for bail following which it had placed conditions on them during the pendency of their appeal in a lower court against the conviction. The bench stated that the victim's narrative "does not throw up gut wrenching violence that normally precede or accompany such incidents."

The testimony of the victim does offer an alternate story of casual relationship with her friends, acquaintances, adventurism and experimentation in sexual encounters and these factors would therefore, offer a compelling reasons to consider the prayer for suspension of sentence," it added.

Further in its order, applying the reformatory and rehabilitative justice in its order, the division bench has ordered counselling of all three accused at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) for "correcting their behavioural aberration."

It would be a travesty if these young minds are confined to jail for an inordinate long period which would deprive them of their education, opportunity to redeem themselves and be a part of the society as normal beings. Long incarceration at this stage when the appeal is not likely to mature for some time is likely to result in an irreparable damage, the bench said.

On March 24, 2017, the accused were convicted by a lower court in Sonepat. Hardik and Karan were sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment and found guilty of gangrape and other criminal offences. The third accused Vikas was sentenced to seven years in jail for rape and other crimes.

In its 12-page judgment, the High Court said, We have considered the argument of the learned counsel and have thought it prudent to refer to the statement of the prosecutrix and her cross-examination to gain and give an insight into the immature but nefarious world of youngsters unable to comprehend the worth of a relationship based on respect and understanding. The entire crass sequence actually is reflective of a degenerative mind set of the youth breeding denigrating relationships mired in drugs, alcohol, casual sexual escapades and a promiscuous and voyeuristic world.

The High Court said "There is indeed no doubt that few allegations of the victim regarding blackmail, if correct need strongest condemnation with equal forceful retribution that the law mandates. But it also maintained that it is "equally worrisome is how to retrieve the youth who have dragged themselves and their families into an abysmal situation, be it the victim or the perpetrators."

"Indeed all the transgressions if established would demand retributory justice at the time of decision of the appeal, but while dealing with an issue of suspension of sentence, we are constrained to not only keep in mind the gravity of the situation and the offence, but also to strike a balance between the retributory reformatory and rehabilitative justice," the bench said.

While observing that the case is a "tragedy of sorts, driving four young lives and equal number of families into an abyss," the bench also said that "The perverse streak in both is also revealed from her admission that a sex toy was suggested by Hardik and her acceptance of the same."
Meanwhile, the police is in a dilemma regarding the teenager who was married to a 62-year-old Oman national, Ahmed Abdullah Amur Al-Rahbi, recently. She is presently unwilling to return to Hyderabad. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Three more Oman nationals have been detained by the police in connection with a trafficking case registered at Chandrayangutta police station.

The Omanis landed in the city under the pretext of medical treatment and had allegedly paid money to Volta Qazi alias Ali Abdullah Rifai of Talabkatta to facilitate the marriages.

The qazi accepted the money and promised to arrange girls for them, the police said, quoting the detained Omanis.

The police has registered two more fresh cases against the controversial qazi against whom many cases are pending in various police stations Two teams have been sent to Bengaluru and Kolkata to trace him, said V. Satyanarayana, DCP, south.

It is reported that the qazi is seeking help of intermediaries to revoke the PD Act proceedings against him.

We are also keeping a watch on the intermediaries. If their role is proven, we will register cases against them too, said the police.

Meanwhile, the police is in a dilemma regarding the teenager who was married to a 62-year-old Oman national, Ahmed Abdullah Amur Al-Rahbi, recently. She is presently unwilling to return to Hyderabad.

The police had conducted a video conference in presence of her parents. The girl had said, I am happy and comfortable here. My parents fought over money and lodged a police complaint.

Her father works as a helper at a function hall in Nawab Sahab Kunta, Falaknuma, while her mother is a domestic help.

She may be saying so out of fear. We cannot believe her version unless we personally record her statement. The Omani national is not willing to communicate with us. We have sought the help of the external affairs ministry to bring her to India, he said.
Hyderabad: The south zone police has picked up three persons, including the prime suspect, in the seven-year-old boy murder case. Mir Abbas Hassan Rizvi was found murdered at a graveyard behind the Bibi-ka-Alawa.

The boy had come to the ashoorkhana along with his family on Thursday night. He was kidnapped by the prime accused Jaweed, who took him to the graveyard and allegedly killed him.

Jaweed came to the Bibi-ka-Alawa along with the family and three others from Safilguda and Moula Ali. We are finding details about the persons who are involved in the crime, said V. Satyanarayana, DCP (south zone).

The police is examining the call records to find out details of persons with whom Jaweed interacted in the last few days. The case is being probed from various angles and two teams are working on the case, he added.
A complaint by the boys father, K. Raju, stated that his 11-year-old Class VI son did not turn up after tuition at Mallareddy Nagar. At 7 pm, he received a call from an unknown person, saying that his son was kidnapped and a ransom of Rs 10 lakh was to be paid to secure his release. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: The Trimulgherry police on Saturday arrested a 24-year-old student for kidnapping an 11-year-old boy for Rs 10 lakh ransom.

The accused was identified as Bale Somashekar Rao, a student from J.J. Nagar, Neredmet.

A complaint by the boys father, K. Raju, stated that his 11-year-old Class VI son did not turn up after tuition at Mallareddy Nagar. At 7 pm, he received a call from an unknown person, saying that his son was kidnapped and a ransom of Rs 10 lakh was to be paid to secure his release. The caller threatened to kill the boy if the father refused to part with the money.

A case was registered and an investigation team was despatched to Nacharam based on the mobile phone details and to gather the footage from CCTVs.

Another team was sent to Osmania University to get the details of the vehicle in which the accused transported the teenager. The accused was picked up on Friday said B. Sumathi, DCP, north zone.

The accused traced the boy in Saraswathi Nagar and took him inside a car, bearing number TS 08 EA 1602. He got the contact details of the father from the boy and called him from different sources, including public telephone booths, added the DCP.

The accused confessed to the crime and the police recovered a toy pistol, vehicle, knife, sedatives, ropes, and bandages from him. He was sent to the judicial custody.
Of the 82.32 lakh pattadars (landowners) existing in the revenue records, 18 lakh have passed away without transferring the property to their heirs. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: The land survey taken up by the state government has sparked family feuds in villages.

Of the 82.32 lakh pattadars (landowners) existing in the revenue records, 18 lakh have passed away without transferring the property to their heirs.

Now, many of these properties are being claimed by multiple heirs.

While updation of land records and survey is set to commence from September 15, the farmers coordination councils set up in villages are already receiving complaints from family members against according ownership to anyone till the dispute is settled.

NRIs who inherited property in villages and presently staying in the US, Canada, Australia, the UAE etc. too are making calls to council members and revenue officials, asking them not to update records till the land disputes between the family members are resolved. They are also insisting that the survey only be taken up in their presence.

Revenue officials are currently handing over photocopies of Record of Rights (RoR) which officially shows who own the lands, to owners by visiting their houses.

They are also giving new RoR forms and asking them fill in details of any change of ownership so that they can verify this during the survey and issue new pattadar passbooks.

This is fuelling disputes among family members in cases where the land continues to be in the name of their deceased ancestors.

Disputes are cropping of over sharing of property with parents and sibling due to which they are trying to block the land survey.

This is because land values have increased tremendously over the past decade due to the realty boom. Land that used to fetch less than Rs 50,000 per acre a decade ago in villages now costs in lakhs. With this, even a gunta of land is becoming a bone of contention between family members. As the owners have died without distributing the property to their heirs, everyone is staking claim. Village elders should take the initiative and ensure smooth progress of land survey and land records updation by resolving such issues as the government cannot interfere, said Deputy CM Mohd. Mahmood Ali, who holds the revenue portfolio.
7-year-old Pradyuman was murdered in a toilet of Ryan International School in Gurgaon on September 8. (Photo: File)

Haryana: The lawyer of the family of seven-year-old student, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances at Ryan International School, Gurgaon on Friday said they would approach the Supreme Court on Monday if the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) did not start probe in two days.

On September 8, seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur was found dead inside the toilet of his school, with his throat slit.

Also read: CBI to probe Ryan murder, govt takes over school management for 3 months

Haryana Chief Minister, Manohar Lal Khattar had announced that a CBI investigation would be carried out into the murder, following which the case was handed over to the investigating agency on September 15.

However, the CBI had on Tuesday said it had not received any notification from the Haryana government for further investigation into the murder.

Also read: Ryan student murder: CBI hasn't received Haryana govt notice for further probe

Pradyuman's father Varun Thakur has expressed disappointment over the delay in handing over the case to the CBI even after the chief minister's intervention.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had on Wednesday issued notice to the Haryana government on the anticipatory bail plea filed by the three trustees of Ryan International School in connection with the murder.

Meanwhile, on September 14, the Bombay High Court had rejected the anticipatory bail pleas of the three Mumbai-based trustees.

Following the incident, school's bus conductor was arrested for the crime, but the case took a complicated turn after family of the accused claimed that he was being wrongly framed and that the school authorities were trying to mislead.

(With agency inputs)
The police suspects KJ Singh and his mother, Gurcharan Kaur, were murdered. (Photo: Aditya Raj Kaul | Twitter)

Mohali: Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh on Saturday ordered the police to set up Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother.

Singh and his 92-year-old mother were found dead at their residence in Mohali, Punjab on Saturday.

The police suspect Singh and his mother, Gurcharan Kaur, were murdered.

"There were injury marks on their necks," Mohali Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Alam Vijay Singh said.

Former Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal condemned the murders and urged authorities to nab the culprits immediately.

Just heard senior journalist KJ Singh has been murdered along with his mother.Condemn this killing and urge authorities to nab culprits imm.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

I condemn ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators imm.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

Senior police officers are present at Singh's house currently.

Singh was the former news editor of Indian Express.

Further details are awaited.

(With agency inputs)
Earlier in August, the court had allowed the ED custody of Shah after the agency alleged that he was ruining the country by using money to fund terror. (Photo: PTI | File)

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday filed a chargesheet in the Delhi Court against Separatist leader Shabir Shah for his involvement in a decade-old money laundering case for alleged terror financing.

"Shabir Shah admitted that he talks to Hafiz Saeed over the phone on the issue of Kashmir. He recently spoke to Saeed in January 2017," ED in its chargesheet said.

It also added that Shah received funds from Pakistan terror outfits to promote terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India.

Shabir Shah further admitted he has no source of income of his own and as such he does not file any ITR regarding his income, ED claimed.

Shah only receives donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards party fund which amounts to eight to 10 lakhs per annum.

ED in its chargesheet also found that Shabir Shah's wife Dr Bilquis was also involved in collecting money through Hawala in terror funding.

The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Shah for his involvement in a decade-old money laundering case for alleged terror financing.

Shah was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on July 25 from Srinagar and was brought to Delhi where he was produced in a court.

Earlier in August, the court had allowed the ED, custody of Shah after the agency alleged that he was "ruining" the country by using money to fund terror.

The ED had issued multiple summons to Shah, but he never deposed before the central probe agency.

The court, in July, issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against the separatist leader.

The agency had been issuing to Shah summons earlier too in pursuance of the August 2005 case in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Mohammed Aslam Wani (35), an alleged hawala dealer.

In its chargesheet, the ED also mentioned that Aslam Wani disclosed receiving deliveries of Hawala money on behalf of Shabir Shah at Delhi which was delivered to him by Pakistan Hawala operator Shafi Shayar.

According to the police Wani had claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah.

The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Shah and Wani.

Wani was arrested with a large cache of ammunition and Rs 63 lakh, allegedly received through 'hawala' channels from the Middle East, on August 26, 2005.
Chennai: All we want is sound sleep and peaceful mornings and Chennai in a way is assuring us that, say Rohingya women, who are now taking refuge in the city. More than five years have passed since quality of life, proper clothes and food became an issue. The men, however, feel safe leaving the women back in the camp and this is the reason the refugees do not want to go back to their country again.

Houses were reduced to ashes, family members burnt alive and teachers molested in front of all the students. If I was there for a year more, I would have become a sex slave or not there at all, said 18-year-old Noor Khaida recollecting her horrific past in Myanmar before she found her refuge here. For her wheatish skin tone and fluency in Tamil, anybody would mistake her for a local

After Noor's house was burnt four times and everybody was completely deprived of food, their family sailed to Bangladesh and took a bus to Kolkata and finally ended up in Chennai after their journey. Along with their family of three are 91 others and all are currently living in a refugee camp originally built for Sri Lankan refugees at Kelambakkam. There are 47 children, 25 women and 22 men belonging to 19 families living in the camp now.

More than half of them said Chennai is a safer place. Back in Myanmar, agitators would burn at least 200 houses a day and if a major fight erupts, the number can go up to 1,500. They enter schools and ask the teachers to strip in front of the students, said a kid refusing to give out her name.

She added that in Chennai, the scenario was completely different as the government school in Kelambakkam agreed to admit the kids, though the government did not recognise them officially.

Moreover, girls aged 18 and above are not allowed to step out of their homes in our village. This place gives much freedom as the volunteers have arranged for tuition at the camp when my family stopped sending me to the school, said Nazima.
Hyderabad: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devandra Fadnavis on Saturday spoke up against the large number of permits required to start a new business which, he said, was limiting entrepreneurship.

He said the Maharashtra government had brought down the requirement for permits to start a hotel from 179 to 29.

He was speaking at the annual leadership summit of the Indian School of Business here.

Mr Fadnavis spoke about competitive leadership which he said was all about creating processes and inspiring people.

Film-maker Karan Johar at the ISB leadership summit.

The Maharashtra government has merged seven different departments and 14 schemes and this has led to more practical use of labour and intelligence. We have managed to convert 11,000 villages suffering from severe drought conditions to have enough water, which is no less than a water revolution. This kind of revolutionary thinking can make a change, Mr Fadnavis said.

This was followed by a panel discussion with Amazon India VP Sriraman Jag-annathan Kalaari Capital MD Vani Kola among others.

Mr Pramod Bhasin, former CEO Genpact, who delivered the opening address said, As students, you should raise the bar for learning and performance by building up your risk appetite and challenging. Going obsolete conventions but respect norms. Mr P. Venkataraman from Dr Reddy Labs asked students to think out of the box and according to the convenience of the general public while developing products.
The victim was given injections and medication for about a month. Doctors suggest a skin graft as it was deep wound. She said she was partly immbolised. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: A German language trainer from Chennai was bitten by a stray dog at the Secunderabad Club on September 21.

Club staff beat the animal to death.

Even on Saturday, Ms Krishna said, she was unable to meet the club management to represent her case. Ms Krishna complained about the poor handling of the incident, and in indefficency in crisis management.

Ms Krishna was staying with her two daughters at the club to take part in a squash tournament.

Ms Usha Krishna, 42, suffered a gaping wound on her right calf.

The dog bit me on my calf, its teeth pierced through my jeans and caught the flesh. I was in a state of shock, and the staff was standing 50 metres away. My daughter screamed and a few men came to my rescue and beat the dog to death with iron rods, Ms Krishna said.

She said she was bleeding profusely from the wound with flesh hanging out. The staff could not handle the crisis. The mother of another player shouted for first aid. They later rushed me to a hospital, Ms Krishna said.

She was given injections and medication for about a month. Doctors suggest a skin graft as it was a deep wound. She said she was partly immbolised.

A club staffer paid Rs 18,000 for the treatment and was yet to be reimbursed, she said. The staff showed more concern than the club management, she said.

After she returned to the club, she found more stray dogs.

I made a final attempt to meet the president or the secretary of the club on Saturday. I wanted to inform them that my wound would need grafting and further treatment, but the only answer was that the club would look into the letter, without any reassurance, she said.

When the newspaper tried to contact the club secretary, the official said he was at a function and refused to comment on the incident.
Udupi: After struggling for over a year, Jacintha, who was assured a Home Nurse job at Qatar, but was forced to work as servant in Saudi Arabia, has finally succeeded in returning home.

Jacintha had to fight a long battle where she had to undergo physical and mental torture by her owners. "It was literally a hell which I experienced there," Jacintha recollected her horror with tears.

"The family members would close the door and lock it and go. I had to work there over 16 hours a day with no proper food. I had to work from 6 am to 2 am. By 6 am I had to wake up and start working again," she told reporters in Udupi.

"I was not provided proper food. Though I am a patient, I was not provided any proper medicine also. If I tried to call through phone, the employer would beat me up the next day. I request anybody who wants to go to Gulf countries for job to verify properly and then go. Nobody should be cheated and undergo the experience I underwent," she added.

Jacintha hails from Mudarangadi village in Udupi district. The responsibility of the family with three children and their education fell on her last year after her husband passed away. She was in search of an employment when she noticed an advertisement in a local newspaper which stated that an Indian family in Qatar needed a Home Nurse.

Jacintha decided to take the offer and contacted the recruitment agency in Mumbai, headed by one Shabaz Khan. Jacintha readily agreed the job as she was assured Rs 25,000 per month and also passport and visa would be arranged by the agency.

She went to Mumbai from where through Goa and Delhi she was taken to Dubai on June 10, 2016. Two other women too were with her. Though she was assured a job at Qatar, Jacintha was shocked to see that she had ended up at Yanbu in Saudi Arabia.

Apart from long working hours, Jacintha was starving as she only got leftovers. The employer had declared that Jacintha would not be sent back unless the contract ends. It was not that Jacintha did not try to escape. Her effort in November to return to India failed when one of the neighbour who assured to help her took her to the police station from where she ended up at the house of her employer. Her effort to escape annoyed the employer and her family who beat her and slammed her head to the wall until she lost consciousness.

Later with the help of an Indian driver, she succeeded in contacting her children. A priest directed the children to approach Human Rights Protection Foundation in Udupi.

The Foundation which managed to get the details of the employer was told by the latter that Rs 24,000 Saudi Riyals (About Rs 5 lakh) was paid to Indian agent with a contract for two years. He said that Jacintha would be allowed to return if the money was paid. However the family had not received any money!

Despite contacting the police and external affairs ministry, when the government machinery failed, the Foundation asked the Kannadigas of Gulf for help.

"The NRI Forum immediately responded. With the combined efforts of these Samaritans, Jacintha successfully reached Jeddah on September 16 and finally now to India on September 22," Foundation president Dr Ravindranath Shanbhag said.

Shanbhag said that in spite of being released by the employer, Jacintha could not return to India immediately since she did not have the work permit. As her employer had bought her through the human trafficking network, she was employed without a work permit! "There was every possibility of Jacinthas arrest and imprisonment. Roshan and his team worked together to contact the Labor department officials in order to obtain the work permit," he added.
Madurai: Taking the controversy over the circumstances that led to former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaas death after prolonged hospitalization in Chennai last year one notch higher, senior party leader and state forest minister Dindigul C Sreenivasan has virtually admitted that the entire AIADMK ministry then (during September 22, 2016 when she was first admitted to hospital until her death on December 5, 2016) had lied to the people on the health conditions of their benevolent leader J. Jayalalithaa since she was admitted in the hospital, but claimed that what they are saying now is true.

Addressing a gathering to mark late Chief Minister C.N. Annadurais birth anniversary celebrations at Madurai on Friday night, Mr Sreenivasan listed the lies the ministers had made to the people during that period, like Amma was having idli and chutni.

We were compelled to lie about her health. We made such statements to make the people believe that she was doing well, he said. I apologise for having made such false statements on our leaders health, said Sreenivasan.

We were not allowed to even see her in the hospital. Whenever we visited the hospital, we were made to sit in the room of the hospital owner. Sasikala would meet us in that room and we will return," he said, adding, in fact nobody was allowed into the floor where Jayalalithaa was given treatment.

Sreenivasan said that Jayalalithaa would have told them what was happening and the hardship she was undergoing in the hospital if they (Sasikala) family had allowed them to meet her.

The Forest minister also challenged party rebel TTV Dhinakaran to release the video of Amma's treatment which he claims was in the possession of their family members. State cooperation minister Sellur K Raju and other local party leaders participated in the meeting.
Warangal: Writer Prof. Kancha Ilaiah was allegedly attacked by some members of the Arya Vysya community at Parkal on his way back to Hyderabad from Bhupalapalli where he had gone to attend a public meeting of the Telangana Mass and Social Organisations Forum.

Some people allegedly stopped Prof. Ilaiahs car and raised slogans against him for writing a derogatory book on the community. The police took him to the police station where Prof. Ilaiah filed a petition saying he faced a threat to his life from Arya Vaishya community members. He alleged that some people threw footwear and stones at his car.

Arya Vysya community members reached the police station and raised slogans against Prof. Ilaiah. They entered into an argument with the police and refused to leave. About the same time, TMAS members and Prof. Ilaiahs supporters also reached the police station.

Members of the Vasavi Kanyakaparameshwari Temple Committee and Arya Vysya Yuvajana Sangham members demanded that the police arrest Prof. Ilaiah.

Temple committee chairman Tammishetty Venkanna said they had filed a complaint against Prof. Ilaiah in the Parkal police station for writing a book against the Arya Vysya community and demanded his arrest. The police later escorted Prof. Ilaiah out of Parkal amid security.
He was identiThe victim was identified as Arun Krishna, 23, son of Matathinkalkkara Surendran of Malayinkal, Thiruvananthapuram. (Representational Image)

Kozhikode: A first-year MTech (nano technology) student committed suicide at the National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NIT-C), on Saturday in his hostel room.

This is the second such incident to take place in Kozhikode in the last two months.

He was identified as Arun Krishna, 23, son of Matathinkalkkara Surendran of Malayinkal, Thiruvananthapuram.

Krishna was found hanging from the window bars in room number 2405 of the MBA hostel at 11.30 AM, according to police.

The incident came to light as he failed to respond when his classmate tried to contact him over phone.

Later, the security staff and warden broke open the room.

We had met him the other day and found nothing unusual in him, a classmate said. Arun had secured admission in the NIT-C on June 28. His body was shifted to Medical College Hospital for post-mortem. His relatives will reach Kozhikode on Sunday, the police said.

The Kunnnamangalam police registered a case for unnatural death.

Earlier on July 29, Golla Ramakrishna Prasad, 17, a first-year B-Tech student and son of Golla Peddaramayya of Athmaguru in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, was found dead in his hostel room.

The body was partially hanging from the cross bars of the window as in the case of Arun Krishna. His death came within a week of his getting admission.
Lucknow: Taking on the Opposition which has time and against accused him of playing vote bank politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday declared that his politics was not for votes as he and his party come from a different culture. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that he did not believe in vote bank politics because the country should be above party politics. Speaking at a public meeting after inaugurating the Pashu Aarogya Mela  in Shahanshahpur in Varanasi, the Prime Minister said that he had launched a major war against corruption and black money and was determined to weed it out of the system.

He said most of the problems faced by the common people in India were rooted in corruption. Our politics is not for votes, our culture is different. In politics, people do only that task which yields votes, but our character is different. Some politicians work only when it fetches votes but we have been brought up in a different culture, he said. The Prime Minister said that cleanliness was worship for him as it could rid the poor of various diseases and great deal of economic burden. Hundreds of diseases come knocking at your doorsteps because of lack of hygiene, he added.

He said that he was fortunate to lay the foundation stone of a public toilet in Shahanshahpur village because sanitation is also a kind of worship for me. Mr Narendra Modi quoted a Unicef report which said that each household in India which does not have a toilet, spent around Rs 50,000 a year on treatment for different ailments. It is the responsibility of every citizen and every family to keep their surroundings clean so we are able to build clean villages, clean cities and a clean nation, he stated.
Madurai: Forest minister Dindigul C. Srinivasan dropped a bombshell alleging that the Sasikala family was responsible for the death of Jayalalithaa. The ministers charge, made at his Anna birth anniversary rally at Dindigul on Friday, brings pressure not only on the rival AIADMK faction led by the jailed Sasikala and captained by her beleaguered nephew TTV Dhinakaran but also upon Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami as he did not follow up on his promise of a judicial commission to probe Ammas demise in the Apollo Hospital last November.

Recalling that Sasikala was in charge when Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo, minister Srinivasan said top leaders including BJP president Amit Shah, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, finance minister Arun Jaitley and TN Governor CH Vidyasagar Rao, were prevented from seeing Amma under the pretext they could carry infection to her.

The people of Tamil Nadu have already declared they would have nothing to do with the killers of our Amma. Only Sasikala and family were responsible for the death and thats why we convened the general council to throw them out of the party, Srinivasan said.

He said Dhinkaran, using his ill-gotten money, had planned to unseat Edappadi K. Palaniswami as Chief Minister and grab the post himself by winning the RK Nagar byelection. We all were aware of his plan, but were not in the position to reveal it outside, he said and added that it was in such a situation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi came as a god and stopped the by-election.

Minister Srinivasan regretted supporting the Sasikala family during that period and said, People should forgive us for that. He also alleged that Dhinkaran sent his men to Singapore to negotiate with DMK leader MK Stalins son-in-law Sabareesan for getting the post of deputy CM and two berths in the DMK cabinet for his nominees after toppling the Edappadi government.

While Srinivasan's bombshell rocked the political corridors and excited the news rooms  albeit on an issue that has been over-debated to levels of fatigue  it got certification of authenticity by his cabinet colleague Vellamandi Natarajan.

Dindigul Srinivasan's charge is absolutely correct. Sasikala and family did not permit any of us, MPs, MLAs and even VIPs to see Amma. That's the reason why the Chief Minister is setting up a judicial probe into Amma's demise, Natarajan told reporters at Tiruchy on Saturday.

Hitting back at Dindigul Srinivasan's charge, TTV Dhinakaran alleged that CM Palaniswami's relatives are caught in serious corruption.

There were also charges of corruption against OPS and some other ministers.

Now Edappadi Palaniswami has lost the majority to rule the state. All the ministers will soon lose their jobs and return home. They will all end up maamiyar veedu (prison) after that, said Dhinakaran.
Bennu is a primitive, carbon-rich asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago. The asteroid's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees in comparison to Earth's.

An unmanned NASA spacecraft travelling to a distant asteroid veered toward Earth on Friday for a gravitational slingshot maneuver that will better aim it toward the Sun-orbiting space rock, Bennu, the US space agency said.

The gravity-boost took place about halfway through the journey of the spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer).

"Catch you on the flip side!" said the NASA Twitter account for OSIRIS-REx, just before it made its closest approach to Earth at 12:52 pm (1652 GMT).

The mission launched last year from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its goal is to collect a sample from Bennu in 2018, and return it to Earth for further study in 2023.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson, described the gravity-assist as "a clever way to move the spacecraft onto Bennu's orbital plane using Earth's own gravity instead of expending fuel."

The spacecraft zipped over Antarctica at a distance of 11,000 miles (17,000 kilometers), using Earth's gravity to shift its trajectory so it can eventually meet up with Bennu.

Bennu is a primitive, carbon-rich asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago. The asteroid's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees in comparison to Earth's.

NASA cautioned that during the gravity assist, OSIRIS-REx must swing through a region of space that contains Earth-orbiting satellites.

"NASA has taken precautions to ensure the safety of the spacecraft as it flies through this area," said the space agency.

"The mission's flight dynamics team designed a small maneuver that, if necessary, could be executed a day before closest approach to change the spacecraft's trajectory slightly to avoid a potential collision between OSIRIS-REx and a satellite."

OSIRIS-REx was expected to lose communications with Earth for about an hour during the flyby.

"The spacecraft will be too low relative to the southern horizon to be in view with either the Deep Space tracking station at Canberra, Australia, or Goldstone, California," explained Mike Moreau, the flight dynamics system lead at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. An update on its progress is expected later Friday.

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The Doklam stand-off, which lasted for 70 days, had been eating up newsprint since it began on June 16. We visited western Bhutan long before China attempted to build a road near the Doklam area, leading to the stand-off between India, Bhutan and China. The cool vibe of Paro engulfs you the moment you land at the airport. The tiny airport is a trailer to Bhutanese architecture of intricately carved wooden facades (which we saw more of at Punakha and Paro Dzongkhas). The landing is perfect, the plane cruising through the mountains awash with greens of spring and yellows of oncoming autumn, on the toy-like runway. We even managed to capture a Dragonair flight landing by patiently waiting, as only a handful of planes fly into Paro airport. The drive from Paro, to capital Thimphu, gives a good glance of what Bhutan has to offer in terms of visual and aural beauty.

Like any other city, Thimphu has a relaxed vibe. Cosy cafes serving dishes like Pork Paa, crispy Beef Chilli and momos, shopping complexes, a meeting square complete with a clock tower can make you lose track of time. A two-and-a-half hour drive from Thimphu, with a gushing, blue stream on one side and coniferous forests on the other, takes you to the base camp for the Tango and Cheri hikes, for those looking for an adventurous touch to their travel. The Tango and Cheri are monasteries on adjacent hills, with the Thimphu Chu (river) flowing through the middle, like a constant companion for hikers. With no tourists, few monks living in the monastery, and some mountain goats, Tango is a perfect day hike worth taking. On descending, we spent time on the rocks by the river, watching the sun playfully colour the water in hues of green and blue.

Punakha Dzongkha

A more touristy monument worth visiting and learning about is the Dochula Pass, about a 90-minute drive from Thimphu. The memorial structure at Dochula has 108 chortens (stupas) erected by the eldest Queen Mother, Her Majesty Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuk. The Pass offers 180 degree majestic views of the Himalayas, something a traveller can never tire of. In the vicinity is the Royal Botanical Park, as well as an important temple, which locals frequent. The road from Dochula Pass to Phobjika is nightmarish, and often results in car breakdowns. A small town on the way to district Wangdue Phodrang, Phobjika gives a glimpse into the simple Bhutanese folk life. Farms, simple houses, school children in cute ghos and kiras (national dress) with strawberry cheeks singing the praises of their king are among the sights and sounds of Phobjika valley. Thanks to a flat tyre, we were able to experience a different side of local life, which remains untouched by fashionable apparel and the coffee culture. While Phobjika had a rural charm, Wangdue Phodrangs Baja Town has the vibe of an unsafe and impoverished neighbourhood. A planned town with several two-storeyed buildings lined side-by-side and tonnes of grocery shops, Baja Town seems like the place that missed the gross national happiness memo. Its ghetto-ish vibe is in stark contrast with Thimphus relaxed and uplifting mood.

Young monks playing the tung chen at Chimi Lakhang temple

No trip to Bhutan is complete without the breathtaking hike to Taktsang Monastery (Tigers Nest). Located at a 20-minute drive from Paro town, the hike isnt difficult, but can leave you breathless especially in the winters. One has the option of taking a pony up to a certain point, after which youre at the mercy of your feet. We completed the hike in two hours, stopping along to take in the spectacular views of Bhutan and the Tigers Nest from different heights and angles. The last leg of the hike are a bunch of winding, steep steps leading to Taktsang. The bunch of monasteries are dedicated to various deities. The actual Tigers Nest is a small cave with two flights of wooden stairs, with an entrance/exit big enough only for one person at a time.

Two or more hours can be spent atop Taktsang, soaking in the beautiful scenery, which includes a fierce waterfall tamed by the sight of rainbow alongside. Once down, youre filled with a sense of accomplishment and of course, a camera full of postcard-perfect pictures. A few minutes outside of Paro, you can treat yourself to a hot stone bath. The water (in which hot mineral-rich stones are dropped) is infused with medicinal herbs like khemla and sweet flag known to ease aches and pains, and at Rs 1,000 for two people for 30-40 minutes, its totally worth it! Bhutan has something for every kind of traveller and if youre Indian, youre in for a treat. Bhutanese have a deep respect and brotherly feelings for Indians. As for the locals, they are genuinely joyful and ever-smiling.

Blessy likes to travel in her free time
In Australia, hundreds of people usually gather at Apples Sydney city store, with queues winding down George Street in the central business district. But there were fewer than 30 people lining up before the store opened on Friday, according to a Reuters witness. (Photo: AFP)

Apples launch of the iPhone 8 kicked off with less fanfare on Friday than new models in previous years in the United States, Asia, Australia and Britain, as fans held out for the premium iPhone X, due out in early November.

In San Franciscos Union Square, 50 miles from Apples Cupertino headquarters, just 80 people were lined up at the companys flagship store, a sharp contrast to years past when lines stretched for blocks when new products were released.

In Australia, hundreds of people usually gather at Apples Sydney city store, with queues winding down George Street in the central business district. But there were fewer than 30 people lining up before the store opened on Friday, according to a Reuters witness.

Apples flagship store in Londons Regent Street also experienced a slim turnout, according to several British newspapers.

Shares of the company were down 1.3 percent to $151.39 in afternoon trading. The stock has lost 6.3 percent since closing at $161.50 on Sept. 11, a day before its new products were announced.

While the number of people queuing up outside Apple stores has dropped over the past several years with many buyers choosing to shop online, the weak turnout for the latest iPhone has partly been due to poor reviews.

Mazen Kourouche, who was first in queue in Sydney after lining up 11 days outside the store so he could buy and review the product on YouTube, said there were modest refinements.

(It) is pretty similar to the iPhone 7 but it shoots 4k 60 frames per second and its got a new glass back instead of the metal which is apparently more durable, he told Reuters. There arent too many new features to this one.

In China, a loyal Apple customer said the improved camera was one of the reasons she had bought the new device.

I waited until midnight to watch the launch event with my boyfriend to learn whats new with this iPhone. Its photograph function is pretty good. So I think I must change with no hesitation, said Ta Na, a 29-year-old consumer in Shanghai.

Mentions of iPhone 8 and iPhone X on the popular Chinese social media platform Weibo, an indicator of consumer interest, were less than seen for previous launches.

In San Francisco, customers waiting in line were evenly split between those interested in the iPhone 8 and those looking to buy the Apple Watch Series 3. The latest watch includes standalone cellular data connectivity for the first time, meaning it can be used to make phone calls without an iPhone nearby.

Chayce ONeal, 27, said he had come to buy the new watch and wasnt discouraged by reviews that mentioned connectivity problems. But he was skipping the iPhone 8 and holding out for the iPhone X.

I like being on top of the cutting edge of technology, he said.

Indifferent reviews of the iPhone 8, which comes 10 years after Apple released the first version of the revolutionary phone, drove down shares of the company to near two-month lows of $152.75 on Thursday, as investors worried pre-orders for the device had come in well below previous launches.

The iPhone 8 will only cater to those who want a new version but do not want to pay a hefty $999 for the iPhone X, said iTWire.coms technology editor Alex Zaharov-Reutt, who did not line up for the launch.

That was the case for Damien Roberts, a customer in line at Apples San Francisco store. Roberts owns a battered iPhone 6s and wanted an upgrade to the iPhone 8 Plus for phone calls, messages and playing his favourite video game Clash of Clans. He said he didnt need the extra features of the $999 iPhone X.

Its a lot of money to shell out for a phone, said Roberts, a Briton who was purchasing the phone while on vacation.

Speaking to CNBC, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the Apple Watch with cellular data service is sold out in so many places around the world and iPhone 8 models were also sold out. He did not specify the locations he was referring to.

The iPhone X is a glass and stainless steel device with an edge-to-edge display that Cook has called the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone.

I think itll be more lively with more people with the iPhone X, said Ray Yokoyama, after buying an iPhone 8 in Tokyo.

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If you have the latest version of Google Play Services, then tapping the update button might actually deliver the update to your smartphone.

One of the most irritating aspects of the Android ecosystem is the delay in the rollout of the latest Android update. Unlike iOS where all supported devices receive the update at the same time, the Android universe only gifts the latest updates to Google-branded smartphones, that too to the devices that fall into its first preference batch. It seems that the Google is looking to shed this image according to one Google employee on Google+.

According to Elliot Hughes, a Google developer, the Check for updates button now actually works for all those Android smartphones that ship with Googles OTA update app. We used the word all Android smartphones because this isnt a platform-side update. If you have the latest version of Google Play Services, then tapping the update button might actually deliver the update to your smartphone.

However, dont get too excited about this feature as it has a lot of ifs and buts. You will only get to see the benefit if an update from Google has been rolled out for your model but your device isnt in the first batch. It will still depend on the carrier to make the update available to your device. And, if you are using a Pixel or Nexus, then you are in for luck as phones with custom interfaces require some time to get the latest updates.

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EAM Sushma Swaraj speaking at the Leadership Summit on Environment Pact, presided by France's President Emmanuel Macron. (Photo: MEA Twitter)

United Nations: India on Tuesday reaffirmed its commitment to the landmark Paris climate change agreement, saying it is willing to "work above and beyond" the pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, during a UN 'Leadership Summit on Environment Pact', said that India had been at the forefront of the debate on environment and development.

Her remarks came amid uncertainty over the US role in the deal after President Donald Trump in June announced that America was withdrawing from the Paris deal, arguing that it gives undue advantage to countries like India and China.

India, which is the world's third largest carbon polluter, along with more than 190 nations reached a pact in December 2015 with an aim to prevent an increase in the global average temperature and keep it well below 2 degrees Celsius. The deal, which replaced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, was ratified last October.

Participating in the UN meet hosted by Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Swaraj said India was willing to work "above and beyond" the Paris agreement.

Understanding our responsibility towards planet Earth. EAM @SushmaSwaraj attends SGs meeting with select leaders on #ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/Zc242c248P  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 19, 2017

"Understanding our responsibility towards planet Earth," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

The summit was presided by French President Emmanuel Macron. India takes the climate change issue very seriously, Kumar said.

"We also mentioned that Indian and France are working together on international Solar Alliance," he said.

During the day, Swaraj had a series of bilateral meetings with leaders from Mexico, Norway and Belgium wherein focus was primarily on bilateral relations. She also called on Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth.

"There were some discussions on the possibility of a high-level visit from Belgium to India later this year," Kumar said.

Later in the evening, Swaraj attended a reception hosted by the British Prime Minister Theresa May for the Commonwealth Heads of Government delegations.

Swaraj is scheduled to hold meetings with her counterparts from San Marino, Brazil, Morocco, Moldova and call on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

She is also scheduled to participate in several multilateral meetings including that of the G-4 (Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers.
MEA spokeseprson tweets, reaffirming the need for early reform of the UN Security Council, EAM Sushma Swaraj attends the G-4 Foreign Ministers Meeting along with Brazil, Germany and Japan represntatives. (Photo: EAM Twitter)

New York: External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj will address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the third time representing India in the 72nd session of the General Assembly is likely to corner China for its hindrance to put UN ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Massod Azhar.

Sushma Swaraj is also expected to echo Indias stand on Rohingya issue and the long standing Indias bid for permanent membership for UN Security Council.

It was for the first time that BRICS nation in a declaration termed the Pakistan based organisations, like JeM as terrorist group.

Press Release following Meeting of BRICS Foreign Ministers

September 21, 2017 pic.twitter.com/J9Oy3YvoUn  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 21, 2017

The move came close on heels after US President Donald Trump in August attacked Pakistan for giving safe havens to terrorist outfits. The US had already declared the JeM as terror group.

With a backing from super power along with BRICS Sushma Swaraj is in comfortable position to give China a rebuttal on supporting its all weather ally Pakistan from harbouring terrorists groups.

China has been acting as a roadblock to Indias request to put UN ban on JeM chief, the main perpetrator behind the 2016 Pathankot air base attack in India. China has been using veto to make Indias plea null and void.

Stating that Pakistan has become geography synonymous with terror, Indias first secretary to UN, Eenam Gambhir in Right of Reply during the general debate of 72nd session, on Friday said: The quest for a land of pure has actually produced 'the land of pure terror.' Pakistan is now 'Terroristan', with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism.

Rohingya issue

Meanwhile, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj is also likely to clear the air about the Indias perspective on Rohingya issue as UN Human Rights Council earlier in September had deplored Indias move of deporting Rohingya refugees.

Responding to UNs backlash, Indias representative to UN called the move to safeguard nation's security, saying in its reply that the Rohingya refugees has affiliation to terrorist groups based in Pakistan.

The Indian Government reiterated the same and has also filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Rohingya issue calling them "illegal" immigrants in the country and their continuous stay posed "serious national security ramifications".

Media reports said that Pakistan based militant outfits Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jamatul Mujahideen and Pakistani Taliban have reportedly given full assistance to the Rohingiya militants.

Similarly, Al Qaeda militants calling a support for Myanmars Rohingya Muslims, has warned the country that it would face punishment for its crimes.

The Rohingya refugee crisis, began with the military operation that sparked by attacks carried out by Rohingya militants on police posts on August 25. The crisis had shocked the world and UN as over 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to take refugee in Bangladesh.

UNSC Permanent Membership

Sushma Swaraj is once again expected to bring up India's bid for permanent membership in United Nations Security Council. Ever since, Modi government came to power in 2014 India has been strongly pitching to among the five members along with Brazil, Japan and Germany.

Joint Press Statement issued after G-4 Foreign Minister's Meeting 1/2 pic.twitter.com/81dDEdPBPJ  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 20, 2017

But the bid has not borne the fruit as China, the only Asian-subcontinent country, enjoying the permanent status is against India's demand of being a permanent member.

The UNSC is combined group of 20 major countries, of which 5 countries (US, Russia, Britian, France and China), who are quoted as world powers enjoy permanent membership, whereas the other 15 countries, which include both India and Pakistan are non-permanent and the list of non-permanent countries keep rotating.

G-4 Foreign Minister's Meeting Joint Press Statement 2/2 pic.twitter.com/YJfdE9CVBB  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 20, 2017

During her 71st UNGA address Swaraj had urged international body to renew the outdated UNSC as majority of nations share the belief that the UN should not remain frozen in 1945, just to serve the interests of a few, adding that An expansion in the Permanent and non-Permanent membership of the Council to reflect contemporary realities is therefore, an urgent necessity.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who met on the sidelines of UN General Assembly session, also discussed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. (Photo: PTI)

New York: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday raised the issue of terrorism and H-1B with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as the two leaders met for the first time in a bilateral setting.

Swaraj and Tillerson, who met on the sidelines of UN General Assembly session, also discussed strengthening of the US-India political and economic partnership, officials said.

"The Secretary thanked the Minister for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said after the meeting.

"They discussed further strengthening the US-India political and economic partnership," she said.

Swaraj also strongly raised with Tillerson the issue of H1-B visa, the most sought after by Indian IT professionals.

The Trump administration is currently reviewing the H-1B visa policy as it thinks that the visa is being misused by companies to replace American workers.

"The two ministers discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

The two sides reviewed all aspects of bilateral relationship, including expanding trade and investment relations, he added.

They also discussed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

US President Donald Trump this month scrapped an amnesty programme that granted work permits to immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children. The move can impact 800,000 undocumented workers including thousands of Indian- Americans.

According to Nauert, Swaraj and Tillerson also discussed the upcoming Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which the US and India will co-host in Hyderabad from November 28 to 30.

The American delegation would be led by Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the US President Trump.

During the meeting, the two leaders also discussed a wide range of bilateral issues, including the situation in the neighbourhood and the Indo-Asia Pacific region, officials said.

This was the first highest-level meeting between the leaders of the two countries since June when Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with President Trump.

The meeting also comes ahead of the visit of Defence Secretary Jim Mattis to India next week.

This was the first stand-alone meeting between Swaraj and Tillerson.

"Secretary Tillerson and Minister Swaraj also looked forward to convening a 2+2 dialogue alongside Minister of Defence (Nirmala) Sitharaman and Secretary of Defense (Jim) Mattis in the near future," Nauert said.

Swaraj is scheduled to deliver her address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
Washington: US President Donald Trump came to wife Melania Trumps rescue days after she faced backlash for wearing stilettos while visiting the flood ravaged Texas in August, a media report said.

US based magazine, The Hill quoted Trump saying, She's wearing high-heels like many of you would do. And they went after her, but she didn't know, and then when she got off the plane in Texas she was wearing sneakers, which she had with her. And they [media] know it was dishonest," Trump told the crowd, adding sarcastically, "You know, she's going to go into the floods with her high heels.

In August, Trump and his wife Melania had visited the flood ravaged Texas during which the latter was spotted wearing sky-high heels before boarding the aircraft from White House in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.

Melania Trump, who has always been in news for her style quotient, was criticised by netizens all around the world.

In this regard, slamming the coverage of her shoes, the first lady's communications director has said in statement, It's sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas and people are worried about her shoes, the report quoted.

Despite criticism, the first lady was seen wearing stilettos again while leaving the White House for a second trip to Texas later that week.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met US secretary of defence Jim Mattis in Washington DC during former's state visit to US in June. (Photo: PTI)

New York: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis will visit India and hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman to reaffirm that Washington considers New Delhi a valued and influential ally.

This is the first visit by a cabinet-level official to India under the Trump administration.

"The secretary will emphasise that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia," the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

During his two-day visit starting from September 26, the Pentagon chief will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the India Gate, and meet the prime minister and Sitharaman in New Delhi.

"The secretary will also express US appreciation for Indias important contributions toward Afghanistans democracy, stability, prosperity and security," the Pentagon said.

Mattis visit to India comes after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, held a bilateral meeting with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly meeting here.

During the meeting, the two leaders among other issues discussed Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism.

They also discussed the strategic relationship between Washington and New Delhi.

Modi and President Donald Trump had announced a two plus two strategic and defence dialogue between the two countries at the White House in June after the India-US summit.
Iran said it has successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington. (Representational Image | PTI)

Tehran: Iran said on Saturday it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

The broadcaster gave no date for the test although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested "soon".

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

President Donald Trump has threatened to bin the agreement over the issue, saying that Iran's missile programme could give it the technical know-how for a delivery system for a nuclear warhead when a sunset clause in the deal expires in 2025.

He is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether or not he believes Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal.

If he decides that it is not, it could open the way for renewed US sanctions and perhaps the collapse of the agreement.

Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it.
Lahore: Pakistan navy on Saturday successfully launched air-to-surface anti-ship missile in the Arabian Sea on Saturday, according to a statement by a Navy spokesperson.

Pakistan navy Helicopter Sea King conducted live weapon firing by test firing air-to-surface anti-ship missile, which successfully hit the intended target with pinpoint accuracy, reaffirming the weapon's lethality and offensive punch of the Pakistan navy fleet, the statement said.

Attending the event , Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah praised the combat readiness of the fleet. "The successful firing by Pakistan navy Helicopter Sea King is reflective of high state of readiness and professionalism of Pakistan navy fleet," he said.

Admiral Zakaullah also expressed his complete satisfaction at the combat readiness of Pakistan navy fleet and reaffirmed the resolve of Pakistan Navy to ensure the country's seaward defence and safeguard maritime interests at all costs, Geo TV reported.


Hearing a batch of petitions on cow vigilantism, the court, however, told senior advocate Indira Jaising  representing Tushar Gandhi, activist and great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi  not to mix up issues, as the matter of compensation could be dealt with separately.



Jaising sought direction to the Central government to frame a national policy to prevent such incidents.



She contended that despite the apex courts rulings for mandatory compensation to the victims of crime, the money was not being paid.



Jaising cited the example of family members of Junaid, killed by a group of fellow passengers while returning to his Ballabhgarh home with his brothers after Eid shopping in Delhi on June 23.



The counsel along with senior advocate Kapil Sibal also raised the case of another victim Pahlu Khan, whose family members were being harassed in Rajasthan.



On the other hand, the court asked the chief secretaries of 22 states to file compliance reports in terms of its September 6 order to appoint a senior police officer as the nodal officer in every district within a week to check the cow vigilante groups.



Let the compliance reports be filed. Nobody can wash their hands of (their duty). We will give directions to all the states, the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said.



The court was informed that Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat have already filed their compliance affidavits.



The court gave the other states time to file the reports by October 13 and fixed PILs, including one filed by Tehseen Poonawallah, for consideration on October 31.





The Supreme Court on Friday said the states were under the obligation to compensate victims of violence by cow vigilante groups. A three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the states have to frame a scheme to compensate the victims of crime under the Criminal Procedure Code.


Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang, and Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that that scrap resembled a "kindergarten fight between children."



"We have to calm down the hot heads and understand that we do need pauses, that we do need some contacts," Lavrov told a news conference after his address to the General Assembly.



On the fringes of the world meeting, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

"I think that it could be an H-bomb test at an unprecedented level perhaps over the Pacific," he said -- while adding: "It is up to our leader so I do not know well."



Washington on Thursday authorized a tough new raft of sanctions in the latest effort to tighten the screws on Pyongyang over its banned weapons programs, following its sixth nuclear test -- the largest yet -- and the firing of two missiles over Japan in recent weeks.



Trump's executive order, which prohibits firms from operating in the United States if they deal with North Korea, came after the UN Security Council agreed its own further set of sanctions aimed at reducing Pyongyang's ability to trade with the outside world.



But analysts say the sanctions show no signs of working and cautioned that the increasingly ill-tempered and personal exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang did not augur well.

"There are some very dangerous things that could come to that move this from theatre to reality. This is the time to be heading them off, not making them feel inevitable," said John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul.



Washington has refused to offer incentives to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table, despite appeals to do so from China and Russia, who are both uneasy over Trump's bellicose tone.



However, in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump suggested the door to dialogue remained open. "Why not?" he said when asked whether there could be talks with Pyongyang.



China wields the most influence on North Korea, providing an economic lifeline. But it also fears the consequences if the regime collapses, such as an exodus of refugees or a US-allied, reunited Korea on its border.



"Negotiation is the only way out and deserves every effort," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the General Assembly.



The sentiments were echoed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said: "military hysteria is not just an impasse, it's disaster."



North Korean envoy Ri is expected to meet on Saturday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will send out feelers on possible diplomatic talks.



But Chung Sung-Yoon, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP that the North itself may have shelved the idea of negotiations until it reaches its nuclear goal.



"People say this is all part of its brinkmanship strategy to force the US to come forward for negotiation. But the North is leaving too little room for the US to do so with the latest series of threats and provocations," he said.

An escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un ratcheted up a notch on Friday as the US president dubbed North Korea's leader a "madman," a day after the reclusive regime hinted it may explode a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.Hours earlier, in a rare personal attack, Kim took aim at Trump, branding him "mentally deranged" and a "dotard", and warning he would "pay dearly" for his threat to destroy North Korea if challenged, uttered before the United Nations General Assembly.The verbal clash came a day after Washington announced tougher sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program, on the heels of a Trump speech in which he which he nicknamed Kim "Rocket Man" and declared him to be on a "suicide mission.""Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" Trump posted early Friday in the first of a barrage of unrelated tweets.Kim had delivered a tongue-lashing of his own -- vowing to "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire," in an address read out on state television by a star news anchor before a still image of Kim at his desk.Trump "insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history", Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency."I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech."
Responses to terrorism must be similar across geographies and cultures and differential standards must not be accepted, India has said, seeking global action to tackle the evolving threat of Internet being used by terrorists for radicalisation and terror financing.



Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar made the remarks during a high-level meeting at the UN on 'Preventing Terrorist Use of Internet' hosted by the UK and Italy on Wednesday. "Internet backbone, critical Internet resources and data centres should be dispersed and redundant to mitigate the impact of major terror attacks, Jaishankar said, according to transcripts released by the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations on Friday.



"Responses to terrorism must be similar across geographies and cultures. This is an issue where differential standards must not be accepted, he said. "Where the Internet is concerned, we all recognise how effective a tool it is for terrorism. Its utility for radicalisation, indoctrination, recruitment and financing is by now well-proven. In such a situation, we cannot be passive. This forum is an effort to more actively attack this problem and we applaud that," he said.



The top Indian diplomat said that India is cognizant of the threat posed by terrorists using the Internet. "Our pluralism and democratic values make us particularly sensitive to its dangers. We may have held out better than many others, yet the rapid growth of internet users -- now close to 500 million and growing -- underlines the scale of the challenge," the top Indian diplomat said.



In his remarks, Jaishankar said the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is an encouraging development because combating terrorist usage of Internet has stakeholders beyond the government. "It calls for new policies but more important, new mindsets. And what we see is a positive change," he said.



The meeting agreed that terrorists using the Internet is a global issue that needs innovative, international solutions. In the presence of UK Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italy's Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, leaders from industry and several countries met on the margins of the UN General Assembly to re-affirm their collective determination to prevent the Internet from being misused by terrorist groups and individuals.



Participants of the meeting in a statement said that they believe that the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism provides the best over-arching mechanism to tackle the evolving threat posed by Internet being used by terrorists.



"We have recognised the international nature of the online terrorist threat and the need to build global momentum to tackle it in a comprehensive way. We agreed to support the Forum, as well as existing regional initiatives in the sector of countering terrorism online, as they take vital steps towards this through their work to undertake research, share knowledge and develop technical solutions that will help their industry as a whole to protect their global user base, it said.



As leaders of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube emphasised their shared ambition to prevent terrorists from exploiting the Internet to radicalise, recruit and spread propaganda, and to protect their users from terrorists and violent extremists online.



"They have committed to a range of platform-specific and Forum-wide efforts to better tackle terrorist abuse of open platforms, including exploring artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the identification of terrorist content; building on their hash sharing database of known terrorist content to help more companies to detect and prevent re-upload of that content; and other initiatives to support smaller companies build capabilities for tackling terrorist abuse of their platforms, the statement said.
JD(S) State president H D Kumaraswamy who underwent an open heart surgery on Saturday morning is said to have responded to the procedure well.



Doctors who operated upon him have said that he is in a stable condition and that he would be kept under observation for one week.



Kumaraswamy underwent a valve replacement surgery, where the tissue valve that was inserted a decade ago, was replaced with an aortic valve. The valve is said to have been damaged following excessive coughing. The former chief minister was admitted to the Apollo Hospitals on Bannerghatta road two days ago.



A team of four cardiologists led by Dr Sathyaki P Nambala performed the four-hour minimally invasive redo aortic valve replacement (2.5-inch incision) surgery, which started at around 10 am.



Stating that the open heart surgery was successful, Dr Sathyaki said that the shelf life of the newly replaced valve was around 15 years. He added that Kumaraswamy was in need of rest and that he should not entertain any visitors for the next two weeks, as he would be prone to infections.



The 57-year-old, who is a diabetic, had undergone an open heart surgery in December 2007, following which his health has been fragile. By his own admission, Kumaraswamy is also highly prone to infections and allergies. During his tours in North Karnataka districts earlier this year he developed a bad cough after he inhaled fumes emitted by firecrackers.



The coughing aggravated, leading to weakness, during his recent visit to Israel, where he was advised hospitalisation. On his return to Bengaluru, Kumaraswamy consulted with his cardiologist (also his brother-in-law) Dr C N Manjunath of the Jayadeva Hospitals, who felt the need for the valve replacement.



As it was felt that the Apollo Hospitals is better equipped, Kumaraswamy was admitted to the hospital two days ago. The surgery was performed under the guidance of Dr Manjunath, Dr K S Ravindranath, former vice chancellor of RGUHS, and Dr AM Jagadeesh of Jayadeva hospital.



While Kumaraswamy's wife Anitha, son Nikhil Gowda and sister Shylaja were by his side at the hospital, his father H D Deve Gowda busied himself by making temple visits and performing puja for his son's speedy recovery. Gowda first visited the Shani temple in N R Colony and Karanji Anjaneyaswami temple in Basavangudi.



He later performed a Maha Mrutynjaya homa, 10,008 Maharudra Parayana and Maharudrabhisheka at the Gavigangadharaswami temple. His older son H D Revanna, MLC T A Sharavana and several JD(S) workers accompanied Gowda on these temple visits.



Kumaraswamy will be in post-operative care for the next one week. He has been advised rest for the next three weeks.


Bollywood filmmaker Karim Morani, accused in two separate 2G spectrum scam cases, surrendered before the Hayathnagar police here on Friday midnight. He has been facing the charge of repeatedly raping a 25 years old Delhi based woman threatening to post her private pictures on social media.



According to Hayathnagar police Morani came to the police station at 11.45 PM along with his brother Mohammed Morani and surrendered before them as per the Supreme Court order. Hayathnagar police said Morani would be produced before the court shortly.



Morani moved up to Supreme Court for anticipatory bail, but the Court on Friday dismissed his plea and directed him to surrender before the police immediately.



The Hayathnagar police registered a case against Morani in January this year under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 376 (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage), 417 (cheating) and Section 354C of Nirbhaya Act (the Criminal Law Amendment Act).



The victim is the film enthusiast, and is a native of Delhi. She in her complaint to the Hayatnagar police under Rachakonda Police Commissionerate alleged that the Bollywood producer raped her first time in the month of July 2015 by offering her wine laced with some sedatives. She added that the producer has taken her nude photos and blackmailing her since then.



The Bollywood producer who acted as a co-producer for his close friend Shahrukh Khans Bollywood blockbusters such as RaOne, Chennai Express and Dilawale said to have confined the girl to a hotel room on the outskirts of Hyderabad and raped her several times during the shooting of Dilwale and after. The girl said that she escaped his clutches and reached the police station to make her compliant.



The girl in her compliant had said that the blackmail continued for months and Morani continued his assault in Mumbai too. The Hayatnagar police who have seized the CCTV camera footage of the hotel then sent the victim for medical examination.



Morani is also facing trial in 2G spectrum allocation scam case probed by CBI and a separate money laundering case by ED. Former Telecom Minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others were co-accused in both the two cases.
In a veiled reference to the ongoing controversy over cow vigilantism, prime minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that BJP did not indulge in vote bank politics like others and for its development of the country was more important.



"The nature of politics is such that people oblige only those, who are likely to vote for them...animals cannot vote and hence no one pays any attention toward them," Modi said while addressing a public meeting after inaugurating a Cattle Health Fair in his Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi.



"BJP does not indulge in vote bank politics...for us, development of the country comes ahead of everything," the prime minister said.



Underlining the importance of the cattle, he said that India still lagged behind in milk production. ''A lot of work has been done in Gujarat to increase milk production...people have been benefitted there,'' he added.



Modi said that such kind of fairs would go a long way in helping the farmers, who, owing to financial constraints, were unable to provide good medical care to their cattle.



The prime minister also said that the government was committed to providing house to every poor in the country by 2022. "It is a difficult task but who will do it if not Modi," he remarked.



He also referred to the cleanliness campaign by his government and said that it was essential to keep the diseases at arm's length.



Modi underlined the need to have toilets in every household and said that they ensured dignity for the womenfolk of the house. "Those, who care for the dignity of the women, will certainly build toilets at their homes," he remarked.



The prime minister also heaped praise on the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and said that the state government was committed to the welfare of the people.


Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav today cautioned his supporters against "fake samajwadis", signalling fresh strain in the party's top ranks.



The former chief minister was addressing the state convention, which unanimously re-elected Naresh Uttam as the party's president in Uttar Pradesh.



Akhilesh called on his party members at the meet, asking them to realise their responsibilities ahead of Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.



"Beware of 'banawti' (fake) samajwadis. They have tried to stop the samajwadi movement many times in the past. They succeeded in one conspiracy as a result of which we could not form government in the state," he said in a veiled attack on his uncle and SP leader Shivpal Yadav and his supporters.



Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been engaged in a battle for supremacy over the party founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav.



Akhilesh, however, clarified that he enjoyed the blessings of his father and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. "I want to say that 'netaji' (Mulayam) is my father and his blessings will always be with me. We will take forward this 'andolan' (movement)," he said.



The former chief minister also criticised the Centre for the recent train derailments and sought better rail services for Uttar Pradesh. He highlighted the works initiated by his government and said the present BJP government befooled people with false promises to grab power.



The convention was attended by senior party leaders Ram Gopal Yadav, Azam Khan, Ram Govind Chowdhury and over 15,000 workers from across the state. Mulayam and Shivpal were conspicuous by their absence.
Eminent scientist Professor C N R Rao has become the first Asian to be chosen for the prestigious Von Hippel Award for his immense contribution in materials research.



The award is the US-based Materials Research Society's (MRS) highest honour.



It recognises "those qualities most prized by materials scientists and engineers -- brilliance and originality of intellect, combined with vision that transcends the boundaries of conventional scientific disciplines," according to the MRS.



The award citation noted Rao's immense work on novel functional materials, including nanomaterials (having particles of nanoscale dimensions), graphene (the strongest and thinnest material) and 2D materials, superconductivity, and colossal magnetoresistance (change in electrical resistance of a material in a magnetic field).



The award will be presented in Boston on November 29, during an MRS meeting, according to a release issued by the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research here of which Rao, a Bharat Ratna awardee, is the founder president. The award includes a cash prize, trophy and a diploma.
Several programmes, including armed rallies, were today organised in Jammu region to mark the 122nd birth anniversary of the state's last Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh, amid demands that the day be declared a public holiday.



Participants criticised the PDP-BJP government for failing to declare September 23 as a public holiday in the state. At an event to pay homage to the state's last Dogra ruler, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh was forced to cut short his speech.



The issue has been gaining traction in the state for some time. A resolution was adopted in the state legislative council in January to declare the day a public holiday.



But there apparently is no agreement between the two ruling parties.



Lawyers affiliated to the Jammu Bar Association stayed away from work and instead organised a programme within the Association's premises to celebrate the contribution of the Maharaja, under whom the historic instrument of accession of the state with the Indian Union was signed in 1947.



Maharaja's grandson and PDP lawmaker Vikramaditya Singh said the demand for public holiday will continue as the issue is linked to the "sentiment" of people in the Jammu region.



"Maharaja was a great leader and the entire Jammu region is united in its demand for a holiday to mark the birth anniversary of their beloved king," Singh told reporters.



Singh said it was time the sentiment of the people of the Jammu region was recognised.



The BJP had backed the January resolution, but opposition National Conference had walked out from the Council then. Independent MLA Engineer Rashid had claimed that the passage of the resolution was a disrespect to the people "who gave their life fighting against the autocratic rule."



Several groups of youth, some armed with swords and licensed guns, rallied through the city on motorcycles and four wheelers, raising slogans against the state government.



Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party chief and former minister Harsh Dev Singh asked his grandsons Ajatshatru and Vikramaditya - to resign from their respective political parties in protest against the state government's "contemptuous denial" to declare the day as a public holiday.



He said the "criminal silence" of the BJP ministers on the issue has exposed the ruling alliance.
A strong 6.2 magnitude earthquake shook central Mexico on Saturday days after a powerful quake that killed nearly 300 people, Mexican and US seismological monitors said.



The quake struck at 12:53 GMT with an epicenter 19.3 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the city of Matias Romero, in the state of Oaxaca, the US Geological Survey reported. Mexican quake monitors gave the same figure.



In Mexico City work crews temporarily halted rescue operations, while the country's Civil Protection service said there were no reports that the new quake -- an apparent aftershock of Tuesday's powerful 7.1 tremor -- had affected the capital.
An organisation working for Chakma and Hajong tribes in Arunachal Pradesh today urged Union minister Rajnath Singh to "restore" the rights of the two ethnic communities.



"It is not just citizenship rights that need to be given," the organisation 'Right Cause - Partnering for Change' wrote in an open letter addressed to the Union home minister, president of the organisation Mahendra Chakma told reporters here.



"We urge immediate restoration of all their rights like employment with Arunachal Pradesh government which was banned in 1980, issue of ration cards which was cancelled in 1991 and appointment to the post of Gaon Burah (village headman) which was cancelled in 1994", Chakma claimed.



In his letter to the Home Minister, a copy of which was given to journalists, Chakma wrote, "We urge all stakeholders and political leaders not to politicise the issue further and instead work together towards a permanent solution.



The Chakma refugees who came to India in 1986 and were camped in Tripura bordering Bangladesh and subsequently repatriated are different and not to be confused with Chakma and Hajong refugees who were permanently rehabilitated in the then North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) which later became Arunachal Pradesh."
The State Human Rights Commission issued a notice to the Collector and District Magistrate Guntur on Saturday based on the petition made by A.P.Balala Hakkula Sangham in the incident of four years old boy mauled to death by stray dogs at Adavi Tekkala Padu under Guntur Municipality.



The Human Rights Commission also called for a report by 12 Of December from the Collector Guntur.



In this incident a four years old Premkumar son of Yesu and Malleshwari died on the spot. Balala Hakkula Sangham alleged that the Guntur Municipal Corporation Officials failed in to eradicate stray dogs and demand for criminal cases on the Municipal official.
Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan today launched the 'Pradhan Mantri LPG Panchayat' from Mota Ishanpur village here today and handed over free LPG connection to a beneficiary of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.



Addressing the public, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister said his government has so far provided LPG connection to 8.5 crore households in less than three years as against 14 crore connections provided by the Congress government.



Pradhan said LPG connection has empowered women and saved lives of lakhs of women who die due to health complications arising out of use of traditional means of fuel like wood.



In the presence of Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, Pradhan handed over free LPG connection to the beneficiary of PMUY Kokilaben Parmar. She happens to be the third crore beneficiary under the scheme.



Taking a swipe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for asking what his government did for the poor, Pradhan later told mediapersons that his ministry provided three crore LPG connections to the poor including the tribals and Dalits.



"Those who have cheated the people of this country, and have been shown the door by the people, are shedding crocodile tears for the poor. People will give them befitting reply in the next election," he said.



He said Pradhan Mantri LPG Panchayat will aim at spreading awareness among the LPG users about how to properly use the clean fuel and its many benefits.



"One lakh LPG Panchayat (to be held across the country) will deal with the issue of safe use of LPG as well as its various benefits, like environment, health, and how it empowers women," he said.



Pradhan said that 40 per cent of Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries in Gujarat are tribals and Dalits. He said his ministry has also increased LPG distribution centres, with 106 new distribution centres added in the last one and half years in Gujarat alone.



"We are working on setting up 319 new distribution centres, which will provide employment to 5,000 people," he said.



LPG Panchayat will serve as an interactive platform between those who received LPG cylinders under PMUY, officials, LPG distributors and NGOs.

In one panchayat, around 100 LPG customers of nearby areas will share their experiences with each others. They can also share their problems and suggestions.



The panchayats will also include safe practices, quality of service provided by distributors and availability of refill cylinders.
A Metropolitan Magistrate Court here at Hayatnagar has remanded Bollywood producer Karim Morani accused in a rape case in judicial custody on Saturday. Morani surrendered before the local police on Friday-Saturday night as per the Supreme Court order. He has been shifted to Cherlapally jail.



Earlier, a trial court here had granted him anticipatory bail, which was challenged by the police in High Court. After the High Court cancelled his bail, Morani moved the apex court through his counsel Mukul Rohatgi.



The producer has been facing the charge of repeatedly raping a 25 years old Mumbai based Delhi woman threatening to post her private pictures on social media. According to Hayathnagar police Morani came to the police station at 11.45 PM along with his brother Mohammed Morani and surrendered.



The Hayathnagar police registered a case against Morani in January this year under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 376 (rape), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage), 417 (cheating) and Section 354C of Nirbhaya Act (the Criminal Law Amendment Act).



The victim, a native of Delhi and film enthusiast in her complaint to the Hayatnagar police under Rachakonda Police Commissionerate here alleged that the Bollywood producer raped her first time in the month of July 2015 by offering her wine laced with some sedatives. She said that the producer who has taken her nude photos has been blackmailing her since then. The Bollywood producer who acted as a co-producer for his close friends Shahrukh Khans Bollywood blockbusters such as RaOne, Chennai Express and Dilawale said to have confined the girl to a hotel room on the outskirts of the city here and raped her several times during the shooting of Dilwale and after.



The girl said that she escaped his clutches and reached the police station to make her compliant.



The girl in her complaint had said that the blackmail continued for months and Morani continued his assault here and even in Mumbai. She said that Morani threatened her that he would upload the nude photos in social media. The Hayatnagar police who have seized the CC TV camera footage of the hotel then sent the victim for medical examination.



Morani is also facing trial in 2G spectrum allocation scam case probed by CBI and a separate money laundering case by ED. Former Telecom Minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others were co-accused in both the two cases.
The HAL police have arrested a man for cheating people of over Rs 10 lakh by posing as a CEO of a company.



The suspect Rajkumar (45), is a resident of Jayanagar 3rd Block.



According to the police, Rajkumar approached gullible people, mostly construction workers hailing from different states. He showed them pictures of under construction high rise buildings claiming that he was the CEO of the company implementing the projects. He collected money from workers promising them to issue Aadhaar cards and election identity cards.



"He collected between Rs 500 and Rs 5,000 from each worker and vanished," the police inspector said.



The police constituted a special after after 15 separate complaints were lodged against him.



"We picked him up from his house, but he pleaded innocence. We recovered around 15 fake Aadhaar cards in the names of senior citizens in his house," the inspector added.




The Bengaluru Urban district administration on Saturday conducted a drive to rid a lake at Singapura near Byatarayanapura, of encroachment and reclaimed 66 acres and 12 guntas.



Deputy Commissioner V Shankar told DH, "A few influential have encroached upon the lake land. Some of them have not bothered to reply to the notices served on them. We will take appropriate action soon."



The deputy commissioner added that the drive was conducted following the order by the House Committee on Encroachments of Lake. The drive to clear encroachment on other waterbodies in the city will continue.






Residents and shop owners around Shivananda Circle who are opposing the proposed steel bridge met the Additional Chief Secretary, Urban Development Department (UDD) Mahendra Jain on Saturday.



The residents had moved the court seeking directions to quash the government order which approved construction of steel overbridge at Shivananda Circle on Hare Krishna Road.



The state government had announced the 1.5-km steel bridge in its budget for easing traffic at the circle. The residents contended that the project would lead to more traffic bottlenecks and worsen the situation. The court, while disposing of the PIL directed them to approach the UDD with their representation.



Jain told the residents that he would get the details of the project from BBMP and then call for a meeting.










The chilling murder of a seven-year-old boy inside a prominent Delhi school has shocked the nation. But similar shocks have been delivered to Bengalureans by schools in our own backyard, sparking repeated public outrage. Rules were framed and stringent guidelines issued to make every school-going child safe and secure. Yet, the safety umbrella continues to wither. Why?



Early this year, the sexual assault on a three-year-old girl inside a Marathahalli pre-school had exposed the horrors of a deeply compromised safety ecosystem. The rot had run so deep that the school management used every ploy to hush up the case. The suspect was a non-teaching staffer, recruited without any verification of his background.



Sense of insecurity



Despite systems in place on paper in many schools, the recurring episodes of child abuse have instilled a deep sense of insecurity among parents. School van drivers caught for drunk driving and behavioral issues and absence of attendants in these vehicles as mandated by the new rules, indicate that the school-home commute too is equally unsafe.



CCTVs could be seen displayed prominently at many school gates. But are they really functional? Are they being monitored round-the-clock? Or are they merely cosmetic add-ons to instill a false sense of security, an eyewash strategy to comfort parents and satisfy the mandatory requirements?



Enforcement loopholes



At a private school near Annasandrapalya, a lone CCTV at the main entrance is positioned in such a way that it does not capture the entry of anyone into the premises. Outside another school in Indiranagar, the security guard claims the CCTVs are in place, and female attendants accompany children in every van.



But at the schools main gate, the cameras are nowhere to be seen. Questioned, the guard looks away. No lady attendant is seen inside the school vans emerging out of the institution. This is true of most school vans that crisscross the city.



Beyond CCTVs and attendants, the priority should be to ensure an environment where the child can report any incident to anyone in the school without fear, as Sujata Mohandas, principal of the Sishu Griha Montessori and High School puts it.



Shared responsibility



But there are challenges. The responsibility should be shared by the parents, schools and society at large. She explains, It is the bound duty of all schools to provide a safe and secure environment to every child. But as long as we dont eliminate the monsters with devious minds, bent on carrying out crimes against children, the best security measures provided may seem futile.



Mohandas says 24/7 security was posted at all the gates of her school, long before the government issued the safety guidelines. She listed the other security features: A lady security is also present during school working hours. Floor supervisors are positioned on all floors and corridors of our school. Lady staffers are deployed outside female washrooms and male staff outside male washrooms. Rooms not in use at certain times of the day are always kept locked.



Most of these measures were mandated for all schools three years ago, shortly after a six-year-old girls rape at a Kadugodi school sparked widespread public outrage. The school made amends thereafter, says Mujeeb Rahman, a parent whose two daughters study there. They have even introduced smart cards for children. On getting into a van, they swipe it, alerting the parents through a mobile app, he says.



But the safety rules are only on paper in many schools for a reason: There are no inspections, no officially sanctioned committees to check whether the rules are being implemented. Several schools with poor infrastructure choose to ignore the guidelines blatantly, as installing, monitoring and maintaining CCTVs, recruiting additional staffers with verified antecedents add to the costs.



Child Protection Policy



So, who is to blame for poor enforcement? Nagasimha Rao from the NGO, Child Rights Trust draws attention to the tussle between the education department and the department and women and child development on who should implement the Karnataka State Child Protection Policy (KSCPP).



Framed by the department of women and child development in collaboration with the police, education department and United Nations Childrens Fund (Unicef), the policy employs a rights-based approach to child safety.



The policy laid down operational guidelines for educational institutions to follow. They included measures such as conducting background checks on all staff, installing CCTV cameras and forming Child Protection Committees in the schools. Although the policy was approved by the State Cabinet in April 2016, there is no visible evidence of any substantial change in the way schools function.



Policy amendment



One lacunae in the policy was the lack of any provision to penalise errant schools. To address this, the policy was amended in April this year by including a clause that mandated a penalty of up to Rs 10 lakh. The District Education Regulatory Authority (DERA) could collect this amount and even recommend withdrawal of the schools recognition.



Now, the question in everyones mind is this: Will the threat of punishment push the schools to enforce the safety guidelines or will they wait till the next disaster strikes?



Key guidelines from Child Protection Policy



Each educational institution to formulate own child protection policy and display it publicly



Child Protection Committees to be formed with head of the institution, teachers, parents, and male and female students as members; to conduct quarterly meetings



A Child Protection Officer to be appointed. The officer should be a permanent employee, preferably a woman.



Annual appraisal of teaching and non-teaching staff to include compliance with the Child Protection Policy.



Coordinated external review every three years by education department, department of women and child development, and other related departments



Screening for recruitment to all positions including oral and written references from the last two employers and police verification



GPS and CCTV in school buses; regular inspections to make sure driver is not under influence of alcohol



Teacher or attendant, preferably female, to accompany children in the school bus till the last stop.



Combining School Safety with Child Safety



The Government of India, through the National Disaster Management Authority, has come up with a school safety policy. This focuses on physical harm to the child from physical objects in the school. On the other hand, the Karnataka State Child Protection Policy primarily focuses on harm to children from other humans. We are in the process of framing rules which will cover aspects of both the central and state policies, informs Ajay Seth, additional chief secretary for primary and secondary education.



Framing rules, ensuring implementation



The State Government is set to frame fresh rules on child and school safety by early November. The rules will take into account various other laws and policies which have come up at different times.



But how will the department ensure that the rules are followed? Sending officials from the department to inspect all schools will not lead to effective implementation. The Child Protection Committee (CPC) will have to meet regularly and information about the meetings have to be made public on the school website, says Seth.



Parents, he says, can ensure that the meetings are conducted. If the CPC is not working, he or she can raise the issue with the management. If they dont take action, then the department can step in. There will be regulation by a hierarchy of stakeholders rather than government machinery alone, the official explains.



(with inputs from Meghana Choukkar)
Not long ago, parents would remain worry-free as their children left for schools early in the morning and returned late in the afternoon. But today, they are tormented by worrying thoughts about the safe return of their young ones. They are unnerved by the recent cases of child abuse and deaths reported from schools across the country.



Although there are several rules and guidelines in place to ensure childrens safety in schools, the episodes of sexual assault and murder indicate a lack of seriousness among the authorities. Speaking to parents across Bengaluru, DH brings into focus their serious concerns that remain unaddressed.



The biggest problem, according to parents, is not the lack of rules but zero implementation. We have all the rules and regulations in detail across schools, but practicality and implementation remain a big question. There is literally no authority to check the implementation of these guidelines. The CBSE board sends guidelines and circulars but what happens next? Nothing, says Nibedita R, a homemaker and parent of two children.



Her children study in class four and LKG at a private school, where parents are not welcome. Since there is no one to keep a check, why dont they at least let parents in for an inspection? Of course, we wont disturb the classes. But who is next best to ensure the safety of our kids? As far as the CCTVs are concerned, there is no guarantee that all of them work at any given point of time, Nibedita says.



She, along with other parents, had complained about these gaps to the school authorities. They ask us not to interfere, she recalls. The matter had been taken up with CBSE authorities in Chennai. But the response was an excuse that they lacked manpower to form committees to look into these issues.



Another parent, Manjula Katgeri, who is also a retired Kendriya Vidyalaya teacher, believes the way forward is to include parents in the entire process. There must be awareness and communication about the topic. During the daily morning assembly, the school principal, teachers, students and even parents should talk at least five minutes about safety issues, she suggests.



Parents must also be allowed to play an active role. When parents visit the schools to drop or pick-up their wards, they must be allowed to go up to the classrooms and know what is happening in the school at all times. There must be active communication between parents, teachers and students on a day-to-day basis, says Katgeri.



This, she adds, is necessary to create an open environment for honest discussions about not just studies but other concerns as well. There must be washrooms in every floor of a school and not in some dingy corner away from the main building. Such spots must be avoided.



She cites schools in the United States where students are dropped at their doorsteps only if a parent is present and admissions are given to children living within a range of five kilometres from a school. These positive examples can be followed in our schools as well, she says.



Several reported cases of child abuse were found to have been committed by non-teaching staff, including bus drivers and conductors. Parents have been raising concerns about this trend. One cant stress enough on the point that no matter who is appointed, the track-record of the person must be verified. There must be a thorough police verification done, says Mukunda S N, a businessman and father of two seven-year- olds studying in a city private school.



However, a professional teacher trainer, Anshima Gupta feels this culture of fear and misconduct is part of a bigger picture characterised by lack of awareness and sexual repression In the long term, I feel the taboo on talking about sex and sexual repression in our country leads to instances such as these. We see this repression playing out in different places and ways. There needs to be openness about this topic, Gupta points out.



She also recommends a separate committee that is solely focused on checking the behaviour of teachers, staff and students to address all threats to child safety. Besides, one cannot completely alienate the male staff members as there have been cases where the female staff has been accused of sexual abuse. It needs a comprehensive and unbiased check, Gupta notes.










Congress on Saturday asked Narendra Modi government how Dawood Ibrahims wife Mehajabin Shaikh had managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected.



Party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the country wants an explanation from the government over the issue.



Dawoods wife, Mehajabin Shaikh, came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government was sleeping, Surjewala said.



His comments came a day after Dawoods brother Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father Salim Kashmiri.



What was the Central Bureau of Investigation doing? What was the Research and Analysis Wing doing? Wife of a terrorist who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back, he said.



Why was she not arrested? Why was no action taken against her? The prime minister, defence minister and the home minister must give answers, he said.
The governments measures for reviving some key sectors of the economy may be the focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modis address to a special BJP conclave on Monday, party officials said.



Coming on the occasion of the birth centenary of Sangh Parivar icon Deendayal Upadhyay, the prime ministers announcement may seek to address concerns from many quarters as the growth was shown at a three-year low of 5.7% in the first quarter of 2017-18, they said.



Both Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley held a number of brainstorming sessions with experts and officials from different ministries last week, BJP leaders said.



Three days ago, Jaitley had said the steps to lift the slowing economy will be taken after they are endorsed by Modi.



We have taken note of all the economic indicators available. The government will take any additional moves which are necessary, he said.



With experts including former RBI governor C Rangarajan saying that any stimulus package being contemplated should focus on raising the capital expenditure to catalyse private investment, Modi may announce a package for power, housing and social welfare programmes to generate jobs and perk up demand, BJP leaders said.
The exodus of Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh seems to be casting a shadow on Indias efforts to add new momentum to the BIMSTEC.



As a large number of Rohingya took refuge in Bangladesh in the wake of the latest wave of violence against the community at the Rakhine state in western Myanmar, the strains in Dhakas relations with Nay Pyi Daw is now worrying India.



What New Delhi is concerned over is the implication of the worsening relations between Nay Pyi Daw and Dhaka over its efforts to breathe fresh life into the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation or the BIMSTEC, which has both Myanmar

and Bangladesh as its members.



The next summit of the BIMSTEC is likely to take place in Kathmandu later this year and Bangladesh is likely to use the opportunity to slam Myanmar for the atrocities on the Rohingyas.



Dhaka has already conveyed to New Delhi that it would step up the attack on Nay Pyi Daw in all international forums, including the BIMSTEC, unless Suu Kyi Government takes back the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh and ensure security, dignity and citizenship rights for them in Myanmar, sources told DH.



She recently alleged that Myanmar Army was laying landmines along the

countrys border with Bangladesh.




The order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has evoked a strong reaction from students that has now led to an online signature petition in support of the victim by students of OP Jindal Global University and others.



The petition has so far been signed by close to 3,700 people and will be sent to the Chandigarh High Court for consideration. Students staged a protest at the university. The petition alleges that the focus of the judgement veers towards victim blaming. It doesnt matter if a girl smokes, drinks, or is sexually active- these things are irrelevant when it comes to rape or sexual assault, it added.



The University Students Council, in a written response on Saturday said, As soon as we read the order, the student community assembled near the flag pole as a sign of protest against the order. The Student Council approached the administration to discuss the support we could provide to the family and further legal recourse that can be adopted as a community.



The petition opines that sexual experimentation by the girl in her personal life is not an acceptable reason for the suspension of the sentences. On the courts order saying that there was no gut wrenching violence which normally accompanies such situations, the petition argues that rape and sexual assault do not become excusable if it does not involve extreme violence.



The petition held that the integrity of a womans body, her personal space and her agency cannot fade and allowed to become less important in the face of a convicts familys social standing.
The Supreme Court dismissed a batch of pleas for extending the time for admission to super-specialty courses in private medical colleges and deemed universities across the

country.



Relying on the principle of sustenance of discipline, the court agreed to the Medical Council of Indias view that it would lead to chaos and benefit non-deserving candidates, though the Union government wanted the seats to be filled by granting more time.



A number of applications filed on behalf of various colleges sought the apex courts permission to extend the time as about 50% seats in super-speciality courses and a larger number in other courses were still lying vacant.



They sought permission to fill the seats from a list of selected candidates.



The top court had on September 4 extended the time for admission to super-specialty courses till September 14. The request was then made to extend time with regard to post-graduate courses and MBBS, too. On Friday, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and others submitted before a bench presided over by Chief Justice Dipak Misra that the seats going vacant would hit the institutes and deemed universities hard financially.



They a made fresh bid for seeking more time.



However, the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said, Having bestowed our careful and studied consideration with regard to the submissions advanced at the bar, we are of the convinced opinion and an extension at this juncture would not be appropriate.



A sense of concern is one thing, but sustenance of discipline and order is another aspect. Weighing both the concepts in a balanced manner, we unhesitatingly come to the conclusion that the prayers made in the interlocutory applications do not deserve any acceptance and, accordingly, they stand rejected, the bench added.



The MCI, represented by advocate Gaurav Sharma, vehemently opposed any further relaxation of time. This court has extended the time and fixed the time limit till 14th September, 2017 and the candidates did not avail the facilities. It will be an anathema to the concept of law to grant extension at the behest of the institutions or the students, he said.



Grant of extension of time has the potentiality to usher in a state of chaos and the result may be that the students who are not eligible or have defaulted, would gain the benefit, he said.




The Haryana Police said on Saturday that it had initiated the process for declaring jailed Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singhs adopted daughter Honeypreet Insan and some other sect functionaries as proclaimed offenders.



Besides, the police have decided to attach properties owned by Honeypreet as well as Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan, key Dera functionaries who are on the run.



Legal action against two to three people, who are untraceable, is being taken. We have started the process of declaring them proclaimed offenders. Their personal properties will also be attached...These persons are Aditya Insan, Pawan Insan and Honeypreet Insan, Haryana DGP B S Sandhu said while talking to reporters in Sirsa on Saturday.



I want to warn them that they should appear before police and present their side to the investigators, he said.



The DGP said that efforts were being made to nab Honeypreet and the other two in connection with the violence that had erupted following the conviction of Ram Rahim in a rape case.



For this, an international alert has been issued and teams are conducting raids, he said.
Telecommunication operators have played a key role in establishing connectivity and speedy adoption of digital services in the country over the last three decades. Rajan S Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) shares his views on the financial burden and policy paralysis afflicting the sector with N V Vijayakumar of DH. Edited excerpts:



What is the current status of telecom industry?



We should understand the fact that mobile connectivity and data services have played an important role in bridging the digital divide and moving India towards a truly equitable and democratic nation. Indian telecom industry is going through a consolidation phase and there is a lot of financial troubles lurking them. Now, we are looking for three bigger players: Idea-Voda; Rcomm-Aircel; Airtel; MTNL-BSNL; and Jio. So India is going towards a phase where there will be three to four players like in US and Europe. I think it will help customers. Telcos will have to invest in technology and without which they cant provide modern facilities which the customers are looking for.



According to a recent data, the mobile subscribers base in India decreased by 6.41 million to 948.54 million in August. Bharti Airtel continues to hold the top position with 29.63% market share and followed by Vodafone India with 208.14 million connection.



How do you see technology changing?



The cost for providing service in this industry is growing and access to lots of capital is required. During the pre-auction period, telcos were paying as per use. As we moved towards more use of spectrum and SC made it mandatory that it should be bought by auction and the price of spectrum started increasing. Now you can see that technology obsolescence factor is increasing. It took 20 years to recover 2G investment and for 3G only three years and nobody is talking about it and all investment became obsolete. People are talking about 4G and now 5G is already in.



How do you view the entry of Reliance Jio in the telecom industry?



I admit that the entry of Reliance Jio created a tariff war in the Indian telecom industry and it reduced the earnings of old operators. They have approached the government seeking relief for the debt ridden industry. At present, Reliance Jio offers entire phone call service using the VoLTE technology and the incumbents are forced to bear the cost of carrying their legacy infrastructure. Technology migration sounds good, but we have to look at practical dimensions of what happens in terms of incumbents. Airtel has just started VoLTE-based calls and plans to expand it across India by the end of the current fiscal.



How is the financial health of telecom industry?



Currently, overhead cost is very high in the industry. For the operators 90% of network is being supplied by foreign companies. Globally average revenue per user (ARPU) is $75, while in India it is $3.



The financial health of this industry is in trouble because the return is less as the operators will have to pay for the spectrum usage charge, licence fee and now the GST also.



Nowhere in the world we have a government imposing service tax on the allocation of spectrum, that too 18%.



The industry for the first time registered a negative growth last fiscal. We asked the government to address the financial condition of telecom players and the government constituted the inter ministerial committee. That committee met and recommendations are sent to finance minister and a decision on this will be taken soon.



Its recommendations include reduction of the tenure of debt and reduce the licence cost by 5%.



What is your take on the reduction of mobile interconnect usage charge (IUC)?



The established players like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea have been demanding an increase in the IUC to about 30-36 paise from 14 paise per minute. It will help in their financial position. But the new entrant Jio has been demanding to do away with it altogether.



Now the Trai has decided to bring down the charges to 6 paise per minute from October 1 and nil from January 2020. For the first time, the TRAI has indicated that it is using a pure Long-Run Average Incremental Cost (LRIC) model, which is usually reserved for very mature networks in calculating costs. If it is implemented it will hit earnings of old mobile operators to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore in the current fiscal.



How do you view the policy initiatives?



We need urgent relief and policy intervention from the government to encourage regulatory stability, facilitate growth, innovation and investment.



Trai has started the consultation process for the next round of spectrum auction across nine bands which include 60% of the unsold radiowaves in the last auction and 275 MHz from the two new 5G bands. It had also sought fresh views on valuation methodology for the prized 700 MHz, a band that found no takers in the last auction given the reserve or base price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz in 2016.



The Trai mandate is that all operators should move towards VoLTE technology which is not practical as it will hit services for 2G users who account for 70% of the total subscriber base in the country. VoLTE (Voice over Long-Term Evolution) is high-end and latest version of calls that are made on Internet-based networks.




Bengaluru-based agri-tech company CropIn Technologies, which provides Software as a service (SaaS) based services to agribusinesses globally, wants to maximise per acre value of farmers, and make every farm traceable.



The company, which was founded in 2010, is targeting more farmers to use its newly launched app, which enables them to do connected and data driven farming.



We started CropIn with $10,000 (approximately Rs 6 lakh), which was raised from friends. What we noticed was farmers were using traditional technique, and we wanted to disseminate the right information and the marriage of agriculture and technology will result in more productivity, said CropIn Technologies CEO Krishna Kumar.



Kumar said that the ecosystem has improved now with more farmers using smartphones, they can analyse, interpret data and derive real time actionable insights on standing crop and projects spanning geographies. CropIn uses Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Geo-tagging and Satellite monitoring to revolutionise the agri-ecosystem.



Interaction with farmers



Its products for B2B are Smartfarm, Mwarehouse, Smartsales, and Smartrisk,.



Its recent offering AcreSquare is a farmer application that helps companies interact directly with their farmers, share content, educate them and provide consultation.



Though its now present in B2B, CropIn wants to enter the B2C segment so that more farmers can use its app and get benefitted. The market is ready right now and we are building solutions. Also, with technology, farmers can get loans from banks and NBFCs, as they know exactly about the crops performance over the years, said Kumar. Its clients include Godfrey Phillips, McCain, IFB Agro, ITC, ICICI Lombard, Big Basket and Philip Morris, among others.



Apart from India, CropIn is present in 12 countries. It works with over 125 clients, benefitting over 5 lakh farmers across the globe. Last year, it raised more than $2 million in Series A funding.
In the wake of garbage contractors threatening to disrupt waste collection in Bengaluru, the state government on Saturday invoked ESMA, prohibiting pourakarmikas and other staff from going on strike for the next one year.



Chief Minister Siddaramaiah directed the Urban Development Department to invoke Section 3 of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), which empowers the state government to crack down on protests and strikes that disrupt public services.



All pourakarmikas, auto tippers, compact loaders and drivers employed directly by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) or through contractors cannot strike work for the next one year. The ESMA provision covers both pourakarmikas under contract as well as those on the civic bodys rolls, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad clarified.



The move comes months ahead of the 2018 Assembly elections and at a time when the state government and the BBMP are facing the heat from the public over the recent rain-related chaos.



A garbage crisis now, in the festive season when the amount of waste generated goes up significantly, may further dent the ruling Congresss image.



The ESMA, which comes with stringent penal provisions, can be invoked whenever essential services such as public transport, health services, the supply of water, milk and electricity are affected.



Solid waste management was declared as an essential service in June last year.



This is the second time the government has invoked ESMA this year. In July, ESMA was invoked against Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) workers who went on a flash strike. The ESMA was invoked in 2000 when pre-university lecturers boycotted evaluation of answer scripts for more than a month.



People who violate the Act are liable to be imprisoned for a year or fine of Rs 5,000 or both. They can be arrested without a warrant and all offences under ESMA are non-bailable.



Once ESMA is imposed, a person cannot take recourse under any other law.




American automobile giant Ford, in a bid to fortify India into a more serious participant in its global roadmap, is investing $195 million (around Rs 1,264 crore) towards setting up of a product development centre in Chennai.



The Global Technology and Business Centre will serve as a hub for product development, mobility solutions, and business services for India and markets around the world. It will be the ninth centre of its kind in the world, and would be hiring around 3,000 engineers initially, and scaling that up overtime.



"The centre will primarily work around development and creation of new product design. Currently, the base product design is done in other centres around the globe. Going forward, the India centre will work along with global peers on various projects," Ford India Executive Director (Marketing, Sales, and Service) Vinay Raina told DH.



Ever since setting foot in India in 1995, Ford has made investments to the tune of $2 billion. Its two factories in Chennai and Sanand (Gujarat), have a total annual capacity of 4,40,000 units between them.



"The Sanand facility makes the Ford Aspire and Figo, which also get exported to over 50 countries. The Chennai plant manufactures the EcoSport and Endeavour, from where the EcoSport is exported. All this is aligned to Make in India," Raina said, adding that the Mustang is imported from the US as a CBU.



Ford claims to be the biggest car exporter from India, having exported 1,51,638 units in 2016. Domestic sales stood at 86,460 units last year, to which Bengaluru contributed 8%.



"We continue to believe that India is the right place for growth. Even the new development centre shows how important India stands in the portfolio for Ford, one in terms of investments, and also where future growth opportunities will arise," Raina said.



Currently, Ford has 376 dealerships across 209 towns and it is looking at expanding into Tier-IV and Tier-V towns, he added.




A 19-year-old man reportedly tried to molest a foreign student at Paneer in Deralakatte on the outskirts of Mangaluru on Saturday.



Mustafa, of Harekala, followed the 19-year-old woman as she walked to an ashrama at Paneer. He is said to have tried to outrage her modesty and behaved indecently with her. The woman screamed, drawing passersby. Members of the public caught the suspect and turned him over to the jurisdictional Ullal police who booked him under Section 376 of the IPC.



The man is said to be mentally ill. His parents produced a letter that stated that he had been admitted to Wenlock Hospital for treatment.




The Supreme Court has dismissed a plea for anticipatory bail by a BJP leader from Dakshina Kannada district in a case pertaining to group clash and stabbing. It noted that there are over a dozen other cases pending against him.



A bench of Justices Kurian Joseph and R Banumathi asked petitioner, 28-year-old Mithun, to surrender and seek regular bail from the district court in Mangaluru.



Advocates Bina Mahadevan and Krishna Kumar Singh, representing the petitioner, contended that he has been falsely implicated in the case due to political rivalry. They said that the petitioner, a social activist and political leader, is ready to abide by any strict condition that the court imposes in granting him anticipatory bail.



The counsel challenged the Karnataka High Court's order of August 14, rejecting his plea for anticipatory bail. They contended that the HC overlooked the fact that the petitioner was ready to cooperate with the investigation and there was no circumstance to show a possibility that he will abscond.



The bench, however, said, We do not find any ground to interfere with the order (of high court). The special leave petition is, accordingly, dismissed.



If the petitioner is arrested, he may apply for regular bail before the trial court, in which case his application for regular bail shall be considered expeditiously, the bench said.



An FIR was lodged on May 26 with the Bantwal Town police station by Abdul Hasir, contending that Mithun, along with others, assaulted him and his companions. The complainant had sustained stab injuries on his back.
A Bangladeshi national has been languishing in jail for the past four years without even being produced before a trial court.



The 27-year-old Khokan Khan was arrested by the city police in a robbery case in 2013. He, along with Mohammed Sagar, a native of West Bengal, was accused of robbing a person by sneaking into a house in Subramanyapura. Sagar managed to get the bail while Khan has not even been produced before the court.



Both were also said to be involved in a similar criminal offence in Delhi.



On September 18, a petition seeking bail before the High Court of Karnataka was rejected on the grounds that he had entered the country illegally and committed the crime here.



Justice Rathnakala refused to grant bail and said, "The petitioner's stay in the country cannot be legalised by granting bail."



The petitioner's counsel, M Krishne Gowda, claimed that Khan was issued a voter's identity card by the Election Commission of India which he has not yet produced before the trial court.



Assistant Solicitor General Krishna S Dixit informed the court that though Sagar was granted bail by the trial court, Khan should not be granted bail as he is an illegal immigrant. The further said Khan had violated Section 14 of the Foreigners Act, 1946, by not only entering the country without a visa but also overstaying. He said if bail was granted, he would "disappear forever".



The judge ordered the lower court to verify the voter's card produced by Khan and hear the case on a day-to-day basis to conclude the trial in six months.




BJP workers protested in front of the Mahalakshmi Layout police station on Saturday, condemning a notice served on the party's state president, B S Yeddyurappa.



Police on September 22 summoned the senior BJP leader in a case pertaining to the attempted kidnap of Vinay Bidre, the personal assistant of another party leader and his bete noire, K S Eshwarappa. The notice, issued by Malleswaram subdivision ACP, A R Badiger, asked Yeddyurappa to appear for questioning at 10.30 am on September 28.



The protesters, led by the BJP's Malleswaram MLA C N Ashwath Narayan and former deputy mayor S Harish, urged the police to withdraw the notice. "The notice is politically motivated. The government is misusing the police to target Yeddyurappa. The police are acting as the government's agent," Ashwath Narayan said.



Like in other cases, the police should visit Yeddyurappa's residence and obtain his statement. An attempt is being made to tarnish Yeddyurappa's image, he added.



Additional policemen were posted around the police station as Bidre, the complainant in the case, arrived to record his statement.



"It's the prerogative of the investigating officer to serve a notice on or visit a person's house to get his/her statement. The investigating officer will take suitable action as per the law," Chetan Singh Rathore, DCP (North), said when DH asked him whether the notice would be withdrawn.




The government may postpone the Karnataka School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Council (KSQAAC) and Summative Assessment-1 examination scheduled for October 27 and 28.



The exams may now be held on November 3 and 4. The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is likely to notify the postponement shortly.



The decision comes in the wake of a demand seeking postponement of the exams by teachers and parents.



The government has declared Dasara holidays between October 11 and October 25. About a week ago, the DPI announced the dates of these examinations. The decision didn't go down well with teachers as the exams were scheduled a day after re-opening of schools. Their contention is that a one-day gap wasn't enough and many students may remain absent for the exam.



"A one-day gap is not sufficient for teachers and students before the exam. It won't be proper to ask students to appear for exams soon after the holidays. Considering these difficulties, we have requested the government to reschedule the exams," Basavaraj Gurikar," president, Karnataka State Primary School Teachers Association, told DH.



The Association has submitted a memorandum to Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait, Ajay Seth, Principal Secretary, Primary and Secondary Education Department and Sumangala V, Director, SSLC Board, in this regard.



T B Badachi, a high school teacher in Chikkodi, said, "There will be less attendance for one or two days after holidays in rural and semi-urban areas. So, many students may miss the exams. Parents in rural areas do not understand the importance of the examinations. Teachers need to convince them and ask them to ensure that their children appear for the exams without fail."



The teachers said they need time to prepare students for the exams by conducting revision classes.



Seth told DH, "We have received requests from teachers seeking postponement of exams. The department is seriously considering the requests and a suitable decision will be taken shortly."




Following the release of 1.13 lakh cusec water from the Ujani dam in Solapur district of Maharashtra, same quantum of water was released from Bhima barrage at Sonna, Afzalpur taluk, in the district on Saturday, said Lakshmikant Agnihotri, Executive Engineer, Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Limited (Afzalpur Division).



The catchment areas of the River Bhima in Maharashra has received copious rainfall leading to an increased inflow into the Ujani dam and subsequent discharge of the water.



At Sonna barrage, the water was released downstream through 15 gates of the total 29 gates. Water is also being released into the river from the power generating units. The live storage in the dam stands at 405.8 metres, he added.



In the past few days huge volume of water has been released from Ujani dam leading to the discharge of same amount of water from Sonna barrage.



A few days ago 58,000 cusec of water was released from the dam, which was followed by 1.43 lakh cusec, 70,000 cusec and now 1.13 lakh cusec.
The Congress on Saturday kick-started its statewide door-to-door campaign Mane Manege Congress from Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, where Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and other party leaders trained their guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa.



The party leaders, including Siddaramaiah and AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka K C Venugopal, visited many houses in Ramagondanahalli in Mahadevapura and distributed a 32-page booklet highlighting the Congress governments achievements over the past four years and the BJP-led Centres failures.



The party has drawn up a plan to reach every household under 54,246 booths across the state till October 15, as part of the campaign. Narendra Modi said there will be sabkasaath, sabkavikas. Only capitalists and industrialists have gained, while the poor have remained poor, Siddaramaiah said in an unusually animated address.



The chief minister used the welfare plank to reach out to voters, recounting several schemes the government has launched till date. Modis motto is Mann ki Baat. Ours is Kaam ki Baat, he said.



BJP leaders have no guts



Siddaramaiah targeted Yeddyurappa and other state BJP leaders on the issue of farm loan waiver. I told the BJP that they have to put pressure on Modi to waive Rs 42,000 crore loans farmers had borrowed from nationalised and grameen banks. But they dont have the meter to do that, he said. Colloquially, the word meter refers to guts or courage.



Further, Siddaramaiah called Yeddyurappa Karnatakas most hypocritical politician, referring to the latters claims that he would prove the chief ministers corruption. The BJP has now started using the Income Tax department against our leaders D K Shivakumar, Ramesh Jarkiholi and M T B Nagaraj. No matter what the BJP, or even the JD(S) does, Congress will come back to power.



Venugopal said he would review the campaign a month later.



From booth-level workers to chief minister, everybody must participate in the campaign, he instructed.




By Seth Cline

22 September 2017

(US News)  To some, climate change is a vague idea, a hazy future. In parts of the South, its become a devastating reality.

When you drive down the street theres piles and piles of furniture, clothing, shoes, sound systems, just about anything you find inside a home, Hilton Kelley, an environmental activist and former actor, says of Port Arthur, Texas, in Harveys aftermath. It really looks like a war zone in many of our neighborhoods.

For the residents of Port Arthur and nearby Houston, Hurricane Harvey was just the latest battle in the regions ongoing conflict with an increasingly volatile Mother Nature.

Katrina, we shouldve learned from that. If we didnt learn from that we shouldve learned from Rita. If we didnt learn from Rita, we shouldve learned from Ike. If we didnt learn from Ike, we shouldve learned from Gustav, says Kelley of the areas stormy history. How many hurricanes do you have to go through in 15 years to realize that this is the new norm?

Port Arthur, like the South as a whole, is both uniquely located to feel climate changes effects and uniquely vulnerable to its dangers, experts say. From Florida and the Gulf Coast to Kentucky and Southern Appalachia, the rising temperatures and more frequent extreme weather that come with climate change threatens to disrupt local economies and endanger working class communities.The southern U.S. is basically ground zero for climate change, says Dr. Robert Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University and the so-called father of environmental justice.Theres the Souths geography, for one. Surrounded on one side by rising seas and susceptible to the heat waves and droughts of the lower latitudes, its suffered more billion-dollar weather and climate disasters than any other U.S. region going back to 1980. Texas alone has seen 94 of such events in that time frame, nearly 25 more than any other state.In Texas you get everything. You get ice storms and blizzards and tornadoes and flash flooding and haboobs and of course hurricanes, says Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University who contributed to the 2014 National Climate Assessment.But geographic hazards are only part of what makes the South particularly at risk to climate change, Hayhoe says. Theres also the sheer number of people affected, and how vulnerable they are.Despite the hazards, states like Texas have taken few steps to reduce risk. Although Texas leads the U.S. in terms of dollars paid for flood claims, it ranks among the worst in flood-control spending and doesnt require its communities to enroll in FEMAs National Flood Insurance Program. Suburban sprawl has led to new houses and developments being built on flood plains, and complicated emergency response. And migration to Texas and the South generally have only increased the regions exposure, particularly for those pushed to the low-lying and less desirable areas.These weather and climate extremes broaden the gaps between haves and have-nots. If you have insurance versus if you dont, if you can evacuate or you cant, Hayhoe says. Theres a socioeconomic component to individual vulnerability.That vulnerability is a major reason why the South is set to be Americas biggest loser in the coming battles with a changing climate. An study published this summer in the journal Science, which used innovative methods to estimate climate changes economic costs by region, predicted that climate change would hit the South the hardest: desecrating crop yields, increasing mortality rates, and exacerbating income inequality in what is already the countrys poorest region.Harbingers of those dire predictions can already be seen in this years hurricane season. [more]
By Philip Fearnside

15 September 2017

(Mongabay)  On 23 August 2017, Brazils president Michel Temer issued a decree revoking the RENCA (National Reserve of Copper and Associated Minerals), an area the size of Switzerland on the northern side of the Amazon River straddling the states of Para and Amapa. The Ministry of Environment had not been consulted and Brazils environmentalists and public were caught by surprise. Actually, in March the Temer administration had announced its intention of revoking the RENCA at a convention of mining companies in Canada. The choice of venue is telling.A firestorm of criticism in Brazil and abroad (see here, here, here, here and here) led Temer to revoke the decree on August 28th and replace it with a new one. However, this widely trumpeted revocation didnt mean ceasing to abolish the reserve, as the new decree merely tacked on some language stating that protected areas and environmental regulations would be respected. Needless to say, these regulations were already in place, and the original decree implicitly assumed that they would remain so.On August 30th a federal judge issued a preliminary decision (liminar) suspending the decree and directed that the matter should be decided by the National Congress. However, the National Congress is presently dominated by representatives with a decidedly anti-environmental stance (see here, here and here). In addition, preliminary judicial decisions such as this are easily overruled by interested parties, such as the presidential administration, by seeking out friendly judges to issue a counter decision. This occurred many times when decisions halting construction of dams like Belo Monte were overturned within a few days.The RENCA was not created for conservation purposes, but rather as an act of Brazils 1964-1985 military dictatorship to preserve a strategic reserve of mineral deposits instead of allowing international mining companies to exhaust and export these deposits, as, for example, had happened with the manganese deposit elsewhere in Amapa. However, in practice, the RENCAs prevention of large-scale mining has protected the environment in this vast area, both inside and outside of legally protected areas.
President Donald Trump is considering a new order to replace his soon-to-expire travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries. The new ban would be tailored on a country-by-country basis to protect the United States from attacks, US officials said on Friday. With the current ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen due to expire on Sunday, Trump was given recommendations by Elaine Duke, the acting homeland security secretary, but has not yet made a decision on the details of the new order, the officials told reporters. The officials declined to say which or how many countries would be targeted. However, The Wall Street Journal cited unnamed sources to say the new, more targeted restrictions likely to affect nine countries. White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters in a conference call that while "we can't get into decision-making", the next step will be a presidential proclamation setting out the new policy. He declined to say when that would come. Trump's six-nation travel ban was laid out in a 6 March executive order that was blocked by federal courts but later allowed to go into effect with some limits by the US Supreme Court in June. The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from the six countries and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days, purportedly to give Trump's administration time to conduct a worldwide review of US vetting procedures for foreign visitors. The existing refugee ban expires on 24 October. "We need to know who is coming into our country," Miles Taylor, counsellor to the secretary of homeland security, said. "We should be able to validate their identities and we should be able to confirm that our foreign partners do not have information suggesting such individuals may represent a threat to the United States. "That is a fundamental obligation of the US government, and it's something that drove this process from start to finish." Under the recommendations Trump is weighing, there would be restrictions on US entry that differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, the officials said. Trump, who promised as a candidate to impose "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States", said the ban was needed to protect the United States from terrorism. The legal question of whether that ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the US Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled, will be argued before the Supreme Court on 10 October. The March travel ban and an earlier January one that targeted the same six countries as well as Iraq are some of the most controversial actions taken by Trump since assuming office in January. The March order was intended to address legal issues raised by his January order, which caused chaos at airports worldwide and prompted protests in major US cities and airports. States, including Hawaii, the American Civil Liberties Union and refugee resettlement agencies challenged the March order in court. The order took effect on 26 June after the Supreme Court allowed the ban to go into effect for "foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".








The Wiregrass United Way began its 8th Annual Wiregrass United Way Campaign this week with its 2017 Campaign Kickoff Bus Tour making a stop in Eufaula. Miss Alabama Jessica Proctor accompanied members of the Wiregrass United Way.

Volunteers and staff with the made stops in all six counties they serve as part of the bus campaign with mini campaign kickoff events held at each of the six stops.

, WUW Board of Trustees chair, and Rich Merrell, overall campaign chairman, spoke to the crowds gathered at each stop along with Miss Alabama. Several local businesses were recognized and presented pacesetter awards.

The overall goal for the Wiregrass United Way for this year is $2,840,000. This goal represents a 1% increase over the amount raised last year. If the organization reaches this goal, the Wiregrass Foundation will contribute an additional $400,000. The goal for Barbour County has been set at $136,000. As of Tuesdays campaign kickoff, $49,637 of that goal has been raised.

Serving with Johnson and Merrell in leadership positions this year are the county chairs. For Barbour County, Blair Osmer is the board chairman.

The Wiregrass United Way has served the Wiregrass area since 1938, currently funding 44 member agencies in Barbour, Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston counties. Funds raised by the Wiregrass United Way are utilized locally in the six county areas.

A committee of local volunteers determines how the funds are distributed among the member agencies. For more information call 792-9661 or visit the website at www.wuw.org.
Organisers of the upcoming Mexican GP are hoping their showcase event will embody the country's fighting spirit following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake which hit Mexico City earlier this week.

The event, set to take place on October 29, is still on schedule, with initial examinations of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez revealing no structural damages.

"We'll continue doing the assessments as we go, but so far there's really no concern - we'll have a race," said Mexican GP press officer and marketing director Rodrigo Sanchez Peraza.

"We need to remain together in the bad and the good, not only in the bad. I think that's a powerful message and something we need to show.

"The same pride you see in the grandstands, we're seeing it in devastation zones right now."

Organisers are also encouraging support for the country's recovery efforts by donating to UNICEF Mexico, the Mexican Red Cross, Oxfam Mexico and Save the Children Mexico.

Billionaire Carlos Slim, who was instrumental in helping Force India's Sergio Perez reach F1, has set up several foundations destined to help Mexico City and the families of the estimated 250 victims of Tuesday's earthquake.

Perez also pledged support to his homeland by donating three million pesos to the Carlos Slim Foundation.

Mexican GP director Federico Gonzalez believes this year's event will convey an important message.

"Our priority at the moment is the recovery of the city. We are united with the individuals and families affected," said Gonzalez.

"The Mexican spirit of humanity and determination are a force to be reckoned with and it's heartening to see this in action across the city.

"As demonstrated during the two most recent editions of the Mexico Grand Prix, when the Mexican people come together we achieve incredible things. At this moment, we are all united and working together making sure we get through this.

"We want to reach out to the international community and seek their support over the coming weeks and months; there are lots of ways people can help.

"We deeply appreciate all the support and affection already demonstrated from all over the world."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

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If Renault's Malaysia GP preview is anything to go by, Jolyon Palmer will be racing in Sepang next weekend, putting to rest fears of his replacement by new recruit Carlos Sainz.

Palmer thus kicks off the first of his last six races with Renault after the termination last week of his contract with the French outfit.

Singapore saw the Briton score his best ever result in F1 following his drive to P6, and the 26-year-old is hoping for more of the same at a venue which brought him his first F1 top-ten finish last year.

"Finally we had a smooth race which is ironic given what was going on with the safety cars and the tricky weather conditions," explains Palmer.

"We made a good start, and the move on Bottas was fun; a lot happened in the two hours. It feels like a weight off the shoulders to get some points, I hope to push on now and get some more. I know I can do it."

Sepang is another 'hot and sweaty' track which will likely challenge the drivers physically although less so than in Marina Bay last weekend.

"Its always nice and warm there and I tend to do well in these humid races; Malaysia last year, Singapore this year so Im looking forward to it," says the Brit.

"Its a cool track with a good atmosphere to match. Its a flowing circuit with some long straights, fast corners and hard braking zones.

"We have a bit of confidence going there. The car keeps getting better, Im certainly improving too so well aim to get another good result.

"I raced in Sepang twice when I was in GP2 but for various reasons at the time I didnt have any memorable finishes, although one year I came up to ninth from the back of the grid.

"Last year I got my first Formula 1 point; there are plenty of overtaking opportunities on the track so Ill be looking to make the most of it and add some more points.

"Kuala Lumpur is a really cool city to explore and downtown you can visit the very modern areas with the big famous towers and then you have the more traditional areas and the markets. The citys got a great vibe."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

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France and Germany are discussing their offers regarding the mandate of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Donbas, Andreas Peschke, Germany's Federal Foreign Office's director for Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Central Asia, has said.

"As for our participation [...] we are currently discussing this issue with our partners. First and foremost, with our French partners as we closely cooperate in the Normandy format. I believe, following it we will discuss the final option with Ukrainian partners and the Russian side," Peschke told Interfax-Ukraine, replying to a question as to whether the German side is intending to put forward its offers on the peacekeeping mission's mandate.

At the same time, he did not specify whether it will be joint offers of the German and French sides.

"I would not describe it so strictly, but our dialogue on this issue is underway. It should be joint efforts ultimately," the diplomat said.

It is necessary to consider the deployment of such a mission to Donbas thoroughly, Peschke said.

"There are offers of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, there are offers of the Ukrainian side, and we believe this issue should be thoroughly considered," he said.

Such a mission would facilitate the implementation of the Minsk Agreements, "if we are able to determine parameters that are mutually acceptable by the parties," the German diplomat said.

Peschke said he believes it is possible to find a compromise on the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas in the near future.
A relatively new form of cybercrime recently has been plaguing American consumers. Thieves have been hijacking mobile phone account numbers and then transferring services to a different device, The New York Times reported last week.

Further, hackers have begun using mobile numbers to raid digital wallets and similar accounts, according to the paper.

This type of theft has been successful even against the most sophisticated of consumers. Accounts belonging to the chief technologist of the Federal Trade Commission, Lorrie Cranor, are among those that reportedly have been breached.

A simple identity theft scam targeted two of her phones, Cranor wrote in an online post earlier this year, resulting in her eventually losing control of her devices and her account information, not to mention the intrusion into her personal life and loss of privacy.

Identity thieves simply walked into a store, claimed to be her, and asked for a mobile phone upgrade. They walked out with two new iPhones assigned to her number. The SIM cards on her account were deactivated.

The FTC declined to comment on whether it was pursuing an investigation related to the incident.

Cyberthefts involving a mobile phone account hijacking or opening of a new mobile account in a victims name have jumped from 1,038 reported to the FTC in January of 2013, or 3.2 of all identity thefts reported to the commission in that month, to 2,638 in January 2016, or 6.3 percent.

Because only about 1 percent of identity thefts are reported to the FTC, regulators have only a small slice of examples to evaluate when trying to get ahead of data scams.

Vulnerable Systems

The incidents that have been reported showcase a vulnerability in todays security protocols, said Mark Nunnikhoven, senior vice president for cloud research at Trend Micro.

A lot of multifactor identifications systems use text messages as a tool to verify identity, because the goal of many attacks is to take control over the phone number and not the physical handset, he told the E-Commerce Times.

These attacks use social engineering techniques to abuse a mobile phone providers business processes, Nunnikhoven said. The attacker calls up the mobile phone provider and uses just enough information about you, plus a few social engineering techniques, to get the provider to transfer the number to new accounts.

Its a lot easier to have a legit number ported than it is to hack an entire phone network, he noted.

However, hacking numbers has been a feature of SS7 attacks in the past, Nunnikhoven recalled. The System Signaling 7 system, which is used by mobile phone networks to communicate with each other, is vulnerable to a type of hack that transfers phone and text messages to another device. An SS7 attack was demonstrated in the U.S. most famously in a 2016 60 Minutes segment.

Adding layers of security to authenticate a legitimate customer creates additional problems for mobile phone companies that have to deal with millions of calls and need to create an efficient workflow while making sure customer data is secure, Nunnikhoven pointed out.

Every mitigation that you can use to avoid this kind of account hijacking makes that customer service workflow more difficult, he said, which is exactly what the carrier is trying to avoid.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Password resets are only as secure as the destination of the reset, said Kevin Epstein, vice president of the threat operations center at Proofpoint.

Persuading phone companies to transfer numbers to a new device is like [filing] a mail forwarding order with the post office and then asking for a credit card company to mail a new PIN to a cardholders address, he told the E-Commerce Times.

US Security Lagging

Cybertheft of mobile phone numbers is a U.S. problem to the best of my knowledge, said Sean Sullivan, security advisor at F-Secure.

European and certainly Finnish operators have stronger controls in place to prevent transferring accounts to new SIMs, he told the E-Commerce Times.

So why hijack the phone number? The point of hijacking the phone number is because it guards the Gmail account, for example, Sullivan said.

The Gmail account is used to provide access to financial accounts. So, you gain control of the phone number, you go to Gmail and use the I forgot my password and Google sends a code to your phone number that is used in the password reset process. And then the thief can use the Gmail account to reset bank passwords, etc. And services such as PayPal may use SMS messages as a second factor of authentication, he explained.

Basically, in order to protect what were originally Web-based services, companies extended security to phones  using them as a second factor. So, the phone is now a target, Sullivan remarked.

Two measures that Sullivan takes to protect his accounts:

I have email addresses for Google / Windows / Apple accounts that are used only for administrating my accounts. The associated email addresses are not used in connection with my online services. I try to avoid providing my phone number to my online services. I use an authenticator app for MFA/2FA . Hijacking my phone number will not provide access to my authenticator app.

So, what to do? Sullivan asked.

U.S. operators need to improve security controls  thieves have reportedly been successful in getting numbers transferred by repeatedly calling customer support, until they reached an agent willing to make the change even without all the proper information, he noted.

Further, online services should do more to encourage and provide options for authenticator apps  and to move away from phone/SMS-based solutions, Sullivan recommended, at least for tech-savvy customers with something more to lose.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he is confident that a United Nation peacekeeping mission to Donbas would be deployed all over the region.

"Of course, it won't be the Russian scenario," Poroshenko said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Toronto.

"The peacekeeping mission should have the United Nations mandate and be deployed to the entire territory of Donbas up to the border between Ukraine and Russia to prevent troops and weapons from getting to the occupied territory," Poroshenko said.

"I believe that the UN peacekeeping operation will be a real breakthrough in the peaceful settlement. In this endeavor, expertise and advice of our Canadian friends would be of great value for us," Poroshenko said on Facebook following negotiations with the Canadian prime minister.

"Also we have talked about reforms in Ukraine, and I appreciate that Ukraine remains one of the priority countries for Canada's international assistance," he said.
There has been an assassination attempt on the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic's (DPR) Revenues and Duties Minister, Alexander Timofeyev, the DPR said on its official website on Saturday.

"There has been an assassination attempt on Deputy Chairman of the DPR Council of Ministers, Revenues and Duties Minister Alexander Timofeyev at the intersection of Myru Avenue and Ulrikh Street at 08:30 a.m. today, September 23. According to sources, Alexander Timofeyev has been hospitalized in grave condition," the website said.

Meanwhile, the press service for the DPR Revenues and Duties Ministry said that the minister's car has been bombed.

"We are not aware where the explosive device was planted. We have just talked to the minister, he's safe and sound," the press service told the Donetsk News Agency.

Eight people were injured in the explosion, the incident site has been cordoned off, employees of the DPR law enforcement agencies and Interior Ministry are working there, it said.

An Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported earlier on Saturday that two explosions had occurred near Myru Avenue in downtown Donetsk.
In the age of post-truth and alternate facts, perhaps one should not be surprised with Prime Minister Narendra Modis statements as he inaugurated the multipurpose Sardar Sarovar dam in Gujarat on his 67th birthday on 17 September. Virtually dismissing the complex and controversial history of the dam project that has stretched over three decades, Modi claimed, I decided that with or without the World Bank, we would go ahead with the project. The facts are rather different. He also claimed that donations from the temples of Gujarat came in to help finance the project after the World Bank pulled out of its funding commitment. Once again, he was stretching the truth.

The Sardar Sarovar dam, one of the 30 large, 135 medium and 3,000 small dams that are being built on the Narmada river, was not financed by temples. It was paid for by government funds after the World Bank, which had extended a loan of $300 million, pulled out before releasing its final tranche in 1993. It is the reason behind the World Banks decision, and the peoples struggle against it that are a part of the narrative on the history of this project. And it is this history that we must remember without embellishment to draw from it the crucial lessons India needs to heed as it goes ahead. That Modi chose to dismiss this as a massive disinformation campaign against the project only goes to show how, irrespective of the party in power, the message of responsible, equitable and sustainable development has yet to find a mark.
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If you enjoy a fright and don't mind travelling out of Essex for a real scare this Halloween, then where better than to head to a haunted prison that incarcerated some of Britain's most dangerous criminals.

Shepton Mallet Prison, in Somerset, was once home to London's most notorious London gangsters the Kray Twins, and will be opening to the public for overnight ghost hunts at Halloween , reports the Bath Chronicle .

Visitors, working in small teams, will spend the night ghost hunting and seeking the spooky spirits which inhabit the prison.

Guests at the prison will use up to date ghost hunting equipment including table tipping, watch and wait vigils, glass moving, Ouija Boards, and the opportunity to carry out your own mini investigation.

Organisers of the event said: "You will also be given time to explore the prison on your own and carry out your own mini ghost hunt.

"Working in small teams this is an amazing experience.

"Sometimes daunting, sometimes terrifying but always memorable."

Originally built as a House of Correction in 1625 this prison has a grim history.

In the 17th and 18th Centuries the men, women and children who were imprisoned here existed in the most hideous conditions where they were left starving in packed, small pox infested cells.

During the 1950s, it was a Category C Lifer Prison incarcerating the most cold-hearted and dangerous of criminals including the notorious Kray Twins.

Brutal executions took place here and it is thought that former inmates lie in unmarked graves throughout the graves.

Eighteen American soldiers were recorded as being killed for crimes including rape and murder.

Sixteen were hanged and two shot by firing squads.

This event is booking up fast!

Book your place at www.hauntedhappenings.co.uk or find out more by calling 0115 9720570.

HMP Shepton Mallet is at Frithfield Lane, Shepton Mallet, BA4 5LU and is about a three and a half hour drive from Essex.
The fire at the ammunition depot near the village of Maloyanysol, Donetsk region's Nykolske district, not far from Mariupol has been extinguished, the Ukrainian State Emergency Situations Service said on Saturday.

The fire occurred on Friday.

"The field close to the base grounds was set on fire by unknown civilians," the South operations command said citing commanders of the military unit, where the incident had happened.

"The fire spread to the depots which store munitions causing these to detonate," the South operations command said.

A criminal case on charges of deliberate damage or destruction of property has been initiated on the grounds of the fire.
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An anti-fascist group gathered in Chelmsford city centre today (September 23), in response to a planned English Defence League march.

Essex Unite Against Fascism set themselves up beside Lloyds Bank on Chelmsford High Street, awaiting for EDL members who had planned to march through the high street.

Rumours suggest that only one to five members of the far-right street protest movement showed up and so they cancelled their plans to march.

Regardless of the cancellation, between 20 to 30 anti-fascist protesters showed up to express their disgust of the views of the EDL.

One man said: "We've already seen what fascism has done with Nazi Germany, we don't want to go down that road again."

Three liaison officers from Essex Police were on the scene in case of any hostility, and riot vans were seen elsewhere in the city.

He added: "There's not been any hostility. A bit of verbal abuse but nothing major. We're not a violent group."

The demonstration was set to last until 3pm, but due to the failed march of the EDL, the protesters decided to pack up early and had left by 1.30pm.

Another campaigner said: "We are obviously delighted that the EDL failed to march. They had a poor turnout. It shows that the EDL is pretty much a spent force.

"Not that we should rest on our laurels because there is a rise of the far right and white supremacy across the world. We can be happy that the EDL failed but we must stay on our guard."
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Get the latest on all the biggest court and crime news in Essex direct from our expert court reporter

A man was arrested in Chelmsford on suspicion of sexual grooming, after a self-styled paedophile hunting group.

The CSE Interceptors carry out stings in a bid to bring offenders to justice.

Following one of their stings yesterday (September 22), police arrested a 27-year-old man on suspicion of sexual grooming.

A spokesman for Essex Police said: "The man was arrested in New London Road at around 1.10pm after information was passed on by a third party. He has since been released under investigation."

Earlier this week a man was charged following a similar sting.

Douglas Hutchings, 74, of High Street, Maldon, was charged with sexual grooming.

He was arrested shortly after 1pm on Tuesday, June 20, after a tip-off from the paedophile hunting group to Essex Police.
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A witness has described the horrific moments that followed an acid attack in Stratford this evening.

We have already reported how six people have been injured following the incident that took place at around 8pm and one man has been arrested.

It happened outside The Stratford Centre, very close to the part of the train station where thousands of commuters travel into London from Essex each day.

Witness Zak Abdi, who had been shopping with his friends at the time, recorded footage at the scene.

He told Mirror Online: "I was about to leave the station and a few guys were scattering, and there were guys on the floor in agony, with their friends all around them.

"The police locked off the whole area, it was just hectic. The police did what they can."

(Image: @MilvertonTaylor on Twitter)

He said: "It happened right outside Stratford, not far from the Westfield. I saw a group of guys running. Police couldn't stop them.

"It hit a group of men who looked like they were en route to a club.

"It didn't hit just one person, it hit a crowd of people. One guy had been hit in the face, he kept shouting 'I can't see, I can't see, I can't see'.

"I think he has lost his vision. He kept shouting, it was a scary moment for everyone.

"Everyone was just jumping out of the way, trying to escape the whole thing. I feel traumatised, it could have been me if I'd been two minutes later."

Met Police officers remain at the scene this evening.

A statement from the force reads: "Police were called just before 8pm on Saturday, 23 September to the area around Stratford Shopping Centre to reports of a group of males spraying what is believed to be a noxious substance.

"London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade have attended. A number of people have been reported injured at different locations - believed to be six people. We await further details. One male has been arrested on suspicion of GBH.

"Officers remain on scene. A cordon is in place. Enquiries continue."
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A new Facebook hoax has led users of the popular social media site into panic.

A myth suggests that there is a hidden list on the site, which allows Facebook users to discover people who are stalking them on the social media platform.

According to the hoax, Facebook will give you a list if you go to the block section in setting and type in "following me".

However, it is a ruse and nothing else, according to the Birmingham Mail. Despite this, the hoax is still making the rounds across the website and people are getting frightened.

One user wrote: " I Just learned something new. If you go to account settings, blocking, block users, and type in "following me", without the quotes, you might be surprised just who is following you. I had a lot people on it that I had no clue who they were. They are blocked now. I had to block them one at a time. Creepy..most were middle eastern. And all my posts are to friends, not public."

Experts have outed the whole thing as nothing but a ruse to scare people.

The hoax has done the rounds previously, but is seemingly picking up serious traction this week.

When you type something into the "search bar" on Facebook, it is going to find ANY and ALL pages, people, and/or posts with those words in them.

What you're probably seeing is a list of people with names that include letters from the words "following" and "me."

So how can you find out how who really is following you?

According to Facebook's Help Center, you go to the right corner and select settings, then click public posts, then select friends or public next to who can follow me.

Tech experts at ThatsNonsense.com explain: "Why Facebook would implement a feature that would allow users to see their paid stalkers or "covert followers" seems oddly counter-productive, yet this logical flaw hasn't seemed to stop these rumours from going viral, regularly."

Quite.
A detailed and well researched historian who questions and compares the various (and not reliable sources) to try to come to some conclusions.



I've thumbed forward a bit an it's clear the book will give a good insight into Anglo-Saxon England and the results of the Norman.



The book gives a very clear picture of noble life in Normandie in the 11 century. Bear in mind that parts of some buildings in Rouen today date from that period.

It's written in unnecessarily complex academic French. Who really uses the verb "seoir" today....as in "comme il sied"?



I need a good dictionary to understand some of the terms used in today's French, and certainly also Google to understand some of the ancient French words used as if they have currency today. Eg l'aune, destrier, senechal and many more.



There's no index! Grrrr. It's written as a literary piece, you have to read it from start to finish, you can't use it as a reference book to check something.



Geography is important to understand who did what, to whom, where and when. There is no sensible map of France (and Italy, and Turkey, and Palestine!) which would help understanding. A time table of key events would be helpful too. This is not the first time I have found these problems with otherwise good French "textbook".



There are quite a few photographs of contemporary documents. The use an indecipherable script, and use either ancient French, or Latin which does not relate too much to the Latin I learnt at school. Not very informing?

Well, if you read this then the title of the thread has passed the "censor test"!I refer, of course, to Guillaume le Conqerant (le Batard de Normandie), or as I knew him at school as "Willy the Conk"I recently bought a book, in French, entitled "Guillaume le Conqerant" by Gilduin DAVY. It's here on Amazon.I'm about half way though it, I'm at 1040....Bill(ha!) is not thinking of making a tourist trip to England yet....he's got other problems of unruly lords beneath him. He also had a problem with people calling him "Guillaume le Batard". (True, he was so, but it's not very polite?) He solved this, when he was old enough (14 years), by killing the people concerned. The name did not stick!Anyway, here are a few comments on the book. I'm not into history for the sake of it, but living in Rouen I like to take an interest in "local affairs".Overall, I'm enjoying it, but it is hard work.Has anybody else read it? You'll like it if, err, err, this is the sort of thing that you like.DejW
Even in the run up to a general election, the economy in New Zealand is strengthening, jobs market growing and more people are being tempted to move to the nation to live and work.New Zealand is a popular location with expats and with visitors and they are being attracted by the countrys strong growth and outlook. There has been a rise in people moving from the UK and South Africa.  The nation is also proving popular with visitors, with numbers from both Australia and the United States, increasing, and sporting events also boosting the number of people spending time in the country.Figures from Statistics New Zealand shows that strong export and domestic demand are underpinning growth. Exports of goods posting the biggest quarterly increase in nearly 20 years and 11 of 16 industries increased in the latest quarter, with retail trade and accommodation having the biggest rise.The World Masters Games and Lions' rugby tour increased tourist spending on accommodation, food, and beverages, boosting a usually quieter time of year.The latest official figures also confirm just how popular New Zealand is with annual net migration at 72,100 in the year to August 2017, up year on year and arrivals reached 132,200, a new annual record.The biggest increase in arrivals were from South Africa and the United Kingdom as more people from these countries decided to settle in New Zealand. Fewer people are arriving from India with arrivals down 2,600, mainly due to fewer students from India studying in New Zealand.More people are also visiting New Zealand. The figures show that in August 2017 some 234,000 visitors arrived, a new August record, and 6% more than in August 2016. Almost half of the visitor arrivals were people coming to New Zealand from Australia.Visitor arrivals numbered 3.7 million in the August 2017 year, another new annual record, up 9% from the August 2016 year. The increase was mostly due to the 86,500 or 6% more people visiting from Australia and 55,200 or 21% more from the United States.
Bexar County has reversed its decision to move a polling site for the Nov. 7 election from Takas Park to a public school a few blocks outside Windcrest city limits, due to the insistence of city leaders that voting in municipal elections occur within city limits.

We will hold elections that have to do with our city inside our city, Windcrest Mayor Alan Baxter said at a special city council meeting Friday.

He expressed concern that using Ed White Middle School, 7800 Midcrown, would hurt local voter turnout. Ten candidates are vying for three council spots in the Nov. 7 city elections.

Windcrest, like many of San Antonios suburban cities, contracts with Bexar County to conduct its elections. Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen told Baxter on Tuesday that early voting would move from Takas Park to Ed White Middle School, 7800 Midcrown, due to recurring logistical problems at Takas Park and security concerns.

The city repeatedly booked the community center at the park for evening events during early balloting in past elections, Callanen said, forcing election staffers to remove their equipment and reinstall it the next morning.

At one time we had to move into a hallway at City Hall because the city booked a multiday event, Callanen said.

Windcrest residents also have barraged her with requests to move out of Takas Park, she said, many citing an alleged assault of one campaign worker by another last year at the site.

As a candidate last year, I didnt feel safe down there, said Pam Dodson, who favored using the school site outside the city. In the past weve relied on our police department for security.

After negotiation, Callanen said, she agreed to keep the polling site at Takas Park after Baxter agreed to pay the cost of posting a sheriffs deputy there during early voting.

We want our voters to be welcomed and not to be hassled or intimidated, she said.

Calling the park safe, Baxter professed no knowledge in a post-meeting interview of any such funding commitment, but said, If Bexar County wishes us to do that, we have no problem.

Informed of Baxters remarks, Callanen said, I think I better get it in writing.

Full-time security may not be needed at the park, she said, adding, Were going to put a deputy there and see how things go.

She said Baxter had offered to post Windcrest police there.

We said, No, no, no. You cant have police officers there, recalled Callanen, noting the state election code designates sheriff deputies as the providers of election security.

Windcrest Police Chief Al Ballew didnt respond Friday to a request for details on the alleged assault last year, and to address security concerns raised by locals.

The alleged assault victim, Edith Jacobi, wife of Councilman Jake Jacobi, said despite the incident that she feels safe at the park and wants polling to remain there.

As a voter, Mike Scott is weary of facing aggressive campaigning when going to vote.

This whole political thing that goes on now here in Windcrest has taken its tone from the national stage, said Scott, a former council candidate. Its gotten ugly.

Baxter faces Dan Reese in the mayors race, while Place 4 incumbent Rick Cockerham faces Frank Archuleta.

Place 5 incumbent Jan Leaders faces Randy Bristow, Joan Pedrotti, Liz Dick, Kimberly Wright and Rusana Brooks in a crowded race.

Even if the city charter dictated that municipal elections are to occur inside the city, as some here claim, Callanen said state election code permits joint elections to be held anywhere within the boundaries of the largest local entity on the ballot, in this case Bexar County. The Nov. 7 ballot includes state constitutional amendments and other races, not just the Windcrest council elections.

She said the contract under which Bexar County is conducting the election for Windcrest gives her the authority to select polling sites for all entities on the ballot.

If theyre holding their own election, they can have the polling site wherever they want, Callanen said.

zeke@express-news.net
Ukraine ready to work with Canada on issue of visa-free travel

Ukraine is ready to work with Canada on the issue of a visa-free regime for its citizens, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"We are now ready to work with Canada in terms of achieving a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens," Poroshenko said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Toronto.

He noted in 2005 Ukraine abolished visas for Canadian citizens.

"We agreed to significantly reduce the number of refusals to Ukrainians when obtaining Canadian visas. And the validity of visas will be prolonged for the period of validity of the passport," Poroshenko wrote on his Twitter page.

The head of state stressed the importance of strengthening inter-human contacts between Ukraine and Canada.

"We discussed the further strengthening of our interpersonal contacts, in particular, we agreed to open the Consulate General of Ukraine in Edmonton," Poroshenko said.

According to him, this step will greatly facilitate business contacts, as well as contacts with the Ukrainian community.
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NEW ORLEANS  Amid a barrage of questions from a panel of appeals court judges, the state of Texas on Friday defended its law banning so-called sanctuary cities as part of its willingness to cooperate with the Trump administration in its stepped-up enforcement on illegal immigration.

In the latest battle over Senate Bill 4, the three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took some by surprise when it cut off not only the states lawyers but those for the plaintiffs as they tried to make opening arguments to pitch why  or why not  the court should keep in place the recent ruling of a judge in San Antonio that blocked the law from taking effect.

Instead, two of the appeals judges  Justice Stephen H. Higginson and Justice Leslie H. Southwick  delved into hyper-technical discourse with the attorneys over how federal law and prior court rulings apply to SB 4. Most of the oral arguments focused on one provision of SB 4 that requires local officials to cooperate with immigration detainer requests, which allow foreign-born detainees to be transferred to federal custody after they are released from state or local custody.

Early this month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the Aug. 30 preliminary injunction by Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio that stalled SB 4 in its tracks two days before it took effect. As part of the appeal, Paxtons lawyers Friday tried to make their case for an emergency stay that would set aside Garcias order so the law can take effect while the lawsuit is litigated, including the states full appeal, which is scheduled for oral arguments at the 5th Circuit on Nov. 6.

The three-judge panel is expected to make a decision soon on whether to lift or keep the injunction.

We delivered a strong case for allowing Senate Bill 4 to take effect, pending our appeal, because of the far-reaching public safety consequences of the lower courts order, Paxton, who attended the hearing, said in a written statement afterward. Enforcing immigration law helps prevent dangerous criminals from being released into Texas communities. Supreme Court precedent for measures similar to Texas law make clear that Senate Bill 4 is entirely consistent with the cooperative system of government that the Constitution created.

Higginson, appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, and Southwick, appointed by President George W. Bush, peppered the state and a Justice Department lawyer with questions to try to understand how the state can justify turning a provision of federal law that allowed local officials to voluntarily comply with detainer requests and make it mandatory. Higginson often expressed statements that he believed that the law is problematic and might not stand constitutional scrutiny.

The problem I see with SB 4 is its achieving something the federal government cant achieve, Higginson said.

For the plaintiffs, Higginson and Southwick asked how they can say SB 4 is bad when the law allows the state to tell local governments what the federal government already allows it to do, plaintiffs lawyers explained after the hearing. The third justice, James L. Dennis, appointed by President Bill Clinton, remained mostly quiet, except to keep the lawyers within time limits set by the court.

The plaintiffs, which include Latino groups and five of Texas largest cities, including San Antonio, argue that SB 4 is overly broad, is confusing and tramples on constitutional rights, including a chilling effect on officials who might speak out publicly against the law. Opponents also say the law opens the door to abuses against immigrants and Latinos.

Its our contention that its the mandatory nature that creates that new level of illegality, argued Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents San Antonio and Bexar County and some community groups.

SB 4 is writing essentially a blank check in advance for the Trump administration, argued plaintiffs lawyer Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Immigrant Rights Project.

The arguments occurred as immigrant community groups from Texas rallied outside the courthouse in New Orleans, demanding that SB 4 be struck down. At one point, the 150-plus demonstrators banged drums and chanted so loudly that they drowned out the arguments inside the hearing.

As the hearing wound down, Higginson and Southwick asked the state to explain why it seeks an an emergency stay, if the parties will be back Nov. 6.

The state is losing its sovereignty by not being able to carry out its willingness to cooperate with the federal government, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller replied.

Besides requiring local officials to comply with immigration detainer requests, SB 4 prohibits cities and counties from adopting policies that limit immigration enforcement, allows police officers to question the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest, and threatens officials who violate the law with fines, jail time and removal from office.

Garcia, the judge in San Antonio, halted the part of the bill that requires jail officials to honor all immigration detainers, the provision that punishes local officials and another that prohibits a pattern or practice that materially limits the enforcement of immigration laws.

Garcia let stand one of the most controversial portions of the law: allowing police officers to question the immigration status of people they detain. However, he found that language in that provision was too vague.

In one of its appellate briefs, Paxtons office said the laws immigration detainer provision does not violate the Fourth Amendment; its enforcement-assistance provision is not pre-empted by federal law; the prohibitions against local officials endorsing sanctuary policies do not violate free speech; and the laws provision in which officers can ask people suspected of being here illegally for immigration status are not facially vague.

In a motion filed Thursday, Louisiana, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina seek permission to file an amicus brief supporting Texas claim that SB 4 is legal and necessary.

gcontreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland
Texas correctional officials this month quietly eliminated the use of solitary confinement as a punishment for jailhouse rule-breakers, positioning the state at the forefront of a nationwide push to end the practice.

Im quite frankly very surprised and very pleased that theyve made this move, said Doug Smith, a policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

The change that took effect Sept. 1 only affects the roughly 75 prisoners in punitive solitary, leaving untouched the nearly 4,000 state prison inmates isolated in so-called administrative segregation due to gang affiliation or other security threats. The number of inmates in administrative segregation used to be more than twice that size, but has since been reduced by innovative programs.

Still, prison reform advocates and elected leaders say theres more work to be done.

Ive been concerned about their overusing administrative segregation for years, said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chair of the Texas Senates criminal justice committee. Im convinced that if youre not emotionally disturbed when you go in there, you will be when you get out.

Before the administrative change was implemented this month, Texas prison officials had made sharp reductions in its solitary confinement population. In August 2013, there were 215 inmates in punitive solitary confinement. By July 2017, that number was down to 76. In the same time frame, the number of inmates placed in administrative segregation decreased from about 7,200 to 3,940.

National trend

The policy changes have come in response to evolving national dialogue about the use of various types of isolated confinement, a Texas prison spokesman acknowledged.

Restrictive housing has been a topic of discussion across the nation for a number of years; and as an agency over the last several years, weve really looked at ways to reduce it, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said of the September policy change. When reviewing solitary confinement as a policy and practice, we determined that as a department we can effectively operate without it.

Although tough-on-crime supporters of isolated confinement have long contended that its necessary for prison safety, Lance Lowry, who heads the Texas Correctional Employees union in Huntsville, said the change doesnt pose any major security changes.

I think it does open up the state to less liability, he said, touting the move as an effort to modernize the prison system. Theres never been any factors that show that it positively rehabilitates the individual.

Now, rule-breakers will face other punishments, such as loss of good time or loss of commissary privileges, Clark said.

Those who persistently pose safety threats with violent behavior could face administrative segregation, which typically involves at least 22 hours a day alone in a cell.

The only time an inmate is released from a cell is for up to an hour a day in recreation, which is essentially a slightly larger cage, and for a shower, said Michele Deitch, an attorney who teaches at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. They must be shackled any time they leave their cell.

By another name

For advocates, the continued use of administrative segregation is troubling, even though its on the decline.

TDCJ still has wide discretion to use solitary confinement  theyre just calling it administrative segregation, said Matt Simpson, a senior policy strategist with the ACLU of Texas.

Since at least 1985, Texas prison officials have assigned members of a number of violent gangs to administrative segregation based on their membership. The population in solitary confinement ballooned, and by 2006 included nearly 10,000 prisoners. Even after reductions, the Texas administrative segregation population outpaced most other states by 2011, according to Houston Chronicle archives.

I know part of the problem  they overbuilt the damn number of ad seg cells, Whitmire said. The number for how many we need was just pulled out of the air. But when you build them, you gotta use them.

But in the wake of changing national attitudes concerning incarceration, along with pushes from legislators such as Whitmire and a growing awareness of the potential harms of long-term isolation, Texas has shifted away from its reliance on isolation.

A successful gang renunciation program, administrative segregation diversion and a transition program to help move prisoners back into the general population have all helped eat away at the thousands of restrictive administrative classifications in the Texas system.

During the same time, theres been no dramatic change in major prison violence, Clark said, although the numbers have crept upward, In 2012, there were 96 serious assaults on staff and 1,242 on other prisoners. In 2016, there were 108 serious assaults on staff and 1,456 on inmates.

In theory, the continued use of administrative segregation might keep the worst of the worst out of the general population.

You still need security detention because the Hannibal Lecters of the world are still out there, Lowry said. Theres still some bad actors in prison that will hurt people.

Reforms take hold

The changes in Texas come amid a sea change nationwide.

In California, a class-action suit on behalf of inmates who had spent years in extreme isolation netted a sharp decrease in the use of solitary. In Colorado, the chief of corrections made waves by choosing to spend a day in solitary, even as the state worked to cut back its use. And in New York, a lawsuit reformed the use of solitary, and isolated populations have since decreased.

At the latest count, the Empire State had just under 3,000 prisoners in its most restrictive form of punitive solitary confinement, known as SHU, and an unknown additional number in a less restrictive type of isolation called keep-lock, according to Scott Paltrowitz, an attorney with the advocacy group the Correctional Association of New York.

But with an inmate population of around 50,000, New York has roughly a third of the 145,000 inmates in the Texas system.

According to the most recent figures, the Lone Star State is holding just 2.7 percent of inmates in administrative segregation, Clark said.

And even in light of Texas nose-diving numbers, some advocates questioned whether the elimination of punitive solitary confinement would just result in a shift back to classifying those same inmates as threats worthy of administrative segregation.

The state capped punitive solitary stays at 15 days; administrative segregation can last for months or years.

This is the highest-risk population, and we need to acknowledge that the vast majority of them are coming home one day, Smith said. You cant write off this population because theyre the worst of the worst.

Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report.
City leaders in Fredericksburg, Kerrville and Boerne in the mid-1880s looked on with admiration and anguish as established towns such as New Braunfels and Seguin and new communities like Floresville, Devine and Hondo thrived with rail connections to San Antonio and beyond.

They witnessed old county seats such as Castroville, Frio City and Helena lose status when they were passed by. They desperately needed rail service to survive and would have to pay whatever it took to get it.

Hill Country communities were struggling. Under the best of circumstances, it took two days to reach San Antonio from Kerrville. There were no bridges and no Army posts to help maintain the trails and provide security. Boernes population was declining. The area had beautiful landscape in its favor but not much else. Large farms and ranches were not an option. What they did have was wool and wood. Many pier and beam houses in San Antonio were built on Hill Country cedar posts.

They approached Uriah Lott, the head of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad, the only one of the seven original railroads that served San Antonio to be created locally. Started in 1884, the Sap, as it was fondly known, had very little capital. Its main goal was to establish rail service with a port city other than Galveston, which was controlled by Southern Pacific. Its first 30 miles to Floresville were improvised. It used old streetcar track being replaced and intercepted a steam locomotive on its way to the scrap yard. The first train arrived in Floresville on Jan. 7, 1886. Lott then found backers in Corpus Christi to extend the tracks there.

Lott agreed to build into the Hill Country. A construction engineer by trade, he knew that finding a suitable route to climb from San Antonios 650 feet above sea level to Kerrville at 1,637 would take all of the 65 miles that separated them. Boerne and Kerrville had to pay $180,000 each, the equivalent of $5 million today. Leading families, such as the Schreiners of Kerrville, decided to take the risk.

Construction began swiftly. Tracks were laid heading north from the Sap depot south of downtown, where South Alamo crosses South Flores. (A Salvation Army store occupies the space today.) The first train to Boerne arrived March 12, 1887, to much fanfare. Special trains to bring in visitors were run, and local people welcomed overnight campers with enthusiasm. The town is 800 feet higher than San Antonio, but the terrain and the grades are gentle. Reaching Kerrville would be more of a challenge.

Continuing north, the railroad had to build its first major bridge, over the Guadalupe River. As the terrain got tougher, the people of Fredericksburg learned that they would not be getting service from the Sap after all, a bitter blow to their ambitions. Instead, the tracks went on to Comfort and then Kerrville. Along the way, residents in Zanzenburg relocated closer to the tracks and adopted the name Center Point. Bandera, 20 miles away, used passenger and freight wagons to access rail service here.

Service to Kerrville began Oct. 6, 1887. Again it was a gala occasion, with numerous special trains to bring in visitors. Many liked what they found and decided to stay. A population boom ensued. Land values soared. The gamble for city leaders paid off handsomely. But the news was not so good for the railroad itself. What it now had was an expensive-to-maintain branch line that just stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was always hoped that communities north of Kerrville would pay to extend service, but none emerged. The nearest rail connection was Llano, 62 difficult miles away.

The Southern Pacific took control. No one else was willing or able. It consolidated what the Sap had built, and Hill Country service continued unaffected. In 1916, 29 years after the rails had reached Kerrville, rail service to Fredericksburg finally began, from a junction on the Sap line just south of Comfort. The 24-mile route required 24 bridges ranging in length from 25 to 70 feet, the largest being almost 42 feet high. It also required the construction of a tunnel, one of the very few in Texas. The SP and major banks refused to help fund construction, so it was paid for by local businessmen. Construction was so expensive and revenue so small that the original company  the San Antonio, Fredericksburg and Northern  declared bankruptcy in 1917. The company was reorganized as the Fredericksburg & Northern. Original backers lost their entire investment.

An unusual aspect of the Hill Country line was its heavy reliance on passengers as opposed to freight. Hotels flourished with a steady stream of visitors. The military also took advantage of the line. There were tracks right into Camp Stanley, which became a major storage facility, and many a soldier disembarked at Leon Springs for a final route march into nearby Camp Bullis. During World War I, the army opened a rifle rage near Center Point and an artillery range near Kerrville. To encourage civilian development, the SP brought in special farm trains, staffed with agricultural experts to teach recent immigrants from Europe how to make the land profitable. Each station agent was expected to know his local customers well. Some got tired of constantly spelling their Germanic names and just painted them on the interior walls of the depot. You can see the history of each one in the surviving depot in Welfare.

The economics of providing Hill Country rail service were never good. The line was especially expensive to maintain. Branch lines need a major industry to sustain them, but this never emerged. With better automobiles and roads, and buses that charged lower fares, even passenger service began to dry up. The SP began running doodlebugs, lightweight, gasoline-powered passenger/light freight combinations to save money but maintain their common carrier passenger obligations.

The Fredericksburg line, the last to be built in South Texas, which the SP declined to acquire, was the first to be abandoned. Its last train ran in July 1942. All local passenger service ended in 1947. One depot after another was closed. Center Point was the first to go. Freight service declined as trucks took over. The construction of the interstate was the final nail in the coffin. The last train to Kerrville, delivering asphalt, was run May 15, 1970. The tracks north of Camp Stanley were pulled up the next year. The facility continued to use rails until the early 1990s. The tracks now stop at a large quarry just north of Loop 1604.

Hill Country rail service lasted 84 years. It never made a profit in one of them. Today, many people regret that the tracks to Kerrville were pulled up. They believe they could have become a popular scenic railroad, similar to the Hill Country Flyer between Cedar Park, north of Austin, and Burnet. That line survives because the city of Austin bought the tracks when the SP applied to abandon it. Freight service and, more recently, a commuter line, make the expense worthwhile, and the tourist train somewhat rides its coattail. Austin even pays for the liability insurance on the line. None of these things happened on the Kerrville branch.
Poroshenko: G7 could become platform in issue of returning Crimea

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko counts on assistance of G7 countries in the issue of returning Crimea to the sovereignty of Ukraine.

"I consider G7 as a platform that will help us, the international group of friends to terminate the occupation of Crimea," Poroshenko said at a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Toronto.

Poroshenko noted Ukraine counts on Canada during its presidency in G7 [from 2018].

"Thanks to the chairmanship of G7, Canada could play an even more important role in ensuring peace and stability in Ukraine and Europe," Poroshenko stated.
Kevin Hart's wife Eniko Parrish is "is fully cooperating with the law enforcement investigation" into the comedian's alleged extortion scandal.

Kevin Hart and Eniko Parrish

The 'Central Intelligence' star has been targeted in extortion attempt over a sexually-suggestive video but Eniko - who is pregnant with the couple's baby - is standing by him and helping Kevin through the investigation.

A source told PEOPLE: "She is standing by Kevin's side. They are dealing with this together. She is adamant about working through it. She won't give up on their marriage."

However, the allegations and extortion attempt have taken their toll, with another insider explaining: "She has been hounded and is very upset. She is trying to stay healthy and enjoy her pregnancy, but the latest drama is too much."

Kevin, 38, - who also has children Heaven, 12, and Hendrix, nine, with ex-wife Torrei - revealed the extortion plot when he sent "many apologies" to his wife and children in an emotional Instagram post, in which he discussed his "mistakes" and claimed there was someone trying to make "financial gain" from his past antics.

He said: "I'm at a place in my life where I feel like I have a target on my back.

"And because of that I should make smart decisions. And recently, I didn't. You know, I'm not perfect. I'm not going to sit up here and say that I am or claim to be in any way shape or form.

"And I made a bad error in judgement and I put myself in a bad environment where only bad things can happen and they did. And in doing that I know that I'm going to hurt the people closest to me, who've I talked to and made apologies to, that would be my wife and my kids.

"And I just, you know, it's a s***ty moment. It's a s***ty moment when you know you're wrong and there's no excuses.

"At the end of the day man, I just simply have got to do better. But I'm also not going to allow a person to have financial gain off of my mistakes and in this particular situation that was what was attempted. I said I'd rather fess up to my mistakes."

Kevin's spokesperson refused to reveal the details of what the actor was responding to.

They said in a statement: "Someone tried to set Kevin up in a failed extortion attempt. As law enforcement is involved, we cannot comment further as it could affect the investigation."
Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder have apologised after they were criticised for telling a "goofy" story about Ian throwing out Nikki's birth control pills.

Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder

The 'Twilight' star and the 'Vampire Diaries' actor have insisted their comments did not mean to make light of reproductive coercion and apologised as their only intention was just to share the story of a "goofy moment in Barcelona with their two best friends" as they decided to try for a baby.

They said in a statement: "To anyone who has been affected by reproductive coercion, we are deeply sorry. That is an extremely serious issue, and women's rights is something that is incredibly important to both of us. It is something we've been very vocal about, and something that is very close to our hearts.

"We never expected a lighthearted interview we did poking fun at EACH OTHER and how WE chose together to get pregnant. A goofy moment in Barcelona with our two best friends and the anticipation of our journey together as we went from two to three, to turn into something representing a very serious matter.

"However, if this somehow sheds light on a topic that definitely needs mainstream attention, then we are grateful for the unintended consequence. It's a shame that outlets chose this as their way into a very serious discussion, as we are certainly not qualified to be the faces of this topic."

In a previous interview, Nikki explained how Ian had "thrown out" her birth control pills, prompting Twitter users to hit out at the actor.

Speaking on Dr. Berlin's Informed Pregnancy Podcast, she said: "He threw out all my birth control pills."

Whilst Ian added: "It was the beginning of the pack, so I had to pop all those suckers out."
The American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), an alliance of ten business groups representing firms from across the Canadian, Mexican and US textile and apparel supply chain, has urged the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiators to preserve tariff preference levels (TPLs) during talks as these help keep operations competitive.Retaining the size and scope of the TPLs is essential to ensure that supply chains and the North American jobs they support are not harmed, the association said in a letter addressed to the lead trade representatives from the three nations.

The American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), an alliance of ten business groups representing firms from across the Canadian, Mexican and US textile and apparel supply chain, has urged the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiators to preserve tariff preference levels (TPLs) during talks as these help keep operations competitive.#

TPLs are special NAFTA provisions allowing customs duty at a preferential rate to non-originating goods, i.e., goods not obtained or produced in the three NAFTA countries, up to a specified quantity.AAFA urged negotiators to fully retain TPLs as these maximize the ability to use North American content in manufacturers global supply chains.NAFTA originally included permanent provisions that gave each trading partner the ability to supplement strict yarn forward rules, which means the yarn used to form the fabric must originate in a NAFTA country, with limited amounts of non-originating input.That provision allowed North American supply chains to complement originating input purchases, support manufacturing operations in all three countries, and continue using NAFTA despite the worldwide sourcing options available, AAFA feels.US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, Canadian foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland and Mexican secretary of the economy Ildefonso Guajardo lead the respective teams.The first round of talks on updating the NAFTA, which came into effect on January 1, 1994, was scheduled in Washington from August 16 to 20 and the second round was convened in Mexico from September 1 to 5.The teams will meet in Canada in late September and return to the United States in October, with additional rounds being planned for the remainder of the year. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Yet another fire incident has struck the $28 billion Bangladesh garment industry, just when it seemed that the industry has walked a long way since the deadly 2013 Rana Plaza disaster that killed over 1,100 people. This time, the fire broke out in a garment factory (after working hours) in Munshiganj district killing 6 people and injuring several others.

The fire took place in the chemicals storage area of the factory. Since the factory was closed, the fatality was low, said Bangladeshi media reports.

After China, the Bangladesh garment industry is the second biggest in the world. Over 80 per cent of the country's export earnings are from the garments industry which also provides employment to over 4 million, mostly women. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The African Institute for Corporate Citizenship (AICC) has called for government support and private sector intervention for Malawis declining cotton industry that has witnessed low production levels despite ranking fourth among the countrys foreign exchange earners. Spinning, weaving, knitting and garment manufacturing have also shrunk in the last decade.The number of ginning companies has declined significantly from twelve in 2014 to less than six in 2016 due to low volume of cotton production, AICC CEO Felix Lombe told a news agency. More ginners will imply more jobs, he said.

The African Institute for Corporate Citizenship (AICC) has called for government support and private sector intervention for Malawi's declining cotton industry that has witnessed low production levels despite ranking fourth among the country's foreign exchange earners. Spinning, weaving, knitting and garment manufacturing have also shrunk in the last decade.#

Non-governmental organisation AICC, which works in fields of agriculture, governance and health sectors, has proposed that the Malawi Government should start a cotton fund by injecting $4.8 million to rejuvenate the sector by generating $60.5 million in exports.As the country produced less than 15,000 metric tonnes of seed cotton in 2016, AICC feels the annual cotton production should be increased to over 50,000 metric tonnes.Mapeto David Whitehead and Sons is the only spinning company in the country at present and utilize less than five percent of the lint produced domestically. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Moscow City Court will consider investigators' motion on the extension of arrest of Ukrainian citizen Roman Suschenko charged with espionage on September 25, his lawyer Mark Feygin told Interfax on Saturday.

"Investigators seek the extension of Suschenko's arrest for two more months. The hearing will take place at the Moscow City Court at 10:30 a.m. on September 25," he said.

Moscow's Lefortovsky District Court made a decision to extend the restrictive measure earlier. But this motion is heard at the Moscow City Court, because investigators requested to extend Suschenko's arrest, the total duration of which has already exceeded 12 months since his detention.

It was reported on October 3 that the Ukrainian citizen had been detained "while committing an act of espionage" in Moscow. According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Col. Roman Suschenko is a career officer of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence.

Espionage charges were brought against Suschenko, he pleaded not guilty.

Lawyer Mark Feygin said that his client has been charged on several counts of espionage.

The lawyer said that Suschenko, who had lived in France for six years as a correspondent of the Ukrinform news agency in Paris, repeatedly visited Russia and stayed there for personal reasons at the time he was detained. His relatives live in Russia.

Kyiv has described Suschenko's detention in Russia as an act of provocation and the spying charges brought against him as far-fetched.
Karl Mayer, leading textile machinery firm from Germany, has released a new collection of bath towels made with super heavy warp-knitted terry fabrics with its TM 4 TS EL, a special terry tricot machine used for making terry fabrics from staple-fibre yarns. The bath towels feature long repeats, hems, and borders and are useful for the hotel sector.Soft, fluffy fabrics having the typical loop strength of warp-knitted fabrics, and consequently their high wash resistance, are mainly used at the premium end of the hotel market. The TM 4 TS EL at Karl Mayer was threaded with thick yarns in order to meet the appropriate requirements.

Karl Mayer, leading textile machinery firm from Germany, has released a new collection of bath towels made with super heavy warp-knitted terry fabrics with its TM 4 TS EL, a special terry tricot machine used for making terry fabrics from staple-fibre yarns. The bath towels feature long repeats, hems, and borders and are useful for the hotel sector.#

Christiane Litterst, a product developer in textile technology from Karl Mayer said, We used OE-spun cotton yarns having a count of Ne 12/1 in ground guide bars, GB 1 and GB 4. Cotton yarns in this count have never been processed on tricot machines before. Even at a speed of 800 min -1, fly formation was not an issue with the type of pattern and yarns selected.The lowest count recommended previously was Ne 16. Despite this, no problems were encountered during the warp knitting process. To work the ground, cotton of Ne 16/1 was used in GB 3 and polyester of 100 den was used in GB 2.No changes had to be made to the finishing sequences either. The fabric produced weighs 600 g/ square metres, has a fluffy handle, and is extremely absorbent. The EL pattern drive of the TM 4 TS EL enables loop-free stripes to be worked to produce the pattern, and the fabric edges are worked directly during the process.The universal terry tricot machine also enables different loop heights to be worked in the same article, and very lightweight fabrics of the highest quality can also be produced. Even those warp-knitted terry fabrics weighing 200 g/ square metres have an attractive and extremely stable construction. (GK)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $2.179 billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $2.059 billion in the same period of 2016-17.

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

Category-wise, knitwear exports rose 7.53 per cent year-on-year to $439.258 million during the two-month period, while exports of non-knit readymade garments were up by 15.65 per cent to $418.631 million.

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

Among textiles, raw cotton exports fetched $8.697 million during the period under review, showing a drop of 14.71 per cent compared to exports of $10.197 million during the same months of the previous fiscal. Cotton yarn exports also fell by 3.98 per cent to $210.413 million, as against exports of $219.140 million made during July-August 2016.

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

Exports of cotton fabric dropped 7.86 per cent to $349.302 million during the two-month period, while bedwear exports increased by 8.09 per cent to $384.321 million, the data showed.

On the import side, synthetic fibre imports were up 11.91 per cent year-on-year to $96.033 million, whereas imports of synthetic and artificial silk increased 19.13 per cent to $117.989 million.

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

Meanwhile, the value of textile machinery imports by Pakistan increased 16.12 per cent year-on-year to $88.333 million during July-August 2017, which shows a rise in confidence among the countrys textile entrepreneurs.

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

In fiscal 2016-17 that ended on June 30, the value of textile and garment exports made by Pakistan increased by 0.04 per cent to $12.452 billion compared to exports valued at $12.447 billion in 2015-16. (RKS)

The value of textile and garment exports from Pakistan increased by 5.81 per cent year-on-year in dollar terms in July-August 2017, according to data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. During the first two months of fiscal 2017-18, Pakistan earned $... billion from textile and apparel exports compared to $... billion in the same period of 2016-17.#

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL) has become a member of 3GPP, the most influential global organization in developing the standards in 5G, which is targeted for commercial launch in 2020. By becoming a member of 3GPP, Turkcell will assume an active role aiming at remarkable contributions in the development phases of 5G, viewed as the technology of the future. Turkcell's many years of experience will be instrumental in 5G standardization activities along with other global players.

Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL) prepares to leave its mark on 2018 with a major and exciting step forward in the technology field. On its path to rapidly becoming the world's first global digital operator, Turkcell will be involved in the standardization work of 5G, which is the next generation wireless technology after 4G, together with other major global corporations in the field. Becoming a member of the most prominent global organization in the development of the 5G standards, Turkcell will join the efforts and leave its mark on the technologies that will be shaping the future.

We aim to be a pioneer in 5G

Pointing to the infrastructure preparation work on 5G that has been underway for a while, Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu spoke as follows: "As Turkey's Turkcell we are proud to be a pioneer in several fields concerning 5G. We reached record speeds in one of the world's first 5G tests, which took place under the roof of Turkcell. To lay the groundwork for Turkey to be a major player in the field, we are engaged in scientific cooperation with universities and are continuing to support the leading efforts of BTK (Information and Communication Technologies Authority), all aimed at making Turkey one of the first countries to implement 5G. We have gained valuable experience in infrastructure and product deployment, service development, making network improvements, and offering the latest technologies, by cooperating with global players. In the field of 5G, as a corporation we desire not to be a mere consumer. Instead, we aspire to be a producer, a company involved in the development activities as a leader, and are continuing to work steadily towards that goal. In this scope, we are very happy to be a member of 3GPP, as part of the next step in these efforts, and looking forward to participating in this undertaking alongside the other leaders. With this crucial move, we, as Turkcell, have stepped further towards the 5G era. We believe that our unique approach, as the world's first digital operator, will contribute greatly to 5G technology, together with other 3GPP member companies".

The most important organization setting mobile communications standards

Established in 1998 to set the 3G-UMTS standards, under the name of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP has later become the most important organization developing the 4G and 5G mobile communications standards. 3GPP is the global organization that works not only on further improving the mobile technologies we currently use, but also on defining 5G technologies, establishing the new and advanced features, and their standardization activities.

ABOUT TURKCELL: Turkcell is a digital operator headquartered in Turkey, serving its customers with its unique portfolio of digital services along with voice, messaging, data and IPTV services on its mobile and fixed networks. Turkcell Group companies operate in 9 countries Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Northern Cyprus, Germany, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Moldova. Having launched LTE services on April 1st, 2016 in Turkey, Turkcell reached 84.12% population coverage as of September 30, 2017 employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation technologies in 81 cities. In 2G and 3G, Turkcell's population coverage in Turkey is at 99.59% and 96.98%, respectively, as of September 30, 2017. Turkcell offers up to 1 Gbps fiber internet speed with its FTTH services. Turkcell Group reported TRY4.6 billion revenue in Q317 with total assets of TRY32.3 billion as of September 30, 2017. It has been listed on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only NYSE-listed company in Turkey. Read more at www.turkcell.com.tr

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180119005506/en/

Contacts:

Turkcell Corporate Communications

Burak Mergen

burak.mergen@turkcell.com.tr
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / October 10, 2017 / Lundin Law PC, a shareholder rights firm, announces a class action lawsuit against TransDigm Group Incorporated ("TransDigm" or the "Company") (NYSE: TDG) for possible violations of federal securities laws from May 10, 2016 through January 19, 2017, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors, who purchased or otherwise acquired TransDigm shares during the Class Period, should contact the firm by October 10, 2017, the lead plaintiff motion deadline.

To participate in this class action lawsuit, click here.

You can also call Brian Lundin, Esq., of Lundin Law PC, at 888-713-1033, or you can e-mail him at brian@lundinlawpc.com.

No class has been certified in the above action yet, and until a class is certified, you are not considered represented by an attorney. You may also choose to do nothing and be an absent class member.

The Complaint alleges that, during the Class Period, TransDigm made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose: that the Company's growth and profitability were artificially inflated because of its illicit business practices; that TransDigm used exclusive distributors to make noncompetitive government bids seems competitive; that the Company's subsidiaries failed to list TransDigm as a parent entity when submitting government bids; and that, as a result of the above, the Company's statements about its business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. Following this news, TransDigm's stock price fell materially, which harmed investors according to the Complaint.

Lundin Law PC was founded by Brian Lundin, Esq., a securities litigator based in Los Angeles dedicated to upholding shareholders' rights.

This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics.

Contact:

Lundin Law PC

Brian Lundin, Esq.

Telephone: 888-713-1033

Facsimile: 888-713-1125

brian@lundinlawpc.com

http://lundinlawpc.com/

SOURCE: Lundin Law PC
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, September 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Today marks the 87th anniversary of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This day provides an opportunity to think about ways to give back to the nation, and there are many ways to give back to one's country. One of these ways is to preserve the resources that the nation has, and at the forefront of these resources, is energy. It is the vein that Saudi Arabia feeds on to continue its development and prosperity.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/

For the past three years, the demand for energy increased at a yearly rate of 8%, and is expected to increase up to 58% in the next 25 years. These figures will have an immense impact on oil, especially that 90% of the Kingdom's revenue is generated from oil exports. While 27% percent of the produced oil is spent on generating energy.

Dr. Mohanad Al Shaikh the CEO of Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) said, "Today energy is a basic human need, and is essential to further prosperity, development, and sustainability. Therefore, it is extremely important to preserve this resource. Yet energy efficiency and preservation do not come easily. They require great efforts and awareness, as well as the transfer and adoption of the latest global technologies, adapting them to meet the needs of all economic and development sectors; especially the energy-efficient technologies. Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) has always been at the forefront of energy conservation, and in line with the government's initiatives towards increased energy efficiency early on. In ddition to the importance of raising awareness of smart energy use, as it will provide the opportunity of supporting the national economy by diversifying revenues."

Al Shaikh, also highlighted the role that the company plays in energy efficiency by providing high energy efficiency HVAC units. Pointing out the affinity of the company's strategy with the Saudi Vision 2030, which was initiated by the government to limit random energy consumption. In addition, He mentioned that the company will continue its efforts to support the local manufacturing industry to achieve the desired sustainability; through providing products with the highest ratings of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization. In light of the Saudi National Day, Al Shaikh also urged other industries to conserve energy and rely on all means to do so.

"It is with great pride that we reminisce in the great achievements in many fields under the leadership of our government, and celebrating this national day revives the spirit of prosperity in us." Al Shaikh, concluded.

About Al Salem Johnson Controls:



Al Salem Johnson Controls, founded Controls in 1991, was the result of a strategic partnership between the Group of Companies Al-Salem and Johnson Controls Global, which specializes in providing integrated solutions in ventilation, cooling and air conditioning HVAC systems, fire safety, security installations and control, it has proven its ability to raise the efficiency of energy consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.



Johnson Controls Global is well known for its leadership in technical and industrial fields globally, with a strong presence in 170 countries. The vision and common goals between the Johnson global and the Al-Salem group was a stepping stone in bringing a diverse spectrum of services and high-quality products and solutions to the Kingdom, in order to achieve optimal energy efficiency and operations.

Al Salem Johnson Controls has some noteworthy achievements across various Saudi projects, including the King Abdullah Science and Technology University, expansion of the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah, expansion of King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah, in addition to major universities such as University of Imam Mohammed, University of Princess Noura in Riyadh, King Abdullah Financial District, Aramco, Ministry of Education, and Pilgrims House in Saudi Arabia.

With a staff of over 2000 employees, Salem Johnson Controls is strategically located across the Kingdom to serve its diverse clientele and industry and has a unique after-sales service in terms of quality and efficiency.

For more information on Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) and its latest campaigns, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/yorkksa

https://twitter.com/yorkksa

https://www.instagram.com/yorkksa/

http://york.com.sa/

For more information, please contact:

Omar Batterjee

Public Relations Account Executive

Memac Ogilvy PR

Mob: +966-555-617-104

E-mail: omar.batterjee@ogilvy.com



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/560135/Al_Salem_Johnson_Controls.jpg )



Video:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/


The global industrial remote terminal unit (RTU) market is expected to grow at a CAGR of more than 7% from 2017-2021, according to a new market research report by Technavio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005361/en/

Technavio has published a new market research report on the global industrial remote terminal unit market 2017-2021 under their industrial automation library.

Global industrial remote terminal unit market segmentation by product and end-user

Technavio's report on the global industrial remote terminal unit market analyses the business dimensions and presents a comprehensive breakdown in terms of market segmentation by product type, including wireless industrial RTU and wired industrial RTU. The end-user industries prefer wireless industrial RTUs due to their capability of monitoring remote operations in harsh environments.

Based on end-user, the global industrial remote terminal unit market has been segmented into oil and gas industry, power generation industry, chemical and petrochemical industry, and water and wastewater industry. In 2016, the oil and gas industry accounted for a major share of the global industrial RTU market, accounting for more than 29% share of the overall market.

"Industrial RTUs are widely used in the oil and gas industry, both in onshore and offshore fields. Industrial RTUs used for monitoring oil wells enhance remote applications in the oil and gas industry. The exploration of new oil and gas fields in the US and Africa has increased the investments in the industry. This will provide a growth momentum for the adoption of latest industrial RTUs," says Raghav Bharadwaj Shivaswamy, a lead analyst at Technavio forautomation research.

This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing

Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free

Global industrial remote terminal unit market: competitive vendor landscape

The competition between vendors in the global industrial RTU market is highly fragmented in terms of product features, prices, customized solutions, and monitoring services. Leading vendors such as Emerson, Honeywell, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Yokogawa, Advantech, and ABB are the key companies that provide products and services for the global industrial RTU market. The sales of industrial RTUs take place through direct and indirect sales via suppliers, local representatives, and certified distributors. The established vendors emphasize on expanding the market for industrial RTU geographically and increasing production capacities.

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Other topics covered in the report:

Market drivers:

Increase in sales and revenue with the support of e-commerce

Growing shale oil and gas production

Market challenges:

Excessive cost of installation and maintenance services

Issues based on cybersecurity

Market trends:

Increasing integration of IoT

Aging industrial assets in process industries

Get a sample copy of the global industrial remote terminal unit (RTU) market report free of cost

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Technaviois a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171221005361/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

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New Delhi: Arvind Subramanian, whose term as Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) has been extended by a year, on Saturday said the economy was going through some "transitional issues" and the government was working towards reviving growth.

"We do have some transitional issues that we are working through, we will have to see how the economy can overcome these challenges," Subramanian said.

"We have to revive growth, investment, exports. As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, in the days ahead, you will know what the government is planning to do," he said.

Srubramanian, whose term was due to end on 16 October, has been given an extension of one year, the government said on Saturday.

"Delighted to take on the challenges. The government is working on multiple fronts," the CEA said after the extension was announced.

The Finance Minister had on Friday said that the government was fully prepared for a "responsive action" to give a boost to the economy as the GDP numbers in the first quarter dipped to a low of 5.7 per cent.

"We have taken note of all the economic indicators that are available. This has been a proactive government on the reforms agenda. Over the last two days, I have had a series of discussions with ministerial colleagues and various secretaries. The government will take additional measures in the coming days after consulting the Prime Minister," he had said.

On 19 September, Jaitley had chaired a high-level meeting to review the economic situation and discuss measures, including a possible stimulus package for the economy.
Hyderabad: Bollywood producer Karim Morani has surrendered to police here in connection with a rape case hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his bail plea, authorities confirmed on Saturday.

He surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station on the city's outskirts around midnight, the police said. The Chennai Express producer will be produced before a court later in the day.

Morani is facing the charge of raping a Delhi-based woman. The 25-year-old aspiring actor alleged that he repeatedly raped her by threatening to post her private pictures on social media.

The police had booked him in January on charges of rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cheating and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition challenging the Hyderabad High Court's verdict cancelling his bail. The High Court on 5 September had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail.
Jayan Cherian's Malayalam film Ka Bodyscapes has finally ended its long drawn battle with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), with the movie receiving an 'A' certificate after the CBFC suggested (read: commanded) four excisions and a modification, according to a report by The News Minute.

The four excisions include removal of all references to the RSS and the saffron flag wherever they appear in the movie. Additionally, the makers of the film have also been directed to delete all the visuals containing photos of the RSS founder KB Hedgewar and ideologue MS Golwalkar from the movie, along with a scene of a female character that is shown masturbating. The objectionable and disrespectful visual of a painting depicting Lord Hanuman carrying books in his hand (sic) has also been asked to be excised. All these suggestions were sent to Cherian in the form of a letter by A. Prathibha, a regional officer of the CBFC from Thiruvananthapuram.

Ka Bodyscapes only managed to receive (in the face of much difficulty) its adult certification after the Kerala High Court passed an order commanding the CBFC to certify the movie in lieu of Cherian moving the High Court after the CBFC out-rightly banned the movie, despite having several viewings for many committees.

The blatant suggestion more than articulates the fact that the CBFCs objections were driven by sheer shameful political considerations and not by anything else. I had approached the board to get the film cleared for public screening in April, 2016, and they made me run from pillar to post for over a year and a half, said Cherian, according to a report by The Hindu.
Poroshenko and Trudeau discuss course of reforms, peacekeeping mission in Donbas

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau have discussed the issues of the UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas and Ukrainian reforms.

"We've just had a very good and productive discussion with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of a wide range of areas in which Ukraine and Canada are truly exceptional partners," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Poroshenko presented Ukraine's new initiatives in the field of security and defense.

"Today I've presented Ukraine's vision of how we can establish partnership in the field of security and defense with new initiatives. I believe that the UN peacekeeping operation will become a real breakthrough in a peaceful settlement. In this endeavor, the experience and advice of our Canadian friends would be very useful for us," Poroshenko said.

The head of state stressed the importance of Canada's international assistance to Kyiv.

"We also talked about the progress of reforms in Ukraine. And I appreciate that Ukraine remains one of the priority countries for international assistance from Canada," he said.

Poroshenko expressed gratitude to Canada for the support of Ukraine.

"We are grateful to Canada, which remains one of the leaders of Ukraine's support, which we highly appreciate," the president wrote.
After TVF Pitchers, Naveen Kasturia is back in the digital space, only this time, the actor will be seen in a bilingual titled Social, also starring Rana Dagubatti,Priya Banerjee, Abdul Razzaq and Moin Khan.

The social media thriller directed by Shashi Sudigala began earlier this month and Naveen plays the protagonist who is on a mission to find his kidnapped sister through the influence of social media platforms and Rana Dagubatti plays the tycoon/ mastermind of sorts by heading a company named Social

Viu's Social addresses cyber crime and is said to be a 13 episode series about four people and their journey of finding the missing girl through social media. At the looks of it Naveen plays the vulnerable brother, who is ready to compromise on anything to find his trapped sister.

In a recent press meet, Naveen Kasturia discusses all about Social, working in Telugu for the first time, his upcoming web shows and more.

Social happens to be a bilingual digital series, what made you chose this project, also shot in Telugu apart from Hindi as your next?

I did not think much about the language when I said yes to the show. It was the script was the idea and the concept. Also I had meeting with Shashi Sudigala, that made me say yes to it. I am very keen to explore various genres and languages with digital platforms since it is a safe and enabling space for creativity. I was initially anxious about working in Telugu, but Shashi made me comfortable. Also, it is the way that the story is been told. The screenplay of the show attracted me.

How was it working with director Shashi Sudigala?

It's been very good. He's the one making things easy for us. We are improvising so much on set, he doesn't even want us to learn our lines, he just wants us to come on set and have fun. We should just know the theme or the point of the scene and nothing else. We restructure every time we come on set depending on, he takes inputs from every actor.

What according to you is the main takeaway from Social, for the audience?

I can't slot it in one genre. Can't say it's a mystery or a thriller or a drama. For me it's the theme. Every script is also trying to say something. What this show is trying to say is that you'll have to be little careful on the social space. The number of likes or comments on a picture on social media make us feel very good about, but it also hampers your privacy at some point. So it can lead to other places that we are not aware of. So that's why the tag line, a click can destroy your life.

You have worked as an assistant director in 4 films including Shangai and Jashnn, any plans of pursuing film making soon?

I wanted to be a filmmaker, so I starred as an assistant director and then I thought i'll start making my film and also act in it. That's what my master plan was. So, I won't be going back as an AD. I will still want to direct some day. Also, I am still more of an audience. I like to watch stories. As an actor I am always trying to contribute to the story and not the role. I try to contribute in that way and discuss with the director. Acting is something that I am still discovering.

What projects are you currently pursuing apart from Social?

Pitchers 2 is going to happen next. We are planning to shoot in November and December and it'll hopefully come out by March next year. I am also working on a web show called Bose with Alt Balaji, Pulkit has directed it and Rajkumar Rao is playing Bose. It has an amazing script. I have also done 3 films this year.

What can we look forward to in Pitchers 2?

It's the journey of the same guys who get the funding in the last episode. Except this time it is different conflicts in personal relationships and professional issues. The audience will also get to know their idea as that wasn't disclosed in the first season. But yeah I am can't give away the structure yet!
The first episode of Social, directed by Cycle Kick fame Shashi Sudigala, is out on Viu and to everyone's delight, it kicks off with introducing Vikram Sampath (played by Rana Daggubati). The sensational tech tycoon is being interviewed by a news channel where he discusses how his life has changed in the last few months but the story doesn't reveal how.

Taking the viewers a few months back to where it all started, Vikram is seen in his office making a viral video to start an online campaign. He encourages people from around the country to make socially relevant pages and promises to personally mentor some of the most interesting and relevant pages.

The narrative shifts to a family in Hyderabad where Prithvi (Naveen Kasturia) is packing to return to his job in the US. Like typical siblings Prithvi and his sister Veda (Preity Asrani) go on about arguing on silly things even as Veda is seen chatting with people for a trekking plan, she then leaves to meet her friends informing her mother that she will return shortly.

In a different part of the city, Neelesh (Moin), a serial failed entrepreneur and Prithvi's childhood friend is on his way to meet Chaand (Abdul Razzak), a hardware store owner with a dream to live abroad one day. Neeesh is excited to tell him all about this exciting campaign on Social, but Chaand, remembering the countless times Neelesh has gotten him into trouble, avoids discussing anything with him.

Back in Prithvi's house his family starts to worry as Veda hasn't returned home and her phone is switched off with no one aware of her whereabouts. When they approach the police, the cops are more interested in launching their website rather than helping the family in distress. When back home, a restless Prithvi decides to take extreme steps to get the attention of the police.

Is Veda a victim of a prank or something sinister online?
Mumbai: Leading activist and ex-Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed to have received death threats in a call made from a landline number in Karachi.

"At 12.33 a.m., I got a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against (former BJP minister) Eknath Khadse," she said in a statement.

Damania quoted the telephonic conversation: "Tune jina haram kar rakha hai sabka. Teri family hai na.." (You have made life miserable for everybody. You also have a family).

She said the true caller showed the number (starting with codes +92 21) from a landline in Karachi.

Damania lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in Santacruz east this morning.

"Informed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) is investigating the matter," she tweeted later.

Khadse, the senior most BJP leader in Maharashtra, had resigned as the Revenue Minister in June 2014 after his name cropped up in a dubious land deal in Pune.

Subsequently, Damania had also leveled accusations against Khadse of favouring certain contractors in the multi-crore rupees irrigation scam which is under investigation.
Ahmedabad: The Central government will on Saturday launch a country-wide LPG Panchayat as a backup to the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana to distribute LPG connections in the rural areas where conventional fuel is used for domestic purposes, an official said.

Briefing reporters in Ahmedabad on the launch of the LPG Panchayat, Indian Oil Corporation Executive Director and State-level Coordinator for Oil Industry in Gujarat Sanjeev Jain said, "The average usage of LPG among the three crore beneficiaries of Ujjwala Yojana is around three cylinders a year, as against seven-and-a-half cylinders of others."

He said through the LPG Panchayat, to be formally launched by Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan from a village in Gandhinagar district on Saturday, "we want to understand that problems and issues that are preventing increased growth of LPG".

Through officials of the oil PSUs, NGOs, Asha workers and social workers, the Panchayat aims to connect with the beneficiaries of the Ujjwala Yojana to resolve issues and wrong beliefs they may have.

Jain said one lakh LPG Panchayats would be activated across the country under the scheme during the next one and a half years. "The idea of this platform is to trigger a discussion through sharing of personal experiences on the benefits of use of clean fuel compared to traditional fuels like cowdung, charcoal or wood."

India has over 21 crore LPG connections, with 51 percent reach in the rural areas and nearly 100 percent penetration across the urban centres.

Explaining further the need for this interaction with the Ujjwala beneficiaries, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd General Manager in charge of LPG Operations Sanjay Malhotra said, "Though many have opted for conversion to LPG usage, with our target to reach a total of five crore connections, there are those who still have misconceptions that food cooked on LPG stove is tasteless and is not safe."

"Some think wood is cheaper than LPG, some are not sure about its safety and use it only to warm up tea or food for domestic animals. Some have kept it unused and continue with the conventional fuel," he added.

He said these LPG Panchayats would clear all these doubts and misgivings. The agenda would also include safe practices, quality of service provided by distributors and availability of refill cylinders.
New Delhi: The Congress on Friday urged the Election Commission (EC) to mandatorily hold all the future elections with the paper trail of votes and honour its own commitment as well as Supreme Court orders in this regard.

A delegation of top Congress leaders, led by party chief Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel, met Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) AK Joti, election commissioners OP Rawat and Sunil Arora and urged them to use voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines with the electronic voting machines (EVMs) in all the elections in future.

Assembly polls are scheduled to be held in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh later this year.

The Congress leaders also pointed out that there were talks that the Election Commission had sent the EVMs used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls earlier this year to Gujarat.

Expressing concern on the issue, they urged the poll panel to issue a clarification soon.

"We request the Election Commission to immediately issue appropriate instructions, directions to ensure that free and fair elections are conducted with the help of VVPAT machines, so as to ensure that the liberty of voters is protected by enabling them to effectively and freely cast their votes during Gujarat Assembly election 2017," the memorandum submitted by the Congress leaders to the Election Commission said.

The party said the Election Commission, being the constitutional watchdog for ensuring transparency, "must make sure" that the elections were free and fair and urged it to increase the time for paper trail of votes from the current seven seconds to 13 seconds.

It also urged the Election Commission to ensure that jail inmates or anti-social and rouge elements in preventive detention or custody were granted parole or furlough only in concurrence with the poll panel.

Senior Congress leaders Madhusudam Mistry, Deepak Babaria, Vivek Tankha, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Arjunbhai Modwadia, Siddharth Patel, VV Rabari and Gaurav Pandya were also part of the delegation.

They called for advertising and informing the public regarding voters' rights, including the one which empowered them to object to wrong recording of votes or wrong printing or any kind of manipulation or tampering with the VVPAT machines.

"If the candidate is not satisfied with the counting process or the results, on a request, there should be a recounting immediately," the memorandum said.

"The returning officer has to give a certificate of counting and comparison of paper trails to the candidates. This would also establish the credibility of the VVPAT machines," it added.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Saturday filed a chargesheet against Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah and a suspected hawala dealer, Mohammad Aslam Wani, in connection with a 2005 money laundering case filed against both for alleged terror financing.

Shah also admitted to speaking with 26/11 mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba co-founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed about the Kashmir issue, with the last conversation being in January 2017.

Enforcement Directorate files chargesheet in Delhi Court against Separatist leader Shabir Shah in PMLA Case.  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

ED submitted-Shabir Shah admitted that he talks to Hafiz Saeed on phone on the issue of Kashmir; he recently spoke to Saeed in January 2017  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

The final report, filed before additional sessions judge Sidharth Sharma, also named the alleged hawala dealer Wani, who is in judicial custody along with Shah.

As per an ANI tweet, Wani "disclosed receiving deliveries of Hawala money on behalf of Shabir Shah at Delhi", which was delivered to him by a Pakistani hawala operative Shafi Shayar.

The ED, in its chargesheet, also said that terror outfits from Pakistan funded Shah to spread terror in Jammu and Kashmir and India, as reported by ANI.

The agency investigated Shah's income and said that he has no source of income. The news agency tweeted that the separatist leader received up to Rs 10 lakhs in a donation.

Shah's wife Bilquis was also involved in collecting money through hawala funds, another ANI tweet said.

The case dates back to August 2005 in which the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested Wani.

Wani had then claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the duo.

Shah was arrested by the ED on 25 July. The agency arrested Wani on 6 August.

With inputs from PTI
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly a day after Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi accused India of state-sponsored terrorism, India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj addressed the world body on Pakistan, terrorism, climate change and UN reforms. She, however, made no mention of the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis and India's stand on it. Here is the full text of her statement at the UN General Assembly on Saturday:

Mr President,

Let me begin by offering my heartiest congratulations on your election as President of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. For those of us fortunate to represent our nations as Foreign Minister this is a particularly happy event: one of us has this honour.

Mr President,

India welcomes your efforts to place people at the heart of international diplomacy as you shape policy and lend direction to world affairs from your august chair. I thank you for the theme you have chosen: 'Focusing on people: Striving for peace and a decent life on a sustainable planet'. People, peace, decency, sustenance and focus define a noble objective.

Mr President,

The United Nations was established for the welfare, security, harmony, rights and economic progress of the people of our world. India fully supports your efforts in this great mission.

I had spoken before this Assembly last year as well. It is a year that has seen much change both in this Assembly and in the world it represents. We have a new Secretary General at the United Nations. He is determined to prepare and strengthen the United Nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We welcome his efforts, and see in him a leader who can give practical shape to a vision.

Mr President,

Our contemporary world is trapped in a deluge of troubles of which, surely, the most dangerous is the relentless rise of violence, terrorism, and the ideas that engineer this evil, are spreading at the pace of a conflagration. Climate change stares us in the face, and threatens us with its dimension. There is a growing question mark over maritime security. For a mix of reasons, provocative and inflammatory, people are leaving the psychological, cultural and economic comfort of their traditional home space to seek refuge on distant shores causing global anxiety. A large part of the globe's population is still tortured by hunger and poverty. The young are beginning to lose hope as they confront unemployment. Women, victims of historic discrimination, are demanding what they must get gender empowerment.

Nuclear proliferation is back in the zone of dangerous headlines. Cyber security has become a source of deep insecurity.

In 2015, we set ourselves a target of 2030 to find solutions to many challenges on this Agenda. Two of these years have already passed. Surely it is already time to ask how much has happened. If complacency defines the next 13 years then we are in danger of losing control. We need a sense of urgency as well as unshakable fortitude to take decisions that can avert catastrophe.

I am pleased that India has displayed the courage and leadership to take tough decisions which have launched the interlinked process of sustainable development. The complete eradication of poverty is the most important priority of the present government. Mr President, There are two ways of addressing the curse of poverty. The traditional method is through incremental levels of aid and hand-holding. But our prime minister Narendra Modi has chosen the more radical route, through economic empowerment. The poor are not helpless: we have merely denied them

opportunity. We are eliminating poverty by investing in the poor. We are turning them from job-seekers into job-providers.

All our economic programmes have a principal purpose, the empowerment of the poor: Jan Dhan, Mudra, Ujjwala, Skill India, Digital India, Clean India, Start-Up India, Stand-Up India. To describe them all would take up more time than I have at my disposal, and I shall therefore dwell on only three core programmes.

The Jan Dhan plan must surely count as the world's largest financial inclusion scheme. At least 300 million Indians who had never crossed the doors of a bank today have bank accounts; this is equivalent to the population of the United States of America. This was, understandably, not easy to complete in three years, but our banks, achieved this visionary goal set by our prime minister. While some remain to be included, the target has been set - every Indian family will have a bank account.

Mudra Yojana has enabled government to fund the unfunded. Those who had never dreamt that bank credit was within their options, today, through Mudra, are getting soft loans without collateral to begin micro businesses. I am particularly delighted to inform you that over 70 per cent of these loans have gone to women. Unemployment spreads despair. Through Skill India,

Start-Up India and Stand-Up India poor and middle class youth are being trained to match their honed talent with bank credit and become self-employed or small-scale entrepreneurs.

Ujjwala is a signature scheme of our government. Free gas cylinders are being provided to the poor so that women do not have to suffer the dangerous consequences of wood-fired kitchens. Uniquely, gender emancipation is at the creative core of this programme.

Demonetisation was a courageous decision to challenge one of the by products of corruption, the "black money" that disappeared from circulation. Today, India has passed the Goods and Services Tax legislation, through which there is one-tax across the country, without the untidy and punishing system of multiple taxes under differing categories in different parts of the country. Our "Save the girl, Educate the girl" campaign is reducing gender inequality. Our Clean India programme is generating what can only be described as a revolutionary change in social attitudes and habits.

I would like to note, at this point, that nations with rising capabilities will be able to generate such change, but the developed world must become an active partner in helping those vulnerable countries which are still mired in stagnant poverty reach SDG horizon within 2030. That is why the principle of Global Partnership was included in SDGs. I am happy to report that India has started, this year, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund.

Mr President,

We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us. On Thursday, from this dais, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi wasted rather too much of his speech in making accusations against us. He accused India of state sponsored terrorism, and of violating human rights. Those listening had only one observation: "Look who's talking!" A country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

Pakistan's Prime Minister claimed that his nation's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. I would like to remind him that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace, and friendship. Pakistan's Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.

Prime Minister Abbasi has recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events. But his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters. He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration, India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistan's politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at "forgetting" facts that destroy their version.

Pakistan's current Prime Minister spoke of a "Comprehensive Dialogue" between our two countries. I would like to remind him that on 9 December 2015, when I was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by his leader Mian Nawaz Sharif, then still Prime Minister, that dialogue between us should be renewed and named it a "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue". The word "bilateral" was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process.

I would like today to tell Pakistan's politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?

India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan nefarious export of terrorism. There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indian freedom, for we have been a sustained democracy. Every government has done its bit for India's development. We have marched ahead, consistently, without pause, in Education, Health and across the range of human welfare. We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? We produced scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists. Doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death. If Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

Mr. President,

Terrorism is at the veiy top of problems for which the United Nations is searching for solutions. We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the world's big powers.dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it?

We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals. The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them, towards duplicity.

This has been going on for years. Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism. If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together?

Mr President,

Through you, with utmost sinceriiyi I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence. Let us display our new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Mr President,

I had- identified climate change as one of the significant dangers to our existence. India has already said that it is deeply committed to the Paris Accord. This is not because we are afraid of any power, influenced by friend or foe, or tempted by some imagined greed. This is an outcome of a philosophy that is at least 5000 years old. Our Prime Minister has, on his personal initiative, launched the International Solar Alliance as witness to our abiding commitment to a cause.

When we talk of world peace, we mean peace not only among human beings but also peace with nature. We understand that human nature is sometimes inimical to nature, but we would like to amend human nature when it tends in the. wrong, directions. When we inflict our greed upon nature, nature sometimes explodes. We must learn to live with the imperatives, cycles and creative urges of nature; in that lies, our own salvation.

We have just witnessed hurricanes, earthquakes, rains that inundate, storms which terrify. This is not a mere coincidence. Nature sent, its warning to the world even before the world's leadership gathered in New York at the United Nations through Harvey. Once our gathering began an earthquake struck Mexico and a hurricane landed in Dominica. We must understand this requires more serious action than talk. The developed world must listen more carefully than others, because it has more capacities than others. It must help the less fortunate through technology transfer and

Green Climate Financing - that is the only way to save future generations.

Mr President,

We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems. It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth. On 18 September, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something. But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations.

Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation. I hope that under your enlightened leadership, Mr President, this will become a priority. If that happens it will be a significant achievement.

We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN Peacekeeping this goal can't be achieved.

Mr President,

There is no shortage of issues; there is even less shortage of problems which should be recognised from this podium. But time is not always on the side of those who would like to raise issues and problems in the interests of a better, more peaceful and progressive future. The issues you have chosen are relevant to the UN Charter as well as to the ancient traditions of my land.

Mr President,

My country's culture and thought has been shaped by a history and philosophy that believes in peace as humankind's only rational and practical objective. We truly believe that the world is one family and we hope that every member of this family deserves that elixir of life, happiness. Let me end by reciting a verse that is a synthesis of thought:

May all be happy;

May all be healthy;

May all see what is good;

May aU be free from suffering.

Thank you, Mr. President.
Hyderabad: A multi-agency exercise, involving the armed forces, the National Disaster Response Force, (NDRF) and others, was conducted on Saturday as part of efforts to synergise relief operations in an urban flooding scenario.

The joint exercise, 'Pralay Sahayam', was organised as per a directive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre, who was present on the occasion, told reporters.

"In December 2015, in the combined commanders conference, our Prime Minister Modiji (suggested this exercise). As per his direction, this exercise 'Pralay Sahayam', we are all doing together," Bhamre said.

The exercise aimed to synergise the efforts of the agencies and build confidence among the populace with regards to the capabilities towards mitigation of disasters and support available during massive flooding in the cities.

For the drill, dummy structures depicting multi-storey buildings and houses with stranded people in submerged residential localities following heavy rains were erected in the Hussain Sagar lake, the venue for the massive exercise.

The stranded occupants of homes were rescued in joint operations carried out by the armed forces, NDRF, state government agencies, police and others. The Indian Air Force and the Army Aviation employed the Mi-17s, the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and others for aerial evacuation.

One Mi-17 chopper lowered a Gemini class inflatable boat of the Navy for rescuing the trapped citizens. "The idea (of the exercise) is that a system is built in which all the stakeholders play their respective roles. "They understand their own responsibility and how a relief operation is conducted so that loss of life is minimum," Bhamre said. Such exercises help in formulating and improving the response to disasters, he said.

The Union minister appreciated the armed forces, the Telangana government and other agencies for their contribution in the event. Similar joint exercises were conducted in the last one year at Guwahati, Visakhapatnam, Bhuj and Karwar in Karnataka on different types of disasters like floods, cyclone and earthquake, officials said.

Thanking the Union minister for conducting the exercises in Hyderabad, Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana Mohammed Mahmood Ali recalled the help rendered by the armed forces personnel following heavy rains in the city last year.
Having been the editor of seven newspapers in India and abroad these past 46 years I would gladly submit that I would have had no hesitation in banning columnist Suprateek Chatterjee for his tweets indicating his delight in case someone killed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Not just that but deliberately encouraging others to feel likewise and asking terrorist to pick up the gauntlet.

Just as much as he feels he has the right to say his piece so does The Quint and why on earth should it associate itself and its staff with an individual who calls for blood spill with ill-concealed glee. This is not free speech it is incitement. And by blocking him and taking down his columns The Quint has protected its interests. For those supporting him as readers or fellow journalists what redeeming feature can they find in such obnoxious content, not any of it predicated to reason only a diatribe that would be unacceptable in any social context?

By that measure, if he had written that he hopes Modi loses the elections in 2019 and his narration rises above the level of hectoring and pursues a logical argument I would allow it to be on the front page. That is freedom of expression. Not some silly undergrad self-indulgence inviting death upon Modi.

A piece published on Firstpost earlier underscores the chunk of hypocrisy that fuels liberals and their thought processes as well as the absurdity of trying to link their viciousness with banter or shrilly categorising it as their right in a democratic setup.

In itself, the Chatterjee issue isnt such a big deal. But it becomes one when media per se does nothing about this infringement on its rules of engagement and backs off censuring the man.

The aforesaid article almost makes further comment redundant but the issue needs to be kept on the front burner and it does become a case of 'physician, heal thyself'. We, the media, have a responsibility to ourselves and our standards. We spare no one when it comes to what they say in those 140 characters or elsewhere and howl for blood if we choose to find something offensive. If you take the ill-mannered and rude tweets sent out by Congress party leader Manish Tewari on the same subject and compare them to Chatterjee's chant they are vanilla in comparison. Yet, the media went on the town and milked it for every drop they could squeeze from it. Why then should the sauce change for ourselves? We should be out there backing The Quint rather than censuring it and displaying our distaste for this gross liberty taken by one of our tribe. Not to step up to the plate would be would a dereliction of our duty.

Silence in the ranks is tantamount to agreement. If we do not police ourselves and acknowledge when the line of correctness and propriety is rent asunder we lose the moral right to judge others and their various acts of omission and commission.

In his latest book The Absence of Guilt in which legal author Mark Gimenez argues about the right to say what you like and the protection afforded by the first, fifth and sixth amendments to the US Constitution. He writes of an American Imam refused bail on the grounds that he might be a threat to a bombing mission of the Dallas Cowboys stadium despite there not being a shred of evidence to support the suspicion. A very telling sentence in the book echoes what is happening in our country. "Just because I say I wish you were dead, it does not make me guilty of conspiring to murder you."

True. But what if that exhortation is picked up and someone runs with it. Are you an accessory before the fact?

We, in India, have no such protections but the liberals have always wanted the spirit of freedom of expression to be seen as fluid and responsive to the occasion.

"The conservatives argued for original intent. Now, it has changed. Liberals argue for original intent so they can hide behind the laws and scream persecution while the conservatives look for a more amorphous interpretation," says Giminez

What these people are doing is generating hatred and divisiveness under the guise of concern for the greater good.

When media espouses violence and gets an audience it is the beginning of the end for a land of laws.

Exactly how Hitler got started.
Jammu: Two Border Security Force (BSF) troopers and three civilians were injured when Pakistan Rangers resorted to heavy shelling on the international border in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Saturday.

"The two troopers and three civilians were injured in the overnight Pakistan ceasefire violation in RS Pura and Ramgarh sectors.

"The Pakistan Rangers used mortars, automatics and small arms to target over half a dozen BSF posts and civilian areas in the firing that started at 10 pm. Our troops effectively retaliated," the police said.

Villagers in the areas close to the international border said their crops have suffered extensive damage due to the shelling.

Residents of the border villages have also started moving to safer places.
White House has not yet decided on supply of weapons to Ukraine

Washington has not yet decided on the supply of weapons to Ukraine, the German edition Deutsche Welle has reported, with reference to a White House representative.

The White House representative on Friday, September 22, said that the issue of providing military support to Kyiv is still being worked out, the edition said on Saturday.

As reported, on September 22 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the United States' readiness to support Ukraine in the field of military-technical cooperation.
In the Punjab and Haryana High Court judgment in the Jindal Law School rape case, it is shocking to see that all verbatim quoted paragraphs are about the victima law student at the Universityand centre around her character, instead of speaking about the three accusedHardik, Karan and Vikas. In fact, the High Court suspended the sentence awarded to the law accused, who had blackmailed and gang-raped the victim numerous times for about two years.

Earlier this year, in March, the Additional District and Sessions Court had awarded 20 years imprisonment to the primary accused, Hardik, and his friends, Karan and Vikas were handed seven year jail terms. The High Court allowed their release and suspended the sentences awarded to them, directing that they would not leave the country, or contact the victim in any manner. Additionally, the court also suggested that they would have to undergo psychiatric counselling until they are free of their voyeuristic tendencies.

The Bench delivering the judgment comprised of Justice Mahesh Grover and Justice Raj Shekhar Attri, and shockingly suggested that they intend to balance the concerns of the victim, demands of the society and law and the element of reformatory and rehabilitative justice. For a Court that is primarily to examine questions of law, the Bench does not discuss the provisions pertaining to the crime at all. Sections 376D (gang rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 67 (publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act are not delved into at all. Instead, the court examines portions of the victims testimony and tears her character to shreds. Theres also no analyses of previous cases with similar facts, no examination of major judgments on rape. The present judgment seems like a travesty.

Throughout the judgment, the criminal offences were ignored, and the alleged denigration of moral values by the youth took precedence for the bench. For instance, the Court stated that the testimony of the victim reflected the immature but nefarious world of youngsters unable to comprehend the worth of a relationship based on respect and understanding and how [t]he entire crass sequence actually is reflective of a degenerative mindset of the youth breeding denigrating relationships mired in drugs, alcohol, casual sexual escapades and a promiscuous and voyeuristic world.

Moreover, the verdict as well as the judgment leaned in favour of the accused instead of the victim, whose basic human rights were violated. The bench spoke about a balance being struck between retributory (sic), reformatory and rehabilitative justice. This does not quite make sense, because the one who had invoked the justice system was ultimately denied it. The judges let the accused go because it would deprive them of their education, opportunity to redeem themselves and be a part of the society as normal beings. The punishment (or lack, thereof) does not take into account the crime, but the honour and reputation of the perpetrators.

Another shocking rationale for the verdict was that there was a lack of gut wrenching violence that normally precede or accompany such incidents. This part of the judgment is reminiscent of the 2012 Jyoti Pandey rape case that shook the conscience of the country because the victim was brutally violated, tortured and murdered by six men in a moving bus after being gang-raped. Jyotis brutal and gruesome death validated her narrative as a rape victim in India. If we strip the story of the brutality of the violent crime and the victims excellent character, the case fails to truly reflect the larger, significant issues of gender-based violence in the country. No such gut-wrenching violence took place in the present case, thereby normalising the rape, and sending a message out stating that a raped woman must die a heinous death in order to get justice. In fact, the court blames the character of the victim, instead of the perpetrators, stating that her statement has a perverse streak and offers an alternate conclusion of misadventure stemming from a promiscuous attitude and a voyeuristic mind.

The most significant issue that surfaces in this case is that despite recommendations in the Justice Verma Committee report of 2013 stating that criminal laws governing sexual assault must be interpreted from the perspective of the victim, there is no such effort from the judiciary or the adversarial system at large. To recall a case which took place before the Verma Committee report, in the Mathura rape case (Tukaram v. State of Maharashtra) in 1978, the Supreme Court was reluctant to take into account the statement of the victim because the circumstantial evidence did not lead to the inference of guilt and in fact derogates in no uncertain measure from the inference drawn by it. The discussion of the victims character in the present case makes it clear that rape jurisprudence in India remains strictly victim unfriendly, and does not take into account reparations in the form of both compensation and rehabilitation, and the accountability of the government in providing integrated services for the healing of the victim and to prevent violence against women.

Flavia Agnes talks about the phenomenon of double trauma where the victim, having gone through sexual assault, has to go through a gruelling ordeal of being in the court-room - where the perpetrators status of innocent-until-proven-guilty is used against her time and again. What the Indian judiciary needs to do is figure out a way to conduct a gender-sensitive trial where criminal justice is victim-centric and focuses on the needs and interests of victims in judicial proceedings, and where trials are time-bound. Questions pertaining to the sexual history and character of the victim are barred by law, and this must be implemented.

The Jindal Law School rape case is an example of how problematic rape jurisprudence in India is, despite the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee. The fact that the bench does not examine questions of law, whether it be sexual assault or the publication of obscene information in electronic form (thereby, completely ignoring that violence against women occurs in digital spaces also) is shocking. The bench does not talk about the concept of consent, and makes no effort whatsoever to make the trial victim-centric. The present case is an example of how change in judicial quarters must be pushed by a variety of stakeholders, and that legal amendments and ethos dont always change the thinking of people on the ground
New Delhi: The Indian Journalists Union (IJU) Saturday strongly condemned the killing of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother in Mohali and urged the state government to track down the killers.

Earlier on Saturday, Singh and his 92-year-old mother were found dead at their residence.

An official spokesman of the Chief Minister's Office said while Singh's throat had been slit, his mother Gurcharan Kaur was suspected to have been strangled.

Expressing outrage, the journalists union also referred to murders of two more scribes earlier this month  Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka on 5 September, and Shantanu Bhowmick in Tripura on 20 September.

"Three journalists killed in last three weeks in different parts of the country exposing the fragility of safety of journalists in the country," the IJU said in a statement.

Singh, who was in his sixties, was a former news editor of The Indian Express, The Tribune and The Times of India in Chandigarh.

"We urge upon the Chief Minister of Punjab to immediately take steps to track down the killers of KJ Singh and his mother to allay the fears of journalists community," the union said. It also demanded enactment of a law at the national level for safety of the journalists.

The IJU urged the Press Council of India to take suo motu cognisance of the murder of Singh and take appropriate action.
Kolkata: A clay model resembling a doctor and taking money in the crowd puller Mohammed Ali Park Durga Puja pandal has triggered protests from the medical fraternity prompting the organisers to put up a notice that the model represents 'fake doctors' only.

Puja committee chairman Dinesh Bajaj said, "Pictures of the model were taken before we could complete the decoration (leading to the controversy).

"Now we have put up a notice board before the model which reads 'Hatred for fake doctors who are like demons and Respect for the real doctors".

"We would have put up the board beside the model before inauguration, in any case. The same board would be put up in different parts of the park (where the pandal has come up)," Bajaj said.

The model donning a white apron and a stethoscope has been kept beside 'Mahishasura', the buffalo demon slain by the goddess.

Indian Medical Association (IMA) member Dr Sajal Biswas said, "Durga puja is a festival of harmony where lakhs of people assemble. Such a model will create wrong impression about doctors who share a unique, human bonding with patients. We wish the model is removed and necessary action taken."

IMA West Bengal unit Secretary Santanu Sen said, "It would have been appropriate if the model was removed. The puja committee should also make the issue clear that they are only referring to fake doctors and making a distinction. They should put up hoardings, posters and notices around the puja pandal area to make the distinction."

Bajaj, however, said that the issue has been sorted out with the IMA and Medical Council of India that had contacted the organisers to seek assurances that the medical profession would not be maligned in puja decorations.

The issue also triggered protests in the social network.
tech2 News Staff

The successor to Xiaomis stellar Redmi Note 4 is coming soon, say reports. The new device, called the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, is expected to be powered by the latest high-end mobile platforms from Qualcomm.

As per the leak, reported by GadgetHouse, the device will come with the same 5.5-inch full HD display that we saw on the Note 4, but the SoC gets a bump to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 platform. Theres supposed to be a 3 GB RAM and 4 GB RAM variant in the offing. The corresponding internal storage options are to be 32 GB and 64 GB.

Interestingly, the leak suggests that the new phone will come with a dual camera setup on the rear, featuring an RGB 16 MP sensor and monochrome 5 MP sensor. One might also expect to find a 12 MP front camera. GadgetHouse report indicates the phone will also support fast charging, though they havent specified the fast charging standard that will be used. Given that its a Qualcomm chip, we can probably expect to see Quick Charge 2.0 or 3.0 support.

In terms of software, were expecting to find the device running Android 7.1 Nougat with MIUI 9.

Pricing is rumoured to be in line with previous devices, with the base model starting at around Rs 10,000 in China.

Earlier leaks on Weibo did suggest that the device would come with a Mediatek Helio P26 octa-core processor instead of a Snapdragon chip.
Mohali : Former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said the economy is on a "downhill path" because of the "adventure" of demonetisation undertaken last year which was not required at all, either technically or economically.

Singh, a renowned economist considered to be the architect of the reforms of early 1990s, said demonetisation has not been successful in any civilised country, except some of the Latin American nation.

"I don't think demonetisation was at all required. I don't think it was technically, economically necessary to launch this adventure," he said at the Indian School of Business (ISB) Leadership Summit when asked if the note ban decision was the right one.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced on 8 November last year scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes. He said the process involved withdrawing almost 86 percent of the currency from circulation and "there was bound to be fallout which we are all seeing."

Singh made a speech before answering a few questions at the event. "The economy has slowed down as I had projected a few months ago as a result of demonetisation and also the fact that demonetisation has been accompanied by the GST, which is a good thing that we have done in the long term. But in the short term, there are glitches that need to be resolved. Therefore, the economy has experienced a downhill path," he said.

He said the GDP growth was much higher in the last quarter of 2016 to 2017 than the first quarter of this financial year. There are certain things that need to be done immediately, Singh said. "When we were in office, investment rate in the economy was 35 to 37 percent but now it is less than 30 percent.

Private investment in particular is not growing," he said. He added that India needs much more investment in public sector "but we cannot rely exclusively on public sector realise our development initiatives. We must also simultaneously work on a foreign exchange situation."

Singh, who had served as the country's finance minister over two decades back, said growth cannot take place at a high rate if banking system is not performing its task of providing money to entrepreneurs and to others who need to invest in our economy.

Responding to a question on healthcare, he said it is one area where the country is not spending enough and not giving the required emphasis on preventive healthcare.

Although private sector has a role to play, the public health problems require strong leadership and this is one area where markets are important but not the final solution, he said.

Asked what he felt would be the role of the government in foreseeable future and its interactions with the private sector, Singh said, "government in our country cannot be wished away." He said public sector spending is only 30 percent of the GDP, which is not too big compared to many other nations.

Infrastructure, public healthcare, agriculture are the areas where the government will remain important, he said. Responding to a question on globalisation, Singh said it is here to stay.

Despite what US President Donald Trump said in his election campaign, the American public opinion will prevail, he said. "Also, I feel in Europe too there is today recognition of multilateral trading system. China today has become a great champion of globalisation," he said.

Asked if the US president was being protectionist, the former prime minister said, "I am quite confident the US president's current thinking will not last more than a year or so."
New Delhi: The CBI on Friday arrested a deputy commissioner in the Income Tax Department in Mumbai in an alleged bribery case of Rs three crore, a spokesperson for the probe agency said.

Jaipal Swamy's two alleged accomplices Kamlesh Shah and Prathamesh Masdekar have also been arrested in the case, the spokesperson said.

"A case was registered against the deputy commissioner of income tax, Mumbai, on the allegations of demanding an illegal gratification amounting to Rs three crore from the complainant for showing undue favour in his tax assessment," CBI Spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said.

He further said it was alleged that the accomplices of the deputy commissioner were to arrange gold in exchange of money sent by the complainant.

"One of the accomplices was caught red-handed accepting the alleged gratification of Rs three crore by way of two Cheques. The other accomplice and the public servant were also arrested. Searches were conducted on Friday at three locations in Mumbai," he said.

He said the arrested accused will be produced in a competent court in Mumbai on Saturday.
Mumbai: A fire broke out in a commercial building in suburban Kandivali on Saturday morning, with four to five persons rescued from the spot, a civic official said.

The blaze broke out on the second floor of the three-storey structure located at Ashok Nagar, Kandivali East, said an official of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) Disaster Management Cell.

"The Fire brigade received a call at 10.20 am. Our team arrived at the spot at 10.38 am and swung into action to douse the fire which occurred in a commercial establishment. Cooling operations were underway", the official said.

The fire was confined to four to five galas (commercial shops) on the second floor, he said.

Four-five people who were inside the building have been rescued with the help of a ladder. They were unhurt.

Eight fire engines and water tankers are at the spot to contain the blaze, the official said, adding that the cause behind the fire is yet to be ascertained.
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Narendra Modi is in Varanasi today and the prime minister is set to launch several infrastructure projects in his Lok Sabha constituency. Modi would be dedicating Deendayal Hastkala Sankul, a trade facilitation centre for handicrafts, in Bada-Lalpur near Varanasi.

Prime Minister Modi will visit the historic Tulsi Manas Temple in Varanasi today, where he is set to release a postal stamp based on Ramayana. He will later visit the Durga Mata Temple in the city.

In the evening, Modi will be visiting the historic Tulsi Manas Temple in Varanasi, where he will also be releasing a postal stamp on Ramayana. He plans to visit the Durga Mata Temple in the city later on Friday.

Modi will be dedicating Deendayal Hastkala Sankul, a trade facilitation centre for handicrafts, in Bada-Lalpur near Varanasi. The prime minister will also launch other projects including Utkarsh Bank which specialises in micro-finance, 'Jal Ambulance' (water ambulance) service and 'Jal Shav Vahan' (water-based vehicle for carrying bodies) service.

Uttar Pradesh's deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya addressed the gathering and said that Narendra Modi is the most powerful world leader. "He has worked relentlessly for the poor for past three years," he added.

While welcoming Modi, Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that it is an honour to receive the prime minister and his government will continue to work towards the welfare of poor and women.

Modi lauded the Uttar Pradesh government for playing a major role in the Central government's agenda of development. He said projects worth over one thousand crore will be launched from one event and one platform.

We want the poor to have the strength and courage to stand on their feet and Utkarsh bank is a step in that direction.

While addressing the crowd, Modi said that no poor person wants his children to have the same poor life. No one wants their future generations to inherit poverty and therefore, my government's dream is the same as a poor's dream for his children.

My government's dream is the same as a poor's dream for his children: Modi

He further said that he is hopeful that the development projects will not just help Uttar Pradesh financially but also socially.

Modi said that India is moving forward at great speeds and it is changing rapidly. The government's aim is to change Uttar Pradesh, change India, he added.

Modi said that his dream is to wipe out poverty from India and all BJP schemes are made keeping in mind the empowerment of the poor. "These infrastructure projects will give a huge financial push to Uttar Pradesh," he added.

My dream is to wipe out poverty from India: Modi

Modi will visit the historic Tulsi Manas temple in Varanasi and release a postal stamp on Ramayana. He will later visit the Durga Mata temple in the city.

Launching the postal stamp based on epic poem Ramayana at the iconic Manas Temple, PM Modi said that he could have launched the stamp from the Prime Minister's residence in New Delhi. However, he wanted to unveil the tribute to Lord Rama's life from the place where saint Tulsidasa himself wrote the Ramayana, the Hindu mythological epic detailing the life and times of Rama.

Modi had initially planned to hold a massive roadshow at a seven-kilometre long stretch. However, the programme was cancelled owing to shortage of time and erratic weather conditions.

We not only lay foundation but also inaugurate projects: Modi 

The prime minister will now head towards the DLW guest house where he will stay tonight. Tomorrow, he is scheduled to inaugurate 'Pashu Arogya Mela' in Shahanshahpur on the outskirts of the city. He will also address a gathering of farmers there.

As per protocol, Yogi Adityanath and Ram Naik are already on the dias. Now it is expected that Modi will join them soon, News18 reports

As per his itinerary, Modi will distribute certificates for the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojna before addressing the gathering, media reports said.

Hailing the Centre for its policies, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said that his government is interested in developing rural sector of the state. He said that his government is working towards giving a home to every poor man by 2022.

Recap: Modi offered prayers at Tulsi Manas, Durga Kund temples in Varanasi Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday evening visited the famous Tulsi Manas and Durga Kund temples here and offered his prayers. Accompanied by Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Modi sought to know detailed information about the Manas temple, which was inaugurated by then President Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan in 1964.

Narendra Modi says that he is overwhelmed by the unexpected large gathering at Shahanshahpur. He added that he won't disappoint them and will work for them.

"With animal welfare fair, poor will get an opportunity to look after their milch animals. For farmers, milk from milch animals is the biggest source of income. So this welfare scheme is a boon for them. I congratulate Yogi Adityanath for it," Modi said.

Taking a potshot at vote bank politics, Modi said, "I am of a different mould. I do not think of vote bank. For me my country is bigger concern than my party."

Country is bigger for me than the party, says Modi

While reiterating his call for a new India by 2022, Modi said that animal welfare and innovation in agriculture will form a major part of a new India. He added that his government has come up with the idea of soil health card to help farmers.

Arguing that cleanliness must be an integral part of every Indians life, Modi slammed the lethargic attitude towards cleanliness and said that people litter in the open and expect that the government will clean them.

Cleanliness is the responsible of every Indian, says Modi

Modi takes potshots at the previous governments, says money meant for the poor never reached them. He adds that the previous UPA government was not interested in making new homes for poor. While promising homes for every Indian by 2022, he adds that it is his government that has prioritised building homes.

Every Indian will get a new home by 2022, says Modi

"We are aiming at changing the lives of the poor, middle class families. Were taking up schemes to uplift the middle class, as they are the ones wholl help the nation progress," says Modi.

"By 2022, every poor, whether in urban or rural area, will get a home. Building crores of homes will generate jobs, income," Modi said.

In a apparent reference to demonetisation, Modi said that the government is taking pains to fight corruption in India. he added that due to corruption, even people had to bear some pain in the fight against corruption.

The Times of India report says that steel magnate Sajjan Jindal has adopted the Harishchandra ghat in Varanasi as part of Narendra Modi:s Swacch Bharat Abhiyan. "The Centre has cleared a multi-crore renovation project by the magnate's firm, Jindal Steel Works (JSW), to repair, clean and restore the ghat, a site on the bank of the Ganga frequently visited for Hindu funeral rites," the report notes.

Narendra Modi's two-day visit is his first since the BJP won the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

"Our politics is not for votes, our culture is different as for us country is bigger than party, PM Narendra Modi. Our priority not to get votes. Animals will not go to cast ballots," said Modi.

"In the coming five years, we have to be committed towards that resolution. If 125 crore people take one resolution each and live up to it, then the nation would move 125 crore steps forward in the next five years," the prime minister said. Modi added the government's resolution was to double the farmer's income and ensure even the poorest of the poor have a home to live in by 2022.

"That is because sanitation is also a kind of worship for me. It will rid the poor of my country of various diseases and the economic burden due to those diseases that result from dirty surroundings," Modi said.

Addressing a public gathering on the second day of his Varanasi visit, he said it was his good fortune to lay the foundation stone of a public toilet in Shahanshahpur village of his Lok Sabha constituency.

"Our (BJP) politics is not for votes, our culture is different. In politics, people do only that task which yields votes, but our character is different. Some politicians work only when it fetches them votes. But we have been brought up in a different culture. ... For us, the nation is above all and it is our top most priority, not votes," Modi said.

He said his government had "waged a war" against black money and corruption, for which the poor has had to suffer because of "the loot" by the dishonest.

"The previous government had no interest in giving homes to the poor. After mounting pressure, they gave a list of only 10,000. But the current (Yogi Adityanath) government has given a list of lakhs of people to avail benefit," Modi said.

Modi also targetted the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh for not providing to the Centre the list of homeless requiring houses in the state.

Praising villagers, where he went for laying foundation of a toilet for naming it as "Izzatghar", Modi said, "I liked this word so much. Where there is Izzatghar, there is honour of our mothers and sisters. I also congratulate the state government for recognising it as Izzatghar. In the days to come those who are concerned about their honour, will construct Izzatghar."

The Times of India report says that steel magnate Sajjan Jindal has adopted the Harishchandra ghat in Varanasi as part of Narendra Modi:s Swacch Bharat Abhiyan. "The Centre has cleared a multi-crore renovation project by the magnate's firm, Jindal Steel Works (JSW), to repair, clean and restore the ghat, a site on the bank of the Ganga frequently visited for Hindu funeral rites," the report notes.

Narendra Modi's two-day visit is his first since the BJP won the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh.

From the Darshan at the Durga Mata Temple and visit to Durga Kund. pic.twitter.com/bstURnNdYB

"Our politics is not for votes, our culture is different as for us country is bigger than party, PM Narendra Modi. Our priority not to get votes. Animals will not go to cast ballots," said Modi.

"In the coming five years, we have to be committed towards that resolution. If 125 crore people take one resolution each and live up to it, then the nation would move 125 crore steps forward in the next five years," the prime minister said. Modi added the government's resolution was to double the farmer's income and ensure even the poorest of the poor have a home to live in by 2022.

"That is because sanitation is also a kind of worship for me. It will rid the poor of my country of various diseases and the economic burden due to those diseases that result from dirty surroundings," Modi said.

Addressing a public gathering on the second day of his Varanasi visit, he said it was his good fortune to lay the foundation stone of a public toilet in Shahanshahpur village of his Lok Sabha constituency.

"Our (BJP) politics is not for votes, our culture is different. In politics, people do only that task which yields votes, but our character is different. Some politicians work only when it fetches them votes. But we have been brought up in a different culture. ... For us, the nation is above all and it is our top most priority, not votes," Modi said.

He said his government had "waged a war" against black money and corruption, for which the poor has had to suffer because of "the loot" by the dishonest.

Let us actively participate in the movement towards a Swachh Bharat and fulfil Mahatma Gandhi's dream. @swachhbharat

"The previous government had no interest in giving homes to the poor. After mounting pressure, they gave a list of only 10,000. But the current (Yogi Adityanath) government has given a list of lakhs of people to avail benefit," Modi said.

Modi also targetted the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh for not providing to the Centre the list of homeless requiring houses in the state.

Praising villagers, where he went for laying foundation of a toilet for naming it as "Izzatghar", Modi said, "I liked this word so much. Where there is Izzatghar, there is honour of our mothers and sisters. I also congratulate the state government for recognising it as Izzatghar. In the days to come those who are concerned about their honour, will construct Izzatghar."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will continue on his Varanasi tour for the second day on Saturday. On Friday evening, Modi visited the famous Tulsi Manas and Durga Kund temples in Varanasi and offered his prayers.

Accompanied by Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Modi sought to know detailed information about the Manas temple, which was inaugurated by then President Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan in 1964.

The temple draws thousands of devotees every year. Behind a stone named 'Manas', there are five books kept with Ram-Ram written on it by people. The Prime Minister, a staunch devotee of Goddess Durga and who is on a nine-day Navratri fast, also offered prayers at the ancient Durga Kund temple.

Modi was informed by its priests of the temple that it was built by King Sudarshan and was renovated in the 17th century by Queen Bhawani.

Earlier in the day, soon after arriving in the temple town, also his parliamentary constituency, Modi inaugurated 17 projects and laid foundation stones of six others.

He will see the famous 'Subh-e-Benaras' on Saturday morning and has some other events to attend before he flies back to the national capital around noon. For the night he is staying at the DLW guest house.
New Delhi: Former union minister P Chidambaram on Friday described as an "absolute lie" the CBI statement in the Supreme Court that his son Karti has many offshore accounts.

"By quoting CBI as the source, the lie does not become the truth," he said reacting to CBI's claim in the court during a hearing on the look out notice against Karti which he has challenged.

"Why doesn't CBI take my open offer and name the alleged 'undisclosed assets'? I have already made a public statement that my family and I will execute any document necessary to transfer the alleged 'undisclosed asset' to the government so that government can become the owner," Chidambaram said.

The Congress leader also demanded that media withdraw the story forthwith.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Saturday summoned Indias high commissioner in Islamabad even as it condemned the alleged firing by Indian forces across the Line of Control, in which six Pakistani civilians were killed.

Pakistans Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza also established contact on the hotline with Indian counterpart Lieutenant General AK Bhatt and discussed the issue of the killing of civilians, the army said.

A Pakistan Foreign Office (FO) spokesman said that Acting Foreign Secretary Aitzaz Ahmed summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale over unprovoked ceasefire violations by the Indian occupation forces in Charwa Sector on Friday.

Ahmed strongly condemned the firing which killed six civilians, including four women, and injured 26 others, including 15 women and five children in Bini Sulariyan village.

Many of the affected are seriously injured and the casualties are likely to rise, the FO said. The deliberate targeting of civilians is indeed deplorable and contrary to human dignity and international human rights and humanitarian laws, he said.

He urged India to respect the 2003 ceasefire agreement, investigate the latest incident and other incidents of ceasefire violations, instruct its forces to respect the ceasefire in letter and spirit and maintain peace on the LoC and working boundary.
New Delhi: The CBI on Saturday took custody of three people arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the killing of Pradyumn Thakur, a seven-year-old student of Ryan International School, on 8 September.

The CBI had sought custody of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar, regional head of the group Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas from the court.

"On the request of the CBI in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the alleged murder of a student in a school at Gurugram, the competent court on Saturday remanded three accused in one-day police custody," a CBI spokesperson said.

The CBI on Saturday took over the probe into the killing of the seven-year-old at the Gurugram school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The case had been registered at the Bhondsi police station in Gurugram under the IPC sections related to murder, and relevant sections of the Arms Act, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.
Mohali: Senior journalist KJ Singh and his bed-ridden 92-year-old mother were found murdered at their Phase 3B2 residence in Mohali, on Saturday afternoon.

While 64-year-old Singh's throat was slit and he had stab injury on his body, his mother Gurcharan Kaur was suspected to have been strangled, the police said.

Both bodies were found lying on the beds in their respective bedrooms, the police said. The scribe's body was seen lying in a pool of blood, they added.

The crime scene presented a gory picture as blood had spread to other rooms from the journalist's bedroom, a police official said.

The crime came to light when Singh's sister Yashpal Kaur and nephew Ajay Pal went there with lunch at around 1 pm Saturday.

"They found both (Singh and his mother) dead," said Mohali SSP Kuldeep Chahal.

Singh's car was missing from the house, the SSP said even as he refused to elaborate more on this aspect saying a probe was underway.

The culprits did not touch the gold chain around Singh's neck or a purse containing around Rs 25,000 cash, lying near the bed of his mother, police said.

"The miscreants wanted to give it a robbery angle but it does not seem so. The motive of the criminals was something else," said Mohali SP (Detective) HS Atwal adding that locks of one or two boxes inside the house had been opened.

There was no closed-circuit television (CCTV) in the house, the SSP informed.

Both the victims were living in the house while Singh's six siblings were staying at various places in Mohali and Chandigarh.

The Mohali Police have registered a case of murder but no arrests have been made so far.

Punjab Police's Bureau of Investigation Director Prabodh Kumar along with IGP (Crime) Shashi Prabha Dwivedi visited the spot.

"It's a blind double murder. We have found some clues, which are being studied systematically," said ADGP Prabodh Kumar.

Meanwhile, Punjab Police have set up a Special Investigative Team (SIT), headed by IGP (Crime) to probe the murders.

IG (Crime), under whom the SIT will function, has been asked to ensure that all leads are probed and the culprits are nabbed at the earliest, an official spokesman said.

Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh also directed the police to beef up security in the area and take steps to ensure the safety of the ordinary citizens, he added.

Singh, who started his career in journalism as a sub editor with The Indian Express in 1978, had also served The Times of India and The Tribune. His last job was with The Tribune as chief news editor in 2009.

Meanwhile, mediapersons in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh condemned the killing of journalist and his mother and sought immediate arrest of the culprits.
Washington: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took a dig at Pakistan and criticised it for exporting terror across the world in her address to 72nd UN General Assembly session while reiterating India's demand for a permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council. Swaraj also urged the world body to bring urgent reforms since the current United Nations and its powerful Security Council do not reflect the ground realities of the 21st century.

Addressing the world leaders in Hindi, Swaraj also spelled out concerns like climate change, maritime security, unemployment, gender empowerment, nuclear proliferation, and cybersecurity.

On Pakistan

Reacting sharply to Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's allegations raised during his speech on Friday, Swaraj said, "The country which has crossed all limits of decency, murdered several innocents is teaching us lessons on humanity."

Swaraj asked its leaders to introspect as to why India is recognised as a global IT superpower while Pakistan is infamous as the "pre-eminent export factory for terror".

"I would like today to tell Pakistan's politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?" Swaraj asked.

Swaraj also said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan's nefarious export of terrorism.

"We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists...you have created terrorist camps, you have created Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen and Haqqani network," she said, adding that if Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

India had described Pakistan on Friday as "terroristan" and a land of "pure terror" that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

She said the terrorist groups created by Pakistan is not only harming India but also hurting its neighbours  Afghanistan and Bangladesh  as well.

Swaraj also said that while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship since he assumed office, "Pakistan's Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer."

On old United Nation resolutions mentioned by Abbasi, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader's memory has conveniently failed him where it matters.

"He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version," Swaraj said in a hard-hitting response to Pakistani prime minister's speech.

On Terrorism

Describing terrorism as an "existentialist danger" to mankind, Swaraj said, wondered how the international community will fight the menace if the UN Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists. "If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together?"

Swaraj also referred to the challenges India had faced in listing Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist stating, "If even the UNSC cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together?"

Swaraj was apparently referring to China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, which has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM has already been on the banned list.

"Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence," she said.

Swaraj called on the UN member states to display their new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) this year itself. Although India proposed a CCIT as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree on a definition of terrorism, she rued.

"We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the worlds big powers dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it?" she asked.

"We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take," she said. Terming talks against terrorism as mere rituals, Swaraj also criticised how self-interest of some world leaders is creating duplicity even when the world is required to "fight and destroy" terrorism.

UNSC reforms

Swaraj reminded the world body of the need to bring long-pending UN Security Council reforms.

"We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems," Swaraj said in her address.

"Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation," Swaraj said in her address to the UNGA.

She hoped that this "will become a priority" for the UN. "If that happens it will be a significant achievement," she said.

"I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations," Swaraj added.

On climate change

Swaraj also highlighted India's commitment to the Paris Climate Accord while stating that the challenge posed by climate change requires more "serious action than talk" and asked the leaders of the developed world to help the less fortunate ones through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing.

"Nature sent its warning to the world even before the world's leadership gathered in New York at the United Nations through Harvey," she said, adding that once the gathering of world leaders at the UNGA began, an earthquake struck Mexico and a hurricane landed in Dominica.

"We must understand, this requires more serious action than talk," she said.

Countering President Donald Trump's view on Paris Accord on which he had said that the agreement on climate change was unfair to the US, as it badly hit its businesses and jobs, Swaraj said, "The developed world must listen more carefully than others because it has more capacities than others. It must help the less fortunate through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing - that is the only way to save future generations."

Swaraj said that it was not just mere coincidence that the world has witnessed hurricanes, earthquakes, rains that inundate storms which terrify.

Swaraj praises demonetisation, Modi government

The external affairs minister praised Modi stating highlight several schemes of the BJP government at the Centre such as Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra Yojana, Skill India, Startup India, Ujjawala Yojana, Beti Padhao Beti Bachao, Swacch Bharat Abhiyan and GST among others.

Swaraj also said that demonetisation was a "courageous" decision taken by Modi to challenge the black money  one of the by-products of corruption, even though several recent reports have proven otherwise.

Swaraj, who arrived New York last Sunday, spent a major part of her day on Friday giving final touches to her speech. She had only one bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during which she raised the issue of terrorism and H-1B.

They had also discussed strengthening of the US-India political and economic partnership.

India on Friday had ripped into Pakistan its reply statement. Enam Gambhir, India's First Secretary to the United Nations, described it as "terroristan" and a land of "pure terror" that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

Modi lauded Swaraj's speech at the UNGA, saying that "the External Affairs Minister was insightful in identifying global challenges and strongly reiterated India's commitment to create a better planet".

A strong message was given by @SushmaSwaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace. #UNGA  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

In another tweet, Modi said: "Incredible speech by EAM Sushma Swaraj at the UN. She has made India extremely proud at the world stage."

With inputs from PTI
United Nations: India Saturday called for an early start to text-based negotiations for UN Security Council reforms with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressing hope that a revamp of its top organ will be a "priority" for the world body.

In 2015, the UN General Assembly had adopted a negotiating text by consensus for long-pending UN Security Council reforms, setting the stage for talks on the issue.

"Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation," Swaraj said in her address to the UN General Assembly.

She hoped that this "will become a priority" for the UN. "If that happens it will be a significant achievement," she said.

"We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he (Antonio Guterres) wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN peacekeeping, this goal can't be achieved," she said.

For long, India has been calling for reform of the UN Security Council. India and a large number of countries believe that the current United Nations and its powerful Security Council do not reflect the ground realities of the 21st century.

Earlier this week, foreign ministers of G4 countries  India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan  met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to push their case for reform of the Security Council including expansion of its permanent and non-permanent members.

India has also received support from several other multilateral groupings during the current UN General Assembly session in this regard, including BRICS and IBSA. Several countries have taken up the floor of the General Assembly to support India's bid for permanent membership.

"We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems," Swaraj said in her address.

"It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth. On September 18, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something.

"But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations," Swaraj said.
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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to raise issues like the global fight against terrorism, climate change and the Security Council's reform in her address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday night.

When Swaraj, 65, takes the podium she would be addressing the UN General Assembly for the second consecutive time. She is expected to deliver her speech in Hindi like the last year.

The General Assembly debate would begin at 6.30 pm. Swaraj is listed 7th in the list of speakers. On an average, a speaker addresses the general assembly for 10 minutes, but most of the time leaders take more time than that.

On Friday, Swaraj had only one bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during which she raised the issue of terrorism and H-1B. They also discussed strengthening of the US-India political and economic partnership.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted that Swaraj will speak at the UN at 8.15 pm (IST) approximately.

In 2016, Swaraj slammed Pakistan in a powerful speech , calling it a "terrorist haven" and stating that India, despite extending a hand of friendship, only received terrorism in the form of Pathankot, Uri and Bahadur Ali in return.

On Pakistan: India has already indicated the tone it will take regarding Pakistan at the UNGA. On Thursday, the Indian statement made in its right of reply to the United Nations said: "In its short history, Pakistan has become a geography synonymous with terror. The quest for a land of pure has actually produced 'the land of pure terror'. Pakistan is now Terroristan ." The statement was made by Eenam Gambir, India's First Secretary to the United Nations.

Rohingya refugee crisis: With India constantly trying to guard its borders against huge influx of Rohingya refugees who are trickling in through the porous borders, Swaraj has a tough job at hand if the issue comes up in the General Assembly address. Swaraj will have to tread carefully.

North Korea: North Korea is perhaps the most pressing issue. According to this article in Firstpost , India's North Korea policy has undergone a marked shift recently, even to its own detriment. India has banned all trade with North Korea  except for food and medicine  even though it is one of the few countries with which India has a trade surplus.

"Our contemporary world is trapped in a deluge of troubles with terrorism. Climate change stares us in the face, as does the growing threat of maritime security," says Swaraj at the UN.

Sushma Swaraj addresses the issue of Pakistan. She said Pakistan's prime minister Shahid Abbasi wasted in speaking against India on Thursday. She added, "Those listening had only one observation: Look who's talking."

Pakistan is engaged only in fighting us, says Sushma Swaraj

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship to Pakistan. However, Pakistan prime minister Shahid Abbasi must answer why his nation spurned this offer, said Swaraj.

In a stinging retort to Pakistan, Sushma Swaraj said the neighbouring country was a haven for terror outfits like JeM, LeT and the Haqqani network. "Doctors save people from death, while terrorists put them to death," said Swaraj while remarking how Pakistan produced only terrorists unlike India which creates scholars and doctors.

India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj called terrorism an "existential danger to humankind" and declared there was no justification to its barbarism. Swaraj further said that Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has conveniently forgotten facts. "The reality is Pakistan's politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version," Swaraj said her rejoinder.

India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj called terrorism an "existential danger to humankind" and declared there was no justification to its barbarism. Swaraj further said that Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has conveniently forgotten facts. "The reality is Pakistan's politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version," Swaraj said her rejoinder.

Batting for the Narendra Modi government, Sushma Swaraj called demonetisation "a courageous decision" to fight black money. She also hailed the benefits of GST, and various other schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Skill India, Swachh Bharat, StartUp India, and Mudra Yojana.

Apart from addressing Pakistan, Swaraj also expressed India's commitment to combatting climate change. "Climate change is a significant danger. We are deeply committed to the Paris Agreement. Our decision to back is not because of external pressure but the outcome of a nearly 5000-year-old philosophy.

On climate change, EAM says that India is deeply committed to the Paris Accord. PM Modi launched the Intl Solar Alliance towards this cause. pic.twitter.com/STuhOCNlID

Talking about Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Mexico earthquake, Swaraj said, "We must understand this requires more serious action than talk. the developed world msut listen more carefully than others,"

A strong message was given by @SushmaSwaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace. #UNGA

EAM on UNSC reforms: Early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations. pic.twitter.com/wiJesVV4Mx

Incredible speech by EAM @SushmaSwaraj at the @UN ! She has made India extremely proud at the world stage. https://t.co/nLI2CC2VBj #UNGA

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is expected to raise issues like the global fight against terrorism, climate change and the Security Council's reform in her address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday night.

When Swaraj, 65, takes the podium she would be addressing the UN General Assembly for the second consecutive time.

She is expected to deliver her speech in Hindi like the last year.

Swaraj, who arrived New York last Sunday, spent a major part of her day on Friday giving final touches to her speech. Among other things, it is expected to include mention of the fight against terrorism, reform of the UN Security Council, climate change and an emerging India's role and responsibilities in the 21st century.

On Friday, Swaraj had only one bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during which she raised the issue of terrorism and H-1B.

They also discussed strengthening of the US-India political and economic partnership.

In all, the external affairs minister has had as many as 27 bilateral meetings with her foreign counterparts.

Swaraj attended 12 multilaterals and two trilateral meetings.

"Our goals are broad. They are global in nature. Some of them are inspirational. There are some of them where we are working for several years and there are some where we hope to have an outcome this year," Syed Akbaruddin, India's Permanent Representative at the UN, told Indian reporters last week.

In addition to the reform of the United Nations, in particular that of the Security Council, Akbaruddin said that issues of climate change, terrorism, people-centric migration and peacekeeping are other key focus areas for India this year.

Indian officials remained tight-lipped on the content of Swarajs speech.

While India strongly responded to Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's rhetoric on Kashmir in the UN General Assembly, it would not be surprising that Swaraj asserts the governments position on this issue one more time.

India on Friday ripped into Pakistan, describing it as "terroristan" and a land of "pure terror" that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

The General Assembly debate would begin at 6.30 pm. Swaraj is listed 7th in the list of speakers. On an average, a speaker addresses the general assembly for 10 minutes, but most of the time leaders take more time than that.

With inputs from PTI
New York: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issues of H1B visas and the rights of illegal immigrant children when she met with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday morning

Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that Sushma Swaraj "strongly raised the issue of H1B visa and children falling under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy with secretary Tillerson."

He also said the two of them "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

A State Department statement said that they "looked forward to convening a 2+2 dialogue" with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Defence Secretary James Mattis in the near future.

The statement said that Tillerson thanked Sushma Swaraj "for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region".

In speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, US president Donald Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India".

He also asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.

Another topic that came up in their discussions between Sushma Swaraj and Tillerson was the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which the two countries are to co-host in Hyderabad, in November, the State Department said.

Trump's daughter and his official adviser, Ivanka, who is to lead the US delegation to the summit also met Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday.

This was the first one-on-one meeting between the top diplomats of the two countries since Tillerson, a former head of the oil giant Exxon Mobil, became Secretary of State.

On Monday both of them had participated in a trilateral meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

It was not clear what Sushma Swaraj wanted done about the H1B, a category of temporary visas for professionally qualified people, as there has as yet been no changes to that visa system.

While Trump has spoken of restricting the H1B visa system as part of his policy of putting Americans first, so far there have been no changes to it and for this year the same levels of 65,000 for general H1B visas and 20,000 for those with advanced US degrees have been kept.

Indians get most of the H1B visas, although it does not have any national quotas or is specifically designed for Indians.

According to some estimates, about 7,000 Indians are covered by DACA, a presidential order issued by then president Barack Obama to allow those who were brought in illegally as children to stay on in the US.

Trump had said that he was not going to renew the DACA order, which will expire next March, and wanted Congress to legislate it into law.

He has since said that he may reconsider it if Congress had not passed the law by then.
New Delhi: The killing of journalist Shantanu Bhowmick in Tripura is another "sickening assault" on

freedom of expression, Amnesty international India said on Friday.

Killing of journalists cannot become the order of the day and the state governments must do everything in their capacity to prevent scribes from becoming targets for their viewpoints or affiliations, the rights body said.

"Shantanu Bhowmick's gruesome murder again exposes the vulnerability of journalists working in difficult situations. The perpetrators must be brought to justice, if more attacks on journalists are to be prevented," Arijit Sen, programme Manager, Amnesty India, said.

Bhowmick, who worked with a TV channel in Agartala, was covering an agitation by the indigenous people's front of Tripura in Mandai area of West Tripura on 20 September when he was hit from behind and abducted.

Later, the scribe was found with serious stab injuries and rushed to Agartala Medical College and Hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.

"The killing of 28-year-old journalist Shantanu Bhowmick in the course of his work in Mandai, Tripura, is another sickening assault on freedom of expression," Amnesty said.

Earlier this month, journalist Gauri Lankesh was killed outside her home in Bengaluru.

According to the committee to protect journalists, there have been no convictions in any of the 27 cases of journalists killed for their work in India since 1992, Amnesty said.
Patna: State governments should set up regulatory bodies to check the "whimsical and arbitrary functioning" of private schools, Union minister Upendra Kushwaha said on Saturday.

The Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development said that the central government is taking steps to find a solution to the problem.

"In order to check the arbitrary and whimsical functioning of private schools in the country, we (the Centre) have asked the state governments (to set up regulatory bodies)" Kushwaha told reporters.

Such a regulatory mechanism has come up in several states and Bihar should also have one, he said.

He said the CBSE has issued guidelines to schools to check any irregularity following the killing of a class II boy inside a toilet of a private school in Gurugram recently.

If required, the school concerned could be de-affiliated, the minister added.

Kushwaha, also the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party chief, said that his party has submitted a 25-point memorandum to Bihar government that includes this issue of the regulatory mechanism.

As the same party is now in power at the Centre and in the state, Kushwaha said, there would be no problem in getting land for opening Kendriya Vidyalayas in Bihar.

The RLSP president said he plans to meet Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in this regard soon.

He announced that the party would hold a "Shiksha Sudhar Sankalp Mahasammelan" at Gandhi Maidan on 15 October in the state capital.

The party has organised such sammelans in all the districts of Bihar during which the party received tremendous support from the people to bring changes in the education sector, Kushwaha said.
Lakhimpur Kheri: An alleged illegal arms factory was unearthed in the remote Mahadev Tanda village in the Singahi area on the Indo-Nepal border, the police said on Saturday.

"Four persons Israr, Punnu, Mohd Shami and Rafiq were arrested on Friday while making country-made firearms. Twenty firearms, six more being manufactured, parts used in the manufacturing and other equipment were recovered from their possession," Superintendent of police (SP), S Channappa told PTI.

During interrogation, the accused confessed about smuggling of illegal arms in various districts, the official claimed.

The police did not rule out the possibility of cross-border smuggling. Further probe is on in the matter, the official said.
New Delhi: A Rohingya petitioner on Friday told the Supreme Court that they were not illegal immigrants but refugees who fled Myanmar and came to India for shelter in wake of their persecution on the grounds of their religion and community identity and were entitled to all protection under the international conventions on refugees and treaties.

Contesting the Central government's stand that they being foreign nationals enjoyed no protection under the Indian Constitution, Rohingya refugee Mohammad Salimullah, who has moved the top court, seeking its protection from being deported said that protection under Article 14 - guaranteeing equality before law and Article 21 - guaranteeing protection of life and liberty was available to both Indian citizens and non-citizens alike.

In his rejoinder to the Central government's affidavit, he said: "Rohingyas are not involved in any act of militancy. They are a fleeing persecuted ethnic minority whose only claim is to peaceful asylum. Any individual case of involvement in militancy may be dealt with by the governmental in accordance with the law of the land...

"...there cannot be a general assumption that entire Rohingya community in India is involved in militancy related activities."

Denying the Central government's assertion that some of the Rohingyas were involved with ISIS, petitioner Salimullah described this as a "mere assumption" and in this context, referred to concern expressed by UNHCR that "states may be inclined to expel groups or individuals based on religious, ethnic or national origin or political affiliation, on mere assumption that they may be involved in terrorism".

Arguing that there could not be any blanket restriction on the movement of Rohingyas or their deportation, Salimullah said that "since it is clear that these Rohingyas are helpless and have fled prosecution in their home country and cannot thus be sent back to the place where they fear bodily harm or threat to their lives".

Deportation of Rohingyas, the rejoinder said, would be a complete violation of their human rights and India's commitment to international law on refugees.

The top court is going to hear the plea by Salimullah challenging the government's move to deport Rohingyas on 3 October. The Centre has already told the top court that the decision was entirely within the domain of the government and the top court should keep off it as it has no jurisdiction to entertain the matter.

In its response, it said some of the Rohingyas were involved with ISIS and other Pakistan based terror outfits and posed threat to the security of the country.
A little while ago, Sanket Avlani  the curator at Design Fabric and more popularly known as the brain behind the funky 'Taxi Fabric' project  happened to travel with a friend to purani Dilli, to meet artists practising Urdu calligraphy. The katibs (calligraphers) showed Avlani and his friend how they practised their art; they also revealed, how, over time, it was fading out. The katibs believed that the language had suffered, because it was linked to a particular people, religion or agenda.

That conversation sparked a deeper interest in wanting to explore the origins and history of the Urdu language, so Avlani set out to shoot a 20-minute documentary with cinematographer Vikas Maurya. They visited the Rajasthan Arabic Persian Research Institute, one of the few institutes in India offering a certified course in Urdu, located in Tonk. They also filmed interviews with well-known Urdu calligrapher Qamar Dagar and Amir Waseem Ahmad, a professor at Urdu Academy in Delhi, who are striving to keep the art alive.

From that beginning rose Design Fabric's latest project  The Urdu Exhibit. On display at the G5A in Mumbai, with an event scheduled for Tuesday, 26 September, the audio-visual experience encompasses photography, murals, the work of calligraphers, poetry recitals, short films, and murals  all inspired by Urdu.

The curatorial note for The Urdu Exhibit states: "We delve deep into the origins and history of the language, the artists whore painstakingly trying to keep it alive, the different representations of it and largely at how its a vehicle of peace. Given the current political environment  at home and around the globe  we expected to be faced with roadblocks on the way. But what we emerged with was Love. A lot of love."

Madhuvanthi Mohan, the community manager and creative producer at Design Fabric, took Firstpost through some of the most exciting parts of the project:

The Urdu Exhibit encompasses the works of photographers responding to Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poem 'Before You Came'. What were the impressions you had while viewing these photos?

We asked a group of photographers with unique styles to create a photograph inspired by the timeless Urdu poem 'Before You Came' by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The poem captures that roller coaster of emotions that love makes you go through and how the poet seeks permanence as a cure. This photo series captures the mysticism and romance that is unique to the Urdu language and Urdu poetry in particular. By putting together different photographers' visions of the poem, we also want to reflect on the fact that one poem never has just one meaning, it can evoke various feelings in various people. The result is a unique set of visuals that bring together the melancholy of the poem but in startlingly different ways. The photographers include Aashim Tyagi, Aishwaraya Arumbakkam, Aman Makkar, Aun Raza, Farhan Hussain, Jatin Kampani and Prashant Godbole.

Also read  Urdu literary icons get a visual makeover with Shiraz Husain's Khwaab Tanha Collective

The Urdu Exhibit also presents a futuristic look at what the script will look like, in 20150. How was that interpreted?

Urdu is steeped in tradition and apart from being the most respectful language, it has often been regarded also a 'holy' language, especially by those who speak it. Thinking what the future of Urdu script will be in 2050 is a visual idea worth exploring. Taking the past beauty and glory of the script and fast tracking to the future, we thought, would be an exciting challenge. How will the script look or translate or be used in 2050? We asked a set of talented artists to give us their take.

Mohammad Azad  Jahaan-E-Urdu: Here the letter U looms large and omniscient and Mohammad uses the U to amalgamate everything the language stands for in 2050. He sees a world where the culture of tehzib still flourishes and Urdu draws strength from that. It nurtures and protects the essence of other languages, as Sanskrit once was the root of everything, Urdu is now the root and the constant. It blends and seamlessly adapts into popular culture, as any language must do, to survive.

Qamar Dagar  Anjaam (The Culmination): Qamar Dagar speaks of elegance, of refinement and how Urdu with its sweet rhythm and charm is quite perfect for poetry. Is this why there is such a khazana of writings available from stalwart poets in Urdu? Of course. But the language also draws you in with aesthetics; the delicate calligraphy and linear beauty of Urdu are quite unmatched. And yet Urdu adapts and grows and when you change the physicality of the written form, something changes internally. It is a subtle change but a powerful one and if you notice, Urdu has now evolved from a language of communication into a visual art. Isnt that true of the future as well? Qamar Dagar creates the visual of a flower blossoming, that blends the script into its form. A poetic metaphor for a language of poets.

Yusuf Zamani  Mustaqbil: Zamani sees the language from the eyes of an optimist. It adapts and moulds itself into the most popular mode of communication of the time. Be it a digital code or advertising jargon, it lives and thrives by becoming available and useful.

Furqan Jawed  'Ghar-e-beghar' (Homeless in Homeland): Furqan assesses that Urdu is now associated with the rhetoric of a Muslim identity. And in the existing scenario this doesnt bode well for the growth of the language either in India or abroad. So to restrict oneself to the aesthetic beauty of the language alone would be unfair, one must consider the socio-political scenario that has curbed the language and possibly points towards its demise. And hence the dystopian world and representation of a language that is struggling to survive despite the cliches and stereotypes that are thrust on it.

Could you also tell us a little more of the mural art by Zeenat Kulavoor in Mumbai and Sanki King in Karachi, that's part of this project?

Two artists based in India and Pakistan embarked on a project to bring Urdu to the forefront and bring two communities together. Pehle Aap is a mural conversation project as part of Design Fabric's Urdu Issue between artists Sanki King in Karachi and Zeenat Kulavoor in Mumbai.

Using their own unique styles and perspectives, these artists will have a conversation with each other through Urdu script and through their walls. There will be a total of four walls  two in Mumbai and two in Karachi.

They will then announce an open call to other artists based anywhere to join in and continue the mural conversation in their own cities and create the #PehleAap movement, to do their part in keeping this beautiful dying language alive and to bring artist communities together over this cause.

It was so fun working on this collaborative project with artist based in two different countries. Through Skype calls and FB messenger we all got to know each other which added so much to the collaborative feeling of it.

Zeenat's first mural in Lakshmi mills compound Lower Parel says Pehle Aap  a Lukhnowi tradition to show respect. It means After you. She started the project with this phrase showing respect to Abdullah (Sanki King).

The second mural in the series, Sanki's first in the conversation is titled Inqilaab 1and is inspired from a poem by John Elia called 'Ab hamain inqilaab chahye hai' (Now we need revolution). Throughout his life John had been an advocate of peace and put great efforts into bringing the people of India and Pakistan together, not only through his poetry but also through his writings.

The third mural in the series is by Zeenat also in Lakshmi Mills compound and is in response to Sanki King's line. It is a line from Yahaan bhai hai wahaan bhi a poem by the late Muqtida Hasan Nida Fazli. During the partition of India-Pakistan, his parents migrated to Pakistan, but Fazli decided to stay in India. He remained a lifelong critic of the Partition and an opponent of communal, divisive politics. He penned the most subtle comparison between the two countries after his visit to Pakistan in the form of this beautiful poem.

The fourth by Sanki King is called Inqilaab 2', inspired by the same poem as his first. In this poem, John talks about the love and similarities between Indian and Pakistani people and the poem starts with verses singing praises of the artists and poets of these two countries. He also talks about the differences/conflicts that have been created between these "two brothers" by the politicians/establishment and how they have been abused, manipulated and pushed away from each other. Most of the poem is filled with grief and sorrow about the state of the two countries, and John constantly points out that these two brothers need to come closer and love each other again; for this he suggests that a revolution has become a necessity.

Through an augmented reality setup, guests can view images of Sanki King's murals in Pakistan through their device, at the site of Zeenat's mural (which is just outside where the Urdu Exhibit is being held at G5A).

The Urdu Exhibit by Design Fabric, at the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture, Mumbai

On Tuesday, 26 September 2017; 6.30 pm onwards

Limited entry; click here for more details
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday cautioned his supporters against "fake Samajwadis", signalling fresh strain in the party's top ranks.

The former chief minister was addressing the state convention, which unanimously re-elected Naresh Uttam as the party's president in Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh called on his party members at the meet, asking them to realise their responsibilities ahead of Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

"Beware of 'banawti' (fake) samajwadis. They have tried to stop the samajwadi movement many times in the past. They succeeded in one conspiracy as a result of which we could not form government in the state," he said in a veiled attack on his uncle and SP leader Shivpal Yadav and his supporters.

Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been engaged in a battle for supremacy over the party founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh, however, clarified that he enjoyed the blessings of his father and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. "I want to say that 'netaji' (Mulayam) is my father and his blessings will always be with me. We will take forward this andolan (movement)," he said.

Akhilesh also criticised the Centre for the recent train derailments and sought better rail services for Uttar Pradesh. He highlighted the works initiated by his government and said the present Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government befooled people with false promises to grab power.

The convention was attended by senior party leaders Ram Gopal Yadav, Azam Khan, Ram Govind Chowdhury and over 15,000 workers from across the state. Mulayam and Shivpal were conspicuous by their absence.
New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday demanded the Narendra Modi government explain how absconding don Dawood Ibrahim's wife Mehjabin Shaikh managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected to meet her father.

"Wife of Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a video message.

Surjewala's remarks came a day after the arrested brother of Dawood, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law, Mehjabin Shaikh (Dawood's wife) visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father, Salim Kashmiri, before quietly departing.

Targetting the investigative agencies of the government, Surjewala questioned, "What was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) doing? What was Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) doing?"

Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Congress leader said, "Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back."

"Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her?" he asked.

"The prime minister (Narendra Modi), defence minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and home minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers," he said.

Iqbal was arrested early on Tuesday by a crack team of Thane's anti-extortion cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma who had picked him up from his Mumbai home late on Monday night in an extortion case.
Thiruvananthapuram: The CPI would discuss the possibility of forming a broader secular democratic platform to take on the BJP-RSS in the light of the current situation in the country, party general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy said on Friday.

"Already we are propagating the issue. We on our own cannot fight fascist forces of the BJP. So a broader platform is essential and this will be widely discussed in the party congress to be held from 25-29 April, 2018 at Kollam," Reddy told a meet-the-press programme.

Replying to a query, he said the Congress has lost its capacity to fight the BJP alone so there is a need for a broader platform. He also claimed that the Congress was "not serious in fighting communalism in states" and that it should "change" its character and activities.

Whether the Congress should be part of the platform, has to be decided, the leader said.

Party national secretary D Raja said the current situation in the country necessitates a broadest possible "popular resistance to the onslaught coming from the BJP and the Sangh Parivar," and alleged that it was posing a grave threat to Indian democracy, its secular fabric and the Constitution.

Asked if the Congress will be part of the platform, Reddy said details have not yet been worked out.

"But our idea is it should not only be a political platform, but a broad mass organisation of intellectuals, social organisations, and all those who fight for secularism. Secular political parties also should find a place," he said, adding that this has to be discussed with other Left parties.

On whether the Opposition was sufficiently strong to take on the BJP, he said the non-BJP, anti-BJP sections are in majority.

Opposition represents 70 percent of those who did not vote for the BJP, he contended.

"The combined Opposition has not yet come and may not come by 2019 Lok Sabha polls as most of them are regional parties. So, it will be some sort of regional parties combination in different states and some sort of political Opposition at the national level," he said.

Hitting out at the Centre for what he alleged were "anti-people" policies, Reddy claimed the Narendra Modi government was doing precious little for the common man "who has been hit hard due to spiralling prices of essential commodities, including fuel".

The Congress, with a pan India presence, was still the biggest Opposition party and has a role to play. "But we do feel that the Congress is not serious to fight communalism in states.... There should be a change in their character and activity," he said.

On the Rohingyas issue, he said it should be looked at from a "humanitarian" perspective.

It may be possible that some individual Rohingyas are involved in terror activities, Reddy said.

"We do not say that our country has to welcome everyone .... It will be too big a burden. But those who have already come, it is only a few thousands, who can be settled. Some have settled here for last one decade. The issue has be settled in a humanitarian manner," he said.
Ousted member of Assam BJP Benazir Arfan created a stir recently when she alleged that the national party engages the minority leaders only for optics and not beyond that.

Her allegations came days after she was expelled from the party for allegedly inviting people to participate in a hunger strike protesting atrocities against Rohingyas in Myanmar through a post published in the partys WhatsApp group, an allegation which she vehemently denies.

"I was expelled from the party under false allegations. I never invited anyone to participate in any protest programme. Rather it was a prayer programme organised by an NGO for the solace of souls of Hindus and Muslims killed in recent incidents in Myanmar," Arfan, who was expelled on 18 September, told Firstpost.

Arfan said that she was targeted only because she was seen as a Muslim woman who could not be cowed down by patriarchal designs.

"Minority leaders and workers are welcomed to BJP only because the party needs to show a judicious representation of various communities in its hierarchy. But they are not given important portfolios, however talented they are," she said.

The former BJP leader went on to say that there is a striking difference between what the party professes and what it practices in reality.

"Though the party makes effort to be seen as an inclusive organisation, it shies away from providing Muslims with leading positions in the party and the government. It proves how much BJP cares about the minorities," Arfan said.

The Sarbananda Sonowal government in Assam has no Muslim member in the cabinet so far.

Arfan said that the same is true even in the case of women leaders of the party at least in the state.

The two BJP women MLAs have not made it to the council of ministers yet. Pramila Rani Brahma, who is the only woman cabinet minister in the state, is from the Bodo People's Front, an ally of the ruling BJP.

However, the BJP rubbishes her allegations as ones levelled only after she was expelled from the party on account of her 'repeated violation of party rules and regulations'.

"The allegations she raised are utter lies. Sab Ka Saath Sabka Vikas has all along been the cardinal principle of the party, and none is above it however big leader he or she may be," said Assam BJP general secretary Pulok Gohain.

He also said that prior to expelling her, Arfan was repeatedly warned not to defy party rules and regulations, but she would not listen.
Some vital clues about how the 2019 drama is likely to shape up emerged recently with the main protagonists laying down the markers. No sooner did Rahul Gandhi return from the US trip after a two-week long engagement programme with thought leaders, Narendra Modi headed to Varanasi where he inaugurated a host of developmental projects and claimed that every poor Indian will have a home by 2022.

This presents a cleavage of ideas and gives us a glimpse into the poll strategies of Congress and BJP as they gear up for the Lok Sabha polls.

For Congress, the strategy seems to be one more repackaging of the discredited and rejected Rahul Gandhi brand. The party has embarked on a PR programme to have us believe that behind that awkward gawkiness, Gandhi is actually a smart, thoughtful, conscientious, well-read, energetic and sensitive leader who has been unjustly vilified by BJP through its well-oiled propaganda machinery. The underlying message to voters is clear: BJP was so scared of Gandhis awesomeness that it employed a cunning plan to show him as a nitwit, and the public has foolishly bought into that falsity.

On cue, a section of the media, too, seems to have discovered the Gandhi scions 'hidden' talents. While some have boldly already announced him to be a better candidate for the prime minister's post than the incumbent, others have offered that the 'myth' of his incompetence has been well and truly busted  all it apparently took for Gandhi was to take a few questions from university students.

It is entirely possible that Gandhi is indeed a very smart (if misunderstood) politician, and that he is finally coming into his own. It's also equally possible (if only theoretically, at this stage) that the route to winning an election in India meanders through lectures at foreign universities. However, till such time when this is proven with data, we will have to go with the axiom that addressing and impressing voters is important to winning elections in India.

For now at least, one must believe (till Gandhi proves otherwise) that the true test of leadership skills lies not in the way a leader performs on foreign shores while interacting with think tank members or students in elite universities, but in the way, the leader handles the rough and tumble of electoral politics. And, the leader, unfortunately, must emerge through the electoral process and not through newsroom fiats.

It is specious to argue that BJP's propaganda machinery has created an impression that the Gandhi dynast is incompetent. Had Gandhi been even a fraction of the leader that Congress and some in media tout him to be, the party wouldnt have suffered such a stunning debacle in 2014, and BJPs efforts to show him as incompetent or dim-witted would have backfired. The BJP exploited Gandhis many failures, and it is an entirely plausible electoral strategy.

In the years that Narendra Modi has been in power at the Centre, India is on the verge of becoming 'Congress-mukt'. The grand old party is facing a nationwide wipeout. Electoral reverses are cyclical in nature but the malaise against Congress perhaps runs deeper. Even an existential crisis hasnt caused the Congress to emerge out of its stupor. The party has been unable to address endemic organisational weaknesses, nurture next generation of leaders, or create alliances to take on the BJP juggernaut. These are structural shortcomings and they wont be remedied through cosmetic surgeries.

Gandhis calibrated trip of the US seems to be a concerted effort to place him as an intelligent (if withdrawn) leader. The itinerary, drawn up by family faithful Sam Pitroda, included interaction with elite university students, business and thought leaders, NRIs and even some staff aides on Capitol Hill, though Seema Sirohi reports from Washington in The Quint that he was largely ignored by the Trump administration and did not get the kind of high-level attention from the White House or the State Department that out-of-power Americans get when they travel to New Delhi."

The hope is that this interaction with the US intelligentsia will dispel the western presss negative impression of him, and this positivity will percolate down to, and get magnified in Indian media. The plan may work, but it also raises some questions.

First, if the general purpose of the visit is to convince the world of Gandhis leadership acumen, then it is a tacit admission that he suffers from an image deficiency problem, and it is a lame excuse to blame it on the Opposition.

Second, the focus of all Congress attention is on Gandhi alone. This projection of another Gandhi as the panacea for a billion teeming Indians may have worked in the 1980s and 1990s, but the post-liberalisation India is a different animal. In a recent TV interview, P Chidambaram had admitted that Ahmed Patels narrow victory to retain Rajya Sabha seat has taught the Congress that it must concentrate on organisational structure. Its unclear whether the party vice-presidents US trip addresses those concerns.

Third, the Congress has considered it a sacred duty to shield Gandhi from all charges of failure. Yet, the planning of an elaborate Gandhi image makeover exercise as a fulcrum of 2019 campaign is a roundabout way of admitting that the Congress vice-president had, indeed, been a failure.

During the course of interaction, the Gandhi dynast did make some honest admissions and even disarmingly quipped that Modi is a better communicator than him. That may earn him plaudits but does nothing to address the key issues that plague India. Gandhi highlighted the problems but offered no solutions. He offered a muddled view on China instead.

Talking to students at University of California, Berkeley, he said: "India is a democratic country and unlike China, it has to create jobs in a democratic environment. India does not have and nor does it want China's coercive instruments. We cannot follow their model if massive factories are controlled by fear."

Days later at Princeton University, he said: "China is entering spaces with its One Belt One Road. It is moving with tremendous power. It has a vision of the world and from China's perspective, its a powerful vision. Does India have a vision?"

These statements show that Gandhi is an earnest and honest man, but political leadership demands clear-headedness. Hes also quite stiff during public interactions, as Sadanand Dhume writes in Times of India. I caught a glimpse of Gandhis less-than-stellar political skills in New York on Wednesday. In a private room ahead of his speech he posed stiffly for photos with an endless parade of pushy non-resident Indians. A natural politician would have fed off the human energy. Gandhi bore the haunted look of a librarian forced to publicly perform vaudeville.

The BJP, meanwhile, seems to have decided that 2004 debacle was the result of twin deficiencies: A botched up communication strategy, and lack of a base among the poor. Modi seems to be moving quickly on these fronts and he is consciously trying to create a pro-poor image, even at the risk of antagonising the middle-class, BJPs traditional base.

Between these contrasting ideas, a fascinating contest in 2019 stares at us.
tech2 News Staff

In order to make enterprise setup easy, Android Oreo (8.0) includes a feature called Zero-touch enrollment. Through this, one can streamline the enterprise mobility management (EMM) process. This can probably bring ease both for the company providing the mobile and the end user.

EMM has become a necessary tool for companies these days to control their organisation and data security in mobile phones.

In this case the user has to be certain that the Android device they're using supports Android Oreo (8.0). According to Googles blogpost, those with a Pixel phone can use it in Android Nougat (7.0). However, it is necessary for these people to purchase the device from an enterprise reseller, or a Google partner. And not from a consumer store.

The reseller has to set up a Zero-touch enrollment account. For this, a Google account is required where the user has to enter a corporate email, and not their personal one.

In the Zero-touch enrollment portal, an EMM device policy controller has to be installed. The policies that are necessary for the device to have.

During this process, the devices sees if they have been allotted any enterprise configuration. This configuration helps in completing the setup of the device. The EMM configuration can either be set as default or as manual. Through this portal, the account owner can manage people who are part of this. It also allows them to add or delete a reseller. Moreover, even other devices can be added to it.

This Zero-touch enrollment can be used with Pixel by Google, Huawei Mate 10, Sony Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact.

The service is currently available in the US, Canada and Europe and select places in Asia. It has not come to India as of now.

Through this, the IT desk in the users workspace does not have to do it separately for everyone individually, dramatically streamlining the process.
tech2 News Staff

In a bid to provide brands way to compare advertisements performances, Facebook has introduced new measurement solutions that will enable advertisers to see the impact of their ad campaigns on the social networking platform and TV.

Facebook, in collaboration with data measurement firm Nielsen, launched "Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift" solution through which advertisers can interpret their cross-platform results, the company said in a statement late on Friday.

The solution leverages Nielsen's expertise in television measurement and its database of television programming to poll for TV ad exposure. The results are delivered independently by the company. The product is currently available to eligible advertisers via their Facebook representative in the US and the UK and will be available in Australia by the end of the year.

The social media giant is also working on a solution "Facebook Cross-Platform Brand Lift", which will offer polling and results from cross-platform brand lift measurement for ads on Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network.

The tool, which may be available to advertisers in early 2018, will also provide self-serve reporting, including that of Facebook usage during commercial breaks.

As per previous report, Facebook has put out a statement on 21 September saying that it will hand over 3,000 ads addressing social and political issues that are alleged to have been generated by Russian-controlled accounts on Facebook. These ads appeared between 2015 and 2017 and have been handed to the Special Counsel investigating the allegations of Russian interference in the 2017 US Presidential elections.

With inputs from IANS
tech2 News Staff

Google is celebrating the hundredth birth anniversary of Dr. Asima Chatterjee, an Indian chemist, who contributed in the field of organic chemistry. It must be noted that she was the first woman to be awarded a Doctorate in Sciences by an Indian university, the University of Calcutta.

In the Doodle, there is a bespectacled woman with organic compound structures making up the Google logo around her, signifying Dr. Chatterjees contribution to organic chemistry.

Born on 23 September, 1917, she was also the first woman to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress in 1975.

Over sixty years of research, Dr. Chatterjee has contributed significantly in the field of medicinal chemistry. Her focus was mostly on alkaloid, coumarins, and terpenoids.

She had also developed an anti-epileptic drug called Ayush-56 and an anti-malarial drug. These patented drugs are marketed by many companies. In fact, she often stressed on the use of indigenous plants to form drugs and its intermediaries.

She graduated from the Scottish Church College in Kolkata with honours in Chemistry (1936). Over the years she has been a recipient of numerous awards, like the CV Raman award, PC Ray award and the SS Bhatnagar award.

She was also honoured with the third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan, for her contribution to science.

Known to be a woman of substance, according to the Google blogpost, in 1967, Dr. Chatterjee had lost her father and husband within a gap of four months.

Her husband Dr. Barananda Chatterjee passed away leaving her with a daughter who was still a child, Dr. Chatterjee lifted her spirits and resumed her work in contributing to science. It also said that her husband had a great influence over her life.

Over the years, she has been a leading member in various science delegations in India and abroad. She was also nominated as a member of the Rajya Sabha by the then President of India in the 1980s.
AFP

Google is seeking ways to help publishers win paying subscribers for news stories, a person close to the matter told AFP. To this end, the US internet giant is collaborating with NewsCorp, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, according to the source. Google was said to be ramping up its support for subscription services in recognition of the fact that such revenue is vital for publishers who can't rely on advertising alone for financial survival.

Google declined to comment on word of this latest effort.

"We work closely with news publishers across the world to build products that help support their business and add value to users," Google spokesperson Maggie Shiels said in response to an AFP inquiry. "At the moment we don't have anything to announce."

Google already uses its technology to let readers of online news subscribe to publishers with a single click, in an internet age spin on tossing a free copy of a newspaper on a doorstep in the hope people sign-up for daily deliveries.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has made a priority of investing in artificial intelligence, and has spoken publicly about infusing the company's array of offerings with software smarts. Artificial intelligence could be combined with troves of data at Google to try to better win over potential news subscribers.

Publishers have complained at times that Google is making money off their work by surfacing stories in search results. Google has countered that it shares revenue with publishers, drives traffic to their websites where stories are hosted, and that they can opt not to show up in search results.

The need to support reliable news organizations has been highlighted by controversy over bogus stories crafted to influence politics, promote social division, or simply rake in online ad revenue.
IANS

NASA's asteroid sample return spacecraft flew past Earth on Friday on its way to asteroid Bennu, for a rendezvous next August.

The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer) spacecraft came within 17,237 km of Antarctica at 12.52 pm EDT (10.22 pm India time) on Friday, just south of Cape Horn, Chile, before following a route north over the Pacific Ocean, NASA said.

"The encounter with Earth is fundamental to our rendezvous with Bennu," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is currently on a seven-year journey to rendezvous with, study, and return a sample of Bennu to Earth. This sample of a primitive asteroid will help scientists understand the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago.

The spacecraft launched on September 8, 2016, on an Atlas V 411 rocket. Although the rocket provided the spacecraft with the all the momentum required to propel it forward to Bennu, OSIRIS-REx needed an extra boost from the Earth's gravity to change its orbital plane.

Bennu's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees from Earth's orbit, and this manoeuvre changed the spacecraft's direction to put it on the path toward Bennu.

As a result of the flyby, the velocity change to the spacecraft was 3.778 kilometres per second, NASA said.

"The total velocity change from Earth's gravity far exceeds the total fuel load of the OSIRIS-REx propulsion system, so we are really leveraging our Earth flyby to make a massive change to the OSIRIS-REx trajectory, specifically changing the tilt of the orbit to match Bennu," Burns said.

The mission team also is using OSIRIS-REx's Earth flyby as an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft's instrument suite.

Approximately four hours after the point of closest approach, and on three subsequent days over the next two weeks, the spacecraft's instruments will be turned on to scan Earth and the Moon, NASA said.

These data will be used to calibrate the spacecraft's science instruments in preparation for OSIRIS-REx's arrival at Bennu in late 2018.

"The opportunity to collect science data over the next two weeks provides the OSIRIS-REx mission team with an excellent opportunity to practice for operations at Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

"During the Earth flyby, the science and operations teams are co-located, performing daily activities together as they will during the asteroid encounter," Lauretta added.
Berlin: British prime minister Theresa Mays speech in Florence has failed to inject much-needed new momentum into talks on Britains departure from the European Union, a top politician with German chancellor Angela Merkels conservatives said on Saturday.

May set out a plan on Friday to retain full access to the EUs single market for two years after Brexit to try to reassure business and reset the tone of stalled negotiations with Brussels.

Michael Stuebgen, European spokesman for the conservatives in the German parliament, said it remained unclear how Britain would meet its financial obligations under the EU budget, and that London continued to refuse Britons living in Europe access to the European Court of Justice.

"Theresa Mays speech underscores the will of London to move ahead with Brexit negotiations, but unfortunately it will not provide a new dynamism in the talks that is so urgently needed," Stuebgen said in a statement.

He said May also failed to address the issue of future borders, especially in Ireland.

"On this basis, we can hardly expect the needed progress in the Brexit negotiations before the European Council meeting in October," he said.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert declined to comment after Mays speech.

On Friday, before May spoke, Seibert told reporters a new round of negotiations due to start on Monday offered Britain a "fourth opportunity" to discuss specific proposals, reflecting growing impatience with the lack of progress in the talks.

The head of the German Association of Small and Medium-sized Businesses (BVMW) called Mays speech disappointing and said she had wasted an opportunity for a new beginning in the Brexit negotiations.

"What German industry needs above all is planning and investment certainty," BVMW chief Mario Ohoven said in a statement. "Looming customs duties and bureaucratic trade obstacles are exactly the opposite of that, and are already resulting in significant damage to the investment climate."
Seoul: Will North Korea's next nuclear test involve a thermonuclear missile screaming over Japan? That's a question being asked after North Korea's foreign minister said his country may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.

The world hasn't seen an above-ground, atmospheric nuclear test since an inland detonation by China in 1980 and North Korea upending that could push the region dangerously close to war. The room for error would be minimal and any mistake could be disastrous. Even if successful, such a test could endanger air and sea traffic in the region.

Because of that many experts don't think North Korea would take such a risk. But they're also not ruling it out given the North's increasing number of nuclear and missile tests.

The main reason for North Korea to take that risk would be to quiet outside doubts about whether it really has a thermonuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile, said Jeffrey Lewis, a US arms control expert at the Middlebury Center of International Studies at Monterey. So far North Korea has been separately testing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles built to deliver them, rather than testing them together.

North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho wouldn't have spoken without approval from Pyongyang's top leadership when he suggested to reporters in New York on Friday that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfill the vows of the country's leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, pledged hours earlier to take "highest-level" action against the United States over Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" the North if provoked. Ri didn't elaborate and said no one knew what decision Kim would make.

If North Korea attempts an atmospheric nuclear test at sea, it would likely involve its most powerful ballistic missiles, such as the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 or the intercontinental-range Hwasong-14, experts say. The country lacks assets to air-drop a nuclear device and sending a vessel out to sea to detonate a device raises the chances of getting detected and stopped by the US military.

For the nuclear missile to reach a remote part of the Pacific, it would have to fly over Japan, as the North did with two Hwasong-12 test launches in recent weeks.

There have only been a handful of times when atmospheric nuclear tests involved ballistic missiles, including China's fourth nuclear test in 1966. That involved a midrange Dongfeng-2 missile being launched from a deep inland rocket facility to the Lop Nur nuclear test site in the country's far west.

Lewis finds similarities between the current situation surrounding North Korea and the events that led to China's 1966 test, which was driven by US doubts of Chinese capabilities to place nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles.

"The United States is still taking an attitude of skepticism toward North Korea's nuclear capabilities," he said. "The difference, of course, is that China fired its nuclear-armed missile over its own territory, not another country."

A nuclear launch by North Korea would come dangerously close to an act of war, said Lee Choon Geun, a missile expert from South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute. Missile tests can easily go wrong and the consequences of failure could be terrifying if the missile is armed with a nuclear weapon.

A failed flight or an accidental detonation over Japan would likely trigger retaliation from Washington and Tokyo that might result in a nuclear war, he said.

"It's reasonable to think that Ri was bluffing," Lee said. "Would they be sure that the United States and Japan will just sit there and watch?"

But Lewis says that's exactly what the United States and Japan will do.

"Although I am sure such a launch would be very alarming to people in Japan, there is little the United States or Japan could do," he said. "Would we really start a war over such an act? I don't think so."

An atmospheric nuclear test would be far more dangerous than detonations in controlled underground environments, both because of the force of the blast and unrestrained release of radioactive materials that could spread out over large areas. Such a launch would potentially endanger aircraft and ships because it's highly unlikely the North would give prior warnings or send naval vessels to the area to control sea traffic.

An atmospheric thermonuclear blast would also raise the risks of damage caused by an electromagnetic pulse, an intense wave of electrical energy generated by the explosion that could destroy electronic devices and equipment over a vast area, Lee said.

The US and the old Soviet Union combined to conduct more than 400 atmospheric nuclear tests before they joined Britain in a 1963 treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. The treaty was later signed by more than 100 other countries. China conducted 22 atmospheric nuclear tests, which frequently involved bombers dropping nuclear devices on test sites, before its last one on 1980.

While the impact of previous tests hasn't been fully understood, damage from radioactive fallout could be serious.

When the United States detonated its most powerful nuclear device in a 1954 test code-named Castle Bravo, the radioactive fallout spread far beyond the test site in the Marshall Islands.

Twenty-three crewmembers of a Japanese fishing vessel that was 160 kilometers east of the detonation site, were contaminated and suffered from radiation sickness. One of the fishermen, Matashichi Oishi, once told The Associated Press that he saw a flash before tiny white flakes fell on the crewmembers like snow.

North Korea in past months has been stepping up the aggressiveness of its nuclear and missile tests.

The North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on 3 September in what it claimed as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental Hwasong-14 ICBMs. In two July flight tests, those missiles displayed the potential ability to reach deep into continental United States.

With its two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan in August and September, the North also broke from its previous test regime of firing missiles at highly lofted angles to reduce range and avoid other countries. The launches were seen as North Korea's attempts to win more military space in a region dominated by its enemies and evaluate the performance and reliability of its missiles under operational conditions.

The North has also threatened to launch a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the US Pacific military hub.

Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said it's more likely that the North's next significant launch would be a full-range test of an unarmed Hwasong-14 ICBM. The North could launch the missile at around 7,000 kilometers to display a capability to reach Hawaii or Alaska, he said.

Still, the past months have taught him not to underestimate what the North could do.

"North Korea has repeatedly exceeded my expectations and Kim Jong Un in the statement has vowed to go beyond any expectation," said Kim, the analyst.
Cox's Bazar: Bangladesh authorities on Friday released two Myanmar photographers covering the Rohingya crisis for a German magazine after they were granted bail by a court, police and a lawyer said.

Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat were detained early in September in the border district of Cox's Bazar, where more than 4,20,000 Rohingya Muslims have sought refuge from violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state since 25 August.

Police have said they were arrested on suspicion of espionage  a charge rejected by the pair's lawyers.

"They were freed on bail," a police inspector told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

One of the pair's lawyers, Jyotirmoy Barua, confirmed that the two were granted bail by a court of a judicial magistrate in Cox's Bazar.

It was not clear whether the two would be allowed to travel back to Myanmar.

The lawyer said the two were charged with "false impersonation" and providing "false information" after police accused them of using tourist visas to enter the country, instead of journalist visas.

Cox's Bazar police, however, earlier told AFP the pair were also "primarily accused of espionage".

An award-winning photographer from Bangladesh was also arrested with the pair was later freed.

Scores of foreign journalists have poured into Bangladesh's southeast to cover the Rohingya exodus.

The UN has accused Buddhist-dominated Myanmar of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against the stateless group.

Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat arrived in Cox's Bazar in early September on assignment for Hamburg-based magazine Geo to cover the refugee crisis, which has strained relations between Muslim-majority Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The lawyer described Minzayar Oo as "an award winning photographer whose work was published in reputed dailies and magazines including the New York Times, Guardian and National Geographic".

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has urged Bangladesh to release the photographers and drop all charges against them.

"The Bangladeshi authorities should not criminalise covering a major world story," said CPJ deputy executive director Robert Mahoney said last week.

"Both local and international journalists reporting on the Rohingya story must be allowed to work freely," he said.
United Nations: Countries like India and Japan, Brazil and Germany must be given permanent seats in the UN Security Council, Bhutan said on Thursday as it backed reforms in the world body to revitalise and strengthen it.

Bhutan prime minister Tshering Tobgay said the UN reforms would be incomplete without reforming the Security Council to reflect the changing realities of the world. "As such, countries like India and Japan, Brazil and Germany must be called upon to serve as permanent members in the Security Council. And Africa must be appropriately represented," Tobgay said in his address to the UN General Assembly.

The Secretary General's reform initiatives will provide the much needed framework to revitalise and strengthen the UN Bhutan joins all member states in backing this bold endeavour, he said.

Asking member countries to join him in observing a moment of silence to remember the victims of global terrorism, Tobgay said the recent acts of terrorism have brought pain and suffering to countless people in nearly every part of the world, and far too many lives have been cruelly lost.

"The horrific acts committed by terrorist groups undermine global peace and security, and Bhutan joins the call for united action to combat these extremists. To win the fight against terrorism we have no option but to strengthen the

United Nations, so that multilateralism and global cooperation are further enhanced," he said.

Referring to the three recent hurricanes that battered communities in the Caribbean and in the United States, and the devastating floods in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka that have taken more than 1200 lives, he said these disasters are not isolated incidents.

"Experts are increasingly convinced that natural disasters like hurricanes and floods are made worse by climate change. Climate change is a reality. Each of the last three years has been the hottest in recorded history. Sixteen of the 17 hottest years on record have all occurred in this new century. And this must alarm us, for we are only in 2017," Tobgay said.

"There is no room for complacency, hesitation or finger pointing, excuses or procrastination. The urgency is now. Our wellbeing is at stake. The survival of future generations is at risk," he said.

"The Paris Agreement is proof that we have accepted that climate change is a reality, and that we are willing to come together, to work together, to fight climate change together. I urge all countries to fulfil the promises they made in Paris," he added.
A day after conducting joint drills with Chinese air forces, Pakistan said that it successfully test-fired an anti-ship missile in the Northern Arabian sea on Saturday, stating that the country is prepared for war.

According to reports, the Pakistan Navy test-fired the anti-ship missile from a Sea King helicopter into the open sea, successfully hitting its target.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration, a press release issued by the navy said.

Stressing war preparedness and the professional capabilities of Pakistan, Zakalullah said that the Pakistan Navy will safeguard the sea borders and interests of Pakistan at every cost.

"I am proud of Pakistan Navy fleet's war preparations," Zakaullah was quoted as saying

The naval chief also visited fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed exercises involving the naval fleet.

The missile test has come just a day after pilots of the Chinese and Pakistani air forces conducted joint drills sitting in the same aircraft, which Chinese state-run media said was a reflection of deep mutual trust between the two militaries.

During the ongoing joint drills named "Shaheen VI", air force personnel cooperated in planning and implementing strategies, as well as learning operational concepts and tactics from each other, state-run Xinhua news agency had reported.

Li Wengang, head of China-Pakistan joint training command office, said that sitting in the same aircraft to fight was a reflection of the deep mutual trust between the two countries and their militaries.

Chen Lei, a leader of a Chinese pilot team, said that the drill improved trainees' skills and friendship, adding that individuals from both sides have become "buddies" after more than 10 days' training, the report said.

The joint training between the two militaries which maintain close relations was launched in March 2011.

With inputs from PTI
San Juan: Puerto Rico battled dangerous floods on Friday after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, as rescuers raced against time to reach residents trapped in their homes and the death toll climbed to 33.

Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rossello called Maria the most devastating storm in a century after it destroyed the US territory's electricity and telecommunications infrastructure.

"Part of the island is lacking communications so what we have are some preliminary assessments about 13 deaths at this juncture," Rossello told CNN.

"Right now our efforts are to make sure we have everybody safe, that we can rescue people. Our efforts have already produced almost 700 rescues so we're clearly focused on that."

The National Hurricane Center said some areas in Puerto Rico could see 40 inches (more than a meter) of rain from Maria, and Rossello warned of dangerous mudslides brought on by the deluge.

"We have a lot of flooding, we have reports of complete devastation of vulnerable housing. Of course it's still raining over here."

Maria has been blamed for at least 33 deaths, including 15 in Dominica, three in Haiti and two in Guadeloupe. After lamenting that Puerto Rico had been "absolutely obliterated" by Maria, US president Donald Trump spoke with Governor Rossello last night when he promised to speed up emergency relief efforts.

Although the southeast coast suffered the worst damage, no part of the island escaped the storm's wrath, including the capital San Juan where there was widespread flooding.

The city's mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, said the biggest need was reaching vulnerable people who are stranded in their homes to give them emergency medication and supplies.

"On Thursday, we were canvassing and we found elderly people that don't have blood pressure medicine, food," she said. "If we get to an elderly home too late, the situation of care will be disastrous, and could be disastrous.

"I got an SOS from (an elderly home) and it was a text like from a horror movie. It said if anybody can hear us, please, we are stuck here and we can't get out and we have no power and we have very little water left. We got there just in time."

The torrential rain had turned some roads into muddy brown rivers, impassable to all but the largest of vehicles. Toppled trees, street signs and power cables were strewn across roads that were also littered with debris.

Puerto Rico's electricity network has been crippled by the storm and engineers say it could take months for power to be fully restored.

The local electricty board has promised that their priority will be to restore power to hospitals, water treatment plants and pumping stations.

Brock Long, who heads the US federal government's emergency management agency FEMA, said that ships carrying millions of emergency meals and bottled water were trying to dock as the island's ports are slowly reopened.

As of early Friday, Maria was a Category three hurricane with winds of 205 kilometers per hour, churning in the sea some 35 miles east of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos.

Heavy rains and high winds began hitting the archipelago, a British territory, last afternoon.

The government opened new shelters after several buildings which had been used during Hurricane Irma earlier this month were damaged and authorities feared they might not hold up under another fierce storm.

In the Dominican Republic, the heavy rains triggered flooding as rivers overflowed their banks.

High winds downed trees and electrical pylons, and 1,40,000 people were left without power, the government said. Some 17,000 have been evacuated from their homes.

Maria has already torn through several Caribbean islands, claiming the highest toll on Dominica, which has a population of around 72,000 and has been largely cut off from the outside world.

"We have no water, no electricity, very limited communications," Dominica's prime minister Roosevelt Skerrit said.

AFP aerial footage showed debris from damaged buildings scattered across the island and many structures with their roofs ripped off. Trees were snapped in half or torn out of the ground.

Residents on Thursday were busy shoveling mud from their homes and businesses, while laundry was hung out to dry on the frames of half-destroyed homes and along downed utility cables.

Skerrit appealed for desperately needed supplies and helicopters to ferry them to cut-off communities.

"These hurricanes are becoming stronger than ever and more powerful than ever... And we really need, all of us, to understand that these issues are of greater concern to small islands like ours.

"We are very very vulnerable," said Skerrit, who himself had to be rescued during the hurricane which blew off the roof off his home.
United Nations: France, Britain, the United States and four other countries have asked the UN Security Council to meet next week to discuss the ongoing violence in Myanmar, according to a request seen by AFP on Friday.

The seven countries including Egypt, Kazakhstan, Senegal and Sweden want UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to brief the council on Myanmar's military campaign against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state.

The Ethiopian presidency of the council said it was holding consultations to set a time for the meeting.

The United Nations says more than 4,20,000 Rohingya have fled for safety to Bangladesh in the face of the army campaign in Rakhine that includes rape and the burning of villages.

The military operation was sparked by attacks carried out by Rohingya militants on police posts on 25 August.

The security council has called for an end to the violence but rights organizations have said the exodus has continued, fueling international outrage.

The United Nations has described the military operation as "ethnic cleansing" and French president Emmanuel Macron went further, describing it as "genocide."
Dhaka: The United Nations will need $200 million over the next six months to face the "catastrophic" influx of more than 4,20,000 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh, a top United Nations official said on Friday.

The Rohingya Muslims, escaping ethnic unrest in Myanmar, have overwhelmed Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar in under a month.

The United Nations made an emergency appeal for $78 million on 9 September, but United Nations resident coordinator in Bangladesh, Robert Watkins, said much more would be needed as the exodus grows.

"Our best estimate at this point is $200 million. We are putting together a plan right now that will be ready in about four or five days," Watkins said.

He said aid workers were already struggling to get food, medicine and drinking water to the refugees, many of whom were limited to one meal a day.

The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) group has warned that refugee camps are on the brink of a "public health disaster", saying filthy water and faeces flow through shanties now bursting with Rohingya.

"The fact that there are 4,30,000 refugees here is in fact a catastrophic event. There is no question about that. We are coping the best we can," Watkins said.

"We are working very hard with the government to get out assistance to all the people, to make sure that everyone is covered with shelter, getting food and getting access to health care and Pure water and sanitation. This is our priority right now."

He described the government allocation of new land for a massive new refugee camp as a "big breakthrough".

The 2,000 acres of land between two existing camps is already being developed.

"People have been supplied with building materials so they can build their own shelters in the short term. In the medium term they can build something more resilient.

He also offered United Nations help in government attempts to register refugees.

"The government has started doing that. We have been offering the government to assist with our biometric registration technology and staff and that is still being negotiated with the government."

The registration could play an important role in any future accord to send Rohingya back to Myanmar, where the Buddhist-dominated army has been accused of killing Rohingya and burning their villages.

A huge relief operation has started with truck convoys carrying aid to some of the remotest border areas.

Some 100 tonnes of food, tents, sleeping mats and blankets sent by Saudi Arabia have started arriving in Cox's Bazar. The US has also pledged $32 million to help Bangladesh cope with the influx.

The International Organisation for Migration said the Saudi aid would be distributed "to some of the thousands of people who have arrived from Myanmar with nothing and are now camped out and living rough on the side of the road or in muddy fields."

"We urgently need more supplies like food, water, medicine and shelter. We can and we must do more," Save the Children International chief executive Helle Thorning-Schmidt said at the UN in New York.
Florence: British prime minister Theresa May on Friday called for a two-year transition after Brexit in which Britain would largely maintain its current ties with Brussels, in a charm offensive intended to unlock stalled negotiations with the European Union.

In a major speech in Florence, May promised to meet Britain's existing EU budget commitments until 2020 and outlined new legal guarantees for the rights of around three million EU nationals living in Britain.

She also committed to maintaining Europe's security, saying in a direct pitch to EU leaders, "We want to be your strongest friend and partner as the EU and UK thrive side by side."

A fourth round of negotiations with the European Commission is due to start next week, with London keen to make progress on the terms of the divorce so that talks can move on to trade.

"While the UK's departure from the EU is inevitably a difficult process, it is in all of our interests for our negotiations to succeed," she said.

May said she wanted a transition period after Brexit in March 2019 of "around two years" during which "access to one another's markets should continue on current terms" for Britain and the EU.

She also promised to honour Britain's financial commitments for the remainder of the EU's current budget plan.

Britain's contributions for two years would be at least $24 billion  though this falls well below European estimates of Britain's total Brexit bill.

Within hours, Moody's Investors Service cut its long-term credit rating for Britain, citing the economic uncertainty sparked by the Brexit negotiations and the likelihood of weaker public finances.

Moody's dropped its grade by one notch, to Aa2 from Aa1 with a stable outlook, which reflects expectations Britain's debt will "continue to rise" and worries that any UK-EU trade agreement "would not award the same access to the EU... that the UK currently enjoys".

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the "constructive spirit" of the speech, but said he would wait to hear the "concrete implications"  particularly on the money.

He said that if Britain wanted to continue to benefit from access to the single market after it leaves the EU, all existing rules must apply.

French president Emmanuel Macron noted "advances" and "openings" in May's speech.

"The signals sent by the British prime minister show a willingness" ahead of next week's round of negotiations, he told reporters.

But Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage expressed outrage at the idea, saying: "Theresa May's Brexit vision is that we leave the EU in name only. All areas of integration we have currently will be rebadged."

EU citizens' rights

May's speech came 15 months after Britain's referendum vote to leave the EU and six months after she triggered the two-year Brexit process, amid increasing demands by Brussels for more clarity.

One problem was that her own government is still divided  a fact highlighted this week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson laid out his own vision for life outside the EU.

After the speech, he said May's words were "uplifting".

Although May did not rule out her previous threat of walking away from the talks, she expressed optimism that a deal could be done.

On the issue of EU citizens' rights, she sought to break the deadlock over the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as the arbiter in any disputes.

She said the final deal agreed with Brussels would be fully incorporated into British law.

A small group of British expatriates had gathered outside the Santa Maria Novella church complex where May spoke, holding up signs saying "Hands off our rights".

Creative and practical

May is hoping her speech will be enough to unlock the talks in time for an EU leaders meeting on 19-20 October, when her 27 counterparts will decide if talks can move onto trade.

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform said May was "right to adopt a positive tone", but added that her offers were "not enough to unblock" the talks.

The shape of that future trade deal remains elusive, though the prime minister insisted there could be no role for the ECJ  a totemic issue for eurosceptics in Britain.

She rejected the idea that Britain could adopt a model similar to that enjoyed by Norway, or a free-trade agreement like the one recently struck between the EU and Canada.

"Instead let us be creative as well as practical in designing an ambitious economic partnership," she said.
Pyongyang: Tens of thousands of Pyongyang residents were gathered in the capital's Kim Il-Sung Square on Saturday to laud leader Kim Jong-Un's denunciation of US president Donald Trump.

Such set-piece rallies, organised by the authorities, are a regular feature of political life in Pyongyang, and are intended as a physical demonstration of popular support for the leadership.

Students in white shirts and red ties held up the red flag of the ruling Workers' Party, with a yellow ink brush representing intellectuals, a hammer for the workers, and a sickle for the peasantry.

Ranks of workers and residents listened, their fists clenched, as speakers repeated Kim's denigration of Trump as "mentally deranged" and a "dotard".

The US president dubbed Kim "Rocket Man" in a speech at the United Nations last week in which he threatened to "totally destroy" the North if it attacked the US or its allies.

In a statement on Friday, Kim responded by saying that "a frightened dog barks louder" and Trump would "pay dearly" for his comments - triggering the US head of state to describe him as a "madman".

On one side of the square a giant poster depicted innumerable red missiles plunging towards a collapsing US Capitol, with the slogan "Korea's Answer".

The bellicose rhetoric between Kim and Trump has become increasingly personal, and raised fears of miscalculation in the standoff over the North's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

"I would like to put down my pen and take up arms again to perform my duty to defend the fatherland," said Pyongyang Mechanical University student Ri Il Ung, 24.

"Trump is a warmonger and a backstreet gangster," he added. "It's quite ridiculous that such a person could become a politician."

Ordinary North Koreans normally only ever express officially-approved sentiments when speaking to international media.

The North Korean regime is intensely militaristic and bases its claim to legitimacy on defending the country from external aggression, and analysts say that Trump's comments are grist to its mill.

Kim is also using the drama to reinforce his leadership, they add.

Pyongyang insists it needs nuclear arms to protect itself from a US invasion, and carried out its sixth atomic test earlier this month, earning itself an eighth set of United Nations Security Council sanctions.

It has also tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles that appeared to bring much of the US mainland into range, and regularly issues bloodcurdling threats.

Thousands of people marched through the square, past portraits of Kim's predecessors, his father and grandfather Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung, behind a banner proclaiming: "Let us safeguard with our lives the central committee of the party headed by the great comrade Kim Jong-Un."

Environmental protection ministry official Han Kwang Nam told AFP: "We fear nothing, we are not afraid because we have the greatest ever general, the respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong-Un.

"We will surely gain victory."
United Nations: Syria's war has taken a new turn with the expected recapture of Raqqa from the Islamic State, but world leaders gathered at the United Nations this week seem to be paying little attention.

Once the focal point of a myriad of high-powered meetings during the UN General Assembly, Syria this year dropped off the diplomatic agenda, dwarfed by the crises over North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal.

Last year, tensions were running high at the UN assembly, with Western powers locked in heated exchanges with Russia and Iran, the Syrian government's allies, over the offensive against rebel-held Aleppo.

Since then, President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaken Aleppo and most of the opposition-held territory, backed by Moscow and Tehran.

The Islamic State (IS) group is close to defeat in its two remaining Syrian strongholds: Raqqa and Deir Ezzor.

Russia, Iran and Turkey have set up four "de-escalation zones" in Syria and are working with the United States and Jordan in the south to bring about ceasefires that have eased the violence.

"The war in Syria is not over yet," European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini reminded foreign ministers at an EU-hosted meeting on Syria on Thursday.

But she acknowledged that "the situation on the ground has improved. Daesh (IS) has been driven out from its strongholds," and fighting has eased.

"For many Syrians, this makes the difference between life and death."

Now in its seventh year of war that has left 330,000 dead, Syria has become an extremely complex conflict, but diplomatic efforts remain low profile.

The Kurdish issue and Israel's growing involvement, fueled by fears that neighboring Syria will become a springboard for Iran, are shaping up as new crises, diplomats say.

"Nothing is resolved", said a European diplomat, who asked not to be named.

The country remains deeply divided  some would call it a de-facto partition  five million Syrians are still refugees and a new outbreak of fighting is still possible, he said.

During his address to the assembly, French president Emmanuel Macron called for the establishment of a new Syria "contact group" to push for a diplomatic solution.

Russia and the United States reacted coolly to the proposal.

The administration of President Donald Trump has yet to define its Syria strategy beyond fighting Islamic State militants and is refusing to give Iran, a key player in the war, a seat at the table.

"If the contact group had Iran in it, that would be difficult for us," a senior US official told AFP this week following a meeting between the United States and allies on Syria.

"The Americans have dropped out of the search for a political solution," said the European diplomat. "Their focus is solely military: defeating Islamic State."

The United Nations is planning to convene a new round of peace talks in the coming weeks between Syria's government and the opposition, even though past negotiations have failed to yield more than incremental progress.
Moscow: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has likened the war of words between US president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to a kindergarten fight between children.

The North Korean leader earlier labelled Trump "mentally deranged" and a "dotard" after Trump threatened to destroy his country.

Trump responded with a tweet calling Kim Jong-un "a madman" who "will be tested like never before!"

Lavrov said a pause was needed, "to calm down the hotheads", BBC reported on Friday.

"Yes, it's unacceptable to silently watch North Korea's nuclear military adventures but it is also unacceptable to unleash war on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

He called for a political process, which he said was a key part of the United Nations Security Council process.

"Together with China we'll continue to strive for a reasonable approach and not an emotional one like when children in a kindergarten start fighting and no-one can stop them," he said.

The North Korean leader had attacked Donald Trump days after his speech at the United Nations, in which the US president said he would "totally destroy" North Korea if the US was forced to defend itself or its allies.

He also mocked Kim Jong-un with a disparaging nickname, saying: "Rocket man is on a suicide mission."

But the North Korean leader said remarks by the "deranged" US president convinced him he is right to develop weapons for North Korea.

In an unprecedented personal statement, Kim said Trump would "pay dearly" for his speech, which he labelled "unprecedented rude nonsense".

He said Trump had insulted his country in the eyes of the world, and threatened to "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire."

Experts say this is the first time a North Korean leader has made a direct address to an international audience - and it merits serious and thorough consideration.

China also urged a calming of the heated rhetoric on both sides, saying the issue was "complicated and sensitive".

"All relevant parties should exercise restraint instead of provoking each other," said foreign minister spokesman Lu Kang.
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The first, Consumer Healthcare, features everything from oral health to nutrition products. Although this is a segment that usually grows at the slowest rate of the three, it generates the most predictable cash flow and offers reasonably strong pricing power. That's because most consumer health products, such as toothpaste, are basic-need goods and will be purchased regardless of how well or poorly the U.S. or global economy are performing.

The second operating segment, vaccines, has historically grown at closer to a mid-single-digit rate. This division is primarily designed to take advantage of a growing global population, which makes it an intriguing long-term play. Recently, though, GlaxoSmithKline has seen vaccine sales soar thanks to Shingrix, the most popular vaccine for the treatment of Shingles. Sales of Shingrix accounted for $457 million in first-quarter sales, or more than a fifth of all vaccines revenue, and it's still growing at an extraordinary pace.

The third and final segment is pharmaceuticals, which generated 54% of first-quarter sales. Although pharmaceuticals is the toughest to predict from a cash flow perspective, it offers the strongest long-term growth rate. Leading the charge are Glaxo's next-generation asthma and COPD medicines (Breo Ellipta, Anoro Ellipta, and Trelegy Ellipta, to name a few), and its portfolio of HIV therapies. In the first quarter alone, these new respiratory products brought in $807 million in sales (more than $3.2 billion on an extrapolated annual basis), while core HIV products hit $1.36 billion in Q1 sales ($5.44 billion in extrapolated annual sales).

Add this all together, and throw in billions of dollars in established pharmaceutical sales that are still generating a boatload of residual cash flow, and you have a recipe for a 5.8% dividend yield and forward price-to-earnings ratio that's well below the average of the S&P 500. That's what makes GlaxoSmithKline a top high-yield stock to consider buying.

This retailer just keeps getting stronger

Jeremy Bowman (Target): Fresh off another strong earnings report, Target looks like a great stock to pick up right now. The big-box chain has remade itself and adapted to a new retail era, thriving while department store chains and other traditional retailers are struggling. Target is renovating its stores, is adding new small-format locations, and has launched a multipronged e-commerce strategy, complete with same-day delivery from Shipt and a pickup option that allows customers to get their orders placed into their vehicles once they pull up to the stores.

The results are clear. Comparable sales jumped 4.8% in the first quarter with a 4.3% increase traffic, following a similarly strong performance last year. Digital sales jumped 42%, with the bulk of the growth being driven by same-day fulfillment.

Operating income increased 9%, and adjusted earnings per share jumped 15% to $1.53, boosted by share buybacks, and easily beat estimates at $1.43. Target declined to raise its full-year guidance, but based on its results and second-quarter EPS forecast of $1.52-$1.72, the company is tracking above the top end of its full-year EPS guidance of $5.75-$6.05.

Based on that range, Target is trading at a forward P/E of just 13, and dividend investors can sit back and collect a 3.3% yield. Even better, the company is a Dividend Aristocrat, and Target is expected to raise its dividend for the 48th year in a row in June. Considering Target's strong recent profit growth, investors could see a sizable dividend increase this time around.

10 stocks we like better than ExxonMobilWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has quadrupled the market.*

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CEOs of major corporations have decided to go political, casting aside tradition, political constraint and attacking not just policies, but the president himself.

The corporatists who are attacking the Trump administration so far haven't been called to account by their customers, shareholders or regulators.

Apple CEO Tim Cook this week called immigration "the biggest issue of our time," saying Congress needs to continue the DACA program and protect young illegal immigrants.

Apple is one of 800 companies, including Amazon, Facebook and Google calling on Congress to preserve DACA. No business sector is more focused on politics and efforts to undercut President Trump than Silicon Valley and technology companies.

The five largest companies in the country by market capital are all tech companies, and they've spent around $50 million on lobbying last year -- double what the five largest banks spent. But financials and tech are planning to spending much more

The CEOs of these companies aren't adding anything to the debate on immigration, while obviously losing focus on elements of their businesses. Demand for the iPhone 8, which hit stores today, is tepid at best. Apple's Series 3 Watch already has cellular connectivity problems, and there are supply concerns about the iPhone X, which is scheduled to hit stores in November.

As for facebook, the only known collusion with Russia during the 2016 election appears to be between Facebook and the Russians. Facebook is now saying it will turn over ads bought by Russians to congressional investigators after Russian operatives spent about $1,000 on $3,000 ads.

The Chamber of Commerce and The Business Roundtables have spent billions of dollars lobbying for amnesty for illegal immigrants and open borders for the past decade, and now the CEOs of the member companies of the chamber and business roundtable are desperate.

They've spent vastly more money to lobby on immigration than they've spent on any other issue over the past decade. They spent billions, and still they can't silence the American people. And now, the multinationals and their CEOs find themselves on the losing side of the argument and on the wrong side of history. How about that: Citizens may yet count for something in our politics after all.
The massive Equifax data breach that resulted in at the stolen information of more than 143 million people has ignited national conversations on the importance of cybersecurity -- but it's also raised vital questions about the legality of Equifax's decision to not immediately disclose the hack.

For months, groups have fought over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureauas proposed arbitration rule, which would let more consumers team up to sue banks, credit card companies and other financial firms.

The U.S. House of Representatives in July voted to repeal the rule. But chances of the rule dying in the Senate may have shrunk.

Hereas a look at what could happen and how you can weigh in.

How the data breach fueled debates

Arbitration clauses are widely used by financial companies to require consumers to address common grievances behind closed doors or through small claims court. It has made class action lawsuits rare, allowing acompanies to avoid accountability,a contends CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

Equifaxas own arbitration clause initially appeared to ban data breach victims from suing the company if they enrolled in the companyas credit monitoring service. Public outrage led Equifax to update its terms of service agreements to explicitly allow consumers to sue over the data breach.

Still, consumer protection groups slammed Equifax, citing the arbitration clauses as proof the CFPBas rule was necessary. Critics of the rule, however, argued that the data breach wasnat relevant to the debate over arbitration.

The CFPB rule is really about whether companies should have the right to include arbitration clauses in their contracts, says Norbert Michel, director of the center for data analysis at the Heritage Foundation. The Equifax data breach doesnat involve contracts because breach victims never signed a contract with the credit bureau.

Equifax and the Consumer Data Industry Association, its lobbying group, have spent years trying to keep the CFPB arbitration rule from taking effect. The CDIA wrote a letter claiming that the rule shouldnat apply to credit companies like Equifax. Class action lawsuits wouldnat aserve the public interest or promote the public gooda given the legal obligations of credit repair organizations under another law.

What the Senate might do

The Equifax hack could shift the odds in favor of CFPB supporters.

aConsumer concern regarding Equifaxas usage of mandatory arbitration agreements has weakened the congressional effort to reverse the CFPBas mandatory arbitration rule,a wrote Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at Compass Point Research & Trading, in a note for clients.

The Congressional Review Act lets lawmakers dump rules that seem harmful or unnecessary. A simple majority is needed to succeed. But with Democrats backing the CFPB proposal, Republicans are essentially one vote away from losing the chance to kill the arbitration rule.

aI would have bet before the events that came out in the news last week that they probably had the votes, but the margin is so close that any event like this (the Equifax breach) certainly could have an effect,a says Ramona Lampley, a professor at St. Maryas University School of Law in San Antonio. aIt really should not though. It hasnat changed the nature of the issues, which is really a conversation about the merits of arbitration versus the merits of class action.a

What consumers should do

The CFPBas arbitration rule went into effect Sept. 18. But the Senate may have until November to vote, according to the press office for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. So consumers have time to put in their two cents.

Amanda Werner, campaign manager with Americans for Financial Reform, suggests writing a letter or calling your senator. Consider discussing how mandatory arbitration could affect your ability to solve problems with the company supplying your savings account or credit card.

If youare trying to avoid forced arbitration, carefully review contracts before signing them. Werner recommends searching for the word arbitration and any language limiting class action lawsuits. Look for an opt-out provision that can protect your legal rights and any group that may be involved in helping to resolve disputes.

aOne might also want to search for AAA, which is the American Arbitration Association, and at least as consumer arbitration goes is the industry leader in having special rules designed to protect the consumer in the process,a Lampley says.
London's mayor said Saturday that people angry about the decision by transit authorities to strip Uber of its license to operate in the city should blame the ride-hailing company itself.

"I have every sympathy with Uber drivers and customers affected by this decision, but their anger really should be directed at Uber," Mayor Sadiq Khan said.

The city's transportation agency, Transport for London, said Friday that it would not renew Uber's license when it expires Sept. 30, citing a lack of corporate responsibility.

The agency said the factors it considered included Uber's "approach to reporting serious criminal offenses" and its use of software designed to evade the authorities.

Khan said in a statement that it would be wrong "to license Uber if there was any way this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety or security."

Uber has long been a target of complaints from taxi drivers and companies. Cab drivers say Uber drivers don't have to comply with the same licensing standards, giving the ride-hailing service an unfair advantage and placing the public at risk.

Uber said it plans to appeal and accused London's regulator of caving in to special interests "who want to restrict consumer choice."

It can keep operating in the city pending the outcome of the appeal.

More than 500,000 people have signed an online petition protesting the decision not to renew Uber's license. Uber has 3.5 million customers and 40,000 drivers in London.
File photo

An 18-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder in connection with the London tube attack, the police said on Friday.

Ahmed Hassan, of south London's Surrey, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court Friday afternoon, when he will also face a second charge under the Explosive Substances Act, the BBC reported.

Three other men, aged 25, 30 and 17, respectively, remained in custody.

Thirty people were injured last Friday when a bomb partially exploded on a District line Underground train.
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on Friday said if North Korea tested a nuclear bomb in the Pacific Ocean it would be the closest the Hermit Kingdom has come to committing an act of war.

North Korea announced Friday that the country might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. This comes after President Donald Trumps United Nations address, saying that the U.S. if provoked, would destroy the communist country.

That would be as close to an overt act of war as anything weve yet seen, he told FOX Business Connell McShane on Countdown to the Closing Bell.

President Trump tweeted early Friday morning that Kim Jong Un is a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people, further escalating the tensions between the U.S. and North Korea.

Peters said that China needs to intervene before the U.S. and North Korea go to war.

If China doesnt crackdown brutally hard on North Koreas economy, mercilessly hard, this is going to end in war, he said.

On Thursday, Chinas central bank told other Chinese banks to stop doing business with North Korea. According to a Reuters source, the banks received documents on Monday to stop providing financial services and loans to new and existing North Korean customers.

Peters added that its not about loans; its about the money transfers, the money laundering. If China really really were to crackdown, they could paralyze whats left of the North Korean economy.
North Korea said on Saturday that firing its rockets at the U.S. mainland was "inevitable" after U.S. President Donald Trump called Pyongyang's leader "rocket man", in a further escalation of rhetoric between the two leaders.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho's remarks before the United Nations General Assembly came hours after U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea, in a show of force the Pentagon said demonstrated the range of military options available to Trump.

Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force, Ri told the annual gathering of world leaders.

It is only a forlorn hope to consider any chance that the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) would be shaken an inch or change its stance due to the harsher sanctions by the hostile forces, he said.

Trump announced new U.S. sanctions on Thursday that he said allow targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea. Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted its ninth round of sanctions on Pyongyang to counter its nuclear and ballistic missiles programs.

Ri, who said Pyongyang's ultimate goal was to establish a "balance of power with the U.S.", retorted that Trump himself was on a "suicide mission" after the U.S. president said Kim was on such a mission.

The U.S. bombers' flight was the farthest north of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea that any U.S. fighter jet or bomber has flown in the 21st century, the Pentagon said.

"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the President has many military options to defeat any threat," said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White, calling North Korea's weapons program "a grave threat."

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies."

Ri warned Pyongyang was ready to defend itself if the U.S. showed any sign of conducting a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country".

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several flying over Japan, as it accelerates its program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

The flight follows a week of heightened rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang, with Trump and Kim Jong Un trading insults. Trump called the North Korean leader a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard."

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile. The North has threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.

The Pentagon said the B-1B Lancer bombers came from Guam and the U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle fighter escorts came from Okinawa, Japan. It said the operation showed the seriousness with which it took North Korea's "reckless behavior."

The patrols came after officials and experts said a small earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not man-made, easing fears Pyongyang had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its last one.

China's Earthquake Administration said the quake was not a nuclear explosion and had the characteristics of a natural tremor.

The CTBTO, or Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors nuclear tests, and officials of the South Korean meteorological agency also said they believed it was a natural quake.

An official of South Korea's Meteorological Agency said acoustic waves should be detected in the event of a man-made earthquake.

"In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorizing this as a natural earthquake."

The earthquake, which South Korea's Meteorological Agency put at magnitude 3.0, was detected 49 km from Kilju in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea's known Punggye-ri nuclear site is located, the official said.

All of North Korea's six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean Peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of U.N. sanctions.

Trump told the U.N. on Tuesday the United States would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.

North Korea's nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons program.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, Phil Stewart and Christine Kim. Additional reporting by Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Michael Shields in Zurich, Denis Pinchuk in Moscow and David Brunnstrom and Yara Bayoumy at the United Nations and John Walcott and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Dalgleish)
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted Senator John McCain for dealing a possibly fatal blow to the latest Republican attempt to dismantle Obamacare.

According to a new independent analysis, the bill awaiting a Senate vote could lead to 21 million fewer Americans having health insurance.

McCain, an Arizona Republican who is being treated for brain cancer and cast a crucial "no" vote to defeat a similar bill in July, said on Friday that he could not "in good conscience" vote for the proposal authored by Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham.

"He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!" Trump wrote about McCain on Twitter early Saturday morning.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he will schedule a vote on the Graham-Cassidy bill by Sept. 30, the last day when it could pass in the chamber with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 typically required.

The bill would take federal money spent on the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, as well as subsidies to help individuals buy private insurance, and deliver it to the states in block grants.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which analyzes legislation, has not had time to assess the Graham-Cassidy bill before the expected vote. McCain, a close friend of Graham, said he could not support it without knowing how much it would cost, its effect on insurance premiums, and how many people would be affected.

But the Brookings Institution said on Friday that the Graham-Cassidy bill could leave at least 21 million fewer Americans with health insurance by 2020 to 2026. The Washington think tank has generally been supportive of Obamacare, which is formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

The coverage estimate "likely understates" reductions in insured Americans because it is not clear how states would use the money or if they would face obstacles in setting up new programs, according to Brookings researchers.

"What is clear, however, is that the legislation would result in very large reductions in insurance coverage," they wrote.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price told Fox News Channel's 'America's News HQ' on Saturday that that he is "providing technical assistance and information" to senators working on the bill.

Price said that the bill was "not dead" despite McCain's announcement and wavering support from several other Republican senators.

"The reason it's not dead is because it's not finished. The bill hasnt been completed. We continue to work with the authors on it through this weekend," Price said.

The Senate Finance Committee on Monday will hold a hearing on the Graham-Cassidy bill. Cassidy, a physician, is expected to testify.

CBO estimates of previous Republican proposals showed they could lead to more than 20 million fewer insured Americans. This complicated passage in the 100-member Senate, where Republicans hold 52 seats and Democrats are unanimously opposed to repeal-and-replace measures.

Republicans need at least 50 votes to pass the bill, relying on Vice President Mike Pence to break a tie. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she was leaning against the Graham-Cassidy bill, as has Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Kansas Senator Jerry Moran and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski are undecided.

After blasting McCain, Trump on Saturday singled out Paul and Murkowski.

"I know Rand Paul and I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Regarding Murkowski, he tweeted that in Alaska: "Deductibles high, people angry!"

The insurance industry, hospitals, consumer activists, the AARP advocacy group and organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Heart Association and American Cancer Society all oppose the bill.

Shares of some health insurers closed higher on Friday after McCain announced his opposition. Centene Corp ended up 1.6 percent, while Humana Inc gained 0.2 percent and Aetna Inc rose 0.1 percent, reversing earlier losses. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Lisa Von Ahn)
Barney Smith, the man known as the "King of the Commode," has been creating works of art out of toilet seats for more than 50 years.

But he's finally calling it quits, FOX 29 in San Antonio reported.

The 96-year-old retired plumber from Texas created the Toilet Seat Art Museum to showcase his porcelain masterpieces. Over the years, Smith has decorated roughly 1,300 toilet seats  with themes as varied as the Berlin Wall to Barbie and Ken.

"Each one of them has got a story," Smith told the local television station.

In a 2011 interview with the station, Smith said each toilet seat can take up to 100 hours to make.

But now Smith says his age may be finally catching up to him.

"I can't do what I used to do," he said.

Carye Bye, a friend of Smith's, said he hopes to sell his unique legacy to another museum. But he prefers that it stay put, in Alamo Heights.

"If we can save it and have it be here, that would be my ultimate," Carye told Fox 29.

Those wanting to check out the artwork for themselves better hurry, Smith said.

"I know that it won't be long," he said, "until the Lord will call me and say, 'That's enough'."
From galaxy donuts to dragon whisper flavored hard seltzer, 2017 was certainly the breakout year for mystically themed foods. As temperatures drop, one take on a favorite harvest dish promises to carry your novelty culinary Instagram posts through the autumn: mermaid and unicorn flavored elote.

Served fresh from Masons Den, the trendy takes on grilled Mexican street corn are prepared by slathering the maize in mayo, rolling it in cotija cheese, and drizzling it with butter.

Operating the business in Southern California, owners Alicia and German Correa told Fox News that the elote recipe was given to them by a friend who owns a successful eloteria in Tijuana, Mexico. After experimenting with dying the cheese and butter with food coloring, the Correas released their product to the masses at a local market, with great success.

DISNEYLAND IS SELLING MINI CORN DOG NACHOS FOR ONE MONTH ONLY

Our most popular Elote was the Unicorn. The customers love the concept and the corn, they not only taste a traditional corn but they also taste the rich flavor of the cheese, German Correa said.

Additional psychedelic, photo-opp ready elote flavors include Cheetos and Takis.

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Named their eloteria after their young son, Masons Den is excited about the opportunity to do further good in their community. We are planning to expand our business in the next coming months and offer people with developmental disabilities an opportunity to work with us, Correa added.

No wonder people cant get enough of this magically delicious treat.
If U.S. intelligence discovers that North Korea has a nuclear tipped, long-range missile getting ready to fire into the South Pacific with the goal of detonating itto prove to the world it is a nuclear powerthere is only one thing President Trump should do: destroy it before it ever goes into the air.

And that could mean war with North Koreaa war that I have waged many times in computer simulations and in tabletop exercises and it frightens me to depths of my soul. That could mean millions of people dead. But the alternatives, even with the stakes so high, are too frightening to imagine.

America and its allies would simply have no choice but to respond to what is the most dangerous of threats the world has faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Consider for a moment if we let Kim Jong Un go ahead with such a missile launch.

For one, consider if Kim gives the order, and it heads into the skies above Northeast Asia. However, all does not go as planned, and the missiles guidance system has a problem or the engines fail. The missile could then head towards the ground and crash into a populated area in South Korea or Japan. While the warhead on the top of the missile, holding a potential atomic or hydrogen bomb, might not detonate on impact, the potential for radioactive contamination and fallout over a wide area is very possible. And if the worst happens, an actual nuclear detonation, the path to war seems as if it would be mapped out in atomic lettering.

The Trump administration simply cannot allow North Korea to begin lobbing nuclear weapons across sovereign nations and use the Pacific Ocean as its own personal atomic testing grounds.

Then there is the danger if North Koreas nuclear test is successful, making a long voyage across the Pacific. Imagine a North Korean ICBM heading towards the South Pacific, passing over Japan, maybe even Guam and detonating in an unpopulated, isolated part of the planet. While the potential loss of life would be low, the long-term impacts could be felt across the globe. Radioactive fallout would be carried by the winds and oceans all over both sides of the Pacific, potentially causing cancers and illness not detected for years. Pacific island populations could be greatly impacted, some of which wont have the resources to handle such a crisis. There is a reason why nations do not test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere anymorethere could be no greater poison to our planet.

Then there is something far greater to fearthat other states will see this as a greenlight to conduct their own atmospheric tests at some point in the future, or simply to build nuclear weapons, as they know Washington is powerless to stop them.

Or North Korea, if not stopped from doing such a test, could do it againand again. And considering that Pyongyang has already fired missile and rockets over Japan, can we really believe that would stop at one?

Now, to be very fair, I realize that taking out a North Korean missile before it launches is very likely an act of war. Also, being someone who is against unilateral military action against Kim Jong Un to destroy his nuclear weapons program before it can definitively strike the United States, this might even come across as a flipflop of sortsI get it. However it may seem, the Trump administration simply cannot allow North Korea to begin lobbing nuclear weapons across sovereign nations and use the Pacific Ocean as its own personal atomic testing grounds. While I dont ever like the term redline with all of its historical baggage, this is one Team Trump cannot allow to be crossed.

So how would North Korea respond to such an attack? As someone who has studied Pyongyang for over a decade, I want to be one-hundred-percent honest: I dont know. And that terrifies me.

Pyongyang could decide to respond by shelling downtown Seoul with hundreds of artillery shells and missiles. Kim could decide to sink another South Korean naval vessel, just like he did a few years ago. Or he could test another ICBM, but this time lob it a few hundred miles off the West Coast of the United States. He could even decidehowever remotethat now is the time to invade South Korea and achieve his familys long-lost dream of reunifying the Korean peninsula under communism. Maybe he decides now is the time for general nuclear wareven more remotebut not out of the woods of considerations. Heck, he could even do nothingbut I doubt it.

The above quick survey of Americas options in dealing with this latest potential provocation with North Korea and how Kim could respond proves only one thing: there are no good options. But to allow Kim Jong Un to openly test nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean, flying them over sovereign nations with all that can go wrong, is even more insane then taking them out. The potential pitfalls that could occur only leaves one option, if it comes to it.

We can only hope the pariah of Pyongyang was just bluffing, as it would be time for America to call.
It worked for Trump. It took Le Pen nearly to the finish line. And it influenced the Brexit vote. Now, concern about unchecked immigration, especially of Middle East and African Muslims, looks like it might have an unexpected influence on Germanys national elections this weekend.

Its probably inevitable that Angela Merkel will win her fourth term as chancellor, keeping her Christian Democratic Union in the drivers seat, though short of a majority of seats in the Bundestag. If that occurs, as expected, Merkel could form a so-called grand coalition with the left-leaning Social Democrats.

The real story of this election, however, is the last-minute surge of the right-of-center party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD as it is known to voters. After open infighting among its leadership earlier this year, AfD has regrouped and looks like it might take more than 10 percent of the vote, meaning it can be represented in the German parliament.

Its been almost impossible for an openly right-wing party to succeed in modern Germany, where the specter of Nazi rule still unsettles citizens. But Merkels open-arms policy to Middle East refugees has stretched her credibility with voters, who nonetheless respect her for keeping the national economy strong.

Still, a string of rapes and other assaults in Cologne two years ago, and other crimes attributed to refugees have put voters in a rebellious mood, and the AfD has benefitted from that dissatisfaction. AfD candidate Georg Pazderski laces his campaign speeches with dark warnings that Germany is being overwhelmed by outsiders. That message resonates especially strongly in regions of the former East Germany, where higher-than-average unemployment is blamed on immigrants.

Merkel, by contrast, has stuck to her position that Germany -- and for that matter the rest of the European Union  has a moral obligation to welcome refugees from the terror-torn Middle East and northern Africa, and scoffs at the notion that some of the influx of newcomers have terrorist ties.

Like Donald Trump, and Frances right-wing presidential candidate Martine Le Pen, the AfD is hoping that the appeal of its message is greater than the polls indicate. Indeed, as with Trump, AfD supporters appear uncomfortable revealing their true feelings to pollsters.

That may change on election day, and if it does, as with Trump, Germany could be facing a brave new world of uncertainty next week.
On Wednesday, we saw Iranian President Rouhani at the United Nations state that if the U.S. reneges on the nuclear deal, America will pay a high cost.

This statement is a clear indicator of what the Iranian regime thinks of the so-called nuclear deal: they are huge fan of it. And why wouldnt they be? It gives them exactly what they have wanted all along: Regime Preservation. It single handedly removed crippling sanctions allowing them to increase their financial resources to do what they do best, export terrorism -- or, as they like to tell themselves internally: self-defense.

For us however, the deal isnt worth the paper that its printed on. Does that mean it should be scrapped? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Heres why.

President Trump said during his UN speech at the General Assembly that it is one of the worst deals he has seen, an embarrassment to the American people. I have no doubt he probably believes this even more since he took office and reads the regular intelligence reports in his daily brief showing Iranian groups smuggling illicit materials globally to Shia-backed groups and further exporting terrorism as a result. Most people will never know the extent of these reports.

When the president wakes up he sees a different picture than most Americans. The truth is to those of us who have been in the intelligence community, the world is a scary place. The threats we face daily as Americans are so great that I learned over time that its a good thing most of us dont know about them. Its why we sleep well at night but our leaders are tossing and turning. He sees the daily intelligence reports telling him exactly what the Iranians are up to around the world. The Iranian regime will be President Trumps most difficult battle yet.

We shouldnt be fooled, however, by these reports into categorizing the interests of Iranians as a whole. The destabilizing actions described are those of a small faction of hardliners hell bent on protecting the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution. These hardliners are masters of deception, and they have been playing us all along. Every time weve threatened sanctions against the country, the hardliners have gained more legitimacy

The problem that we are seeing is not the majority-moderate Iranian regime or even the Iranian people. With nearly 70 percent of the Iranian population under the age of 40, the truth is the nation and its people could be our biggest strategic ally in the region. The majority want peace. The majority want a better relationship with the West. The majority want to connect with the rest of the world. Heck, didnt you notice, when the television cameras cut to the Iranian delegate at the UN, he was using an iPhone while listening to the president? The irony of that photo is not lost on me.

Here is the nub: The Iranian nuclear deal was not for this faction of hardliners. The deal, as terrible as it was, was for the good of the Iranian people. It was a symbol to all of them that the U.S. wants a better relationship. In the end, the people are the decision-makers and they will be the reason for regime change. Yet, unfortunately, our current policies are still hurting them the most.

The real problem is the Iranian hardliners who refuse to let go of their history, and are secretly playing us against one other on the world stage. These are the hardliners who will always choose anti-imperialism pride, anti-American sentiment, and Islamic revolution values over pragmatism. They are the Iranian leaders from the 60s, 70s, and 80s who convinced themselves that America can never be trusted. Regime preservation dictates their actions. They are the Iranian version of the deep state.

And this, coupled with the Saudis and the Israelis lobbying President Trump to get more aggressive with Iran against our better interests, creates a recipe for disaster.

The hardliners on both sides of the Middle East are pushing each others buttons in order to increase the divide between Iran and the U.S. Its playing out on the world stage like a scene from the movie Sum of All Fears, where rogue elements get us to nearly attack each other by making us believe its in our best interest. Since Im also a former intelligence analyst by trade, I guess that would make me Jack Ryan in this equation.

If President Trump scraps the nuclear deal in October, the hardliners in Iran will use this to consolidate power in their own country. The decision would work in their favor, in other words. They will use the outcome to turn to their moderates and say I told you so, thereby winning support from their local populations, who are regularly told the West is the reason for their problems.

The hardliners are trying to position the U.S. as materialistic and oppressive to the general population, and themselves as the caretakers of the Iranian people. Unfortunately, our actions over the years continue to help them do so.

Recent examples of this include travel restrictions on Iranian students, entrepreneurs, and artists. Apple recently removed Iranian apps from the app store. Even Google shut down Google Analytic accounts from operating. These business services were stopped out of fear of violating sanctions. These are the services that help young pro-Western entrepreneurs, civil society and the private sector. These small things collectively are slowly giving the hardliners the chance to be proven right.

The Iranians havent reneged on the deal. The hardliners have, fueling the fire of anti-American sentiment and intent. We need to target them.

What we truly need is a fresh tactical restart of our Iran policy. The focus shouldnt be on scrapping the Iranian nuclear deal at all, but rather covertly targeting the small factions within the country that are causing others to believe its falling apart while supporting the new generation of Iranian moderates at the same time. It should be the carrot and stick approach. The carrot should be empowering the Iranian private sector by encouraging American investments and allowing Iranian people to engage with the rest of the world through trade, exchange, and travel. The stick should be military action targeting Irans national security and radical establishment at odds with the next generation of Iranian leaders ready to take over.

More specifically, we need to target the group that allows the hardliners to carry out their tasks: The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force (IRGC). Much of the turmoil we see around the world is a result of their actions. They are covertly at war with us, but we are not at war with them.

When we hear about Iran teasing our naval forces with attack boats in the Persian Gulf, or flying one of their drones low enough around our warships for us to see them watching  thats the IRGC in action.

Even further, within the IRGC, everything seems to point to a small branch of rogue elements known as the IRGC-Qods Force, led by none other than Major General Qasem Soleimani, who (as much as I despise him) is one of the greatest military minds of our generation. His mind, though, is being used for evil instead of good. He has been directly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers, he has directed attacks against the West, and he works for the Ayatollah, who is really pulling the strings.

We need to unleash our covert action against the Qods Force, targeting their covert actions more aggressively around the world. We need to make clear rules of engagement, stating that we will respect the Iranian national interests, but we will strike any of their units we find upsetting the stability of the region.

At the same time, we can show respect to the Iranian majority who want better relations by investing in the country, with Americans leading the charge. The biggest nightmare of the hardliners is an Iran thats open and an Iranian population that is no longer locked in and isolated from the rest of the world. We should attempt to reduce the burden on international banks still too afraid to transact there despite sanctions that have been lifted. Empowering the private sector in Iran and allowing for Iranian people to engage with the rest of the world through trade, exchange, travel is the best strategy to weaken the IRGC. The more we help open the country, the less powerful their influence will be.

The efforts to weaken the hardliners/IRGC coupled with efforts to empower moderates in the regime and the private sector will allow for peaceful and gradual change in the nature of the government to one that is more cooperative in regional affairs and much more accepted by the people.

Reducing IRGCs power and supporting the Iranian people directly may just be the drastic approach needed for us to win the long war.
As Islamic State heads toward defeat in Iraq, Christian and Yazidi survivors of genocide should be returning to their hometowns in Nineveh province. Instead, these fragile minority communities mostly remain stranded at displacement shelters in Kurdistan without the means to rebuild their villages. Many are fleeing Iraq, and the country now risks losing these religious minorities entirely. The Trump administration is making the situation worse by continuing Obama policies that effectively exclude these non-Muslims from U.S. aid in Iraq.

Today there are fewer than 250,000 Christians in Iraq, according to the State Department, down from as many as 1.4 million before the 2003 invasion. These Christians speak Aramaic, like Jesus of Nazareth, and trace their faith to Thomas the Apostle, whose relics were spirited from Nineveh by Orthodox monks as ISIS approached. The Iraqi Jewish community, its roots in the Babylonian exile, was forced out over the past 70 years; fewer than 10 Jewish families remain in Baghdad. Yazidiswho have lived near the Sinjar Mountainsnumber about 400,000. Nadia Murad, the voice for thousands of Yazidis enslaved by ISIS, warned a congressional panel earlier this year that her people could soon disappear because of emigration. This would signal the end of Iraqs indigenous non-Muslim communities.

Since fiscal 2014, the U.S. has provided $1.4 billion in humanitarian aid for Iraq, but very little of it has reached the beleaguered Christian and Yazidi communities. This is because the Obama administration decided to channel most of it through United Nations refugee and development agencies, a practice the new administration has continued. There is no protection for religious minorities in the U.N.s overwhelmingly Muslim camps, and Christians and Yazidis are terrified of entering them. The U.N. doesnt operate camps in Iraq for displaced Christians, and the international body has enough resources to shelter only half the Yazidis who congregate around Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. U.N. programs also exclude the local churches that struggle to care for these minorities, forcing them to raise aid on a piecemeal and insecure basis from other sources.

President Trump has spoken about the plight of Christians in the Middle East, but he has done little to effect change. Far lower percentages of Christians and Yazidis are returning from displacement to their homes in the devastated Nineveh Plains and Sinjar, respectively, compared with the larger religious groups in Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul. The prior administration decided to have U.S. reconstruction assistance, now at $265 million since fiscal 2015, also flow through the U.N. The director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Mark Green, started only last month and has not yet moved to change this policy.

To continue reading Nina Shea's column in the Wall Street Journal, click here.
A Democratic candidate for mayor in New Orleans allegedly masturbated during an Uber ride in California earlier this year, authorities said.

A female driver allegedly caught Frank Scurlock, who has campaigned calling for a safer New Orleans, pleasuring himself on a trip to a West Hollywood hotel on Feb. 10, Santa Monica Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry White told The Advocate.

Charges in connection to the incident werent filed until Aug. 31 because of questions regarding jurisdiction in the case, White said.

Scurlock  known locally for his slogan to Make New Orleans Fun Again  is scheduled to be arraigned in Los Angeles Criminal Court on Oct. 16, two days after the mayoral primary in New Orleans.

The female Uber driver reported to police that she was transporting Scurlock on a highway near Santa Monica when she heard noises coming from the back seat. The driver then stopped the car and opened the passenger car door where Scurlock was sitting and found him with his erect penis in his hand, White said.

The driver then went to a nearby gas station to call police and Scurlock allegedly fled the scene, White said, referencing the womans statement to police and prosecutors. The woman then took investigators back to the hotel where she initially picked Scurlock up, The Times-Picayune reports.

They went back to the hotel and were able to get a name, White told the newspaper. Based on the name, they got a picture and put it in a photo lineup, and the driver identified him.

If found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of lewd conduct, Scurlock would need to register as a sex offender in California. Its unclear if he would also need to register as a sex offender in Louisiana if convicted, according to The Advocate.

The allegations brought against me are without merit, Scurlock said in a statement obtained by WDSU. It has been many months since this alleged incident occurred. I await my day in court and expect to be vindicated.

Scurlock was also arrested in May at the Jefferson Davis statue in New Orleans, where he allegedly approached an officer at a protest by opponents of a plan to remove the statue.

Scurlock told The Advocate after his arrest that he opposed the monument being removed because it could start a Civil War II. He was initially charged with obstructing a public passage, but the charge was later changed to assault before a judge dismissed the case altogether, The Times-Picayune reports.

Scurlock, a native of New Orleans, is the son of John Scurlock, who founded Space Walk Inc., a bouncy house manufacturing company, in 1958, according to a biography on his campaign website.

Frank and his family have grown Space Walk Inc. into a multi-million-dollar company that operates in 200 communities across the country, the website reads. Frank built Spacewalk into Americas leader in inflatable fun. Spacewalk is in its third generation of family leadership under his son Mials Scurlock.

In a statement to The Post, Scurlocks son, Mials, said his father divorced from his mother, Patricia Murphy, in 2013. Murphy at that point bought Scurlock out of the family business, he said.

My mother solely owns the trademark, the statement read. Further, she is the 100% shareholder.

Scurlock has been estranged from his family since 2013, according to the statement provided by his son, Mials.

Scurlock was formerly registered as a Republican, but has since registered as a Democrat, The Times-Picayune reported in July after his May arrest.
President Trump held a rally in Alabama on Friday ahead of a Sept. 26 primary election to be held in the state. Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to finish out Jeff Sessions term when he was tapped as the U.S. attorney general, faces former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore in a runoff next week.

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The TV rights to an upcoming novel co-written by former President Bill Clinton has been acquired by Showtime, the premium cable television network said late Friday.

Showtime Network Inc. called the novel, co-written with bestselling author James Patterson, a powerful, one-of-a-kind thriller.

I'm really enjoying writing this book and working with Jim, Clinton said in a statement. I cant wait to see Showtime bring the characters to life.

The network said the novel -- titled The President is Missing -- has the level of detail that only someone who has held the office can know.

Showtime chief executive and President David Nevins said getting the rights to the novel was a coup of the highest order for the network.

The novel is scheduled for release in June 2018.

The White House is such an exciting world to explore and is made even more so with the unique insights of a former president, Patterson said.

Clinton, a Democrat and the countrys 42nd president, has published several nonfiction books including Putting People First: How We Can All Change America.

Patterson holds the record for most No. 1 New York Times bestsellers by a single author, selling more than 380 million copies worldwide. Among them is Womens Murder Club.

Showtime won a bidding war for the books rights.

The networks affiliation with CBS, and the corporation's boss, Leslie Moonves, helped seal the deal, according to the Associated Press.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on Saturday defended his using of private planes for official travel, saying he welcomes an internal review of the flights that have recently come under scrutiny but acknowledged the optics in some of this dont look good.

He promised to stop flying private on official business until the review is done.

I dont think there will be any charter trips until this review is complete," Price told host Leland Vittert on Fox News America's News Headquarters. "I think thats appropriate because of the concerns that weve heard.

Price said all the flights were work-related and used for official business, including for trips related to the opioid crisis or the recent hurricanes.

But weve heard the criticism, Price said. Weve heard the concerns. And we take that very seriously and have taken it to heart.

The HHS inspector general's office said Friday the agency is reviewing Price's charter flights to see if they violated government travel regulations, which generally require officials to minimize costs.

We will cooperate fully with it, Price said. I instituted or initiated as well an internal departmental review of the procedures and processes that we go through for official travel to determine whether there are any changes or reforms that are necessary. And if there are, then we look forward to instituting those, because we welcome this review.

He added, We want to make certain that we have the full confidence not just of this administration but the American people.

INVESTIGATORS REVIEWING HHS CHIEFS PRIVATE CHARTER FLIGHTS

Price, a fiscal hawk as a Republican congressman, was asked to respond to past comments of him criticizing then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2010 for flying over our country in your luxury jet.

I think the issue with the speaker, the former speaker, was a different matter, he said.

Politico first reported on Price's trips earlier this week. According to the outlet, Price flew on charters to visit community health centers in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. One leg was from Dulles International Airport in the Washington suburbs to Philadelphia International Airport, a distance of 135 miles.

On Saturday, Price said the private plane travel is not the norm for him.

Weve taken many, many trips in cars, sometimes four and five hours at a time, he said. So this isnt the routine. These were 11 trips about an eight month period of time.

Fox News Alex Pappas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon will head to Alabama to campaign for Roy Moore  the Christian conservative who is running against the candidate endorsed by President Trump in the states Republican Senate race.

A source close to Bannon confirmed to Fox News that Bannon, along with Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, will headline a rally for Moore on Monday night.

Trump has endorsed Luther Strange, the appointed incumbent senator, in the runoff, which takes place Tuesday. The president held a rally for Strange on Friday evening. Stranges campaign has benefited from the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and political organizations tied to him.

TRUMP CAMPAIGNS IN ALABAMA FOR SENATE CANDIDATE LUTHER STRANGE

The race has divided Trump from some of his usual allies.

Bannon, who left the White House last month after serving as Trumps chief strategist, is backing Moore, the states former chief justice.

Steve is excited to support President Trump and his agenda by fighting back against Mitch McConnell and battling lobbyists like Luther Strange, the source said.

Bannons appearance at the rally was first reported by Axios.

Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to fly to Alabama on Monday to campaign for Strange.

Strange, the former attorney general in Alabama, was temporarily appointed to the seat in April after Attorney General Jeff Sessions joined the Trump administration.

Moore, known in Alabama as the Ten Commandments Judge, is a Christian conservative who is famous for having been removed twice from his position on Alabamas Supreme Court.

The winner of the GOP runoff will face Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney under the Clinton administration who was endorsed by former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has announced plans to campaign for Jones in Alabama in October.

Fox News' Peter Doocy contributed to this story.
President Trump, with his United Nations debut over, turned his attention Saturday to make-or-break senators in their chamber's upcoming ObamaCare vote, encouraging GOP Sen. Rand Paul to find a way to vote yes.

The Senate is scheduled next week to vote on another plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the Cassidy-Graham bill, which like other previous attempts this year by the GOP-controlled chamber appears a few votes shy of passage.

I know Rand Paul and I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party! Trump said Saturday morning in one of several tweets.

WHAT IS GRAHAM-CASSIDY?

The Senate has until Sept. 30 to pass the bill with a simple, 51-vote majority under the so-called budget reconciliation procedure.

Republicans have 52 members in the Senate. However GOP Sens. Paul, of Kentucky; Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska; John McCain, of Arizona, and Susan Collins, of Maine, appear holdouts, as in previous votes.

Alaska had a 200% plus increase in premiums under ObamaCare, worst in the country. Deductibles high, people angry! Lisa M comes through, Trump tweeted Saturday about Murkowski.

The House earlier this year passed an ObamaCare replacement measure. But the Senate has failed on at least two tries, frustrating Trump who made a major campaign promise of dismantling former President Barack Obamas signature 2010 health care law.

No Democrats support congressional legislation to end the law.

Under the Cassidy-Graham bill, states would have more flexibility in managing federally-backed health insurance by giving states funds through block grants.

McCain, recently diagnosed with brain cancer, cast the deciding vote in August to nix a repeal-replace bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

He said Friday that he would not vote for the Cassidy-Graham bill.

Trump slammed McCain on Saturday in three tweets:

John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!" he wrote, followed by: "Arizona had a 116% increase in ObamaCare premiums last year, with deductibles very high. Chuck Schumer sold John McCain a bill of goods. Sad.

Large Block Grants to States is a good thing to do. Better control & management. Great for Arizona. McCain let his best friend (South Carolina GOP. Sen.Lindsey Graham) down!
Few religious pilgrimages lead down a dusty, unpaved Oklahoma road past grazing horses, metal barns and towering wind turbines in the distance.

But the unusual destination of this 2,000-mile (3,218-kilometer) trek from Central America to a farmhouse outside a one-stoplight town seems an appropriate honor for the Rev. Stanley Rother, a martyred priest celebrated for his unassuming nature and hard work.

Rother is set to be beatified Saturday at Roman Catholic mass in Oklahoma City, moving him one step closer to possible sainthood. The ceremony is expected to draw thousands to a downtown convention center to honor the church's first U.S.-born martyr and the first priest from the United States to be beatified.

The native of Okarche was a 46-year-old missionary in Guatemala when he was killed in 1981, one of several priests slain during the country's civil war between a right-wing dictatorship and liberal guerrillas. His name first appeared on a death list, and then he was shot to death in his mission.

Juan Pablo Ixbalan made the journey from Guatemala with his fellow parishioners and church leaders to Rother's childhood home. Setting foot in the house where Rother was born moved Ixbalan to tears, he said, and further sealed an inseparable connection.

"I feel like his brother  that we lived together, that we share the bond of brotherhood," Ixbalan said in Tzutuhil, which is spoken by a subgroup of Mayans, through an interpreter. "He became one of us. He learned the language."

Ixbalan, 63, was a young teen when he first met Rother at his church in Santiago Atitlan, situated on a lakeshore between two volcanoes in the Guatemalan highlands where he grew up.

Rother started a radio station, worked alongside farmers and pushed for locals to make and sell knitted clothing. In helping translate the New Testament, Rother is credited with helping start the written form of Tzutuhil.

Language wasn't always Rother's strong suite. Early on in seminary, he got a "Cs" and "Ds", respectively, in Latin and English. Family lore tells that when Rother told his father he was going to become a priest, the elder Rother joked that he shouldn't have avoided Latin in high school.

But farm work came with ease, and it served the eldest of the five Rother children well in Guatemala. He helped install an irrigation system and brought in crops such as wheat and soybeans, dissuading farmers from using chemicals. He brought in tractors to till the land, and repaired vehicles when they broke down.

Rother was born in 1935, a descendent of German immigrants who homesteaded on the outskirts of Okarche, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Oklahoma City. While much of the state remains largely protestant, Okarche  population 1,300  has held to its Catholic heritage. It's still home to the Holy Trinity Church and school Rother attended.

Although the beatification ceremony is in Oklahoma City, it's been felt in Rother's hometown. The delegation from Guatemala stopped for lunch at Esichen's Bar, which bills itself as Oklahoma's oldest bar, but is best known for selling whole fried chickens.

Julie Kroener's family has owned the Okarche establishment for five generations. She was a child when Rother died, but she said grew up respecting him and his family.

"This is a huge deal, and it's an amazing thing to experience," Kroene said Friday, just after the lunch rush. "It gives you a sense of pride knowing that somebody like that comes from such a simple town."

The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, a sponsor of Rother's mission to Guatemala, opened his cause for beatification in 2007. Pope Francis declared Rother a martyr in December, and beatification is a step closer to potential sainthood. Francis, the first Latin American head of the church, has said priests killed during the region's right-wing dictatorships died out of hatred for their faith.

Regular candidates for beatification need a Vatican-certified miracle attributed to their intercession, but the church makes an exception for martyrs. A miracle is still necessary to be declared a saint.

Writer Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda penned a 2015 biography of Rother and helped submit paperwork that could lead to his sainthood. She said Rother's life became extraordinary because of his compassion and ability to help people carry on the everyday activities of life.

"This guy could fix the tractors. He could work the land," she said. "I love that he's from Okarche, Oklahoma. It doesn't get better than that."

___

Follow Adam Kealoha Causey on Twitter at https://twitter.com/akcausey .
Authorities in Tennessee said nine hostages were released from a bank Friday evening after a machete-wielding man held them there for several hours.

No injuries were reported.

Columbia Police Capt. Jeremy Alsup told reporters that the suspect remained holed up in the Community First Bank and Trust after releasing the hostages. Alsup said the suspect was a 53-year-old white man, but offered no further details.

Police responded to the bank shortly before 2 p.m. after receiving a report of a robbery.

Alsup said police do not believe robbery was the suspect's "prime motive," but did not elaborate.

Law enforcement briefly closed the road outside the bank, but re-opened it after determining the suspect had no firearms

Click for more from Fox17.com.
A high school teacher in Texas accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student has been arrested.

Sara Kathryn D'Spain is one of two teachers in Kerrville who have been under investigation for alleged improper contact a student, the San Antonio Express-News reported. The investigation involving the second teacher is still underway, police told the newspaper.

DSpain, who was released from jail after posting a $35,000 bond, was placed on administrative leave last week along with the other teacher, the report said.

"These allegations are of behaviors that will not be tolerated in our school district and that are not indicative of our faculty and staff," Superintendent Mark J. Foust told the Express-News.

DSpain could serve serious prison time, and a hefty fine if convicted, San Antonio's WOAI-TV reported.

Since the 2010 fiscal year, Texas authorities have investigated more than 1,500 allegations of improper relationships between teachers and students, the Express-News reported.

In May, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that requires principals to report to district superintendents if a teacher is terminated or resigns after being accused of an improper relationship with a student.

The law, which took effect Sept. 1, increases the penalty for superintendents who don't report such misconduct and revokes the teaching certificates of teachers who are found to be registered sex offenders, the newspaper reported.
Florida lawmakers, emergency management officials and nursing home owners met Friday in a bid to implement new safety rules following a tragedy that resulted from Hurricane Irma.

The group gathered in Tallahassee, the state capital, to try and meet a deadline set by Gov. Rick Scott, who drafted the new rules after a group of seniors died at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, the Sun Sentinel reported.

That death toll now stands at 11, after 94-year-old Alice Thomas died Thursday, the Miami Herald reported.

The nursing home became a grim symbol of the devastation of Hurricane Irma, which ripped through Florida earlier this month.

The deaths at the Rehabilitation Center, which had its license suspended earlier this week by the Agency for Health Care Administration, are currently under a criminal investigation.

Following the tragedy, Scott invoked emergency powers to set forth new rules on nursing homes and assisted living facilities, giving them 60 days to install a generator capable of providing backup power for four days following an outage. Failure to do so will result in a fine.

Impossible deadline?

But some nursing home officials claimed it would be nearly impossible to adhere to Scott's stipulations.

"Compliance with the rule is impossible and time is running out," Steve Bahmer, president and CEO of LeadingAge Florida, an association that represents both nursing homes and assisted living facilities, told the Associated Press.

Justin Senior, the state's top health care regulator, warned the industry that the cost of not abiding by the new rules would be greater than the cost of compliance.

But a legal effort could take shape to challenge Scotts regulations, given that they are not currently part of state law.

17,000 flood claims

Meanwhile, cleanup and restoration efforts were still underway throughout Florida, the Miami Herald reported. As of Thursday, nearly 17,000 flood insurance claims had been filed with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

In Washington, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, proposed a bill that would give temporary tax relief to victims of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

The bill would ease requirements for deducting individual property losses and allow people to draw on their retirement funds without penalty, as well as encourage donations to relief efforts by temporarily removing limits on deductions for charitable contributions.

It "helps hurricane victims keep more of their paycheck, deduct more of the cost of their expensive property damage, and have more affordable and immediate access to money they have saved for their retirement," he said in a statement. "These tax relief measures will help more people be able to bear the tremendous expense of recovering from these destructive hurricanes."

Brady plans to formally introduce the bill Monday.
A suspected gunman was arrested Saturday after shooting a woman and two New Haven, Conn., police officers who responded to the scene.

Fox61 reported that John Douglas Monroe, 50, was arrested following an hours-long standoff at a house on Elm Street.

New Haven Police spokesman David Hartman told the Hartford Courant, that Monroe was shot by officers who entered the house after he refused to come out or communicate with them. The suspect was hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Authorities said police were called after a woman was shot in the hand, chest and back. The woman fled to a neighbor's home and was later taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Officers Eric Pessino and Scott Shumway were shot and injured as they tried to enter the house. Pessino was grazed on the arm, and was treated and released from a local hospital. Hartman said Shumway was still being treated for his injuries, but declined to give details.

The Courant said the woman who was shot is a retired state Department of Corrections officer, but did not give her name. Her relationship to Monroe was not immediately clear.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Fox61.com.
Three people were killed and 27 others injured when a bus mounted a pavement here on Friday evening.

The police said the accident occurred at around 6:30 p.m. local time at a junction in the Sham Shui Po district. When a taxi in front braked, the double-decker bus hit the rear of the taxi, then swerved left and mounted the pavement, smashing through railings and hitting a building's canopy.

Pictures of the scene show that an overhanging advertisement on the building had partly pierced through the front window of the upper deck.

Choi Wai Fung, director of the Mong Kok Fire Station, said firefighters arrived at the scene minutes later and found four passengers trapped on the upper deck and four people rolled under the bus. It took around 30 minutes to rescue all the injured out.

Many ambulances were sent to the scene for rescue efforts. An official in charge of paramedic efforts for this accident said one person was declared dead at the scene, while another two succumbed to their injuries in hospital.

The injured were sent to four nearby hospitals, and eight of them were in critical conditions, according to the official.

The police has arrested the 44-year-old bus driver on suspicion of dangerous driving.

The bus company Citybus said the driver joined the company in May 2012 and he had started work at 5:25 p.m. It was his first shift of the day.

Citybus extended its condolences to the families of the dead, and said it would offer assistance to the families as well as those injured.

The crossroad was cordoned off. Traffic on nearby roads were temporarily suspended.
A man convicted of killing Holly Bobo avoided the death penalty Saturday after accepting a sentence that will keep him behind bars for the rest of his life-- plus 50 years.

Zachary Adams, 33, was found guilty Friday in the kidnapping, rape and murder of the 20-year-old Tennessee nursing student in 2011. Her skeletal remains were found three years later.

Judge C. Creed McGinley told a jury Saturday that Adams made a deal with prosecutors just minutes ahead of his sentencing hearing.

Under the agreement, Adams received a term of life without parole for Bobo's killing. He was sentenced to consecutive terms of 25 years on the kidnapping and rape counts.

McGinley told the jury that the deal with Adams was reached with "some reluctance."

The judge asked Adams if he voluntarily agreed to the deal that may have saved his life.

"Yes sir," Adams responded in a soft voice.

Bobo's mother Karen addressed the jury, telling the panel that her daughter was a loving person who "appreciated the small things in life."

"She was the sweetest soul I ever knew," Karen Bobo said.

Bobo disappeared from her home in rural Parsons on April 13, 2011.

On Sept. 7, 2014, two men in the woods came across the skeletal remains of what would be later identified as the nursing student. Her body was discovered about 400 yards into the woods in northern Decatur County, approximately 20 miles away from her parents home.

Bobo's disappearance led to a massive search of the farms, fields and barns of western Tennessee. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has said that the Bobo investigation was the most exhaustive and expensive in the agency's history.

But investigators found no DNA evidence connecting Bobo to Adams. Instead, they relied on testimony from friends and jail inmates who said Adams spoke of harming Bobo.

The trial in Savannah, Tenn., lasted 11 days.

Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams' brother, John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.

Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend Shayne Austin had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river on the day she was reported missing.

Autry was on a list of witnesses who were offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.

Autry's lawyer has told the judge that a trial does not need to be set for Autry, indicating he has reached a deal with prosecutors. A trial date has not been set for John Dylan Adams.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Iraq combat veteran is being hailed a hero for helping rescue a woman from a burning car just before it exploded.

Staff Sgt. Cory Hinkle of the North Carolina National Guard reacted quickly on Monday when he saw a head-on crash in Shelby, N.C., local new outlets reported.

Hinkle and another man rescued the woman, Brandy Guin, from her car and then he shielded her body with his as the car exploded.

Ive been in the military for 15 years, Hinkle told the Shelby Star newspaper. Its instinct for me. I made the decision right then that if something came off the car, itd have to go through me first.

He was slightly injured after being struck in the foot by a piece of flying metal.

Hinkle served in Iraq where he cleared roadside bombs, WSOC-TV reported. A bomb once blew up near him.

Guin, 28, told WBTV she appreciated what Hinkle.

She broke her ankle in the crash and couldn't stand.

The station reported that Hinkle went to the hospital to visit Guin.

I will forever be indebted to him, she told the station.
A New Mexico school board is planning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish at public meetings starting next week.

Las Cruces Superintendent Greg Ewing told the Las Cruces Sun-News that students are entitled under law to choose to have part of their education in Spanish and that reciting the pledge in Spanish during board meetings will be a wonderful experience for students.

"We want to be as inclusive as we can and as welcoming as we can of all individuals," he said.

The pledge will continue to be recited in English at the meetings.

Las Cruces is following the lead of districts in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, where the pledge has been recited for years in both languages at public meetings.

Las Cruces officials say the change stems from New Mexico's Spanish-speaking heritage.

"We are a bilingual state," school board member Terrie Dallman said. "We are supposed to be providing education, especially our second-language learners if their primary language is Spanish."

A supporter of the proposal, Dallman said the Pledge of Allegiance was recited in Spanish in several elementary school classrooms when she taught and that middle schools carried out the practice, too.

Spanish explorers and conquistadors first entered present-day New Mexico in the 1500s, sparking a wave of colonization in a land that had exclusively been the domain of Native American tribes and pueblos. Immigration from Spanish-speaking countries has continued over the centuries.

Nearly half of New Mexico's population in 2016 was Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In Dona Ana County, 68 percent of the population was Hispanic or Latino.

About half of the county's population sometimes or always speaks a language other than English in the home, according to the Census Bureau.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In a show of American military might to North Korea, U.S. bombers and fighter escorts flew on Saturday to the farthest point north of the border between North and South Korea by any such American aircraft this century. The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously President Donald Trump takes North Korea's "reckless behavior."

"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies," White said.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has said Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack. Kim's foreign minister told reporters this past week that the North's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century "encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons."

At the United Nations, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said Saturday that his country's nuclear force is "to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."

He also said that Trump's depiction of Kim as "Rocket Man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more."

Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

Trump continued the heated exchange with the North Koreans Saturday night.

He tweeted: "Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was "deranged."

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the North's young autocrat as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission."

Trump's executive order expanded the Treasury Department's ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.

Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the North's most important trading partner.

If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated North's ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade, serves as the country's conduit to the international banking system.
The destructive floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy receded quickly, but some storm victims are still neck-deep in a battle over insurance payouts. And many victims of this year's storms in Texas, Florida and elsewhere should brace themselves for a similar fight, lawyers involved in Sandy insurance battles say.

As Sandy's fifth anniversary approaches Oct. 29, more than 1,000 families in New York and New Jersey are still fighting with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over their flood insurance claims, according to government statistics.

The FEMA-run National Flood Insurance Program paid out $8.2 billion to about 144,000 policyholders after Sandy, a critical safety net that saved many homeowners from financial ruin.

But many storm victims also complained that they were shortchanged by the private insurance companies hired to administer the program and left with too little money to repair the damage.

Under pressure from Congress, FEMA reopened the Sandy claims process in 2015 and since then has paid out an additional $396 million, but some property owners continue to argue in that they are owed more.

In the barrier island city of Long Beach, New York, Jamilyn Spellman is among those still fighting, even though her Sandy-damaged home has long since been demolished, the land beneath it sold, and its original owner  her mother  has died of cancer.

"She just wanted to die at home," said Spellman. But "she died displaced ... literally, in the hospice, talking about FEMA."

After nearly every major storm, lawyers for Sandy victims said, disputes arise over fair payouts that can be maddeningly difficult to resolve.

"It has been a struggle every step of the way," said August Matteis, a Washington, D.C., lawyer whose firm is representing about 1,200 policyholders going through the FEMA review. "FEMA is still fighting us tooth and nail for every penny."

Amy Bach, executive director of the advocacy group United Policyholders, said the lessons of Sandy and other past storms show that victims of this year's hurricanes need to take an aggressive approach to their claims, too.

Among other things, she said, victims should thoroughly photograph their home's condition, inside and out, before making even temporary repairs or cleaning out debris.

"You need to be proactive in documenting and valuing your losses if you want to get a fair, full and timely settlement," she said.

The National Flood Insurance Program was created to protect homeowners unable to buy insurance in the private sector because they live in high-risk flood zones.

While many homeowners with Sandy policies settled claims quickly, more than 2,000 sued over what they said was sloppy work by some of the insurance adjusters and structural engineers who were rushed into the disaster zone to evaluate the damage.

After some homeowners and their lawyers uncovered evidence that at least two engineering companies hired by insurers had a practice of rewriting reports turned in by field inspectors, FEMA took the unprecedented step of allowing all Sandy victims to have their claim re-examined. About 19,500 policyholders asked for a review.

According to the last FEMA update, released Sept. 8, most of those reviews had been completed. But about 1,100 policyholders were still in an appeals process, with a neutral reviewer going over their claim.

FEMA officials have said their priority is getting claims paid fairly as quickly as possible. It has set a target of Oct. 25 for completing arguments in the Sandy claim review process.

The agency has also undertaken a series of reforms since Sandy. Among other things, it has already decided to give victims of Hurricane Harvey a year to document their losses. Sandy victims were initially told they had just 60 days, though deadlines for many were later extended.

The Spellmans' insurance fight is similar to a lot of the other insurance disputes that have dragged out.

Sandy's storm surge inundated the property with 3  feet of water, opened a small sinkhole under part of the house and put a hole in the foundation.

An engineer hired by the insurance company said the building could be saved and FEMA awarded the family about $104,000 for repairs. Contractors hired by the family said the damage was bad enough that it would cost at least $300,000  more than the family's $250,000 policy.

The house was eventually razed in hopes the family could put up a modest modular home. And finally, the lot was sold last December because the family could no longer afford the mortgage and taxes.

Jamilyn Spellman says she is holding out hope that when the fight with FEMA ends, she'll end up with what her mother was "rightfully entitled to and fought for."

"It would help so much ... but the damage is already done," she says. "My mother's gone. The house is gone. For me, I feel like I've already lost what's important."
A 22-year police department veteran in San Antonio, Texas, has been suspended indefinitely because of a relationship with a convicted prostitute.

Officer Mark H. Walaski was taken off duty in July for consorting with persons of ill repute, the Houston Chronicle reported, citing police records.

Officer Walaski's actions constitute a serious behavioral infraction which does not align with the ethical standards expected of every SAPD officer. As a result, he was issued an indefinite suspension, the department said in a statement.

The indefinite suspension is tantamount to being fired, LawOfficer.com reported.

Walaski is appealing his latest suspension through arbitration, his attorney, Ben Sifuentes, told San Antonios KSAT-TV.

The chief's letter of suspension for Officer Walaski contains factual errors, the attorney said in a statement. We are confident this will be proven.

According to the newspaper, Walaski met Tracy Helmke in July 2016, when she had an active warrant for a prostitution charge. The officer allowed Helmke to live at his home, and paid $530 to bail her out after she was arrested on prostitution charges.

The officer also was involved in a disturbance with the woman, and failed to report the matter to a police supervisor, the newspaper reported.

Walaski was previously suspended this year for discarding what appeared to be synthetic marijuana following a drug arrest, failing to activate his body camera during another arrest, and not completing proper reports for either incident, the newspaper reported.

His suspension gave the department of some 2,100 officers a total of about 45 suspensions this year, the newspaper reported.
Puerto Rican officials could not communicate with more than half the towns in the U.S. territory as they rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people downstream of a failing dam and the massive scale of the disaster wrought by Hurricane Maria started to become clear.

Authorities launched an evacuation of the 70,000 people living downstream from the Guajataca Dam in northwest Puerto Rico, sending buses to move people away Friday and posting frantic warnings on Twitter that went unseen by many in the blacked-out coastal area.

"This is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION," the National Weather Service wrote. "All the areas around the Guajataca River must evacuate NOW. Your lives are in DANGER."

The 345-yard (316-meter) dam, which was built around 1928, holds back a man-made lake covering about 2 square miles (5 square kilometers). More than 15 inches (nearly 40 centimeters) of rain fell on the surrounding mountains after the Category 4 Maria left the island Wednesday afternoon, swelling the reservoir behind the nearly 90-year-old dam.

An engineer inspecting the dam reported a "contained breach" that officials quickly realized was a crack that could be the first sign of total failure of the dam, U.S. National Weather Service meteorologist Anthony Reynes said.

"There's no clue as to how long or how this can evolve. That is why the authorities are moving so fast because they also have the challenges of all the debris. It is a really, really dire situation," Reynes said.

Government spokesman Carlos Bermudez said that officials could not reach 40 of the 78 municipalities on the island more than two days after the hurricane crossed the island, toppling power lines and cellphone towers and sending floodwaters cascading through city streets.

Officials said 1,360 of the island's 1,600 cellphone towers had been downed, and 85 percent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may be worse than they know.

"We haven't seen the extent of the damage," Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters in the capital. Rossello couldn't say when power might be restored.

Maj. Gen. Derek P. Rydholm, deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve, said at the Pentagon that it was impossible to say when communication and power would be restored. He said mobile communications systems are being flown in.

But Rydholm acknowledged "it's going to take a while" before people in Puerto Rico will be able to communicate with their families outside the island. Until Friday, he said, "there was no real understanding at all of the gravity of the situation."

The island's electric grid was in sorry shape long before Maria struck. The territory's $73 billion debt crisis has left agencies like the state power company broke. It abandoned most basic maintenance in recent years, leaving the island subject to regular blackouts.

"Some transmission structures collapsed," Rossello said, adding that there was no severe damage to electric plants.

He said he was distributing 250 satellite phones from FEMA to mayors across the island to re-establish contact.

The death toll from Maria stood at six, but was likely to rise.

At least 27 lives in all have been lost around the Caribbean, including at least 15 on hard-hit Dominica. Haiti reported three deaths; Guadeloupe, two; and the Dominican Republic, one.

Across Puerto Rico, more than 15,000 people are in shelters, including some 2,000 rescued from the north coastal town of Toa Baja.

Some of the island's 3.4 million people planned to head to the U.S. to temporarily escape the devastation. At least in the short term, though, the soggy misery will continue: Additional rain  up to 6 inches (15 centimeters)  is expected through Saturday.

In San Juan, Neida Febus wandered around her neighborhood with bowls of cooked rice, ground meat and avocado, offering food to the hungry. The damage was so extensive, the 64-year-old retiree said, that she didn't think the power would be turned back on until Christmas.

"This storm crushed us from one end of the island to the other," she said.

Secretary of State Luis Marin said he expects gasoline supplies to be at 80 percent of capacity because the port in the southeastern town of Yabucoa that receives fuel shipments received minor damage.

Hour-long lines formed at the few gas stations that reopened on Friday and anxious residents feared power could be out for weeks  or even months  and wondered how they would cope.

"I'm from here. I believe we have to step up to the task. If everyone leaves, what are we going to do? With all the pros and the cons, I will stay here," Israel Molina, 68, who lost roofing from his San Juan mini-market to the storm, said, and then paused. "I might have a different response tomorrow."
Missouri is at the center of a racially charged conflict  again.

A judge last week acquitted a white former St. Louis police officer in the death of a black drug suspect. The Sept. 15 verdict provoked angry protests in a state still not fully recovered from the unrest that followed the 2014 death of Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old shot by a white officer in the suburb of Ferguson.

Scholars and activists say the latest demonstrations, like the Ferguson protests, aren't just about a police shooting. They reflect racial disparities going back generations.

Kimberly Jade Norwood is a black law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. She says the conflict has to do with inequities such as poor public education, poor housing and lack of access to jobs.
Confusion swirled over the fate of University of Berkeleys controversial Free Speech Week after the student group that organized it canceled the event but a featured speaker insisted it was still being held.

UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Saturday that the Berkeley Patriot student organization told university administrators that the four-day event scheduled to start Sunday had been canceled.

But the event's co-organizer, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, said in a Facebook post that while the student group may have pulled out, he and other speakers had not.

"We shall speak in Berkeley, we shall speak on the plazas and the steps. We shall defend free speech, whatever the cost may be. We shall never surrender!" Yiannopoulos wrote, adding that he was paraphrasing Winston Churchill.

The conservative student group Berkeley Patriot was dropping out for safety reasons, the Berkeleyside, a local website, reported Saturday.

The university has made it impossible to hold the event, the groups attorney, Marguerite Melo, told the website. A lot of these speakers have withdrawn. To have an empty gesture of Free Speech Week, when there are no speakers is impossible. And the university couldnt guarantee our speakers would be safe.

We are very disappointed, she added We are going to cancel. We have made a determination, or our clients have, that it is just not safe. If we had had Zellerbach Hall, that would be a different story. But my clients didnt want to be responsible, even morally, if something happened.

The website reported that the groups withdrawal does not mean Yiannopoulos and the other speakers he has invited cant come to public spaces on the campus. It only means there wont be amplification provided.

"It is extremely unfortunate that this announcement was made at the last minute, even as the university was in the process of spending significant sums of money and preparing for substantial disruption of campus life in order to provide the needed security for these events," Mogulof said in a statement, according to KNTV.

Some headline speakers, including Ann Coulter, have backed away from the event or said their names were listed without their knowledge.

In an email to the Associated Press Friday, Coulter said she considered going but opted not to after she heard "the administration was dead set on blocking this event."

"I also don't think Berkeley deserves to hear a brilliant and entertaining Ann Coulter speech," Coulter added in her email.

Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump, was on Yiannopoulos' lineup of speakers, but has not said publicly if he plans to attend. It was reported Friday that Bannon would not travel to Berkeley and was focusing his energies on campaigning for Roy Moore in next week's Republican runoff for the Senate in Alabama.

A number of other listed speakers have posted comments on social media saying they don't plan to show up, either. Among them is James Damore, a former Google employee who was fired for writing a memo viewed as sexist. He tweeted that he never knew he was on the list.

Yiannopoulos' attempt to speak at Berkeley in February was shut down by masked anarchists who rioted on campus.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Syrian activist and her U.S.-born journalist daughter have been killed in their home in Istanbul, relatives and Turkish media said Friday  the latest victims of attacks targeting Syrian activists in Turkey.

The bodies of 60-year-old Orouba Barakat, from Idlib in northern Syria, and her only daughter, 23-year-old Halla Barakat, were discovered late Thursday, state-run Anadolu Agency reported, after friends contacted police when the journalist didn't show up for work.

Anadolu said the bodies were stabbed. Homicide officers are investigating the deaths. The Hurriyet newspaper said police believe the women were killed two or three days ago.

Officials for the U.S. State Department confirmed the deaths in a statement released on Friday afternoon.

The United States is deeply saddened by the deaths of Arouba and Hala Barakat, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in the statement, which had alternative spellings of their names. Hala served as a journalist for Orient News and we remember the courageous work of her mother, Arouba, a Syrian activist who reported on the Syrian regimes atrocities. The United States condemns the perpetrators of these murders and we will closely follow the investigation."

There have been four previous killings of Syrian journalists in Turkey, which the Islamic State group has claimed. A fifth journalist survived two attacks.

The two women were related to the Barakat family from Chapel Hill, N.C., whose three members were also killed in 2015 by their neighbor, said Orouba Barakat's sister, Shaza Barakat, who came from Syria to attend the funeral.

She said her sister and her family had been critical of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and suggested that the government may be behind the killings.

Orouba had left Syria in the 1980s, worked as a journalist for Arab newspapers, covering economic and political affairs. She later traveled to America where she gave birth to her daughter. She is separated from her U.S.-Syrian husband, a physician in the United States, Shaza Barakat said.

"We accuse the Syrian regime, the gangs, because we are against the unjust government, this deadly oppressor, which has killed three quarters of the Syrians and displaced the rest, and destroyed all of Syria," Shaza Barakat said in messages to The Associated Press.

According to Syrian opposition activists, Orouba was a member of the Syrian National Council. She had backed the uprising against Assad and had supported the opposition, even as she was critical of some opposition groups.

Her daughter was a journalist working for the opposition's Orient news. Earlier this year, she took part in a talk titled "Russia destroyed Syria."

Media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has urged Turkey's government to protect Syrian journalists in exile in the country.

Halla and her mother were also close friends of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was taken hostage by ISIS militants in Aleppo in 2013 and then killed nearly a year-and-a-half later, according to ABC News.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Bangladesh police say two Myanmar photojournalists arrested while covering a massive influx of Rohingya refugees from their country have been released on bail, but that they can't leave the country because the charges against them have yet to be dropped.

Their attorney Jyotirmoy Barua says that Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat were freed late Friday following a court order.

Police said Saturday that the two were arrested on Sept. 13 for taking photographs and collecting secret state information in the Teknaf area bordering Myanmar and providing false identity to government officials.

Police said they also violated immigration rules by coming in as tourists and working as journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded their immediate release and dropping of all charges against them.
South Koreas weather agency said a magnitude 3.0 earthquake rocked North Korea on Saturday and that it appeared to be a natural occurrence. However, reports about the temblor contained conflicting information about its scale and nature.

An official from Seoul's Korea Meteorological Administration said Saturday's quake was detected in an area around Kilju, in northeastern North Korea. She said the analysis of seismic waves and the lack of sound waves clearly showed that the quake wasn't caused by an artificial explosion. She spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.

Meanwhile, a Chinese monitoring agency said the quake was actually a magnitude 3.4 and that it was like caused by an explosion, Japans Kyoto News reported.

The nuclear proliferation watchdog CTBTO disputed the claim saying that initial analysis show that the tremor was "unlike man-made."

The site of the quake is near where North Korea on Sept. 3 conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in what it said was the detonation of a thermonuclear weapon.

Kyoto News said the temblor was detected at 4:29 p.m. local time at a depth of "0 kilometer," a strong indication of a manmade event, according to the China Earthquake Network Center.

North Korea has been maintaining a torrid pace in nuclear and weapons tests as it accelerates its pursuit of nuclear weapons that could viably target the United States and its allies in Asia.

North Korea said its recent nuclear test was a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles. In two July flight tests, those missiles showed potential capability to reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.

Today's quake measures 3.4 significantly smaller than all of North Korea's six nuclear tests.

-- October 2006: 4.3

-- May 2009 : 4.7

-- February 2013: 5.1

-- January 2016: 5.1

-- September 2016: 5.3

-- Sept 2017: 6.3 (estimates vary)

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country's civil war.

Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States' Arab allies.

Hamas had long been based in Syria, receiving Damascus' support in the militant group's campaign against Israel.
Turkey's official news agency says Istanbul police have detained 36 people as alleged members of the Islamic State group.

The Anadolu news agency reported Saturday that anti-terror police conducted simultaneous raids at 15 different addresses in Istanbul to apprehend five suspects who allegedly had travelled to Iraq and Syria for IS.

The news agency says 31 of the people detained are foreigners. There was no information on their nationalities.

Several deadly attacks in Turkey that killed more than 300 people since 2015 have been blamed on IS.

Along with combatting the extremist group's cells inside its borders, Turkey launched a military operation in northern Syria in August 2016 to clear the border zone of IS members after a suicide bomb ripped through a street wedding in Turkey's Gaziantep province.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel handed out coffee to campaign workers in Berlin, urging them to keep up the momentum in the final hours before the country votes.

The dpa news agency reports that Merkel told supporters Saturday there were still large numbers of undecided voters and "many make their decision in the final hours."

Merkel is seeking a fourth term as chancellor in Sunday's election. The latest polls show her conservative bloc finishing on top with 34 to 37 percent support, followed by the Social Democrats with 21 to 22 percent.

The anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party seems assured of gaining seats in parliament for the first time, with 10 to 13 percent support.

Merkel was heading north for rallies in Greifswald and Stralsund to wrap up her campaign.
If North Korea's foreign minister hoped to draw a response from U.S. President Donald Trump with his Saturday speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he succeeded.

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N.," the president tweeted late Saturday. "If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"

The president was referring to Ri Yong Ho, who on Saturday called Trump "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania," and promised that a strike on the U.S. mainland was "inevitable."

"Little Rocket Man" was Trump's now-infamous label for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

With his tweet, Trump seemed to reiterate a previous asserton that any strike by North Korea against the U.S. or its allies would be met with an overwhelming response.

The address by Ri in New York City began as the Pentagon announced it had flown bombers and fighter escorts to the farthest point north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone by any such American aircraft this century.

"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.



"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies," White said.



The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. Unlike on previous so-called "show of force" missions, the U.S. aircraft were not accompanied by South Korean or Japanese planes.

"While conducted unilaterally, this mission was coordinated with regional allies - namely the Republic of Korea and Japan - and was a strong testament to our ironclad alliance," U.S. Pacific Command spokesman Cmdr. Dave Benham told Fox News, using the official name for South Korea.



B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.



U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but Benham noted that this century "encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons."



At the United Nations, Ri said that his country's nuclear force is "to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."



He also said that Trump's depiction of Kim as "Rocket Man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more."



Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.



"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.



On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.



"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.



Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was "deranged" and vowed the president would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies against an attack.



In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the North's young autocrat as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission."



Trump's executive order expanded the Treasury Department's ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.



Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the North's most important trading partner.



If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated North's ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade, serves as the country's conduit to the international banking system.



North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A group of men sprayed a "noxious substance" at shoppers in London Saturday night, injuring at least six people, police said.

The Metropolitan Police said a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm at the Westfield Stratford Shopping Centre in east London, Sky News reported.

"So far we have treated at least five patients at the scene and taken three patients to hospital," said London Ambulance Service assistant director of operations Paul Gibson. "We remain on the scene."

Gibson later confirmed at least six people were treated for injuries, with three people hospitalized, according to Sky News. All the injuries were non-life threatening.

Two groups of men got into an argument when the attack happened, said Chief Superintendent Ade Adelekan, Newham borough commander. A witness said he saw one man screaming while his friends shouted, "It is an acid attack, his skin is burning!"

A man who gave his name as Hossen, an assistant manager at Burger King, said he saw a victim and his friend, a local homeless man, run into the restaurant's bathroom to "wash acid off his face."

"There were cuts around his eyes and he was trying to chuck water into them," the man said.

It's unclear if the incident is terror-related.

The shopping center opened in 2011 and is located near the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck southern Mexico on Saturday, the third to jolt the reeling nation this month.

The strong quake was centered about 11 miles south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca, which was the region most battered by a magnitude 8.1 quake on Sept. 7.

A woman died when a wall of her home fell on her in the town of Asuncion Ixtaltepec, and a man died after a wall fell on him in San Blas Atempa. Four people were injured in Juchitan and three in Tlacotepec, but none of their lives were in danger. Another person suffered a broken clavicle in the town of Xadani.

The earthquake, which struck around 8 a.m. local time, swayed buildings and set off a seismic alarm in Mexico City, prompting civil defense officials to temporarily suspend rescue operations in the rubble of buildings downed by Thursday's magnitude 7.1 quake in central Mexico that killed at least 295 people.

That quake dimmed activity in the stylish Condesa neighborhood, where young revelers typically spill out from dimly lit bars and restaurants on a Friday night.

Instead of crowds gathered with beers, small handfuls of rescue workers still dressed in reflective vests took breaks from digging through rubble. Entire restaurants with white linen tables were empty. Metal gates shuttered others.

"It feels lifeless," said Mariana Aguilar, 27, a hostess at a bar and restaurant who stood waiting for guests yet to arrive. "I walk through these streets every day and you never imagine something like this would happen."

The upscale Mexico City neighborhood was one of the hardest hit by the quake, with more than a half-dozen collapsed buildings in the immediate vicinity. The few Condesa residents who ventured out Friday night said they were anxious for relief from an anguishing week.

"The city is still quite tense," said Israel Escamilla, an engineer, as he sipped a plastic cup filled with Coke at an empty bar. "But as good Mexicans we have to keep lending support however we can."

As rescue operations stretched into Day 5, residents throughout the city held out hope that dozens still missing might be found alive. More than half the dead 157  perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

Along a 60-foot stretch of a bike lane in Mexico City's downtown, families huddled under tarps and donated blankets Friday, awaiting word of loved ones trapped in the four-story-high pile of rubble behind them.

"There are moments when you feel like you're breaking down," said Patricia Fernandez Romero, who was waiting for word on the fate of her 27-year-old son. "And there are moments when you're a little calmer. ... They are all moments that you wouldn't wish on anyone."

Along the bike lane, where families slept in tents, accepting food and coffee from strangers, people have organized to present a united front to authorities, who they pressed ceaselessly for information.

They were told that water and food had been passed along to at least some of those trapped inside. On Friday morning, after hours of inactivity blamed on rain, rescuers were readying to re-enter the site, joined by teams from Japan and Israel. Fernandez said officials told them they knew where people were trapped on the fourth floor.

It's the moments between those bits of information that torment the families.

"It's that you get to a point when you're so tense, when they don't come out to give us information," she said. "It's so infuriating."

Jose Gutierrez, a civil engineer attached to the rescue who has a relative trapped in the wreckage, gathered other families of the missing to let them know what was going on.

"My family is in there. I want them to get out," Gutierrez said, his voice breaking. "So ... we go onward."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sonja Edwards, leader of the Restoration Community Dance Ministry at Lake of the Woods Church, is spreading the word about a national event in which her group is participating, and shes encouraging others to do the same.

The ministry will be involved in Awaken the Dawn and Rise Up, a four-day event Oct. 6-9 on the National Mall in Washington. Its also being billed as Americas Tent Meeting.

There will be 57 tents, representing each state and various regional groups, the nation of Israel and other interests. The tent city opens at 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 6, and continues 24 hours a day until 6 a.m. Monday morning, according to the website.

Awaken the Dawn is a worship movement, a prayer movement and a missions movement, states the website.

Edwards and her group will perform on Saturday, Oct. 7, and shes hoping that other church groups and organizations from the Fredericksburg area will attend. Shed love to see people of all backgrounds unite on the National Mall.

We need this more than ever right now, she said, especially with everything that is taking place around the world.

According to the website, the gathering takes place the same time as the Feast of Tabernacles, when all of Israel would gather in their nations capital in tents. Succat Hallel in Jerusalem will be doing a tent gathering in Israel during the same dates.

More information is available at the website, awakenthedawn.org.

Edwards dance ministry will give a presentation about the Awaken the Dawn services at the Lake of the Woods Church at the 11 a.m. service on Sunday.
Are you ready? Did you hear? There is going to be a cataclysmic event today that will change the world. It may even bring it to an end. At least that is what some astronomers, internet preachers, and so-called end-times experts are predicting.

A quick search of Sept. 23, 2017 on YouTube will bring up a host of videos claiming that an event of great prophetic importance will take place today. On this date, the sun will be in the constellation Virgo (the virgin), along with the moon near Virgos feet.

Additionally, Jupiter will be in Virgo, while the planets Venus, Mars and Mercury will be above and to the right of Virgo in the constellation Leo. Some people claim that this is a very rare event (allegedly only once in 7,000 years) and that it supposedly is a fulfillment of a sign in Revelation 12:1-2 which reads, And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

A close examination of scientific facts and basic astronomy debunks most of the claims being made by these individuals. For instance, they say that Leo has nine stars, but most star charts outline Leo with at least 10 stars, others use 13. Either way, the addition of the three planets would give the woman a crown of more than 12 stars.

This is not the first time people have made these types of predictions. Humankind has been forecasting the end of the world for thousands of yearsand here we still are.

In 500 A.D. a Roman priest predicted Christ would return, based on the dimensions of Noahs Ark. In 1809 Mary Bateman, who specialized in fortune telling, had a magic chicken that laid eggs with end-times messages on them. The uproar she created ended when she was caught forcing an egg into the hens oviduct.

More recently, preacher John Hagee claimed that the four blood moons of 2014-2015 meant a significant event would happen in Israel. And who could forget all of the predictions of the world coming to an end in the year 2000?

Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Thessalonica, that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2). Jesus Himself said that no one knows the day or hour, not even the angels of heaven or the Son, only the Father knows (Matthew 24:36).

Why do we keep looking for signs and making predictions, when every other prediction of the end of the world or Christs return has been wrong and when the Bible itself tells us that no one will know? Likely, it is because we feel knowing about an event will help us to prepare for it. Sadly, in my opinion, the reverse is true.

When we spend so much time focusing on end-times predictions, we miss the opportunity to answer Gods call on our lives in the here and now.

As Christians, instead of trying to predict the day and time of Christs return to earth, we should live every day like it was the day of His return. If you were expecting Jesus to visit, how would your life look? Would you change anything about the way you spend your time and money?

How can we prepare ourselves to be ready at any moment? Ultimately, we should focus on being people who live and love others the way Christ did when He was here on earth the first time.
Members of a Colonial Beach church will collect donations outside the Walmart in Dahlgren on Sunday to send to flood victims in Houston.

Hazel Harris of Little Zion Baptist Church said the drive will begin at 1:30 p.m., with a goal of collecting enough supplies to fill a tractor-trailer donated by Bevans Oyster Co. The Northern Neck company also is providing a driver and fuel for the trip, she said.

The drive is seeking numerous items from the community, including baby food, non-perishable foods, bottled water, cloth and paper towels, plastic containers and large trash bags, diapers, soap, deodorant, shampoo, baby wipes and feminine products. The list was provided by The Church Without Walls in Houston, which will distribute them to victims of Hurricane Harvey there, Harris said.

Harris said donations will also be accepted in the lot where the truck is parked across from the church at 7748 Leestown Road in Colonial Beach until there is a full load, she said.

Staff report
Joseph D. Morrissey has dropped his lawsuit against former Gov. L. Douglas Wilders defunct National Slavery Museum.

Morrissey, a longtime Richmond-area attorney and former state delegate, had alleged that the organization, Wilder and developer Louis Salomonsky had failed to pay $130,000 in legal fees related to a 2013 tax dispute with the city of Fredericksburg.

Morrissey said this week that he plans to refile the suit but referred questions to his lawyer, state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr., RFranklin County, who did not respond to messages left with his law office Wednesday or Friday.

Last week, Circuit Court Judge Bradley B. Cavedo ordered Morrissey to pay $1,000 to Salomonsky, who filed a motion seeking sanctions against Morrissey for including him in the suit.

Wilder alleged Morrissey agreed to represent the museum on a pro bono basis, something Morrissey and his law partner, Paul Goldman, denied in the suit.

As evidence, Morrissey and Goldman cited an alleged statement by Salomonsky to Goldman that he would personally guarantee that Morrisseys legal fees would be paid.

In seeking sanctions, Salomonsky argued that Morrissey knew or should have known the suit lacked merit and was unlikely to be successful because under state law a promise to guarantee a loan must be made in writing.

Cavedo agreed, writing in a Sept. 15 order that a reasonable inquiry into relevant law would have revealed the necessity of such a writing and signature.

Morrissey filed his lawsuit after Wilder filed a complaint against Morrissey with the Virginia State Bar that has since been certified and is awaiting a hearing.

In the suit, Morrissey had alleged that Wilder had only filed the complaint in retaliation for Morrissey notifying Wilder that unless his firms fees were paid, a lawsuit would be filed.

Meanwhile, Wilder alleged Morrissey did not represent him or the museum in a competent or diligent way, a claim Morrissey has alleged was false, misleading, malicious, defamatory, mean-spirited, retaliatory and an attempt to bully and intimidate Morrissey and Goldman.

Morrisseys lawsuit had sought $1.45 million in damages.
Tammy J. Snellings, 58, of Stafford County passed away Wednesday, September 20, 2017 at Mary Washington Hospital. Ms. Snellings graduated with high honors from Stafford High School. For many years she was co-owner and office manager of Jett Sheet Metal. She was a member of White Oak Ministries. Survivors include her parents, Robert and Frances McNutt; son Jeffrey David Snellings; grandchildren Zachary Hall and Summer Fitzgerald; half-brother Mark W. McNutt; longtime companion Donald L. Jett Sr.; several aunts and uncles; and best friend Tina Brock. She was preceded in death by her daughter, Bobbi Lee Snellings. A celebration of her life will be held at her family's home at a later date. Online guestbook available at covenantfuneralservice.com.
A POPULATION catastrophe is in the making in Africa that could engulf the world, Europe first.

The United Nations predicts that between now and 2050, the populations of 26 African countries are expected to at least double. Nigeria will overtake the United States to become the worlds third most populous country in 2050.

By the year 2050, according to the United Nations, annual increases will exceed 42 million people per year and total population will have doubled to 2.4 billion.

This comes to 3.5 million more people per month, or 80 additional people per minute. At that point, African population growth would be able to refill an empty London five times a year, Britains Guardian newspaper calculates. Poor Africa, with so little to support a doubling population, is on its way to new horrors of food shortage, lack of jobs and misery.

This is not just a crisis for Africa, but very much one for Europe, and in time, for other countries.

African migrants, fleeing broken societies and imminent famine, have been crossing the Mediterranean in rickety craft, flooding Europe. This flood will grow and it will be joined by people seeking survival from deeper in Africa; not just from the north, but from the center and the south.

Desperate people move. Take the Royhinga refugees, walking with what they can carry from Myanmar to Bangladesh: a journey from unsafe to unwelcome. It is already happening in Africa and it will dominate in the future.

India, which knows something about population explosions (the population there has grown from 400 million, when the British pulled out in 1947, to 1.3 billion), has looked for a way of improving expectations as a means of population stabilization.

Their solution has not been droves of family planners with suitcases of condoms, but rather a bold, high-tech solution: electricity, and lots of it.

In New Delhi, this strategy was explained to me by a professor at the University of Delhi. As an American, I was aghast at the poverty and the minimal lives lived by tens of millions.

Almost verbatim, this is what I was told, We have a solution to this misery: an electric grid. When we electrify a village, everything changes. Someone gets a televisionmaybe an old black-and-white one, but Indians are good at keeping things runningand then expectations go up, hygiene improves, and birth rates go down.

He added, It works.

That, maybe, is why today India is one of the leaders in building electric capacity of all kinds, including an ambitious nuclear program.

Electricity provides a solution in Africa, but much of the installed electric capacity is old, serves only urban areas and dates to the colonial era.

In Africa and South America, I have seen electricity transform lives. An electric supply leads to the ability of villages to move basically from the Iron Age to the Ion Age.

I saw this acutely in my childhood in Africa. An electrified village can keep its food supply from rotting, grind its grain instead of shipping it to a mill, allow local businesses to get a footing, and limit family size. But mostly the young, whether through television or radio, are inspired to greater expectations, to horizons beyond the squalor and poverty that has been their inheritance.

The European media have been covering the African population flood with intensity, particularly the BBC. Yet much of this has had a hand-wringing quality.

As we see the lethality of electricity failure in Florida, following Hurricane Irma, we again get a sharp lesson in the value to human life of electricity, unique in service to human kind.

If Africa is not to become a huge and permanent humanitarian crisis, affecting the whole world, it needs to get in on the electric solution.

Ideally, this should be first with the fuels available: sun and wind. These are peculiarly suited to Africa: poor, desperate Africa where people hurt so much, every day.
In some ways, Norka Kletzke wishes she could return to the overcast day last September when she buried her firstborn son.

She wants to see, free from the freshness of her grief, the hundreds of people who lined State Route 610 in Stafford County to honor the man theyd known until then only as the Mystery Marine.

It was the first glimpse she got of her sons legacy, and Kletzke knew then that she would devote her life to making sure it lived on. And since that day, she has, along with her husband, John, and her surviving children, Michelle and Michael, and dozens of other relatives and friends.

On Veterans Day, the Kletzkes, still raw from their loss, walked the route he so often ran in his service-issued silkies, a POW flag rippling behind him. Tattooed and muscled, he was impossible not to notice, and when his photo ended up on Facebook, unidentified, he was dubbed Stafford Countys Mystery Marine.

At Christmas, their first without him, Norka Kletzke ordered T-shirts with his imagine and gave them as gifts to her family. In honor and memory of our Mystery Marine, the shirts read, along with the dates of his birth and death.

They wore them often enough that she was inundated with requests. Shed ordered 300 of the T-shirts altogether, refusing to take money from those who offered to pay for them. They had a giant banner made, too.

Then on Thursday morning, nearly one year since the day of his Sept. 24, 2016, death, they put on the shirts again and loaded the banner and headed to the VFW post in Fredericksburg.

A group of bikers were on a journey from Arizona to Long Island to raise awareness about veteran suicide. They were stopping in the city for a brief ceremony hosted by the Blue Star Mothers of Fredericksburg, and the Mystery Marine was among those they were riding for.

UNABASHED BOY JOY

His name was Mario Joseph Kletzke. He was born July 31, 1993, the first boy in a family of girls. And while all the babies had been special, the family welcomed the first grandson with particular jubilation. He was named for his grandfathers.

The Kletzkes always knew Mario would grow up to be a Marine. His father had retired from the Corps as a gunnery sergeant and gone to work as Virginia State Police officer.

John and Norka Kletzke bought Mario his first pair of fatigues when he was still a boy, and he would stand at attention and march stiffly around the house. He was remarkably tidy and organized, even as a boy, a trait that seemed to further foreshadow a future in the military.

He was shy at times, his mother said, and he never seemed to get angry. Nothing seemed to bother him, she said, which made the way he died all the more impossible to comprehend.

He always smiled, she said, and sure enough, in almost every photograph she has of him, he beams.

It was almost like there was a light inside of him, his mother said. He made the room feel warm.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from North Stafford High School in 2012 and was assigned to the infantry as a rifleman.

He was a good Marine, said his sister, Michelle Kletzke. He did what he was told, and others looked to him for answers.

He deployed to Afghanistan. For eight months, the family fretted for his safety and sent him regular care packages. When he came home, the Kletzkes were there.

It was very emotional. A lot of them didnt make it back, Norka Kletzke said. There were four that she knew of.

At the end of his four-year commitment last June, Mario Kletzke did not re-enlist. He left Camp Lejeune, N.C., where hed been assigned to the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division. His commendations included a combat action ribbon and a National Defense Service Medal.

He moved back to Stafford, where he began the runs that made him a local celebrity. At home, Norka Kletzke would grab him and kiss him and tell him how handsome he was.

The following month, in July, the family took a vacation to Ocean City, Md., to celebrate Marios 23rd birthday. It would be his last.

Norka Kletzke keeps the photo from that evening on her phone. His smile flickers like the birthday candle on the table before him. That would change.

Weeks later, Mario learned that a buddy from his unit had died by suicide. It was the second time a fellow Marine hed been close with had taken his own life.

He was distraught from that, Norka Kletzke remembered. He was crying, and he said, Why did he do it, mom? Why did he do it, mom? A week later, my son did it.

NO PROTOCOL

The family at first wasnt sure what to do. Norka Kletzke knew only from the movies that when a service member died, there was a knock at the door.

But Mario had died at home.

Still, she assumed the military would handle the arrangements. After a few days, she learned her family would be responsible for the burial because Mario was no longer in the Marines.

When Mario deployed to Afghanistan, hed told his family he wanted to be buried at Arlington if he did not make it home.

I tried to keep my promise, Norka Kletzke said. There was a waiting list of three months. I couldnt keep my son in a cold box.

And so they settled on Quantico National Cemetery, a short drive from home, and after a funeral mass at St. William of York Catholic Church on Oct. 6, they began the slow procession to that final resting place.

The community lined the street for miles. They wore red, white and blue and held American flags and Marine Corps flags. Strangers took off work, setting up at busy intersections, and parents brought their children.

I had no idea how big it was, she said, and their presence meant more to the family than they can ever express.

It would have been easy for all those people to disappear after that, to pay their respects and go on about their lives. But the community never left their side, Norka Kletzke said.

When she sees coins left by strangers on her daily visits to Marios grave, she tells him how much he was loved. And when shes by herself, wondering why her son didnt reach out and what more she might have done, she remembers that she is not alone.

Thursday was proof of that.

BAND OF BROTHERS

The bikers stopping in Fredericksburg were part of Project Miller: 22 Plus 1 Memorial Run, a nonprofit named for Keith Miller, a Marine corporal from Long Island who died from suicide in September 2015. He was one of 22 veterans and one active-duty service member who take their own lives every day.

Miller had dreamed of riding his HarleyDavidson motorcycle across the country. His friends were making the trip instead, beginning in Arizona where hed been stationed and ending in his hometown.

Outside the VFW post, the Blue Star Mothers were ready for the riders and for the Kletzke family. There was the North Stafford High School marching band and the JROTC, whose members had stood at attention that day a year ago as Marios hearse went by. Fredericksburgs mayor was there, and Stafford Supervisor Laura Sellers, an emergency services therapist who understood full well the magnitude of loss by suicide. The Patriot Guard Riders, whod honored Mario at his funeral, were back again, too.

And there was Teri Reece, president of the Fredericksburg chapter of Blue Star Mothers, whod helped put it all together.

Norka Kletzke first connected with Reece when her son deployed to Afghanistan. After Mario was gone, she said, they have never left my side.

When the band stopped playing, when the distinguished guests had made their speeches, Reece called Norka Kletzke up to present her with a rock from the Gold Star Mothers. Mario was a casualty of war, too.

She would take it home and put it on a table decorated with Marios things, just beneath his Marine Corps photo.

Saturday, the Kletzkes will put on their Mystery Marine T-shirts again. They will gather in front of Mission BBQ in Stafford before walking Marios route, and the community will be waiting.
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday met with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, with the two sides agreeing to enhance bilateral cooperation.

Wang once again extended condolences to Cuba over the damage it has suffered from Hurricane Irma, and expressed the belief that Cubans will be able to overcome the difficulties and restore normal life under the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and the government.

In face of the complex and changeable international situation, China and Cuba should enhance communication and coordination and deepen their strategic cooperative partnership, said Wang.

China will continue to put Cuba at a special place in its foreign policy and will as always support Cuba's legitimate fight for sovereignty and its endeavors against the U.S. embargo, he said.

Latin America is an important region with a concentration of developing countries, said Wang. The development and revitalization of the region is an important part of the endeavors to revitalize the emerging markets and developing countries as a whole.

China-Latin America comprehensive cooperation is facing new opportunities, he noted.

Rodriguez thanked China for its assistance over Hurricane Irma, saying Cuba-China relations have seen a sound development with the continuous advancement of practical cooperation and good consultation over international affairs.

The Cuban Communist Party, the government and people appreciate China's support for Cuba's righteous cause and congratulate China on its enormous achievements in political, economic and diplomatic fields, he said.

Cuba is willing to strengthen exchanges with China on state governance and is looking forward to the successful holding of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The two ministers also exchanged views on Venezuela. They agreed that the internal affairs of Venezuela should be handled by the government and people through inclusive dialogues and consultations toward a proper solution within the legal framework, and the international community should play a constructive role in this regard.
A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now?
They were like kids with a new toy at Christmas.

Once city officials had cut the ribbon and residents and other stakeholders had heard the speeches Friday at a ceremony to note the reopening of the Marys River Natural Area boardwalk, folks just had to take the thing for a spin.

So everyone jumped onto the new raised boardwalk and sauntered north toward the information kiosk.

We were here earlier this year (for a groundbreaking) and now were back, said Corvallis Mayor Biff Traber. We had dirt before and now we have something beautiful. The boardwalk is in place and it makes this peaceful place easy to use.

The natural area, south of Philomath Boulevard off of Southwest Brooklane Drive, was anything but peaceful in the winter of 2011-12 when floodwaters from the nearby Marys River wiped out the previous boardwalk.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency kicked in more than $200,000, but the city had to match the funds and find other donations in a complicated project that swelled to a final cost of $500,000. Neighbors, many of them on hand for the ceremony, chipped in $12,000.

The Parks and Recreation Department faced procedural hurdles along the way. Both city and Benton County land are involved and there were endangered species and tribal issues to review. Ground finally was broken April 12 for the boardwalk replacement as well as a new at-grade concrete path.

Recognizing the difficulty of the process, the Oregon Recreation and Park Association awarded a statewide parks planning honor to Jackie Rochefort of the city. Rochefort will receive her award in November at the association's annual conference in Bend.

Rochefort noted in her remarks that the FEMA grant required the city to reuse the material that was washed out. Contractor Scott Taylor, a veteran of Parks and Recreation projects, salvaged boards and bridge rails that he was able to use, and there was timber left over to frame the citys new bocce courts at Crystal Lake Park.

Taylor also was determined to keep Mother Nature from interfering again. He anchored the raised boardwalk to 158 helical piers sunk 10 feet into the ground. At a bridge at the midway point of the 0.38-mile trail system he went 24 feet deep with his piers. He also set gaps in the horizontal beams to help any accumulating water drain away.

When Karen Emery, director of Parks and Recreation, suggested that the contractor knew how many screws had been used in the construction he had the answer.

24,000, give or take a few, Taylor said.

Mark Miller, who has lived in the neighborhood a year, only had the experience of being able to watch the progress of the project. Friday, he and his daughter Annabelle and son Ben were able to walk the trail, with Ben foraging for fish and other critters underneath the bridge.

Taylor said there are a lot of muskrats in the area as well as at least one nutria.

Corvallis Councilor Penny York, whose Ward 1 includes the trail, praised city officials for designing it in a way that will maximize access: Both the boardwalk and concrete path easily accommodate wheelchairs.

A spur of the trail system ends at the Marys River. Emery said that Parks and Rec hopes to someday build a bridge across the Marys River to the city-owned Caldwell Farms Open Space.

Its really more of a dream right now, she said.
Watches are not rocket science. Or are they? Watches are not rocket...

Perhaps you dont have a PhD. Well, thats a shame, because with some watches, youll need one to understand how to tell the time. Perhaps you dont have a PhD. Well,...
Long mandatory break : Demolition of Viktoria bridge resumed

Bonn After works were halted for quite a while, the demolition of the Viktoria bridge continues. Heres an update on the status of the works and the consequences.

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A construction site of this size demands flexibility - by the city council when it hit problems during the execution; by the train company whose trains have to wriggle past the diggers; by motorists who suddenly find new road markings in the mornings. All of this happened at the Viktoria bridge recently. For the past two weeks, the demolition work has resumed. This is the current status.

The assignment: The assignment for the demolition of the eastern part of the bridge was decided upon per urgent motion. As reported, there was no proposal by any company after a nationwide call for bids. Only after a new call for bids was announced, the job was awarded to a company. Later construction tasks will have to be contracted out in the same way.

Currents works: The eastern part of the bridge will be demolished at a cost of 800,000 Euro. The works should be finished by December. The head of the civil engineering office, Peter Esch, says: That way, more steps can be taken in time, to keep on track with the agreed milestones by the Deutsche Bahn in the coming year. Those milestones have an effect on the entire train service in Western Germany and need to be filed for two years in advance. These narrow time slots make the planning of the call for bids difficult for the city council.

Next steps: During the milestones agreed on with the Deutsche Bahn for June 2018 the pouring of the bridge foundation for the area of the train trail will take place, according to Peter Esch. Whats special about it: As opposed to ordinary construction sites the closing of the tracks gets announced first and the works will be scheduled to suit that date. If it seems like there is no work done on the Viktoria bridge for a while, that could well be that a certain time buffer was not necessary. When the Eastern part of the bridge will be supplied with the new superstructure, the roadway, the city council will divert the traffic onto that side - and the whole thing gets repeated on the Western side. The works might collide with the renewal of the Tausendfuler (A 565), which according to city officials may not be entirely avoidable.

Traffic routing: According to the city council, the traffic interruptions are rather unremarkable, because there is always at least one lane available for both directions. This will not change during the coming construction phases, confirms Peter Esch. Some motorists were confused at the start of the week because of the provisional markings on the Wittelsbacher Ring. The city council admitted that those were made by mistake and have been removed in the meantime.

Costs: For the bridge plus ramp 24.6 million Euro have been calculated. According to the current status, that estimate will be held. An increase in costs, according to officials, may not be ruled out for definite though.

Original text: Rudiger Franz
Egypts FM Sameh Shoukry extended an invitation to the youth of Cyprus and Greece to attend a World Youth Forum that Egypt will hold in Sharm El-Sheikh in November

The Egyptian, Cypriot and Greek foreign ministers agreed Friday to bolster ties and open a dialogue between the youth of the three countries, a foreign affairs ministry statement read.

During the meeting, Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry extended an invitation to the youth of Cyprus and Greece to attend a World Youth Forum that Egypt will hold in Sharm El-Sheikh in November.

The three senior officials met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, where they also discussed the current security situation in the Middle East.

Shoukry underlined the importance of eliminating bureaucratic obstacles in order to facilitate a number of projects already agreed upon with Cyprus and Greece, especially projects in the field of energy.

The foreign ministers also discussed preparations for an upcoming tripartite summit, scheduled to take place in Nicosia in November.

This will be the fifth tripartite summit held between the three countries, with the first held in Cairo in November 2014, the second in Nicosia in April 2015, the third in Athens in December 2015 and the fourth in Cairo in October 2016.

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Several million Egyptian students headed back to school as classes started in some schools in 11 governorates across the country on Saturday for the new academic year 2017/18, including in Cairo, Alexandria and Upper Egypts Minya, state-run news agency MENA reported.

Students in the remaining 16 governorates will start school on Sunday.

Some 22 million students are currently enrolled at Egyptian public schools for the new academic year, while over one million are enrolled at private schools.

Governors, security bodies, and the health and education ministries supervised preparations for the new school year.

The start of the school year in the restive North Sinais Rafah city has been postponed for two weeks, according to the education ministry.

The Ministry of Education has issued guidelines to school administrators to ensure the safety of students and employees and follow up on plans to prevent and treat infectious diseases among students, MENA added.

The education ministry said it would vaccinate students and ensure the safety of school meals in accordance with a plan set by the health ministry.

The ministrys guidelines also stress the importance of students saluting the flag and singing the national anthem before the start of classes.

The ministry also said that 99 percent of schools text books have been printed.

Some 2.5 million university students started the academic year last Saturday.

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On Thursday, in the morning, at 1 William Street, Brisbane, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC presided at a meeting of the Executive Council of Queensland.

In the evening, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey welcomed HRH, The Duke of York, KG to Government House.
(TNS) - Days after Hurricane Maria cratered homes and shredded power lines, officials in Puerto Rico on Friday continued rescue efforts, while warning that death tolls would likely increase as flooding continues to affect large portions of the island.The National Weather Service said the Guajataca Dam, on the western side of the island, was failing Friday afternoon and that evacuations were underway. The weather service said the failure is causing flash flooding downstream on the Rio Guajataca, where several rural communities are situated.Overall, at least six people were killed in the U.S. territory as a result of Maria, said Hector M. Pesquera, secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety.In Utuado, a town about 65 miles west of San Juan, three people died in a landslide. And three people were killed as a result of floods and falling debris in the suburbs of San Juan.These are fatalities we know of, Pesquera said. We know of other potential fatalities through unofficial channels that we havent been able to confirm.For several days, Maria has pummeled the Caribbean, leaving a deadly trail and recovery efforts that will last several months.On Friday, Maria began to pass northeast of the Turks and Caicos as a Category 3 storm. A hurricane warning remained in effect for those islands as well as for the southeastern Bahamas. The storm is expected to veer into the open Atlantic Ocean and pose no threat to the U.S. mainland.Prior to the storms arrival here Wednesday, it had already killed at least 15 on the island of Dominica. Two more were killed on the island of Guadeloupe, one in the U.S. Virgin Islands.While the eye of Maria has passed Puerto Rico, heavy rains continue to blanket portions of the island.With most radio, television and cellphone towers down, communication remains difficult, if not impossible, on parts of the island. Officials have imposed an overnight curfew through Saturday.In San Juan, the airport was expected to open Friday, but many other businesses remained shuttered. Roads were blocked by flooding and downed trees. Whole blocks were still submerged. The island was already facing an economic crisis before the storm, and many victims expected the recovery to be slow, especially the electrical grid.U.S. utility crews from the mainland were headed to Puerto Rico to help restore power. The U.S. military sent staff members and aircraft to assist with search and rescue.In a statement, Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said over 95 percent of Puerto Ricos wireless cell sites are currently out of service.Unfortunately, getting Puerto Ricos communications networks up and running will be a challenging process, particularly given the power outages throughout the island, he said.Nearly 3,200 U.S. government staffers overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were already in Puerto Rico ahead of the storms arrival on Wednesday, helping with recovery efforts in the Caribbean after Hurricane Irma hammered the region last week.Maria skirted the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix, cutting electricity and cellphone service. About 600 people took cover in emergency shelters and the government imposed a curfew, Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp said.Mapp said the Governor Juan F. Luis Hospital and Medical Center in St. Croix had been breached, and patients were being evacuated to the U.S. mainland. He praised residents for sheltering ahead of the storm.Given the amount of roofs blown off and scattered debris, you hunkered down and you hunkered down well, he said.Its going to be a long road to recovery, Mapp said during a Thursday briefing.Maria was still a Category 3 hurricane Friday, its remnants expected to bring as much as 40 inches of rain to Puerto Rico, where an islandwide flash flood watch remained in effect Friday.With winds of up to 125 mph, the hurricane was traveling northeast of Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos early Friday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was forecast to bring storm surges of up to 12 feet to the southeastern Bahamas as well as the Turks and Caicos, where eight to 16 inches of rain was expected, which could cause flash floods and mudslides. The storm is forecast to gradually weaken during the next two days as it heads north in the Atlantic, the hurricane center said.The hurricanes swells were expected to impact the southeastern U.S. coast Friday, the hurricane center said, and could cause dangerous surf and life-threatening rip currents along the coast for several days.It has been an active hurricane season. Hurricane Irma, a record-breaking powerful storm, killed at least 84 people in the Caribbean and the U.S., and arrived on the heels of Hurricane Harvey, which killed more than 80 people in Texas last month.(Hennessy-Fiske reported from San Juan and Lee from Los Angeles.)2017 Los Angeles TimesVisit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said in a meeting on Friday with South Sudans First Vice President Taban Deng Gai that Egypt supports the African countrys efforts to achieve peace and security, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Shoukry, who met with Gai on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, affirmed his countrys historic relationship with South Sudan, which he said was reflected in the successful visit by South Sudans President Salva Kiir to Cairo in January.

Shoukry also highlighted Egyptian development projects in South Sudan, including a solar power plant in Juba and two fish farms in Juba and Wau, with both projects valued at $10 million.

Shoukry stressed that Egypt supports the peace agreement between Juba and rebel forces under its current terms at the UN Security Council and the African Unions Peace and Security Council.

Gai expressed his countrys appreciation for Egypts efforts in organising an operation earlier this year to airlift 100 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the South Sudanese people.

Gai also discussed with Shoukry his country's latest efforts to achieve national unity through a national dialogue and efforts implement a peace agreement signed in August 2015.

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The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has agreed to pump $150 million in direct investments in Egypts agriculture sector in partnership with the countrys private sector, Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr said in a statement on Saturday.

The investments aim at developing the countrys nutrition sector, introducing the newest technologies in manufacturing, as well as providing new job opportunities for the youth.

The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group, which focuses on developing the private sector in developing countries.

The deal comes following a meeting between Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi with World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim in New York on Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings, where the two discussed cooperation between Egypt and the bank.

Nasr expressed her aspirations for further cooperation with the World Bank group, and hopes to sign new investment agreements during the upcoming annual meetings of the Bank in Washington in October.

Nasr is Egypts representative at the World Bank Group.

On Tuesday, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which is also a member of the World Bank Group, agreed to provide $210 million in guarantees to a number of international companies that will be building a new solar energy project in Upper Egypt's Aswan.

Other agencies like the IFC and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are also participating in the Aswan project with investments of over $2 billion.

Part of the project aims at establishing 11 solar energy fields at a cost of $730 million to produce a total 500 megawatts, and will be carried out by Egypts private sector in cooperation with international companies, the statement added.

According to the World bank's data, the current portfolio of the World Bank in Egypt includes 26 projects for a total commitment of $5.92 billion.

Egypts net foreign direct investment rose by 14.5 percent to $7.9 billion in the 2016/17 fiscal year.

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Early Friday, 22 September, a large crowd has gathered in front of Cairo Festival City's Music Park.

Many young people arrived as early as 12pm, some coming from cities outside Cairo, to secure a place for the triple bill concert of Jordanian band El-Morabba3, Lebanon's Mashrou Leila and Egypt's Sharmoofers, taking to the stage that evening.

Though Egypt has a large fan base for the three bands, it was hard not to notice a predominant following of Mashrou' Leila's fans, many of whom came wearing T-shirts with the band's name or logo, lyrics of the songs on them, in addition to bracelets, necklaces and even henna tattoos referencing the band.

But there were also fans of Jordanian El-Morabba3 and Egyptian Sharmoofers showcasing their admiration for the bands and humming their songs.

The concert started at 6pm (despite being scheduled at 4pm) and each band played for over an hour and a half, pushing the concert into the late hours.

The evening opened with Jordanian band El-Morabba3 who performed their well known hits. The crowd cheered the band members, creating the sign of the square with their hands in reference to the band's name in Arabic (El-Morabba3, meaning the square).

Founded in 2009, El-Morabba3 consists of Muhammad Abdullah (bass, song writer, vocals), Odai Shawagfeh (electric guitar, keys/synthesiser, producer) and Dirar Shawagfeh (drums).

On their Facebook page the band presents themselves as follows: "El Morabba3 to us is the window in which we see things we want to express ... being from a region that had seen a lot and still does every day. This window serves as our escape and our return all together."

This is not El-Morabba3s first concert in Egypt as the band has performed in several venues in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as participating in the Oshtoora Music and Arts Festival (2016) that took place in Fayoum. In August this year, the band was scheduled to perform in Dahab, but the event was cancelled.

The second band to take the stage was Lebanese Mashrou' Leila (Overnight Project), a Lebanese alternative rock band that describes themselves as "born of a nocturnal encounter," formed in 2008 originally by seven members.

Since their formation, the band has very fast reached the top of fame in the Arab region, extending their popularity to the international scene. Their songs fuse interesting and often metaphoric lyrics that touch on many issues embedded in Middle Eastern realities with strong rock definition and orchestration.

Mashrou' Leila's first concert in Egypt took place in 2011 when the band performed at El-Geneina Theatre during Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy's (Culture Resource) summer programme. Since then, they visited Egypt on several occasions, making their Alexandria debut in 2013.

Mashrou' Leila was welcomed with strong cheering from the crowd, proof that the band has a powerful fan base in Egypt.

Listeners went almost ecstatic when vocalist Hamed Sinno opened the concert and continued to thrill attendees throughout the evening with his singing and dance moves. Some international reviewers compare Sinno to Freddie Mercury (or call him Freddie Mercury of the Arab World) for his unique eccentricism and musical talent.

As the night continued Mashrou' Leila sang many of their well known hits, including Ala Babu, Aoede, Ashabi (Comrades), Bint El-Khandaq, Fasateen, Habibi, Lil Watan, Marikh, and 3 Minutes.

Some audience members brought a variety of signs they waved in the audience or even aubergines on sticks, referencing Mashrou' Leila's song Raksit Leila (Night's Dance) where this vegetable is mentioned.



Attendees jumped and sang to Mashrou' Leilas songs, the atmosphere overtaking some girls who were crying emotionally.

This lead to the song Djin with which the band wanted to close their concert, but the audience did not let them leave and the band performed two encores including their famed Shim El-Yasmine (Smell the Jasmine).

After almost two hours on stage, Mashrou' Leila finally stepped down, to give way for the Egyptian band Sharmoofers.

Founded in 2012 by vocalist Ahmed Bahaa and bassist Moe El-Arkan, Sharmoofers' lineup also includes Ahmed Aly (percussion), Mostafa Kerdani (drums), Mohamed Labib (saxophone), Islam "Solly" Ali (trumpet) and Adel Mohamed (percussion).

Since its inception, Sharmoofers has entertained a large following with their music online and through live performances.

In April 2014, they performed on the third season of El-Bernameg, the satirical show hosted by Bassem Youssef. A month later, they made their debut live performance at Al-Azhar Park, and have since been performing in various venues across Egypt.

By the time of Sharmoofers taking the stage, several audience members began leaving the concert location.

This was partially due to the number of Mashrou' Leila as well as ElMorabba3 fans coming for this unique opportunity to see their stars, but also by the time the Egyptian band took the stage, the late hour prompted the youngest listeners, particularly girls, to start heading home.

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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Theres a lot about neurosurgery that I dont know, but Im guessing there is no patients statute of limitations.

Otherwise, why would High Points Dr. Mike Hussey agree to talk with a Brasstown man he had treated 20 years earlier?

Hussey even agreed to meet the patient halfway  at Ashevilles Grove Park Inn.

The patient first met Hussey on July 18, 1969  aboard the USS Repose, a Navy hospital ship anchored off Vietnam.

First Lieutenant Charles O. Chuck Van Gorder Jr. of the 101st Airborne had been severely wounded in the head by machine gun fire, Hussey recalls. He was in pretty bad shape when we took him aboard.

Our 26 doctors and 29 nurses had all the specialties covered, but I was the only neurosurgeon. I stitched and patched him up as best I could and sent him to Walter Reed Hospital stateside.

Their next contact came by telephone in 1989.

Are you by any chance the Navy doctor who treated me in Vietnam? Van Gorder asked. An affirmative answer led to the Asheville reunion.

Doctor and patient stayed in close contact after that, but only in 2012 did Van Gorder casually mention he had not received the silver star awarded him for his Vietnam service.

He wasnt worried about it in the slightest, but it wore on me enough to pursue corrective action, Hussey says.

Van Gorders father had been an Army doctor who served with the 101st Airborne during World War II. Dr. Van Gorder landed behind German lines in a glider on D-Day. His MASH unit was overrun by Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge, and he spent the rest of the war as a POW.

After World War II, Dr. Van Gorder set up his medical practice in Andrews, along with Dr. John Rodda, a fellow POW and doctor peer from the same D-Day MASH unit.

Dr. Van Gorder is the second Great American Tom Brokaw writes about in his 1998 book, The Greatest Generation.

Brokaws book features a full-page photo of Dr. Van Gorder with this inscription, To Dr. Mike Hussey, in deep appreciation for the wonderful care you gave my son when he was wounded in Vietnam, Charles O. Van Gorder, M.D.

Husseys corrective action for Van Gorders silver star is still in progress. Left in its wake are names like Howard Coble, Richard Burr, Thom Tillis and numerous DOD and Army agencies. His team now includes retired generals, veterans advocates and business entrepreneurs who thrive on cutting through bureaucracy.

I have the impression it isnt if Van Gorders award will catch up with him, but when.

In his mid-60s, Hussey left his thriving neurosurgery practice in High Point to care for his cancer-stricken wife, Becky, to whom he had been married 43 years. They had a son, daughter and two granddaughters.

After his wifes death, Hussey began a long-term relationship with Community Clinic of High Point.

I help out there two days a week  in primary care, not neurosurgery, he says. This is what I do for fun!

He is medical director of the clinic and sees over a dozen patients each of the two days he works  about 18,000 patient visits over the past 15 years. He was recently recognized for outstanding service by the North Carolina Association of Free and Charitable Clinics.

Shipmates from the Repose had a reunion in 2003, and Hussey was tasked to locate as many doctors and nurses as possible. He located a Navy nurse who served on the Repose during Husseys tenure. She had retired as a lieutenant commander and lived in Jacksonville, Fla. They had not seen each other since their Vietnam days.

The two reconnected at the reunion and have been happily married for over 15 years. Peggy Hussey volunteers at the clinic, too. But I work in pharmacy, not with the doctor, she says.

The Husseys, members of St. Marys Episcopal Church in High Point, have fond memories of their service on the Repose.

No one wanted to rotate off the ship, it was actually sad when someone had to leave, Mike Hussey says. Since we dealt primarily with trauma victims, everyone had to pitch in and do their part  the learning curve was steep. It was a tight-knit group.

I loved being a Navy officer, he says. My first assignment was aboard the USS Lexington. After being treated less than royally as an intern and resident, they actually saluted me on the Lexington. I reciprocated by removing a good number of wrong girl tattoos.
GREENSBORO  Douglas Park played host Friday night to the latest outcry to end gun violence in the city.

More than 30 people came together to celebrate the life of Jacqueline Thompson and discuss how to help stop the violence plaguing the city.

Thompson, 47, was one of three people shot in Greensboro late Monday into early Tuesday in separate, unrelated shootings. She was shot inside a house at 625 E. Gate City Blvd. and was taken to Moses Cone Hospital about 1 a.m. She died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Police have not made an arrest in Thompsons death and are still investigating what happened inside the house that night.

Its really sad, Jessica Thompson, 23, said about the death of her mother, who had spent the past two decades protesting against such violence. This violence needs to stop.

There have been 33 slayings in Greensboro this year, just six shy of the citys record number of killings in 2007. Sherman Moore, an anti-violence activist, said there is a need for city government, police, clergy and residents to come together to figure out how to stop the violence. He said he is working on planning another rally that will include everyone in Greensboro.

With music blaring in the background and the smell of grilled food in the air, Jessica Thompson mingled with all who came to remember her mother. With the autopsy on her mother completed, she said her family can now focus on planning a funeral.

This is making me want to get out and help in the community, she said.

Jacqueline Thompsons death was a call to action, Moore said. Other killings in the city have prompted meetings, but he said this one has moved people to want to act.

The next move is the unity movement peace walk, said Moore, who is looking to host that event late next week. This was messing with the wrong person.

In the days after Thompsons death, the community has mobilized to speak out against violence, said Irving Allen, a local activist and City Council at-large candidate. He called Thompsons death tragic and said it speaks to the issues that are plaguing Greensboro.

Its tragic to see the cycle of violence hasnt been broken, said Allen, who thinks the key to organizing efforts against violence starts with employing people like Moore to work with the city.

Greensboro resident Antione Johnson said Thompson was a real queen. Her death made those who knew her want to do something to continue her fight.

Johnson, known to some as Prophet of the Streets, considered Thompson family and wants her killer brought to justice.

An activist just died, Johnson said. If theyre gunning down activists, that tells you something.
GREENSBORO  Its never too late to be named queen.

Jeanne Callicutt had a lot less experience on the beauty pageant circuit when her grandparents entered her in a VFW pageant years ago in Pennsylvania.

She was 3-years-old.

On Saturday, Callicutt was crowned the 2017 Ms. Guilford County Senior. It was the third consecutive year she competed for the crown.

I was surprised, said Callicutt, 71, of Greensboro. I was like, Oh no, not me. 

This is the fourth year of the Ms. Guilford County Senior pageant. Its been held at Spring Arbor of Greensboro senior home each of those years. Sarah Daffron, coordinator of the county pageants statewide, said the winners from each county will compete in the Ms. North Carolina Senior pageant in Southern Pines next year.

Contestants have to be 60 years or older to enter, according to the Senior America Pageant website. Each contestant is judged on an interview with the judges, physical fitness, evening gown and talent.

Callicutt is flying to western Pennsylvania Sunday to visit family and shes taking her crown to show off. The newly crowned queen said she is already looking forward to the next round of the competition.

Hell yeah, she said about her chances of winning it all in state competition in April.

Daffron made it all the way to the 2010 Ms. North Carolina Senior competition and won in her first year of trying. She said the contestants get to showcase their talents and have fun doing it.

The competition is growing with Alamance County hosting its first senior pageant next weekend and Forsyth County planning to start a pageant for its seniors within the next year.

I think our society is geared toward seniors sitting in a rocking chair, Daffron said. We dont sit in any rocking chairs and were not couch potatoes.
GREENWICH  Local leaders in Greenwich and hospital administrators are closely watching the budget battles in Hartford with mixed feelings.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has expressed an intention to veto a Republican-crafted budget that cuts spending, and he has been backed in his opposition by advocates for labor, education and urban constituencies.

Republican lawmakers from Greenwich, meanwhile, are holding fast to their belief that the time for state spending cuts to address major deficits has come.

State Sen. Scott Frantz, a Republican, wrote in an email, The public office-holders have spoken on behalf of the people of Connecticut, who are in agreement. This is a test of who the governor is  a compassionate, decent leader or a status quo supporter of failed policies for far too long.

State Rep. Fred Camillo said, We believe this plan will stabilize our state finances and encourage future investment here.

The GOP plan would steer the state administration to make $260 million more in savings than the plan Malloy and other Democratic legislative leaders are proposing.

Malloy, a Democrat, called the $40.7 billion budget plan put forward by Republicans, and a handful of Democrats, unbalanced. It would cut funding for public colleges, pensions for state workers, aid to certain municipalities and some social services.

It relies on too many unrealistic savings, it contains immense cuts to higher education, and it would violate existing state contracts with our employees, resulting in costly legal battles for years to come, Malloy said of the GOP plan.

First Selectman Peter Tesei, a Republican, said he was urging the governor not to veto the spending plan.

During the past three years, under the Malloy administration, the town has seen its state aid dwindle from $6.6 million to zero. My priority has been to maintain our solid financial standing during difficult economic times without sacrificing important infrastructure and service needs. Despite losing nearly all state funding, the 2017/2018 town budget has the lowest tax increase (1.49 percent) in decades. The bipartisan state budget adopted by both houses of the legislature addresses the states dire financial condition. I would encourage the governor to sign it, he wrote in an email.

The budget fight in Hartford is of particular concern to Greenwich Hospital and others medical institutions in the region, who are watching the financial dealings with trepidation.

Vin Petrini, senior vice president for public affairs at the Yale New Haven Health Services, which encompasses Greenwich Hospital, said, Were encouraged by a recognition that we cant keep taxing non-profit hospitals. Greenwich Hospital, and others in the region, have been paying a new tax levied on hospitals under the Malloy administration.

Petrini said there was optimism that state lawmakers would work out a deal that wouldnt drastically cost more money for hospitals to operate.

Were hopeful that weve got a bipartisan approach to access untapped federal dollars, matching dollars. If the budget is vetoed, we hope that they preserve this agreement, for the state to access federal matching dollars, from Medicaid dollars, Petrini said.

The agreement would lower the financial burden on Greenwich Hospital and its peers, he said.

The ongoing drama was not helpful to hospitals, he noted.

Theres uncertainty here, he said, and that made it difficult for non-profit organizations to plan their own budgets.

The state budget is two months late. The state is facing a $3.5 billion deficit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The smuggling attempts were discovered at Cairo International Airport and Safaga harbour

The Egyptian Archaeological Unit at Cairo International Airport succeeded to foil an attempt to smuggle Ottoman pistols to Turkey while a unit in Safaga Port foiled an attempt to smuggle a collection of 21 silver coins from the reign of King Farouk to Saudi Arabia.

Hamdy Hamam, the head of the unit at Cairo International Airport, said the guns were determined to be rare, ancient relics after being examined by experts.

One of the guns is 56 centimetres long and consists of a metal handle and a chamber marked with foliage decorations while the two others are 48 centimetres long and consist of a wooden handle, a metal curving with a metal trigger, and a decorated bullet chamber.

The coins are dated to the Ottoman period, the Sultan Hussein Kamel era and the reign of King Farouk.

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Riverside

A decision is slated to be made this week about the controversial proposal to build an apartment complex at the corner of East Putnam Avenue and Sheephill Road.

The towns Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a special meeting at 4 p.m. Monday at Town Hall on the proposal to build 17 moderate-income residential units and five retail spaces in a four-story, 40,931-square-foot mixed-use building.

The plan also includes more than 100 above- and below-ground parking spaces and would replace the current buildings at the address which includes the Goodwill drop-off, a tailor and a limousine rental service.

The project has gotten strong pushback from nearby residents who claim the apartments would increase traffic flow and provide dangerous conditions to an already busy intersection on the Post Road. The buildings developers, J and J Greenwich, said a parking study shows no large increase on the existing numbers of cars.

Opponents of the proposal claim the study was improperly done. Developers have said they have met every requirement put forth by the commission and that the project would add important units to the towns stock of moderate-income housing, which had been listed as a priority in the towns current Plan of Conservation and Development.

The meeting will be open to the public but public comment will not be allowed. The Planning and Zoning Commission is no longer accepting testimony from either side on the proposal and is meeting on Monday to render a decision only.

Central Greenwich

Nearly 30 neighbors gathered on Hemlock Drive Sept. 16 to complete a vernal pool planting and restoration project. Under the leadership of the Greenwich Neighborhoods Preservation Association, close to 600 shrubs were planted in and around the edges of the pool, which is a small wetlands that requires surrounding forest and green space to function properly.

Organizers said the native wetland shrubs were carefully selected to provide restoration, enhancement and filtration of the water that enters the pool, cooling the surface water in the pool, removing nutrients and serving as both food and habitat for amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals.

The work was done under the supervision of Michael Klemens, a nationally recognized vernal pool expert.

This vernal pool is very unusual as it thrives in a developed portion of Greenwich, providing vital ecological services to the neighborhood, while contributing to the purity of the towns wetlands, which drain directly into Long Island Sound, Klemens said. GNPA has taken a proactive step in working with both landowners and the town to enhance the vitality and survival of this ecological oasis.

The pools perimeter had native plants and shrubbery to create a habitat and natural buffer.

Representative Town Meeting member Michael Warner, whose district includes Hemlock Drive, not only stopped by, but did some of the planting.

This restoration project shows the dedication of GNPA and many of their supporters to the preservation of this precious resource, said First Selectman Peter Tesei, who also dropped by to see the project. This is a beautiful area on Hemlock Drive and Oak Street that is serene with wonderful elements of nature while being in the center of town.

Cos Cob

Joey Bs Famous Chili Hub on River Road Extension in Cos Cob is holding its second annual thank you day to Greenwichs police officers.

The restaurant will host its Thank a Cop Day on Wednesday. From 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. complimentary hot dogs will be served to for all first responders.

And for a $10 donation, which will go to the Greenwich Polices Scholarship Fund, people will be able to take part in a dunk tank from 1 to 3 p.m.

The event is the brainchild of Joey Bs owner Dom Delfino, who created it after seeing so many members of the GPD as regulars at the restaurant and who has relatives in law enforcement.

Doms generosity and kindness are immeasurable, GPD Sgt. John Thorme of the Community Impact Section said.

As a business owner, I feel its a great way to get the community and police officers to come together, Delfino said. Were grateful to Greenwich Police force keeping businesses and residents safe.

Downtown

Greenwichs The Last Taste of Summer Beer Fest is set for Sept. 30.

The event will take place in Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in downtown Greenwich, one week after the annual Greenwich Wine and Food Festival. According to organizers, there will be brews and pours from more than 30 Connecticut craft breweries including New Belgium Brewing, Armada Brewing, Charter Oak Brewery, Spiked Seltzer and Thimble Island.

Town resident Scot Weicker, president of SBWEventsGroup, has put the event together with Daphne Dixon. He said he expects a good audience for a fine event with a great message and cause behind it.

Summer is being extended, Weicker said. This will be the last taste of summer.

There will also be live music, games, activities and food from Bobby Qs and popular local food trucks including Wendys Weenies, Lobster Craft and Melt Mobile. Music will be performed by the Wilton Steel Community Band, The Clams and Sacred Fire, a tribute band to Carlos Santana.

The festival is scheduled to start at noon.

Free parking will be available for fest attendees in both the Island Beach and Horseneck Parking Lots. People will also be able to use nearby municipal parking but the metered spaces will not be free.

Attendees must be 21 years or older and must bring photo IDs with them to participate in the tastings. The event will take place rain or shine. People are allowed to bring blankets and chairs but no coolers, outside food or alcohol, ice or any other beverages.

More information is online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/craft-beer-festival-the-last-taste-of-summer-tickets-36253401901 along with information on purchasing tickets.

The event will benefit Live Green CT!s zero food waste programs. According to the organization, close to 60 million metric tons of food are wasted every year in the United States, with an estimated value of about $162 billion with more than half of it ending up in landfills.

Food waste is a global issue and tackling it is a priority, said Richard Swannell, director of sustainable food systems at the Waste and Resources Action Program. Awareness of food waste has risen, but we need to do more to tie that to awareness to actions on the ground. We need to find better ways to deal with food waste, but we need to prevent it in the first place.

Weicker called the Beer Fest a zero waste event; everything will be recycled.
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After years of saving up for a down payment, Mexican immigrant Maria Gonzalez, 33, and her husband finally moved out of their Chicago-area rental apartment into their own four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the city. It wasn't easyshe works in sales and he owns a mechanical shop, and money was tight. But they managed to put down about $14,000 and got a mortgage for the rest of their $230,000 single-family house. They closed in March.

And now the couple, who have been in the U.S. for 15 years, fear they could lose their home at any moment if one or both of them are deported. Gonzalez, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, overstayed her tourist visa years ago. Her husband is also living illegally in the U.S.

"These are very difficult and scary times," says Gonzalez through a translator. "We don't know what's really going to happen."

For the millions of immigrants and refugees who have made the United States their home, the country doesn't feel very welcoming lately. President Donald Trump rose to political popularity promising to build a wall along the Mexican border. One of his first major moves in office was to block people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the country (a revised version of the order is still being challenged in court). He recently announced plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields almost 800,000 immigrants who came illegally to the U.S. as children from deportation.

Claire V. Widman

The administration also hopes to limit legal immigration by eliminating the lottery program that provides 50,000 visas a year for foreigners and cutting the number of refugees allowed in each year. It's taken aim at alleged abuses of the H-1B visa program, which is designed to bring in only the highest skilled foreign workers to fill jobs that Americans don't have the experience to hold.

But like it or not, immigrants are an integral part of the fabric of the United Statesits traditions, its economy, and even its real estate. The latter has mostly been ignored as high-decibel debates rage on over the impact of immigrants on local economies and job markets.

So we decided to cut through the overheated rhetoric to determine the real impact that recent waves of immigrants have had on America's residential housing markets. The data team at realtor.com focused on groups who have arrived here since 1985. How have these recent immigrants fundamentally transformedfor better or worsemetros and towns across the U.S.?

We discovered that there was no one narrative that could answer that question. It's a tale of haves and have-nots. From the border towns of the West, to the skyrocketing abodes in Silicon Valley, to the desolate cities of the Rust Belt, swaths of America have seen local housing fundamentally altered by an influx of new immigrant groupssometimes in surprising ways that fly in the face of prevailing narratives.

There are now about 42 million immigrants from just about every country in the world living in the U.S., making up about 13% of the overall population, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They're a wildly diverse group, but they're bound by a common desire: to build a better life for themselves and their families.

"Immigrants are a big driving force for housing markets across the nation," says Kusum Mundra, an economics professor at Rutgers University, Newark. "Most want the American dream, which is to own a home."

The immigrant 'boost' to property values

Claire V. Widman

For most immigrants, the path to homeownership remains a challenging one.

Although some ultrawealthy foreign buyers immediately purchase luxury homes or investment properties upon entering the U.S., they're the exceptions, not the rule. For most immigrants, it takes about five to 10 years after arrival before they're buying homes at similar rates as native-born Americans, says Gary Painter, director of social policy at the University of Southern California's Sol Price Center for Social Innovation in Los Angeles. He specializes in real estate and immigration.

About 40.7% of immigrants were homeowners in 2016, compared with 66.1% of native-born Americans, according to a realtor.com's analysis of U.S. Census data.

"Just like those born in the U.S., [immigrants] view home-buying as putting down roots in the community," Painter says. "On average, where immigrants are settling, property values have gone up."

That's because they're often settling in struggling cities that have lost jobs and residents, such as the Rust Belt, but offer more lower-priced housing. Once they move in, many start businesses, spend money locally, and increase the demand for housingall of which lead to the stabilization or boost in property values.

Their presence has also been associated with a reduction in crime. For every 1% increase in the immigrant population, there were 4.9 fewer crimes per 100,000 people, according to a 2016 Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice study.

"There are cities that are on the way down, and immigrants have revived them," says George Masnick, senior research associate at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. "Theyre buying houses. ... Theyre going to be the ones who keep the local economy vibrant."

One of those places has been in Detroit and the suburbs surrounding it. The area's population dropped nearly 63% since it peaked at roughly 1.8 million residents in 1950, during the height of the domestic auto business. Today, the metro is home to the largest percentage of Middle Eastern immigrants that have come to the U.S. since 1985, according to the realtor.com analysis.

(The realtor.com data team used the CIA's classification of 19 Middle Eastern countries and territories in its calculations. They included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Gaza Strip, Republic of Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, West Bank, and Yemen.)

Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

"People come into neighborhoods and buy houses that maybe were not well-kept up and fix them up, and they attract other people like themselves to the areas," says Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The group is based in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills.

Many are drawn to the Middle Eastern community in Hamtramck, MI, one of the largest Muslim populations in America. Hamtramck boasts a low median home closing price of just $61,000, according to realtor.com.

But the travel ban against six Muslim-majority countries has affected the community, even though many are not Muslim. After Trump was elected, one Muslim couple came into real estate broker Kabir Ahmed's Home Pride Realty office in Hamtramck, wanting to sell their investment properties. The wife was crying.

"It did put fear into a lot of people," Ahmed says. Nearly all of his clients are Muslims from Yemen or Bangladesh, where he was born. Sales haven't substantially fallen yet, but many potential clients are on the fence over whether to buy.

"Some people are still nervous about the way things are shaping up," he says.

The refugees hoping to be reunited with their families

Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

That uncertainty is also affecting war-weary refugees hoping to be reunited with their families. In 2016, there were an estimated 65.6 million refugees worldwide, more than half of whom are children, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That's one in every 113 people.

Of those refugees, nearly 97,000 were admitted to the U.S. last year, according to the U.S. Department of States Refugee Processing Center. The Trump administration capped admissions to 50,000 this year citing terrorist concerns, with battle-torn Syria as a particular threat.

"Many of the refugees we work with had to pick up and run," says Alicia Kinsman, director of legal services at the International Institute of Connecticut. The Bridgeport, CTbased group helps about 100 to 150 refugees predominantly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, and Syria find housing and settle into their new communities.

"They were about to be detained and tortured by their government, so they had to flee," Kinsman says.

Many of those who were admitted into the U.S. are sending money to their family members abroad, instead of spending it in their new communities as they wait to be reunited.

Refugees are settled all over the country and are often placed in areas where they already have family or community tiessuch as the Bridgeport metro. It has the nation's ninth-highest number of Syrian immigrants, at 0.035%, who have moved to the U.S. since 1985. They aren't all refugees.

They feel so blessed to be here and motivated to build a life and contribute to the communities theyre living in," Kinsman says.

The downsides to immigrant enclaves moving next door



An influx of residents from another part of the world isn't always good for local real estate. Home prices tend to go up faster in places where immigrants don't live, says Albert Saiz, director of the Center for Real Estate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That's because some native-born Americans are willing to pay more to live in neighborhoods with other homegrown Americans, according to a 2011 research paper he co-wrote in the American Economic Journal.

But when it comes to rents, immigrants tend to boost them by 1% for each additional percentage of foreigners who move into an area, according to 2006 research Saiz published in the Journal of Urban Economics.

"It's good for the owners and landlords," he says. "But it might not necessarily be perceived as a good thing for renters who lived there before."

In addition, low-income immigrants might strain an area's public and health servicesparticularly schools and hospitals, says Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies. The Washington, DCbased think tank favors lower immigration rates.

Schools might need to hire bilingual teachers and other staffers to accommodate new students who don't speak English. In addition, many low-income immigrants receive government assistance, often in the form of food stamps, housing aid, or free school lunches, he says. (Legally, most immigrants cannot receive government help for their first five years in the country.)

And, true to some of the angrier rhetoric that reared its head in the oft-toxic 2016 election season, immigrants can indeed displace local blue-collar workers. The reason is sometimes newcomers will accept lower wages than their American-born counterparts.

"There are short-term negatives that basically fuel the anti-immigrant movement," says Harvard's Masnick says. But "this is temporary and there are all these benefits that are going to come along."

The 'haves': Silicon Valley's tech-savvy immigrants



There's no hard and fast rule over how immigrants will affect a local housing market. But in Silicon Valley, the impact has been vast.

The San Jose metro areathe valley's urban epicenterhas the highest percentage of immigrants in the nation, with 29% of residents born on foreign soil, according to realtor.com's analysis from 1985 to 2015. (It was followed by Miami, at 28%; Los Angeles, at nearly 23%; San Francisco, at 21.6%; and New York, at 21.5%.)

Many of these Silicon Valley settlers are the epitome of the "merit-based" English-speaking, highly skilled workers that Trump would prefer to be admitted to the U.S. Companies are bringing them over to fill high-paying tech, finance, and engineering jobs for which they can't find enough qualified U.S. citizens.

Meenakshi Mini Thangaswamy, 33, is one of these tech-savvy immigrants. She and her husband moved to the U.S. nearly a decade ago from India so she could get a master's degree and her husband-to-be could receive a Ph.D. Today, the parents of two young daughters each work at well-known tech companies.

They both received their U.S. citizenship about four-and-a-half years ago. And this past April, they bought a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, single-family house in Silicon Valley's San Mateo, CA.

Despite Trump's tough talk on immigration, Thangaswamy doesn't regret the purchase.

"If I watch the news, I dont feel like it's the same country. [But] the core and the fabric of the country is still the same. It's the land of opportunity," she says. "Some of the [negative] feelings that are going on in the country, I dont think are going to last a long time."

She's found the Silicon Valley community to be very welcoming. The metros of San Jose, at nearly 5.2%, and San Francisco, at almost 2.1%, have the highest percentages of Indian immigrants since 1985, according to realtor.com's analysis.

But all of those well-paid tech workers, both native- and foreign-born, have pushed home prices up to dizzying heights. The median list price of a home in the San Jose metro was $1,015,300 as of Aug. 1, according to realtor.com data.

Claire V. Widman

Brian Wu, 27, who requested his name be changed to protect his privacy, moved to the U.S. seven years ago for college and now works as a software engineer at Google. He has an H-1B visa and is going through the green card process. His wife, who is also a Chinese immigrant, has a student visa. They bought a three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home in Silicon Valley's Burlingame, CA, in May.

"It's a good investment," he says of his home. "I'm tired of spending $3,000 every month for a two-bedroom apartment."

He's doesn't think any new immigration polices will affect him or his wife. Changing the current visa system would "be a pretty big hit to the IT companies," he says. "I don't see there's anything to be worried about."

The 'have-nots': Struggling along the U.S.-Mexico border



The poorer housing markets in the towns along the U.S.-Mexico border bear little resemblance to the mind-numbingly expensive ones in the tech hubs of Northern California.

McAllen, TX, for example, is one of the most impoverished metro areas in the country, with median home prices of $189,000about 45.4% less than the national average of $275,000. It also has the highest number of Mexican immigrants arriving since 1985, at nearly 19.1%.

Wikipedia CC

Hispanics (including Mexican immigrants) have made up about 45% of all first-time home buyers nationwide over the past decade, says Gary Acosta, CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

"Buying a home and having a permanent place for the extended family is central to the Hispanic culture," he says.

But that could change as many Mexican-born and Mexican-Americans might no longer feel welcome enough in the U.S. to buy a home.

"A lot of the folks who are potentially affected by the immigration policies being implemented now are not just undocumented individuals, but people connected to those individuals through marriage or through employment," Acosta says. Because of deportations, "one of the [financial] contributors to the family potentially may not be here in the coming months and years."

The towns and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border could be hurt badly as a result.

"You're going to see a spike in foreclosures," predicts Acosta. "You're going to see fewer buyers and more sellers, and that's going to drive prices down."

That might be good in the short term for buyers hoping to score a deal. But it could hurt the economies and property values of these communities for years to come, he says.

Claire V. Widman

The fear of deportation is particularly frightening for immigrants who have no documentation who have obtained mortgages and bought homes in this country. It's estimated that about 31% of these foreigners are homeowners, according to a recent Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report.

Even without papers, immigrants can obtain Individual Taxpayer Identification Number loans. ITIN loans are not easy to getapplicants must muster up 20% down payments and have excellent credit. Loan officers will look at their rent, cellphone, and insurance bills to make sure they're being paid on time. And borrowers usually pay 7% to 7.5% interest on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages unlike Americans who are being charged in the low 4% range.

John Moore/Getty Images

But they're growing in popularity, says Alterra Home Loans CEO Jason Madiedo.

Alterra, which has offices in 14 states, has done about 170 ITIN loans (fewer than 1% of the company's overall business) in the past two years or so, mostly to Hispanic buyers who go in with multiple family members together to qualify. The average mortgage is $138,000.

"They still have the dream of owning a home," says U.S.-born Madiedo, whose parents were Columbian immigrants without documents who eventually became citizens. "The desire and the dream is outweighing the risk for them."

Yuqing Pan and Vanessa Velez contributed to this report.

The post How Immigrants Are Transforming the American Dreamand Real Estate Along With It appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
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The kids are not all rightor so the click-bait headlines would lead you to believe. There are countless stories about those flighty millennials who job-hop every year, are crazy-obsessed with their iPhone phablets and shell out too much on Instagrammable avocado toast or kale smoothies to move out of their parents basements and (gasp!) pay their own rent.

There's more than a hint of truth to that last part. About 15% of 25- to 35-year-olds were still crashing with their folks in 2016, according to a Pew Research study. And that leaves 85% either cramming into apartments with friends or living solo.

The young-at-heart data team at realtor.com decided to dig into these numbers. As it turns out, where millennials are living plays a big role in whether they are most likely to live alone, as opposed to with their folks.

And there's a lot of variation across the country, we learned. For example, Bridgeport and New Haven ranked in the top 10 U.S. metros where young adults are most likely to delay moving out of their home. But most of them live alone in more affordable cities like Albany, NY, or Omaha, NE.

"We definitely see a larger percentage of millennials living at home at an older age than previous generations," says Jason Dorsey, president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, a millennial research firm based in Austin, TX. "They hit the Great Recession, so its taking them longer to financially recover. They had a tough job market from the start. And theres been quite a lot of wage stagnation."

Adding to the generational woes: Millennials have record amounts of student debt that needs to be paid off. It's yet another factor that has helped push up the median age of first-time homeowners to 32 in 2016, according to the National Association of Realtors.

"Its more socially acceptable now to delay marriage, kids, and a home," Dorsey says. "Theres not the expectation that you would have bought your own home by age 30."

So where exactly are millennials living on their own (without roommates or romantic partners)? And where have they flown back toor never leftthe nest? To figure out it out, realtor.com's data team analyzed 2015 U.S. Census Bureau data on 18- to 34-year-olds in the largest metros. We also added in rental prices for one-bedroom apartments from the rental website Apartment List and realtor.com median home list prices to give you an idea of the local housing markets.

Ready for home-cooked meals? Lets look at where millennials are most likely to shack up with Mom and Dad.

Percentage of millennials living with parents: 51.8%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $620

Median home list price: $189,300

There are two main reasons why millennials stick around their family abodes in McAllen, which sits on the U.S.-Mexico border: They don't make enough money to move out, and even if they could, their families may not want them to. Unlike larger cities in the Lone Star State, the area lacks good-paying, professional jobs. That makes it hard to afford to live on one's own.

Plus, many of the city's close-knit families prefer to pool limited resources by living together under one roof, until major life events like marriage or childbirth.

Percentage of millennials living with parents: 45.8%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $1,210

Median home list price: $699,000

The sky-high prices in California make it hard for just about everyone, regardless of their age, to make it on just one income. What puts Oxnard on this list is that twentysomethings are simply fleeing because it doesn't have enough high-paying jobs to keep up with the increasing home prices.

However, this bucolic surf town is within reach of western Los Angelesabout an hour and a half away by car or train. That means millennials might be able to commute to the City of Angels a few days a week and then come home to dear old Mom and Dad.

Percentage of millennials living with parents: 45.6%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $681

Median home list price: $166,700

El Paso has a lot in common with McAllen. It also lies along the U.S.-Mexico border, suffers from a high unemployment rate and slow economic growth, and is seeing home costs rise. And it has a large Mexican-American population that is generally favorable toward children living with their parents well into adulthood.

So even though housing is pretty cheap, many local residents still can't afford their own digs. But many wouldn't want 'em anyway.

Percentage of millennials living with parents: 45.2%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $1,134*

Median home list price: $725,000

Many millennials want to live on their own in coastal Bridgeport, but there aren't enough homes to go aroundespecially in the right price range.

Because of its close proximity to New York Cityabout 70 minutes away on an express Metro North trainBridgeport is a popular commuter hub for those looking to save a few bucks and former city dwellers craving extra space for a family. The downtown is also experiencing a resurgence, especially in the Black Rock neighborhood, with bars, restaurants, and live music venues popping up.

That's led to "a big inventory of renters and a small inventory of rentals," says local Realtor Gail Robinson of William Raveis Real Estate.

Percentage of millennials living with parents: 44.8%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $1,062

Median home list price: $379,500

Millennials are spreading across Miami like bronzing oil on sunbathers. The beaches, all-night parties, and jobs have made it the second most desirable U.S. metro for millennial home buyers, according to realtor.com.

Even with the influx of young residents, the Magic City has one of the highest percentages of millennials who have yet to fly the coop. Thank the killer rents and rising home values. After college, many South Florida kids head home to continue with graduate studies at nearby universities or enter the job market. But theyre often met with entry-level salaries that cannot keep up with the elevated cost of living.

"I have a lot of clients who live with parents and save up little by little until they're ready to buy something," says local Realtor Giovanna Calimano, of Yes Real Estate.

The rest of the top 10 metros where millennials are most likely to live with their parents are Riverside, CA; New York City; North Port, FL; New Haven, CT; and Worcester, MA.

Now, let's look at where millennials are most likely to live solo.

Percentage of millennials living alone: 11.2%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $1,130

Median home list price: $391,900

Its no surprise that millennials are moving en masse to funky Austin, one of the most dynamic metros in the United States. And even if they are living on their own, don't expect them to be lonely. The city is praised for its great food (hello, breakfast taco!), the arts and tech festival/empire of South by Southwest, as well as its thriving entrepreneurial communities.

What is shocking is how many of Austin's millennials are making it on just one income. The median price of an apartment is more than $1,000and it gets higher the closer you get to the city center.

One reason that many millennials can afford Silicon Hills, as the Texas capital is known, is due to the influx of tech startups and other related firms. The alluring combo of higher incomes and a lower cost of living has led many to choose the city over other tech hubs.

"More and more young people have higher-salary jobs based out of the [San Francisco] Bay Area, Chicago, or New York, and telecommute from Austin, because of the quality of life," says local real estate broker Mark Strub of Strub Residential. "It really is that cool."

Percentage of millennials living alone: 10.4%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $759

Median home list price: $269,700

Yes, Nebraskayou got a problem with that? The city offers affordable rents for those just starting out, and even buying a home is within reach. Plus it boasts thriving arts, restaurant, and indie music scenes. It's home to Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway company, so we're not exactly talking about the middle of nowhere.

The city even has a decent coolness quotient. Local indie rock bands like Cursive have produced albums with Saddle Creek Records, a homegrown record label founded in part by Omaha-native Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. The city's craft beer industry is also gaining momentum, hailed by Thrillist as one of the 10 Untapped Beer Cities Poised to Blow Up.

Percentage of millennials living alone: 10.4%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $719

Median home list price: $234,700

Plenty of the roughly 27,000 students who attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee stick around after graduation. And why not? Milwaukee offers many of the same amenities as nearby Chicago (about an hour and a half away), and the housing is just a fraction of the price.

For example, a brand-new, 1,200 square-foot apartment in downtown Milwaukee runs $1,500 to $1,700 a month in rent, says local Realtor Betsy Wilson Head of Realty Executives. Those a bit more flush with cash can purchase a home in good shape for $150,000 to $175,000.

Plus, millennials don't need to break the bank to have a good time. Idyllic Lake Michigan supports a large sailing community. The Milwaukee Arts Museum is one of the largest in the country, with nearly 25,000 pieces of art. And there are tons of free activities going on around town.

"Every night in summer, [there's a] free concert somewhere," says Wilson Head.

Percentage of millennials living alone: 10.2%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $743

Median home list price: $175,000

Once the prime exemplar of the decline in cities in the Rust Belt, Pittsburgh has made a big comeback in recent yearsespecially among savvy twentysomethings. They've helped propel Steel Town into a new era of prosperity, driven by the growing tech industry and management services.

The city has new art spaces, parks, bike trails, restaurants, bars, and social events, while maintaining the best parts of its old, industrial vibe. Plenty of historic factories have been renovated into reasonably priced housing with the authentic urban, loft vibe that many millennials adore. House party!

Percentage of millennials living alone: 10.1%

Median rent for a one-bedroom apartment: $870

Median home list price: $269,900

New Yorks state capital has embraced the tech industry, attracting companies like IBM and GlobalFoundries. This has helped retain local university graduates and lure millennials from other metros. That influx of young folk has laid the groundwork for a burgeoning cultural scene that has repurposed formerly abandoned industrial districts and launched a downtown renaissance.

"The reason why Albany is so attractive is because it's affordable," says local real estate broker Anthony Gucciardo of the Gucciardo Real Estate Group. Three-bedroom, two-bathroom houses rent for about $2,000 a month.

"The only people here who are likely to have roommates are those still in college," he says.

Rounding out the top 10 cities where millennials are most likely to live alone are Indianapolis; Dayton, OH; Cleveland; New Orleans; and Kansas City, MO.

* The average rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in June, according to Rent Jungle.

The post Where Millennials Live Aloneand Where They're Still Crashing With Mom and Dad appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
The Moto E4 Plus landed in the US last month, and now it's finally time for it to get its first promotional price reduction. Normally going for $179.99 unlocked, the entry-level model with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage can now be snagged from Amazon for just $148.89. This is the standard version, mind you, not the one that has lock screen offers and ads that is exclusive to Amazon Prime members.

So if you act soon (because there's really no telling how long this deal will last), you're able to save a neat $31.10 compared to the phone's normal pricing. The non-Plus E4 model was discounted once a while back too, but it's nice to see this one getting the same treatment.

This offer is especially great if you don't care much about specs in a smartphone, but want the biggest battery capacity possible, to ensure that your device will last for days on a charge. The Moto E4 Plus definitely delivers on that front, with its huge 5,000 mAh cell. It's also notable that, like other Motorola phones sold unlocked, this one supports all the major carriers in the US - GSM-based ones such as AT&T and T-Mobile, yes, but also CDMA-based networks such as Verizon and Sprint.

Via
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi managed to sell over 1 million smartphones in 48 hours during online festive sales in India, carried out by retailers Flipkart and Amazon. If you break it down, that's 300 smartphones per minute on average.

That's an achievement of sorts for Xiaomi, given that last year the 1 million figure was crossed after 18 days. "This achievement marks an industry first, and is a key milestone for Xiaomi India," the company said.

The Redmi Note 4 was the top seller smartphone as far as Flipkarts Big Billion Day Sale is concerned, while of all the smartphones sold by Amazon, an overwhelming majority were Xiaomi devices. This made Xiaomi the top smartphone brand for both sales.

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Haiti - FLASH : Stone throw and shots, evacuation of the President !





Friday in the early afternoon, President Jovenel Moise returned from New York and was greeted in the jubilation at Toussaint Louverture International Airport by several hundreds of PHTK activists and sympathizers, most of whom came from Les Cayes and for which had a dozen buses put at their disposal...



When he left the airport Jovenel greeted the citizens who came to welcome him and walked with them during part of the route that was to take him to his private residence.



Unfortunately, this joyful event, which was supposed to be a "good kid" walk, went wrong as his procession and the crowd approached the airport's crossroads. According to a note from the presidency, in spite of an impressive security device, "individuals who were ambushed in the zone fired several shots and stone throws towards the crowd that followed him at Boulevard Toussaint Louverture and Delmas (Carrefour airport)" triggering panic in the crowd and forcing the security agents closer to the President, to carry out the emergency evacuation of the Head of State to make it safe.



The imposing the Haitian National Police (PNH) security apparatus, backed by special units, had to use tear gas, acidulated water cannon and gunfire in an attempt to control the panic.



The presidency condemns this new infringement of peace and property and urges the sponsors and authors of these actions to regain control.



Note that Jovenel Moise is safe and sound.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22187-haiti-flash-jovenel-moise-evokes-the-army-of-haiti-at-the-tribune-of-the-un.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Moise announces other unpopular decisions

On his return from New York, President Moise declared at a press briefing at the airport that he did not intend to back down on the budget while saying "I will continue to take extremely difficult decisions that require a lot of courage [...] You gave me power not to do what I want nor to let you do what you want."



5 new substitutes Government Commissioner

During an extraordinary audience, Dean Bernard Saint-Vil of the Tribunal of First Instance (TPI) of Port-au-Prince received in a brief ceremony the oath of five new substitutes of the government commissioner : Amenaide Pascale Raymond, Angine Tamara Jean-Louis, Manoucheka Laurent, Nehemie Jean-Baptiste and Sagine Rose Ida Denis.



Poet Jean dAmerique receives the "Poetry Prize of Vocation"

Haitian poet and slammer Jean dAmerique received the "Poetry Prize of Vocation" for his new book "Nul chemin dans la peau que saignante etreinte" to be published next December at Cheyne Publisher. This prize, awarded every year since 1984 by the Marcel-Bleustein-Blanchet Foundation for vocation, is intended to introduce a young poet under 30 years of age.



Evacuation of Families in Cap-Haitien

Faced with the rising waters, several families of "Blues Hills", a vulnerable area of Cap-Haitien were evacuated to a shelter church.



"Ti Manman Cheri" in Cotes de Fer

Registration of mothers in the "Ti Manman Cheri" program was successfully completed in the commune of Cotes de Fer. More than 1,000 mothers who are among the most vulnerable, will benefit from social assistance throughout the country.



World Day of the Deaf

The Office of the Secretary of State for the Integration of People with Disabilities (BSEIPH) invites all development actors to take into account the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people in their policies and programs. Together let's work for the inclusion of everyone in the national life.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Tuesday, October 25, 2022 GE Tax Takes $200M Bite out of Health Care

By Grassroot Institute @ 10:02 PM :: 586 Views :: Health Care, Taxes If we exempted medical care from the general excise tax it would save doctors and patients more than $200 million [a year]. And that would help keep doctors in our state, rather than having to flee the state to earn money elsewhere...." Read More..
Kishor Kunnumpurathu Wilson was fined but not disqualified

A driver who went though a stop sign at a crossroads crashed into a vehicle and forced it into a nearby field.

Kishor Kunnumpurathu Wilson (35) caused extensive damage to the other vehicle, which was towing a trailer with a quad bike, when the trailer turned over.

Judge Cormac Dunne fined Wilson 750 but did not disqualify him from driving.

At Swords District Court, the defendant, of Beechtree, in Oldtown, Co Dublin, admitted a charge of careless driving.

The incident took place near Oldtown on October 13 last year.

Garda Joseph Carolan said that Wilson drove through a stop sign and collided with another vehicle.

He added that the other vehicle was pulling a trailer, which had a quad bike on it.

Raining

Gda Carolan said the vehicle was sent through the gate of a nearby field.

The trailer turned over and there was extensive damage to the vehicles. However, there was no major injury to anyone, said Gda Carolan.

The officer said that Wilson was driving along narrow country roads, and the incident happened at a crossroads.

Defence solicitor Bernard Stobie said it was raining on the day in question.

The court heard Wilson was a married man with two young children.

Mr Stobie said that the defendant was very sorry for his driving, and the court was told that he had never been in trouble before.

Mr Stobie also asked the judge not to disqualify Wilson from road use as he lived in a rural area and needed to keep his driving licence to be able to get around.
A scheme designed to bring thousands of homes back into use has fallen short of its targets - with Dublin lagging behind most parts of the country.

Under the Government's Repair and Lease Scheme, owners of vacant properties are paid up to 30,000 to bring the properties up to standard so they can be rented out to social housing tenants or families in need of State support.

The scheme was pitched as an essential element of the Government's plan to tackle the homelessness crisis.

But new figures supplied to the Herald show that just 102 units have been deemed suitable for social housing since March - despite the Government committing to implement 800 by the end of the year.

Just seven of these properties are in the capital, according to information obtained by John Curran, chairman of the Oireachtas Housing Committee.

Committed

Not a single unit has been earmarked for the catchments of South Dublin or Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown.

Mr Curran, a Fianna Fail TD for Dublin Mid West, strongly criticised what he said represents a "failure" on behalf of the Government to meet its own targets under the scheme.

"Back when the Government's plan, Rebuilding Ireland, was launched, then minister Simon Coveney committed to a target of bringing 800 vacant units back into the market by 2017 and 1,600 by the year 2020. It is wholly apparent that these are impossible targets given the current rate of slow pace," Mr Curran told the Herald.

"It is estimated that while in the midst of the current housing and homelessness crisis, there is somewhere in the region of 200,000 vacant properties nationwide and over 40,000 in greater Dublin alone. An agreement to lease has been signed in the case of eight units across the entire country while only seven have been identified as suitable in the Dublin region," he added.

In response, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said local authorities have received applications for 535 units to be included in the scheme for the first three months of the year.

But he said feedback received from local authorities suggests that many properties are not suitable for the scheme itself.

"I am examining all opportunities to accelerate and improve both social housing delivery as well as initiatives to bring more vacant houses back into use at a faster pace. I am currently finalising the outcomes of that review," Mr Murphy said.
Comings & goings: Health bar, candle shop, fishing charter website

A health bar and candle-making shop will cut their ribbons in the next few weeks while a charter fishing company launches its website.
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Suspense over a Madhya Pradesh-based Jain couple, who hit national headlines for deciding to leave behind a three-year-old daughter and Rs 100 crore in property for monkhood, continued on Saturday after only the husband took his vows and the wifes ceremony was postponed.

The ceremony was held at Vrindavan park in Surat Gujarat under Jain monk Acharya Ramlal Ji Maharaj, who christened 35-year old Sumit Rathore as Sumit Muni.

Ramlal said 34-year-old Anamikas initiation would be held after completion of legal formalities but did not give a specific date, leading to speculation that condemnation across the nation, the Jain community and also from within the family, had influenced religious elders.

This decision was in the best interest of the girl, said RK Bhandari, a well-known doctor and community leader.

Many had spoken out against the decision and activists even complained to the National Human Rights Commission arguing that the move amounted to infringement of human rights of their minor daughter Ibhya.

The situation was unclear because on Friday, the couple signed an affidavit giving guardianship of Ibhya to Anamikas father Ashok Chandliya, leading everyone to believe that both were going forward with the initiation.

Sumits cousin, Sandeep Rathore, who was strongly opposed to the move, told Hindustan Times that local government officials had spoken to community leaders and others on Friday night. I am personally very satisfied with the postponement, he said.

Sumit Rathore taking his vow of monkhood on Saturday. (HT Photo)

RTI activist Kapil Shukla told Hindustan Times that though he was not privy to activities within the Jain community, the delay in Anamikas deeksha likely meant that it has been delayed for years, at least till her daughter grew up.

Akhil Bharatiya Sadhumargi Jain Shravak Sangh Neemuch district in-charge Sandeep Khabia, who was present in Surat at the deeksha ceremony, said it was held at 7:30 am in the presence of hundreds of Jain community members. Sumits head was shaved and he wore the white clothes of a monk. But he refused to comment when asked why Anamikas initiation was postponed.

Jain spiritual leader, Maharaj Udai Muni, said the right to practise ones religion was fundamental under the Constitution and that the state could not interfere in it.

Sumit and Anamika had decided to become monks when Ibhya was only eight months old and, as preparation, started living separately. The couple, who married four years ago, have taken a vow of silence.

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Sunny Leone and her husband Daniel Weber surprised everyone when they announced that they have adopted a baby girl from Latur. The Indo-Canadian actor says she is enjoying every second of her time with her daughter, and cant wait to show her the entire world and teach her so many things. The news about adoption came in July, and the baby has been named Nisha Kaur Weber.

Well our whole life has changed for the better. Figuring out our schedule is not as difficult as we thought it would be and she is at an age where she can travel with us if need be, said Sunny Leone.

I am enjoying every second of my time with her. There is nothing more I can ask for. We are truly blessed, added Sunny Leone, who attended the fourth season of Big Boys Toys Expo -- a three-day event held at the MMRDA grounds Mumbai from September 22.

Arunoday Singh and Sunny Leone in a still from Jism 2.

The adoption process took two years. Sunny says she is enjoying being a mother. It is the best experience of my life and I cant wait to show her every inch of this world and teach her so many things, said the actor.

Sunny, whose real name is Karenjit Kaur Vohra, made a transition into Bollywood after making a name for herself as an adult film actor abroad. She took the reality TV route with a stint in one of the previous seasons of Bigg Boss to come into spotlight in India. She has featured in films like Jism 2, Ek Paheli Leela, Kuch Kuch Locha Hai and One Night Stand. Her Twitter bio reads: Life is short lets make the most of it. And Sunny says she has been following this for many many years.

I dont think a particular thing lasts forever so I try and have as much fun as possible all the time where ever I am in the world, added Sunny, who is also known for special numbers in films like Raees and Bhoomi.

Sunny Leone performing during Mr and Miss attitude 2017 competition at Morahbadi Ground in Ranchi. (Hindustan Times)

She is also know for her stint as host of Splitsvilla, an author and a business woman by coming out with a fragrance line. Sunny is also coming out with a cosmetic line and a production house. I have owned my own business since I was 18 years old so this is what I love. My first passion was owning a business and watching it grow. My moves are pretty calculated but here and there something comes along that I love and would love to see as my own. The only fixed plan always is to keep pushing forward and keep taking risks.

The actor, who often gets embroiled into controversy with her bold moves like endorsing a condom brand, feels she is a business woman before an artist. There are moments when being creative takes over, but at the end of the day the business side needs to work as well, she added.

Sunny Leone in a still from Beimaan Love.

Talking about her future projects, Sunny said, Right now I am working on some projects that have not been released to the public so you will have to wait. But I am almost ready to drop my cosmetic line StarStruck by Sunny Leone. So beyond excited about my own line of cosmetics.
Mangal Kunjam , a 26-year-old tribal journalist in the Maoist-hit Bastar, is a happy man after Newton, the film in which is played the brief yet important role of a journalist. Newton has been declared as official entry for Oscars from India.

In the film, Kunjam asks a very important question from the inspector general (IG) who came to visit the polling booth,  Aap jin Maovadiyon ka samarpan karvaate hain fir unhee maovadiyon ko badookh dekar unhee se ladvaate hain..aisa kyun ?

In 2005, when Salwa Judum  a government-sponsored vigilante movement to fight Maoists  started, more than 6,000 tribal youths and surrendered Maoists worked as special police officers (SPOs). In 2011, the Supreme Court banned Salwa Judum and ordered the state government to stop using SPOs. It was later observed that SPOs are used as assistant constables in a special force  district reserve guard (DRG).

Kunjam is working in the core Maoist area for last five years and is known for his nuanced reports. He has faced continuous threats from security forces for reporting fake encounters in the Dantewada region.

In the movie Rajkumar Rao played a role of imaandaar presiding officer of a booth. The same thing is happening with everyone who is honest in Bastar. I have been threatened several times and most of police officers still brand me as Maoist just because I am an honest journalists working in the region, said Kunjam.

Kunjam is the only person from Bastar who got a role in the film.

Talking about how he got this role, Kunjam said, I have a journalist friend in Mumbai, Javed Iqbal, who was close to the director and the writer. They called me when they came for research in Bastar and asked about the real situation of Bastar.

The film has been shot in Dalli Rajahara in Balod district, which is not Maoist affected, because of security reasons.

 I honestly narrated the whole situation and later they decided to give me the role in the film. I got the role of a TV journalist and the director had also given me the freedom to ask any question to IG in the film which I have asked, told Kunjam.

Kunjam further said that most of the questions which were asked from the tribals in the film by me are not scripted.

In the film I ask about the benefits of elections and they reply that never think of any benefit the election in this area. This is fact that most of the tribals who are living in Maoists affected area feel that election has never helped them, said Kunjam.

At many places the election is a farce just like it was depicted in the film.  When a foreign journalist came to cover the booth in the Maoist affected village , the villagers were forced to come to the election booth for voting which is a reality at many places, said Kunjam.

This is reality that tribal are trapped between security forces and Maoists in Bastar, he added.

 After the success of the film , which depicts the reality of Bastar, I want that a film should be made of the journalists working in Bastar. Most of the scribes working in this area are threatened and implicated in false cases, Kunjam said.

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India has decided to send Rajkummar Raos Newton as its official Oscar entry. The film is a satire on the Indian electoral process in which Rao plays a presiding officer. The film also has Pankaj Tripathi, Raghuvir Yadav and Anjali Patil in important roles.

Now, Newton needs to brace itself for a tight fight in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars as it will be up against some really acclaimed features, which include Hollywood star Angelina Jolies Cambodian film, First They Killed My Father.

The film is based on the experiences of human rights activist Loung Ung. Netflix distributed the film worldwide. Cambodia has made the film its official entry to the Oscars.

However, this isnt the only talked about film in this category. Newton will also have to compete with master director Fatih Akins German film In The Fade and Pakistans Saawan.

There are other well received films in the competition as well. It wont be easy for Newton to reach in top five.

Earlier in a conversation with Hindustan Times, the films producer Manish Mundra suggested the team of Newton is working on a strategy to conquer the West.

He said, We will try to raise enough funds to make our presence felt, so that influencers can watch the film and talk about it. I am sure if the influencers like it and the foreign media picks it, then we can reach the point where we can put up a fight. Most of them are based in the US, so we will also try for a quick release there.

The Oscars will commence in the first week of March 2018.
You could visit Taiwan, a tiny island country in the South China Sea, for its almost implausible sights. Not to mention its interesting accommodations, plush tea arenas and craggy coastlines with swaggering turquoise waters. However, in this small nation bursting with diversity, its best to arrive on an empty stomach, because, as far as Im concerned, Taiwan is all about the food.

Oh oysters, walk with us

Taiwans capital, Taipei, is a scrumptious city to live in. Seriously. Its major sport is arguing over which night market has the best oyster omelette. Though Im just a visitor, my vote would go to the one in Shilin, where the omelette is a bit chewy thanks to the addition of tapioca starch, and decadent thanks to being soaked in a dense sweet chilli sauce.

To go with my omelette, I bite into a Taiwanese sausage  not your regular forcemeat, but cured, a bit dry and slightly sweet. Then I stroll about the market, sipping bubble tea, a milky, sweet drink laden with gummy tapioca pearls, the size of marbles. Among the stalls selling grilled squid, pan fried buns, and fried fish cakes, I find one dishing out beef noodle soup, almost a staple in this country. A perfect bowl consists of a flavourful broth which could be spicy red or light and fragrant, fork-tender meat and chewy noodles. I choose the light broth and am so blown away that I cant even find adjectives to describe the sensation.

One of the best oyster omelettes is available in Shilin (Rupali Dean)

We are still discussing the delights of the night market when the bus stops at Leader Village Taroko, our hotel for the night. It is a small tribal village with separate aboriginal-style cabins with a Tang Dynasty touch.

Sample delicious dim sums at the night market (Rupali Dean)

When China became a socialist country in 1949, many people escaped to adjacent Taiwan, then a trivial island with native inhabitants of Trukus on the eastern side. I am fortunate to experience their way of life and cuisine first hand. On offer at our dinner place, using locally sourced ingredients, is comfort food Taiwanese style. I gorge on the wild barbecue boar meat with chillies and garlic, a wooden shoot of sticky bamboo rice, chicken soup, fried pork and native sweet potatoes, radishes and morning glory  I have no adjectives to describe this meal.

Of tofu and day lillies

Pick from a variety of vegetables for a DIY soybean milk hot pot meal at a soybean farm (Rupali Dean)

The next morning, about to set off on tour, I gulp down my tea and abandon my first-rate roasted aboriginal Shoubing, a flatbread with sesame seeds. The weather is breezy, perfect for the visit to the tofu (bean curd) makers. Freshly made tofu is unbelievably creamy, delicately sweet, and substantially versatile, and I cant wait to see how its made.

Nanfangao is a key mackerel fishing port, with an annual mackerel festival that draws thousands every year

We first go to the soybean farm to watch the process of turning beans into milk and then into tofu  similar to how we make cottage cheese back home. Next up is a DIY soybean milk hot pot for lunch, for which I load up items from a tray next to a bubbling cauldron, let my meat, seafood and generous selection of vegetables from Enoki mushrooms to radish boil, then take the lot out and eat. Yum.

Next up is a bus trip east of Zhutian Village, to Fuli Township, in Hualien County, where day lily flowers grow. I bite into a day lily candy as we drive past hills of impossible beauty, thinking that I need new words to describe the beauty around me. Day lily flowers at Sixty Stone Mountain are a great tourist attraction: the location is gorgeous, and has quaint eateries. We settle down at one with some day lily and pumpkin fritters, and tea.

Quaint eateries in Sixty Stone Mountain offer nibbles like day lily fritters (Rupali Dean)

Fishing for food

You cant be on an island and not catch the seafood, so dressed in pyjamas and a tee, I set out with local fishermen one morning to catch my own lunch. Freshly caught fish with nanao (natural farm rice) cooked on the boat, with congee and roasted peanuts, some pork tongue, and sashimi with a soy chilli dip, makes an excellent meal. The fish is mackerel  Nanfangao, where we are, is a key mackerel fishing port, with an annual mackerel festival that draws thousands every year.

Enjoy a meal of fresh mackerel on a boat at Nanfangao, the key mackerel fishing port (Rupali Dean)

With spectacular food on my plate for a week, I imagine I cannot think of any one particular dish to sum up my trip to Taiwan  but oh yes, I can! The famous soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung! Steamed dumplings filled with pork or shrimp dipped in vinegar soy sauce; I will carry this taste with me forever. The broth is in gelatin form and when the dumplings are steamed, it becomes juicy and hot, pouring flavour into your mouth when you bite. Poke a hole in the soup dumpling, drain the broth into your spoon, sip the broth, and then eat the dumpling. I demolished as much as I could before I had to run back to the waiting taxi for the airport.

Savour a bowl of soup dumplings filled with pork or shrimp dipped in vinegar soy sauce at Din Tai Fung, Taipei (Rupali Dean)

The Brunch Insiders view Visit the Sun Moon Lake, Taiwans largest water body. It is a stunning spot for sunrises and sunsets. (Source: Conde Nast Traveller) Among the top things to do in Taiwan is visiting the Buddhist Longshan Temple, Lukang. (Source: Lonely Planet) Art lovers can plan a visit to the National Taiwan Museum Of Fine Arts. (Source: TripAdvisor)

From HT Brunch, September 24, 2017

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The Haryana Police have started the legal process to declare Honeypreet, Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan, close aides of jailed Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim, as proclaimed offenders (PO).

This was stated by director general of police (DGP) Baljeet Singh Sandhu while addressing a press conference here on Saturday.

He said an international alert has been sounded for Honeypreet and the two other dera functionaries and raids were being conducted to nab them., The trio has been booked for allegedly inciting violence in the wake of Ram Rahims conviction in two rape cases by the CBI court in Panchkula on August 25. The police have nabbed dera spokesperson Dilawar Insan from Sonepat.

A total of 1,278 people have been arrested. Honeypreet, Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan are on the list of the most wanted. They will be declared POs. Their personal properties will be attached as per the law once they are declared POs, Sandhu said.

He said that if required, the police will ask the dera chief to join the investigations to facilitate the arrest of Honeypreet, his adopted daughter.

Aditya Insaan, an articulate ophthalmologist who studied at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, is the main spokesperson of the dera. He has been booked on charges of sedition, along with Surender Dhiman Insan, the dera spokesperson from Punjab.

Pawan Insaan is former spokesperson of the dera and used to manage the media for the self-styled godman.

Sandhu confirmed that Honeypreet had stayed at the dera headquarters for two days

following Ram Rahims conviction.

To a question, he said no permission was granted for naam charcha, a gathering for prayer services, at the

dera. Talking to Hindustan Times, additional director general of police (ADGP-law and order) Muhammad Akil, said, Police teams are working round-the-clock to nab Honeypreet. We have registered a total of 240 cases with regard to the violence after the conviction of the dera chief. We have got important clues from the arrested accused, of which 44 have been nabbed from Sirsa.

Honeypreets husband has filed no complaint

Meanwhile, the DGP said that Honeypreets former husband Vishwas Gupta, who apprehends thread to his life, has not filed any formal complaint yet in this regard.

Gupta, while addressing a press conference in Chandigarh on Friday, had said, I might be killed for speaking against the dera head, who is a very powerful man despite being in jail.

Gupta had also said that he was forced to divorce his wife and many false cases were filed against him at the behest of Ram Rahim who had an illicit relationship with her.

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Activist Anjali Damania asked police to file a complaint on Saturday morning, saying she received a threatening call around 12.30 pm on Friday. She told police the caller asked her to withdraw all the complaints she had filed against senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Eknath Khadse or face consequences.

Vakola police registered a case against unidentified people under section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code.

The Police complaint noted that the call was made from +92**********. Damania said the mobile application Truecaller traced the call to Pakistan and identified the number as belonging to Dawood 2.

It was disturbing to receive such a threat. I have informed the chief minister of the call. The joint commissioner of police, crime, has been asked to look into the issue, said Damania.

HT has an audio clip of the call, which Damania recorded. It features a man threatening to make her life miserable, adding that he knows who her family members are.

Damania had recently asked police to file a complaint against Khadse under section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the IPC, saying he used a sexist term to refer to her during a public speech. She has also filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay high court against the senior BJP politician in connection with a disproportionate assets case.
Like many others, I grew up deeply upset that Ram sent Sita away, and over the years I unburdened my mind of many thoughts on this painful topic. But scholars say, with good reason, that the Uttar Kand is prakshipta, a later interpolation, which makes sense.

I uphold the certainty that while the beautiful gods are one thing, it is unrealistic to demand epic endurance from human women. Equally, it is unacceptable if men (or women) behave like rakshasas.

Instead, if more citizens displayed some of Rams sixteen qualities like gunavan (principled), satya-vakyo (truth-telling), jita krodaha (in control of his anger) and so on, as described by Valmiki when he asks Narada, Where may I find such a person?, our country would have a better chance of being a nicer, kinder place.

Here I would like to call attention to discourses by speakers who make use of Mahipatis Bhakta Vijaya compendium, which has a heavy 18th-century male bias. Since it is an important, widely translated sourcebook on the lives of saints, many preachers in many languages unquestioningly repeat stories from it without intending any harm.

But Hindu society has undergone deep social and historical reform since Mahipatis day. So the message that goes out is not always helpful to the cause of the Constitution and the dignity bestowed on each citizen of the modern Republic of India, particularly its women.

Therefore, I would earnestly request Hindu preachers to shift emphases and reinterpret when telling stories from Bhakta Vijaya. I would also sincerely request the religious channels to ask their speakers to update their retellings from Mahipati for the sake of the countrys health and progress.

While genuine preachers can have a positive role to play in guiding and improving society, its an absolute treat when learned but easily understood acharyas flit in and out of the Vedas, Vedangas, Puranas and Itihasas (Valmikis Ramayana, Vyasas Mahabharata and Srimad Bhagvatam); the kavyas of Kamban and Tulsidas; the works of the Big Three philosophers Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva; and the medieval Bhakti bandwidth, ancient playwrights like Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti et al.

A beautiful love story emerges from such reading and listening that seems very pleasant to recall this Navratri week. This is the love story of Sri and Sriman, of Lakshmi-Narayana.

Through every epoch, Sriman cannot bear to be separated from Sri. The acharyas say they are equal in every respect but one. Sriman will punish wrongdoers but Sri is so compassionate that she forgives everybody out of love; so she is Srimans guiding light.

Valmiki sees Sita in the Ashokavana telling Trijata, unasked, that when Ram comes to rescue her, she will personally ensure the safety of the wage-slave rakshasis who torment her in captivity.

Somehow, our view of Mahalakshmi has become pared down to her role as Dhanya, embodiment of wealth. But if we think it over or recite slokas like the Mahalakshmi Ashtothram, such a lovely, gracious personality emerges, as if anew from the Kshirsagar, that we begin to understand the beauty of the divya dampati or divine couple and want to say their names and hear their stories.

This Vijayadashami, may the universal kindness symbolised by Lakshmi-Narayana light up our land.

shebaba09@gmail.com

(The views expressed are personal)

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Antibiotics should not be given to children with ear infections; treatment should be limited to paracetamol and ibuprofen, say new guidelines from UKs health watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

It found that 60% of children with a middle-ear infection (acute otitis media) felt better within a day without antibiotics, and most others got better on their own.

The UK warning comes a few days after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned parents that antibiotics were not effective against viral infections like the common cold, flu, most sore throats, bronchitis, and many sinus and ear infections.

Heres when to say yes and when to say no to antibiotics for common infections.

NO: Cold, flu, sore throat (except strep)

Antibiotics treat bacterial infections and are useless against infections caused by viruses, such as the common cold (runny or stuffy nose, sneezing) or seasonal flu that causes fever and body ache. Steam inhalation works much better than any medication to improve symptoms of cold and a scratchy throat, while paracetamol does wonders for pain and fever.

Seasonal flu, including H1N1 or swine flu, are caused by viruses that remain unscathed by antibiotics. All viral infections are self-limiting, lasting for five days to a week. The flu vaccine taken annually protects against infection and severe disease.

YES: Strep throat, whooping cough

You need antibiotics if you have strep throat, which is caused by infection of the streptococcus bacteria, which makes the throat feel raw and makes swallowing painful. The rawness and pain in the throat begin suddenly and are accompanied by high fever of over 101F without cough, sneezing, or other cold or flu symptoms. Some people may develop swollen lymph nodes in the neck and white or yellow spots or coating on the throat and tonsils.

The B. Pertussis bacterial infection causes whooping cough, which starts with a runny nose, fever and mild cough and slowly progresses to weeks of coughing fits, which may be accompanied by a whooping, gasping sound or vomiting.

The coughing fits becomes increasingly frequent and more severe as the illness continues, occurring more often at night. Its a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable infection.

MAYBE: Sinus infection, bronchitis, ear infection

About 90% of all common sinus and chest infections are viral or low-acuity bacterial infections, with the infected person feeling better without antibiotic treatment in three to five days.

Antibiotics for sinus infection may be needed if infection is severe with high fever, nasal drainage and a productive cough, or if it lasts for more than a week.

Most coughs, sore throats and acute bronchitis cases in otherwise healthy adults also dont need antibiotic treatment  only about 10% of people with a sore throat or bronchitis need antibiotics to get better.

Only ear infections with discharge from the ear caused by a burst ear drum should be prescribed antibiotics  if symptoms do not improve within three days, or if there are symptoms of a more serious illness, recommend the NICE guidelines.

The larger threat

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics have made once-treatable common bacterial infections more difficult and even impossible to cure, because bacteria have evolved to evade antibiotics, leading to drug resistance.

Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report that described antimicrobial resistance as a global health emergency because the world was running out of antibiotics to treat potentially fatal infections such as tuberculosis, acute diarrhoea, pneumonia, and urinary-tract infections.

Over the past few decades, scientists tackled drug resistance with more powerful antibiotics and drug combinations., but with the last new class of antibiotics (excluding variations on existing ones) discovered in 1987 and the few new ones in development not ready for market, the world is running out of choices.

India is the worlds largest consumer of antibiotics, followed by China and the US. Global antibiotic use rose 36% in the decade ending 2010, with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa accounting for 76% of this surge.

In India, as around the world, whats fuelling use is low awareness on the potential harms, non-prescription sale of antibiotics, a poorly regulated private hospital sector, high rates of hospital infection, frequent infectious disease outbreaks, rising incomes and use of antibiotics to boost livestock growth.

While there is no data for India, antibiotics cause one in five emergency department visits for drug reactions in the US. Apart from raising your risk of getting an antibiotic-resistant infection, antibiotics kill healthy bacteria in the intestines and often cause nausea, bloating, stomach ache, appetite loss and vomiting. So just, you know, say no.

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Earlier this week I spoke at the launch of a book on demonetisation by the economist Ram Gopal Agarwala. While Ram has crticised the implementation of demonetisation he sees merit in its outcome and has risked the wrath of most of his tribe who dont by accusing them of lack of understanding of the world of black money and the informal sector. He was congratulated for having the courage of his convictions by another speaker, Ram Madhav, national general secretary of the BJP. I didnt feel qualified to argue about the impact of demonetisation on the economy but I did stress the suffering it had inflicted on the small sector.

Ram sees demonetisation as a means to an end and the end is a corruption-mukt bharat. He discusses others measures that need to be taken to get there. I spoke at the launch because I agree strongly with Rams emphasis on the need to reform governance and his complaint that there has been very little progress on implementing the 10th Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission. The report points out that the Indian Civil Service (ICS) on which the present system of administration is based was the instrument of imperial power. I couldnt resist the opportunity to point out to Madhav the irony of a party, which lays such stress on nationalism governing the country as the British Raj had governed it. Madhav said the government was trying to undertake reforms but facing resistance from the bureaucracy.

The government is relying on digitalisation and computerisation to overcome the chronic inability of the administration at the local level to make payments honestly and deliver services effectively. But in his very optimistic book about Indias future Nandan Nilekani, the architect of Aadhaar has written: When it comes to computerisation within the state we cannot build new systems over a creaky base  we have to first reinvent our state processes to increase our inefficiencies rather than merely computerising what already exists.

Of course, computerisation can be a help particularly in curbing corruption at the delivery point and the Aadhaar card is a remarkable achievement. Computerisation can also make matters worse when it comes to administration by creating information overload and unnecessary communication which wastes time. Whatever their benefits computerisation, digitalisation are not magic wands to be waved over the seemingly intractable problem of Indias bad governance.

The fundamental administrative reform required, which no party has yet begun, is the reconstruction of all the institutions of governance to make them suitable for the needs of democratic India. They need the inner strength to play their role in maintaining the checks and balances between themselves and preserving their correct relationship with politicians.

Insulating civil servants from political interference is one of the key principles underlying the proposals of the Commission is and this is the main reason why all parties have shied away from reform. Politicians do not want to lose their compliant institutions. The collapse of the police in Panchkula when the followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim rioted was the result of political interference in the functioning of a compliant police force. Commenting on that incident Julio Ribeiro, one of Indias most-respected retired police officers said: Politicians of all parties and ideologies treat the bureaucracy and the police as their private fiefdoms that will bow to their wishes as and when demanded.

But the blame for the institutional decay doesnt end with politicians. The Commissions report says responsibility for insuring the impartiality of the administration has also got to be shared by civil servants and they as Madhav said seem equally opposed to this.

So what is to be done? Ribeiro says only public pressure can sway politicians. Perhaps hes right. If Indians raise their voices so loudly that politicians see there are votes in administrative reforms the rot in the institutions of India might be stemmed and they might at last become Indian rather than crumbling relics left behind by a foreign ruler.

To say India would be corruptionmukt would be a step too far. I know no country where there is no corruption at all but India would certainly be far less corrupt.

The views expressed are personal
On May 15, 1961, the politician C Rajagopalachari wrote to the industrialist JRD Tata, asking him to support the newly-formed Swatantra Party. A patriot of impeccable pedigree, Rajaji had started Swatantra to provide effective opposition to the ruling Congress party, which he saw as insensitive to economic and political realities, and dominated by a single individual (Jawaharlal Nehru). Rajaji knew the House of Tatas had long funded the Congress, but, as he now told JRD Tata, even if you help the ruling party with funds for its political and electioneering activities, it would also be just and proper for you to help a party that seeks to build an efficient check on its errors. Rajaji told JRD that were the Tatas to fund Swatantra in addition to Congress, it would be a patriotic duty, for no democracy governs well in the absence of a strong opposition.

The Tatas decided to fund Swatantra, in the hope that, as JRD Tata told Rajaji, Indias political life develops in a truly democratic way around two main opposing Parties, neither of which would be to the extreme Left or the extreme Right. JRD also wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, expressing his concern at the total absence of an responsible and organised democratic opposition to the dominant Congress party.

I am one of those, wrote JRD Tata to Nehru in this remarkable letter, who believes that the single party regime under which we have lived since Independence has been up to now a good thing for the country as it has provided the stability and the means of concentrating the national energies and resources on orderly development, which would have been impossible without a strong and continuing administration. But even you will agree, said JRD to Nehru, that if single party dominance continued indefinitely this situation contains the seeds of trouble and risk in the future. However good any political party and its administration may be, it is inevitable that people will ultimately want a change and that some elements in the political life of the country will come to disagree with some of the Congress Partys policies and seek the means of trying out their own ideas.

JRD Tata pointed out that in the absence of a constructive Opposition, the only option for patriots opposed to the Congress was either to go into the political wilderness where their services will be lost to the country or turn to the Communist Party or some equally undesirable extremist party. The Tatas had thus concluded that it was indispensable in the national interest that an effort should be made to displace the Communist Party as the second largest party in Parliament. The party most suited for this role was Swatantra, for, apart from its commitment to individual rights and the promotion of private enterprise, the leaders of this party, while conservative in outlook, are not reactionary or communal or extreme rightists.

And so, JRD told Nehru, the Tatas had decided that in addition to continued support to the election funds of the Congress we should also contribute, although on a lower scale, to the funds of the Swatantra Party.

Nehru replied to JRD almost immediately. While willing to modify his views with experience, he believed that so long as the policies of the Congress are beneficial to the people of India, I must continue to follow them. Then Nehru came to the question of party funding. You are, of course, completely free to help in any way you like the Swatantra Party, he said, before adding: But I do not think that your hope that the Swatantra Party will emerge as a strong Opposition is justified. I think it will be disappointed at the turn of the next General Elections. It seems to be that it has no roots in the thinking of either the masses of India or the greater part of the intelligentsia.

It is noteworthy that Nehru replied so courteously to J. R. D. Tata, respecting his decision while defending his own policies. Some other Indian Prime Ministers may have reacted rather differently to the head of an industrial house seeking to fund a responsible and organized Opposition to the ruling party.

The Tata/Nehru correspondence of 1961 seems strikingly relevant today, at a time when Narendra Modis BJP has become the dominant force in Indian politics, displaying in the process the same arrogance that Jawaharlal Nehrus Congress once did. But can one imagine an Ambani or Adani writing to Modi in the manner that J. R. D. Tata wrote to Nehru, declaring that, in the larger interests of Indian democracy, they would fund another party in addition to the BJP? Of course not. There is no Indian industrialist alive today who has the political sagacity or moral courage of J. R. D. Tata. No industrialist now would have the guts to tell the Prime Minister so frankly that he, his party, and his Government were not flawless or perfect.

Like Nehru in his pomp, Modi today leads a party whose political dominance is far too excessive for the health of our democracy. But who will have the charisma and staying power to mobilise and lead a credible, non-sectarian (and preferably non-dynastic) Opposition to the BJP? And who will have the courage to come forward to fund it? On the answers to these questions much depends, for, as Rajaji pointed out all those years ago, no democracy governs well in the absence of a strong opposition.

Ramachandra Guhas books include Gandhi Before India

Twitter: @Ram_Guha

The views expressed are personal
In a setback to the efforts to boost health facilities, the defence ministry has turned down the Uttarakhand governments request to the army to take over the management of two state-run medical colleges.

In a letter to chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, former defence minister Arun Jaitley recently turned down the governments proposal. Jaitley expressed the armys inability to take over the management of the state-run medical college in Srinagar and the other coming up in Almora.

Cabinet minister Madan Kaushik confirmed Jaitley expressed the armys inability to let its doctors manage the two medical colleges. We will again make a representation to the defence ministry urging the latter to spare its retired medical specialists to run the twin state-run medical colleges, he told HT.

The proposal was made as part of the Rawat governments move to boost medical facilities and also deal with the acute paucity of doctors dogging the state-run hospitals in hilly areas.

As per an official note released sometime back, Army chief General Bipin Rawat during his meeting with the chief minister agreed in-principle to the latters proposal that the armys retired medical specialists are permitted to man the medical colleges. The proposal was made to boost the medical facilities and deal with acute paucity of doctors in the hills, sources said.

In a recent interview with HT, Rawat had said some medical specialists from the army had offered to join Srinagar Medical College. He also said some retired doctors from the army could also be hired for other state-run hospitals in the hills.

The paucity of doctors is so acute in the hills that the Rawat government recently transferred a large number of doctors to the hill districts. The problem has its root in the doctors unwillingness to take up postings in remote areas owing to lack of basic facilities there. The previous Congress government had offered a lot of incentives to doctors to take up postings in the hills, but the strategy failed to yield the desired results.

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When Iqbal Ahmad, now the district magistrate of Champawat district in Uttarakhand, joined the civil services in 2010, he did not just have the aim of serving the nation, but wanted to go the extra mile.

The young officer had in 2009 completed his MBBS from Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore in Karnataka. A year later, he was selected for Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

However, the Kanpur-born Ahmad had to wait for another seven years to fulfil his old wish  to give free medical consultancy to the poor  as he had no formal registration.

On September 15, the Uttarakhand medical council cleared the registration and now I can serve, Dr Iqbal told HT.

On Friday, he walked into the district hospital and started his medical practice for the first time.

The district magistrate will serve for one hour every morning at district hospital. During tours, he will give consultancy to the locals.

Dr MS Bora, chief medical officer of Champawat, welcomed the move, saying, DM Dr Iqbals dececison would motivate our health department and the needy of the district would definitely benfit from his one-hour medical consultancy.

Champawat has only 42 doctors out of the 95 sanctioned. It has one district hospital and 21 other hospitals besides about 1,500 OPDs.

Uttarakhand has almost 60% shortfall of doctors. Against a requirement of 2,700 doctors state has just 1,000 doctors.

Kumaon commission, Chadra Shekhar also welcomed the decision, saying If an IAS like him wants to utlize his specialization for the common public, it will benefit the state.

Shekhar recalled that earlier, a senior IAS officer from Uttarakhand, Dr Rakesh Kumar, also an MBBS holder, had served the people by providing free medical consultancy.

Another officer to have done the same is Sadanand Date, a senior superintendent of police (SSP) posted in Uttarakhand, who is also a qualified surgeon.
DEHRADUN: The National Green Tribunals order restricting developmental works in hill areas of Himalayan states will aggravate problem of mass migration in coming days, forest and environment minister Harak Singh Rawat has said.

The minister made the same point at the Sustainable Mountain Development Summit held in Aizawl between September 20 and 22. The summit was organised by Integrated Mountain Initiative, a civil society initiative involving mountain states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand Sikkim and hill districts of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.

Representatives of 10 Himalayan states unanimously acknowledged mass migration from hill areas as their common problem and demanded that the central government must create a separate ministry or institution to take care of development in these states.

Rawat urged all Himalayan states to come forward to find a solution to difficulties faced by them following the green watchdogs order. He appealed to the central government to frame developmental action plans for Himalayan states to check mass migration.

Another representative from Uttarakhand and Rajya Sabha member Pradeep Tamta demanded the Centre to set up a new ministry for integrated and sustainable development of the Himalayan region.

Mass migration is a menace for all Himalayan states as they agreed with our contention for integrated approach to check it. We also want a solution to obstacle to developmental works owing to the NGTs ruling, Rawat told Hindustan Times on Saturday. A balance has to be maintained between the NGTs concerns and need for developmental works in Himalayan hills.

Notably, the participating states constitute more than 20% of Indias geographical area and 4% of the countrys population.
Around 21 restaurants were sealed in south Delhis Hauz Khas village on Saturday for not having proper environmental clearances to operate.

The sub-divisional magistrate of Hauz Khas, Ramchandra M Shingare, who conducted the sealing operation along with Delhi Pollution Control Committee and Delhi Police officials, said the establishments were served closure notices about four months ago.

Most of these dont have consent to establish (CTE) or consent to operate (CTO) certificates, which are mandatory to run hotels in Delhi. Consent to establish is the first step for any industry or trade to begin operations and the permission is given within four months of it being applied for. The CTO certificate is given by the DPCC. You need these to run an establishment along with clearances from the police, fire and corporation health departments, Shingare told Hindustan Times.

The permission, officials said, is mandatory for ensuring that there was no water and air pollution. However, the 21 sealed establishments, most of which are takeaway joints according to the sub-divisional magistrate, didnt have it.

The sealing action has been conducted under section 33A of Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, and section 31A of Air (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, within 15 days.

Owners, however, said they were not given any notice.

Raj Kumar Dhingra, member of Hauz Khas Village traders association said out of 12 restaurants running in his building, six were closed in the absence of no objection certificate received from Delhi Pollution Committee and from the joint commissioner, Delhi Police.

On the hit list Welcome Point Food Factory by Lalit The Big Burp Theory Bombay Velwet Alibaba Caves Warm Momo Village Balcony The Frat House Rehab Gatro Pub Levels HKV Reloaded/Poison Capsule by Pink Room Chaayos Play at the Rate 30 New York Slice ELF Cafe Lounge Bulldog Speedy Chef Darjeeling Kitchen Cafe Hi-5H Wai Wai City

However, all these restaurant owners had applied for licences from DPCC and Delhi Police a long time back and their applications were put on hold unnecessarily. No prior notices were served by government authorities to any of the restaurant owner before taking this action. We condemned the move, he said.

Earlier this month, Delhi high court had termed the Hauz Khas Village as a ticking time bomb and observed that neither the government agencies nor the restaurant owners of the area have responded to its queries on safety and other issues.

A bench headed by acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal warned the associations of restaurants owners that they will not be allowed escape civil and criminal liability in case any unfortunate incident took place, as there was virtually no space for emergency vehicles to enter the area.

The reports of Delhi Police, Delhi Fire Service, SDMC and the Delhi Jal Board illustrate that the Hauz Khas Village is a ticking time bomb without essential civic and emergency servicesOur repeated queries regarding quantum of solid waste (garbage) and sewage generated by these restaurants (pubs,bars and cafes in Hauz Khas Village) evoked no response from either the authorities or the restaurant owners, the court observed.
This Sunday morning, by the time you get to the breakfast table, there will be several groups of riders on Delhis streets. These bikers will be taking to the streets of Delhi-NCR to participate in the worldwide event that marks September as Prostate Cancer Awareness Month.

A lot of people know about prostate cancer and how bikers across the world organise rallies to create awareness about it. About 40-50 riders from our group will be meeting other riders  about 100  at Shiva Murti on NH 8 at 5.30am, and then will ride together. We will have tags on the bike windscreens that talk about prostate cancer, says Faisal Qureshi, from Brotherhood Riders of Superbikes (BROS).

Though the Distinguished Gentlemans Ride has bikers formally dressed, when they ride, some of the groups wont follow a particular dress code. We want to ensure safety of the riders since most of them will be riding superbikes. Raising awareness is important, and this ride is for a cause. But that cant be at the risk of the life of bikers, says Hardeep Singh Barmi, from the group Batch Of Soul Superbikers (BOSS). Qureshi further says, We are so strict about following safety rules that we send back bikers if they dont turn up dressed in safety gear.

Members of the group BOSS  Batch Of Soul Superbikers.

These bikers, after raising awareness will head for a hearty breakfast to Pebble Street, a lounge at Connaught Places outer circle.

We have people from all age groups and communities in this rally. Theres a 61-year-old ex-armyman, and people from different religions as participants. Everyone is coming together to make the public aware of this issue and discuss about it, says Qureshi.

Make sure you are at Connaught Place too, to participate in this noble cause.

Follow @htTweets for more

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A teachers group has filed a police complaint against a Delhi University teacher for allegedly writing an objectionable post on social media about Hindu Goddess Durga.

The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers Front (NDTF) on Saturday complained to the police against Kedar Kumar Mandal, an orthopedically challenged teacher at Dyal Singh College.

This is an attempt to destroy the social harmony of the society. It is unbecoming of a teacher and cannot be tolerated. NDTF has lodged a police complaint and legal proceedings should be started against him, said AK Bhagi, president of NDTF.

The alleged post was made on Friday evening but was later taken down from Facebook. Attempts to reach Mandal failed as his number was switched off.

IS Bakshi, principal of the college, said he had not received any complaint. Bakshi said Mandal is an assistant professor in the Hindi department.

I have not received any complaint but came to know about the alleged Facebook post through colleagues. It is mindless and doesnt suit the stature of a teacher. I will look into the matter on Monday, he said.

A police officer confirmed that a complaint had been received and said that the matter was being analysed.

The RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) demanded suspension of the teacher and said they would lodge a complaint with the college on Monday.

The ABVP asked students to boycott Mandals classes.

We demand suspension of this person who has no respect for religious sentiments of Hindus as well as dignity of women. Such a person, if allowed to continue as a teacher, will only spread hatred amongst students, said Saket Bahuguna, national media convener of ABVP.
Police departments across India have often been lauded for doling out advice about safety and security in a witty manner on social media. People now prefer tweeting about their grievances rather than making phone calls.

On Friday, however, Delhi and Gurgaon Police got into an ugly battle of words, washing their dirty linen online, for everyone to see.

Heavy and incessant rainfall lashed the national Capital and NCR on Friday, bringing traffic to a standstill. A frustrated commuter stuck outside Gurgaons Ambience Mall (NH-48) tweeted to the Delhi Police asking for help.

@gurgaonpolice @dtptraffic stuck for last one hour at NH 48 in front of ambience mall. Please help  Birender Kumar Singh (@singhbk) September 22, 2017

Thus began a very public blame game.

Delhi Police replied saying the matter was out of their jurisdiction and forwarded Birender Kumar Singhs complaint to Gurgaon Police instead.

Thanks, matter is out of Delhi Police jurisdiction so your complaint is being forwarded to @gurgaonpolice for taking necessary action.  Delhi Traffic Police (@dtptraffic) September 22, 2017

Gurgaon police, in turn, tweeted asking the Delhi Police to manage the traffic over Rajokri flyover in a better fashion saying it was leading to congestion in Gurgaon.

The exchange ended with the Delhi Police saying that the area traffic staff has again been informed to take necessary action in this regard, but not before leaving several Twitter users annoyed.

The old blame game of Delhi police, either the offence can be prosecuted on the spot, or out of jurisdiction or staff has been informed!!!  Navneet (@nav_neet) September 22, 2017

@dtptraffic how u know his location & decide on jurisdiction from your twitter account? This NH8 mess occurs every single day. @LtGovDelhi  CA (@ca_ind) September 22, 2017

Well done both the??, Public is suffering you guys are even confuse about your area.  Rahul ????? Zimmy (@hellorahul09) September 22, 2017

Lovely table tennis between 2 police teams who should be interdependent on each other.  Sunil Issar (@SunilIssar) September 22, 2017

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Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal to draw his attention to the ailing health infrastructure in the city. Referring to shortage of staff in Delhi government hospitals, Kejriwal urged the L-G to take immediate measures and fill vacant posts.

Today, we have a situation in many Delhi government hospitals, where we have ventilators but no ventilator staff to operate them, we have machines (like X-ray, CT scan, MRI) but no staff to run them, the letter sent to L-G Baijal reads.

Kejriwal further pointed out that in several hospitals, there are long queues outside medicine dispensing counters due to non- availability of pharmacists. More medicine counters cannot be opened due to lack of pharmacists. And posts of pharmacists are lying vacant in many government hospitals, he said.

Since services comes directly under you, I would urge you to kindly take necessary steps to fill up all vacant posts in all Delhi government hospitals on an urgent basis and in a time bound manner, he added.

Kejriwal had held a meeting with medical superintendents of all the hospitals on August 16 and they had then complained of shortage of staff.

I am told that a few lives could have been saved if staff was available to operate ventilators in some hospitals, he said.

Medical superintendents (MSs) have been asked to fill vacant posts by hiring experts from outside on contract basis till these posts are filled up on regular basis. The chief secretary was directed to seek your approval to empower medical superintendents to be able to do that, the CMs letter said.

The CM also alleged that a file regarding this was prepared and the proposal sent to L-G directly without rooting it through him or the health minister. Kejriwal asked the L-G to send back the file to him so that they can also offer suggestions.
Fitness is the new fad in Delhis Tihar Jail, the countrys largest prison. For the first time a jail inside the prison complex has started an open-air gymnasium .

The gym, which at present has around four fitness equipment, is reportedly a hit with most prisoners. When the idea was first discussed, prison officials realised that there was no dearth of doctors or fitness trainers in the jail, who could help manage the gymnasium.

The open-air gym in a park inside jail number 1 is mostly used by elderly prisoners facing problems, like obesity or arthritis. A senior prison officer said that in the coming weeks, similar gyms will be opened in two other jails. Some professional gym trainers, who are presently behind bars, have also volunteered to help other inmates.

An officer said the idea behind starting a fitness centre in jail is to enable an atmosphere suitable for rehabilitation. Most model prisons across the world have open-air gyms and prison doctors to look after the fitness of their prisoners. Many elderly prisoners had also requested that apart from their yoga sessions, a gymnasium would help them take up physiotherapy. In Delhi, open gyms in public parks and grounds were started by civic agencies in 2014.

We installed fitness equipment that would help prisoners take care of their physiological needs, a senior jail officer said.

Because the gymnasium is a hit, jail officials have assigned time tables for all prisoners to use the gym, so that everyone gets a chance. We did not even have to hire anyone from outside. Some jailed trainers are now teaching the younger inmates, who are now interested to make a career as a fitness trainer, said a senior jail official.

Officials said that prisoners are allowed to visit the open-air gym either in the morning or evening hours. Before the facility was started, Tihars prisoners started their day with yoga and physical training classes. Though, many interested prisoners took walks or played games inside the prison, there were no fitness training equipment.

Tihar prison is the largest and the most populated prison in India. There are over 14,400 prisoners lodged at the jail.

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The Delhi government said it will not be able to give higher education loan to students this year and accused the Lieutenant Governor of refusing to approve the scheme that was sent to him recently with some amendments.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said on Friday that the L-G Anij Baijal has asked them to get Centres opinion on the scheme that was launched in 2015.

But the L-G office issued a statement refuting the allegation and maintained that there had not been any rejection of the scheme.

The government had recently proposed to extend the loan to Delhi students, who were pursuing higher education in government institutes outside Delhi unlike earlier when it was only given if student was studying in Delhi. The proposal was sent to the L-G for approval.

Addressing a press conference, Sisodia said any political rivalry with them should be kept aside when it comes to education of students.

But now the L-G has stopped the scheme and asked to get an opinion from the Central government. It is the Delhi government, which is using Delhis taxpayers money and wants to give loan to students. Taking opinion from Centre means the kids will not get loan as of now. There may be political rivalry with us but what is the rivalry to kids, Sisodia said.

The statement said the L-G had always supported such initiatives but in this case the law department had expressed some reservations.

Hence, the L-G had only advised the education department to consult the ministry concerned in government of India, which may have prior experience of such schemes, about the soundness of the scheme so as to avoid any legal and financial complications in future in the interest of students. It is reiterated that there has not been any rejection of the scheme, the statement said.

Under the scheme, students are provided loans up to R 10 lakh by banks with the government as a guarantor.

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The admit card for the written examination to recruit constables will be released by Central Selection Board of Constable (CSBC), Bihar on Saturday. The examination will be held on October 15 and 22.

Steps to download the constable exam admit card:

1) Visit the official website of CSBC

2) Click on the link for downloading hall ticket for the constable examination

3) Enter the required details on the login page and submit

4) Admit card will be displayed on the screen

8) Download the admit card on your computer and take a printout of the same

The admit card will not be sent to the candidates by post. The admit card will contain the details of the examination centre. Candidates must reach the examination centre on time (one hour before the exam starts) along with their admit card and photo identity proof like Aadhar, Voter Id or driving licence etc.

Candidates whose photographs are not clearly visible or absent from the admit card must bring an application regarding the same with two photographs (similar to one given for the admit card) along with a valid Photo Id.

Candidates who fail to download their admit card online, can get the same from central selection board office, the details about which are provide on the notification dated September 13 about the release of admit card.

Candidates should Keep their admit card safely even after the written examination.

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Three government engineering colleges started in haste by the Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government in three backward districts of Rajasthan earlier this year are shunned by both students and faculties.

The three colleges at Dholpur, Karauli and Baran have 300 seats each. But as per the education department figure, only 26 students took admission for the academic year 2017-18 in the five branches of engineering offered at the Baran college.

The figures are more pathetic in the two other colleges with the total number of admission is as low as seven.

Its, however, not only the students who are giving these institutes a miss. There is no faculty in the three engineering colleges, which are run from the campuses of other institutes.

The Dholpur and Karauli colleges are functioning from the Bharatpur engineering college while the Baran college is run form the campus of government polytechnic.

State technical education minister Kiran Maheshwari admitted facing problem in attracting students and faculties. But he claimed that the poor enrolment is the reflection of waning interest of students towards engineering throughout the country.

She said the government has taken measure to improve the standard of the colleges and attract students.

We have tried to bring in good faculties, introduce new courses, ensure infrastructure and upgrade our syllabus, aligning it to the needs of industry so students get employment, she said, We have also reduced the annual fee from Rs77,000 to Rs70,000.

Others, however, claimed the adverse situation is because of the haste shown by the state government in starting these colleges without appointing faculty or building infrastructure.

In fact in April this year, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) had denied permission to the state to start these colleges without setting up proper infrastructure.

But the government was in a hurry to fulfil the announcement made in the 2014-15 state budget in view of the Dholpur by-election.

Minister Maheshwari again pursued the matter with the AICTE officials in June and obtained the nod.

An official of the technical education department cited remoteness of the colleges for the poor response.

Since these colleges are located in remote parts of the state, students are not keen to join them. Hiring faculty too is posing problem because of the same reason, he said.

But at the same time, he pointed out that all the government colleges in the state are facing similar problems.

The education department records show that Rajasthan Technical University that gives affiliation to these colleges has 159 teaching posts vacant.

The Bharatpur engineering college has 62 posts vacant, while Banswara has all 29 posts vacant. In Bhilwara the number is 39, in Jhalawar it is 29, 60 in Bikaner and 82 in Ajmer. The colleges are making do with guest faculties.

At an event in Jaipur, AICTE chairman Anil Dattatreya had cautioned that colleges which lack proper infrastructure and register less than 30% admissions for five consecutive years will be shut down.

He also advised engineering colleges and universities to revise and renew their syllabus, which was a major cause for declining admissions and quality of education.

This year the government engineering colleges in the state saw 58% admissions. As per education department data out of 5,860 seats only 2,483 seats have been filled.

Private engineering colleges too were no better. Of the 43446 seats available in 100 colleges, only 13864 were filled.

At least 10 private engineering colleges in the state earlier sought permission to shut down as they are not getting adequate students.

This comes at a time when the central government has launched initiatives such as Make in India to create more jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector.
When 64-year-old Rohit Salvi, a Patan Patola master weaver arrived to participate at World Ikat Textiles: Ties that Bind, a cross-cultural exhibition, symposium and bazaar held in Delhi a few weeks back, he was turned away from the hotel where he was supposed to stay. There was no reservation for him at the Western Court Hotel, he was informed, never mind the email of confirmation from the organisers.

Along with Savan, his 33-year-old nephew, the youngest weaver in the family, Salvi had to check into a small hotel near the railway station. Representatives of the World Crafts Council who had co-organised the event with the Delhi Crafts Council and other noted textile and crafts brands later apologised to them but Savan says they were hurt at being initially overlooked. Especially as a visual representation of the Shrikar Bhat, an award-winning drape woven by Rohit Salvi was the lead image on all promotional materials for this event. Since 1978, the Salvis who weave Patans famous double Ikat Patola, have been honoured with four national awards and two Shilpguru citations.

Textile designer Swati Kalsi at an interactive workshop with Sujani craftswomen of Bihar. (Photo courtesy: Sunayana Singh )

Far away in the temple town of Nathdwara in Rajasthan, 62-year-old Shyam Sharma, also a 1987 national awardee for reverse painting on glass and an old hand at Pichhwai art, bemoans the fact that artists like him can never directly reach the kala-premis (art lovers) of the world, thwarted as they are by gallery owners and middlemen. I got a national award but no proper platform ever to evolve my art or earnings. One painting takes me 20-25 days to make but earnings depend on negotiations with middlemen. Sometimes I get as little as Rs 15,000 a piece even though it sells for ten times the price in city galleries, says Sharma.

Currently, there is a visible inflection point in Indias design journey. A contemporary awakening of sorts surrounds us through travelling shows, seminars, crafts tours, handloom melas, ministry and media engagements. Many more people now know about tribal and folk art, the hand-made aesthetic in textile and the dilemmas of the countrys heritage legacy. A movement summed up rather succinctly by Bhopal-based Gond artist Bhajju Shyam: Five years back we were called craftsmen. Today we are known as contemporary artists.

Yet there is a lot of lopsidedness in the crevices of this evolution when it comes to commercial gains, name and fame of urban designers compared to village artisans. Indian design is a co-created entity shared by urban design thinkers and rural artisans. Asias well-known design guru Rajeev Sethi calls the latter the skilled poor, the base of the creative community. They have seldom been credited for their contributions to the nations cultural monuments even though it is in collaboration with their skills and underpaid work that sensitised minds trained in design schools have evolved what India at 70 recognises as its design idiom.

The other half

The point is not who invented the wheel or who is more important in the caravan of brand India. Nor is it about diminishing the role of design gurus without whom innovation, finesse and recognition would be impossible. But it is about deconstructing the story to reveal its nuances. More than 43 lakh people are engaged in weaving and allied activities according to the Handloom Census of India of 2009-2010 while 45,000 creations made by 9,000 artisans, awardees and retailers were showcased at Textiles India 2017 in Gandhinagar this June.

Yet an ambiguous anonymity continues to cloud the other half.

So while most of us know about Jaipur blue pottery, the jadau jewellery of Rajasthan, handblown glass from Moradabad, Naqashi of Kashmir; recounting the names of master craftsmen or the stars from the younger generation of artisans is hard. Undoubtedly, a clutch of successful designers work with craftsmen in fair and mutually enriching ways. Some bring them to fashion week ramps for visibility, others take them abroad for visual retelling of their skills at international design festivals. But only a few over the years have publicly shared the signature with an artisan.

Credit sharing

Textile designers Shani Himanshu of 11:11/eleven eleven and Swati Kalsi are among those keen to turn the tide. With Arvind Limited, Himanshu created 100 per cent Khadi jeans, a line of limited edition indigo dyed denims. Each pair carries the name of the craftsperson on the label. Kalsi works with female Sujani embroidery artisans from Bihar in interactive workshops to create work on the cusp of art, craft and textiles. The hand has a brain of its own. It can think of and make surfaces that neither machines nor the human mind can recreate. Each artisan has an individual style of doing the same embroidery, she says of her one-of-a -kind pieces. Kalsi foots the expenditure for the travel, stay and boarding of artisans in the city and believes that profit-sharing models need to be evolved by engagement, time, skill, and risk-taking on the part of artisans.

Beenu Bawa, the brand director of lifestyle brand Goodearth who has made a series of craft films titled Pehchaan (recognition) on the talent of Indias unknown artisans says it is time the spotlight moves to other crafts beyond weaves. Artisans are the best representations of the Indian entrepreneurial spirit which is the engine of growth. But we must listen before trying to help them. They crave the respect and freedom of modern artists. They understand market forces and find fair-trade regulations insulting, says Bawa.

Design guru Rajeev Sethi working with Odisha artists in 1983 for a Smithsonian exhibition. (Photo courtesy Asian Heritage Foundation)

Forty years ago, lest insult became injury, Sethi says he requested Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, the leading social reformer of post-independence India to help constitute the Bhule Bisre Kalakaar Cooperative for forgotten artists. This was just after the Emergency when bulldozers had razed the mud homes of artists in the Kathputli colony near Shadipur depot in Delhi. Anand Gram, a unique arts habitat blending urban and rural ethos for artists relegated to city slums, was imagined. The four decade-long failure to take these projects to their logical conclusion continues to hurt, says Sethi.

Later in 1985-86, the Golden Eye exhibition of India curated by Sethi for the Smithsonian Museum in the US had panels with names and quotes of the 55 contributing craftsmen. A red stone bench made by Sethi with Kesariya Ram, a stone artist from Rajasthan, is now famously a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Likewise, each work at the Jaya He museum jointly carries the name of the Ustaad (the head) of the artisan group with that of Sethi.

Concerns around artisanal signature formed the basic promise of Indian design as envisioned by Chattopadhyaya and cultural activist Pupul Jayakar, says Ashoke Chatterjee, former director of the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, from 1975-2000. 

Incubation of the design process however came later. Acknowledging their work and instilling self-confidence in artisans began with the collaborations between NID faculty and students for craft documentation projects who came from privileged backgrounds, says Chatterjee. Craft is our only hope and this inclusive ethic of joint signature and credit must apply to all interventions, he says adding that a majority of artisans remain voiceless. It is an unequal society and while there have been wonderful people and projects, others have exploited them and left them behind.

Artisans who handstitched Khadi garments for 11:11/eleven eleven. (Photo courtesy: Shani Himanshu)

Bhajju Shyam for instance sells each of his Gond painting for Rs 20,000-Rs 25000 from his home studio while city galleries charge upwards of Rs 60,000, taking their cut which Shyam believes is fair. We need design gurus to hone our skills and galleries to give us space, he says. Goodearth says they never negotiate money or fees with an artisan once the sampling is approved. A yearly order plan is shared for artisans to plan raw material, 30 to 50 per cent is given as advance and the entire order, sometimes even extra is picked up when ready with no rejections.

It may be time however to highlight unsung artists alongside flourishing city talents. Like Hansiba, a hand embroidery brand named after the first and oldest artisan of SEWA (Self Employed Womens Association). Not as patriotic duty or social service but as professional ethic and the sturdy market mantra of credit where due.

***

RITEN MAJUMDAR AND THE INDIAN DESIGN IDIOM

In the late Seventies, Fabindia founder John Bissell collaborated with less-known Baroda artist Riten Majumdar. The colour blind Majumdar, brushed past the then prevalent idiom of floral and ethnic patterns to imagine a new graphic, geometric matrix in high intensity colours. It was used by Fabindia as a fundamental design map for garments, wall hangings and other products. Not only did products evolved from Majumdars idiom fly off Fabindia shelves but became ubiquitous in street markets, says Prableen Sabhaney, head of communications and public affairs at Fabindia. As part of a project that discovers less-known designers of South Asia, Whitworth Gallery in the University of Manchester is currently displaying the late Majumdars work loaned by Fabindia.

Master craftsman Lal Singh Bhati working on a work called Cheel Gadi Haveli at Jaya He Museum. (Photo courtesy: GVK)

ARTISANS WORK ON WAGES AND NOT PROFITS

Artisans work on wages. There is no concept of profit in their work, says crafts consultant Meera Goradia, former director of Kutch-based NGO Khamir. This statement underpins the inequalities. Artisan wages are usually matched to daily minimum wages proscribed for unskilled labourers. The minimum wage of non-agricultural, unskilled workers in the central sphere was raised from Rs 246 to Rs 350 per day in 2016.

There are various models of wage protection, minimum work provision and sustenance for craftspeople. Some fall under government schemes, funds and subsidies for the handloom and handicrafts sector. Others are initiated by not for profit organisations like Dastkar, Dastkari Haat Samiti, SEWA or Jiyo by Asian Heritage Foundation whose sole aim is to make crafts communities independent. Others like Khamir, Shrujan, Fabindia, have evolved models of profit-sharing by percentage as a give-back to craftspeople.

On average, a rural craftsperson earns between Rs 6,000 to Rs 14,000 a month, from the Ikat weaver of Odisha to the Uppada artisan of Andhra Pradesh. Earnings depend on daily productivity, speed and quality of work. Master craftspeople who double up as middlemen or as associates of city designers earn more. Despite the current hype around turning Khadi into a luxury brand, a spinner earns only Rs 7 per hank (unit of yarn). An average of 25 hanks (unit of yarn) per day still adds up to only Rs 175 daily wage. It is important to debate how the net profit percentage is calculated by big design houses and how overheads claimed by stores are justified, says Goradia.
Navratri- nine nights of celebration of goddess Durga has begun and has been welcomed with much fervor across the country. The festival witnesses tons of devotees observe fasting for a period of nine days in honour of the goddess. The strict no-meat practice enables one to tuck in to vegetarian specialties during this period.

However, keeping a tab on your fasting methods is important to avoid health mishaps. Dr Purva Duggal, head of nutrition, Fortis Hospital, Mulund, suggests a few tips to conquer the fasting period and yet remain healthy.

-Do not starve yourself- Even though you fast, you should not starve yourself and should eat enough to get through the day; eat smaller meals frequently to maintain stamina. Try to limit yourselves when it comes to fried food and opt instead for baked, grilled or roasted food instead. Fasting is a good way to detoxify your body from the regular junk and alcohol that is consumed, helping maintain sugar levels in the body. Keeping yourself hungry for a longer period of time can lead to severe acidity.

-Avoid sugars- One needs to stay away from refined sugar and substitute it with healthier alternatives like jaggery or honey. If you have a habit of having a lot of sweets, those sugar cravings can be curbed with various fruits or salads, since they are light and easy to digest. Regular snacking can help prevent from feeling low and maintain adequate sugar levels.

-Always keep yourself hydrated- Unless you go for a nirjalvrat, it is important to keep yourself hydrated throughout. Besides water, a lot of other fluids can be consumed like coconut water, buttermilk, green tea, lemon water etc. Avoid consumption of alcohol as it can lead to dehydration and slows down metabolism.

-Avoid fasting if youre pregnant- If a normal and healthy delivery is indicated, fasting within limits will not have much of an effect on you or your baby. However, if your pregnancy is indicative of complications, it is recommended to avoid fasting during this period. It is best in to consult your doctor before taking any step. Make sure you consume plenty amounts of fluid during this time.

-Plan your day- Make sure you do not overeat, especially packaged snack foods as they contain high amounts of Iodine. Chalk out your meal plans for the day to ensure your stomach is satisfied. Dont dwell into snacks too much, munching on nuts and dry fruits is a healthier alternative. Your lunch could be slightly heavy and dinner should be light, which is apt for proper digestion.

-Avoid caffeinated drinks - Tea and coffee can help curb hunger pangs for a good amount of time. However, make sure you do not consume these on an empty stomach; it can affect your digestive system tremendously. Consuming too much tea or coffee can often make you feel bloated or dehydrated. Insomnia might also set in which is not healthy.
Residents of Panchgaon and other villages located along the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) expressway and Delhi-Jaipur National Highway are unhappy, as the Gurgaon district administration on Wednesday gave its nod to restart earth filling work for the KMP despite their protest. Residents said they will not allow resumption of work and will hold protests.

Residents said early on Wednesday, a team from the district administration, led by Bharat Bhushan Gogia, sub- divisional magistrate (SDM) North, visited the Panchgaon with the police and officials of the Haryana state industrial and infrastructure development corporation (HSIIDC), which is the custodian of the KMP.

We objected to the resumption of work that we stopped a month ago. A week ago, we spoke to CM Manohar Lal Khattar and he agreed to hear our grievances after the MCG elections on September 24. We asked the team what was the hurry in restarting the earth filling work, as the CM had agreed to hold a meeting with us. However, the SDM simply ignored our plea to not resume earth filling. This is clear sign that administration wants HSIIDC to complete the KMP project. However, we wont let that happen, Mahender Yadav, a Panchgaon protester who met Union minister Nitin Gadkari twice in the last two months demanding a roundabout at Panchgaon Chowk instead of a cloverleaf planned by the HSIIDC.

Read I Proposed toll charges on KMP e-way sent to state Cabinet for approval

We made it clear to the Union minister that Delhi Jaipur NH and KMP are going to disrupt connectivity between 50 villages and it makes more sense to build a roundabout than a cloverleaf. The minister agreed to conducting a feasibility study. However, while the study is under way, the Gurgaon administration has given its nod to resumption of work, Sushil Yadav, another representative for Panchgaon villagers, said.

Panchgaon residents feared being cut off after they learned that two toll points have been proposed on KMP and two more on the Delhi Jaipur NH.

Gogia said, Technically, roundabout is not feasible and we told residents that we are considering building an underpass instead. We even visited the site on Wednesday.

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Gurgaon deputy commissioner, Vinay Pratap Singh, held a meeting with parents at the Ryan International Schools Bhondsi premises on Saturday with regards to the school administration and apprised them of security measures taken by the district administration. The school is scheduled to reopen on Monday.

Sandya Lal Das was designated the principal and school head on Saturday. The school was shut since the murder of a class 2 student on September 8 in a school toilet.

A 15-point power point presentation was also shown to the parents, which covered all safety concerns, including the installation of CCTV cameras and the construction of toilets for non-teaching staff.

The presentation had all the details of the bus attendants who will be deployed in school vehicles, GPS fitting in the buses, attendants deployed outside the toilet and coverage of the entire premises under CCTV cameras.

The presentation also specified ongoing construction work, which is in full swing going inside and outside the school premises for increased security.

Singh, during the two-hour interaction with the parents and teachers, replied to more than 50 queries. The major concern raised by the parents was pertaining to the officials who will be responsible for the safety and security after three months when the district administration will hand over the charge to the school management.

If any security lapse is found after handing over the school to the management, the school management will be responsible for the same. The handing over after three months will be decided by the higher authorities. We will ensure all measures are in place and parents queries are resolved, said Singh.

I held a detailed interaction with parents and they were satisfied with the discussion. The presentation shown to them specified all measures taken by the administration to ensure safety and security of each student inside the premises, said Singh.

Porta cabins were installed near the gate to check the entry of non-teaching staff into the school. Parents had refused to send their children if the same toilets were used by the students and non-teaching staff.

A school safety committee was also formed and will be presided over by the school principal and include two parents who will be selected through a draw next Saturday. The deputy commissioner has asked the school staff to send applications to parents so that those interested to volunteer can fill and deposit the same.

The criteria to choose two volunteer parents will be fair and transparent. Those interested can fill the applications, said Singh.

He assured parents that all safety measures have been taken and asked them to send their wards for classes from Monday as students have missed several classes.

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday began investigations into the murder of an 8-year-old student at the Ryan International School, an incident that highlighted the lack of security in educational institutions in India.

Officials said a team from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) also visited the school in Bhondsi and collected evidence from the crime spot, a toilet in the premises.

The class 2 student was found dead with his throat slit in a toilet of the school on September 8. Gurgaon police arrested Ashok Kumar, one of the schools bus conductors, in connection with the case. Police said Kumar killed the boy after a failed attempt of sexual assault on the minor.

The boys father, however, expressed doubts over the police findings and demanded a CBI probe into the incident.

The incident sparked outrage across the country with parents demanding strict security measures in schools across the country citing several similar incidents in the recent past.

A CBI team visited the school and questioned the teachers and other staff in connection with the crime, and the sequence of events before and after the body of the boy was found. The investigators also went round the school, especially the crime spot.

Another team meet the chief of the special investigaton team, Ashok Bakshi, who led the police investigations into the murder.

Gurgaon police chief Sandeep Khirwar has maintained that bus conductor Ashok Kumar was responsible for the murder, and all circumstantial evidence pointed towards him.

Bakhsi told HT that the case was handed over to CBI formally after a team visited Gurgaon on Friday evening and completed the formalities of take over.

All the documents pertaining to the case have been handed over to CBI, he said.

A CBI team is also scheduled to visit the Gurgaon court to complete legal formalities and to seek permission for questioning Ashok Kumar, and two other Ryan officials who are presently in Bhondsi jail.

The CBI took over the investigation into the said case which was registered...at Bhondsi police station in Gurgaon under sections 302 (murder) of the IPC, 25 of the Arms Act, 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act read with section 34 of IPC, CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said on Friday.

A recent survey by the ChildFund Alliance, carried out in 41 countries including India, said one in every three children in Indian schools feels unsafe, a report in India Today said.

The report, titled Small Voices, Big Dreams, showed that the safety concerns of children included corporal punishment and bullying.

The survey identified deficient infrastructure, lack of toilets and inadequate safety measures as among the reasons for children to feel unsafe. Toilets were identified as vulnerable areas for children.
Legendary director Martin Scorsese will soon be teaching filmmaking online. Scorsese will debut the class in early 2018 through online-education startup MasterClass, reported Variety.

The class costs US $ 90 (Rs 5,838) for unlimited access to more than 20 video lessons -- pre-enrollment is available starting Friday at masterclass.com/ms.

I was excited by this project because it gave me a chance to pass down my own inspirations and experiences and practices and evolutions, not as a blueprint for how to make movies but as a guidepost, an offering to young people attempting to find their own way, Scorsese said in a statement.

In the course, the Oscar-winning filmmaker will deconstruct his films and provide insights into how he approaches filmmaking, including lessons on storytelling, editing and working with actors.

The MasterClass course will include a downloadable workbook with lesson recaps and supplemental material. In addition, students enrolled in the class will be able to upload video questions to Scorsese, who will provide select feedback.

MasterClass, founded in 2015, has released more than a dozen celebrity-led online courses to date. Those include classes from Shonda Rhimes, Christina Aguilera, Kevin Spacey, David Mamet, Dustin Hoffman, Werner Herzog, Aaron Sorkin, Hans Zimmer, James Patterson and Steve Martin.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Ironical as it may sound, at a time when Goddess Durga is worshipped with full fervour , the annual event coming to symbolise womens power in popular perception, there is a temple in Bihar dedicated to the deity to which women are not allowed entry during the Navaratras.

The shrine making this exclusion is Maa Aashapuri temple at Ghosrawan village, about five kilometers from the Jal Mandir, the world famous Jain shrine at Pawapuri (Giriyak block) in Nalanda district in south central Bihar and about 80 km south east of state capital, Patna.

Believed to be belonging to the Pala age, the temple is dedicated to Goddess Ashtabhuji Siddhidaatri, one among the nine images of the Durga.

The deity is known widely as Aashapuri, meaning the one who fulfils all the wishes of devotees, and is visited by thousands of devotees throughout the year. But such is its tradition that women are not allowed on the temple premises, leave alone its sanctum sanctorum, during the nine day period of Durga worship.

We follow a purely Taantrik style of puja during Navaratra, of which women cannot be a part, said Purendra Upadhyay, one of the priests of the temple.Its an old tradition and people do not want to defy it as it is believed that the violation of this rule may put a divine curse over the village and its people, he added.

Rajeev Ranjan, a local from Ghosrawan village, said he had been witnessing this norm since his child hood days. Women get barred from entering the temple during the festival. But I cant say how or when this practice originated, he said.

Only after the evening aarti of the deity on Bijoya Dashami, is the entry of women to the temple resumed for worshipping the deity and performing rituals.

It is believed that in the 9th century CE Buddhists, who followed the Vajrayana tradition, used to perform Taantrik Saadhna at this site.

It seems this place was a full fledged study centre of Vajrayana Buddhism. Many Buddhist images have also been discovered in the village during chance findings. Some of these are even preserved at the temple and are worshipped also, Ranjan said.

Though the temple now appears like any other modern temple and has been developed by the villagers, the Garbh Griha is quite ancient and it is believed the Goddess is being worshipped here since the 9th Century CE.

Its one among the 84 Siddhi Peeths of the Hindus. Even King Jayapal, one among the Pala rulers, used to visit the temple to perform puja here, he said.

Denial of entry to women in temples has becoming a contentious issue in recent years.

In April 2016, trustees of Shani Shingnapur temple trust in Maharashtra agreed to facilitate unrestricted entry for women, including enter the sanctum sanctorum, breaking the tradition followed for several decades, following a High Court directive. The direction came after an agitation led by activist Trupti Desai.

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Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday cautioned his supporters against fake samajwadis, signalling fresh strain in the partys top ranks.

The former chief minister was addressing the state convention, which unanimously re-elected Naresh Uttam as the partys president in Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh called on his party members at the meet, asking them to realise their responsibilities ahead of Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by chief minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Beware of banawti (fake) samajwadis. They have tried to stop the samajwadi movement many times in the past. They succeeded in one conspiracy as a result of which we could not form government in the state, he said in a veiled attack on his uncle and SP leader Shivpal Yadav and his supporters.

Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been engaged in a battle for supremacy over the party founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh, however, clarified that he enjoyed the blessings of his father and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. I want to say that netaji (Mulayam) is my father and his blessings will always be with me. We will take forward this andolan (movement), he said.

The former chief minister also criticised the Centre for the recent train derailments and sought better rail services for Uttar Pradesh. He highlighted the works initiated by his government and said the present BJP government befooled people with false promises to grab power.

The convention was attended by senior party leaders Ram Gopal Yadav, Azam Khan, Ram Govind Chowdhury and over 15,000 workers from across the state. Mulayam and Shivpal were conspicuous by their absence.
A doctors organisation has alleged that police assaulted a doctor on Friday for not giving way to their vehicle in Bihars Aurangabad.

Bihar Health Service Association (BHSA) said, Aurangabads police brutally assaulted the doctor, Manish Singh, for merely not giving pass to a police vehicle in a congested area.

BHSA condemned the act and demanded immediate action against the accused. It said BHSA members will hold a protest if Aurangabad police fail to penalise the culprits.

The doctor, who works at Sadar Hospital in Aurangabad, is currently under medical care.
Two Bihar police officials, including the in-charge of a station, have been transferred from their postings after they were recorded threatening a man caught for trading in liquor with third-degree torture unless he paid a bribe of Rs 1 lakh.

Triloki Mishra, the station house officer of Bakhri police station in Begusarai, a town 125km east of Patna, and assistant sub inspector TN Yadav were heard threatening Rakesh Kumar on an audio clip that was shared on social media.

Shortly afterwards, Vikas Vaibhav, the deputy inspector general of the range, ordered Mishra and Yadav to report to the police lines and asked the Begusarai police superintendent to personally inquire into the matter.

Vaibhav, who is DIG of eastern (Bhagalpur) range, holds additional charge of Munger range where Begusarai is.

In the audio clip, two persons are heard saying that Rakesh Kumar would be absolved of charges in the illegal liquor trade case and spared from third degree torture if he paid the bribe money, the DIG said.

The conversation was recorded and uploaded on social media by a person negotiating on behalf of Kumar after the police officers did not relent on their demand for a bribe of Rs 1 lakh, sources said.

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Every year, as many as 6.6 million babies  a figure equivalent to Irelands population  are born in India through caesarean-section (c-section) surgery.

The number has more than doubled in the past decade, going up from 8.5% of the total births in 2005-06 to 17.2% in 2015-16. During the same period, institutional deliveries  births at hospitals, health centres and clinics  also doubled from 38.7% to 78.9%, data released by the National Family Health Survey-4 in 2017 shows.

C-sections are effective in saving maternal and infant lives, but only when required for medical reasons. At the population level, c-section rates higher than 10% do not lower mother and newborn deaths, said the World Health Organisation (WHO) on c-section in 2015, after a systematic review of scientific literature.

Globally, 18.6% of all births occur through c-section surgery, ranging from 6% in less-developed to 27.2% in more-developed regions, data from 150 countries till 2014 shows. The c-section rate worldwide increased by 12.4% (from 6.7% to 19.1%) between 1990 and 2014.

So, are instances of c-section surgery rising because it minimises chances of birth complications (such as preterm births and cephalic, breech or transverse foetal presentations) or does it simply feed commercial and non-medical interests?

To introduce transparency, the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) plans to ask all empanelled hospitals and clinics to display their c-section rates prominently at reception counters. If hospitals dont comply, they will risk losing CGHS empanelment and, with it, several thousands of CHGS beneficiaries whose treatment is paid for by the government.

The most common medical causes for c-section are large or premature babies, routine repeat caesareans, non-progressive labour, breech presentation, foetal distress, prematurity, in-vitro fertilisation, and late age of conception. (Shutterstock)

Is less better?

C-section rates in rural India (12.9%) are closer to WHO recommendations, but its urban count  28.3%  is nearly three times that. The rates hover around 50% at many private tertiary-care hospitals in Indian cities.

Tertiary medical institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and district hospitals across the country show higher c-section rates than the population average because complicated pregnancies are often referred there. At the institution level, low c-section rates are often not the best indicator of quality and ethical healthcare because states with the worst public health infrastructure often have the lowest rates. They simply dont have the infrastructure or human resources to conduct c-section deliveries, says Dr Neerja Batla, professor of gynaecology and obstetrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

A substantial number of emergency c-section cases are referred to other medication institutions even from the AIIMS-run government hospital (Comprehensive Rural Health Services Project) at Ballabhgarh in Faridabad because it has no anaesthetist on weekends.

The most common medical causes for c-section are large or premature babies, routine repeat caesareans, non-progressive labour, breech presentation, foetal distress, prematurity, in-vitro fertilisation, and late age of conception.

Technology capable of monitoring foetal distress has made it possible to save babies as young as 25 weeks. The priority of doctors is to safeguard the mother and child in the safest way possible, says Dr Rishma Pai, president, Federation of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of India.

A convenient truth

In 2015, WHO recommended the Robson classification system as the global standard for assessing, monitoring and comparing c-section rates at healthcare facilities to ensure that it is performed only for medical reasons.

C-section rates at private hospitals and clinics are often higher than government medical colleges and district hospitals, where junior doctors and post-graduate students are available on a 24x7 basis. Doctors at private centres dont want to wait around for a natural delivery, which can occur at a time inconvenient to them, says a health ministry official.

Moreover, a large number of private sector doctors visit more than one hospital or clinic  making unplanned deliveries inconvenient. Opting for a c-section helps them plan their day and also make more money for the hospital, claims 34-year-old Sailesh Manchanda, who believes his wifes obstetrician opted for the scalpel even when all her health parameters were normal.

I got a second opinion after my daughter was born, and was told there was no need for a c-section, says Mandhanda, whose daughter  Siya  is now five. His second child, Nimish, had a natural birth at a different hospital earlier this month.

Is it a choice?

Doctors at private hospital also tend to practise defensive obstetrics, where litigation fears make them choose to deliver the baby through surgery at the first sign of trouble. If the baby is born with a birth-related defect, who will be held responsible? This is about human life, and the quality of life cannot be compromised, says Dr Pai, who differs with the government on forcing hospitals to display c-section rates. Such a step may pressurise some hospitals to reject complicated pregnancies.

The ministry official shrugs off her objection. We just want transparency, and whats best for the mother and child, he says.

Following a UK Supreme Court judgment in 2015 that compensated a baby who suffered brain damage during a vaginal birth inadvisably conducted on a woman with diabetes and a small pelvis, all doctors are officially required to warn expectant mothers on the risks posed by both c-section and natural births. Some of them pick c-section in the hope of avoiding labour pain. Conducting c-section by saying that the mother wanted one is no excuse. Doctors have to inform her that epidural anaesthesia makes delivery painless, says Dr Batla.

Incidentally, surgery comes with its own risks  anaesthesia complications, infections, haemorrhage, scarring, injury to other organs, increased chances of respiratory distress, and the likelihood of the baby contracting autoimmune diseases and allergic ailments. C-sections also delay mother-newborn bonding and breastfeeding, and increase the chances of repeat caesareans for subsequent deliveries.

Dr Batla says charging the same amount for c-sections and natural deliveries is one way to build trust. Some hospitals are already doing that to dispel suspicions of medical profiteering, he adds.

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External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday said demonetisation was a courageous decision taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to challenge the black money - one of the by-products of corruption.

Modi on November 8, 2016, demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in a bid to clamp down on black money, fake currency menace, terror funding and corruption.

Demonetisation was a courageous decision to challenge one of the by-products of corruption, the black money that disappeared from circulation, Swaraj said in her address to the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly here.

She also said India has passed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) legislation, through which there is one-tax across the country, without the untidy and punishing system of multiple taxes under differing categories in different parts of India.

Our Save the girl, Educate the girl campaign is reducing gender inequality. The Clean India programme is generating what can only be described as a revolutionary change in social attitudes and habits, she said.

India, she said, has displayed the courage and leadership to take tough decisions which have launched the interlinked process of sustainable development.

Swaraj said the complete eradication of poverty is the most important priority of the present government.

There are two ways of addressing the curse of poverty. The traditional method is through incremental levels of aid and hand-holding, she noted.

But our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen the more radical route, through economic empowerment. The poor are not helpless; we have merely denied them opportunity. We are eliminating poverty by investing in the poor. We are turning them from job-seekers into job-providers, Swaraj said.

She said that all of the economic programmes -- Jan Dhan, Mudra, Ujjwala, Skill India, Digital India, Clean India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India - have a principal purpose, the empowerment of the poor.

The Jan Dhan plan must surely count as the worlds largest financial inclusion scheme, she said, adding that at least 300 million Indians who had never crossed the doors of a bank today have bank accounts: this is equivalent to the population of the United States of America.

This was, understandably, not easy to complete in three years, but our banks, achieved this visionary goal set by our Prime Minister. While some remain to be included, the target has been set - every Indian family will have a bank account, she said, adding that these accounts were opened with zero balance.

Mudra Yojana, she said, has enabled government to fund the unfunded. Those who had never dreamt that bank credit was within their options, today, through Mudra, are getting soft loans without collateral to begin micro businesses, she said.

She said that over 70% of these loans have gone to women.

Describing Ujjwala a signature scheme of the government, Swaraj said free gas cylinders are being provided to the poor so that women do not have to suffer the dangerous consequences of wood-fired kitchens.

She said India has started, this year, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund, asserting that the country is completely engaged in fighting poverty.
Police in Rajasthans Alwar arrested on Saturday Falahari Maharaj, a 58-year-old self-styled godman who is accused of raping a 21-year-old law student after promising to make her a judge.

The arrest of the godman comes three days after the case files reached Alwar from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, where the law student resides. The godman is admitted in a private hospital since then.

The maharaj has been arrested and a medical checkup is currently being done following which he will be presented in court, additional superintendent of police (headquarters) Paras Jain told HT.

The godman commands a strong following across northern India and the delay in his arrest sparked speculation that police might be holding back due to political pressure.

Police said he allegedly raped the woman devotee on August 7 when she went to his ashram to offer her first stipend as a token of respect. The woman lodged an FIR and state police took up the case on September 11, after being motivated by the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh for rape.

The father of the woman had said on Friday that more such cases would come up as the investigation progressed.

There are more such cases which will come up now. There are devotees associated with the godman who couldnt come forward earlier because of fear, they will come up Soon, the reality of the man will be revealed, he said.

Police said the self-styled godman, who also has an ashram in Bilaspur, allegedly threatened the woman to not disclose the incident to anyone, citing his influence.

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Former labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya and BJPs Vishakhapatanam MP K Hari Babu are likely to be inducted as chairpersons of parliamentary standing committees during the latest reconstitution of these panels.

Dattatreya, who was dropped from the Union council of ministers in the reshuffle earlier this month, may be given a new post to reward his experience.

Every year, some members of the standing committees are reshuffled and at times, new chairpersons are appointed by the Lok Sabha Speaker or Rajya Sabha chairperson in consultation with respective political parties. The panels play an important role in the functioning of the Parliament as they review bills, policies, raging issues and government expenses before submitting their suggestions and recommendations to the House.

The upcoming rejig in the panel comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reshuffled his Council of Ministers in which at least two incumbent chairpersons have been sworn in as ministers, leaving a vacancy in the House panels. According to the rule, no minister can be a member of the panel.

Satyapal Singh headed the panel on office of profit while Virendra Kumar chaired panel on labour, said a source. Apart from these two members, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was heading the joint committee on salaries and allowances of the members of parliament. As he has resigned after the presidential election, his post too, will see a new face.

Adityanaths replacement will come only after the session starts as this particular post is decided after election, said a source in Lok Sabha secretariat.

Recently, Kirit Somaiya, who heads the committee to look into the improper conduct of a member, had been given the additional responsibility of chairing the labour panel.

BJPs Bhupinder Yadav is all set to replace Congress veteran Anand Sharma in the chairmans position of the panel on law which is deliberating, among other things, the electoral reforms. Yadav, who is a former lawyer has been chairing three other committees of Parliament.

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The Shiv Sena on Saturday said if India is forced to provide shelter to Rohingya immigrants under pressure from vote-hungry politicians, it would not bode well for Muslims in the country.

The Sena, an ally of the BJP, also questioned the patriotism of those advocating refuge to the community which is fleeing Myanmar.

Having sympathy for these people for votes is the height of anti-nationalism. Already, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are living here in lakhs. If Rohingyas also get added now due to these vote- hungry politicians, it will not be long before what happened in Myanmar happens here as well. And in the process, Indian Muslims will be crushed, the Sena said in an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana.

Violent attacks allegedly by Myanmarese armymen have led to an exodus of Rohingyas from the western Rakhine state in that country to India and Bangladesh.

At present, around 40,000 Rohingyas are living in the country. The Centre has told the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims have entered India illegally and are a threat to the nations security.

The Centre also believes some of them have links with Pakistans (spy agency) ISI, the Sena organ said.

If somebody wants these people to stay and prosper here, do they have any patriotism in their blood? It is because of some selfish Muslim clerics that a common Muslim man is always under suspicion, the Marathi daily added.

The Sena said those backing Rohingya Muslims should explain why they had to flee the neighbouring country.

Two days ago, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and not refugees who have applied for asylum in India.

The Centre told Parliament on August 9 that more than 14,000 Rohingyas, registered with the UNHCR, are at present staying in India. However, aid agencies estimate there are about 40,000 Rohingya Muslims in the country.
The drug store at a government health facility in Gaya district of south central Bihar was sealed and its in-charge suspended after it was found that expired medicines had been supplied from there to state-run hospitals and primary health centres.

The irregularity was detected on Monday at Jaya Prakash Narayan (JPN) Hospital at Gaya, 100 km south of state capital Patna, during the review of drug supply system in the district. The review work was undertaken as part of Magadh division commissioner Jitendra Srivastavas initiative to streamline health services in five districts of the division.

A day after the abnormality surfaced, district magistrate (DM) Kumar Ravi ordered sealing of the drug store and deputed a magistrate to examine the medicine stock.

Civil surgeon Dr Baban Kunwar said 39 types of expired drugs were recovered from the store. Kunwar said he had suspended drug store in-charge Abhay Sharma and constituted a five-member team to inquire into the racket.

I have asked the probe team, headed by physician Dr Ram Chandra Prasad and comprising three drug inspectors and a pharmacist, to submit its report in 10 days, the civil surgeon added.

When asked about the impact of the sealing of the drug store on the supply of the medicines to centres, Kunwar said everything would be normal within next two-three days.

It is not for the first time that the JPN Hospitals drug store is in the eye of storm. The state governments drug department had inspected the store in January and found similar irregularities. Drug inspector Ashok Kumar Yadav had then prepared a detailed report and submitted it to the civil surgeon for further action. Subsequently, the civil surgeon sought an explanation from the pharmacist of the drug store, but the order was not complied with.

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In Gujarat, in June 2014, over 40,000 government primary and secondary schools were directed to introduce books penned by RSS ideologue Dina Nath Batra as supplementary literature. The books authored by Batra, who is the convener of the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, mostly impart lessons on moral values and Indias culture and history. The books translated from Hindi to Gujarati and published by the Gujarat State School Textbook Board (GSSTB) talk about Akhand Bharat (undivided India) and advocate doing havan and feeding cows on birthdays instead of following western culture of blowing candles.

Supplementary books are not part of the curriculum. No questions related to such books are asked in examinations. Schools have just been asked to keep these books, M I Joshi, director, primary education, told Hindustan Times.

Just a month before, the state government issued a circular to schools on Batras books, and state education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama announced that chapters on the life of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be included in the textbooks of primary schools.

The chapters may include events starting from his birth, his humble family background, schooldays, how he faced struggle at different stages of his life and what are the circumstances behind his decision to become a monk, Chudasama had said on May 29, 2014.

He had said that in an effort to teach leadership skills to the students, inspiring events which took place before Narendra Modi became the PM would be included as chapters in textbooks. The government had even decided to form a committee to finalise the events to be included. The idea, however, was scrapped within 24 hours of the announcement. I firmly believe that the life story of living individuals should not be included as a part of the school curriculum, Modi had tweeted.

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In Rajasthan, new textbooks for the state board schools being taught from this year have an extra dose of nationalism, with Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar pushing to the margins the role of Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and edging out Jawaharlal Nehru from the social science textbook of Class 10.

School students in Rajasthan are also being taught that Rajput warrior Maharana Pratap defeated the army of Mughal emperor Akbar in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576.

Academics are not amused. Historical evidence shows that Pratap, the ruler of the erstwhile Mewar region, fled the battlefield, although in the later years he continued his guerilla war against the Mughals. In fact, all the heroes  from Pratap to Prithviraj Chauhan  that the RSS is projecting had lost conclusively. By twisting facts, one cannot re-write history, said professor D N Jha, former member of Indian Council for Historical Research.

But Rajasthan education minister Vasudev Devnani said that students will not read distorted history. Until last year, students of class 10 and 12 read Pratap had lost the battle. According to him, There has been an attempt to downplay the role of our heroes.

After the revision in class 10 schoolbooks, the University of Rajasthans (RU) History department has included a book that projects Rajput king Maharana Pratap as a victor in Haldigati. Education experts are calling these history revisions as Hinduisation of the countrys freedom struggle.

Last year, Indias first Prime Minister Nehru was erased from the class 8 textbook. The government says that Nehru has been given ample space in the class 9 textbook. Every hero cant be included in every book, offered Devnani by way of defence.

The class 10 social science textbook also says that the first crop of Congress leaders wanted to prolong British rule in India because they felt the latters exit would lead to lawlessness in the country.

This narrative is taken a step further in the class 11 political science textbook. Here, the Congress party is described as a nurtured baby of the British, that it was established by the capitalists and representatives of the upper middle class.

In the class 10 book, Savarkar has been described as a great revolutionary, a great patriot, and a great sangathanwaadi (organisation man). The lifelong sacrifices he made for the countrys independence is beyond words, says the textbook.

A chapter in the book on the torch bearers of the Indian independence movement lists them in the following order: Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekanand, Maharshi Arvind Ghosh, Mahatma Gandhi, Veer Savarkar, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, BR Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru and Deendayal Upadhyay.

Commenting on the changes, Rajiv Gupta, retired professor of sociology at University of Rajasthan, says that those who supported the colonial empire and succumbed to it, like Savarkar, have been glorified in the revisions.

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External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday called Pakistan the pre-eminent export factory for terror that gave its own people and the world nothing but terrorism, and accused its leaders of hypocrisy in talk and actions in regard to bringing peace to the subcontinent. (HIGHLIGHTS)

The two neighbours became independent within hours of each other, Swaraj told the UN General Assembly in New York and proceeded to draw out the stark contrast in the paths they had followed.

We have marched ahead, consistently, without pause and created IITs, IIMs and AIIMS and produced scholars, doctors, engineers and scientists, she said, addressing herself to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who had addressed the session earlier in the week.

Responding to Abbasis allegation that India was involved in state-sponsored terrorism and widespread human rights violations, Swaraj said, Everyone who heard that speech said, Look whos talking.

While India was engaged solely in efforts to develop itself, Pakistan is only engaged in fighting us, she added.

What have you produced? You have produced terrorists and terrorist camps. And she went on to name a few of the groups - Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen and the Haqqani Network.

Why is it that today India is a recognized IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror? she asked, setting up the subcontinental rivalry in a context often lost during the heated exchange of accusations and counter-accusations.

Swaraj called on the UN to unite to fight the evil of terrorism  saying evil is evil  and not to differentiate between good and bad terrorists and not allow self-interest to lead nations into taking duplicitous positions.

Without naming China in this context, she referred to its efforts blocking the UN designation of JeM chief Masood Azhar and asked, If even the UN Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together?

Swaraj also renewed Indias call for speeding up UN reforms to expand the Security Council with a sense of urgency, to include more permanent members  India is a leading claimant.

And she reiterated the countrys commitment to the Paris Accord on climate change, asserting it was not impelled by fear or influence or tempted by some imagined greed, a thinly veiled response to US President Donald Trumps charge that India was in it for billions and billions in foreign aid.

Swaraj also spoke of large-scale movement of refugees (from West Asia) causing global anxiety, the return of nuclear proliferation (North Korea), maritime security, cyber security, unemployment, gender discrimination, poverty, hunger and the progress of Indias own poverty alleviation programme.

But as anticipated, she dealt at some length on Pakistan, issuing a forceful rejoinder to the Pakistani premier, who had accused India from that podium of human rights violations in Kashmir and refusing to resume the stalled peace process.

Swaraj said, A country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

She proceeded to rebut Abbasis claims that while Pakistan wanted peace, it was India that was holding back. She reminded Pakistan of Prime Minister Narendra Modis offer of a hand of peace and friendship immediately after taking office. Pakistans Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.

Swaraj accused Pakistans politicians of forgetting inconvenient facts such as their commitment to bilateral dialogue  as agreed in the Simla Agreement of 1971 and the Lahore Declaration in 1999  while invoking UN resolutions on Kashmir that have been long overtaken by events.

Opening up the question of terrorism to the larger world body, Swaraj called on it to take a close look at progress on the issue. We all condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals. The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them towards duplicity.

That was meant for China.

Swaraj went on to urge world leaders to prove their sincerity by reaching an agreement by the yearend on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism proposed by India in 1996.

Following Swarajs address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated her for the incredible speech, saying she had made India extremely proud.

 A strong message was given by Sushma Swaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace, he tweeted.
The new class 7 history book, published by the Maharashtra government, has come under fire for allegedly reducing the role of Mughals and other empires in Indian history.

Except for a few chapters, the entire book titled History and Civics is dedicated to the rise and fall of the Maratha empire. Chapters on Mughal empire and other empires such as the Vijayanagara and Bahamani empires, the Delhi Sultanate, the Palas, Cholas and Rajputs have been condensed into a single chapter titled India Before the Times of Shivaji Maharaj.

Bapusaheb Shinde, who was a member of the subject committees of the new as well as the old textbook, denies that there has been any attempt to omit any part of history. We didnt cut anything. All the kings find mention in the book. But we cant provide all the historical details due to limited pages of the book, he said.

However, many history teachers are unhappy with the new book. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a teacher from Nanded said, Theres nothing wrong with teaching about the Marathas, but one should have a sense of proportion. The hundreds of years of Mughal rule cannot be relegated to a few paragraphs. The students will never get to learn about them in their school years, he said.

The curriculum is being seen as a counter to the Delhi-centric narrative of the history being propagated by books published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and other state boards.

Theres a sense that all our history books, including NCERT books, are north-centric. The academicians of Maharashtra appear to be doing exactly the opposite, said a Pune-based historian associated with the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training.

Agreed Sadanand More, chairman of History subject committee of Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production & Curriculum Research. The earlier book didnt have a proper place for Maharashtra. The NCERT history book, too, has mere one and half pages for Marathas. Theres no picture of Shivaji Maharaj in the book. Shouldnt students get to read about Marathas? he said.

Some historians also suggest that its an attempt by the right-wing National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by BJP ruling the state to appropriate Shivaji for political gains. Historians point out that at various times, Shivaji has been hailed as a Hindutva icon, promoter of Brahmins and protector of backward categories.

History is the first casualty of any appropriation of historical figures caused by a change in power, said Arvind Ganacharya, former professor at the University of Mumbai s History department. He adds that while its necessary that the children should learn the history of the region, in Maharashtra, the textbooks neglect much of the states history at the expense of Shivaji.

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Several students who bagged MBBS seats after passing the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) received a shock when the private colleges they were allotted sought astronomical fees to let them in.

They finally left in disappointment, forsaking their dreams as well as a large sum deposited with the Directorate of Medical Education and Training (DMET).

Each of the candidates had earlier deposited 2 lakh as security deposit with the DMET against allotment of seats. However, when they approached the colleges concerned, they were asked for fees that made the amount fixed by the government seem like a pittance. Unable to afford it, they forfeited the seats, only to realise they would be losing their security deposit of 2 lakh too.

Medical education director general Dr KK Gupta said though he was aware of the issue, there was little he could do in light of a government norm specifying that students must forfeit their deposits if they dont accept seats allotted to them.

He, instead, advised the candidates to lodge FIRs against the colleges.

At the time of counselling, the officials showed me a circular stating that the college fee was 8.5 lakh per annum, said Mahesh Kumar Sharma, whose son was allotted a seat at a medical college during the first round of counselling.

He was even told that the 2 lakh security deposit would be adjusted in the college fee at a later stage. The shock came when the college reportedly asked him to pay 21.5 lakh as just first-year fee. Apparently, 8.5 lakh was the basic fee. Sharma was also required to pay an annual hostel fee of 4 lakh and a non-refundable security deposit of 9 lakh.

I couldnt afford it. I complained to the UP director of medical education but he chose to forfeit my 2 lakh deposit instead of taking action against the college, said Sharma.

HT spoke to more than half a dozen parents who levelled similar charges against the colleges.

A Directorate of Medical Education official said the colleges took advantage of a loophole to fix higher fees. While the fee committee fixed the basic annual fee for each college in 2017-18, it allowed them to charge the hostel fee and security deposit at their discretion. This allowed the colleges to have an upper hand in final fee fixation, he said, adding that all but a handful of colleges misused the provision.

Even the most inferior college could be seen demanding 17 lakh as the first-year fee, the official said.

Gupta said the directorate doesnt exert much control over the colleges.

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The BJPs conclave in New Delhi on Monday will seek to dismiss apprehensions about the state of the economy and reaffirm its commitment to the welfare of the poor and deprived social groups.

More than 2,000 BJP leaders, including MPs and MLAs, will attend an extended meeting of the partys national executive in New Delhi on Monday, the birth anniversary of Sangh ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya.

The party is likely to adopt a resolution reposing faith in the government for taking bold decisions such as recall of high value currency notes and roll out of the Goods and Services Tax, which have been criticised by the Opposition.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently suggested the two decisions adversely affected Indias gross domestic product figures.

The GDP growth slid for the sixth quarter in a row to hit a three-year low at 5.7% in the June quarter.

However, BJP chief Amit Shah attributed the slowdown to technical reasons, while finance minister Arun Jaitley said last week that the government was looking for ways to lift economic growth.

BJP sources said the resolution was likely to reiterate that the impact of GST and note ban on growth will be for a brief period and GDP figures will soon become robust.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will deliver the concluding speech at the event, is also likely to touch on these points. He may also address concerns about fewer jobs.

The executive meeting of the ruling party comes ahead of the assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, where the BJP has set ambitious targets. The party will reiterate its commitment to welfare of the poor and marginalised sections of society, a new vote base that it has tried to build.

At its national council meeting in Kozhikode last September, the BJP had announced that it will observe the birth centenary year of Deendayal Upadhayaya as Garib Kalyan Varsh (year for the welfare of poor).

The celebration comes to end on Monday and the party will review the activities it undertook last year to reach out through programmes such as free LPG to BPL families and loans for Scheduled Castes.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has summoned a prominent trade association leader of Kashmir and a research scholar at the Kashmir University (KU) in connection with the ongoing probe into alleged funding of anti-national activities in the strife-torn Valley.

Mohammad Yasin Khan, who heads the Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA) and Kashmir Traders and Manufacturers Federation (KTMF), and Aala Fazili, a research scholar at the pharmaceutical sciences department of KU, are scheduled to appear at NIA headquarters in New Delhi on Monday.

Khan and Fazili both confirmed to HT that they have received the summons and said they have been asked to report at 11am on Monday at the NIA office in New Delhi.

The KTMF and KEA have said summons to Khan was an attack on traders of the Valley and have called for a Kashmir bandh on Monday. Major markets across the valley are expected to remain shut on Monday.

Read more: Decline in stone pelting in Kashmir post NIA raids: CRPF DG

The NIA has also summoned Syed Naseem Geelani, son of hardline Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Geelani for another round of questioning on Monday.

These summons come at a time when the NIA has arrested seven separatist leaders and two alleged stone-pelters from Kashmir and conducted several raids in the case of alleged funding of anti-national activities in the Valley.

Most of the arrested are close aides of Geelani and moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, including Geelanis son-in-law Altaf Shah. Of the two alleged stone pelters one is a freelance photo journalist in south Kashmir.

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Jammu and Kashmir deputy chief minister, Nirmal Singh, was allegedly heckled by people from the Dogra community over PDP-BJP coalition governments failure to declare September 23 as a state holiday on the birth anniversary of Maharaja Hari Singh.

Hari Singh was the last Dogra ruler, who signed instrument of accession with the Union of India on October 26, 1947.

Singh, who reached the Tawi Bridge to take part in the celebrations was speaking at a function when scores of people, including the Dogra youths, wearing black T-shirts and carrying saffron flags, raised slogans against Singh and the state government.

The people were not ready to listen to what they called lame excuses of the deputy CM and gheraoed him. Some of them also allegedly heckled the him. Following the uproar, Singh had to cut short his speech and was escorted out by a large contingent of police from the venue.

The protesters demanded deputy CMs resignation and accused the BJP of betraying the mandate of the people of Jammu region.

Responding to the critics, Singh in a statement said that some people were doing politics over Maharaja Hari Singhs birth anniversary.

These people always do divisive politics and are doing it today as well, the deputy CM said.

The BJP, in 2014 assembly polls, had won 25 assembly seats from Jammu region out of a total of 37. It didnt win any seat from Kashmir, despite the partys focused attention to the Valley.

Meanwhile, to celebrate the birthday of Maharaja Hari Singh, Team Jammu organised functions at 75 different places across Jammu province, from Poonch to Lakhanpur and Kishtwar to Arnia where the enthusiastic volunteers distributed sweets.

The J&K high court Bar Association also celebrated the birth anniversary.
Three days after a group of CBI officials were found to be attempting to enter the official residence of a sitting judge of Odisha High Court, the police said they were waiting for response from the central agency into the incident.

On Tuesday night, a team of CBI officials led by their inspector PK Mishra had forcibly tried to enter the official residence of Odisha high court judge Chitta Ranjan Dash under the mistaken belief that it was still occupied by former chief justice of Odisha High Court IM Quddusi. Quddusi, now retired and staying in Noida, was arrested by CBI a day later on the charge of helping an Uttar Pradesh-based educational trust barred by the government from admitting MBBS students.

"Two days ago we asked the CBI officials to explain on what basis they entered the house of sitting judge of Odisha High Court at night violating all standard operating procedures. The nameplate of justice CR Dash was prominently displayed outside. The CBI officials should have been aware that once Quddusi had left Odisha 7 years ago and a new judge was staying. This is inexplicable. We have asked for a detailed reply. We would be getting their reply by today," said a senior Odisha police official, requesting anonymity.

The Cuttack Commissionerate police have lodged a case against the CBI under sections 120(B), 353, 511 and 34 of the IPC based on the report of the security guards who were on duty at the judge's residence.

On the otherhand, the Odisha High Court yesterday served notice on union home secretary, Director CBI, Odisha home secretary, Odisha DGP, Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Police Commissioner after the High Court Bar Association filed a PIL demanding judicial probe into the incident. The High Court has asked the CBI to mention on whose permission its team had visited the residence of a sitting HC judge. The High Court lawyers, who were on a cease work since Wednesday, have ended their agitation after a meeting of the High Court Bar Association.

Preliminary probe by police have so far revealed that the CBI team which arrived at the residence of the judge on Cantonment Road at night tried to force its way but were prevented by a 56-year-old homeguard. Impressing the CBI team that it was the residence of justice CR Dash, the homeguard reportedly asked the CBI team to come in morning if at all it was necessary. "Had it not been the homeguard, the team may have entered the house," said an official probing the incident. Police said they would seek explanation from CBI why no prior approval of chief justice of Odisha High Court for entering the premises of a judge.

The CBI officials did not show any search warrant or identity to the securityguard and kept on arguing with the homeguard till a police patrol van on duty arrived at the spot and took the officials to the Cantonment police station. After reaching the police station, the CBI team realised their mistake, but did not show any search warrant.

CBI in a press statement refuted allegations of attempting to search or trespass at the residence of any sitting High Court judge. "A CBI team with independent witnesses visited the former residence of the retired Odisha High Court judge in Cuttack in a case related to a private medical college. The visit was for recovering incriminating documents and cash. The CBI team was informed at the gate that the said retired judge was no longer residing there. The CBI immediately left the location and informed the local police of the development," the statement said.
Five people, including two BSF personnel, were injured in the overnight shelling and firing by Pakistan Rangers on Indian posts and forward villages in Samba and Jammu districts.

Continuous ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the international border and the Line of Control (LoC) have forced hundreds of border residents to flee their homes.

At least three civilians and two BSF personnel were injured in the ceasefire violation by Pakistan in RS Pura and Ramgarh sub sectors last (Friday) night, said a police spokesman.

India also retaliated in equal measure.

On Friday night Pakistans border guards started the firing and around 9pm four mortar shells exploded near a police post at Treva in Arnia sub sector, said an intelligence official.

He informed that Bamboo chak, Jerda and Jora Farm villages were once again targeted with mortar fire.

In adjoining RS Pura sub sector Satowali , Suchetgarh and Bidhipur villages were shelled.

Three villagers from Satowali who were injured in the Pak shelling were identified as Pushpinder Singh, Subash and Vandana Devi.

In Ramgarh sector in Samba, two Indian border guards suffered minor injuries in Pakistani firing.

A BSF officer said that firing stopped at around 5am on Saturday, adding 20 border outposts in the area were affected.

He said Pakistan too suffered some damages in the retaliatory firing from the BSF.

There are a few areas of Pakistan which are clearly visible from our side. The damage is visible but the extent is not known, he said.

Over 500 people were evacuated by the police from a few border hamlets targeted by Pakistani troops, PTI said, quoting officials.

The villagers have been housed in a camp.

Over 20,000 people have also fled their homes and hearths in Arnia and R S Pura sectors in the past few days, the officials told the news agency.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the LoC between September 13 and September 18.

Firing and shelling resumed on September 21 after a two- day lull.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.

(With agency inputs)

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Haryana health minister Anil Vijs demand that the kin of Dera Sacha Sauda followers killed during the Panchkula violence deserve compensation is a shrewd step of the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government to build consensus on this contentious issue.

By bouncing this proposition publicly, its a desperate attempt of the state government to assuage the ruffled feelings of dera followers whose support helped the BJP in forming the government in October 2014. Until Thursday, the issue whether to give compensation to the kin of Dera followers killed in the police firing during the August 25 violence that broke out at Panchkula after Dera chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh was convicted in twin rape case, was being hotly debated within the government.

Any compensation (to kin of Dera Sacha Sauda followers killed during the Panchkula violence) will be given only as per court orders.

It was for the first time on Thursday when Vij publicly made the demand for compensation. His contention was that the families of those killed in the Jat quota agitation last year were given Rs 10-lakh compensation each.

There have been precedents in the state when compensation was given to those killed in the firing. Why to have different yardsticks? Deaths were unfortunate on both the occasions, he said.

BJP sources say Vij was fielded to pitch this demand publicly as a part of the well-thought out plan to kickstart the debate and bring on board the naysayers.

Tracking those killed in Dera violence | Brothers return dead: Father ordered them to go to Panchkula

CM breaks silence, Hooda too bats for relief

And on Friday, the otherwise nonchalant chief minister Khattar didnt duck this issue. Instead, he decided to break his studied silence. Any compensation will be given only as per court orders, Khattar told reporters at Panchkula after visiting Mansa devi shrine.

Khattar made it clear that the court had issued directions that the damage caused during the violence be compensated from the Dera property and that the matter was under consideration of the court.

While Khattar deflected Vijs demand towards the high court, former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda backed the adequate compensation demand even as he slammed the Khattar government for repeating Jat agitation-like failure. There were supporters who were fooled into going to Panchkula and did not know the reality of Ram Rahim, Hooda said.

The government committed a huge blunder by letting Dera followers gather in large number. Now it is the duty of the government to compensate those who lost their breadwinners.

Reservations within cabinet

There are considerable reservations within the Haryana cabinet over the political craft of Khattar, the stiff-necked RSS pracharak-turned-chief minister, in dealing with the delicates issues, including the Dera Sacha Sauda episode.

Party leaders feel Khattar blundered in several areas from the beginning. For instance, Khattar did not consult cabinet colleagues nor did he keep them posted about the ground situation.

The baba episode has divided the Khattars cabinet comprising nine cabinet ministers, including CM, and five ministers of state. The BJP has 47 MLAs in the 90-member Haryana Vidhan Sabha. Sources say Khattar did not call a cabinet meeting to discuss and devise the strategy and to keep his council of ministers in the loop in the run-up to August 25 court verdict in the rape case against ram Rahim.

The baba episode has divided the Khattars cabinet comprising nine cabinet ministers, including CM, and five ministers of state.

However, on August 23 Khattar invited certain key ministers at his residence and apprised them of the dera developments.

On August 29, the cabinet met informally where the CM defended his actions, a source in the cabinet said, indicating that signals emanating from Delhi also silenced the Khattar-baiters.

Sources say a section of ministers had begun raising the compensation demand after the August 25 violence during informal and formal cabinet meetings. This issue was again discussed on Wednesdays informal cabinet meeting. Certain ministers are critical about what they describe as brutal abuse of force by the security forces against unarmed Dera followers.

There is a general feeling within the government that Khattar deserves the blame for Panchkula build-up and then using bullets to silence the protesters, said a cabinet minister, requesting anonymity.

Though the government seems to be recovering from the initial shocks of the dera episode, the compensation issue is a yet another test of Khattars political craft.

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Tarun Kumar, 22-year-old sweeper of The Millennium School here, has confessed that he tried to molest a nine-year-old girl student in the school toilet on Wednesday.

Police said Tarun admitted the offence during the late night interrogation on Thursday. Meanwhile, the accused was produced in a local court on Friday and remanded in one-day police custody for further investigations.

Accused Tarun Kumar (HT Photo)

Police said the accused is resident of Rakesh Nagar area of the city and he has been working with the school for the past three years.

Meanwhile, the police have booked school principal Amita Kochhar under Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. The accused was identified with the help of the victim and he was wearing a green shirt on the day of incident as the girl had claimed. Talking to Hindustan Times, Panipat district superintendent of police (DSP) Vidyawati said the girl identified the accused from some photographs shown to her. District child protection officer Nidhi Gupta said the girl told her school teachers that somebody had hit her, but she narrated the entire incident to her mother at home. However, the counselling of the girl was on to get more information in the case, Gupta added.

The accused was identified with the help of the victim and he was wearing a green shirt on the day of incident as the girl had claimed.

The police swung into action after hundreds of parents of students held a protest outside the school on Thursday and demanded action against the accused and school authorities.

After a day-long protest, the police rounded up all the five sweepers and one of them later admitted that he committed the crime. As per the complaint filed by family members of the victim, the accused caught the girl inside the toilet and tried to rape her around 8am on Wednesday morning, but she somehow ran away from the toilet.

Parents protest, seek principals arrest

Parents of about 1,000 students of the school held a protest on the second consecutive day on Friday, demanding the arrest of principal Kochhar.

The protesting parents said the incident has exposed serious lapses in the security system of the school and they will not send their children to school until the police arrest the principal and ensure the safety of their children. Also, members of the school parents association have filed a police complaint and demanded that Kochhar be held responsible for the incident and strict action should be taken against her.

DSP Vidyawati said the FIR has already been registered against the principal under Section 120 B of the IPC, but the investigation was still on and arrest will be made only if required.

She said the incident has exposed lapses on the part of the school and action will be taken against it. The agitating parents ended their protest following an assurance from the police regarding action against the school management.

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The BJP on Saturday alleged that its workers were being killed in West Bengal due to the frustration of the ruling Trinamool Congress, which was disturbed by the saffron partys growth in the state.

Disturbed by growth of BJP in Bengal, TMC goons are resorting to brutal killings of BJP workers in Bengal. The hooliganism of TMC will not be tolerated and we will fight to free Bengal from the appeasement politics of TMC (sic), BJP national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said in a series of tweets.

He added that the people of the state would give a befitting reply to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

Speaking to reporters, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh alleged that the police in the state were not working in an impartial manner.

The police is reluctant to catch the culprits as they are associated with the TMC. But, this politics of annihilation of the opposition will not be tolerated by the people of the state, he said. PTI PNT MM RBT RC
Following protests over a hike in petrol prices across the country, Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Saturday the prices of the fuel had already started going down.

The prices have started decreasing. The prices have even gone down in the past two days.

The minister cited the hurricanes Irma and Harvey as a reason for the instability in the petroleum market and the hike in fuel prices.

Pradhan also backed the possible implementation of GST on petroleum products, saying that it would ensure the interests of the people.

We have appealed to the GST council to implement GST on petroleum products, which would ensure interests of the people. The interests of the state and central government will also be secured, he said.

He also stressed the need for the state to have a balanced model, so that taxes can be procured without the people being affected by it.
President Ram Nath Kovind will make his first foreign trip as head of state to the strategically-significant African continent in the first week of October.

The Presidential visit to Ethiopia and Djibouti is seen as a reiteration of the importance Narendra Modi government gives to the continent where the Chinese have made considerable inroads.

This visit happens soon after India and Japan declared their strategic intent to link Asia with Africa in their annual summit in Gandhinagar as part of their larger India-Pacific and Indian Ocean strategy.

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia is the seat of African Union, had hosted the first India-Africa summit outside India in 2012. There are more than 540 Indian firms in Ethiopia.

Chinas new military base in Djibouti  first in the region  has raised concerns in many world capitals as this showed Chinas long-term strategic intent in the content.

The vast Indian Ocean Region hosts over 40 states and nearly 40% of the worlds population. It touches Australia, South-East Asia, South Asia, West Asia and the eastern seaboard of Africa (and) the  island states. Think of the civilisational links, yet great diversity in this vast region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in Mauritius in 2015.

Djibouti is Chinas first overseas naval base, however, Beijing terms it as a logistics facility.

Senior officials said the details of Presidents programmes during the three-day trip are still being worked out.

Apart from the bilateral meetings, President will also take part in events that stress the special relationship between India and these two countries.

Indian ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti Anurag Srivastava met the President in August.
The sale of US-made Guardian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and an American offer to build single-engine fighter planes in the country are likely to be the chief talking points during US defence secretary Jim Mattis three-day visit to India next week, sources said on Saturday.

The US governments decision to supply Guardian drones, manufactured by General Atomics, is one of the major developments that has taken place after the US administration passed the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) in December 2016 to strengthen defence and security cooperation with India. The deal for 22 such UAVs is expected to be worth $2 billion.

The Trump administration is supporting US military contractors exploring the possibility of setting up production lines for single and twin-engine fighter jets in India. US aerospace firm Lockheed Martin is eyeing a project to build F-16 warplanes in the country.

Mattis visit will be the first Cabinet-level visit to India under the Trump administration. Mattis will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, national security adviser Ajit Doval and defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the visit.

The secretary will emphasise that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia, the US department of defense said in a release.

The secretary will also express US appreciation for India's important contributions toward Afghanistan's democracy, stability, prosperity, and security.

At $15 billion, military purchases from the US have consumed more than a fourth of the total capital expenditure for the last decade. Since 2008, India has bought or ordered military equipment worth $15 billion from the US, including C-130J special operations planes, C-17 transport aircraft, P-8I submarine hunter planes, Harpoon missiles, Apache and Chinook helicopters and M777 lightweight howitzers.

The US government in a July report to the Congress said it is creating new positions in the DoD to strengthen military ties with India. Two new under secretary level posts will come up by February 2018 to steer the defence technology and trade initiative (DTTI) that seeks to overcome bureaucratic obstacles to cooperation and identify opportunities for sharing of defence technologies.
PATNA Amid growing trouble for RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his younger son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, who have been named in an FIR and are facing CBI summons in a corruption case dating back to Prasads tenure as railways minister (2004-09), the RJD first family has new worries on the home front.

There are indications that sibling rivalry is brewing in the RJD chiefs family, with Prasads elder son, Tej Pratap Yadav, becoming more assertive to carve his independent political space to show himself up as a leader enjoying a stature parallel to his younger brother.

This has become all too apparent in recent times with Tej Pratap not shying from giving public speeches, as he did during the RJDs August 27 rally at Patnas Gandhi Maidan where he spoke with rustic witticism, in a style reminiscent of his father.

He was at it again at Bhagalpur, in south eastern Bihar, earlier this month, when he took the mike to announce that RJD would go the whole hog to expose the multi crore Srijan scam, in which money from government accounts was fraudulently transferred to the accounts of an NGO, Srijan..

RJD insiders feel the elder Yadav scions public appearances having more of a comic element than his brother Tejashwi, what with his bid to blow a onch shell at an RJD rally and copying his fathers distinct style of communicating with the masses.

Tejs assertion has become a problem for Lalu who has namedTejashwi as his political successor and can ill afford any trouble between his children at a time when he and Tejashwi are facing CBI interrogation in a case of transfer of valuable land in Patna to family members allegedly in lieu of leasing out two railways hotels to a private party in 2006.

It is another matter that Tej has received much applause in his brief speeches owing to his penchant for straight talk.

If sources are to be believed, Tej has not been happy with his parents decision to project Tejashwi as Prasads heir apparent.

Last year, Tej had raised eyebrows when he said he would not mind if his younger brother got married first because of the latters popularity among girls and his haloed status as deputy CM.The comment was seen as an early sign of sibling rivalry.

Tej was denied the limelight which is brother has got in his short career. Now, he, too, wants to come to the forefront and position himself as a leader of reckoning, said a senior RJD leader, pointing out how the elder Yadav scion had pushed his own outfit called DSS (Dharamanirpeksh Sewak Sangh), parallel to the RSS.

What has come as an obstacle for Tejs upward climb in the party is his rather shy nature and being less articulate as compared to his younger brother, who in his tenure as deputy chief minister and leader of opposition, has succeeded in silencing critics about his speech making capability.

There are also reports of Prasads elder daughter and partys Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti nursing the ambition of getting a bigger say in the party though she has faced quite a setback after her name cropped in money laundering cases with the ED and the IT department issuing summons to her and her husband Shailesh Kumar.

RJD leaders feel Prasad has a daunting task ahead in trying to douse the flames of sibling rivalry in his family in days to come. Though it is not clear as whether Tej would be given any new responsibility in the party, the Mahua MLA is surely eying for a top slot.

The only relief for the RJD chief is that his two sons have not showed any acrimony in public and together undertook a tour to drum up support for the RJDs rally last month.

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In another stunning revelation, Iqbal Kaskar, the younger brother of Dawood Ibrahim, told the Thane police that he spoke to the don three to four times over phone and via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the past one year.

Kaskar, who had earlier during his interrogation revealed that Dawood was in Pakistan, told the police that he discussed about their family members with his brother during the phone conversations.

Sources said the 52-year-old Kaskar told his interrogators that during one of their conversations, Bhai [Dawood] told him to seek any kind of help.

Kaskar gave us details about his phone conversations with Dawood in the past year and we are investigating his claims, said Abhishek Trimukhe, deputy commissioner of police, Thane.

We have also traced some Pakistan-based mobile numbers, which are under scanner.

A Thane crime branch police inspector, who did not wish to be named as he is not authorised to speak to the media, said the phone numbers which Kaskar gave have been traced to Pakistan, but its difficult to pinpoint the exact location as it keeps changing often.

Kaskar also told us that in one of the calls, Dawood wanted to know about his business in Mumbai.

Kaskar was arrested earlier this week by the Thane anti-extortion cell for his involvement in an extortion case.

A builder had come forward and lodged a complaint against him. Since then, several other businessmen, including a jeweller, have come forward and said they, too, had received extortion calls in the past few years.

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Refuting the Indian governments claims of having terror links with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Islamic State (IS) and being a threat to the country, a Rohingya refugee filed an affidavit in Supreme Court, asserting that they were refugees and should be treated on par with Tibetan and Sri Lankan ones.

The affidavit, filed on Friday, rejected contentions of the government, saying: No terror links with ISI/ISIS and no Rohingyas in India have indulged in anti-national activities and this assertion is not substantiated with any evidence by government.

The refugee has relied on a statement by Jammu and Kashmir CM Mehbooba Mufti in state assembly, which said: No Rohingya has been found involved in militancy-related incidents. Seventeen FIRs have been registered against 38 Rohingyas for offences relating to illegal border crossing.

Among the reasons the Rohingya refugees gave in their defence against their deportation to Myanmar, they clarify the distinction between refugees and immigrants  while refugees are individuals who have fled their country fearing persecution, immigrants are individual who voluntarily choose to move out of the country seeking employment opportunities.

The apex court is already seized of a public interest petition (PIL) filed by two Rohingya Muslim refugees challenging the governments decision to deport an estimated 40,000 people of the community. While the hearing on their plea is scheduled on October 3, it is unclear when the child rights panels petition will come up for hearing.

Earlier this week, the Centre told SC many Rohingya refugees have links with IS and Pakistans spy agency ISI, posing a serious security threat to India. The government also said if allowed to stay, they would exhaust the natural resources meant for Indian citizens that could culminate in hostility towards them and lead to social tension.
After the BJP and the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), Tripura journalists have now demanded a CBI probe into the murder case of Santanu Bhowmik who was hacked to death on September 20 while covering a clash between two rival tribal bodies at Mandwai.

Police had arrested two youths in connection to Santanus murder case. But it is mere eyewash. Tripura police failed to properly investigate murder cases of minister, MLAs and bureaucrats earlier. So, we demand the state government hand over the murder case to the CBI for an impartial probe, said Subal Dey, veteran scribe and editor of a local newspaper Syandan Patrika. But he stressed that the murder should not be given any political colour.

Journalists associations even declared that they would approach the high court to ensure security of scribes during duty hours and would appeal to it for a CBI probe into Santanus murder if the state government rejects calls for such an investigation.

Seven different journalists organizations also condemned Santanus murder and held a peace rally in the state capital on Saturday evening followed by a meeting in front of Rabindra Shatabarshiki Bhawan.

A silent procession was organized by Agartala Press Club on Friday.

Read more: Journalist killed in violence between rival tribal wings in Tripura

BJP state president Biplab Deb had written to Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Friday asking him to send a team from his ministry immediately to visit various parts of the state. He also asked that the murder case be handed over to the CBI to unearth the truth.

BJP state in-charge Sunil Deodhar in his tweet blamed Chief Minister Manik Sarkar for not participating in Fridays procession to condemn the young journalists murder.

Hypocrisy at its best. Manik Sarkar joined Journalists protesting Gauri Lankesh murder, but failed to join them for santanu.@RakeshSinha01 pic.twitter.com/SeqM86aiTh  Sunil Deodhar (@Sunil_Deodhar) September 22, 2017

The government has suspended internet services since the night of September 20 to check communal tension following Santanus murder. Internet services are likely to remain suspended till Sunday midnight.
Declarations by UPs chief minister Yogi Adityanath and education minister Dinesh Sharma that students will be taught correct history have triggered a heated debate in the countrys most populous state.

The state government recently organised a first of its kind quiz in schools where students were mostly asked questions on saffron stalwarts and schemes of the Yogi and Modi governments. The state government has already ordered all universities to stock the entire works of saffron ideologue Deen Dayal Updhyaya.

Does that mean Updhyayas life and times will appear on history text books in UP? They must. He was a great leader whose concept of antyodaya and ekatma manavwad have the potential to energise and transform the entire country, said BJP leader Chandramohan.

In May, Adityanath had said his government was seeking suggestions to include forgotten personalities in textbooks. Raja Suheldev, a Pasi king from Bahraich could be one of them as BJP has repeatedly claimed that he had stopped Muslim invaders like Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masood, the nephew of Mahmood Ghazni, from carrying out loot and plunder.

Sharma describes the Mughal emperors, who in fact settled in India, as invaders and looters. Akbar took a few good decisions because of his Hindu minister Birbal. Shahjahan, widely described as a patron of arts and architecture and creator of Taj Mahal, also has a dark side. He was so cruel that he got the hands of those who built the Taj chopped off and this is never talked about, Sharma told HT.

Medieval India historian Harbans Mukhia has put the hand-chopping story in the realm of bazaar gossip, not historical fact.

Former UP governor Aziz Qureshi makes a different point. I had gone to Pakistan once and I discovered to my horror that important historical figures like Ashoka, the Marathas and Chandra Gupta Maurya, were missing from their history textbooks. I told my Pakistani friends that they would regret this for students there would develop a narrow, lopsided world view of history. I fear we too are treading the same path, he says.

Historian Prof Saleem Kidwai counters the view that the Mughal emperors were foreigners or invaders. He said, Except for Babur, many of the Mughal emperors like Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb married Rajput women, many had Rajput mothers and many were buried here too.

Kidwai says facts are indisputable and shouldnt be tampered with, a line that former UP minister Ammar Rizvi sticks to. What guarantee is there that the rewritten history wont be overwritten or restored again once a different political ideology replaces this one? History would be one roller coaster, witnessing mad swings and jerks with change of political power, says Rizvi.

History has always remained over and above religion and should stay that way, PK Ghosh, a retired professor of medieval and modern history told HT.
Four centuries ago, Mughal emperor Humayun stopped by, giving the village its name. Today, Shahanshahpur had another brush with fame when it hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The village, some 30km from Modis Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, has had its tryst with history.

Legend has it that the village was named after Shahanshah Humayun, who had taken shelter in the hut of an elderly woman here after his battle with Sher Shah Suri more than 450 years ago.

On Saturday, Shahanshahpur played host to Prime Minister Modi, who inaugurated the Pashu Arogya Mela, being organised for the first time in the village, on 1,800 acres.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacts with the people of Shahanshahpur on Saturday. (Photo: PIB)

The Prime Minister, who addressed a public meeting, also laid the foundation stone for a toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the village.

Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Minister of State for Rural Development Mahendra Singh and BJPs UP President Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present on the occasion.

The residents of the village take pride in the lore about the Mughal emperors visit.

The prime ministers visit has given the villagers a reason to relive the tale, said MLA Neelratan Patel Neelu of the Apna Dal (S), which is an ally of the BJP.

The story goes that Humayun reached the quiet village after crossing the Ganga late at night after Sher Shah Suri defeated him in the battle of Chausa.

That was when the elderly villager gave him shelter in her hut without knowing that her lodger was none other than Humayun, say locals.

Years later, when Humayuns soldiers succeeded in locating the village, the residents learnt who the overnight guest was.

After Humayun restored his rule, he sent his soldiers to say thanks to the elderly woman. Unfortunately, she was dead by then.

That was when their village -- till then known as Kalupur -- was named Shahanshahpur.
Deeg-Kumher legislator and state Congress senior vice president Vishvendra Singh on Saturday announced to launch a protest rally on December 25 to demand water for Bharartpur region.

People in large number will participate in the rally at the Lohagarh Stadium from where the agitation against the state government will be launched, said Singh, who earlier launched a campaign for job reservations for Jats.

After success in fighting for other backward classes reservation, the next agitation will be launched for water looking at the apathetic attitude of the ruling BJP towards the needs of the district, he said.

A Jan Chetna Yatra will be launched from the last week of September to spread awareness among the people of the district, he told Hindustan Times.

People from all castes, religions and farmers have been facing water crisis for a long time.

A much as 70-80% of groundwater in the district is saline and farmers have been demanding water from the Yamuna River from Haryana through the Gungaon canal since 1984, he said.

According to the May 12, 1994 water sharing pact between five states, including Rajasthan, Hariyana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh, states that 1,280 cusec of Yamuna water should be released for Bharatpur.

The water sharing pact between the Rajasthan and Hariyana governments states that the district should receive 500 cusec water every day through the Gurgaon canal from Haryana

The Ashok Gehlot government in 2013 inaugurated the  755 crore Chambal drinking water project at Mallah to provide water to villages of the district but the present government has failed to ensure that water from the Chambal reaches the people, Singh said.

The Chambal project was slated to be completed in two phases. In the first phase water was to be supplied to Deeg-Kumher, Bharatpur city and Nadbai, Rupwas, Weir and Bhusawar in the second phase.

Chief minister Vasundhara Raje visit a visit to Bharatpur four years back, assured to provide water to farmers.

Bharatpur and Alwar are under the National Capital Region The government has sanctioned 900 crore for Alwar in the last budget through various schemes but no budgetary allocation was sanctioned for Bharatpur.

Water can be supplied to western Rajasthan through the 750km-long Indira Gandhi Canal and from the Narmada River for Jalore and other districts.

The agitation will be to demand water from the Chambal drinking water project for the villages of the district and water from the Goverdhan canal and the Yamuna River through the Gungaon canal from Haryana.

Distribution of water from the Yamuna can be solved as the BJP is in power in Rajasthan and, Haryana. The government should ensure that farmers in the district get water from the Yamuna to irrigate their crops, Singh said.
Members of the Rajput Karni Sena burned posters of the upcoming movie Padmavati in Jaipur on Saturday and warned the makers of the film that they will not let the film release in Rajasthan unless its pre-screened to Rajput and Hindu outfits.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali had assured us that the film will be shown to us before its release. But till now, the movie hasnt been screened and the poster of the film has been unveiled, said Karni Sena Jaipur district president Narayan Divrala.

He added that the Rajput outfit wont let the film release in Rajasthan if facts are distorted in the film, which releases on December 1.

We wont let the film release unless we are certain that history is not distorted and theres nothing offensive against the Rajput and Hindu communities, said Divrala.

Karni Sena members had earlier vandalized the sets of Padmavati in Jaipur in January and allegedly manhandled its director Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Last time, Bhansali was slapped but this time if our demands are not met, things will get even worse, said Divrala.

Patron of the Sena, Lokendra Singh Kalvi told HT that if facts are distorted the films release will be stalled in half of India.

Around 25 days ago, I got a call from someone from Bhansali films who asked me if we wanted to see the film. I told the person to screen the film to our panel of historians and journalists, who will then take a call on it. Till now, they havent reverted, said Kalvi.

Kalvi added that Sena members are currently touring various states to ensure that history is not distorted in the film.
Over the past few months Bengal has been in the news for the scourge of fake doctors -- imposters who have treated patients for years at state-run institutions, private hospitals and personal chambers though they never attended a medical school. On Saturday, organisers of the prominent community Durga puja at Mohammad Ali Park added a somewhat divine dimension to the controversy by dressing up Mahishasura, the demon, as a doctor.

While the organisers claimed they were trying to raise public awareness against bogus doctors, associations of doctors pointed out that the words fake doctor were not written anywhere on the clay model or in the pandal.

The model showed a young man with a stethoscope and dressed in white apron taking money from patients.

Read: West Bengals top doctors turn out fakes, arrests blow lid off thriving scam

The puja at Mohammad Ali Park is one of the most popular community pujas in Kolkata. Based on arterial Central Avenue, this puja was first held in 1969.

This is an attempt to malign more than two lakh doctors in the state. This will send a wrong message to the people as well and break the trust they have in physicians. I talked to Rajeev Kumar, the commissioner of police, and said the idol should be removed immediately. The organisers much tender unconditional apology, West Bengal Medical Council chairman Dr Nirmal Maji told HT.

Read: West Bengal: CID launches statewide hunt to nab more fake doctors after arrest of three

Its unfortunate to say the least and we are condemning it outright. One can also think of taking legal steps. How can anyone think of maligning a noble profession in this manner, said Santanu Sen, secretary of the state chapter of Indian Medical Association. Some doctors threatened to complaint to the authorities against the puja organisers.

As the controversy grew, the puja organisers shielded the idol with a screen and put up a placard with the words work in progress.

Naren Pandey, who practised without having a medical degree, was arrested earlier this year. (Social Media)

We want to caution the people against fake doctors. How can any society tolerate them? This was the idea behind the depiction. Our work is not yet complete, said Dinesh Bajaj, chairman of the Mohammad Ali Park puja committee.

The inauguration of the puja is scheduled on Sunday. Bajaj said the organisers have nothing but respect for genuine doctors and contempt for the fake ones.

Read: With police too busy to crack down, fake doctors do brisk business in Delhi

On Saturday morning the doctors reacted when images of the asura were telecast by Bengali TV channels.

Fake doctors have been in the news fore more than a year. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested dozens of such doctors from across the state, while the authorities admit there could be hundreds more.

Significantly, along with the rest of the country, there is a growing distrust between common people and doctors, thanks to increasing cases of hospitals overcharging patients, conducting needless pathological tests and people dying because of negligence.

The situation reached such a point that on February 22 this year chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a meeting with the authorities of all prominent private hospitals and nursing homes in Bengal and pulled them up for overcharging and shoddy service. She also set up a health regulatory commission and encouraged aggrieved patients to lodge complaints. The meeting was telecast live. It added to public fury against doctors.
An FIR was lodged on Friday evening against Aligarh president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Mahila Morcha Sangeeta Varshney, who was seen repeatedly slapping a teenage girl, for dating a Muslim man, in a video that was widely shared on social media websites.

Sevendra Kumar, father of the 18-year-old victim Pooja, filed the complaint against Varshney.

Circle officer, Gandhi Park police station, Pankaj Srivastava, said, The victim's father complained against Sangeeta Varshney for beating up and threatening his daughter. We have lodged an FIR under sections 323 and 504 of the Indian Penal Code and have started the investigation.

The victims father said the incident adversely affected his daughter's reputation.

The law has not given any right to Sangeeta Varshney to beat up and threaten my daughter. This was a shameful act that caused damage to my daughters image and respect. I was hurt to see her getting slapped in that video. Action should be taken against all those who indulge in moral policing and threaten common people in the name of love jihad, said Sevendra Kumar.

In the video, Varshney was seen telling the girl, Have you no shame? You are a big girl and yet you do not know who is a Hindu and who is a Muslim?

The BJP leader later admitted to having slapped the girl. She said, I saw a couple surrounded by a crowd. People told me that the Hindu girl and a Muslim man were trying to run away. I found it to be a case of love jihad. I took the girl to an ice-cream parlour to speak to her.

However, women activists took a grim view of Varshneys arguments and actions. Activist Kalpana Gupta wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, urging him to stop moral policing by organisations such as BJP Mahila Morcha, Hindu Yuva Vahini and Hindu Jagran Manch.

Earlier, police had registered a case against the Muslim man who was seen with Pooja. He was charged under IPC section 294 (indulging in obscene act in a public place), but was granted bail.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday watched veterinary doctors perform a surgery on a bull in Varanasi to remove polythene from the animals rumen.

A team of veterinary experts, headed by principal scientist Dr Amarpal from the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) in Bareilly, removed polythene from the stomach of a bull that was brought to Pashudhan Arogya fair by its owner Raghvendra Singh on Friday.

The Prime Minister went to the stall where veterinary doctors were conducting the surgery and stayed there for about 10 minutes. The surgery lasted about two hours.

The farmer brought his bull to the fair and informed our team that it had stopped eating fodder and was losing weight. Dr Abhijit Pawade and I examined the bull and diagnosed it with critical rumen impaction (a condition which results from accumulation of indigestible material in the stomach), Dr Amarpal said.

We decided to carry out surgery to remove polythene. The surgery gave a lot of relief to the animal, he said.

Modi spoke to the farmer and wanted to know the reason that caused the infection in bull. The farmer told the PM that the bull had consumed polythene.

Cleanliness campaign will help in checking infection among the cattle, Dr Amarpal said and appealed to the people not to dump polythene on the streets.

He said there was no medicine to dissolve polythene in the rumen of the cattle. The only way to prevent impaction is to keep polythene at a bay, he said.

People should understand that the cattle dont know what is good or bad for their health. They eat whatever they find. Everyone should resolve to ensure proper disposal of polythene, Dr Pawade said.

He added that the PMs cleanliness mission was very useful.
The first day of college is a lonely, scary experience for most kids. For those from alternative schools, its the beginning of a different way of life.

Just the sight of a class of 80 students where no one bothered to listen to the teacher made me feel so uncomfortable. Here were just faces, barely even names, says Aryaman Jal from Andhra Pradesh.

I noticed that people were getting irritated when I asked questions in class. I had to stop, says Kunal Lalchandani from Ahmedabad.

My confidence took a dip. Its different to speak among six children and suddenly have to open up among 35, says Rohan Jain from Delhi.

Feeling alone in a crowd; classmates who think theyre strange; teachers who seem distant and want them to stick to the script  these emerged as their most common concerns, when we spoke to kids from alternative schools who have moved into the mainstream.

Its a culture shock that the parents and schools have known was coming, and in many cases there are organised efforts to prepare the youngsters in their last year at the alternative school.

These institutes  places like Mirambika Free Progress in Delhi; Tridha in Mumbai; Riverside and Eklavya in Ahmedabad; Rishi Valley in Andhra Pradesh  have flexible curricula and timetables; classes as small as six and eight; teachers who visit each students home; a practical approach to learning that includes camping trips to study the constellations.

When we were learning about Indias medieval history, we decided to cover the class in a mud floor just to see what it was like, says Akshay Menon, a former Tridha student. Moving from such schools to the rush and bustle of college, the first casualties are personalised attention and the freedom to choose. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

Student from alternative schools are used to speaking their minds, and this can be perceived as an attitude problem, says Gita Bhalla, associate director of the V Excel Educational Trust.

When we were learning about Indias medieval history, we decided to cover the class in a mud floor just to see what it was like, says Akshay Menon, a former Tridha student.

Moving from these schools to the rush and bustle of college, the first casualties are personalised attention and the freedom to choose.

These students are so used to personal attention, pursuing what they like, doing things that make them happy, that following the rat race in conventional education can make them feel lost in a crowd, says Dr Samir Dalwai, developmental pediatrician and director of New Horizons Child Development Centre.

Student from alternative schools are also used to having an opinion and speaking their minds, and this can be perceived as an attitude problem, adds Gita Bhalla, associate director of the V Excel Educational Trust that runs the Ira Institution for Learning, which trains teachers for alternative schools.

The students too can develop an I dont care attitude towards their new school or college, she adds.

The good news is that the worst of the turbulence last, on average, a year or two. They are used to a community, but will eventually come to terms with the more formal systems because they are still young and flexible when they make the shift, says Dr Dalwai.

The bad news is that most of them face this additional challenge at a time that is already very confusing  teenage.

On the upside, most already know what they want to do because their schools taught them to discover and build upon what they like, says Dr Dalwai.

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College feels constricting, stressful

Kunal Lalchandani went to Ahmedabads Riverside alternative school. There, they did everything in small groups. In college, he says, most students are looking for or already have that one best friend. It gets stressful to feel like Ive been thrown into a crowd of people I meet every day but dont know, he says. (Satish Bate / HT Photo)

After studying at Ahmedabads Riverside alternative school since Class 1, Kunal Lalchandani is finding college quite an inhibiting experience.

I soon realised it was all about the rules. There are rules for attendance, penalties for not attending things you dont like, says Lalchandani, 21, who is now studying Business Administration in Mumbai. Anything not in the rules, no one cares about. Then it becomes about passing the buck  everyone thinks its the peons job to switch off fans and lights, upright toppled dustbins I cant come to terms with this approach.

In his school, each class had 25 children, four students to a table. Teachers used ice-cream sticks to teach addition and subtraction.

The children looked happy and teachers smiled, Kunal says. We didnt rote-learn formulae, but understood the why behind everything. The school focused on producing human beings, not rankers.

Encouraged to ask questions in school, in college that has had to stop. I noticed that people were getting irritated.

In a class of 60, teachers dont have as much of a bond with each student either.

Interestingly, where he was once used to doing everything in a small group, he is now finding that most students are looking for or already have that one best friend.

It gets stressful to feel like Ive been thrown into a crowd of people I meet every day but dont know anything about, he says.

For his mother, Kiran, who moved him from a conventional school so that he would be able to grow up as an individual, these feel like teething problems and part of the price to be paid for that opportunity.

Hell learn to adjust; everyone does eventually, she says. Its definitely been worth it overall. Hes been away from home and never complained about homesickness. He is always praised for how confident he is. These are a childs real achievements, not degrees and marks, and alternative schools help you get there.

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My classmates think Im strange

Trisha Salvi studied at the Tridha alternative school in Mumbai. Now an architecture student, she is still struggling with the hectic pace, long hours and stringent deadlines. It makes me wonder, sometimes, if this is how its going to be when I start working. My peers, theyre used to this grind, this amount of homework and exam pressure. They seem able to deal with the stress much better, she says. (Satish Bate / HT Photo)

Trisha Salvis alternative school, Tridha, had customised desks and a library in each class. It taught her how to stitch, and how to plant, tend and pick vegetables. She learnt about the constellations while camping under the stars.

Now in her fourth year of architecture, she says its been a challenge adjusting to a conventional classroom.

It feels like a one-way process, teachers coming in, teaching, leaving and children reproducing their words on paper, says Trisha, 22. In a class of 40, only about two children ask questions and I happen to be one of them, so the others think Im strange.

On the upside, all the questions have helped her build a good rapport with her teachers. Some of my classmates seem to have a problem with that too they seem to think that the teachers are biased towards me when thats not the case at all  were just talking, she says.

The pace is a lot more hectic than shes used to too. The long hours and stringent deadlines make me wonder, sometimes, if I am ready for this kind of lifestyle and if this is how it is going to be when I start working, she says.

My peers, theyre used to this grind, this amount of homework and exam pressure. They seem able to deal with the stress much better.

Trishas mother, Rutuja, says they knew this time would come  a period of adjustment that would be relatively difficult  but the joy her daughter knew at Tridha mattered more.

Anyway, how long can institutions promise personal attention? You grow up and learn to deal with situations on your own, and she will learn to do that too, Rujuta says.

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Age and designation are not barriers to me

Rohit Jain had to move from his alternative school in Delhi, Mirambika, in Class 8. At the new school, everyone sat in rows, wearing uniforms. It all felt so alien, he says. Now working with a non-profit, he says his years at Mirambika taught him to befriend seniors and not be intimidated by age or experience. (Parveen Kumar / HT Photo)

At Mirambika Free Progress School, Delhi, there were no textbooks, uniforms or desks arranged in rows. An English class could just be each student talking about what they were reading.

I remember talking about Charles Dickens in English classes, says Rohan Jain, now 26. He had to shift to another school mid-way, though, because Mirambika then ended at Class 8.

The new school was a different world  everyone sitting in rows, wearing uniforms. It all felt so alien, Jain says. Children asked for permission to enter the class. I thought that was really odd. Why would you need to ask to enter a space that is yours?

I was told class participation was important, but its different to speak among six children and suddenly open up among 35.

He hadnt expected it, but his confidence took a bit of dip too, in the middle of so many students per class, all of whom knew the system better than he did.

I was told class participation is important, but its different to speak among six children and suddenly open up among 35, he says. I was asking a lot of questions, but all the other kids were focused on answering as they had been taught to.

Jain now works as manager of the innovations and exponential impact team at Charities Aid Foundation India, a non-profit organisation that connects donors with charities and helps companies utilise their CSR budgets effectively.

The fact that he thinks differently is still noticed all the time, sometimes positively and occasionally negatively too.

When I joined, I advised the company to reuse the runoff from an RO machine, he says. I know people were surprised, but Im glad I could think about it when nobody else had and its these small things that tell people that a person is different.

I think I feel the difference every day, he adds. I am confident and outgoing and I find it easier to speak with seniors because thats the way we were moulded in at Mirambika. With classes of just six kids, we were always making friends with seniors, so age and designation are not barriers to me.

I had to stop caring, think of normal school as a stepping stone

At the Eklavya school in Ahmedabad, teachers would visit each students house; kids would make duck ponds and tree houses on the schools massive grounds; some classes were held in the surrounding forest.

We were so close to our teachers that they could always tell if something was wrong, says Sheel Parekh, now 26 and an interior designer.

Since she loved to draw, she decided to pursue design at a college in Ahmedabad, and in preparation switched to a state board school for Classes 11 and 12.

There was no campus and no place to play sports. The teachers didnt really know the students, she says. The students were so used to mugging that I became afraid to ask questions and I didnt know how I should go about writing the exams.

A few months in, she says she just stopped caring. I was there only to get a get a passing certificate. For me, my only school will be Eklavya. It pushed me to pursue my passion and understood my love for art even before I did.

Thankfully, the design college at CEPT University was a better experience.

I was doing what I had always wanted to do, says Parekh. And it was a bit like Eklavya, where we were just 30 students per class. She began to make friends with teachers and seniors, thanks to the confidence she says she had gained in school. Today, I am doing what I love for a living, and its all because of the school I went to, she says.

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HISTORY: Dhirubhai Ambani International School is a K-12 school established in 2003.

UNIQUE FEATURES: The school emphasises on professional development opportunities for staff and participates in international teacher exchange programmes. From class 3 onwards, students participate in a wide range of community service programmes.

Highest ratings in: Educational philosophy, attitude towards learning, Breadth of vision

Board: ICSE, IGCSE (Class 10); IBDP (Class 12)

Annual Fee: LKG - Class 4: Rs 2.05 L; Class 5 - 7: Rs 2.1 L; ICSE - Class 8-10 Rs 2.3 L; IGCSE - Class 8-10 : Rs 5.9 L; IBDP - Class 11-12: Rs 9.65 L

Students: 1,075

Student-Teacher Ratio: 7:1

Quote

Receiving this recognition again is truly a tribute to our constant emphasis on childrens well-being and all-round development and our commitment to making learning a happy experience for them.

NITA M AMBANI, founder and chairperson
When the proposed development plan (DP) was released last year, the Archdiocese of Bombay raised objections to the status of 90 churches in Mumbai, saying they had been wrongly marked.

However, when the civic body released its modifications to the plan on its website on September 8, Godfrey Pimenta, trustee of Watchdog Foundation, found that only 28 changes had been made. Now, only 23 of these religious places have been marked. As many as 34 have not even found a mention in the DP.

The authorities have not carried out a proper inspection, despite our objections. I plan to file a public interest litigation in the high court regarding this soon, he said.

Authorities of St Francis Xaviers church, Vile Parle, had objected to the church being marked as a primary school in the proposed development plan (DP) a year ago. They said the authorities assured them that their request would be taken into consideration. We received an acknowledgment letter after we presented our objection to the planning committee. They said the situation would be rectified. However, we havent received an update yet, said Fr Savio DSouza, parish priest.

The church was marked as an orphanage in proposed DP 2015, then marked as a school in the proposed DP 2016 and has been marked to an orphanage yet. This is because it shares its compound with Shishu Bhawan, which is run by Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity, and Xaviers High School and Junior College.

The discrepancies are not limited to just one church  Our Lady of Perpetual Succor at Chembur has been marked as St Anthony Church after the modification.

Officials associated with the DP told HT that as the plan has not yet been finalised, there was scope for the government to examine these objections and make changes. The DP is not a tourist map. Places marked in it are based on utility. When it comes to religious places, the committee takes a call on it depending on whether they are a part of our heritage list, said an official.
To seek revenge from his brother, a 38-year-old man kidnapped and strangled his five-year-old nephew to death near a swamp at Wadala TT, said the Mumbai police.

The unit IV of the crime branch arrested Usiullah Shaikh from Shanti Nagar near his residence, just 11 hours after Tauseef was found dead on Friday morning.

Usiullah lived with his brother Naushad, who owned a tailoring workshop. According to the police, they had a fight over monetary issues a few days ago, which led Naushad to fire his brother. Insulted, Usiullah decided to kidnap his nephew to seek revenge, an officer said.

After the childs body was found, the crime branch CCTV cameras and found a man clad a lungi was taking Tauseef somewhere. Locals residents told the police that the man resembled Usiullah.

We nabbed Usiullah from the area where he was loitering. Upon searching his belongings, we found the same lungi. He was arrested on the charges of kidnapping and murder. He confessed to the crime, said the officer.

Naushad, who is devastated by the death of his son, said that on Thursday after attending school, Tauseef had come home at 6pm along with his eight-year-old sister, who goes to the Mhada municipal school in Wadala. After coming home, Tauseef went out to play. When he did not return even after at 8pm, we panicked and searched for him. The entire locality was trying to find him and even the mosque made announcements. But we could not find him, said Naushad.

After a brief search Naushad went to the Wadala TT police station and registered a complaint. In the morning a few men who had gone relieve themselves at the swamp near the Madina mosque in Shanti Nagar informed us that they had seen a childs body there. We ran at the spot and found Tauseef lying dead there. The police arrived and sent the body to the Sion Hospital for a post-mortem, said Naushad.
The family of a 26-year old from Navi Mumbai, who was declared brain-dead on Saturday after an accident, donated his heart, kidneys and liver which helped saved lives of four end-stage organ failure patients in the city.

His corneas were also transplanted into two patients.

This was the 51st cadaver donation this year, according to data by the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee, a non-governmental organisation that facilitates organ donation between donors and recipients.

Lokesh Gholap, an engineer working at a private company in Navi Mumbai, had met with a road accident on Thane Belapur road on Thursday. Gholap, a resident of Kalamboli, was taken to a local hospital but was later shifted to Apollo Hospital, Navi Mumbai. On Saturday, doctors declared him brain dead. In spite of treatment, he did not recover and was declared brain-dead, said a doctor from the hospital.

The family consented to donate all organs, after they were counselled by hospital officials.

We counselled his family members and the organ retrieval process was started. Now his heart, liver, kidneys and corneas are giving new lease of life to six people, said Satish Manjunath, an administrative official from the hospital.

The kidneys were transplanted into a 38-year-old man, who was admitted at the same hospital, and another patient at PD Hinduja Hospital in Mahim.

The liver was harvested for to a 52-year old man who was being treated at Apollo.

The heart of the patient was sent to Fortis Hospital in Mulund. We handed over the body to his family members, said Manjunath.
A 53-year-old senior officer of the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporations (KDMC) accounts department is suspected to succumbed to dengue on Friday night, making it the first such case in Ambernath this year.

Shweta Singhasane, a resident of Shivaji Nagar in Ambernath was admitted to a private hospital in Kalyan on Wednesday after a severe illness. Sources said she had consulted a doctor in Ambernath a few days ago.

We have collected Singhasanes medical reports and will form a committee to determine if she succumbed to dengue. If so, this is the first such incident this year, said Asha Raibole, medical officer, Ambernath Municipal Corporation (AMC).

Last year, two Ambernath residents were suspected to have died of dengue. The civic body, however, confirmed that only one succumbed to the mosquito-borne viral disease.

I have asked the officers to visit the area and take steps to curb mosquito breeding. I have also asked them raise awareness about dengue among residents, she added.

Singhasanes death has prompted the KDMCs health department to check whether there are mosquito breeding spots in the civic bodys headquarters. I have instructed the chief medical officer to inform the Ambernath medical officer to take action. She has also inspected the accounts departments office to rule out the possibility of Singhasane having been bitten there, said P Velarasu, KDMC commissioner.

Smita Rode,chief medical officer, KDMC, said there were no larvae or mosquitoes at Singhasanes office.

In March 2016, four-year-old Nishant Vijay Brahmane from Sagarli in Dombivli died of dengue. Following this, the health department deployed teams to inspect the area.

Residents had complained that water logging and haphazardly dumped waste were contributing to the breeding of mosquitoes.

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Activist Anjali Damania filed a complaint on Saturday after she received a threat call late in the night from a Pakistan-based number identified as Dawood 2 on Truecaller app, asking her to withdraw all cases she had filed against senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse.

Damania had filed a case against Khadse for using sexist slur in reference to her in a public speech made by him. She has also filed a PIL against the BJP leader in a disproportionate assets case in the Mumbai high court.

Damania told HT that she had received a call at around 12.30 last night and was asked to take back all cases filed against Khadse or face consequences.

The phone call was made from a landlines number with Karachi city code. The complaint, filed under sections 507 and 506 of the IPC, has noted the number as +922135871719. Numbers from Pakistan start with the ISD code +92.

Damania tweeted that the number was listed in the name of Dawood 2 in the caller identification app, Truecaller.

Dawood Ibrahim is Indias most wanted criminal, who is known for running mafia in Mumbai and is an accused in several cases of murder, extortion, drug trafficking and terrorism, besides the 1993 bomb blasts in the city. He is currently said to be living in Pakistan.

Its very disturbing to receive such a threat call. I have informed the chief minister of the call. And Joint CP, crime has been asked to look into the issue. The number was traced to Pakistan, listed in the name of Dawood 2, said Damania.

The call recorded by her (an audio clip is with HT) has a male caller asking her to take back all cases against Khadse otherwise he would make her life miserable.

The caller said that he knows she has family and added that she was making things difficult for many people.
To help his girlfriend, a 16-year-old boy from Gujarat staged his kidnapping and demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh from his father, said the Mumbai police.

He has been living at his maternal grandfathers house in Sakinaka for one-and-a-half months. The police said he wanted to help his girlfriend and her family at Talasari in Palghar. He planned to live with her after getting the ransom money. The boy recently completed his Class 12 (commerce) . His father is a government employee in Gujarat.

On Friday, the teenager went missing from his uncles Sakinaka residence at 12.15 pm. Four hours later, his father received a call from a person who claimed to have kidnapped his son.

The kidnapper demanded Rs 50 lakh from the father and told him to deliver the money at Manor in Palghar. The caller also threatened to kill the boy if the family approached the police, said a crime branch officer.

The boys maternal uncle approached the Sakinaka police immediately and registered a case of kidnapping. While the police were investigating the case, 10 sleuths from the crime branch unit also started probing it.

The police traced the call and found that it was from a lodge called Laxmi Residency in Manor, said officials. The crime branch team reached the spot and found the teenager with his 19-year-old childhood friend, who allegedly called the family. The duo spilled the beans on their kidnapping bid and confessed to have staged it, said officials.

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A United States-based scientific organisation blocked access for students and researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) to its journal, after a student was allegedly found to have downloaded a large number of papers from their website.

The American Physical Society (APS) restored access after a couple of days, following a request by the institute to the publisher. Meanwhile, the institute has launched an investigation into the incident, even though the student, who is from IIT-B's electrical department, has denied any wrongdoing, revealed sources.

Though IIT-B did not give details about the date of the incident, sources said that it happened around two weeks ago.

Colleges subscribe to various academic journals to help students with their research work. While the students are allowed to access these journals online and download papers published in them, the publishers usually put restrictions on the number of downloads to prevent distribution of these papers to non-subscribers.

IIT-B also has a policy in place regarding usage of online content.

The APS journal has been described as a lifeline for researchers of many departments. The librarian of the institute had to plead with the publishers, before the access was finally restored, HT has learnt.

Varsha Apte, the head of IIT-Bs computer centre, said that as soon as the institute learnt about violation of its policy, it suspended the online account of the erring student, and a probe was launched to look into the incident. The abuse of the journal facility took place from within the campus, she said.

When the authorities confronted, the student insisted that he is innocent. Apte, nevertheless, has taken all the information regarding his mobile and laptop for further investigation.

A large number of downloads by a student often suggests that its being done for the purpose of illegally distributing to researchers outside the campus. The students sometimes download the papers from journals in IIT-B for their friends who dont have access to these publications. They either do it manually or use computer programmes designed for mass downloads. Theres a possibility that these papers could have been freely made available on online portals, said PhD scholar from the institute.

One of the famous cases of unauthorised downloading of academic articles involved internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in 2013. Swartz had connected a computer to the computer network at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, and set it to download academic journal articles systematically using a guest user account issued to him by MIT.

Earlier this year, a New York district court awarded a publisher of scientific journals US$15 million in damages for copyright infringement by several websites publishing pirated papers.

Apte said that the publishers raise a flag when they detect unusually high rate of downloads from a particular account. When the publishers find that the rate downloads has crossed a particular limit, they suspect that the student is doing it for someone else, and not for his own reading, she said.

In April, IIT-B was served a notice from a major proprietary software developer because many people inside the institute were using its software in an unauthorised manner.

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Two men allegedly gang-raped a 25-year-old-woman near the Raj Nagar Extension in Ghaziabad when she was returning home from a hospital where works as a nurse, police said on Saturday.

Friday nights incident is the latest sexual assault on women in the National Capital Region (NCR), where one rape case is reported every four hours.

Police said the woman was dragged into roadside bushes near the NH-58 when the two yet-to-be identified men allegedly took turns raping and assaulting her. They also snatched her mobile phone and filmed the assault.

The woman is admitted to a private hospital with injuries on face and other body parts.

While on the way back home, she saw two men following her on the isolated road. She tried calling up her family but the call did not go through. The two unidentified men stopped following her when they saw her on the phone...Moments later, they reappeared and pulled her to nearby fields, said RS Khoda, the station house officer of the Sihani Gate police station.

The incident took at around 10 pm place barely 200 metres from the locality where the woman lives. It was raining heavily when the assault took place, police added.

She told that initially she thought that the two men were robbers and were trying to snatch her mobile. She handed over the mobile but one of them pulled her hair while the other slapped and punched her multiple times, said an officer investigating the case.

She said both were drunk and called each other with names while in a hurry to leave the scene of the crime. We picked up one person with similar name. He was a previous accused in a rape case. But the man was not identified by the victim, the officer said.

Police sources said that the two men were aged around 22-23 years and unknown to the woman.

The incident also highlights police failure to secure an area where similar incidents have been reported in the past. In February last year, 24-year-old woman, then an executive with e-commerce firm Snapdeal, was allegedly abducted by five men from near the Hindon river and taken to the same isolated stretch near Raj Nagar Extension before taking her to Haryana. She was later released unharmed.

Ghaziabad police said several teams from the crime branch and special operation group have joined the investigations and in search for the accused.

We are also scanning the nearby CCTVs and taking help from local informers. The guilty will be brought to book, said HN singh, senior superintendent of police, Ghaziabad.

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Thanks to the efforts of police in Purnia, a town in north-eastern Bihar, as many as 52 helpless girls are able to dream big.

Giving wings to their dreams is Meri Pathshala, a Purnia police initiative that aims to educate disadvantaged girls lodged in shelter homes run by NGOs.

Kalpna (name changed), a 17-year-old girl from Jammu and Kashmir, was staring at a bleak future when she was rescued from the clutches of a migrant labourer in Purnia district early this year.

More than six months after, she feels at home pursuing her education quite enthusiastically at a home run by Nari Gunjan.

Another girl, Rashmi (name changed), too has shown extraordinary talents in picking up numbers.

They want to become financially independent after completing their studies.

Sudha Varghese, secretary of Nari Gunjan, thanks the police for its initiative to create interest in education among the inmates of the NGOs Purnia centre.

Education empowers human beings and I am really very happy seeing police officials so much enthusiastic about providing education to these special children, she said.

When I made a call to Purnia superintendent of police Nishant Tiwary, he immediately offered all support, Varghese told HT. Police officials will not only teach these girls at the Nari Gunjan centre, but also provide them reading and writing materials, the Padma Shri recipient social worker said.

We want these girls to become financially independent, and for this we will impart them skill development training, Varghese said.

Tiwary, who inaugurated the Meri Pathshala unit at Nari Gunjan, said police officials, preferably women, would visit the NGO centre every day and teach the girls for two hours between 12 noon and 2 pm.

Police are supposed to maintain law and order. But we want to do something more. Hence, as part of the Meri Pathshala initiative, police officials are assigned duty to teach children at remote places where people are still not taking much interest in educating their wards. So far Meri Pathshala is being run by Purnia police at six places in the district, he said.

After these children become well conversant with letters and numbers, they will be enrolled in government schools, the SP said.
Union minister Jayant Sinha on Friday said all airlines operating in Chandigarh want to run more long-distance and low-cost international flights from here.

Indigo, Air Asia and Spicejet are looking at expanding their operations, but they need to show me the money, said the minister of state for civil aviation, while promising to encourage the airlines. Sinha was speaking at the 15th edition of the Indian School of Business Leadership Summit, inaugurated by Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu.

Chandigarh will soon find more frequency of international flights, said Sinha. The airlines also want to work on the long-haul and low-cost model, which will help bring the fares down.

The airlines also want to work on the long-haul and low-cost model, which will help bring the fares down.

Quoting experts, he said the model will bring the cost of a round trip to London down from Rs 40,000-50,000 to Rs 25,000.

We are working on this revolution, he further said.

Will give whatever facility needed

Speaking to the media, Sinha said starting night operations at the Chandigarh airport depends on the demand. As flights increase, we will give whatever facility is required, including night hours, he said. On the airport naming row, he said whether it should be named after Mohali or Chandigarh is to be agreed upon by Punjab and Haryana governments.

They need to cooperate on this issue and then we will fulfil that agreement, he said.

Regional hub of air connectivity

Sinha said the Centre wants to make Chandigarh a hub of regional air connectivity, from where airlines can operate flights to smaller towns and cities. As flights increase, we feel smaller cities like Pathankot, Jammu, Srinagar and Shimla can get connected from Chandigarh, he said. We are encouraging (operating) smaller aircrafts like nine-seater, 19-seater and even helicopters to smaller towns.

Notably, with the regional connectivity scheme UDAN, the government aims at connecting 45 unserved and under-served airports and make flying affordable by capping fares at Rs 2,500 for half of the seats in one-hour flights.

With PTI inputs

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Not this one! I had not thought that I would have to write this obituary. One does not write obituaries to contemporaries one has shared the working space with even if one is a seasoned Rudali (tear-shedder) of sorts. KJ, as he was known, not Karan Jeet that was his full name, was a newsman par excellence, an avid reader and a lover of western music. The first line that came to the mind was from a famous song of the 70s, our seasons in the sun, sung by Terry Jacks: Goodbye my friend its hard to die/ When all the birds are singing in the skies!

The 63-year-old brave news editor with immense talent was brutally murdered with his 92-year-old mother, Gurcharan Kaur, at their home in Mohali.

As the news of this violence spread like wild fire in media circles, sorrowful messages started pouring in. His contemporary and rival, as far as editing expertise went, in Indian Express, Chandigarh, AVS Namboodiri, former editor of Deccan Herald in Bangalore, wrote: Very upsetting. How could one imagine such a thing could happen? Still more terrible to think how he must have reacted to it. RIP, my friend.

In a post accompanying this image on his Facebook post, KJ Singh wrote in tribute to a friend, At one of his shows, I was caught unawares when Prabal Pramanik, who died a few days ago, walked up and presented me with a cutout of my face on green paper. This is for you as one of my first visitors, he said. I must have entered the room less than a couple of minutes earlier! Electric scissorhands he was.

KJ and Namboodiri had joined the Indian Express in Chandigarh a few months after I joined it as trainee sub-editor way back in 1977. The Express had opened its office in the city once the Emergency was lifted and many cases withdrawn against the legendary RN Goenka. Then editor Prem Bhatia of the mighty Tribune group dismissed our paper as The rag across the street! Yet the rag across the street was to nurture many a young talent such as Shekhar Gupta, Vipin Pubby, Pradeep Magazine, Vijaya Pushkarna nee Krishnamurthy, Jagtar Singh, Sanjeev Gaur, Kishwar Desai nee Rosha, just to name a few.

Vijaya, a senior editor with The Week in Delhi, recalls thus those times and KJ, the cultured and aesthetic man on the U-shaped desk: From the beginning, during our very young days, KJ was a quiet and soft-spoken man, who kept to his work, a gentleman. In fact, I remember the two of us sitting on the rusty chairs of the canteen behind the old office at 186-B, having chai that is now called cutting chai. Most often, he listened and I chatted and chatted. And he paid for the tea! Never any gossip from office or city that I could trace back to him! He was so gentle, polished, refined....cant imagine anyone would want to kill him!

KJ with a colleague at the Indian Express office in Chandigarh in this undated photo from the 1984-86 period. (Facebook)

The handsome KJ did have a glad eye for the pretty girl trainees in the office and he once confessed to me that he was going to buy a solitaire for a charming Bengali girl whom he was befriending. But this was never to happen as he always fled last minute. His personal life was a mystery and he guarded it fiercely. Even his close buddies never went beyond the drawing room of his home. A loner he remained but never short of humour and repartee.

Vipin Pubby, former resident editor, The Indian Express, Chandigarh, recounted: He was a moderate drinker and so was I. The first time he invited me to split a bottle of beer with him and the joke between us always was lets split a bottle of beer.

KJ was news editor for The Times of India and The Tribune in Chandigarh but his glorious years were with the Express.

All who worked with him are unanimous in praising his professional competence. He played a key role in shaping Chandigarh Newsline when Express launched it in 1994, the city pullout proved to be a game-changer in journalism. Newsman Jagtar recalls when in June 1981, then Express editor VN Narayanan assigned him to interview Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The story titled Martyr in search of martyrdom was to go on a page that KJ handled. KJ called me and asked why give so much space to the man?

Veteran journalist Gobind Thukral recalls KJ as, One of the most competent editors with a feel for news and conscientious of his work. We met less in the past few years. He was devoted to his mother and took great care of her.

Ah! KJ, it is hard even to say goodbye.
Four humans on one bed. This is a common scene at the overcrowded gynaecology ward of Government Multi-Speciality Hospital, Sector 16, where two mothers share one bed with their new-born babies.

The hospital stay is one of the most horrifying experiences for these mothers, who are in immense pain both before and after the delivery. Strapped for space, they find it difficult to sleep for the fear of squashing their babies, and one of them at the other side of the bed doesnt even have the comfort of resting her back against the bed rest.

The labour room at GMSH-16 has a total of 20 beds and the number of women ready to deliver at any given point is usually between 40 and 60. This means 2-3 women have to share one bed. At times, mothers can be seen sprawled on the floor as well. Doctors say they are admitting double the number of patients they can handle as hospitals in the periphery are quick to refer their patients to this hospital.

Nothing has changed in this ward in the last 20 years. I had shared a bed when I delivered a baby here 20 years ago. Today, my sister is also sharing a bed with another woman. This shows the sad state of hospital infrastructure in Chandigarh, lamented Sarabjit Kaur from Zirakpur.

She was sitting next to her sister, Satnam Kaur, who was squeezed in one corner of the bed with her newborn.

Nothing has changed in this ward in the last 20 years. I had shared a bed when I delivered a baby here 20 years ago. Today, my sister is also sharing a bed with another woman.

On the other corner, Rani Sharma was sitting without any back-support and feeding her baby boy. She said, It was a nightmare. I was in terrible pain, yet I could not move because another pregnant woman was lying next to me.

Further, while I was waiting in the labour room, two women delivered babies on beds as doctors were busy attending to other cases. It scared me further, she said. Post-delivery, Rani was moved to another ward but here again she and her child had to share a bed.

The health officials say the patient load has increased manifold, whereas the infrastructure remains the same. They blame poor health facilities in the periphery and adjoining states, which add to the burden on the citys government hospitals.

14,192 deliveries in 2016

In 2016, a total of 14,192 deliveries were registered in four government hospitals, namely, GMSH-16, civil hospitals in Manimajra, Sector 22 and Sector 45. Out of the total, only 8,280 cases were from Chandigarh, while the rest 5,912 were from the adjoining states.

If the hospitals in the periphery improve their working, our work will become much easier and we will be able to provide better patient care.

At over 4000 cases last year, Punjab sends the maximum number of delivery cases to Chandigarh hospitals. It is followed by Haryana and Himachal Pradesh with 597 and 425 cases, respectively.

Dr Vandana Gupta, Medical Superintendent, GMSH-16, said, If the hospitals in the periphery improve their working, our work will become much easier and we will be able to provide better patient care.

Every evening, Chandigarh hospitals witness a deluge of referral cases from periphery, including Dera Bassi, Mohali, Landran, Kharar, Zirakpur. Why dont they perform Caesarians in the evenings? asked the doctor.

Corroborating her, a gynaecologist from the hospital said, The number of patients increases during the evenings, nights, and weekends. Some of the cases are such that they can be easily dealt with in the periphery hospitals.

The work load must be shared by other hospitals, she insisted.

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A day after various farmer unions began their protest on the outskirts of Patiala alleging that the governments debt waiver scheme would benefit only a small section of the farming community, Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh warned farmer unions against misleading farmers on the scheme.

In a statement, the CM said baseless charges were being made against his government by politically-motivated farmer leaders at the behest of some political parties. Urging them to stop misleading farmers with false statements on the issue, he said, The process has already been initiated by the government in right earnest. It will be notified soon following the cabinet approval. It will benefit 10.25 lakh of the 13 lakh farming families who have taken loans. This constitutes nearly 80% of the borrowers in the farming community, which has a total of 17 lakh plus families.

Urging farmers not to be incited by the claims and allegations of farmer unions, he said contrary to what they are trying to project, the loan waiver scheme would positively impact small and marginal farmers, leaving out only the big farmers, who would be covered in the next phase.

The loan waiver amount announced by our government is also way above that announced by other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka, despite the fact that Punjab is in a worse financial condition. The Punjab government has also decided to take over the interest of the affected farmers with retrospective effect, he said.

Amarinder also cited media reports pointing to loan waivers as low as one paise in UP.

He said officials concerned have been working closely with the banks, since the farm loan waiver scheme was announced in June to prepare detailed lists of farmers and their loan amounts to be covered in the first phase.
Senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother Gurcharan Kaur were found murdered at their house in the heart of Mohali on Saturday afternoon.

Mohali senior superintendent police Kuldeep Chahal confirmed the double murder in Phase 3B2 and said the motive was being investigated.

Police said KJ Singh was first stabbed in the stomach as he opened the door to the assailant. The trail of blood led to the room where he was found dead. After that his throat was slit.

His mother, Gurcharan Kaur, who was bedridden, was strangulated to death.

Singh, a bachelor, was a former news editor of the Indian Express, The Times of India and The Tribune in Chandigarh.

The murder came to light around 1pm when KJ Singhs sister Yashpal Kaur and her son, Ajay Pal, a staffer with The Times of India, came with lunch for the two. They found the main door with blood stains bolted from outside.

The police said Singhs part-time house help, Rekha, rang the bell at 9am as usual but returned from the gate when no one answered it. She came back an hour later but left without entering the house.

Singhs green Ford Ikon car and an LED TV are missing.

The senior journalist, who was freelancing for a Canadian magazine, had a studio with recording equipment in the house. The police are yet to ascertain if anything is missing from the studio.

The police are scanning CCTV footage from a camera installed two houses away.

Police sources said KJ Singh had last talked to his elder brother, who stays in Chandigarh, on Friday evening. They said the murder appears to be the handiwork of more than one person.

The incident has left the media fraternity of Chandigarh and residents of the area shocked.

SIT formed

On directive from Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, police set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the double murder.

Have directed DGP to ensure thorough probe into murder of journalist KJ Singh & his mother in Mohali. SIT has been set up under IG (Crime).  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) September 23, 2017

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Badal tweeted his condolences:

I condemn ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators imm.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017
Reality TV star Kylie Jenner is pregnant with a baby girl. A source close to the People magazine has confirmed that the 20-year-old business mogul is due in February with her first child with rapper Travis Scott.

They started telling friends a few weeks ago. The family has known for quite some time. She is really excited and so is Travis, the source said.

Another source close to the family told the magazine, It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about. Everyone is overjoyed for her. This is the happiest shes ever been.

Jenner has been dating Scott since earlier this year after splitting from her on-again, off-again boyfriend Tyga in April.
A young woman and her 10-year-old sister were murdered by their father in Pakistan in a so- called honour killing, police said here on Saturday.

Abdul Gani killed his daughters 20-year-old Shamim and Noreen and later confessed to the crime upon his arrest, according to DSP Fazal Wahid.

The crime took place in Peshawars Achar Kali area on September 20.

The accuseds son reported the murders to police and lodged an FIR in the case, the officer said.

Police had to conduct several raids before the accused was apprehended from the Mosam Ghari area here, two days after the murders.

According to the DSP, Abdul Gani said he killed his daughters because he was ashamed at their conduct as they used to leave the house at all hours, the Dawn reported.

Last year, Pakistans parliament unanimously approved anti-honour killing and anti-rape bills.

The legislation on honour killings introduced tough punishment for convicts, making it stricter than that in usual murder cases.
Two journalists from Myanmar, who had been detained in Bangladesh while reporting on the influx of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, have been released on bail, a police official said on Saturday.

The journalists, Minzayar Oo and Hkun Lat, were detained in early September in the Coxs Bazar border region of Bangladesh, where refugees are arriving from Myanmar to escape a military offensive against insurgents.

A court granted them bail, but they cant go back to their country now, police official Ranajit Kumar Barua, told Reuters by telephone, adding that the court would decide whether the two could leave the country at a separate hearing which may take place sometime in the next week.

A lawyer for the two journalists also confirmed their release, but did not provide any further detail.

Bangladesh police had said that the pair were detained for engaging in journalistic work for a German magazine, while on tourist visas.

More than 422,000 refugees from Myanmar have poured into Bangladesh since August 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts triggered a Myanmar army crackdown in response.

Germanys GEO magazine, which had assigned Minzayar Oo to cover the Rohingya crisis, said he had traveled to Bangladesh on September 6, and was detained the next day.

Minzayar Oo is one of Myanmars most prominent photographers and has worked for various media outlets, covering the countrys emergence from military rule. He has previously worked as a contractor with Reuters.

Hkun Lat is also a well-known photographer in Myanmar and has won prizes for his coverage of conflict in frontier regions.
A mentally ill doctor who shot a Yale University physician to death and narrowly missed wounding the victims pregnant wife was sentenced Friday to 32 years in prison, ending a seven-year legal drama over the gunmans sanity that included forcibly medicating him so he could be competent to stand trial.

Lishan Wang, 51, a Chinese citizen from Beijing, agreed to the sentence in June when he pleaded no contest to manslaughter, attempted assault and gun crimes.

Authorities said Wang opened fire at Dr Vajindeer Toor and his wife, Parneeta Sidhu, outside the couples home in Branford in 2010, killing Toor but missing Sidhu. Police said Wang was upset about a workplace dispute with Toor two years earlier at a New York City hospital where they both worked at the time.

Superior Court Judge Patrick Clifford in New Haven handed down the punishment to Wang, calling him a revengeful and disturbed person and saying the shooting was a senseless, cowardly act.

Wang said that his medical career was destroyed because he was fired  unfairly  from the hospital and that Toor was to blame for the shooting.

After the hearing, Sidhu said the prison sentence should have been longer.

My loss cannot be replaced, she said. I have no ill feelings toward anybody else. You have to be pretty disturbed to do something like this.

Wang has been under a judges order to be forcibly medicated against his will to treat his mental illness so he could remain competent to stand trial  an issue that went all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Wangs lawyers said an insanity defense was likely if the case had gone to trial. They have said that Wang has delusional disorder and paranoia, though he had insisted that he was competent and didnt need medication.

Toor was a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine who was working with the infectious-disease section of Yale-New Haven Hospital. In 2008, he worked at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in New York City, where he and other doctors had confrontations with Wang that led to Wangs firing, authorities said.

Wang was ruled incompetent to stand trial in 2015. Judge Thomas OKeefe Jr. ordered that Wang be medicated against his will to see if he could become competent to stand trial.

Wangs public defenders appealed the forced-medication order, saying it violated his constitutional rights to a fair trial and mental and physical integrity. But the state Supreme Court upheld the ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
A Lufthansa passenger jet that was hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant groups campaign against West German authorities has returned home.

The dpa news agency reported Saturday that most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum.

The remainder is due to arrive Wednesday from Brazil. The aircraft ended up in a Brazilian carriers fleet and had been sitting decommissioned at the countrys Fortaleza Airport for years.

A Palestinian group demanding the release of members of West Germanys Red Army Faction hijacked a Mallorca to Frankfurt flight in October 1977. The hijacking marked the peak of the German Autumn of leftist violence.

German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Some 70,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes after a rain-swollen dam in Puerto Rico failed in the latest disaster caused by Hurricane Maria.

With the death toll from the storm at 33 across the Caribbean, the National Weather Service office in San Juan issued a flash flood warning on Friday for people living along the Guajataca river in the northwest of the island and said the 1920s earthen dam was in danger of collapsing altogether.

All Areas surrounding the Guajataca River should evacuate NOW. Their lives are in DANGER!, the service said in a tweet. Flooding has already begun downstream, it said.

All Areas surrounding the Guajataca River should evacuate NOW. Their lives are in DANGER! Please SHARE! #prwx  NWS San Juan (@NWSSanJuan) September 22, 2017

Shortly thereafter, Governor Ricardo Rossello issued an order for some 70,000 people living in the area to get out.

According to the newspaper El Vocero, Public Safety Secretary Hector Pesquera said a drain that normally releases a stream of water from the dam in a controlled fashion had broken.

We just received new video of the dam failure coming out of Lake Guajataca, PR. #PuertoRico pic.twitter.com/LMdXzKEca4  WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) September 22, 2017

So instead, the busted drain sent water gushing down a sort of ramp-style conduit and eventually washing away huge chunks of soil from the grassy green slope of the dam, according to video on the WeatherNation website.

However the flash flood warning only lasts until 0600 GMT, the weather service said, suggesting that the river waters were going down.

Puerto Rico was already battling dangerous floods after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island early Wednesday. Rescuers raced against time to reach trapped residents.

Rossello has called Maria the most devastating storm in a century after it destroyed the US territorys electricity and telecommunications infrastructure.

Rossello told CNN the island is lacking communications and the preliminary assessment at this point is 13 fatalities.

Right now our efforts are to make sure we have everybody safe, that we can rescue people. Our efforts have already produced almost 700 rescues so were clearly focused on that.

The National Hurricane Center said some areas in Puerto Rico could see 40 inches (more than a metre) of rain from Maria, and Rossello warned of dangerous mudslides brought on by the deluge.

We have a lot of flooding, we have reports of complete devastation of vulnerable housing. Of course its still raining over here.

SOS text

Maria has been blamed for at least 33 deaths, including 15 in Dominica, three in Haiti and two in Guadeloupe.

After lamenting that Puerto Rico had been absolutely obliterated by Maria, US President Donald Trump spoke with Governor Rossello Thursday night and promised to speed up relief efforts.

Although the southeast coast suffered the worst damage, no part of the island escaped the storms wrath, including the capital San Juan where there was widespread flooding.

The citys mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz, said the biggest need was getting emergency medication and supplies to vulnerable people who are stranded in their homes.

Yesterday, we were canvassing and we found elderly people that dont have blood pressure medicine, food, she said.

I got an SOS from (an elderly home) and it was a text like from a horror movie. It said if anybody can hear us, please, we are stuck here and we cant get out and we have no power and we have very little water left. We got there just in time.

Network crippled

The torrential rain had turned some roads into muddy brown rivers, impassable to all but the largest of vehicles.

Toppled trees, street signs and power cables were strewn across roads that were also littered with debris.

Puerto Ricos electricity network has been crippled by the storm and engineers say it could take months for power to be fully restored.

The local electricity board has promised that their priority will be to restore power to hospitals, water treatment plants and pumping stations.

Brock Long, who heads the US federal governments emergency management agency FEMA, said that ships carrying millions of meals and bottled water were trying to dock as the islands ports are slowly reopened.

As of Friday evening, Maria was a Category Three hurricane with winds of 205 km per hour, churning in the sea east of the central Bahamas.

Heavy rains and high winds began hitting the archipelago on Thursday afternoon.

The government opened new shelters after several buildings which had been used during Hurricane Irma earlier this month were damaged and authorities feared they might not hold up under another fierce storm.

Maria previously tore through several Caribbean islands, claiming the highest toll on Dominica, which has a population of around 72,000 and has been largely cut off from the outside world.
Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high- profile military parade on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

The broadcaster gave no date for the test although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested soon.
Uber will lose its licence to operate in London because it may be endangering public safety and security, according to a UK regulator, in a blow to a company facing questions over its corporate culture.

The company, which has been beset by a litany of scandals over its management style  from accusations of sexism to the illegal use of software to trick regulators  was told it was not fit and proper to keep operating in London, where it has 3.5 million passengers and 40,000 drivers.

The regulator, Transport for London, said it considers that Ubers approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications.

Uber has been facing legal and administrative challenges in Europe and other parts of the world since it began operations in 2012. Here is a list of Ubers mounting troubles across the world this year:

On January 28, after President Donald Trump releases his first executive order on immigration, New York taxi drivers protest by refusing to pick up passengers at Kennedy Airport for an hour. Some protesters say Uber tries to capitalise on the protest by picking up passengers anyway, prompting a Twitter protest urging people to delete Ubers app from their smartphones.

On February 1, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to step down from President Donald Trumps economic advisory council that he had joined in December, under pressure from employees who wondered why he was still willing to advise the President.

On February 19, former employee Susan Fowler, in an explosive revelation on her blog, claimed that she and other female staffers had been subjected to sexual harassment at Uber; and when she reported the situation to HR and upper management, all she got was indifference. She was reportedly told that nothing could be done about the Manager who she accused because he was a high performer.

Kalanick tweeted his response calling the behaviour described in her blog post abhorrent & against everything we believe in and promised that anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.

On February 21, it was announced that Uber had hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a review of the sexual harassment claims. Arianna Huffington, who joined Ubers board last year, Liane Hornsey, Ubers chief human resources officer, and Angela Padilla, the companys associate general counsel, were also to help conduct the review.

Many criticised this as well, wondering at the efficacy of an enquiry conducted by people from within the company.

On February 23, Google-owned Waymo sued Uber for stealing its self-driving car technology. The case accuses Anthony Levandowski, a former top manager for Googles self-driving car project, of stealing pivotal technology that is now propelling Ubers effort to assemble a fleet of autonomous vehicles for its ride-hailing service.

On February 24, venture capitalists Mitch and Freada Kapor, early investors in Uber, publicly criticised the firm for failing to end a toxic culture of harassment. Uber has had countless opportunities to do the right thing , they wrote. We feel we have hit a dead end.

On February 28, a senior executive at Uber, Amit Singhal, was asked to leave the company for failing to disclose a sexual harassment allegation stemming from his tenure at Alphabet Incs Google

On March 1, the companys CEO Travis Kalanick got into an argument with his Uber driver. In a dashcam video published by Bloomberg News, Kalanick was seen arguing with his Uber driver over the companys treatment of drivers. After a conversation about policies at Uber, Kalanick ends the conversation by saying: Some people dont like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!.

On March 3, The New York Times reveals that Uber used a phony version of its app to thwart authorities in cities where it was operating illegally. Ubers so-called Greyball software identified regulators who were posing as riders and blocked access to them. The US Justice Department is investigating Ubers use of the Greyball software.

In March, Uber said it planned to withdraw from Denmark after the country passed a new taxi law that required ride-hailing services to install fare meters and meet other requirements.

He later apologised in an email sent to all employees of the company.

In April, a Rome court banned unlicensed ride-hailing services such as Uber, but the ban was short-lived after the company appealed to a higher court. Uber does not operate in Milan after a 2015 ruling against UberPOP that the smartphone app represented unfair competition to taxis.

In May, a non-binding legal opinion by a legal adviser to Europes top court found Uber to be a transportation service, not just an online app, exposing it to further local regulation across the region.

On June 6, Uber fires 20 people after a law firm, Perkins Coie, investigates complaints of harassment, bullying and retaliation. That investigation, which was separate from Holders, checked into 215 complaints; 57 are still under investigation.

On June 13, Kalanick tells Uber employees that hes taking a leave for an unspecified period, but will be available for the most strategic decisions. Ubers board releases Holders recommendations, which include removing some of Kalanicks responsibilities and replacing Ubers chairman and founder, Garrett Camp, with an independent chairman. Holder also recommends many cultural and policy changes, from establishing an effective complaint process to recruiting more diverse applicants to prohibiting alcohol and drug use during core work hours.

On June 20, Uber embarks on 180 days of change, seeking to persuade riders and investors that it is a company with a conscience and a heart. The first move was allowing riders the ability to give drivers tips through the Uber app, something that Kalanick had resisted. Details of the rest of the plan were not made public.

On June 21, CEO Travis Kalanick resigns under pressure from investors and the board. He will stay on as a board member.

With inputs from Reuters and Associated Press
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, poised to win a fourth term in Sundays election, urged supporters on Saturday to keep fighting for votes with a third of the electorate still undecided.

Merkels call was echoed by her centre-left challenger Martin Schulz of the Social Democrats, now in an unwieldy grand coalition with her conservatives.

Merkel is widely expected to cruise to re-election with the Social Democrats trailing by double digits but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could emerge as the third largest party, complicating the make-up of her next coalition.

A new INSA poll published by Bild newspaper showed declining support for both Merkels conservatives, who dropped two percentage points to 34 percent, and the SPD, down one point to 21 percent.

The anti-immigrant AfD, meanwhile, gained two percentage points to 13 percent, which would make it the first far-right party to enter parliament since the end of World War 2.

Merkel, speaking to supporters in Berlin before heading to her home constituency in northern Germany, called for a final push to drum up votes by focusing on conservatives commitment to support for families, a pledge to avoid tax increases and a focus on increasing security in Germany.

The Christian Democratic leader also lauded the role of the European Union in providing stability in a troubled world.

We want to boost your motivation so that we can still reach many, many people today. Many are still undecided, said Merkel, who then walked the pedestrian zone in the northern city of Stralsund and led a crowd in practicing CPR in Greifswald.

Merkel said it was important to focus on social justice issues but also to show how conservatives had ensured the strength of Europes largest and richest economy.

First elected in 2005, Merkel remains popular in Germany but has regularly faced jeers and whistles from left- and right-wing demonstrators during her speeches across Germany - a decided change from her last campaign in 2013.

At a campaign rally in Munich on Friday, Merkel defended her 2015 decision to admit about one million asylum seekers as a humanitarian necessity but pledged to prevent a repeat of that crisis by doing more to fund programmes in migrants home countries to dissuade people from emigrating.

What happened in 2015 cannot and will not be repeated, Merkel said, saying she would protect European borders.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) sits atop a resuscitation doll next to Dr Klaus Hahnenkamp on stage in Greifswald, Germany, on September 23, 2017. During the project week "resuscitation"' of the Medical University Greifswald, people are taught to resuscitate and Merkel attended the closing event for election campaign purposes. (AP)

Conservatives blast far right

Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere, in an interview with Internet provider t-online.de, vowed to continue fighting Islamist terrorism by strengthening European borders and bolstering security at home.

But he also criticised the AfD as a wolf in sheeps clothing and said the BfV domestic intelligence agency was studying whether right-wing extremists are seizing power and exerting influence on the party.

In Berlin on Friday evening, Schulz urged supporters to keep knocking on doors in pursuit of a higher voter turnout, saying this could offset growing support for the AfD. He described the AfD as gravediggers of democracy.

Schulz told Bild newspaper he had not given up hope of victory since 37% of voters remained undecided.

The AfD was founded in 2013 with the original goal of opposing large bailouts of financially strapped euro zone countries but from 2015 shifted its focus to immigration.

It is now polling around 11% to 13%, up from earlier this year but still below a peak of 16% in late 2016.

The party, which has already won seats in 13 of 16 state legislatures in Germany, has promised to re-energise debate in the federal parliament after four years of what it calls boring rule by Merkels grand coalition.

Electoral arithmetic might yet push Merkel to renew her coalition with the SPD, or she might opt for a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmental Greens.

The Institute for Electoral, Social and Method Research think tank said on Saturday a simulation of the vote indicated a drastic shift from left to right, with left-leaning parties at their weakest point since the 1960s.

The net winners in Sundays election, it said, would clearly be the AfD, which it expects will take 13.7% of the vote.

It forecast that the conservatives would win 34.8% and the SPD 22.1% - both sharply less than in 2013.
K-pop and Korean soap operas are making a great contribution to attracting foreign capital to Korea, the Wall Street Journal blog claimed Monday.

"Korean debt issuers looking to attract overseas investors now have two surefire conversation starters: K-pop and TV dramas, one banker notes," according to the paper.

Citing Whang Youn-sung, director of global capital markets at Bank of America Merril Lynch, the WSJ said the topics help break the ice in negotiations. "In the past, it was mostly about Asian investors talking about how much their wives love Korean dramas. After 'Gangnam Style,' some U.S. investors started conversations with it," Whang was quoted as saying.

According to the bank, Korean debts maturing next year account for the second-biggest part in Asia after Japan with 27 percent. China and the Philippines come next with 15 percent and 13 percent.

Thanks to K-pop and Korean drama, the atmosphere in meetings between debt issuers and investors will be much smoother next year, according to the WSJ.

Meanwhile, Filipino broadcaster ABS-CBN on Tuesday said that despite Japan's efforts to lure tourists from ASEAN, "Seoul has been leading Tokyo in drawing booming middle-class visitors from ASEAN for the last several years."

Japan has been promoting its pop culture to Southeast Asia and relaxed visa requirements for tourists from the region.

ABS-CBN quoted figures from the Japan National Tourism Organization as showing that 387,000 Thais visited Korea last year, 2.4 times more than in 2008, but only 260,000 visited Japan, up only 35 percent from 2008. It concluded that the success of K-pop and Korean drama is the key to Korea's success in attracting more tourists.


North Korea has become more opaque to the outside world following a decision by YouTube to silence an official propaganda channel, a monitoring group has warned, as new sanctions over Pyongyangs nuclear programme begin to bite.

Observers have long relied on state-run news for glimpses into Pyongyangs shadowy regime and weapons programme, but one such source - the Uriminzokkiri channel - went dark earlier this month.

YouTube has cut off a vital supply of video used by open source researchers, which means there is now less visibility into whats happening in North Korea, said Martyn Williams in a commentary published on Friday on the respected 38 North website, which focuses on North Korea analysis.

The Western worlds understanding of North Korea is limited to begin with, cutting off access to these few windows into North Korean thinking and life further hampers our knowledge of the country.

YouTube first pulled the channel in early September with a message stating that it was in violation of community standards and the page currently has a notice that it is subject to a legal complaint.

The Google-owned company was not immediately available for comment.

Academics use official footage of missile launches and visits to factories by the Norths leader Kim Jong-Un to gain rare insights into the progress of the countrys weapons programmes.

Williams said the YouTube move served to highlight the sometimes-unintended consequences of sanctions.

North Korea was slapped with tough new restrictions this month after it conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test, following months of increasingly brazen missile launches.

The United Nations measures include limits on oil shipments into the country and a ban on lucrative textile exports from the North.

The resolution also imposes asset freezes on government agencies including the countrys Propaganda and Agitation Department, which the UN said has has full control over the media.

Experts have raised concerns over further punishing the already deeply isolated North, which pressed on with nuclear and missile tests in defiance of a slew of previous embargoes.
Beijing China has announced it will limit oil supplies to North Korea under United Nations sanctions, stepping up pressure on Pyongyang over its pursuit of nuclear and missile technology.

The Commerce Ministry said Saturday that China, the Norths main trading partner and energy supplier, will limit supplies of refined petroleum products starting October 1. It said Beijing also will ban imports of North Korean textiles, one of Pyongyangs last major sources of foreign revenue following repeated rounds of UN sanctions.

China has long been the Norths only major ally and diplomatic protector but is expressing increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong Un. Beijings status as the Norths main trading partner makes its cooperation critical to the success of economic sanctions.
The Pakistan Navy on Saturday fired an anti-ship missile from the air to hit a target in the Arabian Sea as the navy chief said the firing drill demonstrated his forces war preparedness.

A Sea King Helicopter launched the air-to-surface missile that hit the intended target with pinpoint accuracy, a navy spokesperson said.

The fire power display was witnessed by the navy chief, Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah, who praised the combat readiness of the fleet. The successful firing of the missile from the helicopter was a testament of the navys war preparedness and professional skills, he said.

The successful firing by helicopter Sea King is reflective of (the) high state of readiness and professionalism of (the) Pakistan Navy fleet, Zakaullah said as he visited several ships at sea and witnessed the exercise.

He said the navy is committed to ensuring Pakistans seaward defence and will safeguard the torrential water boundaries of the motherland and its interests at any cost.

In March, the navy had conducted a successful test of a land-based anti-ship missile. That trial was conducted from a coastal region and the missile hit a target placed at sea.

In May, the Pakistan Navy received seven surplus Sea King multi-role helicopters it had ordered from the UK in 2016.
Yesenia Vergara grabbed her two daughters and abandoned her home in the isolated Mexican hamlet of Huautla late last month when rain-swollen river waters burst through her window, flooding her house with branches, boulders and mud.

Just two weeks later, Mexicos deadliest earthquake in a generation delivered a second blow to her simple riverside home, financed with money sent back by her husband from the United States.

This is the end of the world, I thought. Now is the time that God has called us to be judged, Vergara said, recalling the moment when the quake struck in the early afternoon last Tuesday.

The village was just getting back on its feet and now another tragedy has come, she said.

The epicenter of the 7.1 magnitude tremor, which has claimed nearly 300 lives so far, levelled dozens of buildings in Mexico City, sparking a desperate search for survivors. The quake struck 70 km (45 miles) from Huautla, a charming settlement nestled amid the lime-green mountains of Morelos state.

While the Mexican capital has been over-run with eager volunteers amid an outpouring of support, the villages of Morelos and Puebla states that lie near the epicenter have received much less attention.

A growing cadre of well-wishers sought to rectify that on Friday, fanning out across the states backroads, trudging through knee-high streams to deliver food, water and medicine to remote populations high up in the mountains.

Far outpacing the government response, the volunteers patriotic reaction has cheered a traumatized country. It has also provided a sharp contrast to the increasingly politicized reaction to the tremor, which sparked a virtual arms race between political parties seeking to outdo each other with donations to relief efforts.

We feel very grateful, Vergara said of the volunteers. But also very disappointed with the government.

We are scared

Although the quake didnt destroy any buildings in Huautla, Mayor Miguel Medina said 10 families out of roughly 1,000 people were evacuated because some 100 structures were damaged.

By Friday afternoon, Vergara said nobody had yet come to inspect the thick cracks menacing her home, exiling her and her young family to her mothers house.

Fortino Garcia, a 48-year-old taxi driver from the city of Cuernavaca, was among eight people who had driven from Mexico City to deliver aid to villages in the area.

Although he approved of the governments reaction to the quake, he criticized politicians who he said were trying to capitalize on the tragedy by placing stickers with their name or party on supplies collected by volunteers.

Lots of politicians are sadly jumping on this to campaign, he said in Huautlas main square, after delivering diapers, sanitary towels and water.

A growing resentment over how the aid was being distributed by village officials was on display as residents accused officials of cherry-picking better quality donations of clothes and food and leaving less desirable ones for the villagers.

In a warehouse in the center of the village where hundreds of women were lining up for food and water, Medina denied he or any of his employees had been profiting from the aid, which he said came from all over the world.

People from other countries have come to give us their little grain of sand, he said. Were very surprised and thankful.

Still, rumors of official malfeasance could be found on every corner.

Like much of Mexico, crime and violence in Huautla had risen dramatically over the last few years, according to a shopkeeper who declined to give her name out of fear. She said some villagers took up arms last month and installed themselves at the entrance to the town to ward off outsiders.

In July, she said, an elderly woman was killed when she interrupted a burglary in her home, something previously unheard of in this quiet farming settlement.

Given the impact of the flood, the quake and rising violence, she said she was less optimistic for the future of her teenage daughter, who was listening by her side.

Were scared, the shopkeeper said. Things arent like they used to be.
Workers in Moscow have erased the illustration of a gun from a freshly inaugurated monument of Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the legendary AK-47 assault rifle, after it was found that the drawing was of a Nazi weapon.

We have checked the information about a mistake. It is confirmed. The sculptor, Salavat Shtsherbakoff, has acknowledged his mistake, the state-supported Russian Military History Society, which backed the monument, told TASS news agency.

The erroneous drawing was of an StG44 - for Sturmgewehr (Storm Rifle), a name reputedly conferred by Adolf Hitler himself. It became the Nazis frontline weapon on the bloody Eastern Front in World War 2.

A worker used an angle grinder on Friday to obliterate the offending depiction of the StG44, an AFP photographer saw.

Police officers collect evidence after a fragment featuring the German StG44 rifle was removed from the newly unveiled monument dedicated to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, in downtown Moscow on September 22, 2017. (AFP)

Kalashnikov was elevated to hero status in the Soviet Union for inventing a simple, rugged, reliable and easy-to-manufacture automatic weapon for the Red Army.

It entered service after World War II - the AK-47 comes from the Russian Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947 - to became a standard weapon for Soviet forces and revolutionary movements around the world. Its image has also become notoriously intertwined with terrorism and massacres.

Acclaim of Kalashnikov continued after the fall of the Soviet Union, culminating with a project to erect a statue in his honour after he died in 2013.

The seven metre (23 feet) statue, located in a central thoroughfare, was unveiled to great pomp on Tuesday, with goose-stepping troops and Russian officials in attendance. Orthodox priests sprinkled it with holy water.

Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky praised the inventor and called the rifle - which has been reproduced an estimated 100 million times worldwide - a cultural brand for Russia.

A combination photo shows part of a monument to the Russian designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, Mikhail Kalashnikov, before (top) and after workers removed a fragment of the memorial in Moscow. (Reuters)

The statue itself accurately features Kalashnikov clutching his invention. The StG44 was featured in an engineers drawing, located on part of the memorial that traces the history of the AK47.

The change to the statue coincided with the public unveiling in Moscow on Friday of a bronze bust of Stalin, fuelling concerns that the authorities are seeking to whitewash the Soviet dictators bloody history.

Stalins bust was one of seven sculptures spanning the history of the Soviet Union from Lenin to Mikhail Gorbachev.

They are the latest addition to a recently opened Alley of Rulers that already features 33 Russian rulers.

The force behind the sculptures is the Russian Military History Society, founded by President Vladimir Putin and whose current president is Medinsky, known for fiercely nationalist views.
The influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has ground to a virtual halt, officials said on Saturday, almost a month after the eruption of violence in Myanmar which has seen nearly 430,000 flee in four weeks.

The Rohingya Muslims have jammed camps around the Bangladesh border city of Coxs Bazar, stretching government and UN agencies to the limit.

But Bangladesh border guards said they have seen no boats carrying Rohingya on the Naf river, which marks the Myanmar border, or in the Bay of Bengal for at least three days. Arrivals across the land frontier have almost stopped.

Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) commander SM Ariful Islam told AFP.

The United Nations also said the influx has dropped as it gave a new estimate of 429,000 Rohingya crossing the border since a Myanmar military crackdown in Rakhine state was launched on August 25.

Neither the Bangladesh military nor the UN advanced any reason for the dramatic fall in new arrivals.

UN agencies had given a daily update on the figure but said it would now only be released every Sunday.

No Rohingya came crossing our side of the border in the past few days, said Manzurul Hasan Khan, another BGB commander whose soldiers mostly patrol the land border.

Myanmars de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased clearance operations targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmars border area.

Attacks by militants on Myanmar police posts on August 25 unleashed the military crackdown which the United Nations has said could amount to ethnic cleansing.

Rohingya crossing the border say they witnessed mass killings and rapes by troops and Buddhist militias in Myanmar. The army denies the allegations.

Rights group Amnesty International said it has assessed three new videos taken inside Rakhine state as recently as Friday showing large plumes of smoke rising from Rohingya villages.

The stateless minority has languished under years of discrimination in the mainly Buddhist country, where they are denied citizenship.

Even before the latest exodus, Bangladesh was housing some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine state.
A strong 6.1 magnitude earthquake shook central Mexico on Saturday days after a powerful quake that killed nearly 300 people, Mexican and US seismological monitors said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the new, magnitude 6.1 temblor was centered about 11 miles (18 kilometers) south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca, which was the region most battered by a magnitude 8.1 quake on Sept. 7.

It was among thousands of aftershocks recorded in the wake of that earlier quake, which was the most powerful to hit Mexico in 32 years and killed at least 90 people.

There was some damage in Oaxaca but no immediate reports of new deaths. The Federal Police agency posted images online showing a collapsed bridge that it said had already been closed due to damage after the Sept. 7 quake.

Bettina Cruz, a resident of Juchitan, Oaxaca, said by phone with her voice still shaking that the new quake felt horrible.

Homes that were still standing just fell down, Cruz said. Its hard. We are all in the streets.

Cruz belongs to a social collective and said that when the shaking began, she was riding in a truck carrying supplies to victims of the earlier quake.

Nataniel Hernandez said by phone from Tonala, in the southern state of Chiapas, which was also hit hard by the earlier quake, that it was one of the strongest aftershocks he has felt.

Since Sept. 7 it has not stopped shaking, Hernandez.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Paul Caruso said the new temblor was an aftershock of the 8.1 quake, and after a jolt of that size even buildings left standing can be more vulnerable.

So a smaller earthquake can cause the damaged buildings to fail, Caruso said.

At the moment the greatest damage has been to the Ixtaltepec bridge, which should be rebuilt, and structures with previous damage that collapsed, President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted. He said government workers were fanning out in Juchitan to provide help to anyone who needs it.

Jaime Hernandez, director of the Federal Electrical Commission, said the quake knocked out power to 327,000 homes and businesses in Oaxaca but service had been restored to 72 percent of customers within a few hours.

Buildings swayed in Mexico City, where nerves are still raw from Tuesdays magnitude 7.1 temblor that has killed at least 305 across the region. Many residents and visitors fled homes, hotels and businesses, some in tears.

At the Xoco General Hospital, which is treating the largest number of quake victims, workers ordered visitors to evacuate when seismic alarms began to blare.

That included Syntia Pereda, 43, who was reluctant to leave the bedside of her sleeping boyfriend. Jesus Gonzalez, 49, fell from a third-story balcony of a building where he was working during Tuesdays quake and was awaiting surgery.

But she controlled her emotions, went outside and came back when the trembling was over.

We are getting used to this, Pereda said. Every so often we hear the alarm ... you say, well, it is Gods will.

Alejandra Castellanos was on the second floor of a hotel in a central neighborhood of Mexico City and ran down the stairs and outside with her husband.

I was frightened because I thought, not again! Castellanos said.

Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said there were no reports of significant new damage in the capital, and rescue efforts related to Tuesdays quake were continuing. He reported that two people died of apparent heart attacks during the new temblor.

At the site of an office building that collapsed Tuesday and where an around-the-clock search for survivors was still ongoing, rescuers briefly evacuated from atop the pile of rubble after the morning quake before returning to work.

As rescue operations stretched into Day 5, residents throughout the capital have held out hope that dozens still missing might be found alive. More than half the dead  167  perished in the capital, while another 73 died in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico State, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

Along a 60-foot stretch of a bike lane in Mexico City, families huddled under tarps and donated blankets, awaiting word of loved ones trapped in the four-story-high pile of rubble behind them.

There are moments when you feel like youre breaking down, said Patricia Fernandez Romero, who was waiting Friday for word on the fate of her 27-year-old son. And there are moments when youre a little calmer. ... They are all moments that you wouldnt wish on anyone.

Families have been sleeping in tents, accepting food and coffee from strangers, people have organized to present a united front to authorities, who they pressed ceaselessly for information.

They were told that water and food had been passed along to at least some of those trapped inside. On Friday morning, after hours of inactivity blamed on rain, rescuers were readying to re-enter the site, joined by teams from Japan and Israel. Fernandez said officials told them they knew where people were trapped on the fourth floor.

Its the moments between those bits of information that torment the families.

Its that you get to a point when youre so tense, when they dont come out to give us information, she said. Its so infuriating.
When external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj takes the podium at the UN general assembly Saturday, she is expected to deliver a speech that will take a broad-based thematic approach to Indias global vision, expectations and policies regarding the world body, without skipping specific references.

Swaraj will refer to Pakistan, of course, in the context of Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasis charges against India in his speech  of war crimes in Kashmir, for instance  and she will go beyond what we said in our right of reply, an official said on background, which was, calling Pakistan Terroristan and the land of pure terror.

But the external affairs ministers speech will be more broad-based and thematic, focused on five key elements  UN reforms to expand the security council, counter-terrorism,, climate change, south-and-south cooperations (among developing nations) and peacekeeping and peace-building.

Swaraj is expected to renew the appeal for speeding up the reforms process to expand the UN security council, to make it reflect the changing world order, and give emerging powers such as India a permanent seat. Indias claim to one is backed by four of the five permanent members; China is the sole holdout.

Previewing Indias agenda for this UN general assembly, Indian permanent representative to UN Syed Akbaruddin said earlier this week in the context of UN administrative reforms, You cannot have reform only of the secretariat; reforms cannot sidestep issue relating to governance of UN bodies.

Counter-terrorism it likely to hold an equally important position in Swarajs speech, with emphasis on terrorist attack India continues to face from across its western border. India has been relentless on this issue, and will continue to raise it forcefully as it can, putting its chief backer, Pakistan, front and centre.

There are nations in our midst that still speak the language of terrorism, Swaraj had said in 2016. They nurture it, peddle it and export it. Sheltering terrorists has become the calling card of such nations. We must identify those nations and hold them to account. She had gone on to name Pakistan.

As this year, then Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif had accused India of human rights violations in Kashmir. In response, Swaraj had said that the Prime Minister of Pakistan used this rostrum to make baseless allegations about human rights violations in my country. I can say only that those accusing others of human rights violations would do well to look within and see what egregious abuses they are perpetrating in their own countries, including in Balochistan. The brutality against the Baluch people represents the worst form of State oppression.

Climate change is expected to figure significantly as well, specially in the context of US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. Swaraj may not mention the US decision, but is likely to take the opportunity to reiterate strongly Indias commitment to the accord and its own mitigation goals.

The permanent representative had also mentioned while previewing Indias agenda, people-centric issue of migration and peace-building and peace-keeping by the UN, of which India is a leading contributor. In 2016, Swaraj spoke about the need in respect to peacekeeping operations, adequate consultations with troop-contributing countries before framing mandates for United Nations peacekeeping operations.
An escalating war of words between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un ratcheted up a notch on Friday as the US president dubbed North Koreas leader a madman, a day after the reclusive regime hinted it may explode a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

Hours earlier, in a rare personal attack, Kim took aim at Trump, branding him mentally deranged and a dotard, and warning he would pay dearly for his threat to destroy North Korea if challenged, uttered before the United Nations General Assembly.

The verbal clash came a day after Washington announced tougher sanctions aimed at curbing North Koreas nuclear and ballistic missile program, on the heels of a Trump speech in which he which he nicknamed Kim Rocket Man and declared him to be on a suicide mission.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before! Trump posted early Friday in the first of a barrage of unrelated tweets.

Kim had delivered a tongue-lashing of his own -- vowing to surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire, in an address read out on state television by a star news anchor before a still image of Kim at his desk.

Trump insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history, Kim said, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech.

Sanctions

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang, and Moscows Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that that scrap resembled a kindergarten fight between children.

We have to calm down the hot heads and understand that we do need pauses, that we do need some contacts, Lavrov told a news conference after his address to the General Assembly.

On the fringes of the world meeting, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

I think that it could be an H-bomb test at an unprecedented level perhaps over the Pacific, he said -- while adding: It is up to our leader so I do not know well.

Washington on Thursday authorized a tough new raft of sanctions in the latest effort to tighten the screws on Pyongyang over its banned weapons programs, following its sixth nuclear test -- the largest yet -- and the firing of two missiles over Japan in recent weeks.

Trumps executive order, which prohibits firms from operating in the United States if they deal with North Korea, came after the UN Security Council agreed its own further set of sanctions aimed at reducing Pyongyangs ability to trade with the outside world.

But analysts say the sanctions show no signs of working, and cautioned that the increasingly ill-tempered and personal exchanges between Washington and Pyongyang did not augur well.

There are some very dangerous things that could come that move this from theater to reality. This is the time to be heading them off, not making them feel inevitable, said John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul.

Still hope for peace

Washington has refused to offer incentives to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table, despite appeals to do so from China and Russia, who are both uneasy over Trumps bellicose tone.

However in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump suggested the door to dialogue remained open.

Why not? he said, when asked whether there could be talks with Pyongyang.

China wields the most influence on North Korea, providing an economic lifeline. But it also fears the consequences if the regime collapses, such as an exodus of refugees or a US-allied, reunited Korea on its border.

Negotiation is the only way out and deserves every effort, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the General Assembly.

The sentiments were echoed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said military hysteria is not just an impasse, its disaster.

North Korean envoy Ri is expected to meet on Saturday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who will send out feelers on possible diplomatic talks.

But Chung Sung-Yoon, analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP that the North itself may have shelved the idea of negotiations until it reaches its nuclear goal.

People say this is all part of its brinkmanship strategy to force the US to come forward for negotiation. But the North is leaving too little room for the US to do so with the latest series of threats and provocations, he said.
Several social media users, fed up with the news of American reality television star Kylie Jenners pregnancy, used the opportunity to draw attention to subjectively more pressing issues.

People on the microblogging site began sharing tweets that opened with the news of Kylies pregnancy but went on to address the Mexican earthquake, lack of clean drinking water, food crisis and volcanic eruptions.

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT



ok now that I got your attention, the entire country of Mexico had a earthquake and A lot of people died  ? (@noinkboy) September 23, 2017

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT



ok, I got your attention... Mexico & Puerto Rico need your help! Donate to your local centers & spread the word!  E.R. (@FiebreDeJack) September 23, 2017

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT!



now that I have your attention,..



Venezuela is currently having a food crisis.  pando (@OmarMuzaffar) September 23, 2017

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT



Great now that I have your attention, Flint Michigan still doesn't have fresh water to drink  Jo Jo (@JoeeMarinoo) September 23, 2017

A source close to the People magazine confirmed that the 20-year-old business mogul is due in February with her first child with rapper Travis Scott. Some Facebook users were so done with keeping up with the Kardashians, they decided to go on a tangent and respond with cute pictures of their pets accompanied by random facts.
Officials in Indonesia have raised the alert level for a volcano on the resort island of Bali to the highest threshold over fears an eruption could be imminent.

Thousands of residents and tourists were evacuated from villages near the Mount Agung volcano, which last erupted more than 50 years ago.

Authorities have warned people to avoid hiking within a 9-kilometer radius from the crater, which has been blowing smoke over the popular tourist site.

Hundreds of small tremors this week also have rattled the mountain, which is about 70 kilometers northeast of the tourist hot spot of Kuta. Officials say nearly 10,000 people have been evacuated from the area and more evacuations are expected.

"Volcanic activity remains high and there are indications of magma rising to the surface," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the National Disaster Management Agency. "There should be zero public activity within the specified radius in case there is an eruption."


US-backed Syrian fighters captured Saturday the countrys largest gas field from the Islamic State group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region, a senior official with the group said.

Nasser Haj Mansour of the Syrian Democratic Forces said the Conoco gas field and plant came under full control of the group on Saturday morning after days of fighting with the extremists. He added that SDF fighters also captured the nearby al-Izba gas field.

Another SDF spokesman, Brig. Gen. Talal Sillo, said the fighting in the area left 65 IS fighters dead while more than 100 gunmen surrendered. He added that IS had been controlling Conoco since 2014.

Sillo said that SDF fighters marched toward the field from the nearby village of Khsham under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war in Syria with activists on the ground, reported later that SDF fighters took full control of the field in the province of Deir el-Zour. It said IS fighters are launching a counteroffensive to retake the field.

SDF fighters have been marching on the east bank of the Euphrates River in Deir el-Zour while Syrian troops are gaining in areas on the west bank of the river under the cover of Russian airstrikes. Earlier this week, Syrian troops crossed into parts of east bank but have concentrated their operations mostly on the west.

Deir el-Zour is a province rich in oil and gas and both sides have been racing to reach the fields. The next main target will be al-Omar oil field that is Syrias largest and is also on the east bank of the Euphrates, and Syrian government forces are also speeding to capture it. Oil revenues are badly needed for future reconstruction of Syria that has been plagued by war since 2011.

On Thursday, Russia warned against targeting its special forces in Deir el-Zour raising concerns over direct clashes between rival forces backed by Moscow and Washington fighting for the energy-wealthy region.

The warning was followed by an acknowledgement from the Pentagon of an unprecedented face-to-face meeting between Russian and American military leaders, which occurred inside or near Syria, to address the rising tensions.

Russia has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and joined the war two years ago tipping the balance of power in his favor.
Will North Koreas next nuclear test involve a thermonuclear missile screaming over Japan? Thats a question being asked after North Koreas foreign minister said his country may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.

The world hasnt seen an above-ground, atmospheric nuclear test since an inland detonation by China in 1980, and North Korea upending that could push the region dangerously close to war. The room for error would be minimal, and any mistake could be disastrous. Even if successful, such a test could endanger air and sea traffic in the region.

Because of that, many experts dont think North Korea would take such a risk. But theyre also not ruling it out given the Norths increasing number of nuclear and missile tests.

The main reason for North Korea to take that risk would be to quiet outside doubts about whether it really has a thermonuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile, said Jeffrey Lewis, a U.S. arms control expert at the Middlebury Center of International Studies at Monterey. So far, North Korea has been separately testing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles built to deliver them, rather than testing them together.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho wouldnt have spoken without approval from Pyongyangs top leadership when he suggested to reporters in New York on Friday that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfill the vows of the countrys leader, Kim Jong Un.

Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, pledged hours earlier to take highest-level action against the United States over President Donald Trumps threat to totally destroy the North if provoked. Ri didnt elaborate and said no one knew what decision Kim would make.

If North Korea attempts an atmospheric nuclear test at sea, it would likely involve its most powerful ballistic missiles, such as the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 or the intercontinental-range Hwasong-14, experts say. The country lacks assets to air-drop a nuclear device, and sending a vessel out to sea to detonate a device raises the chances of getting detected and stopped by the U.S. military.

For the nuclear missile to reach a remote part of the Pacific, it would have to fly over Japan, as the North did with two Hwasong-12 test launches in recent weeks.

There have only been a handful of times when atmospheric nuclear tests involved ballistic missiles, including Chinas fourth nuclear test in 1966. That involved a midrange Dongfeng-2 missile being launched from a deep inland rocket facility to the Lop Nur nuclear test site in the countrys far west.

Lewis finds similarities between the current situation surrounding North Korea and the events that led to Chinas 1966 test, which was driven by U.S. doubts of Chinese capabilities to place nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles.

The United States is still taking an attitude of skepticism toward North Koreas nuclear capabilities, Lewis said. The difference, of course, is that China fired its nuclear-armed missile over its own territory, not another country.

A nuclear launch by North Korea would come dangerously close to an act of war, said Lee Choon Geun, a missile expert from South Koreas Science and Technology Policy Institute. Missile tests can easily go wrong and the consequences of failure could be terrifying if the missile is armed with a nuclear weapon.

A failed flight or an accidental detonation over Japan would likely trigger retaliation from Washington and Tokyo that might result in a nuclear war, Lee said.

Its reasonable to think that Ri was bluffing, Lee said. Would they be sure that the United States and Japan will just sit there and watch?

But Lewis said thats exactly what the United States and Japan would do.

Although I am sure such a launch would be very alarming to people in Japan, there is little the United States or Japan could do, he said. Would we really start a war over such an act? I dont think so.

An atmospheric nuclear test would be far more dangerous than detonations in controlled underground environments, both because of the force of the blast and unrestrained release of radioactive materials that could spread out over large areas. Such a launch would potentially endanger aircraft and ships because its highly unlikely the North would give prior warnings or send naval vessels to the area to control sea traffic.

An atmospheric thermonuclear blast would also raise the risks of damage caused by an electromagnetic pulse, an intense wave of electrical energy generated by the explosion that could destroy electronic devices and equipment over a vast area, Lee said.

The United States and the former Soviet Union combined to conduct more than 400 atmospheric nuclear tests before they joined Britain in a 1963 treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. The treaty was later signed by more than 100 other countries. China conducted 22 atmospheric nuclear tests, which frequently involved bombers dropping nuclear devices on test sites, before its last one in 1980.

While the impact of previous tests hasnt been fully understood, damage from radioactive fallout could be serious.

When the United States detonated its most powerful nuclear device in a 1954 test code-named Castle Bravo, the radioactive fallout spread far beyond the test site in the Marshall Islands.

Twenty-three crew members of a Japanese fishing vessel that was 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of the detonation site were contaminated and suffered from radiation sickness. One of the fishermen, Matashichi Oishi, once told The Associated Press that he saw a flash before tiny white flakes fell on the crew members like snow.

North Korea in past months has been stepping up the aggressiveness of its nuclear and missile tests.

The North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it said was the detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental Hwasong-14 ICBMs. In two July flight tests, those missiles displayed the potential ability to reach deep into the continental United States.

With its two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan in August and September, the North also broke from its previous test regime of firing missiles at highly lofted angles to reduce range and avoid other countries. The launches were seen as North Koreas attempts to win more military space in a region dominated by its enemies and evaluate the performance and reliability of its missiles under operational conditions.

The North has also threatened to launch a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the U.S. Pacific military hub.

Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seouls Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said its more likely that the Norths next significant launch would be a full-range test of an unarmed Hwasong-14 ICBM. The North could launch the missile at around 7,000 kilometers (4,349 miles) to display a capability to reach Hawaii or Alaska, he said.

Still, the past months have taught him not to underestimate what the North could do.

North Korea has repeatedly exceeded my expectations and Kim Jong Un in the statement has vowed to go beyond any expectation, said Kim, the analyst.
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When future policymakers go back and study the U.S. energy industry in the decade that began in 2010, one of the defining trends will be the sudden decline of coal and nuclear power.

That decline has coincided with the rapid expansion of wind, solar and other renewable energy projects and the abundance of cheap natural gas produced during the so-called shale revolution. But whether this is the start of a great new era of American energy or a disaster in the making has become the subject of great debate.

Now, add another voice to the mix. In a recent report, the research firm IHS Markit warned that the shift away from coal and nuclear is likely to leave the U.S. grid overly reliant on natural gas and renewable forms of energy and prone to more expensive and volatile electricity prices.

"Over the last three years, the problem only seems to have gotten worse," said Lawrence Makovich, chief power strategist at IHS and the study's lead author.

The report is funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Edison Electric Institute and the Nuclear Energy Institute - trade groups that have a lot at stake in what the power grid becomes in the decades ahead.

At the center of the debate is the growing role of intermittent energy sources, namely wind and solar, which are taking market share from coal and nuclear power plants that operate all the time. That is not only creating challenges in managing the flow of electricity and out of the grid, but also long-term concerns about the reliability of electricity systems as profit-starved power companies shutter plants, leading to shortages.

The renewable power industry, however, challenges the idea that rising use of renewables would create such problems and raise prices.

"On the contrary, solar provides significant cost savings, relieves pressure on our nation's infrastructure and improves the grid's overall performance," said Alex Hobson, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association,. " The more solar we use, the more America benefits."

The combination of increased competition, low electricity prices and rising regulatory costs have roiled traditional power generators. NRG Energy of Houston has cut hundreds of jobs as it divests some $4 billion in assets. Calpine, another Houston company, recently sold itself to a consortium of investors led by a New Jersey private equity company. Dynegy, also of Houston, is said to be in merger talks with Vistra Energy of Dallas.

In Texas, the Public Utility Commission is studying the economic threats posed to power generators and their plants and is considering changes to the state's wholesale power markets.

In the IHS report, Makovich portrayed a confused energy market with criss-crossing and contradictory incentives for carbon-free energy that favors wind and solar through tax incentives but does not do enough to support carbon-free nuclear power.

The study comes as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission weighs whether to take action to keep afloat a raft of nuclear plants in danger of closing in the years ahead. A report by the Department of Energy last month put the majority of the blame on the flood of cheap natural gas and recommended changes to power markets to help the coal and nuclear sectors.

"Our study is saying there is a clear economic argument behind making these additional interventions because we're not dealing with a clear market operating without distortion," Makovich said. "You have favored technologies."
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It's not every day that a tiny Texas town lands a nanotechnology company, but Stafford is now home to an operation that aims to churn out whole new generations of materials created on the molecular level.

Indian-born entrepreneur Mahesh Patel started his company, ShayoNano, and produced his first 300-pound batch of a nanomaterial used to enhance the efficiency of common paint earlier this year. It was a milestone in a 25-year journey, including nine years the chemical engineer had spent in Singapore, searching for the perfect spot to set up in America.

"Nanotechnology is waiting for a success story," he said. "That would be the kind of story we'll create in the next years."

The first product off the production line is dubbed SmartHide, a lower-cost substitute for titanium dioxide, a crucial component of paint, which boosts opacity and other qualities.

Inside the facility, innumerable pipes and cables connect an array of shimmering pressurized vats, each linked to a touchscreen. The setup, which Patel describes as proprietary technology, can produce up to 5 tons of product per day.

By beginning production, ShayoNano has already gotten much further than most nanomaterial startups.

Nanotechnology has been under development in its modern form for more than 30 years, and it's been worked into ubiquitous applications, often unbeknownst to consumers. But experts in the field say the sector is still waiting for its heyday.

"I think that the real opportunity for nanotech has not been realized yet," said Lisa Friedersdorf, director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office.

"We're starting to see things moving in that direction, but we certainly are not done yet."

Houston laboratories played a crucial role in the early development of nanomaterials and Houston has struggled to nurture a tech scene, yet nano still hasn't taken off.

A handful of startup companies have cropped up, exhausted investor funding and fizzled. A few remain on shaky footing.

"I don't know exactly why it hasn't taken off," said Nick Tillman, director of energy acceleration at the Houston Technology Center. "It definitely has local promise. That would be something to set Houston apart."

One in a millionth

Decades ago, technology evolved dramatically when scientists learned to engineer on the microscale, one-millionth of a meter, to produce microchips. Nanoscale is a thousand times smaller - one-billionth of a meter - and it represents a realm where many substances are in atomic or molecular form. By engineering particles on the nanoscale, scientists can design attributes of the bulk material.

Modern nanoscience emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, propelled largely by Nobel Prize-winning research from Rice University, which found the first novel ways that atomic carbon could be assembled, dubbed buckyballs.

"Nano didn't take off in the same way that venture capitalists thought it would," said Andrew Barron, a nanomaterials researcher at Rice University. "Just because you make a material doesn't mean anyone wants to use it."

Many promising ventures in nanomaterials have taken flight and quickly crashed, said Shay Curran, director of the University of Houston's Institute for NanoEnergy and owner of a small nanomaterials company, Integricote.

While researchers turned out novel and sophisticated products, they struggled to make it marketable or profitable. In other cases, scientists lacked business savvy and may have misrepresented the time needed to develop a working prototype as the time needed to bring a product to market.

"You weren't necessarily going to have a product in three to five years," Curran said. "It takes a lot of time. People became disillusioned with nano."

For example, Konarka brought in about $250 million in grants and investor funds, promising plastic solar cells that were never commercialized. It folded.

At least two startup nano ventures spun off of research out of Rice University, Curran said, but never made it off the ground.

"There have not been that many successful nanomaterial companies," he said.

Innovation in nanotechnology has gravitated to the East and West coasts, he said, largely because academic institutions there provide researchers with ample funding and access to venture capital.

Going macro with nano

Patel, the CEO of ShayoNano, hopes to succeed where others have failed. He got his start in nanoscience more than two decades ago when, as a second-year chemical engineering student at a university in Mumbai, he won a prize for making a working prototype of a fuel cell in 1992.

ShayoNano was Patel's fledgling endeavor in 2007 when an economic development arm of the Singaporean government invited him to relocate to the small island city-state. With investor funding, he built a lab and spent nine years developing products based on nanotechnology.

"They had good faith in us, and they kept investing money," Patel said.

He sensed the time to begin production was near, and aimed to open a facility in the U.S. He didn't know exactly where. So he took a road trip.

Alone in a rental car, Patel drove from Austin to Miami, meeting with economic development offices along the way in search of a place to settle down.

He liked Houston for its port and its airport with nonstop flights to Asia, but Patel wasn't just looking for a place to do business. He wanted a place to live. Behind the scenes, he had a researcher crunching numbers.

His 14-year-old son in Singapore had tracked down data on school quality and neighborhood crime rates, identifying the Sugar Land area as a prime place to grow up.

Patel was elated with the area's large Hindu community, and with the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir temple, which was crafted from stone in India, then imported and set up just outside Stafford in 2004.

He nabbed a temporary spot downtown in the Houston Technology Center, a startup incubator, in 2015, and moved to a small office in Stafford by the year's end.

"A little town like Stafford doesn't get nanotechnology very often," said Patti Worfe, economic development director for the city of Stafford. "We're very excited."

The custom production hardware began arriving in Stafford in May, and the operation came on line late July.

ShayoNano has a handful of patented products developed in its lab. One material captures carbon emissions, others capture impurities in water, extract beta-carotene from palm oil, absorb oil from water, prevent paper from burning or protect plastic from ultraviolet rays.

Patel sold his first batch of SmartHide to a small-scale paint manufacturer. He claimed that larger producers have already expressed interest but would require a batch of product larger than his current facility can turn out. By jumping straight to large-scale production, he hopes to sell in bulk to big customers.

Since ShayoNano moved into its small Stafford office, it has been working with the city to find space for a much larger production facility - 100,000 square feet or larger.

"We continue to look for a substantially bigger building for them," Worfe said. "If the production on this product really takes off, they could start needing additional space very quickly."
For the television snob, Sheldon Cooper is easy to dismiss.

He's a generic nerd - a static character on a static show that has, though being among American television's most watched programs for the better part of a decade, seemingly receded from the cultural conversation.

"The Big Bang Theory" is returning to CBS for its 11th season Monday, the same day as the debut of the spinoff show "Young Sheldon," which follows the character's East Texas upbringing. By now, it seems like there isn't much left to say about the protagonist of CBS' most successful show.

Yet Sheldon might be contemporary American television's most important creation, an archetypal outlier deserving of more reflection on what he means today. There's a case to be made that he remains a more culturally influential character than any single character in, say, HBO's hit "Game of Thrones."

That may read like an audacious statement. Spend any amount of time online, and it's apparent that "Game of Thrones" is America's "favorite" show. It dominates cultural discussions and website clickbait, even though CBS stalwarts "The Big Bang Theory" and "NCIS" often attract more viewers.

More Information 'The Big Bang Theory' 11th season premier When: 7 p.m. Monday Network: CBS See More Collapse

But the network shows rarely receive similar media coverage or online cultural digestion. Prestige television served up by HBO or Netflix understands that virality can be specific, so the industry fosters shows that are daring, provocative or original enough to be worthy of conversation.

In that viewpoint,"The Big Bang Theory" is the antithesis of "Westworld."

Which means that Sheldon thrives in an alternate universe, a world where consistency is key. Even if internet dialogues have ignored the cultural crater of television's first prominent science genius molded to reflect today's geek culture, the achievement of Sheldon remains.

Houston native Jim Parsons' take on the Sheldon role has offered a portrait of nerd culture that has refused to go away. Critics might call his portrayal generic, perhaps even offensive to nerds. His shtick is to use social ineptitude to mask repulsive attitudes toward the people around him. His and his nerdy cohorts' behavior with women, though treated as comedy, can often be seen as misogyny masked in geek's clothing.

And yet Sheldon is the first prominent character to lead a top-flight network show who doesn't just acknowledge the existence of mainstream nerd culture but lives inside of it. Played by anyone but Parsons, the character might be seen as awkward and cringe inducing, yet Parsons dove so fully into Sheldon's self-absorption that the result is an unforgettably acid charm.

Compare Sheldon to, say, Jack from "Will & Grace," and there's a similar through-line, says Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University. Sean Hayes' performance was both loved and criticized, yet regardless of your opinion of his character, Jack stood tall in the imagination as a first for television. He became a symbol for gay acknowledgement in the late '90s when the public's views on sexuality where evolving.

" 'Will & Grace' was an important TV series in getting people to think about LGBT issues in ways they hadn't, but they did that with a lot of stereotypes. Jack had every one of them," Thompson said of the show that will return to NBC on Thusday night, a decade after it ended. "At the same time, that show did some important things. It is a complex thing going on there."

Similarly, Sheldon became a symbol of not just a person likely on the autistic spectrum but also an answer to the sly jocks, gruff fathers and witty teenagers of sitcoms past. He shows the dominance of nerd culture as a contrast to family sitcoms of the 1990s, when characters such as Steve Urkel from "Family Matters" or Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" could never be more than a sideshow.

And after 10 seasons, Sheldon delivers his literal-minded, condescending one-liners in a vastly changed television landscape. The culture has since worshipped a barrage of Jon Snows, Walter Whites and Don Drapers - men with secrets and dramatic twists.

Meanwhile, Sheldon Cooper has no secrets. He is exactly who you think he is, and Parsons makes that fact wonderful. Sheldon is a reminder that the old-school sitcom star still has his place in television.

"Look at where people take pictures of their lunch. It's always a well-known restaurant. That's like people posting about 'Master of None,' " Thompson says.

In other words, the new and critically acclaimed tend to receive more attention. But that doesn't mean the safe and consistent are inferior. Sheldon's place wasn't supposed to be the trending list of Twitter - his place has always been, literally, in your home.

"You can spend an equally good time getting a burger at In-N-Out or Whataburger," Thompson says. "Sometimes, that's just what the doctor ordered."
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First came the driving rain, which pummeled neat rows of vegetables and unearthed seeds that had just taken root on Garrett Gundermann's small farm near Wharton.

Then the nearby Colorado River breached its banks and continued to swell even when the sun at last returned. It seeped throughout the fields and swamped the few crops the storm hadn't drowned.

"There was just nothing left when the water receded," Gundermann said. "We've never had this much loss."

Tropical Storm Harvey destroyed hundreds of acres of crops and countless livestock when it inundated the Houston area, setting small farmers back for months or even years. The disaster has left a tight-knit cluster of local farmers markets without key vendors, and for days organizers have been seeking donations to help farmers like Gundermann who were hurt by the flooding.

In Meyerland, where the streets are still lined with piles of waterlogged furniture and carpets, the farmer's market opened Saturday with fewer than half its roughly 30 vendors. Many had stayed home to assess damage to their properties and begin the arduous process of cleaning debris from flooded fields or buying new livestock to replace drowned animals.

"The whole market has been hit," said Kat Carlson, a Meyerland market organizer whose family runs a goat dairy. "People in this town don't know what farmers have lost."

Salvaged vegetables

Plant it Forward, a nonprofit with one small neighborhood farm in Montrose and two in southwest Houston, set up a booth with a couple of coolers of vegetables, the only ones its farmers had salvaged. Its farm at Fondren and Willowbend took on the most water as the Brays Bayou flooded and left sweet potatoes and other vegetables rotting in the ground.

The farm sells produce at six local markets, all of which have set up with fewer vendors or revised their schedules after Harvey. The Heights Epicurean Market canceled its September lineup, and Urban Harvest is assessing the toll the storm took on its many of its farmers as it resumes its Eastside and City Hall markets.

Randi Rogers, who manages a Plant it Forward program that provides customers with weekly boxes of vegetables, said the farms likely won't have another harvest until late November. For now, she'll have to fill boxes with a small assortment of offbeat vegetables that weathered the storm: sweet potato greens, malibar spinach, bush okra.

"There's a lot of dirty work ahead," she said. "This is the hardest season to grow in Houston."

Kurt Sonntag, who raises chickens on his farm in Willis about 50 miles north of Houston, set up a booth in Meyerland with eggs and the few broilers he had available to sell as he divvies up his remaining stock among restaurants and small markets.

The storm dumped about three feet of rain on his property and the chicken pens flooded soon after it started to fall.

Some birds hopped on top of others to keep their heads above water, Sonntag said, and the bottom ones didn't make it. Then a power outage cut off heat in the coop, and he ultimately lost about a quarter of his flock of more than 500 chickens.

Chicks never arrived

Making matters worse, his local post office ceased deliveries of live animals as it sorted through a massive backlog of mail that it couldn't deliver during days of rain and flooding, so he hasn't yet received the 100 chicks he orders each week from a farm in Iowa. They'll take weeks to grow when they finally arrive, challenging him to stretch his meat supply to serve his customers.

"We're going to be cutting it close," he said.

Despite its reduced size, the Meyerland market's reopening helped restore a sense of normalcy for those who shop there.

Set out tip jars

Elizabeth Asnes, a regular customer, stopped by to check on the vendors. She picked up eggs and chicken for new neighbors, hoping to spread the word about the market, which began operating 11 months ago at Pilgrim Lutheran Church.

"I think it's fabulous, and I don't want it to go away," Asnes said. "I don't have to go to the grocery store anymore."

Carlson, worried the market will lose customers if it doesn't soon return to full capacity, encouraged farmers to set out tip jars for donations and promoted a crowd-funding page for Gundermann. Already, she said, several customers have given money to him and other vendors.

Gundermann, who relies on his 500-acre farm to support a family of four, had just begun to recover the costs of a late winter freeze that damaged many of his crops when the storm destroyed everything.

He told 15 employees to find work elsewhere and he's considering selling some of his land to make ends meet as he replants his field.

Gundermann doesn't anticipate making money until January at the earliest and doesn't expect to fully recover from his losses for years.

"It's going to be starting over, like when I just started farming," he said. "It's true devastation."
North Korea's florid insults and President Donald Trump's schoolyard ripostes are but the latest in a long tradition of political and diplomatic put-downs. And they are far from the most cutting.

Pyongyang has arguably done better (or worse, depending on point of view). Among U.S. presidents, it has called Lyndon B. Johnson a "living corpse," George W. Bush a "tyrannical imbecile" and Barack Obama a "clown" and a "monkey."

In 2009, North Korea's foreign ministry described then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a "funny lady" who sometimes "looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."

Trump, however, is the first U.S. president who has answered in kind, reaching into late-20th-century pop to deride North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man on a suicide mission." Kim, or at least his translator, sent many Americans scurrying to their dictionaries by dredging up the 14th-century word "dotard" to describe the U.S. president as old and senile.

But even leaving aside the buzz-killing possibility of nuclear war, none of the current jousting reaches the level of historically clever ridicule. For that, top marks are usually given to the British.

Of the long-necked, sour-faced French leader Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill once said, "He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath."

Told by Lady Astor that if she were his wife she would poison his tea, Churchill responded that, if he were her husband, he would drink it.

More recently, the Labour Party politician Denis Healey famously said that debating his mumbling, Conservative counterpart Geoffrey Howe was "like being savaged by a dead sheep." (Healey and Howe both died in 2015.) Of John Prescott, a member of his own party, Healy said, "He has the face of a man who clubs baby seals."

The United States' Founding Fathers were no slouches in the threatening-insult department. Thomas Jefferson is often credited with calling John Adams a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman," although many historians attribute the line to a pro-Jefferson political pamphleteer during one of their campaigns against each other.

Adams's partisans, on his behalf, called Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

During a pre-Civil War secession crisis, Trump's favorite former president, Andrew Jackson, told his vice president, John Calhoun of South Carolina, that "if you secede from my nation, I will secede your head from your body."

Issues of slavery and secession also led to one of the most famous incidents in Congress, when Massachusetts Republican Charles Sumner, in the spring of 1856, called Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas a "noisesome, squat, and nameless animal." The verbal attack resulted in Sumner being seriously beaten with a cane on the Senate floor.

Trump is sometimes compared in terms of language to Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate George Wallace, who issued similarly blunt attacks against "pointy-headed" bureaucrats and intellectuals, "liberals" and "pinkos."

Among the most memorable political put-downs in modern U.S. history was Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's response to Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind., in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, after Quayle defended his lack of experience by noting that he had spent as much time in Congress as John F. Kennedy had when Kennedy ran for Congress.

"I knew Jack Kennedy," the silver-haired Texas Democrat responded. "Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

On the presidential side of the same race, Vice President George H.W. Bush called his Democratic opponents Bill Clinton and Al Gore "bozos."

Hillary Clinton has endured her share of ridicule, much of it indirect or gender-related. When she first campaigned for president, long before the North Koreans or Trump took aim at her, Clinton acknowledged in a 2008 debate with Obama that she perhaps had a personality deficit compared with the charismatic young senator from Illinois, whom she conceded was "very likable."

Obama interjected with a patronizing smile, "You're likable enough, Hillary," words that many women considered sexist reminders of painful efforts to get ahead.

Among the most prolific domestic insulters of recent years has been New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, R, who during his time in office has called an openly gay lawmaker "numb-nuts," a Navy SEAL an "idiot," and the state Senate budget committee chairman an "arrogant SOB." During a news conference, he once told reporters they should "take a bat" to state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D, a grandmother in her 70s.

On the diplomatic stage, North Korea has had stiff competition from Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush a "monkey" and, in a 2006 U.N. speech, a "devil" who trailed the stench of sulfur in his wake.

After Trump slapped sanctions this year on the repressive Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro, the late Chavez's successor, Maduro warned Trump to "get your pig hands out of here."

But Maduro, and perhaps not even Kim, can compare with Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, who separately called both Obama and Pope Francis a "son of a whore" and the U.S. ambassador a gay "son of a bitch."

Asked during last year's U.S. presidential campaign to compare himself to Trump, Duterte replied: "Donald Trump is a bigot, and I am not."
In a victory for Texas' medical community, a Harris County state district judge Friday rejected a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state law that allows doctors to withdraw life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of the patient or guardian.

Judge Bill Burke said it would be "a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water" to repeal the controversial 1999 law, enacted in response to doctors' push to eliminate care they believe prolongs suffering in terminal patients. The law, which is unique to Texas, has drawn criticism from some families who say it gives doctors too much power.

"It would be a big mistake to throw out a statute in place for nearly 20 years that seems to be working pretty well," Burke said in rejecting the request for summary judgment declaring the law unconstitutional. "If you think the law doesn't provide sufficient protection for patients, go to the Legislature to remedy it."

Burke, a Republican, also questioned the involvement of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs. Burke told Austin Nimocks, a Paxton associate at the hearing, that "I find your presence very unsettling" and suggested the attorney general should be defending state law, not advocating against it. He said it smacked of politics.

RELATED: Lawsuit challenging futile-care law goes before judge

"I suspect you're looking for a shoehorn into the abortion debate," Burke said. "I'm not going to go there."

Nimocks acknowledged that the attorney general's position is unusual but said the office's "oath is to the Constitution first and foremost." He said there are occasions when laws are unconstitutional.

Burke added that the suit was moot because it concerns a patient no longer alive.

Treatment continued

The lawsuit was brought by Evelyn Kelly, a Pasadena woman whose 46-year-old, cancer-stricken son died, without any interruption in treatment in December 2015, a month after Houston Methodist Hospital invoked the so-called futile-care law. Methodist agreed to continue providing Chris Dunn treatment after her lawyers sought a temporary restraining order in November 2015.

Kelly said she was "disappointed and shocked" by the ruling.

"I'm not sure what the judge's problem was," Kelly said. "He'd obviously made up his mind before arguments began how he was going to rule."

Joe Nixon, the lawyer representing Kelly, said immediately after the hearing Friday that it had not been decided whether to appeal the ruling. But Kelly said Friday night she plans to appeal.

Methodist lawyers and a spokeswoman declined comment.

Nixon called his motion "a big ask" and said "trial judges don't like striking down judgments."

The suit, which did not fault the care provided by Methodist, alleged the law does not provide due process to patients or their guardians.

Nixon cited as examples that the law provides no definition of futile care; no criteria for the makeup of the ethics committee; no right for the patient to have an advocate at the committee hearing; no record of the hearing or right of review; and no avenue for court appeal.

Burke said he would only address the facts of this case, not "abstract" constitutional questions.

He said it was clear Methodist didn't violate Dunn's due process because the hospital provided everything the law requires.

The law gives doctors the authority to remove life support in cases doctors deem futile as long as a hospital ethics committee agrees with the recommendation and loved ones are given 10 days to find a facility to which to transfer the patient.

No other state gives such power to doctors and hospitals, a fact that has drawn national attention. Art Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University Medical Center, said that "if you were to predict which state would defer to doctors and establish a futility process, Texas would be way down the list."

Signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush, the law was a compromise between the medical community and Texas Right to Life and some disability-rights groups. Texas Right to Life came to regret the decision.

Right to Life's statement

In a statement Friday, Texas Right to Life assailed the ruling.

"This statute denied Chris his due process, but today the court left this mother voiceless and helpless by deeming her child's right to life moot by this ruling," the statement said. "Once again, Evelyn's son was victimized by this unconscionable law."

Texas Right to Life has represented more than 300 families unhappy about hospitals' decisions to invoke the law, its staffers say. As a result of a 2003 amendment to the law, the group is listed as a resource on the notification letter families receive when the law is invoked. It assisted Kelly's legal pursuit of the case.

Dunn was taken to Methodist in October 2015, after doctors found a mass on his pancreas. In ensuing weeks, it grew so large it began pinching his small intestine and kidney and caused organs to begin failing. Methodist doctors placed him on a breathing tube, but told Kelly they had done all they could and invoked the law.

The ruling was applauded by the Texas Medical Association, which was part of a broad coalition of groups who together filed a motion in support of the law. The groups included Texas Alliance For Life, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, the Coalition of Texans With Disabilities and the Texas Alliance for Patient Access.

"This is a good decision," said Dr. Carlos J. Cardenas, president of the medical association, which represents more than 50,000 doctors and medical students in Texas. "It upholds a law that reinforces physicians' professional and ethical responsibility always to put our patients' best interests first."

Nixon told Burke that he and Methodist lawyers would draft a ruling for him to sign in the coming days.
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AUSTIN -- As a boy he weathered several nasty hurricanes that blew through his hometown on the Texas coast, including Carla and Beulah, but John Sharp's family never filed for federal disaster assistance.

In fact, until recently, he had never had contact with or knew much about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other than reading about the miscues that brought it notoriety during Hurricane Katrina 10 years ago.

That changed when he got a late-night call from Gov. Greg Abbott's political guru, Dave Carney, alerting him that the governor would soon call to ask him to become Texas' new recovery czar. Sharp said he wasn't sure what to think.

When Abbott called a couple of hours later, his message was simple: 'Look, Sharp ... You probably work 10-12 hours a day right now, and there's another 10-12 hours a day out there that you ain't doing s---."

"Do I get to keep the job I have now?" Sharp said he asked.

Yes, Abbott said. "This (new job) is not a paid deal."

"He didn't say would you like to be. He just said he needed me to do this," Sharp, 67, the $900,000-a-year chancellor of the Texas A&M University System said. "What do you say? No, I don't want to do this? Of course I said yes. I mean anybody would."

Anybody, if you're John Sharp, an affable Texas politician with a ski nose like Bob Hope and a charming, good-old-boy approach to match, the last Democrat to win state office two decades ago who has since become a go-to for Republican governors to fix complex problems or push through controversial ideas.

Since he signed on three weeks ago to oversee Texas' recovery from Hurricane Harvey, the worst storm to blast Texas coast in more than a century, and by most measures the most destructive in U.S. history, Sharp has crisscrossed the storm-blasted areas along the Texas coast.

When Abbott announced Sharp's appointment as the head of the Governor's Commission to Rebuild Texas on Sept. 6, he said his instructions were simple: "Rebuild Texas ahead of schedule, under budget and with a friendly smile."

In the weeks since, Sharp has juggled his A&M duties with the recovery, spending hours in briefings and updates and repeatedly touring the state with Abbott, including a Thursday trip to Rockport. He routinely gives out his private cell phone number to local officials with the instruction, "call me if you need anything," and, perhaps not surprisingly, he has taken calls at all hours ever since.

And as Texas' cleanup and recovery enters its fourth week, the Sharp-led effort has logged several firsts for covered much new ground, officials confirm, including pressing Texas A&M's network of locally based agriculture extension agents into service for the first time ever to be the local contact for state recovery efforts, instead of hiring a network of expensive consultants to do the same thing.

Seasoned experts who successfully help the recovery after Katrina and Sandy have also been brought in to assist, several also at no expense to taxpayers. Sharp's first call after taking his new job was to call Billy Hamilton, a former deputy comptroller known as one of the best organizers in state government.

True to form, the straight-talking, tobacco-chewing Sharp offers a salty response when asked how those changes got approved so fast, within days after the state's recovery got into full swing: "I didn't ask."

For a get-it-done, no-BS guy who was once considered an up-and-comer who might run the state as governor someday, before Texas went from Blue to Red, Sharp said the new job is a perfect fit in some respects, even though he admits he spent the first few days "scared s----less" before he got the operational plan set and going.

"I ain't running for nothing," Sharp said, explaining why he feels free to make decisions that will push the recovery ahead quickly, even before they are not fully vetted politically. "It's a real liberating experience knowing you're not ever running for anything ever again."

"Respond immediately, fix the problem, cut red tape," read one of Sharp's homespun Rules of the Road that he issued for the recovery effort soon after he came aboard.

"No surprises," read another.

On a recent morning, as Sharp touted the battered coastal community of Rockport, near where Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25 with disastrous 140-mph winds, he said he was struck by the totality of the devastation. With Abbott at his side, Sharp's rules quickly took effect.

Recalling previous hurricanes and the controversies that turned the recovery ugly, Sharp knew that fast action was the imperative. "Every time you turned on CNN, the mayor was bitching, the parish sheriff, all those people were bitching -- and they just turned the whole tone of everything," he said. "You've got to be able to get to that mayor before he gets so frustrated that he just starts screaming and hollering about it."

So when local officials on the tour complained that they debris removal was an issue, because they had no landfills to hold the trash and couldn't burn it. Abbott signed a proclamation allowing them to burn the debris.

When a woman tearfully relayed how she had not heard from her father, who had been unable to get to safety from an island before Harvey arrived, state officials dispatched as boat that located him safe and sound.

"You don't wait around for things to happen. I'm not big on rules," Sharp said. "The governor has shown a total willingness to cut through red tape. I mean it takes him five seconds to make a decision."

Attention to detail

Sharp said he cares little whether someone is upset. What matters to him is that their needs are being properly and quickly addressed.

"Mosquito spraying. We caught a lotta s--- over that," he explained. "The beekeepers were not happy with C-130 aircraft flying over killing mosquitoes (and) organic farmers ... because they can't call their stuff organic anymore because it's been sprayed with pesticides.

"I said, 'Sorry, I've got kids trying to go to school and they've got mosquitoes stuck up their nose and we're going to kill them (the mosquitoes)."

If his bluntness may seem unusual in an era when most tea party-affiliated politicians try to spin a happy face on whatever they do, Sharp is clearly a throwback to another era.

Born and raised in Placedo, a coastal farming town of 200 near Victoria, he grew up the son of an oilfield worker and a school teacher. He jokes that has family's white frame house was "so porous the wind went right through it," to explain why it never sustained much if any damage in previous hurricanes.

It also escaped damage from Harvey. Even though his dad sold it 50 years ago, he said he checked in with the current owner -- a remark that highlights his attention to detail that has made Sharp legendary, and occasionally reviled, in state government.

After earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1972 from Texas A&M, where he was in the prestigious Corps of Cadets and served as student body president, he went to work for the Legislative Budget Board in Austin. Soon, he earned a master's degree in public administration what is now Texas State University in San Marcos.

Returning in 1978 to Victoria, where he ran a real estate firm, Sharp launched his political career by getting elected to the Texas House where he served until 1982, when he was elected to the Texas Senate. In 1986, he was elected to the Texas Railroad Commission where he helped reform trucking regulations, improve railroad safety and develop new markets for clean-burning natural gas.

In 1990, he was elected comptroller of public accounts to replace the legendary Bob Bullock, who had been elected lieutenant governor. Sharp instituted a series of reforms to make state government more efficient and accountable, despite complaints from entrenched bureaucrats, and implemented a new credit-care system for state benefits as well as a new state lottery -- in a process that became a model for other states.

In 1998, he ran as a Democrat to replace Bullock as lieutenant governor, but lost to Republican Rick Perry. Another try in 2002 was unsuccessful, when he lost to Republican Davis Dewhurst.

In 2005, at a time that Sharp's name was mentioned as a possible candidate for governor, Perry named Sharp to head a special education task force to study reforming the state's tax system. He dropped his gubernatorial aspirations, and went to work on a reform plan that eventually adopted by the legislature -- in what was considered a win for both Sharp and Perry.

After helping spearhead the passage by voters of a new program for cancer-fighting research grants, Sharp in 2008 announced he would be a candidate to replace retiring U.S. Kay Bailey Hutchison -- a decision he withdrew when he became chancellor.

At A&M he has created occasional waves as he has pushed ahead with the biggest expansion in the A&M System's history, overseeing enrollment growth from 122,000 to 148,000 and a $5.4 billion construction boom at the flagship campus in College Station.

While Abbott has said Sharp was a natural go-to guy to oversee Texas' recovery -- because of his long experience in state government and his get-it-done style, Sharp professes that he has no idea why the governor selected him.

Even so, the two had known each other for more than 10 years as neighbors in Austin's upscale Pemberton neighborhood, just northwest of downtown. "We both had adopted kids. We're both Catholics," Sharp said.

'A very astute choice'

For legislative leaders and outsiders familiar with both Abbott and Sharp, the choice seems natural -- a choice that promises to make Sharp one of Texas' most prominent non-elected officials for the rest of this decade, and perhaps beyond. Sharp estimates the recovery from Harvey will take at least three years.

"It's a very astute choice for the governor because it takes politics out of the equation: a lifelong Democrat who has no political aspirations and won't be a political rival," said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. "John Sharp is immensely talented, and who gets along with conservative Republicans, centrist Republicans and Democrats."

And if the recovery effort becomes controversial, Abbott can't be accused of assigning a political hack or crony to handle the showcase program.

So far, with the recovery efforts going smoothly, both remain highly complimentary of each other -- with Sharp insisting, in typical fashion, that Abbott has amazed him with his attention to detail.

"I'm telling you, he's immersed in this," Sharp said. "When I'd do this stuff for politicians, they're at the 30-40,000 foot level, you know: 'You do this; let me know when the press conference is.' We'll go into private meetings, with no press corps ... and we've got all these experts sitting back there, and who answers every question? Abbott."

Abbott aides said the governor's instructions to Sharp were simple: Advocate for for communities, and get things done without delay.

People close to Sharp say he and Abbott have something else in common: Both Texas natives have taken the state's recovery personally.

Two weeks ago, while Abbott and Sharp toured the Houston area, Ray Kendall, 49, shook hands with both officials and heard their reassurances that recovery assistance would be expedited. He had questions -- and doubts.

"Both of them guys listened and (Sharp) had someone get my information and told me to let him know if I didn't," the Fort Bend business owner explained. "I got a call back from someone later that afternoon, and they're helping me get everything lined up.

"He said he knew how to cut through the damn red tape. And sure enough."

No surprises, as Sharp said.

Correction: Gov. Greg Abbott's political guru Dave Carney was incorrectly identified in an earlier version of this story.
(Thumbs up) You can catch a buzz and help Harvey victims at the same time. Just order - what else? - a Harvey Wallbanger. A key ingredient in that drink, Galliano, is owned by liquor company Lucas Bols. It's donating all September profits from Galliano to the mayor's relief fund. Individual bars are also stepping up, with bartender extraordinaire Bobby Heugel leading an informal Harvey Wallbanger-related fundraiser.

(Thumbs down) If ever there was a time when we collectively should be talking about generating additional revenue for governmental bodies, it's in the wake of an emergency like Harvey. Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett each - excuse the verb - floated tax increase proposals of different kinds. In the city of Houston, the average homeowner would pay just under $5 a month, less than the price of a 6-pack of Lone Star. The person who needs a beer - or a chill pill - is state Sen. Paul Bettencourt. "I don't believe government should be showing this type of attitude when people are down," Bettencourt said. Of course, this is exactly the time people need government to fix the problems that elected officials like Bettencourt have neglected for decades.

(Thumbs down) Houston flood czar Stephen Costello was the key advocate for ReBuild Houston, a pay-as-you-go infrastructure improvement program funded largely by a drainage fee that's been tacked onto our water bills since 2011. Costello, who we haven't seen much of before, during or after Harvey, might want to take a look at RebuildHouston.org, the organization's website. It's about as up-to-date as the Addicks Dam. There hasn't been meaningful information added in months. As we dig out, it might be nice for those who promised that ReBuild Houston was a viable solution to provide a status report and some semblance of transparency.

(Thumbs down) We wrote about a tone-deaf rich guy last week but now comes Houston lawyer and Texas A&M regent Tony Buzbee. As many of us continue to muck out, drive rental cars or take the bus, he took delivery of a $600,000 World War II tank right in front of his River Oaks Boulevard mansion. "What are your neighbors going to say, all these rich-ass people?" asked a breathless Fox 26 reporter. Buzbee won't have trouble coming up with the cash. He was one of the first sharks stirring up Harvey-related legal business at town hall meetings he hosted to put the Army Corps of Engineers in those tank sights.

(Thumbs down) The Trump administration has appointed a pair of Texans to distinguished positions. We're unclear who's in charge of vetting, but consider this:

Trey Trainor was tapped for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. The Texas Observer analyzed Trainor's activity on social media and wrote the lawyer "approvingly tweets out articles characterizing Obama as a 'race hustler,' Protestantism as 'poison' and Islam as a 'phony religion' manufactured by the 'murderous Mohammed.'"

Jeff Mateer, a first assistant attorney general to Ken Paxton, if confirmed will have a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas. He gave a speech in 2015 referencing a young transgender child. "I mean it just really shows you how Satan's plan is working and the destruction that's going on." From that lectern, he called same-sex marriage "disgusting."
Missouri electric cooperative linemen  including those at Intercounty Electric Cooperative  have returned from Florida and Georgia where they helped restore power in the wake of Hurricane Irma. Missouri sent 133 linemen from 22 systems to assist SECO Energy in Sumterville, Fla., and Flint Energies based in Reynolds, Ga.

Most of the Missouri lineworkers traveled to Florida, including Intercountys crew, where damage to the central Florida electric cooperative was described as unprecedented.

SECOs infrastructure suffered significant damage as Hurricane Irma traveled directly through its service territory with winds that ranged from a Category 1 to a Category 3 hurricane. Power outages began Sunday evening, Sept. 10, as Irmas tropical-storm-force winds entered Central Florida.

Intercounty employees assisting were Jason Greear, Matt Ryberg, Nathan Ellison, Aaron Scantlin, Brandon Schmitt and Jason Elledge.

Members continued to lose power throughout Sunday night and Monday morning when winds increased to hurricane-force speeds. When winds subsided, more than half of SECOs system was down and more than half of the cooperatives nearly 200,000 members were without power.

Restoration began on Monday, Sept. 11, at noon. More than 1,200 lineworkers and tree trimmers were deployed in full force throughout the system over the next six days to restore power. At the end of the day on Sunday, Sept. 17, SECOs system was more than 99.9 percent restored. A few members could not receive power due to high water.

The men worked as much as 16 hours per day repairing broken poles and wire damaged by powerful wind and falling trees. In Florida they carried tools through chest-deep water, keeping a wary eye out for alligators. The Georgia crews braved venomous snakes and the ever-present fire ants.

The Missouri linemen were part of the largest mobilization of mutual assistance in the history of the rural electric program. More than 1.2 million electric cooperative members were without power following the hurricane.

Building on lessons learned from providing assistance during previous hurricanes, a tanker truck from Central Electric Power Cooperative accompanied the Florida-bound crews in case fuel was in short supply.
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A wall of remembrance for those who died from substance abuse at last year's event. This year's event will focus on strengthening families and communities. It runs from 1 to 3:30 at Colegrove Park.

Annual Vigil, Walk Making Substance Abuse Recovery Visible

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  Organizers of Saturday's Voices of Recovery are hoping to "flip the script on what addiction looks like."

Begun as a vigil in 2013 mourning those lost to addiction, the event has grown over the years to focus more strongly on recovery by adding a gathering and walk. It runs from 1 to 3:30 on Saturday at Colegrove Park with the

"You think of death, you think of arrests, you think of broken homes, and that's all part of it," Colin Woods, a former addict now working with Berkshire Transition Network in Great Barrington. "For a young person in recovery it's a scary step to take ... [we need] to show there is hope and there is freedom on the other side."

Woods knows from experience. Raised in Clarksburg, his plans for higher education and taking over this family business fell to the wayside as his alcohol abuse as teen got him kicked out of college. As his addiction progressed, he moved on to opiates when his work in a pharmacy made them easily available. He burned bridges with family, was in trouble with the law and had reached a point even the substance abusers around him distanced themselves.

He was homeless and camping out an Mausert's at his lowest point when he walked to the home of a relative who had conquered addiction to ask for help.

"Addiction brings people to unimaginable bottoms both physically and emotionally," Woods said. "To have that hope and to have somebody hold their hand out and say I've been through that before is the way out."

Woods entered a treatment center in Connecticut and now, 6 1/2 years later, is holding out his hand to help others. The key, for him at least, was seeing young people who had overcome addiction.

"I need to see it. I needed to see somebody who took that next step and was living a life of freedom and happiness," he said. Instead of recovery being a grind, it was about moving forward and achieving goals.

"That's what I would like people to see recovery as: an upward trajectory not just a slow grind."

Saturday's event highlight the path to freedom from addiction at the family friendly event with representatives from local resource groups, speakers, a walk down main street, music and activities. Northern Berkshire Community Coalition is the lead this year but Kenna Waterman's Josh Bressette Commit to Save A Life again will have a "Wall of Recovery."

"A big part of this event is to make recovery visible," said Wendy Penner, director of prevention and wellness at Northern Berkshire Community Coalition. "Because what is visible in our community about addiction is often death, overdoes, tragedy."

Just in the last two weeks, two people have died of overdoses and first-responders have administered overdose-reverser Narcan at least five times. The Rev. David Anderson, who will speak at the vigil, has overseen the funerals of nearly a dozen overdose deaths, Penner said.

There is hope, and it's not nearly visible enough, said the event's participants.

"Many times when people are in recovery, that's a very private thing, there is a stigma of the disease," Penner said. "Every year we really struggle to find a person in recovery to speak because of that shame and stigma ... we need to move beyond it so when people are ready ... they can see those examples, they can see people [in recovery] ... and aspire to be like that."

Mayor Richard Alcombright, a strong proponent of recovery work and member of several state and regional working groups on the opioid crisis, said the thing that differentiates addiction from other diseases is its illegal nature.

"It's sold illegally, it's used illegally," he said. "For me that's the big differentiator with community understanding of addiction and other life-threatening disease and we need to get past that, too."

One way is the walk downtown this year at Colegrove Park, another is making sure people know where they can get services. The city could have pushed Tapestry Health's needle exchange to third floor in the back of a building instead of on West Main, the mayor said. "We didn't want to do that. We wanted it to be visible so the community understand that this is a disease."

Tapestry Health has serviced more than 250 people with harm-reduction efforts, testing and referrals to recovery sources since opening earlier this year. The methadone clinic is providing services to more than 200 people a week and the Brien Center on American Legion Drive has a day-treatment program that meets five days a week.

"It's not as well utilized as we would like it to be and so what we're seeing is we still have work to do to build that recovery community," Penner said.

The theme for Saturday's Voices for Recovery is strengthening families and community by raising awareness of not only survivors and resources but looking at how families are impacted and where they also can find help.

"For every one person who has a substance abuse disorder there are seven other people that are being affected," said David Risch, a member of Al-Anon and participant in NBCC's working group. "We're looking for support for people in recovery and family members could be a source of support."

It's in important for families members to learn the "language of addiction," he said, such as acknowledging they can't change a person. But they can step back and disengage emotionally to reflect if they are part of the problem or can be part of the solution.

"If there are families out there who are struggling who need a place to start, a great place is this Saturday," the mayor said. "There will be resources there and plenty of people that can give either physical or emotional hugs."




Haiti - Agriculture : Workshop on the Results of the National Agricultural Production Survey





This week at the Hotel Montana, Carmel Andre Beliard, the Minister of Agriculture opened the workshop on the Results of the National Agricultural Production Survey (ENPA) 2016. This survey, launched in September 2016, which was completed in April 2017, covered four main components: cereals, legumes, food and fruit.



One of the objectives of this survey, in addition to making available a wider range of information products and services, was to make reliable and relevant information available to the State in order to better plan agricultural and rural development and to the various actors of the sector, to better define their interventions, with the ultimate aim of improving food security and fighting poverty.



Branly Eugene, the Director General of the Ministry, closed the workshop by thanking the European Union, which financed it, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for its technical assistance and all partners who worked on this important survey.



IH/ iciHaiti


















Imperial Valley News Center

Zoohackathon 2017 Launches in the United States, the U.K., and India

San Diego, California - The U.S. Department of State will host the second annual Zoohackathon on September 22-24 at the San Diego Zoo and on October 6-8 at the Zoological Society of London and the World Wildlife Fund in New Delhi.

Wildlife trafficking  the poaching, illegal transit, trade and sale of wildlife  is the worlds fourth largest transnational crime. In addition to decimating populations of Earths most iconic species, wildlife trafficking enriches transnational criminal networks that profit from the illicit sales of exotic pets, delicacies, jewelry, and traditional medicines all over the world. According to the Environmental Crime Crisis report produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and INTERPOL, the illegal trade in fauna and flora (other than fisheries and timber) has been estimated by different sources to be worth as much as $23 billion annually.

Zoohackathon is an event organized by the Department of States Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, in partnership with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, that challenges the public to develop solutions that will help stop wildlife trafficking. Over two different weekends this fall, coders, designers, and conservation enthusiasts from around the world will gather to develop new technological applications and tools that will help address the challenges of wildlife trafficking.

At each Zoohackathon site, participants will have 24-48 hours to hack their way toward solutions to challenge statements solicited from conservation experts around the world. At the end of the hackathons, teams will present their ideas and a panel of judges will nominate a winner for each site. All of the winners from the three host sites will be eligible for a global prize.

For further information about Zoohackathon, please visit www.zoohackathon.com/ .
Imperial Valley News Center

California, Quebec and Ontario Sign Agreement to Link Carbon Markets

Quebec City - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today signed an agreement with the leaders of Quebec and Ontario to officially integrate their cap-and-trade programs, expanding the three-year partnership between California and Quebec to include Ontario, Canadas most populous province and leading industrial region. The agreement takes effect January 1, 2018.

"Climate change, if left unchecked, will profoundly disrupt the economies of the world and cause untold human suffering," said Governor Brown. "That's the reason why California and Quebec are joining with Ontario to create an expanded and dynamic carbon market, which will drive down greenhouse gas emissions."

Governor Brown, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne (left) and Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (center) sign agreement to expand cap-and-trade partnership.

Climate change is a global problem that requires global solutions. Now more than ever, we need to work together with our partners around the world and at home to show how our collaboration can lead to results in this international fight. Todays carbon market linking agreement will add to the success we have already seen in reducing GHG emissions in Ontario, California and Quebec. We are stronger together and by linking our three carbon markets we will achieve even greater reductions at the lowest cost. I look forward to continuing to work with Governor Brown and Premier Couillard on our common goals, including advocating for the adoption of carbon markets and emissions cap programs across North America and around the world, said Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Quebec has been active for many years in the fight against climate change. We believe in concerted and coherent actions with our partners as well as in cooperation to face the challenges posed by this global challenge. On behalf of the Government of Quebec, I want to assure Ontario and California of Quebec's full cooperation in the implementation and promotion of carbon markets in North America and internationally. We should rejoice in the progress made so far and the new milestones made today in strengthening our relations, which contribute to a more prosperous, more responsible and low carbon society, said Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard.

Governor Brown delivers remarks at the 7th joint meeting of Cabinet Ministers of the governments of Ontario and Quebec.

California's cap-and-trade program, which launched in 2012 and linked with Quebecs program in 2014, sets a declining limit on carbon pollution and creates a market to achieve the emission reduction targets in the most cost effective manner.

Expanding the partnership to include Ontario will further strengthen this market-based system and drive additional investment in clean energy and innovation.

A strong cap-and-trade program, together with California's full suite of climate programs and actions, will help ensure the state can cut carbon within its borders to meet its ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

The linkage agreement reflects California, Quebec and Ontario's shared commitment to operate an efficient, linked market and supports coordinated information sharing and continued consultation. It also lays out a process for other jurisdictions to join the linked program and establishes a working model for other states and provinces that are seeking cost-effective approaches to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's agreement comes after Governor Brown signed AB 398 in July, extending the state's cap-and-trade program to 2030. In March, as required by SB 1018, Governor Brown produced findings that Ontarios program was as stringent as Californias program and could be considered for linkage and in July, the California Air Resources Board adopted an amendment to its cap-and-trade regulation setting January 1, 2018 as the start of the linkage. Ontario and Quebec are both on track to finalize corresponding linkage amendments to their regulations.

While California, Quebec and Ontario developed their cap-and-trade programs through separate legislative and regulatory processes, the three jurisdictions have worked together to ensure that their programs complement each other and provide participants in all three jurisdictions with the benefits of an expanded program.

Under the linked program, carbon allowances and offset credits can be exchanged among participants in all three jurisdictions cap-and-trade programs. The expanded market leverages additional greenhouse gas reductions at reduced cost and enhances the ability of jurisdictions to effectively work together to develop and implement cost-effective regional greenhouse gas emission reduction programs.

The agreement was signed today in Quebec City during the 7th joint meeting of Cabinet Ministers of the governments of Ontario and Quebec and can be found here. For additional information on the cap-and-trade program, visit: http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/linkage/linkage.htm

Today's action follows the Governors events and meetings earlier this week tied to Climate Week NYC, the Yale Climate Conference and the UN General Assembly. Over the course of the week, the Governor met with the UN Secretary-General, opened Climate Week NYC 2017 and discussed subnational climate action from governments and the business community at events with other global leaders. Governor Brown announced co-chairs for the Global Climate Action Summit, highlighted state, city and business-led climate initiatives at the Yale Climate Conference and joined fellow U.S. Climate Alliance co-chairs to release a report on the progress by member states to meet their portion of the U.S. commitment under the Paris Agreement. In addition, the Governor participated in a wide-ranging discussion organized by the Skoll Foundation and the UN Foundation on the need to mobilize all levels of society to decarbonize the economy, signed an agreement with Denmark on water and climate issues and welcomed the Republic of the Marshall Islands and other new members to the Under2 Coalition.
NAVSUP FLC San Diego Supports Mexico Humanitarian Assistance Efforts

San Diego, California - NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center (FLC) San Diego personnel assisted in the coordination and delivery of more than 50,000 pounds of humanitarian aid supplies as part of earthquake relief efforts for Mexico, Wednesday.

The White House ordered the urgent staging and delivery of the medical, water sanitation and hygiene supplies following a 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the Mexican nation Tuesday. More than 200 people have perished as a result of the quake to date.



NAVSUP FLC San Diego executed the President's request in collaboration with Project Handclasp and United States Northern Command, ensuring 48 pallets of disaster relief supplies were on the ground and in the hands of the Mexican people within hours.



"Very quickly after receiving the call, we were able to get the humanitarian aid identified, sorted, packed, banded and transported to the flight line for delivery," said Craig Horton, Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) Department director. "To lend a hand in helping a nation in their time of need was an incredibly important priority for us."



Humanitarian assistance and international relief operations have long been a part of U.S. maritime force core capabilities.

"The Navy isn't just a fighting force; we are also ambassadors of goodwill between the United States and many other countries," said Rich Monahan, ILS engineering division officer. "We are a team of Sailors and civil servants who care about our global neighbors."



The earthquake struck on the 32nd anniversary of a 1985 earthquake that killed thousands in central Mexico. According to Mexico's national Civil Defense agency, the sheer force of Tuesday's quake reduced buildings to rubble and left large swaths of central Mexico without power. Medical aid and search and rescue efforts are ongoing.



"In times like these, it is imperative to have the right supplies and capabilities on site in very short order," said Commanding Officer Capt. Michelle Morse. "I believe we hit the mark, and I believe I speak for everyone on this team when I say it was an honor to be a part of that effort. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Mexico as they navigate through this inconceivable tragedy."



NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center San Diego is one of eight fleet logistics centers under NAVSUP Global Logistics Support (GLS) that provides operational logistics, business and support services to fleet, shore and industrial commands of the Navy, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command, and other joint and allied Forces. Services include contracting, regional transportation, fuel, material management, household goods movement support, postal and consolidated mail, warehousing, global logistics and husbanding, hazardous material management, and integrated logistics support.



NAVSUP GLS provides global logistics for a global Navy. The organization is made up of more than 6,300 military and civilian logistics professionals operating from 105 locations worldwide providing an extensive array of integrated global logistics and contracting services to Navy, Marine Corps, joint operational units, and allied forces across all warfare enterprises.
Navy Awards Contract for Columbia Class Submarine Development

Washington, DC - The Navy awarded a $5.1 billion contract to General Dynamics Electric Boat for Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) of the Columbia Class submarine this week.

The IPPD contract award is for the design, completion, component and technology development and prototyping efforts for the Columbia Class Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs). This work will also include United Kingdom unique efforts related to the common missile compartment.



"The Columbia class submarine is the most important acquisition program the Navy has today," said Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. "This contract represents a significant investment in maintaining our strategic deterrent into the future, as well as our ongoing partnership with the United Kingdom."



The contract award follows a successful Milestone B (MS B) approval Jan. 4 2017.



MS B formally initiated the Columbia Program entry into the Engineering and Manufacturing Development Phase.



"Awarding this contract is an important step in ensuring an on-time construction start in FY 2021," said Rear Adm. David Goggins, Columbia Class Program manager. "The Navy and our industry partners are excited to begin this important phase of the Navy's number one acquisition priority."



The 12-ship Columbia Class will replace the existing Ohio Class nuclear ballistic submarine force, which provides our Nation with a credible and survivable sea-based strategic deterrent. The first patrol of the lead ship, SSBN 826, is scheduled for fiscal year 2031.



The Columbia Class Program is managed by Program Executive Office (PEO) Submarines. PEO Submarines focuses on the design, construction, delivery and conversion of submarines and advanced undersea and anti-submarine systems, including Special Operations Forces delivery systems, submarine rescue systems, torpedoes, towed acoustics sensors, and unique submarine sonar, control, imaging and electronic warfare systems.
Navy Continues to Foster Resiliency to Families of the Fallen

Washington, DC - Since 1936, the last Sunday in September has been designated as Gold Star Mother's Day to recognize and honor those who have lost a child serving in the United States Armed Forces.

In 2009, fallen service members' families were officially recognized and added by presidential proclamation, renaming the observance to Gold Star Mother's and Family's Day.



Members of the Armed Forces don't serve alone. Standing with each service member are parents, spouses, children and siblings providing support and love. This year, when the president signs the proclamation observing Sept. 24 as Gold Star Mother's and Family's Day, the nation has the opportunity to let the families who have suffered the unimaginable pain of losing a loved one while on active duty know that America will not forget them or their hero.



The Navy is committed to helping foster resiliency for families of fallen service members regardless of how they died. The Navy Gold Star Program honors Gold Star families throughout the year by hosting events that pay tribute to their lost loved ones, providing resources and opportunities to connect with one another.



For more information on the Navy Gold Star Program, visit www.facebook.com/navygoldstar or www.navygoldstar.com or call 1-888-509-8759.



Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC), headquartered at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., is responsible for worldwide U.S. Navy shore installation management. With more than 53,000 military and civilian personnel worldwide across 11 regions, 71 installations and 123 Naval Operations Support Centers, CNIC is responsible for the operations, maintenance and quality of life programs to support the Navy's fleet, fighter and family.
U.S. Humanitarian Assistance in Response to the Syrian Crisis

Washington, DC - Maintaining its steadfast commitment to getting lifesaving support to the people of Syria impacted by conflict wherever they are, the United States today announced more than $697 million in additional humanitarian assistance. State Department Bureau of Population, Migration, and Refugees Acting Assistant Secretary Simon Henshaw made this announcement at the UN General Assembly. It brings U.S. humanitarian assistance to nearly $7.4 billion since the start of the Syria crisis in 2011.

This assistance reflects the continued generosity of the American people and demonstrates steadfast U.S. commitment to helping address the unprecedented magnitude of suffering and urgent humanitarian needs.

U.S. humanitarian assistance supports the operations of the United Nations, other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations operating across the region. Through this support, the United States will continue to provide emergency food, shelter, safe drinking water, urgent medical care, humanitarian protection activities, and other urgent relief to help the 13.5 million people suffering inside Syria, throughout all 14 governorates in Syria  ultimately saving lives and alleviating human suffering amid daily threats of violence and deprivation.

The new funding also helps mitigate the impact of the crisis on governments and communities throughout the region that are straining to cope as they continue to generously host five million refugees from Syria.

U.S. Humanitarian Assistance for the Syria Crisis, By Country

INSIDE SYRIA: Nearly $516 million

New total since the start of the crisis: Nearly $3.8 billion

The humanitarian needs inside Syria continue to outpace the international response. As the largest single donor to the humanitarian response, U.S. humanitarian assistance provides critical, lifesaving support to millions of displaced people or those unable to meet their basic needs in affected areas of Syria, including through operations across international borders and conflict lines. The additional U.S. contribution continues to support emergency food assistance, including monthly household food parcels, ready-to-eat rations, flour to bakeries, and food vouchers, which includes support for the Raqqa response. The contribution also supports emergency medical care, shelter assistance, and provision of safe drinking water, hygiene programs, and improved sanitation to those affected by the crisis, including refugee populations inside Syria. It also provides critical relief supplies and much-needed counseling and protection programs to help the most vulnerable, including children, women, persons with disabilities, and the elderly.

LEBANON: Nearly $29 million

New total since the start of the crisis: Nearly $1.6 billion

Todays announcement provides additional support to both the more than one million refugees from Syria living in Lebanon and vulnerable Lebanese host communities. The additional U.S. funding supports basic assistance to refugees; food; health care including life-saving hospital care and childhood vaccinations; shelter improvements to informal settlements and sub-standard shelters; and access to safe drinking water for Syrian refugees and Lebanese host communities. The funding also supports emergency and reconstructive surgeries for weapon-wounded patients, including young children, evacuated to Lebanese facilities.

JORDAN: Nearly $88 million

New total since the start of the crisis: More than $1 billion

U.S. funding, now surpassing the $1 billion mark since the start of the crisis, continues to support the 141,000 refugees from Syria living in camps, as well as the more than 500,000 non-camp refugees with cash assistance to meet basic needs such as rent, health care, food vouchers, and transportation. It supports efforts to enroll additional students in public school; psychosocial programs; and water and sanitation improvements that benefit refugees from Syria and Jordanians. In addition, U.S. funding supports refugee registration and information; access to work opportunities; and protection programs based in communities. U.S funding includes providing life-saving assistance for an estimated 50,000-60,000 Syrians stranded at the Jordanian border. This assistance also supports food vouchers for Syrian refugees.

TURKEY: $35 million

New total since the start of the crisis: Nearly $572 million

U.S. funding assists Turkey in addressing the humanitarian and protection needs of more than 3.1 million Syrian refugees in Turkish host communities and camps. Our funding includes basic assistance to refugees, support for psychosocial programs, and prevention and response to gender-based violence. U.S. assistance also provides essential commodities, including tents, blankets, and winter supplies, supports emergency food needs, builds additional schools, pays teachers stipends, and provides school supplies and school transportation for children. This funding supports health programming and accreditation for Syrian doctors, and expands livelihoods programming including vocational training. This assistance also supports emergency food needs among refugees living in camps.

IRAQ: $15 million

New total since the start of the crisis: Nearly $294 million

The Kurdistan Regional Government hosts 97 percent of Syrian refugees in Iraq. U.S. funding supports the repair and upgrade of shelters, the expansion and rehabilitation of schools, and improvements to water and sanitation systems in refugee and host communities, in addition to the management and maintenance of camps. Funding also supports psychosocial care, nutrition programs, and otherwise helps refugees meet their food needs, including through livelihoods programming.

EGYPT: $13 million

New total since the start of the crisis: More than $140 million

Our funding helps the 120,000 refugees from Syria meet their basic needs including food, healthcare and education; prevents and responds to sexual and gender-based violence and protects vulnerable children; and increases self-reliance and livelihood opportunities.

Regional Funding: $2 million

New total since the start of the crisis: Nearly $18 million

Funding Numbers by Country*
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The original Nineties supermodels joined Donatella Versace at the Versace Milan Fashion Week show on Friday, to mark the 20th anniversary of her brothers murder.

Dressed in gold, floor-length gowns, the original supers Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, and Carla Bruni walked the runway with Donatella to the late George Michaels Freedom. A voice announced Gianni, this is for you, as a curtain was drawn back to reveal the supermodels.

Gianni Versace, who founded the fashion house in 1978 and is widely credited with cementing the concept of a supermodel, was shot dead on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997. The gunman Andrew Cunanan took his own life in the days following, after killing five people including the fashion designer. After her brothers sudden death, Donatella took over his duties at the fashion empire.

The soundtrack and the gang of supermodels strutting arm-in-arm referenced the 1991 Versace show, where George Michael sat in the front row.

Speaking at a press conference prior to the show, Donatella said that she was happy that after 20 years she can finally do this with a smile on my face, The Guardian reported.

To celebrate her brothers work, Donatella used bold prints showcased between his 1991 and 1995 collections, including the leopard from the 1992 Animaliercollection, the 1991 collection using Andy Warhol screenprints of Marilyn Monroe, as well as the Greek baroque styles of the same year.

Models present creations for fashion house Versace during the Women's Spring/Summer 2018 fashion shows in Milan, on September 22, 2017 (MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images)

We pay homage to not only (Gianni's) artistic genius but to who he was as a man, and above all, as my brother, Donatella wrote in the Versace Spring/Summer 2018 collection notes, according to Sky News.
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Has Theresa May committed the UK to keeping a key Vote Leave promise?

No, not the 350 million  we may be getting back full control over our own laws, but not the laws of arithmetic. I mean this one, signed by three current members of the Cabinet, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, and Michael Gove:

There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.

In fact, when the UK belatedly produced its counterproposals on the rights of UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens here, they were considerably less generous than the offer made by the EU27, and in particular they explicitly removed a number of important rights.

Perhaps most obviously, the UK proposes that EU citizens in the UK will no longer have the same rights to be joined by family members, but instead will be subject to the considerably more restrictive rules applied to UK nationals:

Future family members of those EU citizens who arrived before the specified date  for example a future spouse  who come to the UK after we leave the EU, will be subject to the same rules that apply to non-EU nationals joining British citizens.

Now, some might argue that this is fair, because it brings to an end a position where EU nationals in the UK (and indeed UK nationals elsewhere in the EU) have, in some respects, more rights than Britons here.

On the other hand, EU nationals who moved here exercising their free movement rights did so on the basis that they had these rights, which the UK signed up to in various EU Directives.

Moreover  and this is my view  if anyone is really worried about the unfairness to British citizens, then that unfairness could be ended tomorrow by the UK government, which could simply give us the same rights EU citizens have.

The fact that most of those who make this argument are unprepared to contemplate this solution carries more than a whiff of hypocrisy. Nor are these the only rights EU nationals will lose, as Dr Mike Ward explains.

Now, some commentators  in particular, Migration Watch and Daniel Hannan  continue to attempt to mislead the public about this: for example, Daniel Hannan recently claimed that EU citizens will have all the same rights as now, while Migration Watch argue that when they said that EU citizens will keep their existing rights they didnt mean all their existing rights.

But no one senior in Government has made such an obviously false claim; indeed, David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, explicitly recognised that EU nationals would lose some of their current rights, saying we agonised over the issue.

That is, until Friday in Florence, when in response to a question from an Italian journalist, the Prime Minister did just that (video  at about 1.13):

Q. "As you said, 600,000 Italians now live in the UK. You said that you want them to remain. What is going to change for them  I guess something is going to change?"

A. (the Prime Minister). "We set out that for those EU citizens currently living in the UK who have made the UK their home, including those 600, 000 Italians who are in the UK, we want them to be able to stay and to have the same rights as they have at the moment."

That is unequivocal. The same rights they have now. Now, of course, the Prime Ministers statement is technically untrue  the UK has set out no such thing.

But thats not really the point, because what matters is not what weve said so far, but what we do next  and in particular, what David Davis and Ollie Robbins, our lead representatives, say at the negotiations next week. Monsieur Barnier has already signalled very clearly in his response to the speech that he expects them to make good on the Prime Ministers promise.

So do they say that the Prime Minister didnt really mean it, or didnt understand what she was saying, and that the UKs position remains unchanged  we have no intention of giving EU citizens the same rights as they have at the moment?

In that case, why on earth should anyone in the rest of the EU27 take anything she, or the UK government says, seriously? Such a course would be deeply damaging to the Prime Ministers credibility (especially in Italy, where her comments have been widely, and accurately, reported).

Or do they, belatedly, do the right thing, and change the UKs approach - a course of action which would generate a huge amount of goodwill? Three million EU citizens here and a million Britons elsewhere in the EU are waiting to hear.

Jonathan Portes is professor of economics and public policy at King's College London, and senior fellow in UK in a Changing Europe
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The UK's credit rating has been downgraded by Moody's Investor Service because of economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

The downgrade came just hours after a major speech by Theresa May, which she had hoped would clarify the UK's position on Brexit.

Moody's also said an easing of austerity was behind its decision to lower the UK's rating.

 In 90 seconds: Theresa May's big Brexit speech

Recommended Theresa May unveils plans UK to stay in single market for years

The news will come as a huge blow to Ms May just hours after her speech in Florence, Italy, in which she confirmed that Britain will leave the European single market but offered little clarity on plans for an alternative economic relationship.

In response, Moody's warned of "uncertainty for businesses" and said the current plans for Brexit will cause the "erosion of the UK's medium-term economic strength".

In a damning assessment of the Government's negotiating strategy to date, analysts said: "Moody's is no longer confident that the UK government will be able to secure a replacement free trade agreement with the EU which substantially mitigates the negative economic impact of Brexit.

"While the government seeks a 'deep and comprehensive free trade agreement' with the EU, even such a best-case scenario would not award the same access to the EU Single Market that the UK currently enjoys.

"It would likely impose additional costs, raise the regulatory and administrative burden on UK businesses and put at risk the close-knit supply chains that link the UK and the EU."

Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 1 /8 Brexit: the deciders Brexit: the deciders European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty Brexit: the deciders French President Emmanuel Macron Getty Brexit: the deciders German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters Brexit: the deciders Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA Brexit: the deciders The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty Brexit: the deciders Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images Brexit: the deciders Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA Brexit: the deciders After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA

It also cited a relaxation of spending restrictions imposed between 2010 and 2015, warning of "increasing political and social pressures to raise spending after seven years of spending cuts".

The Government announced last week that the public sector pay cap will be lifted from next year, and has taken a number of other steps to ease austerity, including increasing spending on health and adult social care.

The ratings agency said: "Overall, Moody's expects spending to be significantly higher than under the government's current budgetary plans and higher than the rating agency expected when the negative outlook was assigned in June 2016."

As a result, it said, it expects the UK's budget deficit to remain around 3.5 per cent of GDP - significantly higher than the below 1 per cent by 2020-21 that ministers have promised.

The UK is "among the few highly-rated European sovereigns where the public debt ratio continues to rise", the agency added.

In a further blow to Ms May, Moody's said the Conservatives' deal with the DUP was another reason for the downgrade. It highlighted the 1bn given to Northern Ireland as part of the parliamentary pact as another cause of increased public spending.

Despite downgrading the country's credit rating, analysts raised the UK's overall outlook from "negative" to "stable" because they believe "some form of a free trade agreement [with the EU] is in the interest of both sides and will ultimately be agreed".

Moody's said hints that the UK government was "softening its negotiating stance in a number of areas", especially on the need for a transitional period before Britain fully leaves the EU, was behind the change to "stable".

The Government hit back within hours of the downgrade being announced, claiming the decision was based on "outdated" evidence.

A spokesperson said: The assessments made about Brexit in this report are outdated. The Prime Minister has just set out an ambitious vision for the UKs future relationship with the EU, making clear that both sides will benefit from a new and unique partnership.

The foundations on which we build this partnership are strong. The government has a robust economic record which has delivered four and half years of continuous growth and a record number of people in work. We have made substantial progress in reducing the deficit while finding extra money for the NHS and social care at the same time. We are not complacent about the challenges ahead but we are optimistic about our bright future.
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Over half of construction workers in Britain are concerned by the prospect of a skills shortage as the UK hurtles towards Brexit, new data reveals.

A survey by polling company OnePoll, commissioned on behalf of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), found that output from the UK construction market is expected to grow over the next twelve months.

But 53 per cent of construction workers deem labour shortages to be a serious challenge.

A RICS report earlier in the year estimated that that 8 per cent of the UKs construction workers are EU nationals, accounting for some 176,500 individuals.

The latest survey shows that construction workers in London and senior and middle managers are most concerned about a skills gap.

With Britain set to leave the European market we must ensure that we are not left in a skills vacuum, said Barry Cullen of RICS.

He welcomed the recently introduced apprenticeship levy, which the survey found was expanding the pool of talent in the industry, but said that post-Brexit assurances were needed.

The construction industry  due to its high proportion of international workers  has been particularly vocal around the risks of Brexit since the June 2016 referendum.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled  leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

In March this year it set out a wish-list for Brexit, citing five things that it believes should be strategically prioritised by the Government as divorce negotiations get under way.

As well as setting a concrete timeline and doing its utmost to attract foreign investment, the group at the time demanded that the Government push for skilled international workers to be able to come to the UK, for an agreement to be reached swiftly for the passporting of professional services and for it to seize the opportunity to reset British agriculture by leaving the Common Agriculture Policy.

A report published on Friday by the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) found that UK businesses are already finding it notably harder to recruit skilled staff for professional roles like banking and engineering as a result of a fall in net migration.
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More overseas tourists visited the UK in July than during any month on record, as a slump in the pound sharpened the countrys appeal as a holiday destination.

More than four million trips to the UK were recorded during the month, up 6 per cent on the same month in 2016, according to the Office for National Statistics.

International visitors spent 2.8bn in July, also representing the highest amount for a month since records began in 1961.

Tourism is a major economic force that creates jobs and drives growth for the whole of the country, said tourism minister John Glen. These record figures show the continued strength of this important sector and the UKs global position as a must-visit destination.

Recommended UK tourism is booming as more Brits choose to go on staycation

Patricia Yates, director at national tourism agency Visit Britain, said the figures demonstrate why tourism is one of the countrys most valuable export industries and that it is an increasingly important driver of economic growth across our nations and regions.

Inbound tourism has proved robust all year, largely driven by a dramatic slump in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote, especially against currencies such as the euro and US dollar.

There were 2.9 million overseas visits from North America between January and July, marking a 21 per cent increase on the same period last year. A total of 15.1 million overseas visits were recorded from EU countries, the UKs largest visitor-generating region, representing a 4 per cent rise on the same period last year. Combined visits from Australia, China, the Gulf markets and India, were up 18 per cent to a record 3.6 million during the first seven months of the year.

Tourism is worth approximately 127bn annually to the UK economy.
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Sweden is conducting its largest military exercise in more than two decades amid rising Russian aggression.

More than 20,000 troops supported by both French and American air defence units participated in the September Aurora 17 drill.

The exercises spanned Sweden's west coast, Gothenberg, the Stockholm area, Malaren Valley the Baltic island Gotland.

Recommended US Special Forces deployed at Russian border to defend Baltic states

Russia has ratcheted up its military presence in the Baltic region and staged a large-scale military exercise called Zapad, in which it sent helicopters, fighter jets, missiles and tanks along its border with the EU.

Some 19,000 Swedish soldiers participated in the exercise, supported by 1,435 US and 120 French soldiers. Units from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Lithuania and Estonia also participated.

Residents of Gotland were reportedly unnerved by the sudden military presence, with one man telling Sky News: "All these guns and soldiers are a little bit scary."

Sweden in June summoned Russia's ambassador after a fighter jet flew strangely close to a Swedish reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace above the Baltic sea.

Sweden's government in August agreed a defence deal which secures 2.8bn kroner (260m) for the armed forces every year until 2020. Eight years after conscription was scrapped in the country, the government has reintroduced the policy, following a failed recruitment drive.

At the end of the Cold War, Sweden had some 850,000 personnel, yet numbers have now dwindled to some 50,000.

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. 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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. 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

Sweden is not a member of Nato, but it has increased ties with the group in recent years, as Russia has bolstered its armed forces.

Last year Stockholm introduced an agreement that allows Nato forces to be deployed in Sweden, but only with the host country's permission.
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An imam who told children that martyrdom was greater than any other success they could achieve at school has been convicted for supporting Isis.

Kamran Hussains extremist sermons were recorded by an undercover police officer at a charity-funded mosque in Stoke-on-Trent.

Prosecutors said Hussain told children as young as 10 that non-Muslims wanted to kill them and that they must stand up and be ready to sacrifice, be ready to stand in the face of the elements of Shaytan [Satan], be ready to spill blood and have your blood spilt.

The 40-year-old argued that he was exercising freedom of speech, and that the ability to discuss difficult concepts in a challenging world was an essential part of religion.

But a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of eight charges including supporting Isis and encouraging terrorism.

Hussains lunchtime speeches to the Ellahi Mosque in Tunstall High Street were recorded for four months from June last year, seeing him address around 40 worshippers including children.

Prosecutors said the 10 out of 17 sermons investigated strayed beyond the mainstream moderate Islamic thought.

The court heard that in June, Hussain referred to Isis as a small fledgling state who is standing in the face of a pompous and arrogant army, while calling on Muslims to pray for the terrorist groups victory and for their oppressors to be annihilated.

 Cressida Dick says terrorism is putting 'unsustainable' strain on Met

The following month, he prayed for all to live under Sharia law and urged his listeners to stand against sinners, oppressors and infidels.

He urged them to finish them and remove their heads for what they do, adding: When you dont fulfil the command of Allah, Im coming to remove your head.

In August, Hussain was recorded speaking in favour of engaging in jihad, while claiming that neither the Queen or Prime Minister could stand in the way of the law of Allah.

Hussain said jihadis would take over a land; they stand a black flag; and establish the law of Allah over the necks of the people, whether they like it or dont like it.

His words were echoed in an audio clip found on one of his mobile phones with a jihadi saying: Inshallah... we will see the black flag rise over Big Ben and Downing Street.

Around 15 children were present at a meeting later that month when he gave an incendiary sermon on non-Muslim kuffar, while floating conspiracy theories claiming that the far-right English Defence League and Britain First had been created by the Government to target Muslims.

In September, prosecutor Sarah Whitehouse QC said he told his audience that martyrdom was the supreme success and was greater than any other success, such as school or college.

Martyrs would go to paradise if you go in front of Allah with the bullet wounds and the sword wounds and you are raised in that situation with the blood still coming from your body, Hussain added.

He repeated the same sentiment later in the month, while criticising the Governments counter-extremism Prevent programme.

Michael Ivers QC, a barrister representing Hussain, argued there was a place for criticism and unconventional views and not toeing the line.

He told jurors: My client does not need to channel everything he says just so it fits in with what other people think it should say.

Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 1 /40 Timeline: The emergence of Isis Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawis successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a real war with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assads regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a conspiracy. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Ladens successor) concerned about Isis expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraqs second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloffs murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Obama tells us that America will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - April Isis media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist groups al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isiss deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic citys ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyras residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamists positions. AFP

Just because Mr al-Baghdadi and his group  the Islamic State  have decided to take various Islamic terms, words and concepts, that everyone in the world must change their sermon and adapt what they would have said.

Or everyone must not use the word martyrdom anymore because you would be aligning yourself to this johnny-come-lately group who have decided to say it. Why do people have to amend what they say?

Hussain did not react as he was found guilty on all counts, half of which were by a majority verdict.

A supporter called down from the public gallery see you soon as he was led from the dock, with Hussain smiling and replying inshallah, meaning God willing.

He was remanded in custody ahead of a sentencing hearing on Thursday, where he faces a maximum of seven years in jail for encouragement of terrorism and 10 years for supporting a proscribed organisation.

West Midlands Police Superintendent Wayne Jones said Hussains actions have no place in our society and would not be tolerated.

Mari Reid, from the Crown Prosecution Services counter-terror division, said Hussain had violated his position of trust and authority in the community.

His audience included children, some as young as 10, who would have heard him say killing others or being killed themselves was more desirable than doing well in school, she added.

The CPS was able to take the jury through his dangerous sermons and show how they went beyond ordinary speech and amounted to support for terrorism.

Additional reporting by PA
The high-profile meeting in Bali is the first since Biden became US President in 2021.
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A paedophile who filmed children using a camera hidden in his bathroom clock has been jailed.

Patrice Renault, 43, was initially investigated by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and police because of internet traffic showing he had viewed indecent images of children at his home.

He was found to have downloaded hundreds of videos of child abuse on to his computers, as well as extreme pornography and voyeuristic images.

He quickly confessed to searching for and downloading images of young boys in love, directing officers to the relevant computers and handing over his passwords, a spokesperson for the NCA said.

But Renault did not tell officers he had hidden a camera in the clock in his bathroom and used it to record guests at his home. Those filmed included three children.

A judge at Belfast Crown Court sentenced him to 16 months imprisonment for making indecent images of children and possessing extreme pornography, and eight months for voyeurism.

The judge said Renault would spend six months in prison before being released to serve suspended prison sentence of 18 months.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant 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Colin Radcliffe, a senior manager at the NCA, said: Renault exploited guests who stayed at his house for his own sexual gratification.

That was on top of the harm he did by downloading images of children. Behind every one of those was an instance of horrific abuse and Renault re-victimised children by viewing them.

The NCA and PSNI will continue to work together to bring offenders who participate in the abuse of children to justice.


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The teenager accused of carrying out the Parsons Green bombing bought some of his deadly ingredients on Amazon, a court heard.

Ahmed Hassan, 18, is accused of attempting to kill Londoners on a packed District Line Tube train with a home-made bomb contained in a bucket hidden inside a Lidl carrier bag.

He allegedly bought parts to make the improvised explosive device online and left the carriage of the District Line train at Putney Bridge, before the device partially detonated at the next station last Friday morning.

Witnesses told how a fireball erupted inside the carriage, leaving 30 people injured, including one woman with serious burns.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told LBC on Friday it was a very, very dangerous bomb. It partially detonated. It had a large quantity of explosive and it was packed with shrapnel.

It could have been so much worse.

Mr Hassan, of Cavendish Road, Sunbury, in Surrey, was arrested at the port of Dover at 7.50am on Saturday by counter-terrorism officers.

The teenager, whose parents are understood to have been killed in Iraq, was in the foster care of Penelope and Ronald Jones, aged 71 and 88 respectively, who previously received MBEs for services to children and families.

He appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday wearing a grey jumper and with long dark, unruly hair, to face charges of attempted murder and using the chemical compound TATP to cause an explosion that was likely to endanger life.

He spoke only to give his name, date of birth and address, and was remanded in custody to appear at the Old Bailey on 13 October.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Six people were injured in an apparent mass acid attack in Stratford, east London.

Police were called to the Stratford Centre in the borough of Newham just before 8pm, a Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Independent.

The force said a group of males was reported as having sprayed what is believed to be a noxious substance and eight victims were injured in a number of locations.

One person has been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm, it said.

Witnesses at the scene said an argument broke out among a group of people in the Stratford Centre, which is a much smaller shopping mall than its sprawling neighbour, the Westfield Centre.

A man who gave his name as Hossen, 28, a Burger King assistant manager, said he saw a victim and his friend, a known local homeless man, run into the fast food outlets toilets to wash acid off his face.

He said: There were cuts around his eyes and he was trying to chuck water into them.

Another witness, Zak Abdi, who shared footage from Stratford train station, told the Mirror Online he saw a substance thrown at a group of men who looked like they were on their way to a club.

It didnt hit just one person, it hit a crowd of people. One guy had been hit in the face, he kept shouting I cant see, I cant see, I cant see.

I think he has lost his vision. He kept shouting, it was a scary moment for everyone.

Nate Higgins, 20, told the Independent he left Westfield shopping centre at about 8.30pm.

I was in Westfield and I came out and saw all the police and ambulances.

People werent panicking. It seemed like it was settled. But as I was leaving more and more ambulances and fire engines were showing up.

There were more fire engines than Ive ever seen in one place.

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in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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 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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 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during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA

Inside the Burger King toilets, water could reportedly be seen all over the floor, along with toilet tissue and medical gloves.

Other eyewitness accounts said a group of males roamed in and around the centre apparently picking off their victims, with several people posting footage of the aftermath on social media.

Victims appear to be receiving treatment in Stratford rail centre, which is directly opposite the shopping centre and close to the Olympic Park.

Panicked commuters can be seen fleeing the scene in some images, while footage shows police and security officers swarming around the CCTVs at the train station.

The incident is not being treated as terror-related, Scotland Yard said in a statement.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

Paramedics and firefighters were also called, and a wide cordon was put in place.

Paul Gibson, LAS assistant director of operations, said: We were called to the incident at 8.07pm and sent a number of resources including ambulance crews, paramedics in cars and members of our hazardous area response team.

The first of our medics arrived within 10 minutes of the first emergency call and worked closely with our colleagues from the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and London Fire Brigade making sure patients received the medical help they needed as quickly as possible.

We treated six patients in total and took three to London hospitals.

Additional reporting by agencies
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A former contestant on University Challenge has been acquitted of raping a woman at York University.

Former student Bartolomeo Joly de Lotbiniere, 22, had been accused of assaulting a woman in 2014.

He was found not guilty of rape and assault by penetration at a retrial at Bradford Crown Court, after a jury at his original trial in February failed to reach a verdict.

Mr Joly de Lotbiniere had been accused of attacking a woman at her halls of residence after the pair had been out in York.

The couple began to kiss and Mr Joly de Lotbiniere went to get a condom, but struggled to get an erection and the two agreed to stop.

We both just agreed to stop. I think she said lets just stop, he told a jury.

Mr Joly de Lotbiniere said the woman did not try to stop him or push him away, but said he was embarrassed by what had happened.

The court was told he sent texts to the woman, one of which said: I was a disgrace, I did a very stupid thing and I am very sorry for what I did.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

The defendant said he was referring to being ashamed by the incident, saying it was only his second sexual encounter and he was not comfortable with having a one night stand.

The woman, now 22, had gone to the police after seeing Mr Joly de Lotbiniere on the BBC programme University Challenge in 2015 and had got angry and upset.
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More police have said they want to be armed with guns than ever before as the UK remains on high alert following a string of terror attacks.

A national survey carried out by the Police Federation of England and Wales found more than a third of officers supported the idea of routinely being armed, compared to 23 per cent when the last survey was carried out in 2006.

Another 55 per cent said they would be prepared to carry a gun if asked to  up more than 10 per cent.

The greatest support among the 32,300 officers surveyed was for guns not to be issued routinely to all officers, but for more police to be trained to use firearms so they could use them when needed.

Steve White, chair of the Police Federation, said: Considering the threats we now face, the resources we dont have and the demand we cant meet, we expected to see an increase in support for routine arming.

Despite the atrocities seen this year, a terror threat that only goes up, never down, and prolonged pressure heaped on officers, they still hold on to the principle of policing by consent, with two thirds of officers not wishing to be routinely armed if given the choice.

Mr White said the number of specialist firearms officers had been dented by savage cuts but was returning to 2010 levels.

 Cressida Dick says terrorism is putting 'unsustainable' strain on Met

Lets face facts, we live in dangerous times, he added, saying he hoped that the survey could be used to lobby the Government and help police to not only keep themselves safe but help achieve their number one priority in keeping the public safe.

The research found that male officers, those in cities and in frontline roles, were most likely to support being armed, while more than half were concerned that armed units were not readily available when needed.

Police in Northumbria, Greater Manchester, Cleveland, West Midlands and the City of London forces were most likely to support being given guns, while Gloucestershire, Humberside, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, and West Yorkshire were at the other end of the scale.

A significant proportion said they wanted access to alternative protective measures and equipment at all times, including being constantly accompanied by another officer (68 per cent), having body-worn video (78 per cent) and armed with Tasers (75 per cent).

The research was carried out following the terror attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, while police were assaulted by a man armed with a sword outside Buckingham Palace while fieldwork continued.

PC Keith Palmer was stabbed to death by Isis supporter Khalid Masood in Westminster and officers who fought the London Bridge attackers with just their batons were severely injured in the London Bridge attack.

The atrocities have sparked renewed public debate over whether more police officers should be armed with Tasers and guns, amid wider concerns about the strain terrorism is putting on forces other work.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, has voiced opposition to routine arming in London, arguing it was unnecessary and would damage officers relationship with the public.

I understand why people are saying well, surely many more officers, or maybe even all officers, should be armed but I dont actually agree, she told LBC Radio.

In pictures: Westminster attack Show all 9 1 /9 In pictures: Westminster attack In pictures: Westminster attack An air ambulance lands after gunfire sounds were heard close to the Palace of Westminster in London PA wire In pictures: Westminster attack MPs wait until the situation is under control in Westminster. 'The alleged assailant was shot by armed police,' David Lidington, leader of the House of Commons, told the house. BBC News In pictures: Westminster attack Crowds gather in Westminster after shooting incident, which police are treating as terror attack BBC News In pictures: Westminster attack Police were also called to an incident on Westminster Bridge nearby AP In pictures: Westminster attack Early reports indicate the car, which mounted the pavement on Westminster Bridge and mowed into around a dozen people, was the same vehicle which then rammed into the railings of the Palace of Westminster, just around the corner Reuters In pictures: Westminster attack Security sources described the suspected assailant as a middle-aged Asian man, who is understood to have left the car before attacking a police officer with a seven-to-eight inch knife PA wire In pictures: Westminster attack Police have asked people to avoid the immediate area to allow emergency services to deal with the ongoing incident AP In pictures: Westminster attack One woman has died and a number of others, including the police officer, have been hurt, according to a junior doctor at St Thomas' Hospital Reuters In pictures: Westminster attack At least three gun shots were heard by those inside Westminster, and proceedings in the House of Commons have been suspended AP

I dont want to see every officer on every street corner carrying a gun.

Authorised firearms officers volunteer for the specialist job and have to undergo rigorous training and selection processes.

Home Office statistics show there were 6,278 armed officers across the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales as of the end of March  an increase of 639 (11 per cent) compared with a year earlier.

A major uplift was launched after Isis massacred 130 people in Paris in 2015 and the number is due to top 7,000 by April next year.

Theresa May has announced an extra 24m of funding for counter-terror policing in the wake of the attempted bombing on a Tube train in Parsons Green.

But the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) warned that terrorism does not take place in isolation and prevention relies on the whole policing system.

Every time theres a terror attack, we mobilise specialist officers and staff to respond but the majority of the officers and staff responding come from mainstream policing, head Sara Thornton added.

This disrupts the daily work of policing on which the public rely, it creates backlogs of incidents in our control rooms and results in a slower response to the public.

The NPCC called for the Government to consider increasing funding for stretched police forces to cope with the extra strain of terror prevention.

Police chiefs are carrying out a separate review of the response in the wake of a wave of terrorist incidents in the UK.
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A march by the far-right English Defence League (EDL) in Essex has been abandoned after only a handful of supporters turned up.

The protest had been due to start at 1pm but was over less than half an hour later after a solitary stand run by a handful EDL members was packed up.

They were vastly outnumbered by counter-demonstrators in Chelmsford, who estimated the number of far-right protesters at between two and six.

One man volunteering as a steward was seen unfurling a large St Georges flag emblazoned with the phrase RIP Lee Rigby, referring to the soldier murdered by two Islamist terrorists in Woolwich in 2013.

The flag also included the EDLs slogan and the phrase: Not racist, not violent, no longer silent.

The groups Essex division claimed it called the protest to highlight issues including grooming gangs, female genital mutilation and terror arrests.

A Facebook event for the march had listed 17 people as going and 43 interested but they failed to materialise.

 Far-right groups hold protest only to find themselves outnumbered 10-1 by anti-fascist demonstrators

Paul, an activist from Stand Up To Racism, said the group was a hated minority that would not be tolerated in the city.

Only two to four of them turned up, he told The Independent. They scuttled of home, they wouldnt march because they were vastly outnumbered by the opposition.

People from Chelmsford will not tolerate fascists in their midst trying to divide our communities.

Our grandfathers and grandmothers fought against fascism and we wont allow it to happen again.

Unite Against Fascism described the event as a washout, putting the number of EDL protesters at six.

A heavy police presence had been deployed to prevent disorder but officers stationed around central Chelmsford and on standby in riot vans were not needed.

The EDL's poster advertising the planned march in Chelmsford

Meanwhile, counter-protesters demonstrated peacefully carrying refugees welcome signs.

One anti-EDL demonstration was called Chelmsford Throws Out Fascism by organisers.

Chelmsford and Essex's response to their fascist, white supremacist ideology will always be to throw it in the bin, they said.

Supporters joined with another counter-demonstration organised by United Against Fascism, which called the EDL pathetic.

The group is frequently outnumbered by opponents at its marches, including some that saw clashes break out in London and Birmingham in June.

Earlier that month, a small group of EDL supporters had to be confined to a side street by police in Liverpool.

Far-right groups have come under increased scrutiny in the UK amid a spike in tensions over grooming gangs, Brexit and terror attacks carried out by both Isis-linked extremists and a suspected far-right fanatic in Finsbury Park.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

National Action, a neo-Nazi group, became the first far-right group to be banned as a terrorist organisation by the Government in December after being linked to the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox.

Two British soldiers are among the alleged members currently awaiting trial for terror offences.

Leaders of another ultranationalist group, Britain First, have been charged with causing religiously aggravated harassment during a rape trial.

Reports of hate crime have risen dramatically in the past 18 months, as the number of suspected far-right radicals flagged to an anti-terror programme has soared.

Just under a third of all people being monitored under the Channel programme in 2016/17 part of the Prevent terror prevention scheme  believe in extreme right-wing ideologies and are vulnerable to radicalisation, according to Home Office figures.
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Schools must teach all pupils about British values, particularly as some children are encouraged to resist them at home, the head of Ofsted has said.

Amanda Spielman, who has held the post since January, said the education system should play a vital role in upholding British values, in a society where she said some children are growing up in environments that are actively hostile towards them.

She described the existence of unofficial schools in the UK as a dangerous problem, citing the fact that 10 unregistered schools had been found in Birmingham in the past two years, with eight now registered or closed while the other two are still operating legally.

Speaking to officials in the city on Friday, Ms Spielman said: That is why what we call British values are so important. And we shouldnt be afraid to say that British values are not universal values.

I often hear people react against the word British in this context. But while they may not be unique to Britain, they are certainly not understood everywhere in the world. Even where they are understood and valued they arent always fully reflected in practice.

We know that even in the UK some children are being brought up in an environment that is actively hostile to some of these values.

The education system has a vital role in upholding them. If children arent being taught these values at home, or worse are being encouraged to resist them, then schools are our main opportunity to fill that gap.

Education has to be the values anchor in a stormy sea.

Ms Spielman criticised superficial displays of British values or tick box exercises, citing an instance where her colleagues son had come home with a homework task to craft a picture of the Queen out of sequins.

A charming task in itself perhaps, but thats not teaching children about our common values, she said, adding: Pupils should learn how we became the country we are today and how our values make us a beacon of liberalism, tolerance and fairness.

Ms Spielman added that there were continuing risks presented by unregistered schools that hide from the rule of law.

They often teach a narrow curriculum of just a few subjects, perhaps with a particular single-faith focus, and are often housed in buildings that wouldnt pass the most basic of health and safety checks, she said.

Some of the images taken by inspectors that I have seen show places that are filthy and downright dangerous. In short, they put children at risk. Our inspectors are working hard to identify and help shut down these illegal operations.

But we know we cannot do it alone: all of us have a role to play, whether by being alert when children are taken off the school roll or by passing on intelligence about where these schools may be located.

Part of this is continuing to build confidence in mainstream education, and to make sure parents understand the risks of sending their children to unregistered schools.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

Of schools caught up in the Birmingham Trojan Horse scandal in 2014, she said that the very places that should have been broadening horizons were instead reinforcing a backward view of society.

While those inspections are a long way behind us and many of the schools involved have completely transformed since, it is fair to say that the wider social and cultural issues leading to the events still need addressing, she added.

It comes after Ms Spielman said earlier this year that children must be taught British values in school to help them develop resilience against terror attacks, saying Ofsted would work to counteract extremism by searching for illegal, unregistered schools where children are at risk.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg has led a backlash from Brexit-backing Tory MPs against Theresa Mays plan to slam the brakes on full EU withdrawal, calling it disappointing.

The new right wing Conservative champion criticised the proposal for a two-year transition because it would delay the end of free movement and continue to hand billions of pounds to Brussels.

Mr Rees-Mogg also urged the Prime Minister to come clean over whether Britain would remain under the remit of the European Court of Justice  which should be ruled out as a red line.

Meanwhile, the former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith warned the transition was controversial, calling for guarantees that ECJ jurisdiction and single market membership would end in 2019.

And Owen Paterson, another former Cabinet minister, protested that the transition period puts off the time when we can really take advantage of having left.

The backlash came as the Czech Europe secretary, Ales Chmelar, warned the divorce bill would be far higher than the 18bn Ms May is now willing to pay, to cover the remaining EU budget period.

This is just a payment for the remaining financial framework period. This is not a payment for all the legacies that we see, including for example the pensions and the legacies in terms of grants and funds, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Sources in Brussels told The Times that the remaining liabilities could reach 20bn  making the total exit bill close to 40bn  and would have to be negotiated separately.

In her much-anticipated Florence speech, the Prime Minister asked for single-market access, and for Britain to stay within a customs agreement, for up to two years.

During that time, the UK would continue paying into EU budgets and abide by EU rules, even accepting new regulations through to 2021.

To appease Eurosceptics, Ms May insisted the arrangements would be time-limited and that Britain would technically leave both the single market and customs union.

But Mr Rees-Mogg, speaking on BBCs Newsnight programme, said: I have three concerns about the speech. The first is free movement, which ought to end at the end of March 2019.

Turning to the financial costs, he said: For us to be guaranteeing money, which the speech practically does, so early on concerns me considerably.

After warning about the ECJ, he added: We can improve the standard of living once we are outside the containment of the European Union. This is very exciting and delaying it is inevitably disappointing.

Mr Duncan Smith praised the upbeat speech, but said: It must reserve us the right to negotiate with other countries, to adjust our laws as we see necessary, and set such limits on freedom of movement as we see fit.

And Mr Paterson warned: As long as we still have that transition period, we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking on opening up markets around the world.

Another Brexiteer Tory MP, Peter Bone, said he still believed Britain would crash out of the EU with no deal, which would probably be the best thing for the British people.
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Downing Street is embroiled in a public spat over a Brexit-triggered cut to the UKs credit rating, after its claim that the verdict is outdated was rejected.

The ratings agency Moodys said No 10 was wrong to argue the downgrade would not have happened if the decision had been taken after Theresa Mays speech in Florence.

Instead, it stood by its cut  stating the speech had not changed the big picture of likely damage to the economy from Brexit, when the UK's debt reduction plans are already off course.

Recommended UK credit rating downgraded due to Brexit uncertainty

Ive read the speech and it doesnt change our view at all, said Alastair Wilson, the head of sovereign ratings at Moodys.

It certainly is not outdated. It reflects a medium term view, it's very much a forward looking view, he told BBC News.

Meanwhile, Labours Treasury spokesman, Peter Dowd, said the downgrading was a hammer blow to the Government's economic credibility.

For the second time under the Tories the UK's credit rating has been downgraded, and on this occasion citing their lack of faith in the Chancellor to meet his own spending targets as a result of unfunded spending commitments such as the deal with the DUP, he said.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said it was no coincidence the downgrading came alongside Theresa May's Florence address.

Despite Theresa May's conciliatory tone we are no closer to knowing what our future relationship with the EU will be once any transitional deal expires, he said.

The warning that Moody's have issued by downgrading the credit rating is that the economy will be weaker once the transitional deal comes to an end.

All May has done is simply delay the economic pain caused by an extreme Brexit.

Moody's, one of the major ratings agencies, downgraded the UK to an Aa2 rating from Aa1  having removed its top-notch AAA rating in 2013.

The other major agencies, Fitch and S&P, changed their ratings in 2016, with S&P cutting it two notches from AAA to AA, and Fitch lowering it from AA+ to AA.

Moodys pointed to higher spending, running ahead of revenues  including the DUP cash  and said any free trade agreement will likely take years to negotiate, prolonging the current uncertainty for business.

No 10 tried to play down the downgrade, arguing it followed a meeting on 19 September  which, therefore, did not take into account the new Brexit policy.

The Prime Minister has just set out an ambitious vision for the UK's future relationship with the EU, making clear that both sides will benefit from a new and unique partnership, it said.

The foundations on which we build this partnership are strong.

Mr Wilson said he welcomed the speech in some respects, saying: Recognition that transitional arrangements will be needed is a positive feature from the credit perspective.

However, Moodys said the best-case scenario for a post-Brexit trade agreement would not award the same access to the EU single market that the UK currently enjoys.
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Jeremy Corbyn has launched his partys conference in Brighton declaring that the transformation of Labour is just beginning.

The leader told supporters the annual conference would be handed back to our members and that the voices of ordinary people would be heard loud and clear in the party.

It follows the launch of a review of internal rules that would see the mainly Corbyn-backing membership given a greater role, including in leadership contests, at the expense of MPs with whom the leader has clashed.

Recommended Jeremy Corbyn speaks at rally in Brighton to begin Labour conference

Mr Corbyn also promised to oppose the Conservatives at every opportunity inside and outside Parliament, with a string of unions considering strike action over low pay.

It is the first Labour conference since the June election in which Mr Corbyn outperformed expectations, increasing Labours seats and stripping the Conservatives of their Commons majority.

The result has allowed him to consolidate his position, ending talk of a leadership challenge and overseeing an improvement in the partys performance as an opposition.

He told supporters: The next Labour government will take our authority from the many, not hoard power in the hands of a few. Thats why our conference will be different. For the first time in years, we are handing it back to our members.

Politics isnt some technical specialism for an elite. Politics is about us all coming together to decide our futures. Thats why were doing things differently. We arent a lobbyists playground. This is a real conference whose decisions matter.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

And thats why weve set up a review to democratise and open up our party from top to bottom. The transformation of Labour is just beginning.

Hundreds of people crowded into the park to watch the Labour leader, who approached the stage in the middle of the crowd accompanied by the theme tune from the 90s TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

He was thronged by left-wing allies including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who joked that the grey beards got it wrong on Labours election chances  before clarifying he did not mean Mr Corbyn.

In scenes more akin to a music festival than a political rally, the start of Mr Corbyns speech was held up by loud chants of Oh, Jeremy Corbyn from the audience, some of whom sported slogan T-shirts and signs bearing the Labour leaders face.

Labour will decide at conference  expected to be the biggest ever  whether to approve a string of reforms put forward by the partys ruling National Executive Committee.

If passed they would mean future leadership candidates could stand with the backing of just 10 per cent of the partys MPs.

Changes to the NEC itself have also been proposed, with three new seats being created, to be filled by representatives of the wider party membership.

Mr Corbyn also planned to turn his fire on the Conservatives, telling supporters: We now have the chance to transform our country. To do that we must use our strength inside and outside Parliament to challenge the Conservatives at every step  and prepare to form a government whenever the next election is called.

The Tories have no mandate for what they are doing. Wherever we can we will block their attempts to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy by making life worse for millions of people. We are in a moment of great change  in the economy, politics and across the world.

 Jeremy Corbyn hands out free food at food bank

Our challenge is to marshal these forces of change for the real wealth creators  all of us  and to transfer wealth, power and opportunity to the many from the few.

Close Corbyn ally Mr McDonnell has said Labour will support unions in the fight for better wages for public sector workers.

Prison officers, nurses, civil servants and higher education staff are among those considering industrial action with the TUC planning a day of action next month.
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Labour has accused big business leaders of siphoning away taxpayers money into their own pockets, leaving young British people without the future prospects they deserve.

A senior figure in Jeremy Corbyns shadow cabinet attacked corporate chiefs for sitting on piles of cash that should have been spent improving skills for young workers.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner warned executives they had missed a chance to show they could be trusted to meet their obligations to society and promised a Labour government would make them pay.

It comes after businesses returned to Labour conference this year, keen to understand what the future might hold under a Corbyn government in the light of the partys better than expected performance in the election.

Hundreds of extra business delegates are attending the event which officially begins on Sunday. Large corporations like BT, Aviva and energy provider E.On are paying for fringe meetings and a business forum event is set to be ram-packed.

The revival has led Mr Corbyn to declare that Labour is now the natural party of business, but Mr Gardiner made clear that did not mean the private sector would escape facing up to its responsibilities.

Ex-Chancellor George Osborne chartered a course to lower corporation tax from 28 per cent in 2010 to its current 19 per cent level today, with it set to fall further to 17 per cent. But Mr Gardiner said the change had been made on the understanding the windfall would in part be spent developing young peoples skills.

He said: What they have done is theyve paid out to their shareholders and they have sat on piles of cash in their reserves. Thats why we said that we would raise back up that corporation tax in order to fund student fees and other parts of our education programme.

They shouldnt be surprised in any way when a Labour government comes along and says look, we know that left to your own devices you simply take this money and pocket it, Mr Gardiner added.

Thats not why the public, the Government, has reduced your tax bill. They have reduced your tax bill in order to grow the economy, not simply to see it siphoned away into a few peoples pockets.

The former businessman, who worked in the City for 12 years, said the issue linked directly to anger over immigration, with corporations having relied on importing people with skills rather than taking time to invest in the British workforce.

Barry Gardiner, Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade (PA Archive/PA Images)

The Independent recently polled various Labour manifesto policies, with those representing a crackdown on corporate excess proving highly popular  in particular a measure to cap the pay of top executives at a specific ratio of a firms lowest-paid worker won overwhelming support.

Mr Gardiner said: The idea that somebody in the same company can say to somebody else in that company, you are earning below the average wage of 28,000 a year, and yet I in this company am earning, in some cases, 50 times as much as you areit is just to treat your colleagues with contempt.

He pre-empted the inevitable attack from critics that his words are anti-business, saying: This is not anti-business in any way whatsoever. It is about saying look, lets ensure everyone in a company has a stake in the company, they want it to do well, because they know if it does, they also do well.

Its common sense. Its what people want. As The Independents poll found out, this isnt a case of saying this is something people should think about.

They already think it. They think who are the bozos who think its right that somebody should be earning 10m a year, when somebody in that company is being paid less than 25,000. They think it doesnt make sense, and it doesnt.

Barclays, NatWest, the London Stock Exchange and accountants KPMG are also sponsoring fringe meetings at conference. Mastercard, Centrica, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Microsoft, Google and Hitachi also have a presence in Brighton.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA 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 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty 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. 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

In 2016 there were 1,832 business delegates at Labours conference, but this year a total of 2,757 have signed up. There are also reports that 25 per cent of stands at next years conference have already been booked.

As well as reacting to the election result, many business leaders like the partys softer stance on EU withdrawal amid fears over disruption from a hard Brexit desired by some Conservative ministers.

But as firms try to ascertain what the party would do in the wider country, there is also an internal transformation taking place, with rival factions trying to reshape the party. In particular, there are plans to lower the number of MPs that a future candidate needs to enter a Labour leadership contest, from 15 per cent of the parliamentary party to 10 per cent.

Mr Gardiner warned Labour colleagues that the public is not interested in internal rule making procedures.

He added: What they think is important, is what is this bunch going to do for me if I vote for them?.

They dont give a monkeys about 15 per cent, 10 per cent, 50 per cent, thats not the issue. The issue is whats our policy.

And the one thing we know is that our manifesto in 2017, people liked it. Thats what we have got to focus on. That manifesto would not have been there, except for Jeremy Corbyn. Lets be clear about that.
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A US teacher faces one count of first-degree sexual assault after allegedly having sex with four of her students, including two which took place in her apartment on the same day, according to police.

The police affidavit about the charge against Art teacher Jessie Lorene Goline states that the sexual acts happened between January and April 2016.

Prosecutors said that the single charge was filed as only one of the students was under 18 years of age at the time of the alleged incidents.

The investigation into the schoolteacher started when parents accused the 25-year-old of having sexual relations with several students at Marked Tree High School, where Goline taught. Staff at the school intervened when a parent threatened to do bodily harm to the art teacher.

A state prosecutor said: Boys brag, by way of explaining how Goline was charged with underage sex.

Goline admitted to school authorities that she had inappropriate sexual relationships with four students, according to Arkansas Online.

The schoolteacher said she thought one student was 18 years old but later discovered he was way younger than what he had told her, according to the affidavit.

The male students  one from East Poinsett County School District and three from Marked Tree School District  stated that they had exchanged texts with the teacher and their conversations became more overtly sexual over time.

One student alleges that Goline took him to her apartment, where they had sex. Afterwards, she drove him back home.

The art teacher reportedly sent another student a picture of herself wearing a thong.

During the investigations, Goline had a tearful conversation with Matt Wright, the head teacher of Marked Tree High School.

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

When Wright asked whether Goline had acted inappropriately with the students, she said: We had sex, according to Arkansas court documents.

Im not going to lose my husband, she told Wright, according to a court affidavit seen by KAIT-TV.

When the allegations came to light, Goline was sacked from her job and ordered not to enter school property. She was formally dismissed on 19 June by an Arkansas Department of Education tribunal.

We did not and will not tolerate behaviour such as this, superintendent of Marked Tree School District Matt Wright said. We take the privilege of serving Marked Tree students seriously and are pleased that our procedures of immediate removal and reporting helped move this incident toward final resolution and justice.

The 25-year-old art teacher was released on a $5,000 bond. Goline could face up to a 40-year jail sentence if convicted.
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The Marriot hotel group are refusing to cancel an event organised by one of the largest anti-Muslim groups in America.

ACT for America was launched as a response to the 9/11 attacks and it has been accused of existing to advance anti-Muslim legislation and spread hate speech, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The group, which claims to have 750,000 members and 1,000 volunteer groups, is holding its national two-day conference on 2 October in Arlington, Virginia, at the Marriott Crystal Gateway hotel.

Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organisation, penned a letter to the Marriott CEO on 11 September urging him to cancel.

In it, the group reminded Mr Sorenson that the Marriott proudly states on its website that diversity and inclusion is fundamental to our core values'" and the hotel group's history of standing up for minorities.

"We especially applaud Marriotts 2010 decision to cancel an agreement to host a white nationalist conference at your Dulles property and ask you to look to this precedent as a basis for cancelling the ACT for America conference."

ACT for Americas president and founder Brigitte Gabriel has described the ACTCON2017 event as an opportunity to plan how to fight the leftist Islamic coalition" in a promotional video.

Described by New York Times Magazine as a radical Islamophobe, Ms Gabriel has been spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric since she founded ACT in 2007.

She has said that a practising Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Quran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.

More recently in 2015, she told the right-wing American news outlet Breitbart News: Europe will no longer be Europe by 2050. Europe has already become Eurabia. Europe is Eurabia right now."

Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban Show all 11 1 /11 Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty Activists protest Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban People listen to speakers at a demonstration against racism and conservative presidential candidate Donald Trump's recent remarks concerning Muslims on December 10, 2015 in New York City. Dozens or demonstrators and activists converged at Columbus Circle to denounce the politics of Trump and the treatment of Muslim refugees both in America and Europe. Spencer Platt/Getty

Over this summer ACT organised a series of "March Against Sharia" events around the USA which were reportedly attended by neo-Nazis.

The company has yet to respond to the letter but a spokesperson told the Huffington Post: We are a hospitality company that provides public accommodations and function space. Acceptance of business does not indicate support or endorsement of any group or individual.

The Independent has contacted the Marriott Hotel group to comment.
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A powerful 6.2 magnitude earthquake has hit Mexico City, a Mexican monitoring body has said, and there are reports from witnesses of buildings shaking.

It wasnt immediately clear if the trembler, which was centred in the southern state of Oaxaca, had caused any damages or injury. The United States Geological Survey said that the earthquake was an aftershock from a previous quake, and that already vulnerable buildings could be in danger of collapse from previous damage.

I was frightened because I thought, not again! Alejandra Castellanos, who was on the second floor in a central neighbourhood of the city, told the Associated Press. Ms Castellanos ran down the stairs and to the street with her husband as soon as she felt the earthquake.

Recommended Mexico City earthquake puts bravest and best dogs in spotlight

Thousands of others reportedly also ran to the streets, fearing the worst after previous earthquakes left the country in fear of more damage.

In recovery areas, workers were forced to leave the rubble mounds they were sifting through, but were able to return to work shortly. Street signs reportedly swayed from the quakes impact.

The earthquake comes just days after a 7.1 magnitude quake hit Mexico City, destroying buildings, and killing nearly 300 people. Response operations related to that event were still ongoing at the time of the new trembler.

The quake hit in a region of Mexico that was most shaken by an 8.1 magnitude earthquake that hit earlier this month as well. That earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico, and could be felt hundreds of miles away from its epicenter in Mexico City. That earthquake also left more than 60 people dead.

Mexico City earthquake in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Mexico City earthquake in pictures Mexico City earthquake in pictures A handout picture provided by the citizen Edgar Cabalceta shows a general view of Mexico City following a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, in Mexico City, Mexico EPA Mexico City earthquake in pictures Rescuers and residents look for victims amid the ruins of a building knocked down by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted central Mexico damaging buildings, knocking out power and causing alarm throughout the capital on September 19, 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico. The earthquake comes 32 years after a magnitude-8.0 earthquake hit on September 19, 1985 Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures A police officer stands guard near a building which collapsed after a quake rattled Mexico City RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures Rescuers, firefighters, policemen, soldiers and volunteers remove rubble and debris from a flattened building in search of survivors after a powerful quake in Mexico City AFP/Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures Rescuers and residents look for victims amid the ruins of a building knocked down by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted central Mexico damaging buildings, knocking out power and causing alarm throughout the capital on September 19, 2017 in Mexico City Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures People try to rescue survivors from a collapsed buildings after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Richter scale in Mexico City, Mexico, 19 September 2017. At least 79 people lost their lives in the states of Morelos, Puebla and Mexico by the earthquake of magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale. EPA Mexico City earthquake in pictures People clear rubble after an earthquake hit Mexico City, Mexico REUTERS Mexico City earthquake in pictures People clear rubble after an earthquake hit Mexico City, Mexico REUTERS Mexico City earthquake in pictures Rescuers and residents assists an injured victim amid the ruins of a building knocked down by a magnitude 7.1 earthquake that jolted central Mexico damaging buildings, knocking out power and causing alarm throughout the capital on September 19, 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico. The earthquake comes 32 years after a magnitude-8.0 earthquake hit on September 19, 1985. Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures People remove debris outside a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico REUTERS Mexico City earthquake in pictures People remove debris as they search for possible victims after a quake rattled Mexico City on September 19, 2017. A powerful earthquake shook Mexico City on Tuesday, causing panic among the megalopolis' 20 million inhabitants on the 32nd anniversary of a devastating 1985 quake. The US Geological Survey put the quake's magnitude at 7.1 while Mexico's Seismological Institute said it measured 6.8 on its scale. The institute said the quake's epicenter was seven kilometers west of Chiautla de Tapia, in the neighboring state of Puebla. AFP/Getty Images Mexico City earthquake in pictures A security guard walks over debris of a building which collapsed during a quake in Mexico City AFP/Getty Mexico City earthquake in pictures Reconstruction work in the towns affected by the telic movement has begun. Several temples suffered severe damage. Rex

In areas hit hardest by that earthquake, tremblers have been felt repeatedly since. The 6.2 magnitude quake Saturday was the most violent felt in Tonala, one of the worst hit cities, according to a resident.

Since 7 September, it has not stopped shaking, Nataniel Hernandez told the Associated Press over the phone.
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Robert Mugabe has called Donald Trump a giant gold Goliath who threatens to make other countries extinct.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, the Zimbabwean President told Mr Trump to blow your trumpet for peace.

It came two days after Mr Trumps own address to the UN, in which he strongly condemned a number of countries, including North Korea, Iran and Venezuela.

Mr Mugabe, 93, appeared to have fallen asleep during Mr Trumps address earlier in the week. Images showed him with his head resting on his hand and his eyes seemingly closed.

However, he appears to have had heard enough of the US Presidents speech to criticise him in his own, comparing Mr Trump to the biblical figure of Goliath, a giant who had attempted to destroy the Israelites before being killed by David with a slingshot.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Mugabe said: Some of us were embarrassed, if not frightened, by what appeared to be the return of the biblical giant gold Goliath. Are we having a return of Goliath to our midst, who threatens the extinction of other countries?

May I say to the United States President, Mr Trump, please blow your trumpet. Blow your trumpet in a musical way towards the values of unity, peace, cooperation, togetherness, dialogue, which we have always stood for.

Recommended Iran says it will increase missile capabilities after Trump speech

The Zimbabwean autocrat said the US' approach to other countries should be based on those values rather than the promise on our damnation.

Mr Mugabe has been a fierce critic of Western intervention and claimed in his speech that Zimbabwe had defeated the monster of imperialism.
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Snow has fallen in California on what was officially classed as the last day of summer, with the unexpectedly early turn in the weather causing dangerous travel conditions.

Drivers have been advised to take care in the icy conditions and one man has already been killed due to a car crash on the Interstate 80 motorway.

Residents in the Sierra Nevada mountain range were shocked to wake up to heavy snowfall on Thursday morning with one village in Mammoth Lakes reporting 3 inches of snow.

The Yosemite National Park was forced to close its eastern entry due to the adverse weather conditions despite Tioga Pass road typically only becoming impassable in mid-November.

The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Show all 19 1 /19 The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey A tattered U.S. flag damaged in Hurricane Harvey, flies in Conroe, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Lisa Rehr holds her four-year old son Maximus, after they lost their home to Hurricane Harvey, as they await to be evacuated with their belongings from Rockport, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey People line up for food as others rest at the George R. Brown Convention Center AP Photo/LM Otero The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Volunteers with The American Red Cross register evacuees at the George R. Brown Convention Center Reuters/Nick Oxford The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Soldiers with the Texas Army National Guard help the residents of Cyprus Creek Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Residents wade through floodwater Reuters/Nick Oxford The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Residents walk along the flooded roadway of Texas 249 as they evacuate their adjacent neighborhoods EPA The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey A man floats past a truck submerged on a freeway flooded by Tropical Storm Harvey on Sunday AP The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey People are rescued by airboat as they evacuate from flood waters from Hurricane Harvey in Dickinson, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey James Archiable carries his bike through the flooded intersection at Taylor and Usenet near downtown Houston, Texas EPA The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey A massive sinkhole opened up on a motorway in Rosenburg, a city 25 miles southwest of Houston, Texas Rosenberg Police The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey People are rescued from flood waters from Hurricane Harvey in an armored police mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle in Dickinson, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey People are rescued from flood waters from Hurricane Harvey on a boat in Dickinson, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Evacuees are airlifted in a US Coast Guard helicopter after flooding due to Hurricane Harvey inundated neighborhoods in Houston, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Evacuees leave a US Coast Guard helicopter after being rescued from flooding due to Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas Reuters The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Residents look on at a submerged motorway during a break in the rain in Houston, Texas EPA The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey People photograph the submerged motorway interchange EPA The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Debris lies on the ground after a building was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey in Aransas Pass, Texas AP The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey Dominic Dominguez searches for his boat in a boat storage facility that was heavily damaged by Hurricane Harvey near Rockport, Texas EPA

However, the heavy snow isnt expected to last in Northern California. Fall is a big transition period, so we have these big dips in temperature and then we go higher, National Weather Service forecaster Hannah Chandler told the LA Times.

Its kind of a weather roller coaster, she added.

America has been suffering from a string of remarkable weather events this summer, not least the severe flooding in Houston, Texas due to Hurricane Harvey.
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Reporters say they were pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested by St Louis police while covering protests in the midwestern city.

Police arrested more than 200 people over the weekend, as protesters took to the streets to decry the acquittal of former St Louis police officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of a young black man. Among those arrested were newspaper reporters, documentary makers, and livestream journalists who say they were just trying to do their jobs.

Jon Ziegler, a journalist who livestreams under the name Rebelutionary Z, described arriving at a largely peaceful protest on Sunday night. By that time, he said, "most of the casual protesters and onlookers were just hanging around".

Authorities say most of the protesters were peaceful, but some groups branched off and began destroying property.

The group wandered through downtown, passing shops and restaurants littered with patrons. Suddenly, Mr Ziegler said, they noticed they were surrounded on all sides. Lines of riot police were closing in, rhythmically banging the ground with sticks as they advanced.

Someone gave an order to disperse, Mr Ziegler recalled  but the protesters had nowhere to go.

In the journalists video from the night, someone can be heard yelling: Where are we supposed to go?

A protester faces off with law enforcement officials during Fridays protests in St Louis (Reuters)

I live down the street! someone else yells. They said I could walk down here!

We are closed in on all four sides now I have no idea where people are supposed to go," tweeted Mike Faulk, a reporter for the St Louis Post Dispatch was covering the protests. "People freaking out.

The tactic appears similar to one called kettling, in which large numbers of police officers physically contain a crowd in a limited area. The practise is controversial because of the likelihood of catching innocent bystanders  journalists, legal observers, even passersby  in the kettle.

The police department did not directly respond to questions about kettling, but said the layout of the area, and not a specific tactic, dictated how tactics were deployed.

Mr Ziegler said he assumed everyone on the street would be lined up and arrested. But once the police had fully encircled the group, he said, they instructed everyone all to get on the ground. Those who did not immediately comply  and even those who did, according to Mr Ziegler and others  were doused with pepper spray.

"Everyone got on the ground and put their arms up, said Fareed Alston, a documentary filmmaker who was in St Louis to film the protests. They still were kicking us, spraying us, and we were just on top of each other, soaking in a pile of pepper spray.

Within minutes, Mr Alston said: I couldnt see anything; I couldnt breathe; I was just burning from every place on my face, and even my hands and body.

 St Louis Police appear to chant "Whose streets, our streets!"

From there, Mr Alston said, the police demanded that everyone in the crowd stop filming, and snatched phones out of the hands of those who persisted. The filmmaker said his own camera was ripped off of his neck when he refused to turn it over.

Through eyes swollen with pepper spray, Mr Alston claims he saw police going through his photos. In a letter to the city, the St Louis Post Dispatch claims their reporter, Mr Faulk, had his phone searched through as well.

Armed with their large cameras and other equipment, the journalists said they were easily identifiable by police.

Hey Superstar! an officer can be heard yelling at Mr Ziegler in his video. Later, Mr Ziegler said, an officer joked about being his biggest fan.

You wanted to take pictures, huh? You wanted to video record?" Mr Alston said police asked him, tauntingly.

Police arrest a protester in St Louis (Associated Press)

The taunts signalled a change in the officers spirits, Mr Ziegler said. Once protesters had been subdued; pepper sprayed and zip-tied, "the mood changed completely, into a cop party".

Mr Zigler claimed  and Mr Alton independently confirmed  that officers started smoking cigars and taking selfies with arrestees. Later, other reporters would hear officers chanting, Whose streets? Our streets! as they marched through the city.

The police department said they have seen footage of the chanting, and were reviewing it.

"We hold our officers to the highest standards of professionalism and any officer not meeting those standards will be held accountable," a spokesman said.

Protesters march after the not guilty verdict in the murder trial of Jason Stockley, (Whitney Curtis/Reuters)

Mr Ziegler, Mr Alton, and Mr Faulk were all taken to jail, and detained for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours. Both Mr Ziegler and Mr Faulk said they were denied medical attention. Mr Ziegler said he was never able to wash the pepper spray off his face; Mr Faulk, according to the letter sent by the Post Dispatch, returned to the newsroom limping, knees bloodied and pepper spray still on his skin. Mr Alton said he was never permitted to use a phone.

All three men were ultimately charged with failure to disperse, and released on bond. At a press conference, Police Chief Lawrence OToole repeatedly referred to those arrested as "criminals".

Im proud to tell you the city of St. Louis is safe and the police owned tonight, he said on Sunday night. Once again, a group of criminals set out to break windows and destroy property. Tonight, those criminals are in jail.

 Police knock over protesting old lady in St Louis

The Post Dispatch has since launched a public campaign to demand the charges against Mr Faulk be dropped. In their letter, which they sent to the St Louis mayor, acting police chief, and city counselor, they deem Mr Faulks arrest inappropriate and highly disturbing.

In response, Mayor Lyda Krewson promised to have the Public Safety Department investigate the situation. The City Counselor, Julian Bush, called the allegations disturbing, and added: We need to know more.

But some feel the damage has already been done.

The First Amendment is not a whimsical, academic concept to be dismissed when it becomes inconvenient  or embarrassing to the police, Elizabeth Donald, president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists, told the Post-Dispatch.

The chilling effect of assaulting, arresting, jailing and charging a journalist in the course of his duties cannot be understated.
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Violence broke out at a New York hotel when protesters disrupted a speech by Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As Mr Erdogan addressed supporters in Turkish at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, one man shouted in English Youre a terrorist, get out of my country before being struck and dragged away.

Protesters were seen being hit and pushed by men in suits, thought to be the presidents bodyguards, his supporters or hotel security, before being thrown out of the venue.

Pro-Erdogan supporters could be heard chanting the Presidents name during the clash.

Mr Erdogan, who is in New York for the UN General Assembly, paused on stage, blaming a few impertinent hall terrorists for the violence.

Amateur footage and photos taken by witnesses at the hotel appear to show protesters being violently attacked and shoved to the ground.

One of the demonstrators was wearing a T-shirt featuring a photo of Michael Israel, an American killed in a Turkish airstrike while volunteering with the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, the New York Times reported.

Mr Erdogan considers the YPG as being affiliated with the banned Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, which is fighting for an independent Kurdish state.

The demonstrators later said they had intended to condemn Mr Erdogans policies in Turkey and Syria.

One protester, who identified herself as Meghan Bodette, told the New York Times the group wanted to call attention to the Turkish states war crimes and human rights abuses against the Kurdish people.

Ms Bodette tweeted she had been ejected from the hotel after standing up with a YPJ flag.

The YPJ, the Womens Protection Units, is the all-female affiliate of the YPG.

Five demonstrators were detained for a short period but no arrests were made, according to New York police.

In May, violence broke out when the Turkish Presidents security and pro-Erdogan supporters attacked Kurdish and Armenian protesters while Mr Erdogan visited Washington DC.

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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. 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Nine people were injured in the brawl outside the Turkish embassy.

Last month, a grand jury in DC issued indictments for 19 people for attacking the demonstrators. Fifteen were identified as Turkish security officials.
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The US military has flown bombers close to North Korea to show Pyongyang that Donald Trump has many military options to defeat any threat.

The show of force follows a contentious week in which Mr Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un exchanged personal barbs over North Koreas nuclear ambitions. The comments marked an escalation in rhetorical warfare that has already seen Mr Trump promise fire and fury if North Korea does not curb its pursuit of nuclear weapons that could hit America.

Earlier on Saturday an earthquake was detected near the site where North Korea has conducted numerous nuclear tests, sparking fears of a new detonation. But later analysis suggested the tremor was natural in origin.

Mr Trump used his first address to the UN to say that Rocket man is on a suicide mission, using a nickname he coined for Mr Kim. In response, Mr Kim issued an unprecedented personal statement, and referred to the President as a dotard  a word used to describe old and senile individuals.

Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy [North Korea], we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hardline countermeasure in history, Mr Kim said in that statement.

His foreign minister has now said that Mr Trump is trying to convert the UN into a gangsters nest where bloodshed is order of the day.

North Korean officials have said that Mr Kim is considering green lighting a nuclear test in the Pacific Ocean in response to Mr Trumps comments, just weeks after the countrys sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date. Just days later, seismologists detected a 3.5 magnitude earthquake near North Koreas known nuclear testing site  however it wasnt immediately clear if that quake was a man-made occurrence from an explosion, or naturally occurring.

Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters

This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests, the United States Geological Survey said on its web site. We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature of the event.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said that the flights underscore the seriousness with which we take North Koreas reckless behaviour. The flights were the closest that any US plane has flown to the demilitarised zone in the 21st century.
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North Korea's foreign minister says it is inevitable that missiles from his country will hit the United States after the American military flew bombers further north of the demilitarised zone than any American military plane in the 21st century, and after a week in which Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un exchanged personal insults.

Mr Trump's insults make "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more," North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said during a visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr Ri said that recent economic sanctions placed on his country by the UN, and the United States, will do very little to deter his country's plans to develop a nuclear force capable of hitting the US mainland.

Recommended US bombers fly near North Korea in show of force

"Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force," Mr Ri said. "It is only a forlorn hope to consider any chance that [North Korea] would be shaken an inch or change its stance due to the harsher sanctions by the hostile forces."

The President insulted Mr Kim personally during his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, calling him "rocket man" and saying that he was on a "suicide mission" if he keeps developing his nuclear weapons programme. In response, Mr Kim released an unprecedented personal rebuke, calling Mr Trump a "dotard", and a "frightened dog".

Following those insults, North Korean officials indicated that Mr Kim was considering testing a nuclear weapon in the Pacific Ocean, sending Japan  which is between North Korea and those open seas  into a frenzy, with officials warning people to be prepared for a potential missile launch over their island.

Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters

"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific, Mr Ri said then. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un.

Following the threat of a nuclear test, the United States military announced that it had flown American bomber planes further north than theyve flown those aircraft during the 21st century as a show of force to let North Korea know that the US has a range of options to deal with the country, including military options.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said that the flights underscore the seriousness with which we take North Koreas reckless behaviour.

Those strong words on both sides have left some concerned that the escalating rhetoric has lead to something even more bothersome.

I think this will lead to something in the coming days, Gi-wook Shin, the director of the Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre at Stanford University, told The Independent after the initial statements, saying that they now put pressure on Mr Kim to put his money where his mouth is. Thats why Im concerned, that it might be more than an escalation of rhetoric. There may be escalation of expectations.

Days after Mr Kims statement, seismographs picked up on a 3.5 magnitude earthquake in North Korea near the countrys nuclear testing grounds, leading to some concern that the country had already tested a nuclear device. It wasnt, however, immediately clear if that was the case or not. If they did, it would be the seventh test, following the sixth and most powerful earlier this month.

This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean nuclear tests, the US Geological Survey said on its web site of the earthquake. We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature of the event.

Tension between Mr Trump and Mr Kim have been increasingly strained since the President took office earlier this year. That relationship has been especially tense as a result of the numerous intercontinental ballistic missile tests that North Korea has performed, including some that experts said could plausibly hit the United States homeland. Following those tests, intelligence also unearthed indicating that North Korea had developed the technology necessary to create a nuclear warhead that could be attached to a missile, making an attack on the US all the more possible.
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Nine months after first introducing a controversial travel ban that filled airports with protesters, the White House is considering implementing a new and more targeted ban to get stricter on incoming immigration.

The measure is the latest in the contentious efforts by Donald Trump to make good on a central campaign promise  to strengthen the US border, and to make sure that foreign nationals who want to come to America to hurt the country are not able to do so.

Heres what you need to know about the new measures.

Recommended Supreme Court allows Trump to uphold refugee restrictions

Who is developing the latest proposal?

Mr Trump is considering recommendations from the Department of Homeland Security on th new rules. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke is the face of that effort, and submitted a new report to the President last week That report details potential new travel restrictions that could be put in place.

Are new countries going to be added to the travel ban?

At this point, it is not clear what countries might be added, or taken off, of the targets list. The White House has so far refused to disclose those names, and how many countries might be on the list in general.

New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Show all 27 1 /27 New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Ethnic Yemenis and supporters protest against President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban Men pray during a protest by ethnic Yemenis and supporters over President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen on February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. At least 1,000 Yemeni-owned bodegas and grocery-stores across the city shut down from noon to 8 p.m. today to protest the order. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People gather for evening prayer at a rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban People rally 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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, on February 2, 2017 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban 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 in New York. Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner places a sign on the gate of his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 02: Yemeni business owner Musa closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty New York City bodegas strike to protest Trump's travel ban A Yemeni business owner closes the gate to his store February 2, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Across the city, Yemeni owned bodega and grocery-stores will shut down from noon to 8 p.m. to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen. It is expected that over 1000 stores will be closed in protest with workers and owners participating in an afternoon rally in Brooklyn. Spencer Platt/Getty

But, they have outlined their basic considerations. Basically, after the agency raised the baseline for vetting standards for people coming from other countries, and countries that dont meet that threshold may see enhanced measures.

A report from the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, indicates that the Department of Homeland Security has identified 17 countries that were not meeting vetting standards.

What kinds of measures are these countries facing?

Again, exacting details are hazy at this point. But, the administration appears poised to impose a variety of stricter procedures for individuals travelling from certain countries. That could include enhanced vetting procedures, or harsher restrictions on travel.

Whats wrong with the old travel ban?

Mr Trumps travel ban  which was the second attempt to implement such a measure  was not cleared by the courts to go into effect until June, and it was only written to be implemented for a temporary period. The order suspended the US refugee program for 120 days and limited travel from six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.

As such, the problem  in the strictly non-political sense  is that the 90 days are up Sunday.

Why were the first travel bans so controversial?

For opponents of Mr Trump, and for those who have philosophical differences with the President when it comes to Americas relationship with immigration, the measures were outrageous because they appeared to target people based upon their religion, not on the basis of risk analysis. In addition to that, opponents pointed out that the US has fairly strict vetting programmes for refugees at the moment.

The Presidents supporters, of course, saw things differently. Mr Trump openly campaigned calling for a Muslim ban, meaning that at least a portion of his supporters would not find it problematic that the President chose to target six majority Muslim countries in his ban. Plus, they argued, national security is tantamount to other concerns, and that the US has no obligation to accept travel from foreign nationals if they might pose a security risk.
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College sexual assault survivors and their advocates say the Trump administration has betrayed students who were assaulted on campus.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently rescinded Obama-era guidelines meant to encourage the reporting of sexual assault. In their place, she imposed interim guidelines that allowed more protections for the accused.

The reforms were cheered by advocates for accused students, who claim the previous standards denied them their right to due process. Scott Schneider, an attorney who leads the higher-education group at Fisher Phillips, told the Wall Street Journal the rules contained really sensible statements about due process.

But to one student survivor, the announcement felt like a crucial lifeline being taken away.

What happened to me is the most traumatic event that ever happened in my life, the student, who asked not to be named, told The Independent.

The 20-year-old student says she was assaulted last December by two men  one a classmate at Notre Dame, the other a student at another school. She decided to report the assault after watching a documentary about the fight for survivors rights.

I felt like, to continue making progress, we need to continue to fight, she said. Under the Obama-era rules, she felt confident her rights would be protected.

But under the new guidelines, she said, I don't know if I would have come forward.

 Betsy DeVos refuses to say if federally funded schools will be punished for LGBTQ discrimination

Through a series of letters, the Obama administration significantly expanded what colleges are required to do for survivors under Title IX  the federal law preventing gender discrimination on campus.

Ms DeVos repealed those letters on Friday, declaring that the era of rule by letter is over. Her new guidelines allowed schools to use a higher standard of evidence in sexual assault cases, and removed the recommendation that they resolve complaints within 60 days. It also allowed schools to hear appeals only from the accused, and not from the accuser, if they so desired.

Carly Mee, a staff attorney for the survivor advocacy group SurvJustice, said the new guidance flipped Title IX on its head.

Title IX was implemented in order to provide some measure of rights and protections to survivors, because they were historically put at a disadvantage, she said. The current guidance ... is more concerned about accused students and their ability to go to school.

The Notre Dame survivor said she worried that schools would drag out sexual assault proceedings even longer under the new policy. She started her own complaint process in April, and said she hadnt received a decision until the day before classes started in August.

It was really difficult to go through, coming back here and still not knowing what was going on, and who knew, and what the decision would be, and if [the accused] would retaliate she said, trailing off.

If Notre Dame is already taking this long when they have this 60-day guideline in place, I can't imagine how long they would take if that wasn't in place at all, she concluded.

Various politicians also spoke out against the decision, which Ms DeVos had previewed in a speech two weeks earlier.

Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania tweeted that the Trump administration had betrayed the victims of campus sexual assault with this decision. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the decision repulsive, and promised to stand by his citys existing protections for survivors.

Ms DeVos, however, said the interim rules signalled a move toward a more fair and impartial process. In her previous speech, she had slammed the Obama administration for pushing schools to overreach, and deny the accused due process.

The Notre Dame survivor said she wasnt worried about how Ms DeVoss new rules would affect her, because her case was nearing resolution. Her real worry, she said, was for survivors who want to report in the future.

It's obviously not an easy process by any means, she said, but then if you favour towards the accused, it's just going to make the process that much harder.
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Asima Chatterjee was born on 23 September 1917 in Calcutta and she is highly regarded in India for her pioneering work in medicinal chemistry.

Growing up in Calcutta during the 1930s, it was unusual for a woman to be involved in higher education, let alone in the sciences.

Despite resistance, Chatterjee completed her undergraduate degree in organic chemistry and went on to win many honours including Indias most prestigious science award in 1961, the annual Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for her achievements in phytomedicine. It would be another 14 years before another woman would be awarded it again.

According to the Indian Academy of Sciences, Chatterjee successfully developed anti-epileptic drug, Ayush-56 from Marsilia minuta and the anti-malarial drug from Alstonia scholaris, Swrrtia chirata, Picrorphiza kurroa and Ceasalpinna crista.

Her work has contributed immensely to the development of drugs that treat epilepsy and malaria.

A prodigious writer, she published around 400 papers in national and international journals as well as many review articles.

She was elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress Association in 1975  in fact, she was the first woman scientist to be elected to the organisation.

The scientist exhibited an early interest in medicinal plants, following in the footsteps of her father, Dr Indra Nayan Mukherjee, who was an ardent amateur botanist. Dr Chatterjee was particularly interested in the medicinal properties of plants indigenous to India.

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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. 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An outstanding contribution was her work on vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant. They are used in chemotherapy to assist in slowing down and halting cancer cells duplicating.

One of her students, SC Pakrashi said: I have closely witnessed her initial struggles to establish herself. Those were trying times for research. One of the issues Chatterjee had to deal with were inadequately equipped university laboratories, with sparse funds.

He added: She was a very hard task master, never satisfied with performance and would never compromise with the standard of work.

Her philosophy in life was imbibed with a strong work ethic. I wish to work as long as I live, she said.

She died on 22 November 2006.
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China has unveiled its plans to restrict oil and other energy supplies to North Korea, as part of UN-led efforts to halt Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development.

Chinas Commerce Ministry announced on Saturday that exports of refined petroleum to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) will be restricted to 2 million barrels per annum, which comes into effect on 1 October.

Although North Korea buys most of its oil and gas from China, consumption estimates are low, according to AP. How effective the sanctions will be is uncertain. It emerged that the embargo does not affect crude oil supplies, which is by far the largest share of energy exports to the North.

Petrol prices in Pyongyang were reported to have increased by around 20 per cent in the last two months, AFP news agency said.

"It was $1.90 yesterday, today it is $2," a petrol station employee told the news service. "I expect the price will go up in the future."

Textile imports to North Korea are also on Chinas ban, the commerce ministry said. These are Pyongyangs second-largest export and the embargo could cost the country up to 530m per year.

Ri Yong-ho, North Koreas foreign minister is slated to address the UN General Assembly on Saturday.

The UN Security Council voted in September to restrict fuel supplies and ban North Koreas textile exports. China agreed to the measure after the US tempered its initial suggestion of a total oil embargo.

China accounts for around 90 per cent of North Koreas trade, with the US governments Energy Information Agency estimating that the Norths imports amount to 5.5 million barrels of crude and 2.2 million barrels of refined oil products every year.

Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters

Joseph Cheng of the Chinese University of Hong Kong told Al Jazeera that China wants to demonstrate its support of the world community's position dissuade North Korea from continuing to hold nuclear tests and long-range missile tests.

He added that Beijing believed that economic sanctions alone will not be able to persuade Pyongyang to give up their programmes.

Tensions between North Korea and the United States continue to be strained with Kim Jong-un calling US President Donald Trump mentally deranged.

The sanctions seem to be having little effect so far, with North Koreas foreign minister telling reporters in New York on Friday that his country could continue launching nuclear missile tests.

"This could probably mean the strongest hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean. Regarding which measures to take, I don't really know since it is what Kim Jong-un does," said Ri in a CNN report.
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French President Emmanuel Macron has said Brexit cannot proceed until three major sticking points have been clarified, following Theresa May's speech in Florence.

Mr Macron said the settlement rights of EU nationals living in the UK, the financial terms of the exit package and the Irish question all require further clarification before the negotiations can continue.

He said he noted "progress" and "openings" in the key speech delivered by Ms May, but was still left needing answers to the three key questions.

"The signals sent by the British Prime Minister show a will", he told the French press.

"Before we move forward, we want to clarify matters concerning the settlement of European citizens, the financial terms of exit and the question of Ireland.

"If these three points are not clarified, we will not be able to advance on the rest."

Theresa May hoped her speech in Florence would provide clarity on the UK's Brexit negotiating position (EPA)

He added that he would leave "the exclusivity" of the reactions to the chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier.

"On two of these points (...) openings have been made, it is up to Michel Barnier to comment on them."

Mr Barnier earlier welcomed "the constructive spirit" of the speech in Italy - but asked for further details on its "concrete implications", particularly in regards to Ireland.

The Brussels chief said the Prime Minister had failed to clarify how the UK would honour its "special responsibility" for the consequences of Brexit for Ireland.

Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar joined the call for greater detail on how a transition period might work after the UK leaves the Union in 2019, while Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said Mrs May delivered nothing but the same old story.

Mr Barnier said: "Today's speech does not clarify how the UK intends to honour its special responsibility for the consequences of its withdrawal for Ireland.

"Our objective is to preserve the Good Friday Agreement in all its dimensions, as well as the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union."

But the leader of the Government's DUP allies Arlene Foster offered support, claiming Ms May had outlined a positive vision for the future in the speech.

Following Brexit, the UK's only land border with an EU state will be that between Northern Ireland and the Republic and working out how this will operate in practice when freedom of movement ends is one of the chief points of negotiation.

"The UK government, the Irish government and the EU as a whole have been clear that through the process of our withdrawal we will protect progress made in Northern Ireland over recent years - and the lives and livelihoods that depend on this progress.

"As part of this, we and the EU have committed to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area and, looking ahead, we have both stated explicitly that we will not accept any physical infrastructure at the border.

"We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland - and indeed to everyone on the island of Ireland - to see through these commitments."

She proposed a two-year transition period for the UK after its leaves the EU, suggesting that Britain would continue to "honour its commitments" under the bloc's current budget.

Much of the speech delivered exactly what was expected, with Ms May proposing a transition period of "about two years" following the UK's exit from the 28 nation block in March 2019, during which time trading relations will remain as they are in order to avoid the much-feared economic "cliff edge".

In her 35-minute address, Ms May insisted there should be no need for new trade tariffs between the UK and EU and promised any future UK divergence from EU rules would not be designed to gain an "unfair competitive advantage".

The speech was hailed as "positive, optimistic and dynamic" by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who was in the audience just six days after publishing his 4,000 word personal Brexit manifesto which exposed Cabinet rifts over the future relationship and was widely viewed as his personal manifesto.

But Mr Johnson admitted it could take until 2021 to fully repatriate powers back to the UK as promised by the Leave campaign, telling reporters: "As the Prime Minister rightly said we are going to have a transition period and after that of course we are going to be taking back control of our borders, of our laws, of our destiny."

Neither Mr Macron not any of the other EU leaders were present in the audience which consisted chiefly of Westminster reporters and Italian business and diplomatic figures.
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Russia's foreign minister has compared Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un to nursery children, after the two leaders traded insults and threats.

North Korean leader called Mr Trump a "dotard" and a "frightened dog" over the threats of annihilation the US President made during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr Trump responded the next morning by calling Mr Kim a "madman" and threatening to test him "like never before".

 Donald Trump: We'll deal with 'Little Rocket Man' Kim Jong-un

Moscow's Sergei Lavrov described the leaders as "hotheads" who needed to "calm down".

"Yes, it's unacceptable to silently watch North Korea's nuclear military adventures, but it is also unacceptable to unleash war on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

Calling for a political solution to the dispute, he said: "Together with China we'll continue to strive for a reasonable approach and not an emotional one like when children in a kindergarten start fighting and no-one can stop them."

Mr Lavrov told a news conference there were many people who would like to try not to pursue military action and sanctions, but rather try peaceful solution.

He added that discussion between the nations could be meditated by a "neutral" European country.

He said he had no new initiatives to bring the two sides together, saying he believed the potential for the Russian-Chinese freeze-for-freeze proposal is not yet exhausted".

Such an agreement would halt North Korean nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the US and South Korea stopping their joint military exercises. Mr Trump's administration has rejected it.

Tensions have racheted up between America and North Korea after the isolated state carried out a series of missile tests, two of which flew over US-ally Japan.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Trump used a speech at the UN to say that the US would "totally destroy" the communist nation if it was forced to defend itself or one of its allies.

Mr Kim responded with an unprecedented personal statement where he said Mr Trump would "pay dearly for his speech". Experts have said the speech carried added weight because it was unusually addressed to an international audience.

Mr Kim said Mr Trump had insulted his country and he threatened to "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire".
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Motorists in Germany have been prohibited from driving with part or all of their face covered.

The move, brought in among a host of other new traffic laws, applies to all facial coverings including masks but has been interpreted by many as a ban on burqas and niqabs.

The German parliaments upper house, the Bundesrat, introduced the measure to ensure a drivers identity can be determined if they are caught speeding.

Drivers now face a fine of 60 Euros (53) if they cover their faces.

Although the law allows some religious head coverings such as headscarves worn by Muslim women, critics have said the move is symbolic.

Nurhan Soykan, of Germanys Central Council of Muslims, told Deutsche Welle: Proof of this is the fact that laws are being passed in areas that don't need to be regulated.

We know of no case in which a burqa or niqab wearer caused an accident that can be linked to wearing a full-body veil.

Earlier this year, the German parliament supported a draft law banning women working in the civil service, judiciary and military from wearing a full-face Islamic veil.

German chancellor Angela Merkel announced her support for the move, saying full-face veils were not acceptable in the country and calling for them to be banned wherever it is legally possible.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In February, the state of Bavaria prohibited full-face Islamic veils in schools, universities, polling stations and government offices.

Several countries, including France, Belgium and the Netherlands, have introduced partial bans on wearing the Islamic full body covering.

The new ban was brought in with a host of other traffic laws, including fines for drivers who look at their mobile phones instead of the road.
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German voters are going to the polls on Sunday amid predictions that the countrys far right will win seats in the Bundestag for the first time in half a century.

Surveys show the populist Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party comfortably taking third place in the election, with a noticeable upward trend continuing into the last week of the campaign.

Angela Merkel is expected to be easily returned as Chancellor for the third election straight with a predicted 34 per cent over the vote, with her main rivals  and current grand coalition partners  the centre-left SPD set to poll a dismal 21 per cent.

But the exact shape her government will take after the election is uncertain, with an array of coalition options involving the SPD, the centre-right liberal FPD, or even the Greens, who sometimes cooperate with Ms Merkels CDU party at the state level. The final week of campaigning has also seen volatile changes to all the parties vote shares, raising the possibility of a last-minute upset.

Ahead of the election an average of major polls showed the far-right AfD on 13 per cent of the vote, ahead of left-wing Die Linke (11 per cent), the FDP and the Greens (eight per cent). The results would leave the AfD, which currently has representatives in 13 out of the countrys 16 local state assemblies, with about 70 seats in the national parliament.

There has been speculation the AfD could do even better than polls suggest because of Germans keeping their support for the party secret. One survey commissioned by the tabloid newspaper Bild suggested 40 per cent of Germans believe the party will do better than expected.

The party has won support despite a series of scandals during the election period. Alexander Gauland, the AfDs deputy leader, caused anger after he suggested Germans should be proud of soldiers who fought in the Second World War  breaking a long-established political convention.

He has also made racist comments about Angela Merkels minister for integration  suggesting that Aydan Ozoguz, who has a Turkish family background, should be disposed of in Turkey.

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

The AfD was founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, when it won 4.7 per cent of the vote in that years federal elections, narrowly missing the 5 per cent threshold for winning seats in the Bundestag. It has since taken a more explicitly anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance and seen its popularity grow  pledging to ban mosques, minarets and face veils. The party says it wants to take Angela Merkel to court for accepting refugees and campaigned under the explicit slogan Islam is not a part of Germany. Ahead of election day the party has covered Berlin and other cities in posters explicitly attacking Islam.

The party previously sat in the same European Parliament group as the British Conservative Party  the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)  but it was expelled after signing a cooperation agreement with the Austrian Freedom Party, a far right populist outfit.

The closest the Bundestag has come to having far right MPs since the Second World War was the Deutsche Rechtspartei, or German Right Party, a hard right national conservative outfit that attracted former Nazis and won five seats in the 1949 federal election. It lost those seats at the next election.

Other than the AfD, the most notorious contemporary German far right party is the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). The NPD has previously won scattered representation in local state parliaments but has failed to ever win any seats in the Bundestag.

Earlier in the year the SPDs vote share surged upon the appointment of its new leader Martin Schultz, but his honeymoon period faded quickly and the party is plumbing new depths of unpopularity.
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Refugees on Greeces Lesvos island say they have turned to self-harming, in the hope that their actions will lead to a faster release from the poor conditions inside the detention centre.

Known as the pre-removal centre, the compound is in a gated section of the Moria refugee camp and holds refugees who are expected to be deported.

Eighteen-year-old Mirwaf Mansour*, who came to Greece as a refugee from Egypt, says he began cutting himself in a bid to get moved out of the detention centre, where he was held for 30 days after arriving at Moria camp in November 2016.

Recommended Syrian refugees respond to Hurricane Irma by cooking feasts for

He pulls up his shirt, revealing a deep scar on his back, before pointing out another gash on his wrist.

Mr Mansour says poor living conditions and freezing temperatures made the detention centre unbearable.

After waking up one morning to find one of the men he was sharing a room with dead, Mr Mansour says he became too afraid to even fall asleep during his detention.

The pre-removal detention centre seen from above in the Moria camp grounds (Chantal Da Silva)

I was living there with six people from Egypt and one from Syria, he says. The one from Syria died.

I woke up at seven one morning and went to wake everyone else up... but he didnt wake up. I think maybe it was because of the cold. It was freezing. After that, I didnt sleep for three days, Mr Mansour continues. I was so scared that if I fell asleep, I wouldnt wake up.

A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Greece, Boris Cheshirkov, told The Independent the UNHCR has heard from refugees who have turned to self-harm in detention.

Some people who are in the pre-removal have told UNHCR they have resorted to self-harm in the hope of being released, Mr Cheshirkov said.

But the strain on their mental health should not be discounted, he added.

Mr Cheshirkov explained that in the pre-removal centre, UNHCR has observed poor hygiene conditions and overcrowding.

When this is coupled with the frustration of people, it contributes to mental and psychosocial problems.

The pre-removal detention centre is a closed section of the Moria refugee camp operated by the Greek Ministry of Migration Policy.

One man says he was regularly beaten by police at the detention centre of Moria (Janice Dickson)

Under Greek law, it is designated as a special detention premises for the detention of third country nationals that have been issued with deportation or return decisions. Refugees who end up there are detained until the completion of the deportation or return procedures.

Sahar Mallah, Oxfams Protection Manager on Lesvos, explained that as part of a program called Pilot Project, refugees from certain countries are detained upon arrival  often these refugees are from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and several African countries. They often dont have access to a lawyer and live in worse conditions than other asylum seekers.

Mr Cheshirkov said the Hellenic Police may detain asylum-seekers of countries with a low recognition rate, like the countries Ms Mallah mentioned. While several dozen nationalities are accommodated in Moria, the highest number of people are Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan  who have high recognition rates, he explained.

Asylum-seekers from countries with a low recognition rate are surprised to find themselves in detention in a country where they were hoping to find freedom.

Saami El Mahdy*, 26, arrived at Moria in 2016 after being rejected entry by Turkey, but because of his Egyptian nationality, he spent over a year in detention where he says he was physically and verbally abused.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr El Mahdy explains through a translator that he repeatedly asked officers and aid workers to explain why he was being held in the detention camp for so long, but he was never given an answer.

It was in the detention centre that he started cutting his wrists. Asked what life was like in the detention centre, he turns over his arms, revealing a string of scars on both sides.

I thought about dying, he said. They deal with humans like theyre animals.

Mr El Mahdy said in detention police officers hit him and said bad words. He says officers would beat him for no reason and call him words like Motherf***er.

Saami El Mahdy, 26, said he started cutting himself after suffering physical and verbal abuse at the detention centre (Chantal Da Silva)

Oxfam says there have been rising rates of suicidal behaviour across refugee camps in Greece, with evidence of people burning themselves with cigarettes and abusing drugs like Vicodin, Trazadone and alcohol.

Ms Mallah said in the summer months, when Moria becomes even more crowded, living conditions worsen. A container appropriate for five people living in it could house as many as twenty. The more people, the worse the conditions get.

A lot of people say they want to end their lives...I end up crying when I smile or Death would be better than this, Ms Mallah said.

Rafat Zaghloul*, a friend of Mr El Mahdy, was also held at the detention centre when he arrived at Moria. He says he understands those sentiments.

Why do they put us in prison? Whats the reason? Theyre crazy, he says, shaking his head.

I should have rights like anyone else.

Some refugees live in shipping containers at the refugee camp, while others live in tents (Janice Dickson)

Mr Zaghoul says he was forced to flee Egypt after receiving death threats from Muslim Brotherhood when he refused to join the militant group.

A lot of bad things happened. They said they would kill me, kill my father and my brother.

Here, they tell me its safe to go back to Egypt. Yes, Egypt is safe, but the Muslim Brotherhood is not.

Mr Zaghoul says that while he does not feel its safe to return to Egypt, he is desperate to leave Lesvos after being forced to stay in the detention centre.

I wouldnt stay here, he says. I cant after the bad memories.

*Some names have been changed to protect the anonymity of sources
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An amateur treasure hunter in Germany has stumbled upon what could be radioactive material from a secret research facility dating back to World War II.

64-year-old Bernd Thalmann was exploring the ground in Oranienburg, north-east Germany, with his metal detector when it gave an unusual bleep.

After bringing the mysterious object home, the pensioner alerted the authorities about his discovery of a shiny lump of metal.

Police discovered the find was radioactive, leading to the evacuation of 15 residents from several houses by emergency services.

Specialists in hazmat suits searched Mr Thalmanns home and removed the suspicious object in a lead-lined container which was then placed inside a protective suitcase.

Mr Thalmann is now being investigated for being in possession of unauthorised radioactive substances, according to the Berlin Courier.

German authorities have revealed that the area of Oranienburg was the location of Adolf Hitlers secret uranium enrichment facility.

The research centre was tasked with enriching uranium oxide imported from South America, to make weapons-grade plutonium. The ultimate aim was to create a Nazi atomic bomb.

According to police, Mr Thalmann was intent on retracing his steps to find more hard evidence of the mysterious Nazi-era site. The amateur archaeologist was proving uncooperative, according to authorities.

A police statement revealed that the finder refuses to provide information on the exact location. An investigation was launched, with the radioactive find part of a criminal investigation, according to AFP.

Britain and the United States have long possessed information regarding the Nazis plans to make atomic bombs.

Nazi reconnaissance maps Show all 2 1 /2 Nazi reconnaissance maps Nazi reconnaissance maps Nazi reconnaissance maps

The US National Archives released documents this year about the National Socialist Party developing nuclear weapons.

The log book from Hans Zinsser, a German test pilot read: In early October 1944 I flew away 12-15km from a nuclear test station near Ludwigslust (South of Lubeck).

A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent, billowing sections (at about 7000 metres) stood, without any seeming connections over the spot where the explosion took place. Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communication as by lighting turned up.

There are claims that his testimony was corroborated by another pilot, while an Italian correspondent also saw the explosion, reporting the incident to Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

According to Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch in his book Hitlers Bomb, German scientists carried out three nuclear weapons tests just before the end of the Second World War.

However, Mr Karlschs theory was discredited by Gerald Kirchner of Germanys Federal Office for Radiation Protection. In a Der Spiegel report, Mr Kirchner says that soil sample readings at the detonation sites show no indication of the explosion of an atomic bomb.
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A two-metre-long turtle has reportedly washed onto a beach in Calella, near Barcelona on the northeast coast of Spain.

The apparently dead leatherback turtle, which reportedly weighs 700kg, was filmed being removed from the beach with a crane.

It is reportedly the second leatherback turtle, or Dermochelys Coriacea, to wash ashore on the Spanish coast in the past month, after fisherman in Vilanova i la Geltru found a 300-kilogramme dead at the beginning of September.

Recommended The Planet Earth crew put every baby turtle it filmed back in the sea

Sightings of the giant turtles in the Mediterranean are rare, with only ten being spotted in the last 2,000 years, biologists told La Vanguardia.

The giant turtles prefer tropical and subtropical waters and are usually found in South America, according to the newspaper.

Pere Alzina, a biologist from Arenys de Mar, told the paper we could have the great surprise of finding a leatherback turtle nest in the Mediterranean".

Dermochelys Coriacea is the largest species of turtle on earth and are one of the deepest-diving marine reptiles.

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 turtle that was found in Calella will be taken to the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where it will undergo testing.
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Iran said yesterday it had successfully tested a new medium-range ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) in defiance of US pressure to halt its advanced weapons programme. The launch came shortly after the US President attacked the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in a speech at the UN in New York and will further increase political tensions between the two countries.

The State broadcaster IRIB carried footage of the Khoramshahr missile without giving its time and location. It included video from an on-board camera which it said showed the detachment of the cone that carries multiple warheads.

"The weight of the Khorramshahr missile's warhead has been announced to be 1,800 kg (4,000 lbs), ... making it Iran's most powerful missile for defence and retaliation against any aggressive enemy," state television said.

The US has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a UN resolution which calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to technology capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Iran denies any such plans.

The missile was first displayed at a military parade on Friday, where President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would strengthen its missile capabilities. With its range, the missile is capable of reaching much of the Middle East, including Israel, and was, according to Mr Rouhani, being developed as a deterrent.

Iran's Defence Minister, Gen Amir Hatami, outlined the missile's specifications. "The ability to evade the enemy's air defence line and to be guided from the moment of launch until the target is hit turns Khoramshahr into a tactical missile," he said. Iran would "not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile", he added.

Britain voiced concerns about the latest test with the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson writing on Twitter: "Extremely concerned by reports of Iran missile test, which is inconsistent with UN resolution 2231. Call on Iran to halt provocative acts."

The US announced fresh sanctions on Iran in July over its ballistic missile programme and what it claimed was the country's support for terror organisations. It also imposed sanctions on Iran after a ballistic missile test in January, saying such launches violate the spirit of the 2015 agreement between Iran and six world powers to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

Mr Trump included Iran among a small group of rogue regimes, and said its government was bent on death and destruction, adding that a nuclear agreement was an embarrassment to the US.

Mr Rouhani responded by referring to a rogue newcomer to international politics and deplored the US leader's ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric, adding that his country would not be the first to violate the deal, which Mr Trump has threatened to pull out of.
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Moscow authorities have been forced to make an urgent amendment to a monument dedicated to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle, just three days after its grand unveiling.

An elaborate monument which now sits behind a 30ft statue of the inventor was supposed to depict all the weapons he designed in his lifetime, but observant Russians quickly noticed that a Second World War German rifle was also included in the display.

The Sturmgewehr 44 (StG 44) assault rifle was used by Nazi troops and has now been removed from the monument, leaving a gaping hole in its place.

The mistake is made even more embarrassing due to the ostentatious unveiling ceremony which included a Russian Orthodox priest blessing the statue with holy water.

The sculptor, Salavat Shcherbakov, was forced to apologise on state-run Rossiya 24 channel. He said: It looks like this [mistake] sneaked in from the internet.

And the error caused additional controversy because of the accusations, made during Kalashnikovs lifetime, that his most famous weapon copied the StG 44 design.

Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara Show all 13 1 /13 Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The unnamed gunman gestures after shooting the Russian Ambassador to Turkey AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman opened fire at a photo gallery in Ankara, Turkey AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov was delivering a speech when the gunman opened fire AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman addressed the room after shooting the Russian Ambassador AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman spoke in Arabic after opening fire on the Russian ambassador to Turkey AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman stands over the body of Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, at a photo gallery in Ankara, Turkey AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara People in the art gallery react moments after the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was shot dead AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara Turkish police secure the area near the art gallery where Andrei Karlov was shot REUTERS Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman reportedly shouted "Aleppo" and "revenge" after shooting Mr Karlov dead AFP/Getty Images Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman stands over the body of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara The gunman, a Turkish policeman, can be seen standing behind the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, before he opened fire AP Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara An ambulance leaves the area near the art gallery where the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov was shot dead REUTERS Russian ambassador to Turkey shot dead in Ankara Guests leave as the gunman holds his weapon behind them AFP/Getty

Kalashnikov created the AK47 in 1947, five years after the German arms designer Hugo Schmeissers released the Nazi edition.

Although there are some differences between the guns, they share a striking resemblance - no doubt contributing to the sculptor's modern day error. Kalashnikov was always dismissive of the rumours.
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Nearly a year after Donald Trumps victory, both parties in Washington are still trying to figure out what it means and how best to adapt. Its hard to say who has faced the deeper existential crisis. The Democrats lost pretty much everything; the Republicans gained, well, Trump.

The self-flagellating of the Grand Old Party, GOP, continues as it scratches around for votes for another bowl of old mutton theyre calling a viable replacement for the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Boiled up by Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, two senators from the South, it has been roundly condemned by the healthcare industry as unworkable and cruel to patients. Late on Friday John McCain declared his opposition, probably killing it dead. But still they try. Such is their desperation to be seen capable of passing something. Anything.

The best the Democrats can say these days is that Trump has been giving them day-passes to his latest little club, namely the Oval Office. He even did a deal this month with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, leaders of the opposition in the Senate and House respectively, to find the money to fund the government, leaving Republican leaders twisting in he wind.

In its latest cover, Time examines their plight. Eight months into the Trump presidency, the party looks to face its toughest odds since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984, editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal writes. The Democrats are in their deepest congressional rut since the class of 1946 was elected, and hold the fewest governors' mansions 15  since 1922. Of the 98 partisan legislatures in the US, Republicans control 67. During Barack Obama's presidency, Democrats lost 970 seats in state legislatures, leaving the party's bench almost bare.

 Donald Trump: We'll deal with 'Little Rocket Man' Kim Jong-un

Thats only part of the litany of woe. He also highlights their stunning youth deficit. Among all those leading the party in Congress or positioning to be its candidate for president next time around, none couldnt qualify as your great grandparent. No offence, Bernie or Elizabeth.

But here is the real problem for both parties: America doesnt know what it wants. The pendulum rule of electoral politics suggests that by next year  the congressional midterms  or certainly by the 2020 presidential contest, the country will have swung back to something near the old normal. The moment for "outsider" candidates promising to disrupt the status quo will have passed. Candidates offering experience and expertise  imagine!  will be back in vogue.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is backing Judge Roy Moore for the US Senate (AP)

A first indicator of this has been the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Trumps outreach to Chuck and Nancy, which prevented a government shutdown. A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 71 per cent of Americans support the agreement which also provided funding for victims of the two recent hurricanes. And there has been uptick, for the first time, in Trumps approval ratings too.

But then cast your eyes to Alabama where on Tuesday Republicans must decide whether to stick by Luther Strange, a former state attorney general who was appointed on an interim basis earlier this year to hold a vacant US Senate seat, or push him aside in favour of his challenger from within the party, former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore.

 Donald Trump doesn't know difference between Melania and Ivanka, says Jimmy Kimmel

Fresh from his railings against North Korea at the UN  and the return railings from Kim Jong-un  Trump flew to Alabama on Friday to campaign for Strange. A risky gambit. Latest polls show Strange, all 6ft 9 of him, losing to Moore perhaps by a hefty margin. If that is what actually happens, it will mark the first major repudiation of Trump at the polls since he took office. But it will not have come from the "resistance" of the liberal left, but rather from the far right.

Were he to make it all the way to Washington- after defeating Strange he would still face a Democrat opponent on election day  Moore would make Trump look Kennedy-esque (and Ted Cruz a kitten). This the man who in 2005 said homosexual conduct should be illegal, and who was suspended from the state Supreme Court last year after he ordered all Alabama judges to ignore the US Supreme Court ruling in favour of gay marriage. It was the second time hed been booted from the Court. The first was after he installed a stone monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, in violation of the constitution.

On the trail just in the last few days he has spoken of reds and yellows in America  yes he apparently meant native Americans and Asians  and warned that punishment for loose behaviour is nigh. You think that Gods not angry that this land is a moral slum? he asked during a visit to a church. How much longer will it be before his judgment comes?

Mr Moore is no stranger to controversy (The Hill ) (The Hill)

He and his supporters argue that while Trumps heart may have been in the right place he is falling under the spell of the Washington establishment. Of Chuck and Nancy and also Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the Senate. As Sarah Palin put it, the swamp is trying to hijack this presidency. Yes Palin is not with Strange and therefore Trump. She is all out for Moore.

Alabama is not America, thats for sure. But this is confusing, nonetheless, for all of us and for the leaders of the two parties. Support for Trumps deal with the Democrats suggests an appetite for less extremism in Washington not more. But a Moore victory in Tuesdays Republican primary would send an entirely different message: that Trumps time in the Oval Office is but the beginning of a nationalist and populist wave in America. That its barely got started. In other words, for those not exactly enamoured of Trump: you aint seen nothing yet.
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On 10 April 2003, I was driving on a road west of Kirkuk, waiting for the city to be captured by the Kurdish Peshmerga and worried that we might arrive there before the Iraqi army had withdrawn or broken up. We could see no cars from Kirkuk coming towards us, which might mean that there was fighting still going on.

We could see abandoned Iraqi army camps beside the road but no looters, a bad sign in Iraq in wartime where only extreme danger will deter looters from trying to grab the richest pickings. We were havering about what to do, when a car appeared from the direction of Kirkuk whose driver leaned out the window to shout: It is finished - the way to Kirkuk is open."

An orgy of looting was going on inside the city, with the theft of everything from mattresses to fire engines. I saw two looters drive away a large yellow bulldozer they had just stolen. The Kurdish Peshmerga had taken over the city a few hours earlier, saying that they were there to fill the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Iraqi army and to restore order, though they did little to stop the looters.

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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. 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They had repeatedly promised the Americans that they had no plans to seize Kirkuk and, even now, were insisting that their occupation was only temporary. A senior Kurdish officer standing in the wreckage of the governors office told me that were expecting to withdraw some of our men within 45 minutes.

Fourteen years later, the Kurds still control Kirkuk, the oil capital of northern Iraq with a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, as well as much of the surrounding province. The leaders of the US-led coalition during the invasion had feared that, if the Kurds captured the city, they would provoke a Turkish invasion, since Turkey had declared that it would not tolerate such a thing. I wrote an article describing the Kurdish takeover with the headline Kurdish victory provokes fears of Turkish invasion.

It never happened: in the years following 2003, Iraqi Kurdistan has been like the eye at the centre of a hurricane, always brushed by disastrous winds but avoiding complete catastrophe.

Journalists reporting on Kirkuk frequently referred to it as a powder keg because of its ethnic and sectarian divisions along with its oil wealth, which so many different parties would like to control.

The cliche is a useful one for reporters in Iraqi Kurdistan in general, because it suggests that an explosion will happen without saying when. Again and again, predictions of Turkish invasions or war between the Peshmerga and Iraqi central government forces over disputed territories have proved false or premature.

The referendum on independence for the Kurdish controlled territory, due to take place on 25 September, is the latest event billed as threatening the stability of Iraq and a good chunk of the Middle East. Seldom has a democratic poll in such a small place been so universally denounced by so many international powers, including the US, UK, Germany and France.

A White House statement emphasises to the leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that the referendum is distracting from efforts to defeat Isis and stabilise the liberated areas. Holding the referendum in disputed areas is particularly provocative and destabilising.

Regional powers like Turkey and Iran have likewise demanded that the referendum be cancelled and threatened retaliation if it is not. In Baghdad, the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has denounced it and the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional. But for all the sound and fury, it looks as if the vote is going ahead.

A peculiarity of this hysterical reaction is that the referendum is non-binding and does not commit KRG President Masoud Barzani to doing anything concrete to achieve self-determination. He himself says that the purpose of the poll is to tell the world that we want independence", adding that outside powers had believed that the calling of the referendum was merely a pressure card, a ploy to extract concessions from Baghdad.

By pressing ahead with it, he believes he has put Kurdish independence firmly on the agenda. If nothing else, he has demonstrated that the international community is terrified by anything that destabilises Iraq and that the cooperation of the Kurds cannot be taken for granted.

Among the Iraqi Kurds, Barzani has already re-established his credentials as the standard bearer of Kurdish nationalism, defying threats and pleas for postponement or cancellation of the vote. Even Kurdish leaders opposed to it as too risky are calling for as large a "yes" vote as possible, so as not to undermine the demand for a Kurdish state.

The national issue also diverts attention from the corruption and incompetence of the KRG government and the dreadful condition of its economy. Barzani has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections for 1 November, when he and his Kurdistan Democratic Party should benefit from an overwhelmingly positive referendum result 35 days earlier.

The political landscape of northern Iraq is changing in other ways. Isis is on the run and on Thursday the Iraqi army started an offensive against one of its last substantial enclaves at Hawija west of Kirkuk.

As always, calculating the political and military balance of power in Iraq is difficult because so many players are involved and the way they come together is unpredictable. How, for instance, will Abadi react to being treated so contemptuously by the KRG? His forces have just won a historic victory over Isis by recapturing Mosul after a nine-month siege. He will not want to lose the credit won then by being faced down by Barzani.

On the other hand, Baghdads hard-fought success at Mosul dependeds on the air support of the US-led coalition. Without it, the central governments military strength is for the moment too modest to give it a military option against the Kurds.

There is another reason why the Kurdish leadership may show caution after the referendum, assuming there is no last-minute postponement: they have a lot to lose. The Kurdish demand for self-determination is not like that of the Algerians or Vietnamese after the Second World War because, in many respects, the KRG is already highly independent and has been so since 2003. Its government is stronger politically and militarily than many members of the UN. But is also true that the Kurds' real share of power within the nominally power-sharing government in Baghdad has been shrinking. For practical purposes Iraq is already two countries, despite the pretence that it is a unitary state.

The real constraint on self-determination for Iraqi Kurdistan is that, referendum or no referendum; it remains a minnow in shark-infested waters. The US and its allies will no longer need the Kurds to the degree they do today once Isis is defeated. The Iraqi central government will get stronger rather than weaker. The safest course for the Kurds is still a confederal power-sharing agreement with Baghdad, but so far neither side has had the will to make this happen.
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The emergency situation in Rakhine State, Burma, has worsened since 25 August when violent clashes began between minority factions and Burmese militants, resulting in a reported 1,000 plus fatalities and the displacement of hundreds of thousands.

The United Nations estimates that more than 400,000 men, women and children have fled Burma for refuge in Bangladesh since the violence erupted, with thousands more arriving each day.

Unicef estimates that 50,000 of the new arrivals to Bangladesh are pregnant women and an unprecedented 60 per cent of new refugees in Bangladesh are children. Many are malnourished and injured, having walked for days in search of sanctuary.

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

At least 1,267 children have been separated from their families and are at particular risk of human trafficking, sexual abuse, child labour and child marriage.

Ive just returned from Bangladesh where I joined a team to assess the need on the ground and see how Islamic Relief can help these displaced people.

I met some of them when I joined my colleagues in the southern fishing port of Coxs Bazar, before heading further south on the Naf River.

Here, thousands of refugees are fleeing Burma by boat.

From Bangladesh, if you look east to a ridge of tree-covered mountains, Burma is close enough to make out buildings and lights.

In Teknaf, the southernmost city on mainland Bangladesh, we walked to a crossing point used by the refugees.

There we found a dozen narrow wooden boats, which were collecting and dropping off groups of people carrying their few hastily-gathered possessions.

 Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Burma

At the Teknaf crossing I met Muhammad Rafiq, his wife Nuru, and their four children.

The family fled their home as the conflict erupted and the river crossing was the second step on their journey through the border area.

Muhammad was accompanied by several members of his village and they all provided mutual support to each other.

Holding his two-year-old son, Noyum, in his arms, Muhammad told me: We left in the middle of the night. We had time only to grab our children. We left everything behind.

 Rohingya crisis: Muslim village burnt to the ground

Noyum had a fever and was semi-conscious.

Muhammad needed to complete the next part of his journey quickly as his son required immediate medical attention.

However, Noyum had to compete with hundreds of others at this crossing with similar needs.

Muhammed Rafiq and his wife, Nuru, have fled with their two-year-old son Noyum, who is in need of medical attention (Imran Madden)

At the Tayum Kali refugee camp, roughly 4km from the Burmese border, I met Soydul Amin, who arrived in Bangladesh on 12 September with five family members.

He had to flee overnight and, like the others I met, also left his life possessions behind.

Soydul has shown incredible resolve by clearing part of a hillside then levelling it out using hand tools  aiming to, quite literally, build a new home for his uprooted family.

He has built a shelter frame out of bamboo, covering it with plastic sheeting purchased from the local market.

A resolute Soydul told me: My family and I will clear this land and make a shelter. We will support each other and others around us.

Many of these refugees are self-sufficient and stoic individuals, determined to make the best of a bad situation.

I met with many refugees who have fled over the Bangladeshi border (Imran Madden)

While this independent spirit is essential to get refugees through the chaos and confusion of their arrival in Bangladesh, it will be down to NGOs, such as Islamic Relief, for the most part to provide them with improved shelter units, water, sanitation and food.

Many of these refugee settlements are on hilltops. In early December  just over two months away  the temperature will drop dramatically and these makeshift shelters will prove inadequate for the coming winter months.

It is vital that the international community comprehends their plight and responds in their hour of need.

Now back home in England, I cannot help but wonder whether Noyum received the medical treatment he so urgently needed.

At the point where so many are seeking a new life away from sectarian violence, for too many it has marked the end of theirs. Surely their life is too high a price for anyone to pay.

Imran Madden is the UK director of Islamic Relief, which has launched an emergency appeal for Burma
Investors in Irish real estate are securing yields of almost 12pc with growth expected to continue over the near-term, albeit at a lower level.

Aberdeen Standard Investments said the outlook in Dublin is good for the next two years, but have urged investors to be cautious over the longer term given the cyclical nature of the market.

European real estate analyst Craig Wright told a media forum organised by Aberdeen that the fundamentals in the market were strong, and there was more liquidity in the system.

State bad bank Nama was playing an increasingly important role in development, he added.

"In terms of the one to two-year outlook, we favour Dublin. We see a positive performance from the core to the out of town market and it's doing particularly well," he said. "We would throw some caution on the longer term, given the cyclical market.

"The role Nama played in removing the bad loans has really helped to bring liquidity back. You're seeing Nama playing a more important role in development."

He said that yields were falling from a high of 40pc in 2014, which have since dropped to 26pc in 2015, 12.5pc in 2016 and 11.7pc to the second quarter of this year.

"That's shows while it's been a rapid cycle, the fundamentals are in the good place and you're perhaps seeing more capital growth."

Historically, Ireland is considered to be one of the most volatile markets, but across Europe there is a need for more investment in healthcare and retirement living, giving the ageing population.

Aberdeeen Standard Investments also say that as consumers move to online shopping, there will be less retail needed and more logistics.

Around 30pc of Irish companies retail through online platforms, compared with a European average of 18pc.

"Retail is still important but we need to adapt to change," he said. "Probably the benefactor will be logistics. Online is driving logistics close to consumers."

Three-year yields on Dublin office and high-street retail are expected to hit 4.5pc, with logistics at 6.2pc.
A "double whammy" from Brexit and Mercosur threatens to derail Ireland's beef sector, Meat Industry Ireland (MII) has warned.

Amid reports that Europe is on the cusp of offering the South American bloc major concessions on beef imports into the EU to secure a trade deal, MII said such a move would leave the Irish beef sector "seriously exposed".

The ICMSA and IFA have backed MII calls for the Irish Government to block moves by the European Commission to complete the Mercosur trade deal.

The drive to secure a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur has gathered pace over the last month, with Commission officials pushing to conclude negotiations by Christmas.

EU Commission president Jean Claude Juncker told the MEPs last week that concluding a trade agreement with Mercosur - which includes the beef exporting giants of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay - was now a priority for Europe.

Suggestions in Brussels of preferential access for a further 85,000t of South American beef, have infuriated farm leaders.

European farmers' organisation Copa and Cogeca chief Pekka Pesonen said the move would have a "catastrophic" impact on the EU beef sector, particularly as beef consumption is falling.

He said the EU was "not getting much in return" for opening up its market to cheaper South American imports, which he said could also threaten EU food safety and animal health standards. "We cannot continue to use this important European sector as the bargaining chip for other areas," Mr Pesonen added.

IFA president Joe Healy pointed out that Mercosur countries already have very favourable access to the European market, with the trading bloc delivering 74pc of all EU beef imports amounting to 246,000t every year.

Mr Healy said there could be no increase in import volumes or additional tariff rate quotas in any new offer in the Mercosur trade negotiations.

"The EU cannot make any new offer which will damage the EU beef sector by allowing the South Americans to cherry pick the high price EU steak market," the IFA leader said following a meeting with DG Trade in Brussels.

"The IFA made it very clear to the EU Commission that now is not the time for the EU to make a new offer on Mercosur with the threat and uncertainty of Brexit and the associated impact that the sterling exchange rate is having on the beef sector, as well as the scandal in the Brazilian meat sector," he added.

ICMSA president John Comer said a sweetheart deal for Mercosur would have "very serious repercussions for Irish beef producers".

"It is very difficult to see how Irish farmers, along with their EU counterparts, are expected to meet the most costly and exacting standards on food safety and environmental standards while the Commission negotiates on trade deals involving non-EU imports that do not even pretend to have similar standards," Mr Comer said.

Cormac Healy of MII said this week would be crucial in the wider farm lobby's continuing battle to halt the Commission's trade deal plans. "We are heading for D-Day this week or next, as the Commission make a push for a deal to be done," he said.

EU deal with South America could derail Irish exports warn farm leaders
London is a far cry from the idyllic farm at Ballymacdoyle, Burnham on the shores of Dingle Bay, with views of Milltown across the water and Dingle town to the right of the frame.

Working the graveyard shift from 10pm to 6am while the city above slept was tough going, though the money was good.

"It was six nights a week, so it was tough enough going. I never really adjusted to it," says the 29-year-old, who had landed in London at 19, having decided the degree course in engineering at IT Tralee was not for him.

"I was always thinking about coming home. Dad had sucklers here, around 60 Simmental suckler cows, and I was mad to come home and mad to farm but I knew there was going to be no money in the suckler farming life."

Ronan returned to Dingle in 2012. He completed two years at Clonakilty Agricultural College, specialising in advanced dairy herd management.

The O Siochru farm is part of the former estate of Lord Ventry, and the renovated family home was one of six labourers' cottages.

He points to a site next door with a mobile home, where he plans to build his dream home. He rents out the caravan during the summer for extra income.

In 2014 he and his father Joe began the process of converting the suckler farm into a profitable dairy enterprise. "During the two years I was in college, we started selling the sucklers and buying Friesian and Holstein calves in," he says of their partnership.

Around this time he also held down two jobs in Dingle, as a waiter in a restaurant, and cleaning 12 holiday homes.

"During that time we were rearing the calves and inseminating them and they were going to be calving down in February 2014.

"Only for Mom (Mary) and Dad I'd have nothing," he says. "We spent a lot of money. The milking parlour was the biggest investment. We put in a 14-unit Dairymaster parlour with ACRs and automatic feeders, and new bulk tank. We spent a lot of money on farm roadways as well and reseeding."

Already there were around 50 existing cubicles and they put in another 15, providing accommodation for around 70 cows.

Ronan leases 63ac, about 20ac of which is part of the grazing platform. The home farm has about 70ac suitable to grazing and some woodland.

"Dad had a lot of work done here. We started milking then in February 2014 and I'd say it was one of the best years for dairy farming ever," he says.

"The weather was good, the price was very good; close to 40/l, and you couldn't have picked a better year to start.

"The following two years then, 2015 and 2016, I was probably making the same amount of money because they were producing more, even though milk price was poor enough. "This is my fourth year now and I'm milking 78 and I'd say the average age of the herd is 2.5 lactations so there's a lot left in them yet.

"They're really producing this year now and I'm hoping to sell 570kg milk solids per cow. At the moment they're milking 22l, 4.35pc fat and 3.89pc protein, so they're performing well."

Ronan advises anyone thinking about converting from suckler to dairying to pay close attention to where the stock is coming from.

"Only buy in stock from herds that you know. This might save you money in the long term as you won't end up getting rid of stock that is no good," he says.

Ronan is building a cubicle shed and plans to expand to about 100 cows. "I'll hit the brakes then after that, I'd say and we'll see how it goes. There's a fine line; one man can milk 100 cows but anything over that and you need help and you need 50 cows to pay for that help."

Supplements

The cattle are usually out from mid-February to the end of November, in a good year, and he supplements them 1.7kg/cow ration as well as silage.

Ronan is the elder of two boys with two older sisters. Triona is a social worker in Dublin, Emer is nursing in Cork, Muireann is in UCC, and Donnchadh is doing his Leaving Cert.

He continues to work off-farm, seven nights a week as a night porter in the Dingle Bay Hotel. He says he'll wait for signals on milk prices in the coming year before he makes a decision on that. He doesn't miss the travel or the weekends away and is certain he will remain farming on the Dingle Peninsula.

"If I'm even away for two or three days, I'm mad to come home. I'd be wondering about the cows. My girlfriend gives out to me.

"It's easy for me, I suppose. I'm young and enthusiastic. Will I be as enthusiastic in 30 years time? Hopefully I will be.

"I can't say I'm more interested than any other man because I haven't been doing it for long but I'm hooked at the moment anyway," he says.

Working nights below ground on London's Tube, Ronan O Siochru was sustained by dreams of returning to the family farm in Kerry, writes Majella O'Sullivan
Where do you start if you want to fell trees on the farm? Not by putting petrol in your chainsaw but by filling out the necessary paper work. Thinning your forest, felling a tree on the farm or coppicing a woodland all have one thing in common: you have to have a valid felling licence in place before you start the work.

The Forestry Act 2014 replaced the Forestry Act 1946 at the end of May of this year and judging by the number of calls I'm getting, forest owners are not familiar with the new application form yet.

A felling licence is issued by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Once in place, it will allow you to fell or otherwise remove a tree or trees and to thin a forest for management reasons. A felling licence can be valid for up to 10 years and can be extended for another five years. There are exemptions where a felling licence is not required, but that is a topic for another article.

What is a forest?

Trying to define a forest is a good place to start. Under the Forestry Act 2014, forest land is defined as 'land under trees with a minimum area of 0.1 hectare and tree crown cover of more than 20pc of the total area (or the potential to achieve this cover at maturity)'.

Making a felling licence application

The felling licence application form is a six-page document requiring more detail than before. For instance, you will need to estimate the timber volume to be felled, the level of canopy closure and so on. This may sound like a daunting task but the excellent guidance notes make filling out this form pretty straightforward.

The completed form is sent to the Felling Section of the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) based in Johnstown Castle Estate in Co Wexford.

The application form, detailed guidance notes as well as examples of completed application forms can be found at www.teagasc.ie/forestry or www.agriculture.gov.ie/ forestservice.

Public consultation

When a licence application is received, the Forest Service (DAFM) will publish a notice of the application before making a decision on the matter. Any person can make a submission within 30 days. The notices can be accessed from the Department and Teagasc websites. Details provided include when the application was received; the relevant townland and county; the area involved and the last date for submissions. Those that make a submission will be informed of the decision.

Approvals and appeals

Tree felling decisions can be accessed from the Department and Teagasc websites.

You can appeal a felling approval decision. This must be done in writing within a 28-day window. The appeal should be addressed to the Forestry Appeals Committee, Kilminchy Court in Portlaoise.

Site notice

Once your felling licence has been approved, you need to place a site notice at the entrance from the public road at least seven days before the felling starts. This notice must remain in place for the entire duration of harvesting operations.

This site notice must be easily visible and readable from the public road. The sign itself must be made of rigid and durable material and must be replaced if it becomes damaged or difficult to read.

The site notice must include your name, location, townland and felling licence number. A description of the nature and extent of the tree felling must also be included as well as the approximate start and end dates and when the notice was erected at the site.

The site notice informs passers-by that a felling licence has been issued. It is however, not part of a consultation or appeals process.

Now that you have your paperwork sorted, it is time to put petrol in your chainsaw and struggle into your protective gear.

Steven Meyen is a Teagasc forestry advisor email: steven.meyen@teagasc.ie
A direct service between Dublin and Beijing has been approved by Hainan Airlines and the final all-clear from the Chinese government is pending, according to Domhnal Slattery, the chief executive of aircraft leasing firm Avolon.

The planned route has been in development for well over a year now.

Already, Cathay Pacific has announced the first ever scheduled direct connection to Asia from Ireland, and is launching the route between Dublin and Hong Kong next year.

Hainan Airlines is owned by Chinese conglomerate HNA, whose Bohan Leasing unit acquired Dublin-based Avolon in 2015. With more than 900 owned, managed and on-order jets, Avolon is the third-largest aircraft lessor in the world. The company was co-founded by Mr Slattery in 2010.

Speaking yesterday at the autumn lunch of the Institute of Directors, Mr Slattery warned that Ireland needs to significantly expand its diplomatic presence in China if it is to capitalise on opportunities the country presents.

"The size of our representation, diplomatically, in China is de minimis," he said. "(Denmark's) trade and diplomatic representation is about 100 times larger than Ireland's. That's just not good enough.

"There are 1.4 billion people in China who want to drink Irish milk and eat Irish meat. We need to be the primary supplier there." Recounting the development of Avolon, whose $30bn of assets now includes $8bn of equity, Mr Slattery said that Irish startups tend to sell up too soon. Avolon was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2014 before sold months later to Bohai.

He said the listing was personally a "huge learning curve".

"Clearly, the opportunity lies for more and more Irish companies to get to the point of going public and not selling out too early, which is unfortunately a characteristic of a lot of our stars in any sector, particularly the tech sector," he said.

Mr Slattery revealed how he'd been working on establishing Avolon with colleagues about two years before the actual launch.

But events such as the collapse of Bear Stearns in 2008 put everything on the back burner.

He also said that as Avolon was being developed in 2009, the startup didn't have "50p to rub together", when it approached the Dublin office of law firm Maples.

"I remember I called up the managing partner of Maples at the time and gave him the vision," he said, telling the partner that he had needed top tier legal work done, but had no money to pay for it.

"To give them their due he said 'we'll give you half-a-million euro in credit for legal work and if it works out, we're going to be your firm for the long term. If it doesn't, we'll write it off'."
The Government has promised to speed up putting pensions in place for around one million private sector workers who have no occupational scheme.

An auto-enrolment scheme is being looked at where those who do not have an occupational pension are put into one.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said too much time had been wasted.

"This issue has been long-fingered for too long, and now that the economy is recovering strongly we must act decisively, and we will publish a five-year roadmap for pension reform before the end of the year," he said.

"I anticipate the first payments being made into those new individually held funds by 2021."

Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty said the Government will publish a consultation paper on the new scheme by the end of the year.

Research has found thousands of people face the prospect of still having to pay off a mortgage when they retire.

Insurance Ireland welcomed the announcement of plans to introduce an auto-enrolment pension scheme.
Just 130 new social houses have been delivered from a total of almost 3,000 promised more than 18 months ago - with 630 under construction.

The lack of progress comes despite the schemes being approved by the Department of Housing in July 2015 and January last year. At the time, the Government said they were "shovel-ready".

They are part of the wider social housing building programme under Rebuilding Ireland, which aims to deliver 47,000 new units by 2021. The department insists that the programme is on track.

But an analysis of progress on 2,576 homes to be delivered by local authorities, and 400 by approved housing bodies (AHBs), raises concerns. There are delays in approving projects, a lack of progress on design and planning and, in some cases, problems acquiring land.

The Government approved the projects as part of the State's response to the housing crisis, and said it was an "aggressive plan" to tackle the crisis.

Each of the developments had gone through the first stage of the approval process, meaning the councils and AHBs were told to complete the design and planning stage. In many cases, this has not yet happened.

While the Government insists 80 households are being provided with a home every day, the lack of progress on projects suggests serious problems.

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The figures were provided by local authorities and AHBs. The figures show that in the local authorities, 136 schemes provided for 2,576 units. The total budget was 484m. To date, 132 have been completed or acquired, and 626 are under construction.

Three councils did not respond - Cavan, which was to deliver 14 homes under the July 2015 and January 2016 approvals, Galway County (120) and Westmeath (65).

On the AHBs, responses were received in relation to 400 units, with a budget of almost 70m. Five homes have been built. Projects are awaiting department approval, some since last March, while others are at the planning or design stage.

Across the social housing programme, projects have been cancelled. However, these have largely been replaced with alternatives, and there is now a pipeline of 10,000 units planned.

One source suggested there were not enough resources in place to help local authorities, many of which lost capacity when social housing programmes were abolished.

The department said the time taken to complete the approvals process varied through different projects, with "informal dialogue" used to resolve problems.

"Construction projects by their nature take time and the priority is to deliver new social housing that is sustainable. The above stages take on average 18 months," it said.

"This timescale is consistent with an average pre-construction period for delivery of private housing, which ordinarily would not be delayed with matters of tendering or public procurement, as is the case with social housing". It was "simply not correct" to say the department was delaying projects, it added.
Jay Clayton, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said the agency learned in August that hackers may have exploited an incident in 2016 for illegal insider-trading

The US Department of Homeland Security detected five "critical" cyber-security weaknesses on the Securities and Exchange Commission's computers as of January 23, 2017, according to a confidential weekly report reviewed by Reuters.

The report's findings raise fresh questions about a 2016 cyber breach into the US market regulator's corporate filing system known as "EDGAR."

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SEC chairman Jay Clayton disclosed this week that the agency learned in August 2017 that hackers may have exploited the 2016 incident for illegal insider-trading.

The January DHS report, which shows its weekly findings after scanning computers for cyber weaknesses across most of the federal civilian government agencies, revealed that the SEC at the time had the fourth most "critical" vulnerabilities.

It was not clear if the vulnerabilities detected by DHS are directly related to the cyber breach disclosed by the SEC. But it shows that even after the SEC says it patched "promptly" the software vulnerability after the 2016 hack, critical vulnerabilities still plagued the regulator's systems.

The hack, two weeks after credit-reporting company Equifax said hackers had stolen data on more than 143 million US customers, has sent shockwaves through the US financial sector.

An SEC spokesman did not have any comment on the report. It is unclear if any of those critical vulnerabilities, detected after a scan of 114 SEC computers and devices, still pose a threat.

During the Obama administration, such scans were done on a weekly basis. "Any critical vulnerability like that should be acted on immediately," said Tony Scott, the former federal chief information officer during the Obama administration who now runs his own cyber-security consulting firm.

"This is what was at the root of the Equifax hack. There was a critical vulnerability that went unpatched for some long period of time. And if you're a hacker, you are going to ... try to see if you can exploit it in some fashion or another. So there is a race against the clock."

For the past several years, the Department of Homeland Security has been producing a report known as the "Federal Cyber Exposure Scorecard". It provides a weekly snapshot to more than 80 civilian government agencies about potential outstanding cyber weaknesses and how long they have persisted without being patched.

A directive by Homeland Security requires agencies to address critical vulnerabilities within 30 days, though sometimes that deadline can be difficult to meet if it might disrupt a government system.

The January snapshot shows improvements have been made across the US government since May 2015, when there were a total of 363 critical vulnerabilities on devices across all of the civilian agencies, according to the report.

As of January 23, there were a total of 40 critical vulnerabilities across the agencies reviewed by DHS and another 280 weaknesses categorised as "active high," which is the second more severe category.

The top four agencies with the most "critical" vulnerabilities as of January 23 included the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the General Services Administration and the SEC.

However, more vulnerabilities do not necessarily mean one agency is worse than another because things depend on how many computers or devices known as "hosts" were scanned and what kinds of information could potentially be exposed.

"All it takes is one," Scott said. "You can have one host and one vulnerability and your risk might be 10 times as high as someone who has 10 hosts and 10 vulnerabilities." (Reuters)
Fire victims Mary Ellen Byrne (8) (left) and her sister Kerrie Ann Byrne (3) (right), pictured with their mother Elizabeth Byrne

The fire scene where Barbara Doyle died with her two nieces

Gardai have thanked members of the public who came forward with information about a triple murder that occurred 30 years ago.

Cold case detectives revealed earlier this week that they believe a house fire which claimed the lives of a young woman and her two nieces in 1987 was set deliberately.

The fire, which occurred in Church Lane, Kilcock, Co Kildare on September 20, killed Barbara Doyle (20) and her nieces Mary Ellen Byrne (8) and Kerrie Byrne (3).

Chief Superintendent Gerard Roche today thanked those who have provided information, and said; "We are satisfied there are people who will remember this fire and the deaths of Barbara, Mary Ellen, and Kerrie, and who have not yet spoken to Gardai."

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The blaze was reported between 3am and 4am on the Sunday morning, when the childrens parents were at a 21st birthday party.

Ms Doyle, who was minding the children, was a sister of their mother, Elizabeth Byrne.

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Gardai said the investigation into the fire has remained open for the last 30 years.

Detectives said new evidence has been discovered and they believe the fire was started deliberately.

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An incident room has been set up at Leixlip Garda station and cold-case detectives from the serious crime review team are assisting local officers.

Anyone with information is has been asked to contact Leixlip Garda Station at 01-6667800 or the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111.
Gas supply has been fully restored to natural gas customers in Galway and Mayo.

Gas Networks Ireland released a statement to media on Saturday evening, confirming they have "completed the restoration of fully odourised gas in the network in Galway and Mayo."

"The work was successfully completed by our crews this evening," the statement reads.

"All customers in Counties Galway and Mayo can now use gas safely."

They advised that all customers ensure that their appliances are switched off before they turn their gas supply back on.

Gas Networks Ireland also apologised to their customers for any inconvenience caused and said they thanked them for "their patience".

Those with gas supply in the west of Ireland were requested to turn their supplies off after an odourless natural gas entered the network through Shell's Corrib gas refinery on Thursday.

Gas Networks Ireland issued an alert on Thursday to customers in parts of Co Galway and Co Mayo.

Yesterday it said supplies in Loughrea, Ballinalsoe and Gort were safe to be switched on.

Natural gas is odourless, colourless and tasteless. A chemical containing sulphur is added to it during the refining process for safety reasons.

It is believed one fifth of a day's supply entered the network from Shell's Bellanaboy terminal without the additive.

It's understood the glitch was discovered by a worker in the refinery.

Shell E&P Ireland said it was the first time the issue has occurred in Mayo. It said a "small quantity" of the odourless gas was in the system. "Work is ongoing to remove a quantity of un-odourised gas, which entered the Gas Networks Ireland (GNI) network," it said.

"Flaring is expected to continue today at the Bellanaboy Bridge Gas Terminal to remove the gas in a safe and controlled manner."

Rural Affairs Minister Michael Ring said the issue needs to be investigated immediately by the State agencies to reassure people and businesses.
Gas supplies in the west of Ireland should return on a phased basis over the weekend, energy chiefs have said.

Odourless natural gas which entered the network through Shell's Corrib gas refinery in Co Mayo is gradually being pumped back to the terminal at low pressure to be burnt off.

It may be tomorrow before the 10,000 or so affected households and businesses will be advised it is safe to reconnect supplies.

Gas Networks Ireland said it recommended users cut supplies using a valve on their meters because the gas could not be detected by smell in the unlikely event of a leak.

It issued an alert on Thursday to customers in parts of Co Galway and Co Mayo.

Yesterday it said supplies in Loughrea, Ballinalsoe and Gort were safe to be switched on.

Natural gas is odourless, colourless and tasteless. A chemical containing sulphur is added to it during the refining process for safety reasons.

It is believed one fifth of a day's supply entered the network from Shell's Bellanaboy terminal without the additive.

It's understood the glitch was discovered by a worker in the refinery.

Shell E&P Ireland said it was the first time the issue has occurred in Mayo. It said a "small quantity" of the odourless gas was in the system. "Work is ongoing to remove a quantity of un-odourised gas, which entered the Gas Networks Ireland (GNI) network," it said.

"Flaring is expected to continue today at the Bellanaboy Bridge Gas Terminal to remove the gas in a safe and controlled manner."

Rural Affairs Minister Michael Ring said the issue needs to be investigated immediately by the State agencies to reassure people and businesses.
The Government is considering buying property 'off the plans' from developers in a bid to encourage them to build more homes.

In a fresh attempt to solve the housing crisis, the Government has outlined a strategy that hinges on the Part V scheme, that obliges builders to construct a number of homes on land zoned for development.

According to the Irish Independent, the Government will consider the purchase of additional Part V units on select schemes.

In a document seen by the Irish Independent, the Government said that this "reduction on risk will ultimately reduce development margin".

The Government hope that by buying the property before homes are built, it will make it easier for developers to get finance.

The Part V scheme has been criticised by developers as it has been seen as an "obstruction" to the housing market.

But the Rebuilding Ireland document, seen by the Irish Independent, says the policy will solve the housing crisis.

The paper states: Despite much talk of available finance, the reality is that the finance market for residential delivery has contracted significantly. It argues the de-risking of residential projects is key to attract reasonable finance levels.

The Government hopes that the plan will allow developers to deliver units at affordable levels.

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing described the report as part of a Rebuilding Ireland observation designed to examine housing delivery input costs.

He said its aim was to consider areas where economies can be achieved and claimed: It is the intention therefore that actions arising out of the completed report will assist in achieving a more economic product within the marketplace.
Rob O'Byrne: 'I built a small home gym, which is fully wheelchair accessible. I want to give people with disabilities access to a personal trainer  someone who understands where they are coming from'

A Dublin man has described his "nightmare holiday" after he was left paralysed in a freak accident while in Spain with his family.

Rob O'Byrne (29) from Co Dublin was drinking by the pool with his family when he jumped into the shallow end of the pool.

"We were sitting by the pool and someone mentioned going for an impromptu swim, so I took off my shirt and dived into the pool. That fateful decision would change my life forever. I didn't know that the water was shallow. I hit my head at the bottom and knocked myself out," Rob told Independent.ie.

The then 17-year-old was left unconscious after the accident and strangers jumped into the pool to save him from drowning.

"I never got to thank the stranger who saved my life.

"When I woke up at the side of the pool the real nightmare began. I was put into a wheelchair and brought up to my room, lifted on to the bed and a doctor was called. He examined me and told me the reason I couldnt move from the neck down was because my body was in shock from the cold water, I would be okay in the morning but I should come down to the clinic the following day.

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"As I lay on my bed for the next couple of hours, I didnt improve. My father became seriously worried and called an ambulance. When the paramedics arrived they examined me and immediately put me onto a spinal board and in a neck brace. I was brought to a Spanish hospital."

In hospital, Rob was given the devastating news that he was paralysed.

"I had damaged my spinal cord and was left a C5 incomplete quadriplegic  I was able to speak and breathe on my own but I was paralysed from my chest down. I had no leg or hand function.

"I went from being an outgoing teenager to facing the prospect of never being able to walk for the rest of my life. I spent a week in intensive care in the Spanish hospital and was flown back to the Mater Hospital spinal unit. Five weeks later, I discovered I would never walk again."

The Leaving Cert student said he was "inconsolable" and feared that he would never have a "normal" life.

He spent two months in the Mater Hospital and nine months in the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH).

"It was a long nine months but from the very start of my rehab I decided to be positive. I knew there were people in the hospital in worse situations than me. I was grateful that I wasnt paralysed from the neck down.

"I had to learn how to carry out everyday functions again such as dressing myself and moving from the chair to the bed. Because I had no hand function I had to learn how to pick up little items like coins, to hold cups and use knives and forks."

After being released from hospital in 2006, Rob returned to school to do his Leaving Cert.

"It wasnt easy  I did the two-year course in one - and passed. After school, I attended Inchicore College of Further Education and did a Fetac Level 5 business management course. From there I went on to the Institute of Technology, Tallaght and spent the next four years studying for my honours degree in business management."

After completing his studies, he became the first person in Ireland to undergo a tendon transfer and was able to move his arm muscles again.

"When I saw a slight flicker in my triceps I realised the last four month had all been worth it."

When Rob left rehab, he went to a commercial gym to get active, but he said personal trainers didn't understand the rehabilitation Id been through.

"I looked into different forms of exercises and found TRX (Total Resistance Training). I started with a personal trainer and we messed around with the equipment until we found a routine that worked. It ended up opening my eyes to different ways people in wheelchairs, those with brain injuries, stroke injuries and the blind, can exercise. It inspired me to try find a way to get the word out there."

Rob decided to focus on the future and he went back to college to train as a gym instructor and personal trainer.

He then built a small home gymn, which was wheelchair accessible, and set up his own business.

Expand Close Coldplay hero Rob O'Byrne and RTEs Kathryn Thomas join forces with Spinal Injuries ireland to raise funds for people living with spinal cord injuries. Photo - Aishling Conway / Facebook

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" I want to give people with disabilities access to a personal trainer  someone who understands where they are coming from and who understands their needs, to give them the one-on-one attention they need."

Earlier this year, Rob became a viral sensation after crowdsurfing at a Coldplay concert in Croke Park.

"I never imagined Id end up on the shoulders of strangers, crowd-surfing my way to the stage and ultimately performing with Chris Martin, or that the clip would go viral."

The inspirational gym enthusiast also became involved with the Go Green campaign for Spinal Injuries Ireland (SII). The campaign looks to raise awareness and support for people living with spinal cord injuries throughout Ireland.

"In the press release for the event they called me a Coldplay hero and fitness ambassador. Im not sure how much of a hero I am but I like the idea of being a fitness ambassador, and I hope that this little gym of mine grows into something special."

Rob would like to hear from the people who saved his life. If you remember him, you can contact him on whatsyourexcusefitness1@gmail.com or go to the Whats Your Excuse Facebook page.

SII is also asking people to donate on the day via their mobile phones by texting CORD to 50300 to donate 4.
General view of gardai at scene of Volvo car crashed at laneway behind Greenhills Community College, beside Temple Manor Close. Photo: Caroline Quinn

A man has died after an incident which involved him crashing his car into a steel barrier in Co Dublin.

After crashing his car, the man in his 30s, broke into two homes on Temple Manor Drive, Limekiln Avenue, Greenhills, Walkinstown, Dublin 12, shortly after 9pm.

Gardai arrived at the scene and when the man became aggressive, gardai were required to arrest and restrain him.

As he was being removed from the house he became unresponsive and medical assistance was called.

He was taken to Tallaght Hospital and was later pronounced dead. A post mortem examination will be carried out today by the State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy.

The matter have been referred to the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission.

The crash scene and the house where the man was arrested have been sealed off for a technical examination by Garda Crime Scene Examiners and Garda Forensic Collision Investigators.

Gardai are appealing for anyone who witnessed the initial crash on Limekiln Ave or who may have been in the Templemanor area between 9pm and 10pm on 22nd September to contact them at Crumlin Garda Station on 01 666 6200.
Ryanair has announced a massive seat sale following a week of controversy.

The airline took to Twitter yesterday evening to announce a sale on one million seats, with prices starting at 9.79.

Passengers from Dublin can purchase one-way tickets to cities such as Paris, Cologne, Hamburg, Eindhoven and Ibiza for less than 10. Passengers from Cork can avail of flights to London or Liverpool for the same price, while those travelling from Shannon can choose from flights to London, Warsaw and Manchester.

The offer will run until midnight on September 25 and applies to dates between October 2017 and February 2018.

This comes after the company was forced to cancel 2,000 flights in September and October due to pilot shortages.

At the airlines AGM on Thursday, the flights fiasco was described as a complete cock up, with Ryanair boss Michael OLeary conceding that he had made a boo boo.

Shareholders at the meeting raised concerns about the reputational damage the cancellations would have on the company.

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Rostering issues plagued the company throughout the week, prompting staff to demand improved working conditions.

Mr OLeary called on pilots to yield holiday days in order to carry the airline through the coming period of staff shortages.

The Irish Independent reported yesterday that 55 of Ryanairs pilot bases have rejected the call, instead demanding better conditions.

Ryanair has about 4,200 pilots, about 1,000 of them between Dublin and London Stansted. The company has 86 bases in total.

Despite reports of growing discontent, Mr OLeary claimed that the airline had already received offers from pilots willing to yield 2,500 holiday days in order to alleviate the crisis, which has impacted more than 300,000 passengers.

The company has offered its captains 12,000 to work the extra days, with first officers offered 6,000.

Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that Ryanair staff in the UK were given the option of moving to alternative bases or taking unpaid leave for the coming season.

Cabin crew in East Midlands were told that the number of Ryanair aircrafts would be reduced in the area this winter, leaving staff to find a temporary secondment at an alternative base, such as Cologne, Berlin or Eindhoven.

Staff who do not wish to avail of this option have been warned that they will not be entitled to statutory pay for the upcoming period, which is expected to last two months.
The focus this week on Leo's first 100 days as Taoiseach is fake news. Fine Gael's hold on power is as tenuous as a deckchair on Miami Beach in the face of Hurricane Irma. Leo and his Fine Gael ministers will only last as long as 44 Fianna Fail TDs sit on their hands in the Dail chamber - only while he fulfils the terms and conditions of their 'confidence and supply' agreement.

It's an illusion. Fine Gael is in government, but not in power.

Recently, in a radio broadcast, I confronted Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty with this mathematical reality check by describing Leo as a "eunuch" Taoiseach, describing the circumstances of his paralysed grip on governance. For my trouble, a complaint is lodged with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland over an alleged sexual insult. Ludicrous. After 18 months of relishing the trappings of office, FG ministers need reminding of FF's basic raison d'etre to oust them whenever they'll gain maximum electoral advantage.

The paradigm of 'New Politics' means the lowest common denominator of Dail approval only for populist measures. Economically, this only facilitates tax cuts/extra spending. Legislatively it means only innocuous non-contentious housekeeping laws get enacted. Policy-wise, it demands evasion of divisiveness - hence abortion is outsourced to the Citizens' Assembly, experts, and committees.

Leo can't and won't stray outside these 'New Politics' parameters if he wants to retain his dream job. All he can do is rebrand Fine Gael. He's good at marketing. He creates images of youthful energy (jogging), international trendiness (Macron and Trudeau selfies), statesmanship (Theresa May/ Brexit optics), compassionate responses (Donegal flood visibility) and instant soundbites/tweets on every moving object from George Hook's woes to Diana's anniversary.

A combination of the silly season, absentee Opposition, a post-coronation honeymoon and an army of spin doctors have procured an opinion poll bounce for FG to 33pc and and 8pc gap over FF. It's a step up from the spent force that was Enda Kenny since the crushing 2016 election reverse. We know Leo is spontaneously smart, informed and articulate. We observe his neediness to be liked. We hear his vision stuff of 2040's 'Republic of Opportunity'.

But... we reserve judgment. Voters are still in contemplative, undecided wait-and-see mode.

Their principal criticisms: 'all spin - no substance'. As carping goes, it's not too bad. Better than being accused of indolence, invisibility, indecision, ignorance, lethargy, indifference, unethical behaviour, cronyism, incompetence, arrogance, nastiness or being dictatorial.

Despite denials, every party is fast forwarding election preparations with a view to a campaign by early summer of 2018. Candidate selection conventions, policy manifesto drafts and fundraising are well underway. Senior civil servants privately confide of inertia akin to the final year of government term.

Dail resumption amounts to more of "Up for the match" preview hype, rather than the throw-in.

The body politic being on autopilot is economically endurable as long as we have the fastest-growing economy in Europe and Brexit remains distant remote confusion. It's socially unacceptable if you can't access affordable/social housing or public health services.

Time will inevitably run out on this minority government nonsense as 'New Politics' will be synonymous with 'No Politics'.

Amidst the PR fog, Leo has one tangible recess achievement. The voluntary departure of Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan was a subtle political stroke. Her previous dogged determination to cling onto the post could've precipitated a Dail defeat and subsequent election. All Opposition parties had declared no confidence in her. Prospects of further revelations about fake breath tests, Templemore finances and disclosures tribunal are likely to worsen things.

An O'Sullivan iceberg of titanic proportions has been defrosted.

Extricating the Government from being joined at the hip with O'Sullivan's demise was a singular success; done by subtle spin, nuanced distancing and furtive leaks of her Europol application and extended official vacation.

Further action of transforming Garda culture requires extreme reform resolve. The Department of Justice is already (sadly, but typically) resisting radical reconstruction.

Leo and Charlie Flanagan have a once-off opportunity to establish civilian standards of modern governance, accountability and efficiency. Courage to confront secrecy remains the most required attribute in a leader.

The next significant set piece to navigate FF consent is with the Budget on October 10. There's a paltry 350m-500m of net giveaways, which will be magnified by multi-annual grossed-up targets. The macro merit of a balanced budget and national debt reduction is the most prudent priority, facing probable UK recession, a sterling slide and Brexit slump.

Sound economics doesn't generate favourable headlines, rather admirable staid stodgy credibility. That's the essence of substance over style.

FF can please more punters by focusing on USC cuts to the lower paid, benefiting 1.3 million taxpayers.

The critical issue is to send a signal the income tax burden of 20bn on individuals and payroll costs, (pre-austerities levels of 12bn) is making us an uncompetitive location and providing an oppressive disincentive to work harder.

Increasing private and public housing supply to 50,000 new units per annum has to be realised.

Here's a list of the impediments to constructing a block of 50 apartments at 200,000 (total cost 10m): planning objections/delays; raising equity finance of several million euro; non-existent infrastructure of sanitary services/roads; skilled labour shortages.

Infrastructure investment of 12bn annually is required for our population growth of one million over two decades. Let's plan it now.

Pressing the green button on implementing an auto-enrolment universal pension scheme can't wait till 2021. Do it in conjunction with reforming USC.

Repealing the eighth amendment soonest would repudiate the culture of cowardice prevalent since the X case.

Leo's leadership will not be defined in 100 days - instead it will be defined by the next election result.

Micheal Martin's leadership pivots on the same outcome. Between now and then it's merely the political foreplay of jockeying for ministerial office. We'll have to wait until the next Dail to resolve our problems. The sooner, the better.
I must respond to your columnist Ian O'Doherty's absurd claim that Amnesty International has somehow been quiet about the serious human rights abuses taking place in Myanmar.

Just last week, we published evidence of a mass-scale scorched-earth campaign across northern Rakhine State where security forces and vigilante mobs are burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random as they try to flee. Make no mistake about it, this is ethnic cleansing and we have been to the fore of both documenting and naming it.

Not only have we condemned the security forces, we have consistently called on Aung San Suu Kyi to stop burying her head in the sand over the horrors unfolding in Rakhine State. We have baldly stated that efforts by her government to blame the Rohingya for the burning of their own homes are blatant lies.

We will continue to call out both the government and Aung San Suu Kyi if they persist in their denial of the horrific policies being implemented by military leaders in Myanmar.

Rather than letting ourselves be distracted by side issues, our primary focus remains on the serious human rights violations which are taking place right now. Almost half a million Rohingya have been forced to flee their homes in just under a year. My colleagues are on the ground in Bangladesh documenting the ongoing violence. We are calling for the crimes committed by the security forces to be investigated and the perpetrators held to account. We are mobilising our supporters across the world to demand an end to the attacks on the Rohingya people. (If your readers are interested in joining us, they can sign our petition at amnesty.ie.)

Myanmar must end systematic discrimination against the Rohingya people which lies at the heart of the current crisis. The international community must wake up to the nightmare the Rohingya people are living through and demand an end to the violence. These are our urgent priorities.

In that context, we have opted not to prioritise the question of Aung San Suu Kyi having been granted the freedom of the city of Dublin. Our campaign to protect the human rights of the Rohingya people will continue, long after Mr O'Doherty has stopped paying attention to the situation in Myanmar. All of this information is available on amnesty.ie, if Mr O'Doherty was inclined to check.

Colm O'Gorman

Executive Director, Amnesty International Ireland, Dublin 2

Exploiting loyalty is a disgrace

Reading the article by Charlie Weston ('Elderly will have to pay more as Eir raises its prices for 500,000', Irish Independent, September 21), the first emotion that comes to mind is anger.

Once again the older population is being targeted as a soft touch by the telecom giant. Older customers are less likely to switch providers and tend to remain loyal into the autumn of their lives.

This is the third year in a row Eir has raised its prices. Elderly people also lost their telephone allowance in recent years. Some vulnerable people who will be affected by this latest move have been with this company since the Post and Telegraph days.

The deputy chairman of the Consumers' Association, Michael Kilcoyne, called on Eir to rethink the price increase and instead offer a discount to long-standing loyal customers. I won't hold my breath.

It seems that advancing years comes with a health warning for a great many people across the land, as the burglar to your home and your savings comes in many forms, and not necessarily with a sledgehammer to break down your door.

Loyalty and respect in business, it seems, is a thing of the past in modern Ireland, but using the loyalty of customers of long-standing to exploit them in their twilight years is a bridge too far.

Eir should follow the example of some of the large supermarket chains, and offer a loyalty card that rewards customers who stay loyal to them, and don't switch their business to a rival competitor.

Tom Towey

Cloonacool, Co Sligo

Bedsits welcome - if up to standard

I was pleased to hear the Housing Minister is to allow the reintroduction of bedsits. These are the least expensive accommodation units for single tenants, as they involve the use of one room for living in, cooking and sleeping with shared toilet and bathing/showering facilities. They are also the least expensive for landlords to set up, as facilities are minimal and landlords can afford to let these for the lowest rent possible to pay overheads and make a profit. Tenants pay less and can better keep the cost of rent down.

What needs to be done is to set minimum standards requesting that all bedsits be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) together with either an independent engineer's report stating that the property is habitable, with a registered BER standard or an inspector's report.

It should be possible for all prospective tenants to look up registered bedsits online. There should be at least two toilets for every five people, with toilets separate from showers and baths.

Every house divided into bedsits should have a lockable shed for tenants to be able to store bicycles, other hardware, and also hang washing. Those with fireplaces or stoves in bedrooms should be safe enough for tenants to light fires. Broadband should be obligatory. Bedsitters not attaining these standards should be reported to the RTB.

I last stayed in a bedsitter in 1994, and spent almost 36 months in five different bedsitters - they were adequate for my needs, and minimised the cost of rent. If I ever had to relocate and move into rented accommodation, I would be delighted to move into a bedsitter if it were to best meet my needs.

James Cashman

Killorglin, Co Kerry

Weeding out the words

Whilst I enjoy tackling your puzzle page each day, I am curious to know how to make 15 words of minimum four letters from MARIJUANA (Irish Independent, September 20) in 10 minutes.

Surely anyone who manages this needs to be tested for, well, drugs.

Gerry Kelly

Rathgar, Dublin 6

So many sensational scribes

I have been writing letters to your newspaper for the past five years, and hopefully will continue to do so for the many more, whether published or not. There has been some wonderful letters by my fellow scribes over the years.

I must work harder to improve my letter writing. I must read more. I must sit in the chair and fight the blankness. I must not leave my desk. I must not abandon the room. I must not sit watching the TV. I must not distract myself in any way, until I feel I have fought and tried. I must put in the time, and effort. If I do not, the words will not appear. Simple as that.

Brian Mc Devitt

Glenties, Co Donegal
Bagatelle's anthem 'Summer in Dublin' has inspired the search to find a similar song celebrating Drogheda in time for the Boyneside town's hosting the Fleadh Cheoil.

Cllr Frank Godfrey, who in his younger days was a well known DJ, says he would love to see an iconic song for Drogheda embracing the history, the people, heritage, the Boyne and the Fleadh.

'We don't really have a song for Drogheda that's well-known and sung everywhere,' continued Cllr Godfrey. 'I'm looking for a great song like 'Summer in Dublin' by Bagatelle that is memorable and although years old, is still being sung today.' The song should reflect Drogheda life and heritage as well as the Fleadh being held in the town for the first time.

There is a prize fund of 1,000 and the winning song will be selected by a panel of three judges at a gig showcasing the short-listed songs,

Application forms will be available from Cllr Godfrey from October and should be submitted to him by the end of May 2018, along with a recording of the song.

The competition is open to all, not just those from the Drogheda area. It can be performed by individuals or a group. There is no entrance fee for the Fleadh song competition.

Contact Cllr Frank Godfrey on 086-6060261.
On Friday night I headed for the old Customs House on Quay Street where Dundalk Sub Aqua Search and Rescue Club were hosting their end of summer bar-b-que and a good crowd had turned out specially for the celebration.

The club has been in existence for 20 years, 9 years in the building for, which they use as a training and lecturing centre. They meet there and dive in Greenore every Wednesday and Sunday during the summer along with taking part in dives all round the coast and abroad. The club boasts 54 members, are also involved in search and rescue missions whenever they are needed.

I wasn't too long in the door when I met up with one of the founder members Bernie McDonnell from Ravensdale who told me that along with Finbar Dillon from Newtownbalregan, had founded the club all those years ago and was delighted with the way it had grown over the years and now boasted 4 inflatable boats ready for action and hold their annual flag day on New Year's Eve!

I then decided to have a look round to see who was up for making the best of the night and caught up with my delightful sister-in-law Eilish Fahy from McSwiney Street who was jointly responsible for the bar-b-que, has been a member of the club for just under a year and loves it. She said it was going to be a mad night followed by a duvet day!

After this I caught up with Sandra Woods from Greenore who has been with the club for three years now and she was there on the night with her mum Mary Woods from Ladywell Terrace and nephew Jamie Martin from Seafield Lawns who had his eyes on the chocolate fountain.

Outside enjoying the pit-fire was Anne Piper from Mullaharlin Road who told me her husband Bill was the main diver and she was the first to comment on the camaraderie within the club, a theme that became more obvious the more I talked to. She was sitting having a drink and a laugh with Regina Reynolds from Blackrock who was up for making the best of the night.

Regina told me she was there with Capt. Chris O'Donnell from City Centre who told me he too is a newbie, only having been with the club for a year, but loving every minute of it, saying it's the best thing he has ever done. He was having a laugh with newbie Robbie Farrell from Drogheda and the lads agreed that their recent dive off Achill Island was the best yet.

Not too long later I had the pleasure of talking to co-organiser of the night Blathnaid McClean from Lis Na Dara who has been with the club for four years and loves it. She was having a chat with Frank Berg, originally from Norway, but now living in Carrickmacross and has been with DSA for 13 years. He also was hugely enthusiastic about the club, particularly the night dives.

After this I headed over for a chat with the club's PRO Mary McCarthy from Point Road who told me the club is involved in dives nearly every weekend, are involved in search and rescue whenever needed and take on new recruits each year in October. They start with a Try a Dive in Aura swimming pool and go from there.

Not too long later I then got talking to club chairperson, my old friend Joanne Murphy from Demesne Road who has been with the club since 2003, absolutely loves it, has dived all over the country and told me it took her three attempts to get into the club.

This story was mimicked by Jackie Healy from Cork who joined the same time as Joanne and loves it too. She felt it was really worth it to have to work to get into the club and said the friendships she has made have been great. Jackie then told me they saw dolphins when they were out diving in Greenore during the week!

Not too long later I met up with Eddie Finegan from Bishops Court who has been with the club for eight years now and thinks it's brilliant and assured me it was going to be a good night at the bar-b-que too.

I then headed inside and got a word with Alan Reburn from Rockmarshall who was with Megan Bradshaw from Downpatrick. Alan joined last year, loves the dives and said they are a really great bunch of people.

Heading over to another group I met the star pupil from last year John Molloy from Dromintee who was chatting to Aaron Rooney from Bay Estate, April Dillon from Broughton Street and Sean Ferguson from Lower Faughart who told me they really enjoyed the dive in Mullaghmore in Sligo although Achill was an excellent weekend too.

Finally, before I departed I caught up with Lorraine McCoy from St. Malachys Villas who has been with the club for 12 years who admitted that St. John's Point was her favourite dive and said that the club is in great shape and the members just can't do enough for each other.
Primary Schools throughout the 32 counties have been invited to participate in JEP 2018 at www.juniorentrepreneur.ie by the signup deadline, October 10 2017

Do you have a budding Michael O Leary, Norah Casey or Lord Alan Sugar in your house.

Would you like your child to have the chance to participate in a unique programme which brings their existing curriculum and the world of business together in a fun environment.

5th and 6th class primary students in schools in Fingal are being given the chance to become involved in an award winning programme which will see them mentored by business people from their own communities willing to share their experience with them.

The Junior Entrepreneur Programme brings entrepreneurship into primary schools and helps students develop existing skills such as literacy and numeracy but also new skills such as problem solving, technology, communication, team building, confidence and creative thinking.

Children from Donore NS, Le Cheile Educate Together, and Monastery NS were among those in Co Louth who took part in last year's programme.

The Junior Entrepreneur Programme is available free of charge, to all 5th and 6th class pupils in the country.

It is a 12 to 16 week programme which help them learn and develop business skills in collaboration with their classmates.

Close to 40,000 children have participated in the Junior Entrepreneur Programme since its inception in 2010. It has been developed and supported by entrepreneur Jerry Kennelly of Tweak.com and some of Ireland's other leading entrepreneurs including Michael Dawson of One 4 All.

The children involved in the programme during the last school year created businesses that generated total sales of over 320,000 and profits of almost 230,000.

The classes themselves made decisions on how to spend their profits. Applications are currently being accepted for inclusion in the next Junior Entrepreneur Programme which will start in schools in September.

Further details are available on www.juniorentrepreneur.ie or by contacting the JEP office on 066 7169553.
Joe Biden, the 47th Vice President of The United States in Lily Finnegans, with Jim and Jamie Biden, along with Siobhan and David Kearney during Mr Joe Bidens return visit to the Cooley Peninsula

Derek McGarrity, Proprietor of Lily Finnegans with Joe Biden, the 47th Vice President of The United States during Mr Bidens return visit to the Cooley Peninsula

The US flag was flying proudly once again at Lily Finnegan's in Whitestown as former Vice President Joe Biden made a return visit to Cooley last weekend.

Biden famously made his first visit to the area in June 2016, during the last few months of his term in office, calling in to Lily Finnegan's as he made his way around north Louth. So it was only fitting that the now retired VP would re-visit his ancestral homeland during a return to Ireland last week.

But it was an altogether more relaxed visit this time around as he drove himself up to the Whitestown landmark!

'We got word on Wednesday that Joe Biden would be calling in with us again,' said Derek McGarrity, Lily Finnegan's owner. 'He was very relaxed this time around, was driving himself. He laughed that you don't get to drive when you are vice president!'

Arriving in with his brother Jimmy, and nephew Jamie, he met with locals who stopped by for photographs and a chat. 'He was really welcoming to everyone, happy to chat and pose for pictures,' added Derek.

'He was actually still working away on his family tree, and had managed to trace it all the way back to the early 1800s,' added Derek.

Biden continued his tour of Cooley by re-tracing the route he took during the summer 2016 visit, even making a stop off once again at Kilwirra graveyard in Templetown where some of his ancestors are buried. He then completed the return trip with a visit to scenic Carlingford, where last year he had been awarded the 'Freedom of Louth.'
The Darkness into Light Committee in Dundalk present a cheque to Tom McEvoy of Pieta House. Included are, Sean Kelly, Orla Sheridan, Helena Mullen, Johann Crawford, Pairic Browne, Sarah MacClancy and Chloe Enright

The hugely successful Darkness Into Light event held in Dundalk in May raised an incredible 60,000 for the charity Pieta House. This was the first year an event of its kind was held in Dundalk, with a huge amount of organisation going into hosting the event locally.

Organisers received a huge response with over 2,400 turning up to walk or run in the fundraiser.

And with such large numbers of people taking part, the event succeeded in raising 60,702 for the vital work of Pieta House.

The Darkness into Light was a unique, early morning experience beginning in darkness at 4.15am as thousands of people turned up to embark on a walk or run a five kilometre route while dawn was breaking.

The early dawn represents hope and is symbolic of the work of Pieta House; bringing people from darkness back into the light.

Although it was the first year Dundalk hosted the event, it has been held nationally for a number of years.

Indeed, in 2016, over 130,000 people took part in over 50 venues across Ireland.

Speaking at the launch of the event Director for Dundalk, Sean Kelly, said: 'Darkness Into Light is a people's event organised by local committees all over the country and luckily this year a group of volunteers have got together in Dundalk to organise it.'

He said it was a 'fantastic opportunity to raise much needed funds for an issue that affects so many lives especially here in Dundalk.'

'While suicide is a devastating tragedy, we must not forget that there is hope, there is help, and Pieta House will be there to provide both.'

He said they were overwhelmed by the response to the Darkness Into Light event in Dundalk.

After such a phenomenal reaction, the local organising committee were delighted to presented the total funds raised to staff from Pieta House at a function in the Windsor Bar and restaurant last week.

Such was the success of the first Darkness Into Light held locally that organisers have confirmed they are hoping to stage the event in Dundalk again next year.

Plans are expected to be announced in early 2018.

The campaign is an ongoing vital fundraiser for Pieta House, as demand for the service continues to grow.

With more than 80% of Pieta House's income depending on public donations, funds raised during Darkness into Light are essential for Pieta House to continue to provide a free service for the increasing numbers seeking help.

The charity is focused on providing services aimed at the prevention of suicide and self harm.

To find out more about the work of Pieta House, check out their website, www,pieta.ie
A young plant hire driver who 'panicked' when Gardai tried to stop him when he was driving a Northern registered car in Dundalk has been spared a conviction and possible ban for dangerous driving after he handed over 5,000 in cash to go to the Garda Benevolent Fund.

Danny Mullen (22), Newtown Road, Killeen Lower, Newry, admitted a dangerous driving charge arising from the early morning chase which started at Dublin Street on November 27 2016. A further 18 related charges were struck out by the State after a guilty plea was entered on the sole dangerous driving offence.

Judge John Coughlan heard how at around 2.45am, Gardai came across Mullen driving a Northern car and followed him up Park Street and into Dublin Street.

They put on the blue lights and sirens and tried to stop him, but Mullen ignored them and continued to drive at Vincent Avenue where Gardai pulled the patrol car alongside him.

But Mullen took off, through a red light at Hill Street and continued on the Dublin Road towards the Xerox junction. He overtook other vehicles at speed at Heynestown.

Judge Coughlan said he had heard enough of the evidence and barrister Martin Dully said his client is currently working in Scotland as a plant hire driver on a contract that would last into next year.

And while he was not trying to minimise the incident, Mr Dully said Mullen had been 'very young, very immature and stupid to permit this situation with gardai to arise'.

Judge Coughlan said if he disqualified the defendant, then he would lose his licence and his job because under a new agreement, a ban imposed in the Republic is now recognised in Britain.

The judge wanted to know 'how much cash' Mullen had on him. Mr Dully said his client had brought 2,000 to court, but the judge said this was 'not enough' and added: 'I will take five grand off him. I will give him an hour and a half to get it'.

And before the court was finished last Wednesday, Mullen handed over 5,000 for the Garda Benevolent Fund and the charge was struck out.
An Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Frances Fitzgerald TD, with Bill Graebel, CEO of Graebel Companies Inc and members of Graebels staff at the official opening of Graebel Companies Inc newly established Europe Middle East and Africa

The creation of 125 new jobs in Dundalk will provide further incentive for young people who left Ireland to work abroad to return home.

Speaking at the launch of US company Graebel's new European headquarters at Finnabair estate, Cllr. John McGahon, who is chairman of the Dundalk Muncipal District Committee said it was the quality of employment opportunities that would attract young people home again.

He said it was the 'young people of my generation' many of whom had been forced to go overseas in search of employment in recent years, who could benefit from the arrival of companies like Graebel to Dundalk.

The chairman added that Dundalk had a proud history of business, and wished Graebel's every success in setting up their new headquarters in the town.

'Dundalk has such a proud tradition of industry and it's fantastic that Graebel's announcement of 125 jobs is the latest addition to the rich tapestry of industry and commence that Dundalk is so proud of.'

Martin Shanahan, CEO of IDA Ireland also welcomed the announcement, saying:

'The decision by Graebel Companies Inc., to establish its EMEA Financial Shared Services and Operations Centre in Dundalk is very welcome.

He added that IDA Ireland has 'worked closely with the company in recent years to win this investment for Ireland.' The types of roles being created coupled with strategic value of the centre is in line with IDA's strategic objective to win high quality investments in regional locations.'

Graebel's more than 800 employees worldwide provide efficient, fully integrated solutions that make it easy for companies to relocate their talent and facilities around the world in order to improve business performance, lower costs and grow in existing and new markets.
Two girls from Bray got to learn magic tricks recently for a new RTEjr show, 'AbraKIDabra'.

Anu Demel (7) and Lauren Coffey (8) were joined by 30 of their friends from Junior Musicals in Bray, at The Ark in Dublin's Temple Bar to film the scenes.

Funny man Joe Daly performs and teaches magic to kids in the theatre and at home.

Budding magicians at home will also be encouraged to get involved when Joe takes them to his workshop in the 'Teach a Trick' segment. The audience will learn everything from how to make water disappear to how to balance a deck of cards and most importantly how to make money multiply.

Lauren lives in Newcastle and goes to Newcastle Primary School. She is in third class.

'Lauren was absolutely thrilled to be chosen from the hundreds of auditions to be a presenter on Abrakidabra,' said her mother Catherine.

'She really enjoyed meeting magician Joe on the day and learning and performing a wonderful magic trick - but she won't reveal any details as apparently a magician never tells! She thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Lauren is really looking forward to seeing the show broadcast in the Autumn.'

Anu lives in Bray's Wyvern Square and is in first class at St Patrick's. Her mother Aoife said that Anu had a brilliant time filming. 'She really loves acting and is gaining in experience,' said Aoife. Anu has appeared in RTE's Bridget and Eamon, playing one of the couple's long-suffering children; Tim Chadwick's music video 'Dreamer', and a number of commercials.

Joe Daly is one of the best magicians Ireland has to offer and in AbraKIDabra, he performs a modern magic show with a twist. Young audiences all over the country love his colourful magic tricks intertwined with his funny slapstick humour.

Speaking about his involvement with abraKIDabra Joe says:

'I had an amazing time making abraKIDabra. The kids involved were fantastic. Their energy and enthusiasm was infectious. I'm delighted that children at home are going to get the chance to see my magic show & learn how the tricks are done. I hope it inspires them to become magicians.'
Just days remain until Culture Night 2017 gets under way in Wicklow.

The county is set to host some particular gems this year, giving culture vultures a flavour of what is available on their own doorsteps.

Even better - it's free, and organisers are calling on as many people as possible to come along and immerse themselves in the rich and diverse cultural events and activities that Wicklow has to offer.

A total of eleven areas of the county will host events this year - Arklow, Ashford, Aughrim, Avoca, Blessington, Bray, Donard, Greystones, Hollywood, Redcross and Wicklow town, so both rural and urban dwellers will have something happening close by.

Culture Night celebrates creativity and the arts and runs this coming Friday, September 22.

From early evening, arts and cultural organisations and venues of all shapes and sizes, including the national cultural institutions, extend their opening hours to allow for increased access to the public. Special and unique events and workshops are specifically programmed at participating locations and everything is available free of charge.

Culture Night has grown from a relatively small scale cultural event staged only in Dublin in 2006 to the significant national cultural event it now is, with some 400,000 people visiting museums, galleries, historic houses, artists' studios and cultural centres across the island. The initiative has captured both the public imagination and the enthusiasm of artists and cultural organisations.

The aim of the initiative is to encourage more people to visit cultural venues and experience culture in their locality, remind us all about the fantastic cultural facilities and resources that we have locally and nationally and to encourage people to make a habit of attending cultural events.

It also helps to foster a sense of community and belonging and raises the profile of cultural organisations.

In Arklow, Solace Studio Pottery and Place Studios will host a joint open night from 7 to 10 p.m. in the Meehan Levins building at Condren's Lane.

Hosted by ceramic artist Peir Leonard and artist and printmaker Deirdre Burke, the studios will present exhibitions of ceramic wall art and jewellary, fine art and printmaking, woodcraft and metalcraft - all made by local artist and craftspeople.

There will also be live music followed by demonstrations and poetry readings as well as a wine and Wicklow Farmhouse Cheese reception.

Also in Arklow, Bodhran Buzz for all the family takes place in Arklow Library from 6 to 6.45 p.m.

The workshop will teach participants the basic of how to hold a bodhran and the stick to get the first few beats.

The event is sponsored by Music Generation Wicklow as part of their year round programme. It is suitable for children aged seven and older.

In Ashford, a musical evening for all ages will take place at Nun's Cross Church from 7 to 9 p.m.

Alchemy Music presents a celebration of music featuring Mike and Marta Nielson performing a repertoire for jazz guitar and accordion and Perfect Friction, who will play a traditional set.

Blessington Men's Shed in the old library buildings will host The Shed Sessions from 5 to 7 p.m.

Join Rachel Conlan, Fear an Ti Mattir Lennon and Muintir Blessington Comhaltas for music, tea, coffee and home baking.

Rachel and her friends will be performing from her highly acclaimed album A Quare Yield which features Alan Reid and Marty Barry.

Bray Concert Band will keep the public entertained at the Civic Plaza outside the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray from 6.15 to 6.55 p.m.

Re-formed during the 1980s by Gerry Stafford, the band provides a fun, sociable and supportive environment for musicians from teens to adults.

From 5.45 to 6.30 p.m. Greystones Orchestra Emsemble will host an event in Greystones Library.

The group will charm you with some of their much-loved repertoire that covers a wide variety of works and musical genres, from classical to popular.

Further south of the county, the best of traditional music, dance and storytelling will feature at Wicklow Brewery, Redcross from 8.30 to 11 p.m.

Join in for a fun night of Trad Sult which will include Sean-nos dancing, storytelling and set dancing including the famous Wicklow Set.

Culture Night organisers are encouraging those who take part in the night to share their experiences and to post comments and photos to social media using #CultureNight and #WicklowCulture

Further updates are available on the Wicklow Culture Night Facebook page and on @artsoffice on Twitter
(Back, from left) Breda Murphy, Dora Hayden, Theresa Bradshaw, (front) Bridie Murphy and Mary O'Loughlin at the Greystones Cancer Support coffee morning last Thursday.

Visitors to Greystones Cancer Support Centre last Thursday morning helped to raise a wonderful 1,000 for Wicklow Hospice Foundation.

There was a great turnout at the GCS 'Ireland's Biggest Coffee Morning'. Those who went along enjoyed a cup of tea or coffee and a treat, a chat, and the chance to help the hospice foundation.

Until the hospice is opened, there is no full time palliative care for those who need it in County Wicklow. Donations are still being accepted at Greystones Cancer Support Centre.

This was just one of the venues all over the country raising money last Thursday morning for their local hospice and homecare services.

This was the 25th anniversary of Ireland's Biggest Coffee Morning, supported by Bewley's coffee.

There is full planning permission for hospice on a site at Magheramore in Wicklow, donated by The Columban Sisters, with works expected to begin next year.
A public meeting will be held this month about a planning application at Kilbride Hill House, better known as the Danish Embassy Residence.

Cllr Joe Behan is organising the meeting about the application to build 43 new dwellings on the site.

A new application was made on September 6, with a number of changes from last year's application.

Cllr Behan said that representatives of the applicant will attend to answer any questions on the new application.

Submissions can be made to Wicklow County Council by October 10, with a cost of 20.

The meeting will take place on Monday, September 25 at 8 p.m. The previous permission was refused last October. There were previously 46 houses planned for the site.

There were 85 individual objections and a public petition signed by more than 300 local people.

Some of the reasons for refusal included destruction of trees, noise impact, and other concerns.
Principals in Bray are delighted with the results their students achieved in this year's Junior Certificate.

At St Kilain's Community School, John Murphy said that this was the best set of results the achieved in the Junior Cert in 10 to 15 years.

'There were lots of As in all subjects,' said John. 'The students were particularly strong in maths, languages, CSPE and the technical subjects.'

He said that most of the young men and women are already settled in well to Transition Year, with a smaller number starting the Leaving Cert Applied programme.

'All in all, it has been a very happy and successful start to the new school year at St Kilian's,' said John.

Principal Gearoid O'Ciarain at Colaiste Raithin said that two students there attained nine As and a B. 'It came down to who made the best efforts,' he said. 'They were rewarded with the grades.'

The students were looking forward to a trip to Kippure to celebrate their results, as well as a surfing trip to Waterford this week.

Mr O'Ciarain siad that the Junior Cert is the first time that the young students get the opportunity to pit themselves against each other.

He said that the group did particularly well in Irish, with a total of 23 As, higher than the usual from a Junior Cert group of 44 students. They also did very well in maths this year.
A Sunbeam House residential home in Greystones was found to be compliant in just one of 18 outcomes in a HIQA inspection.

In two categories there was major non-compliance. The unannounced inspection took place last April.

The inspector found appropriate measures were not in place to protect residents from being harmed and to keep people safe. Some incidents occurring within the centre were either not reported to the person in charge or reported retrospectively.

According to the report, staff members were not guided effectively and consistently in the administration of medication. Some medications did not contain the resident's name for whom the medication was prescribed.

On the day of inspection, the three members of staff present did not have training in the administration of rescue medication despite two residents prescribed rescue medication for seizures.

Residents went out for the day with staff but when the inspector queried the procedure in relation to this, they were informed that staff forgot to sign out the rescue medication and take it with them.

The inspection covered such categories as: residents' rights, dignity and consultation; social care needs; health and safety and risk management; safeguarding and safety; notification of incidents, healthcare needs and medication management.

The compliant category related to written tenancy agreements.

This was the second inspection of this designated centre. On the previous inspection no residents were living within the designated centre.

The inspector visited the centre, met with the four residents, the person in charge and spoke with four staff members. The inspector viewed documentation such as, care plans, support plans, recording logs, policies and procedures. Over the course of this inspection, residents communicated in their own preferred manner with the inspector. Residents allowed the inspector to observe their daily life in the centre.

The house in Greystones provides residential, day care and respite service for adults with intellectual disabilities.

The bungalow is a five-bedroom house with one bedroom used as a staff bedroom.

Safeguarding and safety was found to be in major non-compliance as incidents were not appropriately reported.

Medication management was also found to be in major non-compliance as adequate arrangements were not in place to ensure safe medication practices. Eight outcomes were found to be moderately non-compliant. One outcome was found to be compliant.

In terms of rights, dignity and consultation, the inspector noted that during the course of morning one resident entered into the bedroom of another resident while the resident was asleep in their bed, this occurred on three separate occasions. The inspector brought this to the attention of the person in charge, as this was not promoting privacy for all residents. The inspector also found another aspect of care operating in the designated centre was impacting upon the privacy and dignity of one resident. For example, staff assisted one resident to use the toilet during the night. There was no rationale or assessment in place demonstrating the need for such an intervention.

A spokesman from Sunbeam House Services had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to press.
The 'Na Snamhini' swimmers who had hoped to secure the use of a lifeguard hut as a changing facility over the winter.

A group of Bray sea swimmers are concerned that they may not get the use of a lifeguard hut for changing in this winter.

The 'Na Snamhini' swimmers have had the use of a Wicklow County Council owned hut for the past two winters.

They recently wrote to Bray Municipal District asking for a second hut but received a reply informing them that a water safety assessment is being carried out on the beach and any decision at all has been deferred.

A representative of the council said yesterday that there have been a number of water safety incidents over the past year on Bray Beach

'Bray Municipal District has requested that a safety and risk assessment be carried out on the beach by Irish Water Safety. Until we receive the assessment report, the council will defer its decision on providing a hut this winter,' the representative said. 'Wicklow County Council has a duty of care and can't assist with this matter pending the assessment report.'

Although asked about the nature of the incidents on the beach, the council representative would not be drawn on the details. However, they said that the incidents in question were not linked to Na Snamhini.

'For the past two winters the district engineer Liam Bourke has kindly given us the use of one of the huts from October to April,' said a spokesperson for the year-round swimming group. 'This has meant that a significant number of men and women have continued to swim throughout the winter months, as we had this shelter to protect us and our clothes from the elements.'

When Cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council, Cllr Edward Timmons, contacted Bray Municipal District on behalf of the group, he was told that Irish Water Safety has not given the council a time frame for the assessment.

'One of our group spoke to a member of the Water Safety department and was told the report should have no impact on the provision of the huts for the swimmers,' said the Na Snamhini spokesperson.

The huts were removed from their lifeguard position at 8 a.m. last Saturday morning.

Others to have made representations on behalf of the group include Minister Simon Harris and Cllr Steven Matthews.

'The Mission of the Department of Health is to improve the health and well-being of people in Ireland by keeping people healthy,' said Minister Harris.

'The framework Healthy Ireland sets out the Department's aspirations, which include exercise, socialising, stress reduction, promoting good physical and mental health. No one can doubt that sea swimming is a major contributor to achieving all of these goals, especially in the winter months when people are less inclined to engage in outdoor activities. By their action, Wicklow County Council are not contributing to achieving these goals.

The District Administrator's Office has said that while there is no final decision regarding the provision of one hut, they do not have funds to provide a secure base for a second hut. The group had requested the use of a second hut because the first one can only accommodate four or five people at a time, and the male swimmers are disinclined to use the hut while the females are using it.

The group said that they very much appreciate having had the use of the hut for the past two years and that it has been a wonderful facility.
The second part of 'Memories and Miracles on Where the Road Takes Me' will be aired on C103 from 7pm to 8pm on Sunday night next, September 24, and if it will be as good as the first part is not to be missed.

The response to the programme by people who can remember The Edel Quinn Hall in its hey-day was tremendous and they will be waiting to hear the second part. John Green will continue the reminiscing with the greats of the showband era and is sure to awaken more memories of that time.

It's all centred on the Edel Quinn Hall in Kanturk, which celebrated its 60th anniversary back in November of 2014. But, who was Edel Quinn and why do we search for a miracle that would mean so much to the people of Kanturk. Edel Quinn is titled The Very Venerable Edel Quinn and a confirmed miracle would see Edel canonised and from then on she would be Saint Edel Quinn.

Yours truly will be sharing memories of my time with The Young Ones playing in the Edel Quinn Hall and also I will be sharing memories of my father, Neily Lynch, during the building of the Edel Quinn Hall.

The memories are all musical, as we bring some of Cork's best known showband stars back to the hall to re-live their memories of playing to packed audiences there, during one of the most exciting eras in Ireland's music history - The Showband era. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy a musical journey back in time, as we also delve into the life and times of an amazing young woman who is one step away from sainthood.

Information seminar on ovarian and breast cancer

The Duhallow Women's Forum will host a free ovarian and breast cancer awareness seminar in the James O'Keeffe Institute, Newmarket on Thursday, 5 October at 7.30pm.

The event is open to the public and will explore: Breast Cancer Awareness - Signs and Symptoms; What supports are available and what to expect; what to say and what happens when someone you know gets a diagnosis; Ovarian Cancer - Signs and Symptoms; Diagnosing and treating ovarian cancer and current research. Lifestyle Choices - Your Health, Your Choice: how 4 in 10 cancers could be prevented if we make simple changes to our everyday life.

Speakers will include: Sharon O'Toole, Senior Research Fellow in Trinity College Dublin working in the area of ovarian cancer; Fiona Moriarty, Breast Cancer Nurse Counsellor, Cork ARC Cancer Support House, and Meave Fitzgerald, Marie Keating Foundation.
A North Corkman has been further remanded in custody for preparation of the book of evidence after being charged with the murder of a mother of three in a flat in Cork city earlier this year.

Cathal O'Sullivan, a native of Charleville but resident at Popham's Road in Farranree, was making his fourth appearance at Cork District Court when he appeared charged with murdering Nicola Collins.

Ms Collins (38), a native of Tralee but living at Clashduv Road in Togher in Cork city, was found by paramedics when they called to a flat at Popham's Road in Farranree in Cork on March 27 last.

Last week, Det Insp Declan O'Sullivan told Cork Coroners Court that a person was currently before the courts in relation to Ms Collins's death and he applied for an adjournment of the inquest. Cork City Coroner Philip Comyn granted the application and adjourned the inquest indefinitely to allow the criminal proceedings over Ms Collins's death take their course in the courts.

Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margaret Bolster gave evidence at the inquest of carrying out a post-mortem on the body of Ms Collins and she outlined her findings at autopsy to the coroner's court.

Ms Collins died from brain swelling and traumatic subdural haemorrhage with diffuse axonal injury to the brain due to blunt force trauma to the head, Dr Bolster told the court.

Det Insp O'Sullivan told Mr Comyn that the garda family liaison officer who was dealing with Ms Collins's family would inform them that the inquest had been adjourned pending the criminal trial.

Ms Collins, who was buried in her native Tralee following a funeral mass in the town, is survived by her father, Michael, who lives in Cork and her mother, Kay, who lives in Tralee, and her three children.

Mr O'Sullivan failed in a bid to obtain bail in the High Court and his barrister, Peter O'Flynn BL, raised the issue of how long his client has been in custody when he appeared at Cork District Court this week.

Judge Olann Kelleher granted a garda application and remanded Mr O'Sullivan in continuing custody to appear in court again October 18 for preparation of the book of evidence.
Millstreet is set to benefit from the announcement of 1,165,200 for the provision of new Social Housing units.

Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine Michael Creed confirmed that the Government is to provide funding to Cork County Council for the provision of six new social housing outlets.

Commenting on the announcement Minister Creed said: "Providing an adequate supply of social housing is a key priority of this Government, over 1.1 million is to be provided to Cork County Council for the provision of six social housing units, at Clara Road".

The 'Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness' is designed to accelerate all types of housing supply - social, private and rental.

In particular, Rebuilding Ireland seeks the delivery of increased volumes of social housing over the coming years (47,000 units by 2021) and places a focus on delivering long-term housing solutions for homeless households.

"I'm pleased that families in Millstreet and in the North Cork area, with a housing need are benefiting from this strategy and will continue to do so as progress accelerates in the coming months and years," said the Minister.

National Dairy Show returns to Green Glens

Millstreet stages the National Dairy Show on its return to the spacious Green Glens Complex on Saturday, October 21 with an extensive programme scheduled and former rugby great Mike Ross performing the official opening.

Show Director John Kirby states the hosting is organised by a voluntary committee selected from the Cork Club, their commitment and loyalty since the first show in 1982 is to be commended.

"I consider myself very fortunate to be surrounded and supported by such a hard-working and experienced group. An event such as the National Dairy Show requires huge commitment, forward planning and hard work from the organisers but more importantly demands a high level of funding to make the event fit for purpose", he said.

"Last year's show cost in excess of 100k to stage, of which a major portion was provided by sponsors and their contribution to the success of the show is hugely valued. Some of our sponsors have been with us since the inception of the show and others have joined us along the way with new sponsors always welcome on board", said Mr Kirby.

The show director applauded the continued support of the host Duggan family and added that the event is attracting an ever increasing demand for trade stand space and last year over 100 stands, all relevant to the dairy industry, exhibited on the day.

"This provides attendees at the show a chance to see a great variety of up to the minute technology available on the market as well as an opportunity to engage with trade personnel about what is relevant to their present and future needs," he said.
The sixth Drogheda International Classical Music Series was launched in the d Hotel, with the Series running from September 2017 to March 2018 with one concert per month.

Advance tickets for concerts are 19 & 17 online / phone or 20 & 18 on the door. Student / children's tickets are 5. Booking through Droichead Arts Centre on 041 9833946 or www.droichead.com

The Series funded by the Arts Council and Louth County Council and is run in partnership with Droichead Arts Centre. Fri 13th Oct 7:30pm St Peter's Church of Ireland. Gould Piano Trio - According to the Washington Post, the British-born Gould Trio have the combination of jeweller-like precision and a musical fire that ignites from the first bar.

For their first visit to Drogheda, they will perform three major works for piano, violin and cello. Thurs 23rd Nov 7:30pm St Peter's Church of Ireland Alina Ibragimova (violin) with Cedric Tiberghien (piano) - French pianist, Cedric Tiberghien makes a welcome return to Drogheda this time with the brilliant Russian/British violinist Alina Ibragimova for a programme of violin and piano hits including Franck's famous Violin Sonata.
It is, perhaps, apt, that Fr Oliver Brennan says that poetry has been a part of his life pretty much since he could read. And it's a good thing that he loves poetry because the Louth native has spent nearly five years reading and selecting around 400 poems on the theme of a quest for God.

This is a major publication that brings together poets from around the world who write on the topic of searching for a higher power. It didn't start out this big, as Fr Brennan explained. And it was by a nice coincidence that it came about in the first place.

Speaking from his home in the Armagh parish of Kilmore, he said: 'It came about when I officiated at the wedding of Sarah Egan and Dr Todd Swift, poet and publisher. I became friendly with the couple and I would have used poetry a lot in my homilies over the year.

'We got talking about writing and poetry and, as I had previously had books published, Todd suggested an anthology of poetry. I had some spare time and we started meeting regularly in Ireland and London, where Todd is based'.

Fr Brennan couldn't have wished for more when the call went out, via the internet, for poets to submit their work for the collection. Thousands of poems poured in and the initial idea to have only Catholic-related poems quickly stretched to include Christianity and then every major religion.

Dr Swift, as the owner of Eyewear Publishing in London, also had access to lots of poetry which was also included in the selection process.

Included in the anthology, entitled 'A Poet's Quest for God', is work from well-known names, including the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, but also many young, previously unpublished poets from all over the world, including from Ireland.

Some of them write from a faith perspective, while others write about their search for a meaning in life, their hunt for a new beginning.

It was a huge task to whittle the thousands of submissions to the ones that made the book, but it was a 'thoroughly enjoyable' one. Fr Brennan said: 'Seamus Heaney wrote that reading poems should blow your heart open' and I have always found it very enjoyable'.

It was difficult rejecting those who didn't make the anthology for reasons including that they may not have fitted the purpose of the book.

He said: 'Some will be disappointed, but perhaps their work can be used in another book. There are a lot of young poets included in our anthology because I wanted to find out what they were thinking and how they were searching for meaning and spirituality in their lives which are being lived in post-modern times.

'And one of the good things I discovered during this process is that young people are searching for meaning in the spiritual dimension in their lives and are exploring that search through poetry'.

He's also pleased to report that he believes poetry is enjoying a resurgence at the moment, thanks, in part, to the technological age we live in allowing poets' work to reach around the world. But technology has a downside as well, with long periods of time in front of tech and computers sucking real meaning from lives . . . ultimately leading them on a search for 'more than this'.

There has been a decline in formal religion over the past number of years, but people continue to search for a higher meaning - whatever is relevant to them.

Fr Brennan says he thought a lot about who the book is aimed at, and many of the poems can be read and enjoyed by ordinary people. There are, of course, some 'academic' ones, but the majority, he says, are accessible to those who 'read them with their heart' and read them a number of times.

'Poetry is a bit like Modern Art - the meanings are not always visible the first time around. And it is certainly different to the poems that we learned growing up as children'.

The priest's love of poetry is a life-long one. The words first fused into his heart when he was a child, and read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems, 'As Kingfisher's Catch Fire', which reveals how each human also has one distinctive, defining function.

It was a poem that spoke deeply to the young Oliver. 'To me, it says just be yourself and that gave me huge self-belief when I was younger. It still speaks to young people, telling them to be themselves, to be the best self you can be and not what other people think you should be'.

For all the reading of poetry throughout his life, Fr Brennan admits that he has not written much of it himself - none which has been published - preferring to continue to read other people's work. He has been noted, throughout his ministry, for his poetic homilies in which he sometimes quotes poets' work, but often reveals his own thoughts on topics in a beautiful way.

Looking over the anthology, Fr Brennan says he hopes that people will find it uplifting and full of hope. He also hopes that it will assist people in their lives, as they search for meaning and while there are a few poems about the darkness that journey to meaning can bring, the vast majority of the works are positive, showing others that no matter what happens in life, there is a meaning, a purpose, though it is not always clear at the time.

'You have to search for meaning for yourself. And I think this book will help with that, offering positivity and happiness'.

The anthology has already been launched in London and in Maynooth, where the books have sold out, but Fr Brennan, a native of Ardee, is keen to launch it in Louth, where he spent many years and where he was parish priest in Blackrock and Heynestown.

He continues to have a lot of friends in the seaside village, where he spent 11 years as parish priest and people had asked him to launch the book in Louth. Tomorrow evening, September 20, he's doing just that at the Ballymascanlon Hotel.

The hardcover edition, published by the London press Eyewear, has received glowing reviews in America, Ireland and the UK, and featured poems will be read by Fr Brennan and Dr Todd Swift.

There will be drinks at 7pm, with readings from the anthology starting at 8pm sharp. The book will be available to buy at the reduced price of 20 and everyone is welcome to attend. At over 350 pages, and handsomely designed, this hardcover book is an ideal Christmas, communion, or birthday present, and will be a cherished part of any family home library.

Despite the huge amount of work involved in getting 'A Poet's Quest for God' edited and published, Fr Brennan is already sketching out his next work, which will be on the theme of spirituality, the search for meaning in life and what's missing. It's a lifelong search and one that Fr Brennan continues to do with, as Seamus Heaney said: 'a heart blown open'.
The Drogheda Creative Writers Group will meet on the second and fourth Monday of each month from Monday, at 8pm at The Living Room, Sarsfields Bar, Drogheda.

All new, emerging and established writers, poets and artists are welcome to attend. Further details can be found on the Drogheda Creative Writers Group Facebook page. You can contact the group at droghedacreativewriters@gmail.com.

Les Feuilles Mortes

Les Feuilles Mortes, a magical and mysterious musical journey from plainchant to jazz brought to you by KenDu Music, takes place in Church of Ireland, Collon, on October 20th at 8pm. Tickets are 20.
A young man who caused over 2,000 worth of damage to an ATM in a shop has been warned to 'work harder' to come up with compensation to pay for the damage.

Sean Bowe (21), who works as a dishwasher, was warned by Judge John Coughlan he is about to have a 'very turbulent future,' if he does not come up with the money.

Drogheda District Court heard the defendant struck the ATM in Donovan's Centra in Bettystown and caused 2,280 worth of damage to the cash machine.

The defendant, of The Anchorage in Bettystown pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage to the cash machine on September 27th, 2016.

He also pleaded guilty to the theft of a pair of runners worth 16 from Penneys on West Street on April 20th this year.

Defence barrister Irene Sands said the defendant struck it as he was going through a turbulent time.

'He thought it was a wall he struck. He had no intent to damage it,' she said.

However, Judge Coughlan warned him to come up with compensation for the damage he caused.

'He is about to have a very turbulent future. Tell him to work harder. I want all the money paid. You'll be a long time looking out the window of Mountjoy otherwise,' warned the Judge.

He adjourned the case for six months for the defendant to come up with the money.
Duleek 1916-1981 Monument Committee will host a commemoration on Saturday 23rd September in Duleek to remember the 100th anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Thomas Ashe.

The event will commence at 4pm with a march to the hunger strike monument on Station Road with a re-enactment by the Irish Citizen Army on the way.

Spokesperson for the monument committee Thomas Lynch said this will be a very special event where the leader of the "Battle of Ashbourne" during the Easter rising in 1916 Thomas Ashe will be remembered on the 100th anniversary of his death on hunger strike on 25th September 1917.

Thomas Ashe was born in Kinard East, Lispole, Dingle Co, Kerry. He was a member of the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers. He went on to become principal of Corduff National School in Lusk Co, Dublin.

He spent his last years before his death teaching children in Lusk, where he founded the award-winning Lusk Black Raven Pipe Band as well as Round Towers Lusk.

A fundraising event by the monument committee will follow the commemoration in the Greyhound Bar Duleek with a book launch "The Truth Will Out" by Paul McGlinchey.

This is a non-party political event and all are welcome to attend.
A drug addict who tracked a woman down to a women's refuge centre and made threatening phone calls to her before threatening to 'burn the place down' claimed he was on a two day 'bender' at the time.

Thomas Peter Mulhern (23) has been sentenced to five months in prison after he pleaded guilty to contravening a safety order that was in place at the time.

He put the woman in fear but claimed his recollection of the incident is minimal, Drogheda District Court heard.

The defendant, of Rathmullen Park in Drogheda, contravened the safety order at Drogheda Women's Refuge on August 25th.

Inspector Brendan Cadden told the court the victim had to leave her residence and go to a woman's refuge in Drogheda.

'The defendant tracked her down and made threatening phone calls. He arrived at the refugee and threatened to burn it down. She was in fear,' said Insp Cadden.

Defence barrister Irene Sands said 'It was an unpleasant experience for the victim.'

'He is a drug addict and was on a bender for two days prior to the event. He was on a huge amount of illicit substances and his recollection is minimal. Thankfully the injured party didn't come to any harm,' she said.

Judge John Coughlan remarked: 'The lady had to leave her home. He tracked her down and is guilty to contravening a safety order. In my view it's five months in custody.'
Balbriggan Community College is one of a select few schools across the country to have been awarded the International School of Distinction.

For the second year running the school has claimed the honour which recognises the work of the whole school in creating a 21st century Teaching and Learning environment, where students dream big and aim high.

Supported by Trinity College Dublin and College for Every Student (U.S.), this award is presented to 10 ten schools in Ireland, who are part of an evidence based research showcasing enhanced educational experiences.

The Community College is focusing on building essential skills and knowledge required for college and career readiness.

'The student experience in our school is enhanced through involvement in a range of activities building leadership skills, expanding college knowledge and growing new relationships with college and work mentors,' said principal Emmet Sheridan.

College progression rates over the last number of years evidence a strong college-going culture with up to eight out of every ten students progressing to further and higher education.

'We are very proud to say that we have the highest progression levels in Balbriggan for mixed multi denominational post primary school. A showcase in TCD early October will celebrate the achievements as part of Trinity Access 21.

And the school has invited parents of fifth and sixth class pupils to its open night on Thursday between between 7.30pm-9.pm.
Childcare provider Sherpa Kids has announced an expansion of its service in the area.

It has launched a new service in St Nicholas of Myra National School in Kinsealy and it is planning to expand its existing Donabate service.

Sherpa Kids will now offer before school, afterschool and holiday care service to children attending St. Nicholas of Myra School and the nearby Malahide & Portmarnock Educate Together School through a daily drop-off and collection service.

They have expressed their thanks for the support of Brendan Fahy, Principal of St. Nicholas of Myra National School and the school's Board of Management in enabling us to expand our service and deliver much needed flexible, high quality and affordable childcare in North County Dublin.

The expanded Donabate service at Scoil Phadric Calini National School and is now accepting regular and casual bookings for our service from pupils attending the adjacent Boys' school (St. Patrick's Boys National School).

By deploying the additional capacity, they are now able to provide care for up to 45 children at any given time, for breakfast and afterschool programs as well as during mid-terms and school holidays.

They have expressed their gratitude to Ciara Greene,Principal and the School's Board of Management who have been tremendously accommodating and understanding of the huge need for an onsite flexible childcare service in Donabate.

In the implementation of these enhancements, Sherpa Kids Swords, Portmarnock and Rush has received Government support, by means of a Department of Childand Youth Affairs grant.

This funding has enabled the refurbishment of the Kinsealy facility and the installation of new equipment and the expansion of the Donabate facility.

'This comes as a good example of state intervention to start addressing the long standing issue of before and after-school care and create favourable conditions for local businesses seeking to create the required capacity,' said Berta Lazorovici, director of Sherpa Kids Swords, Portmarnock and Rush.

It is a locally owned company, part of the Sherpa Kids Ireland network which offers flexible, high quality childcare at an affordable price.

'We provide a safe and secure environment for the quality care of school aged children through a structured well balanced programme. We educate and entertain children within their familiar environment, offering their parents peace of mind and a solution adapted to their needs. We don't restrict parents to certain number of hours to book, they have liberty in designing their bookings based on their schedule (be it that they work in shifts or they just need care for an odd day).'
Celebrity Big Brother star Jeremy McConnell claimed he entered a woman's house without permission because he was intoxicated and became disorientated after he was chased by two men following a house party.

The Swords man star was found by the house owner in the kitchen area of her home at 6.30am in Skerries, after she heard a noise downstairs.

However, Balbriggan District Court heard the woman 'was not in fear' but she had called gardai. The Reality TV star told gardai, who arrived at the house in Kelly's Bay Strand ten minutes after the woman called them, he was attending a house party in the same estate and 'became disorientated' after he claimed two men were chasing him.

McConnell, of Boroimhe Laurels in Swords, pleaded guilty to trespassing at the woman's house in Skerries on February 10. He had entered the woman's home through a rear back door which was unlocked, the court heard.

Garda John Lennon gave evidence he arrested the defendant at Balbriggan Garda Station on August 10 at 3.30pm. He said the defendant replied: 'I'm sorry' to the charge. Gda Lennon said he received a call on February 10 at 6.30am from a woman who reported a male had entered her house and was in the kitchen area. Ten minutes later Gda Lennon arrived at the property and met with the injured party. The defendant was still on the premises. He was socialising in the area and left a house party.

'He claimed he had been chased by two other men and was still disorientated but very apologetic,' said Gda Lennon.

When asked by Judge Dermot Dempsey if the injured party was put in fear, Gda Lennon said 'No, she said she wasn't in fear, she had her dog in the house.'

Addressing the court, McConnell, who starred in MTV's 'Beauty School Cop Outs,' said 'I am extremely apologetic. I was intoxicated and went into the wrong house.' He explained he has undergone rehabilitation since the offence and is now residing in Cardiff for the next three months for work reasons.

When asked by Judge Dempsey if he brought any cash with him to court, indicating he may give the defendant the opportunity to make a charitable donation in lieu of a conviction, he replied: 'I didn't bring any cash with me today but I can come back next week.' However, Judge Dempsey then proceeded handing down a conviction and fined him 150.

After his court appearance, McConnell told Fingal Independent: 'It was last year at a rough time. I am very sorry to the lady. I've paid my fine and can finally move forward. She made me a lovely cuppa too.'

Last month he was found guilty of assaulting the mother of his child, UK actress Stephanie Davis and on Wednesday, September 13 he was sentenced by Judge Wendy Lloyd at Liverpool Magistrates' Court. He was given a 20 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months and was instructed to take a 'Building Better Relationships' course with the Probation Service. He was also ordered to undertake 15 days of Rehabilitation Activity Requirements and 200 hours of community service work. He had pleaded not guilty to assaulting Ms Davis at an address in Merseyside on March 10.
The search for William Gaule continued at the weekend

Two extensive searches of the Coast Road area and the shoreline were undertaken at the weekend to locate a missing man from Malahide.

Local volunteers led by members of the Civel Defence and the Irish Coast Guard combed the shoreline on Saturday and Sunday in search of William Gaule who has been missing from his Malahide home since September 6.

William is described as being in his mid-60s and is described as 5'9" with grey receding hair and a moustache.

When William was last seen he was wearing blue/black knitted jumper and dark coloured trousers.

The Gaule family took to social media to appeal for help in the search for William and were answered with a big turnout to help in a number of organised searches on Saturday and Sunday.

The family have publicly thanked all those who have taken part in the searches and there are likely to be further searches organised this week.

On Saturday afternoon, the search was supported by the Irish Coast Guard who provided a helicopter to back up the extensive search on the ground by volunteers.

Members of the Civil Defence co-ordinated the continued search on Sunday but sadly, no evidence of Mr Gaule's whereabouts was found in either search.

Gardai continue to seek the public's assistance in tracing the whereabouts of William Gaule who they confirmed is missing from his home in Malahide, since the September 6, 2017.

They have asked for as many people as possible to share the description and picture of William that is circulating on social media as the search intensifies for the missing Malahide man.

Anyone with information on William's whereabouts is asked to contact Coolock Garda Station on 01-6664200, the Garda Confidential Line 1800-666-111, or any Garda Station.
The charge against a Dublin man due to stand trial at the non-jury Special Criminal Court for the murder of Noel Kirwan has been struck out.

However, it is understood that the Director of Public Prosecutions will restart proceedings against Jason Keating (26), who was told last Thursday by presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt that he was 'free to go' after an application by the State.

Mr Keating, of Lower Main Street, Rush, was charged with the murder of Noel Kirwan (62) outside his house at St Ronan's Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 on December 22, 2016.

State Solicitor Rioghnach Corbett told the three-judge court that her application was to have the charge struck out.

Counsel for Mr Keating, Mr Giollaiosa O Lideadha SC, said he understood that there was some difficulty with the certificate and charge sheet which were initially before the District Court.

Last week the State made an application for Mr Keating to be tried before the Special Criminal Court.

The DPP can direct an accused face trial in the non-jury court if it deems "the ordinary courts are inadequate for effective administration of justice".

Mr O Lideadha told the court he also understood that it was the intention of the prosecution to 'restart proceedings' against his client.
County Wexford is in the middle of a housing crisis the likes of which has not witnessed in a generation.

This is what Cllr Davy Hynes and several councillors and senior council officials outlined during a one hour debate on the issue. Cllr Hynes said the council buying a few hundred houses is not going to solve the problem. 'People are in B&B's. People in HAP houses are being told to get out. The best I can say to some people is that I can give them a tent or a sleeping bag. We are at our wits end with this.'

CEO Tom Enright said the county's homelessness issue is a huge problem. '430 women and children were turned away from Wexford Women's Refuge (in one year). Many of these people end up homeless. We are working with the refuge on a facility and we're talking to the department in Dublin.'

Chairman Cllr John Hegarty said a constructive meeting on housing is needed.

Cllr Michael Sheehan said he knows of people living in cars and on streets. He said he knows of people living in cars and on streets. There are many local authority houses and apartments that are lying vacant. He asked how long it takes the council to turn these properties around for residents. 'The tenants in these houses are becoming homeless and all we're doing is perpetuating the cycle.'

Cllr Keith Doyle said he warned about the housing crisis several months ago, saying people are getting evicted and can't find a house to live in anywhere. At this point several councillors left the council chamber. Cllr Mary Farrell said: 'It's really bad form for people to get up and walk out fo a tea break during this.'

Cllr Doyle said landlords are evicting people and selling their properties cashing in on the current in demand market. 'We should try and close that loophole,' he said.

Cllr Tony Dempsey welcomed the council's decision to buy houses. 'Buying a house is cheaper and I am sure the person who gets the money is quite happy to get it. 100 houses is fantastic progresss. The only people who solve the problems are in Wexford County Council. Homelessness is about education and it's a reflection of the failure of the education system,' he said.

Cllr Anthony Kelly said Wexford Corporation built estates throughout Wexford town in the 60s, 70s and 80s and they served people well. Cllr Mary Farrell said: 'We are on the frontline and are getting the brunt of this every day. We get calls through the night with people crying. There is a new homelessness, the hidden homelessness. These are people who are back living with their parents. This is unacceptable. It's outrageous the regulations that are in place for people building a house.'

Cllr Willie Fitzharris said developers have been unfairly targeted. 'I agree that speculators got in during the boom who should never have been allowed. There are a lot of property owners out there who are losing a lot of money who bought at the high end. Sometimes they have to make decisions or go broke. They have a right to make a decision to keep themselves afloat.'

Cllr Keith Doyle said he raised the issue of the new homelessness several times. Cllr Robbie Ireton said council staff are doing tremendous work against all the odds to help families and individuals who find themselves homeless through no fault of their own.

'What have you (my fellow councillors) done to work with officials to solve this problem,' he said.
Linda McEvoy, pictured here with principal Michael Finn, has been appointed deputy principal of Gorey Community School

Gorey Community School now has a third deputy principal. Linda McEvoy has taken up the new role and joins Frank Duke and Stella Kehoe in helping principal Michael Finn manage the running of Ireland's largest secondary school.

The school has over 1,560 students, and Michael Finn explained that the Education Department has said that a school with over 900 students can now have a third deputy principal.

'Linda has already made a huge difference within the school,' he said. 'She's very popular with staff and parents, and I'm absolutely delighted to have her on board.'

Linda has been working in Gorey Community School for over 14 years, initially as a subject teacher of history and geography. For over ten years, she worked in the role of special educational needs co-ordinator.

She said she is delighted and honoured to have been appointed to the role and is looking forward to working with the whole school community to help maintain the school's excellent reputation.
A documentary by a former Gorey School of Art student has been selected to be screened at the fifth Wexford Documentary Film Festival this weekend. 'Home' by Eman Cherbatji, will be shown as part of the short film selection in the Stella Maris Centre, Kilmore Quay, at 1.45 p.m. on Saturday, September 23.

Eman is a graduate of the documentary film-making and photography course in Gorey School of Art. Her short film was selected for the festival from a large volume of entries from national and international filmmakers.

'Home' tells the story of a family that fled the city of Aleppo in Syria and are now living in Ballyhaunis in Mayo. In the twelve minute film, they talk about their homeland before the war, as they ponder the meaning of home and their new lives in Ballyhaunis.

Nine short films have been selected to be shown in the Saturday afternoon slot.

'I went into the course asking if I could do photography only, not knowing I would love film-making, but after doing the course I realised I wanted to become a documentary filmmaker,' said Eman. 'I fell in love with film, and now all I want to do is make documentaries.'

Paul Carter, director of Gorey School of Art, said that Eman has completed two courses at Gorey School of Art. 'She always looked liked a student who was searching for her visual language,' he said. 'It's clear now that that language is film-making. It's very exciting. I'd also like to congratulate the production team, Cathal Byrne, Katie Coffey, Jamie Dixon, Zena O'Brien and Elena Larionova. They were an exceptionally talented and professional team of students.'

'We are delighted with Eman's remarkable achievement and wish her great success in her future film-making career,' added Michael Finn of Gorey Community School. 'This award affirms both Eman's talent and dedication to her goals, and the success of GSA's documentary film-making course and the commitment of the staff.'

Also during the festival, children from the Gorey School of Art summer school will have their stop motion animations screened on Saturday at 11.30 a.m. just before the showing of the Danish film 'Antboy' at 11.40 a.m.
Johnny OMahony of Castlequin with the remnants of a Fenian fighting pike found in his land

'Twas down by the glenside I met an old woman, A plucking young nettles, she ne'er saw me coming, I listened a while to the song she was humming, Glory O, Glory O to the bold Fenian men'..

These are the words of a song entitled the Bold Fenian Men, a popular Irish rebel song written by Peadar Kearney who also composed the National Anthem.

Earlier this year the Golden family of Kells near Cahirsiveen and the community of that area marked the 150th anniversary of the Fenian Rising with a Walk of the Ancestors commemoration there.

It honoured the Golden family's ancestor, the Fenian John Golden of Kells, who was deported as a result of his rebel activities to Fremantle, Western Australia.

Johnny O'Mahony from Castlequin, Over-The-Water, Cahirsiveen, is a familiar figure in the Valentia and wider area as he goes about his duties as a part-time postman. As is quite appropriate to this year's 150th Fenian Anniversary celebrations, Johnny has in his possession the end section of a fighting rebel weapon described as a 'Fenian Pike'.It was discovered in the wall of a field called The Lawn in his family farm in Castlequin.

Johnny states that the owner of this pike (whose identity he cannot establish) fled to Australia after the Rising and prior to leaving hid the pike, not daring to be associated with it as it would have led to prosecution. This man returned home in 1917 and in time informed Johnny's father, Dave O'Mahony (who passed away in 1996), as to where the weapon was concealed.

The instructions given were that the pike remnants were to be found so many paces from a palm tree under a flat stone up in a wall of The Lawn Field. Dave O'Mahony and his father John followed the instructions to successfully find the implement.

Those days of the Fenians were days of woe in Ireland and as this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Rising, spare a thought for that anonymous Fenian fighter who fought for Irish freedom all those years ago.
The aromas of Armenia wafting out of Gapo's Restaurant on Church Street are winning more and more customers for owners Artur and Lenne Gabrielyan - now marking their first year in the tasty Listowel business.

The couple, who met and fell in love 13 years ago while working in another Listowel restaurant with a foreign culinary twist - Casa Mia's Italian - made the brave step to go out on their own and they haven't looked back since.

Last week found them catering to the racing punters, and winning many new fans for the herb-infused tastes of Artur's beloved homeland of Armenia - which comprises the better part of the Gapo's menu.

"Leanne is from Lativa, so there's some of her homeland on the menu too and there's plenty of normal European dishes also so it is a good mix," Artur told The Kerryman.

And it's a good mix too, ingredient wise, in each of the Armenian dishes, in a taste that is threatening to become as popular as better known culinary cultures in Listowel thanks to Gapos.

Artur and Leanne find the town responding well to the taste. "We use a lot of herbs and spices in Armenian cooking and if we're cooking meat we would always marinate it in advance before roasting it, to get all the flavour soaking in the meat."

Artur admits to having found it difficult on the palatte when he first came to these shores 17 years ago. "For six months I was eating only pizza!"

If the Irish food took awhile to win him around, there was one town that captured his heart in an instant. "I remember passing through Listowel and just everything was buzzing, the whole town seemed so busy and full of life, this was back in 2000. I stayed a little bit but went on to live in Dublin and Cork for awhile before I decided to come back and settle down here. I liked the way it was a laid back town too."

The rest is history - work, love, marriage, two boys and a top business. It's a business winning more and more converts.

"I think the people of Listowel and North Kerry are really coming around to more exotic foods and getting braver in what they will try. I actually think Ryanair opening up destinations all over the place is responsible for a lot of it."

The new open-mindedness is heartwarming for the couple. "We get more and more coming in wanting to try Armenian food and asking us 'what do you suggest we try?' so that's great to see."

Gapo incidentally was Artur's great-grandfather. Like the placename Rae joined Healy in a famous moniker here, Gapo was married to Gabrielyan."The whole family came to be known by it. They called us Gapos!"
A Pakistani asylum seeker has been charged with conning a Tralee taxi driver out of 500 after he allegedly made off without paying for a taxi ride from Kerry to Sligo where he was due to appear before the local district court.

Waleed Khan (28) a native of Pakistan who lives at the Atlas House asylum centre in Tralee, had been due in court to answer a charge of engaging in threatening or abusive behaviour at Sligo University Hospital on July 16 last.

When he arrived at Sligo District Court on September 7 Mr Khan was charged with dishonestly by deception, arising from the allegedly unpaid bill for the taxi that he had used to get to the court that morning.

The court heard that Mr Khan had agreed to pay Tralee taxi driver Pat Godley 500 to take him to Sligo but that on arriving in Sligo town he didn't hand over the cash.

"Is the taxi driver here? asked Judge Kevin Kilrane. "We sent him home," said the arresting Garda Martha Carter.

The court heard Mr Khan - who has no family in Ireland - has lived in the country for a number of years.

Waleed Khan disputed the taxi driver's claim about the fare and said that a 300 fee had been agreed before they left Tralee.

Defence solicitor Tom MacSharry said Mr Khan had moved to Tralee from the Globe House asylum centre in Sligo after "having some difficulties there".

Mr Khan said he would "definitely" pay the outstanding taxi bill and intended to do so by getting a loan from some Pakistani friends who are living in Riverstown village near Sligo town.

Judge Kilrane remanded Mr Khan in custody to a special sitting of Sligo District Court at 9pm on September 8.

At that special sitting, Khan elected for trial by judge and jury on the dishonesty charge.

There was no mention of any money being present in court for the taxi driver.

Free legal aid was granted and Judge Kilrane remanded Mr Khan in custody, with consent to bail to appear at Harristown District Court in Castlerea when a date will be set for his case to come before the Circuit Criminal Courts.
No Ryanair flights to or from Kerry Airport are expected to be affected as part of the budget airline's effort to meet pilot and crew rostering and holiday requirements by cancelling up to 50 flights a day for the next six weeks.

Ryanair is cancelling the flights as it moves to reduce a backlog of holidays for staff caused by the change in the start date of Ryanair pilots' "operational year" from April to January.

The cancellations have been allocated "where possible" to Ryanair's bigger base airports and to routes with multiple daily frequencies to minimise inconvenience, it says.

Ryanair has now published a full list of its upcoming flight cancellations - up to Saturday October 28 - and no flights into or out of Kerry Airport are included.

While it is possible that Ryanair could still opt to cancel some of its Kerry flights this appears unlikely.

Management at Kerry Airport have said they do not expect any cancellations at Farranfore and that it is bigger airports that will be affected by the unprecedented action by Ryanair.

Details of all flight cancellations can be found at www.Ryanair.com. The airline says all customers will be informed by email if their flight has been cancelled. Those customers whose flights are cancelled will be offered a full refund or a seat on the next available flight.

For full details on your air passenger rights in the event of cancellation, delays and more, see flightrights.ie.

Meanwhile it has also been announced that Ryanair's Kerry Berlin service will continue next Summer.

Ryanair originally announced in February that flights from Kerry To Berlin would be available as part of its winter schedule.

Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has now confirmed Kerry Berlin is also part of the airline's 2018 summer schedule.
Great Kerry patriots, powerful families, heroes of World War One and much else besides are brought to life in a striking new publication coming out in time to commemorate the figure of Tomas Aghas on the centenary of his death.

Volume four of the Old Kerry Journal hits the bookshops of the county this week bursting at the seams as it is with lively and insightful articles on a host of topics relating to the story of the county in recent centuries.

It's the work of a Tralee couple long steeped in the history of the nation through their Irish Life and Lore series - husband and wife Maurice and Jane O'Keeffe - and it unfolds across scores of strikingly-laid out pages featuring the work of the O'Keeffes' daughter Dr Helene and fellow historians Russell McMoran (a co-editor of the Journal), Thomas Dillon, Gerald O'Carroll, Martin Moore and John G Knightly.

Indeed it is Helene O'Keeffe who is responsible for the striking visual quality of the Journal as well as one of the centrepiece articles - The Life and Legacy of Thomas Ashe - having laid it all out in a labour of love in recent months.

Cover star Diana Denny sets the tone with distinction in a portrait from 1821 by John Linnell capturing this lady of old Tralee in a naturalised style full of youthful vibrancy. Her portrait appears thanks to the scions of the Denny family - in particular UK-based descendant Tom Denny, who opened up the family collection for use in the work.

Tom will himself be playing an important role in the continuing story of the Dennys and Tralee soon, as Jane O'Keeffe explained: "Tralee will shortly mark an important symbolic gesture by the Denny family in the installation of a stained glass window in St. John's Church, Castle Street, Tralee. The artwork will be entitled The Reconciliation Window. Tom Denny, a UK-based stained glass artist, is a descendant of the Denny family of Tralee, and he will this month finish work on the window which will be ready for installation in the church in October 2017." On the opposite side of the political coin is the story of the county's great patriot Tomas Aghas, done justice in a comprehensive piece by Helene at the core of the Journal and surrounded by so many other fascinating pieces on old Kerry. It's available in bookshops or through www.irishlifeandlore.com, at 12.
Senator Mark Daly said he was delighted over the release of Ibrahim Halawa having campaigned on behalf of the family through his role on the Foreign Affairs Committee over the past four years of the 21-year-old's incarceration.

"We're delighted he is coming back after campaigning relentlessly to have him released. Ibrahim now needs support having endured torture. Ibrahim showed the Irish Ambassador to Egypt the marks on his body caused by his torturers. There is now a journey ahead of him to try and get back to normal, and to college, which is what he always wanted to do," said Sen Daly.

In 2015 Senator Daly invited members of Ibrahim's family to the Foreign Affairs Committee to suggest that a delegation travel to Egypt to visit and lobby for Ibrahim's release.

"I've recently been in contact with Ibrahim's sisters who have done a remarkable job keeping the case alive in the media. He is Irish born and was awaiting trial for something he didn't do. Having investigated the circumstances of the case, Amnesty International said he was a 'prisoner of conscience' which means the person is innocent of the charges faced. When you have an Irish born citizen facing a death sentence, it needs the full support of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the government."

Meanwhile, Tralee native Damien Cole provided consular assistance to Halawa in his role as Irish Ambassador to Egypt.
A new analysis of bones taken from a century-old excavation at Carrowkeel in County Sligo has revealed evidence of the burial practices and death rites of the ancient people of Ireland that may have included the dismembering of our dead.

The findings, which have been published in the journal Bioarchaeology International, are part of a project applying modern techniques and research questions to the human remains. The team of researchers includes Sam Moore, lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at IT Sligo, and the group's work focussed on the 5300 years-old Passage Tomb Complex at Carrowkeel. This site is one of the most impressive Neolithic ritual landscapes in Europe.

"The bones were analysed from an original excavation of Carrowkeel in 1911, led by Prof R.A.S. McAlister," explains Sam.

"They were subsequently presumed missing or lost until a group of boxes with the name 'Carrowkeel' on them was discovered in the archive in the University of Cambridge in 2001. The bones date from between 3500 and 2900 BC."

The project was led by Dr Thomas Kador (University College London), with osteological research undertaken by Dr Jonny Geber from the Department of Anatomy at New Zealand's University of Otago. The group also included Sligo based archaeologist Dr Robert Hensey and independent researcher Padraig Meehan.

The team analysed bones from seven passage tombs that included both unburnt and cremated human remains from around 40 individuals.

Dr Geber says he and his colleagues determined that the unburnt bone displayed evidence of dismemberment.

"We found indications of cut marks caused by stone tools at the site of tendon and ligament attachments around the major joints, such as the shoulder, elbow, hip and ankle," he says.

Dr Geber says the new evidence suggests that a complex burial rite was undertaken at Carrowkeel, which involved a funerary rite and placed a particular focus on the "deconstruction" of the body.

So why would people in pre-historic Ireland have performed such rituals?

"Attempting to understand the reasons these ancient communities dismembered the bodies is one of the real fascinations with this research," says Sam Moore. "In the societies of the past, ancestry had more to do with group identity. This appears to have held real importance in Neolithic Ireland."

While evidence of similar pre-historic funerary rites has been uncovered in the UK, this is the first definitive discovery of similar practices during the same period on the island of Ireland. The re-analysis of the bones uncovers high level of complexity and diversity of the funerary rites, which perhaps was not fully recognized previously.

The new study has been able to show that the Carrowkeel complex was a highly significant place in Neolithic society in Ireland, which had an important role in facilitating interaction with the dead and a spiritual connection with the ancestors.
Being housed, even in a small property, is better than being either homeless or being unable to afford anywhere half decent.

There has been discussion this week about the Government lifting the country's ban on bedsits.

For a start I never realised there was an actual ban on this form of accommodation, and secondly it appears that regulation of this part of the rental market was the problem in the first place and not the actual housing model.

We are in the midst of a housing crisis and unfortunately there is no quick fix, just lots of small changes to be made which in unison will help meet the massive demand for properties. The traditional bedsit was a self contained unit but usually with shared bathroom facilities and common areas.

They were more prominent in cities and if re-introduced, could make a difference in these densely populated areas where there is most need.

I know that there are many students in particular who would not turn their noses up at such an option - after all it is similar to some on-campus accommodation in certain colleges.

They would be cheaper and still offer freedom and independence which sometimes is not the case in lodgings or digs - which has been suggested as an alternative to those who cannot secure private houses or apartments.

If proper standards were set in place like in other parts of the rental market then there is no reason why more smaller units like this couldn't be made available. The problem lies with landlords who have the nerve to put sub-standard properties on the market and charge a premium.

If renters had more options and a better standard of property to choose from, then there would be no demand for shabby and unsafe accommodation and therefore landlords would have to bring them up to scratch.

The word bedsit does conjure up an image of a freezing cold and tiny little room in an equally run-down building but this does not have to be the case.

The reality is that Ireland needs more properties and when faced with a crisis we have to take whatever measures possible to serve the people best.

Being housed, even in a small property is better than being either homeless or being unable to afford anywhere half decent. That is why so many people are accepting sub-standard properties against their better judgement - because they have no other choice.
Sinn Fein Councillor Chris MacManus has said this week's report from the Environmental Protection Agency on drinking water from public water supplies is a cause for grave concern. "It again highlights that the water supply from Lough Talt has inadequate treatment for Cryptosporidium and is putting 12,823 users at risk of illness caused by the microscopic parasite," he said.

The details were contained in the EPA's 'Drinking Water Report 2016' released last Monday. It was also confirmed that the Lough Talt upgrade has no proposed actions timescale.

Cllr. MacManus said:"As of this month 87 public water supplies across the state, were still on the so-called Remedial Action List for work to be carried out to protect tap water standards. Eighty-five of these supplies have a planned date for completion of their works. Only two, including Lough Talt, have no timescale of when their needed actions might be carried out.

"Irish Water need to immediately review water supply options from Lough Talt. A report in May said it was likely to take 7-10 years to deliver a new treatment plant because of planning, environmental, budgetary, and construction processes. The people of Tubbercurry and southwest Sligo cannot wait that long. Irish Water need to follow through on its commitment to resolve this critical issue in the short term. They need to provide a temporary solution to ensure a safe and clean drinking water supply while a viable long-term resolution is examined.

"We are all aware of the farcical contradiction in EU legislation in halting this project - fined for not providing safe drinking water, unable to construct a treatment plant because of the area's conservation status. Everyone's primary concern should be the provision of safe drinking water to the 13,000 citizens reliant on the Lough Talt supply."
James Gormley still shudders thinking about the bomb that dropped out of the African sky that sunny September morning in 1961.

It landed so close to his weapons pit that it threw him and his countyman James Tahaney out of the trench, almost burying them alive.

"We didn't know where we were. We were dug out by the lads beside us. We were dazed. They brought us into this cement medical hut. We were there for maybe an hour or two until we came around and then straight back out to the trenches again," he says.

"We had to dig trenches with only bayonets and our bare hands," he says, before choking up. He is still overcome with emotion at the memory.

"A curse, a curse it was," he adds, shaking his head.

James was only 21 years old, a private in 'A' Company, 35th Infantry Battalion, sent to the Congo as a UN contingent to keep the peace in 1961. It was his second tour of duty in the Congo, having been there with the UN for six months in 1960.

A native of Ballymote, James was one of 12 Sligo men among 155 soldiers stationed in Jadotville when they came under siege from Katangan forces - they held their ground and fought for five days and nights.

That morning they were taken by surprise by the Katangans who knew they were in morning mass parade.

"We were at mass when the next thing was we heard the fire," recalls James from his home in Ballyshannon.

"We had sandbag positions outside. John Monaghan was the Company Sergeant and when he heard the fire he threw us into the back of the landrover," he says.

As a Vickers machine-gunner, James played a pivotal role in keeping their attackers at bay while the rest of the Battalion organised their defence and got into position.

"He says, 'Now when we land at our sandbag position I want you to jump out of the landrover' and he gave us a hand grenade. So we jumped out and straight across the sandbags. Brought out the Vickers machine gun and set it up," he says.

James and Riverstown native Private James Tahaney spun around their machine guns and returned fire, surprising the mercenaries who weren't expecting the Irish to fight back .

Did he think they were going to die?

"We did of course. They were dropping bombs from a jet. The next thing is there were 3,000 Congolese and French paratroopers and mercenaries," he says.

The fighting lasted five long days and nights.

Indian, Pakistani and Indonesian UN troops couldn't come to their aid because the Katangan jet had blown up a nearby bridge. They were completely trapped.

"We had no water, nothing to drink, no food, only a bit of tinned beef. We had no sleep at all," recalls James.

The 42-year-old Battalion Commandant Pat Quinlan knew he would have to negotiate a ceasefire after they ran out of ammunition and food .

James and his comrades smashed all their weapons and surrendered.

Not one Irish man was lost while losses of 300 were inflicted on their enemy.

They were held by the Katangans for several weeks at a compound in Jadotville, sleeping on stretchers surrounded by 12ft high barbed wire fence they were forced to erect themselves.

"They didn't do anything to us but we didn't know what they might do. We used to walk around outside in the compound. We hadn't that much grub. We were like Japanese prisoners," he says.

After several weeks captivity, they were finally to be handed over in return for thousands of Katangan prisoners held by the Indians.

They were bussed out to Kinshasa airport, then known as Leopoldville.

"We got there, and there was no hand over. So we had to go back to Jadotville again. After another few days, there was a second handover - same thing again, no handover so we had to go back again.

"The third time, all our fellas, we were like brothers, we decided that we were going to take over the bus and kill the Congolese, but it didn't come to that. The third time, we were released," he says.

"Eventually everything went well, but I wouldn't like to go through it again," he says.

One of ten siblings, several of whom still live in Ballymote, James had no idea whether his mother or siblings knew he was alive or dead.

James recalls his leader, Comdt Quinlan, who died in 1997 aged 78, as "a gentleman."

"He was a very nice person. He used to always smoke a pipe. I couldn't say enough about him. I think he was the best Company Commander that I ever met all the times I served overseas.

"Everybody respected him, all the fellas from Athlone, Mullingar, Galway, Longford - we were like brothers the whole lot of us. We all stuck together," he said.

James got on with his life, even returning for his last overseas tour of duty in Cyprus 1964-'65.

He was transferred from Athlone barracks to Finner Camp where he served 35 years until his retirement in the mid-nineties.

He married his childhood sweetheart Mary (from Tubbercurry) and reared four children in Ballyshannon where he still lives today.
Helen Rochford-Brennan, Chairperson of the European Dementia Working Group, speaking at the launch of Virtual Dementia Tour Evaluation Report, at St Johns Community Hospital, Sligo. Photo: James Connolly

A launch has taken place at St John's Community Hospital, Sligo of a report aimed at creating greater understanding of what it's like to live with dementia.

This unique interactive learning experience which takes place in a mobile simulated training unit is see as an exciting opportunity for the HSE.

It aims to support those caring for people with dementia to have greater understanding and empathy in their caring role of what it is like to live with a dementia diagnosis.

A formal research evaluation of the Virtual Dementia Tour was commissioned by the NMPD and undertaken by Ulster University In early 2017.

The report is entitled: 'A research evaluation of an interactive training experience: The Virtual Dementia Tour.'

Ms Anne Gallen, Director of Nursing Midwifery Planning and Development Unit commented: "We are always exploring new and innovative ways of facilitating education around this important area of practice. Consideration around the findings of this research evaluation will provide the next steps in relation to supporting healthcare teams and carers to provide person centred and evidence informed care to people with a dementia diagnosis.

"Moreover, it has the potential to positively impact nurses as a means of becoming more knowledgeable in the area of person-centred Dementia care."

John Hayes, Chief Officer, Community Healthcare Organisation Area 1 (Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan & Sligo) said: "This report will provide research evidence to ascertain the efficacy of this type of approach around training and education in dementia care.

"The findings will also inform a person-centred implementation plan for CHO Area 1 that will support delivery of the National Dementia Strategy".

One of the pertinent messages within The Irish National Dementia Strategy (Department of Health, 2014) informs us that with the right supports a person with Dementia can live well.

Co-operation and Working Together (CAWT) supported The Virtual Dementia Tour (VDT) training experience in Donegal for two days in the autumn of 2016.

The provision of education and training opportunities for health care professionals and also for carers and people with Dementia is part of the HSE commitment to enable it to meet the needs of people living with Dementia in a person centred and compassionate way.

The HSE Nursing Midwifery Planning and Development Unit (NMPD), Directors of Nursing/Service Managers and their Teams in the North West have been collaborating on this subject.

Also, more recently work has been undertaken with nursing colleagues in the Western Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland to explore how they can work in partnership to build capacity in relation to skills and knowledge around dementia care.
Sligo Cancer fundraiser Peter Milne is in a race against time to get the Government to stick to its promise of funding a kidney cancer drug he needs to survive.

Peter's only hope is the drug Nivolumab, which is still not yet available to HSE patients.

In July however, Health Minister Simon Harris Nine announced that nine new life-changing drugs would be made available later this year after the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health resolved a dispute over funding the medication.

The drugs include Nivolumab along with other drugs used to treat cancer, heart disease and depression and will be funded this year from the HSE's existing budget.

The Government said the drugs would be available from September.

It was a lifeline for Peter who needs the drug to control the spread of his cancer.

He has been battling kidney cancer since 2008 and suffered a relapse in 2014. He was told last April that the drugs he was on were no longer working.

The ray of hope from Minister Harris in July wasn't to last long.

Just last Wednesday, following a procedure at a Dublin hospital, his consultant Professor Ray McDermott gave Peter and his wife Bernie the devastating news that his tumour had grown and he needed to be treated with Nivolumab immediately - but it could be a year before it's made available by the HSE.

A year is time Peter hasn't got.

"He needs it now," said his distraught wife Bernie Marron, "but the Government won't pay for it now."

"We've gone from the euphoria in July when the Government announced they would approve it for reimbursement, to crushing disappointment. The doctor has no sense that it's in the pipeline any time soon," she said.

"The doctor told him his tumour had grown. That's why he's having difficulty breathing. The Government said it's not available to Peter. They won't pay for it," she told The Sligo Champion.

Speaking last July, Minister Harris said he had asked that the issue be resolved as a matter of urgency, so that patients were not adversely affected.

Minister Harris added that "the speedy provision of these nine treatments is a priority, and I expect the HSE to conclude all the necessary processes - clinical, commercial and legal - as a matter of priority, to ensure that clinicians and patients have access to these treatment options as soon as possible."

"This idea that it was going to be released by September turns out not to be true," said Bernie.

She has raised the matter in political circles in a bid to keep the pressure on the Government to keep its promise made last July.

"I've emailed them all. I've spoken to Deputy Tony McLoughlin who is our Government TD and he said he was going to speak to Minster Simon Harris on our behalf.

"I rang him today and he said that he hadn't gotten to speak to Simon Harris but he was trying to reach him.

"Martin Kenny tried to phone me back when I was driving. I emailed Marc MacSharry and left a message. I've also written to all the members of the Oireachtas Committee on Health, which includes some Senators.

"They were very helpful before. I know it was late Friday and this is only Monday so we'll see what happens.

"I'd really like there to be movement ahead of a consultation we have Tuesday (today) with Peter's consultant.

"If the people who prescribe it have no time line, you don't know where you are. We would try to put the money together if it was a matter of a few weeks but it's expensive," she said.

"I don't think it costs much more than the drugs he was on though. But our consultant told us not to bankrupt ourselves," she added.

The drug is estimated to cost in the region of 100,000-140,000 per annum. It's not a cure, it's a life-extending drug, says Bernie.

Nivolumab was recently approved for use by the HSE and deemed effective to treat kidney cancer such as that which Peter suffers from. Peter had been switched to a different generic brand of the same drug he was on that stopped working for him in April but his family did not have high expectations that would work.

Now it seems their worst fears have come to pass.

"I would love to have Peter home. But I don't know if the doctors are waiting to find out about the treatment of Nivolumab for Peter," she said.

Speaking from hospital in Dublin to The Sligo Champion yesterday, Bernie said Peter was doing OK and in good spirits.

"His lungs got infected from where the tumour is growing and blocking his airways. The situation is that a second drug he was put on has stopped working.

"Nivolumab is a immunotherapy. It's licenced in the UK and used by the NHS," she said.

The retired drama teacher had a cancerous kidney removed in 2008 but the cancer resurfaced in 2014 and he has been receiving ongoing treatment for terminal cancer ever since.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Peter began raising thousands of Euro for Sligo Cancer Support Centre.

In 2015 Peter climbed the four highest peaks in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales to raise funds for the local charity: Carrauntwohill in Kerry, Snowden in Wales, Scafell Pike in the Lake District in England and Ben Nevis in Scotland.

Speaking in 2015, Peter said the Cancer Support Centre in Sligo had been "a brilliant resource" for his family.

" We were in a state of shock, when we got the news and I can't thank them enough. On one side they have a huge amount of expertise, massages and counselling to make life easier for people, but there's always a welcome for you there. It's unbelievably warm, welcoming and peaceful over there as a place where you can go and just chat anytime," he said at the time.

"I've had some wonderful counselling sessions with their counsellor. Not pushing it aside, dealing with it. At the same time, living life to the full," he said.

His Four Peak Mountain climb so inspired a UK Insurance company that they raised almost 4,500 by climbing the equivalent height by going up and down their office stairs in 2016. They presented the cheque at the summit during Peter's annual community climb of Benbulbe.

For his wife Bernie and two grown children, Sinead and Ronan, every moment gained with Peter is now precious.

The Sligo Champion had still not received a comment from the HSE at the time of going to press yesterday evening (Monday).
When Arklow man Tom Curran agreed to be interviewed for a documentary about his late partner's Marie Fleming's right to die campaign, he had no idea of the series of surprising coincidences that would ensue.

Tom was approached by a group of DCU media students who wanted to document the couple's story and Marie's legal challenge to have assisted suicide legalised in Ireland.

'It started around Februrary or March of last year when the students approached me and asked if they could feature Marie's story as their end of year project. I was flattered and shocked that they were interested especially as they were not even in college when Marie's story came to prominence. I was delighted that these young people wanted to document it,' Tom said.

The group later met with Tom in Arklow and Woodenbridge and filmed an interview as well as various local scenes and photographs of the couple.

'Later they sent me the footage to approve and I thought that was the end of it until I got a call to say they were taking part in a film festival in Donegal.'

The young film-makers had no idea that Marie was a native of Donegal and of her connections to the county.

'I couldn't believe it when they told me that the festival was to take place in Ballyliffen as that was a place where Marie spent a lot of time in her youth. On top of that, it turned out that the film is to be screened in the same hotel where Marie and her first husband had their honeymoon. I couldn't believe the coincidence,' Tom said.

Tom will attend the festival on this Sunday, September 24, and will give speech at the screening. The film-makers are also set to receive an award for their documentary 'An Act of Love' - the same title as Marie's book.

'It will be very emotional and poignant but I am looking forward to it and to spending a few days in a place which was so dear to Marie,' Tom said.
Puerto Rico faced another night of darkness yesterday, two days after Hurricane Maria hurled rain and wind at the US territory and knocked out its electricity grid.

Residents feared power could be out for weeks - or even months - and wondered how their battered island would cope.

Some of the island's 3.4 million residents planned to go to the US to temporarily escape the desolation left by the destruction. At least in the short term, though, the soggy misery will continue: additional rain - up to 15cm - is expected through today.

Neida Febus wandered around her San Juan neighbourhood with bowls of cooked rice, ground meat and avocado, offering food to anyone in need. The damage was so extensive, the 64-year-old retiree said that she didn't think the power would be turned back on until Christmas.

"This storm crushed us from one end of the island to the other," she said.

The National Weather Service in San Juan said yesterday the north-western municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas, home to about 70,000 people, were being evacuated because a nearby dam was failing.

The death toll in Puerto Rico stood at six but was likely to rise. Hector M Pesquera, of the Department of Public Safety, said the casualties occurred in the municipalities of Utuado, Toa Baja, and Bayamon.

"At the moment these are fatalities we know of. We know of other potential fatalities through unofficial channels that we haven't been able to confirm," Mr Pesquera said.

Diana Jaquez, one of the owners of the Coquette hair salon in the Santurce area, assessed damage from the storm with her husband. Their children played nearby.

She said she hadn't decided whether to leave Puerto Rico. "Business has dropped a lot," she said.

"People have other priorities than looking good."

Outside her store, more than 100 people stood in line waiting to get money out of an ATM machine and hoping there would still be some cash left when their turn came.

The loss of power left residents hunting for gas canisters for cooking, collecting rainwater or steeling themselves mentally for the hardships to come in the tropical heat.

Maria's death toll across the Caribbean rose to at least 27.

Along with six deaths on Puerto Rico, at least 15 were killed on hard-hit Dominica.

Other islands reporting deaths were Haiti, three; Guadeloupe, two; and Dominican Republic, one.
China has been expressing increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong Un

China has announced that it will limit energy supplies to North Korea and stop buying its textiles under UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile development, further reducing support from Pyongyang's last ally.

Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to two million barrels per year, effective January 1, the Commerce Ministry said. Sales of liquefied natural gas are banned outright.

North Korea depends on China for almost all its oil and gas but estimates of its consumption are low, leaving it unclear how Beijing's new limit will affect them. The restrictions announced on Saturday do not apply to crude oil, which makes up the biggest share of energy exports to the North.

China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are believed to be the North's biggest source of foreign revenue following rounds of UN sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.

China accounts for some 90% of the North's trade, making its cooperation critical to efforts to derail Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development.

Chinese leaders were long the North's diplomatic protectors but express increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong Un. They support the latest UN Security Council sanctions but are reluctant to push Pyongyang too hard for fear Kim's government might collapse. They also argue against doing anything that might hurt ordinary North Koreans.

Chinese officials complain their country bears the cost of enforcing sanctions, which have hurt businesses in its north-east that trade with the North.

Earlier US president Donald Trump lashed out at Kim during a rally speech in Alabama.

Mr Trump said: "We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place", adding: "Rocket Man should have been handled a long time ago".

Both leaders have been trading barbs.

Kim earlier this week called Mr Trump "deranged" and said he would "pay dearly" for his threats.

Mr Trump delivered a combative speech on Tuesday at the UN General Assembly, where he mocked Kim as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission". Mr Trump also told the UN that if "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea".

The UN Security Council voted on September 11 to limit fuel supplies and ban the North's textile exports. China, one of five permanent council members with power to veto UN action, agreed to the measure after the United States toned down a proposal for a complete oil embargo.

Petroleum exports for use in the North's ballistic missile programme or other activities banned by UN sanctions also are prohibited, the Commerce Ministry said.

The US government's Energy Information Agency estimates the North's 2016 daily imports from China at 15,000 barrels of crude oil and 6,000 barrels of refined products. That would be the equivalent of almost 5.5 million barrels of crude and 2.2 million barrels of refined products for the full year.

North Korea has abundant coal but depends almost entirely on imports for oil and gas.

North Korean textile exports in 2016 totalled 750 million dollars (555 million), according to South Korea's Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. It said nearly 80% went to China.

AP
A former waiter is poised to be elected as head of Italy's most popular party today, giving him a shot at becoming the country's next prime minister.

Luigi Di Maio is all but certain to be announced the winner of an online ballot to choose the new leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which has called for a referendum on whether Italy should ditch the euro.

Members of the party, which has challenged the traditional primacy of the left and right, voted online yesterday and Thursday, with the result to be announced at a rally in Rimini this evening. Mr Di Maio, the deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament, was one of eight contenders but the other seven are considered to be political nobodies with no chance of winning.

A general election is due to be held by next May, with the Five Star Movement leading most opinion polls as the most popular party. Mr Di Maio stands out for his youth - he is 31 and has had a meteoric rise within the party that was founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a former stand-up comedian.

Mr Di Maio presents a calmer image than 69-year-old Mr Grillo, who has a toxic relationship with the press - this week he told journalists: "I'd eat you just for the pleasure of vomiting you out." The election was called after Mr Grillo stepped back from the party's day-to-day running. ( Daily Telegraph)
Transport plane carries parts of Lufthansa aircraft at the airport in Friedrichshafen (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

Transport plane carries parts of Lufthansa aircraft at the airport in Friedrichshafen (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via AP)

A Lufthansa passenger jet hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant group's campaign against West German authorities has returned home.

The dpa news agency reported most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived on Saturday in the city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum.

The remainder of the aircraft is due to arrive on Wednesday from Brazil.

The aircraft ended up in a Brazilian carrier's fleet and had been sitting decommissioned at the country's Fortaleza Airport for years.

A Palestinian group demanding the release of members of West Germany's Red Army Faction hijacked a Mallorca to Frankfurt flight in October 1977.

The hijacking marked the peak of the "German Autumn" of leftist violence.

German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, Somalia.

AP
A spiritual guru has been arrested in India on suspicion of rape, police said

Police have arrested a popular Indian spiritual guru, the second in the past month, for allegedly raping a 21-year-old woman in western India.

The woman, whose parents have been followers of 70-year-old Kaushlendra Prapannacharya Falahari Maharaja, complained that the guru assaulted her, police officer Jaisingh Nathawat said.

The alleged assault happened on August 7 at his headquarters in Alwar, a town in Rajashtan state.

The woman said the spiritual guru warned her against telling anyone about the assault, but she decided to break her silence after another self-proclaimed guru was tried.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison last month for raping two followers in northern Haryana state.

Falahari Maharaja faces 10 years in prison if convicted.

Religious sects have huge followings in India and also wield considerable political clout.

AP
British canoeist Emma Kelty rejected an offer of safe passage through dangerous pirate infested waters prior to her murder over fears she was losing too much time in her bid to complete her quest.

The 43-year-old adventurer, who gave up her job as a headteacher to become a full-time explorer, was murdered in her tent during her mission to canoe solo 4,000 miles down the Amazon.

Brazilian police said Miss Kelty had been shot and killed by robbers - known locally as water rats - who then dumped her body in the river.

Prior to her death she stopped in the village of Sao Joao de Catua on the Solimoes river before embarking on the feared stretch of river after Coari, 100km upstream.

Resident Miliane Vincente told Mailonline they had warned her of the dangers.

"We saw her passing by and called her into the community. I told her it was very dangerous, that it was full of drug trafficking and terrorists," she said.

"I took her to my house and gave her water to drink, and we talked as she showed me her photos. I told her to go with us in our boat to Coari so she wouldn't be in danger.

"I still remember he last words: I can't stay, the more time I stay here the more time I'm losing. For me to succeed I have to do this route. Your hearts are very kind, but I have to carry on."

After the meeting, Mrs Kelty later posted on Facebook: "So in or near coari (100km away) i will have my boat stolen and i will be killed too. Nice."

Investigators had tried to find her after her emergency alert sounded, which pinpointed her exact location, and they launched a search operation.

It later became apparent she had not triggered the emergency alarm and the 'SOS' button was in fact pressed by one of her killers who was trying to work out how to use the device they had stolen, an hour and a half after her death.

Police have now recovered the GPS device, as well as a mobile phone and a memory card, which the gang of seven 'pirates' sold to local villagers after killing her.

The GPS signal sent at 10pm last Wednesday night led investigators to the riverside village of Lauro Sodre, 150 miles west of Manaus, and a manhunt which has brought about the arrest of three men accused of her murder.

Ringleader Evanilson Gomes da Costa, 24, died Wednesday after being shot by rival gangsters.

And one local who knows da Costa - known by his nicknamed Baia - said the gangster spoke to him in the early hours of the morning following Ms Kelty's death last Wednesday night, revealing what they had done.

The man, who didn't want to be named, said: "He said he was one of four men. The woman had put up her tent on the beach in exactly the area where the Colombia drug traffickers go through, and which is crawling with pirates who wait for them to arrive to attack.

"These men aren't pirates though, they are just drug users. We are all shocked that these men from our community did such a terrible thing to this woman.

"When the men saw her tent they thought it belonged to a Colombian with drugs, so they started firing from about 50 metres away. The woman was hit in the arm. She started waving frantically and screaming for help."

He said that when the four men saw that she was a woman they attacked her and, still believing she was carrying drugs, cut off her hair with a knife while demanding to know where the drugs were.

According to the man, one of the group then slit her through with the knife, before all four men "sexually abused her".

He said they then dragged her body to the river and dumped it in the fast-moving water.

He said: "The men fled into the forest after we all found out what they had done. We provided the police with the details and their identities. We're all disgusted by what they have done."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Members of rescue team search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

People run for refuge to a school used as a shelter after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

People stand together on a street after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

People run for refuge to a school used as a shelter after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

People who are living in a shelter because their homes were damaged in an earthquake, are united in a prayer after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

A rescue removes debris in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

People stand together on a street after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

There has been a new earthquake in Mexico measured at magnitude 6.2 and centered in the southern state of Oaxaca, US seismologists say.

The quake hits the country just four days after a deadly 7.1 magnitude quake claimed the lives of 300 people and injured a total of 2,619.

Expand Close A rescue removes debris in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero / Facebook

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Whatsapp A rescue removes debris in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Witnesses told Reuters that a slight tremor was felt in Mexico City and seismic alarms sounded.

Residents ran into the streets and rescuers briefly stopped combing the rubble left by a bigger tremor earlier this week.

Expand Close People stand together on a street after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez / Facebook

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Whatsapp People stand together on a street after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

The United States Geological Survey said the new quake was relatively shallow and hit near Juchitan, which is a tropical region of Oaxaca state hard hit by another major earthquake on Sept 7.

Already shaken by the two recent earthquakes that have killed at least 380 people in Mexico this month, thousands of people ran out onto the streets again in Oaxaca and Mexico City, some in pajamas when the new tremor shortly before 8 a.m.

"I heard the alarm and ran downstairs with my family," said Sergio Cedillo, 49, who was watching rescuers efforts to find survivors from Tuesday's quake when the alarm sounded.

No new damage was immediately reported, but rescue efforts were suspended in areas affected by Tuesday's quake to allow authorities to see if the new tremors would put workers at risk, Luis Felipe Puente, the head of Mexico's civil protection agency said.

Expand Close A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero / Facebook

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Whatsapp A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Rescue efforts

The quake comes as armies of trained rescuers and scores of volunteers are already carefully combing through the rubble of Mexico's most deadly earthquake in decades, hoping against diminishing odds to pull more survivors out nearly four days after the disaster struck.

Expand Close A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero / Facebook

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Whatsapp A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

While rescue efforts at the sites of some collapsed buildings had been called off, at others sweat-drenched workers kept up a frenzied pace.

The 7.1 magnitude earthquake destroyed 52 buildings in the sprawling Mexican capital early afternoon on Tuesday, leaving thousands homeless and close to 300 people dead nationwide.

Apartment buildings, offices, a school and a textile factory were among the structures flattened.

Maria Isela Sandoval waited anxiously outside a collapsed office building in the trendy Roma neighborhood for news of her missing nephew and possibly other co-workers trapped somewhere under the ruins.

Expand Close People run for refuge to a school used as a shelter after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril / Facebook

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Whatsapp People run for refuge to a school used as a shelter after a tremor was felt in Mexico City, Mexico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril

She said her nephew worked on the fourth floor of the building, and that officials have told her they believe survivors could be trapped in a capsule within the twisted steel and chunks of concrete.

"We pray to God they are alive, that they can hold on," the 38-year-old housewife said, her eyes red with exhaustion as she has not slept in days.

U.S. rescue workers went to work Friday in the collapsed office building, looking for six people who were still missing.

Mexican soldiers and volunteers, supported by teams from as far away as Israel and Japan, have so far rescued at least 60 people from the ruins in Mexico City and surrounding towns.

After several days of searching, rescuers were finding more corpses than survivors, and frustration was mounting especially as the government's efforts were largely panned.

Across the mega city of more than 20 million people, many whose homes had become uninhabitable sought a place to call home, raising the specter of a housing shortage.

Officials said there could be some 20,000 badly damaged homes in the adjacent states of Morelos and Puebla.

Julia Juarez, 56, sat in a park where the homeless set up tents. "All the help we have received is from the civilian population. The government has not sent anything at all," she said. "No food, no clothes, no water, not even an Alka-Seltzer," she said, referring to the pain relieving medication.

Tuesday's massive quake hit on the anniversary of the deadly 1985 tremor that by some estimates killed as many as 10,000 people and destroying scores of older buildings in the Mexican capital.

Despite the shrinking odds that more survivors would be pulled out from huge piles of debris, workers at many sites continued to dig on the faintest chance at success.

At the same collapsed Roma office building, volunteer coordinator Angel Ortiz, a 36-year-old taxi driver, pointed to the results of heat-sensing detectors that appeared to show signs of life somewhere underneath the rubble.

"There are still people alive down there," he said.

Like many traumatized but determined rescue workers, Ortiz described the past few days as an emotional roller-coaster, feeling encouraged one moment but depressed the next.

"For me, it's really satisfying to be here even though it's hard to explain," he said. "There's so much emotion and anxiety."

More to follow
Rescuers search the rubble of a building in the Ciudad Jardin neighbourhood of Mexico City (AP)

Mexico has raised the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake to 293, with more than half the fatalities in the capital.

National Civil Protection chief Luis Felipe Puente said there were 155 dead in Mexico City.

In a tweet on Friday, Mr Puente said the tolls remained unchanged elsewhere with 73 in Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

AP

Hope mixed with fear on a 60ft stretch of bike lane in central Mexico City, where families huddled under tents and donated blankets awaited word of their loved ones trapped in a four-storey pile of rubble behind them.

On day four of the search for survivors after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake brought down the seven-floor office building and many others, hope rose and fell with a change in the weather; word that Japanese rescuers had joined the recovery effort; officials' assurances that people remained alive inside; and a call from a familiar number.

For Patricia Fernandez Romero, who spent the morning on a yellow folding stool under a handwritten list with the names of the 46 missing, it was remembering how badly her 27-year-old son Ivan Colin Fernandez, sang and realising how much she wanted to hear him again.

"There are moments when you feel like you're breaking down," Ms Fernandez said.

"And there are moments when you're a little calmer. They are all moments that you wouldn't wish on anyone."

Along the bike lane, where families slept in tents, accepting food and coffee from strangers, people have organised to present a united front to authorities, who they pressed ceaselessly for information about their loved ones.

They were told that water and food had been passed along to at least some of those trapped inside.

On Friday morning, after hours of inactivity blamed on rain, rescuers were readying to re-enter the site, joined by teams from Japan and Israel.

Jose Gutierrez, a civil engineer attached to the rescue who has a relative trapped in the wreckage, gathered other families of the missing to let them know what was going on.

"My family is in there. I want them to get out," he said, his voice breaking. "So we go onward."

A rollercoaster of emotions played out for Roberta Villegas Miguel, who was awaiting word of her 37-year-old son, Paulino Estrada Villegas, an accountant who worked on the fourth floor and was married with two young daughters.

Wrapped in a fuzzy turquoise blanket against the morning chill, she said that her daughter-in-law was contacted by a friend who said she had received a call from a mobile number that belonged to her son, but there was no conversation.

Her daughter-in-law ran to authorities with the information, but hours later returned to say that it was her husband's old number.

At first they held out hope that he had given his old phone's card to a co-worker who was using it to call out of the building. But eventually authorities traced the call to Queretaro state, extinguishing the latest glimmer of hope.

Meanwhile, the time was nearing for bulldozers to be brought in to clear rubble and replace the delicate work of rescuers, though officials went to great pains to say it was still a rescue operation.

National Civil Defence chief Luis Felipe Puente acknowledged that diggers and bulldozers were starting to clear away some wrecked buildings where no life has been detected or where teetering piles of rubble threatened to collapse on neighbouring structures.

"It is false that we are demolishing structures where there could be survivors," he said.

"The rescue operations will continue, and they won't stop."

AP
A Rohingya Muslim woman holds her child as she waits to receive aid near Balukhali refugee camp, Bangladesh. Photo: AP Photo/Dar Yasin

India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using "chilli and stun grenades" to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar, officials said yesterday.

Border forces in Hindu-majority India, which wants to deport around 40,000 Rohingya already living in the country, citing security risks, have been authorised to use "rude and crude" methods to stop any infiltration attempts.

"We don't want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we won't tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil," said a senior official with the Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

"We're using grenades containing chilli spray to stop hundreds of Rohingyas trying to enter India ... the situation is tense," added the official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media.

More than 420,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when a coordinated attack by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces triggered a counter-offensive, killing at least 400 people, mainly militants.

The United Nations has called the assault a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Densely populated Bangladesh is struggling to shelter all the refugees desperate for space to set up shacks, sparking worries in India that the influx could spill into its territory.

RPS Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF patrolling a large part of the border in India's eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both chilli grenades and stun grenades to push back the Rohingya.

A chilli grenade makes use of a naturally occurring compound in chilli powder to cause severe irritation and temporarily immobilise its target. ( Reuters)
Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans gather at Kim Il Sung Square to attend a mass rally against America (AP/Jon Chol Jin)

US President Donald Trump's insult, calling leader Kim Jong Un "rocket man", makes "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more", North Korea's foreign minister said.

Ri Yong Ho called the US leader "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency" with his finger on the "nuclear button" and declared: "None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission."

He told world leaders on Saturday: "In case innocent lives of the US are lost because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible."

Mr Ri's highly anticipated speech to the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting fuelled the fiery rhetoric between the US president and North Korea's young leader.

Mr Trump threatened in his speech to the 193-member world body on Tuesday, to "totally destroy" the North if provoked.

Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, responded by pledging to take "highest-level" action against the United States.

Mr Ri suggested to reporters on Friday in New York that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfil Kim's vows. But he did not make any mention of such a test on Saturday.

Mr Ri said: "Our national nuclear force is, to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the US and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the US."

Mr Ri's comments came as the United States on Saturday flew bombers and fighter escorts to the furthest point north of the Demilitarised Zone by any such American aircraft this century, in a show of American military might.

The Pentagon said the mission showed how seriously President Donald Trump took North Korea's "reckless behaviour".

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defence Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons programme is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community.

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies," Ms White said.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday.

The US characterised the flights as extending further north of the DMZ, which separates North and South Korea, than any US fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

Mr Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

On Thursday, Mr Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Mr Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.
officials said in most cases the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems

The US federal government has told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year's presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after US Department of Homeland Security officials first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia.

The states that said they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The Associated Press contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others confirming were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Being targeted does not mean that sensitive voter data was manipulated or results were changed.

For many states, the Friday calls were the first official confirmation of whether their states were on the list - even though state election officials across the country have been calling for months for the federal government to share information about any hacks, as have members of Congress.

"It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information," California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement. "The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy."

US Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia, the top Democrat on a committee that's investigating Russian meddling in last year's election, has been pushing the department for months to reveal the identities of the targeted states. He said states need such information in real time so they can strengthen their cyber defences.

"We have to do better in the future," he said.

Homeland Security said it recognises that state and local officials should be kept informed about cybersecurity risks to election infrastructure.

"We are working with them to refine our processes for sharing this information while protecting the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners," it said in a statement.

The government did not say who was behind the hacking attempts or provide details about what had been sought. But election officials in several states said the attempts were linked to Russia.

The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state's systems were targeted by "Russian government cyber actors". Alaska elections division director Josie Bahnke said computers in Russia were scanning election systems looking for vulnerabilities.

A spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State said the group has requested a list of the states where there were hacking efforts. In most cases, states said they were told the systems were not breached.

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. The targets included voter registration systems but not vote tallying software. Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks but most were unsuccessful.

Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. Other states said their cybersecurity efforts turned back efforts to get to crucial information.

"There are constant attempts by bad actors to hack our systems," Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement. "But we continue to deflect those attempts."

Colorado said the hacking was not quite a breach. "It's really reconnaissance by a bad guy to try and figure out how we would break into your computer," said Trevor Timmons, a spokesman for the Colorado secretary of state's office. "It's not an attack. I wouldn't call it a probe. It's not a breach, it's not a penetration."

AP
Syria's foreign minister has told world leaders that his country is "marching steadily" toward the goal of rooting out terrorism and "victory is now within reach".

Walid al-Mouallem pointed to "the liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra", the end of the siege of Deir el-Zour by the Islamic State, "and the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria" by the Syrian army and its supporters and allies, including Russia and Iran.

Russia's military said about two weeks ago that Syrian troops have liberated about 85% of the war-torn country's territory from militants, a major turnaround two years after Moscow intervened to lend a hand to its embattled long-time ally.

While al-Mouallem was looking towards the end of Syria's more-than-six-year civil war, the leader of hurricane-hammered Dominica made an impassioned plea for help at the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting for an island country on "the front line of the war on climate change".

"Let these extraordinary events elicit extraordinary efforts to rebuild nations sustainably," Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told the UN five days after Hurricane Maria swept over his Caribbean country with 160 mph winds, killing 15 people, flattening homes and destroying roads.

The General Assembly was scheduled to hear later Saturday from North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho, a highly anticipated speech following the escalating rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and his country's leader Kim Jong Un.

In his speech, Mr al-Mouallem heaped praise on the army and the country's allies and looked ahead to victory, though fighting still continues in many areas of the country.

"I am confident that when this unjust war on Syria is over, the Syrian army will go down in history as the army that heroically defeated, along with its supporting forces and its allies, the terrorists that came to Syria from many countries and received large support from the most powerful countries of the world," he said.

While the army and its supporting forces and allies "are making daily achievements, clearing out territories and uprooting terrorists," Mr al-Mouallem said, "the threat of this plague persists".

On the political front, he said local reconciliation agreements have allowed tens of thousands of internally displaced people and refugees to return home.

He said "Syria is determined to scale up reconciliation efforts, whenever possible".

The Syrian minister said Syria is encouraged by talks in Kazakhstan's capital Astana on local ceasefires and "de-escalation zones."

He expressed hope that these talks "will help us reach an actual cessation of hostilities and separate terrorist groups" like IS from groups that have agreed to join the Astana process.

Mr Al-Mouallem reaffirmed the Syrian government's commitment to further progress in Geneva talks, which are aimed at establishing a transitional government, drafting a new constitution and holding elections in Syria.

"This process has yet to bear fruit in the absence of a genuine national opposition that can be a partner in Syria's future," he said, "and as countries with influence over the other party continue to block any meaningful progress."

Talks among Syrian opposition groups are expected to take place in early October in hopes of producing a unified delegation in Geneva.

AP
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In a first, a Pakistani film has been chosen as Britains official submission for the foreign-language category at the 90th Academy Awards. The film My Pure Land directed by British Pakistani filmmaker Sarmad Masud is the first Urdu language film as Britains selection for the Oscars and it for sure is a very big thing.

Bill Kenwright Films

The story of My Pure Land revolves around the story of a mother and her two daughters and how they fight back for their land against an army of bandits.

Bill Kenwright Films

Th film is based on the real story of Nazo Dharejo, who grew up in a rural pocket of Sindh with her two sisters and elder brother. Nazo's father, Khuda Buksh was a farmer and her mother Waderi Jamzadi had to raise her children.

Nazo Dhare, a mother with two daughters in rural Pakistan, fights to defend her home when her scheming uncle lays claim to the land.

Bill Kenwright Films

Set in a 24-hour siege, the film has been widely shot through guerilla and deeply focuses on the rawness of living in a deserted Sindh. The film stars Suhaee Abro, Salman Ahmed Khan, Razia Malik, Tayyab Ifzal and Eman Fatima.

Watch the trailer of the film right here.
One day after everyone reacted and trolled Mahira Khan for 'chilling and smoking' with Ranbir Kapoor, the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil actor has pushed out a statement.

Ranbir Kapoor's fan club has released a statement that has reportedly been shared by Ranbir himself. He has lashed out at all the haters, trolls and people on the internet for ruthlessly judging a woman just because she chose to do something she enjoys. A normal smoke break.

Twitter

Defending Mahira and expressing his displeasure on the reaction, Ranbir strongly reacted on the pictures,

Twitter

Ive gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire and respect, for her achievements and even more for the person she is. It is very unfair the way she is being judged and spoken about.

Pointing out at the inequality in judgment, he added,

What is also sad is the inequality in judgment just because she is a woman."

And finally, Ranbir wrote what's on everyone's mind,

BCCL

I request you to stop the negativity and move on with your beautiful god gifted lives. Peace and Love. PS: Both smoking and hate are injurious to health."

Ranbir's reaction comes one day after reactions of people like Ali Zafar, Meesha Shafi and some other Bollywood actors, who too condemned the whole moral-policing and misplaced outraged that was all over the internet and in the media.

What's cooking? #RanbirKapoor & #MahiraKhan spotted smoking on the streets of New York! #bollywood #picoftheday #hollywood #newyork A post shared by Eyes On Celeb (@eyesonceleb) on Sep 21, 2017 at 9:40pm PDT

Ranbir's statement has been reported by Missmalini and has been shared by one of his fan clubs.
The country has been shocked by the brutal murder of the seven-year-old student of Ryan International School and a five-year-old in Gurgaon. Every day we hear tales of some violence perpetrated against helpless children, and in an environment where they are meant to feel secure.

Parents who trust that the school are now terrified that their children could be next, and are seeking reassurance. To that end, educational institutions need a well-planned strategy that ensures prompt response to an emergency so that no life is harmed or lost. Here are some measures that they could adopt.

(Also Read: CBSE Blames Ryan International School's Lack Of Basic Security For 7-YO Boy's Unfortunate Death)

1. Guarding entry points

Every entry point to a school must be restricted and controlled in such a way that no one goes through without being properly identified. These points should be staffed by trained adults who can determine if the visitors really need access or not.

representative image/bccl

2. Installing alarm systems

Mandatory security measures should include alarms in every school. In case of an emergency, alarms should simultaneously alert the school authorities and the local law enforcement officials.

representative image/bccl

3. Installing telephones

The installation of telephones at strategic locations within the school premises can act as an alternative to the rule that prohibits students from bringing mobile phones to school. Students can access help more easily if they are given the liberty to use these instruments in emergencies.

representative image/bccl

4. Installing CCTVs

CCTVs are not items of luxury, but of necessity. Placing them at strategic locations within the school campus can aid in ensuring that no act of violence or abuse goes unnoticed by authorities. The response to an unfortunate event, therefore, becomes automatically quicker.

representative image/bccl

5. Practicing disaster plans

Students and staff should be given regular practice in the understanding of and executing disaster plans. A catastrophe can strike anytime. Hence, its highly imperative for the entire school to be ready when it does.

(Also Read: Private Schools In Gurgaon Are Now Offering Admissions To The Students Of Ryan International)

representative image/bccl

6. Setting up of response units

In case of an emergency, response units can mitigate the effects of a disaster if they are prompted into action. This can be possible only when everyone present at the school adheres to safety protocols.

representative image/bccl

7. Building zero tolerance for bullying

Everyone from parents to school staff should create an atmosphere where the child develops zero tolerance for bullying. This can act as the first step toward building a childs resistance to all kinds of abuse.

representative image/bccl

8. Setting a community watch

A community watch can be organised in schools that comprise teachers, senior students, and other staff members. Keeping a vigil during school hours can go a long way in preventing a disaster. It is advised, however, that the members report a crime when it occurs instead of intervening themselves.

representative image/bccl

9. Building a rapport between school officials and law authorities

This relationship should be established long before a disaster strikes. Response protocols should be addressed and discussed multiple times until both parties agree upon them.

(Also Read: Probe Committee Finds 'Blatant Lapses' On School's Part In Ryan Murder Case)

representative image/bccl

10. Creating safe zones

Schools, overall, should be a safe zone, but sometimes a corner can particularly stand out as unsafe. Students should be encouraged to seek help in case they fear venturing into a space that seems unfamiliar to them.

representative image/bccl

11. Becoming situationally aware

Teachers and students should be trained in situational awareness, wherein they are encouraged to report anything that seems alarming. For example, if they spot the presence of an unknown person, they should be able to report him or her to the school authorities.

representative image/bccl

Any conceivable act of violence can be prevented by adopting these measures. Indian states should offer all the help they can to improve the security of the nations schools and ensure that no child is ever harmed again.
Activist Anjali Damania has registered a complaint with the Vakola police station after receiving threat calls from a Pakistan number early on Saturday.

bccl

Damania believes the number belongs to gangster Dawood Ibrahim. She said she was asked to withdraw cases against BJP leader Eknath Khadse. In September, the Vakola Police had booked Khadse for allegedly making obscene remarks against Damania.

Last nght at 12.33,I recd a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse +922135871719 Truecaller shows Dawood 2 Pakistan pic.twitter.com/9GUqR2VVNt  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

"I was chatting with my husband when I got the calls post midnight. Truecaller app showed that the number belongs to Dawood. I have spoken to the Mumbai Police Commissioner and he has assured action," Damania said.

Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating pic.twitter.com/Gsws5rO8WK  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Damania tweeted the Pakistan number that she got threat calls from.

Khadse had quit the Devendra Fadnavis cabinet in 2016 after he was accused of a shady land deal in Pune MIDC.
Nearly a month after its unsuccessful attempt at placing a navigation satellite into space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for its next PSLV mission in November-December.

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"We are planning the next PSLV launch in November- December," ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of the 68th National Conference of Aeronautical Society of India.

On the failed PSLV-C39 mission in August, he said a committee was looking into it and "it is in the final stages of their findings".

"It will also stipulate the exact problem. We are waiting for it," the ISRO chief said.

isro.gov.in

Kumar asserted there was no problem with the launch vehicle.

"Only that particular separation of the heat shield was the problem," he said.

isro.gov.in

The ISRO chairman also maintained that there would not be any change in the control system of the launch vehicle.

The launch of ISRO's navigation satellite onboard its polar rocket had failed on August 31 following a technical glitch, just prior to its scheduled orbiting in space.

Earlier, at the conference titled 'Emerging Trends in Aerospace Technology', Kumar focused on the need to develop indigenous cost-effective aircraft as "major development is expected in regional transport aircraft sector".

isro.gov.in

Stating that the technology required for the same already exists, the ISRO chariman said the question was whether the country could built aircraft here itself and make them operational at an affordable cost.

"Though the nation has made great strides in aerospace, launch vehicle and missile technologies, it has not made much progress in passenger aircraft sector," he pointed out.

Reasons could be manifold and it is a complex issue, he said.

Obtaining certification of the system for usage is also a problem, Kumar said, adding "we need to take up this issue and resolve it."
Suraj Biswakarma is a worried man. The flourishing tourism business in Sikkim that was raking in big bucks for many like him has dried up, thanks to the neighbouring hills of Darjeeling shutting down to press its demand for separate statehood.

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During the tourist season, the 33-year-old taxi driver from Gangtok easily made Rs 70,000 a month, but this year he has barely managed Rs 25,000. "Our biggest festival (Dashain) is around the corner. Every year I visit my in-laws with gifts. I don't know what my family and I will do this time," he said.

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Sandwiched between China to the north and West Bengal to the south, the land-locked state of Sikkim has been brought to its knees as the Gorkhaland shutdown approaches a record-breaking three months. The state's only lifeline to the outside world, National Highway 10, remains open, but with 70km of it lying in Darjeeling and Kalimpong and reports of violence in the hills, tourists have kept away.

Tourism may have been the hardest hit, but virtually no other sector has remained unaffected either.

"Sikkim's development has slowed down as we depend on Siliguri for all our resources," said former tourism minister KT Gyaltsen, now a legal advisor to the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front party.

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"The construction industry is affected. We have children studying in Darjeeling schools. People have taken a lot of loans and many of our youth are dependent on the tourism industry. It (the shutdown) has hit our economy." Tourism secretary Chewang Zangpo pointed out that between January and June this year, tourist footfall in the state hit a record 11.75 lakh, which included 31,000 foreigners, and then fell sharply.

"Sikkim has been grossly affected. Although the national highway was always open, many countries started issuing advisories cautioning their citizens to avoid our state," he said.

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The price that Sikkim is paying for the Darjeeling cause may be putting a strain on the overwhelming support it extended to its neighbour at the start of this latest round of agitation. What was initially a display of solidarity for neighbours of a similar culture, rapidly digressed into alarm as Sikkim vehicles came under attack across the border.

As income from the tourism sector. which has been flourishing in the past decade, remains non-existent, frustration is on the rise. Gyalsten has a logical explanation for Sikkim's support for the cause. "If we had stayed silent, the disturbance would have started right from Rangpo (the town bordering West Bengal). Our message was 'We support the movement and now leave us alone,'" he said. Pintso Chopel, Sikkim Democratic Front MLA Gangtok echoes a similar sentiment. "Our sympathy is always there but we want the problem solved as early as possible," he said.
A burqa-clad girl dancing to Bollywood chartbuster 'Kala Chashma' in a mall here has raised the hackles of some organizations after the video was uploaded on social media.

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Members of several Muslim organizations have vented their ire against the girl dancing in a burqa, saying it was "unIslamic" and such acts are not acceptable.

The video, which has gone viral on social media and other platforms, shows the girl dancing with four other girls at a programme which was part of promotional activity in a mall. Those present there shot the video. However, TOI cannot vouch for the authenticity of the video. It also could not be ascertained who the burqa-clad girl was.

"Dancing in public wearing a burqa, a sacred symbol of Islam, in front of men is not acceptable in our religion. The young woman has shown our religion in poor light," Ismail Shafi, vice-president of South Kanara Salafi Movement, told TOI.

He added that Muslim women who are part of Bollywood and films, have been doing this for a very long time. "It is unIslamic. The girl in the video has followed them. She had the freedom to remove the burqa and dance. Every human being has freedom in Islam, including women. Her parents should be held responsible for throwing aside values of religion," he said, when asked about an individual's freedom.

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Shafi said they will now try to find the girl, meet her family and explain what the religion means. "It is the duty of parents to control their children. Today, we have learnt that Muslims are going to pubs and are addicted too. Such things are haram," he said.
The situation in Darjeeling remained tense as the indefinite shutdown in the hills entered its 81st day on September 3.

West Bengal police have launched a massive search operation for the absconding Gorkha Janmukti chief Bimal Gurung.

He is the leader of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, a party that is demanding the formation of a separate Gorkhaland state in the state of West Bengal.

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Police are searching for him for his involvement in many cases. Since Friday, the police were combing Darjeeling hills and its adjoining areas for Gurung, against whom a lookout notice had been issued for his alleged involvement in various cases, including a bomb blast in Kalimpong police station in which a civic volunteer was killed.

There are also cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against him.

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Protests by pro-Gorkhaland supporters demanding continuation of the shutdown and a separate state of Gorkhaland were organised in various parts of the hills. Rallies were taken out in Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Sonada and Kalimpong.

Picketing by GJM supporters has been strengthened in several parts of the hills and posters and leaflets were distributed in support of the shutdown.
The Rohingya refugee crisis is getting serious by the day, and lakhs of homeless Rohingya Muslims look for a safe shelter. So far, more than 4,20,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when a coordinated attack by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces triggered a counteroffensive, killing at least 400 people, mainly militants.

While the United Nations has called the assault a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, India seems to have upped its security along the eastern border with Bangladesh and is using chilli and stun grenades to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar from violence in their homeland, officials told agencies on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Indian security forces have been authorised to use rude and crude methods to stop any attempts by the refugees to infiltrate the country. We dont want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we wont tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil, said a senior official with the Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

R.P.S. Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF patrolling a large part of the border in eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both chilli grenades and stun grenades to push back the Rohingya.

Were using grenades containing chilli spray to stop hundreds of Rohingyas trying to enter India ... the situation is tense, added the official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media. A chilli grenade makes use of a naturally-occurring compound in chilli powder to cause severe irritation and temporarily immobilise its target.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke on the Rohingya crisis on Thursday and called for their deportation as they were illegal migrants. The Modi government too, seems rather hostile towards these refugees. Seeking to get legal clearance for the deportation plan, the home ministry told the Supreme Court this week it would confidentially provide it with intelligence information showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants. Police have arrested a suspected al Qaeda member they believe was trying to recruit Rohingya in the country to fight security forces in Myanmar. More than 270 Rohingya have been in Indian jails since 2014.

Most of the peace-loving refugees had no link to criminal activity, two Rohingya men protesting against the deportation move told Indias top court on Friday.

New Delhi police officials have said that the Rohingya Muslims are clearly a threat to our security and that their investigations reveal this as a plan by Al Qaeda to use India and Bangladesh to start a religious war against Myanmar.
Kim, Kendall, Kylie, Kourtney, Kris, and Caitlyn, have hogged the spotlight for way too long and many just cannot stomach their self-absorbed and materialistic lifestyle.

Me: I'm done with keeping up with the kardashians

Twitter: Kylie Jenner is pregnant

me: pic.twitter.com/gZAI5vqDV8  Eva (@evaquinn_) September 22, 2017

Obsessing over the Kardashian and Jenner sisters? Stop. Think. Move On! That was the Twitter mantra, soon after news of 'Kylie Jenner Is Pregnant' took internet by storm.

Social media users used news of her pregnancy to draw attention to more pressing issues like the Mexico earthquake, food shortage, water shortage and other problems afflicting millions across the world.

And it worked wonders:

#1

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT

ok now that I got your attention, the entire country of Mexico had a earthquake and A lot of people died   (@noinkboy) 23 September 2017

#2

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT

ok, I got your attention... Mexico & Puerto Rico need your help! Donate to your local centers & spread the word!  E.R. (@FiebreDeJack) 23 September 2017

#3

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT

Great now that I have your attention, Flint Michigan still doesn't have fresh water to drink  Jo Jo (@JoeeMarinoo) 23 September 2017

#4

KYLIE JENNER IS PREGNANT!

now that I have your attention,..

Venezuela is currently having a food crisis.  pando (@OmarMuzaffar) 23 September 2017

#5

The fact that how Kylie Jenner *might* be pregnant is getting more attention than how Puerto Rico or Mexico is doing, makes me sick.  pic.twitter.com/GSOOWYC6bD  Francisco Ruete (@franruete) September 23, 2017

#6

sorry but i couldn't give less of a fuck about kylie jenner being pregnant... puerto rico dont have power and mexico just had an earthquake  sam (@haliordan) September 23, 2017

20-year-old business mogul, Kylie Jenner, is due in February with her first child with rapper Travis Scott. But no one cares! A big round of applause these Twitter users!
The war of words between President of United States of America Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un has taken an ugly turn. President Donald Trump recently announced another sanction against North Korea, to which, North Korea's leader called Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard".

Kim also said that he was thinking hard about how to respond, reported the Washington Post. "I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech," Kim said, adding that Trump will face results 'beyond his expectation'. He also said that he would ' tame' trump with 'fire', in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim's statement came after Trump issued a new Executive Order that expands U.S.sanctions on North Korea and companies or individuals that are involved in business with the nation, indulge in creating tension with a nuclear and ballistic missile test.

AP

Earlier on September 19, Trump, in his first address to the UNGA, attacked North Korea and termed its supreme leader Kim Jong-un as "a rocket man, who is on a suicide mission".

He further said, "It is time for North Korea to realise that de-nuclearisation is its only acceptable future." Trump asserted that North Korea's reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens entire world with the immense loss of human life.

The United Nations Security Council had also condemned the launch of yet another ballistic missile by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and called on the country's leadership to halt such activities and explore the resumption of sincere dialogue on de-nuclearisation. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the DPRK leadership "to cease further testing, comply with the relevant Security Council resolutions, and allow space to explore the resumption of sincere dialogue on de-nuclearisation."

Twitter has had a good time trolling this statement made by Un

Donald Trump vs Kim Jong Un reminds me of the good ole days of Ajit vs Ranjit bad villain vibes of Bollywood.  Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) September 22, 2017

Kim Jong Un just called Donald Trump mentally Ill. CLASSIC Pot calling the kettle black!   Lori Hendry (@Lrihendry) September 21, 2017

Donald Trump branded Kim Jong Un a Rocket Man. In 2006 we put his father, Kim Jong Il, on our cover https://t.co/uz7nphuWh4 pic.twitter.com/vaCYzN8Maw  The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 20, 2017

Rare image of the childhood conversation between Donald Trump & Kim Jong Un  pic.twitter.com/UsBRfeOJtC  Why So Silly (@silly_why) September 22, 2017

Gonna send theresa may, Donald trump and Kim Jong un the bill for some anti ageing cream  Lizzie Brisco (@LizzieBrisco) September 12, 2017

With Inputs From Agencies
Saudi Arabia adheres to a harsh version of Wahhabi Sunni Islam and is notorious for strict Sharia law and for a country steeped in misogyny sexist statements are part of the package.

Also read: Moral Police In Saudi Arabia Arrests Partygoers For Drinking And Dancing At A 'Mixed Party'

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More recently, a Saudi cleric said women should not be allowed to drive because they have a quarter of the brainpower of men.

Also Read: Saudi Arabia Censored A Woman In Swimming Pool With A Beach Ball And It's Hilarious!

The cleric, who was quoted in a report by Saudi daily Sabq, said: "It is not their fault, but women lack intellect, do they not?

"Would you give a man with half an intellect a driving licence? So how would you give one to a woman when she has half an intellect?

If she goes to the market she loses another half. What is left? A quarter... We demand the traffic department check because she is not suitable to drive and she has only a quarter.

The comments sparked anger on social media, which is hugely popular in the kingdom. Twitter users shared the video, many criticizing it and making jokes about his remarks, under the Arabic hashtag Al-Hijri_women_quarter_brain

Also read: Saudi Arabia May Allow Female-Only Gyms So That Women Can Lose Weight, Outdoors Still Banned

Saad al-Hijri was suspended from all religious activity after the sexist comment.

His suspension, ordered by the provincial governor, was aimed at preventing the spread of views that spark controversy and do not serve the national interest, reports Reuters.

Saudi Arabia remains the only country in the world that bans women from driving.
A Sri Lankan couple is in the news for using 250 school kids for carrying the bride's ridiculously long saree during their extravagant wedding ceremony.

AFP

According to an AFP report, 250 students of a state-owned school carried the train of the 3.2-kilometre (two-mile) long saree worn by the bride.

The bride and the groom walked down the main road in the central district of Kandy Thursday. The report also states that 100 students served as flower girls at the wedding.

The students were from a school named after the provincial chief minister Sarath Ekanayaka, who was a special guest at the wedding.

AFP

The National Child Protection Authority said it was investigating the incident.

We have started an investigation, said the NCPA chairman, Marini de Livera. We are going all out because we dont want this to become a trend.

De Livera said deploying students for such ceremonies during school hours was against the law, and violators could face up to 10 years in prison.

What they [the wedding party] did is a violation of child rights, de Livera said. Depriving children of education, risking their security and harming their dignity are criminal offences.

Inputs AFP
One major point in the fight for Net Neutrality and freedom of the Internet is that users should be allowed equal access to all websites, to visit as they see fit. Thats the ideal situation but its not always the case. Plenty of governments around the world are known to censor content online.

In Russia, the government is known to frequently censor content online thats critical of President Valdimir Putin. Even chat apps in the country are closely monitored, and Internet service providers are expected to comply with any block orders issued.

In China too, citizens are separated from the Internet by whats known colloquially as The Great Firewall. Instead, they have something closer to an intranet, a private lake instead of the ocean at our fingertips, where only Chinese fish swim. In both these countries.

So if you find yourself being censored from content you believe you should be able to view, here are a few steps you can try:

The everymans hack

This is a simple method to bypass only the most rudimentary of censorship attempts. Sometimes, when a government or organisation looks to block off very specific content, itll either block of just the offending web page or the domain name. In that case, the first thing you can try is adding https:// before the website URL. HTTPS is the secure form of the HTTP internet protocol used to access websites. Sometime only this version will remain blocked off, so trying the secure version of the page may work.

It will, however, still let someone monitoring your internet connection (like in your office) view the domain name of the website you visited, just not which specific pages under that you click on.

Another option is to try an alternate URL of the website you want. For instance, if the http://twitter.com domain is blocked off, try the mobile website instead at http://m.twitter.com. Its rudimentary, but its worth a shot.

Web proxies

Web-based proxies (like https://www.proxysite.com/) are websites that redirect a users traffic in order to get around censorship. To use it, all you have to do is visit the website, enter the web address you want to see and itll display the page for you. Unfortunately web-based proxy services, though mostly free, dont block your traffic from anyone monitoring your Internet connection. They also wont let you access blocked services like instant messaging apps, and will have a full record of everything you do online.

Encrypted proxies

These are like web-based proxies, except they provide an added layer of encryption on top, so others cant see what youre up to. On the other hand, while they may be slightly more secure, the tool provider here will still have information about you, including possibly your name and sign up email you may have provided, and the websites you visited.

Virtual Private Networks

A VPN is one of the more secure ways to encrypt your Internet traffic, and is regularly used by corporates looking to protect itself from phishing and data theft attacks through its employees.

Once a VPN is configured on your system (which needs to be your own or at least one you can trust not to be available to anyone else) you can visit webpages, and even access other tools like your email and messaging apps. A VPN protects your connection from being spied on, but the service provider could still be keeping track of your Internet logs, or even giving them to a third party.

Tor browser

Tor is by far considered to be the most secure way to access the Web. Its an open-source software designed to give you anonymity online using a series of nodes in a network to redirect your Internet traffic. The Tor Browser makes use of the Tor anonymity network, with each web request sent back and forth between at least three nodes. Thanks to this, no single node in the chain knows both the destination and source of the signal, allowing to circumvent censorship and also stay anonymous online. The only drawbacks are that it can be slow in terms of traffic, and more importantly, its somewhat complex and therefore tough for a new user to get acclimated to.
Uber just cant seem to catch a break these days. In another major blow to the company, London on Friday stripped the ride-hailing service of its license to operate, starting next week.

Its a huge financial blow to not just Uber, but also its estimated 3.5 million users in the city.

The surprise, however, came with Ubers response to the news, with new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi instead pleading with the city to work with the company, as well as having the London arm asking its users to sign a petition to have them reinstated.

Its clear shift away from the companys previous combative stance under ex-CEO Travis Kalanick, though Khosrowshahi did maintain they were innocent of the accusations. However, it may be a little too late for Uber to play nice.

Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w/us to make things right  dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) 22 September 2017

Londons transport authority said Ubers conduct was not fit to hold a vehicle hiring license, and the companys services would not be renewed when it expires Sept 30. However, the city is letting the company operate until the appeals process is completed, one that could take months as 40,000 Uber drivers fight to save their livelihood.

Ubers approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications, the transport authority said. In particular, it was referring to Ubers failure to report criminal offences by its drivers, as well as lax background checks.

But that's not all...

Also playing a part in the decision was Ubers Greyball fiasco, where it came to light the company was using a software of that name to block regulators from gaining full access to the app. Of course it didnt help that Kalanick himself, with his statements and off-camera antics, constructed for the company an image of an unsympathetic, combative corporation only looking to grab some cash.

Eventually, Kalanick was forced to resign by Ubers board of directors, after a string of scandals and controversies that finally broke the proverbial camels back. In the course of one week in June, Uber was accused of ignoring complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, illegally obtaining medical records of a woman raped by an Uber driver, and intentionally causing major salary discrepancies between employees through its hiring and processes.

So what does that mean for India?

Uber has an incredibly large operation here, around 250,000 drivers in 26 cities. But don't worry, its not likely the company is in any real danger of losing its license over here.

Despite a few Uber drivers in the country having been involved in rape cases, while on the job, Uber's cab hailing services didn't see any interruption in any Indian state. Indeed, one of those rape cases in 2014 was part of the reason Kalanick was forced out. Ubers senior VP Emil Michael, as well as other executives, were sceptical of the victims claims that she was raped by her Uber driver. Instead, they believed it was a corporate sabotage attempt by Ola and therefore illegally obtained the medical records of the victim.
Uncle Sam vs. Russia in Eastern Syria: the Nightmare Scenario





By Mike Whitney

September 22, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The impending collapse of ISIS has touched off a race for territory in the oil-rich eastern part of Syria pitting US-backed forces against the Russian-led coalition of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. This is the nightmare scenario that everyone wanted to avoid. Washington and Moscows armies are now converging on the same area at the same time greatly increasing the probability of a conflagration between the two nuclear-armed superpowers. The only way a clash can be avoided is if one party backs down, which seems increasingly unlikely.

The situation can be easily explained. The vast swath of territory captured by ISIS is steadily shrinking due to the dogged perseverance of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) which has liberated most of the countryside west of the Euphrates River including the former ISIS stronghold at Deir Ezzor, a critical garrison at the center of the fighting. ISIS is also getting pressure from the north where the US-backed SDF is pounding their capital at Raqqa while deploying troops and tanks southward to the oil fields in Deir Ezzor province.

Washington has made it clear that it wants its proxy-army to control the area east of the Euphrates establishing a soft partition between east and west. The US also wants to control Deir Ezzors vast oil resources in order to provide a reliable revenue stream for the emergent Kurdish statelet.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad has said many times that he will never agree to the partitioning of the country. But the decision will not be made by Assad alone. His coalition partners in Moscow, Beirut and Tehran will also help shape the final settlement. As far as Putin is concerned, it seems extremely unlikely that hed risk a protracted and bloody war with the United States simply to recapture every square inch of Syrian territory. The Russian president will probably allow the US to keep its bases in the northeast provided that critical areas are conceded to the regime. But where will the line be drawn, thats the question?

The US wants to control the area east of the Euphrates including the lucrative oil fields. This is why they deployed troops from the SDF southward even though theyre still needed in Raqqa. Earlier in the week, it looked like the Syrian Army had a leg up on the SDF as troops and armored vehicles crossed the Euphrates headed east to the oil fields. But reports that appeared late Thursday indicate that the SDF has beaten them to the punch. This is from South Front:

On Thursday, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured Tabiyeh and al-Isba oil fields in the northwestern Deir Ezzor countryside, according to pro-Kurdish sources.  If these reports are confirmed, the SDF will be in control over a half of Syrias oil reserve. Moreover, that will mean that the SDF at least partly blocked the SAA way on the eastern bank of the Euphrates river. (Syrian Democratic Forces Capture Key Oil Fields In Deir Ezzor, South Front) No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Click Here For Your Free Daily Newsletter

This is a major setback for the Russian coalition. It means that the SAA backed by the Russian Airforce will have to fight a group which, up to this point, has been an ally in the war against ISIS. Now its clear that the mainly-Kurdish SDF is no ally, its an enemy that wants to steal Syrias resources and carve a state out of its eastern flank.

The news about the SDFs arrival at the oil fields came just hours after the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov issued a terse warning to the US and SDF that Russia would retaliate if SAA positions were attacked again by SDF mortar or rocket fire.

Quote: Russia unequivocally told the commanders of US forces in Al Udeid Airbase (Qatar) that it will not tolerate any shelling from the areas where the SDF are stationed () Fire from positions in regions [controlled by the SDF] will be suppressed by all means necessary.

In retrospect, it looks like the SDF had already decided to make a clean break with the government leaving no doubt of where they stood. Washington is using the SDF to seize the oil fields and to claim to the entire east side of the Euphrates for its own. Theres no doubt that these combat units of the SDF are accompanied by US Special Forces who are providing critical communications, logistic and tactical support. This operation has Washingtons fingerprints all over it.

On Friday morning, loyalist forces led by the 5th Assault Corps ISIS Hunters, established full control over Khusham village on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River near Deir Ezzor city. The strategically-located village blocks a key road linking the area held by the SDF to the Omar oil fields.

Get the picture? US-backed forces and Russian coalition members are now operating cheek-to-jowl in the same theatre trying to seize the same oil-rich scrap of land. This has all the makings of a major head-on collision.

Putin is a cautious and reasonable man, but hes not going to hand over Syrias oil fields without a fight. Besides, Assad needs the oil receipts to finance the rebuilding of his decimated country. Equally important, he needs the territory east of Deir Ezzor to for an overland route connecting Beirut to Damascus to Baghdad to Tehran, the so-called Arab Superhighway. Putins job is to glue as much of the country together as needed to create a viable state. So while he may allow the SDF and US military to occupy parts of the northeast, hes not going to surrender crucial resources or strategically-located territory.

So what does it all mean? Does it mean that Russia will support Assads attempts to liberate the oil fields even if it could trigger a broader war with the United States?

Yes, thats exactly what it means.

Putin doesnt want a slugfest with Uncle Sam, but hes not going to abandon an ally either. So theres going to be a confrontation because neither party is willing to give up what they feel they need to achieve success.

So there you have it. As the standoff begins to take shape in east Syria, the two rival superpowers are preparing themselves for the worst. Clearly, we have reached the most dangerous moment in the six year-long war.
Barbarism and Shame: Why the US Refuses a Korea Peace Treaty



By Finian Cunningham September 22, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The Korean crisis is a powerful lens on American barbarism, past and present. Despite Washingtons self-righteousness and pretensions of virtue, the modern history of Korea is an especially powerful lesson that destroys the American national mythology. Listening to President Trumps conceited rhetoric about wiping out North Korea has an eerie resonance with the rhetoric of President Truman. Truman launched into the Korean War more than six decades ago with same arrogant, mythical presumptions of American virtue and self-ordained right to use overwhelming military force. For reasons of political self-preservation, Washington must live in denial of historical reality. US leaders out of necessity have to construct an alternative, fictional narrative for their nations conduct. Because if historical reality were acknowledged, the rulers in Washington, and the whole edifice of presumed American greatness, would implode from the endemic moral corruption. The Korean War (1950-53) has been described as the most barbaric war since the Second World War. Up to four million people were killed in a three-year period. The US air force dropped more tonnage of bombs on the country than was dropped during the whole of its Pacific War against Japan. Despite this massive and barbaric effort in Korea, the first war of the incipient Cold War turned out to be a source of potentially crippling shame for the US. This risk of shame to the American mythical self-image of virtue explains why the Korean War has become known as the forgotten war. It would also explain why present and past US governments prefer to bury their responsibility to end the conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Sixty-four years after the end of the Korean War, the United States continues to refuse to sign a peace treaty with the other main belligerent party  North Korea. Indeed, the issue is not even publicly addressed by Washington, which shows how far removed political awareness of American responsibilities is. Yet, the signing of such a peace treaty by the US is essential to establishing a viable framework to resolve the current and recurring security crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The Korean War came to an end in July 1953 with the declaration of an armistice, or truce. The armistice was never formalized into a legally binding peace treaty, largely due to American intransigence not to do so. The absence of a peace treaty is almost unique in the history of modern warfare. Technically, therefore, the Korean War is not over. It is simply on pause. So, when US military exercises are conducted with its South Korean ally  several times every year  the war drills are plausible grounds for North Korea to fear a resumption of large-scale hostilities. As former US ambassador to South Korea, James Laney, has stated : One of the things that have bedeviled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War. A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the others legitimacy and its right to exist. The looming question is: why does the US government and its military leaders not sign a peace treaty with North Korea? One reason is that the ongoing state of war on the Korean Peninsula provides the US with important strategic advantages  too important for it to forfeit by concluding a peace treaty with North Korea. Lucrative weapons sales  decade after decade  for protecting allies in South Korea and Japan is a boon for the US military-industrial complex that drives its economy. With the presence of 70,000 US troops in Japan and South Korea and the regular positioning of aircraft carriers, missile destroyers and nuclear-capable warplanes, the ongoing low-intensity conflict with North Korea gives the US a politically acceptable cover to project military power for economic influence in the vital, resource-rich region of Asia-Pacific. The installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and the Aegis anti-missile systems in South Korea and Japan  allegedly to protect from North Korean aggression  is also an important strategic gain for Washington to exert leverage over China and Russia. Indeed, this may be the main strategic objective. These economic and military strategic issues have been broached elsewhere in a recent article as to why the US is more interested in maintaining conflict on the Korean Peninsula than pursuing peace. What is worth considering here is the legacy of the Korean War as to why the US continues to bury that conflict as a forgotten war. What is it about the Korean War which seems to make it unpalatable for Washington to publicly acknowledge? The Korean War can be seen as the first major test of US moral and military authority in the Cold War. We must remember that a mere five years after the Second World War, the US had staked its image on presenting itself as the leader of the free world against the Soviet Union and evil communism. In Western political mythology, the US had gloriously won the Second World War, defeating Nazi Germany and saving Europe from totalitarianism. The actual much bigger achievement of the Soviet Union in defeating European fascism was  and still is  conveniently downplayed by Western official narratives. Soon the evil of Nazi Germany was recycled to be projected on to the Soviet Union and world communism. The supposedly Christian, democracy and freedom-loving United States was presented as the noble defender of the free world against the evil of communist expansionism. When the civil war in Korea erupted in June 1950, the US-backed southern administration led by Syngman Rhee claimed that it was communist aggression by the north with the support of the Soviet Union and communist China. The year before, Mao had just successfully won Chinas civil war against the US-backed Chiang Kai-Shek forces which fled to Formosa (Taiwan). From the US point of view, steeped in Cold War ideology of Red Menace, the war in Korea looked like another domino falling to world communism. The origins of the war are murky. American claims about North Korean aggression are belied by the fact that the US-backed Rhee regime in Seoul had carried out countless acts of aggression against the de facto northern state led by Kim Il Sung (grandfather of the current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un). In any case, Korea became a paramount test for presumed US global authority. President Truman had already declared the Truman Doctrine of defending the world from communist aggression. Arguably, the US had no justification for entering the war. It railroaded the newly formed United Nations for a mandate to intervene on behalf of the UN. The facts suggest that the conflict in Korea was one of national self-determination between, on the one hand, competing socialist factions popular in the north and in the south, and on the other hand, the US-backed autocratic regime of Syngman Rhee. The latters hold on power was shaky due to US imposition immediately following the Second World War. Rhees dictatorship, comprising military trained under the previous Japanese fascist colonial regime (1910-45), had carried out mass executions of suspected communist supporters  with American support. It was deeply unpopular and would inevitably have been overthrown in the ferment of anti-colonial movements that were sweeping Korea and the world in the post-Second World War era. In other words, the Korean War was an unnecessary slaughter that was fueled by US interference and ideological presumptions of leadership against evil communism. During the Korean War, the US unleashed barbarism with new technological weapons, writes American historian Jeremy Kuzmarov. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Click Here For Your Free Daily Newsletter It was the first war when napalm incendiary bombs were used in large scale in a scorched-earth tactic of indiscriminately destroying villages and civilians seen as guerrilla sympathizers. Farms, crops, cattle, dikes and dams were also pulverized by American B-29 bombers. The entire country was obliterated in order to save it from communism. American actions were a monumental violation of the Geneva Convention which had only just been signed in 1949, forbidding the indiscriminate killing of civilians. The ink was barely dry when American forces were running rivers of blood all over Korea. The communist guerrillas also reportedly carried out atrocities. But in no comparable way to the scale that the US was committing. How was US conduct in Korea any different from the genocidal total war concept of the Nazi Third Reich? Exactly, there was none, if the truth were told. General Curtis Le May, the head of the US air force in Korea who earlier had masterminded the firebombing massacre of Tokyo during the Second World War, later candidly admitted that there was nothing left to bomb in Korea. He reckoned that US forces killed up to 30 per cent of the North Korean population. Even then, the US generals were actively considering dropping atomic bombs, including on China, which they considered as the real power behind the North Korean guerrilla army. Maos China and Stalins Soviet Union did indeed lend crucial military support to the North Korean side. Newly innovated Soviet MiG jets reportedly had a curtailing effect on the American B-29s. But Beijing and Moscows involvement only came after the US weighed into what was a national struggle. In the end, despite its declarations of moral virtue and Christian righteousness, the US was fought to a standstill. The three-year, backward-and-forward war finally stopped at the 38th parallel, which the US military government had earlier demarcated in 1945. Korea was not liberated from godless communism. The northern Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea stands today as a reminder of defiance to US pretensions. In the course of the war, the US Commander General Douglas MacArthur, was sacked by Truman over his failures and insubordination. It was a shameful outcome for MacArthur who had been adorned as a war hero for the Pacific victory over Japan. He had been one of the US generals advocating the atomic bombing of China. Almost a decade later, the Vietnam War also became another episode of American barbarism and use of genocidal hi-tech weaponry. But by then, as American historian William Blum points out , there was a popular anti-war movement in the US, which exposed many of the crimes and falsehoods perpetrated by Washington. The Korean War was different though. It was largely supported at the time by a US population which had bought into the official mythology of America as the defender of the free world. The Korean War was supposed to be the baptism of noble America, the alleged emerging victor of the Second World War, the presumed protector against evil totalitarianism. But the Korean War destroyed that myth in the most searing way from the slaughter and barbarism that the US inflicted on a peasant army seeking national unity and independence. And for all its military might and divine pretensions, the US was fought to a standstill, if not an inglorious moral defeat. Such is the shameful legacy of the Korean War for American national mythology that one suspects that this is a major reason why US authorities, the government, the Pentagon and the dutiful corporate-controlled news media would much rather prefer to forget the whole despicable episode. Simply put, it has to be erased from consciousness because it would be so otherwise jarring to American presumptions of exceptional virtue. That is why the all-important issue of a peace treaty over the Korean War is not signed by the US. It is simply too shameful a subject to even revisit in the slightest way. And yet, fiendishly, making a formal declaration of peace is crucial to resolve the ongoing conflict on the Korean Peninsula, one that could so easily escalate into a global catastrophe involving nuclear weapons. Tragically, and heinously, the refusal to bear responsibility for the violence and suffering caused in Korea is why the current Trump administration presumes the right to go to war on North Korea. This American presumption is woefully ignorant of history and infused with a disturbed messianic zeal. Trump and his officials arrogantly threaten North Korea with annihilation because the United States has never been held to account for its crimes in Korea (or elsewhere for that matter). Signing a peace treaty would be an important step towards long-overdue American accountability. A step that the arrogant American rulers refuse to take  because they cant admit the shocking reality of their enormous crimes. This article was first published by Strategic Culture Foundation -
Pentagon is Planning a New War Against Syria



After the Caliphate, Rojava



By Thierry Meyssan September 22, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - While the Syrian Arab Army, the Russian aviation and Hezbollah are preparing to finish off Daesh, the Pentagon is planning a new war against Syria, this time with Kurdish troops. Just as the mission of the Caliphate was to create a Sunnistan straddling Iraq and Syria, so the mission of  Rojava  is to create a Kurdistan straddling the two states, as the Pentagon has been publicly stating for the last four years. This map was published by Robin Wright nine months before the offensive by Daesh into Iraq and Syria. According to this Pentagon researcher, it rectifies the map published in 2005 by Ralf Peters for the reshaping of the Greater Middle East. According to US grand strategy, as defined by Admiral Cebrowski in 2001, and published in 2004 by his assistant Thomas Barnett, all of the Greater Middle East must be destroyed except for Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. Consequently, the imminent victory against Daesh will change nothing of the Pentagons intentions. President Trump is against the manipulation of the jihadists. He has stopped the financial and military support that his country was giving them, and has managed to convince Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to do the same. He has modified NATO policies in the matter. However, nothing yet hints as to whether or not he will also oppose the Pentagons grand strategy. As far as the US Interior is concerned, the whole of Congress is in league against him, and he has no possibility of preventing a procedure for destitution other than negotiating with the Democratic Party. Donald Trump has composed his administration of ex-senior civil servants from the Obama administration, a number of opportunistic politicians, many improvised representatives, and very very few trustworthy personalities. His special representative against Daesh, Brett McGurk, is an ex-collaborator of President Obama and is supposed to serve Trumps new policy. On 18 August, he organised a meeting with the tribal leaders to  fight Daesh . However, the photographs he published attest to the fact that, on the contrary, several of Daeshs leaders also participated in the meeting. In the same vein, helicopters of the US Special Forces exfiltrated two European leaders of Daesh and their families from the outskirts of Deiz ez-Zor, before they could be taken prisoner by the Syrian Arab Army on 26 August. Two days later, they also exfiltrated about twenty more Daesh officers. Everything looks as though the Pentagon were storing away its jihadist structure and conserving it for other operations elsewhere. Simultaneously, it is preparing a new episode against Syria with a new army, which, this time, will be composed around Kurdish forces. This war, like the war against the Caliphate, was announced four years ago in the New York Times, by Robin Wright, a researcher at the US Institute of Peace (equivalent to the NED for the Pentagon). It also planned to divide the Yemen into two states, potentially shared between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi  and finally, last but not least, to dismember Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the  Rojava  project corresponds to Israeli strategy, which, since the end of the 1990s and the development of missiles, is no longer concentrated on controlling its border regions (the Sinai, the Golan and South Lebanon), but on taking its neighbours from behind (hence the creation of South Sudan and eventually, Greater Kurdistan). No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Click Here For Your Free Daily Newsletter The recruiting drive for European soldiers for the  Rojava  project has only just begun. A priori, it could assemble as many combatants as there were for the jihad, insofar as the members of the anarchist groups which provide manpower are as numerous in Europe as common law prisoners. Indeed, the jihadist network began in French prisons before becoming a generalised  crusade . It is probable that the recruitment within the anarchist movement will also spread as the conflict goes on. Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, who organised this recruitment, planned in the long term. I use the word  crusade  deliberately, because these wars in the Middle Ages, like the one we have just experienced, were, in fact, European imperialist operations against the people of the Greater Middle East. It is just as grotesque to claim that there is a link between the message of Christ and the crusades as to claim a link between the Prophet and jihadism. In both cases, the commanders were  Westerners  [ 1 ], and these conflicts exclusively served Western imperialism. The successive crusades bled across two centuries, and the majority of Christians in the Levant fought alongside their Muslim compatriots against the invaders. Not long ago, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, publicly declared that President Assad  did not deserve to be on Earth , and confirmed that the jihadists were doing a  good job . Many young people answered his call by joining Al-Nusra (Al-Qaida), then Daesh. Today, the French ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, publicly announced that France would support the creation of the state which would include Iraqi Kurdistan and the corridor to the Mediterranean via Syria. A few young Europeans have already answered this call, and many others will follow. Today, as in 2011-12, the Western Press has taken the side of this new anti-Syrian army, supported by their governments. It will never question the treachery of Abdullah Ocalan, who renounced Marxist-Leninism for anarchy. It will repeat that Kurdistan has already been recognised by the Sevres Conference, in 1920, but it will avoid looking at the documents which specify its boundaries. It will believe it to be legitimate in Iraq and Syria, although it is currently situated in Turkey. It will ignore the fact that the frontiers, in fact, correspond to nothing other than the plans developed by the Pentagon. The referendum for the independence of the Iraqi region of Kurdistan and the territories annexed with the help of Daesh will launch the beginning of this operation, on 25 September. As in 2014, it will be intended to simultaneously destroy Iraq and Syria, this time without creating a  Sunnistan  from Rakka to Mossul, but a  Kurdistan , on a territory linking Erbil and Kirkuk to the Mediterranean. Thierry Meyssan - Political consultant, President-founder of the Reseau Voltaire ( Voltaire Network ). Latest work in French  Sous nos Yeux. Du 11-Septembre a Donald Trump (Right Before our Eyes. From 9/11 to Donald Trump). Notes [1] This term is poorly chosen insofar as  Westerner  is not opposed to  Oriental , but to  Soviet . I could find no other term to describe collectively the Europeans, the North-Americans and the Israelis. Authors note. Translation - Pete Kimberley - Source - Al-Watan (Syria) This article was first published by Voltaire Network - See also - LAVROV: Russia will not allow a partition of the Syrian Arab Republic
Russian Special Forces Repel a US-planned Attack In Syria Denounce the USA and Issue a Stark Warning



By The Saker September 22, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Something rather unprecedented just happened in Syria: US backed good terrorist forces attempted a surprise attack against Syrian government forces stationed to the north and northeast of the city of Hama. What makes this attack unique is that it took place inside a so-called de-escalation zone and that it appears that one of the key goals of the attack was to encircle in a pincer-movement and subsequently capture a platoon of Russian military police officers deployed to monitor and enforce the special status of this zone. The Russian military police forces, composed mainly of soldiers from the Caucasus region, fought against a much larger enemy force and had to call for assistance. For the first time, at least officially, Russian special operations forces were deployed to rescue and extract their comrades. At the same time, the Russians sent in a number of close air support aircraft who reportedly killed several hundred good terrorists and beat back the attack ( Russian sources speak of the destruction of 850 fighters, 11 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, 46 armed pickup trucks, five mortars, 20 freighter trucks and 38 ammo supply points; you can see photos of the destroyed personnel and equipment here ). What also makes this event unique is the official reaction of the Russians to this event. Head of the Main Operations Department at Russias General Staff Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi declared that: Despite agreements signed in Astana on September 15, gunmen of Jabhat al-Nusra and joining them units that dont want to comply with the cessation of hostilities terms, launched a large-scale offensive against positions of government troops north and northeast of Hama in Idlib de-escalation zone from 8 am on September 19 () According to available data, the offensive was initiated by American intelligence services to stop a successful advance of government troops east of Deir ez-Zor. Today, other Russian officials have added a not-so-veiled threat to this accusation. The Russian Defense Ministrys spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov has declared that: Russia unequivocally told the commanders of US forces in Al Udeid Airbase (Qatar) that it will not tolerate any shelling from the areas where the SDF are stationed () Fire from positions in regions [controlled by the SDF] will be suppressed by all means necessary. This is unprecedented on many levels. First, the Russians clearly believe that this attempt to kill or capture a platoon of the Russian military police was planned by the United States. The fact that they are making this accusation officially shows the degree of irritation felt by the Russians about the duplicity of the Americans. Second, this is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that Russian Spetsnaz forces had to be sent in to rescue a surrounded Russian subunit. All Spetsnaz operators survived, but three of them were wounded in the operation (the Russians are not saying how badly). The close air support by very low flying SU-25 aircraft was obviously coordinated by Spetsnaz forward air controllers and probably saved the day. In other words, this was a close call and things could have ended much more badly (just imagine what the Takfiri crazies would have done, on video, to any captured Russian serviceman!). Finally, a US-organized attack on what was supposed to be a de-confliction zone combined with an attempt to capture Russian soldiers raises the bar for American duplicity to a totally new level. The big question now is do the Russians mean it? or are they just whining with real determination to hit back if needed. There are a couple of problems here. First, objectively, the Russian contingent in Syria is a tiny one if compared to the immense power of CENTCOM, NATO and the ever-present Israelis. Not only that, but in any US-Russian confrontation, Russia as a country is objectively the weaker side by any measure except a full-out nuclear exchange. So the Russians are not in a position of force. Furthermore, for historical and cultural reasons, Russians are much more concerned by the initiation of any incident which could lead to all-out war than the Americans who always fight their wars in somebody elses country. This might seem paradoxical, but the Russians fear war but they are ready for it. In contrast to the Russians, the Americans dont fear war, but neither are they ready for it. In practical terms this means that an American miscalculation could very well lead to a Russian military response which would stun the Americans and force them to enter an escalatory spiral which nobody would control. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Click Here For Your Free Daily Newsletter Remember how Hillary promised that she would unilaterally impose a so-called no-fly zone over Syria? She promised not only to deploy US aircraft above Russian forces in Syria, but she also promised that she would force the Russian Aerospace forces out of the Syrian skies. Thank God, this crazy witch was not elected, but it appears that folks with the same arrogant and,frankly, completely irresponsible point of view are now back in power under Trump. My fear now is that the incompetent, arrogant, not too bright and generally ignorant commanders at the Pentagon and the CIA will simply ignore clear warning signs coming from the Russians, including the public announcement that the Kremlin has given the authority to use force to protect Russian personnel to the local Russian commanders in Syria. In plain English, this means that if they are attacked the Russians in Syria do not need to consult with Moscow before using force to protect themselves. By the way, such rules of engagement are pretty common, there is nothing earth shattering here, but the fact that they were made public is, again, a message to the AngloZionist and the good terrorist they use to try to conquer Syria. This time around we (the world) were lucky. The Syrians fought hard and the good terrorists were probably surprised by the ruthless determination of the Russian military police forces (in reality, mostly Chechen special forces) and of the Spetsnaz operators. It is one thing to fight Syrian conscripts, quite another to deal with these hardened warriors. But the next time around the outcome could be different. The bigger picture is also one which gives me a great deal of concern. The Syrians, with Iranian, Hezbollah and Russian help, have freed Deir ez-Zor and have crossed the Euphrates river and are moving further East. In plain English this means that the US and Daesh have lost the war and that the last region of Syrian from which the AngloZionists can hope to partition the country (their current plan B) and establish a permanent US military presence is now threatened by the Syrian advance. The distance between the US forces currently deployed in northeastern Syria and Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Russian forces is becoming shorter and shorter each day. I can just imagine how, say, Iranian or Hezbollah forces which are already smelling the nearby presence of US forces are drooling with hunger for the moment they will finally be able to get their hands on their old and most hated foe. I feel sincerely sorry for the first US unit to make contact with the Iranians or Hezbollah forces. Right now the Americans are hiding behind the Kurds, but sooner or later the Iranians or Hezbollah will find them. As for the Kurds, their situation in Syria is precarious, to put it mildly: they are surrounded on all sides by the Turks, the Syrians and the Iranians and their only more or less stable zone of control is in Iraq. The Americans understand that perfectly, hence their desperate attempts to stop the Syrians. This is a very dangerous situation: even though CENTCOM and NATO are by far the biggest guys on the block, in Syria the Americans are cornered, their corner is shrinking fast and it remains entirely unclear how this process can be stopped. Hence the attack on the de-confliction zone we just witnessed. I hope that eventually the Americans will do what they did in al-Taif and simply pack, declare victory and leave. That would be the only rational thing to do. But after listening to Trump at the UN I dont get the feeling that being rational is at the top of the US priority list. Thats all rather frightening. This article was first published by The Saker - The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 See also - LAVROV: Russia will not allow a partition of the Syrian Arab Republic
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been hailed by University undergraduates to call off its 37 day old strike.

Some of the students disclosed in Kano on Tuesday that they were happy to hear that the union had called off the five-week old strike.

AlAmin Lawal, a 200 level student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, said he was short of words to express his happiness over the new development.

I cannot express my joy since I heard that ASUU had called off the strike because I was about to finish my semester examination when the lecturers commenced the strike, he said.

He commended the union for the decision, saying it would enable them complete their examinations and move to the next level.

Musa Bala, a 300 level student of Bayero University Kano, described ASUUs decision as a welcome development, as students would now resume normal academic activities.

He, however, called on the Federal Government to keep to the agreements reached between it and the lecturers in order not to disrupt academic activities in the universities in future.

The Federal Government should try as much as possible to keep to the promises made to the lecturers as that will go along way in ensuring uninterrupted academic activities in our universities, Bala said.

Similarly, most of the parents who spoke on the issue expressed gratitude to Allah for making it possible for the government and lecturers to reach an agreement on the strike.

They, however, advised the lecturers to always go for dialogue in resolving dispute rather than resorting to total strike.

The ASUU President, Prof Biodun Ogunyemi, on Monday in Minna directed all university lecturers to resume work this Tuesday.
Two men, identified as Onyekachi Idoko and Felix Akor, were arrested by the Enugu State Police Command for the alleged murder of three persons in Udenu Local Government Area of the state.

This was confirmed by the spokesperson of the command, ASP Ebere Amaraizu, in a statement issued on Tuesday in Enugu.

Amaraizu said that the two suspects were arrested following a well-coordinated operation by the police.

He said that the murder suspect, Idoko of Ifuroka-Amalla community in Udenu council area was nabbed by police operatives of the Udenu Division on a tip-off.

The spokesman said that the murder suspect, who fled after committing the alleged offence, was arrested on Sept. 16 at Inyi community in Igboeze North Local Government Area of the state.

He alleged that the suspect alongside others murdered one Onyemaechi Eze on July 5 over a yet-to-be established issue or issues and escaped.

The suspect is now helping the operatives in their investigations as he had given insight into how he and his gang allegedly collected N200,000 from the native doctor, Felix Akor, who hired them to murder the victim.

The native doctor, Akor, is also alleged to be diabolically responsible for the mysterious death of two siblings, Blessing and John.

Akor has been arrested by the operatives as well, he said.

The police spokesman said that both suspects had been helping police operatives in their investigations.

Source: ( PM News )
Leader of the Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, has challenged the court order proscribing his group and declaring it a terrorist group.

This statement was made on Friday, by Mr. Kanus lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, said the motion challenging Wednesdays court order was filed on Friday.

According to the motion, dated September 21, Mr. Ejiofor argued that IPOB is a non-violent organisation; therefore the decision of the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court to issue an order, based on a motion made ex-parte, was illegal.

A motion ex-parte is a motion heard by the court without the presence of the other party/ parties.

The lawyer added that his client, whose whereabouts has been unknown since the violent crisis in Abia started two weeks ago, was not allowed fair hearing and that the court lacked the jurisdiction to grant such an order.

The Nigerian government on Wednesday obtained an order of court, affirming the declaration of IPOB as a terror group.

The group, which seeks an independent country of Biafra, has been accused of killing and intimidating civilians and security operatives.

Source: ( Premium Times )
The account details of the sponsors of terrorist group, IPOB, will be released by the Federal government to the French government.

According to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said that France was the headquarters of IPOBs funding, but the french on Thursday said it had no knowledge of IPOBs presence in France.

But a very senior government official said the FG had reached out to France, explaining that it did not accuse the country of being the sponsors of Biafra but that a large transfer of funds were made regularly from France to IPOB in Nigeria.

It was learnt that the FG had asked the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit and the Central Bank of Nigeria to compile the needed information on the sponsors and it hand it over to the French government.

The government will also write the Special Control Unit against Money Laundering, which is tasked with the mandate of supervising, monitoring and regulating Designated Non-Financial Institutions as regards compliance to Nigerias Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism.

According to the government other countries from which IPOB also received huge cash inflows include: Turkey, Senegal, Malaysia, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the United States.

Punchngs source said reports would also be given to the aforementioned countries. He added, Before his arrest, Nnamdi Kanu had appealed to people of Igbo extraction in some of these countries to provide him with funds which would be used in buying weapons and bringing down the Nigerian Government.

In a video, which has even gone viral on Youtube, Kanu said he needed guns. This is not hearsay. We will also be writing these countries informing them of the need to ensure that IPOBs source of funding is traced and blocked.
US has vowed to North Korea to shoot down any missile fired by North Korea towards Guam Territory, after dictator, Kim Jong-un threatened testing a H-bomb across the U.S Territory of Guam following Donald Trumps speech at the just concluded UN General Assembly where he said hell do anything to defend the United States and its allies from North Korea even if it means totally destroying North Korea.

The remarks were not taken kindly by Kim Jong-un who made a rare broadcast appearance, where he branded the US President as a dotard and frightened dog.

The US leader responded with a tweet calling Kim Jong-un a madman who will be tested like never before! and now the world power say if Kim delivers his threat of flying a hydrogen bomb over the pacific, itll be shot down.

Trump vows to shoot down any North Korea missile fired over any US territory in Guam

She continued: The question of whether or not to apply military actions depends on specific situation.

Dr Emily Landau, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), said she finally thinks North Korean supreme leader is realising there will be serious consequences if the United States or its allies is threatened.

I think Kim might fire towards Guam and then well have to see what the response will be. she said to Express.co.uk

Guam is a grey area for the US and i do not believe it is covered by the fire and fury threat, despite it being a US territory.

Source: ( Linda Kieji )
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka says being an itinerant teacher has become a way of life as he takes up a post as visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg.

The 83-year-old Nigerian playwright and author told students and journalists at the South African university on Friday that the benefit of encountering different cultures during his travels is that one does not stagnate.

Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1986. He says he and his Johannesburg students might create a play together, as well as discuss history and international relations along with literature.

Soyinka drew laughter after saying: What I dont know, Ill pretend that I know.

The university says it hopes Soyinkas periodic presence on campus will boost plans to set up a creative writing program.

Source: ( AP )
In recent interview with Wolverhamptons magazine WLV Life, Soon to Wed Actress, Adesua Etomi reveals why she returned to Nigeria after her stay in the UK.

Not limited to that, she also discussed the things she finds rewarding about acting, and, ultimately, her goals.

Described her experience, studying in the university, Adesua Etomi said:

It is the foundation upon which my career has been built.

The actress had for a long time known she wanted to be in the arts, wanting to be become an actor but also wanting a course that would focus not only on the practical side of the arts, but also on the theoretical side, too.

On moving to Nigeria, Adesua said she had planned, when she left the UK, to stay only for 3 months.

But she arrived in Nigeria and fell in love with the budding film industry, and wanted to be known as one of the people who helped shape it.

Everything boils down to love, she said. Love for the arts, love for Nollywood, and love for Nigeria.

Adesua said her proudest achievement so far has been winning the Best Actress in a Drama award for the movie, Falling, at the 2016 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards.

Of course, like every other actor, Adesua would love to win an Oscar.

I would love the opportunity to put Nigeria and the UK on the map,

she said.

Waking up to a job she loves every single day is the most rewarding part of her job, she added.

It is a blessing because not many people get the privilege to do what theyre passionate about every day and get paid for it.

source: 36ng
Astro Labe, a self-described anarchist who headbutted former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has denied he attacked the politician because of his opposition to same-sex marriage.

It had absolutely nothing to do with marriage equality, said Astro Labe, a 38-year-old DJ from Hobart, Tasmania, where the attack occurred on Thursday.

I was thinking theres Tony Abbott, Im going to headbutt him, said Labe, a self-described anarchist who expressed disdain for Abbotts conservative views.

Abbott was in the southern Australian island state to campaign against same-sex marriage during a postal ballot in which Australians have been called on to vote yes or no to legalising gay unions.

He claimed after the attack that it was part of a bullying campaign by the yes camp, adding the assailant was, of course, wearing a yes badge.

But Labe told Australian television late Friday that it was just coincidental that someone had stuck a sticker on my jacket.

He has been charged with assault over the attack.

Up to 15 million Australians are taking part in the postal ballot, which began earlier this month. The result of the vote will be known in mid-November.

Abbott, 59, was prime minister from 2013 to 2015, when he was deposed by current leader Malcolm Turnbull  a moderate who supports marriage equality.

Concern the vote could unleash abuse and homophobic slurs saw parliament pass election-style safeguards restricting campaign material that might be misleading and deceptive during the ballot period.

The postal survey is non-binding but Turnbull has vowed to hold a vote in parliament if the yes camp wins a majority in the ballot.

Source: ( AFP )
A husband and wife have been horrified after discovering they are actually brother and sister after 24 long years.

A Pakistani couple united in an arranged marriage over 24 years ago recently learnt that they were in fact of the same parents, SMACK reports.

The siblings, who were separated as children after the tragic death of their parents, were later adopted by different families until they later married each other.

It took about 24 years for them to realise the truth.

We thought our marriage was normal, we thought we were cousins explained Abdul Rahim, 47.

Everybody in town knew we were brother and sister but no one had the courage to tell us until now, said the sister turned wife, Aisha, in tears.

Anthropologist Juliane Edwards, who has studied the case of incestuous arranged marriages in Pakistan for decades is not surprised the least by the situation.

Its a cultural thing. When endogamous consanguineous marriages, or marriages between cousins, is socially acceptable, then marriage between siblings doesnt seem as far-fetched, she explained.

Ive repeatedly studied cases in Pakistan where widowed fathers would marry one or more of their daughters, she admitted.

Ive heard of one case where one mans daughter was allegedly very ugly and could not find a husband, so he forced his son to marry his own sister as a punishment for being lazy, she recalls.

Last year, a Pakistani Federal Shariat Court judge made international headlines after refusing to allow a woman to divorce her brother from an arranged marriage stating that being siblings was not enough of a justification to obtain court approval for divorce under Sharia law.
Governor Rochas Okorocha has revealed why he is against the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and feels it should be condemned by not only the Igbo but other well-meaning Nigerians.

In an interactive chat with journalists yesterday, he said:

I have made my mind clear on this. IPOB is not good for the South East. It is not the best way to complain of marginalization to the Federal Government of Nigeria. There are better ways to do it. And if IPOB must do a thing like that, it should have changed its name from sovereignty. You can call it any name but remove Biafra.

Is that the way Ijaw youths and Arewa youths fought? They would have made more impact but for everything that an Igbo man does, we want to go to the extreme. Now you want to separate yourself from Nigeria, meanwhile, the South South would not go with you; Edo, Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross River would not go with you. If they cut us here now as South East, if I need to go to Rivers, I would go and ask for passport and visa and we are all keeping quiet.

These guys are kind actually. If there is crisis, there is no Hausa man in Imo State or Igbo land who has a duplex. There is no Yoruba man who has a room and parlour or a duplex or a N20 million investment anywhere. But the Igbo have trillions of naira investments in Lagos, Abuja and everywhere and the same people are looking for secession. These people are kind. If they ask you to go now, what happens; you lose those properties to Lagos and the South West; you lose your properties in the North and so on and all of us are keeping quiet and supporting IPOB. We thought we were getting at the Federal Government. It was very childish and those who are behind these should stop.

The hope is that by the Nigerian sharing formula, the next ship whatever arrangement, the next people that should be considered is the South East. But the South East again has created an image of danger to the rest of Nigeria that if they give them the presidency, they would secede. So, where are we in our wisdom and intelligence? You can judge especially those of us in the Diaspora who have never come home. If they discuss the Nigerian problem here, you think they have a solution to it. So, that is my position on IPOB. But my advice is that the Igbo should change their style and condemn this IPOB thing in a manner that should be done. Allow us to flow with the rest of Nigerians now because we shall benefit more than anyone else.
The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris paid a condolence visit to the family of ASP Cyril Nwosu.

A group of IPOB members armed with Petrol Bomb and other offensive weapons attacked and burnt down Ariaria Police Division, Aba, one police vehicle and two exhibit vehicles parked at the Division and attacked Police Officers at the Division with dangerous weapons.

In the process, some of the Police personnel were seriously injured. ASP Nwosu, who was among those seriously injured, was rushed to the Living Word Hospital where he was admitted.

The doctors battled in vain to save his life, but he sadly died as a result of the injuries sustained. The hoodlums also carted away three (3) Pump action Rifles, ammunition and destroyed other Police security materials.

In his characteristic empathy, the IGP gave a posthumous promotion to the late ASP and promised to look into the possibility of elevating the widow, who is an Inspector to a higher rank.

He also announced police scholarship to the only child left behind by the deceased, whom he described as an officer that died in the service of his country.

Source: ( Linda Ikeji )
A furious woman chopped off her lovers penis after she found out he was marrying another woman. The injured man, named only as Irshad, 26, was lured to a guest house in Kattipuram, India to meet the woman, 30, one last time.

But he was later rushed to hospital on Tuesday, after she cut his genitals off with a knife. Cops claim the scorned lover arranged the meet up to teach him a lesson.

People heard Irshad screaming in agony, before emergency services arrived at the scene, the UK Sun reports. He was rushed to MIMS Hospital in Kozhikode, where he is still undergoing treatment.

Irhsad was due to tie the knot with a bride of his parents choice. But since the gruesome incident, he was captured lying in a hospital bed giving a thumbs up.

Local cops reportedly said: The man is undergoing treatment at MIMS hospital as of now. We have taken the attacker into custody for questioning.

Source: ( Instablog9ja )
The Crown Prince of Benin Kingdom has been unveiled at a ceremony at the Oba of Benins palace on Friday.

Prince Ezelekhae Ewuare

The Crown Prince of Benin Kingdom identified as Prince Ezelekhae Ewuare has been unveiled on Friday at the Edo state capital.

Accoridng to The Nation , the prince was unveiled at a ceremony at the Oba of Benin palace where immediate past Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was honoured by the Benin Monarch, Oba Ewuare II.

It is the first time Prince Ewuare would be introduced at an occasion, as many stood up to catch a glimpse of the future king of Benin kingdom.

TORI News will bring you more details of the royal prince in our subsequent reports.
Meet the future King of Benin Kingdom, Crown prince Ezelekhae Ewuare who was unveiled recently in a ceremony at the Oba Palace.

The Nation reports that he was unveiled at a ceremony at the Oba of Benin palace where immediate past Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was honoured by the Benin Monarch, Oba Ewuare II.

It is the first time Prince Ewuare would be introduced at an occasion. Many stood up to catch a glimpse of the future king of Benin kingdom.

source: Theinfong
#suitcase murder suspect Justice minister orders extradition of 'suitcase' murder suspect to New Zealand South Korea's justice minister on Monday ordered the extradition of a woman believed to be the mother of two children whose bodies were found in suitcases in New Zealand in August,...

#KBO KBO sets salary cap for 1st time In an unprecedented move designed to ensure a level playing field, the top South Korean baseball league announced Monday it has set a salary cap for the next three seasons. The ...
A notorious cultist and ex-convict, identified as Ibrahim Oriyomi Balogun (AKA Small Jpron), who was accused of carrying out multiple murders around Somolu has been re-arraigned on charges of murder barely a year after he was arrested, charged to court and released.

Thirty-six-year-old Balogun has been arrested at least three times in the past  in November 2012, August 2016 and March 2017  on allegations of murder and cult-related activities.

He was arraigned in 2016 for murder, possession of firearms and for belonging to a cult.

Shortly after his arrest in 2016, he surfaced in public again and the police said he escaped custody.

When he was earlier paraded before journalists in 2016, he confessed to being involved in the killing of three persons.

He had said, I am an Eiye cult leader. I joined the cult in 2009. The reason for my joining was to avenge the death of a close friend, Sunday Folorunsho, aka Small Biscuit.

It was the Aiye cult members who killed him. So, the Eiye faction approached me and said I should join them. They said they would help me to fish out the people who killed my friend. I have killed three persons, among are Femi Wiper and Lekan Akon.

When he was paraded before journalists in March 2017, the Commissioner of Police at the time, Fatai Owoseni, said Balogun escaped through the connivance of two police operatives, who were being investigated.

This time, the suspect was arraigned before an Ebute Meta Chief Magistrates Court, Lagos for belonging to a secret cult.

He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge of belonging to an unlawful society.

The Prosecutor, Mr. Chinalu Uwadione, told the court that Balogun belonged to an unlawful society known as Eiye confraternity.

The offence contravened Section 42(1), (a) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

The Chief Magistrate, Mrs. Oluyemisi Adelaja, granted the accused a bail of N300,000 with two sureties in like sum.

The case was adjourned till October 16 for further hearing.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Some prison inmates have gotten themselves into more trouble than they saw coming after they broke out of jail to steal and then sneaked back inside.

Four prison inmates reportedly broke out of the Holmes-Humphreys County Correctional Facility, broke into a business, and then returned to jail.

According to New York Post, the group of Mississippi inmates busted out of jail this week, burglarized a bargain store  and then broke back in and returned to their cells.

The jailbirds, identified as Levontaye Ellington, Travis Baker, Maurice Robertson and Jacquiez Williams broke out of the Holmes-Humphreys County Correctional Facility in Lexington Tuesdayby hopping a fence, Mississippi News Now reported.

Once in the clear, the men walked less than a mile to a Dollar General chain store after closing and swiped anything they could grab.

They stole cigarettes, cigarette lighters, phones and just items they felt they could sell in jail, Lexington Police Chief Robert Kirklin said according to the report.

But rather than extend their newfound freedom, the foursome inexplicably snuck back into the jail, undetected, baffling police.

Youre already in jail, but you want to break out and break back in? the chief said. That is just something. I heard it all.

The inmates denied their involvement in the scheme, even though they were caught on store surveillance footage, according to the report.

Just looking at the type of clothing they had on and just one of the bags they had put some of the merchandise in,police were able to pin the inmates to the crime, Kirklin said.

The inmates were charged with commercial burglary.
A notorious cultist and ex-convict, Ibrahim Oriyomi Balogun (AKA Small Jpron), whom the police have accused of carrying out multiple murders around Somolu and Bariga areas of Lagos, has been re-arraigned on charges of murder barely a year after he was arrested, charged to court and released.

Thirty-six-year-old Balogun has been arrested at least three times in the past  in November 2012, August 2016 and March 2017  on allegations of murder and cult-related activities.

He was arraigned in 2016 for murder, possession of firearms and for belonging to a cult, PUNCH learnt.

Shortly after his arrest in 2016, he surfaced in public again and the police said he escaped custody.

When he was earlier paraded before journalists in 2016, he confessed to being involved in the killing of three persons.

He had said, I am an Eiye cult leader. I joined the cult in 2009. The reason for my joining was to avenge the death of a close friend, Sunday Folorunsho, aka Small Biscuit. It was the Aiye cult members who killed him. So, the Eiye faction approached me and said I should join them. They said they would help me to fish out the people who killed my friend. I have killed three persons, among are Femi Wiper and Lekan Akon.

When he was paraded before journalists in March 2017, the Commissioner of Police at the time, Fatai Owoseni, said Balogun escaped through the connivance of two police operatives, who were being investigated.

This time, the suspect was arraigned before an Ebute Meta Chief Magistrates Court, Lagos for belonging to a secret cult.

He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge of belonging to an unlawful society.

The Prosecutor, Mr. Chinalu Uwadione, told the court that Balogun belonged to an unlawful society known as Eiye confraternity.

The offence contravened Section 42(1), (a) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

The Chief Magistrate, Mrs. Oluyemisi Adelaja, granted the accused a bail of N300,000 with two sureties in like sum.

The case was adjourned till October 16 for further hearing.
Actor turn politician Yul Edochie has made it known his governorship ambitions wont stop him from making more movies.

In an interview with Inside Nollywood he said:

Politicians have failed us so, Im in the race to touch the lives of Anambra people positively. Always remember that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The problems of Anambra people have reached the last bus stop. I joined the race to harness the creative potentials of the youths and the resource-endowment of Anambra and move the state to the next level of development.

It will not stop my acting career at all. I intend to combine both roles effectively. However, Im willing to jettison actingin order to face governance for four years should it be required of me.

An actor also has a right to contest for public office like every other citizen of Nigeria. So, I think the fact that Im an actor is a major plus, not a setback.
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.
Did you know that having top-notch mathematical skills and financial knowledge is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to excelling as a financial professional?

Mitch Pisik, who has held numerous senior management positions, including being CEO of Breckwell Products, and has more than 20 years of experience in business development, operations, and finance, advises that "the accounting/financial aspect of the job is the floornot the ceiling."

In other words, if you can't perform the other basic functions of your job, you won't make it. To stick around and get ahead in finance, you need to perfect these essential non-financial skills.

Key Takeaways The finance profession can appear highly quantitative, focused on mathematical equations, financial models, and dollar amounts.

Nevertheless, other so-called "soft skills" are necessary to be successful in finance.

These include communication and relationship skills, as well as the ability to sell along with a proficiency to work in today's high-tech environment.

1:44 Top 7 Non-Financial Skills Required In Finance

1. Communication Skills

Financial professionals can't just be good at crunching numbers  they must be able to communicate their knowledge with strong speaking, writing and presentation skills.

Beverly D. Flaxington, the author of 7 Steps to Effective Business Building for Financial Advisors, says that when you are presenting to a board, an investor or a prospect, you need to know how to convey complex information in a way people can easily understand.

2. Relationship-Management Skills

The people skills you need in order to succeed as a financial professional include understanding different personality types, listening, asking the right questions, resolving conflicts, educating others and counseling clients. Ontario-based financial planner Judith Cane says that success in finance is "15% technical knowledge and 85% psychology. When people come to see me it's because they have issues with money. They spend too much, they don't save anything or they save everything." What clients often need, therefore, is an unbiased advisor who can understand their needs and help them make financial decisions.

Managing relationships is an important life skill, whether you're dealing with subordinates, co-workers, bosses or people outside your company. When people trust you, like you and feel that you respect them, they will want to help you succeed, whether it's by speaking highly of you, promoting you or signing up to be your client.

3. Marketing and Sales Skills

Robert L. Riedl, director of wealth management for Endowment Wealth Management in Appleton, Wisconsin, says financial professionals need to be able to market their professional skills and knowledge to prospects in their niche markets. To do so, it's imperative to have a complete understanding of both your personal strengths and your firm's professional strengths.

He further advises that in marketing yourself to clients, you shouldn't just communicate how much you know, but also how much you care, because "the client's most valuable assets and their biggest daily concern is not their monetary wealth, but rather their family."

Clients want to know that you can help them manage their money to best provide for their family's long-term needs.

4. Project Management Ability

Any task that takes more than a few minutes is essentially a project  one that you'll need to manage effectively in order to be profitable. You'll need to efficiently and effectively schedule your time, manage budgets, meet deadlines and get what you need from other people in time to complete your project successfully.

Both during and after any project, staying organized and paying attention to detail are also key.

Corporate finance professional Myles Wolfe says, "For any analytical project, someone will usually have questions about the inputs and assumptions. If you can't deliver timely backup information, even if it is 100% accurate, people will question the accuracy of the final output."

He says that it's critical to have both your electronic files and hard copies organized to access information quickly. You might be asked a question months after your initial analysis by a CFO who needs the information in 30 minutes for a conference call. "Especially in the financial world, sloppiness is intolerable," he says.

5. Problem-Solving Skills

You will always encounter problems in any job, and being able to solve them rather than cracking under pressure is essential.

To get ahead, it can also be helpful to look beyond your own personal responsibilities. Pisik advises that by helping your coworkers solve their problems rather than simply reporting them to upper management, you'll be viewed as a team player.

"People will gravitate toward you and your career will flourish," he says.

6. Technology Proficiency

No matter where you work, you will need to be proficient with computer hardware and software and able to pick up new programs related to your job quickly. The more shortcuts, keys, programs and functions you know in Excel, the better off you will be in finance. You should also get familiar with marketing and communication software tools.

7. Tenacity and Ethics

A competitive personality, passion for your work and the stamina to work long hours and go above and beyond what's expected of you and what your co-workers and competitors are doing are all crucial to success in finance. At the same time, you can't be so competitive that you make poor choices, or your career and reputation will suffer.

Kevin R. Keller, CAE, CEO of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, says that adhering to a set of ethical standards such as those required of certified financial planners (CFPs) is crucial to rebuilding the trust that has been broken by financial scandals.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards' Standards of Professional Conduct requires CFPs to provide professional services with integrity, objectivity, competence, fairness, confidentiality, professionalism and diligencepeople who work in finance would be wise to adhere to these principles.

Anticipation

Looking ahead to what bosses or clients will need from you in the immediate or even distant future will help you rise to the top. It's not enough to just solve the day-to-day challenges of your job; you must be able to think long term. Consider the following:

What skills can you develop and what accomplishments can you put under your belt that will land you a promotion at your current company, get your foot in the door at another company or get you rehired if you are laid off or?

How can you make your boss's life easier by anticipating what they will need from you tomorrow, next week or next month, and taking care of it ahead of time?

How can you develop relationships with your clients by paying close attention to their situations? For example, if you notice that the person who has come to you for help managing an inheritance is pregnant, realizing that they could need help saving and investing for their child's college education, updating their will and possibly creating a trust can help you create a long-term business relationship with that client.

Wisdom and Interpretation

Los Angeles-based writing consultant Elizabeth B. Danziger, founder of Worktalk Communications Consulting and author of "Get to the Point!," says, "Clients of financial-service professionals are looking for more than knowledge and numbers: they're looking for wisdom and interpretation."

The Bottom Line

By combining your ability to analyze numbers with skills such as communication, project management, and relationship development, you'll emerge as a leader and position yourself to rise to the top of your field.
What Is the Fisher Transform Indicator?

The Fisher Transform is a technical indicator created by John F. Ehlers that converts prices into a Gaussian normal distribution. The indicator highlights when prices have moved to an extreme, based on recent prices. This may help in spotting turning points in the price of an asset. It also helps show the trend and isolate the price waves within a trend.

Key Takeaways The Fisher Transform is a technical indicator that normalizes asset prices, thus making turning points in price clearer.

Some traders look for extreme readings to signal potential price reversal areas, while others watch for a change in direction of the Fisher Transform.

The Fisher Transform formula is typically applied to price, but it can also be applied to other indicators.

Asset prices are not normally distributed, so attempts to normalize prices via an indicator may not always provide reliable signals.

Understanding the Fisher Transform Indicator

The Fisher Transform enables traders to create a Gaussian normal distribution, which converts data that isn't typically normal distributed, such as market prices. In essence, the transformation makes peak swings relatively rare events to help better identify price reversals on a chart.

This technical indicator is commonly used by traders looking for leading signals, rather than lagging indicators. The Fisher Transform can also be applied to other technical indicators, such as the relative strength index (RSI) or moving average convergence divergence (MACD).

TradingView.

The Fisher Transform Formula

 Fisher Transform = 1 2  ln ( 1 + X 1  X ) where: ln is the natural logarithm X = transformation of price to a level between -1 and 1 \begin{aligned} &\text{Fisher Transform} = \frac{1}{2}*\ln \left( \frac{1+X}{1-X} \right)\\ &\textbf{where:}\\ &\ln \text{ is the natural logarithm}\\ &X = \text{transformation of price to a level between -1 and 1}\\ \end{aligned} Fisher Transform=21ln(1X1+X)where:ln is the natural logarithmX=transformation of price to a level between -1 and 1

How to Calculate the Fisher Transform

Choose a lookback period, such as nine periods. This is how many periods the Fisher Transform is applied to. Convert the prices of these periods to values between -1 and +1 and input for X, completing the calculations within the formula's brackets. Multiply by the natural log. Multiply the result by 0.5. Repeat the calculation as each near period ends, converting the most recent price to a value between -1 and +1 based on the most recent nine-period prices. Calculated values are added/subtracted from the prior calculated value.

The Fisher Transform Indicator Trading Applications

The Fisher Transform indicator is unbounded, which means extremes can occur for a long time. An extreme is based on the historical readings for the asset in question. For some assets, a high reading may be seven or eight, while a low reading may be -4. For another asset, these values may differ.

An extreme reading indicates the possibility of a reversal. This should be confirmed by the Fisher Transform changing direction. For example, following a strong price rise and the Fisher Transform reaching an extremely high level, when the Fisher Transform starts to head lower that could signal the price is going to drop, or has already started dropping.

The Fisher Transform frequently has a signal line attached to it. This is a moving average (MA) of the Fisher Transform value, so it moves slightly slower than the Fisher Transform line. When the Fisher Transform crosses the trigger line, it is used by some traders as a trade signal. For example, when the Fisher Transform drops below the signal line after hitting an extreme high, that could be used as a signal to sell a current long position.

As with many indicators, the Fisher will provide lots of trade signals, plenty of which are not profitable to follow. Therefore, some traders prefer to use the indicator in conjunction with trend analysis. For example, when the price is rising overall, use the Fisher Transform for buy and sell signals, but not for short-sell signals. Meanwhile, during a downtrend, use it for short-sell signals and ideas on when to cover.

The Fisher Transform Indicator vs. Bollinger Bands

These two indicators look very different on a chart, yet both are based on a distribution of asset prices.

Bollinger Bands use a normal distribution in that they use standard deviation to show when the price may be overextended. Fisher Transform, on the other hand, uses a Gaussian normal distribution. The Fisher Transform appears as a separate indicator on a price chart, while Bollinger Bands are overlayed over the price.

Limitations of the Fisher Transform Indicator

The indicator can be rather noisy at times, even though its intent is to make turning points easier to identify. Extreme readings are not always followed by a price reversal; sometimes the price just moves sideways or reverses only a small amount.

What qualifies as extreme can also be hard to judge, since the levels tend to vary over time. Four may be a high level for years, but then readings of eight may start to frequently appear.

Looking at all changes in direction on the Fisher Transform can help spot short-term changes in price direction. However, the signal may come too late to capitalize, as many of these price moves may be short-lived.

Asset prices are not normally distributed, therefore attempts to normalize prices could be inherently flawed and may not produce reliable signals.
Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe revealed that he was told that poems by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh was not supposed to be read on the BBC".

He was talking about the notorious BAFTA incident in 2002 where he responded angrily after the BBC cut his recital - a tribute to actor Richard Harris - from the awards broadcast.
A school principal in north Co Dublin is being hailed a hero after saving the life of a nine-year-old boy who collapsed in the yard.

Tim O'Tuachaigh started CPR and sent for the defibrillator which had been donated by Apache Pizza to the local GAA club in Rush.
Families who have lost loved ones through homicide are being encouraged to reach out to get the support they need.

The charity AdVic - which provides free counselling for such families - is holding its annual remembrance service in at 2pm in the Freemason's Hall in Dublin today.
Dublin's planned new suburb, Clonburris, will be about the size of Balbriggan, and have eight schools and two train stations, it was revealed today.

The new town will be built south of its most recently created suburb - Adamstown.
China has announced that it will limit energy supplies to North Korea and stop buying its textiles under UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile development, further reducing support from Pyongyang's last ally.

Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to two million barrels per year, effective January 1, the Commerce Ministry said. Sales of liquefied natural gas are banned outright.

North Korea depends on China for almost all its oil and gas but estimates of its consumption are low, leaving it unclear how Beijing's new limit will affect them.

The restrictions announced today do not apply to crude oil, which makes up the biggest share of energy exports to the North.

China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are believed to be the North's biggest source of foreign revenue following rounds of UN sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.

China accounts for some 90% of the North's trade, making its cooperation critical to efforts to derail Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development.

Chinese leaders were long the North's diplomatic protectors but express increasing frustration with the government of Kim Jong Un.

They support the latest UN Security Council sanctions but are reluctant to push Pyongyang too hard for fear Kim's government might collapse. They also argue against doing anything that might hurt ordinary North Koreans.

Chinese officials complain their country bears the cost of enforcing sanctions, which have hurt businesses in its north-east that trade with the North.

Earlier US president Donald Trump lashed out at Kim during a rally speech in Alabama.

Mr Trump said: "We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place", adding: "Rocket Man should have been handled a long time ago".

Both leaders have been trading barbs.

Kim earlier this week called Mr Trump "deranged" and said he would "pay dearly" for his threats.

Mr Trump delivered a combative speech on Tuesday at the UN General Assembly, where he mocked Kim as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission". Mr Trump also told the UN that if "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea".

The UN Security Council voted on September 11 to limit fuel supplies and ban the North's textile exports. China, one of five permanent council members with power to veto UN action, agreed to the measure after the United States toned down a proposal for a complete oil embargo.

Petroleum exports for use in the North's ballistic missile programme or other activities banned by UN sanctions also are prohibited, the Commerce Ministry said.

The US government's Energy Information Agency estimates the North's 2016 daily imports from China at 15,000 barrels of crude oil and 6,000 barrels of refined products.

That would be the equivalent of almost 5.5 million barrels of crude and 2.2 million barrels of refined products for the full year.

North Korea has abundant coal but depends almost entirely on imports for oil and gas.

North Korean textile exports in 2016 totalled 750 million dollars (555 million), according to South Korea's Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. It said nearly 80% went to China.

- AP
In August, the Labour Court ruled Michael Coughlan was unfairly dismissed by DHL Express Ireland Ltd arising out of an incident in October 2015 when the company van he was driving collided with fencing at a DHL depot in Cork causing 2,500 worth of damage.

The company dismissed the driver/courier a month later for misconduct.

Mr Coughlan, who had worked for the company for 11 years, had previously attended a training course over his involvement in accidents in DHL vans in 2012 and 2013. Barrister Tom Mallon, counsel for DHL Express Ireland Ltd, told Ms Justice Eileen Creedon it was the companys case that the Labour Courts decision was flawed and in breach of fair procedures.

He said the matter came before the Labour Court after the company had appealed a Workplace Relations Commission finding that Mr Coughlans dismissal was disproportionate and unfair. The commission had ordered he be re-hired.

Mr Mallon said when the companys appeal came before the Labour Court the chairman refused to allow DHLs representative cross-examine Mr Coughlan on issues which it deemed relevant to its appeal.

Counsel said the refusal was unfair on the company and amounted to a breach by the Labour Court of its obligation to provide a fair and full hearing to each party.

DHLs witnesses at the hearing had been cross-examined by Mr Coughlans representatives. Mr Mallon told the court the Labour Court had awarded Mr Coughlan just over 72,000.

Judge Creedon granted the company permission, on an ex-parte basis where only one side was present in court, to bring its proceedings against the Labour Court.

As well as seeking an order quashing the Labour Courts determination, DHL also wants the matter remitted for rehearing before a differently constituted division of the Labour Court. It further seeks a declaration that the Labour Court acted in breach of its obligations towards DHL when it denied its representative a chance to cross-examine Mr Coughlan.

Mr Coughlan, from Gerard Griffin Street, Cork, is a notice party to the proceedings which the judge made returnable to a date in October.
Chief executive Tom Godfrey and managing director Ted Webb have led the buyout from Bank of Ireland, but have not disclosed the official terms.

Bank of Ireland said, however, it will maintain close links with the advisory firm. As an independent company, IBI may have more room to expand and hire senior staff without the pay ceiling constraints facing banks after the financial crisis.
Having been billed as one of the big events of the month, Theresa Mays appearance in Florence also proved to be a letdown, said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst, at online trader IG.

The speech was big on Johnson-style rhetoric, with plenty of broad sunlit uplands stuff that spelled out how the UK wished to be a friend to the EU.
The juvenile was back before Cork District Court for sentencing yesterday when he pleaded guilty to all charges arising out of both incidents.

Inspector Brian ODonovan said that at 10pm on March 10, the teenager was one of a large group of youths who were the source of anti-social behaviour in Fairhill. Gardai witnessed the defendant breaking the wing mirrors off three cars.

When Garda Ross McCabe approached the teenager the youth became aggressive and told the guard to fuck himself.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of causing criminal damage and one of engaging in threatening behaviour.

In a second incident on May 7, Garda Eamonn ORiordan said that he encountered a motorbike with no lights driving at high speed towards the Garda patrol car after midnight on that date in a residential area of the north side of the city. Gardai in the car had to take evasive action to avoid a collision with the bike.

The defendant was not wearing a helmet and was easily identified. He pleaded guilty to dangerous driving with no licence.

Judge Con OLeary put sentencing back for a month and released the accused from detention. He was put on bail with conditions that require him keep a curfew to be home between 9pm to 7am and to stay away from a number of named individuals. He is also required to stay away from his local shopping centre. The judge directed the preparation of a probation report in advance of sentencing.

Emma Leahy, defence solicitor, said the boys mother is very supportive but does not condone his behaviour on the nights in question. She said he suffered from ADHD from a young age.
Sinead Rafferty and Rachel Finnegan from Corduff National School in Lusk, Co Dublin, joined the invited dignitaries to remember Kerry-born Ashe at a State ceremony in Glasnevin Cemetary in Dublin.

Sinead, who is in third class, said they are proud of what Ashe achieved in the 1916 Easter Rising, but they also think it is important to speak about how he was a teacher ahead of his time.

Eileen Quinn, niece of Thomas Ashe, in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, during the state commemoration for the centenary of the funeral of 1916 Rising leader.

He was incredibly popular with the children of Corduff, she said. They said he had a way of teaching that helped them to learn easily. He did not believe in using the rod.

Ashe, who was born in Kinard East, Lispole, Co Kerry, trained as a teacher in De La Salle College, Waterford. He taught at Minard Castle National School in Kerry for nine months before his appointment as principal of Corduff National School.

Rachel, who is in sixth class, said Ashe was a great teacher who became a great leader.

He is someone I should look up to, she said. He reminds me to stand up for what I believe in, to never give up, to be the best I can and be proud of my country.

Thomas Ashe

The ceremony, attended only by invited guests, took place at Ashes grave which is near that of ODonovan Rossa and Fenian founder James Stephens.

Minister for Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys, laid a wreath at Ashes grave on behalf of the Government. She described Ashe as a member of that revolutionary generation that laid the foundations of the modern Irish State. She said the State, together with members of Ashes family, wanted to mark his life and legacy with a sensitive and fitting commemoration that reflected his great love of his country and his heritage.

A floral wreath was laid by Ashes niece, Eileen Quinn, her son, Gregory, and her grandson, also called Gregory.

Chairman of the Glasnevin Trust, John Green, who also laid a wreath, said that, as they reflected on the short life of Thomas Ashe, it was extraordinary how much he achieved.

From the Gaelic League to the Gaelic fields; from his school to his community; from the Irish Volunteers to the Irish Republic Brotherhood; he was a leader, he said. His tragic death sometimes overshadows his many talents and achievements.

A member of the Black Raven pipe band plays at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin, for the commemoration for the centenary of the funeral of 1916 Rising leader Thomas Ashe.

After the Rising, Ashe escaped execution and was interned. He was released in June 1917 under the general amnesty given to Republican prisoners.

In August 1917 he was arrested after a speech in Ballinalee, Longford, where Michael Collins was also speaking. When he was taken to Mountjoy Prison, Ashe and another Irish revolutionary and politician, Austin Stack, demanded to be treated as prisoners of war.

On September 25, 1917, Ashe died from pneumonia, which was caused by force-feeding by the prison authorities. He was 32 years old.
As new CSO figures show that Irelands unemployment rate has fallen to 6.3%, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told Ibec the Government is to prioritise new laws restricting zero hour contracts during this Dail term.

Ibec director of employer relations Maeve McElwee said such legislation would lead to significant costs and administration for all employers.

Speaking on RTEs Morning Ireland, she said it was disproportionate legislation that would impact all employers. She said employers are asking for a regulatory impact assessment to be carried out before any legislation is implemented to consider the significant economic cost it would have on employers.

While she accepted less than 2% of employees were working in low or zero hour contracts which may be precarious, she said some of the workers were also working by choice on well paid, low hours contracts.

She said this included 20,000 workers across the health and education sectors.

Ms McElwee said the vast majority of employers look after their employees and treat them with dignity.

Labour Party spokesperson on employment Senator Ged Nash, who initiated the process to ban zero hour contracts, called on the Government to publish the proposed legislation in full.

These proposals have been on the blocks for two years. There are still too many people going to bed on a Sunday night not knowing how many hours they will work that week, and therefore how much they will earn, he said.

However, Mr Nash said that while the Governments proposals represent a step in the right direction, the draft legislation needs to be strengthened, warning that low-hour contracts, which are more prevalent in Ireland, are just as bad for workers.

Much is being made of the plan to end the use of zero hour contracts. This might be a catchy headline but all it really amounts to is a piece of legislative tidying-up, as UK-style zero hour arrangements are not a common feature of the Irish landscape. However, if and when and low hours contracts are much more prevalent and just as insidious.

The Irish Small and Medium Enterprises association described the proposed legislation as  an overly onerous response to the (unestablished) problem of zero hour contracts.

ISME spokesperson John Barry said: The key point is that we are talking about a very small minority of employers abusing staff under if and when contracts. Legislation on zero-hours contracts will not stop abuse of employees with if and when contracts, it will simply change the rules. The bad employer will always find a way around the rules.

He added: This is a knee-jerk reaction to a populist call by the left. Perhaps legislation recognising new working patterns would make it easier for people to get bank loans, etc. As we head to zero unemployment and people shortages, it makes no sense to introduce legislation addressing a practically non-existent problem.

Meanwhile, Irelands jobless rate stood at 6.3% in August, almost three percentage points below the eurozone average of 9.1%, according to official figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The unemployment rate for August was down from 6.4% in the previous month, and significantly less than the peak of 15.1% it hit during the financial crisis.

But the CSO figures showed that youth unemployment rose to 12.7% from 12.3% in July.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist with Merrion Stockbrokers, said Irish employment rose in 11 of the 14 economic sectors on an annual basis in the first quarter of 2017.

He forecast an average jobless rate in 2017 of 6.4% against 7.9% in 2016 and 9.4% in 2015.

Zero-hours work explained

A zero-hours contract of employment is a contract without specific working hours. Under such a contract, the employee is available for work but does not have specified hours of work. Anyone with a zero- hours contract enters into a formal arrangement that requires them to be available for a certain number of hours per week, or when required, or a combination of both.

Employees on zero hours contracts are protected currently by the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 but this does not apply to casual employment.

Under the 1997 Act, an employee under a zero-hours contract who works less than 25% of their hours in any week should be compensated.

Last May, the Government approved legislative proposals from Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell OConnor and Small Business Minister Pat Breen to strengthen the regulation of precarious work.

The draft proposals are aimed at low-paid workers in particular and address the issue of employees whose contracts do not reflect the reality of their hours worked.

A government statement says the plans include an amendment to the Organisation of Working Time Act which will outlaw zero-hour contracts in most circumstances.

The proposals will stop situations where the stated contracted hours are zero, unless it is genuinely casual work.
Richard Corbridge, the HSEs chief information officer, who is due to leave his post in November, said he has personally committed that no new site will go live until we have designed, built, and tested the integrated solution.

Integration between the GP and hospital system in the Cork region is due to commence on October 31.

The Irish College of General Practitioners has criticised the decision to go live with the Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System (MN-CMS) at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) and University Hospital Kerry (UHK) without first establishing a link to their IT systems, as GPs and maternity hospitals operate a shared-care model.

The next site earmarked for rollout is the Rotunda Hospital. A contract up to the value of 330,000 has been awarded to consultants Prospectus to assist where capacity is limited within the Rotunda and the national [HSE project] team. If the full value of the contract is drawn down, it will bring overall consultant spend on the project to more than 1m to get the system up and running in just three of the countrys 19 maternity units.

The HSE has already paid Deloitte 700,000 to assist rollout in CUMH and UHK. Consultant fees are in addition to the 35m paid to US firm Cerner, with whom the HSE signed a seven-year contract, with the option to extend by three years.

Last November, the ICGP was told the absence of a digital link between GPs and the hospital system would be resolved within six months.

The HSE said the solution is in the final stages of testing and will be made available nationally after being piloted in CUMH and KUH. The next MN-CMS sites will only go live once this solution has been proven in the live environment.

The HSE conceded it was disappointing that the link currently in place for integrated care is still a paper-based process and it was clear the link needs to be digital before the next sites can go live.

The HSE said failure to install a digital link between GPs and hospitals prior to the go-live was not an oversight. The interim solution was to print out the electronic health record and add it to the paper file carried by the mum-to-be to ensure GPs and the hospitals have access to the same information.

The national rollout is well behind schedule  four hospitals were originally earmarked to have the system installed in 2016. The rollout in CUMH was delayed six months and took 10,000 staff training hours.
The commissioner for agriculture and rural development, however, also said farmers must be protected post-Brexit and new markets will have to be explored.

As British prime minister Theresa May yesterday announced a two-year transition period after Britain exits the EU in March 2019, Mr Hogan said new markets should be established in advance.

We have a difficulty now with our nearest big neighbour in terms of the dependence we had over the years with the UK. Theres no point in waiting for two or three years and waiting for things to happen, he said.

Now is the time to do something about it by working together to make sure that we get into new markets and offer financial support to that.

He was speaking at the opening a new 86m milk processing facility in Mallow, Co Cork.

He praised the innovation of a new Dairygold Nutritionals Campus, on a 22-acre site, which will support growth for 2,900 milk suppliers across Munster in the post-quota era and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, processing up to 600m litres of milk every 48 weeks.

Up to 1,750 tonnes of nutritional ingredient powders will be produced each week on site.

The campus is a key pillar of a Dairygold expansion plan.

Its chief executive Jim Woulfe said the next phase of development at the Mallow plant is already under way, and the company is also investing in cheese production in Mogeely, East Cork with Norwegian commercial partners TINE.

Mr Woulfe says the Mallow investment delivers on the twin objectives of its expansion plan.

This world-class nutritionals campus not only caters for our members expanding milk production but it also puts in place the processing technology to expand our range of higher value ingredients for the adult and infant nutritional sectors.

This, in turn, creates more value-add for our increasing milk volumes. The nutritionals campus will be at the forefront of our nutritionals growth agenda, with further investment planned in the near future.

Meanwhile, Mr Hogan urged the UK government to remain in the European Union customs union and the single market.

Nobody in the UK voted to leave the single market or customs union, he added.

Mr Hogan said common sense would have to prevail from UK political leaders and said the Brexit narrative had got out of control.

Turnover for Dairygold in 2016 was 765m, with 1.3bn litres of milk produced on site. The company has 7,100 shareholders and employs 1,200 people.
The report into facilities on the Co Donegal island also found of the fire stations location: It was noted that parking at the adjacent bar impinged upon the fire station forecourt. It was reported that this has resulted in a delayed turnout on previous occasions.

It found the existing station does not fulfil minimal functional requirements nor provide firefighters with facilities conducive to safety, health and welfare as required under law. The provision to the firefighters and residents of Arranmore should be no less than any other station.

The assessment of the suitability of fire service facilities on Arranmore Island was carried out by James Murphy, a retired former senior fire officer with Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service, on behalf of Donegal Firefighters Association. Copies of the report have been passed to county councillors in Donegal, who are due to discuss the issue at a meeting on Monday.

The report points out that Arranmore has a regular population of almost 500 but that during the summer months this can rise to around 1,100, mainly due to tourists and students studying Irish. It also has two primary schools, a secondary school, hotels, and pubs.

It has an establishment of seven firefighters but just two are retained firefighters. In contrast, Inis Mor on the Aran Islands has a fully retained crew.

Of the fire station on the island, constructed in 2003, the report states: Fire precautions comprises of three fire extinguishers. There is no fire alarm and detection or emergency lighting.

According to the report: The facilities at Arranmore are extremely limited. All activities are taking place in one area which lacks provisions such as adequate heat and basic comfort.

Among the observations are that the standard of heating is unlikely to conform with requirements under the Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, and that wet fire kit and other equipment cannot be dried. It points out that damp fire kit conducts heat more than dry kit and is therefore less protective in a fire situation as well as being less comfortable.

The report also highlights other shortcomings, including how storage of equipment is haphazard and a general lack of space for meetings and training.

Recommendations include that the station be provided with a jeep-type vehicle, as in mainland stations, and that consideration should be given to the provision of a new build station.

The existing structure is too small to allow for remodelling. A new station may be more cost-effective than extending and upgrading the existing structure.

It also said the station should have a fire alarm and detection in accordance with regulations and linked to a call handling company, as the fire station is an invaluable community asset and as such early warning in the event of fire is considered essential to protect the property and ensure the ongoing availability of the service.

A spokesman for the DFA said: "The DFA commissioned these reports in an effort to improve the facilities on both Islands. We fully support the members on the Islands and ask all stakeholders and elected officials to get together and find a way forward."
The National Maritime College of Ireland, and its joint venture Irish partner SEFtec, have landed a major contract to build a marine safety training centre in Germany.

It will be modelled on the modern National Maritime College training centre in Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, and it is hoped it will showcase Irish expertise to the rest of Europe, resulting in many more significant orders.

The deal has been struck with German maritime training company MACO, which is the training arm of Hamburg Port and the Hamburg Seamans Union. It is one of Germanys leading providers of maritime professionals.

The manufacture of the pool and firefighting units will be carried out in Cork and will be transported to Germany in kit form and reassembled.

The Irish partners have already completed similar projects in the United Arab Emirates, Angola, Ukraine, and the Canary Islands.

National Maritime College boss Conor Mowlds said the German contract was a big coup for us.

He said the UK has, up to now, been a traditional market for college training courses and while a lot of their British customers will remain there was a need to look elsewhere post-Brexit.

Mainland Europe is where we must look now. We cant afford to wait and see what happens post-Brexit and we are changing focus to a presence in Europe, he said.

Mr Mowlds described the German contract as aflagship project because of the prestige of MACO and said it would send out a very strong signal to the rest of the European market about the National Maritime College/SEFtecs prowess.

Mr Mowlds said the joint venture company, which was formed between NMCI and Crosshaven-based SEFtec in 2010 and known as the National Maritime College Offshore, was now marketing itself directly at maritime conference and events organised in mainland Europe for the oil and gas exploration industries.

Weve already had some very strong enquiries on foot of this from other EU countries, he said.

All key German technical and administrative staff will be trained at the college as survival instructors initially.

Following this a broad range of additional training, consultancy and supports will be provided to ensure they have the skills to run their own training centre.
The school told the High Court it had just three places available in a special class for such children and had to whittle its intake for the current academic year down to three from 17 applications it had received.

Feichin McDonagh SC, counsel for the school board of management, told Ms Justice Eileen Creedon that the mother of one of the children turned away had appealed the schools refusal. He said her appeal had gone before a three-person committee established by the department, which had been successful. The committee had made a recommendation that the child be enrolled.
After Mrs May proposed a two-year transition period for the UK after it quits the EU in a speech in Florence, Mr Varadkar said he gave her comments a guarded welcome.

I dont think it is a game- changer, he said. I give it a guarded welcome. I dont think it is enough to say to allow us to move on to the next phase of negotiations, we will need more clarity and more progress.
For me there are two kinds of holidays, a totally chilled, lying-by-the-pool, soaking-up-the sun holiday and an away from home break, where I visit lots of farms and food producers, craft brewers or distillers and check out new cafes, restaurants, farmers markets  you get the picture. Its a holiday but one where I get to keep in touch and learn lots more about the food scene in whatever country Im visiting. Believe it or not I find the latter type of holiday much more relaxing.

I spent a few days in Denmark and Sweden recently. This is particularly easy, just fly into Copenhagen and whizz across the 16km Oresund Bridge and youre in Sweden.

Ive been wanting to visit Skane for years, an area that is often referred to as the breadbasket of Sweden.

We were on our way to visit Mandelmann, a traditional and virtually self-sufficient farm. Gustav spent years studying medicine and Marie studied art and sculpture. They eventually

decided that they couldnt stand another minute in the city  there had to be another way to live your life  so they bought 100 hectares and a traditional Swedish farmhouse and went back to the land with their children. They set about growing food, rearing cattle and pigs and chickens. There are lots of springs on the land so they created ponds and streams surrounded by bulrushes and willow, herb and meadowsweet, a haven for ducks and geese.

There are apricots and mulberries hanging from the trees and gardens full of vegetables

intermingled with flowers and herbs.

Not surprisingly, Swedish TV discovered them and is now filming a second series which has been a smash hit among the many who have fantasies about moving to the country to grow some of their own food without realising the phenomenal amount of work it all entails, but life is a tradeoff.

When they shear their sheep they use some of the wool on paths to suppress weeds and do a huge amount of preserving. Theres also a cafe. When I visited several local girls were in the kitchen of the cafe making halloumi cheese from the milk of the small white cows and another was stoning a huge basin of plums for jam.

The gardens and farm are open to the public and now theres a cafe and several greenhouses packed with heirloom tomatoes, under-planted with grapes and pumpkin, basil and French marigolds even a Sichuan peppercorn tree.

The staff party was on the night we visited and had long tables under the grape vines and kiwi fruit in the greenhouses.

They had huge bowls of salads and the sweetest lamb from the farm.

The farm found work for all these young people and theres a long waiting list to apprentice, learning valuable skills.

Such is the popularity of the farm that one has to book ahead to visit and tickets are limited to 400 a day.

Theres also a cook book, Sjalvhushallning Pa Djupadal, by Marie and Gustav Mandelmann but it is Swedish  thanks to Ted Berner for translating the recipes.

Here are a few of my favourites, plus my lunch box suggestions of the week as promised.

Plum and Apple Jam

Delicious on bread or toast but only good with cold pork or ham.

Makes 6 x 450g (1lb) jam jars

900g (2lb) blood plums

450g (1lb) bramley cooking apples

150ml (quarter pint) water

1.1kg (2.5lb) granulated sugar

Cut the plums in half and remove the pips, then cut each half into four. Peel and core the apples and cut them into chunks. Put the plums and apples into a wide, stainless-steel pan with the water. Cook, covered, for 10-15 minutes until the apples and plums are both soft.

Meanwhile, heat the sugar in an oven. When the fruit is soft, add the warm sugar and cook, uncovered for about 8-10 minutes, until the jam is set.

Pour into hot, clean jars. Cover and store in a dry, airy cupboard.

Variation: Damson and Apple Jam

Substitute damsons for plums and proceed as above. Remember to skim off the stones and scum with a perforated spoon (this is time-consuming but worth it) as they rise to the top. Pour into hot jars and cover. Store in a dry, airy cupboard.

Marie and Gustav Mandelmanns Rhubarb Juice

2 kg rhubarb, washed and roughly cut

1.5 l water

600 g sugar per litre of rhubarb juice

Boil the rhubarb in the water for 15 minutes. Strain through muslin. Measure the juice and add the sugar. Boil up again until sugar is dissolved and bottle in clean bottles.

Taken from Sjalvhushallning Pa Djupadal by Marie and Gustav Mandelmann

Marie and Gustav Mandelmanns Rosehip Soup

700 g fresh rosehips

1.5 l water

130 g sugar

1.5 tbsp potato starch

Lemon juice

Clean the rosehips well and remove any stems and remnant flower. Boil the rosehips in water for 20 minutes, stir and mash. Pour this through a sieve. With this liquid add the sugar. Add a little of water to the potato starch and whisk it down into a soup. Bring liquid, sugar and potato starch to the boil, dissolve the sugar and taste. It may need more sugar or lemon juice.

Taken from Sjalvhushallning Pa Djupadal by Marie and Gustav Mandelmann, Translated by Ted Berner

School Lunch Box Suggestion Temari Sushi (Clingfilm) Sushi

Makes 20-30 pieces

Sprig of dill or chervil or coriander

Half quantity prepared sushi rice

25g (1oz) smoked salmon, cut into 2.5cm (1in) squares

or

10 cooked prawns or shrimps

or

Half cucumber, sliced wafer thin and cut into 2.5cm (1in) pieces

or

25g (1oz) rare roast beef, thinly sliced and cut into 2.5cm (1in) pieces

To Serve

wasabi paste

pickled ginger (optional)

Sushi Rice

450g (1lb) sushi rice No 1 Extra Fancy

600ml (pint) water

Vinegar Water

50ml (2fl oz) rice wine vinegar

1.5 tablespoons sugar

2.5 teaspoons salt

Lay a piece of clingfilm, about 10cm (4in) square, on a clean work surface and place a sprig of dill, chervil or coriander face down on the cling film

and then a piece of cucumber or smoked salmon at the centre of it. Put a

teaspoonful of sushi rice on top of it.

Pick up all four corners of the clingfilm and gather them in the middle. Twist the clingfilm to compact the rice and form a small ball. Repeat the

process with the other toppings.

Keep each piece of sushi wrapped in the clingfilm until just before serving. You may want to put a dab of wasabi under the rice if the temari sushi is being served as finger food. For a starter arrange on a plate and serve with pickled ginger and a little wasabi and soy sauce.

Preparing the Sushi Rice and Vinegar Water

Rinse the rice for 10 minutes in a colander or sieve under cold running water or until the water becomes clear.

Wake up the rice by sitting it in 600ml (1pint) cold water for 30 to 45

minutes. In the same water, bring to the boil and then cook for 10 minutes until all the water has been absorbed.

Do not stir, do not even take off the lid. Turn up the heat for 10 seconds

before turning the heat off. Remove the lid, place a tea towel over the rice,

replace the lid and sit for 20 minutes. Mix the rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt together in a bowl until dissolved.

Turn the rice out onto a big flat plate (preferably wooden). While the rice is still hot pour the vinegar solution over the rice and mix the rice and

vinegar together in a slicing action with the aid of a wooden spoon. Dont stir.

You must do it quickly preferably fanning the rice with the fan. This is much easier if you have a helper. Allow to cool on the plate and cover with kitchen paper or a tea towel. (It will soak up the liquid as it cools.)

Hot Tips:

Bayin Peanut Oil: John and Katrina Crawford set up Bayin to bring a taste of Myanmar to our table. They import cold pressed, naturally produced

sesame and peanut oil from Myanmar and recently won a Great Taste Award for their peanut oil. It was described as having a lovely delicate colour with good clarity. It has a good nutty aroma and sweet taste.

bayin.ie/ Telephone Katrina on 086 1522653

Toonsbridge Dairy Cheeses and Real Olive Company produce from the English Market and can now be purchased online. Customers can have mozzarella delivered to their door anywhere in Ireland, fancy that.

therealoliveco.com or email Jenny-Rose jenny@therealoliveco.com

Irish plums are in season but hurry, it is almost over. Next up are damsons so keep an eye out at your local farmers market. Rose Cottage in Co Laois had an excellent crop of Victoria, Jubille, Opal, and Hagenta varieties.

Tel: 057 8732666.

Irish Seed Savers, Scarriff, Co Clare, have a range of workshops and events through autumn and winter. Creating an Orchard, Permaculture, Winter Pruning in the Orchard, Organic Gardening plus craft and skills courses. irishseedsavers.ie; 061 921866.
WHEN I first visited Munich in the 1980s, I was a student who didnt seem to have much time for the citys art and culture but I did love its irresistible energy, the ability of its citizens to work hard and play harder and the uncanny knack its public transport systems had of always being on time.

This all helps to make ambling around Munich a relaxing experience. In spite of the fact that a great percentage of the city was destroyed during the second world war, it doesnt really show and there are enough stand-out monument buildings and elegantly rebuilt parts to join up with the more modern buildings so that it sums up to a very appealing city centre.

Karlsplatz is the best place to start. From this central point in Munich, absolutely everything radiates outwards and the train (S-Bahn line No 1) from the airport will whisk you straight to Karslplatz in 50 minutes.

This is also the starting point to Munichs main shopping street. The multilevel Kaufhof Galerie department store occupies much of the western side of Karslplatz and then after passing through the Karlstor archway there is a straight run of varied retail outlets and refreshment pit-stops on street level. Neuhauser Strasse forms a pedestrian thoroughfare some 2km long.

There are the local brands such as Trendbox or the shops selling the traditional lederhosen. The more upmarket clothes shops are in the shiny Kaufinger Tor shopping centre where shops include Hallhuber, Jack & Jones and Gortz 17 for the fancy shoes.

The best bit of it is the section ending in Marienplatz. Here you can do the charming tourist thing and stand looking at the Glockenspiel at the town hall (Neues Rathaus) where mechanical characters come out and mark the hour in time-honoured tradition. You can also catch the 210-year-old open-air market on the neighbouring Viktualienmarkt. Along with Marienplatz, this square will turn all Christmassy starting on November 27.

The Frauenkirche (aka the Munchner Dom) just off Marienplatz is Munichs most symbolic building, with its unmistakable onion-domed twin towers and austere red-brick exterior.

Walking over the devils footprint at the entrance, youll find a suitably ornate and decorative interior befitting its status as the citys principal cathedral.

Back down Neuhauser Strasse, the much smaller Burgersaalkirche has a candy pink exterior that gives way to a well-lit Baroque interior that feels more like an opera house than a Catholic church.

Inside the Ochsenbraterei beer tent at Oktoberfest on Theresienwiese where people celebrate and drink beer; the Octoberfest is an annual event in Munich but you can enjoy Bavarian brew throughout the year.

The real hidden gem to ensure you stumble across, however, is the stunning Asam Church at Number 32, Sendlinger Strasse. Its a small church with no elbow room in a discreet location on a busy street but once you step inside, prepare to pick your jaw back up off the floor: Its so crammed with astounding Baroque decoration that you can only wonder how they manage to fit it all in. Its creators were two brothers named Asam  one was a sculptor and the other a painter and it could very well be the most elaborate calling cards in the world.

In terms of museums, Munich has a range of places to visit that will blow the socks off. Top of the list is Deutsches Museum (S-Bahn/tram stop Isartor), located on an island in the middle of the river Isar.

It would take several days to see properly but is still a must-see if only for a short time. A more manageable feat might be to visit the Neue Pinakotek (tram numbers 27 or 28), which contains one of the most important collections in the world of 18th and 19th century fine art. Its treasures include works by Francisco de Goya, Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Vincent Van Gogh and Thomas Gainsborough. The Alte Pinakotek  just a few steps away  has one of the worlds best collections of Old Master paintings.

One of the reasons the city is so well-endowed with important museums worthy of a capital city is because Munich was the capital of the independent kingdom of Bavaria for a long time. If you dont have time to visit the Nymphenburger Palace of King Ludwig II (on the outskirts of the city but requiring a full day to take in the vast gardens, great halls and recently-restored royal carriage), then the Residenz on Max-Joseph-Platz is well worth a look to get a feel for the over-the-top royal heritage of Bavaria. Check out the stunning antiquarium and the various treasures collected over the years by the Wittelsbach dynasty.

But back to the beer Munichs streets will be fairly beer-soaked during Oktoberfest, however anytime outside of that period, there are several places to partake of the brown stuff. Try the Augustiner Bierhalle on the afore-mentioned Neuhauserstrasse where cheap comfort food can be enjoyed with a hefty stein of beautiful Bavarian beer surrounded by dark wood panelling and decor involving a lot of antlers. Theres also the most famous one  Hofbrauhaus on Platzl  which is atmospheric, loud and touristy with a constant background soundtrack of oompah bands.

An even more madcap experience is to be had at the Jodlerwirt in the shadow of the Frauenkirche in Althofstrasse. Upstairs in a packed room, a man with an accordion stands in a recess belting out Bavarian folk favourites with an accordion while complete strangers link arms singing and swaying or dance on the table.

The Englischer Garten is one of the worlds largest city parks and no visit to Munich is complete without at least taking time to stroll through some of it.

All kinds of activity go on here throughout the year, including surfing (on artificial waves on the lake), strolling, cycling, jogging and nude sunbathing (weather-permitting in one section). It also has four beer gardens, the most popular of which is the Chinesischer Turm Beer Garden, where tables are sprawled invitingly under the shadow of a Chinese pagoda.

GETTING THERE

Flights:

Aer Lingus (aerlingus.com) operate daily direct flights from Dublin and weekly (increasing to twice weekly in summer), year-round.

Where to Stay:

For the splash-out option the 5-star Hotel Konigshof on Karlsplatz is the pick of the crop.

For a more normal-priced stay, there are plenty of options in the bohemian Schwabing district (U-bahn stop Bonner Platz) just north of the city centre where a pleasant student vibe permeates the local bars and restaurants. The Ibis Munchen Parkstadt Hotel, for example, will cost under 100/night.

What to Eat:

Lots of Munchners eat standing up at one of the many Stehcafes around the city, where you can get a tasty meaty sandwich for about 3.

Those unaccustomed to the delights of Bavarian food will be pleasantly surprised by the amazing things that they can do with the simple sausage.

The Nurnberger Bratwurst Glockl am Dom just off Marienplatz offer very hearty options accompanied by the uniquely delicious Bavarian potato salad for around 15.

Sights to See:

Apart from the aforementioned, a visit out to the Olympic Park (U-bahn line No. U3 or Tram 21 or 27) is rewarding for the amazing spiders web architecture and the Olympiaturm tower from where you can enjoy a weissbier while getting a birds-eye view of the entire city.

Getting Around:

The CityTourCard allows you to travel unlimited on Munichs buses, trams and trains as well as 10% discounts on most of the attractions.

For information in English see www.mvv-muenchen.de.
Is there anything like Fashion Month to make a woman feel dowdy? Actually, lets just keep going: dumpy, drab, dated and downcast. And thats just the Ds. Feel free to add the adjective that best describes how you feel after watching a procession of those show-stopping catwalk ensembles that look nothing like anything in your wardrobe. Well, mine anyway, but I doubt Im alone in that.

Theyre not really meant to, of course, although this year those in the know have proclaimed that fashion has finally come back down to Earth. There is, apparently, a return to practicality and a move away from the peacocking Insta-bait with its thousand-pound tracksuits and limited-edition bumbags, as one eloquent fashion editor put it.

Wonderful news, but Im not celebrating just yet.

Street style may have gone back to ground-level, whatever that means, but from where Im sitting the closest thing on the London catwalk to anything I own was a pair of green fluffy slippers by faux-fur label Shrimps. But theyre not even practical.

Bra tops are also de rigueur this season, but I cant see how they might be considered practical either. Bra tops? In an Irish spring? Doesnt anybody feel the cold any more?

Of course its not exactly breaking news to suggest most of us are more Dunnes than Dior. We have been looking down the yawning gap between the fashion pages and what the average woman wears for decades now.

The rise of social media, however, has made it much worse  its hard to stop yourself being drawn into the fashion abyss when the seasons must-haves are just a click away. And its big business. Oh, to be a micro-influencer. Those with upwards of 10,000 followers can command fees running into thousands of euro for a single post.

We might succeed in seeing it for what it is (a little aspirational whimsy), or let it pass over our big hair (fyi, its back, Eighties-style) if it wasnt for the unending discussion in the media.

Just when you thought Fashion Month couldnt get any more depressing, along come the Emmy Awards. Given the focus on glamour, youd be forgiven for thinking that it was a red-carpet competition for best dress rather than a celebration of US prime-time television programming.

The spotlight seems to be on the splendid designer creations that cost more than most of us will ever spend on clothes in a lifetime.

For days afterwards, its impossible to avoid those best dress/worst dress photo spreads that have become a staple of most publications. And what better way to bring out the snarky, gloaty worst in all of us.

Shameful admission #1: I sneak a peek at the worst dress pictures and am secretly pleased to think that perfection cant be bought even at those prices.

Shameful admission #2: I very often confuse the worst and the best and think the fashion crime is, in fact, the essence of shtyle.

Shameful admission #3: I have, quite unconsciously, bought into fashion-shaming, As if body-shaming and fat-shaming werent enough, we now think its perfectly acceptable to tear strips off a person just because of what they are wearing.

Im with Lena Dunham, star of the HBO series Girls, on this one.

Earlier this year, internet gossip columnist Perez Hilton wrote At least shes trying under a picture of her on the Human Rights Campaign Gala red carpet. She was wearing a black dress with red accessories. Lets leave the description at that because what you wear to a human rights campaign gala shouldnt be a priority.

Thats exactly what Lena said and its worth repeating her response in full because her words will be blessed balm for anyone suffering fashion angst.

I try at a lot of things, she commented. Mostly I try at being a writer, director, actor, activist, friend, sibling, partner, godmother... Fashion is fun but sometimes Id rather not spend 3 hours and lots of cash I could give to charity or spend on books and food to get ready to go out.

Theres a lotta different ways to be a public figure and I think theres room for us to occasionally show up in public like normal people do. When I look at that picture you subjected to caption this criticism, I see a day well-spent writing, reading, having tea with a friend. Its unfortunate that the days you approve of most are the ones where Im spending the least time on what really matters. With love, Lena.

If I could, Id put that exchange on the school curriculum. (Oh, and long live the school uniform  they may be hated but how much heartache they save.) Id also include the wisdom of a dear friend who, when asked about her winter wardrobe, said this: My autumn/winter wardrobe is the same as my spring/summer wardrobe, except with jumpers over it. Thats not to say that women  men too  cant take an interest in fashion, but lets wear the clothes, not the other way around.

There was one small ray of hope in the middle of Fashion Month. Supermodel Heidi Klum launched a fashion collection this month, which is now available in Lidl.

The 20-piece collection, called Heidi and the City, is also available in real sizes (8 to 18) and at reasonable prices, from 5.99 to 59.99.

Who can afford Chanel? she said at the launch. Actually, Heidi herself probably can but its still heartening to read that she wants to make clothes for real people.

If only those real people would allow themselves to separate fashion fact from fashion fantasy.
On the day before what turned out to be the last false alarm for Ibrahim Halawa, he relayed a few thoughts to be posted on Facebook.

Within hours, he was expecting to hear the verdict in the trial that had kept him in an Egyptian prison for four torturous years.

Perhaps expecting was too strong a word as there had already been 30 adjournments and, amid the complexities and confusion of a case that involved more than 400 defendants, anticipating progress on any given court date had been an exercise in hope over optimism.

But this time, the last Monday in August, the Irish Government was confident this was it and senior ministers had reportedly cleared their diaries for taking and making calls in preparation either for getting Ibrahim home to Ireland as a free man or pardoned convict, or launching an appeal in the case of conviction and further imprisonment.

I guess Im closer to the unknown, wrote Ibrahim.

As it happened, Monday, August 28, became just another date in a long list of disappointments. Adjourned again, Ibrahim was returned to his limbo existence.

Three weeks later, on Monday last, there was another flurry of activity as another possible final day in court loomed.

This time, government ministers were quieter, though they remained on watch nonetheless.

This time, the verdict did come through. Ibrahim was acquitted of all charges. The unknown was known.

Declan Walsh, the Irish journalist who is Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, vividly described seeing the young Dubliner, partially obscured by the glass and wire mesh cage in which the prisoners were held, jumping up and down, punching the air and hugging fellow inmates as the judge read out his determination.

From outside the soundproofed enclosure, his jubilations were a strange, silent dance of delight but the tears in Ibrahims eyes bellowed emotion.

But as Ibrahim prepares to begin his life again in Ireland, the effects of his experiences, how they will shape a future he had begun to doubt he would have, and how they will shape attitudes towards him, will undoubtedly begin to be revealed. Arguably, he is closer to the unknown now than ever.

HOLIDAY

Ibrahim Hussein Halawa was 17 when he travelled with three of his sisters from their home in Firhouse, south county Dublin, to Cairo to spend the summer with relatives in 2013 while he waited for the results of his Leaving Cert exams.

The youngest of the seven Halawa siblings, he was born in Ireland after his father, Sheikh Hussein Halawa, moved the family from Egypt in the mid-1990s to head up the new Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh, Dublin.

The expansive campus, home to Irelands largest mosque, is funded by the al-Maktoum Foundation established by the billionaire ruling family of Dubai who have strong ties with Ireland through their stud farms here.

The Halawas have had a comfortable but unshowy lifestyle here, family, faith, and education absorbing them.

They have always insisted they were not political  not in the activist sense anyway. But Ibrahim and three of his sisters, Omaima, Fatima, and Somaia, arrived in Cairo just as the city was erupting in political protest.

Egypt had enjoyed a brief taste of democracy after Hosni Mubarak, dictatorial leader for 30 years, was toppled during the Arab Spring revolutions that swept north Africa in 2011.

In the countrys first free elections the following year, Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the uprising, was the victor. But the celebrations were short-lived.

Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist Sharia law-supporting Islamic group, quickly drew criticism for cronyism, conservatism, and a new constitution that awarded himself sweeping powers.

Crowds returned to the street in protest and Morsis army chief, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, turned on him, leading a coup and assuming control of the country.

A fresh wave of protests followed. Like or loathe Morsi, he was democratically elected and the voice of the people who voted him in and then asked him to change his ways was now being silenced by a strongman in the Mubarak tradition.

At first the demonstrations ran peacefully. A mix of pro-Morsi, anti-coup, and a bit of both, the protesters worked well together in a shared expression of discontent.

The Halawas joined in and on one occasion, they took to the stage under the banner of Egyptians Abroad for Democracy, Ibrahim taking his turn with other young expats to address a crowd of thousands.

Video footage shows a confident teenager, speaking energetically in Arabic while the crowd cheers their approval before he leads them in chants in English of: What do we want? Freedom. When do we want it? Now.

Curiosity, excitement, youthful idealism, too much free time  anyone could have drawn the siblings to the movement. Some have claimed  though the family strenuously reject it  that the siblings were deliberately dispatched by their father as a show of strength for the Muslim Brotherhood which was keen to prove its reach into the West.

El-Sisis patience with the protests rapidly waned and in mid-August he sent security forces to clear the main gathering in Rabaa. In the clashes that followed, as many as 900 demonstrators were killed.

There were casualties on the government side, too  officially several dozen members of the security forces died although other sources put the toll at less than 10. Either way, the loss of life among the protesters was enough to ensure that Rabaa would be forever accompanied by the word massacre.

On August 16, a demonstration against the killings was called for Ramses Square. The Halawas went along and became swept up in a terrifying ordeal. Another crackdown was ordered and the siblings took shelter with hundreds of others in the al-Fateh mosque.

They were there all through the night and into the following afternoon, with security forces surrounding them and becoming increasingly trigger happy.

During that time, the siblings stayed in touch with home by phone calls that would eventually get them direct contact with the then Irish ambassador to Egypt, Isolde Moylan.

Through her diplomatic connections, she attempted to arrange safe passage out of the mosque but the situation escalated, the uniforms forced their way into the mosque, and hundreds were rounded up and imprisoned.

The sisters were granted bail to await trial after three months and immediately left for Ireland  an act complained of by the Egyptian authorities although their displeasure is contrived because they had to know the trio would head straight for the airport on release.

Most likely they knew detaining three young women would be a PR disaster even for a regime that didnt care much for its image abroad. Ibrahim, however, was a different story. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong gender.

WARNING

His story is not unique. Every so often a western citizen falls foul of the law some place where western styles of justice, with their preoccupations about innocence until proven guilty, rights for detainees, and respect for prisoners seem absurd.

The American student Otto Warmbier, who was returned to his family from North Korea in a coma last June, is a case in point.

He had allegedly taken a propaganda poster from a hotel. Charged, tried, and convicted of crimes against the state, he was sentenced to 15 years hard labour.

What happened after that is unclear but his release was announced to his overjoyed parents only for them to discover their son had been in a persistent vegetative state for more than a year. He died days after his homecoming.

Ibrahims case was complicated because Egypt did not view him as a western citizen despite his Irish birth and harp-embossed passport.

With two Egyptian parents, he was considered Egyptian and no pleas for special treatment for the naive tourist from a friendly overseas nation was going to cut any ice.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, on its travel advice page, is very clear about the kind of assistance it can and cant provide in the event of an arrest abroad and, since Ibrahims case, specifically addresses situations where Irish citizenship may not be recognised.

The right of an Irish dual national to receive consular assistance from our Missions is effectively determined by the attitude of the host country, it warns.

In circumstances where the Irish citizen is detained either in the country of their other nationality, or is travelling on the passport of another country, we may not be able to provide consular assistance.

Under international law, countries are not obliged to legally recognise dual citizenship/nationality. Irish citizens should be aware that travelling or visiting the country of their other citizenship may have implications for them, and that they may also be subject to laws which apply only to citizens of that country.

Most importantly, regardless of how outrageous a countrys criminal justice system may be, or how far below the standards required by international law it falls, the Irish Government warns it cant interfere in the local judicial process.

TERROR

And yet, the Irish consular team in Cairo were on Ibrahims case swiftly and consistently throughout the four years. In the early days they were treated with contempt, not being told which prison he had been moved to, being denied visits and refused meetings.

But they persisted and managed to secure regular contact and visits with him and for his extended family in Cairo. The accounts that emerged from family contacts were disturbing, with a distressed Ibrahim telling of the daily terror of beatings, threats, and humiliation.

Everyone was anxious for an early trial but terrified of what that trial might bring. Because of the deaths of security force members during the protests, the prisoners were being collectively charged with murder. Ibrahim could be facing the death penalty.

HOMEFRONT

Back at home, the Halawa sisters began a high-profile campaign for Ibrahims release. There were vigils, protests, political lobbying, media appearances, and petitions.

International human rights groups backed them, the European Parliament called for Ibrahim to be freed, an Oireachtas delegation visited Cairo to make representations.

As the campaign gathered strength, it attracted opposition that made its presence felt through social media. While it is hard to deduce from rants on Twitter anything more than the knowledge that certain people rant on Twitter, the sheer nastiness of some of the commentary has unsettled the Halawas.

Much has been made of a film clip of Ibrahim inside the mosque in which he refers to Egypt as my country. Although the clip is filmed on a phone in frantic circumstances and is of poor quality, it is clear that Ibrahim is also saying the demonstrators must keep up their protests in order to stop the kind of abuses in Egypt spreading to Ireland, the country of his home.

A view is out there, though it is impossible to tell how widely held, that Ibrahim is not really Irish, that he should pay for the sins of his father, that he will have been radicalised in prison and represents a threat to this country, and that he should be refused entry here.

It may be a minority view but it raises questions for how well integration is going here. In the decade to 2015, an average of more than 12,000 people a year became naturalised Irish citizens. More than 100,000 have dual citizenship.

In the last few years, large scale citizenship ceremonies have become the norm  feelgood events where people are applauded for seeing becoming an Irish citizen as something good to aspire to.

But what happens if those same people run into trouble abroad? Does their entitlement to the protections of the Irish State and the privileges afforded by an Irish passport become diluted in the public mind by dint of their acquired Irishness?

Sisters of Ibrahim Halawa (L to R) Fatima, Omaima & Somaia celebrate the news their brother has been acquitted on all charges relating to mass protests in Cairo 4 years ago.

DIPLOMACY

There are questions, too, around Irelands diplomatic strength in a fast-changing world where traditional friendships are under strain.

While the Cairo team worked hard on the ground to improve the conditions under which Ibrahim was held, Dublin rarely looked to be getting anywhere on the bigger issues of the detention itself, the disproportionate charges, and the farcical nature of the trial.

It was notable that the Egyptian ambassador to Ireland at the time of Ibrahims arrest, Sherif Elkholi, was not inclined to make any comment on the issue.

His successor, Soha Gendi, has been more talkative but she has never made any concessions for the sensitivity of the case or for the Irish ears listening to her.

She accused the Halawa family and human rights groups of lies when they raised concerns about mistreatment of Ibrahim or other detainees and has gruffly dismissed any criticism of the obvious injustices of the Egyptian justice system.

Ibrahims sister Somaia Halawa with Childrens Minister Catherine Zappone at a vigil for her brother outside Leinster House earlier this year.

She simply hasnt cared for fostering constructive communications on the issue and we must assume this is also the attitude of the regime she serves.

From a human perspective, the most pressing questions are for Ibrahim himself. He should be graduating from college around now. His sisters have toddlers he has never met. His friends have lives he hasnt shared. Some degree of post-traumatic stress seems inevitable.

Peter Greste, the Australian journalist who was detained for more than a year and for a while shared a cell with Ibrahim, has said there will be no getting back to normal for him because normal doesnt exist anymore.

Childrens Minister Katherine Zappone said priority must be given to assessing and addressing Ibrahims health, psychological, and social needs when he returns home.

With a new Irish passport issued to him and release paperwork being processed, Ibrahim is closer to home than at any time in more than four years. And once again, closer to the unknown.
The Center for Creative Economy will host Creative Startups Demo Night on Tuesday at 575 Patterson Ave. in the atrium of Biotech Place in Wake Forest Innovation Quarter.

Demo Night will feature 10 creative companies competing for up to $75,000 in seed stage funding as part of the Creative Startups Southeastern Accelerator program.

The event is free and open to the public. It will start at 5:30 p.m. with drinks and networking, followed by the pitch presentations at 6 p.m., and a chance to meet the startups and network at 7 p.m.

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines and Corey Madden, executive director of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, will be among the speakers .

During Demo Night, teams will showcase their innovations to funding prospects, businesses, community leaders and the media.

Participating companies include Dance Adventures, an adventure travel company in Cambridge, Mass., specializing in dance tours around the world; Denizens Plush, an independent hand-manufacturer of weird plush toys, based in Winston-Salem; Do Good Artist, a developer of innovative partnerships and initiatives between the arts and other industries, based in Puerto Rico and Winston-Salem; FireLux, a film production company in Wilmington;

Jenni Earle, a design house in Winston-Salem, specializing in hand-dyed bandanas; Kidobit, an educational game company in Wilmington whose first product teaches kids age 5+ the basics of coding; MEDwig, a custom medical wig-making company for patients with hair loss, based in Winston-Salem; OMG Herbal Bar, a boutique in Winston-Salem, offering customized natural and holistic products and services to enhance health;

Sincerely Cosmetics, a vegan non-toxic cosmetic company, based in Los Angeles, that gives a portion of sales to arts education for inner-city youth; and The Dream School, an afterschool and summer camp in Winston-Salem that uses podcasting, digital video and coding to enhance students basic learning skills.
The latest effort in Washington to repeal and not actually replace the Affordable Care Act has a different name, the Cassidy-Graham plan, but it should look familiar.

It is essentially a proposal like the ones that came before it this year to make massive cuts in Medicaid, end subsidies that make it possible for low-income families to afford coverage and give insurance companies the ability to both charge people with preexisting conditions more and offer sketchy policies that dont cover essential benefits.

Some of the mechanisms are different in this plan, most notably the cuts are camouflaged in Medicaid block grants to the states that are reduced, capped and then ended, leaving North Carolina $8.7 billion short in 2027. Thats right, the bill not only repeals the Affordable Care, it ends Medicaid as we now know it.

No one knows exactly how many people in all will lose their health care under the latest attempt to undo the progress that the Affordable Care Act has made. And senators wont know either when they vote, as the Congressional Budget Office says there is not time to fully evaluate the new plan.

But it appears Congress is voting anyway, without committee hearings, without real debate, even without information about exactly what their disastrous new legislation will do.

A few things are certain. Millions of people will lose their coverage and again be one illness away from bankruptcy as they use the emergency rooms for primary care. Other will forego preventive care altogether because they cannot afford it. And the folks at the lower ends of the economic ladder will feel the effects most acutely.

That last one folks in North Carolina are used to.

The troubling news from Washington comes on the heels of the release of the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau that shows that while poverty declined slightly in 2016 in North Carolina there are still roughly 1.5 million people in the state living below the poverty line, and 21 percent of the states children.

The slight progress in 2016 was more the result of the strength of the national economy and programs like the Affordable Care Act that allowed hundreds of thousands of people to access health care than any initiatives by the folks who have run the General Assembly for the last six years

The record of how legislative leaders treat low-income people is clear. They gutted the states unemployment insurance system to the point that it is now harder for laid-off workers in North Carolina to get benefits than virtually everywhere else in the country.

A few years ago, the General Assembly abolished the state Earned Income Tax Credit, giving North Carolina the dubious distinction of being the only state ever to create a state EITC to help low-wage workers and then take it away from them.

Just this past session, House and Senate budget writers ended the state funding mechanism for legal services for low-income people and made it almost impossible for judges to waive court fees in minor cases where the defendants have no ability to pay.

Of course, they also refused to expand Medicaid like 30 other states have done which would have provided coverage for 300,000 low-income people. This session, despite having a budget surplus and putting hundreds of millions of dollars in the state savings account, they forced the Department of Public Instruction to cut funding that provides extra support for struggling schools, most of them with a majority of low-income students.

Even this years progress reducing the waiting list of at-risk kids for NC PreK was an odd choice. It was financed with federal block grant money currently at risk in President Trumps budget when the state could easily pay for it and make sure every eligible child could enroll.

There is plenty more, but you get the idea. State lawmakers have waged war since 2011 on programs that help low-income people in North Carolina.

And it is not because they needed the money to balance the budget. The General Assembly has cut taxes by $3.5 billion since 2013 with the bulk of it going to corporations and the wealthy. The top one percent of taxpayers, with average annual incomes of a million dollars, have received an annual break of $22,000 a year.

Now legislative leaders may have the chance to strike an even more devastating blow by rationing federal Medicaid dollars as they see fit without federal oversight until the money disappears completely in ten years.

Given their record recently, that is a scary prospect indeed. You can almost hear them licking their chops.

That is what is at risk in this latest pernicious health care plan bubbling up in Washington, a proposal that would make some insurance companies happy but take health care away from the folks who need it the most, the folks in North Carolina already reeling from six years of a combination of neglect and outright attacks.

No thanks.
NEW YORK  When you discount the rhetorical overkill, the most surprising thing about Donald Trumps address to the United Nations Tuesday was how conventional it was. He supported human rights and democracy; he opposed rogue regimes; he espoused a global community of strong, sovereign nations. Pretty shocking stuff.

Because hes Trump, the zingers got the headlines: He repeated his childish, snarky (but sort of funny) playground denunciation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission. And he offered a bombastic threat that if North Korea attacks the U.S. or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy it.

OK, got that: Its a restatement of the existing U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence. Trump also thanked China and Russia for their diplomatic help and pushed them to do more. He said the Iran nuclear deal was an embarrassment and its regional actions were a scourge, but he didnt say he would tear up the deal. He appealed to the Iranian people, without exactly calling for regime change. He checked all the hard-liner boxes, in other words, without making any new commitments.

It was a well-cooked pudding, the sort of speech Trump might have given at his inauguration back in January if he hadnt been so angry. Back then, he spoke like a wrecker (raging about American carnage). Now hes using the alliterative phrases that are speechwriters earwigs, as in calling for a renewal of will, a rediscovery of resolve and a rebirth of devotion. Stirring, pleasant to hear, otherwise incomprehensible.

Trump even had one of those JFK-style false-dichotomy ask not ... but what ... passages when he talked about the choice between lifting the world to a new height or letting it fall into a valley of disrepair.

The speech was reportedly written by Stephen Miller, aka Darth Vader among many in the mainstream media, but this seemed to be Miller 2.0, and perhaps the language left his now-deposed mentor Steve Bannon gnashing his teeth: What happened to the insurgent populist Trump who talked a year ago as if he wanted to topple the global order? On Tuesday, Trump seemed instead to embrace an updated version of it.

Trumps address offered a heavier dose of nationalism and self-interest; he wanted to root collective action in sovereignty and reciprocity, rather than a vaguer globalism. He spoke about righteousness defeating evil, a great re-awakening of nations, and other fuzzy Reaganisms. But at its core, this was a speech that any president since Harry Truman probably could have delivered. (Interestingly, Trump twice favorably mentioned Truman, the haberdasher from Kansas City whose stubborn common sense shaped the liberal order.)

Trump was something of an interventionist in his remarks. He wanted to bash not just North Korea and Iran, but other undemocratic rogue regimes, such as Cuba and Venezuela. He even spoke up for human rights, decrying the authoritarian nations on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Trump even invoked the Marshall Plan, the very cornerstone of the liberal international order. He added a Trumpian touch, saying it had been built with these beautiful pillars  sovereignty, security and prosperity. He was right in that, as in saying that North Korea shouldnt be Americas responsibility, because thats what the United Nations is for. (Warning to base: Has POTUS been kidnapped by the black-helicopter crowd?)

Watching Trump give his biggest speech since the inaugural, I was modestly reassured to see him operating within the four walls of rationality, albeit reading from a teleprompter. Rocket Man aside, the tone seemed a bit like last weeks bipartisan legislative opening to Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

After a miserable nine months, Trump is sick of losing. He wants to win, and he evidently has realized that he cant do so with a collection of right-wing outliers as his only allies. The U.N. speech, especially its repeated emphasis on the U.N. itself, struck me as the international version of his rebranding.

So what worries me about Trumps speech? Oddly, its precisely that it was so conventional. If Trump is going to deal successfully with North Korea, hell truly have to think outside the box. If he wants a better, longer-lasting deal with Iran, he needs in some way to engage that nation and its people.

And most of all, Trump needs to bring America with him in making a reformed United Nations a place that actually solves problems. The Great Disrupter says he wants to revive the global community and make it work better. OK, Mr. President, lets see what youve got.
GAYLE ANDERSON, Winston-Salem

State of the Community

For the past several years, Winston-Salem has held a State of the Community presentation where residents can hear from some of our leaders about where we are today and where we want to be in the future. This years event is at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 26, at Hanesbrands Theatre downtown. Topics include capital investments, jobs, indicators of community well-being, arts initiatives and the status of our public schools. The event is open to the public, and no reservations are required.

Its important for our community to keep score on our progress, to acknowledge where we need more work, and to bring this information to all segments of our community. The event will be recorded and re-broadcast on City of Winston-Salem WSTV 13. Not all of the indicators are as positive as we would wish, particularly our low job creation numbers, compared with other urban areas of the state. For example, during the past two years, net new jobs created in Forsyth County number about 4,100 while our neighboring Guilford County created twice that number.

On the plus side, our bustling downtown continues to grow; our tax rate is low; and employers say our workforce is one of the most productive anywhere. Our quality of life continues to be the envy of many other communities.

It will take all of us working together to reach the goals our community has set.

Anderson is the president and chief executive of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce.  the editor

vvv***

RUDY DIAMOND, Lewisville

Increased severity

Overwhelming scientific evidence concludes that humans have caused climate change and its consequences. Because of man-made climate change the seas have higher temperatures and rising ocean levels. Any middle-school student knows that warm water feeds hurricanes and because of rising sea levels more flooding can occur during a storm.

It is true that climate change does not cause individual storms, but it is also true that climate change is making the impact of storms more severe. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are perfect examples of increased severity.

The National Weather Serviced described Hurricane Harvey as unprecedented. Florida has never seen anything to compare to Irma.

Republican climate-change deniers, like EPA chief Scott Pruitt, said now is not the time to talk about climate change but to focus on the victims. I totally disagree. Americans can walk and chew gum at the same time. Of course we must focus on the victims, but it is also a perfect time to point out that this Republican administration and Congress are doing harm in the fight against climate change. President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Change Accord. Pruitt has cut policies that could have cut carbon emissions. House science committee chairman Lamar Smith has even argued in the conservative news website, The Daily Signal, that climate change is beneficial. North Carolinas two U.S. senators and Fifth District representative, Virginia Foxx, are climate-change deniers.

Help prevent these monster weather events. Vote out climate change deniers and apologists before it is too late.

vvv***

CARLOS MIR, Winston-Salem

The evangelicals

Yes, our leader is a degenerate, but God uses degenerates. God doesnt use liberals, or Democrats, or Muslims, or for that matter, Jews after Jesus or perhaps after Saul of Tarsus. This is my reading of Gary Abernathys Sept. 7 column Why most evangelicals dont condemn Trump.

Just who are these evangelicals? Are they this surprisingly monochromatic sect that sings the Gospels like a paean to capitalism? Can Catholics who evangelize apply for membership? How about the throngs who live the words and become the presence of Christ in communities far and wide without benefit of a catchy label and good press? Can you be considered an evangelical if you restrict the message to certain communities and economic status? By the way, what is the message: love of neighbor or love of self?

What I find objectionable is the use of biblical literalism and uninspired readings of Scripture with an emphasis on obsessive adherence to legalism as a recipe for blessed prosperity. Prosperity in this world is not unrelated to military hegemony and often comes from the end of a bayonet or torsion club. Justifying support for despots with Old Testament scriptural acrobatics while ignoring the Gospel message is simply profane.

Analogies to King David fail when there is no repentance by the flawed leader. Perhaps we all need to check our sinful pride and seek collaboration, community and communion.

vvv***

JAMES T. FULLER, Winston-Salem

Now the deficit

Tax reform that includes tax cuts will do nothing to solve the problem of the U.S. deficit. You dont pay off a debt by having less money to throw at it.

All during the Obama administration, I listened to conservative doomsayers who were convinced that the out-of-control deficit would destroy our nation. Thank goodness theres a Republican in the White House so we dont have to pay attention to the deficit anymore.

Please submit letters online to Letters@wsjournal.com or mail letters to: The Readers Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Letters are subject to editing and are limited to 250 words. For more guidelines and advice on writing letters, go to journalnow.com/opinion/submit_a_letter.
JURIST Guest Columnist Victoria Drake of the St. Johns University School of Law discusses Fourth Amendment rights amidst advancements in cloud technology I am a millennial, and technology is a major part of my life. When I discovered the cloud, it completely changed the way I store my electronic data. The pictures I took from my European vacation, my tax returns, and even my notes, papers, and documents from law school are all stored in my cloud account. The amount of storage, and ease of access were what enticed me to create a cloud account. I feared that my computer will crash, and that I might lose everything I have stored on the hard drive; but now that I have a cloud account, that fear is no longer a reality. As long as I have an Internet connection, my files are always available to me on any device.

As much as I want instant access to all my data, I equally do not want the government having any access to it. In light of the current battle between Apple and the FBI, it appears that other U.S. citizens are just as concerned as I am about preserving a balance between privacy, and what the government can and cannot gain access to. In particular, I am concerned with keeping the data that I store in my cloud account private, and keeping law enforcement out. It is implausible that a judge would approve a warrant to seize all the letters I have ever mailed in my lifetime through USPS, so why should a judge approve a warrant for all content stored in my cloud account? Just because my data is digitized, and I can save an immense amount of it in a single account, does not mean that that data is less deserving of Fourth Amendment protections.

When the founding fathers drafted the Bill of Rights, more specifically, the Fourth Amendment, they would have never imagined the vast breakthroughs in technology that we see today. In drafting the Fourth Amendment, James Madison guaranteed a right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects; an umbrella of protections. The Fourth Amendment should continue to be read with such broadness, especially in the age of the cloud. There is a need for law enforcement to gain access to cloud accounts through warrants, but the rights of U.S. citizens cannot be ignored.

The current federal law that addresses how law enforcement can obtain warrants for electronic data stored in the cloud is known as the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which was passed as part of the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986. 1986 was more than thirty years ago, and technology has tremendously changed since then. Today, Congress seeks to amend the SCA with the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act (LEADS). What LEADS intends to do is limit warrants for electronic data to only U.S. persons or businesses incorporated in the U.S. However, LEADS fails to stipulate a time frame that government actors can access a cloud account, and it also fails to particularize the type of data to be seized. LEADS is a good start to updating the old SCA, but it has serious gaps and we should not squander the legislative attention being paid by leaving the gap unfilled. More importantly, LEADS should not become law unless it is amended to comply with the Fourth Amendment.

Under the SCA and LEADS, there are no sections stipulating what Fourth Amendment guidelines law enforcement should abide by when applying for a warrant to search your cloud account. For me, the solution is simple: recognition of a reasonable expectation of privacy in data stored in the cloud. Unfortunately, no court has recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy in data stored in the cloud, but I feel that the courts are approaching the subject. In 2010, the Sixth Circuit, in U.S. v. Warshak, was the first circuit to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of e-mails stored on third party servers. The Sixth Circuit stated that the content of e-mails are subject to Fourth Amendment protections. Furthermore, in 2014, the Supreme Court, in Riley v. California, held that the warrantless search and seizure of digital content of a cell phone during an arrest is unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts explained that since cellphones can take advantage of cloud technology, Fourth Amendment safeguards should exist. And even today, several courts are divided on the issue plaguing the FBI and Apple, and whether Apple should have to comply with the FBIs demand to unlock the phone that belonged to the San Bernardino killer. Even though these cases have not directly recognized a reasonable expectation of privacy in data stored in the cloud, I believe that the holdings from these cases are laying the groundwork that will help to achieve that privacy right.

In order for a reasonable expectation of privacy to exist, there is a two-fold test that must be adhered to. The first step is to determine whether a person has exhibited an actual expectation of privacy. The second step is to determine whether that expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable. I believe that when it comes to data stored in the cloud, a reasonable expectation of privacy should exist. First, I keep my cloud account private by utilizing password protection. I also do not share my password or any of the content within my cloud account. Second, I am not the only individual who takes advantage of cloud technology; therefore, I feel that society is ready to recognize an expectation of privacy in data stored in the cloud. Millions of Americans utilize cloud technology, and also safeguard their accounts through password protection or encryption services. I firmly believe that society is ready to recognize a privacy right in data stored in the cloud, especially since so many Americans vocalized distrust and contempt against the FBI in its recent battle with Apple.

According to Justice Stewart in his majority opinion from Katz v. U.S., the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. Justice Stewart even went so far as to say that what a person seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. I seek to preserve as private all data that is stored in my cloud account. I keep my account private, and so do millions of other cloud users. It is vital that the Fourth Amendment evolves with technology, and that is why I believe that it is time for the courts to award Fourth Amendment protections to data stored in the cloud.

Victoria Drake recently graduated from St. Johns University School of Law. During her time at St. Johns, Victoria served as the Editor in Chief for the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, as well as Vice President for the Womens Law Society. After the bar exam, Victoria will be joining the in-house legal team at Grassi & Co., a leading accounting and consulting firm in New York.

Suggested citation:Victoria Drake, A Digital World: Why Law Enforcement Needs to Obey the Fourth Amendment, JURIST, September 23, 2017, http://jurist.org/dateline/2017/09/Victoria-Drake-cloud-technology-fourth-amendment.php.

This article was prepared for publication by Ben Cohen, Section Editor for JURIST. Please direct any questions or comments to him at commentary@jurist.org
Transport for London (TfL) [official website] on Friday announced [motice, PDF] that it will not issue a private hire operator license to Uber London Limited to operate in London.

Ubers current license is set to expire September 30. However, Uber is able to appeal within 21 days, and Uber will be allowed to continue its operations in London while the appeal process progresses.

TfL has declared that Uber has demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility. TfL specified that the lack of responsibility is found in each of the following areas:

Its approach to reporting serious criminal offences. Its approach to how medical certificates are obtained.

Its approach to how Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are obtained.

Its approach to explaining the use of Greyball in London, software that could be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the app and prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties

Londons Mayor, Sadiq Khan [Official Website], has announced [Press release] his support of the TfL decision. He has stated that it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners safety and security. He also stated that Uber needs to play by the rules.

A petition [Change.org petition] to ask the governor to reverse the decision has already received over 300,000 signatures 6 hours after starting.

Uber has seen increased regulations in Europe over the past year. In May the European Court of Justice (ECJ) had given a non-binding opinion [JURIST report] that Uber was a transportation company subject to additional regulations and fines. In December, Denmark had indicted [JURIST report] Ubers European branch over charges of assisting drivers in violating taxi laws.
[JURIST] The UN Security Council [official website] voted Thursday to establish an investigation [UN press release] into the Islamic State over possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Iraq.

IS has previously been accused by the UN of targeting civilians [UN press release] and having an absolute disregard for human life.

The UN Security Council has expressed concern [UN press release] over the effect a planned independence referendum by the Kurdistan region. The member states have released a statement [UN Security Council press release] saying this would negatively impact the investigation into IS crimes as Kurdish forces played a critical role in the operations.

Britain has committed [Reuters report] around $1.3 million to establish a team to help Iraq hold IS accountable for their actions and alleged violations of human rights. Britain has also stated they would not support the investigation until Iraq agreed and consented to the investigation.
German auto manufacturer Volkswagen is sponsoring the largest German art exhibition in China.

Titled Deutschland 8, the exhibition displays 300 pieces in eight venues across Beijing, including the Taimiao Temple, which is hosting an exhibition of this type for the first time.The exhibition runs through Oct 31.

The display will be complemented by a number of learning opportunities Volkswagen Group China will offer to interested individuals, enabling them to expand their understanding of art. With its paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, video art and installations, Deutschland 8 will share the work of Germany's most influential contemporary artists.

"Volkswagen Group is much more than a car maker. We are part of the world we live and work in and take on responsibility by supporting cultural and social activities  worldwide as well as in China," said Jochem Heizmann at the opening ceremony in Beijing. Heizmann is a member of the board of management of Volkswagen AG as well as the president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China.

He continued, "We are convinced Deutschland 8 is a landmark in the prosperous cultural exchange between China and Germany. It will bring together both cultures to the benefit of all."

This major project will be a highlight marking the 45th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Germany, and is made possible with the support of Volkswagen Group China. In particular, the company is helping organizers invite people to explore art and to awaken their creativity.

In a symposium, Volkswagen will facilitate a direct dialogue between Chinese and German artists. In addition, the company will provide information online where interested individuals can visit and get to know contemporary German art outside the context of the exhibition sites.
Apart from hosting and possible maintenance costs, there are not exactly downsides to having your own website. Even if its just a personal blog it can always become more useful down the line, if you utilize it in the right manner. In other words, more
KEARNEY  A Kearney man has been convicted of the unintentional death of an elderly woman in the Kearney Walmart Supercenter parking lot.

Tyler Olexo, 18, of Kearney pleaded no contest Thursday in Buffalo County Court to misdemeanor motor vehicle homicide of Paula Newmyer, 88, of Kearney on March 30. In exchange for his plea, Deputy Buffalo County Attorney Patrick Lee dismissed three unrelated county court cases.

Olexo also agreed to pay $951 in restitution.

Judge John Rademacher accepted Olexos plea and ordered the State Probation Department to do a presentence investigation. That report contains background information on a defendant  including his or her family and criminal history, employment, and psychological and chemical dependency  to help the judge issue an appropriate sentence.

Sentencing will be in November. On March 30, Olexo was driving a 1989 Chevrolet K1500 pickup east in the Walmart parking lot between rows six and seven as Newmyer was walking west in the parking lot while pushing a shopping cart. A Kearney Police Department accident report said Olexo stopped his pickup and backed up to the west as Newmyer changed directions to go southwest behind the pickup, and the pickup hit her.

The impact pushed the shopping cart, causing Newmyer to fall to the ground and hit her head. Newmyer was transported to CHI Health Good Samaritan in Kearney and died April 2.

There were two witnesses to the incident, the accident report indicates. There was no damage to Olexos vehicle.

Olexo faces up to one year in jail and could have his drivers license revoked for up to one year.
With the release this week of Hillary Clintons book about the 2016 presidential election, What Happened, many Americans are re-experiencing the disappointment of Nov. 8 when Donald Trump pulled off the electoral upset of the century.

In her book, Clinton recalls some of the darker moments on the campaign trail, including the crudeness in which Trump spoke about the debate when Clinton was late returning to the stage after using the restroom.

She recalls other efforts by Trump to undercut her confidence and spread damaging information through Russian leaks to the media. Trump didnt fight like a gentleman, and now that the election is nearly a year in the past, Clinton is fighting back. In her book shes citing plenty of instances in which her opponents behavior was distasteful and, by some measures, dishonest.

Whats not coming out in What Happened is whether Clinton might have won in 2016 if only more of her supporters had voted. She actually won the popular vote, but Trump prevailed in the Electoral College by a narrow margin. His win left a large number of Americans supporting Clinton wondering how victory had escaped them.

Stunned and defeated, some vowed to commit themselves to better outcomes in 2018.

Well, guess what, the next election is closer than you think. Some of Nebraskas top officials already are declaring their candidacies. A few political newcomers are testing the water, while heavyweights like Gov. Pete Ricketts are bringing together their supporters in events such as the First Annual Nebraska Steak Fry on Oct. 8 at Shelton.

Young people who really intend to be more politically active on this go-round had better get busy.

First, promise yourself to not sit on the sidelines. The best politicians excel at getting supporters to campaign for them and, on Election Day, to go out and vote. Voters who stay at home let down the candidates who are counting on them and they let themselves down.

Next, get out of the shadows. Volunteer, learn how to speak out, get involved in a cause. Help someone, and do it in person, not through an online donation.

When you step outside your comfort zone, it empowers others to do the same. More importantly, it will give you street cred as an advocate and leader. While youre inspiring others you might surprise yourself.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

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This combination of Friday, Sept. 22, 2017 photos shows eight of the Little Rock Nine, the black teenagers who had to be escorted by federal troops past an angry white mob and through the doors of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 25, 1957. Top row from left are Minniejean Brown Trickey, Elizabeth Eckford and Ernest Green; middle row, Thelma Mothershed Wair, Melba Pattillo Beals, and Gloria Ray Karlmark; bottom row, Terrance Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier. (AP Photo/Kelly Kissel)
FILE - This Oct. 14, 2016 file photo shows Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's names printed on a ballot on a voting machine to be used in the upcoming election, in Philadelphia. The federal government on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017, told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year's presidential election. The notification came roughly a year after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
In this Sept. 19, 2017 photo, evacuee Guillermina Reyes, 90, sits with with her pet dog Blackie at the Juan Ponce de Leon Elementary School before the arrival of Hurricane Maria, in Humacao, Puerto Rico. The island took a direct hit by the category the hurricane. Authorities warned people who live in wooden or flimsy homes should find safe shelter before the storm's expected arrival on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)
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Being a full time vegan on the hunt for a decent meal out can be a mammoth task.

Come to think of it, being a part-time vegan out in town with carnivores, can be a minefield of embarrassment, annoyance and frustration - before you plump for the stuffed pepper option.

Again.

To save the awkward "no I don't eat fish, no I don't eat honey, no I don't eat butter," chat so familiar between waiters and vegans, we've compiled what Kent has to offer the dairy-free diners.

Here are the 10 vegan restaurants in Kent serving food so good it would turn any meat lover to the other side.

The Monument, Canterbury

(Image: Josh Jordan)

A vegan pub, yes a pub, has opened in Canterbury.

Before we go any further, "A vegan pub? What?" I hear you all ask.

Well, The Monument, a popular jaunt among Kent University students, has recently been transformed into an animal-product free zone.

It can surprise most non-veggies just how much animal product is used in everyday items, including alcohol.

Yes, most alcohol uses gelatin (animal fat), and therefore off limits for vegans.

(Image: Josh Jordan)

But not at The Monument.

Gelatin, usually found in sweets and soap, can put a lot of ethically minded vegans off their pint, but no more!

Punters can enjoy their regular pie mash or burger, but they will be made from mock meat and plant-based substitutes.

Googies Art Cafe, Folkestone

The award-winning Googies Art Cafe unveiled its vegan comfort food menu in February, which includes nachos, burgers, stews and a breakfast as well as sweet treats.

The nachos are topped with soya Mexican chili, guacamole, salsa and grated vegan cheese. While the stew consists of Portobello mushroom, mixed beans and red wine and is served with chive dumplings, sage and onion mash and seasonal vegetables.

Diners at last year's Taste of Kent Restaurant of the Year, which is famous for its burgers, can substitute any burger from their main menu with a vegan patty.

Vegan sweet treats on the menu include brownies and other homemade cakes. The vegan breakfast is available every morning.

The Skinny Kitchen, Canterbury

(Image: The Skinny Kitchen)

The menu at The Skinny Kitchen is very extensive and has something for everyone - including, of course, vegans and vegetarians.

Emma Louise said on TripAdvisor: "From walking into the restaurant, I was really happy with our choice.

"The staff were very friendly and ensured all our needs were catered for without being too in your face.

"I was a little dubious about how nice a vegan pizza would be but I can tell you it was outstanding.

"The Greek chips were made vegan for me and the team ensured any other choices I made were right for my needs."

The Wallflower Cafe, Herne Bay

The Wallflower is an independent cafe that serves locally sourced vegetarian and vegan food to hungry visitors.

Their specialities include huge salads packed with healthy local ingredients, fried breakfasts and tasty falafel burgers.

The Holy Pundit, Hythe

The Princes Parade Indian restaurant consistently receives rave reviews for their vegan and vegetarian cuisine.

Penelope Visman wrote on TripAdvisor: "With a vegan and vegetarians in my family what a joy it was to find a menu with something that appeals to all food lovers alike.

"Food here is cooked with real care, skill and attention by the creative chef who comes out of his kitchen to check that diners are happy.

"Currently there are six veganchoices on offer as side dishes, as well as a good selection of rice and breads.

"Low-cholesterol polyunsaturated oil is used, and there are no additives, preservatives, ready-made 'concoctions' or artificial colourings.

Shakey Shakey Fish Bar, Ramsgate

Located in the High Street, 91 per cent of reviews on TripAdvisor for this fish bar are 'excellent' and reviews on the website say it serves "the best fish and chips ever" and "the best fish and chips in Kent".

If you're a vegan too, Shakey Shakey is highly recommended with a wide variety of choice.

Singh's Restaurant, Gravesend

This Indian restaurant has a full vegetarian menu. They offer many southern-style dishes, and have a range of heat dishes that suit everybody's taste.

With 3 million veggies in Britain, some businesses have cleverly taken advantage of a growing market

One TripAdvisor reviewer said: "Before our visit I could see there were lots of vegan options but I was even more pleased to learn that every dish could be customised to your tastes from the level of spice to veganising anything.

"I had naan breads and a mango lassi which are normally off limits to vegans so I was impressed by how much choice I had."

The Veg Box Cafe, Canterbury

This place provides a host of vegan-friendly dishes on their vegetarian menu.

They offer vegan wine, locally produced food and ale brewed across the road.

Beano's Vegetarian Cafe Bar, Folkestone

Vegan options feature on Beanio's weekly roast menu.

The cafe also have a range of vegan-friendly cakes on offer.

The Lady Luck, Canterbury

While not entirely veggie, the pub provides a range of vegan ale and food.

Meat-free burgers, hot dogs, along with dairy-free desserts, ice creams and brownies are all on the menu.
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A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

By the time you read this, Congress will be in session and hopefully not engaged in another watermelon spitting contest on health care (Id use a urological metaphor, but there may be children in the room). If our Representatives and Senators choose to tackle this again, may it be in a thoughtful manner that considers the best ideas from all parts of the ideological spectrum.

One of my biggest frustrations when listening to the debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the repetition of the myth that the ACA created many of the problems that our patients now face with their insurance. My memories of life before the ACA are not the romanticized ones that some of the critics seem to have, a world without rising premiums, high deductibles, and gaps in coverage. In some parts of the country, things are worse post-ACA, but they are better in others for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this column.

But to suggest that all was well, and then came the ACA is fantasy, if not intentionally misleading.

One possible exception was my first practice job almost 30 years ago, where everyone had insurance, copayments were low, there were no deductibles, pharmacy was covered, and preventive care was encouraged. I worked at a staff-model HMO, the Rhode Island Group Health Association (RIGHA), which was also the insurer for those patients.

Yet, even that system didnt always meet everyones expectations, such as when a patient wanted to see the famous Doctor So-and-So who was not an HMO physician and therefore considered out of network.

Unfortunately, RIGHA went out of business within a year of my hiring. I think the timing was coincidental and more a result of the competitive insurance environment in Rhode Island at the time as well as flaws in the business model. However, similar practices live on  Kaiser Permanente comes to mind  and in many ways, the new delivery models, such as the patient-centered medical home, replicate the type of care I delivered in 1989 at RIGHA.

In 1990, I left the HMO and went into private fee-for-service practice, where I remain today. There, I encountered a hodgepodge of payment mechanisms.

Some patients had plans similar to the one my HMO patients had, with low copayments and few additional out-of-pocket expenses beyond their payroll deduction for their employer-based insurance, and that was typically a low deduction.

Others had plans that covered part of my bill, with the patient responsible for the rest. For some of these patients, payment was collected at the time of the visit and the patient would get reimbursed by their insurer. For others, we would bill the insurance and then bill the patient for whatever insurance did not cover.

This arrangement sometimes resulted in awkward situations, such as when the insurer sent the payment to the patient, who then deposited the money instead of signing it over to the office. Perhaps they thought it was a bonus of some kind.

Many of these plans did not cover preventive services. Medicare, for that matter, was also deficient in this area. As a result, patients would ask if I could code a service as something other than preventive for it to be covered by their insurance, in contrast to todays requests that I code services as preventive so that they are covered.

Many of the traditional indemnity plans had deductibles and covered 80% or so of the insurance-approved payment (as opposed to the actual fee) for a service, leaving significant gaps in coverage.

Another segment of my practice was uninsured.

Some of my patients had insurance from out-of-state companies. Their employers probably found it less expensive. I believe that was because when you sell health insurance in a region whose regulators and attorney general have no jurisdiction over you, you dont have to pay promptly, or at all.

In todays conversation, much is made of consumers having choices in health plans and competition among insurers. Back then, many employers offered their employees different types of plans (HMO, PPO, etc.) from multiple insurers. So-called market forces took care of that, when in order to control expenses, employers would give one health insurer exclusivity in return for a better quote. Rising health care costs were reflected in premiums, and in order to mitigate these increases and be able to continue offering medical coverage to their employees, deductibles rose (or were introduced), copayments went up, networks narrowed, and more was taken out of paychecks to pay for it.

In case youve lost track, Im still in the 1990s, not the present.

The rise in deductibles and copayments continued through the 2000s.

So, when the ACA was signed into law in 2010, a significant number of Americans were already dealing with high deductibles, coverage limitations, restricted networks, and rising premiums. While it is clear that the ACA did not address these issues adequately, it did not introduce these problems, either.

While were being nostalgic, lets not forget that millions of Americans were not faced with these challenges, but that was because they had no insurance at all. Ive heard some people say that no insurance is better than bad insurance. As far as I can tell, very few of them have ever been uninsured.

Yul Ejnes is an internal medicine physician and a past chair, board of regents, American College of Physicians. His statements do not necessarily reflect official policies of ACP.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
The government has been accused of choking every village in rural Ireland as Kilkenny areas are left in limbo over whether or not their applications under the Town and Village Renewal Scheme were successful.

The Castlecomer Municipal District meeting heard that there are 12 areas awaiting determination in respect of the success or otherwise of their applications for funding from the 20 million allocated for rural town and village regeneration.

Director of Services at Kilkenny County Council, Simon Walton, told members that there was no feedback yet from the Department of Culture and Heritage on which applications were successful.

Mr Walton said: This is the 2017 Town and Village Renewal Scheme and were now in September.

He says it will be 2018 before the proposals in the applications are completed, provided they are successful.

Fianna Fail Councillor, Pat Fitzpatrick, said: The Department are choking every village in rural Ireland. Were sitting here, waiting and wondering.

Cllr Fitzpatrick says the applications from Kilkenny included: Castlecomer, Piltown, Graignamanagh and Thomastown which are all so important to their community.

Mr Walton told the meeting that there were originally 15 Kilkenny towns and villages seeking to apply for funding under the scheme but three of these were not as far along in their applications.

The Town and Village Renewal Scheme was launched in 2016 to start the process of rejuvenating rural towns and villages.

Under last years scheme Ballyhale, Kells, Piltown and Urlingford received 95,000 each. In April of this year the Department said the funding for 2017 would be made available through councils over the next 15 months.
Anna Phelan from Loreto Secondary School in Kilkenny has been selected as one of 13 Student Leader Ambassadors from across Ireland for Cycle Against Suicide this year.

Anna and her fellow ambassadors gathered at a retreat in Kippure, Wicklow at the end of last month to participate in the wide range of workshops, including outdoor pursuits, team building, presentation skills and leadership training.

The retreat, now in its fourth year, recognises students for their exceptional contribution to the area of mental health. The aim of the Student Leader Ambassador Programme is to harness the leadership potential of these young adults, and empower them to bring the Cycle Against Suicide message Its OK not to feel OK; and its absolutely OK to ask for help, back to their schools and communities.

As well as participating in workshops and presentations, students also collaborated to develop a theme for this year's Student Leaders' Congress, which will take place in January.

It is a huge honour for Loreto Kilkenny to have a student selected for such a prestigious and worthwhile programme at a national level, said Link teacher Claire Traenor.

We are immensely proud of Annas achievement.
* Moody's cuts UK rating to Aa2 from Aa1

* Outlook revised to neutral from negative

* Downgrade comes hours after PM May speech on Brexit

* Moody's sees deficit of 3-3.5 pct of GDP in coming years

(Adds details, background)

By William Schomberg and David Milliken

LONDON Sept 22 (Reuters) - Ratings agency Moody's downgraded Britain's credit rating by a further notch on Friday, saying the government's plans to fix the public finances had been knocked off course and Brexit would weigh on the economy.

A few hours after Prime Minister Theresa May set out plans for a new relationship with the European Union, Moody's cut the rating to Aa2 from Aa1, underscoring the economic risks that leaving the bloc poses for the world's fifth-biggest economy.

Britain has worked down its budget deficit from about 10 percent of economic output in 2010, shortly after the global financial crisis hammered the country, to 2.3 percent in the most recent financial year which ended in March.

But Moody's said the outlook for public finances had weakened significantly as May's government increasingly put into question the austerity push pursued by former prime minister David Cameron and his finance minister George Osborne.

The government responded by saying Moody's assessment of the Brexit hit to the economy was "outdated" and that May had set out an "ambitious vision for the UK's future relationship with the EU" in a speech earlier on Friday. The Moody's downgrade was made after a meeting with the government on Sept. 19 and did not reflect May's speech on Friday, the government said.

Nonetheless, Moody's verdict on Britain's public finances will make for grim reading for May and her finance minister Philip Hammond.

After seven years of austerity, the government was coming under pressure to ease its squeeze on public finances and a recent relaxation of a tight public sector pay cap for police and prison workers was likely to be broadened, Moody's said.

Furthermore, a deal struck by May with a small political party in Northern Ireland after she lost her parliamentary majority in June's election and the dropping of plans to review costly pension increases would also weigh on the public purse.

"Overall, Moody's expects spending to be significantly higher than under the government's current budgetary plans," Moody's said.

On the tax side, it noted how the government abandoned a controversial plan to raise national insurance contributions for self-employed workers and was reliant on "highly uncertain revenue gains from tackling tax avoidance to fund tax cuts".

As a result, the budget deficit was likely to remain at around 3-3.5 percent of GDP in the coming years, higher than the government's plans to cut it below 1 percent of GDP by 2021/22.

That meant Britain was one of the few big European economies where the public debt ratio was likely to rise, probably peaking at about 93 percent of GDP in 2019, two years later than under the latest government plans.

BREXIT HIT

At the same time, budget pressures would rise as Britain's economy slowed due to Brexit, with growth of just 1 percent likely next year, down from 1.8 percent in 2017 and not recovering to its historic trend rate over the coming years.

Moody's said it was no longer confident that Britain would secure a replacement free trade agreement with the EU which substantially mitigated the Brexit hit.

"While the government seeks a 'deep and comprehensive free trade agreement' with the EU, even such a best-case scenario would not award the same access to the EU single market that the UK currently enjoys," it said.

Britain's government said Moody's move brought it into line with the other major credit ratings agencies, Fitch and Standard & Poor's.

Moody's revised up its outlook on the country to stable from negative, meaning a further downgrade is not imminent.

(Reporting by Shashwat Awasthi in Bengaluru and William Schomberg in London; Editing by David Milliken and Sandra Maler)
ISTANBUL, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Turkey's parliament voted on Saturday to extend by a year a mandate authorising the deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq and Syria, two days before a planned independence referendum in northern Iraq's Kurdish region. Turkey said earlier it would take security, political and economic steps in response to the referendum, which President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman said was a "terrible mistake that will trigger new crises in the region". (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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 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.
I am traveling to Europe shortly and am finding conflicting information on what I may or may not bring on board from the States to Europe pertaining to knitting and crocheting. Though these airlines are partnered with Delta which says knitting/scissors, etc. are O.K. we are flying KLM to Europe and Air France home. Those of you who are world travelers, what has been your experience with these airlines? Your help will be greatly appreciated.



I find it ironic that heavy chain jewelry(you can choke someone with the loop), men's belts with buckles(poke someone), women's stilettos(stab someone), sharp pencils(definitely stab someone) are considered safe, but a dull crochet hook or knitting needle is not. Too bad there is no continuity in establishing what can and cannot be taken aboard a plane.



Here's to knitting/crocheting in the skies. Time to cover the skies with out work.
By Nam Hyun-woo



The 10th meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Asia Network on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises took place Tuesday through Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur.



This year's meeting was co-organized by the OECD, the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, and the Malaysian Directors Academy, with the financial support of the state-backed Korea Institute of Public Finance.



Themed "Managing risk and promoting business integrity in the state-owned enterprise sector," this year's gathering attracted government representatives from Asia as well as state enterprises, civil society, international organizations and corporate governance practitioners.



"Governments in both mature and emerging economies are important owners of commercial enterprises and corporatized assets. These state-owned enterprises (SOEs) often supply fundamental services such as water, electricity and transportation that private companies depend upon for their competitiveness, and on which the citizens depend for their quality of life," said Cho Im-gon, executive director at the research centre for SOEs at the KIPF.



"Ensuring that governments efficiently manage these assets is therefore crucial for the competitiveness of the broader enterprise sector, economic growth and sustainable development more generally."



He noted that the two-day meeting has allowed participants to exchange information on recent developments in state ownership and governance practices among participating countries from the region and share good practices for managing risk and promoting business integrity in the state-owned enterprise sector.



"In this context, I am proud to say that the KIPF has been an active participant in the OECD's various initiatives on SOE governance," said Cho, who attended the conference as a speaker.



Cho also said that Korea's experience in developing and implementing online repository of both financial and non-financial information of all public institutions including SOEs is considered as best practice in SOE disclosure in international community.



"I believe this OECD conference has been a great opportunity for Korea to actively share our experience with other emerging economies and developing countries," he said.



Since its establishment in 2006, the OECD-Asia SOE Network has notably supported the dissemination and implementation in Asia of the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises, the international standard for ensuring that SOEs operate efficiently, transparently and on equal footing with private enterprises.



Through its annual meetings, the OECD-Asia SOE Network takes stock of emerging trends in state ownership in Asia, evaluates them against international standards and identifies elements of good practice to promote continued improvements in state ownership practices in the region. The Network also facilitates closer integration among state ownership practitioners in Asia.




Ri Yong-ho / Korea Times file

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho slammed U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying his threat to destroy the nation amounted to "the sound of a dog barking."

Ri arrived in New York earlier in the day to attend the U.N. General Assembly.

Speaking to reporters in front of his hotel, he issued the regime's first response to Trump's threat a day earlier to "totally destroy" North Korea if it poses a direct threat to the U.S. or its allies.

"If he was thinking he could scare us with the sound of a dog barking, that's really a dog dream," Ri said, referencing a North Korean proverb that a procession moves even if dogs bark. In Korean, a dog dream is one that is absurd and makes little sense.

Asked to comment on "Rocket Man," Trump's new nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he said, "I feel sorry for his aides."

Ri flew into JFK International Airport from Beijing and was escorted out by Pyongyang's ambassador to the U.N., Ja Song-nam. His visit comes amid growing pressure on the regime to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The minister is scheduled to address the global gathering on Friday and meet with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday.

North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 and recently launched a series of ballistic missiles, including two over Japan.

Last week the U.N. Security Council adopted its ninth set of sanctions against Pyongyang, capping the country's oil imports for the first time.

Media attention is likely to focus on the possibility of a Washington-Pyongyang meeting during Ri's stay, although few expect there to be serious discussions at a time of heightened tension between the countries.

North Korea has sent its foreign minister to the annual event every year since 2014.

It has used the forum to defend and tout its nuclear and missile programs and heap criticism on the U.S., which it claims has hostile intentions toward the regime.

Ri is scheduled to return home early next week, according to sources. (Yonhap)
Ranking officials of North Korea's Workers' Party and military have held separate rallies in support of leader Kim Jong-un's rare statement against the U.S., state media reported Saturday.

Kim said in the statement issued Thursday he would consider taking the highest level of countermeasures against the U.S. in what is viewed as a direct response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" the North over its nuclear and missile programs at the U.N. General Assembly two days earlier.

Choe Ryong-hae, a vice chairman of the Workers' Party, read Kim's statement during the rally of the WPK Central Committee members held at the committee office in Pyongyang on Friday. It was followed by speeches from several lower-level officials which denounced Trump's U.N. General Assembly speech and criticized him as a "lunatic gangster" and "mentally deranged dotard,"

according to the North's Korean Central Television.

Saying that Trump's harsh remarks are tantamount to a declaration of war against North Korea, they vowed to achieve final victory in the war to make him pay the price for his "absurd remarks."












U.S. President Donald Trump will take the "appropriate" action if North Korea tests a nuclear bomb over the Pacific Ocean as threatened, his top diplomat said Friday.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Thursday warned of the "highest level" action after Trump told the U.N. General Assembly the U.S. will have no choice but to "totally destroy" the North if forced to defend itself or its allies.

Kim's top diplomat, Ri Yong-ho, told reporters in New York such action could involve a powerful test of a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific.

"We will continue our efforts in the diplomatic arena, but all of our military options -- as the president has said -- is on the table," Tillerson said in an interview on ABC. "And once we can assess the nature of this threat, the president will make a decision regarding the appropriate actions."

Pressed to answer if there could be military action, he said: "That will be the president's decision. There will be assembled and there is assembled on a standing basis a National Security Council that meets on each of these issues to advise the president. Ultimately, it will be his decision."












A 3.2 magnitude earthquake detected near North Korea's nuclear test site Saturday was judged to be a natural quake, South Korea's weather agency said.



The tremor occurred at 5:29 p.m., 20 kilometers southeast of the country's Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeastern province where the North conducted its sixth nuclear test Sept. 3, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.



The agency upgraded the scale of quake from its earlier assessment of the 3.0 magnitude.



"The quake has been analyzed to have occurred naturally," an agency official said. "A sound wave, which is usually generated in the event of an artificial earthquake, was not detected."



The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said that it detected two seismic events in North Korea, but they were "unlikely (to have been) man-made."



But Japan's Kyodo News earlier reported that a 3.4 magnitude earthquake was detected at a depth of zero kilometers near the North's nuke test site, citing China's quake agency.



It said that it was thought to be an artificial quake caused by a "suspected explosion."



The quake occurred at a sensitive time when North Korea is likely to make further provocative acts after its leader pledged to retaliate against the United States.



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to take the "highest-level" action in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" the North over its nuclear and missile programs.



North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said later in New York that Pyongyang may consider its most powerful test of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.



The North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September. It claimed that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb for an intercontinental ballistic missile.



China announced Saturday that it will limit exports of petroleum products to North Korea starting in October to implement the latest U.N. sanctions over Pyongyang's sixth nuclear test. (Yonhap)




This composite image shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the North Korean national flag and a field of opium poppies in the reclusive country. / Graphic by Cho Sang-won



Online drug trafficking soars

By Kang Hyun-kyung

There is a popular belief among North Koreans that opium is a powerful medicine to treat several symptoms and minor diseases.

They take opium for an upset stomach, constipation, heart disease or even a cold. For its perceived health benefits, many North Koreans keep a small amount of opium at home as part of their first aid kits.

Opium, the dried latex extracted from opium poppies, is obtained through a relatively simple process, so ordinary North Korean citizens can produce the narcotic product easily at home "to make ends meet," according to a North Korean defector.

"The entire process is all about distilling opium poppies several times and hardening the refined liquid by adding a thickener to it," he said asking for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. "So, producing fine opium hinges on the machinery. If the equipment is good, it's easy to obtain high-quality opium. So opium makers invest lump sums of money to design and build effective equipment."

He had been an opium retailer in North Korea and made a considerable amount of money by trafficking it to China. He escaped North Korea to avoid arrest after North Korean authorities discovered his illegal business there. He came to South Korea in 2010.

Unlike in other countries where drug production and trafficking are linked to criminal organizations, in North Korea some "money-savvy ordinary citizens" are involved in the production of the drug, despite being officially prohibited from doing so.

In the 1990s, North Korea initiated a state-sponsored project to raise opium poppies to produce opium as an export item. After it was officially scrapped after international sanctions, some civilians acquired the knowhow to extract opium from the plants and set up the necessary equipment in their homes to produce opium.

North Korea's homemade opium has become a transnational organized crime as Chinese criminal organizations have trafficked the drug outside the country, according to human rights activist Peter Chung.

"If you go to China's northeastern city of Yanji, it's easy to get North Korean drug. You can get it even at noraebang (karaoke)," he said. Chung travels to the northeastern part of China frequently to help North Korean defectors there.

Homemade North Korean opium, better known as "ice" among drug traffickers, is popular among Chinese drug dealers.

"It's cheap and natural," said the anonymous defector who trafficked opium, noting North Korean opium has no ingredients other than opium poppies and thickener.

North Korean homemade drug is different from methamphetamines, strong central nervous system stimulants made with chemical ingredients. In South Korea, meth goes by the name "philopon."

Jeon Kyoung-soo, a retired drug enforcement official and founder and president of the Institute of Drug-Related Crime, said meth is "a toxic chemical product" that destroys human organs if taken continuously. Used mainly as a stimulant, its side effects include psychological problems, weight loss, organ damage and death.

North Korean drugs have drawn public attention this week after the first son of Gyeonggi Governor Nam Kyung-pil was arrested for smuggling 4 grams of illegal drugs from China. According to police, he consumed 2 grams after vaporizing it at his home in Seoul. He was caught by undercover police while searching on a dating application for a female partner "willing to enjoy" the prohibited drug with him.

It remains uncertain whether the drug he obtained from "a Chinese" after paying 400,000 won during his recent trip to the country is North Korean opium or not.

The police called it "philopon" and provided no further details about the drug.

If South Koreans obtain a prohibited drug in China, experts say it is highly likely the drug in question is North Korean opium.

"If Governor Nam's son purchased it somewhere in the northeastern part of China, such as Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, I'm sure it's North Korean opium," said So Jae-pyong, managing director of the Association of North Korean Defectors in Seoul.

So said North Korean opium is everywhere in Northeast China because the region is near the North Korean border where drug trafficking occurs and many ethnic Koreans live there. "If you know someone who is familiar with or engaged in the smuggling of ice' from North Korea, it's easy to get it," he said.

North Korea has fields of opium poppies, of which the exact scale of production is unknown. Opium has long been a North Korean export item. In the 1990s, then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un, directed the plantation of opium poppies to earn foreign cash. The so-called White Balloon Flower Project was scrapped years later in the face of mounting international criticisms and resultant sanctions.

After that, So said "a special government agency" took over control of opium production there. "I don't know which organization it was," he said, "but the agency was part of the North Korean government."

In 2008, a Seoul-based human rights group for North Korean defectors disclosed a video tape showing a vast opium poppy field in the northeastern county of Taehung. The group said it is in the jurisdiction of the North Korean military. Once harvested, the group said the opium poppies are sent to Nanam Pharmaceuticals in the northeastern port city of Chongjin to produce opium.

Some of the handmade North Korean opium has been trafficked into South Korea via air routes and sea lanes.

In recent years, internet and social media have been increasingly used as a medium to purchase the illegal North Korean drug. In 2012, 86 drug-related suspects were caught after they traded drugs online, and the figure soared to 1,120 cases last year, according to National Police Agency.

In South Korea, trafficking of prohibited drugs has increased rapidly over the past five years. According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, about 9,100 drug users and dealers were arrested in 2011. The figure rose to 12,000 in 2016.

There is no data on origins of the prohibited drugs, but some experts say 50 to 90 percent of what's consumed in South Korea is made in North Korea.

Porous border controls are one of the hurdles in the crackdown of the trafficking of North Korean opium.

"Guess what will happen if Governor Nam's son consumed the drug alone without seeking a partner online?" So said. "He would have not been caught."

Easy access to North Korean opium in Northeastern China is another factor that facilitates North Korean drug trafficking into South Korea.
First lady Kim Jung-sook makes ganjang-gejang (crab marinated with soy sauce) for serving Korean residents living in Flushing, New York at Kitchen in Cheong Wa Dae. / Yonhap



By Chyung Eun-ju

First lady Kim Jung-sook expressed her gratitude to Koreans in the United States, serving traditional dishes to about 300 Korean residents from Flushing, New York, on Wednesday (local time).

Kim personally prepared the food on the private plane she boarded with President Moon Jae-in on Monday to attend the U.N. General Assembly.

"Rather than coming empty handed, I brought kimchi that I made myself," she said on her visit to the Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York (KCS) that was established in 1973 as the first Korean social welfare facility in the U.S.

Kim also served gomtang (Korean beef bone soup), kkagdugi (kimchi-like sliced radish) and ganjang-gejang (crab marinated with soy sauce).

"The reason I packed ganjang-gejang and brought it to New York is because it is hard to find in the U.S.," Kim said. "I wanted to serve it to the people who are homesick for Korean food.

"I have great fondness for the elders that have gone abroad for the progress of our country. I wanted to first meet the elders in Washington and New York. They have overcome the language barriers and other difficulties of living in a foreign land; my heart is overwhelmed with emotions.

"Everyone will have a different memory of Korea. Even though a lot of time has passed, I am very thankful for the elders' unchanging consideration for our nation's safety."

The first generation of Korean immigrants to the U.S. have called Flushing home since 1960 and established Korea Town.
President should stay focused on jobs, national security







Former President Lee Myung-bak has emerged at the center of a political controversy for allegedly directing the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to conduct a smear campaign against opposition politicians, including Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, and suppress anti-government figures in various sectors during his 2009-2013 presidency.



The prosecution launched an investigation into the allegations Wednesday after an NIS task force uncovered documents that allegedly contain plans to undermine the mayor and his key policies. Earlier this week, Park filed a complaint with the prosecution accusing 11 people, including the former president and jailed former NIS chief Won Sei-hoon, of libel and abuse of authority. Won was sentenced to four years in prison earlier this month for interfering in the 2012 presidential election through covert cyber operations intended to influence public opinion.



It is important to get to the bottom of irregularities of previous administrations for the sake of establishing justice. This important effort to bring justice to the wrongdoers shouldn't distract the Moon Jae-in administration from its task of dealing with grave economic and national security challenges.



President Moon has ordered an intense self-reform of the NIS to separate it from partisan politics. After Moon took office, the NIS established a task force to look into political meddling under previous administrations, as well as a reform committee which requested the prosecution's investigation into allegations from Mayor Park and others who claim they suffered under the Lee administration's alleged suppression. The NIS reform committee also requested the prosecution's investigation of an alleged blacklist of cultural figures who were critical of the Lee administration, including actor Moon Sung-keun and comedian Kim Mi-hwa. Kim said that she is planning to sue the former president.



In addition to the prosecution and the NIS, the Cabinet also seems preoccupied with shaming the previous administrations. The Ministry of Unification's policy innovation committee held its first meeting Wednesday presided over by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon. The committee is composed of outside experts and is tasked with looking into the missteps of the previous conservative governments' North Korea policies, such as the closure of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.



It is feared this may distract the government from focusing on the real issues. The people are reeling from an unprecedented unemployment crisis and the nation is divided over the government's response to North Korea's increasing military provocations.



If President Moon remains fixated on undoing the wrongs of the past conservative administrations, he could run the risk of being seen as operating a political vendetta. That will certainly sap his political capital, slow Moon's bigger agenda and compromise national unity.








Two suspected drug dealers face multiple charges after a bust in Paris Thursday.

32-year-old Danielle Humphrey and 35-year-old Byron Medford were at a house on SE 13th, near Cedar street, when police found them.

Police say they had cocaine, tetrahyrocannibinol, marijuana and digital scales.
ELKHORN  Police say a competitor at the Walworth County Fair demolition derby demolished a lot more than just his car.

Robert S. Moore, 32, Lombard, Illinois, is facing felony criminal charges after he allegedly became violent after being ejected from the county fair demolition derby on Sept. 4.

According to a criminal complaint, Moore shouted profanity, then punched a sheriffs deputy in the head, and rammed a tow truck whose driver was trying to remove him from the derby arena.

If convicted on all charges, Moore could face more than 10 years in prison.

Demolition derby organizer Dennis Nelson said the event is a high-impact sport that often causes competitors to become agitated. Nelson said this competitor, however, got carried away.

Things just escalated, Nelson said.

Moore, who is free on bond, is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Oct. 3 in Walworth County Circuit Court.

Defense attorney Paul Bucher said Moore did not strike anyone until after someone hit him first. Moore was also unaware that a sheriffs deputy was part of the disruption, Bucher said.

It was a massive free-for-all, Bucher said. It was an out-of-control mess.

According to the criminal complaint, Moore was participating in the demolition derby on the county fairgrounds in Elkhorn when he was ejected from the event. Nelson said Moore was ejected because he was not performing the required minimum number of collisions with other vehicles.

Moore responded to the ejection by yelling profanity at the referee and creating a disturbance that temporarily stopped the event, the complaint said. When a tow truck arrived to remove his vehicle, Moore allegedly rammed his derby vehicle into the tow truck and damaged it.

Walworth County Sheriffs Deputy Matthew Weber, who was on-duty at the fair, intervened when it appeared that Moore was about to become violent toward a bystander. The complaint states that Moore punched Weber in the head, at which point the deputy used his taser to subdue the suspect.

According to the complaint, Weber suffered shooting pain in his head and was later treated at a nearby hospital.

Sheriff Kurt Picknell said the deputy has since recovered from his injuries and returned to work.

Nelson said the demolition derby resumed after Moore was arrested and removed from the scene.

The Walworth County District Attorneys Office on Sept. 18 charged Moore with felony battery to a law enforcement officer and felony battery, along with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property.

Nelson also said Moore will be banned from future demolition derby events because of the Walworth County incident. He described Moore as an experienced derby participant who should have known the limits of the competition.

You hate to see anybody go to jail, Nelson said. But he let it go too far.
PRESS RELEASE

The Idea of E-BRICS Is Now Being Floated, Where E Stands for Egypt

Sept. 22, 2017 (EIRNS)Is the BRICS about to become the E-BRICS, where E for Egypt? Chinas Global Times floats the idea in an article entitled, "Could Egypt Become the Next Member of the BRICS?" Published on Sept. 14, it is co-authored by He Wenping, a senior research fellow at the Charhar Institute in China, and Hisham Abu Bakr Metwally, the first economist researcher at the Central Department for Export & Import Policy under the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Trade and Industry.

The article reviews the growing importance of Africa for the BRICS, pointing out that Egypt was chosen by China as an observer to take part in the Sept. 3-5 BRICS summit in Xiamen, and that

"Egypt is a large and central country in the Middle East and Africa, giving it an advantageous geographical location, and Egypt also has huge human capacity,"

the authors write.

"It is one of the largest markets in Africa with a population of 93 million. The economy is gradually improving, with annual rates of GDP growth reaching 4.3% in 2015/2016."

They point out the Egypts volume of trade with the "BRICS bloc was nearly $20 billion during 2016. Egypt recently signed a memo of understanding with China worth about $739 million for an electric railway line. The two countries have also signed an agreement for Egypts second satellite'EgyptSat-2with a Chinese grant of 300 million yuan ($45 million).
PRESS RELEASE

Lavrovs UN Speech Highlights Trumps Statement on National Sovereignty

Sept. 22, 2017 (EIRNS)In his speech before the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking as leader of the Russian delegation in the absence of the Russian President, highlighted, very much in the beginning of his remarks,, U.S. President Donald Trumps assertion of the importance of the principle of national sovereignty.

As posted on the Russian Foreign Ministrys website, Lavrov opened his address by referring to the Resolution passed by the General Assembly on "Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order," which

"clearly stipulated the inadmissibility of interference in internal affairs of sovereign states, non-recognition of coups detat as a method of change of power, and the need to exclude from the international communication the attempts of unlawful pressure by certain states on others, including exterritorial application of national jurisdiction."

This basically served as an introduction to the Russian Foreign Ministers highlighting Trumps defense of national sovereignty:

"Nevertheless, the world keeps changing. It is gratifying to note, as the U.S. President Donald Trump unequivocally stated from this podium last Tuesday, that it is important to comply with the principles of sovereignty in international affairs; it is necessary to ensure leadership by example, and not impose ones will on other nations; the countries with different values, cultural patterns, and aspirations cannot only coexist, but also work hand-in-hand on the basis of mutual respect. I believe that anyone can sign under these words, especially if the U.S. foreign policy is conducted precisely on this basis."

Lavrov reiterated Russias well-known foreign policy concerns. Of note was his slamming NATO:

"NATO aspires to recreate the Cold War climate, and refuses to bring to life the principle of equal and indivisible security across the OSCE area, solemnly declared in the 1990s.... For the last quarter of a century, Russia, no matter the challenges it faced, made in good faith its part of the way to eliminate the legacy of the Cold War, [and] has done a lot to strengthen confidence and mutual understanding in the Euro-Atlantic region and the world.... "This, however, has not been reciprocated by our Western partners, overexcited by the illusion of the end of history and still trying to accommodate rudimentary institutions of the bloc-to-bloc confrontation era to the modern day realities. The West, in its turn, structured its policy according to the principle of "whos not with us, is against us," and has chosen "the path of reckless eastward NATO expansion and provoking instability in the post-Soviet space and encouraging anti-Russian sentiments."

On Ukraine, he presented President Vladimir Putins proposal

"to establish the UN Mission for the Protection of OSCE observers in Donbass. A relevant draft resolution has been tabled [presented] in the UN Security Council" and he expressed hope that "it will facilitate the settlement of the internal Ukrainian crisis that broke out as a result of the anti-constitutional coup perpetrated by the ultra-radicals. We are looking forward to constructive interaction on those issues with our European and U.S. partners, without zero-sum games."

Slamming the neo-Nazis, presumably in Ukraine and the Baltic states, Lavrov said,

"It is an outrage to use ones concern for freedom of expression as an excuse to condone radical movements that profess neo-Nazi ideology and stand up for heroization of Nazis and their associates. Consistent efforts are required to put a secure shield against neo-Nazism, revanchism, extremism and xenophobia, and enhance international and intercultural harmony.... We deem it necessary to pay without delay priority attention to this issue at the UN General Assembly and UNESCO, in order to provide for a corresponding legal framework to prevent of such actions. Russia intends to submit relevant proposals." Also of note is what Lavrov said on Iran: "Today, the world is watching with alarm as the U.S. imposes yet a new set of restrictions against Iran which, on top of all, are exterritorial in nature and threaten the realization of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that became one of the key factors of international and regional stability."

And on the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, he again stressed that relevant UN resolutions,
PRESS RELEASE

Wang Yi Calls for Dialogue on the Korean Peninsula; Touts Success of the Balt and Road Initiative for World Peace

Sept. 22, 2017 (EIRNS)Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed the General Debate at the UN General Assembly 72nd session yesterday, reiterating his countrys call for dialogue in resolving the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. He again stressed Chinas commitment to maintain a nuclear-free peninsula, but also urged the parties to do nothing to increase tensions. "All parties must play a constructive role," he emphasized.

Wang underlined the central role that the United Nations has played in keeping the peace over the last seven decades, and stressed the need for the UN maintaining a focus in the resolution of the nuclear crisis on the peninsula. He also said that the world is approaching the anniversary of the first agreement achieved in curtailing the D.P.R.K.s nuclear program as a result of the six-party talks, which "had formulated a roadmap" for denuclearization. That took place 12 years ago, but, "That statement is not outdated," Wang Yi said.

He also said that the UN must play a major role in the continued economic development in the developing sector, emphasizing that recovery from the 2008 crisis was "still an uphill journey." He said that the UN must be a key in pursuing development policies that take advantage of "new scientific revolutions" on the horizon, in which endeavor "the UN must remain a pace-setter," and underlined the importance of the UN Charter. "Globalization is not an issue of East versus West," he said. "We shouldnt follow the law of the jungle. Countries should flourish together."

He said there has been a "momentous journey for China" over the last five years. "China will never seek hegemony, and it will always vote for peace." He also raised the importance of the upcoming Communist Party of China Congress, "which will open a new chapter of the Chinese Dream," and touted the success of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in May, which "provided over 270 deliverables." Next year, he said, China will follow it up by hosting the China International Exposition.
Should a hotel chain make a judgment on the groups that hold conferences at one of its properties?

That is the question that was raised this week after the worlds largest hotel chain, Marriott International, announced it wont cancel a conference next month for what critics say is an anti-Muslim hate group.

The Bethesda, Md., hospitality company with about 6,000 hotels worldwide said it will allow a conference next month at an Arlington, Va., hotel for a self-described grass-roots security organization known as ACT for America.

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We are a hospitality company that provides public accommodations and function space, a Marriott spokesman said. Acceptance of business does not indicate support or endorsement of any group or individual.

Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and the Southern Poverty Law Center both describe ACT as an extremist anti-Muslim hate group. Muslim Advocates wrote to Marriotts chief executive, Arne Sorenson, urging the company to cancel the Oct. 2-3 gathering.

ACT denies being a hate group and instead says it is advocating to protect the U.S. from terrorists and their supporters. The Washington-based organization was founded in 2007 by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-born Christian immigrant who has appeared on Fox News as a commentator.

The group, which claims 750,000 members, has supported President Trumps restrictions on refugees and travel from Muslim-majority countries. It organized protests throughout the country this summer against sharia law, which the group says is incompatible with Western culture.

In an online video promoting the October conference, Gabriel warns The leftist Islamic coalition is raging war against the rule of law and against you and me. Thats why I need you by my side as we descend on Washington, DC.

Although Marriott said it does not make a judgment on groups who use Marriott hotels, the Washington Dulles Marriott hotel was one of three hotels that in 2010 canceled a contract to host a conference of a white nationalist group, American Resistance.

A Marriott spokesman declined to comment on the 2010 cancellation, saying he didnt have sufficient information on it.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
An architecture biennial looks to history. A pair of red shoes are set to dance at the Ahmanson. And getting a closer look at some of the shows (including music!) that are part of Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles / Latin America. Im Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, with the weeks essential culture news:

Architecture plays itself

The second iteration of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, organized by L.A. architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, opened last weekend. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reports that this is a biennial that turns turns its gaze to the professions own history, in an elegantly and densely layered exhibition  though one that seems to be at a remove from the current national mood. Los Angeles Times

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Hawthorne sat down for a conversation with curators Johnston and Lee. The show, says Lee, is a reaction to the complete fascination with newness  new for news sake. Los Angeles Times

Art and natural disaster

Arts communities all over the Americas are reeling from natural disaster.

Mexico Citys museums appear to be emerging largely unscathed in the wake of the powerful 7.1 earthquake that had left at least 274 people dead as of Friday. ARTnews

A rescuer listens for signs of life in a building felled by the earthquake in Mexico City. (Eduardo Verdugo / Associated Press)

How the architectural center La Casa del Arquitecto in Mexico City became a headquarters for architects and engineers aiding quake rescue efforts. Citylab

In Chicago, Puerto Rican and Mexican cultural groups have come together to create relief funds for Mexico and Puerto Rico (hit by the devastating Hurricane Maria). Chicago Sun-Times

Florida sizes up damage  physical and financial  to its theaters in the wake of Hurricane Irma. American Theatre

The Red Shoes in L.A.

Choreographer Matthew Bournes company New Adventures is known for dance theater adaptations of works such as Lord of the Flies and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Now hes bringing his award-winning production of The Red Shoes (inspired by the 1948 film) to the Ahmanson Theatre. Its an expression of what art can do, he tells The Times Jessica Gelt. Its about dying for art. Los Angeles Times

Choreographer Matthew Bourne photographed at the Ahmanson Theatre, where The Red Shoes is having its U.S. premiere. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Contributing reviewer Lewis Segal reports that the shows highlights include the ways in which Bourne acutely reveals character and social class. But some of the key narrative components dont always match the high achievement of the dances. Los Angeles Times

All PST, all the time

The PST: LA/LA series of Latin American exhibitions is in full throttle. Heres what weve been looking at:

Times art critic Christopher Knight reports that the exhibition devoted to the work of 20th century artist Martin Ramirez at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles may rank among the most significant shows in the series. Ramirez was a Mexican migrant who spent much of his life in California state mental hospitals and created curious, pattern-filled drawings of trains and caballeros. The artists presentation of conceptual mysteries through rigorous formal clarity is seductive, writes Knight. Los Angeles Times

In Orange County, The Times Deborah Vankin reports on the life and legacy of late muralist Emigdio Vasquez, which serves as a point of inspiration for a group exhibition at Chapman University. Vasquezs son, Emigdio Higgy Vasquez, who has helped restore key pieces of his fathers work, will paint a new mural at Chapman as part of the show. Los Angeles Times

Vankin also has a look at a striking mural installation by the Oaxacan artist collective Tlacolulokos at the Los Angeles Public Library. Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in L.A., she writes, provides an alternate perspective on California history that gives voice not only to the Zapotec community but to all indigenous communities. Los Angeles Times

Dario Canul of Tlacolulokos examines a portion the collectives new mural at the L.A. Public Library. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Plus, Times music writer Randall Roberts reports on a series of PST Musical Interventions organized by curator and critic Josh Kun  events that looks at how Latin American musicians have shaped L.A. music and vice versa. Los Angeles Times

And because you cant have enough of a good thing: Critic Holland Cotter reports on PST: LA/LA in a lengthy dispatch about the series  describing it is a huge historically corrective, morale-raising cultural event. New York Times

PST in the galleries

Times reviewer Sharon Mizota has a look at whats doing in commercial galleries in conjunction with PST:

First up: the exhibition at Regen Projects organized by artists Abraham Cruzvillegas and Gabriel Kuri which features a flaming bubble machine and a 1939 wallpaper design by Miguel Covarrubias. Los Angeles Times

Meanwhile, at Freedman Fitzpatrick, an installation by the artist known as f.marquespenteado imagines a fictional dinner party that features an encounter between Mexican Americans and a Brit. Los Angeles Times

And in her solo show at Commonwealth & Council, Carolina Caycedo continues her project Be Dammed, which looks at the environmental and social impacts of dams. The exhibition, writes Mizota, with its elegiac forms builds a tension between flow and congestion. Los Angeles Times

Playing the Italian avant-garde

Few cities in the world, writes Times classical music critic Mark Swed, can put on a show of Luciano Berios 14 Sequenzas working only with local musicians. The Italian avant-garde composers works require unusual techniques on a wide range of instruments. But the Monk Space in Koreatown just put on such a show  with soloists who offered a fascinating look at the inner workings of musical life in L.A. Los Angeles Times

Bassist Tom Peters plays Luciano Berios Sequenza XIVb at Monk Space. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

A big night

Paul Rudnicks Big Night at the Kirk Douglas Theatre takes on the Hollywood awards machine as plot device. The play is about Michael (played by Brian Hutchison), the gay central character, who has been nominated for an Oscar. But sitting like a specter on the sidelines are issues of violence and intolerance  which intersect with a seemingly blissful night. The interplay of perspectives is lively, writes Times theater critic Charles McNulty, but the characterizations are types led more by laugh lines than by psychology. Los Angeles Times

Brian Hutchison performs in Big Night at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Master of puzzles

The prolific Tom Jacobson is a writer known for stirring history, sexuality and religion in plays that often are constructed like puzzles or that kaleidoscopically shift styles, writes The Times Daryl H. Miller. Following a staging of The Devils Wife just a few weeks ago, the writer now has another work on view: Walking to Buchenwald, at the Atwater Village Theatre, inspired by a trip he took with his family. Los Angeles Times

Playwright Tom Jacobson hangs out with some taxidermied critters at home. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Art and DACA

L.A. artist Camilo Ontiveros made a towering sculpture with the belongings of Juan Manuel Montes, the first recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (known as DACA) to be deported under the Trump administration. Made months ago, this prescient work greets visitors to Home  So Different, So Appealing at LACMA. They are the belongings of someone who is really vulnerable, Ontiveros tells me, someone who is taken away. Los Angeles Times

Artist Camilo Ontiveros with Temporary Storage: The Belongings of Juan Manuel Montes. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Plus, I look at how various art works around town and on the border have acquired new significance in the wake of Trumps announced DACA phase-out. Los Angeles Times

Extra plus, 10 artists on the rescinding of DACA. Walker Reader

Long read Im seriously digging

Paul Chaat Smith, a curator at the National Museum of the American Indian, recently gave a talk at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. And it was wondrous: Indians are present in daily life of Americans, but for most Americans, the vast majority, Indians are not present and Indians are invisible. Yet paradoxically, Americans are deeply familiar and emotionally connected with Indian imagery, with Indian place names, with Indians in the fabric of American life. Walker Reader

In other news

 More than 100 U.S. museums, led by the Guggenheim, have filed a pair of amicus briefs against Trumps immigration ban on the basis that it negatively affects arts institutions. Artnet

 Plus, on its blog, the Guggenheim features art against the ban. Guggenheim

New Yorks Guggenheim Museum in 2011. (Kathy Willens / AP)

 The firing of director Matthew Halls roils the Oregon Bach Festival. New York Times

 The plan to build a cultural pier designed by architect Thomas Heatherwick over New Yorks Hudson River is dead. Artforum

 Sherry Lansing and former Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell join the Broad museum board. Los Angeles Times

 John Seed pays tribute to Los Angeles gallerist Greg Escalante, who recently passed away. Hyperallergic

 Lin-Manuel Miranda took Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar Lopez Rivera to see Hamilton in Chicago late last month. Chicago Tribune

Lin-Manuel Miranda in Puerto Rico in late August. (Gladys Vega / Getty Images)

 Opera Philadelphia, a new festival, is coming out swinging and the critics are digging. Washington Post

 David Lynch is having a massive art exhibition in Poland. IndieWire

 Who knew? In 1957, designer Charles Eames created a film about objects employed in Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations. Eames Office

 Otiums Yayoi Kusama-inspired menu is all kinds of dotty. Food & Wine

And last but not least

Feel the need to break out the poop emoji? Andrew Russeth has an incomplete guide to art exhibitions held in bathrooms. ARTnews

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

@cmonstah
Tall tales from the world of rock n roll are legion, but country artists have stories of offstage shenanigans that would curl the toes of even the rowdiest rocker.

And in his new partially animated Cinemax series Tales from the Tour Bus, Emmy-winning writer-director-producer Mike Judge tells a few, both hilarious and heartbreaking.

From the singularly self-destructive qualities of Johnny Paycheck  who once stole Patsy Clines car  to the time Waylon Jennings tied George Jones to a tree (alcohol was involved), Judge approaches the stories as a die-hard fan of the genre.

I'm always trying to turn people, nonbelievers, onto stuff like this because I think, once you get past the initial prejudice of just thinking you're not supposed to like country music, that you can find that it's actually really great, says Judge, whose wildly varied comedy resume incudes Beavis & Butt-head, King of the Hill, Office Space Idiocracy and Silicon Valley.

REVIEW: Mike Judge gets at the wild, dark heart of country music in the addictive 'Tales From the Tour Bus' 

Using a mixture of animation and live-action, Judge, who serves as the shows (animated) narrator, illustrates stories told by relatives, friends and assorted members of artists entourages including hairstylists, backing musicians and bus drivers. And in one case, the artist himself, Billy Joe Shaver. (The episodes begin with the disclaimer that the events recounted are real but due to the passage of time and, in some cases, indulgence in both controlled and illicit substances, details of some tales are a bit hazy.)

We recently hopped on the phone with Judge, a musician himself, to discuss Tales, how it felt to see himself as a cartoon, and, naturally, the bizarre way that his satirical 2006 film Idiocracy has presaged some of our current events.

Most folks primary awareness of the shows first subject, Johnny Paycheck, is "Take This Job and Shove It" but even the biggest fan might not realize he had such a wild life. Did the stories come first or the idea for the show?

It's funny you say that because one of the reasons that the whole thing started was I had heard stories about Johnny Paycheck. I mean, I was a fan of his. Everyone knew "Take This Job and Shove It," but I had one of the older albums.

I had heard these crazy stories about him, and this friend of mine, Rich Mullins [whos played bass for Monster Magnet and Karma to Burn and co-created Tales]  hes a metal guy but he's really into this stuff  was pointing out that none of this stuff is on the internet and well, maybe there should be a documentary.

In the course of doing this, Merle Haggard passed away along with Billy Sherrill, who we had a phone interview with, but never got to interview on camera. So some of these, I just thought it would be good to get these stories down while these people are still around.

Given the personal nature of some of the stories, have you heard from the estates of the subjects who have passed away?

No, actually. I mean we were in touch with them to begin with, but I guess they haven't seen it yet. But ultimately I love their music. I took the lead from [the people involved like sidemen] the Adams Brothers, for example, who were really close friends with both Johnny Paycheck and George Jones. I mean they love those guys. They also have no problem making fun of them. That's the way all these people are. At the same time, these are some of the most ornery people you'll ever meet, but that's kind of what that world is. So I just took the lead from them on what the tone of it would be.

These [artists] made, I think, really incredible music, and are incredibly talented. I think we try to balance it. I never, ever wanted it to be we're just making fun of them. To me it's like making fun of them the way you'd make fun of your friends, which is exactly what the people we're interviewing are doing.

Did you have a favorite episode once it was done?

Even though I actually had met Billy Joe Shaver several times and was a fan, there's a lot of these stories about him I didn't know the details of.

That man has had a hard life with family tragedies and health problems and on and on.

Yeah, one after another. That's my favorite one, I think, of the series, the stories are just incredible. That's the only one where [we talked to the artist]. Jerry Lee Lewis is still alive, but we didn't interview him. We have one little clip at the end of him that's fairly recent, but Billy Joe Shaver, we interviewed a bunch, and he's just an amazing storyteller. In his stories, they have a beginning, middle and end. He tells them great. He's crazy in the best way and he's a little bit scary at his age still.

Do you have plans for a second season? Or to delve into another kind of music?

Yeah, we've talked about doing another one and, yeah, jumping to a different genre, doing hip-hop or 70s rock.

You have been a touring musician yourself. Do you have any tales from your tour bus?

No, I toured all over in Europe and everything. I played with blues people mostly, and I played upright bass. I did OK. I was a sideman, so ...

You didnt get into any trouble?

No, I didn't. I didn't get to do enough drugs. Now, if I play, it'll be with somebody that I used to play with. I don't like using my Hollywood thing to go try to play with somebody famous. I dont ever do that.

Presumably many people are coming up to ask you about Idiocracy these days. What do you say?

Oh my God, yeah. I don't have a snap answer really, except that, on the one hand, Im proud to have predicted the future. On the other hand, Im not glad that its the future. But yeah, its really crazy, I mean just all the specific things out of the movie that have happened.

It's very strange. But you feel no responsibility, right?

No, you know, don't shoot the messenger.

And it happened so much sooner than you expected.

Yeah, its 10 years, not 500.

You gave voice to characters on Beavis & Butt-head and King of the Hill but have you yourself been animated before?

Not myself, and I wasn't crazy about that. Originally I was thinking of it like the way Bill Cosby introduced Fat Albert, but then I hated myself on camera talking. So we ended up animating it.

Did you find yourself getting vain about what the animation would look like? Like Dont make my forehead too big.

A little bit. [Laughs.] The artist who drew me for the most part  it's tricky because I don't want to be like, "Make me look really good-looking" or anything  and finally, at one point she said, "Do you want me to get rid of those lines on your neck?" And I said, "Yes. You said it, not me, but go ahead."
Hi, Im books editor Carolyn Kellogg, and this week, our books newsletter has gotten a little bit interactive. Read on to play.

THE BIG STORY

Maybe you read Han Kangs The Vegetarian  I know I did after it won the Man Booker International Prize. The novel is a spare, strange tale of a South Korean woman who stops eating meat, in an unspoken resistance to her husband, and wastes away. The book was an English-language bestseller and young translator Deborah Smith was lauded with praise. But a closer look at her translation caused a huge controversy in South Korea: Did it go too far? Charse Yun, a Korean American who is now a professor in Seoul, explains what happened in this fascinating essay that raises questions about the pitfalls of translating, which errors are important, and what we can expect when reading works in translation.

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THE INTERACTIVE PART

Take our poll: How many works in translation have you read this year?

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BOOK REVIEWS

Celeste Ngs novel Little Fires Everywhere wont disappoint fans of her bestselling debut, Everything I Never Told You. Ng goes into the suburbs again with a lovely dioramic quality, writes Steph Cha in our review, while keeping the story moving at a thrillers pace.

In her novel The History of Bees, Maja Lunde looks at mans intersection with nature through one thing  yes, bees  and three distantly-removed generations. Its a deftly managed if somewhat predictable story of environmental disaster, writes Ellie Robins in our review.

Reviewer Swapna Krishna highlights four science fiction novels that are criminally good. I mean, theyre great reads that are both science fiction and crime fiction: The Salt Line by Holly Goddard Jones, Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman and Yesterday by Felicia Yap.

Join Agatha French looking at I Fought the Law, a book of photographs by Olivia Locher that illustrates unusual laws that are  or maybe arent  on the books across America. In Nebraska, can a parent without a proper license perm their childs hair?

HOMEGROWN

Jason Tougaw, now a literature professor in New York, grew up gay in a hostile environment in Southern California. His memoir of those ups and downs, The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism, combines ideas of the mind and neuroscience with personal experience. (Tougaws heritage may ring a bell with longtime Angelenos and horse-racing fans: his grandfather was the jockey Ralph Neves, who famously was declared dead after being thrown from a horse, taken to the morgue, awoken with a doctors shot and rode again the next day, winning four races). Scott Cheshire talks to Tougaw about his book.

LITERARY NEWS

Lillian Ross, the celebrated New Yorker writer, died this week at age 99. Her last piece for the magazine was a 2012 essay about her friendship with J.D. Salinger.

Birds of a brother: Hank Green, whose brother is the wildly popular YA novelist John Green, will publish a book of his own next year titled An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. Both Greens come to L.A. in November to celebrate the release of Johns forthcoming book, Turtles All the Way Down.

Kirkus announced the finalists for its $50,000 prizes in fiction, nonfiction and young readers literature.

Merriam-Webster has added 250 new words to the dictionary, including sriracha and alt-right.

As the massive citywide art celebration Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA gets underway, take a look at Visualizing Language at the L.A. Central Library (online here, but also in person). The library asked the Oaxacan art duo Tlacolulokos to create paintings in dialogue with the murals in its rotunda, and the result is nothing short of extraordinary.

Artist Dario Canul of Tlacolulokos working on the murals in the L.A. Central Library. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

BESTSELLERS

Debuting at No. 8 on our nonfiction bestseller list is Patti Smith. The rocker turned writer (but also still a rocker) tells a layered tale of art and creativity in Devotion, partly derived from her own journals and created from her presentation at the Windham Campbell Prizes, published by Yale University Press.

Patti Smith performed Sept. 13 in New York. (Michael Loccisano / Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com

@paperhaus
Good morning. Im Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. If youre reading this newsletter, the world did not end today as prophesied. Lets take a look back at the week in Opinion.

It might be baffling to some that President Trump , who owes his political career to firing people, hasnt already thrown out the one person who presents the biggest threat to his presidency. Rest assured, writes former U.S. Atty. Harry Litman in a Los Angeles Times op-ed article, that our notoriously think-skinned, erratic president will fire special counsel Robert Mueller . It is not a question of if, but when.

So, what happens then? Impeachment? Removal? Litman predicts something far less cathartic for his opponents, but much more dangerous to our democracy:

Mueller could launch a legal challenge to the ouster (potentially with the support of the Department of Justice). Its by no means clear that Mueller, an ex-Marine of legendary rectitude, would choose to sue. Assuming he did, though, he would need to overcome a series of constitutional arguments by the presidents lawyers that any restrictions on the presidents ability to terminate him would impinge on presidential power under Article II. In any event, any pushback from the courts would likely be procedural and incremental. Only Congress is positioned to pass broad judgment on Trump. But a congressional response  for example, a statute to create an independent counsel  would be tempered by political compromise, and would have to withstand a presidential veto. In particular, its hard to envision a scenario in which Congress successfully forced Trump to reinstate Mueller. As for a more definitive rebuke such as impeachment, for now it is a barely conceivable fantasy. Even if Democrats were to gain control of the House in the 2018 elections, chances are remote that Democrats in the Senate would be able to muster the 67 votes needed to convict and remove. The trial would be a sort of opera bouffe with Trump at the center at his most melodramatic. And when Trump is acquitted, he will find a cheap salesmans way to declare victory, to the exasperation of his critics. Impeachment without removal, then, looks to be the worst-case scenario for Trump. Hell still get away with firing Mueller, but expect him not to run for a second term. Expect him also to be a fixture on, and probably atop, lists of the nations worst presidents. Still, once Trump is out of office, and assuming he hasnt left visible wreckage beyond an ousted independent counsel, can we then count ourselves lucky and move on from the misadventure? >> Click here to read more

Meanwhile, Trump name-called and threatened to annihilate another country. Columnist Doyle McManus warns that Trump ridiculing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as Rocket Man at the United Nations could lead to war. The Times Editorial Board calls Trumps speech at the General Assembly, in which he also insulted Iran, needlessly offensive. In letters to the editor, readers say Trump demonstrated his unfitness for the presidency and embarrassed the United States.

L.A. and Mexico City have a lot in common  theyre both big, and they both shake. Watching clips of the 7.1-magnitude earthquake in Mexico City, with desperate residents fleeing collapsing structures and others clinging onto the legs of life-saving tables as the room around them shakes, reminds editorial writer Mariel Garza that she and others in Los Angeles will one day find themselves in the same grave situation. The Times Editorial Board warns of the effects on Los Angeles of a similarly powerful temblor: An earthquake of 7.1 or higher could leave you alive but stuck in a paralyzed community without power, water, functioning roadways and aqueducts, and Whole Foods. First responders could be a couple of days from getting to you.

Republicans once again tried to take Obamacare away, and the bill this time  which would entail savage cuts to Medicaid and effectively end the Affordable Care Acts guarantee of healthcare coverage to people with preexisting conditions  is scarier than ever, writes political scientist Scott Lemieux. The Times Editorial Board takes a similar view of the bill, noting that the difference this time is that it would reward the (mostly red) states that havent expanded Medicaid while punishing the (mostly blue) ones that have by turning federal subsidies for healthcare into block grants.

Are you expressing concerns about the cost of a single-payer healthcare system? Then youre a troll, according to Adam H. Johnson: Others claim they support universal healthcare in theory (one day, perhaps), but cannot do so now because of a concern. They are concern trolls  broadly defined as a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion. L.A. Times

Free Speech Week at UC Berkeley might have been a farce all along. Apparently, before announcing their multi-day rally scheduled for next week, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and a conservative campus publication didnt book facilities, pay security deposits or confirm speakers  and its still not clear if many of the event details have been worked out. Yiannopoulos and his fellow organizers claim the university has stifled their free expression, but something less sinister may end up scuttling Free Speech Week: simple incompetence. Pacific Standard

Fight climate change. Just dont touch our cars. The editorial board scolds motorists for effectively thwarting efforts throughout the state to significantly reduce Californias carbon footprint: Any effort that limits, constrains or makes driving ones car more expensive or inconvenient  no matter how civic-minded the proposal  is immediately controversial in California, and often a nonstarter. Getting between Californians and their cars can spell the end of a political career. Just ask former Gov. Gray Davis, who was recalled in large part because of his decision to triple the states vehicle license fee. L.A. Times

Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com
A jury on Friday found two gang members guilty of murdering five people at a Long Beach homeless encampment, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.

David Ponce, 36, and Max Rafael, 31, were convicted of five counts of murder and one count of kidnapping.

The jury, which deliberated for one day, also found true the special circumstance allegations that the pair murdered someone during a kidnapping and were active participants in a criminal street gang.

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In 2008, Vanessa Malaepule, Frederick Neumeier, Hamid Shraifat, Katherine Verdun and Lorenzo Villicana were found fatally shot at a camp of tents near the 405 Freeway.

Four years later, prosecutors charged Rafael and Ponce, who had been recorded seemingly bragging about the killings to a jailhouse informant.

Ponce was also convicted of kidnapping and murdering Tony Bledsoe, whose body was found in 2009 in Lake Los Angeles.

The death penalty phase for Ponce is scheduled to begin Wednesday, while Rafael is expected to be sentenced in November.

corina.knoll@latimes.com

@corinaknoll
Trent Sanders, a retired L.A. County sheriffs deputy, remembers the raw power of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and the wicked punch of the 1994 Northridge quake.

Both of them were frightening, destructive and deadly.

But neither of those was the Big One.

Are you ready? Sanders asks in an earthquake-preparation checklist he has repeatedly emailed to friends, neighbors and family members, many of whom have forwarded the advice to their own pals. His ideas arent necessarily original, but theyre neatly compiled, and last week, he posted them on his Facebook page.

Every time theres an earthquake, he sends a reminder, said Julia Wood, a public health nurse who lives in Long Beach. Even if its not an earthquake, but a disaster somewhere in the world, he reminds us we have to be ready.

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With monster hurricanes in the news, along with two killer quakes in Mexico, Sanders has been busy. At 76, he is a human early-warning system.

Sanders said its obviously critical for cities to do what they have to do. In short, they need to follow the lead of Los Angeles, Santa Monica and San Francisco, which have ordered retrofitting of the most vulnerable kinds of buildings. The televised rubble in Mexico and the collapse of a concrete building were horrific reminders of the urgency to move quickly.

But Sanders, whose public service didnt end with his retirement, wants to make the point that individuals need to do their own part. And that denial or procrastination could have lasting consequences.

We all know where we live and what the risks are. California is a banged-up specimen with a curved spine and head-to-toe fractures, mugged by time, and the worst beatings may be yet to come. And still its so easy not to be ready, or to pretend were in good shape by throwing a flashlight and a few cereal bars into a bag and then forgetting where we stashed it.

Not Sanders.

Here it is, right back here, the lanky retiree said as he escorted me to a backyard storage bin the size of a mini-Cooper.

Dont put your stash in the house or garage, Sanders said, because there will be fires after a magnitude 7 or 8 beast. Water supply lines may rupture and buildings will burn to the ground.

Stacked and layered inside his earthquake shed are lanterns, propane tanks for his barbecue grill, a portable shower contraption, first-aid equipment, vacuum-packed MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), coffee, canned goods, bags of rice and enough beans to fire a rocket into orbit.

After Northridge and Sylmar, the supermarkets were just denuded of everything, said Sanders. And people werent prepared for that.

Some people can barely afford to shop for this weeks meals, let alone stash away food that may never be eaten. But if theres widespread devastation, emergency supplies may not be available for days, so Sanders encourages people to do what they can.

I dont think hes being alarmist, either. Earlier this year, when I toured the San Andreas fault with earthquake queen Lucy Jones, she reminded me that transportation, power, water, gas and communication arteries could be ruptured in a 7.8 jolt. Skyscrapers could topple and countless buildings might be declared uninhabitable.

Jones also noted that just because your house is bolted doesnt mean its properly secured. Standards have changed dramatically over the years, so get your home checked by an established contractor who specializes in seismic safety.

Count on there being no water, Sanders says on his advice sheet, advising people to stockpile enough to last several weeks, figuring on one gallon per person daily. And you need to plan for some kind of latrine system, he said, with plenty of toilet paper in your prep kit.

If roads are out, you might not be able to leave the area, Sanders said. Even if you could, gas pumps might not work. And dont expect your cellphone to function, said Sanders. So you need to plan ahead on how to rendezvous with family.

He recommends designating a friend or relative out of the area that everyone can call when they get to a working landline, so families can keep tabs on one another. Also, if youre a push-button dialer who doesnt memorize important phone numbers, keep a written list in your purse or wallet.

Sanders said he keeps some cash on hand, hidden away, because ATMs wont operate in a power outage, and anyone who requires regular medication should keep an emergency supply on hand.

Ed Phelps, who lives across the street from Sanders, is a former city councilman who helped draft La Canada-Flintridges earthquake preparedness plan. He already had an emergency food supply and several large drums of water in storage at his home. But after getting Sanders list, he added a few items. Among them, a portable stove, a camping shower and a generator that can run a refrigerator.

When your house catches fire and you dial 9-1-1, youre going to get a busy signal, said Phelps. In L.A., we could be talking about a catastrophic quake, and Trents right. Its going to be like Florida, where four and a half million people were without electricity.

Another person who has heeded Sanders warnings is his sister, Carla Johnson, who lives in the Glenoaks Canyon neighborhood of Glendale. She has a 55-gallon water drum, food supplies and a duffel bag with flashlights, batteries, a whistle to call for help and a crowbar in case she has to pry her way out of a damaged house.

Weve got over 700 houses up here and theres a concern that if the overpass from Highway 2 comes down, wed be trapped and have to hike out, Johnson said.

I asked if her brother, the former deputy, has always been a persistent guy  and, in this case, kind of a town crier.

Thats him, she said. And the older he gets, the more he gets that way.

In his backyard, Sanders had one last piece of advice for all of us.

Dont be paranoid, he said. Be prepared.

Here are some quake tips:

Preparing your home for The Big One.

Tips to be ready for the next major quake.

Getting beyond quake anxiety and into positive action.

Get more of Steve Lopezs work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez
The Los Angeles teachers union on Wednesday called for school board member Ref Rodriguez, who is facing felony charges, to resign from the L.A. Board of Education.

The union said in a statement that Rodriguez did not do enough by announcing Tuesday that he would step down as board president.

His decision to stay on the board runs afoul of the commitment needed for his elected position, to the students, parents and educators he is meant to serve, said the statement signed by the unions officers. It is not reflective of a kids first agenda he and his colleagues trumpet so often.

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While we believe in due process rights, choosing to stay on as a board member means he will continue to make long-lasting policy decisions, including who becomes the next board president, the officers stated. Our students will take a back seat to what happens next in this criminal case. His voting record as a school board member, including possible conflicts of interest, will inevitably all be called into question.

The unions stand is not particularly surprising.

United Teachers Los Angeles opposed Rodriguez during the election that brought him to the Board of Education in 2015. The union also is concerned that the current, slim board majority will lean increasingly in favor of charter schools. The departure of Rodriguez would subtract a key vote from that bloc.

Advocates of charter schools spent record sums in 2015 and 2017 to help elect a pro-charter board majority. The other major spender, backing opposing candidates in those campaigns, was the teachers union.

Allies and backers of Rodriguez have generally applauded his decision to step down as president, a post he has held only since July. But theyve also generally supported  at least publicly  his plans to stay on as a board member.

Some Rodriguez supporters have downplayed the charges against him, filed by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office last week. Prosecutors allege that he secretly funneled nearly $25,000 of his own money into his campaign through straw donors. Rodriguez legally could have put the money into his campaign directly.

The City Ethics Commission faulted Rodriguez for allegedly trying to hide, from voters and others, the true source of the donations.

howard.blume@latimes.com

Twitter: @howardblume
Anyone thinking about visiting our neighbors south of the border this weekend might want to go on foot.

The San Ysidro port of entry closed to traffic traveling from the U.S. to Mexico at 3 a.m. Saturday morning and will remain shut until noon Monday. Southbound traffic crossing into Mexico is expected to reach maximum gridlock if people dont make other plans. All cars that normally would pass through the busiest port of entry in the world will be funneled through Otay Mesa.

If everyone who crosses on a daily basis or a weekend basis crosses, were going to have really terrible traffic delays going into Mexico, said Anthony Kleppe, a senior asset manager with the U.S. General Services Administration.

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Authorities have likened the weekend shut down to Carmageddon, when part of the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles was closed for a weekend in 2011.

Kleppe said most people in the San Diego and Tijuana region have been informed over the past two months to avoid the port this weekend, and he hopes it wont be a problem.

Hes been doing what he calls an Uber test, asking Uber drivers whether theyve heard about the closure. In recent weeks, all have said yes.

I think weve been fairly successful in ensuring that the traveling public is aware of the closure, Kleppe said. Were hopeful that theyre going to heed the warning and enjoy the communities that theyre in, stay there and plan their trips accordingly. Im really not envisioning a terrible traffic jam.
A La Verne police officer was injured and a suspect was shot and wounded during an altercation early Saturday, authorities said.

The shooting occurred about 3:30 a.m. at an apartment complex in the 2400 block of Foothill Boulevard, officials said.

Los Angeles County sheriffs investigators are assisting the La Verne Police Department with its probe of the incident, said Deputy Charles Moore.

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Responding to a family disturbance call, La Verne police were confronted by a man with an unknown, dark object in his hand, Moore said. Believing it was a weapon, the officer ordered the man to drop the object, he said.

The man did not comply, Moore said.

He fired at least one round at the male adult, he said of the officer, adding that the object in the mans hand wasnt a weapon.

The man kept walking toward the officer, who then used his Taser, Moore said. The stun gun had no effect on the man.

Despite further commands, Moore said, the man continued approaching the officer, reached down at his waistband and made a threatening statement. The La Verne officer shot at the man several times, striking him once in the torso, Moore said. A stray bullet struck an assisting officer in the lower torso, authorities said.

Both men were taken to a hospital. The suspects condition was not known, and the officer was listed in stable condition, Moore said.

Neither the suspect nor the police officer was identified.

After daybreak Saturday, sheriffs detectives and La Verne officers stood within a cordoned-off crime scene at the Amber Ridge Apartments, collecting evidence. Strewn on the ground near a La Verne police cruiser with its trunk open were a pair of brown boots and clothing.

Times staff photographer Irfan Khan contributed to this report.

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

For more news from the Los Angeles County courts, follow me on Twitter: @marisagerber

UPDATES:

4:10 p.m. This article has been updated with new comments from authorities.

This article was originally posted at 12:15 p.m.
Organizers of a far-right speakers series planned on the UC Berkeley campus informed school officials that all speaking events scheduled for the coming week have been canceled, the university said Saturday.

Representatives of the student group Berkeley Patriot informed the school that Free Speech Week, which was scheduled to kick off Sunday, would not take place, Dan Mogulof, a campus spokesman, said in a statement. There was no reason given for the cancellation.



For the record: A previous version of this article misspelled Chase Aplins last name as Apin.

It is extremely unfortunate that this announcement was made at the last minute, even as the university was in the process of spending significant sums of money and preparing for substantial disruption of campus life in order to provide the needed security for these events, Mogulof said.

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The event seemed to be in trouble in recent days as organizers failed to meet Berkeleys deadlines for renting indoor venues on campus, while at the same time some scheduled speakers either canceled plans to attend or said they never agreed to appear.

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who struggled to help organize the far-right festival, said he still planned to speak at noon Sunday at Sproul Plaza, where the universitys free speech movement began. The campus become the national staging ground for confrontations between the right and left

We are unable to host an official UC Berkeley speaking event, Yiannopoulos said. So were going to host an unofficial one.

Chief Margo Bennett of the UC Police Department said that Sproul Plaza is public space where anybody can walk on and talk. But she noted that Yiannopoulos had not applied to use amplified sound on the plaza.

The blame for this events new mutated form lies squarely with UC Berkeley.  Milo Yiannopoulos

Members of Berkeley Patriot disagreed about whether to cancel the Free Speech Week event, but the groups leadership ultimately decided to pull the plug late Friday.

For the last few days, weve been concerned about threats the university had been making and the potential of violence, Berkeley Patriot President Mike Wright said in a phone interview.

Sophomore Chase Aplin, one of the groups 11 members, said most of the clubs members did not agree with the decision to pull the groups sponsorship of the speakers series and would be joining Yiannopoulos at Sproul Plaza.

Most members do not feel this was the correct choice, Aplin said in a text message.

Conservative champions Mike Cernovich and Pamela Gellar will also join Yiannopoulos at Sundays event. The slate of speakers includes Canadian far-right personality Lauren Southern, Los Angeles street artist SABO, conservative author Lisa De Pasquale, and former UC Irvine College Republicans President Ariana Rowlands.

In an afternoon news conference on Facebook Live, Yiannopoulos said the blame for this events new mutated form lies squarely with UC Berkeley.

These students have been bullied, cajoled and manipulated by UC Berkeley, he said of the Berkeley Patriot organizers.

Lucian Wintrich, a writer for the Gateway Pundit website, which regularly publishes outlandish stories about politics, was supposed to speak at Free Speech Week. But earlier this week he pulled out, telling The Times that he didnt want college students to waste their money coming to the event.

In a Saturday email to a UC Berkeley administrator, obtained by The Times, Wintrich said that Yiannopoulos had known for some time that the Free Speech Week event would be canceled.

When asked if this was all set up, Wintrich responded yes.

It was known that they didnt intend to actually go through with it last week, and completely decided on Wednesday, he wrote.

Yiannopoulos said this was not true, but he did appear to take some responsibility for the now-canceled events chaotic and disorganized rollout.

I understand there were some hiccups with speakers, which I take personal responsibility for, he said. Although it was an error of my staff, its down to me.

In recent weeks, Yiannopoulos insisted that a bevy of high-profile speakers would be attending the Berkeley series. But one of the most controversial names on the list  conservative commentator Ann Coulter  told The Times Friday that she was never coming.

My speakers bureau never booked me to speak at Berkeley. No contract for me to speak existed, she said in an email Friday.

Former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was another unconfirmed speaker. He didnt respond to repeated requests for comment.

Meanwhile, a previously scheduled counter-demonstration in Berkeley on Saturday afternoon went forward as planned with about 500 participants. That mostly subdued event, dubbed No Hate in the Bay: March Against White Supremacy, was sponsored by an array of groups including labor unions and human rights organizations.

The crowd meandered around the Oakland/Berkeley border chanting against Nazis.

Cat Brooks, the founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project in the Bay Area who helped lead the march Saturday, said Berkeley had become a crown jewel for right-wing activists working to build their ranks.

She called Yiannapoulos a showman and said she wasnt surprised his event had fallen apart.

They know that here is not the place to come, she said. You will not win that fight here. You will not win that fight in the Bay Area.

Yiannopoulos has complained to reporters that the university had tried to sabotage plans for Free Speech Week by making it difficult for organizers to make logistical arrangements and to meet certain deadlines.

But Mogulof, the UC Berkeley spokesman, said such claims were without basis in fact.

The university was prepared to do whatever was necessary to support the 1st Amendment rights of the student organization, Mogulof said in a statement.

UC Berkeley has incurred at least $1.4 million in security costs since February, when Yiannopoulos last appearance sparked violent protests. The campus spent $200,000 on security for that event, $600,000 for Coulter, whose event ultimately was canceled, and an estimated $600,000 for the talk last week by conservative writer Ben Shapiro, according to the university.

Officials shut down a large portion of Berkeleys campus as well as three city blocks to prevent the kind of rioting that happened when Yiannopoulos February event was canceled.

The protests outside Shapiros talk were relatively subdued with no widespread violence and nine arrests.

Even as Free Speech Week at the university buckled under its own weight, Yiannopoulos took the time during this Facebook Live stream on Saturday to announce four upcoming speaking dates for his planned seven-month Troll Academy tour across the U.S.

Three of them are in California, on Oct. 25 at Cal State Bakersfield, Oct. 29 at San Diego State and Oct. 31 at Cal State Fullerton.

benjamin.oreskes@latimes.com

javier.panzar@latimes.com

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UPDATES:

6:45 p.m.: This article was updated with new comments from UC Berkeley officials.

3:20 p.m. This article has been updated with more information about counter-demonstrators march.

2:20 p.m.: This article has been updated with comments from counter-demonstrators.

1:40 p.m.: This article has been updated with additional comments from Milo Yiannopoulos.

1 p.m.: This article was updated with a notice posted on Milo Inc. that a free speech march would be held at UC Berkeley on Sunday.

11:45 a.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from Lucian Wintrich, one of the scheduled speakers.

10:50 a.m.: This article was updated with new comments from UC Berkeleys spokesman.

This article was originally published at 10:20 a.m.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the significant destruction and death toll from Tuesdays earthquake in Mexico should prompt owners and local governments across California to get more buildings retrofitted to withstand quakes as soon as possible.

A viral video capturing the collapse of a five-story concrete building  remarkable for the detail it shows of how such structures behave in an actual quake  has become a startling and visceral illustration for how seemingly solid buildings can become brittle and crumble when shaken side to side.

Aqui el momento donde un edificio, al parecer en la Colonia Roma colapsa. pic.twitter.com/rAYKX0lJjm  REFORMACOM (@Reforma) September 19, 2017

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Any building owner who thinks they should sit back and relax for the next 20 years should view that video. And lets figure out a way to get to work now, Garcetti said.

Whats more expensive, he said, the loss of your entire property  let alone the loss of lives  or the investment in making sure that no earthquake of that size will destroy your building or kill anyone?

Structural engineers in California say its clear that brittle concrete buildings were a major reason for many of the deaths caused by Tuesdays magnitude 7.1 quake in central Mexico. Only a few local governments around the world have required that brittle concrete buildings be retrofitted, and Los Angeles was one of the first to do so in 2015.

Garcetti proposed the retrofit law, requiring that concrete buildings and wooden apartment buildings with flimsy ground floors be retrofitted by a certain deadline.

Requiring concrete buildings to be retrofitted was at one time controversial in Los Angeles, given the expense, which can exceed $1 million for a large structure. L.A.s seismic safety law permitted a lengthy deadline  25 years to retrofit a concrete building once the city issues an order requiring the building be seismically evaluated for risk of collapse.

(The deadline for wooden apartment buildings is shorter  seven years after an order is given.)

But Garcetti said the destruction this week in Mexico City underscores how important it is to get those buildings retrofitted well before the 25-year deadline.

The images from Mexico reinforce the route that we took and the importance  despite the expense  of including concrete buildings in our legislation, the mayor said. Looking at those horrific images and seeing the tragic consequences remind me of our No. 1 responsibility to save lives, and not just try to calculate a dollar amount of, too much, to save a life.

That said, it also makes me uneasy thinking of 25 years  we picked the compromise of ... putting a mandate thats very strong, and we were very flexible about the timeline, Garcetti said.

For now, Garcetti is not proposing a change in law to shorten the deadline to retrofit concrete buildings. But, he said, it would help owners to make it easier to obtain loans to do retrofits, whether they be publicly or privately financed, so they wouldnt have to pay for the costs all up front.

The mayor called on other cities throughout California to start looking to L.A.s retrofit plan as a model.

Our next step is to do whatever we can on our watch to go even further, Garcetti said. If the biggest city in the state can do this, then you can do it, too, in your own backyard.

Garcetti congratulated other cities, such as Santa Monica, for going one step step beyond L.A. in requiring retrofitting of a certain class of steel frame building found to be vulnerable to fracturing in an earthquake. He said officials at L.A.s Department of Building and Safety are studying the Santa Monica law to assess it.

ron.lin@latimes.com

@ronlin
North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho warned Saturday that it is inevitable that his country will launch a missile toward the mainland United States in revenge for the insults President Trump has directed at leader Kim Jong Un.

None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission, Ri said in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly  turning the tables on Trumps accusation that Kim is suicidal. The insults make our rockets visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.

On Tuesday, Trump had used the same forum to mock Kim as Rocket Man and warn that the U.S. would totally destroy North Korea if attacked.

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The mudslinging continued in the same vein in Ris speech. He taunted Trump as President Evil and called him a mentally deranged person full of megalomania  who has turned the White House into a noisy marketplace full of crackling sounds.

Earlier in the day, the Pentagon announced that American bomber and fighter jets flew along North Koreas eastern coastline in a predawn show of force that was closer to the rogue nations border than any other mission this century.

Dana White, chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement Saturday that U.S. B-1 bomber and F-15 fighter jets launched from airfields in the region and flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat, White said. North Koreas weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community.

The Pentagon issued several photos of the sleek fighter and bomber jets streaking across the darkened sky toward the Korean Peninsula.

In his speech, which had been prepared in advance, Ri did not mention the flights, but he condemned tightened U.N. sanctions as heinous and barbaric and said they would not deter his country from developing nuclear weapons.

We are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force, Ri said.

Earlier in the week, Ri told reporters that North Korea could next conduct an atmospheric nuclear test over the Pacific  which would be a major escalation. All six of North Koreas previous nuclear tests have been underground. No nation has conducted an atmospheric nuclear test since China in 1980.

Although the hyperbolic volley of insults between the U.S. and North Korea leaders has been at times comical  the stilted North Korean rhetoric is easy to ridicule  the exchange is setting nerves on edge.

Kim Jong Un this week personally took to North Korean television to deliver a denunciation of Trump, whom he called a dotard. Trump tweeted a fresh attack against Kim on Friday night, calling him a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, complained that Trump and Kim are behaving like children in a kindergarten.

Im nervous, said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA Korea analyst. Kim Jong Un is known to be paranoid and thin-skinned. She said Trump has laid down his challenge in a way that will make it difficult for the North Koreans to back down.

Im a hard-liner too when it comes to North Korea, she added, but you have to give them a way out. There is no path. This is a dangerous game to be playing.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Twitter: @BarbaraDemick

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UPDATES:

4:50 p.m.: This story was updated with additional information about the U.S. air maneuvers in the region.

This story was originally published at 3:30 p.m.
It was a spectacle nobody in this sleepy New Jersey town would forget.

Early one Monday morning, police and FBI agents in bulletproof vests bounded up the steps of suburban townhouses and split levels, threatening to break down the doors, hauling out in handcuffs husbands and wives in the distinctive clothing of ultra-Orthodox Jews. One was a prominent rabbi and head of a synagogue.

It was the dramatic kickoff of a series of well-publicized raids that since late June have netted 26 suspects on charges of stealing $2 million in government benefits. Prosecutors say that the suspects understated their income to get free healthcare, food stamps, rental subsidies and other benefits.

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All of those arrested  13 men and 13 women  were ultra-Orthodox Jews. The charges have tapped into a well of festering hostility toward an insular and eccentric minority.

Once a backwater at the edge of New Jerseys Pine Barrens, Lakewood is now home to one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel. They are a fast-growing population with a high birthrate; the population of Lakewood has exploded from 45,000 in 1990 to more than 100,000 today. Many of the newcomers are from large families priced out of Brooklyn by gentrification.

Lakewood is now home to one of the largest concentration of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

At first glance, little sets Lakewood apart from any number of other suburban communities on the fringes of the New York metropolitan area. But the differences are there. Signs are commonly in Hebrew and Yiddish. The Shop-Rite has closed and was replaced by Glatt Gourmet, a kosher supermarket. New subdivisions have Jewish-themed street names, like Hadassah Lane.

Like the Amish, these strictly observant Jews are instantly recognizable by their modest dress  the women in long skirts and wigs that cover their hair, and the men with yarmulkes or black fedoras and tzitzit, the strings hanging out of their shirts that remind them of their religious obligations. Instead of buggies, though, they mostly drive SUVs or minivans to fit large broods of children.

Around New York, there are a handful of similar towns that are dominated by ultra-Orthodox Jews, but only in Lakewood have federal and state authorities laid down the gauntlet so definitively.

The strictly observant ultra-Orthodox Jews are instantly recognizable by their modest dress. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Many young families are heavily dependent on government benefits. Couples marry and bear children young, usually in their early 20s while the fathers are full-time students in religious schools, the mothers working part-time doing office work.

With five or more children, many of them with special needs  a result attributed to women having multiple births until late in life and genetic disorders in a relatively closed population  families cannot survive without government assistance, especially to buy health insurance.

You have a family or six or seven or eight ... and theyre reporting their total income at $10,000. ... You have to ask -- what is going on here?  Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato

In Lakewood, 65,000 people  more than half the towns population  are on Medicaid, the government health program for low-income families, according to state data. Lakewood has more children with two parents receiving government benefits than any other municipality in New Jersey, including large, chronically depressed cities such as Newark and Camden. A report by the Asbury Park Press found that Lakewood had received 14% of the money from a $34-million state fund for catastrophic illnesses in children, despite having only 2% of the states children. It also found that the town had 29 times more grant recipients than any other town in New Jersey.

In 2015, the New Jersey state controllers office flagged the disproportionate sums of government money being absorbed by Lakewood. The town didnt look poor by any conventional yardsticks of poverty.

You have a family or six or seven or eight, somebody is paying the mortgage, somebody is paying the taxes, they have two cars in the driveway, theyve got food for all the kids  and theyre reporting their total income at $10,000, said Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County prosecutor who took the lead in the case. You have to ask  what is going on here?

In one case unsealed by the court in June, a couple with six children are alleged to have reported their income at $39,000 per year  low enough to qualify for Medicaid  when in fact they were getting more than $1 million annually from a limited liability corporation.

Members of the religious community say that cases of deliberate fraud are rare. For the most part, they say, the couples caught up in prosecutions had failed to report money theyd gotten from parents who were either paying the tuition for children in private schools or helping with the mortgage.

The rules are very confusing. You have to be a Talmudist to figure out which program treats gifts from family as ordinary income, said Rabbi Moshe Weisberg, the Lakewood head of what is called the Vaad, a self-governing council for the ultra-Orthodox community.

Attendees a Lakewood Township housing meeting listen to a proceeding regarding new residential developments. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

People most often got in trouble with their Medicaid applications, motivated by their inability to afford market-rate health insurance, which he said ran as high as $30,000 annually for a large family. Several of the families have disabled children, he noted.

None of these people used any of this welfare money for an extravagant lifestyle. They were struggling to make ends meet and trying to pay medical bills, said Harold Herskowitz, a businessman who runs a toy store in Lakewood. He believes the prosecutions were motivated by hostility toward the ultra-Orthodox.

Im the child of Holocaust survivors; I dont appreciate Jewish people dragged out in public early in the morning, Herskowitz said.

The initial arrests in June received extensive news coverage, with television crews tipped off in advance to film the scenes of couples in handcuffs being led away. Following complaints, the prosecutors have made subsequent arrests more discreetly, but still the publicity rankles.

The case has tapped into a wave of hostility toward the community. Last month, somebody hung an anti-Semitic banner on a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, and fliers were distributed on the windshields of cars with photos of those arrested under the caption, Thieving Jews Near You.

Under fire from many sides, the observant Jews of Lakewood are trying to burnish their reputation in New Jersey. Theyve hosted outreach programs between the community and the police  Bagels, Lox & Cops, as the meetings have been called. Other public programs have been designed to advise ultra-Orthodox families on how to stay on the legal side of public assistance programs.

Lakewood, about 50 miles from New York City, was a resort town for the New York elite beginning in the late 19th century, attracting luminaries such as Mark Twain and members of the Rockefeller family. Their fancy retreats were later turned into kosher hotels catering to working- and middle-class Jews, the town becoming an extension of the Catskills Borscht belt across the border in New York state.

In 1943, the Rabbi Aharon Kotler, a Holocaust survivor who fled Lithuania, picked the town for his Beth Medrash Govoha, a yeshiva  religious school  that is now one of the worlds largest with 6,500 students, all men. That would in turn attract other yeshivas, along with Jewish primary schools, kosher delicatessens and shops.

It was an idyllic little town with a strong Jewish flavor, said Aaron Kotler, the founders grandson and current head of the yeshiva, in an interview in his sprawling suburban ranch house, the walls proudly displaying oil paintings of previous generations of bearded rabbis. My grandfather chose Lakewood because it was quiet, which is ironic because people complain the yeshiva has ruined the quiet.

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, president of Beth Medrash Govoha, is also a key leader in Lakewoods Jewish community. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Kotler describes Lakewood today as one of the most attractive destinations for young religious Jews to study and raise families, making the demographics similar to other university towns.

I like to think of Lakewood as poor by choice, said Kotler.

The community has shown itself to be unusually adept at navigating the intricacies of politics and government.

Their lives depend on knowing everything about how Section 8 [subsidized rental housing] works and getting into WICs, the government Women, Infants and Children food assistance program, said Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queen College who has written several books on the community.

Politically speaking, the ultra-Orthodox wield clout beyond their numbers, with adult members almost always turning out for elections and voting as a single bloc.

They tend to vote like the Christian right, and they have learned to make their votes very important, said Heilman.

In all of New Jersey, Lakewood had the highest concentration of Donald Trump voters in last years presidential election  74.4%. With their children all in private religious schools, they are strong supporters of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary who has called for school vouchers. Charles and Seryl Kushner, the parents of Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are benefactors of the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva, and the rotunda of the schools 2-year-old main building is named for them.

Beth Medrash Govoha, a yeshiva founded In 1943 by Rabbi Aharon Kotler, is now one of the worlds largest with 6,500 students, all men. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Ultra-Orthodox votes are even more important in local political races. They have installed candidates who favor their interests on the Lakewood school board, township committee and zoning board.

Lakewoods 30,000 ultra-Orthodox children are ferried to 130 private religious schools on public school buses  boys and girls separately, since they attend single-sex schools  while public schools with only 6,000 children, mostly Latino and African American, have been gutted by a lack of funding. (This is in part due to a quirk in New Jerseys school financing formula that requires busing for private school students but reimburses the districts based on public school enrollment.)

Some 4,000 new units of housing have been approved in Lakewood in the last two years, making the township the fastest-growing municipality in New Jersey. Real estate developers catering to the ultra-Orthodox are carving new subdivisions lined with four- and five-bedroom townhouses for large families.

Some 4,000 new units of housing have been approved in Lakewood in the last two years, making the township the fastest-growing municipality in New Jersey. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

When I moved here, there were trees. Now I wake up and Im surrounded by high-density townhouses, said Tom Gatti, a retiree who heads a coalition of senior citizens opposing the pace of new development in Lakewood. Anytime you try to challenge anything the ultra-Orthodox are doing, they drop the anti-Semitic card on the table.

They are not looking to assimilate into the community; they are trying to take over, Gatti said.

The ultra-Orthodox Jews also face criticism from less religious and secular Jews.

Being observant should, first and foremost, involve living and working ethically, complained a hard-hitting editorial in the Forward, the Yiddish- and English-language Jewish publication based in New York. The editorial called the welfare fraud cases a desecration of Gods name.

Its too simple to say that this is a problem with Jews, said Heilman, the sociology professor. It is not their Jewishness that has created the problems; it is the way they interpret the demands of being Jewish.

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barbara.demick@latimes.com

Twitter: @BarbaraDemick
For people who spent their formative years in Los Angeles in the 1990s (someone like, say, me), being shaken awake in the pre-dawn hours of Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1994, certain that were all going to die, left an indelible mark on our psyches. It is our shared experience of how suddenly and unsparingly violent a major earthquake can be.

Its also a reminder of our collective complacency.

Since Mexico was struck by two earthquakes this month  both far more powerful than Los Angeles 1994 temblor (to say nothing of the two major quakes that struck on the same morning in June 1992)  multiple warnings have been issued about the likelihood of a similar disaster hitting Southern California. The death and destruction in Mexico City, were told, remind us of what is destined for Los Angeles.

Should Californians need reminding that earthquakes pose a major risk, as if the ground shaking underneath us isnt a feature of life here? Weve had these experiences, and many of us sporadically relive them as anyone would a childhood trauma. But the warnings from policy makers, scientists, The Times Editorial Board and now letter writers indicate that the passage of time may have made it easier to deprioritize earthquake preparation in Los Angeles.

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Edward Beres of Pasadena envisions a scenario in Los Angeles like Puerto Ricos current condition:

The recent earthquakes in Mexico prompted your editorial board to list some of the measures that our governments are taking or could take to help reduce the damage that a similar event here will cause.

A hallmark of our democracy is the safeguarding of its citizens from breathing carcinogenic air, buildings collapsing and much more.  Hal Rothberg, Calabasas

Reinforcing soft-story buildings and giving folks a few seconds of warning are fine measures, but you brush over what seems to be the most serious threat: An earthquake of 7.1 or higher could leave you alive but stuck in a paralyzed community without power, water, functioning roadways and aqueducts, and Whole Foods.

That means no power, natural gas, gasoline, running water or food supplies for months (and as a result, no functioning schools, hospitals, or businesses).

Most of the L.A. regions utility and gasoline supply lines cross the San Andreas fault, as do highways leading to warehouses that supply the region. Id like to see some reporting on what our governments plans are for the aftermath.

You write that the American Red Cross suggests a preparation kit with a minimum of three days food along with water, flashlight, and batteries. What do we do on days four through 180? It seems that rather than looking at the earthquake in Mexico as a preview of life here after the next big quake, Puerto Rico having no power for months in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria is a better glimpse of L.A.s future.

Granada Hills resident Paul Burns details his preparation:

This past weeks events reminded me that I have done my summer update of my earthquake preparedness kit stored in the corner of my backyard in a 55-gallon container. Furthermore, I checked on my camping supplies, and I keep an extra propane tank ready. Also, I try to keep two cars with their tanks at least half-full.

Dont be scared. Be prepared.

Hal Rothberg of Calabasas puts pressure on policymakers:

Our hearts go out to the people of Mexico. The loss of life and devastation are incomprehensible. Sadly, theres a lesson to be learned.

Building codes and regulations must be stringent and enforced. Unfortunately, our administrations anti-science and anti-regulations stands almost assure a wider array of disasters beyond those that devastated Texas, Florida and now Puerto Rico.

A hallmark of our democracy is the safeguarding of its citizens from carcinogenic air, buildings collapsing and much more. Its a long list, and we each must remind our local, state and national representatives of our concerns and recommendations.

Like global warming, its not too late until its too late.

Beto Hale of Woodland Hills identifies some lessons for Los Angeles to learn from Mexico:

The city of Los Angeles should send a team of officials to Mexico City to help, watch and learn. L.A. is ill-prepared for a big earthquake. The tremor here on Monday night was a joke.

Also, its not right to tell people not to run out of a high-rise structure. Many people did not did not get crushed in Mexico because they followed strict protocols practiced continuously in office buildings, including getting out during the earthquake.

Finally, we did not receive any sort of warning or alarm before or during the tremor on Monday in Los Angeles. We get Amber Alerts all the time. It should be easy to send earthquake alarms via cellphone.

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To the editor: To think I considered voting in the primary for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the coauthor of the latest GOP bill to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. I admired his standing up to Donald Trump in the Republican presidential debates.

Graham seemed to be a voice of reason. Now he is pushing the bill-du-jour to replace Obamacare, and the main difference between his proposal and others previously is that he will soften the financial blow on red states. (Graham-Cassidy: Another day, another lousy GOP healthcare bill, editorial, Sept. 21)

Really? Millions stand to lose their healthcare coverage, including in states that supported President Trump in the election. This is a sad development.

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Graham has shown his true colors, and although I am partially colorblind, I get it: The Republicans in Congress seem not to like low-income Americans having medical insurance if it means the wealthy have less money. Shame on him.

Bob Warnock, Eagle Rock

..

To the editor: Fortunately, there is still time for one of the central lessons of Ken Burns and Lynn Novicks documentary, The Vietnam War, to register with congressional Republicans: Just because a misguided and ill-advised decision or promise has been made public, that doesnt justify persisting in it.

The bill proposed by Graham and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is sold as delivering on Republicans repeated promises (made while they did not control the White House) to repeal Obamacare. Now that they must actually govern, they should do so on behalf of all Americans.

Graham-Cassidy would be the most fundamental modification of this critical sector of our economy in 50 years. With virtually all major organizations representing healthcare deliverers and patient advocates  even insurers  actively denouncing the proposal, it is all but criminally irresponsible to bet on a crap shoot.

Cheryl McDonald, Pasadena

..

To the editor: A compromise for Republicans and Democrats that would enable a single-payer system could involve a government-funded insurance system that is run privately.

Republicans have embraced privatization in the past, as witnessed by KBR Inc. and Halliburton Co. assisting the armed forces in Iraq (although unfortunately without enough oversight).

If the single-payer system is managed by the current employees of the private health insurance companies, the only people who would be hurt would be the industry executives earning large salaries.

Peoples health should not be controlled by for-profit businesses.

Daniel Diamond, Santa Barbara

..

To the editor: This latest attempt by Senate Republicans to take healthcare away from tens of millions of Americans brings to mind the words that U.S. Army attorney Joseph Welch directed toward Sen. Joseph McCarthy about his allegations of communism in the Army.

Welchs words apply today to Republican senators:

Until this moment, senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

John F. Rossmann, Tustin

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To the editor: Healthcare punditry has descended into mudslinging. The right, the left and the center are lost in the sea of regretful policy that has morally and fiscally bankrupted our healthcare system. (Are Democratic and Republican healthcare proposals really equally extreme? Opinion, Sept. 19)

Physicians are demoralized and burdened by documentation as no other country requires, especially with electronic health records. When was the last time your family physician had the time to talk with you uninterrupted?

The only beacon of hope is with price and profit controls in a single, transparent system outside market forces. The health insurers have muddied the waters; Obamacare was not the answer. We must include physicians in the discussion for a healthcare public utility removed enough from government interference and politics.

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The bean counters, including columnist Jonah Goldberg, are not physicians. The $32-trillion tab over 10 years he mentions does not give a complete picture. Extrapolating from a Lewin Group study a decade ago of the cost of providing universal coverage in California, hundreds of billions of dollars a year are lost nationally with our present system.

Yes, we can afford a single-payer system as a public utility.

Jerome P. Helman, MD, Venice

..

To the editor: Goldberg misses the mark when he tries to equate extremist Republicans hell-bent on stripping healthcare from millions of Americans with Democrats who are proposing Medicare for all.

How is a government-run system so extreme when it exists in some form in practically every other developed economy, and appears to deliver better outcomes at lower costs? Perhaps Goldberg believes that Americans are incapable of doing large, important things, whereas liberals still hold onto the notion of American exceptionalism.

As for the quoted $32-trillion cost over 10 years, Goldberg does not say anything about the offsetting reductions in current insurance premiums, the fact that the scope of the initiative would likely be reduced by the time it became law, and that private insurance would likely continue, albeit at reduced levels, in order to cover things that the government system cant or wont pay for.

James Clark, La Canada Flintridge

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Trump Jr. to speak privately to Senate staff on Thursday

(Richard Drew / Associated Press)

President Trumps oldest son is expected to meet privately with a Senate committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, several senators said Wednesday.

Donald Trump Jr.'s appearance Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee would probably focus on a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer and others during the final stretches of last years campaign. Emails released in July show that Trump Jr. was told the session at Trump Tower in New York was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father, the Republican nominee.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating that meeting, also attended by Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. A grand jury has heard testimony about it.

Trump Jr. has also agreed to appear in the coming weeks before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation.

Separately, President Obamas national security advisor, Susan Rice, was meeting on Wednesday with the House Intelligence Committee, according to a person familiar with the interview. This person wasnt authorized to discuss the committees confidential work and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

That committee has subpoenaed the Justice Department and the FBI for documents related to a dossier of salacious allegations involving Trump and possible ties to Russia.

As for Donald Trump Jr., some Democratic senators said they planned to attend his session though tradition dictates that senators cannot ask questions at such interviews conducted by committee staff.

Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said they would be there. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) was considering it.

I go in with an open mind, Durbin said. I want to hear his answers to questions  there are plenty of questions  about the involvement of the Trump corporation as well as the Trump campaign with the Russians and other foreigners, and I just want to hear what Mr. Trump has to say.

Durbin said he would be shocked if questions werent asked about whether Trump Sr. knew about the Trump Tower meeting.

The critical part of his testimony will be following the financial dealing, Blumenthal said. He said he also wants to find out what Trump Jr. may know about potential obstruction of justice, adding there may have been conversations between the two about the firing of FBI Director James Comey and other matters.

Blumenthal and Coons said the private interview is no substitute for a public hearing, which the committee chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has promised will happen.

This meeting is far less important than his public testimony, under oath, before the American people, Blumenthal said.

Grassley would not say on Wednesday whether he would issue a subpoena for Trump Jr. if he refuses to testify publicly.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is reviewing subpoenas from the House intelligence committee.

In a letter Friday that was obtained by the AP, the committee wrote that it had served subpoenas on Aug. 24 to the department and the FBI for documents related to the committees investigation of Russian meddling. The Justice Department and FBI had missed the original Sept. 1 deadline, so the committee extended the deadline to Sept. 14.

The letter was signed by the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who stepped back from the Russia investigation this year after he was criticized for being too close to the White House. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) took over the leading role, but his name does not appear on the letter.

As chairman, Nunes retains subpoena power in the committee.

According to the letter, the original subpoenas requested any documents related to the dossier and sought information about whether the department was involved in its production.

If the documents are not produced, the committee is seeking to compel Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who has withdrawn from investigations examining connections between Trump and Russia, and newly installed FBI Director Christopher Wray to testify in an open hearing. The committee issued two additional subpoenas to Sessions and Wray on late Tuesday.

Resort to compulsory process was necessary because of DOJs and FBIs insufficient responsiveness to the committees numerous Russia-investigation related requests over the past several months, the letter said.

If the committee is unable to obtain documents or testimony, Nunes wrote, the committee expressly reserves its right to proceed with any and all available legal options, including a House vote to hold Sessions and Wray in contempt.

The Justice Department confirmed it was reviewing the subpoenas but declined further comment.

The dossier attracted public attention in January when it was revealed that then-FBI Director Comey had briefed Trump, soon before he was inaugurated as president, about claims from the documents that Russia had amassed compromising personal and financial allegations about him.

Its unclear to what extent the allegations in the dossier have been corroborated or verified by the FBI because the bureau has not publicly discussed it.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday evening on MSNBC that the subpoenas were issued over the objections of Democrats. Schiff said Republicans are working harder to discredit those who compiled the dossier than to find out if the allegations in it are true. He said Republicans should be more focused on getting documents from the White House.

The subpoenas were first reported by the Washington Examiner.
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John Muir Middle School unofficially set the world record Thursday for the largest Japanese fan dance  with 1,392 students and faculty participating  to conclude its fifth annual Japan Day festivities.

Photographs and video documenting the event are being sent to Guinness World Records to hopefully receive a certificate of the accomplishment, though it may take months to receive official approval, said Ted DeVirgilis, English teacher and organizer of the event.

If officially recognized by the Guinness, he said Muir Middle School would replace the record set by 250 people participating in a Japanese fan dance.

In the center of the campus field were multiple taiko drums and a traditional yagura tower. On the blacktop were tables showcasing a plethora of Japanese fans and 1,500 hachimaki  headbands  made by Muir students.

Shortly after a calligraphy class and interactive lesson on anime, hundreds of students  including 11 Japanese students visiting the Burbank campus as part of the Rebun International Exchange Program  flooded onto the schools lower field in preparation for the fan dance.

Soon after finalizing details, music streamed through speakers and the students and faculty began the Shin Hokkai Bon Uta dance taught by Christine Inouye, a dance instructor and choreographer who teaches at local community centers.

Prior to the event, the fan dancers rehearsed the choreography for two weeks. They practiced every day for 15 minutes during their physical education classes, said Greg Miller, the schools principal.

For five minutes and 55 seconds, 50 independent stewards watched the dancers, making sure everyone moved in unison and kept dancing the entire time.Among them was Gankyo Nakamura, the first non-Japanese citizen accepted in Kabuki theater in Japan. This form of drama includes stylized dance, elaborate costumes and intricate makeup.

Muir Middle School students, teachers and community members attempted to set the Guinness World Record for the largest Japanese fan dance with 1,400 people, at the school in Burbank on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. (Raul Roa / Burbank Leader)

Unlike past years, where only a limited number of students could participate in events such as tea ceremonies and sushi-making classes because of financial costs, DeVirgilis said he wanted the entire student body to be involved in one activity to feel a new culture through song and dance.

This is the first time Im seeing something like this. Its remarkable, Nakamura said. Its not only about moving the body, its about discipline.

For sixth-grader Zachary Garland, 11, who recently moved to California from New York, the event marked the highlight of his time in his new home.

If this big and special stuff only happens in California, then Im happy. This was fun to do, he said.

priscella.vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella
A new carrier at Hollywood Burbank Airport will soon be offering daily flights to the Central Coast, airfield officials announced this week.

On Oct. 3, Hawaii-based carrier Mokulele Airlines will begin its operations at Hollywood Burbank, offering two daily flights to Santa Maria Public Airport Monday through Friday as well as one weekend flight, said Madeleine Zavala, manager of business and property for the local airfield, during a meeting of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority on Monday.

Mokulele launched in 1994 as an inter-island airline service in Hawaii. In 2016, it expanded its service to California, offering flights to Imperial County and Santa Maria out of Los Angeles International Airport.

As of next month, the airline will discontinue its LAX-to-Santa Maria service and move its operations to Terminal B at Hollywood Burbank. Mokulele will use its nine-seat Cessna Grand Caravan airplanes to make trips to the Central Coast. Each of Mokuleles flights will have two pilots, Zavala said.

Rob McKinney, president of Mokulele, said the cost of operating out of LAX was becoming prohibitive and that having the airlines own gate at an airport that large was not possible.

Whereas in Burbank, we can afford our own gate, and we can control everything, McKinney said. We can provide a higher level of service.

Also, the upcoming runway closures at LAX would have had a negative effect on Mokuleles ability to get its planes up in the air on time, McKinney said.

The airline chose Hollywood Burbank over other airports in the region because of its partnership with Alaska Airlines and because many of its passengers tend to use Southwest Airlines for their connecting flights, McKinney said.

As an airline, Mokulele runs  94% on time, which Im very prideful of, he said. LAX kind of brought that down, so Burbank is going to help us bring that back up to that same level of service that we have systemwide.

anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio
A Newport Beach-based start-up company has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Cubroid, an interactive wireless robotics set.

The building blocks can be assembled in various ways and are compatible with Lego. The toy aims to expose young minds to coding and technology through fun and dynamic blocks and simple coding programs, according to a news release.

Pre-ordering of Cubroid is available through Kickstarter. Sets start at $149. They could be delivered by February.

As of Friday, the campaign had about $46,000 raised from 82 backers, far surpassing its original $10,000 goal.

The products are designed and developed in Newport, then manufactured in Seoul, South Korea.

Nekter to host opening fundraiser Saturday

Nekter Juice Bar is opening a 25th location at the Harbor View Shopping Center in Newport Beach.

The opening includes a party from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday. A portion of the days sales will benefit nearby Lincoln Elementary School.

The juice bar is at 1666 San Miguel Drive.

Costa Mesa mayors State of the City speech is Thursday

Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley will be the guest speaker for a State of the City speech Thursday presented by the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce.

The event will run from 7 to 8:45 a.m. at the Avenue of the Arts hotel, 3350 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa.

Foley will discuss public safety, projects at Lions Park, sober-living homes, homelessness, business partners and Costa Mesas brand as the City of the Arts.

Tickets start at $25. To RSVP, visit costamesachamber.com/events or call (714) 885-9092.

Lincoln center to host womens empowerment panel

Orange County United Way and Bank of America will present a womens empowerment series event Wednesday in Newport Beach.

Carla Vargas, chief operating office of Orange County United Way; Jackie VanderBrug, managing director of U.S. Trust; and Regina Waugh, executive director of the Los Angeles Countys Women and Girls Initiative, will discuss the impact of corporate engagement globally and how being philanthropic can support your business and our community.

Michelle Jordan, principal at Jordan LLC, will moderate.

The panel will go from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Experience Center at Fashion Island.

Pedego to have event at Breitling air show

Fountain Valley-based Pedego Bikes will have its Pedego Palooza event Sept. 30 during the Breitling Huntington Beach Airshow.

It includes a beach party and group ride starting at 11 a.m. on Pedego bikes from the companys Fountain Valley headquarters, 11310 Slater Ave., to the beach.

Admission to the party, which goes from noon to 4 p.m. and includes lunch, is $40 or free to Pedego Owners Group members and friends.

For more information, visit pedegopalooza.com or call (949) 336-8333.

UFC Gym to host seminar

UFC Gym in Costa Mesa will have a free anti-bullying seminar Sept. 30.

It starts at 10 a.m. at the gym, 2860 Harbor Blvd.

Fresh Brothers raises funds for hurricane relief

The Fresh Brothers pizza chain, including its two locations in Newport Beach, recently raised nearly $17,000 that will help victims of hurricanes in Florida and Texas.

The money will go to the American Red Cross and Greater Houston Community Foundation.

Firm acquires Newport officer tower

Olen Properties, a Newport Beach-based real estate company, has purchased a nine-story office tower in Newport for $75.6 million, according to a news release.

The tower is at 4100 Newport Place Drive, near John Wayne Airport, and contains about 190,000 square feet.

Fairhaven recognizes Corona del Mar woman

Corona del Mar resident Gina Kay, founder of In Home Care Solutions and Health Care Academy, both based in Costa Mesa, has received the Oliver Halsell Care Award from Fairhaven Memorial Park and Mortuary, according to a news release.

Fairhaven, which has locations in Santa Ana and Mission Viejo, recognizes those who have demonstrated exceptional care in their profession and community, improving the lives and spirits of those they help. Kay will receive the award in November.

We are happy to honor Gina Kay for the impact she is making in home care  an area of healthcare that grows more important every year, said Rod Gomez, general manager of Fairhaven Memorial Park. Gina has a well-rounded background, and we are impressed that she created not only a company to provide home care services, but also a school that ensures that home care workers are properly prepared for their important and very demanding roles in the home.

Costa Mesa bank branch names senior VP

Douglas Spencer has been named senior vice president and regional manager of Pacific Mercantile Banks Costa Mesa office.

The branch at Metro Pointe is the chains largest regional office. Spencer is a banking veteran of more than 30 years. He also has been president and chief executive of Diva Limousine, a luxury ground transportation company.

Newport oyster bar to help St. Jude

Fly-n-Fish Oyster Bar and Grill in Newport Beach is having its third annual Chowder for a Cause fundraiser throughout October.

Proceeds from every order of New England clam chowder sold will benefit St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.
The Lido House hotel is an extension of Bob Olsons house.

Olson, chief executive of hotel builder and owner R.D. Olson Development, said the inn under construction in Newport Beach is modeled after his Balboa Island home, down to the details that welcome people inside.

The guestroom doors are painted the same deep cranberry shade as Olsons front door.

The stonework and siding come from the Olson home too, and Costa Mesa-based custom homebuilder Matt White, who did Olsons house, also tackled the hotels five deluxe cottages.

Its very personal, Olson said Thursday before kicking off a hard-hat tour with project officials. Its very, incredibly personal to me.

With its Cape Cod architectural style and harborfront setting, the four-story, 130-room boutique hotel, set to open in March on the former Newport Beach City Hall site at 3300 Newport Blvd., is designed to evoke a casual yet sophisticated beach house vibe.

The hotel will offer a spa, a full-service restaurant called The Mayors Table, a coffee shop and ice creamery and a rooftop lounge. At Crew, the coffee and ice cream house, the beans will be roasted locally and the syrups made in-house. Project officials tout the rooftop lounge, named Topside, as the only rooftop bar in Newport Beach.

Dennis Reyling, vice president of construction and development for R.D. Olson, led his tour group past the walk-in freezers, display kitchen and private dining room of The Mayors Table toward the keyhole-shaped bar. Even practical storage spaces will be stylish.

Theres a beer keg cooler in there, Reyling said, motioning toward an area off the bar that was not yet walled in. And the right side that looks really open to you right now is (going to be) all glass, and thats where all the wine racks are, so youll see all the wine in that room there.

A key exterior feature of The Mayors Table is its custom black brick facade. Olson wanted the restaurant to stand out from the street and look like an old establishment that had the hotel built around it.

The dark masonry had to be just so, and Olson searched Southern California until he found the right craftspeople in Temecula.

These black bricks are really cool. I have been driving everybody crazy about these black bricks, he said. We finally got the brick that we wanted.  Nobody makes these, it turns out, but we got a group inland to agree to make these bricks for us.

In addition to the cottages, Lido House will have several executive suites, an expansive presidential suite with a view of Catalina Island on a clear day, and standard king- and double queen-bed rooms.

The cottages are two-bedroom, two-bath models with full kitchens and living rooms, dedicated parking, washers and dryers, and fireplaces and barbecues on their rooftop decks. Each cottage has a unique floor plan and styling by local interior designers; no two are alike.

Other upscale touches around the grounds include high tea in the parlor off the lobby, valet parking and a saltwater pool with cabanas and Champagne cart service.

The luxurious property will be operated by Marriott as part of its Autograph Collection. R.D. Olson Development has an 85-year lease with the city for the land.

The project first went before the city in 2013 and broke ground last year.

Adam Beer, the hotels general manager, said he wants Lido House to be a gathering spot for locals in addition to travelers, with a warm residential feel.

When you walk in, its a local cottage and house, vs. a hotel, he said.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD
Newport Beach is considering updating an impact study for noise at John Wayne Airport as residents are roiled by recent changes in takeoff patterns.

City Manager Dave Kiff said a resolution he will take to the City Council on Tuesday is generally intended to memorialize Newports long history of actions to protect residents from the airports effects. But it does reflect some new strategies, including updating the departure noise impact analysis conducted by ASRC Research and Technology Solutions in 2008.

Kiff said an update will help the city and others know more about which flights are using which departure path and how newer planes affect the noise footprint.

The resolution also formally encourages pilots and carriers to reach a higher takeoff altitude and use appropriate noise abatement procedures when safe to do so.

New departure paths implemented this spring have planes not staying directly over Upper Newport Bay as they did before. The city argues that flights headed to points east of Las Vegas now veer too far west, and the path that heads to the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest is too far east.

That shift a few hundred feet from the water and closer to homes has ignited public outcry.

The flight path alterations are part of the Federal Aviation Administrations Southern California Metroplex project. The FAA says the new air traffic system covering the regions airports, including John Wayne, will shore up inefficiencies, saving fuel and reducing carbon emissions and flight delays.

The city has created a form on its website to collect complaints to forward to the FAA. Residents can find the form by clicking Nextgen Departure Concerns at JWA under the Trending tab at newportbeachca.gov.

The council will hear about the issue, and members of the public can share their concerns, at a study session preceding Tuesdays regular meeting. The council will vote at the regular session on whether to accept the resolution.

New sewer rates

Also planned for the meeting, the council could finalize new sewer rates. The council gave tentative approval this month to a new rate structure that would see the typical residential sewer bill climb by $2.36 per month starting next year, and continue to climb incrementally through 2022.

Civic Center Park sculptures

The council will cast the final vote on which sculptures to place next in Civic Center Park. The rotating sculpture exhibit, now entering its third phase, will get nine new pieces in October. The city Arts Commission made its selections earlier this month after a series of meetings and public outreach efforts.

Tuesdays meeting starts at 4 p.m. with the study session, followed by the regular session at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 100 Civic Center Drive.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD
Firefighters and lifeguards took center stage Thursday night as city officials and community members gathered to thank the first responders at the 20th annual Newport Beach Fire and Lifeguard Appreciation Dinner.

In front of a crowd of more than 300 people at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa, lifeguard Eric Smith was awarded seasonal lifeguard of the year, Capt. Jon Mitchell was named lifeguard supervisor of the year and Capt. Glenn White was honored as firefighter of the year.

Each of the honorees were selected by their respective union associations, according to Fire Chief Chip Duncan.

More than 60 fire officials and lifeguards and their families attended the dinner and awards ceremony, which was hosted by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce and The Commodores Club.

Mayor Kevin Muldoon thanked the department for its skill and professionalism while keeping the city and its beaches safe for residents and tourists.

We understand and appreciate the sacrifices your families make to support your service to Newport Beach, he said.

Smith began his career with the city as a lifeguard trainee. Hes currently an instructor and group leader with the citys junior lifeguard program, which tasks him with overseeing 14 instructors and 500 12- and 13-year-olds in the program.

Its an honor standing up here and being held in such regard, he said to the crowd. He complimented his colleagues for their hard work and passion for the profession.

Its their due diligence that encourages me to come to work, he said.

White, who has spent nearly 34 years in the department, has served as a firefighter, paramedic, hazardous materials team captain, investigator and strike team leader on wildfires outside of Orange County. Hes served as a training officer for the Orange County Fire Arson Task Force and is a certified California State Fire Marshall Arson Investigator.

Mitchell, who began his career with the department as a tower lifeguard, has steadily climbed the ranks. This is Mitchells second time receiving the award. He was first named lifeguard supervisor of the year in 2006.

Hes also been awarded co-lifeguard of the year and junior lifeguard of the year.

Mitchell told the crowd Thursday evening that people often ask him why hes always smiling. His response is always the same.

I love where I work and I like what I do, he said.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
A stretch of water off Corona del Mar State Beach will be used to test sonar buoys that could help quickly alert lifeguards to sharks lurking near the coast, officials announced Friday morning.

In a news conference at Inspiration Point, Newport Beach Mayor Kevin Muldoon, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) and others discussed installing six of the special buoys by Memorial Day in a roughly 1,000-yard stretch of water between the offshore rocks near Poppy and Ocean avenues and the jetty at the mouth of Newport Harbor.

The devices, designed by Australia-based Shark Mitigation Systems, are called Clever Buoys. Ian Cairns, a representative of SMS, said the buoys also use sonar transducers, which will be on the ocean floor. A transducer is an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another.

Together, the buoys and transducers can find nearby marine animals and, based on the swimming patterns, detect whether an animal is a shark or dolphin.

Cairns said the buoys will notify lifeguards seconds after a sighting, giving them ample time to investigate.

Rob Williams, Newport Beachs chief lifeguard, said his teams can use boats or drones to respond to the alerts and, depending on the size or behavior of a shark, quickly issue warnings or beach closures.

Were very excited about it as a city and a lifeguard division, Williams said.

Final funding for the buoys is still being secured, as are various permits. Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Committee on Science and Technology, said he will be looking for federal funding to help. He said city, county, state or private money also could go into the effort.

Rohrabacher added that the buoy alerts to lifeguards could one day also be available to the public on a phone app.

Rohrabacher called sharks off the Southern California coast an expanding threat that hes experienced while surfing. He joked that he has both local experience with the predators and the sharks back in Washington.

Officials noted that Corona del Mar State Beach, known as Big Corona, was the spot where swimmer Maria Korcsmaros was bitten last year by a shark, possibly a great white, about 150 yards offshore. She survived the attack.

Later that year, Newport Beach became the first city in Orange County to have a dedicated shark page on its website. The city also installed acoustic receivers at the Newport Pier, Balboa Pier and off Corona del Mar to gather information for the site.

Fridays news conference was briefly disrupted by a passerby walking her dog. She accused Rohrabacher, who was being filmed by television news crews, of working for the Russian government.

Critics have accused the longtime congressman of being overly friendly with Russia. They also have staged regular protests outside his Huntington Beach office.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
I dont swear.

Not accidentally; not on purpose.

Never.

Now, lest you develop an exalted impression of me, Im no goody two-shoes  whatever the Sam Hill (my moms form of cursing when I was a kid) that means. I wasnt always thus.

Im no virgin when it comes to cussing. Ive been around the block.

But I made a decision more than 40 years ago about how to conduct my life. I vowed to stop swearing. Swearing doesnt automatically send you to hell; but it ensures that youll speak its language.

Ive held myself to a strict standard. No gutter talk. It matters not what others around me say, Ill not cave in.

Sure, when I served in the United States Army I swore like, well, a sailor (Ive been told the Navy exceeds the Army in colorful invective). The language around me was consistently rough. My mates and I regularly swore and were OK with it.

Virtually every sentence out of my mouth while in uniform contained an epithet. I routinely used vulgar words as modifiers. What they modified was my brain and the wholesome manners Id been raised with.

Four-letter words seemed natural to me, so I went with them  without blanching.

The only people I didnt swear in front of were my parents, nuns, young ladies that Id not yet met, and grandmas. Everyone else  including an Army chaplain was fair game.

I was some kinda role model, eh?

When I graduated from college I took a job in higher education. I pursued a career there. Crass language didnt fit that environment. I determined that I would tone down my salty rhetoric.

I then met Hedy and she further civilized me. We married and started having babies. I was now in my early 30s and didnt want my children exposed to my bad language.

I also became a Christian and that dramatically altered my perspective.

I changed. I truly believed that swearing was coarse and inappropriate. I didnt want to do it anymore, so I cleaned up my act. I did a 180.

Do I notice people cussing today more than ever before? Oh, heck yes.

Take a walk around a mall or a college campus and listen to the conversations. F-bombs and S-words fly like hand grenades.

The most egregious offenders, I believe, are teenage and early-20s females. They use language publicly that would have short-circuited my Army buddies eardrums. Do you ladies eat with those potty mouths?

Do you care how others perceive you? Do you talk to Granny and Gramps like that? Good gracious.

Im particularly sensitive to female behavior. I have three daughters and six granddaughters.

Now, in my early 70s, Ive started breaking out in the vilest language myself. What? Not purposefully, mind you.

I dont hear myself doing it, but Hedy does. And she tells me about it. Its appalling, but I have no control. None. I let fly with harangues that would curl my sainted mothers hair.

This proves that the inner me isnt so squeaky clean. Like most humans, Im flawed.

I sally forth with swear words once or twice a month. Heres what I think is happening.

I have Parkinsons disease. Parkinsons is a progressive neurological disorder  a disease of the brain  with no known cure. It causes nerve cells to die or become impaired, and patients exhibit such symptoms as tremors or shaking, slowness of movement, rigidity or stiffness, loss of facial mobility, and balance difficulties. Because it affects the brain, it can modify behavior.

Now I occasionally have dreams where Im fending off an attacker or charging a fortification. I shout threats and obscenities in my dream. Unfortunately, its not limited to the dream. I can be heard throughout the house.

Hedy has to shake me awake. Huh, what? I sputter.

It makes for interesting discussions at the breakfast table when our grandkids sleep over. Their parents  my kids  are beginning to consider me a bad influence.

Sadly, swearing is like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.
State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) and Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) have officially completed their first sessions in their new legislative roles, authoring a number of bills that could have local and statewide impacts.

Portantino, elected in November to represent the 25th state Senate district, wrapped up his time in Sacramento with seven bills awaiting the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown as well as seeing passage of three of his Senate resolutions.

It was challenging and exciting, Portantino said. Im proud that I was able to focus on issues that I ran on, especially my work on K-12 education.

Of Portantinos bills sitting on Browns desk, three directly involve education, such as SB 478, which aims to streamline the way community colleges award degrees so students receive them immediately after they have completed the requirements.

Portantino said he didnt expect the rejection in the state Senate of his SB 328, which would have required middle and high schools to begin the school day no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

I was surprised that [opponents] worked against me on the well-being of children, he said.

Portantinos state Senate resolutions included the naming of a portion of the Ventura (134) Freeway to be the President Barack H. Obama Highway, a commemoration of the Armenian Genocide and requiring Caltrans to install signs directing drivers on the Foothill (210) Freeway to the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial.

Friedman, elected in November to represent the 43rd Assembly district, also finished her inaugural year with a number of Assembly bills on Browns desk. However, her ability to help possibly secure $20 million toward the Glendale Narrows Riverwalk project, as part of SB 5, was perhaps the highlight.

Should the bill pass, the funds will support the final phase of a years-long effort to link the Riverwalk and Glendale Bikeway system to the Los Angeles bike trail and Griffith Park via a bridge across the L.A. River.

We have a hundred thousand residents who live within one mile of the proposed bridge site. Right now, those people cant get to Griffith Park without having to get on the 134 Freeway or detouring, she said. This is going to give people a safe way to get into the park.

Recently, the California legislature passed Friedmans bill to enact tougher penalties for reckless driving, especially when associated with street racing. AB 1393 sets a 30-day impound penalty for cars connected with illegal street racing or reckless driving after the second or subsequent offense.

This is not a slam dunk to be signed, so I would suggest to people who think this is a good step to help with our reckless driving, that they take it upon themselves to send a letter or email or call to Gov. Browns office.

Brown has until Oct. 15 to sign or veto bills.

For a complete list of Assembly bills authored or co-authored by Friedman, visit bit.ly/2xly8ip.

For a complete list of state Senate bills authored or co-authored by Portantino, visit bit.ly/2fnrC47.

jeff.landa@latimes.com

Twitter: @JeffLanda
After Armenian constituents raised concerns over the lack of in-depth information provided to students about the Armenian Genocide, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and seven of his Congressional colleagues sent letters Wednesday to history textbook publishers in California, urging them to include additional details about the tragedy in forthcoming textbook editions.

Its a really necessary part of any students education to understand what people are capable of and under what circumstances it takes place, and how it can be avoided in the future, Schiff said in a phone interview.

Letters were sent to major textbook publishers, such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson, said Emilie Simons, a spokeswoman for Schiff.

Glendale Councilman Vrej Agajanian said Schiffs letter and the other letters will hopefully lead to the expansion of information about the genocide, which can be essential for a students education. He also referred to a quote by Irish philosopher Edmund Burke: For evil to flourish, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing.

The world has a short memory and, if every kid learns about this, they can be a solider to stop future genocides, said Agajanian, who is a political talk show host for ABCTVLIVE with Vrej Agajanian, which airs on the Armenian American Broadcasting Corp.

In 2016, Glendale Unifieds history and literature teachers underwent additional training with genocide experts to better instruct students about the Ottoman Turks massacre of 1.5 million Armenians beginning in 1915.

Also, in 2016, Glendale Unified officials unanimously approved recognizing Armenian Genocide Commemoration Day on April 24, giving students and faculty that day off.

In 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1915, which required the Armenian Genocide be included in high school curricula.

priscella.vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella
Netanyahu would like to pull back the Iran nuclear agreement. But will he get what he wants?

President Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the United Nations General Assembly. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

With his eye on domestic politics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to New York this week hoping to return home with a promise that the U.S. president will attempt to modify the 2015 deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, Israeli sources said.

Netanyahu was also hoping to avoid the subject of peace talks with the Palestinians.

But the Israeli and American leaders seemed to come to their meeting Monday in New York, their third encounter this year, with different agendas.

Trump has until Oct. 15 to notify Congress whether Iran is living up to its commitments under the deal, which was spearheaded by President Obama in an attempt to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu is an implacable opponent of the agreement, and Trump is certainly no proponent  as a presidential candidate, he termed it a terrible deal.

But even if the United States were to pull out of the pact, any modification would require an agreement from the other five signatories, which include China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Trump on Monday seemed eager to change the subject.

We are going to discuss peace between Israel and the Palestinians; it will be a fantastic achievement, Trump said during a brief media event before meeting privately with Netanyahu for an hour.

We are giving it [an] absolute go  there is a good chance it could happen. Most people would say there is no chance whatsoever, but I think that with the ability of Bibi and the other side  I really think we have a chance, Trump said, using Netanyahus nickname.

In a manner of a response to the president, the prime minister said, Peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and peace between Israel and the Arab world, go together.

It is a formulation Netanyahu uses often, implying there can be no peace negotiations with the Palestinians until Israel is recognized by the Arab world as a whole.

Despite this position, Netanyahu has by and large ignored the Arab Peace Initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia that would normalize ties between Arab states and Israel in exchange for a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, which Israel has ruled since 1967.

Haaretz reported from New York that Netanyahu and his staff have insisted in recent days that his meeting with Trump would focus on Iran, and he seemed a bit surprised by the presidents remarks.

Israeli political analyst Ron Ben-Yishai suggested that Netanyahus demand was no more than Israeli spin.

In the current state of affairs, theres absolutely no chance the nuclear agreement with Iran would be cancelled, and theres no chance the United States would walk away from the agreement, he wrote on the Ynet website. Theres a simple reason for that: None of the countries and international organizations that signed the agreement have an interest in violating it.

Trump said he expected to have a response regarding Iran very soon.
For the jubilant, flag-waving throngs who filled rallies across Iraqs semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in recent weeks, a vote on independence Monday represents a chance to realize a dream cherished for generations.

But every major player in the region opposes the referendum, placing the Kurds on a collision course with neighbors and allies, including the United States, which warns that it could ignite conflict with the central government in Baghdad and unleash ethnic fighting in a part of the world still roiled by the battle against Islamic State.

Kurdish forces played a pivotal role in the campaign to reclaim Mosul, the largest city to fall to the extremist group also known as ISIS and Daesh. But U.S. officials say the conflict over Mondays referendum is undermining efforts to drive the militants from their remaining footholds in Iraq.

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U.S. diplomats and their Western allies are making last-ditch efforts to persuade the northern Kurdish regions president, Massoud Barzani, to delay the plebiscite in favor of mediated negotiations with Baghdad. The United Nations has also appealed for dialogue, saying it will not be engaged in any way or form in Mondays referendum.

Diplomats are particularly concerned about the decision to hold voting in disputed areas that are controlled by Kurdish forces but claimed by Baghdad  notably the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The move has raised tensions that they say Islamic State and other extremists are seeking to exploit.

Iraqs prime minister, Haider Abadi, called the referendum a dangerous escalation and said he was prepared to intervene militarily if violence breaks out. Iraqs parliament declared the plebiscite unconstitutional and moved to dismiss the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, who supports the referendum and says only the provincial council can remove him.

Two of Iraqs neighbors, Turkey and Iran, concerned that the referendum could inflame secessionist aspirations among their own Kurdish minorities, have said they are considering countermeasures. Turkey is carrying out military drills near northern Iraq, and Iran has threatened to close its border with the landlocked Kurdish enclave.

If this referendum is conducted, it is highly unlikely that there will be negotiations with Baghdad, and the above international offer of support for negotiations will be foreclosed, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a sharply worded statement Wednesday.

Analysts dont rule out the possibility of a last-minute compromise. But without iron-clad guarantees and a road map to independence, they say Barzani is unlikely to back down.

The Kurds have repeatedly deferred their nationalist aspirations in the hope that Iraq would fulfill its pledge to address longstanding grievances, said David L. Phillips, a former State Department advisor now at Columbia Universitys Institute for the Study of Human Rights. That hasnt happened.

In an address to supporters Friday in the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, Barzani insisted the vote would go ahead, saying Iraqs Kurds are ready to pay any price for freedom.

Kurdish leaders contend their region has earned the right to self-determination: It has lost nearly 1,800 fighters in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State and sheltered an estimated 1.8 million people displaced by the conflicts in Iraq and Syria over the past three years.

There is also concern among a generation of Kurdish nationalist fighters that a window of opportunity to cement their legacy may be closing.

If and when Daesh is defeated  the United States will have less interest in investing in its relationship with Kurdish parties in northern Iraq and Syria, said Joost Hiltermann, program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

The regions Kurds, who number an estimated 30 million, have longed for a state of their own since at least the end of World War I, when they were partitioned among Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

They thought they were on the way to securing one after the 1991 Gulf War, when the U.S. and Britain enforced a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Kurds from the countrys late strongman Saddam Hussein, whose military killed tens of thousands of them, including with chemical weapons.

Kurdish leaders made another bid for statehood after Hussein was toppled in 2003, but they were persuaded to be patient. Now they say their patience has run out.

We were promised by American and other international partners that this will be a democratic Iraq. But after 14 years waiting for that democratic Iraq, we realized that were not getting there, said Falah Mustafa Bakir, the Kurdistan Regional Governments foreign minister, who was in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly. We have been treated as part-time Iraqis.

Promises by Arab leaders in Baghdad to resolve disputes over territorial boundaries, the distribution of oil revenues and the status of Kurdish fighters known as the peshmerga have not been fulfilled, he said. And public employees have not received their full salaries since Baghdad stopped sending budget payments to Irbil in 2014.

The time has come for us to go our own way, Bakir said. But we want to do that peacefully, through dialogue and understanding.

Kurdish leaders say Mondays vote wont result in an immediate declaration of independence but will provide a mandate to negotiate an amicable separation from Baghdad. They dismiss fears that this would divert attention from the campaign against Islamic State or pose a threat to Iraqs neighbors.

We are committed to continue the fight against ISIS, Bakir said.

Despite the heated rhetoric coming from Baghdad, analysts say Prime Minister Abadi has shown a willingness to discuss the possibility of an independent Kurdish state  but not if it includes Kirkuk and its lucrative oil wells.

Kurdish forces took control of Kirkuk in 2014, after Iraqi government troops fled an assault by Islamic State militants.

The city, which is home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, has long been a flashpoint between Irbil and Baghdad. Shiite Muslim militias, which are sanctioned by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and also receive support from Iran, have deployed around Kirkuk and other disputed territories, vowing to resist any attempt to break up Iraq.

But for all the saber-rattling, there is excitement within the Kurdish enclave about Mondays vote.

In Irbil, a stronghold of Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party, streets are festooned with red, white and green Kurdish flags. Drivers cruise the city, honking their car horns and displaying posters of the Kurdish leader. Fireworks light up the sky at nightly rallies.

Khabat Abdallah, a 41-year-old peshmerga fighter, brought his wife and six children to see the festivities outside the citys ancient citadel. A veteran of the wars against Hussein and Islamic State, he carried the pictures of slain comrades on his cellphone. He was looking forward to casting a vote for independence.

We never felt that we are part of Iraq, Abdallah said, as he hoisted up his 3-year-old son to get a better view of a group of traditional dancers. Saddam used chemical weapons against us when we asked for our rights, and [former Prime Minister Nouri] Maliki cut our budget and salaries.

There is little doubt about the referendums outcome  Iraqi Kurds overwhelmingly support independence. But some of Barzanis rivals view the vote as a ploy to divert attention from the failings of a corrupt leadership beset by political discord and an economic crisis brought on by plummeting oil prices. Others worry that holding the vote now invites a risky conflict with allies and trading partners.

Kamal Salih, 47, who runs a sweets shop in the Kurdish city of Sulaymania, said he wont be voting Monday.

Our Kurdish leadership is not up to running a state, he said.

Times staff writer Zavis reported from Los Angeles and special correspondent Resol reported from Irbil.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

ALSO

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A brave soldier and one horrible day: two lasting memories of Iraq

Rival Palestinian groups appear to move toward unity after a 10-year split
UPDATE: Coroner IDs girl who died after vehicle strike

A 12-year-old girl died after being struck by a vehicle about 8 p.m. Friday as she walked along the southbound shoulder of the 3400 block of Nazareth Road just south of Kingston Road in Palmer Township, police report.

The township resident was taken by Suburban EMS to Easton Hospital, then transferred to Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, where she died from her injuries, Detective Jim Alercia said in a news release.

The child's name was not immediately released, nor was the identity of the southbound driver, who remained at the scene and cooperated with the investigation, Alercia said.

Township police were notified just before midnight by the Lehigh County Coroner's Office that the girl had died, Alercia said. The coroner's office will release the child's name once her family is fully notified and will also determine the cause and manner of her death.

The driver wasn't named because the investigation is still active, Alercia said.

Investigators and a reconstruction team reopened the road -- which is also known as Route 248 -- just after midnight, Alercia said. It had been closed between Kingston and Van Buren roads.

The preliminary investigation indicates the child was walking from the Sheetz convenience store, which is nearly across the street from where she was hit, Alercia said.

Township police were assisted by the township fire department "throughout the investigation process," Alercia said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY -- A judge on Friday denied a request for probation rather than prison by John Cramsey, the Lehigh County anti-drug crusader stopped outside the Holland Tunnel last year with a cache of weapons in his truck, despite Cramsey's assertion that incarceration would hinder his HIV treatment.

The ruling means Cramsey faces up to five years in prison, and at least one year without parole, if an appeal fails.

"Defendant was armed and dangerous and demonstrated he was willing to act violently to accomplish his goals," Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable said in court in Jersey City. "In this case, the interest of justice shows a requirement for a custodial sentence."

Cramsey's lawyers had filed the motion for a non-custodial sentence after he pleaded guilty on July 28 to one count each of possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon. The charges carry a sentence of five years in prison with one year of parole ineligibility, meaning Cramsey could be put behind bars for nine months upon his formal sentencing, a term that would incorporate three months he served in the Hudson County jail following his arrest.

Cramsey's lawyer Max Novel told the judge that he and co-counsel James Lisa would appeal her denial of the motion. Novel then asked Venable to grant of stay of Cramsey's sentencing pending the outcome of the appeal. Teh sentencing had been scheduled for Friday immediately following the motion hearing.

Venable agreed th the stay, and gave the lawyers 20 days to file a notice of the appeal. Cramsey's lawyers also say they will seek a pardon from Gov. Chris Christie.

Cramsey, 52, of East Greenville, Pa., and two other people were stopped in his distinctively marked pickup truck just after going through a tunnel toll booth in Jersey City on June 21, 2016. Port Authority Police found a 12-gauge shotgun, an assault rifle with high-capacity magazines, five handguns, including some that were loaded, which Cramsey legally owned but did not have a permit to carry in New Jersey.

The trio were en route to Brooklyn to rescue a Pennsylvania teen from a location where her friend had just died of an overdose. The teen, Jenea Patterson, would die of an overdose in January.

The two others, drug counselor Kimberly Arendt and videographer Dean Smith, were later approved for a pre-trial intervention program for first-time offenders, or PTI, that if completed would spare them criminal records. Cramsey's application was denied, and that denial is now under appeal.

Smith was in court to watch the motion hearing, and in a brief interview said he was unaware there were guns in Cramsey's vehicle until they were stopped. Asked if he thought Cramsey should go to prison, Smith replied, "absolutely."

Before Venable ruled on the motion, Cramsey argued that Cramsey had lost his livelihood running a gun range and his health had deteriorated, only because he had tried to help another young woman with a drug problem four months after the deth of his own daughter from an overdose four months earlier, in February 2016.

Now, Lisa said, Cramsey hoped to earn his license as a drug counselor.

"He's been punished far more than te state of New JErsey can punish him, he's lsot everything," Cramsey said. "All he wants to do is do the right thing,"

Assistant Hudson County Prosecutor Thomas Zuppa had a far different view of Cramsey, who he said had acknowledged on social media that he was ready and willing to use the small arsenal in his truck on anyone who tried to stop him from rescuing Patterson.

"He stands before your honor today as an armed vigilante," Zuppa told the judge. "He was bringing the danger"

Referring to Cramsey's HIV status, Zuppa added, "Nothing has been submitted to indicate that Mr. Cramsey can't be treated while in prison."

The Judge agreed, with that and other points, ruling the the aggravating factor in the case, including Cramsey's lack of remorse and the need to deter others from vigilantism, outweighed the sole mitigating factor, which was that Cramsey had no prior criminal convictions.

"The laws of this country are in place to prevent citizens from this kind of behavior," Venable said.

Out in the hallway after the hearing, Cramsey declined to comment on the decision.

"I don't feel like talking right now," he said.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at

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On of my highlights of Conference was the debate on the emergency motion on delaying the rollout of Universal Credit because it is turning into a disaster for the people who are forced to claim it. People have to wait 6 weeks or longer for money. Imagine what that is like if you have no savings to get you through  a situation many people on low incomes will face.

The idea of Universal Credit is a very good one. It aimed to end the poverty trap which stopped people on benefits from getting work because it cost them to do so.

I made a speech from a Scottish perspective, outlining the principles of accessibility, fairness and confidence that were in our manifesto on social security and observing that Universal Credit meets none of them in its current form.

Other speakers gave some pretty harrowing examples of how people could lose their homes and have to rely on food banks to get by.

I am really hopeful, though, that we really are going to take this stuff to the Tories and try and get things changed.

The reason for my optimism is our new Department of Work and Pensions spokesperson Stephen Lloyd. Remember all that energy he put in to regaining his Eastbourne seat? He seriously never stopped campaigning after 2015. Well, that energy and determination is going in to opposing the Tory Government and building alliances across the Parliament to force the Government to think again. Here, in full, is the speech that he made in the debate:

The Tories reputation for competence is an oxymoron of epic proportions. This is a party who have politicised our police force with their ridiculous introduction of police and crime commissioners, prevented councils from building new council homes from the receipts of Margaret Thatchers huge council house sell-off programme decades ago, which is a direct cause of todays appalling housing shortage  and then today the complete shambles of what theyve done with Universal Credit. Competence is not a word which springs to mind!

The original concept of UC was to make work pay and when we supported it in coalition it would have done. Since then though, over 3bn has been taken out of the programme. The work allowance, for instance, an amount people on benefits can earn before those benefits start being reduced, has been slashed to the bone. In some cases  to zero! And the taper rate, which determines how much people get to keep of their benefits for every extra pound earned, has also been cut to ribbons!!

This has rendered the entire principle behind universal credit  to make work pay, something I and the Liberal Democrats passionately believe in  utterly worthless.

Universal credit is no longer a progressive, reliable policy; it is a complete train wreck. And the Conservatives are responsible!!

It gets worse. Housing payments made directly to the tenants; something I fiercely opposed at the time when I was on the Work and Pensions Select Committee  telling the ministers that it would lead to a shocking rise in rent defaults. And I remember so clearly the then Secretary of State chiding me for not trusting that tenants would pass the money on to their landlords.

The result?, and this is even before the full national UC rollout-out, have been every bit as bad as I feared; if not worse!

Latest figures from the likes of the Peabody Group, a housing association which owns and manages more than 55,000 homes in London and the south-east, have said the rate of rent arrears among its tenants on universal credit is three times greater than those not on the new benefit. Three times greater!

or Gloucester City Homes which has more than 4,000 rented properties in their portfolio; theyve said that 85% of its universal credit claimants are in arrears, compared to just 20% of all other tenants.

These are utterly shocking figures

The Tories incompetence and ideological fixations over Universal Credit are leading to appalling consequences for thousands of people. And if UC is not checked. Stopped right now, in its tracks, so the failings can be addressed, it will be tens of thousands of our fellow citizens slipping into grotesque levels of debt.

Frankly, if we do not have a pause I see thousands of families even losing their homes..as I do not see the private sector landlords being as accommodating as local councils when their tenants fall into rent arrears.!

And the delays in recipients actually receiving their new Universal Credit payments are making a grim situation even worse. Conference: it is becoming common knowledge that many recipients on the UC pilots werent receiving their new rolled up Universal credit payments for two or even three months.

Imagine for a moment what this actually means? These arent folk who have lines of credit with the local bank. Its people who are often disabled, disadvantaged, people who have been out of work for a long time. So for them to borrow money, we are talking loan sharks, pawnbrokers and pay day loan cos.

In short these are some of the most vulnerable people in our country, being crushed under an initiative which is flashing red warning lights of a strobe light intensity for all to see  and what is the government doing  NOTHING!

They are determined to continue the mass rollout  and in fact it comes to my own constituency, Eastbourne, in October.

I therefore believe it is crucial, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of people not yet on Universal Credit, but whose lives will be ruined if we dont act; that the Lib Dems and Labour join together in calling for a pause to the rollout. To see if it can be rescued before its too late.

As the partys DWP spokesman, I know the Labour shadow Secretary of State, Debbie Abrahams. I worked with her on the Work and Pensions Select Committee when I was last an MP.

So I am saying to her: Lets both join together in demanding the government pause the Universal Credit rollout, and lets do it now, together, before its too late?

Friends. I started the debate questioning the Conservatives wholly un-warranted reputation for competency.

So next time you see a Tory minister introducing yet another policy which has shambles written all over it like Universal Credit, stick a red nose on them as well as a pair of size 15 purple shoes and a spangled jacket  because you will then see what the Conservative party really stands for  and its not competency; its being a 22 carat, copper-bottomed, red nosed, purple booted clown

Please join me in supporting this motion.
The decision taken by Transport for London to revoke Ubers licence undermines a key theme of Vince Cables speech from just a few days ago, a belief in competitive markets. Whilst the company has only operated in the capital for a relatively short time, the benefits it has bought to Londons transport market for both Londoners and tourists alike have been numerous. Uber not only provides a cheaper, more accessible transport solution to its customers, but it has also forced its competitors to innovate, an example being black cabs now accepting card payments, freeing their users from having to carry large amounts of cash. If the Liberal Democrats are to be a proud champion of enterprise, the party should feel no shame in its support for companies such as Uber, which provide choice to consumers in what is otherwise a monopolistic market.

It is reasonable to have concerns over safety, but to pretend that these concerns should be limited to Uber and not the wider taxi market is nonsensical. Indeed, it could be argued that by providing customers with information about a driver before they have arrived, as well as providing the means to track the drivers whereabouts, Uber is comparatively safer than the average black cab. Liberal Democrat representatives in London should now look to work with Uber and TfL to insure the swift return of the 40,000 registered Uber drivers to the citys streets, and to guard against a protectionist stitch-up that puts the interests of established transport providers ahead of the interests of consumers.

* Andy Briggs is Co-Chair of Liberal Reform, a pressure group for personal, political, social and economic liberalism.
Over on the Black History Month website, as they gear up for the 30th year, Vince Cable has sent a message for this years Black History Month which starts next week.

Since its inception in 1987, Black History Month has given us many inspiring stories, reminding us of the tireless efforts of those who have fought for equality in the face of adversity, hate and indeed danger. They did so selflessly, so that future generations would enjoy the freedoms and opportunities they were denied.

I am really pleased to once again extend my support to this annual celebration of culture, identity and community in this its 30th year in the UK. As I think back over British history, I am overwhelmed by the remarkable legacies of BAME diaspora communities, whose contributions have transformed the political, economic and cultural landscape of this country for the better.

Undoubtedly, though, there is still so much more to be done. Levels of hate, prejudice and discrimination remain worrying and by some measures are on the increase, as evidenced in the recent Lammy Review. It is our duty to tackle this head on.

As a Liberal Democrat, I have a deeply held belief in the fair treatment of all people, regardless of race or background. That is why our party is committed to changing the structures, institutions and attitudes that still limit inclusion, diversity and equality.

Thank you to everyone involved in organising this years activities and I wish you all a very rewarding and thought-provoking month ahead.
A BROTHER of billionaire businessman JP McManus is prepared to make a major investment in restoring a property on Limerick's North Circular Road to its former glory.

Gerry McManus is seeking planning permission from Limerick City and County Council to move the former Bishops Palace to a new location on the same site, after much of the property was devastated by a fire late last year.

Documents lodged with the local authority said that Mr McManus is prepared to make a major investment in this site, but it needs to be the correct solution.

The residence, which is now uninhabitable, was once the most expensive property ever to change hands in Limerick.

Developer Aidan Brooks, now based in London, bought the eight-bedroom, three-storey property, along with six acres of land, for 26 million in 2007 amid intense bidding.

Mr Brooks still retains Portland House, the former Church of Irelands bishop residence, next door to Kilmoyle and in the region of five acres.

Three years ago the property changed hands, when was acquired by Gerry McManus.

While it was listed as selling for 1.1m, according to the Property Price Register earlier this year, the figure does not include the sale of land around the property.

The revised plans for the site seek the removal of late 20 century house extensions and outbuildings, the deconstruction of the existing dwelling house and the reconstruction in a new location, as well as the construction of a two storey extension to the relocated dwelling.

The file also lists the construction of a gate lodge to the North Circular Road entrance, the construction of courtyard buildings, and other works.

Limerick City and County Council has expressed serious concerns about proposals to move the former Bishops Palace to a new location on the same site.

In correspondence this summer a council planner wrote: The planning authority has serious concerns in respect of the proposal to move the building given that the house is composed primarily of golden sandstone which, it says, can be weak and prone to the process of decay.

While not a protected structure, it is designated as being of national importance and is listed in the National Inventory of National Heritage.

While works to refurbish the interior of the house were carried out previously, following an earlier planning application, it was subsequently extensively damaged in a fire last November.

According to planning documents submitted to the council, just a marble fireplace and the cantilevered staircase survived the fire.

It is proposed the original chimneys, the outer walls, cast iron gutters and downpipes as well as two granite sills would all be retained and reused.

Architect Michael Healy of Healy Partners said a conservation architect and a stone mason recently carried out limited opening up works at Kilmoyle House to ascertain the feasibility of dismantling and moving the building.

Overall the cement was removed with relative ease and did not cause any damage to the arises of the stone, he states.

Limerick City and County Council has indicated a decision is due by the end of next month.

The house, which dates back to the 1850s, was once the home of former bishops Donal Murray, and Jeremiah Newman.

Mr Brooks had previously applied for planning permission to build a nursing home and retirement village on the site, but did not proceed with the development.
THERE will be blood on someones hands yet, Abbeyfeale councillor Liam Galvin warned this Wednesday following yet another crash on the N21 just outside Abbeyfeale in which two people were injured.

And he has called for a full meeting of Limerick City and County Council to take place in a bid to get urgent action underway at Wards Cross where the accident occurred.

He is also insisting that officials from Transport Infrastructure Ireland, (TII), the body responsible for the countrys main roads, must attend that meeting and come to Wards Cross to see the situation for themselves.

There is going to be blood on someones hands, he warned. And it wont be mine as I have done everything in my power to bring it to the attention of the TII.

Tuesdays accident occurred about 8pm and according to an initial report from the gardai, one car collided at speed with a car in front. The two men who were in the front car were locals and lived within yards of the cross, Cllr Galvin told the Limerick Leader. They were travelling home from Abbeyfeale and were sitting in the car, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before turning right, when they were struck from behind, he said. The two men were brought to hospital with injuries but were released on Wednesday morning.

The dangers of the Wards Cross junction, about two miles east of Abbeyfeale town, have been raised by Cllr Galvin and another Abbeyfeale councillor, Francis Foley, on several occasions. 40,000 was spent on safety measures there a number of years ago, Cllr Galvin pointed out, but this only involved improving sightlines for traffic emerging from the side road on to the N21.

Cllr Galvin had asked for a stacking lane to be created to allow traffic from Abbeyfeale in particular to cross the N21 in safety. But this was not agreed. People living in the area, the councillor claimed, were driving from Abbeyfeale via the Clash Road because they were in dread of their lives.

Several times over the past number of years, the dangers of junctions along the N21 from Barnagh to the Kerry border have been raised at the Newcastle West Municipal District. And a deputation from the district raised their concerns with the TII.

However, according to Cllr Galvin, they made no progress on the matter.

It is now coming up to budget time and I am calling on the Department of Transport to make the money available to upgrade the junctions and bring them to a standard where they will be safe, he said this Wednesday.

He estimated it would only cost a few million euro.

They have money for cutting trees and for lining roads yet there are far more important issues to be addressed such as Wards Cross and other junctions, he argued.

Unfortunately, he added, councillors no longer had any control or jurisdiction over main roads. All the power lies with the TII. All we can do is raise the issues, he said.

But he now believes the TII should be abolished and power over the main roads returned to local authorities which would then make their own submissions for funding to central government.

However, following Tuesdays accident, he said he had no option but to look for a meeting with Transport Minister Shane Ross and will be asking Minister of State Patrick ODonovan and Deputy Tom Neville to support his request that the minister release money to upgrade all junctions from Barnagh to the Kerry border. I will not be letting this go, he declared.

Fellow Abbeyfeale councillor, Francis Foley described Wards Cross as highly dangerous. Something needs to be done about it urgently, he said. It is not so long ago that there were two fatalities not far from that cross.

The garda investigation into Tuesdays accident is continuing and anyone with information is asked to contact 068-30010 or 069-20650.
IOWA CITY, Iowa - Moments into her final town hall of the short September recess, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, asked if her audience had heard the news: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had declared his firm opposition to Cassidy-Graham, the GOP's last attempt at a "repeal and replacement" of the Affordable Care Act.

"I'll be honest, it seems unlikely that we'll be voting on this," said Ernst.

A crowd of hundreds, in one of the University of Iowa's largest rooms, roared with applause. But for another hour, Ernst took questions on the future of the ACA, with one questioner demanding she take a position - she had been "leaning yes" on the failing bill.

With just eight days to go before Sept. 30, the deadline after which Republicans will lose the ability to pass an ACA replacement with a simple majority, activists working to save the law were markedly cautious. Days of action - Saturday rallies organized by MoveOn, Monday rallies by Indivisible - would continue. So would calls to senators. Having been caught unaware in May and last week, when Republicans revived "Trumpcare," activists said they would keep pounding until the deadline had passed.

"You don't want to leave anything to chance," said Ben Wikler, the Washington director of MoveOn. "If more senators come out in opposition to the bill this week, that makes it less likely that they can credibly come back and support another repeal vote. It needs to be totally clear to them that electoral disaster would come from keeping their horrible campaign promise."

The vast protest movement that the left built after 2016 took nearly a week to focus on Cassidy-Graham; before that, many groups had began focusing on pushing a DREAM Act through Congress. At a Friday rally with the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, which had been planned before Cassidy-Graham gained momentum, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., thanked McCain for his statement, then encouraged protesters to keep working.

"Do everything you can, get the word out all over this country, to tell them that no Republican should vote for this," he said.

Sanders, who was facing some criticism for agreeing to debate the GOP bill's sponsor on Monday night, benefited from the impression that the bill would fail. But to ensure that failure, activists were planning a two-pronged strategy - continuing to pressure Republicans against backing the bill, and thanking the Republicans who had promised to oppose it.

"The events in Arizona are going ahead, but they're going to be thank-you rallies," said Wikler. "For everybody else, they can expect a 30-ring circus of protests if they do go ahead and do this."
VILNIUS, Lithuania - The vast Russian military exercises that ended this week showed off a muscular fighting force practicing state-on-state warfare, NATO's deputy military commander said, in one of the first assessments of a large-scale operation that put Russia's neighbors on nervous alert.

The Zapad exercise, which rehearsed a conflict along Russia's western borders, showed off a force that was marshaling itself "probably more quickly, more efficiently, with this underlying message that if you thought we were in decay, we're not," NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, British Gen. James Everard, said in an interview.

The exercise, whose active phase ended Wednesday, is an every-four-years effort that was held this month for the first time since Russia in 2014 annexed Crimea from Ukraine then sparked war in the eastern part of the country. Because Russia used exercises as cover ahead of both its operations in Ukraine and its 2008 invasion of Georgia, its neighbors were cautious this time as the Kremlin fired up its military machine.

Now Western allies are sifting through intelligence reports and starting the arduous work of assessing Russia's military capability, which is deep into a reform that has translated the force from a neglected and struggling group into one that for two years has been able to project power into Syria, far from Russia's borders.

Everard said that the first formal assessments would likely not be ready before the end of October. But he said that some of the basics of effective large-scale warfare - an ability to pick up and move large numbers of troops, and then command them effectively - were on clear display.

"You see a recognition in the Russian hierarchy that if you are going to have a foundation of military force behind your stratagem, and I think they do, then it needs to work," he said.

Military analysts also said the exercise was a chance for the Kremlin to shoot a message straight to the Pentagon and its allies that Russia has a formidable fighting force capable of mobilizing across its enormous territory - and it needs to be reckoned with.

But if the exercises showed off a Russian military that is much-better trained and equipped than at any point since the Soviet collapse, the scenario of the exercises - an enemy from the West tries to overthrow the government in Moscow's ally, Belarus, and is beaten back - also may reveal Russia's greatest handicap.

Moscow says it is convinced it is under threat of assault by a hostile force in the West that is determined to bring its military to Russia's borders. This, as President Vladimir Putin sees it, has already been done in the Baltics. He believes the United States and NATO were the instigators of street protests that forced Ukraine's president to flee to Russia in 2014.

Viewed from that perspective, Zapad was intended to reinforce a point Putin made in December: That Russia is "stronger than any aggressor."

"Russia is acting on a faulty threat assessment and seeks to fashion a military response to largely imaginary threats and challenges that are not military in nature," said Vladimir Frolov, an independent foreign policy analyst based in Moscow. "It's all about strategic messaging of coercion and compellence directed at the U.S. and NATO, to prevent things the West has no intention of doing or the capability to accomplish."

NATO says it is a defensive alliance and creates no military threat to Russia. Many NATO officials disbelieve the Kremlin's stated concerns, saying they are an excuse to practice for war against the West.

Although Russia publicly declared that the exercises were small enough to exempt them from international transparency obligations, most Western observers said that the concurrence of drills and joint exercises across Russia's vast territory made them far larger than what was formally announced. The Russian and Chinese navies drilled in the east. The Russian military exercised in Central Asia. Bomber flights ranged over the Norwegian Sea. Paratroopers were active far above the Arctic Circle.

Adding a nuclear edge to the war gaming, Russia carried out two tests of its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-24, the first two days before Zapad began and the second on the culminating day of the exercise.

Western officials are still trying to estimate how many troops took part in the exercises. Some security officials and analysts ventured initial guesses that Zapad may have been a smaller exercise than other major efforts in recent years, although they said it was still a significant event.

"It was effectively a national-level military operation," said Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow for Russian studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security think tank. He said his initial estimate was that between 65,000 and 72,000 troops took part.

Putin, who viewed a mock battle involving tanks, missiles, air power and paratroopers at a firing range in Luga, northwestern Russia, also watched a broadcast of Russia's new Iskander-M missile being launched from a firing range in southern Russia to a target in Kazakhstan some 300 miles away. The weapons were not only a fearsome show of Russian firepower, they were also a sparkling advertisement for the nation's arms exporters.

"The president was very positive about the conduct and the result of that event," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Friday.

As the exercise unfolded, the Pentagon stepped up the presence of U.S. forces in the region. The U.S.-led heavy armored battalion deployed to Poland was in the process of rotating, meaning it was temporarily doubled. The U.S. Air Force sent three extra F-15 fighter jets to patrol the skies over the Baltics. And nearly 500 U.S. Army troops fanned across the Baltics for the month of September to do exercises.

"We train hard to have a combat edge, and that has a deterrent effect," said Lt. Col. Hugh Jones, the commanding officer of the Germany-based U.S. Army squadron doing the troop exercises in the Baltics.

Some of the Russian military capabilities seen by NATO leaders confirmed their preexisting concerns.

"In 24 to 48 hours, some parts of the Russian armed forces could be ready to invade one Baltic state or all of them," Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said in an interview. "It's clear that it's not only defense but it's also about offense."

Part of the exercise rehearsed cutting off the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the rest of NATO, Latvian Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis told Latvia's LETA news agency. That is a nightmare scenario for the alliance because Russia has stationed powerful antiaircraft missile systems in its exclave of Kaliningrad, creating challenges for any Western attempt to retake the region.

Despite the Western worries, the training may not have been flawless.

"What had been expected but did not happen was the demonstration of readiness of the newly-formed divisions, which adds credibility to the proposition . . . that they are rather far from being combat-capable," said Pavel Baev, who studies the Russian military at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Other embarrassing incidents included a Tu-22M long-range bomber overshooting a runway and a misfiring rocket from a Ka-52 attack helicopter that hit spectators.

The "Russian Air Force is feeling the pressure of the protracted deployment in Syria," Baev said. "Typically, maintenance is the weakest link, and accidents multiply," he said.

Still, during the exercise, top military and security officials held daily briefings to prepare for the worst-case scenario of an invasion, even as they said they thought it was unlikely one would occur.

"As a human being, when you see such events close to your country, you always think, 'what if?'" said Lithuanian Col. Mindaugas Steponavicius, the commander of the Iron Wolf Brigade, Lithuania's core fighting force.

Earlier this year, NATO deployed battalions of about 1,000 troops to each Baltic nation and Poland, a step that alliance leaders hoped would ease the risk that Russia would try to seize any territory from those nations.

"We all hoped that the Cold War or something comparable would never happen again," said German Army Lt. Col. Thorsten Gensler, the commander of the German-led, multinational NATO battalion that has deployed to Lithuania to dissuade Russia from attacking NATO territory. "So it is a kind of deja vu for me to be here."
Kadi Bah saw people starving in the Sahara desert and drowning in the Mediterranean during her failed six-month odyssey to reach Europe. But as soon as the United Nations plane bringing her back home from Libya to Ivory Coast touched down, she was hatching plans to try again.

"I'll be so proud of myself if I can make it to Europe; I'll tell everybody I managed to leave," the 23-year-old hairdresser said. "That's why I keep trying."

At first glance, Bah's determination to emigrate is puzzling. She has a four-year-old daughter. She had a job. Ivory Coast is a regional economic powerhouse, with an average annual growth of 9 percent. Ivorians don't fit the profile of migrants fleeing war and repression for the West.

Yet Ivory Coast ranks as a top African departure country for people who try to reach Italy by boat, after Nigeria and Guinea, according to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration. Authorities on the Italian island of Lampedusa identified about 12,000 arrivals from Ivory Coast last year, up from 7,000 in 2015.

"It seems like a paradox, but in some cities, it's a fashion trend," said Ally Coulibaly, minister for African integration and Ivorians overseas. "When the son of the neighbor makes it to Italy or France and starts to send money back to the family, the other neighbor thinks it's something his son can do, too. Going to Europe becomes a community project."

The irony is that Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, has traditionally attracted migrants, not provided them: a quarter of the population was born elsewhere, in another West African country.

"When we survey those who return, we find that unemployment is not the main reason for people to leave," said Issiaka Konate, director of the department for Ivorians overseas, which charters planes to bring back Ivorian migrants. "People want a better life, a sense of well-being."

Bah set her sights on France, the former colonial ruler, after speaking with customers of the salon in Abidjan, Ivory Coast's main city, where she worked. Some customers moved abroad on student visas, and they encouraged her via Facebook chats to try to leave the country too, she said.

"They said things are good over there," said Bah, who started working at the age of 12 because her parents couldn't afford school fees. "They make me want to go."

Bah traveled by bus to Agadez, a town in northern Niger that serves as a transit point for migrants because it's the last stop before the Sahara desert. There, she boarded a pickup truck for the 465-mile (750-kilometer) journey to the Libyan border. Along the way, she and her fellow travelers saw a group of migrants who'd been abandoned by their driver.

"They were alive but they had nothing to eat or drink," she said. "We gave them some water and food but we had no extra space in our truck."

Upon arrival in Tripoli, Bah joined seven other Ivorian women in a house she believed may have been the property of her handler, a 25-year-old man from Mali. Before leaving Ivory Coast, she had wired 1.2 million CFA francs ($2,078) for the journey to his bank account.

After a few weeks of "doing nothing," Bah was told to board one of four crowded, inflatable vessels that left Libya's shores in a convoy under cover of darkness. About two hours into the journey, the last boat, with about 200 people on board, began to sink.

"We saw it happening before our eyes," Bah said. "They were drowning and we were on our boat watching them die, unable to save them."

Then Bah's boat developed trouble too and she believed the moment had come when she would die. "I just told myself it was over," she said.

Libyan fishermen agreed to tow them to shore in exchange for the passengers' belongings, Bah said. In Tripoli that evening, she was arrested and sent to a detention center. It was there that she accepted her government's offer to return.

"The Ivorian ambassador came to see us. He said we should come back," she said. "He was right. In Libya, they don't like black people. But they didn't do anything to me. They only beat the boys, not the girls."

The government has brought back Ivorian migrants from the Philippines to Gabon and runs a campaign to warn of the dangers of illegal migration.

Bah is among a growing number of women migrants from West Africa since leaving is no longer "a man thing," said Laurent Guittey, a project manager at the IOM in Abidjan. "Women have started to leave too, because they're seeing that other women have managed to succeed."

Back in Ivory Coast, Bah avoided her own neighborhood, didn't use her Facebook account and screened her calls. She didn't want to tell anyone she'd failed in her dream to reach Europe.

A few weeks later, she was gone again.

"I'm not going back to Libya," she said, as she was about to board a bus to Mali. "From Mali, it'll be easier to get a visa for France."

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Bloomberg's Ana Monteiro contributed.
FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany - Two years after Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers, there's scant evidence of the influx here in this struggling former communist stronghold hard on the Polish border.

There are no mosques, few ethnic-minority restaurants and only a scattering of nonwhite residents.

But in recent weeks, Muslim faces - a man with a long, scraggly beard, a woman fully veiled but for the eyes - have been everywhere, staring down from posters that bear the message: "Islam doesn't belong in Germany."

The posters are the handiwork of the Alternative for Germany party. And the message is part of a campaign likely to propel the party, known as the AfD, to a historic outcome in national elections on Sunday. For the first time since 1961, Germany is on track to seat a far-right party in Parliament.

The AfD's success has unnerved Germans who see the party as the ominous vanguard of a return to a far darker past built on prejudice and hate. In the final days of campaigning, Chancellor Angela Merkel's allies have deemed the party an affront to the German constitution, while her top rival, center-left candidate Martin Schulz, described the AfD as "our enemies."

But as the contest for a parliamentary seat here in Frankfurt an der Oder shows, it is far from clear whether the AfD's rise represents a German lurch to the extreme right, or simply a protest among voters fed up with a cross-party consensus that on key issues has drifted steadily left.

"The German political establishment has made it pretty easy to fill a market niche," said Jurgen Neyer, a politics professor at this city's European University Viadrina. "It's as if all car manufacturers offered only red cars. Now someone is offering a black car. Wow! Is it better? Hard to say. But it's something different."

Most Germans do not appear to want something different. Polls show that nearly 80 percent of the country will vote Sunday for one of the four main establishment parties.

One is led by Merkel, who has governed for 12 years and is overwhelmingly favored to win another term, bucking global trends that favor shake-ups over continuity.

The other three parties have been hard-pressed to meaningfully differentiate themselves from the chancellor on policy, endorsing her decision to welcome refugees and standing beside her as she has reached beyond her conservative base to capture the center ground on the environment, the economy and other major policies.

Then there are the left and right fringes - one with communist roots, the other with positions that critics deride as neo-fascist. In a country with pungent memories of both communism and fascism, the extremes have long struggled. They remain relatively small, hovering at around 10 percent.

But both have been growing - especially the right. They have caught in their currents disaffected voters who had begun to see German politics as a conflict-free zone where Merkel decided and everyone else nodded along.

"There used to be differences among the big parties in Germany. Those differences are gone," said Detlev Frye, 52, a former radio news announcer who was once a youth activist in the center-right Christian Democrats.

Under Merkel, that party shifted to the center - and Frye lost interest in politics. But his passion was reawakened when he saw a speech by Alexander Gauland, one of the founders of the AfD, in which he insisted there was an alternative to Merkelism.

"People had developed a state of mind of 'We can't change our direction,' " said Frye, who is now an AfD candidate for local office near this riverside city. "But there's no consensus among the people. There's only consensus among the politicians."

The AfD got its start in 2013 as a rebellion against European Union plans to bail out debt-stricken Greece, and that was the issue that first animated Frye. In that year's German parliamentary vote, the AfD nearly met the 5 percent threshold to win seats.

But it was the backlash against Merkel's response to the 2015 refugee crisis that came to define the AfD's image, and that pushed its support to 15 percent or more early last year.

Gauland, now one of the party's co-leaders, said in an interview that the refugee crisis has been the prime driver of AfD support because the party was willing to criticize Merkel's approach when others would not. But he also said the issue's fading from public view helps explain the party's slide in support earlier this year.

"The 'refugees welcome' policy of Angela Merkel alienated a lot of people," he said, noting in particular the images of long lines of asylum seekers making their way across European borders.

The refugees are still a problem, he contended, citing what he described as "societal changes for the worse" that he ascribed to "Islamic people who have totally other values." But those issues are "not so visible on television."

The AfD is trying to make them as prominent as possible in Frankfurt an der Oder, where the 76-year-old Gauland is the local candidate.

In some respects, the city - a poor east German cousin to west Germany's Frankfurt, which is a thriving capital of global finance - offers a perfect opportunity for the AfD.

The local economy was devastated by German reunification, losing high-tech manufacturing jobs to points farther west where education levels were higher, even as low-skilled service jobs hopped the muddy Oder River to Poland.

About 30 percent of the city's population left; those who remain tend to be older, with few career prospects. Disaffection with the liberal and cosmopolitan ways of Berlin, about an hour west by train, runs high.

What's more, the area's representative in Parliament has been an outspoken advocate for Merkel's refugee policy, and even took two Eritreans into his home at the height of the crisis.

"It could be that this is a problem for me in the elections," acknowledged the lawmaker, Martin Patzelt, who is a member of Merkel's CDU.

But he defended his decision as the response to "an urgent need" and said one of the refugees remains a guest in his home two years later.

"He's doing well. Going to school," said Patzelt, who said his family has taken in visitors for extended stretches before. "I always say, 'The world is sitting at our kitchen table.' "

Local AfD activists say residents resent Patzelt for helping foreigners when the needs are acute at home.

"People want Patzelt to be a voice for his constituents, not for the Eritreans," Frye said.

That sentiment is hardly universal, however, and in some cases, the party's inflammatory rhetoric seems to have backfired.

"I'm sure I won't vote for the AfD," said Christine Boll, 63, a former teacher. "I don't like racism."

But Boll was far less certain about what party she would vote for; days before the election, she said she was still having trouble figuring out what distinguished the mainstream parties from one another.

In that respect, she has company. With the establishment parties in agreement on the major issues, a likely scenario after the vote is that Germany once again has a "grand coalition" government in which Merkel's CDU joins forces with its top rival, Schulz's Social Democrats.

If that happens, and if the AfD finishes in third place, as many polls project, the party would become the official voice of opposition in the Bundestag, the German Parliament.

That would give the AfD a far more prominent platform from which to make its case ahead of the next elections, in 2021, and likely dash any hopes within the establishment that the party will simply fade away as the memory of the refugee crisis recedes.

"They really are the alternative, and that makes them attractive," said Neyer, the professor. "I think they're real. They're here to stay."

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The Washington Post's Luisa Beck contributed to this report.

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North Korea's foreign minister warned Saturday that a strike against the U.S. mainland is "inevitable" because President Donald Trump mocked leader Kim Jong Un with the belittling nickname "little rocketman."

U.S. bombers escorted by fighter jets flew off the North Korean coast in a show of force shortly before Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho strode to the podium to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, capping an extraordinary week of militaristic threats from both nations before an organization founded to maintain international peace and security.

Ri said that Trump's bombast had made "our rockets' visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable," and linked it to the Trump's insulting shorthand references to Kim.

Harsh sanctions placed on North Korea's trade with the outside world will have no impact on its ability to complete building a nuclear bomb capable of reaching the United States, Ri said, suggesting that stage is imminent..

"Through such a prolonged and arduous struggle, now we are finally only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state nuclear force," he said.

"It is only a forlorn hope to consider any chance that the DPRK would be shaken an inch or change its stance due to the harsher sanctions by the hostile forces," he said, using the acronymn for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

A mass rally was also held Saturday in central Pyongyang to express support for "final victory" over the United States, the regime's KCNA news agency reported. The rally in Kim Il Sung square was attended by over 100,000 people, KCNA reported, "full of the spirit of annihilating the enemies." Speaking at the rally, a Pyongyang official said the people of the capital were "aflame" with the desire to wipe their sworn enemy, the U.S. imperialists, off the globe.

The rhetoric between Trump and Kim has grown exceptionally personal. At a rally Friday night in Alabama, Trump called Kim "little rocketman," magnifying the disparaging label he slung at King in his U.N. speech Tuesday in which he threatened the United States would "totally destroy" North Korea in defense of itself or its allies. He said Kim was on "suicide mission"

Kim in turn called Trump a "frightened dog" and a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard." Ri echoed those sentiments on Saturday, calling the president a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania" and at one point referring to him "President Evil."

"None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," Ri said in broad denunciation of Trump that brought applause from the North Korean delegation. "In case innocent lives of the U.S. are harmed because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible."

Ri emphasized that North Korea has the know-how to carry out its threat. He said Pyongyang has a hydrogen bomb that that can fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. On Friday, Ri said Korea was prepared to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

"Trump might not have been aware what is uttered from his mouth, but we will make sure that he bears consequences far beyond his words, far beyond the scope of what he can handle even if he is ready to do so," Ri said.

On Friday, Trump kept up his verbal fusillade against Kim, tweeting that Kim is a "madman" who will be "tested like never before."

Tensions are escalating so quickly that when an 3.5 magnitude earthquake was detected in northern North Korea Saturday in the vicinity of a nuclear test site, it briefly aroused suspicions that North Korea had conducted another underground nuclear test. It was quickly confirmed as just an earthquake.

The heated exchanges between Trump and the North Korea's leader come at a time when diplomatic pressure may be starting to bear fruit. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last week that sanctions are beginning to have an effect. China, North Korea's economic lifeline, has gradually imposed greater economic sanctions on its neighbor, including caps on oil. On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order giving the Treasury Department more authority to cut off trade that helps finance North Korea's weapons and nuclear programs.

While Tillerson has insisted that diplomacy still has a chance to work, military force appears to be increasing as an option.

Just before Ri spoke at the U.N., the Pentagon disclosed that the U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flew in international airspace east of North Korea. The Pentagon said it was the farthest point north of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea that any U.S. planes have flown in this century. The bombers took off from an air base in Guam, which North Korea has threatened to target. They were escorted by F-15C fighter jets from Okinawa, Japan.

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Video: Trump turned U.N. into a 'gangsters nest,' North Korea foreign minister says

North Korea Minister for Foreign Affairs Ri Yong Ho addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations on Sept. 23, with harsh words directed at President Trump.

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James Comey, the former FBI director, was met with raised fists and chants of "no justice, no peace" by protesters Friday as he delivered the keynote address at Howard University's convocation, marking a rocky re-emergence into public life since he was fired by President Donald Trump in May.

Comey gamely delivered his speech, at a ceremony marking the school's 150th opening convocation, amid disruptions from more than a dozen protesters in the packed, large auditorium who interrupted him repeatedly to let him know he was not welcome on campus.

He has accepted a yearlong post as an endowed chair at Howard.

Ignoring the disruptions, Comey encouraged the crowd to "listen with an attitude that they might actually be convinced of something. Instead, what happens in most of the real world and about four rows in this auditorium, is that people don't listen at all."

A group called HU resist arranged the protests at Howard, a historically black college. The demonstrators appeared to be taking aim at Comey's previous comments regarding law enforcement efforts to prevent crime in African-American communities. In a statement, the group said Comey had "boasted many affronts to black communities and communities of color during his tenure with the FBI, including the dismissal of racist state-sanctioned violence, and efforts to dismantle the growing Black Lives Matter movement."

The group's email address contained the phrase "Concerned Student 1867," the year the school was opened and a name similar to that used by a group at the University of Missouri formed to protest racial injustice on that campus in 2015 that drew widespread attention.

The protests also come at a time of roiling debate on college campuses, which have become sites of fringe protests and counterdemonstrations over free speech and the role of schools in providing students access to opposing viewpoints.

As FBI director, Comey gave an unusually candid speech in 2015 about race, weighing in near the height of a national debate over race and policing set off by the shooting death of Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old, by a white officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri. Comey said that police officers needed to recognize their inherent biases and acknowledge law enforcement's history of discrimination and abuse.

"At many points in American history," he said, "law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups."

But he also promoted the idea that crime was increasing in part because bystanders videotaped police officers, making officers afraid to do their job. That theory, known as the Ferguson effect, has not been proven and remains controversial. Taping officers is legal and tapes of police abuses have led to investigations, firings and convictions.
President Donald Trump criticized Sen. John McCain on Saturday morning after the Arizona Republican's announcement that he could not support the latest GOP push to overhaul the Affordable Care Act.

"John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves," Trump said on Twitter, referring to Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who supports the latest health-care bill. "He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!"

McCain announced in a statement Friday that he could not in "good conscience" vote for the Cassidy-Graham health-care proposal because it fails to address health care in a bipartisan fashion.

But Trump noted that Arizona had experienced premium increases last year and complained that Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, N.Y., had sold McCain a "bill of goods." It is not clear what the president was referring to.

Trump added that McCain had disappointed his friend and co-sponsor of the legislation, Sen Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

"McCain let his best friend L.G. down!" Trump tweeted, using Graham's initials.

Both McCain and Graham referenced their friendship publicly in statements about the health-care push.

McCain noted that he opposed the bill even though the authors are his "dear friends" and he thinks "the world of them."

And Graham responded to McCain on Friday saying that their friendship "is not based on how he votes but respect for how he's lived his life and the person he is."

In a slew of tweets Saturday morning, Trump also pressured two other senators who have held back their support for the Cassidy-Graham measure.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been a vocal opponent of the proposal, but Trump tweeted that he believed "he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party!"

And Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she will vote, but with McCain opposed, her support will be critical for the bill's passage.

In a tweet, Trump noted high health-care costs in Alaska and indicated that he hopes Murkowski "comes through."

"Alaska had a 200% plus increase in premiums under ObamaCare, worst in the country. Deductibles high, people angry! Lisa M comes through," he tweeted.
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The Camp Logan historical marker in Memorial Park has been cleared of graffiti.

The sign was smeared with paint last month within hours of its rededication. The newly restored Texas Historical Commission marker was unveiled Aug. 23 by local officials, preservationists and historians during a week of centennial events observing the Camp Logan Riot.

The marker commemorates the World War I training camp of black troops stationed in Houston as well as the associated 1917 racial riot and aftermath that became one of Houston's darkest episodes.

The vandalism happened as the city was preparing for Hurricane Harvey and remains under investigation, Houston Police Department spokeswoman Jodi Silva said Friday.

The sign was cleaned on Aug. 31 by the Memorial Park Conservancy, under a process authorized by the state historical commission, according to conservancy president and CEO Shellye Arnold.

The incident marked Houston's third historical monument in a week damaged by paint amid national turmoil over Confederate monuments following an Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman was killed and dozens injured in a clash between white supremacists and counter-demonstrators.

A bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in Sunnyside was found smeared with white paint on the morning of Aug. 17. Bell Park's seven-foot-tall statue of Christopher Columbus in the Montrose area was found splattered with red paint that night. In the following days, a local demonstration drew hundreds of protestors and counter-protestors to a monument celebrating the Confederacy in Sam Houston Park. And a Houston man, who police said had explosives when he was arrested at the statue of Confederate officer Richard "Dick" Dowling in Hermann Park, was charged in federal court.

Mayor Sylvester Turner called for "tolerance and understanding" at last month's Camp Logan marker rededication.

The day-after desecration appalled leaders of the Houston-based Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, which organized the centennial commemoration that coincided with the state historical marker's repair. That facelift repaired damage caused by injury and aging that left a scar along the back of the metal sign.

Debra Blacklock-Sloan, a member of the Harris County Historical Commission and its marker rededication chair, said Thursday she was pleased to learn about the cleaning, but still wants the marker moved to a more "visible" part of Memorial Park for security purposes.

Conservancy officials have said a new location could be considered after construction now ongoing in the park is completed.

In 1917, black soldiers from the Army's Third Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment left against orders from the training camp at what is now Memorial Park. The military men exacted revenge for humiliating and sometimes physically abusive treatment by local white citizens and police officers.

In the end, 16 people died  including five police officers  and 22 others were believed to have been wounded, although historical accounts vary.

The riot was followed by murder trials resulting in 19 men hanged and 53 handed life sentences.
A college student who pushed for the deportation of his fellow classmate will now have to finish his studies at another university.

Tayler Ragg, a self-proclaimed Trump supporter, is no longer enrolled at Transylvania University in Kentucky after he campaigned to have fellow student Paola Garcia deported. He posted to the "10th Crusade Enthusiasts," a white supremacist's Facebook page: "Everyone go report this illegal at my school bragging about breaking the law." That social media account has since been deleted.
Raised during the Depression, Mary Ann Veltman Tassos started working by the time she was a teenager, mostly baby-sitting.

Tassos was also tasked with helping to get her younger sister and cousins to school on time.

We learned how to be frugal and learned how to take care of ourselves, brother Pat Veltman said.

Tassos was attending Our Lady of the Lake University when she got hired at Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., an opportunity she couldnt refuse.

More Information Mary Ann Veltman Tassos Born: Jan. 2, 1932, San Antonio Died: Sept. 19, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Husband Wallace Tassos; parents James and Erin Veltman; brother James E. Veltman Jr. Survived by: Brother Pat Veltman and sister-in-law Judy; sister Kitty Sebera; sister-in-law JoAnn Veltman Services: Rosary at 7 p.m. Sunday at Porter Loring Mortuary chapel, 1101 McCullough Ave.; Mass at 10:30 a.m. Monday at St. Anthony de Padua Catholic Church, 102 Lorenz, followed by burial at Sunset Memorial Park See More Collapse

She was making such good money at the time, she decided to end her college career, sister-in-law JoAnn Veltman said.

Working her way through the ranks, Tassos supervised several departments before retiring from human resources in 1995, after 50 years.

She was a very smart woman, Pat Veltman said. And she did really well with her finances.

Tassos, 85, died of complications of Alzheimers disease Tuesday.

An accomplished deep-sea fisherman, Tassos was 15 when the boat she was in during the Texas Tarpon Rodeo off the coast of Port Aransas capsized.

A bad storm came in, and her boyfriends father was washed out of the boat and drowned, her brother said. She was in the water for 18 hours.

Tassos and two others were rescued.

While attending St. Marys High School, Tassos became certified as a lifeguard in 1949, although she never went deep-sea fishing again.

After graduating from St. Marys in 1950, Tassos enrolled at what was then Our Lady of the Lake College, taking the job at Southwestern Bell soon afterward.

Meeting her future husband through mutual friends, Tassos married young restauranteur Wally Tassos in 1954.

Working all day at her job, Tassos would come home and make dinner for her husband, who owned and operated the Bean Pot on Austin Highway. He often wasnt home until close to midnight

Tassos also cared for her mother, who had Alzheimers disease, until she died at 93.

Mary took her in and took care of her when the rest of us thought she would be better off in a home someplace, her brother said.

A talented and mostly self-taught seamstress, Tassos did many projects for the AT&T Pioneers, a service organization made up of retired telecom employees.

She did beautiful embroidery work, and her quilts were to die for, JoAnn Veltman said.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
The Altrusa organization held its meeting on Sept. 5 at The Bridge, formerly known as the Crisis Center.

Suzanne Smith, the executive director of The Bridge, gave a presentation on the services provided for individuals and families who experience domestic abuse, dating violence and sexual assault in five counties: Burt, Cuming, Dodge, Saunders and Washington.

The group gave new and gently used handbags with toiletries and small gifts in them to The Bridge.

The hostesses were Cherry Gocken and Carole Tremain.

Sue Maly delivered a birthday cake to the Jefferson House in August. Marilyn Clark showed a port pillow she made for cancer patients. Altrusa provides pillows to the cancer center in Fremont.

Kay Bevington discussed the Fall Holiday Luncheon and Boutique to be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 28 at First Lutheran Church. Tickets are now being sold for $8. Streak-free cloths also will be sold at the luncheon.

Each year the group creates a quilt for a money-making project for scholarships. This year it is a quilt representing Nebraska Statehood of 150 years. Tickets are now on sale for $1.

The next meeting will be 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3, at Lutheran Family Services, 1420 E. Military Ave.
On the top of a hill, near a sprawling live oak, beneath a 36-star flag perpetually at half-staff, deep in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, is a simple and elegant monument to the Union dead.

The Treue der Union monument  True to the Union  remembers and honors a group of German Unionists from Comfort who were killed in 1862.

They were killed while heading to Mexico. Some were hoping to eventually join the Union. Others were hoping to sit out the Civil War, said Brenda Seidensticker with the Comfort Heritage Foundation. But they never made it so far.

Confederate soldiers surprised the Unionists at the Nueces River, killing 28. This includes nine badly wounded Unionists who were captured and then massacred.

They were supposedly told to get under this tree, Seidensticker said. And then they were shot in the head.

Their bodies were left unburied. It was a bloody and brutal message to all Union sympathizers in a part of the world that had voted to stay in the Union. Another eight men were killed two months later as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande.

It wasnt until 1865, after the war, that a party set out to the battle site at the Nueces River to recover the remains of these Unionists. They were buried on top of this hill, overlooking the town. And the monument, an obelisk of 20 feet, was raised a year later.

True to the Union.

After our Confederate monument came down in the dead of night, supposedly to be relocated to a yet-to-be-named location, I simply had to visit Treue der Union.

I wanted to connect with this stirring and solemn moment in our history and visit hallowed ground  free of Confederate flags and guns as props. I wanted to feel the weight of brutality and enduring principle. And I wanted to see a monument that provides proper context to the war. People were killed because they opposed slavery and believed in this Union. And for this, their bodies were left to rot and be picked apart.

Thats worthy of a lasting and honest monument. Lest we forget.

Not that the monument hasnt been mythologized over the years  mostly in small ways.

In a meticulous piece of research, Treue der Union: Myths, Misrepresentations, and Misinterpretations, historian and Comfort area physician Frank Wilson Kiel outlines the many ways Treue der Union has been misrepresented.

It has long been described, in some form and fashion, as the only Union monument in the Confederacy. But this is not so. Kiel finds at least 10 places with monuments to the Union in the South, including in Denison and in nearby New Braunfels, which has a monument to Confederate and Union soldiers.

Kiel notes that since 1991, the flag at Treue der Union has flown at half-staff. There is a certain mythology about this, Kiel argues, citing newspaper accounts that claim Congress awarded the monument a special designation. But no such designation exists. The only congressional record Kiel could uncover is correspondence from U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith to the Comfort Heritage Foundation.

It is appropriate and fitting that the 36 star flag be flown at half-mast for perpetuity in remembrance of the 36 souls who perished in this tragic episode of our countrys history, Smith wrote.

If anything, these misrepresentations serve as a reminder that we all can bend history through our preferred lens  and we witnessed how far we can bend it in our recent statue debate.

But lets not lose sight of the larger truth. We often talk about the Civil War at the expense of oppression, brutality and slavery, instead venerating battles and strategy. We ignore the cruel cataclysm of the Civil War and slavery, the destruction of our shared humanity. We assume the nation has healed, even as the remnants of slavery and war reverberate through our country so many generations later.

To feel this, take a trip to Comfort some weekend morning. Sit beneath a live oak tree at the top of the hill and remember those who stayed true to the Union.

jbrodesky@express-news.net
Its Hispanic Heritage Month, a time designated by Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan to focus on the cultural heritage of the large U.S. Hispanic-descent population.

This past June, my wife and I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and while there attended a presentation on the 50th anniversary of 1967s Rio Arriba County Courthouse raid in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico.

Reies Lopez Tijerina, the raids leader, is a rarely mentioned public figure whose endless energies fighting injustice are embedded in Southwest social history.

Texas-born Lopez Tijerina didnt set out to make war against the government. Rather, the raid in 1967 resulted from the second of his two main passions  his dream to establish a religious community, and recovering New Mexicos Spanish-Mexican land grants that the U.S. seized and kept after the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-48.

More Information To learn more To get the story behind Reies Lopez Tijerina's words and deeds, read "They Called Me 'King Tiger': My Struggle for the Land and Our Rights," translated from Spanish and edited by Jose Angel Gutierrez. Also recommended: "Trespassers on our own Land," by Mike Scarborough. Using a detailed interview approach, it contains the first-person account of Juan Valdez, a key member of the historic Rio Arriba courthouse Raid, "New Mexico's Stormy History," by Elmer Eugene Maestas, an excellent account of one of New Mexico's Spanish colonial (land grant) pioneer settler families. See More Collapse

The Rev. Lopez Tijerina began preaching at a small church. Ultimately, he decided to isolate his flock in a self-contained cooperative, far removed from what was, in his view, a corrupt social system. Unable to find affordable land in Texas, he moved his group to Arizona.

A gifted speaker, he was persuaded to leave the pulpit and become a social justice activist representing the large marginalized population he fondly called el pueblo. He was especially concerned that mainstream white society generally misread indigenous/mestizo peoples demeanor for weakness. His goal was to change that view.

Later moving to New Mexico, he quickly became a target of the FBI and law enforcement agencies, and they used every means available to derail his mission.

He transitioned into his second passion  reclaiming Spanish land grants. After hearing heartbreaking reports, he set out to familiarize himself with the subject.

Native Americans and Spanish-descent land-grant heirs had two main claims: They accused the U.S. of deceptively nationalizing their ancestral lands into the Forest Service, and after 1848, manipulative land financiers had methodically  at times brutally  robbed Nuevo Mexicano families of their lands.

To Native Americans, it was an especially sore subject. Unfamiliar with European-style land ownership, they soon adapted and accepted the idea. Valuing their Spanish-Mexican land grants as deeds to their communal lands, they wanted the U.S. to honor their titles, just as the Spanish and Mexican governments had done before 1848.

In embracing Native Americans as blood-related kin within his umbrella of Indohispanos their cause was crucial to Lopez Tijerina. He wanted the world to know that bigotry against Americas original inhabitants preceded prejudice against other minority groups in the U.S.

Unless the first Americans receive justice first, he said, no other minority group will be so blessed. Both the struggle and dilemma continue to this day.

Prepared with research collected in Mexicos national archives, a list of U.S. violations of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the U.S. Constitution, Lopez Tijerina shared with the people a bold plan to reclaim their lands and combine them in shared ownership.

Faithfully, the families relied on their charismatic leader to get it done.

Shortly, Lopez Tijerina became concerned that the authorities werent engaging. Taking matters into his own hands, he led a group representing more than 150 families and occupied the San Joaquin del Rio de Chama land-grant territory for five days, beginning on Oct. 15, 1966.

They asked state authorities to do a title search. The Anglo-controlled state officialdom denied the request.

On June 5, 1967, he led armed members of his Alianza Federal de Mercedes group to the Rio Arriba County Courthouse. Their intention was to confront the district attorney with a citizens arrest for ignoring the will of the people.

Things went terribly wrong from the start. Shots were fired, wounding two individuals. Hostages were taken, but later released. The state National Guard was mobilized, and innocent civilians were arrested and jailed without being charged.

On the run for several days in the terrain he and his followers were fighting for, Lopez Tijerina turned himself in. Albeit at a great price, he brought worldwide attention to the United States illegal seizure of Spanish-Mexican land grants.

Various hearings and court trials later, Lopez Tijerina was tried and sentenced to prison. After his release, he became a nationally acclaimed human rights advocate.

The Voice of El Pueblo died at 88 on Jan. 19, 2015, in El Paso. He never abandoned his strong view that the three branches of the U.S. government  but especially the judicial branch  deliberately denied justice for Native American and land-grant heirs of Spanish-Mexican descent.

As with most 1960s Mexican-descent social justice leaders, Lopez Tijerina had admirers as well as detractors.

To Southwest indigenous-Spanish land-grant descendants, he renewed a sense of dignity, especially after the San Joaquin reclamation. Their steady support was essential during Lopez Tijerinas days as a fugitive.

But Anglos generally didnt like him, and the most affluent Hispanics of that time rejected him, repeating the Anglos false claim that he was a communist agitator. The children of those same Hispanics continue to pass through the doors of opportunity opened wide by 1960s activists.

Few of us would have freely experienced a fraction of the suffering and deprivation that he, his family, and bravos followers endured throughout their justice journey.

Lopez Tijerina was controversial. Still, great leaders often apply unconventional means to get results. Although land grants were not returned to their rightful owners, his success may be measured in other ways.

Its not by accident that the 1960s brought human rights relief to the Southwest. Civil rights, voting, education, fair employment and equal housing legislation was passed because Lopez Tijerina and fellow activists urged elected officials to write and enact those laws.

Hispanic Heritage Month 2017 and the 50th anniversary of the Tierra Amarilla raid remind us why, as Mike Scarborough, author of Trespassers on our own Land, writes, so many Native Americans and Spanish Mexican-descent citizens today still feel as foreigners in their own homeland.

Jose Joe Antonio Lopez was born and raised in Laredo and is a U.S. Air Force veteran. He lives in Universal City and is the author of four books. His latest is Preserving Early Texas History (Essays of an Eighth-Generation South Texan). Lopez is also the founder of the Tejano Learning Center and www.tejanosunidos.org, a website dedicated to Spanish and Mexican people and events in U.S. history that are mostly overlooked in mainstream history books. A version of this article was first published in the Rio Grande Guardian International News Service.
In addition to wind, rain and destruction, hurricane season brings a practice that is almost universally repudiated: price gouging. Price gouging during emergency situations is against the law in several states, including Texas and Florida, where Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the hardest.

But several economists and political pundits have spoken in favor of price gouging. They claim that we should not mess with prices, whose job is to get goods to those who want them the most. If prices go up, buyers will think twice before purchasing something they may not need, while suppliers will be incentivized to go the extra mile and provide needed goods to make more money. If you take that extra gain away, you will have fewer goods and in the wrong hands.

There is some truth to this.

Markets are indeed a reasonable way to move goods around. Yet the belief in markets often goes well beyond what they are. Economist Mark J. Perry recently argued that outlawing heavy price increases during hurricanes was as ridiculous as asking the government to outlaw temperature increases during heat waves. Another economist, Michael Salinger, equated understanding that price gouging is a good thing with learning as a kid that the moon was responsible for the tides. These examples compare the price mechanism with natural forces that are beyond the control of humans.

But this is wrong.

Markets are not equivalent to tides or temperatures. They are a clever human creation to allocate goods. Economist and sociologist Karl Polanyi argued in his 1947 book The Great Transformation that markets are a valuable form of organization, but one which can only remain valuable as long as we contain it and limit it in accordance with nonmarket considerations. All societies have had, besides markets, other ways of connecting people and goods, such as reciprocity and redistribution. It was only in the 19th century that we started believing market forces could and should self-regulate.

Disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma test our social bonds in ways that few events do. We often hear that collective catastrophes bring out the best in people, and the meaning is clear: We act on our empathy, our generosity, our obligations to one another.

Some advocates of unfettered markets grumble that those who act self-interestedly and raise prices are contributing to an efficient allocation of goods but are hardly recognized. Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman stated that gougers deserve a medal. Yet there are good reasons why they do not, and why we cannot be easily convinced otherwise. The moral condemnation of price gouging is a recognition that in certain social situations, raising prices is kicking vulnerable people when they are down. Our reaction to price gouging is not some silly knee-jerk rejection from people who dont know enough about economics, as it is sometimes portrayed. It is, rather, deeply reflective of the societal need for mechanisms other than markets.

I asked students at the University of Texas at Austin, some of whom were returning from a devastated Houston, what they thought about price gouging. One student said, It depends: from a moral standpoint or from an economic standpoint? But we should not separate the two. There may be benefits to price hikes in terms of efficient allocation and real difficulties in policing gouging.

There is a long way between these issues and praising self-interest during an emergency. A realistic solution to the problem cannot involve mocking our moral reaction against gouging as well-intentioned but ill-informed. We should rather solve the problem of allocation while taking seriously our moral commitments. This is not an easy task, but self-interested action is as much human nature as is the disposition to help others disinterestedly.

Communities recover better from disasters when they preserve their trust and social bonds. During catastrophes, we are not just allocating goods, we are also asking who we are, what holds us together, and what we owe to one another as humans and as members of society.

Daniel Fridman is an assistant professor in the Department Of Sociology and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina.
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Fremont After 5 Connection will meet at 6:45 p.m. Oct. 9 at the Midland University Dining Hall, Ninth and Pebble streets.

Carol Martin will present A Hawaiian Adventure. Laura Daugard & Company will provide music.

Ilene Dirks of Sioux City, Iowa, will speak on Best Friends Forever. She is a family and consumer science teacher. She has six children, 13 grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and loves to cook, especially in the microwave.

The cost for the evening is $14 for a buffet. Call Merrilee at 402-721-2827 for reservations by Oct. 3. Honoring your reservation is necessary.
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Today

HomeStore, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., 701 E. Dodge St., Fremont. The HomeStore sells donated items at discounted prices. Proceeds support the mission of Fremont Area Habitat for Humanity.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Storytime, 11-11:30 a.m., Keene Memorial Library auditorium, 1030 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous womens heart to heart group, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Camp Fontanelle Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze, 1-7 p.m., Camp Fontanelle. Other activities include a petting barn, zipline rides, laser tag in the maze, hayrack rides, a childrens barrel train and more. Entrance fees are free for 2 and under, $5 for ages 3-11 and $7 for ages 17 and up. There is an additional charge for zipline and laser tag. A full concession stand also is available.

Tailgate party, 1:30 p.m., Fremont Eagles Club. Everyone is welcome.

Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 7:30 p.m., United Faith Church, 218 W. Gardiner St., Valley.

Narcotics Anonymous Lie Is Dead Group, 8 p.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Sunday

Fremont Antique Car Club Inc.s 50th Annual Swap Meet, 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., Christensen Field, Fremont. The one-day swap meet will be held rain or shine. It will include arts and crafts, antique items, a car corral and a free pedal car drawing. Admission is free for buyers.

Knights of Columbus Pancake Breakfast, 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Delaney Hall at St. Patricks Catholic Church, Fremont. Pancakes, eggs, ham or sausage, toast, coffee and orange juice will be served. The cost is $5.50 for adults and $2 for ages 12 and under.

Alcoholics Anonymous Happy Sober Sunday Group, 9 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Seekers of Serenity Group, 10:30 a.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Camp Fontanelle Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze, 1-7 p.m., Camp Fontanelle. Other activities include a petting barn, zipline rides, laser tag in the maze, hayrack rides, a childrens barrel train and more. Entrance fees are free for 2 and under, $5 for ages 3-11 and $7 for ages 17 and up. There is an additional charge for zipline and laser tag. A full concession stand also is available.

Fremont Izaak Walton 2017 Joy Ride, 1:30 p.m., leaving from Walmart, Fremont. The ride will collect toys, videos, games and more for girls and boys ages 1-16. All types of vehicles are welcome. Participants should meet at Walmart at 1 p.m. Riders will make stops in Cedar Bluffs, Morse Bluff and North Bend before ending up at Fremont Izaak Walton Park, 2560 W. Military Ave., Fremont. Lunch will be served when all riders return at approximately 3:30 p.m.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Point of Freedom Group, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Alcoholics Anonymous Sunday speaker, 7:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Monday

TOPS Club (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), 9 a.m., First United Methodist Church, 850 N. Broad St., Fremont. Weigh-ins begin at 8 a.m. Visitors (preteens, teens and adults  male and female) are welcome. The first meeting is free. For more information, call Janet Bloemker at 402-721-8952.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Fremont Community Blood Drive, 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fremont City Auditorium. All blood types are needed. To schedule an appointment, call Caryl Grorud at 402-721-3144 or Kyle Jensen at 402-910-0681, or visit www.redcrossblood.org.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous basic text study, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Celebrate Recovery, 7-9 p.m., Sanctuary Church, 1640 W. Military Ave., Fremont. Childcare is available.

Celebrate Recovery, 7 p.m., Fremont Church of the Nazarene, 960 Johnson Road.

Alcoholics Anonymous 12x12 meeting, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2017 > Genocide of Rohingyas in Myanmar: the Hindutva Imprints

Currently, one of the worst post-World War II genocides is underway in Indias neighbour-hood. In the Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma), cleansing of people belonging to the Rohingya tribe (mostly Muslims and a few Hindus and Buddhists) has been going on for the last two decades. But this cleansing project of the Rohingyas is in full steam now by the Myanmar Army and foot-soldiers of the Fascist Buddhist organisations with the coming to power of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize recipient for fighting against the military rulers of the country. Ironically, this Nobel Laureate now supervises genocide of Rohingyas in collaboration with the countrys Army and fascist Buddhist cadres.

The rampaging killer/raping/maiming/burning gangs sponsored by the Burmese state, Army and fascist Buddhist organisations have evoked worldwide condemnation and severe repudiation from world forums including the UN. However, the Indian PM Modi, who visited Myanmar recently, instead of expressing concern on the cleansing of Rohingyas, expressed solidarity with the killer state. He and Myanmars State Counsellor and de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in a joint statement said:

It is important to maintain security and stability along the long land and maritime borders of India and Myanmar...India stands with Myanmar over the issue of violence in the Rakhine state which has led to loss of innocent lives.

This statement remained silent on the mass cleansing of the Rohingyas but expressed grave concern on the terrorist activities of a section of Rohingyas in self-defence. In a more shocking development the RSS/BJP Indian Government has issued instructions to deport nearly 40,000 Rohingyas, who escaped to India while under attack, for being a security threat.

The inimical attitude of the Indian rulers towards the Rohingyas is neither accidental nor sudden. It does not seem to be the fall-out of some grave security threat which might have cropped up in the recent past. We need to investigate whether this cleansing got impetus with the political ascendancy of the fascist Buddhist organisations in Myanmar and fascist Hindutva organisations in India.

The world, obsessed with Islamist terrorism, has not bothered to take any notice of a new terrorism network developing fast in India and its neighbourhood between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and two ultra nationalist Buddhist groups of Myanmar and Sri Lanka against the minorities in the area. In a startling and focussed disclosure

The International New York Times

(October 16, 2014) in an editorial titled Deadly Alliances Against Muslims disclosed how fascist Buddhist groups in the region, the Sri Lankan Buddhist group, Bodu Bala Sena, and Myanmars Wirathu Group 969 [run by Ashin Wirathu, a so-called monk from Myanmar who has been preaching hatred toward Muslims and is the spiritual leader of a move-ment to boycott Muslim businesses] were in contact at a high level with the Right-wing Indian Hindu group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to form what is called a Hindu-Buddhist peace zone in South Asia which means a Muslim-Christian free zone in the area. The editorial concluded with the following alarming words:

It is folly for the governments of Mr Rajapaksa in Sri Lanka, President Thein Sein of Myanmar [both headed their respective countries in 2014] and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, or their political allies, to give even the appearance of tolerating these Islamophobic groups in a region that has too often been convulsed by religious sectarian violence. They should condemn this mad alliance before it can spread further.1

Though this network prioritises the Islamic/Muslim threat as its main concern, it also treats Christians and other ethnic minorities as dangers and wants to control them. They refuse to accept that this region was a multi-religious area. Ashin Wirathu is committed to get rid of Muslims and other minorities of the area. They have killed hundreds of Muslims, raped Muslim women, burned hundreds of mosques and destroyed a large number of Muslim properties and businesses.

For public consumption, the RSS has denied the claim of Gnanasara that they were in discussions at a high level with the Right-wing Indian Hindu group, Rashtriya Swayam- sevak Sangh. The RSS spokesman, Ram Madhav, promptly denied that there were any such discussions. But according to the NYT, Madhav, a senior RSS/BJP ideologue of Indias ruling oligarchy, has written comments sympathetic to Bodu Bala Sena and Mr. Wirathus group 969 in Myanmar on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. He lauded the plan of the Hindu-Buddhist peace zone in South Asia which means an area free of minorities, specially Muslims. In his posting [March 28, 2013 on Facebook] he agreed with the propaganda that

The Muslim population in Sri Lanka is growing fast...There are mosques and madrassas sprouting everywhere in the country. A rough estimate suggests that of the 1.2 million Muslim population every 50 households have a mosque. In Colombo itself a new magnificent mosque is coming up, so are in many other places. Increasing number of burqa-clad women and skull cap-wearing men can be sited [sic] on the streets of Sri Lankan cities and towns now.

Ram Madhav also noted that Muslims in Sri Lanka have been insisting on halal products. He noted approvingly that

the Bodu Bala Sena essentially talks about protecting the Buddhist culture of the country from foreign religions. By this it also means the Christian missionaries who are trying to convert people.

He was happy to note that

the Bodu Bala Sena has maintained that Hindus and Buddhists of the country should work together on these issues.

He ended by commending:

So far, the issues raked up by the BBS are worthy of active and sympathetic consideration. Bodu Bala Sena is able to capture the attention of the Buddhist population of Sri Lanka. It was atrocious on the part of Ram Madhav, a leader of the largest Hindu organisation in the world, to overlook the fact that the Sri Lankan state in connivance with such Buddhist fascist organisations of Sri Lanka killed, raped and maimed lakhs of Hindu Tamils in the area. In one of the Tweets he wrote: BODU BALA SENAA NEW BUDDHIST MOVEMENT IN SRI LANKA Bodu Bala Sena (BBS)a Buddhist organisation many wish.

It is to be noted that the RSS has been historically close to the ruling military dictators in Myanmar who have encouraged characters like Ashin Wirathu to propagate hatred against minorities in the country. How close the RSS was to the military junta which now shares power with Aung San Suu Kyi can be known by the following report which appeared in the official organ of the RSS,

Organiser,

dated February 28-March 5, 2000:

The 50th anniversary of the Sanatan Dharma Swayamsevak Sangh (SDSSthe RSS counterpart in Burma) was held at the National Theatre on Mayoma Kyaung Street, Yagnon, recently. Secretary-2 of the State Peace and Development Council, Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, attended the meeting. The programme was attended by Ministers and senior military officers. Minister for Commerce, Brig. Gen. Pyi Sone; Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Maj. Gen. Sein Htwa; Minister for Health, Maj. Gen. Ket Sein were among the prominent persons who attended the function...The Secretary-2 delivered a speech at the function.

This report appeared with two photographs. In one photograph five military Generals, including the second in command of the military junta, Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, were seen standing on the stage in the midst of the SDSS leadership wearing khaki shorts. In the other photograph leading lights of the Burmese military junta were seen sitting in the front row of the auditorium.

This terrorist network exposed by the New York Times may have many other layers as was made clear by neo-Nazi mass murderer of Norway, Breivik, who glorified Indian Hindu Nationalists.2 He opened the Pandoras box when he declared the Hindu Nationalist movement as a key ally in a global struggle to bring down democratic regimes across the world. Just before he went to massacre a large number of people in Norway, he released a manifesto of 1518 pages, of which 102 pages dealt with the glorification of the Hindutva movement of India. It declared support to Sanatana Dharma movements and Indian nationalists in general. This manifesto also laid down a plan of co-operation between neo-Nazi movements of Europe and Hindu Nationalist organisations of India. This neo-Nazi document emphasised that it was essential that these two learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible as our goals are more or less identical. This manifesto specially mentioned the name of the fountain-head of the Hindutva politics like the RSS and its subsidiaries like the BJP, ABVP and VHP in this regard.3

Importantly, the manifesto pledged military support

to the nationalists [RSS] in the Indian civil war and in the deportation of all Muslims from India as part of a larger campaign to overthrow all Western European multicul-turalist governments.

Imagine if such conspiratorial revelations were made against some Muslim/Christian/Sikh individuals or organisations, the Indian intelli-gence agencies would have dug the areas inhabited by them to find out the linkages. Unfortunately, these startling disclosures about the RSS linkages with a developing terror nexus internationally, are no cause of worry for the Indian state. This silence gives the conspirators legitimacy to play havoc in the region.

The International Court of Justice at the Hague must immediately constitute a team to unearth the nefarious role of fascist religious and cultural organisations behind the genocide of Rohingyas in Myanmar. Apart from looking into the role of such organisations in this genocide, this UN organ must also find out whether this cleansing is taking place to facilitate the capture of oil resources in this region and land grab by the Chinese and Indian corporate giants.4

Endnotes

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/opinion/deadly-alliances-against-muslims.html?_r=0

2. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/norwegian-mass-killers-manifesto-hails-hindutva/article2293829.ece

3. [http://ibnlive.in.com/news/norwegian-killer-anders-breiviks-manifesto- supports-hindutva/170496-3.html]

4. https://qz.com/1074906/rohingya-the-oil-economics-and-land-grab-politics-behind-myanmars-refugee-crisis/

Shamsul Islam, a well-known theatre personality, is a former Associate Professor (now retired), Department of Political Science, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. For some of the authors writings in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu and Gujarati use the following link: http/du-in.academia.edu/Shamsullslam
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2017 > In the Courtyard of Modis New India

by Arun Srivastava

We are at a time when ideas sale, ideas are used especially for the mobile and hi tech life-style. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a perfect businessman, has been in the business of selling ideas since 2014. During the last three years he sold many ideas and incidentally there is no dearth of buyers. Now he is selling the idea of New India not only inside India but even abroad too.

What has been really interesting is in his hurry he has been pitching his ideas of New India against the Old India, which is represented by Bharat. If he is to be believed, Bharat has been an outdated concept and entity. This has outlived its utility. This is a discarded and obsolete word.

It is worth mentioning that some great socialist leaders, like Charan Singh, Rammanohar Lohia and others were in favour of promoting the concept of Bharat as it imbibed the aspiration of a vast majority of the rural Indian people. No doubt over the decades the policy towards the population has multiplied and demography has changed, the urban middle class, which was then in the embryonic stage, now dictates the politico-economic scenario and decision-making process. Obviously in this backdrop Modi pursuing the appeasement policy towards this burgeoning class should not come as surprise.

But the basic question is: how does he intend to accomplish his mission? One of his ideas for retrieving black money, the demonetisation, is lying shattered on the Rajpath of the nations capital, Delhi. Recently the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine, Steve Forbes, criticised demonetisation, as sickening and immoral and a massive theft of peoples property. He even went on to say that India has not only immorally harmed its own people, but also set the most destructive example of the anti-cash fad for the rest of the world. The RBIs Annual Report shows not everything was right with demonetisation.

Even the latest report of the Indias central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, shows not everything was right with demonetisation. It severely criticised it and observed that it would have a disastrous effect on the economy and growth. Just as the former Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had prophesised that the economy will face bad days and it would fall substantially by the 2nd or 3rd quarter.

Ironically for his observation the eminent economist had to face flak from the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, on the floor of Parliament. Eventually Dr Singh has been proved to be right. Jaitley even does not have the self-respect to seek apology from Dr Singh for his remarks. Even after 10 months, the tremors of the ground-breaking demonetisation wave, that shook the whole nation and tumbled our economic situation, are being felt.

In his hurry to present his image of a macho politician and a statesman as well, Modi has been always coming out with some ideas without bothering to find whether they are relevant or absurd. His latest emphasis on New India should be seen in this backdrop. Modi has been calling upon the people to liberate India from its past and how it tries to reach out to a better yet distant future. Obviously the question the springs up is: whether Modi looks at traditions and social norms, jurisprudence or the economic system as bogus and irrelevant which have outlived their utility. Since he is advocating for ushering in New India, it is his moral responsibility to lay down the structural foundation of the New India. Simply rhetoric is not sufficient. He would have to spell out its parameters and paradigm.

Unfortunately so far he has refrained from placing it before the people of the country. He has been playing with words and using his call for ushering in New India as a tool to accuse the policies and programmes followed and implemented by the Congress. One thing is quite significant: he is still haunted by the Congress or secular phobia. He had based the superstructure of his government on the task of demystifying the Nehruvian model of governance which he ultimately had to drop due to stiff resistance. Now he has been trying to give shape to his idea under the facade of New India.

One thing is certain: that Modi lacks conviction to challenge the Nehruvian programme and economic policy as his saffron economists, swadeshi academics and intellectuals have failed to evolve and provide him with an alternative model. The much acclaimed Niti Aayog has proved to be a theatre for some discarded economists.

These days we hear a lot about the clash of the two Indiasthe India of the villages vs the India of the cities, deprived India vs shining India, holder of old values vs clamour for new alien values. A consistent effort is on to pitch the old India against New India. This is an agenda similar to what was espoused by Charan Singh but there is a major difference in the content and contour. While in the realm of Charan Singh the farmer, the village community represented the idea and image of Bharat, in Modis dominion everything which is nearer to or represents the aspiration of Hindutva is part of the New India.

India has been experiencing a significant shift in cultural, social and economic ethos and aspects of life in recent times. Modi is forcing the society and country to accept the Hindutva tenet blended with Western culture as the new norm of Indian life and culture. The transition of Bharat to India has put the lust for prosperity, progression and growth, unperceived in the past, on the high pedestal. It is an irony that at a time when the intellectuals, academics and socially conscious people have been trying to seek solace in Indias past, the saffron brigade, which claims to be the votary of the Indian traditions and culture, has been persuading us to adopt the concept of New India, whose essence is still not clear and mired in uncertainty. The RSS has been in utter hurry.

The RSS has been emphasising on ultra-nationalism and in some cases has thrashed and insulted the people who refuse to subscribe to their ideological line. But it is a fact that the RSS and BJP have been striving to change the basic structure of nationalism. The BJPs emphasis on New India has completely changed the dynamics of the concept of Bharat. In the BJPs rule Bharat has become an obsolete word. Everything which is disliked by the urban middle class and has been rejected by it is attributed to the creation of the old India, Bharat, which is still in the clutches of inequality in all aspects of personal and professional life. In the prevailing situation New India symbolises the growing, cluttering, rising economy.

Though the saffron brigade claims that it symbolises the promise of democracy, independence, equality and growth, this is not true at the ground level. Behind the facade of intolerance, the Modi Government and the Sangh have been pushing the politics of majoritarianism and strengthening in India the capitalist economy where equality and independence are utopian elements. The New India would witness the dawn of gender equality and right to literacy, according to the saffron brigade. So far these two words, in the view of the saffron forces, have been missing in India. They try to impress upon the people that New India would bridge the gap between Bharat and India and help diminish the line of inequality.

The new India is an emerging superpower. It is the new India that is the rival of a resurgent China. It is the new India that the world is rushing to befriend and to invest in. Its time for New India to divorce Bharat.

The PM defined New India as an effective vision to fight against communalism, casteism and corruption, but in real terms Modis New India will have communalism, fascism and bigotry as its foundation. True enough, ushering in New India is a tactical one step forward in the direction of courting ultra-nationalism. One thing is absolutely clear: that New India will revive nationalism like never before

The nationalist wave is already sweeping the country. One dangerous outcome of this trend is the rise of reactionary sections which are quite proactive to describe anyone not subscribing to their philosophy of Hindutva as anti-national. Ultra-nationalism is New India. Intriguingly in the New India poverty will be understood as the lack of access to empowerment opportunity. This is simply a gimmick and an attempt to play with the sentiment of the poor.

For Modi, the New India concept is a course-correction populist narrative; nothing more than that. Explaining his idea of New India and Indians, he said it should be a country that offers opportunities to the poor. A new India where the poor do not want anything by way of charity, but seek opportunity to chart out their own course... Indians today are not waiting for governmental sops. They only want opportunities to be created for them, so that they can work for their livelihood and prosperity.

But the fact of matter is that Dalits and poor are the worst victims of the vigilantism and caste violence during Modis rule. Throughout India Dalits have been facing the worst nature of reprisal and oppression. They are the primary object of cow vigilantes. During last three years of Modi rule this has become the order of the day.

Modi claims that New India is a philosophy of resurrecting a vibrant India. It is a call to rescue the country of the scourge of filth, poverty, misery, lethargy, apathy and corruption. New India is about new values. New India is a dream of an India where digital technologies shall bridge the divide between the rich and poor. But how far is this correct? That is not yet clear. Nevertheless, one thing is quite apparent: the slogan of New India is a tactical ploy of the RSS to accomplish its task of ushering in Hindu Rashtra in the country. They resorted to this policy once the Sangh and Modi Government came to realise that the secular forces were ready to strike back. In fact they had nursed the impression that after the electoral rout the secular forces have lost their identity and zest for survival. But they were mistaken. Electoral politics and election results are not the barometer of the strength and perseverance of the secular forces. Once the Sangh came to realise this basic tenet, it made a paradigm shift in its strategy.

Innovation is life. When there is no inno-vation, there is stagnation, stated PM Narendra Modi, at the Champions of Change event organised by NITI Aayog in the Capital. One thing is quite perceptible: instead of depending on the common people and motivating them to take the country to the New India goal, Modi has been primarily focusing on the middle class and social elite as he banks on them for ushering in a state of Hindutva and winning the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

There is no disputing the fact that with changing times, we have to change our processes and systems. But a question crops up: what should be nature of the change? There is absolutely no reason to deny that Modi has been playing into the hands of the fascist capitalist forces. The deliberations at the Champions of Change makes it explicit that the entire focus of Modi was on the urban middle class.

New India is just more of the old stale and corrupt stuff packaged and sold as new, to the unsuspecting. Modi has been acting at the behest of the RSS. This is in fact one of the clever and astute moves of the Sangh. The leadership knows that the liberal urban middle class with Centrist mindset would be the gullible taker of this slogan as it nurses the feeling that the old rules and laws were major hindrances in the process of their material ascendance. They aspire for more material gain and easy access to power.

After they tasted the fruits of power during the last seven years, previously under the rule of the UPA and then under Modi and Kejriwal, they do not intend to lose the initiative and control over the governance. Earlier they could not speak out their minds, but after Modis ascension they got a person of their ilk who can present their views and articulate their desires. A simple look at their response to whatever Modi says is testimony to it.

These are the people who systematically denigrate and scorn the Congress and more especially Rahul Gandhi. These are the new swayamsevaks of the Sangh. A large majority now sees a justification for what they always believed, but were constrained from speaking out because of old-generation morality and political correctness. Interestingly, these people claim themselves as the real nationalists but do not hesitate to deride and revile the political leadership which fought for freedom and independence. They are following in the footsteps of the RSS; decry the political leadership which fought for independence but refrain from speaking against those out to undermine freedom and nationalism.

The author is a senior journalist and can be contacted at sriv52[at]gmail.com
The ostensible purpose of President Donald Trumps speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was to explain to the world why America First is an idea other countries should embrace. It was to be a deeply philosophical address, a White House official promised. Instead, the speech will inevitably be remembered for just two words: Rocket Man, Trumps derisive nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Never mind grand strategy. Trump made sure the medias favorite soundbite would be a schoolboy taunt and a threat of mass annihilation.

Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime, the president told the worlds diplomats. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

The problem with Trumps threat wasnt only the juvenile language he chose, or that it inevitably distracted attention from the rest of his message. His taunt, far from serving an underlying strategy, was probably counterproductive.

Ridiculing Kim Jong Un is more likely to persuade North Korea to increase its nuclear weapons and missiles than limit them (or) give them up, warned Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Successful diplomatic negotiators usually take pains to treat their adversaries with respect and provide them a dignified way to retreat from their original positions. That often means offering positive incentives as well as threats, carrots as well as sticks.

Trump didnt do any of that. He said the only way for North Korea to defuse the crisis was to give up its entire nuclear program. He offered no guarantee that the regime would be secure if it took that risky step (although his secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has said the United States does not seek regime change). Trump made a maximum demand, added a maximum threat and tossed in a gratuitous insult.

That approach may have worked in New York real estate, but its less likely to succeed against a deeply suspicious sovereign state with nuclear weapons.

Oh, yes: sovereignty. That was supposed to be the presidents deeply philosophical theme. Trump called repeatedly for a world of strong, sovereign nations in which each country would defend its own interests  a universal version of America First.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, he promised. We want harmony and friendship, not conflict and strife. We are guided by outcomes, not ideology.

But he added an important caveat. He said every government has two sovereign duties: to refrain from threatening other countries, and to respect the interests of their own people.

And he listed countries that apparently dont deserve all the benefits of sovereignty, because theyve broken one of those rules.

One, of course, was North Korea, whose nuclear program threatens its neighbors. Thats an easy case.

But he also denounced Venezuela, because its socialist government has inflicted terrible pain and suffering on (its) good people.  This situation is completely unacceptable.

And he denounced Iran, not only for interfering in other countries, but also for repressing its own citizens.

Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, he warned, and hinted, again, that the United States might walk away from the 2012 agreement under which Iran halted its nuclear program.

Sovereignty for me, in other words, but maybe not for thee.

In the case of Iran, Trump has now threatened to abandon a six-nation nuclear agreement his predecessor made, and added that a change of regime in Tehran would be a good idea, too. Why should North Korea expect better treatment? Those conflicting messages wont increase Kim Jong Uns interest in negotiating a deal.

Perhaps Trumps real target, though, was China. The presidents strategy has been to press leader Xi Jinping to impose tough sanctions on North Korea, and to warn that war is inevitable if diplomacy fails. So far, it hasnt worked. Xi has politely promised cooperation, but in practice hes acting as if he doesnt think Trump will pull the trigger.

Chinas strategic priorities are just different from those of the United States, Stewart M. Butler, a former State Department strategist, observed. Its hard to know how much more leverage we can get them to bring to bear.

Rocket Man isnt likely to impress Beijing, either. Insults are no longer their diplomatic style. Theyre more interested in predictability and stability.

Trump may think hes backing North Korea and China into a corner, but he risks backing himself into one at the same time. If North Korea crosses the red line the president has drawn  putting a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile  his bluff will have been called. And then he will face two bad outcomes: Back down or go to war. If the result is war, a war the United States doesnt want to fight, Tuesdays Rocket Man speech will be remembered as one of the steps that took us there.
Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2017 > ASEAN and the Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Time to Act

South-East Asia cannot ignore the Rohingya crisis any longer as it is not only about Myanmar but it has repercussions for the whole regional scenario. Although the issue had been brewing up for quite a few years, the international community realised it in 2015 when thousands of Rohingya refugees were marooned at sea for many days as they were not allowed in neighbouring Thailands and Malaysias coasts. Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesias initial refusal to take refugees abandoned in water received wide criticism from international quarters. The Phili-ppines did offer assistance, but that country being far away from the Rohingyas it was impractical.

This year on April 30, the ASEAN Summit took place on an integrated, peaceful, stable, and resilient ASEAN Community in the backdrop of the Rohingya crisis. However, the Rohingya issue was not discussed officially. Not taking up the Rohingya issue is part of the ASEANs guiding principle of non-interference in member-states internal affairs. However, ASEAN leaders have deviated from this principle many a time including in December 2016, when Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak protested against it. Similarly, during the ASEAN Foreign Ministers meeting in December 2016, Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman called for regional resolution of the Rohingya problem. However, at the informal Foreign Ministers meet in Yangon, members could not work out anything concrete. Further, on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit, Indonesian President Joko Widodo told Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi that regional cohesion is relative to cohesion in Myanmar. Irrespective of the reasons behind Indonesia and Malaysias concerns, it is imperative for the ASEAN, considered to be a successful regional organisation, to move beyond a reactive position and take a more pro-active approach.

So far the ASEAN states may have projected an inward-looking approach but now it is critical to recognise the Rohingya problem as an issue which demands immediate collective attention as it has reached a stage of spill-over with potential security inference for the entire region. The ASEAN has to go beyond establishing task forces to deal with the situation as instability in the area may seriously hamper trade and investment prospects which may jeopardise economic and political relations in both intra- as well as inter-regional spheres.

The ASEAN has often been reluctant to to act on any political crisis in the region as we have seen way back in 1999 in the East Timor crisis. However, at the 2003 Summit of the ASEAN in Bali, ASEAN leaders declared the Bali Concord II calling for formation of an ASEAN Security Community. Further, at the 27th ASEAN Summit in November 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) Blueprint 2025 formed part of ASEAN 2025: Forging Ahead Together. The ASEAN Community Vision 2025 consists of a Resilient, Inclusive, People-oriented, and People-centred ASEAN among other features. Now if the ASEAN wants it to be taken seriously as an impending Security Community, they have to adopt a coherent approach on political-security issues.

The ASEAN has to give due attention to the issue to protect it from division on ethno-religious lines with Muslims, Buddhists and Christians forming the major component of the ASEAN population. Another major challenge is fear of refugees, Rohingyas being soft targets for terrorist recruiting and terrorist-related activities. With the deepening of the crisis there are increasing chances of extremist organisations entering the field to lure them. It will not only be detrimental to the growth and development of the region, but will result in the growth of insurgency. ASEAN states have to work towards a diplomatic solution so as to ensure that the crisis is contained without further threat to the people, regional cohesion and extra-regional security ramifications.

The Rohingya crisis is not confined to the South-East Asian region, but it is affecting neighbouring South Asian states too. Apart from Thailand and Indonesia, Bangladesh and India are also reeling under the effects of refugees seeking asylum in these countries. Already, Bangladesh may have about 400,000 Rohingya refugees or even more. Bangladesh, which is struggling to ensure basic services to its own population of about 170 million, is under tremendous pressure due to the influx of a huge number of Rohingyas. India has also sent a consignment of relief materials to Bangladesh recently.

Although the ASEAN states may not like a direct confrontation among the member-states which may prove to be ineffective, definitely mediators and the diplomatic approach of the ASEAN should be pursued with vigour. Ultimately it is question of ASEAN solidarity and a testing time for the whole organisation which puts a question-mark on the groups ability to deal with an issue of trans-national impact. The ASEAN cannot continue to look powerless all the time nor can the ASEAN states refuse to take responsibility of refugees and force them to go to extra-regional states for refuge. The ASEAN states have to share the refugees till the situation improves.

The policy of non-intervention should pave the way for diplomatic efforts with continuos engagement.

The ASEAN is respected as an economic unit, a community with a collective identity. The ASEAN should show more accountability in taking care of the regional humanitarian crisis. In order to deal with conflicts and disasters affecting regional states, the ASEAN has established an ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre). This can be seen as promotion of humanitarian assistance beyond borders. However, the Centre has so far confined its humanitarian initiatives to cases of natural disasters.

In the final anaysis, the ASEAN states cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility to protect the refugees and it is high time that instead of some ad hoc mechanisms, Myanmar and the neighbouring countries work out a solution. The ASEAN should collectively rise to the occasion. With the ASEAN aiming at a security community, they have to work in tandem to resolve the refugee crisis created by the movement of Rohingyas of the Rakhine State in Myanmar. It is time to act and adopt a more transparent and strong approach to ensure they work together on critical issues, especially relating to regional tensions.

Dr Bharti Chhibber is teaching Political Science at the University of Delhi. Her Email is: bharti.chhibber[at]gmail.com
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In his State of the University address delivered Tuesday, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Ronnie Green laid out an ambitious vision for Nebraskas flagship college.

The speech detailed record enrollment this year and an aspirational goal to enroll more than 30,000 students by 2025. Other future aims discussed included keeping college affordable for Nebraskans and growing the universitys diversity efforts.

But the announcement that Green plans to pursue as much as $8.5 million in additional cuts next year  beyond those previously publicized  to prepare UNL for future budget crunches is at odds with a university focused on growth.

These two things, growing the university and continuing to cut millions of dollars, are fast approaching a point where they become mutually exclusive.

For the University of Nebraska system to remain the economic driver  a $3.9 billion economic impact across its five campuses  Nebraskans take for granted, a further lack of funding will have more adverse effects on those outcomes. Less is not more, and organizations cannot cut themselves into prosperity.

The Nebraska Legislature reduced $13 million from NUs funding. That compounded $36 million in increased costs, including to salary and benefits packages, the states Regents institutions faced entering this school year. UNL alone is identifying how to cut $11 million this year and $6 million next year, while also raising tuition rates in both years. But thats before Greens plan to seek even deeper reductions in spending.

Meanwhile, Nebraska faces the prospect of additional declines in its tax receipts, following recent reports that fell short of even the downward revisions. These anticipated revenue declines no doubt prompted Green to proactively hunt for additional cost savings that he said will affect the universitys academic programs.

With other looming funding questions at the Capitol in light of negative trends, this is no doubt a difficult time to be a state senator. Not every entity can be fully funded, despite their worthy goals  including NU.

But few have as large and wide-ranging of a positive impact, one that stretches from border to border, as the University of Nebraska. The direct and indirect benefit of university education and research serves urban and rural residents, businesses and schools alike.

In his remarks Tuesday, Green said: How to budget through a downturn in the state economy at the same time you have this momentum and this growth that is happening at the university, thats the challenge we have.

Indeed, Nebraskas lawmakers and institutions of higher learning face a steep challenge heading into uncertain financial times. But each funding cut brings the states Regents campuses closer to deciding to continue their critical mission or reducing their statewide impact.
MARTINSVILLE  A historic house that once was facing being torn down now has a second lease on life.

Its the rectory of Christ Episcopal Church, at 325 E. Church St., on the other side of the church from the churchs Parish House.

The churchs new rector, Nicolas Nick Hull, and his wife, Leandra Burke, say that the house is not what drew them to Martinsville, but it was definitely the icing on the cake.

To destroy or save

Built in the 1940s, the house is part of federal, state and local historic registers as a noted example of Colonial Revival architecture. It is known as the Charles C. Fishburne House, named for a former rector of the church.

The house has an interesting history, Hull said. The porch on the side nearest the church once was the rectors office, he said, and a public area for parishioners and visitors.

Among the houses noted characteristics are a cornice line of simple, molded wood; double-hung sash windows with shutters; a porch with paired square columns, a pediment and square-post balustrade; and a single-story addition with a shed roof. Keystone lintel is atop first-floor windows, which have wood panel aprons below them.

It has four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.

It was used as a rectory until the early 1980s, when Ed Covert came as rector, Debbie Lewis said. Covert wanted to build equity in his own home, Sue Rosser said.

The church then rented out the rectory. Most recently it was used for professional services by counselor Julia Hall. Hall moved her business to Cleveland Avenue when the church decided to do something different with the property, about two years ago. The money the church received in rent basically offset the rectors housing allowance, Rosser said.

Through the years, the houses condition deteriorated, and the church voted to tear it down in 2013. However, since it was on historic registries, the church had to get permission first.

The church put the request through the Martinsville Architectural Review Board, which in September 2014 denied permission to demolish the house.

The ARB denied the request because demolition due to neglect is unacceptable, and thats what it was. We had neglected it over the years, Rosser said.

During the time the church was vying to get the house demolished, the city received 13 calls, letters and emails from the public about the proposal, according to Bulletin reports. All but one was in opposition to the demolition, and eight of those voicing opposition were Christ Episcopal members.

Resurrection of the rectory

We like to call it a resurrection of the rectory, Rosser said.

Sue Rosser was the driving force in getting the rectory restored, Carol Deaton said. Deaton is now the churchs junior warden, the person in charge of care of the building and grounds.

Trent Bowles, the junior warden at the time of the renovation, used his expertise for construction in getting it done, Lewis said. Zach Foster was the crew leader.

Rosser said that to finance the renovations, the church had a variety of fundraisers, including a rummage sale. It also received donations from the congregation and used some funds in different places that were kind of dormant. We just dug deep.

The church ran into more than we thought with the scope of the renovations, Lewis said. The work was mostly cosmetic, she said, with some repairs due to areas affected by water damage and electric. The floors were refinished, and the kitchen was redesigned.

The house was completely rewired to code, Rosser said, and a new heating and air conditioning system was installed.

Anybody whos done any restoration of a home knows that whatever you plan for it to be, it goes way beyond that, Rosser said. She declined to say how much the renovations cost.

To get the cosmetic work done, people from the church adopted rooms, Cari Zimmer said.

We created teams and had a lot of people involved, Lewis said.

Rosser said that in general, rectors used to live in rectories near the church, and in recent decades they started preferring to buy their own houses instead. Now, though, she is seeing the trend reverse itself: Rectors are preferring to live in rectories, in part to be near the church, and also to avoid the potential hassle of having to sell a house when they move to new churches.

The renovation of Christ Episcopal rectory, she added, could not have turned out better. Now its just a jewel. Its an absolute jewel. Its a loving home.

The rector and his wife

Hull grew up in Michigan and Georgia. He was raised Catholic, he said, and had his first exposure to the Episcopal church when he was a teenager.

He attended Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee, the only Episcopal college, he said, and there met Burke.

Various outreach projects he did as a college student were meaningful to him, he said. He helped with a halfway house for people overcoming drug addictions and also with Habitat for Humanity.

His major was religious studies, and he went through the standard two-year discernment process. Thats an Episcopal program required for people before they enter seminary.

The point is to help the students determine the right field for them, be it ministry or something else. Thirty-five began the program, he said, but only six of them went on to seminary.

He went to the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, from which he was graduated in 2014. His first professional position was as a curate  sort of a junior priest paired with a mentor  in Columbus, Georgia. He and Burke married during that time.

Meanwhile, the couple were looking to make their life halfway between both sets of parents, his in Dayton, Georgia, and hers in Northern Virginia. Though it was Hull looking for a job, I made a point that Leandra was part of every step of the process, he said, and the couple would decide together where to live.

He interviewed for the position at Christ Episcopal by Skype, then visited.

The couple knew immediately that Martinsville was the town for them, they said. I fell in love with everybody, Burke said.

He started as rector on Oct. 10  the day before the couples first wedding anniversary. We loved this church during the interview process, he said, but were just completely taken aback by the welcome we got once they moved to Martinsville. We enjoy the community too.

Moving into the house was a big step for the couple, Hull said.

We came for the community, and the house was a nice bonus. We were really intimidated  this was a tremendous step up for us, he said.

Their apartment in Columbus was the size of the rectorys living and dining room, he said, and they didnt have furniture to fill the rectory.

The couple laughed when they recalled a visit from a relative. When is your furniture getting here? Hull said the uncle asked. It is here, the couple told him.

Once the new rector and his wife moved in, several members of the congregation also gave them furniture for the house, women from the church said.

The couple love the outdoors, Hull said, and are on the water as much as possible. They love the natural features of the Henry County area, they said, and often take their dogs out on the river.

Burke is pursuing a masters degree in library information from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and she is a student teacher at the library of Patrick Henry Elementary School, with Amy Nester. She is slated for May graduation.

Im really happy to be here, she said. She did not grow up going to church, she added, and appreciates the support and friendships being part of a church provides.

Its fun hopping over for church and Loaves and Fishes (the churchs community meal), and the kids are so sweet, she said.

They laugh about the ways theyve had to get accustomed to small town life.

The second time they took a walk through town, he said, a cars horn beeped at them. Being from a big city, he initially took offense, thinking the beep was confrontational  until he realized it was to call attention to the fact that the driver was waving a greeting. Now, the couple said laughing, they measure their walks by how many friendly beeps and waves they get, the more the better.
HARTFORD, CONN. -- Two people were killed and several others injured in a pair of shootings that took place just miles and hours apart, Hartford police reported Saturday.

Police responded to reports of a shooting at 16 Durham St. around 7 p.m. Friday, Deputy Chief Brian Foley told the Hartford Courant.

A 28-year-old man, who had reportedly been shot in the back of the head while sitting in a vehicle outside the home, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Foley said.

Another man, who had also been in the vehicle, was grazed in the head, but alert and talking when emergency crews arrived, according to police.

Hartford Police said the vehicle the men were in appeared to have multiple bullet holes and the back window was shattered. Bullets found on scene were from two different calibers and appeared to be shot from close range, leading police to believe more than one gun was involved in the incident, Foley told the news outlet.

Hours later, police responded to a 12:35 a.m. ShotSpotter notification at 1170 Albany Ave, where they found four men lying in the street, Foley reported.

One of the men was pronounced dead on scene, while another, who was reportedly found with a gun in his hand, had a serious eye injury and was considered in critical condition, police said. Foley noted that the wounded man had a permit for the gun.

Emergency crews transported two other men to St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center with gunshot injuries that appeared to be non-life-threatening, the Courant reported.

Foley said police are investigating whether the two shootings were related.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available.
This story has been updated to reflect the status of defendant Melissa Mimitz.

SPRINGFIELD -- A Connecticut woman charged with kidnapping and home invasion is being held without bail for a so-called dangerousness hearing next week.

Lily Bodenlos, 29, of Naugatuck, pleaded not guilty Friday in Springfield District Court to seven charges related to an alleged home invasion and robbery on Aug. 30 in Springfield. A second defendant, Melissa Mimitz, 37, of Newington, is facing the same charges, but did not appear in court on Friday.

A female victim was allegedly tied up and maced after the suspects entered her Brentwood Street home around 10:30 a.m., according to police.

The two women were arrested in Connecticut on Thursday.

At a prosecutor's request, Judge William Rota ordered Bodenlos held for a hearing Wednesday to determine if they pose too great a risk to the defendant or the public to be released on bail. The judge also impounded the arrest report.

Assistant District Attorney Mary Sandstrom recommended that Bodenlos be held without bail.

Both suspects face seven felony counts, including home invasion with a firearm, armed and masked robbery with a firearm, kidnapping with a firearm and four counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

If a judge grants the prosecution's request, Bodenlos will be held without right to bail for 120 days. Following that period, the prosecution can request a second detention order for another 120 days.
SPRINGFIELD -- Local elected officials and residents urged state legislators on Friday to give urban communities like Springfield zoning control over addiction centers and group homes to prevent "oversaturation" of vulnerable neighborhoods.

Approximately 30 people attended a public hearing on the issue at City Hall, conducted by the Legislature's Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery. The local officials and residents spoke in favor of a bill that would require developments defined as "substance use and alcohol addiction centers and clinics" to go through local zoning regulations and approvals.

Currently, a law known as the Dover Amendment exempts those facilities from zoning regulation if they offer some educational function, officials said. Such developments also do not need City Council approval.

Mayor Domenic J. Sarno, among the proponents of changing the Dover Amendment, said communities need to have some system of "checks and balances" over group homes. Some organizations use the Dover Amendment to avoid accountability, he said, and oversaturation leads to "quality-of-life issues" and reduced property values, and causes some neighbors to sell their homes and leave Springfield.

Sarno said he strongly supported the location of the Western Massachusetts Correctional Addiction Center on Mill Street. He said the facility has been "embraced" by the surrounding neighborhood, although some residents who raised concerns.

Jim Goodwin, president and chief executive of the Center for Human Development, said the Dover Amendment is a good law and protects well-run and well-regulated group homes from discriminatory zoning decisions. Changing the Dover Amendment would address zoning issues, not "bad" group homes, he said.

Residents cited the example of the Bridge Home, which opened a sober house on Worthington Street in 2016. The project was opposed by residents but allowed without City Council approval. It closed after less than a year, and the building was sold as a single-family residence.

Those speaking in favor of the bill included the lead sponsor, state Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, D-Springfield, and City Councilors Michael Fenton, E. Henry Twiggs and Melvin Edwards.

Residents of the several neighborhoods including McKnight, Maple High-Six Corners and the North End said there are too many group homes in concentrated areas, often among beautiful Victorian homes.

Maria Perez and Carmen Santana, both residents of the North End, said there are at least 16 group homes and substance abuse centers in their neighborhood.

"It's staggering," Santana said. "It should be spread through the state."

Twiggs said of the 30 houses on Westminster Street in the McKnight neighborhood, where he lives, there are five group homes.

Edwards said a dozen or more group homes are concentrated within walking distance of each other in the Maple-Mill Street area. "You don't have to drive to see there is an issue of oversaturation," he said.

Goodwin said his agency has 47 group homes in the region, with seven in Springfield. CHD has a larger number of homes in Chicopee and Holyoke, and also has homes in communities such as Longmeadow and East Longmeadow, he said.



Goodwin, in response to allegations of poorly managed group homes in Springfield, said the Center for Human Development facilities are well-run, and under heavy regulation and inspection. In addition, investments are made to improve the properties that are purchased for group homes, he said.

Gonzalez praised CHD, but said there are overburdened areas of the city.

Under his bill, addiction centers would not be exempt from zoning regulations "without first obtaining the approval of the legislative body of the city or town" in cases where it is a low-income city or town, defined as a community with average median income equal to 60 percent or less of the average median income of the commonwealth.

The provision would not close existing group homes, but would ideally lead to services and programs being spread out across the state, Gonzalez said.

"I am not saying that Springfield has too many addiction clinics, " Gonzalez said after the hearing. "I am only talking about over-saturation of group homes in neighborhoods that qualify under the Dover Amendment. I am concerned we are not providing these same type of programs in the suburban communities where opiate addiction has also caused a lot of families' pain."
U.S. Senator Jon Tester https://www.tester.senate.gov/ today announced $8 million in federal grant funding for the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) to support reading education across Montana.

The funding comes from the Striving Readers Comprehensive Literary Program and will strengthen pre-literary skills, reading and writing for infants through 12th grade students. OPI will grant out the money to local Montana school districts.

"Every student in Montana deserves a quality public education and these resources will help our local public schools deliver for our students," said Tester, a former teacher. "When students have a strong foundation in reading and writing, they will have success in the future."

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, Tester is a longtime supporter https://www.tester.senate.gov/files/Letters/2014_04_11-%20TO%20Secretary%20Arne%20Duncan-Dept%20of%20Education-%20Striving%20Readers.pdf of the Striving Readers Program. He recently voted for legislation that funds the program.
"Im in the people development business," Bodnar said. "My passion, my purpose, my energy in life has come from working to develop teams and helping people reach their full potential."

KEILA SZPALLER [email protected]

http://missoulian.com/news/local/seth-bodnar-university-of-montana-should-be-premier-flagship-in/article_3c990c4e-d0b6-5a93-be4f-a78568ddc8ab.html

***

UM presidential candidate Bodnar emphasizes leadership experience at forum

The UC Theater at the University of Montana swelled to a full house moments before a forum opened for UMs most nontraditional candidate for the presidencySeth Bodnar.

Among his accolades, Bodnar cites working as a Green Beret in the Armys Special Forces, earning two masters degrees from Oxford, and spending time as both a visiting economics faculty member at West Point and a senior executive at General Electric.

Courtney Brockman

http://www.montanakaimin.com/news/um-presidential-candidate-bodnar-emphasizes-leadership-experience-at-forum/article_a2e2acaa-a08f-11e7-922d-fb3b0330bd8b.html

***

GE executive Seth Bodnar thinks his leadership skills are enough to lead UM

A "once in a lifetime cadet," Erwin said Bodners atypical background also has prepared him to become a "once in a generation type of leader."

Courtney Brockman

http://www.montanakaimin.com/news/ge-executive-seth-bodnar-thinks-his-leadership-skills-are-enough/article_6b789720-9f36-11e7-9c55-fb8300dcadbb.html

***

3rd UM presidential candidate says lack of administrative

By Eric Clements

Video Report: http://www.kpax.com/story/36434837/3rd-um-presidential-candidate-says-lack-of-administrative-experience-is-a-strength

***

UM Presidential Finalist: Seth Bodnar

"We ought to be out there talking about our goal to make this the safest campus in the country, says Bodnar. That is first and foremost. So, as the president, safety of students is my number one priority. You cant learn if youre not safe."

By David Winter

http://www.abcfoxmontana.com/story/36434802/um-presidential-finalist-seth-bodnar

***

Open to all  Schedule of UM Public Forums for Four Final Presidential Candidates Starting Sept. 18 in Missoula http://www.matr.net/article-78807.html

***

University of Montana President Candidate Andrew Feinstein listens well, raises morale http://www.matr.net/article-78830.html

University of Montana President candidate finalist Mirta Martin believes in higher education, University of Montana http://www.matr.net/article-78774.html
CEDAR RAPIDS  If education funding in Iowa received a grade, some education experts and legislators said Friday that it would be a poor one.

Discrepancies in funding equality affects almost half of all of Iowas 333 school districts, Superintendent of the Davenport Community School District Art Tate said during a panel at The Gazettes Iowa Ideas conference.

Tate said his district has been shortchanged about $2.7 million a year due to the spending formula. With 66 percent of his students on free or reduced-price lunch, he said, There are not enough assets to serve our students.

Before the 1970s, public schools in Iowa mostly were funded through local property taxes until the state increased its aid as a portion of the school funding formula.

The formula allows for some districts to spend as much as $175 more per students than others, meaning an additional hundreds of thousands of dollars for some schools general funds.

Although state lawmakers review the funding system every five years, state Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, said nothing has been fixed.

The legislature does not have the political will to get it done, Mascher said.

The panel discussion also turned to how funding should be allocated, a topic to be discussed in the upcoming state legislative session. School districts currently receive an increase in the percentage of state supplemental aid from the budget, depending on overall revenue.

State Rep. Walt Rogers, R-Cedar Falls and chairman of the Iowa House education committee, said he predicts legislators to start at the current standing of 44 percent of the states general budget and go from there.

The biggest thing tightening our budget is Medicaid, Rogers said. Theres been a 6 percent increase overall budget-wise (in Medicaid funding) over the last 10 years.

But Tammy Wawro, Iowa State Education Association president, pushed back, saying that having a percentage of an unknown number  as the general budget depends on still-incoming revenue  leaves much to the unknown.

That doesnt help us plan or make me feel comfortable about where were at, Wawro said.

Instead, Wawro said teachers should be guaranteed a baseline within their incomes and benefits. This would be key, she said, in recruiting and retaining quality educators in the states districts.

If we cannot be competitive with states outside of Iowa, we are going to be in a world of hurt and we are not going to see kids staying in the state to teach here, Wawro said.

In a discussion on school transportation, Rogers said theres a need for more innovation and efficiency.

Allocating large portions of their state aid on their transportation can force some school districts to cut advanced-placement courses and other programs, Wawro said.

Mascher also said a solution for rural schools, which struggle to offer more programs, can be found in an initiative through the Iowa Department of Education that offers high school courses online.

However, just having conversations on these issues could show that effort is being made in the right direction.

Putting the stake in the ground is huge, but I think were there, Tate said.
IOWA CITY  Health care was at the top of voters agendas at a town hall meeting with U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa City on Friday, even as the latest attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act hit a roadblock.

About an hour before Ernsts public event, Arizona Sen. John McCain announced he would vote no on the Graham-Cassidy health care bill, likely dooming its chances. McCain joins fellow Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky in opposition, meaning the bill cannot lose any more votes and still pass. When Ernst announced the news to the crowd gathered at the Iowa Memorial Union on the University of Iowa campus, she was met with deafening cheers.

Still, audience members made clear health care is a primary concern, asking the senator question after question on the topic. She said she agreed with them that a solution must be found  but the question remains what that solution will be.

She called Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders proposal for a single-payer health care system, a pie in the sky, questioning how it would be paid for, and said she hopes to find a bipartisan solution going forward. In the interim, she said she worries for families facing rising premiums and loss of choices with just one insurer, Medica, remaining on Iowas health insurance exchange for 2018.

Several hundred people flowed into the Iowa Memorial Union for the event, the third town hall this week for Ernst after appearances in Floyd and Wayne counties as part of her 99-county tour.

Johnson County made its status as Iowas most liberal enclave known with frequent loud cheers, boos and shouting and a sea of red and green signs reading Agree or Disagree that audience members waved enthusiastically.

The atmosphere was, at times, verbally combative, but when one attendee thanked Ernst for coming to Iowa City even knowing the reception she was likely to face, the crowd cheered.

After the event, Ernst told reporters she thinks it is important to hear from constituents, perhaps especially so when they dont agree with her.

It is important that people can get out and express how they feel about different issues. It certainly does inform me on how people are thinking, she said. I know tensions are running high ... but Iowa has once again proven that we can have civil discourse, and we can discuss these issues, hear from constituents and do it in a manner that will be productive.

One audience member who tried to yell out his question and was asked to sit was Emiliano Martinez, a University of Iowa senior and president of Hawkeyes for Dream Iowa, which organized a rally in Hubbard Park after the event. The organization advocates for so-called Dreamers, the undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children. They were given protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  or DACA  program implemented by President Barack Obama in 2012 and rescinded by President Donald Trump in early September. Trump said the program would end after six months and that it is up to Congress to find a solution in that time.

Another person later asked Ernst the same question Martinez was yelling: what will she do to help the Dreamers?

I do support finding a legal status, a permanent legal status for our Dreamers, Ernst replied.

Talking with media after the town hall, she said she is aware of three or four bills in the works to address the issue. Ernst said the challenge will be finding consensus and balance on a path forward.

Martinez said he was satisfied by her answer, but remains wary.

My concerns are for the end line, he said. We would hate to see DACA happen but be used to bargain for an increased budget for Immigration Customs and Enforcement or for deporting the parents of Dreamers.


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Erin N.Haynes, HeidiSucharew, Timothy J.Hilbert, et al. Impact of air manganese on child neurodevelopment in East Liverpool, Ohio. NeuroToxicology (2017). DOI:10.1016/j.neuro.2017.09.001

The research team worked along with a trained registered nurse from East Liverpool. The participants and their caregivers were assessed for their cognitive learning and were given questionnaires at the time of taking their blood and hair samples.In this study, the research team that increased Mn in hair samples was found to be linked to declining in full-scale IQ, processing speed, and working memory.Manganese, an element found in combination with iron and various other minerals plays a crucial role in growth and development of the brain. However, excessive exposure to manganese can lead to neurotoxicity.Manganese is widely used in the production of steel, batteries, alloys, and fertilizers. It is also added to unleaded gasoline.East Liverpool school district officials in 2013 approached Erin Haynes, DrPH, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health, who is the lead author of the study.The research team was prompted by concerns about students' academic performance and found that Mn concentrations have exceeded the reference levels given by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than a decade.Haynes said that there are socioeconomic issues at play and are also compounded by significant environmental exposures.Haynes has collaborated with the Kent State East Liverpool Campus, and the community group - Save our County Inc., which was formed in 1982 by East Liverpool residents in response to a hazardous waste incinerator, which was constructed in their community.Haynes said, "Children may be especially sensitive to the neurotoxic effects of ambient Mn exposure, as their brains are undergoing a dynamic process of growth and development."In East Liverpool, the school district superintendent requested to test students for manganese levels along with neuropsychological tests after being concerned about the elevated airborne levels of Mn.A pilot study overseen by Haynes found that the levels of Mn were doubled in school children, reported the research team from other cohort CARES study.Therefore, further research was pursued to investigate the link between Mn exposure and cognition of the child.East Liverpool is located in northeast Ohio along the Ohio River and has established a history of environmental exposures. The EPA records showed that the levels of manganese concentrations were elevated since 2000.In 2005, EPA regarded East Liverpool to be a potential environmental justice area, afflicted with environmental exposures.In 2010, EPA reported that detection by all monitors in East Liverpool showed that of manganese concentrations have "consistently exceeded" the health-based guidelines that were set by the agency.About only 7.3 percent of the residents of East Liverpool have a college degree, and the declining population is now just 11,000.The East Liverpool school district reports a higher than average percentage of students in special education (19%) compared with the Ohio state average of 13 percent. The school board heard Haynes' research study on manganese in Marietta, Ohio.Communities Actively Researching Exposure Study's (CARES) original location was Marietta. The study was initiated in 2008, which was based on the concerns from the community about exposure to manganese that was from a nearby metallurgical manufacturing company.Cambridge, Ohio serves as the comparison community, and ever since, the CARES research has expanded into East Liverpool.In previous studies, the CARES research team found that whether too low or too high levels of manganese can lead to lower neurodevelopment.Marietta and East Liverpool have the highest levels of manganese in the country, said Haynes, who continues to study these areas by further including neuroimaging.Haynes said, "As we continue to advance our understanding of the impact of manganese on neurodevelopment, and help to define the lines between essential benefit and toxicological harm."In this study, scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, University of Albany, New York State Department of Health and the late Roxanne Burns, Ph.D., chair of the biology department at Kent State University East Liverpool Campus were also part of the study. Dr. Roxanne Burns had been a staunch supporter of this study and the community, and the research team is deeply indebted to her contributions, explained Haynes.Source: Medindia
We often hear about crew members meeting unfortunate fates on the sets of films and any real controversy settled with certain compensation. However, this time it's pretty different and serious. The death of two stuntmen has been plastered all over the news and stars are definitely not working in favour of Actor Tom Cruise And director Doug Liman. The two are being held responsible for the death of the two aforementioned crew members who died on the set of American Made'.

The families of the victims have blamed the actor and the director and said that their demand to shoot a high-risk, action-packed motion picture is the main cause of their death. The families of pilots Alan Purwin and Carlos Berl who died during filming a dangerous stunt have blamed Cruise and Liman and have decided to sue them.

(c) Instagram

According to the document obtained by The Blast, Purwin had complained to his executive producer before the unfortunate incident took place, stating to him that the stunt was one of the most dangerous projects he has ever come across.

As per another document that was acquired by People.com, it read, The demands of filming in Colombia, together with Cruise's and director Doug Liman's enthusiasm for multiple takes of lavish flying sequences, added hours to every filming day and added days to the schedule."

(c) Cross Creek Pictures

While these two lost their lives, another crew member survived but has been left paralyzed. The lawsuit also claims that necessary measures were not taken by the filmmakers and the pilots were made to perform dangerous flying sequences.

Purwin also mentioned an incident where he insisted and pleased with Tom Cruise and told him, Caesar and I won't be coming home in a box.'

Lapses in planning, coordinating, scheduling, and flight safety that was the Defendants' responsibility resulted in an unqualified and unprepared pilot being pressed into service for a dangerous flight in a vintage aircraft across an unfamiliar mountain pass in bad weather, states the document.

(c) Cross Creek Pictures

The lawsuit also states that a producer had to send a letter to the insurance company complaining about the madness Cruise and Liam's decision to pictures a very dangerous and threatening sequence.

DL (Director Liman) and TC (Cruise) (are) adding entire scenes and aerial shots on the fly. Had to bring in Uni Safety to help wrangle them. In the last 48 hours this has become the most insane s*** I've ever dealt with, it read.

(c) Cross Creek Pictures

The families are grieving and have said that Cruise could have been in the stunt himself as he is a qualified pilot and is very well aware with the Aerostar plane and the routing.

The plaintiffs believe that the crash could have been easily avoided if proper measures were taken.
MASON CITY | A trial date has been set for a civil case involving G8 Development, the city of Mason City and the Mason City Chamber of Commerce.

The trial will begin at 9 a.m. Nov. 14, 2018, in Cerro Gordo County District Court. Judge Christopher C. Foy has been assigned to the trial.

On July 18, G8 Development filed suit against Mason City and the Chamber of Commerce Foundation, claiming the city was in breach of contract.

The city and the Chamber both filed responses to the lawsuit and requested a jury trial.

According to court documents, the amount in controversy exceeds $10,000, though no specific amount of compensation has been requested by G8 Development.

The city of Mason City rejected almost all of the claims made in lawsuit filed by a San Diego developer who failed to build a downtown hotel, according to court documents.

In the lawsuit, Philip Chodur of G8 Development makes several claims against the city and the chamber, namely claiming the city was in breach of contract.

When the city terminated the development contract, G8 claimed the termination was not in good faith. At that time, the city said the developer had defaulted on the project.

The response stated that the city has acted in good faith and added that G8 did not act in good faith in the performance of obligations under the terms of the development contract.

Much like the city, the Chamber in court documents rejected almost all of the claims made in lawsuit as well, saying G8s claims are barred by the doctrine of unclean hands.

The doctrine argument is a defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith, with "unclean hands.

The term is used within contract law. Through the doctrine, the plaintiff is not entitled to a remedy since the plaintiff has unclean hands.

G8's petition names Chamber Director Robin Anderson and her alleged role in the interference, claiming she had secret meetings with certain members of the City Council and encouraged them to terminate G8's contract in favor of Gatehouse Capital.

G8 claims that the interference and alleged secret meetings caused the city to terminate the development contract, affecting the company's ability to perform and complete its obligations under the contract.

The Chamber denied the existence of secret meetings and denies that it interfered with the contract.

Chodur filed a similar lawsuit alleging the city of Vista, California, breached its contract with him on a condominium, commercial and office space project, according to an article published in the San Diego Union Tribune in October 2015. The suit claimed the city changed agreements for the project.

Chodur filed a claim with the city for $3 million, which was rejected. He then filed a suit for breach of contract, which is still pending.
CEDAR RAPIDS | A Mason City man who pleaded guilty to possession child pornography was sentenced Thursday to more than 10 years in federal prison.

At the plea hearing, Jeffery Landheer, 47, admitted he knowingly possessed child pornography on a computer hard rive from 2009 to 2016, according to a news release.

Landheer was sentenced 121 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade in Cedar Rapids. Special assessments of $5,100 were imposed and Landheer must also serve a 15-year term of supervised release.

He must comply with all sex offender registration and public notification requirements.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Mason City Police Department.

This case was brought forward as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Led by the U.S. Attorneys Offices and the Criminal Divisions Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, H.E Ioannis Kasoulides, the Minister of Foreign ffairs of the Arab Republic of Egypt, H.E Sameh Shoukry and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic, H.E Nikos Kotzias held a trilateral meeting today on the margins of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York.



This trilateral consultations mechanism, which was launched in New York five years ago, reaffirms the mutual commitment of the three states to cooperate and work towards promoting security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean region and facilitates cooperation in this respect.



The Ministers reviewed the progress on the implementation of projects in priority areas agreed during previous trilateral Summits. They welcomed ongoing cooperation in the fields of energy, agriculture, maritime transport, ICT, tourism, trade, and investment. Cooperation between diasporas is an additional promising field.



The Ministers expressed commitment to intensify cooperation in these fields, also in view of the upcoming trilateral Summit of the Heads of State / Government to be held in Nicosia on the 21 November 2017.



The Ministers welcomed the holding of the 7th EU-Egypt Association Council on the 25 July 2017 and the adoption of the jointly negotiated EU-Egypt Partnership Priorities that pave the way for a reinforced, mutually beneficial bilateral partnership leading towards a stronger strategic engagement in areas of common interest.



The Ministers expressed satisfaction for the outstanding cooperation on regional and international affairs, including in the framework of the UN, where currently Egypt is a non-permanent member of the UNSC, and the EU.



The Ministers also reiterated satisfaction with the results of the 2nd Rhodes Conference for Security and Stability that took place in May 2017.

The Ministers welcomed the upcoming 2nd Athens Conference on Religions and Cultural Pluralism and Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East, to take place on 29-31 October 2017, as a forum of enhancing tolerance and better protection of cultural and religious communities in the region.



The Ministers engaged in a wide-ranging discussion on a number of regional issues of mutual concern, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as other developments in the Middle East (Syria, Libya, the fight against terrorism) and their impact on our common region. The important, constructive role of Egypt in the resolution of these conflicts was particularly highlighted.



The Ministers agreed to intensify efforts to tackle regional challenges, to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, increase information sharing and promote regional security, long-term stability and prosperity. The Foreign Ministers of Cyprus and Greece expressed solidarity to the people and the Government of Egypt who are suffering from acts of terrorism which seek to destabilize the country.



The Ministers reiterated that deliberate destruction and looting of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq is an act of barbarity substantially contributing to the financing of terrorist groups. They also expressed support on the need to further address the aspect of trafficking of archaeological objects obtained through looting or illegal excavations into the agenda of countering terrorism financing.



Regarding the ongoing refugee and migratory crisis, the Ministers agreed that effective management is the responsibility not only of neighbouring States and of Europe but also of the international community as a whole. To this end, initiatives should be taken to address the root causes of this complex phenomenon (including wars, conflicts and lack of stability in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere), through cooperation with countries of origin and transit. The Ministers also expressed appreciation for Egypts efforts to address migration challenges, by accommodating refugees and migrants and working to prevent illegal migration flows as well as smuggling and trafficking of human beings.



The Ministers reaffirmed unwavering support to the efforts of the Government of the Republic of Cyprus for a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem that will reunify Cyprus in a viable, functional state in line with UNSC resolutions and international law, without outdated security arrangements which allow for the right of foreign military intervention and without foreign troops. They stressed that the United Nations remains the forum through which a settlement can be achieved and that UNFICYPs presence is indispensable, as long as Cyprus remains under illegal Turkish military occupation.



The Ministers expressed resolve to strengthen cooperation with a view to promoting good neighbourly relations, regional stability, peace and prosperity. They also reiterated that this cooperation is founded upon well-established principles of international law. They emphasized the universal character of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and stressed their commitment to proceed expeditiously with the negotiations on the delimitations of maritime zones where appropriate.



The Ministers emphasized and re-affirmed their commitment to mobilize all their capabilities to effectively promote common values and work towards unleashing the full potential of our neighbourhood to the benefit of the peoples of our countries and of the wider region.




Mr President,

Mr Secretary General,

Dear Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,





Mr President,



I would like first of all to wish every success to the new Secretary General Mr Guterres and to reaffirm our full support to his work.



Allow me also to congratulate you on both your election to the office of President of this 72nd General Assembly and the choice of this years main topic.



Our world is changing rapidly today. We are going through the second machine era. An era when machines no longer constitute the extension of physical strength, but rather produce spiritual wealth and knowledge. Machines that are faster and smaller, yet have an immense impact on our daily lives. On the way we work and produce. On the way we communicate and interact. This trend can be described as the fourth industrial revolution.



This new era brings with it innovations and advantages, but also challenges, especially for states. Challenges that they need to face effectively if they are to survive in todays complex international reality.



States have to show resilience and meet the needs of their people for more human rights, communication, growth and innovation.



They have to evolve. But their evolution is certaintly linked to the evolution of the Organization itself. Will the UN be able to follow these developments and adapt to the new emerging reality?



In the light of this double adaptation, this time is extremely critical and requires the promotion of reforms that will make the UN capable of remaining relevant in an ever changing world, one that is very different from the one that existed in 1945.



If the UN is to keep its capacity to uphold its mandate, it also needs to evolve and meet the challenges before us.



As insecurity and instability still abound in large parts of our world, Greece is formulating a multidimensional foreign policy with a view to actively contributing to peace through putting forward concrete ideas at international fora and regional organizations, stability through political initiatives.



More specifically, we favor the prospect of broadening the agenda of the EU-UN institutionalized dialogue and cooperation to an extensive array of issues of global concern.



As a vision, we all want to see a world free of Weapons of Mass Destruction.



In this framework, we strongly condemn this latest test and North Koreas ongoing illegal nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes which seriously endanger regional and international peace and security.



Contemplating developments in disarmament and non-proliferation over the past year, I believe that it is imperative, now more than ever, to seek avenues of dialogue with the participation of nuclear states. This could be the vehicle to bridge the gap between the step-by-step approach towards nuclear disarmament and the immediate non-verifiable total ban.





Mr President,



Situated close to what continues to be an extremely turbulent region like the Middle East and parts of North Africa, Greece is a pillar of stability.



In this context, we have recently undertaken many initiatives, such as the Rhodes Conference for Security and Stability and the Athens Conference on Religious and Cultural Pluralism and Peaceful Co-existence in the Middle East, as well as the newly established Ancient Civilizations Forum (ACForum), which was held the last time only yesterday, here in New York.



The Rhodes Conference focuses on a positive agenda of cooperation between 20 European and Arab countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, with the aim of fostering stability and security in the region.



I would also like to mention that alongside Cyprus, in the framework of promoting peace and stability in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, we have established a number of trilateral forms of cooperation which include Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine.



Our main objective is to develop a positive, manifold agenda of cooperation in international affairs, focusing on synergies and joint activities, especially through culture as one of the main drivers of soft power in international relations, and other areas of cooperation, such as trade, education and research.



Enhancing regional cooperation in the Balkans is the core thinking behind another Greek initiative, namely that of Quadrilateral meetings between Ministers of Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, launched in Thessaloniki in April 2016.



The four countries, with a view to responding to the refugee crisis effectively and in line with European democratic values and principles, will focus, during their upcoming meeting in October, on identifying ways for better interaction on issues such as return operations, exchange of information, tackling smuggling, human trafficking, terrorism, organized crime and energy networks.





Mr President,



The Syrian war has taken a great toll in human lives, and millions have been displaced. The cessation of hostilities is sine qua non for progress of political negotiations. Greece sees no alternative other than a political solution to this crisis. We fully support an inclusive political dialogue in Geneva under UN auspices.



The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a constant threat to regional stability and security. The current situation on the ground is not sustainable. We support the two-State solution, meaning the creation of a sovereign and independent State of Palestine living in peace and security alongside the State of Israel while responding to Israels longstanding quest for security.



On Libya, Greece attaches particular importance to the international efforts to stabilize the country. Greece strongly believes that there is no military solution to the Libyan crisis. We support all efforts towards peace and security.





Mr President,



Terrorism remains one of the major global challenges we are faced with. The significant progress witnessed recently in the fight against DAESH demands special mention.



Strengthening international cooperation among all relevant actors and improving information exchange constitute key elements in tackling the movement of foreign fighters, while at the same time it is essential to address the root causes of violent extremism.



Greece participates actively in the common anti-terrorism fight.



In the context of our efforts to prevent terrorists from exploiting any resources for their actions, we particularly support international efforts aiming at promoting a concerted international action against illegal trade of antiquities and cultural artifacts.





Mr. President,



We consistently pursue friendly relations and enhanced cooperation with all our neighboring States as a means of promoting stability and prosperity for all.



In the Western Balkans, Greece remains a firm supporter of the EU Enlargement Policy.



The rise of nationalistic rhetoric in the region raises grave concerns. We wish to underline that actions and statements that undermine good neighborly relations should be avoided by all means.



Greece maintains a friendly approach to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.



The Greek initiative for designing and implementing the bilateral Confidence Building Measures has strengthened our relations, facilitating efforts for addressing more sensitive matters, such as the pending issue of the name of our neighboring country.



In this respect, Greece will continue to work systematically to reach a mutually acceptable solution to the name issue. Our position is clear: a mutually accepted name, erga omnes.



Accordingly, progress in Greek-Turkish relations can only be built upon the full respect of international law, including the International Law of the Sea. We have repeatedly pointed out that good neighborly relations cannot be served by persistent challenging of Greeces sovereignty and sovereign rights by a neighbor.



Regarding the Cyprus Issue, our objective is summed up in a concept that the UN Secretary General adopted during the International Conference on Cyprus: to make Cyprus a normal state. A sovereign and independent state, free of foreign occupation troops, external guarantees and intervention rights.



The International Conference on Cyprus held in Switzerland this year, was unfortunately closed last July, without producing agreement, because the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot sides were the only parties in the Conference who did not share the goal of the normal state concept.



We are prepared to continue discussing the key international issue of Security and Guarantees, whenever Turkey demonstrates a clear willingness to resume negotiations on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions, as well as within the framework of parameters set down by the UN Secretary General in Crans Montana.





Mr President,



In the area of civil and political rights, we actively support the fight against racism and any other forms of discrimination including those based on religious, gender, sexual and any other grounds. In this vein, Greece, prioritizing the safety of journalists and media workers, especially in conflict areas, is going to submit the relevant thematic resolution during the current Third Committee session of the UN General Assembly.



Furthermore, my Country in the framework of Human Rights Council leads an initiative by successfully submitting a resolution on Promoting Human Rights through sport and the Olympic Ideal.



We remain committed to the protection of human rights in all policies addressing large movements of migrants, with particular attention paid to the specific needs of migrants in vulnerable situations, including children.



We also believe that setting this framework right is more than ever important in order to grant protection to those in need of it, to fight against human trafficking and migrant smuggling and to return people not entitled to international protection, while at the same time tackling the root causes of migration through effective cooperation with countries of origin and transit. Finally, social and economic inclusion of legal migrants is equally important and deserves our fullest attention.



Greece has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring full and effective implementation of the Political Declaration of New York and its annexes, which were adopted during the High Level Meeting on the margins of the 71st UN General Assembly, and, in parallel, it has stressed its commitment to work in the context of the Global Compact for Migration that is to be concluded by 2018.





Mr President,



I wish to assure you that, as a founding member of this Organization, Greece will lend it its unfailing support as the UN tries to rise up to the task of creating a more peaceful and prosperous future with justice and solidarity for all and especially for the next generations.





Thank you.
         Elxis CMS     

 2 /       
MASON CITY | Police have released photos of a person they believe is involved in a card-skimming incident at a Mason City credit union's ATM.

The suspect is described as a male with dark hair and a short beard.

It is believed that the suspect used the information gained from the use of the skimming device to duplicate onto blank cards, the Mason City Police Department said in a news release.

The suspect allegedly used those cards at ATMs at two convenience stores in Albert Lea on Sept. 9, police say.

The evidence of a card skimmer was discovered at North Iowa Community Credit Union's west branch ATM, 4063 Fourth St. S.W., Mason City, according to a news release from the police department Wednesday.

A skimmer is a device that's slid over a card reader to collect debit and credit card data. It can fit over the reader as tightly as two coffee cup lids, making it difficult to identify, Mason City Police Capt. Mike McKelvey told the Globe Gazette Tuesday.

Police found video evidence of a person monkeying around with the card reader, McKelvey said Tuesday.

On Sept. 11, the police department responded to a report from a local resident that money was missing from her bank account. Suspicious transactions had been occurring at locations outside of Mason City, the release said.

Officers determined the transactions were likely fraudulent, and that the resident had used the credit union's west branch ATM. Officials say the incident remains under investigation.

People who may have used the west branch ATM in the past two to three weeks should continue to monitor their accounts for bogus charges. Any suspicious transactions should be reported to law enforcement.

Anyone with information about the incident should call the Mason City Police Department at 641-421-3636.

Tips can also be shared with the North Iowa Crime Stoppers by calling 800-383-0088.
RUDD | A man and woman from Rudd were arrested late Thursday for felony first-degree theft, according to law enforcement.

Jamie Rose Nicholson, 32 and Thomas John Kerlin, 30, are accused of stealing more than $10,000 worth of items from a home on the 1000 block of Fair Meadow Drive between Sept. 3 and Sept. 5.

They were both found to be in possession of stolen property, according to court documents.

Cerro Gordo County Sherriff Kevin Pals said the items include household goods like clothing, jewelry and more.

Basically anything you can think of in a house, Pals said. A little bit of everything.

Some of the items have been recovered.

(It is) hard to tell if it was all recovered due to some items being located in different areas, Pals said. Deputies are continuing to go over the evidence they collected.

The department believes Nicholson and Kerlin were together when the crime was committed.

The pair was arrested by deputies in the 2200 block of 21st Street Southwest about 10:30 p.m.

Deputies made their presence known at a residence, and Mr. Kerlin escaped the house and knowingly ran from deputies, court documents say.

Kerlin was found hiding under a neighbors porch, according to the criminal complaint.

After arresting him, deputies searched Kerlin and found a marijuana pipe. He was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and interference with official acts in addition to his first-degree theft charge.

Nicholson was charged with first-degree theft.

Law enforcement says the investigation is ongoing.
CHARLES CITY | Two people were arrested after law enforcement responded to a burglary call in rural Floyd County Friday evening.

The Floyd County Sheriff's Office said in a news release it received a report of a burglary in progress in the 2200 block of Walnut Avenue around 6:49 p.m.

Deputies arrested Bradley Hanawalt, 53, New Hampton, and Leigh Viers, 32, Charles City, for felony third-degree burglary. Hanawalt was also charged with misdemeanor driving while suspended.

Both are being held in the Floyd County Jail.

 Ashley Miller
CLEAR LAKE | A track of light rail running near Clear Lake that currently holds old rail cars will be put back into service, with the help of an annual grant and loan program funded by the Iowa DOT.

In total, a little more than $2.6 million has been allocated for three major statewide rail projects, $655,000 of which is dedicated to restoring freight service to just over 10 miles of track, from the southwestern part of Mason City, along Old Highway 106 to the western terminus near Interstate 35 in Clear Lake.

Michael Johns, general manager of Iowa Traction Railway Company  the owner of the tracks  said the current light rail will be replaced with current standard freight rail. That equates from 60-pound to 112 to 115-pound rail, in order to transport anything from soda ash, propane, utility poles and other items.

Johns said the change will allow freight to be shipped on the tracks for the first time in five years, and create 30-45 jobs in the next five years.

"None of these are home runs," he said of the projects funded by the state's Railroad Revolving Loan and Grant program. "But this is an appropriate scale project for the Clear Lake-Mason City area."

Johns said his company has already strengthened trestles and bridges that the new railroad will travel over. He added that he hopes expansion can move to Interstate 35, collaborating with trucks that need to offload materials there.

In terms of the other two projects, Laura Hutzell, rail development manager for the Iowa DOT, said funds will be used to revitalize the industry in different sectors of the state.

The Pattison Sand CP Unit Train Expansion, for example, will use the money for its second of five phases, adding 3,300 feet of track and adding 78 rail cars in Clayton to help deal with industrial transit.

Hutzell said the projects' funds are applied for by the Iowa DOT to the state legislature each year, which then approves the money for the Railroad Revolving Loan and Grant Program.

She added the projects are significant to helping improve overall transit in the state.

"Rail is a big mover in this state," Hutzell said. "The funding isn't always there so it's nice to have funding ... a lot of people think 'highway' when they think freight transit, but rail carries a lot as well."

Johns added that his company's specialty will be beneficial to the Clear Lake-Mason City area.

"This is shortline railroads," he said. "We offer tailor-made services that the Class 1 (freights) don't typically offer ... we feel we open up Mason City and Clear Lake to a lot of projects."
To the editor,

It is good news that President Trump called the nation to pray Sunday, Sept. 3 for Texas and healing. Hopefully we will take more time to seek God's face for those in crisis from the hurricane, our families and leaders.

As a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, I am disturbed by the increase of addictions of all kinds. We warn pregnant women not to drink or use other drugs by observing National Fetal Awareness (FAS) Day, Sept. 9, at 9 a.m., ringing bells. FAS causes brain damage which results in small size, cleft lip, hip displacement, etc. The effects on the Central Nervous System include memory and attention problems, hyperactivity, problems with math and lack of balance.

The prescription drug epidemic is very widespread and has devastating effects on families. We urge addicted people to seek godly counseling, medical help, support from churches, and to be more aware of those in trouble or depressed. We oppose legalizing recreational marijuana. Prevention can help us avoid much pain and loss. The Lord Jesus Christ came to heal the broken hearted, forgive the lost sinners, and free those in bondage.

The Cass River-Bad Axe WCTU met Aug. 30, at the Cass City Library. We discussed the state convention which will meet Sept. 13 in Monroe, Michigan. The next local meeting is at noon on Friday, Sept. 22 at the Cass City Rawson Library.

Many Christian leaders have also called for a National Day of Prayer, Fasting and Repentance on Sept. 11, 2017, to urge forgiveness, unity, and respect.

Marie Kiehl

Bad Axe
To the editor:

On March 11, The Detroit Free Press published a piece by Michigan 10th District Rep. Paul Mitchell in which he stated that, "Recent town hall events around the country, meant for any and all constituents, have devolved into rowdy media events."

The congressman has been in office since Jan. 3, 2017, and has continued to ignore constituent requests for a town hall meeting, citing the excuses he gave in the above referenced article.

I, and a small group of other concerned individuals from the 10th district, visit Rep. Mitchell's office each week. We always come at the same time and bring our questions to his staff on the issues confronting our country. Week in and week out we are able to discuss in a respectful way where we disagree and where we see the need for change. Rep. Mitchell is well aware of what time our group will be there each week. Not once during any recess has he ever arranged to be in his office at that time in order to speak with us himself.

His staff has always been engaging and welcoming, they are not at all resistant to the fact constituents visit the office, that part has not a problem in any way.

It is obvious to all of us that the reason Rep. Mitchell does not meet with his constituents in a face-to-face manner is not about how we may behave, it is clearly about his own ability to answer tough questions. Never once have we been asked to leave the office, told we pose a security risk, asked to lower our voice, or even been told our questions were out of line. We are an educated, professional group of concerned citizens from the 10th District.

As we near the fall of his first year in office, I think it is high time Rep. Mitchell stopped using the excuse that the lack of town halls has anything to do with the way his constituency might behave. Clearly he is hiding from his constituency and is ill-prepared to deal with any situation which may become even slightly uncomfortable for him.

Being a public official includes some tough duties, not one of us is allowed to cherry-pick which parts of our jobs we will and will not do, we would be fired. The job has duties, we must accomplish all of them. Some we will like, others we will not look forward to, but, we all know, we have to accomplish them all.

We want a representative who will respect us and treat us as equals rather than placing himself above us as Rep. Mitchell has done. As taxpayers, constituents and people we deserve a representative who wants to meet with us -- to know us, understand our issues and opinions, and discuss differences with us in a respectful and civil manner. I hope Rep. Mitchell will reconsider his approach, meet and speak with, not at, us in a way that allows us access to our government.

Barring a complete turnabout on his part which creates access for all, I hope that in this coming year we have a candidate step forward who respects his prospective constituents enough to meet with them, to listen to the issues, to discuss why we disagree, to understand the concerns we have, and to demonstrate their ability to do the job and all that it entails including meeting face-to-face with constituents. There is no substitute for the give and take that occurs in a true exchange of ideas. It's the very reason a classroom is set up in the way it is, listening to the ideas and reflections of others educates us all.

I hope that Rep. Mitchell will reconsider his approach, maybe as a New Year's resolution, and be able to talk to us all in a way that allows us access to our government. We deserve that much.

Kathryn Lucas

Armada
The headaches began in March. The couple didn't think much of them - until Carrie DeKlyen began vomiting.

An initial scan showed a mass in her brain. More tests showed that it was a form of cancer, possibly lymphoma, but treatable. But a pathology exam revealed a more grim diagnosis. The 37-year-old mother of five from Wyoming, Michigan, had glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. If lucky, she could live for five more years.

The tumor was removed during surgery in April, said her husband, Nick.

Then, not even a month later, the couple received two pieces of shocking news. Carrie's tumor was back - and she was eight weeks pregnant.

Now Playing: Carrie DeKlyen, the Michigan mother of six who sacrificed cancer treatment that would have saved her life but ended her pregnancy, died Saturday  three days after delivering her newborn baby. She was 37 Video: PeopleTime

They had two options: They could try to prolong Carrie's life through chemotherapy, but that meant ending her pregnancy. Or they could keep the baby, but Carrie would not live long enough to see the child.

It was a wrenching but obvious choice for the DeKlyens: They would have the child, their sixth.

Life Lynn DeKlyen was born at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 6 - 24 weeks into Carrie DeKylen's pregnancy. She weighed 1 pound 4 ounces. The couple came up with her name together.

Carrie DeKlyen was buried six days later.

Then Life died as well, 14 days after she was born.

The infant's death was announced Thursday on the couple's Facebook page.

"It is with great sadness and a absolutely broken heart that I tell you Life Lynn passed away last night," the post read. "Carrie is now rocking her baby girl. I have no explanation of why this happened, but I do know Jesus loves us and someday we will know why. The grief we feel is almost unbearable, please be praying for our family."

Nick DeKlyen could not be reached for comment Thursday.

But he told The Detroit News just one day earlier that Life Lynn nearly died Sept. 12, the same day Carrie DeKlyen was buried.

"I know God can turn this around," he told the News on Wednesday. "And I am going to keep believing that Life is going to be fine."

Life was delivered by Caesarean section as Carrie DeKylen was dying.

"That's what she wanted," Nick said earlier this month. "We love the Lord. We're pro-life. We believe that God gave us this baby."

In the spring, after a second surgery to remove the tumor, the couple had gone home, knowing Carrie had only months left to live.

By the end of June, the tumor was back again.

This time, it was inoperable: Doctors told the DeKlyens that all they could do was to keep taking out the fluid accumulating in Carrie's brain to relieve the pain, her husband said.

Carrie was rushed back to the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor in mid-July. She was screaming in pain and convulsing. That was the last time she was conscious, her husband said.

"They said that she had a massive stroke," Nick DeKlyen told The Washington Post this month. "They said the fluid built up so much the cranium had no place to go."

Carrie was 19 weeks pregnant by then. Nick said doctors told him they would do what they could to keep the child growing.

But Carrie would probably not wake up again - and if she did, she wouldn't recognize her family. She had suffered significant brain damage from the stroke. For the next several weeks, a feeding tube and a breathing machine would keep the mother and her child alive.

Two weeks later, there was another stroke. Carrie's brain was so swollen that doctors had to remove a portion of her skull, Nick said.

By the time Carrie was 22 weeks pregnant, her baby wasn't growing fast enough, weighing only 378 grams, or eight-tenths of pound.

To survive birth, the baby had to be at least 500 grams, a little more than a pound, Nick said.

Another two weeks went by, and some good news came: The baby weighed 625 grams.

The bad news was, the baby was not moving.

Nick said he was given two options: He could do nothing and hope the baby began moving and continued growing, but doing nothing meant his child could die within an hour. Or he could authorize a Caesarean section.

He chose the latter, and Life was born - an extreme preterm who would never know her mother.

"It was kind of bittersweet," Nick recalled, noting that Carrie was "not awake" during or after giving birth. Instead, "she [was] going to pass away," he said.

"After that, I went to the surgeon and said my wife had enough. She's gone through so much pain these last five months."

Carrie lived briefly after doctors removed her from life support.

"I sat by her the whole time. I kind of held her hand and kissing her, telling her that she did good," Nick said. "I told her, 'I love you, and I'll see you in heaven.' "

On Sept. 8, early in the morning, Carrie opened her eyes, then closed them again, Nick said.

She clenched her hands tightly, then slowly stopped breathing. She died before dawn.

Carrie's story was chronicled on a Facebook page called Cure 4 Carrie.

Four days after his daughter was born and two days after his wife died, Nick said he was dividing his time between planning a funeral and visiting his newborn, who remained in intensive care.

He was living temporarily in the Ronald McDonald House in Ann Arbor, a short walk from the hospital, and driving back to Wyoming on weekends to visit his other children, ages 18, 16, 11, 4 and 2.

The 39-year-old said at the time that he was still figuring out his family's future.

Four years ago, he said, he started a vending machine company that he later sold to his brother. But he did not have a source of income.

"My wife's gone. I have six kids, three are under the age of 5. I'm just going to focus on my daughter right now, getting her home," he said. "As far as what I'm going to do after that, I can't tell you."

A GoFundMe page to help the family has raised more than $150,000.

Earlier this month, Nick dismissed critics who questioned the couple's decision to put their faith first, saying keeping their child showed his wife's selflessness.

"She gave up her life for the baby," he said, adding later: "I just want people to know that my wife loved the Lord. She loved her kids. She put anybody in front of her needs. . . . She put my daughter above herself."
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BRIDGEPORT  Zoning Attorney Chuck Willinger made a bold claim.

Of the entire United States, Bridgeport has the most restrictive liquor regulations, he said in an interview Friday.

Well, at least the strictest in Connecticut. That is according to an analysis by Lynn Haig, Bridgeports director of planning. So on Monday Haig will ask the zoning commission to adopt rule changes that could allow more package stores to open.

Willinger inspired the effort. He has been fighting for nearly two years to find some way around a court ruling that tossed out a politically connected clients zoning approvals for a new liquor store at 1044 Brooklawn Avenue in the North End.

Rather than filing a likely unsuccessful court appeal, Willinger instead tried to convince the zoning commission to change the regulations.

And earlier this year Haig, who is in the midst of trying to amend a variety of zoning requirements, decided it was time to get involved and see if there was any merit to Willingers efforts.

Of course I sat down and talked with him, Haig said. But I went out and did my own research and made a decision thats what I think is best for Bridgeport.

She said the changes were also drafted in consultation with the citys lawyers and zoning officials.

Specifically Haig wants to reduce the required footage separating liquor sellers from sensitive uses  schools, day cares, houses of worship, hospitals  from 1,500 feet to 750 feet. And she wants to eliminate the requirement that liquor stores must be at least 1,500 feet apart.

Haig said the goal is to be more business friendly. But, she noted, if passed the changes will be far from a happy hour for booze slingers.

Applicants would have to overcome a new set of standards. Any new package store would have to: Be compatible with the citys master plan; not disrupt neighbors or threaten future development of the surrounding area; not lower property values; and provide adequate safeguards to protect neighbors, particularly residences, from detrimental impacts.

Haig also noted that the state, which issues liquor permits, caps those based on population. In Bridgeport that cap is 57.

Were only 14 away from our maximum, Haig noted.

Willinger said he will be at Mondays zoning meeting wholeheartedly in support of the changes. He added that, if passed, he hoped his client, Michael DeFilippo, will be able to reopen his North End business.

A Superior Court Judge in January, 2016 overturned a special zoning variance granted DeFilippo in 2015 allowing him to open a package store within 1,500 feet of houses of worship and a day care.

That case, and Willingers subsequent attempts to change the citys liquor regulations, drew added scrutiny because DeFilippo is bartender for Democratic Town Chairman Mario Testa, who owns a small pizza restaurant across the street and a catering hall a short drive away.

Many prominent Democrats testified in favor of DeFilippos initial application for a zoning variance  something Judge Dale Radcliffe noted when he overturned it.

Radcliffe in his ruling wrote that the parade of preening politicians endorsing this application may have the unintended consequences of convincing the already cynical that the fix was in, even if the record does not conclusively establish that finding.

Rich Augustynowicz of Bev Max in Bridgeport has been one of the more vocal opponents of DeFilippo, Willinger and now Haig.

Augustynowicz plans on getting plenty of like-minded critics to show up at Mondays zoning meeting and demand the current rules remain in place.

Augustynowicz said this is all being done for DeFilippo  who is running for City Council  and Willinger, not for the greater city. He suggested, sarcastically, that Haigs new liquor regulations also require applicants be politically connected.

Ive never met Mr. Willingers client. I do not know Mario Testa, Haig said. I was not politically pressured in any way. I am making a proposal as a professional planner and doing my job to the best of my ability.

Augustynowicz also said Haig is ignoring the strong opposition expressed over Willingers prior attempts to change liquor regulations: Where is the line of people representing the public standing at the door asking them to change the liquor law in Bridgeport because we need more liquor stores?

Haigs proposal does acknowledge police have had complaints of loitering, drinking outside and of sales to minors at some current liquor stores, but noted the issues are not pervasive throughout the city and most city package stores cause no problem.

Well aware of the opposition, Haig said she is prepared to be open-minded at Mondays zoning meeting. And if she hears some really good comments that would make me rethink some of the language then Haig is prepared to ask that the matter be continued to a future date for her to fine tune her draft.

Its a touchy subject for a lot of folks in the community for a variety of reasons, Haig said.
BRIDGEPORT  City resident and published poet Gissel Grizzle was given a citation by the City Council and from the mayors office at the latest City Council meeting.

I was completely shocked, Grizzle said. I was just trying to figure out what kind of trouble I got into  and how much it was going to cost me.

Despite the intimidation of the name, citations from the Bridgeport City Council and the mayors office are awards given to residents that have accomplished something significant, city spokeswoman Rowena White said.

White said Mayor Joe Ganim saw the Hearst Connecticut Media story about Grizzles Untold Verses book and wanted to recognize her talents. She was presented with the two honorary citations Monday.

This is amazing, Grizzle said. This is more than I ever dreamed of. It reminds me that hard work pays off.

Grizzle said she traveled back and forth from Jamaica to the U.S., spending most of her time in Jamaica, since the age of 4. At 9-years-old, Grizzle said her parents decided she should permanently stay in the U.S.

We moved to Bridgeport in 2005, in time for me to attend high school, Grizzle said. She attended Central High School and graduated in 2009.

At the age of 14, Grizzle said she wrote her first poem. She went on to study at Housatonic Community College, where she completed a dual major in general studies and human services.

There were times when I questioned myself: Am I doing the right thing? What do I have to show for the work that Im doing? Should I have accomplished more? Grizzle said. But getting this award shows me I have come such a long way. I am humbled by the journey and Im so appreciative.

Untold Verses was officially published last September, Grizzle said. She is working on her second poetry book, which she said she hopes to publish within the next few months.

It doesnt end here, Grizzle said. I have more people to touch, I have more lives to impact and more people to encourage.
BRIDGEPORT  Speaking Friday to a room of two-dozen health care workers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., encouraged Connecticut residents to lobby red states in opposition to the latest proposal to scrap Obamacare.

Later in the day it was reported that Arizona Sen. John McCain would break from his party and not support the Republican bill to replace the Affordable Care Act.

But while the bill teetered on the brink, it was not quite doomed on Friday afternoon.

The proposal to undo President Barack Obamas health care law would shift money and decision-making from Washington to the states. It is expected to come to a vote next week, a deadline thats focused the GOP on making a final run at the issue.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday tweeted in support of the bill, sponsored by senators Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La.

He chastised GOP holdouts and countered reports that it weakens a rule barring insurance companies from taking away coverage from people who are ill.

I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does! Trump said. A great Bill. Repeal & Replace.

Connecticuts all-Democratic congressional delegation opposes the Graham-Cassidy bill.

Sen. Blumenthal and (congressman) Chris Murphy oppose any change that isnt the change they propose  that isnt more government, said state GOP Chairman J.R. Romano. I am personally on Obamacare  its horrible... premiums are going up.

By imposing a medicare cap and increasing block grants, the bill would reduce total federal funding health care funding to both Connecticut and Arizona by around $5 million according to a CNBC report citing a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The block grant system would end incentives for Medicare expansion. And health care workers at Southwest Community Health Center where Bluementhal spoke Friday fear that a loss in Medicare dollars could increase the number of uninsured patients walking through their doors.

If they cant afford to pay for it, they dont go, and then we end up seeing them sometimes years later with very serious medical problems, said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Dara Richards.

Richards gave the example of colonoscopy, an exam that can cost hundreds of dollars but is vital to preventing death from colon cancer.

Sixty percent of the centers patients paid with Medicare in 2016; 20 percent didnt have insurance and paid on a sliding scale.

As Blumenthal prepared to leave the health center, a man asked if he should contact Republican lawmakers directly, even if he wasnt their constituent.

Yes, Bluementhal said. Especially if its by internet  then they dont know where its from.

cattanasio@ctpost.com / on Twitter @viacedar

The Associated Press contributed reporting from Washington
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BROOKFIELD  On a trip to Tennessee a few weeks ago, the Marturano family discovered a rock decorated like a ladybug at a rest area. On the bottom was a message to check out a Facebook group from Onslow County, N.C., encouraging people to paint rocks with inspirational messages and place them where others are likely to find them.

The Marturanos, who have lived in Brookfield for about five years, had stumbled upon the Kindness Rocks Project, an effort that began in Massachusetts in 2014 and has since spread to hundreds of towns and cities across the world.

Lisa Marturano, said her daughter, 14, and son, 11, were thrilled to find the rock and wanted to hide some of their own across Brookfield. To spread word of the plan, Marturano and her husband created an Instagram page and a Brookfield Rocks Facebook group that in less than two weeks has attracted more than 250 members.

Marturano and the kids have painted 60 to 80 rocks and hidden them throughout town at parks, the library, gas stations and other public places. She said they love to see peoples excitement at finding the rocks.

Its kind of an impersonal world, so its nice to see someone smile and get a little interaction, Marturano said. Everyone gets to find something fun. We actually watch people pick up rocks when we hide them and they just smile. To brighten someones day, thats all we want to do.

Its a perfect summer activity to get her son away from his video games, too, she said.

Its the easiest thing in the world, and its actually very relaxing, Marturano said.

She added she hopes the rocks travel throughout the country, as did the one the family found in Tennessee.

Hundreds of similar groups exist throughout the world, with several in Connecticut, including Danbury.

The project began in Massachusetts when Megan Murphy started decorating rocks with inspirational messages and hiding them on the beach in Cape Cod. Murphy had long walked the beach and saw heart-shaped rocks and sea glass as a sign from her late parents.

It started out as a simple hobby that I had that made me feel happy and good at a time in my life where I needed something, Murphy said. This filled the space for me. I never in my wildest dreams thought this would go viral and so many people would resonate with it.

Murphy runs social media pages where people can share how finding the rocks have helped them. Often people have discovered rocks when they needed strength to fight breast cancer or while they were grieving for a loved one, she said.

Almost eerily it will relate to that lost person, so the person who finds the rock feels like its a message from beyond, Murphy said.

Dozens of families have posted in the Brookfield Rocks Facebook group with pictures of their kids finding rocks at the Still River Greenway, ShopRite and other places across town. Families are encouraged to take the rocks and hide them somewhere else or to decorate their own.

The Brookfield Police Department joined the fun over the weekend, painting and hiding a few rocks.

Its a fun endeavor, a community-based thing and we like to be involved in the community, Chief James Purcell said.

Murphy said she hopes the rocks remind people of their similarities and lead communities to grow stronger.

Im so grateful that so many people have taken it back to their communities and have done such great work, she said. It becomes more intimate, I think, for communities and that's where connection occurs.
WASHINGTON  Republican hopes of repealing Obamacare teetered on the brink of failure yet again Friday as Senate Democrats including Connecticuts Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy drew to within one vote of defeating the GOPs latest replacement.

The decision of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to oppose the measure of Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., means Republicans have no margin of error in their sprint to pass the bill by the Sept. 30 deadline. Although not certain, defeat appeared likely with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, having declared shes leaning no and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, on the fence.

This bill is the cruelest, meanest most misguided and misanthropic version of Trumpcare to see the light of day, said Blumenthal. Youd think theyd try to make next version more kind and generous, but instead theyve gone in the other direction. Id be shocked if it passed, but Im even more shocked that were even considering it.

The Cassidy-Graham bill would replace the Affordable Care Act  Obamacare  with more than $1 trillion in block grants to states over seven years. It would end Obamacares expansion of Medicaid, put a cap on overall Medicaid spending and permit states to allow significantly higher premiums for persons with serious medical conditions.

Cassidy, Graham and other Republicans said the bill would take centralized power away from Washington and give states the opportunity to fashion their own solutions to providing health care for all. But insurers, doctors, and health administrators all have criticized the bill as undermining the financial stability of the health care system.

Facing a deadline

With the Senate divided 52-48 in favor or Republicans and all 46 Democrats (plus two independents) against Cassidy-Graham, McCains decision means Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., cannot afford another defection. With Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., already against, just one additional GOP vote would sink the bill.

Under current Senate rules, Republicans have until the end of next week to pass a measure by 50 votes (with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaker). Beyond Sept. 30, Republicans would need 60 votes, a mathematical impossibility.

McCain cast the decisive vote in July that led to defeat of the previous GOP repeal-and-replace effort. The prospect of yet another defeat Friday left Democrats giddy, although mindful that the battle isnt over yet.

Coraggio  courage in Italian  wrote Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., in retweeting McCains announcement of his decision.

In a statement, Himes said McCains choice may prove the final blow that takes down this dangerous legislation. Defeating this bill does nothing for the American people or the people of Connecticut, however, unless both the House and Senate get back to regular order and crafting bipartisan fixes to the ACA.

Murphy said Cassidy-Graham would be an absolute humanitarian disaster for Connecticut. Everybody has to stand up to raise the alarm bell and do everything they can to stop this bill.

Not dead yet

And Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., urged lawmakers to work across the aisle to forge a bipartisan solution.

Graham-Cassidy is wrong for Connecticut, and it is wrong for our country, Esty said. One party negotiating behind closed doors - shutting out the public  is not the way to serve the families we are sent here to represent.

Republicans were far from accepting defeat. Graham, a longtime friend of McCain, said we press on. On Twitter, Pence called the Republican proposal the right bill at the right time and said he and President Donald Trump are undeterred even though opposition is forming up.

Behind the scenes, the White House and top Capitol Hill Republicans were said to be offering deals to other potential defectors in exchange for yes votes. One such deal with Murkowski was dubbed the Alaska Purchase.

For that reason, Murphy and Blumenthal, said they were not ready to pop Champagne corks.

The battle is far from over, Blumenthal said. A number of votes are very much in question, and theres no end to the politicking and horse trading thats apparently happening behind the scenes.

dan@hearstdc.com
OSAGE | The Mitchell County Regional Health Center launched its Rise Up capital campaign Thursday with a beam signing celebration.

Held in the main lobby of the Mitchell County Regional Health Center, hospital staff, administration, members of the hospital board, economic development, county officials and local citizens, gathered to listen to a brief presentation regarding the project and the campaign.

In need of additional space to expand the clinic and rehabilitation services, the Mitchell County Regional Health Center embarked upon a $12.5 million renovation and expansion project. The outcome will modernize and enhance the overall experience for their patients, while also looking to attract additional physicians to the facility, officials said.

We still need help to be able to meet our goals, said Jon Koster, member of the Mitchell County Regional Health Center Board of Trustees.

The expansion project includes private registration areas, double of the gym space and private exam rooms in the physical therapy department, in addition to a helicopter pad, on the roof of the clinic, and two additional stories to the clinic which will house four provider pods.

Slated to be completed in spring 2019, the project has already raised nearly $400,000, with $135,224 in donations from the MCRHC employees, $128,000 from the MCRHC Board of Trustees and Foundation board, $23,600 from the MCRHC Auxiliary, and $100,000 from Home Trust & Savings Bank.
CROMWELL  The Cromwell Historical Society is inviting residents to venture back to the 18th-century version of the One Percent.

Monday evening at the First Congregational Church, at 355 Main St., the society is presenting a program, Living Large in 18th-Century Middletown.

And to allay any confusion, Historical Society President Richard F. Donohue explained that in the 1700s, the village that became Cromwell was a part of Middletown called the Upper Houses.

The program will be presented by William Hosley, an Enfield resident, historian and preservationist whose interest is focused on the Connecticut River. He has curated exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford on Samuel and Elizabeth Colt and another on Art and Society of the Connecticut Valley.

Hosleys talk Monday will focus how the elites of the day expressed their status, worldliness and ambition through signs, symbols and cultural materials gathered together in flashy, big mansions beyond what previous generations had known, according to Donohue.

As the furthest deep-water port up the Connecticut River, (Upper Houses) was a bustling hub of maritime activity and the home of several wealthy merchants, he said.

Hosleys program will look at the arts and architecture of mid-century Middletown and the maritime trade economy that sustained it, Donohue said. In particular, the talk will focus on the Judge Seth Wetmores 1746 mansion.

More than providing food for the mind, the society is also providing food for the body, Donohue said. A potluck dinner will convene at 6 p.m. with the talk following at 7. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.

Contact Jeff Mill at jeff.mill@hearstmediact.com.
DES MOINES | Give us a development agreement, and well tentatively approve financial assistance for your project.

That was the message the states economic development board gave to Mason City leaders Friday during discussion of upwards of $10 million in state tax breaks for the citys proposed $38 million River City Renaissance project.

Board members told Mason City leaders once the city has a development agreement with Gatehouse Mason City LLC on a new downtown hotel and conference center, the board will give contingent approval for the tax breaks at its October meeting.

That tentative approval would come just before Mason City is scheduled to host a public hearing on the development agreement and a referendum on the overall project, which includes the hotel, an ice arena and multipurpose center, a skywalk, a performing arts pavilion, and a new Music Man museum.

City administrator Brent Trout said the city is working on the final details of the development agreement with Gatehouse.

I think we are close, Trout told board members Friday.

David Rachie, with Gatehouse, said progress on the development agreement has been made in leaps and bounds.

Trout and Rachie said the final point of negotiations is the citys schedule for making payments on a $4.2 million loan with Gatehouse. Both said they expect to reach a final agreement ahead of the economic development boards next meeting.

The board has given preliminary approval for $7.1 million in tax breaks for the project; it could increase that figure up to $10 million.

If the board gives contingent approval for the tax breaks, it would be contingent on passage of Mason Citys Nov. 7 referendum. Voters will be asked to approve the citys plan for up to $14 million in loans for the project.

The hope is that theres no uncertainty between the developer and the city by the time you guys come back to us, because otherwise its going to be hard to give you guys contingent approval, board member David Bernstein, of Sioux City, told Mason City officials. Because we just have October to act on this before your referendum.

Board member Chris Murray, of Ankeny, added for emphasis, Having that development agreement is a critical point. You guys know it, and we dont need to repeat it. Youve got to get that development agreement.

During the Mason City groups update to the board, Trout said a well-organized campaign will help gain the necessary 60 percent approval from voters in the Nov. 7 referendum. He pointed to a recent city council special election as cause for optimism.

Candidate Joshua Masson, who supports the project, handily defeated candidate Max Weaver, who opposes the project, 72 percent to 27 percent.

Its encouraging, what were seeing within the community, Trout said.

The project referendum will be joined on the Nov. 7 ballot in Mason City by the mayors office and three city council seats.

Weaver, after losing Tuesday's special election, filed Thursday to run for the at-large seat. Other project skeptics or opponents are among the candidates running to represent the Second and Fourth wards.
The Grand Valley State volleyball team dropped a close five-set battle to the Panthers of Davenport University on Friday night (Sept. 22). Much like their match on Tuesday against Wayne State, the Lakers found themselves up 2-0 after winning by scores of 25-21 and 25-18 before dropping the final three by scores of 25-22, 26-24, and 16-14. The loss drops GVSU to a 5-7 overall record and a 2-2 mark in GLIAC play. The Panthers improve to 7-5 overall and 3-1 in conference play.

Senior middle blocker

led the Lakers in kills with 20 - the second highest mark in the match. Doby also contributed on the defensive side as well by tallying two block assists and sixteen digs. Junior

was the only other Lakers to break the double-digit kill mark, as the middle blocker tallied 16 kills while also adding on two solo blocks and two block assists as well.

was a force at the net as the junior tallied four block assists and a solo block to go along with her four kills.

Senior

tallied a match-high 50 assists while also picking up 24 digs and two block assists. Libero

led the Lakers in digs with 33 throughout the match to go along with her four assists and two service aces.

Offensively, the Lakers led the Panthers in kills (62-60), assists (59-57), aces (9-5), while the Panthers led in hitting percentage with a .123 throughout the match while holding GVSU to .117. Grand Valley State also led in digs (116-113) but Davenport held the edge in blocks (12-9).

GVSU and DU found themselves tied 5-5 early in the match before the Lakers were able to jump out to a 14-10 lead after a 9-5 run. GVSU would go up 17-11 before the teams would trade points back and forth until Davenport would go on a 5-2 run to bring the score to 23-21. The Lakers would be able to close out the set on back-to-back block assists (Olson, Brower &

, Butsavich) for the 25-21 victory.

The Lakers would open the second set with an 8-3 run, including scoring the first four points of the set. The Panthers countered with a 7-2 run of their own to bring the score to 10-10. Keeping with the trend, GVSU also used a 7-2 run to take a commanding 17-12 lead. Davenport would close the gap slightly, but the margin was too big and the Lakers ran away with a second set 25-18 victory.

Grand Valley State opened up the third set with a 4-2 lead before it was closed by the Panthers, leading to the teams going back and forth to a 17-17 tie. Davenport then went on a three point run for the 21-18 lead, which the Lakers would never recover from. DU won the set 25-22.

The Panthers used the third-set victory as momentum to take an early 15-9 lead before extending that lead to 23-16. After a kill from the Panthers brought the score to 24-18, the Lakers stormed back and scored six straight points to tie the match 24-24. Unfortunately for GVSU, Davenport strung together two kills for the 26-24 victory and tied the match 2-2.

The fifth set opened up with an 8-4 lead by the Lakers before Davenport scored four straight to force the set into an 8-8 tie. After tying at 9-9, GVSU took a 13-10 lead. The lead didn't last long however, as the Panthers scored for straight for the 14-13 lead. After a GV sub, the Lakers tied the match at 14 apiece but once again, the Panthers scored the final two points of the set for the comeback 3-2 victory.

The Lakers will be back in action tomorrow (Sept. 23) as GVSU will travel to Westville, Ind. to take on the Pride of Purdue Northwest at 2:00 p.m. This will be the first matchup between the Lakers and the Pride
ANN ARBOR, MI - Some University of Michigan students and faculty want a building named for controversial ex-university President C.C. Little changed.

Little was UM's president from 1925 to 1929. He was an avowed eugenicist - someone who believes humans can be improved through controlled breeding of people with desirable genetic traits. He also supported policies such as compulsory sterilization of the "unfit" and immigration restriction, according to the university.

UM has a building named in his honor, the C.C. Little Science Building. UM regents named the building for Little in the 1960s as part of a broader effort to recognize previous university presidents.

UM's Student Government for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts passed a resolution Wednesday, Sept. 20, to rename the building on the university's central campus.

Nicholas Fadanelli, LSA Student Government president, said Little's position on the Board of the American Eugenics Society, his presiding over the "Third Race Betterment Conference" of 1927 and the use of his position as president of UM to advance his eugenicist agenda provide a convincing case to rename the building.

"It is one thing to remember our history - both its dark moments and its finer ones - and a completely separate notion to put on top of a pedestal those whose actions and views not only go against the fabric of the values the university community holds dear, but actively undermined the positions of authority they were entrusted with," Fadanelli said.

The student government resolution is the latest attempt at UM to drum up support for the removal of Little's name from the building that has carried his name since 1968. On Sept. 1, members of the LSA faculty, along with an undergraduate student, formally submitted a case to have the name removed.

A group led by UM history professor John Carlson worked throughout the summer to assemble a case aligned with the new university guidelines that govern these kinds of requests.

UM Spokesperson Kim Broekhuizen said the case is under review by the the UM president's advisory committee on university history.

The petition came in response to UM's announcement in January that it defined a new set of principles and process for renaming buildings and spaces on campus in conjunction with its bicentennial.

The new principles allow any member of the UM community to submit a proposal to the president's office for review and possible reconsideration of the current name of an officially named space.



Proposals are now considered through a set of guiding principles, outlined by the advisory committee, including pedagogy, interpretation, due diligence, commitment, revision, historical and institutional context and consistency.

In a message to the university community at that time, UM President Mark Schlissel said it was an appropriate time for UM to consider the people behind the names of its buildings.

"Amid all of our historical analyses, some have wondered from where the names on and within our campus buildings have come," Schlissel wrote. "Who are these people and why are university places named after them? What ideas, values, and actions were possible for namings in a particular historical context? Similar questions are being raised at a number of campuses across the nation."

Around the same time of Michigan's defining of a new set of principles, Yale made headlines when it announced in February that it would change the name of a residential college - Calhoun College - commemorating John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century white supremacist statesman from South Carolina.

The college renamed the building for Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist and Navy rear admiral who received a master's degree and a doctorate from Yale.

LSA Student Government Vice President Ryan Gillcrist, who is in favor of changing the name of the Little building, said he believes it is important for UM to both preserve and learn from its history.

"Naming a building after someone is an act of glorification," Gillcrist said. "The effort to rename the building is not an attempt to erase the past. Its purpose is to learn from it and prevent the celebration of a man who believed that thousands of students who have attended this university past and present have characteristics that are undesirable and therefore should not be a part of our society."

LSA Student Government Life Relations Officer Patrick Miller said he finds it distasteful that UM has both a major academic building and main bus hub named after Little.

"The bus stop, in particular, is one of the first areas of campus that first-year students become acquainted with and, while they may not know why C.C. Little is such a controversial figure, it still gives this rather nefarious figure recognition he does not deserve," Miller said. "While I agree that all history should be remembered, both good and bad, there is no reason to commemorate the memory of C.C. Little. Instead, we should learn from this figure and make sure his mistakes are not repeated."

In spite of the controversial nature of many of his proposals, President Little's administration was marked by several major accomplishments. These included Freshman Week, a period just before the fall term when incoming students were introduced to university life, and the Alumni University, designed to make the university an ongoing part of alumni life. Although it did not survive in its original form, it led to the establishment of the Bureau of Alumni Relations and the strengthening of ties between the university and its graduates. He also initiated the plan to house all students in university dormitories.

According to his university biography in the Bentley Historical library, Little's "forthright approach and a lack of skill in personal relations resulted in increased friction within the university. In addition, his outspoken views on birth control and eugenics alienated sectors of the public." Little resigned as president on Sept. 1, 1929.

LSA Student Government will host a panel titled "To Rename or to Remain C.C. Little," featuring UM LSA professors and students from 6 to 8 p.m. on Sept. 26 in Room 4 of the Michigan League.
Students at Howard University loudly protested former FBI Director James Comey Friday as he delivered a convocation address.

As Comey, making a rare public appearance since leaving the FBI, began his speech welcoming new students at Howard University, protesters could be heard yelling from the back of the room, raising their fists and shouting. Some of the slogans included "No justice, no peace, "We shall not be moved" and "white supremacy is not a debate."

Standing before a packed auditorium, Comey stood silently for over 15 minutes as the students yelled, "I love being black" and "Get out James Comey -- you're not our homey."

"I love the enthusiasm of young folks, but I wish they understood what a conversation is," Comey said as the students continued to chant, sing and clap throughout his entire prepared remarks. He said that he had received a number of invitations to speak over the place several months, but "chose to come here."

"I look forward to adult conversations about what is right and what is true," Comey concluded, as he ended to a standing ovation.

As holder of the school's Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King endowed chair in public policy, Comey is slated to give a number of speeches during the following year. His role at Howard will include engaging the Howard community through a lecture series "designed to foster fruitful discussion and spur meaningful interaction," according to a university press release.

Freshman Howard student Nayla Hale, a member of HU Resist, said that students were specifically troubled by Comey's views on the so-called, "Ferguson effect," which suggests police officers use restraint out of concern over being videotaped during violent confrontations.

"James Comey represents an institution diametrically opposed to the interests of Black people domestically and abroad," said HU Resist in a statement passed out at the convocation Friday. "The 'Ferguson Effect,' for example, is an outright racist lie designed to undermine Black Liberation Movement."

But other students told CNN they thought the group went about it the wrong way.

"What just happened is not the Howard way at all," Brittiany Royster, also a freshman at Howard. "I wanted to hear him out. I love being black, but I also love being black and educated. And in order to do that, is to choose intellect over ignorance -- you have to keep an open mind and hear all parties out."

Trump's name was not mentioned by any speakers Friday, though the political climate during his administration was a theme in others' remarks.

"There's great crisis our nation," said Rev. Dr. Bernard L. Richardson, as Comey bowed his head during the opening prayer. "Truth is being rendered irrelevant," sparking a church-like call-and-response from the audience which said, "that's right."

The former FBI head has stayed mostly out of the spotlight since his dramatic testimony before the Senate intelligence committee in June -- one of the more significant moments to develop in the ongoing saga over Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election.

CNN reported earlier this week that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller has requested the White House turn over any documents related to Comey's dismissal, as well as information connected to an Oval Office meeting in which Trump told Russian officials that firing Comey eased pressure on his White House.

CNN's Miranda Green contributed to this report.
ANN ARBOR, MI - The University of Michigan and Ann Arbor Police are hosting a prescription drug drop-off in Ann Arbor.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, UM's Division of Pain Research, Anesthesiology will accept old, expired or unneeded medicine at the Pioneer High School parking lot, 601 W. Stadium Blvd.

The drug drop-off is one of many such events aimed at reducing the number of opioid painkillers in homes.

UM and Ann Arbor Police will accept prescription and over the counter pills, capsules and patches for humans and pets.

Syringes, needles, lancets and liquids are not accepted.

The number of opioid prescriptions in Michigan increased by 41 percent between 2009 and 2015.

Opioids, which can be highly addictive, have caused thousands of deaths in Michigan in recent years.

There have been nearly 300 fatal opioid overdoses, including heroin overdoses, among Washtenaw County residents since 2011.

Check here for a list of places to get rid of unwanted medications in Washtenaw County.
BAY CITY, MI -- Firefighters and police are on-scene to battle a fire at the Laporte Building in downtown Bay City.

Crews were called in at about 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, to the building at the corner of Fifth Street and Washington Ave. Witnesses said there was a significant amount of smoke coming from the roof of the building.

Bay City Fire Chief Karey Priuer said an air conditioning unit caught fire on the roof. A firetruck had its ladder extended to the roof with personnel on it.

A civilian witness said he was on the roof when the air conditioning unit started smoking. He had to climb down the building's fire escape.

As of 4:25 p.m., the scene still smells of smoke, but nothing is visible. Firefighters poured water on the roof and a brief plume of smoke was emitted.

Mid-Michigan, including Bay City, is experiencing record heat this week. Temperatures eclipsed the 90-degree mark on Friday for the second straight day.

Fifth Street from Washington Avenue to Adams Street remains blocked off to traffic.
FLINT, MI - Nearly nine months before the state of Michigan acknowledged a problem in Flint's drinking water, state health officials discussed that health issues relating to the water source switch - initiated by a governor-appointed emergency manager - may be "embarrassing" or "a difficult situation" for Governor Rick Snyder.

Taking the witness stand on Friday, Sept. 22, in the criminal case against Michigan Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, former MDHHS Epidemiology Director Corinne Miller testified that, in a meeting with Linda Dykema -- another DHHS department director - on Jan. 28, 2015, she hypothesized that the recent outbreak in legionella cases in Genesee County was related to Flint's water source switch from Detroit to the more-corrosive Flint River in April 2014.

However, Miller said she "opined" that because the water switch was initiated by Snyder-appointed Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, that news of a water-related disease outbreak may be "embarrassing" or "cause a difficult situation" for the governor.

Emergency management left Flint in January 2016, but the city still remains under financial oversight from the state-appointed Receivership Transition Advisory Board.

Miller's testimony is part of a plea agreement with the state, in which she agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in other criminal cases tied to Flint's water emergency in exchange for a reduction in the charges against her.

Originally charged with felony misconduct in office and a misdemeanor of neglect of duty by a public officer, Miller pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge and was sentenced in March to perform community service and write a letter of apology to Flint residents.

The now-retired epidemiologist testified in court that after learning of the Legionnaires' case outbreak in Genesee County from her staff on Jan. 23, 2015, she sent an email voicing her concerns to her boss, Sue Moran, and met with Lyon five days later to explain the outbreak.

"I felt relieved," Miller said, recalling her feelings after the meeting with Lyon, a member of Snyder's cabinet. "I thought he would want to take it to the governor."

But Lyon told Miller to "keep him informed" of the outbreak, she said.

During the first day of testimony in the case, prosecutors pointed to Lyon's waffling between dates of when he first knew of legionella in the water, saying both June 2015 and January 2015.

Miller also testified that the state held off in issuing a public alert regarding Flint's water so that they could research the source of the legionella bacteria. But, she said that "in hindsight," a warning to residents could have been issued on Jan. 28, 2015.

Earlier in the day, an infectious disease expert involved in Wayne State University's investigation of Flint's water contamination crisis testified that Flint residents and hospitals should have been notified of an outbreak in legionella cases and prevented patients from using the city's water in June 2014 - over a year before public health officials issued a warning.

The state did not switch Flint's water source back to the Detroit water system until October 2015.

Special Prosecutor Todd Flood said he intends to call at least five more witnesses to testify in the case against Lyon, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter and misconduct in office. His is the first of 15 criminal water crisis cases against government officials to advance to a preliminary exam.

Two former emergency managers, current and former employees of the state Department of Environmental Quality and DHHS, and city employees are among 15 individuals charged in Attorney General Bill Schuette's investigation of the water crisis to date.

Testimony in the case is not expected to resume for at least a week, attorneys said, but official dates have not yet been scheduled.
WALKER, MI -- While some may still be miffed the city of Walker's missed the chance to be the West Michigan home of Cabela's, the city's mayor isn't.

It took 7 years, but Mark Huizenga believes Walker ended up with a better deal: an industrial park instead of a shopping center.

Anchoring Walkerview Industrial Park is the 340,000 square-foot FedEx Ground distribution center, which opened this month.

FedEx is the first to build in the 260-acre industrial neighborhood situated between Walker Avenue on the west, Four Mile Road on the north, Bristol Avenue on the east and the I-96 expressway. Two more buildings are in the pipeline, according to Huizenga.

"Really, focusing on industrial here is better for the community," Huizenga said of the swath of former orchard land east of I-196.

He toured the distribution center with other invited guests during its grand opening celebration Friday, Sept. 22.

Huizenga feels a particular closeness to the project he shepherded during most of his four years as mayor.

FedEx brings higher paying jobs than the retail sector can offer, Huizenga points out.

The new facility doubles the capacity of FedEx's previous location at 3 Mile Road. But that hasn't translated to the workforce yet. FedEx added 40 more employees with the move, bringing the total to 230. More workers will be brought on as capacity expands, a FedEx official said.

The ability to move more packages through the facility will be important this holiday season, said Carlos Etheredge, managing director for FedEx's Great Lakes District, headquartered in the Toledo, Ohio area.

"This building will be able to sort 15,000 packages an hour," Etheredge said.

Nearly a decade ago, there was a lot of excitement about a $400 million 242-acre retail development going up where FedEx sits now.

The mega shopping center would generate more than 3,600 jobs over a decade and $1 million annually in tax revenue, developers assured. But they needed $40 million in tax breaks to make it happen.

When the controversial incentive package didn't get approved in 2010, Cabela's nixed plans to build to build in Walker.

Without the coveted outdoor retailer as an anchor, plans for the shopping center stalled.

A few years later, Cabela's settled on a scaled down version on 44th Street SW near RiverTown Crossings mall in Grandville. The store was built without the lure of tax breaks.

FedEx's facility, 3466 Shippers Dr. NW, is so new it doesn't show up on Google Maps. The delivery giant has a 15-year lease with Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corp., which bought the property in April for $32 million.

The 8-acre facility with 104 loading docks was built primarily with local contractors. A.J. Veneklassen Inc. constructed facility and Dematic made the high-tech package-sorting equipment inside.

Rockford Construction Co. constructed the access road from the south side of the site to Walker Avenue, which has an exit ramp to I-96, to handle the FedEx facility's constant truck traffic.

The facility is part of FedEx's nationwide network expansion plan, that has added 15 major hubs and expanded or relocated 500 other facilities nationwide since 2005.

In the las decade, the daily volume of packages that FedEx Ground handles has doubled.

FedEx Ground, a subsidiary of the $18 billion FedEx Corp., transports nearly 8 million packages daily. Most of that business is coming through a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service.

"It's amazing to see what has come from what was an apple orchard and then fallow land to a technological masterpiece," Huizenga said.
GRANDVILLE, MI -- Police want the public's help to identify a man who fired shots into the air outside of the Kobe Steakhouse restaurant.

Police released grainy surveillance images of a vehicle and a suspect late Friday, Sept. 22.

No one was injured in the shooting.

Officers initially responded about 1:20 a.m. Friday to the restaurant, 3434 Rivertown Point Court, on a report of shots fired.

They determined that shots were fired following an argument between several people at a large dance party. The people involved in the dispute left the building and, once outside, someone fired shots into the air.

Witnesses described the weapon as a silver handgun and police recovered several 9 mm casings from the scene.

Police think the shooting suspect is connected to black Infiniti SUV with a partial Michigan plate of DPY. The SUV was observed at the scene.
The Obama administration's policies for dealing with sexual assault on college campuses was a "failed system" that didn't benefit students or universities dealing with the issue, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Friday evening.

Speaking at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference on Mackinac Island, DeVos said the Title IX guidelines implemented by President Barack Obama's administration to combat sexual assault "didn't work for students, it didn't work for institutions, it didn't work for anyone."

Describing the guidelines as one of several examples of the previous administration's overreach from Washington, D.C., DeVos said she and President Donald Trump were ready to step back and allow local entities to take a larger role in developing policy.

"President Trump and I know our jobs -- it's to get out of the way," DeVos said to applause.

DeVos' comments come on the heels of her announcement implementing new interim guidance for campus sexual assault, throwing out the sexual assault guidance issued by President Barack Obama's administration in 2011, which urged colleges and universities to more aggressively tackle instances of sexual assault.

The new guidance does not provide a time frame that constitutes a "prompt" investigation, whereas the Obama-era rules recommended a 60-day window following the complaint. It also lets universities use a higher standard of proof to determine whether a student is guilty of sexual assault.

In addition to other changes, the new guidance says that schools - once sexual assault allegations have been reported - have the option to pursue an "informal resolution," including mediation, if all parties agree. The Obama-era guidance says "mediation is not appropriate even on a voluntary basis."

Following the announcement Friday, administrators at Michigan's colleges universities said they would be watching ongoing replacement efforts to the guidelines closely, but declined to weigh in on whether DeVos was making the right call by overturning the rules or whether there are any particular changes they would like to see moving forward.

During her speech to attendees at the Republican conference, DeVos said Trump is "very encouraging and he is very empowering" when it comes to allowing his cabinet to make decisions, and spent considerable time addressing an issue she's long focused on at both the state and federal level -- school choice.

"Choice in education is good politics because it's good policy. It's good policy because it comes from good parents who want better for their children," she said. "Families are on the front lines of this fight -- let's stand with them."

DeVos, a West Michigan native and former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, was narrowly confirmed as U.S. Education Secretary earlier this year following months of pushback from activists and education advocates.

Prior to her confirmation, DeVos and members of her family were active fundraisers for Michigan Republicans and advocated for school choice and education voucher programs.

Watch DeVos' speech in its entirety below:
As she settles into her new position as chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel predicts the thousands of airplane miles and hundreds of fundraising calls are going to pay off.

McDaniel, a Michigan native who left her job as Michigan Republican Party chair to becoming the second woman ever elected to chair the RNC, said she's been loving the transition and is already focused on 2018, where she said Republicans are looking at "the best map we've seen in 70 years" in U.S. Senate elections.

"It's been a great adventure," she said during an interview at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference. "From an RNC perspective, we raised record money and we won the four specials, so I feel pretty good, but we've got some midterms coming up that I think about a lot."

McDaniel replaced outgoing chairman Reince Priebus this year after Trump named her as his preferred pick for the RNC post. While she was state party chair, she worked to elect Trump in Michigan and coordinated with the Trump campaign to lead the efforts against the statewide recount request initiated by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. The recount was stopped two days after it began following orders from state and federal courts.

McDaniel said her major focus now is on putting together voter data and raising the funds it takes to capitalize on races where Senate Democratic incumbents serve in states won by President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and working to change the trend of the party holding the White House losing House seats in the midterm.

She said the federal arm of the Republican party is looking seriously at Michigan, where incumbent U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow is up for reelection in 2018. Currently, former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Bob Young and Detroit businessman and veteran John James are in the race, and others, including sitting U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, businessman Sandy Pensler and musician Kid Rock have considered entering the race.

"I feel really good about our opportunity to flip the seat in Michigan," McDaniel said.

Stabenow has said little about the election so far, but told MLive earlier this year that she's not actively campaigning for the time being: "Right now I'm just doing my job."

Although McDaniel's enjoyed her new role so far, she acknowledged throughout the conference that the transition has not been without its challenges. A mother of two, McDaniel said during a conference panel that her new job has occasionally impacted her family.

McDaniel said her daughter has been having a hard time at school: "Some of her friends have decided, 'We don't want to be your friend because your mom supports President Trump."

McDaniel considers helping women with similar challenges get more involved politically, either as a donor, supporter or a candidate, an issue of utmost importance.

"Our country is better served when we have voices of women in leadership positions," she said. "Part of it is having a conversation and finding better ways to recruit women -- I talk to women candidates who have a variety of reasons they wouldn't run. They need to be recruited sometimes."
EMPIRE, MI - A half-century ago this weekend, proof that Michigan's gamble to stock Lake Michigan with sleek salmon from the Pacific Northwest was paying off in the form of "coho fever."

In September 1967, thousands of fisherman flocked to Northern Michigan to land these fat, sleek sport fish when their first spawning run began near the big rivers branching off from the Lake Michigan coastline. For some, that quest would turn deadly.

The Platte River in Benzie County, near what would be come Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, was the hot spot that fall.

Anglers hauled their boats - or borrowed them - packing fishing gear into everything from canoes and rowboats to cruising-size yachts.

"Fishermen came from everywhere," recalled former Department of Natural Resources director Howard Tanner, in a 2011 interview with The Grand Rapids Press/MLive. "They had no downriggers, no fish finders. They had small boats and no experience.

"People who never thought of catching salmon were able to go out and catch their limit. The fish were porpoising and they fished with whatever they had."

"They had salmon fever," Preston Kuks, a Grand Rapids angler and semi-retired charter boat captain, said in a 2011 interview with MLive. "There were so many boats on Platte Bay you could just about walk on them."

Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

So intent were they on landing these fish that many didn't notice the warning signs in the sky on Sept. 23, 1967. Or if they heard the squall warnings issued for Lake Michigan that morning, they didn't heed the danger.

Less than two hours after sunrise that day, the storm began to build over a section of lake crowded with what witnesses later described as 1,000 small boats.

When the violent storm struck, more than 100 boats were swamped and others capsized in 25-foot waves.

The U.S. Coast Guard launched rescue crews. The state police used bullhorns from the beach, urging fishermen to return to shore.

The National Guard unit in Manistee was put on standby.

"It was pure hell," said William Jacobson, a marina owner who hopped aboard his 36-foot fish tug to help with the rescue, according to a UPI wire service story about the disaster.

"The waves were fantastic - like mountains."

Media at the time reported that at least 100 boats were "hurled ashore and beached on rocks and sandbars."

Of the seven people who died that day, the victims included people from Jenison, Grand Rapids and Wyoming. They included the bodies of two men found washed ashore on an Empire beach.

Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

It took the U.S. Coast Guard days to sort out how many victims they actually had.

"During the next four days Coast Guard aircraft flew 33 sorties for a total of 55 hours. State and Local police provided beach patrols and private individuals also aided in the operation," according to the military's narrative of the incident.

"One of the greatest problems faced by the Coast Guard was the confusion created by the hundreds of people unaccounted for after the storm, most of whom were not in trouble but had just not contacted their friends or family. Each report of a missing person was carefully followed through so that within four days it was determined that seven had been recovered and only one person remained unaccounted for."

The next month, the Department of Transportation convened a Marine Board of Investigation to dig into the tragedy.

It concluded, in part, that many of the fishermen caught in the squalls were unfamiliar with big lake fishing, and most were not wearing life jackets.
Current and prospective employees have opted out of working in state government over the ongoing criminal charges in the Flint water crisis, Gov. Rick Snyder said Saturday.

During a discussion with members of the media at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, Snyder said the ongoing cases against Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon and other state employees have resulted in a hit to employee morale.

"We've lost people -- they have left state government because they don't want to have that hanging over their head," he told reporters. "I've actually had people tell me they've had retirements or people deciding they didn't want to take a job because of this environment."

Snyder was also critical of the time it's taken for some state employees who have been charged: "Just as a normal citizen, you would hope you get your day in court."

Andrea Bitely, spokesperson for Attorney General Bill Schuette, said in a statement that "Attorney General Schuette will continue to pursue justice for the families of Flint, especially the mothers and children, in the courtroom and not the media."

Lyon is the highest-ranking state employee to face criminal charges for his role in the water crisis and represents the first time a Snyder cabinet member has been charged. In total, 10 current and former state employees have been charged with crimes in relation to the Flint water crisis.

In addition to involuntary manslaughter, Lyon is also accused of misconduct in office, which prosecutors will work to prove during the case's preliminary exam.

Lyon's preliminary exam began Thursday and continued into Friday. The exam featured testimony from Tim Becker, who served as the MDHHS deputy director from Oct. 2014 to July 2016, who testified he began discussing possible legionella bacteria in Flint's water system in January 2015 - nine months before the city switched its water source back from the corrosive Flint River water to the Great Lakes Water Authority.

The court also heard from Dr. Marcus Zervos - the head of Henry Ford Hospital's Infectious Diseases division and co-principal investigator of Wayne State University's study of Flint's water contamination crisis. Zervos testified that a legionella outbreak may have played a role in more than the 12 deaths the state originally reported.
Sentences may be suspended

JUDGE SUSAN B. JORDAN

Damonjaae Jaleel Boyd, 20, 135 months to 300 months in jail, credit for 242 days served, $1158 costs and fines, for assault with intent to rob while armed.

Ashlee Victoria Breidenbaugh, 20, 24 months to 240 months in jail, credit for 80 days served, $1058 costs and fines, for controlled substance possession of methamphetamine, second or sub offense.

Curtis Lee Fleming, 40, 23 months to 48 months in jail, credit for 84 days served, $923 costs and fines, for larceny in a building.

Steven Ray Griffith, 40, 180 days in jail, credit for four days served, $535 costs and fines, for larceny in a building.

Divonne Lynette Ratliff, 47, 270 days in jail, credit for 6 days served, $643 costs and fines, for possession of methamphetamine, controlled substance-possess narcotic/cocaine, less than 25 grams.

Demetrius Jerrell Taylor, 26, 24 months to 120 months in jail, credit for 214 days served, $1583 costs and fines, for larceny person, and 153 days in jail, credit for 153 days, for aggravated assault.
JACKSON, MI - Michigan Supreme Court justices will not consider the appeals of two men convicted of murder in Jackson County.

In separate opinions issued on the same day, the state's highest court reported this month it did not find reason to review the unrelated 2014 cases of Akram Bilal, 38, and Brandon Mann, 32.

Akram Bilal

Both men are serving long prison sentences, Bilal for killing his girlfriend during a drunken dispute and Mann for strangling his friend while belligerent on moonshine.

They were convicted in 2015 of second-degree murder and firearm crimes.

Bilal shot Violet McElroy, 51, four times on July 5, 2014, at Reed Manor apartments in Jackson. He wrapped her body in a blanket and left it near a Dumpster.

He testified there had been an argument, and he grabbed a .22-caliber rifle from a drunken McElroy after she emerged armed from a bedroom as he poured bottles of tequila down the kitchen sink. "My body went into some kind of mode that I can't explain," he said.

It was the end of a tumultuous relationship that once had McElroy, with her fingernails torn away, writing a note with her own blood.

Circuit Judge Thomas Wilson sentenced him to 32 to 60 years in prison for the murder offense, possessing a firearm while committing felonies and other crimes.

Bilal, now housed at the Saginaw Correctional Facility, later argued without success to the Michigan Court of Appeals. He said testimony showed he was provoked or that the death was accidental. His choice of weapon - a bolt action rifle - showed otherwise, the court found. One shot could be fired accidentally, but "deliberate human action" is required for subsequent shots.

Also in 2015, a jury convicted Mann, then a parolee, for using his hands to kill Clayton Orange, a fragile 60-year-old with lung disease, on Oct. 19, 2014.

The two had been drinking the home-crafted booze and smoking marijuana at Orange's home on Comdon Road in Parma.

Prosecutors contended the homicide was brutal and premeditated; Mann said it was self-defense.

There was a fight. "I hit him back and retaliated. My adrenaline was pumping, I was pretty drunk and I started blacking out," Mann said.

Mann had a gun. He said he grabbed the weapon with one hand and Orange's throat with the other and threw Orange on the couch.

"I figured we'd wake up, shake hands and talk about how dumb all of this was," Mann testified.

Circuit Judge John McBain ordered him to serve 62 to 90 years for murder and possessing a firearm while committing a felony.

The Michigan Court of Appeals later denied his motions, disagreeing that his statements to police should not have been presented to the jury without an evidentiary hearing because he was intoxicated. His blood alcohol level during the questioning, done nine hours after his arrest, was 0.099.

Mann is serving his time in Muskegon Heights at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility. His earliest release date is November 2076.
CARSONVILLE, MI -- A Carsonville church was vandalized and an award is being offered for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible.

Deputies from the Sanilac County Sheriff's Department were dispatched to United Methodist Church on Friday, Sept. 22 for a breaking and entering and vandalism complaint, according to the sheriff's department.

According to deputies, several of the stained glass windows were shot with possibly a BB or pellet gun.

The subjects also entered the church, damaged the inside and stole items, according to police.

A $500 reward is being offered for information about the incident leading to an arrest of those responsible.

Contact Deputy Todd Laming at 810-648-2000 ext. 648 or the detective's bureau at 810-648-8360.
DETROIT -- Daniel Norris is back on the mound for the Detroit Tigers, making his first start in 10 weeks.

He'll do it against the Minnesota Twins, who are looking to build on their 2 1/2 game in the American League wild card race.

Follow the live stats on this page and chat with other fans and readers about tonight's game in the comments section below.

Who: Detroit Tigers (62-91) vs. Minnesota Twins (79-74)

When: 7:10 p.m. EDT

Where: Comerica Park

TV: FS-Detroit

Radio: FM 97.1 The Ticket and the Tigers radio network
[September 22, 2017] Wells Fargo Donates $250,000 for Mexico Earthquake Relief Efforts

Wells Fargo (News - Alert) & Company (NYSE: WFC) today announced a $250,000 donation to the American Red Cross to assist with relief efforts in areas of central Mexico that were devastated by a Sept. 19 earthquake. This donation will help the Red Cross assist with preparedness, relief and recovery efforts following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 200 people, injured hundreds more and destroyed buildings and key infrastructure throughout the region. Wells Fargo has maintained a presence in Mexico since 1860. "Our thoughts are with all of those impacted by this devastating earthquake and we are committed to helping them recover and rebuild as quickly as possible," said Walfer Mejia, Wells Fargo's country manager for Mexico. To assist its customers who have family and friends affected by the earthquake, Wells Fargo also announced that it will waive transfer fees for ExpressSend remittances sent from an eligible account to Mexico through October 6, 2017. The first remittance sent under each Service Agreement must be initiated in person at a Wells Fargo branch, though customers with an existing checking or savings account may be able to initiate their first remittance by clling the Wells Fargo Phone (News - Alert) BankSM. Subsequent remittances may be initiated at a Wells Fargo retail banking branch, by calling Wells Fargo Global Remittance Services at 1-800-556-0605, or through Wells Fargo Online at wellsfargo.com. Beneficiaries can receive funds at 11,600 locations and 16,900 ATMs in Mexico.



"We know many of our customers are eager to send money to help family and friends pay for critical needs like food and water, medical bills and home repairs, and we're proud to help our customers send every possible dollar back home," said Daniel Ayala, head of Wells Fargo's Global Remittance Services Group. "We stand in solidarity with the people of Mexico." About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $2.0 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo's vision is to satisfy our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 8,500 locations, 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 42 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 273,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 25 on Fortune's 2016 rankings of America's largest corporations. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked Wells Fargo No. 3 on its most recent list of the top corporate cash philanthropists. In 2016, Wells Fargo donated $281.3 million to 14,900 nonprofits and Wells Fargo team members volunteered 1.73 million hours with 50,000 nonprofits. Wells Fargo's corporate social responsibility efforts are focused on three priorities: economic empowerment in underserved communities, environmental sustainability, and advancing diversity and social inclusion. News, insights and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170922005642/en/

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Pursuant to Regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations & Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, please find the enclosed summary of proceedings of 33rd Annual General Meeting of the Company held on Saturday, 23rd September, 2017 at Rotary Sadan, 94/2, Chowringhee Road, Kolkata-700 020 at 10.00 A.M.Further, please note that the Board of Directors had appointed Shri Atul Kumar Labh, proprietor of M/s. A. K. Labh & Co., Practicing Company Secretaries as Scrutinizer to scrutinize the remote e-voting and voting process carried out at the AGM through ballot paper.The results on the resolution shall be declared by 25th September, 2017. The declared results along with Scrutinizer's Report shall be placed on the Company's website at www.atninternational.co.in and on the website of CDSL at www.evotingindia.com and shall also be communicated to the Stock Exchanges where shares of the Company are listed.Source : BSE

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Retail major Shoppers Stop today said Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC will invest Rs 179.25 crore in the company.

Shoppers Stop's board has approved the issuance of 43.95 lakh equity shares of Rs 5 each at price of Rs 407.78 per piece to Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC for Rs 179.25 crore on preferential basis in a meeting held today, Shoppers Stop said in BSE filing.

The board has also proposed to hold an extraordinary general meeting of the company on October 18, 2017 to seek approval of the shareholders, it said.

The issuance of shares to Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC is subject regulatory and shareholders' approvals.

Earlier this week Shoppers Stop had entered into a commercial arrangement with Amazon India to sell its products on the latter's marketplace.

Shoppers Stop, in a BSE filing, had said there is no separate monetary consideration other than the mutual covenants and agreements of the parties.

"In addition to the website of the company and its group companies, the company will exclusively sell its products online on the Amazon.in the marketplace," it had said.

Amazon India will provide marketing, promotion and visibility support to promote the sale of products of Shoppers Stop on Amazon.in.

The companies will also partner for marketing activities, it added.

"The parties will partner on an exclusive basis for the creation of Amazon experience centres," the filing had said.

Amazon India Fashion Business Head Arun Sirdeshmukh had said the collaboration will enable the two partners to draw upon each other's strengths to serve the evolving customer base in India.

"Shoppers Stop will list its entire portfolio of over 500 brands on the Amazon marketplace in an exclusive arrangement. Also, Shoppers Stop Ltd will create exclusive Amazon experience centres for fashion across its physical network," he had said.
The market had started the previous week on a strong note, with the Nifty hitting a record high of 10,178.95 (on September 19). However, the sell-off in the later part of the week (especially on Friday when it lost 1.5 percent) wiped out those gains and the index ended the week below the psychological 10,000-mark, with a 1.2 percent loss on likely another hydrogen bomb test by North Korea and after S&P downgraded China's credit rating.

After this correction, the market may see some bounce-back amid consolidation initially in the coming week. But the rally may not be sustainable due to ongoing geopolitical tensions between the US and North Korea. Now, Iran also successfully tested its new medium-range missile despite warnings from Washington.

So the major upside looks capped in near-term, experts feel. Earnings and economic recovery, which is likely in second half of FY18, would be positive triggers, they said.

Other reasons for likely consolidation would be expiry of September futures & options contracts due on Thursday and the lack of any major micro data announcement. So the range for the coming week could be 9,900-10,100 if there is no escalation in North Korea tensions, experts feel. Overall, it has been in a range of 9,800-10,100 since August and now the upper end of range increased to 10,200.

"We believe that the volatility will remain high in the coming week. But developments related to the lingering geo-political tussle will dictate the market trend," Jayant Manglik, President, Retail Distribution, Religare Securities said.

Apart from the above factors, FII trend, monsoon update and currency movement will also remain on the participants radar, he added.

While suggesting to keep hedged positions and avoid over-leveraging, he said investors should see this correction as an opportunity to accumulate quality stocks.

The major fall is unlikely in the coming week, unless geopolitical tensions are intensified, according to experts.

They feel the Indian market is well supported by domestic inflows. FIIs continued to be sellers in India since August but that is not something to be worried about for now, they said.

"Markets have not priced in any nuclear attack but we don't expect a nuclear war from North Korea. However, it would be a mistake to allow North Korea to have nuclear weapons," Jamie Dimon, Chairman & CEO, JPMorgan Chase said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

Here are 10 things to watch out for in the coming week:-

North Korea

North Korea's reply to the US Trump's tweet on Thursday saying it may consider testing a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean hit market sentiment globally.

So investors will closely watch developments in North Korea.

Experts feel this North Korea tension will remain the main factor to watch out for, at least till it subsides completely.

Meanwhile, China on Saturday said it would limit oil exports to North Korea under UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile development. The world's second largest economy will also ban textile imports from the North.

Rupee

On Friday, fiscal woes due to reports of likely government's stimulus to revive economy caused selling pressure in the rupee on last Friday morning. However, it recovered all its losses in the later part of the session to end flat due to RBI's intervention, and selling of dollars by exporters & banks.

Many experts feel if the government gives stimulus then the FY18 target for fiscal deficit may not be achieved.

"A stimulus can potentially increase the central government's fiscal deficit to 3.5-3.7 percent of GDP in FY18, from the budgeted 3.2 percent target (3.5 percent of GDP achieved in FY17), depending on the size of the stimulus (0.3-0.5 percent of GDP). This would be a setback to the fiscal consolidation momentum that was endured through the past few years," Deutsche Bank said.

F&O Expiry

All futures and options contracts for September month will expire on Thursday and positions will be rolled over to October.

ICICIdirect feels the Nifty is likely to remain below 10,100 levels in the expiry week. The aggressive writing is seen in 10100 Call option which is expected to keep Nifty below 10,100 level, it said.

If the currency cools-off below 65.3 against the US dollar, the equity indices will again find support near the crucial support zone of 9,850-9,900 towards expiry, it feels.

The volatility has moved up towards 13 percent due to closure of Put writing positions at near the money strikes. This may keep the markets subdued for some sessions, according to ICICIdirect.

Maximum Call open interest (OI) of 64.43 lakh contracts was seen at a strike price 10,200 which will act as a crucial resistance level for the index in September series, followed by 10,100 (with 56.44 lakh contracts in open interest) and 10,000 (with 41.55 lakh contracts in OI).

Maximum Put OI of 42.17 lakh contracts was seen at strike price 9,900 which will act as a crucial base for the index in September series followed by 9,700 which has seen 33.79 lakh contracts in open interest.

Auto stocks

Auto stocks will be in focus on Friday ahead of September sales data due on October 1.

Numbers are expected to be strong due to demand and restocking ahead of Diwali. So Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki, Hero Motocorp, TVS Motor, Bajaj Auto, M&M and Eicher Motors will be in focus.

IPO and Listing

Prataap Snacks' Rs 482-crore initial public offering will remain open till September 26. The issue has been subscribed 35 percent on Day 1.

Capacit'e Infraprojects will list its equity shares on September 25. Experts expect the listing price could be in the band of Rs 350-400 per shares against issue price of Rs 250 per share.

ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company is expected to debut on bourses on September 27. Grey market premium and 3 percent overall subscription to the issue indicated that there could not be much premium on listing, experts feel.

FIIs & DIIs data

Foreign institutional investors have been sellers in India since August. They sold shares worth nearly Rs 20,000 crore between August 1 and September 22.

During the same period, domestic institutional investors bought shares worth more than Rs 25,000 crore, according to provisional data.

Macro data

The macro economic data on infrastructure output for August and foreign exchange reserves for the week ended September 22 (which already crossed USD 400 billion in previous week) will be released on Friday after market hours.

Indias budget balance; external debt for the quarter ended June 2017; deposit growth; and bank loan growth data will also be announced on Friday after market hours.

Technical Outlook

Experts on an average said they expect the immediate support for the Nifty to be 9,900 level, followed by 9,850 while the resistance could be around its previous high of 10,178.95 level.

"In the coming week if Nifty trades and closes above 10,012 level then it is likely to test 10,078  10,144 - 10,221 levels. However, if Nifty trades and closes below 9,916 level then it can test 9,850  9,784 - 9,707 levels," Arpit Jain, ACA, Arihant Capital Markets said.

He said, "Broadly, we are of the opinion that 10,150 level remains major resistance for the markets. Further, any close below 9,850 level would intensify selling pressure."

Hence, one should adopt a cautious approach towards the markets at current level, he advised.

According to Jayant Manglik, the Nifty has crucial support at 9,900 and its breakdown will result in further slide while 10,100 would act as resistance in case of any bounce.

Corporate Action, Earnings, Stocks in Focus

Lanco Infratech will announce its June quarter earnings on September 26, Petron Engineering on September 28 and UB Engineering on September 29.

On coming Monday, Visa Steel share price is expected to open higher as the company has received approval from shareholders to raise limit for investment by FIIs & NRIs in equity share capital.

Coffee Day Enterprises may remain weak as PTI sources said that Income Tax officials on Saturday continued their search at the properties belonging to former Union minister SM Krishna's son-in-law V G Siddhartha, who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of the Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) group.

Matrimony.com will also be in focus on Monday as the stock fell 16.5 percent in two consecutive sessions (since listing). BNP Paribas Arbitrage sold 2.74 lakh shares in two days through bulk deals.

Bharat Road Network will also be closely watched as despite weak market conditions, it gained more than 2 percent on Friday. Corporation San Finance bought 8.77 lakh shares (representing 1 percent of total paid-up equity) of Bharat Road Network.

Novartis India will consider a proposal for buyback of shares on Monday.

Cadila Healthcare may open higher on Monday as its group firm Zydus Cadila has received approval from the USFDA to market blood pressure medicine, Amlodipine and Olmesartan Medoxomil tablets.

Global cues

Japan's Manufacturing PMI for September will be released on Monday while Bank of Japan will announce minutes of the monetary policy committee meeting on Tuesday.

In US, new home sales data for August will be declared on Tuesday and final GDP data for Q2 on Thursday.
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Pharma stocks extended their gain this week on the back of sustained investor interest in the sector owing to attractive valuations.

How did the pharma index perform?

The BSE Healthcare rose 0.52 percent in the past week, while the benchmark Sensex declined 1.36 percent.

Dr Reddy's and Divis Laboratories were the biggest gainers, rising 11.41 percent and 10.87 percent, respectively.

The other stocks that gained include Cipla (3.88 percent), Torrent Pharma (3.5 percent) and Biocon (1.55 percent), while Aurobindo Pharma (-4.12 percent), Sun Pharma (-2.04 percent), Lupin (-0.12 percent) and Cadila Healthcare (-0.16 percent).

Here's what kept the sector buzzing:

Divi's Laboratories said it has received a Form 483 citing six observations from US FDA which are procedural, but all previous observations have been confirmed as completed and resolved. The US FDA is re-inspecting the plant which was under warning letter.

Dr Reddys shares zoomed as the company said it has received an establishment inspection report (EIR) from the US Food and Drug Administration, for Formulation Srikakulam Plant (SEZ) unit II, Andhra Pradesh.

Indias drug price regulator -- the National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA) -- has allowed Abbott Healthcare to withdraw its Absorb and Absorb GT1 stents from the Indian market, citing "safety concerns" raised by US FDA, EU, TGA-Government of Australia and also in India.
In good years and in bad, theres a lot of money in American food. Regardless of the year, however, less of it flows back to the folks who actually grow the food, American farmers and ranchers.

For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that cash paid to American farmers and ranchers this year  for everything from cattle to cauliflower to catfish  will equal $366.6 billion. The all-time record is 2014s plump $424.2 billion.

Either number, however, pales in comparison to total U.S. grocery sales, pegged by the Food Marketing Institute at $668.7 billion last year, the latest available data.

While two-thirds of a trillion bucks is nothing to sneeze at, its chicken feed compared to what Americans spend on food at home and what USDA labels away from home. That amount will again top $1.5 trillion this year, according to the USDA.

Farmers, ranchers, and Big Agbiz are happy, even proud, to point to impressive numbers like these because all reinforce agricultures role in the U.S. and global economy. But the numbers, big and small, dont tell the entire story.

For instance, on Aug. 30 USDA trumpeted that 2017 net cash income and net farm income would rise for the first time after three consecutive years of decline. USDA sees net cash income at $100.4 billion, up nearly 13 percent, but net farm income  explained as a broader measure of profits  will increase only $1.9 billion, just 3.1 percent, to $63.4 billion.

Any upward kick is nice, of course, but $1.9 billion spread nationwide requires a microscope to see, not trumpets to announce.

Microscopes also might be in order at the nations largest ag cooperative, CHS Inc., better known as Cenex Harvest States, to examine its similarly lean year.

In late April, Reuters reported that Seara Ind e Com de Produtos Agropecuarios Ltda, a Brazilian grain trading and farm management company with business ties to CHS, had filed for bankruptcy. Its tanking, sources told the news service, would clip the Minnesota-based farm coop for around $200 million.

Even worse, reported Reuters, CHS appeared to be one of the last to know that Seara was sinking; it was surprised by Searas decision to seek court protection

Wow, anyone watching the store at CHS?

Maybe not. In late August, the $30 billion coop again made headlines when it filed suit in federal court against Boersen Farms, Inc., a massive Michigan farming operation that had borrowed more than $145.3 million from CHS Capital LLC, a CHS subsidiary.

Boersen Farms, explained DTN, an electronic news service, grew out of the crack-up of another giant Michigan farm, Stamp Farms LLC when it bought the bulk of Stamp Farms land-lease agreements and other assets in what was considered one the largest farm bankruptcies ever in 2013...

Four years later, however, Boersen appears well on its way to where Stamp once was. On Aug. 23, CHS began collection proceedings on its multi-million dollar loan, noting that Boersen Farms consisted of approximately 25,000 acres of corn and 58,000 acres of soybeans in about 800 parcels scattered throughout 26 Michigan counties.

Outside those mind-boggling numbers  a $145 million loan to an 83,000-acre farm  an even more mind-boggling question looms: Who at CHS thought loaning $145 million to an 83,000-acre, corn and soybean farm was a wise investment?

If it was long-time CEO Carl Casale, hes not around to answer any questions. Casale, who spent 26 years at Monsanto before arriving at CHS six years ago, was quietly replaced in May, a month after CHSs Brazilian losses became public. If it was CHS Board Chairman David Bielenberg, hes gone, too, having resigned two weeks after Casale left.

That leaves two, new and hopefully chastened, bosses to find out what happened. It also leaves the coops farmers and ranchers to pick up the tab.

Little wonder theres more and more money in food and less and less cash in growing it: profits run uphill to those getting paid, losses run downhill to those getting nicked.
Kerala's all-women self-help group Kudumbashree is getting ready to impart entrepreneurial skills training to rural women in Uganda.

Volunteers of Kudumbashree, the poverty eradication mission by the state government, were invited to help women launch profitable ventures in the agricultural sector of that country, Kudumbashree officials said.

The group would impart a 10-day training to make rural women equip to start farming and various farming-based initiatives, they said.

The state self-help group was roped in after a 26-member team from different countries visited Kerala under the aegis of the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management at Hyderabad and the US Agency for International Development last March, they said.

Kudumbashree Executive Director S Harikishore said the team comprised members from Afghanistan, Ghana, Uganda, Liberia, Kenya and Kudumbashree imparted them training in various aspects of entrepreneurship.

"Kudumbashree is invited as part of Uganda's plan to replicate our various women empowerment programmes in the social and economic sectors there," he said.

Various initiatives imparted by Kudumbashree in the agricultural sector including the production and distribution of value-added products, the significance of forming a consortium of entrepreneurs and innovative thoughts regarding farming would find a place in the training sessions, the official said.

Launched in 1998 as a poverty eradication mission by the state government to wipe out poverty through community action, Kudumbashree has tried its hand in various fields, ranging from pickle-making to IT business to empowering women households in the state. The network now has 43 lakh members across the state.
Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrives to address the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz - RC1831F8AF80

Pakistan is known more as an exporter of terrorism across the world, said Sushma Swaraj in her speech at United Nations General Assembly. Taking a hard line against Pakistan, Swaraj, who was expected to speak on terrorism and climate change, compared India with its often contentious neighbour.

Swaraj criticised Pakistan and its role in harbouring known terrorist organizations. She stated that while India has created institutions like IITs and IIMs, Pakistan has built LeT, Hizbul Mujahideen and the Haqqani Network.

Swaraj also took a page from recent history and chastised the Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi for raking up the Kashmir issue at UN. She reminded him that the two countries had resolved to end all issues bilaterally under the Shimla Agreement (1972) and Lahore Resolution.

Swaraj also called for an international definition of terrorism from the UN within this year.If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? she said.

With reference to climate change, Swaraj reiterated India's commitment to the Paris Accord and also called for developed nations to extend a helping hand in tackling climate change by ,"helping the less fortunate through technology transfer and green climate financing."

"Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the UN Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation," Swaraj said in her address to the UN General Assembly.

She hoped that this "will become a priority" for the UN.

"If that happens it will be a significant achievement," she said.

"We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he (Antonio Guterres) wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN peacekeeping, this goal can't be achieved," she said.

For long India has been calling for reform of the UN Security Council.

Earlier this week, foreign ministers of G4 countries  India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan  met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to push their case for reform of the Security Council including expansion of its permanent and non-permanent members.

India has also received support from several other multilateral groupings during the current UN General Assembly session in this regard, including BRICS and IBSA.

Several countries have taken up the floor of the General Assembly to support India's bid for permanent membership.

"It seems to believe that it can afford not to change the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth. On September 18, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something.

"But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations," Swaraj said.

(With inputs from PTI)
Pakistan's PML-N party-led government today managed to pass a key clause in the Elections Reforms Bill in the Senate, paving the way for ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif to become the chief of the ruling party again.

The Election Commission of Pakistan had disqualified Sharif as a member of the National Assembly following the Supreme Court's July 28 verdict on the Panama Papers scandal.

The 67-year-old leader was also rendered ineligible to act as the president of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party under the landmark verdict.

At today's session of the Senate, a vote was held on the proposed amendment with 38 lawmakers approving the bill as it is while 37 rejecting it. The government managed to get the bill passed by one vote, the Express Tribune reported.

With the passage of clause 203 of the Elections Reforms Bill, 2017 by the Senate, Sharif could become the chief of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz again, it said.

The National Assembly had approved the bill earlier.

Opposition Pakistan Peoples Party's Aitzaz Ahsan had suggested an amendment in clause 203 stating that someone who was no longer a member of the National Assembly could not become the chief of a party either.

The amendment would have prevented Sharif from becoming president of the PML-N once again.

The bill gives every citizen the right to be part of a political party or create one, except those in government service.

The bill will now return to the National Assembly for approval. If the lower house of parliament passes the bill with amendments, it will become a law after formal assent by President Mamnoon Hussain, Dawn newspaper reported.

If the assembly refuses to accept the bill, it will go to a joint sitting of Parliament, it said.

After the passage of the bill, PML-N leader Mushahidullah said with the approval of clause 203, Sharif could become the party chief again.

"In fact, it can be considered that he has already become the party chief," he added.
Poised with unprecedented industrial and educational growth and development, the Burke County commissioners formally approved a new brand that reflects the rapidly emerging economic opportunities.

In development for several months, the new brand sets a formal, moving-forward tone for the future of Burke County  one that is positioned for advancement  while maintaining the character and heritage of the county. Further, using strategic font and color treatments, the new brand invites visual unity and collaboration.

A new tagline, All About Advancing, is an integral part of the new brand.

After years of strategic planning, we are seeing a significant amount of growth and development, said Bryan Steen, Burke County manager. Consequently, we are becoming a focal point for economic and ecotourism opportunities. Burke County is supremely positioned to grow and prosper  to advance  in a manner that is very rare in North Carolina.

For example, before the year is out, we will celebrate the selection of a site location for the placement of the western campus of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Burke County, thus, making (it) one of only two North Carolina counties with a NCSSM campus. We will also celebrate a groundbreaking for a significant expansion of Continental Corporation, making it the lead manufacturer of automobile brakes systems in North America, and the opening of Western Piedmont Community Colleges Mechatronics Center.

The impressive roster of growth and development also includes the recent expansion of the Burke County Library System, the new Burke County Emergency Communications Center, addition of two Emergency Medical Services (EMS) bases, the repurposing of the Western Youth Institution into a National Guard Regional Training Center, and the emergence of significant lifestyle amenities such as the Fonta Flora State Trail and Lake James Loop Trail, Steen said.

This unique convergence of growth is the direct result of years of careful planning and preparation by our commissioners, staff, industries, economic development team (BDI), community leaders and a general countywide sharing of long-term visions and goals, he said. Burke County is swiftly advancing to become a qualified destination of choice for industry, exceptional educational facilities, offerings and residents. As a result, we needed a brand that reflected that commitment to advancing.

During the next several months, the new Burke County brand will be deployed across all appropriate areas: signage, websites, stationary, collateral handouts and promotional items.

The new Burke County brand was developed by the Morganton-based marketing agency VanNoppen Marketing, which, during its 16 years of successful, award-winning growth, has worked closely with many Burke County businesses in the development of smart and successful marketing, graphic design, website development and branding initiatives.

Burke County has a population of about 90,000 people and a diverse economy that includes industrial products from technological, furniture, medical, chemical, machine component and textile manufacturers. Burke County is home to the western campus of the NC School of Science and Mathematics and Western Piedmont Community College. A thriving tourism industry is driven by the charm of growing downtowns and an abundance of natural lakes, rivers, forests, mountains and protected parklands. Lake James State Park, South Mountains State Park, Linville Gorge, and the Fonta Flora State trail are located in the county, as is a portion of the Pisgah National Forest. Because of the size of these park and forest lands, the U.S. government and the state of North Carolina are two of the three largest landholders in the county.




Hamilton, Bermuda (September 23, 2017)





Archer Limited (the "Company") advises that the 2017 Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders of the Company was held on September 22, 2017 at 11:15 a.m. at the Elbow Beach Hotel, 60 South Shore Road, Paget PG04, Bermuda. The audited consolidated financial statements for Archer Limited for the year ended December 31, 2016 were presented to the Meeting.





In addition, the following resolutions were passed:

1) To re-elect Alf Ragnar Lvdal as a Director of the Company.

2) To re-elect Kate Blankenship as a Director of the Company.

3) To re-elect rjan Svanevik as a Director of the Company.

4) To re-elect Giovanni Dell'Orto as a Director of the Company.

5) To re-elect John Reynolds as a Director of the Company.

6) To re-elect Dag Skindlo as a Director of the Company.

7) To re-appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as auditors and to authorized the Directors to determine their remuneration.

8) That the remuneration payable to the Company's Board of Directors of a total amount of fees not to exceed US$500,000.00 be approved for the year ended December 31, 2017.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.




Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

Cloudy skies. High near 60F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Increasing clouds with showers arriving overnight. Thunder possible. Low 53F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
NEW YORK, Sept. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against TechnipFMC plc (TechnipFMC or the Company) (NYSE:FTI) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, and docketed under 17-cv-02368, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired TechnipFMC securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

If you are a shareholder who purchased TechnipFMC securities between April 27, 2017, and July 24, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until October 2, 2017 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

TechnipFMC plc provides oilfield services. The Company offers subsea, surface, onshore, and offshore solutions for oil and gas projects. TechnipFMC serves customers worldwide. TechnipFMC was formed through the merger of FMC Technologies Inc. and French oil-services Technip SA.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) TechnipFMC had a material weakness in its internal control over rates used in the calculations of the foreign currency effects on certain of its engineering and construction projects; (ii) accordingly, the Company lacked effective internal controls over financial reporting; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, TechnipFMCs public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On July 24, 2017, post-market, TechnipFMC issued a press release and filed a Current Report on Form 8-K with the SEC, announcing that the Company would restate its financial statements as of March 31, 2017, as these statements could no longer be relied upon.

On this news, TechnipFMCs share price fell $0.48, or 1.71%, to close at $27.56 on July 25, 2017.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

rswilloughby@pomlaw.com
Carolyn Van Houten/Staff

A small Houston energy company was awarded nearly $100 million in damages by a Texas jury that found Canada's Talisman Energy violated their partnership agreement and committed accounting fraud.

The district court jury in La Salle County sided with Matrix over the multibillion-dollar company in the Eagle Ford Shale dispute that dated back to 2011. Talisman was later acquired by Spanish energy giant Repsol in 2015 in an $8.3 billion deal. Talisman, now known as Repsol Oil & Gas Canada, can still appeal the jury decision.
Alex Brandon/STF

Two staffers for U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway and one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were sent to a hospital near El Campo on Thursday after a major car wreck that interrupted a government tour of hurricane damage to agricultural production.

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who was in the final car in the caravan, was unhurt, as were USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue; Conaway, R-Midland; and other staffers on the trip.
A Midland man was arrested Sunday after he allegedly exhibited a firearm and a knife, according to court documents.

Billy Cole Blackmon, 42, was being held Thursday on three $125,000 bonds for first-degree felony charges of aggravated assault of a date/family/house member with a weapon, four $100,000 bonds for first-degree felony charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and two $500 bonds for Class B misdemeanor charges of driving while license invalid/suspended with previous convictions.

Midland police were dispatched at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday in reference to a disturbance.

Blackmon was following a woman in a vehicle and flashed a gun, according to his arrest affidavit. He allegedly raised the gun to his head multiple times during the drive.

The incident came a day after Blackmon allegedly unloaded a handgun and made the woman believe he put a bullet back in the chamber. Blackmon placed the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger three times in a Russian roulette style, according to the affidavit.

Blackmon in July was with the woman when he grabbed a handgun and began to lift it, according to the affidavit. He later allegedly pointed it to the side of his head.

The woman was afraid Blackmon would shoot or hurt her during the incidents, according to the affidavit.

Blackmon in June allegedly grabbed the woman, drew a knife and placed the blade on her throat.

If convicted of a first-degree felony charge, Blackmon could face up to life imprisonment.






A teacher at Tivy High School in Kerrville ISD was arrested Thursday on accusations that she had an improper relationship with a student.

Sara Kathryn D'Spain of Bandera now faces one charge of improper relationship between an educator and student. She was booked into the Kerr County Jail on a $35,000 bond and has since bailed out.
DENVER, CO, Sept. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Collegiate teams involving hundreds of students from the United States and Europe arrived today at the new site of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2017, which is being held for the first time in Denver, Colorado. These motivated students began assembling their highly energy-efficient, solar houses this morning at 8 a.m. and will spend the next nine days completing their one-of-a-kind houses. This intense assembly phase is a sprint as teams get ready for an exclusive media sneak peek on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 10 a.m. and for opening day on Thursday, Oct. 5, when Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette plans to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony beginning at 9:30 a.m. The competition challenges student teams to compete in 10 contests that gauge each houses performance, livability and market potential. An overall winner will be announced on Oct. 14.



WHO: Participating collegiate teams in the 2017 competition span three countries across two continents, including teams from the United States, Netherlands and Switzerlandand feature

one team with a Colorado university: University of California, Berkeley / University of Denver

See below for full team listings.

WHAT: House Assembly: See teams assembling their houses for competition and public exhibit

Interview Opportunities: Get early access to students and Solar Decathlon Director Linda Silverman

B-Roll and Photo Opportunities: Capture compelling video and photos of student teams assembling energy-efficient, solar houses

Background Information: Visit our online media resources section and download our online media kit





WHEN: House Assembly:*

Monday, September 25  October 3 (varying phases of house assembly)

*Advance coordination, including personal protective equipment, is required to visit during the assembly phase. Please see RSVP details below to make arrangements.

Media Preview Day:

Wednesday, October 4 at 10 a.m. (capture house footage and interview teams)

WHERE: 61st & Pena Station on the University of Colorado A line commuter rail connecting Denver International

Airport to downtown Union Station  view directions

RSVP: Media wishing to attend should RSVP by contacting Eric Escudero, media relations contact at the U.S. Department of Energy, at Eric.Escudero@ee.doe.gov or (720) 356-1534. Advance coordination is required to visit during the assembly phase.

Solar Decathlon 2017 teams competing in Denver, Colorado

Las Vegas: University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Las Vegas, Nevada)

University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Las Vegas, Nevada) Maryland: University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)

University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland) Missouri S&T: Missouri University of Science and Technology (Rolla, Missouri)

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Rolla, Missouri) Netherlands: HU University of Applied Science Utrecht (Utrecht, Netherlands)

HU University of Applied Science Utrecht (Utrecht, Netherlands) Northwestern: Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois)

Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois) Swiss Team: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, School of Engineering and Architecture Fribourg, Geneva University of Art and Design, and the University of Fribourg (Lausanne, Switzerland) Team Alabama: University of Alabama at Birmingham and Calhoun Community College (Birmingham, Alabama)

University of Alabama at Birmingham and Calhoun Community College (Birmingham, Alabama) Team Daytona Beach: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Daytona State College (Daytona Beach, Florida)

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Daytona State College (Daytona Beach, Florida) UC Berkeley/U of Denver: University of California at Berkeley and University of Denver (Berkeley, California)

University of California at Berkeley and University of Denver (Berkeley, California) UC Davis: University of California, Davis (Davis, California)

University of California, Davis (Davis, California) Wash U  St. Louis: Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri)

The student-built houses will open to the public for free tours October 5-8 and October 12-15 from 11:00 a.m.  7:00 p.m. and October 9 from 1:00 p.m.  7:00 p.m. The overall winner will be announced on Saturday, October 14 at 9:30 a.m. Ride the University of Colorado A line light rail to the event site at the 61st and Pena station (6045 N. Richfield St.) near Denver International Airport. Free public parking is also available during the event (directions and a map). For full event information, current standings, high-resolution photos, and videos, visit www.SolarDecathlon.gov. You may also follow the competition in real time on Facebook at Facebook.com/DOESolarDecathlon and Twitter at @Solar_Decathlon. Photos are also available on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/solar_decathlon/.

More about the Solar Decathlon

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition made up of 10 contests that challenge student teams to design and build full-size, solar-powered houses. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends design excellence and smart energy production with innovation, market potential, and energy and water efficiency. Competing students gain hands-on experience and unique training that prepares them to enter the energy workforce. Solar Decathlon is more than a student competition. Its an intensive learning experience for consumers and homeowners as they experience the latest technologies and materials in energy-efficient design, innovative energy technologies, smart home solutions, water conservation measures, electric vehicles, and sustainable buildings.

Solar Decathlon 2017 is made possible by a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Energetics Incorporated, with the generous support of the Solar Decathlon 2017 Supporting sponsors, Wells Fargo, the City and County of Denver, and Denver International Airport (DEN), and Solar Decathlon 2017 Contributing sponsors, L.C. Fulenwider, Schneider Electric, Regional Transportation District, Xcel Energy and Panasonic Enterprise Solutions.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/98bf8119-2b39-4c3a-847a-71300987720a
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After surveying the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico on Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said that "in person it is much worse than it appears on the TV reports."

"The devastation of the island is really breathtaking," continued Cuomo, who held a press conference shortly after a delegation of officials who visited the island with him landed in JFK. "There are parts of the island that have as much as seven to eight feet of water in homes."

Cuomo went to Puerto Rico in response to an official request for assistance and aid from Governor Ricardo Rossello. The delegation brought 34,000 bottles of water, 9,600 ready-to-eat meals, 3,000 canned goods, 500 flashlights, 1,400 cots, 1,400 blankets, 1,400 pillows and 10 10kW generators. The supplies and the delegation arrived via an aircraft donated by JetBlue.

"The one thing that's clear is these people need a lot of help. And we have to remember that they're American citizens. It's Puerto Rico, they're American citizens. U.S. Virgin Islands, they're American citizens," he said.

Cuomo was joined by 60 members of the National Guard, emergency management officials, Representative Nydia Velazquez and Assembly Member Marcos Crespo.

Crespo, like so many others who haven't been able to reach their loved ones, wasn't able to visit the town where his mother lives during the visit because it was so "battered and flooded," according to the New York Post.

"While I didn't get to see mommy, I have hope," Crespo told the Post. "I don't know much about my town today, as I did before this trip. But I know the donations Puerto Ricans have received are going to help where it matters the most."

And this morning, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and 22 city workers flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Among the city workers are 10 emergency managers, nine members of the NYPD Hispanic Society, two staffers from Department of Buildings, and a staffer from the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit.

"We're ready to do all we can to help those affected by this devastating hurricane," Mayor de Blasio said in a statement. "We thank the Hispanic Federation for making this flight possible and these responders for dedicating their time and expertise to assisting with recovery."

For a list of organizations collecting money and goods for the hurricane recovery effort, click here.
Plainview/Hale County Crime Stoppers 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 Sept. 11, 2017, someone entered 1301 Nassau and took a Sony PlayStation, 2001 white colored Cadillac 4-door, bearing Texas FDZ-9225, and three televisions.
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KRESS -- You can learn to play the fiddle, play the right notes and have great technical skill. But if you really want to grab the people, Youve got to play it from the heart, says Hollie Williams.

On Oct. 1, Williams, 25, will become the youngest member ever inducted into the Western Swing Society Hall of Fame. Located in Sacramento, California, the society has been around for 36 years.

Williams grew up in a musical family in Plainview, entering her first fiddle contest at age 7. She frequently played fiddle with her dad Stephen White on guitar, sister Kendra Terrell on guitar, and mom Crystal White on piano. Granddad Greg White was also a musician.

My granddad got me started on the fiddle, Williams recalls.

She later took lessons from musician and music teacher Gary Williams, and the couple was married in 2010.

Williams became a licensed beautician in 2014 and works as a hair stylist at Radiant Lily.

I like art, she said, and I like working with artistic colors at the Radiant Lily, not like the pinks or the blues, but being creative with hair colors. Its the same with my music.

It was none other than Del Puschert, tenor saxophonist for Elvis Presley, who advised her to have a second career. Puschert asked the young fiddler what she wanted to be when she grew up, and Williams said she wanted to be a musician.

Naw, Puschert said. Have a different career and do music on the side.

Puschert practiced what he preached. He was a barber, Williams said.

The Williams home in Kress is filled with memorabilia from a variety of stars, including Bob Wills hat and spurs, a beautiful suede blazer worn by Wills wife and daughter, and numerous autographed photos and instruments.

I guess the biggest one Ive ever met was Merle Haggard, Williams said. He was just as common and nice as you or I.

Merle and I were good friends, Gary Williams said.

Williams has a difficult time stating what her favorite song is. She plays a variety of pieces, including jazz as well as Western swing.

Half of jazz is improvisation, she said. You have to be able to feel it.

She and her husband demonstrated, playing Its a Sin to Tell a Lie, a standard that has been recorded by jazz, pop and country musicians.

Jazz fiddlers are rare, Williams said. She named Stephane Grappelli and Joe Venuti as two of the best. She also looks up to Jason Roberts, who played fiddle for Asleep at the Wheel.

Hollie and Gary Williams are looking forward to their California trip, leaving on Tuesday, Sept. 26, and arriving in time to take part in a three-day festival leading up to the induction on Sunday. During those three days, the couple will play with the Hall of Fame band. Williams said they enjoyed taking the same trip three years ago when she was named Rising Star by the Western Swing Hall of Fame.

Williams has not yet purchased the dress shes going to wear for her induction. She only knows that shes going to wear her cowboy boots and a nice black dress.

Sometimes you find just the right thing at the last minute, she said.

Im proud of Hollie, Gary Williams said. There are over 300 people that submit their resumes to the Hall of Fame, and they only take 10. Its hard to get there. You cant buy your way in. It takes knowledge, ability and hard work.

Its Gary Williams opinion that while a lot of people play music, very few of them are musicians. True musicians, he says, are never satisfied with the way they play.

They keep learning, he said. I once asked Johnny Gimble if he were in a book with only 10 chapters about the best music in the world, what chapter would he be in. He said about Chapter 3. It takes two lifetimes to learn everything there is to know about music, and we only have one.

Though she admires other musicians, Williams husband says, She has her own style.

And to prove it, he accompanies Williams on the guitar while she plays a rousing rendition of Dinah  with plenty of feeling.
A civilian drone someone was flying in Staten Island collided with a Black Hawk military helicopter that was also flying over the island on Thursday night.

ABC reports that the helicopter, in town for the UN General Assembly, was flying about 500 feet above the Staten Island neighborhood of Midland Beach earlier this week when the civilian drone knocked into the rotor and got lodged in the aircraft. The pilot was able to land the helicopter safely at New Jersey's Linden Airport.

According to NBC, the drone put a dent in the helicopter and cracked a window, in addition to causing damage to the aircraft's rotor.

"Our aircraft was not targeted, this was a civilian drone," Army Lieutenant Colonel Joe Buccino, spokesman for the 82nd Airborne, told the Post. The NYPD and the military are both investigating the incident according to the paper, but no arrests have been made yet.

"This is terrifying. Tight FAA regulations are set up to specifically avoid such incidents," Chris, an FAA Certified Commercial Remote Pilot told Gothamist. "I hope for a better mechanism to enforce the existing regulations rather than further restricting drone usage. Either way, this pilot was extremely reckless and I hope he or she is identified."

Federal Aviation Administration rules prevent people from flying drones within five miles of an airport. In New York City, drone enthusiasts can only legally fly the aircraft in five specific city parks with model airplane fields.
MERIDEN  Over 100 people gathered in solidarity at the home of undocumented city residents Franklin and Gioconda Ramos for a candlelight vigil protesting the couples deportation this week.



Having exhausted nearly all legal options, federal authorities have ordered the couple to board a flight to Ecuador on Friday, leaving behind their two American citizen adult sons.



Only one week I leave my sons, all my life in this country, said Gioconda Ramos. I am very, very sad.



Franklin and Gioconda Ramos were just 19 when they illegally crossed the border into the United States in 1993. Since settling in Meriden, the couple learned English, purchased a home on Cook Avenue and raised two sons, Jason and Erick, who attend college at Central Connecticut State University.



The couple learned during a routine check-in Aug. 1, that federal immigration authorities would be enforcing their final orders of removal and giving them until the end of the month to purchase tickets to Ecuador.



The Ramos complied with the governments request, presenting proof of one-way plane tickets at the Hartford immigration office Aug. 31, where a crowd of supporters rallied in the street. They have been ordered to wear GPS ankle bracelets until their flight Sept. 29.



U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal attended the vigil on Friday night, saying that while the countys immigration laws must be followed, so should the rules of justice and humanitarian mercy.



The United States of America should not be tearing families apart. We should enable them to stay together, Blumenthal said. The Ramos family deserves better and I will fight to make sure they have a fair chance to stay here in America.



City Councilor Miguel Castro said the family are ideal community members with no criminal record, not even a traffic violation.



They are part of our community. They are part of the fabric of this city, Castro said. We fight and stand against policies that will promote segregation and discrimination against any member of community.



Community members clutched candles and stood silently as prayers were recited in the Ramos backyard.



Despite the rapidly approaching deportation deadline, Franklin Ramos said he still has faith his familys situation could turn around.



I am still thinking something good will happen, Ramos said. My sons are fighting very hard for me and I fight with them.



ltauss@record-journal.com 203-317-2231 Twitter: @LeighTaussRJ






With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy vowing to veto the Republican budget adopted a week ago, the State Elections Enforcement Commission is asking him to ensure changes to campaign finance laws stay out of future negotiations.



The Republican budget would end the Citizens Election Program, which provides public financing to candidates, saving the state a combined $34.8 million over two years, but the five-member commission said in a recent letter that proposal ignores the programs value.



They also asked in the letter to Malloy that he veto the budget and keep the topic out of future negotiations.



Changes to the way our government operates and the access that Connecticut voters have to their elected officials should be done with transparency, not in closed door secret budget sessions, the commission said in the letter sent Friday.



Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, responded, saying we just cannot afford to spend taxpayers dollars on pencils, and postcards, and rulers, while were telling folks were not going to give them proper services.



The state began offering campaign financing grants in 2008 through the Citizens Election Program. To qualify, statewide candidates must reach contribution thresholds through donations of no more than $100 per person, with limits on the number of donations that can come from outside their district.



Proponents have touted the program as a model on how to limit the influence by lobbyists and corporations.



Fasano, who also represents Wallingford, said changes to the CEP and state election laws have weakened the programs value. He pointed to a Democrat-approved amendment that allowed Sen. Ted Kennedy to supplement his $95,000 grant in 2014 with $288,000 from the Democratic State Central Committee.



Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, said the state never should have started the program.



I dont agree in the public financing of campaigns, as simple as that, said Sampson, who also represents part of Southington.



State Elections Enforcement Commission Executive Director Michael Brandi said the complaint is disingenuous because nearly 80 percent of candidates annually participate, including a high number of Republicans.



Sampson, who has been a CEP recipient since he first ran in 2012, said campaign rules create an extreme disadvantage for candidates who dont use the program.



Brandi disagreed, pointing out candidates can seek higher donations if they dont participate. He also raised concerns about other proposals in the Republican budget, including raising contribution limits for exploratory committees from $375 to $1,000.



Brandi said CEP has helped reduce the amount of spending in Connecticut races when compared to the rest of the country. He said that has also reduced the influence of private or special interests.



Brandi said the program has also been critical to Connecticuts reputation. Lawmakers passed a package of campaign finance reforms in 2005 after a series of scandals that included former state Treasurer Paul J. Sylvester and Gov. John G. Rowland, and current Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, who was re-elected in 2015 after his release from federal prison.



It would bring Connecticut back to the days of Corrupticut, Brandi said, referring to a phrase used playing on the states name and its image of corruption.



Brandi and the SEEC letter both said elimination of CEP would also result in only a small savings  the program collects $46 million over a four-year election cycle, funded by unclaimed bottle deposits.



When asked for a comment on the SEEC letter, a spokesman for Malloy said that the governor will veto the Republican budget, leading to continued negotiations.



The governor has been very clear  he will veto this budget, said the spokesman, Chris Collibee. Over the past week he has held productive conversations with leadership from both parties regarding the budget and we look forward to those conversations continuing.



Democratic lawmakers have also expressed concern about the proposed elimination of CEP, including House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin.



Democrats have expressed a willingness to sacrifice the CEP for budgetary reasons in the past, though, notably suggesting in late 2015 that the program be suspended for the 2016 election cycle to help close budget deficits. That proposal also stalled.



Some Democrats say they never would have been elected into office without the program. Rep. Liz Linehan, D-Cheshire, said she doesnt have a political pedigree that would have led to her 2016 victory under the old system.



Aside from costs, Fasano said SEEC has used CEP to help create almost a cottage industry for itself. He said the commission has sought to expand its reach and ability to investigate, an issue that has ruffled feathers within both parties.



I think that theyve gotten out of hand, theyve become too large, and theyve become too bureaucratic, but above and beyond that we cant afford this program, Fasano said.



Some lawmakers have also complained about investigations that take too long, and the Democrats budget included a requirement that the SEEC conclude all its investigations within a year of receiving a complaint.



Brandi said more than 70 percent of complaints are already resolved in less than a year, but he doesnt have the staff to complete some of the more complex investigations within that time.



msavino@record-journal.com 203-317-2266 Twitter: @reporter_savino






Opinion

Destination Sharjah

The 41st Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) concluded on Sunday. It was a wonderful opportunity for the people of the UAE to see some of the best brains of the earth here in Sharjah. This was the 15th edition I have attended with my children. With each passing year, SIBF is growing better and better. Lots of visitors had great time meeting with great talents. I felt good to see so many young guys and girls taking interest in the book fair.


Fire department's past, future in focus

ALBANY  Albany Fire Chief Warren Abriel Jr. will present a history of the 150-year-old Albany Fire Department from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall.

The department is one of the oldest professional departments in the U.S. Abriel will also discuss modern accomplishments and the proposed Albany Firefighters Museum.

Abriel is a 45-year veteran of the department. His great-grandfather Ruben Abriel became one of the first paid department members in 1867 when it was founded.

For more information, call 518-434 9821.

Esperance society plans book sale

ESPERANCE  The Esperance Historical Society and Museum is having an antique and new book sale from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 7, at the Esperance Museum, just off Route 20 on Church Street.

Also the Esperance 2018 Bicentennial Cookbook is now available. Scattered throughout its 200 pages and recipes, readers will also find old postcards, family photos (some from over 100 years ago) and household hints.

An entire section will be devoted to a Schoharie County favorite: The Chocolate Jumble.

Talk on urban renewal's effects

STEPHENTOWN  Rensselaer County and Troy City Historian Kathryn Sheehan will present an illustrated talk, "Architecture Worth Saving in Rensselaer County: Revisited!" at 7:30p.m. Oct. 2 at the Stephentown Historical Society meeting at Stephentown Heritage Center, 4 Staples Road.

The architecture in question was pictured in a 1965 book of that title. Sheehan will show what has happened to some of these buildings over 52 years, as well as highlight some other new sites for consideration.

For information call 518-733-0010.

Sheehan's talk expands on a 1965 book by RPI architecture Professor Bernd Foerster, documenting urban and rural architecture built before 1929. Foerster felt these buildings were threatened by the urban renewal movement and the expansion of the interstate highway system in the county. His photographs covered a wide range of urban and rural houses as well as churches and businesses.

Vermont medical site seeks memorabilia

BENNINGTON, VT  As Southwestern Vermont Health Care prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2018, its art and archives department is seeking photographs, memorabilia, medically related antiques, and even patients, long-time employees, and their family members to help document the health system's history.

"We are looking for people who were born here or worked here in the early days and who can share interesting stories and memories or objects from that time," said Sarah Lewis, the health system's archivist.

Items and stories may be included in an exhibit of hospital history planned at the Bennington Museum in early 2018.

Call Sarah Lewis at sarah.lewis@svhealthcare.org or Ashley Jowett at 802-447-5019 to share items that may be of interest.

Items may be contributed to the collection temporarily or permanently.

 Compiled by Tim Blydenburgh
GREENWICH  Decisions about Selectman Drew Marzullos immediate political future in Greenwich will be his own, leaders of the town Democratic Party said Friday, one day after learning Marzullo faces charges for shoplifting.

Marzullo did not return requests for comment Friday, and has made no public comment in response to a news report of his arrest.

Marzullo, who is running for re-election as selectman in November, also has formed an exploratory committee for a potential run for lieutenant governor in 2018. He was arrested on Aug. 26 in Clinton and charged with fifth-degree larceny after allegedly taking items worth almost $700 from two stores in the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlet mall.

The Executive Committee understands that Drew is taking the weekend to consider his options, party leadership said in a statement. Per Connecticut statute, decisions about remaining on the ballot once nominated are solely at the discretion of the candidate.

Marzullo, who is free on $5,000 bond, is due in state Superior Court in Middletown on Oct. 17. The charge is a misdemeanor and Marzullos attorney said no plea will be entered on that date.

He is accused of taking $486 in merchandise from a Skechers store, and $184 in merchandise from J. Crew.

Greenwich politicians on both sides of the political aisle said Friday they were shocked when they found out about the arrest. Marzullo is running for his fifth term on the Board of Selectmen. Since taking office in 2009 he has become one of the towns most visible public officials.

I am surprised and saddened by this news, Republican First Selectman Peter Tesei said Friday. During the past eight years, the Board of Selectman, together with Drew as a member, has worked collaboratively toward our common goal of providing the best possible services to all of the residents of Greenwich.

When asked what he thought Marzullo should do regarding his candidacy, Tesei said, At this time, Drew needs time to reflect on these circumstances and my thoughts are with him and his family, who support him.

Selectman John Toner, also a Republican, spoke highly of his colleague.

I consider Drew a friend, Toner said. Ive known his family since I was three and a half years old. We moved next to his great grandfather and his mother grew up on the next street from me. For the past three years he has been a pleasure to work with. We dont always agree with each other but we work well together.

Members of the Democratic Town Committees Executive Committee said no one in the party leadership had knowledge of the arrest before reading about it in press reports Thursday.

We are saddened to learn of the charges against Selectman Drew Marzullo, they said in a statement. Regardless of Drews guilt or innocence in the alleged incident, the Executive Committee is disappointed that he did not communicate to any member of Executive Committee about this concerning situation.

Marzullos running mate on the Democratic ticket, first selectman candidate Sandy Litvack, said Friday he had not spoken to Marzullo and that he, too, learned of the arrest through the media. Litvack said he hoped to speak to Marzullo soon.

I like and respect the guy, Litvack said. I think its very sad. I dont know what else I can say at this time because I dont know any of the facts.

Litvack did not offer any indication he felt Marzullo should leave the ticket.

Im not going to pass judgment without any facts, Litvack said. Its up to him to decide what he wants to do.

Republican Town Committee Chairman Stephen Walko referred calls to party Vice Chairman Rich DiPreta. Walko is an attorney at Ivey, Barnum and OMara, the firm representing Marzullo in the case as well as in other matters.

DiPreta said it was too soon Friday to speak on behalf of the party, but offered his own reaction.

Drew has served the town for many years, he said. Its a very unfortunate set of alleged facts but there is a legal process in place for a reason.

DiPreta said he had no comment on whether Marzullo should consider resigning or withdrawing from the race.

Marzullo is a former 20-year paramedic with the Greenwich Emergency Medical Service. It was confirmed Friday that Marzullo left GEMS late last year, but the circumstances of his departure remain unclear. His attorney Andrea Sisca, who is not representing Marzullo in the criminal case, confirmed he has not worked for GEMS since November 2016 but would not say whether he had been dismissed or left by choice.

GEMS Executive Director Tracy Schietinger would not comment on Marzullos status with GEMS Friday.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
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NEW MILFORD  Surrounded by his family and town employees who have already started moving into the building, Mayor David Gronbach ceremoniously cut the ribbon Saturday on the result of one of his campaign promises, the John Pettibone Community Center.

It really took a village to get to this point, Gronbach told the crowd.

After thanking those who helped with the project, Gronbach took visitors on a tour of the former school, which has been renovated to house the Parks and Recreation Department, social services and the youth agency.

The parks department, which used space all over town for various programs, will use the former main office and re-purposed neighboring classrooms as its own dedicated space, he said.

Other classrooms were converted for the youth agency, which more than doubled the amount of space it had at its East Street location, said Gene Marino, chairman of the agencys board.

(Our employees) are all used to working pretty much on top of each other, so this makes it a nicer surrounding for them, Marino said. And it expands a lot of possibilities for programming, too.

Some renovations were not finished in time for the grand opening Saturday, but Gronbach said they will likely be completed in the next few weeks.

The buildings library, now empty, will be furnished as a space for community group meetings, and classrooms reserved for the social services department will get divider walls, he said.

The schools central offices were expected to relocate to Pettibone from the Lillis Building on East Street, but the Board of Education backed out after differences arose between the board and town over financing of renovations.

Gronbach said Saturday one wing of the building is still open to the board, but if school offices dont move, it could be offered to Naugatuck Valley Community College or Henry Abbott Technical High School to use for satellite labs.

The next step will be to get nonprofits to use some of the space at the center. Gronbachs mayoral aide, Mary Vannucci, said the office has already been flooded with emails and calls from interested groups.

This would be another facility where we can expand some of the things we do, said Phyllis Schaer, chairwoman of the Candlewood Lake Authority, who took a tour Saturday. I think were just seeing the tip of what (Pettibone) can do to benefit the town.

The authority is considering using the space for classes and demonstrations, she said. Other groups include the Community Culinary School of Northwest Connecticut, which might use the kitchen; the Womens Club of Greater New Milford, and the nonprofit Robotics and Beyond, which might take over the technology lab.

Turning the school into a community center, a promise from Gronbachs 2015 mayoral campaign, has not been without controversy, with most of the contention focusing on how Gronbach approached and carried out the work.

His critics, mostly Republicans, have said the plans should have come from a bipartisan committee that included residents. Theyve also called for a more detailed budget and urged that money for repairs be included in the town budget or financed through bonds.

The Town Council has approved $225,000 for repairs and $155,000 for sidewalks by tapping the Waste Management Fund.

Some have also challenged Gronbachs assertions the renovations likely would cost a couple hundred thousand dollars, although studies conducted earlier, when the building was still a school, estimated those costs in the millions.

Members of the board of finance questioned whether this was an appropriate use of the fund, and Michael Barnes, president of the Republican Town Committee, filed a lawsuit over the $225,000, which is still pending.

Gronbach maintains the fund was established just for projects like this.

The project also stalled in January while the building was inspected for asbestos, which appeared not to have been disturbed during the renovations.

Gronbach said Saturday the biggest and most expensive part of the renovation was updating the buildings electrical system. Most of the other work was cosmetic improvements.

He said hes incredibly happy with how the renovations turned out.

When I took office, it was being left to kind of fall apart and was kind of sad and overwhelming, Gronbach said. But seeing how far weve come, even to me, is nothing short of really miraculous.
WASHINGTON  A last-ditch effort by Senate Republicans to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to replace the Affordable Care Act appeared to be on life-support Friday after Sen. John McCain said he would vote against the bill.

With a full bloc of Senate Democrats opposing the health care overhaul, the bills sponsors can afford to lose only two Republicans to avoid defeat. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has also declared his opposition, and a third, Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Friday she was leaning that way.

Now Playing: Matthew Chapman, National Political Writer at Shareblue, discusses the GOP's latest attempt at passing a repeal and replace bill for Obamacare. Chapman notes that there doesn't seem to be a reason for the particular rush, other than trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act before the start of the year. We discuss Senator John McCain's role in the failure of the last GOP bill and whether he will vote for this one, especially given his close friendship with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Chapman adds that Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski is publicly undecided, even though she also voted against the last bill. The Cassidy-Graham bill has a provision that seems especially intended to placate Murkowski: the state of Alaska is exempt from Medicare cap that almost all other states are subject to. Chapman notes that Republicans will be forced to go back to the drawing board and work with Democrats on bipartisan legislation if this latest bill doesn't pass. Video: Cheddar

More for you The night John McCain killed the GOP's health-care fight

McCain announced his decision in a statement in which he said he could not in good conscience support the bill because the partisan process that created it would leave the American people guessing from one election to the next whether and how they will acquire health insurance.

Senate Republicans, who hold a slim 52-48 majority, are pushing for a vote by Friday, when special rules that would allow the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Bill Cassidy, R-La., to pass with a bare 50 votes plus a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence. After Friday, 60 votes would be required for passage.

One hearing is scheduled with the Senate Finance Committee for Monday afternoon, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Congress official arbiter of major legislation, has said it cannot complete analysis of the impact of the proposal on health-insurance coverage and premiums by Fridays deadline.

As in July, when McCain cast the dramatic vote that killed the last Republican effort to repeal the current health law, the Arizona Republican lamented a legislative process devoid of committee hearings and a Congressional Budget Office review.

I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried, McCain said. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.

McCain acknowledged that his move probably torpedoes the bill co-sponsored by Graham, his closest friend in the Senate.

The bills authors are my dearest friends, and I think the world of them, McCain said. But he blasted the process his party used to move legislation that he said would affect a fifth of our economy and every single American family.

Graham said his friendship with McCain is not based on how he votes but on how hes lived his life and the person he is, and said he would press on with his bill.

There was no immediate reaction from President Trump. But Pence said the fight wasnt over.

This is not going to be easy. Some have gone so far as to announce their opposition already, he said. President Trump and I are undeterred.

A defeat of the Graham-Cassidy bill, if it happens, would be a huge break for California, which vigorously embraced the Affordable Care Act, using its federal funds to expand coverage to 5 million people, and would be among the hardest hit by its repeal. By some estimates, the state stands to lose $78 billion in federal funds from 2020 to 2026 alone under the legislation.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, praised McCain for once again showing courage on behalf of the public, and urged House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to begin bipartisan talks in the House to fix some of the widely acknowledged problems in the Affordable Care Act that have kept premiums high, especially for small businesses and individuals buying policies on its state exchanges.

Such negotiations had been started in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee between its chairman, Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and ranking Democrat Patty Murray of Washington, after the July repeal effort failed, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., killed those talks when he announced that he would bring the Graham-Cassidy bill to a vote next week.

Murray also applauded McCain.

I agree with Sen. McCain that the right way to get things done in the Senate  especially on an issue as important to families as their health care  is through regular order and working together to find common ground, she said. She added that she is confident that we can reach a bipartisan agreement as soon as this latest partisan approach by Republican leaders is finally set aside.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he assured Sen. McCain that as soon as repeal is off the table, we Democrats are intent on resuming the bipartisan process.

Republicans have faced broad opposition to their repeal bills from nearly every corner of the health care industry, which grew louder and more unified with each legislative iteration. On Friday, California-based Kaiser Permanente and its unions came out strongly against Graham-Cassidy, joining the nations biggest names among insurers, doctor and hospital groups and patient advocacy organizations.

McCains announcement came on the same day that Collins, who joined McCain in voting against the Republican repeal effort in July, said she is leaning against the current bill, especially because it, in effect, would void the current laws requirement that insurers issue policies to people with chronic medical conditions such as cancer or diabetes. An estimated 100 million people have what is known as a pre-existing condition.

Under the Graham-Cassidy plan, states would be required to set up their own health-insurance systems, with far less federal money than they get now, and would have the flexibility to radically alter the current laws rules.

Collins said that while the bill ostensibly requires insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, it could allow insurers to charge them premiums that she said would be so high they would be unaffordable.

Another blow to the GOP effort came Friday from Alaskas Department of Health and Social Services, which said the state would lose 65 percent of its funding under the repeal bill, going further than previous GOP repeal efforts.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also voted against the July repeal effort but has not stated her position on the latest version, and had said its effect on her state would play a big role in her decision.

San Francisco Chronicle news services contributed to this report.

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynlochhead
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Porter-area healthcare options recently improved with the opening of a full-service emergency room.

The Greater East Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce welcomed the Cleveland Emergency Hospital ER branch opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 21. Is is an office that also operates as an ER at 24540 FM 1314 in Porter. It opened last month.

"We're trying to expand the Cleveland Emergency Hospital system," Administrative CEO Don Vickers said. "The Porter area is underserved so that's why we expanded here."

The Porter branch is a full-service ER with five beds. It always has a physician on staff, according to Lab Manager Tamesha James. It also has an on-site pharmacy.

"We're really excited about these patient rooms," she said.

CT scans and X-rays, as well as tests can be performed at the facility.

"The longest test we have here is 20 minutes," she said.

Results for some of the tests also can come back in the same day. James also says patients can worry less about insurance options when coming to Cleveland Emergency Hospital's branches.

"We accept every insurance," she said.

Vickers expressed how important it is to have more options available for hospitals and other medical needs for the Porter area.

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Cleveland Emergency Hospital has been in operation since August 2015 and has opened four new facilities in two years, including the Texas Emergency Hospital, also in Cleveland, in July 2017.

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For more information about the hospital and its services, call 281-747-7952.
President Donald Trump escalated a war of words with North Korea on Friday, calling Kim Jong Un a "madman" who would be "tested like never before," the latest in a potentially dangerous exchange of threats that included the North Korean leader calling Trump "deranged."

The playground-level taunts marked a sudden and potentially alarming turn toward personal enmity between the two leaders, who are still taking one another's measure. The insults capped a week in which Trump threatened to obliterate the impoverished but nuclear-armed nation to protect the United States and its allies; he also announced sweeping new U.S. financial sanctions.

Diplomats fretted that Trump was making a bad situation worse by threatening military action. North Korea said it is considering how to respond and suggested Friday that it may soon test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.

The latest exchange began late Thursday, when Kim called Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" and referred to Trump's speech at the United Nations on Tuesday as "unprecedented rude nonsense."

Name-calling is standard procedure for North Korea, but the kind of direct statement issued in Kim's name Thursday night is unusual.

Trump responded early Friday via Twitter.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

Trump returned to the theme later Friday, saying at a political rally in Alabama that "Rocket Man should have been handled a long time ago."

"I want to tell you something, and I'm sure he's listing because he watches every word. He's watching us like he never watched anybody before. And maybe something gets worked out and maybe it doesn't. Personally, I'm not sure it will," Trump said. "But I'll tell you one thing: You are protected."

The Trump administration said last week that Trump is merely using the kind of blunt language that the isolated North Korean leader understands. But officials acknowledge that they know little about how Kim perceives the world.

Asian diplomats have warned the United States that the risk is particularly acute if Kim feels he is losing respect with the North Korean military and government elite.

Pentagon leaders also worry that in the current charged environment, either leader or his military might misinterpret the other's intentions. So far, the White House has pursued a sometimes confusing three-part strategy of tougher economic sanctions, military threats and an offer of negotiations.

"We don't know how their means of communication and behavior will be," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday. "How the decision-maker or the people that are closer to the decision-maker are going to behave is something we will have to understand and learn."

Trump declared Tuesday while addressing the United Nations General Assembly that "the United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

The North Korean state news agency KCNA on Friday referred to Trump's speech as "rubbish." "This thrice-cursed sophism made by the mentally deranged hooligan has shocked the whole world," the news agency said.

The exchange of insults came as China on Friday disputed Trump's claim that it has joined a new round of punishing economic sanctions against its communist ally.

Unveiling the penalties Thursday, Trump said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had ordered Chinese banks to cease conducting business with North Korean entities. He welcomed the move as "very bold" and "somewhat unexpected."

But on Friday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman denied that Beijing had agreed to go that far.

"As far as I know, what you have mentioned just now is not consistent with the facts," spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular news conference in response to a question about Trump's comments.

Rising tension and the threat of a new war on the Korean Peninsula shaped Trump's four days of diplomatic discussions at the United Nations. He met with the leaders of Japan and South Korea - U.S. allies directly threatened by North Korea - and mocked Kim as "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission" before announcing sweeping new U.S. financial sanctions.

Kim did not attend the session, and neither did Xi nor Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation also does business with North Korea.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the gathering Thursday of "a very dangerous confrontation spiral."

"We resolutely condemn the nuclear missile adventures of Pyongyang in violation of Security Council resolutions. But military hysteria is not just an impasse, it's disaster."

Trump also said diplomacy can still work to avert a crisis, and U.S. officials scurried to tell allies that Trump is not itching for war.

When asked Friday whether the president's tweets were working to avert war, Tillerson highlighted the U.S. diplomatic efforts to address the North Korea situation.

"The president obviously takes the responsibility of the security of the American people very seriously, and it is his first and foremost responsibility," Tillerson said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"We will continue our efforts in the diplomatic arena, but all of our military options - as the president has said - are on the table," he added.

The White House said Friday that Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who met Thursday, "shared the view that maintaining overwhelming military superiority over North Korea is essential."

China has tightened the financial screws on North Korea under U.N. sanctions approved in recent weeks. But Beijing remains unwilling to completely isolate the regime and has not cut all financial ties.

Given that China accounts for nearly 90 percent of North Korea's trade, Beijing's cooperation is vital to Trump's efforts to isolate and pressure Pyongyang.

The executive order Trump issued Thursday imposes sanctions on any foreign financial institution that knowingly conducts or facilitates "any significant transaction in connection with trade with North Korea." It also bans aircraft and ships from entering the United States if they have traveled to North Korea in the preceding 180 days.

At Friday's Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing, Lu repeated Beijing's familiar talking points: that China "comprehensively and strictly" implements U.N. resolutions but opposes unilateral sanctions imposed outside the U.N. framework.

"China's stance on this is clear and consistent," he said.

Lu declined to comment on the "personalized" exchange between Trump and Kim.

He also, again, appealed for calm.

"What's needed now is to implement the U.N. resolutions strictly and positively explore channels to solve problems via talks, rather than provoking each other and adding oil to the fire," Lu said.

- - -

Denyer reported from Beijing. Anna Fifield in Tokyo and Shirley Feng, Luna Lin and Liu Yang in Beijing, and Abby Phillip in Huntsville, Alabama, contributed to this report.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - President Donald Trump campaigned on Friday night for Alabama Senate candidate Luther Strange, in a race that has pitted him against his most loyal supporters and that holds the potential to upend the political dynamics for Republicans facing election in 2018.

The endorsement of 'Big Luther' could prove to be a big boost for the interim Alabama senator, who is trailing his opponent, former state judge Roy Moore, in some public polls. But even Trump seemed unsure that the endorsement was the right move.

"I'll be honest, I might have made a mistake," Trump told the crowd at one point during his nearly 90 minutes of remarks.

"If Luther doesn't win they're not going to say, we picked up 25 points in a short period of time," he added, referring to the media. "If his opponent wins, I'm going to be here campaigning like hell for him."

After some musing, he seemed to catch himself.

"Luther will definitely win," Trump said.

It may not have been exactly the ringing endorsement Strange's campaign had hoped for, but it would have to do.

Trump is jumping into the special election at a time when Strange could use all the help he can get before the primary election on Tuesday night. The Alabama Republican is favored by establishment Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., but has been pilloried by Moore, who has fashioned himself as an outsider Republican in the mold of Trump himself.

For his part, Strange has draped himself in Trump in an effort to win over the president's ardent supporters. So much so that the Friday night rally bore few signs that its purpose was to boost his candidacy.

Everything about the rally - the mega stadium, the massive American flag, the "Make America Great Again" hats - screamed Trump. There were few signs that the rally was for anyone else, except for the giant Trump campaign-styled "Vote for Luther" sign that hung in the background.

The president delivered a signature rally speech, meandering from topic to topic, prompting laughter, and chants of "Lock her up!" from the crowd when he mentioned his former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. He denounced the "dishonest media" who he said would not broadcast images of the crowd (though they often do). And he complained about the treatment of first lady Melania Trump in the media.

Then, without much warning, Trump returned to his prepared remarks touting Strange.

"Luther wants to end business as usual, stop the insider dealing and Luther Strange is determined to drain that swamp," Trump said, in a brief interlude.

Trump talked at length about Strange's willingness to vote in favor of the Republicans' bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act without seeking any favors in return. He said his endorsement of Strange came despite his unwillingness to wade into an ongoing primary.

"We have to be loyal in life," Trump said. "He never went quid pro quo, he just treated me great.

"And I'm calling him. He was down like quite a bit and I said I'm going to endorse you," Trump continued. "I shouldn't be doing it . . . The last thing I want to do is be involved in a primary."

But Strange had given him one of the "coolest" moments of the last six months of his life, Trump told the crowd. So he came to Alabama to get out the vote for Strange in the final days of the primary campaign.

But, quickly, Trump was back to his usual campaign fare.

He boasted of his electoral college win.

"They said there was no path to 270 but there was a path to 306," Trump said.

He admonished Clinton for failing to travel to Wisconsin during the campaign and dismissed the idea that Russia interfered in the election to help him.

"In case you were curious, no, Russia did not help me," Trump declared.

He returned again to Strange, who apparently watched the rally from somewhere offstage.

Both men were on message on one important point: The Senate majority leader was persona non grata.

"He's not a friend of Mitch McConnell, he doesn't know Mitch McConnell until recently," Trump said, decrying the "bad rap" that Strange's opponents had saddled him with as an establishment candidate. "He doesn't know him, he just got there!"

Moore, a controversial former state judge, boasts the support of prominent pro-Trump figures, including two ex-White House staffers, chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his terrorism aide, Sebastian Gorka.

At a rally in Montgomery on Thursday night, former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin pitched the race, and Moore's candidacy, as a fight for the soul of Trumpism.

"A vote for Judge Moore isn't a vote against the president," Palin said. "It is a vote for the people's agenda that elected the president. It's for the big, beautiful movement that we're all a part of. The president needs support to keep the promises that elected him. So we're sending Trump someone who has our back, not Mitch McConnell's . . . Make no mistake, 'Big Luther' is Mitch McConnell's guy."

The dissent among Trump allies even came from within his own Cabinet.

Housing and Urban development Secretary Ben Carson issued a statement on Friday backing Moore's candidacy, an extraordinary endorsement that came just hours before Trump was set to arrive in Alabama to campaign for Strange.

"Judge Moore is a fine man of proven character and integrity, who I have come to respect over the years," Carson said. "He is truly someone who reflects the Judeo-Christian values that were so important to the establishment of our country."

Recent polling in the state shows Strange trailing Moore despite the political muscle backing him.

Republicans worry that if Strange falls to Moore, the race could launch a tsunami of outsider challenges to incumbent Republican lawmakers in the next midterm election.

Trump warned the crowd that Moore would be vulnerable to losing to the Democratic candidate in the general election while Strange would sail through to victory.

"Roy has a very good chance of not winning in the general election," Trump said. "Roy is going to have a hard time, but I will be backing him if he wins."

And he lamented that Strange, who he noted had fought against public corruption in his previous career as attorney general of Alabama, had been saddled as an establishment candidate. Strange was appointed by the Alabama governor to fill the seat vacated by former senator Jeff Sessions, who has become the U.S. attorney general in the Trump administration.

"Friends of mine have told me very strongly that if Luther wasn't appointed in office . . . he'd be leading every poll by 50 points," Trump said. "But the fact that he got appointed hurt him.

"If Luther didn't take an appointment, if he just ran, it wouldn't be a contest," Trump said.

As Trump faces the prospect that his chosen candidate might not emerge the victor, he has fixated on what his endorsement has done to help Strange catch up in the polls.

"If Luther doesn't make it, they're going to go after me," Trump said, referring to the media. "He went to third, second and now it's almost pretty even right?"
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - Tens of thousands of residents in northwestern Puerto Rico were ordered to evacuate Friday amid fears that a dam holding back a large inland lake was in imminent danger of failing because of damage from Hurricane Maria's floodwaters.

Officials worried that as many as 70,000 people could be in the path of a massive amount of rushing water in the event the Guajataca Dam releases into the Guajataca River, which flows north through low-lying coastal communities and empties into the ocean.

The dam suffered a "fissure," Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a news conference Friday afternoon. Residents in the municipalities of Quebradillas, Isabela and part of San Sebastian could be affected if the dam collapses, he said, and it could be a catastrophic event.

"To those citizens . . . who are listening: Please evacuate," Rossello said as buses were dispatched to ferry residents out of harm's way. "We want your life to be protected. . . . Please, if you're listening, the time to evacuate is now."

Now Playing: In the wake of Hurricane Maria, a remarkable rescue of two children and their mother was captured on video. Video: GeoBeats

Abner Gomez, executive director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency, said in an interview late Friday that the dam's gates suffered mechanical damage during the storm, making it impossible for them to open and let out normal water currents. Officials worry that could cause the dam to spill over.

Gomez said that under current conditions, with water rising after the hurricane, "there is no way to fix it" right now. Additional water flowing into the lake could create sudden dangers, so emergency evacuation was the only option, he said. If the dam spills over or fails structurally, he said, "thousands of people could die."

The urgent situation Friday came more than 48 hours after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico's southeastern coast as the most powerful storm to strike the island in more than 80 years. It was a reminder that Maria's impact on Puerto Rico is far from over; officials still have little sense of the scope of the damage as a communications and power blackout continued to affect nearly everyone in the U.S. territory.

Gomez characterized Maria as "one of the greatest natural disasters" in recent U.S. history, comparing it to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The destruction in some parts of the island "looked more like a tornado than a hurricane," he said. Rescue and recovery could take months, he said, and a "return to normalcy" could take at least a year.

Authorities on Friday reported six deaths across the island. Three of the fatalities occurred in the municipality of Utuado as a result of mudslides, Puerto Rico's public safety department said in a statement. Two others died in flooding in Toa Baja, and one other person died in Bayamon when a panel struck him in the head. More deaths are likely to be reported in coming days as search-and-rescue crews reach previously inaccessible areas, officials said.

"We are aware of other reports of fatalities that have transpired by unofficial means, but we cannot confirm them," said Hector Pesquera, secretary of the public safety department.

Though damage assessments have been nearly impossible, early reports reveal an island ravaged by Maria's high winds and torrential rains, with roofs peeled open like tin cans, neighborhoods waterlogged, and trees that were lush just days ago now completely stripped bare of leaves. The hurricane plowed through the entire 100-mile island, with the eye tracking diagonally from the southeast to the northwest.

"Every vulnerable house here made out of wood was completely or partially destroyed during the path of the eye of the hurricane," Rossello said of an island where many homes are constructed with wood foundations and zinc roofs. "Puerto Rico has endured an horrific ordeal."

The lack of communications has isolated rural areas of the island. Just 15 percent of Puerto Rico's communication towers are working, and some transmission towers have collapsed. Up to 85 percent of the island's fiber cables are damaged.

Power remains completely out across the island, and just 25 percent of it has water service.

Shock has given way to frayed nerves as officials warned that it could be months before power is restored to some areas, and there is no indication of when communications infrastructure will be fixed. In San Juan, the capital, streets were choked with traffic as people tried to find loved ones and spent hours waiting in line for gas.

The De La Cruz family could not find fuel Thursday. On Friday morning they waited in line for six hours at one of the open stations here, and there were still 20 cars in front of them. Gabriel De La Cruz and his wife, Luisa, took turns fanning their 1-year-old son, Ismael, who sat sweating in the hot car, wearing only a diaper.

"This is all we have," De La Cruz, 30, said of the car. They lost their home and all their belongings.

Residents searching for loved ones in remote areas met downed trees, power lines and other debris. News was particularly scarce from the southern and central parts of the island, as well the tiny island of Vieques to the east.

"Even worse than not having power or water, which we've unfortunately become accustomed to, a communications blackout was the real anxiety-inducing feature . . . we haven't really dealt with it before," said Miguel Soto-Class, president of the Center for a New Economy, a San Juan-based think tank, who stood on the roof his home to get a cell signal. "Are people dead and suffering or are people like we are, bruised but fine? The not-knowing part is just terrible."

Puerto Rico, with 3.5 million U.S. citizens, also is facing a crisis due to geography: It is an island dependent on air and sea for supplies and help. The immediate response that occurred after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, where volunteers from Louisiana headed in during the storm, or after Hurricane Irma in Florida, where utility trucks were pre-positioned to assist, is impossible here.

"It's not like you can just drive a tractor-trailer," said Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Puerto Rican-born president of the New York City Council. "That adds a whole other layer of logistical challenge to it."

Photos taken from a helicopter surveying the damage in the southeastern part of the island, encompassing an area that on a good day would be a two-hour drive from San Juan, show entire neighborhoods engulfed in murky water. Tops of buildings were sliced open, their rooms visible as if in a dollhouse.

A building in a coastal luxury resort, once with enviable ocean views, was now partially floating over open air as rocks and mud crumbled under one corner and fell into the sea. Windmills broke and shattered, and solar panels shone like mirrors.

The enormity of what the country had just been through - and what was yet to come - appeared to be sinking in for many people, including those who considered themselves hurricane-hardened.

"This storm was something," said Geraldo Ramirez, 36, a resident of San Juan's La Perla neighborhood. "I was here for Hurricane Georges back in '98, and that was hard to believe, how badly it affected the island. But this, Maria, was something altogether different."

Ramirez lives in a small three-story house near the waterfront on Calle San Miguel. His house, a sturdy cinder-block structure, was built 17 years ago and did not suffer much structural damage. But rain and ocean water found its way into every room. He expects not to have power for months.

"But it's OK, we will make do," he said. "We are used to it and it's always the same. Georges, Hugo, we lose power and we lose water. But we know how to survive."

Leaning against the wall of his carport in coastal Loiza, Jorge Diaz, 72, was waiting for the airport to open, so he can escape to relatives in Florida because he can't imagine going months without electricity and water.

"That's unreasonable. You can't live like this," Diaz said. "It's a dark time now. A dark time for Puerto Rico."

One block down and across the street, Lizmarie Bultron, 39, trudged through calf-high water to exit her home, about a block from the beach.

"Everything I had is gone. I lost my whole house; the only thing left is the floor," Bultron said, looking at her feet, still ankle-deep in water. "And this, this water won't be gone for at least a month. All we can do is wait. Wait for help to come. That's the only choice. But no one has come yet. Not FEMA, not anyone."

---

Cassady reported from Loiza, Puerto Rico; Somashekhar and Zezima reported from Washington. Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo in San Juan and Jesse Mesner-Hage in Washington contributed to this report.
MORRISTOWN, New Jersey - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson issued a statement on Friday supporting Roy Moore's candidacy for the Republican Senate nomination in Alabama, breaking with President Trump's endorsement of the establishment-backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange.

The extraordinary endorsement in Tuesday's primary runoff election comes just hours before Trump is set to arrive in Alabama to campaign for Strange.

And it highlights what appears to be a growing rift between the outsider president and his grass roots supporters, many of whom have vocally backed Moore's candidacy.

"Judge Moore is a fine man of proven character and integrity, who I have come to respect over the years," Carson said. "He is truly someone who reflects the Judeo-Christian values that were so important to the establishment of our country.

"It is these values that we must return to make America great again," the statement continued. "I wish him well and hope everyone will make sure they vote on Tuesday.'

Moore, a former Alabama state judge, is a controversial figure in the state. He was removed from his post for failing to follow federal orders to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments that he had installed at the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Despite support for Moore from some of Trump's most ardent supporters, including two former White House officials, Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, the president has endorsed Strange in the race. Vice President Mike Pence also plans to campaign for Strange ahead of the runoff vote.

In a tweet Friday, Trump praised Strange and predicted that the race would be close. Some recent polls had shown Moore leading, though the contest was getting more competitive.

"Will be in Alabama tonight. Luther Strange has gained mightily since my endorsement, but will be very close. He loves Alabama, and so do I!" Trump wrote.

- - -

Video: A window into the Alabama campaign trail with Roy Moore

The Post's Michael Scherer followed former Alabama chief justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore in the final days of his campaign against Sen. Luther Strange (R). Here's a look into the controversial race.

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2fH9VJz

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Elizabeth Mongno was walking Tonka around her wooded property in rural New Jersey when the 1-year-old dog spotted a deer and decided to chase it.

Tonka likes to roam free in the 3- to 4-acre land divided among a handful of homeowners, and he usually comes back within seconds. But when he dashed into the woods Wednesday evening, he didn't return. She screamed for Tonka to come back, and about 30 seconds after her dog took off, she heard a yelp. She knew Tonka was hurt and thought he had been bitten by another animal.

About 10 minutes later, her husband found Tonka lying on the ground about 50 feet from their property line. He'd been shot with a bow, directly into the heart. Tonka tried to walk home, Mongno said, but he didn't make it.

"It didn't occur to me that there's a hunter in the woods," Mongno told The Washington Post. "I started screaming."

Police said Tonka was killed by a bowhunter who mistook the 95-pound Alaskan Shepherd with white and gray fur for a coyote chasing a deer. The hunter, Romeo Antonucci, was licensed to hunt and was within the proper distance from houses when he fired his bow, police said. But Antonucci has been charged with careless discharge of a weapon and damage to property (in this case, Tanko is considered property, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection told NJ.com).

Antonucci, of Kenilworth, New Jersey, did not respond to requests for comment.

Bow hunters in New Jersey are allowed to hunt deer as long as they're 150 feet from residences. The state legislature passed a bill in 2010 to shorten the minimum distance requirement from 450 feet to 150 feet in an effort to curb the deer population.

State law also allows hunters to shoot coyotes. Only bows are allowed during the fall hunting season, which began this month. Firearms and bows are permitted from November to March.

Mongno said Antonucci is a relative of one of her neighbors who gave him permission to hunt on their property, which is not far from Mongno's. She said she and the other neighbors should've been made aware that somebody was hunting on the property, which is dotted with five houses, so that they knew to be more careful.

"We didn't know that there was anybody hunting. . . . Children played in those woods," Mongno said. "It didn't even occur to us that anybody would even hunt there because it's a small piece of property."

Mongno said she is not against hunting. Though she doesn't hunt, her husband is an avid hunter.

"If the rule is 150 feet, and that is what it is, that's fine," she said. "But we have the right to know if somebody is hunting in the property adjacent to us. . . . It never occurred to us that we needed to have hunting laws for our back yard."

She also criticized Antonucci for mistaking her dog for a coyote.

"If he couldn't tell the difference between a dog and a coyote, he should not have a weapon. . . . You need to know your target," she said.

Mongno's family got Tonka last year, when he was still a puppy. The beloved dog had become Mongno's third child and her little boy's best friend.

"I will never forgive myself for letting him get away from me. My poor kids couldn't be more broken, especially my 9-year-old. . . . Tonka put so many smiles on so many faces. His lovable, goofy personality made everyone around him happy," Mongno wrote on Facebook.
LONDON - In a major speech on how Britain wants to exit the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May called Friday for a two-year "implementation period" after Brexit, during which trade and travel, customs regulations and security arrangements would continue on current terms.

May's remarks in Florence immediately stirred debate in Britain and across Europe about exactly what she meant. But the consensus was that Britain means to leave the European Union as promised in March 2019, but remain a full trading partner, pay its full share to the European Union budget and fully abide by its collective rulings for an additional two years, more or less.

In short, this appears to mean that a first, political, diplomatic Brexit will happen in March 2019 - and that full trade and travel Brexit will happen in 2021.

The European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, dubbed May's speech "constructive" but added that it "must be translated into negotiating positions to make meaningful progress."

Barnier said the prime minister showed "a willingness to move forward."

Not everyone on the European side was so diplomatic.

Manfred Weber, a senior German member of the European Parliament and an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the speech was far from illuminating.

"In substance PM May is bringing no more clarity to London's positions. I am even more concerned now," he tweeted.

European and British negotiators have spent the last six months - and three rounds of talks in Brussels - with very little to show.

Before her talk, the hyperbolic British press was dubbing May's moment in Florence the speech of her political career.

The consensus appears to be that May's address was optimistic, can-do and a very British, very Conservative, very May speech - with one eye on challenges to her leadership back home, but thin on details.

The speech was notable for its almost complete absence of blame on all sides and May extending her hand, about 11 times, in friendship.

"It's up to leaders to set the tone, a tone of trust," May said.

In her remarks, May kept pressing her skeptical European counterparts not to get bogged down in who pays what, when and how, but to envision instead a new post-Brexit world in which "imaginative" and "creative" and "ambitious" solutions could bind the two entities together toward common goals based on shared values.

"We want to be your strongest friend and partner as the E.U. and the U.K. thrive side by side," May told the Europeans.

"We want to work hand-in-hand with the European Union, rather than as part of the European Union," she said.

Keir Starmer, Brexit spokesman for Britain's Labour Party, said May has finally accepted a long transition phase, as his opposition party has advocated.

"Not much else in the speech," he tweeted.

Nigel Farage, former leader of the U.K. Independence Party and a high-profile Brexiteer, slammed the speech, saying that May was seeking to "rebadge the status quo."

"The most telling line of the whole speech was towards the end when she said, 'We don't seek an unfair competitive advantage.' Well, that's what I voted for! I voted for us to be able to be competitive, to be global, to be free of European laws," he told Sky News.

The Daily Mail, a British tabloid that has been very gung-ho on Brexit, flashed a headline that read: "May is accused of BETRAYING referendum by effectively keeping Britain in EU until 2021."

Journalist James Blitz wrote in the Financial Times's Brexit Briefing: "This was a determined effort to break the logjam in the talks. It is too soon to say whether Mrs May will have convinced the EU to move to phase two in a little over a month's time."

May promised a "bold new security agreement" and said Britain is "unconditionally committed to Europe's security."

The prime minister said she hoped two trading partners could do "so much better" than even the best and most recent deals that the European Union has struck with Canada and Norway.

There should "no need to impose tariffs where there are none now," May said, hopefully.

The 27 other E.U. member states agree that they will start talking about future rights, privileges and trade for Britain only after "sufficient progress" has been made on three other key issues - E.U. citizens rights, the border with Ireland and the divorce bill.

May promised that E.U. citizens already living in the United Kingdom would be welcome to stay. On the problematic frontier between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of Britain, she said there should be no hard border.

The prime minister did not say how much Britain would pay into European Union coffers to remain in the trading bloc during the transition - nor how much Britain might owe to get out of the union.

May said only that London would "honor"its existing and future commitments.

Independent estimates of that "divorce bill" - the settling of accounts for British commitments, offset by payments to the E.U. - range from $30 billion to $90 billion.
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San Juan, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican officials rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people downstream of a failing dam and said they could not reach more than half the towns in the U.S. territory as the massive scale of the damage wrought by Hurricane Maria started to become clear on Friday.

Government spokesman Carlos Bermudez said that officials had no communication with 40 of the 78 municipalities on the island more than two days after the Category 4 storm crossed the island, toppling power lines and cellphone towers and sending floodwaters cascading through city streets.

Officials said 1,360 of the island's 1,600 cellphone towers had been downed, and 85 percent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may be worse than they know.

"We haven't seen the extent of the damage," Gov. Ricardo Rossello told reporters in the capital.

More than 15 inches of rain fell on the mountains surrounding the Guajataca Dam in northwest Puerto Rico after Maria left the island Wednesday afternoon, swelling the reservoir behind the nearly 90-year-old dam.

Authorities launched an evacuation of the 70,000 people living downstream, sending buses to move people away and sending frantic warnings on Twitter that went unseen by many in the blacked-out coastal area.

"This is an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SITUATION," the National Weather Service wrote. "All the areas around the Guajataca River must evacuate NOW. Your lives are in DANGER."

The 345-yard dam, which was built around 1928, holds back a manmade lake covering about 2 square miles.

An engineer inspecting the dam reported a "contained breach" that officials quickly realized was a crack that could be the first sign of total failure of the dam, said Anthony Reynes, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service.

"There's no clue as to how long or how this can evolve. That is why the authorities are moving so fast because they also have the challenges of all the debris. It is a really, really dire situation," Reynes said. "They are trying to mobilize all the resources they can but it's not easy. We really don't know how long it would take for this failure to become a full break of the dam."

Maj. Gen. Derek P. Rydholm, deputy to the chief of the Air Force Reserve, said at the Pentagon that it was impossible to say when communication and power will be restored. He said mobile communications systems are being flown in. But he acknowledged "it's going to take a while" before people in Puerto Rico will be able to communicate with their families outside the island.

Until Friday, he said, "there was no real understanding at all of the gravity of the situation."

Across the island more than 15,000 people are in shelters, including some 2,000 rescued from the north coastal town of Toa Baja, including several who were stranded on roofs.

Gov. Cuomo arrives

Gov. Andrew Cuomo traveled to Puerto Rico on Friday to assess damage from Hurricane Maria and bring supplies and assistance to the storm-tossed island territory.

The Democrat departed from JFK Airport on Friday morning for San Juan. He said the state would also be sending National Guard personnel, Black Hawk helicopters, state troopers and donated supplies including more than 34,000 bottles of water, nearly 10,000 ready-to-eat meals, 3,000 canned goods, 500 flashlights, 1,400 cots, blankets and pillow and 10 electrical generators.

Cuomo said Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello asked his New York counterpart for assistance to help the recovery. He flew on a donated JetBlue aircraft that officials said was the first flight to depart for San Juan since the storm.

"Gov. Rossello didn't have to ask because in New York, we are family with the Puerto Rican community and with family, you don't have to ask for help," he said, noting that New York is home to more Puerto Ricans than any other place outside the island territory.

The state will send 60 members of the National Guard and four Black Hawk helicopters, along with 50 state troopers.

Cuomo was expected to return to New York on Friday evening. He said the point of the one-day trip is to assess conditions so New York can better focus its assistance.

"Anything this state can do for Puerto Rico, we will do," he said. "Whatever resources, whatever need they have, this state will be responsive."

It's the second time in a week that Cuomo has traveled to the Caribbean to survey storm damage and offer message of support. Last week, he traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma. Maria has delayed the deployment of 130 New York National Guardsmen and state troopers to the USVI.

Electrical grid problems

Rossello couldn't say when power might be restored. The island's electric grid was in sorry shape long before Maria struck. The territory's $73 billion debt crisis has left agencies like the state power company broke. It abandoned most basic maintenance in recent years, leaving the island subject to regular blackouts.

"Some transmission structures collapsed," Rossello said, adding that there was no severe damage to electric plants.

He said he was distributing 250 satellite phones from FEMA to mayors across the island to re-establish contact.

Secretary of State Luis Marin said he expects gasoline supplies to be at 80 percent of capacity because the port in the southeastern town of Yabucoa that receives fuel shipments received minor damage.

Hours-long lines formed at the few gas stations that reopened on Friday and anxious residents feared power could be out for weeks  or even months  and wondered how they would cope.
WASHINGTON - The former leaders of a public charter school for disabled and at-risk teenagers have agreed to settle a District of Columbia lawsuit alleging they sought to enrich themselves by diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money meant for the school into private companies they created.

Donna Montgomery, David Cranford and Paul Dalton, all former managers at Options Public Charter School, agreed to a collective settlement of $575,000, which will be paid to the school that now operates under new leadership as Kingsman Academy. Jeremy Williams, a former chief financial officer of the District's Public Charter School Board, who allegedly aided the scheme, agreed to a settlement of $84,237 in a separate deal signed last week. The defendants agreed that they would not serve in a leadership role of any nonprofit corporation in the District until October 2020.

"This settlement ensures that more than $600,000 in misappropriated funds will now go to Kingsman Academy to serve disabled students in the District of Columbia, and will deter future wrongdoing," said Robert Marus, a spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General. "As the referees for the District's nonprofit laws, our office will continue to bring actions against any who would misuse funds meant for public or charitable purposes."

A statement issued by attorney S.F. Pierson, who represents Dalton, said all three former managers "continue to contest the District's claims and continue to maintain their position that they managed Options to the highest standards." Pierson said the former school leaders are "not personally paying" anything to settle the District's claims. It's common that insurance plans cover litigation-related costs for nonprofit directors or corporate officers.

Williams could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a civil case filed in 2013, the District's attorney general's office alleged that the former leaders of the school, as well as the senior staff member at the charter school board, created a scheme to divert $3 million in tax dollars to themselves and two for-profit companies they founded. The companies provided services including transportation and Medicaid billing to the school at a markup, with profits pocketed by the defendants, according to the complaint.

Williams, who had been in charge of financial oversight of the city's charter schools, allegedly helped facilitate the scheme, before he left his job at the charter school board to work at one of the for-profit companies.

After the lawsuit, the school went into court receivership. The two for-profit companies also went into court receivership and ultimately paid $200,000, most of which went to the school.

The city sued another charter school founder for a similar scheme in 2015. Court documents from that lawsuit, which was settled later that year, showed that Kent Amos, the founder of Community Academy Public Charter Schools, paid himself more than $1 million a year to lead the schools via a private management company he established.

Such allegations prompted the charter school board to strengthen its financial oversight procedures and its policy regarding disclosing conflicts of interest.

Scott Pearson, executive director of the board said in a statement that the board takes its oversight role "seriously" and that it has worked closely with the Office of the Attorney General throughout the Options litigation. "We thank the OAG for their persistence in seeing this to a resolution," he said.

The U.S. attorney conducted a multiyear investigation of the case that ultimately did not result in criminal charges.

J.C. Hayward, a longtime television news anchor at WUSA and former chairwoman of the board at Options Public Charter School was initially named as a defendant, but she was dismissed from the civil case a few months after it was filed. The station placed Hayward on leave when the lawsuit was filed in October 2013, and she retired not long afterward.

Shannon Hodge, co-founder and executive director at Kingsman Academy, said she was "grateful" that the settlement dollars would go to the school that replaced Options. "We will certainly make sure that the students benefit from that settlement," she said.

Kingsman opened in the summer of 2015. It operates in the same facility in Northeast Washington and serves a similar demographic that Options did, with a majority of students receiving special-education services. But it has its own leadership team and educational philosophy, Hodge said. "We are a very different school," she said.
PARIS - Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the French capital Saturday, condemning the liberalizing labor laws of President Emmanuel Macron.

The demonstrators gathered at the behest of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the radical leftist who has emerged as the principal opposition figure to France's centrist president, a former investment banker. Two and a quarter centuries after the French Revolution, Melenchon's anti-capitalist supporters first targeted Paris's symbolic Place de la Bastille, marching against a leader they, too, consider a king.

In a wide-ranging speech, the fiery Melenchon, 66, attacked Macron and the "liberal chaos" he believes the president's Anglo-American-style economic reforms will bring. But most of all, Melenchon vowed "resistance" to the new French president and railed against the process by which Macron passed his reforms, nominally devised to lower an intractably high unemployment rate and stimulate economic growth.

"We were not able to discuss a single line, a single page of the ordinances!" he proclaimed, before an applauding crowd of thousands. In reality, the Elysee Palace engaged in months of dialogue with prominent French union leaders, several of whom, in exchange for certain concessions, have since refused to protest the new laws.

Saturday's march came in direct response to Macron officially signing five major labor decrees into law Friday, a move the young president immediately heralded as an "unprecedented reform of the labor market" and a moment that broke with decades of French regulatory tradition.

In a country still home to one of the world's most highly regulated labor markets, these new reforms are likely to create a long-unimaginable shift in favor of corporations and small businesses alike.

Melenchon, in many ways the heir to France's long-dormant Communist political tradition, is not amused.

"Capitalism is the first enemy of democracy," he declared in his remarks. In his eyes, there is much to dislike in Macron's unapologetic embrace of capitalism.

Under Macron's new scheme, for instance, French companies across the board now stand to benefit from the new laws' stated aim of reducing the centralized power of collective bargaining. But much of the true emphasis in Macron's proposals is on nurturing smaller businesses, with 50 employees or fewer, which will now be able to negotiate contracts directly with employees - and, crucially, without union oversight.

These smaller businesses, the new laws also ensure, will additionally profit from a legislated cap on damages that French courts can demand for wrongful employee terminations. In the past, many French companies have said, these often-hefty damages have proven deadly for smaller companies that do not necessarily have excess cash reserves to sustain the burden.

Most Melenchon supporters in the crowd Saturday - many of whom had arrived in the capital on convoys of chartered buses from all over metropolitan France - were appalled at the changes.

One of them, Camille Groux, 23, a building engineer from the north-central French city of Orleans, said that he found Macron's actions tantamount to a "betrayal."

"What he proposes is extreme," he said. "His ordinances in fact undermine our democracy by giving the power to the heads of companies instead of us, the people. It's the beginning of an authoritarian power."

Anne-Catherine Lhuillier, 35, a French civil servant in the education sector from the Paris suburbs, said she felt vulnerable under the new laws, given that she has seen no raises in the 10 years she has worked in the sector, and that increased competition would probably mean increased insecurity.

"People who work need some money to live," she said. "Just to live."

When the laws take effect in January 2018, Macron may become the first modern French president to successfully overhaul a labor market that many of his predecessors have tried - and failed - to deregulate.

The difference, political analysts have observed, is that most of those antecedents sprung reforms on the French public without prior discussion, whereas labor reform was always a central promise of Macron's campaign. His actions since his inauguration in May have taken few by surprise, and the protests that have occurred have been less severe than those in April 2016, against similar reforms proposed by Francois Hollande that were far narrower in scope.

Apart from Saturday's march, protests in general against Macron's labor laws appear to be tapering off, with figures declining in recent weeks.

Melenchon, however, has vowed to continue the fight.

"We must bring forward the strength of our people in battle and in the streets," he said.
A small church hall in the northern English city of Manchester with sandwiches and cups of tea is not the most obvious venue for an insurrection that would reverberate across Europe.

After glorious defeat at the British general election in June, supporters of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn are mobilizing for what they see as inevitable with U.K. politics in disarray: their bearded, 68-year-old socialist cult hero getting another shot at becoming prime minister.

"It's evident that this government is rapidly losing all legitimacy," said Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a national organizer for fringe group Momentum, which has been holding training sessions across the country for would-be activists like the one in Manchester. "We are getting battle ready for an election, whenever that election may be."

It's been a good year for Corbyn as much as it's been a bad one for Prime Minister Theresa May, as her plan to unite Britain behind her vision for leaving the European Union backfired.

The risk for Labour is that another election doesn't come soon enough for Corbyn to capitalize on his broadening appeal even with the help of an army of his most ardent activists.

Some political analysts, politicians and banks like Morgan Stanley predict another vote next year as Brexit negotiations flounder and May's Conservative Party turns on her following the loss of its parliamentary majority. At the moment it's set for 2022, but getting ready for power will be front and center of Labour's annual conference starting in Brighton on Sept. 24, just months after even many of its own lawmakers had written the party off.

"A full length parliament is a lot of time for the opposition and familiarity breeds contempt," said Anthony Wells, head of political polling at YouGov, whose latest survey put Labour one percentage point ahead of the Conservatives. "Will Jeremy Corbyn supporters have got bored of him in five years time?"

Being on the campaign trail is a situation that plays to Corbyn's strengths at street rallies rather than his weaknesses as an organizer of Britain's largest opposition party.

Momentum, the core of Corbyn's faithful, is hitting the doorsteps, targeting the home districts of prominent Conservatives including Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Foreign Secretary Johnson, the former London mayor. The group came into being to support Corbyn's bid for the Labour leadership following Ed Miliband's failure to unseat the Conservatives in 2015. It was accused by some senior Labour lawmakers for hijacking the party, steering policy and ultimately making it unelectable.

Yet its influence has grown as Corbyn gained traction among young and disaffected voters after years of government spending cuts. It expanded online rapidly and developed software that allowed its thousands of volunteers to club together and share cars to drive to a battleground seat for a day's campaigning during the June election.

It gave Corbyn an advantage, with Momentum backing him, as well as other third-party groups that "were campaigning all the time," said Conservative strategist Lynton Crosby, quoted in an upcoming book, "Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election." Momentum "had a big role and influenced the campaign," he said.

In the end, Labour took its biggest share of the vote since Tony Blair's landslide victory in 2001, though won far fewer seats in the British first-past-the-post voting system.

Still, Momentum's membership has swelled by more than 10,000 people in the past year to 27,000, according to its press coordinator, Joe Todd. Two of the candidates Momentum backed have gained places on the seven-member panel that decides motions for the party's annual conference.

"We've always wanted to do this, but the election gave us that boost," said Beth Foster-Ogg, 20, an organizer at a training event in the Manchester church hall. She said now it's time to get ready for the next vote, even if that ends up being in 2022. "We're preparing and we're doing groundwork because the election won't actually be won in the three months leading up to it, it will be won in the next five years."

Since May's disastrous result in an election she called to strengthen her hand in Brexit talks, she needs the backing of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to pass some key legislation. Brexit will require a series of votes and Corbyn has moved Labour policy closer toward that of Brexit opponents who advocate continued membership of the single market.

So suddenly a fringe group of activists feels it can pose a more credible threat.

At the recent training event in Manchester, about 30 Momentum members gathered to school each other in how to deflect criticism of Corbyn. The goal is to change people's minds and change the outcome of the next election, not least by attracting people who wouldn't normally participate in politics.

"I first got involved in the Labour Party during Corbyn's first (leadership) election in 2015 campaigning for that, and I was struck by the number of young people who were involved and who were new to politics," said Momentum member Anthony Hay, 39. "You've got a generation of young people who are enthused by the new direction of the party."

Youth enthusiasm aside, Corbyn would still face a tough path to victory at the next election. He faces the threat of a more adept rival next time around, more of his own party infighting as Brexit looms and the possibility that the U.K. will reach "peak Corbyn." This is the year that saw Corbyn T-shirts, songs and a packed-out Glastonbury festival appearance in addition to his gaining plaudits for his support of victims of an horrific fire at a London tower block.

"In many ways, politics is in a state of flux unlike anything we've seen before," said Matthew Flinders, a Sheffield University politics professor. "How does Jeremy Corbyn maintain that energy and continue to secure the youth vote while expanding to reconnect with many of those people who are disillusioned?"

---

Bloomberg's Tim Ross and Flavia Krause-Jackson contributed.
NORWALK  Norwalk Hospital will host a Red Cross community blood drive to benefit patients in need from 1-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 3 in the Patio Room on the 5th floor.

Because the need for blood remains constant, the Red Cross urges donors of all blood types to give blood or platelets to help keep supplies ready to go, so they are ready for all patients when they need them the most.
By the time Lukas Cavar was rescued from a cave in southern Indiana, the abandoned college freshman had spent nearly three days trapped in its dark confines, fearing he might die there.

To survive, Cavar says he licked the cave walls for moisture and the wrappers of his Clif bars for any trace amounts of food, as first reported by Indiana Daily Student. He wondered whether he would ever see his family and friends again, and began typing goodbye notes on his iPhone - before its battery died on the second day, Cavar said.

The Indiana University student had been exploring Sullivan Cave, about 10 miles south of his school in Bloomington, Ind., on Sunday with other members of the Caving Club, a campus extracurricular group that promotes "responsible caving practices with opportunities to visit caves around the area."

Over several hours, Cavar got separated from the group - and then left behind in the cave after the rest of the Caving Club members left and padlocked its entrance gate.

Sanjin Wang/Getty Images

It would be nearly 60 hours before they realized their mistake and returned to rescue him Tuesday.

"In that sort of situation, if you let your mind wander, it'll go to some pretty bad places," Cavar, 19, told The Washington Post. "I guess that's where I went . . . that I'd die alone in this cave."

On Sunday, after he realized he had been forgotten by the group, Cavar spent hours screaming out of the cave's padlocked entrance - about a 1-by-3-foot hole in the ground, surrounded by concrete with metal bars welded into place - in the hopes that someone would hear him from a nearby road. No one did.

"The first day I was in very, very bad shape. I was panicking. I was very confused. I really didn't take any time to sit down and think of my situation," Cavar said. "I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it out of that cave at that point."

He told Associated Press that, with no cellphone reception, he also had attempted unsuccessfully to pick the lock on the entrance gate with a paper clip. As evening approached on the first day he was trapped, Cavar evaluated the items he had with him, his surroundings and how he could prolong his survival, according to the AP:

Once night came, Cavar took out his phone and started writing down exactly how he got lost at first, his condition, what supplies he had and any other thoughts. As it got darker outside, the cave got colder.

"Right now I need some rest and thinking. Battery around 56% of phone, and headlamp seems fine so far. Should try to conserve. Good luck me," one note to himself read.

Later, Cavar followed up: "Many salamanders all around. Possible food source? Spiders too, disconcerting. Killed as many as I could find in vicinity. Thinking of family."

Another day went by and he wrote: "Night two is about to begin. Let's hope the temperature change isn't too drastic. Bats and snakes coming out. Feels like Halloween coming early."

Cavar started writing notes on his phone to family and friends in case he died in the cave. He dreamed of people rescuing him.

"3:45- missed all classes today. Surely somebody will have noticed by now," another note read.

Turns out, someone did.

His friends noticed that he missed physics class Monday, which was unlike him, they said. When he didn't show up Tuesday and never went to work that day, they knew something was wrong.

"Lukas is not one to miss class. I don't think he's missed a single class since college has started at all and we were a little bit worried about that," his friend Sam Norrell, 18, told The Post. "Lukas would never miss work without calling in. He'd have to be very sick not to call work. That was the tipping point."

When Norrell and other friends couldn't find him around campus, they contacted the Caving Club, and that's when they realized that he might still be in the cave. The rescue was a blur for Cavar, but what he does remember is that the club members who found him brought him a Big Mac and a pasta meal - both of which he happily devoured.

He told the Indiana Daily Student that club members apologized profusely.

"You could tell they were pretty shaken up," Cavar told the student newspaper. "They did near kill me. I can't imagine what kind of guilt they felt."

His friends, including Norrell, were at his dorm waiting when he got back.

"We hugged him and we were sobbing," his friend Maris Pilgrim, 19, told The Post, adding that they made him some pizza rolls and helped him get the dirt off his face when they were all reunited.

They stayed up until the early hours of Wednesday morning as Cavar told them of his experiences inside the cave. He resumed classes Thursday and has since started rabies shots.

Cavar wasn't reported missing to campus police until Tuesday, officials said.

"We didn't get involved in this until he had actually been let out of the cave," Craig Munroe, captain of the Indiana University Police Department, told The Post. "We were notified by residence staff."

Indiana University spokesman Ryan Piurek confirmed to The Post that Cavar was left in the cave from about 2 p.m. Sunday to midnight Tuesday, when he was rescued.

"We were extremely relieved that this brave and resourceful student, aside from being tired and hungry, was found at the entrance to the cave unharmed, composed and in good condition, and that he is currently doing very well," Piurek said in an email. "Considering the scary circumstances, it was a remarkably good outcome."

He added that the school's Caving Club members had acknowledged that they failed to properly follow the club's safety protocols. It was unclear, however, what exactly led to the lapse. Caving Club officers did not respond to messages sent to the club's Facebook group and also declined to comment to the IU student newspaper, citing "a sensitive legal matter."

The club's website emphasizes an array of safety rules to follow while caving, from always carrying three sources of light per person to never going caving alone. According to local media outlets, the club published a statement to an IU student network that said Cavar's situation was the result of "a failure in our leadership."

"We have a series of rigorous protocols in place that are supposed to prevent situations like this, but they are only effective if followed," the statement read. "We had a failure in our leadership to closely follow all these safety procedures. The risk that our member was exposed to as a result of these failures is a vivid reminder of why we have protocols."

The Indiana Karst Conservancy, a nonprofit that owns Sullivan Cave, declined to give details about the case or how groups are allowed to access the cave.

"We have no comment on that, thank you," Julian Lewis, the conservancy's president, said by phone Saturday before hanging up.

Cavar posted a message to Facebook after he was rescued, according to the BBC: "Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm safe and sound! Just got rescued about 30 minutes ago. Boy, it's good to be back on the surface!"

He told the AP he does not plan to go spelunking again.
Washington

President Donald Trump is weighing the next iteration of his controversial travel ban, which could include new, more tailored restrictions on travelers from additional countries.

The Department of Homeland Security has recommended the president impose the new, targeted restrictions on foreign nations from countries it says refuse to share sufficient information with the U.S. or haven't taken necessary security precautions. The restrictions could vary by country, officials said.

Trump's ban on visitors from six Muslim-majority nations, which sparked protests and a flurry of lawsuits, is set to expire this coming Sunday, 90 days after it took effect.

"The acting secretary has recommended actions that are tough and that are tailored, including restrictions and enhanced screening for certain countries," Miles Taylor, counselor to acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, told reporters on a conference call Friday.

But officials refused to say how many countries  and which countries  might be affected, insisting the president had yet to make a final decision on how to proceed.

Taylor said the recommendations were based on whether countries were providing U.S. authorities with enough information to validate the identities of potential immigrants and visitors and to determine whether or not they posed a threat. The recommendations were first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Trump's travel ban executive orders remain two of the most controversial actions of his administration. The ban, which went into effect in late June, barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who lacked a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States" from entering the country. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the ban next month.

Officials described the process of reaching the new recommendations as far more deliberate and systematic than Trump's original travel ban order, which was signed just days after he took office with little consultation or input outside the White House.

DHS said it had worked with other agencies to develop a comprehensive new baseline for foreign nationals based on factors like whether their countries issued passports with biometric information to prevent fraud and shared information about travelers' terror-related and criminal histories.

"Our guiding principle," Taylor said, "was this: We need to know who is coming into our country. We should be able to validate their identities, and we should be able to confirm that our foreign partners do have information suggesting such individuals may represent a threat to the United States."

The U.S. then shared the new baseline requirements with every foreign government in July and gave them 50 days to comply.

While most countries already met the standards, officials said that some that didn't have made changes that put them in compliance. Other countries, however, were unable or "deliberately unwilling" to comply. Citizens of those countries would be denied entry or face other travel restrictions until their governments made changes.

Trump had originally tried to ban the entry of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, in his January order, but scaled back his efforts in a more narrowly tailored version written to better withstand legal scrutiny in March.
As the Jewish High Holiday season moves in, Israel is getting set to welcome a throng of religious visitors -- evangelical Christians.

Thousands will pour in from more than 80 countries to the streets of Jerusalem in early October for an annual march celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Jewish festival of Sukkot. As they follow in the footsteps of Jesus, whose holiday visit to the city is described in the Book of John, they'll also be rallying behind the modern state of Israel.

Evangelicals from the U.S. alone pump more than half a billion dollars a year into Israeli tourism and charity, while endorsing the country's conservative politics in a controversial alliance. Donald Trump's recent visit to the Jewish state has energized fundraising efforts as evangelicals try to ramp up support for a land many see as God-given.

"After the elections, being pro-Israel became a part of the establishment, rather than part of the opposition," said Rabbi Tuly Weisz, who raises money for charities from evangelicals through his israel365.com website. "I do believe that this year's increase in tourism and overall growth in charitable giving can be partially attributed to the fact that the Trump administration is seen to be extremely pro-Israel."

Although some fundraisers haven't seen a Trump-related uptick in donations, Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, saw the U.S. president's May visit as a peerless opportunity to recruit Christian support. He hailed Trump as the Jewish state's best friend in a post to his 28 million Facebook followers, and draped buildings with three-story banners urging the U.S. president to "Make Israel Great."

"I want to do whatever I can to influence him to care about the Jewish people," Evans said.

Polls show no other group in the U.S. supports the Jewish state more than evangelicals -- not even American Jews. Israel can count on their unstinting support in Washington, and Netanyahu recognizes the power of their backing as he faces multiple criminal investigations that could drive him from office.

"Millions and millions of Americans cheering him and donating money to Israel sends an image that is very powerful to the Israeli public," said Jonathan Rynhold, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist who has studied the evangelicals' relationship with Israel.

In the midst of an eastern European tour in July, the prime minister made sure to address the Washington conference organized by evangelical pastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel, appearing on two massive screens by satellite from Budapest.

"We have no better friends than you," Netanyahu declared. "You are always there for us."

Israel didn't always welcome evangelicals, who are the subject of an anti-missionary law. Many believe Jews must return to the biblical Land of Israel to facilitate a Second Coming of Christ. Some say masses of Jews will die in the final struggle between God and Satan if they don't accept Jesus Christ as their Lord.

Others see an unholy alliance. Deeply fervent Jews suspect all evangelicals are missionaries, while secular liberals deplore their conservative politics and support for Israel's settlement of captured lands Palestinians claim for a state.

"We do not seek their honey, and we do not seek their bee sting," said a West Bank rabbinical council's 2014 ruling, quoting a Talmudic adage.

Still, for official Israel, the outpouring of love is a boon as it seeks new allies in the face of growing antagonism in the U.S. and Western Europe toward its occupation of land Palestinians claim for a state. Evangelicals see things differently, and according to the Israeli Tourism Ministry are flying in in even greater numbers this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Jerusalem's Old City and West Bank biblical sites.

In a 2014 Pew Research Center poll, 82 percent of white evangelicals in the U.S. said they believe Israel was given by God to the Jewish people, versus 40 percent of Jews. Almost 60 percent of evangelicals, according to a 2015 Bloomberg poll, said they would back Israel regardless of U.S. interests.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is the heavyweight champ in raising money from evangelicals. His International Federation for Christians and Jews collected $132 million in 2015 -- the last year for which records were publicly available -- much of it going to the poor in Israel and other Jewish communities, according to Internal Revenue Service records.

"I demonstrated that there was this group out there that is growing in numbers and influence and that it's important for the Jewish community to reach out to them, and that it could be done with integrity by a Jewish rabbi," Eckstein said.

Organizations such as Hagee's CUFI have modeled their approach on Aipac, the pro-Israel lobby known for its mastery of Washington politics, according to David Brog, a former CUFI chief executive now leading billionaire Sheldon Adelson's campaign against Israel boycott efforts on college campuses.

"Almost every politician in America gets that if you want to appeal to evangelical Christians, you talk about traditional values, about being 'pro-life' and also about your support for Israel," said Brog, a cousin of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "Even a guy like Donald Trump who didn't share the values of the religious Christian community was able to talk about Israel in a way that really galvanized people."
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In a massive undertaking that spanned two cities, an army of volunteers in San Antonio loaded $4 million in food, water, diapers and other donations Saturday to help victims of Tropical Storm Harvey in the Houston area.

This is huge, said Antonio Fernandez, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of San Antonio, the nonprofit organization that oversaw the effort. This is the first time Catholic Charities has done something of this magnitude.

As onlookers waved and cheered, caravans of trucks trickled out of a parking lot at the former site of St. Stephen Catholic Church in the 2100 Block of South Zarzamora Street. Fernandez said at least 500 volunteers in San Antonio helped load the supplies, and another 400 volunteers unloaded the deliveries at a warehouse in Houston later Saturday.

It was an unprecedented undertaking for an unprecedented storm. Harvey unleashed torrential, record-breaking rainfall in the Houston area that caused widespread flooding and killed 50 people there.

It was the first time something like this had hit Texas, Fernandez said. So we had to do something out of the ordinary.

The empty church on Zarzamora, which closed in June due to a drop in parish population and structural concerns, was suddenly full of life Saturday. Loading stations were positioned around the property. A forklift operator loaded pallets of bottled water into trucks. In other areas, volunteers formed human chains to load boxes of supplies into waiting vehicles.

The volunteers came from all walks of life and denominations. One of the volunteer drivers, John Stearnes, usually hauls livestock in his cattle trailer. But on Saturday a crew of volunteers was loading boxes of diapers into the vehicle.

Thats a 32-foot trailer full of diapers, said Stearnes, who said he wanted to do whatever he could to help. Thats a lot of diapers.

Across the parking lot, Oscar De La Torre parked his minivan at loading station No. 6 and opened the back to let the volunteers do their work.

He didnt have to wait very long. In a matter of minutes, they had finished loading his van with supplies.

This is great for us to help the people of Houston, he said. We have a lot of the things that people lost.

The convoy carried 40,000 pounds of food, 500,000 bottles of water and 250,000 diapers  all of which was loaded in a matter of hours into 75 vehicles. The fleet included 35 U-Haul trucks, 10 more box trucks, and two 18 wheelers.

When we got here, this whole area was just lined up with pallets filled up to the roof, said Richard Gutierrez, a seminarian at Assumption Seminary who volunteered to load the vehicles. It was fun taking it down.

Catholic Charities in San Antonio had previously delivered supplies to other hard-hit areas of Texas, such as Victoria and Corpus Christi. But this was the largest undertaking so far. And the group plans to continue the effort for as long as it takes.

We are trying to help everybody in Texas who needs help, Fernandez said.
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The rare chance to explore what lies beneath San Antonio is coming up in November when Robber Baron Cave opens to the public for just one day.

Adventurers are invited to "Explore a local cave and experience a piece of San Antonio history rarely open to the public" on Saturday, Nov. 11, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Robber Baron Cave Open House.

The opportunity only happens once every 18 months, according to a news release.

RELATED: 2 Texas cities named among places you should visit 'before they are too popular'

The cave, located a mile south of Loop 410 on Nacogdoches Road in Alamo Heights, is the state's lengthiest and second oldest, with a storied history to match. Much mystery and lore surround the hidden gem with 5,340 feet of mapped passages, which served as a variety of purposes throughout the 20th century.

Revelers toasted cocktails and whiskey in secrecy during its years as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. In the years following, it became a tourist attraction until 1933, then became a hangout for kids in the 1950s. The high traffic left the underground world in poor shape, until it was handed over to the Texas Cave Management Association by its previous owner upon his death in 1995, according to the website.

RELATED: San Antonio's Bracken Cave bats part of global TV event

As the association works to preserve the karst resource, an annual, public open house is organized to gather oral histories of the Robber Baron Preserve and provide the public with the opportunity to experience the unique biology and geology firsthand.

TCMA is offering three options to tour the cave in November.

Guests can take a self-guided tour on a first-come basis, or they can sign up in advance for a specifc time to avoid the wait. They can also schedule a small-group, guided tour of more "challenging," off-trail areas where the self-guided tours don't have access to.

Only guests 12 years old and older will be able to take the off-trail tour, according to a news release.

RELATED: Places every Texas kid should see before growing up

Since Robber Barron is an "undeveloped, 'wild' cave," TCMA recommends sturdy shoes and appropriate clothing. Helmets and lights will be supplied, the release said.

Advance registrations have limited space and must be set up through the TCMA website, starting Oct. 10.

Admission is free, but donations are requested to help preservation efforts of the cave.

mmendoza@mysa.com | Twitter: @MaddySkye
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Most Texas residents living in hotels because Hurricane Harvey damaged their homes now have until Oct. 10 to check out.

The new deadline adds two weeks to the Transitional Sheltering Assistance program for the majority of storm survivors. The extension was requested by the state, according to a FEMA news release issued Friday. Without more time, residents would have lost hotel and motel accommodations next week.

Rooms were being rented for 24,027 displaced individuals or families statewide as of Friday morning, FEMA spokesman Leo Skinner said. More than 12,000 of those applicants are from Harris County, officials confirmed. Another 5,000 were from the Fort Bend, Galveston, Brazoria, Montgomery and Liberty counties.

Most people were scheduled to leave the accommodations on Sept. 26, Skinner said. Applicants should receive notification of specific check-out dates.

Under the program, FEMA pays daily accommodations and taxes. Applicants are responsible for all other costs, including meals and transportation. The hotel or motel payments do not count against the maximum amount of financial assistance available to applicants in FEMAs Individuals and Households Program.

Transitional Sheltering Assistance participants must be registered with FEMA for disaster assistance and eligibility is determined automatically.

The entire transitional housing program is scheduled to end on Oct. 23, Skinner said. That deadline leaves room for displaced people to have even more time to locate homes.

If they still need it, they can request that and possibly get another two-week extension, Skinner said.

Officials could decide to push the Oct. 23 deadline further out, depending on circumstances with the state and FEMA, he added.

On Thursday, the American Red Cross announced that it will provide $400 to more than 100,000 qualified Texas households in 39 counties severely affected by Harvey, according to a news release. People who need the help can apply at www.redcross.org/HHIA. A valid email address is required for registration, which will continue until Oct. 10.
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AUSTIN  Mayor Ron Nirenberg underscored the need for local control and pushed back against legislative encroachment during a combative live podcast recording with state Sen. Don Huffines, kicking off the Texas Tribune Festival.

Nirenberg wasted no time with the verbal fisticuffs, leading off by attacking the GOP-controlled Legislature and Huffines, R-Dallas. The two debated a range of issues, including local control, stormwater management, tree preservation and sanctuary cities.

At one point, San Antonios mayor rattled off a series of statistics about the benefits of immigrants in Texas and supported the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

Huffines, meanwhile, said he didnt know about the statistics Nirenberg provided and instead attempted to toss some red meat to what appeared to be a liberal-leaning crowd. The senator was jeered when he used the term anchor babies, and then suggested that Dreamers had no right be be upset about their perilous status but instead should be angered that their parents smuggled them here.

After the panel, Nirenberg chided Huffines in an interview.

Don Huffines wants to take our state back to a time when saying that was acceptable. We are not fooled, Nirenberg said. There should be no quarter for that kind of racism.

The mayor also told the audience that local control was clearly under attack during both the regular and special legislative sessions this year.

In particular, issues of tree preservation, of the ability for cities to grow revenue as their communities grow, issues of the authority of annexation and land-use controls, and even the things that are beneficial on their face to the state, such as protecting our military installations, were under attack, Nirenberg said. My faithfully anti-city Sen. Huffines  provided one of the most egregious bills of them all, which was trying to do away with home-rule cities altogether.

Huffines, a real estate developer, responded that he governs through the lens of the founding fathers, believes in personal responsibility and power of the individual. The state senator also said hes not anti-city. But he then acknowledged that there are times he believes cities should be reined in.

When a city gets out of the fairway, the main lane of traffic, and starts veering off into different things  then theres a reason for the Legislature to step up, he said.

Huffines also suggested that his governing philosophy was centered on liberty and that he saw local control as more control, which is something he seeks to limit. The senator suggested that the U.S. Constitution was written to limit government control but also posited that the states are the heart of governance, allowing for both the federal government and local governments to exist.

Nirenberg quipped that the state doesnt have a monopoly on liberty and suggested that the Legislature stop passing laws that are unconstitutional.

The two also squared off over local control at last years Texas Tribune Festival, a three-day annual event that brings together hundreds of politicos across scores of panels.

Nirenberg is also scheduled to sit on a Saturday panel focused on climate change and how cities are reacting to it.
After long hours of driving, Kay Wlodarek steered her white truck into a Nebraska animal shelter, across from three bright colored signs that read, Welcome to Nebraska Hurricane Harvey Survivors.

Wlodarek drove a dozen dogs and one ferret rescued in Corpus Christi to the Beatrice Humane Society in Beatrice, a small town 40 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska, where welcoming volunteers took them in. By 5 p.m., 10 of the dogs and the ferret had been adopted.

It feels good, Wlodarek said in an interview with a Nebraska TV station in mid-September. It was a long drive. We literally come into our bays, set the truck and trailer and leave.

Wlodarek, who volunteers for Tall Tales Rescue & Transport near Fort Worth, is one of the hundreds of people and rescue groups who used vehicles and aircraft to save animals affected by the storm.

In San Antonio, Animal Care Services, the San Antonio Humane Society, the Animal Defense League of Texas and San Antonio Pets Alive! took in hundreds of animals. In one mission, ACS officers and volunteers partnered with Wings for Rescue to send 200 dogs and cats in one of the nonprofits aircraft to the East Coast.

Crews from the San Antonio Zoo traveled to the downtown aquarium in Houston and the Texas Zoo in Victoria to deliver supplies and assist with rebuilding efforts. And Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation in Kendalia took in more than 150 critters swept from nests and rescued from swollen rivers.

When word of the floods and devastation reached the Beatrice shelter, director of operations Bryce Caulk said the staff started gathering supplies and making space for possible arrivals.

Caulk, originally from North Texas, called a friend in the Lone Star State to offer shelter for pets that had never been adopted and in need of a home. He said it was nice to work with Wlodarek to save the animals and witness the overwhelming support from their community.

I might not be in Texas, but I still have family there, Caulk said. Aside from it just being tragic, it meant a lot to reach out and help. Its home, even if its not physically.

John Rypma, chairman of the board, watched Wlodarek as she parked her truck that hauled a big, brown trailer with precious cargo. He said he was pleased by the outpouring of care for the well being of animals.

Its amazing how this whole situation of saving animals from this disaster has swept the country, Rypma said. Everybody is in awe of how quick it all happened.

vtdavis@express-news.net
SAN ANTONIO  A man is in critical condition Friday evening after he was stabbed at a North Side apartment complex.

San Antonio Police Department Sgt. Eddie Rohmer said one person, in his 30s, was stabbed at about 5 p.m. at the Arriba Apartments, 5200 Blanco Road.
A San Antonio police officer received a one-day suspension in July for laughing at former City Councilman Alan Warrick, who passed out on a park bench outside City Hall after a night of drinking at a bar, according to suspension records obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

Officer Abel Garcia, who has been with the department for 18 years, was en route to a call at 6:30 a.m. May 26 when he saw Warrick standing outside City Hall. Garcia told internal affairs investigators that he was alarmed that Warrick was at City Hall so early, so he went to check on him.
Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery will visit San Antonio from Thursday through next Sunday, give lectures and produce a mandala sand painting at the Institute of Texan Cultures, 801 E. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd.

Opening ceremonies are 11 a.m. Thursday. A lecture on Symbolism of the Sand Mandala will be at 5 p.m. Friday, and another lecture on Tibet Today will be at 6 p.m. Saturday.
NBC Bay Area has learned that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has turned over emails showing that one commissioner urged the utility to balk during secret settlement talks over the San Bruno pipeline blast.

The content of the emails is truly alarming, said San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson about emails the company released Thursday, long after assuring the public that it had disclosed any improper contacts with state regulators.

Two of the newly disclosed emails date back to January 2013. At the time, the utility was in secret negotiations with San Bruno officials over penalties in the gas explosion that left eight people dead.

One of the emails is redacted, but it details advice the utility purportedly got from then Commissioner Catherine Sandoval.

Now a professor at Santa Clara law school, Sandoval did not respond to a call for comment for this story.

But according to the account in the Jan. 10, 2013 e-mail by then PG&E vice president of regulatory relations, Brian Cherry, Sandoval boasted about knowing the positions of both sides and even urged the utility to tell San Bruno to take a hike -- because no one is going to (redacted) without convincing evidence by the other side.

Another e-mail, sent the day before, details how then president of the commission, Michael Peevey, grumbled about how the agency was handling the talks.

Over lunch with a PG&E consultant, Susan Kennedy, who had previously served as chief of staff to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peevey purportedly said he hoped that his newly installed safety chief can bring something home  but that the crazies are so far out there it may not be possible.

Peevey, Kennedys email says, blamed most of the craziness on the locals in (San Bruno) and his personal prosecutor, Jerry Hill.

A deal, Peevey suggested to Kennedy according to her email, was unlikely but not completely off the table.

In the end, the utility had to pay $1.6 billion in fines and penalties.

Through it all, state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) wonders whether the utility has learned its lesson.

These are pretty damning and damaging, he said of the latest emails, adding that he is concerned about the three year delay in their release.

When this happens, you dont know can you still trust them, can you trust them, Hill said. What else is out there? That really begs the question, what else are they not showing us still?

The disclosure of the latest emails comes as the utility agreed this week to a nearly $100 million settlement for improper contact with regulators over a five year period.

PG&E said in a regulatory filing that the emails are similar to ones its already being punished for. It says they were only recently found during another search requested by an unspecified government agency.

It feels like its never going to ever, ever end, said Jackson, the city manager for San Bruno.

At some point, she said, there has to be a conclusion and the California Public Utilities Commission has to make sure that the rules are clear, the rules are enforced and this doesnt happen again.
Police are asking for the public's help in locating $900,000 worth of antique jewelry stolen during an auto burglary in San Francisco.

The burglary was reported at 12 noon on Aug. 12 in the parking lot of Ocean Beach, near the Great Highway and Balboa Street, police said. The jewelry was inside two tote bags removed from the rear cargo area of a 2016 black Cadillac Escalade. Police said its rear driver's side window was shattered during the crime.

The unique jewelry pieces are a 18K yellow gold tassel necklace, cushion cut diamond earrings (approximately four carats each), 18K yellow gold cuff bracelet and a diamond and pearl tassel necklace.

A 2000 blue Acura TL was seen speeding from the area and is may be tied to the auto burglary, according to police.

Anyone with information on the auto burglary and/or the whereabouts of the jewelry pieces is encouraged to contact the San Francisco Police Department tip line at 415-575-4444 or Text a Tip to TIP411 and begin the message with TIP411. Callers can remain anonymous.
San Jose police said they have arrested three suspects in a series of brazen snatch-and-grab jewelry robberies which targeted Asian women walking in parking lots in San Jose.

Police said they arrested Dominic Shamo, 21, and Juan Arzate, 20, and a 17-year-old boy, all of San Jose, on suspicion of robbery and attempted robbery.

According to police, the suspects approached multiple victims and forcibly removed jewelry from them before fleeing on foot.

Police said the trio was walking behind another victim on Sept. 4 when a concerned citizen called police. Officers found the suspects in the area of McKee Road and North Jackson Avenue, where they were able to link the three suspects to at least four other robberies in the area between August and September 2017.

An investigation into the robberies revealed that Shamo and Arzate "directed" the juvenile, who is mentally disabled, to grab the jewelry from the victims, police said in a statement.

Shamo and Zarate were both booked into the Santa Clara County Jail and the minor was booked into Juvenile Hall.

San Jose police are asking for the public's help in identifying other victims who may not have reported their robbery to police. Those wishing to report them can call Detective Michael White at (408) 277-4166. Those wishing to remain anonymous can call (408) 947-7867.
The student group Berkeley Patriot on Saturday informed UC Berkeley that Free Speech Week has been canceled, but event headliner Milo Yiannopoulos doubled down on his plans to come to the campus.

Yiannopoulos said on Facebook Live that he will join Pamela Geller, Mike Cernovich and other speakers at Sproul Plaza at noon Sunday for a March for Free Speech  with the full backing of the Berkeley Police Department.

"We are going to be hosting an event come hell or high water tomorrow," Yiannopoulos said, vowing to proceed with or without UC Berkeley's or the students' cooperation.

He made his comments from a hotel room after canceling a news conference on San Francisco's Treasure Island.

"It is extremely unfortunate that this announcement was made at the last minute, even as the University was in the process of spending significant sums of money and preparing for substantial disruption of campus life in order to provide the needed security for these events," university spokesman Dan Mogulof said in a statement.

Berkeley Patriot's decision comes one day before the four-day event kicked off and one day after the group's members and Yiannopoulos denied reports that Free Speech Week had been nixed.

Soon after UC Berkeley's announcement Saturday, British right-wing provocateur Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook: "I've just been told that student group the Berkeley Patriot, under pressure from the administration, is withdrawing its sponsorship of Free Speech Week. The students may have pulled out of Free Speech Week, but I and my speakers have not."

Yiannopoulos said he was disapppinted by the chaotic turn of events but spurned the idea of backing down.

He told NBC Bay Area: "Theyre kids. I'm disappointed, but I understand. We, however, are not going to be deterred."

UC Berkeley issued a statement Saturday evening indicating that it was aware of Yiannopoulos' plans to speak and that the school was "putting measures in place to ensure the safety of the campus community." The university also advised people in attendance on Sunday to avoid violence.

"Our campus will not tolerate acts of violence or the destruction of property, and the UCPD will dutifully investigate, arrest, and prosecute anyone who commits crimes on our campus," a statement from the university read.

Yiannopoulos also said he plans to give Berkeley Patriot $10,000 because UC Berkeley could benefit from a "strong, populous, free-speech loving conservative publication." Yiannopoulos also encouraged people who booked flights to Berkeley and spent money in any form to attend Free Speech Week to send him their receipts so he can reimburse them.



For its part, Berkeley Patriot members told NBC Bay Area that they were refused access to a Treasure Island venue where they had planned a news conference Saturday.

"They literally chained the building," Yiannopoulos revealed on Facebook.



In an email, the group accused the venue of a breach of contract because it had paid for the facility's use.

"We have not been able to secure an alternative venue large enough to accommodate the press on short notice, likely due to the Bay Area's commitment to free speech for everyone except Milo," Berkeley Patriot said.



Earlier this week, Berkeley Patriot enlisted the help of the Law Offices of Melo and Sarsfield LLP to push for a Department of Justice investigation into what they call "de facto viewpoint discrimination" on the part of UC Berkeley.

On Saturday, the group's lawyer Marguerite Melo wrote a letter to the university's Interim Vice Chancellor Stephen Sutton, which said: "Since announcing their intent to host the event, the student group has been subjected to extraordinary pressure and resistance, if not outright hostility, by the UC Berkeley administration and your employees."

Among other things, she accused university officials of failing to communicate with Berkeley Patriot members, enforcing "arbitrary" and impossible to meet deadlines, and implying that the group "would be morally and legally responsible for any acts of violence committed against them, or members of the public."

Mogulof quashed the assertions, saying that "claims that this is somehow the outcome desired" by UC Berkeley are "without basis in fact." Also, accusations that university officials wanted to put the "speakers in harm's way are unfortunate," he wrote.

"The University was prepared to do whatever was necessary to support the First Amendment rights of the student organization," Mogulof stressed. "We're very concerned about verbal and physical assaults and we have gone to extensive efforts to provide them with protection and security."

Mogulof said that Berkeley Patriot had missed a number of deadlines to sign contracts and confirm venues with UC Berkeley. He also highlighted the confusion that had loomed over Free Speech Week's roster  all the way through Friday  with a number of speakers dropping out, while others said they had never planned to attend.



In fact, UC Berkeley had been planning to pour over $1 million into stepping up security for Free Speech Week, which was scheduled to go from Sept. 24 to Sept. 27, according to Mogulof.

"We want to state unequivocally that campus leadership has complete faith in the UCPD, as well as the extraordinary number of allied law enforcement agencies who agreed to contribute additional officers for these events. We are confident that UCPD would have had the necessary resources in place to provide security for the events," he wrote.

UC Berkeley had also partnered with the Berkeley Police Department and would continue to do so, given the "uncertainty of what's happening tomorrow," Mogulof said.

Earlier this month, UC Berkeley spent $600,000 on ramping up security during a speech by political commentator Ben Shapiro. University officials, police and the community were wary of violence erupting during the former Breitbart News editor's visit.

NBC Bay Area's Christie Smith contributed to this report.
A woman who was holding her daughter's hand while waiting to cross the street was attacked by a random assailant on Wednesday in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, according to police.

San Francisco police Officer Robert Rueca said the woman didn't provoke the suspect into striking her, nor did she speak to him before the assault occurred. The suspect ran from the scene in the 1000 block of Market Street.

"The suspect just began assaulting the victim," Rueca said.

According to Rueca, the victim was taken to the hospital and the child, described as a toddler, was uninjured and picked up by an adult family member.

Rueca said the suspect has been identified as a black man, but a further description wasn't available. He said officers are investigating the case and working on retrieving surveillance footage from the area of the assault to better identify the suspect.

Anyone with information about the assault is asked to call the San Francisco Police Department's tip line at (415) 575-4444.
A Massachusetts father who had recently been denied a gun license shot and killed his 6-year-old son and tried to set his child's home on fire before taking his own life, authorities said Friday.

Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said Foxborough police received a 911 call around 11:30 p.m. Thursday for a medical emergency at a home on East Street. Responders found 6-year-old Anthony Scaccia upstairs in the home with a single gunshot wound. He was taken to Norwood Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Police also found 49-year-old William Scaccia Jr. dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. A gun, shell casings and a note believed to have been written by the father were also found in the home.

William Scaccia also intentionally set a fire in the home, police said, but it was extinguished by a neighbor before emergency crews got to the scene.

Foxborough police said they had had a "significant history" with the father, who was not living at the home where the murder-suicide happened, and that history resulted in them denying him a gun permit in July.

Authorities identified the 6-year-old boy and father who were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in Foxborough, Massachusetts, late Thursday night.

He was facing pending charges stemming from a Sept. 16 domestic incident, Foxborough Police Chief William Baker said.

"I would like to say the most critical part of this story in my opinion is the loss of this innocent life of this child," Baker said. He encouraged anyone who is struggling with challenges to reach out to others who can help.

Counselors will be made available at the school where Anthony Scaccia was a kindergartener, according to Foxborough Schools Superintendent Debbie Spinelli.

"Our hearts go out to this sweet little boy who was just starting his educational journey and to those who loved and cared for him," Spinelli said in a statement.

A next-door neighbor told NBC Boston that the boy's grandmother came over to his home in a panic on Thursday night, and when he went to the house, he found the young boy dead upstairs.

The neighbor said they tried to revive the child, but he was gone. His father was found dead as well.

The boy lived at the East Street home with his grandmother and mother, who the neighbor said was working overnight. The boy's father did not live there, but the neighbor said he had come over and was arguing about custody, which is when things turned tragic.

SUICIDE PREVENTION HELP: The National Suicide Prevention Hotline (1-800-273-8255) is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.


Russian agents attempted to breach Connecticut's election system before the 2016 election, that's according to the federal government, which says 20 other states were also targeted.

"Some Russian agents tried to probe our website at the Secretary of the State's office which has to do with online voter registration," said Connecticut Deputy Secretary of the State Scott Bates.

The Department of Homeland Security informed all 21 states on Friday.

Connecticut officials say they were scanned but not breached.

"Everyone in Connecticut needs to know their vote is safe and secure. Our systems worked. Our defenses are up. They tried to hack, we pushed them back, and we're going to be one step ahead of the bad guys," said Bates.

Bates says that hackers tried to get into the website and got nowhere close to voter registration data thanks to perimeter cyber security defenses. He stressed that voting machines were not affected.

"Connecticut voting machines are not hooked up online, so that's the good news. Your vote is safe. It counts and it's secure. The challenge we have is that Russian agents were looking for weaknesses in our cyber security. We repelled them, but we're on notice now," said Bates.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg. We're going to see a lot more sophistication with these attacks," said Lon Seidman. Seidman is a tech expert who has a consumer technology channel, http://lon.tv/.

Seidman says Friday's development is not surprising, adding that the modern-day cyber warfare is one that many countries engage in, including the US.

"Everyone is trying to see where the vulnerabilities are because if you are able to break in and disrupt a substantial amount of infrastructure, the power grid, the voting systems you can actually create a lot of damage in another country without even having to fire a shot," said Seidman.

"[Hackers] just have to be lucky once, and we have to be right all the time. And we're going to be focused that we are," said Bates.

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill is convening a cyber security task force to pull together state and local leaders. State officials say they need Congress to appropriate money for cyber security for all states to continue staying ahead of hackers.

And experts warn that hackers don't just focus on a system, they'll focus on individuals who might have access to important data.

"People really need to take this seriously. And even if you think you're not an important person, to the Russians you might end up being that way, especially if your computer that you use at work happens to have access to data that is important to people. It's a matter of not clicking on attachments that come through even if they look like they're coming from someone you know. It always starts off very innocently with a simple mouse click and before you know it you have an international incident," said Seidman.
A massive blaze engulfed two apartment buildings on Chicagos South Side early Saturday, according to fire officials.

The two-alarm fire began around 6:45 a.m. in the 5800 block of South Prairie Avenue in the citys Washington Park neighborhood, authorities said.

Area residents said the building where the blaze began caught fire about three weeks ago, but this time, it was much worse and spread to the structure next door.

There were unconfirmed reports of someone missing in the fire, according to CFD District Chief Jeffrey Horan.

Horan said the person in question may be a 40-year-old male, but there were conflicting reports as to where the man would be.

Firefighters did a primary search and were unable to find anyone trapped, officials said, and would continue to search the area and the two four-story buildings impacted by the flames.

More than one hundred firefighters were called to the scene, according to Horan, who said the department was taking precautions with the hot weather.

Firefighters cant be in the fire for more than ten minutes because of the high temperatures, Horan said, which is why so many were involved in the operation.

Residents were evacuated from the apartment building where the fire spread, and smoke could be seen for miles around.

No injuries were reported, and emergency crews remained at the scene Saturday morning.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
A 25-year-old felon has been charged in two separate 2016 shootingsone that left a taxi cab driver dead and the other that ended the career of a U.S. airman, authorities said Friday.

Joseph Brown, of the 4700 block of South Indiana Avenue, is charged with murder and attempted murder. He was arrested Wednesday after being positively identified by witnesses and ballistics tests as the shooter in both incidents, authorities said. Both shootings occurred in the East Garfield Park neighborhood. He was already in the custody of the Cook County Department of Corrections and awaiting trial for an unrelated 2015 felony arrest, police said.

On Oct. 19, Brown was one of two gunmen who shot an unarmed 21-year-old man in the shin, knee cap and upper thigh, prosecutors said. The victim, a member of the U.S. Air Force, was jogging in the 200 block of South Central Avenue when he attempted to cut through an alley to avoid Brown, prosecutors said. Brown was outside with several others when he and an accomplice approached the victim and asked if he was in a gang, according to prosecutors. Brown and the other unidentified shooter opened fire on the victim after he said he wasnt affiliated with a gang, prosecutors said.

Because of the gunshot wounds, the airman was no longer capable of carrying out his military duties and was honorably discharged from the Air Force, prosecutors said.

A couple weeks later, on the evening of Nov. 2, Brown fired a single fatal bullet into a 51-year-old cab drivers head, prosecutors allege. The killing occurred in the 300 block of West 5th Avenue.

Brown walked up to the window of Gregory Wongs taxi, pointed a gun at him and ordered him out of the cab, prosecutors said. When Wong complied, Brown pistol-whipped him and rifled through his pockets for the cabbies cash, according to the Cook County states attorneys office.

Brown then shot Wong at close range when he wouldnt stop screaming, according to prosecutors.

Wongs execution-style killing was caught on the cabs security camera, the states attorneys office said. Brown can be seen and heard on camera making threats and shooting Wong, prosecutors said.

"I will shoot this b----," prosecutors argue Brown can be heard saying to Wong. "Let it the f-- down."

Wong can be heard screaming in the footage until Brown fires the fatal shot, prosecutors said.

Wong was holding a money clip and keys when police found his body in the street next to his cab, the state's attorney's office confirmed.

A Cook County judge denied Brown bail Friday.
Thanks to the generority of so many, the NBC 5 and Telemundo Chicago Disaster Relief Drive has collected more than $3.7 million in donations just hours into the drive.



CLICK HERE TO DONATE



In the wake of deadly earthquakes in Mexico and horrific hurricanes that recently hit parts of the U.S. and Caribbean, NBC 5 and Telemundo Chicagoo are working with the American Red Cross to support relief efforts.

From 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 22, the stations are hosting a Disaster Relief Drive with donations going to the Red Cross in support of areas affected by these recent devastating natural disasters.



Just before 7 a.m., Walgreens donated a whopping $3.4 million to the effort. By 11 a.m., viewers from the Chicago area donated almost $40,000 by phone. More than $11,000 was donated online.



Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stopped by the phone bank to thank volunteers and make a personal donation of $2,000.



Before noon, Motorola Solutions donated $30,000 to the drive, and Exelon donated $25,000.



Want to join us in Making a Difference? During the drive, call 312-836-4855 to donate through NBC 5 or 312-836-4844 to donate through Telemundo Chicago.



You also can click here to donate online to help people affected by Hurricane Maria, Mexico earthquakes, Hurricane Irma or Hurricane Harvey. Online donations are being accepted now and will continue to be taken after Friday's Disaster Relief Drive.



Looking for other ways to help from the Chicago area?

Chicagoans are rallying to support survivors of the storms and earthquakes. Click here for opportunities to donate your time or supplies to efforts across the area.

NBC 5 and Telemundo Chicago's Making A Difference series is focused on inspiring, positive local stories highlighting people driving positive change across the Chicago area. Thank you for helping us Make a Difference!
A man accused of shooting two police officers and a woman during to a domestic dispute on Elm Street in New Haven, prompting a SWAT response and evacuations in the neighborhood Saturday, is in custody, according to the police chief.

The shooting occurred on Elm Street between Orchard Street and Sherman Avenue around 10:30 a.m.

New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell said that the officers were injured during a response to a domestic incident. Police believe a man shot his wife.

Two police officers and a woman were injured in a shooting stemming from a domestic dispute on Elm Street in New Haven, a city official confirmed to NBC Connecticut.

New Haven Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said that the 51-year-old female victim was shot several times at a home at 638 Elm Street then ran to a neighbors home for help. The victim was shot in the hand, arm, back and chest and she was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital for treatment where she was in critical condition. She is now in stable condition.

Police said the victim is a retired Department of Correction officer.

When officers entered the home at 638 Elm Street, shots were fired. The officers, identified as Officer Eric Pessino and Officer Scott Shumway, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Pessino suffered a graze wound on the arm and has been treated and released. Shumway was shot in the arm and was released Saturday night. Both are at home recovering, police said.

The SWAT team and hostage negotiators were called in. Negotiators attempted to convince the suspect to surrender but were unsuccessful. The suspect was taken into custody after police confronted him by the basement of his home. According to police, the suspect pointed a gun at law enforcement officers, who fired at him.

The suspect, identified as 51-year-old John Douglas Monroe, was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital with serious injuries.

Monroe is expected to face a long list of charges.

Neighboring buildings were evacuated and the road was closed down for several hours. As of 3:15 p.m., people were being allowed back into their homes.

Connecticut State Police and the New Haven States Attorneys Office have taken over the investigation.

Mayor Toni Harp released the following statement on the situation:

"I'm so grateful the two officers shot in the line of duty today weren't wounded more seriously, and seem to be OK; likewise, I'm grateful for the effective, professional response by the NHPD in the face of today's violence. All of us in New Haven appreciate the potential risk police officers face daily - and thank them for taking on that responsibility."

((CORRECTION: An initial version of this story misspelled Officer Pessino's name as Pasino. The article above has been edited with the correct spelling. ))
Republican and Democratic state legislators are sparring over which side's budget proposal has the best plan to help Connecticut homeowners with crumbling foundations.

Democrats say their five-year plan is more detailed, with up to $161 million in grant and loan money. It covers foundations in houses and condos, and would set up something called a captive insurance company, to process claims and approve contractors.

We had the Office of Fiscal Analysis look at this. This is a truly comprehensive piece of legislation that's been vetted by everybody," Sen. Cathy Osten, a Democratic lawmaker, said.

Republicans counter their plan raises more than $45 million - about the same amount the Democratic proposal does - in a two-year period instead of five. Most of the funds in the Republican plan come from grants. They would cover houses, but not condos. The Republicans propose hiring three people in the governor's office to distribute funds and vet contractors.

$40 million is a pretty robust number to get people to actually come forward, report, say they need the help. At that point, we'll know what we'll need in monies, to address the issue," Republican lawmaker Rep. Tom Delnicki said.

The Democrat's plan includes receiving potentially up to $60 million in federal block grant funds. Republicans say they have been reluctant to count on that money, noting it involves red tape and may not cover everyone.
A former California court clerk who accepted $420,000 in bribes to fix more than 1,000 minor court cases has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors say Jose Lopez Jr. of Anaheim was sentenced Friday.

Lopez, 36, pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiring to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

According to court documents, the former Orange County Superior Court clerk entered information into his court's computers to make it appear defendants had pleaded guilty, paid required fees or performed community service when they had not.

In some cases he created phony documents showing charges had been dismissed.

In all, prosecutors say, he fixed 1,034 cases over about five years.

Most involved minor traffic infractions.

Sixty-nine were for driving under the influence.
The FBI is investigating after a drone hit a pair of Army helicopters over Staten Island earlier this week.

Army officials said that two Blackhawk helicopters, with the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were damaged after coming in contact with the drone about 500 feet above Midland Beach just after dark on Thursday.

The impact dented one helicopter, cracked a window and damaged its rotor blades. It was enough damage, Army officials said, that the helicopters had to land in nearby Linden, New Jersey.

Steven Cohen, an area drone advocate, said he was skeptical that a drone could cause that much damage, but he said the drone operator did exactly what he advises against.

We are trained and educated to avoid and literally turn away from manned aircraft, he said.

Drones are banned in most parts of New York City, and restrictions are even tighter during the UN General Assembly. Flying at 500 feet is also illegal.

Its not clear if any suspects have been identified in the case. No arrests have been made.
Sept. 21

At 1:57 a.m. officers responded to a complaint in the 2800 block of North Montana Avenue concerning a possibly intoxicated driver. Officers located the vehicle and, after investigation, arrested the 18-yearr-old male, Helena, driver for 1st offense Driving Under the Influence. He was booked at the detention center. Officers also cited and released a 15-year-old female and 17-year-old male for Underage Possession of Alcohol. Both were cited and released to a parent.

At 3:30 p.m. an officer was called to investigate a theft from a business in the 2700 block of Prospect Avenue. A female attempted to leave the store with approximately $400 in unpaid merchandise. The officer is attempting to identify and locate the female.

At 6:30 p.m. an officer met with a male who reported his cellphone stolen earlier in the day at a business in the 2700 block of Prospect.

At 7:48 p.m. an officer was called to investigate a violation of a no contact order. After investigating the complaint, the officer arrested an 18-year-old female Helena resident for Violation of a No-contact Order. She was booked at the detention center.

At 5:55 p.m. an officer investigated a reported violation of a protective order. The case was referred to the City Attorneys Office for possible charges.

Sept. 20

At 9 a.m. an officer investigated a theft from a vehicle in the 300 block of Saddle Drive. The victim reported a laptop computer stolen from the car sometime over the prior night.

At 9 a.m. an officer investigated a trespass to and theft from a yard in the 600 blk of Jackson. The victim reported finding an unknown male in her yard earlier in the night, and believed the male had stolen property from the yard when he fled.

As of Friday morning, the county jail held 91 inmates (81 for felonies and 10 for misdemeanors). In total, the county has 118 inmates at various detention facilities. In addition, 40 are PBT (Personal Breath Test) and 31 are SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor bracelet). 91 clients are serviced by the 24/7 sobriety program. We also have 8 testing out of county, 1 is pre-trial, 2 are GPS (Global Positioning System bracelet), and 9 are on house arrest.
What to Know Fire officials were called to the scene on Maiden Lane, a luxury condo tower under construction, shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday

The worker, who was wearing a safety harness, somehow fell from the 29th floor and landed on a scaffold bridge; he died at the scene

A cousin tells News 4 the victim is a father of five from Ecuador who has worked many similar construction jobs in the past

Fallen machinery trapped and critically injured a worker at a Queens construction site Friday afternoon, fire officials say, one day after two workers were killed in separate accidents at other construction sites in New York City.

A Bobcat machine somehow fell on top of a worker at the construction site on Northern Boulevard and 46th Street in Sunnyside at about 1:45 p.m., pinning him underneath, the FDNY says.

Firefighters performed a high-angle rescue, which took about a half hour, and transported him to Elmhurst Hospital.

Officials are investigating how the accident happened. A subway system ventilation plant is being built at the site as part of the MTA NYC Transit Capital Program, according to a sign there.

The victim is at least the fourth construction worker to have been injured or killed on the job in New York City in two days. On Thursday, 36-year-old Juan Chanillo fell to his death while working on a luxury condo project at 161 Maiden Lane in the Financial District. Hours later, a 45-year-old man died after falling from a bucket lift about 36 feet off the ground in midtown at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street. A colleague was also injured in the fall.

Stop-work orders were issued for both sites, and violations could be announced for the construction companies working on the sites.

The I-Team first reported that nearly 40 construction workers have died on city job sites since 2015. The tragedies were dominating discussion among construction workers across the city Friday.

"It's terrible. You don't wanna hear about anybody dying on the job, especially when they have a family go to back to," said worker Juan Olivares.

"It's all you can do, look after yourself and people around you," said Tommy More.

Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peter acknowledged "there's been a disturbing number of construction fatalities in the last several years." He says he's formed a construction fraud task force looking for fake credentials at job sites, and is pushing for heavy fines and even criminal charges for violators.

"The fines are not sufficient, and we are taking the next step and beginning to hold people criminally accountable," he said.

The City Council is also poised to pass a new bill requiring 40 hours of safety training for construction workers -- four times what OSHA now requires -- and providing $5 million in taxpayer money to pay for it.

"People are just falling. They're human beings and just falling," city councilman Jumaane Williams said Friday. "We cannot do nothing. And we want."

Critics of the bill say it would only help unions, and could cost some workers their jobs.
In service to the tri-state community and in support of friends and families of viewers impacted by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and by the recent earthquake in Mexico, Telemundo 47 / WNJU and NBC 4 New York / WNBC will hold a special community call-to-action anchored by a one-day telethon scheduled for September 25.

Mondays telethon is part of a concerted effort spearheaded by Telemundo stations across the country. On this day Telemundo and NBC-owned stations will host phone banks in collaboration with the American Red Cross to collect funds for victims and communities impacted by severe weather-related events.

TELEPHONE:

Viewers can call 1-800-596-6567. Press 1 for instructions in English and 2 for instructions in Spanish. Donors can designate their funds to go to the Red Cross recovery efforts of their choice.

ONLINE DONATIONS:

Donate Here

For more on how to help, the following organizations are conducting relief efforts for hurricane and earthquake victims.

Catholic Charities USA: The official domestic relief agency of the U.S. Catholic Church, Catholic Charities USA, is asking people to support their Maria relief efforts by donating online, by phone at +1 (800) 919-9338 or by texting CCUSADISASTER to 71777. 100 percent of donated funds go directly toward disaster efforts, according to the website.

CONPRmetidos: This Puerto Rican non-profit is raising funds to support hurricane victims. We anticipate the funds will be used first for immediate needs of food, shelter and water and then transition to long term recovery efforts, the organization says, having set a fundraising goal of $150,000. Donate here.

Dominica American Relief & Development Association, Inc.: This association, which was organized in 1979 as a way for people from the island of Dominica living in the New York area to help their homeland after Hurricane David, has started a GoFundMe page for victims of the hurricane on the island.

Global Giving: This crowdfunding network has a fundraising goal of $2 million. This fund will provide relief to survivors in the form of emergency supplies like food, water, and medicine in addition to longer-term recovery assistance to help residents recover and rebuild, the group says. Donate here.

Save the Children: Another organization dedicated to helping children in particular is asking for donations here.

Team Rubicon: Team Rubicon is looking for military veterans and kickass civilians such as first responders and medical professionals to join recovery efforts. Volunteers should be prepared to "get dirty, from chainsaw operations to muck-outs," the groups says on its website. Apply to be a volunteer here.

UNICEF USA: The United Nations Childrens Fund has sent staff and humanitarian supplies such as water purification tablets, tents and hygiene kits to Caribbean islands. The program is asking for donations, saying on its website, Children are literally in the eye of the storm. The Hurricane season has forced the most vulnerable children in the Caribbean into even more danger.
Thousands of doses of heroin have been diverted from the streets after Delaware authorities confiscated the illicit opioids during a search of a Dover hotel.

The drugs were discovered as U.S. Marshals, Dover Police and Delaware State Police took 27-year-old Cameron Norwood and 25-year-old Natasha Morris into custody at the Best Western Galaxy Inn at 1700 E. Lebanon Road in Dover Thursday, officials said.

Norwood was wanted on a probation violation, state police said.

During a search of the hotel room and a 2000 Saturn Aura sedan, officials found 13,000 bags of heroin  96 grams  and a loaded 9mm handgun, state police said.

Norwood and Morris have been charged with drug possession with intent to deliver, possession of a firearm, conspiracy and related offenses. They are being held on $170,000 cash bail. It is not clear if they retained legal counsel.


The City of San Diego opened an Emergency Operations Center led by the city's Office of Homeland Security in City Hall to help counter the Hepatitis A outbreak, city officials announced.

The Emergency Operations Center was established on Monday to help coordinate the citys "Vaccination, Sanitation and Education" campaign efforts, according to a statement.

The Emergency Operations Team consists of 12 people, led by the citys Homeland Security Executive Director John Valencia.

The campaign seeks to aggressively combat the spread of the virus by vaccinating at-risk individuals, sanitizing at-risk areas and spreading awareness of how it is contracted, according to a statement from city officials.

"We are a resilient city and have proven time and again that we are ready to handle anything that comes our way," said Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

A public health emergency was declared on Sep. 1, 2017, due to the ongoing high number of cases since the outbreak was recognized on March 3.

There have been over 400 cases of Hepatitis A reported so far, compared to 26 cases in 2016, according to the San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA).

Sixteen people have died due to the virus, and 305 have been hospitalized this year.

Symptoms of the virus may not be noticeable for 15 to 50 days after exposure, so the number of cases is likely higher than reported, according to HHSA.

The most at-risk for contracting the virus are the homeless populations living on the streets, intravenous and illicit drug users, men who have sex with men, people who have sexual contact with someone who has the virus, people with a chronic liver disease, and individuals who have clotting factor disorders, according to health officials.

Symptoms of Hepatitis A include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, yellowing of skin and eyes, dark urine and light stool.



Doctors recommend washing hands regularly, especially after visiting public spaces like parks, restrooms or using public transportation, since the virus can linger on contaminated surfaces for months.

The County of San Diego has increased efforts to maintain sanitary conditions by routinely power washing benches and sidewalks with a chlorine-bleach solution in strategic areas, and increasing the availability of toilets and handwashing stations throughout the county, according to a statement.

Health officials are requiring the following occupational groups be vaccinated: fire, emergency, law enforcement personnel, food handlers, health care personnel and professionals, service workers working directly with the homeless population, and individuals working directly in substance abuse treatment programs, and public transit workers.

More than 28,000 people have received immunizations through city and county efforts so far, according to city officials.

"Weve made continued progress in getting more folks vaccinated and improving the sanitary conditions on our downtown streets and sidewalks," said Faulconer. Were going to get through this together, but we need everybody to do their part by getting the word out to at-risk individuals who need to get vaccinated and by making sure all San Diegans regularly wash their hands with soap and warm water.

Vaccinations are only required for at-risk personnel or individuals, but vaccination locations are available throughout the city.

The last time the number reached over 400 in San Diego was in 1999, the year before the Hepatitis A vaccination became routine among children, according to HHSA.

The local public health emergency is ratified every two weeks until the declaration is canceled, according to HHSA.

The outbreak will likely last another 6 months, according to health officials.
Controversial comments made by U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-50th District) calling for a preemptive strike on North Korea have drawn concern and criticism from national security experts.

Hunter, interviewed by the local news station KUSI, said North Korea has nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S. and San Diego.

From my perspective, why would I not hit you first? Why not do a preemptive strike when you have ICMBs leveled at the U.S. and youre not a logical player in the world scene, said Hunter.

I would preemptively strike them. You can call it declaring war, call it whatever you want, but preemptively striking them and taking them out, I personally think thats the only thing to get them not to have nuclear missiles at the United States, said Hunter.

The comments were made in support of President Trump's comments before the United Nations earlier in the week. The President said if forced to defend itself, the U.S. will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

But while acknowledging the North Korean threat, national security expert Ron Bee called the comments dangerous and warned of consequences.

You have to think of what sort of consequences down the road happen if you use a preemptive strike. What sort do you use?" Bee speculated. "He did not mention that. Should it be conventional? Should it be nuclear?

He also said a preemptive strike would put millions of people at risk.

That puts a lot of people at risk, especially in Seoul, where there are 2.5 million of our allies within artillery range and 10-thousand artillery pieces, said Bee.

Meanwhile, the San Diego director of the Truman National Security project, Shawn Vandiver, had strong criticism for the congressmans comments.

The fact is, a preemptive strike from us results in tens of thousands of deaths, many of whom may be Duncan Hunters constituents, all of whom are American citizens or wearing our uniforms and that is absolutely unacceptable, said Vandiver.

Congressman Hunter and his staff did not respond to a request from NBC San Diego for a follow-up interview.
Large amounts of federal aid have begun moving into Puerto Rico, welcomed by local officials who praised the Trump administration's response but called for the emergency loosening of rules long blamed for condemning the U.S. territory to second-class status.

In northwest Puerto Rico, people began returning to their homes Saturday after a spillway eased pressure on a dam that cracked after more than a foot of rain fell in the wake of the hurricane.

The opening of the island's main port in the capital allowed 11 ships to bring in 1.6 million gallons of water, 23,000 cots, dozens of generators and food. Dozens more shipments are expected in upcoming days.

The federal aid effort is racing to stem a growing humanitarian crisis in towns left without fresh water, fuel, electricity or phone service. Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is in charge of the relief effort, said they would take satellite phones to all of Puerto Rico's towns and cities, more than half of which were cut off following Maria's devastating crossing of Puerto Rico on Wednesday.

The island's infrastructure was in sorry shape long before Maria struck. A $73 billion debt crisis has left agencies like the state power company broke. As a result the power company abandoned most basic maintenance in recent years, leaving the island subject to regular blackouts.

A federal control board overseeing Puerto Rico's finances authorized up to $1 billion in local funds to be used for hurricane response, but Gov. Ricardo Rossello said he would ask for more.

"We're going to request waivers and other mechanisms so Puerto Rico can respond to this crisis," he said. "Puerto Rico will practically collect no taxes in the next month."

U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York said she will request a one-year waiver from the Jones Act, a federal law blamed for driving up prices on Puerto Rico by requiring cargo shipments there to move only on U.S. vessels as a means of supporting the U.S. maritime industry.

"We will use all our resources," Velazquez said. "We need to make Puerto Rico whole again. These are American citizens."

A group of anxious mayors arrived in the capital to meet with Rossello to present a long list of items they urgently need. The north coastal town of Manati had run out of fuel and fresh water, Mayor Jose Sanchez Gonzalez said.

"Hysteria is starting to spread. The hospital is about to collapse. It's at capacity," he said, crying. "We need someone to help us immediately."

The death toll from Maria in Puerto Rico was at least 10, including two police officers who drowned in floodwaters in the western town of Aguada. That number was expected to climb as officials from remote towns continued to check in with officials in San Juan.

Authorities in the town of Vega Alta on the north coast said they had been unable to reach an entire neighborhood called Fatima, and were particularly worried about residents of a nursing home.

"I need to get there today," Mayor Oscar Santiago told The Associated Press. "Not tomorrow, today."

Rossello said Maria would clearly cost more than the last major storm to wallop the island, Hurricane George in September 1998. "This is without a doubt the biggest catastrophe in modern history for Puerto Rico," he said.

Rossello and other officials praised the federal government for planning its response in detail before the storm hit, a contrast with what Puerto Rico has long seen as the neglect of 3.4 million Americans living in a territory without a vote in Congress or the electoral college.

"This is the first time we get this type of federal coordination," said Resident Commission Jenniffer Gonzalez, Puerto Rico's non-voting representative in Washington.

A dam upstream of the towns of Quebradillas and Isabela in northwest Puerto Rico was cracked but had not burst by Saturday night as water continued to pour out of rain-swollen Lake Guajataca. Federal officials said Friday that 70,000 people, the number who live in the surrounding area, would have to be evacuated. But Javier Jimenez, mayor of the nearby town of San Sebastian, said he believed the number was far smaller.

Secretary of Public Affairs Ramon Rosario said about 300 families were in harm's way.

The governor said there is "significant damage" to the dam and authorities believe it could give way at any moment. "We don't know how long it's going to hold. The integrity of the structure has been compromised in a significant way," Rossello said.

Some residents nonetheless returned to their homes Saturday as the water levels in the reservoir began to sink.

"There were a lot of people worried and crying, but that's natural, because the reservoir was about to break through," said Maria Nieves, 43. "They couldn't open the spillway until later in the night."

The 345-yard (316-meter) dam, which was built around 1928, holds back a man-made lake covering about 2 square miles (5 square kilometers). More than 15 inches (nearly 40 centimeters) of rain from Maria fell on the surrounding mountains.

Officials said 1,360 of the island's 1,600 cellphone towers were downed, and 85 percent of above-ground and underground phone and internet cables were knocked out. With roads blocked and phones dead, officials said, the situation may worsen.

At least 31 lives in all have been lost around the Caribbean due to Maria, including at least 15 on hard-hit Dominica. Haiti reported three deaths; Guadeloupe, two; and the Dominican Republic, one.

Across Puerto Rico, more than 15,000 people are in shelters, including some 2,000 rescued from the north coastal town of Toa Baja. Many Puerto Ricans planned to head to the mainland to temporarily escape the devastation.
A fire damaged several businesses early Saturday morning at a commercial building in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

The fire at 756-762 Adams St. broke out in the basement of the building at 2:34 a.m. and quickly reached 2 alarms.

Boston fire officials said among the 7 business in the one-and-a-half story structure were a restaurant, nail salon, coffee shop and a dentist office.

Firefighters spent several hours on the scene after the fire was contained due to the high levels of carbon monoxide.

Building owner Kenny Blasi was visibly upset after arriving to the scene.

"I'm grateful it didn't burn down," he said. "Our family has owned it since 1959. It was actually our dad's hardware store."

Fire officials said the blaze was self contained but due to the damage, it could be weeks before the businesses are able to reopen.

"They are closed  electric and gas is shut off so they are going to be shut down for a little while," Boston District Fire Chief Douglas Smith said.

No injuries were reported.

Fire officials estimate the damage at $700,000.

The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
A man accused of trying to kill someone with a 2X4 in Vermont, robbing a Massachusetts bank and fleeing in a stolen truck earlier this month has been arrested as a fugitive at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.

Members of the U.S. Marshals Service found 48-year-old Alfred Craven of Readsboro, Vermont, at the casino Friday. He was wanted on attempted murder charges out of Searsburg, where a 53-year-old man claims Craven attacked him with a 2X4 on Sept. 4, fracturing his skull, his jaw and other bones in his face.

The victim told Vermont State Police Craven had fled, and a warrant was issued for his arrest on aggravated assault and first degree attempted murder charges.

While he was on the run, police say Craven robbed the North Easton Savings Bank in Mansfield, Massachusetts on Sept. 18. Craven, who Mansfield Police say is a native of nearby Taunton, allegedly stole a Chevy Silverado from a car wash on Route 44 in that city. Police say he used the truck as a getaway vehicle after passing a note to a bank teller demanding cash.

Mansfield Police

Police in Mansfield are charging Craven with unarmed robbery, larceny over $250, receiving a stolen vehicle and disturbing a school assembly. They plan to bring him to Attleboro District Court after he faces a federal probation charge. Mansfield Police add that he will also face charges out of Taunton District Court, and that he remains in the custody of U.S. Marshals.

Vermont State Police told necn Friday they had no new information about the case against Craven.

According to U.S. Marshals, "Craven has an extensive criminal history that spans Vermont, Massachusetts and California," with federal convictions for conspiracy to sell marijuana and bank robbery.

It was not immediately clear if Craven had an attorney.
BLUE BAY  Last spring in the middle of Mack Days, a young boy walked through the door at Blue Bays processing house holding a single fish.

Cindy Bras-Benson will never forget the look of disappointment etched on his face.

His father was a man who towered over most. She figured him to be about 6-foot-4 and he was just big.

But apparently, according to his young son, his skills with a net or keeping a fish hooked could have used some improvement.

The boy told Bras-Benson they had hooked about a dozen lake trout that day, but they had only managed to get one into the boat.

And here was this little guy holding it up for me to see, said the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal fisheries specialist.

She noticed that one of its fins was clipped. A few minutes later, she was able to confirm the boy had caught a tagged fish and he was $500 richer.

Those are the kinds of stories that I just love to see every year, Bras-Benson said. There are always a few people who dont catch a lot of fish that end up getting lucky.

***

The 2017 version of Fall Mack Days officially was underway Friday on Flathead Lake. It will run through Sunday, Nov. 12. By the time its over, upwards of $150,000 in cash and prizes will have been awarded to the best fishermen and the luckiest.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the semi-annual fishing contest started by the CSKT in an attempt to reduce the number of non-native lake trout in Flathead Lake in hopes that someday the population of native bull trout and westslope cutthroat in the lake will return.

In those 15 years, fishermen have caught 555,339 lake trout over the course of 781 days of fishing in the spring and fall.

Its hard to quantify just what that means to the total population of lake trout in Flathead.

A population estimate put lake trout numbers at 1.4 million a few years ago. Since lake trout and lake whitefish were first planted back in the early 1900s by the railroad as a food source for their workers, lake trout carved out their own niche in clear waters of the deep lake that boasts the perfect cobbles for spawning.

But it would take the introduction of another non-native species to make their populations explode.

The introduction of mysis shrimp to lakes upstream of Flathead Lake in the 1960s proved to be a disaster for native fish and the teeming population of kokanee salmon that once thrived in the lake. Back then, biologists believed the shrimp would become an important food source for the salmon and other native species.

Instead, it proved to be their undoing.

The shrimp hide in the darkest depths of the lake during the daylight hours and rise to the surface to eat zooplankton during the night. The kokanees feeding habit were exactly the opposite.

The shrimp dined on the zooplankton that were an important food source for the land-locked salmon. In just a few years, the kokanee fishery completely disappeared, much to the chagrin of many fishermen.

But what was bad for kokanee was great for lake trout.

Lake trout are voracious fish eaters, with even their own young on the menu.

To escape their elders, fingerling lake trout dive to the depths of the lake, always a place where food was hard to come by. The mysis shrimp changed all that. Suddenly, the young lake trout had an ample food source, and their numbers exploded.

That was the basis for the ecological cascade that happened in Flathead Lake, Hansen said. Lake trout are a top predator. As their numbers exploded, native fish numbers declined.

The old timers will tell you there was a time when you could catch cutthroat trout on a fly from the lake shore, Hansen said. That doesnt happen anymore.

***

Throughout the Flathead Reservation, the tribes are working to create better habitat for native species. Mack Days is an extension of that effort to eventually bring back native trout to Flathead Lake.

Even with the large numbers of lake trout that are being caught in the spring and fall, combined with a netting operation thats been underway for the past three years, Hansen said the capture rates are still lower than what the experts say need to occur to eventually reduce lake trout numbers by the tribes goal of 75 percent.

Biologists have estimated that about 143,000 lake trout need to be harvested annually to actually start to bring the population down.

Last year, Hansen said a record number of about 100,000 were harvested by anglers and netting.

We're ratcheting it up every year, but were still not where we need to be, he said.

The tribes are investing in a second boat that will be used to net lake trout sometime later this year.

They have also purchased a machine that filets the trout in a matter of seconds to ensure that none of the fish that are caught go to waste. Over the years, nearly 75 tons of fish have been distributed to the food banks from Missoula to Whitefish.

Fishermen numbers have dropped off some over the past couple of years, but many of those who remain are catching more fish than ever.

Anglers are getting better and better at catching fish, Hansen said. Some catch their 100-fish limit a day. Its their skill and new technology that is driving those catch rates up every year.

During the very first Mack Days in 2002, anglers caught 888 fish.

This spring, they caught 37,195. The record catch came in 2012, when 38,085 were caught.

Hansen said there are some indications that lake trout numbers might be on the downswing, but its still too early to tell for certain.

No one believes that its possible to fully eradicate lake trout from Flathead Lake, he said.

There will always been a lake trout fishery here, Hansen said. This effort will be forever.

***

Anglers wanting to take part in this falls Mack Days event can choose to fish any day Tuesday through Sunday. They receive a ticket that will be entered into a lottery. At the end of the contest, tickets are drawn with cash prizes starting at $1,000.

There is also a $10,000 tagged trout swimming somewhere around Flathead Lake. Three are worth $5,000, five carry $1,000 tags and more than 6,000 are valued between $500 and $100. The tagged fish have the adipose fin clipped.

Fish need to be put on ice and brought to the Blue Bay area to be counted. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, people can have their fish counted at Big Arm and Polson if they call 270-3386.

To learn more about the rules, go to mackdays.com.

Lake trout spawn in the fall so they come in closer to steep rocky shorelines, and shore anglers have better luck catching them. Boat anglers will be trolling and jigging for them during this event.

Some days one method will work, and other days anglers might have to switch and try another method. Temperature, wind, sunlight can all play a role in what works and what doesnt. Success seems to come to the anglers who adapt to the fish and go after them trying different methods, baits, and colors.

Bras-Benson said it takes some patience to figure out what works and where to find the fish.

You really have to write your own story when it comes to fishing, she said. You have to get out there and go fishing. You cant just talk to people and figure it out. This lake is big and deep. There are a lot of areas for the fish to be. You just have to keep trying until you figure it out.

And its also good to have someone with you thats good with a net.
Burdwood practice serves more than 10,000 patients three decades after opening

STAFF and patients wished good health to the Burdwood Surgery as it celebrated its 30th anniversary on Saturday.

Both the old faces and the new joined in the celebrations at the Wheelers Green Way surgery and had an opportunity to see the newly-renovated clinical rooms.

Local services, including Heartstart Thatcham, Village Agents, Berkshire Carers Hub, Citizens Advice Bureau and Dementia Action Alliance were there on the day to chat with visitors and offer advice.

To mark the occasion, a cake was cut by retired partner Dr Peter Robertson.

The surgery opened on September 16, 1987, with the ribbon being cut by the mayor at the time, Mike Rees.

Thatcham Health Centre had decided to develop a new four doctor premises on the new Kennet Lea estate to help cope with the town's expanding population.

Dr Robertson and Dr Paul Harris had been employed to help set up the new premises and then moved from Thatcham Health Centre on the day that the surgery opened.

What became Thatcham Group Practice then evolved into two separate practices, Thatcham Medical Practice and the Burdwood Surgery, in July 1999.

It was an amicable decision among the partners and both practices have since thrived.

The surgery cost more than 200,000 and was receiving more than 50 new patients a week when it opened 30 years ago.

It now has more than 10,000 patients and serves the south of Thatcham, Crookham and the neighbouring areas.

It has long been a training practice for new GPs, first with Dr Bal Bahia and now Dr Peter Osborne as trainers, and is involved in the organisation of local health care.

The surgery is managed between partners Dr Michael Morgan, Dr Bahia, Dr Osborne and Dr Xanthe Phillips, who work alongside practice manager Kamal Bahia.

Dr Morgan, who has been at the surgery since 1987, thanked members of the Patient Participation Group, with a special thanks to patient services manager Kerry Rolls for organising the anniversary celebrations.

We look forward to serving our patients and their families for the next 30 years, it has been a privilege, staff said.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Hinduja Group flagship Ashok Leyland Ltd (ALL) further strengthened its light commercial vehicle (LCV) portfolio with the launch of Dost +, a new version of the Dost LCV it had jointly developed with Nissan.

The new model, however, is part of Ashok Leylands strategy to navigate the LCV space solo, after the break-up of the alliance with Nissan last year. According to Fridays announcement, the company will go on adding one new mini-truck model every six months, until 2020.

The Chennai-headquartered manufacturing company has earlier announced that it is investing `400 crore on developing a new range of LCV products, of which the Dost+ is a part. DOST+ will address the needs of the upper end of small commercial vehicle (SCV) segment in the 2T (tonne) to 3.5T gross vehicle weight (GVW) segment and has a payload capacity of 1.475T. The DOST+ price would start at `5.54 lakh. Prices are ex-showroom, Chennai, the firm said.

The new LCV launches  ALL had launched Partner early this year  will help Ashok Leyland broaden its portfolio in a segment with high-volume potential. The LCV business is set to be a game changer for the company, managing director Vinod K Dasari said.

Nitin Seth, president  light commercial vehicles, ALL, elaborated a little more. The Dost+ will initially be marketed in four southern states and parts of Maharashtra. For exports, the companimy will focus initially on overseas markets with left-hand drives.

With the left-hand driven Dost range of vehicles we will target markets like Russia, Ukraine, Seth said, going on to add that they would begin serving such markets by the beginning of 2018. Exports currently contribute to 10 per cent of total light commercial vehicles sales.

Last year, we sold 32,000 units (of light commercial vehicles) of which 3,000 units were exports. This year, we are expecting sales volume to reach 40,000 units of which 4,000 will be exports,

he added.

CHENNAI: Hinduja Group flagship Ashok Leyland Ltd (ALL) further strengthened its light commercial vehicle (LCV) portfolio with the launch of Dost +, a new version of the Dost LCV it had jointly developed with Nissan. The new model, however, is part of Ashok Leylands strategy to navigate the LCV space solo, after the break-up of the alliance with Nissan last year. According to Fridays announcement, the company will go on adding one new mini-truck model every six months, until 2020. The Chennai-headquartered manufacturing company has earlier announced that it is investing `400 crore on developing a new range of LCV products, of which the Dost+ is a part. DOST+ will address the needs of the upper end of small commercial vehicle (SCV) segment in the 2T (tonne) to 3.5T gross vehicle weight (GVW) segment and has a payload capacity of 1.475T. The DOST+ price would start at `5.54 lakh. Prices are ex-showroom, Chennai, the firm said. The new LCV launches  ALL had launched Partner early this year  will help Ashok Leyland broaden its portfolio in a segment with high-volume potential. The LCV business is set to be a game changer for the company, managing director Vinod K Dasari said. Nitin Seth, president  light commercial vehicles, ALL, elaborated a little more. The Dost+ will initially be marketed in four southern states and parts of Maharashtra. For exports, the companimy will focus initially on overseas markets with left-hand drives. With the left-hand driven Dost range of vehicles we will target markets like Russia, Ukraine, Seth said, going on to add that they would begin serving such markets by the beginning of 2018. Exports currently contribute to 10 per cent of total light commercial vehicles sales. Last year, we sold 32,000 units (of light commercial vehicles) of which 3,000 units were exports. This year, we are expecting sales volume to reach 40,000 units of which 4,000 will be exports, he added.
The owners of a medical marijuana provider business, as well as one of their patients, is suing the city of Billings over its ban on dispensaries within city limits.

Rich Abromeit, co-owner of Montana Advanced Caregivers, and Nancy Moore are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in district court Thursday.

The suit calls Billings' zoning prohibition on medical marijuana businesses an "abuse of and unlawful exercise of the police power." The ban would force Montana Advanced Caregivers out of Billings, though it was licensed by the city before any zoning ban went into effect.

The business was licensed in 2009 and has operated on the South Side. The lawsuit claims that $2.5 million has been invested into the operation, which is considered one of the larger provider businesses and serves around 460 patients.

On Aug. 29, the Billings City Council voted to ban providers from operating businesses in the city. It already had an interim ordinance banning new providers from setting up shop.

The decision was justified as a zoning issue, saying that land use in Billings can't violate local, state or federal law.

All marijuana use remains illegal under federal law, even though Montana has legalized medical marijuana.

A judge has ordered the city not to enforce the ban while the lawsuit is ongoing.

The lawsuit claims that the ordinance banning provider operations are unconstitutional and was not "passed for the purpose of public health, safety and welfare," but rather "ulterior purposes other than required by statute."

The plaintiffs also say the prohibition violates the rights of Montana Advanced Caregivers and Moore, who is a registered patient. Moore has multiple sclerosis and has said that medical marijuana allowed her to get away from harsh prescription medications.

The lawsuit says that the city's ordinance "carves out a class of Montana citizens who reside in or rely upon dispensaries located in Billings whose city council can, and does, treat them differently than similarly situated registered cardholders ... "

On Friday, District Judge Gregory Todd signed a temporary restraining order that puts the city's provider ban on hold until after later court hearings. None had been scheduled as of Friday.

Abromeit and co-owner Jason Smith declined to comment Friday about the ongoing case.

In an email statement, Billings City Attorney Brent Brooks said the lawsuit is being reviewed.

He also said that Mayor Tom Hanel and the City Council "have requested additional information from city staff to be presented during the October 16, 2017, council work session."

The council is still undecided whether existing providers in city limits will be "grandfathered in" and allowed to stay put. The issue is scheduled for potential council action on Nov. 13.
By IANS

SEOUL: Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has reiterated India's commitment to promoting free and fair world trade, while emphasising the challenges that lay ahead in ensuring it as embodied in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Prabhu is on a visit to South Korea from September 21-23 to participate in the seventh Asia-Europe Economic Ministers (ASEM) meeting and the third joint ministerial review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

"He commended ASEM for addressing global issues of common interest in the spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership and also underlined the emergence of India as one of the world's leading investment destination," a statement from the Commerce Ministry said on Saturday.

On the sidelines of this meeting, the Commerce and Industry Minister had productive meetings with the Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France, Benjamin Griveaux; State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway, Dilek Ayhan; State Secretary for Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Susanne Hyldelund, and the DG of the Ministry of Industry and Economy of Spain, Jose Louis Kaiser Moreiras.

Prabhu also met the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party, Choo Mi-ae and discussed the rapid progress in bilateral ties.

Choo highlighted the importance attached by South Korea President Moon Jae-in to the bilateral relationship with India and his commitment to elevate it to the next level.

Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Choo said the "elephant was outperforming the dragon".

The minister met the Chairman and CEO of Korea's most influential media house, the Chosun Ilbo, Bang Sang-hoon to discuss bilateral economic ties and to consider hosting the next India-Korea Business Summit at an early date, focusing on sectors which would energise the bilateral trade relationship.

Earlier, on September 21, he met the senior leadership of top Korean industries, including Samsung, Kia motors, Lotte, Kumho-Asiana, Hyundai Electric, Posco, LS Group, Toray Chemicals, CJ Logistics and Tongyang Moolsang.

In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed, the statement added.

SEOUL: Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has reiterated India's commitment to promoting free and fair world trade, while emphasising the challenges that lay ahead in ensuring it as embodied in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Prabhu is on a visit to South Korea from September 21-23 to participate in the seventh Asia-Europe Economic Ministers (ASEM) meeting and the third joint ministerial review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). "He commended ASEM for addressing global issues of common interest in the spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership and also underlined the emergence of India as one of the world's leading investment destination," a statement from the Commerce Ministry said on Saturday. On the sidelines of this meeting, the Commerce and Industry Minister had productive meetings with the Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France, Benjamin Griveaux; State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway, Dilek Ayhan; State Secretary for Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Susanne Hyldelund, and the DG of the Ministry of Industry and Economy of Spain, Jose Louis Kaiser Moreiras. Prabhu also met the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party, Choo Mi-ae and discussed the rapid progress in bilateral ties. Choo highlighted the importance attached by South Korea President Moon Jae-in to the bilateral relationship with India and his commitment to elevate it to the next level. Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Choo said the "elephant was outperforming the dragon". The minister met the Chairman and CEO of Korea's most influential media house, the Chosun Ilbo, Bang Sang-hoon to discuss bilateral economic ties and to consider hosting the next India-Korea Business Summit at an early date, focusing on sectors which would energise the bilateral trade relationship. Earlier, on September 21, he met the senior leadership of top Korean industries, including Samsung, Kia motors, Lotte, Kumho-Asiana, Hyundai Electric, Posco, LS Group, Toray Chemicals, CJ Logistics and Tongyang Moolsang. In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed, the statement added.
J Deepthi Nandan Reddy By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The Indian ceramic industry is poised to take on Chinese products in the global market, according to Nilesh Jetpariya, president, Vibrant Ceramics 2017. Speaking to Express on Friday, Jetpariya said that while China accounts for 39-40 per cent of global ceramic exports, India currently accounts for only 12 per cent but this would soon change as Indias share is set to go up.

Demand for ceramics has been growing robustly over the past 10 years. As China was ready then, it got a good hold in the global ceramic market. But, most countries have been dissatisfied with the quality of Chinese products. Therefore, they are looking for alternatives. India, with its growing production volumes and quality products, is going to benefit in a big way. The advantage India has is, it can offer better ceramic products at cheaper prices than China, explained Jetpariya.

According to the industry representatives, the Indian ceramic market is pegged at `25,000-30,000 crore, with 20 per cent of it being exports. Ceramics are cheaper, long-lasting and maintenance-free compared to other alternatives. Besides the huge export potential, large-scale construction in housing and allied sectors is driving demand. Both domestic ceramic market and exports will grow by at least 30 per cent, added Jetpariya. While 90 per cent of ceramic production is done in Gujarat, even states like Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are focusing on increasing ceramic production.

HYDERABAD: The Indian ceramic industry is poised to take on Chinese products in the global market, according to Nilesh Jetpariya, president, Vibrant Ceramics 2017. Speaking to Express on Friday, Jetpariya said that while China accounts for 39-40 per cent of global ceramic exports, India currently accounts for only 12 per cent but this would soon change as Indias share is set to go up. Demand for ceramics has been growing robustly over the past 10 years. As China was ready then, it got a good hold in the global ceramic market. But, most countries have been dissatisfied with the quality of Chinese products. Therefore, they are looking for alternatives. India, with its growing production volumes and quality products, is going to benefit in a big way. The advantage India has is, it can offer better ceramic products at cheaper prices than China, explained Jetpariya. According to the industry representatives, the Indian ceramic market is pegged at `25,000-30,000 crore, with 20 per cent of it being exports. Ceramics are cheaper, long-lasting and maintenance-free compared to other alternatives. Besides the huge export potential, large-scale construction in housing and allied sectors is driving demand. Both domestic ceramic market and exports will grow by at least 30 per cent, added Jetpariya. While 90 per cent of ceramic production is done in Gujarat, even states like Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are focusing on increasing ceramic production.
By Reuters

ST. LOUIS: Protests in St. Louis over the acquittal of a white former policeman who killed a black man could impede the city's bid to attract Amazon.com's second headquarters, academics and business executives said.

Marked by scuffles, teargas and property damage, the protests have been unfolding as the city, which has a history of social unrest, is vying for the lucrative Amazon deal.

"There is no good timing for something like this and it will have an impact," said Didi Caldwell, founding principal with Global Location Strategies in South Carolina, which helps companies choose locations for new businesses and expansion.

Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, said this month that it planned to build a $5 billion second headquarters that could bring 50,000 new jobs to the winning city.

An Amazon spokesman declined to discuss the site search.

In its call for proposals from cities, Amazon said a "compatible cultural and community environment" that included diversity, a high quality of life and stable business climate were key. The company intends to make a decision in 2018.

William Collins, a Vanderbilt University economic historian who has studied the aftermath of the 1960s race riots in the United States, said the impact on a city's ability to draw new employers depended on how companies view such incidents.

Does it suggest a deeply rooted problem that's likely to make living, working, and investing in a particular location less attractive or less profitable than alternatives? If so, it can have lasting implications, Collins said.

A September 16 ruling found former St. Louis policeman Jason Stockley, 36, not guilty of first-degree murder in the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, 24.

'NATIONAL ISSUE'

In August, after clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, regional economic development officials wrote to site selection companies saying the violence did not define the city.

St. Louis Economic Development Partnership officials said they were aware of racial tensions highlighted by the protests but argued that the problem was not unique to St. Louis.

"The protests, although the timing of them was not the best for St. Louis, are really indicative of a national issue that needs to be looked at," the partnership's Chief Executive Sheila Sweeney said on Thursday.

The day before, protesters at a high-end shopping mall blocked traffic and chanted, "No justice, no profits."

Other cities that have indicated they are in the running for the Amazon site include Seattle, Dallas, Houston and Denver.

Charlotte, North Carolina, which saw riots last year after the fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer, has not seen business opt against moving there. Officials, who noted that the city's efforts to break down bias led to the protests, said quantifying any lasting impact was difficult.

"It's a troubling challenge of our time," said Dianne Chase, spokeswoman for the Charlotte Regional Partnership, a public/private economic development organization trying to attract Amazon. "We're not alone, it's most unfortunate to say."

St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson declined to speak on the issue, but told reporters this week that the city had a legacy of institutional racism and needed to move forward with more jobs and stronger civilian oversight of the police.

St. Louis is touting its central U.S. location, riverways, interstate highways and rail lines, vibrant technology environment and urban setting, as its main attractions.

While the city is a transportation hub with a low cost of living, good housing stock and access to research universities, the unrest could hurt its chances even if it made Amazon's final list, said Global Location Strategies' Caldwell.

Companies looking for locations will never announce they have eliminated a city for reasons like racial unrest, but that would likely be the case, she said.

St. Louis residents expressed concern on social media over economic impact related to the unrest.

People were saying, 'Unless the city cleans up its act, well never get Amazon,' said Lindenwood University economics professor Howard Wall.

"Sometimes the economics are sort of a wash and it just becomes about where am I more comfortable doing business and living," Caldwell said.

The St. Louis metro area has been a hot spot for the national debate over racial bias in law enforcement since Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed in 2014 by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson. The Brown shooting sparked riots and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

ST. LOUIS: Protests in St. Louis over the acquittal of a white former policeman who killed a black man could impede the city's bid to attract Amazon.com's second headquarters, academics and business executives said. Marked by scuffles, teargas and property damage, the protests have been unfolding as the city, which has a history of social unrest, is vying for the lucrative Amazon deal. "There is no good timing for something like this and it will have an impact," said Didi Caldwell, founding principal with Global Location Strategies in South Carolina, which helps companies choose locations for new businesses and expansion. Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, said this month that it planned to build a $5 billion second headquarters that could bring 50,000 new jobs to the winning city. An Amazon spokesman declined to discuss the site search. In its call for proposals from cities, Amazon said a "compatible cultural and community environment" that included diversity, a high quality of life and stable business climate were key. The company intends to make a decision in 2018. William Collins, a Vanderbilt University economic historian who has studied the aftermath of the 1960s race riots in the United States, said the impact on a city's ability to draw new employers depended on how companies view such incidents. Does it suggest a deeply rooted problem that's likely to make living, working, and investing in a particular location less attractive or less profitable than alternatives? If so, it can have lasting implications, Collins said. A September 16 ruling found former St. Louis policeman Jason Stockley, 36, not guilty of first-degree murder in the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, 24. 'NATIONAL ISSUE' In August, after clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, regional economic development officials wrote to site selection companies saying the violence did not define the city. St. Louis Economic Development Partnership officials said they were aware of racial tensions highlighted by the protests but argued that the problem was not unique to St. Louis. "The protests, although the timing of them was not the best for St. Louis, are really indicative of a national issue that needs to be looked at," the partnership's Chief Executive Sheila Sweeney said on Thursday. The day before, protesters at a high-end shopping mall blocked traffic and chanted, "No justice, no profits." Other cities that have indicated they are in the running for the Amazon site include Seattle, Dallas, Houston and Denver. Charlotte, North Carolina, which saw riots last year after the fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer, has not seen business opt against moving there. Officials, who noted that the city's efforts to break down bias led to the protests, said quantifying any lasting impact was difficult. "It's a troubling challenge of our time," said Dianne Chase, spokeswoman for the Charlotte Regional Partnership, a public/private economic development organization trying to attract Amazon. "We're not alone, it's most unfortunate to say." St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson declined to speak on the issue, but told reporters this week that the city had a legacy of institutional racism and needed to move forward with more jobs and stronger civilian oversight of the police. St. Louis is touting its central U.S. location, riverways, interstate highways and rail lines, vibrant technology environment and urban setting, as its main attractions. While the city is a transportation hub with a low cost of living, good housing stock and access to research universities, the unrest could hurt its chances even if it made Amazon's final list, said Global Location Strategies' Caldwell. Companies looking for locations will never announce they have eliminated a city for reasons like racial unrest, but that would likely be the case, she said. St. Louis residents expressed concern on social media over economic impact related to the unrest. People were saying, 'Unless the city cleans up its act, well never get Amazon,' said Lindenwood University economics professor Howard Wall. "Sometimes the economics are sort of a wash and it just becomes about where am I more comfortable doing business and living," Caldwell said. The St. Louis metro area has been a hot spot for the national debate over racial bias in law enforcement since Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed in 2014 by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson. The Brown shooting sparked riots and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Sushmitha Ramakrishnan By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Chicken that you order from food outlets in Kancheepuram district could well be a pond heron, a cattle egret or any one of the large wild water-birds found in the wetlands of our State.

A study conducted by researchers from National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and National Conservation Foundation (NCF) across 27 wetlands in Kancheepuram district revealed shocking details of illegal hunting and sale of large water birds that is rampant in the district.

The study found that 47 out of the 53 water birds found in these wetlands are being hunted despite being protected by Wildlife Act 1972.

Hundreds of hunters in possession of single barrel muzzle loading guns, catapults, snares, traps and glue pads roam the wetlands hunting birds everyday, the study revealed. About 11 hunters operate in each wetland and they bag about 21 birds in each foray, said R Ramachandran, the lead author of the study.

Speaking to Express, Ramachandran narrated what a typical hunting foray looks like. The hunters send a couple of scouts at dusk to identify the birds night hideout. At around 3am, a team of three of four hunters approach the location with their guns and catapult. When one bird is disturbed, the entire flock flies. They make use of this to shoot down tens of birds, Ramachandran said.

STORY IN PICS | Protected waterbirds hunted in wetlands, served as chicken in Chennai outskirts

The study was performed by the researchers after they built trust with the hunters by visiting them repeatedly for months. The hunting operates in an organised fashion, where only one hunter shoots and others assist him in flushing and collecting the birds. The profit is then divided among them.

As a part of the study, a detailed questionnaire was handed out to 272, hunters. All hunters were male and aged between 26 and 54 and more than half of them had at least completed elementary school.

The study says that while nearly two-thirds of the hunters knew that it was illegal, none expressed fear of persecution. Over 73 per cent of hunters told the researchers that they primarily hunted for monetary reasons and not for sport. On average, they make about Rs 13,000 a month from the hunt, said Ramachandran.

Almost all hunting happens on weekends, when the birds are immediately transported to local shandies and sold in the open. Five open markets were found to be selling these wild water birds during the course of this study. The bird market first opens to premium customers who buy all the exotic birds. The regular ones are then auctioned and sold to local eateries that pass them off as chicken.

In as much as 74.63 per cent of interviews, the hunters reported supplying birds to 426 eateries in the region. In stark contrast, only eight of the surveyed 681 eateries acknowledged serving wild meat, the study said.

All hunters were male and aged between 26 and 54 and more than half of them had at least completed elementary school.

Pond heron was observed to be the most commonly traded species and also the cheapest, along with cattle egrets. Both of these birds are found in abundance across India. While these two cost about Rs 150 a bird, spot pelican was found to be the most expensive, as a bird cost Rs 2,500. The Asian open bill and the black-headed ibis cost Rs 1,000, while cormorants and darters cost about Rs 300 and whistling teals sell for about Rs 500 a bird.

With such rampant hunting, the birds have become more alert and paranoid around humans, a researcher said. I observed that waterbirds in Tamil Nadu start shying away even when youre 100m away from them, he said. The impact of this hunting on bird population however remains unclear as there has been no baseline study performed in the State.

Most people who consume the meat in these eateries are unaware that these are wild water birds. They simply think its chicken. If these birds carry an epidemic, there is no way one can trace it back to the population, commented Ramachandran.

Large water birds that are found in protected bird sanctuaries like Vedanthangal, which has a similar environment, were however not spotted in agricultural wetlands. Their absence in the similar environment is what piqued our curiosity and led to the study, said Ramachandran.

CHENNAI: Chicken that you order from food outlets in Kancheepuram district could well be a pond heron, a cattle egret or any one of the large wild water-birds found in the wetlands of our State. A study conducted by researchers from National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and National Conservation Foundation (NCF) across 27 wetlands in Kancheepuram district revealed shocking details of illegal hunting and sale of large water birds that is rampant in the district. The study found that 47 out of the 53 water birds found in these wetlands are being hunted despite being protected by Wildlife Act 1972. Hundreds of hunters in possession of single barrel muzzle loading guns, catapults, snares, traps and glue pads roam the wetlands hunting birds everyday, the study revealed. About 11 hunters operate in each wetland and they bag about 21 birds in each foray, said R Ramachandran, the lead author of the study. Speaking to Express, Ramachandran narrated what a typical hunting foray looks like. The hunters send a couple of scouts at dusk to identify the birds night hideout. At around 3am, a team of three of four hunters approach the location with their guns and catapult. When one bird is disturbed, the entire flock flies. They make use of this to shoot down tens of birds, Ramachandran said. STORY IN PICS | Protected waterbirds hunted in wetlands, served as chicken in Chennai outskirts The study was performed by the researchers after they built trust with the hunters by visiting them repeatedly for months. The hunting operates in an organised fashion, where only one hunter shoots and others assist him in flushing and collecting the birds. The profit is then divided among them. As a part of the study, a detailed questionnaire was handed out to 272, hunters. All hunters were male and aged between 26 and 54 and more than half of them had at least completed elementary school. The study says that while nearly two-thirds of the hunters knew that it was illegal, none expressed fear of persecution. Over 73 per cent of hunters told the researchers that they primarily hunted for monetary reasons and not for sport. On average, they make about Rs 13,000 a month from the hunt, said Ramachandran. Almost all hunting happens on weekends, when the birds are immediately transported to local shandies and sold in the open. Five open markets were found to be selling these wild water birds during the course of this study. The bird market first opens to premium customers who buy all the exotic birds. The regular ones are then auctioned and sold to local eateries that pass them off as chicken. In as much as 74.63 per cent of interviews, the hunters reported supplying birds to 426 eateries in the region. In stark contrast, only eight of the surveyed 681 eateries acknowledged serving wild meat, the study said. All hunters were male and aged between 26 and 54 and more than half of them had at least completed elementary school. Pond heron was observed to be the most commonly traded species and also the cheapest, along with cattle egrets. Both of these birds are found in abundance across India. While these two cost about Rs 150 a bird, spot pelican was found to be the most expensive, as a bird cost Rs 2,500. The Asian open bill and the black-headed ibis cost Rs 1,000, while cormorants and darters cost about Rs 300 and whistling teals sell for about Rs 500 a bird. With such rampant hunting, the birds have become more alert and paranoid around humans, a researcher said. I observed that waterbirds in Tamil Nadu start shying away even when youre 100m away from them, he said. The impact of this hunting on bird population however remains unclear as there has been no baseline study performed in the State. Most people who consume the meat in these eateries are unaware that these are wild water birds. They simply think its chicken. If these birds carry an epidemic, there is no way one can trace it back to the population, commented Ramachandran. Large water birds that are found in protected bird sanctuaries like Vedanthangal, which has a similar environment, were however not spotted in agricultural wetlands. Their absence in the similar environment is what piqued our curiosity and led to the study, said Ramachandran.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Ukrainian Ambassador Igor Polikha's mobile phone was snatched while he was taking pictures of the Red Fort, following which one person was arrested today, the police said.

The snatched iPhone has also been recovered, said Jatin Narwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North).

Polikha was alone at the time of the incident that took place on Wednesday morning. He was clicking pictures of the Red Fort while standing on a road near the monument when a man came towards him, they said.

In his complaint, the envoy claimed that the man snatched his iphone within seconds and fled from there.

Following the incident, police rounded up more than 100 suspects and questioned them.

The police did not have any clues to the accused since none of the CCTV cameras, installed in the area, captured his face clearly. However, the priest of the temple, where the ambassador was standing when his phone was snatched, helped the police to prepare the sketch of the accused. The sketch was circulated among the pavement dwellers living in the areas nearby, said an officer privy to the probe.

He added that the police also questioned the people who are in the business of buying stolen mobile phones, and through this the police managed to identify the accused.

However, when the police reached his residence in Nand Nagri he was found to be on the run. They caught hold of his accomplice, Rajender Prasad (26), who was standing guard when the accused fled with the ambassador's phone, the officer said.

Narwal said the police were conducting raids to nab him the main accused.

Police said Polikha is a photography enthusiast. His phone contained pictures he had clicked and some personal information.

NEW DELHI: Ukrainian Ambassador Igor Polikha's mobile phone was snatched while he was taking pictures of the Red Fort, following which one person was arrested today, the police said. The snatched iPhone has also been recovered, said Jatin Narwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North). Polikha was alone at the time of the incident that took place on Wednesday morning. He was clicking pictures of the Red Fort while standing on a road near the monument when a man came towards him, they said. In his complaint, the envoy claimed that the man snatched his iphone within seconds and fled from there. Following the incident, police rounded up more than 100 suspects and questioned them. The police did not have any clues to the accused since none of the CCTV cameras, installed in the area, captured his face clearly. However, the priest of the temple, where the ambassador was standing when his phone was snatched, helped the police to prepare the sketch of the accused. The sketch was circulated among the pavement dwellers living in the areas nearby, said an officer privy to the probe. He added that the police also questioned the people who are in the business of buying stolen mobile phones, and through this the police managed to identify the accused. However, when the police reached his residence in Nand Nagri he was found to be on the run. They caught hold of his accomplice, Rajender Prasad (26), who was standing guard when the accused fled with the ambassador's phone, the officer said. Narwal said the police were conducting raids to nab him the main accused. Police said Polikha is a photography enthusiast. His phone contained pictures he had clicked and some personal information.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: After Hyderabad police which recently busted the international child bride racket in the city, where 20 persons have been arrested, the search is on for more accused. Besides the sheikhs from Oman, Qatar and the Qazis who were put behind bars, the police is now going to delve deeper, track down further links and get to the bottom of the issue, according to South Zone DCP, V Satyanarayana.



Meanwhile, the 12 minors who were saved from their clutches and are currently under the care of Girls Home in Nimboliadda, will soon be provided additional care and support. We have directed the matter to the Minorities Welfare department who will take care of the rehabilitation, care and protection of these minor girls. The specific plans are yet to be decided, the DCP informed.Right now, they are looking at tracing more people who are involved in the racket and putting them behind bars, he added. The process of rehabilitating these minor girls will be finalised in the next 15 days, he further informed.



Syed Omer Jameel, special secretary, Minorities Welfare department informed that all possible support will be extended to help these minor girls. I have received information from the police on Friday. I am yet to look into specific case details of the girls. Once we identify this, we will look into the schemes that are available for them and link them, he said.Their educational qualifications and skills will be taken into consideration after which they will be linked to schemes. The rehabilitation will be such that they do not fall prey to such incidents again and can become self sustained, economically. A plan will soon be formulated, he added.

HYDERABAD: After Hyderabad police which recently busted the international child bride racket in the city, where 20 persons have been arrested, the search is on for more accused. Besides the sheikhs from Oman, Qatar and the Qazis who were put behind bars, the police is now going to delve deeper, track down further links and get to the bottom of the issue, according to South Zone DCP, V Satyanarayana. Meanwhile, the 12 minors who were saved from their clutches and are currently under the care of Girls Home in Nimboliadda, will soon be provided additional care and support. We have directed the matter to the Minorities Welfare department who will take care of the rehabilitation, care and protection of these minor girls. The specific plans are yet to be decided, the DCP informed.Right now, they are looking at tracing more people who are involved in the racket and putting them behind bars, he added. The process of rehabilitating these minor girls will be finalised in the next 15 days, he further informed. Syed Omer Jameel, special secretary, Minorities Welfare department informed that all possible support will be extended to help these minor girls. I have received information from the police on Friday. I am yet to look into specific case details of the girls. Once we identify this, we will look into the schemes that are available for them and link them, he said.Their educational qualifications and skills will be taken into consideration after which they will be linked to schemes. The rehabilitation will be such that they do not fall prey to such incidents again and can become self sustained, economically. A plan will soon be formulated, he added.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: Google Doodle, today, celebrates 100th birthday of Asima Chatterjee, a renowned Indian chemist, who was the first female Doctorate of Science in India from an Indian University.

Born on September 23, 1917, Dr Asima Chatterjee has various contributions on the research of vinca alkaloids and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs.

According to Googles blog, Dr. Chatterjee primarily studied the medicinal properties of plants native to India. Throughout her career, her research contributed to the development of drugs that treated epilepsy and malaria. Dr. Chatterjee's most noted contribution to the field, however, was her work on vinca alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds made from plants, often to treat medical ailments. Vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, are used today in chemotherapy treatment because they help slow down or stall the multiplying of cancer cells.

The post continued, Dr. Chatterjee's groundbreaking contributions to medicine were recognized by universities all over the world. She received numerous accolades from the Indian government, including some of the highest awards (like the Padma Bhushan) and an appointment to the upper house of Parliament!

Asima joined the Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta Universtiy in 1940 and founded the department of chemistry in the college.

Asima Chatterjees work in the field of science opened the doors for millions of women to excel in the field and her research on vinca alkaloids which is now widely used in chemotherapy and helps to slow down the growth rate of cancer cells.

Her phenomenal contributions have won Asima various awards and accolades from all over the world and she was also honoured with Indias highest award, Padma Bhushan.

In 1975 she became the first woman to be appointed general president of the Indian Science Congress.

She had one child, a daughter called Julie, with her husband Dr. Baradananda Chatterjee, and died in 2006 in her nursing home at the age of 90.

NEW DELHI: Google Doodle, today, celebrates 100th birthday of Asima Chatterjee, a renowned Indian chemist, who was the first female Doctorate of Science in India from an Indian University. Born on September 23, 1917, Dr Asima Chatterjee has various contributions on the research of vinca alkaloids and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs. According to Googles blog, Dr. Chatterjee primarily studied the medicinal properties of plants native to India. Throughout her career, her research contributed to the development of drugs that treated epilepsy and malaria. Dr. Chatterjee's most noted contribution to the field, however, was her work on vinca alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds made from plants, often to treat medical ailments. Vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, are used today in chemotherapy treatment because they help slow down or stall the multiplying of cancer cells. The post continued, Dr. Chatterjee's groundbreaking contributions to medicine were recognized by universities all over the world. She received numerous accolades from the Indian government, including some of the highest awards (like the Padma Bhushan) and an appointment to the upper house of Parliament! Asima joined the Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta Universtiy in 1940 and founded the department of chemistry in the college. Asima Chatterjees work in the field of science opened the doors for millions of women to excel in the field and her research on vinca alkaloids which is now widely used in chemotherapy and helps to slow down the growth rate of cancer cells. Her phenomenal contributions have won Asima various awards and accolades from all over the world and she was also honoured with Indias highest award, Padma Bhushan. In 1975 she became the first woman to be appointed general president of the Indian Science Congress. She had one child, a daughter called Julie, with her husband Dr. Baradananda Chatterjee, and died in 2006 in her nursing home at the age of 90.
Riaan Jacob George By

Nara Thai, founded in 2003 by a group of women entrepreneurs, has consistently been voted as one of the best restaurants in Thailand since 2006. The cult status of Nara Thai, which has outlets in Bangkok, Singapore and Sri Lanka, is not without reasonauthentic Thai dining in a stylish setting, a formula that has worked brilliantly in its favour.

Karyna Bajaj

Cut to Mumbai, in September 2017, where Nara Thai opened a ritzy new outlet at the heart of the citys swanky business district Bandra Kurla Complex. Besides the occasional Thai restaurant in a five-star hotel or pan-Asian restaurants, there hasnt been any noteworthy standalone Thai restaurant in Mumbai, says Karyna Bajaj, the face of Nara Thai in India. The executive director of KA Hospitality, she also manages the high-profile Hakkasan and Yauatcha restaurants in Mumbai.

Nara Thai Mumbai stands out with its sophisticated yet casual aesthetic. The design concept was overseen by Thai interior decorator Nitipattara Yensup, who is also responsible for the decor of several Nara outlets. The look of Nara Thai Mumbai is characterised by large windows, while the oversized Bangkok-style ceiling fans are unmissable. Small, subtle details and motifs in the restaurant constantly remind you that you are in a Thai restaurantembellished lamps, silk cushions, Thai orchids, bevelled mirrors and, of course, lots of purple.

We are not looking to innovate or experiment with Thai food. It is traditional, regional Thai cooking, which is comfort food for our diners, presented beautifully. The dishes served here are true to their origins and are strongly rooted in Thai culture, says Bajaj.

Butterfly Pea Sour

cocktail

As I pore over the menu, it is not hard to see that Nara Thai is indeed a celebration of Thailands vibrant flavours in their purest form. The menu comprises a range of salads, curries, stir-fries, noodles, rice and a host of other native specialities. While the menu in Mumbai has remained largely unchanged and features most of the Nara Thai signatures from Bangkok, we have added a whole bunch of new vegetarian options for our diners, says Bajaj, alluding to the standout vegetarian dishes like crispy-fried morning glory leaves drizzled with a sweet and sour Thai dressing, okra with Thai herbs and a colourful Pomelo salad (Yum Som O), which had everyone at the table craving.

Some of the other signature dishes were the fascinating Butterfly Pea Rice (which changes colour as a special Thai dressing is poured on top of it), stir-fried crab with yellow curry, crispy shrimp cakes, grilled pork with Nahm Jim Jaew sauce, the all-time favourite Pad Thai and the red chicken curry, with the goodness of kafir lime and delicate spices. There was a visible focus on regional Thai fare and the staff were quick to point out the origin of your dish.

My meal at Nara Thai culminated on a wonderful note with the hospitable Bajaj herself assembling a dessert for mecoconut ice cream topped with a bunch of sweet Thai condiments, a refreshingly light combination. Nara Thai joins the ranks of highly specialised region-driven restaurants in Mumbai, with a strong focus on experience. It scores on all counts, including food, ambience and service, making it a new must-do on the Mumbai food scene.

Nara Thai

Raheja Towers, Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai.

Meal for two with a drink: Rs 2,500

www.narathai.in

Nara Thai, founded in 2003 by a group of women entrepreneurs, has consistently been voted as one of the best restaurants in Thailand since 2006. The cult status of Nara Thai, which has outlets in Bangkok, Singapore and Sri Lanka, is not without reasonauthentic Thai dining in a stylish setting, a formula that has worked brilliantly in its favour. Karyna BajajCut to Mumbai, in September 2017, where Nara Thai opened a ritzy new outlet at the heart of the citys swanky business district Bandra Kurla Complex. Besides the occasional Thai restaurant in a five-star hotel or pan-Asian restaurants, there hasnt been any noteworthy standalone Thai restaurant in Mumbai, says Karyna Bajaj, the face of Nara Thai in India. The executive director of KA Hospitality, she also manages the high-profile Hakkasan and Yauatcha restaurants in Mumbai. Nara Thai Mumbai stands out with its sophisticated yet casual aesthetic. The design concept was overseen by Thai interior decorator Nitipattara Yensup, who is also responsible for the decor of several Nara outlets. The look of Nara Thai Mumbai is characterised by large windows, while the oversized Bangkok-style ceiling fans are unmissable. Small, subtle details and motifs in the restaurant constantly remind you that you are in a Thai restaurantembellished lamps, silk cushions, Thai orchids, bevelled mirrors and, of course, lots of purple. We are not looking to innovate or experiment with Thai food. It is traditional, regional Thai cooking, which is comfort food for our diners, presented beautifully. The dishes served here are true to their origins and are strongly rooted in Thai culture, says Bajaj. Butterfly Pea Sour cocktailAs I pore over the menu, it is not hard to see that Nara Thai is indeed a celebration of Thailands vibrant flavours in their purest form. The menu comprises a range of salads, curries, stir-fries, noodles, rice and a host of other native specialities. While the menu in Mumbai has remained largely unchanged and features most of the Nara Thai signatures from Bangkok, we have added a whole bunch of new vegetarian options for our diners, says Bajaj, alluding to the standout vegetarian dishes like crispy-fried morning glory leaves drizzled with a sweet and sour Thai dressing, okra with Thai herbs and a colourful Pomelo salad (Yum Som O), which had everyone at the table craving. Some of the other signature dishes were the fascinating Butterfly Pea Rice (which changes colour as a special Thai dressing is poured on top of it), stir-fried crab with yellow curry, crispy shrimp cakes, grilled pork with Nahm Jim Jaew sauce, the all-time favourite Pad Thai and the red chicken curry, with the goodness of kafir lime and delicate spices. There was a visible focus on regional Thai fare and the staff were quick to point out the origin of your dish. My meal at Nara Thai culminated on a wonderful note with the hospitable Bajaj herself assembling a dessert for mecoconut ice cream topped with a bunch of sweet Thai condiments, a refreshingly light combination. Nara Thai joins the ranks of highly specialised region-driven restaurants in Mumbai, with a strong focus on experience. It scores on all counts, including food, ambience and service, making it a new must-do on the Mumbai food scene. Nara Thai Raheja Towers, Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai. Meal for two with a drink: Rs 2,500 www.narathai.in
One is in the east and the other in the west, but visiting both Singapore and Israel remains a learning for anyone who looks at strategic issues with focus. Both are small nations, good friends of India, and punch much above their weight; Singapore in the economic and governance domains, and Israel in the world of security and technology. Both will take exception to my limited choice of areas, in which I classify them for their proficiency. But I do so only due to constraints of space. I happened to be in the two nations back-to-back, and hence this piece is all about a few observations more from geopolitical and geostrategic angles. The two nations are high on Indias strategic graph.

I was in Singapore as a Distinguished Guest at the invitation of the government through the famous Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) under its national security studies programme. My curriculum included two main talks and a series of interactions dealing with strategic issues; it included access at very high government levels. This was my umpteenth visit to Singapore, which in recent years has emerged as the focal centre for strategic studies in Asia. While there was much that one took away from the outstanding interactions one had with vital players in the world of strategic affairs, there was much one could also contribute to the departments from a practitioners angle; the experience in practical handling of threats being comparatively limited among the experts there.

The biggest take away for application to Indias world of handling strategic security was the almost complete integration of academia, think tanks, security practitioners to include the armed forces and police, and interestingly the bureaucracy. The most outstanding knowledge management system seems to have been developed. There are extremely fresh domains which find sections within RSIS involved in their researchone such is fake news. There appears no silo system of knowledge management as one finds in India.

Singapores main security concern appears to be the potential of lone wolf attacks to upset the carefully-crafted syncretic model of existence. Being a developed society, the threat perception is live that such attacks could be carried out by regional or home-grown Islamic radicals intending to deliver a message of capability to target a developed state. Hence, there is tremendous urge to understand the issues related to Islamic radicalism.

Moving to Tel Aviv to attend the famous Herzliya World Summit on Counter Terrorism, I found myself there after long. The meet was a lesson in focus. While none can deny the existence of maximum threats from violent extremism in Middle East and now Europe, the quantum of attention to other regions was minuscule. For the first time in years, we had a workshop on Af-Pak, where an attempt was made to project the models of terrorism in South Asia. Despite the contextual nature of the theme, the level of interest was marginal even among the US experts. Israels advantage is that even the ministers who spoke at the plenary sessions had much experience in either the Israeli defence forces or police.

Pakistan got away squarely without being named for its nefarious activities, nor was there any reference to its role in the spread of radical Islam. In fact, in the plenary sessions you found no Indian, but Pakistani presence on the dais was more noticeable.

The private conversations among delegates revolved around Israels apparent obsession with Iran, and the returning confidence Israel has in the US after the Obama administrations departure. A most interesting theme dwelt on the inevitability of a clash between Israel and Hizbullah, especially focusing on the arsenal of rockets built up by the latter. Although Israel has its own iron dome system, the challenge to defend itself against thousands of rockets rained upon its facilities, and population centres does remain a nightmarish contingency.

There were interesting discussions on Europe, the future of IS, the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the immigration issue. The apparent lack of clarity on the future of Syria was glaring, but on IS there seemed consensus about its ability to disperse and conduct its activities. The financial networks and the importance of these in sustaining a movement such as IS did not emerge. Central Asia did not emerge as a possible option for IS, despite the knowledge that the narco-networks and abundance of gas could be possible temptations for the group to gravitate there. The Marawi standoff in the Philippines hardly found mention, proving that the conference was not comprehensive in outlook. In its Middle East orientation it was, of course, outstanding.

Like Singapore, Israel too has ensured full integration of its stakeholders with a networked human resource-based and data-linked knowledge bank. There are no silos of knowledge there either. That was the big takeaway for India, which needs to get its act together on knowledge management in a more professional way. The setting up of the National Defence University delayed by better part of 16 years now may need a push from none less than the PMO.

Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain

Former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps

atahasnain@gmail.com

One is in the east and the other in the west, but visiting both Singapore and Israel remains a learning for anyone who looks at strategic issues with focus. Both are small nations, good friends of India, and punch much above their weight; Singapore in the economic and governance domains, and Israel in the world of security and technology. Both will take exception to my limited choice of areas, in which I classify them for their proficiency. But I do so only due to constraints of space. I happened to be in the two nations back-to-back, and hence this piece is all about a few observations more from geopolitical and geostrategic angles. The two nations are high on Indias strategic graph. I was in Singapore as a Distinguished Guest at the invitation of the government through the famous Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) under its national security studies programme. My curriculum included two main talks and a series of interactions dealing with strategic issues; it included access at very high government levels. This was my umpteenth visit to Singapore, which in recent years has emerged as the focal centre for strategic studies in Asia. While there was much that one took away from the outstanding interactions one had with vital players in the world of strategic affairs, there was much one could also contribute to the departments from a practitioners angle; the experience in practical handling of threats being comparatively limited among the experts there. The biggest take away for application to Indias world of handling strategic security was the almost complete integration of academia, think tanks, security practitioners to include the armed forces and police, and interestingly the bureaucracy. The most outstanding knowledge management system seems to have been developed. There are extremely fresh domains which find sections within RSIS involved in their researchone such is fake news. There appears no silo system of knowledge management as one finds in India. Singapores main security concern appears to be the potential of lone wolf attacks to upset the carefully-crafted syncretic model of existence. Being a developed society, the threat perception is live that such attacks could be carried out by regional or home-grown Islamic radicals intending to deliver a message of capability to target a developed state. Hence, there is tremendous urge to understand the issues related to Islamic radicalism. Moving to Tel Aviv to attend the famous Herzliya World Summit on Counter Terrorism, I found myself there after long. The meet was a lesson in focus. While none can deny the existence of maximum threats from violent extremism in Middle East and now Europe, the quantum of attention to other regions was minuscule. For the first time in years, we had a workshop on Af-Pak, where an attempt was made to project the models of terrorism in South Asia. Despite the contextual nature of the theme, the level of interest was marginal even among the US experts. Israels advantage is that even the ministers who spoke at the plenary sessions had much experience in either the Israeli defence forces or police. Pakistan got away squarely without being named for its nefarious activities, nor was there any reference to its role in the spread of radical Islam. In fact, in the plenary sessions you found no Indian, but Pakistani presence on the dais was more noticeable. The private conversations among delegates revolved around Israels apparent obsession with Iran, and the returning confidence Israel has in the US after the Obama administrations departure. A most interesting theme dwelt on the inevitability of a clash between Israel and Hizbullah, especially focusing on the arsenal of rockets built up by the latter. Although Israel has its own iron dome system, the challenge to defend itself against thousands of rockets rained upon its facilities, and population centres does remain a nightmarish contingency. There were interesting discussions on Europe, the future of IS, the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the immigration issue. The apparent lack of clarity on the future of Syria was glaring, but on IS there seemed consensus about its ability to disperse and conduct its activities. The financial networks and the importance of these in sustaining a movement such as IS did not emerge. Central Asia did not emerge as a possible option for IS, despite the knowledge that the narco-networks and abundance of gas could be possible temptations for the group to gravitate there. The Marawi standoff in the Philippines hardly found mention, proving that the conference was not comprehensive in outlook. In its Middle East orientation it was, of course, outstanding. Like Singapore, Israel too has ensured full integration of its stakeholders with a networked human resource-based and data-linked knowledge bank. There are no silos of knowledge there either. That was the big takeaway for India, which needs to get its act together on knowledge management in a more professional way. The setting up of the National Defence University delayed by better part of 16 years now may need a push from none less than the PMO. Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain Former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps atahasnain@gmail.com
By IANS

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday said those who indulge in violence in the name of cow vigilantism need to be brought to justice and states were under obligation to compensate victims of violence by such groups.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said states must frame schemes to compensate victims of crime, including those of cow vigilantism, as envisaged under the Code of Criminal Procedure, while hearing a petition filed by activist Tushar Gandhi. No state can wash off its hands like this, the bench observed.

The court asked all states and union territories to comply with its September 6 order to appoint nodal officers to deal with cow vigilantism by October 31 and file their compliance reports. The direction came after the bench was informed that only five states  Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have filed compliance reports and asked counsel for the remaining 22 states to file the reports.

However, the court refused to take up the issue of murder of Junaid on a train in Faridabad allegedly by members of a cow vigilante group now and said individual cases should not be clubbed with the larger issue. During the hearing, senior advocate Indira Jaising appearing for Gandhi said, There have been more than 60 incidents across India where people were assaulted and even beaten to death after allegations that they had killed cows or were in possession of beef. There are groups which are committing atrocities against Dalits and other minorities in the name of protection of cows.

SC expresses anguish over rape compensation

The Supreme Court Friday expressed unhappiness over the sad state of affairs on the issue of compensation to be disbursed to the victims of sexual assault under the Nirbhaya fund, as there was no clarity on how and at what stage it should be paid. A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said though the Centre was disbursing funds to the states under the scheme, there appeared to be no system as to how and at what stage the sexual assault victims have to be compensated.

The bench took note of the fact that there is no integrated system of disbursal and management of the money allocated for compensating such victims. The Nirbhaya Fund was announced by the Centre in 2013 after the December 16, 2012, gang-rape and murder in Delhi to support initiatives of the government and NGOs working towards protecting the dignity and ensuring the safety of women.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday said those who indulge in violence in the name of cow vigilantism need to be brought to justice and states were under obligation to compensate victims of violence by such groups. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said states must frame schemes to compensate victims of crime, including those of cow vigilantism, as envisaged under the Code of Criminal Procedure, while hearing a petition filed by activist Tushar Gandhi. No state can wash off its hands like this, the bench observed. The court asked all states and union territories to comply with its September 6 order to appoint nodal officers to deal with cow vigilantism by October 31 and file their compliance reports. The direction came after the bench was informed that only five states  Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have filed compliance reports and asked counsel for the remaining 22 states to file the reports. However, the court refused to take up the issue of murder of Junaid on a train in Faridabad allegedly by members of a cow vigilante group now and said individual cases should not be clubbed with the larger issue. During the hearing, senior advocate Indira Jaising appearing for Gandhi said, There have been more than 60 incidents across India where people were assaulted and even beaten to death after allegations that they had killed cows or were in possession of beef. There are groups which are committing atrocities against Dalits and other minorities in the name of protection of cows. SC expresses anguish over rape compensation The Supreme Court Friday expressed unhappiness over the sad state of affairs on the issue of compensation to be disbursed to the victims of sexual assault under the Nirbhaya fund, as there was no clarity on how and at what stage it should be paid. A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said though the Centre was disbursing funds to the states under the scheme, there appeared to be no system as to how and at what stage the sexual assault victims have to be compensated. The bench took note of the fact that there is no integrated system of disbursal and management of the money allocated for compensating such victims. The Nirbhaya Fund was announced by the Centre in 2013 after the December 16, 2012, gang-rape and murder in Delhi to support initiatives of the government and NGOs working towards protecting the dignity and ensuring the safety of women.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Amidst continuous ceasefire violations by Pakistani forces on the Line of Control and International Border, top military commanders of both armies held telephonic talks to defuse the tension. When Pakistan alleged of its civilian killings in firing by Indian army, but Indian Army categorically told Pakistan that it reserves the right to retaliate appropriately to any incident leading to loss of lives of Indian troops.

Conveying this stern message, Indian Director General Military of Operations(DGMO) also told his Pakistani counterpart that Pakistan Army continued to support infiltration as was evident from sniping and targeting Indian troops.

The LOC has witnessed more than 470 incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistan this year apart from 290 odd militants tried to infiltrate. While, 50 of them were killed this year, more than 80 managed to sneak into Kashmir, sources said. However, security forces killed total 151 militants in various parts of Jammu and Kashmir during multiple operations and figure is an all-time high in recent years.

In unscheduled talks sought by Pakistan DGMO Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza with Indian DGMO Lt General A K Bhatt on Friday at 1.30 pm, the former claimed that the Indian troops killed Pakistani civilians in its area facing Jammu sector. The two DGMOs have a hotline as part of confidence building measure and talk to each once a week every Tuesday. The last unscheduled talks took place on July 20.

In Islamabad, Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said six civilians were killed and 26 others injured in alleged ceasefire violations by the Indians from across the LOC. Later in the day, Pakistan summoned Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad to lodge protest against civilian killings.

Refuting the allegation, Lt. Gen Bhatt said in ten minutes parleys all ceasefire violations in the Jammu sector were initiated by Pakistan Rangers and the Border Security Force (BSF) only responded appropriately. He also emphasized that no targeted firing on civilians was carried by the Indian side. Apart from these, firing by BSF troops were initiated onto armed intruders attempting to infiltrate from close proximity of Pakistani posts along the Amritsar border. This incident took place two days when at least two armed intruders from Pakistan side tried to infiltrate from the International Border and the BSF shot them dead.

Similarly, Pakistani Rangers indulged in unprovoked firing all along the International Border in Jammu last week forcing the local administration to close educational institutions in a radius of five km to prevent civilian casualties.

The Indian DGMO also pointed out that infiltration from across the LOC continued with the active support of Pakistani forwards impacting peace and tranquility along the LOC and also the internal security situation. This was evident from continued attempts of sniper fire and targeting of troops undertaken through cross border actions duly supported by Pakistan Army, Bhatt told Mirza, officials said. Bhatt reaffirmed the Indian Armys sincerity to maintain peace along the LOC provided there was a reciprocal effort from Pakistan.



NEW DELHI: Amidst continuous ceasefire violations by Pakistani forces on the Line of Control and International Border, top military commanders of both armies held telephonic talks to defuse the tension. When Pakistan alleged of its civilian killings in firing by Indian army, but Indian Army categorically told Pakistan that it reserves the right to retaliate appropriately to any incident leading to loss of lives of Indian troops. Conveying this stern message, Indian Director General Military of Operations(DGMO) also told his Pakistani counterpart that Pakistan Army continued to support infiltration as was evident from sniping and targeting Indian troops. The LOC has witnessed more than 470 incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistan this year apart from 290 odd militants tried to infiltrate. While, 50 of them were killed this year, more than 80 managed to sneak into Kashmir, sources said. However, security forces killed total 151 militants in various parts of Jammu and Kashmir during multiple operations and figure is an all-time high in recent years. In unscheduled talks sought by Pakistan DGMO Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza with Indian DGMO Lt General A K Bhatt on Friday at 1.30 pm, the former claimed that the Indian troops killed Pakistani civilians in its area facing Jammu sector. The two DGMOs have a hotline as part of confidence building measure and talk to each once a week every Tuesday. The last unscheduled talks took place on July 20. In Islamabad, Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said six civilians were killed and 26 others injured in alleged ceasefire violations by the Indians from across the LOC. Later in the day, Pakistan summoned Indian deputy high commissioner in Islamabad to lodge protest against civilian killings. Refuting the allegation, Lt. Gen Bhatt said in ten minutes parleys all ceasefire violations in the Jammu sector were initiated by Pakistan Rangers and the Border Security Force (BSF) only responded appropriately. He also emphasized that no targeted firing on civilians was carried by the Indian side. Apart from these, firing by BSF troops were initiated onto armed intruders attempting to infiltrate from close proximity of Pakistani posts along the Amritsar border. This incident took place two days when at least two armed intruders from Pakistan side tried to infiltrate from the International Border and the BSF shot them dead. Similarly, Pakistani Rangers indulged in unprovoked firing all along the International Border in Jammu last week forcing the local administration to close educational institutions in a radius of five km to prevent civilian casualties. The Indian DGMO also pointed out that infiltration from across the LOC continued with the active support of Pakistani forwards impacting peace and tranquility along the LOC and also the internal security situation. This was evident from continued attempts of sniper fire and targeting of troops undertaken through cross border actions duly supported by Pakistan Army, Bhatt told Mirza, officials said. Bhatt reaffirmed the Indian Armys sincerity to maintain peace along the LOC provided there was a reciprocal effort from Pakistan.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Twenty-two students of IIT Kanpur have been suspended with immediate effect for bullying freshers on campus back in August. They are all from the second year. Orders for their immediate eviction from hostels have been issued. They will be given a chance to present their side of the matter in a hearing after the Dasara holidays in October.

The decision to suspend 22 students was taken at a meeting of the IIT-K Senate late Thursday night. The Senate, headed by the director of the institute, is the institutions apex body for academic and administrative decisions.

The incident of ragging, which took place on August 19-20, came to light when the affected freshers complained to the dean of students affairs (DOSA). Junior students residing in hall number 2 said they were bullied and abused by the seniors and asked to do some unusual tasks.

The administration set up a probe panel comprising of five faculty members, the dean and four students. The committee found the seniors guilty and recommended expulsions. But since expulsion would have impacted their careers, it was decided to give them a chance to explain their side of the case after the Dasara holidays, sources in IIT-K said.

Two accused students  Rituj Jugade and Nikhil Kurele  submitted a representation to the authorities stating that they were not present in the hostel when the incident took place. Apart from ordering immediate suspensions, the Senate decided to remove Rituj Jugade, president of the Student Gymkhana, from the post and imposed a life ban on him from contesting elections or taking membership of any of the college committees.

The Senate Students Affairs Committee (SSAC) will present its final report on the matter after hearing the suspended students in October. Its report would be taken up in a Senate meeting in November.

However, the Senate decided not to take any legal action against the errant students or refer the matter to the police. In coming to that decision, it set aside the views of some members who wanted an FIR lodged against the culprits.

LUCKNOW: Twenty-two students of IIT Kanpur have been suspended with immediate effect for bullying freshers on campus back in August. They are all from the second year. Orders for their immediate eviction from hostels have been issued. They will be given a chance to present their side of the matter in a hearing after the Dasara holidays in October. The decision to suspend 22 students was taken at a meeting of the IIT-K Senate late Thursday night. The Senate, headed by the director of the institute, is the institutions apex body for academic and administrative decisions. The incident of ragging, which took place on August 19-20, came to light when the affected freshers complained to the dean of students affairs (DOSA). Junior students residing in hall number 2 said they were bullied and abused by the seniors and asked to do some unusual tasks. The administration set up a probe panel comprising of five faculty members, the dean and four students. The committee found the seniors guilty and recommended expulsions. But since expulsion would have impacted their careers, it was decided to give them a chance to explain their side of the case after the Dasara holidays, sources in IIT-K said. Two accused students  Rituj Jugade and Nikhil Kurele  submitted a representation to the authorities stating that they were not present in the hostel when the incident took place. Apart from ordering immediate suspensions, the Senate decided to remove Rituj Jugade, president of the Student Gymkhana, from the post and imposed a life ban on him from contesting elections or taking membership of any of the college committees. The Senate Students Affairs Committee (SSAC) will present its final report on the matter after hearing the suspended students in October. Its report would be taken up in a Senate meeting in November. However, the Senate decided not to take any legal action against the errant students or refer the matter to the police. In coming to that decision, it set aside the views of some members who wanted an FIR lodged against the culprits.
Abhijit Mulye By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: Former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and activist Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed to have received a threatening call from a Pakistan-based number demanding that she withdraw the cases she filed against former minister Eknath Khadse of the BJP.

"I received a call at 12.33 am asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse. The number had the country code +92 - which is the country code of Pakistan. The Truecaller app flashed "Dawood 2" on the screen," Damani said.

She added that she lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station about the call and recorded a statement.

"The caller spoke rudely and threatened to make my life difficult. I immediately spoke to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. He promptly assured me that the joint commissioner of police (crime) will seriously look into the matter," Damania said.

Damania is among the petitioners who filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Khadse for alleged graft. Earlier this month, she accused Khadse of passing sexually suggestive remarks against her.

Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating pic.twitter.com/Gsws5rO8WK  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Interestingly, last year, Khadse, who was forced to resign as a minister following charges of corruption, was accused of being in contact with the fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

In 2016, Manish Bhangale, a self-proclaimed ethical hacker, alleged that Khadse was in contact with Dawood Ibrahim and even produced the bills for a landline number in Karachi which was reportedly registered in the name of Dawood's wife, Mehjabeen Sheikh.

Bhangale made the information public when Khadse was facing corruption charges in connection with the illegal procurement of a piece of industrial land near Pune.

However, Khadse was relieved when it was proved that Bhangale forged the telephone bill and other documents. Bhangale was later arrested by the Mumbai police.

MUMBAI: Former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and activist Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed to have received a threatening call from a Pakistan-based number demanding that she withdraw the cases she filed against former minister Eknath Khadse of the BJP. "I received a call at 12.33 am asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse. The number had the country code +92 - which is the country code of Pakistan. The Truecaller app flashed "Dawood 2" on the screen," Damani said. She added that she lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station about the call and recorded a statement. "The caller spoke rudely and threatened to make my life difficult. I immediately spoke to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. He promptly assured me that the joint commissioner of police (crime) will seriously look into the matter," Damania said. Damania is among the petitioners who filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Khadse for alleged graft. Earlier this month, she accused Khadse of passing sexually suggestive remarks against her. Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating pic.twitter.com/Gsws5rO8WK  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017 Interestingly, last year, Khadse, who was forced to resign as a minister following charges of corruption, was accused of being in contact with the fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. In 2016, Manish Bhangale, a self-proclaimed ethical hacker, alleged that Khadse was in contact with Dawood Ibrahim and even produced the bills for a landline number in Karachi which was reportedly registered in the name of Dawood's wife, Mehjabeen Sheikh. Bhangale made the information public when Khadse was facing corruption charges in connection with the illegal procurement of a piece of industrial land near Pune. However, Khadse was relieved when it was proved that Bhangale forged the telephone bill and other documents. Bhangale was later arrested by the Mumbai police.
Arunava Banerjee By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Some 90 Rohingyas huddle in one two-storeyed building in Keelambakkam in Chennai, living the life of stateless people and waiting anxiously for the outcome of the international outcry over the massacre of the minority in Myanmar.

With the Indian government declaring its intention to send back all refugees who have no papers, these Rohingya families face an uncertain future. Their refrain is that theyd rather die here than go back to Myanmar.

Are these the last rains?

Some people are bad and some people are good; thats with every community, a 24-year old Rohingya refugee says as he erects a tent outside a dilapidated two-storeyed building on the Kelambakkam-Vandalur road on the outskirts of Chennai. The tent shelters the hearth on which his family will cook its food.

Thousands of miles away from home in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, 93 Rohingyas have been living in this crumbling building under the protection of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) since their arrival in 2012.

Muhammad Yousuf, a 28-year-old refugee who used to sell groceries in his hometown before fleeing Myanmar, points to the workers erecting tents and says, We are preparing for the rainy season.

He is unaware that this years rains may well be the last they will witness in India. The central government does not want them here. In a 15-page affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday, New Delhi said, Continuance of the Rohingyas illegal immigration into India and their continued stay in India, apart from being absolutely illegal, is found to be having serious national security ramifications and has serious security threats.

This is home. Our children speak Tamil

Yousuf agrees that the Rohingyas living in this shabby building have no legal documents but he cannot imagine that any of them are a threat to the nations security. This place has become home to us. Twenty-three of our children go to the government school here and speak Tamil fluently, he says.

Many of the Rohingyas here have smartphones and its anybodys guess how they came to have SIM cards. Some of our brothers here have two SIM cards and they gave us one to use, Yousuf explains.

Many of the refugees lodged here do not deny they got themselves smartphones. Its a necessity. We speak to people back in Burma via IMO. So some of us have smartphones, explains a 24-year-old youth who studied in a madrasa in Myanmar before coming to India.

All of us have identity proof as citizens of Burma but to go back would mean a horrific death. We have seen the Myanmar army chop off the body parts of our people. It is better to burn us down here rather than send us back, he adds.

From Cox Bazar to Kovalam

The central government in its affidavit has raised concerns about the influx of refugees across Indias porous border with Myanmar. There is an organised influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar through agents and touts facilitating illegal immigrants Rohingyas into India via Benapole-Haridaspur, Hilli and Sonamura, Kolkata and Guwahati.

Yousuf recalls his journey to India. He had to shell out all the money he had saved to pay agents and touts to get him here. We had seven-day visas issued by the Burmese government. With it, we managed to reach Cox Bazar in Bangladesh. But we were not welcome there, he said.

Cox Bazar, Yousuf recalls, is full of agents who swarm the refugees as they arrive, reeling off a list of destinations to settle in. They include Pakistan, India and Nepal. When my family and I landed in Bangladesh, several agents approached us. We did not know any of them. They asked us whether we want to go to Pakistan, India or Nepal. Each country had a different price. India was the cheapest. We felt it would be safer and so we paid almost one lakh in Burmese currency to an agent who helped us reach here, Yousuf said.

At that time we did not know we were going to Chennai. We reached the Indo-Bangladesh border on a bus and from there we were ferried by boat to Kolkata. There, another agent got us aboard a train, and we reached Chennai. We just wanted to escape, we did not know where we were going, he adds.

Yousuf said that some of the refugees who were apprehended in Kolkata have been sent to jail. The ones who managed to reach Chennai shifted camps a couple of times including setting up one near the Kovalam beach before being finally shifted here with the help of the UNHRC.

CHENNAI: Some 90 Rohingyas huddle in one two-storeyed building in Keelambakkam in Chennai, living the life of stateless people and waiting anxiously for the outcome of the international outcry over the massacre of the minority in Myanmar. With the Indian government declaring its intention to send back all refugees who have no papers, these Rohingya families face an uncertain future. Their refrain is that theyd rather die here than go back to Myanmar. Are these the last rains? Some people are bad and some people are good; thats with every community, a 24-year old Rohingya refugee says as he erects a tent outside a dilapidated two-storeyed building on the Kelambakkam-Vandalur road on the outskirts of Chennai. The tent shelters the hearth on which his family will cook its food. Thousands of miles away from home in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, 93 Rohingyas have been living in this crumbling building under the protection of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) since their arrival in 2012. Muhammad Yousuf, a 28-year-old refugee who used to sell groceries in his hometown before fleeing Myanmar, points to the workers erecting tents and says, We are preparing for the rainy season. He is unaware that this years rains may well be the last they will witness in India. The central government does not want them here. In a 15-page affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday, New Delhi said, Continuance of the Rohingyas illegal immigration into India and their continued stay in India, apart from being absolutely illegal, is found to be having serious national security ramifications and has serious security threats. This is home. Our children speak Tamil Yousuf agrees that the Rohingyas living in this shabby building have no legal documents but he cannot imagine that any of them are a threat to the nations security. This place has become home to us. Twenty-three of our children go to the government school here and speak Tamil fluently, he says. Many of the Rohingyas here have smartphones and its anybodys guess how they came to have SIM cards. Some of our brothers here have two SIM cards and they gave us one to use, Yousuf explains. Many of the refugees lodged here do not deny they got themselves smartphones. Its a necessity. We speak to people back in Burma via IMO. So some of us have smartphones, explains a 24-year-old youth who studied in a madrasa in Myanmar before coming to India. All of us have identity proof as citizens of Burma but to go back would mean a horrific death. We have seen the Myanmar army chop off the body parts of our people. It is better to burn us down here rather than send us back, he adds. From Cox Bazar to Kovalam The central government in its affidavit has raised concerns about the influx of refugees across Indias porous border with Myanmar. There is an organised influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar through agents and touts facilitating illegal immigrants Rohingyas into India via Benapole-Haridaspur, Hilli and Sonamura, Kolkata and Guwahati. Yousuf recalls his journey to India. He had to shell out all the money he had saved to pay agents and touts to get him here. We had seven-day visas issued by the Burmese government. With it, we managed to reach Cox Bazar in Bangladesh. But we were not welcome there, he said. Cox Bazar, Yousuf recalls, is full of agents who swarm the refugees as they arrive, reeling off a list of destinations to settle in. They include Pakistan, India and Nepal. When my family and I landed in Bangladesh, several agents approached us. We did not know any of them. They asked us whether we want to go to Pakistan, India or Nepal. Each country had a different price. India was the cheapest. We felt it would be safer and so we paid almost one lakh in Burmese currency to an agent who helped us reach here, Yousuf said. At that time we did not know we were going to Chennai. We reached the Indo-Bangladesh border on a bus and from there we were ferried by boat to Kolkata. There, another agent got us aboard a train, and we reached Chennai. We just wanted to escape, we did not know where we were going, he adds. Yousuf said that some of the refugees who were apprehended in Kolkata have been sent to jail. The ones who managed to reach Chennai shifted camps a couple of times including setting up one near the Kovalam beach before being finally shifted here with the help of the UNHRC.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Hindi film producer Karim Morani surrendered before the Hayatnagar police here late Friday night after the Supreme Court shot down his plea for bail in a case filed against him by his daughter's friend alleging rape, cheating and wrongful confinement.

On Saturday, the police took Morani to Osmania General Hospital on Saturday for medical tests and produced him in the Hayatnagar court.

The case was booked against Morani in March 2017 when the woman approached the police claiming that Morani promised her roles in films but cheated her after exploiting her.

Morani was formally placed under arrest after his surrender here and was produced in court which sent him to judicial custody for 14 days, a police officer said today.

"Morani surrendered before us (Hayathnagar police) around midnight. After completing legal formalities and medical check up, he was produced before a court today. He was remanded in judicial custody till October 6," J Narender Goud, Hayathnagar Police Inspector told PTI.

He said police have filed a petition seeking Morani's custody for seven days for further questioning.

Morani had taken anticipatory bail and then moved the High Court and the court had asked him to surrender before police then. Again Morani moved Supreme Court with a petition seeking to reconsider the HC's order, but the apex court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition and asked Morani on Friday to immediately surrender before Hayathnagar police.

Narender Goud said, "After the Supreme Court's order on Friday, Karim Morani, who is facing allegations of rape among other criminal charges, surrendered late in the night. He will be produced before court today, after completing formalities."

In fact, during last January, a woman, who had done Bachelor of Business Management (BBA) degree, lodged a complaint with the Hayathnagar police alleging that Morani had repeatedly raped her.

It was alleged that Morani had sedated the Delhi-based woman and raped her several times, besides taking her nude photos between July 2015 and January 2016. The victim also alleged that Morani had raped her at a film studio here in 2015.

The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail.

Morani was booked for cheating, rape, wrongful confinement), criminal intimidation), and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code.

(With inputs from PTI)

HYDERABAD: Hindi film producer Karim Morani surrendered before the Hayatnagar police here late Friday night after the Supreme Court shot down his plea for bail in a case filed against him by his daughter's friend alleging rape, cheating and wrongful confinement. On Saturday, the police took Morani to Osmania General Hospital on Saturday for medical tests and produced him in the Hayatnagar court. The case was booked against Morani in March 2017 when the woman approached the police claiming that Morani promised her roles in films but cheated her after exploiting her. Morani was formally placed under arrest after his surrender here and was produced in court which sent him to judicial custody for 14 days, a police officer said today. "Morani surrendered before us (Hayathnagar police) around midnight. After completing legal formalities and medical check up, he was produced before a court today. He was remanded in judicial custody till October 6," J Narender Goud, Hayathnagar Police Inspector told PTI. He said police have filed a petition seeking Morani's custody for seven days for further questioning. Morani had taken anticipatory bail and then moved the High Court and the court had asked him to surrender before police then. Again Morani moved Supreme Court with a petition seeking to reconsider the HC's order, but the apex court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition and asked Morani on Friday to immediately surrender before Hayathnagar police. Narender Goud said, "After the Supreme Court's order on Friday, Karim Morani, who is facing allegations of rape among other criminal charges, surrendered late in the night. He will be produced before court today, after completing formalities." In fact, during last January, a woman, who had done Bachelor of Business Management (BBA) degree, lodged a complaint with the Hayathnagar police alleging that Morani had repeatedly raped her. It was alleged that Morani had sedated the Delhi-based woman and raped her several times, besides taking her nude photos between July 2015 and January 2016. The victim also alleged that Morani had raped her at a film studio here in 2015. The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail. Morani was booked for cheating, rape, wrongful confinement), criminal intimidation), and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code. (With inputs from PTI)
By PTI

ARNIA (JAMMU): Night after night, Anita Kumar and her family huddled together under a bed in one corner of a room, surrounded by the deadly sounds of gunfire.

After heavy cross-border shelling over several days, the family finally decided to leave their home along the India-Pakistan border yesterday.

"We chose to stay here, despite the intermittent attacks.

But on Thursday night, the situation got worse, two shells hit our house, damaged it and killed a buffalo," Kumar said.

The once-bustling border settlement of Arnia now resembles a ghost town. Like Kumar and her family, many have fled the town to escape the shelling that has been carrying on for seven days.

"The mortar bombs fired by Pakistani troops will kill us if we don't leave our homes," Arnia resident Pritam Chand told PTI.

Not just Arnia, 20 adjoining hamlets also wear a deserted look as its residents move to relatively safer areas.

Night times, residents of the border areas stressed, were the most frightening, as guns and mortar shells boomed.

Chand, whose family members fled Arnia and took shelter at his son-in-law's house in the Chatta area of Jammu, pointed to the bullet holes scarring the walls of his house and said it had been hit by three mortar shells.

"Thursday night's shelling almost led to the partial collapse of the house," he said.

Over 60 per cent of the houses in the area had been hit by mortar shells, Chand said.

"Had our family not left the house, we would all have died yesterday," he said.

The shelling leaves behind a lethal trail of destruction - at least two persons were killed and 19 others injured in explosions last week.

"In our ward, 12 houses were hit on Thursday night,"

Chand said, adding that over 90 per cent of those who had stayed back in Arnia had now left the town.

Kumar, her husband Bhag Singh, their two children and her mother-in-law have taken refuge in a relative's home. "We have no money to rebuild our house," she rued.

The sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of the area, Surinder Choudhary, said roughly 10,000 people had left their homes.

Those who have moved to regions around, come back to their homes in the daytime, mostly to feed their cattle.

Dead cattle in pools of blood, torn off roof-tops and windows punctured by bullets and splinters of mortar bombs are a common sight here. The smell of cordite and gunpowder lingers in the air.

"We live under the shadow of death. Our cattle have been killed and injured. Our houses and cow sheds have been damaged. We have been forced to leave our homes. Our children are not getting education. Is this the life we wanted,"

Jabowal resident Shamsher Singh asked.

People in this border town believed that statements about giving "befitting replies to Pakistan" only invited more attacks.

"When the ministers issue statements about befitting replies to Pakistan from their Delhi offices, we pay for their remarks," a villager said.

The local people demanded bunkers from the government to escape the shelling from across the border.

"Instead of issuing statements, the government should provide us with individual bunkers and plots for constructions of safe houses away from the firing ranges," Kumar said.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) between September 13 and September 18.

After a two-day lull, firing and shelling resumed on September 21.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.

ARNIA (JAMMU): Night after night, Anita Kumar and her family huddled together under a bed in one corner of a room, surrounded by the deadly sounds of gunfire. After heavy cross-border shelling over several days, the family finally decided to leave their home along the India-Pakistan border yesterday. "We chose to stay here, despite the intermittent attacks. But on Thursday night, the situation got worse, two shells hit our house, damaged it and killed a buffalo," Kumar said. The once-bustling border settlement of Arnia now resembles a ghost town. Like Kumar and her family, many have fled the town to escape the shelling that has been carrying on for seven days. "The mortar bombs fired by Pakistani troops will kill us if we don't leave our homes," Arnia resident Pritam Chand told PTI. Not just Arnia, 20 adjoining hamlets also wear a deserted look as its residents move to relatively safer areas. Night times, residents of the border areas stressed, were the most frightening, as guns and mortar shells boomed. Chand, whose family members fled Arnia and took shelter at his son-in-law's house in the Chatta area of Jammu, pointed to the bullet holes scarring the walls of his house and said it had been hit by three mortar shells. "Thursday night's shelling almost led to the partial collapse of the house," he said. Over 60 per cent of the houses in the area had been hit by mortar shells, Chand said. "Had our family not left the house, we would all have died yesterday," he said. The shelling leaves behind a lethal trail of destruction - at least two persons were killed and 19 others injured in explosions last week. "In our ward, 12 houses were hit on Thursday night," Chand said, adding that over 90 per cent of those who had stayed back in Arnia had now left the town. Kumar, her husband Bhag Singh, their two children and her mother-in-law have taken refuge in a relative's home. "We have no money to rebuild our house," she rued. The sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of the area, Surinder Choudhary, said roughly 10,000 people had left their homes. Those who have moved to regions around, come back to their homes in the daytime, mostly to feed their cattle. Dead cattle in pools of blood, torn off roof-tops and windows punctured by bullets and splinters of mortar bombs are a common sight here. The smell of cordite and gunpowder lingers in the air. "We live under the shadow of death. Our cattle have been killed and injured. Our houses and cow sheds have been damaged. We have been forced to leave our homes. Our children are not getting education. Is this the life we wanted," Jabowal resident Shamsher Singh asked. People in this border town believed that statements about giving "befitting replies to Pakistan" only invited more attacks. "When the ministers issue statements about befitting replies to Pakistan from their Delhi offices, we pay for their remarks," a villager said. The local people demanded bunkers from the government to escape the shelling from across the border. "Instead of issuing statements, the government should provide us with individual bunkers and plots for constructions of safe houses away from the firing ranges," Kumar said. There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) between September 13 and September 18. After a two-day lull, firing and shelling resumed on September 21. Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.
By Online Desk

Sumit Rathore, a 34-year-old businessman and owner of property worth Rs 100 crore, gave it all up and took his vows as a monk today.

The 'deeksha' (initiation) ceremony was held at Vrindavan park in Surat in Gujarat under Jain monk Acharya Ramlal Ji Maharaj. The monk rechristened Sumit Rathore as Sumit Muni, reported Hindustan Times.

The Madhya Pradesh-based Jain couple - Sumit Rathore and his wife Anamika - had last week announced their decision to become monks under the 'Shwetambar' (white-clad) order of their religion and leave behind their daughter and renounce property reported to be worth Rs 100 crore.

Anamikas initiation would be held after completion of legal formalities, said the senior monk. However, no clear reasons were given as to why her deeksha was being postponed. Just yesterday, the Gujarat child rights panel had sought a report from civil and police administration about steps taken by the Jain couple to secure their three-year-old daughter's future.

RTI activist Kapil Shukla told the Hindustan Times that he suspected the reason behind the delay in Anamikas deeksha likely meant that it would be postponed for years, at least until the couple's daughter has grown up.

Sumits cousin, Sandeep Rathore, who was strongly opposed to the move, told the newspaper: I am personally very satisfied with the postponement."

Concerned about the future of the child, a person had recently filed an RTI query with the Gujarat State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (GSCPCR), its chairperson Jagruti Pandya said.

"Through the RTI application, a person sought to know from us what will happen to the child if the couple became monks," she said.

Anamika, an engineering graduate from Rajasthans Modi Engineering College, had been working with Hindustan Zinc, a mining major, before her wedding. Sumit had returned to Neemuch to manage the family business, after completing a diploma in import-export management from a college in London.

They had been married for four years.

Sumit announced his decision to adopt monkhood on August 22, and Anamika followed suit.

Although at first, the couples kin tried to dissuade them in vain, they eventually accepted their decision and the Rathores went about making plans and began living apart as far back as when their daughter Ibhya was an eight-month-old baby.

Anamika's father Ashok Chandaliya, a former Neemuch district president of the BJP, had last week said that he would take care of his grand-daughter. "I am not against my daughter Anamika becoming a nun," he had said.

Rajendra Singh, Sumit's father, who runs a factory manufacturing gunny bags for packaging cement, had also echoed a similar view. Sumit's cousin Sandip Rathore had earlier claimed that Sumit owns properties "running into Rs 100 crore".

Earlier this year, a Jain teenage boy from Gujarat, who had scored 99.99 percentile in class XII Commerce examination, took the vow of monkhood.

Even in modern times, a large section of the Jain community in India follows its rituals rigorously, including Tapasya. A 13-year old Jain girl, Aradhana Samdariya, died in October 2016 after observing a 68-day fast following the tapasya ritual, sparking widespread outrage and shedding light on the practices followed by the community. Despite the controversies, many Jain spiritual leaders have dismissed the debates, terming them as attempts to malign the community.

(With PTI inputs)

Sumit Rathore, a 34-year-old businessman and owner of property worth Rs 100 crore, gave it all up and took his vows as a monk today. The 'deeksha' (initiation) ceremony was held at Vrindavan park in Surat in Gujarat under Jain monk Acharya Ramlal Ji Maharaj. The monk rechristened Sumit Rathore as Sumit Muni, reported Hindustan Times. The Madhya Pradesh-based Jain couple - Sumit Rathore and his wife Anamika - had last week announced their decision to become monks under the 'Shwetambar' (white-clad) order of their religion and leave behind their daughter and renounce property reported to be worth Rs 100 crore. Anamikas initiation would be held after completion of legal formalities, said the senior monk. However, no clear reasons were given as to why her deeksha was being postponed. Just yesterday, the Gujarat child rights panel had sought a report from civil and police administration about steps taken by the Jain couple to secure their three-year-old daughter's future. RTI activist Kapil Shukla told the Hindustan Times that he suspected the reason behind the delay in Anamikas deeksha likely meant that it would be postponed for years, at least until the couple's daughter has grown up. Sumits cousin, Sandeep Rathore, who was strongly opposed to the move, told the newspaper: I am personally very satisfied with the postponement." Concerned about the future of the child, a person had recently filed an RTI query with the Gujarat State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (GSCPCR), its chairperson Jagruti Pandya said. "Through the RTI application, a person sought to know from us what will happen to the child if the couple became monks," she said. Anamika, an engineering graduate from Rajasthans Modi Engineering College, had been working with Hindustan Zinc, a mining major, before her wedding. Sumit had returned to Neemuch to manage the family business, after completing a diploma in import-export management from a college in London. They had been married for four years. Sumit announced his decision to adopt monkhood on August 22, and Anamika followed suit. Although at first, the couples kin tried to dissuade them in vain, they eventually accepted their decision and the Rathores went about making plans and began living apart as far back as when their daughter Ibhya was an eight-month-old baby. Anamika's father Ashok Chandaliya, a former Neemuch district president of the BJP, had last week said that he would take care of his grand-daughter. "I am not against my daughter Anamika becoming a nun," he had said. Rajendra Singh, Sumit's father, who runs a factory manufacturing gunny bags for packaging cement, had also echoed a similar view. Sumit's cousin Sandip Rathore had earlier claimed that Sumit owns properties "running into Rs 100 crore". Earlier this year, a Jain teenage boy from Gujarat, who had scored 99.99 percentile in class XII Commerce examination, took the vow of monkhood. Even in modern times, a large section of the Jain community in India follows its rituals rigorously, including Tapasya. A 13-year old Jain girl, Aradhana Samdariya, died in October 2016 after observing a 68-day fast following the tapasya ritual, sparking widespread outrage and shedding light on the practices followed by the community. Despite the controversies, many Jain spiritual leaders have dismissed the debates, terming them as attempts to malign the community. (With PTI inputs)
By ANI

IMPHAL: Chief Minister of Manipur N. Biren Singh, on Friday, said that stringent security measures have been taken up at the border areas of Manipur, sensing the possibility of a mass influx in the backdrop of the recent large scale violence in Rakhine province of neighbouring Myanmar.

All possible measures have been set into motion to check influx of illegal immigrant," he said, while speaking at a press conference held in the Chief Minister's Secretariat.

Terming Assam-Jiribam as the most vulnerable point citing the influx of Bangladeshi immigrant, he said that additional forces have been stationed at the border.

It has been informed that besides the existing check post, another police check post will be set up at Jiribam Mukh and also strengthened the foreigner check post, the Manipur CM said while spelling out the steps taken along the border in the wake of the Rohingya refugee crisis

Moreover, house to house drive has been started by the Jiribam police with help of the paramilitary forces since September 13, he added.

Chief Minister Singh also said that 1,211 houses were covered wherein 265 suspicious immigrants have been rounded up and 107 have been pushed back.

Similarly, the drive against illegal immigrants have been strengthened at the Indo-Myanmar border at Moreh by deputing officers.

He further said that the Indo-Myanmar border at Beihang in Churachandpur district would be developed as second corridor in the wake of the Act East Policy adding that a permanent police station would soon be established at Beihang.

He also spoke about the total ban on use of agriculture land for commercial purpose, State government is going to effectively implement the Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2014 by putting a total ban on sale, purchase and use of agricultural land for commercial purposes."

He further informed that anyone found violating the ban would be penalized as per the provisions of the Act.

According to Biren, the move was initiated by the state government in order to uphold the primary objective of the Act to conserve wetland and agriculture land, which came into force on September 10, 2014.

He said, A Cabinet meeting was held with regards to the subject, wherein the gradual diminishing of agricultural land was discussed deliberately," adding, As per the decision of the Cabinet, an order was passed on September 19 and reaffirming to effectively implement the Conservation Act 2014,

The chief minister also informed that a data bank would be set up to keep the records of paddy lands by conducting proper identification

of the status of the existing paddy land through digitized cadastral maps on the basis of satellite images at the time of the commencement of the Act (in September 10, 2014).

Although no reclamation of paddy land shall take place without the reference to the data-bank, the Act allows conversion or reclamation of paddy land of an area measuring 0.10 acre in urban area and 0.20 in rural area for construction of residential building for the owner of the paddy land for his own purpose if he has none, he further illuminated

IMPHAL: Chief Minister of Manipur N. Biren Singh, on Friday, said that stringent security measures have been taken up at the border areas of Manipur, sensing the possibility of a mass influx in the backdrop of the recent large scale violence in Rakhine province of neighbouring Myanmar. All possible measures have been set into motion to check influx of illegal immigrant," he said, while speaking at a press conference held in the Chief Minister's Secretariat. Terming Assam-Jiribam as the most vulnerable point citing the influx of Bangladeshi immigrant, he said that additional forces have been stationed at the border. It has been informed that besides the existing check post, another police check post will be set up at Jiribam Mukh and also strengthened the foreigner check post, the Manipur CM said while spelling out the steps taken along the border in the wake of the Rohingya refugee crisis Moreover, house to house drive has been started by the Jiribam police with help of the paramilitary forces since September 13, he added. Chief Minister Singh also said that 1,211 houses were covered wherein 265 suspicious immigrants have been rounded up and 107 have been pushed back. Similarly, the drive against illegal immigrants have been strengthened at the Indo-Myanmar border at Moreh by deputing officers. He further said that the Indo-Myanmar border at Beihang in Churachandpur district would be developed as second corridor in the wake of the Act East Policy adding that a permanent police station would soon be established at Beihang. He also spoke about the total ban on use of agriculture land for commercial purpose, State government is going to effectively implement the Manipur Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act, 2014 by putting a total ban on sale, purchase and use of agricultural land for commercial purposes." He further informed that anyone found violating the ban would be penalized as per the provisions of the Act. According to Biren, the move was initiated by the state government in order to uphold the primary objective of the Act to conserve wetland and agriculture land, which came into force on September 10, 2014. He said, A Cabinet meeting was held with regards to the subject, wherein the gradual diminishing of agricultural land was discussed deliberately," adding, As per the decision of the Cabinet, an order was passed on September 19 and reaffirming to effectively implement the Conservation Act 2014, The chief minister also informed that a data bank would be set up to keep the records of paddy lands by conducting proper identification of the status of the existing paddy land through digitized cadastral maps on the basis of satellite images at the time of the commencement of the Act (in September 10, 2014). Although no reclamation of paddy land shall take place without the reference to the data-bank, the Act allows conversion or reclamation of paddy land of an area measuring 0.10 acre in urban area and 0.20 in rural area for construction of residential building for the owner of the paddy land for his own purpose if he has none, he further illuminated
By PTI

CHANDIGARH: BJP candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll Swarn Singh Salaria today said he did not expect a contest from the Congress and AAP nominees in the by-election and exuded confidence that the saffron party would retain the seat by a "massive" margin.

The Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, a stronghold of the BJP, fell vacant after the sitting MP, actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna, died of cancer in a Mumbai hospital on April 27.

Khanna was a four-time MP from Gurdaspur.

The BJP had, on September 21, named Salaria as its candidate for the October 11 bypoll. Khanna's wife Kavita was also a frontrunner for the BJP ticket in the bypoll.

Salaria (63), a business tycoon, lashed out at Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh for the latter's remarks against him.

Singh had yesterday taken a jibe at Salaria saying, "What can he (Salaria) do for the (Gurdaspur) constituency when he failed to run his own medical college in Chintpurni (in Pathankot), jeopardising the careers of 1,800 students."

He had also said the high court had ordered the closure of the college and the state government had sought permission from the Medical Council of India (MCI) to accommodate the students in other medical colleges of the state.

Asked to respond to Singh's remarks, Salaria said, "The Chintpurni medical college was shut when I took over. I tried to revive it. You (Singh) should support and admire me for this. The college is in Punjab and it is your (Singh's) responsibility as well to run it."

He also rejected Singh's claims that he had approached him for a Congress ticket in the bypoll.

"He (Singh) is a senior leader and I respect him a lot. He should not level such false allegations," Salaria said.

"I am a successful businessman. I own an airline, hotels, restaurants and a security company. I have a workforce of more than 70,000 people," he added.

Salaria said he did not expect any contest in the bypoll.

"This seat belongs to the BJP and we will again win it by a huge margin," he told PTI.

The Congress has fielded senior leader Sunil Jakhar in the bypoll, while Major General (retd) Suresh Kumar Khajuria of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also in the fray.

Salaria took potshots at both at Jakhar and Khajuria.

"Jakhar has been brought from a distance of 400 km (from Gurdaspur) by the Congress to fight the bypoll. How can he win it," he wondered.

On the AAP candidate, Salaria said, "Khajuria has never been seen working for the welfare of the people of this constituency."

He claimed that he had been serving the people of the area for the last 15 years.

"My family members, including my mother, sister, live in Gurdaspur and Pathankot," said Salaria, who is a native of the Chauhana village in Gurdaspur.

He said he would take the achievements of the Narendra Modi government to the voters while seeking their votes.

"I will highlight the achievements and policies of the three-year-old Modi government at the Centre when I go to the people to seek their votes. There are several initiatives, such as demonetisation and GST, taken by the government.

Moreover, there is no allegation of corruption of even a single paisa against this government," Salaria said.

The BJP candidate in the bypoll also said he would "expose" the Congress government in Punjab for "failing to honour even a single promise it had made to the voters" before the state Assembly polls earlier this year.

"What has the Congress done in the last six months? They had made tall claims before the voters and now they are finding themselves unable to live up to their expectations. The people are angry with them," he claimed.

CHANDIGARH: BJP candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll Swarn Singh Salaria today said he did not expect a contest from the Congress and AAP nominees in the by-election and exuded confidence that the saffron party would retain the seat by a "massive" margin. The Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, a stronghold of the BJP, fell vacant after the sitting MP, actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna, died of cancer in a Mumbai hospital on April 27. Khanna was a four-time MP from Gurdaspur. The BJP had, on September 21, named Salaria as its candidate for the October 11 bypoll. Khanna's wife Kavita was also a frontrunner for the BJP ticket in the bypoll. Salaria (63), a business tycoon, lashed out at Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh for the latter's remarks against him. Singh had yesterday taken a jibe at Salaria saying, "What can he (Salaria) do for the (Gurdaspur) constituency when he failed to run his own medical college in Chintpurni (in Pathankot), jeopardising the careers of 1,800 students." He had also said the high court had ordered the closure of the college and the state government had sought permission from the Medical Council of India (MCI) to accommodate the students in other medical colleges of the state. Asked to respond to Singh's remarks, Salaria said, "The Chintpurni medical college was shut when I took over. I tried to revive it. You (Singh) should support and admire me for this. The college is in Punjab and it is your (Singh's) responsibility as well to run it." He also rejected Singh's claims that he had approached him for a Congress ticket in the bypoll. "He (Singh) is a senior leader and I respect him a lot. He should not level such false allegations," Salaria said. "I am a successful businessman. I own an airline, hotels, restaurants and a security company. I have a workforce of more than 70,000 people," he added. Salaria said he did not expect any contest in the bypoll. "This seat belongs to the BJP and we will again win it by a huge margin," he told PTI. The Congress has fielded senior leader Sunil Jakhar in the bypoll, while Major General (retd) Suresh Kumar Khajuria of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also in the fray. Salaria took potshots at both at Jakhar and Khajuria. "Jakhar has been brought from a distance of 400 km (from Gurdaspur) by the Congress to fight the bypoll. How can he win it," he wondered. On the AAP candidate, Salaria said, "Khajuria has never been seen working for the welfare of the people of this constituency." He claimed that he had been serving the people of the area for the last 15 years. "My family members, including my mother, sister, live in Gurdaspur and Pathankot," said Salaria, who is a native of the Chauhana village in Gurdaspur. He said he would take the achievements of the Narendra Modi government to the voters while seeking their votes. "I will highlight the achievements and policies of the three-year-old Modi government at the Centre when I go to the people to seek their votes. There are several initiatives, such as demonetisation and GST, taken by the government. Moreover, there is no allegation of corruption of even a single paisa against this government," Salaria said. The BJP candidate in the bypoll also said he would "expose" the Congress government in Punjab for "failing to honour even a single promise it had made to the voters" before the state Assembly polls earlier this year. "What has the Congress done in the last six months? They had made tall claims before the voters and now they are finding themselves unable to live up to their expectations. The people are angry with them," he claimed.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Refuting allegations against the Rohingyas community, petitioners in a case Friday filed their response to the Centres stand of calling them a national security threat, before the Supreme Court.

Mohammed Salimullah, the main petitioner in the case, countered claims made by the government in its affidavit filed earlier this week and said, The government cannot make a blanket claim that all Rohingya refugees have terror links and there being a fear of them being radicalised by terror recruits operating in India. The government must conduct an individual refugee determination of all Rohingya in India with the assistance of the NHRC and the UNHRC.

Any individual case of involvement in militancy may be dealt with by the government in accordance with the law of the land but by this there cannot be a general assumption that the entire Rohingya refugee community in India is involved in militancy-related activities, the affidavit reads.

The affidavit also takes exception to the Centre painting all Rohingyas under the same brush, without any substantial evidence of their being a threat to national security. It is also noted that not a single FIR has been lodged against a person from the Rohingya community in a way that would threaten national security.

In the case of Sri Lankan refugees, the government had put in place a screening mechanism to identify those associated with LTTE (India had declared it a terrorist organisation) or having a criminal record and had put them in special camps but not Rohingyas.

NEW DELHI: Refuting allegations against the Rohingyas community, petitioners in a case Friday filed their response to the Centres stand of calling them a national security threat, before the Supreme Court. Mohammed Salimullah, the main petitioner in the case, countered claims made by the government in its affidavit filed earlier this week and said, The government cannot make a blanket claim that all Rohingya refugees have terror links and there being a fear of them being radicalised by terror recruits operating in India. The government must conduct an individual refugee determination of all Rohingya in India with the assistance of the NHRC and the UNHRC. Any individual case of involvement in militancy may be dealt with by the government in accordance with the law of the land but by this there cannot be a general assumption that the entire Rohingya refugee community in India is involved in militancy-related activities, the affidavit reads. The affidavit also takes exception to the Centre painting all Rohingyas under the same brush, without any substantial evidence of their being a threat to national security. It is also noted that not a single FIR has been lodged against a person from the Rohingya community in a way that would threaten national security. In the case of Sri Lankan refugees, the government had put in place a screening mechanism to identify those associated with LTTE (India had declared it a terrorist organisation) or having a criminal record and had put them in special camps but not Rohingyas.
Kumar Vikram By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modis call for the creation of New India has generated good response among the youth of the nation. So far, over 45,000 people have taken pledge of Sankalp Se Siddhi (Attainment through Resolve) after the PM Narendra Modi had exhorted people for creation of New India on August 9 in the Lower House of the Parliament.

It was on August 9 this year when the Prime Minister had talked about the national issues asking Lok Sabha members to collectively pledge to remove corruption, give rights to the poor, generate employment and end malnutrition. He was speaking to mark the 75th anniversary of Quit India movement.

Urging people to form a New India, PM Modi said, Let us pledge to free India from poverty, dirt, corruption, terrorism, casteism, communalism and create a New India of our dreams by 2022.

After the address in the Parliament, BJP as well as the government machinery organized events all across the nation where participants took the New India Pledge of Come, let us together pledge for building a New India by 2022, a Clean India, a Poverty-free India, a Corruption-free India, a Terrorism-free India, a Communalism-free India, and a Casteism-free India.

A separate window of New India was created on the governments mygov website where people could come and take pledges. There are also options of posting comments on the issues which were raised by the PM in the Parliament.

Speaking about the exercise of inviting people to take pledge for New India, a government official said that the main idea is to make democracy more participatory. Government has always believed in participation of masses in the nation building. On every significant occasion, whether it is General Budget or Independence Day, we invite people with their valuable suggestions, added the official.

Within a span of 43 days total 45,753 people took pledge till Saturday evening and the number is going up day by day. Apart from this, over 5000 people have posted comments on topics ranging from corruption free India to terrorism free India while taking the pledge on the Mygov website.

Please take measure to reduce the political interference in the functioning of the Police department as well as bureaucracy. It has degraded the social status of the Police force, despite working hard like any other security forces, society does not respect police personnel. Please take measures to keep and boost the morale of them. And the Bill for the autonomy of CBI should be enacted earliest, said Ajinkya in his post.

Similarly, Ashok Kumar on the mygov website posted, Corruption should end from Politics and all government offices.Without bribing, we are left to run from pillar to post.

Commenting on the situation of poverty, Abhishek Bajpai said, When you go to marriage party these days lots of food item goes waste. Government should create a rule to debar excessive food item. That is government should fix quantity and number of food item to be served. An inspection officer can check that during party time. If excess items are there and wastage is done than penalty should be taken from person who is giving party.

Commenting on prevailing issue of casteism, Prabhulinga Swami wrote, please remove caste based reservations in admissions to various colleges etc. and jobs. Because of these caste based reservations students who are from general category and working a hard to get into best colleges in India are not getting it.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modis call for the creation of New India has generated good response among the youth of the nation. So far, over 45,000 people have taken pledge of Sankalp Se Siddhi (Attainment through Resolve) after the PM Narendra Modi had exhorted people for creation of New India on August 9 in the Lower House of the Parliament. It was on August 9 this year when the Prime Minister had talked about the national issues asking Lok Sabha members to collectively pledge to remove corruption, give rights to the poor, generate employment and end malnutrition. He was speaking to mark the 75th anniversary of Quit India movement. Urging people to form a New India, PM Modi said, Let us pledge to free India from poverty, dirt, corruption, terrorism, casteism, communalism and create a New India of our dreams by 2022. After the address in the Parliament, BJP as well as the government machinery organized events all across the nation where participants took the New India Pledge of Come, let us together pledge for building a New India by 2022, a Clean India, a Poverty-free India, a Corruption-free India, a Terrorism-free India, a Communalism-free India, and a Casteism-free India. A separate window of New India was created on the governments mygov website where people could come and take pledges. There are also options of posting comments on the issues which were raised by the PM in the Parliament. Speaking about the exercise of inviting people to take pledge for New India, a government official said that the main idea is to make democracy more participatory. Government has always believed in participation of masses in the nation building. On every significant occasion, whether it is General Budget or Independence Day, we invite people with their valuable suggestions, added the official. Within a span of 43 days total 45,753 people took pledge till Saturday evening and the number is going up day by day. Apart from this, over 5000 people have posted comments on topics ranging from corruption free India to terrorism free India while taking the pledge on the Mygov website. Please take measure to reduce the political interference in the functioning of the Police department as well as bureaucracy. It has degraded the social status of the Police force, despite working hard like any other security forces, society does not respect police personnel. Please take measures to keep and boost the morale of them. And the Bill for the autonomy of CBI should be enacted earliest, said Ajinkya in his post. Similarly, Ashok Kumar on the mygov website posted, Corruption should end from Politics and all government offices.Without bribing, we are left to run from pillar to post. Commenting on the situation of poverty, Abhishek Bajpai said, When you go to marriage party these days lots of food item goes waste. Government should create a rule to debar excessive food item. That is government should fix quantity and number of food item to be served. An inspection officer can check that during party time. If excess items are there and wastage is done than penalty should be taken from person who is giving party. Commenting on prevailing issue of casteism, Prabhulinga Swami wrote, please remove caste based reservations in admissions to various colleges etc. and jobs. Because of these caste based reservations students who are from general category and working a hard to get into best colleges in India are not getting it.
By ANI

ALWAR: Self-styled godman Phalahari Baba, who was arrested by Rajasthans Alwar Police on Saturday on charges of raping a 21-year-old woman at his ashram, has been sent to 15-day judicial custody by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court.

A woman from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur had lodged a sexual assault complaint against Phalahari Baba.

Reportedly, the police sent to him to judicial custody after they got a medical examination conducted on him at an Alwars government hospital where his sugar and blood pressure were found to be normal.

Facing allegations of sexual assault, the self-styled godman reportedly had checked him into an Alwars private hospital in earlier this week claiming that he was suffering from high blood pressure.

Kaushlendra Prapannacharya Falahari Maharaj, 70, is known as "Falahari" because he takes fruits only in diet.

ALWAR: Self-styled godman Phalahari Baba, who was arrested by Rajasthans Alwar Police on Saturday on charges of raping a 21-year-old woman at his ashram, has been sent to 15-day judicial custody by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court. A woman from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur had lodged a sexual assault complaint against Phalahari Baba. Reportedly, the police sent to him to judicial custody after they got a medical examination conducted on him at an Alwars government hospital where his sugar and blood pressure were found to be normal. Facing allegations of sexual assault, the self-styled godman reportedly had checked him into an Alwars private hospital in earlier this week claiming that he was suffering from high blood pressure. Kaushlendra Prapannacharya Falahari Maharaj, 70, is known as "Falahari" because he takes fruits only in diet.
By PTI

SHAHANSHAHPUR (VARANASI): Four centuries ago, an emperor stopped by, giving the village its name.

Today, Shahanshahpur had another brush with fame when it hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The village, some 30 km from Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, has had its tryst with history.

Legend has it that the village was named after 'Shahanshah' Humayun, who had taken shelter in the hut of an elderly woman here after his battle with Sher Shah Suri more than 450 years ago.

Today, Shahanshahpur played host to the prime minister, who inaugurated the 'Pashu Arogya Mela' (cattle health fair), being organised for the first time in the village, on 1,800 acres.

The prime minister, who addressed a public meeting, also laid the foundation stone for a toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the village.

Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Minister of State for Rural Development Mahendra Singh and BJP's UP President Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present on the occasion.

The residents of the village take pride in the lore about the Mughal emperor's visit.

"The prime minister's visit has given the villagers a reason to relive the tale," said Apna Dal (S) local MLA Neelratan Patel 'Neelu'. Apna Dal (S) is an ally of the BJP The story goes that Humayun reached the quiet village after crossing the Ganga late at night after Sher Shah Suri defeated him in the battle of Chausa.

That was when the elderly villager gave him shelter in her hut without knowing that her lodger was none other than Humayun, say locals.

Years later, when Humayun's soldiers succeeded in locating the village, the residents learnt who the overnight guest was.

After Emperor Humayun restored his rule, he sent his soldiers to say thanks to the elderly woman. Unfortunately, she was dead by then.

That was when their village -- till then known as Kalupur -- was named Shahanshahpur.

SHAHANSHAHPUR (VARANASI): Four centuries ago, an emperor stopped by, giving the village its name. Today, Shahanshahpur had another brush with fame when it hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The village, some 30 km from Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, has had its tryst with history. Legend has it that the village was named after 'Shahanshah' Humayun, who had taken shelter in the hut of an elderly woman here after his battle with Sher Shah Suri more than 450 years ago. Today, Shahanshahpur played host to the prime minister, who inaugurated the 'Pashu Arogya Mela' (cattle health fair), being organised for the first time in the village, on 1,800 acres. The prime minister, who addressed a public meeting, also laid the foundation stone for a toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the village. Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Minister of State for Rural Development Mahendra Singh and BJP's UP President Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present on the occasion. The residents of the village take pride in the lore about the Mughal emperor's visit. "The prime minister's visit has given the villagers a reason to relive the tale," said Apna Dal (S) local MLA Neelratan Patel 'Neelu'. Apna Dal (S) is an ally of the BJP The story goes that Humayun reached the quiet village after crossing the Ganga late at night after Sher Shah Suri defeated him in the battle of Chausa. That was when the elderly villager gave him shelter in her hut without knowing that her lodger was none other than Humayun, say locals. Years later, when Humayun's soldiers succeeded in locating the village, the residents learnt who the overnight guest was. After Emperor Humayun restored his rule, he sent his soldiers to say thanks to the elderly woman. Unfortunately, she was dead by then. That was when their village -- till then known as Kalupur -- was named Shahanshahpur.
Amit Agnihotri By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: After a slew of speeches in the US, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi faces the test of impressing domestic audience as he prepares to launch the Gujarat poll yatra on Monday. Although Rahuls interactions with audiences in the US, where he touched upon issues related to foreign policy, politics, governance and economy, have won him accolades back home, it remains to be seen how he connects with the locals during the yatra, which will be launched from Dwarka in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat.

Rahul had conducted similar yatras ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls this year but failed to enthuse the voters. During the first phase of the Gujarat yatra, Rahul is expected to exchange views with villagers, traders and professionals. He is likely to focus on the plight of farmers, small businesses and talk about jobs for youth.

These interactions are crucial for the Congress vice-president as he is betting heavily on the coming assembly polls in Gujarat where his party has been out of power for 19 years, said the party insiders.

However, turning the tide in the western state is going to be an uphill task for Rahul who has to rely on a divided state unit to take his message to the masses, said a senior AICC functionary. Those who has assumed that the exit of rebel Shankersinh Vaghela would help the Gujarat Congress stay united, are probably wrong.

Last month Rahul appointed four working presidents Tushar Chaudhary, Paresh Dhanani, Kuwarji Bawalia and Karsan Das Sonali, in the state and named senior leader Siddharth Patel as the campaign committee chief in a move being seen as an attempt to contain the state unit chief, Bharatsinh Solanki.

Amid factional fights, the state unit went into a huddle to ensure the smooth proceedings of the poll-yatra.

All India Congress Committee secretaries Rajeev Satav, Varsha Gaikwad, Harshvardhan Sapkal and Jitu Patwari, in charge of the four zones into which the state has been divided, reviewed the preparations along with senior state leaders.

Another All India Congress committee secretary Prakash Joshi has been deputed to coordinate Rahuls yatras with the local teams.

NEW DELHI: After a slew of speeches in the US, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi faces the test of impressing domestic audience as he prepares to launch the Gujarat poll yatra on Monday. Although Rahuls interactions with audiences in the US, where he touched upon issues related to foreign policy, politics, governance and economy, have won him accolades back home, it remains to be seen how he connects with the locals during the yatra, which will be launched from Dwarka in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Rahul had conducted similar yatras ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls this year but failed to enthuse the voters. During the first phase of the Gujarat yatra, Rahul is expected to exchange views with villagers, traders and professionals. He is likely to focus on the plight of farmers, small businesses and talk about jobs for youth. These interactions are crucial for the Congress vice-president as he is betting heavily on the coming assembly polls in Gujarat where his party has been out of power for 19 years, said the party insiders. However, turning the tide in the western state is going to be an uphill task for Rahul who has to rely on a divided state unit to take his message to the masses, said a senior AICC functionary. Those who has assumed that the exit of rebel Shankersinh Vaghela would help the Gujarat Congress stay united, are probably wrong. Last month Rahul appointed four working presidents Tushar Chaudhary, Paresh Dhanani, Kuwarji Bawalia and Karsan Das Sonali, in the state and named senior leader Siddharth Patel as the campaign committee chief in a move being seen as an attempt to contain the state unit chief, Bharatsinh Solanki. Amid factional fights, the state unit went into a huddle to ensure the smooth proceedings of the poll-yatra. All India Congress Committee secretaries Rajeev Satav, Varsha Gaikwad, Harshvardhan Sapkal and Jitu Patwari, in charge of the four zones into which the state has been divided, reviewed the preparations along with senior state leaders. Another All India Congress committee secretary Prakash Joshi has been deputed to coordinate Rahuls yatras with the local teams.
Aishik Chanda By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday quashed a West Bengal government order halting the Durga Puja immersion so that it does not coincide with the Muharram procession. While the state government feared that allowing processions of both festivals on the same day would risk a repeat of the 2016 communal flare-up, the High Court ordered the state to manage the two processions by demarcating separate routes.

What was the controversial West Bengal government order about?

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee issued an order on August 24 stating that Durga Puja immersions could not be done after 10 pm on September 30 and on October 1 because the Muharram processions are taken out that day. She cited potential law and order problems as her justification.

What was the basis for Mamata Banerjees order?

West Bengal witnessed communal flare-ups in six urban centres on October 12 and 13 last year when Durga Puja immersion and Muharram coincided. Mamata Banerjee wants to avoid a repeat of such clashes.

However, the police did not submit any report to the state administration suggesting any such possibility. Since there was no police advice on the matter, the High Court dismissed the state governments fears as baseless speculation.

What was the High Courts verdict?

The High Court allowed Durga Puja immersion on all days from Dashami (September 30) till 12 am, even on Muharram (October 1), and ordered the administration to ensure that the two processions take separate routes that do not intersect.

Why was this an embarrassment to Mamata Banerjee?

The High Court rebuked the state administration for using extreme power on citizens and accused it of issuing arbitrary orders to curb the rights of citizens. It also asked the Kolkata police to learn procession management from their Mumbai counterparts who handle the Ganesh Chaturthi and Muharram processions whenever they occur on the same day. The Calcutta Hgh Court judgment gave crowing rights to the BJP, which opposed Mamata Banerjees order, describing it as a case of Muslim appeasement.

What was Mamata Banerjees reaction to the judgement?

The West Bengal chief minister reacted strongly. They can slit my throat but no one can tell me what I should do to ensure peace in the state, she said. She also said the central government conspired to have the order quashed. Mamata Banerjees warned the BJP against fomenting violence by taking out rallies with swords and tridents on Dashami like it did during Ram Navami this year.

Is the BJP using Hindu festivals to expand its political base?

Though the RSS-BJPs penetration into Durga Puja committees has been slow and negligible, the saffron brigade has made significant headway into the Bajrang Akharas which mainly conduct Ram Navami and Ravan Dahan celebrations. This serves its purpose of gaining the support of the youth.

What happens in these processions?

Shrill cries of Jai Shri Ram issue from loudspeakers and youngsters dance with shining swords and tridents are during Ram Navami and Dussera processions. Many of the procession routes go through Muslim-dominated areas. As was the case in the 2016 Durga Puja-Muharram communal flare-up, minor altercations while Hindu processions pass through Muslim localities or vice versa led to massive communal tensions and arson. Curfews, arrests and massive deployment of police forces were required to quell communal trouble.

Is BJP concentrated only in Hindi-speaking migrant urban pockets?

No. Though a large chunk of the BJP membership in the state comprises of Hindi-speaking Hindu migrant youngsters mainly from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the party has also made some gains by garnering support of rural Bengali Hindus living as minorities in Muslim-dominated regions or living in the vicinity of a large Muslim populations, thus tapping into their insecurities.

What political gains has the BJP made in Bengal?

Since garnering 17 per cent of the polled votes in the 2016 Assembly elections, BJP has made its presence felt in all elections since then. It has slowly replaced the Congress and Left to emerge as the main opposition to the Trinamool Congress.

What are BJPs points of attack against the Trinamool Congress?

Though Trinamool Congress has a mass rural support base due to the welfare schemes and infrastructural development it has taken up, the ruling party has been sharply attacked by opposition parties including the BJP for involvement in the Saradha scam. Besides, the Mamata Banerjee government enjoys massive support among the 30 per cent Muslim population of the state, has been accused by the BJP of being partial towards the community in providing scholarships, stipends to Muslim clerics and inclusion of Muslim castes in the OBC category.

Has Mamata attempted to woo Dalits and caste Hindus?

During her first term, Mamata identified that the Dalits constituted some 30 per cent of the electorate and the largest Dalit caste - the Namasudras -- were politically and socially united and formed a massive vote base in the southern districts of the state. She successfully wooed them by giving tickets to leaders of the Matua Mahasangh, the religious reformation movement of Namasudras headquartered in Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas. She also identified the second largest Dalit caste - the Rajbongshis - of north Bengal and made deep inroads into Rajbonghshi-dominated areas in Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri districts, which were earlier bastions of the Forward Bloc, a constituent of the Left Front. She also offered prayers at the Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha and proclaimed herself as a true Hindu who doesnt need any certificate from the BJP.

Has such politics affected the social fabric of the state?

As Bengals society is highly politicised and well-informed, decision-making and controversies definitely have a deep impact on the people. However, the social fabric and communal harmony have largely remained intact despite communal flare-ups. Hindus and Muslims in most parts of Bengal have learnt to live together not only because of deep cultural ties but also because of economic inter-dependence.

KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday quashed a West Bengal government order halting the Durga Puja immersion so that it does not coincide with the Muharram procession. While the state government feared that allowing processions of both festivals on the same day would risk a repeat of the 2016 communal flare-up, the High Court ordered the state to manage the two processions by demarcating separate routes. What was the controversial West Bengal government order about? West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee issued an order on August 24 stating that Durga Puja immersions could not be done after 10 pm on September 30 and on October 1 because the Muharram processions are taken out that day. She cited potential law and order problems as her justification. What was the basis for Mamata Banerjees order? West Bengal witnessed communal flare-ups in six urban centres on October 12 and 13 last year when Durga Puja immersion and Muharram coincided. Mamata Banerjee wants to avoid a repeat of such clashes. However, the police did not submit any report to the state administration suggesting any such possibility. Since there was no police advice on the matter, the High Court dismissed the state governments fears as baseless speculation. What was the High Courts verdict? The High Court allowed Durga Puja immersion on all days from Dashami (September 30) till 12 am, even on Muharram (October 1), and ordered the administration to ensure that the two processions take separate routes that do not intersect. Why was this an embarrassment to Mamata Banerjee? The High Court rebuked the state administration for using extreme power on citizens and accused it of issuing arbitrary orders to curb the rights of citizens. It also asked the Kolkata police to learn procession management from their Mumbai counterparts who handle the Ganesh Chaturthi and Muharram processions whenever they occur on the same day. The Calcutta Hgh Court judgment gave crowing rights to the BJP, which opposed Mamata Banerjees order, describing it as a case of Muslim appeasement. What was Mamata Banerjees reaction to the judgement? The West Bengal chief minister reacted strongly. They can slit my throat but no one can tell me what I should do to ensure peace in the state, she said. She also said the central government conspired to have the order quashed. Mamata Banerjees warned the BJP against fomenting violence by taking out rallies with swords and tridents on Dashami like it did during Ram Navami this year. Is the BJP using Hindu festivals to expand its political base? Though the RSS-BJPs penetration into Durga Puja committees has been slow and negligible, the saffron brigade has made significant headway into the Bajrang Akharas which mainly conduct Ram Navami and Ravan Dahan celebrations. This serves its purpose of gaining the support of the youth. What happens in these processions? Shrill cries of Jai Shri Ram issue from loudspeakers and youngsters dance with shining swords and tridents are during Ram Navami and Dussera processions. Many of the procession routes go through Muslim-dominated areas. As was the case in the 2016 Durga Puja-Muharram communal flare-up, minor altercations while Hindu processions pass through Muslim localities or vice versa led to massive communal tensions and arson. Curfews, arrests and massive deployment of police forces were required to quell communal trouble. Is BJP concentrated only in Hindi-speaking migrant urban pockets? No. Though a large chunk of the BJP membership in the state comprises of Hindi-speaking Hindu migrant youngsters mainly from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the party has also made some gains by garnering support of rural Bengali Hindus living as minorities in Muslim-dominated regions or living in the vicinity of a large Muslim populations, thus tapping into their insecurities. What political gains has the BJP made in Bengal? Since garnering 17 per cent of the polled votes in the 2016 Assembly elections, BJP has made its presence felt in all elections since then. It has slowly replaced the Congress and Left to emerge as the main opposition to the Trinamool Congress. What are BJPs points of attack against the Trinamool Congress? Though Trinamool Congress has a mass rural support base due to the welfare schemes and infrastructural development it has taken up, the ruling party has been sharply attacked by opposition parties including the BJP for involvement in the Saradha scam. Besides, the Mamata Banerjee government enjoys massive support among the 30 per cent Muslim population of the state, has been accused by the BJP of being partial towards the community in providing scholarships, stipends to Muslim clerics and inclusion of Muslim castes in the OBC category. Has Mamata attempted to woo Dalits and caste Hindus? During her first term, Mamata identified that the Dalits constituted some 30 per cent of the electorate and the largest Dalit caste - the Namasudras -- were politically and socially united and formed a massive vote base in the southern districts of the state. She successfully wooed them by giving tickets to leaders of the Matua Mahasangh, the religious reformation movement of Namasudras headquartered in Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas. She also identified the second largest Dalit caste - the Rajbongshis - of north Bengal and made deep inroads into Rajbonghshi-dominated areas in Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri districts, which were earlier bastions of the Forward Bloc, a constituent of the Left Front. She also offered prayers at the Jagannath temple in Puri, Odisha and proclaimed herself as a true Hindu who doesnt need any certificate from the BJP. Has such politics affected the social fabric of the state? As Bengals society is highly politicised and well-informed, decision-making and controversies definitely have a deep impact on the people. However, the social fabric and communal harmony have largely remained intact despite communal flare-ups. Hindus and Muslims in most parts of Bengal have learnt to live together not only because of deep cultural ties but also because of economic inter-dependence.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Ten days after Sharath, son of an Income Tax official, was kidnapped and murdered, the city police arrested the victims schoolmate Vishal and were shocked to learn that Sharath was strangled to death the same night and his body thrown into a lake. The prime accused Vishal is an acquaintance of Sharaths family.

On September 12, Sharath, a resident of Muneshwaranagar on Ullala Main Road, was kidnapped by a gang when he went to show his new motorcycle to his friends. H P Vishal (21), a student and an RTO agent at Ullal RTO, Vinay Prasad (24), a driver, Karan Pai (22), a worker at a factory in Kumbalgodu and Vinod Kumar (24), an unemployed youth, were taken into custody for questioning after Vishal revealed details about his associates. Another accused, Shanthakumar, the brother in-law of Vishal and a cab driver, is still at large. Sharaths new motorcycle was found at the house of Vikas, a relative of Vishal. He did not tell Vikas about the incident when he parked the vehicle there.

Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar said the gang wanted to extort `50 lakh as ransom from Sharaths parents. However, on September 12, Vishal met Sharaths family and got to know that they had lodged a complaint with Jnana Bharati police. On learning about this, he decided to murder Sharath for fear of getting caught. Between 11.30 pm on Tuesday last and midnight they strangled Sharath in a Maruti Swift Dzire car belonging to Vinay. They then tied a boulder to the body and dumped it in the Narasimhayyana Kere. After three days, they found the body floating. They again tied a boulder and drowned it, but the body surfaced again after a few more days. They then shifted the decomposed body in a car and buried it at Kurubarapalya Bande near Ramohalli lake.

Based on the information given by the gang, police exhumed the body and post-mortem was conducted at the location itself as it was highly decomposed.Vishal started thinking of the kidnap plan when he noticed that Sharaths father Niranjan Kumar Nair, an I-T officer hailing from Palakkad in Kerala, would give him expensive gifts like the motorcycle. Vishal and four others hatched a plan to extort money from Sharaths father. On September 12, Vishal told Sharath about a new Benelli motorcycle that a friend had bought and said they could take it out for a ride. Sharath agreed and said he too would bring his new Royal Enfield motorcycle.

Sharath left home around 6 pm and was headed to Shirke apartments near Kengeri. He never returned home but the same night, two videos in Kannada and Malayalam were sent to Sharaths parents on WhatsApp.In the first video, shot in a car, Sharath is seen informing his father that he has been kidnapped by someone who suffered at your hands, and asking for a ransom of `50 lakh to free him. In the second video, Sharath said the abductors also had his sister under observation and warned his parents not to approach police.

From Suspense to Grief

September 12

6.10 PM - Sharath leaves home on his new bike, captured in CCTV camera installed at neighbours house.

6.30 PM - Kidnappers abduct Sharath in a cab, take him to city outskirts.

8.30 PM - Unaware of Sharath being kidnapped, his mother Vanaja sends a text message, asking him to come home soon.

9.10 PM - Family tries to contact Sharath, but his phone is switched off

10.7 PM - Vanaja receives video clips through WhatsApp.

September 14

Four special teams formed to search for the kidnappers. Officials question friends and neighbours.

September 19

A rumour spreads that Sharath had plans to go to Ladakh on his new bike. Police officials reject the theory.

September 21

Police detain Vishal based on call records. He reveals the whole murder plan.

September 22

Police exhume Sharaths body after taking the accused to the crime spot. Post-mortem is conducted on the spot.

Around afternoon, body is cremated at Kengeri in presence of his family members and colleagues of his father.

Police take all four accused into custody for further interrogation.

BENGALURU: Ten days after Sharath, son of an Income Tax official, was kidnapped and murdered, the city police arrested the victims schoolmate Vishal and were shocked to learn that Sharath was strangled to death the same night and his body thrown into a lake. The prime accused Vishal is an acquaintance of Sharaths family. On September 12, Sharath, a resident of Muneshwaranagar on Ullala Main Road, was kidnapped by a gang when he went to show his new motorcycle to his friends. H P Vishal (21), a student and an RTO agent at Ullal RTO, Vinay Prasad (24), a driver, Karan Pai (22), a worker at a factory in Kumbalgodu and Vinod Kumar (24), an unemployed youth, were taken into custody for questioning after Vishal revealed details about his associates. Another accused, Shanthakumar, the brother in-law of Vishal and a cab driver, is still at large. Sharaths new motorcycle was found at the house of Vikas, a relative of Vishal. He did not tell Vikas about the incident when he parked the vehicle there. Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar said the gang wanted to extort `50 lakh as ransom from Sharaths parents. However, on September 12, Vishal met Sharaths family and got to know that they had lodged a complaint with Jnana Bharati police. On learning about this, he decided to murder Sharath for fear of getting caught. Between 11.30 pm on Tuesday last and midnight they strangled Sharath in a Maruti Swift Dzire car belonging to Vinay. They then tied a boulder to the body and dumped it in the Narasimhayyana Kere. After three days, they found the body floating. They again tied a boulder and drowned it, but the body surfaced again after a few more days. They then shifted the decomposed body in a car and buried it at Kurubarapalya Bande near Ramohalli lake. Based on the information given by the gang, police exhumed the body and post-mortem was conducted at the location itself as it was highly decomposed.Vishal started thinking of the kidnap plan when he noticed that Sharaths father Niranjan Kumar Nair, an I-T officer hailing from Palakkad in Kerala, would give him expensive gifts like the motorcycle. Vishal and four others hatched a plan to extort money from Sharaths father. On September 12, Vishal told Sharath about a new Benelli motorcycle that a friend had bought and said they could take it out for a ride. Sharath agreed and said he too would bring his new Royal Enfield motorcycle. Sharath left home around 6 pm and was headed to Shirke apartments near Kengeri. He never returned home but the same night, two videos in Kannada and Malayalam were sent to Sharaths parents on WhatsApp.In the first video, shot in a car, Sharath is seen informing his father that he has been kidnapped by someone who suffered at your hands, and asking for a ransom of `50 lakh to free him. In the second video, Sharath said the abductors also had his sister under observation and warned his parents not to approach police. From Suspense to Grief September 12 6.10 PM - Sharath leaves home on his new bike, captured in CCTV camera installed at neighbours house. 6.30 PM - Kidnappers abduct Sharath in a cab, take him to city outskirts. 8.30 PM - Unaware of Sharath being kidnapped, his mother Vanaja sends a text message, asking him to come home soon. 9.10 PM - Family tries to contact Sharath, but his phone is switched off 10.7 PM - Vanaja receives video clips through WhatsApp. September 14 Four special teams formed to search for the kidnappers. Officials question friends and neighbours. September 19 A rumour spreads that Sharath had plans to go to Ladakh on his new bike. Police officials reject the theory. September 21 Police detain Vishal based on call records. He reveals the whole murder plan. September 22 Police exhume Sharaths body after taking the accused to the crime spot. Post-mortem is conducted on the spot. Around afternoon, body is cremated at Kengeri in presence of his family members and colleagues of his father. Police take all four accused into custody for further interrogation.
By Online Desk

Mining baron and former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy has been allowed to visit his hometown Bellary by the Supreme Court on Friday. The relief is widely seen by BJP leaders in the state as a chance for Reddy to have a second innings in his flagging political career.

After denying him permission several times since his alleged involvement in the Bellary mining scam cases, the Supreme Court on Friday permitted Reddy to stay in Bellary for three days.

TV reports quoted the bench as saying in its order, "We allow the petitioner-applicant to visit Bellary from 29.09.2017 to 01.10.2017 as he wants to perform necessary rituals and to participate in the celebration of the festival of Dussera along with his family members."

The apex court had on September 4 dismissed Reddy's similar plea to enter Bellary, while refusing to relax bail conditions. The foundation of Reddys release on bail was the condition that he would not visit Ballari and Kadapa districts.

Earlier, Reddy was granted permission by the court on certain situations, including once when his mother was critically ill.

In 2011, Reddy was arrested and jailed in connection with an illegal mining case involving his Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC).

Reddy and his brother-in-law B V Srinivas Reddy, Managing Director of OMC, were arrested by CBI on September 5, 2011 from Ballari and brought to Hyderabad.

In the OMC case, the company is accused of changing the mining lease boundary markings and indulging in illegal mining in the Ballari Reserve Forest area, spread over Ballari in Karnataka and Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh.

The mining baron is also alleged to have bankrolled the 2008 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka, which marked the rise of the BJP in the state with BS Yeddyurappa becoming chief minister.

Mining baron and former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy has been allowed to visit his hometown Bellary by the Supreme Court on Friday. The relief is widely seen by BJP leaders in the state as a chance for Reddy to have a second innings in his flagging political career. After denying him permission several times since his alleged involvement in the Bellary mining scam cases, the Supreme Court on Friday permitted Reddy to stay in Bellary for three days. TV reports quoted the bench as saying in its order, "We allow the petitioner-applicant to visit Bellary from 29.09.2017 to 01.10.2017 as he wants to perform necessary rituals and to participate in the celebration of the festival of Dussera along with his family members." The apex court had on September 4 dismissed Reddy's similar plea to enter Bellary, while refusing to relax bail conditions. The foundation of Reddys release on bail was the condition that he would not visit Ballari and Kadapa districts. Earlier, Reddy was granted permission by the court on certain situations, including once when his mother was critically ill. In 2011, Reddy was arrested and jailed in connection with an illegal mining case involving his Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC). Reddy and his brother-in-law B V Srinivas Reddy, Managing Director of OMC, were arrested by CBI on September 5, 2011 from Ballari and brought to Hyderabad. In the OMC case, the company is accused of changing the mining lease boundary markings and indulging in illegal mining in the Ballari Reserve Forest area, spread over Ballari in Karnataka and Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh. The mining baron is also alleged to have bankrolled the 2008 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka, which marked the rise of the BJP in the state with BS Yeddyurappa becoming chief minister.
Toby Antony By

Express News Service

KOCHI: Indias relationship with China and Pakistan may not be at its best, but it has not stopped the nations tourists from visiting Kerala. In fact, there has seen a spike in their number in the last two years.

People associated with tourism sector credit growing awareness of Kerala tourism via the internet for the trend.The tourism department data says as many as 6,203 Chinese tourists arrived in Kerala in 2016, a growth of 26 per cent (4,898) compared to 2015. The number of tourists from the Middle Kingdom was 4,748 in 2014.Leading travel firm ATE Groups Chairman E M Najeeb cited digital marketing and the campaign carried out in China by Keralas tourism agencies as the main reasons for the inflow of tourists from the East Asian nation. Usually, Chinese tourists prefer destinations in North India.

Now due to strong marketing by South Indian agencies in China, the arrival of tourists from that country is slowly growing. Those who arrive in the north come to know about South Indias spots and travel to Kerala, said Najeeb.Kerala Travel Mart Secretary Jose Pradeep reckons China as a potential market for the state tourism. Even though the Chinese prefer the golden triangle in North India and Sri Lanka, agencies from Kerala are taking part in travel marts and are carrying out road shows in the Chinese cities.

However, the dearth of guides who can speak Chinese is a challenge weve been facing. We usually rely on North Indian guides, said Jose.

Ernakulam Tourism Joint Director P G Sivan attests there are a lot of queries coming from China. It might be due to Ayurveda and destinations that attract tourists from countries like Pakistan and China. Keralas medical tourism sector is popular across the globe as well. Increasing number of internet users is another reason for rising tourist inflow. People can familiarise and access feedback from tourists who arrived in Kerala through internet sources, he said. As far Pakistanis are concerned, data show as many as 128 tourists visited Kerala in 2016.

The number of Pakistani tourists was less than 100 in 2010. Even visitors from war-torn countries like Syria (935), Iraq (629) and Afghanistan (575) are showing an upward trend.Ernakulam seems to be the most popular destination, with 3,776 Chinese and 94 Pakistanis visiting the district.More than 10.38 lakh tourists from 270 countries visited Kerala in 2016. Britons (1.55 lakh) topped the list, followed by Americans (87,834), Saudiites (87,451) and Frenchmen (79,822).

While Ernakulam attracted the most (407,653), Kasaragod (1,823) recorded the lowest.

KOCHI: Indias relationship with China and Pakistan may not be at its best, but it has not stopped the nations tourists from visiting Kerala. In fact, there has seen a spike in their number in the last two years. People associated with tourism sector credit growing awareness of Kerala tourism via the internet for the trend.The tourism department data says as many as 6,203 Chinese tourists arrived in Kerala in 2016, a growth of 26 per cent (4,898) compared to 2015. The number of tourists from the Middle Kingdom was 4,748 in 2014.Leading travel firm ATE Groups Chairman E M Najeeb cited digital marketing and the campaign carried out in China by Keralas tourism agencies as the main reasons for the inflow of tourists from the East Asian nation. Usually, Chinese tourists prefer destinations in North India. Now due to strong marketing by South Indian agencies in China, the arrival of tourists from that country is slowly growing. Those who arrive in the north come to know about South Indias spots and travel to Kerala, said Najeeb.Kerala Travel Mart Secretary Jose Pradeep reckons China as a potential market for the state tourism. Even though the Chinese prefer the golden triangle in North India and Sri Lanka, agencies from Kerala are taking part in travel marts and are carrying out road shows in the Chinese cities. However, the dearth of guides who can speak Chinese is a challenge weve been facing. We usually rely on North Indian guides, said Jose. Ernakulam Tourism Joint Director P G Sivan attests there are a lot of queries coming from China. It might be due to Ayurveda and destinations that attract tourists from countries like Pakistan and China. Keralas medical tourism sector is popular across the globe as well. Increasing number of internet users is another reason for rising tourist inflow. People can familiarise and access feedback from tourists who arrived in Kerala through internet sources, he said. As far Pakistanis are concerned, data show as many as 128 tourists visited Kerala in 2016. The number of Pakistani tourists was less than 100 in 2010. Even visitors from war-torn countries like Syria (935), Iraq (629) and Afghanistan (575) are showing an upward trend.Ernakulam seems to be the most popular destination, with 3,776 Chinese and 94 Pakistanis visiting the district.More than 10.38 lakh tourists from 270 countries visited Kerala in 2016. Britons (1.55 lakh) topped the list, followed by Americans (87,834), Saudiites (87,451) and Frenchmen (79,822). While Ernakulam attracted the most (407,653), Kasaragod (1,823) recorded the lowest.
By Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: Even as swine flu cases showed a decline with no death reported in the last three days, the deadly dengue is rapidly spreading its tentacles in rural areas. As many as 53 positive cases have been reported on Friday.

Sources said, more than 1,000 persons have tested positive for dengue in less than a month activating the health machinery to initiate prompt measures to prevent the disease from spreading further.

The State has recorded 1,621 dengue positive cases and four deaths so far this year. The number of affected was 566 with two deaths till August 25.

Barring Koraput, Malkangiri and Nabarangpur, the disease has been reported from all other districts while Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda and Kendrapara have been major contributing districts.

Balasore, in fact, topped the list with 604 positive cases, followed by Bhadrak at 230 cases, Cuttack 197, Jajpur 118, Jajpur 74, Khurda 67 and Kendrapara 53 cases. One each death has been reported from Paradip, Bhadrak, Keonjhar and Balasore.

Compared to last year, the growth rate is not alarming, but detection of more than 50 persons every day for the last few days has left the health officials on the tenterhooks. Last year, 6,756 persons were affected by the disease and 11 died.Joint Director, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), Dr MM Pradhan said at least 80 per cent positive cases are migratory in nature. Most of the people diagnosed with dengue were working in metros like Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai which have a high prevalence rate, he said.

A team of officials led by Dr Pradhan visited Baliapal and Bhogarai, the worst hit blocks of Balasore district, and conducted awareness camps to sensitise people for source reduction and cleaning of breeding sites. Entomologist Ravi Shankar Pandit, who visited the affected areas, also submitted his report on the possible reasons behind the rise of cases in the district.

People have been alerted not to take pain killers if they experience pain during fever and consult doctors immediately. Since adequate hydration is a must, residents are told to increase their liquid intake. With the Puja vacation approaching, health officials have been asked to keep a close watch as more people are expected to return home, Dr Pradhan added.

BHUBANESWAR: Even as swine flu cases showed a decline with no death reported in the last three days, the deadly dengue is rapidly spreading its tentacles in rural areas. As many as 53 positive cases have been reported on Friday. Sources said, more than 1,000 persons have tested positive for dengue in less than a month activating the health machinery to initiate prompt measures to prevent the disease from spreading further. The State has recorded 1,621 dengue positive cases and four deaths so far this year. The number of affected was 566 with two deaths till August 25. Barring Koraput, Malkangiri and Nabarangpur, the disease has been reported from all other districts while Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur, Khurda and Kendrapara have been major contributing districts. Balasore, in fact, topped the list with 604 positive cases, followed by Bhadrak at 230 cases, Cuttack 197, Jajpur 118, Jajpur 74, Khurda 67 and Kendrapara 53 cases. One each death has been reported from Paradip, Bhadrak, Keonjhar and Balasore. Compared to last year, the growth rate is not alarming, but detection of more than 50 persons every day for the last few days has left the health officials on the tenterhooks. Last year, 6,756 persons were affected by the disease and 11 died.Joint Director, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP), Dr MM Pradhan said at least 80 per cent positive cases are migratory in nature. Most of the people diagnosed with dengue were working in metros like Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai which have a high prevalence rate, he said. A team of officials led by Dr Pradhan visited Baliapal and Bhogarai, the worst hit blocks of Balasore district, and conducted awareness camps to sensitise people for source reduction and cleaning of breeding sites. Entomologist Ravi Shankar Pandit, who visited the affected areas, also submitted his report on the possible reasons behind the rise of cases in the district. People have been alerted not to take pain killers if they experience pain during fever and consult doctors immediately. Since adequate hydration is a must, residents are told to increase their liquid intake. With the Puja vacation approaching, health officials have been asked to keep a close watch as more people are expected to return home, Dr Pradhan added.
By Express News Service

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday vacated the stay on the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) exam to recruit special teachers. In a petition, the litigants, Rajeshkanna and Kumar, stated that the TRB issued a notification for conducting a written exam to recruit special teachers in July.

While so, the eligibility criteria set by the TRB for the recruitment of physical education teachers did not follow the norms mandated by the Central governments National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). Hence, the petitioners prayed for a stay on TRB exam slated for September 23.

When the petition came up before a Justice T Raja on Friday, he granted an interim stay on the exam.

However, the TRB appealed against the order before a division bench in the evening, stating that it had followed all the norms for conducting the TRB exam. When the appeal petition was heard by the division bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Sathish Kumar, they vacated the stay issued by the single judge.

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Friday vacated the stay on the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) exam to recruit special teachers. In a petition, the litigants, Rajeshkanna and Kumar, stated that the TRB issued a notification for conducting a written exam to recruit special teachers in July. While so, the eligibility criteria set by the TRB for the recruitment of physical education teachers did not follow the norms mandated by the Central governments National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). Hence, the petitioners prayed for a stay on TRB exam slated for September 23. When the petition came up before a Justice T Raja on Friday, he granted an interim stay on the exam. However, the TRB appealed against the order before a division bench in the evening, stating that it had followed all the norms for conducting the TRB exam. When the appeal petition was heard by the division bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Sathish Kumar, they vacated the stay issued by the single judge.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Scientists at city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology(CCMB) will be using genetic mapping and pre-marital counseling for those affected with Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) to come up with genetics-based diagnosis and treatment methods. The programme is sanctioned by CSIR under the Mission Mode Project and executed by CCMB.The three-year programme costing Rs 55 crore will be headed by scientists at CCMB and five other CSIR labs. The programme is designed around a survey on genetic mapping of those with Sickle Cell Anaemia by Chhattisgarh government and Chhattisgarh Institute of Sickle Cell Anaemia.



The study genetically mapped and isolated children within the age group of 3 to 15 years and found 6,000 affected by the disease and 1,50,000 carriers of the genetic disorder. The scientists will focus on this group and provide them with genetic testing to confirm the status of the disease. Those diagnosed with the disease or those who have been confirmed carriers of the faulty gene will be advised against marrying those who are carriers of SCA gene.

If a couple who are both carriers of SCA are having a child, pre-natal diagnosis will help us determine if the unborn child is susceptible to SCA, said chief scientist Giriraj Chandak who will head the programme. For those who are unmarried, we will warn them against marrying a carrier if they are a carrier themselves. The birth of an affected child can thus be prevented, he added.Chandak and his team hope the data collected in the course of the programme will help them understand why existing treatment for SCA work differently on different persons. The scientist feels caste and inbreeding within families have helped keep the disease prevalent even today.

HYDERABAD: Scientists at city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology(CCMB) will be using genetic mapping and pre-marital counseling for those affected with Sickle Cell Anaemia (SCA) to come up with genetics-based diagnosis and treatment methods. The programme is sanctioned by CSIR under the Mission Mode Project and executed by CCMB.The three-year programme costing Rs 55 crore will be headed by scientists at CCMB and five other CSIR labs. The programme is designed around a survey on genetic mapping of those with Sickle Cell Anaemia by Chhattisgarh government and Chhattisgarh Institute of Sickle Cell Anaemia. The study genetically mapped and isolated children within the age group of 3 to 15 years and found 6,000 affected by the disease and 1,50,000 carriers of the genetic disorder. The scientists will focus on this group and provide them with genetic testing to confirm the status of the disease. Those diagnosed with the disease or those who have been confirmed carriers of the faulty gene will be advised against marrying those who are carriers of SCA gene. If a couple who are both carriers of SCA are having a child, pre-natal diagnosis will help us determine if the unborn child is susceptible to SCA, said chief scientist Giriraj Chandak who will head the programme. For those who are unmarried, we will warn them against marrying a carrier if they are a carrier themselves. The birth of an affected child can thus be prevented, he added.Chandak and his team hope the data collected in the course of the programme will help them understand why existing treatment for SCA work differently on different persons. The scientist feels caste and inbreeding within families have helped keep the disease prevalent even today.
Jayendra Chaithanya T By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: During a probe into cases of Pakistan lottery fraud, Hyderabad police revealed they had stumbled upon a hawala racket being run in Arab countries. They found that crooks had been making calls to Indian citizens from Arab countries using pre-activated Pakistan mobile numbers (+92) and distributing money deposited by the victims to hundreds of families in Bihar.According to police, this is the modus operandi: Workers in Arab countries are asked to deposit their earnings, meant for their families in India, with several agents in the country in which they reside. Their families are paid with money deposited by lottery fraud victims in India.



The fraud victims are reportedly told to deposit money into bank accounts managed by the crooks who lure them with the promise of huge monetary returns. About hundred such cases have been reported in Hyderabad in the last five years in which Old City residents were duped in this manner. An investigation into these cases is what, police said, led them to the Pakistan-based hawala racket. A cyber crime officer said that the kingpin of the racket is suspected to be operating from Pakistan.

Some agents approach Indians, especially those from Bihar, in Gulf countries and convince them to send money home through them for no extra charges. The money given to the workers families, however, comes from cyber fraud earnings. Police traced holders of bank accounts, into which these cyber fraud earning were deposited, to Bihar.

When these account holders were questioned, police found that an agent had collected their bank accounts details and was paying them nominal amounts each month as commission for use of the account. The numbers from which the crooks called to lure fraud victims were of pre-activated Pakistani SIM cards but calls were made from Arab countries, the officer said. So far only agents based in India have been arrested. One from Kerala was arrested this year. There are agents in various states, but so far only two complaints have been received, the officer said.

Team went to Bihar

The ultimate beneficiary of the scam is the Pakistan-based kingpin, the cyber crime officer said. A cyber crime police team from Hyderabad went to Bihar over the past week. The officer said apprehension of the kingpin would be difficult.

HYDERABAD: During a probe into cases of Pakistan lottery fraud, Hyderabad police revealed they had stumbled upon a hawala racket being run in Arab countries. They found that crooks had been making calls to Indian citizens from Arab countries using pre-activated Pakistan mobile numbers (+92) and distributing money deposited by the victims to hundreds of families in Bihar.According to police, this is the modus operandi: Workers in Arab countries are asked to deposit their earnings, meant for their families in India, with several agents in the country in which they reside. Their families are paid with money deposited by lottery fraud victims in India. The fraud victims are reportedly told to deposit money into bank accounts managed by the crooks who lure them with the promise of huge monetary returns. About hundred such cases have been reported in Hyderabad in the last five years in which Old City residents were duped in this manner. An investigation into these cases is what, police said, led them to the Pakistan-based hawala racket. A cyber crime officer said that the kingpin of the racket is suspected to be operating from Pakistan. Some agents approach Indians, especially those from Bihar, in Gulf countries and convince them to send money home through them for no extra charges. The money given to the workers families, however, comes from cyber fraud earnings. Police traced holders of bank accounts, into which these cyber fraud earning were deposited, to Bihar. When these account holders were questioned, police found that an agent had collected their bank accounts details and was paying them nominal amounts each month as commission for use of the account. The numbers from which the crooks called to lure fraud victims were of pre-activated Pakistani SIM cards but calls were made from Arab countries, the officer said. So far only agents based in India have been arrested. One from Kerala was arrested this year. There are agents in various states, but so far only two complaints have been received, the officer said. Team went to Bihar The ultimate beneficiary of the scam is the Pakistan-based kingpin, the cyber crime officer said. A cyber crime police team from Hyderabad went to Bihar over the past week. The officer said apprehension of the kingpin would be difficult.
By Associated Press

SEOUL: Will North Korea's next nuclear test involve a thermonuclear missile screaming over Japan? That's a question being asked after North Korea's foreign minister said his country may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.

The world hasn't seen an above-ground, atmospheric nuclear test since an inland detonation by China in 1980 and North Korea upending that could push the region dangerously close to war. The room for error would be minimal and any mistake could be disastrous. Even if successful, such a test could endanger air and sea traffic in the region.

Because of that many experts don't think North Korea would take such a risk. But they're also not ruling it out given the North's increasing number of nuclear and missile tests.

The main reason for North Korea to take that risk would be to quiet outside doubts about whether it really has a thermonuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile, said Jeffrey Lewis, a U.S. arms control expert at the Middlebury Center of International Studies at Monterey. So far North Korea has been separately testing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles built to deliver them, rather than testing them together.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho wouldn't have spoken without approval from Pyongyang's top leadership when he suggested to reporters in New York on Friday that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfill the vows of the country's leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, pledged hours earlier to take "highest-level" action against the United States over Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" the North if provoked. Ri didn't elaborate and said no one knew what decision Kim would make.

If North Korea attempts an atmospheric nuclear test at sea, it would likely involve its most powerful ballistic missiles, such as the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 or the intercontinental-range Hwasong-14, experts say. The country lacks assets to air-drop a nuclear device and sending a vessel out to sea to detonate a device raises the chances of getting detected and stopped by the U.S. military.

For the nuclear missile to reach a remote part of the Pacific, it would have to fly over Japan, as the North did with two Hwasong-12 test launches in recent weeks.

There have only been a handful of times when atmospheric nuclear tests involved ballistic missiles, including China's fourth nuclear test in 1966. That involved a midrange Dongfeng-2 missile being launched from a deep inland rocket facility to the Lop Nur nuclear test site in the country's far west.

Lewis finds similarities between the current situation surrounding North Korea and the events that led to China's 1966 test, which was driven by U.S. doubts of Chinese capabilities to place nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles.

"The United States is still taking an attitude of skepticism toward North Korea's nuclear capabilities," he said. "The difference, of course, is that China fired its nuclear-armed missile over its own territory, not another country."

A nuclear launch by North Korea would come dangerously close to an act of war, said Lee Choon Geun, a missile expert from South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute. Missile tests can easily go wrong and the consequences of failure could be terrifying if the missile is armed with a nuclear weapon.

A failed flight or an accidental detonation over Japan would likely trigger retaliation from Washington and Tokyo that might result in a nuclear war, he said.

"It's reasonable to think that Ri was bluffing," Lee said. "Would they be sure that the United States and Japan will just sit there and watch?"

But Lewis says that's exactly what the United States and Japan will do.

"Although I am sure such a launch would be very alarming to people in Japan, there is little the United States or Japan could do," he said. "Would we really start a war over such an act? I don't think so."

An atmospheric nuclear test would be far more dangerous than detonations in controlled underground environments, both because of the force of the blast and unrestrained release of radioactive materials that could spread out over large areas. Such a launch would potentially endanger aircraft and ships because it's highly unlikely the North would give prior warnings or send naval vessels to the area to control sea traffic.

An atmospheric thermonuclear blast would also raise the risks of damage caused by an electromagnetic pulse, an intense wave of electrical energy generated by the explosion that could destroy electronic devices and equipment over a vast area, Lee said.

The United States and the old Soviet Union combined to conduct more than 400 atmospheric nuclear tests before they joined Britain in a 1963 treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. The treaty was later signed by more than 100 other countries. China conducted 22 atmospheric nuclear tests, which frequently involved bombers dropping nuclear devices on test sites, before its last one on 1980.

While the impact of previous tests hasn't been fully understood, damage from radioactive fallout could be serious.

When the United States detonated its most powerful nuclear device in a 1954 test code-named Castle Bravo, the radioactive fallout spread far beyond the test site in the Marshall Islands.

Twenty-three crew members of a Japanese fishing vessel that was 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of the detonation site, were contaminated and suffered from radiation sickness. One of the fishermen, Matashichi Oishi, once told The Associated Press that he saw a flash before tiny white flakes fell on the crewmembers like snow.

North Korea in past months has been stepping up the aggressiveness of its nuclear and missile tests.

The North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it claimed as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental Hwasong-14 ICBMs. In two July flight tests, those missiles displayed the potential ability to reach deep into continental United States.

With its two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan in August and September, the North also broke from its previous test regime of firing missiles at highly lofted angles to reduce range and avoid other countries. The launches were seen as North Korea's attempts to win more military space in a region dominated by its enemies and evaluate the performance and reliability of its missiles under operational conditions.

The North has also threatened to launch a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the U.S. Pacific military hub.

Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said it's more likely that the North's next significant launch would be a full-range test of an unarmed Hwasong-14 ICBM. The North could launch the missile at around 7,000 kilometers (4,349 miles) to display a capability to reach Hawaii or Alaska, he said.

Still, the past months have taught him not to underestimate what the North could do.

"North Korea has repeatedly exceeded my expectations and Kim Jong Un in the statement has vowed to go beyond any expectation," said Kim, the analyst.

SEOUL: Will North Korea's next nuclear test involve a thermonuclear missile screaming over Japan? That's a question being asked after North Korea's foreign minister said his country may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean. The world hasn't seen an above-ground, atmospheric nuclear test since an inland detonation by China in 1980 and North Korea upending that could push the region dangerously close to war. The room for error would be minimal and any mistake could be disastrous. Even if successful, such a test could endanger air and sea traffic in the region. Because of that many experts don't think North Korea would take such a risk. But they're also not ruling it out given the North's increasing number of nuclear and missile tests. The main reason for North Korea to take that risk would be to quiet outside doubts about whether it really has a thermonuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile, said Jeffrey Lewis, a U.S. arms control expert at the Middlebury Center of International Studies at Monterey. So far North Korea has been separately testing nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles built to deliver them, rather than testing them together. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho wouldn't have spoken without approval from Pyongyang's top leadership when he suggested to reporters in New York on Friday that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfill the vows of the country's leader Kim Jong Un. Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, pledged hours earlier to take "highest-level" action against the United States over Donald Trump's threat to "totally destroy" the North if provoked. Ri didn't elaborate and said no one knew what decision Kim would make. If North Korea attempts an atmospheric nuclear test at sea, it would likely involve its most powerful ballistic missiles, such as the intermediate-range Hwasong-12 or the intercontinental-range Hwasong-14, experts say. The country lacks assets to air-drop a nuclear device and sending a vessel out to sea to detonate a device raises the chances of getting detected and stopped by the U.S. military. For the nuclear missile to reach a remote part of the Pacific, it would have to fly over Japan, as the North did with two Hwasong-12 test launches in recent weeks. There have only been a handful of times when atmospheric nuclear tests involved ballistic missiles, including China's fourth nuclear test in 1966. That involved a midrange Dongfeng-2 missile being launched from a deep inland rocket facility to the Lop Nur nuclear test site in the country's far west. Lewis finds similarities between the current situation surrounding North Korea and the events that led to China's 1966 test, which was driven by U.S. doubts of Chinese capabilities to place nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles. "The United States is still taking an attitude of skepticism toward North Korea's nuclear capabilities," he said. "The difference, of course, is that China fired its nuclear-armed missile over its own territory, not another country." A nuclear launch by North Korea would come dangerously close to an act of war, said Lee Choon Geun, a missile expert from South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute. Missile tests can easily go wrong and the consequences of failure could be terrifying if the missile is armed with a nuclear weapon. A failed flight or an accidental detonation over Japan would likely trigger retaliation from Washington and Tokyo that might result in a nuclear war, he said. "It's reasonable to think that Ri was bluffing," Lee said. "Would they be sure that the United States and Japan will just sit there and watch?" But Lewis says that's exactly what the United States and Japan will do. "Although I am sure such a launch would be very alarming to people in Japan, there is little the United States or Japan could do," he said. "Would we really start a war over such an act? I don't think so." An atmospheric nuclear test would be far more dangerous than detonations in controlled underground environments, both because of the force of the blast and unrestrained release of radioactive materials that could spread out over large areas. Such a launch would potentially endanger aircraft and ships because it's highly unlikely the North would give prior warnings or send naval vessels to the area to control sea traffic. An atmospheric thermonuclear blast would also raise the risks of damage caused by an electromagnetic pulse, an intense wave of electrical energy generated by the explosion that could destroy electronic devices and equipment over a vast area, Lee said. The United States and the old Soviet Union combined to conduct more than 400 atmospheric nuclear tests before they joined Britain in a 1963 treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. The treaty was later signed by more than 100 other countries. China conducted 22 atmospheric nuclear tests, which frequently involved bombers dropping nuclear devices on test sites, before its last one on 1980. While the impact of previous tests hasn't been fully understood, damage from radioactive fallout could be serious. When the United States detonated its most powerful nuclear device in a 1954 test code-named Castle Bravo, the radioactive fallout spread far beyond the test site in the Marshall Islands. Twenty-three crew members of a Japanese fishing vessel that was 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of the detonation site, were contaminated and suffered from radiation sickness. One of the fishermen, Matashichi Oishi, once told The Associated Press that he saw a flash before tiny white flakes fell on the crewmembers like snow. North Korea in past months has been stepping up the aggressiveness of its nuclear and missile tests. The North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it claimed as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental Hwasong-14 ICBMs. In two July flight tests, those missiles displayed the potential ability to reach deep into continental United States. With its two Hwasong-12 launches over Japan in August and September, the North also broke from its previous test regime of firing missiles at highly lofted angles to reduce range and avoid other countries. The launches were seen as North Korea's attempts to win more military space in a region dominated by its enemies and evaluate the performance and reliability of its missiles under operational conditions. The North has also threatened to launch a salvo of Hwasong-12s toward Guam, the U.S. Pacific military hub. Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military official who is now an analyst at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said it's more likely that the North's next significant launch would be a full-range test of an unarmed Hwasong-14 ICBM. The North could launch the missile at around 7,000 kilometers (4,349 miles) to display a capability to reach Hawaii or Alaska, he said. Still, the past months have taught him not to underestimate what the North could do. "North Korea has repeatedly exceeded my expectations and Kim Jong Un in the statement has vowed to go beyond any expectation," said Kim, the analyst.
By AFP

UNITED NATIONS: North Korea's foreign minister assailed US President Donald Trump at the United Nations on Saturday, deriding him as a "mentally deranged" leader whose threats had increased the chances of military confrontation.

Ri Yong-ho told the General Assembly that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country if necessary had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable."

Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."

In his first address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called leader Kim Jong-Un a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," prompting Kim to warn in turn that the US president would "pay dearly" for his threat.

Ri accused Trump of turning the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day," and of insulting Kim.

"None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," he declared.

The North Korean threat has dominated this year's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations amid fears that the heated rhetoric could accidentally trigger a war.

Nuclear hammer of justice

North Korea in recent weeks detonated its sixth nuclear bomb and has test-fired intercontinental missiles -- saying it needs to defend itself against hostility from the United States and its allies.

WATCH VIDEO | North Korea at United Nations says rockets to US 'inevitable'

The United States led a push at the United Nations for tough sanctions that were adopted on September 11, and has imposed unilateral measures to punish firms that do business with North Korea.

Calling the sanctions resolutions unjustified, Ri said that Pyongyang was left with no other choice but to respond with the "nuclear hammer of justice."

He stressed however that North Korea's nuclear drive was a "war deterrent" and declared that his country was a "responsible nuclear weapon state."

North Korea will take "preemptive action" if the United States and its allies attempt to carry out a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country," he said.

Declaring that the missile and nuclear tests were a source of "prestige" for his country, Ri said sanctions would not succeed in forcing his government to change course.

Hours before he took the UN podium, US bombers flew off North Korea's east coast, flying the furthest north of the demilitarized zone of any US aircraft.

The Pentagon said the mission was a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat."

UNITED NATIONS: North Korea's foreign minister assailed US President Donald Trump at the United Nations on Saturday, deriding him as a "mentally deranged" leader whose threats had increased the chances of military confrontation. Ri Yong-ho told the General Assembly that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country if necessary had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable." Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today." In his first address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called leader Kim Jong-Un a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," prompting Kim to warn in turn that the US president would "pay dearly" for his threat. Ri accused Trump of turning the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day," and of insulting Kim. "None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," he declared. The North Korean threat has dominated this year's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations amid fears that the heated rhetoric could accidentally trigger a war. Nuclear hammer of justice North Korea in recent weeks detonated its sixth nuclear bomb and has test-fired intercontinental missiles -- saying it needs to defend itself against hostility from the United States and its allies. WATCH VIDEO | North Korea at United Nations says rockets to US 'inevitable' The United States led a push at the United Nations for tough sanctions that were adopted on September 11, and has imposed unilateral measures to punish firms that do business with North Korea. Calling the sanctions resolutions unjustified, Ri said that Pyongyang was left with no other choice but to respond with the "nuclear hammer of justice." He stressed however that North Korea's nuclear drive was a "war deterrent" and declared that his country was a "responsible nuclear weapon state." North Korea will take "preemptive action" if the United States and its allies attempt to carry out a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country," he said. Declaring that the missile and nuclear tests were a source of "prestige" for his country, Ri said sanctions would not succeed in forcing his government to change course. Hours before he took the UN podium, US bombers flew off North Korea's east coast, flying the furthest north of the demilitarized zone of any US aircraft. The Pentagon said the mission was a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat."
PCD captures Division IV girls soccer title as Rogers comes up short

When the final horn sounded the Knights raced toward their keeper Sarah Howe and the celebration was on. It was a sweet win, one the Knights earned.
DECATUR  A Decatur woman accused of stealing more than $484,000 from her employer pleaded not guilty to a theft charge during her arraignment Friday afternoon.

Natalie E. Stout, 37, is due back in court for her pretrial on Nov. 20, according to Macon County Circuit Clerk records. Stout's attorney, Christopher Amero, declined to comment on the case when contacted by the Herald & Review on Friday.

Police arrested Stout on Aug. 20, and she was released from the Macon County Jail after posting her $20,000 bond. A sworn police affidavit said Stout took the money during a period that stretched from 2013 to December 2016.

It was at that point when her employers at the Decatur-based firm JD Properties became suspicious and fired her, the affidavit said.

An audit of JD Properties' bank records and accounting documents determined that about $484,877 was missing, the affidavit said. Police obtained Stout's bank records through a grand jury subpoena, the affidavit said, and the records showed large amounts of cash being deposited into her account over the years.

Police said an analysis of Stout's bank records showed her spending the money in a variety of ways, including house and vehicle payments and credit card bills. Between 2013 and 2016, Stout spent more than $79,000 on online predominantly online shopping purchases, the affidavit said.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High 42F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with snow showers developing after midnight. Low around 30F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
Thiruvananthapuram: Amid boycott calls for Kerala actor Dileeps movie Ramleela, his ex-wife, actor Manju Warrier has condemned the move saying a film involves an entire crew and not just an individual.

Dileep has been lodged at the Aluva jail since July 10 in connection with the abduction and sexual assault of another female Kerala actor. His fifth bail application since his arrest on July 10 will be up for hearing before the Kerala High Court on September 26, two days before the film release.

Warrier, in a Facebook post, has come out in support of her former husbands film, which is set for a September 28 release.

The actress has said that the boycott call is unfortunate and that our personal likes and dislikes should not affect a film that involves a lot many lives and careers.

Ramleela's release was put off for some time after Dileep's arrest and the makers of the big budget film finally decided to release it on September 28.

However, watching the film of someone who has been accused of rape, raises the question morality for the Kerala audience.

Meanwhile, Manju Warrier's film, Udaharanam Sujatha is also releasing on the same date. She started the Facebook post with a mention of her movie and later added that the call for boycotting a movie is unfortunate and will affect the entire film industry.

She further said that people should be let to watch the film and decide for themselves.

The post says: Ramleela is releasing along with Udaharanam Sujatha, I saw a call for boycotting Ramleela and some even said that the theaters should be burned. I feel such a stand is unfortunate. We shouldn't show our personal liking or dislike to movie. A film is not of just one person, it's of many people. A lot of families depend film industry, its an industry which give daily bread and butter, education and medicines to a lot of families. If the films go away from the theaters we will not get people to invest in movies and the dreams of many families will be shattered (sic)."

She further wrote: Ramleela is an investment of crores of rupees for producer Tomichan Mulakupadam. Its also the movie of a debut director Arun Gopi, who has been dreaming about film for years. They all have the right to bring this movie to the theaters and wish that the people see it. We have no right to deny it. If we do that it is an injustice to cinema... time will not forgive us. Let people watch Ramleela ... let the justice of viewership dawn. (sic)"

Dileep , who is the 11th accused in the case, will be moved up to second in the additional charge sheet, behind prime accused Sunil Kumar a.k.a 'Pulsar'Suni. If found guilty, he could be behind bars for life.

The actor has been charged under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) 342, 366 (kidnapping), 376 D (gangrape), 411, 506 (1), 201(destruction of evidence), 212, 34 of IPC and 66 (e) and 67 (a) of IT act.

According to sources, there are 19 pieces of evidence which prime facie show Dileep, out of personal enmity, plotted to have a popular south Indian actress abducted and sexually assaulted in Kochi on February 17.
Jammu: At least two BSF jawans and five civilians were injured on Saturday after Pakistani troops opened unprovoked firing and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) and targeted Indian outposts and hamlets in Jammu, Samba and Poonch districts, officials said.

Pakistan troops engaged in heavy firing and mortar shelling on villages and border outposts in Arnia, R S Pura and Ramgarh sectors along the IB in Jammu and Samba districts since last evening, the officials said.

Hundreds of border residents have been forced to flee from their homes due to continuous violations of the ceasefire by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) and the LoC.

They targeted over 20 villages. Three civilians in Satowali village of R S Pura sector were injured in Pakistani shelling and had to be hospitalised, they said, adding that another villager was injured in Treva in Arnia sector.

In Ramgarh sector in Samba, two BSF jawans suffered minor injuries in Pakistani firing, the officials said.

Pakistan also engaged in heavy firing and shelling in Poonch sector along the LoC last evening. An eight-year-old boy was injured in the firing, they said.

Over 500 people were evacuated by the police from a few border hamlets targeted by Pakistani troops last night, they said.

The villagers have been housed in a camp. Over 20,000 people have also fled their homes and hearths in Arnia and R S Pura sectors in the past few days, the officials said.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the LoC between September 13 and September 18.

Firing and shelling resumed on September 21 after a two-day lull.

A BSF jawan and a civilian were killed and 25 others including five BSF personnel were injured in the shelling and firing by Pakistani troops during the period.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.
New Delhi: A two-feet-long monitor lizard was found in the premises of Delhi Secretariat causing a stir at the hub of the city government, a wildlife NGO on Saturday said.

The reptile, a non-venomous species, was found trapped inside a turnstile (automated gate) in the lobby area and was later rescued, Wildlife SOS said.

But, the sprawling campus of the Secretariat is no stranger to such unusual visitors.

"Last year, we rescued a 3.5-ft-long cobra from the Secretariat," said a member of the team, which rescued the lizard on Thursday.

Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder, Wildlife SOS, said "Monitor lizards are non-venomous and pose no threat to humans.

"As a result of continuous deforestation and expansion of human habitation these largely misunderstood reptiles are often forced to wander out of their natural habitats in search of food and shelter."

"They play an important role in the ecosystem but they are often killed for their meat and body parts due to misconstrued beliefs," he said.

The NGO said that after being kept under observation for a few hours the lizard was released back into its natural habitat.
Bengaluru: A former BJP corporator has lodged a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Friday against Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

The complainant, NR Ramesh, has also named Bangalore Development Minister, KJ George and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner, Manjunath Prasad.

The complaint further states that BBMP officials, along with state government authorities have misused public funds of the solid waste management department.

According to Ramesh, Rs 385 crores were allotted in 2016, while in 2017, the allotted funds are Rs 1,067 crores  a whopping increment of Rs 682 crores within a year.

In the past one year, only the salaries paid to Pourakarmikas have gone up from Rs 11,500 to Rs 17,053, while the other expenses remain the same.

Moreover, the Pourakarmikas are also not receiving their salaries. There is a nexus between BBMP officials, contractors and those in power. Where is this additional Rs 682 crore? This money has gone to the politicians, Ramesh said.

Karnataka BJP, on the other hand, has planned to stage a protest on Wednesday and gherao the BBMP building.

NR Ramesh said that till date there have been 44 complaints filed against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with the Anti-Corruption Bureau, but there has been no FIR so far.

I will approach the Karnataka High Court if ACB fails to register a FIR. I myself have filed 11 complaints so far and there has been no progress in any of the cases. I am forced to approach the court and ask them to instruct the ACB to start an investigation, added Ramesh.
Kolkata: A Durga puja committee in West Bengal dressed demon Mahishasura as a doctor, landing it in trouble.

The Mahishasura idol at Mohammad Ali Park committee pandal holds a stethoscope and is wearing a white apron taking money from patients. The theme mocks 'doctors' practicing the profession with fake certificates.

The step to decorate the demon in the form of a doctor irked the West Bengal Medical Council, encouraging it to register its objection to the puja committee. The council said that the theme will send a wrong message to the masses about doctors and their profession.

The organisers, on the other hand, sought to clear the air, saying that they intended to create awareness among the masses about "fake doctors".

West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee intervened in the matter asking the committee to change the theme.

Medical council Chairman Dr. Nirmal Maji said that he was shocked to know the puja theme. This will create a mistrust between patients and doctors, according to Dr. Maji. "They are maligning the image of doctors," he said, adding that the contentious idol should be replaced with a normal one. The council also wrote to Kolkata police commissioner, seeking a tough action against the organisers.

Dinesh Bajaj, Mohammad Ali Park puja committee chairman, said: "I would like to clarify that the intention was not to hurt anyone. We are going ahead with the theme to expose fake doctors in Bengal."

Later, it was learned that the committee was mulling over changing the theme and had taken steps ahead of the inauguration on Sunday.

The 'fake doctors' theme was based on the ongoing investigation into several people practicing the profession holding fake certificates.

In April 2017, the WBMC tipped the state CID that several fake doctors were operating in Bengal, requesting the institution for a crackdown to save hundreds of lives.

Several fake doctors have been arrested from Bengal and its adjoining states ever since. The investigation revealed that most of the arrested fake doctors were attached to some of the well-known hospitals, including Kothari Medical, Belle Vue Clinic, Ruby General Hospital, Kalpana Women and Child Care, ILS Hospital etc.

One of the fake doctors, Subhendu Bhattacharya, who was arrested recently, had even received an award from former President of India Pranab Mukherjee. He used to run a private nursing home - Kalpana Women and Child Care - in Howrah district.
DECATUR  Cybersecurity is a rapidly growing field.

Millikin University alumnus Tony Giannino, who works in that field for State Farm, told Decatur high school students that by 2019, a shortage of two million workers is expected. The average of unfilled jobs is already 40,000, and it pays very, very well. There just aren't enough people who can do the work.

It's about protecting assets and creating controls to reduce risk, Giannino said. Jobs are focused on where the risks reside and how to reduce risk, vulnerability and asset management.

In spite of his position, he said, he has never seen the company's server, not even through a glass wall. He doesn't need access to it and for security, people only know what they have to know to perform their functions.

That's how cybersecurity works in every field, he said.

It's not a matter of 'if' a company gets breached, but when, he said.

Giannino visited Millikin's dual-credit class on computer programming as part of an effort to show students the variety of careers available in the technology field.

This is programming fundamentals, said Professor R.J. Podeschi, a 2002 Millikin graduate who is leading the course. We're definitely trying to get them interesting in technology, particularly coding and programming. The reason these students have an opportunity is through grants and gifts given to the Decatur Public Schools Foundation.

That grant provides a discount on tuition and pays for the students' books, and they will have college credit for the class, which should be accepted by most institutions, Podeschi said.

Obviously, we'd love for them to be part of our information systems program, but what they satisfy here through this requirement should take them to any institution for college programming credit, he said.

The class is the second dual-credit class offered to Decatur's high school students, the other being introduction to arts technology.

There are a mix of DPS students in here and Millikin students, Podeschi said. I have (Millikin) sophomores and juniors in here who are taking the class for their information systems degree.

A recent class presented the students with a challenge using a programmable robotic car. Podeschi had laid out various courses on the classroom floor, and with only a sheet of basic instructions, the students had to make the car complete the challenge. Millikin emphasizes performance learning, which is hands-on, real-world activities in addition to theoretical learning.

I got an email from a counselor one day, said Zech Burrus, a senior at Eisenhower High School who wants to work in computer science. It was perfect so I went for it.

Aloni Jordan, who is also an Eisenhower senior, is interested in computer programming.

My counselor said it would be a great class for me, she said. She plans to apply to Millikin for college as well.

The real focus isn't so much on the fact that the class is dual-credit, said Zach Shields, executive director of the Decatur Public Schools Foundation, as it is on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) career awareness and skills. Archer Daniels Midland Co. has provided funding for this class, for training for Decatur teachers' to equip them to lead STEM activities at all grade levels, and for special projects in those areas.

It's more of a comprehensive approach to talk to kids about careers in STEM, particulary coding, Shields said. We use professional development with teachers in the district to start incroporating more STEM activities in the classroom, and R.J., who we've worked with a lot in past, agreed to put together this. It's great that ADM feels strongly feels strongly about influencing careers in STEM. That's what we're working on. It's nice that the kids receive credit for it also.

For me, it was the programming part, said Braden England, a senior at MacArthur High School. I really like programming and I think it will help me a lot for future jobs, and when my counselor first told me about it, I was really excited to be able to learn more about jobs and having an actual class about it, for any other college I might go to, it looks really good on my application.

England is interested in cybersecurity, and knows that programming skills will be important if he pursues that career.

I'm examining my options, said Arianna Fonville, a junior at Eisenhower. I don't know if I want to go into computer sciences or into engineering, which I'm also interested in, but I want to get more into the scripts and what they do on a daily basis, but so far (the class) is fun.
New Delhi: Search engine giant Google celebrated the 100th birth anniversary of renowned Indian chemist Asima Chatterjee with a themed doodle on Saturday.

Doodle paid homage to the chemist for her significant contribution in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine.

Chatterjee grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the 1920s and 1930s, when it was almost unheard of for a woman to study chemistry.

But that did not stop Chatterjee and she not only completed her undergraduate degree in organic chemistry, but also went on to receive a Doctorate of Science in 1944 from the University of Calcutta.

Later, she was appointed Reader in the Department of Pure Chemistry in the same university in 1954. She was the first woman to be awarded the D.Sc. of any Indian university.

Asima Chatterjee, who was born on September 23, 1917 in Bengal, had successfully developed the anti-epileptic drug Ayush-56 from Marsilia minuta and an anti-malarial drug from Alstonia scholaris, Swrrtia chirata, Picrorphiza kurroa and Ceasalpinna crista.

She made significant contributions in the field of medicinal chemistry with special reference to alkaloids, coumarins and terpenoids, analytical chemistry, and mechanistic organic chemistry.

A recipient of the Padma Bhushan in 1975, Chatterjee, was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1982 to 1990 and was the first woman to be appointed general president of the Indian Science Congress in 1975.

She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent.

(With inputs from IANS)
United Nations: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday sent a strong message to China on fighting terrorism, without naming it or Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masoor Azhar, by urging the international community to accept that terror is an existential danger and the world must stop differentiating between good and bad terrorists.

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, Swaraj wondered how the world will fight the menace if the UN Security Council cannot even agree on the listing of terrorists.

If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together? she asked.

Swaraj was referring to China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, which has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on Masood Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM has been put in the banned list.

I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence," she said.

Swaraj called on the UN member states to display their new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism, she rued.

We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the worlds big powers dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it?" she asked.

"We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals," she said.

"The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them towards duplicity," Swaraj said.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, in her address to the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, showed the mirror to Pakistan by highlighting the differences between the approaches of the two nations. She said that while India has created IIT and IIM, Pakistan built Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM). Highlighting the Indian governments schemes, she said that India is fighting poverty, but Pakistan is only fighting its neighbour.

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An attempt on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas life, inspired by the way Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, was foiled four weeks ago by her loyalists and top counter-terrorism officers in Dhaka.

Intercepts suggested that six to seven personnel of the Special Security Force (SSF), which guards the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, were preparing to attack Hasina on August 24. Their plan was to attack her as soon as she would step out of her office for an evening stroll.

Four independent sources, including two in Dhaka and two in the external intelligence apparatus of India dealing with Bangladesh, confirmed the development.

Bangladesh intelligence sources told News18 that the attack was being coordinated with Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) militants. According to the plan, JMB jihadis were supposed to trigger a series of explosions around Hasinas office to divert the attention of the other security guards, and to provide an escape route to the assassins.

The plan was modelled on the assassination of Indira Gandhi. It was supposed to be an inside job performed by recalcitrant bodyguards with the outside support from jihadis, another top intelligence official working closely with Bangladesh PMO told News 18.

JMB, an internationally recognized terror group, has taken responsibility for many bomb blasts in Bangladesh and aims to replace democratically-elected government with Islamic State.

The plan was foiled after a joint team of Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence officers intercepted the communication between JMB militants and the rogue SSF guards.

As soon as the conversation around the conspiracy was intercepted, PM Hasina was advised to stay put at a location outside her office in Dhaka, where she had gone for a personal meeting. Following this, her loyal guards formed an inner ring around her. The rogue men were nabbed right after this, paving the way for Hasina to return safely to her office.

The whole operation was discreet. We wanted to catch every last person involved in this, a top official in Dhaka said.

According to sources, the suspects are still being interrogated by Bangladeshi authorities.

News18s request for comment from Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka through the Bangladeshi High Commission in Delhi didnt elicit any response.

A spokesperson of the Ministry of Home Affairs in New Delhi said the issue pertains to Bangladesh and declined to comment further.

This is said to be the 11th assassination attempt on PM Hasina since she took charge in January 2009.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two members of her security detail on October 31, 1984 as she walked from her residence to office in New Delhi.

In the attempt on Prime Miniter Hasinas life, Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is suspected to be among the main conspirators of the attack. It all began when ISIs Brigadier Ashfaq, in-charge of eastern operations, met a top opposition leader from Bangladesh in London two months ago, said one of the intelligence officials in Dhaka.

The Bangladeshi intelligence is closely monitoring two major general-level officers of SSF, who also met the same opposition leader in London.

According to the sources, these SSF officials made a phone call to a top officer in the ISIs Operations Directorate, which suggested finalisation of a plan to create large-scale disorder in Bangladesh.

Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies had earlier intercepted communications between ISIs Brigadier Ashfaq and Hafiz Tohar, chief of the military wing of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group that is said to be carrying out attacks in the interests of the Rohingya refugees.

In these tapes, Ashfaq is heard asking Tohar to mount multiple attacks on Burmese security forces right after former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan had presented the Rakhine Commission report to Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar president Htin Kyaw on August 24.

Myanmar news agency Mizzima, in a report, published the content of the two calls from Ashfaq to Tohar and one from ISIS spokesman Al Amin to Tohar on August 23 and 24.

According to intelligence officers in Dhaka, ISI was working on a pincer plan to create unrest in the Bangladesh-Myanmar border region by assassinating PM Hasina. A red alert has been issued across Bangladesh to guard against possible attempts to trigger communal violence, particularly in south-east Bangladesh where thousands of Rohingya refugees are living in temporary camps.

 Subir Bhaumik, a former BBC journalist, is a contributor to CNN-News18
Chandigarh: Senior journalist KJ Singh and his 92-year-old mother were found dead in their Mohali residence on Saturday in what police suspect is a case of double murder.

Singh was a well-known journalist in Chandigarh, serving as News Editor at The Indian Express. He had also worked at senior positions at The Times of India and The Tribune in Chandigarh.

Police investigation was underway at his residence in Phase 3, B2 in Mohali. The Punjab Police has set up a Special Investigative Team (SIT) under the Inspector General (Crime) to probe the case.

Singh's throat had been slit while his mother Gurcharan Kaur was suspected to have been strangled at their Phase 3B2 home, said an official spokesman of the Chief Minister's Office.

"There was injury marks on their necks," Mohali Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Alam Vijay Singh said.

Condemning the murder, former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal urged authorities to nab the culprits immediately.

Just heard senior journalist KJ Singh has been murdered along with his mother.Condemn this killing and urge authorities to nab culprits imm. Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

I condemn ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators imm. Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

The media fraternity in Punjab, Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh strongly condemned the alleged killings and sought speedy arrests.
New Delhi: Film producer Karim Morani was arrested by the Hyderabad Police early on Saturday after he surrendered in a rape case following the cancellation of his anticipatory bail a day earlier.

The Supreme Court had on Friday upheld the Hyderabad High Court's decision to cancel the Chennai Express producers anticipatory bail.

The Hyderabad High Court of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, on September 5, had held as valid the lower court's order to cancel Morani's anticipatory bail on grounds of concealment of the fact that he has been facing criminal trial in the 2G scam case and was in jail for several months.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud did not grant 2-3 days time sought by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, the counsel for Morani, for surrender, and asked him to surrender at the Telangana jail.

Rohatgi had raised the issue of belated filing of the FIR, and that too at Rangareddy District in Telangana, and said it was not the case of grant of bail but rather one of unjust cancellation of the anticipatory bail.

It has been alleged that Morani had sedated the aspiring actress and raped her several times, took her nude photos between July 2015 and January 2016.

The sessions court at Telangana had initially granted anticipatory bail to Morani on January 30 this year and later, cancelled it after being told that the producer had concealed in his bail plea his involvement in the 2G case and the fact that he was in jail in connection with the corruption matter.

(With PTI inputs)
An attempt on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas life, inspired by the way Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards, was foiled four weeks ago by her loyalists and top counter-terrorism officers in Dhaka.

Intercepts suggested that six to seven personnel of the Special Security Force (SSF), which guards the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, were preparing to attack Hasina on August 24. Their plan was to attack her as soon as she would step out of her office for an evening stroll.

Stay tuned for live updates

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
Addressing farmers on Day 2 of his Varanasi visit, PM Narendra Modi has promised homes for all by 2022 and pitched for a clean and new India. The PMs packed schedule for the day started with the inauguration of a sanitation drive and a Pashu Arogya Mela in Shahanshahpur on the outskirts of Varanasi, his Lok Sabha constituency. The PM also handed loan waiver and housing scheme certificates to beneficiaries.

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United Nations: Hitting out at Pakistan for creating terror groups like LeT, JeM, Hizbul Mujahideen and the Haqqani Network, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday asked the nation's leaders to introspect as to why it has become infamous as the pre-eminent export factory for terror while India has been recognised as a global IT superpower.

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, Swaraj accused Pakistan of waging a war against India. She said a country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

She was referring to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's speech on Thursday in which he had accused India of state-sponsored terrorism and violating human rights.

I would like to tell Pakistan's politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?" Swaraj asked.

India had ripped into Pakistan on Friday, describing it as "terroristan" and a land of "pure terror" that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

Speaking in Hindi for the second consecutive year at the annual UNGA session, Swaraj said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan's nefarious export of terrorism.

"There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indian freedom, for we have been a sustained democracy. Every government has done its bit for Indias development," she said, highlighting India's achievements in the fields of education, health, space etc.

"We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism?" she said.

"We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists... you have created terrorist camps, you have created Lashkar-e- Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen and Haqqani network," she said, adding that if Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

She said the terrorist groups created by Pakistan is not only harming India, but also hurting its neighbours Afghanistan and Bangladesh. She said that for the first time in the UN history, Pakistan sought right to reply and then it had to simultaneously respond to three nations.

"Doesn't it reflect your nefarious designs," she asked the Pakistani leader.

Referring to Prime Minister Abbasi's speech, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader "wasted" too much of his time in making accusations against India.

"Those listening had only one observation: 'Look who's talking!' A country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium," Swaraj said.

Commenting on Abbasi's claim that Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship, Swaraj said while it remains open to question whether Jinnah actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship since he assumed office.

"Pakistan's Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer," she said.

On old UN resolutions mentioned by Abbasi, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader's memory has conveniently failed him where it matters.

"He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version," Swaraj said in a hard-hitting response to Pakistani prime minister's speech.

Noting that Abbasi spoke of a "Comprehensive Dialogue" between the two countries, Swaraj reminded him that on December 9, 2015, when she was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that dialogue between India and Pakistan should be renewed and named it a "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue".

"The word 'bilateral' was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process," Swaraj said.
Shahanshahpur (UP): Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a 'Pashu Arogya Mela' (cattle health fair) and a sanitation drive in Shahanshahpur on the outskirts of his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi on Saturday.

Addressing a public meeting after the event, PM Narendra Modi promised homes for all by 2022 and lashed out at his political rivals, saying that for him development, and not vote bank, was the priority.

"Our (BJP) politics is not for votes, our culture is different. In politics, people do things only for votes, but we are different. For us, the nation is above all," Modi said on the second and final day of his Varanasi visit.

He said his government had "waged a war" against black money and corruption, for which the poor has had to suffer because of "the loot" by the dishonest.

Referring to the mega animal fair being organised for the first time on 1,800 acres of land, he said "these animals don't go to cast their ballot. They are not anyone's voters.

He said proper healthcare of the cattle through such initiatives would help increase milk production in India, which is lower than in several countries.

Encouraging the farmers to adopt dairy and animal husbandry as alternate sources of income, Modi said such initiatives would lead to "a new path of progress" that would not only raise farmers' income, but also the overall income.

Maintaining that crores of families are still homeless, he said the government has decided to provide each of the urban and rural poor, a shelter by 2022 when the country celebrates 75th year of Independence.

"When crores of houses are built across the country, it will require bricks, cement, iron and wood. It will generate jobs for thousands and open up new avenues of income and employment," the Prime Minister said.

"If Modi will not take up such an arduous task, who else will," he said, drawing applause and cheers from the crowd.

The PM also targetted the previous Akhilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh for not providing to the Centre the list of homeless requiring houses in the state. "The previous government had no interest in giving homes to the poor. After mounting pressure, they gave a list of only 10,000 people. But the current (Yogi Adityanath) government has given a list of lakhs of people to avail benefit," Modi said.

Referring to his government's cleanliness drive, he said toilets at home can save up to Rs 50,000 per annum as per a survey.

Praising villagers, where he went for laying foundation of a toilet for naming it as "Izzatghar", Modi said, "I liked this word so much. Where there is Izzatghar, there is honour of our mothers and sisters. I also congratulate the state government for recognising it as Izzatghar. In the days to come, those who are concerned about their honour, will construct Izzatghar."

Thanking Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for arranging the cattle health initiative, Modi said cattle were brought here from different places and specialist doctors are here to treat them. "I hope such programme is held across the state through which we will take care of the poor mans cattle. It will be a relief for them," he said.

On the first day of his visit, Modi had inaugurated 17 infra projects worth over Rs 1000 crore, including the Ramnagar-Samne Ghat bridge and the Balua Ghat bridge.

He also flagged off the third Mahamana Express train between Varanasi and Vadodara.

(With PTI inputs)
Jaipur: A 70-year-old self-styled godman was arrested from Alwar in Rajasthan on Saturday for allegedly raping a law student in his ashram last month.

Police said that Swami Kaushlendra Prapannachari Falahari Maharaj was picked up from a private hospital, where he got admitted soon after the 21-year-old woman from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district filed a rape complaint against him earlier this month.

Aravali police station SHO Hemraj Meena said Falahari Maharaj has been sent to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Alwar for a medical examination. A three-member medical board has been set up for the probe against the self-styled godman.

The incident had allegedly taken place at the godmans Madhusudan ashram in Alwar on August 7 this year, Bilaspur ASP Archana Jha said. According to the FIR, parents of the woman, who studies law in Jaipur, have been followers of Falahari Maharaj for several years.

On the godmans recommendation, she interned under a senior lawyer in Delhi, for which she received a stipend of Rs 3,000. Her parents asked her to donate the stipend amount to the ashram in Alwar.

When she went to the ashram on Raksha Bandhan last month, the self-proclaimed religious guru asked her to spend the night there citing the occurrence of 'grahan' (eclipse) that day.

At night, he called the woman to his room and allegedly sexually assaulted her, the ASP said, quoting from the complaint. He also threatened her with dire consequences if she told about it to anyone, police said.

When the woman came home this month, she narrated the ordeal to her parents following which a rape complaint was lodged with the women cell. A case has been registered against the accused under IPC sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation), the police officer said.
New Delhi: Separatist leader Shabir Shah has reportedly confessed to links with hawala operators in Pakistan who were laundering money to fund militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.

The chargesheet filed against the separatist leader by the Enforcement Directorate said he had also admitted that he was in regular touch with 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed and had last spoken to the Lashkar-e-Taiba founder in January this year.

The chargesheet, a copy of which was accessed by CNN-News18, also said that Shah had confessed to paying a 3% commission to the hawala operators.

It has also been found that the website IP address of Shahs Democratic Freedom Party is registered to Peshawar, while the Information Department of the political party is in Rawalpindi.

The Enforcement Directorate has also reportedly found that Shah was accepting donations in cash, but did not file tax returns for the same, nor did he issue any receipts for these donations. He had no regular source of income.

The probe agency filed the chargesheet in a Delhi court on Saturday afternoon.

CNN-News18 had earlier reported on how money from Pakistan was being routed to India to fund terror activities in the Valley. The Jihadi Badaam investigation had exposed how Pakistan's ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba were using cross-border trade of California Almonds, which is duty-free, to transfer funds to terror organisations.

In 2005, the Delhi Police's Special Cell had arrested hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani with cash and firearms, who later confessed to passing on a huge amount of cash to the separatist leader.

Wani was arrested allegedly with Rs 63 lakh, received through 'hawala' channels from the Middle East, and a large cache of ammunition.

During questioning, he had told the police that Rs 50 lakh was to be delivered to Shah and Rs 10 lakh to Jaish-e-Mohammad area commander in Srinagar, Abu Baqar, and that the rest was his commission.

Wani, who hails from Srinagar, had also claimed that he delivered around Rs 2.25 crore to Shah and his kin in multiple instalments over the past year.

The Enforcement Directorate then registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Shah and Wani.

Shah had earlier said the ED case against him was "politically motivated".

(With agency inputs)
Begusarai: Crossing all limits of barbarity, a school warden in Begusarai district of Bihar poured hot oil on the palms of girl students as she suspected one of them of stealing her mobile phone.

The incident came to light when the students of the government-run Kasturba Awasiya Vidyalaya in Nurulapur complained to their parents about the ordeal they suffered.

The incident took place on September 17, when the school warden Kahkasha Naaz found that her mobile was missing.

Suspecting that one of the students had taken it, she started beating a few students to get them to admit to the theft. When that did not work, she ordered the hostel caterer to stop cooking food for the students.

A girl shows the burn marks on her hand. (Photo credit: ETV)

Although the girls kept pleading their innocence, the warden was adamant that one of the students had stolen the mobile.

A student, Manisha Kumari, said that madam even got a tantric to the school to make the children confess and force fed them some specially cooked rice.

At last, she poured hot oil on our palms, Manisha said while narrating the ordeal.

A few girls were taken to a private nursing home as they screamed in pain. The parents of the girls stormed the school gates after a staff member of the school informed them about the incident. Reema Devi, a teacher in the same school, said she had objected to such kind of punishment but the warden did pay heed to her.

A large number of parents and local residents also protested outside the school on Saturday and lodged a complaint against her to the district authorities. The block education officer, Ravi Kumar Ram, has issued a show-cause notice to the warden.
Shahanshahpur: Four centuries ago, an emperor stopped by, giving the village its name. On Saturday, Shahanshahpur had another brush with fame when it hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The village, some 30 km from Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi, has had its tryst with history.

Legend has it that the village was named after 'Shahanshah' Humayun, who had taken shelter in the hut of an elderly woman after his battle with Sher Shah Suri more than 450 years ago.

On Saturday, Shahanshahpur played host to the prime minister, who inaugurated the 'Pashu Arogya Mela' (cattle health fair), being organised for the first time in the village, on 1,800 acres.

The prime minister, who addressed a public meeting, also laid the foundation stone for a toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the village.

Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Minister of State for Rural Development Mahendra Singh and BJP's UP President Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present on the occasion.

The residents of the village take pride in the lore about the Mughal emperor's visit.

"The prime minister's visit has given the villagers a reason to relive the tale," said Apna Dal (S) local MLA Neelratan Patel 'Neelu'. Apna Dal (S) is an ally of the BJP

The story goes that Humayun reached the quiet village after crossing the Ganga late at night after Sher Shah Suri defeated him in the battle of Chausa.

That was when the elderly villager gave him shelter in her hut without knowing that her lodger was none other than Humayun, say locals.

Years later, when Humayun's soldiers succeeded in locating the village, the residents learnt who the overnight guest was.

After Emperor Humayun restored his rule, he sent his soldiers to say thanks to the elderly woman. Unfortunately, she was dead by then.

That was when their village -- till then known as Kalupur -- was named Shahanshahpur.
Ranbir Kapoor and Mahira Khan sent their fans into a frenzy when their photos went viral on social media. Both the actors were spotted in New York, catching up and smoking on the sidewalk. While speculations about their alleged romance started immediately, few people targeted single mother and popular Pakistani actress Mahira, for smoking and tarnishing her image. After much slut-shaming online, many celebrities from Pakistan took Mahira's side, asking trolls to grow up and let Mahira live her own life.

Now, Ranbir has broken his silence over the much-talked-about photos. In an official statement, the actor said, "Ive gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire and respect, for her achievements and even more for the person she is. It is and spoken about. What is also sad is the inequality in judgment just because she is a woman. I request you to stop the negativity and move on with your beautiful god gifted lives."

"I've gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire & respect..." - #RanbirKapoor pic.twitter.com/jcd5CmhdIL Filmfare (@filmfare) September 23, 2017

Ending his statement with a hard-hitting postscript, Ranbir added, Both smoking and hate are injurious to health.

While the statement neither confirms nor denies Ranbir's link-up rumors with the actress, it surely targets the trolls to mind their own business.

Credit: @ All Pakistan Drama Page

It is notable that the duo made headlines a few months back after a video wherein Pakistani actress Mahira was pleading something to Ranbir. The video went viral from the Global Teacher Prize, Dubai. The rumors of Ranbir and Mahira calling love shots have been there for a while and the latest photos add to the speculation.
The Income Tax department is raiding properties of pro-Dinakaran MLA Senthil Balaji in Karur district, yet another episode in Tamil Nadus ongoing political drama.

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Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday asked people to be careful against 'goody-goody people', who believe in communal disharmony and conspire against Bengal.

Mamata, who inaugurated state minister Arup Biswass Suruchi Sangha Dura Puja Pandal on Saturday evening, said that there are three types of people - "good, bad and goody-goody people".

They are dangerous, Mamata said, "It's difficult to understand goody-goody people," in an apparent reference to BJP workers.

These 'goody-goody people', she said, were creating communal discord in the state through social media. "One such person recently shared a Bhojpuri film poster showing men molesting a woman and claimed that the 'incident' had occurred in Bengal's Basirhat. It's a dangerous trend and all of us must protest this," she said.

The chief minister asked the Maharashtra police if they will be able to handle law and order in their state if Ganapati Puja and Muharram fall on the same day. "It is easy to give lectures. Stern action will be taken against those trying to disturb the atmosphere in Bengal."

Mamata said that she was proud to have been born in Bengal and people here live in communal harmony. "God is for all. Some people are trying to create controversy in the name of immersion, but we will not let them do this," she said.

Earlier on August 24, Mamata had announced that no immersion of Durga Idols will take place on October 1 due to the Muharram procession.

The decision was taken to maintain communal harmony. Some people might try to bring disturbance, and we will not allow that to happen in Bengal.

Later, a petition was filed in the Calcutta High Court against Mamatas decision, banning idol immersion on the day of Muharram. The High Court in its verdict said that immersion should be allowed on all days, including Muharram if it is found permissible.
Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav today cautioned his supporters against "fake samajwadis", signalling fresh strain in the party's top ranks.

The former chief minister was addressing the state convention, which unanimously re-elected Naresh Uttam as the party's president in Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh called on his party members at the meet, asking them to realise their responsibilities ahead of Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

"Beware of banawti (fake) Samajwadi. They have tried to stop the Samajwadi movement many times in the past. They succeeded in one conspiracy as a result of which we could not form the government in the state," he said in a veiled attack on his uncle and SP leader Shivpal Yadav and his supporters.

Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been engaged in a battle for supremacy over the party founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh, however, clarified that he enjoyed the blessings of his father and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. "I want to say that Netaji (Mulayam) is my father and his blessings will always be with me. We will take forward this andolan (movement)," he said.

The former chief minister also criticised the Centre for the recent train derailments and sought better rail services for Uttar Pradesh. He highlighted the works initiated by his government and said the present BJP government befooled people with false promises to grab power.

The convention was attended by senior party leaders Ram Gopal Yadav, Azam Khan, Ram Govind Chowdhury and over 15,000 workers from across the state. Mulayam and Shivpal were conspicuous by their absence.
DECATUR  A new law signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner in August allows Illinois counties to use pet population control funds for trap/neuter/vaccinate/return, or TNVR, programs of free-roaming feral cats.

Sponsored by state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, and state Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago, the bill was spearheaded by the Best Friends Animal Society.

This proposal is the product of a year of work among experts, Holmes said. County governments already have the resources to adequately control the population of feral cats, so why not let them use their funds to do what the experts say is the best way forward? Local governments will do the best job of controlling the feral cat population if the state simply allows them.

The goal is to keep the cats out of shelters and avoid euthanizing them. Macon County has the Macon County Animal Control & Care Center.

Some counties don't have shelters, or the shelter isn't very big, said Beth Hughes, who runs the Care Van program. That makes euthanasia much more likely if animals aren't claimed or adopted, whereas TNVR doesn't require shelter space and controls populations.

Including vaccinations in the program also alleviates the concern that the returned cats will spread diseases. Simply removing feral or stray cats from an area only creates what is called the vacuum effect. Other strays or ferals will move into an area that's been vacated.

Cats are territorial, said Jeanette Skaluba of Yoga4Cats, a nonprofit that raises money for TNVR programs. Volunteers also work to foster and find permanent homes for cats. New cats, she said, won't try to move into a territory already claimed by a colony, but if that colony is removed, other cats will take over the turf.

That's why the return portion of the program is important. If the cats are neutered, vaccinated and returned, the same cats will stay in that territory and over the course of time, the population will decrease as the cats age and die without reproducing.

Not everyone is on board, however. Illinois Audubon opposes the law and tried to prevent its passage. According to Illinois Audubon, feral and stray cats may kill more than 1 billion birds a year in the United States.

The organization also objected because there were no provisions in the law to prohibit the release of the cats to protected wildlife areas or in the vicinity of people's homes and no provision to measure whether the programs are effective.

We didn't feel it was comprehensive enough, said Jim Herkert, executive director of Illinois Audubon. We think good public policy on feral cats should be more broad than (TNV). For example, the fundamental goal of good public policy is reducing cat populations. There may be locations where removal is necessary.

"We see TNV as one potential way to reduce cat overpopulation, but we need a whole variety of shelter-based strategies, such as bringing cats in and not releasing them, with certain locations set aside for birds and wildlife that should be protected from cats.

In some cases, Herkert said, that would include euthanizing the cats that were caught and taken to shelters.

That, however, is one way to create the vacuum effect that Hughes described, Skaluba said. Cats returned to their colony location don't roam the way intact cats do. They don't fight as much. The return in TNVR means to take the cats back to their original location, not simply release them. Many of the cats in these programs are barn cats, or living in known colonies. They're not living in wildlife refuges or the the back yards of bird watchers.

Birds are in more danger from humans than from cats, Skaluba said. Cats have been living outside forever.

Another provision of the new law is additional funding for the Paw Fund, which provides assistance to low-income households, veterans and people with disabilities to help them with spay and neuter costs for their pets. Hughes said she was just informed that the program, which had lacked funding for some time, was again open and taking applications.
New Delhi: Mining baron and former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhan Reddy has been allowed to visit his hometown Bellary  a reprieve which may help his political revival ahead of 2018 Assembly elections.

After denying him permission several times since his alleged involvement in the mining scam cases, the Supreme Court relented on Friday and permitted Reddy to stay in Bellary for three days.

The court had on September 4 dismissed Reddy's similar plea to enter Bellary, while refusing to relax the conditions of bail.

But on Friday, a bench led by Justice AK Sikri allowed yet another application by Reddy with not much opposition from the CBI coming forth.

"We allow the petitioner-applicant to visit Bellary from 29.09.2017 to 01.10.2017 as he wants to perform necessary rituals and to participate in the celebration of the festival of Dussera along with his family members," said the bench in its order.

The court order is expected to help Reddy, who has been vying for political revival ever since he was released on bail by the bench in January 2015. He was arrested in 2011 in connection with illegal mining cases.

One of the conditions of the bail, however, was that he would not enter Bellary, Anantpuram and Cuddapah.

Earlier, Reddy was granted permission by the court only on certain expedient situations, including once when his mother was seriously ill.

Reddy made many unsuccessful attempts before the top court, first in November 2015 and two subsequent endeavours to get this bail condition relaxed but to no avail.

The CBI then raised objections citing his involvement in the iron ore mining scam spread across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The BJP leaders in the state told CNN-News18 that Reddy had been waiting for this relief to start his second innings in politics.

One of them added that it would be difficult to ignore Reddy's claims when the BJP has appointed former chief minister, BS Yeddyurappa as president of its state unit despite several cases of corruption pending against him.

The mining baron is said to have bankrolled the 2008 Assembly and 2009 Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka, which saw the ascendance of the party in the state with Yeddyurappa becoming chief minister.
Lucknow: Taking potshots at the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, Samajwadi Party national president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said people of Uttar Pradesh are now regretting voting BJP into power in the state.

Addressing party workers and leaders on the occasion of the 8th state convocation of Samajwadi Party at Ramabai Ambedkar Ground in Lucknow, Akhilesh Yadav said, "Development is not the core agenda of BJP, I am sure they will bring some new distraction just before the elections. The BJP government in state and Centre has betrayed farmers by not fulfilling the promises made to them before elections".

Launching a scathing attack on BJP for saying "Lucknow Metro is a dream project of Prime Minister Naredra Modi", Akhilesh said, "They (BJP) claim that the Lucknow Metro was the dream project of PM Modi. I challenge them to run the Metro in Varanasi at least. The BJP will not run Metro in any of the cities in Uttar Pradesh during their regime."

Akhilesh said that the Samajwadi Party is the largest political party and plays a bigger role in Uttar Pradesh's politics. "Many times we have said if you want to improve education then improve figures in Uttar Pradesh. If the country wants to achieve significant success in the field of health, the health condition of the people of UP should be improved. Only they can bring changes in the country's politics," he said.

"The current situation of electricity supply in the state is in shambles today; people are facing prolonged power cuts. Be it rural or be it urban, everywhere people are fed up of power outages," added Akhilesh.

Senior Samajwadi Party leader and Akhilesh's confidant, Naresh Uttam Patel was once again elected as the Samajwadi Party state president on the occasion. Senior leader Azam Khan took over the podium and addressed the party workers who were gathered there from all over the state. He said, "Discipline and tolerance should be the motto of Samajwadi people if they want to make progress in life."

Without taking anyone's name, Azam Khan also attacked the people who have betrayed the party. He said, "There were few people who have betrayed us in the past, and it is because of them that the ruling party came to power. I would also request all of you to maintain brotherhood as people in power (BJP) want to spread communal tension before 2019 polls.
Lucknow: The last time he was in his Parliamentary constituency of Varanasi, it was in March, when Prime Minister Narendra Modis party was engaged in a bitter triangular battle for power in Uttar Pradesh.

Six months hence, after a landslide victory in the state, Modi will be back in Varanasi announcing a slew of big budget projects ahead of the 2019 general elections.

Its preparations for 2019 is likely to be the sole agenda of the party at this juncture and it will come riding the dual planks of development and governance.

On the second day of his Varanasi visit on Saturday, the PM would be inaugurating 19 development projects estimated to come at a cost of Rs 1,000 crore. The most important being a trade facility centre, Modi will also be laying the foundation stone of 10 other development projects.

The focus will however be on what the Prime Minister has to say during his Varanasi visit. He will be addressing two public rallies with the first immediately after the trade facility inauguration in Badalalpur and a second in Shahanshapur on Saturday.

Politically speaking, Modis address will be of further significance with a changed political narrative in the state.

Focus will now be on the Yogi Adityanaths governance, especially in the aftermath of incidents like Saharanpur violence and the Gorakhpur child deaths.

Professor KK Mishra of BHU, said, Modi is doing practical politics. His first visit to Varanasi post UP elections will definitely define the BJP's plan ahead of the 2019 election.

Professor Mishra further adds, By inaugurating 19 projects, the PM wants to assert the fact that he is delivering on his promises. It seems development and good governance will be BJP's electoral emphasis this time.

The fact that the Prime Minister has decided to stay in Varanasi for a night, is also significant. In his meeting with prominent BJP workers, he is expected to discuss the road ahead for the party, with the UP win in mind.

BJP state general secretary, Vijay Bahadur Pathak said, People of Varanasi have a special place for the PM. He is their MP and therefore it's very natural for him to give some time to the people of his constituency.
New Delhi: As the debate on whether to Rohingya refugees rages in the country, Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has weighed in, saying the Northeast experience with immigrants has been very bad. Speaking to CNN-News18, Sarma, who jumped ship from the Congress to the BJP in 2015, also took on Rahul Gandhi for his comments on dynastic politics.

Edited excerpts:

Is it a good idea to give asylum to Rohingyas?

Our experience in the Northeast with immigrants has been very bad. Over 30% people are immigrants and as a result the indigenous people are fast losing their identity. We are fast losing our culture, we are losing our land. Our monasteries and temples have been encroached upon. We are in very serious trouble when it comes to immigration. So, drawing from my experience in the Northeast, I don't think any more people should be given asylum or refugee status in India.

Are they really a threat to national security? If yes, how?

We have to believe the Government of India because it is privy to all information. When the Government of India has on oath submitted before the Supreme Court that they (immigrants) pose a threat to national security, I think we should believe in that. And ultimately the issue will be decided by the honourable Supreme Court. I think we should wait for the final verdict.

The United Nations has said that India should be more responsible in the matter and show some heart. How do you look at this kind of international pressure building on India?

I think the UN Human Rights Commission and the Security Council should come to the Northeast and see how a community is losing its identity because of our large heart. We are losing our culture. I think nobody will be that generous at the cost of our national security and national identity. So we should help Rohingya in Myanmar and in Bangladesh, but I think we should not invite them or give them refugee status in Assam or anywhere else in India.

Do you think absence of documentation is a problem? Out of 40,000 Rohingya, there are just 15,000 who have proper documents.

I can't really say what the problem is here, but I can say from my experience that today in Assam and the rest of Northeast, our indigenous people are losing their identity because of the immigrants. So the Government of India should be very careful. What Northeast is facing today, the rest of India shouldn't face tomorrow.

It's being said that there is some kind of resurgence of the Congress given the kind of reaction Rahul Gandhi's speeches in Berkeley and Princeton got. Given that you quit the Congress just two years ago protesting against dynasty politics, are you seeing a new Rahul Gandhi? Rahul 3.0 or 4.0 perhaps?

I don't know if Rahul Gandhi is proposing to contest the next elections from Berkeley or Princeton. But there is no traction (for his speeches) back home. I think if there's an election today, after the Berkeley and Princeton speeches, he'd lose badly. People on the ground haven't heard his speech and, basically, whoever has heard his speech, is disgusted with the way he defamed our country. He said our countrys politics is based on dynastic rule. With his comment, he lost whatever goodwill the Congress might have had. I think this US tour will backfire on him like anything.

Are you seeing any kind of change?

No, no. I think he has become more arrogant. How can a person say that India is ruled by dynasts. I have seen Rahul Gandhi. That defeat (in 2014) should have made him polite, made him humble, but it has made him more arrogant. This is a speech by an arrogant prince.

Are the caste Assamese opposing the BJP's saffron drive on Deen Dayal Upadhyay's legacy in Assam?

I think Deen Dayal is a part of the legacy of India. And our Assamese people are very much a part of India. There are few Left liberals who don't like the way the BJP is expanding its base in the Northeast. We will overcome this.
Madurai/Kodagu: Senior Tamil Nadu minister and AIADMK leader Dindigul Srinivasan has claimed that afraid of Sasikala, party leaders lied about Jayalalithaa's health last year so that people believe that she was improving.

No one was allowed to meet the late chief minister.

Whoever came, would be briefed by Sasikala's relatives that she was "all right", he said.

The minister sought the pardon of AIADMK cadres and the public for lying about Jayalalithaa's health.

Reacting to the minister's comments, sidelined AIADMK leader T T V Dhinakaran told reporters at Kodagu in Karnataka that they have footage of Jayalalithaa getting treatment in hospital and would hand it over at "an appropriate time".

Addressing a public meeting at Madurai on Friday, Srinivasan said he was now coming out with the truth pushed by the situation.

The fact was none including himself was allowed to see Jayalalithaa, who was admitted to the Apollo Hospitals in Chennai on September 22, 2016, claimed Srinivasan, who had also made such statements to the media last year.

After prolonged treatment for infection and other complications, Jayalalithaa had died of a heart attack on December 5 last.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami recently announced that a commission of inquiry would probe the death.

Present deputy chief minister and former rebel leader O Panneerselvam had pressed for a probe into the death of Jayalalithaa saying there were doubts in the minds of people.

"I seek pardon from you. Please forgive me. We told lies Amma (Jayalalithaa) is eating sambar, chutney, tea etc so that you will believe that she is improving. In fact nobody saw Amma eating idli or drinking tea or chatting... all are lies," Srinivasan said.

Similarly, news about several leaders meeting Jayalalithaa in the hospital and their version that she was improving was also false, he claimed.

"We were afraid of Sasikala at that time and lied about Jayalalithaa's health condition," he claimed.

"It is very common that sisters who fight inside the house will appear to be friends outside. We did not want the secret of the party to get leaked... that is why we lied," he said.

Referring to statements by people loyal to Dhinakaran that they had evidence to refute doubts over the treatment given to Jayalalithaa, he dared them to release these and face the inquiry commission to let the people know the truth.

Dhinakaran said even Governor CH Vidyasagar Rao had visited the hospital and had issued a statement on her health.

"Doctors from Apollo Hospitals, the staff, even doctors from AIIMS had come for treating Jayalalithaa. But the truth is they did not allow even my aunt (ousted AIADMK general secretary V K Sasikala) to see her," he said.

"Amma was admitted on September 22 (last year). But from October 1, she (Jayalalithaa) did not even see my aunt due to the spread of infection," he said.

"We are not afraid of anything. We have the footage. And without her (Sasikala) consent, how can I give it. If there is any judicial or CBI inquiry, then we will give it at the appropriate time," he said after meeting his 18 loyalist MLAs staying at a resort in Kodagu for the past one week.

Srinivasan said it was they who made Sasikala as interim general secretary after Jayalalithaa's demise.

"We did that because Sasikala claimed she was with Jayalalithaa and took care of her. But people thought otherwise. They were angry and asked why did you handover the party to the Sasikala clan," he said.

He maintained that Sasikala was selected only due to the compulsion of the circumstances.

A recent general council meeting of the party had annulled the appointment of Sasikala as interim general secretary and held as invalid all her decisions.

On chief minister K Palaniswami criticising him during various public meetings, Dhinakaran said: "I don't want to degrade myself by responding to comments made by him."

DMK Leader M K Stalin said in Chennai that it was due to the comments made by various AIADMK leaders on the health of Jayalalithaa that his party had sought "an inquiry".

He said Palaniswami and deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam) had announced that a judicial inquiry would be conducted into Jayalalithaa's demise. "But so far it is not clear on who is going to probe it," he added

BJP state unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan said "If there are doubts raised by (AIADMK) ministers', my view is that the state government itself can inquire about it," she said.
Apple's launch of the iPhone 8 kicked off with less fanfare on Friday than new models in previous years in the United States, Asia, Australia and Britain, as fans held out for the premium iPhone X, due out in early November. In San Francisco's Union Square, 50 miles from Apple's Cupertino headquarters, just 80 people were lined up at the company's flagship store, a sharp contrast to years past when lines stretched for blocks when new products were released. In Australia, hundreds of people usually gather at Apple's Sydney city store, with queues winding down George Street in the central business district. But there were fewer than 30 people lining up before the store opened on Friday, according to a Reuters witness.

Apple's flagship store in London's Regent Street also experienced a slim turnout, according to several British newspapers. Shares of the company were down 1.3 percent to $151.39 in afternoon trading. The stock has lost 6.3 percent since closing at $161.50 on Sept. 11, a day before its new products were announced. While the number of people queuing up outside Apple stores has dropped over the past several years with many buyers choosing to shop online, the weak turnout for the latest iPhone has partly been due to poor reviews. Mazen Kourouche, who was first in queue in Sydney after lining up 11 days outside the store so he could buy and review the product on YouTube, said there were modest refinements.

"(It) is pretty similar to the iPhone 7 but it shoots 4k 60 frames per second and it's got a new glass back instead of the metal which is apparently more durable," he told Reuters. "There aren't too many new features to this one." In China, a loyal Apple customer said the improved camera was one of the reasons she had bought the new device. "I waited until midnight to watch the launch event with my boyfriend to learn what's new with this iPhone. Its photograph function is pretty good. So I think I must change with no hesitation," said Ta Na, a 29-year-old consumer in Shanghai. Mentions of iPhone 8 and iPhone X on the popular Chinese social media platform Weibo, an indicator of consumer interest, were less than seen for previous launches.

In San Francisco, customers waiting in line were evenly split between those interested in the iPhone 8 and those looking to buy the Apple Watch Series 3. The latest watch includes standalone cellular data connectivity for the first time, meaning it can be used to make phone calls without an iPhone nearby. Chayce O'Neal, 27, said he had come to buy the new watch and wasn't discouraged by reviews that mentioned connectivity problems. But he was skipping the iPhone 8 and holding out for the iPhone X. "I like being on top of the cutting edge of technology," he said.

Indifferent reviews of the iPhone 8, which comes 10 years after Apple released the first version of the revolutionary phone, drove down shares of the company to near two-month lows of $152.75 on Thursday, as investors worried pre-orders for the device had come in well below previous launches. The iPhone 8 will only cater to those who want a new version but do not want to pay a hefty $999 for the iPhone X, said iTWire.com's technology editor Alex Zaharov-Reutt, who did not line up for the launch. That was the case for Damien Roberts, a customer in line at Apple's San Francisco store. Roberts owns a battered iPhone 6s and wanted an upgrade to the iPhone 8 Plus for phone calls, messages and playing his favourite video game "Clash of Clans." He said he didn't need the extra features of the $999 iPhone X.

"It's a lot of money to shell out for a phone," said Roberts, a Briton who was purchasing the phone while on vacation. Speaking to CNBC, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the Apple Watch with cellular data service is "sold out in so many places around the world" and iPhone 8 models were also sold out. He did not specify the locations he was referring to. The iPhone X is a glass and stainless steel device with an edge-to-edge display that Cook has called "the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone". "I think it'll be more lively with more people with the iPhone X," said Ray Yokoyama, after buying an iPhone 8 in Tokyo.

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When HTC Corp brought back founder Cher Wang two years ago to turn around the struggling Taiwanese mobile phone maker, investors hoped she could stem a sharp loss in market share to Apple and Samsung Electronics. But the gamble to rebuild the early smartphone pioneer's reputation failed, as its market share has continued to dwindle - to below 1 percent from closer to 10 percent in 2011. On Thursday, Wang announced HTC was shifting around 2,000 staff, mainly handset engineers, to Alphabet's Google in a $1.1 billion deal that casts doubts over the company's longer-term future. "Our main consideration is that our brand will continue," Chialin Chang, who heads HTC's mobile business, told reporters. "So our major releases will be as usual. In future, HTC will concentrate not on our portfolio size, but what's in the portfolio."

Wang, a pioneer in Taiwan's male-dominated technology industry, founded HTC 20 years ago as a contract manufacturer and established it as a leader, designing and making Microsoft-powered smartphones. It later turned out its own branded phones, but often struggled to translate positive early reviews into strong sales, despite spending heavily on marketing, including a collaboration with "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr for its flagship HTC One phone. It also struggled to carve out a strong consumer brand in a market where Apple and Samsung grew quickly and have since been joined by Chinese rivals such as Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. HTC shares have slumped around 90 percent since the company's 2011 peak. This week's deal marks a retreat from HTC's smartphone legacy.

"It may take a hard look at its smartphone business ... and think it's probably better to wind it down as soon as possible rather than for it to drain more cash," said David Dai, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. "If it focuses on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), there's a much more concrete chance the company turns things around." That prospect pushed up HTC shares by their daily maximum of 10 percent on Friday, valuing the company at around $1.7 billion, as some investors hope the Google cash helps HTC focus on its Vive VR headsets and reduce its development costs. HTC Chief Financial Officer Peter Shen said the deal will cut operating costs by 30-40 percent.

GLIMMER OF HOPE

While the Google cash throws HTC a lifeline for now, it may find it hard to retain staff, analysts said. Google has cherry-picked the best people, said a former HTC executive who has spoken to current employees, adding: "It's hard to see how anyone remaining would be enthusiastic." "Google's investment will probably slow, but not stop, HTC's decline," said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. Even Vive faces tough competition against the likes of Samsung and Sony Corp, which control half the $2 billion global AR and VR headset market. HTC saw flat second-quarter growth, and had 4.4 percent market share after a price reduction.

"Vive remains in the red; free cash flow is negative; book value is eroding; and sales growth is decelerating," JP Morgan analyst Narci Chang said in a note following the Google deal. "Nevertheless... we think HTC might narrow the loss considerably... enough to keep the business afloat and beat the (market) consensus for the next few quarters." For now, no major VR overhaul has trickled down to staff.

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A week after Facebook disclosed the details about Russian political ads worth $100,000 on its platform during the 2016 US presidential election, the social media giant has announced it would now share those 3,000 ads with Congress. After an extensive legal and policy review, Facebook announced late on Thursday it will share the content of those ads with Congressional investigators. "We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election," Colin Stretch, General Counsel wrote in a blog post. "That is an assessment that can be made only by investigators with access to classified intelligence and information from all relevant companies and industries -- and we want to do our part. Congress is best placed to use the information we and others provide to inform the public comprehensively and completely," he added.

Two weeks ago, Facebook announced that it had found more than 3,000 ads addressing social and political issues that ran in the US between 2015 and 2017 and that appear to have come from accounts associated with a Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency. Facebook handed over the details to American Special Counsel Robert Mueller that included copies of the ads and details about the accounts that bought them and the targeting criteria they used. The company cleared that disclosing content was not something it does lightly under any circumstances but it was deeply committed to safeguarding user content, regardless of the user's nationality and ads were user content. Facebook said that apart from reaching out to the Congressional leadership to agree on a process and schedule to provide the content of these ads, along with related information, to investigators, they would continue their own review and probe to make sure investigators have the information they need.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who returned after taking parental leave after his second daughter was born, said in a post on Friday that he deeply cares about the democratic process and protecting its integrity. Zuckerberg noted that the social media company has already provided information regarding this issue with the special counsel and have also briefed Congress about it. He said the company would now make political advertising more transparent. When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, they are required by law to disclose who paid for them. "Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads they're currently running to any audience on Facebook. We will roll this out over the coming months, and we will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads," he posted.

Zuckerberg said the company would strengthen ad review process for political ads. Facebook would now increase investment in security and specifically election integrity. "In the next year, we will more than double the team working on election integrity. In total, we'll add more than 250 people across all our teams focused on security and safety for our community," Zuckerberg said. The company would also expand partnerships with election commissions around the world. It is already working with electoral commissions in several countries to help people register to vote and learn about the issues. Facebook would increase sharing of threat information with other tech and security companies.

Not just Facebook, Twitter executives are also scheduled to meet with the US Senate Intelligence Committee next week which is investigating alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election.

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Microsoft is set to open its first UK store on Londons Oxford Circus, just opposite Apple's flagship store that was revamped a year ago. "Microsoft has confirmed that it plans to open a store in London. As has become tradition, Microsoft's new store is just a few doors away from Apple's own retail store on Regent Street," The Verge reported late on Thursday. The company had earlier shown interest in opening a flagship UK store. It was rumoured to open one in 2013 and then later in 2015.

However, the company shelved its plan after it could not locate a right spot. Notably, this time, Microsoft has officially confirmed its plans of unveiling a store which indicates the deal could be materialised. The tech giant has similar stores across the US, a few in Canada, and one each in Puerto Rico and Australia.

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Florence (Italy): British Prime Minister Theresa May has called for a two-year transition after Brexit in which Britain would largely maintain its current ties with Brussels, in a charm offensive intended to unlock stalled negotiations with the European Union.

In a major speech in Florence on Thursday, May promised to meet Britain's existing EU budget commitments until 2020 and outlined new legal guarantees for the rights of around three million EU nationals living in Britain.

She also committed to maintaining Europe's security, saying in a direct pitch to EU leaders: "We want to be your strongest friend and partner as the EU and UK thrive side by side."

A fourth round of negotiations with the European Commission is due to start next week, with London keen to make progress on the terms of the divorce so that talks can move on to trade.

"While the UK's departure from the EU is inevitably a difficult process, it is in all of our interests for our negotiations to succeed," she said.

May said she wanted a transition period after Brexit in March 2019 of "around two years" during which "access to one another's markets should continue on current terms" for Britain and the EU.

She also promised to honour Britain's financial commitments for the remainder of the EU's current budget plan. Britain's contributions for two years would be at least 20 billion euros (18 billion, $24 billion) -- though this falls well below European estimates of Britain's total Brexit bill.

Within hours, Moody's Investors Service cut its long-term credit rating for Britain, citing the economic uncertainty sparked by the Brexit negotiations and the likelihood of weaker public finances.

Moody's dropped its grade by one notch, to Aa2 from Aa1 with a stable outlook, which reflects expectations Britain's debt will "continue to rise" and worries that any UK-EU trade agreement "would not award the same access to the EU... that the UK currently enjoys".

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the "constructive spirit" of the speech, but said he would wait to hear the "concrete implications" -- particularly on the money.

He said that if Britain wanted to continue to benefit from access to the single market after it leaves the EU, all existing rules must apply.

French President Emmanuel Macron noted "advances" and "openings" in May's speech.

"The signals sent by the British prime minister show a willingness" ahead of next week's round of negotiations, he told reporters.

But Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage expressed outrage at the idea, saying: "Theresa May's Brexit vision is that we leave the EU in name only. All areas of integration we have currently will be rebadged."

May's speech came 15 months after Britain's referendum vote to leave the EU and six months after she triggered the two-year Brexit process, amid increasing demands by Brussels for more clarity.

One problem was that her own government is still divided -- a fact highlighted this week when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson laid out his own vision for life outside the EU. After the speech, he said May's words were "uplifting". Although May did not rule out her previous threat of walking away from the talks, she expressed optimism that a deal could be done.

On the issue of EU citizens' rights, she sought to break the deadlock over the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as the arbiter in any disputes.

She said the final deal agreed with Brussels would be fully incorporated into British law.

A small group of British expatriates had gathered outside the Santa Maria Novella church complex where May spoke, holding up signs saying "Hands off our rights".
London: Iran will strengthen its missile capabilities and not seek any country's permission, President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday rejecting demands from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Rouhani spoke at a military parade where an Iranian news agency said one of the weapons on display was a new ballistic missile with range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles), capable of carrying several warheads.

The Tasnim news agency, which quoted the head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division, Amirali Hajizadeh, gave few other details of the missile.

Iranian state television showed footage of the firing of "Khoramshahr missile" but did not specify if the test-fire happened on Friday or in the past.

At the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said Iran was building its missile capability and accused it exporting violence to Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

He also criticised the 2015 pact that the United States and six other powers struck with Iran under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.

In a speech broadcast on state television, Rouhani said: "We will increase our military power as a deterrent. We will strengthen our missile capabilities ... We will not seek permission from anyone to defend our country.

"All countries in the world supported the nuclear deal in the United Nations General Assembly this year ... except the United States and the Zionist regime (Israel)," Rouhani said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that the agreement must be changed or the United States could not stick with it. Iran has said its nuclear accord cannot be renegotiated.

The prospect of Washington reneging on the deal has worried some of the U.S. allies that helped negotiate it, especially as the world grapples with North Koreas nuclear and ballistic missile development.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said tensions on the Korean peninsula underlined the importance of the Iranian deal, and that China would continue to support it.

Trump put Iran "on notice" in February for test-firing a ballistic missile and imposed new economic sanctions in July over its missile programme and "malign activities" in the Middle East.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that the U.S. imposition of unilateral sanctions on Iran was "illegitimate and undermines the collective nature of international efforts."
Washington: US President Donald Trump defended his wife and First Lady Melania Trump after she faced criticism for wearing sky-high stilettos while en route to the hurricane Harvey-hit Texas state last month, the media reported.

Trump's defence of the footwear choice came while critiquing the media during a rally in Alabama on Friday night, reports The Hill magazine.

"She's wearing high-heels like many of you would do. And they went after her, but she didn't know, and then when she got off the plane in Texas she was wearing sneakers, which she had with her. And they (media) know it was dishonest," Trump said, adding sarcastically, "You know, she's going to go into the floods with her high heels."

The First Lady faced online backlash last month after she wore heels when leaving the White House to visit Texas in the aftermath of hurricane Harvey.

Melania Trump's communications director slammed the coverage of her shoes at the time, saying, "It's sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas, and people are worried about her shoes."

She wore stilettos again when leaving the White House for a second trip to Texas later that week.
Tehran: Iran said on Saturday that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.

The broadcaster gave no date for the test although officials had said on Friday that it would be tested "soon".

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

President Donald Trump has threatened to bin the agreement over the issue, saying that Iran's missile programme could give it the technical knowhow for a delivery system for a nuclear warhead when a sunset clause in the deal expires in 2025.

Diagrams showing the evolution of Iran's ballistic missiles. (Photo: Reuters)

He is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether or not he believes Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal.

If he decides that it is not, it could open the way for renewed US sanctions and perhaps the collapse of the agreement.

Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it.
Update: Amherst County Sheriff E.W. Viar said Sunday a deputy is at home recovering after he was shot late Friday by a passenger in a vehicle during a traffic stop.

At approximately 11:30 p.m. Friday, deputies initiated a traffic stop at the Monroe Post Office and during the course of the stop a passenger in the vehicle produced a handgun and shot a deputy, striking the deputy in the head, according to a news release. Another deputy shot the passenger.

The officer injured was treated and released and the suspect was still being treated as of Saturday morning, the release said. The Amherst County Sheriff's Office has asked the Virginia State Police to investigate and has said it will not comment further on what transpired.

Viar said in the emailed statement Sunday he is thankful no one lost their lives in the incident and he asks the community to keep the male deputy and other deputies in their thoughts and prayers.

"The [law enforcement profession] is a very dangerous job. Each day across our nation law enforcement officers are losing their lives doing routine traffic stops," Viar wrote in the email. "I am grateful that the citizens of Amherst County have rallied around our Department. We take pride in serving our great community."

Earlier: An Amherst County Sheriff's Office deputy was shot late Friday and a person is injured after another deputy returned fire, the Amherst County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.

At approximately 11:30 p.m. Friday deputies initiated a traffic stop at the Monroe Post Office on U.S. 29 in Monroe, according to a news release. During the course of the stop a passenger in the vehicle produced a handgun and shot one deputy, striking the deputy in the head, the release states.

Another deputy returned fire and shot the passenger.

The deputy was treated and released and the suspect still is being treated, according to the release. The Amherst County Sheriff's Office has asked the Virginia State Police to investigate the incident in accordance with its policy and is not releasing further information on the incident.

The sheriff's office is deferring to Virginia State Police for further details.
Correction appended

An equal branch of government

Bill Wheatons Sept. 19 letter to the editor, No, the judiciary isnt co-equal, presents an incomplete and misleading discussion of the intentions of the Founders with regard to the Supreme Court.

Using Federalist Paper 78, he claims that those who wrote the Constitution intended the court to be a weak institution. He also seems to assume that the Federalist Papers are an accurate annotation of the Constitution which all who participated in its construction would agree upon. This is not the case.

First, when the delegates from the states arrived in Philadelphia for the convention the one and almost only thing they agreed on was that they must repair or replace the Articles of Confederation. To generalize a bit, beyond that there was a division that separated delegates from the North and South. The Norths economy was based on commerce. They wanted a strong federal government that could promote interstate and international commerce. They were also suspicious of democracy, perhaps in part because of the recent Whiskey Rebellion, an incident in which poor farmers attacked banks with pitchforks. In contrast, delegates from the agricultural South wanted a limited federal government with respect for states rights and were open to democracy allowing white males to vote for some offices in the federal government. Office holders today could learn much from the Founders. Despite the differences, they created the Constitution through compromise. Once drafted, there was a need to convince states to ratify the document. Hamilton from the North, Madison from the South and Jay wrote the Federalists Papers. The object was to write a series of persuasive letters that would soothe the fears that might cause hesitation in accepting the new document. Federalist 78 is an example of this effort.

Federalist 78 does start off telling readers that they have nothing to fear with regard to the Supreme Court. It will not have much power. The remainder of 78 gives them great power. He assumed that the Court would have the power of judicial review. He explained this saying:

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body.

Its this power that enables them to second guess and strike down actions of the president and Congress and now the actions of state and local governments.

SUE LOCKHART

Lynchburg

Correction

Because of an editing error, Sue Lockharts Sept. 23 letter to the editor, An equal branch of government, incorrectly stated that the Whiskey Rebellion preceeded the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It was Shays' Rebellion. We regret the error.
United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday snubbed President Robert Mugabe as he treated other African leaders to a working lunch on the sidelines of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly in New York.



Trump was joined by South African President Jacob Zuma and leaders of Nigeria, Cote dIvoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Namibia, Senegal and Uganda.



It was not clear whether Trump, who was on Thursday attacked by Mugabe during his speech to the General Assembly, had overlooked the Zimbabwean leader as a result of the long-standing frosty relations between Washington and Harare or it was for other reasons.



The US slapped Mugabe and members of his inner circle with sanctions over human rights violations and lack of rule of law.

On Thursday, Mugabe took a dig at Trump for his speech on North Korea and Iran, which he said was threatening peace.



In a speech that lasted about 20 minutes, Mugabe called on Trump to blow his trumpet in a musical way, towards peace.



That was a bit surprising as Mugabe, ahead of his 93rd birthday, had suggested in an interview with ZTV that Trump might re-examine long-standing US sanctions on Zimbabwe.



When it comes to Donald Trump, on the one hand, talking of American nationalism, well, America for America, America for Americans  on that we agree, Mugabe said adding: Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.



Mugabes welcoming tonne during Trumps inauguration did not change Washingtons stance towards Harare.



The US national security adviser, Herbert McMaster, this year told a press briefing that the exclusive group of dictators, which includes Mugabe, had gained notoriety for rampant human rights abuses.

McMaster was reacting to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduros decision to force through a controversial poll that seeks to create a body to review the South American countrys constitution.



Maduro is not just a bad leader. He is now a dictator, McMaster said.

By this action, Maduro is joining an exclusive club of outlaw world leaders, like Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Kim Jong Un (North Korea), and Robert Mugabe.



Trumps snub of Mugabe was the third time in three years that the 93-year-old has suffered such an embarrassment at the hands of a sitting American president.



In 2014, former president Barack Obama did not invite Mugabe to a landmark US/Africa investment summit held in Washington where nearly 50 heads of State took part in the two-day event, which sought to widen trade, development and security ties between America and Africa.









Mugabe and leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Madagascar were excluded from the summit.

At the time, Mugabe was African Union (AU) first vice president and incoming chairperson of Southern African Development Community (Sadc).





In 2015, Obama visited the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia but avoided meeting Mugabe although he was at the time chairperson of the continental body and the regional Sadc bloc.

During his speech at the AU headquarters, Obama condemned African leaders who refused to give up power, in remarks widely interpreted as a veiled attack on Mugabe.





Africas democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. No one should be president for life, he said.

The countrys largest opposition party, MDC, said no one was prepared to engage with Mugabe because he had outlived his usefulness to them.





Surely, you couldnt expect him (Trump) to invite Mugabe to the working lunch that he hosted on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.





Mugabe is a Pariah in influential world politics. Thats why even Obama hardly made a direct reference to Mugabe in his speeches, even when he visited Africa, said MDC spokesperson, Obert Gutu.





Mugabe wants to sound bullish and cocky in his UN public speeches. The bottom line, however, is that he is yesterdays man. His brand of politics and grandstanding is no longer in sync with the dictates of modern day global politics and international relations, he added.





Analysts said it was not surprising that Mugabe had been excluded from the working lunch as the US could have been guided by its foreign policy and the countrys strategic interests in Africa.

And there are a host of US institutions that determine this. That Mugabe is officially under targeted sanctions means the snub is not surprising, said political analyst, Vivid Gwede.





Officially, the Zimbabwean leader remains blacklisted in the US probably in the same boat with Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran.





And this has been a bipartisan approach of the Republicans and Democrats alike from the younger George Bushs era to Barack Obama and now Trump. It is a continuation of a well-known US policy position. It would have been a shifting of sands if he was included, added Gwede.

Farai Maguwu, a local political activist, said it was clear from his rhetoric that Mugabe is in a permanent conflict mode hence his presence at such an important engagement meeting would throw spanners into the discussion.





I think Trump, like many other leaders, is waiting to meet the next president of Zimbabwe for constructive dialogue, said Maguwu.





Mugabe, members of his family and senior Zanu PF officials were slapped with sanctions at the height of political violence and farm invasions in 2000.





The Zanu PF leader accused the US of seeking to overthrow him through the use of sanctions although Washington maintains they were in response to ballot fraud, lack of rule of law, human rights violations and lack of respect for property rights.





Mugabe and his Zanu PF government have blamed both the US and European Union sanctions for sinking the once-thriving economy but their opponents in the opposition blame corruption and bad governance for the current crisis.





Social commentator, Rejoice Ngwenya, said it was awkward for Trump to choose to meet leaders of Ethiopia and Uganda and yet excluding Mugabe from the same meeting.

He said Uganda and Ethiopia were fellow human rights habitual offenders who preside over authoritarian democracy.





Nevertheless, any American leader would spite Mugabe because the latter does not hide his resentment of western democracies he accuses of imposition of sanctions on him. Mugabe is not likable  his arrogance and overrated anti-imperial stance are irritants, observed Ngwenya.





Political analyst, Maxwell Saungweme, said the countries that were invited were of strategic interest to American foreign policy and businesses.





He observed that the countries have huge natural resources of interest to the US and the American government funds a lot of humanitarian and development programmes there.

While Zimbabwe is also endowed with natural resources, our policies do not make us attractive to US investors. We grab land and businesses and run them down, said Saungweme.





Also, Zimbabwe is a very tiny country with a little market and tiny demand for American products if you look at it in the grand scheme of things. We are a tiny country with a very small population and we often overrate ourselves.





Media practitioner, Nigel Nyamutumbu, said the snubbing of Mugabe by Trump had both economic and political undertones.





On one hand it shows that Trump is going to maintain the sanctions regime on Zimbabwe and will not seek to influence the US Congress to repeal the embargo. On the other hand, it shows who America will be keen to discuss potential business and investment with in Africa and sadly, it seems Zimbabwe is not a prime target, said Nyamutumbu. Daily News
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Long accused of harvesting the organs of prisoners on death row to be sold to the highest bidder, China appears to have cleaned up its act, the Washington Post reports. China has been castigated by the international community for building the world's second-largestbut basically unregulatedtransplant industry by harvesting thousands of organs from condemned inmates, including political prisoners, each year. China vowed to stop the practice in 2014 and now, thanks to a decade of effort by Huang Jiefu, a former deputy health minister in China, and a Chicago surgeon, China has a "transparent" online registry of voluntary donors and a database that matches recipients, per the Post. Huang says the "game of wealth and power" of illegal organ allocation is over, though Chinese law does not explicitly prevent using the organs of convicted prisoners.

Former critics are slowly coming around. The former chief of the Transplantation Society says he sees a "substantial change in China" which is going "in the right direction." But not everyone is convinced. A Chinese lawyer says a prisoner facing execution was forced to "voluntarily" donate his organs last November, and a report in June 2016 accused China of continuing the practice, per CNN. A US House resolution passed just last year condemned China's "state-sanctioned" secret organ harvesting. And in February of this year, Huang acknowledged at a Vatican summit that illegal organ transplants may still be taking place in a "big country" like China, per Newsweek. WHO advisor Dr. Francis Delmonico told PBS in May that while death row harvesting is "markedly reduced" in China, he could not say for sure it has "completely stopped." (Read more China stories.)
Authorities in Maryland have charged two teens with kidnapping and raping a classmate and police say a third suspect is at large, the AP reports. The Frederick News-Post reported Wednesday that police said in court documents that a female acquaintance of the victim may have persuaded the suspects to act. Police said the girl told them she was grabbed while walking home on Sept. 2, taken to an apartment, and sexually assaulted. According to police, she said two were classmates who allegedly told her they were acting on orders from the younger female acquaintance.

Frederick authorities charged 19-year-old Victor Antonio Gonzalez-Guttierres and 17-year-old Edgar Natanal Chicas-Hernandez, who's charged as an adult. Police didn't identify the third suspect. Court documents don't identify the female acquaintance, who repeatedly denied involvement. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement Thursday that the agency has lodged an immigration detainer for Gonzalez-Guttierres. ICE says he is from El Salvador. (Read more rape stories.)
The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems last year, although in most cases the systems were not breached, the AP reports. The government said last year that more than 20 states were targeted by hackers believed to be Russian agents before the 2016 elections. But for many states, the calls Friday from the Department of Homeland Security were the first official confirmation of whether their states were on the list. States that said they were targeted include Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The government did not say who was behind the hacking attempts or provide details about what had been sought. But election officials in three states said the attempts could be linked to Russia. The Wisconsin Election Commission, for example, said the state's systems were targeted by "Russian government cyber actors." Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states, the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems. The targets included voter registration systems but not vote tallying software. Officials said there were some attempts to compromise networks but most were unsuccessful. Only Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems. Colorado said the hacking wasn't quite a breach. (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
Mark Zuckerberg says he's sticking with his plan to eventually sell 99% of his shares in Facebookand he's starting with up to 75 million shares, which is almost a fifth of his stake in the company. In a post on, of course, Facebook, Zuckerberg explains that he has dropped his controversial plan to create non-voting shares in the company because his shares have become so valuable that he can sell enough to fund his philanthropy and "retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more," TechCrunch reports. Facebook "was not originally founded to be a company, but to accomplish a social mission," he says. The stock has soared to more than $170 a share, meaning Zuckerberg's sell-off could raise up to $12.8 billion.

Zuckerberg's earlier plan to create a new class of shares would have allowed him to sell off almost all his stock and still retain control of the company, but it was deeply unpopular with other shareholders, Bloomberg reports. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have pledged to give away most of their fortune. Zuckerberg says the share sale will fund work at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative including efforts at "curing all diseases in our children's lifetime and personalizing education for every student." The initiative is working with "amazing scientists, educators, and doctors around the world who need support today, not decades from now," he says. (Zuckerberg and Chan welcomed a new baby in August.)
John McCain's opposition to the latest GOP effort to repeal ObamaCare didn't quite kill the legislation's chances, though it came pretty close. Still, Democrats are taking pains not to declare victory in public or do anything that smacks of gloating, reports Politico. As Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz tweeted, "This bill is not dead yet. You can relax on October 1. They never let up, and neither can we." (After that date, Democrats will be able to easily kill any repeal effort with a filibuster.) McCain joins Rand Paul as a definite no, meaning Mitch McConnell can't afford one more defection even as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both were leaning in that direction. So what next? McConnell isn't saying yet whether he will proceed with a vote on the bill from Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham regardless, reports the Washington Post.

If the repeal effort does indeed fail this month, Democrats want to resurrect bipartisan talks aimed at improving ObamaCare, rather than dismantling it. But given the vast differences in ideas on the left and right about what is necessary, the Hill doesn't see much hope for an "era of bipartisanship" on health care. On Friday night, President Trump called McCain's decision "horrible" but suggested that Republicans continue with the vote. The most well be is one or two votes short, he said, per the New York Times. "You cant quit when you have one or two votes short. You cant do it." Meanwhile, co-author Graham didn't sound too peeved at McCain. "My friendship with @SenJohnMcCain is not based on how he votes but respect for how hes lived his life and the person he is," he tweeted. (Read more ObamaCare stories.)
Iran says it has successfully test-fired a new long-range ballistic missile, a "Khorramshahr" with a range of around 1,240 miles. State-run media released video of the missile being fired around midnight Friday, hours after it was unveiled at a military parade, though it's not clear when the test actually took place, NBC reports. Iran says the missile, which is capable of hitting Israel, can carry several warheads. The missile is named after a port city Iran retook at heavy cost during its war with Iraq.

The test is expected to raise tensions between Iran and the US, where President Trump accused the country of building "dangerous" missiles in his United Nations address on Tuesday. "Iran is sending another signal of defiance taken straight from the North Korean textbook," BBC analyst Kasra Naji says. Naji calls the missile test a "borderline case" for the United Nations Security Council. Iran has agreed to limit its nuclear weapons program, but it says the missiles it has been testing are not designed to carry nuclear warheads. (Read more Iran stories.)
Melania Trump is taking her biggest step yet as first lady, leading the US delegation to an international sporting event in Toronto for wounded service members, the AP reports. It's her first trip representing the US without President Trump at her side. On Trump's schedule for the Invictus Games: meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, delivering remarks at a reception for the nearly 100 US athletes participating in the week-long Olympic-style competition, and attending Saturday's opening ceremony. Saturday also included a brush with British royalty for Trump, meeting with Britain's Prince Harry, who founded the Invictus Games in 2014. (Read more Melania Trump stories.)
A small earthquake shook North Korea early Saturday, according to South Korean officials, raising fears that the country had carried out another nuclear test amid its escalating dispute with the US. The quake happened near where North Korea has carried out other nuclear tests, which have registered as small earthquakes, though opinions are split on the source of the latest quake, the Guardian reports. "A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a man-made earthquake," a South Korean meteorological official says. "In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorizing this as a natural earthquake."

China's official Xinhua news agency, however, says an explosion was the likely source of the quake, which China measured at 3.4 magnitude, the AP reports. The US Geological Survey says it measured the quake at 3.5 and it cannot confirm whether it was natural or not. China also announced Saturday that it is limiting petroleum exports to North Korea under the terms of a UN resolution passed after a nuclear test earlier this month, reports USA Today. At a rally in Alabama Friday night, President Trump mocked Kim Jong Un as "Little Rocket Man" and told supporters they had nothing to fear from North Korea, despite the country's threat to detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific, reports the Washington Post. (Read more North Korea stories.)
Police don't often ask for the public's help to solve a car break-in, but then most cars aren't carrying nearly $1 million in jewelry. The San Francisco Chronicle reports someone smashed the windows of a Cadillac Escalade parked in San Francisco on Aug. 12 and stole two tote bags that were inside. Police say the bags contained approximately $900,000 in jewelry, including diamond earrings, a diamond and pearl necklace, an 18-karat gold necklace, and an 18-karat gold bracelet. Police are looking for a blue 2000 Acura TL believed to be involved in the burglary and asking any residents with information to get in touch. (Read more San Francisco stories.)
A Lufthansa passenger jet that was hijacked to Somalia 40 years ago at the height of a far-left militant group's campaign against West German authorities has returned home. The DPA news agency reported Saturday that most parts of the Boeing 737 arrived Saturday in the city of Friedrichshafen, where they will be reassembled and displayed at the Dornier Museum. The remainder is due to arrive Wednesday from Brazil. The aircraft ended up in a Brazilian carrier's fleet and had been sitting decommissioned at the country's Fortaleza Airport for years.

A Palestinian group demanding the release of members of West Germany's Red Army Faction hijacked a Mallorca to Frankfurt flight in October 1977, the AP reports. The hijacking marked the peak of the "German Autumn" of leftist violence. German commandos stormed the plane in Mogadishu, Somalia, killing three hijackers and rescuing all 86 passengers. Surviving members of the flight crew were also rescued, though pilot Juergen Schumann had been shot dead earlier by one of the hijackers. (Read more plane hijacking stories.)
A machete-wielding man was arrested Friday in Tennessee after taking nine people hostage inside a bank, ABC News reports. According to WZTV, the situation started around 2:45pm at the Community First Bank & Trust in Columbia. Police say it's unclear why the suspect took hostages at the bank, but it doesn't appear to have been a robbery attempt. The suspect initially let four hostages go before allowing the remaining five to leave hours later. None of the hostages were hurt. The suspect was tackled by police and arrested upon leaving the bank Friday night. He suffered minor injuries during his arrest. Police haven't released any information about the suspect or hostages. (Read more machete stories.)
The man who kidnapped, raped, and killed a 20-year-old nursing student in Tennessee has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, WTVF reports. Holly Bobo disappeared in 2011 after going into the woods outside her parents house with an unidentified man; her body wasn't found until 2014. According to USA Today, a jury found 33-year-old Zach Adams guilty on all counts Friday, and Adams accepted a plea deal Saturday morning before a jury was set to decide if he would receive the death penalty. In addition to the life sentence for murder, Adams received two consecutive 25-year sentences for kidnapping and rape.

Karen Bobo, Holly's mother, called Adams an "animal" while delivering a victim impact statement in court on Saturday. I know that my daughter fought hard for her life and I know that she begged for her life because my daughter loved and enjoyed life, Bobo said. But you chose to take that from her and you have shown absolutely no remorse for anything that you have done. Prosecutors say the Bobo family reluctantly agreed to the plea deal, WREG reports. Adams' attorney says she plans to file for a mistrial but first needs to figure out a reason for doing so. Two other defendants are still awaiting trial in the case. A motive for the murder of Holly Bobo is still unknown. (Read more Holly Bobo stories.)
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I want to take this space to explain a little more about the various steps one can take to guard against theft of your money or identity, because its been in the news so much lately, and I know it can all be confusing.

First, what are we afraid of here? Three things:

A thief uses your existing credit card numbers to buy things.

Someone impersonates you and opens up new credit accounts or takes out loans in your name.

Someone uses your personal information to file a tax return and claim a refund.

In some ways, straightforward credit card fraud is the least frightening. Thats because the credit card companies have gotten very good at flagging charges that are out of the ordinary in any way, and those charges can be reversed when you respond quickly. When I bought gas on a recent trip to New Jersey, the credit card company wanted to make sure it was really me, because I lived in Brooklyn and dont own a car. Its also important to look at your own statements each month for charges you dont recognize, even tiny ones.

The second possibility is what people call identity theft. How do you stop people from opening up new accounts in your name?

You may have seen different terms floating around: credit freeze, credit lock, fraud alert and credit monitoring. They are all a little different, and they can all cost money.

In order from least to most extreme and/or effective, here is how they break down:

Credit monitoring is offered by many third-party companies, for a monthly fee. But the problem is that it is passive and retroactive, not proactive.

A fraud alert is free. With this form of protection, when anyone tries to open a new credit account in your name, add a new card to an existing account or raise your credit limit, the lender is supposed to verify that its you, for example, by calling you on the phone number you gave. You can call any of the three credit reporting agencies to place a fraud alert for 90 days. After that it is renewable. More information from the Federal Trade Commission: go.madison.com/ftcfraudalert.

A credit freeze is deeper than a fraud alert. With a credit freeze, no third party can access your credit report until the freeze is lifted. Even if you want to get a mortgage or an auto loan, you have to call and get it lifted, which takes around three business days.

In the wake of their breach that exposed critical information on 143 million Americans  and after a public outcry  Equifax has announced that it will offer a credit freeze free of charge for all consumers until Nov. 21.

But you still may have to pay a small fee to put a freeze on your files with the other two major bureaus, Experian and TransUnion. And you need to order a freeze with all three of them to really be safe.

One silver lining of this situation is that more consumers may decide to initiate credit freezes, as many consumer groups recommend.

But there is one more step to take to guard against identity theft. Remember what I said about taxes? Sometimes identity thieves file tax returns using your Social Security number and claim fraudulent refunds. The IRS has been stepping up enforcement and safeguards against this crime.

One recommendation for this year is to file early, and in the meantime, pay attention to any mail from the IRS. Remember that they will never demand information from you over the phone.
The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574.
New Delhi:

A total number of 21 restaurants were sealed in south Delhis Hauz Khas village on Saturday for not having mandatory approvals under the pollution laws.

These units were under the scanner Delhi Pollution Control Committee that oversees the implementation of environmental laws in the national capital and loopholes were found with regard to pollution.

The order was issued days after Delhi High Court termed the area as 'a ticking bomb.' The sealing action has been conducted under section 33A of Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, and section 31A of Air (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981.

Delhi Jal Board and BESES Rajdhani, the power distribution company, has been ordered to disconnect the water and power supply to these restaurants immediately as these restaurants did not follow the waste norms and some of them even did not have license.

Read more: 25-year-old woman gang raped in moving car in Noida, thrown in Delhi

Most of these dont have consent to establish (CTE) or consent to operate (CTO) certificates, which are mandatory to run hotels in Delhi. Consent to establish is the first step for any industry or trade to begin operations and the permission is given within four months of it being applied for. The CTO certificate is given by the DPCC. You need these to run an establishment along with clearances from the police, fire and corporation health departments, Sub-divisional magistrate of Hauz Khas, Ramchandra M Shingare Shingare told Hindustan Times.
New Delhi:

Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, who have been busy with Tiger Zinda Hai, have finally finished the shooting of the movie. The actors were shooting for the movie in Abu Dhabi and had elaborate action sequences which where filmed in the Emirates for 60 days.



Director Ali Abbas Zafar took it to micro-blogging site Twitter to share the news and wrote, "Filming wrapped @TigerZindaHai @yrf in #Abudhabi ... looks like 22nd December is just around the corner. Good job team tiger will miss U."



He even shared a stunning picture of one of the scenes from the movie featuring a chopper along with the sun.

Filming wrapped @TigerZindaHai @yrf in #Abudhabi ... looks like 22nd December is just around the corner YS. Good job team tiger will miss U. pic.twitter.com/Q6mtr2x7us a ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) September 21, 2017



On the other hand the official handle of Tiger Zinda Hai also shared a classy picture of Salman-Katrina-Ali to announce the wrap up.



Zafar described the experience of shooting the film as "gruelling, challenging and a whole lot of fun".



"We've shot across pristine, relatively unseen locations in Austria, Morocco and shot on a huge lot in Abu Dhabi along with other spots.



"Right from the infrastructure, to the support that the local military has given us, shooting here was smooth and a great collaborative experience. Tiger and Zoya's second outing is going to be larger than life, and the shoot lives up to that," he said.



With the principle shoot wrapped, only a song remains to be filmed for the movie.



"Tiger Zinda Hai" is set to hit the screens on December 22.

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New Delhi:

Tamil Nadu Minister for Forests Dindigul C. Sreenivasan has asked for forgiveness from AIADMK cadres and the public for lying about Jayalalithaas health last year.

Addressing a public meeting in Madurai on Friday night Sreenivasan said, "Forgive me my party worker but all of us ministers lied before you when we said Amma is having food and she is alright. Said so many things to make you believe she is healthy but truth is no one had seen her".

He stated that only V.K. Sasikala and her family had access to see Amma rest no one was allowed when she was admitted to Apollo Hospital in Chennai on September 22, 2016.

"Arun Jaitley, Amit Shah, V Naidu, Rahul Gandhi and DMK leaders visited Amma but they could only see Pratap Reddy and Sasikala", Mr Sreenivasan further added.

Read more: AIADMK expels Sasikala, says party to retrieve 'two leaves' symbol

After prolonged treatment for infection and other complications, Jayalalithaa had died of a heart attack on December 5, 2016.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami had announced the government's decision to set up an inquiry commission to probe Jayalalithaa's death which will be headed by a retired High Court judge.

Ever since Jayalalithaa's death, there have been hints of foul play over her death, with critics pointing fingers at the now jailed Sasikala.

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New Delhi:

The Thane police is interrogating Dawood Ibrahims brother Iqbal Kaskar in an extortion case. During interrogation, Iqbal refuted claims that his brother Dawood is unwell.

Iqbal contradicted the reports where it being said that Dawood is suffering from chronic illness and negotiating a deal to return to India.

Iqbal had also revealed that he had spoken to Dawoods first wife Mehjabeen over phone. He said that his wife Rizwana met Mehjabeen in Dubai last year.

Dawoods brother claimed that he had spoken to his Bhabhi over phone when Rizwana met Mehjabeen in Dubai.

Iqbal said that Dawood is presently in Pakistan and also shared 4-5 addressed where he is presently residing. He also claimed that Dawood moves around in Pakistan with proper security. He also iterated that Dawood is facing no physical difficulties.

Earlier, Thane police team arrested Iqbal Kaskar for running an extortion racket against builders, land owners, businessmen as well as jewellers.

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New Delhi :

It is not in the interest of Indian Muslims to give refuge to Rohingya immigrants and the government should not pay heed to the "vote hungry" politicians of the country, said the Shiv Sena on Saturday.

Questioning the patriotism of those who are rooting to grant refuge to Rohingyas, the Sena said, "Having sympathy for these people for votes is the height of anti-nationalism. Already, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are living here in large numbers.

"If Rohingyas also get added now due to these vote-hungry politicians, it will not be long before what happenedin Myanmar happens here as well. And in the process, Indian Muslims will be crushed," the Sena said in an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

It should be noted that large number of Rohingyas have faced exodus at the hands of Myanmarese army which has resulted a high influx into Bangladesh and India. "At present, around 40,000 Rohingyas are living in the country.

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims have entered India illegally and are a threat to the nation's security. "The Centre also believes some of them have links with Pakistan's (spy agency) ISI," the Sena organ said.

Also Read: Rohingya crisis: Aung Suu Kyi welcomes international scrutiny

"If somebody wants these people to stay and prosper here, do they have any patriotism in their blood? It is because of some selfish Muslim clerics that a common Muslim man is always under suspicion," the Marathi daily added.

Two days ago, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the Rohingyas are illegal immigrants and not refugees who have applied for asylum in India.

Also read : Rajnath Singh: Mistake to consider Rohingyas as refugees

The Centre told Parliament on August 9 that more than 14,000 Rohingyas, registered with the UNHCR, are at present staying in India. However, aid agencies estimate there are about 40,000 Rohingya Muslims in the country.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed farmers in Varanasias Shahanshahpur on Saturday. PM Modi laid foundation for toilet under 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' in Shahanshahpur. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was also present.

Here are the live updates from PM Modi's tour:

# LED bulbs have been installed in street lights in Kashi, says PM Modi

# We have taken responsibility for tough jobs, says PM ModiA

# If Modi won't do tough jobs then who will, says PM ModiA

#A 'Swachhta' has to become 'Swabhav', it'sA our collective responsibility. A cleaner India will also be a healthier India: PM Modi

#A For us, country is bigger than party: PM Narendra Modi in Varanasi

# By 2022, all the poor will have a home of their own, says PM Modi

# It is our responsibility to provide shelter to poorest of poor, says PM Modi

# Cleanliness can eradicate all diseases, says PM Modi

# It is my privilege to lay foundation for toilet, says PM Modi

# Unhygienic conditions are root cause of many diseases, says PM ModiA

#A Our target is to double income of farmers by 2022, says PM Modi

#A For us, governance is not about vote banks or winning elections. Our priority is development of the country: PM Modi

# We are very ahead in milk production but it is dismal in terms of milk production per cattle, says PM Modi

# Our priorities are not set according to votes: PM ModiA

# People will benefit fromA Pashu ArogyaA Mela: PM Modi

#A I congratulate CM Yogi Adityanath forA Pashu Arogya Mela, says PM Modi

# I won't let the efforts of people, who are attending the addressal,A to go in vain, says PM ModiA

# PM Modi begins speech in front of farmers in Shahanshahpur

# Varanasi: PM Narendra Modi at Pashu Arogya Mela in Shahanshahpur. He will later address the farmers.

Varanasi: PM Narendra Modi at Pashu Arogya Mela in Shahanshahpur. He will later address the farmers. pic.twitter.com/4buMj5QXxF a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 23, 2017

# PM Modi inaugurates Pashu Arogya Mela in Shahanshahpur

# Governor Ram Naik and CM Yogi Adityanath was also present

# PM Modi interacts with villagers in Shahanshahpur

# PM Modi lays foundation of for toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

Varanasi: PM Modi lays foundation for toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, in Shahanshahpur, CM Yogi Adityanath also present pic.twitter.com/OkyELlanJb a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 23, 2017

# PM Modi reaches Shahanshahpur

# PM Modi to reach Shahanshahpur shortly

Earlier on Friday, PM Modi said development was the solution to all the problems in the country and accused the previous governments of destroying the public exchequer in their bid to win elections.

Modi, who is on his first visit to Varanasi after the BJPas landslide victory in the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in March this year, also launched several development projects worth over Rs 1,000 crore for his Lok Sabha constituency.

aDevelopment is the solution to all our problems,a Modi said addressing a public meeting here.

aGovernments in the past were such that they seemed to hate development. For them, national exchequer was destroyed in the task of winning elections),a he added.

Targeting the previous governments, Modi alleged they were driven by political calculations, resulting in schemes being inaugurated but never seeing completion.

aWe not only launch but also complete projects.a

Asserting that his governmentas effort was to empower the poor, he said, aOur aim is to see that the dream of development is fulfilled and lives of poor changes and they get opportunities.a

Modi said even the poor people do not want their future generations to eke out a living like themselves. aNo poor person wants to give their children their poverty in inheritance,a Modi said.

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New Delhi:

The main opposition party Congress on Saturday demanded an explanation from Narendra Modi government over absconding don Dawood Ibrahims wife Mehjabin Shaikh visiting Mumbai undetected last year.

In a video message, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said, Wife of [Dawood] Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping.

Surjewala questioned the investigative agencies and asked what CBI and RAW were doing when she visited Mumbai and left quietly.

Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back.

Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her? he asked.

Also Read | Raj Thackeray claims Dawood Ibrahim in talks with Modi-govt, wants to surrender

The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), defence minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and home minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers, Surjewala said.

Earlier on Friday, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar, brother of Indias most wanted don told investigators that Mehjabin Shaikh visited Mumbai in 2016 to meet her father Salim Kashmiri.

A Maharashtra anti-extortion cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma had arrested Iqbal Kaskar from Mumbai in an extortion case.

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New Delhi:

Pakistani troops targeted Indian border outposts and hamlets in Jammu, Samba and Poonch districts in overnight firing and shelling, injuring two BSF jawans and five civilians, officials said on Friday.

Continuous violations of the ceasefire by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) have forced hundreds of border residents to flee their homes.

Pakistan troops engaged in heavy firing and mortar shelling on villages and border outposts in Arnia, R S Pura and Ramgarh sectors along the IB in Jammu and Samba districts since last evening, the officials said.

They targeted over 20 villages. Three civilians in Satowali village of R S Pura sector were injured in Pakistani shelling and had to be hospitalised, they said, adding that another villager was injured in Treva in Arnia sector. In Ramgarh sector in Samba, two BSF jawans suffered minor injuries in Pakistani firing, the officials said.

Pakistan also engaged in heavy firing and shelling in Poonch sector along the LoC last evening. An eight-year-old boy was injured in the firing, they said.

Over 500 people were evacuated by the police from a few border hamlets targeted by Pakistani troops last night, they said. The villagers have been housed in a camp.

Over 20,000 people have also fled their homes and hearths in Arnia and R S Pura sectors in the past few days, the officials said. There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the LoC between September 13 and September 18.

Firing and shelling resumed on September 21 after a two- day lull. A BSF jawan and a civilian were killed and 25 others including five BSF personnel were injured in the shelling and firing by Pakistani troops during the period.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.

With Inputs from PTI

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New Delhi:

Alwar police on Saturday arrested a self-styled godman Baba Falahari on sexual assault complaints by a woman. A woman from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur had lodged sexual assault complaint against him.

Earlier, the girl, who hails from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, lodged a complaint against Kaushlendra Prapanacharya Phalahari Maharaj alleging that he had sexually exploited her at his ashram in Rajasthans Alwar on August 7.

Hemraj Meena, SHO Aravali police station said, Bilaspur police have sent the complaint here. We have registered a case of sexual exploitation and initiated investigation.

After visiting the ashram of the accused, police found that he was undergoing a treatment at a private hospital in the city, Meena said.

Kaushlendra Maharaj will be interrogated after permission from doctors, he added.

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New Delhi:

Ukrainian Ambassador Igor Polikha's whose mobile phone was snatched while taking pictures of the Red Fort has been recovered, following which one person was arrested, the police said.

Person who snatched the mobile phone was identified and raid was conducted to arrest him. Police arrested one person for possession of mobile phone of Ukraine's ambassador to India.

The snatched iPhone has also been recovered, said Jatin Narwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North). Polikha was alone at the time of the incident that took place on Wednesday morning.

He was clicking pictures of the Red Fort while standing on a road near the monument when a man came towards him, they said. In his complaint, the envoy claimed that the man snatched his iphone within seconds and fled from there.

Following the incident, police rounded up more than 100 suspects and questioned them. The police did not have any clues to the accused since none of the CCTV cameras, installed in the area, captured his face clearly.

However, the priest of the temple, where the ambassador was standing when his phone was snatched, helped the police to prepare the sketch of the accused.

The sketch was circulated among the pavement dwellers living in the areas nearby, said an officer privy to the probe. He added that the police also questioned the people who are in the business of buying stolen mobile phones, and through this the police managed to identify the accused.

However, when the police reached his residence in Nand Nagri he was found to be on the run. They caught hold of his accomplice, Rajender Prasad (26), who was standing guard when the accused fled with the ambassador's phone, the officer said. Narwal said the police were conducting raids to nab him the main accused. Police said Polikha is a photography enthusiast. His phone contained pictures he had clicked and some personal information.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi:

Separatist leader Shabir Shah confessed during interrogation that he was in a "regular" touch with 26/11 mastermind and JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, said Enforcement Directorate.

Shah revealed he was in regular contact with LeT founder Hafiz Saeed and had last spoken to the terrorist in January this year.

The Enforcement Directorate filed a chargesheet against Shah in a Delhi Court on Saturday. In the chargesheet, ED said the Separatist leader has revealed his links with hawala operators in Pakistan, who were laundering money to fund militancy and unrest in Kashmir,

According to the reports, Shah told ED that he was paying a 3 percent commission to Pakistan hawala operators for laundering money.

Also Read | Pak terror funding: NIA arrests Geelanis son-in-law, 6 others

Earlier in July this year, Shabir Shah was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with over a decade-old money laundering case against him for alleged terror funding.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had issued multiple summons to Shah, but he never deposed before the central investigating agency.

The ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Shah and his another Aslam Wani.

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New Delhi :

Shahanshahpur, a village 30 kms from PM Narendra Modi's constituency Varanasi, today achieved another historical milestone of hosting the PM himself. 450 years ago in this village Mughal ruler Humayun took shelter in the hut of an older woman during his battle with Sher Shah Suri.

The Prime Minster was there to inaugurate 'Pashu Arogya Mela' (cattle health fair), being organised for the first time in the village, on 1,800 acres. He also laid the foundation stone for toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the village.

Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Minister of State for Rural Development MahendraSingh and BJP's UP President Mahendra Nath Pandey were also present on the occasion. The story of Mughal emperor gives the villagers a sense of pride. The presence of PM Modi has given them a new impetus.

The story goes that Humayun took refuge in the villlage after crossing the Ganga late at night. Humayun was finally able to defend from Sher Shuri. It is then when the the elderly woman gave him Sher Shah Suri.

Years later, when Humayun's soldiers succeeded in locating the village, the residents learnt who the overnightguest was. After Emperor Humayun restored his rule, he sent his soldiers to say thanks to the elderly woman. Unfortunately,she was dead by then.

It was then the villahe came to be known as Kalupur was named Shahanshahpur.

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New Delhi:

The death toll due to swine flu in Madhya Pradesh stands at 87 from July 1 this year till now even as 129 persons are being treated for the disease in different hospitals, officials said on Friday.

Health Department Director K.L. Sahu told news agency IANS that, two persons suffering from swine flu died in two Indore hospitals on Thursday.

The disease is spreading continuously as approximately one person is dying every day due to the disease. The toll from July 1 to September 21 is 87, he added.

He also informed that 529 persons were found to be suffering from the H1N1 virus in the given period. All hospitals and clinics have formed separate wards for treatment of patients suffering from the disease.

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New Delhi:

If the Durga Puja organisers in West Bengal want immersion of idol on the day of Muharram on October 1, then they will have to procure No Objection Certificate (NoC) from the police.

At a meeting called by the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, it was finalised that police would seek permission requests from organisers by Sunday.

Few ministers and senior police officers, including the state director general of police (DGP), attended the meeting. It was also decided in the meeting that superintendents of police (SPs) in the districts with international borders will be put on alert on the day of immersion to avoid any mishap.

The puja organisers will have to take permission from the police for immersion (on Muharram day). The permission might be denied or granted based on law and order situation, said West Bengal Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya.

We are fully prepared for law and order situation in Kolkata. I would like to appeal to people not to upload provocative posts on social media, said Calcutta Police Commissioner, Rajeev Kumar.

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New Delhi:

Iran has successfully launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, a state-media report said on Saturday. The missile was tested in defiance of US warnings as the countrys President vowed to carry on with its missile program.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade on Friday.

Moreover, it also carried in-flight video from the nose cone.The missile was launched during a military parade in Tehran which commemorated the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

Iran also displayed other home-made advanced missiles, including ballistic missiles, which are reported to have ranges of 1,300 km to 2,000 km.

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New Delhi:

Chinas earthquake administration said the 3.4 magnitude quake that hit North Korea on Saturday was a suspected explosion, probably another nuclear bomb test by the isolated DPRK.

China's seismic service CENC said it detected a zero-depth earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)

It said epicentre of the quake was almost same with a similar little depth earthquake on Sept. 3, which was actually a nuclear test.

According to South Korea's meteorological agency, the earthquake was detected near the Punggyeri nuclear site in North Korea's Hamgyong Province.

However, the agency has said it has not detected any man-made sound waves and the initial view was that it was a natural tremor.

North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho had warned on Thursday that Kim Jong-un could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific.

Also Read | North Korea successfully tests 'missile ready' Hydrogen bomb

Earlier in the month, North Korea carried out its biggest ever sixth nuclear test, with seismic monitors measuring an "explosion" of 6.3 magnitudes near its main test site, sending tensions over its weapons ambitions to new heights.

On North Korean television, a newsreader called the test a "complete success" and said the "two-stage thermonuclear weapon" had "unprecedented" strength. Hours earlier, Pyongyang claimed its leader had inspected a hydrogen bomb meant for a new intercontinental ballistic missile.

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New Delhi:

A day after India slammed Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj addresses 72nd United Nations General Assembly session.

During her address, Swaraj is expected to deliver a stinging response to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi speech in which he accused India of war crimes in Kashmir.

EAM shall also raise the issues like global fight against terrorism, climate change and the reforms of United Nations Security Council.

India, in its bid to isolate Pakistan internationally, told UN on Friday that the country has become a synonym of terrorism.

Also Read | UNGA 2017: Pakistan is 'terroristan', exporting terrorism globally

Here are the live updates:

# EAM Sushma Swaraj ends by reciting a verse: May all be happy; May all be healthy; May all see what is good; May all be free from suffering.

# Nature sent its warning to the world. Once our gathering began, an earthquake struck Mexico. We are seeing tribulations across the world.

# EAM: PM Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship. Pakistans Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.

# He forgot under Shimla agreement and Lahore Declaration Ind & Pak resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally: EAM

# Pak PM has recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events.But his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters: EAM

# If the UNSC cannot agree on listing terrorists, how can we fight terrorism together: Swaraj

# "We made AIIMS. We took tremendous strides in the area of space research. We made doctors. We made engineers. You made jihadis. your jihadis are not just killing Indians but even people in Afghanistan and Bangladesh."

# Shahid Khaqan Abbasi levelled various allegations on us recently. When he was speaking, people sitting here were saying, Look! who is talking?

# India-Pakistan got freedom at the same time but today, India is known as a superpower in Information Technology while Pakistan is known for terrorism.

# We are fighting poverty but our neighbour Pakistan is fighting us: EAM

# India has displayed courage & leadership to take tough decisions which have launched the interlinked process of sustainable development.

# EAM spells out concerns like terrorism, climate change, maritime security, unemployment, gender empowerment, nuclear proliferation&cybersecurity.

# EAM: Our contemporary world is trapped in a deluge of troubles of which, surely, the most dangerous is the relentless rise of violence.

# Sushma Swaraj begins her address.

EAM Sushma Swaraj addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly session in New York pic.twitter.com/AThKjtO8XC  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

Indian delegation at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly session in New York #UNGA; EAM Sushma Swaraj to address shortly. pic.twitter.com/yq4xfPkzWv  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

# Sushma Swaraj shall begin her address at around 8:45 pm

# Currently Papua New Guinea PM Peter O'Neill is speaking at 72nd UNGA session, he condemns North Korea's nuclear threat.

# Sushma Swaraj's address at UN General Assembly to begin shortly.

The Big Speech! EAM @SushmaSwaraj to address 72nd UN General Assembly session approx. 8.15 PM India time. Live on https://t.co/wWfXa9htpG  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) September 23, 2017

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United Nations:

Bombarding Pakistan with her piercing eloquence at UNGA, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday said the in reply to India's IITs, IIMS and AIIMS, the country has produced LeT (Lashkar-e-Taeba), JeM (Jaish-e-Mohammed) and HM (Hizbul Mujahideen).

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, Sushma Swaraj spoke on issues like terrorism, climate change, maritime and cyber security, UN Security Council reforms, poverty and unemployment.

In her hard-hitting speech, Swaraj accused Pakistan of waging a war against India and said a country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

Referring to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasis speech on Thursday wherein he accused India of violating human rights and state-sponsored terrorism, Swaraj strongly advised the neighbourhood to introspect.

I would like today to tell Pakistans politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror? Swaraj asked.

India had ripped into Pakistan on Friday, describing it as terroristan and a land of pure terror that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

Also Read | EAM Sushma Swaraj hits Pakistan left, right and centre at UNGA, top quotes

Speaking in Hindi for the second consecutive year at the annual UNGA session, Swaraj said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistans nefarious export of terrorism.

We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? she said, referring to the institutions such as IITs, IIMs and AIIMS.

We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced??You have produced terrorists...you have created terrorist camps, you have created Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen and Haqqani network, she said, adding that doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death.

Swaraj said that if Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

The minister said the terrorist groups created by Pakistan is not only harming India, but also hurting its neighbours - Afghanistan and Bangladesh - as well.

She said that for the first time in the UN history, Pakistan sought right to reply (RoR) for one nation and then it had to simultaneously respond to three nations.

Doesnt it reflect your nefarious designs, she asked.

Referring to Prime Minister Abbasis speech, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader wasted too much of his time in making accusations against India.

Those listening had only one observation: Look whos talking! A country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium, Swaraj said.

Commenting on Abbasis claim that Pakistans founder M A Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship, she said while it remains open to question whether Jinnah actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship since he assumed office.

Pakistans Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer, she said.

Highlights | Sushma Swaraj at UNGA: India produced scholars, scientists, Pakistan produced terrorists

Noting that Abbasi spoke of a Comprehensive Dialogue between the two countries, Swaraj reminded him that on December 9, 2015, when she was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that dialogue between India and Pakistan should be renewed and named it a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

The word bilateral was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process, Swaraj said.

On old UN resolutions mentioned by Abbasi, Swaraj said that his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters.

He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at forgetting facts that destroy their version, Swaraj said.

On climate change, Swaraj said the challenge posed by it requires more serious action than talk and asked the leaders of the developed world to help the less fortunate ones through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing.

She also warned the international community that there is a growing question mark over maritime security and that nuclear proliferation is again making dangerous headlines.

Nuclear proliferation is back in the zone of dangerous headlines. Cybersecurity has become a source of deep insecurity, Swaraj said in an apparent reference to the continued provocative behaviour of North Korea which has been carrying out missile tests and nuclear tests in violation of the UN Security Council resolution.

She said a large part of the globes population is still tortured by hunger and poverty, and added that the young are beginning to lose hope as they confront unemployment.

Women, victims of historic discrimination, are demanding what they must get gender empowerment, she noted.

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MAYVILLE  Interim Police Chief Ryan Vossekuil has rejected an offer from the city of Mayville to serve as the police chief and as a result, the city is considering other candidates for the position.

According to a news release from Mayor Rob Boelk, Mayville Police and Fire Commission selected Vossekuil to be hired as the new police chief and the city offered a formal contract. Vossekuil rejected the offer and he did not make a counter-proposal.

The release states that due to former Police Chief Christopher MacNeills resignation, the city included protections from an employment standpoint.

The contract offered included a 12-month probationary period. A probationary period carries the risk that Vossekuil could be more easily dismissed and thus put benefits Vossekuil has earned over time in jeopardy. Vossekuil, a Mayville native, has been with the police department since 2003 as a full-time sworn officer. He was promoted to sergeant in 2012 and to captain in 2015.

Vossekuil said in a phone interview that he is disappointed that an agreement could not be worked out.

I had some serious concerns about stipulations in the contract, Vossekuil said. My attorney advised that no police chief in the state of Wisconsin would sign that contract.

Boelk declined to comment when contacted Thursday.

Until the city hires a replacement, Vossekuil will remain the interim police chief. Vossekuil has been serving as the interim chief since April.

Being the chief of police in Mayville has been a goal of mine since Ive been a kid, he said. I was honored and humbled that the Police and Fire Commission appointed me.

He said that he still wants the position, but wants a contract that he sees as fair and similar to other police chief contracts.

PFC Chairman Dan Bell said the commission will discuss the next steps for hiring a new chief at its next meeting, but declined to comment further.

A group called Mayville First has created a Change.org petition showing support for the PFCs appointment of Vossekuil as chief. It has 651 supporters. Vossekuil said he appreciates the support.

Former Police Chief MacNeill was accused of altering a report about the son of a former Mayville police officer. Boelk placed MacNeill on paid administrative leave Feb. 9. He resigned March 31 as chief.

Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation agents started investigating MacNeill in fall 2016. He also was investigated by the Watertown Police Department at the request of Boelk.

In August, MacNeill waived his preliminary hearing after the court discussed a plea agreement that would reduce felony charges against him to misdemeanor charges.


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VANCOUVER, Sept. 22, 2017 /CNW/ - Nevsun Resources Ltd. (TSX:NSU) (NYSE MKT: NSU) ("Nevsun" or the "Company") today announced that Chief Operating Officer, Frazer Bourchier, will step down from the Company to pursue a position with a gold company based in Toronto. Mr. Bourchier continues with the Company until December 31, 2017. Nevsun has a de-centralized model with strong Eritrean and Serbian teams who will manage the business during a successor search. As part of his transition through December 31, 2017, Mr. Bourchier will work closely with Nevsun management to transition key relationships in Eritrea and Serbia.

"Frazer has been a valued member of the Nevsun team and we wish him all the best in his future endeavours," said Peter Kukielski, Nevsun's President and Chief Executive Officer, "We have commenced a search for Frazer's successor, and remain focused on delivering the Timok PEA in October and the PFS in Q1 of 2018 (amended from Q1 of 2017)."

About Nevsun Resources Ltd.

Nevsun Resources Ltd. is the 100% owner of the high-grade copper-gold Timok Upper Zone and 60% owner of the Timok Lower Zone in Serbia. Nevsun generates cashflow from its 60% owned copper-zinc Bisha Mine in Eritrea. Nevsun is well positioned with a strong debt-free balance sheet to grow shareholder value through advancing Timok to production.

NEVSUN RESOURCES LTD.,

"Peter G.J. Kukielski"

Peter G.J. Kukielski

President & Chief Executive Officer

SOURCE Nevsun Resources Ltd.

For further information: Nevsun Investor Relations, Tel: +1 604 623 4700, Toll free: 1 888 600 2200, Email: [email protected], Website: www.nevsun.com
Spotify is Beating Apple Music and Here Is Why

Of the two major front-runners in the steaming war, Spotify and Apple Music, the former appears to be beating out its competition on several fronts. Here we look at some of main reasons for Spotify's growing success over Apple, including its 'bundling' with Hulu.

_______________________

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

At around 65 million, Spotify has more monthly paying customers than any of its competitors by far. One of the reasons is that it was one of the first in the streaming music space, and another is that it has a fairly simple user interface. But the biggest reason by far is the fact that Spotify continues to make affordable deals with its main customer base, with the latest partnering with Hulu as a perfect example.

Spotify and Hulu are collaborating in a bundle aimed at students with a price of just $4.99. Considering that Spotifys current student plan is already $4.99, this new deal where streaming video service Hulu is included will undoubtedly be very attractive to its prime target audience. Whats even better is that if youre already a subscriber to Spotifys student plan, you can activate Hulu retroactively.

As stated previously, this deal is one of the reasons why Spotify has the lead in the streaming music market and it user base continues to grow faster than the competition. The company makes it easy and inexpensive for musics most avid consumers to become familiar with streaming, and it siphons off users from its main free competitor in YouTube at the same time. Whats more, music industry insiders have been saying for years that the ideal price point for a music subscription is $4.99 and that price will stimulate real growth in the space. Spotify has been offering its entry level paid subscription to students at this price for a while, and now with the Hulu deal its even more attractive.

This is a big deal because so far it seems that once a person commits to an online subscription to just about anything, its difficult for another company to pry that subscription away. Consumers make their decision and tend to stay with it. Suffice it to say that once a company gets you, it will probably take either some major mistreatment or a new technology innovation to wrest that subscription away.

Theres actually more to this Spotify/Hulu collaboration that meets the eye though. Spotify knows that it will eventually need to offer something unique and interesting video-wise if it wants to play in a bigger media sandbox. Its currently burning through cash so theres none available to invest in original programming anyway (although it does have plans for a few music-oriented shows), which requires much deeper pockets than the company has, or maybe ever will have. Having a partner like Hulu solves those issues though. That company will reportedly spend more than $2 billion in original content in 2017 alone, and if Spotify users have access to this scripted content through a bundle, its almost as good as coming from Spotify alone in terms of branding.

Its a win for Hulu too. It gets access to current Spotify subscribers, and will be part of the online environment for prime demographic new subscribers that it might not have access to otherwise.

Meanwhile Apple is said to be investing in its own original video content, and it also has a $4.99 student program. It always feels like Apple Music is playing catch up and not innovating though, so the narrative is lead by Spotify, and thats where all the attention gets focused. Whats a better story  Spotify and Hulu cutting a deal or Apple spending a vague amount of money on some vague future content? Of course, then Apple has a big iPhone event that makes you even forget that Apple Music exists.

I get it that Apple Music is a low priority for Apple and that it may even be a loss-leader of sorts. It certainly doesnt have to stand on its own and will always be supported by super deep pockets in a way that virtually all other companies (save for Google and Amazon) can only envy. But Spotify has the lead in streaming subscribers by a large margin, and if things continue to play out as they are, it wont be giving up that mantle any time soon.

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The Federal Government and the West African Power Pool have commenced the process for the construction of a second 330 kilovolt transmission line that will further boost electricity supply to the Republic of Benin.

Nigeria supplies electricity to the Community Electric du Benin, the power firm of the Republic of Benin, and the neighbouring country is owing Nigeria several billions of naira as electricity debt.

The new 330KV transmission line being constructed by the Federal Government through the Transmission Company of Nigeria and the WAPP will be ready for use by 2021.

The interim Managing Director, TCN, and Chairman of WAPP, Usman Mohammed, announced the commencement of the process for the construction of the power line during the projects Environmental and Social Impact Assessment study in Abuja on Friday.

The second 330KV Ikeja West transmission line to Sakete in Benin Republic is necessary as the first could soon be constrained by the demand for more power from the Nigerian grid increase, he said.

Mohammed also told participants at the event that Nigerias transmission infrastructure was no longer the weakest link in the power sector value chain going by the latest expansion drive at the TCN.

The TCN is no longer the weakest link in the power value chain as it is fast-tracking the implementation of many power projects. The transmission, rehabilitation and expansion programme seeks to expand the grid to about 20,000 megawatts in the next three years, he said.

Mohammed added that the TCN had embarked on a nationwide installation of transmission transformers, noting that three of the power equipment were installed in Lagos last week, two scheduled for the North, while another three would be installed in the Port Harcourt region soon.

He said the WAPP project was supported by the New Partnership for Africas Development and the African Development Bank, adding that the ESIA study would be conducted in six months, after which the construction would take another 24 months and should be ready by 2021.

The Permanent Secretary in the power arm of the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Louis Edozien, urged the Community Electric du Benin to immediately settle its accumulated electricity debt.

The electricity that we have already supplied is not paid for. I use this platform to emphasise to the CEB that the debt that has accumulated needs to be settled quickly. It helps us explain to Nigerians why we should expand the supply by doing this kind of project. A mechanism must be in place to make sure the debt does not balloon again, he stated.

Expressing support for the project and Nigerias ability to deliver, Edozien said power generation companies could now supply up to 7,000MW of electricity, but noted that the distribution companies could only distribute about 4,600MW.

The Director-General, CEB, Dr. Karimou Sika, appreciated the Nigerian government and the WAPP for the project and stated that it would provide an opportunity to sustain the Republic of Benin power system and ensure adequate supply of electricity to his country.


Members of Nigeria Governors Forum arrived the Hilltop Mansion of Akwa Ibom State Government House, Uyo, to attend the 30 Anniversary celebration of the State creation yesterday.



The Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo is expected to commission an Electric Metering Factory, Syringe Factory and a General Hospital in Onna and Etinan Local Government Areas of the state.
File photo

Nigerian Army on Friday, gave a detailed update on its Operation Python Dance II in the Southeast, war against criminals and onslaught against the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its leader Nnamdi Kanu.

Below is a statement released on Friday by Colonel Sagir Musa, Deputy Director Public Relations 82 Division of the Nigerian Army.

*****************************

Following the commencement of Exercise EGWU EKE II on Friday 15th September 2017 in 82 Division Area of Responsibility, simultaneous activities have started in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo and Cross River States without hitch. The essence of the exercise is to enhance troops preparedness and proficiency in dealing with emerging security challenges peculiar to the South-Eastern Region, such as kidnappings, armed robbery, communal crisis, farmers- herdsmen clashes, cultism, violent agitations and insurgency, amongst others.

One interesting aspect of the exercise is that, it is multi agency in nature and execution, thus enhancing synergy of efforts among the Services, Security and response agencies. Relevant para-military organizations such as the Nigerian Police Force, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp, Department of State Security Service, Federal Road Safety Commission, National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency and Nigerian Immigration Service are all synergizing and collaborating in the exercise to ensure attainment of these objectives.

Similarly, there are elaborate humanitarian activities associated with it, hence, the 82 Division Nigerian Army embarked on free medical services. The first was on Tuesday 18 th September 2017 at the Adult Education Mass Literacy Centre, Nkwuagu Primary School Amaagu, Abakaliki Local Government Area (LGA ) of Ebonyi State.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General TY Buratai, accompanied by the Deputy Governor of Ebonyi State, Dr. Eric Kelechi Igwe, the General Officer Commanding 82 Division Nigerian Army, Major General Adamu Baba Abubakar and the Chief of Training and Operations Army Headquarters, Major General David Ahmadu and other senior Army Officers, were personally present at the commencement of the free medical outreach.

The turnout was impressive, as over 2,000 people benefited in the areas of dental, optometry, laboratory services and blood pressure measurements. Others were dispensing of eye glasses, de-worming tablets, assorted drugs, mosquito nets and sanitizer to various categories of people.

In the same vein, similar medical outreach will be conducted at Nnarambia community Central Primary School, Ahiara Mbaise in Ahiazu Mbaise LGA of Imo State on 23rd September 2017 as part of the activities of Exercise EGWU EKE II. The Division has also scheduled similar free medical outreaches in other states covering its area of responsibility during the exercise.

Furthermore, in addition to visiting the Operational Headquarters of Sector 5 of Exercise EGWU EKE II, at 24 Support Engineering Regiment, Abakaliki, the Chief of Army Staff also visited the Step-Up Headquarters of 82 Division at the Nigerian Army Language Institute, Ovim, in Isiuokwuato LGA of Abia State.

So far, the troops have been carrying out routine activities associated with the exercise seamlessly along with other supporting Services and agencies. Some suspected criminals were arrested, farmers-herdsmen as well as communal clashes have been averted. Similarly, kidnappers, cultists, armed robbers and other criminal elements have been denied freedom of action through patrols, raids and manning of checkpoints as follows:





PATROLS

Following credible intelligence report and some distress calls from Ukpata community in Uzo-Wani LGA of Enugu State of a planned attack on the community by Fulani herdsmen on the 19th September 2017, a patrol team of Sector 3 was deployed in the area from 17th September 2017 to date. Through that we were able to prevent serious clash between the Fulani herdsmen and the community.

Similarly, at about 4.30pm on 17th September 2017, troops of Sector 2 on patrol at Ohaji-Egbema general area, along Obokofia-Agwa, Rombe-Oguta road junction in Imo State, intercepted 2 persons in a vehicle conveying about 15kg of a substance suspected to be Indian hemp. The suspects and the substance have been handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency.

Also troops of Sector 2, Sub Sector 1, at about 12.00am 19th September 2017, while on patrol along Onitsha-Owerri road arrested 3 suspected hoodlums; Chisom Francis, Chukwu Enema and Uchenna Ogataku that barricaded the highway, extorting money and other valuables from hapless motorists resulting in serious traffic jam. The suspects have been handed over to Ogbaku Police Station.

RAIDS

Following a tip off, a criminal hideout was raided at about 12.15am in Obinze community general area on 17th September 2017. Consequently, 17 suspected criminals were apprehended by troops of Sector 4. Items recovered include 3 x locally made pistols, 5 Dane guns and 15 rounds of various calibers of ammunition. Other items recovered were local charms and 7 wraps of substance suspected to be Indian hemp.

Furthermore, at about 1.30am on 17th September 2017, troops of Sector 4 in conjunction with the Nigeria Police raided a criminal den at Ukukwa North Local Government Area of Anambra State, where they arrested 7 suspected criminals. Items recovered are; 4 x locally made pistols, 420 live cartridges, about 50kg of Cannabis and some Charms. The suspects and the items were handed over to the Nigeria Police.

Similarly, based on intelligence, troops of Sector 2, at about 12.00am hours on 18th September 2017, conducted 2 raid operations on suspected cultists shrines at Awara and Assa communities of Ohaji-Egbema LGA of Imo State. The raids resulted in the arrest of 10 suspected cult members. They were however, transferred to the Nigeria Police after preliminary investigation.

In addition, at about 2.30am on 19th September 2017, troops of Sector 1, raided a notorious kidnappers den at Ohanze community in Obingwa Local Government Area of Abia State. The operation led to the release of a kidnap victim, Mr. Monday Benson and the arrest of 3 suspected kidnappers; Arinze Ugiri aged 39 years, from Amouvuro community, Okezie Nwobolo, aged 30 years, from Amouvuro Nteuzor community and Michael Sunday 24 years old, from Okeyan Nteuzor village of Abia State. Suspects have also been handed over to the Nigeria Police after initial questioning.





CHECKMATING VIOLENT ACTIVITIES OF THE BANNED INDIGENIOUS PEOPLE OF BIAFRA

Despite the initial opposition to Exercise EGWU EKE II by the outlawed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra members and their sympathizers and unpatriotic elements, the general area of the South East especially Aba in Abia State is now fully stabilized. The usual violent activities of the outlawed Biafra National Guards (manning check points and extorting money from traders and motorists) have now been checkmated. Similarly, the outlawed Biafra terrorists group presence is no longer visible and people go about their normal businesses without fear, let or hindrance.

The 82 Division Nigerian Army wishes to reassure the public that it is poised to maintaining the peace and security in the entire South-Eastern Region. Members of the public are please requested to cooperate with security agencies by remaining law abiding and passing credible information to the nearest security check point or call 193 and the various Sector Commanders telephone numbers that were earlier made public.
Happy New Month Nigeria! Welcome to the month of June. As the world searches for a respite from all its troubles since 2020 began, one can ...
During his stay in the country, Vice Admiral Mosiwa Samuel Hlongwane and his Nigerian counterpart Vice Admiral Ibok Ibas are expected to hold talks on the creation of strategic frame work for information sharing and mutual assistance.

The activities lined up for the visit include guided tour of naval establishments and units, courtesy calls on the Chief of the Defence Staff, Chief of the Naval Staff and Chief of the Air Staff. He will also visit the National Defence College Abuja.
Nnamdi Kanu at Aba

Azuka Jebose explains that Nnamdi Kanu would have succeeded in his call to arms struggle for the secession of Biafra, if not for his "thuggery", lack of discipline, careless utterances and unchecked rage.

Love Nnamdi Kanu or loathe him. You cannot ignore him. He is young, bold and brave. He took a path young politicians of Nigeria, feared or failed to walk on, in our nations political turbulence. He came and disturbed our nation's conscience. He was the proverbial gunpowder waiting to explode. Nnamdi exploded to national prominence with his call for a separate entity from Nigeria, threatening death and destruction to his once nation which in later years, he branded a zoo. Nnamdi was once a Nigerian patriot. But for his thuggery, lack of discipline, careless utterances and unchecked rage, Nnamdi Kanu would have succeeded in his call to arms struggle for the secession of Biafra.

Young Nigerians from East, West, North, South, paid attention to his defiance, commitment and courageous challenge to our rotten system. He brought to the forefront of our existence, sacred conversations, previously whispered in certain corners of our political frontiers. Nnamdi Kanu pricked the conscience of a troubled nation with a history of mismanagement, corruption, disenfranchisement, insincerity, and neglect of its everyday people, especially its youths. Those who were left behind by the system, privileged him attention, affection, welcome his selection as their inspirational leader, to deliver them from the ineptitudes of Nigeria. Nnamdi saw this acceptance and adoration from his people, thus, took a chance, but rather, as a separatist. If Nnamdi had been a nationalist, with an inclusive brand product and messaging for all Nigerians, I swear: I would have abandoned all things bright and beautiful to join him.

Despite his separatist agenda, he poked the ethnic and moral principles of our nation: he demanded we engaged ourselves as different ethnic groups: We did. We became our enemies: our best friends from different regions suddenly turned against us as our worse enemies, neighbors could no longer respond to early morning salutations from across the walkways because tribes and tongues differ: we became divisive with insults and dehumanization of our being. We lost our humanity and dignity as one people, under God. Nnamdi Kanu separated us. The wounds may later heal. The scars would be reminders that Kanu was here.

Nigeria, times are changing: we cannot continue to ignore what led to the anger and rage. The government cannot proscribe and declare Nnamdis platform, IPOB, as a terror group without addressing their grievances. Their reasons are our reasons as a nation in distress: the time is NOW. Let us examine the causes of our rage. Every tribe in Nigeria complained, through the years, of alleged marginalization by the Northern ethnic group. Most Ethic groups in Nigeria are treated as second-class citizens in our homeland. This may rattle my dear Northern friends. But we cannot continue to deny our problems: Plenty Nnamdis would be birthed very soon if attempts are not made to level the playing field.

Sadly, Ndigbos have turned their silent protests into a movement for the creation of Biafra nation. It did not start today. It may not end tomorrow as long as the government remains passive about these brazen problems. It is time to listen to our complaints, recognize these problems and proffer a permanent solution. Every Nigerian should be guaranteed equality, equity, and fairness.

Ndigbos too should examine that which makes a great culture separate and unequal. Ndigbos are the most divisive ethnic group, among themselves, in Nigeria. Affluence, influence and morbid archaic cultural beholdings continue to create a clash of class within different Ndigbo nations. Its time to revisit the Efulefu, "Oshu Outcasts" and other nonsensical primitive cultural norms that are retrogressive, dehumanizing and not dignifying to a unique and amazingly industrious and brilliant people.

The next Nnamdi Kanu will certainly come with a more appealing message.

He shall be prepared and shall not fail. The next Nnamdi Kanus appeal shall penetrate beyond marginalization of a people, he shall call to action, awaken the minds and souls of disenfranchised unemployed brilliant Nigerians, young, old and dying. Guess what? Nigerians shall gravitate to his message of empowerment, of taking back Nigeria from an institutionalized ruling class, to we, the people.

The Next Nnamdi Kanu may not throw sticks and stones or wield machetes at the Army, carelessly insult and abuse leaders, elders, grass root leaders, Kings and other custodians of our cultural and tribal institutions: he definitely would not come under Ipobs platform. He shall walk our paths, urge Nigerians to get ready and take back our country from corrupt jack-booted politicians and past military authoritarianisms. The next Nnamdi Kanu shall be larger than him and broader than Biafra. I await that. What about you?

***

Written by Azuka Jebose
The Nigerian Army has described reports in a section of the media that Boko Haram is still holding seven local governments in Borno State...

The Nigerian Army has described reports in a section of the media that Boko Haram is still holding seven local governments in Borno State, as not only an attempt to propagate falsehood but a futile effort to misinform members of the public.The army in a statement by Onyema Nwachukwu, said contrary to the opinion of one Buba Galadima in an interview that Boko Haram is still in control of seven local governments in Borno, the reality on ground belie this as the terrorist group does not hold or control any local government area in the state.Read the full army statement on the issue below:The attention of the Headquarters Theatre Command Operation Lafiya Dole has been drawn to a publication in The Guardian newspaper of 21 September 2017 where one Buba Galadima in an interview claimed that Seven Local Governments of Borno State were still under control of Boko Haram terrorists; even though he failed to furnish members of the public with the names of those Local Government Areas.Obviously, this sweeping statement is not only an attempt to propagate falsehood but a futile effort to disinform members of the public on the true security situation in the north east from a perspective of one who is evidently detached from the realities of the counter terrorism cum counter insurgency operations in the north east. It is very crucial to set the record straight by making it crystal clear that contrary to his opinions, the Boko Haram Terrorists group does not hold or control any Local Government Area in Borno state or in the north east as claimed in the interview. These Local Government Areas have been liberated by troops of operation Lafiya Dole and the troops have continued to ensure security in these areas after routing out the insurgents. As a matter of fact, locals have been encouraged to return to their communities to resume their vocations and normal life.It may perhaps be needful to refresh memories by recalling that prior to the inauguration of Operations Lafiya Dole, the entire north east was infested with Boko Haram Terrorists, who became emboldened to the extent of declaring a caliphate with headquarters in Gwoza town. All that became history as the gallant troops of Operation Lafiya Dole came into the theatre, gradually but steadily decimating the insurgents and liberating held territories in a series of well-planned and coordinated joint ground and air operations. One of such major operations was the Operation RESCUE FINALE, which routed the insurgents out of its tactical headquarters in Camp Zeiro in Sambisa forest and out of its so called spiritual headquarters in Alargarno.Ever since, Operation Lafiya Dole has continued to relentlessly conduct several other operations such as Operation DEEP PUNCH, CHIKIN GUDU Operation and Operation RAWAN KADA alongside the Multinational Joint Task Force. These and many other operations have culminated in the degradation and incapacitation of the insurgent group. Apparently, this is the reason, the terrorist group is striving to remain relevant by resorting to callously use women and children to carry out suicide bomb attacks on soft and vulnerable targets.Currently, Operation Lafiya Dole in its resoluteness, is carrying out precursor operations that will lead to a final assault to decisively and finally put an end to the insurgency in the north east.Talking about logistical supplies, Operation Lafiya Dole regularly provides logistical support and replenishment to own troops deployed in all locations and Forward Operational Bases through the normal channels, using our main supply routes.More also, Theatre and formation Commanders routinely conduct working visits to troops in their formations and units within the theatre of operation. Hence, the question of troops been inaccessible as portrayed in the said article, is an irredeemable fallacy. Perhaps it is necessary to note that considering the vastness of the north east, Operation Lafiya Dole, aside holding tactical defensive positions to block the insurgents from access to logistics, has also gone ahead to insert Mobile Strike Teams in the theatre of operations to effectively patrol localities as well as seek out and neutralize the insurgents from their hideouts.Suffice to mention that in the month of August alone, a total of 82 Boko Haram insurgents have been killed in combat and 630 remote settlements were cleared by own troops.Our troops are tirelessly on the trail of the fleeing insurgents as devastating coordinated aerial and artillery bombardments are being unleashed on the terrorist group. Our troops are therefore not waiting only to repel BHT attacks as erroneously painted in the article, but are rather tactically deployed to deny the adversary freedom of action and access to logistics.Needless to add, that a group of insurgents on the run cannot hold or control any territory. Boko Haram lacks the capability to hold any territory in the north east, hence its mindless attack on innocent and vulnerable civilians with suicide bombings, most of which were made unsuccessful by our vigilant troops.While not attempting to dismiss the fact that as the fleeing faceless insurgents rummage for logistical replenishment, they occasionally mix up with unsuspecting locals and thereafter attack them. This definitely cannot be described as holding territory, rather, it only simply underscores the need for other relevant agencies to do more to ensure progressive reintegration of the locals into their various communities.Without sounding immodest, it is worthy to note that the counter terrorism and counter insurgency operations of Operation Lafiya Dole in the north east, has been commended within Nigeria and in the international community, resulting in several high level official visits to the north east by national and international bodies.While assuring that our focus in Operation Lafiya Dole remains clear and will not be derailed, the general public is urged not be misguided by the insinuations and disinformation contained in the said article as they are devoid of the true and realistic impressions of the security situation in the north east.
Harry Kane kept up his impressive scoring record against West Ham with his brace inspiring 10-man Tottenham to a 3-2 victory at the London Stadium.Kane netted twice in the space of four first-half minutes to take his tally against the Hammers to seven goals in his last six Premier League games.Javier Hernandez pulled one back for West Ham after Christian Eriksen had made it three, but despite Sergie Aurier picking up a red card and Cheikhou Kouyate netting late on, the hosts were unable to stage a comeback.West Ham looked slightly more threatening in the early stages, with Hernandez seeing a hopeful effort from distance palmed over by Hugo Lloris and Marko Arnautovic being thwarted by a last-ditch tackle from Aurier in the box.The first real clear-cut chance did not come until the 34th minute and Tottenham made it count, with Dele Alli running onto Eriksen's ball before picking out Kane in the middle to head home.And Tottenham then made it two just four minutes later, with Kane finding the back of the net again, this time firing in a rebound after Alli had been denied by a save from Joe Hart.Kane could have had a hat trick on the hour-mark when he smashed a free kick goalbound, only for his effort to rebound off the post.But just a few seconds later, Aurier's deflected pass landed at the feet of Eriksen, who picked out the bottom corner from the edge of the box to make it three for Spurs.It was not long until Kane hit the woodwork again, this time his low effort came back off the other post after he had linked up well with Alli.West Ham did pull one back on the 65th minute, with Jose Fonte heading on a corner to find Hernandez at the back post, who then nodded home from close range.And the home side were given a further boost five minutes later when Tottenham were reduced to 10 men after Aurier was shown a second yellow card for a late tackle on Andy Carroll.West Ham pulled another back with just a few minutes left on the clock when Kouyate arrived at the far post to head in Arthur Masuaku's cross, but Spurs were able to hold on for the three points.Credit: ESPN
World-record signing, Neymar, has said sorry to Edinson Cavani and his Paris Saint-Germain team-mates, after he argued with the striker over a penalty last weekend.Neymar and Cavani clashed over who should take a late penalty during Sundays 2-0 victory over Lyon at the Parc des Princes.Cavani missed from 12 yards and LEquipe reported that the pair had to be separated by team-mates in the changing room after the match.The French paper now claims the Brazilian has apologised to the PSG squad following the incident.Manager Unai Emery revealed on Thursday, that both Neymar and Cavani would be trusted to take penalties. But he refused to reveal who was his preferred choice.
TABERNACLE TWP. -- Two people were hospitalized after a late-night accident involving and ATV and a pedestrian, New Jersey State Police said.

The ATV struck a person at the intersection of Chatsworth Road and Patty Bowker Road around 11:51 p.m., according to New Jersey State Police Spokesman Trooper Alejandro Goez.

Two people -- the pedestrian and the operator of the ATV -- were taken to Cooper University Hospital, Camden, with what Goez described as non-life threatening injuries.

Troopers from the Red Lion Station in Burlington County were on the scene for about an hour and a half.

Further details were not available Saturday morning. The accident remains under investigation, Goez said.

Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- The photo of Kiedron Alexander's back shows his skin bubbling and peeling, raw, red flesh poking through.

The image was taken by his lawyer after Alexander was treated at Kennedy Hospital in Stratford on the night he claims, according to court documents, that his girlfriend threw boiling water on him. That night, in January 2016, he said, his girlfriend was the first to reach the phone and she called 911.

Police would later arrest Alexander, who was 32 at the time, for assault, despite the fact that he claims he never laid a hand on her. Three months later, the case was dismissed. Toni Telles, Alexander's attorney, said a judge did not find his girlfriend's testimony to be credible.

Now, nearly two years after the domestic violence incident in their Pine Hill apartment - a town that had the 12th highest domestic violence rate in New Jersey in 2015, police figures show - Alexander is suing the agencies that arrested him, claiming he was targeted because he's a man.

"People get in to arguments all the time, but the idea that the Camden County prosecutors or Pine Hill has a policy that forces an officer to choose who to arrest and arresting someone because of their gender should not be tolerated," Telles said. "They are not permitted by law to discriminate against certain protected categories and this includes sex and gender."

Pine Hill borough counsel David Patterson said Wednesday the borough does not comment on pending litigation.

Veteran trial attorney and Rutgers-Camden University law professor Victoria Chase specializes in local domestic violence cases. She has a different view of how police handle domestic violence complaints.

"I can say that I do not share the perception the police are instructed in such a manner that the result is that men are unfairly arrested," Chase said. "Rather, as the statute requires, police are instructed to ascertain whether there is a visible sign of injury. Where one party has such a visible sign of injury, the person apparently causing the injury must be arrested. My perception is that police are in fact applying the visible sign of injury requirement without reference to gender."

According to a study on violence between partners conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in 2014, 22 percent of women and 14 percent of men experienced severe physical violence from a partner in their lifetime. That violence could include things such as being hit with something hard, being kicked or beaten, or being burned on purpose, the study said.

After the alleged assault, police complaints were filed against both Alexander and his girlfriend. The complaint against Alexander said he allegedly "attempted to cause serious bodily injury" by "strangling his girlfriend around the neck with both hands" and by "smacking her in the face with her Uggs boot several times."

The complaint against his girlfriend said she "attempted to cause bodily injury" by "throwing boiling water on him during the course of a domestic dispute" causing "severe burning to his left ear, left shoulder and left side of his face." Both complaints listed simple assault as a charge.

Alexander was arrested and held in Camden County jail for the better part of two days. The prosecutor's office referred the case back to municipal court and the charges were dismissed, according to court records.

There is no record of the girlfriend's arrest or prosecution, according to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Court documents also show Alexander won a restraining order against her.

Alexander and his attorney are suing Pine Hill, its police department, the county prosecutor's office and the arresting officer. The suit was filed in Superior Court in January and moved to federal court in Camden this month.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Bayonne residents converged at 16th Street Park Friday night for a concert to benefit Baytown, Texas, one of the many cities devastated by Hurricane Harvey last month.

The Bayonne to Baytown benefit was created with help from Bayonne native Terry Young, who is very active in the Bayonne music scene.

After Harvey devastated parts of Texas, Young went to City Hall as a man with a plan.

"We wanted to help Baytown due to how similar it is to Bayonne,'' Young said. "We're known for our bridge and they're known for their bridge. It's all there in the names, too. We're just really trying to help them out and we've had a pretty good response with donations."

One hundred percent of the proceeds made from the benefit will donated to Baytown for the relief effort.

"It's a phenomenal cause," Davis said. "Terry came to us and informed us that the music community wanted to do something to help out those who were affected by Harvey. We told him to roll with it."

It was decided that instead of donating the money to the Red Cross, Bayonne would donate any money made to a town with a much similar demographic. After research was conducted into the area, Baytown came into the picture and has been since identified by Bayonne as its sister -- two towns separated by more than 1,000 miles.

Bayonne knows something about storm damage, having had some areas of the city take a hard hit during Superstorm Sandy.

"This benefit really took off like wildfire," Davis said. "Musicians began showing up and this has turned into what I feel is going to be a wonderful night."

Bands and performers slated for the night included Rocco and The Mob, Jackie Nese of "American Idol,'' Joe Bayer (who was voted entertainer of the year in Nashville in 2016), Terry Young's the Blue Dog Band, and a group of local Bayonne musicians who came together to perform and were unofficially dubbed the Local Bayonne.

Local performance arts group Artist Avenue also performed alongside the Local Bayonne as well as performing the national anthem.

"I think this is just awesome," Greg Aulden of Hoboken, who performed with the Local Bayonne, said. "The whole idea to do this for Baytown and getting everyone together is just great."

Bayonne to Baytown shirts were made and sold at the benefit to help raise money as well as hats and various food and beverage.

"This is a very big effort and it's excellent," Bayonne resident Carol Keene said. "There's a lot of people in Texas and some of them are even from Bayonne. I'm very happy to see this happening and it should be done more often."

Among the Bayonne residents who came out to show there support was Erica Salazar, who formerly lived in Baytown. Salazar has lived in Bayonne for the past year now.

"It's really crazy to see how similar both towns are," Salazar said. "It's amazing to see everyone come together and help out. A lot of people may not even really know about Baytown but they still came out to help. It's nice that it's getting some attention."

Salazar's family still resides in Baytown and lived through Harvey.

"Everybody I know is still there -- my whole family and my friends," Salazar said. "My immediate family, like my mom and dad, they're all OK. But some uncles, aunts, cousins and some friends I have down there lost everything."

Before the start of the show, Peter Daniels of Carepoint Health came forward to present a $3,000 check.

"I want everyone to know that Carepoint Health remains committed to the communities we serve," Daniels said. "We try to provide quality in the full range of healthcare services to the Bayonne community and everyone else we have served over the past 100 years."

Bayonne's own Tammy Blanchard, an award-winning actress, spoke before the start of the show.

"I'm thankful to have been invited here for the relief effort," Blanchard said. "I was born and raised here and I never left. The biggest reason for that is because there's nothing more important than love, family, and community. I learned that here and wouldn't trade any fame or fortune for it. All we ask is that you give what you can give and God bless Baytown."

Further donations to help out Baytown, Texas, can be made at beof.org, the Bayonne Economic Opportunity Foundation.
While Friday marked the start of fall, the weather had a familiar feel to it  closer to the start of summer.

Autumn officially began at 3:02 p.m., but temperatures felt like mid-summer highs, reaching into the 90s in the metro area. The National Weather Service in Valley, Nebraska, issued a heat advisory Friday for most of the western two-thirds of Iowa.

The weather service said high temps plus high humidity pushed the heat index to around 100 degrees in some places. Western Iowa was under a hazardous weather outlook, with heat indexes into the upper 90s.

A cold front is expected to move into the region early next week and will bring more seasonal temperatures, according to the weather service.

Today should continue the trend of summer swelter with a high around 90. Sunday will bring mostly sunny skies, a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms and a high in the mid- to upper 80s, the weather service said.

Audra Moore, a KMTV meteorologist, said chances were low for any severe weather through the weekend. There is a chance, however, for showers and thunderstorms Sunday night through Tuesday in the Council Bluffs-Omaha area, the weather service said.

Expect overnight lows in the 50s and 60s and daytime highs in the 70s.

The weather service said there is a potential for heavy rain in some western Iowa and eastern Nebraska locations Sunday night through Monday night. Moore said the best opportunity for precipitation will come Monday.

Monday definitely looks like a wet day, she said.

Sunshine and highs in the lower 70s are forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, the weather service said. Moore said a warm front that moved into the metro area Thursday led to the spike in temperatures, humidity and strong winds.

A cool front is expected to muscle in late Sunday into Monday, setting off temperature drops and precipitation, she said.

Temperatures will begin to feel like fall by Tuesday and Wednesday, Moore said.

Normal highs in the metro area for mid- to late September are the mid-70s and normal lows are around 50 degrees.

The upcoming forecast according the the weather service:

Today: Mostly sunny, with a high near 89. South wind 8 to 13 mph.

Tonight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 71. South southeast wind 7 to 11 mph.

Sunday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 p.m. Mostly sunny, with a high near 86. South wind 8 to 11 mph.

Sunday night: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 1 a.m. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 66. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Monday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms, then showers likely and possibly a thunderstorm after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 78. Chance of precipitation is 60 percent.

Monday night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a low around 58.

Tuesday: A chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1 p.m. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 70.

Tuesday night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 52.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 70.

Wednesday night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 51.

Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 73.

 The Associated Press contributed to this report.
. To do so, first type the original number into the text box. Then click on the "Scientific Notation" option located at the top of the floating window. Finally, click on the "Standard" button found beneath the text box to display your result. This program is useful for scientists and engineers working with decimal-based numbers. It provides easy access to those who need to convert those numbers into more compact forms without having to do heavy math calculations first.

Scientific notation is a way to express very large or very small numbers. It is used in physics, chemistry and other fields where large numbers are common. Those numbers are written as a power of 10 followed by a number with an exponent. For example, 1,000,000 (one million) is written as 1  103. The exponent shows how many zeros are after the first digit. For example, 1,000,001 is written as 1  102. Scientific notation is a useful tool for making calculations easier. You can use it to write down very big or very small numbers in one step instead of writing out both the large and small numbers separately. You can also use it to express large or small numbers in terms of other units like centimeters or millimeters.

Scientific notation solver is an online tool that can be used to convert any number into scientific notation. Simply enter any number to the left of the decimal point and it will automatically convert it into a scientific notation equivalent. This web tool can be very helpful when you need to convert a large number into scientific notation. However, please note that this online tool can only convert numbers that are in scientific format. For example, it cannot convert a non-scientific number like "1,085" into a scientific notation equivalent. It is also important to keep in mind that this web tool only works when converting numbers from one particular format to another. For example, if you want to change a non-scientific number like "1,085" into standard format, then you will have to use another online tool like NumberFormatting.com.
Editors note: Area ministers who would like to be part of this feature can contact Joan von Kampen at 308-535-4707 or joan.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com. Submissions may be edited for length or to conform to newspaper style.

Matthew 18:21-35

Today, the Apostle Peter asks Jesus, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?

And then Peter is astonished to hear Jesus say, I tell you, you are not to forgive just seven times, but seventy times seven!

Were supposed to forgive 490 separate times? I see Jesus saying to Peter, Put away your calculator: Its not about the math, its about whats in your heart.

Jesus is saying that the number amounts to infinity squared, isnt he? There is a point where justice and forgiveness intersect, even though that may sound like trying to mix oil and water But where? Do we forgive al-Qaida, ISIS or the Taliban 490 times without seeing that justice is served for the cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent people by them?

Where do forgiveness and justice intersect? The rabbis of ancient times said that it was enough to forgive someone three times, so Peter probably thought he was being extravagant, and even going overboard, when he asked Jesus about forgiving up to seven times.

Peter was strong and opinionated, and he was no dummy. So, Jesus says to Peter, and you and me as well, that if a person sins against you  you have to do something about it. You have to reconcile; you have to get together; you cant just sit around all puffed up and red in the face, all angry and bent out of shape.

Its a matter of the heart, isnt it? And if its a matter of the heart, its also a matter of faith.

Forgiveness is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of Christianity, yet we Christians have not done a very good job of dealing positively with forgiveness, have we? Instead, we Christians are remembered for the false justice of the Crusades, witch burnings, the Inquisition, Jewish pogroms, as well as the injustices done to African-Americans, Native Americans and Asians throughout our history. It also includes other forms of oppression, like economic slavery, but you get my point.

So, should we really be in the business of forgiveness? Should we really try to love our neighbors? Should we really do good to those who hate us? Or, should we do unto others before they do it to us? Is that what faith, hope, love and forgiveness are all about? Where do justice and forgiveness intersect?

You say, Ive forgiven the guy six, no, seven times! Whens he going to get it? Do I have to forgive him eight times?

Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven!

Its not about doing the math, so what is the glue that holds our world and ourselves together? What is it that knocks over the barriers we erect around our hearts; what is it that kicks through the rusty gates that we build around our spirits and keeps us from tearing each other apart? Its about having the faith in Jesus to forgive, and if its about faith-forgiveness, then its also a matter of trust in the justice of the outcome.

Im certain that God knows if you begin forgiving someone 490 times, that youll lose count before you ever get there: that its a matter of the heart, faith, love and spirit. God is calling us to have a loving spirit of forgiveness. Yet, once again, I would point out that justice is also a key part of any equation that involves dealing with horrendous wrongs.

So, what about our debt of sin and the failings in our own lives? What about the fact that as human beings, none of us is even close to being sinless and debt free in the eyes of God? Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lord, save us!

We are commanded to love one another, so I have to pray, Oh, God; give to me this spirit of loving forgiveness. God, I want to embrace the Dark Side and kill the no-good bums who hate me and who I hate, but God, I know that is not of you. So, Father, please give to me the spirit of forgiveness, and let me put the matter of ultimate justice and forgiveness in your hands. Lord, I pray for both a spirit of justice and forgiveness, and Lord, I put them both in your hands.

The Rev. Jan Ekstedt

First Christian Church

North Platte
Teck Resources Ltd (NYSE: TECK) lays claim to being the largest diversified miner in Canada. But its roughly $12 billion market cap pales in comparison to mining industry giant BHP Billiton Limited (NYSE: BHP), one of the largest diversified miners in the world with an over $100 billion market cap. That difference, however, doesn't make BHP the better investment, here's why you might prefer the smaller of this pair.

Similar enough

BHP's largest businesses are petroleum, copper, iron ore, and metallurgical coal. Iron ore is the most important, accounting for roughly 45% of underlying EBITDA in fiscal year 2017. That said, the company's coal business, around 18% of EBITDA, has a notable focus on steelmaking coal, increasing the miner's overall reliance on the steel industry. Teck's business is made up of steelmaking coal, copper, and zinc. Steelmaking coal is Teck's biggest business, at roughly 70% of gross profit before depreciation and amortization. So both miners are highly dependent on the steel industry, with Teck a little more so.

Looking at the pair's financial situation, Teck and BHP have similar debt levels. Long-term debt makes up about 25% of Teck's capital structure and about a third of BHP's. Debt to EBITDA ratios are also roughly in line, with Teck at about 1.60 and BHP at 1.75. While they operate on a different scale size-wise, both have roughly similar financial foundations.

To be fair, Teck's balance sheet has improved materially of late, with debt levels falling by about a third over the last three years. BHP's debt levels are roughly flat over that span. During the commodity downturn investors were, worried that Teck wouldn't be able to pay its debts and the capital investments it had agreed to fund. That is where some big differences start between Teck and BHP.

Bigger or smaller

In late 2013, Teck teamed up with Suncor Energy and Total to build a new Canadian oil sands mine known as the Fort Hills Project. The timing for that project was pretty bad. Oil prices started to plummet in mid-2014, a drop that coincided with a deepening downturn in commodity prices across the board. Meanwhile, the cost of the project increased from around $11 billion to nearly $13.5 billion as it progressed. All told, this investment left Teck with higher costs (driven by the obligation to fund its 20% share of the Fort Hills project) right at the point when its revenues were being hit. You can see why investors were concerned about its finances.

However, it managed to get through that difficult span in one piece and without materially altering its business -- helped along by recently recovering commodity markets. Fort Hills should start producing oil at the end of 2017, with a 12-month ramp up to full production thereafter. This will add a fourth major commodity to Teck's operations, materially increasing its diversification. It will also turn oil from a business that was all cost to one that starts producing revenues. And, as Suncor explained earlier this year, once built, oil sands tend to be fairly cheap to operate -- something that investors often don't grasp.

BHP has traveled a vastly different path. During the downturn it made the decision to slim down by spinning off South32 in May 2015. The new company took on BHP's smaller operations, including businesses like nickel and zinc, leaving BHP to focus on oil, iron ore, coal, and copper. More recently BHP has been under pressure from activist investors to trim down its oil business, too. It looks like BHP is going to appease the dissident shareholders by selling its U.S. shale assets.

A different trajectory

There's nothing inherently wrong with BHP or its move to trim down. In fact, BHP is a financially strong, well run miner. The decision to spin off South32 and the current attempt to jettison U.S. shale assets are perfectly reasonable business decisions.

However, I prefer the direction in which Teck is moving. It survived the commodity downturn while still expanding its business into new areas. And that investment is about to pay off with oil from Fort Hills set to contribute to the top and bottom lines starting later this year -- adding a fourth major commodity to its portfolio. The overhang from the costs for the Fort Hills project, meanwhile, will start to fall away once that happens. Teck is, in essence, getting bigger to get stronger. I like that story more than BHP's efforts to shrink itself into a better industry position.

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Like a Powerball jackpot of hundreds of millions of dollars, the tantalizing prospect of landing the Amazon second headquarters could mean 50,000 six-figure corporate jobs and $5 billion in investment has made communities across the country undeterred by long odds.

Gary took out an advertisement in Monday's New York Times appealing directly to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Northwest Indiana also is making a broader regional pitch for the widely coveted headquarters. The Northwest Indiana Forum, the Portage-based economic development agency, has contacted Amazon and is preparing a formal competitive bid.

The NWI Forum is working with both Gary and the state government, but is looking at potential locations all over the Region and not just in Gary, President and CEO Heather Ennis said.

"It's a huge opportunity that communities all over the nation are pursing," she said. "Opportunities like this come just once or twice in a lifetime."

Amazon seeks a deal

Earlier this month, Amazon opened a nationwide bidding war for incentives including tax breaks. The retail giant said it is seeking "a metropolitan area with more than 1 million people, a stable and business-friendly environment, urban or suburban locations with the potential to attract and retain strong technical talent and communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options."

Northwest Indiana is pitching itself as part of the broader, talent-deep Chicago metro of 9.4 million, but with a lower cost of business and a more stable business climate than the city of Chicago itself.

"We are in the third-largest metropolitan area in the country," Ennis said. "We have an excellent quality of life, outstanding infrastructure and a lower cost of doing business. We have an extremely stable climate."

Though Northwest Indiana is better known for steel mills and oil refineries than glassy corporate office towers, some have said there's merit to such a pitch.

"If Indiana wants to respond to Amazons proposal, it should do so by putting forward Northwest Indiana," Indiana University Economist Morton J. Marcus wrote in his statewide newspaper column. "Access to the Chicago metropolitan area meets most of the conditions put forward by Amazon. The Gary/Chicago Airport does not have the air service Amazon might desire, but it could with the support of a company that sees itself as remarkably important."

Max Grinnell, an urban studies professor who writes The Urbanologist blog, wrote on Twitter that "I believe that Chicago is a better choice than Boston for #AmazonHQ2. And NW Indiana is a better choice than either of them."

He tweeted that the Region has lots of land, is relatively affordable and could expand transit options.

"My thought is that NW Indiana is well positioned for a renaissance and that the arrival of Amazon would be the impetus," he wrote on Twitter.

A long shot

Northwest Indiana officials still know the Region would face long odds when faced with competitors like Chicago, Toronto, Austin, Boston, Denver, Dallas and New York City. Gary acknowledged in the New York Times ad its bid is "far-fetched," and Ennis said local economic development officials don't have any blinders on.

"All of us know this is a long shot," she said. "But we're prepared to go continually after it and earn opportunities like this."

The Northwest Indiana Forum has been working on the project with the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and several local communities. Officials are eyeing a range of greenfield and infill sites across the Region where Amazon could build a new corporate campus.

"We're right in the Chicago metro so we meet the population threshold," she said. "We've got transit, great quality of life and schools like Notre Dame and Purdue. We've got a commuter rail line and access to O'Hare and Midway and international flights. Our area has quality of life and has to be attractive to them in cost savings."

Indiana University Northwest Assistant Professor of Economics Micah Pollak said Gary or Northwest Indiana could offer Amazon advantages.

"The city is a major artery for transportation with its own international airport and close proximity to major ports, highways and rail lines, as well as an extremely business friendly environment, low taxes and cost of living, excellent higher education facilities, plenty of affordable land and close proximity to Chicago," he said. "Furthermore, while we have a long history of manufacturing in the region, economic conditions change and high-paying service jobs like those associated with a corporate headquarters are exactly what the region needs today and would not only be welcome, but strongly supported."

He said the Region and Northwest Indiana should pursue ambitious goals, including trying to attract a large corporate headquarters.

"As the economic conditions continue to improve in Gary and Northwest Indiana, and with its long list of potential benefits, the city and Region will continue to become more competitive as a business location," Pollak said. "While the success of this particular appeal ultimately depends on the formal bid, whether the company to locate its headquarters in the city of Gary is Amazon or another firm, the city is working hard to build an extremely attractive environment for business, and it is only a matter of time before a major firm takes notice."

NiSource is the only Fortune 500 company with a corporate headquarters in Northwest Indiana.
PORTAGE TOWNSHIP  Police have identified the woman killed in a crash at Ind. 149 and County Road 700 North Thursday afternoon.

Irline Marie Holley, 69, of Portage, died at the scene of the accident, which happened shortly after 1 p.m., according to Porter County Sheriff's Department spokesperson Sgt. Jamie Erow.

Deputies from the Porter County Sheriff's Department were dispatched to the area for a report of a crash with serious injuries, according to a news release.

The initial investigation shows Holley was driving a 1997 Pontiac Grand Prix eastbound on Country Road 700 North when she ran a red light, police said.

The Pontiac was struck on the driver's side door by a flatbed truck heading southbound on Ind. 149, police said. The truck, loaded with concrete, was being driven by Jesus Garcia-Valdez, 27, of Calumet City.

Garcia-Valdez attempted to avoid the crash, police said.

Holley was transported by South Haven EMS to a landing zone for Lutheran Air to be airlifted, but died on scene.
MALDEN  A community push toward setting up 529 college savings accounts for all Porter County first-graders was initiated at the start of the school year.

Now area farmers are being asked to get on board by donating any amount of grain as part of the Gift of Grain program to further help the worthy cause, William Higbie said.

Higbie, who serves as president and CEO of the Porter County Community Foundation, helped kick off the Gift of Grain program Friday at the Malden-based Co-Alliance grain elevator.

He was joined in his efforts by Tim Stoner, a longtime area farmer and a member of the Porter County Ag Initiative.

"This is the launch of what we hope is the first of many years to come. We expect to keep building the program, and as more and more farmers learn of it, there will be more participation," Stoner said.

Stoner said he had approached Higbie about starting the Gift of Grain program as a contribution by Porter County farmers.

"We wanted to do something as an agricultural community," Stoner said.

The proceeds from the grain donated will be split between the Promise Porter County match fund and the Agricultural Community Endowment Fund, Higbie said.

There are no minimum or maximum requirements in terms of grain donated, Higbie said.

"To donate in this way does have tax-favorable consequences for the farmers," Higbie said.

The idea to start setting up 529 college savings accounts for Porter County first-graders was brought to Higbie by Bob Wanek, who serves as CEO for the Valparaiso YMCA.

Wanek told Higbie about the broader Promise Indiana plan in which he thought there was potential to introduce in Porter County.

The four components of the Promise Porter County program are: To start 529 college savings plans by first grade; introduce a college savings curriculum into the schools; hold an introductory event at Valparaiso University for all first-graders and to champion community investments dollars.

Urschel Laboratories, of Valparaiso, has already donated the first $25 for each first-grader who signs up for the savings accounts, Higbie said.

Studies have indicated that youngsters who start saving early and who are encouraged by their community are more likely to graduate from high school, go to college and have fewer problems.

"The power goes beyond just money," Higbie said.

For Kouts mom Stephanie Robertson, the Promise Porter County program was a great motivator for her to set up a 529 college savings account for all three of her young children.

"This is a good push," Robertson said.

Robertson said because of the program, she had recently set up an account for daughter, Maggie, a first-grader at Kouts Elementary, then went on to set up accounts for her two older sons, Boone, a second-grader and Wyatt, a fourth-grader.

Similarly, Boone Grove dad Mike Herlitz said he recently set up a 529 college savings plan for his daughter, Lilly, a first-grader at Morgan Township Elementary.

"It's a pretty neat program and an easy way to get your college program started. They even give you an incentive of $25 as a start," Herlitz said.

Jessica Parks, of Washington Township, set up a saving plan for her youngest son, Gage, a first-grader at Washington Township.

"We're very appreciative of the community foundation and the program," Parks said.

For more information, contact Higbie at 219-465-0294.
Governor Andrew Cuomo is back in New York after a day-long trip to Puerto Rico. The governor took the trip to witness the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria. NY1's Angi Gonzalez filed the following report.

Governor Andrew Cuomo returned to Kennedy Airport Friday night visibly exhausted after his daylong trip to Puerto Rico, a last-minute trip organized to survey the damage left behind by Hurricane Maria and to offer assistance.

"My opinion is, in person, it is much worse than appears on the TV reports," Cuomo said.

The governor took a tour of Puerto Rico by air and later in Humvees. Video provided by the governor's office shows neighborhoods paralyzed by up to eight feet of water, and residents who must wade through contaminated and brown water when leaving their homes.

It was a visit that came at the request of Puerto Rico's own governor, Ricardo Rossello.

"When I asked him for aid and for collaboration, the governor didn't hesitate," Rossello said.

JetBlue donated the plane needed to make the trip a reality. The cargo hold was stuffed with a variety of donations, everything from food and water to much-needed generators.

The entire island is still without electricity, and it could be months before it is restored.

"We left an assessment team on the island who is going to be working on getting the power up and running," Cuomo said. "That is probably the most significant infrastructure system that's been damaged."

Rep. Nydia Velasquez was among those on the trip. She says the visit gave her new purpose.

"As a Puerto Rican, I just want to say that going there today gave me the strength to go back to Washington and make the case on behalf of 3.5 million American citizens," she said.

But there are many among the 700,000 New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent who have still been unable to make connections with loved ones on the island. Among them is Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

"I have three aunts and cousins and an uncle who is on his death bed in Bayamon. We do not have any contact. It's complete radio silence over there," Diaz Jr. said. "Your viewers should know that the island of Puerto Rico is not ever going to be the same again."

If you'd like to donate supplies to help the victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a number of firehouses and EMS stations in all five boroughs are collecting items.
Record Number of Black Candidates Seeking History During Midterm Elections

While some already are household names like Stacey Abrams in Georgia, Val Demings in Florida, and Anthony Brown in Maryland, others like Natalie James in Arkansas, Will Boyd in Alabama,...

Tell the Supreme Court: We Still Need Affirmative Action

One of the great joys of my life is teaching. Im fortunate to teach classes on social justice at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most respected schools in...
In this second part of the three-part series on the 22 years of the Constitutional court, SULAIMAN KAKAIRE examines the effect of backlog in the court, and how politics has remained a stumbling block to efficiency.



The backlog in the Constitutional court has had an effect on the nature of reliefs that come from it. In many cases, the parties could have already moved on by the time the court decides a case.

According to constitutional lawyer Peter Walubiri, this makes the courts judgments to be postmortem. They are basically for academic [purposes] or posterity but do not affect current events; yet ideally the decisions should primarily influence current events that is why the framers deemed it fit that the matters should be heard expeditiously, he says.

Lawyer Peter Walubiri

Take Muwanga Kivumbis 2005 constitutional petition against the attorney general, challenging the constitutionality of section 32 of the Police Act which empowered the police to stop the holding of an assembly or rally or public procession allegedly upon reasonable grounds.

Kivumbi ran to the court seeking a quick relief after police stopped him from holding rallies to mobilise against the parliaments plan to lift presidential term limits.

Although the Constitutional court declared the provision to be unconstitutional, the said judgment was made in May 2008 when the petitioners grievance could not be addressed.

Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi, the lawyer in Kivumbis case, regrets the delay. It was absurd that the good decision came when the term limits had already been lifted and the elections had been held, he said.

There are several other cases of a similar nature, including some that are pending before the Constitutional court yet events influencing them have changed or the parties in those cases have moved on.

For instance, Justice Kenneth Kakuru says before he joined the Constitutional court bench in 2013, he had filed several petitions but more than five years later, they are yet to be decided.

After the 2011 elections, I filed cases challenging the constitutionality of electing members of parliament representing special interest groups on political party tickets. In my view, they are not to be voted on party tickets because when they are elected through political parties, they, by implication, abandon the constituency they are representing, he says.

Unfortunately, these petitions have not been heard yet we have gone through elections.

Similarly, in 2011, Kakuru also filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of provisions of the Political Parties and Political Organizations Act, which prohibits state-funding of political parties without representation in parliament.

Those provisions are not only discriminatory but they are not in line with the principle of promoting multi-party dispensation. All parties, upon registration, must be funded by the state as a way of supporting them. You see, it is like a national team that expects to get players from local teams that are not supported. How do you expect the good players to emerge?

Currently, there are at least 117 petitions and 97 constitutional applications yet to be heard by the Constitutional court even when they have pended before the court for more than two years.



EROSION OF RULE OF LAW

Backlog in the Constitutional court has not only led to the granting of post-mortem orders but it is eroding the rule of law.

Human rights lawyer Isaac Ssemakadde, who is current pursuing several cases pending before the court said that the inefficiency in the court has affected the culture of rule of law since there are many acts or omissions that go without reprimand.

When you petition to determine the constitutionality of a would be violation and the court does not expedite its work within a reasonable time but decided to do it at a later date the consequence of it is that the impugned act would stand for some time and this promotes impunity, which in a long run erodes the rule of law, Ssemakadde said giving an example of a case his organization (LBT) filed challenging the approval procedure used by Parliament while vetting presidential appointees.

Currently, the appointments committee vets appointees and goes ahead to approve on behalf of Parliament. In our view [as petitioners], we challenge that procedure on ground that a committee of Parliament cannot usurp the power of parliament to approve appointees. Parliament is speaker and members of parliament. It is not a committee, Ssemakadde said, adding that; it is absurd that this illegality has not been undone since court is yet to determine the case in spite of the fact that it was filed more than two years ago.

Eventually, Nyanzis legal team filed a constitutional petition but Ssemakadde, one of the lawyers on the Nyanzis legal team, fears that Nyanzis petition is going to suffer the same fate.

If we had not secured the interim reliefs Stella [Nyanzi] would be going through the unconstitutional mental examination because the court could not have determined the petition expeditiously as required by the law, he said.



INTERIM MEASURES

Internally, the Constitutional court seems to have devised means of doing justice in spite of the fact that there is backlog in the court.

Justice Kenneth Kakuru

Currently, there is no specific rule in the Constitutional court that empowers it to grant interim reliefs. However, the court derives that mandate by seeking refugee from Rule 23 of the Constitutional court rules, which empowers the court to apply the Court of Appeal rules, with such modifications as the court may consider necessary.

Walubiri told The Observer that this procedure adopted by the court is instrumental in seeing that timely justice is achieved in the constitutional court.

Interim reliefs are necessary for purposes of achieving justice and also to avoid rendering the main case a nugatory. So, they protect a status quo. Assuming you are losing your property and the case cannot be heard in time because of backlog, which is a reality in the court, you cry out to the court and get an interim injunction. This is what we do for our clients, he said.

In the instant case, Walubiri argues that the remedial measure resorted to by the Constitutional Court is based on the fact that the court does not listen to cases expeditiously.

The law abhors a vacuum. You cannot suffer a wrong without a remedy, he said.

The application of this rule has brought some controversy as acknowledged recently by the Constitutional court in the recent case of Murisho Shafi and others vs attorney general. The controversy was about the number of justices to determine such application.

In the 2007case of James Isabirye v Attorney General, court held that: this rule if applied to constitutional miscellaneous applications would entail modification in the interpretation to the effect that a full bench to hear this application would constitute five justices and not three. In the premises, the panel for handling interim orders would also consist of three justices and not a single judge.

Subsequently, the Constitutional court moved away in from this position in the case of George Owor vs Attorney General moved away from its previous decision by holding that a single justice of the court had the jurisdiction to hear such an application.

The court observed: We have now carefully considered our decisions in the Isabirye case and Olara Otunu case in light of section 13 of the Judicature Act...Rule 53(1) and 2(b) appears to conflict with section 13(1) of the Judicature Act which gives a single justice power to exercise the powers of the Court in interlocutory matters.

In George Owor case, the court stated, as its reasoning for the aforementioned holding, that justices of the Court of Appeal are too few and too busy to bring together a panel of five justices to hear applications for interim orders or interlocutory applications. Therefore a single justice of the Court should be able to do so.

After a review of the authorities and the confusion caused by the two differing authorities, the court recently in the case of Murisho held that while determining interim reliefs arising from constitutional petition the Coram must be five justices of the court.

Court observed that; Jurisdiction is first and foremost not founded on convenience but on the law. Secondly in practical terms a court with fourteen judges [full complement being fifteen] can constitute a standing panel of five judges for a specific period to hear any urgent matters. This may be on a fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly roster. After all constitutional matters are supposed to take precedence over any other business before the Court.

Kakuru, who was a member of the panel in the Murisho case, told The Observer that court should stick to the constitutional provisions and rules of the court.

Why dont we have these cases fixed? The constitution and rules are clear that constitutional matters take precedence. And is required to have the petitions listened to throughout the weekend. This shows you how important constitutional matters are, he said.

In his decision, Kakuru observes that although interim orders were well intended, they have grossly been abused by both courts and litigants.

Court further observed that the interim reliefs are bad in a way that once the interim order has been granted, the petitioner substantially obtains the relief sought in the petition and ceases to have any further interest in its determination.

The court too loses interest in the matter and does not bother to fix it for hearing. This is illustrated by the fact that a report of this court presented at the 19th Annual Judges conference held between 26th-30th January, 2017 indicates that there are 309 Constitutional petitions and 241 Constitutional applications pending hearing at this court. Many of these were filed more than five years ago.

Apparently, there are some practitioners who have faulted the court in its decision in the case of Murisho. They argue that interim reliefs do not involve interpretation of the constitution and should be taken as interim reliefs.

What they should do is devising means of fighting abuse. For instance, there are instances when they can be granted yet denied others. What criterion is followed? Walubiri said citing an example when he became a victim of the abuse.

In 2010, Walubiri handled the case of Joseph Bossa vs Attorney General and Electoral Commission, where the petitioner sought for declarations that the act of the electoral commission of compiling and updating a national voters register which was used for the 2011 presidential, parliamentary and local government elections is more than the total adult population of Uganda when the register was compiled in 2010.

Whereas in the said petition Walubiri sought for an interim injunction before the elections, it was not fixed or heard until after the elections.

He said that if the application had been granted the opposition could have been the happiest people.

The interim orders could have served some justice because that case has never been heard to date. The debate should be on streamlining how these interim reliefs are granted because there is some abuse, Walubiri said.



GOING ABOUT THE ABUSE

In filing an application for interim reliefs, Nyanzis legal team had foresight of the abuse in the court and indeed thought strategically in that direction.

Ssemakadde, one of Nyanzis lawyers, told The Observer that whereas they applied for interim reliefs in the constitutional court by being aware of the politics and abuse in the court they still applied for stay of proceedings under the MTA in the trial because it too is empowered to grant such applications.

For the latter case, it is always hard for the trial court to grant such applications but our client was lucky. If it was not for this foresight our clients fate would have been that bad because it is almost four months since we filed that application but court is yet to think of fixing it. Can you imagine, Ssemakadde said.

Although Ssemakadde filed for interim reliefs in the court, his view of them is to the contrary.

I think that any reasonable court or person is supposed to respect the constitutional petition. So, the moment one proves existence of the petition, any person or authority whose authority is constitutionally challenged based on that petition, they are supposed to suspend exercise of such authority pending the determination of the petition, Ssemakadde said adding that jurisprudence to that effect is needed.

Apparently, this sort of jurisprudence operates well in circumstances where there is expeditious determination of petitions.

skakaire@observer.ug



This article is a product of The Watchdog and was produced with support from the African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME).
Kizza Besigye

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has directed Freedom FM radio to submit recordings of a talk show, in which the former Forum for Democratic Change president Kizza Besigye was hosted and he allegedly incited violence.

Besigye appeared on a talk show on Freedom FM in Kabale town on September 9, between 09:30pm -11:00pm.

He relocated to Freedom FM after he was blocked from appearing on Voice of Kigezi for a paid talk show on the directives from the Office of Kabale Resident District Commissioner. While appearing on Freedom radio, Besigye rallied his supporters to contest in the forthcoming local council elections.

He also rallied voters to support Shillah Arituha, the former FDC candidate for the Rukiga Woman MP seat. Besigye also called on all Ugandans to resist the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2017, which seeks to provide for compulsory land acquisition for government projects and the proposed scrapping of the presidential age limit.



On September 19, Eng. Godfrey Mutabazi, the executive director, Uganda Communications Commission wrote to the managing director of Freedom radio to submit the recordings of Besigye's talk show for investigations for inciting violence. Freedom FM was expected to deliver the recording not later than September 22, 2017.



Mark Adi, the programs director Freedom radio has confirmed the development, saying they have already submitted the recording to UCC for review. He however, says the complaints about the talk show are politically influenced.



Besigye's talk show on Freedom radio came a few days after president; Yoweri Museveni appeared on Voice of Kigezi and several other stations to clarify the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2017.

During the talk show, Museveni warned media houses especially radio stations against hosting those opposed to the proposed amendment.
Dr. Stella, who has treated veterans for nine years at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, says the skills he's learned as a heart doctor has prepared him to serve in the U.S. Congress.

As a board-certified heart doctor, I aim to achieve nothing short of perfection every day in my care of patients.After graduating from Loyola University School of Medicine, I've spent my entire career diagnosing problems, providing solutions, and ensuring I leave patients in much better condition than how they first came to me. That is why I am announcing my bid to be your next US Congressman," his announcement said.



Dr. Stella the growing health care crisis throughout the nation calls for experienced voices that can contribute to correcting the situation. Voices that know their constituents well, he said.

"In my medical profession, I've seen more than my fair share of bad situations. Congress is defaulting to party lines and forgetting their own constituents. This includes Representative Foster, the gentleman who is supposed to be personifying the interests of you, the residents of where I call home," Stella said. "But he spends more time in New York than he does here in his home district."



The absolute results I set out to achieve in medicine will be no different in my political career. I promise to improve every situation that comes my way, bringing jobs and much more to our beaten down district. And like many parents still say today to their kids, Be sure to leave it better than how you found it, I plan to do the same with our district and Washington D.C. he concluded.



Nick Stella was raised in Darien IL, graduated from Illinois Benedictine University in Lisle, and received his M.D. in 1995 from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine. After residency training at Loyola University, he stayed to complete his Fellowships in Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology. There, he was named both Cardiology Chief Fellow as well as Interventional Chief Fellow. Nick and his wife of 17 years have one daughter.

District 11 includes Aurora, Bolingbrook, Burr Ridge, Joliet and parts of Naperville.

His introductory video:
Illinois' Left had nothing to fear from the state's two elected U.S. Senators. Of course, Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth declared time and time again they had no intention of supporting the effort set forth by GOP senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Illinois native Dr. Bill Cassidy (R-LA).

SPRINGFIELD - Tossing control of federal health care dollars back to the states is something the Left stands firmly against - and exactly what the Republican U.S. Senate majority's latest attempt at reforming ObamaCare would do.

American Bridge, an Leftist activist group blasted the Graham-Cassidy proposal and explained why the Left is so opposed to it:

The Graham-Cassidy bill is the worst version of Trumpcare yet. The bill would kick 965,000 Illinoisans off of their health insurance and rob the state of $9.26 billion in federal funding over the next ten years. It ends Medicaid as we know it, guts protections for people with preexisting conditions, and defunds Planned Parenthood. The American Medical Association, AARP, The American Heart Association, and 35 anti-cancer advocacy groups all oppose the bill.

American Bridge condemned Governor Rauner for not signing onto a letter with other governors opposing the bill. The Left hit Twitter, calling for Rauner to condemn the proposal. Their long term solution is a single-payer system similar to Canada and Great Britain's systems.

Nowhere does American Bridge answer what most Illinoisans that pay for their own health care insurance knows: the choices are limited. With limited choices come less competition. And with less competition comes higher premiums and deductibles.

As Biz Journals reported last year about what was going to happen in Illinois in 2017:

Only one or two insurance companies will sell coverage in 2017 in the Illinois health marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act in 75 percent of the state's counties, the Illinois Department of Insurance said. According to the state agency, Blue Cross Blue Shield will be the only insurer selling policies in the marketplace in seven counties  Madison, St. Clair, Monroe, McHenry, Lake, Kendall and Grundy  the Associated Press reports. In Illinois, four insurers have exited or folded, leaving five companies in operation, according to the news agency. Insurers didn't get the payments from the federal government they were counting on, and sicker patients and higher prescription costs contributed to insurers' losses, Illinois Department of Insurance Acting Director Anne Melissa Dowling told the AP. Some 70,000 Illinois residents who were covered by marketplace plans will need to enroll in new health plans next year because their carrier has withdrawn from the market, according to the news agency.

The argument has boiled down to whether or not private companies should be required to take patients with pre-existing conditions, whether states can be trusted to appropriately distribute federal funds, whether states can wean themselves off federal funding and whether Planned Parenthood should continue to be paid for with federal tax dollars.

UPDATE: The race for governor is now ratcheting up the Left's outrage. State Senator Daniel Biss posted this meme Saturday afternoon:
A woman shot and mortally wounded a 15-year-old girl early Saturday at a building used for an informal taxicab service in northeast Omaha, police said.

Shadaisja Hill was fired upon about 2:15 a.m. at 36th and Lake Streets, police said. It was not clear whether the girl was inside or outside the building when she was shot.

Police said Sunday night that the girl was on life support awaiting organ donation.

Police said the suspect is Catessa Barnum, 25. They had not announced her arrest late Saturday. Police said they considered Barnum to be armed and dangerous.

Authorities have not described a motive or the underpinnings of the case.

Hill arrived in a private vehicle at a CHI Health clinic at 24th and Cuming Streets. She was transferred to Creighton University Medical Center-Bergan Mercy, where she died later in the day.

In the hour after Hill was shot, police expanded the crime scene cordon from the area just outside the building of the informal cab service, which is called a jitney. The cordon was extended into the traffic lanes of Lake Street.

The killing was the 22nd homicide in Omaha this year. At the same time last year, there had been 18 slayings in the city.

Monique Farmer, an Omaha Public Schools spokeswoman, said it did not appear that Hill attended the districts schools.

Hills relatives could not be reached Saturday.

Someone with information on Barnum should call the Police Departments homicide unit at 402-444-5656 or Crime Stoppers at 402-444-STOP, police said. A tip leading to an arrest is eligible for a $5,000 reward.

* * * * *

Correction: Due to incorrect information provided to the newspaper, an earlier version of this story said the reward for a tip in the case was $25,000, then that it was $10,000.

Correction: Due to incorrect information provided to the newspaper, an earlier version of this story said the 15-year-old died Saturday.
Eight Nebraska educators were honored Thursday during the 40th annual Archbishops Dinner for Education at the Embassy Suites in La Vista.

The annual event is a celebration of Catholic education in the archdiocese.

Each honoree received a $5,000 award.

The 2017 honorees were:

Administrators of the year: Holly McCoy, Mercy High School, Omaha, and Sandy Williams, St. Michael Elementary School, South Sioux City.

Educators of the year:

Elementary  Leisa Kolberg, St. Vincent de Paul School, Omaha, and Ginger Schieffer, St. Rose of Lima School, Crofton

Secondary  Keith Engelkamp, Skutt Catholic High School, Omaha, and Lauren Borer, Pope John XXIII Central Catholic High School, Elgin

Special education and inner city  Colleen Botsios, All Saints School, Omaha, and Elizabeth Connors, Madonna School & Community-Based Services, Omaha.

In January each year, schools and parishes submit nominations for the awards. Nominations are reviewed by a selection committee, and eight educators are honored at the dinner.

Chairpersons for the dinner were Denise and Tate Fitzgerald, and honorary chairpersons were Phyllis and Les Lawless. More than 1,100 guests attended.

The event raised more than $450,000. The money will go to the Childrens Scholarship Fund of Omaha to provide scholarships to low-income students to attend Catholic schools.
Against a backdrop of back-and-forth nuclear threats between the United States and North Korea, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson on Friday visited the suburban Omaha command center of Americas nuclear arsenal.

Wilson, a former Air Force officer, spent much of the day in briefings with Gen. John Hyten, who heads the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base. They reviewed StratComs broad portfolio, which also includes space operations, cyberspace and missile defense.

She also met with Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to talk about the progress of StratComs new headquarters and replacement of Offutts runway.

Wilson toured Offutts flight line, getting a close-up look at some of the 55th Wings reconnaissance jets. And she met with hundreds of Offutt airmen during an all-hands-call in a sweltering hangar, followed by a short press conference.

Wilsons visit comes during a time of nuclear tension unseen since the Cold War. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have upped their war of words.

Just a week ago, Kim launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. It was North Koreas 14th missile test of the year, and came during a visit to StratCom by Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Trump responded by criticizing Kim in front of the United Nations General Assembly, calling him Rocket Man, who is on a suicide mission, and threatening to totally destroy North Korea if the United States has to take defensive action.

Kim filmed a response, calling Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard and a gangster. He threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean this weekend.

Every military commander I know does not want a war on the Korean Peninsula, Hyten said. We have to communicate that the U.S. is ready to respond.

He and Wilson gave interviews in Washington, D.C., earlier in the week, pushing for a larger and more predictable defense budget at an annual meeting of the Air Force Association.

Not having a budget just makes it impossible to plan for the year, Hyten said.

Wilson wants to see a larger Air Force in terms of both personnel and aircraft. We are too small for what the nation is asking us to do, she said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Would exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific, as North Korea has threatened, push the current war of words between the U.S. and North Korea closer to actual war?

As with much that has transpired lately in the U.S.-North Korea nuclear crisis, no one can be sure where this would lead or whether the North would even carry out its threat.

It does, however, raise many questions, including: How would the North undertake such a nuclear test? What risks might it pose to Japan? How would the U.S. respond?

After North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said President Donald Trump would pay dearly for threatening to totally destroy North Korea if the U.S. were forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack, Kims foreign minister told reporters that his countrys response to Trump could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific.

All six of North Koreas nuclear tests thus far, dating to 2006, have been conducted underground.

Experts say the most likely way the North would conduct an atmospheric test over the Pacific is to launch a long-range missile  probably flying over Japan  and have its nuclear warhead detonate in the skies over a remote part of the Pacific.

I strongly suspect they have the capability to do this, said James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He said the North likely would do a few trial runs with unarmed missiles before performing the test with an actual H-bomb aboard.

Such a test with a live warhead would tell North Koreas engineers whether their bomb design can survive the rigors of flight and re-entry into the Earths atmosphere, said Michael Elleman, a missile defense expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he wont allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the Norths progress.

Kim lobbed a string of insults at Trump on Friday, calling him a mentally deranged U.S. dotard. It was the first time for a North Korean leader to issue such a direct statement against a U.S. president.

Trump lashed back, calling Kim a madman whose regime will be tested like never before.

Late Friday, China announced that it will limit oil exports to North Korea under U.N. sanctions over its nuclear and missile development.

Susan Thornton, acting secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said Friday that a North Korean H-bomb test in the Pacific would be outrageous. She said it would draw a concerted and determined international response, but declined to be specific.

North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. invasion, but Thornton contended that the North ultimately seeks to take over U.S.-allied South Korea.

She said Kims aim in developing nuclear weapons is to fulfill a long-term desire on the part of the North Korean regime to reunify the Korean Peninsula under the Kim family regime and proliferate these weapons and blackmail other countries. This is an intolerable prospect that no other country in the international community can abide.

Elleman said the missile of choice in a North Korean atmospheric H-bomb test likely would be its longest-range ballistic missile, known as the Hwasong-14, which apparently has the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, or the intermediate-range Hwasong-12. The Hwasong-14 was flight-tested for the first time two months ago.

Kim Jong Un would have to accept considerable risk of failure  or worse, a missile carrying a nuclear warhead could crash into Japan  if he elects to use the Hwasong-12 or -14, Elleman said. The Hwasong-12 has been flight-tested just six times, three of which ended in failure.

How might the U.S. respond, given its treaty commitment to defend Japan?

Acton argues for negotiating a deal that would preclude such an escalation. He suggests a deal in which the North would agree to halt missile flights over Japan or South Korea and the U.S. would agree to stop its strategic bomber training flights within a certain distance of the North Korean border.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said he thinks the North Korean threat is likely bluster, but if it happened, theres a real possibility the U.S. would take military action in response, given the potential for an accidental detonation over a populated area and the potential threat to sea or air traffic.

They have done crazy things and tend to carry through with what they have said, Kristensen said, but a live nuclear weapons launch and detonation in the Pacific would be an extraordinarily irresponsible act.

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It surprised everyone, even die-hard fans, when Wes Anderson announced that he would not just adapt Roald Dahls childrens book Fantastic Mr. Fox for the screen, but do it with stop-motion animation. But after wed all given it a bit of thought, it made sense: Andersons films and Dahls stories do share a certain sense of inventive humor, and stepping away from live action would finally allow the director of such detail-oriented pictures as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou fuller control over the visuals. Eight years later, we find Anderson overseeing another team of animators to tell another, even more fantastical-looking story, this one set not in an England of the past but a Japan of the future.

There, according to the projects newly released trailer, canine saturation has reached epic proportions. An outbreak of dog flu rips through the city of Megasaki. Mayor Kobayashi issues emergency orders calling for a hasty quarantine. Trash Island becomes an exile colony: the Isle of Dogs. Equals in furriness, if not attire, to Fantastic Mr. Foxs woodland friends and voiced by the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Scarlet Johansson, Tilda Swinton, and of course Bill Murray (in a cast also including Japanese performers like Ken Watanabe, Mari Natsuki, and Yoko Ono  yes, that Yoko Ono), the canines of various colors and sizes forcibly relocated to the bleak titular setting must band together into a kind of ragtag family.









Anderson must find himself very much at home in this thematic territory by now. It would also have suited the towering figure in Japanese film to whom Isle of Dogs pays tribute. Although Anderson has cited the 1960s and 70s stop-animation holiday specials of Rankin/Bass like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Little Drummer Boy  all produced, incidentally, in Japan  as one inspiration, he also said on an ArteTV Q&A earlier this year that the new film is really less influenced by stop-motion movies than it is by Akira Kurosawa. Perhaps he envisioned Atari Kobayashi, the boy who journeys to Trash Island to retrieve his lost companion, as a twelve-year-old version of one of Kurosawas lone heroes.









And perhaps it owes to Kurosawa that the setting  at least from what the trailer reveals  combines elements of an imagined future with the look and feel of Japans rapidly developing mid-20th century, a period that has long fascinated Anderson in its European incarnations but one captured crisply in Kurosawas homeland in crime movies like High and Low and The Bad Sleep Well. Anderson has made little to no reference to the Land of the Rising Sun before, but his interest makes sense: no land better understands what Anderson has expressed more vividly with every project, the richness of the aesthetic mixture of the past and future that always surrounds us. And from what I could tell on my last visit there, its dog situation remains blessedly under control  for now.

via Uncrate

Related Content:

A Complete Collection of Wes Anderson Video Essays

The Geometric Beauty of Akira Kurosawa and Wes Andersons Films

Wes Anderson & Yasujiro Ozu: New Video Essay Reveals the Unexpected Parallels Between Two Great Filmmakers

Accidental Wes Anderson: Every Place in the World with a Wes Anderson Aesthetic Gets Documented by Reddit

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. Hes at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
Precision Castparts welders in the Portland area voted Friday to join a union, a decision that directly affects only about 100 employees but could have an outsized impact on one of Oregon's largest companies.

Throughout the union drive, labor organizers said they hoped that unionizing part of the company could lead to a broader effort at Precision Castparts. And the Portland company said that if one group of employees unionizes, it could have a broad, and negative, effect on the rest of the business.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said 54 voted to join the union, and 38 voted against. They all work for PCC Structurals, a Precision Castparts subsidiary.

"The IAM is looking forward to negotiating a fair contract with PCC that's characteristic of the welders' value," union spokesman Billy Anderson said in a written statement. He said timing for reaching a contract agreement is up to the company being fair and willing to bargain in good faith."

Precision Castparts said it's disappointed by the results of the election and intends to continue challenging a federal ruling that allowed the welders to organize as a distinct group.

"Our Portland manufacturing operations are highly integrated and every position is important and essential to our process," the company said in a written statement. "We believe that it is not appropriate to isolate one group of employees since all production employees would ultimately be affected by any union representation, whether or not they are represented by that union."

During the union drive, workers said they hoped unionization would bring a more fair application of work rules and better compensation, citing stock bonuses they lost after Precision Castparts was sold to Warren Buffett's investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, last year.

Friday's vote comes four years after the Machinists ran an unsuccessful campaign to organize close to 2,300 blue-collar Precision Castparts employees in the Portland area. After a bitter campaign, 57 percent of eligible workers voted against it.

In the interim, Berkshire Hathaway spent $37 billion to buy Precision Castparts  the largest sum ever paid for an Oregon company, and the largest acquisition in the investment firm's history.

Precision Castparts makes heavy-duty metal components for airplanes, generators and other industrial products. It reported $10 billion in sales in fiscal 2015, its last year as an independent company, and $1.5 billion in profits.

At that time, more than one-fifth of Precision Castparts' 30,000 employees worldwide were covered by collective bargaining agreements. The company said at the time that its labor relations were generally "satisfactory," but that it had worked hard to prevent unions from gaining additional ground among its workers.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699
Delivery workers who drop off Walmart groceries may soon also bring them into your kitchen and unload them into your refrigerator, even if you're not home.

The world's largest retailer announced Friday that it is testing a delivery program in Silicon Valley that would allow customers to use smart-home technology to remotely open the door for delivery workers and watch a live stream of the delivery by linking their phones with home security cameras.

"Think about that - someone else does the shopping for you AND puts it all away," Sloan Eddleston, vice president of Walmart eCommerce Strategy & Business Operations, wrote in a blog post Friday.

"As the homeowner, I'm in control of the experience the entire time," he added. "I'm watching the entire process from start to finish from my home security cameras. As I watch the associate exit my front door, I even receive confirmation that my door has automatically been locked."

Walmart executives touted the program as a way to make grocery shopping even more convenient for customers who are becoming accustomed to ordering food online. After all, they said, the rise of ride-sharing and home-sharing services means many people are already used to getting into strangers' cars and sleeping in their bedrooms.

But security and privacy experts said Walmart's new service raised a number of unique questions for homeowners, insurance companies and others.

"There are always unintended consequences that arise with these newfangled ideas," said Albert Gidari, director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. "It might be creepy and intrusive, but there are also a lot of security risks and liability questions down the road: What happens if there's a theft, or damage, or a dog bite? Will your homeowners' policy cover that? How will insurance companies react to this?"

The move comes as Walmart and Amazon.com accelerate the race to win over customers by offering ever-more-convenient technology. Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that Amazon is working on a home security camera system that would allow customers to remotely access video feeds to see, for instance, when packages are delivered to their homes. (Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

The $600 billion grocery market has been a particular point of competition following Amazon's $13.7 billion takeover of Whole Foods Market last month.

Walmart, currently the country's largest grocer, announced this week that it would become the first retailer to allow customers to use food stamps to pay for online grocery orders. The company also recently announced that it was teaming up with Google to allow shoppers to buy its products by speaking to Google Home devices.

Walmart's latest partnership, with smart-technology company August Home and same-day delivery service Deliv, is still in the early stages, according to Walmart spokesman Ravi Jariwala. He added that it was not clear how long the current test would last or how the program might evolve.

"We want to start small so we can test and learn," Jariwala said. "This may not necessarily become the norm. And it may not be for everyone, certainly not right away, but we see a lot of potential here."

Gidardi, of Stanford, said the program was likely to appeal to urban dwellers who work long hours and are already accustomed to having cleaning crews, nannies and other service workers come into their homes while they're away.

"This is a group of people who are already used to a certain level of intrusiveness," he said. "But God help the teenager playing hooky or the family dog who's not expecting the delivery man."

-- The Washington Post
A man who says alleged sexual abuse by a nurse tormented his dying wife's last days has filed a $750,000 lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente.

Judith Kay Weitzel, 71, died of liver cancer in April 2016. That was about nine months after she reported that she was abused at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas, says the lawsuit filed by her husband, Gary Weitzel.

Gary Weitzel claims the health maintenance organization failed to respond to his wife's initial complaint in summer 2015 and then didn't reveal the identity of the nurse while his wife was still alive and undergoing treatment at the hospital.

That left his wife in "extreme fear" that the nurse was free to enter her hospital room again and abuse her, says the suit, filed Thursday in Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Kaiser officials determined the allegations of sexual abuse were unfounded after an investigation, spokesman Michael Foley said Friday in a statement.

"We take any allegation of inappropriate care very seriously and conduct investigations to determine if there is an opportunity to improve," the statement said.

A week after Judith Weitzel's death, Kaiser in April 2016 sent Gary Weitzel a letter saying the nurse no longer worked at Kaiser, but had acted appropriately while on the job. But Kaiser also said its investigation wasn't able to determine the identity of the nurse who might have been involved in the case.

Those conflicting statements led Gary Weitzel to mistrust Kaiser's investigation, said attorney Mark McDougal, a Portland attorney representing Judith Weitzel's estate.

The lawsuit notes that a nurse at another Kaiser hospital -- Alex Woolner -- sexually abused five women in 2016 before he was caught. Woolner was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison earlier this year for abuse at Kaiser's Beaverton location on Southwest Western Avenue.

The lawsuit states that after Gary Weitzel hired an attorney, Kaiser identified the nurse that Judith Weitzel thought had abused her. The nurse hasn't been charged with any crimes.

The nurse was involved in installing a catheter on Judith Weitzel and was doing regular "groin checks," but didn't chart his name, which is required, according to the suit.

The suit states that the nurse sexually touched her vagina. McDougal said although Judith Weitzel has died and can't testify, she did complain of the abuse almost immediately.

Read the lawsuit here.

-- Aimee Green
A Portland man detained and then released after driving through a crowd of counter-protesters in Vancouver earlier this month told police he made a wrong turn that put him in their path and later sped away to stop them from damaging his truck.

William Wilson told two officers that he wasn't trying to hit anyone and wasn't sure what to do when people started hitting his truck with rocks and other items, according to police reports released Friday by Vancouver police.

But a handful of witnesses who contacted police after Wilson's release said the pickup driver appeared to intentionally drive toward the crowd and sound his horn, which played "Dixie," to rile the counter-protesters.

The confrontation occurred Sept. 10 as a conservative group called Patriot Prayer held rallies in Vancouver and downtown Portland. Both rallies drew counter-protests.

The clash prompted more than 2,500 people so far to sign an online petition calling for Wilson's arrest. Some critics have said the encounter echoed the fatal crash in Charlottesville, Virginia, just weeks earlier when a man drove into a crowd of counter-protesters at a neo-Nazi march, killing a woman.

Vancouver police said the next day that they didn't have enough evidence to arrest Wilson at the scene, but asked people to contact them if they saw what happened. They referred the case to the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office for review. The office didn't return email requests for comment.

Wilson "said he feared for his safety and 'panicked,'" according to a report written by Officer Rey Reynolds, who interviewed Wilson where his pickup stopped near West Sixth Street and Washington Street in downtown Vancouver. "William said he drove quickly away from the group until he was stopped by police. William was clearly shook from the incident."

The police officer noted dents and scratches on most of Wilson's truck and estimated about $3,000 in damage. Reynolds and another officer who interviewed Wilson said they didn't find anyone who had been injured when Wilson drove through the crowd walking along Sixth Street and through a red light. But they did see the pickup almost hit two pedestrians, the reports said.

Reynolds reported seeing "20-30 mostly black clad and masked subjects beating on the truck" before it raced through the intersection.

The officers also reported that they couldn't find any of the people who damaged Wilson's truck.

Police initially handcuffed Wilson, put him in a patrol car to interview him, but then released him at the scene "based on the information available at the time," another report said.

Wilson declined to speak to police two days later saying he wanted to consult an attorney first.

One witness emailed police and described Wilson's actions as "clearly intimidatory." Another described Wilson passing counter-protesters without incident while honking his horn, but then he circled back. That's when people blocked his path and threw rocks, the second witness told police.

A third witness claimed Wilson "terrorized and endangered the lives of pedestrians with his vehicle" and was "clearly attempting to antagonize the crowd," the police reports said.

Another witness contacted by police said he had attended the rally with four other people and they were chased by "a mob of suspected 'antifa' members" while leaving. He said he saw people hitting, kicking and throwing rocks and glass bottles at Wilson's truck.

Police in Vancouver arrested two people in Vancouver unrelated to the pickup confrontation and police in Portland arrested seven people during the rallies.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Legislators achieved the seemingly impossible last session with the passage of a $5.3 billion transportation package. Somehow, throwing together a bipartisan group of lawmakers and sending them to talk with Oregonians around the state helped build the trust and buy-in needed to support a list of projects and the taxes to fund them. The lack of controversy stands in stark contrast with the failed negotiations in the 2015 session.

So it would make sense that leaders might copy that formula to help solve some of the other intractable problems facing Oregon, say, for example, its warped revenue system or its suffocating pension obligations. But so far, efforts are slow to get off the ground. While Sen. President Peter Courtney has floated a proposal to start up such a committee with a focus on funding K-12 education, he said he has yet to hear much support from either House Speaker Tina Kotek or Gov. Kate Brown. And so, Oregon waits.

The problem is the state has waited too long already. Legislators staved off draconian cuts for the 2017-2019 biennium in large part because Oregon's still-booming economy came to the rescue, powering stronger-than-projected revenue. But the threats to the state's fiscal health are only expected to grow. Public employers' pension contributions are increasing for the next several budget cycles. At the same time, state economists recently reported a small uptick in unemployment numbers among signs of a slowing economy. Oregon's luck may well be running out.

These signs should be setting off alarm bells. They are for veteran legislators Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, Rep. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, and others, who have asked leaders to convene a legislative committee to look at revenue and spending. But as The Portland Tribune reported earlier this month, Bentz was told by Brown and Kotek to "wait until March" - after the 2018 short legislative session which is expected to focus on a new carbon tax instead of the more pressing budget crisis bearing down on Oregon.

Editorial Agenda 2017

Boost student success

Get Oregon's financial house in order

Help our homeless

Honor our diverse values

Make Portland a city that works

Expand access to public records

________________________

.

Credit Courtney for stepping up. Specifically, the senate president told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board that he wants a bipartisan group to help find a stable permanent funding source for K-12 education, reversing the damage from the 1990s era Ballot Measures 5 and 50 that sharply limited property taxes and shifted education funding from localities to the state. The group could go around the state, talk with Oregonians about what they want to see: longer school days, year-round classes, college-level courses for high school students. At the same time, legislators can explain to them the funding disasters caused by Measures 5 and 50 and lay the groundwork for a new, saner system.

The transportation committee showed what can happen when legislators focus first on identifying needs and leave for later the precise methods of revenue, he said. Similarly, a committee should draw up education needs first, and then delve into solving the difficult revenue, spending and pension issues. The idea is that their shared commitment to specified education goals will help them, businesses, labor unions and others work through to a solution.

Oregonian editorials

Editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom. Members of the editorial board are Laura Gunderson, Helen Jung, Mark Katches and John Maher.

To respond to this editorial, post your comment below, submit an OpEd or a letter to the editor.

If you have questions about the opinion section, email Laura Gunderson, editorial pages editor, or call 503-221-8378.

It's a daunting task but it's one thoughtful way of addressing problems that threaten to sink our state. Courtney, however, first needs the full support of Kotek and Brown to move some kind of process forward. Now. On Friday, Kotek told The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board that she is talking with Courtney about mapping out the best way to proceed. Brown's spokesman said she voiced her support for the concept back in July. But they both need to act with the kind of urgency that these problems merit.

The longer they wait, the more self-interested parties step into the breach with "solutions" that are simplistic or destructive. Both the teachers union and a group of unnamed business interests are planning to file or have filed initiative petitions for the 2018 election. While both sides dress up these proposed initiatives as championing the public interest, neither come close.

This past session posed a number of thorny problems to solve - many of which were exacerbated by how long legislators waited to act. Deadline legislating rarely results in sound policy. Brown, Kotek and Courtney should show they've learned that lesson and hasten to work of setting up a committee.

- The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
Patrick Allen will take over permanently on Monday as director of the Oregon Health Authority, where he replaces former director Lynne Saxton.

Allen was tapped as acting director of the agency in August, after Gov. Kate Brown asked Saxton to step down following news that the health authority drafted a plan to damage the reputation of a Portland health care provider.

In his last job as director of Oregon's Department of Consumer and Business Services, Allen oversaw the state's health insurance exchange as well as divisions that deal with workplace issues and building codes. Officials took the insurance exchange away from the health authority after the failure of Cover Oregon. Allen also held several economic development jobs with the state.

In a statement, Brown said the health authority "must be capable of maintaining a high value and sustainable health care system. Pat has already proven to be a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars and a valuable leader at OHA. I look forward to the work he will do to ensure (health authority) lives up to the expectations of Oregonians."

The announcement came at the end of a week in which Allen went before lawmakers in Salem to answer questions about the public relations plan, even though he did not work at the agency when it was developed. Saxton and other officials involved with the plan skipped the hearing, despite a request from Republicans that they attend.

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrud
Dee Dee Kouns, a longtime crime victims' rights advocate whose work changed the state constitution and contributed to the passage of Measure 11, died Thursday. She was 89. Kouns died from an apparent heart attack in her Charbonneau home, her son Kevin Kouns said.

Kouns and her husband Bob founded Crime Victims United in 1983 after their 26-year-old daughter was murdered. During decades of advocacy, they fought to revise criminal law and the state constitution to enshrine rights for victims of violent crimes. They also supported the passage of Measure 11, which established mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes and required juveniles above the age of 15 be tried as adults for those crimes.

By the time Dee Dee and Bob Kouns retired in 1997, they were known as the parents of the victims' right movement in Oregon, said Crime Victims United President Steve Doell.

"We had no crime victims' rights until the Kouns came along," he said.

The Kouns became frustrated with the criminal justice system after their daughter Valerie McDonald was killed in 1980. McDonald went missing after she moved from Portland to San Francisco for college, but police did not assign an investigator to the case for 10 days, Dee Dee Kouns told The Oregonian in 2005.

McDonald's belongings were later found in possession of the two men who managed her apartment. Both men had previous criminal convictions, including assault with a deadly weapon and assaulting a police officer.

Police ruled McDonald's death a murder, but did not charge the two men with any crime because of the lack of a murder scene, body or weapon.

The investigation left the Kouns with a deep frustration of the criminal justice system. In the decades after McDonald's death, they often used her story to push for political change.

In 1986, they pushed for a measure that would put victims' rights during criminal trials into state law. The initiative, Measure 10, barred excluding crime victims from the courtroom during a trial and established their roles in trial scheduling, sentencing and parole. The measure was criticized by defense attorneys, who said it violated the rights of the accused.

In 1994, the Kouns supported the passage of Measure 11, which created some of the longest mandatory minimum sentences in the country. The practice of mandatory minimums has been criticized by criminal justice reform advocates, who say the policies have not significantly reduced crime rates and have led to racial disparities in sentencing.

The Kouns also advocated for the passage of a measure in 1996 that changed the language of the state constitution to reflect crime victims' rights. Measure 26 amended the constitution to read that criminal laws should be founded on "protection of society, personal responsibility, accountability for one's actions and reformation."

Dee Dee Kouns' advocacy work has left a lasting impression on state policies, Doell said.

"It's hard to encapsulate all the things she did," he said. "We're talking about years and years of service to the state."

Bob Kouns died in 2004 from prostate cancer. He was 73.

Even after her retirement, Kouns remained active, her son Kevin said. Until the past few years, she regularly went to Salem for advocacy work, he said.

Her death was a shock, Kevin Kouns said. Even at 89, she walked like a 25-year-old, he said  back straight, head high.

"Make no mistake about it," he said, "she was one tough lady."

Kouns is survived by her sons, Kevin Kouns and Mike McDonald.

A joint memorial service for Kouns will be held at the Charbonneau Country Club on Sunday, Oct. 15 at 1 p.m. The memorial will be a joint service for Kouns and her son Patrick McDonald, who also recently died at age 68.

 Samantha Matsumoto

This story has been updated with more details about Dee Dee Kouns' advocacy work. A previous version of this story included an incorrect date for the memorial service.
State regulators allowed a Portland man to have a childcare business in his home while owning a storefront dispensary selling marijuana.

Those potentially dueling interests didn't surface until this summer, after two childcare employees quit and contacted the state. They accused the day care owner, Samuel Watson, of keeping large amounts of marijuana inside his Alameda home and said he was putting children at risk. Watson categorically denies the allegations, and state officials have not found him at fault.

Without key employees, Watson in June was forced to shut down his in-home day care and a second location in Concordia.

Now, Watson's girlfriend is trying to reopen the Concordia day care, in the same location, with a new name. And Watson is trying to open a new state-licensed marijuana shop in the North Portland storefront he previously used for medical marijuana. His girlfriend boasts on social media that she is a "proud co-owner" of the recreational cannabis shop.

The case highlights a loophole in Oregon's attempt to separate the burgeoning marijuana industry from day cares that watch over children.

In 2015, state regulators forced licensed childcare providers to make a choice: profit from pot or kids, not both. New rules prohibited anyone who applies for a childcare license from growing or distributing marijuana, either at the day care or elsewhere.

But the state defines a license holder as the "children's primary caregiver." That leaves room for a hands-off day care owner, such as Watson, to keep selling pot.

State officials say other rules take care of potential problems. No one can grow or distribute marijuana inside a day care, no adults can smoke cannabis with children present, and adults must store marijuana for personal use under lock and key.

Some parents, however, say that letting a cannabis entrepreneur live in a day care facility raises the risk children will be exposed.

"The licensing requirements need to change," said Emily Hensley, who sent her infant daughter to Watson's Concordia day care. Hensley filed a small claim against Watson seeking $1,100 in reimbursement for tuition and alternative childcare.

"People who want to be in the business of childcare should not be in the business of marijuana," Hensley said. "Those things do not mix well."

Others don't want to rush to judgment.

Anthony Taylor, president of Compassionate Oregon, which advocates for medical cannabis patients, said state marijuana rules already offer adequate protections at day cares. Preventing pot entrepreneurs from owning a childcare business could be discriminatory, he said.

"It makes no difference that he owns a dispensary," Taylor said. "It's a red herring."

It's not clear how many day care owners in Oregon also have a financial stake in marijuana, because the Office of Child Care, the state regulator, doesn't ask for that information. Nor does the agency review publicly available marijuana ownership records to identify matches.

"With the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana by the voters of Oregon, it is important for all levels of Oregon's government to review existing rules, statutes and policies and update them as needed," Dawn Woods, the state's childcare director, told The Oregonian/OregonLive in response to written questions.

Dr. Zane Horowitz, medical director of the Oregon Poison Center, said marijuana extracts and edibles pose the greatest risk of harming children when ingested.

"Would eating the leaf marijuana product, for a bite or two, cause significant or really any health risks?" he said. "It's probably unlikely."

Allegations against Watson's day care, called Step by Step, ultimately ended up with Oregon's Department of Human Services. The agency conducted an "assessment" that remains in process, according to an agency spokeswoman, who declined to release any other information.

On Friday, Watson provided The Oregonian/OregonLive with what appeared to be a voicemail from an agency investigator. She said she planned to close the case as "unfounded." She added that she had "some concerns," but that it didn't sound like children were exposed, "if the conditions were, in fact, present in the home."

The day care providers who worked for Watson, Shai King and Bre Murphy, had told regulators they quit because they could no longer ensure the safety of children. They had to clean up "marijuana residue and crumbs" left from weekends and evenings, they wrote.

"We have reason to believe large quantities were stored in the residence," King and Murphy told the Office of Child Care in a June 21 email.

Watson, in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, denied the allegations, stating that "every single accusation is completely false." Watson said the safety of kids was of the utmost importance at his day cares.

Watson said he believes his former employees were disgruntled. They had learned, he said, that he planned to replace Murphy.

"And then every single thing that they could make up about my business, and cannabis being related to it, has been made up," he said.

INHERITED DAY CARE

Watson, 33, was never the typical day care owner.

Watson's mother, Leslie, started Step by Step in 2003 in the home where Watson grew up. When she died in 2011, Watson became the owner and hired others to run it.

The day care netted about $12,000 a month, or $144,000 a year, according to an April 2012 prenuptial agreement between Watson and Erika Yoshida filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Watson said those figures were incorrect.

"I wish that it netted that much," he said.

Watson said he wasn't overly excited about the business and kept it open to honor his mom. His passion, he said, was marijuana.

Oregon voters authorized medical marijuana in 1998, and lawmakers in 2012 blessed its distribution at storefront dispensaries. Voters in November 2014 legalized cannabis use for everyone.

Watson won state approval to open GreenSky Collective that month, according to Jonathan Modie, an Oregon Health Authority spokesman. Watson was listed as the sole owner of the medical marijuana dispensary, on North Interstate Avenue. GreenSky later received temporary permission to sell recreational cannabis.

Watson's then-wife also ventured into the industry, although Yoshida didn't have an ownership stake in Watson's marijuana or childcare companies. Erika Yoshida, the daughter of teriyaki sauce magnate Junki Yoshida, brokered real estate deals for pot businesses, according to media reports. In fall 2015, Willamette Week dubbed Watson and Yoshida the "Power Couple" of pot in an edition about marijuana entrepreneurs.

But by early 2016, Watson and Yoshida had separated, according to Yoshida's divorce filing. Watson moved into his boyhood home in Alameda, where the day care was still running.

Problems soon followed, according to King, who worked for Watson starting in 2012.

In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, King said she saw Watson store marijuana at the house last year in large plastic tubs kept upstairs, where children were not allowed. The bins did not have special locks, she said.

Watson said he "absolutely did not store any cannabis in that house."

King said she witnessed him open a bin and scoop out some pot. King said she told Watson she wanted to buy marijuana from his dispensary. "He's like 'Oh, no, I'll get you it for free. Just come up,'" she told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

King said Watson gave her the marijuana after the day care closed for the evening. She said she didn't pay Watson for the pot.

Watson called her account "completely false."

King, who later secured a $2,457 judgment against Watson for back wages, said she also saw Watson smoke marijuana in his home. She said Watson smoked pot upstairs, during business hours, when kids were in the home.

Watson denied smoking marijuana when children were in his home. "Absolutely not," he said.

King said she and other employees found marijuana remnants in areas accessible to children, such as small tables used by pre-school-aged children.

"When I started finding it downstairs, on the main level where kids are, I was like, 'This is becoming an issue,'" King said. "And we talked about it. And he said he wouldn't be as, like, careless. But it kept happening."

Watson said there was "no way" marijuana remnants could be there.

"I don't keep cannabis inside of my house," he said. "The businesses are completely separate."

King also said she once saw an unlocked handgun on Watson's night stand at his Alameda home.

Watson acknowledged owning a handgun. But he said it's stored in a locked safe at his father's house.

"IT WAS VERY STRESSFUL"

Medical dispensaries were allowed to sell recreational marijuana only through the end of 2016. Watson said he shut down at the beginning of 2017.

He then took steps to expand his day care business.

Watson tapped King to oversee a new Concordia childcare location in February. Her name was on the license.

King told The Oregonian/OregonLive she had other concerns beyond marijuana. King said employees' paychecks occasionally bounced and the company didn't always provide adequate food to feed children. At the Concordia location, she said, the water got shut off. The Portland Water Bureau confirmed a shut off and reconnection on April 19.

As the primary provider at the Concordia location, King was the one who the state would hold accountable, she said.

"It was very stressful," said King, 24.

Watson acknowledged financial challenges. He blamed some of the issues King raised, such as food shortages and utility shut offs, on poor management by his employees.

"There's probably been a handful of times in which paychecks bounced," he said. "That was probably the biggest thing that I can say I could have done better is manage the finances a little better."

On June 20, King and Murphy contacted the state to voluntarily close the two childcare locations.

"I think I did the best I could," King told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "I cleaned up his mess, basically. I probably should have reported it sooner."

STATE'S RESPONSE

In reality, the Office of Child Care had known that Step by Step's owner was in the marijuana business for ten months but sat on the information.

In October 2016, a tipster had called the licensing agency to allege that children were left unsupervised at the Alameda day care during lunch. Woods, the agency director, said her office investigated but was unable to substantiate the allegation.

But the tipster also told the agency about Watson's marijuana business and provided its name and location, according to documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request. It was still operating at the time.

That information, manually entered into the state's childcare database, apparently set off no alarms.

Woods said regulators didn't take note of Watson's marijuana business until August, two months after King and Murphy wrote their email. Woods said her agency learned about Watson's business after contacting the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

State regulators are now deciding whether businesses owned or linked to Watson and his girlfriend, Ava "Nusheen" Bakhtiar, should qualify for new marijuana and childcare licenses.

Watson asked the state liquor commission to license his old dispensary, GreenSky Collective, to sell recreational marijuana. Watson is the only listed owner, according to Mark Pettinger, a liquor commission spokesman.

Watson also registered a new business at the same address called Jeffrey's Flower & Oil, according to filings with the Secretary of State's Office. The Jeffrey's logo now dots storefront windows and the side of the building. Watson said he is considering using Jeffrey's as the assumed business name for GreenSky Collective.

Watson's girlfriend portrays herself as a business partner in his marijuana shop. On her Instagram profile page, Bakhtiar calls herself a "Proud co-owner of Jeffrey's, a North Portland Dispensary." She wrote in June that she "partnered" with Watson to open Jeffrey's.

Watson told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Bakhtiar is not an owner of Jeffrey's and that her social media writings overstated her position.

In an email, Bakhtiar said she regularly uses Instagram to convey "a sense of ownership for every company I work for," adding that doing so helps promote brands and generate sales.

The liquor commission has reviewed Watson's application to open a dispensary, but it is incomplete, the agency said.

Meanwhile, the Office of Child Care is considering an application involving Bakhtiar to open a new day care at Watson's old Concordia location. It's likely to be approved following a state inspection, according the agency.

Only Bakhtiar is listed as owner, the agency said.

But in records filed with the Secretary of State on July 26, Watson and Bakhtiar are both listed as owners of the new day care business, known as Luna Mamas. Watson said he is working with the Secretary of State to have his name removed as an owner.

"I don't want to be involved in any of the day care, because of all of this," Watson said. "I can't afford to have this ever happen again."

THE AFTERMATH

Nine families have filed small claims against Watson and Step by Step this summer, seeking more than $9,300 in total. One of the parents, Jenny Cole, has filed a $500,000 lawsuit claiming negligence and alleging marijuana possession and use in the home. The lawsuit names Watson, Step by Step, Bakhtiar and Erika Yoshida as defendants. Yoshida declined to comment.

Parents contacted by The Oregonian/OregonLive generally said they didn't have any problems with Step by Step until learning about the concerns that the staff raised this summer.

Mandy Williams, who sent her youngest daughter to Watson's day care, said the state needs to prohibit marijuana entrepreneurs from owning day cares inside their homes. Absent a change in state rules, Williams said, Oregon should force day care owners to disclose their marijuana interests to parents.

"There's nothing more precious than your child, and placing them in someone else's care is difficult," said Williams, who is among the parents seeking money from Watson. "This is another piece of information we should have access to prior to making the decision."

Bakhtiar, who is trying to get her day care licensed, told The Oregonian/OregonLive it is discriminatory and hurtful to question if a marijuana entrepreneur can also own a childcare business.

In a state where marijuana use is as accepted as social drinking, Bakhtiar, 28, proudly shares her interests in cannabis online. An Instagram comment from January expressed her gratitude after finding work at a marijuana laboratory.

"A wise soul recently told me that I need to allow my lifestyle to dictate my career and not the other way around," she wrote. "I'm lucky that I found a home in the cannabis industry  I couldn't think of a better marriage between lifestyle and career."

-- Brad Schmidt

503-294-7628

@_brad_schmidt
A shallow magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck beneath the Pacific Ocean off the Northern California coast Friday afternoon, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

No tsunami warnings were issued for the coast, according to the National Weather Service. Tsunamis are not expected because the quake was not strong enough to create any, the weather service said.

The temblor occurred at 12:50 p.m. at a depth of 2.5 miles, according to the USGS. Its epicenter was roughly 122 miles west of the historic village of Ferndale on California's Lost Coast.

There were few indications on social media that the quake was strongly felt, if at all. Neither the Eureka nor Fortuna police departments reported that they felt anything or received reports of damage.

Within 20 seconds of the larger quake, the USGS reported on its website a 5.6 magnitude temblor that was closer to the California coast, but deleted it later.

"There was only one event, and that was the 5.7," said Justin Pressfield, a spokesman for the USGS.

Pressfield said there was a discrepancy in different scientific networks' reading of the data from the earthquake, which resulted in a mistaken reporting of two quakes.

A smaller 3.3 earthquake did occur beneath the Pacific in the same general area around 10 a.m., however.

California's north coast is one of the state's most seismically active areas, regularly producing major earthquakes. There had been other smaller quakes in the area in recent days.

In January 2010, a 6.5 quake hit the area, snapping power lines, toppling chimneys, knocking down traffic signals, shattering windows and prompting the evacuation of at least one apartment building.

A 6.9 earthquake struck the same area in 2014, and a 6.5 quake hit last December.

Oregonian/OregonLive reporter Samantha Matsumoto contributed to this report.

-- Los Angeles Times
Carlos Giusti

In another week dominated by natural disasters, Hurricane Maria lays waste to Caribbean islands on the heels of Hurricane Irma and a 7.1 earthquake devastates Mexico less than two weeks after a similar quake hit the country. Not to be outdone, President Donald Trump warns that if Kim Jong Un (or, as he called him, Rocket Man) attacks the U.S. or its allies, North Korea will be totally destroyed. Not just destroyed, but totally destroyed.

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Race for the Cure

Sunday: Thousands of people converge on downtown  this time, not to demonstrate  to participate in Portlands 26th annual Race for the Cure, which raises money and awareness to fight breast cancer.

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A political Emmy Awards

Sunday: Politics seem to be at the forefront of Emmy voters minds, with The Handmaids Tale, Veep and Saturday Night Live cleaning up on televisions biggest awards on a night that featured Julia Louis-Dreyfus tying the record for most career Emmys and a guest appearance from former White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

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School district faces audit

Monday: Oregons secretary of state says he will audit Portland Public Schools, an unusual move linked primarily to the districts decision to sue a parent and a reporter to keep records secret.

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Trump at the U.N.

Tuesday: President Donald Trump, in his first major address to the U.N. General Assembly, minces no words, saying if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies from an attack, the U.S. will totally destroy North Korea.

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Sessions comes to Portland

Tuesday: Attorney General Jeff Sessions makes a brief visit to Portland to say sanctuary cities  Oregon is actually a sanctuary state  have become a traffickers, a smugglers or a gang members best friend.

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Quake hits Mexico

Tuesday: Hundreds die and countless buildings collapse as a 7.1 earthquake  the second major quake to strike the country in less than two weeks  levels parts of Mexico and Mexico City.

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Home run record

Tuesday: Kansas Citys Alex Gordon hits what normally would be a meaningless home run in a meaningless game but, because it also was the 5,694th hit this season, it sets a major league record.

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Puerto Rico devastated

Wednesday: Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico straight on, leveling homes, tearing roofs off of buildings and leaving the entire island without power, a situation that could take months to resolve.

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Arts tax upheld

Thursday: Oregons Supreme Court rules that Portlands controversial arts tax is legal and does not violate the Oregon Constitution, echoing decisions made previously at the district and appeals court levels.

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As a retired four-star general and former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Merrill McPeak is familiar with conflict. So, he's not too bothered by the dramatic reactions some people have had to "The Vietnam War," the PBS documentary made by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

"It's interesting that we are being attacked now from both sides," McPeak says, with "the hard right wing" arguing that "we coulda, shoulda, woulda won Vietnam if we'd just done this or that, or if Congress hadn't cut off the funding."

On the other side, McPeak continues, there are "the unreconstructed war protesters, who say the film doesn't point out explicitly that the protest movement, the antiwar movement, was right from the beginning."

For his part, McPeak looks calm as he sits at the desk in the office of the Lake Oswego condo he shares with his wife. Nearby, McPeak's dog, Maddie, sleeps quietly on a cushion next to a couch.

"I guess being attacked from both sides means you're about where you ought to be," says McPeak, 81.

It's not surprising that "The Vietnam War," which took Burns and Novick about a decade to make, should stir strong emotions. The 10-part, 18-hour documentary explores one of the most divisive eras in American history, a painful period marked by wounds that haven't yet fully healed.

The documentary premiered Sept. 17, and continues Sept. 24-28 on PBS. It's available for streaming on PBS.org and PBS apps for Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, iOS and Android.

McPeak, who is interviewed in the film about his Vietnam service, was also a consultant on the project.

His filmed interview only lasted about an hour, McPeak recalls. But Burns and Novick turned to him for help and technical advice over the course of more than five years.

"It's been an honor for me to do that, because this is such a wonderful piece of work," says McPeak. Burns and Novick's film will be "timeless," says McPeak, who praises it for a "very balanced view of that war."

Though McPeak arrived in Vietnam in late 1968 and flew a total of 269 combat missions there, he says being involved in "The Vietnam War" opened his eyes to aspects of the conflict that were new to him.

"I thought I knew about Vietnam," McPeak says. "I was there, after all. And I studied lessons learned, as a professional matter," because "I needed to know what happened there, and why."

Even so, McPeak says, Burns and Novick "taught me a whale of a lot more. I know things I never knew, never guessed at." Part of that, McPeak says, came from new scholarship about the era. He also credits interviews done by Burns and Novick of "these people from the other side, Viet Cong guys, and North Vietnamese army officers, and Politburo members and combatants from the north. We never got their version of the story before."

As to how McPeak became involved with Burns and Novick, he jokes, "Well, I'm a famous, good-looking guy, so if you've got a movie to make, you've got to get in touch with me."

The real story, he continues, involves his position as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Max Cleland, a former U.S. Senator and fellow Vietnam vet who was executive secretary of the battle monuments commission, had been contacted by the filmmakers.

Cleland, who also appears in the documentary, recommended Burns and Novick talk to McPeak. The filmmakers did, and then called McPeak from time to time to check technical details, and more.

"Eventually, I ended up in New Hampshire, where Ken Burns has got a place where he does a lot of editing," McPeak says. He and other advisors would watch the film in progress, checking archival material for accuracy.

"I would say, 'Hey, that guy's not a colonel, he's a lieutenant colonel. You've got to read rank," McPeak adds, with a smile.

"Or, I would say, he's not Army, he's Marine Corps. You can tell because he's wearing a different set of camouflage. Or, I would say, that's not an F-4, that's an A-4 (aircraft), and the engine noise is wrong."

McPeak has also joined Burns and Novick for a series of personal appearances to discuss the film, including a sold-out event July 24 at Portland's Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Our TV writer Kristi Turnquist sits down for an interview with General Merrill A. McPeak, former Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force. Gen. McPeak is featured in the Ken Burns documentary "The Vietnam War." Posted by The Oregonian on Thursday, September 21, 2017

"I'm going again," McPeak says. Secretary of Defense James Mattis "wants to meet Ken and Lynn, and they've asked me to go with them. So, I'll go back to Washington (D.C.) in a month or so."

The public appearances are part of an outreach effort that goes beyond the film. As McPeak says, "Ken and Lynn want to start a national dialogue that they hope will heal up some of the wounds that still remain. I'm less sanguine about those possibilities myself. But there's no doubt that this history lesson will teach a lot of people a lot of things they didn't know before. And then, if there is a possibility of dialogue, it'll be more informed than it could ever have been before this documentary."

In the Burns and Novick film, McPeak says that U.S. forces faced an impossible challenge in the Vietnam War because "we were fighting on the wrong side."

In retrospect, McPeak edits that comment. "What I should have said is, when you get involved in somebody else's war, you've got to pick the right side." The U.S. was supporting South Vietnam, and the documentary provides ample evidence of what McPeak says, namely, that the government there was corrupt, and lacked the support of the people.

"It was blindingly obvious to me, and to a lot of other people in my squadron, that we were trying to prop up a government that had almost no chance of surviving on its own," McPeak says.

Had the South Vietnam government been closer to a true democracy, there might have been a chance at victory, McPeak says. Lacking that, he recalls, "This was not going to ever be a winning effort. I saw that quickly, and anybody with eyeballs could see it."

The U.S. decision to fight using conventional means also made victory impossible, McPeak says. "I mean, we could have nuked Hanoi, and game over. That's a win, if you think that's a win."

McPeak continues, "Given the limitations that we imposed on ourselves there, there was no way we could win."

By the time McPeak arrived in Vietnam, he says, the U.S. government was so heavily committed that "it had become a matter of our prestige," and "we had to save face. So, we continued an idiotic intervention on behalf of a corrupt regime."

"The Vietnam War" also makes clear how badly President Lyndon Johnson managed U.S. involvement.

"You can kind of sympathize with Johnson, because he felt like he was trapped," McPeak says. "He'd been handed this smelly, awful problem and he kind of was cornered."

In the film, a devastating sequence covers Richard Nixon, who was running against Hubert Humphrey for the presidency in 1968. Humphrey had gained momentum, thanks in part to the prospect of potential peace talks to end the Vietnam War. But, as the film says, Nixon engineered an intervention, which caused South Vietnam to pull out of the talks, on the promise that Nixon would offer better terms for ending the war if he was elected.

Nixon defeated Humphrey. And the war ground on for five more years, with thousands more lives lost. In "The Vietnam War," Nixon is heard on tape talking with Johnson on the phone. Nixon denies any such involvement in derailing the peace talks.

"He lied about it to Johnson, who knew he was lying," McPeak says. "I doubt that very many Americans fully appreciated the depth of Nixon's deceit here," which McPeak calls "really treacherous behavior."

For all the tragedies associated with the war, the U.S. defeat in Vietnam did teach the military lessons that helped drive reforms, McPeak says.

In contrast, "at the policy level, there were a lot of lessons to be learned," McPeak says. "And there's no evidence that we paid any attention at all."

As examples, McPeak cites the post-9/11 invasion of Iraq, and the government diverting attention from Afghanistan.

Citing Winston Churchill's quote about democracy being the worst form of government, "except for all the others," McPeak says, "We've got a pretty good system here," flaws and all.

"I'm sworn to defend it even today, from all attacks, domestic and foreign," McPeak says. "But it gives us pretty disappointing results sometimes."

-- Kristi Turnquist



kturnquist@oregonian.com

503-221-8227

@Kristiturnquist
A man was killed Friday night after a car hit him when he was walking in a Hillsboro street, Washington County sheriff's deputies said.

The man was reportedly walking in the street near Southwest Baseline Street and 331st Avenue shortly after 9 p.m., sheriff's spokeswoman Deputy Shannon Wilde said. He was hit by a car shortly after.

The man died at the scene.

The driver stayed at the scene, Wilde said.

Deputies don't know why the man was walking in the road.

The road will be closed for several hours in both directions, Wilde said.

-- Samantha Matsumoto
The Islamic Center of Saginaw has scheduled its second open house from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30. Local and national imams and authors will be on hand to answer questions about Islam, and the local community will be sharing their traditions, history, faith and food.

It has been six years since the Islamic Center of Saginaw opened at 4330 Center Road near Tittabawassee Road. The center joined the ICS Downtown to serve the city's Muslims, and the community has continued to grow. The center has also welcomed its first full-time Imam into the community. Imam Safwan Eid, previously of the Islamic Institute of Boston, brings his youth, experience and diverse talents to Saginaw, along with his wife and daughter.

Eid said he is ready to embrace the challenges of today and engage with society at all levels to ensure the universal rights of every human being and improve the quality of lives and interactions with one another.

"The goal of this open house is to create interpersonal relationships built on foundations of fruitful dialogue," Eid said. "Then we will be able to mobilize in the future for causes we all believe in and to emphatically give all forms of hate their overdue ending."

The open house will feature several scholars, Imams and authors who will speak on Islam in America. Dr. Imam Talal Eid, the former U.S. diplomat and commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, will offer his in-depth knowledge of Islam and his many years of experience serving the American community. Other guests will include internationally known calligrapher Haji Noor Deen, who will give demonstrations of his art, and whose work will be available for sale. Michael Wolfe, executive producer of "The Sultan and the Saint" film will also be on hand to discuss the legendary meeting between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan Al-Kaamil of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade.

Visitors will also enjoy the diverse flavors of the Mediterranean and South Asia and a tour of the mosque as they go from booth to booth conversing with the 3,000-plus expected attendees.

The Islamic Center is located at 4330 Center Road. Onsite and valet parking will be available.
Trinity Lutheran Church in Midland is hosting the Saginaw Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on Oct. 1, 4:00 p.m. Saginaw Valley Chapter members have planned a program set for 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, titled "Luther and the Catechism Hymns: An Interpretation by Johann Sebastian Bach." The program features J.S. Bach's Clavierubung III, which includes organ chorale settings on Luther's small catechism.

The Clavierubung III, sometimes referred to as the Organ Mass, corresponds with the musical settings of the 1739 St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, Lutheran Mass. The work begins with three settings on the Kyrie (God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), and is followed by two settings on the Gloria. Bach then turns to Luther's Small Catechism, writing two keyboard settings, a large and a small, for each of the six articles in the Catechism. Organ chorale settings have been composed for The Ten Commandments, the Creed, The Lord's Prayer, Baptism, Penitence, Confession, and Communion. The large settings, played on the organ, will be performed by AGO members and the small settings will be played by four pianists, using the church's grand piano. The organ chorales are introduced and concluded with Bach's great St. Anne Prelude and Fugue in E-Flat Major, performed by Steven Egler, Dean of the Saginaw Valley Chapter.

Andreas Teich, pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church, Bay City, will provide commentary on Luther, the Reformation, the Small Catechism, and J.S. Bach's organ chorale settings. Program attendees will be invited to sing three of the hymn settings: "All Glory Be to God on High," " We All Believe in One God" and "Out of the Depths".

Other performers include Beth Elston (Cross Lutheran Church, Pigeon), Barbara Bleck (Immanuel Lutheran Church, Sebewaing), Patti Bowen (Trinity Lutheran, Midland), Timothy Nechuta (high school student of Dr. Egler, from Williamston), James Gladstone (retired, Holy Cross Lutheran, Saginaw), Scott Hyslop, (St. Lorenz Lutheran Church, Frankemuth), Brenda Haydan (Trinity Lutheran Church, Midland) and Carl Angelo (First Presbyterian Church, Flint). The manual or small setting performers are Andrea Alexander, and three students of Dr. Adrienne Wiley: Feng Jim Cui (high school, Midland), Choe Danitz (CMU student, Mt. Pleasant) and Doug Webster (accompanist at CMU, Sanford).

The program is open to the public and free of charge. Trinity Lutheran Church, 3701 Jefferson, is hosting the event and will serve refreshments after the performance. All are welcome
The Midland Area Chamber of Commerce gave an opportunity this week for local business professionals to get a jump on understanding the effects of marijuana legalization with an expert on the topic.

Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., former advisor to three U.S. presidential administrations and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, spoke on the cost of legal marijuana to businesses at the chamber's September installment of the Issues & Answers Program Series.

"Our chamber has not taken a position on this issue," Diane Middleton, the chamber's executive director, said while introducing Sabet. "He is the foremost expert on this issue in the country. He is the one we want to hear from."

Sabet told the crowd they are ahead of the curve by talking about marijuana legalization now.

He was quick to point out legalization is different from decriminalization, and said research by SAM shows many think they are voting for decriminalization.

"What is being voted on is making a business of pot," he said. "At the end of the day, this is a business and it is about money for the people that are promoting this ... This is about a small group of people getting very rich."

Sabet said it's important to look at the other legal drugs in the country when considering the industrialization of marijuana -- alcohol, tobacco and prescription medication. "Those haven't turned out so good for us as a country," from numerous perspectives, he said.

He called tobacco the biggest public health crisis of the century after its industrialization 100 years ago with endorsements from doctors that tobacco was a medicine. "My warning is we're walking into that same trap with marijuana," he said.

Sabet said the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has led to employers being unable to find employees who can pass pre-employment drug tests, and construction companies have been recruiting workers from other states.

Today's marijuana also has much more of the active ingredient THC, from 2 percent THC in the 1960s to 16 percent being considered a low amount of THC now in Colorado. Products made from marijuana can have as much as 98 percent concentrated THC.

Depending on the person, THC can remain in the system about a week, and for sure for three days after use, Sabet said. "That is a huge headache for employers," because they cannot prove when marijuana was last used, or if it was used on the job, leaving employers to show the employee was impaired.

It also comes in numerous forms, including edibles which have no smell, making it impossible to detect use on the job.

The marijuana lobby promised to make workers' right to use a priority after a 2014 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that established employers can fire employees for off-the-job marijuana use, Sabet said, chronicling other state courts' decisions regarding marijuana use.

Sabet listed various other findings about people who use marijuana, including they:

 Miss work more frequently and have more disciplinary problems than their colleagues,

 Are 40 percent more likely to have missed at least one day of work in the last month due to illness or injury,

 Are 106 percent more likely to have missed at least one day of work in the last month because they "just didn't want to be there," and

 Create significantly more safety problems at the workplace than non-users, including industrial accidents and injuries.

For a run down of the statistics, go to www.learnaboutsam.org

"The question is where do we want to go with marijuana?" Sabet said. "We want to be a resource," he said of SAM.
The Midland County Health and Human Services Council recently heard a presentation from Midland County Probate and Juvenile Court Judge Dorene Allen; Elizabeth Kline, Community Mental Health supervisor; and Brian Millikin, director of the Midland/Gladwin Department of Health and Human Services, regarding their collaborative partnership in handling child abuse and neglect in Midland County.

Child abuse and neglect crosses all socioeconomic classes and happens to seemingly ordinary people in all walks of life. The greatest myth is that the dangers to children come from strangers. In most cases, the perpetrator is someone the parent or child knows, and is often trusted by the child and family.

Complaints of child abuse/neglect are referred through the Michigan Centralized Intake line at 855-444-3911. Basic information is gathered and a screening is completed to determine if the allegations meet the definition of abuse/neglect. Those that meet the definition are assigned to the local DHHS office for investigation. DHHS requires a complete investigation of the allegations within 30 days. Depending on the rating of the investigation, a variety of DHHS services are provided to improve the family situation and they try, as much as possible, to have the child(ren) remain in the home. Collaboration with community partners and service providers is a key part of success.

A host of community services are available such as: parenting education, Community Mental Health services, DHHS Homemaker services, contracted counseling, Mid-Michigan Community Action Agency-Families First, or other home services, domestic violence services and collaboration with special education teachers/parapros/administration, where applicable.

At this point, the hope is that the services offered have been successful and a DHHS case can be closed. If the family is non-compliant or based on the severity of the allegation, DHHS may file a petition with the court to request the court's jurisdiction and oversight.

Judge Allen also discussed Baby Court, a great illustration of the collaboration between the Court, DHHS and CMH which focuses on abused and neglected children 0-3 years old. Twenty-eight percent of the court's abuse/neglect caseload is comprised of children 0-3 years old and 65 percent of the parents in these cases end up either releasing their parental rights or have them voluntarily terminated. Many of these issues are cyclical and a generational pattern is noted. The premise of Baby Court is to have the community rally around a family so that it can become intact and healthy. The key goals are to ensure that the babies are thriving and reaching developmental goals, are able to develop healthy bonds with caregivers, and to reduce and prevent the cycle of child abuse/neglect. Typically, Baby Court has much fewer placement changes for these children as a result of the intensive services.

Ann Fillmore, executive director of United Way of Midland County, serves as a member of the Midland County Health & Human Services Council. The HHSC promotes excellence in the delivery of health and human services through the collective efforts of 27 key community leaders with a shared vision for solving community challenges. Its membership fosters collaboration and cooperation among social service agencies, education, health care, business, the faith-based community, the courts, law enforcement and local government.
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BLOOMINGTON  "Heroin is poison."

McLean County Assistant State's Attorney Jeff Horve opened his remarks with that observation Friday in the sentencing hearing of a Bloomington man who admitted his role in the drug-induced homicide of Marie Lavallee, a 28-year-old mother of three, in August 2016.

Jeremy Miller, 29, was sentenced to 14 years for drug-induced homicide, the first such case to be prosecuted in McLean County. He must serve 75 percent of the sentence.

Horve asked Judge Scott Drazewski to impose a 15-year sentence, in part to deter others from providing drugs that result in a user's death.

"There are no winners here today at all," said Horve, referring to the victim's death and the criminal charges that sent Miller to prison.

The victim's mother, Frankie Ayco, sobbed through much of her lengthy victim impact statement that began with describing the early morning phone call on Aug. 2, 2016, notifying her of the fatal overdose.

"There are no words to describe that moment," said Ayco.

Lavallee was "my only daughter, a sister, a Navy veteran, a wife, a mother to three beautiful children ... and the unfortunate reason we're here today," said Ayco.

The victim suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and turned to the New Life Christian Center in Bloomington in December 2015 after her condition worsened, said Ayco.

Ayco said her daughter began seeing Miller, who stayed at a housing unit connected to the church and worked for the church part time.

Ayco blamed Miller for introducing her daughter to heroin.

"Yes, you killed my daughter," Ayco told Miller as he sat next to his lawyer Jeff Brown. "You do know you're a murderer, right?" Ayco asked Miller.

Lavallee managed to stay clean for 20 days after Miller left town in July 2016 but returned to heroin when he came back July 20, said Ayco.

In his request for a six-year sentence, Brown argued that Miller "is not a dangerous man, he's an addict." The defendant used "a lot of heroin, amounts that were dangerous," he said.

Brown denied that Miller injected Lavallee with heroin, saying both were addicts. "They fell asleep. He woke up and she didn't," said Brown.

In his remarks to the judge, Miller offered a timeline of his first meeting with Lavallee, a woman he had not seen in eight years. The two started a relationship and planned to marry in March 2017, he said.

But along the way, they started using heroin and struggled to kick their habit.

"The tide went out and never came back," Miller said of Lavallee's death. Miller admitted that he went to Chicago after Lavallee's death and purchased heroin but denied he intended to sell the drugs.

Drazewski said Miller "has significant rehabilitation potential" if he is able to overcome his drug issues. The judge noted that "many layers exist in my case, on all sides."

In remarks on the sentence, Horve said 'it's a double-digit sentence. I think it's fair and justice was served today."
WASHINGTON (AP)  In a show of American military might to North Korea, U.S. bombers and flight escorts flew on Saturday to the farther point north of the border between North and South Korea by any such American aircraft this century. The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously President Donald Trump takes North Korea's "reckless behavior."

"This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies," White said.

North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has said Trump would "pay dearly" for threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack. Kim's foreign minister told reporters this past week that the North's response to Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific."

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won't allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North's progress.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century "encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons."

At the United Nations, North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said Saturday that his country's nuclear force is "to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S."

He also said that Trump's depiction of Kim as "Rocket Man" makes "our rocket's visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more."

Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was "deranged."

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the North's young autocrat as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission."

Trump's executive order expanded the Treasury Department's ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.

Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the North's most important trading partner.

If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated North's ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Korea's trade, serves as the country's conduit to the international banking system.
When you listen to Talking Heads' most iconic songs, they all have one standout element in common: Tina Weymouth's funky, melodic bassline. Without her there would no "Psycho Killer," no "Burning Down The House," no "Once in a Lifetime,"  grooves which are immediately recognizable, ingrained in our collective memories even as the songs' lyrics fade. It's Weymouth's basslines that continue to be sampled and resurfaced by everyone from Jay-Z to, most recently, Selena Gomez  yet her role in creating them is rarely discussed.

Upon the release of Gomez's "Bad Liar," a track built on Weymouth's iconic "Psycho Killer" riff, critics focused on David Byrne's seal of approval, despite the fact that he wasn't responsible for the seminal sample. As is often the case with women who back charismatic frontmen, Weymouth's recognition was an afterthought.

Weymouth, now 66, isn't looking for kudos, either. "I didn't really think I should concern myself about that. I know what I did," Weymouth told PAPER in a phone interview. "I'm still here. I still do my thing. I think that's really what it's all about in the end  not how people perceive you."

In a recent interview, Talking Heads drummer (and Weymouth's husband) Chris Frantz admitted that "had there been no Tina Weymouth in Talking Heads, we would be just another band." So, why does it seem as if she's been slowly written out of the legacy of a band she played such a significant role in?

Critics occasionally mention that Weymouth influenced a slew of female bassists, from Kim Gordon to Este Haim, but not much else. Rarely do people write in-depth profiles of her, despite the fact that she (along with Frantz) figured out that the key to translating Byrne's esoteric ideas into catchy, iconic pop music lay within the rhythm section.

Her basslines became the pulse of the band, infusing downtown punk with a new sound: a danceable combination of the soulful, funky jams of Parliament and James Brown with the rock steadiness of Carol Kaye. They authentically covered a broad spectrum, from melodic funk that drove the songs forward to pointed grooves that anchored African-inspired, polyrhythmic dance music  a sound she and Frantz would further develop with their seminal group Tom Tom Club.

Yet, when Weymouth is written about, her musicianship is ignored while she is characterized as everything from, at best, a humorless shrew to, at worst, "the Lady Macbeth of rock" by men who focus primarily on Byrne. This trope is not unusual  just symptomatic of a bigger problem of female artists being airbrushed from history they helped create. When they are included, they are frequently portrayed in either black and white personality extremes, defined by their gender  talented despite being a woman  or cast in the shadows of their thoroughly examined, fully-formed male peers under the lens of male critics.

Take David Bowman's 2002 biography This Must Be The Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th Century. He characterizes Byrne as the humble, friendly protagonist of this story, the true hero, while depicting Weymouth as an antagonist, "a little brittle," with "the vibe of a Catholic saint. Or maybe a tragically lame prima ballerina. Or maybe Valerie Solanis, the woman who shot Andy Warhol." This is Bowman being gentle. Later, he will compare her to "Rochester's wife, the mad one," and call her memories "poisonous."

Critics often brush over the details: Byrne made her audition three times to keep her spot in the band  something no other member was asked to do. In the 2015 documentary Girls in Bands, she recalled Byrne telling her that he thought "a woman's role shouldn't really be in the big world because it was a dangerous place for women."

Whenever something wasn't working, Byrne blamed Weymouth. "Anytime David felt insecure, I was his whipping boy. Every time he couldn't come up with something, he'd beat me up about it. The whole time, it was so painful for me," she recounted to Bowman.

Paul Natkin/Getty

Perhaps, though, Tina Weymouth never gets enough credit because she is, by and large, an unassuming figure so unlike any of her female peers. "I don't want to go beyond what I do well, which is play music," she told Creem in 1979. "I haven't exploited being female 'cause it's better to save those things."

She's a woman who will keep up with an aggressive world tour with Talking Heads while pregnant, who will finish recording a bass track while in labor. A woman who won't hold back on brutal honesty about what it was like to live in David Byrne's shadow: "For years," she once told the Los Angeles Times, "people only asked me about David, and I was good at that."

She is fiercely loyal and exceedingly dependable, but expects no fanfare. Starting a band had been Frantz's dream, she recalled in a 2014 lecture at Red Bull Music Academy, Tokyo, and he spent nearly two years searching for a bassist. No one would bite, so, eventually, Weymouth went out and bought a bass nearly as big as she was, ready to step in:

"I was only playing bass for five months when the band first played [live]," she explained in the same lecture. "I really was a punk. I was a complete autodidact. I did not take a lesson. Nobody taught me how."

She saw holes and knew how to fill others' needs  something women have been doing with no acclaim for centuries. When band members reminisce about their early days, they remember her living with Byrne and Frantz in a commercial loft with no heat and no bathroom, making them food, cutting their hair, driving them to gigs, performing double duty as bassist and road manager.

Tina Weymouth was a pioneer, and she continues to be a lasting influence, particularly on women, today. She hasn't stopped charging relentlessly down her own path, continuing to mentor and collaborate with younger artists while creating new music with Frantz.

"One thing I did that I'm glad about in retrospect is that I never talked about the problems of being a woman," she told The Face in 1981. "I didn't want to discourage anyone who had the same idea. I didn't want to make it look like an uphill trek, which it was."

Women often have to tell their own stories, though, and Weymouth's reluctance to draw attention to herself and the trials of being a female complicates things. It's a catch-22: "I was always a feminist," she told PAPER. "I just hated to always get that question. It locks you into asking, 'Is that all you think about when you see me? As a woman? You don't see me as an artist? You don't see me as a musician?'"

Remaining quiet meant disciples had no fear in emulating her, but it also made her a mystery. So, like so many women who came before her, she's endured the projections of biased critiques and shallow musings from men, her influence reduced to a footnote. Same as it ever was.

Splash photo by Richard McCaffrey/Getty


Author Stefan Salinas writes to tell me of his new book for children, which he both wrote and illustrated. It is a Catholic-Muslim childrens book that is slowly getting attention.

To create it, I not only combed the internet for stories and images pertaining to this true event from Bosnia, but I was able to interview the senior carpenter!

The description says:

In the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Catholics have been living side by side for many years, but they have not always gotten along. Twenty years have passed since they were at war with each other. How can neighbors of different faiths live together in peace?

Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, paid a visit to Bosnia on June 6, 2015. This is the true story of a Muslim family of carpenters who designed and made a chair in honor of this occasion.

This book is for children, parents, grandparents, for everyone!

Written from the perspective of Salim Hajderovac, the cheerful and humble carpenter, this book is a wonderful story about interreligious teamwork Within the context of a true story, children will learn a few basic truths about Catholicism and Islam.

 Regina Lordan, Catholic News Service

Salinas color pencil, ink, and acrylic illustrations are expressive and communicate much of the text well A heartfelt story that simply conveys the importance of positive interfaith relations.

 Gloria Koster, School Library Journal

This book is important in the difficult times that have befallen us all.

 Malden Obrenovic, Al Jazeera Balkans

to help readers  children and the adults who may read it to them  appreciate people of other cultures and faiths instead of fear them.

 Christina Gray, Catholic San Francisco
Photos: Iran marks Sacred Defense Week with massive military parades

09/22/17

Report by Press TV; photos by Islamic Republic News Agency

Iran has unveiled a new ballistic missile during military parades held across the nation to mark the first day of the annual Sacred Defense Week. The missile, named Khorramshahr, was put on display during the military parade in Tehran on Friday, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials in attendance.



Khorramshahr, Iran's newest ballistic missile

The ballistic missile, which has a range of 2000 kilometers, is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.



"As it was observed, the missile has become smaller in size and more tactical and it will be operational in the near future," he told reporters on the sidelines of the parades.

Addressing the event, Rouhani said no country can stop the Islamic Republic from strengthening its missile capabilities and defense programs.



"We will promote our defensive and military power as much as we deem necessary," Rouhani said. "We seek no one's permission to defend our land."



He added that Iran's defense power has never been used for aggressive acts, while certain world powers export deadly weapons to the Middle East.

The Iranian president said Tehran is playing a key role in restoring peace and stability to the region.



"The great nation of Iran has always pursued peace and security in the region and the world, and has always defended the oppressed people of the world. We will defend the downtrodden people of Yemen, Syria, and Palestine whether you like it or not," he added.



The parades across the country feature military units from various divisions of the Armed Forces, including the Army, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as well as the Police Force. The week-long events are held in commemoration of Iranian forces' eight-year defense of the Islamic Republic in the face of Iraq's 1980-88 imposed war against the country.

Rouhani further slammed Washington and Tel Aviv's recent anti-Tehran statements before the UN General Assembly.



He said the US and Israel have isolated themselves by expressing opposition to the nuclear agreement, which is hailed by the entire world community as a win for international diplomacy.

Rouhani once again reiterated Iran's full commitment to the landmark 2015 nuclear accord with six world powers, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).



He said the entire global community commended the deal, "except only two people," referring to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who used their UN speeches to attack the JCPOA.



"I am very glad that this year at the United Nations and among all the countries of the world, there were only two voices, which were opposed to that of the people of the world. The US and the occupying regime of al-Quds were the only two voices, which were different from the voice of the entire world." Rouhani asserted.


































































































Iran Needs a National and Realistic Foreign Policy

09/23/17

By Shireen T. Hunter (source: LobeLog)



The Challenge of Governing

(source: Iranian economic magazine Tejarat)





The worsening relations between the United States and Iran since the election of Donald Trump reached a fever pitch with the president's speech at the UN General Assembly and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's response to it.

President Trump's harsh speech included a range of accusations against Iran. Most of these accusations were either unfounded or only partially true. President Rouhani for his part did not mince words and declared President Trump's speech unworthy of the UNGA. Other Iranian politicians and commentators were much less polite in characterizing Trump's speech.

Trump's approach towards Iran has been unwise, imprudent, and counterproductive, beginning with his frequent hints that Iran has not abided by the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Trump administration has also made continual threats to withdraw from the JCPOA, has imposed new sanctions on Iran, and has even hinted at possible military action against the country.

These policies have increased the risk of a full-scale conflict between Iran and America, whether by accident or by design, with heavy costs for both sides. The US would not likely emerge unscathed from such a conflict, but the biggest loser would be Iran. In fact, should it occur, a military confrontation with the US could set in motion dynamics that could threaten Iran's territorial integrity and its survival within its current borders. The experience of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and even Syria serve as warning to the Iranian leadership about what could happen to their own country.

Therefore, it is up to the Iranian leadership, especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to avert such a potential disaster. To do so, Iran needs to adopt a nationally focused and realistic, instead of ideological and Islamist, foreign policy.

What Iran Must Change

After taking a hard and realistic look at the country's assets and liabilities and economic and military capabilities, Iran must develop a vision of its regional and international roles and functions that's commensurate with its capabilities. Thus far, Iran's exaggeration of its power has only enabled its enemies and competitors to generate international opposition to it.

In particular, the Iranian leadership must rid itself of the illusion that a spirit of Ashouraei-referring to Hussein's martyrdom 1,400 years ago-can compensate for the lack of modern weaponry, especially adequate air force, air defense systems, and naval power. The Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) seems to believe that it can engage the United States in a long and debilitating war by resorting to asymmetrical warfare. But such a war will also exhaust Iran and exacerbate its many problems.

Moreover, the idea that Iran should confront America in the Middle East and beyond, especially on issues that do not relate to its own immediate security and other national interests, defies reason and prudence. So far, this policy has only resulted in Iran essentially paying tribute to even its smallest neighbors. All of them, from Pakistan to Turkmenistan, have used Iran's problems with America to extract concessions from Tehran. Oddly enough, the same Iranian leadership that considers talking to America below Iran's national dignity remained silent when Turkey's president openly insulted Iran and Iranians, and the Saudi monarch called Iran a snake whose head should be cut off.

The Iranian leadership must prioritize Iran's survival over any other ideological goals, such as liberating Palestine and Jerusalem or fighting international imperialism. In other words, they must act as the leaders of a nation, not a universalist revolution or a crusade for a cause. Most, if not all, of Iran's problems have resulted from this ideological aspect of its behavior and the lack of sufficient commitment to Iran's national interests. They have persisted in this behavior even though they have paid a heavy price for it. Ironically, this ideological behavior has been limited to the Palestinian issue and Israel. In other regions, from Afghanistan to the Caucasus, Iran has essentially followed a non-ideological approach.

But because of the centrality of the Palestinian issue in Middle East politics, Iran's ideological approach has cost it much. For example, despite spending money and sacrificing Iran's interests for the sake of Palestine and earning Israel's fierce enmity, Iran's leaders have never been able to count on Palestinian groups in a pinch. Now Iran risks becoming the sacrificial lamb at an Arab-Israeli feast. Yet, the Iranian leadership seems oblivious to these facts and risks.

In Syria, after having lost men and money, Iran is making sacrifices that ultimately benefit Russia. In Iraq, as a thank you for sheltering him, Shia leader Muqtada Sadr now pays court to Saudi Arabia. Another prominent Shia leader, Amar Hakim, whose father lived for years in exile in Iran, is also wooing the Saudis and other Arabs. The Iraqi government, meanwhile, puts up all sorts of barriers to Iran's economic and cultural interaction with the country and shows no flexibility on issues such as the dispute over navigation rights around Shat al Arab. This is not surprising: the Iraqi government and Iraqi activists are acting as nationalists while the mindset of Iran's leadership is Islamist, with Iran being only a useful instrument for advancing Islamist goals.

Iran cannot expect normal relations with the world while ignoring one of the most influential global players, the United State. It doesn't matter that Iran has pursued a more pragmatic and constructive approach in other parts of the globe. By going against international consensus on issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the survival of Israel, Iran has gained little from its good behavior elsewhere. In fact, the single most important cause of the US-Iran dispute is the latter's attitude toward Israel.

Finally, Iran must realize that it cannot expect others, be it Europe, Russia, or China, to look after its interests. Only its leaders can do so provided that they put Iran and its interests ahead of some vague, unattainable Islamist and revolutionary objectives.

Clock Is Ticking

There is not much time left for Iran to change course. The last four decades have been lost years for Iran in terms of economic development. A country that was at the point of takeoff in 1979 now is behind many Asian and neighboring states, such as Turkey. Its best and the brightest are leaving whenever they get a chance and are enriching other countries.

In short, regardless of whether US remains in the JCPOA and/or adds new sanctions, Iran faces severe existential challenges, largely because of the ideological and Islamist character of its leadership. That includes problems caused by environmental degradation. Iran's resistance to asking advice from foreign experts has led to faulty engineering and other planning errors that have exacerbated its environmental problems, especially the shortage of water.

These problems and challenges, at home and abroad, will continue to mount as long as the Iranian leadership does not put Iran first and acts in a realistic fashion and in accordance with its capabilities and limitations. Iran cannot expect global cooperation even as it challenges the international system and its key actors.

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).




Iran successfully test-fires new ballistic missile

09/23/17

Source: Press TV

Iran has unveiled a new ballistic missile during military parades held across the nation to mark the first day of the annual Sacred Defense Week. The missile, named Khorramshahr, was put on display during the military parade in Tehran on Friday, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials in attendance.



Watch the video



Iran has released footage of the successful test-launch of its new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran. Video footage aired by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Friday showed the missile launched from an unknown location.



The video also contained telemetry camera footage from four different angles which, according to its caption, showed the moment when the warhead of the missile was discharged.



Earlier on Friday morning, the missile was unveiled during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.



Khorramshahr, Iran's newest ballistic missile

The ballistic missile, which is Iran's third type of missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers along with the Qadr-F and Sejjil ballistic missiles, is capable of carrying multiple warheads.



According to Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, the Khorramshahr missile has become smaller in size and more tactical and it will be operational in the near future.

Iran has repeatedly insisted that its military capabilities are solely aimed for defense purposes and they pose no threat to other countries. The Islamic Republic has also been assisting its allies, including Iraq and Syria, in their ongoing fight against terrorism.



Washington has on several occasions slapped new sanctions against Iran over its missile program.



The United States claims that Iran's missile tests and rocket launches violate UN Resolution 2231, which was adopted in July 2015 to endorse the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.



Iran has strongly rejected the US allegations that it has violated the UN resolution, and insists that its missile tests and rocket launches are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.
Iran inks banking deals worth 1.5 Billion Euros with Austria and Denmark

09/23/17

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - Austria's Oberbank and Denmark's Danske Bank signed deals worth 1 billion Euros and 500 million Euros respectively with Iran on Thursday to be the first European banks to resume banking ties with the country after the lifting of sanctions in January 2016. The first deal was signed in Vienna by Oberbank's CEO and Chairman of the Board Franz Gasselsberger and representatives of 14 Iranian banks, IRNA reported.

As per the agreement, the Austrian bank will finance a variety of infrastructure and production projects in Iran.



In another meeting on Thursday, Denmark's Export Credit Agency (EKF) signed an agreement with the Organization for Investment, Economic and Technical Assistance of Iran (OIETAI).



The deal was signed by the director of OIETAI, Mohammad Khazaie, and the CEO of EKF Anette Eberhard in Vienna.

During the meeting, Khazaie said "Iran is interested in cooperation with Denmark in different areas like water resources management, renewable energies as well as environment."



During the visit of Iranian banking delegation to Austria, another 500-million deal was signed with Denmark's Danske Bank.



Although Iranian banks have already signed a 8 billion Euros deal with South Korea and a total of 35 billion Dollars worth of deals with Chinese counterparts, the new deals were first banking agreements Iran has had with European banks since 2002.
The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) and the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) are expected to probe former officials of the Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC) during the tenure of ex-President John Mahama over an alleged GH50 million dubious debt.



Newly-appointed Managing Director of PMMC, Dr Kwadwo Opare, made this known during the inauguration of the reconstituted eight-member governing board of the company in Accra on Friday.



According to him, massive rot had been uncovered at PMMC under the leadership of George Abradu-Otoo, who is ex-President Mahamas darling boy.



This, according to him, had compelled the current management to consider referring the cases to the CID and EOCO for thorough investigations.



He said preliminary investigations by the new management revealed that PMMC had GH50 million questionable debt.



The debt, he said, was incurred from 2013 to 2017.



The moneys, according to him, were reportedly borrowed from banks by the previous management of PMMC for trading.



They borrowed money from the banks and they were not paying back and then the interest accumulated, he said.



How can you borrow to trade and then you make losses, continue to make losses and you continue to trade? That is the question we should ask, the MD queried.



According to him, several receipts and documents at PMMC showed that some of the funds were wrongly invested.



Dr Kwadwo Opare alleged that about $2 million had been invested into the purchase of a diamond polishing machine for PMMC, claiming that the machine was left to rust after a short period of time.



Daily Guide had earlier reported about the said diamond polishing machine and other alleged shady deals at PMMC, which included the non-repatriation of mineral proceeds to the country by foreigners, particularly Indians and Chinese who exported gold through PMMC during the tenure of Mr Abradu-Otoo.



Mr Abrado-Otoo denied any wrongdoing in an interview with the paper in 2015.



But the current MD insists that there was serious financial malfeasance at PMMC which had made it difficult for the company to pay its staff.



The Board



The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, inaugurated the board for PMMC, which is chaired by the former Member of Parliament (MP) for Akwatia, Kiston Ohemeng Kissi.



The other board members include Dr. Kwadwo Opare-Hammond, Kofi Mensah Dametsia, Alhaji Musah Fuseini, Nana Kwesi Awuah, Emefa Janet and Lawyer Komla.



Task



The deputy minister tasked the newly-inaugurated board to turn around the fortunes of the ailing company, saying, You have to adopt a paradigm shift to add value to your products.



Mr Ohemeng Kissi, on his part said, I love challenges, this is because when there are victories, they feel well earned.



He also bemoaned the deplorable state in which the former management left the company.



PMMC is in coma and needs to be revived; my colleagues and I would be up to the task. We would transform this company into a profit-making and a dividend-paying company, he stated.







Source: Melvin Tarlue & Akpene Darko-Cobbina/Daily Guide









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The Juvenile Court has sentenced a 17-year old third-year student of Achimota Senior High School who was alleged to have shot his colleague, Lilly Asibetse, to serve 3 years in a correctional home.



The court presided by Benardine S. A. Senoo, found the accused guilty and handed him the sentence after the trial went on for months.



Lily Dzigbordi Asigbetse who lived at Cantonments had visited the accused person at Community eight (8) in Tema.



On January 5, 2017, the accused was said to have gone for his fathers gun under his bed with the intent of firing into the air. However, it ended up killing his friend, Lily Asigbetse, also a third year student of Achimota School.



The prosecution said one Madam Gifty Billy, a neighbour, heard the gunshot and went to the scene. But she only found the victim lying in a pool of blood.



Madam Gifty rushed the victim to the Port Clinic in Tema; however, due to the condition of the victim, she was transferred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, where she died on admission.



The case subsequently went to court and after several months of adjournment, a ruling has been given.



A family member, Peggy Ama Donkor wrote on her Facebook Timeline: Our God indeed answers by fire and vindicates his own. On behalf of the Asigbetse and Donkor families, I wish to thank you all for your prayers and advice during our darkest times. Special thanks to Dr Joyce Aryee, Kojo Anan Ankomah, Mrs. Ansah , Egbert Faibille and all the silent prayer partners. God richly bless you all.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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First Lady Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo, has reaffirmed Ghanas commitment to end the AIDS epidemic in the country by the year 2030.



She was speaking at a high-level meeting of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against Aids/HIV (OAFLA) in New York on the sidelines of the 72nd UN General Assembly.



The First Lady noted that Ghana as a country was currently implementing the Treat All and Task Sharing Policy targeted at ending AIDS by 2030.



The theme for the meeting is: Global Partnership towards harnessing the demographic dividend in Africa.



Mrs Akufo-Addo said that the Treat all and Task Sharing Policy emphasizes strengthening of our health systems as well as creating synergies and partnerships among government institutions, development partners, private sector, civil society organizations and faith-based organizations to deal with HIV/AIDS.



She emphasized that we can only achieve a healthy population if we strengthen our health systems and that strengthening the health systems will have a ripple effect on the HIV response.



She also stated that the implementation of the policy had a direct correlation with the achievement of the demographic dividend, and therefore called on African countries to work together to find synergies that would help harness the potential of its youthful populations in order to reap the dividend from them.



The First Lady noted that the development and advancement of this youthful population remains Africas hope for the future, noting that the recent enormous demographic changes on the African continent was due to improved infant and child survival rates coupled with high birth rates that had also resulted in most African countries having a youthful population.



Therefore it has become pertinent to focus attention on the youth especially adolescent girls if we want to advance the pace of development on the African continent, she said.



Mr Michel Sidibe, Executive Director of UNAIDS, in his remarks, emphasized the need for African countries to invest in the education of its youth especially girls and leverage on its social capital to address challenges such as child marriage, school drop-out, HIV among the youth in order for them to achieve their full potential.



Mrs Amira Mohammed, African Union Commissioner for Social Affairs, also urged African countries to increase their domestic funding for healthcare especially for addressing HIV AIDS as well as make education free to help keep the girl child in school and also end child marriage.



Dr Natalia Kanem, the UNFPA Acting Executive Director, called for more investment in maternal health as well as the interest and protection of young people especially girls.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), in relation to the Ghana  Cote d'Ivoire dispute, uanimously ruled on Saturday that Ghana did not violate the sovereign rights of its neighbours with regards to the maritime boundary dispute.



The tribunal was presided over by Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, with Judge Rudiger Wolfrum, Judge Jin-Hyun Paik, Judge Thomas Mensah and Judge Ronny Abraham as members.



Judges Mensah and Abraham were appointed by Ghana and Ivory Coast respectively, in accordance with the rules of the tribunal.



Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber on Saturday September 23, 2017 read that the court ... Unanimously, decides that the single maritime boundary for the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nm starts at BP 55 with the coordinates 05 05 23.2N, 03 06 21.2 W in WGS 84 as a geodetic datum and is defined by turning points A, B, C, D, E, F with the following coordinates and connected by geodetic lines:



A: 05 01 03.7 N

03 07 18.3 W

B: 04 57 58.9 N

03 08 01.4 W

C: 04 26 41.6 N 03 14 56.9 W

D: 03 12 13.4 N 03 29 54.3 W

E: 02 59 04.8 N 03 32 40.2 W

F: 02 40 36.4 N 03 36 36.4 W



From turning point F, the single maritime boundary continues as a geodetic line starting at an azimuth of 191 38 6.7 until it reaches the outer limits of the continental shelf.



Read the full ruling here....

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Former Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, has expressed excitement over the ruling of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) delivered on Saturday.



Speaking on TV3s Midday news Live shortly after the ruling, Mrs Appiah-Oppong said: it is a win for Ghana...there is no trouble...our sovereignty over that area has been upheld" adding our resources are preserved and intact".



Ms Appiah-Oppong, the then Attorney General and Minister for Justice when the case began over three years ago, was part of the legal team that represented the country to make the case for the court to quash the claims made by Cote d'Ivoire after bilateral efforts to find solution to the dispute failed.



The current Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Gloria Afua Akufo took over the case after the Akufo-Addo led government came into office.



Both were present at the ruling.





Background



In September 2014, the Government of Ghana dragged Cote d'Ivoire to ITLOS in Hamburg, Germany, after the francophone neighbour began laying claim to some offshore oil concessions and adjoining seabed being developed and exploited by various companies, including Tullow Oil plc., within Ghanas territory.



Ghanas resort to ITLOS under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) followed 10 failed attempts at negotiations between the two countries. Ghana wants ITLOS to declare that it had not encroached on Ivory Coasts territorial waters. Ghana filed its suit based on Article 287 Annex VII of the 1982 UNCLOS.



Cote d'Ivoire, in February 2015, filed for preliminary measures urging the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case, dubbed: Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Ghana and Cote dIvoire in the Atlantic Ocean.



Ghana maintained that Cote d'Ivoire began issuing threatening letters to oil companies operating in the disputed area after millions of dollars had been invested to develop the affected oilfields.



Exploration and exploitation work on the Tweneboah-Enyera-Ntoumme (TEN) project being operated by Tullow Oil Plc., and its partners would have been affected had the tribunal ordered a suspension of all activities.



However, in April 2015, ITLOS, in its provisional measures, said on-going projects in the disputed fields, including the $7.5-billion TEN project could proceed while the substantive case was being dealt with, but ordered that Ghana should not start new explorations within the same fields.



The provisional measures followed legal and technical representations made by both countries at ITLOSs Special Chamber in Hamburg, Germany, on March 29 and 30, 2015, after which ITLOS ruled thus:



THE SPECIAL CHAMBER,



(1) Unanimously



22



Prescribes, pending the final decision, the following provisional measures under article 290, paragraph 1, of the Convention:



(a) Ghana shall take all necessary steps to ensure that no new drilling either by Ghana or under its control takes place in the disputed area as defined in paragraph 60;



(b) Ghana shall take all necessary steps to prevent information resulting from past, on-going or future exploration activities conducted by Ghana, or with its authorisation, in the disputed area that is not already in the public domain from being used in any way whatsoever to the detriment of Cote dIvoire;



(c) Ghana shall carry out strict and continuous monitoring of all activities undertaken by Ghana or with its authorisation in the disputed area with a view to ensuring the prevention of serious harm to the marine environment;



(d) The Parties shall take all necessary steps to prevent serious harm to the marine environment, including the continental shelf and its superjacent waters, in the disputed area and shall cooperate to that end;



(e) The Parties shall pursue cooperation and refrain from any unilateral action that might lead to aggravating the dispute.



(2) Unanimously



Decides that Ghana and Cote dIvoire shall each submit to the Special Chamber the initial report referred to in paragraph 105 not later than 25 May 2015, and authorises the President of the Special Chamber, after that date, to request such information from the Parties as he may consider appropriate.



(3) Unanimously



Decides that each Party shall bear its own costs.



(signed)



Boualem BOUGUETAIA,

President of the Special Chamber



(signed)

Philippe GAUTIER,

Registrar



Before ITLOSs provisional measures, Cote d'Ivoire had, in a 27-page application signed by its Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Mr Adama Toungara, urged the tribunal to also direct Ghana to refrain from granting any new permit for oil exploration and exploitation in the disputed area.



It also prayed the tribunal to direct Ghana to refrain from any unilateral action entailing a risk of prejudice to the rights of Cote d'Ivoire and any unilateral action that might lead to aggravating the dispute.



Cote d'Ivoire argued that it would suffer severe and irreparable economic injury if its request was not granted by the tribunal.



It also accused Ghana of attempting to prejudice the tribunals decision by going into the merit of the case with volumes of documents and witness statements, but Ghana faulted its neighbour for departing from the law, making baseless accusations, being inconsistent and failing to produce witnesses and expert evidence.



Ghana also reminded Cote d'Ivoire of its lack of consistency and merit in filing for preliminary measures.



The absence of credible data and evidence from Cote d'Ivoire, according to Ghana, at the time, was due to that countrys handicap in producing factual documents to back its case.



Ghana, which was led by then-Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, also reminded the tribunal of Cote d'Ivoires failure to challenge the evidence of its technical witnesses, which, according to it, tore Cote d'Ivoires case in shreds.



We invite you to firmly decline the application before you, Mrs Appiah-Opong said, with the argument that Cote d'Ivoire had failed to prove that Ghana had encroached on its territorial waters to warrant the stoppage of activities, including the exploration of oil in the disputed area, until the final determination of the dispute.



There is no justification in law, logic, and fairness or on the evidence for the measures sought. They will be unprecedented, an invasion of sovereign rights that stand in the face of representations made by Cote dIvoire for more than four decades, on which others and we have relied, she stressed.



Leading a team of local and international lawyers and technical staff from relevant agencies, Mrs Appiah-Opong told ITLOSs five-member panel that until Ghana was well advanced with its oil exploration programme on its side of the boundary, there were no difficulties.



She added: At the time when Cote dIvoire had much more oil and gas production than Ghana, there were no claims about moving the maritime boundary.



In 2009, Cote dIvoire started to make representations to Ghana about its desire to alter the boundary. Yet, its public position did not change. None of its inconsistent positions has any proper justification in law.



The tribunal is presided over by Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, with Judge Rudiger Wolfrum, Judge Jin-Hyun Paik, Judge Thomas Mensah and Judge Ronny Abraham as members.



Judges Mensah and Abraham were appointed by Ghana and Ivory Coast, respectively, in accordance with the rules of the tribunal.



The two countries ended their oral submissions in February 2017.



Ghanas current Attorney-General, Gloria Akuffo, at the last hearing, argued that the two countries already had an agreement on their maritime boundary, albeit informally. Cote dIvoire, on the other hand, rejected that claim, calling on the Chamber to declare that Ghana has, indeed, violated the sovereign rights of Cote dIvoire when it unilaterally undertook drilling activities in that boundary.



In his final arguments, Cote dIvoires agent and Minister of Mines, Petroleum and Energy, Adama Toungara, said: To declare and adjudge thirdly that Ghana has violated the provisional measures prescribed by this chamber by its order of 26th of April, 2015. And fourthly, and consequently, [A] to invite the parties to carry out negotiations in order to reach agreement on arrangements for reparations due to Cote DIvoire; and [B] to state that if they fail to reach an agreement within a period of six months as of the date of the judgment to be delivered by the special chamber, the chamber will determine the amount of compensation or the arrangements for reparations on the basis of additional recent documents dealing with the subject alone.



Ms Akuffo, on the other hand, told the Special Chamber that Cote dIvoire was trying to move the boundary to the east to benefit from Ghanas oil reserves, saying: They simply cannot escape from years of mutual practice, however hard they try, in implementation of and reinforced by their own official maps, laws and decrees. It was easy to lose count of the different ways in which they tried to portray the coast. Arrows went one way and then the other, coastal directions twisting and turning; land was added; land was removed, depending on what point they wanted to make at any particular moment.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), as part of its judgement on a three-year boundary dispute between Ghana and Cote dIvoire, has stated that Accra must not pay any compensation to Abidjan.



Cote dIvoire, as part of reliefs put forward, asked the Chamber to order Ghana to compensate them, because in their view, Ghana benefited from a resource in itsterritorial waters.



They had argued that reparation by equivalence or compensation should be envisaged both for the loss of hydrocarbon production for any damage that Ghanas activities may have caused to the rocks and deposits.



Ghana on the other hand, argued that it would be absurd to compensate Cote dIvoire for physical changes to the seabed brought about by oil production works which Cote dIvoire itself wants to pursue in the very same way.



The Chamber dismissed Cote dIvoires request sustaining Ghanas argument.



The Special Chamber, in delivering its judgement on the delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between the two in the Atlantic Ocean, also ruled that Ghana has not violated the sovereign rights of the Francophone country by exploring for oil in that disputed basin.



The Chamber rejected Cote dIvoires argument that Ghanas coastal lines were unstable.

It also noted that Ghana has not violated Cote dIvoires sovereign rights with its oil exploration in the disputed basin in question.



Justice Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber in reading the judgment, accepted Ghanas argument of adoption of the equidistance method of delineation of the maritime boundary.



Analysts say Ghana would now have to wait to see how the final map looks, once the coordinates are plotted in the sea using boundary pillar BP 55+ on a common land boundary, as starting point for drawing the new equidistance line.



In consideration of the new boundary, the Chamber determined that it starts from boundary 55 -200 nautical miles away, a position much closer to what Ghana was arguing for.



The judgement effectively means that Ghanas oil fields are not going to be materially affected.



Ghanas oil discovery



In 2007, Ghana discovered oil and gas in commercial quantities, and this was followed by Cote dIvoire staking its claim to portions of the West Cape Three Points.



These claims were renewed in 2010 after Vanco, an oil exploration and Production Company announced the discovery of oil in the Dzata-1 deepwater-well.

Cote dIvoire petitioned the United Nations asking for a completion of the demarcation of its maritime boundary with Ghana, and Ghana responded by setting up of the Ghana Boundary Commission.



This commission was tasked with the responsibility of negotiating with Cote dIvoire towards finding a lasting solution to the problem.



But this commission bore no fruit, and in September 2014, Ghana dragged Cote dIvoire to ITLOS after 10 failed negotiations.



ITLOSs first ruling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, with old projects continuing after Cote dIvoire filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.



The moratorium prevented Tullow Oil from drilling additional 13 wells. Tullow thus drilled eleven [11] wells in Ghanas first oil field.



Background



In 2014, Ghana took the case to ITLOS to dispel claims it has encroached Cote dIvoires marine borders as part of oil exploration activities at Cape Three Points, off the shores of the Western Region.



Ghanas defense held that Cote dIvoire was barred from demanding ownership to the disputed area it had acknowledged that Ghana owned the space without any qualms in the decades leading up to the oil discovery.



The oral hearings for the dispute were concluded in February 2017.



In 2007, Ghana discovered oil and gas in commercial quantities, and this was followed by Cote dIvoire staking its claim to portions of the West Cape Three Points.



These claims were renewed in 2010 after Vanco, an oil exploration and Production Company announced the discovery of oil in the Dzata-1 deepwater-well.



Cote dIvoire petitioned the United Nations asking for a completion of the demarcation of its maritime boundary with Ghana, and Ghana responded by setting up of the Ghana Boundary Commission.



This commission was tasked with the responsibility of negotiating with Cote dIvoire towards finding a lasting solution to the problem. But this commission bore no fruit, and in September 2014, Ghana dragged Cote dIvoire to ITLOS after 10 failed negotiations.



ITLOSs first ruling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, with old projects continuing after Cote dIvoire filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.



The moratorium prevented Tullow Oil from drilling additional 13 wells. Tullow thus drilled eleven [11] wells in Ghanas first oil field.

Source: Ebenezer Newmann Afanyi Dadzie/[email protected]









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Member of Parliament (MP) for Effutu constituency, Alex Afenyo-Markin, has accused the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), of enforcing its laws selectively.



"recently they (EPA) raised issues regarding the mining business of Exton cubic on the grounds that they have not met all the requirements and that they have not issued them with license, but the point is that Ghana Bauxite company limited which is also another company into mining has been mining since 2001and I know for a fact that their (Ghana Bauxite) agreement with government has never come to parliament and they dont have the requisite documentations and so if they; EPA want to be fair, then they should also stop Ghana bauxite company from operating; its just a matter of equality before the law. If they say that Exton Cubic does not have what it takes to mine, then they should look at Ghana Bauxite..." he said on Citi FM Eyewitness news, Friday.



The MP raised this issue on the Floor of Parliament, and the matter was referred to the Finance Committee and according to the MP Ghana Bauxite appeared and conceded that indeed their agreement with Ghana has not come to Parliament.



If you may recall, EPA had stated that Exton Cubic reneged on commitments to submit a liability estimate of environmental degradation, among others. Subsequently, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, John Peter Amewu, directed the company to stop exploration of bauxite in the Tano Offin Forest reserve because of having an invalid mining agreement.



That is why the MP for Effutu feels the EPA is being selective.



Afenyo-Markin who also raised this same issue at the Public Accounts Committee on Friday added that in the case of Ghana Bauxite, "they are not even paying taxes. They are relying on a supposed memorandum of understanding between them and government and we all know that when it comes to taxation, it is only Parliament that can waive.



"If they, the EPA, want to apply the law and want to be fair, they should also stop Ghana Bauxite from operating. It is just a matter of equality before the law. If you are saying that Exton Cubic has not met the necessary requirements, please apply same to all these mining companies so that you dont go and act in a certain manner for the government to take the bashing as if it is political EPA must be seen to be working and dealing with the law without fear, favour or looking at personalities in accordance with the constitution he added.



Afenyo-Markin was however quick to add that he has no personal interest as far as Exton Cubic is concerned and that he is only ensuring that there is fairness.



"It is about the interest of government and the Ghanaian people" he said.

Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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WASHINGTON - The Trump administration on Friday withdrew Obama-era guidance on how schools should respond to sexual violence complaints, giving them flexibility to use a higher standard of evidence forsexual misconduct cases and formally shifting the federal stance on what has become an explosive campus issue.

The action followed through on a pledge Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made on Sept. 7 to replace what she called a "failed system" of civil rights enforcement on matters related to campus sexual assault. In her view, the government failed under President Barack Obama to find the right balance in protecting the rights of victims and the accused.

Under Obama, the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights had declared in 2011 that schools should use a standard known as "preponderance of the evidence" when judging sexual violence cases that arise under the antidiscrimination law known as Title IX.

Common in civil law, the preponderance standard calls for enough evidence to tip a judgment to the conclusion that something is more likely than not to be true. That is lower than the "clear and convincing evidence" standard that had been in use at some schools. Victim advocates viewed the April 2011 letter as a milestone in efforts to get schools to heed the longstanding problem of campus sexual assault, punish offenders and prevent violence. It also dovetailed with a high-profile campaign by the Obama White House to combat sexual violence.

Now, under President Donald Trump, the Office for Civil Rights is declaring that schools may use either standard while the government begins a formal process to develop rules on the issue. How long that will take is not clear. A department official said the administration does not want to rush the process.

The department's interim guidance requires schools to address sexual misconduct that is "severe, persistent or pervasive," and conduct investigations in a fair, impartial and timely manner. Schools will be allowed to have informal resolution to cases, through mediation, if appropriate and if all parties agree. Obama's team did not favor mediation, declaring it "not appropriate" for dealing with sexual assault allegations.

"This interim guidance will help schools as they work to combat sexual misconduct and will treat all students fairly," DeVos said in a statement. "Schools must continue to confront these horrific crimes and behaviors head-on. There will be no more sweeping them under the rug. But the process also must be fair and impartial, giving everyone more confidence in its outcomes."

Catherine Lhamon, who was assistant education secretary for civil rights under Obama and now chairs the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, denounced the action.

"The Trump administration's new guidance is dangerously silent on critical parts of Title IX," Lhamon said in a statement. "This backward step invites colleges to once again sweep sexual violence under the rug. Students deserve better, the law demands better, our college and university community must continue to commit to better, and we as a country must demand more from the U.S. Department of Education."

Friday's action formally withdrew the civil rights office's "Dear Colleague" letter of April 4, 2011, and a follow-up statement of "Questions and Answers" that was issued on April 29, 2014.

Laura Dunn, a lawyer with the District of Columbia-based SurvJustice, said the department's actions will allow colleges to give an unfair edge to the accused in sex discrimination cases. "This is simply unlawful, to flip a civil right on its head," Dunn said in a statement. She said the department had acted beyond its authority.

Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in Philadelphia, which opposed the 2011 letter, praised the development. "It's a great day for fundamental fairness on campus," Shibley said. He called it a "necessary but not sufficient step," acknowledging that colleges retain control over their internal misconduct rules and proceedings.

It is by no means certain whether, or how much, colleges will change their protocols. University of California President Janet Napolitano told reporters Wednesday that she does not expect the 10-campus UC system to drop the preponderance standard.

"UC's pledge to protect our students and employees from sexual violence and sexual harassment remains unchanged," Napolitano - who was homeland security secretary under Obama - said in a statement Friday.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, which represents college and university presidents, said schools are likely to take a cautious approach while they await definitive rules. "Schools will respond conservatively to this," he said. "Most of them will leave in place what doesn't need to be changed."

But Hartle added a caveat: "All institutions are going to need to look at their processes to make sure they're not biased against the accused," he said.

The interim guidance could also affect federal civil rights investigations at some colleges and universities. As of this month, the department reported that more than 250 schools faced inquiries related to their handling of sexual violence complaints. Those investigations are ongoing, officials said, but certain cases could be reevaluated if they are directly related to the 2011 guidance that has now been rescinded.
A New Orleans mayoral candidate was cited for public masturbation after he was caught with his pants down during an Uber ride in California.

Frank Scurlock faces of a charge of lewd conduct, which includes a maximum penalty of a year in a jail and possibly registering as a sex offender, according to Nola.com.

Scurlock in February was picked up from a West Hollywood hotel by an Uber driver and driven through Santa Monica when the driver heard noises coming the backseat, according to Terry White, a deputy city attorney in Santa Monica.

White told Nola.com that the woman stopped the car, opened the passenger door and discovered Scurlock with his penis exposed and masturbating.

"The driver felt because of sounds that came from the backseat that (Scurlock) was masturbating," White said to Nola.com.
Allegheny County added a new element to its background check for new full-time employees: a check on whether all real estate taxes are paid.

The new policy, which took effect earlier this month, will require new hires to verify their real estate tax status as a condition of any job offer.

If the county's check returns any problems, the prospective employee will have seven business days to prove that they've taken action to settle their delinquent taxes.

But County Councilman Sam DeMarco told TribLive that the policy does have some wiggle room.

"If someone had at least set up an installment agreement then they're OK," DeMarco said, according to the TribLive report. "It's just folks who are basically thumbing their nose at the system."

Others raised questions about whether the policy could survive legal challenges.

A Pittsburgh employment lawyer told TribLive that the policy disproportionately affects low-income job candidates.

"What you're looking at here is, generally, financial condition," Sam Cordes said. "People that have been out of work for a while are people that don't pay some of their bills."

Tax-clearance checks have been a condition of employment for years at the state Department of Revenue. In 2010, the state sent 6,600 letters to other state employees who either had delinquent taxes or missing paperwork.
By Bill Godsey

The recent settlement allowing construction activities for the Mariner East 2 pipeline to continue has put in place a strict new oversight program that will increase transparency of drilling activities during construction.

Bill Godsey (submitted photo)

The agreement deserves praise for going well beyond state requirements and for bringing together key stakeholders in pipeline construction: Sunoco Pipeline LP, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and a handful of Pennsylvania-based environmental groups. Given the importance of this agreement, it's important that readers understand some of its nuances.

One thing the parties agreed to is to begin reporting indications of "loss of circulation" during construction. But just what is this "loss of circulation" and how threatening is it to the surrounding communities?

"Loss of circulation" isn't actually as uncommon as you'd think. It's also not a high-risk scenario, and pipeline companies are well equipped to quickly mitigate any potential damage.

According to DEP and the pipeline construction company, "loss of circulation" is an "indicator of drilling fluid migrating out of the borehole into the groundwater."

It cannot be observed from the surface because it's all happening underground. This is a common occurrence during the pipeline construction technique known as horizontal directional drilling (HDD).

This kind of drilling is the most up-to-date and safest-known method for constructing underground pipelines. It is the best option in minimizing chances of water contamination, though of course no method can possibly be 100 percent accident-proof. It requires mud containing non-toxic bentonite --- which will not cause any long-term harm to the environment --- during construction.

It's not unusual for this non-toxic drilling fluid to rise to the surface in naturally occurring cracks in the soil, or to move horizontally underground.

Such "inadvertent returns" are often predicted in environmental reviews before construction permits are approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and easily cleaned up afterwards to minimize environmental damage.

During "loss of circulation," bentonite does not come back up the borehole during the HDD process and instead moves in different directions underground. This is because, according to the Marcellus Drilling Coalition, the drilling fluid will move through the "path of least resistance," which "may be an existing fracture or fissure in the subsurface."

Additionally, in recent risk assessments conducted with anti-pipeline groups, "loss of circulation" is not listed as a high-risk indicator. It's not even routine practice to report "loss of circulation."

Though with the ME2 agreement, Sunoco has indicated that it will report occurrences from here on out.

Because it's a fairly frequent happening, pipeline construction companies are well aware of the risks and prepared to fix any problems.

When "loss of circulation" is detected, it's common industry practice to increase monitoring to detect any inadvertent returns to the surface.

It's fairly simple to reduce mud losses by sealing the fractures in the ground with mud. As the diameter of the drill hole increases with use, it will then become the path of least resistance.

"Loss of circulation" also leads to corrective action and clean up. It's industry practice to list it as a concern in environmental impact statements and HDD plans for pipelines that would require clean up, and that's exactly what Sunoco is doing.

A DEP inspector who visited a site in Chester County told the Delaware County Daily Times that Sunoco had installed a containment area around the incident and has "cleaned up pretty well."

When complete, the Mariner East 2 pipeline will carry natural gas liquids (NGLs) from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex near Philadelphia.

The "rebirth" of this industrial complex into a NGL storing and distribution facility could bring thousands of jobs and new hope to the surrounding areas, potentially transforming it into a thriving energy hub

Common, predictable and non-threatening mishaps during pipeline construction that are properly addressed should be low on the list of concerns when we consider the prosperity ME2 will bring to the state of Pennsylvania.

Bill Godsey is owner and president of Geo Logic Environmental Services and a former geologist for the Texas Railroad Commission.
FILE - In this images released on Wednesday Jan. 18, 2012, show victims of a 2008 murder of five people at a homeless encampment released during a news conference announcing the arrest of suspects in Long Beach, Calif. Two gang members have been found guilty of killing five people at a homeless encampment near Los Angeles. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office says a jury found David Ponce and Max Rafael guilty of five counts of murder and a kidnapping charge on Friday. Prosecutors say Ponce and Rafael fatally shot three men and two women living at a homeless encampment near a freeway off-ramp in Long Beach. (AP Photo/Jeff Gritchen /Los Angeles Daily News via AP)
The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the coming open enrollment season.

The shutdown will occur from midnight to noon Eastern Daylight Time on every Sunday except Dec. 10.

The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange  healthcare.gov  overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces.

HHS officials disclosed this information Friday during a webinar with community groups that help people enroll.

The Trump administration has come under attack from critics who say that it is intentionally undermining the Affordable Care Act, through regulatory actions. It shortened the enrollment period, withdrew money for advertising, and cut the budget for navigator groups, which help people shop for plans. And now HHS is closing the site for a substantial portion of each weekend  for maintenance, officials said. That is the same time that many workers  the prime target group for ACA insurance  could be shopping for their insurance, critics noted.

"The Department of Health & Human Services is actively trying to prevent people from signing up for healthcare coverage," Rep. Don Beyer (D., Va.) tweeted. "This is outrageous."

"Argh" was the reaction of Shelli Quenga, program director at the Palmetto Project in South Carolina, a nonprofit group that received about $1 million to help with outreach and enrollment in the last 12 months. This month, HHS cut her budget in half for this year's open enrollment.

Open enrollment season will run from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, less than half the time people have had to sign up during the first four years of the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act.

More than 12 million people enrolled on the state and federal marketplaces for 2017 coverage, including more than nine million on the federal exchange. Some customers give up coverage over the course of the year.

Advocates were already nervous that fewer people would sign up during the shortened period this time around.

"I could see this really impacting the ability of people to complete an application sign-up in a single sitting, which is so important," said Jason Stevenson, spokesman for the Utah Health Policy Project, an Obamacare navigator group. He noted that 10 p.m. Mountain Time is often a relatively popular time for people to enroll online.

"Health insurance is complicated," he said, "and in the past couple of years we had an administration that made it easier to sign up, but that has really changed in the past six months, with more hurdles not only for consumers but for those whose job it is to help them."

A spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the exchanges, said the shutdowns should not cause too many problems.

"Maintenance outages are regularly scheduled on healthcare.gov every year during open enrollment. This year is no different," said the official, speaking on background and requesting anonymity. "The maintenance schedule was provided in advance this year in order to accommodate requests from certified application assisters. System downtime is planned for the lowest-traffic time periods on healthcare.gov, including Sunday evenings and overnight."

Former Obama administration officials say the planned shutdowns of healthcare.gov go far beyond what has happened before. Typically, the online enrollment system was off-line for only a few hours at a time and such interruptions were much less frequent than once a week.

A federal report to Congress said healthcare.gov was online 99.9 percent of the time in the 2015 and 2016 open enrollment seasons.

The Trump administration plan will have the site operating 93 percent of the time  over an enrollment period that is half as long as it used to be. In effect, instead of a 90-day enrollment season, the Trump administration has cut it to 45. The maintenance shutdowns cut it to an equivalent of 42 days.

"There is just a really big question as to why this is happening," said Lori Lodes, former CMS communications director. "Have they done a comprehensive review of the tech and believe this is what is actually necessary? If so, then why don't they have confidence in the system."

"We've never only had six weeks to do this with no outreach help from the feds," said Quenga from South Carolina. "Every minute is valuable."
An arrest warrant has been issued for a 30-year-old Harleysville man in connection with the shooting Friday of a 48-year-old Limerick woman moments after she answered her front door.

The warrant for Gregory Feldman, who the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office in a tweet said was "considered armed and dangerous," accuses him of twice shooting the victim, Amy Hermann, 48, after opening the front door of her home on Long Meadow Road. When police arrived, she was sitting on her front porch holding her chest, being attended to by her husband, Mark.

Limerick police said the victim identified Feldman as her shooter and said he was her daughter's ex-boyfriend. She also said he tried to shoot her several times after that but the gun misfired. She was taken to Lehigh Valley Hospital with wounds to her chest and neck, police said.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, Feldman told Hermann he came by to inquire about how her daughter Rebecca was doing. When she told him that "he shouldn't be there," Feldman said he "had something" for the daughter, pulled out a handgun and shot.

After shooting Hermann, police said, Feldman tried to step into the house but was unsuccessful, so he left, leaving behind a backpack he was carrying but taking Hermann's cellphone.

Police said Rebecca Hermann told them that her current boyfriend called her mother's cellphone after the shooting and that Feldman answered and demanded to speak to Rebecca. When she got on the phone, Feldman reportedly said: "I wanted you to feel my pain."

Feldman, who is not licensed to carry a concealed firearm, was charged with aggravated assault, attempted murder and other offenses.
A former staffer at the shuttered Wordsworth residential youth-treatment center pleaded guilty Friday to sexually assaulting three teenage girls who had been placed at the West Philadelphia facility.

The assaults to which Isaac Outten, 38, admitted during a hearing before a Common Pleas Court judge took place in fall 2015, one year before state officials ordered Wordsworth closed after a 17-year-old boy died in a fight with staffers who had come to his room looking for a stolen iPod.

The Oct. 13, 2016, suffocation death of David Hess, 17, of Lebanon, Pa., http://bit.ly/2f9mwaz has been ruled a homicide but no charges have been filed. His death capped a decade of allegations and charges of sexual and physical abuse at what was the city's only residential treatment center for troubled youth, as chronicled by the Inquirer and Daily News in April http://bit.ly/2oCByVF.

In July, facing numerous lawsuits alleging sexual or physical abuse by employees, Wordsworth officials filed for bankruptcy and announced that the company would be acquired by the Philadelphia-based Public Health Management Corp.

Outten, who now lives in a Richmond, Va., suburb, pleaded guilty to one count each of statutory sexual assault, institutional sexual assault, and unlawful contact with a minor from an Oct. 19, 2015, incident involving a 15-year-old girl.

Outten also pleaded guilty to two counts of institutional sexual assault and two counts of unlawful contact with a minor from an Oct. 26, 2015, incident with a 17-year-old and an Oct. 11, 2015, incident with another 17-year-old.

All three assaults occurred at Wordsworth's facility at 3905 Ford Rd.

Judge Roger F. Gordon ordered a presentencing and mental-health evaluation and set sentencing for Dec. 21.

Assistant District Attorney Kelly Harrell said Outten's plea agreement did not include a recommended prison term, although her office agreed to drop a series of related charges that would have increased his prison time.

The most serious charge to which Outten pleaded guilty  statutory sexual assault  is a first-degree felony that carries a maximum of 10 to 20 years in prison. The state's sentencing guidelines, however, could yield a recommended prison term of one to two years, according to Harrell.

Outten, who has no prior criminal record, was allowed to remain free on $10,000 bail until sentencing. Outten's attorney, David D. Wasson III, said after the hearing that Outten did not wish to comment.

Wasson said Outten, the father of several young children, moved to Virginia in 2015 after Wordsworth officials learned of the sexual assaults and fired him.

Harrell said judges had placed the three girls at the Ford Road facility as "juvenile dependents" because they were not able to live at home. Harrell said Outten lured the girls to the basement for sex and forced them to take naked photos of themselves with his iPhone.

Outten promised the 15-year-old money for diapers and milk for her 1-year-old child in exchange for sex, Harrell said. He promised one of the 17-year-olds he would help with a criminal case.

In addition to the criminal charges against him, Outten has been added as a defendant in a Common Pleas Court lawsuit filed against Wordsworth by his 15-year-old victim.
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO  Tens of thousands of residents in northwestern Puerto Rico were ordered to evacuate Friday amid fears that a dam holding back a large inland lake was in imminent danger of failing because of damage from Hurricane Maria's floodwaters.

Officials worried that as many as 70,000 people could be in the path of a massive amount of rushing water in the event the Guajataca Dam releases into the Guajataca River, which flows north through low-lying coastal communities and empties into the ocean.

The dam suffered a "fissure," Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a news conference Friday afternoon. Residents in the municipalities of Quebradillas, Isabela and part of San Sebastian could be affected if the dam collapses, he said, and it could be a catastrophic event.

"To those citizens . . . who are listening: Please evacuate," Rossello said as buses were dispatched to ferry residents out of harm's way. "We want your life to be protected. . . . Please, if you're listening, the time to evacuate is now."

Abner Gomez, executive director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency, said in an interview late Friday that the dam's gates suffered mechanical damage during the storm, making it impossible for them to open and let out normal water currents. Officials worry that could cause the dam to spill over.

Gomez said that under current conditions, with water rising after the hurricane, "there is no way to fix it" right now. Additional water flowing into the lake could create sudden dangers, so emergency evacuation was the only option, he said. If the dam spills over or fails structurally, he said, "thousands of people could die."

The urgent situation Friday came more than 48 hours after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico's southeastern coast as the most powerful storm to strike the island in more than 80 years. It was a reminder that Maria's impact on Puerto Rico is far from over; officials still have little sense of the scope of the damage as a communications and power blackout continued to affect nearly everyone in the U.S. territory.

Gomez characterized Maria as "one of the greatest natural disasters" in recent U.S. history, comparing it to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The destruction in some parts of the island "looked more like a tornado than a hurricane," he said. Rescue and recovery could take months, he said, and a "return to normalcy" could take at least a year.

Authorities on Friday reported six deaths across the island. Three of the fatalities occurred in the municipality of Utuado as a result of mudslides, Puerto Rico's public safety department said in a statement. Two others died in flooding in Toa Baja, and one other person died in Bayamon when a panel struck him in the head. More deaths are likely to be reported in coming days as search-and-rescue crews reach previously inaccessible areas, officials said.

"We are aware of other reports of fatalities that have transpired by unofficial means, but we cannot confirm them," said Hector Pesquera, secretary of the public safety department.

Though damage assessments have been nearly impossible, early reports reveal an island ravaged by Maria's high winds and torrential rains, with roofs peeled open like tin cans, neighborhoods waterlogged, and trees that were lush just days ago now completely stripped bare of leaves. The hurricane plowed through the entire 100-mile island, with the eye tracking diagonally from the southeast to the northwest.

"Every vulnerable house here made out of wood was completely or partially destroyed during the path of the eye of the hurricane," Rossello said of an island where many homes are constructed with wood foundations and zinc roofs. "Puerto Rico has endured an horrific ordeal."

The lack of communications has isolated rural areas of the island. Just 15 percent of Puerto Rico's communication towers are working, and some transmission towers have collapsed. Up to 85 percent of the island's fiber cables are damaged.

Power remains completely out across the island, and just 25 percent of it has water service.

Shock has given way to frayed nerves as officials warned that it could be months before power is restored to some areas, and there is no indication of when communications infrastructure will be fixed. In San Juan, the capital, streets were choked with traffic as people tried to find loved ones and spent hours waiting in line for gas.

The De La Cruz family could not find fuel Thursday. On Friday morning they waited in line for six hours at one of the open stations here, and there were still 20 cars in front of them. Gabriel De La Cruz and his wife, Luisa, took turns fanning their 1-year-old son, Ismael, who sat sweating in the hot car, wearing only a diaper.

"This is all we have," De La Cruz, 30, said of the car. They lost their home and all their belongings.

Residents searching for loved ones in remote areas met downed trees, power lines and other debris. News was particularly scarce from the southern and central parts of the island, as well the tiny island of Vieques to the east.

"Even worse than not having power or water, which we've unfortunately become accustomed to, a communications blackout was the real anxiety-inducing feature . . . we haven't really dealt with it before," said Miguel Soto-Class, president of the Center for a New Economy, a San Juan-based think tank, who stood on the roof his home to get a cell signal. "Are people dead and suffering or are people like we are, bruised but fine? The not-knowing part is just terrible."

Puerto Rico, with 3.5 million U.S. citizens, also is facing a crisis due to geography: It is an island dependent on air and sea for supplies and help. The immediate response that occurred after Hurricane Harvey in Houston, where volunteers from Louisiana headed in during the storm, or after Hurricane Irma in Florida, where utility trucks were pre-positioned to assist, is impossible here.

"It's not like you can just drive a tractor-trailer," said Melissa Mark-Viverito, the Puerto Rican-born president of the New York City Council. "That adds a whole other layer of logistical challenge to it."

Photos taken from a helicopter surveying the damage in the southeastern part of the island, encompassing an area that on a good day would be a two-hour drive from San Juan, show entire neighborhoods engulfed in murky water. Tops of buildings were sliced open, their rooms visible as if in a dollhouse.

A building in a coastal luxury resort, once with enviable ocean views, was now partially floating over open air as rocks and mud crumbled under one corner and fell into the sea. Windmills broke and shattered, and solar panels shone like mirrors.

The enormity of what the country had just been through  and what was yet to come  appeared to be sinking in for many people, including those who considered themselves hurricane-hardened.

"This storm was something," said Geraldo Ramirez, 36, a resident of San Juan's La Perla neighborhood. "I was here for Hurricane Georges back in '98, and that was hard to believe, how badly it affected the island. But this, Maria, was something altogether different."

Ramirez lives in a small three-story house near the waterfront on Calle San Miguel. His house, a sturdy cinder-block structure, was built 17 years ago and did not suffer much structural damage. But rain and ocean water found its way into every room. He expects not to have power for months.

"But it's OK, we will make do," he said. "We are used to it and it's always the same. Georges, Hugo, we lose power and we lose water. But we know how to survive."

Leaning against the wall of his carport in coastal Loiza, Jorge Diaz, 72, was waiting for the airport to open, so he can escape to relatives in Florida because he can't imagine going months without electricity and water.

"That's unreasonable. You can't live like this," Diaz said. "It's a dark time now. A dark time for Puerto Rico."

One block down and across the street, Lizmarie Bultron, 39, trudged through calf-high water to exit her home, about a block from the beach.

"Everything I had is gone. I lost my whole house; the only thing left is the floor," Bultron said, looking at her feet, still ankle-deep in water. "And this, this water won't be gone for at least a month. All we can do is wait. Wait for help to come. That's the only choice. But no one has come yet. Not FEMA, not anyone."



Cassady reported from Loiza, Puerto Rico; Somashekhar and Zezima reported from Washington. Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo in San Juan and Jesse Mesner-Hage in Washington contributed to this report.
Radnor Township Commissioners President Philip Ahr is under criminal investigation in connection with matters the Delaware County District Attorney's Office declined to disclose Saturday.

Radnor officials announced the investigation in a one-paragraph news release put out Friday:

"The Delaware County District Attorney's Office has confirmed there is an investigation regarding Township Commissioner Philip Ahr. This investigation is being conducted by the County's Criminal Investigations Division and does not involve the participation of the Radnor police or any other Radnor Township staff or officials."

Radnor's police superintendent, William Colarulo, confirmed a warrant was executed at Ahr's home by county detectives, but said he did not know the contents of the warrant.

Township Solicitor Peter Nelson, reached by phone Saturday morning, said he had "no information about the investigation." He stressed that he represents the township as its lawyer, not Ahr.

When asked if the investigation pertained to township business, Nelson said he had no comment. He referred questions to county authorities.

Emily Harris, spokeswoman for District Attorney John "Jack" Whelan, wrote in an email Saturday, "I am only able to confirm that this is part of an ongoing investigation."

Ahr, a Democrat, did not return a phone message left by a reporter at his Bryn Mawr home early Saturday.

Luke Clark, a Republican commissioner on the board, posted the press release about Ahr on his Facebook page Friday, commenting, "I hate seeing our great township reflected in such a negative light."

Clark said that the investigation is not related to any township business. After obtaining a warrant, county investigators searched Ahr's home Thursday, according to Clark.

"I don't know what they found," Clark said. "As to what they were looking for, we are looking to Delaware County [authorities] to answer that. I can say that they had a warrant, they searched his house, and after that, that's all I have."

Clark said he believes that the investigation into Ahr reflects "badly on the township" and could leave residents in Ward 7, which Ahr serves, without representation. "I hate seeing any of our wards go without representation, and in theory, if he resigns, that will be an issue.  There will be a lack of stability."

The board's next regular meeting is scheduled for Monday. "I don't know if he'll be there," Clark said, referring to Ahr. "I'm sure it's going to be lively."

Commissioner John Nagle, a Democrat, said he hasn't spoken with Ahr since the investigation came to light and knows few details.

"It's a county investigation and they haven't given us any information," Nagle said. "They went into his house and took some computers, I understand. As far as I know, he wasn't arrested, he wasn't charged."

Nagle said he spent Saturday fielding about "50 calls" from residents who sought answers he didn't have. As for Monday night's township meeting, Nagle said he hopes that Ahr stays home, adding, "Our meetings are contentious enough already."

Ahr, 66, who has lived in Radnor for 22 years, became a commissioner in January 2016. In a 4-3 vote, along party lines, the board tapped Ahr as president in April 2016. He replaced Commissioner James Higgins as president. Higgins, a Democrat, had stepped down from his post as president amid controversy over nearly $979,749 that he inserted into a stormwater-management budget in 2016. The board had already voted on that budget without the added line item. Higgins apologized for the "mistake."

Married with two grown sons, Ahr is a relative newcomer to township politics, although he's been active in Radnor's Garrett Hill community. He's served on the Garrett Hill Coalition, the Garrett Hill-Rosemont 4th of July Parade Committee, and the Garrett Hill Steering Committee. He advocated for improvements to Clem Macrone Park and pushed for 28 miles of new trails. Ahr holds a degree in management from Notre Dame University and served in the Navy as a hospital corpsman.

He works as a marketing director at Malvern-based Progressive Business Publications, and is an active member of Our Mother of Good Counsel Parish, where he is parish council president, according to his bio on the Radnor Township website. Efforts to reach people at both places Saturday were unsuccessful.

News of the criminal investigation into Ahr comes about three months after a Delaware County jury found former Radnor Township Commissioner Bill Spingler, a long-serving Democrat, guilty of indecent assault on a person with a mental disability for touching the breast of a 103-year-old woman during visits to her Wayne nursing home last year. Spingler said the woman was his mother-in-law. Spingler is slated to be sentenced Thursday.
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By David Ingram

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)  Facebook Inc on Thursday launched an overhaul of how it handles paid political advertisements, giving a concession to U.S. lawmakers who have threatened to regulate the worlds largest social network over secretive ads that run during election campaigns.

The company also said it would turn over to congressional investigators the 3,000 political ads that it says were likely purchased by Russian entities during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company, for the first time, would now make it possible for anyone to see any political ads that run on Facebook, no matter whom they target.

Facebook will also demand that political advertisers disclose who is paying for the advertisements, a requirement that under U.S. law applies to political ads on television but not on social media.

We will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg, broadcasting live on Facebook from company headquarters in Menlo Park, California, said the changes would help address concerns that governments including Russia are using Facebook ads to meddle in other countries elections.

Earlier this month, Facebook said an internal review had shown that an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on 3,000 Facebook ads promoting divisive messages in the months before and after last years U.S. presidential election. The company initially declined to turn over details on the ads to Congress.

U.S. congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are examining alleged Russian election interference, which Moscow has denied.

Investigators are interested in other companies as well. Representatives for Twitter Inc <TWTR.N> are set to meet next week with staff from the Senate Intelligence Committee in relation to inquiries into the 2016 election.

Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Thursday that he wants to hear from Facebook, Alphabet Incs, Google, Twitter and others in public hearings.

It will be important for the committee to scrutinize how rigorous Facebooks internal investigation has been, to test its conclusions and to understand why it took as long as it did, Schiff said in a statement.

WILD, WILD WEST

The political advertising changes represent a retreat for Facebook, which for years has resisted calls from transparency advocates and academics for the regulation of political ads. The company has instead treated them like all commercial ads.

In the days after the November 2016 U.S. election, Zuckerberg said it was a crazy idea to think that misinformation on Facebook swayed the vote toward President Donald Trump.

Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, this month compared political ads on social media to the wild, wild West and said legislation might be needed to address them.

The U.S. Federal Election Commission last week sought public comment on possible regulatory changes to digital ads and considered whether to call Facebook and other tech firms before the commission for a public hearing.

Facebook has grown to be the leading online platform for political ads because of its low costs and tools for targeting messages to narrow audiences.

U.S. political campaigns likely spent $300 million on Facebook ads during the 2016 election cycle, according to Nomura analysts, though the exact amount is unknown.

It remained unclear whether Facebooks voluntary changes would satisfy demands for government action.

Warner and another senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, on Thursday sent a letter to colleagues inviting them to be co-sponsors of legislation they are writing that would formalize and expand the commitments Zuckerberg made.

The legislation, they wrote, would require digital platforms with 1 million or more users to maintain a publicly available file of all election-related ads bought by people who spend more than $10,000, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters.

Trevor Potter, president of the pro-transparency Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement that his group would carefully monitor Facebooks implementation of this new policy. He said Facebook helped create the secrecy that gave rise to foreign interference in the 2016 elections.

In the past, Facebook has argued that ad details had to remain confidential unless released by the advertisers.

GERMAN ELECTION MONITORING

Zuckerberg, who returned to work on Thursday after a month of paternity leave, laid out other steps the company would take to prevent governments from using Facebook to manipulate each others elections.

He said Facebook would hire 250 additional people; expand partnerships with election commissions around the world; and adapt systems to help deter political bullying.

Facebook has not found an attempt at election-meddling in Germany, Zuckerberg said, but he added that the company would continue to examine fake accounts that it has removed in advance of Sundays German national election.

I dont want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. Thats not what we stand for, Zuckerberg said.

Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said in a blog post on Thursday that it was unusual for Facebook to voluntarily turn over information to government authorities, as it was doing by giving U.S. lawmakers copies of ads.

The company has long had a rigid policy of refusing to turn over any user information without a court order or other legal process.

But ultimately, Stretch wrote, We believe the public deserves a full accounting of what happened in the 2016 election.

(Reporting by David Ingram in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz and Patricia Zengerle in Washington and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bangaluru; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Diane Craft)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters)  U.S. Health Secretary Tom Prices use of private jets for government travel was under investigation on Friday after an internal watchdog agreed to review the issue following calls by Democrats for a probe.

Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinsons office said it would request Prices travel records and seek to review their justification.

Price has taken at least two dozen such charter flights since May at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of about $300,000, according to Politico, which first reported the travel.

HHSs Office of the Inspector General is conducting a review of Secretary Prices federal travel using chartered aircraft. The review focuses on whether the travel complied with Federal Travel Regulations, but may encompass other issues related to the travel, said Levinsons spokeswoman, Tesia Williams, adding that it would be finished as soon as possible.

The move comes after House Democratic lawmakers called for the internal review earlier this week. [nL2N1M203S]

Separately, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms top Democrat, U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, also asked Price for details on the flights and called on panel chairman Trey Gowdy to hold an immediate hearing on the issue.

Representatives for Price did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation, earlier reported by the Washington Post and NBC News.

HHS spokeswoman Charmaine Yoest defended Prices travels, telling the Post: This is Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people and adding that commercial flights could have lengthy delays or force him to miss public events.

In a letter to Price, Cummings asked the secretary for details on the number of flights, the full costs and any documentation about their purpose by Oct. 10.

If these reports are accurate, this would be a stunning and hypocritical breach of trust given that the Trump Administration  is trying to take away health care from millions of Americans and is proposing to slash funding at HHS, he wrote.

As a U.S. lawmaker in 2009, Price chastised the fiscal irresponsibility of government private plane use in an appearance on CNBC that he also posted on Twitter at the time.

Questions over Prices charter flights come as another top U.S. official, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, is facing scrutiny over his use of a government plane to fly to Kentucky for a visit to Louisville and Fort Knox.

Mnuchin and his wife viewed the solar eclipse during the trip, which was to an area of the country that experienced the full eclipse. [nL2N1LI0YD]

(Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by David Alexander and Jonathan Oatis)
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MSNBCs Rachel Maddow showed why she is the number one show on cable news by spending less a minute talking about Trumps rally in Alabama, and instead of opening her show focusing on the Russia scandal and the fading GOP attempt at Obamacare repeal.

Maddow opened with the latest Obamacare news and didnt mention Trumps rally until four minutes into her show.

Here is a screenshot of her mention of Trump:

It is the biggest sign of Trumps fading to black presidency that the top-rated show on cable news did not feel it was necessary to break in and cover his remarks live.

Even All In with Chris Hayes gave Trump more coverage, but it was done mostly on a delayed basis with panel discussions mixed in.

While CNN cut Trumps audio, went split screen and launched into a panel discussion:

Cable news, outside of Fox, has learned a key lesson from Maddow. For most of America, Trump is not must-see television. Maddow has risen to the top of cable news by not spending time analyzing what Trump is saying, but focusing on what the administration is doing or might have done as it relates to Russia.

Others have caught on, and that means that a man who won the presidency thanks to billions of dollars in free television cant even get a speech covered live in primetime on a Friday night.

Maddow has proven that viewers want programs that examine Trump with a critical eye. Wall to wall Trump coverage is out and has been replaced by intelligent journalists pulling back the curtains and revealing what the Trump administration doesnt want people to see.
By PTI: Dhaka, Sep 23 (PTI) Eleven people have been arrested for their suspected links in terror financing during separate raids in the Bangladeshi capital, police said today.

The anti-crime and anti-terrorism Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) made the arrests from different parts of the capital yesterday.

The arrestees were identified as Tony Nath, Md Faysal alias Tuhin, Amzad Hossain, Moin Khan, Md Nahid, Md Jahed Ullah, Md Helal Uddin, Helal Uddin, Al Amin, Al Mamun and Al Amin, the Daily Star reported.

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The elite force in separate drives arrested them from different parts as they were involved in terror financing, the report said, quoting a message from RAB office.

Bangladesh has been witnessing a spate of attacks on secular activists, foreigners and religious minorities since 2013. The country launched a massive crackdown on militants, specially after the July 1 terror attack on a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people, including 17 foreigners.

ISIS has claimed several attacks in Bangladesh, but the government rejects the presence of foreign terrorist groups in the moderate Muslim-majority country, blaming home-grown groups such as the Islamic-State inclined Neo-Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (Neo-JMB) for terrorist attacks. PTI MRJ AKJ MRJ

--- ENDS ---
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You know that hoax President Trump keeps referring to? That is, the agreement among rational people that Russia interfered in the election Trump won? Trumps legal fees to deal with his Russia-collusion scandal are being paid for by a Russian connected billionaire.

The RNC is just straight up taking money now from a Ukrainian-born American who is connected to Russian oligarchs, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

President Donald Trumps attorneys in the probe of Russian election interference are being funded in part through a Republican Party account with a handful of wealthy donorsincluding a billionaire investor, a property developer seeking U.S. government visas and a Ukrainian-born American who has made billions of dollars doing business with Russian oligarchs, Rebecca Ballhaus reported.

The RNC is, for some odd reason, paying part of Trumps legal fees and the President is also using his reelection donations to pay for his Russia collusion scandal legal fees.

CNNs Jake Tapper pointed out again Friday afternoon, There is only one major figure in the national security apparatus who doesnt accept that Russia meddled in our election  the President.

There is only one major figure in the national security apparatus who doesnt accept that Russia meddled in our election  the President. pic.twitter.com/dowv5JU9Wk  The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) September 22, 2017

So, add it up.

Russia hacked the election. They targeted over 20 states, including important states like Wisconsin, a state Trump won by .7 points.

The only assurance we are given is that vote tallies werent changed, but that is not how Russians would impact the election. Their approach would be much more sophisticated so as to avoid detection; they would do things like target voters ability to vote at all through access to voter rolls, which they did have.

Donald Trump won by a mere 77,744 votes in three states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, out of 136 million ballots cast. Trump won these states by very small percentage points, like .2 points in Michigan and .8 points in Pennsylvania. These three wins gave him 46 electoral votes.

Trump continues to call the fact that Russia interfered a hoax, even as the secret meetings his own campaign had with Russian officials and spies get outed.

Now the RNC is just openly taking money from Russian affiliated billionaire to fund Trumps legal fees for the Russia-collusion scandal.

This just reeks of collusion. The stench is so bad its impossible to miss, no matter which way a person turns. Even if youre trying to avoid coming to this conclusion, it is everywhere.

Republicans just keep doing things like taking money from Russian-connected billionaire to fund Trumps fees to pay for lawyers claiming Trump didnt collude with the Russians.

If this were happening in the Democratic Party, you can just imagine the histrionic hysteria.
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While campaigning for Alabama Senate candidate Sen. Luther Strange, Donald Trump suggested that he would throw Hillary Clinton in prison, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions is stopping him.

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Trump said, If crooked Hillary got elected, you would not have a Second Amendment. Believe me. Youd be handing in your rifles. Youd be saying here. Youd go like here, here they are. Youd be turning over your rifles.

The crowd began to chant lock her up. Trump basked in the chants and then said, You gotta speak to Jeff Sessions about that.

Trump was implying that if it were up to him, Hillary Clinton would be in prison.

The same president who tried to fire his attorney general for recusing himself and not killing the Russia investigation, now wants the country to believe that it is Jeff Sessions fault that Hillary Clinton has not been prosecuted.

It is completely insane on many levels for a president to suggest that he would jail his political opponents. Unlike Trump, there is no evidence that Hillary Clinton committed a crime. There is no reason for Clinton to be prosecuted for anything. All she did was win the popular vote over Donald Trump. The President has reached a dangerous level of crazy where he and his rabid cult are demanding the imprisonment of those who oppose them.

This is not democracy. This is not the United States of America.

Trump is off his rocker, and the people all political beliefs who love their country must come together to stop this mentally unstable threat to the nation.
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In another eye-opening Hillary Clinton interview, the 2016 popular vote winner told MSNBCs Joy Reid that she cant say that Donald Trump isnt a white supremacist, particularly following his response to the racist violence in Charlottesville this summer.

The former Secretary of State did not definitively call Trump a white supremacist, but its rather stunning that she refused to say he isnt one.

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This is pretty stunning: Hillary Clinton essentially refuses to say Trump isnt a white supremacist #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/TwDNgNTSMD  Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) September 23, 2017

Joy Reid asked, In your view  I mean, this has been said about him  is Donald Trump a white supremacist?

Hillary Clinton refused to say the man in the Oval Office isnt:

Well, I certainly think theres a lot of evidence as to how he has behaved historically, during the campaign, and as president, that he is appealing to those who are. I cant look into his heart, I cant say what he really feels because I think he is such a political opportunist that if he thought he could get votes and loyalty from a different direction, he would probably go there. But he started off from the very first day, attacking Mexicans, calling them rapists. He had dog whistles that got increasingly louder on immigrants and Latinos and African Americans and women and Muslims and the whole panoply of scapegoats that he was holding out to his supporters as the explanation for whatever their grievance was.

As Clinton said, its hard to truly tell what is in Trumps heart  to the extent that he has one  but it essentially becomes irrelevant whether he is truly a white supremacist or if hes just appealing to them for his own political gain.

In either case, he is emboldening those who do openly subscribe to the hateful ideology of the KKK or other white supremacist groups. That is unacceptable for anybody seeking to hold elected office, especially the President of the United States.
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By David Ljunggren and Adriana Barrera

OTTAWA (Reuters)  Talks to update the North American Free Trade Agreement intensified on Saturday although U.S. negotiators looked set to once again withhold proposals for one of the Trump administrations most challenging issues.

Teams from the United States, Mexico and Canada kicked off the third of seven planned rounds of discussions in Ottawa amid warnings from trade experts that time was quickly running out to seal a deal by the end of the year as planned.

One key issue is the U.S. desire to strengthen rules of origin for autos, which dictate how much of a vehicles components must originate from within North America to qualify for tax free status.

The American side did not mention a specific goal in the first two rounds and Canadas chief NAFTA negotiator on Saturday said he did not think the United States would provide more details during the Ottawa round.

Were not expecting that, no, Steve Verheul told reporters, predicting the pace of the talks would nonetheless quicken.

According to a schedule of the talks obtained by Reuters, rules of origin will be discussed on Tuesday and Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants more U.S. content in autos, citing trade deficits of $64 billion with Mexico and $11 billion with Canada. Trump, who says NAFTA is weighted against his country, has threatened to walk away from the agreement.

Flavio Volpe, president of the Canadian Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association, said late on Friday he felt it was too early for detailed rule of origin proposals given that U.S. officials were still talking to the domestic industry.

Its fine for us if they take a little longer so we all understand what our interests are and we make the right deal. We dont need an early deal, he said.

U.S. chief negotiator John Melle said ahead of the talks that his team would introduce the difficult provisions in Ottawa talks that are due to last for five days.

Another tricky issue is labor, given complaints from U.S. and Canadian unions that Mexicos low wages give it a manufacturing advantage.

The United States is also expected to present proposals on intellectual property and investment, sources with knowledge of discussions said. Other areas of disagreement include dispute settlement mechanisms.

Canadian and Mexican officials, as well as U.S. businesses, have already rejected a proposal by Washington to include a five-year sunset provision in the updated agreement, saying it added uncertainty to investment planning.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Franklin Paul)
By PTI: London, Sep 23 (PTI) Despite frequent contact with each other during the Iron Age, textiles in Italy more closely resembled those found in Central Europe while Greece followed the tradition of ancient Near East, according to a study.

Textiles have been and still are widely considered one of the most valuable indicators of individual and group identity.

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Even in societies today, people frequently form opinions of others based on the type of cloth they are wearing: tweed is associated with Irish and British country clothing, cashmere with Central Asia and silk with the Far East.

Researchers from University of Cambridge in the UK conducted an analysis of several hundred textile fragments, providing a more detailed definition of the textile cultures in Italy and Greece during the first half of the first millennium BC.

During the Iron Age (1,000-400 BC) people were buried with a lot of metal goods such as personal ornaments, weapons and vessels, researchers said.

These metals are conducive to the preservation of textiles as the metal effectively kills off the micro- organisms which would otherwise consume the organic materials, while at the same time metal salts create casts of textile fibres, thereby preserving the textile microstructure, they said.

Researchers used digital and scanning electron microscopy, high performance liquid chromatography and other advanced methods were able to determine a lot of information including the nature of the raw materials and structural features such as thread diameter, twist direction, type of weaving or binding, and thread count.

The technical differences suggest that during the Iron Age, textiles in Italy more closely resembled those found in Central Europe - associated with the Hallstatt culture that was prevalent in modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovenia - while the textile culture of Greece was largely connected with the Near East.

The ancient Near East was the home of early civilisations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East.

"There is overwhelming evidence for frequent contact between Italy and Greece during the first half of the first millennium BC, but this evidence shows that their textile traditions were technically, aesthetically and conceptually very different," said Margarita Gleba, from University of Cambridge.

"This means that the populations in these two regions are making an active decision to clothe themselves in a certain way and it may have to do with traditions set up already in the Bronze Age," Gleba added.

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Curiously, by Roman times, the establishment of Greek colonies in southern Italy and more general oriental influences observed in material culture of Italic populations leads towards gradual disappearance of the indigenous textile tradition, researchers said.

Our future research will attempt to understand the cause behind this change in textile culture, they added.

The study was published in the journal Antiquity. PTI APA SAR SAR

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SC Attorney General Alan Wilson is challenging the CDC's recommendations on COVID vaccinations for kids. They have no force of law, so this is no different than the left trying to enforce its woke orthodoxy. Read moreEditorial: Alan Wilson should stick to the law, stop trying to silence opinions he dislikes
In the Colorado ZR2, Chevrolet has fielded a purpose-built pickup that boasts a number of exclusives.

It's the only midsize truck available with a diesel engine, the only one to come standard with true "off-road" suspension and the only one with locking front and rear differentials.

So, who cares?

Chevrolet engineers made a splash at last year's Los Angeles Auto Show by bringing a number of pre-production ZR2s to a gritty industrial space they'd rented.

For the duration of the show, Chevy hosted wannabe terrain-tacklers eager to show off their off-road skills on a bumpy, rocky course fabricated at the former factory site.

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But even then the questions that formed in my mind were: Who is this truck for? And, how many of those people are there?

The ZR2 is a midsize pickup truck. Despite its massive 17-inch wheels and overblown 31-inch tires, it can be mounted without a stepladder and drives surprisingly like a sedan.

Around town, it's sporty and responsive, easy to maneuver through traffic. It can even be parked in a normal-sized parking spot.

For a truck with fat tires, it's quiet on the freeway, which makes it possible to enjoy the adequate sound system.

The truck's infotainment system, which features an 8-inch color touch screen, connects easily to a telephone. (A Wi-Fi hot spot is standard too.) The HVAC system functions well.

The seats are comfortable, even on longer drives, and though the "extended cab" rear seating area is really more like an extended storage area, there's plenty of legroom and headroom up front. (Rear passengers will need to be rather small if they are to experience reasonable legroom.)

Chevy engineers have taken pains to make the cabin comfy. Standard are heated, leather-trimmed bucket seats, with power lumbar adjustments and a telescoping, leather-wrapped steering wheel.

The ZR2 is delivered standard with a 3.6-liter V-6 engine, which produces 308 horsepower and 275 pound-feet of torque.

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But the preferred option  a $3,500 upgrade  is the 2.8-liter, four-cylinder, turbo diesel engine. It makes an acceptable 186 horsepower and a phenomenal 369 pound-feet of torque.

Corner to corner, the turbo diesel is quite zippy, for a truck. In the rough, it makes the ZR2 a wall crawler.

Off road is where the ZR2 really performs. It's so capable, in fact, that I wasn't able to find anything to challenge it.

The grunty diesel engine, combined with the ZR2's four-wheel drive, long suspension travel and Multimatic DSSV shock dampers, made short work of deep sand, slushy mud, rocky roads and desert washboard. Indeed, the truck was almost as smooth on rough surfaces as it was on the freeway.

Since the ZR2 was twice delayed getting to me because previous drivers had damaged it during their test periods, I was perhaps too reluctant to throw the ZR2 up or down a steep cliff, or hit sand berms at the high speeds.

And I didn't even engage the locking differentials, which would have made near-vertical assaults possible, even on uneven ground.

The truck's plastic-like interior raised concerns about durability and longevity. Would the dash and door panels survive the sun-baking and dust-brushing they'd get from repeated exposures to harsh weather? Only time would tell.

I also wondered about the spare tire placement, which on the model I borrowed was attached to a rack bolted square in the center of the truck bed. That would have complicated plans to haul anything substantial on an overland adventure, such as motorcycles, mountain bikes, kayaks or camping equipment.

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A Chevy executive explained that this is an option, desired by dedicated rock crawlers, because it allows for even more ground clearance under the truck, where the spare is typically stored.

Chevy's marketing people say their ZR2 appeals to truckers "in search of their next adventure and determined to stray off the beaten path." They want a truck tough enough for "overland travel, rock crawling, traversing two-track trails and bombing through the desert," while also gentle enough for daily driving.

Those customers, who Chevy said are cross-shopping Toyota Tacoma TRD midsize and Ford Raptor full-size trucks  both of them more expensive vehicles  have added to the Colorado bottom line. The ZR2 now accounts for about 10 percent of Colorado sales, the company said.

Although the truck's sales are still dwarfed by the Tacoma's roughly 130,000 trucks sold this year, according to Kelley Blue Book, the Colorado's 72,000 moved by dealers is a strong number.

That puts the Colorado far in front of the competing Nissan Frontier, GMC Canyon and Honda Ridgeline. (Full-size work trucks from Ford and Chevy sell better, of course, with Ford turning over about 575,000 of its F-150s this year, and Chevy about 365,000 Silverados.)

Despite the mathematics, I'm still left wondering who's buying the ZR2s. I haven't seen any among the German and Swedish sport utility vehicles crowding the streets. I haven't seen any in the company parking garage.

I guess I'd better call the Chevy guys and ask them to extend the loan. I need to go canyon crawling.
After a troubled youth himself, Phillip Cohen made it a practice to hire people at his woodworking business who also have struggled with addiction and mental health issues. But when an employee died from a drug overdose, he adopted a zero-tolerance policy.

"I think I have saved lives," says the owner of Cohen Architectural Woodworking in St. James, Mo.  an area hit very hard by the nation's growing opioid epidemic. Opioids range from prescription pain medicine such as oxycodone to illegal drugs such as heroin.

Cohen still hires former drug addicts, felons and people who have been traumatized in life. One person, now a top employee, was hired right after he finished drug rehabilitation. Another used to sell illegal drugs. Still, Cohen says, if a worker fails a periodic random drug or alcohol test, "we'll fire them on the spot."

The epidemic of drug use  a report from the surgeon general last year said 20 million Americans have a substance use disorder  is forcing many small business owners to think about what they would do if they suspect an employee is abusing drugs or alcohol.

Between 1999 and 2015, the number of overdose deaths from opioids and heroin quadrupled, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says. The government also reported more than 15 million adults with what's called alcohol use disorder in 2015.

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More than 70 percent of employers with 50 or more workers have been affected by prescription drugs, according to a survey released this year by the National Safety Council. But more than 80 percent don't have a comprehensive drug-free workplace policy.

Although Cohen understood the dangers of drugs and knew some staffers had a history of substance abuse, he wasn't prepared when a worker overdosed in 2010, three days after the staffer attended a leadership conference.

"I didn't care what people did at first," says Cohen, whose workers use saws and other potentially dangerous machinery to create reception desks, cabinets and furniture for businesses, schools and health care facilities. But the devastating death of an employee prompted him to hire an attorney to write a tough drug policy that workers must read and sign.

"You have to draw the line somewhere," says Cohen, who also brings in counselors and people who run support groups to help staffers who are struggling with personal problems.

Many small business owners don't think ahead and create a written policy on alcohol and substance abuse, says employment law attorney Shira Forman. That forces them to be reactive, trying to figure out what to do when presented with an employee who shows up drunk, high or hung over, whose work is suffering or who causes an accident.

"It's often not something that an employer knows how to deal with until they're confronted with a scenario," says Forman, who works at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in New York.

Having a policy in place doesn't make it easier for a boss to confront a staffer they believe to have a drug or alcohol problem. It's hard on an emotional level, especially if the employee denies there's an issue and gets angry. But there also can be legal questions that must be considered before an owner broaches the topic.

While a staffer's behavior might seem to point to a substance abuse problem, it's often not a clear-cut situation, says Michael Schmidt, an employment law attorney with Cozen O'Connor in New York. An employee might have a prescription for opioids, and therefore be protected by federal, state or local laws. A staffer might have shaking hands, a sign of possible alcohol withdrawal but also a symptom of anxiety or a condition such as Parkinson's disease.

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Even when it's clear the problem is due to drugs or alcohol, many owners seek help from a lawyer or HR professional. David Grant was taken by surprise when an employee at his public relations company told him a co-worker had gotten drunk at lunch with a client.

Grant turned to his human resources provider and a consultant on dealing with alcoholics.

"It was a world I don't know anything about," says Grant, whose eponymous company is based in New York. "I was aware of how litigious everyone is, so I did it by the book."

Grant's HR provider had created a substance abuse policy that he followed. He told the staffer she had a choice: go into rehabilitation treatment for a month or be fired. She chose treatment, which Grant paid for. He also warned she'd be dismissed if it happened again. And it did; a few weeks after she returned to work, she again was drunk at a client lunch.

"I fired her instantly," Grant says. He had to follow some painful advice from his consultants: "You can't back off. You can't be a nice guy."

At Abbey Research, a market research firm based in Philadelphia, the substance abuse policy calls for employees to be suspended if they fail a random drug test or tell management they have a drug problem.

Their jobs will be held until they pass a drug test because the company wants to give people a second chance, says Kristen Donnelly, who is in charge of human resources. But if they fail a second time, they'll be fired.

The company, which seeks to help people who are struggling economically and personally, is located in a neighborhood where drug use has taken a toll. Two staffers have been suspended and then fired for drug use in the 18 months since Donnelly has headed HR.

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But even afterward, the company has helped them find resources aimed at getting them back on their feet. "First and foremost they're human beings, and they're human beings with a disease," Donnelly says.
With sparse dialogue and vivid, sometimes graphic, scenes, Jolie depicts a family that loses everything, showing the forced migration from the comforts of the city to hard labour and starvation in the countryside.

In her fourth feature as a director, First They Killed My Father, Angelina Jolie delivers her most assured film yet. Among the fans: the country of Cambodia, which has selected the Netflix docudrama as its official nominee for the Oscars, a first for the Academy Awards.

Beginning with archival footage that suggests America was complicit in the tragedy that unfolded in Cambodia during and after the Vietnam War, Jolie, who has held dual US-Cambodian citizenship since 2005, makes her stance clear at the outset. First with a bombing campaign and then by abandoning the anti-communist government in 1975, Washington paved the way for the wholesale slaughter of 1.5-3 million people by the Khmer Rouge. Working with Cambodian-French filmmaker Rithy Panh and sharing writing credits with Loung Ung, whose memoir of the same title inspired the film, Jolie focuses on the period of the revolutionary government's worst excesses-from 1975 to 1979.

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In an affecting performance, nine-year-old Sareum Srey Moch portrays Loung as a mostly silent, wide-eyed spectator to the horror as she toils in the fields, eventually joining in the killing as a child soldier. With sparse dialogue and vivid, sometimes graphic, scenes, Jolie depicts a family that loses everything, showing the forced migration from the comforts of the city to hard labour and starvation in the countryside.

She juxtaposes flashbacks to the grand past against the grim present to evoke a sense of drastic deterioration, mostly succeeding in avoiding melodrama with a simple docudrama approach-perhaps a consequence of her long association with the UNHCR.

Though she blames American cynicism for facilitating the genocide, the film is finally an indictment of the Khmer's rigid revolutionary ideology-which ushered in a brutal dictatorship under the guise of refuting colonialism and capitalism. Regardless of how unequal the society might have been before the revolution, the film makes viewers wonder how a country can be so ruthless toward its own citizens. In the current era of divide and rule, there's a lesson for all in Cambodia's horror.

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Growing up in south Texas along the Mexican border, Ana Johnson always associated pinatas with happy things: birthday parties, festivals and most any kind of celebration.

"Always, there were pinatas," said Johnson, now a Rochester resident. "You know, you hit them and candy comes out. It's fun."

Johnson, a board member of Listos, a Spanish-English pre-school and childcare, doesn't claim to be an expert in making pinatas. But she has made enough of them to feel comfortably competent. She also knows enough how much of a fun, family-oriented activity they can be.

She will be leading a pinata-making workshop on Sept. 28 at 5:30 p.m. at Forager Brewery Company, 1005 6th St. N.W., Rochester. The workshop is one of Listos' fundraisers held throughout the year to support the pre-school's operations.

Tickets for the workshop are $40. The school is also hosting a Day of the Dead fundraising dinner on Nov. 3 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Fellowship Hall at Peace United Church of Christ.

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There are several websites devoted to making pinatas. Here are five steps to making your own:

1. Blow up a large punching balloon and tie with a heavy string. Coax it into a round shape by wrapping it in cloth tape.

2. Cover with at least three coats of papier mache. Johnson uses water, flour and a little bit of glue to make a paste. Dip newspaper strips one at a time into the paste and place them on the balloon. Johnson lays three coats of papier mache over the balloon. It takes about 10 minutes to do one coat and a few hours to let it dry before adding another coat.

3. Make five cones. Johnson uses a template for the cone. Others have more elaborate instructions for making cones. Another method is to cut five to six sheets of strong, white paper into 7-inch squares. In a well-ventilated area, spray-mount different colors of tissue paper onto the squares. Place the point of a compass at the corner of one of the squares and mark a 6 1/2-inch arc. Trim the paper around the arc. Roll the paper into a cone and glue or tape the straight edges together where they meet.

4. Attach cones to the papier mache. Johnson uses glue to attach the cones to the belly of the pinata.

5. Decorate with tissue paper.
Five hundred years ago next month, Martin Luther took the first step in what led to the breaking apart of the Christian world.

Luther's 95 Theses, which he released on Oct. 31, 1517, is generally regarded as the start of the Reformation, a time in which new religions, including Lutheranism, sprung up to challenge the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church.

It was perhaps the most important event of the last millennium, with repercussions that are still felt today.

"He moved medieval Europe into the modern age," said the Rev. Charles Ortloff, pastor at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Rochester.

Not only did Luther's writings lead to religious reform and reaction, they also let loose a genie that would eventually touch nearly every aspect of life and society as it was then known. Among other innovations, Luther demonstrated the power and value of the recently invented printing press, and he ushered in a new era of religious conversation flowing from the people up, rather than from the preacher down.

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"Luther said that everybody has a calling, that God is calling everyone," Ortloff said. Luther also said everyone had the right to hear the words of the Scripture in a language they could understand. In the case of Luther, that was German, rather than traditional Latin.

At its heart, though, Luther's writings were about an effort to reform the way the Catholic Church operated.

"Luther did not want to break away from the Catholic Church, he wanted to reform it," said Wanda Deifelt, a professor of religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. "He was calling all his life to bring about that reform."

So what exactly did the 95 Theses say? Primarily, Luther used the theses to attack the Catholic Church's selling of indulgences, which were claimed to lessen sinners' time in purgatory on their way to heaven. That practice galled Luther and other reformers, who saw it as a way for the church to raise money while preying upon poor and illiterate worshipers.

"I went back and read the 95 Theses," said the Rev. Dan Doering, pastor of People of Hope Church in Rochester, "and what struck me was Luther speaking out against a system of oppression."

That, Doering said, has relevance 500 years later.

"Today, the church is called to speak up against systems of oppression," Doering said. For his parishioners, he said, that includes challenging the repeal of the Dreamers Act, speaking out against the removal of LGBT people from the military, and addressing issues such as affordable housing and income inequality.

"We are a social justice church," Doering said. "I'm a Gen-X pastor, and my idea is that the church stands for something, that the church makes a difference in the world. That's a direct benefit of the 95 Theses."

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Such an approach focuses on what the theses can mean to Lutherans today, rather than on a centuries-old conflict with Catholics.

That's appropriate, said Deifelt, the Luther professor, who was part of an ecumenical effort to bring Catholics and Lutherans together in observance of the anniversary.

The group wrote a document, "From Conflict to Communion," which reflects those efforts.

"We're not going back to the strife, struggle and conflict," Deifelt said. "We have made strides in this. We're not pointing out differences between Catholics and Lutherans. We want to show how far we have come in the last 50 years."

That would be since Vatican Council II, in the mid-1960s, which ushered in reforms of Catholic practices, including celebrating the Mass in the vernacular, as Luther had advocated.

That's one reason the 500th anniversary should be marked in a moderate fashion, she said.

"It's neither a celebration nor a lament," Deifelt said. "It's a commemoration, which comes from the Latin for 'We share memory.' We are telling the story of what happened 500 years ago without pointing fingers."

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WASHINGTON  Three blocks from Smithsonian exhibits depicting the Big Bang and evolution, Washington's newest museum will tell a different story of the creation of the universe.

The Museum of the Bible will showcase the impact of the Old and New Testaments using ancient artifacts and examples of ways the holy book has influenced the modern world.

The museum welcomes everyone from atheists to true believers to explore its eight-story, high-tech museum that uses modern technology to present ancient parables.

"No other book has had such a great impact on society, particularly Western culture," said museum executive director Tony Zeiss. "It's had an impact on literature, on art, on fashion, on politics. You name it."

Opening in November, the nonprofit museum is the brainchild of Steve Green, the evangelical president of Hobby Lobby who has been at the crux of two church-and-state controversies. One involves his efforts to bring biblical teachings into public schools through a series of four secondary school courses. The other was Hobby Lobby's win in a landmark case in 2009 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that companies owned by deeply religious families can use faith-based objections to sidestep the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate.

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Around the same time, the Green family began acquiring biblical artifacts a few at a time until members had amassed tens of thousands, which they displayed in traveling exhibits. Some of the acquisitions caught the attention of federal prosecutors who charged that the antiquities may have been looted from modern-day Iraq. The case ended in a $3 million settlement and the forfeiture of 5,000 artifacts.

None of those artifacts were headed to the Museum of the Bible, Zeiss said.

There will be plenty else in the enormous museum. At 430,000 square feet, it's bigger than the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. And although it's dedicated to one solitary book, the museum occupies one-fifth the space of the Library of Congress, which has a world record 164 million holdings.

Among the museum's relics are first editions of the King James Bible, fragments of the Dead Sea Scroll, the first Bible to travel to the moon, the largest collection of Torah scrolls and Bibles that belonged to celebrities including Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley. Some items will be on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Rome State Archive and the Vatican.

Some religious scholars are concerned more about what isn't in the museum than what is.

"They seem to be excluding a great deal of diversity that makes early history much more interesting than the mythologized version of history," said Jeffrey Robbins, department chairman and professor of religion and philosophy at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. "It traffics in myth rather than history, and perpetrates the chasm that has opened up in American intellectual and religious life between faith and knowledge."

The museum has a blind spot because its board of directors is chock full of fundamental evangelicals to the exclusion of contemporary biblical scholars with more diverse views, Robbins said. He worries that the museum's leaders will present the book as a fixed book with a settled history.

The $509 million museum's opulence and its proximity to the Capitol  three blocks away  highlights the dangerous intersection of public policy and moneyed interests that can "trump the sometimes unsettling truths that come from the rigors of science and academic inquiry," Robbins said.

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To Green, the Bible is a reliable historical document that isn't getting enough attention in the world today, but he also views it as a guide to life.

"When we, as man, live according to the precepts that are given, it is good for us," he said in a 2015 speech describing the museum's mission to the National Bible Association. "It tells us how we should live, and if we can encourage a skeptical world to reconsider a book that can change our world, that's an exciting journey that we're on."

Other museum leaders say they welcome scientific inquiry and that they seek to present the Bible as a historical document, not to interpret it.

"We treat the Bible as a book that has influenced people for generations and generations. It's proven to be the most engaging and intriguing book in the history of mankind, so we try to present it as factually and accurately as possible. People can draw their own conclusions," Zeiss said.

He noted that the proximity of the museum gives non-believers the opportunity to consider biblical teachings about the origins of the universe along with the explanations provided at the nearby Smithsonian museums.

"Hopefully they would be as objective as possible, look at the exhibits we have, and try to get engaged mentally if not emotionally," Zeiss said. "I would encourage them to get engaged in all sorts of things that relate to the Bible including different theories about the development of the Earth and mankind. That's fine. They have something to compare it to."
Jupiter is within reach in Rochester Community and Technical College's astronomy class, thanks to the latest virtual reality technology.

No, really  you actually can pick up the planet or explore Pluto's moons (though we'll leave that whole planet-or-not debate up to the experts) by simply strapping on a pair of goggles.

The college's new virtual reality lab was used for the first time last week and was made possible thanks to a $22,000 grant from the Minnesota State Educational Innovations conference. The "Shark Tank"-style grant, which the college competed for and was awarded in June, will give students a different perspective in classes ranging from astronomy to anatomy and physiology.

For teachers such as earth science instructor John Tacinelli, it will allow for some innovation and perspective in the classroom.

"I like to give authentic experiences, but there's just no way to directly compare the size of Jupiter to the Earth, even if you went to space," Tacinelli said.

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With this "out-of-the-box tool" for instructors at the college, a program called "Titans of Space" allows students to not only get a closer look at each planet, but at the solar system in its entirety.

"It takes you someplace that nobody would ever have a chance to go," said Guy Hamernik, who works in RCTC's educational technology office. Hamernik played a big part in the college applying for the grant and has been involved with exploring gaming technology for the classroom.

The technology works by placing two sensors on opposing walls in a classroom; they're calibrated to detect movement from the headset that students will wear and a controller that's in hand. The entire system is hooked up to a computer that's running whichever program the instructor has selected.

Once you've invested in the big equipment, the individual programs are relatively cheap to purchase and easy to use, Hamernik said, equating it to purchasing an app from the App Store.

Tacinelli is hoping to use the technology with his geology class, utilizing a Google Earth app that will give students a birds-eye view of geographic features, such as rivers and rock formations.

Part of the grant includes research on the implementation of this new technology and how effective it is in the classroom and helping students learn about a certain subject area, Hamernik said.

The downside, they said  just one student can use the technology at a time. Though they're working to get two other classrooms up and running, the instructors are just determining how they'll incorporate it into the curriculum.

For 17-year-old Jack Rubio, a Zumbrota-Mazeppa High School student taking courses at the college, it helps bring subjects such as astronomy into perspective.

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"It makes a lot of concepts easier to grasp," he said, "like the whole distance in studying the solar system. You can think about that, but you can't fully understand it until you see it and you realize these things are actually incredibly far apart."
One of Rochester's oldest and largest employers, Textile Care Services, was purchased by a Wisconsin firm on Thursday.

Superior Health Linens, of Cudahy, Wis., closed on a deal to acquire the large commercial laundry from TC Services LLC, an independent firm related to the Kahler Hospitality Group.

Financial terms of the total sale were not released, though just the real estate portion of the operation cost $10 million, according to state records. People involved said the final amount was "a very large number."

TCS was founded by Mayo Clinic and the Kahler Hotel as a joint venture in 1918 to clean all of the linens for both institutions. The hotel group took over full ownership in 1996.

Today, the laundry cleans 35 million pounds of linens from Mayo Clinic and area hotels every year.

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TCS, based in a 116,000-square-foot facility at 225 Woodlake Drive SE, employs 275 people. Superior rehired every one of those employees this week.

Scott Reppert, the CEO and president of Superior, said he spent much of Thursday and Friday interviewing and rehiring all of the TCS workers.

"Each and every one of them said they loved their job. I asked each one if they were will willing to give 100 percent. They all said they'd give us 120 percent," said Reppert. "There was lots of applause, a lot of happiness.  We had people crying, they were so happy."

In addition to rehiring everyone, Superior gave all of the employees a pay raise and made some improvements to benefits.

The sale wasn't the only deal that wrapped up on Thursday. Mayo Clinic signed a new, long-term contract with Superior-owned TCS.

Working with Superior gives Mayo Clinic something it didn't have during the past 99 years with using TCS as a commercial laundry -- a back-up plan.

The new owner has eight other commercial laundries in Wisconsin, Illinois and Kentucky. If something should happen to the Rochester plant, Superior can clean Mayo Clinic's dirty laundry at its Wisconsin sites.

"Mayo Clinic considers this a patient critical service," said Reppert.

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The new contract is "significantly" longer than the industry standard of five to seven years, he added.

Paul Jewison, the laundry's general manager for the past 25 years, said this change means the operation will be able to invest in new improvements.

"There are a lot of exciting things we can do now," he said. "Plus, for the first time, we'll just be a laundry company and will be able to just focus on that. This is a great deal for us."

In 1996, Sunstone Properties, the previous owner of the hotels, took over complete ownership of the laundry. The Kahler Hotel Group, under the leadership of Javon Bea, then purchased the four Rochester hotels and the laundry for $230 million in 2013. The laundry was operated by TC Services LLC.

Leslie Hohmann, the chief financial officer for the Kahler Hotel Group and TC Services, said this deal is positive for everyone.

"Our board thought it was a good time to sell. And they really liked the people (at Superior)," she said.

TCS will continue to handle the Kahler hotels' laundry needs under a new contract.

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A Rochester landlord won't be able to rent out his Fourth Street Southeast duplex for at least a year after the property was the subject of 80 calls to the Rochester Police Department in 18 months, including an Aug. 15 shooting that sent a Rochester man to the hospital.

Shannon Johnson said he has been addressing concerns at 1120 Fourth St. SE and asked the Rochester City Council for more time.

"I've cleaned up everything on the outside and everything on the inside," he told the Rochester City Council during a hearing regarding complaints, noting he'd also evicted tenants who were causing problems. His brother is still living in one unit.

Susan LeGare-Gulden, manager for housing inspector services, said Johnson has been given several chances to conform to city requirements, even though he had tenants living in the duplex with an expired rental certificate for more than a year.

However, LeGare-Gulden said problems went beyond failing to make needed repairs in a timely fashion to obtain a new rental certificate.

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"He doesn't know how to do background checks on tenants and keep crime out of his rental property," she said. "That is evident by the disorderly use notices that were issued by the Rochester Police Department."

Johnson received four notices since purchasing the property on March 10, 2016. The first was for an alleged controlled substance on the property, but the complaint was later dismissed by the city attorney. Two other notices were issued for a loud party or noise, and another was given for disorderly conduct.

Several neighbors also voiced concerns, noting the rental property had been a problem before Johnson bought it.

Randy Batzel, a neighborhood block captain, said the corner near St. Francis Catholic Church has been problematic for the neighborhood, citing a history of drug use and other issues.

"We're sick of it," he said. "We'd love to see the place torn down and make a cul de sac, because we're sick of the problems."

Another neighbor, Mike LaPlante, also called the house a chronic neighborhood problem.

"We've had problems with the current landlord and previous landlords," he said.

Others in the community stood up to acknowledge the challenges of operating rental property and the need for units with lower rents.

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"I've noticed with Mr. Johnson he's tried to do what he can and has been frustrated and sabotaged," Paul Sadler said. He added that tenants have damaged the property and blocked him from making repairs.

Johnson said he's aware of his shortcomings and has tried to find a way to support his family with rental units.

"I realize this has cost everyone involved a lot of time and money, and it has cost me several thousand from having my unit vandalized terrible and several months of lost rent," he said. "I made several mistakes, including not screening my tenants as good as I should have, which I apologize for."

He said he wants to build relationships with the neighbors, but has found that difficult with other properties he has owned.

LeGare-Gulden said her suggestions for council action could address some of the concerns and potentially turn the property around. The proposal was to rescind Johnson's ability to retain a rental license for two years, vacate the property and have Johnson retake public safety classes to learn to properly operate a rental property. He would also be required to make improvements before allowing the building to be rented in the future.

Council members voiced concern about extending the restrictions too long, which could lead Johnson to sell the property and put it into the hands of someone else who might face similar struggles.

"I'm not sure what two years will get us that one year wouldn't," council member Ed Hruska said, noting a shorter requirement would allow Johnson to maintain the property and change direction.

The council voted unanimously to keep the two-year restriction in place with LeGare-Gulden's other recommendations, but council members said Johnson would be able to request a review in a year.

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"If you stay there, your job is to fix it up and rebuild the relationships with the neighborhood," council member Mark Bilderback told Johnson.
ALBERT LEA  Save Our Hospital has secured two speakers for the Sept. 30 Rally for Rural Healthcare outside Mayo Clinic's Albert Lea campus.

Rep. Paul Thissen , the former Democratic speaker of the house and a candidate for governor in 2018, and Dr. Matthew Kumar , who has filed four federal antitrust complaints against Mayo, have both agreed to speak, according to Save Our Hospital spokeswoman Jennifer Vogt-Erickson.

Thissen on Thursday confirmed his plans to attend, but the Post Bulletin was unable to reach Kumar.

More than 250 people are expected to attend the event, which is scheduled to coincide with Mayo shifting its intensive care unit from Albert Lea to Austin on Oct. 1. During the next 18 months, most inpatient services will be moved to Austin due to financial and staffing concerns, according to the clinic.

Kumar, who chairs the Department of Anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and Austin, made headlines earlier this month when the Post Bulletin discovered he has filed multiple complaints against his employer since 2015.

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Thissen is a new face in the debate. However, he's previously sent a letter to John Noseworthy, Mayo's president and CEO, requesting a pause in the consolidation and raising concerns about communication, Destination Medical Center funding and higher premiums in southeastern Minnesota. Those concerns echo many points raised by other Democrats, including Gov. Mark Dayton and 1st District Congressman Tim Walz.

"Rural counties and smaller towns require a different approach to health care," Thissen wrote on Sept. 8. "All of us have been challenged to meet those unique demands. People are rightly scared and concerned about their future health security. This is true for the people in Albert Lea.

"I've heard communities from across Mayo's service territory who are asking themselves, 'Are we next?'"

Mayo has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to citizens in and around Albert Lea, but some services  starting with the ICU  will soon be located 23 miles away. The two campuses are legally considered one entity.

Mayo announced its decision to consolidate the Austin and Albert Lea campuses on June 12 after completing an 18-month internal study. It's since explained that decision by pointing to millions in financial losses in recent years and staffing challenges that put patients at risk.
In a lab on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus, bright green plants float in water-filled washtubs beneath glowing fluorescent lights.

Here, researchers are actually trying to grow one of the state's most dreaded aquatic invaders.

"Right here in the middle, we have starry stonewort, which is Minnesota's newest invasive species on the scene," program coordinator Pat Mulcahy said.

Mulcahy and other researchers are cultivating the pesky algae to figure out what conditions it grows best in, which could help identify the Minnesota lakes most at risk of becoming infested.

At the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center, scientists are working to help policymakers figure out how to battle these invaders. Last week, the center opened its lab doors to the public to highlight a few of its projects during its annual AIS Showcase.

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"It's hitting people closer and closer to home," said Nick Phelps, the center's director. "Their favorite lakes are becoming invaded and probably the most likely way toward a solution is through research. So, they come here, learn what they can and then bring that back home so they can use it."

Invasives hit home for Cheri Fink. In fact, they hit right on her feet. She lives on Clearwater Lake in Annandale, which has Eurasian water milfoil. Zebra mussels were discovered two years ago, too.

Now, Fink has to wear shoes in the water so they don't cut her feet. She attended the AIS Showcase recently to see how Minnesota is trying to fight aquatic invaders like zebra mussels or the invasive milfoil.

"Our waters are so important to us and to the economy of the state and to our health," Fink said. "So I'm here to see what we're doing in Minnesota."

The Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center was created in 2012 with funding from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund and the state's Clean Water Fund. The center got a big boost this year when the Legislature included $410,000 a year in the state budget.

Its goal is to use science to help inform policy decisions about aquatic invasive species, Phelps said. The center has about 30 projects underway studying 10 different invasive species.

Many Minnesotans are familiar with the mantra that they should clean, drain and dry their boats to avoid transporting invasive plants and animals. Phelps said that advice is still important.

But he said there are many other ways to tackle the problem that focus on prevention, early detection and trying to manage an invasive species when it does show up in a lake or river.

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Some of those efforts are aimed at determining which lakes and rivers are most at risk of infestation, Phelps said, so inspection and decontamination efforts can be targeted.

"Unfortunately, some lakes, if zebra mussels were to show up, would be perfect homes for them. Other lakes won't be," he said. "So trying to figure out which lakes those are is very, very important."

Researchers at the center are also trying to determine exactly how these invaders are hitching a ride from one lake to another.

Valerie Brady studies spiny waterfleas, tiny creatures that have infested about 40 Minnesota lakes.

"What we're trying to figure out is which types of things that people have on a fishing boat are most entangling spiny waterflea, and thus are most risky in terms of transporting them to uninfected lakes," she said.

Brady's team sends out a test boat rigged with different types of fishing gear. Then they see how many spiny waterfleas attach themselves.

"Our hope is that with this research we can nuance the clean, drain, dry message," Brady said. "Like, did you forget to spray off your anchor rope? Or maybe don't use braided line on this lake."

Spiny waterfleas are voracious eaters, Brady said. In some lakes, they've reduced the amount of tiny zooplankton by as much as 50 percent.

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Then, "the baby fish suddenly have only half the food to eat that they had before," she said. "That's why we care about these things  other than they're a pain in the butt and they don't belong here."
By PTI: Varanasi, Sep 23 (PTI) Banaras Hindu University students today continued their protest near the varsitys main gate against the increasing incidents of eve-teasing inside the campus.

The latest incident was reported on Thursday, when a woman student of the Arts Faculty was harassed by three men on a motorcycle inside the campus as she returned to her hostel. The three men abused her and fled when she resisted their attempts, she said.

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The woman alleged that security guards, about 100 metres from where the incident happened, did nothing to stop the men. She said her warden, instead of taking up the issue with her superiors, asked her why was she returning late to the hostel.

The wardens response angered the students colleagues, who sat on a dharna at the main gate midnight Thursday.

One of the students even got her head tonsured.

The protest is continuing. It had forced authorities to change the planned route for Prime Minister Narendra Modis convoy yesterday.

The students said they have to face eve-teasers inside the campus regularly and the varsity administration was not taking any action to stop the miscreants.

Police and BHU professors tried to pacify the students yesterday, but they refused to end their protest and sought assurance from the university vice chancellor.

A large number of police personnel have been deployed near the campus as a security precaution, said the police.

Last night, the BHU issued a statement saying the dharna by the students just a day before Modis visit was "politically motivated" to malign the image of the university.

The university also said that security guards were regularly patrolling the campus and assistance from the police is sought from time-to-time to maintain peace in the campus. PTI CORR ABH

--- ENDS ---
ST. PAUL  Minnesota and 13 other states appear on target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the amount set in the Paris climate accord.

Their progress comes despite President Trump abandoning the global environmental agreement in June.

Shortly after Trump pulled the U.S. from the Paris deal, DFL Gov. Mark Dayton joined onto the U.S. Climate Alliance, whose members include 14 states and Puerto Rico.

The Climate Alliance said in a report this week that its members are on track to hit or exceed their goal of reducing 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 percent come 2025.

These member states already cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent between 2005 and 2015, the Climate Alliance said.

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"I am very pleased that Minnesota and other states are demonstrating to the world what we can achieve by working together to conserve energy, use cleaner and renewable energy, and leave a livable planet to our children and grandchildren," Dayton said in a statement.

As of Friday, the U.S. and Syria were the only countries left that hadn't signed onto the Paris agreement. Nicaragua, one of the last holdouts whose leaders said the deal wasn't aggressive enough, jumped on this week.
ST. PAUL  Minnesota's school leaders say new opportunities for free preschool are in high demand this school year.

Funding approved by the Legislature last session provides $70 million in new spending on three of the state's main early education programs. It's the latest in several years' worth of increased early education spending during Gov. Mark Dayton's term.

Some of the money is specifically for low-income students and students deemed at-risk for other reasons. Other funds provide free preschool for any 4-year-old, regardless of family income.

"Sometimes there's a gap between the families who might qualify for [a] type of funding, and families who may not qualify but also may not have the means to pay for a preschool experience," said Burnsville-Eagan Savage early childhood programs coordinator Cindy Check.

Burnsville-Eagan-Savage added 104 free preschool spots with the unrestricted funds. The district was one of 59 districts and charter schools in Minnesota that were approved to receive new preschool money.

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Most of the district's preschool classrooms are full with waiting lists, Check said.

The new funding allowed Burnsville-Eagan-Savage to add three classrooms to what had already been a fairly robust free preschool offering.

Elsewhere in Minnesota, state funds shore up programs that districts had already been running out of their general funds.

"I don't even want to know what would happen if we didn't offer it or if we made people pay for it," Tri-County Schools Superintendent Ryan Baron said.

Tri-County is a tiny district in northwestern Minnesota that, like many school districts, competes with neighboring schools for students at all grade levels. Districts are funded based on total enrollment.

Baron said Tri-County saw free preschool as a good financial move even before the state started funding it. "If you can keep two of those kids in your building that pays for them. If you can keep them in the next year that pays for having that service," Baron said.

Funding last year let Tri-County hire new preschool staff. This year the district applied for more funding but was not awarded any.

Preschool is also a key selling point in the rural St. Louis County school district in northeastern Minnesota, where the district struggles to hang on to students whose parents commute to nearby cities like Virginia and Duluth for work.

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"If we don't have the preschool programs in our buildings, they're going to take those kids with them," said Superintendent Steve Sallee.

St. Louis County was awarded funding for 85 preschool spots this year.

"Our demand is huge. Pretty much all of our programs are full and now we're trying to expand them," Sallee said.

But Sallee faces a common obstacle to expansion  lack of space in school buildings.

Districts get the new state funds at the end of the school year based on how many preschoolers they served. That means they need to have space for new students before they get the money.

More than a hundred districts and charter schools that applied for funding this year did not receive it. Dayton pushed for a larger preschool investment of $175 million but ultimately had to compromise with Republican legislative leaders.

The new money for school-based preschool is set to expire in June 2019.
We know that black turnout in the last election was down from 2012, when black turnout was actually higher than white turnout. The left screams GOP vote suppression!, except that the lower turnout occurred in many instances in cities and states that Democrats control. Maybe the fact that Obama was no longer on the ballotand Hillary wasmight explain why some black voters stayed home (or voted for Trumphe got the highest GOP share of the black vote in 30 years).

Or maybe blacks are tired of Democrats in general, and Obama in particular. Obama is currently making plans for his presidential library and community action center to be located on the south side of Chicago. The mostly black neighborhood where it is planned to be built isnt happy about it, and not buying Obamas happy talk about how it will bring prosperity to the neighborhood.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Obamas promises for presidential center may not be enough this time for African-Americans By Dahleen Glanton . . . A nasty fight over a community benefits agreement with the Obama Foundation has exposed an unexpected rift between the former president and some of the South Side residents who helped lift him to prominence. Not everyone on the South Side, it seems, thinks Obama did enough for black folks during his eight years as president. And as he prepares to build a presidential center that will pay tribute to his legacy, some South Siders are calling him out for what they consider broken promises. Obama consistently has asked residents to trust that he will do right by them. The presidential center, he insists, will provide a wealth of opportunities specifically designed to meet the needs of Chicagoans who have long been overlooked. But this time, according to one activist, there will be no Amen, kiss the ring.

So I guess the old hopey-changey stuff doesnt work any more; the old halo is dimming, or something.

Popcorn, please.
The latest survey of the Alabama Republican Senate primary has Judge Roy Moore leading Sen. Luther Strange, 54-46. The poll was conducted for Fox 10 News by Strategy Research on Wednesday. It surveyed by telephone 2,000 Republicans who have voted at least once in the last 4 elections and said they planned to vote next week.

This result means that Moore has led Strange in all ten of the independent polls taken of this race, according to Jonathan Gray of Strategy Research.

Despite Stranges seemingly hopeless position, President Trump has doubled down on his support, announcing that he will campaign for the Senator this weekend. According to the Strategy Research poll, Trumps endorsement has influenced 20 percent of Republicans voters, leaving the remaining 80 percent unaffected.

Trump, then, has probably helped Strange eat into what was once a lead perhaps twice as big as the one Moore now holds. But it seems unlikely that he will be able to push Strange over the finish line.

To make matters worse for Strange, Ben Carson has endorsed Moore. The HUD Secretary stated:

Judge Moore is a fine man of proven character and integrity, who I have come to respect over the years.

He is truly someone who reflects the Judeo-Christian values that were so important to the establishment of our country. It is these values that we must return to make America great again. I wish him well and hope everyone will make sure they vote on Tuesday.

Carson doesnt expressly urge people to vote for Moore, but its clear that he supports the former Judge. It seems unusual for a Cabinet member to back a candidate running against the one endorsed by the president, but these are unusual times.

Again, the question must be asked: Why is President Trump going to Alabama this weekend to campaign for a candidate trailing so badly to a candidate who backs Trumps populist-nationalist agenda? The answer, I think, is that hes doing it as a favor to the Senate GOP leadership.

Wouldnt it be better, though, for Trump to keep the Senate leadership happy by being less eager to cut deals with Chuck Schumer, rather than by backing losing candidates running against conservative populists?
Byron York has been following the saga of the Trump dossier and the FBIs possible role in paying for it or using it for improper political purposes. I grew up believing that the FBI was incorruptible, but I dont suppose anyone thinks that anymore. The Obama administration corrupted everything it touched, most emphatically including the FBI. Byron supplies some background:

The dossier is a collection of what former FBI director James Comey called salacious and unverified allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump campaign figures in the 2016 campaign. The Russia allegations were compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which is thought to have been paid for the work by wealthy supporters of Hillary Clinton. The FBI reportedly considered taking over the dossier project in the fall of 2016, when the campaign was at its height, leading Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley to say the dossier matter raised questions about the FBIs independence from politics. Both Grassley and the House Intelligence Committee have been interested in learning if the FBI ever used the salacious and unverified dossier as a basis for requesting surveillance on anyone in the Trump circle. Those questions only intensified this week with reports that the FBI wiretapped Trump associate and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the transition period.

Four weeks ago, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the FBI and the Department of Justice to produce documents, including:

all internal FBI reports incorporating, relying on, or referring to information provided by Steele, his sources, or Fusion GPS. The committee also asked for documents on any FBI or Justice efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate Steeles information. And the subpoena sought any surveillance applications that included any information, or were based on any information, provided by Steele.

The original deadline for production was September 1. The deadline has been extended twice, most recently until today, and the FBI still has not responded.

Byron writes that the FBI may be able to ignore the subpoena forever, with the possible result that we will never know whether the Obama administration enlisted the FBI on behalf of Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign. It depends, he thinks, on whether Paul Ryan is willing to get involved:

[I]f Nunes is to prevail in the subpoena affair, it seems likely he would have to have the support of Speaker Paul Ryan. If the Speaker stands behind Nunes efforts, the subpoena will have more weight and be more difficult for the FBI and Justice to defy. If, on the other hand, Ryan does not stand behind the chairman, the FBI and Justice might be emboldened to delay forever. (A spokesman for Ryan did not immediately answer phone and email inquiries.)

I cant imagine why Speaker Ryan wouldnt want to get to the bottom of the apparent misuse of the FBI by Barack Obama and his corrupt Department of Justice. But this is what I really dont understand: the FBI is part of DOJ, which is runin theory, at leastby the Attorney General. Why doesnt Attorney General Jeff Sessions simply order the FBI to comply with the House Intelligence Committees subpoena, promptly?
President Trump spoke in Huntsville, Alabama tonight. He was trying to boost Sen. Luther Strange, who trails Judge Roy Moore in the Republican Senate primary that will take place next Tuesday.

The speech was well over an hour in length. I caught about an hour of it.

It was a powerful political speech reminiscent of Trumps 2016 campaign trail orations. I found it entertaining.

Trump spent roughly 98 percent of this time touting himself  his 2016 victory, his accomplishments as president, etc.  and maybe 2 percent of his time talking about Sen. Strange, almost all of which consisted of praising Strange for backing him in the Senate.

Whether this approach was the product of vanity or calculation, I dont know, but it made sense. If Strange wins, it will be because of Trumps popularity, not his own. Time spent by Trump being Trump was time optimally spent from Stranges perspective.

Trump made a point of saying that Strange doesnt really know (or barely knows) Mitch McConnell. If true, this seems like a dereliction of duty by Strange. A state isnt well-served by a Senator who hasnt gotten to know his partys leader in the Senate.

It probably isnt true though. In any case, this remarkable claim obviously reflects the profound lack of popularity under which McConnell labors. Mitch who?

Trump put in a few good words for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose former seat is being contested in this race. He also called Roy Moore a good man, but questioned whether he can win the general election.

As I have noted, the polls show Strange well behind Moore. Its likely that Strange is headed for defeat and Trump for a bit of embarrassment.

But having consistently underestimated Trumps appeal to voters, and having heard his speech tonight, Im not prepared to say with assurance that Moore will defeat Strange. Tuesday night sure will be interesting.
Karim Morani - who has produced, among others, films such as Ra-one and Chennai Express, surrendered to the Rachakonda police in the case of an alleged rape of a 25-year-old Delhi-based woman.

Karim Morani is accused of raping a Delhi-based woman on multiple ocassions in Mumbai and Hyderabad (File photo)

By Ashish Pandey, India Today Web Desk: Bollywood producer Karim Morani today surrendered before the Rachakonda police of Hyderabad in Telangana in a rape case from earlier this year. Morani's surrender followed the Supreme Court refusing anticipatory bail in the matter.

Morani, the producer of films such as Damini, Raja Hindustani, Ra-One and Chennai Express, allegedly raped a Delhi-based woman on multiple occasions in Mumbai and Hyderabad in 2015.

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Morani surrendered to the Rachkonda police, which had registered a case of rape after the woman, a 25-year-old victim, who is a Bachelor of Business Management student, came forward with her allegations in January this year.

Morani will be produced in court today and will also be taken for a medical examination.

#UPDATE Hyderabad: Film Producer Kareem Morani surrenders before Hayat Nagar Police in rape case pic.twitter.com/21usAmD9OT- ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

In her compliant the woman had claimed that Morani raped her on different occasions in Mumbai and in Hyderabad. The woman, who wanted to act in films, had also alleged that Morani made a false promise of marrying her.

Karim Morani faces charges under section 417 (cheating), 376 (rape) 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage) and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

In an interview with India Today earlier this year, the woman said that Morani first raped her in Mumbai in July 2015. "I didn't know what was happening nor did I know how to react. I was depressed and didn't talk to anyone about it. When I spoke to his family, they did not even react. But now after going through so much, I felt the need to fight. And I am doing this on my own," she said.

"He repeatedly drugged and raped me. He threatened to shoot me and blackmailed me with nude pictures of mine which he had clicked," she also said.

Morani is the founder of Cineyug Productions and is considered to be a close friend of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. Among the movies Morani has worked on are Chennai Express and Ra One, both Shah Rukh Khan-starrers.

Morani is also an accused in the 2G scam case.

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Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has issued her statement on President Trumps nomination of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras to the Eighth Circuit. There is a quality of unintentional self-parody to Senator Klobuchars statement. The statement reads like it might have been written by a staffer satirizing Senator Klobuchars public persona. This is the statement in its entirety:

Justice Stras has served on the Minnesota Supreme Court for seven years. While I dont agree with all of his decisions, I felt it was important to actually look in depth at his record. I learned that for the vast majority of the cases he has respected precedent and sided with the majority, which has included both Democratic- and Republican-appointed judges. He is also supported by former Supreme Court Justice Alan Page. While Justice Stras was not my choice for the 8th Circuit Court, it is my view that he deserves a hearing before the Senate. I am also concerned that this position could simply go to a less independent judge from another 8th Circuit state (Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota or South Dakota) since this is not a permanent Minnesota position. I also respect the fact that Senator Franken has an equal role to play here. Under Senate practice, both Senators from a judicial nominees home state must allow that nominee to have a hearing. Like Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, I support the practice as it is a check and balance regardless of whether a state is represented by two Democrats, two Republicans or one Democrat and one Republican. The policy has resulted in decision-making for judges across party lines. This policy has held true throughout the entire Obama administration, including when Republicans ran the Senate and when Democrats ran the Senate. Changing this policy would have serious ramifications for judicial nominations in every state in the country. Given this important policy, and given Senator Frankens view that Justice Stras should not be allowed a hearing in the Senate, the White House will need to provide additional names for the 8th Circuit position. I have enjoyed getting to know Justice Stras throughout this process and I know he will continue to serve admirably on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

In her statement Senator Klobuchar asserts, contrary to Senator Franken, that she thinks Justice Stras deserves a hearing. However, she calls on Chairman Grassley to honor Frankens effort to block the nomination from consideration by the Senate.

Her statement fairly raises the question whether Senator Klobuchar has turned in her blue slip on the nomination, or will do so. The implication is that she would if she hasnt already, but she doesnt say. Or does she believe the question to be moot? I dont think it is. We have not yet heard from Chairman Grassley.

Yesterday I called and then emailed Klobuchar communications director Caitlin Girourard. When I called I was told Ms. Girouard had stepped out, but was given her email address. Here is the email I sent:

Dear Ms. Girouard: I have been covering the Stras nomination for the website Power Line (powerlineblog.com). I read Senator Klobuchars post-Labor Day statement on Justice Strass nomination. Would you please advise if Senator Klobuchbar has actually returned her blue slip on Justice Stras, or if/when she intends to do so if she hasnt? I would appreciate a response to this message today even if it is just to let me know that Senator Klobuchar declines to respond. Thank you in advance for your courtesies. Scott Johnson

I have received no response to my inquiry. Minnesotans deserve an answer to this straightforward question.
Though they were dripping in sweat, Matt Hennessy and his friends were all smiles.

They were among the 6,000 cyclists who finished the course for the 2017 Bike MS: City to Shore Ride. The fundraiser workout turned into festivity.

The ride started in Cherry Hill on Saturday morning, and by noon many bicyclists had crossed the finish line in Ocean City. Riders have multiple route options before arriving in Ocean City and can ride both Saturday and Sunday or just Saturday.

The ride can range from 25 miles to 180 miles and travels over flat terrain and back roads of South Jersey to the blueberry fields in Hammonton and, finally, to Ocean City High School, where cyclists cross the finish line.

Its the 38th year the event has finished in Ocean City. The organization expects to raise close to $6 million to help combat multiple sclerosis  a disease in which the immune system attacks the protective myelin covering of nerves.

For Matt Hennessy, the disease hits home, because his mother-in-law has MS.

Saturday afternoon was a celebration, though, as Hennessy, his team and family and friends were all celebrating on Fifth Street.

Its good to see all of our family hanging out here. Weve done this for over 10 years, and we did the 25 miles today, said Hennessy, of Philadelphia. It feels great to see everyone come out and support the people they love and support the family members affected by it.

Kevin Moffitt is the president of the greater Delaware Valley chapter for the National MS Society. He said the weather was beautiful Saturday, unlike two years ago, when severe storms forced a cancellation of the event.

But on Saturday, Moffitt said it was nice to see team members high-fiving after they crossed the finish line and spend the rest of the afternoon in Ocean City with their families.

Even those who do it just for the sake of the ride  and it has a reputation as one of the best on the East Coast  (those riders) meet people every year who have MS, Moffitt said. Its not as prevalent as some other diseases, but its common enough that you know people affected by it, and this is a way of helping them.

Loretta Tubiello, of Quakertown, played the role of team captain Saturday afternoon as she and her friends got off their bikes and enjoyed the festivities.

She said her former co-worker has MS, and her and the team dedicated their ride to her.

We love to bike, and its a good cause and were raising money, so its all good, she said.

She said it took them about two hours to complete their route. She added they wouldnt be riding Sunday but instead they would be staying in Ocean City.

Were going to hang out on the beach tomorrow, she said.

David Bubb isnt taking that luxury. This is Bubbs fifth year participating in the race.

As he pushed his bike up the ramp to the Boardwalk, Bubb, of Collegeville, Pennsylvania, will be up again in the morning to bike north.

Its a great way to end the summer, he said.
CAMDEN  A Margate doctor admitted Friday morning to more than $24 million in prescription fraud in connection with a large-scale federal investigation.

John Gaffney, 55, of Linwood, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health-benefits fraud before U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler. Gaffney admitted he signed fraudulent prescriptions for more than 200 patients, including teachers, police and firefighters, resulting in fraud of more than $24 million.

Gaffneys is the sixth guilty plea in the past month related to this widespread investigation. It is the first to involve a doctor.

Federal authorities have been investigating health-benefits fraud in three Absecon Island municipalities  Atlantic City, Ventnor and Margate  over the past few months.

Five other conspirators in the scheme pleaded guilty in August, admitting to health care fraud.

The plea agreements detail a massive prescription-fraud scheme from January 2015 to April 2016 that involved recruiting public employees  teachers, firefighters, municipal police officers and state troopers  to obtain prescriptions for patients whom doctors never treated.

The prescriptions included those for compounded pain creams, scar creams, antifungal creams, libido creams and certain vitamin combinations. In exchange, the doctors would receive kickbacks from an out-of-state compounding pharmacy and pay co-conspirators.

According to court documents, Gaffney signed more than 200 unnecessary prescriptions for teachers, police and firefighters covered under the NJ Direct insurance plan. Gaffneys co-conspirators in the scheme persuaded people to get the medically unnecessary prescriptions for compounded medications from an out-of-state compounding pharmacy, after learning the medications could be reimbursed for thousands of dollars.

Gaffneys conspirators would obtain insurance information of those recruited and fill out a compounding pharmacy prescription form, which would then be signed by Gaffney, even though he never saw or evaluated the patients, according to court documents. Gaffney also signed a blank prescription form, which conspirators made copies of and used to submit fraudulent prescriptions to the pharmacy.

The fraudulent prescriptions with Gaffneys signature totaled more than 200, and just under $25 million was paid for the prescriptions, according to court documents.

As a reward to Gaffney for his role in this scheme, he received more than $25,000 in cash and gifts, including dinners and bottles of wine, according to his Philadelphia-based attorney Michael Engle.

Gaffney has been a licensed doctor since 1989 and has had no board actions taken against him, according to the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners.

Dr. Gaffney is extremely remorseful for his actions, Engle said. Dr. Gaffney recognizes that his conduct was illegal, that he regrets it and if he could take it back he would.

Engle added the issues will be addressed with the medical board. As part of the plea agreement, Gaffney must forfeit $25,000 and pay restitution of at least $24,956,435.08, according to court documents.

Gaffneys sentencing date is scheduled for Jan. 5. He could face as many as 10 years in prison.

Drug compounding, a process in which a pharmacist mixes ingredients into a custom drug, is legal, but the resulting drugs are expensive. Recent federal prosecutions have shown here and elsewhere they are a target for fraud.

Federal subpoenas were issued in June to Atlantic City, Ventnor and Margate seeking information about potential fraud targeting public-employee prescription benefits.

A separate investigation led by Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner also is focusing on public-employee prescription fraud, including compounded medications.

Matthew Tedesco, a 42-year-old pharmaceutical representative from Linwood, pleaded guilty to health care fraud charges before Kugler for leading a conspiracy that netted him $11 million in profit in little more than a year.

In a plea deal with prosecutors, Tedesco and Robert Bessey, 43, of Philadelphia, described recruiting public employees to obtain prescriptions for patients whom doctors never treated. In exchange, the doctors would receive kickbacks. Tedesco also recruited patients to request expensive, unneeded drugs without having seen a doctor, according to his plea.

Using preprinted prescription forms, the two men targeted medications with the highest possible reimbursement and often sought 12 months of refills without regard for the medical necessity, according to the criminal information.

Both men are scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 4 and could face as many as 10 years in prison.

Former Atlantic City firefighter Michael Pepper, 45, of Northfield, entered a guilty plea, also in August, along with Steven Robert Urbanski, 37, a pharmacological broker from Marlton, and Thomas J. Hodnett, 41, a pharmaceutical sales representative from Voorhees.

The trio served as recruiters in the conspiracy, according to court documents.

They could face as many as 10 years in prison and have sentencing dates scheduled for Dec. 5.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Gaffney signed more than 200 fraudulent prescriptions. He signed fraudulent prescriptions for more than 200 patients.
Its the Revel until it opens and people have jobs.

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Dont call it Revel anymore, call it TEN

Doesnt surprise me at all. South Jersey is really no better than the Klan states.

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Is it a crime to hang posters? Or is it a crime depending on political agenda?

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They will be charged with vandalism as the postings were not authorized.

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Three suspects sought in posting of white supremacist fliers at Stockton

NJEA had Prieto in their pocket to protect it, but thankfully Steve Sweeney wouldnt cave.

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Our view: NJ politics succeeds by getting self-interest to serve common good

Guess that made for a very sticky situation.

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Fruit truck crash on I-295 causes jam

1st Maryland was a very historic unit. Thank you for keeping history alive.

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Civil War re-enactors work

to understand Confederate soldiers

Its kind of a double whammy to get rear ended and falsely accused of drug use.

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profanities during DWI arrest

Why would anyone vote for him, when he is telling you that he is going raise taxes?

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When you think youre not going to get caught, youre lying to yourself.

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Former USPS worker charged

with stealing $75,000 in workers comp

They seem to have a lot of problems concerning finances in Galloway.

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Galloway Township charges employee with misconduct, theft

It happens all the time. And not just in Atlantic City. Im so glad he was pulled to safety.

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Atlantic City police pull man from Caesars parking garage ledge
By PTI: Kochi, Sep 23 (PTI) A conference of the Left parties of the South Asian countries flayed the stand taken by various governments, including the BJP-led dispensation in India, on the Rohingya refugee crisis here today.

The two-day conference, being attended by senior communist leaders from South Asian countries, including Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, discussed the Rohingya refugee crisis, CPI(M) politburo member M A Baby said.

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It also decided to adopt a resolution, seeking a "pro- active" intervention by the United Nations (UN) on the issue, he added.

It was also decided at the conference to urge the governments to treat the Rohingya people, who fled the Rakhine state in Myanmar facing an onslaught from the military, as refugees and take immediate steps to protect them by providing them humanitarian assistance, Baby told reporters at the end of todays session at the conference.

The UN must "pro-actively" intervene in the issue, he said, adding that a resolution in this regard would be adopted by the participants at the conference tomorrow.

Baby criticised the NDA governments stand on the Rohingya crisis and sought to know whether it had decided to deport the Rohingya refugees "under the influence of the RSS".

The conference -- The South Asian Regional Seminar on Imperialism, National Sovereignty, Communalism and Religious Sectarianism in South Asia -- was inaugurated by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.

The conference, organised by the CPI(M) to mark the 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, is also being attended by senior communist leaders of the country, including Prakash Karat, Sudhakar Reddy, S Ramachandran Pillai and D Raja.

In his inaugural address, Yechury said it was the considered opinion of the communist parties of the South Asian countries that the struggles against imperialism, national sovereignty, communalism and religious sectarianism were interlinked in this part of the world.

"The battles on each of these fronts -- anti-imperialism, defence of national sovereignty, defeating communalism and religious sectarianism -- have to be won in order to eventually win the war against exploitation and for the liberation and emancipation of our people in our respective countries," he added. PTI TGB BN RC

--- ENDS ---
To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/

For the past three years, the demand for energy increased at a yearly rate of 8%, and is expected to increase up to 58% in the next 25 years. These figures will have an immense impact on oil, especially that 90% of the Kingdom's revenue is generated from oil exports. While 27% percent of the produced oil is spent on generating energy.

Dr. Mohanad Al Shaikh the CEO of Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) said, "Today energy is a basic human need, and is essential to further prosperity, development, and sustainability. Therefore, it is extremely important to preserve this resource. Yet energy efficiency and preservation do not come easily. They require great efforts and awareness, as well as the transfer and adoption of the latest global technologies, adapting them to meet the needs of all economic and development sectors; especially the energy-efficient technologies. Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) has always been at the forefront of energy conservation, and in line with the government's initiatives towards increased energy efficiency early on. In ddition to the importance of raising awareness of smart energy use, as it will provide the opportunity of supporting the national economy by diversifying revenues."

Al Shaikh, also highlighted the role that the company plays in energy efficiency by providing high energy efficiency HVAC units. Pointing out the affinity of the company's strategy with the Saudi Vision 2030, which was initiated by the government to limit random energy consumption. In addition, He mentioned that the company will continue its efforts to support the local manufacturing industry to achieve the desired sustainability; through providing products with the highest ratings of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization. In light of the Saudi National Day, Al Shaikh also urged other industries to conserve energy and rely on all means to do so.

"It is with great pride that we reminisce in the great achievements in many fields under the leadership of our government, and celebrating this national day revives the spirit of prosperity in us." Al Shaikh, concluded.

About Al Salem Johnson Controls:



Al Salem Johnson Controls, founded Controls in 1991, was the result of a strategic partnership between the Group of Companies Al-Salem and Johnson Controls Global, which specializes in providing integrated solutions in ventilation, cooling and air conditioning HVAC systems, fire safety, security installations and control, it has proven its ability to raise the efficiency of energy consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.



Johnson Controls Global is well known for its leadership in technical and industrial fields globally, with a strong presence in 170 countries. The vision and common goals between the Johnson global and the Al-Salem group was a stepping stone in bringing a diverse spectrum of services and high-quality products and solutions to the Kingdom, in order to achieve optimal energy efficiency and operations.

Al Salem Johnson Controls has some noteworthy achievements across various Saudi projects, including the King Abdullah Science and Technology University, expansion of the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah, expansion of King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah, in addition to major universities such as University of Imam Mohammed, University of Princess Noura in Riyadh, King Abdullah Financial District, Aramco, Ministry of Education, and Pilgrims House in Saudi Arabia.

With a staff of over 2000 employees, Salem Johnson Controls is strategically located across the Kingdom to serve its diverse clientele and industry and has a unique after-sales service in terms of quality and efficiency.

For more information on Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) and its latest campaigns, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/yorkksa

https://twitter.com/yorkksa

https://www.instagram.com/yorkksa/

http://york.com.sa/

For more information, please contact:

Omar Batterjee

Public Relations Account Executive

Memac Ogilvy PR

Mob: +966-555-617-104

E-mail: omar.batterjee@ogilvy.com



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/560135/Al_Salem_Johnson_Controls.jpg )



Video:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/



SOURCE Al Salem Johnson Controls (ASJC)
BASEL, Switzerland, Sept. 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bayer today announced the appointment of Dr. Sharon James as Head of the Global Innovation & Development (I&D) organization of the Consumer Health Division, effective October 2, 2017. Dr. James succeeds Dr. John O'Mullane, who will retire from the company on December 31, 2017 after 30 years in the industry.

"With more than 25 years' experience in the fast-moving consumer goods and consumer product sector, Sharon has a proven record of developing and supporting products for leading consumer brands," said Erica Mann, Member of the Board of Management, Bayer AG, and President, Consumer Health Division, Bayer. "I am excited that Sharon is joining Consumer Health, and know that under her leadership Bayer will continue to successfully develop and deliver new innovative self-care solutions that help people around the world be a little healthier every day."

Dr. James joins Bayer from Reckitt Benckiser, where she most recently held the position of Senior Vice President, Head of Global Research & Development (R&D), at the company's global headquarters in Slough, UK. She also previously held various senior roles at PepsiCo and Glaxo SmithKline.

Dr. James' product development experience spans health, personal and home care categories where she has delivered transformative and consumer-loved innovation internationally. Known for embedding a 'consumer-first' mindset in R&D, Dr. James is also a strong advocate of open innovation  collaborating extensively with a broad range of partners across the health industry.

Dr. James holds a Ph.D. in Neurobiology from University College London, Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology and a Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Biochemistry from University of London.

Dr. James will report to Erica Mann and will be a member of the Consumer Health Executive Committee. She will be based in Basel, Switzerland.

Dr. O'Mullane joined Bayer in 2014 following the acquisition of Merck Consumer Care. Among his many accomplishments leading global research and development organizations at Bayer, Merck (MSD) as well as Schering-Plough and GlaxoSmithKline, was leading successful over-the-counter switches of prescription medicines, creating state-of-the-art consumer testing centers at company facilities, and establishing consumer-centric design thinking methodologies across the function. Additionally, at Bayer, Dr. O'Mullane led a strategy to sharpen the Division's focus and redesign its innovation and development operating model to better deliver bigger, better and faster innovation to consumers.

"Under John's leadership, the Division is well-prepared to meet the needs and desires with new products that consumers demand," said Erica Mann. "I would like to thank John for his passion and strong sense of purpose that has helped to put us on a path of even greater success with our innovation efforts."

Bayer: Science For A Better Life

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group aims to create value through innovation, growth and high earning power. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development and to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen. In fiscal 2016, the Group employed around 115,200 people and had sales of EUR 46.8 billion. Capital expenditures amounted to EUR 2.6 billion, R&D expenses to EUR 4.7 billion. These figures include those for the high-tech polymers business, which was floated on the stock market as an independent company named Covestro on October 6, 2015. For more information, go to www.bayer.com.

Media Contact :

Trish McKernan, Bayer, Tel. +41 58-272-7871

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Bayer

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SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroMoney, a global fintech blockchain company and lending services provider, announces a private presale for its token-generating event for the early birds among funds and big contributors. This presale started on September 15th, 2017.

MicroMoney is a fast-growing company founded in 2015 with the offices in five Asian countries  Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. The company plans to expand its presence to 5 more countries by 2018. MicroMoney was established as a company focused on micro-financing in the money lending industry, providing customers with online loans without any collateral requirements using machine learning algorithms.

There are still more than 2 billion of the unbanked in the world, especially in the emerging market. These people are excluded from local and global economies as they are still using cash and don't have access to basic financial services. Taking out a loan is a great challenge for them as well unless they have a credit history.

With a track record of over two years in providing stable, mature businesses on emerging markets, MicroMoney will solve the problem of the unbanked and unbankable by using blockchain technology and artificial neural network to provide financial inclusion into the global crypto economy.

The private presale campaign was designed only for funds and significant token-buyers with the target to reach $2,000,000 during this stage and $30,000,000 by the end of the whole token-generating event.

Learn more about MicroMoney at  https://micromoney.io

Media Contact

Contact Name: Vladimir

Contact Email:[email protected]

Location: Midview City, Singapore

MicroMoney is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest.

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SOURCE MicroMoney
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar, Sept. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroMoney, a fintech institution from Eastern Asia, announces today its Initial Coin Offering set to launch on 18 October, 2017. The visionary company has big plans to transform the economy in emerging markets.

According to World Bank, 2 billion people around the world still don't have a bank account. Unable to build credit, they lack access to basic financial services like personal loans and SME loans. This is a critical problem affecting local economies, especially in emerging countries like the Philippines, Thailand or Myanmar.

MicroMoney offers a solution: helping people build their first credit history on the blockchain. It uses new technologies and Big Data to determine a person's creditworthiness via an innovative neural scoring credit.

"We are proud of the fact that we can help people who have no access to the classical, but outdated centralized economy of bank," says Anton Dzyatkovsky, CEO and founder of MicroMoney.

The company wants to lead the way towards to eliminating poverty with mobile and internet availability, along with financial inclusion. The founding team has a clear vision and set of goals following the ICO. Setting the sale hard-cap to $30 Mln, it plans to truly revolutionize the current economy situation in emerging countries around the world including the regions of Asia, Africa and South-America.

Anton Dzyatkovskii CEO and founder of MicroMoney is also the lending director of  a blockchain company with similar goals  where he has already raised 25M USD. With more than 15 years experience in the fintech industry and an extended understanding of the Asian market  Anton worked in Singapore and Thailand  he is fully aware of what could be improve in those countries and believes strongly in changing the micro-industry.

TOKEN SALE

MMT Token price is locked to $1 dollar per MMT Token. Maximum quantity of 60,000,000 will be issued and all the unsold tokens will be destroyed after Token Crowdsale. Purchases will be possible on https://micromoney.io.

Token sale will start on October 18, 2017. Pre-sale has already started on September 15, 2017 with a 43% bonus on purchase during this period. Early investors will get bonuses as high as 25% bonus on day one.

MicroMoney for the people, Big Data for Businesses

The platform is already functioning in 5 countries and has helped a lot a people with modest resources. It has a large amount of feedback with gratitude. Data don't lie; indeed, 73% of customers are returned customers for whom the platform opened brand new possibilities. 9 out of 10 customers got the first loan of their life!

It is important to note that behind its easy process lays a complex and sophisticated type of technology: Neural Scoring. Gathering more than 10, 000 data from a person's phone, algorithms can determine the creditworthiness of a person in a record-time of 15 seconds. Smart contracts are now being developed to secure transactions within the platform.

Undeniably, with MicroMoney's innovative Big Data & Credit History Bureau built on Blockchain, thousands of local Businesses will get access to millions of new customers.

"We're developing a whole new ecosystem to power the New World Global Crypto Economy," said CEO Anton Dzyatkovsky.

Now, MicroMoney plans to expand to China, Hong Kong and by the end of 2020, the company aims to cover India, Africa and South America.

About MicroMoney

MicroMoney is a global fintech company. It focuses on Big Data platforms for banking and financial organizations and micro-financing in the money lending industry. MicroMoney began operations in 2015 and has developed into a fast-growing company with more than 200 employees across offices in Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. MicroMoney provides premium micro-financing services for lower income people, underbanked and unbanked customers in Asia.

Learn more about MicroMoney at  https://micromoney.io

Read the whitepaper here: https://micromoney.io/MicroMoney_whitepaper_ENG.pdf

Follow on Twitter at  @micromoneyio

Follow on Facebook at  @micromoneymyanmar

Join the discussion on Telegram  https://t.me/micromoneyico

Media Contact

Contact Name: Olga Rusakova

Contact Email: [email protected]

Company: MicroMoney

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SOURCE MicroMoney

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FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., Sept. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn today joined birding enthusiasts and supporters of Fort Washington State Park in celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Militia Hill Hawk Watch.

"What a milestone for both Fort Washington State Park and the dedicated volunteers who staff the Militia Hill Hawk Watch," the secretary told celebration attendees gathered on the park grounds. "It is hard to believe we are just minutes from Philadelphia and yet hundreds of migrating raptors are heading south overhead. I commend you on your 30th year of documenting these flights and fueling public interest in them."



Since Sept. 1, and through Oct. 31, volunteers have been daily monitoring southern migrations at the Montgomery County park, where visitors utilizing two observation areas can glimpse all 16 species of raptors migrating along the Atlantic Coast.

"Public interest in observing raptors and other migrating bird species from two observation areas never has been stronger at Fort Washington State Park," Dunn noted. "This would never be possible without the dedication of the volunteers before me. You staff the observation decks; keep the all-important numbers; and infect future volunteers with your passion and commitment."

Militia Hill Hawk Watch prides itself in counting migrating raptors as they move southward on their annual journey as far as Central and South America. Founded in 1988, it operates from 9 AM to 5 PM daily, with dedicated volunteers providing valuable count data to the Hawk Migration Association of North America. The group delights in introducing visitors to the beauty of the state park and the many birds, other animals and insects that can be seen during their visit.

"I'm so glad we are celebrating 30 seasons of an amazing annual gathering that started with a card table and a few chairs in 1988," said Militia Hill Hawk Watch site coordinator Rich Conroy. "The combination of hawk migration and sharing with people what is going on in the sky above us, and where these birds are headed, always leaves me feeling wonderfully connected to our world beyond Militia Hill."

Militia Hill is one of many count sites throughout Pennsylvania which provide invaluable avian migration information through concerted citizen-science effort.

The Militia Hill Hawk watch has had an impressive tabulation of raptor species and numbers since 1988. The average season count is 11,088 raptors with a total of 321,553 in its past 29 years.

All 16 species that migrate along the East Coast are observed on a regular basis. The hawk watch's most spectacular day occurred on Sept. 15, 2013, when 18,055 broad-winged hawks migrated over Militia Hill.

Organizers welcome and encourage volunteers in the effort. Volunteer compilers will be on duty every day --- for a total of 61 days.

With an elevation of only 330 feet, and no large, nearby body of water, Militia Hill has no strong geographic features of importance to migration, and yet all East Coast raptor species are seen above the park grounds.

Detailed records of raptor observation and weather conditions are reported daily to the Hawk Mountain Migration Association of North America. They can be accessed at www.hawkcount.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: Terry Brady, 717-705-22265; [email protected]

SOURCE Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

Related Links

http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us


By PTI: By Anil Bhatt

Arnia (Jammu), Sep 23 (PTI) Night after night, Anita Kumar and her family huddled together under a bed in one corner of a room, surrounded by the deadly sounds of gunfire.

After heavy cross-border shelling over several days, the family finally decided to leave their home along the India- Pakistan border yesterday.

"We chose to stay here, despite the intermittent attacks. But on Thursday night, the situation got worse, two shells hit our house, damaged it and killed a buffalo," Kumar said.

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The once-bustling border settlement of Arnia now resembles a ghost town. Like Kumar and her family, many have fled the town to escape the shelling that has been carrying on for seven days.

"The mortar bombs fired by Pakistani troops will kill us if we dont leave our homes," Arnia resident Pritam Chand told PTI.

Not just Arnia, 20 adjoining hamlets also wear a deserted look as its residents move to relatively safer areas.

Night times, residents of the border areas stressed, were the most frightening, as guns and mortar shells boomed.

Chand, whose family members fled Arnia and took shelter at his son-in-laws house in the Chatta area of Jammu, pointed to the bullet holes scarring the walls of his house and said it had been hit by three mortar shells.

"Thursday nights shelling almost led to the partial collapse of the house," he said.

Over 60 per cent of the houses in the area had been hit by mortar shells, Chand said.

"Had our family not left the house, we would all have died yesterday," he said.

The shelling leaves behind a lethal trail of destruction - at least two persons were killed and 19 others injured in explosions last week.

"In our ward, 12 houses were hit on Thursday night," Chand said, adding that over 90 per cent of those who had stayed back in Arnia had now left the town.

Kumar, her husband Bhag Singh, their two children and her mother-in-law have taken refuge in a relatives home. "We have no money to rebuild our house," she rued.

The sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of the area, Surinder Choudhary, said roughly 10,000 people had left their homes.

Those who have moved to regions around, come back to their homes in the daytime, mostly to feed their cattle.

Dead cattle in pools of blood, torn off roof-tops and windows punctured by bullets and splinters of mortar bombs are a common sight here. The smell of cordite and gunpowder lingers in the air.

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"We live under the shadow of death. Our cattle have been killed and injured. Our houses and cow sheds have been damaged. We have been forced to leave our homes. Our children are not getting education. Is this the life we wanted," Jabowal resident Shamsher Singh asked.

People in this border town believed that statements about giving "befitting replies to Pakistan" only invited more attacks.

"When the ministers issue statements about befitting replies to Pakistan from their Delhi offices, we pay for their remarks," a villager said.

The local people demanded bunkers from the government to escape the shelling from across the border.

"Instead of issuing statements, the government should provide us with individual bunkers and plots for constructions of safe houses away from the firing ranges," Kumar said.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) between September 13 and September 18.

After a two-day lull, firing and shelling resumed on September 21.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army. PTI AB RMS BDS SMN

--- ENDS ---

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United Nations, Sep 19 : India ranked third among the countries that have faced the most natural disasters in the last half century, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday pleading for unwavering international action on climate change.

In his first speech to the annual high-level meeting of the General Assembly, he said, "It is high time to get off the path of suicidal emissions. We know enough today to act."

"I urge governments to implement the historic Paris Agreement with ever greater ambition," he said.

United States President Donald Trump has declared that his country is pulling out of the Paris agreement on combating climate change.

Pointedly, Guterres said, "The United States, followed by China, India, the Philippines and Indonesia, have experienced the most disasters since 1995 - more than 1,600, or once every five days."

Climate change was among the seven global threats that he listed needing immediate global action.

International terrorism is taking a great toll on the world, he said and called for intensifying the global efforts against terrorism and radicalisation.

"Stronger international cooperation remains crucial," he said. "Together, we need to make full use of UN instruments, and expand our efforts to support survivors.

But he added, "Experience has also shown that harsh crackdowns and heavy-handed approaches are counterproductive."

Foremost among the seven perils he listed is the nuclear threat emanating from North Korea.

"Global anxieties about nuclear weapons are at the highest level since the end of the Cold War," Guterres warned. "The fear is not abstract. Millions of people live under a shadow of dread cast by the provocative nuclear and missile tests of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

He appealed to the Security council to act unitedly to meet the threat and to all countries to comply with its resolution imposing sanctions.

"Only that unity can lead to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and -- as the resolution recognises -- create an opportunity for diplomatic engagement to resolve the crisis," he said while condemning Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests.

"The dark side of innovation" is another global peril, he said, adding "it has moved from the frontier to the front door."

"Cyber war is becoming less and less a hidden reality -- and more and more able to disrupt relations among States and destroy some of the structures and systems of modern life," he said.

Genetic engineering has also raised ethical questions that have not been resolved, he said.

The humanitarian crisis from unresolved conflicts and violations of international law that is manifested in the flow of refugees is another peril the world faces, he said.

He mentioned the Rohingya crisis, and said, "The authorities in Myanmar must end the military operations, and allow unhindered humanitarian access. They must also address the grievances of the Rohingya."

The other threats are the growing inequality among nations and within nations, and human migration.

Emphasising the need for global unity to meet the great perils facing humanity, Guterres said, "We come from different corners of the world. Our cultures, religions, traditions vary widely -- and wonderfully. At times, there are competing interests among us. At others, there is even open conflict."

"That is exactly why we need the United Nations, he said. "That is why multilateralism is more important than ever."

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
Washington, Sep 19 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday met Governor of Virginia Terry McAuliffe, who called it a "productive meeting".

McAuliffe tweeted: "Growing relations between India and the Commonwealth of Virginia with @OfficeOfRG, @milinddeora, and @sampitroda. Very productive meeting."

Replying to his tweet, Gandhi said: "It was a pleasure meeting you, Governor @TerryMcAuliffe. Enjoyed our discussion."

Rahul Gandhi, who is on a tour of the US, will be interacting with students at Princeton University in New Jersey on Tuesday night.

He is also scheduled to address a public meeting in New York on Wednesday arranged by the party's overseas wing as part of its push to enlist Non-Resident Indians.

Gandhi recently addressed students at the University of California.
New York, Sep 21 : The US will provide a humanitarian aid package worth $32 million to the Rohingya Muslim minority who have fled violence in Myanmar and crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh, the State Department announced.

The funding "reflects the US commitment to help address the unprecedented magnitude of suffering and urgent humanitarian needs of the Rohingya people," said the State Department's Acting Assistant Secretary Simon Henshaw on Wednesday at the ongoing UN General Assembly here.

He added that the US hoped its contribution would encourage other countries to provide more funding as well, reports CNN.

The aid package comes a day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with Myanmar de facto leader of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi and "welcomed the Myanmar government's commitment to end the violence in Rakhine state and to allow those displaced by the violence to return home," according to the State Department.

Tillerson "urged the Myanmar government and military to facilitate humanitarian aid for displaced people in the affected areas, and to address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations".

The State Department also said the aid "will help provide emergency shelter, food security, nutritional assistance, health assistance, psychosocial support, water, sanitation and hygiene, livelihoods, social inclusion, non-food items, disaster and crisis risk reduction, restoring family links, and protection to the over 400,000 displaced persons".

Henshaw said Wednesday's announcement brought the total US aid to Myanmar refugees, including Rohingya, to nearly $95 million in fiscal year 2017.

Some 415,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since the ongoing violence broke out on August 25 when Rohingya rebels attacked police checkposts in Rakhine resulting in the deaths os 12 security personnel, CNN reported.

Speaking at the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence called on the world body "to take strong and swift action to bring this crisis" of violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar to an end.

"The United States renews our call on Burma's security forces to end their violence immediately and support diplomatic efforts for a long-term solution.

"President (Donald) Trump and I also call on this security council and the United Nations to take strong and swift action to bring this crisis to an end."

Pence also spoke about how the violence in Myanmar is a perfect example of the kind of problem the UN should help solve.
United Nations, Sep 22 : Exercising its right of reply in the general debate at the UN General Assembly Session here, India slammed Pakistan for its support to terrorism, labelling it as "Terroristan".

"In its short history, Pakistan has become a geography synonymous with terror," Eenam Gambhir, First Secretary in India's Permanent Mission to the UN, said on Thursday in response to Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi's statement that "the struggle" of the people in Kashmir was being "brutally suppressed by India".

Gambhir, who stole the show last year when she verbally pummeled former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and delivered the memorable line: "The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism," packed equally powerful punches against Abbasi this year.

Pakistan's "contribution to the globalisation of terror is unparalleled", she declared.

"The quest for land of pure has actually produced a 'land of pure terror'.

"Pakistan is now 'Terroristan' with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism," Gambhir added.

In his speech, Abassi also accused India of war crimes over the use of pellet guns by law enforcement personnel and warned of a "dangerous escalation" on the subcontinent.

Lampooning Abbasi's claim of fighting terrorism, she said: "This is a country whose counter-terrorism policy is to mainstream and upstream terrorism by either providing safe haven to global terror leaders in it military towns or protecting them with political careers."

"It is extraordinary that the state which protected (former Al Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden and sheltered Mullah Omar should have the gumption to play the victim.

"By now all Pakistan's neighbours are painfully aware of these tactics of creating narratives based on distortions, deception and deceit," the diplomat said.

She also said that the current state of Pakistan could be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Saeed, leader of the UN-designated terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, was now seeking to be legitimised as a leader of a political party.

Stating that nothing can justify Pakistan's avaricioius efforts to covet territories of its neighbours, Gambhir said: "In so far as India is concerned, Pakistan must understand that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India.

"However much it scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India's territorial integrity."

Ridiculing Pakistan for its complaints about the consequences it faced for its counter-terrorism efforts, she said: "Having diverted billions of dollars in international development aid towards creating a dangerous infrastructure of terror on its own territory Pakistan is now speaking of the high cost of its terror industry.

"The polluter in this case is paying the price," she added.

Gambhir got the backing of an Afghan diplomat, who spoke after her, also exercising his right of reply to Abbasi's allegations about terrorism coming to Islamabad from Kabul.

The Afghan diplomat asked where did Osama, Mullah Omar and his successor Mullah Akhtar Mansoor die, and answered they were locations in Pakistan.

"That was the country from which more than 20 international terrorist organisations came to Afghanistan and even Abbasi had admitted that those who carried out the May 31 bomb attack in Kabul that killed more than 150 people may have come from his country," he added.
United Nations, Sep 22 : In a sharp escalation of its attack, India slammed Pakistan at the UN for its support to terrorism, calling it "terroristan".

"In its short history, Pakistan has become a geography synonymous with terror," Eenam Gambhir, First Secretary in India's Permanent Mission to the UN, said on Thursday exercising India's right of reply after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi's virulent attack that "the struggle" of the people in Kashmir was being "brutally suppressed by India".

Gambhir, who stole the show last year when she verbally pummelled former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and delivered the memorable line: "The land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism", packed equally powerful punches against Abbasi this year.

Pakistan's "contribution to the globalisation of terror is unparalleled", she declared.

"The quest for land of pure has actually produced a 'land of pure terror'.

"Pakistan is now 'Terroristan' with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism," Gambhir added.

In his speech, Abbasi warned of the possibility of a "dangerous escalation" in the subcontinent and clamoured for intervention by the global organisation.

Accusing New Delhi of frequently violating the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, he said that "if India does venture across the LoC, or acts upon its doctrine of 'limited' war against Pakistan, it will evoke a strong and matching response".

"The international community must act decisively to prevent the situation from a dangerous escalation," he said.

Abbasi also admitted that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is directed against India.

"Confronted by a hostile and increasingly militarized neighbour, Pakistan has been obliged to maintain the capability for credible deterrence," he said. "Our strategic assets are vital to deter oft-threatened aggression."

Abbasi spent almost a third of his General Assembly address of about 12 minutes attacking India.

Abassi also accused India of war crimes over the use of pellet guns by law enforcement personnel and warned of a "dangerous escalation" on the subcontinent.

Lampooning Abbasi's claim of fighting terrorism, she said: "This is a country whose counter-terrorism policy is to mainstream and upstream terrorism by either providing safe haven to global terror leaders in it military towns or protecting them with political careers."

"It is extraordinary that the state which protected (former Al Qaeda leader) Osama bin Laden and sheltered Mullah Omar should have the gumption to play the victim.

"By now all Pakistan's neighbours are painfully aware of these tactics of creating narratives based on distortions, deception and deceit," the diplomat said.

She also said that the current state of Pakistan could be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Saeed, leader of the UN-designated terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, was now seeking to be legitimised as a leader of a political party.

Stating that nothing can justify Pakistan's avaricious efforts to covet territories of its neighbours, Gambhir said: "In so far as India is concerned, Pakistan must understand that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India.

"However much it scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India's territorial integrity."

Ridiculing Pakistan for its complaints about the consequences it faced for its counter-terrorism efforts, she said: "Having diverted billions of dollars in international development aid towards creating a dangerous infrastructure of terror on its own territory Pakistan is now speaking of the high cost of its terror industry.

"The polluter in this case is paying the price," she added.

Gambhir got the backing of an Afghan diplomat, who spoke after her, also exercising his right of reply to Abbasi's allegations about terrorism coming to Islamabad from Kabul.

The Afghan diplomat asked where did Osama, Mullah Omar and his successor Mullah Akhtar Mansoor die, and answered they were locations in Pakistan.

"That was the country from which more than 20 international terrorist organisations came to Afghanistan and even Abbasi had admitted that those who carried out the May 31 bomb attack in Kabul that killed more than 150 people may have come from his country," he added.

None of the 112 other countries that have spoken so far in the annual high-level General Assembly debate has even mentioned the Kashmir issue, and last year none other than Pakistan did during the entire session.

Earlier on Thursday, Abbasi met Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Pakistani media reported that he handed over to Guterres a dossier of "Indian atrocities in Kashmir".
Tehran, Sep 22 : Iran on Friday unveiled a new long-range ballistic missile as the country marked the beginning of Defence Week.

The missile, named Khorramshahr, was put on display during a military parade here with President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials in attendance, reports Xinhua.

The ballistic missile, which has a range of 2,000 km, is capable of carrying multiple warheads, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division, told the media.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh said without further elaboration.

On Friday, the Iranian armed forces commemorated the 1980-1988 war with Iraq by holding a parade in which Iran's most advanced military power and abilities are showcased.

The IRGC and the volunteer militia Basij forces participated in the parade.

Iran also displayed other home-made advanced missiles, including ballistic missiles, which are reported to have ranges of 1,300 km to 2,000 km.
Mumbai, Sep 22 : Key Indian equity indices on Friday witnessed the steepest fall since November 2016, on the back of escalating geo-political tensions between North Korea and the US, a weak rupee and heavy selling pressure in capital goods, metal and banking stocks.

Market observers pointed out that investors' sentiments were hampered by a likely US rate-hike in December which was signalled by the US Federal Reserve on Wednesday night. The move can potentially lead foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) away from emerging markets such as India.

Besides, investors remained cautious about the government's plans for a stimulus programme which might lead to fiscal deficit.

The wider Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) slipped below the psychologically important 10,000-points-mark, to close at 9,964.40 points -- down 157.50 points or 1.56 per cent.

The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, too, plunged by 447.60 points, or 1.38 per cent, to end below its psychologically important 32,000-points-level at 31,922.44 points.

"The main indices -- NSE Nifty50 and BSE Sensex -- fell steeply during the day's trade. This was the largest fall for both the indices on an intra-day and overall closing basis since November 11, 2016," Deepak Jasani, Head - Retail Research, HDFC Securities told IANS.

"The weakness came on the back of geo-political tensions as North Korea threatened that it could consider testing a nuclear weapon in the Pacific."

According to Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, concerns over the government's plan for a stimulus to halt the economic slowdown -- which might lead to fiscal deficit -- eroded investors risk-taking appetite.

"In view of the economic slowdown, the government is reported to be open to allowing the fiscal deficit to exceed this year's target as it considers a stimulus package in the range of Rs 40,000-50,000 crore by way of increased spending," Desai told IANS.

In terms of the broader markets, the S&P BSE mid-cap index tanked by 2.71 per cent and the small-cap index by 2.93 per cent.

In terms of investments, provisional data with the exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold scrips worth Rs 1,241.73 crore while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) purchased stocks worth Rs 521.17 crore.

"The rupee fell sharply today to breach the 65-mark against the US dollar but recovered later. The rupee fell to a nearly six-month low of 65.14 against the US dollar -- its lowest since April this year," Desai added.

During the day, the rupee closed at 64.79-80 against the US dollar.

Sector-wise, all the 19 sub-indices of the BSE closed in the red, led by capital goods (down 603.52 points), metals (down 554.26 points) and banking (down 526.84 points) indices.

Major Sensex gainers on Friday were: Wipro, up one per cent at Rs 294.05, and Coal India, up 0.12 per cent at Rs 253.90.

Major Sensex losers were: Tata Steel, down 4.70 per cent at Rs 654.55; Larsen and Toubro, down 3.49 per cent at Rs 1,184.90; Reliance Industries, down 2.83 per cent at Rs 817.50; ICICI Bank, down 2.77 per cent at Rs 277.10; and Hero MotoCorp, down 2.59 per cent at Rs 3,788.15.
New Delhi, Sep 22 : The Delhi High Court on Friday asked Delhi and neighbouring states to strictly implement the Air Pollution Act that bans the burning of crop residue and paddy straw.

"All the states shall implement the respective notifications and directions issued by them under the Air Pollution Act banning the burning of crop residue and paddy straw strictly, in letter and in spirit," said a division bench of justices Justice Ravindra Bhat and Justice Sunil Gaur.

Crop stubble burning in both rabi and kharif seasons has emerged as a menace in the region, causing environmental problems. It leads to haze and smog over north India, especially Delhi, during winter months.

Four neighbouring states - Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan - are among the contributors in crop stubble burning, which spikes air pollution in Delhi every year during October-November.

"The State Governments are to issue directions/orders to all the companies/plants including biomass plants, cement plants and power generation plants and public undertakings involved in the manufacturing of boards and rough paper, to discharge their corporate social responsibility by collecting the crop residue from the fields of farmers by providing them with money as consideration for lifting the agricultural residue," the court said.

The court directed Delhi and neighbourhood state to file a report on the implementation for preventing burning of agricultural waste every week with effective from October 1.

The court also issued directions to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to obtain weekly reports from the special committees established to prevent burning of agricultural waste.

The court has asked the Union Government to monitor the sites where agricultural waste is found to have been burnt through satellite tracking.

The court asked the states to inform the public about the protective measures taken and to safeguard their health from smog.

The court observed that one major component of air pollution in Delhi during October and March each year is the burning of agricultural waste, including plant residue and stubble while harvesting the Kharif and Rabi crops.

The court observed that 14 million tonnes of paddy straw is burnt in Punjab alone while figures regarding particulate matter emissions for Haryana are equally large.

The court has listed the matter for further hearing on October 16.

The court was hearing a public interest litigation initiated by it on the issue of increasing air pollution in Delhi.

The court had earlier expressed serious concern over increasing air pollution "akin to living in a gas chamber" and asked the central and city governments to act strongly to curb pollution.
Kolkata, Sep 22 : A day after the Calcutta High Court lifted restrictions on Durga Puja immersion imposed by the West Bengal regime, the administration on Friday said it would allow the immersion on the 'Ashura' day of Muharram only if the situation and circumstances are found fit.

"The court has asked the state government to take responsibility so that the rituals of all the communities can be observed properly. The permission for immersion would be granted as per the judgement of the state administration," state Home Secretary Atri Bhattacharya told the media after a high level meeting at the state secretariat Nabanna.

"At the end of the day, depending upon the circumstances, wherever the situation is found fit, permission would be given. Whereever there are problems, permissions will not be granted," he added.

Meanwhile, state Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purkyastha, who was also present at the meeting, claimed to have got intelligence inputs about outsiders entering the state to foment violence and unrest.

"We have inputs that some people may come here to create violence and disrupt the peace. We are keeping an eye on them according to our intelligence input. If anyone tries to create any sort of unrest or disturbance we will take strict actions against them," he said.

He said the state police has already conducted several meetings at various levels to maintain peace and harmony during the festive season.

"We have conducted several meetings at the district and state level. We are taking necessary steps so that unity and communal harmony can be maintained during (Durga) puja and Muharram," he said.

The officer also appealed the people not to be misguided by social media posts and said strict action would be taken if anybody posts provocative messages on social media.

The Calcutta High Court on Thursday lifted all the restrictions on Durga Puja immersion imposed by the West Bengal government, allowing it till 12 a.m. on all days including on 'Ashura', the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram.

The state government earlier banned idol immersion after 10 p.m. on September 30 - Dashami when the Durga Puja ends - and on October 1, when the Muslim community will mark Muharram. The state government had decreed that immersion would resume on October 2 and continue up to October 4.

The decision stoked a controversy as BJP and RSS termed the state's order as unconstitutional. BJP President Amit Shah questioned the order and accused the West Bengal government of resorting to appeasement politics, looking at the vote bank of a certain community.
New York, Sep 22 : India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussed on Monday how their two countries can jointly fight terrorism and promote security in the Indo-Pacific region.

This follows President Donald Trump's announcement last month that strategic partnership with India would be "a critical part of the South Asia strategy for America," placing those issues high on the bilateral agenda.

"They discussed further strengthening the US-India partnership, particularly in the areas of fighting terrorism, promoting economic growth, and expanding security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region," said Helaena White, the State Department spokesperson for South Asian media.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the two of them "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauer said earlier that Sushma Swaraj and Tillerson also "looked forward to convening a 2+2 dialogue" with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Defence Secretary James Mattis in the near future.

She said that Tillerson thanked Sushma Swaraj "for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region".

In his speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India" and asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.

Sushma Swaraj also took up the issues of H1B visas and illegal immigrant children at their meeting.

Kumar said in a tweet that Swaraj "strongly raised the issue of H1B visa and children falling under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy with Secretary Tillerson".

Another topic that came up in their discussions was the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which the two countries are to co-host in Hyderabad in November, the State Department said.

Trump's daughter and his official adviser Ivanka is to lead the US delegation to the summit and she met Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday.

This was the first one-on-one meeting between the top diplomats of the two countries since Tillerson, a former head of the oil giant Exxon Mobil, became Secretary of State.

On Monday, both of them had participated in a trilateral meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

It was not clear what Sushma Swaraj wanted done about the H1B, a category of temporary visas for professionally qualified people, as there has as yet been no changes to that visa system.

While Trump has spoken of restricting the H1B visa system as part of his policy to put Americans first, so far there have been no changes to it and for this year the same levels of 65,000 for general H1B visas and 20,000 for those with advanced US degrees has been kept.

Indians get most of the H1B visas, although it does not have any national quotas or is specifically designed for Indian.

According to some estimates, about 7,000 Indians are covered by DACA.

DACA was a presidential order issued by then President Barack Obama to allow those who were brought in illegally as children to stay on in the US.

Trump had said that he was not going to renew the DACA order, which will expire next March, and wanted Congress to legislate it into law.

But he has since said that he may reconsider it if Congress had not passed the law by then.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 23 (PTI) Social activist Anjali Damania today claimed she received a threat call from a Pakistan-based number, asking her to withdraw the cases she has filed against BJP leader Eknath Khadse.

The former Aam Aadmi Party leader said the Truecaller app -- which reveals caller identity -- showed that the number belongs to "Dawood".

The activist lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in suburban Santacruz about the call. Police officials from Vakola later visited her home and recorded her statement, she said.

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Damania tweeted that she received the call at 12.33 am, asking her to withdraw all cases against Khadse, from a number prefixed with +92 -- the country code of Pakistan. The app flashed "Dawood 2" on the screen, she said in the tweet.

Earlier this month, Damania accused Khadse, a former minister, of making obscene remarks against her and demanded his arrest.

Khadse, however, had denied having made any such remarks against the social activist.

Damania told PTI that the caller spoke rudely to her and threatened to make her life difficult.

"I immediately spoke to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and he was prompt to assure me that the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) will seriously look into the matter," she added.

"I also spoke to the police commissioner. Ironically, officers from Vakola police station, which is just a five minute walk away from my home, took over an hour to reach my residence and record my statement," she said.

Damania also alleged that the police are taking the matter "casually" and did not deem it necessary to post a policeman outside her home.

The activist, through tweets, appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh for action in the matter.

Based on Damanias complaint, an FIR has been lodged under IPC sections 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication), a police official said.

Damania is among the petitioners who have filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Khadse for alleged graft. PTI APM DC RSY BSA

--- ENDS ---
United Nations, Sep 23 : African countries have called for international support in peace-keeping efforts and humanitarian work in the region at the annual United Nations General Assembly.

Cameroon President Paul Biya said on Friday peace remains dangerously under threat, notably from terrorism, conflicts, poverty and climate disruptions, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Today, I would say, we are all 'beggars for peace.' And such persistent threats are of utmost concern to us all," said Biya on the fourth day of the general debate.

He condemned continuing conflicts in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, which are wreaking pain and hardship.

He said Cameroon has hosted and will continue to host thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria.

Biya urged all countries to make efforts together to achieve peace and asked the world to take Africa's message into account more seriously.

Echoing Biya's words, President of the Central African Republic Faustin-Archange Touadera expressed his will to pursue peacebuilding and reconciliation through dialogue.

He presented his government's strategy for the restoration of State authority since the country's return to constitutional order and the establishment of national institution.

In a news conference held earlier this week, Touadera said that the Central African Republic is at a critical moment in its history and it needs more attention from the international society.

The General Assembly of the United Nations kicked off its annual general debate on Tuesday, with heads of state and government representatives gathering at the UN headquarters to present their views about pressing world issues.
Instanbul, Sep 23 : The winner of Miss Turkey 2017 has been stripped of her crown after one of her past tweets came to light.

Itir Esen, 18, had shared a post referencing last year's coup attempt, comparing her menstrual cycle to the spilt blood of "martyrs", BBC reported on Friday.

The competition's organisers said the tweet was "unacceptable" and confirmed their decision to dismiss her, just hours after she won.

Esen has since said, via Instagram, that she was not being political.

The tweet was posted around the first anniversary of the July 15 coup attempt, when nearly 250 people died fighting an army uprising.

She wrote: "I am having my period this morning to celebrate the July 15 martyrs' day. I am celebrating the day by bleeding a representation of our martyrs' blood."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regularly refers to the "martyrs" who died resisting the coup.

The beauty pageant's organisers said the tweet did not come to light until after Thursday's ceremony in Istanbul, after which they held a long meeting to discuss the situation and verify the post.

On Friday, they released a statement to announce their decision to rescind her title: "We regret to say that this tweet has been tweeted by Itir Esen. It is not possible for the Miss Turkey Organisation to promote such a post, when it aims to introduce Turkey to the world and contribute to its image."

Esen later responded with her own statement on social media: "I want to say that as a 18-year-old girl, I had no political aims while sharing this post."

"I was raised with respect for the homeland and the nation," she added, apologising for "being misunderstood".

Runner-up Asli Sumen will now travel to China to represent Turkey in the Miss World competition.

Esen is not the first Miss Turkey to find herself embroiled in a political row.

In 2016, another past winner, Merve Buyuksarac, was given a 14-month suspended prison sentence for insulting President Erdogan via satirical poem she shared on social media.

Buyuksarac, who won the 2006 crown, was also briefly detained over the issue in 2015.

Around that time, President Erdogan launched thousands of lawsuits against people he said had insulted him.

He later withdrew them, saying he was inspired by the feelings of unity after the failed coup.

However, a harsh crackdown has continued, which the president insists is necessary for national security. More than 150,000 state employees have been dismissed and some 50,000 people arrested.
Wellington, Sep 23 : Voting was underway on Saturday for the New Zealandgeneral elections in which the ruling National Party has already emerged as a favourite but might need alliances to govern, the media reported.

Some 3.2 million citizens are registered to cast their ballots across 2,400 polling stations, reports Efe news.

Voting will conclude at 5 p.m. (local time), according to the New Zealand Election Commission.

The centre-right National party, which has been in power for nearly a decade and led by Prime Minister Bill English is being contested by the centre-left Labour Party led by Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand First Party and the Greens.

The average in latest polls gave the National Party, which has been in power since 2008, 45.1 per cent of the possible votes and the Labour Party 37.2 per cent.

The two minor parties, which could be crucial for possible coalitions, the New Zealand First, polled 6.6 per cent, and the Green Party, 7.2 per cent, which places them above the 5 per cent required to be able to hold a seat in parliament, which elects the government.

According to this forecast, 55 of the 120 seats in the race would be held by the National Party, 46 by Labour, 9 by the Greens and 8 by New Zealand First.

One of the main concerns discussed during the election campaign was access to affordable housing as prices have risen by more than 30 per cent over the last three years, largely blamed on foreign investors, especially from China.

Other hot topics included immigration, with currently some 70,000 people arriving per year, income and capital gains taxes, health care costs, improvements in public transport and river pollution.
New York, Sep 23 : US President Trump slammed Senator John McCain for opposing a last-minute plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, insisting that the Republicans would "eventually" roll back his predecessor's signature healthcare law, the media reported.

Trump on Friday night called Arizona Senator's opposition "totally unexpected" and "terrible" during a campaign rally in Huntsville, Alabama, reports The Hill magazine.

"John McCain, if you look at his last campaign, it was all about repeal and replace, repeal and replace," Trump told the crowd.

"So he decided to do something different, and that's fine.

"We're going to do it eventually," Trump insisted of Obamacare repeal efforts.

Trump broadly chastised congressional Republicans for campaigning for seven years "saying repeal and replace, repeal and replace" and failing to deliver on the promise.

"They didn't care, nobody cared, because they had a President who wasn't going to sign it," Trump said, referring to Republicans votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) under his predecessor Barack Obama.

"So it didn't take much courage," he continued. "I think they voted, what 61 times? Sixty-one times to repeal and replace. They finally get a president who will sign the legislation and they don't have the guts to vote for it."

McCain was one of a few Republican senators watched closely ahead of a possible vote next week on the repeal legislation sponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham, The Hill magazine reported.

He cast a deciding vote in July killing a scaled-down Obamacare repeal bill, joining Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins in voting against the bill.

McCain announced earlier on Friday he would also vote against the latest repeal measure from Graham and Cassidy, which Republicans hoped to vote on next week ahead of a September 30 deadline for approving the bill on a majority vote.

"I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried," McCain said in a statement.

In his speech, Trump also said that he was provided a list of 10 Republican senators who were "absolute no's" on the Obamacare repeal, saying McCain was not on the list.

"John McCain was not on the list. So that was a totally unexpected thing, terrible. Honestly, terrible."

The President acknowledged that McCain's opposition hurt the Republicans' repeal efforts, but insisted the party would "go back" and press for repeal.

"It's like a boxer... they get knocked down, get up. Knocked down, get up.

"And then the bad ones, they stay in the stool and they say, 'We quit, we quit'. The great ones get up and they end up winning. That's what we're going to do. We might have to go back again and again."
Beijing, Sep 23 : China on Saturday announced that it would restrict oil exports to North Korea from October 1 and also suspend textile imports from Pyongyang.

The Ministry of Commerce will implement UN Security Council Resolution 2375 by halting the export of liquified natural gas and gas condensate and limit exports of refined oil, reports Xinhua news agency.

However, the ban on textile imports will be effective from Saturday, it said.

Refined oil exports to North Korea from all UN members is capped at 500,000 barrels from October 1 to the end of the year and 2 million barrels annually from January 1, 2018.

China will suspend such exports once the total exports approaches the ceiling.

Exported refined oil products must be used fully on civil purposes, not for North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, or other activities banned by the UN Security Council, the ministry said.

Last week, the Council unanimously adopted resolution 2375, imposing fresh sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear test on September 3, which violated previous UN resolutions.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : Google on Saturday honoured Asima Chatterjee, the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Science in India with a Doodle.

When the doyenne of chemistry was growing up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the 1920s and 1930s, it was almost unheard of for a woman to study chemistry.

But that did not stop Chatterjee and she not only completed her undergraduate degree in organic chemistry, but also went on to receive a Doctorate of Science in 1944 from the University of Calcutta.

Throughout her career, Chatterjee's research contributed to the development of drugs that treated epilepsy and malaria.

However, her most noted contribution to the field, was her work on vinca alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds made from plants, often to treat medical ailments, Google said.

Vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, are used today in chemotherapy treatment because they help slow down or stall the multiplying of cancer cells.

For her groundbreaking contributions to medicine, Chatterjee was recognised by universities all over the world.

A Padma Bhushan recipient, she was also the first woman to be elected as the General President of the Indian Science Congress, a premier institution that oversees scientific research.

She won several prestigious awards such as the S.S. Bhatnagar award, the C.V. Raman award, and the P.C. Ray award.

Chatterjee, who breathed her last on November 22, 2006, received numerous accolades from the Indian government, including a nomination to the upper house of Parliament.
Mumbai, Sep 23 : Actor Ranveer Singh says that he shaved off his beard to shoot younger version of Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus "Padmavati".

Ranveer was looking dapper at the GQ Men of the year award on Friday night and while interacting with media the actor informed that "Padmavati" is shaping up really well and he shaved off his beard to shoot young Alauddin Khilji's sequence.

"There are lots of expectations with 'Padmavati'... Film is shaping up really well. I am very excited about the film. As of now, I shaved off my beard to shoot young Alauddin's portion and I really miss my beard," said Ranveer.

The makers of "Padmavati" released the first look of the film featuring Deepika Padukone, who is playing the title role in the film, on Friday.

Commenting on this Ranveer said, "Now slowly material will start to come. Deepika's look has been launched then Shahid's and my look will also be out and after that trailer of the film will get release."

In "Padmavati", Deepika is playing Rani Padmini aka Padmavati of Chittore, alongside Ranveer Singh's Alauddin Khilji and Sahid Kapoor's Raja Rawal Ratan Singh. The film is also produced by Bhansali Pictures and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures.

It is scheduled to release on December 1, 2017.
Hyderabad, Sep 23 : Bollywood producer Karim Morani surrendered to police here in connection with the alleged rape of a 25-year-old aspiring actress, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his bail plea.

The "Chennai Express" producer surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station on the city's outskirts around midnight.

He will be produced before a court later in the day, police said on Saturday.

The Delhi-based woman alleged that Morani raped her on the pretext of marrying her. She alleged that Morani took her nude pictures and videos and sexually exploited her by threatening to post the same on social media.

The police had booked him in January on charges of rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cheating.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition challenging the Hyderabad High Court's verdict cancelling his bail.

The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail.

Morani was booked for cheating, rape, wrongful confinement), criminal intimidation), and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code.

The complainant alleged that Morani raped her in Mumbai and also at a film studio in Hyderabad in 2015 after promising to marry her.

The woman, who had done her Bachelor of Business Management (BBA) from Delhi, said she had met Morani through his daughter, who was also a theatre artiste in Mumbai.

The producer, however, had denied the allegations. Morani said the complaint was filed with the sole intention of tarnishing his reputation and image.

The producer's name had also figured as an accused in the 2G spectrum scam. He was accused of helping channel funds to the tune of Rs 200 crore to popular Tamil television channel Kalaignar TV.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Congress on Saturday demanded the Narendra Modi government explain how absconding don Dawood Ibrahims wife Mehjabin Shaikh managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected to meet her father.

"Wife of Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a video message.

Surjewala's remarks came a day after the arrested brother of Dawood, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law, Mehjabin Shaikh (Dawood's wife) visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father, Salim Kashmiri, before quietly departing.

Targetting the investigative agencies of the government, Surjewala questioned, "What was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) doing? What was Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) doing?"

Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Congress leader said, "Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back."

"Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her?" he asked.

He also said that this shocking revelation was made by Mumbai's Thane police.

"The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Defence Minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers," he said.

Iqbal was arrested early on Tuesday by a crack team of Thane Anti-Extortion Cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma who had picked him up from his Mumbai home late on Monday night in an extortion case.
New Delhi : Two weeks of a well-orchestrated tour of the US may not be enough to determine whether Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi is a reflective and seriously analytical politician, as his supporters insist, or a privileged nincompoop, as social media so churlishly characterises him.

However, what it appears to have done somewhat successfully is lend him some sheen for the urban constituencies that have been missing in his public engagements in India. At the very least, the tour helped him reboot -- even though it remains to be seen if all apps fire up subsequently.

His visits to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Princeton and New York exposed him to a diversity of opinion makers but, put together, the audiences were no more than 5,000 people. While the numbers do not necessarily tell the whole story, what they do say was that the attendees were mainly props to transmit a more credible message back home, where his voice is either instantly derided by a frenzied social media trolling culture, or ignored altogether.

Unfortunately for Gandhi, the people with whom he interacted with sobriety and substance -- to the pleasant surprise of many of them -- are of no consequence to him in his larger political strategy back in India. Even his much-emphasised message to the 21st century non-resident Indians (NRIs) of India's independence movement being propelled by the early 20th century NRIs such as Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Babasaheb Ambedkar and Vallabhbhai Patel, had only limited resonance.

His first public speech, at the University of California-Berkeley, the famed home of unfettered US liberalism, did make some news in India because of Gandhi's clarity of purpose on subjects such as the rate of growth versus very low job creation, and the country's syncretic culture coming under a serious strain by divisive political forces. Ironically, what made most news was his rather glib dismissal of dynastic politics, saying that had become the way things are done in India even in professions beyond politics.

From all available accounts, his interactions with the mainstream political and policy communities in Washington left most of them rather impressed by his understated but substantive style. The image of Gandhi within these fraternities has been one of an absentee politician riding his family name. However, the Washington meetings seemed to have changed that uncharitable point of view.

Perhaps the most extensive policy-focused engagement that he had was in front of some 200 students at Princeton University where he displayed a grasp of broader economic, political, cultural and social trends. His central point was about the need to create large-scale jobs as a vehicle to impart a broader vision to India's increasingly frustrated population. He kept citing the number of 30,000 Indians entering the job market every 24 hours and barely 450 of them managing to find employment.

The thrust of his argument was that unless this dire statistic was urgently addressed it would be impossible to think in terms of a vision for a great future. To his credit, he acknowledged his own party's failure to meet that number even while saying that the current government too had failed. He did speak in terms of working unitedly to address the central question of jobs.

One recurring feature of his interactions was India's reputation as a tolerant and harmonious culture having suffered a major setback in recent months. He said he was asked throughout his tour what had gone wrong with the country -- and his response was to speak of "a divisive politics".

The showcasing of the 47-year-old's serious side outside the relentless ridicule he faces in India may help him personally in attending to the Congress Party's decline with renewed vigour. However, the scale of the party's disaffection is so great that its rejuvenation is unlikely to come via Berkeley or Princeton, but through his unfailing engagement across the length and breadth of India.

The role that the NRIs could play in boosting Gandhi's prospects as a credible rival to Prime Minister Narendra Modi is rather limited, but to the extent their positive attention can lift his personal spirits in a way he can achieve that goal, the tour could be particularly useful.

(Mayank Chhaya is a Chicago-based senior journalist. He can be contacted at mcsix@outlook.com)
Rains, with thunderstorms, continued to lash Delhi and other parts of the national capital, including Noida and Gurgaon, as cloudy skies brought residents a brief respite from the heat. The IMD has forecast more rains for today.

Rains continued to lash Delhi for the second day in a row (Photo: PTI)

By India Today Web Desk: Delhi, for the second day in a row, woke up to overcast skies and wet roads as rains continued to lash the city.

The rainfall was unlikely it let up soon, with thunderstorms and showers predicted for Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida as well as Gurgaon.

Waterlogging was reported in parts of Delhi, and with rains to continue, there are chances of roads getting clogged later in the day.

Water logging after incessant rain near Delhi's Baba Kharak Singh Marg pic.twitter.com/eGeAe5gRD8- ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

advertisement

Unlike Friday, however, there were no reports of major traffic snarls in the national capital, at least until early morning.

On Friday, people were stuck in jams at many places due to waterlogging, while breakdown of vehicles at certain places also turned distressing for commuters.

The ITO was severely affected as people were stuck in mile-long traffic snarls from afternoon till evening. Besides, the Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg and the area around the India Gate were also affected.

Rains and Delhi traffic only petty obstacles, determined to 'raid' Thyagaraja Stadium for @StarSportsIndia @ProKabaddi pic.twitter.com/v7hnHvStf5- Gautam Gambhir (@GautamGambhir) September 22, 2017

In Old Delhi, people were hassled while commuting to the Chandni Chowk, the Red Fort and Old Delhi Railway Station areas.

Areas in trans-Yamuna like Seelampur, Wazirabad, Shahdara, Zaffrabad, Yamuna Vihar were also affected. In east Delhi, the area around Anand Vihar ISBT was also affected.

RESPITE FROM HEAT

The two days of rainfall brought respite from the sticky hot weather that Delhi had been seeing for the last few days.

According to the Indian Metrological Department's Safdarjung observation centre, the minimum temperature for today will hover around 24 degrees Celsius while the maximum will be at 30 degrees Celsius.

On way to work at 5 am amid #DelhiRains pic.twitter.com/zpxh4LHfzL- Karan P. Saxena (@karanpsaxena92) September 23, 2017

It will be business as usual from Sunday, with the IMD not predicting rainfall for the next weeks. Cloudy skies, however, will persist and should offer some relief from the heat.

(With inputs from PTI)

--- ENDS ---
Mumbai, Sep 23 : "Newton" Director Amit V Masurkar says he was completely unaware of the Iranian film "Secret Ballot" and that people should watch both the films and compare to find out if they are copied.

"Newton" has been chosen as India's official selection for Oscars 2018. A day after this news was announced, several reports came out claiming that the film has been inspired by a 2001 Iranian movie titled "Secret Ballot", helmed by Babak Payami.

It focuses on the life of a ballot officer who visits a barren and desolate place to plead with voters to cast their votes and take part in the elections.

Asked if he was inspired by the Iranian film, Masurkar told IANS: "I wrote the story in 2013 and after that, for eight months I along with Mayank (Tiwari, the screenplay writer) worked on the script.

"The intention of the story is to talk about a section of the population in our democracy who has a desire to vote but how, under which situation, missed out on the equal rights. The story was born from my heart. I had no idea about 'Secret Ballot'."

The director added: "I think two days before the shooting starts, someone told me if I watched that Iranian film. I went through some of the clippings online and our film has no similarities to that.

"Newton" had its world premiere at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival and won the International Confederation of Art Cinemas Award for best film in the 'Forum Section'.

Masurkar says that the film has been watched by several critics.

"The film has travelled to 40 countries. Audiences and critics have watched it across. They could have said that then... they haven't because it is a different film. I think people should watch the film to compare and find out if my film is copied from that one ('Secret Ballot')," Masurkar said.

"Newton", which stars National Award-winning actor Rajkummar Rao, revolves around a government employee who struggles to supervise voting in a forest area of Chhattisgarh, controlled by Maoists.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Congress on Saturday demanded that the Narendra Modi government explain how absconding don Dawood Ibrahim's wife managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected and said that it raises questions on the credibility of the Centre and Maharashtra government as well as the state and central security agencies.

"Wife of Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a video message.

Surjewala's remarks came a day after the arrested brother of Dawood, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law, Mehjabin Shaikh (Dawood's wife) visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father, Salim Kashmiri, before quietly departing.

Targetting the investigative agencies of the government, Surjewala questioned, "What was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) doing? What was Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) doing?"

Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Congress leader said, "Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back."

"Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her?" he asked.

He also said that this shocking revelation was made by Mumbai's Thane police.

"The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Defence Minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers," he said.

Iqbal was arrested early on Tuesday by a crack team of Thane Anti-Extortion Cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma who had picked him up from his Mumbai home late on Monday night in an extortion case.

Congress Rajya Sabha leader Rajiv Shukla termed the matter as very serious and said that it raises question on the credibility of the central and state government as well as the central investigative agencies.

"Dawood's wife Mehajabin Shaikh came to India in 2016 for 15 days. What was Mumbai Police doing? What were the central and Maharashtra government doing? What were the other agencies doing?" he asked.

"It is a very serious issue. It is like 'diya tale andhera' (darkness under a lamp -- or something taking place right under your nose). The state government, Mumbai Police and all the central agencies should answer how it happened, as it raises questions on their credibility," he added.
Vienna, Sep 23 : The Austrian government has approved a humanitarian aid package worth 350,000 euros for the Rohingya Muslim minority who have fled violence in Myanmar and crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh.

"Austria not only condemns the violence against the minority of the Rohingyas in Myanmar but also seeks to provide quick on the ground assistance," said Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in a statement on Saturday.

Kurz said that Austria wants to ensure that the much-needed humanitarian aid reaches Rohingyas who have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Cox's Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled prior rounds of violence in Myanmar.

The Rohingya refugees began fleeing Myanmar from August 25 when Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) rebels attacked police checkposts and killed 12 security personnel, triggering a military crackdown.

Myanmar has said its military operations in Rakhine were in response to the August attack and that the military was battling terrorists.
Kolkata, Sep 23 : Actress Raima Sen, who carries off both ethnic and Western styles well, says she is a conservative dresser.

"Even though I kind of carry off everything, I am still a very conservative dresser... ," Sen told IANS here at the launch of Satya Paul's Diwali exclusive limited edition festive series "Ramayana".

Inspired by the epic, the collection includes three different looks, the Rama Sari, the Sita Sari and the Ramayana Sari, that offer a vivid mix of prints, ranging from neo-traditional, tessellating geometrics to contemporary graphic and abstract.

Draping the Rama sari from the collection, the "Choker Bali" actor said she would prefer free-flowing and light fabrics for the festive season.

"Something light like this (referring to the sari) which is easy to carry because we do so much of work and it would be convenient to wear a light sari, and of course colourful because we do a lot of work on stage... cut ribbons... roam around and people want to see bright colours," she said.

On the work front, Raima, the daughter of actress-politician Moon Moon Sen and granddaughter of Bengali cine icon Suchitra Sen, has just wrapped up shooting for the Bengali film "Kaya."

She is looking forward to a clutch of Hindi films including "Vodka Diaries" and "Varanasi" and is excited about the Bengali webseries "Hello".

"For me the clarity of vision of the director is the most important thing. I learnt a lot from (late filmmaker) Rituparno Ghosh. I have worked a lot with him. I am one of the lucky few that did. I have also worked with wonderful directors like Reema Kagti, Pradeep Sarkar and others," Raima added.
Agartala, Sep 23 : The Press Council of India (PCI) on Saturday sought a report from the Tripura government on the killing of a TV journalist on Wednesday, while several media organisations have demanded a CBI probe into the murder.

During mob violence Shantanu Bhowmik, a 28-year-old journalist, was brutally killed allegedly by tribal-based party cadres at Mandai in West Tripura district.

"The PCI has sought a report from the Tripura government about the killing of the journalist while discharging his professional duties. After getting the report from the state government, the PCI would take a final decision on the issue," Tripura Journalists Union (TJU) general secretary Pranab Sarkar told the media here.

Seven journalists' and media organisations on Saturday took out a rally here and demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the killing of the journalist.

Subal Kumar Dey, President of the Tripura Newspaper Society, has demanded a white paper from the Tripura government on the attacks on journalists over the past some years in the state.

Meanwhile, tension prevailed on Saturday in parts of West Tripura and Khowai districts where a tribal-based party has carried out a series of attacks since Tuesday, including the one in which the 28-year-old journalist was killed.

Police said that a 29-year-old driver Jiban Debnath of a private vehicle was missing since Wednesday. The security forces continued their search operation to rescue the driver.

"A journalist of a Delhi-based newspaper had hired a private vehicle and gone to Khumulwng along with a local guide. Some members of the IPFT (Indigenous People's Front of Tripura) attacked them there and then fled. The IPFT activists also burnt down the vehicle," a police official said.

He said that while the journalist and his local guide reported to the police the next day (Thursday), the driver was still missing.

The official said when a police team was rushed to Khumulwng, headquarters of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), the IPFT activists attacked them and burnt down the police vehicle.

Since Tuesday, prohibitory orders have been in force in more than 10 places in West Tripura and Khowai districts, including violence-hit Mandai, 35 km north of here.

Contingents of the Central Reserve Police Force, Tripura State Rifles and the Tripura Police have been deployed in the trouble-torn mixed population areas.

Mobile-internet services in Tripura have been suspended until Sunday night as a precautionary measure, and top officials of the state are monitoring the situation.

Wednesday's incidents in West Tripura and Khowai districts are an upshot of Tuesday's violent attacks by another party's activists in several parts of the state.

On Tuesday, over 60 members of the ruling CPI-M's tribal wing Tripura Rajya Upajati Ganamukti Parishad (TRUGP) were injured in separate attacks allegedly by rival IPFT cadres at 12 places.

TRUGP President Jitendra Chowdhury said: "The IPFT members attacked the TRUGP men and women when the latter were coming in vehicles to Agartala from different places in Tripura to attend a party rally here."

Deputy Inspector General of police Arindam Nath said that so far 13 IPFT members have been arrested for their involvement in the attacks.

The IPFT and the Twipraland State Party have since 2009 been agitating for upgrading the existing Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) to a separate tribal state.

The TTAADC has jurisdiction over two-thirds of Tripura's 10,491 sq.km area that is home to over 12,16,000 people, mostly tribals.

Ahead of the assembly elections in Tripura, due in February next year, the separate tribal-based state demand has snowballed into a major political issue. Tribals play a crucial political role in the state, with 20 of the 60 assembly seats reserved for them.
Seoul, Sep 23 : Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has reiterated India's commitment to promoting free and fair world trade, while emphasising the challenges that lay ahead in ensuring it as embodied in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Prabhu is on a visit to South Korea from September 21-23 to participate in the seventh Asia-Europe Economic Ministers (ASEM) meeting and the third joint ministerial review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

"He commended ASEM for addressing global issues of common interest in the spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership and also underlined the emergence of India as one of the world's leading investment destination," a statement from the Commerce Ministry said on Saturday.

On the sidelines of this meeting, the Commerce and Industry Minister had productive meetings with the Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France, Benjamin Griveaux; State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway, Dilek Ayhan; State Secretary for Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Susanne Hyldelund, and the DG of the Ministry of Industry and Economy of Spain, Jose Louis Kaiser Moreiras.

Prabhu also met the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party, Choo Mi-ae and discussed the rapid progress in bilateral ties.

Choo highlighted the importance attached by South Korea President Moon Jae-in to the bilateral relationship with India and his commitment to elevate it to the next level.

Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Choo said the "elephant was outperforming the dragon".

The minister met the Chairman and CEO of Korea's most influential media house, the Chosun Ilbo, Bang Sang-hoon to discuss bilateral economic ties and to consider hosting the next India-Korea Business Summit at an early date, focusing on sectors which would energise the bilateral trade relationship.

Earlier, on September 21, he met the senior leadership of top Korean industries, including Samsung, Kia motors, Lotte, Kumho-Asiana, Hyundai Electric, Posco, LS Group, Toray Chemicals, CJ Logistics and Tongyang Moolsang.

In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed, the statement added.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday claimed that arrested Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah was in touch with Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

In its chargesheet, the financial probe agency claimed that "Shah admits that he talks to Hafiz Saeed, global terrorist, based in Pakistan on phone on the issue of Kashmir".

"Recently he had talked with Hafiz Saeed in January 2017," the agency said.

The revelations were made in the chargesheet that the agency filed against alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani and Shah in connection with an ongoing money laundering case.

The chargesheet also revealed that Mohammad Shafi Shayar, a Kashmiri, was also part of their movement, before he went to Pakistan.

"Shah was in touch with with Shayar through phone. On analysis of the call detail report (CDR), it was found that 20 calls were made received from Shayar from his Pakistan number 923005161648 from January 22, 2017 to July 26, 2017 on the mobile of Shabir Shah," the chargesheet alleged.

According to the ED, Shah had met Shayar in central jail, Jammu during the years 1993-94.

After being released from jail, Shayar left for Pakistan with his family and settled in Rawalpindi. He belonged to an organisation named People's League in Anantnag.

The chargesheet further alleged that "Shah claimed that these calls were made from Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue".

"Shah admitted that Shayar used to talk to Shah and not to his family for the last 18 to 20 years. Shayar also calls Shah through Zamir Ahmed Sheikh, the photographer, driver and close aide of Shah on his mobile number 9469100898," the ED claimed.

The ED also said that Shah's Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party website's IP address belongs to Peshawar in Pakistan and is hosted on host201212.comhosting.com and the organisation of the domain is Commission on Science and Technology at Peshawar, Pakistan North West Province.

Shah was arrested by the ED on July 25 in a money laundering case of 2005. The ED arrested Aslam Wani on August 6. Wani had allegedly confessed that he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore in hawala money to Shah.
Panaji, Sep 23 : The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in Goa on Saturday protested against the central government's decision to stop service charges in hotels and restaurants.

Speaking to reporters in Panaji, General Secretary of the AITUC Christopher Fonseca said that hotel employees, including those in tourism-friendly Goa, were paid low wages and depended on service charges or tips paid by customers. Doing away with it would be a setback to the several thousand strong workforce.

"The wages paid to the hotel employees, even in the five-star hotels, is very low and the hotel employees mostly survive on service charges or on tips given by customers," Fonseca said, adding that even in neighbouring countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, paying service charge was mandatory for customers.

Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan's decision to do away with the service charge is "shocking" and amounts to "trampling" on the service conditions and rights of hotel and restaurant workers, Fonseca added.

The AITUC and the Hotel Employees Federation of India have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to intervene in the matter and make payment of 10 per cent service charge mandatory in hotels and restaurants.
Dhaka, Sep 23 : The UN High Commissioner for Refugees visited Bangladesh on Saturday to measure the extent of the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Almost 430,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar and crossed to Bangladesh since August 25. During his visit to the Cox's Bazar district, where a majority of the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar are staying, the UNHCR commissioner Filippo Grandi's aim was to get a first-hand grasp of the scale of the refugee crisis, the UN said in a statement.

The UN added that Grandi was set to "meet with refugees and see UNHCR's continued ramping up of its response to support Bangladesh", Efe news reported.

Grandi posted on Twitter several photographs of a refugee camp, where he was seen with children and mothers inside a school in a precarious state or watching small children bathing in the murky waters of a river.

"Rohingya refugee children swim in a makeshift camp in Bangladesh: I asked their mothers what they need most. Everything: they replied," Grandi said.

On Friday, the UN estimated that the refugee crisis in Bangladesh may require a call for funds to the tune of $200 million to serve 1.2 million people, including nearly 430,000 Rohingyas who arrived in recent weeks.

The exodus of Rohingyas began on August 25 after the Myanmar Army launched an offensive in the region following an attack by Rohingya rebels on multiple government posts.

Non-profits have denounced human rights violations and the international community has increased pressure on the Myanmar government over the military operation.
Jaipur, Sep 23 : The Shri Rajput Karni Sena, an organisation of the Rajput community, on Saturday burnt posters here of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's much-awaited "Padmavati" which is slated for a December 1 release.

A group of protesters gathered in front of Rajmandir Cinema Hall and shouted slogans against Bhansali and burnt posters of the film.

"While shooting in Jaipur Bhansali had promised to show the film to us and historians before releasing it. But since then no one has contacted us, nor has the film been shown to us," Narain Singh Divrala, district president Jaipur of the Shri Rajpur Karni Sena, told IANS.

"We want him to show the film to the core committee of Shri Rajput Karni Sena and various organizations, including historians, before releasing it," Divrala said.

"Till then we will not allow the film to be released," he added.

"If the Karni Sena core committee and historians don't have any problems only then will we allow screening of the movie," he added.

"We have come to know through media reports that facts and history have been distorted in the film, and it is unacceptable," Divrala said.

In January, activists of the Shree Rajput Karni Sena had protested, manhandled and misbehaved with the crew of Bhansali's "Padmavati" claiming that he was distorting historical facts in the movie.

They had also damaged some cameras and other equipments. Bhansali had to stop shooting.

The Karni Sena claimed that they have got a big library and that in no book is it written that Alauddin Khilji, a powerful ruler of the Khilji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate in 13th-14th century, fell in love with Padmavati or that he was her lover.

"They are trying to defame Padmavati by distorting historical facts. It is not acceptable," an activist of Karni Sena said.

In March some miscreants broke the mirrors in Padmini Mahal (palace) in Chittorgarh Fort where Ala-ud-din Khilji is believed to have seen Rani Padmavati or Padmini.

Shri Rajput Karni Sena claims that the mirror was invented years after Padmavati lived and therefore it is a completely untrue story.

The first look of Bhansali's much-awaited film, featuring Deepika Padukone, was released earlier this week. The actor plays Rani Padmini or Padmavati of Chittor, alongside Ranveer Singh who plays Alauddin Khilji.
By PTI: Tirupati, Sep 23, (PTI) A devotee from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh offered a "Sahasra Nama Mala" (golden garland), valued at about Rs 8.36 crore, to the hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara near here on the opening day of the nine-day annual Brahmotsavam festivities tonight.

The jumbo garland, weighing about 28 kg, contained as many as 1008 golden coins carrying 1008 holy names of Lord Venkateswara, temple sources said.

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M Ramalinga Raju, an entrepreneur, handed over the offering to the priests and top officials of the shrine in the presence of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, they said. Naidu was in the temple after making the customary offering of a set of new silk clothes to Lord Venkateswara on behalf of the state government on the occasion of Brahmotsavam, the sources added. PTI COR BN

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New York, Sep 23 : Morocco has advocated a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach to combat the Islamic State and terrorist propaganda during a ministerial meeting of the Global Coalition on the sidelines of the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York.

The meeting was chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday. In the meeting, Morocco stressed on the importance of clear action to combat terrorist propaganda and the role the country can play in the struggle, said Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Nasser Bourita.

The Global Coalition against the IS was formed in September 2014 with the goal to degrade and defeat the terror organisation.

The coalition's 73 members are committed to tackle the IS on all fronts, to dismantle its networks and counter its global ambitions.

Beyond the military campaign in Iraq and Syria, the coalition is committed to tackle the IS' financing and economic infrastructure, prevent the flow of foreign terrorist fighters across borders, as well as support stabilisation and restore essential public services to areas liberated from the terror outfit.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : The Indian Women's Press Corps on Saturday expressed deep shock at the double murder of senior journalist K.J. Singh and his 92-year-old mother in Mohali and urged the Punjab government to to apprehend the culprits at the earliest.

In a statement, the IWPC said that Singh who was in his 60s was a former news editor associated with the Indian Express, Times of India and The Tribune for several years. He was, as colleagues have described him, a "thorough professional and an exceptionally decent man".

"We urge the government of Punjab which has set up an SIT to apprehend the culprits at the earliest. We also urge that the state government take special policing measures for the safety of senior citizens, women and children.

"The IWPC joins in with the media fraternity of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh in condemning this most heinous murder," said the statement.
Hyderabad, Sep 23 : A city court here on Saturday sent Bollywood producer Karim Morani to judicial custody for 14 days in a rape case.

Morani surrendered to police late on Friday night in connection with the alleged rape of a 25-year-old aspiring actress, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his plea for anticipatory bail.

The "Chennai Express" producer surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station on the city's outskirts around midnight. He was formally placed under arrest.

Morani was later produced before a magistrate, who remanded him to judicial custody till October 6. He was lodged in Cherlapally jail on the city outskirts.

The Delhi-based woman alleged that Morani raped her on the pretext of marrying her. She alleged that Morani took her nude pictures and videos and sexually exploited her by threatening to post the same on social media.

The police had booked him in January on charges of rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cheating.

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed Morani's petition challenging the Hyderabad High Court's verdict cancelling his bail. The apex court directed him to surrender.

The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Morani's bail.

Morani was booked for cheating, rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of marriage under the Indian Penal Code.

The complainant alleged that Morani raped her in Mumbai and also at a film studio in Hyderabad in 2015 after promising to marry her.

The woman, who had done her Bachelor of Business Management (BBA) from Delhi, said she had met Morani through his daughter, who was also a theatre artiste in Mumbai.

The producer, however, had denied the allegations. Morani said the complaint was filed with the sole intention of tarnishing his reputation and image.

The producer's name had also figured as an accused in the 2G spectrum scam. He was accused of helping channel funds to the tune of Rs 200 crore to popular Tamil television channel Kalaignar TV.
New Delhi, Sep 23 : India-US defence cooperation is set to get a boost when US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis visits India next week during which he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The visit, from September 26-28, is the first Cabinet-level visit to India under the Trump administration.

It will help underscore the enduring US commitment to strategic partner India, said a US Embassy press release.

Mattis will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the India Gate, meet Sitharaman, and also Prime Minister Modi.

"The Secretary will emphasize that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia. The Secretary will also express US appreciation for India's important contributions toward Afghanistan's democracy, stability, prosperity, and security," a Pentagon press release said.

His visit comes after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in New York earlier this week on how their two countries can jointly fight terrorism and promote security in the Indo-Pacific region.

This follows President Donald Trump's announcement last month that strategic partnership with India would be "a critical part of the South Asia strategy for America," placing those issues high on the bilateral agenda.

The two "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

In his speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India" and asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.
Kolkata, Sep 23 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Saturday that her government would thwart any plans to create division among the people during the upcoming religious festivals.

"Our government would not allow anybody to divide the people of the state. Will will ensure the failure of all such plans," Banerjee said while launching a community Durga Puja festival.

Her comments came a day after state Director General of Police Surajit Kar Purakayastha claimed to have got intelligence inputs about outsiders entering the state to foment violence and unrest.

"We have inputs that some people may come here to create violence and disrupt the peace. We are keeping an eye on them according to our intelligence input. If anyone tries to create any sort of unrest or disturbance we will take strict actions against them," Purakayastha said after a high-level meeting on Friday.

Banerjee cautioned the people not to get "misled" by conspiracies hatched by troublemakers.

"Please be alert and active in countering mischievous tweets and Facebook posts which may try to spread falsehood and misinformation."

She said embracing festivals of all communities was intrinsic to the state, which abhors conflicts.

"One shouldn't spare those troublemakers who are trying to besmirch our reputation, our Durga Puja festival."

Banerjee said during the recent communal disturbances at Baisrhat of North 24 Parganas district "some elements had issued video clips from Bhojpuri films to claim the incidents had taken place in Bengal" and "also tried to pass off some happenings in neighbouring Bangladesh as incidents in occurring in Bengal."

Slamming those raising questions over her religion, she said she "hated their poor taste".

Banerjee said in April, a priest had tried to block her entry to the famous Jagananth Temple in Puri. "But others then took me inside."
Moscow, Sep 24 : The US is not cancelling visa programmes for Russians, instead it wants as many Russians as possible to visit the country, US Ambassador to Russia John Tefft has said.

"We are trying very hard to promote travel to the US," Tefft said on Saturday in a video interview posted on the official Twitter account of the US Embassy in Russia, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We are issuing immigrant and non-immigrant visas. We are trying to increase our capacity to do that literally every single day," he said in response to worries that the embassy keeps Russians out of the US amid tense bilateral relations.

In August, the US mission suspended all non-immigrant visa operations across Russia for nine days and halted visa operations at the US consulates indefinitely.

The visa freeze was in retaliation for Russia's cutting its US diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people to 455 and a seizure of two US properties in Moscow in July.

"We are working very hard at the American embassy to try to deal with the reduction of our staff, which was imposed upon us by the Russian government," Tefft said in the interview.

Moscow-Washington ties have reached a record low due to the ongoing war of mutual sanctions.
United Nations, Sep 24 : Highlights of External Affairs Minister Swaraj's address to the United Nations on Saturday:

*World is trapped in a deluge of troubles of which the most dangerous is the relentless rise of violence and terrorism, and the ideas that promote them are spreading.

*Climate change threatens the world and developed countries have to step up to help the developing countries deal with it.

*Nuclear proliferation has re-emerged as a global threat -- a reference to North Korea.

*Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen "the more radical route" of fighting poverty by empowering the poor, ho had been denied opportunities, instead of the traditional method of "incremental levels of aid and hand-holding."

*In an unusual gesture to the Opposition, especially the Congress party, Swaraj acknowledged, "Every government has done its bit for India's development."

*Demonetisation was a courageous decision to challenge one of the by-products of corruption, the "black money" that disappeared from circulation.

*More than 160 countries support text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council and adopting it and continuing with the reform efforts should be a priority.

*Terrorism is the top problem for the UN and the Comprehensive Compact on International Terrorism should be adopted.

*If the Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, the world can't fight terror. "Stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance.

*Swaraj lampooned Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi's attacks on India as a way to blunt them in the international forum: "He accused India of State-sponsored terrorism, and of violating human rights. Those listening had only one observation: 'Look who's talking'."

*India has offered the hand of friendship and agreed to bilateral dialogue, but "Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process."

*Contrast the flow of history between the two neighbours: National development for the people in India and development of factories of terror export in Pakistan.

*Pakistan's leadership should introspect why the two nations were on different trajectories.

*UN resolutions have been overtaken by history and bilateral negotiations are the only way forward.
Washington, Sep 24 : The US flew bombers near North Korea's coast on Saturday, an action the Defense Department said was meant to send a clear message to Pyongyang about the country's military options.

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that (President Donald Trump) has many military options to defeat any threat," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement, Efe news reported.

"North Korea's weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies," the statement added.

White said US Air Force B-1B bombers from the US island territory of Guam and US Air Force F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan "flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea."

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any US fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Korea's) reckless behavior," White said.

The Pentagon's announcement came before North Korea addressed the United Nations' General Assembly on Saturday and after the US imposed new sanctions on Pyongyang this week.

Those new sanctions bar ships and aircraft from visiting the US within 180 days of having gone to North Korea.

The ban also applies to vessels that have done a ship-to-ship transfer with a vessel that has visited North Korea within 180 days.

Trump ordered the sanctions via a decree whose aim is to "maximize pressure on North Korea to demonstrate to its leadership that the best and only path is to return to denuclearization."

A new nuclear test by Pyongyang earlier this month and Trump's belligerent rhetoric have caused tensions on the Korean peninsula to soar over the last year.

Seismic activity Saturday in North Korea, meanwhile, sparked fears that Pyongyang may have conducted yet another nuclear test, but experts said the small earthquake was probably due to natural causes.

North Korea has refused to back down in the face of international pressure and on Saturday said it was nearing completion of its nuclear goals but that its program was intended merely as a deterrent.

"We do not have any intention at all to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against the countries that do not join in the US military actions against (the Asian nation)," North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told the UN General Assembly on Saturday.

Ri on Friday said North Korea may test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean, making those remarks after Trump inflamed tensions in his debut speech before the UN.

Trump ominously warned Pyongyang on Tuesday that the US would obliterate the Asian country if necessary.

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," Trump said in his UN speech.
Barry Rondinella, JWA Airport Director, Scholarship students Lex Lizotte and Soraya Eftekhari, Scott Cutshall, VP Clay Lacy, OC Supervisor 2nd District Michelle Steel It is inspiring to see local students with a strong passion for flight

Clay Lacy Aviation awarded flight training scholarships to two Orange Coast College aviation science students during a ceremony at John Wayne Airport on September 18. Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel attended the event to recognize scholarship winners Lex Lizotte and Soraya Eftekhari. It is inspiring to see local students with a strong passion for flight, said Supervisor Steel, who represents Orange Countys Second District. I am delighted to join with Clay Lacy in honoring these remarkable future pilots.

About the 2017 Clay Lacy Scholarship Winners

Lex Lizotte, of Huntington Beach, California, aspires to become a pilot for a major cargo company like FedEx. Soraya Eftekhari grew up in Switzerland and now lives in Newport Beach. Her goal is to fly and train other pilots in seaplanes. Upon graduation from Orange Coast College, each will have earned an Associate of Science degree and private pilots license. They both plan to complete their aviation education and pilot certifications at a four-year institution.

Recognition from Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel

Without the support of companies like Clay Lacy, the cost of learning to fly would be beyond the reach of many local students, Supervisor Steel said. I also want to congratulate Dean Shrader and Dr. Harriman at Orange Coast College for building such an outstanding aviation school here in Orange County.

Orange Coast College Aviation Science Program

Located in Costa Mesa, California, Orange Coast College has developed a highly regarded aviation program. The curriculum prepares students to become professional pilots or pursue a wide variety of other aviation careers. Program information is available at orangecoastcollege.edu.

About Clay Lacy Aviation

Founded in 1968 by legendary aviator and industry pioneer Clay Lacy. Today, Clay Lacy Aviation is considered the worlds most experienced operator of private jets. With five corporate aircraft at John Wayne Airport in Orange County and over 100 aircraft at locations across the United States, prominent individuals and leading corporations trust Clay Lacy for aircraft management, charter, sales, acquisitions, maintenance, avionics, interiors and FBO services. The company has aircraft operations and regional offices across the U.S., including FBOs at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles and Seattles Boeing Field, and FAA repair stations in Van Nuys, Seattle and Carlsbad, California. With the most knowledgeable team in the industry, Clay Lacy delivers superior safety, service and value to aircraft owners and jet travelers worldwide. Visit claylacy.com

Press Contact

Scott Cutshall

Clay Lacy Aviation

+1 (818) 989-2900 X706

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US President Donald Trump, speaking at a rally, said Kim Jong Un should have been handled long ago and, once again, referred to the North Korean dictator as 'Rocket Man'.

By India Today Web Desk: The Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un war of words (and insults) continues. A day after the North Korean Supreme Commander called Trump, among other things, a 'mentally deranged dotard and gangster,' the US president lashed out, saying that 'madman' Kim should have been dealt with a long time ago.

Speaking at a rally in the US state of Alabama, Trump said, "We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place."

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During the rally, the US president once again referred to Kim Jong Un as 'Rocket Man', a term Trump has been using off later to describe the North Korean dictator. Trump even used the phrase during his maiden United Nations General Assembly speech earlier this week.

This time, Trump's mentioning 'Rocket Man' drew loud cheers from the crowd. "Rocket man should have been handled a long time ago. We can't have mad men out there shooting rockets all over the place," Trump said, indicating that past US governments had failed to sufficiently tackle North Korea and its nuclear dreams.

Trump's speech in Alabama came hours after the US president took to Twitter to threaten Kim that he was going to be tested "like never before".

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

Pyongyang has come under increased international attention following its sixth - and most powerful - nuclear test. The UN, in response, ordered new sanctions against the Kim Jong Un regime.

North Korea was also a major part of Trump's address to the United Nations General Assembly. Trump said that the US may ultimately left with no choice but to "totally destroy" North Korea.

Trump's UN speech led to a rare personal statement from Kim Jong Un who targeted the US president personally.

"The mentally deranged behavior [sic] of the US president openly expressing on the UN arena the unethical will to "totally destroy" a sovereign state, beyond the boundary of threats of regime change or overturn of social system, makes even those with normal thinking faculty think about discretion and composure," Kim said.

"Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation," Kim further said, ending with, "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire."

Trump responded soon after, tweeting, "Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before."

(With inputs from agencies)

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WATCH | Trump urges UN member states to isolate Kim govt until it ceases its hostile behavior

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Shabir Shah admitted he had links with hawala operators in Pakistan who were laundering money to fund militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. He said he last spoke to Hafiz Saeed in January, the ED said.

By Shivendra Srivastava: The Enforcement Directorate has (ED) said in a chargesheet that separatist leader Shabir Shah confessed to having been in constant touch with 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed.

Shah said he last spoke to him in January, the ED's chargesheet says.

Shabir Shah admitted he had links with hawala operators in Pakistan who were laundering money to fund militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.

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Shah, who had no regular source of income, was accepting donations in cash, but neither issued receipts nor filed tax returns for them.

The ED also discovered that the website IP address of Shah's Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party is registered in Peshawar.

It filed its chargesheet in a Delhi court this afternoon.

SEPARATIST-PAKISTAN NEXUS

Earlier this year, an India Today expose, Hurriyat Truth Tapes, revealed how state and non-state actors in Pakistan, including Hafiz Saeed, were choreographing anarchy through their agents in the Kashmir Valley.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) then launched an investigation into the funding of Hurriyat Conference leaders, and made several arrests.

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"I think that move by the Chinese central bank was important," the commerce secretary told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday. "A, from a physical point of view, limiting the trade. Because Chinese is the main trading partner with North Korea anyway.

"But even more importantly, it sent a very powerful message to North Korea that China is not being as supportive of them as it had been."

In the 2016 "US-Korea Yearbook," published in the spring by the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies, Han May Chan, then a second-year student, briefly laid out the argument that the success of economic sanctions against North Korea might depend on China's participation. Decades of sanctions have left other world powers with less sway over North Korea, she said:

"The DPRK has grown accustomed to the hostile sanctions regime for decades. Therefore, the effectiveness and the success of the current sanctions regime actually depends solely on China and North Korea. Unless the DPRK believes that the benefits from trade with the international community are greater than the current security benefits of prioritizing its military-first economy, North Korea will have little incentive to change its policy."

Others, however, have questioned whether a strong response from China  and China joining North Korea's adversaries  could lead to the conclusion desired by the United States and the UN: the denuclearization of North Korea.

Jeffrey Lewis, the director of an East Asia program at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, told The New York Times that if North Korea were to lose China's support, "the last thing you would do in that situation is give up your independent nuclear capability."
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said Friday that the US intelligence community's assessment of Russia's interference in the 2016 election "cast doubt on the legitimacy" of President Donald Trump's victory.

"Our intelligence community assessment did serve to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory in the election," Clapper said of Trump in a CNN interview Friday evening.

"I think that, above all else, is what concerned him, and I think that transcends, unfortunately, the real concern here, which is Russian interference in our political process which, by the way, is going to continue," Clapper said.

Watch the segment below:

It was the most direct assertion about the effects Russian operatives had in the US election  the investigation of which has evolved exponentially in the last four months under special counsel Robert Mueller, who is overseeing the Russia probe on behalf of the US Justice Department.

Mueller and his investigators have focused on several people close to Trump who have ties to, or have made contact with, the Kremlin  including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and others. Information gleaned from US government surveillance of Manafort prompted concerns that he had encouraged Russians to "help with the campaign," according to a CNN report on Monday.

Kremlin operatives reportedly bragged about trying to use people close to Trump  like Flynn, Manafort, and former foreign-policy adviser Carter Page  to make inroads with the campaign.

And Donald Trump Jr. became the subject of heavy scrutiny in July when it was discovered that he, along with Manafort and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner attended a meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer who promised to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Russia's efforts to sway the US election were further revealed this month when Facebook announced that Russian-associated Facebook accounts had purchased $100,000 in ads during the election. The ads were used to target voters in some battleground states.

A soft spot for Trump

Clapper's assertion that Russia's activities cast doubt on Trump's legitimacy will likely strike a nerve with the president. Aides and allies have said previously that Trump's ire toward the Russia investigation stems from that exact notion that Russia's meddling potentially diminishes his November 2016 victory.

Trump himself is a subject of Mueller's investigation for possible obstruction of justice, for his part in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Trump has said that he had the Russia probe in mind when he made his decision, and later said that firing Comey took "great pressure" off of him in the investigation.

To date, neither Trump nor anyone subject to Mueller's investigation has been accused of any wrongdoing, and Trump has denied the same.

For her part, Clinton has made crystal clear whom she blames for Russia's interference.

In an interview with USA Today published Monday, Clinton said she thought some Trump associates had an "understanding" that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted her to lose and Trump to win.

"There certainly was communication, and there certainly was an understanding of some sort," Clinton said.

"And there's no doubt in my mind that there are a tangle of financial relationships between Trump and his operation with Russian money," Clinton said, adding that she was confident the Trump campaign "worked really hard to hide their connections with Russians."

The federal government told election officials in 21 states on Friday that hackers had tried to break into their systems before the 2016 election, The Associated Press reported.
Cote DIvoire had accused Ghana of using the development of its oil industry to annex a part of its territory which does not belong to it.

Cote DIvoire was claiming ownership of the disputed TEN oil field, forcing Ghana to file a suit at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to ward off Ivory Coast from the disputed oil fields.

Ghana filed its suit based on Article 287 Annex VII of the 1982 UNCLOS.

Cote dIvoire in February 2015 filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities in the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case, dubbed: Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Ghana and Cote dIvoire in the Atlantic Ocean.

But the Special Chamber of the ITLOS on April 25, 2015 declined to suspend production activities in the disputed area with the explanation that in the view of the Special Chamber, the suspension of ongoing activities conducted by Ghana in respect of which drilling has already taken place would entail the risk of considerable financial loss to Ghana, and its concessioners and could also pose a serious danger to the marine environment resulting, in particular, from the deterioration of equipment.

The moratorium prevented Tullow from drilling additional 13 wells, Tullow drilled 11 wells in Ghanas first oil field.
READ MORE: Education Ministry assures unemployed graduate teachers

According to her, it was time for parents to discuss sex and pregnancy prevention with their wards.

Her proposal for condoms to be distributed to school girls, she said, was based on her experience in the UK, where she says condoms are distributed to school girls every weekend.

During my visit to the UK, I observed that some schools were distributing contraceptives and condoms to teenage girls on Fridays to help protect them sexually, she said.

READ MORE: Lancaster University Ghana holds inaugural graduation ceremony
The high failure rate has drawn concern from some students who are questioning the results published on Friday.

The students, under the umbrella body, Concerned Law Students, have challenged the GLC to release the raw scores of every candidate who sat for the exams in order to ensure fairness and transparency.

We call on the GLC to release results of every candidate since it is difficult to fathom that the rest of the 797 candidates whose name did not appear on the pass list all failed. Assuming without admitting that this number failed, the GLC must publish their raw scores/total marks in order to ensure transparency and fairness, the Concerned Law students said in a statement.

A private legal practitioner, Professor Kwaku Asare, had challenged the constitutionality of the law entrance exams in the Supreme Court.

The court ruled that the requirements were in violation of the Legislative Instrument 1296 which gives direction for the mode of admission.

READ MORE: Group heads to court to stop upcoming entrance exams

Following the ruling, the Concerned Law Students petitioned the GLC to end the entrance exams but the petition was shot down.
The heartbreaking situation has left school authorities with no option, but to convert the inadequate classrooms into dormitories. To alleviate the situation, authorities went further to turn some uncompleted buildings and a small assembly hall into classrooms, but to no avail.

The arrival of 660 Free Senior High School beneficiaries posted to the School has aggravated the crisis, requiring urgent attention.

Accra-based Starr Fm reported that, both female and male students are using a classroom block as dormitory, forcing students to sleep in turns as though they are in prison. Some students who cannot stand the heat in the rooms defy the unfriendly weather condition and mosquitoes to sleep on the veranda.

A 12-unit storey classroom block abandoned by a contractor some years ago is being partitioned to be used as Classrooms.

The crisis stricken school also lacks desks to meet the demands of the student population, forcing at least four students to share a desk.
By India Today Web Desk: Mohali: Senior journalist KJ Singh, mother found dead in suspected double murder

Senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother were found dead in Mohali. Police suspect it could be a double murder case.

Working with India to take ties forward post-Doklam: China

India and China have left the Doklam episode behind, and "are working together to take forward the bilateral relationship," Chinese Consul General Ma Zhanwu said.

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Manish Pandey and Kedar Jadhav are quality players, important to back them: Ajinkya Rahane

Ajinkya Rahane backed middle-order batsmen Manish Pandey and Kedar Jadhav to discover their form and fire against Australia in the coming ODIs

Ranbir FINALLY breaks his silence on viral photos with Mahira Khan

Ranbir Kapoor requested people to stop judging Mahira Khan.

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The case was filed by Ghana at the ITLOS after Ivory Coast claimed Ghana was exploring oil on its territorial boundaries.

Giving the special chamber's ruling on Saturday, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia said the ITLOS unanimously concluded that Ghana did not violate Ivory Coast's maritime boundary.

Below is how the case was settled based on the arguments of the two parties.

1) Unanimously,

Finds that it has jurisdiction to delimit the maritime boundary between the Parties in the territorial sea, in the exclusive economic zone and on the continental shelf, both within and beyond 200 nm.

(2) Unanimously,

Finds that there is no tacit agreement between the Parties to delimit their territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf both within and beyond 200 nm, and rejects Ghanas claim that Cote dIvoire is estopped from objecting to the customary equidistance boundary.

(3) Unanimously, Decides that the single maritime boundary for the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nm starts at BP 55+ with the coordinates 05 05 23.2 N, 03 06 21.2 W in WGS 84 as a geodetic datum and is defined by turning points A, B, C, D, E, F with the following coordinates and connected by geodetic lines:

A: 05 01 03.7 N 03 07 18.3 W

B: 04 57 58.9 N 03 08 01.4 W

C: 04 26 41.6 N 03 14 56.9 W

D: 03 12 13.4 N 03 29 54.3 W

E: 02 59 04.8 N 03 32 40.2 W

F: 02 40 36.4 N 03 36 36.4 W

From turning point F, the single maritime boundary continues as a geodetic line starting at an azimuth of 191 38 06.7 until it reaches the outer limits of the continental shelf.

(4) Unanimously,

Finds that it has jurisdiction to decide on the claim of Cote dIvoire against Ghana on the alleged international responsibility of Ghana.

(5) Unanimously,

Finds that Ghana did not violate the sovereign rights of Cote dIvoire.

(6) Unanimously,

Finds that Ghana did not violate article 83, paragraphs 1 and 3, of the Convention.

(7) Unanimously,
The Attorney-General, Ms Gloria Afua Akuffo, officials from the Ministry of Energy, the Maritime Boundary Secretariat, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) and other state agencies that made an input into the hearing of the case are in Hamburg to observe the proceedings.

Ghana and Ivory Coast are seeking a resolution over the dispute at the International Tribunal following Ivory Coasts accusation that Ghana is using the development of its oil industry to annex a part of its territory which does not belong to it.

Cote DIvoire is claiming ownership of the disputed TEN oil field, forcing Ghana to file a suit at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to ward off Ivory Coast from disputed oil fields.

It filed its suit based on Article 287 Annex VII of the 1982 UNCLOS.

Cote dIvoire in February 2015 filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities in the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case, dubbed: "Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Ghana and Cote dIvoire in the Atlantic Ocean."

But the Special Chamber of the ITLOS on April 25, 2015 declined to suspend production activities in the disputed area with the explanation that "in the view of the Special Chamber, the suspension of ongoing activities conducted by Ghana in respect of which drilling has already taken place would entail the risk of considerable financial loss to Ghana, and its concessioners and could also pose a serious danger to the marine environment resulting, in particular, from the deterioration of equipment."
Im very positive on the basis of the law, not only on the basis of nationalism. I have reviewed the very recent decision and I have seen the approach that has been taken by the court in recent times and Im very convinced that it will go in Ghanas favour, he told Accra-based Starr FM.

Ghana and Ivory Coast are seeking a resolution over the dispute at the International Tribunal following Ivory Coasts accusation that Ghana is using the development of its oil industry to annex a part of its territory which does not belong to it.

Cote DIvoire is claiming ownership of the disputed TEN oil field, forcing Ghana to file a suit at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to ward off Ivory Coast from disputed oil fields.

It filed its suit based on Article 287 Annex VII of the 1982 UNCLOS.

Cote dIvoire in February 2015 filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities in the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case, dubbed: Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Ghana and Cote dIvoire in the Atlantic Ocean.

But the Special Chamber of the ITLOS on April 25, 2015 declined to suspend production activities in the disputed area with the explanation that in the view of the Special Chamber, the suspension of ongoing activities conducted by Ghana in respect of which drilling has already taken place would entail the risk of considerable financial loss to Ghana, and its concessioners and could also pose a serious danger to the marine environment resulting, in particular, from the deterioration of equipment.
In 2015, Ibrahim said in his testimony, anti-gay activists in Ghana had attacked one of his friends. His friend was forced give up the names of his gay acquaintances and his named was mentioned.

According to The Intercept, Ibrahim was warned by another friend to leave the area. As he went home to pack his belongings, the anti-gay gang in the area attacked him.

Ibrahim says he was stabbed in his left arm and only just managed to escape by hailing down a nearby taxicab.

They stabbed me and gave me a cut on my back and hand. I received treatment at the hospital. I couldnt walk for one week, he told the asylum officer, The Intercept said.

The group posted the incident on the social media with a picture of me. They said that I was gay and asked people to arrest me whenever they saw me.

According to the report, Ibrahim didnt report the incident to the police out of fear. While hiding out in a nearby town, he plotted his escape to the United States. He had made it to Tijuana via Brazil and then Belize, paying a man he met there $500 to help guide him into Mexico.

When asked what he thought would happen if he returned to Ghana, he responded, I fear I am going to die. I will be killed.

His lawyers are working for his stay in the USA to regularised as he could be deported back to Ghana at any moment.

They have accused USA immigration officials of ignoring evidence that Ibrahim's attackers in Ghana will hunt him once he is deported back to Ghana.

According to the report, the leader of the anti-gay gang that had attacked Ibrahim and his friends was arrested but has been given bail.

READ MORE: Gays turn to far right AFD party for solace

Ibrahim has since been transferred to a facility in South Texas, where his case has gained attention from immigration activists and advocacy groups in the local community, the report said.

He is now represented by a human rights legal team, which is urgently trying to appeal the judges decision and get a new asylum hearing before he is sent back to Ghana.
Ri Yong-ho told the General Assembly that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country if necessary had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable."

Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."

In his first address to the General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called leader Kim Jong-Un a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission," prompting Kim to warn in turn that the US president would "pay dearly" for his threat.

Ri accused Trump of turning the United Nations into a "gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day," and of insulting Kim.

"None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission," he declared.

The North Korean nuclear crisis has dominated this year's gathering of world leaders at the United Nations amid fears that the heated rhetoric could accidentally trigger a war.

North Korea in recent weeks detonated its sixth nuclear bomb and has test-fired intercontinental missiles -- saying it needs to defend itself against hostility from the United States and its allies.

Nuclear hammer of justice

The United States led a push at the United Nations for tough sanctions that were adopted on September 11, and has imposed unilateral measures to punish firms that do business with North Korea.

Calling the sanctions resolutions unjustified, Ri said that Pyongyang was left with no other choice but to respond with the "nuclear hammer of justice."

He stressed that North Korea's nuclear drive was aimed at developing a "war deterrent" and declared that his country was a "responsible nuclear weapon state."

North Korea will take "preemptive action" if the United States and its allies attempt to carry out a "decapitating operation on our headquarters or military attack against our country," he said.

Declaring that the missile and nuclear tests were a source of "prestige" for his country, Ri said sanctions would not succeed in forcing his government to change course.

Ri then met for 30 minutes with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who expressed concern over the escalating tensions and emphasized the need for a political solution, a UN spokesman said.

Just hours before Ri took the UN podium, US bombers flew off North Korea's east coast, flying the furthest north of the demilitarized zone of any US aircraft.
The process is intended to provide a more bipartisan consensus on judges who will serve in or represent a senator's home state when the president is of the opposition party, encouraging communication between the White House and home-state senators before a nomination. But the opposition party has sometimes used the blue slip process to stonewall nominations and prevent the president from naming judges in their states.

With Democrats now having the ability to  in many states  prevent Trump's judicial nominees from advancing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times recently that he thought the blue slip practice should be scrapped for circuit court nominations.

"My personal view is that the blue slip, with regard to circuit court appointments, ought to simply be a notification of how you're going to vote, not the opportunity to blackball," McConnell told the Times, adding that he still favored keeping the practice in place in its current form for district court judges.

Democrats called hypocrisy on McConnell's part. In 2009, right at the start of President Barack Obama's term, McConnell joined the entirety of the Republican conference in writing a letter to the president expressing their belief in the necessity of consultation with home-state senators for judicial nominations. The letter also stated that senators expected the blue slip process to be maintained "regardless of party affiliation."

"Republicans, Leader McConnell and [Senate Judiciary Committee] Chairman [Chuck] Grassley among them, have taken advantage of this tradition for decades," Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Judiciary Committee member, told Business Insider in a statement. "People who claim to be Senate institutionalists should not engage in wholesale destruction of Senate traditions just for immediate partisan advantage."

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, another member of the Judiciary Committee, told Business Insider that the process has historically been "followed by members of both parties" and "ensures senators are consulted regarding nominees for seats from their home states."

"Judges are appointed with lifetime tenure, so it is critical that senators have the ability to secure judges for their home states that are qualified for their positions," Coons said.

"This isn't a partisan issue, either  this allows Republican senators to prevent Democratic presidents from confirming unqualified or inappropriate judges for their home states, and vice versa," he added.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, issued multiple statements over the summer taking aim at those on the right who chastised the blue slip process.

"I want to set the record straight with respect to blue slips," she said in a July statement. "The blue slip has been used since 1917 and history is being misrepresented in a brazen attempt to destroy the Senate's prerogative to 'advise-and-consent' on judicial nominees. ... It was always honored during the Obama administration  even when Republicans did not return blue slips for up to two and a half years."

"The bottom line is that no circuit court nominee has been confirmed without two blue slips from home-state senators since at least 1981," she added. "As far as this senator is concerned, no senator should be chastised for thoroughly vetting nominees using a tool that's been around for 100 years."

But whether or not that tradition is followed is not up to McConnell. It comes down to whether Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley decides to stick with the process. Speaking to The Washington Times last week, Grassley said he hasn't made up his mind, telling the publication, "You need to ask me in a month."

For Trump, the judicial nominating process provides him with the opportunity to cement an early legacy, particularly as his legislative agenda has stalled in a Congress where both chambers are controlled by Republicans.

Trump has an unprecedented 140-plus vacancies to fill, some of which are the direct result of Republicans refusing to provide blue slips to Obama's nominees,. And 30 states have at least one senator who caucuses with Democrats. Though his nominees have received blue slips from Democratic senators in Colorado, Michigan, and Indiana, Trump has so far mostly avoided naming judicial nominees for district and circuit courts from states represented by at least one Democrat.

The blue slip issue turned hot recently after a trio of Democratic senators refused to provide blue slips for two of the president's judicial nominees.

The first such instance was when Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota refused to sign off on Trump's nomination of Minnesota Supreme Court Judge David Stras for a vacancy on the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. Franken said he could not support Stras, nominated by Trump in March, after studying his record.

Franken was followed by Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon later in the same week. The Oregon Democrats announced they would block Ryan Bounds, an assistant US attorney in Oregon, from a seat on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals because he had not been approved by a bipartisan judicial selection committee in their state.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Business Insider in a statement that the blue slip process "should be used to prompt consultation between the Senate and the White House," but that it "isn't an invitation to thwart the president's power to nominate."

Several conservatives have taken issue with the blue slip process prior to McConnell making his remark last week. Some insisted that Democrats are using it just to stonewall Trump.
This incident occurred in Los Angeles at the Dash boutique owned by Kourtney and Kim according to TMZ News.

Medrano, who was seen brandishing a machete made nothing light out of her threats. Her black jacket with a skull drawing was a clear pointer that she wasn't playing.

Her rants mainly focused on ensuring that the celebrity family steer clear Caribbean island nation, Cuba which is a country of communists.

"The Kardashians will be executed if they step on Communist territory! Theyll be killed!!!," she said. Her stern scream "stay away from Cuba" carried a message that the family are simply not welcomed.

According to reports, Medrano has been arrested and charged with assault and making criminal threats. A $50,000 bail has been set for her release if she is able to cough out the money.

Lt. William Nash who spoke to KTLA News revealed that no one was injured from the encounter but the experience left a feeling of fear among employees of the boutique.

ALSO READ: Reality star shares 1st photo with Dream Kardashian

The Kardashian family were one of the tourists who visited Cuba following the ease of travel restrictions to the country by the United States of America in 2016. This was one of the last minute move of President Barack Obama.
His funeral will kick off on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, with a Christian wake at his father's compound in Ezekwuabor Otolo, Nnewi.

On Thursday, October 5, 2017, his body will leave the Akwudo Mortuary to his father's compound, before a mass by Holy Family Parish, Otolo Nnewi.

A comic actor before his death, Okwy Chukwujekwu was also known as Main Bossman. He reportedly passed away in Anambra State, following an asthma attack.

His death was confirmed by fellow actor Odira Nwobu on September 4, 2017, with a video of his dead body.

The National Chief Whip of Actors Guild of Nigeria, Empress Ikwumonu, had expressed the body's regret at Okwy's passing.

Yes, he is dead. At the moment, we dont really know the real cause of his death, though some are saying it was an asthma attack. However, his death is a big loss to the movie industry," she said.

He was very creative and talented. We pray God to give the family the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss. We will keep the general public posted on the burial date.

Chukwujekwu's movies include "Men of Wisdom," "Ogbo Na Ncha," "Papa Do Something," "Ibu's Burial" among others.
By PTI: Patna, Sep 21 (PTI) Online booking of tickets, guide maps, attractive website and display boards will be introduced at the Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park here, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushi Modi said.

Officials should complete all the projects related to the development of the zoo within a stipulated time-frame and money will not be a constraint, Modi said at an event at the zoo on the occasion of World Rhino Day today.

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Modi, who also holds the Finance, Commercial Taxes, Environment and Forest portfolios, stressed the need to make the Patna zoo a cleaner place as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis "Swachhta Abhiyan".

"The facility of getting online ticket will be introduced very soon for the people who wish to visit Patna zoo and other parks, so that they can get their tickets sitting at homes," Modi said.

People visiting the zoo will also be given guide maps apart from folders containing information regarding the animals, he said.

Prominent display boards would be put up before the cages besides making the zoo website more attractive, Modi said.

The officials have been directed to get the feedback form filled up by the visitors, he said.

A toy train for children and a trackless train for others will soon be started at the zoo, he said.

A 3-D theatre will also be set up at the zoo where films relating to nature and wild life animals will be screened.

Laying the the foundation stone for setting up a "Rhino Conservation Breeding Facility" at the zoo, the deputy chief minister said, the aim was to promote breeding of one-horned rhinos at the zoo.

The breeding facility will be developed at a cost of Rs 3.89 crore and spread over 2.5 acres of land in Patna zoo, official sources said.

The number of rhinos at the zoo was the highest in the country with 12 rhinos at present, he said.

The environment and forest minister also appealed people to adopt animals.

"Adopting animal is the best way through which one can show his/her love towards wild animals," Modi said. PTI AR MM

--- ENDS ---
The agency also disclosed that property worth over N50 millions were destroyed by the flood.

The NEMA Coordinator, Owerri operations office, Mr Evans Ugoh, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday.

Ugoh said the primary cause of the heavy flooding in the area was the ongoing urban renewal embarked upon by the state government.

He explained that contractors working in various sites have destroyed the central drainage system, which was connected to the popular Otammiri River in the state.

Ugoh said the waterways were disorganised and the flood eventually found its way to the area where so many houses were submerged.

NAN reports that the down pour, which started early hours of Thursday, wreaked havoc in Federal Housing Egbu, bank road, Amakaohia.

Ugoh, however, lamented that contractors working in various sites in the ongoing urban renewal programme of Gov. Rochas Okorocha had caused more harm than good.

Our drainage is gone and most houses built on the waterways will continue to have this problem until the anomaly is corrected, he said.

He advised that Imo government to implore uncommon courage and willpower to demolish all the houses built on the waterways.

He also advised the government to ensure close monitoring on contractors working in various sites and mandate them to channel the waterways properly.
According to the deputy secretary, Igbo Leaders of Thought, Elliot Uko, Kanu was planning to dump secession idea for restructuring demand.

Uko said the leader of the Igbo Leaders of Thought, Prof. Ben Nwabueze, convinced Kanu to drop his absolute demand for Igbo secession and accept restructuring.

Uko, who was present at the meeting between Kanu and South East governors, revealed this in Enugu on Friday, September 22,

He said Kanu accepted Nwabueze's proposal on the condition that he had to consult with other IPOB members.

Uko said: "The 30th of August, 2017 meeting between Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and South East governors was historic in the sense that Prof. Ben Nwabueze made Kanu to adjust his position in a landmark development.

"Because of Kanus deep respect for Prof. Ben Nwabueze, whom he trusts absolutely, Kanu accepted in principle Prof. Nwabuezes proposal that IPOB accepts the restructuring of Nigeria and step down the agitation for secession. But the restructuring should be a return to the 1963 Constitution format.

Kanu, in reverence to Prof. Nwabueze, agreed in principle to the Nwabueze proposal, but insisted on discussing with and carrying along the entire leadership of the IPOB, both at home and in the Diaspora.

"The meeting also agreed to meet again within days in order to fine tune and conclude the agreements. It was also agreed that IPOB will not disrupt any elections.

"But most importantly, Kanu accepted Prof. Nwabuezes suggestions that IPOB demands are not absolute. Meaning that the group will have to shift ground in subsequent meetings.

"Kanu was cautious not to take solo decisions without carrying his group along, and therefore promised to bring the groups leaders to the next meeting."

ALSO READ: Senate to meet security chiefs over IPOB crisis
Abdullahi stated this in an interview with the Sun newspaper on Saturday, September 23.

He said: "You see, the problem is the system. Buhari may be a good person; he could be a gentleman who wants to work honestly but in a wrong system. It was a system of military fiat when he was a head of state, but the system he finds himself now does not allow him to manoeuvre.

"He has to cross many hurdles and checkpoints at the National Assembly and his party before he can execute anything meaningful, and all these squabbles are not based on principle but personal interests, either at party level or at constituency or at the level of the judiciary.

"All this really will make it impossible for a good person or committed person to operate effectively in this country in the manner which will accelerate development. Perhaps, you might ask the question if we can really change?

"Buhari might not have failed, but the system of government that he is operating in has substantially failed in the same manner as the ones before it.

"You see the fact that Buhari is incumbent does not automatically confer on him the candidature of the party in the next election if there is internal democracy in the party. The fact that you are a sitting president does not mean other members of the party cannot contest against you. If I were Buhari, I will welcome competition in my party.

"This is an opening for democracy in my party and I will ask people to come and test their popularity. If he has done well, people will re-elect him. This is a confirmation he has done well and that both the party and voters trusted him. I criticize all political parties for the system they employ in conducting primary elections.

"The one I am most familiar as good was the one used by Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1992, that was a direct primary election, where every member of the party has a chance to come and vote for who will represent him as a councilor, chairman, governor or president. In direct primaries, all parties have chance to come, cue and vote or elect any person of their choice.

"But the current delegate system brings nothing except corruption. Once the parties are corrupt, certainly, government must be corrupt, this is what is happening now all over the country."

ALSO READ: Buhari now in London  Adesina
It was gathered that the militants attacked a tug-boat carrying crude oil in Southern Ijaw creeks.

At least three crew members, two of which were security operatives, were reportedly killed in the attack.

This is coming barely three weeks a military houseboat was ambushed by suspected Niger Delta militants in the same area, leaving two persons dead.

The latest attack occurred on Friday, September 22, at Ekebiri Waterways in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa.

Confirming the incident, the Police Public Relations Officer for Bayelsa Command, Asinim Butswat, said that one policeman is still missing.

Butswat said that a response team dispatched to the crime scene rescued eight occupants of the ill-fated boat while efforts are underway to arrest the suspected bandits.

He said: "On 22, September 2017, at about 1845hrs, a Tugboat, towing a Barge with a combined team of policemen from the Nigerian Inland waterways, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corp and Civilians on board was attacked by Suspected Sea Pirates. The incident took place at Ekebiri Waterways in Southern Ijaw LGA, Bayelsa.

"A reinforced team arrived shortly and rescued one Policeman, three NSCDC personnel and four civilians. However, a policeman, one NSCDC Personnel and a civilian were shot dead by the sea pirates. One Policeman is still missing."

ALSO READ: Niger Delta militants ask Northerners to leave region before October

The police spokesperson said that the remains of the victims have been recovered and deposited at the Federal Medical Centre Mortuary for autopsy.
The reporter, Mr Emmanuel Antswen of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), was picked up on Friday, September 22, after reporting the controversial protest at the IDPs camp at the International Market, Makurdi, the state capital.

NAN reported that the IDPs had on September 11 protested an alleged diversion of relief materials.

The Executive Secretary of the Benue State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) Dr. Boniface Ortese ordered the closure of IDP camps, following persistent protest over alleged diversion of relief materials by camp officials,

Ortese said he ordered the closure because the protests have been hijacked by "hoodlums."

The SEMA boss had petitioned NAN over the story in question, seeking N3 billion as damages while the agency insisted on the validity of the report.

He had also claimed that the protests were instigated by the NAN reporter to enable him get a story to write.

Antswen was released on Saturday, September 23, at about 11 am after spending one night in the open cell at the state Criminal Investigation Department.

The chairman of the Benue State Council of Nigerian Union Journalists (NUJ) Mr. Kris Atsaka, signed the bail papers for the release of Antswen.

ALSO READ: NEMA's slow response to crisis is a national disaster

In a solidarity visit with the NUJ over the journalists' arrest, the Publisher of Daily Assets newspapers and a former Group Managing Director of Leadership Newspapers, Dr Cletus Akwaya, advised journalists to stand in defense of one another when in crises.
George, who is a former National Vice-Chairman of the party, is vying for the PDP chairmanship position ahead of the party's December 9, convention.

Speaking to NAN in Lagos on Friday, September 22, Babatope, who is leading George's campaign organisation, faulted a group within the party which called on George to step down for a younger candidate.

The group, "Renaissance", made up of some ex-governors and National Assembly members have reportedly backed former governor of Ogun, Mr Gbenga Daniel, as the party's chairman.

But, Babatope said George will never step down for anyone as experience, maturity and passion, more than anything else is required to reposition the party.

He aid: "How can anyone say George should step down for a more youthful candidate? No, that is wrong, George will never step down for anybody.

"What the party needs at this point in time is someone with maturity, experience and passion to reposition the party and return it to winning ways.

"I can tell you that Chief Bode George is an embodiment of all that. He is experienced, tested and trusted. He is a stickler to the philosophies of the party and he will deliver.

"You see, the elders cant be governors but they give directions to the youths based on their experience.

"The issue of youthfulness does not come in here; George is the best to lead the party."
Washington had initially sought a full oil embargo, but softened its stance to secure backing from Russia and China, the North's sole ally and main trading partner.

In a statement posted to its website late Friday night, the ministry reiterated the terms of the latest resolution, writing that as of October 1, UN member states would not export more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products to the North, a cap raised to 2 million starting next year.

"Chinese government authorities will issue a notice based on the export situation when approaching the upper limit, and from that date implement a prohibition on exports of refined oil products to North Korea for the year," it said.

It added that China has issued a "comprehensive ban on imported textiles" from North Korea.

The announcement follows days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un's regime, which has raised international alarm.

The US has accused China of not doing enough to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear programme.

The majority of North Korea's oil likely comes from China, but exactly how much the Asian giant exports to its neighbour remains unknown, as Beijing has not published such data since 2014.
The Finnish group said this month it planned to reduce its headcount in France by 597, a little over 10 percent of its total workforce in the country.

"I told the prime minister of my concerns over this issue and my total inflexibility," Macron told reporters after meeting with Sipila.

"Nokia's recent announcement does not conform with the commitments it had then made to the government of France," Macron said.

"I am pro-European ...but I believe in pledges .. and Nokia has not indicated that it will keep its word, and that is serious."

Macron said he hoped that the situation would become clearer in the coming weeks, adding that they would be in line with previous commitments.

Nokia, which no longer makes handsets having sold that business to Microsoft, bought French-American telecoms equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent in 2015 in a deal that was expected to lead to savings.

The cuts in France will be focused on administrative and support services and will not effect research and development as it refocuses on high-speed 5G telecom networks, cybersecurity and internet-linked appliances, the group said.
Topbas, 72, did not give any reason for his resignation from the job which Erdogan himself held from 1994-1998.

"I resigned from the office of mayor as of today but I am not quitting my party," Topbas told reporters.

Topbas had been under pressure after the 'No' vote came out ahead in Istanbul -- as well as the capital Ankara -- in the key April referendum on expanding Erdogan's powers.

The 'Yes' vote won the plebiscite with 51.5 percent but the narrow victory created jitters in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

In his recent speeches, Erdogan has often called for a renewal of AKP's cadres and making the party younger and more dynamic.

Erdogan has also noted that parts of the party have suffered from a "metal fatigue".

Topbas, an architect by profession, has been mayor of Istanbul since 2004 and has presided over the transformation of the mega city that began under the mayorship of Erdogan.

"There's no room for resentment in politics," Topbas said when asked whether he felt offended.

"I don't feel resentful towards anyone. I am a member of my party."

Local elections are due in March 2019 and will set the tone for a crunch political year with parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled in November.

His departure will also cast the spotlight on the future of the AKP's long-serving and controversial Ankara mayor Melih Gokcek.

Observers will now also watch closely to see if the AKP puts forward a heavyweight to replace Topbas.

Topbas also found himself in a delicate situation after the failed July 15 coup last year which Ankara blames on followers of US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen.

In September last year, Turkish police arrested Topbas's son-in-law, businessman Omer Kavurmaci, for alleged links to Gulen.

But he was later released pending trial, on the grounds that prison conditions would worsen his health. Kavurmaci has been diagnosed with epilepsy.
The army claims it is targeting Rohingya militants who attacked police posts on August 25. But its operation has been so sweeping and brutal that the UN says it likely amounts to "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya Muslim minority, a group reviled by many in the mainly Buddhist country.

On Saturday Myanmar's commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing posted a statement on Facebook saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in northern Rakhine's Buthidaung township on Friday.

The army chief accused the militants of trying to drive out around 700 hundred villagers who have remained in Mi Chaung Zay -- an argument analysts have said makes little sense for a group whose power depends on the networks it has built across Rohingya communities.

"As our villagers did not want to leave their homes, the terrorists blew up the bomb during the prayer time as a way of terrorizing the villagers," the army chief's statement said.

"It is the act of ARSA terrorist group," it added, using an acronym for the Rohingya militant group whose raids on police posts in August triggered the military backlash.

No one was reported injured in the explosion.

With the government blocking access to the conflict zone, it is difficult to verify the swirl of claims and counterclaims over who is driving the unrest, which has also displaced tens of thousands of Buddhists and Hindus.

But rights groups say there is overwhelming evidence that the army is using its crackdown on militants to systematically purge the 1.1-million strong stateless Rohingya from its borders.

Fires and land mines

On Friday Amnesty International said new videos and satellite imagery confirmed fires were still ripping through Rohingya villages, scores of which have already been burned to the ground.

"Not satisfied with simply forcing Rohingya from their homes, authorities seem intent on ensuring they have no homes to return to," said Tirana Hasan from Amnesty.

According to government figures, nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages in nothern Rakhine have been completely abandoned over the past month.

Many of those who stayed behind are now living in isolated Muslim communities, gripped by fear and cut off from crucial aid, according to the UN's humanitarian coordination office, UNOCHA.

"Following continuous threats from local Rakhine people to leave, many of these vulnerable people are so terrified that they are calling the Government, the UN and others asking for additional measures to protect them," UNOCHA said in its latest update.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday also echoed allegations from Bangladeshi officials that Myanmar security forces were laying landmines along the border, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have crossed in the largest mass refugee movement in recent decades.

"The dangers faced by thousands of Rohingya fleeing atrocities in Burma are deadly enough without adding landmines to the mix," said Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW's South Asia director.
Falahari Baba, who is accused of raping a law student from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, has confessed to the crime, according to police.

By Rohit Parihar: Falahari Baba, who is accused of raping a law student from Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh, has confessed to his crime, according to police.

However, Alwar Police took an unusual stand of not seeking baba's custody because of his confession admitting the rape and his ill health, senior police officers told India Today.

As a result, the court has sent him to judicial custody for two weeks after he was arrested from the hospital where he got himself admitted when he learned about the FIR against him.

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Police insisted that he was questioned when he was admitted to the hospital when he was not even arrested.

"His custodial interrogation was not required," Hemant Priyadarshi, IG, Jaipur Range told India Today.

Earlier, reports had questioned his continuance in the private hospital even when doctors there had certified him fit for discharge.

"He is in bad health. He was earlier also hospitalized for a long time. We could not risk arresting him when he confessed his crime at the hospital bed because of his fragile health. He is not as fit as Gurmeet Ram Rahim," another senior officer said.

The police have seized his laptop, hard disk and some other material from his place.

However, there will always be a doubt whether police could gather enough evidence without taking him to the site of the crime.

Some photographs being circulated on social media show the accused with top BJP leaders, but the authenticity of the pictures have not been verified yet.

Police has recorded the statement of the rape victim and expect that more victims, if there are any, would come forward to lodge complaints.

ALSO WATCH: Bizarre babas behind bars: Ram Rahim, Asaram

--- ENDS ---
President Donald Trump, whose initial measures against the six countries were blasted as an effective "Muslim ban," has yet to make a final decision on which nations will make the new list for much-restricted issuance of US visas, they said.

The officials refused to identify the countries or give a number.

But they said the new presidential order will implement a "spectrum" of measures that could range from just tougher vetting of applicants -- like demanding access to their cellphones and social media accounts -- to a full, open-ended travel ban.

"Our enemies and our adversaries are dead set on exploiting our defenses to enter our country and we've got to do everything possible to keep nefarious actors out," said Miles Taylor, counselor to the secretary of homeland security.

"The goal here is not to indefinitely block certain nationals from coming to the United States. The goal is to protect Americans until foreign governments do comply with our standards and no longer pose a risk to the welfare and the security of the United States."

That left the way ahead murky for citizens of Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, who have been blocked from obtaining US visas since the ban began at the end of June.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the new list could possibly have eight or nine countries on it, including some if not all of the six currently affected.

Political uproar

The ban -- which initially included Iraq and was accompanied by a 120-day block on all refugees -- sparked a political uproar when Trump announced it on January 27, a week after becoming president.

It came after he had repeatedly promised in last year's election to block Muslims from the United States.

The ban was frozen by courts after a weekend of chaos at airports and a barrage of lawsuits by immigration advocates and civil liberties groups.

The administration's stated reason was national security: the need to ensure the six countries have adequate vetting procedures for travelers, to prevent terrorists from entering the country.

But critics argued successfully in court that it was unconstitutional because it targeted a single religion.

Five months of legal wrangling led to a Supreme Court ruling on June 26 that permitted the government to implement a narrower version of the original ban, while putting off a full review of its legality until October 10.

In the meantime, the Department of Homeland Security undertook a 50-day review of some 17 countries seen as deficient in establishing the identities of their own people, cooperating on terror threat information, and other security issues.

"What this is really about is, 'Can we validate their identity?'" Taylor said.

While it was rolled out badly and poorly justified, the original ban gave the government "breathing room" to review global risks and establish a security baseline by which to measure other countries.

During the review, Taylor said, "We were actually able to get some of those who were non-compliant to be compliant." Others however "were willfully noncompliant and unwilling to engage with the United States."

Raj Shah, White House deputy press secretary, would not say when Trump would make a final decision on the replacement to the travel ban.
The hermit state's foreign minister, meanwhile, assailed US President Donald Trump at the United Nations, deriding him as a "mentally deranged" leader whose threats had increased the chances of military confrontation.

Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un have exchanged increasingly bellicose rhetoric in recent days, as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang's weapons ambitions -- including a hint this week that the country is considering detonating an H-bomb over the Pacific.

US bombers have carried out similar flights before, as the United States and the international community struggle to rein in North Korea's weapons programs.

But in a new stage for such show of force operations, the Pentagon stressed this was the furthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas that any US fighter or bomber has flown off North Korea's coast in this century.

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said.

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies."

The Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flown Saturday are based in Guam, and were accompanied by F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, White said. They flew over international waters off the east coast of North Korea.

There was another reason for concern after an underground rumble near North Korea's nuclear test site. China at first said it suspected an explosion.

But it was later ruled by a nuclear test ban watchdog and other experts to be a shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake and likely an aftershock from the hermit state's latest nuclear test on September 3.

This week saw a blistering war of words between Kim and Trump, with the US leader using his maiden speech at the United Nations General Assembly to warn that Washington would "totally destroy" the North if America or its allies were threatened.

'Full of megalomania'

The North, which says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself against the threat of a US invasion, responded on Friday with a rare personal rebuke from Kim, who called Trump "mentally deranged" and threatened the "highest level of hardline countermeasure in history."

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho took things further. He, too, dismissed Trump as deranged, and said his threats had increased the chances of military confrontation.

Ri told the UN General Assembly in New York that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable."

Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."

Washington announced tougher restrictions Friday aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program, building on tough new UN sanctions aimed at choking Pyongyang of cash.

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang.

But on the fringes of the UN meeting this week, Ri upped the tensions further, telling reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

Monitoring groups estimate that the nuclear test conducted in North Korea earlier this month had a yield of 250 kilotons, which is 16 times the size of the US bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
In many countries, the success of farming means the difference between life and death.

"You take food for granted here," Kaleb Kamure Titia, a pig and banana farmer on Uganda's border with Sudan, said while in the Quad-Cities this week to learn about better communication between farmers from around the world.

"Not in my part of the world. You must work and make food or people will not be alive," he said. "For me, two years in a row, crops are failing. What are people doing in the meantime? They are dying. So you look for the quickest solution to producing food quickly."

With recent refugees from Sudan moving into Uganda, Mr. Titia said there is not enough food to go around. Producing food is a heavy responsibility and duty needed now more than ever, he said.

Mr. Titia was one of 40 farmers from 14 countries in the Quad-Cities this week to learn about agriculture communication. The trip was organized by the Cornell Alliance for Science, a league of international scientists, agriculturists and environmentalists, based at Cornell University in New York.

The visit included outings to the Deere & Co. Administrative Center in Moline and Cinnamon Ridge Farms in Donahue, Iowa. However, the central focus was developing communication skills to allow farmers to enter the larger agricultural conversation, especially biotechnology debates.

"This is the first time that we have created a training program specifically for farmers," said Joan Conrow, managing editor of Cornell Alliance for Science. "These farmers are clamoring for greater skills to communicate, like using social media and public speaking.

"The program aims to give them concrete skills that they can use to communicate effectively with their community and policy makers."

Jitu Vrajlal Soni is a former Tanzanian farmer who joined parliament to give farmers more representation. "The main problem I see is that there's a gap between getting that information to the people, farmers and policy makers, who don't understand," he said.

"Scientists who are working for biotechnology are doing a great job," Mr. Soni said. "For them, they feel that, once they've done their reports, they're not trained to communicate with the people. If the results are miscommunicated, as it is being done now, there's something wrong."

Many farmers in the program are representatives of developing countries where a producer's resources can't always match the high demand for food.

Alliance director Sarah Evanega said that, given recent advancements in agricultural biotechnology, it's imperative that farmers can publicly advocate for themselves with a scientific backing.

"Farmers should be able to make their own decisions, and we want to hear their stories," she said. "We want to provide them with science-based, empirical studies that show their options. Facts and data matter, but the ability to weave those into a story is powerful. We want to help them identify and develop their own stories."

Dr. Evanega said the stigma surrounding genetically modified organisms and other controversial biotech can be especially harmful to farmers. She urges opponents to consider the reality of international farmers.

"Let's hear from the farmers around the world, those who are pressured with creating enough food for nine billion people by 2050," she said. "The challenges of farmers, especially in developing countries, are much different than our challenges  people who don't deal directly with agriculture, who consume all that they make in the well-fed West."

Mr. Titia said, as biotechnology develops, the bad reputation of GMOs is damaging to his area of the world, as well as to other farmers.

"Science is a solution," he said. "If you can use science to treat human disease, why can't you use science to treat crop/animal disease? It falls on us farmers, really. I'm a farmer. When my bananas are affected by disease, the bacteria wilts the bananas. I feel the pinch as a farmer directly. You can see your bananas dying. There's nothing you can do."

Georgina Gutierrez, a dairy farmer from Mexico, said every farmer at the conference shared experiences and joys that were the same, even though they came from different continents.

"We're closer to the primordial thing about all of us: life," she said. "I'm a dairy farmer, and I see it every day. I know that the milk produced by my cows and the crops that are growing on my land will one day turn into food, good, nutritious, proper food.

"We are closer to life than any other person in the world." Ms. Gutierrez said, "We have to choose not to attack each other and help each other give information in a proper way so that consumers can make an informed decision when they go to the store. We need to come together as a global community because we are feeding the world."

Ruramiso Mashumba, a farmer from Zimbabwe, said she learned a lot at the conference that she can take home. She said the world has a long way to go in representing the voice of the farmer correctly. But for her, the mission is just beginning.

"In my country, last year, our government allowed for us to grow fortified grains, mainly because one in every five children in Zimbabwe has vitamin A deficiency and lot of blindness," Ms. Mashumba said.

"This technology is changing the lives in children in my country. Some people in other countries do not realize the importance of science. I think the future is positive because we are in a new revolution of technology. People are hungry for a better life. For that, the future is bright."
LOGO Lounge by Lori Goldstein Zip Front Hoodie with Peplum Details is rated 3.8 out of 5 by 69 .

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On the third day of Navratri, learn to be tranquil, peaceful and knowledgeable from Goddess Chandraghanta.

By India Today Web Desk: The third day of Navratri brings with itself the worship of Goddess Chandraghanta. Synonymous to all things serene, peaceful and knowledgeable, Goddess Chandraghanta is aptly associated with the colour white.

After Shailputri and Brahmacharini, Goddess Chandraghanta is the thrid most important manisfestation of Goddess Durga. Each Navdurga avatar has some attribute to derive life lessons from. In Chandraghanta's case, the most note-worthy traits are her tranquillity, knowledge and serenity.

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Also Read: 9 avatars, 9 life lessons: Day 1 of Navratri is dedicated to compassion and strength of Goddess Shailputri

Goddess Chandraghanta is believed to be the epitome of generosity and compassion, alongside the presence of divine knowledge and learning. With a bell (ghanta) shaped moon (chandra) adorning her forehead, the Goddess is hailed as the married form of Parvati, who post her marriage to Lord Shiva came around to be known as Chandraghanta.

Also Read: 9 avatars, 9 life lessons: Learn to be as solid as a rock from Goddess Brahmacharini

Whether or not you believe in celebrating Navratri, learning from Goddess Chandraghanta's qualities can do you no possible harm.

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If youre in the Boise area and looking for a healthy sampling of vehicles and weaponry to check out, youre in luck. You can even save a few bucks doing so. History and firearms buffs will definitely want to pay a visit to the Idaho Military Museum. And since admission is free, thats about the only paying youll be obligated to do.

One thing we pride ourselves on is we dont charge an admission into the museum. We go into it feeling that military history has already been bought and paid for, and were trying to make it available to the public so they can see what their fathers and grandfathers utilized in their careers, says Jeff Packer, chief curator and executive director of the museum.

Opened originally in 1995, the Idaho Military Museum moved to its current facility in 2000. It was the brainchild of several officers and enlisted personnel working in conjunction with the Idaho State Historical Society to preserve Idahos military history. Initially located on Gowen Field, it now resides just a stones throw from the Boise Airport.

Gowen Field was built in 1941 for the Army Air Corps as a training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews, so an impressive amount of memorabilia from this time period is on display. Although none of his personal effects reside at the museum, Jimmy Stewart was, in fact, a trainer at Gowen Field before he began talking to invisible rabbits and winning Oscars.

The majority of the pieces in this collection were donated by local service members or families thereof, with some items on loan from the Idaho State Historical Society as well as the Idaho Military Division. Because of the amount of artifacts in the museums collection, rotations do occur every few months, so your chances of seeing something new on a return visit are pretty good. The museum houses everything from Civil War-era items to the Spanish-American War, up through the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Some of the exhibits you can see include a WWII-era PT-23 trainer, which took its last flight on the day they added it to the collection. You can also check out F-4 and F-16 cockpit simulators, guns galore from various wars, relics from the now-defunct Farragut Naval Training Station, and actual Medals of Honor that all have significance to Idaho residents and people who have come through Gowen for training.

In front of the museum youll find an assortment of vehicles, aircraft, and artillery pieces. An F-86, MiG 21, and RF-4C Phantom are all in full view, along with tracked and wheeled vehicles, such as an 1897 75mm French Field Gun, M1 Abrams, M60A3, M728CEV, DUKW, and various armored personnel carriers.

Thankfully Idaho hasnt fallen victim to the PC culture and lets history speak for itself with the educational work they do with local school districts. The staff periodically brings artifacts to the classrooms to show students differences in Axis and Allied weaponry and uniforms to further their knowledge on wartime relics and their development.

They also offer a History of Firearms class for Boise State Universitys history department, where students can attend an evening lecture on the evolution of weaponry. A select few are even taken to a local range for a chance to fire everything from a flintlock rifle to belt-fed German and Japanese machineguns  makes us wish wed gone to college in Idaho!

At least once a year they hold events for the public that are held in conjunction with different organizations. Such occurrences include a recent collaboration with a local military vehicle collectors association. During the event, bivouacs for various countries were set up in period-authentic fashion. Its occasions like this that bring the collection to life and go a step further than just showing items in glass cases or sitting idly in a parking lot.

Tours are self guided and at least one docent is available to answer questions. Video and flash photography are allowed. Although youre not dropping any coin to get in, donations are always welcome and its worth spending a few minutes in the gift shop to see if anything tickles your fancy. This facility is definitely one to add to your museum bucket list.

Idaho Military Museum

Address

4692 W. Harvard St.

Boise, ID 83705

Hours

Noon to 4 p.m.

Tuesday-Saturday

Closed New Years Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas

Admission

Free

Phone

(208) 272-4841

URL

museum.mil.idaho.gov
From Wicca to Hinduism, Buddhism to Christianity, every culture has their own way to celebrate the turning of the season. Here are five festivals and celebrations from around the world that celebrate the Autumnal Equinox, or the first day of fall.
Mental illness is an important factor in shootings, especially in the case of the Georgia Tech shooting. This opinion does not reflect the opinions of the editorial staff.
Tate Student Center Plaza is one of two venues on campus where individuals are permitted to practice free speech. However, on Wednesday, Sept. 20, a statement written on a dry erase board displayed at Tate Plaza upset some students.

Written on the board was a statement, The shooting of Scout Schultz (Georgia Tech) was a clean shoot. Underneath the statement were the options agree, disagree, and unsure. Tallies on the board indicated with a 4-2-0 vote.

The sign was later voluntarily removed.

The board was displayed only four days after the police-involved shooting of Scout Schultz, a senior mechanical engineering major at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

GA Tech sign Tate Student Center Plaza is one of two venues on campus where individuals are permitted to practice free speech. However, on Wednesday, Sept.

Schultz was president of Pride Alliance, an LGBTQ campus organization, and identified as bisexual, nonbinary, and intersex, according to Schultzs profile on the Pride Alliance website.

Schultzs mother told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the Georgia Tech student had a history of mental illness.

University of Georgia students weighed in about the sign and the police-involved shooting at Georgia Tech.

Just because he asked for it, doesnt mean he should have got it, said Aayush Tailor, a freshman finance and international business major from Suwanee, when referring to Schultz repeatedly yelling shoot me to Georgia Tech police. The sign was a little harsh in my opinion.

Alli Carton, a senior social work major from Watkinsville, said she passed by the sign at Tate Plaza on Wednesday and was shocked by what was written on the board.

It was just very heartbreaking for me to see. I know its a free speech area. This person, whoever it might be, was well within their rights [to display the sign], Carton said. But, I just want people to know this is not what I think of when I think of UGA. Theres so much more to this university than what this sign made it seem like.

Carton said whoever wrote the phrase a clear [shot] was putting a label on something that cannot be labelled.

It was such a tragic event for so many people such as the law enforcement at UGA to the families to students on campus, Carton said. Anybody and everybody is affected. Its not something you can just easily label such as that.

After seeing the sign Wednesday, Carton said she has decided to organize an event on next Wednesday, Sept. 27, from 4-7 p.m. at Tate Plaza to show support for Georgia Tech as it mourns the loss of Schultz.

Marli Collier, executive director of communication for Student Government Association, provided a statement on behalf of SGA.

I think [the incident at Georgia Tech] was a great learning lesson UGAs campus. Knowing that Schultz had a history with depression, we know this is a real issue and plagues so many people."

-Marli Collier, executive director of communication, UGA SGA

Our hearts are with the students at Georgia Tech and, of course, with the students affected by the tragedy. We believe the sign to be insensitive, and we would ask those on our campus to be respectful of the situation as many grieve the loss of the student leader of the LGBT+ community, Collier said.

Collier said the murder of Schultz, who had a history of mental illness, was a learning opportunity for the university. The SGA Ignite campaign ran on bringing awareness and accessibility to mental health resources on campus.

I think [the incident at Georgia Tech] was a great learning lesson UGAs campus, Collier said. Knowing that Schultz had a history with depression, we know this is a real issue and plagues so many people. That is why we are tackling [mental illnesses] head on, and...taking the stigma out by letting students be aware of the resources on campus.

In a statement provided by Greg Trevor, the executive director of communications, the University of Georgia described the sign was insensitive and offensive, but also stated the sign was permitted to be displayed because it was within the freedom of expression zone according to university policy.

The sign was located in the Tate Student Center Plaza, an open area of campus where expressive activity is permitted in accordance with the First Amendment. Although the language on this sign was insensitive and offensive to many members of the university community, it is protected expression, the statement read. We do not know who posted the sign, but we do know that it was voluntarily removed.
Bengaluru and Delhi airports had the fastest growth in passenger traffic in 2016 among global peers.

Aneesh Phadnis reports.

IMAGE: Bengaluru airport. Photograph: Kind courtesy GVK

Airports in Bengaluru and Delhi showed the fastest growth in passenger traffic in 2016 among global peers, aided by a surge in domestic air travel and introduction of new routes.

With a 22.5 per cent growth, Bengaluru airport was ranked first among airports handling 15-million-plus passengers annually.

Delhi, which recorded 21 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) growth, bagged the first position ahead of Incheon (South Korea) and Kunming (China), among airports handling 40-million-plus passengers a year.

The slot constrained Mumbai airport, which registered a growth of 9.9 per cent and took the fifth position.

Bengaluru and Delhi handed 22.2 million and 55.6 million passengers, respectively, in 2016.

The ranking was released earlier this week in a report by the Airports Council International, a trade association of world airports.

Delhi continues to show highest growth in the current year, and has recorded 14.9 per cent growth in the first eight months.

Domestic air traffic rose 23 per cent y-o-y to 99.8 million, making India the fastest-growing air travel market in 2016.

In the first eight months of 2017, traffic rose nearly 17 per cent, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

"Slots are not available at Mumbai airport, and airlines have added new flights from Delhi and Bengaluru," said Ameya Joshi, founder of aviation blog Network Thoughts.

"On domestic routes," Joshi added, "IndiGo and Vistara have led capacity expansion while Air India introduced new international flights from Delhi to San Francisco and Madrid in end-2015 and -2016, respectively."

Delhi also saw the introduction of Korean Air's service to Seoul, while new routes to Rajahmundry, Amritsar, Imphal, Jorhat and Port Blair were added at Bengaluru airport.

Jet Airways added new services from Bengaluru to Colombo and Singapore.

In fact, traffic growth at Bengaluru airport was faster than estimated, and the airport crossed 22 million passengers in 2016, a year ahead of the estimate.

Last December, Bengaluru airport handled 2.15 million passengers, the highest-ever traffic recorded in a month by an airport in southern India.

Hari Marar, executive director and president of Bangalore International Airport Limited, said in July, 'Bengaluru airport continues to see fantastic growth in passenger volumes. The construction of the second runway and terminal and other associated projects are now a priority.'

However, the rapid growth in air travel is putting a strain on airport infrastructure across the country.

Even Delhi and Bengaluru airports are staring at a shortage of slots.

The GMR Group plans to invest Rs 16,000 crore (Rs 160 billion) for expansion of Delhi airport that will double the capacity of domestic terminal T1, increase the capacity of international terminal T3, lay a new runway, and build a new terminal over the next seven years.

The situation is no better at the Airports Authority of India (AAI)-run airports; 25 of 126 airports managed by AAI have reached saturation.

Over the next two to three years, seven more airports -- including Varanasi, Raipur and Indore -- will reach peak capacity.

Both Chennai and Kolkata will require a second airport, and the AAI has asked state governments to identify land for the same.
Gujarat has around 3,000 licensees for allopathic drug manufacturing, apart from around seven homeopathic licensees, 500 ayuvedic and 600-700 cosmetics licensees

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) has proven to be a boon for the pharmaceutical industry in Gujarat, with a renewed interest among pharma companies to set up units here as the hilly states tax havens lose attractiveness.

As per the local Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA), they are handling 30-40 applications every week for brownfield and greenfield units since GST has been implemented, as against 10-12 per week earlier.

H G Koshia, commissioner, Gujarat FDCA, informed that data collected for the period between June 13 and September 12 shows that around 56 fresh proposals to set up pharmaceutical manufacturing units have come in during this period.

This apart, another 100-120 proposals have come in for expansion at existing units or brownfield expansion. These are mainly small- and medium-sized units and the total investment is estimated to be around Rs 600-650 crore (Rs 6-6.5 billion).

Gujarat contributes to around 33 per cent of the national pharmaceutical production, and this share is expected to move up to 40 per cent by 2020, feels the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA).

GST was implemented from July 1. This has largely reduced the attractiveness of setting up industries in tax havens of hilly states.

While the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given approval to the scheme of providing Budgetary Support under the GST regime for the eligible industrial units locations in Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and North Eastern states, including Sikkim till 2027, the same applies to the existing units and involves a refund mechanism.

The support of Rs 27,413 crore (Rs 274.13 billion) will be available for the residual period (10 years from date of the commercial production) in these states and would be restricted to the central share of the cash component of CGST and IGST paid by the affected eligible industrial units.

It is estimated that a total number of 4,284 units located in these tax havens will benefit from the scheme.

However, when it comes to fresh investments in greenfield units, these states thus lose out on the competitive advantage vis-a-vis the established pharma manufacturing hubs like Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Viranchi Shah, chairman, IDMA - Gujarat State Board, explained that under the current tax structure contract, manufacturing units (40-45 per cent of the domestic pharma production comes from contract manufacturing) will benefit.

Lets assume one has an input cost of Rs 100 (this includes packing material, bulk drugs, capsules etc which are taxed at different rates), he will roughly pay a tax of 18 per cent, or Rs 18 on the inputs.

"The manufacturer then value-adds on the input and let us assume this amount is around Rs 50, then the final product is priced at Rs 150.

"At 12 per cent rate, tax on this also comes at around Rs 18. Now, this manufacturer is also claiming input tax credit on the tax paid on input or purchases. This reduces his overall tax burden significantly.

Input tax credit basically means that at the time of paying tax on output, one can reduce the tax one has already paid on inputs.

Shah feels that in the contract manufacturing space, value addition or markup is hardly ever over 50 per cent.

There are not many products where you can value-add more than 50 per cent of your input cost. On an average, 30-40 per cent value addition is done, he said.

Considering the existing hubs like Gujarat and Maharashtra have the skilled manpower, and in an uniform tax regime, these hubs would become more popular among pharma companies, especially contract manufacturers.

The industrial town of Baddi in Himachal Pradesh had attracted several pharmaceutical units after the subsidy scheme was announced in 2003.

According to market estimates, around 360 pharma units had set up shop in the state, attracted by the tax incentives.

At least 50-60 small, mid-sized and big pharma from Gujarat had moved to Himachal, Uttarakhand and Sikkim to avail the incentives during the period that included Alembic Pharma, Torrent Pharma, among others.

Interestingly, Maharashtra has not seen a similar surge in applications like Gujarat.

A senior official in the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration said that things have not seen any increased momentum since GST implementation.

We are hopeful that pharmaceutical industry will shift its manufacturing base to Maharashtra after implementation of the GST but we are yet to receive fresh proposals, said a senior FDA official from the state.

Shah felt that this might be because a lot of Maharashtra based companies and even new ones prefer to set up units in parts of Gujarat that border Maharashtra like Vapi, Valsad, Ankleshwar, etc as the land costs are relatively lower and also these areas are close to existing bulk drug hubs of Bharuch and Ankleshwar.

This might be the reason behind Gujarat witnessing a surge in applications while Maharashtra has not experienced any spurt, he said.

Gujarat is also planning to set up a pharmaceutical park in its flagship industrial hub Sanand, about 30 odd km from Ahmedabad under the Cluster Development Programme of the Centre.

Already around 50 hectares of land has been identified.

As such, Gujarat has around 3,000 licensees for allopathic drug manufacturing, apart from around seven homeopathic licensees, 500 ayuvedic and 600-700 cosmetics licensees, Koshia informed.

This, however, does not represent the number of units as one unit at times has multiple licenses for different categories of products. Overall, there are around 1,200 drug manufacturing units in Gujarat.

In contrast, Maharashtra has around 890 pharmaceutical manufacturing units. Gujarat has the maximum number of WHO-GMP certified manufacturers in the country at 280. Maharashtra is close behind at 222.

Photograph: Reuters.
By Siddhartha Rai: The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has urged the Narendra Modi government to strictly monitor entry of sheikhs in the country after Hyderabad police this week busted a racket that sold off minor girls to men from Arab nations on the pretext of marriage. Observers say it has been an open secret for long that a nexus of brokers and qazis has been running such a ring where girls are trafficked from perhaps all parts of the country. Now, the NCM has requested the ministry of external affairs to scrutinise the entry of sheikhs, especially those over 50 years of age.

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Thousands of India's slave brides are often destined for a lifetime of abuse and hardship in the Gulf nations. Girls from poor families are sold like commodities to the Arabs, many of whom arrive in India on tourist visas. In a letter to minister Sushma Swaraj, NCM chairperson Syed Ghayorul Hasan Rizvi has asked that "the ministry for external affairs may instruct all the Indian missions in the middle-eastern countries to strictly verify and scrutinise the background of these sheikhs, especially aged 50 or above, before issuing visa to them." The letter added that the issue needs to be dealt with strictly as it is bringing "disrepute to the country".

In another letter to the union home ministry, Rizvi urged the Centre to prepare a comprehensive list of such incidents and crimes so that a realistic assessment of the problem is available, claiming it is widespread.

"The National Commission of Minorities is of the view that ministry of home affairs must issue instructions to all the concerned agencies of the states and the union territories to sternly deal with the nexus of brokers, qazis, hotel owners and sheikhs and arrest them for outraging the modesty of innocent Muslim girls on the pretext of 'nikah'," it said.

HOW POOR MUSLIM WOMEN ARE LURED

The letters by Rizvi made observations about the dismal plight of these trafficked girls who are often pushed into prostitution as they are deserted by the sheikhs after reaching abroad. "It is a fact that Muslim women from poor families are lured by agents for contract marriage with sheikhs coming from Oman, Qatar and other middle- eastern countries Upon reaching there, these girls are deserted by sheikhs and are tortured, sold and forced into prostitution by them. Many of these girls are forced to work as servants by these sheikhs as they are already married ," Rizvi wrote.

The NCM moved the two ministries as it received a complaint from advocate Mehmood Pracha of Nizamuddin West in Delhi. This Wednesday, Hyderabad Police busted a major racket of contract marriages of young Muslim girls by sheikhs and arrested 20 people including five Omani nationals, three from Qatar and three qazis. Apart from them, their local contacts were also arrested, including five brokers and four lodge owners.

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The police said that the information was leaked when they got a tip-off from a minor girl who had earlier been interviewed by one of the sheikhs for the purpose of marriage. Cops blew the lid off the well-oiled machinery of the ring as the local brokers would indulge the sheikhs right from the time they landed at the airport, providing them accommodation and information about potential girls from economically poor background. The brokers would then convince the families to marry their girls to the rich sheikhs, luring them with promises of a bright and happy future for the girls. The girls were also interviewed.

--- ENDS ---
Indian roads are far more unsafe than its railways.

A sense of urgency is required to tackle India's embarrassing record on road safety, says Vinayak Chatterjee.

IMAGE: The total number of road accidents increased by 2.5 per cent from 489,400 in 2014 to 501,423 in 2015. Numbers for people killed in road mishaps increased even more, by 4.6 per cent, from 141,526 in 2014 to 148,707 in 2015. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters.

There is much agonising over the safety record of the Indian Railways.

There were 26,066 deaths due to accidents on the railways in 2015. Contrast this with roads, where 148,707 died in 2015.

Yet, a sense of urgency on road safety is still to pervade the collective consciousness, in spite of Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari putting it high on his priority list.



India signed the 2015 Brasilia Declaration committing to halve the number of deaths in road accidents by 2020. Road Accidents in India - 2015, released last year by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, shows that this will be a challenge.

The total number of road accidents increased by 2.5 per cent from 489,400 in 2014 to 501,423 in 2015.

Numbers for people killed in road mishaps increased even more, by 4.6 per cent, from 141,526 in 2014 to 148,707 in 2015.



Here are nine suggestions to seriously attempt to achieve the objectives of the Brasilia Declaration.





IMAGE: Improving the design engineering of Indian urban roads, highways and expressways requires fresh thinking. Workers monitor screens connected to cameras set up in and outside the Chenani-Nashri Tunnel, Asia's longest bi-directional tunnel, on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway at Chenani. Photograph: Mukesh Gupta/Reuters.

1. Create an independent road safety agency: The Commission of Railway Safety certifies new tracks before they become operational and enquires into rail accidents. Few know that the CRS is not part of the ministry of railways but is housed in the civil aviation ministry!

Similar independence is needed for a separate, statutory body that should certify whether a new (or upgraded) highway meets all safety requirements. It cannot be part of any implementing agency, like the National Highways Authority of India. A model could be the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States. It has a clear mission: to save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes; and it is do this through education, research, safety standards, and enforcement. An all encompassing action-agenda like the Kakodkar Committee on Rail Safety (2012) is clearly required for the roads sector too.



2. Update and unify relevant codes: Improving the design engineering of urban roads, highways and expressways requires fresh thinking. The safety-related provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, the Indian Roads Congress manual for highway design, and the Road Safety Manual should all be refreshed and aligned.





IMAGE: There needs to be a policy in place to tackle the crucial black spots on India's roads. Photograph: Fry1989/Wikimedia Commons.

3. Fixing black spots: At least 786 black spots (places where the frequency of accidents is higher) have been identified by the government and remedial action has been proposed. These should be fixed with alacrity. The proposed Road Safety Agency should constantly discover and rectify fresh black spots.



4. Teach and certify safe driving: There is no mandatory safety training before appearing for a driving test. It is well known that a substantial number get licences without any test at all. No wonder Gadkari admitted in a public forum that 30 per cent of driving licences were bogus. A foolproof mechanism to issue and renew genuine licences by the many driving schools in India is a basic requirement.



5. Use modern technology for highway safety: The NHAI incorporated Indian Highways Management Company Limited on December 26, 2012. While electronic toll collection is its major objective, the IHMCL can well be re-energised in its ancillary projects charter to focus on safety delivery through technology. Beginnings could be made with regional control centres, emergency call boxes, variable message signage and integration of FastTag, mobile messages and in-cab radio broadcasts.





IMAGE: An all encompassing action-agenda for safety like the Kakodkar Committee on Rail Safety (2012) is clearly required for the roads sector too. Photograph: Brady Holt/Wikimedia Commons.

6. Have sufficient funding: The government has announced a Rs 1-lakh crore rail safety fund. Road safety, too, needs a resource hike. The outlay for 2017-2018 is Rs 250 crores.

This is nowhere near the promised Rs 11,000 crores over five years that was announced in 2016 by the government. To meet this gap, 25 paise out of the Rs 2 cess on every litre of petrol and diesel can be earmarked for a road safety fund. Karnataka proposes to increase the registration fee for all new vehicles by Rs 1,000, which will be used to promote road safety and trauma care in the state. Other states should be encouraged to raise and spend more on road safety.





IMAGE: There is no mandatory safety training before appearing for a driving test in India unlike so many other countries across the world. Photograph: Gary Houston/Wikimedia Commons.

7. Bring stakeholders together to solve specific challenges: A partnership between MSRDC, Mahindra, and NGO SaveLife Foundation was involved with the Mumbai-Pune Expressway for two years. It has reduced fatalities by 40 per cent. Often, road administrators tend to forget two important stakeholders -- the traffic police and the emergency medical response fraternity. These aspects were emphasised in 2015 by the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety.



8. Learn from China: In 2007, China had 110,000 fatalities in road mishaps. By 2015, this had reduced to 60,000. During the same time, Indias fatalities went up from 98,000 to 140,000 despite China having added more vehicles and highways than India in that time.



9. Implement new legislation: The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill has been passed unanimously by the Lok Sabha in April 2017, and is now with the Rajya Sabha. It is expected to be passed in the winter session of Parliament. Many of the suggestions mentioned will be partly or fully implemented after this law comes into force.



The Bill also has other useful points relating to vehicle safety and testing, registration, insurance, a Good Samaritan law and a Motor Vehicle Accident Fund for cashless compensation for treatment during the Golden Hour (the first hour after an accident).



With all these being seriously addressed, we could genuinely strive to respect human lives on Indias roads.



Vinayak Chatterjee is the chairman, Feedback Infra. he can be reached vinayak.chatterjee@feedbackinfra.com; Twitter: @Infra_VinayakCh
China sees India and Japan's 'North East Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project' as a challenge to its OBOR, says Rajaram Panda.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra D Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe after the groundbreaking ceremony for the high-speed bullet train project in Ahmedabad, September 14, 2017. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

China is irked at the growing bonhomie between India and Japan.

This became demonstrably clear when China expressed its discomfort by reacting to the India-Japan understanding for collaborative initiatives to develop India's northeastern region when Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo visited India on September 13-14, 2017.

While China itself continues to show its aggressive posture in regional territorial issues by making dubious claims where none exist, in utter disrespect to the sensitivities to the adversarial countries, it gets paranoid when other countries in the region reach an understanding over issues that are in their mutual interests.

Seen from a larger perspective, a rising China poses a clear threat to the fragile international system dominated so far by the United States, or at least it will be a threat, if it is denied space to reshape the system on its own terms.

China's reaction to the agreement reached between Abe and Prime Minister Narendra D Modi to develop the northeastern states is a demonstration of this larger narrative.

Though several agreements were signed in a variety of areas, I analyse only the objectives of the understanding between India and Japan to develop the northastern states and why China is sensitive about this.

One key takeaway of the 12th annual summit in Gandhinagar was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to set up the India-Japan Act East Forum which could complement India's Act East Policy with Japan's Free and Open Asia-Pacific strategy.

Seen in the backdrop of China's One Belt One Road initiative, the significance of this India-Japan initiative cannot be overlooked.

The broad objective behind this is to enhance connectivity and promote development projects in the northeast region in an efficient and effective manner.

Not many are aware that Japan has historical links with India's northeast.

During World War II, Japanese forces fought the British in Manipur. There is a cemetery in Imphal of those Japanese soldiers who died in the war. Many Japanese visit the cemetry to pay homage.

During a visit to Imphal in 2013, I was surprised to see how beautifully the cemetery is maintained.

Such emotional connect comes handy for the Japanese to collaborate with India to jointly build a bridge with Southeast Asia.

This region is India's only gateway to the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries and therefore connectivity here is hugely important.

Collaborating with Japan, therefore, is a major thrust area to further the Act East policy and lead to economic prosperity of the entire Asian region.

Japan's economic footprint in Southeast Asia is already rooted and joining hands with India could make only it more robust.

The agreement on Japanese loans and aid for highway development can complement India's connectivity in Bangladesh and Myanmar, leading up to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

This initiative could also put other initiatives such as BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal), and BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) Motor Vehicle Agreements on the fast track.

As per the agreement, Japan shall provide a loan of Rs 2,239 crore (Rs 22.39 billion) for the 'North East Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project' to improve National Highway 40 and construct a bypass on NH-54 in the northeast.

It is hoped that the project could be the precursor to improving intra-regional and international connectivity and foster economic development in the region.

IMAGE: Modi greets Shinzo and Akie Abe in Ahmedabad.

Photograph: Kind courtesy @MEAIndia/Twitter

China takes a critical view of this India-Japan joint initiative and sees it as a challenge to its OBOR.

It criticises Japan for building an informal economic alliance with India and engaging in projects to develop the ASEAN countries.

China, however, overlooks the fact that this India-Japan initiative is a part of a larger project of developing a corridor that was conceived in 2016 for the Indo-Pacific region with the aim of extending it to Eastern Africa under the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.

This was conceived as an alternative to China's OBOR which India and Japan see as lacking transparency and solely dictated by China's interests.

Both India and Japan are convinced that by improving connectivity between Asia and Africa, the larger objective of achieving regional prosperity could be made easier.

It is for this reason Modi and Abe agreed to seek synergy between India's Act East policy with Japan's Expanded Partnership for Quality Infrastructure by closely coordinating, both bilaterally and with other partners, for better regional integration.

Improving connectivity and developing industrial networks based on the principles of mutual consultation and trust are defined as the appropriate means to pursue.

Such is not the case with China's OBOR initiative which is suspected to have always some hidden agenda.

It is not that Japan has no presence in northeastern India.

Japan is already engaged with a variety of development projects, ranging from connectivity, infrastructure, electricity, water supply and sewage, forest resource management and biodiversity.

The historical connection also makes way for developing relations in the cultural domain.

The newly created Coordination Forum shall help in proper coordination between the two countries for building a robust India-Japan partnership relating to this region.

With this in view, Japan's Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu took a delegation of 38 Japanese companies based in New Delhi to Imphal on May 20-21 to encourage investments in the region.

The ambassador's visit marked the commemoration of the 73rd anniversary of the Battle of Imphal fought between the Japanese army and the Allied forces in 1944.

Against this symbolism of 'historic emotional links', India-Japan bonhomie to develop this geographical part of India is logical.

No sooner was the MoU reached, China warned third parties against meddling in the boundary dispute with India, mentioning Arunachal Pradesh in an apparent response to the plan between India and Japan to invest in infrastructure projects in the region.

China ignored the fact that the joint statement did not specifically refer to Arunachal Pradesh and yet it raised objections.

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying mentioned that the territory in the 'eastern section', which China refers to large parts of Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls southern Tibet as disputed and therefore has objections of any third party's involvement.

Hua further said this is a bilateral dispute and both countries are trying to seek a solution through negotiation that is acceptable to both sides.

Since the border in the eastern section of the boundary has not been totally delimited, a third country should not get involved in any manner, China says.

The India-Japan joint statement had only referred to cooperation to develop the northeastern states as a 'concrete symbol of developing synergies' between India's Act East Policy and Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy.

But Beijing is opposed to any foreign investment, including from Japan, in the 'disputed areas'.

China wrongly fears that India and Japan are forming a sort of alliance against it and reminds that the two countries should limit their relationship only to partnership conducive to peace in the region.

Does China feel insecure with India and Japan coming together to build a partnership to restore order in a region where it has become increasingly assertive?

This seems to be so as its attempts to expand its strategic space are being checkmated by the other two nations.

If China expects that it can have a free rein in its expansionist design, it would be a folly to believe that others would make no effort to counter such an effort.

This did not deter China's nationalistic Global Times to say that Japan with its 'narrow-minded' outlook is joining with India to 'encircle China'.

India remembers, however, that Japan was the only major power that openly took a position favouring India in the recent military standoff with China at Doklam and it was natural that China was the necessary subtext of discussion between Modi and Abe in Gandhinagar.

There is substantial convergence in the way they see the rise of China, balance of power in the Asia Pacific and cooperation between countries in the African continent and closer region in Southeast Asia.

This is being seen in India-Japan joint initiatives through quality infrastructure projects, not only in the African continent but also in India's northeast, the footprint of which is to counter China's infrastructure development spree in many parts of the world cannot be missed.

Dr Rajaram Panda is currently the Indian Council for Cultural Relations India Chair Visiting Professor at Reitaku University, Japan.

The views expressed are the author's own and do not represent either of the ICCR or the Government of India.
'We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us.'

'A country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity and Human Rights from this podium.'

'I would like today to tell Pakistans politicians just this much, ask them that have they ever thought that India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?'

Mr President

Let me begin by offering my heartiest congratulations on your election as President of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. For those of us fortunate to represent our nations as Foreign Minister this is a particularly happy event: one of us has this honour.

Mr President

I had spoken before this Assembly last year as well. It is a year that has seen much change both in this Assembly and in the world it represents. We have a new Secretary General at the United Nations. He is determined to prepare and strengthen the United Nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We welcome his efforts, and see in him a leader who can give practical shape to a vision.

Our contemporary world is trapped in a deluge of troubles of which, surely, the most dangerous is the relentless rise of violence. Terrorism, and the ideas that engineer this evil, are spreading at the pace of a conflagration. Climate change stares us in the face, and threatens us with its dimension. There is a growing question mark over maritime security.

For a mix of reasons, provocative and inflammatory, people are leaving the psychological, cultural and economic comfort of their traditional home space to seek refuge on distant shores causing global anxiety. A large part of the globes population is still tortured by hunger and poverty.

The young are beginning to lose hope as they confront unemployment. Women, victims of historic discrimination, are demanding what they must get: gender empowerment. Nuclear proliferation is back in the zone of dangerous headlines. Cyber security has become a source of deep insecurity.

In 2015, we set ourselves a target of 2030 to find solutions to many challenges on this Agenda. Two of these years have already passed. Surely it is already time to ask how much has happened. If complacency defines the next 13 years then we are in danger of losing control. We need a sense of urgency as well as unshakeable fortitude to take decisions that can avert catastrophe.

I am pleased that India has displayed the courage and leadership to take tough decisions which have launched the interlinked process of sustainable development. The complete eradication of poverty is the most important priority of the present government.

Mr President, There are two ways of addressing the curse of poverty. The traditional method is through incremental levels of aid and hand-holding. But our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen the more radical route, through economic empowerment. The poor are not helpless; we have merely denied them opportunity. We are eliminating poverty by investing in the poor. We are turning them from job-seekers into job-providers.

All our economic programmes have a principal purpose, the empowerment of the poor: Jan Dhan, Mudra, Ujjwala, Skill India, Digital India, Clean India, Start-Up India, Stand-Up India. To describe them all would take up more time than I have at my disposal, and I shall therefore dwell on only three core programmes.

The Jan Dhan plan must surely count as the worlds largest financial inclusion scheme. Those who did not have any money their bank accounts were opened with zero balance and this would not have happened anywhere in world that if you do not have any money you have a bank account. They have a bank passbook. But this impossible has been made possible in India. At least 300 million Indians, its not a small amount. This is the total population of USA.

At least 300 million Indians who had never crossed the doors of a bank today have bank accounts: this is equivalent to the population of the United States of America. This was, understandably, not easy to complete in three years, but our banks, achieved this visionary goal set by our Prime Minister. While some remain to be included, the target has been set  every Indian family will have a bank account.

Mudra yojana has enabled government to fund the unfunded. Those who had never dreamt that bank credit was within their options, today, through Mudra, are getting soft loans without collateral to begin micro businesses. I am particularly delighted to inform you that over 70 per cent of these loans have gone to women.

Unemployment spreads despair. Through Skill India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India poor and middle class youth are being trained to match their honed talent with bank credit and become self-employed or small-scale entrepreneurs.

Ujjwala is a signature scheme of our government for poor women. They had to work hard for their kitchens, and sometimes they lose their eye sight because of smoke. Free gas cylinders are being provided to the poor so that women do not have to suffer the dangerous consequences of wood-fired kitchens. Uniquely, gender emancipation is at the creative core of this programme.

Demonetisation was a courageous decision to challenge one of the by-products of corruption, the 'black money' that disappeared from circulation. Today, India has passed the Goods and Services Tax legislation, through which there is one-tax across the country, without the untidy and punishing system of multiple taxes under differing categories in different parts of the country.

Our 'Save the girl, Educate the girl' campaign is reducing gender inequality. Our Clean India programme is generating what can only be described as a revolutionary change in social attitudes and habits.

I would like to note, at this point, that nations with rising capabilities will be able to generate such change, but the developed world must become an active partner in helping those vulnerable countries which are still mired in stagnant poverty reach SDG horizon within 2030. That is why the principle of Global Partnership was included in SDGs.

I am happy to report that India has started, this year, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund.

Mr President

We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us.

On Thursday, from this dais, Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi wasted rather too much of his speech in making accusations against us. He accused India of State-sponsored terrorism, and of violating human rights.

Those listening had only one observation: 'Look who's talking!' A country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity and Human Rights from this podium.

Pakistans Prime Minister claimed that his nations founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. I would like to remind him that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace and friendship.

Pakistans Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.

Prime Minister Abbasi has recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events. But his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters. He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at 'forgetting' facts that destroy their version.

Pakistans current Prime Minister spoke of a 'Comprehensive Dialogue' between our two countries. I would like to remind him that on 9 December 2015, when I was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by his leader Mian Nawaz Sharif, then still Prime Minister, that dialogue between us should be renewed and named it a 'Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue'.

The word 'bilateral' was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting of that peace process.

Mr President, I would like today to tell Pakistans politicians just this much, ask them that have they ever thought that India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror?

What is the reason for this have they ever thought? There is only one reason. India has risen despite the principle destination of Pakistans nefarious export of terrorism. There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indias freedom for we have been a sustained democracy.

Every government has done its bit for Indias development. We have marched ahead consistently without pause creating IIMs, IITs, AIIMS and in the fields of education, health, space and across the range of human welfare.We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? We produced scholars, doctors, engineers.

They have produced terrorists and terrorist camps. Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hijbul Mujahideen, Haqqani Network. We produce scholars, doctors, engineers, scientists. What did you make Pakistan? You created terrorists and Jihadis. And you know, Doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death. Your terrorist organisations are not only attacking India but are also affecting our two neighbours, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Mr President

In the history of UNGA it may be a first that a country asked for a right of reply and it had to answer to 3 countries. Does this fact does not depict the reality of their actions? If Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

Mr President

Terrorism is at the very top of problems for which the United Nations is searching for solutions. We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the worlds big powers dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it?

We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all in bilateral and multilateral discussions condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals. The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them towards duplicity.

This has been going on for years. Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism. If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together?

Mr President

Through you, with utmost sincerity, I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence. Let us display our new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Mr President

I had identified climate change as one of the significant dangers to our existence. India has already said that it is deeply committed to the Paris Accord. This is not because we are afraid of any power, influenced by friend or foe, or tempted by some imagined greed. This is an outcome of a philosophy that is at least 5000 years old. Our Prime Minister has, on his personal initiative, launched the International Solar Alliance as witness to our abiding commitment to a cause.

When we talk of world peace, we mean peace not only among human beings but also peace with nature. We understand that human nature is sometimes inimical to nature, but we would like to amend human nature when it tends in the wrong directions. When we inflict our greed upon nature, nature sometimes explodes. We must learn to live with the imperatives, cycles and creative urges of nature; in that lies, our own salvation.

We have just witnessed hurricanes, earthquakes, rains that inundate, storms which terrify. This is not a mere coincidence. Nature sent its warning to the world even before the worlds leadership gathered in New York at the United Nations through Harvey.

Once our gathering began an earthquake struck Mexico and a hurricane landed in Dominica. We must understand this requires more serious action than talk. The developed world must listen more carefully than others, because it has more capacities than others. It must help the less fortunate through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing -- that is the only way to save future generations.

Mr President

We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems. It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth.

On 18 September, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something. But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations.

Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation. I hope that under your enlightened leadership, Mr President, this will become a priority. If that happens it will be a significant achievement.

We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN Peacekeeping this goal cant be achieved.

Mr President

There is no shortage of issues; there is even less shortage of problems which should be recognised from this podium. But time is not always on the side of those who would like to raise issues and problems in the interests of a better, more peaceful and progressive future. The issues you have chosen are relevant to the UN Charter as well as to the ancient traditions of my land.

Mr President

My country's culture and thought has been shaped by a history and philosophy that believes in peace as humankind's only rational and practical objective. We truly believe that the world is one family and we hope that every member of this family deserves that elixir of life, happiness. Let me end by reciting a verse that is a synthesis of thought:

May all be happy;

May all be healthy;

May all see what is good;

May all be free from suffering.

Thank you, Mr President.

Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
Jaipur police on Saturday arrested a 70-year-old self-styled godman, accused of raping a law student, from a private hospital in Alwar in Rajasthan.

Police said Swami Kaushlendra Prapannachari Falahari Maharaj had got admitted to the hospital after the 21-year-old woman from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district filed a rape complaint against him earlier this month.

Aravali police station SHO Hemraj Meena said Falahari Maharaj has been sent to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Alwar for medical examination.

According to hospital sources, a three-member medical board has been set up for the self-styled godman.

He was later sent to 15-day judicial custody by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court.

The incident had allegedly taken place at Madhusudan ashram of the godman in Alwar on August 7 this year, Bilaspur Additional Superintendent of Police Archana Jha had said.

As per the September 11 complaint, the parents of the woman, who is studying law in Jaipur, are followers of Falahari Maharaj for the past several years.

On his recommendation, she did an internship under a senior lawyer in New Delhi for which she received a stipend of Rs 3,000. Her parents asked her to donate the stipend amount to the ashram in Alwar, the ASP said.

Following her parents' advice, she went to the ashram on Raksha Bandhan last month.

Citing occurrence of grahan (eclipse) that day, the self-proclaimed religious guru advised her to stay in the ashram which she agreed to, Jha said.

During the night, he called the woman in his room and allegedly sexually assaulted her, the ASP said, quoting from the complaint.

The self-styled godman asked her not to tell anyone about the incident and threatened to harm her if she did so, she said.

When the survivor came home here this month, she narrated the ordeal to her parents following which a rape complaint was lodged with the women cell, Jha added.

A case was registered against the accused under Indian Penal Code Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation), the police officer said.

Photograph: ANI
A Central Bureau of Investigation team along with forensic experts on Saturday reached the premises of Gurugram's Ryan International School where the body of seven-year old Pradhyumn was found with throat slit on September 8.

The CBI sources said the 10-member team will try to gather evidence and make an attempt to recreate the events of the day Pradhyumn, a Class 2 student, was killed.

The CBI has also started questioning the school bus conductor Ashok Kumar, prime suspect in the killing, regional head of the school group Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas after taking them into custody.

The agency had earlier approached the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences court seeking custody of Kumar, Francis and Jeyus, which was granted.

While Kumar has been sent for a one-day CBI custody, the remaining two are for two days, a CBI spokesperson said.

"At the request of the CBI in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the alleged murder of a student in a school at Gurugram, the competent court today remanded three accused in one day police custody," the spokesperson said.

The CBI had on Friday took over the probe into the killing of the seven-year-old at the Gurugram school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The case had been registered at the Bhondsi police station in Gurugram under the Indian Penal Code section related to murder, and relevant sections of the Arms Act, the POCSO Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.

IMAGE: The accused, bus conductor Ashok Kumar, being escorted by the police. Photograph: PTI Photo
Farid Ahmed Khan is currently in the custody of Hyderabad Police and his role is being investigated in the case.

By Mustafa Shaikh: Family of Mumbai's chief qazi Farid Ahmed Khan arrested in marriage racket case today said that he has been framed in the case.

Khan's son Umair told India Today that his father was approached two months after the nikah and that the girl's age was 23 in the affidavit and passport. Khan is currently in the custody of Hyderabad Police and his role is being investigated in the case.

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"My father is a recognised qazi. Hence, people come to him for translation of the nikhanama in English so that consulates accept it. My father did the same in this case. This couple from Hyderabad came to us two months after their marriage. They gave us a nikhanama, passport and affidavit which said that the girl was 23-years old. Based on the Nikhanama and the witness which came to us my father translated the nikhanama and forwarded it to Oman consulate," said Umair.

Khan's name cropped up in the case as he had signed in the marriage certificate of the couple. "The nikhanama which we were given was not signed by the qazi who performed the marriage. We accept that our father shouldn't have signed the marriage certificate. But to character assassination is not right. We have a responsibility, as we have been qazis for decades now. We were shown some documents and on that basis this certificate was issued," said Umair.

Hyderabad police is investigating the incident where a 16-year old girl who was married to an Omani sheikh in May.

The complaint was lodged by girl's parents at Falaknuma police station in the old city in August. The marriage certificate was obtained from Mumbai and the trail led to Mumbai-based Khan.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: for daughter

By Gurdip Singh

Singapore, Sep 23 (PTI) An Indian businessman flew all the way to Singapore and lined up for 13 hours overnight outside an Apple store to buy the latest iPhone as a wedding gift for his daughter.

Amin Ahmed Dholiya, 43, was the first in the queue outside the Apple store on Orchard Road, where he arrived around 7 pm on Thursday to get his hands on the iPhone 8 Plus which hit the shelves yesterday, reported The Straits Times today.

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"I will buy two (phones), one for my other daughter (as well). This is my first-time queueing overnight for something. I am feeling good now but it will be hard to stand all night," he was quoted as saying on Thursday.

When the store opened at 8 am yesterday, there were some 200 people, including many foreigners, in the queue.

Dholiya returned home last night, according to the Singapore daily.

The new iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus were the first major products launched at the store since it opened in May.

Foreigners "have a bigger reason to queue up and buy" at the Apple store here because the new devices have not yet been launched in their countries, and many of them may have to buy the phones without contract even when the phones are launched back home," said Kiranjeet Kaur, a senior research manager for client devices at market research firm IDC Asia-Pacific.

Apple had on September 12 unveiled the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus.

Singapore consumers will generally prefer to get the iPhone 8 or 8 Plus at a subsidised price with a telco contract, said Kaur.

Many customers from the three Singapore telcos avoided queuing for too long as they could book time slots to collect their new iPhones elsewhere. PTI GS KIS AKJ KIS

--- ENDS ---
Rufus Putnam (April 9, 1738May 4, 1824) was a colonial military officer during the French and Indian War, and a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. As an organizer of the Ohio Company, he was instrumental in the initial settling of the Northwest Territory in present-day Ohio following the war.

==Early life and career==

Putnam was born in Sutton, Massachusetts. Rufuss father Elisha Putnam died when Rufus was 6 or 7, and Rufus temporarily lived with his paternal grandfather in Danvers, Massachusetts. Elisha Putnam and Israel Putnam, who became a renowned general during the American Revolution were cousins. After Rufus Putnams mother married John Sadler, Rufus lived with his mother and stepfather in Sutton, where the family ran an inn.

Putnam served with a Connecticut regiment from 1757 to 1760, during the French and Indian War. During the war, Putnam saw action in the Great Lakes region, and near Lake Champlain.

==Migration and work==

After the war, Putnam relocated to New Braintree, Massachusetts. There, he worked as a millwright from 1761 to 1768.

==Marriage and family==

Established at work, in April 1761 Putnam married Elizabeth Ayers, the daughter of William Ayers, esquire of the Second Precinct of Brookfield (now North Brookfield), Massachusetts. Elizabeth died in 1762, possibly in childbirth.

On January 10, 1765 Putnam married again, to Persis Rice, the daughter of Zebulon Rice of Westborough, Massachusetts.

==Farmer and surveyor==

While Putnam worked as a millwright, he devoted his free time to self-education, studying geography, mathematics, and surveying.

In 1769, Putnam became a farmer and surveyor. Rufus Putnam, along with his cousin Israel Putnam and two others, traveled in 1773 to survey near present-day Pensacola, Florida. There, Putnam surveyed and chartered lands along the Mississippi River, which the Crown was going to grant to veterans of the French and Indian War in lieu of payment for their service.

== Revolutionary War ==

After the battle of Lexington, Putnam enlisted the same day, on April 19, 1775, in one of Massachusetts first revolutionary regiments. Putnam later was commissioned in the Continental Army as a Lieutenant Colonel, under the command of David Brewer. Brewers regiment first engaged with the British Army in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Drawing from his knowledge and skill as a millwright, Putnam constructed the fortifications necessary to obtain victory. His fortifications provided an advantage to the Continental Army, which secured victories at Sewalls Point, Providence, New Port, Dorchester Heights, Long Island, and West Point.

General Washington appointed Putnam to be the Chief of Engineers of the Works of New York. He was soon promoted to engineer with the rank of colonel. When in December 1776 the Continental Congress rejected his proposition to establish a national corps of engineers, Putnam resigned.

He reenlisted in the Northern Army and served under Major General Horatio Gates. Putnam commanded two regiments in the battle of Saratoga. He continued to work on critical fortifications, including Fort Putnam at West Point in 1778. In 1779 Putnam served under Major General Anthony Wayne in the Corps of Light Infantry following the capture of Stony Point, commanding the 4th Regiment. Putnams remaining military career was less eventful. In January 1783 he was commissioned as brigadier general.

== Post-war activities ==

After the war was over, Putnam returned to Rutland, Massachusetts. In 1780 he had bought a farm confiscated from a Loyalist, and he settled there. He returned to working as a surveyor, inspecting lands in Maine (then part of Massachusetts). Putnam was a strong advocate of granting lands to veterans of the Revolution. He was one of the authors of the armys Newbergh Petition, which was submitted to Congress requesting land disbursements. There was pent-up land hunger among younger men in New England, where topography and long settlement restricted buying land.

=== The Ohio Company ===

Putnams advocacy for land grants led him, with partners, to establish the Ohio Company of Associates for the purchase and settlement of Western lands. He established the Company in Boston on March 3, 1786 together with Benjamin Tupper, Samuel Holden Parsons, and Manasseh Cutler. Its primary purpose was to settle the Northwest Territory, roughly the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, which was ceded to the US by Great Britain under the Treaty of Paris (1783).

After passage of the Northwest Ordinance to organize the territory, the Company bought about {convert|1000000|acre|km2} of land north of the Ohio River, between the present day sites of Marietta, Ohio, and Huntington, West Virginia. Cutler had tried to purchase all the land between the Ohio and Scioto rivers, but the western half was optioned by the Scioto Company. It later failed without having purchased any of the land.

=== Later life ===

In 1788 Putnam led a group of Revolutionary veterans to settle the land in what became Ohio. These pioneers arrived at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers on April 7, 1788, where they established Marietta, Ohio as the first permanent United States settlement in the Northwest Territory. Putnam was appointed to serve as one of three judges of the Northwest Territory after Samuel Holden Parsons died.

The territory had been historically occupied by Native American tribes, and more were driven west by colonial encroachment before the Revolution. As they had not ceded any land, they came into conflict with the arriving pioneers. They organized a coalition of tribes to try to expel the Americans from their territory.

Putnam served in General Anthony Waynes Ohio campaign against these Native American tribes, including Shawnee, Lenape and Seneca, who were ultimately defeated. In 1796, Putnam was appointed by the President as the first Surveyor General of the United States, a position he held until 1803. As Ohio residents organized to write a constitution and be admitted as a state, in 1802 Putnam was elected a Washington county delegate to the Ohio Constitutional Convention.

He was appointed as a Trustee of Ohio University, where he served for two decades, rom 1804 to 1824. It was constructed on public lands, under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Long participating in the Masons, a fraternal organization that expanded in the early nineteenth century, in 1808 Putnam was elected the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of Ohio.

Putnam died on May 4, 1824. He was buried at Mound Cemetery in Marietta, Ohio.

==Legacy and honors==

Putnams home in Rutland has been designated a National Historic Landmark in his honor. The town of Putnam, Ohio (now a part of Zanesville, Ohio) was named for him. One of his grandsons, Catharinus Putnam Buckingham, served as a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Putnam
Ministry of Railways has confirmed that no debit or credit card of any bank has been restricted by IRCTC, contrary to the report which suggested the barring of debit card payment option for several banks on IRCTC's website.

By India Today Web Desk: According to a report, Indian Railways online ticketing subsidiary Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) seemed to be in a tussle with some banks. The report claimed that the rail ticketing portal did not allow some banks' debit cards to book tickets online.

The report claimed that the banks were barred because they refused to share a portion of the convenience fee which they charge customers through the portal.

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However, the Ministry of Railways denied the charges. It said that debit cards of all banks were accepted through the seven payment gateways on its website.

No Debit/Credit Card of any bank has been restricted by IRCTC 4 acceptance on any of Gateways as has been misrepresented by some of the news pic.twitter.com/Wjm51sWKvD- Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) September 22, 2017

Debit Cards of all the banks are accepted through 7 Payment Gateways at IRCTC for booking of tickets. 2/3- IRCTC (@IRCTC_Ltd) September 22, 2017

Matter has been taken up with the concerned editor for issuing rejoinder/clarification abt d misleading news. 3/3 pic.twitter.com/15uF1gdeuT- IRCTC (@IRCTC_Ltd) September 22, 2017

DISTRIBUTION OF FEES

Since May, IRCTC and the banks have been trying to come to an accord over the distribution of fees on online booking of rail tickets.

After PM Narendra Modi's demonetisation, IRCTC waived the Rs 20 convenience fee which it charged customers who booked tickets online.

However, it also expected banks to share a part of the convenience fee that they charge customers.

"Every day we are losing 50,000 transactions. Normally, the merchant pays the acquiring bank. But, since IRCTC does not pay us, we were recovering our costs from customers and that is how it had been all these years," a report quoted an SBI official as saying.

MERCHANT DISCOUNT RATE

MDR is the rate charged to a merchant (business/seller) by a bank for providing debit and credit card services.

RBI had earlier lowered MDR charges on payments made through debit cards to 0.25 per cent for payment up to Rs 1,000.

The MDR for debit card payments, including payments made to government, will be capped at 0.25 per cent for transactions up to Rs 1,000 and 0.5 per cent between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000, RBI had said.

SERVICE TAX

IRCTC's website presently allows card payments from banks such as Indian Overseas Bank, Canara Bank, United Bank of India, Indian Bank, Central Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.

After demonetisation, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the withdrawal of service tax on railway tickets booked through IRCTC website. The announcement was made during the Budget 2017 presentation in the Parliament.

--- ENDS ---

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An international panel of judges declared Friday that the Myanmar government was guilty of committing genocide against Rohingya Muslims, who have been fleeing the country following months of military crackdowns against the minority group.

The Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT), a network of scholars and experts from around the globe, delivered its verdict after five days of hearings and testimony from witnesses in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

[T]he State of Myanmar is guilty of the crime of genocide against the Rohingya group, Daniel Feierstein, an Argentinian jurist who headed the panel, said in reading out its unanimous verdict at the University of Malaya.

Moreover, that genocide against the Rohingya is now taking place with ongoing acts of genocide and the possibility the casualties of that genocide could be even higher in the future if nothing is done to stop it, he went on to say.

Top UN officials have described what's occurring in Myanmars northwest state of Rakhine as "ethnic cleansing," but have not used the term "genocide." Ethnic cleansing, unlike genocide, has not been designated as an independent crime under international law.

Crimes against the Rohingya qualified as genocide because Myanmar had pursued systematic policies of discrimination and physical elimination, and active denial of identity and culture against them, the PPT said.

The panel gathered evidence from witnesses, experts and prosecutors showing there was systematic use of the whole spectrum of atrocious violations of the right to life and dignity of the affected populations.

Raping of women was possibly the most conspicuously present, beside the killing and burning of children and elderly, tortures, and the long list of acts included in the definitions of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of war, the tribunal added.

More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled into Bangladesh in the past year amid what Amnesty International called mass scale scorched-earth campaigns in Rakhine state.

Myanmars military had launched security operations in Rakhine after Rohingya militants attacked police posts and killed some two dozen security forces. About 1,000 people have been killed in clashes and security sweeps, according to the U.N.

The verdict by the experts on Friday marked the first time international jurists had described the situation in Rakhine as genocide.

Myanmar government representatives did not testify during the hearings, or respond to requests to appear before the tribunal, according to PPT officials. The Myanmar embassy in the Malaysian capital did not respond to calls from BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Total impunity

The tribunal also found that the Myanmar government had genocidal intent against other Muslims in the country, and the Kachin people, and that it had committed crimes of humanity against them.

The Kachin ethnic group lives in northern Burma's Kachin State. Rebels in Kachin have been fighting for decades for independence or autonomy within a federal Myanmar, which successive governments of the ethnically diverse country have long rejected.

The Permanent Peoples Tribunal  founded in 1979 and headquartered in Italy  is an opinion tribunal whose rulings are not legally binding. It began deliberations in London in March into whether state crimes were being committed against various groups in Myanmar.

The tribunal will forward its findings to international bodies and civil groups in order to keep pressure on the Myanmar authorities, Feierstein told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

The six other panelists were human rights lawyers Nursyahbani Katjasungkana of Indonesia and Shadi Sadr of Iran; Helen Jarvis, an Australian-Cambodian jurist; Gill Boehringer, former dean of the law school at Australias Macquarie University; Nello Rossi, an Italian solicitor-general; and Zulaiha Ismail, a trustee at Malaysias Perdana Global Peace Foundation.

Hasina addresses UN

Myanmar government officials have blamed atrocities, including the burnings of hundreds of Rohingya homes in Rakhine, on the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which it had branded as a terrorist group.

During her address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called on Myanmar to stop the violence and the practice of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine immediately and without condition.

She also called for safe zones to be created in Rakhine so all communities living there could be protected irrespective of religion and ethnicity.

On Friday, the U.N.s resident coordinator in Bangladesh said the United Nations would need $200 million over the next six months to deal with the unprecedented influx of refugees from Rakhine.

Earlier this week, the United States announced that it would provide close to $32 million in new humanitarian aid to help with the refugee situation in southeastern Bangladesh and Rohingya who were displaced within Rakhine.

Speaking before the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence also called on Myanmars security forces to end the violence immediately. The images of the violence and its victims have shocked the American people and decent people all over the world, he said.

In a speech to diplomats in Naypyidaw earlier this week, de facto Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said there had been no further clashes or clearance operations after Sept. 5, and claimed that any human rights violations would be addressed with strict norms of justice.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
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A year after Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's death, AIADMK member claims that he was forced to lie about her health and her days in Apollo Hospital.

By Pramod Madhav: Late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo hospital on September 22 last year. Social media was abuzz with the Tamil Nadu citizens sharing messages about her.

Among them was Dindigul Sreenivasan, who last week courted controversy by saying that VK Sasikala's family was responsible for J Jayalalithaa's death.

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Sreenivasan on Friday said that he had to lie about the late chief minister's death because of pressure.

J Jayalalithaa was in hospital for 72 days, and for close to 65 days, the hospital management and party functionaries claimed that she was doing fine. They had also said that Amma was signing files and party related documents. There was also a government release that she conducted meetings with government officials on Cauvery issue.

C Sreenivasan debunked the government and hospital's version.

"We were compelled to lie about her health. Like many others, even I said that she was having idli and chutni just to make the people believe that she was doing fine. I had to do it to protect the party, stated Sreenivasan. He said that no matter who visited the hospital, they were not allowed to meet Jayalalitha which included Rahul Gandhi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, BJP President Amit Shah and even the State's Governor Vidyasagar Rao.

"When they came to the hospital, they were made to sit in the hospital owner, Pratap Reddy's room. Sasikala would come down and talk to them and they will return, that's all. No one was allowed into the floor where she was kept," he stated.

Replying to Sreenivasan was TTV Dhinakaran who came to VK Sasikala's defence saying, "My aunt Sasikala was also not able to see Amma after October 1 fearing infection. Governor also met her. And saw her condition. Do you mean to say he is lying? These ministers are changing their stand for power and money."

On October 1, AIADMK leader B Valarmathi had told the media that Amma was doing well.

It was only after October 1, that Apollo Hospital issued statements about Jayalalithaa's respiratory problem. But again on November 13, a signed letter by Amma was sent across to media, stating that she had had a rebirth thanks to the love of her people.

She then passed away on December 5, after suffering a cardiac arrest on December 4.

C Sreenivasan might have said this to point fingers at TTV Dhinakaran and VK Sasikala, but did not realise the questions that this statement of his will give rise to.

--- ENDS ---

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Every sixth-grade student in Richmond Public Schools will receive environmental education focused on the James River, thanks to a federal grant awarded Friday.

The $445,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was announced at Great Shiplock Park in Richmond. The money, which is for three years, will allow students in sixth grade from all eight of the citys middle schools  about 1,600 students total  to take part in the Students Investigating Urban Parks program next month. Science teachers in the district also are receiving professional development focused on sixth-grade Standards of Learning guidelines.

Representatives from NOAA, the city, the James River Association and the Virginia Department of Education gathered at the Shockoe Bottom park to praise the nearby river, the funding and the opportunities for students.

It only makes us better as a city, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said.

Through the Students Investigating Urban Parks program, students will do field-based investigations on systems that affect the health of the James in river parks.

We need to work together to ensure that we can continue to open doors and unlock our river, Stoney said. It doesnt matter what neighborhood you live in, or what your financial circumstance is, we can reach down and pull you up and give you the opportunity to enjoy the river like everyone in the region.

The James River Association and the Virginia Department of Education had to apply for the grant, which is being given to nine entities total. NOAA is also giving grant money  about $1 million total  to Friends of the Rappahannock; the Elizabeth River Project; the Boxerwood Nature Center; and the Arlington, Hampton, Spotsylvania and York county school systems to help improve environmental education in the state.

The funding for Richmond students is the largest grant.

Expanding the classroom and creating ways for students to read differently and to do math differently and creating excitement for them is what we need to do, said David Myers, the chief financial officer for Richmond schools,

This is the type of partnership that will allow that, added Myers, who spoke at the news conference in place of interim Superintendent Tommy Kranz.

Speakers highlighted the importance of expanding the rivers tourism and engagement. About 1.4 million people visited the James River Park System in 2016, according to an economic impact study done by Virginia Commonwealth University. More than 800,000 of those visitors were not from Richmond.

Bill Street, CEO of the James River Association, said teachers will be able to incorporate more environmental education into their curriculum and that the impact of the funding will carry on even after the three years its allotted for.
Several people arrested on charges related to the Aug. 12 white nationalist rally appeared in Charlottesville court Friday, including one man who pleaded guilty to throwing a water bottle at the ralliers.

When Troy Dunigan, 21, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, decided to see what was happening at the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville, he said his frustration got the better of him.

When he heard the chanting  Jews will not replace us.  and saw Nazi flags, Dunigan said he threw an empty water bottle at the group of white nationalists gathered in Emancipation Park. He was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Honestly, Im proud of it, Dunigan said. Nazis are evil. They shouldnt be allowed to march, preaching hate.

After pleading guilty, Dunigan will pay a $200 fine.

Also on Friday, two men accused of assaulting Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler at a news conference he held the day after the rally appeared in court. Edgar Collins and Jeffrey Winder both face misdemeanor assault charges.

Both cases were continued until Nov. 17.

Jeff Fogel, who represents Collins, said it was disturbing that his client faces a charge for reportedly pushing Kessler, but that Kessler is not facing any consequences for organizing the rally that ended with a car attack that left one woman dead and dozens of others injured.

Kessler is responsible for bringing Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan to our community, Fogel said. He knew how dangerous these people are.

Why isnt Jason Kessler being held responsible for what happened in our community, he asked.

Fogel said Collins has expressed regret for his actions but said its sometimes hard for people to control their emotions during times of extreme emotion or duress.

I dont want to encourage violence, but sometimes people react during emotional times, said Fogel.

James OBrien, from Gainesville, Florida, who faces a charge of carrying a concealed firearm on Aug. 12, also appeared in court Friday. His case was continued until Nov. 20 to give him more time to find an attorney.
Karan Kundrra and Anusha Dandekar will tie the knot in December, according to reports.

By India Today Web Desk: TV couple Karan Kundrra and Anusha Dandekar have been in a relationship for a while now. The two were last seen together in reality show MTV Love School as love gurus. And the two often share adorable pictures of themselves together on various social media sites.

Recently there were reports that the actors were planning to make things official, and tie the knot this December. After all, many celebs are set to marry this year, including comedy queen Bharti Singh and Naagin star Aashka Goradia.

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However, looks like the wedding rumours about Anusha and Karan are not true at all as the actor himself told ABP News that he is not tying the knot anytime soon.

"No, we are not getting married yet. We won't get married anytime soon," the actor told ABP.

--- ENDS ---
By G. Gilmer Minor III and Dennis H. Treacy

Tomorrow, the Virginia Business Higher Education Council will launch a 100-day campaign to promote reform and reinvestment in our commonwealths top-ranked higher education system.

The program, called GROWTH4VA, has a three-fold purpose: to help grow the Virginia economy, expand access to education and job opportunities for all Virginians, and regain Virginias No. 1 ranking for business.

Why are leaders of Virginias businesses, large and small, so committed to supporting and strengthening our higher education system?

One major reason is the unparalleled return on investment for our commonwealth and its citizens.

According to the latest analysis, Virginias public colleges, universities, and community colleges contribute more than $36 billion to Virginias Gross State Product and support more than 167,000 jobs.

Each dollar spent on Virginias public higher education system produces $21 in economic output and over time returns $1.92 to the state treasury  an investment that more than pays for itself.

For individual Virginians, a college degree or industry-recognized credential is indispensable in the New Economy. Since the recessions of the past decade, the percentage of U.S. jobs requiring a college degree has climbed sharply, and college graduates today on average earn more than twice what those without degrees earn.

***

But there is another major reason for the Virginia business communitys commitment to our higher education system: We Virginians are trustees of a unique asset.

Our diverse system of public and private colleges, universities, and community colleges in Virginia is the nations best. Indeed, the cascade of top national rankings for quality, value, and return on investment is so constant that we easily could take our schools standout status for granted.

Over the past decade, Virginias public four-year colleges and universities have met the objectives of state policymakers by increasing enrollment sharply and broadening the base of Virginia students served. At the same time, they have improved student outcomes, achieving the second-highest graduation rates in the country.

As stewards of tax and tuition dollars, our higher education institutions have performed remarkably well. They have produced these top rankings while generally spending the same or less per student  and often much less  than what their peer institutions spend.

While Virginia ranks at the top for higher education results, we rank near the bottom among the states  44th in 2015  in per-student state support.

At a time when it has become fashionable in some circles to attack our major institutions, including higher education, Virginians take a different view. In a recent poll, large majorities across the political spectrum expressed the opinion that our Virginia higher education system is a valuable public asset, is well run, and is a sound place to invest public dollars.

Virginians are proud of our great schools and are eager to send their sons and daughters there for a top-quality education.

Our elected leaders in both parties share this supportive view.

Over the past decade, our General Assembly and governors have worked together to expand and modernize campus infrastructure, reverse the funding cuts forced by recent recessions, and introduce reforms that enhance performance and economic impact throughout the higher education system.They have worked in partnership with business and higher education leaders to chart a long-term course that will make Virginia the best educated state, preparing Virginians for the top jobs of the 21st century.

All this, however, is not enough.

***

The business community is engaged anew on higher education, working closely with our partners on college campuses, because our commonwealth faces major challenges.

Economic growth is too slow, and business rankings have slipped. Federal funding that has long fueled our economy is slackening.

While unemployment is low, too many high-paying jobs and bright young people are leaving our state. Virginia business growth is stunted by the inability to find properly trained workers. Virginia families find it harder and harder to afford the opportunity that a college degree or industry-recognized credential provides. And students often enter the workforce saddled with significant debt.

As in every field, business models in higher education are changing, making reform, innovation, and increased efficiency essential. Our Virginia colleges, universities, and community colleges have been working hard to adapt and improve, and they will have to work even harder and smarter in the future.

State policy, likewise, will need to evolve, with regulatory and funding decisions becoming more strategic, predictable, and focused on the outcomes that matter most to students and the Virginia economy.

Indeed, the need for positive change is the reason for the 4 in GROWTH4VA.

During the next 100 days, we will be discussing four key strategies to strengthen our standout higher education system and to increase its impact on economic opportunity for all Virginians.

Our colleges, universities, and community colleges in Virginia are stepping up to help achieve these goals, and we in the business community will be stepping up with them. We will be offering practical policies and creative ideas focused on these four strategies:

making Virginia the top state for talent;

gaining recognition as the home of innovators and entrepreneurs;

preparing Virginians for great jobs and great lives;

providing affordable access for all Virginians.

We are confident that Virginias bipartisan leadership will be full partners in this effort, as they have been for the past decade. The business community is especially pleased that both major-party candidates for governor have offered detailed, forward-looking proposals that can help achieve the goals we have outlined.

In the final analysis, realizing Virginias full potential for growth and opportunity is not just the business of business  it is the business of every Virginian.

So visit growth4va.com, join our GROWTH4VA coalition, and let your voice be heard. We will keep you informed of our progress.

Together, we can make Virginia the best place in America to live, learn, work, raise a family, and start and grow a business. Most important, we can make it a thriving community and commonwealth of opportunity for all.
The Constitution clearly outlines the responsibilities for Congress and its duties for the national defense, specifically to raise an army and to build and maintain a navy. Congress accomplishes these duties by budgeting and properly funding our armed forces  but properly funding and budgeting our military does not mean passing Continuing Resolutions (CRs).

Passing CRs has become the norm in Washington for the past eight years. A CR keeps last years funding the same until a budget can eventually be passed. In addition to stagnant funding, a CR does not allow for new starts of programs, maintenance contracts, end strength increases, or even the money to simply transfer military members and their families from duty station to duty station. The armed services simply cannot budget. We would never expect a corporation, small business, or even a household to operate like this, yet we have continued to ask our military to do this year after year. CRs have sent the signal to our military to continue to do more with less and to operate in uncertainty.

Every day our global threats are increasing. North Korea continues to grow more provocative and dangerous in its quest to successfully launch a nuclear missile, creating instability in the Asia-Pacific region; Russia and Iran continue to create instability in their regions; we are still engaged in defeating the Islamic State, and global terror threats remain very real. However, our defense budget stands still. We continue to ask more and more of our men and women in uniform, while at the same time refusing to provide the resources they need to do their jobs. This is unsustainable.

In fact, in a letter to Congress, Secretary of Defense Mattis outlined the damage the current CR will do to the U.S. military. The damage includes:

Navy and Marine Corps:

Eleven ships will remain at sea without needed repairs, because the CR prevents critical maintenance. This will force others to deploy with insufficient training, and slow the Navys ability to repair other ships in 2018. At a time when half of all naval aircraft cannot fly, the Navy will be forced to exacerbate its readiness crisis by cutting flight training time for pilots.

Air Force:

The Air Force is short more than 1,000 pilots. Under a CR it will not be able to stand up F-16 training squadrons essential to getting new pilots in the air, further reducing the pool of properly trained pilots.

Despite the damage that CRs bring to our national defense and security, Congress just recently voted on yet another three-month short-term CR, which will fund our government through Dec. 8 but continue to hamstring our military in the process. After continuous warnings from our naval officers about its direct negative effects, this CR was something I could not support  and as I have done with every CR in the past, I voted against it.

Passing CRs is a short-term solution to a long-term problem and, quite simply, an abdication of Congress duties and responsibilities. Moving forward, Congress must do better for our military and for our men and women in uniform and we must do our part to ensure they have the tools they need to be successful. Going into Fiscal Year 2018 we have a chance to get back to regular order in the budget process, and I remain committed to providing a path of fiscal certainty for our armed services. Its our job. Its our duty.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

A lone protester paced in front of Harvard Universitys admissions office on a foggy Monday morning. He was peaceful and respectful of peoples space and ability to navigate the sidewalks, yet he made his point with a variety of signs he had with him that he interchanged during the day.

The right we have in this county to either join in with other citizens or march solely to protest is crucial to a healthy democracy  and it is the very essence of the rights allowed us by the First Amendment.

It is what we do. It is what we have always done. Throughout our history, it has drawn attention to grievances. Some were right; some were wrong. But all of them have forced us to discuss the virtue of each individual issue.

Peaceful protests have defined us. When they turn violent, they demoralize us.

Last weekend, protests in St. Louis, Mo., erupted following the Friday acquittal of a white former police officer of first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting death of a 24-year-old black man.

At first, the protests that began early in the evening were peaceful and orderly. The protesters vented their concerns and hurt, and the police gave them a wide berth to do so. Then came nightfall.

By midnight, the St. Louis Police chief, Lawrence OToole, said 33 people had been arrested and 10 police officers had suffered injuries.

In a joint video statement with Mayor Lyda Krewson, he said: Many of the demonstrators were peaceful. However, after dark, many agitators began to destroy property and assault police officers.

On Saturday, bat- and hammer-carrying protesters shattered windows and played a cat-and-mouse game with police that resulted in nine arrests.

By Sunday night, the number of protesters had swelled to more than 1,000; again the protesters began peacefully and then went dark and violent. More than 80 people were arrested as demonstrators smashed businesses windows and repeatedly tried to block an interstate ramp.

All of this takes away the very essence of what the peaceful protests were trying to project: Many mothers and sisters and wives worry that their sons and brothers and husbands will be the target of profiling.

There is nothing wrong with having that conversation. Ive seen an abundance of efforts across the country of law enforcement and minority communities to know one another outside of the biases through which each side sees the other. Most of them have been successful.

All police officers should not be judged by the actions of the few. All young black males should not be judged by the actions of the few either. None of this is easy. Yes, it is an uncomfortable conversation, but anything with great virtue begins with awkward and uncomfortable conversations.

The deeper problem is that the agitators who destroy businesses have no regard for authority, private property, or the community in which they live. They are looking for attention, and they are getting it in spades; their antics own social media, newscasts, and print articles and make everyone wonder whether the country is falling apart.

I would argue that the country is not falling apart and that the actions of the few should not be heightened in profile over the actions of the many.

In the 49 states and hundreds of thousands of miles I have traveled in this country, the values and virtues of the people are much more reflected in the compassion and sacrifice we saw in the aftermath of Harvey and Irma than in the protests in Charlottesville and St. Louis, or the antics of the far-left-leaning Antifa movement in Berkeley, Calif.
The nation watched with hope as Mexicans struggled together in the aftermath of a violent earthquake Tuesday that killed at least 250 people.

A doctor volunteered to climb through the ruins of the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school in Mexico City, risking his life to search for children.

Dr. Pedro Serrano crawled on his stomach in crevices to a classroom, only to find a girl, a woman and a man dead, he told The Associated Press.

Then Mexicos elite volunteer rescue team Los Topos, the Moles, combed through the schools debris by hand, carefully removing pieces of concrete and lumber in their search for survivors.

Los Topos raised fists to command silence in hopes of hearing faint sounds of life. More than 25 people died at the three-story school when a wing fell onto itself.

As anguished family members waited, strangers rushed to the school and to similar scenes around the capital, bringing water and food and staying to pray. The 7.1-magnitude quake toppled dozens of buildings in the capital alone.

This is the spirit of Mexico, a volunteer in Mexico City told CNN. Thats our community in general; it crosses classes  if you are rich or poor  and any other divide.

The images were heartbreaking and heroic, just as they were after hurricanes in Houston, the Keys, along the East Coast, and in Puerto Rico. Sadly, heroic is a word we seldom associate with Mexico. Our politicians for generations have promoted a dark cartoon version of our southern neighbor.

Since after World War I, some politicians have blamed Mexicans for bringing crime and drugs into the country, although most Mexicans come to work and employers rely on them.

In 1919, a Page 1 headline in The New York Times warned: Anarchists Flood Here from Mexico  Dangerous Aliens Smuggled Across Border at Rate of 100 a Day  Stricter Laws Needed.

During the 1920s, politicians and pundits in the Southwest made the eugenic argument that Mexican immigrants would destroy white civilization,  historian Neil Foley writes in his 2014 book, Mexicans in the Making of America.

During the Depression, the United States deported half a million Mexicans when jobs here were scarce, but during World War II, the U.S. welcomed tens of thousands of braceros, mostly farm workers, from Mexico.

In the 1950s, Operation Wetback again deported Mexicans, writes Foley, chair of the history department at SMU. A Mexican-American, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Virginia.

The latest politician to malign Mexico and Mexicans to his benefit is Donald Trump. They are not our friend, believe me, Trump said when he announced his candidacy for president. He blamed Mexico for stealing our jobs, hurting our economy in trade and exporting its problems.

When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best, he said. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems ... Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists, he said and added, grudgingly, And some, I assume, are good people.

His vow to build a wall along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for it was a centerpiece of his campaign, and he still says that will happen.

After Mexico suffered an earthquake Sept. 7 that killed at least 90 people, Trump was criticized for his slow response in offering sympathy and support. This week, though, he quickly extended a hand, tweeting a couple of hours after the quake: God bless the people of Mexico City. We are with you and will be there for you.

He called Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto Wednesday to offer condolences, assistance and rescue teams, the White House said.

The snapshots from earthquake-devastated Mexico and the hurricane-ravaged United States show that more unites than separates us. As humans, we all suffer from the capriciousness of nature.

The president is right to stand with Mexico in its hour of need. Well see how long the era of good feeling lasts, but its a start. We need each other  as heroes more than scapegoats.
Athira, a 23-year-old woman, who had earlier converted to Islam has now returned to Hinduism claiming that she did not realize the significance of her religion.

By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan: Athira, a 23-year-old woman, who had earlier converted to Islam has now returned to Hinduism claiming that she did not realize the significance of her religion.

Athira, a native of Kasargod, earlier this year converted to Islam. After her family complained that she had gone missing, Athira made a public appearance in July. Dressed in hijab, she clearly stated that she had converted to Islam on her free will. However, last day, she made yet another public appearance this time with her parents. The 23-year-old, who started off the press conference, with an 'Om Namah Shivaya' said that she had decided to return her own faith, Hinduism.

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From books to Zakir Naik

Speaking exclusively to India Today, Athira revealed the whole story.

"During my college days most of my friends were Muslims. Some of them started to initiate religious conversations and they used to tell that Hindu beliefs were not authentic I didn't have any response as I knew nothing about my religion. Influenced by them, I misunderstood that Islam is the only true religion. They used to give me books to read. I was really frightened after reading the descriptions of hell.

"I used to listen to speeches including that of Zakir Naik. After all these, I misunderstood that Islam is the only true religion. I blindly believed in Islam. That's when I decided to choose Islam, " Athira says.

When asked about the influence of external forces, Athria clearly says that nobody had influenced her to convert. Her friends only shared some religious texts with her for learning.

Athira to Ayisha

Influenced by her friends and religious texts, Athira decided to embrace Islam. But realizing the objection from her parents she decided to leave her home. On July 10th, she left home leaving a letter to her parents that she has gone to learn about Islam. After series of judicial battles, Athria decided to go with her parents under the condition that they would not let her practice the religion of her choice. After embracing Islam she also changed her name as Ayisha.

Back to Athira

After a silence of over a month, Athira once again met the media, this time claiming that he has decided to return to Hinduism. The return is believed to be under the counselling of Arsha Vidya Samajam.

Talking about her return, Athira says that after contacting Arya Vidhya Samajam, they asked her to read Quran with logic rather than blind religious belief. "As I started reading it with logic, I started to realize that many things mentioned in the Quran were wrong or illogical.

It was the unawareness about my own religion that forced me to believe in another religion. Now, I'm happy for realizing the fact and returning to Hinduism," concluded Athira.

--- ENDS ---

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A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
The model, reality star and businesswoman is expecting her first child with rapper Travis Scott.

By India Today Web Desk: The head of a cosmetics empire, a model, a reality television star, a socialite, and a social media personality--these are just a few ways you can define Kylie Jenner. But now there's a new title she can be addressed with: Mom-to-be.

Yes, the 20-year-old is pregnant with her first child. She's having the baby with rapper Travis Scott, whom she started dating earlier this year, after her breakup with Tyga.

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Also Read: Maybe Kylie Jenner did not need a lip job, at least not for this reason

A report in People reveals how the news wasn't broken by Kylie, but a source close to her. "This is the happiest she's ever been," the source is said to have revealed.

Kylie Jenner, with the rest of the Kardashian-Jennner women. Picture courtesy: Instagram/kyliejenner

While the couple shared the news with their friends a few weeks back, their families have known for quite a while. "It is an unexpected but completely amazing turn of events that she could not be more excited or thrilled about," the source said.

Kylie Jenner, with boyfriend Travis Scott. Picture courtesy: Instagram/thebbbuzz

Also Read: Kylie Jenner's sweatshirt-necklace will make your brain burst

Representatives for both Kylie and Travis are yet to come out with a statement, but the news has already got people excited. Kylie isn't the only one, however, to be adding to the Kardashian-Jenner brood. Her sister, Kim Kardashian West is also expecting her third child through surrogacy.

With Kylie expected to deliver in February, it looks like 2018 will be a time for great celebrations for the Kardashians.

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An 18-year-old man died in a single-vehicle crash in Floyd County on Friday night, state police said.

Morgan Daniel Phillips, 18, of Indian Valley, died at the scene. Morgan, the passenger in the car, was not wearing his seat belt.

The driver, Zachary Jonah Todd Quesenberry, 21, of Willis, was taken to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital for treatment of his injuries. He was also not wearing his seat belt.

A 2004 Chevrolet Impala was southbound on Virginia 730, approaching Virginia 749 near Indian Valley, about 7:20 p.m. when it ran off the left side of the road, then crossed the road to the right side and then struck several trees, state police said.

The Virginia State Police crash reconstruction team assisted the investigation, which is continuing.
Its taken 60 years and billions of dollars, but mass transit is finally coming to Dulles International Airport outside the nations capital. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is ready to open the second and final phase of its Silver Line Metrorail extension on Nov. 15. The six new stations will for the first time connect the airport and the outer suburbs of Loudoun County to the regions flagship mass transit system. But the Silver Line extension comes at a time when ridership on Metro remains at roughly half of what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Metro officials say the long-term vision of those who pushed for the line will be vindicated as riders return.
At a seemingly routine meeting of top officials he chaired at Vallabh Bhavan, the state secretariat in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told those present to ensure that revenue documents to farmers be distributed in an utsav (celebration). Many would have wondered why something that was part of routine administrative work needed celebrating. The politically savvy, however, knew why: if the government could announce it was in election mode without saying as much, this was the way to do it.

Seeking a fourth term for himself and the BJP, Chouhan is aware of the enormous task ahead of him. His biggest strength, however, is the disarray in the Congress and its inability to raise issues, besides his own popularity and targeted government interventions for specific groups.

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Social schemes, according to strategists in Team Shivraj, remain the main weapon in Chouhan's electioneering arsenal in the run-up to 2018. The Laadli Laxmi and Mukhyamantri Kanyadaan Yojana had helped him reap electoral dividends in previous terms. This time he is banking on the Narmada Seva Yatra, the mass contact programme he launched in the middle of last December and which ended in May, covering 70 of the 230 assembly constituencies in 16 of MP's 51 districts. One fallout of the yatra was the banning of mechanised sand mining, closing down of liquor shops within a five-kilometre radius of the Narmada and proposed sewage treatment plants in 18 towns.

"Chouhan has always focused on the social sector for winning elections," said veteran political commentator Girija Shankar. "In the past elections, it was bijli, sadak, pani issues. With these addressed, at least in the mind of the government, social sector schemes are being seen as the new vote-getters."

So, bijli, sadak, pani done, the focus has shifted to roti and makaan. In March, the state passed the MP Economically Weak and Low Income Group Right to Housing Act that aims to provide the state's financially weak residents the right to a house or land for building one. The state government aims to build 1.1 million houses in rural areas by 2018 and 389,000 this year. In urban areas, the target is to build 5,00,000 houses by 2018 and 1 million by 2022. Ambitious though the scheme may sound, it could strike a chord among the rural and urban poor. The CM has on many occasions said how his heart bleeds for squatters on government land who are evicted by the administration. While this is a clear message to the administration not to raze illegal slums or evict hawkers and others running commercial activities on government land, the CM has also announced a scheme to regularise illegal colonies saying home buyers in such colonies cannot be penalised for the sins of the builder.

And if the way to the hearts of the poor is through their stomachs, then the Deen Dayal rasoi (kitchen) is doing a good job. Running in all 52 districts of the state, under the scheme 26,000 people on an average are said to be eating a Rs 5 per meal every day.

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Chouhan has also announced a Mukhyamantri Medhavi Vidyarthi Yojana under which the state government will sponsor students wishing to pursue higher education in engineering, law, medicine, arts, sciences and commerce in pre-notified colleges outside the state. All students who are residents of MP, whose guardians have an annual income under Rs 6 lakh and have scored over 75 per cent in state boards or 85 per cent in other boards are eligible. Of course, there is a maximum limit to the fee payable. Some 9,00,000 students appear for the Class 12 exam in MP every year of which an estimated 70 per cent would be eligible for the benefit. A majority of these students would have already got uniforms and bicycles in junior classes. Ergo, the CM will have a captive vote bank in both the students and their parents.

Interestingly, all these schemes cut across the caste divide. The kitchens serve all, the housing scheme covers all and the student's scholarship scheme is for everyone. It was the same for his previous schemes, be it Laadli Laxmi or the Mukhyamantri Kanyadaan. Chouhan would rather stitch up a broad coalition than target SC/ ST groups as the past governments did.

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At the macro level, Chouhan's campaign pitch will involve speaking about double-digit GDP growth rate in general and the agricultural growth rate in particular, which is expected to clock more than 20 per cent this year. Depending on who is in the audience, Chouhan will also talk of increased power supply and generation, expanded road network and irrigation potential. The one thing he probably won't talk about is industry because the state's record on that score remains pretty dismal.

Chouhan also remains popular both within the state and the party. He comes across as earnest, someone whom the public perceives as 'one of us'. Seen as the liberal face of the party, he is also popular among the minorities. Muslims constitute 6-7 per cent of the state's population and are present in about 20 assembly segments concentrated in the western and central MP urban areas, where their vote can swing outcomes. Winnability alone will determine Chouhan's strategy for these seats unlike the tokenism the Congress is believed to indulge in. Right of centre groups, cow vigilantes and the like have a free run in places where polarisation can win seats. However, this is not the case elsewhere where the Muslims have aligned themselves with the BJP leaders in some way.

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What the chief minister needs to do most, though, is win back the trust of the farmers, post the agitation that rocked the state earlier this year. The state government has already announced a bhaavantar or price difference scheme. Massive payouts of crop relief are likely, given the deficient rainfall across the state.

While many thought Chouhan might follow Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's lead on prohibition to woo women voters, the CM does not seem keen on the idea. "We're running campaigns to discourage drinking (see interview)."

What about his plans to counter anti-incumbency? Aware that it might affect his electoral fortunes, the BJP will, based on pre-election surveys, likely deny tickets to at least 20 to 30 per cent of its current MLAs. Changing candidates to counter incumbency is a tactic that has been tried in other states. Some relatives of the MLAs who have been denied tickets may be accommodated to avoid sabotage.

To ensure the smooth distribution of tickets, Chouhan also plans to include a BJP state president who he has a good working relationship with. He would ideally have wanted Narendra Singh Tomar-state BJP president in the 2008 and 2013 elections-but since he is now a Union minister, Chouhan may just have to continue with current incumbent Nandkumar Singh Chauhan.

Chouhan may also capitalise on PM Modi's popularity among urban voters in the state. However, he needs to reassure BJP workers that the bureaucracy is not riding roughshod over them-an oft-repeated allegation in MP.

His best bet, however, is the divided house the Congress is in MP. The faction-ridden party has failed to make political capital on issues such as the high fuel prices, large-scale corruption on the ground and issues plaguing the agricultural sector such as the withdrawal of bonus to wheat farmers when neighbouring Chhattisgarh has reintroduced it for paddy farmers. Chouhan's strategy-if he has that sort of reach within the Opposition-would be to keep the Congress divided. How he will counter the Congress offensive-be it through his kisan putra versus maharaja pitch or by raking up pre- 2003 bijli, sadak and pani indices-will depend on how the Congress resolves its leadership issue. "The CM paints a rosy picture of tomorrow and makes people forget what he had promised but failed to deliver in the past," says leader of the Opposition, Ajay Singh. "Fortunately for him, till the last elections, people had a short-term memory. This won't be the case in 2018."

Indeed, were elections to be held today, Chouhan would be in an enviable position. But there is still a year to go, and the battle-hardened veteran knows all this could well change. The challenge before him is to maintain status quo till the end of next year. Will he be able to pull it off?

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Senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother were found dead in Mohali. Police suspect it could be a double murder case.

By India Today Web Desk: Senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother Gurcharan Kaur were found dead at their residence in Mohali today in a suspected case of double murder.

Singh and Kaur were residents of HN 1796, 3B-2 Mohali in Punjab. KJ Singh was the former news editor of Indian Express and had also worked with the Times of India and the Tribune.

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The SSP of Mohali and other Punjab Police officers have visited the crime scene and an investigation has already been launched. While Singh was found with his throat slit, his mother was found strangulated.

KJ Singh's car, TV and a few other items were found to be missing. Sources said that the perpetrators of the crime are believed to be more than one. SSP Mohali said that the police have ruled out theft as the intention behind the twin murders.

Punjab: Senior Journalist KJ Singh and 92-year-old mother found dead at their residence in Mohali (visuals from outside their residence) pic.twitter.com/yKG4T8U3Os- ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

Singh was in late 60s while his mother was reportedly 92-year-old. After the murder of KJ Singh Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal expressed shock.

I condemn ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators imm.- Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

This is the second incident of murder of a journalist in less than two weeks. Last week, a Tripura-based journalist Shantanu Bhowmick was killed while he was reporting a clash between Indigenous People's Front of Tripura and the Rajaer Upajati Ganamukti Parishad.

KJ Singh's murder comes over a fortnight after the gruesome murder of Karnataka-based journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh .

Lankesh's murder had triggered a nationwide outrage.

--- ENDS ---
French speed-train maker Alstom SA (AOMFF.PK,ALS.L) confirmed that it was in discussions with Siemens about a possible combination of Alstom with Siemens Mobility Division.

"No final decision has been made, discussions are ongoing and no agreement has been reached," Alstom said in a statement Friday.

The boards of Siemens and Alstom are scheduled to meet early next week to approve the deal, which may be announced as early as Tuesday, the bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Aerospace and defense major Airbus Group SE (EADSF.PK,EADSY.PK) is in talks to sell a part or all of Premium Aerotec, a subsidiary that makes large plane components, Die Welt newspaper reported.

The German paper specified that Airbus has held talks with one possible buyer, the Canadian investor Onex.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
By PTI: Kohima, Sep 23 (PTI) Myanmar minister for Ethnic Affairs Sai Kyaw Zaw today invited businessmen from Nagaland to visit Myanmar for business relation.

Zaw said Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh share a land border with Myanmar.

Speaking at the Connect North East Summit here he invited the businessmen from Nagaland to visit Myanmar for business relation and said a lot of businessmen from Manipur and Mizoram visit his country for their business purposes.

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Speaking at the North East Summit, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi emphasised on the need of transforming the potentialities of the North East Region (NER) into measurable goals of success and progress.

The two-day North East Summit has provided an idea of the potentialities of the entire region, Gogoi said while adding that "instead of holding on to the potentialities of the region, it is time to change the potentials to measurable goals of progress and success."

The Lok Sabha MP from Kaliabor, Assam was speaking at the valedictory session of the two-day Connect North East Summit 2017 hosted by Nagaland Government in Kohima.

He expressed hope that the ideas and talking done in the two-day summit would be put into action to take the region forward.

He suggested that Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industries should invite standing committees of the Parliament to such summits so that they would have better knowledge on the requirements of the region.

Former diplomat Gautam Mukhopadhaya said "such summits have been providing an opportunity not only to witness the potential of North East region, but also the neglect of infrastructure development in the region".

"North East needs to be turned into a more productive region by providing market linkages of the local products, and uplifting it from a mere consumer state," he said.

He appealed to FICCI to enhance entrepreneurship in the region by providing finances and also opening of NE Product Centres in the Metropolitan cities.

Nagaland Chief Secretary Pankaj Kumar said that the two-day Connect North East Summit has provided a very useful platform for Government of India and government of North Eastern states, neighbouring countries and other countries having interest in development of the North East Region (NER).

In his valedictory address, Kumar said this would also enable the national and international multi sectoral organisations, various public sector organisations to come together and place ideas, perspective and expertise and network in the information time space to take NER connectivity to the next level.

The Chief Secretary also conveyed gratitude to the dignitaries from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Japan, Laos, Myanmar, Russia and Thailand for providing the broad canvas on which NER connectivity issues have to be dealt with. PTI NBS RG

--- ENDS ---

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By SA Commercial Prop News

Malusi Gigaba: SA Public Enterprises Minister



South Africa stands ready to work at bringing in necessary investment that will ensure the success of the massive infrastructure roll-out plan, says Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba.

Speaking at an investor conference in Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape on Wednesday, Gigaba said the value of infrastructure investment was that it promoted economic activity by creating intermediary industries as well as creating economic activity. However, the success of industrial development depended on matters such as the provision of quality and efficiency of the social and economic infrastructure.

The infrastructure plan lists 17 strategic integrated projects that cut across rail, road, schools and hospital construction. The projects cover a range of economic and social infrastructure across all nine provinces with emphasis on poorer regions.

"It will be necessary to attract strategic anchor industrial investors through offering appropriate infrastructure at special prices in the hope that more investors will follow and push for the establishment of production centres outside the cities to rural towns to stimulate economic transactions and revive rural economies.

"At times, it will be necessary to provide additional incentives to the investors to make up for the absence of a supporting cluster and to accept losses on the infrastructure until economies of scale are built. Surviving this hard slog will require a high level of vision, commitment and determination. Let me state unequivocally that we have the will to drive this hard slog and are willing to incur the economic cost," explained Gigaba.

The minister added that the Eastern Cape was ideally located as a container trans-shipment hub between the Americas.

Additionally, the province has sophisticated manufacturing capabilities especially in automotives. He added that it "needs to expand its economic base" if high unemployment levels are to be reduced.

"It is only through bold new infrastructure investments, together with skilling our people, that we can create the conditions for investments in qualitatively new anchor industries," he said, adding that it was necessary to prioritise strategic anchor investments and as well as what kinds of infrastructure will be required.

Last month President Jacob Zuma officially opened the new multi-billion Rand Port of Ngqura, which forms part of the Coega Industrial Development Zone, situated outside Port Elizabeth.

"We need to unlock Ngqura's potential as a major trans-shipment hub as a matter of urgency. Major shipping lines have invested in feeder ports in both the West and the East coast of Africa which will create efficient logistics chains between Ngqura and growing African middle class consumer and industrial markets. This will give South Africa a unique competitive advantage in accessing these economies," he said.

The automotive industry, he said, needs to build "a critical mass to become globally competitive". He added that it was necessary to ensure that state owned enterprises prioritise the provision of infrastructure to this sector.
The winners of the Samoa Observer Schools Short story competition were presented with their prizes on Thursday at S.S.A.Bs Conference room.

The prize giving ended this years competition, which saw more than 650 entries from across the country.

The annual competition has been run by the Samoa Observer since 2011 with huge support from sponsors, Samoa Stationery and Books (S.S.A.B) who have been with the competition from the very start as a major sponsor, while Eveni joined the Samoa Observer and S.S.A.B. in 2016.

President and Owner of S.S.A.B, Fiti Leung Wai, congratulated all the winners for their efforts.

She also challenged them to continue to write, noting that Samoa needs more internationally recognised authors and poets.

Mrs. Leung Wai said S.S.A.B is proud to be associated with such competitions because they promote literacy, something education in Samoa sorely needs.

The ceremony was led by Pastor Faafetai Fata, of the Apia Harvest Centre Church, who urged the students, parents and teachers to never give up.

He said the principle of sowing and reaping is not only a Biblical principle, it works in every facet of life. That means if students continue to read, write and study hard, they will succeed.

The idea for the competition came from the Editor-in-Chief of the Samoa Observer, Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa. The idea grew out of the Newspapers in Education feature of the Monday edition.

The stories were independently judged by a panel including Professor Silafau Sina Vaai, Papalii Momoe Malietoa, Julie Perelini, Fiona Collins Toalepai and Asolelei Toalepai.

PRIZE WINNERS 2017

Year 6 Samoan

3rd Fuatai Salani, Samoa Primary.

2nd Vaasa Mulinuu, Samoa Primary.

1st Anamaria Falepau, Nofoalii Primary.

Year 6 English

3rd Mahina Warren, Vaiala Beach School.

2nd Ruta Leota, Samoa Primary.

1st Maselina Hazelman, St Marys Primary.

Year 7 Samoan

3rd Paul Sua Paulo, Samoa Primary.

2nd Tamana Tanielu, Samoa Primary.

1st Sainte Kolio, Vaimoso Primary.

Year 7 English

3rd Sommer Lemisio, Robert Louis Stevenson.

2nd Kathryn Tualaulelei, Samoa Primary.

1st Rosa Meredith, Vaiala Beach School.

Year 8 Samoan

3rd Malua Fidow, Asaga Primary.

2nd Brendan Siliva, Lalomalava Primary.

1st Anzarae Anzac, Lalomalava Primary.

Year 8 English

3rd Rosemary Sulifoa, St Theresas, Fusi.

2nd Alexia Slaven, Vaiala Beach School.

1st Apaula Tafea, Vaiala Beach School.

Year 9 Samoan

3rd Monika Musika, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Gloria Gaugau, Don Bosco, Savaii.

1st Oecussi Fatialofa, Aoga Faamasani Amosa.

Year 9 English

3rd Christina Sefo, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Angel Reti, Robert Louis Stevenson School.

1st Lupe Vaai, St Marys College.

Year 10 Samoan

3rd Penani, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Ita Kasiano St Marys College.

1st Gerri Tuifalesa, Don Bosco, Savaii.

Year 10 English

3rd Malnnie Nofoagatotoa, St Marys College.

2nd Sosoli Tupou, St Marys College.

1st Vitolio Tiatia, Aoga Faamasani Amosa.

Year 11 Samoan

3rd Afele Ameto, Itu o Tane College.

2nd Merenaite Ropati, Mata ae vave College.

1st Pitapola Ioane, Aoga Faamasani Amosa.

Year 11 English

3rd Torise Tavita, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Jason Candelario, Don Bosco, Savaii.

1st Nive Lui, Don Bosco, Savaii.

Year 12 Samoan

3rd Nive Niko, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Keresoma Paul, Don Bosco, Savaii .

1st Togisala Sauni Aana No 2 College.

Year 12 English

3rd Laki Nafoi, Itu o Tane College.

2nd Alica Faulualo, Don Bosco, Savaii.

1st Quenjule Slaven, St Marys College.

Year 13 Samoan

3rd Peato Makalio, Don Bosco, Savaii.

2nd Sooautalavou Faatuiese, Itu o Tane College.

1st Posolo Uga, Itu o Tane College.

Year 13 English

3rd Sitivi Sooaemalelagi, Samoa College.

2nd Maraiakalala Ugapo, Don Bosco Savaii.

1st Lauryn Elisapeta Soti, Samoa College.

Most Samoan entries

Itu o Tane College.

Most English entries

Vaiala Beach School.








Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Day 2 of his visit to Varanasi, addressed a rally where he spoke about a number of subjects, including farmers' income, cleanliness and development. Here are all the live updates:

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Varanasi today to address farmers at the Pashudhan Arogya Mela. Modi, on his first visit to Varanasi after the BJP's landslide victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, also plans to distribute loan waiver certificates to farmers.

Modi arrived in his parliamentary constituency on a two-day visit on Friday to launch a number of projects and development schemes.

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Among the major events on Friday was the flagging off of the new Varanasi-Vadodara Mahamana Express.

HERE IS WHAT HE SAID

Swachhata is a Puja for me. Cleanliness is a way to serve the poor of India: PM

I had the opportunity to help in toilet construction at a village nearby. The people of the village have decided to make the village ODF, Modi says referring to his laying the foundation stone for a toilet in UP's Shahanshahpur earlier today.

Modi, once again, says that his government aims to double farmers' income by 2022.

2022 ?? ??????? ?? ?? ?? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ??? ?? ?????? ????? ?? ???? ?? : ???? ???? ???????? ???? pic.twitter.com/Rt1TxQPCNa- BJP (@BJP4India) September 23, 2017

Over 1,700 animals have been brought here to this gathering, veterinary experts have also gathered here to look at the health and ailments of these animals. Our farmers will benefit from this 'Pashudhan Arogya Mela': PM Modi

Let us make these five years about creating the India our freedom fighters dreamt about: PM

Varanasi: PM Narendra Modi at Pashu Arogya Mela in Shahanshahpur. He will later address the farmers. pic.twitter.com/4buMj5QXxF- ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 23, 2017

I want to congratulate the Uttar Pradesh Government & specially Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for holding the Pashudhan Arogya Mela: PM

Focus on animal health is commendable. This focus will benefit the farmers across the state: PM

Varanasi: PM Modi lays foundation for toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, in Shahanshahpur, CM Yogi Adityanath also present pic.twitter.com/OkyELlanJb- ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) September 23, 2017

As a part of #SwachhataHiSeva movement, did Shramdan for the construction of a twin pit toilet at Shahanshahpur, Varanasi. pic.twitter.com/53WDxYL7nq

- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017 For us, governance is not about politics or winning elections. The priority is the wellbeing of the nation: PM Let us build on the strides we have made in the dairy sector. Cooperatives can help in this regard, as they have in parts of the nation: PM

--- ENDS ---
It was a hot day.

But Toetu Sefo did not mind. The 38-year-old was selling strings of fish on the side of the road at Vailele.

He is from Falealupo, Savaii but he told the Village Voice that what he was selling was not his.

They belong to his brother.

We are from Savaii, but my brother is married to a girl from here hence why he is residing here, said. Mr. Sefo.

I dont live here but because I am getting ready to go to New Zealand so I came here to my brother to stay for a short time while I get things ready.

So why is his selling tauia for his brother?

I want to help him out, he told the Village Voice.

This is who we are as Samoans we help each other out especially our family.

I offered to do this because he goes at night and comes back in the morning then he sells this until its finish he hardly gets any rest so as a brother I told him that we will work together to help each out.

Mr. Toetu said this is how his brother earns a living.

Its good money but its hard work too, he said.

But thats life there is no easy way when it comes to building our family. We start from the bottom and with all the sweat and sufferings but we will end as winners.

Thats how it is in life we start from scratch and we will rejoice in the end.

As for selling fish its not a big deal to me as long as I know I am helping my brother in developing his little family.

His children are his main priority and the reason why he does this for a leaving.

He doesnt want his children to miss a day at school and no matter how tired he is he believes that in the future his children will succeed and that he will be the one to gain all the blessings from his children.

Mr. Sefo went on to say that he gets good money every day from selling tauia.

I sell it for $30 and if I sell all of it I get $200 a day which is pretty good, he said.

There are good days and there are also not so good days but thats how it is but we still fight.

On the not so good days I get $100 tala a day but I believe that is more than what some office people get so everything is a blessing from God as long as it is for a good cause that is all it matters.
The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (S.P.R.E.P) has been recognised as the Pacific regional node for the Global Partnership on Marine Litter (G.P.M.L).

The G.P.M.L is a global partnership gathering international agencies, Governments, N.G.Os, academia, private sector, civil society and individuals. As a regional node for the G.P.M.L with funding from UN Environment, S.P.R.E.Ps work includes serving as the regional hub for marine litter work, with the first step being the creation of an information clearinghouse for regional studies and ongoing projects.

The regional node will also work to minimise duplication of marine litter-related projects and foster partnerships as part of the framework of the Cleaner Pacific 2025, a regional strategy developed with Pacific leaders and waste management experts.

This regional node will help us ensure effective, efficient action in our Pacific islands to prevent and clean up marine litter, as part of the implementation of the regional strategy Cleaner Pacific 2025, said Leota Kosi Latu, Director General of S.P.R.E.P.

He noted that this is an excellent example of a genuine and durable partnership between S.P.R.E.P and UN Environment and acknowledged the high level commitment by Pacific Leaders in their Communique to ban single use plastic bags, plastics and Styrofoam packaging.

Leota stated that the issue of plastic pollution was of particular concern to the region as well as global issue. As the agency responsible for waste and pollution management issues, we will be continuing our support to our Member countries with practical actions, information and policy transformation for a cleaner, healthier Pacific.

Pacific leaders have made their concerns about marine pollution clear, and we are pleased to support waste managementas part of our continuing partnership with S.P.R.E.P and the Pacific countries, said Isabelle Louis, Deputy Regional Director for UN Environment Asia-Pacific.

Information exchange and access to technology and financewill be among our contribution to the regions efforts, as well aspromoting sustainable consumption and production.

Marine pollution with its root cause of poor land-based waste management is a significant threat to the Pacific, and discarded plastic waste and microplastics are considered a priority issue. At the UN Ocean Conference in June 2017, S.P.R.E.P and UN Environment made a joint voluntary commitment to prevent and mitigate marine debris.

In addition to the launch of an information portal to connect people with the right information and tools to tackle marine litter, UN Environments support allows us to develop and begin to implement a regional marine litter action plan, said Anthony Talouli, S.P.R.E.P Pollution Adviser.

We want to track, share and integrate actions at national and regional levels for faster responses to our litter challenges.

Mr. Talouli further noted that to achieve Cleaner Seas takes time, resources and commitment and he encouraged participants to show their commitment by joining the Pacific regional node for the Global Partnership on Marine Litter. Kiribati has recently joined the global Clean Seas campaign, launched in February this year by UN Environment to eliminate microplastics in cosmetics and drastically reduce single-use plastic by the year 2022.

We are pleased to announce Kiribatis commitment to Clean Seas focusing on banning single-use plastics, and we hope to showcase other Pacific commitments during the global UN Environment Assembly this December in Nairobi, said Ms. Louis.

This years theme for U.N.E.A is a Pollution-Free Planet, and Pacific leadership can move us toward that vision.
We know technology has reduced the world to the size of a global village.

But not many of us really believe how small that village has become and how this could actually have such a real and profound impact on everyone  including the isolated populations in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean.

Certainly not until the United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns war of words escalate to the point it has reached today, where we suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a growing world crisis.

The latest development has seen North Korea threated to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific.

Should we be disturbed? Should we be worried?

Absolutely. What this has done once more is to prove just how vulnerable we all are to the outcome of global politics, even when weve had absolutely nothing to do with how they started and the level it has reached.

And just like how powerless we are to stop the biggest emitters responsible for climate change, global warning and all other global crises, we are just as powerless against North Koreas threats.

It means all we can do is pray and hope that these big kids will come to their senses otherwise we are in for a very interesting time.

While the Pacific Ocean might be the one of the biggest in the world, the Pacific countries are not that far apart. It means any threat on the Pacific should be taken very seriously.

The nature of the behaviour of Kim Jong Un is nothing new. Call it bizarre or whatever you like, whats disturbing is that he has been threatening the Pacific for sometime now. The real worry is that one of these days, he might just do it.

Can we defend ourselves against such a possibility? What do we have to offer in response? Sadly, apart from Trumps threat to totally destroy North Korea if they touch the Pacific, we are sitting ducks at the mercy of these big nations.

Nuclear testing of course is nothing new to these parts of the world. The French have done it before on Mururoa in French Polynesia. But that was a long time ago and under very different circumstances.

Today, we are talking about a hydrogen bomb. Also referred to as an H-bomb, it is apparently far more powerful than the atomic weapons North Korea was believed to have tested so far.

As opposed to the atomic bomb - the kind dropped on Japan by the US in the closing days of World War II - the hydrogen bomb can be 1000 times more powerful.

The hydrogen bomb, also called a thermonuclear bomb, uses fusion to produce explosive energy. Stars also produce energy through fusion.

This is scary stuff, especially in this day and age where these big nations have access to such amazing technology that could cause so much more damage.

So far, the Pacific leaders have not been quiet about the threat.

Three weeks ago in Samoa, Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi joined 18 other Pacific Island Forum Leaders to condemn North Korea, saying any threat on Guam is a threat to the Pacific. Tuilaepa was supported by leaders like Australias Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, whose countries are also affected.

Whether North Koreas latest threat is in response to the Pacific reactions, the fact remains our leaders cannot be complacent about what is happening.

In New York this week, Prime Minister Tuilaepa is leading the charge in voicing the Pacifics views.

As small island Pacific countries, we are no longer protected by our isolation - we are bystanders but with the greatest to lose in the unfolding power drama being played out in the Korean Peninsula, he told World leaders at the UN General Assembly.

We pray for visionary leadership with sound moral judgment on both sides to ensure we give peace a chance.

We firmly believe that possessing nuclear weapons and adding new nuclear powers only make our world less safe, less secure and less peaceful - hence the need to rid our world completely of all nuclear weapons. No matter the noble goal for having such arsenals, availing them to the wrong and unprincipled hands is a recipe for doom and mayhem, as people, after all, are human and mere mortals.

Closer to home, Acting Prime Minister, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, knows we are powerless to protect ourselves.

But he is a man of faith, relying on divine intervention and the power of prayers.

In my own personal view, we are people of faith, he said. We are founded on God and so threats like this should not put fear in our people. We are not alone in this, we have God by our side and I am confident Samoa is safe from harm.

Well we couldnt agree more. As a Christian nation, we know our only response. We might not be big enough and able to protect ourselves but we serve a God who listens to prayers and supplications.

Have restful Sunday Samoa, God bless!
The Acting Prime Minister, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt, has appealed for calm and called on the nation to pray in light of a threat from North Korea to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific region.

Contacted by the Sunday Samoan for a comment yesterday, Tialavea said Samoa does not have the means to stop threats by big countries like North Korea.

But he said Samoas weapons are prayers and faith.

These are the pillars of life in Samoa we should lean on in times of need, he said.

In my own personal view of this, we are people of faith. Our country is founded on God and so threats such as this should not put fear in our people.

We are not alone in this. We have God by our side and I am confident Samoa is safe from harm.

The Minister urged members of the public to remain calm and know that this is another challenge that all Samoans must combat with a prayer.

He added that the government is monitoring the situation.

In terms of security, our government has a special committee in place to deal with any types of disasters, he said.

The Committee is made up of intelligent Ministers who will consult and come up with a solution to deal with any predicament we face.

Tialavea said he is constant communication with Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who is New York for the 72nd U.N. General Assembly.

On Friday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale.

The threat is not lost on Tuilaepa in New York.

During his address before world leaders, Tuilaepa urged the parties involved to give peace a chance.

We meet this week against the backdrop of a world plagued with uncertainty and a sense of ebbing hope, Tuilaepa said (read his full speech on right and page 11).

We cannot help but watch with trepidation and uneasiness the global dynamics nudging our world perilously close to a potential catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

As small island Pacific countries, we are no longer protected by our isolation - we are bystanders but with the greatest to lose in the unfolding power drama being played out in the Korean Peninsula. We pray for visionary leadership with sound moral judgment on both sides to ensure we give 'peace a chance.'

It explains why I signed yesterday on Samoa's behalf the "Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons". As a signatory to this historic treaty, we wanted to demonstrate unequivocally our aspiration to have a world without nuclear weapons (see story page 14).

The conventional narrative that the possession of nuclear weapons will act as deterrent to make the world a safer place to live, is not borne out by the current realities otherwise the developments in the Korean peninsula would not have happened at all.

We firmly believe that possessing nuclear weapons and adding new nuclear powers only make our world less safe, less secure and less peaceful - hence the need to rid our world completely of all nuclear weapons.

No matter the noble goal for having such arsenals, availing them to the wrong and unprincipled hands is a recipe for doom and mayhem, as people, after all, are human and mere mortals.

But all is not yet lost. The adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants which offers a united approach to address the plight of the world's displaced peoples, the creation of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office aimed at enhancing the Organization's capability to assist Member States in implementing the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy and the historic, first ever Treaty banning nuclear weapons, are all positive developments moving forward.
Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi

Prime Minister Samoa

Statement at 72nd session of the UN General Assembly

New York, U.S.A.

Samoa warmly welcomes your assumption of the Presidency of the 72nd session of our General Assembly, at a time when our organization is going through unprecedented volatile and difficult times.

We look forward to your leadership so that together we can chart a more safe, predictable and humane pathway in our journey through life's uncharted waters. You can count on Samoa's support as we work in partnership to translate into tangible and measurable achievements the overarching theme of your tenure "Focusing on People Striving for Peace and a Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet."

Your predecessor, Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji demonstrated strong leadership during his successful presidency and we wish him well in his new calling.

Mr. President, Secretary-General Guterres is passionate and committed to turn the United Nations into an efficient and effective organization that is fit for purpose and readily responsive to the needs of the very people it was established to serve in the first place. In working to make the UN's focus more people-centered than about processes, Samoa assures the Secretary-General of its full support.

Mr President This week's annual general debate is the twentieth successive general debate of the General Assembly I have attended and addressed. My continuous participation is a measure of my conviction and my Government's unqualified faith in the value of the United Nations and the endless potential it holds to deal successfully with any issue of diversity and gravity that it is confronted with.

The United Nations remains our choice of last resort and hope to provide the political will and the necessary commitment to address our challenges - hence why we want it to remain relevant, adaptable to changing circumstances and respond effectively to the current and emerging challenges facing our world.

Mr. President, We meet this week against the backdrop of a world plagued with uncertainty and a sense of ebbing hope. We are losing the fight to free our world from poverty, instability and conflict abounds and we are no longer distanced and disconnected from deadly acts of terrorism and the devastation of natural and human-induced disasters.

We are living in an environment of risk. Climate change is an existential threat. Allow me to pause and offer our sincere condolences to the governments and peoples of all the countries that have suffered from the recent devastation of hurricanes and earthquakes.

Mr. President, We cannot help but watch with trepidation and uneasiness the global dynamics nudging our world perilously close to a potential catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. As small island Pacific countries, we are no longer protected by our isolation - we are bystanders but with the greatest to lose in the unfolding power drama being played out in the Korean Peninsula. We pray for visionary leadership with sound moral judgment on both sides to ensure we give 'peace a chance.'

It explains why I signed yesterday on Samoa's behalf the "Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons". As a signatory to this historic treaty, we wanted to demonstrate unequivocally our aspiration to have a world without nuclear weapons.

The conventional narrative that the possession of nuclear weapons will act as deterrent to make the world a safer place to live, is not borne out by the current realities otherwise the developments in the Korean peninsula would not have happened at all.

We firmly believe that possessing nuclear weapons and adding new nuclear powers only make our world less safe, less secure and less peaceful - hence the need to rid our world completely of all nuclear weapons. No matter the noble goal for having such arsenals, availing them to the wrong and unprincipled hands is a recipe for doom and mayhem, as people, after all, are human and mere mortals.

But all is not yet lost. The adoption of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants which offers a united approach to address the plight of the world's displaced peoples, the creation of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office aimed at enhancing the Organization's capability to assist Member States in implementing the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy and the historic, first ever Treaty banning nuclear weapons, are all positive developments moving forward.

Mr President, Climate change, like other global challenges, cross borders seamlessly. It has no respect for sovereignty and does not discriminate countries between rich or poor. Its dire consequences are real including those who remain in denial.

Climate change is a perpetual priority issue for Samoa and our Pacific region. In our small islands, as witnessed recently, natural catastrophes can decimate an entire country bringing with them great pain and upheaval to peoples' lives as well as set back the national economy for years. And we know this from repeated past experience.

Our islands limited resources and the lack of adaptive capacity makes the burden of rehabilitation a mammoth undertaking. While we applaud the resilience of our people to bounce back from any major natural disaster, the scars of these natural phenomena take years to heal and recover from. And if it's any consolation to our island states, even some of the well-resourced developed countries are still trying to recover and rehabilitate from the impacts of catastrophes which devastated their economies.

Mr President, Samoa remains committed to ongoing efforts to pursue respect for human rights and rule of law and does its part to contribute to this global effort.

A first ever United Nations human rights council expert group at Samoa's invitation visited last month to carry out a fact-finding mission to assess the progress made towards eliminating discrimination against women and the protection and promotion of women's rights in the country. Samoa is the first Pacific country to open its doors to this independent mechanism.

Mr President, We continue to place great faith in the rule of law and the vital protection it offers to all States, especially to weak and small countries like mine with no armed force and not affiliated to any military grouping. The International Criminal Court is an important part of the architecture of world peace based on the rule of law and we call for the early activation of the Kampala Amendments. The ICC was represented at the recent Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting earlier this month in Samoa.

Mr President Terrorism is an offence to humanity and against the core values of the United Nations. For Samoa, I reaffirm our strong support for the relevant Security Council resolutions against terrorism which provide a clear signal of our determination to suppress terrorist activities, including training, international movement and financing. Samoa continues to align its domestic policies and legislation to meet its international obligations to help fight terrorism as well as participate actively in the Pacific regional security initiatives.

In the context of peacekeeping, Samoa's unwavering support for the United Nations Peacekeeping work is underscored by seventeen years of uninterrupted police deployment to serve in missions in Liberia, Sudan, Timor-Leste and South Sudan, Darfur. Small as we are, Samoan police continue to serve side by side with officers from other countries in places that require the intervention of the United Nations. Our commitment is rooted in our firm belief in the role United Nations peacekeeping plays in helping to eliminate the causes of conflict and in bringing about peace and stability. We fully endorse and condemn sexual exploitation and abuse in peacekeeping and this is why we signed the international compact initiative of the Secretary-General to committing countries peacekeeping.

Mr President, The 2030 Agenda is our framework to put the world onto a path towards a sustainable and resilient future, for people, planet and prosperity. While the 2030 agenda remains high priority on the global agenda, and we see signs of momentum in terms of implementation, much work still needs to be done. The need to accelerate global action and awareness on the SDGs still remains. The adoption of the Pacific regional roadmap for SDGS complements Samoa's roadmap based on an integrated approach for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, Samoa Pathway, Paris Agreement and Pacific Framework for Regionalism which are aligned to our national development strategy.

For Small Island Developing States, the SAMOA Pathway is their sustainable development roadmap which highlights their key tasks and priorities and links closely with the 2030 agenda. As we approach the 5 year review of the SAMOA Pathway in 2019, it is important to ensure that the comprehensive review of the UN support to SIDS is properly addressed and implemented. We need to study closely lessons learnt from the Partnerships registered for SIDS and encourage proactive follow up as well as pursue new partnerships for the group's sustainable development.

Several partnerships and Voluntary commitments specific to SIDS were launched during the Ocean Conference since the last annual SIDS Partnership dialogue. Prior to the mid-term review of the SIDS outcome document it is important to look at ways to improve implementation and addressing the gaps and emerging issues.

The success of the Ocean Conference was crucial to building momentum of SDG implementation given that the Ocean is the lifeblood of the planet. Addressing the targets of SDG14 for SIDS is catalytic to implementing several, if not all of the17 Goals.

With the new Blue Pacific concept for the Pacific region, and the concrete outcomes from the Conference, emphasis is to be placed on implementation. Samoa at the Ocean's Conference pledged 13 Voluntary Commitments that showcased national efforts towards the conservation management and sustainable use of the Ocean and its resources and engagement of communities.

During the Ocean Conference in June, I was appointed the Special Ambassador of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development by UN World Tourism Organization. 2017 is a crucial year for sustainable tourism and given the reliance of many of our small economies on tourism, and the role it can play in SDG implementation; we will continue to promote the role of Tourism in support of peaceful societies and sustainable development

Mr President, Let me now turn to the regional context and share with you some of the decisions taken by the Leaders of our Pacific Islands Forum at their Summit which my country was privileged to host at the beginning of this month. We chose as the theme for our year-long chairmanship "The Blue Pacific: Our sea of islands: Our security through sustainable development, management and conservation".

In Samoa, we re-ayrmed the Framework for Pacific Regionalism to drive our region's policy agenda towards the realization of our vision for a region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion, and prosperity so that all Pacific people can lead free, healthy and productive lives,

We also endorsed The Blue Pacific identity as the core driver of collective action for advancing the Leaders vision under the Framework for Pacific Regionalism. This new narrative calls for inspired leadership and a long-term Pacific Islands Forum foreign policy commitment to act as one for the good of all, rather than a few. The Blue Pacific identity reinforces the potential of our shared stewardship of the Pacific Ocean, based on the explicit recognition of our shared ocean identity, ocean geography, and ocean resources. It aims to strengthen collective action by putting The Blue Pacific at the centre of regional policy making and united action for advancing the Forum Leaders' Vision for the Region.

With other Pacific Leaders, we discussed the key priorities for our region; a few of which I will highlight as their implementation requires collective and urgent action from this august gathering of the United Nations.

Mr President, Firstly, climate change remains a priority challenge for the Pacific region because of its existential nature and its security implications. Climate change is already happening; it cannot be washed away by the rising tides. It has significant security implications and its impact threatens the continued existence and viability as sovereign states of some of our low lying atolls. Even those countries, which have been in self-denial to date of the climate change phenomenon must surely now accept the weight of scientific evidence.

The implementation of the Paris Agreement is of high priority requiring collective action to address this existential threat. We are confident that Fiji's presidency of the November COP23 will focus the spotlight challenges and the need for genuine partnerships to help us deliver on our "nationally determined contributions" as part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The Pacific has also endorsed its Framework for Resilience Development as well as its institutional arrangements to support the elaboration and implementation of the Paris agreement

Secondly, the ocean and its resources continue to be critical to the livelihoods of our people and region. The impacts of Climate Change, Illegal Unregulated Unreported fishing and overfishing are threatening the sustainability of this crucial resource of our region. The Pacific Forum members will continue to be actively engaged on all Ocean related issues of the 72nd session of the GA including the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction process

Thirdly, we adopted the "Pacific Roadmap for Sustainable Development" and its implementation strategy. This demonstrates the seriousness our region places on implementing the 17 SDGs and the importance of a regional approach to meeting these international commitments. We continue to count on the important role of the UN and our partners to support regional and national efforts for SDG implementation particularly the building of our capabilities. We look forward to the Secretary General's reform and how the Forum can engage to ensure its priorities in terms of its SDG roadmap and the implementation of the SAMOA Pathway, Paris Agreement and other regional needs are considered in the reform.

And finally in the context of security, the Pacific Islands Forum remains committed to collective arrangements and mechanisms to assist regional governments recover from national conflicts and crises. The success of these arrangements together with the support of the UN, are already evident in the positive results of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). I am honoured to acknowledge the successful conclusion of the Regional Assistance Mission in the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) which brought together peacekeepers from all members countries of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Leaders acknowledged the successful conclusion of RAMSI and recognized it as a success story of regionalism and a workable example of regional cooperation and diplomacy, embodying more than a decade of partnership and cooperation amongst Forum members.

Leaders agreed to build on the Biketawa Declaration and other Forum security related declarations to expand the concept of security, inclusive of human security, humanitarian assistance, prioritising environmental security, and regional cooperation in building resilience to disasters and climate change.

The Pacific over the years continues to call for advancing the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. Issues such as radioactive contaminants in the Republic of the Marshall Islands are of great concern to RMI and the region. We count on the promised support of the relevant UN entities to respond accordingly to requests for assistance including working closely with the regional technical agencies. The US is also encouraged to take urgent action to address the issue. Thank you.
The Court of Appeal has upheld a Supreme Court decision in a lawsuit brought by prominent lawyer, Leuluaialii Olinda Woodroffe, against Justice Robert Lloyd Fisher.

The decision was delivered by Justice Panckhurst, Justice Tuala-Warren and Justice Vaepule Vaai last week.

The appeal is dismissed, the Court of Appeal ruled.

The order of the Supreme Court striking-out the proceeding is conrmed. The appellant must pay the respondents costs of SAT$28,845.00 being the total awarded in both courts.

Leulua'ialii had sued Justice Fisher for an alleged breach of her rights when he made comments during an appeal hearing last year.

Leuluaialii said Justice Fisher had called her incompetent, among other insults, during the hearing.

The following is the Courts decision in full:

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT Introduction 1. Mrs Woodroffe appeals against an order of the Supreme Court striking out her claim for compensation under the Constitution of the Independent State of Samoa. The claim alleged breaches of the Constitution in two respect; that she had been subjected to degrading treatment in breach of article 7, and that such treatment also breached article 78 by which Judges of this Court must take a judicial oath to do right to all manner of people, without fear or favour, affection or ill will. A declaration and compensation of $2,000,000 is claimed against each Respondent.

2. The Respondents are the Honourable Justice Fisher sued in this capacity as the President of this Court and the Attorney General sued on behalf of the Samoan Government. An application to strike out the claim based in essence on judicial immunity was filed on behalf of the Respondents. Such application was granted by Justice Tuatagaloa.

Some background 3. The events that gave rise to the claim occurred in the course of sittings on 15 February 2016. The context is important. Exchanges between the presiding Judge and Mrs Woodroffe, appearing as counsel, provide the basis of the claim. These exchanges, recorded at the time, must be assessed in the Court context in which they took place.

4. Mrs Woodroffe was counsel for appellants in a case to be heard during the session commencing that day. She appeared at a 9am callover and again at the hearing of the appeal at 2pm on l5 February. The appellants were a mother and daughter suing as the administratrix of the original plaintiff, their son and brother respectively.

The deceased had brought a proceeding against a sibling alleging that his brother had exercised undue influence over their elderly father and thereby secured the transfer of two parcels of land on Upolu into his name (the land case). The case was heard in 2003. The trial judge reserved his decision. An interim decision was not delivered until mid-2014. It comprised two sentences to the effect that although the deeds of conveyance by way of gift were fraudulent, relief could not be determined until a company that held mortgages over the land had been heard.

5. Mrs Woodroffe was not counsel when the undue influence claim was heard in 2003. She was instructed in 20l4, but by the administratrix of the original plaintiffs estate, he having died in the meantime.

This was not the only development during the lengthy delay between the hearing and the interim decision. The defendant brother who had acquired the land by gift from his father had also died, and one of the parcels of land had been sold to a local company through a mortgagee sale.

6. Confronted with this complicated background Mrs Woodroffe turned to the Supreme Court and endeavoured to obtain a nal and reasoned judgment from the trial Judge, including a determination concerning entitlement to the remaining parcel of land. Despite various initiatives and appearances in the Supreme Court, progress proved elusive. This prompted Mrs Woodroffe to le an appeal in this Court against steps taken or not taken by the trial judge which were said to be in breach of the Constitution. A complaint of inordinate delay was the principal allegation.

7. This approach was problematic. No proceeding had been commenced in the Supreme Court seeking relief under the Constitution. Hence there was simply no basis for an appeal to this Court. Discussion at the afternoon hearing on l5 February centred on whether the interim decision might be susceptible of appeal. But the trial judges nding that the land transfers from father to son were fraudulent was in favour of Mrs Woodroffes clients. And, the trial judges refusal to grant relief until such time as he had heard from the company that acquired one parcel of land was understandable and appropriate. Potentially, the company was a bona de purchaser for value without notice.

8. This Court delivered a judgment on 19 February 20l6 in which it adjourned the appeal to allow time for the trial judge to give a nal and reasoned decision. The judgment also proffered a number of procedural suggestions intended to assist the parties in nding a way forward in relation to the 2003 land claim. On 29 August 2016 the trial judge provided reasons for judgment. These fully explained why he upheld the cause of action based on undue inuence. Relief, however, was reserved to enable affected non-parties to be heard. Procedural difficulties 9. The relevant exchanges between the presiding judge and Mrs Woodroffe in signicant measure concerned procedural irregularities related to the appeal led with regard to the land claim. The rst problem was that Mrs Woodroffe did not hold a current practicing certicate from the Samoan Law Society. Counsel for the Law Society appeared at the morning callover to appraise the Court of the situation. Dispute arose concerning whether Mrs Woodroffe had satised the requirements to be the holder of a current certicate. The Court adopted the expedient of granting Mrs Woodroffe leave to appear noting that it only did so in the interest of her clients.

10. Other irregularities arose from non-compliance with the Court of Appeal Rules and its Practice Direction. In summary these were:

a) That the intitulment of the land case was defective in that the administrators of the original defendants estate had not been substituted as parties, albeit an order for substitution had been made in the Supreme Court. The failure was described as unsatisfactory given the administrators potential substantive liability and also their responsibility for costs.

b) The record on appeal was led on the last working day before the hearing and in electronic form. A paper copy was not led until the morning of the hearing.

c) Both the electronic and paper copies were seriously incomplete. Mrs Woodroffe acknowledged this, but told the Court that the complete record was available on another Court of Appeal le for hearing that week, being an appeal against the removal of a caveat registered to prevent dealings with one of the parcels of land involved in the land claim. On inspection of that le it was found that it did not contain the missing elements of the record on appeal.

d) An application for special leave to appeal in relation to the alleged constitutional failures of the trial judge was also led late, namely on the last working day before the hearing in electronic form and on the morning of the hearing in paper form. e) The appellants submissions were likewise led on the last working day (electronically) and on the morning of the hearing (in paper form); and no chronology was included with the submissions.

11. In the judgment given at the end of the session the Court held that the persistent failure to follow proper procedures has been unfair to the respondents, placed unnecessary pressure on Court staff and greatly increased the burden on members of the Court.

The conduct in issue I2. Both the callover hearing at 9arm and the appeal hearing at 2pm have been transcribed. The former is brief, comprising only two pages. The hearing transcript is much longer, being eighteen pages of exchanges that covered a range of issues. Mrs Woodroffes statement of claim includes this at paragraph 22:

The rst defendant in open court (with full gallery) consistently made criticisms of the plaintiff which were high handed, unfair, unfounded, incorrect, gratuitous, inappropriate, abusive and made with a contumelious disregard of the plaintiff, including:

(a) Stating that if it were not for the importance of the appeal I think we might be minded to just dismiss it or at least adjourn it based on the delays and the incompetence of Counsel for the Appellants.

(b) Telling the plaintiff that she had taken every opportunity she could to make the hearing more difficult than it needed to be.

(c) Asking the plaintiff whether she had given consideration to instructing competent counsel.

13. These remarks were made towards the commencement of the afternoon hearing. In our view they represent the highpoint in relation to the criticisms complained of. So far as we can tell the remarks made at the callover are relied upon as part of the narrative, but no direct quotes from that hearing are pleaded in the same manner as those set out above.

14. For reasons that will become apparent shortly, we regard the highpoints of the critical comments as of some real importance. This is not to diminish or disregard the exchanges as a whole, but rather recognises that a critical determination we must reach is whether the conduct, the exchanges at the callover and the hearing, is of a nature and degree sufcient to enable a nding to be made that Mrs Woodroffe was subjected to degrading treatment in breach of the Constitution.

Strike out principles

15. The approach to evaluating a strike out application was common ground between the parties. As the judge below noted the application is to be dealt with on the assumption that the facts pleaded in the claim can be proved. An order striking out the claim may only be made if the causes of action are so clearly untenable that they cannot possibly succeed. If the claim can be saved by amendment of the pleadings, or parties, this may be permitted since a litigants right of access to the court is not to be lightly denied. Only when a claim is doomed to fail should an order striking it out be made.

16. That an application raises difficult and important questions of law and requires extensive argument does not exclude the jurisdiction. This was such a case. In addition to the extensive allegations in the pleadings, counsel and the Court had regard to the transcribed record of each hearing. These provided a verbatim account of the exchanges between counsel and the bench, subject to the odd imperfection. Mrs Woodroffe made the point that body-language and inection were not apparent from the record which is obviously the case. We do not see this, however, as any impediment to our determination of the appeal.

Judicial immunity 17. This was the principal ground advanced in support of the application. Justice Tuatagaloa held that what the rst respondent said was in the course of his discharging his judicial function, that in the circumstances judicial immunity applied and that the two causes of action against him must therefore be struck out.

18. The rst cause of action asserted as the Constitutional breach that the Judge acted in breach of his judicial oath and Mrs Woodroffe submitted that this meant that his actions were not within his judicial function and also tainted by bad faith. In either case judicial immunity was said not to apply. In response to questioning counsel maintained that while the callover and the hearing were conducted by the judge in the exercise of his judicial function, immunity was lost whenever his words, actions and manner clearly expressed ill-will towards the appellant Similarly, when the rst respondent acted in bad faith judicial immunity no longer applied.

19. We shall consider the proposition that a breach of the Constitution can be committed by non-compliance with the judicial oath of Samoa later. For now we park that issue and focus on the principle of judicial immunity, in particular the breadth of the protection provided to judges of superior Courts. Before turning to this we acknowledge that as Mrs Woodroffes argument developed it became a little clearer how she envisaged uctuating immunity might operate in the course of a judicial hearing. Despite the breadth of the allegations made against the rst respondent, Mrs Woodroffe frequently returned to two passages from the afternoon hearing and stressed the humiliating impact that these had upon her. The rst was the Judges opening comment:

Ive already touched this morning on the unacceptable delays in providing the documents that weve required. If it werent for the importance of the appeal I think we might be minded to just dismiss it or at least adjourn it based on the delays and the incompetence of counsel for the appellant.

The fact is, however, that, your clients are much more important than you are, and were going to do our level best to deal with this matter in their interests, despite the fact that you have taken every opportunity you could to make the hearing today more difficult than it needed to be.

A short time later this was said: Youve attempted to bring an application based on the Constitution and that might well have some prospect for you if that were done in the right way but, again, there would be a matter of trying to leap frog over the Supreme Court straight into this Court; it would be a matter of beginning proceedings under the Constitution in the Supreme Court, and if you didnt like the decision youve got then appeal it to us. The case is so challenging from a technical point of view I wondered whether youd given consideration to instructing competent counsel to sort it out.

20. At paragraph 31 of the statement of claim the payers for general damage of $1,000,000 and exemplary damages of the same amount are prefaced in this way:

The rst defendants actions and breaches have caused hurt, humiliation, and nancial loss to the plaintiffs business, including potential future loss to the plaintiff s business: Particulars:

c) The plaintiff is a respected senior lawyer and her competency drives clients to her and creates demand for her services. The actions of the rst defendant have brought the plaintiff into disrepute.

Hence the judges comments quoted above were prime examples of instances where he Abandoned the protection afforded to (him) by the doctrine of judicial immunity2 in Terms of Mrs Woodroffes argument.

21. Judicial immunity dates back to 1613.The rationale for its existence has been eloquently described on numerous occasions and in numerous jurisdictions. One example is to be found in Nahkla McCarthy in which a litigant sued the president of the New Zealand Court of Appeal. His claim was struck out. Woodhouse J explained the principle in this Way:

An action complaining of the judicial work of a superior court judge is probably unique in New Zealand. In the United Kingdom the number of recorded attempts to bring a similar action during the past 150 years or more can be counted on the ngers of one hand. None has succeeded.

It is not necessary to search for the reason. It lies in the 1ight of men and women to feel that when discharging his judicial responsibilities a judge will have no more reason to be affected by fear than he will allow himself to be subjected to inuences of favour. Thus he is surrounded with an absolute immunity from civil proceedings for acts done or words spoken in the exercise of his judicial ofce. But that immunity is in no sense a private right which might be regarded as having been conferred upon him and which he then might be said to enjoy. He is merely the repository of a public right which is designed to ensure that the administration of justice will be untrammelled by the collateral attacks of disappointed or disaffected litigants. That simple concept is gladly accepted, we believe, by the citizen and lawyer alike. And its strength extends to preventing civil proceedings against the judge in respect of his exercise of jurisdiction even thought he may act with gross carelessness or be moved by reasons of actual malice or even hatred.

A judge can, of course, be made to answer, and in a proper case pay dearly, for any criminal misconduct. Like any other citizen criminal proceedings may be brought against him. If the need arose steps could be taken in the Parliament to have him dismissed from ofce. If in the course of his work he should fall into error the matter can become the subject of appeal. If he should wrongly deprive a man of his freedom then altogether apart from appeal, there is the remedy of habeas corpus. But in relation to the performance of his judicial ofce the judge is immune from attack in civil proceedings.

22. Here in Samoa the principle of judicial immunity was considered in 2015 by Chief Justice Sapolu in Talilupetiamalie v Attomey General, likewise in the context of a strike out application. We commend and adopt his survey of several cases from England, Australia and New Zealand. That survey and his discussion of the principles obviates the need for this Court to embark on any similar exercise

23. We add but one matter properly emphasised by Miss Wallwork in her submission. Counsel drew attention to article 114 of the Constitution which provided that existing law would continue in force after Independence Day. Article 111 dened law to include English common law provided it was not excluded by Samoan law, and custom or usage having the force of law. And, article 118 provided that existing judges of the Supreme Court would continue to hold office on the same terms and conditions as prevailed before Independence Day. We accept that this combination of provisions made judicial immunity applicable in Samoa via the common law, as the Chief Justice noted in Talilupetiamalie.

24. We do not accept Mrs Woodroffes submission that the immunity may be lost on account of ill-will, bad faith or any like epithet. To the contrary even a judge actuated by malice or hatred is immune provided he or she is undertaking a judicial function. In short, the immunity is absolute in relation to judges of the Superior Courts, save for some limited exceptions of no present relevance. Accordingly the causes of action against the rst respondent in his personal capacity are doomed. Failure is inevitable regardless whether this cause of action is viewed from the assumed perspective of a breach of the judicial oath or a subjection to degrading treatment; but we shall need to revisit these assumptions when considering the appeal in relation to the second respondent.

The claim against the second respondent 25. The pleading of the third cause of action in the statement of claim is concise. Described as

a. Breach of the Constitution the pleading continues:

In the alternative the Plaintiff repeats paragraph 1 to 31 above.

32. The second defendant is sued on behalf of the State of Samoa. 33. The Government of the State of Samoa is responsible for the actions of the rst defendant. 34. The Ministry concerned is the Ministry of Justice and Courts Administration.

26. The relief sought is again a declaration and general and exemplary damages each of $1,000,000. Hence the gist of the allegations is that the President breached both his judicial oath and article 7 of the Constitution, and that the government is legally responsible for such breaches.

27. This represents a direct claim under the Constitution. This Court in a number of cases has considered when and how a breach of constitutional rights may provide a direct route to damages. In this regard article 4 of the Constitution is pivotal: 4. Remedies for enforcement of rights  (1) Any person may apply to the Supreme Court by appropriate proceedings to enforce the rights conferred under the provisions of this Part.

(2) The Supreme Court shall have power to make all such orders as may be necessary and appropriate to secure to the applicant the enjoyment of any of the rights conferred under the provisions of this Part.

28. Part II contains the fundamental rights, including the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, but not article 78 that requires judges of the Court of Appeal to take the judicial oath. We shall consider the signicance of this in a moment.

29. In the Supreme Court the Judge found that the Attorney General was sued as a party only and considered that if the matter is struck out against the First Defendant the Second Defendant as a party becomes non-existent.6 Unfortunately, her attention had not been drawn to the line of cases in this Court concerning direct claims under the Constitution.

30. Reference to the most recent of these cases will sufce. It concerned a Supreme Court damages award of $963,710 in favour of multiple claimants who had been unlawfully banished from their village. In this Court matais of the village challenged the award on the basis that the Supreme Court judge was wrong to uphold claims based on the torts of misfeasance in public office and negligence. The case is Punitia v Tutuila.The Court of Appeal decision included this:

[59] The submissions were understandable given that much of the judgment was concerned with those torts. With respect to the (Supreme Court) Judge, however, it was unnecessary to embark upon causes of action in tort. They had not been pleaded by the respondents and, at least in the special circumstances of this case, it was unnecessary to do so. In this case the respondents were entitled to rely upon the breach of constitutional rights as a direct route to damages.

[60] We agree that where defendants are sued as individuals it will normally be necessary and appropriate to rely upon tort or other private law causes of action. The long-established criteria for liability in tort and other private law causes of action will generally make them a better vehicle for establishing liability than the broad discretions and value judgments that constitutional remedies entail. Private law causes of action are, and will remain, the primary source of liability in Samoa. Breach of constitutional rights should generally be resorted to only where private law causes of action would not be a satisfactory substitute.

[61] However there is no absolute rule to that effect. In Simpson v Attorney-General [Baigents Case] [1994] 3 NZLR 667 (CA) at 678, for example, Cooke P said this:

As to the level of compensation, on which again there is much international case law, I think that it would be premature at this stage to say more than that, in addition to any physical damage, intangible harm such as distress and injured feelings may be compensated for; the gravity of the breach and the need to emphasise the importance of the afrmed rights and to deter breaches are also proper considerations; but extravagant awards are to be avoided. If damages are awarded on causes of actions not based on the Bill of Rights, they must be allowed for in any award of compensation under the Bill of Rights so that there will be no double recovery. A legitimate alternative approach, having the advantage of simplicity, would be to make a global award under the Bill of Rights and nominal or concurrent award on any other successful causes of action.

[62] Cooke P could see no difficulty in an action in which damages for breach for constitutional rights co-existed with private law causes of action so long as there was no duplication of compensation for the same loss.

31. With regard to compensation or damages the Court under the heading Moderation in damages emphasised that relief for human rights breaches were discretionary. Relief may be denied, or simply a declaration upholding the breach granted. Damages should be moderate, since signicant value judgments are involved, particularly in relation to general and exemplary damages. Special damages are different, bemuse their award requires proof of actual loss and amount leaving little room for argument on discretion.

32. The availability of compensation for a breach of a constitutional rights in Samoa means that we respectfully disagree with Justice Tuatagaloas rst reason for concluding that the claim against the second respondent was doomed. However, she also considered whether either of the asserted constitutional breaches were capable of being sustained in case her reasoning that the Attomey Generals liability depended on his being a party was misplaced. Likewise, we shall consider the arguments directed to articles 78 and 7; and then refer to the vexed quotation whether judicial immunity necessarily avails the Government in relation to the direct damages claim against it.

A breach of article 78 33. Article 78 stipulates that Judges of the Court of Appeal must on appointment take and subscribe before the Head of State an oath in the form set out in the Third Schedule. The words of the oath are: I, .................................... .. swear by Almighty God that I will well and truly serve the Independent State of Samoa in accordance with the Constitution and the law; and I will do right to all manner of people, without fear or favour, affection or ill will. So help me God.

34. Justice Tuatagaloa held that article 78 is administrative and/or a procedural part of the constitution that deals with the judiciary. She continued it does not give rise to a justiciable right or to a right guaranteed under article 9. Article 9 denes the right to a fair trial in relation to both civil and criminal cases. For those reasons she concluded that this cause of action was untenable and should be struck out.

35. We agree that this cause of action is untenable and broadly for the same reasons as expressed by the Judge. It is also telling that article 78 is not a Pa.rt II fundamental right that may be enforced in the Supreme Court pursuant to article 4. (See [27]). Rather article 78 is in Part VI that deals with The Judiciary. Fundamental rights pertaining to a fair trial are prescribed in article 9, and apply to every person who is a civil litigant or charged with an offence, not to counsel. Even if article 78 somehow gave rise to a constitutional right available to counsel judicial immunity would remain in issue.

Degrading treatment 36. Article 7 of the Constitution provides:

7. Freedom from inhuman treatment - No person shall be subject to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Following reference to the submissions, an academic article and a limited number of cases that had been cited Justice Tuatagaloa concluded that any humiliation that the Plaintiff suffered falls way below what is considered or protected by Article 7. On this alternative basis she was fortied in the view that this cause of action was clearly untenable.

38. The statement of claim alleged:

30. The criticisms of the plaintiff, which were high handed, unfair, unfounded, incorrect, gratuitous, inappropriate, abusive and made with contumelious disregard of the plaintiff including the criticisms set forth in paragraph ll hereof, comprises degrading treatment in that:

(a) The treatment of the plaintiff by the rst defendant grossly humiliated the plaintiff before others, and/or

(b) The treatment of the plaintiff by the rst defendant aroused in the plaintiff feelings of fear, anguish, and inferiority, capable of humiliating and debasing the plaintiff.

39. Miss Wallwork submitted that the Judge was correct in nding that the treatment in this case did not approach the level required to support a nding of degrading treatment. Despite the researches of both counsel no case even factually close to this one could be found. This suggested that the treatment in this instance was at a level not worthy of consideration in human rights jurisprudence. Counsel characterised the exchanges complained of as a telling off by the President of the Court in the context of a litany of procedural failures.

40. Mrs Woodroffe argued that the Judge had not recognised that article 7 describes three levels of treatment in diminishing order of severity and that this led her into error. These are torture, inhuman treatment and degrading treatment (or inhuman on degrading punishment). Counsel continued that degrading is dened in the Oxford Dictionary as causing a loss of self respect; humiliating. This was exactly what she had suffered. Accordingly, this cause of action should have proceeded to a substantive hearing.

41. We do not accept that the Judge failed to appreciate that article 7 describes conduct of a diminishing order of severity. She identied subjection to degrading treatment as the alleged breach and remained focused on that concept. In any event this aspect requires a value judgment and it is essential that we consider it afresh, conscious that we are doing so in a strike-out context and that a litigants access to justice is not to be lightly denied.

42. The starting point is article 7 itself. The operative words are to be given their plain meaning, but with due regard to the Constitution as a whole and the specic context in which the words appear. Part II deals with fundamental rights. Article 7 concerns subjection to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment (or punishment). These are strong words, particularly when read in their context.

43. Counsels inability to nd any cases involving conduct at the present level is signicant. Such cases as were cited emphasized the need to evaluate each case on its particular facts and to have close regard to the contextual circumstances. It is for this reason that the factual context has been outlined in some detail earlier in this judgment.

44. In the course of argument Mrs Woodroffe was asked what course she would have taken had these events occurred in a New Zealand Court. To her credit she indicated that a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner would have been the obvious course. The Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act was passed in 2004. One purpose of the Act was establishing an ofce for the receipt and assessment of complaints about the conduct of judges. 9 The Commissioner on receipt of the complaint may provide it to the judge concerned and investigate the matter. His powers include dismissal of the complaint, referring it to the Head of Bench on recommending that it be considered by a Judicial Conduct Panel. Similar arrangements exist in a number of common law jurisdictions.

45. Developments of this kind probably reect at least three factors that are common to each of the different jurisdictions. First and foremost is judicial immunity. This principle is in effect a bar to any form of civil proceedings against a judge for actions occurring in the performance of his judicial function. Second, courtrooms are necessarily robust places. Litigants, counsel and judges must be free to speak without fear if justice is to be done, and standards maintained. Lastly, there are different levels of conduct that may cause offence to others. Reliance alone upon a jurisdiction founded on fundamental human rights may leave conduct at a lesser level of seriousness without a remedy. Hence, a number of countries have established complaints ofce empowered to assess complaints against judges.

46. We agree with, and endorse, the conclusion reached by Justice Tuatagaloa that the conduct here was way below that required to establish degrading treatment under article 7. This conclusion is a value judgment, but one we are satised was inevitable in the circumstances of this case. The references to incompetence represented a strong rebuke, but one administered in extraordinary circumstances and out of concern for litigants who faced a complex situation. For these reasons the cause of action against the Government cannot possibly succeed and must also be struck out. Absent a breach of the constitution the claim cannot be saved by amendment, or otherwise, either.

Does judicial immunity preclude a remedy? 47. The application to strike-out asserted that the claim was both procedurally awed and named the wrong parties. These assertions concerned the naming of both the Judge in person and the Attorney General on behalf of the Government. We have not considered these procedural aspects, preferring instead to go direct to the substantive issues, whether judicial immunity and the non-sustainability of the constitutional breaches were fatal to the causes of action anyway. Our conclusions on these aspects are decisive of the appeal.

48. Nevertheless one aspect remains upon which we must briey comment. Mrs Woodroffe correctly pointed out that the Courts judgment concerning the land case accepted that The Supreme Court has the jurisdiction to grant wide-ranging remedies (including) by those in authority...

49. This observation contemplated the feasibility of a claim against the State of Samoa if the trial judges delay in delivery of the land case judgment was found to be a breach of the Constitution. We have already explained why such a claim may be brought by reference to this Courts decision in Punitia v Tutuila (at [30]). As Mrs Woodroffe noted this observation was, in a sense, supportive of her claim in the present case.

50. There remains, however, what we termed the vexed issue whether judicial immunity may avail the State in relation to a claim based on a judicial breach of the Constitution. Counsel referred to Attorney General v Chapman H a decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court. The majority concluded that the immunity does extend to preclude nancial remedies for breaches by the judicial branch of government. However, two of the ve judges, including the Chief Justice, wrote emphatic dissenting judgments.

51. This is a complex issue. Moreover, there is a signicant difference between New Zealand and Samoan law. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 makes no express provision for remedies. The Samoan Constitution does in article 4. Although counsel cited Chapman we did not have the benet of submissions on this important aspect. Nor need we decide it. It is best left to another day when the Court has heard full argument from counsel and the issue of whether Chapman should be followed in Samoa is alive.

Costs

52. In the Supreme Court the respondents were awarded costs in the sum of SAT$7,827.00. This represented two-thirds of the actual costs of the two counsels who appeared in support of the strike-out application. Although this award was initially made before the Judge had seen Mrs Woodroffes memorandum in opposition to costs (which was led late), this problem was rectied when a reasoned costs decision was subsequently delivered on 7 August 2017. No submission was advanced challenging the approach and outcome in the decision. Instead Mrs Woodroffe sought a reversal of the order should the appeal succeed.

53. Counsel led memoranda on costs in this Court at our direction. Both parties sought costs based on actual costs, albeit Mrs Woodroffes claim was challenged on the basis that a self-represented lawyer was not entitled to costs. The point is now moot. Respondents counsel sought indemnity costs of SAT$31,527.00 for two counsel.

54. We are not persuaded that indemnity costs are appropriate. We award two-thirds of actual, being SAT $2l,0l8.00. The award in the Supreme Court stands.

55. The appeal is dismissed. The order of the Supreme Court striking-out the proceeding is conrmed.

56. The appellant must pay the respondents costs of SAT$28,845.00 being the total awarded in both courts.

Honourable Justice Panckhurst

Honourable Justice Tuala-Warren

Honourable Justice Vaepule Vaai
Think a minuteJames Macie was a child born outside of marriage. Tragically this marked him for the rest of his life as a second-class citizen in Englands 18th century society.

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To attract young renters to his projects, architect-developer Mike Burnett believes in designing around parties.

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Build affordable units rather than paying the citys in-lieu inclusionary housing fee. Its a moral thing for me, he said.

Add flare to the design, such as his YouAre Here project in Golden Hill that retained elements of a 1965 Texaco gas station. The firms upcoming 29-unit Eitol project at University Avenue and Park Boulevard in Hillcrest is composed of 13 four-story, bright red towers with a marketing banner displays a pair of buff mermen. (The name spells Lot 13 backward.)

Besides design, Burnett addressed the current apartment market, saying lenders are offering 65 percent loan-to-cost terms, down from 75 percent and are pulling back from the market because of perceived overbuilding.

Rick Graf, president of the Dallas-based Pinnacle development company, said many cities are coping with the same development pressures and regulatory problems in San Diego.

A lot of the new construction is going into high-end, urban, he said. (Investors) want to invest in high-rise downtown. Its fun, sexy, cool stuff and at the end of the day, most people dont live there.

Pinnacle holds 172,000 units in its portfolio, including 15,000 in California and eight projects in San Diego County. The newest is IDEA1 set to open next month in East Village.

Graf, who said he and his wife recently moved into a downtown Dallas rental, said developers and investors instead focus on workforce housing aimed at middle-income households.

They need a place to live and increasingly, single-family housing is difficult to happen, he said. Its a challenge everywhere.

He said regulations are growing everywhere, even in regulation-averse Texas where theres talk of rent control in Houston.

Thats blasphemy, he said tongue-in-check but understandable given rapidly rising rents in many markets.

Construction, while up in recent years, is down in historic terms, partly because it takes longer to gain approval, Graf said.

Given the alternatives (in investment returns), the money will go elsewhere, he said.

On the tax reform side, Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association and previously executive director of its San Diego counterpart, said Congress is considering reducing business deductions, low-income tax credits, like-kind exchanges and partnership tax preferences.

To fight against such changes, Pinnegar said the association has set aside $1 million to launch a campaign to get members to lean on Congress.

At the state and level, he said, other legal changes aim at increasing affordable housing through zoning and developer fees, but rent control was lately avoided in Indiana, Oregon and Tennessee.

Robert Vallera, a Voit Real Estate Service vice president, said even if multifamily housing production is the highest in 20 years, its not keeping up population.

At 8,300 units approved last year in San Diego County and 100,000 statewide, he said that represents 1 home for every 400 residents, compared with 1 per 100 residents in the 1970s.

The upshot is that median apartment sales prices were up 11 percent last year as vacancies plummeted and demand grew.

One other perspective came from urban planner Howard Blackson, who said despite the era of regulation and tight markets, the Legislature recently approved new funding for affordable housing and San Diego is easing up on zoning controls.

Understand that the regulatory environment is getting better, Blackson said. You are perfectly positioned to build more apartments and multifamily homes than anybody in our lifetime has been able to do.

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
It could have easily been 1987 in San Diego Friday night when the iconic Irish band U2 performed its revolutionary album The Joshua Tree in its entirety, all 50 minutes and 11 seconds of it in chronological order.

It could have been 1987, but it wasnt.

Nothings changed; everythings changed, Bono declared after a rousing delivery of the albums first song, Where the Streets Have No Name.

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Building an entire concert around a 30-year-old album seemed, on its face, an emotional ploy to relive the past, dredging up memories and flirting with old passions. It was a dangerous proposition, and in the wrong hands, it could have been disastrous.

In U2s hands, it was anything but.

The Joshua Tree, the bands critically acclaimed fifth studio album, came of age in the era of Reagan and AIDS and heroin addiction, at a time of economic and political unrest and natural disasters.

It became crystal-clear Friday night that the band had zero interest living in the past. It plucked The Joshua Tree from its resting place in 1987 and dropped it in the heart of 2017.

Their message intact, the albums songs breathed with a new sense of urgency, speaking to a world marred by the ravages of climate change and opioid addiction, at a time of political and economic upheaval.

And therein lies the majesty of Friday nights SDCCU Stadium concert, which ended the second and final U.S. leg of the bands The Joshua Tree Tour 2017. It begins the next leg in Mexico City on Oct. 3.

The band, which hadnt performed in San Diego since 2005, could have easily fallen into a rote recitation of its songs, devoid of purpose and merely resplendent in spectacle. Instead, it put forth an argument  a declaration, really  that we are better than this.

Whether you crossed the street, crossed the state or crossed the border, thank you and welcome! Bono declared after opening the 22-song concert with Sunday Bloody Sunday, the bands debut single from 1983s War album.

Early on, Bono promised an epic night of rock n roll, and U2 delivered.

The 11 songs from The Joshua Tree sat in the middle of the evenings set, book-ended by four songs released before 1987 and seven after it. The concert, which unfolded chronologically until the seven-song encore, proved powerful on many levels.

Musically, the band  Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.  still plays and performs with the potency its fans have come to know and love. Bonos voice is as strong as ever, melodies sung with a great deal of deftness.

The Joshua Tree is top-heavy with familiar hits like I Still Havent Found What Im Looking For and With or Without You, and playing them out of order may have created better pacing, but it wouldve ruined the narrative.

U2, after all, is all about the narrative. Visually, the evening unfurled like a beautiful story, set against the backdrop of stunning images of America, its mountains and valleys and desert streets with no names.

The band launched the evening from a tree-shaped B stage. A gigantic screen on the main stage remained dark while the foursome performed Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Years Day, Bad and Pride (In the Name of Love).

As the last notes of Pride (In the Name of Love) faded into the crisp San Diego night, the first notes of Where the Streets Have No Name began to swell. The stadium soon became awash in red light, the giant screen revealing the silhouette of a Joshua Tree on a red background.

Standing in front of the massive high-resolution video screen  its 200 feet long and 45 feet tall  the members of U2 were dwarfed by such immensity, almost making them seem inconsequential. The band, of course, is hardly that.

In the annals of rock history, U2  much like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles  has earned its place, and deservedly so.

Known for its activism as much as its music, U2 didnt shy away from politics. On Friday night, Bono  leading the charge  preached like it was Sunday morning, touching on topics from war and womens rights to immigration and the plight of refugees. He spoke of faith and hope and dreams and the idea of a perfect America  themes laid out in The Joshua Tree, circa 1987.

Later, Beautiful Day, Elevation and Vertigo brought the house down with pure and raw rock n roll  with the propulsive Elevation sending the capacity crowd into a jumping frenzy.

Earlier, opening act Beck basked in the beauty of the evening, saying: Its a perfect night sky  I feel like I can touch it.

Friday night, during a magnificently guided grand tour of The Joshua Tree, fans didnt need to touch the sky. Thanks to U2, they were already in musical heaven.

U2: The Joshua Tree Tour 2017  San Diego setlist

Sunday Bloody Sunday

New Years Day

Bad

Pride (In the Name of Love)

The Joshua Tree

Where the Streets Have No Name

I Still Havent Found What Im Looking For

With or Without You

Bullet the Blue Sky

Running to Stand Still

Red Hill Mining Town

In Gods Country

Trip Through Your Wires

One Tree Hill

Exit

Mothers of the Disappeared

Encore

Miss Sarajevo

Beautiful Day

Elevation

Vertigo

Youre the Best Thing About Me

Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

One

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michael.rocha@sduniontribune.com
Emotion ran close to the surface at Fridays Miramar Air Show, and it wasnt always excitement about the dazzling aerial aerobatics.

Tear-filled eyes were common  particularly among weathered, tough veterans during pinning ceremonies held by the Pentagons Vietnam War Commemoration unit.

The Marine Corps air show is honoring Vietnam veterans during this years event, which runs through Sunday afternoon with daily performances by the Navys Blue Angels flight team.

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1 / 24 Vietnam Army veteran Ruben Vieras, 67, rubs a pencil across paper to capture the name of his nephew Jose Luis Vieras, who died in Vietnam in 1968, at The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 24 Two Blue Angels pass each other at close range as the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 24 The U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 24 Stacia Nemeth, who is with The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall, hugs each Vietnam veteran that she hands a Vietnam Veteran lapel pin to. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 24 Stacia Nemeth, who is with The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall, hugs each Vietnam veteran that she hands a Vietnam Veteran lapel pin to. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 24 Stacia Nemeth, who is with The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall, shows Vietnam Veteran lapel pins. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 24 Paula Barnett puts the Vietnam Veteran lapel pin on her husband and Vietnam Air Force veteran, who flew a F-100 Super Sabre, during a lapel pinning ceremony for the Vietnam vets. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 8 / 24 Vietnam veteran Ted Vallas, an Air Force Captain who flew a F-100 jet over Vietnam, and his friend Charlene Madvig capture the name of Air Force Capt. Patrick Carroll, who was shot down over Laos. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 9 / 24 Vietnam veteran Stu Read rubs a pencil on paper to capture the name of Army Staff Sgt. Gerald Gaylor. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 10 / 24 The U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 11 / 24 A boy protects his ears from the roar of jet engines as the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 12 / 24 Vapor comes off the wings of a Blue Angels F-18. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 13 / 24 Marines attached to a line attached to a helicopter are lifted into the air during the Marine Air-Ground Task Force demonstration. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 14 / 24 A wall of flames erupt during the Marine Air-Ground Task Force demonstration. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 15 / 24 Blue Angels pilots march to their planes. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 16 / 24 The U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 17 / 24 A young boy plays with toy military jets just before the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 18 / 24 The Patriots Jet Team perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 19 / 24 The U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 20 / 24 People watch the U.S. Navy Blue Angels perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 21 / 24 Two jets pass at close range as the Patriots Jet Team perform. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 22 / 24 A C-17 Globemaster III on display. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 23 / 24 People enter the C-17 Globemaster III. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) 24 / 24 Vietnam veterans look at The Mobile Vietnam Memorial Wall. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)

On behalf of a grateful nation, wed like to thank you for your service  and welcome home, said Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Stewart, a Marine assigned to the commemoration team.

Visitors gathered in front of a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall, which bears the names of more than 58,300 U.S. service members lost in that conflict.

The replica wall is the labor of love of Mike Bertell, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Antelope Valley. His nonprofit group undertook a five-year effort to build the piece, which travels around Southern California.

Why? Because there are about 25 guys I was with on that wall, Bertell said. A lot of people will never get to go to Washington, D.C., he added, referring to the full-size memorial wall on the National Mall.

Roughly 500 pins were distributed Friday. Veterans who served on active duty between 1955 and 1975 are eligible.

An estimated 200,000 Vietnam veterans live in Southern California, with a large cluster around San Diego, said Stewart, of the commemoration committee.

Nationally, about 1 million pins have been distributed so far. In total, roughly 7 million Americans served during the Vietnam era.

RELATED: Miramar Air Show preview 

The crowd began amassing in a Miramar hangar about 10 minutes before the afternoon pinning ceremony was slated to begin Friday.

Many heads were covered in ball caps representing a military unit.

Chatter arose: I was there in 1962 and, Have you seen the new Ken Burns war documentary on PBS?

When the brief ceremony started, the crowd quieted and formed lines. Volunteers offered each veteran one of the nickel-sized pins and a hearty handshake or hug.

Ernesto Sisneros, 69, of San Diego was one of the recipients.

Its a big honor, said Sisneros, who served with a Navy riverine unit from 1967 to 1969, including time on the Mekong Delta.

When we came home, we were spit on, said Sisneros, whose voice cracked as he spoke. We were called baby killers. And I lost a lot of friends over there.

Sisneros pointed over at the wall replica.

They are there on that wall.

Eddie Dees Jr. was another pin recipient. He wore a desert-pattern Navy camouflage uniform top with a warfare insignia above the breast pocket.

Me and my brother were both at Nam at the same time, during the Tet Offensive in 68, said Dees, 76, who went on to serve in the Navy for 31 years.

His father had to agree to send the two brothers at the same time. It was a gamble for the family, but both men made it back home.

Why did Dees step forward for the pinning ceremony at the air show?

Its just to show... he stopped to gather his emotions.

Its hard to put into words.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect Dees correct age.

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An earthquake of magnitude of 3.4 detected in North Korea with the Chinese earthquake administration saying that the quake was caused by a 'suspected explosion'.

By India Today Web Desk: Did North Korea test another nuclear bomb? The question is up in the air after an earthquake was detected to have struck in North Korea today.

However, initial assessment of the quake differed widely, with the Chinese earthquake administration saying that it had detected a magnitude 3.4 earthquake in North Korea that was a "suspected explosion".

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The administration said in a statement on its website that the quake, which occurred around 0830 GMT, was recorded a depth of zero kilometers.

The Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, said on Twitter that earthquake was detected "at roughly the same site as [the] shallow quake on Sept. 3 that was caused by [a] nuclear test".

Magnitude-3.4 zero-depth quake detected in North Korea, at roughly the same site as shallow quake on Sept. 3 that was caused by nuclear test pic.twitter.com/dkMhaipJv2- China Xinhua News (@XHNews) September 23, 2017

The earthquake was detected in Kilju county in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea's known Punggyeri nuclear site is located, according to South Korea's meteorological agency.

The agency also offered a differing view than China's saying that while it was analysing the nature of the quake, its initial view was that it was a natural earthquake.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, the global nuclear proliferation, too weighed in on today's quake, saying that its analysts are looking at "unusual seismic activity" in North Korea.

Analysts looking at unusual #seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude in the #DPRK : 23-SEP-2017 08:30 UTC / More details to come!- Lassina Zerbo (@SinaZerbo) September 23, 2017

Previous quakes from North Korea have indicated nuclear tests by the reclusive state, the most recent earlier this month. Incidentally, today's quake was centered near North Korea's nuclear test site.

Today's quake come over a fortnight after North Korea tested its sixth - and most powerful - nuclear bomb. That test saw Pyongyang explode an hydrogen bomb. Scientists and experts are still analysing that test to determine North Korea's exact nuclear capabilities.

The test was universally condemned, with US President Donald Trump threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if Pyongyang doesn't heed calls to drop its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The United Nations General Assembly is currently in session in New York where North Korea and its nuclear weapons have been a topic of concern among diplomats. US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have also exchanged sharp words and threats this week.

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(With inputs from Reuters; More details awaited)

--- ENDS ---
Fretting about his possible role in the Fat Leonard bribery scandal, in late 2013 the Navy stripped the security clearance of its top spy, destroying the career of Vice Adm. Ted Twig Branch.

On Friday, the Navy closed its review with what it called appropriate administrative action for Branch, the former director of Navy intelligence.

The U.S. Department of Justice  which has handled the prosecution of those who took bribes from contractor Leonard Glenn Francis and his Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia  brought no charges against Branch.

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The Department of Justice declined to prosecute Vice Adm. Ted Branch and forwarded his matter to the Department of the Navys Consolidated Disposition Authority, said Navy Fleet Forces Command spokesman Cmdr. Mike Kafka in a written statement. After completing a thorough and detailed review of the evidence, the CDA took appropriate administrative action. This matter is closed.

Administrative action can include a non-punitive letter of reprimand or an oral counseling chiding a sailor for questionable conduct. Unlike other judicial or military sanctions, administrative action cannot take pay and privileges from a shipmate.

We are very proud of my 37 years of service in the Navy, Branch said by telephone. The last three years were extremely difficult for my family and me, but we are glad now to turn the page. I look forward to being able to continue to serve the Navy and our nation as a civilian.

Helmed by Adm. Philip Davidson, the disposition authority has been sifting through hundreds of cases that federal prosecutors passed on. Federal investigators have uncovered widespread instances of Francis defrauding the Navy on contracts after lavishing officers with teams of prostitutes, pricey resort stays and envelopes stuffed with cash.

Both federal prosecutors and Navy leaders have charged 40 sailors, Department of Defense civilians or Fat Leonard associates in the scandal, including Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, the Navys former director of intelligence operations. He has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial in federal criminal court on conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery charges.

Federal investigators grilled Branch in November of 2013, forcing the Navys leadership to make hard decisions about Branchs case, said former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus.

Mabus said by telephone that investigators assured Navy leaders in late 2013 that they had substantial evidence pointing to Branchs wrongdoing and that they would soon make a decision on charging him.

Obviously, both of those things werent true, said Mabus, adding that the way it was handled wasnt fair to Ted Branch and wasnt fair to the Navy.

Mabus and his admirals felt that they couldnt fire Branch from his intelligence post, but they also fretted that he was close to classified information and they needed to protect that. So they left him in his job but wouldnt clear him to hear or analyze intelligence data.

What he thought would be settled in weeks ended up dragging on for months, then years.

As time went on, they (at the Department of Justice) questioned us, Why arent you replacing him? But we were in a horrible position, Mabus said. They made us aware of potential problems, but we had no grounds to relieve him.

Branch retired from the Navy on Oct. 1 and lives in Coronado.

A highly decorated career aviator recognized repeatedly for combat valor over the skies of Grenada, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq, he now directs a program at the San Diego-based nonprofit group CyberTECH thats designed to spark technological innovation.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
Dont forget your earplugs if youre going to the MCAS Miramar Air Show, the premier display of military aviation in the country.

The annual supersonic sound of freedom marks San Diegos most patriotic concert, conducted with laser-like precision in the skies above.

Meanwhile, down on the ground, roses and raspberries peek out from the fecund earth of North County.

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A raspberry  the Jejune Dotard award  Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, for his Dr. Strangelovian statement Thursday on TV that, if he were the president, he would launch a preemptive military strike against nuclear-armed North Korea.

Let that sink in.

This sort of bluster is, to put it charitably, macho swagger that may fire up Hunters bellicose base, but you can bet its been clipped and filed in North Korea as proof that the U.S. is on the verge of nuclear attack.

The escalation of tension between North Korea and the United States is no laughing matter, as hard as the leaders of the two countries try to make it one.

Earlier last week, President Donald Trump called dictator Kim Jong Un Rocket Man. (Thats the first time Ive found myself humming an Elton John song during a United Nations speech.)

In response, North Korea twice called Trump a dotard, an archaic word for doddering fool. (The North Koreans evidently cant afford updated dictionaries.)

In this tense period of brinkmanship, Hunters capricious advocacy for an attack that would likely result in millions  millions!  of casualties in both Koreas and beyond is simply stupefying.

Now more than ever is international diplomatic and economic pressure required to bring Pyongyang to earth.

Hunter may revel in playing the loose cannon, a cheerleader for President Trumps most intemperate instincts, but many constituents in District 50, already on high alert over a scandal involving his use of his campaign funds as a personal ATM, will go ballistic at the polls.

A rose  the Catching Air award  to Vista for finally, after nine years of stiffing skateboarders, opening not one but two complementary parks where skaters (and bikers and scooters) can shred themselves into the ground.

The $3 million project on North Santa Fe owes its completion in large part to the human capital provided by Jack and Lyssa Flaherty and the financial capital derived from developer impact fees.

Happy, there could be still more stoking in store for Vista skaters.

Councilwoman Amanda Rigby told a Union-Tribune reporter that shes pushing for a skate park in south Vista as well as adding ramps to existing parks.

The words going to get out.

Vista is sick, dude!

At this rate, Vista may have as many skate venues as it does craft breweries.

A blue rose  the Life Is a Beach award  to Maureen Mo Muir, the Encinitas school board trustee and wife of Councilman Mark Muir, who responded to my Sept. 10 pro-pot (her adjective) rose with a letter to the editor extolling the transcendent beauties of her city that would be threatened by the commercial cultivation of cannabis.

In Muirs view, a columnist who does not reside in Encinitas, who has only covered all of North Countys cities for 21 years, lacks the insight to comment on what the city should do about pot or, presumably, anything else.

In her Sept. 12 letter, Muir wrote:

He (i.e., me) doesnt know about the magic of the azure beaches of Encinitas.

Well, on that score, shes absolutely right.

After all these years in North County, I had no idea the beaches from Cardiff to Leucadia are  blue.

Muirs point, however, is not really about the color of the sand. Its about the quality of life threatened by the prospect of commercial marijuana growing in greenhouses in agricultural zones.

He (me, again) doesnt see the beaches teeming with young children catching sand crabs. He doesnt see my friends teenagers surfing and sometimes not-so-young catching the waves. He doesnt see the parents, grandparents and close friends preparing dinner for their hungry, sandy hordes. These beaches are brimming with multi-generational families, anticipating and cherishing this family community. This is a safe, idyllic city to raise children.

Why would our council want to change this?

First off, this is stirring, heart-felt imagery.

To many good people, Muir is to be commended for defending Encinitas from the sorrows of marijuana, which can be exaggerated (see: Reefer Madness and Attorney General Jeff Sessions) but are still real.

I assume Muirs defensive instincts are just as strong when it comes to the ravages of alcohol, another legal drug the sorrows of which can drive one MADD.

Politicians are free to take moral stands to oppose cannabis dispensaries and/or cultivation within the city walls. Proposition 64, which passed in a landslide in Encinitas, allows for that municipal resistance.

At the same time, citizens with libertarian leanings have the right to disagree at the ballot box, either voting in more tolerant politicians or passing an initiative to reverse prohibitions on dispensaries or cultivation or both.

I happen to see some poetry in the flower capital of North County, which is struggling to keep its ag heritage alive, claiming a share of the potentially lucrative commercial marijuana market. Its a pro-business bias, I admit.

But I also readily concede that Muirs idyllic vision of Encinitas is much more poetic, a drug-free utopia as beautiful and rare as blue beaches.

logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com
Dozens of homeless folks on Thursday morning were sprawled out in the courtyard on 15th and Commercial streets outside of Father Joes Villages.

The crowd  some listening to music on headphones and most toting multiple pieces of luggage  gathered for a free lunch doled out regularly by the homeless shelter in East Village.

Frazier Johnson waited patiently among them as a line for food began to form around 11 a.m. The calm 47-year-old wore a fresh long-sleeved t-shirt and a white goatee framing a healthy looking face.

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Johnson said he closely tracks his meal times because they determine when he will need to be near one of the public restrooms accessible to the down-and-out.

If you dont then youre going to have a situation on your hands, he said with a soft smile and dark, lucid eyes.

Johnson, who arrived from Texas a few months ago, said finding a clean bathroom in downtown San Diego can be challenging. However, he doesnt blame local officials.

Theres not enough bathrooms, but if the city puts in bathrooms, you have a whole lot of homeless people that dont appreciate it, he said. Theyre going to go in there and do drugs. Theyre going to mess the place up. So the city has a heck of a problem to overcome.

One of the most frequently used public restroom is located just steps away through the doors of St. Vincent de Paul Village, which as part of Father Joes Villages, is the largest residential service provider for the homeless in the county.

The state and availability of such facilities has recently received intense scrutiny as the region grapples with a massive outbreak of hepatitis A that has killed 16 and stricken 444 people. Health officials believe the eruption of cases, which has now spread to Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, proliferated among the homeless as a result of poor sanitation and drug use.

Deacon Jim Vargas with Father Joes Villages had just finished giving his second news conference in as many days that morning, detailing efforts to keep facilities clean and combat the potentially deadly virus.

The nature of public restrooms in general is its a messy business, Vargas said. We are now having to clean those restrooms every two hours, far more than you would normally clean a restroom because of the clientele we have here. Some of them have mental health issues. Some have substance abuse issues. And that plays itself out in these public restrooms.

The mens room has two stalls, three urinals and a foul smell despite having recently been washed down. Some homeless people said that, like many restrooms that are open 24 hours a day, its not a place they frequent after dark because its a hot spot for meth and heroin use.

Large fans will be installed in the restrooms within a few weeks for the sole purpose of preventing people from using lighters in the facility, Vargas said, pretending to cook drugs in a spoon with his hands. It will blow out the flame and they wont be able to accomplish their goal there of shooting up, basically.

That could help keep the bathroom clear for folks who want to use it for its intended purpose, such as Marcos Vasquez. The 38-year-old has been homeless on and off for the last three years, and he says that while he does his best to make it to the public restrooms, many dont.

A lot of them are alcoholics that are too drunk or too wasted to go down the street and time it, Vasquez said of those who defecate in public, either into trash bags or directly onto the street. They dont care.

Ive had to clean the sidewalks myself off where I camp at, he added. Its gross.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer has ramped up efforts in recent weeks to combat the outbreak of hepatitis A. More than 28,000 people have received vaccinations, and crews have started power washing and bleaching sidewalks downtown.

The city recently added four portable toilets at the corner of C Street and 1st Avenue and another four at 14th and G streets. The facilities are cleaned at least twice a day and monitored around the clock by security guards. City officials said they would install another bank of such toilets in the East Village next week.

Homeless residents currently have access to about five 24-hour public restrooms in the citys urban core. There are more than a dozen other such facilities in downtown including those only open during the day and those along the distant waterfront. City officials said they are looking for locations to place additional temporary toilets.

Downtown property owners with space for portable restrooms are encouraged to contact the city with their willingness to be part of the solution to this public health emergency, said Katie Keach, director of communications for the city. If a site is workable and near at-risk populations, the city will arrange for the installation, maintenance and security of each restroom.

Down the block from Father Joes Villages at the Neil Good Day Center on 17th and K streets next to Interstate 5, homeless have access during the day to a bathroom and on Tuesdays and Thursdays free hepatitis A vaccinations.

We really need restrooms out here desperately, Steven Hillard, 52, whos been homeless for seven years, said on Thursday outside the center. Its just crowded. The lines are long or somebodys taking too long because they got to doctor themselves up in the bathroom not really using it.

Sometimes, I got to water the trees down or spread a little love in the dirt, he added.

Many people said that they would occasionally buy something cheap at a fast food restaurant or at a store, such as Walmart, just to use the bathroom. However, multiple people said that many retailers in and around downtown have started limiting the hours their restrooms are open to the public.

Two public restrooms outside of Halcyon coffee house in Fault Line Park at Island Ave and 14th Street were closed on and off for more than a year, despite developer Pinnacle International having received $1.6 million to maintain the bathrooms and open space.

Thursday afternoon, a number of homeless people hung out around the park using the restrooms, which were recently reopened after the city got wind of the situation. One of them, James David, 45, scrubbed down a pair of pants at one of the many hand-washing stations the city has placed around downtown in response to the outbreak.

I know were homeless, but were people, too, Davis said. We have to stay healthy so you stay healthy.

A few hours later, at one of most heavily trafficked public restrooms in downtown, located at C Street and 3rd Avenue near City Hall, an attendant sat in a booth behind a plastic window buzzing in people, up to two at a time.

Ive got diabetes so I need to be close to a bathroom, said 52-year-old Derek Williams. But this place is disgusting. Thats why I stay in Balboa Park because they have more bathrooms over there.

There are about 28 bathrooms in Balboa Park, half of which are now open 24 hours a day, according to city officials.

As night falls, Alvin Nelson, 54, makes his way from downtown to a restroom facility in Ruocco Park along the waterfront at Harbor Drive and Pacific Highway. Wearing a baggy t-shirt and a Bluetooth speaker dangling from a chain around his neck, he listened to a mix of rap and 60s-era pop.

These restrooms are clean but you have to watch out for the Harbor Police, he said. He likes to fill a small bucket in the sink and then wash himself in the stall so as not to attract attention.

A little bird bath, so if anyones walking by, you dont hassle nobody, he said.

The Port of San Diego said its officers make a point to treat everyone including the homeless with respect and dignity.

Along the way, Nelson meets up with John Lofton, 54, whos been homeless for the last three years. Chatting about the state of public restrooms, Lofton recalls the Portland Loo that the city removed from 14th and L streets next to the Petco Park parking lot. It was ripped out by the city in 2016 after about a year in operation, during which time businesses owners and residents complained about drugs, crime and lewd activity near the facility.

It used to be a rarity to see feces on the ground, Lofton said. Now its a commonplace thing. These people are acting like animals because people are treating them like animals.

Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
At 87 years old, Dolores Huerta hasnt stopped organizing.

Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez, and together they worked for years to secure workers rights. She continues fighting for social justice on a variety of issues including the school-to-prison pipeline and womens reproductive rights through the Dolores Huerta Foundation.

A documentary on her lifes work, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, began showing in San Diego on Friday, thanks in part to The San Diego Foundation.

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I think thats the beautiful thing about organizing  what you do is empower people, and they realize they have the power to make change, Huerta said. I hope thats what people take away from the documentary. If the farm workers can do it, then we can do it.

Growing up, Huerta participated in school clubs and the Girl Scouts.

When I learned that you could do organizing and make policy, that was infectious, Huerta said.

When she was 25, she left her job as a teacher and began working for the Stockton Community Service Organization. Through that work, she met Chavez. They led farm workers strikes and a boycott on grapes that eventually caused vineyards to sign union contracts with their workers.

Though Chavez has been recognized for decades for his inspiration and leadership, much of Huertas acknowledgment has come more recently. Former President Barack Obama gave Huerta the Medal of Freedom in 2012.

Huerta doesnt quibble over the issue.

Cesar was a great human being, Huerta said. He deserves every bit of adoration and recognition because he was a great man.

What does bother her, she said, is that people who died fighting for farm workers rights dont get the same recognition.

No one knows their names, she lamented, listing story after story of men and women who were killed as the workers tried to unionize.

Many believe Huerta hasnt received as much recognition as Chavez because she is a woman.

I used to think it was wrong to try to take credit for the work I did, Huerta says in the film. I dont think that anymore.

Huerta dealt with sexism and machismo from other organizers over the years, she said. After working in Washington, D.C., to get a bill passed in 1986 that would give amnesty to unauthorized immigrant farmworkers, other leaders in the movement sent her to work in Florida while the men held press conferences celebrating the bills passing, she said.

For some reason they felt like I was trying to compete with them, Huerta said. Sexism is irrational. You cant really describe it. It just is.

Because the farm workers movement had a woman leading the charge, more women participated in it than other union movements, according to the documentary.

Linda LeGerrette of South Park recalled how Huerta inspired her when they met in the movement years ago.

Dolores was an icon from the beginning, LeGerrette said. Shes petite in stature, but shes so strong in her voice and her persona.

LeGerrette admired Huertas life choices, noticing how different they were from those of her own mother, who was more traditional.

A mother of 11, Huerta sacrificed much of her time to her cause and relied on others to help her care for her children while she traveled for work.

That took a lot of guts to do that in those days, LeGerrette said. She withstood all that stuff women have to go through to follow their passion.

Huerta said women have a tendency to hold themselves back from a seat at the table, and she advised todays women organizers to confront their fears.

Just do it like the guys do, learn on the job, " Huerta said. The things we fear doing, the only way to get over that is actually doing it.

Start by knocking on strangers doors and convincing them to vote, she said.

The line to see Dolores for its opening day shows stretched down the block on Adams Avenue. The show that included a question and answer session with Huerta was sold out, and the audience greeted her with a standing ovation at the end of the film.

Huerta addressed a variety of issues  the 2018 elections, immigration, racism and education.

After answering questions, Huerta led the room in a round of call and response chants culminating with her famous line: Si se puede!

Dolores will play at Landmark Ken Cinema through Thursday.

Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

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A Huntington Beach police officer was captured on video Friday morning as he struggled with a suspect in a convenience store parking lot and then shot the man multiple times, fatally wounding him.

Bystander video of the incident posted on social media showed the officer struggling with the man in front of a 7-Eleven store and the man pulling an object from the officers utility belt. The officer then unholstered his pistol, moved quickly away and began firing.

The videos show the man standing, turning and hunching his shoulders as the sound of up to seven gunshots can be heard. The officers voice also can be heard shouting, Get down! The man then drops a dark object from his right hand and collapses to the ground.

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This appears to be video of the event, but we have not confirmed the source. We are in the preliminary stages of our investigation and are not releasing any further details at this time, said police spokeswoman Officer Angie Bennett.

Warning: The following tweet contains graphic content.

The deadly encounter occurred about 9:30 a.m., when the officer contacted the man at the 7-Eleven at 6012 Edinger Ave. and the two got into an altercation, Bennett said. The man was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Nearby Marina High School was placed on lockdown for roughly an hour after the shooting.

The bystander who captured the video told The Times that he was in his car when he saw a police officer backing his cruiser out of the 7-Eleven parking lot. The officer stopped and flashed his headlights at a man dressed in dark clothing. When the officer got out of his vehicle and approached, the man swung at the officer.

The bystander said he lost sight of the pair momentarily, then saw the officer standing over the man. Thats when he began recording the episode.

Police use of force experts say the video does not tell the whole story of the incident.

The big question here is what does this officer know that I dont know, said Charles Sid Heal, a retired L.A. County sheriffs commander and shooting expert. Did the officer hear something from the man or someone else that made that man a real deadly threat to a reasonable officer? It is almost a panic shooting because of how quickly he shoots. of the patrolman.

Heal said that in a fight, an officer isnt always aware of what a suspect might snatch from their belt, and that might have escalated the situation. He could have thought the man grabbed his Taser. That is weapon that can disable an officer.

Ed Obayashi, a sheriffs deputy and legal advisor for Plumas County, said the mans proximity to the officer and his rapid movements may have increased the officers perception of a threat.

Obayashi said it is not unusual for an officer to shoot multiple times once they decide to fire. This is an unreal small amount of time, and the brain tells the fingers to keep pulling that trigger, Obayashi said.

What is unusual in this instance however, is that the officer tells the man to get down, Obayashi said, You never hear that after an officers shots. This officer is clearly shocked this man is still standing and not going down.

There have been seven shootings by Huntington Beach Police in 2017. Earlier this month, two Huntington Beach police officers were injured by their own gunfire as they confronted a knife-wielding man.

The shooting comes at a time of tension within the citys police department. Last month, the officers union announced that its members had overwhelmingly approved a no confidence vote in Chief Robert Handy. Handy who has lead the department since 2013, began equipping officers with body cameras last year, despite opposition from members of the police union board.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes
As the search for the last possible survivors of this weeks powerful earthquake intensified Friday, the scale of damage across central Mexico became more evident.

At least 3,000 buildings in the densely packed capital have suffered damage from the devastating 7.1 quake, Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said, with a number of structures declared uninhabitable.

Many others with cracked facades and crumbling balconies are still waiting for official inspections, leaving weary occupants uncertain whether to remain.

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In the badly hit state of Morelos, where the epicenter of the quake was located, Gov. Graco Ramirez said 20,000 houses were damaged, along with186 schools.

Heavy rains have complicated search efforts this week, forcing some crews to retreat amid piles of sodden debris, and more rain was expected Friday night.

Authorities have not released an estimate for the number of people believe trapped or possibly dead inside damaged buildings. The most recent reports indicate that at least 293 people were killed in Tuesdays quake: 155 dead in Mexico City, 73 in Morelos state, 45 in Puebla state, 13 in Mexico state, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

As the window narrowed in which trapped victims might still be found alive, Mexican authorities assured residents that officials would not give up efforts to find anyone who may still be alive.

The work of rescue  will not be suspended, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a visit to Puebla state. We will maintain the work of rescue to look for anyone who may be alive beneath the rubble.

Pena Nieto publicly rebuffed false rumors that rescue efforts soon would be suspended and heavy machinery deployed at damaged sites, a possibility that has inspired panic among relatives of the missing. He said nothing would be demolished until after a census of damaged buildings was complete.

Throwing in the towel is not an option! Secretary of the Navy Vidal Soberon declared in a tweet.

Authorities said rescue work was still being carried out in eight of the 38 collapsed buildings across the capital.

Rescue crews from around the world  including teams from the U.S., Israel and Japan  have descended on Mexico to help with relief efforts.

They have joined firefighters, soldiers, naval officers and a volunteer force of search and rescue specialists known as the Topos  the Spanish word for moles.

On Friday afternoon, the Topos combed through the rubble of a collapsed five-story apartment building in the Tlalpan district in southern Mexico City. Rescue teams were using dogs and heat and sound detectors to look for life.

Its a very emotional moment when you hear a sound that indicates life, said Alejandro Castro, who commands a Cancun-based unit of volunteers. At that moment, you of course hope they will survive, but it is impossible to know.

At least eight people have been rescued alive from the building, authorities say. But on Friday, Azteca TV reported that five of those brought out were dead.

Workers removed their hard hats in respect as colleagues maneuvered one body laid out on an orange stretcher down from the rubble pile on a ladder. From there, they loaded it into a waiting morgue trailer.

Across the city, hopes that the missing would be found alive were being dashed.

In a poignant scene widely aired on Mexican TV, Karina Gaona stood earlier this week in front of a downed building in the hard-hit Roma district and, in a loud voice, expressed support for her brother, Erick Gaona Garnica, who went missing in the structure.

Brother, hang in there, please. We are going to get you out, she had declared. Your daughter is well  your wife is well, your parents and brothers are well. You know that we love you, and we are not going to move from here until we get you out. God take care of you.

On Friday, news circulated that the brothers body had been pulled from the rubble of the building.

Food and supplies continued to pour into the damaged areas to help earthquake victims. Meanwhile, nearly 2 million Mexicans have signed a petition through Change.org asking that the National Electoral Institute, a public organization that organizes federal elections, donate about $7 million to the victims of Tuesdays earthquake and another deadly quake that hit southern Mexico a few weeks earlier.

It is not fair to allocate so much of our tax money to political parties, the petition said, if thousands of Mexicans are suffering from this enormous tragedy.

Special correspondent Cecilia Sanchez contributed.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

twitter: @mcdneville

ALSO

Meet Frida, the valiant Lab whos saved a dozen lives in Mexico

Eleven coffins, all in a row: One of the worst of Mexicos earthquake tragedies unfolded at the church in Atzala

Telemundo and Univision announce fundraisers for disaster relief

UPDATES:

3:40 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details on rescue efforts and tallies of structures damaged by the earthquake.

This story was originally published at 9:20 a.m.
The local marijuana industry is embracing as a huge opportunity San Diegos recent decision to legalize marijuana cultivation and manufacturing, but police and legalization opponents are bracing for a possible increase in usage and crime.

Industry leaders say they expect city approvals for pot farms and factories to be less contentious than approvals for retail medicinal dispensaries have been since the city began allowing them in 2014.

They say zoning rules are slightly looser, city officials have more experience with the industry, and competition will be less intense because there is a citywide cap of 40 such businesses  instead of a dispensary cap of four per City Council district.

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And they say allowing a local supply chain for the citys dispensaries will boost the economy, create jobs and improve the quality and safety of local marijuana by eliminating the need to truck it in from elsewhere.

San Diego police, however, say the City Council erred in voting 6-3 on Sept. 11 to allow local cultivation and manufacturing despite the objections of law enforcement and planning officials.

They say such businesses will be magnets for crime and increase local usage of marijuana, and that they expect cultivators to illegally divert excess product to states where marijuana is illegal because of larger profit margins there.

Local police also dispute that legalizing the entire industry will eliminate the black market, contending that plans to significantly tax legal marijuana mean there will still be an incentive to illegally buy and sell the drug at lower prices.

Lt. Mark Novak said the Police Departments concerns are based on visits to Denver, where both cultivation and sales of recreational marijuana have been legal since 2012.

We went to Denver because theyre a couple years ahead of us and can tell us what theyve been through, Novak said. They can tell us not what people think is going to happen, but whats actually going to happen.

Councilman Chris Ward had a different take two weeks ago when the council approved cultivation and manufacturing of marijuana.

He said reports from four states that have approved recreational marijuana, including Colorado, indicate concerns have been overblown about usage increases and illegal activities related to cultivation.

Having sound policy and regulations in place will allow the city to enforce its rules and assist the industry in regulating itself, Ward told his colleagues, contending that a local supply chain would reduce crime. I think its actually going to be an increase in our ability to keep neighborhoods safe.

Novak said he strongly disagrees, contending tax revenue from the new industry is unlikely to cover higher enforcement expenses or make up for social costs.

The costs far exceed the revenues, but nobody pays attention to that side of it, he said. The expenses are going to be loss of life, property damage, injuries and a variety of different things.

He said allowing cultivation will make it more likely that drug cartels and organized crime will increase in San Diego.

A lot of cartels and organized crime groups use the cover of legalized marijuana states to come in, grow their stuff and use shell services, and then divert the marijuana out of state, Novak said. There is so much marijuana floating around in Denver and Colorado at relatively cheap prices, and a lot of that is being diverted to states where marijuana is still illegal that will pay three to four times the amount.

He also said the black market would be more likely to increase than decrease.

Because marijuana is taxed, youre still going to have a market in town for people who dont want to pay the tax and will get it from an illegal delivery service or an illegal cultivator, he said.

Kimberly Simms, a local attorney representing marijuana businesses, said the black market will shrink in San Diego because customers prefer a well-regulated product that is tested, safe and legal.

You will always have a black market, but the idea here is to have a well-regulated legal market, she said.

Novak said cultivation and manufacturing businesses will also be magnets for crime, primarily because they will have many pounds of valuable drugs and large sums of cash because federal banking laws prevent the industry from using credit or debit cards.

The industry is cash-heavy and drug-heavy and the crooks know that, he said.

Simms said a fair comparison would be to a jewelry story, which is bigger target for crime than an ordinary business but that also has more security and precautions in place.

She said state and local requirements for surveillance cameras, security guards and other measures will make crime at the new businesses less likely.

Novak said the desire for a local supply chain was just greed on the part of the industry.

All of this is about them making more money and increasing their profits, he said. The closer they are, the more money they make.

Simms and other industry officials have said a local supply chain means marijuana wont have to be trucked in from elsewhere, which is bad for the environment and dangerous because shipments could be vulnerable to robberies.

Novak said it was particularly frustrating that the council not only defied the recommendations of staff and law enforcement, but went even further by adding on several suggestions from the local marijuana industry.

They include allowing cultivation and manufacturing businesses within 100 feet of dispensaries, which police say could mean an entire strip mall would become marijuana businesses, and choosing a citywide cap of 40 instead of a proposed cap of two in each of the citys nine council districts.

That is a huge jump  40 versus 18, Novak said. We put a lot of time and energy into this to minimize the risks and make sure we affect public safety as little as possible. Its hard for me to understand.

Police spokesman Scott Wahl said the council appeared to listen more to industry lobbyists than its own police force.

This is an emerging industry and there are lot of unknowns and uncertainties, said Wahl. The idea was to kind of put our toes in first and ease into it so we dont risk public safety while were going through this. But we basically just did a back flip cannonball into the deep end.

Simms said the council made the right decision adopting looser regulations than the city has for dispensaries. The cap of four per district significantly heightened competition, prompting questionable tactics by some aspiring dispensary operators.

Simms said despite the softer citywide cap, however, she still expects those planning to open marijuana cultivation and manufacturing businesses to be scrambling to get to the front of the line when the city begins accepting applications early next year.

A city spokesman said the council is scheduled to approve the new regulations a second time on Monday because they are included in an ordinance.

Its possible the regulations will be amended to include restrictions limiting odor from marijuana businesses, which Councilman David Alvarez has lobbied for.

The only other cities in the county that allow dispensaries are La Mesa and Lemon Grove, where voters forced the hands of city leaders by approving ballot measures last November. And only La Mesa has indicated it may allow cultivation.

david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
A 21-year-old Navy sailor was arrested Thursday on suspicion of raping a girl he met through a cellphone app intended for teens, Oceanside police said Friday.

Isaiah Jackson, of Vista, is accused of creating a Spotafriend account, posing as a 17-year-old male, police said. The app is marketed to youth between 13 and 19 years old who want to meet other teenagers in their proximity.

Police allege Jackson and the 14-year-old victim chatted via the app for two days before they met at an undisclosed location where the assault occurred around midnight Sunday.

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Detectives later identified the suspect as Jackson, an active-duty sailor assigned to a military police unit at Naval Base San Diego, police said.

Jackson was arrested about 11 p.m. and booked into jail on charges that include rape, police spokesman Tom Bussey said.

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Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
Preliminary investigations have revealed that blueprint and components of INSAS and other arms may have been leaked by the detained middleman Deepak Sahu.

By Arindam De: Those arrested in arms smuggling case from the Ichapur Ordnance Factory may have contacts in Bihar and Jharkhand. Preliminary investigations have revealed that blueprint and components of INSAS and other arms may have been leaked by the detained middleman Deepak Sahu.

SIT officers have started to thoroughly investigate this angle. Deepak is being questioned about his links with the Maoists. This factory may have been the source for components of rifles and other arms for at least a few years. Investigators are apprehensive that arrested officer of Ichapur Ordnance Factory Sambhu Bhattacharya was only a part of an organised racket. Investigators will question Bhattacharya on this angle. Both the arrested persons have been remanded to police custody for further investigation.

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Sambhu Bhattacharya was arrested from Ultadanga on Thursday. He has been charged with smuggling out parts of INSAS assault rifle. He used to sell these components from the store to one Deepak Sahu, who has also been arrested. The apparently influential officer has served for long at the ordnance factory. He was in charge of the store and that facilitated his role in the smuggling of arms and components.

Investigators infer that he has been at it for at least five years. SIT has noticed that for a sensitive place the security at the ordnance factory is lax. Although outsiders are thoroughly checked there is remarkable laxity in security checks on staff members.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the accused used to smuggle out components in his car. As he was in charge of the store room he was able to skip the mandatory security checks and he was able to evade cross checking of stocks. He used his official position to smuggle out blueprints and components of rifles.

While investigating the destination of these smuggled arms and components, sleuths have found that they were mainly sourced to locations in Bihar and Jharkhand. And Deepak Sahu was involved in the transport of these components. He had delivered these consignments in Maoist strongholds of Bihar and Jharkhand. This raises the probability of these components finding their way to the Maoists who are thought to have reassembled these components into operational assault rifles.

Investigators are trying to find out the person or persons who brought these components and if Deepak had any direct links with Maoists. There are several illegal arms factories in Bihar that are known to produce INSAS and AK series assault rifles from these components.

Blueprints of rifles seized from Maoists and illicit arms factories have been found to be exact matches of the blueprints smuggled out from Ichapur factory. Investigators think that ordnance factory blueprints have reached the extremists. Both the arrested persons are being questioned in this regard.

--- ENDS ---
Senior aides to President Trump repeatedly warned him not to deliver a personal attack on North Koreas leader at the United Nations this week, saying insulting the young despot in such a prominent venue could irreparably escalate tensions and shut off any chance for negotiations to defuse the nuclear crisis.

Trumps derisive description of Kim Jong Un as Rocket Man on a suicide mission and his threat to totally destroy North Korea were not in a speech draft that several senior officials reviewed and vetted Monday, the day before Trump gave his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, two U.S. officials said.

Some of Trumps top aides, including national security advisor H.R. McMaster, had argued for months against making the attacks on North Koreas leader personal, warning it could backfire.

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But Trump, who relishes belittling his rivals and enemies with crude nicknames, felt compelled to make a dramatic splash in the global forum.

Some advisors now worry that the escalating war of words has pushed the impasse with North Korea into a new and dangerous phase that threatens to derail the months-long effort to squeeze Pyongyangs economy through sanctions to force Kim to the negotiating table.

A detailed CIA psychological profile of Kim, who is in his early 30s and took power in late 2011, assesses that Kim has a massive ego and reacts harshly and sometimes lethally to insults and perceived slights.

It also says that the dynastic leader  Kim is the grandson of the communist countrys founder, Kim Il Sung, and son of its next leader, Kim Jong Il  views himself as inseparable from the North Korean state.

As predicted, Kim took Trumps jibes personally and especially chafed at the fact that Trump mocked him in front of 200 presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and diplomats at the U.N.

Kim volleyed insults back at Trump in an unprecedented personal statement Thursday, calling Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard and a gangster who had to be tamed with fire.

Kims foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, threatened to respond with the most powerful detonation, a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, according to South Koreas Yonhap News Agency.

Trump lobbed another broadside Friday, tweeting that Kim is obviously a madman who starves and kills his own people and will be tested like never before.

The clash may undermine Trumps other efforts on the sidelines of the General Assembly meetings.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

He spent much of Thursday meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in an effort to carve out new ways to pressure Kim to freeze or roll back his nuclear program.

On Thursday, Trump announced new U.S. sanctions against other countries, foreign businesses and individuals that do business with North Korea, a move likely to chiefly affect China, Pyongyangs largest trading partner.

John Park, a specialist on Northeast Asia at Harvards Kennedy School, said the tit-for-tat insults have created a new reality and probably have shut off any chance of starting talks to curb North Koreas fast-growing nuclear arms program.

If the belief centers around sanctions being the last hope to averting war and getting North Korea back to the negotiating table, its too late, Park said.

Since taking office, Kim has pushed the nuclear and missile programs far faster than U.S. experts had expected, sharply accelerating the pace of development and tests. Kim has conducted four of the countrys six nuclear tests.

U.S. officials now believe that North Korea has fully one-third of its economy invested in its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump and his senior aides say Kim has used foreign assistance, including trading subsidies from China, to offset such massive spending. They believe the latest U.S. sanctions, on top of the U.N. sanctions, will help choke off some of that income.

In recent months, Pyongyang has tested its first two intercontinental ballistic missiles, conducted an underground test of what it claimed was a powerful hydrogen bomb, and fired midrange ballistic missiles over northern Japan.

U.S. experts assess that North Korea is six to eight months away from building a small nuclear warhead robust enough to survive the intense heat and vibrations of an intercontinental ballistic missile crossing the Pacific and reaching the continental United States.

Given Kims record of putting political rivals and dissenters to death, including members of his own family, his public statement blasting Trump makes it highly unlikely that other North Korean officials would participate in talks about ending the countrys nuclear program, Park said.

There is no one on the North Korean side who is going to entertain or pursue discussion about a diplomatic off-ramp, because that individual would be contradicting the leader, which is lethal, Park said.

Trump has returned to rhetoric hed used during the campaign, when he called Kim a madman playing around with nukes and a total nut job.

But Trump also praised Kim at the time, saying during a Fox News interview last year that Kims gotta have something going for him, because he kept control, which is amazing for a young person to do.

The president has been fixated on the threat from Pyongyang since taking office.

Trump rarely lets me escape the Oval Office without a question about North Korea, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in July at a national security forum in Aspen, Colo. It is at the front of his mind.

But Trump also has expressed frustration at the failure of previous administrations to block North Koreas advances in ballistic missile and nuclear technology despite negotiations, sanctions, export controls, sabotage and other efforts.

President Clinton, and then President George W. Bush, engaged in two major diplomatic initiatives to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons efforts in return for aid. Both initiatives ultimately collapsed. President Obama reportedly tried cyber-sabotage.

Obama warned Trump before he took office that North Korea would be his most pressing international concern, and the new president was alarmed to learn how close Kim was to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a nuclear warhead to U.S. soil.

Despite all of that, Trump rarely derided Kim by name after he entered the White House.

In May, he said hed be honored to meet Kim under the right circumstances.

In August, after U.S. intelligence analysts became convinced Pyongyang had miniaturized a nuclear warhead, Trump said the country would face fire and fury if it made more threats against the United States. But he stopped short of hurling personal insults.

Matthew Kroenig, a political scientist at Georgetown University and expert on nuclear deterrence, said Trumps threat this week to totally destroy North Korea comes out of the U.S. playbook for preventing a nuclear attack.

The point is to deter a North Korean attack, and the art of deterrence hasnt changed, he said in a phone interview Friday. It is to convince your adversary that the benefit of committing an attack would be outweighed by the costs.

Thats what Trump was making clear  it is not in Kim Jong Uns interest to attack the U.S., Kroenig said.

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

brian.bennett@latimes.com

ALSO

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Kim Jong Un says mentally deranged Trump will pay dearly for threat against North Korea

Trump announces new sanctions against North Korea, but Chinas role remains key

UPDATES:

4:15 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about past efforts to halt North Koreas nuclear program and Trumps public statements on the country.

This article was originally published at 2:15 p.m.
The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board (Sorry, Rep. Issa, hardball isnt defamation, Sept. 16) contends I should have turned the other way after my defeated 2016 challenger spent millions running false ads, with doctored headlines from debunked news stories, accusing me of using my office to line my own pockets.

Would you stand by as your family name was smeared?

I recognize winning defamation cases is difficult for elected officials, but I was still disappointed the law couldnt protect the truth from my opponents lies.

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The truth is my wife, Kathy, and I earned all the money wed ever need years before I entered public life. When we opened our small electronics company four decades ago, all we had was a dream. With hard work, Directed Electronics became a worldwide leader in auto security technology with more than 100 employees.

When I was elected, we could have kept our growing business. Many politicians do. Instead, we sold Directed to focus on serving our community. If money was all we cared about, we wouldnt have sold a successful technology company just at the dawn of e-commerce.

Kathy and I still live in the same four-bedroom home we bought in Vista back in the 1990s. Theres no yacht or country club membership. And unlike some of my colleagues, I dont commute back-and-forth by private jet.

Ive spent years exposing the ways Washington benefits the powerful and well-connected. As chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I earned a reputation (even in this newspaper) as a watchdog against insider deals and taxpayer abuse.

I despise public corruption. Thats why Ive always called it out, even when others wouldnt. And in Washington, that often earns you a bipartisan beating. But Ill continue putting the peoples interest ahead of my own  and keep doing it as long as Im honored to serve.

Issa, R-Vista, represents Californias 49th Congressional District.

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Deal-making is the presidents major selling point yet there has been no substantial legislation success.

America should know by now that his negotiation style of bullying does not work in domestic politics or on the international stage. It is almost like his vindictiveness toward his predecessor has driven him to reverse Obamacare, DACA, TPP and the Paris Accord. Now, the Iran nuclear deal is on his table.

This is the work that took a few years of negotiations with five other partners that has been effective so far in terms of monitoring Irans nuclear program.

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He has recently suggested walking away from this agreement despite opposition from the allies and without any prospect of a better deal in the future.

Abandoning it further destabilizes the region and will narrow our path for any diplomatic solutions with North Korea as the regime will not sign any security agreement with the United States.

Rie Joyce

Chula Vista

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We have the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, same for Irma in Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgins almost destroyed, an opioid epidemic, the North Korea and Iran crises, just to mention the headline catchers.

So what is the Republican Congress working on? Yet another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and deny tens of millions health insurance.

And these people pretend to be running the country. The only running they are doing is the U.S. into the ground.

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Ah, yes of course, thats where the coal is, along with our future.

Phil Kirk

Encinitas

Im horrified about the last-ditch effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and end Medicaid as we know it. This reckless proposal from Senate leaders would jeopardize the health and futures of millions of our neighbors. They need to know that we wont stand for it.

While the attention has often been on the partisan process and pre-existing conditions, this bill also would have ended Medicaid as we know it. Medicaid is a critical lifeline for low-income children, people with disabilities, and seniors.

We need to say loud and clear that any attempt to gut this essential program is unacceptable. I hope we can count on our members of Congress to stand up for Medicaid. Lives are depending on it.

Michele Lagoy

San Diego

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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. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

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Even as good Samaritans worldwide hurry to help the people of Mexico with rescue and recovery efforts after this months massive earthquakes, the people of Puerto Rico need assistance, too, after a hurricane ravaged their island.

Homes, neighborhoods and towns were devastated by Hurricane Maria this week and at least six people are dead on the island. And thats on top of what the American territory already suffered though Hurricane Irma.

Theres a humanitarian emergency here in Puerto Rico, Gov. Ricardo Rossello told the Associated Press. This is an event without precedent.

Two days after the Category 4 storm made landfall, Puerto Ricans were enduring terrible conditions and 70,000 people had to evacuate due to a cracked dam that threatened to flood and endanger lives all over again.

The power grid there is completely down and could take months to fix.

Here are some photos to show just how viciously Hurricane Maria attacked the island of more than 3.3 million people.

People walk on a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 22, 2017. (RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images)

An aerial view shows the flooded neighbourhood of Juana Matos in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Catano, Puerto Rico, on September 22, 2017. (RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images)

Downed traffic lights and power lines are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Luquillo, Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 21, 2017. (RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images)

A completely ruined house is seen in El Negro community a day after the impact of Hurricane Maria, in Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

Marisabel walks inside of her house that was flooded after the passage of Hurricane Maria, in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, on September 22, 2017. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Residents clear the streets after Hurricane Maria made landfall, September 21, 2017 in the Guaynabo suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

A destroyed house lays flooded in Catano town, in Juana Matos, Puerto Rico, on September 21, 2017. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Want to help out?

A list of relief groups recommended by Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities can be found here: Charities Providing Assistance in the Wake of Hurricane Maria

And here are a few other charities that are being widely shared.

First Lady of Puerto Rico Beatriz Rossello has also started a United for Puerto Rico fundraiser. Jennifer Lopez , Marc Anthony and Luis Fonsi are all calling on people to donate.

Check it out here: United for Puerto Rico

Another famous Puerto Rican artist, Daddy Yankee, is also raising relief funds for Feeding America. Head over to Facebook to make a donation to his fundraiser right there in the video description.

NBA star Carmelo Anthony, whose father is Puerto Rican and who has family on the island, is also raising funds through YouCaring. Donate here.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin

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By PTI: tribes

Guwahati, Sept 23 (PTI) An organisation working for Chakma and Hajong tribes in Arunachal Pradesh today urged Union minister Rajnath Singh to "restore" the rights of the two ethnic communities.

"It is not just citizenship rights that need to be given," the organisation Right Cause - Partnering for Change wrote in an open letter addressed to the Union home minister, president of the organisation Mahendra Chakma told reporters here.

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"We urge immediate restoration of all their rights like employment with Arunachal Pradesh government which was banned in 1980, issue of ration cards which was cancelled in 1991 and appointment to the post of Gaon Burah (village headman) which was cancelled in 1994", Chakma claimed.

In his letter to the Home Minister, a copy of which was given to journalists, Chakma wrote, "We urge all stakeholders and political leaders not to politicise the issue further and instead work together towards a permanent solution.

The Chakma refugees who came to India in 1986 and were camped in Tripura bordering Bangladesh and subsequently repatriated are different and not to be confused with Chakma and Hajong refugees who were permanently rehabilitated in the then North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) which later became Arunachal Pradesh." PTI ESB MM

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By PTI: Chandigarh, Sep 23 (PTI) The Haryana police said today that it had initiated the process for declaring Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singhs adopted daughter Honeypreet Insan as a proclaimed offender and added that her property may also be attached.

Besides Honeypreet, the police may also take similar action against Aditya Insan and Pawan Insan, key Dera functionaries who are on the run.

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According to Haryana police DGP B S Sandhu an international alert has been issued and efforts are on to find Honeypreet and the other two.

"Legal action against two to three people, who are untraceable, is being taken. We have started the process of declaring them proclaimed offenders. Their personal properties will also be attached...These persons are Aditya Insan, Pawan Insan and Honeypreet Insan," Sandhu told reporters in Sirsa today.

I want to warn them that they should appear before police and present their side to the investigators, he said.

The DGP said that efforts were being made to nab Honeypreet and the other two in connection with the violence that had erupted following the conviction of Ram Rahim in a rape case.

For this, an international alert has been issued and teams are conducting raids, he said.

The DGP said that till August 25 there was no case against Honeypreet but after the arrest of Dera functionary Surinder Dhiman, her role became suspect.

"Therefore, a case was registered and a search is on to nab her," Sandhu said.

He said the police had information that Honeypreet had come to Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa after the violence.

Asked if Ram Rahim Singh would be questioned regarding Honeypreet, Sandhu said that according to the need, whosoever has to be interrogated, will be questioned.

A joint operation was conducted by Haryana and Rajasthan police teams in Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan to trace Honeypreet Insan on September 21 but she remained elusive.

Honeypreet was booked in connection with the violence following the conviction of the Dera chief on August 25. A lookout notice had already been issued against her and Aditya Insan.

Police had also said that they needed to question Honeypreet on the basis of certain disclosures made by a Dera functionary Surinder Dhiman. PTI CHS VSD ADS

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I think it was all Spell-Checks fault, but then again, Dragon (dictation app) might've had something to do with it.

It could even be that funny accent that I have been accused of having, as a legacy of a foreign birth. Whatever, the just printed transcript for a Sunday mornings lesson gave warning, beware of wolvers.

In a split-second decision, I left the error in the text and the Sunday school class was presented with a whole new enemy to contend with:  ravening wolvers.  There is no brighter smile than the Sunday morning smile, and no kinder laugh than the Sunday morning laugh!

Added to this was the teachers recollection of the little girl, who would ask that her bedside light be left on, because of the  bysters  that roam the night. Now the Church at Ephesus had to confront two new enemies, not mentioned by Paul in Acts 20: wolvers and bysters . The mental picture of Senior Scribe saying to Junior Scribe, I think this scroll will have to be completely rewritten, comes to mind.

In the light hearted, we have just tripped over one of the great errors of our time. All men have the privilege of creating their own religion, but when it comes to putting a label on it, the title Christianity must be preserved for the teachings of Jesus Christ. No honest author amends and publishes under anothers name.

Yet variants to Christs teachings abound in the church.

In the manner of the recurring biblical metaphor, the Apostle Paul calls for the church elders to be on the lookout (watch) for two recurring problems (wolves) in the church. They are both clearly identified as spiritual, and marked, as  those from without  and  those from within.

So comes the question from the back row: Name the wolvers and the bysters, teacher?

There is no funnier joke than a Sunday morning joke.

The question in fact is a very good one, and since The Apostles audience is exclusively church elders, from thence should come the governance.

Beware! says the Apostle. Kind of like snake when walking in the woods (yes, I have had that experience), or like gun at a presidential function, the threat level is instantly max.

Beware those who comfortably put on the mantle of Christianity, as if it were just a Halloween costume.

Jim Bertram has taught an adult Sunday school class at Faith Presbyterian Church in Florence, and the native of Scotland is a member of the Morning News Faith & Values Advisory Board. Contact him and other board members at fvboard@florencenews.com.
FLORENCE, S.C.  To increase visibility in the community and promote positive activities, three organizations partnered to throw a community fall festival at Timrod Park on Saturday afternoon.

Children got their faces painted, ate free snacks, made crafts with members of 4-H and stopped by the balloon-making table for a balloon hat, animal, sword or rainbow.

Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina, City of Florence Parks and Recreation and Blue Choice Medicaid organized the festival.

All of us are looking to do the same thing  promote positive life skills and build a better community, said April Alston, activity coordinator for Parks and Recreation.

Each organization also gave out information about its activities and resources.

The Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina allowed attendees to sign up for troop membership at their booth.

Nakita McFadden, a former Girl Scout, signed up her daughter, Kaniyah McFadden, for her first year in Girl Scouts. Nakita said Girl Scouts helped her make new friends and exposed her to leadership opportunities. She said she wants her daughter to have the same experience.

Kaniyah, a first-grader, has her eyes set on something else, though. She said she is most looking forward to wearing her new vest and selling cookies.

Still, Girl Scouts of Eastern South Carolina says that selling cookies helps promote life skills such as team building and critical thinking.

Alston said participation in different extracurricular opportunities helps children develop into well-rounded individuals who experience fuller lives. Setting up booths and allowing families to learn about different groups helped them see the variety of activities and resources available in their community.

Anything that we can do to keep our kids busy and out of the negative aspects of a community is always positive, Alston said.

Parks and Recreation passed out information and encouraged people to sign up for its Double Dutch team, Dance Elite team and Teen Program.

When children entered the festival, they could sign up for a chance to win free school supplies from Parks and Recreation. Throughout the afternoon event, drawings were held.

Brooklyn Rawlins was one of the winners. Brooklyn immediately put on her new backpack before heading to the food and drinks table for a bag of freshly popped, buttery popcorn.

After making their way around different booths, many children played on the playground at Timrod Park.
By India Today Web Desk: If you haven't been living under a rock, you know that Ranbir Kapoor and Mahira Khan's photos have been taking the internet by storm. The two actors were clicked bonding over a smoke outside a hotel in New York.

It did not take too long for hate posts to be directed at Mahira. The Raees actor was trolled for smoking and wearing a halter dress, among other things. However, some fans came to her defence and slammed the trolls for singling out only Mahira, when even Ranbir was smoking. She also found support in celebrities like Parineeti and Ali Zafar.

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Now, Ranbir Kapoor has broken his silence on the viral pictures. "I've gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire and respect, for her achievements and even more for the person she is. It is very unfair the way she is being judged and spoken about. What is also sad is the inequality in judgment just because she is a woman. I request you to stop the negativity and move on with your beautiful god gifted lives. Peace and love," the actor told NDTV.

In a final message to the trolls, he added, "PS: Both smoking and hate are injurious to health."

Ranbir and Mahira were first clicked together at the Global Teacher Prize event in Dubai. Their closeness sparked rumours that there was a romance brewing between them. However, Mahira took to Instagram to set the record straight.

On the work front, Ranbir's next big screen outing will be Rajkumar Hirani's Sanjay Dutt biopic. The film, which also stars Anushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Dia Mirza, Paresh Rawal and Manisha Koirala in key roles, is set to hit the screens on March 30, 2018.

ALSO WATCH: Ranbir Kapoor opens up on break-up with Katrina Kaif, says he is over it

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The team interacted the victims of violence that has taken place over the past four weeks in Myanmar.

A Rohingya refugee child reacts as people wait to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 23, 2017. (REUTERS | Cathal McNaughton)

By Manogya Loiwal : A team of top level officials including chief of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visited refugee camps in Bangladesh on Saturday.

The team interacted the victims of violence that has taken place over the past four weeks in Myanmar.

A team of various UNHCR senior officials and directors under the leadership of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Fillipo Grandi visited the refugee camps.

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The team spoke to those staying in camps in an attempt to address to the problems of the refugees on ground.

The others in the team of UNHCR who visited were Director of Bureau for Asia and the Pacific Indrika Ratwatte, spokesperson Kitty Mc Kinsey and Deputy director of Emergencies Felipe Camargo.

Government of Bangladesh has already allocated 40 crore Bangladeshi Taka for upgradation of infrastructure in the refugee shelter region.

A visit by UNHCR just reiterated the concern now at international level about the humanitarian crisis prevailing in Myanmar Bangladesh border.

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Press Release

September 23, 2017 Legarda Receives Outstanding Lady Senator Award from PAO The Public Attorney's Office (PAO) led by Atty. Persida Rueda-Acosta has conferred on Senator Loren Legarda the Outstanding Lady Senator Award during the 6th Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) Accredited National Convention of Public Attorneys on September 21, 2017 at the Manila Hotel. Legarda expressed her appreciation for the award, which was conferred in recognition of the Senator's excellence and to show PAO's appreciation of all the support she has shown to the agency. "I thank the Public Attorney's Office for this recognition and I assure continued support for our public lawyers," said Legarda, who commended PAO lawyers for choosing the path of public service, which she described as a tireless and usually thankless job, urging everyone to never lose track of their passion in serving indigent Filipinos and ensuring that the law dispenses justice for all. "As Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance who reviews how government agencies have been spending public funds, I realize that we really cannot sleep on our jobs as public servants because every hour, every day of delay in the provision of our services could mean life or death for the oppressed, the marginalized and the underprivileged. We should do our duty for the people and our country as if our life depended on it every single day," Legarda said. The Senator also committed her full support to the agency by providing adequate funds that will meet their needs and by enacting legislative measures that will benefit the entire institution. "As affirmation of our support, we have already approved in the committee level the proposed 2018 budget of PAO under the Department of Justice, which includes among others, funding for the creation of new lawyer positions in the PAO; as well as the proposed 2018 budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) where the P964.931 million budget for the new PAO-Central Office Building is lodged. We will ensure that this will be approved in the final version of the 2018 national budget to address the lack of public lawyers and the serious congestion problem of PAO Central Office," she noted. The Senator also welcomed the court ruling this year ordering the release of the retirement benefits of PAO lawyers. "It is but fitting to give our retired public attorneys, who have spent many years providing legal services to indigent litigants, the benefits they rightfully deserve," Legarda concluded.
The Narendra Modi governement is providing this assistance to Rohingya refugees on humanitarian grounds.

The relief material were loaded on the INS Gharial.

By Manjeet Negi: While the Rohingya refugee crisis continues to make headlines across the globe, India today loaded about 700 tonnes of relief material on the INS Gharial to be dispatched to Chittagong in Bangladesh.

The relief materials were loaded at the Kakinada Deep Port on Saturday evening.

The Narendra Modi governement is providing this assistance to Rohingya refugees on humanitarian grounds.

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Relief materials contain customised family packets, which consist of essential items - including rations, clothes and mosquito nets.

They are likely to be distributed to up to 62,000 families.

The development comes amid India's decision to deport around 40,000 Rohingya refugees which has drawn strong criticism.

The home ministry later filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in response to petitions that challenged the decision.

It said several fundamental rights of citizens would be affected if Rohingyas - which it called illegal migrants - were allowed to settle wherever they liked in Indian.

"Every country will decide its course of action based on its own foreign, security policy and balance of population," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said.

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Four bronze women took up their positions in a Chinatown plaza Friday to bear silent witness to the wartime atrocity inflicted on hundreds of thousands of their sisters.

It was the unveiling of the long-awaited Comfort Women sculpture in San Franciscos St. Marys Square to honor the Asian women who were forced to become sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II.

We all share the same humanity, Yong-soo Lee, 89, a surviving comfort woman, told a crowd of about 500 that turned out for the unveiling. This is an issue for everyone. This is about a sincere apology from the government of Japan.

Lee, who was kidnapped from her home in Korea at the age of 15 and forced to work in a Taiwan brothel that served Japanese soldiers, fought back tears as she said that the experience was too much to talk about and that she is still suffering from the pain and torture.

The bronze sculpture by Carmel artist Steven Whyte depicts three young somber Asian women on a pedestal and a fourth, older woman gazing up at them from below. The powerful sculpture sits in the southeast corner of the square, in the shadow of Financial District skyscrapers that seem small by comparison.

The artwork, two years in the planning, remained the subject of controversy even on its unveiling.

In a statement, Jun Yamada, the consul general of Japan in San Francisco, said such memorials seem to perpetuate and fixate on certain one-sided interpretations, without presenting credible evidence.

Those words drew ire from 89-year-old Lee, who, through an interpreter, replied, What kind of bull is that?

She and her fellow survivors, who call themselves grandmas, continued to demand an official apology, investigation and reparations from the Japanese government.

We hate the crime, Lee said, not the (Japanese) people.

A small army of elected officials was on hand, along with retired Superior Court Judges Lillian Sing and Julie Tang, who had led the battle to win approval for the public art.

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.

Japan is trying to cleanse and erase history, Sing said. We want to pay honor to the victims.

The crowd waited for nearly two hours for the speeches to end and for Lee and the other dignitaries to yank a golden cloth from the sculpture, to applause and cheers. Everyone in the crowd who made it through the ceremony was rewarded with a free souvenir shopping bag depicting the sculpture.

Jonathan Fortun of San Francisco called the sculpture natural, fitting and moving, and said it makes you feel the atrocity.

Japan didnt want this here, but it belongs, he said. Its important.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
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Sonja Trauss, the love-her-or-hate-her rabble-rouser who helped make San Franciscos housing shortage a trendy political cause, wants to move into a new home herself  an office at City Hall.

Shes entered the race to replace termed-out District Six Supervisor Jane Kim next year and represent an area that will probably shape housing and land use policy for the rest of the city. Trauss faces tough competition from progressive challenger Matt Haney, but a win would be a major coming-out for the Yes in My Backyard group she co-founded two years ago.

The question is whether Trauss is the right figurehead to get the YIMBYs a board seat. Shes smart and animated, armed with a masters degree in economics and the simple message that more housing  a lot more, at all price points  will make cities affordable.

But shes also the subject of a state ethics investigation and the enemy of older progressives, who believe the building boom is decimating San Franciscos character and are using their considerable power in city politics to strike back at the YIMBYs.

On top of all that, Trauss, 35, is known for plainspoken statements that often offend people. In the past few weeks shes struggled to downplay a 7-year-old, resurfaced blog post in which she said low-income public housing tenants usually cant read or write. Shes also spent months trying to explain a tweet calling gentrification the revaluation of black land to its correct price.

The success or failure of her candidacy may rest on whether shes perceived as a fearless truth-teller or as a loudmouth who doubles down on politically incorrect comments.

As soon as she starts talking about something thats not housing  say poor people, or equity  these comments are going to come up, political strategist David Latterman said. And Im curious to see how her team is going to rationalize them.

She shrugs. Ive always been a transparent person, said Trauss, who lives with her husband, an electrician, in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment on Natoma Street.

Seven months pregnant, shes trying to recast herself as a responsible person and forward-thinking policy-maker. And shes managed to cultivate that image in the national press: In September, Politico Magazine profiled her as one of its Top 50 thinkers and visionaries guiding American politics.

She hopes District Six voters will see something refreshing in a person who makes mistakes, but also brings energy and new ideas to a city thats full of careerist politicians.

Theres going to be some stuff thats impolitic, she said. And all of it is from the past.

Granted, the past has a way of coming back during political campaigns. Trauss apologized for the old blog post when it recently appeared on Reddit and defended the black land tweet, saying shed only intended to point out that home values are rising in black neighborhoods.

I think people saw the words gentrification, black and correct in the same sentence, and they just flipped out, she said.

Her most memorable public comment came during a Board of Supervisors committee hearing last fall, when she compared opponents of a 157-unit apartment project at 1515 S. Van Ness Ave. to Trump voters who want to deport immigrants.

It wasnt just dismissive, it was very offensive, said former Supervisor David Campos, a progressive who represented the Mission and has butted heads with Trauss on land use issues.

Trauss said the comment also got positive attention.

It was very animating for both of our bases, she said. If youre in one of those social worlds that thinks Im a jerk, then yeah, it seemed like (the comment) totally didnt work out for me. But on the other side ... I got so many emails of enthusiasm and support, it reminded a bunch of people I existed, and I raised some money (about $10,000) off of it. So it turned out great.

Raised in Philadelphia, Trauss earned a bachelors degree in philosophy from Temple University and a masters in economics from Washington University in St. Louis. She worked stints as a math teacher and baker, and was an unusually brash and unrelenting person long before she became an activist.

In 2004, she got into a protracted fight with a Philadelphia neighbor over noise and odors coming from his printing press. The neighbor filed a criminal complaint against her for stalking and harassment, saying she was calling at all hours of the day to complain. He eventually withdrew the complaint.

When she came to the Bay Area seven years later, Trauss became obsessed with the regions housing crisis. She formed the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation  SFBARF  in 2014 and transformed it the next year into the more appetizingly named YIMBY, which consists of a political action committee, an advocacy organization and a nonprofit that sues communities for not building enough housing. In July, YIMBY got its first court win, forcing Berkeley to approve a three-unit building opposed by neighbors who said its residents would take their parking spaces.

Trauss easily drew followers in the tech world, many of whom are young, new to the city and frustrated by housing prices. She befriended Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who donated $100,000 to her sue the suburbs effort, and state Sen. Scott Wiener, who endorsed her for supervisor.

We need elected officials who understand that the way weve done housing for the last 50 years has gotten us into the mess were in today, Wiener said. Sonja gets that.

As the 800-member YIMBY organization consolidated a political base, they also began a quiet war against San Franciscos progressive leaders, using legal complaints as weapons.

In the past year, Trauss and another YIMBY activist, Vincent Woo, have filed city and state ethics complaints against three influential progressives  affordable housing activist John Elberling; Tim Redmond, who publishes the 48 Hills blog; and veteran political consultant Jim Stearns, who has run campaigns for many progressive politicians.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

Trauss complaint to the state Fair Political Practices Commission accused Elberling of funneling secret campaign contributions through a shell entity. Woo sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service saying Redmond uses his nonprofit news site to promote ballot measures and candidates. The FFPC case remains open, and the IRS would not comment.

Woo complained to the FPPC that Stearns violated a law barring candidates from communicating with independent expenditure committees. The FPPC declined to pursue a case against Stearns, who sees these legal complaints as part of a political strategy.

Trauss is preemptively striking out at people and organizations she might feel are in the way of her being elected as supervisor, Stearns said.

In December, one of Trauss enemies shot back, filing an anonymous complaint with the FPPC. It accused Trauss of misusing campaign money by paying herself $2,000 from the YIMBY June 2016 election fund while she was serving as treasurer. It also alleged that she spent more than $24,000 in June election money on the November election and that she failed to report 13 late contributions  totaling $83,500  within the required 24-hour window.

The FPPC began an investigation on Dec. 28, and Trauss is still awaiting a decision. She said the alleged violations were unintentional.

This is a grassroots organization, and I was trying to do the filings myself, she said. If I had been taking a test, I would have gotten a 97 percent.

Still, the case raised concerns about whether Trauss can survive the crucible of a district race in San Francisco, let alone flip an area thats gone to progressives in the past five elections. Trauss, who sides with the left on just about every social issue except housing, is considered a moderate because of her pro-development stances.

Longtime political strategist P.J. Johnston said she has a shot.

Its an open seat election, districts are small, Johnston said, noting that Trauss would need only about 10,000 votes to win. I definitely think she needs to be taken seriously as a candidate.

But Latterman sees the past as a challenge.

If shes said something on paper or onscreen and its twistable, then someone will twist it, he said. So she and her team better be able to answer for everything.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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BEIJING  For young Chinese engineers in tech, the American dream once meant landing a job or starting a company in Silicon Valley. But Mengqiu Wang, who grew up in Hangzhou and graduated from Stanford University, wants to work in China  not the Bay Area.

If his company, Zero Zero Robotics, had started in California, we probably would have failed, Wang said.

Building a technology business in China has never been easier. Fearing that the Trump administration is unfriendly to immigrants and eager to court the worlds largest online audience, some Chinese engineers are taking their training at American schools and companies back home, where fast-rising venture capital investments and a surging market protected from competition by American companies like Google and Facebook are fueling the Chinese startup scene.

When I was studying abroad, the mentality was to stay (in the U.S.) and find a job, 35-year-old Wang said. If we fail, we go back to China. Now its the other way around in many cases.

Wang is part of a group of Chinese nationals known as haigui or sea turtles, who return to the country after gaining knowledge and skills abroad. Last year, 432,500 Chinese who studied abroad returned to China, an increase of 58 percent compared with 2012, according to the countrys Ministry of Education.

The boomerang effect is aided by the strength of Chinas economy and the promise of its homegrown tech industry, including social networking giant Tencent, e-commerce firm Alibaba and search engine Baidu. Local governments provide incentives to startups that open offices. Chinese citizens who are frustrated not to have reached managerial roles at U.S. tech firms also feel the pull of China, according to Eric Harwit, professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii.

Many of them said in the United States there is a kind of limit, kind of like a glass ceiling, Harwit said. If they can go back to China, they can be head of a company.

China sends more college students to the U.S. than any other country. While President Trumps executive order limiting travel to the U.S. by some foreigners did not directly impact Chinese nationals, it still raised fears, said Melanie Gottlieb, deputy director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

So have proposed changes to the way foreign students obtain work visas, which are causing some students to consider schools elsewhere. This fall, the number of Chinese applicants with admission offers to U.S. colleges fell 2 percent compared with a year ago, and 23 percent of Chinese students said they were concerned about getting or keeping a visa, according to the Institute of International Education, a study-abroad advocacy group. Applications from foreigners applying for H-1B work visas plunged 16 percent from 2016.

Students worry that U.S. immigration is less predictable than it had been in the past, Gottlieb said.

The Beijing neighborhood of Zhongguancun used to be known as a place where shoppers crowded into clusters of small stores selling electronics. In the past two decades, the area has transformed into Beijings version of Silicon Valley, where large tech giants like Baidu and ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing are headquartered. Top schools like Peking University and Tsinghua University, known as the Stanford and MIT of China, are nearby. Its a 3-hour flight from the Chinese manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, allowing entrepreneurs to monitor suppliers to ensure they get parts on time.

Wangs Zero Zero is just 30 minutes away from Zhongguancun. The company, which has about 140 employees and raised roughly $25 million, has built a flying robot, about the size of a small hardcover book, that allows users to appear in their own photos without a selfie stick. It began selling in Apple stores in China and the U.S. this year for about $500.

The world we see has everything except ourselves, said Wang, who started Zero Zero in 2014. You cant see yourself the way that I am seeing you.

Giulia Marchi/Special to The Chronicle

Tech news site TechCrunch reported in August that Snap Inc., the parent company of social networking app Snapchat, was interested in buying Zero Zero Robotics for $150 million to $200 million  a subject Wang declined to comment on. But he said his startup could scale quickly because Beijings labor costs are much lower than in the U.S., and he can find more aviation engineers at universities in China than in Silicon Valley. Salaries are also lower: An engineering graduate from a top school like Tsinghua could earn $50,000 a year, much less than in Silicon Valley, where $100,000 is a reasonable starting salary, he said.

The math works in our favor to be here, Wang said.

China was once known as a copycat country that took the best services and products abroad and quickly made its own cheap version. Thats still partly true, but the country is increasingly building products and services that U.S. companies want to copy.

Facebook Messenger has mimicked aspects of Tencents popular social networking app WeChat, which lets users send money to friends and order items from retailers. Mobile payments have also taken off in China, far more so than in the U.S.

With nearly 1.4 billion people, China has plenty of entrepreneurs and a vast online audience. Capital is also plentiful. Beijing companies drew $20.85 billion in venture capital investment last year, inching closer to the Bay Areas $31 billion, according to PitchBook Data.

Joker Lai, a 28-year-old Malaysian entrepreneur, sees a large opportunity for his Beijing company, Sport Story, which is building an app to help people make friends. Lais school, Tsinghua University, is giving him free office space, and the Beijing government has made it easier to get a business license, he said.

In China, its very, very good timing to start a company, Lai said.

Many analysts attribute the growth of Chinas tech scene to Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, known together as BAT. The three powerful homegrown Chinese firms are also investors in up-and-coming companies. Tencent is a shareholder in e-commerce firm JD.com and Alibaba is a stakeholder in ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, which recently took over Ubers China business.

Partly because of the lack of U.S.-style consumer protection laws, it is easy for those huge companies to share the data they collect with the suite of startups they invest in, according to Minyuan Zhao, an associate professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. That data can be invaluable to companies small and large.

But there are risks to doing business in China. Although protection of intellectual property rights has improved over the last decade, some firms may try to copy a great business idea, and entrepreneurs may not want to deal with the hassle of going to court, Zhao said. Also, relationships with suppliers are often based more on faith than on legal contracts, she said.

The Chinese government can also remove content online that it perceives as threatening to the Communist Party, which has kept companies like Twitter and Facebook from entering the country. And regulations have impeded some businesses efforts to pull money out of the country.

Sorry, this is our law, said Wang Xining with Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We manage the Internet according to our legal framework. The aim is to maintain free flow of information on the condition that there is no harmful elements that would be detrimental to national security and overall welfare of our citizens.

Not all Chinese nationals want to start businesses in China. Derek Weng co-founded a commerce startup in San Jose called LemonBox, which sells vitamins manufactured in the U.S. to Chinese consumers. The firm plans to use the data on consumers buying habits to make recommendations on products related to health care, and Weng thinks the best people for data work like that are in Silicon Valley.

Weng quit his job as a business development manager at Amazon in the Bay Area to focus on LemonBox, but, in a twist, this means he will lose his H-1B visa status and will need to work in China, while his co-founder runs the business in San Jose.

Everybody comes here knowing that this is the entrepreneurs dream life, 31-year-old Weng said. In company cafeterias and neighborhood coffee shops, everybody is talking about new ideas and the next big thing.

As Chinas tech companies continue to grow, some are encouraging students to return home from the U.S. This spring, Baidu President Ya-Qin Zhang visited U.S. colleges in an effort to recruit employees. Zhang says he has seen Chinese nationals excel when they return, perhaps because of language issues.

Harris Hua, an investment analyst, recently moved back to Beijing after he was denied a U.S. work visa. Hua graduated from Furman University in South Carolina last year and worked at a venture capital firm in the Bay Area. Still, he wasnt despondent about leaving Silicon Valley.

I always wanted to go back to just see the country, the market and how people are doing there, said Hua, who grew up in Zhejiang province. I dont think the American dream is as influential as it was in the past few generations from China.

The younger generation of students from China have lived through the countrys economic growth and grown up in prosperity, which may make their perspective on the U.S. different, said Zhao from the Wharton School.

They came to the U.S., looked around the infrastructure, the night scene and thought, Well, its boring here, Zhao said.

At Bay Area tech companies, ethnic Asians are not seen as underrepresented minorities like Latinos or blacks and often represent a sizable chunk of the workforce. But a 2015 study showed that ethnic Asians are rarely placed in executive roles and are often stuck in lower-ranking positions. (Thats notwithstanding former White House adviser Steve Bannons inflammatory suggestion last year that Silicon Valley had too many CEOs who were Asian immigrants.)

The diversity problem of women, blacks and Hispanics are real, said Buck Gee, a former Cisco vice president who worked on the study. The thing you are ignoring is the fact that there is an Asian glass ceiling.

Jeremy Zhou, who spent eight years at Google, most of them in Mountain View, but left to pursue a career in his native China, said he recognizes the challenges non-American employees have to overcome to break into management.

Cultural differences in communication, for example, can be a barrier that affects peoples confidence, Zhou said.

In 2014, Zhou and two other former Googlers started Jide Technology Co., a software business that brings Androids operating system to PCs. Googles absence has made it easier to ramp up. For example, the Google Play store is not in China, so Android app stores from competitors have popped up, according to Jide co-founder David Ko.

Jide has 80 employees, and its office design, like many Silicon Valley startups, has an open floor plan and a pool table.

Zhou is happy in China. But he had to work hard to help his older relatives understand his choice.

They have this mind-set that it is always better over there  in the U.S., he said. For him, it wasnt.

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. She traveled to China with the Jefferson Fellowships Program organized by the East-West Center, a nonprofit that aims to increase dialogue among the U.S., Pacific and Asian nations. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee
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Two San Jose men were arrested on suspicion of turning a mentally disabled teenager into a surrogate serial robber who targeted women for their jewelry, authorities said Friday.

Dominic Shamo, 21, and Juan Arzate, 20, were booked into the Santa Clara County Jail this month on suspicion of robbery and attempted robbery after police say they instructed the disabled 17-year-old boy to steal in their stead.

The teen, whose name was not released, was booked into juvenile hall on identical charges.

Once a mentally disabled person commits a crime it is up to the court system to determine culpability after the arrest, said Sgt. Enrique Garcia, a San Jose Police Department spokesman.

Thats one of the things the court, the judicial system is going to have to look at, Garcia said. Were not qualified to determine the mental capacity of someone.

The suspects got the teen to commit at least four robberies in August and September, police said. Two incidents occurred Aug. 28. One took place in the 1600 block of McKee Road about 3:30 p.m., while another happened about 50 minutes later in the 2300 block of the same road, Garcia said.

Shamo and Arzate picked out Asian women walking through parking lots in San Jose, then ordered the teen to snatch their jewelry and run, police said.

Investigators got a break in the case on Sept. 4 when a witness alerted police that the suspects were following a victim about 1 p.m. near McKee Road and North Jackson Avenue. Police later learned the suspects committed another robbery in the area an hour before in the 1600 block of McKee Road, officials said.

Officers caught up with the suspects near McKee Road and North Jackson Avenue and were able to connect them to the robbery spree.

Some of the victims sustained injuries limited to complaints of minor pain, police said.

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Investigators learned Shamo and Arzate told the teen to grab the jewelry from the victims, but they didnt participate in the snatch-and-run robberies themselves, officials said. Police said the suspects might have mistakenly thought using the teen to do their dirty work would help them escape charges if caught.

They took it to another level by utilizing someone with a mental disability, Garcia said.

While police do not know the relationship among the three suspects, it does not appear the teen was threatened by force to commit the crimes, he said.

Police believe there are more victims who have not come forward and are asking anyone with information to call Detective Michael White of the San Jose Police Departments Robbery Unit at (408) 277-4166.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
The Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg era at the New Century Chamber Orchestra is over, and on Thursday night, with a suave and often forceful concert in Berkeleys First Congregational Church, a new chapter in the ensembles 26-year history began.

It seems a little extreme to dub this the Daniel Hope era, if only because the British violinist hasnt been named music director, the position from which Salerno-Sonnenberg stepped down in May after a starry nine-year tenure. Instead, Hope has adopted the obscure moniker artistic partner, with a three-year contract that suggests hes serving as a bridge to the next real artistic boss.

Still, Thursdays concert, which bore the optimistic title New Horizons, did bring a strong sense of what the upcoming seasons may look and sound like.

Hope, like his predecessor, mined his far-flung connections in the music world to bring in a newly commissioned work  in this case an evocative violin concerto by Alan Fletcher, which had its world premiere. And he deftly straddled the line between serving as leader and a part of the ensemble, which continues to perform with all the close-knit communicative ease of a string quartet.

The chief difference between then and now, at least at a first glance, lies in the sharp temperamental contrast between Salerno-Sonnenberg and Hope  the former fiery, rough-hewn and dramatically dynamic, the latter urbane and smoothly eloquent. Both approaches work, in different and even complementary ways.

Hopes leadership proved most alluring at the evenings end, with a gorgeous and rich-hued performance of Tchaikovskys Serenade in C, Op. 48. This is a staple of the string orchestra repertoire, one that mines with particular grandeur and delicacy the possibilities of these performing forces.

So its a piece that New Century has often undertaken  but rarely with the kind of tonal luster or expressive force that were on display on Thursday. The expansive phrases of the opening movement registered with terrific clarity, the waltz movement tripped along in an elegant murmur, and the finale  drawing powerfully to the concluding repetition of the melodic figure that began the entire work  seemed to encompass a world of emotional variety.

Fletchers ingratiating three-movement concerto, written for Hope, is built largely on water imagery  lapping waves, little repetitive swirls of melody, and an overall sense of restless fluidity. In the first movement, the soloist spins out long, purling melodies that sit atop the waves like a suntanned surfer; the finale plunges the soloist into the thick of the water itself.

In between comes a set of variations on a Protestant chorale melody by Ulrich Zwingli, whose quick-changing moods are both striking and a little hard to follow. Hope and the orchestra rendered the entire piece with smooth assurance, and did the same with Orawa, a bluntly repetitive evocation of the Eastern European mountains by the late Polish composer Wojciech Kilar.

The evenings only real misstep came at the beginning, with a blurry and often ineffective rendition of Mendelssohns Octet for Strings, done in Hopes own arrangement. There was plenty of energy and power, especially in the outer movements, but the textures proved too thick for the composers brilliantly detailed writing to come through clearly.

Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicles music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman

New Century Chamber Orchestra:2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22, and 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco. 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24, Osher Marin JCC, 200 N. San Pedro Rd., San Rafael. $29-$61. (415) 392-4400, www.ncco.org
Speaking at the UN, the Russian foreign minister likened the Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un spat to a 'kindergarten fight between children' and urged calm as the US and the world look for ways to tackle North Korea and its nuclear weapons programme.

By India Today Web Desk: First there was US President Donald Trump threatening to annihilate North Korea.

Then there was Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator, who vowed to make Trump "pay dearly" for his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

This was followed by Trump calling Kim a "madman " and saying that the 'Rocket Man' should have been dealt with long ago.

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Now, Russia has stepped into the picture saying "the hot heads" need to calm down. Without explicitly naming Trump or Kim, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to news agency Reuters, "We have to calm down the hot heads."

Lavrov went to liken the exchange of words and threats between US President Trump and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un to a fight between schoolchildren. "We continue to strive for the reasonable and not the emotional approach...of the kindergarten fight between children," Lavrov was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Lavrov's comments came on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the same stage where Trump made the threat to destroy North Korea earlier this week.

Delivering his maiden UNGA speech, Trump lambasting North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Trump, whose speech came weeks after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test, said, " The US has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

The????has great strength & patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy #NoKo. pic.twitter.com/P4vAanXvgm- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2017

"But we must do much more. It is time for all nations to work together to isolate the Kim regime until it ceases its hostile behavior," Trump went on to say.

Trump's UN address was met with a rare personal response from Kim Jong Un. In a statement full of the trademark North Korean rhetoric, Kim said called Trump "mentally deranged" and promised to tame the "US dotard with fire".

"The mentally deranged behavior [sic] of the US president openly expressing on the UN arena the unethical will to "totally destroy" a sovereign state, beyond the boundary of threats of regime change or overturn of social system, makes even those with normal thinking faculty think about discretion and composure," Kim said.

"As a man representing the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name] and on behalf of the dignity and honor [sic] of my state and people and on my own, I will make [Trump] pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying the DPRK," Kim said.

"Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation," Kim further said, ending with, "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire."

Kim Jong Un personally responded to Donald Trump's UNGA speech and vowed to make the US president 'pay dearly' (KCNA via Reuters) Click here to Enlarge Kim Jong Un personally responded to Donald Trump's UNGA speech and vowed to make the US president 'pay dearly' (KCNA via Reuters)

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The Trump-Kim spat did not end there. Soon after North Korea released Kim's statement, Trump took to Twitter to once again blast Kim, calling him a "madman" who will be tested "like never before".

Hours later, at a rally in the US, Trump once again invoked his nickname for Kim - 'Rocket Man' - and said, "We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place."

For now, Trump seems to have had the last word in this increasingly high-stakes and possibly disastrous battle of words.

WATCH | Trump urges UN member states to isolate Kim govt until it ceases its hostile behavior

--- ENDS ---
The fate of President Trumps unreleased tax returns is, for now, in the hands of Gov. Jerry Brown. And if Brown signs legislation requiring presidential candidates to make their returns public, that decision will shift to the nations courts.

The legislation, SB149 by Sens. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, approved largely along party lines, would require presidential candidates to release five years of their income tax returns in order to appear on the California ballot. Though it does not mention Trump, it clearly targets the president, the first in 40 years to withhold his tax documents from the public. He is an announced candidate for re-election in 2020.

Despite the views of his fellow Democrats, there is no guarantee of support from Brown, who himself broke with California tradition by declining to release his tax returns before his successful election campaigns for governor in 2010 and 2014. But if he signs SB149 into law, opponents will challenge it immediately as an act of state interference in the constitutional standards for presidential candidates.

I see SB149 as establishing a qualification for access to the ballot that courts, including the Supreme Court, have declared unconstitutional, said Bertrall Ross, an election law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco.

The Legislative Counsels office, the legal adviser to state lawmakers, says SB149 is probably unconstitutional because it seeks to influence voters and would handicap certain candidates, thus interfering with the election process.

But the former ethics advisers to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama disagree, saying the bill seeks only to inform voters and would not create a difficult obstacle for candidates.

Its not a slam-dunk case. ... There are reasonable arguments on both sides, said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor in Los Angeles who teaches elections law and who favors the disclosure requirement.

The Constitution requires only that the president be a natural-born U.S. citizen who is at least 35 years old and has lived in the U.S. for the past 14 years, qualifications that the states cannot alter. But states, which conduct the elections, are allowed to control candidates access to the ballot through such procedural requirements as filing fees, deadlines and setting the minimum number of signatures a candidate needs to qualify for the ballot.

Its not clear whether tax return disclosures would be a new ballot qualification or merely a procedural requirement, and no court has yet addressed the issue. It is likely headed for court regardless of whether Brown signs SB149, as legislators in about half the states have introduced similar measures since last years election.

A Democratic-controlled Legislature in New Jersey passed a disclosure bill this spring and drew a caustic veto from Republican Gov. Chris Christie.

The clearly unconstitutional measure, Christie said, was passed as a form of therapy by Democrats unwilling to accept last years election results. But similar legislation could face a different outcome next year, as Christie leaves office in January and a Democrat is leading in the polls to succeed him.

The Supreme Court has not defined the types of state-imposed restrictions on presidential candidates that would create an unconstitutional qualification for office. But the court ruled on a related issue in 1995, striking down term limits set by Arkansas and 22 other states for U.S. House and Senate members. The court said those limits disqualified candidates who met minimum constitutional standards. The ruling did not affect term limits for state legislators.

A year later, voters in Missouri passed an initiative directing congressional candidates to support a constitutional amendment to overturn the 1995 term-limits ruling, and noting on the ballot that candidates who refused had disregarded voters intention. The Supreme Court struck the measure down unanimously in 2001, saying it was an unconstitutional state interference in federal elections and an attempt to handicap disobedient candidates.

Some legal analysts said Californias SB149 could suffer a similar fate because of its political motivations aimed at Trump.

I think that because Californias proposed ballot access restriction will be seen as originating from a partisan purpose, courts are likely to be quite skeptical, said Ross of UC Hastings.

Another law professor, Derek Muller of Pepperdine University, said in a New York Times opinion column criticizing the tax-disclosure measures, that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that states cant use the ballot as a political weapon.

But Levinson, of Loyola, noted that disclosing tax returns is a voluntary action within a candidates control, unlike age restrictions or term limits. SB149s partisan origin is a problem, she said, but the measure seeks disclosure of useful information about a candidates finances and possible conflicts of interest, and those who run for office give up some privacy rights.

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In a joint statement, Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe and the ethics advisers to Bush and Obama, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, told state lawmakers that measures like SB149 were within a states authority to regulate access to the ballot.

These laws require federally qualified candidates to comply with a relatively minor process of tax disclosure  something any candidate can readily do  in order to allow voters to make more fully informed judgments, they said.

McGuire, the bills lead author, said similar measures elsewhere have gained some Republican support, and noted that presidents of both parties had willingly released their tax returns for four decades.

Transparency is a bipartisan issue, he said.

He also rejected suggestions that, if the measure became law, Trump would skirt it by simply leaving his name off the ballot in heavily Democratic California.

McGuire noted that another bill on Browns desk would move the states 2020 primary from June to March, an effort to increase the states now-minimal influence in the presidential nominating process.

California is going to be more important than ever in this next presidential election, McGuire said. Any candidate for president would be idiotic to ignore the most populous state in America.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@egelko
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Who could have imagined in 2015 that Russian operatives would exploit the great modern tools of democratic discourse  social media, a free-flowing Internet  to meddle in our elections?

Ann Ravel, a member of the Federal Election Commission, not only imagined it. She said it out loud.

Think of it, do we want Vladimir Putin or drug cartels to be influencing American elections? she said at an October 2015 FEC meeting in which she was arguing for the commission to require greater disclosure on foreign contributions. Ravel had been a crusader for updating election law to include regulation of political advertisements on the Internet.

The FEC, hopelessly deadlocked, did nothing.

They scoffed at me, of course, Ravel, a Democrat, said of the three Republican commissioners. They put out a statement saying how histrionic I was.

Ravel said she did not have any particular suspicions about Putins intentions when she made that prescient remark.

I just knew that he was evil, Ravel said by phone from Washington, D.C. last week. The thought of him intervening in our national election seemed so inappropriate. But apparently that did not sway my fellow commissioners.

A commission assigned to design and enforce rules on the flow of money in politics has all but abandoned its responsibility. Ravel, a relentless advocate for transparency since her days as chair of Californias Fair Political Practices Commission, resigned from the FEC in February.

The absence of any meaningful regulation on Internet advertising was cast in high relief with revelations that Russian agents covertly bought ads on Facebook during the 2016 campaign. The social media giant acknowledged that it found $100,000 in purchases that were linked to Russian accounts that were designed to appear as if Americans were advocating on hot-button issues such as immigration and gun control.

The Russians had good reason to go through Facebook. Its ability to channel advertising in a highly targeted way could allow those political ads to reach particular voters. Unlike a television or radio ad, which would go to a broader community, those narrowly targeted ads were less likely to catch the vigilant eye of an opposing campaign that could fire off a response or journalists who might fact-check them.

Perhaps most enticing of all for a foreign operative trying to stay under the regulatory radar, political ads on the Internet are largely exempt from government oversight. The FEC voted unanimously in 2006 to stay out of the way of what was then a blossoming forum for public debate.

Subsequent FEC rulings maintained that hands-off approach.

For example, in a 2014 case involving political videos by a pro-coal group in Ohio, the commission did not take action against the group for failing to either report its online advertising spending or a disclaimer on its videos. Why? They were not deemed electioneering communications because the term applies only to broadcast, cable or satellite transmissions. Also, broadcasters must keep records on the political ads they run and who pays for them; there is no such requirement on digital ads.

This doesnt make sense in 2017.

As Ravel wryly noted, the smartphone hadnt been invented when the anything-goes approach was adopted in 2006.

Dont look for change in FEC attitude anytime soon. President Trump has yet to appoint a replacement for Ravels Democratic seat. He filled a vacant Republican seat with a Texas lawyer, James Trainor III, who has made a career out of challenging disclosure laws. He has actually argued that disclosure of political contributors works against the public interest because voters then focus on the source of funding instead of the content of political messages.

As anyone who has followed American politics with any semblance of objectivity knows, the source of the money often is the message when it comes from an individual or industry with a vested interest in the outcome.

In the absence of a government watchdog, Facebook has been pledging to help cut through the smoke of clandestine political ads. It announced Thursday that it will turn over more than 3,000 of the Russia-linked ads to congressional committees investigating the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a Facebook Live talk last week that the company will be working on ways to make political advertising more transparent.

Congress may also get into the act. Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., signaled their intent to introduce legislation to require greater transparency for online political ads.

For all the understandable focus on Russia, Ravel noted that local elections are no less vulnerable to foreign interference. A foreign company may have a stake in a city zoning measure or  to cite a 2012 case that reached the FEC  pornography companies with ties to Cyprus and Luxembourg may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars against a Los Angeles measure to require condoms in adult films.

There are plenty of delicate areas in trying to regulate political advertising on the Internet. But as more and more Americans see political advertising online, it only makes sense that such spots should include the same level of disclosure as those on television.

No one needs to remind the Russians that the regulatory gaps they exploited in 2016 have not gone away.

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicles editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron

State Legislature moves to tighten disclosure laws

The Disclose Act (AB249) by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo:

Its overarching goal: To require forthright disclosure of the top three funders of political advertising from independent expenditures for or against candidates (not connected with the official campaign) or for or against ballot measures. It requires disclosure of donors who contribute $50,000 or more.

How it affects online advertising: It is covered. The bill requires that online political advertising contain easily readable disclosure on the source of funding  and offer links that would reveal the three top funders of an advertisement.

Final votes: The bill cleared the Assembly 59-14 and the Senate 29-9.

Next step: The bill now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown to sign or veto. He has yet to signal his intentions.
Facebook is growing up fast.

This week, the worlds largest social network signed San Franciscos largest office lease in three years, taking up the entire office portion of 181 Fremont St., a new skyscraper in the Financial District.

The 436,000-square-foot space can hold 2,000 to 3,000 workers. The first team to move in, early next year, will be from Facebooks Instagram photo app division.

With the massive real estate deal, Facebook is certainly embracing its role as a major employer and social force in the Bay Area.

The companys Thursday announcement  that it would turn over more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads to the U.S. congressional committees investigating Russias influence campaign during the 2016 presidential election  suggests its finally realizing the need to embrace its role as a major social force in the world as well.

Earlier this month, Facebook admitted that Russian agents had secretly bought ads on the site during last years campaign. The company had hesitated to hand over more information to furious congressional staffers, but it agreed after two weeks of pressure.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg also outlined a list of actions the company plans to take  including better coordination with global election commissions and new transparency requirements for political advertising.

These changes, unthinkable for the Facebook of just a few years ago, are partly about todays political reality. Technological companies have successfully fought off many governmental regulations about their operations, but theres a growing tide of public anger against their opaque operations and startling reach.

If Facebook wants to continue its remarkable growth, itll have to start cooperating  with cities, with Congress, and with the public. At least the company has ensured itself a great view.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

If Senate Republicans were devising a health care program for bad policy, it would be an unqualified success. Their repeated resuscitation of the deservedly ailing effort to undo the Affordable Care Act has been the legislative equivalent of a medical miracle.

The latest and, lets hope, last reincarnation is Graham-Cassidy, a long shot at the buzzer named after the pair of Republican senators who are its improbable  some would say inexplicable  champions: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, otherwise known as an intermittent voice of reason and moderation in his caucus, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who made the grave mistake of telling late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel that he would never support a bill like the one now bearing his name.
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They rolled in on eight wheels sometime in the spring of 1978, first in small groups, then larger packs, dancing around radios blasting hot new beats from Chic and Peaches & Herb.

Roller skating mania had arrived in Golden Gate Park, and by all accounts it was a memorably joyous time in the city.

Motorists beware. Bicyclists, move over, Chronicle reporter Joseph Torchia wrote on July 25, 1978. Somethings happening in Golden Gate Park and even the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees  not to mention that species called pedestrians  are trying to stay out of the way of what one man calls the roller phenomenon.

In 1977, there were no places to rent roller skates near Golden Gate Park. By summer 1978, The Chronicle reported, there were five. By early 1979, there were 11.

Its really, really crazy, Janice Rodriguez told a reporter, while selling the skates out of the back of a van near Haight Street on a Sunday afternoon. Youd think roller skating was just invented last week.

John Storey/The Chronicle

The first mention of roller skating in San Francisco dates to 1870, when skating emerged at the Union Hall on Howard Street.

The Management reserve and will enforce the privilege of excluding any one disregarding the rules, an Aug. 30, 1870, advertisement in The Chronicle read, and will refuse admittance to all not of genteel appearance.

But two 1970s forces met to turn the pastime into a craze: technology and disco. Polyurethane wheels added speed, control and all-weather durability that had been lacking on metal skates. And the music of the day, along with portable battery-powered boom boxes, made the sport perfect for dancing and meeting other groovy people in the outdoors.

The citys Recreation and Park Department officials closed the park to automobiles on Sundays, and the skaters moved in, congregating near Sharon Meadow and the Music Concourse near the California Academy of Sciences.

Skater David Miles Jr. told The Chronicle that he visited San Francisco from Kansas City in 1979, saw a diverse group of people roller-skating through the park from his perch on a tour bus, and decided to make the city his home.

I thought, Hey, thats real sharp. Im going to get me some skates, Miles said in 1980. I made a whole lot of friends. You dont see nobody out here calling n or honkie. Id never seen anything like that before.

Indeed, the roller skating photos from the time are as sunny and jubilant as anything in The Chronicles archive. Strangers form roller skating conga lines of all ages and ethnicities, sun on their faces and feathered hair blowing in the breeze. Skaters in tight jeans orbit radios, pulling along children or letting them shoot through tunnels underneath their adult legs.

Mike Maloney/The Chronicle

In one photo, a uniformed police officer holds hands with a group of young skaters. There are smiles on everyones faces as he pulls the pack up a small hill.

But like everything merry and essentially harmless in San Francisco, there had to be a resulting controversy. Soon, the skating craze was being portrayed as a skating menace.

By summer 1980, roller skating had been banned at the Music Concourse, Stow Lake, the childrens playground and several other areas.

Roller skating rental trucks have been given their rolling papers for Aug. 29 by the Board of Supervisors, unless a decision is made to let them stay, The Chronicle reported on Aug. 11, 1980. The loud disco tunes the skaters once rolled to have been banned. People now disco-roll to tunes inside transistor headphones.

Miles set up an all-volunteer Golden Gate Park Skate Patrol that year to enforce rules, tend to injuries and hopefully avoid a total ban. The group raised money for walkie-talkies, showed up at City Hall meetings, and were ultimately successful in securing an ice-rink-size roller-skating-dedicated Skatin Place at Sixth Avenue and Kennedy Drive.

And thats where Miles remains on weekends, nearly 40 years later. In 2013, he founded the Church of 8 Wheels at the old Sacred Heart Church on 554 Fillmore St.

Current city leaders seem to be embracing skaters again, setting up a roller rink for a recent Civic Center Commons block party near City Hall.

Like disco, roller skating never really died. Its just keeping a slightly lower profile in the 2010s, waiting for the next generation to discover the magic of spinning polyurethane wheels and a steady beat.

Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicles pop culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub
Political events in the Bay Area

Indivisible Marin: Mill Valley Mayor Jessica Jackson Sloan, also a human rights attorney, discusses criminal justice reform in California and nationally. Indivisible Marins meeting is from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Marin, 240 Channing Way, San Rafael. http://bit.ly/2gZc9Ue

Town hall: Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon, holds a town hall meeting at the Orinda Library auditorium, 26 Orinda Way, Orinda, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Voter registration: Volunteers will help new U.S. citizens register to vote after swearing-in ceremony. Sponsored by Democracy Action, which works to advance Democratic candidates. 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday outside the Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakland. https://demaction.us

D.A. candidates: Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley and 2018 challenger Pamela Price hold a town hall, sponsored by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and Starbucks. 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 27 at the Merritt College student lounge, 12500 Campus Drive, Oakland. http://bit.ly/2xkrDvH

Food stamps: Alameda County Community Food Bank hosts an event to raise awareness about SNAP (food stamps) and urge Congress not to cut antihunger programs. Free. 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at 7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland. www.accfb.org

Conservation and cannabis: A discussion of the effects of legalized marijuana cultivation on Bay Area public and private lands, sponsored by the Bay Area Open Space Council. 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. $30 for nonmembers. For information and tickets: http://bit.ly/2w3dTm4

Veg fest: The 18th World Veg Fest promotes health, social justice and sustainability through vegetarian eating. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at the San Francisco County Fair Building, 1199 Ninth Ave. at Lincoln Way in Golden Gate Park. $5 to $25, children 12 and younger admitted free. http://bit.ly/2xgD7A9

Politics and media: Longtime San Francisco journalist Tim Redmond discusses media coverage and the Trump administration. 2 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Richmond Meeting Room of the Sen. Milton Marks Branch Library, 351 Ninth Ave., San Francisco. http://bit.ly/2wJub72

Black Panther history: Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr., authors of Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, discuss their book at the San Francisco Main Librarys Koret Auditorium at 1 p.m. Oct. 29. Information about this event and others noting the books selection in the One City One Book program: http://bit.ly/2eTr1mz

To list an event, email Trapper Byrne at tbyrne@sfchronicle.com.
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Four bronze women took up their positions in a Chinatown plaza Friday to bear silent witness to the wartime atrocity inflicted on hundreds of thousands of their sisters.

It was the unveiling of the long-awaited Comfort Women sculpture in San Franciscos St. Marys Square to honor the Asian women who were forced to become sex slaves by the Japanese army during World War II.

We all share the same humanity, Yong-soo Lee, 89, a surviving comfort woman, told a crowd of about 500 that turned out for the unveiling. This is an issue for everyone. This is about a sincere apology from the government of Japan.

Lee, who was kidnapped from her home in Korea at the age of 15 and forced to work in a Taiwan brothel that served Japanese soldiers, fought back tears as she said that the experience was too much to talk about and that she is still suffering from the pain and torture.

The bronze sculpture by Carmel artist Steven Whyte depicts three young somber Asian women on a pedestal and a fourth, older woman gazing up at them from below. The powerful sculpture sits in the southeast corner of the square, in the shadow of Financial District skyscrapers that seem small by comparison.

The artwork, two years in the planning, remained the subject of controversy even on its unveiling.

In a statement, Jun Yamada, the consul general of Japan in San Francisco, said such memorials seem to perpetuate and fixate on certain one-sided interpretations, without presenting credible evidence.

Those words drew ire from 89-year-old Lee, who, through an interpreter, replied, What kind of bull is that?

She and her fellow survivors, who call themselves grandmas, continued to demand an official apology, investigation and reparations from the Japanese government.

We hate the crime, Lee said, not the (Japanese) people.

A small army of elected officials was on hand, along with retired Superior Court Judges Lillian Sing and Julie Tang, who had led the battle to win approval for the public art.

Japan is trying to cleanse and erase history, Sing said. We want to pay honor to the victims.

The crowd waited for nearly two hours for the speeches to end and for Lee and the other dignitaries to yank a golden cloth from the sculpture, to applause and cheers. Everyone in the crowd who made it through the ceremony was rewarded with a free souvenir shopping bag depicting the sculpture.

Jonathan Fortun of San Francisco called the sculpture natural, fitting and moving, and said it makes you feel the atrocity.

Japan didnt want this here, but it belongs, he said. Its important.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
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A dance party scheduled for November 3 in San Francisco has spurred outrage among Bay Area residents due to its "Day of the Dead" theme and what some perceive as a perversion of Mexican traditions.

The party's Facebook event page, titled "Day of the Dead Comes to San Francisco," became a bulletin board of vitriol from people decrying the intentions of the event and its cultural appropriation.

"This is completely offensive," Bernardette Arellano wrote on the event page. "Do the organizers know anything about Dia de Los Muertos?"

A source of contention for many commenters was the party's description, which reads, "In the last few years, Day of the Dead has exploded in popularity and we've decided to go MASSIVE."

The event promises attendees "an authentic Dia De Muertos experience," complete with DJs, pinatas, aerial performers, and "Europe's largest confetti cannons." The event is scheduled for Nov. 3, whereas Day of the Dead celebrations end Nov. 2.

While such spectacles may have a place at raves and dance clubs, many commenters agreed that one would be hard-pressed to encounter them at traditional Day of the Dead festivities.

"It's a shame to see this degree of whitewashing in a place that prides itself in genuinely embracing cultures," wrote Gino Abrajano.

After seeing the event circulate on Facebook  nearly 20,000 people have RSVPed as "interested" or "going"  Moises Garcia with Calle 24 Cultural District in the Mission District didn't know what to make of it.

"I can't tell if it's real or not," he said.

Some commenters speculated that the high number of RSVPS stemmed from people confusing the party with the 35th annual Dia de los Muertos procession in the Mission.

"This isn't the normal festival," John Baehr pointed out, suggesting that this event was taking away attention from "the traditional Dia De Los Muertos that has been put on in SF every year."

The event is similarly marketed to a "Day of the Dead" party that toured the United Kingdom earlier this year. Tickets for the UK tour were available for purchase on party promoting website Fatsoma. Neither representatives from Fatsoma nor the "Day of the Dead" US and UK tour Facebook pages could be reached for comment.

Day of the Dead  El Dia de Los Muertos or Dia de Muertos in Spanish  is a Mexican holiday devoted to remembering and celebrating the deceased. The lively festival originated thousands of years ago among the Aztecs in central and southern Mexico and later blended with Christianity to become a three-day celebration coinciding with All Saints' Eve (Halloween), All Saints' Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls' Day (Nov. 2).

Garcia directed those interested in Day of the Dead celebrations to the Dia de los Muertos procession in the Mission, hosted by El Colectivo del Rescate Cultural on Nov. 2. The procession will culminate at the Mission Cultural Center for the Marigold Project's Annual Festival of Altars.

Nanette Asimov contributed to this report.

Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.




A man is under arrest after allegedly shooting a gun in East Oakland in the early morning hours of Saturday, hiding in a nearby home and refusing to come out, Oakland police said.

Oakland police said they responded to reports of a shooting in the 1200 block of 65th Avenue that resulted in no injuries. Officers on the scene learned that the alleged shooter, an adult male suspect, was in a nearby residence and still armed with a gun.
Motorola Moto G5 Plus

Cnet rating: 4 stars out of 5

The good: The splash-resistant Moto G5 Plus has a near stock version of Android Nougat, a good camera and video and a metal body  and its extremely kind to your wallet.

The bad: Theres no NFC on the U.S. model, and audio sounds tinny through the built-in speaker.

The cost: $285 to $300

The bottom line: With a long list of features you want and only a few that you dont, there is no better budget phone than Motorolas Moto G5 Plus.

Apple iPhone SE

Cnet rating: 4 stars out of 5

The good: A small, hand-friendly design. Solid speed. Good front and rear cameras. More built-in storage (up to 128 GB). The lowest-priced iPhone you can buy.

The bad: Older giant-bezel design and limited screen size are love-it-or-hate-it. Hardware hasnt changed since its 2016 release.

The cost: $400

The bottom line: The iPhone SE is one year older, but its added storage options and strong performance still make it a great choice for small-phone fans.

Alcatel Idol 5S

Cnet rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

The good: The Idol 5S has a premium design, amazing speakers and a fingerprint reader, and it runs Android Nougat  all while being affordable.

The bad: It has the shortest battery life of any phone weve tested in the past two years.

The cost: $280

The bottom line: The Alcatel Idol 5S is an otherwise great budget phone, but the battery is its Achilles heel.

Motorola Moto E4

Cnet rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

The good: The Moto E4 is splash-resistant and includes a near stock version of Android Nougat, a fingerprint reader, a removable battery and a selfie flash  all while being ridiculously cheap.

The bad: The display is hard to see in sunlight, and the camera is slow to process photos.

The cost: $130

The bottom line: The Moto E4 is the cheapest Motorola phone but doesnt compromise too much on its amenities.

These Cnet staff members contributed to this report: Patrick Holland, Lynn La, Scott Stein and Laura K. Cucullu. For more reviews of personal technology products, visit www.cnet.com.
In a major development, a local court granted one day CBI custody to the main accused Ashok Kumar in the Pradyuman murder case while two other accused Francis Thomas and Jeyus Thomas have been sent to CBI remand till September 25.

By Munish Chandra Pandey: In a major development, a local court granted one day CBI custody to the main accused Ashok Kumar in the Pradyuman murder case while two other accused Francis Thomas and Jeyus Thomas have been sent to CBI remand till September 25.

"On request, the competent court has remanded three accused to CBI custody, who were arrested by the Haryana Police," said CBI officials.

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Sources in investigative agency added that the custodial interrogation is very crucial in this case to find out the truth.

A team has been constituted under Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ajay Kumar Bassi, CBI, to investigate the case. Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case of murder under 302 (murder) of the IPC, 25 of the Arms Act, 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act read with section 34 of IPC.

CBI TEAM VISITS SCHOOL

Meanwhile, a day after the CBI took over the investigation in the murder case of 7-year-old Pradyuman Thakur, a team of 12 CBI officers reached Ryan International School on Saturday morning and spent entire day inside the school.

Sources in the investigative agency have told India Today that the team comprising of forensic experts collected some more evidence from the crime scene which are going to be crucial in the investigation of the case.

Pradyuman, a student of Class second, was brutally murdered inside the school's bathroom on September 8. CBI took over the over the probe on Friday after request by the Haryana government.

WHAT CBI IS LOOKING FOR?

Haryana Police alleged that the Ashok Kumar, 42-year-old bus conductor killed Pradyuman with knife after the 7-year-old resisted an attempt of sexual assault. However, the postmortem report ruled out any sexual attempt by the accused on the deceased.

Pradyuman's father, Varun Chand Thakur, suspects police's theory and believes that there is more to it. He suspects that the school administration was trying to manipulate evidence and destroy clues.

According to top sources in the investigative agency, CBI wants to know the circumstances under which Pradyuman was killed. CBI also wants to confirm the theory of Haryana Police that Ashok killed Pradyuman due to failed sexual assault attempt on the deceased.

CCTV FOOTAGE TO BE RE-EXAMINED

CBI will re-examine all the CCTV footage recovered from the Ryan International School to find more clue in the case. One of the CCTV camera recorded the movement of Pradyuman and Ashok on the day of incident.

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SECURITY LAPSES IN SCHOOL

A three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was formed to find out security arrangement by the school for the students, has pointed out severe security lapses in the daily management and functioning of the school in its report.

--- ENDS ---
This story was originally co-published by ProPublica and Consumer Reports.

California regulators said they have required Nationwide and USAA to adjust their auto insurance rates as a result of a report by ProPublica and Consumer Reports that many minority neighborhoods were paying more than white areas with the same risk.

The regulators said their review confirmed our finding that linked the pricing disparities to incorrect applications of a provision in California law. The statute allows insurers to cluster neighboring ZIP codes into a single rating territory.

The companies were making some subjective determinations as a basis for calculating rates in some ZIP codes, said Ken Allen, deputy commissioner of the rate regulation branch of the California Department of Insurance. Nationwide and USAA are two of the 10 largest auto insurance providers in the country by market share.

The department said that the adjustments would largely erase the racial disparities we found in the two companies pricing. According to our analysis, USAA charged 18 percent more on average, and Nationwide 14 percent more, in poor, minority neighborhoods than in whiter neighborhoods with similarly high accident costs. Allen said its not possible to quantify how these adjustments would affect customers premiums because the revisions are too complex. In addition, theyre taking effect at the same time as an overall rate increase.

Allen said the department is now requiring more justification from insurers for their measurements of risk in the poor, minority neighborhoods that California designates as underserved for auto coverage.

Californias action marks a rare regulatory rebuke of the insurance industry for its longtime practice of charging higher premiums to drivers living in predominantly minority urban neighborhoods than to drivers with similar safety records living in majority-white neighborhoods. Insurers have traditionally defended their pricing by saying that the risk is greater in those neighborhoods, even for motorists who have never had an accident.

The departments investigation was prompted by a ProPublica and Consumer Reports analysis published in April of car insurance premiums in California, Texas, Missouri and Illinois. ProPublica found that some major insurers were charging minority neighborhoods rates as much as 30 percent more than in other areas with similar accident costs.

The disparities were not as widespread in California, which is a highly regulated insurance market, as in the other states. Even so, in California, we found that units of Nationwide, USAA and Liberty Mutual were charging prices in risky minority neighborhoods that were more than 10 percent above similar risky ZIP codes where more residents were white.

California regulators said they approved rate increases from Nationwide and USAA this month that contained corrections to the disparities revealed by ProPublica. The regulators said they are still investigating the proposed rates of Liberty Mutual, which had the largest disparities in ProPublicas analysis. Liberty Mutual spokesman Glenn Greenberg said the company is cooperating with the investigation.

The rate changes will affect only premiums charged from now on. The insurance commission chose not to look into whether, or the extent to which, drivers in Californias underserved neighborhoods may have been mischarged in the past.

Department spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said there was no need to examine past rates. After hundreds of hours of additional analysis, department actuaries and analysts did not find any indication the ProPublica analysis revealed valid legal issues, she said.

Some consumer advocates disagreed with this approach. We think the commissioner should go back and seek refunds for people who were covertly overcharged by the discriminatory practices that ProPublica uncovered, said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog. Consumers Union, the policy and action arm of Consumer Reports, has also sent a letter to the department, urging it to examine whether any rates were calculated improperly in the past.

The insurance commissions in Missouri, Texas and Illinois did not respond to questions about whether they had taken any actions to address the disparities highlighted in ProPublicas article. A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Insurance said in a statement that it urges consumers to shop around for the best price on automobile insurance.

ProPublica and Consumer reports analyzed more than 100,000 premiums charged for liability insurance  the combination of bodily injury and property damage that represents the minimum coverage drivers buy in each of the states. To equalize driver-related variables such as age and accident history, we limited our study to one type of customer: a 30-year-old woman with a safe driving record. We then compared those premiums, which were provided by Quadrant Information Services, to the average amounts paid out by insurers for liability claims in each ZIP code.

When ProPublica published its investigation, the California Department of Insurance criticized the articles approach and findings, saying that the studys flawed methodology results in a flawed conclusion that some insurers discriminate in rate-setting. Nevertheless, the department subsequently used ProPublicas methodology as a basis for developing a new way to analyze rate filings. It used its new method to examine the recent Nationwide and USAA rate filings.

In California, when insurers set rates for sparsely populated rural ZIP codes, which tend to be relatively white, they are allowed to consider risk in contiguous ZIP codes of their own choosing. In some cases, these clusters led higher risk ZIP codes to be assigned a lower risk  and therefore, lower premium prices  than the states comprehensive analysis of accident costs warranted. The use of contiguous ZIP codes is also common in Missouri, Texas and Illinois but is less regulated there than in California.

In an interview, Allen said that Nationwide had made a procedural error in its use of the contiguous ZIP codes provision, and that the regulators required the company to rely more heavily on the states risk estimates in those areas.

Nationwide acknowledged that the state required a rate adjustment, but disputed the association with ProPublicas reporting. It is inaccurate and misleading for anyone to conclude or imply any connection between Nationwides recently approved rating plan and ProPublicas unsubstantiated findings, spokesman Eric Hardgrove said. He added that Nationwide is committed to nondiscriminatory rates and disagrees with any assertion to the contrary.

On page 2,025 of Nationwides most recent California insurance filing, the company disclosed that it provided premium quotes for the ProPublica risk example to the California insurance commission.

The improper use of the contiguous ZIP codes provision was also a factor in the USAA filing, Allen said in an interview. USAA had failed to apply the updated industry wide factors where they had insufficient data, he said.

USAA spokesman Roger Wildermuth acknowledged that when the company filed its rate plan in August 2016, it did not use Californias most up-to-date risk numbers, which were published in December 2015. The reason, he said, was that the insurer had already completed months of calculations prior to that update.

He noted that the department approved that filing, including USAAs decision to rely on its own data, and has now approved the companys revised calculations using updated data.

The department has consistently validated our approach to this rate filing, he said.

California officials said they will more closely police the clustering algorithms, and their impact on poor and minority neighborhoods, as they review future rate filing applications.

We will use this analysis going forward, said Joel Laucher, chief deputy commissioner of the department. We dont need to change any rules to do that.

Julia Angwin is a senior reporter at ProPublica and Jeff Larson is a news applications developer at ProPublica. Twitter: @JuliaAngwin, @thejefflarson
A former Facebook employee is suing the Menlo Park social networking firm, saying he was fired after he complained about the companys treatment of older workers.

Gary Glouner, 52, said in his lawsuit that Facebook had a record of getting rid of employees older than 50 and telling them they were a poor cultural fit and they didnt move fast enough, according to City News Service. After they were let go, the older workers would be replaced with younger ones at Facebook, Glouner said in his lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Glouner did not respond to requests for comment. According to his LinkedIn profile, Glouner began working in global business development and partnerships at Facebook in April 2013. Glouner arrived at Facebook through a circuitous route: He worked for WebFives, a social media startup acquired by Microsoft in 2007. He worked at Microsoft until 2013, when Facebook bought the software companys Atlas online advertising business. Facebook shut down Atlas in 2016.

In 2015, Glouner had a work injury and later a seizure, City News Service reported. He was later told he was not meeting the expectations of his job while he was on medical leave and was fired in November 2015, City News Service said, citing Glouners lawsuit. The former Facebook manager believes he was discriminated against because of his age and disability.

Facebook said Glouners complaint is full of inaccuracies and that it worked extensively with Mr. Glouner to accommodate his medical issues.

His separation from the company had nothing to do with age, disability or any of the reasons stated in his complaint, the company said.

Glouner is also listed on the Team page for Good Message Films, a production company. According to his biography there, Glouner is from a fourth generation Hollywood film/TV family; was a child actor on series including Charlies Angels and CHiPs; and later worked on the Fame television series. The Internet Movie Database does not have an entry for him.

Facebook is among several Silicon Valley companies that have been accused of discriminating against older employees. But age discrimination can be hard to prove because unlike, race, many tech companies do not release the age demographics of their workforce.

Wendy Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: wlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thewendylee
Youre grounded

General Electric is selling five company planes, essentially scuttling its corporate fleet. Its part of a plan to cut nearly $2 billion in expenses across the company under new CEO John Flannery. GE spent $257,639 for former CEO Jeff Immelts (right)personal use of company planes in 2016. The companys aviation division will keep two planes for site visits.

Stop sign

Londons transportation agency dealt a blow to Uber on Friday, declining to renew the ride-hailing services license to operate in its largest European market. New CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made a plea for leniency on Twitter: Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w/us to make things right. The company can continue operating in the city while it appeals the decision.

Dough!

Cookie Do, followed by over 180,000 people on Instagram, faces a proposed class-action suit alleging its not-baked goods cause food-borne illness. The New York City stores cookie dough is made from pasteurized egg product and heat-treated flour, which it claims are worry-free treats you cant get sick from! The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges the plaintiffs suffered stomach pains, nausea, diarrhea and heartburn after eating dough.

Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com.
If you missed it ...

In a week when Mark Zuckerberg wrapped up his paternity leave and was Russian back to work, this also happened:

KB Home CEO Jeffrey Mezger got a pay cut and a warning from the company board after he was caught ranting at comedian Kathy Griffin, his neighbor in Los Angeles. Mezgers bonus for 2017, which has not yet been set, will be cut by 25 percent, and hell be fired if he makes another similar misstep, the company said in a regulatory filing. HuffPost first reported Mezgers rant, which included sexist and homophobic slurs, on Tuesday.

Harvard University reported that its $37.1 billion endowment earned an 8.1 percent return for its most recent fiscal year. The endowments new chief, N.P. Narvekar, said that problems in the endowment would require time to overcome. Its Cambridge neighbor, MIT, posted a 14.3 percent return for its $14.8 billion endowment.

Hillary Clintons What Happened had a big debut. Clintons book about her stunning loss in 2016 to Donald Trump sold more than 300,000 copies in the combined formats of hardcover, e-book and audio, Simon & Schuster told the Associated Press. The books hardcover sales of 168,000 were the highest opening for any nonfiction release in five years, according to NPD BookScan.

After emergency room nurse Maria Striemer witnessed a child nearly die in her care after being left in a hot car, she set out find a way to make sure routine car trips dont end at the ER. Working with her husband, Grant Striemer, she invented and patented the result: The Backseet Buddy. The Ohio couple got a patent in February. They now hope to license the product, which uses Bluetooth to detect a child left in a car and alert a parents phone when they go out of range, to an investor or manufacturer.

SpaceX is seeking to trademark the name Starlink, potentially for a satellite broadband service, GeekWire reported, after documents surfaced on Reddit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also runs Tesla, said in 2015 that a company satellite network might cost $10 billion and take five years to launch.

Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techchronicle
Law firms already elbowing one another for multinational clients will soon have a new competitor: PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Big Four accounting firm that now calls itself PwC, plans to open a law firm in Washington this week.

The law firm, ILC Legal, will advise clients on international matters such as corporate restructuring. Its lawyers will act as special legal consultants, rather than fully licensed U.S. lawyers, allowing them to provide counsel on foreign law but not U.S. law.

ILC Legal, nonetheless, aims to vie with big law firms as a one-stop shop offering multinational companies access to other Pricewaterhouse services, including tax consulting and its network of 3,200 lawyers spread across 90 countries. The firms in that network operate separately but follow the same standards and practices under the brand name.

We wont be a traditional law firm, where legal services are offered in isolation, but one part of a broader offering, said Richard Edmundson, a British solicitor based in London who is the leader of international business reorganizations for the accounting giant and will lead the new firm.

There will be five international lawyers and myself, from London, he said in a phone interview Friday. They include Spanish, Canadian, Polish and German attorneys who have been practicing at firms in the network, he said.

Another advantage of opening ILC Legal in Washington is its proximity to U.S. clients, Edmundson said.

We can talk to them ... and put them in contact with others more easily, he said.

ILC Legal hopes to attract multinational companies seeking counsel in areas like digital security and data protection, dispute resolution, international corporate structuring, and mergers and acquisitions, Edmundson said. It will operate like a traditional law firm, soliciting clients and billing them directly for services.

Although overall demand for legal services is flat and corporations are increasingly handling routine business internally, Edmundson said he hopes that ILC Legal will eventually add more international lawyers.

We hope it will grow, he said.

Accounting giants Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young, which now calls itself EY, also offer legal services and have more than 2,000 lawyers each.

But PricewaterhouseCoopers is the first to create a separate legal entity, said Jeffrey Lowe, the law firm practice group leader at Major, Lindsey & Africa, a legal recruiting firm in New York.

Accounting firms are generally prohibited from providing legal or other services to companies they audit. That means ILC Legal can provide services only to companies that are not auditing clients.

The decision to open a law firm in the United States, which was first reported by the American Lawyer, faced another restriction: Most jurisdictions prohibit non-lawyers from owning or operating law firms or sharing fees with non-lawyers. Washington has no such rule.

Elizabeth Olson is a New York Times writer.
For some older people, just downloading an app or successfully navigating certain websites might seem like cause for quiet celebration.

But not for Shirley McKerrow, a retired business owner and politician from Darwin, Australia.

McKerrow, who is 84, revels in the thought of learning to develop those same apps and websites. Last year, she began taking free online coding lessons through Codecademy, an interactive service that teaches programming languages, and was tutored along the way by her tech-savvy grandson.

She could hardly contain her enthusiasm: I might use my newfound skills to create personalized, all-singing-and-dancing online birthday cards  in fact, all sorts of greeting cards for my family and friends. Maybe I could even graduate to making greeting cards personalized for businesses or for members of Parliament to send to their constituents.

I have all sorts of ideas, she continued, but need to progress my skills a little further before I get too carried away.

While Millennials make up the bulk of those learning in-demand skills like Web design, programming or digital marketing  the average age of students at coding boot camps, for instance, is just under 30  some people old enough to be their parents or even grandparents are also acquiring these abilities. Some, like McKerrow, are taking free lessons or video instructions online. (About a million of Codecademys 45 million users globally are 55 or older.) Others subscribe to Web-based courses or take classes at community colleges, universities or boot camps.

To say there are many might be a stretch, said Jake Schwartz, a founder and chief executive of General Assembly, which offers technology and design training online and in 20 locations worldwide to corporations and individuals. But they have been a welcome addition to class dynamics.

Many older coders want to develop new skills to keep their jobs or to start second careers. Some are looking for volunteer opportunities or hobbies in their retirement. Nearly all who have gone through the rigors of trying to understand correct syntax, algorithms and other technical foundations also gain a sense of confidence and accomplishment, while maintaining and improving their mental acuity.

Liz Beigle-Bryant, 60, of Seattle credits the online classes she took in HTML and CSS code, the building blocks of the Web, for helping her land a dream job recently as a document control coordinator at the public transit agency Sound Transit. She expects to use these tools often in her new position.

One of the big obstacles in a job interview when youre older is that people think youre inflexible and you cant learn new things, said Beigle-Bryant, who was laid off from her job as an administrative assistant at Microsoft in 2011.

The code lessons she took a few years ago, also through Codecademy, gave me an edge, she said. I developed a confidence that I didnt have before.

The operators of many of the nations nearly 100 coding boot camps say the vast majority of students enrolled in immersive training programs, which usually last 12 to 15 weeks and cost about $12,000 to $15,000, find employment upon completion. (The most popular program? According to Course Report, a website that monitors this industry, its a JavaScript-focused full stack, which teaches all stages of software development.)

Older people have been part of these success stories, too, yet they are often hesitant even to get started.

I think so many people are discouraged because they think theyre too old, said Letta Raven, a tech support specialist for a payroll software company and a frequent speaker at womens tech conferences. She has observed this reluctance among some at these conferences, and has even had it herself.

I was considered old in this industry, said Raven, who is 42 and held many jobs, including pastry chef and artist, before settling into her current career. She was long interested in software development, but it wasnt until two years ago that she enrolled at PDX Code Guild, a boot camp, and took courses in programming languages like Python, Ruby and JavaScript.

Steve Deddens, 71, a retired commercial pilot from Austin, Texas, who flew fighter jets during the Vietnam War, said he was a little anxious about embarking on a second career in programming. He worried about keeping up with his younger classmates at General Assembly, where he took an immersive program two years ago.

People my age still have an AOL account, he said.

But Deddens, who is now a software engineer at a company that provides information technology services to Microsoft, found the transition relatively easy.

Ive always been good at solving problems, he said. I like taking things apart. Im an engineer by nature.

While the income he earns from his second career is certainly nice, he said, the other side of it is the joy of doing something with your mind and keeping yourself young.

McKerrow agreed: I think learning computer skills is great for older people. There is no heavy lifting or physical demands, and exercise of the brain is so necessary to avoid atrophy, Alzheimers or dementia.

One way to get started  or at least see if coding is a good fit  is to attend a meet-up. These are organized get-togethers where people sign up online and meet offline to discuss common interests. Codecademy, for instance, holds regular meet-ups in 300 cities around the world.

I made a commitment to go every month, said Laurie Alaoui, 59, who lives in Lincoln (Placer County).

There, she said, she became familiar with the industry lingo and observed coders of all levels. At the third one, I understood maybe 5 percent of what was said, she said. But I took notes, and words I had no idea what they meant, I came home and looked them up. And then the next month I would go to another one.

Before long, it got to where I could sit through the talk and understand what they were talking about, said Alaoui, who became disabled from a car accident in her teens and was looking for something less taxing physically.

In addition to attending meet-ups, she took lessons in HTML, CSS and JavaScript at Khan Academy, which, she said, are basically geared toward kids  they spell everything out. She then enrolled at one of General Assemblys immersive programs and is now developing Gets You Inc., a website that helps connect people with autism.

That was the reason I wanted to get into coding, she said. I saw that you really can change the world.

Vivian Marino is a New York Times writer.
Uber will continue to operate in London while it appeals the decision by the citys transportation agency declining to renew the ride-hailing services license to operate in its largest European market. Uber posted an online petition in support of its appeal, and garnered more than 300,000 signatures in just a few hours.

But the ruling could prove to be a boon for other operators, and could even present an opportunity for Lyft to kick off its long-awaited international expansion.

The decision is the just latest setback for the San Francisco company worth about $70 billion. It has upended public transportation across much of the world by using smartphones to connect drivers with passengers.

But problems have included allegations of sexual harassment, concerns about its use of software to evade the gaze of authorities and a reputation  fair or not  that it simply does not play by the rules.

Criticism from customers, unions, regulators and, crucially, investors contributed to the removal of founder Travis Kalanick, as CEO this year. He was replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi, who had run Expedia.

Ubers approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications, regulator Transport for London said.

A ban on operating in one of its largest markets would certainly hit the companys bottom line. Uber says it has 40,000 drivers in London and 3.5 million customers who use its app at least once every three months.

And if it loses its London appeal, those customers will be up for grabs for other companies, including Gett, backed by Volkswagen, and Mytaxi, owned by Daimler. Those services connect users with traditional taxis and black cabs, which cost more than an Uber ride.

The situation could be similar to what happened in Austin, Texas, last year. Uber and Lyft left the city in protest over a law there that required drivers be fingerprinted. A half-dozen startups swept in, with varying levels of success. At one point, total ride-hailing volume had dropped about 13 percent from the Uber-Lyft days. By the time Uber and Lyft returned this year, there were only three other services operating at any scale.

London, though, is a much bigger and more lucrative market, and Mytaxi and Gett are already well-established. They cheered Londons decision, with Mytaxi even offering a 50 percent discount to lure regular Uber users.

We have long questioned whether Uber has been operating within the letter and the spirit of regulation in London, Andy Batty, Mytaxis general manager for Britain, said in a statement. We believe that Ubers business model is based on pumping large amounts of private-equity money into maintaining artificially low prices in an attempt to drive out competition.

Transport for London, which is responsible for the citys subways and buses as well as regulating its taxicabs, declared that Uber was not fit and proper to operate in the city  a designation that carries significant weight in Britain.

Fit and proper is a benchmark applied to different sectors of business and charitable organizations in the country to ensure that people or organizations meet the requirements of their industry or specialty.

Until now, London has been one of Ubers most notable success stories outside the United States. It began service in the city in 2012, just before the Summer Olympics, initially with a luxury service. It added UberX, which competes more directly with the citys storied black taxis, a year later. By 2015, it had driven Londoners almost 100 million miles, and taken them on 20 million trips. The company now operates in more than 40 cities and towns across Britain.

Its arrival, however, created a clash almost immediately with the black cabs, which trace their roots to 1634.

Black-cab drivers, who earn their licenses by memorizing 25,000 streets and 100,000 landmarks for an exacting test known as the Knowledge, complain that Uber drivers are under-regulated. Many fear that the rivalry will put them out of business: Uber fares are about 30 percent lower than those of black cabs.

The London ruling was specifically against Uber, and does not appear to rule out other ride-hailing services that connect people with private vehicles. That could give Lyft, Ubers archrival, a window to steal a massive market already accustomed to ride-hailing. San Franciscos Lyft has long considered international expansion, but has never revealed concrete plans.

Lyft declined to comment on the ruling.

Ubers London license will expire on Sept. 30. But the company has been given 21 days to appeal in Britains courts and will be allowed to continue operating in the city during the appeal process.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Friday that the family of a 13-year-old boy who was shot to death by a Sonoma County sheriffs deputy while holding a toy rifle can take their wrongful-death suit to trial.

The decision, by two of the three judges on the panel, would allow a jury to determine whether the shooting of Andy Lopez in 2013 amounted to excessive force.

Given the split decision, though, lawyers for the county and Deputy Erick Gelhaus said they are considering appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or filing a petition asking for an 11-judge appeals court review.

Noah Blechman, the co-lead counsel for Sonoma County and the deputy, argued that the suit should be dismissed because Gelhaus believed the toy was an AK-47 assault rifle and reasonably feared for his life when the youngster turned around and started to raise the gun.

Were obviously disappointed in the ruling because we believe it is at odds with Supreme Court precedent in other deadly force cases, Blechman said. It is undisputed that, when he turned around, the gun turned around and was pointing upwards, and in that situation deadly force is justified and qualified immunity exists.

Gelhaus and another deputy, Michael Schemmel, spotted Andy Lopez on the afternoon of Oct. 22, 2013, as the youngster walked past a vacant lot near his home. He was carrying a plastic replica of an AK-47, which was missing the orange plastic tip that would have identified it as a toy.

The officers stopped their patrol car 35 to 40 feet away from Andy, and Gelhaus shouted at him to drop the gun. He turned toward them and, the officers said, started to raise the gun, which had been pointing downward.

Gelhaus fired eight times, hitting the youth with seven shots.

Justices Richard Clifton and Milan Smith ruled that a jury should decide whether Gelhaus had reason to believe that Andy posed an immediate threat given that the gun was pointed toward the ground and the boy hadnt made any sudden movements or behaved aggressively before he was shot.

Judge J. Clifford Wallace disagreed, saying there was no evidence that the use of deadly force was objectively unreasonable in the split second the deputy had to determine whether a deadly threat existed.

The decision to remand the case for trial upholds the 2016 ruling by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, who questioned whether the shooting would have been justified even if the gun had been real. The boys family says the officer should have known the gun was a toy.

Hamilton dismissed a claim that the officer had deliberately violated the youths constitutional rights, saying Gelhaus had no time for reflection and believed he was acting for legitimate law enforcement purposes.

The familys lawyer, Arnoldo Casillas, was not immediately available for comment Friday.

Gelhaus, a sheriffs deputy since 1989, was briefly suspended with pay but returned to patrol after the county district attorney declined to file criminal charges against him. The FBI also declined to file charges. Gelhaus was promoted to sergeant in 2016 and is still on the force.

Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite
San Francisco police rarely seek public help in solving the citys frequent car burglaries, but this was no ordinary break-in.

Roughly $900,000 worth of jewelry was stolen at about noon Aug. 12 from a black 2016 Cadillac Escalade parked in the Ocean Beach lot near the Great Highway and Balboa Street, officials said Friday.
The San Rafael Police Department is trying to identify three suspects who allegedly stole a 92-year-old woman's purse at the Northgate Mall in Terra Linda last week.

According to a press release, the three suspects drove into the mall's east parking lot in a "newer gray unknown model Nissan" and parked in an open parking spot next to the victim's car.

One of the suspects then exited the car and walked up behind the 92-year-old who was getting into her car. The suspect then "forcibly took a purse from the victim" and got back into the car with the other suspects.

Police released the surveillance video above hoping that someone will be able to identify the three suspects.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 San Rafael Police Department Show More Show Less 2 of 3 San Rafael Police Department Show More Show Less 3 of 3





The suspect who stole the purse is described as a "young black female, thin build, black hair pulled up with a 'bun' on top. Wearing a blue jean jacket, a white cowl-neck shirt, dark colored Adidas leggings with white stripes, slide sandals and carrying a brown canvas backpack."

The second suspect is described as a "black female, thin build, black hair with two corn-row hair segments pulled back toward the rear of her head, short length. Wearing a short-sleeve blue and white tie-dye shirt, blue jeans (ankle length), and white Nike Air Jordan type high - top sneakers."

The third suspect is described as "black female, medium to heavy build, black-weave style hair, Wearing a green colored zip-up hoodie with a black tank-top or bra underneath and tan colored leggings and sandals."

Anyone who can identify the suspects is encouraged to submit a tip here:

http://www.srpd.org/forms/tips.php
The fact that there was general consensus on not having Pakistan host the summit unless the situation improves, shows that all the South Asian member nations continue to show solidarity with India and her concerns

By Geeta Mohan: Terrorism was one of the key issues that came up during the SAARC Ministerial Meet which was held on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York on Friday. Mail Today has learnt from senior diplomats who attended the meet that Pakistan raised the issue of hosting of the SAARC Summit.

The diplomat said, "Pakistan made the point that they would want to host the SAARC summit soon." But, another diplomat shared with the newspaper that one of the representatives commented, "the atmosphere right now was not conducive" to hold the summit. Everybody in the room concurred.

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The fact that there was general consensus on not having Pakistan host the summit unless the situation improves, shows that all the South Asian member nations continue to show solidarity with India and her concerns.

Mail Today spoke to diplomats and representatives of various member nations who attended the meeting to get a sense of what transpired. One of the senior officials when asked on if terrorism emanating from Pakistan was raised at the forum said, "everybody, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and India spoke on terrorism but nobody really pointed at each other on the issue. Everybody presented their case and while views on terrorism differed there was no finger pointing".

The External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the meeting, delivered her speech and left. She did not stay for lunch. The rest of the session was conducted by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar. There was no exchange of words or hand shake between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. A diplomat expressed relief that despite the tensions all sides maintained quorum and nobody came to blows. "The atmosphere was cold but there was no open confrontation," he said. Adding that the Indian and Pakistan side did not see this as an opportunity to move forward. "While there was no opportunity to shake hands, neither walked up to the other to say hello", he said.

India had made its position amply clear on the SAARC Summit level meeting to be held in Pakistan. Last year, the SAARC Summit was cancelled unanimously by all the member nations after India initiated the process of boycott because of the terrible terror attacks from Pakistan for which there has been no real action taken by Islamabad. An officer involved in the SAARC process also said that there has been no real forward movement on many projects that India has advanced. "There has been no headway on those SAARC projects with Pakistan", he said.

Whenever SAARC summit level meeting happens, as per procedure, it will be held in Pakistan but as a diplomat said, "the decision to hold the summit in Pakistan remains but date on when to hold it is yet to be determined". For now, Pakistan's proposal to hold the summit in the near future seems highly unlikely unless Pakistan makes a drastic shift in its "terror policy" and dismantles the terror infrastructure that exists in its soil.

--- ENDS ---
Ron Chapple/Getty Image

Officers tracking a stolen Smart Car through the Bayview District last Thursday got a surprise when they stopped the car and found the joyriding thieves  two boys, ages 12 and 13, according to the San Francisco Police Department.

The 13-year-old boy was booked for stealing the car, which went missing after it was briefly left with a key in the ignition near Thurgood Marshall High School on Conkling Street in the Silver Terrace neighborhood about 5:45 p.m., according to SFPD Capt. Raj Vaswani.
I was having one of those weeks. Midterms were coming up. Papers were due. And it seemed like everyone was making plans for Halloween except for me.

I was walking to one of my afternoon classes when I got an email notification from Package Services. I wasn't really expecting any packages, so I was curious about what was delivered. I spent that entire class period attempting to listen to the professor, but only thinking about what the package could possibly be. The sender turned out to be the last person I expected to hear from, and more precious than I could ever imagine.

After the class wrapped up, I quickly gathered my things and walked a couple blocks over to Package Services. The rush from the beginning of the semester had mostly ended, so there wasn't too long of a line. "Thank god," I thought to myself. Only a few more minutes of waiting and I could figure out what this package was.

"Next," an employee called out, interrupting my thoughts.

I got to the front of the counter and swiped my student ID card. The employee took what seemed like hours sifting through an assortment of packages for the one with the "WETTER" label affixed to it. He came back with a rather small square box  maybe 8 inches wide and 8 inches deep. The most noticeable thing about the box were the orange and black Halloween-themed designs on the outside of it. The label on the outside read: "Our Campus Market College Care Package."

As I walked back to my dorm, I wondered about who sent it, since there was no indication on the label or any of the packaging. I would know soon enough, but the three-block walk back to my dorm felt much longer than normal.

When I finally got to my dorm room, I immediately grabbed my pocket knife from my desk. In one motion, I sliced open the clear packaging tape  the last thing standing between me and figuring out the identity of the mystery sender.

Under a bag of Doritos and popcorn lay a postcard-size note, which read:

Happy Halloween Daniel!!

Hard to believe by the time this comes to you it will be Halloween and you will have been at GWU for 2 months. Just know I'm looking down on you all the time my love!!

XOXO,

Mom

Courtesy Daniel Wetter

I was frozen. "This can't be possible," I thought.

All I could do was stare at it, reading it over and over again. I felt the paper, struggling to believe it was real. But there was her handwriting.

I was flooded with memories from the past year, but one from about a month ago stood out.

"Daniel!" my mom weakly called out from her bedroom.

I dropped what I was doing in the kitchen and ran to her room. She was gasping for air, trying to regain her normal breathing.

"Are you okay?" I asked in a bit of a panicked voice. "Should I call someone for help?"

"Get me some orange juice," she said groggily, as her heavy breathing slowed down.

As I went to the kitchen to get my mom a glass of orange juice, my thoughts were going 100 miles per hour. "Is today the day?" I thought. "No, it can't be."

When I returned with the juice, she was sobbing.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Call Eric for me."

It felt like time had slowed to a crawl waiting for my uncle Eric to answer.

"Daniel?" he said as he answered the phone.

"Hey Eric, my mom really wants to talk to you right now," I replied.

"Is she okay?"

"I think you should talk to her, hold on."

I passed the phone to my mom, who was still crying.

"Eric, I can't do this anymore," she told him. "Can you come down?"

I watched the conversation from the corner of her bed as if I was watching a movie. I couldn't believe this was actually happening. Before long, she passed the phone back to me.

"I'll give you a call back after I book my flight," he said.

My mom had calmed down by that point, but she was more sure than ever that her last day would be soon. After years of battling ovarian cancer, my mom was living her final days. Just a few months before, her doctors declared her terminal after trying every viable treatment. At that point, the cancer had reached her lymph nodes and was spreading too quickly for doctors to treat effectively. Now, several of her organs were at risk of failing, including her lungs. She was getting weaker by the day as the cancer relentlessly attacked her body.

I knew this was coming, but I always held out the hope that maybe  just maybe  she would miraculously recover. But reality didn't work like that.

The next day was a blur. I spent a lot of it picking up family from the airport as they arrived to spend time with my mom. We decided we would do a big sushi feast for dinner because it was my mom's favorite. Our kitchen table was soon filled with all kinds of sushi rolls and sashimi. My mom was overjoyed, eating sushi and spending the night with her family, kids, and best friend. It certainly didn't feel like her final days, but she kept insisting the end was near for her.

Courtesy Daniel Wetter

I had arranged to stay at a friend's house that night since I could hardly stand the thought of being in the same place when my mom passed. Toward the end of the night, I texted my friend to come get me. This would be it.

I hugged my mom tightly, while she said all the things she wanted to say to me one last time. That she'd always be there for me, that she loved me more than anything else in the world. I struggled to hold back tears.

The walk to the front door of my house was the hardest thing I'd ever done. "I'll never see her again," I thought as I approached the door. I looked back one last time before leaving. I felt like I was completely removed from the situation, seeing my family comfort my mom who was sobbing uncontrollably after saying goodbye to me for the last time. It was as if the situation was flipped and I was watching a mom who had just lost her son. It was unbearable to witness. I managed to say one last thing through my tears: "Goodbye, mom."

She passed away peacefully that night surrounded by family, while I stayed at a friend's house. I returned to school a couple weeks later, allowing myself the time to grieve and honor her at her memorial service.

I never expected to hear from her again, but there I was in my college dorm room, not a month later, staring at a handwritten note from her. For a fleeting moment, it was as if she was back and she had never died.

After that, I would receive five more notes from my mom  all of them reminders of how much she loved me.

On my 19th birthday, I received a card from her, which read, in part:

Feel my presence, feel my hugs, hear my unending support of your dreams.

Even though it was just a card, I was sure she was there. I could feel her presence and her hugs. It was truly the best birthday present I could ask for.

Courtesy Daniel Wetter

Somehow, even after receiving three notes from her, I never came to expect them. Each of them were a special surprise allowing me to keep talking to my mom. One of the things I missed the most about her was her ability to motivate me no matter what challenges I faced. I can remember seeing her face light up as I told her about my day, and it was that look in her eyes that inspired me to keep striving to be a better me. For me, these notes gave me that inspiration I was so desperately missing. As I read each of them for the first time, I could hear her voice and see the light in her eyes, feel her loving touch.

The last note came in the form of a Valentine's Day care package:

Happy Valentine's Day!

You'll always be my Valentine Daniel. I'm sending you a cupid arrow from Heaven with lots of love attached! I will always love you forever and EVER!! Put your faith in God. He will guide you. Stay faithful to Him.

Love,

Mom

The next big holiday would be Mother's Day. I dreaded the day as it approached because it would be my first Mother's Day without my mom. I secretly hoped I would get another note from her because it would comfort me on such a tough day. In preparation, I bought a card for her and wrote her for the first time since she passed away. It's hard to describe exactly what it feels like writing a card for someone you know won't ever read it, but it felt nice to express my thoughts.

Mother's Day came, but there was no note. I was crushed.

I was in San Diego spending the weekend with some friends, and while I was reflecting on Mother's Day out on the balcony I noticed something in the sky. I looked closer and could make out several tiny little dots floating on the horizon. As they came closer, I realized they were hot air balloons.

I couldn't believe it.

The last time I saw a hot air balloon was when I rode one with my sister and mom just months before she passed away. She had always wanted to ride a hot air balloon, so riding one with her that day in July was like bringing Heaven to Earth for her.

Courtesy Daniel Wetter

Ever since then, I associated hot air balloons with my mom. And here I was on Mother's Day looking to the sky for answers, wondering why I couldn't get a note from her when I really needed it.

It was then that I realized I don't have to get a note from my mom to know she's there. I just know it.

Daniel Wetter is a digital consultant, journalist, and student.
Ah, the Bay Area and its "come as you are" mentality.

Some locals take this credo to heart and openly flaunt their birthday suits in communal spaces.
SANTA ANA  A California man was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his ex-wife and seven others in a 2011 shooting rampage at the hair salon where she worked.

Scott Dekraai, a 47-year-old former tugboat operator, received eight consecutive life terms in a courtroom packed with victims relatives who wore buttons and shirts printed with photos of those killed. Many sobbed and spoke of their devastating loss. Others told Dekraai they hoped he would rot in prison.

Dekraai told the families he knew his words would never suffice but apologized for what he said was a total loss of self-control.

Dekraai pleaded guilty three years ago, but his case dragged on due to a scandal over authorities use of informants to cull information from Dekraai and others housed in Orange County jails.

While authorities can receive information from informants, they cant have snitches deliberately seek out information from inmates with legal representation.

Dekraais public defender, Scott Sanders, began seeking records about informants after he noticed a jailhouse informant, who had chatted up a previous client, was speaking with Dekraai. Sanders accused authorities of trying to cover up a snitch program that had trained inmates to sidle up to high-profile defendants.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals removed the county district attorneys office from the case after finding deputies lied or withheld evidence about snitches.

The state attorney general took over the prosecution and also recommended a death sentence. But when Goethals discovered that sheriffs authorities continued to refuse to turn over informant-related records, he removed capital punishment as an option, saying they had jeopardized Dekraais right to a fair trial.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra said prior to sentencing that he would abide by the judges decision to preclude capital punishment.

Dekraai pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, for which he received a term of seven years to life. He got 25 years to life for a gun enhancement on each of nine counts.

He had been locked in a custody dispute with ex-wife Michelle Fournier over their 8-year-old son when he entered Salon Meritage in Seal Beach wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with three weapons. Dekraai shot and killed Fournier before turning his guns on the salon owner, stylists and customers, and a man sitting in his car in the parking lot. He was arrested within minutes of the rampage.

Amy Taxin is an Associated Press writer.
Katherine Bonniwell, a former publisher of Life magazine who was widely considered a role model for female magazine managers, died Aug. 31 at her home in Manhattan. She was 70.

The cause was lung cancer, her husband, William Leibovitz, said.

Ms. Bonniwell was an early glass ceiling breaker who led a groundswell of very talented women into top positions at Time Inc., Lifes parent company, said Chris Meigher, who was president of the organization during her time there.

She was strong and stalwart and could stand toe to toe with anybody, Meigher said.

Life, best known for its photo essays, was published weekly until 1972 and then monthly from 1978 to 2000. It now exists as a depository of 20 million photos and images on the Time website.

Ms. Bonniwell was publisher from 1988 to 1991, a period marked by high magazine readership but also by advertising downturns and shifts in consumer interest. During her tenure, the magazine increased its circulation to 1.4 million from 1.2 million and won two National Magazine Awards.

Ms. Bonniwell, known for her innovative solutions to complicated problems, was the second woman to serve as publisher of Life; the first was her immediate predecessor, Lisa Valk. She also served as worldwide director of circulation at Time Inc. and business manager for People magazine.

Leibovitz recalled that once, seeing that Time Inc.s Money magazine was performing poorly, Ms. Bonniwell proposed a new content strategy. Instead of publishing a mix of miscellaneous articles, she suggested that each issue of the magazine focus on a different theme. Her suggestion was adopted, and readership soared.

Ms. Bonniwells efforts to put Life back on a weekly publication schedule for the first time in a decade were driven by amazing intellectual and political brilliance on her part, said Jim Gaines, who was managing editor of the magazine at the time and later succeeded Ms. Bonniwell as publisher.

She made a compelling business case for producing more issues and probably would have succeeded, Gaines said, if not for external market pressures and concerns that a weekly Life could cannibalize readership from other Time publications.

Katherine Marbury Bonniwell was born in Manhattan on May 29, 1947, to Lucy and John Bonniwell. Her family was descended from British colonists who arrived in North America in 1670. Her middle name was a tribute to her ancestor William Marbury, of the landmark Marbury vs. Madison Supreme Court decision, which helped establish the doctrine of judicial review.

Ms. Bonniwell earned a bachelors degree in 1969 from Vassar College, where she studied art. She briefly worked at Sothebys auction house before returning to school for a masters from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1976.

Besides her husband, she is survived by her son, Alexander; a sister, Anne Gale; a brother, Charles Bonniwell; and a stepdaughter, Lynn Leibovitz.

Tiffany Hsu is a New York Times writer.
SAVANNAH, Tenn.  After a tense, 11-day trial, a jury found Zachary Adams guilty of kidnapping, raping and murdering nursing student Holly Bobo. She was 20 in April 2011 when she was led into the woods behind her home by an unidentified man wearing camouflage in the rural town of Parsons.

On Saturday, Adams, 33, avoided a possible death penalty by agreeing to a sentence of life in prison plus 50 years.

Bobos disappearance led to a frantic search of the farms, fields and barns of western Tennessee, and her case drew national attention. Her remains were found in September 2014 by two men searching for ginseng in woods not far from her home in Decatur County, about 100 miles southwest of Nashville.

Before her skull was discovered, Bobos relatives and friends prayed she would be found alive. After her death was confirmed, their focus switched to finding justice for the young woman known for her singing at church.

She finally has the peace in the valley that she sang about, family friend Rickey Alexander said.

After the jury was let out of the courtroom, Bobos mother, Karen, hugged prosecutor Jennifer Nichols and Bobos father, Dana, hugged Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn.

Defense attorney Jennifer Thompson patted Adams on the shoulder and spoke into his ear shortly after the verdict was read Friday. Outside the courtroom, she said she was extremely disappointed in the verdict and maintained that Adams is innocent.

Judge Creed McGinley moved the trial from Decatur County to neighboring Hardin County in search of an unbiased jury.

Two other men, Jason Autry and Adams brother John Dylan Adams, also face charges of kidnapping, raping and killing Bobo.

Autry testified against Adams, telling jurors that Adams told him that he, his brother and their friend Shayne Austin had raped Bobo. Autry also said that he served as a lookout as Adams shot Bobo near a river on the day she was reported missing.

Autry was on a list of witnesses who were offered immunity in the case. He said he testified because he wanted leniency.

Adrian Sainz is an Associated Press writer.
1 Costly travel: Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price will face an inspector generals investigation into his reported use of chartered jets for at least two dozen flights in recent months at taxpayer expense. A spokeswoman for HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson told the Washington Post on Friday that the agency will request records of Prices travel and review the justification made by Price and his staff for the trips, which reportedly cost taxpayers a combined $300,000. House Democrats said the flights appeared to violate federal law designed to make sure executive branch officials use the most economical travel available. Prices office says it is sometimes necessary to charter planes to allow Price to both manage one of the largest executive branch agencies and stay grounded with voters. This is Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people, said Charmaine Yoest, his assistant secretary for public affairs. Democrats have blasted Prices use of private jets  some with plush leather chairs, kitchens and other amenities.

2 Sanctuary cities: Attorneys for Texas asked a federal appeals court Friday to let the states law banning sanctuary cities take effect. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia blocked much of the law Aug. 31. Under the law, Texas police chiefs could face removal from office and criminal charges for not complying with federal immigration officials requests to detain people jailed on non-immigration offenses. Various local governments in Texas are fighting the law, which also allows police to inquire about peoples immigration status during routine interactions such as traffic stops  a provision Garcia didnt block. Municipal officials from Dallas, Houston, El Paso, San Antonio and Austin are among the opponents.
A picture of the house is being shared widely on the internet by fans.

By India Today Web Desk: Reality show Bigg Boss is coming to town with a brand new season. While people have not ceased to speculate about the celebrities they might see on the show, there is something else that has caught the attention of the fans. A leaked picture of the Bigg Boss house was shared a while ago on the internet, and people have been posting the image of the said house on various social media sites.

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Popular social media handle Bigg Boss Khabari shared the picture with the caption, "#BiggBoss11 Exclusive *2 Houses *Studio is being revamped *some more new features also added. #BB11 Courtesy - Raj from Whatsapp group."

Check out the post:

Now that looks interesting. Looks like the makers have decided to take the theme of padosis to another level altogether.

Bigg Boss Season 11 will be hosted by Bollywood actor Salman Khan, who will be donning the cap for the fourth time this season.

The show will premiere on October 1 on Colors TV.

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By PTI: Mumbai, Sep 23 (PTI) Senior Shiv Sena leader Deepak Kesarkar today advised the BJP against inducting former chief minister Narayan Rane, who recently quit the Congress, into the party, saying he has a "criminal nature" and indulges in "corruption".

"Rane has not learnt his lessons. Like Sena, it is the BJPs responsibility to stop corruption. Do they need to induct a person like Rane who has a criminal nature and indulges in corrupt practices?" Kesarkar, Maharashtras Minister of State for Home, told reporters in Jalna.

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Speculation is rife in Maharashtra about the possibility of Rane joining the BJP.

Rane, who was handpicked by Shiv Sena supremo late Bal Thackeray for chief ministership in 1999, had quit the saffron party and joined the Congress in 2005 over differences with Uddhav Thackeray, the partys executive president.

Ranes departure and his criticism of the Thackerays still rankles with the Sena.

The recent threat by Shiv Sena leader about the possibility of the party pulling out of the coalition government in Maharashtra was widely seen as a move to preempt Ranes entry into the BJP. The relations between the two saffron allies, which share power both in the state and at the Centre, have been under strain for quite some time.

Referring to the alleged remark by Rane that he would engineer defections in the Congress, Kesarkar asked," How will he do that, if not by use of money power?"

The Sena leader said it would be important to hear Prime Minister Narendra Modis view on Rane joining the BJP as he (the PM) has often talked about zero tolerance to corruption.

Responding to Kesarkars fulminations against Rane, his son Nitesh, an MLA, told PTI it reflected the Sena leaders "frustration".

Hitting back at Kesarkar for calling his father corrupt, Nitesh said,"It is ironical that a person whose family in Sindhudurg is known to be smugglers is calling us names. If at all Rane ji decides to join the BJP, all concerned will have the information."

He accused Kesarkar of "underestimating" the wisdom of elected public representatives when he talked about the possibility of Rane engineering defections. "If MLAs want to stay with us, they will do so only when they know it is good for them." PTI MM RMT SK SK

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With all the fervor of a revival meeting, about 700 people at City College of San Francisco today cheered U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and the supervisor who helped make tuition at the college free to city residents.

The event was a celebration of the new Free City program, which includes both tuition waivers and grants for low-income students who need help paying for books, transportation and other expenses.

The ballot measure was spearheaded by Supervisor Jane Kim and approved by voters in November. The measure increased the real estate transfer tax on high-end properties to help pay for the program.

"It is not rhetoric, but reality - because you are living that reality right now - that when we stand together, there is nothing we can't accomplish," the senator from Vermont said, as the audience roared its approval.

Sanders, Kim and other speakers, including three CCSF students, held forth at Diego Rivera Theatre on campus in front of a backdrop of colorful signs, including posters with bright red hearts on a yellow background, touting the Free City program.

This is the first semester the program has been in effect.

"I am moved and delighted to be at City College today," Sanders said. "We need to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. I want to thank all of you and the Board of Supervisors. You are becoming a model for the United States of America."

In a similar vein, Kim said, "We need to be a beacon for the rest of the country about what it means to make American great again."

The crowd, which overflowed the theater into nearby campus space reserved for the occasion, engaged in a call-and-response with speakers, clapping, yelling and giving both Kim and Sanders standing ovations. Campus police estimated attendance at the event at around 700 people.

"[President Donald] Trump and his friends want to throw 32 million Americans off the health insurance they have," Sanders said, referring to efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The audience booed and hissed in response.

"But we have a different vision, and that is healthcare for all," Sanders said, to cheers and applause.

Melissa Headrick, a CCSF student, could hardly sit still in her seat after arriving about a half-hour early at the event. She said she is a longtime Sanders supporter.

"I like that he fights for what he believes in," said Headrick, who is involved in student government at CCSF.

"My major is international relations. I want to go into immigration law. I want to use my life to help other people, like Bernie," Headrick said.

Before the event began, CCSF student Neha Sharma said, "The cost of living in San Francisco is very high, so this (Free City) will really help."

Brianna Mendonsa, president of the CCSF Photo Club, said, "This [Free City] is a wonderful first step. However, many of us can't afford to live in San Francisco," the Pacifica resident said.

Mendonsa, who works on campus, said she hoped the program would be broadened to include students who don't live in the city but work there.

Kim's ballot measure has brought $27.5 million into the city's coffers in its first six months, the supervisor has said.

A deal announced in February committed the city to $5.4 million in annual funding for the next two years, and the Board of Supervisors has since also approved a $1 million budget reserve to help insulate the program from economic downturns.

Officials said in August that with just over two weeks left until classes were due to start, preliminary numbers showed that more than 30,000 students had enrolled for the fall semester.

This is a 17 percent increase over last year in combined credit and non-credit full-time equivalent student units and a 25.5 percent increase in credit-only full-time equivalent students.
By PTI: London, Sep 23 (PTI) Pakistans ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharifs wife Kulsoom Nawaz has been discharged from a London hospital after successful completion of her third surgery, according to the family.

Kulsoom, who is undergoing cancer treatment in London, this week won the parliamentary election in NA-120 seat which fell vacant after the Supreme Court disqualified 67-year-old Sharif on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal.

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"Just brought Ami home. She is Alhamdolillah recovering well after her 3rd surgery. Jazak?Allah for your valuable prayers," Sharifs daughter Maryam tweeted last night.

The former first lady spent two nights in the hospital after her surgery, including one night in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), according to another tweet from Maryam. "Ami just came out of ICU. She was operated upon yesterday. Recovering Alhamdolillah. Jazak?Allah for your valuable prayers."

Kulsoom was admitted in the hospital on Wednesday for the third surgery as part of her throat cancer treatment. PTI ZH AKJ ZH

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Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said that madarsas should impart modern education apart from religious teachings.

By India Today Web Desk: Following Madhya Pradesh Education Minister Vijay Shah's remark asking madarsas to hoist tricolour every day, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan turned his attention towards "reforming" the minority academic institution in the state.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan has urged the madarsas to impart modern education to students along with religious training. "Modern education should also be imparted along with religious training in madarsas as we want children to be skillful," he said.

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Shivraj Singh Chouhan said children should be given modern education besides religious training to make them good human beings. The Chief Minister said the amount given annually to each madarsa in the state for infrastructure development will be hiked.

Chouhan, while addressing the 20th foundation day of Madhya Pradesh Madarsa Board in Bhopal yesterday, also announced to raise the annual infrastructure development fund of each madarsa in the state from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000.

He also announced that an auditorium will be built for the Madhya Pradesh Madarsa Board. "Although there are employment opportunities, there is a dearth of skillful hands. We have to check this situation," he said.

NO DISCRIMINATION, SCHEMES FOR EVERYONE

The Chief Minister said that government has not discriminated in providing education to children and there are schemes for everyone. "A student is the best gift of God. The government is responsible to do its best for the students," he said adding that the aim of education is to give knowledge, make students skillful, provide good culture to them.

Chouhan said that everyone should unite in serving the nation. Madhya Pradesh School Education Minister Vijay Shah, while lauding the efforts of madarsas in imparting modern education, said that computer training is being provided in these institutions from Class I. He also said that tricolours would be hoisted in madarsas just like in other schools in the state everyday.

Madarsa Board Chairman Sayyed Imadduddin informed that so far 2,575 madarsas have been registered in the state, in which 2.88 lakh children are studying. On the occasion, the Chief Minister honoured the best madarsas, best madarsa teachers and outstanding students.

(With PTI inputs)

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BANGKOK  Amnesty International said new satellite images and videos taken as recently as Friday afternoon in Myanmars Rakhine state show smoke rising from Rohingya Muslim villages, contradicting Aung San Suu Kyis claims that military operations there have ended.

The London group said its sources in Rakhine say the fires were started by members of the Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs. The latest violence in Myanmar has sent an estimated 429,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh in less than a month.

This damning evidence from the ground and from space flies in the face of Aung Suu Kyis assertions to the world, Tirana Hasan, Amnestys director of crisis response, said in a statement late Friday. Rohingya homes and villages continue to burn, before, during and after their inhabitants take flight in terror. Not satisfied with simply forcing Rohingya from their homes, authorities seem intent on ensuring they have no homes to return to.

The top U.S. diplomat for Southeast Asia said America remains deeply troubled by the crisis and allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy said while the U.S. condemns August attacks by Muslim Rohingya militants, the response from Myanmars security forces has been disproportionate. He called on security forces to end the violence in Rakhine, stop vigilantism there, protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian assistance in the area.

Murphy also called on the security forces to work with the civilian government to implement the recommendations of a committee headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Most of those fleeing have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Coxs Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled earlier rounds of violence in Myanmar.

The situation in the camps is so incredibly fragile, especially with regard to shelter, food and water, and sanitation, that one small event could lead to an outbreak that may be the tipping point between a crisis and a catastrophe, Robert Onus, emergency coordinator for the medical relief agency Medecins San Frontieres, said last week.

The latest violence began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched deadly attacks on security posts Aug. 25, prompting Myanmars military to start clearance operations to root out the rebels. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs. The government has blamed the Rohingya, saying they set fire to their own homes, but the U.N. and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.
AUCKLAND, New Zealand  Prime Minister Bill Englishs National Party won the most votes in New Zealands general election Saturday but not enough to form a government without help from other political parties.

That means New Zealanders may need to wait for days or even weeks to confirm whether English will retain the top job as the various parties try to negotiate with each other to form a coalition.

There remained a remote chance that Englishs main challenger, Jacinda Ardern, could take the role.

The results were welcomed by the National Party, which is seeking a fourth consecutive term in office. And they offer some redemption for English, who led his party to its worst-ever defeat in 2002.

The voters have spoken and now we have the responsibility of working to give New Zealand a strong and stable government, he said.

He thanked Ardern for a hard-fought campaign, which he said had motivated and engaged more New Zealanders than any campaign he could remember. We gave it everything, and we got better and better, he said.

Ardern said she called English to acknowledge to him that his party won more votes. She said she couldnt predict what decisions the leaders of other parties might now make. Ive come off the field knowing we gave it our all, she said.

English became finance minister in 2008 when his party was led to victory by John Key. He spent eight years in that role before taking over the top job in December when Key resigned.

Vote tallies show the National Party won 46 percent of the vote, Arderns Labor Party 36 percent, the New Zealand First Party 8 percent, and the Green Party 6 percent.

Under New Zealands proportional voting system, large parties typically must form alliances with smaller ones to govern. The Green Party usually aligns with the liberal Labor Party. But who New Zealand First will favor remains unclear. The party is led by maverick Winston Peters, who said Saturday that he would not be giving any answers until there was time for further consultation.

Ardern had enjoyed a remarkable surge in popularity since taking over as opposition leader last month. The 37-year-old was greeted like a rock star at large rallies and has generated excitement among her fans.

English, 55, ran a more low-key campaign, highlighting his experience and the economic growth the country has enjoyed over recent years.

Nick Perry is an Associated Press writer.
ISTANBUL  The Turkish parliament renewed a bill Saturday allowing the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats  a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their Monday independence referendum.

The decree, renewed annually since 2014 and set to expire next month, allows Turkey to send troops over its southern border if developments in Iraq and Syria are perceived as national security threats.

The mandate, read in parliament Saturday, lists combatting Kurdish militants operating in Syria and Iraq as well as the Islamic State group as national security requirements. It also emphasizes the importance of Iraqs territorial integrity and says separatism based on ethnicity poses a threat to both Turkey and regional stability.

Turkish officials have repeatedly warned the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to abandon plans for independence. Iraqi Kurds have scheduled such a vote for Monday.

Speaking in parliament, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli likened Mondays referendum to a brick that  if pulled out  could collapse a structure built on sensitive and fragile balances. The resulting conflict could be global, he warned.

Earlier Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the referendum a mistake, an adventure. He added a cross-border military operation was also an option.

The mandate being voted on is a combination of two previous bills.

The Iraq Bill was passed in 2007 to combat outlawed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq to prevent attacks in Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK has waged a three-decade-long insurgency against the Turkish state and has its headquarters in Iraqs Qandil mountains.

The Syria Bill of 2012 was in response to mortar attacks by Syrian government forces on a Turkish border town.

The combined bill was passed in 2014 as Islamic State waged a deadly campaign in Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town on the Turkish border. Islamic State failed to take over the town and the victory strengthened Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units or YPG, who are now a key U.S. ally against IS in Syria.

Turkey, however, considers them a terror group and an extension of the PKK.

Zeynep Bilginsoy is an Associated Press writer.
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 23 (PTI) Retail major Shoppers Stop today said it will raise Rs 179.26 crore from Amazon by issuing equity shares, amounting to 5 per cent stake in it, on preferential basis.

The board of directors of the company in its meeting held today approved issue of 43,95,925 equity shares of Rs 5 each at a price of Rs 407.78 per equity share to Amazon.com NV aggregating around Rs 179.26, Shoppers Stop said in a BSE filing.

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The company has entered into an agreement with Amazon.com Investment Holdings LLC for the purpose of issuing equity shares on a preferential basis, it added.

The shares will translate to just over 5 per cent stake of Amazon in the company. As on quarter ended June 30, Shoppers Stops fully paid up equity shares were at 8,35,04,744, according to information available on BSE.

The company said it has called for an ordinary general meeting on October 18, 2017 for seeking approval from its shareholders.

Post allotment of the securities, the investor will have not any special rights under the agreement and will only be entitled to exercise such rights that are exercisable by ordinary shareholders of the company to the extent of its shareholding, Shoppers Stop added.

In a separate statement, company said to strengthen their existing ties, Shoppers Stop(SSL) and Amazon Seller Services (ASSPL) have entered into an exclusive partnership for the department store format. As part of the deal, Shoppers Stop will have an exclusive flagship store on the Amazon marketplace.

The two companies have an existing partnership since 2016 under which Shoppers Stops private and exclusive brands (Stop, Kashish, Haute Curry, RS by Rocky Star,) have been listed on the Amazon marketplace.

Further, Shoppers Stop will now have a flagship store on Amazon.in where it will list its entire portfolio of over 400 across categories such as apparel, footwear, beauty and accessories.

This partnership will leverage Shoppers Stops brand assortment and Amazon.reach to create a superlative omni- channel retail experience for consumers across the country. The two companies will also conduct joint marketing efforts and mutually beneficial marketing and promotion activities, it added.

Besides, Amazon experience centers will be created across the physical network of Shoppers Stop stores.

Commenting on the partnership, Shoppers Stop Customer Care Associate & MD Govind Shrikhande said: "Overall, this alliance with Amazon.in will give a significant fillip to the growth of our omni-channel business".

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Amazon Fashion Head Arun Sirdeshmukh said the partnership enables Amazon.in to further extend its "leadership on selection in fashion category and offer customers across India fast while it also enables Shoppers Stop to access Amazon.ins nationwide customer base and expand reach in new geographies. PTI KRH RKL KKS BAL

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BEIRUT  U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured the countrys largest gas field Saturday from the Islamic State group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region, a senior official with the group said.

Nasser Haj Mansour of the Syrian Democratic Forces said the Conoco gas field and plant came under full control of the group after days of fighting with the extremists. He added that SDF fighters also captured the nearby al-Izba gas field.

Another SDF spokesman, Brig. Gen. Talal Sillo, said the fighting in the area killed 65 Islamic State fighters while more than 100 gunmen surrendered. He added that militants have controlled Conoco since 2014.

Sillo said Syrian Democratic Forces fighters marched toward the field from the nearby village of Khsham under the cover of air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war in Syria with activists on the ground, reported later that SDF fighters took full control of the field in the province of Deir el-Zour. It said Islamic State fighters were launching a counteroffensive to retake the field.

SDF fighters have been marching on the east bank of the Euphrates River in Deir el-Zour while Syrian troops are gaining in areas on the west bank of the river under the cover of Russian air strikes. Last week, Syrian troops crossed into parts of east bank but have concentrated their operations mostly on the west.

Deir el-Zour is a province rich in oil and gas and both sides have been racing to reach the fields. The next main target will be al-Omar oil field that is Syrias largest and is also on the east bank of the Euphrates, and Syrian government forces are also speeding to capture it. Oil revenue is badly needed for future reconstruction of Syria, which has been plagued by war since 2011.

On Thursday, Russia warned against attacking its special forces in Deir el-Zour, raising concerns over direct clashes between rival forces backed by Moscow and Washington fighting for the region.

Russia has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad and joined the war two years ago, tipping the balance of power in his favor.
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WASHINGTON  American bombers and fighter jets flew along North Koreas eastern coastline Saturday in a show of force that was closer to the nations border than any other mission this century, the Pentagon reported.

The predawn flight followed a North Korean threat to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.

Dana White, chief Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement Saturday that U.S. B-1 bomber and F-15 fighter jets launched from airfields in the region and flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea.

This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat, White said. North Koreas weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community.

While the U.S. military routinely conducts such missions in response to North Korean missile and nuclear tests, this flight was the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft has flown off North Koreas coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Koreas) reckless behavior, White said.

The Demilitarized Zone is a strip of land on the Korean Peninsula that separates North and South Korea. It is frequently the scene of military exercises when tensions rise, as has been the case since President Trump took office.

After the military flights Saturday, North Koreas foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, spoke to the United Nations General Assembly and called Trump a mentally deranged person full of megalomania who is holding the nuclear button.

Ris comments further escalated a the war of words instigated this week when Trump described North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as Rocket Man on a suicide mission.

Trump also used his first address to the United Nations to threaten to totally destroy North Korea.

The inflammatory statements were not in a draft of the speech that several senior officials had earlier reviewed and vetted.

Kim lashed back at Trump in a rare personal statement, calling Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard and a gangster who had to be tamed with fire.

Also Saturday, South Koreas weather agency said a 3.2-magnitude earthquake was detected in North Korea close to where the country recently conducted a nuclear test, but it assessed the quake as natural.

The quake was detected in an area around Kilju, in northeastern North Korea, just 3.7 miles northwest of where the North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, according to an official from Seouls Korea Meteorological Administration.

The area isnt where natural earthquakes normally occur. A South Korean expert said the quake could have been caused by geological stress created from the recent nuclear explosion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

W.J. Hennigan is a Tribune Co. writer.
As the number of enrolled patients continues to climb, New Mexicos medical cannabis program officials say they are restructuring to place more emphasis on community outreach and education.

The announcement comes after SFR obtained records indicating that the program's education outreach has mostly been limited to urban areas and select groups. Both patients and doctors have reported hesitancy about discussing the program to the Health Department, which could be alleviated by stronger efforts to educate medical providers about cannabis. In the absence of such outreach, private and for-profit organizations are charging steep prices for cannabis education.

The Health Department says it plans to hire additional staff who will help redesign the state's methods of educating patients about cannabis and is in the process of hiring a second medical director for the program to manage engagement with medical providers and others interested in learning more about how the medicine works.

"We want folks to know in the medical community what the program is, what it can doand also for those who are aware of the program, if we spot issues with incomplete applications, we can try to help them out on this," program director Kenny Vigil tells SFR. "We hope to be a little more proactive."

Since January 2014, New Mexico's medical cannabis program has given at least 33 presentations for medical providers in the state, according to records obtained by SFR. Those recordswhich include personal calendars for health department employees, PowerPoint presentation files, field notes drafted by members of the medical cannabis program and receipts for expenses incurred by presentersshow that the vast majority of presentations took place in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

(source: New Mexico Department of Health)

Dr. Maureen Small, medical director of the cannabis program, and its patient services manager, Kathryn Riter, presented to practitioner clinics and hospitals, condition-specific support groups for diseases such as ALS and Parkinsons, and medical conferences. Vigil says that rather than offering education to providers, the state has so far only responded to requests for cannabis teach-ins.

"We will have organizations reach out to us saying they want more information about the program," Vigil tells SFR. "Basically, it's based on invitations for us to go to them."

According to some of the correspondence obtained by SFR, however, sometimes representatives of the medical cannabis program initiate contact with medical providers.

For example, in November of 2015, Small sent an email to the Family Practice Associates of Taos offering "a brief presentation on medical cannabis and an overview of the program."

"We are hearing from many patients that they are afraid to discuss medical cannabis with their doctor and we regularly are confronted with providers having misconceptions about the program," Small wrote at the time. "One of our missions here at the Department of Health is to inform the medical community about the medical legal aspects of the program and the latest scientific research on medical cannabis."

The presentation at Family Practice Associates of Taos eventually took place on March 21, 2016.

Records show that there were comparably fewer presentations in rural parts of the state. None took place at health centers on Native land, where federal funding from Indian Health Services could make medical staff more reluctant to recommend cannabis for patients. The Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council declined to comment for this story.

Yet, field notes from a presentation to young doctors at Albuquerque's First Nations Community HealthSource in March 2015 note that the audience was "very interested and proactive in nature." Although the doctors weren't necessarily employed by the clinic where the presentation occurred, its chief executive officer, Linda Son-Stone, says providers at HealthSource are currently "not accessing the program."

Medical centers in other rural communities, including Gallup and Silver City, have coordinated presentations with the medical cannabis program through the University of New Mexico's Health Extension Rural Offices program, or HEROs. The program, which has become a model for rural health outreach in other states, is housed in UNM's Office of Community Health and funded with a federal grant.

Dr. Robert Rhyne, a professor and vice chairman for family and community medicine at the school, says the school also has contracts with the Health Department to provide training on cannabis to medical providers, noting that trainers from the school recently fanned out to give certified trainings on best practices for opioid prescription, including guidance on medical cannabis to ease pain and other symptoms.

The HEROs program does most of its own outreach, leaving rural communities relatively untouched by the cannabis program's outreach efforts. One solution, suggests community organizer Jason Barker of the Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act (LECUA) Patients Coalition of New Mexico, would be that producers begin to take on more educational responsibilities.

"It'd be nice to see some of the producers take on some of that aspect," he says. "They mention in licensure requirements that they [should] put forth some educational duties for patients and programs."

But he cautions that dispensary employees are often undereducated about cannabis' medical properties, pointing to a 2016 peer reviewed study by Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research that found only 20 percent of dispensary staff in the states it surveyed had received medical or scientific training.

And in the absence of free and plentiful resources for learning about cannabis, business people with little medical backing can charge hundreds of dollars for one-time "symposiums" offering a quick hit of cannabis education.

The lines are sometimes not so clear. Dr. Steven Rosenberg served as medical director of the state's medical cannabis program from 2013 until earlier this year and runs a business in Albuquerque that charges new and renewing cannabis patients for medical consultations starting at $50.

"You need to treat cannabis patients like any other medicine, and if you're going to recommend a course of therapy, even if you're not writing a prescription, you still have to know something about the substance you're recommending," Rosenberg tells SFR.

Fortunately for Rosenberg, his former tenure with the state has given his for-profit venture a higher profile.

"One of the consults I did was because [the patient] didn't get any instruction from the person who certified them, and that was what they were told to do," Rosenberg says. "Come see me."

Santa Fe Reporter
Jennifer Padilla has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute meth in return for a two-year federal prison sentence.

If a federal judge accepts the plea deal, the 39-year-old mother of five could be free in less than a year because of the 13 months shes already spent in the Santa Fe County jail. Fridays proposed sentence represents a significant reduction from the 10 or more years Padilla was facing behind bars.The plea agreement, negotiated between Padillas Santa Fe-based lawyer, L Val Whitley, and federal prosecutors came less than two months after Padilla alleged misconduct by a confidential informant in a 2016 operation conducted by the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. New Mexico In Depth and the Santa Fe Reporter detailed Padillas allegations last month in a story that included her claims of entrapment and outrageous government conducttwo legal arguments Whitley made in a pair of court motions in late July. The informant convinced her that he was her boyfriend, even having sex with her at the government-funded halfway house where she was living after heroin addiction led to a string of burglaries and 15 months in state prison, Padilla said. He spent time with her children, too, all the while keeping his government work a secret. Padilla is not backing off her allegations, Whitley said, although as a condition of the plea agreement she has withdrawn the court motions. She truly feels that she was entrapped, and we stand by the facts in our motions, Whitley said. But she made a personal decision to take out some of the uncertainty of going to trial.In Fridays appearance before federal magistrate Judge Laura Fashing, Padilla appeared to evince some of the mixed feelings Whitley described. Wearing a fluorescent green prison jumpsuit and five-point shackles in court, Padilla answered Fashings questions for nearly 30 minutes.To a handful Padilla answered No, maamhad she been forced to take the plea; was she under the influence of drugs or alcohol; and similar questions. Most of the time, however, Padilla replied Yes, maam in rapid-fire succession to 47 questions. Only when Fashing asked if Padilla knowingly and willingly participated in the conspiracy to sell meth did Padilla pause.She rocked back and forth, stiffened up, and then answered: Yes. Asked whether prosecutors had offered Padilla a plea deal prior to the court motions and news story, Whitley said in an interview after the hearing: There had been some discussions, but nothing concrete, and certainly nothing as favorable to my client as what we have now. Whitley believes the court motions and the story published last month led to the offer of substantially less prison time, he said.And a nationally recognized legal expert who reviewed aspects of the case agreed. Concerns that are made public about confidential informants and their behavior can have a gravitational pull on the outcomes of cases, including plea negotiations, said Alexandra Natapoff, a former federal public defender.Natapoff, a professor at the University of California at Irvine law school, is a nationally recognized expert on confidential informants. If things go bad, or the informant cant be called as a witness for whatever reason, or the government learns something new about their snitch, cases often fall apart, Natapoff said. Theres no good data on how many cases rely on informants, so we dont know how often that happens, but we do know that it happens.That said, Natapoff added, 95 percent of cases in the federal system are resolved through pleas rather than trials. And there are numerous factors that can impact plea deals. We may never know why that deal was offered in this case, she said. But this is an example where external forces related to the informantmedia attention, defense motionsappear to have changed the negotiations for prosecutors.The US Attorneys Office did not respond to questions or requests for comment following Fridays hearing.But Elizabeth Martinez, a spokeswoman for the office, issued a news release touting Padilla as the 77th person in the sting to plead guilty. The operation netted 103 arrests and federal officials praised it as a success in taking the worst of the worst off Albuquerques crime-ridden streets.A multipart NMID investigation has called some of the governments claims about the operationand its tacticsinto question. Like many swept up in the sting, Padilla did not have the sort of lengthy, violent criminal history officials have said they used as a prerequisite for targeting people. Nor was she moving large quantities of guns and drugs in the city.A review of hundreds of federal court documents also showed the ATF arrested a highly disproportionate number of black people in the sting. Hispanics also were overrepresented among those arrested, while whites were heavily underrepresented.Those findings have drawn scrutiny from a federal judge, as well as outrage and calls for reform in policing methods from Albuquerques black community and a resolution from a city councilor demanding a rebuke of the ATF and a congressional investigation.Padilla contended in the court motions and in interviews that only after she and the informant were in what she believed to be a relationship did he pressure her to call old acquaintances and set up drug deals. NMID and SFR independently verified some, but not all of Padillas claims.Padillas prison term, had she been convicted at trial, would have been between 11 and 17 years depending on how federal sentencing guidelines were calculated, Whitley said. In part, her sentence would have been based on her past criminal recordwhich includes a felony drug possession convictionand the amount of meth involved in the two sales.In negotiating the plea agreement, prosecutors abandoned most of those requirements and agreed to consider Padillas limited role in the drug transactions: She never touched the meth and was not present when her acquaintances made sales to undercover ATF agents.She was arrested Aug. 10, 2016 and has been incarcerated at the Santa Fe county jail since. US District Judge William P. Chip Johnson must accept the deal and the prescribed 24-month sentence or reject it entirely. A hearing is expected in the next two months. If Johnson rejects the agreement, Whitley said Padilla likely would withdraw her guilty plea and he would refile the motion to dismiss her case.We had people who initially corroborated Jennifers account who, for various reasons, were not able to come forward to testify, Whitley said. That wouldve strengthened our position, for sure. Still, the government would have to respond to our claims and put their informant on the stand. We assume he would have denied everything, but she stands by her story and it is very compelling.

Santa Fe Reporter
By PTI: New Delhi, Sep 23 (PTI) Indian classical dance is becoming universal, thanks to the expanding social media, which according to Malaysian Bharatnatyam dancer Shangita Namasivayam, is taking the dance form to the masses.

The danseuse, who was in town for a theatrical dance performance -- "Samyoga-The Divine Union" -- said the internet had opened up numerous possibilities for dance as a medium.

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"The social media has made Indian classical dance universal and there is so much more can be done today to take our traditional dance forms to masses," she told PTI.

However, she admitted to having a strong preference for traditional formats of Bharatnatyam, even though practising neo classical forms has become quite a trend in the contemporary times.

"I think there is a lot of space to explore within classical dance forms, therefore I prefer to stick to the traditional formats. Having said that, many artistes are doing brilliant neo classical works too, which is good," she said.

For her performance here, Namasivayam turned to the institution of marriage for inspiration.

She delved into the truth and justice of wedlock through divine matrimonies based upon love.

Namasivayam had on board with her dancers from Kalpana Dance Theatre, who brought alive the sanctity of the marital bond, by depicting episodes from the weddings of three goddesses -- Sita, Meenakshi and Valli.

"Valli Thirumanam" or Vallis wedding recreated the amusing episode of the Hindu goddess getting married to the love of her life, Lord Muruga.

Legend has it that she had solemnly sworn to marry no one else, but to test her love, Lord Muruga disguises himself as a hunter and then an old man.

When Valli agrees to marry the old man out of fear, Muruga reveals his true form and they are married happily ever after.

"All the marriages we showcased are also relevant to present day relationships. I think everything which is old is very current and fashionable today," Namasivayam said.

The performance which was premiered in Kuala Lumpur in January this year, also involved glimpses of martial arts and other dramatic elements to create the desired effect.

"The biggest challenge we faced was how to make each celebration different. They were all Indian weddings - so the actual ceremony and celebrations needed most creativity," she said. PTI RJS TRS TRS

--- ENDS ---

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By PTI: holiday: DyCM

Jammu, Sep 23 (PTI) Under attack for governments "failure" to declare state holiday on the birth anniversary of Maharaja Hari Singh today, the BJP hit back at critics and said some people "who wanted to merge Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan" are doing politics on the issue to mislead the people.

"Some people are trying to mislead the public by doing politics on this matter (state holiday on Maharajas birthday) but the people should understand this those are the people who wanted to merge Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan at the hands of Hari Singh.

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These people always do divisive politics and are doing it today as well," senior BJP leader and deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh said.

Singh, who was heckled by Dogra members and forced to cut short his address at a function organised to pay homage to Maharaja on his birth anniversary earlier in the day, said the BJP has always paid homage to Maharaja with sincerity since the ruler has always acted in the spirit of public welfare.

"Today politics has started on his birth anniversary even as the BJP has already raised this demand of the people strongly in the government," he said and promised that the BJP would ensure holiday in the same manner as the party has established the statues of Maharaja in the Jammu city.

The deputy chief Minister was speaking at a function organised by his party to celebrate the birth anniversary of the Maharaja in the Bawe area of the city, a statement issued by the party said. PTI TAS AQS

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: holiday: BJP

Jammu, Sep 23 (PTI) Under attack for governments "failure" to declare state holiday on the birth anniversary of Maharaja Hari Singh today, the BJP hit back at critics and said some people "who wanted to merge Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan" are doing politics on the issue to mislead the people.

"Some people are trying to mislead the public by doing politics on this matter (state holiday on Maharajas birthday) but the people should understand this those are the people who wanted to merge Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan at the hands of Hari Singh.

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"These people always do divisive politics and are doing it today as well," senior BJP leader and deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh said.

In a separate statement, the BJP named Congress and National Conference (NC) for "politicising" Maharajas birth anniversary and said, "The opposition parties have lost plot and are bereft of any constructive narrative".

Singh, who was heckled by Dogra members and forced to cut short his address at a function organised to pay homage to Maharaja on his birth anniversary earlier in the day, said the BJP has always paid homage to Maharaja with sincerity since the ruler has always acted in the spirit of public welfare.

"Today politics has started on his birth anniversary even as the BJP has already raised this demand of the people strongly in the government," he said and promised that the BJP would ensure holiday in the same manner as the party has established the statues of Maharaja in the Jammu city.

The deputy chief Minister was speaking at a function organised by his party to celebrate the birth anniversary of the Maharaja in the Bawe area of the city, a statement issued by the party said.

Later in the separate statement, the BJP questioned the "opportunist" Congress, National Conference and other political parties for "failing to declare September 23, the birth anniversary Maharaja Hari Singh, as a public holiday when in power since 1947".

"The Congress and NC have ruled the state right till 2014 but these parties never ever commemorated the last rulers birth anniversary and his contribution to the development of J&K.

"In fact NC under Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Congress under Jawahar Lal Nehru conspired to keep Maharaja Hari Singh out of J&K, after the accession of the state with India," the BJP alleged.

The party said it was the BJP that got the resolution moved by the grandson of ex-Maharaja and party legislator Ajatshatru Singh in the Upper House in January this year for declaring Maharajas birth anniversary as a holiday.

"Congress and NC have lost plot and are bereft of any constructive narrative. These political parties are not able to digest the developmental agenda of the BJP under which premier national level educational institutions have been sanctioned, out of these IIT and IIM stated functioning.

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"Congress and NC did not establish a medical college at Jammu till early 1970s, and no engineering college was established in the region," the BJP said and accused the two parties of trying to keep Jammu region "educationally backward".

"It is for the first time in J&K history that neither the Congress nor the NC are in power, thus these parties are unable play role of constructive opposition. These parties have not yet digested the defeat suffered in 2014 state elections.

"NC, the party responsible for flight of Maharaja from the state, is finding virtue in the state subject law enacted by him," the party said referring to the stand taken by the opposition on Article 35A of the constitution.

It said the Congress, which umpteen times came to power by winning from the Jammu region, never commemorated Maharajas birth anniversary, not to speak of declaring it a holiday. PTI TAS AQS

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who addressed the 72nd session of United Nations General Assembly Session in New York today, lambasted Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi for claiming that human rights violations in areas of Jammu and Kashmir.

Swaraj further said, "We are completely engaged in fighting poverty, but our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us."

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Here is the full speech:

Mr President

Let me begin by offering my heartiest congratulations on your election as President of the 72nd United Nations General Assembly. For those of us fortunate to represent our nations as Foreign Minister this is a particularly happy event: one of us has this honour.

Mr President

2: India welcomes your efforts to place people at the heart of international diplomacy as you shape policy and lend direction to world affairs from your august chair. I thank you for the theme you have chosen: 'Focusing on people: Striving for peace and a decent life on a sustainable planet'. People, peace, decency, sustenance and focus define a noble objective.

Mr President

3: The United Nations was established for the welfare, security, harmony, rights and economic progress of the people of our world. India fully supports your efforts in this great mission.

4: I had spoken before this Assembly last year as well. It is a year that has seen much change both in this Assembly and the world it represents. We have a new Secretary General at the United Nations. He is determined to prepare and strengthen the United Nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We welcome his efforts, and see in him a leader who can give practical shape to a vision.

Mr President

5: Our contemporary world is trapped in a deluge of troubles of which, surely, the most dangerous is the relentless rise of violence, Terrorism, and the ideas that engineer this evil, are spreading at the pace of a conflagration.

Climate change stares us in the face, and threatens us with its dimension.

There is a growing question mark over maritime security. For a mix of reasons, provocative and inflammatory, people are leaving the psychological, cultural and economic comfort of their traditional home space to seek refuge on distant shores causing global anxiety. A large part of the globe's population is still tortured by hunger and poverty. The young are beginning to lose hope as they confront unemployment. Women, victims of historic discrimination, are demanding what they must get: gender empowerment.

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Nuclear proliferation is back in the zone of dangerous headlines. Cyber security has become a source of deep insecurity.

6: In 2015, we set ourselves a target of 2030 to find solutions to many challenges on this Agenda. Two of these years have already passed. Surely it is already time to ask how much has happened. If complacency defmes the next 13 years then we are in danger of losing control. We need a sense of urgency as well as unshakeable fortitude to take decisions that can avert catastrophe.

7: I am pleased that India has displayed the courage and leadership to take tough decisions which have launched the interlinked process of sustainable development. The complete eradication of poverty is the most important priority of the present government. Mr President, There are two ways of addressing the curse of poverty. The traditional method is through incremental levels of aid and hand-holding. But our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen the more radical route, through economic empowerment. The poor are not helpless: we have merely deemed them opportunity. We are eliminating poverty by investing in the poor. We are turning them from job-seekers into job-providers.

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8: All our economic programmes have a principal purpose, die empowerment of the poor; Jan Dhan, Mudra, Ujjwala, Skill India, Digital India, Clean India, Start-Up India, Stand-Up India. To describe them all would take up more time than 1have at my disposal, and I shall therefore dwell on only three core programmes.

9: The Jan Dhan plan must surely count as the world's largest financial inclusion scheme. At least 300 million Indians who had never crossed the doors of a bank today have bank accounts; this is equivalent to the population of the United States of America. This was, understandably, not easy to complete in three years, but our banks, achieved this visionary goal set by our Prime Minister. While some remain to be included, the target has been set - every Indian family will have a bank account.

10: Mudra yojana has enabled government to fund the unfunded. Those who had never dreamt that bank credit was within their options, today, through Mudra, are getting soft loans without collateral to begin micro businesses. I am particularly delighted to inform you that over 70 per cent of these loans have gone to women. Unemployment spreads despair. Through Skill India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India poor and middle class youth are being trained to match their honed talent with bank credit and become self-employed or small-scale entrepreneurs.

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11: Ujjwala is a signature scheme of our government. Free gas cylinders are being provided to the poor so that women do not have to suffer the dangerous consequences of wood-fired kitchens. Uniquely, gender emancipation is at the creative core of this programme.

12: Demonetisation was a courageous decision to challenge one of the by products of corruption, the "black money" that disappeared from circulation. Today, India has passed the Goods and Services Tax legislation, through which there is one-tax across the country, without the untidy and punishing system of multiple taxes under differing categories in different parts of the country. Our "Save the girl, Educate the girl" campaign is reducing gender inequality. Our Clean India programme is generating what can only be described as a revolutionary change in social attitudes and habits.

13: I would like to note, at this point, that nations with rising capabilities will be able to generate such change, but the developed world must become an active partner in helping those vulnerable countries which are still mired in stagnant poverty reach SDG horizon within 2030. That is why the principle of Global Partnership was included in SDGs. I am happy to report that India has started, this year, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund.

Mr President

14: We are completely engaged in fighting poverty; alas, our neighbour Pakistan seems only engaged in fighting us. On Thursday, from this dais, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi wasted rather too much of his speech in making accusations against us. He accused India of State-sponsored terrorism, and of violating human rights. Those listening had only one observation: "Look who's talking!" A country that has been the world's greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

15: Pakistan's Prime Minister claimed that his nation's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. I would like to remind him that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace, and friendship. Pakistan's Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer.

16: Prime Minister Abbasi has recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events. But his memory has conveniently failed him where it matters. He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistan's politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at "forgetting" facts that destroy their version.

17: Pakistan's current Prime Minister spoke of a "Comprehensive Dialogue" between our two countries. I would like to remind him that on 9 December 2015, when I was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by his leader Mian Nawaz Sharif, then still Prime Minister, that dialogue between us should be renewed and named it a "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue". The word "bilateral" was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process.

18: I would like today to tell Pakistan's politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eihinent export factory for terror?

19: India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistan s nefarious export of terrorism. There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indian freedom, for we have been a sustained democracy. Every government has done its bit for India's development. We have marched ahead, consistently, without pause, in Education, Health and across the range of human welfare. We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? We produced scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? You have produced terrorists. Doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death. If Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

Mr. President

20: Terrorism is at the very top of problems for which the United Nations is searching for solutions. We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the world's big powers.dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it?

21: We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals. The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them, towards duplicity.

22: This has been going on for years. Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism. If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together?

Mr President

23: Through you, with utmost sincerity I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence. Let us display our new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Mr President

24: I had identified climate change as one of the significant dangers to our existence. India has already said that it is deeply committed to the Paris Accord. This is not because we are afraid of any power, influenced by friend or foe, or tempted by some imagined greed. This is an outcome of a philosophy that is at least 5000 years old. Our Prime Minister has, on his personal initiative, launched the International Solar Alliance as witness to our abiding commitment to a cause.

25: When we talk of. world peace, we mean peace not only among,human beings but also peace with nature. We understand that human nature is sometimes inimical to nature, but we would like to amend human nature when it tends in the. wrong, directions. When we inflict our greed upon nature, nature sometimes explodes. We must learn to have with the imperatives, cycles and creative urges of nature; in that lies, our own salvation.

26: We have just witnessed hurricanes, earthquakes, rains that inundate, storms which terrify. This is not a mere coincidence. Nature sent,its warning to the world even before the world's leadership gathered in New York at the United Nations through Harvey. Once our gathering began an earthquake struck Mexico and a hurricane landed in Domimca. We must understand this requires more serious action than talk. The developed world must listen more carefully than others, because it has more capacities than others. It must help the less fortunate through technology transfer and Green Climate Financing - that is the only way to save future generations.

Mr President

27: We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems. It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth. On 18 September, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do. something. But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations.

28: Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation. I hope that under your enlightened leadership, Mr President, this will become a priority. If that happens it will be a significant achievement.

29: We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN Peacekeeping this goal can't be achieved.

Mr President

30: There is no shortage of issues; there is even less shortage of problems which should be recognised from this podium. But time is not always on the side of those who would like to raise issues and problems in the interests of a better, more peaceful and progressive future. The issues you have chosen are relevant to the UN Charter as well as to the ancient traditions of my land.

Mr President

31: My country's culture and thought has been shaped by a history and philosophy that believes in peace as humankind's only rational and practical objective. We truly believe that the world is one family and we hope that every member of this family deserves that elixir of life, happiness.

Let me end by reciting a verse that is a synthesis of thought:

May all be happy; May all be healthy; May all see what is good; May a be free from suffering.

Thank you,

Mr. President.

--- ENDS ---
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Prime Minister was quick to tweet his appreciation of Swaraj's speech at UNGA.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today lauded External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's fiery address at the United Nations General Assembly session (UNGA).

While Swaraj in her address gave a befitting reply to Pakistan's claims of India sponsoring terrorism, she also spoke on key issues like climate change and poverty.

Prime Minister was quick to tweet his appreciation of Swaraj's speech at UNGA. He said that Swaraj has given a strong message on the perils of terrorism and why it was important for all to unite and fight against the menace.

A strong message was given by @SushmaSwaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace. #UNGA- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

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In another tweet, PM Modi said that Sushma gave an insightful speech and zeroed down on global challenges.

He said that the external affairs minister in her speech maintained India's commitment to create earth a better planet.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj was insightful in identifying global challenges & strongly reiterated India's commitment to create a better planet. #UNGA- Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

In her speech, Sushma criticised Pakistan for saying that India was supporting terrorism. In her response to Pakistan claims, Swaraj said that India has created IITs and IIMs, while Pakistan was busy making Laskar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Click here to read the full speech

--- ENDS ---
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It was not clear what Sushma Swaraj wanted done about the H1B, a category of temporary visas for professionally qualified people, as there has as yet been no changes to that visa system.

By Indo-Asian News Service: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took up the issues of H1B visas and the rights of illegal immigrant children when she met with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday morning.

Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet that Sushma Swaraj "strongly raised the issue of H1B visa and children falling under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ) policy with Secretary Tillerson".

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He also said the two of them "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

A State Department statement said that they "looked forward to convening a 2+2 dialogue" with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Defence Secretary James Mattis in the near future.

The statement said that Tillerson thanked Sushma Swaraj "for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region".

In speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, US President Donald Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India".

He also asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.

WHAT DID THEY TALK ABOUT H1B VISAS?

Another topic that came up in their discussions between Sushma Swaraj and Tillerson was the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which the two countries are to co-host in Hyderabad, in November, the State Department said.

Trump's daughter and his official adviser, Ivanka, who is to lead the US delegation to the summit also met Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday.

This was the first one-on-one meeting between the top diplomats of the two countries since Tillerson, a former head of the oil giant Exxon Mobil, became Secretary of State.

On Monday both of them had participated in a trilateral meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

It was not clear what Sushma Swaraj wanted done about the H1B, a category of temporary visas for professionally qualified people, as there has as yet been no changes to that visa system.

While Trump has spoken of restricting the H1B visa system as part of his policy of putting Americans first , so far there have been no changes to it and for this year the same levels of 65,000 for general H1B visas and 20,000 for those with advanced US degrees have been kept.

Indians get most of the H1B visas , although it does not have any national quotas or is specifically designed for Indians.

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According to some estimates, about 7,000 Indians are covered by DACA, a presidential order issued by then President Barack Obama to allow those who were brought in illegally as children to stay on in the US.

Trump had said that he was not going to renew the DACA order, which will expire next March, and wanted Congress to legislate it into law.

He has since said that he may reconsider it if Congress had not passed the law by then.

--- ENDS ---
It may only be September, but Canberra got a taste of summer on Saturday as the city smashed a 52-year-old temperature record.

The city recorded its hottest ever September day, with the mercury rising to a top of 30.2 degrees just after 3pm.

Visiting from Newcastle, Jeff Endresz bought ice from a supermarket in Dickson, while a nearby bottle shop had sold out. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

The temperature exceeded the initial forecast of 29 degrees, with the maximum being 1.2 degrees above the previous highest September temperature recorded in 1965.

Ashleigh Lange from the Bureau of Meteorology said the recent warm weather in the capital is due to a large front in western NSW.
The taxi industry has called for a review of Uber's licensing agreements in Australia following London's decision to strip the company of its licence to operate  saying state governments had failed to stand up to the Silicon Valley technology giant.

Australian Taxi Industry Association chief executive Blair Davies said it was pleasing to see London authorities "standing up for their rules".

The taxi industry is calling on a crackdown on Uber licensing agreements following the decision by London authorities not to renew its licence to operate.

"We applaud the decision by Transport for London to enforce its laws," Mr Davies said.

"Uber have been flouting laws all around the globe and we've seen governments cave in to them, particularly in Australia and the USA."
Exxon Mobil shares have declined more than 11 per cent this year at a time of weak energy prices. Credit:AP So at my request, he updated his calculations through December 2016 and provided fresh rankings in his paper Do Stocks Outperform Treasury Bills. We've reproduced the crucial elements here, with an important revision: Today, in the iPhone's 10th anniversary year, Apple is No. 1. In a phone conversation, Bessembinder reminded me that the stock market is a moving target and that his rankings, while valid through the end of 2016, don't capture the sharp movements of this calendar year. Facebook, which started trading in June 2012, is the youngest on the list, with an annualised return of 34.5 per cent. Credit:AP In his 2016 rankings, Exxon Mobil, not Apple, appears at the top, with net wealth creation of more than $US1 trillion ($1.24 trillion). Apple lags at about $US745 billion.

But it has been a wild year. Exxon Mobil shares have declined more than 11 per cent at a time of weak energy prices, while Apple, which just introduced a raft of new iPhones, is on a spectacular stock surge, gaining more than 37 per cent. It's remarkable that Apple has generated so much wealth in such a short period of time. Professor Hendrik Bessembinder Run the numbers as I did, and it's clear that at this moment, Apple has pulled ahead of Exxon Mobil, with total net wealth creation of somewhere in the vicinity of $US1 trillion. Counting dividends, Exxon Mobil's losses in the stock market have reduced its total to a bit over $US910 billion. (Note that, as a technical matter, Bessembinder defines net wealth creation as total stock returns in excess of one-month Treasury bill returns, which averaged an annualised 3.38 per cent, so the actual stock returns for Apple, Exxon, and the others are even higher than indicated.) "It's remarkable that Apple has generated so much wealth in such a short period of time," he said. "Exxon has had decades to pile up those returns."

Exxon is among the top wealth-creating companies that have been publicly trading - under the name of a predecessor, Standard Oil of New Jersey - since the inception of Bessembinder's tally in July 1926. Others include General Electric, IBM, Altria, Coca-Cola, DuPont, PepsiCo and Schlumberger. He relied on a database developed at the University of Chicago, known as CRSP, for the Center for Research in Security Prices, which contains virtually all publicly traded stocks in the United States. The Center for Research uses rigorous and logical criteria to determine when stocks enter and depart its listings, with some results that may seem surprising at first glance. General Motors, for example, ranks eighth. It was publicly traded in 1926, but the list says it ceased to exist in June 2009. A company called General Motors exists today, of course, but as Chloe Fu, senior support and relationship manager at the Center for Research in Security Prices, explained it, GM's bailout and bankruptcy led the centre to declare the old company terminated, with a new GM coming to life in June 2009. Consequently, the new GM returns aren't included in the total for GM on the list. The list is a fascinating ranking of big winners in the stock market. But for a variety of technical reasons, it isn't a straightforward table of the greatest wealth generators in market history. For example, the long-term gains generated by Exxon Mobil and its predecessors are understated because of the database's limited duration and strict criteria. Exxon Mobil's wealth in the list doesn't include Mobil's, which Bessembinder's listing says, ceased to exist in November 1999, when it merged with Exxon. And going back further, both Exxon and Mobil were among the descendants of the Standard Oil trust, established by John D. Rockefeller and his partners in the 19th century. The total wealth generated by the cluster of companies derived at least partially from the trust - which also include Amoco and Chevron - doesn't appear in a single notation because of the list's logic.

The listings for most of the recently created companies are less tangled. As I wrote in July, Amazon, which started trading in 1997, has soared to the 14th spot. Although it hasn't been in existence long compared with Exxon Mobil, its annualised return is the highest in the list, 37.4 per cent through December. A group of young companies have also had remarkable results. Facebook, which started trading in June 2012, is the youngest on the list, with an annualised return of 34.5 per cent. Visa, which had its initial public offering of stock in 2008, is the second-newest company, with a 21 per cent annualised return, followed by Alphabet (Google), ranked 11th, with a 24.9 per cent annualised return. And then there is that great wealth machine, Microsoft, ranked as the third-greatest wealth creator. Since 1986, it has had an annualised return of 25 per cent, making its founder, Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, with a net worth of more than $US87 billion, according to Bloomberg. No list of wealth-generating companies is complete without Berkshire Hathaway. It ranks 12th, just behind Alphabet, with an annualised return of 22.6 per cent. By comparison, Exxon Mobil's annualised return was only 11.94 per cent.

Anyone who invested in Apple or Microsoft or, really, in any of these companies at their inception and just held on did extraordinarily well. You might look at that record and conclude that you should just buy the best companies as a foolproof way to get rich. If only it were that easy. How do you find those companies? Not here. "The problem is, I have no idea which companies will generate the best returns over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years, " Bessembinder said. "Probably it will be some companies we've never heard of. Maybe it will be companies that don't even exist now." This list is worth studying for understanding the past.
Pay increases in awards should not be tied to increases in the minimum wage, she said. Instead workers should be able to push for much higher pay rates. Ms McManus comments come amid concern over weak wages growth and a series of scandals over wage theft and underpayment. "You've now got a situation where the minimum wage is not enough to pull you out of poverty and underneath that you've got that one in 10 workers are on temporary work visas," she said. "And then you've got wage theft dragging things down, 40 per cent of people are in some form of insecure work." Ms McManus said unions are still working on the proposals, the full detail of which will likely be announced early next year. "We want to make sure solutions we propose are rigorous, are flexible and are going to last for at least a couple of decades."

Any changes to allow a type of industry wide bargaining would be controversial and be met with resistance from employers. Ms McManus cited the community sector where unions are forced to negotiate with small organisations which are typically funded by governments. Unions, she said, should be able to bargain directly with governments to set wages and conditions across that sector. Elsewhere unions could bargain with head contractors or franchisors, which would then allow pay and conditions to be set across entire industries or supply chains. "Employers might organise themselves in a certain way, you should be able to bargain where that power is," Ms McManus said. This would mark a significant break with the past 25 years when the Keating government first introduced enterprise bargaining as a way to tailor wages and conditions to an individual firm.

Under the Fair Work Act there has been a shift in recent years away from enterprise bargaining - which typically pays much higher wages and conditions - to the award. Nearly a quarter of all workers are now on the basic wage rates of the award compared to just over 15 per cent in 2010."There's a huge gap between (wages from) bargained outcomes and the award," Ms McManus said. "Unions have been bargaining and the system we've been working in has created huge incentives to cancel agreements, to use labour hire and contract out work." It has become common for employers to cancel agreements and move workers onto the award. That can often cut workers' pay significantly. "Enterprise bargaining is a joke because employers can threaten you with a 30 per cent pay cut," Ms McManus said.
The unthinkable has happened. In an environment where technology is all-pervasive, and companies that disrupt markets using algorithms and smart software can seemingly do no wrong, Sadiq Khan's Transport for London (TfL) has reached for the stop button.

To many Londoners, Uber symbolises the democratisation of a closed-shop industry that has sometimes offered bad service and charged high prices for too long.

In a city that only recently gained a 24-hour Tube service, the prevalence of a mass transport service that offered flexibility at low prices had to be welcomed.

Sure, it has its problems - from price surges at peak times to drivers who do not always know where they are going and, in a small number of instances, individuals who should not be driving at all.
The death this week of L'Oreal's founding family matriarch is putting the spotlight on a reclusive 64-year-old heiress who now finds herself as the richest woman in the world.

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers has shunned the glittering social life that her late mother, Liliane Bettencourt, once embraced.

Bettencourt Meyers is known for playing piano for several hours a day and has written two books - a five-volume study of the Bible and a genealogy of the Greek gods.

"She really lives inside her own cocoon," said Tom Sancton, author of The Bettencourt Affair, who noted that even when she was a little girl she appeared uncomfortable in the world of rich people. "She lives mainly with the confines of her own family."
Sydney has a bigger population than Melbourne, right? Well, maybe. A lot depends on where you draw Sydney's northern boundary. At the moment the official definition of Greater Sydney stretches all the way to Lake Macquarie, about 120 kilometres north of the CBD. That means the city's population is bolstered by the inclusion of the heavily populated NSW Central Coast. That region rates as Australia's ninth largest "significant urban area" in its own right, according to the Bureau of Statistics. It comfortably ranks above Wollongong, Hobart, Townsville and Darwin.

So how would Australia's two biggest cities compare if Sydney did not include the Central Coast? The bureau's latest estimates put the population of Greater Sydney at just over 5 million in June 2016. Greater Melbourne's head count stood at 4.73 million.

But if you remove the Central Coast's 335,000 residents from Sydney's tally it is a different story. That drags the harbour city's population back to 4.7 million  about 25,000 fewer than Greater Melbourne.

On that definition, Melbourne became Australia's biggest city in September 2015. And Greater Melbourne's population could be even bigger if the boundaries were tweaked a little.
Countless people in aged care are being harmed through neglect born of profit-driven cost-cutting and a failure to properly regulate an industry trusted by some of the most vulnerable people and their families.

We should all be alarmed by evidence of systemic and structural deficiencies and shocking examples of the consequent suffering and trauma, set out in The Age's extensive investigation by Michael Bachelard. The four-day series of articles and data show reform is urgently needed to protect the almost 200,000 already in aged care, half of whom have dementia, and to meet the looming demographic surge in the need for end-of-life support. Medical advances have created historic increases in life expectancy, and millions of Australians will soon become unable to live without support available around the clock. Their quality of life is determined by the quality of their care.

The primary problem is an insufficient number of proficient professional staff, particularly nurses. This is discouraging for the many dedicated and decent staff in the industry. Evident flaws include lack of training, lack of expertise and poor English skills. An evident reform is to improve the quality and quantity of staff. There is no legally required minimum ratio of staff to residents, no minimum training standards and no mandatory requirement to have a nurse on duty at all times. There is merely an unenforceable rule that staff numbers should be "adequate".

The status quo is unacceptable in a prosperous nation that claims to value a fair go above all else. The victims are frail people who have contributed to our economy and society for decades, through war and peace, lean times and prosperity.
September heat records were broken across the state on Saturday, as up to 90 new bushfires blazed and temperatures notched 40 degrees in parts of NSW.

Sydney had its second day above 32 degrees this month and can expect a third on Sunday, with 33 degrees forecast. The city has only had 20 September days above 32 degrees over the past 158 years of records.

Temperatures peaked at a record-breaking 40.5 degrees in northwestern NSW, while the city reached a balmy 32.2 degrees on Saturday afternoon.

Of the 90 bush and grass fires, 20 were not yet contained by 6pm, according to the NSW Rural Fire Service.
"Most of the criticism has been based on misinformation": Jennifer Buckingham, the lead author of the report. Credit:Brendan Esposito The Australian Education Union argued the government needs to focus on adequate resources so schools can help vulnerable kids, rather than more testing. "It's an astonishing thing to be doing, quite frankly," president Correna Haythorpe said. Meanwhile, Queensland Education Minister Kate Jones described the test idea as an "insult to all education sectors". Grade 1 students from Bentleigh West Primary School in Melbourne are tested on phonics. Credit:Joe Armao All of this has left Buckingham, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, scratching her head.

"The thing that has surprised me the most is the knee-jerk reaction," she says. "Most of the criticism has been based on misinformation." Nikki Burrows says she was amazed to hear daughter Goldie talking about the strategies she was learning for reading words: "That blew me away." Credit:Joe Armao Buckingham explains what is being proposed will only take between 10 and 15 minutes. And because it will be done with a teacher the student already knows, children are unlikely to even realise they are being assessed, as they often work like this with teachers during class. Buckingham adds that while there is already testing across different states and school systems, there is no nationally consistent process in the early years of schooling. And this means there are gaps. "We're not getting enough kids across the bridge to literacy at the developmentally appropriate time," says report co-author Pamela Snow. Credit:Joe Armao

"The first time we have any national assessment is in year 3 [with the NAPLAN test]," she says. "Year 3 is actually very late to intervene if there is a problem." The NSW Department of Education is already introducing mandatory one-on-one literacy and numeracy assessments at the beginning of Kindergarten to identify the "skills of students on entry to school". The Best Start Kindergarten Assessment will begin being rolled out across primary schools from term 1 next year, with all schools to implement it by 2019.



The NSW strategy is focusing on "an explicit and systematic approach to teaching reading, including the use of phonics", but does not exclusively assess children's understanding of phonics. There are plenty of kids who are having problems. About one in 20 year 3 students did not meet the national minimum standard for reading or numeracy in 2016. According to the Program for International Student Assessment in 2015, 18 per cent of Australian 15-year-olds were low performers in reading proficiency by international standards. More than 20 per cent of 15-year-olds were low performers in mathematical literacy. The literacy component of the proposed test would focus on "phonics" or decoding words, which Buckingham says is a strong predictor of later reading ability. The report recommends that Australia model its phonics assessment on Britain's test, which lists real and "pseudo" words like "vap" and "osk" and asks students to pronounce them to see if they understand how language is made up.

One of the report's co-authors, La Trobe Rural Health School head, professor Pamela Snow, says it is vital students are taught to decode words as part of their literacy education. This represents a shift away from a 40-year emphasis on "whole language"  a view that children pick up reading as naturally as they do talking, and would learn it by being exposed to writing and memorising words. Snow is firmly of the view that effective phonics teaching has been a casualty of the so-called (and long-running) "reading wars". She says phonics teaches children the component parts of words, so children can work out what they are reading. Snow says while it can be easier for children to memorise their way through reading in the early years of school, once words become longer and less familiar, they need a system to fall back on. "We're not getting enough kids across the bridge to literacy at the developmentally appropriate time," Snow says. Nikki Burrows has seen the benefits of phonics instruction first hand with her two children, Lochie, who is in year 4, and Goldie, who is in year 1. The children attend Bentleigh West Primary School in south-east Melbourne, which introduced a phonics program and year 1 check in 2015. This means Goldie has had specific phonics education since the start of her schooling, while Lochie has not. Burrows says she was amazed to hear Goldie talking about the strategies she was learning for reading words, such as "g makes a soft sound when followed by e, i or y": "That blew me away."

Goldie is now reading at above-average level and Burrows wishes Lochie could have had the same opportunity. He has a "really good memory" and it took until the first NAPLAN test to reveal he needed extra help with reading. "None of us had any idea," Burrows says, adding she wishes they had known earlier. The numeracy element of the tests has attracted much less controversy, perhaps because there isn't a clear plan yet as to how it would be assessed, other than that it would focus on "number sense" and "position/location". Ann Gervasoni is an associate professor in mathematics education at Monash University, who was involved in developing a maths assessment tool used in Victorian schools. She too laments the lack of funding for intervention programs, noting "this is probably the most needed aspect". Gervasoni cautions it is important that assessments don't have a "ceiling"  that is, that they can reflect the extent of a child's knowledge, rather than simply assess whether they meet a basic standard.

"In most cases, teachers won't learn anything new [about a student's performance]." Birmingham took the report about testing year 1 students to a meeting of state and territory education ministers last week. Fairfax Media understands some states are surprised the idea is being pushed by the federal government now, when David Gonski has been tasked with reviewing how school funding should be used to improve student outcomes and isn't due to report until March next year. Apart from Queensland and Western Australia, who have already indicated an unwillingness to introduce the tests, there has been a range of reactions from other jurisdictions. Victoria says it will consider the report's findings, NSW says it looks forward to seeing more detail, while ACT Education Minister Yvette Berry is "concerned" by the idea. Not only do Canberra students already undergo testing when they start school, but there is a fear the data could be used like NAPLAN scores, to create league tables (the government says this isn't the plan). "What's needed is a further commitment that jurisdictions could use any test according to their needs and without being ranked on a school-by-school basis," Berry says.
Maganti Venkateswara Rao also known as Maganti Babu, Lok Sabha MP from Eluru constituency of Andhra Pradesh called upon party workers to play Poker while addressing party activists at a programme

By Ashish Pandey: Telugu Desam Party MP Maganti Babu on Saturday asked the police not to arrest any party cadres and activists involved in illegal activity.

Maganti Venkateswara Rao also known as Maganti Babu, Lok Sabha MP from Eluru constituency of Andhra Pradesh called upon party workers to play Poker while addressing party activists at a programme in Chinthalapudi on Friday.

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He also asked them to "celebrate the poker win" with "liquor and watching the Junior NTR recently released blockbuster "Jai Lava Kusha" and "Paisa Wasol".

He advised the police not to arrest his party's activists, if they were found playing cards, added that he himself will come to the police station.

The member of parliament also mentioned that Chinthapudi is famous for playing cards and pointed out expert players of his constituency. Recently, the West Godavari police arrested a several persons who were found playing cards in the district which is worst affected with gambling. The comment of senior politician has drawn criticism from the civil society organisations and opposition parties.

Earlier, Babu was spotted dancing with women dancers and enjoying the banned "cock fight" during Sankranti celebrations defying apex court orders. Magantti Venkateswara Rao first became the MP in 1998 and more again won the election in 2014 of Eluru Parliamentary Constituency. He was a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly from 2004 to 2009. He served as a minister between 2007 and 2009 in Congress government.

--- ENDS ---
Parole officers in New South Wales have no specific training for dealing with radicalised individuals as experts warns of a "pressure cooker" system struggling to strike the right balance between protecting national security and helping extremists to genuinely reform.

A small handful of terrorism inmates will be eligible for parole in the coming months and years, posing serious questions about how to manage offenders when they are released.

Former baggage handler Bilal Khazal, pictured in 2004, was denied parole in August. Credit:Wade Laube

Former baggage handler Bilal Khazal, who is serving at least nine years for producing a jihad manual, was up for parole on August 23 but federal Attorney-General George Brandis denied it on advice from Corrective Services NSW that Khazal had not reformed.

Mazen Touma, one of nine Sydney men jailed over a foiled terror plot in 2005, was paroled this year, becoming the third of the Operation Pendennis group to be released. A Muslim convert who said he became swept up after the September 11 attacks, Touma disengaged through strong family support, positive reinforcement, and self-esteem built through working in the jail precinct and during weekend release, Corrective Services commissioner Peter Severin said.
Public indecency, stalking and fleeing from police - Queensland koalas have some serious questions to answer after several incidents were reported by officers during the past month.

The most serious allegations came on September 10, when police in the Townsville suburb of Stuart in north Queensland allege a koala, which went by the name of Fernando, gave officers a pole dancing display in the middle of a busy road.

Townsville police were confronted by a pole-dancing koala. Credit:Queensland Police Service

Sergeant Julie Cooke wrote in an online account of the incident that officers were "concerned for the koalas safety" but the animal was "very stubborn and reluctant to move on".

"But when police pumped the new Taylor Swift song through the radio he showed his distaste and ditched the pole dancing lesson," Sergeant Cooke wrote.
Inner Brisbane became a sea of rainbows on Saturday, as more than 10,000 LGBTIQ supporters gathered for the annual Pride march.

The event had added meaning this year, with the rainbow army voicing their support for the "yes" campaign as Australians cast their same-sex marriage postal vote.

The Brisbane Pride March attracted more than 10,000 people. Credit:AAP

In addition to the thousands who marched through Fortitude Valley, hundreds more emerged from cafes, shops, apartments and houses to view the spectacle, as the chants of participants could be heard far before any of the crowd came into view.

At times the end of the parade could not be seen as they marched down Brunswick Street, and supporters also converged on New Farm Park where the annual Brisbane Pride Festival had set up.
These patients give permission to undergo an autopsy and tissue collection within 24 hours after they die. It is important because access to the tissue of patients with widespread cancer is limited as they do not often undergo surgery. Associate Professor Sarah-Jane Dawson, from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, said a key problem with treating cancers is that the same cancers can behave very differently from person to person. "To take the example of breast cancer, usually no two women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have the same disease. And that's really the same for all cancer types," Professor Dawson said. "There is a lot of individual variation that exist between patients, even though they've been diagnosed with essentially what's called the same disease.

"It's is very important for us to get a handle on the individual characteristics of someone's disease if we are going to treat it most effectively." It is also hoped research may help explain why secondary or metastatic cancers are more difficult to treat. When Campbel Giles was first diagnosed with cancer in June 2012 - when Elsie was just a toddler - it was already at an advanced stage. She had gone to doctors before she found out she was pregnant, with a lump in her breast, but it was not diagnosed until after she kept going to the emergency department with pain. During her career, Campbel worked for Border Watch newspaper in Mount Gambier, Shepparton News and was bureau chief of WIN Television in Shepparton.

She would later become a political adviser for the state Labor governments under premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby, and for federal Labor MP Brendan O'Connor. "If I was looking for an adviser who held her tongue and kept her opinions to herself I made an awfully bad choice," said Mr O'Connor in a speech to parliament days after Campbel's death. Matt fondly describes his late wife as loud and opinionated, but also very kind. While living in Darwin, he recalls her running around picking up itinerant Aboriginal people (locally called "long-grassers") and taking them to a shelter as a cyclone loomed. She almost didn't get home herself, he said. He said Campbel was asked to participate in the CASCADE program the same day she was told that the cancer had moved to her brain and "there was nothing left in the toolbox".
Doctors are concerned Western Australia's biggest maternity hospital still doesn't have an intensive care unit, meaning seriously ill women are "tossed into an ambulance" and sent to the nearest emergency department.

The 101-year-old, heritage-listed King Edward Memorial Hospital caters for complex pregnancies and high-risk births but also does not have a CT scanner.

The 101-year-old, heritage-listed King Edward Memorial Hospital caters for complex pregnancies and high-risk births but also does not have a CT scanner. Credit:Joe Armao

"Women who are very sick - either obstetrics or a gynaecological cancer and so on - have no access to an intensive care unit," Australian Medical Association (WA) president Omar Khorshid told AAP.

"How is that acceptable in the modern age? It's archaic."
Florence: Britain's exit from the European Union has been effectively delayed until 2021 after Prime Minister Theresa May announced a two-year transition period during which the UK's relationship with the EU will remain virtually unchanged.

It means freedom of movement will continue for another four years, with Britain paying its full contribution to Brussels of around 9 billion ($15 billion) per year in that period.

In her long-awaited speech in Florence, Italy, Mrs May set out plans for a status quo implementation phase after Brexit takes effect in March 2019, with the UK and EU maintaining access to each other's markets "on current terms" and under "the existing structure of EU rules and regulations".

The 35-minute speech was aimed at a European audience and Mrs May stressed repeatedly that she wanted to build a constructive and deep relationship with the EU after Brexit.
Bangkok: New evidence shows that Rohingya Muslim villages continue to be torched in Myanmar's strife-torn Rakhine state, despite denials by the government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Eyewitnesses, photographs and multiple reports also show that Myanmar security forces continue to plant internationally-banned anti-personnel mines that are blowing up Rohingya people fleeing to Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi claimed in a speech on Tuesday that her country's security forces ended what she called "clearance operations" in the state on September 5.

The Myanmar army denies it is laying new land mines along the border.
Honoring survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and acts of violence

Face Forward charity co-founder trail blazer Deborah Alessi does not believe in doing things in half measures. If you met the beautiful, forceful Scottish import you would know in a matter of minutes she is strong willed, straight talking and has a huge heart. Over the past few years she and her like minded philanthropic husband, Dr. David Alessi have put all their attributes, talents and goodwill into the charity they both helm, https://www.faceforwardla.org/

First founded in 2007 Face Forward provides pro bono reconstructive surgery to adults and children who have suffered traumatic and severe physical abuse and creates a welcoming and safe environment for survivors wishing to reclaim their confidence and start a new life.

This is the 8th year that Face Forward will put on it's always memorable Gala, and it is obvious that each year gets better and bigger than before, again, no half measures with this team. This year's bash will be held at the stunning Tagylan Complex in Hollywood on Saturday September 23rd. A special night to honor and support the brave survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and acts of violence.

"Face Forward's annual fundraising efforts enable us to help even more survivors in their journey to achieve both physical and emotional healing and recovery," said Face Forward co-founder Deborah Alessi. "This year has been exceptional for us with amazing patients and exciting new partnerships which will help us raise more awareness and the funds needed to help treat even more survivors from around the globe."

All heart. Trail Blazers Deborah and Dr. David Alessi

TV personality Kelly Osbourne will receive the Voice Award for her committed hard work, leadership and advocacy against all violence. Face Forward Global Ambassador Lana Parrilla ("Once Upon A Time") will receive the Beacon of Hope Award for her unwavering support of this astonishing charity and much needed cause. Roy Larner who is undoubtedly a true hero shall also be honored for his selfless heroism during the London Bridge terrorist attack.

The Arabian Nights themed evening will feature an exciting live auction with items including a 5-night vacation at Niyama Private Islands Maldives, an African safari by Micato Safaris and two first class round trip tickets on Etihad Airways. A silent auction will also be on display for lucky guests.

Additional sponsors include Alessi Institute, Roberto Cavalli, Kandima Maldives, Syneron Candela, Viking Cruises, Synergy Financial, Alyse Parfums, Mont Blac Executive Car Services, Asombroso Tequila, Vino Direct, BTL Svc and St. Petersburg Vodka.

Tickets Available at: http://www.501auctions.com/ffgala/tickets
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Before her address to the UNGA, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a series of bilateral and multi-lateral meetings with her counterparts and in all the meetings she raised the issue of terrorism.

By Prabhash K Dutta: Terrorism, climate change and UNSC reform top the agenda of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj when she addresses the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the second consecutive time tonight. However, counter-terrorism mechanism is likely to remain the core focus of her speech.

The stage was perfectly set up by India's First Secretary of the Permanent Mission to the United Nations Eenam Gambhir, who did almost exactly what she had done last year by using her right to reply in rebutting Pakistan's allegations.

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"In its short history, Pakistan has become a geography synonymous with terror. The quest for a land of pure has actually produced 'the land of pure terror'. Pakistan is now Terroristan," Eenam Gambhir said while responding to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqqan Abbasi's allegation that India supports terrorism.

SUSHMA ON COUNTER-TERROR MISSION

On her part, Sushma Swaraj was busy in New York holding back-to-back bilateral and multi-lateral meetings with leaders from Europe to Latin America and Caribbean Islands. In every meeting with her counterparts, Sushma Swaraj raised the issue of terrorism.

Earlier this week, Sushma Swaraj addressed the third meeting of India-Caricom (Caribbean community) on the sidelines of the UNGA. Sushma drew the attention of the Caribbean community towards the danger that terrorism pose. The Caribbean Islands may not be facing threat of terrorism directly but their support at the UNGA could be significant for India.

Sushma Swaraj said, "Terrorism constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. Counter-terrorism requires a strong collective action by the global community. A strong legal framework also needs to be established in order to address this problem."

Here, Sushma Swaraj also outlined what would be her focus during her address to the UNGA tonight. Sushma Swaraj said, "An early adoption by the UNGA of the Comprehensive Convention of International Terrorism, a draft which was proposed by India as early as 1996, is essential."

PAKISTAN AND ROHINGYA

For almost three decades, India has been a victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Thousands of lives have been lost to terror in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of the country. India has been raising the issue of terrorism on international for over 25 years. But, the world's attention sharpened after 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001.

In recent times, India has succeeded in getting many terror outfits operating from Pakistan to be declared as proscribed. Even though, China stood in the way on several occasions, many other countries have supported India's stand on terrorism. Recently, the US, under Trump administration, designated Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin as global terrorist.

Sushma Swaraj's speech at the UNGA focusing on dangers of terrorism is likely to have its bearing on the Rohingya question particularly in the context of India. The Narendra Modi government has stated it in clear terms that it would work to find ways for deporting Rohingyas living in India illegally. Their number is said to be about 40,000.

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The government has filed a written affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that the stay of Rohingyas in the country poses grave threat to national security. Terror and jihadi outfits are suspected to have infiltrated the vulnerable sections of fleeing Rohingyas. The jihadi elements are suspected to be prying on Rohingyas for recruiting them as potential terrorists.

In this context, Sushma Swaraj will make a strong case for adopting the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) by the UNGA.

WHAT IS CCIT?

India had proposed a convention in 1996 for adoption at the UNGA to widen the ambit of counter-terrorism mechanism. But, 21 years later, the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism is still in the limbo.

Sushma Swaraj had raised the issue of CCIT's adoption last year as well. But, this time, Sushma Swaraj is expected to make a stronger pitch. There are already about 15 other conventions that have been adopted by the UNGA. But, CCIT gives more teeth to fight against terrorism.

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The Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism provides for a legal framework making it binding on all signatories to deny funds and safe havens to terrorist groups. This, if adopted, will leave little scope for China to shield Pakistan, which, in turn, cannot afford to stay away from the CCIT.

The counter-terror convention aims to have a universal definition of terrorism that all 193-members of the UNGA will adopt into their own criminal law.

It makes the signatory countries to ban all terror groups and shut down terror camps. The CCIT makes it legally binding on the member countries to prosecute all terrorists under special laws.

And, more significantly, the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism provides for legal framework to make cross-border terrorism an extraditable offence worldwide. This provision has the potential of forcing Pakistan to stop terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India.

--- ENDS ---
India and China have left the Doklam episode behind (them), and "are working together to take forward the bilateral relationship," Chinese Consul General Ma Zhanwu said.

By India Today Web Desk: China and India are working together to "take forward" their relationship, and have left the Doklam episode behind them, the Chinese Consul General said in Kolkata on Friday.

On August 28, the Ministry of External Affairs announced the "expeditious disengagement of border personnel" at Doklam, signalling that the months-long standoff at the disputed India-China-Bhutan trijunction had come to an end - before it could embarrass the leadership of both India and China at the BRICS summit.

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For months, the Indian Army and the People's Liberation Army of China had faced each other, holding their respective posts about 150 metres apart.

Consul General Ma Zhanwu said yesterday that by working together, India and China can enhance cooperation and exchanges. He was speaking at an event marking the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

"India and China are working together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping had a meeting on September 5 to discuss how to enhance the relationship," Zhanwu said.

Prime Minister Modi had met President Xi on the sidelines of the 9th BRICS Summit. The two leaders agreed that their nations should put in more effort to strengthen the cooperation between their security personnel and ensure that Doklam-like incidents don't happen again.

"As long as the two countries work together, we will able to enhance and develop exchanges and cooperation," Zhanwu said.

Asked if both the countries have left behind the Doklam episode, Zhanwu said, "Yes we have left that behind and are working together to take forward the bilateral relationship".

The Doklam standoff began on June 16, after India stopped the construction of a road by the Chinese Army. It lasted 73 days.

(Inputs from PTI)

--- ENDS ---
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Shaheed El-Hafed, Sep 22, 2017 (SPS) - The Council of Ministers condemned the unjust decision by the Moroccan authorities of the abusive transfer of Sahrawi political prisoners of Gdeim Izik group to various Moroccan prisons, increasing the suffering of the prisoners and their families.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Council of Ministers stressed that such practices of intimidation and reprisals reflect the failure of the Moroccan state that seeks to break the will of the Saharawi activists and the determination of the Saharawi people in their legitimate struggle for freedom and independence.

The Council of Ministers called on the United Nations to exert all the necessary pressure for the release of all Saharawi political prisoners.

On the occasion of the tour of the new Personal Envoy of UNSG for Western Sahara, Mr. Horst Kohle, the Council of Ministers reiterated the position of the Saharawi side, who welcomes the resumption of efforts, expressing its readiness to cooperate constructively for the implementation of the charter and the resolutions of the United Nations to complete the process of decolonization of the last colony in Africa. (SPS)

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New York, September 22, 2017 (SPS) Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, called Friday the UN to guarantee the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people.

During the General Debate of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the Cuban Foreign Minister said that the question of Western Sahara requires an effort in accordance with United Nations resolutions, so as to guarantee the self-determination of the Saharawi people and respect for their legitimate right to live in peace in their territory.

The regular session of the UN General Assembly is held this year under the theme, Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet.

This session of the UN General Assembly is attended by a Saharawi delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed-Salem Ould Salek. (SPS)

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New York, Sep 23, 2017 (SPS) - Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel has expressed hope that the appointment of the new UNSG envoy for Western Sahara, Mr. Horst Kohler, would contribute to the resumption of negotiations between the two sides in the Saharawi conflict to complete the decolonization process of Western Sahara in accordance with international law and UNSC relevant resolutions.

In his address to the General Debate of the 72nd Session of the UNGA, the Head of Algerian diplomacy said that the question of Western Sahara a decolonization issue which the international community has to resolve through the exercise by the people of Western Sahara of their right to self-determination. (SPS)

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New York, Sep 23, 2017 (SPS) - The Vice-President of Botswana, Mr. Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi, reiterated Thursday his country's support to the struggle of the Sahrawi people for their right to self-determination.

He regretted that Western Sahara is the only remaining decolonization issue in the African continent.



He stressed that it is necessary that the Saharawi people be allowed to exercise their right through a referendum under the supervision of the United Nations.

The regular session of the UN General Assembly is held this year under the theme, Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet.

This session of the UN General Assembly is attended by a Saharawi delegation led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed-Salem Ould Salek. (SPS)

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New York, Sep 23, 2017 (SPS) - Lesotho Prime Minister, Mr. Thomas Motsoahae Thabane, has reiterated his country's support for Western Sahara in its struggle for self-determination.

Speaking in the general debate of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, he said that every day that passes without a change in the life of the People of Western Sahara is a reminder to the world that we must renew our determination to fight against the injustices perpetrated against the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

He urged the United Nations to remain resolute in its determination to eradicate colonialism.

He welcomed the efforts to resume negotiations between the Polisaho Front and Morocco in order to reach a solution to the conflict. (SPS)

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London, 23/09/17

The Moroccan occupation authorities have allowed the police and security forces in the Occupied Zones of Western Sahara to use excessive force against Saharawi protesters.

The Royal Moroccan Government must end the violence against Saharawi civilians and when any members of the security forces are found to have violated people's human rights, they must be brought to justice.

The Moroccan occupation authorities and their police security forces and their auxiliaries, some of whom were dressed in plain clothes, launched a violent attack against Saharawi protesters, using excessive violence to disperse peaceful protests. The protests were in solidarity with Saharawi political prisoners and to denounce the clandestine move of the Gdeim Izik group of prisoners to Moroccan prisons. The authorities of the Kingdom of Morocco used excessive, unnecessary, unjustified and disproportionate force against peaceful protesters who did not represent any threat and they acted outside of the law.

Members of Adala UK documented the way in which members of the security forces beat protesters, using batons and throwing stones and driving at protesters in their armoured vehicles. The list of victims includes:

*Aziza Biza, who writes for a Saharawi news website, was badly cut on her head as a result of being hit several times by a member of the security forces.

* Hassna Duhei, a human rights activist, who was hit with a baton all over her body, including her face. Her glasses were smashed on her face which has left her with many cuts.

* a member of Equipe Media was held by the police and hit in the face. They confiscated his camera and the money in his pockets.

Dozens of protesters were taken to the regional hospital in occupied El Aaiun as many were quite severely hurt as a result of the beatings they had received. Those with less severe injuries were treated in the houses of other Saharawi citizens.

The use of violence by the police and occupation forces has provoked increased anger from Saharawi society in social media. The Moroccan authorities have failed to launch and independent and impartial investigation into the conduct of the officers. The government continues to use a variety of different repressive tactics on Saharawi society including harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and beatings in the street, aimed at those who support self-determination and express their fundamental human rights.

At the same time Saharawi citizens, many of whom are human rights defenders or political activists, feel that the risk they face when expressing their points of view in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara has risen. The aim of this action by the occupation forces is to suppress the freedom of expression and association of peaceful protests.

Despite the deterioration of the situation in the Occupied Territories and the flagrant abuses of human rights, democratic countries throughout the world remain silent and refrain from publicly criticising the Kingdom of Morocco. By remaining silent, the international community, including the EU and other influential countries, fuels Morocco's attempts to silence voices in Western Sahara which seek the self determination of the Saharawi people.

According to international law, the citizens of an occupied territory can only be imprisoned within their territory, not in that of the occupying power. Their rights under international laws and treaties must be respected.

The Moroccan government must offer unrestricted freedom to all Saharawi political prisoners, given that no real evidence has been found against them and the trials at which they were sentenced did not meet the minimum international standards of a fair trial.

062/SPS/Adala UK

http://adalauk.com/2017/09/23/adala-uk-condemns-moroccos-brutal-repression-protests-el-aaiun/
A website for a Texas-based company that provides canine blood products for veterinary transfusions nationally says it sources its blood "primarily from volunteer donors" and aims to "operate in a completely ethical, humane manner." But an animal rights group contends it has evidence that the Pet Blood Bank does the opposite, procuring its supply from a colony of about 150 greyhounds that live in squalor in dirt-floored pens.

Photographs of the facility, which People for the Treatment of Ethical Treatment of Animals says a former blood-bank employee took between February and June, show kenneled dogs with open wounds, rotting teeth and toenails curling into their paw pads. The organization sent a letter Wednesday to the sheriff of San Saba County, where the company is located northwest of Austin, urging the seizure of dogs "being cruelly confined or unreasonably deprived of necessary food, care or shelter." A dispatcher said Friday that an investigation is underway.

The former employee's accusations could not be independently confirmed. In an interview Thursday, Pet Blood Bank owner Shane Altizer did not deny that the images were taken there, but said they predated his 2015 purchase of the company or were "moment snapshots" unrepresentative of overall conditions now.

The allegations provide a window into an industry that helps to save thousands of animals each year, although one that critics say needs more regulation. As the U.S. pet population grows and owners increasingly opt to treat injuries and other conditions with procedures requiring transfusions, animal blood banks are struggling to meet demand. Yet no federal standards exist, and only one state, California, regulates such operations and requires annual inspections.

Veterinarian Anne Hale, former CEO of the nation's first and largest commercial animal blood bank, said she visited the Pet Blood Bank this summer and was "pleasantly surprised" to find dogs that appeared healthy and happy. After viewing the photos and video circulated by PETA, however, Hale said Friday that her assessment had changed.

"It appears that the facility was 'cleaned up' before our touring," Hale said in an email. "I agree that this facility should be addressed. This certainly suggests that regional, state and/or federal regulation is warranted."

Experts say sanitary conditions and veterinary care are critical to ensuring that animals are healthy enough to donate blood and that they do not transmit blood-borne pathogens.

No one keeps count of animal blood banks, which take various forms. Commercial operations like the one in Texas sell their products to veterinary clinics or supply companies. But many veterinary hospitals run small-scale versions that usually get blood from staff-owned pets or from patients whose owners may volunteer them in exchange for discounted services.

And many university vet schools also have blood banks, some of which maintain in-house colonies of dogs or cats. These facilities are typically regulated and inspected by the institutions, said veterinarian Sarah Musulin, president of the Association of Veterinary Hematology and Transfusion Medicine.

The "vast majority of veterinary blood banks are overseen by veterinarians and veterinary technicians who have devoted their careers to the well being of animals," said Musulin, who directs the blood bank at North Carolina State University. And many, she said, are eager to "create best-practice guidelines." Those include using young, healthy animals that are vaccinated and on preventive medications and that undergo regular health screenings and assessments for stress behaviors.

One point of debate, particularly when it comes to dogs, centers on what donors to use. Many blood banks rely on a humanlike system, sponsoring blood drives and recruiting volunteers. Others use captive colonies, often made up of retired racing greyhounds, a breed that frequently has a universal blood type. Some use a mix of the two.

Colonies limit exposure to communicable diseases and keep dogs from having to travel for blood draws, but they require ample space and staff to keep the dogs fit and stimulated, Musulin said. Ideally, dogs are used for a short time and then placed up for adoption, she said.

Critics of the colony model say it is inhumane when volunteer programs are viable.

"We don't have a problem with greyhound blood donors. We have a problem with captive greyhound blood donors," said David Wolf, director of the National Greyhound Adoption Program. He cited the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary hospital as a model for having abandoned its colony in favor of a bloodmobile-based program. "Having blood donors is wonderful as long as they go home and sleep on their soft bed," Wolf said.

California requires closed colonies, and Jean Dodds, the founder of Hemopet, a nonprofit commercial blood bank there, is adamant that it is the best way to ensure the safety of blood products and a regular supply. Hemopet's website shows dogs resting in crates in brightly colored "bungalows" alongside a courtyard used for daily walks. It houses about 200 greyhounds that, depending on their weight, donate twice or three times a month before being made available for adoption after no more than one year, Dodds said.

"It should be standardized throughout the country," she said of animal blood banking. "It's basically a hole, and it should be filled."

In Texas, the Pet Blood Bank has mostly used a colony model. It was founded in 2004 by Austin entrepreneur Mark Ziller, who said he initially sought volunteers and used a bloodmobile. When that did not turn up enough dogs, the company began using retired greyhounds housed in a kennel on a private farm northwest of Austin. Ziller said he sold the company in November 2015 to Altizer, whose family owns that farm in Cherokee.

"The Pet Blood Bank had a noble mission: It provided blood for veterinarians to use in lifesaving transfusions," Ziller wrote in an email, saying that during his ownership the dogs had monthly flea, tick and heartworm medications and regular veterinary care.

After viewing the photos PETA obtained, he added, "To see the animals in that state is beyond depressing."

Bill Larsen, 60, is the former employee who took the images. He said he first worked at the facility several years ago and that conditions were better then. He was shocked when he was rehired for several months earlier this year, he said.

He described the dogs' quarters as pens in a former turkey shed that were frequently soiled with feces and urine. The animals had many ticks and were not allowed outside for exercise, he said. Many were what he called "cringe hounds."

"When they see you touch the gate handle, they run into their [dog] house and hide," said Larsen, who recounted how he'd unsuccessfully sought help from local animal shelters and a state agency before contacting PETA. "I just like dogs," he said, and "hate for any animal to get treated like that."

Altizer said he has tried to make rapid changes since taking over the company. A tick treatment program this summer "wiped out" that problem, he said, and he gave other explanations for other images shared by PETA: Greyhounds commonly have poor teeth; skinny, elderly dogs can get bedsore-type wounds that are hard to resolve. The pens are cleaned daily, and a local vet cares for the dogs, he insisted.

"If a dog isn't healthy, they don't produce a product," Altizer noted. "And if they don't produce a product, they're an expense. It's cheaper to keep a dog healthy."

The company's website is being updated and will no longer refer to donors being volunteers, he said.

Hale said Altizer seemed eager for advice and she saw no red flags during her visit this summer. Record-keeping seemed solid, she said, and dogs seemed relaxed in their quarters and during blood draws.

"The dogs really can't put their paw on the paper and agree to their donorship," she said Thursday. "We have a higher level of responsibility than even the human blood bankers, because we have to really pay attention to making sure the donors are well cared for."

According to Daphna Nachminovitch, a senior vice president at PETA, the photos showed tattoos on some of the greyhounds that traced them to racetracks in Florida, Texas and Arkansas. Greyhound adoption programs are ready to take the dogs, she said.

"They were born into an industry that's cruel," Nachminovitch said. "But even if these animals are going to be kept for being bled and solely for that purpose, at the very least there are minimal standards of sanitation and veterinary care that they are due and are required by law."
WESTPORT  The Westport Police Department will bid farewell to Deputy Chief Vincent Penna, a 26-year veteran with the force and a hometown kid, after he announced he will be retiring at the beginning of October.

Penna, who was hired by the department in 1991 as a part-time traffic agent before becoming a full-time officer in 1994, led a commendable and exemplary career peppered with numerous commendation, awards and accolades, wrote Westport Police Chief Foti Koskinas.

In addition to serving as president of Westport Police Union and the Westport Police Benevolent Association for the past four years, Penna has served the department in several capacities. From his beginnings as a patrol officer, Penna worked his way up the ranks, becoming a detective in 2001 and sergeant in 2006, before returning to the detective bureau in a leadership role and eventually ascending to deputy chief in 2016.

Ive been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to either work in or supervise almost every division of the department, said Penna. I feel fortunate to have been able to work in the town I grew up in with the best men and women in law enforcement and can honestly say Ive enjoyed coming to work every day.

Penna said that his legacy at the department will be defined by his work to get Westport included in Norwalks juvenile review board, which affords the towns youth an alternative to being charged criminally if they meet certain criteria, and his role in helping the department become one of 40 around the state that achieved Tier 1 accreditation.

Deputy Chief Penna takes with him a great deal of experience and knowledge. We worked together for many years. We came up through the ranks together, navigated through difficult times and shared countless laughs. Hell certainly be missed by the men and women that worked with him. We all wish him the best in his retirement, said Koskinas.

The vacancy left by Pennas retirement will be filled by a restructuring of the police department organization, which will include the promotion of Lt. David Farrell and Lt. Ryan Paulsson to the rank of captain.

ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2570; Twitter: @Tomlinson_PE
WESTPORT  An Oregon man who took advantage of local Superstorm Sandy victims with a generator installation scheme was tracked down by Westport police after five years on the lam, police said.

Police said 56-year-old John Mech, of Seaside, Ore., came to Fairfield County in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and offered to sell and install generators at various residences throughout the area.

In the case of one Westport resident, the scam involved Mech accepting a down payment of $6,000 from residents for the so-called installations, with the balance of $9,750 due upon completion, police said.

However, after receiving the down payment, police said Mech failed to provide the Westport resident with a generator or perform any installation.

In addition to Westport, police said Mech perpetrated a similar scheme in Monroe and Stamford, for which he also had warrants for his arrest.

On Sept. 15, Mech was taken into custody by wildlife and game control in Oregon for illegal salmon fishing, where police ran a background check on him and learned of multiple extraditable warrants out of Connecticut.

Mech was then transported to Stamford, where he faced six counts of third-degree larceny and four counts of home improvement violations. He was held by the Department of Corrections on $55,000 bond before being transferred to state Superior Court in Norwalk, where he was charged for his crimes in Westport.

Mech was charged with third-degree larceny and home improvement violation.

Mech is detained by in the Bridgeport Correctional Center on a total of $61,000. He is scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 2.
ELLSWORTH  Youd expect to find a store selling cowboy gear in the middle of cattle country.

But Wade Morgans Cowpoke Haven stocks a lot of local history as well. You can find a pinch of it on a historical marker outside. It notes that cattleman Bartlett Richards, who founded the legendary Spade Ranch about 25 miles to the north in 1888, raised cattle on about a half-million acres of the Sandhills, including free-range pasture land owned by the U.S. government. He eventually ran afoul of efforts to make the land available to homesteaders and was jailed for fencing property he didnt own.

What it doesnt say is that the store nearby was founded by Richards.

The tracks were here, and they needed a store to bring stuff in for the ranch, said Wade Morgan, who owns the store today.

You can find hats, boots and other Western wear on its shelves. And guns  lots of guns. Morgan teaches concealed-carry classes, carries his wares to distant gun shows and keeps Sandhills landowners, who live on isolated ranches far from the nearest sheriffs office, supplied with rifles and ammunition. His customers include neighbors and visitors who come from both directions on Highway 2, which stretches from the Panhandle to Grand Island.

A lot of guns go out of here, Morgan said. The guns probably keep the lights on.

The store is one of few retail establishments along the 60-mile stretch of fading commercial ghost towns between Alliance and Hyannis. If youre heading east into the Sandhills, past Antioch, Lakeside, Ellsworth and Bingham, youd better make sure your gas tank is full. But in the Cowpoke Haven you can get a cup of coffee and a sandwich, as well as bits and spurs, stirrups, ropes, belts, books, postcards, knives, fishing lures, predator calls, backpacks, leather goods  including black motorcycle jackets and chaps  insulated coveralls and Zippo lighters. Folks in Ellsworth, population 32, also pick up stamps and mail in the building, which still houses the community post office.

At its apex in 1905, the Spade sprawled across more than 500,000 acres in Sheridan and Cherry counties, with a herd of 60,000 cattle. Its business successor is still operated by the Bixby family. When the store was built, the Spade Ranch owners, which included Richards partners, also built stockyards and a hotel across the street for crews that cut and processed hay and herded cattle. Richards and his partner, Will Comstock, joined with other ranches in 1899 to form a management outfit, the Nebraska Land and Feeding Company, which was headquartered in the store. A large vault in the building secured it records. The Nebraska Stock Growers Association, which merged with other entities in 1988 to form todays Nebraska Cattlemen, had its first meeting in the building, Morgan said. The original store served not only the Spade Ranch but the surrounding community, and the company built roads and brought telephone service to isolated ranches and villages.

According to Nebraska State Historical Society research on the building. Bartlett and Comstock clashed with Theodore Roosevelts administration during the era of the Kincaid Act, which aimed to open up the American West by making land available to homesteaders. Bartlett and Comstock arranged for old soldiers and widows to file claims on parcels near the ranch. But instead of settling those claims, they leased the land to the Spade Ranch. The partners were convicted of illegal fencing and perjury in 1910. Richards died during his imprisonment. Comstock later returned to the area. Richards widow operated the ranch until 1923, when banks foreclosed on the ranch and the associated properties, including the store in Ellsworth.

Lawrence Bixby, hired to operate a portion of the Spade Ranch, began to buy back much of the former Spade property. The store sat vacant until 1927, when a new owner hired Lawrence Graham to manage it. He sold ranching supplies, hardware, gas and lumber for decades and eventually purchased the store in 1950. During his era, several additions were constructed. Graham and his family ran the store until 1967. The building sat vacant for the next four years.

Morgans father Veldon, purchased the building in 1971, dubbing it Morgans Cowpoke Haven. It took on new life as a store and informal community center. The elder Morgan, a rodeo champion and former working cowboy on the Spade Ranch, built custom saddles and other gear. Also an inventor, he made saddlebags and various horse tack and eventually opened a manufacturing plant in the back of the complex.

Dad was the horse man, Wade Morgan said. We made a lot for Cabelas. Elk hunting in the mountains is what started it.

Eighty people worked for Morgans at one time, Morgan said.

When I moved here, there were 30-some kids I went to school with.

In 1995, his father sold the manufacturing business to Weaver Leather Livestock, which still makes halters and other horse-related goods. Wade Morgan bought the property.

Since then, not much has changed. The manufacturing warehouses now are rented by local ranchers and community members to store boats, vehicles and equipment. Morgan still uses the old leather-working equipment. Hitching posts for horses remain outside. Columns and roof joists are burned with the brands of regional ranches. The store retains its scuffed wooden floors and pressed tin roof panels. Photos, paintings, guns, branding irons and other artifacts decorate the walls, serving as an informal museum of Ellsworths colorful history.

Most of the stuff here, people have given me, Morgan said.

It gives the place a look and feel that Western-wear stores in bigger cities strive to copy, but its the real deal. If business is slow enough for Morgan to find time to stretch out a conversation with a customer, that suits him just fine.

I would never trade to be in the city, he said.
Star-Herald Staff Report

A former Gering Police sergeant has been fined in a case alleging he stole from a program that helps kids purchase gifts at Christmas for family members and others.

According to Scotts Bluff County Court documents, Henry Moreno, 40, was fined $650, plus court costs, on one charge of theft by taking, a Class II misdemeanor. Moreno entered a no contest plea to the charge Friday in Scotts Bluff County Court.

Two additional charges of theft by taking were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

An arrest affidavit was not filed in the case, but the complaint filed in the case alleged Moreno took different amounts from the Shop with a Cop program on three separate occasions: $500 in August 2016; $300 in March 2017; and $500 in June 2017.

Moreno was issued a citation on Sept. 6 by Doug Warner, a deputy attorney with the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office.

Moreno, who had been a longtime detective and most recently a sergeant with the Gering Police Department, had been one of the organizers with the Shop with a Cop program. In 2016, Moreno said the program had helped more than 100 kids. He had been lauded for his accomplishments in programs working with kids, such as being Gering's first school resource officer, serving for two years, working to fundraise for CAPstone and other work. In 2016, Moreno received the Outstanding Police Officer award from Kiwanis.

Moreno had resigned from the Gering Police Department in August.
Scot Mosher, who farms east of Scottsbluff, went before the Scotts Bluff County Board of Commissioners to share his concerns about an adjoining property that could become the site of a sand and gravel operation.

The 354-acre property adjoining his farm, located just south of the old Scottsbluff landfill, was recently authorized for sale by the landowner, the City of Scottsbluff. However, the land cant be sold to Croell Redi-Mix until a 30-day period for public input has passed.

One of the early concerns was raised by Meadowlark Hearth, a local organic farm and seed growing operation that is immediately to the west of the property.

Before Mosher raised his concerns, County Board Chairman Mark Masterton emphasized the county has yet to receive anything from its planning commission about the property, which is located within the county.

Croell is planning a concrete sand and gravel operation that will eventually include an asphalt plant, Mosher told the board. The property is pretty much pasture that also falls into a wetland area.

Mosher said none of the neighbors were notified about the potential sale of the land until Scottsbluff had voted on it.

This is pasture land and isnt intensive agriculture, he said. If Croell wanted to put in an extensive industrial operation, it would have been appropriate for them to let the surrounding landowners know.

He cited several concerns about the property being used for industrial purposes. The roads are built over wetlands and residents have trouble keeping them maintained. Also, he said Croell had a track history of environmental concerns, information readily available on the internet.

Mosher said the roads are hard to maintain and he doesnt know how theyll handle heavy truck traffic.

Most of the landowners in the area understand the economic impact Croell would have, Mosher said. We dont believe that all of the jobs will be high paying with benefits, as were told at the Scottsbluff council meeting. This project will be good for the community. We just dont think this the place for it.

He added that his opposition might be considered as not in my backyard, but he believes there are much better places for a sand and gravel operation.

Earlier in June, Croell had approached the City of Gering to purchase 80 acres in the citys industrial area.

The city declined to move ahead on the offer, claiming that several parties had expressed an interest in purchasing the property and the state requires any sale to be done by competitive sealed bid.

In addition, the city said the mineral rights on the property were retained by a previous owner, so a sand and gravel operation would be a prohibitive use.

At the time, Gering City Council member Ben Backus pointed out that state statute allows for property sales that are conveyed by ordinance. As for the mineral rights, Backus said a Supreme Court decision ruled that sand and gravel were not considered minerals.

Masterton told Mosher the Croell project cant go forward until the land sale is final. Then it will first be considered by the countys planning commission for any zoning issues. That meeting will give Mosher another opportunity to state his case.
The Chadron State Park Bioblitz will be held Friday Sept. 29 to Saturday Sept. 30. Attendees can team up with natural resource experts to discover western Nebraska plants, animals and more at this free family event. The schedule is as follows.

For more information, contact Amber Schiltz at 402-310-6137 or amber.schiltz@birdconservancy.org. A State Park permit required for entry at Chadron State Park. Activities will take place through-out the park. The Community Building will be the event head quarters, participants must sign in, session maps and equipment check out will be available.
LINCOLN  Lancaster County Treasurer Andy Stebbing said Friday he will remain in office as he fights five felony charges related to the illegal sale of vehicles and tax evasion.

The 53-year-old Republican, in his first public statement since he was charged in August, also said he plans to seek a third term in 2018. He commented Friday following a brief appearance in Lancaster County Court, where a judge allowed him to remain free without posting bail.

I have great confidence in the system, said Stebbing, a former longtime sheriffs deputy. This case is especially important because it may affect many Nebraskans who have ever purchased a car, or will purchase a car, and sell a car.

Investigators from the Nebraska State Patrol and the Nebraska Department of Revenue looked into private auto sales executed by Stebbing and the income generated by those sales.

The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office charged Stebbing with two counts of filing false state income tax returns in 2016 and 2017, two counts of filing false motor vehicle bills of sale, both in 2016, and one count of acting as an unlicensed motor vehicle dealer from November 2015 to July 2016.
Nebraska and Japan share a special relationship. Japan is not only our states largest direct foreign investor, but also our third largest export market. This week I will be leaving Nebraska and traveling to Japan on a mission to expand trade. This mission will be a great opportunity to expand trade opportunities with Japan and to make the case for additional investments to grow our state.

Theres a reason why Nebraskas relationship with Japan has flourished over the years. We share many things in common. Our people are hardworking and loyal. We both invest deeply in our families. And we both enjoy strong communities that pull together and invest in our people.

These shared values have helped make Japan one of Nebraskas top export markets. Nebraskas agriculture industry, our largest sector, is a prime example of how trade with Japan is growing our state. Japan is our largest export market for beef, pork, wheat, and eggs, as well as our second largest export market for corn. In total, we exports nearly $800 million worth of goods to Japan each year. This all adds up to make Japan our third largest export market, behind Mexico and Canada.

Not only is Japan one of our largest export markets, theyre also growing. Already in 2017 weve seen a 26 percent increase in beef exports and a 46 percent increase in pork exports over the year before. Its clear the Japanese people value our quality products and are willing to invest in our great state.

Thanks to the great relationships that weve built with Japan, theyve become our largest source of direct foreign investment. That investment has borne fruit in companies like Tenaska, an Omaha-based firm which employs nearly 300 Nebraskans. Tenaska has been able to form partnerships with Japanese companies like Mitsubishi and Itochu. Tenaska is one of over 120 companies across Nebraska which actively do business with Japan. Tenaska and other companies are taking advantage of this weeks mission to identify opportunities for new partnerships and investments. Joining me on the trade mission will be Department of Economic Development (DED) Director Courtney Dentlinger, Department of Agriculture (DOA) Assistant Director Mat Habrock, as well as members of Nebraskas business and agricultural sectors.

While in Japan, I will participate in the Midwest US-Japan Association (MWJA) Conference. Nine Midwestern states are involved in the MWJA, which provides opportunities for our ag and business leaders to grow their knowledge about bilateral trade. The MWJA has been very beneficial for Nebraskas exporters, and were pleased to have the opportunity to host next years 50th anniversary conference in Omaha in 2018!

This week, I will also be visiting the Japan Export Trade Research Organization (JETRO). JETRO is Japans independent government agency established to facilitate the countrys efforts in export promotion. There I will be highlighting additional opportunities to strengthen Nebraskas relationship with Japan. These meetings will connect Nebraskas companies with opportunities to enter and expand in the Japanese market.

On Thursday, the trade delegation and I will visit Shizuoka to promote investment opportunities here in Nebraska. We will also be visiting Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto where we will visit several companies with operations here in Nebraska to thank them for their investments which are growing our state.

Nebraska enjoys cultural and educational benefits through our sister city program and partnerships. Currently Nebraska has two sister cities in Japan, Shizuoka, which has been partnered with Omaha for over 50 years, and Ozu, which has been partnered with Hastings for over 20 years. The sister cities facilitate exchanges for teachers, students, hospitals, and even animals between their zoos. These strong connections have solidified the special relationship between Nebraska and Japan, which is one reason why there have been nine Governors Office-led trade missions there since 1991.

Trade missions have been a key part of my grow Nebraska agenda. In addition to this mission to Japan, I also led a mission to Canada to thank our largest trading partner earlier this summer. Throughout my administration, I will continue to pursue new opportunities to grow our state through new trade opportunities and partnerships. If you have any experiences in Japan, either personal or business-related, I would love to hear about them! Feel free to call my office at 402-471-2244 or email me at pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov to share your experiences or any other matter on your mind. We look forward to hearing from you!
A white University of Kentucky student accused of physically assaulting a Black student worker while repeatedly using racial slurs says she will withdraw from the school. The decision announced Tuesday by a lawyer for 22-year-old Sophia Rosing came after hundreds of students rallied on campus the night before. News outlets report the students called for unity and for the university to quickly address the situation. Officials say Rosing has been charged with assault, public intoxication and disorderly conduct. She pleaded not guilty during an arraignment Monday afternoon. The altercation at Boyd Hall was captured on video and posted to multiple social media platforms.
When protests erupted in Ferguson in 2014, St. Louis area law enforcement struggled to keep pace with what quickly became one of the biggest political social media movements of the decade.

According to Twitter, #Ferguson was the most used social activism hashtag within the first 10 years of the platform with more than 27 million tweets.

But while activists spread their message and mastered tools such as live-streaming video and sharing photos that characterized protests and the issue of police brutality, local police departments often let the narratives go unanswered on the platforms where they were shared.

Not anymore.

As St. Louis sees a new protest movement after the acquittal of former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockley in the killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, the departments are deploying a proactive social media strategy designed to quash rumors, give constant updates and spread the police viewpoint directly into thousands of social media feeds.

Were going to tell our own story, said Schron Jackson, public information officer with the St. Louis Police Department, who helps run the social media pages. We dont want our officers to be mischaracterized, so we have to be their voice.

Tough lessons from Ferguson

I think Ferguson taught us all something, said Jackson, who has been with the department for 18 years. I understand what we were missing, so when things happen here thats always my first thought.

A review of police conduct during the 2014 protests by the Department of Justice concluded: The police on the scene in Ferguson had no concept of the effect of social media until it was too late, and all they could do was play catch-up with the massive amounts of data being shared.

For example, the St. Louis County police, the lead agency in the investigation of the shooting of Michael Brown, which ignited the protest, waited 23 hours before addressing the incident on social media.

The first Facebook post gave almost no details but told the public to please keep watching this page for more information to come on this incident. The next update about the incident on the page came 15 days later. Meanwhile, protesters and others on social media quickly shaped the narrative.

The twitter hashtag #handsupdontshoot began to define the shooting, after witnesses claimed they saw an officer shoot Brown while his back was turned and he was attempting to surrender. A review of witness statements by the Department of Justice later disagreed with those early accounts.

There were constant rumors about the protests  spread both about police and the protesters  through social media.

Claims that officers made arrests for no reason were later debunked by a Post-Dispatch photographer. There were tweets claiming a group of protesters looted a McDonalds, when journalists later reported that the store owners had welcomed protesters. The hacker group Anonymous spread private information about a St. Ann Police Department dispatcher who the group claimed was Browns killer. The posts lead to death threats, but the man had nothing to do with the shooting.

Law enforcement agencies soon began to adapt.

Social media was once an add-on duty for county police, but it became a full-time job about three months after Brown was shot when the department hired Vera Culley as its first social media coordinator.

Culley still handles social media for the department.

We were losing, Culley said of the time before she was hired. Social media is where that story happened and we werent there at the beginning.

Social media during the Stockley protests

The lead police agency during the Stockley protests, the St. Louis Police Department, tweeted more within the first 10 hours of the Stockley verdict than the county did in the first two months after Brown was shot.

The posts are also reaching a bigger audience.

Both the county and city police Facebook likes have more than doubled since the early days of the Ferguson unrest. And they continue to grow.

Since the Stockley verdict was announced Sept. 15, the St. Louis city police Twitter account has gained more than 10,000 followers.

Police posts about the protests have fallen into several categories, each with its own rationale for spreading the police message.

Play-by-play alerts and warnings  Both departments social media accounts have shared up-to-date alerts about road closures and the status and location of protests, more than in the early days of Ferguson.

Theyve posted when the departments determine a protest is no longer peaceful and share orders to disperse and warnings of arrest.

The reason behind these posts is simple, according to Jackson: Give the public in the area information for their plans or safety.

Proof of escalation  The departments have also shared images and descriptions of property damage or threats to police from protesters.

Jackson says these posts are shared to give context for when police advance on protesters or use force to disperse a crowd.

City police posted images of broken windows and weapons confiscated.

And both departments have shared posts recounting aggression toward officers, including images of red liquid, bottles and rocks they say were thrown at the police line.

This type of post first became standard procedure during the unrest in Ferguson, Culley said.

There was a lot of live video coverage, but you would see the police line start moving forward and the tone was that theyre moving in and nothing is happening, Culley said. But theres so much that theyre not seeing. There are things being thrown at officers, but the camera doesnt show that.

Though the departments view these posts as balancing the narrative, some protest supporters on social media have complained they overemphasize a few instances of violence while protests have been mostly peaceful.

In one example, a tweet by St. Louis County Police included a photo of two spray bottles with the description: Officers confiscate bottles with unknown chemicals used against police tonight in downtown.

A close-up image of one of the bottles showed it was labeled apple cider. Many protesters believed it was apple cider vinegar, said to lessen the effects of tear gas used by police.

Activists ridiculed the department, claiming the description of unknown chemicals over-emphasized the threat.

The countys page did not ignore the complaints.

If theyre using it against officers, it becomes a weapon, the departments Twitter account posted.

The liquid inside the bottles is still being tested by county police. It was not apple cider, Culley said.

Rumor control  Rumors were rampant in the early days of Ferguson, but police departments have been aggressive this time in debunking false claims.

The clearest example is the city departments response to a rumor that officers were breaking windows in the Central West End and blaming damage on protesters.

It started with a video shared on Facebook the morning of Sept. 16 by documentary filmmaker Chris Phillips, who has been posting regular updates from the protests. Phillips speculated that the video showed a St. Louis police officer breaking a window at Culpeppers restaurant, 900 North Euclid Avenue.

The footage included the sound of glass breaking and the camera swinging to show an officer walking away from the restaurant, but did not show the officer breaking the glass.

The story was shared widely. St. Louis alt-weekly, the Riverfront Times, published a story about the video with the original headline: Did Cop Shatter Culpeppers Window During Protest?

The St. Louis Police Department responded on social media with two surveillance videos showing a protester hurling a chair through the window earlier in the night.

In a tweet directed to the Riverfront Times, the department said: Presenting facts, not sharing false narrative, is important.

Police later tweeted that the uniformed man in the video was a firefighter who was removing a dangerous piece of broken glass.

Jackson said the city police communications team would post video or photos whenever possible.

If we have a video to support what were saying, you know we will share that, Jackson said. People need to see it for themselves because whatever we say, a lot of people wont believe it.

But rumor control and response to complaints have been a regular part of the departments social media during the protests.

The city police account recently pointed out a digitally manipulated image in which a Twitter user added a gun to a St. Louis police officers hands.

The account also responded to critics who stated that an older woman was knocked down without reason by police during a protest on Sept. 15. The police department posted on Twitter that she failed to obey officers orders & was charged w/ Interfering.

On Wednesday night, county police clarified initial reports of mass arrests, including legal observers, at protests on Brentwood Boulevard near the Galleria.

Clear: no arrests made, the account tweeted less than a half hour after the first report of arrests was posted.

Pro-police stories  Some posts are about support for the department  community members donating snacks and drinks for officers, positive interactions with community members and messages of support from the public.

These posts simply put a human face on police and support officers, Jackson said.

These officers are human, but on the front lines they arent able to speak out, said Culley. But we can.
ST. CHARLES  A few hundred protesters marched down Main Street in St. Charles Friday night chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, these killer cops have got to go," one week after a white police officer was acquitted in the shooting death of a black drug suspect.

The protesters initially gathered outside Trailhead Brewing Co. and briefly surrounded a car that was trying to pass as police arrived. Later, protesters stopped traffic at the intersection of Main and Jefferson for six minutes, to dramatize the six years it took for authorities to bring former St. Louis patrolman Jason Stockley to trial in the 2011 shooting death of drug suspect Anthony Lamar Smith.

Stockley was acquitted of that murder charge last Friday in the death of Smith. The judge's verdict in the bench trial has spawned a week of sometimes violent protests, property damage and scores of arrests.

At one point Friday night, protesters walked past several hundred attendees of an Oktoberfest event. Separated by a fence, the attendees yelled at the protesters to go home. Police were seen arresting one man who punched a protester.

Most of the spaces at the struggling mall are empty but a few large tenants remain, including Cabela's, Burlington and an 18-screen Regal movie theater complex. St. Louis Outlet posted on its Facebook page that the mall itself would close at 5 p.m..

Cabela's, which usually is open until 9 p.m. on Fridays, closed at 6 p.m. Friday, according to a notice on its website. Burlington and the Regal theater complex closed at 5 p.m. A "St. Louis Call to Action" notice was posted on social media Friday, urging protesters of the Stockley verdict to assemble at the mall's parking lot at 6:30 p.m. but only a few people showed up and no protest was staged.

Those protesting the verdict have held demonstrations throughout the region during the past week, including at several St. Louis area malls. Thursday night, protesters blocked Brentwood Boulevard near the St. Louis Galleria, prompting an early closure at the mall.

At Pi Pizzeria on Manchester Road in Kirkwood, plans for two opposing protests following controversial comments by the restaurant's owner apparently failed to materialize late Friday afternoon.

In a statement made on social media earlier this week, Pi co-founder Chris Sommers criticized police tactics in quelling protests after last Friday's vercdict, calling it "terrorizing" and "alarming" and lambasting officers for what he described as the warrantless use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

Sommers' comments have drawn condemnation from police and sparked plans by police supporters to protest Friday at the Kirkwood Pi. Counterprotesters also had said they would demonstrate in support of Sommers.

But according to restaurant workers, the crowd at 6 p.m. was standard for a Friday night, and it was hard to tell if anyone was supporting any issue other than eating pizza.

One of the people who showed up was Missouri state Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood. "I'm here to support a really good Kirkwood business . . . that's in my district," she said. She added that she had talked with Kirkwood police to make clear that her attendance was not meant to be a statement against police officers.

"I support the police as well. There is no `right side' in this" situation, Lavender said. "I'm here hoping that somehow we can bring both sides to the table."

Echoing Lavender's sentiment was retired St. Louis teacher Judy Mutchler. "I'm not `pro-police' or 'pro-protester," she said. "But sadly it seems to be turning into that."

Bill Pautler of Glendale said he showed up to support his daughter and son-in-law, who are both St. Louis police officers. "We lost a lot of sleep worrying about them this weekend," he said. "I thought that what Mr. Sommers said about police officers was totally disrespectful and uncalled for."

Sommers, the restaurant co-founder, showed up there in the early evening and declared the threatened pro-police protest "a nothing-burger."

Lisa Brown, Joe Holleman and Kevin McDermott of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed to this report.
A man walking at night encounters a neighbor down on his knees under a lamppost. Whatre you looking for? he asks.

My keys, the neighbor responds.

Where did you lose them?

Over there, the neighbor says, pointing toward an unlit area.

Then why are you looking here?

Because the lights better.

Protesting can be a lot like looking for keys. Just because the protest venue is convenient and likely to get lots of media coverage doesnt necessarily mean its the best place for protesters to direct their anger.

Going after businesses in the Delmar Loop, for example, targets people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sept. 15 not-guilty verdict in former St. Louis police Officer Jason Stockleys murder trial. Immigrant and minority-owned businesses suffered. Employers who provide crucial weekend and summer jobs for local youths also were penalized. As a result, some kids might be out of a job.

Cancellation of the U2 concert in St. Louis on Sept. 16 also left behind a lot of collateral economic damage. Anyone hoping to make a little extra money that night selling concessions, doing cleanup work or other temporary support jobs was out of luck. It wasnt millionaire fat cats reeling in financial agony. The real pain was felt by the laborers who depended on those temp jobs.

Mayor Lyda Krewson also found her home targeted and vandalized for reasons that were never quite clear. She had nothing to do with the verdict or the police actions that led to it. Yet apparently no protests occurred outside the home of Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson, who issued the Stockley verdict.

Amid all the angry and well-justified outrage over racism and skewed justice, another big target has escaped protesters attention.

On multiple occasions over the past year, this newspaper and the Riverfront Times, among others, have drawn attention to the AM radio antics of Bob Romanik, whose racist tirades air each weekday morning at 10 a.m. on KQQZ.

Weve written about Romanik specifically to rouse our readers and the Federal Communications Commission. He is in love with the N-word, and one of our editorials, on Feb. 7, deliberately spelled out the word for readers so they could experience the full gravity of his on-air hate speech.

Weve even given readers email addresses and phone numbers to call to complain about Romanik. The response has been overwhelmingly underwhelming. Not a word from the likes of State Rep. Bruce Franks or city Treasurer Tishaura Jones. Not a soul has shown up to protest outside the KQQZ main offices at 4500 West Main St. in Belleville.

On Sept. 15, Romaniks morning broadcast went live only minutes after news broke of the Stockley verdict. (He nicknames his broadcast the dark side. Which is to say, as far as you can get from the lamppost of enlightenment.)

Romanik launched immediately into a monologue and spoke predictably in support of the verdict. He even played Kool & the Gangs Celebration to cheer Wilsons decision. Then, less than eight minutes into the broadcast, Romanik got to his main point in reference to the people who were already protesting outside City Hall:

I say to you, black, greasy, bastard, no count, good for nothing black religious leaders.  Youve pushed us a little bit too far, and its not gonna work.

He took his first phone call from a listener, who tried to give his opinion about Stockleys hot-pursuit statement of intent to kill suspected drug dealer Anthony Lamar Smith. Romanik interrupted before the caller could finish. He said he was gonna kill a black man when that man was driving down the street all erratic, Romanik shouted. The police officer has the right to kill a person to stop them from killing somebody else.

The African-American caller tried to speak. Romanik cut him off and shouted, Hey, let me talk nig-. Hey, let me talk. ... The caller kept trying, but Romanik wouldnt let him talk. Will you shut up, you stupid nigger son of bitch? Hey, you know what? I dont even want to talk to you. You can kiss my ass, you nigger.

Romaniks next caller described himself as a brother in blue. That is, a police officer. And the caller made no attempt to question Romaniks hate speech. The two basically gave each other radio high-fives. Other officers called in.

Later in the broadcast, just after fielding a call from a self-described proud white man who referred to protesters using the N-word, Romanik had the gall to declare that he was trying to stop racial conflict.

On Wednesday, another caller phoned in and invoked the N-word. Romanik urged the man to keep talking  without interruption.

For all the energy spent shouting and marching along the Loop, the Central West End, downtown, or at the Galleria, no one is addressing the man who is stoking the flames of racism in this region more than anyone else.

And why is that? Well, the lights better over here.
Its increasingly apparent that the St. Louis County Council needs its own legal representation independent of the counsel it currently shares with County Executive Steve Stenger. Counselor Peter Krane, who was appointed by Stenger, has put up far too many obstacles on oversight issues in which the council has clashed with the county executive.

The most current obstacle involves the need for more county auditors. Council Chairman Sam Page says he has evidence suggesting that Krane is allowing political favoritism and an alliance with Stenger to cloud his ability to provide legal advice to the council. Weve seen some of that evidence, and its compelling, especially on the topic of audit authority.

Given the inordinate number of times Stengers name has come into play regarding questionable deals involving his political donors, its time for the County Council to expand its independent oversight, which it cant do if the legal advice it receives comes from someone with conflicting loyalties.

Criticism about Stengers campaign donors and loyal friends being awarded county contracts has dogged him for more than a year. Stenger has denied steering county business toward contributors. Taxpayers deserve to know whether the awarding process is free of political favoritism.

Page summed it up when he told the Post-Dispatchs Jacob Barker that he couldnt verify the allegations, but theres a lot of stories about the exchange of campaign contributions for county contracts, and we need to get to the bottom of it.

Auditing county contracts would answer the question either way. If Stenger has nothing to hide, as he has repeatedly asserted, he should not be worried about what an audit would expose. He contends that St. Louis County does not need a third auditor, despite a 2015 county report calling for additional auditing staff. Page says that St. Charles County, about a third the size of St. Louis County, has six auditors.

Stenger seems to want control over situations that arent necessarily in his domain. He had an embarrassing public feud over MetroLink security and then got upset when Page maneuvered to halt the ice rink development at Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park.

Because he doesnt control the auditors office, it appears that Stenger doesnt want more auditors. He has accused the current auditor, brought in by Page, of incompetence and called for his firing. Page says Stenger has denied the auditor access to information needed to conduct audits.

Pages solution of bringing in independent counsel to try to settle the ongoing feud has merit. County contracts must be scrutinized so taxpayers know whether the county executives donors and loyal friends are winning them fairly. Independent auditing would help clear the air on deals that have raised questions.

If counselor Krane is the impediment to greater auditing transparency, its time to hire an outsider.
The search for a new chief of the St. Louis Police Department got a lot harder last week  and a lot more urgent. In the wake of the Sept. 15 acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley in the 2011 shooting death of a drug suspect, many of the issues that make the chiefs job so difficult were on full display: Multiple street protests alleging systemic police racism; pushback by some officers feeling the stress of 12-hour shifts; a hasty vote under political pressure by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to approve a trial contract for police body cameras; a Board of Aldermen vote to honor the drug suspect.

Under the surface were political tensions left over from the April mayoral election. City Treasurer Tishaura Jones, who lost the March Democratic primary to Lyda Krewson by just 879 votes, joined the second night of protests. Krewsons home had been vandalized the previous night, even though she had nothing to do with the verdict and supported the right to protest.

It was Krewson who created the chiefs job opening on her first day in office by accepting the resignation of Chief Sam Dotson. It will be Krewson who will have final say over his successor after a citizens committee gathers community reaction. Krewson appears to be in no hurry. She should be.

The political uncertainty cant be much of an inducement. Nor can community tensions. Nor can looming pay disparities that by Jan. 1 could reach $20,000 a year between St. Louis officers and their counterparts in St. Louis County. City voters will decide Nov. 7 on a half-cent sales tax increase to close the gap, but residual anger could affect the vote. This would surely be self-defeating, driving good officers elsewhere.

The issue of body cameras now becomes part of the collective bargaining negotiations. Officers are leery. The contract approved by the estimate board last week, in a meeting full of angry protesters, is full of holes. But at least the issue is now on the table.

Meanwhile, gun crime is up and homicides are on pace for a 22-year high. City officers have shot and killed eight people so far this year, all of them armed. Other people have shot and killed at least 130 more.

Choosing a police chief used to be a lot simpler: The inside guy with the best combination of experience and political connections got the job. Now state control is gone, and candidates from the outside are actively being sought to take over an insular department long averse to change.

Change is costly, both financially and politically, said Chuck Wexler, who heads the Police Executive Research Forum, a national think tank. But there are people out there who want to make a difference and arent intimidated.

Lets all hope and pray thats so.
hawar, Pohan said that Afghanistan has the right to maintain good diplomatic relations with other countries including India. Wherever Pak-Afghan relations come under discussion, everyone blames India, the Afghan counsel general said.

Afghanistan also has other neighbours  including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan  but we have had a strong love and affiliation with the people of Pakistan for decades, he added.

He said that both Pakistan and Afghanistan have independent diplomatic policies and their relations with other countries do not affect their mutual relationship. He also said, "The Pak-Afghan relationship is stronger than bonds with other countries and I hope that the relationship will further improve in future."

He said that the love between the people of the two countries has flourished over the years as they enjoy the same culture and lifestyle. The people of the both country, Pakistan and Afghanistan should play their role in improving and further deepening the relationship, he suggested.
Mount Maunganui was a sea of purple this morning as hundreds of people gathered at Coronation Park for the Alzheimers Tauranga Memory Walk.

We had 250 people pre-registered and another 100 turned up on the day, says organiser Julie Sargisson.

The Alzheimers Tauranga Memory Walk, now in its fourth year, falls during World Alzheimers Month and is for people of all ages and abilities to honour family and community members that have been or are affected by dementia.

Over 60,000 people in New Zealand have dementia, says Jolene James, from The Breeze. That number is expected to triple in the next three years.

My mum passed away last year after about seven years with dementia. It was really tough. I know what its like and hopefully this event will raise more awareness of it. It took us a while before we realised what was going on for Mum. This is helping raise awareness and funds.

After Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless spoke to the crowd, Tauranga Samba musicians, all dressed in purple, led the procession out of Coronation Park and into Salisbury Ave. Walkers continued on the 4km course down Pilot Bay, across to Marine Parade, up Banks Ave, and back to Coronation Park. The route was wheelchair, family and dog friendly.

Participants included groups from Hamilton and Tauranga, and staff and residents from Radius Althorp in Pyes Pa, and Carter House in Te Puke.

Funds raised will assist Alzheimers Tauranga to support people living with dementia, carers, family, whanau and friends to live as well as possible. The organisation works with individuals and families to provide personalised education and support, and offers support groups, activity groups and a volunteer companion and befriender programme.

Dementia is a massive issue for those who have got it or are supporting someone who has got it, says Julie. But also for society because the number of people with dementia has increased and will keep increasing as our population ages.

All participants received a purple Memory Walk t-shirt. For more information or to support the fundraising contact Julie on (07) 577 6344 or email tauranga@alzhiemers.org.nz

Becky Parata, Oakly Macdonald (age 3) with grandmother Bev Carnie, Vivienne ONeill, Gillian Russell and Tess Hawkins, all from Carter House in Te Puke.

The Kukutai family from Hamilton and Tauranga.

Marie Roberts, Noelene McLean and Neta Lawrence, from Radius Althorp.

Back row: Sukhbir Kaur, Marie Roberts, Noelene McLean, Neta Lawrence, Harry Singh, Aman Singh. Front Row: Ethel Smith, Terry McComish and Barry Humphrey. All from Radius Althorp in Pyes Pa.
11.55PM: The National Party has a 10 point lead on Labour, with 46 per cent of the vote to Labours 35.8 per cent.

New Zealand First will be the kingmaker, with both the right and left blocs requiring New Zealand Firsts 7.5 per cent share of the vote in order to govern.

The big upset of the night is the fate Maori Party, which has lost its sole electorate of Waiariki to Labours Tamati Coffey.

Tamati won the Maori seat with 9847 votes to Te Ururoas 8526.

National: 46 per cent

Labour: 35.8 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.5 per cent

Greens: 5.8 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.2 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

10.55PM: Todd McClay has won Rotorua, with 100 per cent of the vote counted. Labours Ben Sandford has come second, with New Zealand Firsts Fletcher Tabuteau in third place.



Candidate Votes

BIDDLE, Wendy: 548

CLARK, Rachel: 132

GILLIES, Richard: 1139

McCLAY, Todd: 16,544

PATTERSON, Owen: 93

SANDFORD, Ben: 9114

TABUTEAU, Fletcher: 2685

Party Votes

National: 15,226

Labour: 9434

New Zealand First: 3116

Greens: 1164

The Opportunities Party: 772

Maori Party: 350

ACT: 98

10.25PM: 90 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.2 per cent

Labour: 35.7 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.5 per cent

Greens: 5.9 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.2 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

10.15PM: Labours Tamati Coffey has all but won the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 84.4 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 8628

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 7560

Labour Party Vote: 56.9 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 20.6 per cent.

10.10PM: Todd McClay has won Rotorua, with 93 per cent of the vote counted.



Candidate Votes

BIDDLE, Wendy: 510

CLARK, Rachel: 123

GILLIES, Richard: 1039

McCLAY, Todd: 14,902

PATTERSON, Owen: 90

SANDFORD, Ben: 8304

TABUTEAU, Fletcher: 2426

Party Votes

National: 13,701

Labour: 8632

New Zealand First: 2800

Greens: 1057

The Opportunities Party: 698

Maori Party: 327

ACT: 91

10.05PM: 84.3 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.4 per cent

Labour: 35.6 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.4 per cent

Greens: 5.9 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.2 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

10PM: Scott Simpson has won Coromandel, with 89.5 per cent of the vote counted.



Candidate Votes

ANDREWS, Anne-Marie: 3529

BLOMFIELD, Nathaniel James: 7400

GRAF, Clyde: 715

SIMPSON, Scott: 20,401

SUMMERFIELD, Scott: 4121

Party Votes

National: 19,125

Labour: 9852

New Zealand First: 4496

Greens: 1804

The Opportunities Party: 540

Maori Party: 68

ACT: 150

9.55PM: 76.5 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.5 per cent

Labour: 35.6 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.4 per cent

Greens: 5.8 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.2 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

9.45PM: Labours Tamati Coffey is expanding his lead in the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 65.4 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 7085

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 6182

Labour Party Vote: 56.8 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 21 per cent.

9.35PM: 65.6 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.6 per cent

Labour: 35.5 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.4 per cent

Greens: 5.9 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.1 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

9.25PM: Scott Simpson has a strong lead in Coromandel, with 74.4 per cent of the vote counted.



Candidate Votes

ANDREWS, Anne-Marie: 3115

BLOMFIELD, Nathaniel James: 6535

GRAF, Clyde: 598

SIMPSON, Scott: 18,046

SUMMERFIELD, Scott: 3532

Party Votes

National: 16,904

Labour: 8642

New Zealand First: 3966

Greens: 1566

The Opportunities Party: 460

Maori Party: 55

ACT: 125

9.15PM: 50 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.7 per cent

Labour: 35.5 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.3 per cent

Greens: 5.9 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2.1 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

9.05PM: Labours Tamati Coffey is holding onto his lead in the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 33.2 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 4991

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 4541

Labour Party Vote: 56.2 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 22 per cent.

8.55PM: Todd McClay is leading in Rotorua, with 28.2 per cent of the vote counted.



Candidate Votes

BIDDLE, Wendy: 243

CLARK, Rachel: 60

GILLIES, Richard: 462

McCLAY, Todd: 7251

PATTERSON, Owen: 37

SANDFORD, Ben: 4240

TABUTEAU, Fletcher: 1222

Party Votes

National: 6675

Labour: 4424

New Zealand First: 1421

Greens: 474

The Opportunities Party: 313

Maori Party: 160

ACT: 40

8.50PM: 35.4 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.4 per cent

Labour: 35.9 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.2 per cent

Greens: 6.1 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 2 per cent

Maori Party: 1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

8.45PM: Scott Simpson is leading in Coromandel, with 37.2 per cent of the vote counted.



Candidate Votes

ANDREWS, Anne-Marie: 2065

BLOMFIELD, Nathaniel James: 4454

GRAF, Clyde: 331

SIMPSON, Scott: 11,913

SUMMERFIELD, Scott: 2156

Party Votes

National: 11,168

Labour: 5728

New Zealand First: 2594

Greens: 1024

The Opportunities Party: 259

Maori Party: 35

ACT: 71

8.40PM: Labours Tamati Coffey is still ahead in the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 20 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 3458

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 3017

Labour Party Vote: 56.9 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 20.9 per cent.

8.25PM: 25.5 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.2 per cent

Labour: 36.1 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.1 per cent

Greens: 6.1 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 1.9 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

8.05PM: Labours Tamati Coffey is keeping his lead in the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 13.2 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 2573

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 2108

Labour Party Vote: 57.5 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 20 per cent.

7.50PM: 18.4 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46 per cent

Labour: 36.5 per cent

New Zealand First: 7 per cent

Greens: 6.1 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 1.9 per cent

Maori Party: 1.1 per cent

ACT: 0.5 per cent

7.35PM: Labours Tamati Coffey leads in the Waiariki electorate, currently held by Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell, with 6.3 per cent of the vote counted.



COFFEY, Tamati: 1045

FLAVELL, Te Ururoa: 768

Labour Party Vote: 57.2 per cent

Maori Party Vote: 16.4 per cent.

7.30PM: 11.3 per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46.6 per cent

Labour: 36.3 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.1 per cent

Greens: 5.8 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 1.9 per cent

Maori Party: 0.9 per cent

ACT: 0.4 per cent

7.15PM: Four per cent of the vote has been counted.

National: 46 per cent

Labour: 36.5 per cent

New Zealand First: 7.2 per cent

Greens: 6.1 per cent

The Opportunities Party: 1.9 per cent

Maori Party: 1 per cent

ACT: 0.4 per cent

7PM:

The polls are now closed for Election 2017, and counting has begun to determine the make-up of the 52nd New Zealand Parliament.

SunLive will be bringing you both national and local results as they come in.

The electoral commission expects all advance votes to be counted by 8.30pm  all 1.24 million of them (500,000 more people voted early in this election than in 2014).

By 10pm, half of votes cast today are expected to be counted, while by 11.30pm, 100 per cent of votes cast thus far should be tallied.

Keep checking this story for the latest updates, and follow the conversation on our Facebook page.
11.55PM: Todd Muller has won Bay of Plenty, with 100 per cent of the vote counted. Labours Angie Warren-Clark has come second, while New Zealand Firsts Lester Gray has come in third place.



Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 431

CARLEY, Bruce: 157

GRAY, Lester: 3641

MULLER, Todd: 22,688

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 9547

Party Votes

National: 20,554

Labour: 8952

New Zealand First: 4118

Greens: 1352

The Opportunities Party: 1066

Maori Party: 163

ACT: 174

10PM: Todd Muller has won Bay of Plenty, with 87.7 per cent of the vote counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 381

CARLEY, Bruce: 146

GRAY, Lester: 3333

MULLER, Todd: 21,355

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 8794

Party Votes

National: 17,351

Labour: 8286

New Zealand First: 3791

Greens: 1243

The Opportunities Party: 945

Maori Party: 150

ACT: 161

9.50PM: 75.4 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 336

CARLEY, Bruce: 134

GRAY, Lester: 3007

MULLER, Todd: 19,752

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 8020

Party Votes

National: 17,957

Labour: 7566

New Zealand First: 3403

Greens: 1150

The Opportunities Party: 842

Maori Party: 124

ACT: 147

9.40PM: 67.7 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 322

CARLEY, Bruce: 126

GRAY, Lester: 2894

MULLER, Todd: 19,020

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 7789

Party Votes

National: 17,300

Labour: 7356

New Zealand First: 3260

Greens: 1109

The Opportunities Party: 805

Maori Party: 121

ACT: 141

9.30PM: 50.8 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 274

CARLEY, Bruce: 109

GRAY, Lester: 2531

MULLER, Todd: 16,864

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 6847

Party Votes

National: 15,370

Labour: 6466

New Zealand First: 2868

Greens: 956

The Opportunities Party: 688

Maori Party: 110

ACT: 113

9.05PM: 35.4 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 223

CARLEY, Bruce: 89

GRAY, Lester: 2026

MULLER, Todd: 13,986

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 5546

Party Votes

National: 12,814

Labour: 5241

New Zealand First: 2320

Greens: 764

The Opportunities Party: 518

Maori Party: 88

ACT: 93

8.40PM: 30.8 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 199

CARLEY, Bruce: 82

GRAY, Lester: 1871

MULLER, Todd: 12,789

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 4997

Party Votes

National: 11778

Labour: 4675

New Zealand First: 2149

Greens: 693

The Opportunities Party: 456

Maori Party: 77

ACT: 84

8.15PM: 29.2 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 195

CARLEY, Bruce: 82

GRAY, Lester: 1866

MULLER, Todd: 12,787

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 4992

Party Votes

National: 11774

Labour: 4669

New Zealand First: 2148

Greens: 692

The Opportunities Party: 453

Maori Party: 76

ACT: 84

8PM: 26.2 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 156

CARLEY, Bruce: 68

GRAY, Lester: 1615

MULLER, Todd: 10,586

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 4317

Party Votes

National: 9755

Labour: 4048

New Zealand First: 1846

Greens: 576

The Opportunities Party: 373

Maori Party: 59

ACT: 74

7.35PM: 23.1 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 153

CARLEY, Bruce: 67

GRAY, Lester: 1593

MULLER, Todd: 10,466

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 4258

Party Votes

National: 9638

Labour: 3994

New Zealand First: 1830

Greens: 569

The Opportunities Party: 369

Maori Party: 58

ACT: 72

7.20PM: 13.8 per cent of the vote has been counted.

Candidate Votes

BENNETT, Raewyn: 98

CARLEY, Bruce: 50

GRAY, Lester: 1143

MULLER, Todd: 7578

WARREN-CLARK, Angie: 3228

Party Votes

National: 6953

Labour: 3041

New Zealand First: 1339

Greens: 404

The Opportunities Party: 266

Maori Party: 44

ACT: 49

7PM:

Polls across the Bay of Plenty are now closed for Election 2017, and counting has begun to determine who will be the electorates MP.

SunLive will be bringing you the local results for the Bay of Plenty as they come in.

The electoral commission expects all advance votes to be counted by 8.30pm  all 1.24 million of them (500,000 more people voted early in this election than in 2014).

By 10pm, half of votes cast today are expected to be counted, while by 11.30pm, 100 per cent of votes cast thus far should be tallied.

Keep checking this story for the latest updates on the Bay of Plenty electorate, and follow the conversation on our Facebook page.
Tauranga-based New Zealand First MP Clayton Mitchell will be returning to parliament for a second term on his partys list  but this time he will be part of the government.

When SunLive caught up with him this morning he was preparing to watch the Joseph Parker/Hughie Fury match with some family and friends.

However, it was a different kind of blood sport  politics  he was interested in talking about.

He says hes very pleased to be heading back down to Wellington, but also believes New Zealand First could have done things differently to get a better result after dropping 1.1 per cent in the party vote.

I was surprised, as I believed there was a feeling out there of us getting over 10 per cent. But it just goes to show people were convinced to go either blue or red by the media focus on the main two parties.

Its not actually about me, though, its about the party. Thats the vote weve gone for right from the start. I think Simon and Jan have both done a great job, and Ive congratulated both of them.

As the numbers stand, neither the left nor the right bloc can govern without the support of New Zealand First, meaning the partys MPs will have a role to play in the next government.

For Clayton, neither National nor Labour hold any particular sway as preferred coalition partner.

The preference for me is having policies to benefit all New Zealanders. Its not about red or blue for me.

And what about a possible cabinet post for the Tauranga MP?

Its too early for those discussions. Weve got three new members in our caucus team, and the priority is putting a government together. If theres a role to be played, and a person is suited to it, that person will be considered. Thats how New Zealand First works.

He says although Nationals party vote has remained fairly consistent in this election, the departure of United Future and the Maori Party is significant.

The political landscape has completely changed. But weve held up well, and we can build from here.

As to what hed like to see for Tauranga, Clayton picks transportation and housing as two issues that need addressing.

Id like to see serious changes to alleviate housing pressures, mainly by cutting back on immigration and foreign speculation. Id also like to see the 15th Avenue/Turret Road project completed, which the government hasnt kept its word on, as well as taking tolls off Route K.
A local disability advocate is calling for a boycott of Event Cinemas Tauranga by people with disabilities until it can provide adequate seating for wheelchair patrons and their companions.

Tauranga couple Merle and Dion Seeling approached The Weekend Sun this week after years of frustrating attempts to sit together when going to the movies.

Unlike other cinemas in the city, Event Cinemas Tauranga in Elizabeth St (formerly Bay City Cinemas) does not have rows of seating with seats removed so wheelchair patrons can sit next to their companions.

Wheelchair patrons must sit in a space behind their seated companions  a space that also contains rubbish bins.

Event Cinemas general manager of operations in New Zealand Carmen Switzer reacted swiftly, saying the cinema would be removing and modifying some of its existing seats so they can be placed alongside the wheelchair space provided when it is in use. Rubbish bins will also be permanently relocated to an alternative area.

We will have this in place as soon as the cinema seats can be modified, she says.

Merle used to take her own camping chair along to the cinema so she could sit next to her husband Dion, who uses a wheelchair.

I did that about three times and then I thought no, they can provide me with a chair. They brought me an old wooden chair that creaked the whole way through the movie. Why should I have to sit on something like that when Ive paid the same price as everybody else?

On some occasions Merle will be given a comfortable office chair to sit in, but that is not always the case.

We feel segregated, and when youre in a wheelchair you dont want to draw extra attention to yourself. When we go to the movies Ill push Dion into the space, remove the rubbish bin to the other side of the room and then stand and wait for a staff member to bring me a chair. Its unnecessary and weve got to the point we dont want to go any more.

Disabled Persons Assembly spokesman and chair of Taurangas Disability Advisory Group, Paul Curry, is proposing a boycott of Event Cinemas Tauranga until such time as the company honours its commitments to people with disabilities.

He says he has spoken with the general manager at the cinema several times about the issue, including after it was taken over by Event Cinemas in 2014.

I am absolutely gobsmacked that this is still going on. We held meetings with the cinema owners and even gave them copies of the building code and what should have happened back at the design stage in 2004. They agreed they were going to approach the new owners in Australia and look to make the modifications  having seats removed  so people could sit with each other.

This is very disingenuous of them because they said they were going to do their best to make the cinema accessible.

Paul says 28 per cent of the Tauranga population have a disability of some sort  the highest percentage of all New Zealand cities.

Its not appropriate. In 2017 we should not be going to the cinema and be made to feel that we have to ask for special privileges. We should be included.

We want Tauranga to be the most inclusive and accessible city in New Zealand and this goes against that so I will be taking it up with the disability advisory group committee at council and well be back to see that cinema.

Paul believes the Elizabeth St cinemas are in breach of the New Zealand Building Code, in particular NZS4121, which says that spaces reserved for wheelchair users shall be adjacent to and included in normal seating provisions. It includes a diagram showing examples of seating arrangements where seats have been removed from rows to allow for wheelchair spaces.

Patrick Schofield, manager of building services at Tauranga City Council, says it is important that commercial buildings are accessible, and that business owners know that accessibility is about more than getting in and out  it is about being able to carry out normal activities in the building.
For more than two hours Thursday, approximately 30 people voiced opinions about the Wythe County Public School Systems decision to remove a prayer plaque from the cafeteria at Spiller Elementary School.

The majority disagreed with the decision and urged school board members, who remained silent during the public forum, to fight the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundations demand to remove the plaque, no matter the cost.

Speakers said it is time for Christians to rise up and fight those who attempt to diminish their faith.

There is no middle ground on which a Christian may stand, one speaker said.

During the nearly three-hour meeting at George Wythe High School, Superintendent Jeff Perry spent a half-hour reviewing the situation and the administrations decision to remove the plaque, which reads: Our Father: We thank thee for this food. Bless it to the nourishment of our bodies and our lives to thy service. Amen.

He said he received a letter from the foundation in May, but did not remove the plaque. In the letter, the foundation said the plaque was unconstitutional and that children should not have to view materials promoting a Christian message. Then, after receiving a second letter in August, Perry said he consulted with administration officials and a law professor before putting the plaque in storage.

Perry took full responsibility for the decision.

In reviewing past cases, Perry told audience members that groups that have challenged requests similar to that of the foundation have lost in court and many wound up having to pay their opponents six-figure court costs. The cases have taken two to three years to settle in court, he said, adding that groups like the foundation only takes on cases it knows it can win.

Taking down the plaque does not necessarily reflect his beliefs or those of the school board, but it is the law, Perry said.

Several speakers worried that removing the plaque was a first step to removing a students right to pray at school or participate in Prayer at the Pole, when students gather at the school flagpole to pray.

Perry responded by saying that groups like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Prayer at the Pole on school campuses have been upheld by the courts, along with religious clothing and jewelry.

The superintendent said students have the constitutional right to pray at school, but school employees cannot lead, encourage or tell students what to pray; that is between you, your child and God, he said.

Perry said a legal battle will be long and costly, and courts have ruled against school systems in similar cases in the past. He did not rule out court action, but suggested that adults take every opportunity they can to share their faith with the young people in their lives.

For example, he said parents can send out texts and messages asking people to gather for prayer before sporting events.

Another alternative to the plaque concerned Americas national motto, In God We Trust, adopted by Congress in 1956 and allowed to be displayed in schools. Perry, who acknowledged that the motto is ironic in light of the prayer plaque situation, said a framed poster of the motto hangs in every school in Wythe County. Retired Spiller teacher Debbie Cassell suggested that the community raise money to have beautiful, well-made plaques with the motto made for every school to hang in a prominent place.

Nobody can touch that, she said. Nobody can take that down.

Cassell said All Nations Church Pastor Chad Dunford had agreed for the church to pay for two of the plaques. The school system has 13 schools.

Several speakers were upset that school board members have not spoken publicly about the prayer plaque issue and did not speak during the forum. One person called for a school board member to call for a vote on the matter and a second member to second the motion, forcing a vote so the community can see how each member feels about it.

Speakers like Andrew Davis urged the school board to fight the foundations request.

A law is only as settled as the next case, he said, adding that the foundation is an ideological bully and when you give into a bully, he keeps coming back for more. Davis pleaded for the board to do the right thing and put the plaque back.

Some of the more emotional moments of the forum came when youngsters, overcome with tears, spoke in favor of the plaque.

Zach Perkins said if the school board gives up now, it has already lost.

Do you want kids to grow up in a school with no hope of a God to help them? he asked.

A youngster named Eli said the prayer plaque at Spiller had helped him through a lot of hard times like homework, silent lunch and many lonely times.

Regarding a legal fight, Perry said the school system has received offers from professionals willing to work on the case for free. However, he added, no one has offered to pay potential court costs and legal fees if the school system loses.

Stanley King Jr. said the school system will not know if it can win or not if you dont play. He said any money spent is not wasted if it is for our children and grandchildren.

Put the plaque back up and fight, he said.

One speaker said she was alarmed at how we have become such an offended society.

How far will it go, she asked?

It will go as far as our community allows it go  Soon, will we not be able to say God bless you when someone sneezes? Where does it stop? Draw the line, she said.

At the end of the meeting, Perry said he knows the conversation needs to continue and the school system will hold more meetings on the issue to find common ground.

We will look for ways to advance the cause we want to advance; there are ways, he said.

On Friday, the school system announced a meeting with local church leaders slated for noon on Oct. 4. The meeting is specifically designed for church leaders, the announcement said. For information, call Nicki Blankenship at the school system at 228-5411.

To reach Millie Rothrock, call 228-6611, ext. 35, or email mrothrock@wythenews.com.
Elder abuse, an ongoing problem, was the topic at a TRIAD program presented at a community luncheon at Plenty! Farm recently.

Pam Teaster, Director of Gerontology Research at Virginia Tech, told the group that economic exploitation of senior citizens is a wicked problem. It affects elderly in social, medical and financial ways.

The problem is amplified because it can come from so many avenues, Teaster stated. A lot of times it is from family members, but it can also come from neighbors, anyone that is in a position of trust.

The elderly may have acquired money over a lifetime, or they have other valuables. They may also be alone and isolated, and maybe they have a cognitive decline.

Victims tend to be mostly in their eighties, while the ones taking advantage of them are in their forties and fifties, Teaster said. There are also strangers, who often attempt scams over the telephone.

Women tend to be victimized by a two-to-one ratio, sometimes because they did not have previous experience in controlling the family budget. Widow and widowers sometimes fall victim to sweetheart scams, when a younger person of the opposite sex feigns interest to gain their trust.

Our research at Virginia Tech shows that it is a problem on the magnitude of about $3 billion dollars a year, Teaster said. A lot of times a child or family member with a drug problem will exploit their relative.

Eric Branscom, Floyd Countys Commonwealth Attorney, said the problem is frequent in Floyd. If it is stolen cash, sometimes it hard to put together an evidence trail to prosecute a case. With stolen checks, or credit card theft and fraud, there is a way to track it.

Ryan Hupp, Assistant Commonwealths Attorney, said he had prosecuted a case involving a man on Route 8, who was scammed by men who brought a load of gravel and told him he could have it at a discount. They dumped the load and later charged him $700.

Teaster suggested that elders be cautioned not to give a quick answer. Beware of something that sounds too good to be true, because it probably is.
A good farce is not unlike a good ballet.

In dance, every plie is just as important as every show-stopping pirouette, and one little turn-out can make or break one grand jump. Precision and grace are not independent of one another here; instead, precision breeds the seamless and musical final product that has the audience gabbing all the way home.

The same should be said for physical comedy -- just sub in pants-dropping for plies and pratfalls for pirouettes, and magically, the ungraceful becomes graceful.

Baldwinsville Theatre Guild's new production of "Noises Off" is a testament to this idea that the farce should be seen as high art. On Friday night, the three-act farce-within-a-farce by Michael Frayn opened to a modest crowd of 30 at the Presbyterian Education Center. This hilarious and incredibly technical production simply deserves more attention, though, so be sure to catch "Noises Off" during its six-show run of the next two weekends (through Sunday, October 7).

Frayn, an English writer, conceived of "Noises Off" during the 1970 production of his first published play, a farce called "The Two of Us" starring Lynn Redgrave. Frayn noticed that the goings on backstage were at times more farcical than the farce itself. This became the thrust of "Noises Off," which tells the story of a dysfunctional theater company struggling to get through its own doomed production of a sex farce called "Nothing On."

"Noises Off" opened to critical acclaim in London in 1982 and ran for five more years with five successive casts. It has been revived numerous times since then in both the United Kingdom and here in the United States, with Frayn tweaking the script in the interest of cultural relevance repeatedly along the way. Baldwinsville Theatre Guild is performing the latest revision of "Noises Off," from 2000, with its own unique, localized touches -- by Act Three, for example, the fictional cast and crew of "Nothing On" are on the last leg of their disastrous tour in Baldwinsville.

In his program biography, director Dan Rowlands cites "Noises Off" as one of his "all-time favorite comedies." He needn't tell us, though, because it's clear just from watching this production that he's passionate about this complex show. Blocking a play-within-a-play is difficult enough; with the added physical hijinks of a farce-within-a-farce, directing becomes an outright sport. Rowlands and his production team's vision is best realized in the second act of "Noises Off," which grants the audience a look backstage during a Wednesday matinee performance of "Nothing On" in Schenectady. The cast occupies the space with brilliant economy, and, as per the rules laid out in the top of this review, every movement truly matters.

That this production of "Noises Off" respects the source material's meta sensibilities enough to feature its own set designer, Josh Taylor, as the over-worked, set-repairing stage manager of "Nothing On" is charming. Taylor's set work is purposefully endearing; it's a character in and of itself in both these shows. The set is highlighted by an old, beige rotary phone that finds itself destroyed by the final act; a yellowed TV set; a bunch of faux-brass wall decorations that fall flimsily to the ground with the slamming of doors.

In Act Two, when Taylor's pieces spin around to reveal they're ugly and handmade, they become the setting for the delightfully bonkers Act Two, where the cast of "Nothing On" is consumed with their own personal drama (i.e. love triangles, nervous nosebleeds, keeping the booze away from the resident drunk). Props also (no pun intended) to the sturdiness of these pieces; many of the actors careened into them at full force on Friday night and they still held up.

As with any play, though, the general audience member goes for the cast, and Baldwinsville's "Noises Off" boasts one hearty with talent. No one is particularly hilarious in Act One, which features the characters rehearsing the play and lives more on the dry end of the British humor spectrum, but each player fully embodies his or her character at his or her most quotidian before things ramp up in Acts Two and Three, where the performers try (and fail) to give a good performance of the show inside the show. Again, attention to nuance is pivotal to staging a farce as strong and multilayered as this one, and Rowlands' actors were attuned acutely to this on Friday.

Stars to watch in this one are Jack Sherman as Lloyd Davis, the drolly unlikable director; Matthew Gordon as Garry Lejeune, the leading man who is prone to jealous rage; Justin Polly as the much older Selsdon Mowbray, a half-deaf, alcoholic Brit portraying a burglar; and Heather Jensen as Dotty Otley, the play-within-the-play's biggest star who comes into a very funny existential relationship with acting by the end. The aforementioned Taylor as stage manager Tim Allgood, along with Kristina Rusho as his skittish assistant, Poppy, should also be commended for staying in character all night, miming little tiffs and even switching out sets in between acts with open curtains.

Just like some of culture's finest operas -- and yes, classical ballets -- this farce is not exactly short, clocking in at approximately 2 hours and 40 minutes. The highly technical Act Two, alone, though, rife with expertly choreographed fire axe and cactus attacks, is worth staying for, and by the time "Nothing On" reaches Baldwinsville in Act Three, you're in slapstick heaven.

While the touring crew behind "Nothing On" can't quite get it right, the small, local theater group known as the Baldwinsville Theatre Guild sure knows how to put on an effective farce. Now, go watch them prove it.

The Details

What: Baldwinsville Theatre Guild's production of "Noises Off"

Where: The East Presbyterian Education Center, 64 Oswego Street, Baldwinsville.

When seen: Friday, September 22.

Length of performance: About 2 hours, 40 minutes with two 10-minute intermissions.

Family guide: Recommended for mature audiences.

Runs: Saturday, September 23 through Sunday, October 7 (performances at 8 p.m., with one 3 p.m. performance on Sunday, October 1).

Tickets: Adults $22; students and seniors $18; available online or at the door.

More information: Call 315-877-8465 or visit BTG's website.
[September 22, 2017] Bristol-Myers Squibb's Opdivo (nivolumab) Receives FDA Approval for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Previously Treated with Sorafenib

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE:BMY) today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Opdivo (nivolumab) injection for intravenous use for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have been previously treated with sorafenib. Approval for this indication has been granted under accelerated approval based on tumor response rate and durability of response. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the confirmatory trials.1 In the CheckMate -040 trial, 14.3%* (95% CI: 9.2-20.8; 22/154) of patients responded to treatment with Opdivo. The percentage of patients with a complete response was 1.9% (3/154) and the percentage of patients with a partial response was 12.3% (19/154).1 Among responders (n=22), responses ranged from 3.2 to 38.2+ months; 91% of those patients had responses of six months or longer and 55% had responses of 12 months or longer.1 Opdivo is associated with the following Warnings and Precautions including: immune-mediated pneumonitis, colitis, hepatitis, endocrinopathies, nephritis and renal dysfunction, skin adverse reactions, encephalitis, other adverse reactions; infusion reactions; and embryo-fetal toxicity.1 Please see the Important Safety Information section below. "We are proud to bring the potential for clinically meaningful responses with Immuno-Oncology therapy to these advanced-stage HCC patients, who have had limited treatment options for years," said Chris Boerner, president, U.S. Commercial, Bristol-Myers Squibb. "Today's approval marks an important step toward our mission of delivering transformational medicines to treat conditions with a high unmet need." The burden of liver cancer in the U.S. is significant and is expected to increase in the decades to come.5,6 A recently-released American Cancer Society (ACS) report published in CA (News - Alert): A Cancer Journal for Clinicians notes that death rates for liver cancer are increasing at a faster pace than any other cancer, doubling since the mid-1980s.5 "Unfortunately, the majority of HCC patients are diagnosed with advanced-stage disease and are not candidates for potentially curative surgical interventions," said Adrian M. Di Bisceglie, M.D., co-director, Saint Louis University Liver Center, Chief of Hepatology. "More options are needed for advanced-stage HCC patients who have failed prior systemic therapy." Hepatocellular carcinoma is often diagnosed in the advanced-stage where treatment options are limited and there is a high unmet need for patients who are intolerant to or who have progressed on sorafenib therapy.5,7,8 "In recent years, there has been growing interest in leveraging immuno-oncology knowledge and discoveries to add to the treatment options available for patients with advanced-stage liver cancer," said Anthony B. El-Khoueiry, M.D., lead investigator and associate professor of clinical medicine and phase I program director at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California (USC) and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. "The approval of Opdivo provides us with an encouraging approach and a new treatment option for appropriate patients with HCC following prior systemic therapy." Approval Based on Notable Overall Response Rate and Duration of Response CheckMate -040 included a Phase 1/2, open-label, multicenter study evaluating Opdivo in patients with HCC who progressed on or were intolerant to sorafenib.1,9 In this study, 154 patients received Opdivo 3 mg/kg administered intravenously every two weeks. The recommended dose is 240 milligrams administered as an intravenous infusion over 60 minutes every two weeks until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.1 Efficacy outcome measures included confirmed overall response rate (as assessed by blinded independent central review using RECIST v1.1 and modified RECIST for HCC) and duration of response.1 The median age of patients participating in the study was 63 (range: 19-81), all patients had received prior sorafenib therapy and 19% of patients had received two or more prior systemic therapies.1 Patients were enrolled regardless of PD-L1 expression level and whether or not they were infected with active Hepatitis B virus (HBV) or active Hepatitis C virus (HCV).1,2 Data from CheckMate -040 were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2017 Annual Meeting in June. In the CheckMate -040 trial, 14.3%* (95% CI: 9.2-20.8; 22/154) of patients responded to treatment with Opdivo. The percentage of patients with a complete response was 1.9% (3/154) and the percentage of patients with a partial response was 12.3% (19/154). Among responders (n=22), responses ranged from 3.2 to 38.2+ months; 91% of those patients had responses of six months or longer and 55% had responses of 12 months or longer.1 The median time to response was 2.8 months (range: 1.2-7.0).2 The overall response rate based on modified RECIST was 18.2% (95% CI: 12.4-25.2; 28/154). Complete response rate was 3.2% (5/154); partial response rate was 14.9% (23/154).1 Responses were observed across PD-L1 expression levels.2 "I advocate for others because I know firsthand the terrible toll cancers of the liver take on a patient and their loved ones. In my opinion, HCC is an example of a cancer where awareness is out of sync with the impact of the disease," said Suzanne Lindley, Co-Founder, Yes! Beat Liver Tumors. "Today's approval shines a light of awareness and hope on a disease with a high unmet medical need." Select Safety Profile The safety of Opdivo was evaluated in a 154-patient subgroup of patients with HCC and Child-Pugh A cirrhosis who progressed on or were intolerant to sorafenib in the CheckMate -040 study. Patients were required to have an aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) of no more than five times the upper limit of normal and total bilirubin of less than 3 mg/dL. The median duration of exposure to Opdivo was six months. Treatment with Opdivo resulted in treatment-emergent Grade 3 or 4 AST in 18% (27/154) of patients, Grade 3 or 4 ALT in 11% (16/154) of patients, and Grade 3 or 4 bilirubin in 7% (11/154) of patients. Immune-mediated hepatitis requiring systemic corticosteroids occurred in 5% (8/154) of patients.1 Serious adverse reactions occurred in 49% of patients. The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in at least 2% of patients were pyrexia, ascites, back pain, general physical health deterioration, abdominal pain, and pneumonia. The most common adverse reactions (=20%) in patients receiving Opdivo (n=154) were fatigue (38%), musculoskeletal pain (36%), abdominal pain (34%), pruritus (27%), diarrhea (27%), rash (26%), cough (23%), and decreased appetite (22%). Opdivo was discontinued due to adverse reactions in 11% of patients and 32% of patients had a dose delay for an adverse reaction.2 About Hepatocellular Carcinoma Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer and the fastest-growing cause of cancer death in the U.S.3,5,10 The incidence of liver cancer in the U.S. has more than tripled since 1980.3 It is estimated that there will be approximately 41,000 new cases of liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer and 29,000 deaths from these diseases in the U.S. this year.4 The majority of these cases are caused by Hepatitis B virus (HBV) or Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections, making chronic infection with HBV or HCV the most common risk factor for liver cancer.10,11 However, the increasing prevalence of metabolic syndrome and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is expected to contribute to increased rates of HCC in the U.S. in the foreseeable future.12,13 INDICATION OPDIVO (nivolumab) is indicated for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have been previously treated with sorafenib. This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on tumor response rate and durability of response. Continued approval fr this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in the confirmatory trials.



IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Immune-Mediated Pneumonitis

OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated pneumonitis. Fatal cases have been reported. Monitor patients for signs with radiographic imaging and for symptoms of pneumonitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or more severe pneumonitis. Permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 and withhold until resolution for Grade 2. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, fatal cases of immune-mediated pneumonitis have occurred. Immune-mediated pneumonitis occurred in 3.1% (61/1994) of patients. Immune-Mediated Colitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated colitis. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of colitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 (of more than 5 days duration), 3, or 4 colitis. Withhold OPDIVO monotherapy for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 or recurrent colitis upon re-initiation of OPDIVO. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated colitis occurred in 2.9% (58/1994) of patients. Immune-Mediated Hepatitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated hepatitis. Monitor patients for abnormal liver tests prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater transaminase elevations. For patients with HCC, withhold OPDIVO and administer corticosteroids if AST/ALT is within normal limits at baseline and increases to >3 and up to 5 times the upper limit of normal (ULN), if AST/ALT is >1 and up to 3 times ULN at baseline and increases to >5 and up to 10 times the ULN, and if AST/ALT is >3 and up to 5 times ULN at baseline and increases to >8 and up to 10 times the ULN. Permanently discontinue OPDIVO and administer corticosteroids if AST or ALT increases to >10 times the ULN or total bilirubin increases >3 times the ULN. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated hepatitis occurred in 1.8% (35/1994) of patients. In Checkmate 040, immune-mediated hepatitis requiring systemic corticosteroids occurred in 5% (8/154) of patients receiving OPDIVO. Immune-Mediated Endocrinopathies OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated hypophysitis, immune-mediated adrenal insufficiency, autoimmune thyroid disorders, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Monitor patients for signs and symptoms of hypophysitis, signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency, thyroid function prior to and periodically during treatment, and hyperglycemia. Administer hormone replacement as clinically indicated and corticosteroids for Grade 2 or greater hypophysitis. Withhold for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hypophysitis. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Withhold for Grade 2 and permanently discontinue for Grade 3 or 4 adrenal insufficiency. Administer hormone-replacement therapy for hypothyroidism. Initiate medical management for control of hyperthyroidism. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 hyperglycemia. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, hypophysitis occurred in 0.6% (12/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, adrenal insufficiency occurred in 1% (20/1994) of patients. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, hypothyroidism or thyroiditis resulting in hypothyroidism occurred in 9% (171/1994) of patients. Hyperthyroidism occurred in 2.7% (54/1994) of patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, diabetes occurred in 0.9% (17/1994) of patients. Immune-Mediated Nephritis and Renal Dysfunction OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated nephritis. Monitor patients for elevated serum creatinine prior to and periodically during treatment. Administer corticosteroids for Grades 2-4 increased serum creatinine. Withhold OPDIVO for Grade 2 or 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 increased serum creatinine. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated nephritis and renal dysfunction occurred in 1.2% (23/1994) of patients. Immune-Mediated Skin Adverse Reactions OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated rash, including Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN), some cases with fatal outcome. Administer corticosteroids for Grade 3 or 4 rash. Withhold for Grade 3 and permanently discontinue for Grade 4 rash. For symptoms or signs of SJS or TEN, withhold OPDIVO and refer the patient for specialized care for assessment and treatment; if confirmed, permanently discontinue. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, immune-mediated rash occurred in 9% (171/1994) of patients. Immune-Mediated Encephalitis OPDIVO can cause immune-mediated encephalitis. Evaluation of patients with neurologic symptoms may include, but not be limited to, consultation with a neurologist, brain MRI, and lumbar puncture. Withhold OPDIVO in patients with new-onset moderate to severe neurologic signs or symptoms and evaluate to rule out other causes. If other etiologies are ruled out, administer corticosteroids and permanently discontinue OPDIVO for immune-mediated encephalitis. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, encephalitis occurred in 0.2% (3/1994) of patients. Fatal limbic encephalitis occurred in one patient after 7.2 months of exposure despite discontinuation of OPDIVO and administration of corticosteroids. Other Immune-Mediated Adverse Reactions Based on the severity of the adverse reaction, permanently discontinue or withhold OPDIVO, administer high-dose corticosteroids, and, if appropriate, initiate hormone-replacement therapy. Across clinical trials of OPDIVO, the following clinically significant immune-mediated adverse reactions, some with fatal outcome, occurred in <1.0% of patients receiving OPDIVO: myocarditis, rhabdomyolysis, myositis, uveitis, iritis, pancreatitis, facial and abducens nerve paresis, demyelination, polymyalgia rheumatica, autoimmune neuropathy, Guillain-Barre syndrome, hypopituitarism, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, gastritis, duodenitis, sarcoidosis, histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis (Kikuchi lymphadenitis), motor dysfunction, vasculitis, and myasthenic syndrome. Infusion Reactions OPDIVO can cause severe infusion reactions, which have been reported in <1.0% of patients in clinical trials. Discontinue OPDIVO in patients with Grade 3 or 4 infusion reactions. Interrupt or slow the rate of infusion in patients with Grade 1 or 2. In patients receiving OPDIVO monotherapy, infusion-related reactions occurred in 6.4% (127/1994) of patients. Embryo-Fetal Toxicity Based on its mechanism of action, OPDIVO can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with an OPDIVO- containing regimen and for at least 5 months after the last dose of OPDIVO. Lactation It is not known whether OPDIVO is present in human milk. Because many drugs, including antibodies, are excreted in human milk and because of the potential for serious adverse reactions in nursing infants from an OPDIVO-containing regimen, advise women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment. Serious Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 040, serious adverse reactions occurred in 49% of patients (n=154). The most frequent serious adverse reactions reported in at least 2% of patients were pyrexia, ascites, back pain, general physical health deterioration, abdominal pain, and pneumonia. Common Adverse Reactions In Checkmate 040, the most common adverse reactions (=20%) in patients receiving OPDIVO (n=154) were fatigue (38%), musculoskeletal pain (36%), abdominal pain (34%), pruritus (27%), diarrhea (27%), rash (26%), cough (23%), and decreased appetite (22%). Please see U.S. Full Prescribing Information for OPDIVO. About the Opdivo Clinical Development Program Bristol-Myers Squibb's global development program is founded on scientific expertise in the field of Immuno-Oncology and includes a broad range of clinical trials studying Opdivo, across all phases, including Phase 3, in a variety of tumor types. To date, the Opdivo clinical development program has enrolled more than 25,000 patients. About Bristol-Myers Squibb's Patient Access Support Bristol-Myers Squibb remains committed to providing assistance so that cancer patients who need our medicines can access them and expedite time to therapy. BMS Access Support, the Bristol-Myers Squibb patient access and reimbursement services program, is designed to help appropriate patients initiate and maintain access to BMS medicines during their treatment journey. BMS Access Support offers benefit investigation, prior authorization assistance and co-pay assistance for eligible, commercially insured patients. More information about our access and reimbursement support services can be obtained by calling BMS Access Support at 1-800-861-0048 or by visiting www.bmsaccesssupport.com. About the Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ono Pharmaceutical Collaboration In 2011, through a collaboration agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb expanded its territorial rights to develop and commercialize Opdivo globally except in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, where Ono had retained all rights to the compound at the time. On July 23, 2014, Ono and Bristol-Myers Squibb further expanded the companies' strategic collaboration agreement to jointly develop and commercialize multiple immunotherapies - as single agents and combination regimens - for patients with cancer in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. About Bristol-Myers Squibb Bristol-Myers Squibb is a global biopharmaceutical company whose mission is to discover, develop and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. For more information about Bristol-Myers Squibb, visit us at BMS.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Bristol-Myers Squibb Forward-Looking Statement This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Forward-looking statements in this press release should be evaluated together with the many uncertainties that affect Bristol-Myers Squibb's business, particularly those identified in the cautionary factors discussion in Bristol-Myers Squibb's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016 in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and our Current Reports on Form 8-K. Bristol-Myers Squibb undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. * BICR-assessed based on RECIST v1.1 References Opdivo Prescribing Information. Opdivo U.S. Product Information. Last updated: September 22, 2017. Princeton, NJ: Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Data on file. NIVO 314. Princeton, NJ: Bristol-Myers Squibb. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures. 2017. Atlanta: American Cancer Society; 2017. National Cancer Institute. Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program Stat Fact Sheets: Liver and Intrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/livibd.html. Accessed July 31, 2017. Islami F, Miller K, Siegel R, et al. Disparities in Liver Cancer Occurrence in the United States by Race/Ethnicity and State. Ca Cancer J Clin 2017 Jul 8;67(4):273-289. Wang S, Sun H, Xie Z, et al. Improved survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and disparities by age, race, and socioeconomic status by decade, 1983-2012. Oncotarget. 2016 Sep 13;7(37):59820-59833. Allaire M and Nault JC. Advances in management of hepatocellular carcinoma. Curr Opin Oncol. 2017 Jul;29(4):288-295. Mlynarsky L, Menachem Y and Shibolet O. Treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma: Steps forward but still a long way to go. World J Hepatol. 2015 Mar 27;7(3):566-74. Clinicaltrials.gov. "An Immuno-therapy Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness, Safety and Tolerability of Nivolumab or Nivolumab in Combination With Other Agents in Patients With Advanced Liver Cancer (CheckMate040). Available at: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01658878 Mittal S and El-Serag HB. Epidemiology of hepatocellular carcinoma: consider the population. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2013 Jul; 47 Suppl:S2-6. American Cancer Society. Liver Cancer Risk Factors. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/liver-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html. Accessed August 8, 2017. Dhanasekaran R, Limaye A and Cabrera R. Hepatocellular carcinoma: current trends in worldwide epidemiology, risk factors, diagnosis, and therapeutics. Hepat Med. 2012 May 8;4:19-37. Yang JD and Roberts LR. Hepatocellular carcinoma: a global view. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2010 Aug; 7(8):448-58. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170922005703/en/

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Businesses have been focusing on the Internet of Things as an enabler of growth and increased operational efficiency, as well as the means to provide a better experience to customers and partners, according to the State of the Market: Internet of Things 2017 report Verizon released this week.

Seventy-three percent of executives surveyed said they either were researching or currently deploying IoT, according to the report.

Few industry sectors, business people or ordinary people will not be impacted by this, as augmented intelligence and machine learning use the data from IoT to transform markets, Constellation Research Principal Analyst Andy Mulholland told the E-Commerce Times.

However, a variety of factors have dampened IoT momentum:

Long capital cycles;

Organizational inertia;

Lack of suitably skilled staff;

Lack of industry-wide IoT standards; and

Concerns about security, interoperability and cost.

Ready for the Enterprise

Despite those challenges, the IoT has become enterprise-grade, with the focus on B2B communications, according to the Verizon report.

For example, 70 percent of the Fortune 500 property and casualty insurance firms surveyed indicated they were tapping network-connected drones to perform inspections and other claims-related work.

The energy and construction industries have been using drones to perform inspections, maintenance and other high-cost tasks, while the pharmaceuticals industry has been using IoT solutions to track and trace medicines from production to patients.

The current business focus appears to be on simpler use cases  to track data and send status alerts, for example, which are easier to deploy but lack data analytics capabilities.

Those limitations will prevent these businesses from fully exploiting the IoT, Verizon suggested.

Factors Favorable to IoT Deployment

Falling technology prices, more secure platforms, and better connectivity options will help spur new use cases, the report suggests.

There will be more development around 5G networks, which are expected to be up to 100 times faster than existing networks, Verizon predicted.

Verizon earlier this year unveiled a plan to deliver 5G precommercial services to select customers in 11 markets throughout the United States.

AT&T already has tested 5G for business customers in Austin, where it plans to stream DirectTV Now over 5G connections.

T-Mobile late last year released a video teasing a 2020 launch of 5G services.

Other IoT Projects

Chick-fil-A has begun using IoT  it has installed sensors to monitor the temperatures of coolers and freezers, for example  ABI Research reported.

Axius has teamed with real estate developers to integrate its Axius Hub, which actively monitors every device in a house, into smart homes.

Axius also has partnered with A/V pros, custom electronics installers and IT experts to install connected devices such as thermostats, lighting, locks and cameras into more than 40 homes per month in communities being built by the top 25 U.S. builders and developers, said Axius CEO Colin Barceloux.

Were now live with three partners that operate broadly in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, he told the E-Commerce Times.

IoT Issues

An industry-wide standard is needed, because theres a myriad of kinds of sensors, they talk different languages, and there are really no standards for implementing IoT right now, said Michael Jude, a research manager at Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan.

More and more devices are becoming intelligent, but the fabrics that knit them together in terms of collecting data and processing arent there. If you just place sensors everywhere, it doesnt do any good  you need big data to manage IoT, he told the E-Commerce Times.

IoT is being deployed across many verticals and for use cases within those industries, such as energy, healthcare and fleet management, Verizon spokesperson Adria Tomaszewski pointed out.

The various issues holding back IoT deployment in general are resolved for the use cases being deployed, she told the E-Commerce Times.

That said, several malware attacks have been launched through compromised IoT devices.

Security is a big issue, remarked Frosts Jude. If you have all these intelligent devices watching you, the potential for security harm is exponentially greater.
Facebook is currently embroiled in a messy situation. It's being probed and accused of many things for the part it allegedly played during the 2016 presidential election.

Here's the brief of it: Russia apparently used the social network to spread ads, with the intention to cause pre-election discord among voters, and Facebook only recently admitted that to be true.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, who's currently looking into President Donald Trump's possible ties with Russia, already combed through more than 3,000 Facebook ads linked to Russia.

Initially, Facebook had apprehensions sharing this data to the Congress over fears of sensitive data leaking to the public, but the social network has softened up after a long privacy and legal review, according to Bloomberg.

Facebook Wants To Protect Election Integrity

In a video posted to Facebook on Thursday, Sept. 21, CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a nine-step outline the company would follow to "protect election integrity" and ensure the platform "is a force for good in democracy."

"I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy," Zuckerberg said. "That's not what we stand for. The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world."

The first step is the delivery of $100,000 worth of Russia ads to government officials and investigators. Facebook will start disclosing which pages purchased political ads on its network, a move which Capitol Hill democrats told the Federal Election Commission to push for this week, as Business Insider reports.

Facebook Outlines 9 Steps To Prevent Future Election Interference

Here's what Facebook plans to do, according to Zuckerberg:

 First, the company will actively work with the U.S. government as it looks into possible Russian interference during the 2016 elections.

 Second, the company plans to continue its own investigation on what might have happened on the platform during the election period. Should it discover more evidences pertinent to the overall investigation, it will continue to work with authorities and government officials. This probe, however, will take some time.

 Third, Facebook is going to make political ads more transparent and clear-cut. Facebook will allow users to see which pages bought political ads, in addition to all ads they're running for different audiences. This can help people determine whether there's variation in terms of messaging, since users can't be 100 percent sure if the ad they're seeing is also the ad someone else is seeing.

 Fourth, Facebook will improve its ad review policies for political ads.

 Fifth, it's going to beef up its security investment to protect election integrity. It will do this by doubling the team tasked to work on election integrity, with over 250 people across all teams who will prioritize community safety and security.

 Sixth, Facebook plans to widen its partnerships and collaboration with election commissions globally.

 Seventh, Facebook will commit to sharing threat information with other tech firms and security enterprises.

 Eight, it will work to strengthen the democratic process by creating more services that will protect the Facebook community while engaging in political discussions.

 Finally, Facebook plans to put money where its mouth is by ensuring the integrity of the German elections by detecting fake accounts, working closely with public authorities, and disclosing security measures with parties and candidates.

On the one hand, it's still pretty much up for debate whether Facebook did have a hand in enabling Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. But on the other hand, it's undeniable that Facebook has evolved from an avenue for socializing to a full-blown advertising platform, so one can argue that the criticisms it's now facing are just apt.

For more information on Facebook's involvement in the alleged Russian election interference, read Facebook's post covering its decision to share the ads with Congress, its knowledge of the ads, and more.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Android users know this all too well: repeatedly tapping "check for update" will eventually yield a software update to arrive. Just keep at it and it will come. Except usually, nothing ever comes, causing that button to become pretty much useless.

That's changing now. According to Google software engineer Elliott Hughes, as long as users have the latest version of Google Play Services installed, tapping the check for update button will finally reveal an update, suppose there is one.

'Check For Update' Now Works As Intended

Hughes confirmed the change via Google+, posted Sept 23:

"If you're running a current Google Play Services, you shouldn't need to sideload an OTA or flash a system image just because you're impatient," he wrote. In other words, it doesn't matter if a certain user is part of Google's current rollout group or not  they will still get the update if they keep hammering away the check for update button.

Does This Mean Every Android Phone Will Get Updated Immediately?

Don't get excited yet.

There might be certain caveats. First, as mentioned above, users still need to have the latest Google Play Services update installed, and this could be parsed into stages, meaning not everyone will get it simultaneously.

Second, it's highly likely that this change will only benefit Pixel and Nexus devices, or anything directly from Google, really, such as Android One handsets. This is probably because OEMs such as Huawei, Samsung, and many others each have their custom Android skins, meaning they mostly handle updates themselves. Google's devices, meanwhile, run pure and stock Android, which makes the updating process easier.

Digital Trends has already tested the new check for update button on the Google Nexus Player and can confirm that an update for Android 8.0 Oreo did appear. But again, they used a Google Nexus Player to test if the button is indeed working. It's likely that non-Google devices will yield different results.

Those who have Pixel or Nexus handsets should treat this as good news, since it only means that they'll get updates much faster than before, instead of biting their nails as they wait for the rollout to reach them.

Android Fragmentation

What about other devices, though? When will other companies start expediting the update process and ensure everyone gets it immediately? Well, that is still largely a problem with Android's inherently fragmented update ecosystem. Since Android is open-source, manufacturers are allowed to use the operating system as they please, meaning they're the ones responsible for offering updates as they see fit. Until that's solved, Android fragmentation will persist.

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Wilco walked onto the Pinewood Bowl stage Friday, beginning its first Lincoln show with the gentle acoustic-rooted sound of "Via Chicago."

Then the lights flashed, drummer Glenn Kotche hammered away and Nels Cline cranked up the electric guitar as Jeff Tweedy tried to get the lyrics out over the noise.

And a brilliant show was on.

Tumbling back and forth across its two-decade career, the six-man band knitted together songs -- the experimental "I'm Trying To Break Your Heart" with ace guitarist Cline cranking up the electronic noise shifting into an intense "Art of Almost" and eventually hitting the soul of "Side With Seeds."

Wearing an off-white cowboy hat and jacket on the 85-degree evening, Tweedy didn't say much to the audience early on, speaking only after a half hour.

"It's too hot to talk," he said. "Let's conserve our energy. We got lots of songs. Sing along if you know them, if you know any of them. We're from the Land of Lincoln, you guys live in Lincoln. Isn't that weird?"

The crowd obliged Tweedy, joining in on on "Misunderstand" and, a couple songs later, "At Least That's What You Said" before the ballads broke into noisy rock drive.

Expertly played -- Cline is a six string wizard and the band was veteran tight on the first night of a tour -- the music sounded fine, fine, fine with beautiful tone and a sensibility that unified the disparate styles.

Midway through the show, after a stunning Cline guitar workout, Tweedy stepped to the mic again, saying:

"We're through bumming you out. We front load the set with sad songs. You survived. These songs aren't as sad, as long as you don't pay attention to the lyrics."

Then came a countrified "Forget The Flowers," a shining "Box Full Letters" from "A.M," Wilco's 1995 debut album and a bouncy "I'm Always in Love" -- all rapturously received by the crowd of just over 2,000.

"You're spoiling us," Tweedy said. "Make it harder. Boo a little." Again, the audience obliged prompting Tweedy to quip "I've never felt like I was in the WWF before. I'm a heel."

Then came a stretch that included a punchy "Heavy Metal Drummer" and a Kinks-like "Hummingbird" and the set-ender "The Late Greats."

And it was the hooky "Random Name Generator" that kicked off the encore of the show that was slated to run two hours -- and past deadline.

Seeing the whole thing, however, wasn't needed to know that it was a concert that couldn't have been better from a great American band.
Dan Welch raises cattle and horses in the Sandhills.

He came to Lincoln Friday, along with a slew of other folks from the area, to tell the Legislature's Natural Resources Committee how he's doing.

"Well, this summer we had a drought, the hay crop's about half, we fought three range fires, cattle market's depressed, taxes are going out the roof," he told senators.

Add to that, the Sandhills are being invaded from the south by electric transmission lines and from the north by wind turbines, he said.

And that was the point of his testimony.

The committee met for more than four hours to hear testimony on a resolution (LR125) introduced by Natural Resources Committee Chairman Dan Hughes that studied public power in Nebraska, including the role of renewable energy in state economic development. And a number of people from entities such as the Southwest Power Pool testified.

But Hughes opened up the hearing after that for those who traveled hundreds of miles to tell their stories.

Welch said three years ago he got three letters from the Nebraska Public Power District saying it would give him 80 percent of his property value for his land and explaining eminent domain.

Now, he said, his land has been condemned, and he hoped senators would take action on a "recent problem that has dire consequences on the environment, tourism, property rights and the people of Nebraska."

It affects at least 189 families, he said.

"We understand today that NPPD has no one to answer to. But today, they're going to answer to the people in the Sandhills ... because we're tired. We're tired," he said.

NPPD is working on a $361 million transmission project, 345,000-volt line, called the R-Project, that would stretch from the southeast corner of Holt County west to Thedford, then south and west to the Gerald Gentleman Station. It would cross 423 properties requiring NPPD to get 644 easements from 185 owners.

NPPD has said the line would improve electric reliability for the region, relieve congested transmission systems and create opportunities for development of renewable energy generators like wind turbines.

It was conceived by the Southwest Power Pool, which oversees most of the electric grid and wholesale power market in 14 states.

NPPD used a comprehensive public involvement process during the siting of the transmission line, it said, with three rounds of public open house meetings and additional meetings for those interested. Eight public hearings were held in November 2014, and public input was encouraged throughout the entire process.

Stuart Scranton, who lives south of Thedford, has a 125-volt power line on his property that he said is not environmentally friendly. And he has concerns about the bigger lines NPPD wants to put into the area.

He constantly battles land erosion, he said, and this would make it worse.

He came to Lincoln to get state elected officials to open "dim eyes" and "deaf ears" to the landowners' concerns, he said. There are shorter routes, he said.

"It would be devastating to the eco of the land and with all the wildlife," Scranton said.

The burying beetles in the area put nutrients back in the land, he said, and could be disturbed by the project.

Vickie May, of northern Holt County, wanted to talk about the wind turbines on her property, the closest one a little more than a mile from her house, that have ruined the family's life.

"I don't know where to start," she said, her voice shaking.

"From our south corner we look at 72 wind turbines. It is like a jet plane revving up to take off, but the plane never leaves. That sound is constantly with you."

The family gets little sleep, and she has health problems she's never in her life experienced, May said.

"It breaks my heart to think that everything we have worked our whole life for we may have to abandon or we may have to sell out," she said.

Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon introduced a bill last session that calls for a two-year moratorium on wind energy projects and placement of turbines.

The 19,300-square-mile sand dune formation located in north-central Nebraska is one of the largest tracts of grassland remaining in the United States, Brewer said, and has 1 million acres of wetland. The Sandhills also recharges several extensive aquifers of the Ogallala Aquifer.

The sand dunes of the region provide habitat for more than 700 native plant species, 300 species of birds, 55 species of mammals, 75 of fish, and 27 of reptile and amphibians.

Eighty percent of the world's population of sandhills cranes migrate through the area every year.

He told the committee at the end of the hearing he didn't know how senators could listen for two hours to the landowners and not have a burning sadness about what is happening with the R-Project and wind energy "ripping apart the fabric of the Sandhills."

Committee member Bruce Bostelman of Brainard said he had personally fought the battle three years and had lived a lot their stories.

"We need to be smart about it. If we're going to use renewables (energy), fine. Let's do them in the right place, at the right time, with input from the people who live there," he said.
Actor Steve McQueen, who personified cool during his nearly two decades as a Hollywood superstar, retreated from the glamor and excesses of the movie scene late in his short life and embraced Christianity.

When he died at age 50, McQueen was clutching a Bible  one given to him by Billy Graham.

In fact, it was Grahams personal Bible, the one he preached from at crusades. The Charlotte-born evangelist had handed it to the actor, then gravely ill with cancer, during a private meeting Nov. 3, 1980  just four days before McQueen died after surgery in Mexico.

Nearly 37 years later, the story of Steve McQueens faith journey is finally about to be told on the big screen  the medium that made him internationally famous as the action hero in hits such as Bullitt and The Great Escape.

And though Billy Graham, now 98 and living in his mountain-top Montreat home, doesnt speak or appear in person in Steve McQueen: American Icon, the preacher and his Bible play a major role in its final minutes.

The faith-based documentary feature film will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Grand Cinema in Lincoln and theaters around the country. The host for this one-night event will be Greg Laurie, a lifelong McQueen fan and the pastor of one of Americas biggest megachurches, Harvest Christian Fellowship in southern California.

Much of the drama in the new film comes late: Viewers are told that McQueen took along the Graham Bible  with a prayerful note from the evangelist on an inside page  when he traveled to Juarez, Mexico, for the operation to remove a tumor.

The actor died of a heart attack shortly afterward, on Nov. 7, 1980. And when Grady Ragsdale, the manager of McQueens ranch in California, went to retrieve the body, he pulled the sheet back and found that McQueen had died clutching the Bible to his chest.

Laurie puts it this way in the film: He was holding on to the Bible of Billy Graham as he entered eternity.

In an 1980 interview with the Asheville Citizen not long after McQueens death, Graham called his meeting with the actor one of the most heartwarming stories of my ministry. I think it illustrates how lonely most well-known people are, how guarded they must live and how they really are searching for something. Steve McQueen found what he was searching for.

The film  Steve McQueen: American Icon  also features interviews with actor Mel Gibson, other actors who worked with McQueen, a renowned stuntman, pilots who taught McQueen how to fly, his pastor, his biographer and the last of his three wives, model Barbara Minty McQueen.

Steve McQueen became a movie star in the 1960s, establishing his image as the King of Cool in the roles of the motorcycle-riding POW in The Great Escape and the Ford Mustang-driving police detective in Bullitt. Other McQueen hits in that decade and in the 1970s included: The Magnificent Seven, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Towering Inferno, The Reivers, Le Mans, The Getaway and Junior Bonner.

But toward the end of his life, McQueen disconnected from Hollywood, sought more privacy and meaning and started attending church.

He wanted to meet with Billy Graham, Laurie recounts in the film. And Billy at that time was really, in many ways, the visible representative of evangelical Christians.

Adds McQueen biographer Marshall Terrill in the film: He felt that Billy Graham was the closest thing to God on earth. He could give (McQueen) either some sort of insight or  some sort of wisdom.

Graham and McQueen finally met privately in California on Nov. 3, 1980. When the actor said he wished he had a Bible with him, the evangelist gave him his own weathered, marked-up copy.

On screen, viewers will see that Bible, with Billy Graham on the cover, and Grahams personal note to McQueen:

To my friend Steve McQueen, May God bless you and keep you always. Billy Graham. The evangelist also wrote Phil 1:6, a reference to a passage in Pauls Letter to the Philippians in the New Testament.

It reads:   being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

A spokesman for the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association told the Observer that the story the film tells about the meeting of Graham and McQueen is true. As proof, the BGEA emailed a copy of the 1980 Asheville Citizen article.

As Graham was getting ready to leave his private meeting with the actor, the film says, McQueen said to him: Ill see you in heaven.

After he died, McQueens widow says in the film that her first phone call was to Graham, who counseled her and gave her a prayer.

In the 1980 interview with the Asheville Citizen, Graham described his meeting with McQueen this way:

I wouldnt have recognized him. He looked like a little old man of 90, all wrinkled and shrunk. But his eyes sparkled above the oxygen mask he was using.

Steve McQueen: American Icon ends with an audio of the actor talking three weeks before his death.

I want to change some peoples lives somehow, to tell people that I know the Lord, McQueen says. I used to be more macho. And now my body is gone, is broken. But my spirit isnt broken.



2017 The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

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Margaret Reist Local government reporter Margaret Reist is a recovering education reporter now writing about local and county government and the people who live in the city where she was born and raised. Follow Margaret Reist 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

Americans for Prosperity Nebraska, a conservative advocacy group, sent a mailer to 20,000 Lincoln residents asking them to sign a petition opposing the Lincoln Public Schools $420.8 million budget.

More precisely, the petitions are intended to send the message that the tax hikes must stop  Lincolnites cant keep up!

The group is among those upset that the districts budget took full advantage of an 8.7 percent increase in property values, a result of the Lancaster County Assessors revaluation of all property in the county a year earlier than planned because of the hot housing market.

The school board approved the budget in August.

The valuation increase -- the largest in a decade but smaller than a 12.9 percent increase 11 years ago and a 14.3 percent increase in 2003-04 -- means that even though the district kept its tax rate unchanged from last year, homeowners whose property values rose will pay more to support LPS.

The bulk of the districts increase in spending comes from the valuation increase  the $126.7 million it will get in state aid is just $271,324 more than a year ago.

Both the city and county lowered their property tax rates.

The petition prompted a back-and-forth between Americans For Prosperity Nebraska Director Matt Litt and LPS officials.

The mailer includes a number of statements about LPS spending. LPS wrote a paper addressing each statement and the group then responded to LPS's comments.

Among other things, the flier takes issue with private contracts with a political group run by a state senator, an apparent reference to Nebraskans for Civic Reform, a nonprofit founded by state Sen. Adam Morfeld.

That group is the lead agency for two Community Learning Centers at Lincoln schools. CLCs are before- and after-school programs at high-poverty schools funded through federal and private grants, Title I money and 10 lead agencies that implement or run the programs at the schools. The city provides money as one of the lead agencies, and LPS contributes nearly $300,000 to help pay for the CLC initiative.

LPS officials said $5,000 in general fund money helps run the CLCs at Dawes and Campbell. The remaining $190,905 in costs comes from grants.

It takes a village

In 2011, the first high school food pantry in Lincoln opened, a monthly market at Lincoln High stocked by the Food Bank of Lincoln for any students and their families.

North Star began a food market the next year and today markets operate at five of Lincolns six public high schools and five middle schools, and pilot programs are running at four elementary schools.

Food Bank officials estimate the markets  including a 15th in Fairbury  serve 2,760 students.

You might notice that didnt include Lincoln East, a school with 20.8 percent of its students eligible for the federal free- and reduced lunch program.

East counselor Diane Wilson-Dunning decided she wanted to remedy that, and when funding wasn't available she got the OK to make use of leftover food from the other markets.

She started last year, and got a larger room this year to stack all kinds of food on shelves, waiting for families who need it.

She named it Spartan Village, and with the help of the Junior League added a clothing closet with a variety of donated clothes for students.

Two to six families a week come through, sometimes kids living in an emergency shelter, often working families who need a little food to tide them over the weekend.

Having food or clothing available at school makes a difference, she said, because sometimes its impossible to get to other food distribution sites scattered around the city.

I remember the time a kid looked right at me and said, 'Our car broke down and we dont have any money to fix it.'"

East isnt the only place where teachers or counselors or principals have cobbled together food and clothes they know their students need and created a place  sometimes just a cupboard  to store them.

The world is changing, Wilson-Dunning said. The world is coming to Lincoln and its coming to Lincoln East.

About that hoopla when DeVos visited

Alvin Guenther, who ranches near Dunbar but spent most of his career teaching at public schools and Southeast Community College, was bemused by all the hoopla caused by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' visit last week to Midland Universitys code class at its Omaha campus.

Her visit to Midland and three other Lincoln and Omaha schools was to tout innovation as part of her rethink schools tour to six Midwest states.

Guenther noted that alternatives to four-year college degrees -- something she promoted with her visit to Midland -- is nothing new.

The interesting point of discussion is that Nebraskas community college system has offered classes of this type for decades, he wrote in a letter to the Journal Star. Apparently she is unaware of Nebraskas excellent publicly supported community college system.

Nebraskas community colleges, he notes, have offered classes where students can earn various certifications, get on-site job training and fulfill education requirements. Theyve offered vocational training for years.

Guenther taught adult and continuing education classes and economics at SCC, and also taught in public schools, places he noted now offers career academies with training for high school students.

Years ago, he said, when Burlington Northern Railroad was rebuilding track to withstand the weight of coal being hauled from Wyoming to Nebraskas power plants, SCC trained about 600 people to be section hands  fulfilling an employment need in the community. Like the coding class, decades later.

Yeah, its great, he said. But its nothing new.
Three tenants have signed leases to move into the Arlington Marketplace shopping center now under construction on Burbank Drive.

Jabbys Pizza, CCs Coffee and Sport Clips haircuts will take up space in the center, said Ben Graham, an agent with SVN|Graham, Langlois & Legendre, which is handling leasing for the shopping center.

Graham said activity has picked up at the center at the corner of West Lee and Burbank since construction on the property started several weeks ago.

Graham said hes in final negotiations with other tenants, including a national fitness company and regional restaurant groups.

Arlington Marketplace is a 125,000-square-foot shopping center being developed by Eisenberg Co. of Arizona.

Rouses Markets will anchor the center, taking up 53,000 square feet in the center with its fourth Baton Rouge location. Atomic Burger, a Metairie-based chain known for its burgers made with fresh ground beef and milkshakes chilled to order with liquid nitrogen, has bought an outparcel in front of the center. Arlington Marketplace is set to open sometime in 2018.
He's found a few bullsnakes in transformers, but no one warned Dave Danahy to look out for alligators, cottonmouths and water moccasins during his first four decades with Lincoln Electric System.

That changed earlier this month, when Danahy and 13 of his coworkers arrived in Florida alongside utility crews from Grand Island and Columbus to help restore power after Hurricane Irma.

Despite the note of caution when they arrived, only the Grand Island team saw a gator  a 4-footer, Danahy said, sounding slightly disappointed.

"We actually wanted to see them."

The LES employees returned home Thursday after helping restore power to hundreds of people in the cities of Tallahassee and Ocala.

Working 16 to 17 hours each day, the two teams of Lincoln linemen repaired snapped wires, righted leaning power poles and helped clean up debris from massive trees felled by Hurricane Irma's winds.

The damage could have been much worse, and more difficult to undo, Danahy said.

Particularly in Ocala, about 40 miles south of Gainesville, sandy soil kept utility poles from snapping when trees hit them. The LES teams used digger derrick trucks to push the poles upright, then firmed up the soil around them using hydraulic tampers.

And most utilities in the two cities are along the streets instead of in alleyways, making access easier for repair crews there than in Lincoln.

"If we had a big storm like that, guys are climbing poles, they're not using bucket trucks and things like that," Danahy said.

Floridians appeared to appreciate the help, bringing them snack bags, baked goods, water, pizzas  even drawings of utility workers and their bucket trucks.

"They were just so grateful that we were there. They would ask where we were from and they just couldn't believe that somebody would drive down from Nebraska to help," Danahy said. "It was southern hospitality to the max."
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In fall 2012, Mike Myers was debating how much longer he would keep coming to work each day at C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport, the only school hes ever taught at.

It was his 33rd year in the classroom; it would turn out to be his last.

What clinched it for him, he said, was a raft of changes in Louisiana education law pushed through earlier that year and how they changed the teaching profession.

The centerpiece of those changes were strict new limits on which teachers could enjoy tenure and the job protections that come with it.

The change in tenure law was part of former Gov. Bobby Jindal's push to overhaul the state's poorly performing public schools.

Education reformers saw tenure, which was routinely granted to teachers after three years, as an impediment to removing ineffective teachers from school classrooms. They wanted the job protection tied to how well a teacher's students performed on standardized tests.

A tenured teacher can be dismissed only for just cause. Administrators wishing to fire tenured teachers have to provide ample notice and spell out in writing the causes for termination. Teachers who object can demand a tenure hearing, and, if they still dont like the result, can take their case to district court.

Under the old system, teachers earned tenure once theyd worked for three years. The new law, known as Act 1, awards tenure only to teachers who tally repeated high ratings under a new evaluation system called Compass that makes heavy use of student test scores. And teachers that already have tenure will lose it immediately if theyre rated as ineffective for just one year.

Myers said hes far from alone in his decision to get out.

There were quite a few teachers that this was the final straw that broke the camels back that made them decide to go ahead and retire, Myers said.

There are roughly half as many tenured teachers in Louisiana now as there were before the law changed. During the 2011- 2012 school year, close to 85 percent of Louisianas nearly 50,000 schoolteachers had three years or more of experience, the main criterion for earning tenure.

By November 2016, according to a state survey, only 42 percent of teachers across the state had tenure. The number of non-tenured teachers quadrupled from about 7,000 to more than 28,000.

In a study released in February, the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, which is based at Tulane University, found a sharp uptick in retirements in the first two years after the law changed and its consequences began to kick in.

Estimates suggest that reform-induced attrition was equivalent to losing between 1,500 to 1,700 teachers in the first two years after the removal of tenure protections, or 3 to 3.5 percent of Louisianas teacher workforce, the report concluded.

The new tenure system is just now starting to produce tenured teachers but early indications are they are few in number.

The 2012 law spelling out the changes specifies that teachers can earn tenure only if they are rated as highly effective for five out of six consecutive years. The 2016-17 school year was the fifth year under the new system. Consequently, teachers who were rated highly effective that year as well as the four previous years are now eligible for tenure.

The official number of Louisiana teachers who have actually earned tenure under the new system wont be available until December, the deadline for school district to report the tenure status of their teachers, said Sydni Dunn, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education.

But last year, according to the state survey, only 3,172 teachers in Louisiana were on track for tenure, or about 11 percent of those who didnt have it already. In 21 districts, fewer than 10 teachers were on track. The highest number of on track teachers, 255, were from Bossier Parish.

The on track measure, though, is very broad. It includes teachers who are three to four years away from earning tenure, assuming that they remain highly effective year after year.

Last week, The Advocate asked a handful of large public school districts across the state how many of their teachers have so far earned tenure under the new system.

Jefferson Parish, the states largest school district and employer of more than 3,200 classroom teachers, reported that just eight teachers now have tenure who weren't tenured before the new system was enacted.

Calcasieu Parish, the fifth largest district, is reporting that 64 of its teachers meet the new criteria for tenure, which is almost 3 percent of that parish's teachers.

EBR School Board renews Drake's contract for two more years as superintendent The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board on Thursday unanimously rehired Warren Drake to ser

Ascension Parish, the 10th largest district in the state, reported that no new teachers earned tenure.

Representatives of several other districts, including East Baton Rouge Parish, told The Advocate they are still in the process of determining their totals.

Myers, a longtime and active member of his local chapter of the Federation of Teachers union, said he didnt place much value in tenure until it was changed.

Its not something you ever really thought about or really used, but when they took it away from you then you felt that they disrespected you and didnt treat you as you really should be treated, he said.

Myers job didnt mesh well with the Compass evaluation system, which he described as one size fits all. He taught special education students at Byrd High, shuttling back and forth from the class to class to help these students with varying disabilities. Its an educational approach known as inclusion.

The states initial evaluation format, however, was meant for traditional classroom teachers, not inclusion teachers like him. Myers said the school administrator at Byrd made him teach a lesson as if he were a traditional classroom teacher in order to complete the evaluation. That administrator, then informed him that based on the ginned-up observation, he was likely to be judged ineffective.

When it became clear that they were going to evaluate me as a regular classroom teacher, it got really stupid, he said.

Myers said he filed a grievance, which he eventually won, to force the high school to evaluate inclusion teachers like himself in a way that better reflected what they actually do, but the experience left a bad taste in his mouth. He decided to get out.

I dont want to have to worry about my job in order to do a good job, he said.
Louisiana homeowners, frustrated by the pace of the roll out of the state's major flood recovery program, are imploring members of the task force overseeing the state's efforts to give them a clearer picture of when they may receive aid.

"I'm one of those who is just tired of waiting," Linda Mouton, of Maurice, told the Restore Louisiana Task Force at its meeting in Abbeville on Friday.

Officials warned Friday that the pace could slow even further as hurricane recovery efforts in Florida and Texas swallow resources. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma efforts have claimed nearly half the number of qualified damage inspectors who have been working in Louisiana since the floods of March and August 2016.

The state has distributed about $18 million of the $1.3 billion that the state has received from the federal government to help homeowners rebuild and repair their homes after last year's historic floods.

Gov. John Bel Edwards' administration has pointed to federal red tape that kept money tied up until April and necessary environmental reviews and inspections required by the federal government to spend the money.

"We cannot argue with folks who say that it takes too long," Office of Community Development director Pat Forbes said at the meeting. "We know that it takes too long,"

About 44,000 homeowners have competed an initial survey required to be considered for the federally-funded homeowner rebuilding program. Homeowners can receive reimbursements for work already completed or go through the program to begin work with a contractor.

More than 28,000 environmental reviews have been completed  about 76 percent of the people who have qualified. About 600 homeowners have been granted funds.

But the homeowners who appeared at the task force meeting said that they feel like the next steps come after delays that they don't understand.

"How long does it take to get reimbursed?" said Janice McCumber, of Abbeville. "I think people don't want to fool with this because of the experience they had with FEMA before."

"Every time I've called, it's under review," she added.

Edwards' office has repeatedly pointed to statistics from past disasters that have shown that the flood response has been fast in comparison. But a year after the floods, the pace of the money flow has become a concern among leaders, including some members of Louisiana's Congressional delegation.

The state is still seeking additional aid for the long-term recovery from the floods. Congress didn't include the flood recovery in Community Development Block Grants in an aid package dedicated to Hurricane Harvey. CDBG has been the main source of long-term disaster recovery aid, including the $1.7 billion that Louisiana has received for the flood.

Congress will have to pass another spending plan in December to prevent a federal government shutdown, but it remains unclear whether Louisiana will get additional flood recovery dollars then, particularly in light of recent major hurricanes.
WASHINGTON  U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona announced his opposition to a last-ditch Republican effort to replace Obamacare Friday afternoon, leaving the effort on life-support.

I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal," McCain said of the plan, spearheaded by Louisiana's Sen. Bill Cassidy and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried."

McCain's announcement deeply imperils Cassidy and Graham's proposed health care overhaul, which they've billed as Republicans' final opportunity to fulfill promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

But it doesn't yet doom the Cassidy-Graham plan to certain failure. Republicans have until Sept. 30 to pass the bill with a simple-majority vote under a process known as reconciliation. With Democrats and independents unified in opposition, Cassidy and Graham can only afford to lose two Republican colleagues and still pass their plan.

I cannot in good conscience vote for Graham-Cassidy. A bill impacting so many lives deserves a bipartisan approach. https://t.co/2sDjhw6Era pic.twitter.com/30OWezQpLg  John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 22, 2017

McCain joins Kentucky's Rand Paul in opposing the bill, which Paul has labeled "Obamacare-lite" and has blasted for not going far enough to gut the ACA.

Can't see video below? Click here.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said she's "leaning" toward voting no on Cassidy-Graham, according to the Portland Press-Herald newspaper in Maine. Yet Collins  who with McCain and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski broke ranks to defeat the Republicans' previous attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act in July  hasn't definitively pledged to vote against it.

Opposition from Collins, or from one of a handful of other undecided Republicans, would send the Cassidy-Graham plan down in defeat.

Murkowski has repeatedly told reporters she needs to study the bill more closely and is weighing analyses by a number of different groups that show the potential impact on her state, which because of its massive geographic size and sparse population faces unique costs and challenges in delivering health care.

Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, and Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, have also not indicated publicly which way they'll vote. All represent swing states that expanded Medicaid and most analyses of the proposals show all three states losing out on funding under Cassidy-Graham.

At the heart of the Cassidy-Graham plan is a formula that would take the federal dollars currently pouring into the Affordable Care Act's individual health insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion and bundle them into flexible block grants instead. It would also phase in a population-based cap on federal funding for traditional Medicaid as well.

The Congressional Budget Office is expected to release an initial, partial analysis of the Cassidy-Graham proposal this week. But the report won't consider the bill's effects on the total number of people covered by health insurance, nor will it analyze its impact on the federal deficit. The CBO has said those estimates will take several more weeks.

But estimates and analyses of the bill by a number of other groups  including the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS)  indicate that states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as well as those with high rates of enrollment on the law's health insurance exchanges will see federal health care funding cut under Cassidy-Graham.

Louisiana, which expanded Medicaid in 2016 following the election of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, is among those widely projected to lose federal funding, though figures on exactly how much differ. Edwards and Dr. Rebekah Gee, secretary of the state Department of Health, have come out against the plan.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid estimated Louisiana would lose $2.4 billion in federal funding in 2026, not including cuts from the proposed law's caps on traditional Medicaid funding, while Avalere Health, a consulting group, estimated in a study funded by the Democrat-aligned Center for American Progress that the state could lose as much as $8 billion over the next decade.

Cassidy has argued that the bill's rollback of a required 10 percent state match on Medicaid expansion dollars and increased funding for hospitals serving low-income areas would offset those cuts, though the state and several outside analysts have disputed that.

Rumors have swirled around Capitol Hill that Cassidy and Graham  along with co-sponsors Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, and Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin  had been preparing potential alterations to the bill's formula to send more money to Alaska or exempt the state from some of its provisions in a bid to win over Murkowski.

CMS estimated Alaska would see a 38 percent drop in federal funding for Medicaid expansion and insurance subsidies by 2026. An analysis commissioned by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services put the cut at 65 percent.

In a statement, Cassidy said he was "disappointed that Sen. John McCain is not voting to repeal and replace Obamacare.

"But, as long as there are families being penalized because they cant afford insurance costing $30,000 to $40,000 a year, I will continue to work for those families," Cassidy added.

The astronomical premium figures appeared to refer to costs incurred by Lafayette-based conservative radio talk-show host Moon Griffon, whom Cassidy has repeatedly highlighted while talking about health care. Griffon, according to Cassidy, pays $40,000 in premiums to cover his family, including a child with special need.

A spokesman for Cassidy didn't immediately respond to emails and phone messages Friday asking whether the senator still saw a path to Senate passage without McCain's backing.

The Cassidy-Graham proposal is currently slated for a hearing late Monday morning before the Senate's finance committee. It wasn't immediately clear if the committee's chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would press ahead with the hearing.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated earlier in the week that he intends to bring the Cassidy-Graham plan up for a vote in the Senate sometime this week. It's also unclear if McConnell would press forward with a vote now that the plan's passage appears to be in jeopardy.

"Im excited about solutions we have found in Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson," Graham tweeted Friday afternoon, after McCain's announcement. "We press on."
Lincoln Police say an officer who was assaulted Friday night is in the hospital with facial injuries.

Eighteen-year-old Kevin Estrada allegedly punched the officer at 9 p.m. Friday during an arrest, according to Capt. Don Scheinost.

The injured officer was one of two who responded to a disturbance in the 1000 block of Y Street after receiving calls about a man yelling in the street and knocking over parked motorcycles.

Estrada was later arrested for first-degree assault on a police officer, a felony.
As a trial lawyer, and as a person offended by insurance lobby propaganda masquerading as facts, I felt obliged to respond to Dan Fagan's absurd "Trial Lawyers Laughing On Way To Bank" opinion piece in the Sept. 20, 2017, edition of the Advocate. Neither the state of Louisiana, its governor, its courts, or its members of the trial or defense bars are corrupt. Fagan links all trial lawyers to the Democratic Party, "Big Labor" and "Big Environment."

Dan Fagan: Trial lawyers laughing on way to the bank You can typically tell how well an industry is doing by the money it spends on advertising. 

Let me educate him. Yes, many trial lawyers are Democrats, but so are lots of other folks. Are those folks corrupt, too? Louisiana is a right-to-work state, so exactly what impact does he believe "Big Labor" has? As for the so-called "Big Environment" folks, what about the multitude of grass-roots groups like Ducks Unlimited or any number of other wonderful conservation groups? Are they corrupt, too? Many trial lawyers are Republicans and Libertarians, decorated military veterans, pro-life advocates, Second Amendment advocates, churchgoers, NRA members, hunters, fisherman, conservationists, civic leaders, leading donors to education and other charities, and responsible parents. All are protectors of our God-given constitutional rights. I am proud to be a trial lawyer, and when I get a Christmas card from a former client or a picture of a child's graduation, I thank God I had the privilege of representing that person and making sure his or her access to justice was not denied.

Richard Martin

attorney

New Orleans
Regarding the article titled "Catch Basin Cleaning Contract," I was dumbfounded that city and state agencies along with the contractor did not know the Department of Environmental Quality regulations on the disposal of waste removed from catch basins. Where have they been disposing of the waste all these years? After the local flooding that took place recently I think the citizens were relieved when the New Orleans city officials announced they were going to clean out the catch basins starting with the ones already reported as clogged. Citizens responded and reports of catch basins needing to be cleaned increased by 1,835 in August and September, bringing the total reported to the 311 service to 3,795 needing cleaning or repair.

The question is, which catch basins were cleaned out? The city and state agencies cleaned out 2,260. The contractor RAMJ cleaned 381 in August and September for a total of 2,641. The city 311 database showed only 254 of the 3,795 maintenance requests closed out in August and September. This is one of those times when I think of what Mark Twain said in his autobiography. "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

Irwin Langhoff

retired

New Orleans
In response to Trial lawyers laughing on the way to the bank: Yes, having been a trial lawyer for over 40 years, I found Dan Fagans column very offensive, extremely biased and definitely misleading.

Although I agree that television advertising by certain lawyers, many of whom consider themselves businessmen rather than trial lawyers, is out of control. Of course, you can thank our U. S. Supreme Court for its expansive interpretation of the First Amendment for that, leaving our bar association powerless to exercise any control.

Dan Fagan: Trial lawyers laughing on way to the bank You can typically tell how well an industry is doing by the money it spends on advertising. 

However, Fagans solution calling for more tort reform legislation is not the answer. Tellingly, Fagan does not describe the type of tort reform he is promoting other than lowering the jurisdictional limits on jury trials. But what the Chamber of Commerce has always meant by tort reform is simply restricting the average persons access to the courts, thereby protecting culprits like the asbestos, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. If the chamber actually knows of abuses by particular judges, it should identify them and oppose their re-election, not condemn the entire system.

In my experience, the overwhelming number of judges and jurors are fair to both sides and what tort reform amounts to is an attempt to swing the pendulum in favor of big business. Next time, Fagan wants to look at who's laughing all the way to the bank, let him take a look at the salaries of the top executives of these companies he is trying to protect.

Mike Gertler

attorney

New Orleans
Canberrans will get a chance to vote on the name of the city's new West Basin park, part of the ACT government's redevelopment between downtown and Lake Burley Griffin.

The shortlist includes a landscaper, a convict, an architect and the founder of the Queanbeyan Age; alas, Parky McParkface did not make the cut.

An artists impression of the upcoming West Basin public park.

ACT Place Names Committee member Alen Mawer said an Aboriginal Ngambri-man, Binder Marran of the Ngunnawal people, had almost made the list but the committee could not establish sufficient provenance.

"He's the first person whose name is in a European source which is associated with Canberra as a place," Mr Mawer said.
The UK had its credit rating cut by Moody's Investors Service, which blamed Brexit, a sluggish economy and Prime Minister Theresa May's weakened political position.

It lowered the UK on Friday by one notch to Aa2, the third-highest investment grade.

While both other major rating companies downgraded Britain shortly after the referendum in 2016, this is the first cut since May's election gamble backfired this summer, wiping out her majority, and, according to Moody's, forcing her into unhelpful fiscal compromises.

The Moody's announcement came just hours after May gave a key speech on her vision for the UK's separation from the European Union.
On a warm Sunday summer evening a few years ago, two officials from the Chinese consulate in Sydney travelled to Melbourne to send a message.

They were interested in a caller to an occasionally provocative Sunday evening talk back show on Chinese radio station 3CW. The two men's message was relayed to the caller through a Chinese consulate official in Melbourne.

Free speech should apply to foreign students Credit:Louise Kennerley

The caller, who had gone on air and queried the Chinese Communist Party's activities, was told he needed to consider more carefully what he said publicly.

The caller recently relayed this story to me in a meeting in a quiet CBD hotel. Accompanying my source was a second Chinese-born Australian. He works in Melbourne's Chinese language media industry, which is now dominated by savvy commercial operators in joint ventures with Chinese Communist Party controlled companies.
When architect Bertram Goodhue designed the Capitol he expected it could be built in phases if the state couldn't do everything within budget constraints.

That's what happened, with murals that were planned in several areas and with fountains for the four courtyards within the building.

Eighty-five years later, those fountains were dedicated Friday, with a drone buzzing overhead for a time and a computer laptop that started the water flowing after speeches by Chief Justice Mike Heavican, Legislature Speaker Jim Scheer, former Lincoln Sen. DiAnna Schimek and Gov. Pete Ricketts.

"The silver lining of some of those things not getting finished in the original concept was that succeeding generations of Nebraskans had the opportunity to be involved in this Capitol construction (completion)," Ricketts said.

Schimek was one of those who lobbied on behalf of the fountains being installed, including former Omaha Sen. John Nelson, a key fundraiser for the project.

"We are overjoyed to be here today," she said.

Native designs were incorporated into the fountains to remind school children that the first Nebraskans were Native Americans, Ricketts said.

Money has been donated, and the last part of the project  landscaping for the courtyards  will complete the last phase of restoration.
Basically, we weren't allowed any. Try this, for instance: in private girls' schools, there were regular clothing inspections in order to confirm the students were wearing underpants of the correct type and colour. In some cases, the girls were required to hold up the side of their dress as the teacher walked along the row; in other cases, a mirror was used to look up their skirts; in yet others, a prefect would be stationed under a flight of metal steps in order to look up the dresses of the younger girls as they came down the stairs. Cue millennials: "No way. That is so wrong. Why weren't the teachers arrested?" Satisfying, isn't it, to hear their genuine dismay? In last week's instalment, we shocked the millennials by describing the complex rules around office stationery.

Did anything as weird happen to the boys? An American reader offers this fact: across much of the US, girls and boys were given separate swimming lessons. The girls were allowed to wear a simple bathing costume, but the boys were required to swim naked. In Chicago, where the local NPR station has researched the issue, the compulsory nude swim classes continued until as late as 1980. As the NPR report put it: you would walk naked to the poolside with "the same classmates you sit next to in math". Did this happen in Australia? I've asked around, and can only offer this: in some private schools, if you forgot to bring your swimming costume, the punishment would be to train in the nude, splashing away alongside your covered-up classmates. There did seem an inordinate fondness for nudity in the private schools of the 1960s and 1970s. Several Herald readers, of both genders, recounted communal showers in boarding schools. Female readers added the complication of "that time of the month" during which you were prevented from showering, the details of your period and its length recorded in a large ledger, operated by the PE mistress. At this point, surely, we have the millennials on the run. I can almost hear their pained voices. "We forgive you for the housing! We forgive you for hogging all the jobs! You really did have it bad!"

Admittedly, much of this is about private schools. For those who escaped that particular torture, perhaps life was better. But it was still weird. For instance: smoking. When grown-ups had a party, the little kids would be sent around with a big cigarette lighter, in order to light the guests' cigarettes. Parents would often dispatch their children to the local store to buy "a packet of Dunhills". At that same local store, the owner would sell single cigarettes from beneath the counter to any children who couldn't afford a packet. And, of course, every workplace was full of smokers, puffing away, the air thick with second-hand smoke. Despite all this, if your parents caught you smoking the common punishment was to force you to smoke the rest of the packet in one go, in order to make you so sick you'd give up the habit. I've tested some of these facts on two friendly millennials with whom I work. They reacted with various levels of surprise and disbelief, employing the words "weird", "awful" and  many times  "disturbing".
Alan Inchley, Frankston Renewables up in smoke Peter Hannam's article flagging the potential coal shortage in Australia ('How the Coalition lost its marbles over energy', The Sunday Age,, 17/9 highlights the fact that both coal and gas can no longer be relied on for Australia's power needs. We're lucky that we have unlimited renewables to fill the shortfalls. We're unlucky that our current government cannot see the renewables for the smoke. Kay Wennagel, Hawthorn Australia goes it alone

The 50 nations that have clean nuclear power can't all be wrong. As far as nuclear waste is concerned, Australia's uninhabitable desert allows plenty of places to store it. All the other alternative power options need to be developed but currently only coal and uranium can produce constant industrial scale power with no power blackouts in summer. Worldwide new coal and nuclear power plants are being planned and built in the next decade, except for Australia. Adrian Jackson, Middle Park FORUM Dim the spotlight While I thought Michael Short's article ('A non-binding letter to our ex-PM', The Sunday Age, 17/9) in relation to Tony Abbott and same-sex marriage was immaculate there was one problem  it puts Abbott in the spotlight. Simply put, don't give him space-oxygen. His views are, most times, too extreme and not fair, so forget the rightful notion of balance. I have kept this response brief for that very reason.

David Sheils, Warragul Hypocrisy unlimited Bravo Michael Short. A beautifully argued article that precisely reveals the hypocrisy of the man. Lesley Black, Frankston Value, not profile

Thank you Michael Short for putting in writing a rigorous logical analysis of Tony Abbott's opinionated rant on the marriage equality debate ('Same-sex marriage is a step too far', 13/9). Abbott's writing was a string of logical flaws, baseless assertions and a complete lack of self-awareness (how could he not have self-censored his championing of sexual orientation apartheid?) I fully support The Age publishing a range of views on this issue, but I did question the reasoning behind providing a platform to an already over-exposed individual who had nothing baring even a passing resemblance to "intellectual integrity" to add to the discussion. The quality of the debate would be greatly improved if people were granted column inches based on the value of their contribution, rather than the size of their public profiles. Elizabeth Long, Collingwood Just get on with it

I normally avoid participating in surveys and while I've taken part in the same-sex marriage survey, I'm frustrated at the amount of energy and money which has been devoted to it. Nonetheless, I'd be happy to participate in another survey if one was undertaken to ask Australians to vote either "yes" or "no" to a simple proposition: Should our democratically elected legislators actually get on and do their jobs? The next federal election will give Australians that very opportunity  the chance to vote for politicians who are prepared to listen to their electorates, represent the wishes of those electorates in Parliament and to do the job they were elected to do. Geoff Cossar, Rye Sea, all the facts It was disappointing to read the misrepresentation of data from AMCS on turtle interactions ('Fears for fate of protected sea turtles', The Sunday Age, 17/9). The facts are:

1. Thousands of sea turtles are killed every year due to many different reasons. 2. Longline fishing for the same period accounts for 0.5 per cent of turtle deaths. 3. The tuna longline fishing industry catches fish sustainably and continues to research how not to catch turtles. The federal government with the latest marine conservation management plans has ensured Australia meets international marine conservation targets and continues to be recognised as a global leader in conservation. It has done this by applying robust science to significantly increase conservation. Fishers are the stewards of our marine environment as their livelihoods, families and regional communities depend on it. Seafood is a critical part of our way of life and we do not want to see Australia import more seafood when we can catch our seafood sustainably. David Ellis, CEO, Tuna Australia Ltd Something fishy The Turnbull government's move to tear up marine sanctuary protections, claiming it to be based on a "scientific approach" is a huge retrograde step and would make Australia the first nation to make such a move. Oceans are vital to the health of the world and must be protected from overfishing. It is disturbing that the "scientific data" the government has used is five years out of date, with recent data showing a huge rise in the number of turtles, dolphins, whales etc being snared. For the health of the seas these changes must not go ahead.

Ron Hayton, Beaumaris Protect, now Wise words from Tim Winton ('Hung out to dry', The Sunday Age, 17/9). When will we learn that our oceans are precious. In his novel, Blueback, Winton explores the relationship between a boy and a fish, between nature and the tyranny of those who devalue and exploit the oceans. It is a powerful reminder, that which we carelessly destroy cannot give to us that which we need. Nature and humans are intertwined in a meaningful and complex dance. If we listen to her song we can hear her pain and grief as she is slowly being polluted and neglected. More needs to be done to protect our oceans now. Gemma Di Bari, North Balwyn No nukes

If Jan Hermiston, Nick Roberts (Letters, 17/9) and others want to understand the dangers of nuclear energy, including the waste, start by reading Dr Helen Caldicott. Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming or anything else. But don't believe me. Read the facts for yourself. Don Hampshire, Sunbury Lincoln's example I find myself wondering what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had called for a plebiscite on freeing the slaves instead of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Some leaders have had the courage and decency to stand tall on human rights matters instead of side-stepping them with disingenuous platitudes and divisive actions. Lincoln put himself on the line and was willing to face the political consequences of serving what he knew was right. And he never told people he was a strong leader. They just knew it. John Cameron, Bellbrae

Paying the price There is one thing that the Turnbull government has truly achieved and that's how to divide a nation. By shirking its responsibilities it has broken our system of representational democracy, torn up the rules-book and we are all paying the price. Paul Blackman, Minyip Bad entrance Travelling to Sydney from Melbourne return by XPT, the entrance to Sydney by train is very picturesque. The same, however, cannot be said of Melbourne with dumped mattresses, graffiti, car and truck tyres, home furniture, burnt-out car bodies and commercial rubbish and waste dumped and scattered along the rail line into Melbourne  "the world's most liveable city".

To the overseas visitor, the visitors from other states and Victorian residents the entrance by train into Melbourne is a veritable disgrace and gives the impression of a lack of care and pride in the environment and in the city itself. Scott Ramsay, Strathdale You make the laws Tonight I saw Matthew Guy on ABC news claiming that "Politicians should not be involved in end-of-life issues". Why ever not? Politicians make laws. And we need them to make a law to allow assisted dying when people are suffering unbearably. Next he'll be telling us that politicians should not be involved in marriage issues, I suppose.

Miranda Jones, Drummond Rational applause The Rationalist Society of Australia applauds the Victorian Parliament's exhaustive process that has led to very well developed legislative policy, based on a reason and evidence. Victoria may lead but other states and territories should follow soon after to finally give Australians what they have wanted for decides  voluntary assisted dying. Dr Meredith Doig, president The drone danger

Chinese-manufactured drones used by Australian Defence Forces may have been transmitting sensitive information back to China Inc. Who would have thought? Who didn't check? George Greenberg, Malvern Rainbow blues We recently swapped our big Collingwood flag for a big rainbow flag. I didn't think it would matter much in progressive inner Melbourne. So I was "happy sad" when I got a letter thanking us and saying how much it meant to her kids who now felt OK to do the same. If rainbow kids in inner Melbourne are feeling judged I am worried for those in outer suburbs. So I would encourage all types of families to hang a flag to show your support.
She recently graduated from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies with a degree in politics and development studies, cutting off her waist-length hair in a gesture of freedom to celebrate the end of her exams. "I want to go into politics," she says. "I want to help people and change things"  although it's activism, rather than institutional politics (which she describes as "scary") that interests her most. "All my friends are vegan and I still eat meat, so they're like, 'You're not that political.' And I say, 'I am  in my own way.' "

Growing up a Fendi meant growing up at the heart of one of Italy's most iconic fashion brands. Karl Lagerfeld, who has been designing for Fendi for 52 years, would sketch pictures of her when she was a baby. She's been helping out backstage at her mother's fashion shows since she was 10, attended her first Dior haute couture show at the age of 12 ("I was desperate to meet John Galliano") and can have her pick of glamorous looks from the Fendi archive when the occasion calls. A socialite's career of front-row photo ops, fabulous furs and expensive friends, with perhaps a little designing on the side, seemed to beckon, but Leonetta wants more from life than that.

Her mother is Silvia Venturini Fendi, who heads up the menswear and accessory arms of the Italian luxury house and who, in 1997, created the Fendi Baguette, the little tote that kick-started the It Bag era. Leonetta's sister, the jeweller Delfina Delettrez Fendi, also designs accessories for the house.

If you think all fashion heiresses are bubble-headed brats more concerned with tearing through their trust funds than doing something useful, you've not met Leonetta Fendi. The 20-year-old bounds purposefully through London's Shoreditch House looking as if she's just taken a detour from the Women's March. Dressed in a T-shirt tucked into oversized blue workwear trousers, she's wearing the sturdy boots of someone who prefers to walk rather than Uber it.

Leonetta Fendi (left) with her sister, jewellery designer Delfina Delettrez Fendi, and Karl Lagerfeld, who started designing for Fendi in 1965, more than 30 years before Leonetta was born. Credit:Venturelli/Getty Images

Her own way runs counter to the prescribed route of the fashion It Girl. If Leonetta, which means "little lion" in Italian, conforms to any stereotype, it's that of the "woke" millennial rather than the spoilt rich girl. Instead of spending school holidays yacht-hopping around Europe, she volunteered in refugee camps in Greece, "giving out clothes and sleeping bags and helping in the kitchens". She also went to the refugee camp at Calais, in northern France. "Four or five times. I was volunteering in the camp. It was hard the first time, especially as you don't know what to expect. It was crazy  terrible, terrible situations  but I met such great people. I'm still texting them as they move around the world. Some have managed to get into the UK and they've claimed asylum and are starting their life slowly." It all sounds very worthy, but this bright young Fendi exudes an infectious optimism.

Her upbringing had, she says, "positives and negatives". "When I was young, people would say, 'Will you give me a Fendi bag for my birthday?' I started to think, that's not nice. People are going to be friendly with me for that?" She and all the Fendi cousins went to the same middle school. "There were so many of us, we were a clique," she says of her clan. "That's when I started to realise what it meant, the family." Even so, she didn't enjoy special fashion privileges. She and her cousins were the last girls in school to get Fendi schoolbags.

For Fendi, like many children born into high-flying families, the challenge is to create an identity for herself. "People would say, 'But you're a Fendi  why go to an anti-capitalist march? How can you do that?' People will always judge." Her ambition is to work for the United Nations or a non-government organisation, but she's not turning her back on fashion and the opportunities a global brand such as Fendi offers. "Now I'm starting to think of both paths and to aim to combine politics and fashion," she says. "Fashion is very powerful. It's one of the most powerful mediums to express yourself in."

The Fendi family specialises in producing unconventional, strong, creative and entrepreneurial women. The brand was founded by Leonetta's great-grandmother, Adele Casagrande. She opened a fur and leather workshop in Rome in 1918, renaming it Fendi in 1925 after marrying Edoardo Fendi. The business was passed on to their five daughters  Paola, Franca, Carla, Alda and Anna (Leonetta's grandmother)  who grew up in the atelier, playing with the furs and bags. With the help of Karl Lagerfeld, who began working for Fendi in 1965, the sisters are credited with transforming the image of fur from a staple of wealthy women's wardrobes into a must-have fashion statement.
Whatever names have been thrown at Kim Kardashian West, "foolish" is never one of them.

The social media queen, one of the most recognisable people in the world, has conquered the hugely lucrative app and beauty worlds, and is the star and producer of one of the longest running reality television shows in the US, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, now in its 10th year.

If the Kardashians are the US's unofficial first family, she is the president, and unlike the current leader in command, Donald Trump, she is a media mastermind.

Paparazzi pictures of her sell like gold dust, so like the good little capitalist her momager Kris Jenner has reared, Kardashian West knows her worth and demands her cut.
"Internationally prevalence ranges from between 3 to 18 per cent. In Australia, it is hovering between 3 and 8 per cent," explains internet and mental health expert Dr Mubarak Rahamathulla, a senior lecturer in social work at Flinders University. "Gambling prevalence is 3 per cent."

Although most of us use the internet, an increasing number of Australians are becoming addicted to the constant availability of stimulus and dopamine-hit of notifications. Considered similar in nature to gambling addiction  an impulse control disorder  internet addiction involves substituting real-life relationships and engagement with an online world.

About 87 per cent of Australians use the internet daily, with most of us logging on more than five times a day and spending an average 10 hours and 24 minutes on our digital devices.

It is a problem, growing at high-speed, that affects more Australians than gambling addiction and may be to blame for trolling on social media as well as other "deviant" behaviour.

Despite this, internet addiction is currently not yet recognised as a disorder and the lack of available treatment may result in "deviant" anti-social behaviours online, Rahamathulla says.

"The diagnosis of internet addiction is not recognised yet, so we wanted to know how these people are coping," he explained of his new research, to be published in the Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. "We wanted to study their behaviour in social networking sites because people can take any identity and they can behave in the way they want to behave."

For the study, Rahamathulla explored the social media behaviour of adults who scored high in an internet addiction test that asks questions including: How often do you prefer the excitement of the internet to intimacy with your partner? How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the internet? and how often do you lose sleep due to late-night log-ins?

"Interestingly, people who had higher internet addiction scores are more likely to engage in deviant and problem behaviours on social networking sites," Rahamathulla said. "For example, people with high internet addiction scores had, in higher numbers, initiated sexual relationships with strangers on social networking sites and also reported these relationships were affecting the quality of their intimate relationships in real life."

Internet addicts were five times more likely to get sexually involved with a stranger they met through a social networking site and 3.5 times more likely to engage in risky behaviour, such as sharing their personal details with strangers.
Two Sydney tobacconist owners have been slapped with a record $72,000 fine for selling cigarettes in packages without health warnings.

The man and woman at Free Choice Tobacconist in Bondi Junction were each found guilty of 36 tobacco-related offences, which carry a fine of $1000 per count.

Two proprietors at Free Choice Tobacco in Bondi have been handed the biggest ever fine in NSW for tobacco-related offences. Credit:Louise Kennerley

They are also banned from selling tobacco at their store until August 2018.

The combined penalties are the biggest ever in NSW for tobacco-related offences under the Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2008.
Fish-shaped soy sauce bottles are used to sell doses of 1,4-Butanediol, a GHB alternative. Credit:Victoria Police The syndicate has set up the company with an active, if basic, website to appear operational. It would pass a cursory glance - but police investigations show it has no clients. This group and many others are exploiting a ridiculous loophole in the law that the federal government has failed to address, in an act of blatant stupidity that is impossible to defend. A drum of 1,4 Butanediol. Credit:Victoria Police While it is illegal under state law to possess "Bute", as it is known, for human consumption, it is not illegal to import it for industrial purposes under Commonwealth law. This means criminal groups are freely importing the stuff and flooding the market, targeting nightclubs and music festivals.

Industry sources say 1,4-Butanediol is not an effective cleaning agent but a compound used in the manufacture of specific synthetic products. It would be simple to make it a substance that can only be imported under licence for manufacturing purposes. And so it would seem that while the government has been determined to stop the boats carrying asylum seekers it is not so keen to stop them carrying an illicit product responsible for thousands of overdoses. When swallowed, Bute is turned into GHB by the liver, but as the process is slower, users often take a second or third dose - resulting in a massive number of overdoses. Most users are told they are buying GHB or Liquid E or liquid Fantasy, not an industrial solvent that suppresses heart and respiration function, particularly when used with alcohol. Virtually all overdoses reported to be GHB-related are actually caused by Bute, although pathology tests cannot differentiate between the two. And police say Bute is now the date rape drug of choice, sweetened with a touch of cordial to mask the bitter taste.

The profits are massive. Imported for $7000 a barrel, 200 litres of Bute can be sold immediately for a wholesale price of $200,000, which means the four-tonne lot is worth $4 million. In the retail market, where Bute is sold for between $7 and $15 for 3 millilitres, the profits are astronomical. If all this Bute made the market, it would be the equivalent of 1.3 million doses, with a street value in excess of $15 million. The first shipment has been discovered on the docks by Border Force officers, who then contact Victoria Police. Bute is not considered a high priority, as it is not a prohibited import - even though it is clearly being used as an illicit drug. Which means the Border Force officers are going beyond their usual duties of concentrating on illegal imports to assist Victoria Police in dealing with what has become a massive problem. "They have been incredibly helpful to us and without them these big shipments would get through," one of the Aquatics team says. In the last three years, police have discovered just 10 ml of GHB and the latest operation will bring the Bute seized in Victoria in the same period to 19 tonnes. That is well over six million doses - and still the federal government has failed to act.

Let's put this another way. Police are seizing nearly two tonnes of Bute, a GHB alternative, for every one millilitre of real GHB. And yet the importation of Bute gets the green light, while GHB is banned. Certainly there is intelligence that some of the profits have ended up in the hands of terror suspects, while some are assigned to pay the legal fees of charged drug traffickers. Just recently two sitting judges independently expressed concern about Bute, saying they were alerted to its widespread use by previous stories in this column. We reflect on this not to pump up our own tyres (some critics say they have already reached monster-truck proportions) but to show the lamentable lack of a co-ordinated public policy on what has become a gold mine for organised crime. At the briefing for Operation Aquatics, the team prepare to notify surveillance police who will be needed for the controlled delivery and the undercover unit that may be required if the job gets complicated. The team assign a list of tasks, including swearing out affidavits and warrants, then prepare for the secret drug switch. The sting is on. They source near-identical barrels for the substitution that are then filled with water by Fire Brigade high-pressure hoses.

The next day the container is opened inside a warehouse and the real stainless steel drums, clearly marked as "1,4-Butanediol Made in China" and wrapped in protective plastic film, are removed by forklift and replaced with the fake police ones. The real Bute is then sent to the lab to be analysed and will be destroyed at a later date. The team speculate that a recent increase in the large number of importations is due to gangs stockpiling the product, believing the legal loophole will soon be closed. "They want to get in first," one says. "And we are coming into the party season," another adds. While police can plan for different contingencies, once the switch is made it is the suspects who unwittingly control the operation, as the team can only respond to their movements. It becomes a waiting game.

Will they want to pick up their own importation or require it to be delivered? Will they use unwitting drivers or syndicate members? Will new suspects turn up? When and where will they take the barrels, or will they be spooked and fail to show? Eventually representatives of the cleaning company make contact with the importers to say they will pick up their own consignment, nominating a two-hour window on a weekday. We enter the arrest phase. The suspects are late, but as a rule crooks are rarely punctual. Three men arrive at the docks in a rented truck and pick up the drums, sitting on three wooden pallets. They take them to a private property on the outskirts of Melbourne and unload them in a garage. But soon a second van becomes involved. For the next 24 hours, the suspects are followed as they stop at several addresses that police will only say are known to them.
For almost half of the 18 years that Connie Johnson's husband Michael knew her, she had cancer.

He saw her ravaged by pain and nausea, beset by an illness she had wrestled with three times throughout her 40 years of life, Michael Johnson told a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne.

But he also saw her draw deep strength and power from the Love Your Sister charity she had established with her brother, Gold Logie-winning actor Samuel.

"I saw this woman who was so weighed down by cancer still have the ability to lift so many of us up," Michael said.
Protesters and counter-protesters in the same-sex marriage debate came face to face in Sydney on Saturday as the debate surrounding the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey continued.

"Yes" and "no" campaigners met in Green Park, Darlinghurst. While verbal blows were echanged, a high police presence kept both sides peaceful.

Protesters standing against the Party For Freedom's Straight Lives Matter rally in Green Park, Sydney. Credit:Fiona Morris

The "no" protest was called "Straight Lives Matter". It was organised by Party for Freedom, which is a conservative, nationalist group encouraging people to vote no in the postal survey.

The Party for Freedom president, Nick Folkes, said that the group's message was about alerting people to the consequences of same-sex marriage.
Although the Turner brothers and their mother, Margaret, get little credit in the formation of Fremont, their history is closely tied to the city, and George Turners extant house is variously noted as being the oldest house or building still standing in Fremont or Dodge County.

George Turner was born in England in 1829 and after immigrating to Massachusetts, moved westward to Dubuque, Iowa, then to Omaha in 1856 or 1857. Fremont, which had been platted in 1856, attracted George and, in 1857, at the age of 27, he and his mother, Margaret, arrived in the embryonic village named in honor of Gen. John C. Fremont.

Initially George acted as an Indian trader and set up a freighting company out of Dubuque which expanded as a firm serving Fremont, Pikes Peak and Denver. In 1858, George filed a homestead claim and built a log cabin south of Fremont.

Margaret, meantime, bought lots on the northwest corner of Fifth and Main streets on the old Military Road from the Fremont Town Company for $3 in November 1859 and established a road ranche for freighters and immigrants on the site. The log structure expanded and became known as the Platte Valley Hotel & Stage Station, the second hotel in Fremont. Margaret began buying additional city lots ultimately owning the west half of Main Street from Fifth to Sixth streets."

Mother Turner became a well-known and respected businesswoman with qualities known far and wide. When she died some years later, it was said that there were few hearts which did not ache.

George platted Turners Addition of nine square blocks between C and F streets south of the business district. When Fremont was incorporated and voted as Dodge County seat in 1860, he became one of the first county commissioners, a job he would hold for eight years.

When he learned the Union Pacific Railroad was debating a route through Ames, Iowa, or Fremont, he considered a land donation as a possible inducement for the railroad. George then wisely asked his wife, Nancy, if she preferred life in the city or county. When she chose the city, George offered land to the Union Pacific and Sioux City & Pacific Railroads on the condition that they make Fremont a division point.

John Blair accepted the offer for about 70 acres of land in Turners Addition on behalf of the Union Pacific in 1865 and the Sioux City & Pacific in 1868. George and his brothers then entered a contract to build portions of the Union Pacific toward Ogden, Utah. The Union Pacific reached Fremont in 1866. About the same time George established a wholesale grocery with W.R. Wilson.

Knowing his wifes preference for living in a city, George in 1867 replaced his log cabin -- which was described as being in Block 211 of Turners Addition, a block north of the railroad tracks and faced west at 78 South C Street -- with a two-story, brick, 26-by-34-foot, Italianate house. A year later, he built a carriage house, but George lived only a short time in the house, dying of appendicitis in 1870.

Turners widow added a 17-by-26-foot brick addition to the house in 1874 at a cost of $750 and lived there until her death. Still in the Turner family ownership, a 7-by-14-foot Queen Anne entrance was built in 1889.

But then the house sat, facing the old Chicago & Northwestern freight depot, slowly becoming overrun with dense weeds and trees. Ultimately, it was purchased in 1981 by John Ronan, who enlarged the basement, restored the old brick sidewalks and completely renovated the house at a cost of $140,000 as his insurance companys office.

Mother Turners original hotel was razed in 1875 and the following July the New York Hotel was built in its place. The new hotel, which reportedly cost $15,000, was a three-story brick building with a wooden connecting wing and an elaborate mansard roof and cupola which could host 75 guests a night.

In 1881, a four-story, 36-by-72-foot addition was completed, but that building too is long gone while George Turners home lives on as the oldest dwelling and possibly building of any sort in Fremont. The house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
People who volunteer donate twice as much money to charity as people who only donate money, research has found.

The lead researcher for the Giving Australia report, Queensland University of Technology associate professor Wendy Scaife, said people who volunteered gave on average $1017.11, while those who only donated money gave $536.69 over 12 months in 2015 and 2016.

The research showed emergency relief, including the SES and rural fire services, was the sixth most common cause people volunteered for.

Professor Scaife said volunteers gave more money because they had more knowledge about the charities they give to and what impact their donation had.

"If you are a volunteer, you can see and feel and touch the difference that's being made, so you're very much aware of the need and you're very much aware of how the organisation is filling it," she said.
One of Melbourne's top tourist destinations Federation Square has yet to make a profit in its 15 years and will seek more cash from the state government to maintain the appeal and safety of its "ageing" site.

Visitors are staying about 76 minutes and spending $13.90 each at Fed Square.

Fed Square bears the cost of screening events like the Australian Open. Credit:Melanie Dove

Fed Square has reported $32.62 million in losses over the past five years, including a $5.8 million loss last financial year, its annual report shows.

Just over 10 million people visit the site each year, which houses broadcaster SBS, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and the Ian Potter Centre art gallery.
Fiona Patten declares herself gratified to have played a significant role in Victoria's path towards becoming the first Australian state to allow euthanasia, even though the proposed legislation falls far short of her original permissive ambitions.

She believes that should Victoria support the legislation tabled this week, all the other states and territories will follow soon enough, and as they do, their laws will be increasingly progressive, leaving Victoria with the nation's most conservative euthanasia legislation.

"The thing is, you have to start somewhere," she says.

In her three years in parliament, Patten has clearly learned something about the art of the possible, which is to say, compromise.
Rio de Janeiro: Hundreds of Brazilian soldiers poured into Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha slum on Friday in a bid to help the cash-strapped state government quell the drug-related violence that authorities blamed for at least four deaths and several injuries there this week.

The army deployed 950 troops in the sprawling favela, responding to a request from the Rio state government, Defence Minister Raul Jungmann told local television.

Soldiers walk past men drinking beer during an operation in the Rocinha slum of Rio de Janeiro on Friday. Credit:AP

In the past week, 60 criminals were believed to have launched an effort to dominate the drug trade in the area, not far from some of the city's most expensive real estate, and shootings were reported there on Friday morning, according to local media.

The recurring violence in Rocinha is one more sign of the backsliding since the launch of a "pacification" program in 2008 to reduce violence by pushing out drug gangs and setting up permanent outposts in the city's more than 1000 favelas.
Shanghai: A small earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not man-made, easing fears Pyongyang had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its last one.

Chinese earthquake officials said the magnitude 3.4 quake detected at 5.29pm (AET) was a "suspected explosion", but both the CTBTO, which monitors nuclear tests, and a South Korean meteorological agency official said they believed it was a natural quake. The South Korean agency had logged the tremor as a magnitude 3.0 quake.

"We use several methods to tell whether earthquakes are natural or man-made," said the South Korean official, who asked for anonymity.

"A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a man-made earthquake. In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorising this as a natural earthquake."
Yale University student Hannah Zeavin, who signed a complaint accusing the university of violating Title IX. Credit:New York Times The resume she lodged on applying for a job with the Trump administration gave top billing as a "qualification" to her role in parading women who had accused former president Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct at one of last year's candidates' debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton  but in a Facebook post at the time, she branded the women making similar accusations about Trump as "fake victims". Though welcomed by assault victim advocacy groups, the regime put in place by Obama is controversial  it imposed a "preponderance of evidence" bar, instead of the higher "clear and convincing" evidentiary standard; and it put the acid on college administrators to deal promptly with allegations, by threatening their federal funding and by publishing a 'shame list' of colleges under investigation for their handling of abuse cases. Title IX tattoos on Annie Clark, left, and Andrea Pino, who started a network of young women raising awareness of rape on college campuses nationwide. Credit:New York Times A 2015 survey for the Association of American Universities found that about a quarter of college women had been victims of a range of sexual misconduct up to and including rape, either by force or while they were drunk.

The explosion in abuse is attributed to a combination of factors - in particular, a booze-fuelled frat house mentality, epitomised by student slogans like "No means yes, yes means anal"; a reluctance by increasingly-corporatised college administrations to investigate, lest they offend wealthy donors and students' families; and a justice system in which investigation and trial were a second trauma for women who complained, in which they were demeaned and humiliated in public. Sara Weckhorst, left, and Tessa Farmer, who sued Kansas State University for not investigating rapes they say occurred in off-campus fraternity houses. Credit:New York Times Speaking on September 7 at George Mason University, near Washington, DeVos declared the Obama system "failed", arguing: "There must be a better way forward. Every survivor of sexual misconduct must be taken seriously. Every student accused of sexual misconduct must know that guilt is not predetermined." She came under immediate attack. Betsy DeVos is re-evaluating the get-tough policies on campus sexual assault enforced by the Obama administration. Credit:New York Times

"A blunt attack on survivors of sexual assault ... It sends a frightening message to all students: your government does not have your back if your rights are violated," said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center. "This administration wants to take us back to the days when colleges swept sexual assault under the rug," said Arne Duncan, DeVos' predecessor in the Obama administration. Paul Nungesser, who was accused by a fellow student of rape at Columbia University but cleared. Nungesser sued after being ostracised on campus; he and the university reached an undisclosed settlement in July 2017. Credit:New York Times Obama set down the principles in 2011. At implementation, college administrators devised procedural frameworks which varied from campus to campus, that were intended to minimise the trauma of victims  but which critics argue minimise due process protection for the accused, whose life, they say, can be ruined by the outcome as much as a sexual assault can ruin the life of the victim. But defenders of the lower evidentiary threshold, like Laura Dunn who founded the advocacy group SurvJustice, claim that a higher level of proof is unwarranted because "we're not locking people up, executing them, putting them away for years denying their liberty", as is the case in criminal courts.

Emma Sulkowicz leads a group carrying a mattress during Class Day for seniors at Columbia University in 2015. To protest the school's handling of her sexual assault complaint against a classmate, Sulkowicz carried a mattress around campus all year. Credit:New York Times Perhaps. But on conviction, the accused can be expelled from the college, making it difficult for them to enrol elsewhere; and even before conviction, they can be barred from various college venues and activities. And from one campus to the next there are varying limitations on the accused's right to be fully informed of the details of the accusation; to have an attorney, access to evidence and an opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and/or their accuser; and to have the final decision made by an independent figure  because many colleges have opted for an adjudication process in which a single administration officer investigates and decides the issues. Students walk across Harvard University's campus in Massachusetts. Some faculty say that too much power rests in the hands of the university's Title IX office. Credit:New York Times Liberal commentators like Ruth Marcus argue that there's every reason not to trust the likes of DeVos, but Marcus also agrees that Obama's prescription prompted an over-correction that, at some colleges, failed to do enough to protect the rights of those students accused.

Four Harvard professors, all women billed as feminists and experts in college civil rights, feminist legal reform and sexual assault and harassment, go further, blaming "terrified" college administrators who have "over-complied" with the Obama directive for producing enforcement regimes that "frequently are so unfair as to be truly shocking". Their co-written paper, published by Harvard, is a litany of "severe problems left in the wake of this overcorrection". They say definitions of sexual wrongdoing have gone seriously overboard, including mere speech about sexual matters, and way beyond accepted legal definitions of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment: "They often include sexual conduct that is merely unwelcome, even if it does not create a hostile environment, even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and even if the accuser's sense that it was unwelcome arose after the encounter." The Harvard Four - Elizabeth Bartholet, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk Gersen - make the point that Obama did not require schools to treat accused students unfairly, but they say tactics adopted by the Office of Civil Rights "put pressure on them to stack the system so as to favour alleged victims over those they accuse". They write: "Some schools fail to provide hearings or to allow the accused student's lawyer to attend or speak at hearings. Some bar the accused from putting questions to the accuser or witnesses, even through intermediaries. Some schools hold hearings in which the accuser participates while remaining unseen behind a partition."

They write: "Many Title IX officers run all the different functions in the process, acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and appeals board. Appeals are to an administrator in the institution's Title IX apparatus, rather than to a person who is structurally independent and not invested in the outcome. "Some Title IX officers even take on the role of adviser to an accuser through the process of complaint, investigation, adjudication, or appeal, which means they are not neutral. They do so, moreover, without providing analogous support to the accused." But their colleague Diane Rosenfeld, who heads up Harvard Law School's Gender Violence Program, challenges DeVos' argument on the standard of proof required: "She fails to mention that this is, and has always been, the applicable standard for [these] and other civil rights cases. Why should the fact that an offence involves sexual violence justify treating it differently? Indeed, to do so would be discriminatory in itself." Rosenfeld acknowledges DeVos' case-by-case complaints, but comes back sharply, arguing that each case was a violation of the guidelines articulated by Obama, before lecturing DeVos that the problem was implementation of the Obama guidelines, not the principles enshrined in them. "She should focus on enforcing equality principles rather than giving up just because the system is not yet perfect - or perfectly enforced  not retreat to a regime in which misconduct was rampant and largely unpunished," Rosenfeld said.
Fifty years ago, the streets of Lincoln filled with people dressed in old-time pioneer clothing as Nebraska celebrated its 100th birthday.

Bev Cram remembers wearing a floor-length red skirt and matching vest with a beige blouse. At the time, she was a fourth-grade Nebraska history teacher and was thrilled to see her students so excited about the past.

Although Cram left her pioneer outfit at home Friday afternoon for Nebraska's sesquicentennial celebration, her sentiments remained unchanged half a century later  "This is the best place to live."

About 5,000 or more people spanned across Centennial Mall for the celebration, said Barb Batie, a member of the Nebraska Sesquicentennial Commission. Live music played all night in front of the Capitol, and there were a traveling children's museum, games, food trucks, fireworks and a laser light show displayed on the Capitol.

The laser lights illuminated Centennial Mall, shining blocks away. For many, they were the highlight of the event.

Amateur photographers Laura Schliesser and Eric Wellman packed up their lawn chairs alongside their tripods and headed downtown specifically to photograph the laser show.

Though they saw the test run show, the couple was awed by the full spectacle.

"It was really cool. It exceeded my expectations and what I thought it was going to be like," Schliesser said.

In 1967, Centennial Mall was built to commemorate the state turning 100. With renovations ending recently along the mall, the sesquicentennial celebration acts as an unofficial dedication, Nebraska's first lady Susanne Shore said.

"I want people to celebrate and use Centennial Mall because it's such a beautiful space," she said.

The courtyard fountains at the State Capitol were debuted this year. The fountains were the only aspect of the building's original design that remained unfinished because of cost.

Gov. Pete Ricketts wished the state a happy birthday before switching on the fountains and watching them bubble to life.

Throughout 2017, hundreds of events were held across the state to celebrate the sesquicentennial. Friday's "Salute to the Good Life" celebration marked the finale of a year of festivities.

In addition to honoring Nebraska's statehood, it gave special recognition to the military and veterans with special seating, military bands and the traveling Remembering Our Fallen display.

Three groups helped plan festivities, the first group forming in 2012.

Batie said that although the event seemed effortless, it's taken a lot of time, dedication and hard work to make it this far.

Batie was one of 17 members from across the state who were appointed by former Gov. Dave Heineman to serve three-year terms on the commission. All of the members are volunteers, only reimbursed for gas, a hotel room if needed and a meal. They met at least once every other month in different towns across the state to make plans.

When she got the call from the governor's office, Batie said it brought up a lot of memories about her family's history as homesteaders.

"Our family has a reason to celebrate 150 years," she said.

Her great-great-aunt came to Nebraska from Germany in 1867 and settled near the bank of Battle Creek. After losing her husband and barely surviving a brutal winter, she ran into bad luck again when the profits from her crop were stolen. She wrote to her brothers, who moved to America to help cultivate crops and grow the American dream.

Batie marvels at the hardships her relatives endured to ensure her life here would be comfortable.

Nebraska is the only place she will ever call home. To her and many others, it's the best place to be  truly the home of the good life.

"I am a daughter of the prairie," Batie said.
Repeal and replace is the mantra that will never die  and its come back from the dead again.

But the revised Senate version, known as the Graham-Cassidy bill, would be best served by returning to the grave from whence it came. In particular, its reliance on block grants to shift an even heavier cost burden onto states battling their own budget issues makes it the wrong plan at the wrong time.

Nebraska would see reduced federal funding under Graham-Cassidy, under an analysis from Avalere Health. Though the Cornhusker State would see the smallest reduction of any state losing money for federal health insurance subsidies, near $1 billion, being forced to shoulder that dollar figure could not come at more challenging moment.

The states financial woes and declining tax receipts have been well documented. Adding another $1 billion liability at a time when critical funding needs cant be met would be a crushing blow for Nebraska.

Thirty-three other states, too, would lose such subsidies, with the net loss nationwide totaling $215 billion. Under this bill, Medicaid spending would be reduced by more than $1 billion, or 12 percent, between 2020 and 2036.

The National Association of Medicaid Directors, a bipartisan group representing all 50 states, called the measure the largest intergovernmental transfer of financial risk from federal government to the states in our countrys history. Given that it estimates Medicaid represents a quarter of the average state budget, these concerns arent hyperbolic.

Even beyond passing the bucks from federal to state governments, a critical error with this legislation remains the lack of transparency and debate on the floor.

While Republican leadership is again attempting to whip up 50 votes needed to pass it through the convoluted reconciliation process, the revised bill hasnt yet been debated or opened up for amendments through the traditional process.

Appeals to repeal and replace Obamacare certainly have merit. But any follow-through must be done thoughtfully and transparently.

Ramming through a piece of legislation for something as complex and far-reaching as health care  Medicaid is 3 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product  before receiving a Congressional Budget Office score is dangerous. Doing it quickly to beat a deadline under arcane rules that prevent robust, open debate isnt the democracy envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

Obamacare is no doubt flawed, and some of its provisions remain deeply unpopular. Thats why 15 Republican governors  including Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts signed a letter supporting the new bill.

Simply repealing and replacing Obamacare just to do it  with a flawed bill that would cost two-thirds of states billions of dollars  is the wrong approach. Senators must bury this hurried legislation once and for all, in favor of necessary, comprehensive, bipartisan health care reforms.
Sunday

CBS Religious School is offering Sunday morning classes. Students are invited to learn about and experience Judaism in a welcoming and egalitarian environment. For more information or to register, contact religiousschool.cbs@gmail.com.

Covenant Presbyterian Church, 220 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will worship at 10:30 a.m. with co-pastor Jonathan Murray preaching on "Risk-taking Mission and Service." Classes for all ages meet at 9:15 a.m., followed by coffee and fellowship. 694-7700 or covenantpresbyterian.org.

First Christian Church, 900 S. Ennis St. in Bryan, will meet for worship at 10:45 a.m. The Rev. Jesse Myers' sermon topic will be "Read the Contract," based on Matthew 20:1-16 and Philippians 1:21-30. Sunday school classes for all ages begin at 9:30 a.m., followed by coffee time at 10:30 a.m. Youth groups meet at 3 p.m. 823-5451 or firstchristianbcs.org.

St. Francis Episcopal Church, 1101 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will celebrate Holy Communion at 8 a.m. (Rite 1) and 10:30 a.m. (Rite 2). Adult Sunday school begins at 9 a.m. and children's chapel begins at 10:30 a.m. Following the second service and coffee hour, there will be a Newcomers' Gathering and a meeting of the Fourth Sunday Book Group, discussing A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, in the parlor. For information on weekday services and events, contact the church at 696-1491 or stfrancisbcs.org.

Faith United Church (UCC), 2901 Austin's Colony Parkway in Bryan, has 9:15 a.m. Sunday study: Half Truths: Popular Sayings That Miss the Point, 10 a.m. fellowship and 10:30 a.m. Psalms and Songs Worship. Pastor Karl's message is "God's Justice in an Unjust World." Faithuccbryan.org.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 217 W. 26th St. in Bryan, will host services at 7:30, 9 and 11:15 a.m. We will have coffee hour before and after each service. Christian formation classes begin at 10:15 a.m. www.standrewsbcs.org.

Unitarian Universalist Church of the Brazos Valley, 800 George Bush Drive (Texas A&M Hillel), will meet at 10:30 a.m. The Rev. Aaron Stockwell will speak on "Everyday Creativity." 696-5285.

Unity Spiritual Center of the Brazos Valley, 4016 Stillmeadow Drive, Bryan, will have services at 10:30 a.m. Call 324-9857 or unityspiritualcenterbv.org.

Spirit of Faith Church, 900 E. 29th St. in Bryan, will have Sunday school classes for all ages at 10 a.m., followed by morning worship at 11 a.m. All are welcome. 436-6910.

Mount Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, 3610 Plainsman Lane in Bryan, will have Sunday school classes for all ages at 9:15 a.m. and morning worship service at 10:30 a.m. 846-4753.

Tuesday

Eagle's Nest Praise and Worship Ministries will be opening a free prayer line from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The prayer line number is 775-1513, and calls will be answered by a trained prayer ministry associate. The prayer line is coordinated by pastors Gary and Sheila Jones.

Wednesday

Faith United Church, 2901 Austin's Colony Parkway in Bryan, invites men of all ages to Wednesday morning coffee and guy talk at 10 a.m. Faithuccbryan.org.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 217 W. 26th St. in Bryan, will hold Evening Prayer at 5:30 p.m. www.standrewsbcs.org.

Upcoming

Covenant Presbyterian Church, 220 Rock Prairie Road in College Station, will assemble Clean Up Buckets for those affected by Hurricane Harvey at 6:15 p.m. Oct. 4. Donations may be left at the church office between now and Oct. 4. All are welcome. Visit http://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080a4aafaa2ea3fa7-cleanup to sign up. 694-7700 or covenantpresbyterian.org.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 217 W. 26th St. in Bryan, will host a 150th birthday celebration from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 6. There will be church tours, children's activities, and live music by the Joey McGee Band. www.standrewsbcs.org.
Texas A&M University student Austin Luchak is the latest beneficiary of the iconic Century Tree's offspring and the endowed scholarship efforts of College Station resident Andy Duffie -- both of which contributed to providing him with his new Aggie Ring.

Officials with The Association of Former Students said 4,600 rings were delivered to eager Texas A&M students Friday -- nearly all of which made it onto the hands of their new Aggie owners at the Clayton W. Williams, Jr. Alumni Center in College Station. Although he was one of many receiving the prized Aggie symbol that day, Luchak said the gift facilitated by Duffie made it even more special than it already was.

"It's overwhelming," said the class of '18 construction science major. "People have given into such a spirit and a network behind A&M, and to turn it back into a project to supply a scholarship that [Duffie has] provided, I think, goes beyond anything I've ever seen. It's amazing."

This is the latest endowed scholarship Duffie has funded through the Aggie Century Tree Project -- previously providing financial support through a President's Endowed Scholarship and an Endowed Sul Ross Scholarship for the Corps of Cadets. Both were through the Texas A&M Foundation.

Duffie began the project in 2010 when he collected more than 3,000 acorns from the live oak tree on campus with the intention of growing and selling its seedlings to fund a $100,000 President's Endowed Scholarship -- an achievement he accomplished in 2012 after selling more than 500 of the young trees.

A class of '78 graduate, proud father of two Aggies and self-professed "fond follower of A&M's rich history," Duffie said he loves the idea of the iconic Aggie tree providing rings for the students of present and future generations.

"I appreciate the historical significance of the tie between yesteryear, a 126-year-old tree, all the way up to the current day and all the generations in between," said Duffie, who moved back to College Station with his wife three and a half years ago and has volunteered to help at 14 Ring Day ceremonies.

"Today, [Luchak] is the next chapter in this saga that continues on," he said.

After taking a photo together with the customary "Gig 'Em" to show off their Aggie gold, Luchak requested something a little less orthodox from Duffie -- a fist-bump bringing together their two rings.

"I've been waiting a long time for that," Luchak said, grinning widely.

Duffie said he hopes Luchak is the first of many students to benefit from the Century Tree's seedlings in the years to come. He said the scholarship will be able to provide either one men's ring or two women's rings each year.

"It's really neat for this to be the first ring to be awarded from the Aggie Century Tree Project, but it's the first of many," Duffie said. "There will be many to follow, but the first one is always very memorable and I wanted to make it memorable for Austin."

To go along with the ring, Duffie also gave Luchak a Century Tree seedling of his own as an additional reminder of its significance in the scholarship.

While Duffie said he appreciates the heartfelt thanks offered by Luchak for providing the scholarship, he hopes the young Aggie will find his own way to pay the favor forward to future generations.

"Like [Duffie] has said before, I want to be an ambassador for the tradition and the spirit of Texas A&M," Luchak said. "That hits home for me."

The learn more about the Aggie Century Tree Project, visit its Facebook page or aggiecenturytreeproject.com.
A Caldwell High School teacher has resigned after she was charged with having an improper relationship with a student and indecency with a child.

Spanish teacher Aracely Sauceda, 24, of Bryan, turned herself into the Burleson County Jail on Sept. 16 and was released on $50,000 bond that day.

According to Caldwell ISD superintendent Andrew Peters, earlier this month a teacher who works for the Caldwell district, but not at the high school, overheard students gossiping about a possible relationship between a student and Sauceda. District employees began speaking with students and investigating the claims, as well as notifying the Burleson County Sheriff's Office.

On Sept. 15, Sauceda, who just began her second year of teaching at Caldwell High School, was called into Peters' office. She was placed on administrative leave at that time and turned herself in the next day. She offered her resignation on Monday.

Though Sauceda is only charged in connection to a relationship with a 16-year-old boy, more charges may be forthcoming.

"The sheriff's office told us today that there could be as many as three students involved," Peters said.

A letter was mailed to high school students' parents on Thursday. The letter discussed class changes in the wake of the resignations of Sauceda and another teacher -- who left for health reasons.

"Caldwell ISD's administrators take these issues very seriously and we are [just as] frustrated as the general public is with the stories of inappropriate relationships," Peters wrote in an email to The Eagle. "We train on this and preach on it. Recently the Legislature toughened the penalties on principals and superintendents, however, I believe they need to be tougher on the teachers doing these illegal activities."

Indecency with a child can be charged as a third-degree felony or a second-degree felony based upon the circumstances. A third-degree felony is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, while a second-degree felony is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Improper relationship with a student as a teacher is a second-degree felony.
A group of men and women gathered Friday evening in front of Kyle Field, carrying blue rubber rifles and wearing combat uniforms. By today, they'll have an idea whether they're Marines material.

The 42 college students are participating in what is known as a Fire Team challenge, a rigorous set of obstacle courses and tests put on by the Marine Corps Officer Selection Offices -- or OSS College Station -- to give the potential officers a taste of what to expect in the military.

"A fire team [is] forced to work together in scenarios that would be impossible to overcome individually," said College Station OSS selection officer Capt. Andrew Hotsko. "A fire team [is] assigned one mission with several tasks, and after they complete it, they get a 'follow-on mission,' each essentially carrying them throughout the evening."

As part of the challenge, the group is divided into teams of four and put through more than 12 hours of mental and physical trials across Bryan-College Station. The teams are never told what's about to happen or where their ruck march will take them next -- and they're not allowed to sleep.

Most of the group assembled Friday night were Texas A&M students, many members of the Corps of Cadets. A small handful came from nearby Sam Houston State University. Some student recruits who participated in Friday's fire team challenge have been training with College Station OSS for years, while some have only begun their introduction to the military. Each recruit's level of experience and timeline for joining the Marine Corps is completely unique to that person.

"If a recruit doesn't do well here, that tells me they are not good for the military," Hotsko said. "... This is where the mental stamina comes into play. Whether you've been with us nine months or just started, the idea today is not to quit; to go mission to mission is what we're looking for. It gives us an idea of your character and how you will perform at OCS. If you quit here, you'll likely quit at OCS."

The 42 recruits, supported by 20 current officers, began marching out of Kyle Field at 6:30 p.m., traveling a collective 18 to 20 miles to the TEEX facility in College Station, then the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum and across the Texas A&M campus. The group practiced resupplying machine guns and carrying items up and down the stairs of a campus parking garage, and were asked to haul a 150-pound log. They memorized directions and supply lists and were quizzed throughout their experience.

Blake Gregory, a junior supply chain management major at Texas A&M and fraternity brother with Sigma Chi, has been with College Station OSS since January.

"I have a military tradition in my family," Gregory said. "My dad, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were all part of the military, it's tradition. I want to challenge myself and be part of something with a bigger purpose."

Gregory had considered enlisting in the military after high school, but chose college and then did not go on to join the ROTC program. Gregory said he feels the officer selection path has been the best choice for him, and he plans to attend officer candidate school in the summer, just before beginning his senior year. Instructors will evaluate how Gregory performed during the fire team challenge and determine whether he is prepared to take that next step.

"I think today will be fun," Gregory said before the start of the first ruck march. "I'll take what it is with a positive attitude."

Senior political science-communications double major Brianna Scherer has little free time between her studies, participating as a member of Kappa Delta sorority and training with College Station OSS. She has already been to officer candidate school twice, and thinks her three years under the wing of the officer selection offices in College Station helped her succeed at the school.

"What they've taught me here prepared me for OCS 100 percent, especially compared to other girls there," Scherer said. "OSS is so good for preparedness."

Once she graduates in December and moves on to officially commission, Scherer wants an air contract and hopes to successfully become a pilot.

"I always wanted to be in the military," Scherer said. "I didn't do the Corps [of Cadets]; I spent the night with them one time and it's not for me. I looked around my sophomore year, wanting to serve, and I saw this program and it was perfect. My parents are in the Army, so the Army or the Marines were the only options. I was raised biased. But this really worked going to OCS during the summer, it didn't get in way other stuff with school."

Kyle Miller, a fifth-year geographical information science and technology senior, said he's seeing good results through OSS College Station.

"You have to relearn a lot of stuff here, but now I have a confidence I didn't have before," Miller said. "I'm learning stuff quickly and also get to help teach other guys."
As a senior citizen who frequently eats at the Downtown Senior Center, I am perplexed why the city is considering catering the food in from Omaha.

If there is a good reason to cater food, why is the city not considering catering from Tabitha Home, which feeds an equal number of senior citizens each day? Is any other caterer from Lincoln being considered?

Also, what is the contingency plan if it is not possible for a truck to get to Lincoln, especially considering the severe winter weather we often experience in Nebraska?

I think the complaint that the equipment at the downtown center is wearing out is an excuse. After 20 years, that is to be expected. I smell something political here.

I'm reasonably sure it has to do with the idea to move the center to the proposed VA center on 70th Street. To top it all, the Journal Star ("A senior discount," Sept. 18) says the proposal for the new center does not include a kitchen -- too expensive!

This makes little sense to me. What is the true story? It sounds as if we are suggesting robbing Peter to pay Paul -- save a little now and pay for it down the line.

I think the food at our center is excellent. Why mess with success?

I urge citizens to contact their council member and ask for answers to this poor proposal. The City Council will meet Monday, Sept. 25. I will be there and hope you will, too.

Dick Patterson, Lincoln
While other people worried about what President Donald Trump meant when he discussed sovereignty, and while other people wrung their hands and mopped their brows because he wasnt being polite to North Korea, seated in the front row at his inaugural speech to the United Nations, I heard this:

It is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

While journalists hyperventilated about the tone of his words, others breathed a great sigh of relief that someone was finally speaking truth to power, even if that person wielded a great deal of power himself.

Gone are the days of making nice-nice with the tyrants who come to New York in the comfortable conviction that no matter how egregious their treatment of their own citizens might be, they will not be given a tongue-lashing in this cozy diplomatic country club in Midtown Manhattan.

I know a lot of people hate Trump, and if they dont hate him, they are disgusted that he was the only alternative to Hillary Clinton, whom they hated more. There are the base voters, those who will accept and excuse his flaws regardless of their nature or severity, a minority within a minority.

But there are times when the ones who truly love him and the ones who merely tolerate him can see something that the resistance cannot or will not: his ability to speak some uncomfortable verities instead of the usual empty, albeit elegantly phrased, inanities.

Trump has great timing and an unerring sense of how to cut through the prefab pieties of diplomacy.

One look at Gen. John Kellys now-famous bowed and defeated head could tell you that, a picture worth a thousand tears, as I told one friend.

Clearly, no one expected Obama-style smoothness from this president, but they probably were not expecting him to take on the U.N. record of human rights with deadly accuracy, either. But he went there, and I was cheering from my seat in the peanut gallery.

To understand just how important it was that Trump pointed the finger at a body that has become increasingly unaccountable for its gross hypocrisy, we only have to look at some of the countries included on the Human Rights Council. I have intimate experience with many of these countries, having researched their regimes when working on the asylum applications of my clients.

Lets start with El Salvador, whose term on the council expires in 2017. That will be very good news to one of my clients, a woman who was so badly beaten by her boyfriend that she lost the baby she was carrying, and whose numerous entreaties for police protection were ignored. According to the Country Reports for Human Rights Practices issued by our own State Department, Violence against women, including domestic violence, was a widespread and serious problem. A large portion of the population considered domestic violence socially acceptable.

Another country on the list, Albania, also will see its term expire in 2017. This is great news for another client, an Albanian woman who was raped by her father and brother to flush the gay out of her.

Then theres my friend from Bangladesh, who will be thrilled to know that the country that tortured him for belonging to the wrong political party probably will lose its seat on the Human Rights Council after this year.

But friends from Togo wont be that lucky. That country will be on the council until at least 2018. One of my clients must live with the fact that the government that allowed its police officers to rape and infect him with HIV will be formulating humanitarian policies for another year.

And Venezuela, a country that is confiscating the private property of its citizens, jailing its journalists and silencing its critics, including the relatives of another friend, also will be sharing a place at that table until 2018.

Cuba will be there until 2019, enraging my friend who spent 20 years in prison as a political prisoner before escaping. I remember that when Elian Gonzalez was sent back home with his father by the Clinton administration, my friend called me and said, Tio Sam is sending that child back to hell.

Rwanda is also there until 2019, a country that in 100 days presided over the genocide of millions of its own Tutsi citizens.

And the list goes on. Saudi Arabia, where women are second-class citizens. Kyrgyzstan, where ethnic minorities are persecuted. China, where they jail Christians. And Egypt, where they kill them.

Trump was right about the U.N.s hypocrisy. So while everyone else criticized his harsh tones, I cheered his honesty. So, I am sure, were many of my international friends and the souls of the martyred Christians watching from above.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Email her at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
No way for the mayor to treat the good people of Bryan

For more than two years, the residents of Castle Heights in Bryan have been asking -- and sometimes begging -- the Bryan City Council to help their subdivision with flooding issues. At the council meeting Tuesday, the council voted unanimously for staff to study the problem and recommend a solution.

Those in attendance who have waited so long for help applauded the vote. The mayor brusquely responded, "Please respect the council chambers."

Since when is appreciative applause disrespectful?

KAREN HALL

Bryan

Disappointed in letter that spread hatred of Muslims

I was disappointed that The Eagle chose to publish Dudley Jones' letter, which is full of insinuations and hateful rhetoric.

What happened on 9/11 was an indescribable tragedy. In the aftermath, American people responded to this tragedy in two very different ways. While a majority of them realized that it was an act of an evil group of people and their actions were not to be blamed on other Muslims or their religion, whereas a smaller group took the very path which Jones articulated in his letter, blaming Islam as the root cause of all evils, resorting to insinuations, insults and hate.

Our community has set an example of tolerance and understanding, not the divisiveness Jones' letter perpetuates. When in the early morning of July 7, 2016, someone shot bullets through the front entrance of the College Station mosque there was an enormous outpouring of support and sympathy towards the Muslims by people of all faiths. On the Friday following the shooting many church members, community leaders and others stood outside the College Station mosque to show their solidarity with Muslims as they performed the Friday noon prayers inside. These are the decent people of America who represent the core human values.

Sadly, Jones' letter repeats the narrative that is being perpetuated maliciously by the islamophobes in this country. Muslims, as any other group of decent people, stand for good values and condemn the heinous acts performed by a few in the name of their religion. Muslims want for themselves and their children the same that any good Christian, Jew or a Hindu would.

SYED NAQI

College Station
STURTEVANT  Racine County Workforce Solutions and ResCare Workforce Services are joining forces for a hiring event, planned for 1 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 11, at Fountain Banquet Hall, 8505 Durand Ave., Sturtevant.

The hiring event allows job seekers to meet with representatives from a wide variety of regional companies.

Transportation from Racine and Kenosha is scheduled to be provided compliments of First Student transportation services. Visit Racine County Workforce Solutions, 1717 Taylor Ave., Racine, or the Kenosha County Job Center, 8600 Sheridan Road, Kenosha, by Friday, Oct. 6, to sign up for transportation.

The hiring event partnership includes Racine County Workforce Solutions, ResCare Workforce Services, Job Center of Wisconsin, Kenosha and Walworth County Job Centers, Veterans Services, State of Wisconsin Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Gateway Technical College, University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Carthage College, State of Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Job Corp and First Student transportation services.

This event is free to job seekers. The employer booth registration fee is $150. Employers can register online at http://bit.ly/SEWIRegionalHiringEvent. For general information on the career fair, contact Christine Henning at christine.henning@racinecounty.com or 262-638-6683.
NORWALK  Abutting the former Norden Park, between Interstate 95 and Saugatuck Avenue, lies Avalon East Norwalk.

An amenity-laden apartment complex built in 2013, the 240-unit residence features two outdoor kitchens, a swimming pool, and a clubhouse. Rent to live. Avalon style, reads the companys website.

Rahul Kumar and Heidi Alterman were among hundreds of people who chose to do so. For $2,075 a month, they had access to indoor and outdoor common areas, as well as bike storage and a gym.

But after their first year was up, Kumar said a letter was slipped under his door. On it was a notice of a rent increase. If they chose to renew their lease, their monthly rent would rise nearly $700 to $2,745, an increase of 32 percent.

In response, Kumar researched a typical rent increase. According to Paxton Kinol, the main Waypointe developer, the industry estimates rates will go up roughly 3 percent per year. But when Kumar searched for information on increases at Avalon in particular, he found similar stories to his own, as well as unfounded rumors spread by renters as to how the increases were calculated.

Im naturally a cynical person, said Kumar. I dont think highly of this companys business practice, but I wasnt surprised.

Bait and switch

More Information How to beat the system Look for newer buildings.Initial rents at apartments that have just opened are often a bargain, but treat them as such and expect them to go up in the future. Utilize the length of your lease.A two-year lease can lock in low rates for longer. If the leasing office is reluctant, you can still get a deal by agreeing to the second year at a 3 percent increase - the industry standard. Developers also desire more units to open in the summer and may be willing to cut a deal to make that happen. Try, try again.If you want an apartment, wait for it to go on special. If a unit is vacant for multiple weeks, the algorithm may drop its price to fill it - you may get lucky. Don't worry about your traffic being logged: "You're only logged once as traffic," said Kinol. "If you come back the next week, they're not going to count you again." Negotiate.Entering or renewing a lease is a negotiation, so don't be afraid to act that way. See More Collapse

Kumar and Alterman ended up filing complaints with the Norwalk Fair Rent Commission, which can investigate, mediate and set rent in disputes between landlords and tenants. Eventually they settled for a rent increase that was lower than what Avalon had originally proposed.

Theirs was not the only complaint of that magnitude the agency has received. Another unit in Avalon East Norwalk registered a 31 percent increase of $622; a unit in 597 Westport Apartments, another luxury apartment complex, registered a 26 percent increase of $726.

In the past five years, according to a Hearst Connecticut Media analysis, rent complaints in Norwalk were lodged against properties of all types and ages  from single-family homes to large, professionally managed complexes, and from apartment buildings constructed in the 1960s to complexes built just last year.

But an examination of the rent complaints from newer apartment complexes, built after 2000, showed rent increases there were often substantially higher than those in other buildings. Overall, complaints made to the Fair Rent Commission involved a median rent increase of 10 percent, while complaints for newer complexes involved a median rent increase nearly twice as high: 21 percent.

Im concerned its a bait and switch, said Brenda Penn-Williams, a Fair Rent commissioner. And Im concerned that we in Norwalk are building all of these apartment buildings and not watching out for the residents.

The cases that come before the Fair Rent Commission offer an incomplete picture of Norwalks renting practices  first of all, typically only more extreme increases result in a complaint. Additionally, not everyone is willing to go through the process  and some people are not even aware such resources exists.

Such was the case of William Kennedy, a 62-year-old Army veteran turned actor who lives at The Sheffield SoNo. Kennedy was en route to shoot a scene in Amy Schumers upcoming movie, I Feel Pretty, when he pulled over at a rest stop along Interstate 95.

Quickly checking his email, he noticed a message from Sheffields management team. It was two months before his lease expired. I kind of prepared myself  they have to bump it a little bit, Kennedy said. He expected an increase of 2 to 5 percent. Then he opened the attachment and saw that the price for a one-year lease had jumped from $1,960 to $2,300. When I saw it, 17 percent, it just shook me, he said.

Kennedy tried to push the resulting stress from his mind as he got back into the car to resume driving to the shoot. Dont get whacked out, he told himself. You have to do this job.

But Kennedy had come to the conclusion that sooner or later, he would have to search for a new place. Im going to be shoved out, he said.

Kennedy is a Norwalk transplant, and was not aware of the services the Fair Rent Commission provides. But he was doubtful they would address situations like his. The thing about rent control and rent stabilization in California and Manhattan is they dont apply to buildings like these, he said, gesturing behind him at the Sheffield.

However, the director of fair rent, Adam Bovilsky, was quick to make a distinction between rent control and the services his office provides. The state of Connecticut does not recognize rent control, but the fair rent statutes allow us to ensure no units are excessively over the market rate, he said.

This includes new and amenity-rich apartments  the key consideration was whether similarly situated units with similar amenities were comparably priced. No residential units are beyond our jurisdiction, Bovilsky said.

Algorithmic pricing

One issue that has come up in discussions with tenants, Bovilsky said, is prices at some of the larger developments are generated by algorithms. Some tenants worry such algorithms are behind the seemingly arbitrary rent increases in complexes such as Avalon.

Waypointe developer Paxton Kinol confirmed he has seen the use of rent optimization programs skyrocket among Class A, or high-end, properties. I would say 10 years ago, it was only 10 percent, and now its got to be at least 90 percent of Class A apartments, said Kino. Its kind of like airplane pricing. They started focusing on computer models, and the human aspect is gone.

The Rainmaker Group develops one of these rent optimization programs and explained that its algorithm looks at hundreds of factors.

Apartment pricing is like Tetris, said Dom Beveridge, the companys executive vice president of demand generation. The software is programmed to constantly look to the future to predict how many vacancies there will be in upcoming months and how hard they will be to fill. He gave the example of an apartment owner in September faced with a declining market  Connecticuts real estate market has seen a slowdown in growth.

If Im worried the market is going down, I would think I should take whatever I can get, Beveridge said. But he pointed out that if a potential renter made an offer for a six-month lease, the apartment would open in February, traditionally a hard time to fill an apartment. It may be better to take a lower amount of rent for a lease that would open in the summer, when more people move. That is a trade-off, he said. What characterizes revenue management is there are many, many trade-offs like that.

Going back to the Tetris analogy, apartment owners can tweak both the price and length of leases as new ones come into the picture. The hope is theyll fall together in a way that optimizes vacancies, both now and in the future.

Another aspect the program factors in is demand. The lead indicator for how much demand you have is traffic, Beveridge said  a term that used to refer to how many people came to tour a property. Now the term can extend to phone calls and web searches.

So requesting information about a two-bedroom apartment could increase its value  but that depends on which software the property is using. Yieldstar, which is used for 5,200 units in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area, shies away from web and phone traffic. Instead, it focuses on people who submit a fee with their application for a unit as a measure of demand, since its a clearer signal of interest, said David Danish, Yieldstars vice president of professional services.

Both Beveridge and Danish thought their software could increase revenues, either by decreasing vacancies or incrementally increasing the rental price per square foot. But they agreed it was unlikely their software was responsible for fluctuations in rent in the range being seen in Norwalk complaints.

It sounds more like the result of a mistake to me than the result of a rational pricing engine, said Beveridge. If you did a good job in forecasting demand, prices should not fluctuate that much.

The numbers game

Representatives from Avalon, 597 Westport Apartments and Sheffield did not respond to requests for comment on this story. But Kinol said that the reason for rent increases in new buildings is simple: It takes a lot of people to fill a development that has just opened.

In the beginning, Kinol and his team determine pricing themselves, typically only handing pricing over to software programs the second year.

When youre filling up, I have to get 25 people a month to move in on average, said Kinol. Thats a tall order, and to fill it, he offers prices he considers a bargain, sometimes in the form of a month or two off upfront. According to Kinol, roughly half of tenants renew their lease, so the next year, he only has to find roughly 12 people a month. As the number of openings becomes smaller, that bargain evaporates.

Anybody who moves into a new building and doesnt expect their rent to go up is crazy, Kinol said.

He expects the practice even when hes on the receiving end. I just leased an apartment myself, he said. So what I did was find a brand-new building with a 20 percent discount, and I signed a two-year lease because it will extend the discount. Kinol considered his current situation a deal and said he would not be upset when it ended, even if it meant moving elsewhere.

When Danish tried to think of possible reasons rent could increase by percentages in the double digits, he agreed that landlords giving up-front discounts could be part of the explanation.

How many times have you passed an apartment that says one month free? Or two months free? And in your area, that would be very rare to see in a building that isnt brand new, he said. Having two months free your first year would amount to a 17 percent monthly increase the second.

But the theory isnt a perfect match for most of the complaints for new buildings. Only one, incidentally a 17 percent increase in a Waypointe apartment, was for a building in its second year of operation. And while offering a month or two free would imply the scale of the future increase, when Kennedy rented his apartment two years ago, his rent was not framed as a discount. He had no way to know how much it would go up in the future.

Kennedy looked out across the Norwalk River and shook his head as he spoke of moving. His work ties him to Boston and New York, and he is currently undergoing treatment for skin cancer. He has 20 stitches on his back from removing the melanoma there, and doctors were monitoring to see whether they have to go back in.

Its a terrible time to have this pressure of increased rent, said Kennedy. I know what theyre going to say: Its supply and demand.

rschuetz@hearstmediact.com; @raschuetz
NORWALK  Two thieves made off with more than dozen brand new cell phones after breaking into an AT&T store early Saturday morning, police said.

Police responded to an alarm at the AT&T retail store at 777 Connecticut Ave. around 1:38 a.m. Saturday.

At the scene, police said they found the stores front window shattered and the store ransacked.

According to police reports, front display units that contained models of the new iPhone 8 and Galaxy 8 were smashed, and the models were taken. Whether or not, the models were functional was undetermined, said Lt. Paul Resnick, a police spokesman.

The thieves also broke into the storage room at the rear of the store, where they stole more than a dozen Samsung Galaxies and other expensive phones. Resnick said that the total value of the phones stolen is still being determined.

Video surveillance from the stores security system showed two suspects clad in all-black with bandanas covering their faces breaking into the store. Resnick said that police may release stills from the security footage to the public in the near future.

Anyone with information about the theft is asked to contact the Norwalk Police Department at 203-854-3000 and transfer to the Detective Bureau.

Anonymous tips can also be left at the Norwalk Police Tip Line at 203-854-3111; online at the Norwalk police website at www.norwalkpd.com; or via text message by typing NPD into the text field, followed by the message, and sending it to CRIMES (274637).

ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2570; Twitter: @Tomlinson_PE
If freedom of speech and the press here have produced a popular culture that is an open sewer and a politics of vilification and venom, why would we seek to impose this upon other peoples?

If a U.S. president calls an adversary Rocket Man on a mission to suicide, and warns his nation may be totally destroyed, other ideas in his speech will tend to get lost. Which is unfortunate. For buried in Donald Trumps United Nations address is a clarion call to reject transnationalism and to re-embrace a world of sovereign nation-states that cherish their independence and unique identities.

Western man has engaged in this great quarrel since Woodrow Wilson declared America would fight in the Great War, not for any selfish interests, but to make the world safe for democracy. Our imperialist allies, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, regarded this as self-righteous claptrap and proceeded to rip apart Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and to feast on their colonies.

After World War II, Jean Monnet, father of the EU, wanted Europes nations to yield up their sovereignty and form a federal union like the USA. Europes nations would slowly sink and dissolve in a single polity that would mark a giant leap forward toward world government  Alfred, Lord Tennysons Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. Charles De Gaulle lead the resistance, calling for a Europe of nation-states from the Atlantic to the Urals. For 50 years, the Gaullists were in constant retreat. The Germans especially, given their past, seemed desirous of losing their national identity and disappearing inside the new Europe.

Today, the Gaullist vision is ascendant.

We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government, said President Trump at the U.N.

Strong sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect. In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch.

Translation: We Americans have created something unique in history. But we do not assert that we should serve as a model for mankind. Among the 190 nations, others have evolved in different ways from diverse cultures, histories, traditions. We may reject their values but we have no God-given right to impose ours upon them.

It is difficult to reconcile Mr. Trumps belief in self-determination with a National Endowment for Democracy whose reason for being is to interfere in the politics of other nations to make them more like us.

President Trumps idea of patriotism has deep roots in Americas past. After the uprisings of 1848 against the royal houses of Europe failed, Lajos Kossuth came to seek support for the cause of Hungarian democracy. He was wildly welcomed and hailed by Secretary of State Daniel Webster. But Henry Clay, more true to the principles of Washingtons Farewell Address, admonished Kossuth:

Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on the western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe.

President Trumps U.N. address echoed Clay: In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our governments first duty is to its people to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values. Mr. Trump is saying with John Quincy Adams that our mission is not to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, but to put America first. He is repudiating the New World Order of Bush I, the democracy crusades of the neocons of the Bush II era, and the globaloney of Obama.

President Trumps rhetoric implies intent; and action is evident from Rex Tillersons directive to his department to rewrite its mission statement  and drop the bit about making the world democratic. The current statement reads: The Departments mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world. Tillerson should stand his ground. For America has no divinely mandated mission to democratize mankind. And the hubristic idea that we do has been a cause of all the wars and disasters that have lately befallen the republic.

If we do not cure ourselves of this interventionist addiction, it will end our republic. When did we dethrone our God and divinize democracy? And are 21st-century American values really universal values? Should all nations embrace same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, and the separation of church and state if that means, as it has come to mean here, the paganization of public education and the public square? If freedom of speech and the press here have produced a popular culture that is an open sewer and a politics of vilification and venom, why would we seek to impose this upon other peoples?

For the State Department to declare Americas mission to be to make all nations look more like us might well be regarded as a uniquely American form of moral imperialism.

Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. Republished with gracious permission from Mr. Buchanan. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
RACINE  The City of Racine is continuing to look at its options for the development of Machinery Row after thoughts of using a historic rehabilitation tax credit to help develop the land have slipped away.

Machinery Row is the name given to the proposed redevelopment project eyed for the riverfront along Water Street east of Marquette Street.

When signing the 2017-19 biennial budget on Thursday, Gov. Scott Walker partially vetoed the provision, and lowered the funding amount, for the historic rehabilitation tax credit for redevelopment projects from $5 million per parcel to $500,000 per parcel.

The $5 million per-parcel limitation does little to curtail the fiscal effects of this program, which has swelled to cause an annual tax revenue loss exceeding $60 million, making it one of this states most expensive economic development incentives, Walker said in a statement. Reducing the per-parcel cap to $500,000 per parcel leaves unchanged the incentives for many of the projects in smaller communities across Wisconsin while reducing the states fiscal exposure on larger projects.

For projects to be able to use the tax credit, a July 1, 2018, deadline to start developing has been put in place and its unlikely Machinery Row would be able to meet that deadline. As a result, interim Mayor Dennis Wiser said the city is considering other options.

Irrespective of what the governor does with his vetoes, we are moving away from the tax credits and Machinery Row, Wiser said. The tax credits are intended to provide extra money for the extra cost of refurbishing old buildings, and our perspective right now is that the extra money doesnt overcome the added cost of refurbishing the existing buildings.

Looking for other ideas

Wiser said the next step for the city will be to gather different options for the property and we will present the options to the City Council within the next one or two months, and they will make the decision on the direction.

The simplest option would be to take down the existing structures and then approach developers and say Heres multiple acres of land on a river in an urban setting; show us what your plans are,  Wiser said.

When asked if there are other properties the city might consider for the tax credit, Wiser said at this point I would say the added burden of refurbishing the old buildings typically is not going to be worth it, even with the tax dollars.

Wiser said the goal is to gather the necessary information and share it with the council to start moving forward on Machinery Row prior to the end of this year.
Eagles can tie franchise record, but first they have to fix one issue
Lincoln Middle Schools entire student body met in front of the school Wednesday morning for its annual Constitution Week Celebration.

The event, started by Lincoln Middle School Principal Steve Stuart 11 years ago, reminds students about the United States Constitution and how it pertains to them as students. The event featured the Lincoln Middle School performing art students.

Stuart, who was a history teacher before becoming Lincoln Middle School principal, said that he developed the event 11 years ago because the students cover the topic in their curriculum, and he felt it was an important topic.

The end of seventh grade kind of starts into the Constitution and eighth grade then picks up and continues with it, he said. As a former history teacher I think it's important that these kinds of things get recognized and not get glossed over.

Lincoln Middle School eighth grader Rachel Heflin began the festivities by leading the students in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Next, Lincoln Middle Schools Orchestra Teacher, Melissa Banker, conducted the Lincoln Middle School Orchestra that performed A Soldiers Hymn.

Tom OMalley led the Lincoln Middle School Chorus in a performance of the Star Spangled Banner, and Mark Haun, Lincolns Band Director, led the Lincoln Band in a performance of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Stuart then addressed the student body by stating a quote from Edward Kennedy,

The United States Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share, but it also protects those with views we disagree with, Stuart said.

He posed five questions  a quiz of sorts  for the students to ponder. Just think of the answers, and see how many you get right, Stuart said. How many representatives are there in congress? Who has the power to declare war? How many times may a senator be re-elected? How many supreme court justices are there? What year was the Constitution written?

These are some sample questions from the immigration and naturalization services citizenship test that is given to all immigrants applying for citizenship into the United States, he added. As a citizen we are granted certain rights that are expressed in the Constitution. But with the privileges of citizenship comes responsibilities, and I want to touch on four of those responsibilities today.

Stuart first spoke about honesty and how it refers to the facets of the students moral character.

It covers attributes such as integrity, truthfulness and being trustworthy, You must first and foremost be honest with yourself. Until you can do that, you wont be truly honest, he noted. We expect that you are honest here at school with your teachers and with your peers, and Im sure your parents feel the same way with them at home.

The second responsibility was compassion - the caring for people and other living things in this world. It is easy to feel compassion when we see horrible disasters  like what has recently taken place in Houston and Florida  to be compassionate. But this is something that we need to strive for year round, all the time. Not just in times of disasters but just on the day-to-day basis of showing compassion towards our fellow students and citizens, Stuart said.

He then spoke about respect, explaining that it varies from group to group and can take many different forms. From a simple term of respect applied to an elder to a gesture like a nod or a hand shake, Stuart pointed out. It is important that we first and foremost respect ourselves and value our self worth. Then we must respect other peoples ideas and thoughts. Not that we have to agree with them but respect the right to hold these beliefs.

This is something that our country is struggling with right now, Stuart emphasized. And we must focus on returning us to a more respectful nation who values the customs, the backgrounds and the ideas of all citizens.

Turning to the final responsibility of courage, Stuart noted that there were four main attributes of courage. One, feeling fear yet choosing to act. We saw many examples with our first responders who entered the twin towers on 9/11 while these buildings were crumbling around them. They were fearful but they chose to act, he explained.

Two  follow your heart, Stuart continued. Having the passion to follow your dream is what makes this country as great a nation as it is. America was founded as 13 loosely affiliated colonies that followed their heart to drive us to the point we are now a world power.

His third point of courage was persevering in the face of adversity. Thats to keep going when the odds seem stacked against you, Stuart said. And finally standing up for what is right. Its doing whats right even when its not popular, and its more than just not participating in something that is wrong, but its speaking up to let those people who are doing something wrong  to let them know that they are, in fact, wrong and they need to change their ways.

He encourage all students to be strong when they see someone doing something wrong. If we see somebody being bullied, if we see somebody doing something that is not right, speak up. Talk to them, talk to a teacher, talk to an administrator to help make this school as great as it can be, Stuart stressed.

I hope that each of us will strive to be the best citizen we can be here at Lincoln, at home and within our community, he added.
Whisker Bones is expanding beyond their downtown Edwardsville location with a new boarding center and daycare. The new facility will be called Club Whisker Bones and will be located at 3407 Route 157.

Its the first building in Glen Carbon as you drive south, said Scott Tripp. Tripp and Perry Patten are the owners of Whisker Bones.

We opened one-and-a-half years ago and its been great, Tripp said. Honestly, we cant thank Edwardsville enough. Weve maxed out this building.

Tripp said they saw a need for a different kind of boarding and daycare. We knew from our customers that there was a need for boarding and daycare that is non-traditional, he said. We started doing some research. We asked what can we do differently?

Their research led them to a company in California, Tripp said. They do something we hadnt heard of called communal boarding. They have a room with a bed, couches and chairs. The dogs can stay in the room and sleep on the furniture, he said.

When some dogs get boarded, they get stressed out and stop eating, Tripp said. With a home-like environment, there is less stress.

At the new boarding facility, Tripp said, they will have a similar room that they are calling the bunk room. The dogs can sleep in a human bed, on a couch or chairs, or in one of the dog beds they will have. A team member will stay the night and sleep with them, Tripp said.

Tripp said that they are in the process of renovating the building for Club Whisker Bones. It used to be a chiropractors office, so it has a lot of separate rooms. Were taking out walls and making a place for a play room, he said. The building comes with over one and a half acres of property, he added, so there is room for expansion.

We want to focus on natural play, Tripp said. We wont use plastic playgrounds in our outside area. Well use real logs and have some wooden structures. Everything will be natural focused, like our store. Well put in doggie windows in the fence so the dogs can see whats going on outside. Next spring, he added, they will install a natural pond.

In addition to boarding and daycare, Club Whisker Bones will offer grooming and training and have a small retail area.

Our training will be different as well, Tripp said. It will be bond-based training. You form a bond with the dog so they want to please you.

The facility will be able to have 30 to 40 dogs for daycare and board 25 to 30. Pricing will fall in line with what most people will expect, Tripp said. We think we can offer premium care at reasonable prices.

Tripp said he is especially excited to welcome Matt Hyman as the head camp counselor for the daycare. He used to be a groomer here, Tripp said. He didnt want to groom, but he did want to work with dogs. Tripp said that Hyman was a favorite with customers and their dogs and has been missed since he left Whisker Bones.

Tripp also said that they are hiring more people for the daycare. Were being very picky about the people we choose, he said. All employees will be trained in pet CPR and first aid. Anyone interested can apply at Whisker Bones.
Shed fire extinguished at veterans village

RACINE  Fire investigators are trying to determine the cause of a fire that destroyed a storage shed early Friday morning at the James A. Peterson Veteran Village, 1624 Yout St.

No one was injured in the fire, but fire officials are estimating damage at $3,000.

The structure, which was located on the site where Veterans Outreach of Wisconsin is constructing tiny houses for homeless veterans, was fully involved when firefighters arrived on scene, according to Lt. Scott Sorce of the Racine Fire Department. The property is in various stages of construction with no one living on-site, and the blaze did not spread to the adjacent structures or materials, Sorce said.

While the cause of the fire remained under investigation as of Friday, improperly discarded wood-staining rags may have contributed, Fire Department officials said.

DACA renewal help sessions offered

KENOSHA  CUSH (Kenosha) and Racine Interfaith Coalition are planning to hold help sessions for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients eligible for renewal on Tuesday, Sept. 26. All current DACA recipients whose benefits will expire between Sept. 5 and March 5, 2018 must submit a renewal request by Oct. 5.

Renewal acceptance will provide an additional two-year DACA approval. Applications often are returned for minor omissions or errors on forms. Volunteers will be available at the help sessions to help complete forms and answers questions. Sessions are planned from 9 a.m.-noon and 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the Kenosha Northside Library, 1500 27th Ave., Kenosha.

Documents needed to complete the renewal application include a copy of the original DACA application, current work permit, two passport photos, and a check for $495 payable to U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

If unable to attend, call the St. Mark Outreach Center at 262-656-7370 more information and assistance.

Speaker to discuss plants adaptation to space environment

KENOSHA  Researcher Anna-Lisa Paul will share new insights into plants ability to grow in space at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 26, in the Campbell Student Union auditorium on the south end of the Carthage College campus, 2001 Alford Park Drive.

Paul will discuss her teams experiments on the International Space Station. She will explain how plants can grow and thrive in an environment completely outside their evolutionary experience. Pauls team has begun to gain insight that will guide the role of plants in human exploration of space.

Paul is a research professor in horticultural science at the University of Florida and president-elect of the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research.

The event is free and open to the public, and no advance registration is needed. Contact Andrea Henle, assistant professor of biology, at ahenle@carthage.edu for more information.
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 12:24 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b9dac 1 Art & Culture batik,Go-Tik-Swan,arts,culture,exhibition Free

A collection of batik from renowned creator Go Tik Swan, who was also known as Panembahan Hardjonagoro, is currently on display at the Textile Museum in Tanah Abang, West Jakarta ahead of National Batik day, which falls on Oct. 2.

Officially opened on Sept. 20, the 'Nunggak Semi' exhibition is set to run until Oct. 12 and displays 49 pieces of intricately handcrafted batik dating back to the 1950s. Indonesia's traditional cloth is listed as UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).

Go Tik Swans batik, which are known as Batik Indonesia, flourished by the request of Indonesia's first president Sukarno, who strove to develop nationalistic batik motifs.

Happy Farida Djarot, Jakarta Handicraft Council (Dekranasda) head, in her opening remarks emphasized the importance of preserving the national heritage. Batik drawing process through the use of malam or canting, Happy said, requires skills and concentration that must be maintained.

Read also: Batik: a cultural dilemma of infatuation and appreciation

"We must truly preserve it, care for it, as well as inherit it to future generations so that it does not stop here," Happy, who is the wife of Jakarta Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, said in her speech on Wednesday.

Kate Hreszczuk, 34, an Australian citizen currently residing in Jakarta, had come to the museum on Wednesday morning during the exhibition opening.

Without knowing that it was slated to open that day, Hreszczuk and her mother, Karen McGlynn, 59, were pleasantly surprised to find the exhibition, as well as other side events that were held, in which they also took part in a batik making workshop prior to viewing the gallery.

"We have a whole new appreciation of how batik is made. It was very difficult and you need a very steady hand," Hreszczuk told The Jakarta Post.

Her mother agreed, adding that batik is really intricate in its beauty and design. McGlynn, who is visiting from Australia, is particularly familiar with batik as she buys the fabric to make quilts at home.

"But now, I might even try making the fabric," she said. (asw)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Miami, United States  Sat, September 23, 2017 09:12 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b0eb8 2 Science & Tech asteroid,#asteroid,Gravity,spacecraft,NASA,#NASA Free

An unmanned NASA spacecraft traveling to a distant asteroid veered toward Earth on Friday for a gravitational slingshot maneuver that will better aim it toward the Sun-orbiting space rock, Bennu, the US space agency said.

The gravity-boost took place about halfway through the two-year journey of the spacecraft, known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security  Regolith Explorer).

"The preliminary results are in, and my #EarthGravityAssist was succesful!" said the NASA Twitter account for OSIRIS-REx, about an hour after it made its closest approach to Earth at 12:52 pm (1652 GMT).

The mission launched last year from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its goal is to collect a sample from Bennu in 2018, and return it to Earth for further study in 2023.

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson, described the gravity-assist as "a clever way to move the spacecraft onto Bennu's orbital plane using Earth's own gravity instead of expending fuel."

Read also: NASA offers generous salary for 'planetary protection officer'

The spacecraft zipped over Antarctica at a distance of 11,000 miles (17,000 kilometers), using Earth's gravity to shift its trajectory so it can eventually meet up with Bennu.

Bennu is a primitive, carbon-rich asteroid, the kind of cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to Earth billions of years ago.

The asteroid's orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees in comparison to Earth's.

During the gravity assist, OSIRIS-REx swung through a region of space that contains Earth-orbiting satellites, but emerged intact.

OSIRIS-REx lost communications with Earth for about an hour during the flyby, as expected, because the spacecraft was too low relative to the southern horizon to be in view with either the Deep Space tracking station at Canberra, Australia, or Goldstone, California.
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Linkedin Khristian Ibarrola (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Sat, September 23, 2017 17:00 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21bf94c 2 Science & Tech Bill-Gates,Microsoft Free

Bill Gates remains as one of the technology industrys most influential figures, as his Windows operating system opened a lot of doors for the advancement of todays modern tech.

The 61-year-old Microsoft co-founder is pleased with the contributions he made for this era, but admitted that he regrets putting one command, which is still being utilized to this day.

In an appearance on Bloombergs Global Business Forum in New York City last Wednesday (Thursday in Manila), Gates revealed that the infamous Ctrl-Alt-Delete buttonwhich is used to reboot any Windows computershould have been assigned to a single button.

If I could make one small edit, Id make that a single key, the tech innovator said, according to CNN Money.

Echoing the sentiments he made in 2013, Gates pinned the blame on IBM engineers who were responsible for the IBM PC keyboard at the time.

Read also: Google looking to help news outlets win subscribers

The IBM PC hardware keyboard only had one way that it could get a guaranteed interrupt generated, he explained. So, clearly the people involved, they should have put another key on it to make that work. A lot of machines these days do have that as a more obvious function. Gates even went as far as suggesting that he would like to go back in time to fix the mishap. Well, Im not sure you can go back in life and change small things in your life without putting other things at risk, he said. Sure, if I can make one small edit, Id make that a single-key operation. The three-key function was originally created by IBM engineer David Bradley, who intended it as a shortcut method for rebooting an IBM PC. The method has stuck and been used since then. Meanwhile, Microsoft has long abandoned the key in their latest tech, but the command has lived on to this day.

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This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin Jessicha Valentina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 21:12 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21c1eee 1 People digital,#digital,digital-industry,tech-fair,technology,TechSavvy,#technology Free

Shinta Witoyo Dhanuwardoyo is synonymous with the digital world. Having worked as a techpreneur for 21 years, Shinta is known as the woman behind Bubu.com, Indonesian digital media agency, and IDByte, the countrys biennial digital event.

I want to put Indonesia on the world technology map, Shinta told The Jakarta Post via telephone.

Shinta clearly walks the talk. On Sept. 26 to 28, the fourth installment of IDByte is slated to run in Pacific Place shopping mall, South Jakarta, featuring various speakers, such as YouTube Asia Pacific regional director Ajay Vidyasagar and Instagram global director of community Amanda Kelso.

Prior to the event, IDByte held Virtual Startup Hunt 2017, allowing startup companies from five different cities, namely Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and Medan, to pitch their ideas online.

The finalists will present their ideas in front of the judges in Jakarta on Sept. 25, said Shinta, adding that the winners will have the chance to attend boot camps in Silicon Valley, California, the United States and Sweden.

Read also: Startup 101: Where and what you should study

In addition to the startup competition, IDByte 2017 is set to present an exhibition of Indonesian Tech Giant Companies, showcasing digital companies such as Go-Jek, Tokopedia and more.

The three-day event was aimed at making Indonesia a pivotal player on the global digital scene, which is in-line with Shintas mission.

Though Indonesia is no stranger to the digital world, Shinta said the people currently tend to be users, not players.

Fortunately, she saw the potential of the country to become a tech player.

She added that Indonesia would eventually be ready for digitalization, both physically and mentally, as the countrys digital ecosystem existed. Nevertheless, she noted that the ecosystem needed further development, particularly, in human resources. (asw)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) San Francisco, United States  Sat, September 23, 2017 13:33 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21ba808 2 Science & Tech Facebook,Mark-Zuckerberg,share-ownership,philanthropy Free

Facebook on Friday reversed course on a plan to issue a new non-voting class of shares, avoiding a public trial in a suit filed by investors in the huge social network.

The plan unveiled last year had been designed to allow founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to maintain voting control as he divests to fund a philanthropic initiative with his wife Priscilla.

But he said the separate share structure was no longer needed.

"Over the past year and a half, Facebook's business has performed well and the value of our stock has grown to the point that I can fully fund our philanthropy and retain voting control of Facebook for 20 years or more," Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page.

He said that he and his wife still plan to give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares during their lifetimes, and are even accelerating the process.

Zuckerberg expected to sell 35 to 75 million Facebook shares during the coming 18 months to fund philanthropic work in education, science, and advocacy through the Chan Zuckerberg initiative.

Zuckerberg said he asked board members to withdraw the proposal to create non-voting shares, and they agreed.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly laid out a long term vision for Facebook that requires leadership willing and able to forgo short-term profit for longer term returns.

Read also: Zuckerberg to testify in court hearing

A class action lawsuit filed in a Delaware court to block the share reclassification plan was scheduled to get under way shortly, with Zuckerberg among those expected to be called on to testify.

The rise in Facebook shares has given the social network a market value of nearly $500 billion, giving Zuckerberg a net worth of some $70 billion according to a Forbes magazine estimate.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) San Francisco, United States  Sat, September 23, 2017 08:48 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b00b3 2 Science & Tech Google,#Google,publisher,Online-news-readers,Internet,#Internet,technology,#technology Free

Google is seeking ways to help publishers win paying subscribers for news stories, a person close to the matter told AFP.

To this end, the US internet giant is collaborating with NewsCorp, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, according to the source.

Google was said to be ramping up its support for subscription services in recognition of the fact that such revenue is vital for publishers who can't rely on advertising alone for financial survival.

Google declined to comment on word of this latest effort.

"We work closely with news publishers across the world to build products that help support their business and add value to users," Google spokesperson Maggie Shiels said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"At the moment we don't have anything to announce."

Read also: Indonesia, Google to use Trusted Flagger program to filter out internet content

Google already uses its technology to let readers of online news subscribe to publishers with a single click, in an internet age spin on tossing a free copy of a newspaper on a doorstep in the hope people sign-up for daily deliveries.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has made a priority of investing in artificial intelligence, and has spoken publicly about infusing the company's array of offerings with software smarts.

Artificial intelligence could be combined with troves of data at Google to try to better win over potential news subscribers.

Publishers have complained at times that Google is making money off their work by surfacing stories in search results.

Google has countered that it shares revenue with publishers, drives traffic to their websites where stories are hosted, and that they can opt not to show up in search results.

The need to support reliable news organizations has been highlighted by controversy over bogus stories crafted to influence politics, promote social division, or simply rake in online ad revenue.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Milan, Italy  Sat, September 23, 2017 09:29 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b13af 2 Lifestyle Versace,donatella-versace,model,#model,Milan-Fashion-Week,supermodel,fashion,#fashion Free

Donatella Versace authored the defining moment of Milan fashion week on Friday with a blockbuster show honoring her late brother Gianni which closed with a surprise supermodel reunion that brought the cheering crowd to its feet.

Security guards had to brush back the audience when it rushed the catwalk once a white curtain at the head of the room peeled back at the show's close to reveal the guests of honor.

Out stepped Cindy Crawford, Carla Bruni, Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen and Claudia Schiffer in gold lame as the George Michael anthem "Freedom '90" pounded from the sound system.

Each of the women -- all now in their 40s or 50s -- had personally worked with Gianni during their years on the runway.

"Gianni this is for you," a voice declared throughout the show, which featured a greatest hits of the murdered designer's canon.

There were his iconic baroque designs on dress and trouser combinations, a glittering number bearing Andy Warhol's pop art Marilyn Monroe and rock'n'roll leather adorned with shimmering tassels.

Broad, square-shouldered suits, tight pastel-colored velour-looking dresses as well as swimsuits adorned with sea stars and shells defined the collection.

It was all done before a starry crowd including Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton, Kardashian mum Kris Jenner and Gucci creative mastermind Alessandro Michele. Superstar model sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid were there too -- but to show off the collection to the crowd of buyers, fans and bloggers.

On July 15 the two-decade anniversary came and went for the murder of Versace, who was shot dead on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion. The gunman, 27-year-old Andrew Cunanan, took his own life days later after an inexplicable crime spree that left at least five dead.

"We pay homage to not only (Gianni's) artistic genius but to who he was as a man, and above all, as my brother," Donatella wrote in her notes on the Spring/Summer 2018 collection.

Read also: Hot new talent to light up Milan Fashion Week

Armani shrugs off global mess

Giorgio Armani's show earlier in the day aimed for the same determined joy, which flew in the face of a world that seems dogged by disaster at the moment -- some natural and some man-made.

The clothes he sent down the runway were bright and modern, full of vivid prints and crisp cuts.

What was not there was outrage over Donald Trump, fear that North Korea's cold war might get hot and no trace of the carnage left by a string of earthquakes and monster hurricanes.

"It's not because it's a sad moment that I have to make women sad on the runway," the veteran designer told reporters after the show at Teatro Armani.

Art with a "capital A", Impressionist paintings -- but not one in particular -- drove him to create a collection with plenty of flowers, bright silky pinks and lots of sequins.

Providing a bit of star power for the 83-year-old's show were Monaco's Princess Charlene and Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who is the face of Armani's Si perfume.

On the catwalk there were plenty of small jackets, short dresses with sloping hemlines and luminous pleated skirts. The models also showed off vertiginous, see-through high heels.

Gauzy jacket and trouser suits embellished with bright designs as well as silky green or silver skirts were major themes.

They were all part of what the designer's notes called the "sophisticated, linear elegance of the Armani language."

Read also: Big Bangs theory: In Milan, Gucci goes back to the 80s

New kid at Cavalli

As ever, the show concluded with the designer emerging briefly from backstage in his trademark working clothes of long-sleeved top and high-tech sweatpants to briefly accept the audience's applause.

The show comes just two months after the Armani group announced it would reorganise its brands, concentrating on three core labels and trimming its network of boutiques.

The change up was announced in July when Armani confirmed its sales had fallen five percent in the previous year.

Big brands, including Prada, have struggled to find their mojo after revenues across the luxury world were hurt by a slowdown in Asia and currency volatility.

Friday was also the big day for British talent Paul Surridge. He made his maiden showing in Milan since being named creative lead at Roberto Cavalli, known for its exotic prints and pioneering the sand-blasted jean look.

It was big on slinky monotone dresses with see-through sections, zebra-print trousers and vests as well as flowery, flowing gowns.

On the outdoor runway set in a Milan park, there was also some classic evening wear mixing leather and light fabrics, as well as massively oversized chrome-coated sunglasses.

"I tried to dig deep to find a new sensuality, which I think is missing in women's fashion today and to try and pioneer a new look as Mr Cavalli did in his origin," Surridge told AFP backstage after his show.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 11:08 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b7db2 1 City Car-Free-Day,air-pollution,jakarta,traffic-congestion,TrafficDensity,vehicle,pollution Free

Jakartas Car Free Day, which has been implemented for 15 years, is considered ineffective in efforts to reduce air pollution in the city.

Committee for the Phasing Out of Leaded Fuel (KPBB) executive director Ahmad Safrudin said that while Car Free Day had helped reduce air pollution along Jl. MH Thamrin and Jl. Jenderal Sudirman, air pollution had increased in other areas of the city.

The air pollution might reduce around Sudirman, but it increased significantly in Casablanca because during Car Free Day as people who usually traveled via Sudirman-Thamrin were rerouted to Casablanca," Safrudin said as quoted by kompas.com in Jakarta on Friday.

He said Car Free Day was aimed at reducing people's dependence on private vehicles; however, unlike in Singapore, Bangkok in Thailand and other cities in Europe, it did not work.

Few people in Jakarta are willing to use bicycles or switch to public transportation," Safrudin said.

The Jakarta Environment Agency's environment laboratory head, Diah Ratna Ambarwati, said there was a significant difference in air pollution levels during Car Free Day and normal days.

During Car Free Day, air pollution is reduced by almost 70 to 80 percent," Ambar said.

She said that in 2015, air pollution during Car Free Day declined by 75 percent. The pollution level declined 65 percent in 2016 amid increased construction activity in Jakarta and the increased use of private vehicles in the city. (dis/ebf)
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 14:08 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21bc5f3 1 National KPK,setya,setya-novanto,house-of-representatives,graft,graft-suspect,corruption Free

Judge Cepi Iskandar at the South Jakarta District Court rejected on Friday an objection raised by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) during the hearing of House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novantos pretrial hearing challenge to his being named a suspect.

In its objection, the KPK had argued that Setyas questioning of the status of the antigraft bodys investigators who handled the pre-investigation and investigation of his case was invalid.

KPK legal bureau head Setiadi said that if Setyas legal team wanted to question the status of the commissions investigators they should do so in the Jakarta Administrative Court, not by means of a pretrial motion.

Cepi disagreed with Setiadi. The judge said the status of KPK investigators, which had been questioned by Setya and his legal team, was not related to civil service-related administrative disputes.

Therefore, the judge concludes here that the matter raised by the plaintiff is not a legal dispute so it can be handled through a pretrial hearing, he said.

The KPK also said in its objection that several points raised by Setya and his legal team had touched on the substance of his case. This was because Setya wanted an assessment of the legality of evidence the KPK had used to name him a graft suspect.

The KPK said authentication was part of the core trial process and it was the authority of the Jakarta Corruption Court to handle such matters.

Responding Cepi said the judge would assess the legality of evidence during the pretrial hearing. (hol/ebf)
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 11:48 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21b8b7e 1 National KPK,graft,corruption,Banten,corruption-case,bribery,bribery-case Free

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested on Friday several suspects in Banten for their alleged involvement in a graft case.

We have apprehended around 10 people, comprising a regional head, a municipality official and private company officials, KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah confirmed on Saturday. He declined to give further details.

Febri said KPK investigators found an indication of illicit transactions related to the extending of a license for an industrial complex. During their operation, the investigators also seized cash amounting to millions of rupiah.

Local media outlets report that Cilegon Mayor Tubagus Iman Ariyadi is among those who have been arrested by the antigraft agency. Febri said the KPK was set to make an announcement on the arrests at its headquarters in Jakarta on Saturday afternoon.

This will be the ninth arrest operation by the KPK since August. The previous eight arrest operations took place in regions across the country. Most of the cases involve local leaders, government officials and politicians.

In an operation on Sept.16, investigators arrested Eddy Rumpoko, the mayor of Batu in East Java, for allegedly accepting a bribe. (ebf)
The structure, which was located on the site where Veterans Outreach of Wisconsin is constructing tiny houses for homeless veterans, was fully involved in flames when firefighters arrived on scene, according to Lt. Scott Sorce of the Racine Fire Department. The property is currently in various stages of construction with no one living on site and the blaze did not spread to the adjacent structures or materials, Sorce said.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23 2017

South Koreas ambassador to ASEAN, Suh Jeong-in, completed his term on Sept. 21 in Jakarta. The popular envoy has been appointed deputy minister for planning and coordination at South Koreas foreign affairs ministry in Seoul.

During his near three-year tenure, relations, especially those economic, between the 10 ASEAN member states and South Korea have grown significantly.

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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, September 23 2017

Every year, Retno Trilaksari, 56, travels with her family of three either domestically or abroad. She dreams of visiting Turkey next year, while still eyeing local destinations like Labuan Bajo in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) and Raja Ampat in Papua.

Determined to find cheap tickets to meet her budget, she braved the crowd flocking to the Garuda Indonesia Travel Fair on Friday.

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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 14:04 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21bb658 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Australia,festival Free

The tourism ministrys Wonderful Indonesia brand will take part in the upcoming Indofest event that will be held at Victoria Square, Adelaide, Australia on October 1.

Indofest is the biggest Indonesian event in South Australia that is held annually by the community of Indonesian people in Adelaide, this year marks the 10th anniversary of this event.

With the theme of Kampung Indonesia (Indonesian Village), this years Indofest will highlight the nations official motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity).

Visitors can expect to see music and dance performances, food stalls, interactive workshops on Indonesia and cooking demos at the event.

This festival will also promote Wonderful Indonesia tourist destinations through social media.

Indofest is the only sustainable festival in Australia. This years Indofest coincides with the 10th anniversary of the event and it has gained full support from the Australian government, especially from South Australia, and the Indonesian embassy. It is estimated that there will be 10,000 people who are going to come to Indofest, explained tourism ministry's deputy minister for overseas promotion, I Gde Pitana.

Visitors will feel the atmosphere of Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara and Papua [islands] from these booths, added the ministry's deputy assistant for Asia-Pacific tourism promotion, Vinsensius Jemadu.

Read also: More countries could be listed for harsh US travel restrictions

Meanwhile, the ministrys Wonderful Indonesia brand is going to have its own booth that will serve as the information center for Indonesian tourism.

Tourism minister Arief Yahya explained that the number of Australian tourists coming to Indonesia has been increasing quite well, from 2015 to 2016 the increase was at 14 percent.

Bali is still the biggest market but tourism ministry is also introducing other interesting destinations. The good news is, 60 percent of Australian tourists are repeat visitors, meaning that they have at least went to Indonesia once, had a good experience here and would like to come back again, told Arief.

Arief said that there needs to be a relationship improvement with airlines through joint promotions and an incentive to open new routes to other destinations besides Bali and Jakarta.

Creating the 10 New Balis is the governments effort to develop other destinations outside Bali. As it gets easier to invest in Indonesia, investors and businessmen from Australia can invest in the tourism sector by partnering up with an Indonesian counterpart, added Arief. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Sat, September 23, 2017 15:05 1878 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a21bcd41 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Sail-Sabang,sailing,#sailing Free

Sabang town in Aceh is currently in preparation for the upcoming Sail Sabang 2017 that will be held from Nov 28 - Dec 5.

Our focus for this event is on tourism development, Sail Sabang 2017 will be filled with plenty of different activities as well as cultural and dance performances. President Joko Widodo is set to attend this event, said Aceh tourism department head, Reza Pahlevi.

Reza said that the opening night will have the performance of Laksamana Malahayati colossal dance. Malahayati herself is female admiral from Aceh, then followed by the showcasing of Pemuda Nusantara boat, Baruna Jaya IV and Baruna Jaya VIII research ships, a convoy of 100 Sail Sabang 2017 yachts with participants coming from Langkawi, Phuket, Singapore, Australia, Europe and traditional fisherman boats parade.

There are still other supporting events such as Science and Technology Jambore, International Free Diving Competition, Sabang Underwater Contest, Sabang Carnival, Aceh Culinary and Coffee Fesitval, Sabang Wonderful Expo and Marine Expo, Cruise Operator and Yacht Sales Mission and marine tourism workshop, added Reza.

With the theme Sabang towards the Gate of World Marine Tourism Destination, Sail Sabang 2017 will also feature Pesona Indonesia performances, fishing competition, drone video and photo competition, welcome dinner, Banda Aceh city tour, social service and beach cleanup.

Read also: Creative Economy Agency to make films set at the 10 Priority Destinations

Furthermore, two Landing Platform Dock (LPD) ships that are the NAVY mini mother ships called KRI dr. Suharso and KRI Banda Aceh will depart from Jakarta on November 20 to Sabang, with one taking the Sumatra west coast route while the other one taking the Sumatra east cost route. These ships will board Indonesian youths who are going to do health service and CSR for residents of small islands.

Two barquentine ships namely KRI Dewaruci and KRI Bima Suci will also take part in the festivity, Dewaruci will sail from Jakarta and Bima Suci will sail from Spain, joining it are other barquentine ships from other countries such as India, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

On land, there will be off-road cars from Indonesian Off Road Federation (IOF) that will travel from Jakarta, whilst in the sky, there will be performances from TNI AU Aerobatic Jupiter Team and skydiving from TNI AD (national army), TNI AL (NAVY) and TNI AU (air force). Meanwhile, the health service will be conducted by TNI AD, AL and AU medical teams, Reza said.

All of the activities at Sail Sabang 2017 will be showcased in a short video that will be played during the festivals finale in Sabang on December 2, he added.

In addition, seven floating net cages and modern offshore aquacultures consisting of millions of baby fishes from the ministry of maritime affairs and fisheries will be officiated in Sabang. The science and technology community which will bring the Baruna Jaya VIII research ship will hold an open ship and seminar at Gapang tourist area.

Prior to Sail Sabang 2017, the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) will hold a Sail Sabang seminar on October 5. Other ministries are also contributing to the festival, such as the transportation ministry which will provide five ferries that cater the Banda Aceh Sabang route and 28 busses that will be stationed in Sabang.

The ministry of public works and housing will take care of clean water, toilet and sidewalk facilities around the location for the final night, while the ministry of state-owned businesses will send its CSR using LPD KRI dr. Suharso and KRI Banda ships to remote areas for medical and social services. (asw)
(lead article)

Kurds press fight to vote on independence

Back Kurds right to self-determination!

The Socialist Workers Party urges working people in the United States and around the world to help initiate and join meetings and demonstrations in support of the Sept. 25 independence referendum called by the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.

During Washingtons 1991 war in Iraq, the Kurdish people came to center stage in world politics as never before, not primarily as victims but as courageous and determined fighters for national rights, Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes wrote in The Opening Guns of World War III in New International no. 7. The establishment of the KRG was an unintended consequence of that war.

The Kurdish people are determined to take advantage of a historic opening provided by the unraveling of the post-World War I and World War II order in the Middle East, including artificial and arbitrary borders imposed on the toilers as part of the imperialist victors war spoils.

They see an opening to forge a Kurdish state despite the fierce opposition of Washington, its imperialist allies, Moscow and virtually all the capitalist regimes in the region.

The propertied rulers in the U.S., todays dominant imperialist power, fear the Kurds battle for independence. So do the rulers in Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, where most of the over 30 million Kurdish people live, the largest nationality in the world without a state.

This is because every step forward for the centurieslong struggle of the Kurdish people for self-determination anywhere opens the door to new advances, inspiring Kurds wherever they live and others fighting imperialist domination, oppression and exploitation.

This is the opportunity for Kurds of Iraq to win independence, Ismail Ajam, an Azerbaijani Turk who lives in Iran, told members of the Communist League, a sister party of the SWP, at a London demonstration in support of the referendum Sept. 17. This will have a good effect on the oppressed in Iran  on Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmen and on Kurds in Syria and Turkey. It will give confidence to others in the Middle East.

The ruling families also fear the over 1 million Kurds forced to emigrate to other countries, many fleeing Saddam Husseins murderous attacks on Iraqi Kurds, repression of the Turkish government, or because of the impact of Washingtons seemingly endless wars in the region. They are now part of the working class in the U.S., Germany and elsewhere, joining the class struggle there. These workers will win broader support for the right of Kurds to determine their own future and at the same time their experience and confidence strengthen the fighting capacity of the working class wherever they are.

Holding the Sept. 25 referendum, and the overwhelming vote for Yes to independence that will inevitably result, will open a new stage in the Kurdish struggle in the Middle East. And it will strengthen the fight of the Catalan people for self-determination against Spains capitalist rulers, the Puerto Rican peoples fight against U.S. colonial tyranny and battles against national oppression elsewhere.

The Kurds have a powerful example on how to win and defend national independence in revolutionary Cuba. Cuban workers and farmers, led by Fidel Castro and the July 26th Movement, overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship, expropriated the Yankee overlords and overturned capitalist exploitation.





Related articles:

Kurds mobilize for yes in September 25 vote

Kurds in US rally for independent Kurdistan

Million march for Catalonia referendum







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(front page)

SWP drive on for Militant subscriptions, books, fund

The Socialist Workers Partys nine-week fall circulation drive to increase readership of theand books by party leaders is off to a good start.

At the heart of the effort is knocking on workers doors to discuss the carnage being visited on workers, ranchers and farmers by the bosses and their government as they try to place the cost of the deepening crisis of their capitalist system on us. And the SWPs perspectives for how workers can meet these attacks and chart a course for the working class to take political power.

In addition to branches of the SWP, members and supporters of Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. are using the drive  from Sept. 16 to Nov. 21  to introduce the communist movement, its paper and books to working people where they live and in protests and strike picket lines they participate in.

The drive runs concurrently with the SWPs $100,000 fall fund to finance the partys ongoing work. The chart on the front page shows the quotas taken by SWP and Communist League branches. On page 4 is a chart showing fund goals SWP branches have adopted.

Dan Fein reports a team of SWP members and supporters from Chicago went to Louisville, Kentucky. We went door to door introducing the Socialist Workers Party, he said. We found that a number of workers wanted to talk about the demonstrations against police brutality taking place in St. Louis.

After discussing the partys program for awhile, Ronnie Herman a 39-year-old chef from the Philippines, got a subscription to the Militant. Keep up the good work, he told us, its important what youre doing.

Overall workers we talked to got two Militant subscriptions, 10 single copies and six of the books the party is offering at a special discount, said Fein.

The books are Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, Are They Rich Because Theyre Smart?and The Clintons Anti-Working-Class Record by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes; Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters; and Its the Poor Who Face the Savagery of the US Justice System by the Cuban Five, five Cuban revolutionaries who spent up to 16 years in U.S. prisons for their actions in defense of the Cuban Revolution.

Ron Poulsen from the Communist League in Australia reported that he and three other members of Communist Leagues in Australia, Canada and New Zealand made a trip to the Philippines Sept. 12-18 during the Manila International Book Fair and were hosted at the Polytechnic University there by members of PUP SPEAK  Students Party for Equality and Advancement of Knowledge. PUP SPEAK won last years student council elections, ousting a Maoist current that had controlled the office for three decades.

Over two days, PUP members and other university and high school students who came by our table bought a total of seven introductory subscriptions to the Militant and 15 campaign books.

A total of 66 other books and pamphlets on the communist program, the Cuban Revolution and writings by revolutionary leaders also were sold at the book table.

Members of the Communist League in Vancouver, British Columbia, report they had some rewarding experiences talking politics with working people in the Surrey area in the Lower Mainland.

We went door to door in a working-class town in Surrey and sold six books, Carlita LaBlanc said. One health care worker asked us to come back so she could get a subscription. She had asked us how she could contribute to what we were doing, and decided that getting the paper and showing it around to friends and workmates was the way to go.

We learned about a rally in support of the independence referendum in Kurdistan an hour or so before it began on Sunday. We joined in and two participants got subscriptions, she said. It was a lively and upbeat event with music and dancing, despite the rain.

Philippe Tessier, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, will be coming through here this week, returning from a trip to the Philippines, LaBlanc said, and hell join us in campaigning in the region here for a few days.

Members of the Communist League in London went door to door in the suburb of New Addington Sept. 16, selling five Militant subscriptions and two books.

CL members Olof Andra Proppe and Ogmundur Jonsson met Patrick Collins, a retired alarm fitter, and they discussed the recent opening of the government inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire and social disaster that killed at least 80 people. There used to be more publicity  what they were doing, what they werent doing  but now its out of the news, Collins said. They refused to have any victims on the panel.

The inquiry is designed to keep people off the streets, to make out that the capitalist rulers will take care of everything, Jonsson said. To win the demands for permanent rehousing, financial assistance and fire safety protections residents need, working people have to rely on our own capacities to fight for them. Whats behind this is capitalist profiteering and contempt for working people.

Collins said that he thinks millions of workers are getting angry about worsening conditions and people will explode at some point. He got a subscription to the Militant and Are They Rich Because Theyre Smart?

League members were enthusiastically received at a Sept. 17 demonstration in London in favor of the independence referendum called by the Kurdish Regional Government. In addition to seven subscriptions, Jonnson said, they sold 28 copies of the Militant featuring a centerspread on the Kurdish struggle in Iraq, as well as four other books.

To join in the circulation drive or to contribute to the Party Fund, contact the nearest office of the Socialist Workers Party or Communist League listed on page 8.





Related articles:

Fall campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books Sept. 16  Nov. 21 (chart)

Socialist Workers Party-Building Fund Sept. 16  Nov. 21 (chart)







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(front page)

1000s march to back workers in 6-month-long Spectrum strike

NEW YORK  Thousands of workers turned out Sept. 18 for a march and rally in support of 1,800 members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 who have been on strike against deep concession demands from cable giant Charter Communications/Spectrum for nearly six months. Their last contract expired more than four years ago.

The company says theyre offering a big pay raise, said Gavin Cabrera. But then they say that we should have to pay for our medical insurance and make our own payments to the pension fund. And they want to get rid of seniority. Theyre not even willing to negotiate at this point. They just want to bust the union.

Cabrera said that the company had sent out letters to the striking workers saying they could return to work, but they wouldnt be guaranteed their old jobs, which have been taken by new hires. He added that over the past months some union members had crossed the picket line at the Brooklyn depot where he works.

Charter purchased Time Warner Cable in 2015 and renamed it Spectrum. The company raked in some $3.5 billion in profits last year.

Many other unionists turned out, including hundreds of IBEW electricians and construction workers, hotel workers, laborers, sanitation workers, teachers, retail workers and nurses. The protest began with a rally in Brooklyn, then marched over the Brooklyn Bridge and ended with a rally in Lower Manhattan. Speakers included AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Marcel Feliu, a member of the Laborers International Union of North America, bumped into the rally when he got off his job building scaffolding. I stopped right away to show my support, he said. In dangerous work like I do, the unions are very important. Thats why we need to organize all the workers who dont have unions.

Whatever the outcome of this fight, I will be much better at reaching out to other workers who are on strike, said Michael Traisi, a picket captain on Staten Island. Ive always voiced support for other unions, but now I realize you need to organize to help.

Traisi also explained how the union is trying to reach out to some of the new people Spectrum has hired to cross our picket lines. Theyve been told a lot of lies about us.

Errol Lawrence, a shop steward in Woodside, Queens, worked at Verizon for many years. I left because they had too many strikes, he said laughing. What we need is a major labor movement.





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On the Picket Line

Charges tossed in frame-up of engineer in Phila. crash

Communist League: Stop frame-up against Harding, Labrie!







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Washington protest demands US hands off Venezuela, Cuba

WASHINGTON  Thirty people joined a protest in front of the White House Sept. 14, demanding the U.S. government end its interference in domestic affairs in Venezuela and the sanctions it has imposed on the country and some of its leaders. The action was initiated by the D.C. Metro Coalition in Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and supported by several area groups.

We are here to tell the U.S. government to immediately end its threats against the Venezuelan government and people, said James Harris, speaking for the coalition and the Socialist Workers Party. We support the basic right of Venezuelans to sovereignty and independence. We oppose the U.S. governments attempts to impose regime change.

The government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, along with revolutionary Cuba, has been in the vanguard of offering solidarity and aid to Caribbean countries battered by Hurricane Irma.

After the storm damaged or destroyed some 95 percent of the buildings on Barbuda, Venezuela delivered aid and helped evacuate people from the island. The large international countries have not done anything, said Ronald Sanders, the countrys ambassador to the U.S., adding that the only government to come forward with practical, positive assistance so far has been the government of Venezuela.

Venezuela was also the first government to send humanitarian aid to Cuba, with an air force jet delivering over 7 tons of mattresses, water and canned food on Sept. 12. Cuba was always with Venezuela in the most difficult times, Blanca Eekhout, Venezuelan Minister for Women and Gender Equality, said at Havanas Jose Marti International Airport. That is why we are permanently committed to its people and revolution.

Maurice Carney, a leader of Friends of the Congo, said that the U.S. government has been in the business of regime change around the world for decades. It was with U.S. government support that the nationalist government of Patrice Lumumba was overthrown in 1961, he said. Neither the former colonial power Belgium nor the U.S. wanted this rich country to develop its independence and sovereignty.

Cuba sent 120 internationalists to participate in the fight to break imperialisms grip on the Congo, he said. As some of you may know, those Cuban internationalists were led by Ernesto Che Guevara.

This reporter noted two young women smiling at the protesters. They were both from Guyana, a country neighboring Venezuela. They said thank you for the voices against what the U.S government does in Latin America.

The majority of the protesters were familiar with the long-standing solidarity between Venezuela and Cuba. They carried signs demanding, End the U.S. blockade against Cuba and U.S. out of Guantanamo!

Supporters of the Latin American and Caribbean Network and Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front also spoke, saying every attack on Venezuela has the Cuban Revolution as its target as well.

The next day Venezuela is Hope, a newsletter put out by the Venezuelan embassy, printed a briefing featuring a photo of the protest.

The Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the U.S. appreciates the support by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party, DC Metro Solidarity Coalition, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, and other social movements, who held a demonstration of solidarity against sanctions and interventionist policies of the U.S. government against the Venezuelan people, it said.





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Capitalism turns Harvey, Irma into social disasters

As Raul Castro said, In Cuba, no one is left behind

Brigade will bring solidarity, aid to Cuba after storm

US moves against Cuba crash against our revolutionary spirit







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(front page)

After storm, Cuban people and their govt rebuild

Mobilizing thousands of volunteers, Communist Party members, mass organizations and units from the army, the revolutionary Cuban government is making rapid progress in repairing damage caused by Hurricane Irma and preparing to take on the serious challenges that remain.

While Irma caused more severe and widespread damage in Cuba than in most of the United States  and less than in some Caribbean islands like Barbuda and the U.S. colony of the Virgin Islands  workers and farmers in Cuba have a big advantage. Since the overthrow of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, opening the door for Cubas socialist revolution, Cubas working people run the government. As Cuban President Raul Castro said, they ensure that no Cuban family is left on its own.

Their revolution, and the way the Cuban people met the storm, is a powerful example for workers worldwide to emulate.

More than 1,738,000 people were evacuated in advance of the storm by Civil Defense committees, minimizing the loss of human life. The committees made sure shelters  from community centers to caves  were comfortable and adequately provisioned. Students went door to door to persuade and help anyone in a danger zone who was hesitating, to evacuate. Tens of thousands of electrical and construction workers moved into action as soon as the storm died down.

At the height of the hurricane, 100 percent of electric power  except for generators in some essential buildings  was shut down. Some key power plants were severely damaged and more than 3,600 electrical poles came down. But as of Sept. 16, 87 percent of the population had some electricity restored.

Solidarity is needed

What is needed now is solidarity, and for every Cuban that means offering whatever you have for your neighbor even if that means dividing it up so that a little bit gets into the hands of many, wrote Guerrillero, the newspaper of Pinar del Rio province, one of the less affected areas of the country.

No one should be upset because trucks with food from the countryside are being sent out of this province since at others times this has been done for us, the paper added.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces in Cuba is helping to lead the way. Granma reported Sept. 17 that brigades of 20 or 30 soldiers together with people from the Ministry of Construction and neighborhood organizations are going block by block cleaning up Cienfuegos.

The challenges are formidable. In addition to the electrical grid, tens of thousands of homes were damaged  24,000 in Camaguey province alone. Dozens of oil wells, sugar refineries and more than 100,000 acres of banana, sweet potato, grapefruit, oranges, sugar cane and other crops, as well as chicken coops and feed lots for pigs and cattle were hard hit.

Farmworkers and peasants are organizing to salvage as much as possible of banana and citrus crops that were knocked to the ground. To replace lost vegetable and fruit production, farmers are planting seeds with shorter growth cycles that can still be harvested this year.

The Federation of Cuban Women, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and other mass organizations held a national cleanup mobilization Sept. 17. They were joined by the army, various government ministries and workers from state-owned industries.

We knew we were needed

Juventud Rebelde reported Sept. 17 that as soon as the storm ended a large number of students headed to the University of Havana to begin cleaning up. Nobody called us or went looking for us, but we all got there early because we knew that our support was needed. Weve been working at the university and nearby areas ever since, said student Karla Santana Rodriguez.

The government announced Sept. 18 it was subsidizing 50 percent of the materials needed to rebuild or repair damaged homes. Low interest or zero interest loans are available. And those who cant afford loans can get materials for free.

Some individuals have taken advantage of the situation for themselves at the expense of the social solidarity of the working class. There were reports of price-gouging, hoarding and a few cases of people taking computers from schools and circuit breakers from evacuated homes.

On Sept. 16 the assistant attorney general of Cuba announced that hoarding, speculation, illicit economic activities, illegalities and infractions that harm what is costing so much effort will be dealt with severely.

Troupes of musicians, actors and other entertainers have taken to the road to boost peoples spirits.

Vanguardia, newspaper of Villa Clara province, featured the tour of the Sergio Corrieri artistic brigade, which is giving performances in Caibarien and other hardest hit towns.

As people gathered, not everyone was enthusiastic. They were surprised with the arrival of the musicians, actors, clowns and magicians, and when the Juan Campos Group began playing a popular song, the paper said, like magic the spirit of the tired-out ones revived.

The hurricane did not break the spirit of resistance of Cubans, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said at the United Nations Sept. 18.

Rodriguez pledged that Cuba would cooperate, within our modest possibilities, with our fellow peoples who have been affected by the hurricane. The nearly 800 Cuban volunteer health care workers who were in fellow Caribbean countries before the storm are pitching in and others from Cuba have volunteered to join them.





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Capitalism turns Harvey, Irma into social disasters

As Raul Castro said, In Cuba, no one is left behind

Brigade will bring solidarity, aid to Cuba after storm

Washington protest demands US hands off Venezuela, Cuba

US moves against Cuba crash against our revolutionary spirit







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Million march for Catalonia referendum

The Spanish capitalist government of Mariano Rajoy in Madrid says they are pulling out all the stops to prevent the people of Catalonia from voting on an independence referendum Oct. 1. I will do whatever is needed, without ruling anything out, to prevent it, Rajoy said Sept. 7.

Madrid is threatening to bring criminal charges against over 700 mayors in the autonomous region of Catalonia, including the mayor of Barcelona, Spains second largest city, if they provide facilities or aid for the referendum called by the Catalan National Assembly.

Catalonia President Carles Puigdemont will also face charges if the referendum proceeds.

Catalans  like those in Spains Basque country  have historically faced national oppression under Spanish rule. Under the lash of the capitalist economic crisis, the rulers in Madrid have stepped up assaults on Catalan rights and use of the Catalan language.

Prime Minister Rajoy, the Spanish federal courts and Spains King Felipe have all declared the referendum illegal, saying the Spanish Constitution, adopted in 1978, asserts Spain is indivisible.

Police have raided print shops and other facilities in the province looking for voting boxes, ballots and pro-independence literature to seize and destroy, so far unsuccessfully.

Madrids threats deepened after a Sept. 11 pro-independence demonstration of a million people in the Catalonia capital of Barcelona demanding the right to hold the referendum.

Its about defending what we believe in, which is independence, Helena Casador, a 23-year-old student from Tarragona, told the Guardian at the demonstration. It will go ahead because people are prepared to defy the state.

We will vote, more than 700 mayors chanted in Barcelona Sept. 16, backed by hundreds of flag-waving independence supporters.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Catalans support holding the referendum, whether or not they support Catalonias independence.

The question on the ballot reads, Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic? There are about 5.5 million eligible voters out of a population of 7.5 million.

Decades of struggle, economic weight

The Catalans with their own national identity, language and customs, have lived for more than 1,000 years in a region on the Mediterranean coast in northeast Spain. Under a long series of feudal monarchies based in Madrid, Catalans have faced ongoing repression aimed at making them more Spanish.

In the 19th century, Catalonia was at the forefront of Spanish industrialization, creating a strong working class.

In 1931 a mass revolutionary movement rose against the dictatorial government in Madrid and led to the creation of a Spanish republic. An autonomous Catalan regional government and demands for self-determination arose out of these struggles.

Backed by the fascist regimes in Berlin and Rome, reactionary Gen. Francisco Franco led the old army in the bloody Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, defeating Stalinist, anarchist and centrist forces that prevented the toilers from carrying out a thoroughgoing revolution. During the civil war the revolutionary Catalonian masses fought on the republican side against the fascists.

Francos dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. As trade unions were crushed and revolutionary organizations banned, so too was Catalan autonomy, with language and culture suppressed. Many nationalist-minded Catalan activists were executed or forced into exile.

On the heels of the fall of the dictatorship, a new Spanish Constitution was adopted in 1978 recognizing Catalans as a nationality. It established Catalan and Spanish as the two official languages of Catalonia. But in 2010 the Spanish Constitutional Court reversed this, holding there was no legal basis for considering Catalonia a nation and that the Catalan language should not take precedence in the region.

For Spains capitalist rulers the stakes are high in their drive to block the referendum and beat back pro-independence forces. Catalonia makes up 16 percent of Spains population and its industrial activity  based on chemicals, automobile manufacturing, energy, metal, pharmaceuticals, electronics and other goods  generates about 20 percent of Spains gross domestic product.

The bourgeois political parties that are currently leading agitation for Catalonian independence call for immediate entry into the European Union. The rulers in Madrid bitterly oppose this, fearing it would throw Europes fourth largest capitalist economy back into crisis. This adds further to the growing instability and coming apart of the pipe dream of an ever increasing union of Europe.
Alone in the crowd

I can feel her breath against my cheek. She blows every time she talks to her friend, hot air that speaks of the residue of a hundred things.
It's the perfect time of year to read Maggie Stiefvater's eery Raven Cycle as with psychics, ghosts and dead Welsh Kings, it practically screams Autumn. One of the main romances is between bisexual Adam Parrish and his boyfriend Ronan Lynch, and it's wonderful to see these two very different characters fall in love over the course of the series.If you're looking for a little less fantasy and a little more history, then Mackenzi Lee's latest book might be for you, as it follows bisexual character Monty and his friend (later boyfriend) Percy on a riotous romp through 18th century Europe.Adam Silvera's latest release has been making waves on the NYT bestseller list since it came out just two weeks ago. It follows bisexual character Rufus and Mateo, who is gay, on the last day of their lives.VE Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy is not only incredibly inventive with 4 parallel Londons with varying degrees of magic, a gender bending female pirate, and a magician with a very peculiar coat, from the second book onwards, it also has a lovely romance between bisexual prince Rhy Maresh and gay pirate Alucard Emery.For fans of Pitch Perfect, Noteworthy follows bisexual protagonist Jordan Sun as she goes undercover as a boy in order to join an all male acapella group.This emotional mystery follows bisexual character Sophie as she struggles to deal with a drug addiction whilst trying to find out who murdered her best friend Mina.This magical book follows Alex, a bisexual bruja (witch) as she attempts to find her family after a spell she does backfires.For fans of historical fiction and cozy mysteries, this prequel to Wein's bestselling Code Name Verity would be perfect as it follows bisexual main character Julie Beaufort-Stuart as she aims to solve a mystery involving her family's Scottish river pearls. There are many other amazing books featuring bisexual characters, but this list is a good start for Bisexaul Visibility Day!
Actress Reese Witherspoon has praised female filmmakers for bringing modern reality to romantic comedy films.

The US star, 41, said that audiences are keen to see the genre speak a little more truth as she told how women directors can lend an updated perspective to movies.

Her comments came as she attended a London screening of Hallie Meyers-Shyers Home Again, in which she plays protagonist and single mother Alice, who begins a fling with a younger man.

Nancy Myers, Reese Witherspoon and Hallie Myers-Shyer reunite on the red carpet in London (Ian West/PA)

She told the Press Association: Its great to have a female director and a female producer (Nancy Meyers); they really see romance in a different kind of way.

Its definitely through their lens that you see a romance between an older woman and a younger man my character having a romance with a 27-year-old man, Im not sure that would have occurred to a guy.

Its about updating the romantic comedy, and I think audiences are ready for something new and a little more modern.

She added of the movie, which introduces her straight away as a separated 40-year-old: Its a very modern concept and I think that people are going through that more and more.

Its nice to see a reality reflected on film. I think people are ready for the romantic comedy that speaks a little more truth.

I was really excited to work with a female director, its really important that we have more women behind the camera and I think they did a great job.

Speaking of her experience making a big-screen film for the first time, Meyers-Shyer added: Being a woman guides a lot of your decisions, from wardrobe choices to the dialogue Its a womans story and in my opinion its very much made by women.

People are talking more about (women in film) and I think we will see a change  its more conversation than action, but if audiences come out and see the films then more womens stories will be told.

She also paid tribute to the Hollywood star for taking a leap of faith in her film, while Myers added: Shes naturally the right age, shes naturally funny, shes naturally a wonderful actress, shes been divorced it resonates with her, she made it all real.

Michael Sheen also attended the London event (Ian West/PA)

British actor Michael Sheen also weighed in on the discussion as he arrived at the event, dazzling with his new bleach blond hairstyle for his role in Good Omens.

Sheen, who plays Witherspoons ex-husband in the film, said: It would be a very boring world if you only ever got the same perspectives, so the more we see stories from womens point of view, the more female voices and directors and producers, the better, and I felt honoured to be part of that.

Commenting briefly on his upcoming role, he confessed to reporters that he did not warn his mother about his new look before she saw him in a television appearance.

He joked: She texted me all in capital letters, Oh my god, youre blonde!
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Deuba meets Saarc leaders in New York

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who leads the Nepali delegation to the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, held separate meetings with the heads of state/government of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York on Thursday.
EC invites Carter for polls

The Election Commission has invited former US president Jimmy Carter, founder of the Carter Center, to observe the upcoming provincial and federal parliamentary elections. The country is holding the two elections together in two phases on November 26 and December 7.
Experts raise concern over declining Mahseer numbers

Conservationists have expressed serious concern about degrading aquatic ecosystem that is directly affecting the population of Golden Mahseer, an iconic fish found in the Himalayan rivers.
Fertiliser stocks hit rock bottom

The demand for chemical fertiliser in the district has shot up after existing stocks in the Agriculture Inputs Company (AIC) office in Birgunj was depleted.
Chief Election Commissioner of India Achal Kumar Jyoti will be on a two-day visit in Shimla along with his full team on 24 September to review the poll preparedness of Himachal Pradesh Assembly election to be held later in 2017.

The Full Commission team consists of Election Commissioners: Om Prakash Rawat and Sunil Arora, Deputy Election Commissioners: Umesh Sinha, Sandeep Saxena and Sudeep Jain, Director Generals: Dilip Sharma and Dhirendra Ojah, Secretary ECI: Rahul Sharma and Consultant: Vipin Katara, and the Chief Election Commissioner of India.

An official spokesperson said on Saturday that during the two day visit, the Commission will hold a series of meetings with District Election Officers, Superintendents of Police, Nodal Officers and Higher Authorities of the state.

Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena on Sunday will hold a meeting with Deputy Commissioners (DC) and Superintendents of Police (SP). Besides, he will also hold a meeting with Nodal Officers.

Nodal Officers of various Departments will give presentations on election preparedness before the Full Commission.

Meeting with political parties will also be held, thereafter the Commission will take a meeting of Chief Electoral Officer, Police Nodal Officer and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) Nodal Officers on the same day.

On Monday, the Commission will review the poll preparedness with Deputy Commissioners, Superintendents of Police along with Divisional Commissioners, Police and CAPF Nodal Officers. On the same day, new initiatives will be launched and also DCs and SPs will give their presentations. The Commission will hold the meeting with higher authorities of the state post noon.
Leading activist and ex-Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anjali Damania on Saturday claimed to have received death threats in a call made from a landline number in Karachi.

At 12.33 a.m., I got a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against (former BJP minister) Eknath Khadse, she said in a statement.

Damania quoted the telephonic conversation: Tune jina haram kar rakha hai sabka. Teri family hai na.. (You have made life miserable for everybody. You also have a family).

She said the true caller showed the number (starting with codes +92 21) from a landline in Karachi.

Damania lodged a complaint with the Vakola police station in Santacruz east this morning.

Informed Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) is investigating the matter, she tweeted later.

Khadse, the senior most BJP leader in Maharashtra, had resigned as the Revenue Minister in June 2014 after his name cropped up in a dubious land deal in Pune.

Subsequently, Damania had also leveled accusations against Khadse of allegedly favouring certain contractors in the multi-crore rupees irrigation scam which is under investigation.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday accused Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal of by- passing him on the file related to the filling up the vacant posts in government hospitals. The Chief Minister urged the LG to return the file for his comments.

Kejriwal in a letter to the LG has written that the file was directly sent to LGs office without consulting the concerned Ministers, including him for their comments.

The Chief Minister said in a meeting with medical superintendents of all Delhi government hospitals on 16 August 2017, a decision was taken under which all medical superintendents were asked to immediately fill up the vacant posts by hiring requisite experts from outside on contract basis till these posts were filled up on regular basis.

Kejriwal said that the CS (chief secretary) was directed to seek LGs approval to empower the MS to be able to do that. However, Kejriwal said, I am told that the bureaucracy has imposed such conditions that as a result no MS would be able to practically hire anymore.

I understand that the proposal for the same has been sent to you (L-G) without showing it to the health minister, the finance minister or the chief minister, Kejriwal said in a letter to Baijal.

Before the file was sent to you, I called for the file. To my utter surprise, the senior officers refused to show me the file saying that they have been instructed by Honble LG not to show this file to any Minister including the CM. I would urge you to kindly send the file to me so that myself and my ministers could offer our comments on the basis of our extensive visits to various hospitals and our interaction with several patients, doctors and hospital staff, Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal said there is a huge shortage of staff in all Delhi government hospitals and urged the LG to take necessary steps to fill up the vacant posts on an urgent basis and in a time bound manner as services comes directly under his domain.

I do appreciate that with best efforts, it would take a few months to fill up the posts. In the meanwhile, we cannot allow our hospitals to work without staff even for a day. I am told that a few lives could have been saved if staff were available to operate ventilators in some hospitals, Kejriwal said.
Hollywood veterans Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, who have over 50 years of experience, added more depth to the simple tale of Netflixs Our Souls At Night, says Indian director Ritesh Batra, who finds love stories of older characters more gripping.

Based on an eponymous novel by Kent Haruf, it tells the story of two widowed neighbours, who begin sleeping in bed together platonically to alleviate their loneliness, and a real romance begins to blossom.

Batra, whose earlier credits include the widely acclaimed The Lunchbox and another Netflix film The Sense Of An Ending, was roped in by Redford to direct Our Souls At Night.

Robert is the producer of the movie, so he has developed it, and gave me a chance to work on it. Robert and Jane were already on board, and the film had a great casting. Bruce Dern is there for three scenes, theres also Judy Greer and Matthias Schoenaerts.

All the casting definitely made the film deeper, and all these actors always wanted to go deeper into the material Apart from the script, they would always go deeper in their prep and rehearsal. I got a chance to rehearse with Robert and Jane for a week That was extremely helpful, Batra said over phone from Mumbai.

He was in Mumbai for the India premiere of Our Souls At Night, organised by Jio MAMI Film Club with Star. The film, which had its global premiere at the Venice Film Festival, will have its US premiere in New York next week, before its release on Netflix on September 29.

For Batra, it was great to be able to collaborate with greats like Redford, 81 and Fonda, 79, who defy age with their enthusiasm.

They have been acting all their life. Between them, they have a hundred years of experience in cinema. So, it was great for me. Robert is such a good director himself, and its a great collaboration.

Everyday, it was going about deeper down into the material, and also about keeping it simple and dignified That was a big impetus of this movie. Thats the way the novel is and the characters have a way of doing things simply, Batra said.

The fact that hes an Indian director didnt matter, he says.

I dont think we ever discussed it We discussed the material a lot. But at the end of the day, its about the characters and the material when you collaborate on a movie. Its not about anything else They trusted me. I dont think about it any other way. Not about representing (India).

Representing is a natural consequence of who you are.

Back home in India, he feels the audience will embrace Our Souls At Night for its theme.

In India, people like love stories. I think people will like it because of that and because of the two actors and the nostalgia associated with them, Batra said, pointing out that the actors are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Barefoot in the Park.

As a director, Batra has a different way of looking at a love story  and its far removed from the masala entertainers the Indian audience has grown up watching.

If a love story has to work, it cant be about external obstacles, because we have seen that and done that to death.

What I really enjoyed about Our Souls is that all the obstacles the characters face are internal Its about the baggage of life, and thats what I enjoyed, he explained.

Also, what about Fonda commenting at the Venice Film Festival that Batra was cutting the sex scenes between Redford and her too soon?

Batra laughed, and said: She was just having fun But shes very funny and fun to work with.

After the international projects, Batra will be back soon on homeground to direct a project titled Photographer, but he preferred to remain tight-lipped about it, letting Our Souls At Night get its spotlight.
I love alcoholics. I want to help them because I have gone through that pain. It robs a person off everything, said Ajay (not real name), 38, an engineer from Chandigarh.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he flashed back his memory, when alcohol, which he tasted first in Class VIII, almost brought a dead-end for him.

I was introvert. Alcohol made me confident. The social acceptability of alcohol made me even more susceptible. I did everything for liquor..told lies and stole money from purse of my wife and embarrassed my family in public. I had no resources. My job was at stake, he shared with The Statesman.

I contracted Tuberculosis from father that worsened my condition. But I had to drink alcohol at any cost, Ajay said in the same breath.

Luckily, he found a point of return. He came in contact with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) over six years ago through his family members, who were desperate to correct him. It took him eight months to leave alcohol and realise what he missed in life.

AA is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other to solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism free of cost.

Ajay, who was recently in Shimla for AA conference, is now a self-motivated person, passing on unconditional love to alcoholics in Chandigarh (Helpline no. 094170-37358) as a part of AA, offering them golden chance that saved him.

It is a disease of denial and defiance. While the alcoholic suffers, those living with him turn neurotic. So, besides, AA, we have Al-Anon that offers programme for recovery of families and friends of alcoholics, and Alateen, a fellowship designed for younger relatives and friends of alcoholics through their teens, said Vijay (not real name), 66, from Mumbai.

Vijay left alcohol after repeated failures 22 years back and is committed to the cause of alcoholics since then through AA.

The people who take alcohol in limits and are not affected by it are not alcoholics. Those who cant control are alcoholics. The first symptom is the increase in alcohol tolerance, he added.

The AA does not involve medical intervention. Roughly, 33 per cent of its members come from Rehabilitation centres. It treats the thought and motivates the person make amends through a 12 step programme, said Vikas.

The AA members said many alcoholics or families dont share their problems owing to stigma attached with alcoholism. AA keeps the identity of members anonymous and does not go for documentation.

Active internationally, AA has 40,000 members in India, including 200 women. It runs on voluntary contribution by members and has branches in different states. AA is yet to penetrate much in Himachal Pradesh.
Death is everywhere among the roses in an initially charmingly pretty but increasingly disconcerting exhibition, the first at Guildhall Art Gallery devoted to still life art: the lovely flowers are there, but so are bloody hunks of raw meat, a bullet fashioned from human bone and a cobwebby skull made from dust. Its death. Its always been all about death, curator Michael Petry said cheerfully.

In the 17th century you looked at a vase of luscious blooms and everyone immediately got the message: this is the peak of perfection and beauty, its all downhill from here.Thats the element that is really hooking in contemporary artists. Change and decay is a very practical issue with the skull made from a duster and glued household dust by the artist Paul Hazelton, titled Fright Wig but startlingly resembling the late Andy Warhol.

It is a conservation nightmare, the Guildhall curator, Katherine Pearce, said, watching nervously for any dust being shed as the skull swayed slightly in its glass case. And, of course, most of household dust is actually made up of human skin, Petry added.

So the circle is complete. Darren Joness A Time and a Place is also cause for anxiety  a collection of objects precariously balanced on a small glass shelf, representing a rollicking weekend in the gay bars and clubs of Fire Island off New York, including-ferry tickets, mouthwash, tissues, lubricant in a bullet shaped container, whiskey, paracetamol and a tape measure.

The exhibition, which opens next month, brings together scores of contemporary works including pieces by Michael Craig-Martin, Marc Quinn, and Mat Collishaw. They have been chosen by the artist, author and curator Petry and co-curator, artist and dancer Robert Ekholm, joining old master still life from the collection of the City of London, many coming out of decades in storage or previously admired only by guests at grand City dinners. Death is explicit in many of the contemporary pieces.

Collishaws work resembles a classic 17th-century Dutch still life, food piled up against a dark background  but it actually represents the last meal chosen by a real prisoner, Juan Soria, including chicken, fish and fresh fruit, before he was executed for murder in Texas. The state has since abandoned the tradition of offering prisoners their choice.

Petry, who has just published a Thames & Hudson book on still lifes, wants visitors to look more carefully at what artists are really saying when they choose it  the title of the exhibition is the French nature morte, literally dead nature. The simple outline of a leaf in one contemporary piece needs as careful a decoding as the lost language of flowers and religious symbolism in many of the historic paintings: the American artist Eric Rhein decided to make an image of a leaf for each of the people he knew who had died of Aids, and the maple leaf is for the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. We are more aware of death than ever now, Petry said.

A generation of young artists has grown up in the last two decades in the shadow of endless killing, nonstop war in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq  and now we have two mad men with their fingers on the nuclear button. Visitors to the exhibition may pass by three richly-coloured glass vases on marble plinths at the entrance without realising that they are the first exhibit, Petrys own work. The colours of the vases and flowers relate to the gay code of coloured handkerchiefs to indicate sexual preference: the shapes in which the vases were moulded have an even more intimate meaning. It will all be explained in the label, Pearce said.

This isnt an exhibition where were shying away from anything edgy. Nature Morte is being displayed at the Guildhall Art Gallery, London from 7 September 2017 to 30 April 2018

(Dawn/ANN)
Bollywood producer Karim Morani, who had surrendered to police in connection with the alleged rape of a 25-year-old actress, will be produced before the court on Saturday, authorities said.

The Chennai Express producer surrendered at the Hayathnagar police station on the citys outskirts on late Friday night, hours after the Supreme Court dismissed his petition challenging the Hyderabad High Courts verdict cancelling.

The High Court on September 5 had upheld the decision of the sessions court cancelling Moranis bail.

A Delhi-based woman had alleged that Morani raped her on the pretext of marrying her. She also alleged that Morani took her nude pictures, made videos and sexually exploited her by threatening to post the same on social media.

The police had booked him in January on charges of rape, wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation and cheating.

The complainant alleged that Morani raped her in Mumbai and also at a film studio in Hyderabad in 2015 after promising to marry her.

The woman, said she had met Morani through his daughter, who was also a theatre artiste in Mumbai.

The producer, however, had denied the allegations. Morani said the complaint was filed with the sole intention of tarnishing his reputation and image.

The producers name had also figured as an accused in the 2G spectrum scam. He was accused of helping channel funds to the tune of Rs 200 crore to popular Tamil television channel Kalaignar TV.

Besides Chennai Express, Morani produced several other hit films including Dilwale, Happy New Year and Ra.One.

(With agency inputs)
President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday said that every citizen doing his/her duty or assigned work is a nation builder.

Addressing a gathering at Divya Prem Sewa Mission in Uttarakhand, Kovind said: Every citizen who is doing his/her duty or assigned work, including a policeman on duty here, is a nation builder.

Highlighting that India is identified by its rich culture, traditions and spiritual leaders, Kovind said from Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath till Rishikesh and Haridwar, Uttarakhand was dotted by holy sites.

He further said that while ensuring speedy development, environment preservation must be given equal importance.

Balance must be maintained between environment (preservation) and development while moving forward, Kovind said.

President Kovind began his two-day visit to Uttarakhand on Saturday to pay homage at the Himalayan shrines of Badrinath and Kedarnath. This is his first visit to the state after assuming office.

Earlier in the day, he visited Har Ki Paudi on the banks of the Ganga river in Haridwar and performed puja along with his family members.

On Sunday morning, after a tree plantation programme at Raj Bhawan, the President will leave for Kedarnath and Badrinath.
Peter Gill is a journalist based in Nepal. He writes about environment, politics and human rights issues.
On returning from the US, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will kickstart his partys election campaign in poll-bound Gujarat on Monday.

Gandhi will start his campaigns by visiting Dwarkadhish temple in Dwarka and then meet workers and supporters at Bhatiya Village.

He will also interact with elected panchayat representatives at Vadtra Village in Dwarka district, and farmers, fishermen and traders in both Dwarka and Jamnagar.

The state will witness assembly election at the end of this year.
Hungary witnessed a beautiful glimpse of Indian culture as the Indian Embassy there held a fashion event  Alluring India 2017

The event, which celebrated the 70th anniversary of Indias independence on Thursday, showcased a beautiful blend Indian traditional wear with a touch of contemporary ensemble.

Impressing upon the diverse and rich heritage and culture of India, the fashion show flaunted finely tailored Indian garments such as silk saris, embroidered lehengas and mermaid gowns with ruffles.

The event showcased unique collections by designers in the bridal trousseau industry, Charu Parashar and Payal Keyal, according to a statement.

The collections included designs by Regal Saree and Various Moods by Parashar, The Weaves from the Ghats of Banaras by Salma Sultan, and Contemporary Sari and Contemporary Wedding Cocktail collection by Keyal.

The event was inaugurated by Ambassador of India, Rahul Chhabra at the Balna in Budapest. Other dignitaries present at the event included former Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, Petra Pana, Deputy State Secretary for External Economic Affairs.

The audience also got a glimpse of a live demonstration of how a nine-yard sari was draped to perfection in different styles.

The poem khoob ladi mardani, woh toh Jhansiwali rani thi by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, was enacted to highlight the story of Rani Laxmi Bai, who battled her fight to freedom despite being dressed in nine-yard long Langdar Sari.

(With inputs from agencies)
At least one of the sanctions ~ a ban on textile exports ~ imposed on North Korea, which has accelerated its nuclear weapons development under the leadership of Kim Jong-Un is likely to hit the hermit kingdom severely. Kim, a third-generation dictator, has conducted four of North Koreas six nuclear tests since assuming power in 2011.

The weapons are being tested at a torrid pace and include solidfuel missiles that have been designed to be launched from road-mobile launchers or submarines and are thus less detectable. North Korea claimed that its latest nuclear test was a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its Intermediate Range Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), which could potentially reach deep into the US mainland when perfected. Under Kims leadership, North Korea has been pursuing a nuclear device that is small and light enough to fit on an ICBM, without affecting its range and making it capable of surviving re-entry.

In January last year, Pyongyang claimed to have tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, also known as a thermonuclear device, but foreign experts were rather sceptical. They suggested that it could have been a boosted device, an atomic bomb that uses some hydrogen isotopes to increase its explosive yield. A US official, who studies North Koreas military politics, said it was too early to determine if the test supported North Koreas claim that it had succeeded in developing a thermonuclear weapon, much less one that could be mounted on an ICBM and re-enter the Earths atmosphere without burning up.

The power is 10 or 20 times or even more than previous ones, said Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University. Hours before the test, North Koreas state news agency KCNA had released pictures showing Kim Jong-un, accompanied by scientists, inspecting a silvercoloured, hourglass-shaped warhead during a visit to the countrys nuclear weapons institute.

After the blast, the UN Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions on September 2. These curbs envisage a ban on all textile exports and prohibit any country from authorising new work permits for North Korean workers, two key sources of hard currency.

They also prohibit North Korea from importing any natural gas liquids and condensates, and cap Pyongyangs imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products. North Korea has already been declared as a rogue state; so by definition it can do whatever it wants. It can, for example, test an H-bomb despite disapproval from abroad, and launch missiles into the seas near other countries. But a rogue state, by the same definition, doesnt have very many friends. This was demonstrated by the 15-member Security Council which approved limits on inbound oil supplies and tighter inspections of cargo ships going in and out of its ports.

These sanctions, harsher than those approved before by the UN.and individual governments such as the United States, are designed to choke North Koreas economy. But one measure will pinch harder than the rest ~ the UN resolution banning textile imports coming out of North Korea. The countrys factories depend heavily on the production of coats and suits, for both men and women, to develop its economy through trade, especially with other parts of Asia.

The industry that took hold in the 1970s offers thousands of jobs to a largely poor population and helps close a trade deficit. In 2015 North Korea exported $2.3 billion in goods and imported commodities worth $3.47 billion, That year, the leading export destinations were India, Pakistan and China. The Security Council was aware of the crippling effect of the textile export ban. A Japanese representative to the UN said the resolution strengthens sanctions to an unprecedented level, with the ban on textile exports expected to reduce its revenues by $ 800 million.

The Security Councils ban on oil-related exports to North Korea will hurt industry as well as weapons development. Shipments to the country are expected to fall by 30 per cent, it has been estimated. North Korea has threatened to sink Japan and reduce the US to ashes and darkness for leading the campaign for the sanctions. Reacting to the vote on 7 September, North Korea said the US ought to be beaten to death for spearheading the penalties.

All 15 members of the Council, including China and Russia, approved the sanctions, which also make it illegal for foreign firms to conclude commercial agreements with North Korean organisations. The increasing frequency, power and confidence displayed by these tests seem to confirm what governments and outside experts have long feared ~ North Korea is closer than ever to its goal of building a military arsenal that can target both US troops in Asia and the US homeland.

It has repeatedly vowed to continue these tests amidst what it calls US hostility, specifically the presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Japan and South Korea. Robust diplomacy has been stalled for years, and there is little indication that senior officials from Pyongyang and Washington might discuss ways to halt the Norths determined march towards inclusion among the worlds nuclear weapons powers.

The missile, which triggered sirens and warning messages in northern Japan but caused no apparent damage to aircraft or ships, was the second fired over Japan in less than a month. The launch has been linked to North Koreas signal of intent that it means to target the US Pacific island territory of Guam, which is the home of important military assets and appears well within the Hwasong-12s range. The North American Aerospace Defense Command and the US Pacific Command have observed that the missile posed no threat either to North America or to Guam. India has said that it deplores North Koreas latest nuclear test, calling it a matter of deep concern that DPRK [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea] has once again acted in violation of its international commitments.

The nuclear test, the countrys sixth and biggest-ever, runs counter to the objective of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, which has been endorsed by Pyongyang itself. Delhi has also expressed concern over North Korean nuclear missiles falling into the wrong hands, saying, India also remains concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which have adversely impacted national security.

The test had registered with international seismic agencies as a man-made earthquake near a test site in the North. Japanese and South Korean officials said it was around 10 times more powerful than the tremor picked up after North Koreas last nuclear test a year ago.

(The writer is a retired Professor of International Trade)
With the Gorkha Territorial Administration reduced to irrelevance over the past three months, Mamata Banerjee has put in place a born-again GTA, a loose federal arrangement short of statehood. Whether or not the West Bengal Chief Minister seeks to drive a wedge between the likes of Bimal Gurung (now absconding) and Binay Tamang need not detain us here.

The initiative is without question an effort to bring about a degree of normality in the restive Hills, contending with a shutdown since the first week of June. Hence the robust emphasis on development, a paradigm shift that can be contextualised with the decision to provide Rs 500 crore to the GTA over the next six months to undertake development projects. The pump-priming is distinctly intended to convey a reassuring message to the people. Suffice it to register that Wednesdays announcement has neither been readily welcomed by the Tamang group nor vehemently opposed by the Gurung faction within the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha. Critical indeed has been the change of guard, with Tamang named as the head of the nine-member board. Another rebel leader, Amit Thapa, has been nominated as the boards vice-chairman.

This is a distinct departure from the praxis of dealing with the dissident leader from behind the scenes. Yet there have been hiccups at the threshold. Not unsurprisingly, Tamang on his part has declined comment and reports suggest that other hill-based parties are unlikely to join the new set-up. Both factions of the GTA are in a quandary. The governments administrator has been relegated to the position of just one of the members, the fineprint of the message being that the change mirrors an anxiety to accord a political character to the entity.

We believe in democracy and this is why political persons have been nominated to the board, was the Chief Ministers explanation for the change in the fundamental character of the entity. Though Guring has been fighting a losing battle, there appears to be support for the mans agenda, however belligerent. And if indeed the other hill parties do not eventually join the reformed GTA, the lack of support and participation might render its effectiveness open to question. In the context of the prolonged shutdown, Banerjee has officially recognised Tamang as the leader of the morcha at this juncture. Whether or not she is trying to forestall the Centres move to hold tripartite talks with Gurung can only be speculated upon.

As speculative as to whether the proposed talks will focus on statehood or the GTA, as Banerjee wishes. In the immediate perspective, the GTA must resume functioning and fruitfully utilise the Rs 500 crore earmarked for Darjeelings development. Binay Tamang has been muted in his response. And that is cause for worry
Speaking to journalists at the presidential palace yesterday, Macron said the signals sent by the British prime minister show a willingness ahead of a new round of talks between Britain and the EU next week.

Before moving forward, we hope to clarify things regarding the treatment of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit, and the question of Ireland, Macron said, reiterating the blocs stance.

On two of these three issues, openings have been made, he added without providing further details, saying it was up to the EUs chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to address these points.

In her speech, May promised to meet Britains existing EU budget commitments until 2020 and outlined new legal guarantees for the rights of around three million EU nationals living in the UK.

Barnier welcomed what he called the constructive spirit of Mays speech in Florence but said he would wait to hear the concrete implications.

Macron, for his part, plans to outline his proposals for the future of the EU after Brexit at a speech at the Sorbonne university in Paris on Tuesday, his office said Friday.

The pledges were part of a charm offensive aimed at unblocking the negotiations in time for a meeting of EU leaders on October 19-20, when her 27 counterparts will decide if talks can move onto trade.
The UK must provide more clarity about its negotiating position on Brexit, French President Emmanuel Macron has said following British Prime Minister Theresa Mays speech in the Italian city of Florence.

Macron said on Friday the settlement rights of EU nationals living in the UK, the financial terms of the exit package and the Irish question all require further clarification before talks could be held on trade, BBC reported.

May, during the speech, made suggestions including a two-year transition period after Brexit, and that the UK pay the EU for commitments previously made.

The British Prime Minister said that she hoped this offer would unblock Brexit talks. In the first response by a European leader to the speech, Macron welcomed her initiative, but said the British position still needed to be fleshed out.

Before we move forward, we wish to clarify the issue of the regulation of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit and the question of Ireland, he said.

If those three points are not clarified, then we cannot move forward on the rest.

May said on Friday that there should be a transition period of about two years after March 2019  when the UK leaves the EU  during which trade should continue on current terms.

As per her proposals, EU migrants would still be able to live and work in the UK but they would have to register with the authorities.

May said the UK would pay into the EU budget for decisions made while it was a member, so other member states were not left out of pocket.

She did not specify how much the UK would be prepared to pay during the transition period, but it has been estimated as being at least 20 billion euros (about 18 billion pounds), the report said.

Brussels chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier said May had failed to clarify how the UK would honour its special responsibility for the consequences of Brexit for Ireland.

Irelands Prime Minister Leo Varadkar joined the call for greater detail on how a transition period might work after Britain leaves the EU in 2019, while Sinn Fein party president Gerry Adams said May delivered nothing but the same old story.
Pakistan said it conducted a successful test of the firing of an anti-ship missile from a Sea King helicopter in northern Arabian Sea on Saturday.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration, a press release issued by the navy said.

The anti-ship missile successfully hit its target.

According to the navy spokesperson, Zakaullah said the successful firing demonstration was a testament to Pakistan Navys war preparedness and professional capabilities.

The naval chief also visited fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed exercises involving the naval fleet.

I am proud of Pakistan Navy fleets war preparations, Zakaullah was quoted as saying.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to declare Iran to be in breach of the 2015 deal unless it is expanded to punish Iran for pursuing a ballistic missile program and for sponsoring foreign militant groups.

But Lavrov, addressing reporters at the UN General Assembly, said such matters are beyond the scope of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed between Iran and six world powers, including Moscow and Washington.

Its not only Russia that has said it is necessary to save the JCPOA. That was mentioned by all the European countries that participated in the negotiations, he said.

This program is already finalized and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. Opening up this plan for negotiations basically would be disregarding this agreement, he added.

There are different kind of concerns coming from many sides and these concerns should be addressed through the formats that are relevant for that.

Bringing together apples and oranges would be wrong, especially in such complicated issues as the Iran nuclear deal.

On October 15, Trump is due to tell the US Congress whether he is ready to re-certify Irans compliance with the 2015 deal. If he refuses to do so, it could open the door to renewed US sanctions and the collapse of the deal.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees visited Bangladesh on Saturday to measure the extent of the Rohingya refugee crisis.

Almost 430,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar and crossed to Bangladesh since August 25. During his visit to the Coxs Bazar district, where a majority of the Rohingyas fleeing Myanmar are staying, the UNHCR commissioner Filippo Grandis aim was to get a first-hand grasp of the scale of the refugee crisis, the UN said in a statement.

The UN added that Grandi was set to meet with refugees and see UNHCRs continued ramping up of its response to support Bangladesh, Efe news reported.

Grandi posted on Twitter several photographs of a refugee camp, where he was seen with children and mothers inside a school in a precarious state or watching small children bathing in the murky waters of a river.

Rohingya refugee children swim in a makeshift camp in Bangladesh: I asked their mothers what they need most. Everything: they replied, Grandi said.

On Friday, the UN estimated that the refugee crisis in Bangladesh may require a call for funds to the tune of $200 million to serve 1.2 million people, including nearly 430,000 Rohingyas who arrived in recent weeks.

The exodus of Rohingyas began on August 25 after the Myanmar Army launched an offensive in the region following an attack by Rohingya rebels on multiple government posts.

Non-profits have denounced human rights violations and the international community has increased pressure on the Myanmar government over the military operation.
Marching to the tune of history

On Wednesday, a day before Ghatasthapana kicked off the annual festive season, members of the Shardul Jung Gulmathe 165-member company of the Nepali Army garrisoned at the Kathmandu Durbar Squarewere busy scrubbing and polishing the Dashain Ghar at the palace.
The last days of the Newfie Pride

There were many nights he didnt sleep. The numbers and scenarios turned over and over in his mind, making rest impossible. Id get up two, three oclock in the morning, night after night, come out to the kitchen table and work the numbers every ...
But the tribe has a long way to go
MPs preparing to rush through HPE Bill

After rushing through the controversial Education Act-1972 (Ninth Amendment) Bill, parliamentarians are now preparing to endorse the Health Profession Education (HPE) Bill keeping some provisions that directly benefit a handful of health institutions intact.
West Bengal CID has launched a major hunt operation in Delhi to arrest Gorkha Janamukti Morcha second in command Roshan Giri.

The CID arrested three senior leaders of GJM, who along with Giri, had met Home Minister Rajnath Singh at his office in Delhi. Giri has been slapped with UAPA section of the Indian terror law. The three leadersTilak Chand Roka, D.K. Pradhan (Darjeeling municipality chairman) and P.S. Olawere picked up from a hotel in Gurugram in Delhi.

Additional Director General (CID), Rajesh Kumar, said that the force would be deployed in and around Delhi to arrest Giri. We will arrest Giri because he is wanted under UAPA section, said Kumar.

The three arrested leaders would be flown to Siliguri from Delhi with a transit remand. They have been booked under various sections of IPC including rioting, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation etc.

West Bengals Tourism Minister Goutam Deb said that Giri was being protected by the BJP leaders in Delhi and GJM chief Bimal Gurung by the Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling. If BJP and Mr Chamling have respect for law they should hand over both Gurung and Giri, said Deb.

Giri, being in Delhi, led the delegation to Rajnath Singh recently demanding a tripartite talk to end the stalemate in Darjeeling. In an exclusive interview to THE WEEK before going underground, Giri said:  We would have no objection if Darjeeling is merged with Sikkim. But we want to get out of Bengal.

The bandh in Darjeeling has touched 100 days with West Bengal police forcibly opening shops in some places. But most of the shops have remained shut with very few attendance in schools in Darjeeling. Gurung, who is believed to be in Sikkim, released an audio tape where he condemned the arrest of senior GJM leaders.The West Bengal government has clearly taken advantage of the internal rivalry within the GJM with few leaders led by Binay Tamang rebelling against Gurung to meet Mamata Banerjee for talks. Mamata broke the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration accord recently and created a board of administrators of which Tamang has been made chairman.

West Bengal government has also sanctioned around Rs 500 cr to recreate the damaged properties in Darjeeling.

The questions remains whether Tamang and his supporters still enjoy the support of people of Darjeeling. Though Gurung and Giri are out of thepublic eye, people are largely listening to the messages sent by them. Large number of people are still on the street agitating against the government of West Bengal.

With the arrest of three senior leaders of the hills, its to be seen whether Mamatas gamble would work in the long run or not.
India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using chilli and stun grenades to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar, officials said on Friday.

Border forces in India, which wants to deport around 40,000 Rohingya already living in the country, citing security risks, have been authorised to use rude and crude methods to stop any infiltration attempts.

We dont want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we wont tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil, said a senior official with the Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

Were using grenades containing chilli spray to stop hundreds of Rohingyas trying to enter India... the situation is tense, added the official, who declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to media.

More than 420,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when a coordinated attack by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces triggered a counteroffensive, killing at least 400 people, mainly militants. The United Nations has called the assault a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Densely populated Bangladesh is struggling to shelter all the refugees desperate for space to set up shacks, sparking worries in India that the influx could spill into its territory.

R.P.S. Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF patrolling a large part of the border in Indias eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both chilli grenades and stun grenades to push back the Rohingya.

A chilli grenade makes use of a naturally-occurring compound in chilli powder to cause severe irritation and temporarily immobilise its target.

Prime Minister Narendra Modis nationalist government is growing increasingly hostile towards the Rohingya, with Home Minister Rajnath Singh calling on Thursday for their deportation as illegal migrants.

Seeking to get legal clearance for the deportation plan, the home ministry told the Supreme Court this week it would confidentially provide it with intelligence information showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants.

Most of the peaceloving refugees had no link to criminal activity, two Rohingya men protesting against the deportation move told Indias top court on Friday.

An official of Indias federal investigations agency said it was seeking help from Muslim religious leaders to step up surveillance of the Rohingya.

Police have arrested a suspected al Qaeda member they believe was trying to recruit Rohingya in the country to fight security forces in Myanmar. More than 270 Rohingya have been in Indian jails since 2014.

Our investigations have revealed that Al Qaeda wants to use India and Bangladesh as their base to start a religious war against Myanmar, said New Delhi police official Pramod Singh Khuswah. Clearly they are a threat to our security.

Reuters
On August 17, when Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami ordered a judicial probe into the mysterious circumstances behind the death of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, AIADMK activists were hopeful that justice would prevail. A week later, when rebel leader O. Panneerselvam walked into the AIADMK party office at Llyods Road, the cadres put two and two together. The merger happened. Panneerselvam was sworn in as the deputy chief minister of the state, a portfolio that was not instituted by the party for the past four decades, on August 21.

Flanked by his cabinet colleagues, the chief minister was all smiles when he said, the state government will soon appoint an inquiry commission headed by a retired judge to inquire into Ammas death. However, Palaniswami refused to reveal the names of the retired Justice who would head the probe.

A month has passed by. Forget an inquiry commission, the government has not even issued a government order in this regard.

What we know about Jaya's health

In March, the Palaniswami-led state government was compelled to release the full medical summary issued by Apollo Hospitals on the day Jayalalithaa was declared dead, after party rebel O. Panneerselvam demanded a CBI probe into Jayalalithaas death. Health Minister C. Vijayabhaskar and Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan released the statements and treatment details issued by the team of AIIMS doctors who monitored the treatment provided to Jayalalithaa.

Apollos medical summary, which was signed by Sasikala and Panneerselvam, has complete details of the treatment administered, her health throughout the period she was administered. Upon evaluation, the late honourable chief minister was diagnosed with infection and dehydration, accompanied by respiratory distress and altered sensorium [drowsy and not responding to verbal commands]. She was admitted in a very critical condition in the Multi Disciplinary Critical Care Unit (MDCCU) after initial treatment in the emergency room, said Apollos report.

On the same day, speaking to the media, the health secretary clarified that, there were pre-existing comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension, asthmatic bronchitis and hypothyroidism, but clearly the treatment report of Apollo and AIIMS do not mention any evidence of trauma or any other event as alleged by certain political leaders. The jibe was aimed at leaders of the opposing OPS faction.

Why it is brought up now

Forest Minister Dindigul Srinivasan revealed at a public meeting on Friday that, contrary to government assertions, "we all lied then by saying that our Amma ate idli and drank water. Please forgive us for lying. We did not even meet her. No political leaderbe they ministers from Delhi or even the state governorcould meet Amma.

True, she died under very suspicious circumstances. In fact, the two judge bench comprising Justice Parthiban and Justice S. Vaidyanathan, who heard multiple PILs in December, pointed out, We saw in the newspapers that the chief minister was recoveringthat she was eating, walking, signing papers, and even conducting meetings. Suddenly, she was dead. The judges pointed out that no revenue division officer had seen Jayalalithaas body and, under state laws, the RDO was responsible for a spot preliminary probe in case a death was deemed suspicious. However, the PILs were later set aside.

Despite all this, the government is reluctant to appoint an inquiry commission. Reportedly, T.T.V. Dhinakaran said that the family was in possession of videos of Jayalalithaa in the hospital, and that they will release the same whenever required. In his latest press conference, Dhinakaran said, Sasikala, too, did not go into the MDCCU after October 1.

However, if an inquiry commission is set up as announced by Palaniswami, at least 17 who were closely monitoring Jayalalithaas health will be ushered into the spotlightV.K. Sasikala, Jayalalithaas secretary Poongundran, former government advisor Sheela Balakrishnan, O. Panneerselvam, Tamil Nadu governments Dr Balaji, Health Minister Dr Vijayabhaskar, his secretary Radhakrishnan, T.T.V. Dhinakaran, Dr Richard Beale from London, former chief secretary P. Rama Mohana Rao, and Jayalalithaas niece.

In fact, if Srinivasans statement stands true, it raises doubts as to how Jayalalithaa chaired a meeting on Cauvery, and how her fingerprints were used to nominate her party candidates for Aravakurichi, Thanjavur and Thiruparankundram elections.

The merger might have happened, and OPS might have got plump portfolios, but the pre-condition for the merger and an impending reason to launch a dharma yudham in Tamil Nadu is still hanging in the air.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussed how the two countries can jointly fight terrorism and promote security in the Indo-Pacific region.

This follows President Donald Trump's announcement last month that strategic partnership with India would be "a critical part of the South Asia strategy for America," placing those issues high on the bilateral agenda.

"They discussed further strengthening the US-India partnership, particularly in the areas of fighting terrorism, promoting economic growth, and expanding security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region," said Helaena White, the State Department spokesperson for South Asian media.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the two of them "discussed regional issues, with a focus of Pakistan, Afghanistan and terrorism" and "reviewed all aspects all the bilateral relationship, including expanding our trade and investment relations."

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauer said earlier that Sushma Swaraj and Tillerson also "looked forward to convening a 2+2 dialogue" with Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Defence Secretary James Mattis in the near future.

She said Tillerson thanked Sushma Swaraj "for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region".

In his speech on new Afghanistan policy last month, Trump had said a "critical part of the South Asia strategy for America is to further develop its strategic partnership with India" and asked for more help from India in Afghanistan, where he was recalibrating US policy.

Sushma Swaraj also took up the issues of H1B visas and illegal immigrant children at their meeting.

Kumar said in a tweet that Swaraj "strongly raised the issue of H1B visa and children falling under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy with Secretary Tillerson".

Another topic that came up in their discussions was the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), which the two countries are to co-host in Hyderabad in November, the State Department said.

Trump's daughter and his official adviser Ivanka is to lead the US delegation to the summit and she met Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday.

This was the first one-on-one meeting between the top diplomats of the two countries since Tillerson, a former head of the oil giant Exxon Mobil, became Secretary of State.

On Monday, both of them had participated in a trilateral meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

It was not clear what Sushma Swaraj wanted done about the H1B, a category of temporary visas for professionally qualified people, as there has as yet been no changes to that visa system.

While Trump has spoken of restricting the H1B visa system as part of his policy to put Americans first, so far there have been no changes to it and for this year the same levels of 65,000 for general H1B visas and 20,000 for those with advanced US degrees has been kept.

Indians get most of the H1B visas, although it does not have any national quotas or is specifically designed for Indian.

According to some estimates, about 7,000 Indians are covered by DACA.

DACA was a presidential order issued by then President Barack Obama to allow those who were brought in illegally as children to stay on in the US.

Trump had said that he was not going to renew the DACA order, which will expire next March, and wanted Congress to legislate it into law.

But he has since said that he may reconsider it if Congress had not passed the law by then.

IANS
NAC slashes asking price for its Boeing to $1.4m

Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) has slashed the asking price for its Boeing 757 to $1.4 million after receiving no offers.
Geeta Tandon | Amey Mansabdar

RIDING A BIKE THROUGH fire or jumping off the roof is all in a days work for this feisty lady. Geeta Tandon, 34, has made a name for herself as a stunt woman in Bollywood, having done stunts for almost all the leading ladies in tinsel town. The bravado that she displays in her movie stunts, however, pales in comparison with the immense courage that she had shown to survive a child marriage and escape from an abusive husband, to build a better life for herself.

Geeta lost her mother when she was ten. She and her three siblings stayed with relatives because her father travelled to perform at jagrans to make a living. Her elder sister was married off at 15. And the next was Geetas turn.

In fact, Geeta was happy that she was getting married. I thought, wow, I will live in my own house. I will not be at the mercy of relatives, she said. She was happy that her would-be husband, who ran a transport business, earned well and lived in a joint family. The marriage was finalised in two days, and Geeta, at just 15, got married to a 24-year-old man.

The marriage turned out to be a nightmare. I was just a kid. I had no knowledge of sex. So, it was quite a shock when he forced himself on me, said Geeta. She began to dread sunsets because they signalled that the torture would soon begin. He would get drunk and throw objects around. He would slap me and pull my hair. Nobody came to my rescue, she said.

The violence would progress into sexual abuse, and if she resisted, she would be beaten up. I hoped that after my first child was born, he would not torture me. But then one night, he banged my head against the wall five or six times. I took an auto and went to the police, said Geeta. The police, however, asked her to sort it out with him.

Geeta said she was reduced to a maid servant during the day and a punching bag at night. I knew that if I stayed on, I would soon die a really bad death.

So one night, with her enraged husband chasing her with a sword, Geeta ran for her life with her two children. She lived with her sister for a few days, but was turned out by her sisters in-laws. She took refuge in a gurdwara and began doing odd jobs. There were occasions when people, trying to take advantage of her situation, almost pulled her into prostitution.

Things began to look up as she joined a bhangra group. With one thing leading to another, she got a chance to do a stunt in a movie.

The first stunt I did was a fire sequence. I ended up with burns on my face. But I decided I would not leave this job, said Geeta. She now owns a house in Mumbai, and her son and daughter go to a good school.

Life is beautiful now, she said.
Nepals constitution accommodates aspirations of all Nepali people: PM

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has said that the Constitution of Nepal accommodates aspirations of all Nepali people and lays the foundation for inclusive development and economic prosperity.
Microchip maker Imagine Technologies has agreed a sale to China-backed private equity firm Canyon Bridge for 550 million.

Imagination employs 1,700 staff in Hertfordshire and put itself up for sale in June after its biggest customer, Apple, said it would no longer use the firms technology in its mobile phones. Apple retains an 8 per cent stake in the company.

Imagination makes graphics processors crucial for gaming, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It has warned Apple, which has opened an office nearby, not to infringe its patents.

Apple said it will no longer use the firms technology in its mobile phones

Imaginations shares plunged more than 60 per cent in April after Apples announcement. The 182p per share offer is a premium of 42p to its price the day before the offer was announced.

Canyon Bridge is backed by state-owned Chinese fund Yitai Capital. It said it has no plans to cut UK jobs and promised to help Imagination enter the Chinese and Asian markets.

The companys technology is suited to the internet of things where everyday items like home heating systems connect to the internet.

Ray Bingham, partner at Canyon Bridge, said the fund is buying staff brainpower and most employees want to stay where they are.

This is not like investing in a factory where you can box up the equipment and take it some place else, he said.

The deal comes a week after Canyon Bridges attempt to acquire US firm Lattice Semiconductor was blocked by President Trump over national security issues.
NTFONJENI  Swaziland has been hailed for playing mother-hen to migrant women and girls by availing sexual reproductive health and HIV services.



Visiting ambassador of the Kingdom of Netherlands based in Maputo, Pascalle Grotenhuis whose country has pumped in E20.5 million towards assisting the previously vulnerable migrants commended the country for great progress.



The funding was a partnership between International Organisation on Migration (IOM), Save the Children Netherlands and Witwatersrand School of Public Health (WSPH).



These funds supported the Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) HIV Knows no Borders project (2016-2020) implemented in Ntfonjeni and Timphisini constituency.



Realisation of migrant women and girls who find themselves forced into dangerous migration choices for their survival with limited resources in their possession prompted the implementation of the project.

Grotenhuis who visited the project site at Ntfonjeni expressed extreme excitement on the project advancement.



comprehensive



The project has seen the public in these constituency accessing comprehensive sexual reproductive health (SRH) and HIV/AIDS service.

Grotenhuis said as the Kingdom of Netherlands they felt strongly about supporting vulnerable people in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.



She said they were working with migrants, adolescents and sex workers because they felt that they could really make an effort to support them.
MAHLANYA  To the police it could be described as a major breakthrough but one officer should be thanking his ancestors for being alive.



This was after what could best be described as the timely intervention of ancestral spirits and bravery of a colleague who saved the life of the officer.

The incident then led to a dramatic arrest of four other men who were in the police most wanted list for aggravated burglary.



The drama filled incident took place during broad day light on Thursday near Lobamba, along MR3 Public Road and congested Mahlanya Village respectively.



Patrolling



According to insiders, two police officers from Lobamba Police Station were patrolling around the area when they came across three men, one of whom was carrying a bag.

The officers instincts told them that something was amiss with the men and they stopped them with the intention of searching them.

Before the police car stopped, two of the men bolted leaving two of their accomplices behind and this gade the officers strong reason to believe the men were up to something.



Pistol



They quickly jumped out of the car and surrounded the man while ordering him not to move. The driver was carrying a pistol while his colleague was armed with an R4 rifle.

According to sources, as the officers drew closer to the man, the driver tucked his pistol in his pants as the police prepared to search him.

Unexpectedly, the man quickly drew a loaded pistol from his pants, placed it on the chest of the officer who was carrying a rifle and pulled the trigger twice. However, the gun did not go off, supposedly because he forgot to trigger the safety pin.
Nepals first BoP deficit in 11 months

The outflow of money from Nepals economy surpassed inflows by Rs3.3 billion in the first month of the current fiscal year, as rise in remittance income could not offset pressure exerted by a combination of hike in imports and drop in exports.
Did you vote in the midterm elections as if your countrys existence depended on it?
Editor's note: The Amtrak train was delayed for 2.5 hours after the incident, according updated information from the rail operator.

Wilton

A 17-year-old boy was injured and his dog killed early Saturday afternoon by an Amtrak passenger train heading north above Maple Avenue near Daniels Road, according to State Police.

The teen, whose identity was not released, suffered a broken wrist and and a bruise to the head following the incident, which occurred around 12:30 p.m., according to police. He was transported to Albany Medical Center Hospital for evaluation, but his injuries were not considered serious.

Police said the teen, who lives nearby, had gone to the tracks to retrieve his dog, who had gotten away from home.

The train remained on a side track in Wilton for 2.5 hours after the incident, according to Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. Crew members exercised their right to discontinue the trip and be replaced by relief staff, he said. A relief crew is being sent from Rensselaer.

The 95 passengers headed to Montreal remain on the train, he said. Referred to as the Adirondack line, it originated in New York City. There is just one trip on the Adirondack line every day, and no other train traffic has been impeded, Magliari said.

No passengers were hurt, and there was no damage to the train, he said.

Trains are not able to come to an immediate stop or swerve off the track, the way a car on a street can when a driver sees something in the way, Magliari said. Railroad crews sometimes have no way of preventing such incidents if they are not notified in advance of a problem on the tracks.

"This kind of incident is sad and avoidable if pedestrians choose not to trespass on railroad property," Magliari said. "It's sad for the friends and family on the ground, and it's also said for our train crews."

Pedestrians can notify Amtrak of problems near railroad tracks by calling phone numbers posted at train crossings, or contacting local police, Magliari said.
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Halfmoon

Aldi reopened its Halfmoon store Thursday after several months of remodeling, part of a $1.6 billion plan to update more than 1,300 stores it operates nationwide.

The discount grocery retailer earlier this spring also announced it would spend $3.4 billion to boost the number of stores to 2,500 by 2022.

But it's not clear whether a long-planned store for Hoosick Road in Brunswick is still part of the plan.

The store, along with a Taco Bell, is planned for a site adjacent to Planet Fitness. On Friday, Brunswick Town Supervisor Phil Herrington said he believed the project was moving ahead, despite a refusal by the state Department of Transportation to install a traffic light at the entrance from the busy two-lane road.

Russell Oster, who chairs the town's planning board, said Friday he believed the lack of a signal likely "did slow the project down." But he also said he believed it was moving ahead, although "probably not as rapidly as the applicant would want."

Developer David Leon, who owns the property and operates a number of Planet Fitness franchises, couldn't be reached for comment.

Aldi also operates stores locally in Colonie and Rensselaer. The retailer said it plans to fill 100 positions across the region during a job fair from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday in its local stores.

Starting wages range from $12.75 to $13.50 per hour, Aldi said. Applicants must be at least 18, with a high school diploma or general equivalency degree preferred. They must be available to work anytime between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily, pass a drug screening and background check, and be able to lift 45 pounds.

Employees averaging more than 25 hours a week are eligible for health insurance and dental coverage.
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Halfmoon

This weekend's hot weather isn't welcome in the region's apple orchards. After a damp, cool summer, trees were laden with fruit. But the heat is causing them to ripen rapidly, in many cases falling to the ground before the fruit can be harvested.

"We need cool nights and sunny days, 70 to 72 degrees," said Larry DeVoe of DeVoe's Rainbow Orchard in Halfmoon. "We haven't been getting that."

For farmers and orchards, this growing season has been one of extremes. Heavy rains at the beginning of July left farm fields flooded. Cool temperatures slowed the germination of seeds.

The result?

"The wet, cool weather delayed everything," said Blair Smith, state statistician for the U.S. Agriculture Department's National Agricultural Statistics Service in Colonie. Farmers "are hoping for a late freeze" so that crops will have time to mature.

"The recent heat wave has helped extend the growing season for many farmers, especially for corn growers," said Lisa Koumjian, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Temperatures, which had been below normal for much of the summer, have been well above normal lately.

"Most days are at least 10 degrees above normal," said Joe Villani, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albany. Temperatures are forecast to hit 90 on Sunday and Monday, and maybe even Tuesday, he added.

DeVoe could've used that heat early in the season.

"I've never seen as poor a vegetable year as this is," said the 85-year-old orchard owner and farmer. "We had the fields plowed and ready to plant." But the cool soil kept seeds from germinating.

When crops do mature, yields are projected to beat last year's, said Smith.

The corn harvest is expected to average 150 bushels per acre, up from 129 last year, while soybeans are expected to average 47 bushels, up from 41 in 2016.

Koumjian, meanwhile, said the production of apples, grapes and peaches, among other commodities, also are expected to increase, although final harvest figures won't be available until next year.

Steve Ammerman of the New York Farm Bureau, the farmers' trade association, said the warm weather has been a plus for many farmers, encouraging corn to ripen and sweeten, for example.

But he too has heard the concerns about apples ripening too rapidly in the heat.

"The crop is plentiful and high-quality," Ammerman said Friday. To would-be apple pickers, he said: "Don't wait. Get out there."
Washington

U.S. trade officials on Friday empowered President Donald Trump to impose tariffs that could cut off the solar energy industry from the cheap foreign-made panels that have driven its explosive growth.

The tariffs under consideration are meant to protect a small number of American solar-panel manufacturers reeling in the face of cheap imports. The U.S. International Trade Commission voted to enable Trump to impose them at the behest of two distressed firms that warned the American panel manufacturing industry is in a state of collapse.

But most of the rest of the solar industry fiercely opposes the levies, which independent analysts warn would drive up consumer prices and cause the number of annual solar installations in the U.S. to plunge. Only a fraction of American solar companies make the panels. Most rely on imports to keep prices competitive with other forms of electricity. More than 90 percent of solar installations in the U.S. use imported panels.

The governors of Nevada, Colorado, Massachusetts and North Carolina had implored the trade commission not to authorize tariffs in a last-ditch lobbying effort Thursday. A letter they wrote warned of a "devastating blow on our states' solar industries" and "unprecedented job loss, at steep cost to our states' economies."

In California, which would get hit with more job losses than any state, the governor's office has also been closely watching the situation.

Congress also weighed in, with 69 Republicans and Democrats urging commissioners against greenlighting the tariffs. Several think tanks on the right that have long tangled with the solar industry also lobbied against the tariffs, warning they would be an affront to free trade.

The matter is in Trump's hands. He has been eager to use tariffs in a bid to revive flagging U.S. manufacturing industries, and the commission vote will test his resolve as a protectionist.

Commissioners will take the next few weeks to consider how steep the tariffs should be and make a recommendation to the White House. Trump is not obligated to follow their advice.

Solar companies worry the administration will heed the request of the firms that brought the action and hit foreign manufacturers with a tariff that will raise the price of their panels from 35 cents per watt to 78 cents, which is around the cost of the American product.
A comedy-drama about conflict between the sexes at an Orthodox community in Jerusalem, a film about foster children fleeing the Nazis and a tribute to the late Jerry Lewis are all in the lineup for the 2017-2018 Jewish Film Festival, presented October through April by the Schenectady Jewish Community Center, 2565 Balltown Road.

Admission per film covers the screening, post-movie discussion (when offered) and light refreshments, costing $5 for SJCC members, $10 for the general public and free for students with school ID. Festival passes covering all films are $35 for members, $70 for the general public. For registration or more information, call Judy Ben-Ami at 518-377-8803.

The full lineup:

"The Women's Balcony": 4 p.m. (film only); and 7:15 (with discussion), Sunday, Oct. 8. Emil Ben-Shimon's 2016 Israeli film about a broken balcony, a new rabbi and the push-pull between progress for women and ultra-orthodox practices. Post-film discussion: La Rabinessa Liora Kelman (Congregation Beth Israel), Rabbi Linda Motzkin (Temple Sinai) and Rabbi Eleanor Pearlman (Congregation Gates of Heaven).

"Keep Quiet": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, Oct. 28; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, Oct. 29. Sam Blair and Joe Martin's 2016 Hungarian/British documentary about Csanad Szegedi, the anti-Semitic founder of a far-right party, and the 2012 revelation that his maternal grandmother was Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. Post-film discussion: James Murphy, Saratoga County District Attorney and longtime community activist.

"Fanny's Journey": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, Nov. 11; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, Nov. 12. Lola Doillon's 2016 French/Belgian film following Jewish children in an Italian foster home who flee for Switzerland when the Nazis arrive. Post-film discussion: professor Stephen Berk, Union College.

"The Pickle Recipe": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, Dec. 30; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, Dec. 31. Michael Manasseri's American film about a closely guarded pickle recipe and a family plot to reveal it. Post-film discussion: Antonia Lauria, "who will share memories of her father, Tony, and life at Gershon's [delicatessen in Schenectady], a Union Street tradition for more than 60 years."

"Rosenwald": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, Jan. 13; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, Jan. 14, 2:00 PM (film only). Aviva Kempner's 2015 American documentary looking at Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant's peddler who became the president of Sears and worked with African-American communities to open schools and de-segregate education in the South. Post-film discussion led by: Angelicia Morris, executive director, Schenectady County Human Rights Commission.

"Moos": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, Feb. 17; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, Feb. 18. Job Gosschalk's 2016 Dutch comedy about a widowed father, his twentysomething daughter and her dreams of drama school. Post-film discussion: Patricia B. Snyder, founder of the Empire State Youth Theatre Institute.

"Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown": 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Saturday, March 10; and 2 p.m. (film only) Sunday, March 11. Gregory Monro's American documentary about the late comedian Lewis  his gags, acting, directing, producing and technical innovations. Post-film discussion: Gordon N. Zuckerman, president of Murray and Zuckerman insurance agency.

"The Tenth Man": 4:30 p.m. (film only) and 7:15 p.m. (film and discussion) Sunday, April 15. Daniel Burman's Argentinian film about a bachelor who moves back to his childhood home in a Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires and helps plan for Purim with an attractive, unmarried Orthodox woman. Discussion led by: Dr. Jeffrey Luria, psychologist

abiancolli@timesunion.com
The candidates for Colonie town clerk will head to court next week after one of them raised concerns about a surge in the number of absentee ballots cast in the Independence Party primary.

Alison McLean Lane, a Democrat running against Republican Julie Gansle, filed a lawsuit that alleges the number of absentee ballots cast in the primary - 177 - were remarkably higher than the number of absentee ballots that were cast in the Independence Party primaries in 2015 and 2012, 51 and 22, respectively.

Lane asserts that voters interviewed by a private investigator she hired gave insufficient reasons to explain their needs to use absentee ballots rather than vote in person.

The lawsuit Lane filed on Monday names Gansle, county elections commissioners Matthew Clyne and Rachel Bledi, and those designated to pick up absentee ballots as defendants. A judge ordered a stop to the count of absentee ballots after Lane filed the lawsuit and scheduled a court hearing for Tuesday.

In her lawsuit, Lane alleges a "systematic effort" to have voters cast absentee ballots when they had no legitimate reason to do so.

Efforts to reach Gansle were not successful on Friday.

Bledi expressed confidence that Gansle would prevail in the court case, and dismissed Lane's claims.

"She makes false accusations because she cannot accept the fact that she may lose the Independence Party endorsement," Bledi said. "In the meanwhile, she disenfranchises voters, intimidates them, ties up government operations and wastes taxpayers' money."

According to the lawsuit, many of the absentee voters claimed they would be out of town, or wouldnt be able to vote due to work, on the Sept. 12 primary election. However, the private investigator hired by Lane raised questions about some of the ballots.

One absentee voter swore theyd be out of the county. But the voter admitted to the investigator confusion over new voting procedures was the real reason the absentee ballot was cast.

Another said they worked two jobs and wouldnt be able to get to the polls, but the lawsuit challenges whether thats a valid reason.

Acceptable reasons voters can cite for casting absentee ballots include having a permanent or temporary illness or disability, being out of the county and being in jail or awaiting trial for crime that isnt a felony.

Still others admitted that voting by absentee ballot was suggested by Colonie elected officials or candidates.

This isnt the first time questions have been raised about the handling of absentee ballots in Albany County.

The Albany Housing Authority and several individuals were accused of an unlawful effort to seize control of large numbers of absentee ballot applications in a March 2004 special primary. The case later was settled with the board of elections required to develop written policies and procedures about handling absentee applications and ballots and limiting the number of ballots brought to the board by third parties.

The housing authority also agreed to prohibit employees from collecting ballots and promised to never again disclose personal information of its residents for political purposes.
Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was the new 838 area code.

As phone companies and government regulators prepared the public for adding the 838 area code to the existing 17-county 518 area code that covers the Capital Region, one thing was made crystal clear: Starting Aug. 19 don't even think about making a call without using the area code first because you won't be allowed.

The 10-digit dialing era had arrived in the Capital Region, they said.

But as some people found out, that wasn't the case. And some people have been able to make local calls using 7-digit dialing without the area code first.

As it turns out, phone carriers don't just flip a switch to require 10-digit dialing on their systems. The software updates are sometimes rolled out over a period of time, sometimes by central office code, the three digit prefix that follows the area code.

The Times Union heard from some Spectrum customers this week that they were able to make calls without using the area code. The company quickly went to work trying to find out how that could be the case.

"Engineers are still looking at this, it may be that a few of the updates were queued in the system and did not hit these customers yet," Spectrum spokeswoman Lara Pritchard told the Times Union on Thursday when asked about what might be the cause.

As of Friday, those issues appeared to have been fixed.

"The updates have taken effect," Pritchard said.

Such issues are commonplace in such a complicated thing as adding a new area code, and the software and network updates that each carrier needs to put in place are typically spaced over a period of time.

Regulators say the bugs are typically worked out soon after the launch of mandatory 10-digit dialing, so there was concern that there were some people were still able to make 7-digit calls a month after mandatory 10-digit dialing began.

Still, there won't be any penalties levied since the carriers are addressing the issue when it's brought to their attention.

The new 838 area code officially launched Tuesday, and the first 838 numbers are now ready to be given out. The first request for 838 numbers was for the Hoosick Falls area using the 888 prefix.
PM: Nepals foreign policy dictated by geopolitical realities

Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has said that Nepals foreign policy is dictated by its geopolitical realities.
I must have missed the influx of die-hard Southern rebels who recently moved into the Adirondacks, but there is no mistaking their displays of the "Stars & Bars" from porch roofs and pick-up trucks.

What these newcomers don't seem to realize is how many Adirondack men suffered and died on Southern soil to save the Union. In our own family, Nelson Goff from Wells Hill in Lewis went to war, was captured by rebels and sent to Richmond's notorious Libby Prison. At the war's end, he staggered home a broken man, unable to hold a job or support his family. While he was away fighting to save America, his wife and young children were forced to spend the winter in the Essex County Poor House. Two of Goff's older sons, Jeremy and Chesley died fighting the rebels and they're still buried in Southern soil.
In 1905, Japan made Korea its protectorate. Under the Japanese, Koreans were deprived of land and food, forced into labor, forbidden to publish newspapers, required to adopt Japanese names and worship Shinto shrines, victimized by medical experiments, bullied in school, insulted, raped, tortured and killed.

Some Koreans rebelled. Thousands traveled north to Manchuria, becoming guerrilla fighters to combat the Japanese occupation. Many, including Kim Il Sung, were attracted to Communism's promise of equality. As North Korea's future first president (1949-94), Kim insisted on creating a self-reliant North Korea, independent of foreign influence.

Some Koreans fled, including Syngman Rhee, who unsuccessfully tried in 1905 to convince U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to preserve Korean independence. As South Korea's first president (1948-60), Rhee was anti-Communist, English-speaking and Christian, a religion whose message of equality appealed to Korean lower classes oppressed by the Japanese and traditional Korean hierarchy. Yet Rhee was violently authoritarian and corrupt. He incensed the U.S. by trying to sabotage Korean War armistice negotiations.

Some Koreans cooperated with the Japanese, including Park Chung Hee, who fought within Japan's Imperial Army against Korean guerrillas. As South Korea's third president (1963-79), Park secured economic aid from Japan, pushed for more U.S. troops, bribed U.S. legislators for military aid, imposed martial law and authorized nuclear weapons development before yielding to U.S. pressure.

When World War II Allies liberated Korea from Japan, Soviet troops in the North were rapaciously cruel to Koreans until Stalin, of all people, ordered Soviets to behave. Meanwhile in the South, because of noble U.S. intentions of treating Japan with respect, U.S. leaders infuriated Koreans by initially allowing hated Japanese officials to continue governing Korea.

Popular left-wing movements became increasingly shunned by the U.S. military government, which found it easier to work with conservative, wealthier, right-wing Koreans who spoke English and had typically cooperated with the Japanese.

Like a magnet, the peninsula grew polarized. In the North, those suspected of supporting Japanese, Americans, or Korean upper classes were executed or fled. In the South, those suspected of supporting left-wing movements were executed or fled.

With the Korean War's outbreak, atrocities continued on both sides. U.S. troops were revolted by South Korean atrocities against suspected Communists, yet U.S. forces carpet-bombed street after street of North Korea, dropping napalm and pulverizing most cities and residences.

After the war, North Korea was engulfed by the brutal, hypocritical leadership of Kim Il Sung, whose commands for non-selfish labor fed his selfish desire to be worshipped as the all-perfect Father, a compassionate Santa Claus with a merciless iron grip. Koreans who didn't believe in his magnificence learned to fake it. Even the USSR and China favored stationing U.S. troops in South Korea to deter Kim.

Like a sick, abusive parent, Kim sealed off North Koreans from the world community. Even Russians were considered too dangerously liberal. Using thousands of informers, Kim bred a climate of distrust and psychological isolation and divided North Koreans into a hierarchy of castes based upon loyalty.

Until the 1990s, South Korea also suffered under dictatorships. It continues to rank low in gender equality. Its impoverished economy lagged behind North Korea until the 1960s when Park sent South Korean troops into the Vietnam War, thus winning millions of dollars annually in U.S. aid and jumpstarting South Korea's "economic miracle."

Meanwhile, when the USSR dissolved in 1991, North Korea's foreign aid nose-dived and North Korea plunged into horrific famine.

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In 1994, Kim's son, Kim Jong Il, continued the pathological policies as North Koreans dropped dead from starvation. If you sold the frame of your required Kim Il Sung portrait to buy food, you'd be executed. If you crossed the border in search of food, you'd be executed. Yet all were required to worship the Kims as benevolent gods rather than ungodly frauds.

Since 2011, the grandson, Kim Jong Un, has continued state oppression, with an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 languishing in political prison camps and eating corn stalks. Violence and sexual abuse of women are routinely allowed. Meanwhile, across the border, more than 44,000 South Koreans, primarily women, underwent surgery in 2010 to Westernize their eyelids, an operation popular in the 1950s among Korean prostitutes eager to attract American GIs.

Kim Jong Un's current interest in nuclear weapons has unclear purposes: To wage aggressive war? To ward off U.S. aggression? To raise his self-image? Or to use as a bargaining chip for aid? For an end to U.S.-South Korean military exercises or South Korea's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system?

Korea's history is complicated, with good and bad not neatly dividing along geographical or ideological lines. What is clear is that violence, whether of oppression or war, has neither helped good defeat evil nor helped Koreans better their lives. Like so many of us, perhaps what Koreans need more than military capacity is social capacity: the will to refrain from following cruel orders, the spirit to engage openheartedly in cooperative dialogue, and the heart to understand that none deserve mistreatment.

Kristin Christman is author of Taxonomy of Peace. https://sites.googl-e.com/site/paradigmf-orpeace
Leaders from around the world have descended on New York for United Nations meetings, fancy parties, ringing speeches about helping the poor  and a big dose of hypocrisy.

And  finally!  this is one area where President Donald Trump has shown global leadership.

If there were an award for United Nations chutzpah, the competition would be tough, but the medal might go to Trump for warning that if necessary, "we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." There were gasps in the hall: A forum for peace was used to threaten to annihilate a nation of 25 million people.

There also was Trump's praise for American humanitarian aid to Yemen. Patting oneself on the back is often oafish, but in this case it was also offensive. Yemen needs aid because the U.S. is helping Saudi Arabia starve and bomb Yemeni civilians, creating what the U.N. says is the world's largest humanitarian crisis. In other words, we are helping to create the very disaster that we're boasting about alleviating.

It was also sad to see Trump repeatedly plug "sovereignty," which tends to be the favored word of governments like Russia (even as it invades Ukraine and interferes in the U.S. election) and China (as it supports corrupt autocrats from Zimbabwe to Myanmar).

Speaking of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi skipped the U.N. meeting, after being feted last year, because it's awkward to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner who defends a brutal campaign of murder, rape and pillage. Many Muslim leaders in attendance, like Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did highlight the plight of the Rohingya suffering an ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. If only they were as interested in their own political prisoners!

Meanwhile, world leaders usually ignore places that don't fit their narratives. Everybody pretty much shrugged at South Sudan and Burundi, both teetering on the edge of genocide; at Congo, where we're headed for civil strife as the president attempts to cling to power; and at the "four famines": in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan. To Trump's credit, he expressed concern Wednesday about South Sudan and Congo and said he would dispatch U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to the region to see what can be done; let's hope his administration provides desperately needed leadership.

In fairness, there are broader reasons for hope, including astonishing progress against global poverty  more than 100 million children's lives saved since 1990. Every day, another 300,000 people worldwide get their first access to electricity, and 285,000 to clean water. Global poverty is a huge opportunity, for we now have a much better understanding of how to defeat it: resolve conflicts, invest in girls' education, empower women, fight malnutrition, support family planning, and so on.

For the first time in human history, less than 10 percent of the world's population is living in extreme poverty, and we probably could virtually eliminate it over the next 15 years if it were a top global priority. Trump rightly hailed PEPFAR, the AIDS program President George W. Bush devised, but he also has proposed sharp cuts in its funding).

The progress on stopping human trafficking is also inspiring. I moderated a U.N. session on the topic, and it was heartening to see an overflow crowd engaging in a historically obscure subject, even as a new report calculated that there are 40 million people who may be called modern slaves. Prime Minister Theresa May convened perhaps the largest meeting of foreign ministers ever on human trafficking.

We now have the tools to achieve enormous progress against these common enemies of humanity  poverty, disease, slavery  but it's not clear we have the will. What's striking about this moment is that we have perhaps the worst refugee crisis in 70 years, overlapping with the worst food crisis in 70 years, overlapping with risks of genocide in several countries  and anemic global leadership.

"There is a vacuum of leadership  moral and political  when it comes to the world's trouble spots, from Syria to Yemen to Myanmar and beyond," notes David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee. Margot Wallstrom, Sweden's foreign minister, agrees: "I think there's a leadership vacuum."

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There are exceptions: Wallstrom, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and more.

But many countries are divided at home, distracted by political combat and looking increasingly inward, and in any case, the U.S. remains the indispensable superpower, and it is AWOL. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has achieved a degree of irrelevance that no one thought possible, and Trump is slashing the number of refugees accepted, cutting funds for the U.N. Population Fund and proposing huge cuts for diplomacy, peacekeeping and foreign aid (fortunately, Congress is resisting).

The number that I always find most daunting is this: About one child in four on this planet is physically stunted from malnutrition. And while it is the physical stunting that we can measure, a side effect is a stunting of brain development, holding these children back, holding nations back, holding humanity back.

So it's maddening to see world leaders posturing in the spotlight and patting themselves on the back while doing so little to tackle humanitarian crises that they themselves have helped create.

Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist.
[September 22, 2017] Robbins Geller and Hagens Berman File Comprehensive Multi-State Class Action Lawsuit Against Equifax for Massive Data Breach

Plaintiffs from 43 states filed a class-action lawsuit against Equifax today, following the credit bureau's data breach affecting an estimated 143 million consumers. Robbins Geller and Hagens Berman, two of the nation's most successful firms specializing in nationwide class-action cases on behalf of consumers and investors, are fighting for reimbursement and genuine protection from identity theft for consumers with a legal team including experts in data breach class actions and former federal prosecutors, including a former federal cyber-prosecutor. Hagens Berman attorneys developed a comprehensive Equifax data breach FAQ for those affected by the hack, where they answer key questions about protecting your identity, the lawsuit, and what consumers can expect from a class-action lawsuit against Equifax. The firms' comprehensive lawsuit seeks to make affected consumers whole and seeks remedies for Equifax's negligence and violations of 62 state consumer protection and data breach laws. Find out your rights. The complaint, filed Sept. 22, 2017, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, states that Equifax failed to follow simple rules that any credit reporting agency must follow, including protecting the information it collects by maintaining computer and data security, and ensuring that any system vulnerabilities are patched quickly, especially when such patches are free and readily available. "The massive data breach could have been prevented and should have been detected and disclosed earlier," the suit states. Paul Geller, founding partner and the head of Robbins Geller's Consumer Fraud and Multi-District Litigation Practice Group who has led many class actions involving data breaches and privacy laws, said, "The scope and breath of this security breach is staggering. Equifax collects and stores private data on millions of Americans every day, and its failure to protect that data from hackers shocks the conscience." Steve Berman, Hagens Berman's managing partner stated: "It's ironic that one of the largest sellers of identity theft protection, itself disregarded the basic and industry tandard practice of installing security patches. This data breach will have devastating and long-lasting repercussions for nearly half the adult population of the United States."



Stuart Davidson, the partner at Robbins Geller leading its data breach practice added: "Equifax recently boasted more than $3.1 billion in revenue and nearly $1 billion in profits in its 2016 annual report. It clearly had the resources to make sure that all available security patches were promptly installed, and had it done so, it would have prevented this massive breach of the most sensitive data belonging to 143 million consumers." "These hackers were able to walk away with Social Security numbers, addresses, birthdates, driver's license numbers, and in some cases credit card numbers, thanks to Equifax's lax processes for data safety and security," said Thomas Loeser, a former federal cyber-prosecutor and partner at Hagens Berman. "This breach has provided criminals with the crown jewels of identity theft."

The suit details that for two months before the data breach started, Equifax had notice of the software vulnerability that hackers exploited. Despite press reports of widespread use of this vulnerability, Equifax failed to install an available patch or take its vulnerable systems offline. Ars Technica reported on Mar. 9, 2017 and Mar. 14, 2017 that sites using the software framework that led to the Equifax breach - "Apache Struts CVE-2017-5638" - were under heavy attack by hackers. The framework's vulnerability had been publicly disclosed and widely known since Mar. 2017, according to the lawsuit, and the Apache Software Foundation gave public notice on Mar. 7, 2017, after making a security patch freely available on Mar. 6, 2017. Loeser, who prosecuted hackers for data breach crimes when he worked for the Department of Justice, explained: "While consumers can readily change credit card account numbers and close vulnerable bank accounts, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers are usually permanent and difficult and costly to change. This means that criminals and identity thieves can wait months, years, even decades, before using the stolen information to open loans, obtain credit cards, and file false federal tax returns in unsuspecting victims' names." Teaming up to litigate what is by large measure the largest data breach ever stemmed from the two firms' past working relationship and mutual respect. According to Geller, "our firms each have the human and financial resources to take on the largest and most powerful corporations, and we've each achieved some of the most significant class action recoveries in history. As a pairing, we're a formidable team that is laser focused on achieving real justice for the public." Find out more about the class-action lawsuit against Equifax. About Robbins Geller Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is widely recognized as a leading law firm advising and representing clients in complex litigation, including litigation involving consumer fraud, securities fraud, antitrust claims, ERISA claims, insurance fraud and intellectual property, as well as whistleblower protection and qui tam suits. With 200 lawyers in 10 offices, Robbins Geller has obtained many of the largest class action recoveries in history. Robbins Geller attorneys have recovered tens of billions of dollars on behalf of the Firm's clients. Robbins Geller not only secures recoveries for defrauded consumers and investors, it also implements significant corporate governance reforms, helping to improve the financial markets worldwide. Please visit rgrdlaw.com for more information. About Hagens Berman Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights class-action law firm with 11 offices across the country. The firm has been named to the National Law Journal's Plaintiffs' Hot List eight times. More about the law firm and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170922005714/en/

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[September 22, 2017] The cultural sector congratulates Minister Fortin's position on fiscal and regulatory fairness

MONTREAL, Sept. 22, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - The newly formed coalition that last week issued a Declaration on the sustainability of cultural expression in the digital era welcomes the statement by the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mr. Luc Fortin, that Quebec could act on its own accord if Ottawa does not intervene to ensure financial and regulatory equity for Canadian and non-Canadian Internet broadcasters. The organizations that formed the coalition were very pleased that the Minister shares their concerns about the critical importance of fiscal and regulatory fairness between participants in the cultural sector. The coalition shares the Minister's position that nations must apply a consistent regulatory framework for all parties, including digital multinational corporations. The threat posed by very large internet corporations to the cultural ecosystem in Quebec and Canada underscores the importance of a bold and forward-thinking approach such as that taken by Quebec's Minister. This is the type of approach that should be central to the policy that Minster Joly is expected to announce in the next several days. We believe that, like Mr. Fortin, Ms. Joly should draw inspiration from the mechanisms being put in place by nations around the world to address the threat posed by very large digital multinationals. The coalition's Declaration does not deal solely with fiscal matters. It emphasizes the importance of ensuring sufficient support for creation and production, as well as the continuation of regulatory measures to showcase Canadian content on all platforms. Finally, adequate financing of the ecosystem, including through a revision of the Copyright Act, s essential to safeguard the hundreds of thousands of jobs created by Canada's cultural and media enterprises and organizations.



Standingforculture.info The declaration's first signatories included nearly forty organizations representing hundreds of thousands of people. Within a week more than 3,000 people and organizations had joined on, in Quebec as well as in Canada. www.standingforculture.info provides a copy of the Declaration which can be signed by anyone or any organization wishing to lend their support to this important initiative.

Signatories : Alliance des producteurs francophones du Canada (APFC)

(APFC) Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA)

Alliance quebecoise des techniciens de l'image et du son (AQTIS)

ARTISTI

Association des professionnels de l'edition musicale (APEM)

Association des proprietaires de cinemas du Quebec (APCQ)

Association des realisateurs et realisatrices du Quebec (ARRQ)

Association nationale des editeurs de livres (ANEL)

Association quebecoise de la production mediatique (AQPM)

Association quebecoise de l'industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ)

Association quebecoise des cinemas d'art et d'essai (AQCAE)

Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA)

Conseil quebecois des arts mediatiques (CQAM)

Destiny Tchehouali, directeur de l'Observatoire des reseaux et interconnexions de la societe numerique (ORISON)  UQAM

DOC Canada , incluant sa division du Quebec

, incluant sa division du Quebec Federation culturelle canadienne-francaise (FCCF)

Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ)

Front des realisateurs independants du Canada (FRIC)

(FRIC) Forum for Research and Policy in Communications (FRPC)

Guilde canadienne des realisateurs (GCR)

Guilde des musiciens et musiciennes du Quebec (GMMQ)

Les Amis de la radiodiffusion canadienne

radiodiffusion canadienne L'Observatoire du documentaire

Michele Rioux, directrice du Centre d'etudes sur l'integration et la mondialisation (CEIM)

On Screen Manitoba

Performers' Rights Society (PRS)

Quebec Cinema

Quebec English-language Production Council (QEPC)

Regroupement des artisans de la musique (RAM)

SOCAN

Societe de gestion collective des droits des producteurs de phonogrammes et de videogrammes du Quebec (SOPROQ)

Societe des auteurs de radio, television et cinema (SARTEC)

Societe du droit de reproduction des auteurs compositeurs et editeurs au Canada (SODRAC)

(SODRAC) Societe Internet du Quebec

Societe professionnelle des auteurs et compositeurs du Quebec (SPACQ)

Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique (SCFP) et son Conseil provincial du secteur des communications (CPSC)

Syndicat des employees et employes professionnels-les et de bureau (SEPB)

Table de concertation de l'industrie du cinema et de la television de la Capitale-Nationale

Unifor-Quebec

Union des artistes (UDA) SOURCE Alliance quebecoise des techniciens de l'image et du son (AQTIS)

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Students want amendment to Edu Act revoked

Student unions have submitted a memorandum to acting Prime Minister Bijaya Kumar Gachhadar, demanding the government to withdraw the ninth amendment to the Education Act-1972.
[September 23, 2017] Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK)... "Save Your Energy for Your Country"

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, September 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the 87th anniversary of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This day provides an opportunity to think about ways to give back to the nation, and there are many ways to give back to one's country. One of these ways is to preserve the resources that the nation has, and at the forefront of these resources, is energy. It is the vein that Saudi Arabia feeds on to continue its development and prosperity. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/ For the past three years, the demand for energy increased at a yearly rate of 8%, and is expected to increase up to 58% in the next 25 years. These figures will have an immense impact on oil, especially that 90% of the Kingdom's revenue is generated from oil exports. While 27% percent of the produced oil is spent on generating energy. Dr. Mohanad Al Shaikh the CEO of Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) said, "Today energy is a basic human need, and is essential to further prosperity, development, and sustainability. Therefore, it is extremely important to preserve this resource. Yet energy efficiency and preservation do not come easily. They require great efforts and awareness, as well as the transfer and adoption of the latest global technologies, adapting them to meet the needs of all economic and development sectors; especially the energy-efficient technologies. Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) has always been at the forefront of energy conservation, and in line with the government's initiatives towards increased energy efficiency early on. In ddition to the importance of raising awareness of smart energy use, as it will provide the opportunity of supporting the national economy by diversifying revenues." Al Shaikh,also highlighted the role that the company plays in energy efficiency by providing high energy efficiency HVAC units. Pointing out the affinity of the company's strategy with the Saudi Vision 2030, which was initiated by the government to limit random energy consumption. In addition, He mentioned that the company will continue its efforts to support the local manufacturing industry to achieve the desired sustainability; through providing products with the highest ratings of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization. In light of the Saudi National Day, Al Shaikh also urged other industries to conserve energy and rely on all means to do so.



"It is with great pride that we reminisce in the great achievements in many fields under the leadership of our government, and celebrating this national day revives the spirit of prosperity in us." Al Shaikh, concluded. About Al Salem Johnson Controls:



Al Salem Johnson Controls, founded Controls in 1991, was the result of a strategic partnership between the Group of Companies Al-Salem and Johnson Controls Global, which specializes in providing integrated solutions in ventilation, cooling and air conditioning HVAC systems, fire safety, security installations and control, it has proven its ability to raise the efficiency of energy consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.



Johnson Controls Global is well known for its leadership in technical and industrial fields globally, with a strong presence in 170 countries. The vision and common goals between the Johnson global and the Al-Salem group was a stepping stone in bringing a diverse spectrum of services and high-quality products and solutions to the Kingdom, in order to achieve optimal energy efficiency and operations. Al Salem Johnson Controls has some noteworthy achievements across various Saudi projects, including the King Abdullah Science and Technology University, expansion of the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah, expansion of King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah, in addition to major universities such as University of Imam Mohammed, University of Princess Noura in Riyadh, King Abdullah Financial District, Aramco, Ministry of Education, and Pilgrims House in Saudi Arabia. With a staff of over 2000 employees, Salem Johnson Controls is strategically located across the Kingdom to serve its diverse clientele and industry and has a unique after-sales service in terms of quality and efficiency. For more information on Al Salem Johnson Controls (YORK) and its latest campaigns, please visit: https://www.facebook.com/yorkksa https://twitter.com/yorkksa https://www.instagram.com/yorkksa/ http://york.com.sa/ For more information, please contact:

Omar Batterjee

Public Relations Account Executive

Memac Ogilvy PR

Mob: +966-555-617-104

E-mail: [email protected]

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/560135/Al_Salem_Johnson_Controls.jpg )

Video:

https://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8184051-save-energy-saudi-national-day/



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[September 23, 2017] Blockchain Fintech Firm, MicroMoney Starts a Private Presale for Early Birds

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroMoney, a global fintech blockchain company and lending services provider, announces a private presale for its token-generating event for the early birds among funds and big contributors. This presale started on September 15th, 2017. MicroMoney is a fast-growing company founded in 2015 with the offices in five Asian countries  Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. The company plans to expand its presence to 5 more countries by 2018. MicroMoney was established as a company focused on micro-financing in the money lending industry, providing customers with online loans without any collateral requirements using machine learning algorithms. There are still more than 2 billion of the unbanked in the world, especially in the emerging market. These people are excluded from local and global economies as they are still using cash and don't have access to basic financial services. Taking out a loanis a great challenge for them as well unless they have a credit history.



With a track record of over two years in providing stable, mature businesses on emerging markets, MicroMoney will solve the problem of the unbanked and unbankable by using blockchain technology and artificial neural network to provide financial inclusion into the global crypto economy. The private presale campaign was designed only for funds and significant token-buyers with the target to reach $2,000,000 during this stage and $30,000,000 by the end of the whole token-generating event.

Learn more about MicroMoney at  https://micromoney.io Media Contact

Contact Name: Vladimir

Contact Email:[email protected]

Location: Midview City, Singapore MicroMoney is the source of this content. Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only. The information does not constitute investment advice or an offer to invest. Related Links Bitcoinprbuzz MicroMoney View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blockchain-fintech-firm-micromoney-starts-a-private-presale-for-early-birds-300524698.html SOURCE MicroMoney

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Olathe Northwest High School is getting backlash because profanities were shouted at a group of students. One mother says her daughter felt unsafe as things were thrown at her and her friends and people chanted "Make Olathe Northwest straight again" during the school's homecoming parade.
Kansas City Ruckus Review

This Week According To Newsies

The Week According To 12th & Oak

Compilation of Kansas City conversation featuring pundits, politicos and newsies discussing social media topics from earlier this week.Take a look:"Mike Shanin interviews Kim Kimbrough, Executive Director of the Westport Business League, about safety concerns in the Westport district and efforts to privatize streets. Theresa Garza, Pat McInerney, Crosby Kemper III and Ron Freeman discuss whether Jackson County should renovate or replace the jail, the metro visit from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos & the latest in the push to build a new KCI.""Nick Haines, Steve Vockrodt, Scott Parks, Aaron Randle and Dave Helling discuss the politics surrounding federal money for hurricane relief, the lack of a KC social scene for young black professionals, the local impact of the recent St. Louis riots, the latest twists and turns in the KCI debate, concerns raised after a man found dead in KCI parking and the debate over a new Tyson Chicken plant.""The Weekly Report provides news and insight about Kansas City, Mo. programs and services provided by City departments . . . Along with all the propaganda from the Mayor's office."Developing . . .
One week after a judge acquitted former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley of murder in the 2011 death of Anthony Lamar Smith, protesters continued their push for change, taking their message to mostly white St. Charles. After a brief stop at the St. Louis Outlet Mall, protesters headed for the Oktoberfest festival in St.
Kansas City Urban Core Burnout

Fire destroys home near Askew and Smart By Paul Thompson Northeast News An early morning fire near the intersection of Askew and Smart on Friday, September 22 destroyed a Historic Northeast home, though KCFD firefighters kept the blaze from spreading throughout the neighborhood. Zachary Laman lives across the street from the home on Smart Avenue, and was awakened by the sound of the sirens.

Kansas City Pizza Party Panned

Sixth man charged in baseball bat attack of Kansas City pizza delivery driver KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Jackson County prosecutor charged a sixth suspect, a 19-year-old KC man, in the recent assault of a pizza delivery man in south Kansas City. Like the five other suspects, Ketrail Collins was charged Friday with robbery in the 1st degree and armed criminal action.

Dead-Tree Discipline Dictates

St. Teresa's students who posed with swastika made of beer pong cups need an education Where to begin with the St. Teresa's Academy students only lightly punished by the school after posing for party pics with the swastika they'd fashioned with beer pong cups? In the day, younger sisters, some of us would have been expelled from our Catholic schools for the cups alone.

Smart City Cash???

Eyeing Midwest startups, Firebrand Ventures adds to advisory board A Kansas City-based venture fund announced the addition of another distinguished advisory board member. Joining the team alongside Techstars CEO David Cohen, Kansas Citian Keith Harrington, who's the managing director for Novel Growth Partners , and Brian McClendon, former Uber vice president of maps, Tom Ball is expected to bring his Austin-based investor experience to Firebrand Ventures.

Celebrating More Kansas City Drama

KCAT's A Lie of the Mind is a fitting, wounding elegy for Sam Shepard "You don't need to be cruel," a mother admonishes early in A Lie of the Mind, the 1985 Sam Shepard play now onstage at the Kansas City Actors Theatre. "This whole thing is cruel," her son fires back. As theses go, that's as good as any.

Hottiehelps us complete tonight's glimpse at all the top local MSM stories for tonight. Take a peek:And this is thefor right now . . .
OQIC, a premier insurer in Oman, is offering 25 million offer shares at an offer price of 160 baisa per offer share, (comprising a nominal value of Bzs 100 per offer share, premium of Bzs 58 per offer share and offer expenses of Bzs 2 per offer share).



Following the IPO, the company expects to generate a five-year average dividend yield of 10 per cent. This compares favourably with the average dividend yield of eight per cent for the insurance companies currently listed on the Muscat Securities Market.



OQIC expects to pay its first dividend following the IPO in April 2018. The IPO is priced at a discount of about 14 per cent (P/B) to national peers.



OQIC, a premier insurer in Oman, recently hosted an investor roadshow in Muscat that attracted attendees from a broad range of investor groups, including institutional investors, high-net worth individuals, established family businesses, and investment analysts from brokerage houses.



The senior management team of OQIC and its parent QIC Group interacted with the attendees and received an overwhelming response. Plans are in place for holding a similar roadshow event in Salalah.



Commenting on the event, Ali Al Fadala, the senior deputy group president and chief executive of QIC Group, said: "OQIC has been playing a leading role in the insurance sector in Oman and brings with it strong credentials and the backing of its parent, QIC, which is the largest insurance group in the region."



"A number of reasons make this a highly compelling investment opportunity  such as the experienced founders having an insurance industry track record of over 50 years. In addition to that QICs exemplary performance, well-defined growth strategy, prudent investment management and operational excellence make the offering attractive,' noted Al Fadala.



"OQIC with its highly diversified set of distribution channels in Oman, including digital, branches and bancassurance, along with its focus on select set of profitable segments differentiates the Company from the other participants in the Omani insurance industry," he added.



OQIC chief executive Navin Kumar said: "We are extremely pleased with the strong interest and enthusiasm around the IPO, which is a reflection of the fundamental strength of our company and its compelling investment case."



Application forms for the IPO are available at all branches of Bank Dhofar, National Bank of Oman and Oman Arab Bank. The IPO subscription period will close on October 5.-TradeArabia News Service
The Tragedy at Tundikhel

There are those that describe Tundikhel as Kathmandus lungs. In a city that is swallowing itself whole, Tundikhel is one of the last surviving large public spaces in its inner core.
Saudi government has financed a total of 609 projects worth more than SR51 billion ($13.6 billion) in 82 countries across the globe through the Saudi Fund for Development (SDF), said a report.



The kingdom has been one of the main countries that provide humanitarian and developmental assistance to developing countries, recognising the need of these countries and the importance of cooperation and solidarity among members of the international community, according to the Saudi Press Agency.



The SDF which began its activities in 1975, is the main channel through which Saudi Arabia provides its development assistance, stated the report.



This fund continues to provide assistance to developing countries, since its unification by late King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud until the present prosperous era of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.



Since the inception of the Fund until the end of 2016, it had contributed to financing 582 projects and 27 development programmes in 82 developing countries distributed between Africa, Asia and other regions with a total amount up to more than SR51 billion, said the report.

Of this, SR27 billion was allocated to finance 359 development projects programmes in 45 African countries, while SR23 billion was set aside to complete 232 projects in 29 countries across Asia, and 18 projects worth more than SR1 billion in other regions of the world, it added.
Tribune News Service

Mohali, September 22

On the sidelines of the ISB leadership summit, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said domestic airline carriers were looking to massively expanding international operations. Indigo, SpiceJet, Vistara and others are interested in launching low-cost long haul flights to international destinations, he said, adding that there had to be sufficient demand for the flights.

A round trip to London that costs Rs 40,000-50,000 can come down to about Rs 25,000 in a low-cost model at smaller airports that have slots available, he added. Sinha said there was an open skies policy as far as the flights to international destinations were concerned. On the poor condition of Airport Road in Mohali which had let to a number of road mishaps recently, Sinha said he would request the authority concerned to repair it immediately. On the name controversy of the international airport, Sinha said it was up to the Punjab and Haryana Governments to amicably solve the matter. The airport is managed by a joint venture entity, Chandigarh International Airport Limited, in which the Airports Authority of India has the majority stake of 51 per cent, and Punjab and Haryana are equal partners with 24.5 per cent each.
Tribune News Service

Mohali, September 23

In a gory incident, senior journalist KJ Singh (65) and his bed-ridden mother Gurcharan Kaur (92) were found brutally murdered at their residence in Phase 3B2 this afternoon.

The murderers, who were at least two in number as indicated by the circumstantial evidence, slit the throat of KJ Singh and also stabbed him in the stomach, while his mother was strangled.

Singh was lying in a pool of blood in his bedroom, while his mother was found dead in her room. From the main entrance door to Singhs bedroom, a trail of blood could be seen on the floor of the house located along a green belt.

The mother-son duo was living in the house, while Singhs six siblings, five sisters and an elder brother, reside in Mohali and Chandigarh.

What surprises one is the fact that the miscreants took away a 32-inch LCD screen, Singhs mobile phone, his wallet and 18-year-old Ford Ikon car, but did not touch his gold chain and a purse containing around Rs 25,000 lying near the bed of his mother.

The lock of a steel box was found broken, but the police and Singhs relatives have no idea as to what was missing from it. Even cupboards and other valuables were found intact, though signs of a scuffle and struggle were evident in the drawing room, the police said.

Apparently, the miscreants wanted to project the crime as a robbery. Their motive was definitely something else, said Mohali Superintendent of Police (Detective) HS Atwal, adding that the locks of one-two steel boxes were also found broken. After committing the crime, the criminals bolted the door from outside and shut the main gate from inside before leaving the house.

The incident came to light at 1 pm when Singhs sister Yashpal Kaur, who lives in Sector 71, and his nephew went to deliver lunch there.

Singhs nephew Preet Inder Singh said, When we didnt see the car, my cousin Ajay Pal Singh thought he (KJ Singh) might have taken our grandmother to some clinic/hospital. On seeing blood stains in the courtyard, my cousin and aunt went inside the house and were shocked to see the chilling scene. They then told us about the double murder.

Preet Inder Singh had gone to attend a parent-teacher meet at his daughters school in Chandigarh around 1 pm.

DSP (City 1) Alam Vijay Singh said the murderers attacked Singh as soon as he opened the door.

The blood stains on the door handle on both sides of the main entrance indicated that the attackers first slit his neck with a sharp weapon and then stabbed him, dragging him to his bedroom, said DSP Alam Vijay Singh.

The circumstantial evidence showed that some acquaintance could be behind the crime as Singh never let unknown people enter the house, said the police, adding that there were no signs of a forced entry.

Singh, who had opened the door (probably between 9 pm and 11 pm), must have seen them through the lattice door. Chances of him knowing the criminals cant be ruled out, said the police. Thinking his mother could reveal their identity, the accused murdered her too.

With the lower parts of the bodies turning blue and the blood on the floor drying, the police believe that the accused might have committed the crime before midnight yesterday when it was raining.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Director Bureau Investigation, Prabodh Kumar, along with IG (Crime) Shashi Prabha Dwivedi, visited the spot in the evening.

Its a blind double murder. We have found some clues, which are being studied systematically, said the ADGP.

The bodies were sent to the Civil Hospital in Phase VI, where the autopsy will be conducted tomorrow. police have registered a case of murder against unidentified persons at the Mataur police station.

About KJ Singh

Sixty-five-year-old KJ Singh, who was born at Rohtak in 1952, was a senior journalist. He started his career as a sub-editor with The Indian Express in 1978, where he became the Chief News Editor on the day of the launch of the papers local pullout, Chandigarh Newsline. Later, KJ Singh joined The Times of India in 2000 and then The Tribune Group of Newspapers in 2006 as the Chief News Editor. He had retired in 2009. Singh, who was fond of gadgets, was doing freelancing for some Canadian magazine.

Killings condemned

The Chandigarh Press Club and the Chandigarh Punjab Union of Journalists (CPUJ) condemned the murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother. KJ Singh is the third journalist to be killed in India within days of the murder of Gauri Lankesh, a Kannada journalist, and Shantanu Bhowmik, who was killed in Tripura earlier this week. The incident is shocking, stated the journalist bodies.

An act so brutal

Spoke to bro at 7.30 pm

Till 7.30 pm on Friday, everything was fine, claimed the kin of the victims. My uncle (KJs elder brother VP Singh) had a routine talk with him (KJ) at around 7.30 pm, said Preet Inder Singh, who lives in TDI City.

Domestic help returned

Domestic help Rekha said she went to Singhs place at 9 am on Saturday and rang the doorbell after seeing the main gate closed. As nobody responded, I went back, thinking sahib is not home, she said.

Lived with mom in house

KJ Singh, who was a bachelor, lived with his mother Gurcharan Kaur in the 1-kanal corner house. Due to old age, Gurcharan Kaur did not keep well. Singhs six siblings, five sisters and an elder brother, reside in Mohali and Chandigarh. They would bring lunch for the mother-son duo. Nobody stays in the house next to Singhs residence.

Shashi Prabha to head SIT

Acting on Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singhs directive, the Punjab Police have set up a special investigation team (SIT) under the Inspector General (Crime), Shashi Prabha Dwivedi, to probe the double murder case.

A package from Amazon

The police are looking for a courier boy who brought a package ordered from Amazon. The packet, having blood stains, was seen lying at the spot. The police said it contained books.

CCTV grabs being scanned

The police have procured a CCTV footage from a neighbours house to get leads. The footage is being scrutinised. We have procured the call detail records and are analysing those, said Dwivedi.

Panic in the area

The double murder caused panic among residents in the area. A number of anxious neighbours visited the house of the victims.

Former MP expresses condolences

Pawan Kumar Bansal, former Union Minister, said he was saddened by the death of KJ Singh and his 92-year-old mother. Expressing his condolences, Bansal asked the state government and the police to bring the culprits to book.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 23

The Panjab University Syndicate today reduced the pass marks for the PhD entrance test from 50 to 40 per cent for SC/ST students. The decision will be applicable to the test held earlier this year, the result of which is already out.

Punjab Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had failed to get pass marks in the PhD entrance exam for political science.

A section of Syndicate members said the move was aimed at favouring Channi, but Vice Chancellor Prof Arun Kumar Grover denied the charge.

Meanwhile, Chandigarh BJP president and PU senator Sanjay Tandon today met Vice President and PU Chancellor M Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi and told him that the university authorities were accommodating Channi so that he could clear the exam.

Grover said, The marks havent been reduced for Channi. We have done it as there are very few SC students doing PhD on the campus. Channi could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.
Mohali, September 23

Senior journalist KJ Singh (65) and his mother Gurcharan Kaur (92) were found brutally murdered at their residence here this afternoon.

As directed by Punjab CM Capt Amarinder Singh, the police have set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Inspector General (Crime) to probe the double murder.

The killers  at least two in number, as circumstantial evidence suggests  stabbed KJ Singh in the stomach and slit his throat. His mother was strangled to death. The bodies were found in the victims bedrooms.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The killers took away an LCD TV, the journalists cellphone and his car. Strangely, the gold chain that he was wearing and a wallet with Rs 25,000 in cash were untouched. The assailants tried to make it look like robbery. But their motive was clearly something else, said Mohali Superintendent of Police (Detective) HS Atwal.

The crime was discovered when KJ Singhs sister Yashpal Kaur and her son Ajay Pal went to deliver lunch around 1 pm today.

KJ Singh had worked with the Indian Express and also The Times of India. His last job was with The Tribune as Chief News Editor. TNS
Pavneet Singh Chadha

Tribune News Service

Mohali, September 23

General (retd) VP Malik, who was the Army chief during Kargil war, said by conducting surgical strikes along the LoC, India had sent a message to Pakistan in terms of capability and range of retaliatory options to deter cross-border terrorism.

General Malik was speaking to students on the second day of the IBS leadership summit here on Saturday. He added that now there was a political will and ascent to conduct such strikes in retaliation to continued terrorist attacks by Pakistan backed terror outfits.

Speaking on the Kashmir issue, General Malik said he remained optimistic that soft power and development could contribute towards peace in future.

We need to win the hearts and minds of people and involve local community, he said, adding that the military was contributing through sadbhavana initiatives.

But first, we have to control the violence. It is important to create conditions where development could thrive and create jobs for the youth. The investment will not take place in a place of turmoil and violence. he said. He said politicians had to play a more pro-active role. The politicians have not succeeded in what they should be doing, he said, adding that people must isolate some ideologues who had assumed prominence in Kashmir.

Responding to a question on whether the Army had lost some credibility post the human shield incident, the General said: The credibility and goodwill will return with confidence building measures.

General Malik said, India must be wary of the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a series of infrastructure projects that China is constructing in Pakistan. Our territorial sovereignty must not be compromised. While addressing the students at the summit, General Malik underlined challenges for an uncertain future and said that to tackle the challenges, the fundamentals of leadership needed to be strong.

He said, With issues like climate change, water shortage, Trumpism, Brexit, uncertain geopolitical situation, North Koreas sabre rattling, we need a leadership that imbibes values like honesty, integrity, self-discipline and team spirit.

He regaled the young crowd in attendance with success stories of Operation Cactus in Maldives, and Operation Vijay in Kargil, and reading out excerpts from heart wrenching letters written by soldiers to their families during the war.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 23

The police yesterday recovered the mobile phone of Ambassador of Ukraine Igor Polikha which has been allegedly snatched near Red Fort on Wednesday morning, said a police official.

The snatcher has been identified as Rajender Kumar (26), a resident of Nand Nagri.

Polikha around 9.15 am was clicking some photographs using his mobile phone when an unidentified man appeared, snatched his phone and fled the spot.

The ambassador was alone at the time of the incident, with his driver waiting for him a kilometre away.

Polikha approached the police after which the case was registered and teams were formed to nab the alleged snatcher.

Several teams were formed and lastly we have solved the case and the phone has been recovered last night.

The accused was arrested yesterday, said the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North Delhi), Jatin Narwal.
New Delhi, September 23

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case in connection with the murder of a seven-year-old student in Ryan International School, Gurugram, on the request of the Haryana Government and further notification from the Government of India.

A notification regarding the murder of Pradyuman Thakur was received by the CBI on Friday.

The CBI took over the investigation of the case which was earlier registered on September 8 at Police Station Bhondsi, Gurugram, under Section 302 of the IPC, 25 of Arms Act, 12 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and 75 of Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday refused to stay the arrests of Ryan International School trustees with regard to the case.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Justice Inderjit Singh passed the order while hearing the interim bail plea of the Ryan International School trustees.

The trustees of Ryan International Schools--Augustine Francis Pinto, his wife Grace and their son Ryan had on Saturday moved the High Court, seeking anticipatory bail in the matter.

The High Court also issued a notice to the Haryana Government and sought a reply in the matter.

The next hearing in the case will take place on Monday.

The High Court said its a serious issue and it could not take a decision without hearing all the sides.

The body of Pradyuman was found, with his throat slit, in the Ryan International School, Gurugram, on September 8. ANI
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, September 23

The Rohtak PGIMS Director, Dr Rakesh Kumar Gupta, has resigned from the post. The resignation was tendered in the late hours on Friday.

In his resignation sent to the Department of Medical Education and Research, Haryana, Dr Gupta has stated that he could not focus on research and academics due to administrative responsibilities.

Nevertheless, his resignation is being seen as a fallout of the missing newborn case, which has rocked the PGIMS administration over the past few days.

On the other hand, the parents and other family members of the missing newborn and their supporters continued to stage a protest demonstration on the PGIMS premises.

The PGIMS administration had earlier chargesheeted the Deputy Medical Superintendent (DMS)-cum-Labour Room Nodal Officer and the Head of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the institute in connection with the case.

The action had been taken on the basis of the report submitted by a four-member enquiry committee constituted to probe the matter.

The authorities concerned have also terminated the services of as many as seven staff members, including security guard and housekeeping staff, and put a staff nurse under suspension for the lapse.

The local police authorities have formed a special investigating team to investigate the case and announced a cash reward of Rs 50,000 for specific information about the newborn child who went missing from the PGIMS.

Ranju, wife of Sunny of Dairy Mohalla locality here, gave birth to a male child at the PGIMS on September 10. However, the newborn child went missing from the labour room within a few minutes of delivery.

The police have registered a case under Sections 364 and 369 of the IPC. Unable to get a breakthrough in the case, the police announced a cash reward for information about the child.
Our Correspondent

Nurpur September 23

The Central High-Powered Committee (CHPC), constituted on the direction of the apex court, held a meeting with the Pong Dam oustees at Fatehpur here today and heard their problems in connection with their rehabilitation in Rajasthan.

Before holding the meeting, the CHPC faced the wrath of the oustees who expressed resentment against the state and Rajasthan governments in resolving their longstanding issues.

Amarjeet Singh, chairman of the committee-cum-secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, heard the oustees and also expressed sympathy towards their long-pending rehabilitation issues. As many as 16,000 families in Kangra district had been displaced after construction of the Pong Dam in 1965, but 7,000 families, who were allotted lands in Rajasthan, could not be rehabilitated.

The committee chairman assured the oustees that he would raise these issues with the Government of India and Rajasthan Government. He pointed out that the HP Government had submitted 1,165 cases to the Rajasthan Government for the allotment of land in Rajasthan and the Government of India had directed the Rajasthan Government to intimate the status within 15 days.

He also revealed that the government would contemplate to grant compensation in one go to the oustees on the pattern of Narmada Dam oustees.
Rs2.97 crore approved for Una hospital

UNA, SEPTEMBER 23

The Rogi Kalyan Samiti of the Una District Hospital today approved a budget of Rs 2.97 crore for the financial year.

At a meeting presided over by DC Vikas Labroo, the samiti also gave ex-post facto approval for an excess expenditure of Rs 88 lakh, incurred during the last financial year.

The hospital authorities are directed to make operational the computerised blood testing machine for hormone tests. The machine, costing about Rs 23 lakh, is gathering dust due to lack of laboratory technician for more than a year. The DC directed the Chief Medical Officer to ensure that the doctors prescribe generic medicines which were available at cheap rates. While the Health Department has issued directions to all government medical officers to prescribe generic medicines to cut down on health expenditure, the doctors had been defying orders.  OC
Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 23

Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh was heckled by youth of Jammu on Saturday over the state governments failure to declare a holiday on the birth anniversary of the last Dogra ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh. As they raised anti-BJP slogans, he was forced to leave the venue where people were celebrating the birth anniversary of Hari Singh.

When the Deputy Chief Minister was addressing the gathering, he was interrupted by some youth who were annoyed over the attitude of BJP ministers on this issue. Nirmal Singh tried to pacify the youth but to no avail. Considering the anger of the youth, the police escorted the Deputy Chief Minister to safety. The youth warned the government of intensifying their stir on this issue by organising similar protests against BJP ministers, whom they called Jai Chands of Jammu.

This is just a beginning. We will not allow these Jai Chands to come out of their homes because they have betrayed the people of Jammu, warned Team Jammu chairman Zorawar Singh Jamwal while addressing youth in front of the Maharajas statue on the Tawi Bridge. For the last 70 years, the BJP and its affiliated organisations have exploited the sentiments of Jammu residents. After coming to power, these groups have started bartering peoples aspirations for self-interests, he said. Meanwhile, scores of functions were held across the Jammu region to mark the birth anniversary of Hari Singh.

NC, Cong politicising issue: BJP

Jammu: After Deputy CM Nirmal Singh was heckled by angry youth, the BJP on Saturday evening lambasted the Congress and the National Conference for politicising Maharaja Hari Singhs birth anniversary issue. The BJP questioned both parties for failing to declare September 23 a public holiday when they were in power since 1947. The Congress and the NC ruled the state till 2014 but these parties never ever commemorated the birth anniversary, said BJP state general secretary Narinder Singh. In fact, the NC under Sheikh Abdullah and the Congress under Jawahar Lal Nehru had conspired to keep the Maharaja out of J&K after the accession of the state with India. It was the BJP that got the resolution moved and passed in the Upper House for the declaration of holiday on Maharajas birth anniversary. TNS
Arun Joshi

tribune news service

Jammu, September 23

Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasis speech at the UN General Assembly, like that of his predecessors, was a reinforcement of its reliance on terrorism in destroying Kashmir in all forms and manifestations.

Abbasi was either ignorant or deliberately distorting facts. His swan song was stuck on the UN resolutions of 1948-49 on Kashmir envisaging plebiscite for the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Kashmirs history did not start from there. Tribesmens invasion of J&K under Maharaja Hari Singhs rule was against the Standstill Agreement between Pakistan and J&K on August 15, 1947.

The UN resolutions were not fundamental to J&K. These were a byproduct of Pakistans invasion in a bid to change the geographical boundaries to bring the states rivers in its fold to quench the thirst of its Punjab.

Today, if Kashmir is bleeding, Pakistan should blame itself. It is due to Pakistans greed for water and its perennial anti-India agenda. Its role in arming Kashmiri youth and telling them that their goal is just a few steps away has brought all destruction.

Kashmir is not excited by Pakistans utterances at the UN or other international fora where it uses Kashmir as a shield to hide its own terror machinery. Kashmiris know what they have undergone and who is responsible for it. They squarely blame Pakistan for it.

Streets of Kashmir are abuzz with whispers that Pakistan has paid a lip service to Kashmiris while it was pursuing its anti-India agenda. That they were used as a pawn by Islamabad and Rawalpindi is clear to them though they do not even for a moment absolve India of its response to Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. They are caught in a bind.

Pakistan has done more harm to the Valley by making the Kashmir struggle as a consistent theme at the international fora. Pakistan is known as an underlined terror state not only by India but also the US and most of the European countries. When Pakistan talks of Kashmir, it is seen as a voice of terror. That makes Kashmiris look part of the grand terror design that Pakistan has woven for the world.

It is time to turn the corner. Pakistan should have understood. Nothing is going to come through rhetoric and use of guns, grenades and killing on streets and the turnout at funerals of slain militants or shutdowns. That is a fake reality.

Truth cannot be exaggerated. It can neither be underplayed nor told with caution. Pakistan needs to understand that Kashmiri Muslims have started identifying the real and the original culprit responsible for their troubles. Of course, India is not in an unenviable position either. It should also see the reality of Kashmir beyond the bayonets.
New Delhi, September 23

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today claimed that arrested Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah was in touch with Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

In its charge sheet, the financial probe agency claimed that Shah admits that he talks to Hafiz Saeed, a global terrorist based in Pakistan on phone on the issue of Kashmir.

Recently, he had talked with Hafiz Saeed in January 2017, the agency said. The revelations were made in the charge sheet that the agency filed against alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani and Shah in connection with an ongoing money laundering case.

The charge sheet also revealed that Mohammad Shafi Shayar, a Kashmiri, was also a part of their movement before he went to Pakistan. Shah was in touch with Shayar through phone. On the analysis of the call detail report, it was found that 20 calls were made by Shayar from his Pakistan number from January 22, 2017 to July 26, 2017, on the mobile of Shabir Shah, the charge sheet alleged.

According to the ED, Shah had met Shayar at the Central jail, Jammu, in 1993-94. After being released from jail, Shayar left for Pakistan with his family and settled in Rawalpindi. He belonged to an organisation named Peoples League in Anantnag. The charge sheet further alleged that Shah claimed that these calls were made from Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue.

Shah admitted that Shayar used to talk to him and not to his family for the past 18 to 20 years. Shayar also called Shah through Zamir Ahmed Sheikh, the photographer, driver and close aide of Shah, the ED claimed. The ED also said that Shahs Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party websites IP address belonged to Peshawar in Pakistan.

Shah was arrested by the ED on July 25 in a money laundering case of 2005. The ED arrested Aslam Wani on August 6. Wani had allegedly confessed that he had passed on Rs 2.25 crore in hawala money to Shah.  IANS
Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jammu, September 23

On a day when India cornered Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the Pakistani Rangers pounded several villages on the International Border (IB) leaving five persons injured.

These include BSF constables Rajesh Kumar and Sipual Vermal of 176 Batallion in Ramgarh sector of Samba district and civilians Pushpinder Singh, Subash Kumar and Vandana Devi in Satowali village of RS Pura sector of Jammu district.

As Pakistan was facing the heat at the UNGA, its Rangers widened the shelling area and targeted RS Pura and Ramgarh sectors as well. Since September 13, only Arnia sector was targeted but last night, seven villages of Ramgarh sector and several villages of RS Pura sector also came under target. The injured BSF jawans were first admitted to a Ramgarh hospital and later shifted to the Government Medical College (GMC) in Jammu. A PRO of the BSF said, Around 9.30 pm on Friday, Pakistan Rangers suddenly started heavy, unprovoked firing in Arnia sector and resorted to heavy shelling later on. The BSF gave a calibrated response by equal and more measures.

Firing and shelling continued till 5 am today and affected more than 20 border outposts, he added. Meanwhile, on the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch, an eight-year-old boy, Muhammad Suhail, was injured in Pakistani shelling last evening. The Pakistani Army had opened heavy shelling last evening. (With inputs from Vishal Jasrotia)
Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, September 23



Former Aam Aadmi Party leader Anjali Damania claimed on Saturday that gangster Dawood Ibrahim telephoned her from Pakistan and threatened to harm her if she did not withdraw cases filed against former Maharashtra minister Eknath Khadse..

Damania, an anti-corruption activist, said that Truecaller  a telephone directory and reverse telephone directory application that has an integrated caller ID that displays details of the caller  listed the number under the name Dawood 2.

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Damania said on Twitter that she got the call at 12.33 am, from a number with the country code +92  Pakistans code. In tweets that followed her first, Damania also said she had informed the chief minister and demanded action.

Last nght at 12.33,I recd a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse +922135871719 Truecaller shows Dawood 2 Pakistan.

Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating.

I appeal to PM @narendramodi @PMOIndia & @rajnathsingh to give me time to urgently see them.Threat call? to a citizen? I want my Govt to act.

Last nght at 12.33,I recd a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse +922135871719 Truecaller shows Dawood 2 Pakistan pic.twitter.com/9GUqR2VVNt  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Informed CM on threat call frm a landline number of Pakistan,asking me to withdraw all cases against Eknath Khadse.Jt CP Crime investigating pic.twitter.com/Gsws5rO8WK  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

I appeal to PM @narendramodi @PMOIndia & @rajnathsingh to give me time to urgently see them.Threat call? to a citizen? I want my Govt to act  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Indias most notorious gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has been accused of having been the mastermind behind the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai that killed 257 people and left 713 grievously wounded, is currently believed to be in Pakistan.

She said she reported the call to Vakola police station in Mumbais western suburb Santacruz, but later accused police of not taking her complaint seriously.

"I have spoken to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis who assured me that the Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) will look into the matter," Damania told reporters.

Police have registered an FIR for criminal intimidation and criminal intimidation through anonymous communication under the Indian Penal Code, a policeman sai.

Khadse, who held several important portfolios in the Fadnavis cabinet, had to resign after allegations of corruption made against him by Damania and others in a public interest litigation petition. However, he denied the charges.
1. Yes. The ordinance goes against state law and is not in the best interest of the cities.

2. Yes. At the very least, it should be amended to give police officers some discretion.

3. No. Voters approved the ordinance by large majorities; the councils cant ignore that fact.

4. No. The petition process has to be given a chance to work. Leave the ordinance alone.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say how the cities should move forward regarding the ordinance.

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Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, September 23

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister Narayan Rane who quit the Congress party amidst speculation that he will join the Bharatiya Janata Party in the coming days is facing tough resistance from senior leaders of the saffron outfit.



Led by Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil, the Maratha lobby in the BJP is keen on keeping Rane out of the party, according to sources. Maratha leaders in the BJP fear that Rane, a fellow casteman, could overshadow them with the help of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.



The chief minister, a Brahmin, had tried to prop up Rane as powerful leader of the community when the Marathas held protests across Maharashtra. Rane negotiated with the government on behalf of the Marathas and ensured that the community got some concession though their main demand for quotas in educational institutions and

government jobs were put on the backburner.



Patil and other MLAs in the BJP want Ranes induction into the BJP to be taken by the partys core committee. At a function here earlier this week, Patil said the core committee was yet to discuss the admission of Rane into the BJP. Apart from Fadnavis, BJPs core committee of the BJP includes senior party leaders and members of the state cabinet.



Rane has met BJP president Amit Shah and Fadnavis had visited Rane's home during the Ganesh festival sparking off speculation about the Shiv Sainik-turned Congress leader's entry into the BJP.



Opponents of Rane in the BJP are now mobilising the party cadres in the Konkan region, Rane's stronghold. Senior party leader Anil Gogate, who is leading the BJP cadres against Rane, said they have been fighting him for several years. Rane is self-centric is known to be disrespectful towards people. BJP workers will be embarrassed to campaign for him in any election, Gogate told reporters in Ratnagiri. The grassroots level workers say they would not be able to work under Rane even if they enjoy the common goal of dislodging the Shiv Sena from its base in Konkan.


United Nations, September 23

Taking a dig at Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday asked its leaders to introspect as to why India is recognised as a global IT superpower while Pakistan is infamous as the pre-eminent export factory for terror.

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, Swaraj accused Pakistan of waging a war against India and said a country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium.

She was referring to Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasis speech on Thursday wherein he accused India of violating human rights and state-sponsored terrorism.

I would like today to tell Pakistans politicians just this much, that perhaps the wisest thing they could do is to look within. India and Pakistan became free within hours of each other. Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world, and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror? Swaraj asked.

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Read: Developed world must help less fortunate ones on climate change: Swaraj

Swaraj calls for early start to text-based negotiations for UN reforms

Terrorism existentialist danger to mankind: Sushma Swaraj at UNGA

Growing question mark on maritime security, nukes: Swaraj

Demonetisation courageous decision to challenge black money: Swaraj

PM Modi hails Sushma Swarajs UNGA speech

India had ripped into Pakistan on Friday, describing it as terroristan and a land of pure terror that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism.

Speaking in Hindi for the second consecutive year at the annual UNGA session, Swaraj on Saturday said India has risen despite being the principal destination of Pakistans nefarious export of terrorism.

There have been many governments under many parties during 70 years of Indian freedom, for we have been a sustained democracy. Every government has done its bit for Indias development, she said, highlighting Indias achievements in the fields of education, health, space etc.

We established scientific and technical institutions which are the pride of the world. But what has Pakistan offered to the world and indeed to its own people apart from terrorism? she said.

We produced scientists, scholars, doctors, engineers.

What have you produced? You have produced terrorists...you have created terrorist camps, you have created Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen and Haqqani network, she said, adding that if Pakistan had spent on its development what it has spent on developing terror, both Pakistan and the world would be safer and better-off today.

She said the terrorist groups created by Pakistan is not only harming India, but also hurting its neighbours - Afghanistan and Bangladesh - as well.

She said that for the first time in the UN history, Pakistan sought right to reply (RoR) and then it had to simultaneously respond to three nations.

Doesnt it reflect your nefarious designs, she asked the Pakistani leader.

Referring to Prime Minister Abbasis speech, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leader wasted too much of his time in making accusations against India.

Those listening had only one observation: Look whos talking! A country that has been the worlds greatest exporter of havoc, death and inhumanity became a champion of hypocrisy by preaching about humanity from this podium, Swaraj said.

Commenting on Abbasis claim that Pakistans founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship, Swaraj said while it remains open to question whether Jinnah actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered the hand of peace and friendship since he assumed office.

Pakistans Prime Minister must answer why his nation spurned this offer, she said.

On old UN resolutions mentioned by Abbasi, Swaraj said that the Pakistani leaders memory has conveniently failed him where it matters.

He has forgotten that under the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration India and Pakistan resolved that they would settle all outstanding issues bilaterally. The reality is that Pakistans politicians remember everything, manipulate memory into a convenience. They are masters at forgetting facts that destroy their version, Swaraj said in a hard-hitting response to Pakistani prime ministers speech.

Noting that Abbasi spoke of a Comprehensive Dialogue between the two countries, Swaraj reminded him that on December 9, 2015, when she was in Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference, a decision was made by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that dialogue between India and Pakistan should be renewed and named it a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue.

The word bilateral was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt about the fact that the proposed talks would be between our two nations and only between our two nations, without any third-party present. And he must answer why that proposal withered, because Pakistan is responsible for the aborting that peace process, Swaraj said. PTI
Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 23

Bilateral defence relations and situation in Afghanistan and Indias increased role in the region will be centrestage as US defence secretary Mattis travels to India. One of the top faces in the Donald Trump administration, Jim Mattis is the first cabinet minister in the current government to visit India.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi held summit-level talks with Trump at the White House in June this year.

Mattis will hold talks with his indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman and meet with Prime Minister Modi while in India from September 26 to 28. He will also attend a wreath laying ceremony at the India Gate.

A US Embassy press release read, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will embark on Sunday, to underscore the enduring US commitment to strategic partner India.

The secretary will emphasize that the United States views India as a valued and influential partner, with broad mutual interests extending well beyond South Asia, the statement said.

Unveiling his Afghanistan and larger South Asia strategy after months of review, Trump had outlined his expectations of Indias role in the region while coming down sharply on Pakistan, demanding it dismantled the safe havens of terror on its soil.

In what sounded as transactional Trump said, India makes billions of dollars from us in trade, so we expect them to play a greater role in Afghanistan, especially in economic and development assistance.

New Delhi had welcomed the policy while underlining that it is already doing its fair share in civilian and development assistance to the war torn country.

The situation in the Indo Pacific with North Korean nuclear threats and China's aggression is also likely to figure in the wider discussions

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, meanwhile, held wide ranging talks with Secretary of State Tex Tillerson both bilaterally as well as on a trilateral forum with Japan along sidelines of the UN General Assembly .Swaraj raised the tricky issues of H1B visas and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) affecting Indians and the diaspora with her counterpart.
Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, September 23

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday reiterated the Centres resolve of housing for all by 2022 when India completes 75 year of its Independence.

Speaking at a public meeting in Shahanshahpur adjoining Varanasi on the concluding day of his two-day visit to his parliamentary constituency, he said ensuring development reaching the last person in the queue was his priority.

Providing a roof to every family either in the rural or urban area is a huge responsibility. But if Modi will not take up this challenge, who would? said the PM.

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Blaming the previous Samajwadi Party government of not being interested in building houses for the poor, Modi said that after much persuasion by the Centre it had submitted a list of 10,000 people who were to be provided housing.

Within a short time Yogiji has registered several lakhs for the housing scheme, said the PM who also projected the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana as an employment generation venture.

He said the number of houses to be built for the poor equalled the total number of houses in a medium-sized European nation.

Imagine the amount of cement, bricks, wood, steel and other building material required to build the houses. Arranging for this and building the houses will provide employment to a large number of people, he claimed.

The doubling of the farmers income was another pledge that Modi took for 2022. In this context he praised CM Yogis Pashudhan Arogya Mela (Livestock Health Mela) which he had earlier inaugurated.

Raising productivity of milch cattle and ensuring their health through such melas would go a long way in helping the farmer double his income through dairy farming, he said.

Referring to the Swachch Bharat mission as yet another goal for the nation for 2022, Modi noted that the toilet he had inaugurated earlier in the village had the word Izzat ghar (house of honour) written on it.

I liked this word very much. Where there is an Izzat ghar the honour of our mothers and sisters is ensured. I congratulate the state government for recognising toilets as Izzat ghar. Those concerned about their familys honour should come forward to build an Izzat ghar, he said.

At the function, Modi distributed the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana certificates among beneficiaries in the presence of Governor Ram Naik, Chief Minister Yogi and state BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey.
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 23

The Supreme Court has refused to extend the time for filling up vacant seats in super-specialty, post-graduate and MBBS courses beyond September 14, saying it would not be appropriate.

A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra accepted Medical Council of India counsel Gaurav Sharmas contention that further extension of time for admission would lead to chaos.

The order came on several pleas demanding an extension on the ground that there were 600 super-specialty and post-graduate seats vacant and unless the date was extended, the seats would be wasted.

The court had earlier laid down a time schedule to be followed for completing admissions to medical colleges and on September 4 it had directed that the admission process should be completed by September 14.

While noting the submissions made by senior advocates about the vacant seats going waste, the Bench on Friday said: If we permit ourselves to say so, the concern travelled from rational sphere to emotional sphere. We appreciate the concern, perception and the argument advanced at the Bar.

The petitioners expressed concern that 600 super-specialty and post-graduate seats would remain vacant if the last date for admission was not extended.

On behalf of the government, Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh had supported the demand for concession on the basis of the instructions given by the Directorate General of Health Services.

However, MCI counsel Sharma opposed it. He emphasised the fact that the deadline had already been extended by 10 days and hence, it will be an anathema to the concept of law to grant extension at the behest of the Institutions or the students.

Sharma said another extension has the potential to usher in state of chaos and the result may be that the students who are not eligible or have defaulted, would gain the benefit.

The Bench rejected the extension plea, saying, we are of the convinced opinion and an extension at this juncture would not be appropriate. A sense of concern is one thing, but sustenance of discipline and order is another aspect.
Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 23

Terror dominated External Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajs speech in New York as she addressed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for the third consecutive time. Addressing the 72nd session, the minister held a mirror to Islamabad as she highlighted the differences in the global image of India and Pakistan.

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Why is it that today India is a recognised IT superpower in the world and Pakistan is recognised only as the pre-eminent export factory for terror, she asked. She said while India had created IITs, IIMs, doctors, engineers and scholars, Pakistan had created the JeM, LeT and Haqqani network that produced jihadis and terrorists who attacked not just India, but also Afghanistan and Bangladesh.  Doctors save people from death while terrorists send them to death, she remarked.

Swaraj calls for early start to text-based negotiations for UN reforms

Terrorism existentialist danger to mankind: Sushma Swaraj at UNGA

Growing question mark on maritime security, nukes: Swaraj

Demonetisation courageous decision to challenge black money: Swaraj

PM Modi hails Sushma Swarajs UNGA speech

With Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi, in his address, accusing India of terrorism and human rights violation and seeking a UN-appointed envoy for Kashmir, Swaraj reminded him of his party leader and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs decision of December 2015 to resume talks as comprehensive bilateral dialogue.

Swaraj emphasised: The term bilateral was used consciously to remove any confusion or doubt that the proposed talks would be between our two nations, and only between our two nations, without any third party present.

The minister urged upon the multilateral body to complete negotiations and adopt the CCIT (Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism) pending since 1996, within this year. If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together, she asked the UN members.

On climate change, she responded to US President Donald Trumps charge that India had signed the Paris agreement under monetary influence. India has already said it is committed to the Paris accord. This is not because we are afraid of any power, influenced by friend or foe, or tempted by some unimagined greed. This is an outcome of a philosophy that is at least 5,000 years old, she explained, calling the recent hurricane Harvey, floods and earthquake, from the US to Dominica, as natures warning.

Swaraj highlighted the Indian Governments social welfare schemes and steps towards radical reforms, such as demonetisation and the GST legislation, aimed at eliminating poverty by investing in the poor.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his maiden UNGA speech in 2014 had focused on climate change, sustainable development and poverty eradication while reaching out to Pakistan to join hands on humanitarian causes. Since then, Indias focus has clearly shifted once again to Pakistan-centric terror, which laced Swarajs 2016 speech in the wake of the Uri terror strikes.
New Delhi, September 23

In their first stand-alone bilateral meeting, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in New York. The two had earlier this week participated in the India-US-Japan trilateral along the sidelines of the UNGA summit discussing the strategic partnership in the Indo-Pacific.

All aspects of the relationship were taken up with focus on trade and investment ties and impact of Trump administration policies on Indian immigrants and diaspora.

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MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted, EAM strongly raised the issue of H1B visa and children falling under DACA policy with Secretary Tillerson.

Estimates by SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together) suggest over 20,000 Indian immigrants could face deportation following Trumps decision to repeal DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

A key amnesty granted by former President Obama to children who came illegally to the US, the scrapping of DACA has put a question mark on the future of work permits to thousands of migrants in America, including Indian-Americans.  TNS
Keki Daruwalla

Not many people know what a refugee camp is. I do, for I visited one in Assam where the refugees numbered four lakh  three lakh Muslims and one lakh Bodos  in July-August 2012. I was Member, National Commission for Minorities. Entire villages, mostly of Muslims, had been burnt. About a hundred, including some Bodos, had been killed. The administration, overwhelmed as it was, could not provide any cooks to the inmates. Wisely they left it to refugee women to gather firewood and cook rice and lentils.

It was the height of monsoons, and we  Syeda Hameed, former Planning Commission Member, and I  went camp after camp in driving rain and wind. I remember a woman telling us, I have not changed for 18 days. That meant two things  shortage of toilets, also no bath for 18 days. Camp administrators said within two days or so they had put up 21 toilets. But there were 6,000 people in the camp, which was actually a school.

I can imagine what is happening in Bangladesh camps today  over four lakh Rohingya refugees living under makeshift thatched roofs, women and children hungry and sick, who have walked through jungles and mountains. Entire villages have been burnt and close to 3,000 killed, including children. Incidentally, above a lakh (1,12,000), according to available figures, have risked life travelling in rickety boats to find sanctuary in Malaysia.

In the subcontinent, specifically in relation to todays India and Myanmar, Rohingya suffer from Aristotles tragic flaw hamartia. They are Muslim. For Myanmar, they are aliens as well and that makes it two sins. Aung San Suu Kyi called them Bengalis! Many of them in the 19th century went from Bengal to work there. The British considered Burma a province of India and the movement an internal migration, like the Bengali descent into Sylhet and then Assam. (The way East Pakistanis and later Bangladeshis have driven the Buddhist Chakmas from the Chittagong Hill Tracts should also not be forgotten. Thank God they are in the process of getting citizenship in India.)

Many Rohingya claim they have been living in Myanmar since the middle ages. Myanmar does not consider them as one of the countrys ethnic groups. In the early nineties, the brutal military junta, known absurdly as State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), held parleys with 35, not 135 militant groups, in an attempt to hammer out a constitution.

I was sent by PM Narasimha Rao to warn the SLORC that we were about to give the Nehru Peace Prize to Suu Kyi. Now we go there to talk security, as if some Rohingya onslaught is to take place on Myanmar and India. Yes, but there is considerable raw material here to be radicalised, tinder waiting for the match.

Suu Kyis speech consisting of half lies was a big disappointment to many, but not me who has been following her silence and her niggardly statements on the Rohingya. She has never spoken with any compassion on these benighted people, kept stateless deliberately by Myanmar. Suu kyi is a great lady, whom one has admired for decades, but her inaction here is inexcusable.

One has seen protests in the West with people holding placards calling her Ig-Nobel. What has happened in Myanmar, especially the Rakhine state in August, has been described as the nearest thing to ethnic cleansing. It was wholesale slaughter. And we talk security with Myanmar! Her statement fell far too short. Those who will be taken back are the ones with verifiable documents, governed by its agreement with Bangladesh in 1993. Even they will be taken back as refugees, not citizens. Two years ago, Myanmar cancelled the Temporary Residence Cards given to the Rohingya in 1995. There is no hope here, seeing the brutal antipathy which the Myanmar military (and possibly the Buddhist clergy) has against the Rohingya.

The security angle projected by the Indian Government and its Intelligence agencies is plainly laughable. It is a moot point whether the agencies made a fool of the government, or the party and the government forced them to take this line. States where the Rohingya are encamped do not talk of any incident where they have posed a threat. The Prime Minister himself goes to Myanmar to discuss security and not human rights. To old observers, it all looks like a replay of Bush and Blair going to war with Iraq after squeezing out some reluctant and ambiguous reports from their agencies.

And yet there is the other side, and there is merit in what it projects. The RSS mouthpiece rightly points to the borderless Umma which Muslims belong to. Why cant the Muslim countries, a good 50 of them, absorb some of the Rohingya. The Al Jazeera website amazingly puts out in a map that Saudi Arabia has taken 2,00,000 Rohingya. Not easily believable. The Muslim countries did not absorb even the Syrian refugees while Europe took in more than a million. And the Palestinians remained stateless in all the Islamic lands, didnt they, right till now?

Indias reputation as a country giving sanctuary to those exiled and refugees has suffered badly. Remember we gave sanctuary to U Nuh once. But those were Nehruvian days when ideals mattered. Now all we hear is bragging rights and glitzy event management.
United Nations, September 23

India on Saturday called for an early start to text-based negotiations for UN Security Council reforms, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj expressing hope that a revamp of its top organ will be a priority for the world body.

In 2015, the UN General Assembly had adopted a negotiating text by consensus for long-pending UN Security Council reforms, setting the stage for talks on the issue.

Efforts at text-based negotiations on the reform and expansion of the Security Council were initiated in the last session and more than 160 nations had expressed support for this effort. If we are serious, then the least we can do is produce one text that can be the basis for negotiation, Swaraj said in her address to the UN General Assembly.

She hoped that this will become a priority for the UN.

If that happens it will be a significant achievement, she said.

We also have high expectations from the new Secretary General of the United Nations. If he (Antonio Guterres) wants to reform the peace and security architecture, he will also need to address reforms related to peacekeeping that have been urged for long. Without improvements in UN peacekeeping, this goal cant be achieved, she said.

For long India has been calling for reform of the UN Security Council.

India and a large number of countries believe that the current United Nations and its powerful Security Council do not reflect the ground realities of the 21st century.

Earlier this week, foreign ministers of G4 countries  India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan  met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to push their case for reform of the Security Council including expansion of its permanent and non-permanent members.

India has also received support from several other multilateral groupings during the current UN General Assembly session in this regard, including BRICS and IBSA.

Several countries have taken up the floor of the General Assembly to support Indias bid for permanent membership.

We are discussing turbulence and change across the world, but the one organisation created to address world affairs is beset by its own problems, Swaraj said in her address.

It seems to believe that it can afford not to change from the precepts and perceptions that determined its birth.

On September 18, there was a meeting here on UN reform. I participated. I witnessed an evident desire for change, to do something.

But I do want to remind you that at the 2005 World Summit there was a consensus that the early reform of the Security Council is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations, Swaraj said. PTI
United Nations, September 23

Describing terrorism as an existentialist danger to mankind, India on Saturday wondered how the international community will fight the menace if the UN Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists.

In her address to the 72nd UN General Assembly session, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said terrorism is at the very top of problems, for which the United Nations is searching for solutions.

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If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together? If we continue to differentiate between good terrorists and bad terrorists, how can we fight together? If even the United Nations Security Council cannot agree on the listing of terrorists, how can we fight together? she said.

Swaraj was apparently referring to China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, which has repeatedly blocked Indias move to put a ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM has already been in the banned list.

I would like to request this august assembly to stop seeing this evil with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance. Evil is evil. Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence, she said.

Swaraj called on the UN member states to display their new commitment by reaching agreement on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism this year itself.

Although India proposed a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) as early as in 1996, yet two decades later the United Nations has not been able to agree upon a definition of terrorism, she rued.

We have been the oldest victims of this terrible and even traumatic terrorism. When we began articulating about this menace, many of the worlds big powers dismissed this as a law and order issue. Now they know better. The question is: what do we do about it? she asked.

We must all introspect and ask ourselves whether our talk is anywhere close to the action we take. We all condemn this evil, and piously resolve to fight it in all our declaratory statements. The truth is that these have become rituals, she said.

The fact is that when we are required to fight and destroy this enemy, the self-interest of some leads them towards duplicity, Swaraj said. PTI
Kolkata, September 23

China and India are working together to take forward their relationship leaving behind the Doklam episode, the Chinese Consul General here has said.

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Chinese Consul General Ma Zhanwu also asserted that by working together cooperation and exchanges can be further enhanced.

India and China are working together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping had a meeting on September 5 to discuss how to enhance the relationship, Zhanwu said here on Friday night while addressing an event to mark the 68th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.

As long as the two countries work together, we will able to enhance and develop exchanges and cooperation, he said.

Asked if both the countries have left behind the Dokalam episode, Zhanwu said, Yes we have left that behind and are working together to take forward the bilateral relationship.

Prime Minister Modi had met President Xi on the sidelines of the 9th BRICS Summit on September 5.

The two leaders had agreed that both the countries should put in more effort to strengthen the cooperation between their security personnel and ensure that Dokalam-like incidents do not recur.

The Chinese and the Indian troops were engaged in a prolonged standoff in Dokalam area of the Sikkim sector since June 16 after the Indian side stopped the construction of a road by the Chinese Army.

On August 28, Indias External Affairs Ministry announced that New Delhi and Beijing have decided on expeditious disengagement of their border troops in the disputed Dokalam area. PTI
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 23

Ahead of the October 11 Gurudaspur Lok Sabha byelection, a petition filed in the Supreme Court has demanded that entire paper trails coming out from Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) should be counted and tallied for an authentic result.

The VVPATs are EVMs with a paper trail. When a voter presses the button to choose a candidate, a slip of paper shows the party symbol of the candidate selected for a few seconds before it goes into a sealed box.

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In case an election result is questioned, VVPAT slips can be used to double check on the results.

The petition filed by activist Sabu Stephen  a resident of Thiruvanathapuram  sought a direction to the Election Commission to compare the counts of paper trails with the result of EVM and if any difference was found, the count of paper trails should be taken as the final result.

The petition assumes significance in the wake of controversy after the recent assembly elections in five states wherein many political parties and leaders, including BSPs Mayawati, questioned the EVM results.

Besides Gurudaspur Lok Sabha seat  which fell vacant following the death of three-time MP and actor Vinod Khanna  bypoll is also being held for the Vengara assembly seat in Kerala on October 11.

Counting of votes will take place on October 15.

Congresss Sunil Jakhar and BJPs Swaran Salaria filed their nomination papers on Friday for the Gurdaspur byelection.

The plea is to enhance the trust in the minds of the citizens of India in the electoral process of the largest democratic country of this world, the petition read.

A voter has the right to know whether his/her vote has been recorded and counted. Today, a voter in India does not know whether his/her vote has been recorded or counted with accuracy and impartiality. There is no proof and there is no accountability, the petitioner submitted.

The Representation of People Act, 1951, and the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, cast a duty and responsibility on the Election Commission of India for a smooth and trustworthy electoral process, the petitioner submitted.

Deciding a PIL filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, the top court had earlier directed the Centre to provide financial assistance to the poll panel for introduction of VVPAT system with EVMs to ensure accuracy in the voting system which could be used for manual counting of votes in case of a dispute.

The paper trail is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of voters in the EVMs can be achieved only with introduction of the paper trail, the SC had said.

EVMs with VVPAT system ensure the accuracy of the voting system. With intent to have fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters, it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in democratic system, it had said.
Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 23

The Punjab Police team that had gone to Canada to bring two alleged plotters in the Jassi honour killing case is scheduled to return empty-handed tomorrow following the stay on their extradition.

The Canadian Department of Justice has not specified how long it will take to decide the review petition filed before it to reconsider the extradition of Jassis mother Malkiat Kaur and uncle Surjit Badesha. The team comprising Kanwardeep Kaur, SP, Headquarters, Patiala; Akashdeep Singh Aulakh, Dhuri DSP; and Inspector Deepinder Pal Singh; has booked a flight to India.

Jassis husband Sukhwinder Singh Mithu, who has been waiting for the past 17 years to see the duo face trial in India, was disappointed at the development. It seems the Canadian Government prefers providing a safe haven to alleged criminals. If they are innocent, as they claim, they should have faced trial long ago, he said.

Mithu, a resident of Kaunke Khosa in Jagraon, said the Punjab Police seemed to be doing their best to pursue the case, but other authorities were blocking the extradition. I request the Punjabi community in Canada to help get the stay vacated by sending petitions to the Department of Justice, he added.

Mithu said he had languished in jail for over three years and was still an undertrial in some cases. See the power of the accused, who even managed to get the extradition stalled at the last minute. I am very upset with the Canadian Government.

The extradition was scheduled to take place on Friday, days after the Supreme Court of Canada allowed it. However, the accused moved the Department of Justice that imposed a stay. Jassi, a Canadian national, and Mithu were attacked near Malerkotla on June 8, 2000, by killers allegedly hired by Jassis mother and uncle.
Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 23

The hopes of extradition of the two alleged conspirators of the Jassi honour killing were dashed to the ground with the three-member Punjab Police team which had gone to Canada to bringing back the accused scheduled to return empty-handed on Sunday.

The team is returning as the Canadian Department of Justice has not provided a clear roadmap on how long it will take to decide the review petition filed before it to reconsider the extradition of the two accused--Malkiat Kaur and Surjit Badesha--mother and uncle respectively, of Jassi.

The team comprising Kanwardeep Kaur, SP, Headquartes, Patiala; Akashdeep Singh Aulakh, DSP, Dhuri; and Inspector Deepinder Pal Singh; have booked a flight to India for Sunday. They have sent a communication confirming the flight. The team has informed that the Justice department has not divulged the next date of hearing to them.

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Jassis husband Sukhwinder Singh Mithu of Kaunke Khosa in Jagraon, who is waiting for the past 17 years to see the two accused face trial in India was disappointed at the turn of events. It seems the Canadian government prefers providing safe haven to alleged criminals. If they are innocent, as they claim, they should have faced trial long ago.

Mithu said though Punjab Police seem to be doing their best to pursue the case, other powers may be blocking it.

I request to the Punjabi community in Canada to help in clearing the blockade by sending petitions to the Canada Department of Justice for sending the accused to India.

He said he had languished in jail for over three years and was still under-trial in some cases as he was fighting for justice. See the power of the accused, who even managed to get extradition stalled at the last minute. I am very disappointed with the Canadian government.

The extradition was set to happen on Friday, days after the Supreme Court of Canada allowed it. However, the accused moved the Department of Justice, headed by Federal Justice Minister Judy Wilson Raybould, for review who stayed the extradition. The Punjab Police team and the accused had boarded the plane but were told to alight just before the take-off.

Jassi and her husband Sukhwinder Singh Mithu of Kaunke Khosa in Jagraon were attacked on June 8, 2000 near Malerkotla by contract killers allegedly hired by Jassis mother and uncle. Jassi died while Mithu survived.

Jassi, a Canadian-born Indian girl who lived in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada, fell in love with Mithu of Kaunke Khosa when she was visiting her maternal uncle in India.
Chandigarh, September 23

BJP candidate for the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll Swaran Singh Salaria on Saturday said he did not expect a contest from the Congress and AAP nominees in the byelection and exuded confidence that the saffron party would retain the seat with a massive margin.

The Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat, a stronghold of the BJP, fell vacant after the sitting MP, actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna, died of cancer in a Mumbai hospital on April 27.

Khanna was a four-time MP from Gurdaspur.

The BJP had, on September 21, named Salaria as its candidate for the October 11 bypoll. Khannas wife Kavita was also a frontrunner for the BJP ticket in the bypoll.

Salaria (63), a business tycoon, lashed out at Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh for the latters remarks against him.

Amarinder had yesterday taken a jibe at Salaria saying, What can he (Salaria) do for the (Gurdaspur) constituency when he failed to run his own medical college in Chintpurni (in Pathankot), jeopardising the careers of 1,800 students.

He had also said the high court had ordered the closure of the college and the state government had sought permission from the Medical Council of India (MCI) to accommodate the students in other medical colleges of the state.

Asked to respond to Singhs remarks, Salaria said, The Chintpurni medical college was shut when I took over. I tried to revive it. You (Singh) should support and admire me for this. The college is in Punjab and it is your (Singhs) responsibility as well to run it.

He also rejected Amarinders claims that he had approached him for a Congress ticket in the bypoll.

He (Singh) is a senior leader and I respect him a lot. He should not level such false allegations, Salaria said.

I am a successful businessman. I own an airline, hotels, restaurants and a security company. I have a workforce of more than 70,000 people, he added.

Salaria said he did not expect any contest in the bypoll.

This seat belongs to the BJP and we will again win it with a huge margin, he told PTI.

The Congress has fielded senior leader Sunil Jakhar in the bypoll, while Major General (retd) Suresh Kumar Khajuria of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is also in the fray.

Salaria took potshots at both at Jakhar and Khajuria.

Jakhar has been brought from a distance of 400 km (from Gurdaspur) by the Congress to fight the bypoll. How can he win it, he wondered.

On the AAP candidate, Salaria said, Khajuria has never been seen working for the welfare of the people of this constituency.

He claimed that he had been serving the people of the area for the last 15 years.

My family members, including my mother, sister, live in Gurdaspur and Pathankot, said Salaria, who is a native of the Chauhana village in Gurdaspur.

He said he would take the achievements of the Narendra Modi government to the voters while seeking their votes.

I will highlight the achievements and policies of the three-year-old Modi government at the Centre when I go to the people to seek their votes. There are several initiatives, such as demonetisation and GST, taken by the government. Moreover, there is no allegation of corruption of even a single paisa against this government, Salaria said.  PTI
Chandigarh, September 23

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday asked the leaders of the farmers unions to stop misleading the farmers with false statements on loan waiver, the process for which, he said, had already been initiated by his government.

He said this in a statement issued here a day after various farmers unions launched a protest on the outskirts of Patiala, alleging that the state governments farm loan waiver scheme would only benefit a small number of farmers.

Amarinder claimed that baseless charges were being levelled against his government by certain politically motivated leaders of farmers unions.

The loan waiver scheme, which was set to be notified soon, following a cabinet approval, would benefit 10.25 lakh of the 13 lakh farming families who took bank loans, the chief minister said and pointed out that the figures accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the borrowers in the farming community in the state, which comprised over 17 lakh families.

Contrary to what the farmers union leaders, clearly instigated by certain opposition parties, were trying to project, the governments loan waiver scheme would positively impact the majority of the small and marginal farmers of the state, leaving out only the big farmers, who would be covered in the next phase, he added.

The waiver amount announced by his government was also way above those announced by Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Karnataka, despite the fact that Punjabs financial condition was much worse compared to these states, the Punjab CM claimed.

Unlike the other states, in Punjab, loans of up to Rs 2 lakh would be waived for farmers holding up to five acres of land, he said, adding that an outright relief of Rs 2 lakh each would also be given to the small and marginal farmers, irrespective of their loan amounts.

States such as Rajasthan and Karnataka had announced a mere Rs-50,000 loan waiver for the farmers, Amarinder said.

He added that Punjabs loan waiver scheme had a retrospective effect, from the date of its announcement in the Assembly till the date of its notification.

The government had already prepared a detailed list of farmers with the exact amounts of their loans, to be benefited in the first phase of the scheme, which would be implemented as soon as the notification was issued, the chief minister said.

The state cabinet had already approved the notification, which was now awaiting a clearance from the Election Commission (EC), he added.

The notification has been sent to the poll panel in view of the Model Code of Conduct being in force on account of the October 11 Gurdaspur Lok Sabha by-election.  PTI
Nitin Jain

Tribune news Service

Mohali, September 23

Veteran journalist KJ Singh and his mother were found murdered at their house in Phase 3B2 here on Saturday. The house was found ransacked.

Preliminary reports say Singh's throat was found slit while his mother Gurcharan Kaur was strangled, suggesting resistance by the victim.

The bodies were found lying in a pool of blood when the police were called by the neighbours.

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Their maid was the first to notice the murder and sounded the neighbours, who called the police.

Singh's Ford Ikon car, an LCD and other belongings were found missing, but the gold chains of both the victims were found intact.

It is suspected that the brutal double murder took place sometime on Friday night after the maid left the place and it was discovered only on Saturday afternoon when she returned to work.

Singh was 66 years old while his mother was 92.

Singh had retired as Chief News Editor of 'The Tribune', Chandigarh, after serving on the Chandigarh editions of 'The Indian Express' and 'The Times of India'.

Acting on a directive from Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, Punjab Police have set up a Special Investigative Team (SIT) under Inspector General of Police (Crime) Shashi Prabha Dwivedi to probe the murder.

Taking immediate cognisance of the crime, the Chief Minister called up state DGP Suresh Arora to set up a SIT for a thorough investigation into the case.

The IG (Crime), under whom the SIT will function, has been asked to ensure that all leads are probed and the culprits are identified and nabbed at the earliest.

According to an official spokesperson, the Chief Minister has also directed the police to beef up security in the area and take steps to ensure the safety and security of the ordinary citizens of the state.

Punjab Police Bureau of Investigation Director Prabodh Kumar, IGP Crime Dwivedi along with Mohali SSP Kuldeep Chahal have reached the spot.
Vandana Aggarwal

Looking at the pretty, bright-eyed and vivacious Jaspreet Kaur, you would forget for a moment that she has Down Syndrome (DS).

Born in 1980 to Dr Balbir Singh Sekhon and his wife Rabinder Kaur, both 3rd generation Singaporean Sikhs, Jaspreet was diagnosed at birth with DS. DS affects less than 0.1 per cent of the population. Determined to give her the best possible life, her parents educated themselves about DS and made it their life mission to give their daughter every opportunity to shine.

And shine she did! Today Jaspreet is a self-advocate and an inspiring role model, having achieved what a lot of people with normal abilities would not even think off.

Jaspreet, said her parents, studied at a school for the intellectually disabled in Singapore. She was a curious child with a keen desire to learn.

Jaspreet loves music, dance, going out, watching television and working with kids. Shes done several courses, including a certificate in early education.I enjoy teaching and helping kids, she said softly. She worked as an assistant teacher at a mainstream kindergarten for over 17 years.

Her parents and younger sister have always supported Jaspreet. Despite the fact that people would sometimes gape or stare, they made a conscious effort to take her out on family outings in order to aid her development. These interactions have made Jaspreet confident and articulate. She feels that in spite of having DS, she is a normal adult. She doesnt want people to look down at her, but to make eye contact and look up at her.

Dr Sekhon is the founding chairperson of the Down Syndrome Association (DSA), Singapore, and a lifelong advocate of a better life for the intellectually disabled. His efforts at empowering Jaspreet have borne fruit and she travelled to Amritsar in 2012 to speak about her experiences, on the occasion of the inauguration of the DSA (Punjab) hosted by the Amrit PARIVAAR Parents Association.

She has made presentations to special education trainee teachers about how the system could improve to include and better serve the intellectually disabled. Subsequently,a CD was made of her talk.

Jaspreet also delivered the opening address on World Down Syndrome Day, at the United Nations in 2014. Addressing a global audience, Jaspreet drew attention to the need for providing not just better health care, but also make it accessible to people with disabilities.

She was very poised and not the least nervous. My parents gave me the confidence, she said, and I give them joy, she added with an impish smile.

At the World Down Syndrome Congress at Chennai in 2015, Jaspreet once again spoke for the need to help those with DS to fulfil their dreams and support them, so that they may feel included. In fact, Jaspreet has worked tirelessly to draw attention to people with DS. The same year Jaspreet was applauded by the Prime Minister of Singapore for her indomitable spiritat the launch of the book Singapore at 50  50 Sikhs and their contributions. She was chosen to represent DSA (Singapore) at the National Day Parade in 2016.

She had taken part in the Special Olympics at Singapore as a swimmer but has since moved to playing other sports. Her latest passion is bowling.

Her parents have taught her to be independent. She often travels by herself on public transport. Jaspreet works, twice a week, at a thrift shop run by DSA, where she helps to receive, sort, repack, store and be the sales staff when required. She is currently doing a self-advocacy programme to teach people to speak up for themselves.

Dancing has always been her passion. I often do my own choreography, she says matter of fact. She dances for fun, in competitions and for raising funds for the DSA. As a child, she had dreamt of being a professional dancer. Even though that didnt happen, Jaspreet has continued to pursue it as a hobby.

She credits dance to having taught her to listen, follow instructions, be a better team player and give her the confidence to perform in front of an audience. She has even faced the arc lights with aplomb, having modelled occassionally. She finds modelling fun and exciting and credits the experience in helping to, increase confidence and self-esteem.

Jaspreet has always stood for inclusiveness for people with special needs. Dont give up on us, she appealed poignantly in one of her speeches, Do something about it.
Pushpa Girimaji

On many train journeys, particularly on Rajdhani trains, the railway catering staff forces passengers to pay exorbitant tips. When the train is approaching the destination, they come with a tray to every passenger and demand that they pay as much as Rs 200 towards their tip. Those who pay less are insulted and humiliated. What can I do in such a situation?

First and foremost, tipping is a voluntary gesture, the amount depending on your perception of the quality of service. It is highly subjective and you may want to give a big tip if you are happy with the service or may not give anything at all if you are unhappy. So, the person who is being tipped cannot demand it nor can he determine the quantum. The railway catering staff cannot pressurise you into paying a tip against your will. Do not allow them to do so and the next time you are confronted with such a situation, send a complaint to the railway minister.

I must also mention here that in response to a number of passenger complaints about this, the new railways minister Piyush Goyal has directed the Railways to stop this practice of demanding tips. Any violation will invite heavy penalty, he has said. He has also asked the catering inspectors to monitor this and ensure compliance. The minister has also said that he would look for complaints on social media. So hopefully, this harassment of railway passengers will now cease. If not, just refuse to pay and complain.

Can I file a complaint against this before the consumer court?

There are two issues here. The first is the general problem of forcible tipping. Now that the railway minister has issued a directive against it, any violation will give rise to a complaint as it constitutes deficient service.

The second issue here is that of the harassment caused to you as a passenger as a result of the forcible collection of tip. Here, its not as if the railway staff serves the food at a table, as in a restaurant. All that it does is hand over the food tray or packet to you. So, there is nothing extra that the staff is doing to deserve a tip.

Besides, the Railways collect from you, the cost of the food, which includes the cost of hiring the catering staff that distributes the food. Asking for money over and above that becomes overcharging and, thus, an unfair trade practice. Pressurising and harassing passengers to pay a tip and pay what is determined by the staff constitutes deficient service. The practice can be described as an unfair trade practice and deficient service. And the Railways are accountable for the behaviour of its staff. Also, even though this practice has been continuing for a number of years and passengers have been complaining, the Railways did not take adequate steps to stop it, till now. Passengers who are victims of such high-handed behaviour of the catering staff can file a complaint demanding compensation from the Railways for the loss and harassment caused.

I must mention an interesting case decided by the consumer forum some years ago on the issue of tipping. Here, Deepak Jain, the consumer, had hired the services of a wedding band for his sons wedding and fixed the rate for the total package as Rs 42,000, which included the tip for the person in charge of the mare.

However, on the day of the wedding, the mare attendant misbehaved and demanded more money as his tip, causing the consumer harassment and embarrassment in front of the guests. In an ex-parte order (the service provider did not appear despite notice), the Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum II held that the mare attendant (ghoriwala) not only created a scene, but also humiliated the complainant in front of his guests and caused him mental agony and distress. Such acts and conduct amounted to deficient service and the wedding band was vicariously liable for the conduct of its representative, the ghoriwala, the Forum said. It, therefore, directed that the complainant be paid Rs 10,000 towards compensation and costs of litigation (Deepak Jain Vs Mohan Band; case number 131/2013; decided on 11-2-2014).
Maniki Deep

A visit to Kenwood House, Hampstead Heath, London, engagingly unfolds the history of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (March 2, 1705  March 20, 1793) and the extraordinary story of his nephews daughter, a black girl of mixed race, named Dido Belle.

In the mid-18th century, Kenwood House, set in 800 acres of grassland and woods at the northern edge of London, was the residence of Englands most senior judge, The Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. He lived with his wife and two adopted daughters  children of two of his nephews, because both lost their mothers. The two girls enjoyed excellent education and a luxurious, privileged lifestyle. They were Elizabeth Murray, daughter of Viscount Stormont, British Ambassador to Vienna, and Dido Elizabeth Belle, illegitimate daughter of a Royal Navy Officer, John Lindsay, and a black woman.

Lord Mansfields judgments became the stepping stones towards the abolition of the slave trade. His choices and motives have been fiercely debated ever since. Presented in paintings, case notes and reports, the exhibition at Kenwood House includes accounts of James Somerset and the Zong trials.

In 1772, when Dido was seven years old, James Somerset, an enslaved African, was severely beaten, but escaped. He was eventually caught to be shipped to Jamaica. He was brought before Lord Mansfield under the habeas corpus act (present the body). Asked to decide when a man is free, Lord Mansfield ruled, after five-month deliberation, that forcibly sending Somerset abroad because he absented himself from his service was illegal as no authority can be found for it in the laws of the country and therefore James Somerset must be discharged.

The ruling was interpreted to mean that all enslaved people in England must be discharged and gave a great boost to the abolitionists. Lord Mansfield, however, after considering an economic disaster following abolition, made it clear he intended the ruling to pertain only to Somerset.

Another case that caused public outrage was the Zong case. Zong was a slaving vessel from which 132 men, women and children were thrown overboard and drowned so that the owners could claim compensation. The insurers demanded compensation and the case was brought to Lord Mansfield. Mansfield said that a human being could not be insured and called for a retrial. The slavers and insurers withdrew the case and from then on no-one could insure enslaved people.

The extent to which Lord Mansfields position as legal guardian to Dido Belle affected his judgment is much debated. Her life was indeed unique. Lord Mansfield gave her every advantage to be part of Englands social elite. From diaries and records, she seemed to be a much-loved member of the family. Lord Mansfield was fond of Dido, who acted as his secretary. It also shows he had tremendous faith in her discretion because she would have been reading about high-level government business. In his will, Lord Mansfield stated, I confirm to Dido Elizabeth Belle her freedom. He also paid her a handsome maintenance allowance.

Some months after Mansfields death, Dido married John Davinier, a gentlemans steward at the highest level, and they had three sons. Dido died in 1804.

Lord Mansfields strong opposition to slavery in his attitude and judgments were pronounced and stoked the fires of the abolitionist movement in Britain. Eventually, slavery was formally abolished in Britain and gradually its colonies in 1833 by an Act of Parliament. Abolition of slavery spread waves in the 19th century with Spain and its colonies taking the lead in 1811; Denmark in 1846; France in 1848; The Netherlands abolished slavery in the Dutch Caribbean colonies in 1861; the U.S. Constitution banned slavery in 1865; Cuba in 1886 followed by Brazil in 1888.

Finally, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms, it read.

However, feudalism and the concept of bonded labour were rampant in India for a long time. It was only in 1976 that the Bonded Labour System Act outlawing traffic in human beings and forced labour was imposed by an Act of Parliament. Still, as long as the scourge of poverty and illiteracy debases the people of India, true freedom will not come. It is up to the organised efforts of the State, institutions, social workers and the awakened public at large to root out these evils bedeviling the country.
Saachi Dhillon

Ubud, Balis cultural heart, made famous by Hollywood movie Eat, Pray, Love is the perfect base to trek up Balis second highest sacred mountain and active volcano, Mount Batur. At a height of 1700 m, Mount Batur has an explosive history, the last eruption having taken place in 2000.

It is an early morning trek starting at 2 am. Although there are many tour operators offering the trek, it is best to book the tour at your hotel. Charges range between $30 and $40 per person. This includes a visit to a coffee plantation as well. Set your alarm and make sure that the phone has enough battery or there is a chance that you would miss this fantastic experience.

The base camp is an hours drive from Ubud. We stopped en route to grab a cup of strong Indonesian Kopi (coffee) and fried bananas, which seemed customary for anyone going on this trek. It was drizzling and foggy throughout the journey. The driver, accustomed to such weather conditions, managed to navigate his way with ease. Soon enough, we had reached the base camp.

We were given flashlights, a bottle of water as well as breakfast to enjoy at the summit. It started out as a brisk walk on a flat, unpaved road through some vegetable fields. We walked alongside the guide, Putu, chatting about India, Hinduism and Shah Rukh Khan. There was a gradual incline leading up the mountain soon afterwards. We took several rest breaks from time to time in order not to get tired.

There was a stream of flashlights going up the mountain. At the halfway point, many people stopped to buy some eats from the last shop on the way. The rest of the path was very steep, full of volcanic rocks and loose gravel. People were motivating each other to continue their climb up in spite of the challenging terrain. The guide Putu helped climb up several steep stretches.

As the dawn broke, we picked up some speed in order to find a good spot among the crowd to watch the sunrise. The suns orange hue lit up the sky. As we sat among the misty mountains, heart-shaped clouds with Lake Batur at the bottom; the sweeping panoramic views around us made all the effort worthwhile.

The crater, a short walk away, was engulfed in mist. It is home to monkeys who are eager to grab any eatables from the tourists. After taking a few photographs, we descended into the crater. Steam emanating from the rocks is a common sight there. Some tour operators even offer eggs cooked on lava rocks for breakfast as part of the tour.

The Mount Batur trek is a unique yet rewarding experience, something that should not be missed while visiting the paradise island of Bali.
Harish Khare

Harish Khare

The news item was on the local page: in the run-up to the colourful Dusherra festival, the Chandigarh police administration has asked the Ramlila organisers in the city to ensure that no vulgar songs or scenes get sneaked into the performances on the stage. The advisory is a part of 22 terms and conditions which the police administration has imposed on the Ramlila organisers. The idea of a policeman sitting in judgment on the quantum of decency/indecency is not an easy thought.

We know that from time immemorial, towns and cities across the land have locally organised Ramlilas. For those of us who grew up in the walled city of Delhi, the annual Ramlila celebrations  the procession, and the dramatic enactments at the Ram Lila Grounds  were a part and parcel of a composite, civilised civic culture.

I am sure that in those days, the local administration in Delhi had had no need to issue any kind of advisory. Good taste and wholesome restraint came easily. Those were, admittedly, gentler times and our popular discourse and public life had not yet got cheapened.

But all good things do come to an end. Like other societies, the Indian society too has changed. Our popular culture has become markedly cheapened. Even our religious songs be it at the jagraatas or navraatris  are made to rhyme to bawdy Hindi film songs.

Not all popular music is necessarily cheap. Sometimes it can be very, powerful, very uplifting. Lata Mangeshkars soulful rendition Aye mere watan ke logo, zara aankh mein bhar lo paani touches an emotional cord even till this day, 60 years later; or, that wonderful song, Mile sur mera tumhara, of the mid-1980s, was a very empowering musical ode to our composite heritage.

I do believe that popular culture  film songs, movies, dramas, comedy, television serials  have political consequences. That is why throughout history, we have had authoritarian leaders prescribing and proscribing what the poets, writers, dramatists, bards can say or cannot say. Comedy can be deeply subversive.

What we do in our popular culture has a definite bearing on the kind of choices we end up making in the political arena.

It is now beginning to be recognised in America that Donald Trumps political success had something to do with his vastly popular television show, The Apprentice. It was this serial which showcased his jerky, erratic style and made the Americans comfortable with his personality. A perceptive American writer recently noted that if The Apprentice did not get Trump elected, it is surely what made him electable. It did not elect him, but it made him electable.

Closer home, I am inclined to believe that May 2014 became possible only because the popular culture has made us comfortable with a coarsened taste in public life. The kind of abusive language we hear from our top political leadership finds traction only because the Kapil Sharmas of the comedy circuit have made us used to a bawdy and tasteless humour in our living rooms.

* * * * * * * *

THE other day I received a communication from The Tribunes motoring correspondent, Mr H Kishie Singh. He wrote in great anguish:

Sir, a day of great shame.

India shamed!

Armed Forces shamed!

The Sikhs, a martial class, shamed!

Marshal of the Indian Air Force, Arjan Singhs final farewell with a 17-gun salute!

Gauri Lankesh, a little known, unheard of journalist was given a 21-gun salute!!!

There cannot have been a better way to insult the man, the country or the Armed Forces.

At first glance, I was inclined to share Mr Kishie Singhs sense of outrage. I know of him as a sober and thoughtful man and I am sure he was reflecting a feeling, perhaps, shared by many others. On reflection, I find his dismay somewhat misplaced.

The notion that Gauri Lankesh was given a 21-gun salute emanates from a lazy journalists pen. She did not get a gun salute in the classic sense of the word. In her case, it was just a clutch of policemen firing their rifles in the air. The gun salute for Gauri Lankesh was an altogether different affair in an entirely different context. It was not a military rite, it was a political statement.

A gun salute is a well-prescribed rite of honour in the armed forces all over the world. In military parlance, it means cannons being fired. And, that is what the late Marshal of the Indian Air Force got as part of a proper full military honours drill.

In any case, I shall like to believe that the number of guns fired at his funeral would not at all be  and, cannot be  any indication of the reverence and respect Marshal Arjan Singh commanded, not just among the armed forces, but also in the hearts of most Indians.

Though he was a Jat Sikh (as many obituary notices have mentioned), Marshal Arjan Singh was not just a military leader. He was an outstanding embodiment of the Idea of India. He was a modern, forward-looking, secular, professional and committed patriot. And, a great Indian.

India salutes the man more than 21 times.

* * * * * * * *

I have already talked in this space about Ram Varmas book, Life in the IAS  My encounters with Three Lals of Haryana.

Last evening, I found myself having to talk about the book again, this time at its launch in Chandigarh. The reason I accepted the invitation was that one of the co-panelists was going to be Mr SD Bhambri, a former chief secretary; and, he was also for 20 years the General Manager of The Tribune.

A few days earlier, Mr Bhambri sent me a brief  40 pages  manuscript of Memoirs & Musings, in lieu of an autobiography. This, he says, he has penned at the age of 92. These jottings are extremely, extremely eccentric, but they also make a very, very interesting read. These pages exude, as he says, an aroma of literature.

For someone in his nineties, Mr Bhambri is a remarkably alert grand old man. At Ram Varmas book launch function, he lucidly recalled his own encounters with the Haryana politicians.

I have promised Mr Bhambri that I would go over for a longish chat and a cup of coffee.

* * * * * * * *

TALKING of the very old, my Parsi wife shared this with me a few days ago:

Towards the end of the jashan for the Parsi New Year, the priest asked:

How many of you have forgiven your enemies?

80% held up their hands.

The priest then repeated his question.

All responded this time, except one small elderly lady.

Mrs Batliwala? Are you not willing to forgive your enemies?

I dont have any, she replied, smiling sweetly.

Mrs Batliwala that is very unusual. How old are you?

Ninety-eight, she replied.

Oh, would you please come over in front and tell us all how a person of ninety-eight years of age not have an enemy in the world? The little sweetheart lady tottered down the aisle, faced the congregation and said: None of them is alive. I have outlived all the bastard and bitches!

That grand lady deserves a salute, with a cup of coffee. Join me.

kaffeeklatsch@tribuneindia.com
By K. Natwar Singh

By K. Natwar Singh

Marshal of the Indian Air Force Arjan Singh, DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross), was an authentic hero. After retiring from the Air Force, he served as Indias High Commissioner to Kenya and Ambassador to Switzerland. Then he became a philanthropist. He was 98 at the time of his death on September 16. He was cremated with full military honours.

With one exception his obituaries were banal. The exception was the Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper. Writing obituaries is literary undertaking. Most of our writers come up with hagiographies.

One disagreeable memory sticks in my mind. Some years back the Marshal was to receive an award from President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Arjan Singh then was in his mid-nineties. He walked slowly, supported by an IAF officer. He had also acquired a stoop. Half way to the President, he stopped to catch his breath. The Rashtrapati kept sitting on his Presidential throne and did not move. A more imaginative man would have walked up to the Marshal to pin the Padma Vibushan on his chest. Shri Mukerjee for once slipped and slipped badly.

Rajmata Mohinder Kaur passed away in July in Patiala at the age of 96. The time has now come to perpetuate her memory. Here I give my suggestions. The road in front of Moti Bagh Place should be named after her. A competent and impartial biographer should be located to write her biography. I am too old to do so. An orphanage, a school or college be named after her.

Last week, US President Donald Trump addressed the United Assembly on the opening day of the current session. As usual, he minced no words. The UN is financially sick, hugely over staffed and grossly inefficient. On all accounts I agree with the US President, who is normally error-prone.

I spent nearly five years with the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York (1961-66). The membership then was a little over 100. Now it is 193. In my time, the UN was taken seriously. Its de-colonisation record is exemplary. Its special agencies  WHO, ILO, FAO and UNICEF  still do splendid work. The most important branch of the UN is the Security Council. Its five permanent members are the US, Russia, China, the UK and France. These five have veto power. The non-permanent members do not. Each non-permanent member has a two-year term. We have been trying for a permanent membership for many years. No luck. China is permanent stumbling block. The UN is a good place to enjoy life, have affairs, make friends, go on UN jaunts, get to know the world and rub shoulders with the mighty. If the UN did not exist, would it have been necessary to invent it? Perhaps.

The freshman Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaid Khaqan Abbasi, had the misfortune of being interviewed by the rigorously merciless Christian Amunpour. He came out both bruised and mauled. Pakistan has a monumental inferiority complex vis-a-vis India. The swan song is Kashmir is the core issue. It is not for us. The absurd threat of use of nuclear weapons indicates his ignorance of the foreign policy and defence realities. India is an existential threat, he said. The Oxford Dictionary describe existential as, a philosophical theory which emphasises the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of will. How long the nominated Abbasi will last is an interesting speculative pastime. I wish Pakistan well. It has not been fortunate in most of its leaders.

On February, 21, 1967, I sent Prime Minister Indira Gandhi a note quoting a comment on nuclear powers by a West German (still not united) and Christian Democrat MP: Non-proliferation is like a club of notorious boozers who demand a written agreement from teetotallers that they will never take alcohol and wont touch a drop when a glass is offered to them. And then after the pact is signed, these drinkers not only sit together and booze it up again, but throw empty bottles at the teetotallers. The Prime Minister was duly amused.

Nayantara Sahgal is in her 90th year. She is defying old age. The other day an animated discussion was held at the India International Centre at the launch of her latest novel, When the Moon Shines by Day. What an attractive title. Someone mentioned dynasties. Tara said she was against dynasties. She belonged to no dynasty. I am a Pandit. My fathers name was Ranjit Sitaram Pandit.

Who is the richest woman in the World? Liliane Bettencourt (net worth $44.8 billion). Who is the richest man in India? Mukesh Ambani (net worth 37.9 billion). If you need a loan, ask him. He is a generous man.
Aditi Tandon in New Delhi

Aditi Tandon in New Delhi

The dream of distant lands replete with riches continues to drive Indian women into failed marriages and broken homes. Yet all that has not been able to check the growing Indian obsession with NRI grooms. In Punjab alone, the state NRI Commission receives around 300 alleged cases of desertions and betrayal of women at the hands of their fly-by-night husbands every year. There is no national data because there is no national mechanism to assess the scale of the problem.

Another attempt is being made to address the problem, which several governments have confronted without much result. The Ministry of External Affairs formed a new nine-member committee this May to suggest ways to check wife desertions by NRIs. It has submitted its report. It has argued for amending central laws to make registration of every marriage compulsory irrespective of religion.

It has suggested penalties for banquet halls hosting weddings if their managements fail to inform about such ceremonies to the local magistrate for registration. Another suggestion is to impound passports of cheating NRI husbands to ensure trial for the crime they are accused of, so that they prevented from

leaving the country.

The Passport Officer should have the power to impound the travel document if the NRI in question has refused to honour summons, non-bailable warrants and has been declared a proclaimed offender. In such a case, the district SSP or the magistrate can issue lookout notices and ensure the accused doesnt leave India, says Justice (Retd) Arvind Kumar Goel, committee chairperson and former chair, Punjab NRI Commission.

Obstacles persist

These solutions are not as simple as they appear. Attempts were made in 2012 by the then UPA Government to pass The Births and Deaths Registration (Amendment) Act 1969 making marriage registration compulsory irrespective of religion. The Rajya Sabha passed the amendment, but it could not get through Lok Sabha Sabha and lapsed. The Goel committee has only reiterated what Parliament was seized of.

Family law expert Anil Malhotra argues that compulsory marriage registration by amending the above law is welcome only if Indias principal legislation, The Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) 1955 is also changed to make marriage registration mandatory. The HMA says that the Hindu marriage will be solemnized in accordance with customary ceremonies. Registration of marriages under HMA is optional. The Act says states may make rules for compulsory registration. Non-registration does not invalidate a marriage. So while the ceremony is a must for solemnization, registration of marriage is not, says Malhotra.

That explains why The Punjab Compulsory Registration of Marriages Act 2012 did not take off. Registrations are catching up. Desertions by NRIs are meanwhile increasing. The lure of foreign lands is as strong as ever. Our problem is that the existing laws are not being implemented. We see cases where despite our recommendations in favour of a suffering woman, the accused NRI husband is not being served summons simply because he has either given his village address in India where he never resides or is abroad where our embassies dont engage in proactive follow up. The MEAs role in the matter is paramount, says Justice (Retd) Rakesh Garg, current chairman, Punjab NRI Commission.

No consensus

Within the central committee on NRIs, differences have marred consensus. National Commission for Womens chief Lalitha Kumaramangalam says passport impounding wont have the desired effect if the accused has entered another country on a valid visa. You can then impound the passport but do nothing to deport the man, she says flagging a new trend of NRI men entering India through Nepal, marrying gullible poor women, taking dowry, consummating the marriage and feeling back to never return.

One suggestion the committee made is about the establishment of a national NRI nodal agency. The NCW has insisted on the presence of MEA and Home Ministry officials on this agency. We cant do anything except through our embassies and through the police, said Kumaramangalam.

On passport impounding, the existing laws are also enough, say experts. Section 10 of the Passports Act provides for impounding if the holder, after issuance, has been convicted by a court in India for any offence involving moral turpitude and sentenced for a crime with imprisonment not less than two years or if he is facing a warrant or summons for court appearance or for arrest.

We have reciprocities with other countries whereby we can get the accused deported for trial in India under Section 105 CrPC. The problem is non-implementation of laws. In one case we recommended an FIR against an NRI husband under the anti-dowry law but the accused slapped false cases of trespassing on the petitioning Indian wife. She is now facing harassment, Justice Garg says.

Take the first step

There are no easy solutions, but everyone agrees that compulsory registration of marriages through central law amendments could be a good first step. Marriage registration will provide people evidence in case of custody of children, will help women with maintenance claims and battles against desertions and will also check child marriages, bigamy and polygamy.

A few family law experts go a step further to suggest the government to nationally emulate the Goa, Daman and Diu (Administration) Act 1962 derived from the Portuguese Civil Code of 1867 which Parliament had decided to retain.

Marriage in Goa is a civil contract solemnized between two persons of different sex with the purpose of legitimately constituting a family. The solemnization of marriages in Goa is by compulsory civil registration. Ceremonies are optional.

All Indians and foreigners in Goa adhere to this civil family law code. Conversely the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 (covers Hindus Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs) provides for solemnization of marriages through rituals while describing registration of such marriages optional. This should change, says Malhotra.

Once The Births and Deaths Registration Act is amended to include marriage registrations, all NRI husbands marrying Indian women will need to give details of their passports, residence address and social security number as proof with documents.

These will help us in tracing an NRI back to his foreign residence and bring him home for trial. But India must get access to the database of its 30 million NRIs if it wants to prevent desertions of women. Today an accused NRI is free to change his residence abroad and we have no mechanism to know where he has gone. We need access to all NRI social security database abroad to fill this gap, Justice Garg says.

The committee on NRI issues itself has remained confused on many matters with the Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal reportedly having given her dissent on some aspects. Some committee members are upset they were not given copies of the final report which was shared only during the duration of panel meetings.
Ambika Sharma in Baddi

Ambika Sharma in Baddi

Picture this: a labyrinth of an industry cluster spread over 35 km with over 2,000 units manufacturing as diverse products as battery cells, leather, textile and medicines  together employing about 1.25 lakh workers, mostly migrants. This is Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh area in Himachal Pradesh, sandwiched between Chandigarh, Punjab and Haryana. As a tax haven, the area sits dangerously perched on a hazardous zone: a dozen peripheral villages have reported 80 cancer cases in the last two-and-a-half years, with ever-rising incidents of kidney stone, skin problems, chronic breathing and heart ailments.

This is highlighted in a cross-sectional survey conducted by a three-member team of medical experts from Shimlas Indira Gandhi Medical Colleges (IGMC) Department of Community Medicine. The survey was conducted in March-April last year at the insistence of Doon (a part of Shimla Lok Sabha constituency) MLA Ramkumar Chawdhary. The MLA had repeatedly been approached by villagers from Manpura, Balyan, Buranwala, Upper and Lower Barer, Manjhotu, Barotiwala, Belikhol, Malpur, Bhatoli Kalan, Handakhundi and others.

Pathetic state of affairs

Devraj Chawdhary, former pradhan of Saned panchayat, cites the most recent case of a 7-year-old boy diagnosed with the brain tumor. He says soil and underground water has been contaminated by haphazard disposal of industrial effluents. Villagers dont use water purifiers. The groundwater level has drastically declined as industries continue to draw large amounts of it through bore-wells installed within factory compounds. The air at times gets thick with dust and smoke, says Devraj.

Villagers last year had taken up toxic water discharge from a battery unit at the local grievances committee meeting chaired by the MLA. The villagers had alleged that many cattle heads had died and the agricultural soil had been affected. State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) executive engineer Brij Bhushan inspected the units and issued them notices to comply with anti-pollution measures for optimal treatment of toxic-ridden effluent.

Early this year, the High Court converted the villagers complaint into a PIL and asked the state SPCB and others to respond. It is only now that the state government has cared to take a look at the IGMC survey in order to respond to the court.

Alarming findings

The IGMC report says most cancer patients from the dozen villages sought treatment at PGI Chandigarh. So, the state health authorities had no record of such patients. Since cancer is a hidden enemy and has a long latent period to manifest, experts were not able to link it to environmental contamination, though IGMC experts did interview the patients. They also saw the records of those who had died.

The survey details the number of cancer patients since 2011 (11 cases) for the dozen villages. It reported 19 cases in the following year. In 2013, the number of reported cases rose to 30. The count for the subsequent years was 24 and 28. In the first quarter (four months) of 2016, the figure was 19 cases.

The study had its limitations as records of merely 17 patients were available. The remaining cases were analyzed on the basis of statements of relatives.

The survey found the maximum number of 15.8% patients out of 82 identified since 1992 had oral and oropharyngeal (throat cancer) followed by 13% oesophageal, 9.7% larynx and 7.3% stomach-related.

The impact of environmental pollutants was not evaluated though experts expressed concern over the mushrooming of industries. They underlined the need to maintain a cancer registry for the area to detect the trend. They also recommended awareness activities about cancer so that the disease is detected early.

The report says the five-year prevalence for all types of cancer in the Saned panchayat was 206.6 per lakh population, which is almost akin to the national five-year prevalence for India: 202.9 per lakh population.

Govt sits pretty

The state government has not taken up any fresh, comprehensive study to assess the impact of environmental pollutants on the health of the locals. This is despite several warnings from previous studies underlining the presence of carcinogenic contents in the soil and water of the industrial belt.

Chief Medical Officer Dr RK Daroch accepts that the prevalence of cancer and other diseases is above-normal. I have written to the SPCB to study the situation.

An environmental study conducted by IIT Kanpur scientists in the area in 2014 had warned of a dangerous situation at 16 sites of the industrial belt. It noted higher-than-normal presence of carcinogen benzoapyrene (BaP found in coal tar, automobile exhaust fumes, etc.,) at five sites. So was the level of arsenic at some sites. The lead concentration in water also exceeded the safe limits as per the Bureau of Indian Standards in as many as 11 sites. The study also found Particulate Matter (PM) at a higher level than the National Ambient Air Quality (NAAQ) standards.

It recommended the following remedial measures:

Two round-the-clock automatic air quality stations in the Baddi-Nalagarh area with monitoring of all 12 pollutants, including benzene, toluene, xylene.

The SPCB lab at Parwanoo should be upgraded with sophisticated instruments.

Dr Manjit Singh Bal, professor pathology, MM Medical College & Hospital Kumarhatti (Solan) says since traces of carcinogens have exceeded the safe limits, these can be related to the spurt in cancer cases. Dr Bal was a professor and the head of pathology, Government Medical College, Patiala. He was also the co-principal investigator of population-based cancer registry in Punjab.

He says lead is a by-product in battery manufacturing units. So villagers living in the vicinity run a serious risk to their health. The 47 of the cancers (oesophagus: 11, lung: 9, larynx: 8, lips & oropharynx: 13 and stomach: 6) listed in the IGMC report fall under the category of tobacco-related cancers. Air pollution with dangerous elements in combination with tobacco smoke could be a cause of cancer in these cases, he says.
Shanghai, September 23

China said on Saturday it will ban exports of some petroleum products to North Korea, as well as imports of textiles from the isolated North, in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.

The announcement from Beijing came at the end of a week that saw tensions ratchet up between the United States and North Korea, with the leaders of both countries trading insults.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website that China would limit exports of refined petroleum products from October 1 and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately to comply with the latest U.N. sanctions.

Imports of textiles from North Korea would also be banned immediately, the statement said.

Textile trade contracts signed before September 11 would be respected if import formalities are completed before midnight on December 10, the statement said.

The moves follow the adoption of a unanimous UN Security Council agreement on sanctions after the isolated North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3.

That resolution imposed a ban on condensates and natural gas liquids, a cap of 2 million barrels a year on refined petroleum products and a cap on crude oil exports to North Korea at current levels.

Russia urged calm on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a "madman". Kim had called Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" a day earlier after Trump said Washington would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.

Trump announced new U.S. sanctions on Thursday that he said allows the targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said banks doing business in North Korea would not be allowed to operate in the United States.

China has also urged calm, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi telling his Japanese counterpart that Tokyo should not abandon dialogue over North Korea.

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several of them flying over Japan, as it accelerates a weapons programme aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies.

Reuters
Karachi, September 23

Pakistan said it conducted a successful test of the firing of an anti-ship missile from a Sea King helicopter in northern Arabian Sea on Saturday.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration, a press release issued by the navy said.

The anti-ship missile successfully hit its target.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

According to the navy spokesperson, Zakaullah said the successful firing demonstration was a testament to Pakistan Navys war preparedness and professional capabilities.

The naval chief also visited fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed exercises involving the naval fleet.

I am proud of Pakistan Navy fleets war preparations, Zakaullah was quoted as saying. IANS
BEIJING/SEOUL, September 23

A small earthquake near North Korea's nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not manmade, the nuclear proliferation watchdog and a South Korean official said, easing fears Pyongyang had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its last one.

Chinese earthquake officials said the magnitude 3.4 quake detected at 0829 GMT was a "suspected explosion" but both the CTBTO, which monitors nuclear tests, and a South Korean meteorological agency official said they believed it was a natural quake.

"A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a manmade earthquake," said the South Korean official, who asked for anonymity. "In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorising this as a natural earthquake." The earthquake, which South Korea put at magnitude 3.0, was detected in Kilju county in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea's known Punggyeri nuclear site is located, the official said.

All of North Korea's previous six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test on Sept 3 registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time. Satellite photos of the area after the September 3 quake showed numerous landslides apparently caused by the massive blast, which North Korea said was an advanced hydrogen bomb.

The head of the nuclear test monitoring agency CTBTO said on Saturday that analysts were "looking at unusual seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude" than the Sept 3 test in North Korea.

"Two #Seismic Events! 0829UTC & much smaller @ 0443UTC unlikely Man-made! Similar to "collapse" event 8.5 mins after DPRK6! Analysis ongoing," CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a Twitter post, referring to Sept 3 test.

Russias emergency ministry says background radiation in nearby Vladivostok was within the natural range.

Tensions high

The US Geological Survey said it could not conclusively confirm whether the quake, which it measured at magnitude 3.5, was manmade or natural.

"The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5 km by the seismologist," USGS said. "The Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) is the sole organisation in the US federal government whose mission is to detect and report technical data from foreign nuclear explosions." There was no immediate reaction from China's Foreign Ministry, but the news was widely reported by Chinese state media outlets and on social media.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of UN sanctions.

North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, currently in New York for a United Nations meeting, warned on Thursday that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific.

Ri is due to address the United Nations later on Saturday.

US President Donald Trump called the North Korean leader a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" who would face the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history".

North Korea's nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons programme.

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several of them flying over Japan, as it accelerates a weapons programme aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

While China has been angered by North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile tests and has signed up for the increasingly tough UN sanctions, it has also stressed the need to resume dialogue and for all sides to take steps to reduce tensions.

In a series of meetings this week at the United Nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has reiterated to various foreign counterparts that apart from sanctions, the resolutions also call for dialogue to resume and that this needs to happen.

Earlier on Saturday, China said it will limit exports of refined petroleum products from October 1 and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately to comply with the latest U.N. sanctions. It will also ban imports of textiles from North Korea.

The United States and South Korea are technically still at war with North Korea because the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.

The North accuses the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, of planning to invade and regularly threatens to destroy it and its Asian allies. Reuters
OWASSO  The Owasso Police Department will start implementing a new city ordinance next month to help reduce the number of false burglar alarms.

Starting Oct. 1, alarm users in Owasso will be required to register their security systems online and pay an annual registration fee of $30 for residential locations and $100 for businesses.

The existing ordinance, passed in 2007, outlines only basic standards for various types of security systems to cut down on bogus calls.

However, recent data show that 99 percent of alarm activations in Owasso are false and that their frequency has increased, causing Police Department budget and personnel concerns.

In the past two years, for example, police responded to more than 3,700 false alarms, more than 11 percent of Owassos total number of reactive calls for service. These calls equated to about 1,800 work hours at an estimated cost of $50,000 per year.

A false alarm, defined as an alert not triggered by a criminal event, is responded to just as any other alarm. They are considered priority status and take officers in the field away from nonemergency incidents, potentially resulting in unsolved problems and resident frustration.

Theres no criminal activity; theres sometimes either faulty equipment or human error or pets, said Police Chief Scott Chambless. Thats an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars to be taking our limited resources chasing calls that have no legitimacy at all.

Chambless said the new ordinance will serve as a best practice for improving this problem by creating accountability among alarm users as well as offsetting the costs associated with these calls.

All weve tried to do with these fees is recuperate enough money to pay for the management of the alarm program as well as recuperate some of our costs for responding to false alarms, he said. Theres no profit margin that weve been able to identify from this.

The new standard will operate on a fee-based system, as opposed to the current one, in which owners are issued fines for failing to register or for having an excess number of false alarms. Residents will be allowed two free false alarms per year, and businesses will be allowed three without penalty.

Chambless said Police Department staff conducted extensive research into how to reduce false alarms and modeled the best practices of registrations from other cities across the nation after seeing positive results from the study.

Roswell, New Mexico, claimed a 60 percent reduction, and Fayetteville, Arkansas, claimed a 44 percent reduction, he said. Their programs are similar to ours: registration required and fees for excessive alarms.

While registration enrollment opens on Oct. 1, the program does not take effect until Dec. 1. Alarm users have until then to register their systems at owassopolice.com before any penalty would be imposed.
An EMSA official said Friday that the agency will need to request an even bigger rate increase in Tulsa next year after the City Council recently shot down a proposed $400 hike.

Tulsa city councilors on Sept. 13 rejected a request by EMSA to increase the ambulance transport fee from $1,300 to $1,700, with some members citing concerns about the agencys spending practices.

EMSA Chief Financial Officer Kent Torrence said the agency will be OK financially this year as steps will be taken to defer some costs.

I have no qualms about getting through the year, Torrence said. Frankly, to continue to function next year, we will have to have a rate increase, or we just wont have the money to pay the bills.

However, instead of a $400 increase, Torrence said he expected the agency to have to request that the Tulsa City Council approve an ambulance transport fee increase of about $550.

Thats just where the numbers point, he said.

In large part, the recent rate increase request for EMSAs Eastern Division, which includes Tulsa, Bixby, Jenks and Sand Springs, was intended to cover the agencys legal defense in a federal kickbacks lawsuit.

The U.S. Attorneys Office in Sherman, Texas, announced in January that it had joined a whistleblowers lawsuit that alleges that EMSA and its president and CEO, Stephen Williamson, conspired with a former ambulance contractor to violate anti-kickback statutes and the federal False Claims Act.

The legal defense against that federal lawsuit and a similar lawsuit has already cost EMSA about $2 million in billings from five law firms.

EMSA officials said the rate increase was needed in the Eastern Division because Tulsa had tapped an EMSAcare utility fee fund for $6.6 million in recent years to help cover the citys own budget woes. No rate increase request was made for the Western Division, which is based in Oklahoma City.

Had the city of Tulsa not taken the $6.6 million for its own needs, a rate increase for Tulsa-area residents could have been forestalled until at least fiscal 2019, Torrence said.

Torrence also explained how the agency had built up an $11 million cash balance between its two divisions as of June 30.

Records show that as of June 30 the Eastern Division accounted for $2.9 million of the agencys available cash, with the Western Division having the remaining amount, about $8.1 million.

EMSA said a good portion of the cash balance is used each month to cover the approximately $4.5 million monthly payment to the ambulance contractor.

The Eastern Divisions share of the ambulance contract amounts to about $2 million each month.

So one week after the month end, the East (Division) would normally have to pay $2 million (in ambulance contract fees), so most of the cash, or a good percentage of the cash, is gone, Torrence said. And then throughout the rest of the month, we build that cash balance back up to something that approximates 3 million bucks.

In the Western Division, the $8.1 million cash balance as of June 30 was reduced by about $2.5 million about a week later for the ambulance contract fee, leaving about a $5.6 million cash balance.

Torrence said EMSA carries a larger cash balance in the Western Division at the request of Oklahoma City officials.

They have built their cash balance to a level that they want us to have to meet obligations, Torrence said. Because it gives them a cushion, No. 1 for any unexpected things that might interfere with cash flow, like legal fees and things like that.

A Tulsa city ordinance limits the amount of cash EMSA can request from the utility fund to no more than 10 percent of the operating and capital budget, Torrence said.

To make it through this year, EMSA is deferring some capital costs until next year, Torrence said.

We havent eliminated any costs; weve only deferred costs, so the same costs that are in our five-year forecast, now were going to have four years worth of rate increases to pay for them instead of five, Torrence said.

That why the $550 is needed next year versus the $400 that we asked for this year, Torrence said.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Gov. Mary Fallin on Friday said she will veto any legislative proposals in the upcoming special session that call for cuts to state agencies.

She also said she would not support sending a tobacco tax hike on to a vote of the people.

Fallin has issued an executive order calling lawmakers back into special session starting Monday to fix a $215 million state budget hole and to find money for a teacher pay increase. The hole was created after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled lawmakers did not follow the law last session when they passed a $1.50 cigarette tax as a fee.

Fallin said in a prepared statement on the upcoming session that sending a proposal to hike the cigarette tax to a vote of the people is not an option.

The earliest the issue could be decided by voters is June, the last month of the current fiscal year, the governor said. It doesnt fix the budget hole because it would not generate any revenue for this fiscal year.

House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, has said he will attempt to pass the tax hike on the floor of the House but needs the support of some Democrats.

I appreciate the governors desire to protect state agencies from further cuts, but, unfortunately, thats not realistic without using carryover cash and Rainy Day funds, which the governor has, so far, indicated an unwillingness to do, McCall said Friday in a prepared statement.

McCall also said he has no reason to believe House Democrats will support a tax increase.

Without the Democratic Caucus voting to increase the tobacco tax, it is, quite frankly, dead on arrival, he said.

McCall pointed out a tax increase would require a supermajority to pass but would only need 51 votes to move on to a vote of the people.

While approving it on the ballot would not help matters this fiscal year, the additional revenue certainly would help address long-term budget issues, McCall said. The House will vote to give Oklahomans this opportunity if the Democratic Caucus once again kills the tobacco tax in special session.

The bulk of the funds from the cigarette tax increase would go to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.

Lawmakers are considering cuts to other agencies to make up the funds the three agencies would lose.

Additional cuts to agencies will further harm state services, Fallin said. I will veto a proposal that calls for cuts to state agencies.

The governors special session call also includes addressing a long-term solution to the states continuing budget woes.

This special session is an opportunity for lawmakers to solve lingering, critical structural problems in our state budget, Fallin said. Many ideas have been fully vetted over the past couple of legislative sessions, so it really should be a matter of taking care of unfinished business.
State election officials have just learned that Russian hackers conducted a vulnerability scan of Oklahomas state computer network last year.

The information came by way of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which recently informed Congress that it had evidence that election-related systems in 21 states were targeted.

Bryan Dean, spokesman for the Oklahoma State Election Board, said Homeland Securitys call to State Election Board Secretary Paul Ziriax on Friday was the first indication of any attempted Russian infiltration here.

Homeland Security has informed us that Oklahoma was one of the states targeted by Russian actors trying to infiltrate election systems, Dean said. Before this, we were not aware of any attempts to get into our systems at all. This really didnt get that far.

Oklahoma officials were told of evidence that Russians conducted a surveillance scan looking for vulnerabilities in the states computer network, not the Oklahoma State Election Boards computer network.

No penetration was made into any system, and no further activity occurred, Dean said. There are literally hundreds of thousands of these (scans) every year. Every major company and government deals with those all the time.

Dean said one security advantage Oklahoma has is a centralized election system with centralized voter registration records and uniform voting machines, compared to states where voter registration and election equipment and methods vary from county to county.

We have state cybercommand that protects that, and there are a lot of security measures in place, Dean said. And were working on improving security further. Homeland Security is staying in contact with us. They have offered assistance to all states in looking at our systems to look at vulnerabilities and ways to improve security.
Annual Tulsa Together Service to be held Oct. 1

The Christian Ministers Alliances 24th annual Tulsa Together Service will be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 1 at Braden Park Baptist Church, 4739 E. Fifth St.

The purpose is to promote racial unity, said the Rev. W.R. Casey, president.

The Rev. Anthony Carpenter, from New Hope Baptist Church, will speak. He is also executive secretary of the Creek District Baptist Association.

Music will be by the Cherokee Baptist choir and choirs from New Hope Baptist Church, John Knox Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma Baptist University and St. Thomas More Catholic Church.

The service will be preceded at 5 p.m. by small group meetings to discuss the most segregated hour in America, 11 a.m. Sundays.

The Alliance is also organizing pulpit exchanges for Sunday morning services, in which pastors from a variety of ethnic traditions will speak at each others churches.

The Alliance holds regular meetings at 6 p.m. Saturdays at Harvest Time Outreach Ministries, 2333 E. 48th St. North.

For more information, call Casey at 918-951-7407.

Holy Trinity to open new community center

Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 1222 S. Guthrie Ave., will cut the ribbon on its new community center Saturday evening.

The evening will begin with 5:30 p.m. vespers, followed by the ribbon-cutting ceremony and dinner.

Attending will be Metropolitan Isaiah, who presides over the 14 states that make up the Metropolis of Denver in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

The churchs 57th annual Tulsa Greek Festival was postponed to Oct. 5-7 this year to accommodate construction of the center.

The new 9,500-square-foot facility includes a kitchen, banquet hall and youth activity center.

Tickets are $50. Call 918-607-0182 for more information.

Calendar

LEARNING

Workshop on Zen and Vietnamese Buddhism. Beginning with free 9 a.m. breakfast Sept. 23, Unity Center of Tulsa, 1830 S. Boston Ave. For more: unitytulsa.org.

The faith and values calendar offers groups an opportunity to publicize upcoming events. Items must be received in writing by 5 p.m. Tuesday for Saturday publication. Mail to Bill Sherman, World Faith and Values Writer, P.O. Box 1770, Tulsa, OK 74102; email bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com; or fax 918-581-8353.
In the 19th century, the Presbyterian Church in the eastern United States sent missionaries to the Lebanese capital of Beirut in the Middle East  and also to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Out of those missionary efforts came Tulsas oldest congregation, First Presbyterian Church downtown, and the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL), a group of three dozen Presbyterian churches in Syria and Lebanon.

The Revs. Ryan Moore, co-pastor of First Presbyterian, and Joseph Kassab, secretary general of NESSL, sat in Moores office in Tulsa this week and talked about the church in war-torn Syria.

Moore traveled to Lebanon and Syria recently, hosted by Kassab, as First Presbyterian steps up its effort to help the church there.

Kassab was born in Aleppo, Syria, and has lived in both Syria and Lebanon. He has seen firsthand the Lebanese civil war, from 1975 until 1989, and then the ongoing Syrian civil war, which has displaced millions of Syrians.

He was in the United States to thank churches that are helping in the Middle East. He spoke several times last weekend at First Presbyterian.

When Presbyterian missionaries arrived in Lebanon in the early 19th century, they found the ancient Christian church in that area in a bad situation, being persecuted under the Ottoman Empire, Kassab said.

In the following decades, Presbyterians were influential in the area, he said, including setting up networks of schools. They established the first girls school in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

Even before the current crisis, he said, Syrias secular, socialist government was tolerant of Christians, who made up 10 percent of the population. Christians were free to worship and to build houses of worship.

As long as you didnt interfere in politics, you could do what you want, Kassab said.

The Syrian civil war developed out of demonstrations following the Arab Spring.

The Syrian war is not a conflict between Christians and Muslims, Kassab said, but between radical Sunni Muslims and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam that Sunni Muslims view negatively.

The war would not have happened, he said, without an influx of radicals from other countries.

And radical Sunni Muslims fighting Assad took advantage of the regions poverty to stir people up.

The West needs to understand, Kassab said, that for radical Muslims, there is no separation between religion and government; Islamic law is divine law, from above  you dont discuss it. You just apply it.

He said Syrian Christians generally support the Assad government because under it they have freedom to worship, and under radical Islam they would not.

We all want reform, but we dont want to end up in an Islamic state, he said.

Assad is not the monster that western media has painted him to be, he said.

He is educated, a physician who studied in England, and is married to a highly educated woman.

They know what a modern state is supposed to be, Kassab said.

Assad has been accused of war crimes during the conflict, and Tuesday, in a speech before the United Nations, President Donald Trump called Assads government a criminal regime for its use of chemical weapons.

Moore said the situation in Syria is highly complex.

He said he was surprised on his visit there to find life going on as normal, people crowding into markets and worshipping in churches.

Freedom of worship exists in areas controlled by the Assad government, he said.

Theres so much good news, beautiful people, a church that is vigorous and alive.

Syrians approached him and thanked him for coming, saying they missed Americans and other westerners visiting their nation, Moore said.

Kassab said that the war has strengthened the church.

We are awakened to a new reality about what is our role. When you live in a peaceful country, it is easy to lose perspective, ... that this is a church for others, not a church for ourselves, not a club for insiders.

In the midst of suffering, we are better, he said.
Thanks to the approval of the Vision 2025 tax extension, ground was broken last week on the Air National Guard Training Center, making it the first economic development project backed by the tax to get underway.

The 20,000-square-foot center will house four state-of-the-art flight simulators that will provide realistic training for fighter pilots. In addition, the cockpits are made in Broken Arrow by L3 Technologies, which has been making flight simulators for several years. The 138th Fighter Wing, one of the most decorated and respected wings in the military, is the first unit in the country to use the cutting edge technology.

It will be a regional facility and bring pilots here from across the country The new center will employ 11 to 15 full-time employees, and gives future stability to more than 1,200 jobs at the Air National Guard. The facility, at 9100 E. 46th Street North, is expected to have an overall payroll and benefits of between $2 million and $3 million annually.

The center is a joint project of the federal, state and city governments. Vision will supply $9.4 million; the state will provide $608,000; and federal funds amount to $25 million, including F-16 Combat Air Force Simulators.

We are proud the men and women of the 138th Fighter Wing call Tulsa home, and we want to do our part to ensure they have all the tools they need to defend our country, said Mayor G.T. Bynum at the groundbreaking ceremony.

The Air National Guard has been stationed in Tulsa for decades. We remain pleased that the voters of Tulsa County saw fit to endorse the plans to improve the Guard, as well as help improve the fitness of the countrys fighting forces.

We look forward to many more years of a close relationship with the Air National Guard.
It is morning assembly at Treasures Richfield College, a small secondary school in Maiduguri, the dusty, the wind-blown capital of Borno State, in north-east Nigeria.

Even though early in the day, a baking hot sun is creating beads of sweat on the brows of excited students lined up in front of a modest wooden stage. Music blasts out of speakers to one side. The school has limited resources, but big ambitions. And today is a big day.

It is also a day 16-year-old Fannah Mohammed Ali once feared she would never see. She has just been named as the schools new head girl following a rigorous selection process. Five years ago, however, she almost had to abandon school.

I thought my schooling days were over for good. I lost hope.

My father was a soldier, so was my brother both were killed by Boko Haram, she told UNHCR, explaining her mother then had to support her and the rest of her family by selling charcoal and firewood. I thought my schooling days were over for good. I lost hope.

But a friend told her mother about Zannah Mustaphas Future Prowess Islamic Foundation School, created to look after orphans and other displaced and vulnerable children created by the insurgency, which has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Nansen Refugee Award winner's school builds peace and hope (Elma Okic, camera / Brian Kelsey, producer)

She was accepted. Since then she has never looked back. Today, her ambition is to become a doctor.

I can now think of tomorrow because of what he did for us.

Mustapha, who has been named as this years winner of UNHCRs Nansen Refugee Award, charges no school fees and provides uniforms and and food for his pupils. But most importantly for many, he gives them back hope.

I can now think of tomorrow because of what he did for us  after my fathers death I thought we would never see happiness again, but now here we are, Fanna said.

It has been a long journey for Fannah Mohammed Ali, 16, now head girl at Treasures Richfield College secondary school in Maiduguri, Borno.  UNHCR/Rahima Gambo

Zeinab Ibrahim, 16, is named prefect at morning assembly at Treasures Richfield College, the secondary school she can attend thanks to Mustapha.  UNHCR/Rahima Gambo

Zeinab Ibrahim, 16, and Fannah Mohammed Ali, 16, thought their education was over after Boko Haram violence almost ruined their lives.  UNHCR/Rahima Gambo

Zeinab Ibrahim, 16, Fannah Mohammed Ali, 16, in class with a friend Treasures Richfield College in Maiduguri, Borno State.  UNHCR/Rahima Gambo

Students gather for morning assembly at Treasures Richfield College, Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.  UNHCR/Rahima Gambo

Mustaphas Future Prowess Islamic Foundation is providing the fees for Fannah to attend Treasures Richfield. One of her best friends, Zeinab Ibrahim, who was also an orphan at Mustaphas school, also came to the secondary and has just been named a head prefect.

This is a good day, a happy day  but we owe everything to Mr. Mustapha and we will always see him as our father. He treated us all the same. He is such a good man.
Copperas Cove, TX (76522)

Today

Cloudy with occasional light rain throughout the day. High near 50F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. Low around 35F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Killeen, TX (76540)

Today

Cloudy with periods of light rain. High near 50F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 37F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph.


In celebration of the upcoming release, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Hard Rock is offering a Poppy Burger at select locations around the world including Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas Strip now through Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. The Poppy Burger is a dangerously delicious take on the man-made burger prepared by the motion pictures villain, Poppy, played by Julianne Moore (Photo credit: Hard Rock International).

As godson to Hard Rock Cafes co-founder, Peter Morton, you can certainly say that Ive always been a fan of the Hard Rock brand, said Matthew Vaughn, Film Director and Producer of the Kingsman Series. My first job was a bus boy in the Hard Rock Cafe and it is a brand that I will always love for the fond memories it gave me. I feel privileged they are now my partners.

While sinfully enjoyable, in no way is this burger made with Poppys preferred ingredients! Hard Rocks limited-time menu item begins with a juicy half-pound Certified Angus Beef burger, basted with a bourbon whiskey glaze and topped with pulled pork, melted cheddar cheese, garlic aioli, crisp lettuce and vine-ripened tomato. Served on a sesame seed bun with a side of Golden Circles (onion rings), this burger is sure to impress both food and movie critics!

Thanks to director, producer and long-time Hard Rock fan, Matthew Vaughn, Hard Rocks latest collaboration is one of our most exciting and we are honored to work with such an incredible film, said Stephen Judge, President of Cafe Operations at Hard Rock International. The limited-time Poppy Burger allows fans to take their love for the film to the next level, and is the perfect excuse for dinner and a movie.


Honoring the culture, lifestyle and art of the Samurai Warrior through centuries of Japanese history, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art (BGFA) will unveil its new exhibit, Samurai: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection, on November 3.

The exhibit includes more than 50 pieces of samurai armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller collection, and will feature full suits of armor, helmets, weapons, horse armor, masks and more. The exquisitely crafted pieces represent the evolution of the samurai warriors appearance and equipment spanning 600 years from the 14th-19th centuries. During this time period, Japanese society recognized the advancement of the samurai as a great honor: from archers and swordsmen to an elite class of warriors respected for their military skills, refinement and intellect.

Samurai: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection will feature objects that were used both for combat and ceremonial purposes. The pieces convey the complete story of the samurai, a part of the intellectual Japanese elite who not only fought in battle, but also practiced poetry and calligraphy.

With each of our exhibits, we look to curate compelling collections that combine elements of history and culture, allowing guests to not only view stunning art pieces, but also learn about the context and significance, said Tarissa Tiberti, executive director of art and culture for MGM Resorts International. The upcoming exhibit of Samurai: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection will embrace a vibrant Japanese art form so rich in tradition, history and creativity, unlike anything weve debuted before at Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art.

This exhibit encompasses the entirety of samurai history to allow the visitor to see the evolution of armor as warfare progresses from bows and arrows to swords and guns. Intricate pieces such as lacquered metal helmets adorned with crests, and delicate, detailed armor capable of protecting the samurai in brutal combat, will be on display. Inside the gallery, visitors will experience the masterful craftsmanship of each object and the historical context of the samurai as they walk through this historical epoch in Japanese culture.

It is the combination of art and armor, the boundless creativity of the objects forms, and the aesthetics used by these fierce and cultivated warriors that drew us in to assemble our collection, said Gabriel Barbier-Mueller.

BGFAs current exhibition, I Am The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, will close September 30 to make way for Samurai: Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection. The new exhibit will be on view November 3, 2017 through April 29, 2018.
FPTs turn at the age of 30

One day before its 29th birthday, FPT Corporation (coded FPT) signed an agreement with its strategic investor Synnex Technology International from the US to finalise the capital divestment plan in FPT Trading and reduce the ownership ratio to only 48 per cent.

Not long ago, the group also approved the plan to sell a 30-per-cent stake in FPT Retail to two large investment funds, VinaCapital and Dragon Capital, by the end of the year, minimising its ownership to 45 per cent.

The divestments in both companies are expected to be completed this year. Apart from bringing unexpected remarkable profit gains, the withdrawal also opened a new era for FPT: at the age of 30, FPT has dramatically transformed from a corporation with major sources of income generated by the wholesale and retail segment to a pure technology corporation with main sources of revenue being software business, technology development, and telecommunications services.

A pure technology group

Founded in 1988, the development strategy of FPT initially focused on software business, technology development, and telecommunications services.

Considering the characteristics of the groups operation process, despite being the largest technology corporation in Vietnam, more than half of FPTs total revenue comes from the distribution and retail segment, making it a group specialising in wholesale-retail.

Though recent divestments from the distribution and retail arms have reduced FPTs revenue as it is no longer merged with FPT Trading and FPT Retail, they signify a turning point for the group: FPT returns to its roots of a pure technology company.

Accordingly, FPTs revenue structure will change significantly, as 95 per cent of revenue now comes from the telecom and technology segments. These are also the two biggest contributors to FPTs long-term profit. This move has met the long-held expectations of shareholders and investors. The rest primarily comes from educational businesses, which are closely linked to software and human resource exports.

Profit margins are expected to double

According to the evaluations of certain securities companies, the biggest impact on FPT is that revenue may decline considerably from 2018. Also, there are factors that cannot be ignored, particularly performance indicators. These indexes are expected to significantly increase once they effectively reflect the true nature of a technology company.

Regarding the wholesale and retail sector, despite accounting for 60-70 per cent of FPTs total annual sales, its proportion in total profits only makes up about 20 per cent due to low profit margins. In 2016, this segment yielded a gross profit margin of about 14 per cent, less than half of the 35.5 per cent ratio for software outsourcing.

Before the divestments, the technology and telecom sector accounted for 41 per cent of the total revenue, but brought 76 per cent of FPTs total profit.

According to the calculations of securities companies, divestments from low margin areas, for example the distribution-retail segment, will help raise a more realistic profit margin, reflecting the true nature of a technology company.

FPTs pre-tax profit margin in 2016 Note: The profit margin excluded retail and distribution activities (DB-RT) based on the assumption that FPT will not consolidate all the revenues from these two segments, and consolidate their profits in proportion to the ownership ratio after divestments.

Breakthrough on horizon

Shortly after the groups decision to withdraw capital in FPT Retail and FPT Trading, a series of securities companies have published several reports analysing and assessing the prospects of FPT, unanimously coming to positive conclusions.

Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation (HSC), in its newly published report, has recommended investors to buy FPT shares at an expected price of VND60,000 ($2.64) in the short term and VND65,000 ($2.86) in the long term, which are in proportion with the profit margins of 25 and 35 per cent.

According to HSC, FPTs revenue may fall by 51 per cent in 2018 to about $1 billion, but the growth of pre-tax profit will remain positive. Motivation for growth comes from revenue and profit forecasts for software outsourcing and telecom services, which promise a growth rate of more than 20 per cent.

Similarly, Viet Capital Securities (VCSC) also predicted that divestments from FPTs distribution and retail businesses will allow the company to focus on technology development and telecommunications services, turning these two sectors into a new growth engine.

VCSC forecasts that the Japanese market will continue to be a major source of growth for FPTs software export activities in the future. Revenue from this market is forecast to grow by 30 per cent in 2017, thanks to continuous investments in manpower and increased workload. This sector is also expected to have the highest growth rate of nearly 18 per cent.

As the groups revenue and profit will now be generated largely by the business of technology-telecommunications and properly invested technology projects, investors and partners are looking forward to seeing a more visible image of FPT as an international technology group in the future.
South Koreas tourism organisation show that Vietnam is one of the nations key tourism markets with the highest growth rate in Asia of 20-49 per cent.

It will also provide free advertisements for Vietnamese tour companies organising tours for women customers and launch a tourism promotion campaign in Vietnamese for tourists.

The Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) in Vietnam is using the incentive including free advertising, to travel firms operating tours to beauty shops and shopping centres.

From September to December, the organisation will assist Vietnamese travel firms to offer special packages costing VND14 million (US$616) or more for tourists staying in South Korea for two days or longer.

Figures show that Vietnam is one of South Koreas key tourism markets with the highest growth rate in Asia - 20-49 per cent.

An estimated 234,000 Vietnamese visited Korea in the first nine months of this year, a 29.2 per cent year-on-year rise.
Dr Cuong and Fabrice Leguet at the signing ceremony

Accordingly, the first Stroke Hospital of the Mekong Delta region will be equipped with Siemens Healthineers advanced imaging diagnostic systems. SIS Can Tho plays a vital role in providing timely treatment for stroke patients, thus helping to reduce the risk of disability and death, as well as improving the delivery and coordination of care in acute stroke management.

Stroke cases have been on a rapid rise recently. One of the most common causes of death and disability across the globe, stroke can happen to anyone at any age and at any time.

Statistics show that there are an average of 200,000 stroke patients in Vietnam every year.

The mortality and disability rate is still high due to a variety of reasons, including hospitals limited endovascular intervention capacity and late hospitalisation. In particular, there are more than 10,000 cases of stroke in the Mekong Delta region, with higher rate of mortality and disability than big cities like Ho Chi Minh City.

Fueled by passion and dedication to lead Vietnamese and international doctors in reducing the mortality and disability ratios of stroke and cardiovascular patients, the construction of SIS Can Tho commenced on July 20, 2017 thanks to the ample support from the Can Tho Peoples Committee and local government management authorities.

In the first phase, the hospital will have 60 inpatient beds which will then increase to 150-200 in the next phase. Our aims are to provide CPU and stroke intervention for all Mekong Delta provinces with international standardised treatments, care, and facilities, said Tran Chi Cuong, president of the Interventional Neuroradiology Society of Ho Chi Minh City and medical director of SIS Can Tho. Moreover, SIS Can Tho shall also operate as an educational academy where congresses and international scientific workshops take place, providing in-depth training and education for all domestic and international hospitals in need.

Fabrice Leguet, general director of Siemens Healthcare in Vietnam, also emphasised that SIS Can Tho plays an important and meaningful role in providing high-quality healthcare services for the 17 million people living in the Mekong Delta, particularly in providing timely treatment for stroke and cardiovascular patients as well as education and training.

Siemens Healthineers announces CE-marked assay for Zika virus detection Siemens Healthineers, part of German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG, recently announced its CE-marked immunoassay - the Novagnost Zika Virus IgM -capture Assay- which is now commercially available to laboratories outside of the US.

Siemens Healthineers brings cutting-edge ultrasound system to Vietnam Siemens Healthineers, part of German industrial conglomerate Siemens AG, just introduced state-of-the art ultrasound system ACUSON NX2TM in the Vietnamese market at the first national ultrasound conference which was held at Hue Central Hospital last weekend.
Standard & Poor's downgrade of Hong Kong comes a day after its decision to lower China's rating on debt fears and follows a similar decision by Moody's this year. (Photo: AFP/Philippe Lopez)

Standard & Poor's downgrade of Hong Kong comes a day after its decision to lower China's rating on debt fears and follows a similar decision by Moody's this year. (Photo: AFP/Philippe Lopez)

S&P, which said the semi-autonomous city had "very strong institutional and political linkages" with China, slashed its rating to AA-plus from the highest AAA.

"We view a weakening of credit support for China as exerting a negative impact on the ratings on Hong Kong beyond what is implied by the territory's currently strong credit metrics," the agency said in a statement.

New York-based S&P on Thursday said a "prolonged period of strong credit growth has increased China's economic financial risks", and downgraded the world's number-two economy from AA-minus to A-plus - its first downgrade since 1999.

While the credit growth has fuelled China's economic expansion and high asset prices, "we believe it has also diminished financial stability to some extent", the agency said.

Debt-fuelled investment in infrastructure and real estate has underpinned China's growth for years, but Beijing has launched a crackdown amid fears of a potential financial crisis.

China posted better-than-expected second quarter growth as the economy expanded by 6.9 per cent, but analysts have warned that the momentum may not last.

Ratings agency Moody's downgraded China in May, the first time in almost three decades that the nation's credit rating was cut.

Moody's also slashed its rating for Hong Kong in the same month from Aa1 to Aa2 citing the impact of credit trends in China on the city.
Friday's attack on a train at Parsons Green station in west London was claimed by the Islamic State group AFP/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS

Friday's attack on a train at Parsons Green station in west London was claimed by the Islamic State group AFP/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS

Ahmed Hassan, 18, appeared in court on Friday on charges of attempted murder a week after the attack at Parsons Green station which injured 30 people a week ago.

Dressed in a grey jumper and white trousers, the teenager spoke only to confirm his name and address before prosecutor Lee Ingham briefly presented his case.

The device contained hundreds of grams of the explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the ingredients for which were bought from websites including Amazon, according to the prosecution.

"The initiation blast went off but that did not generate the TATP charge, probably due to inaccurate construction," Ingham told the court.

Placed in a plastic bag, the bomb had all the necessary components including a timer, as well metal shrapnel including knives and screws, the prosecutor said.

Hassan was arrested on Saturday after being recognised by an officer at the ferry port of Dover in southeast England.

Ingham told the court the suspect had a "warped political view" and "hatred for the UK government and society".

The teen has said his parents were killed in Iraq, the prosecutor said.

Hassan is believed to have lived with British foster parents in the London suburb of Sunbury.

The house was one of several addresses searched by police after the attack.

The explosion at Parsons Green station in south-west London, was Britain's fifth terror attack in six months, and was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Two other men aged 25 and 30 remain in custody in connection with the attack.

A 17-year-old boy and two men, aged 21 and 48, have been released with no further action.
A photo illustration shows the Uber app on a mobile telephone, as it is held up for a posed photograph in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. Photo source: REUTERS/Toby Melville/Files

The capital's transport regulator said the Silicon Valley technology giant's approach and conduct was not fit and proper to hold a private vehicle hire licence and it would not be renewed when it expires on Sept. 30.

Uber, which has 40,000 drivers working in the capital, said it would contest the decision. Regulator Transport for London (TfL) said it would let Uber operate until the appeals process is exhausted, which could take months.

"Uber's approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications," TfL said.

Specifically, TfL cited Uber's approach to reporting serious criminal offences, background checks on drivers and software called Greyball that could be used to block regulators from gaining full access to the app.

Uber London General Manager Tom Elvidge made a combative response, saying the mayor, who supported the decision, and regulators had "caved in" to people who want to restrict consumer choice. He added that Uber would "immediately challenge" the decision in court.

New Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, brought in to steer the company after a string of scandals involving allegations of sexism and bullying, later appealed to the city on Twitter with a self-deprecating style highly unusual for the aggressive ride service.

"Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w/us to make things right," Khosrowshahi wrote in a tweet.

Uber has turned to users to defend itself in other battles around the world, and an online petition in support of Uber had gathered more than 390,000 signatures by evening in London.

'SAFETY THREAT'

The loss of the San Francisco-based start-up's licence comes after a tumultuous few months that led to former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out.

Uber, which is valued at about US$70 billion and whose investors include Goldman Sachs , has faced protests around the world for shaking up long-established taxi markets.

The taxi app has also been forced to quit several countries, including Denmark and Hungary, and faced regulatory battles in multiple U.S. states and around the world.

The company's UberX offers rides in London by individuals with licenses issued by TfL, often in drivers' personal cars.

London's traditional black cab drivers have attacked Uber, saying it has undercut safety rules and threatened their livelihoods. Uber has been criticised by unions and lawmakers too and been embroiled in legal battles over workers' rights.

London police also complained in a letter in April that Uber was either not disclosing, or taking too long to report, serious crimes including sexual assaults and this put the public at risk.

Of the 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault made to police in London between February 2015 and February 2016 in which the suspect was a taxi driver, 32 concerned Uber, according to the capital's police force.

Uber said on Friday its drivers passed the same rigorous checks as black cab drivers, it has always followed TfL's rules on reporting serious incidents and it had a dedicated team that worked closely with London's police.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Labour politician who has criticised Uber in the past, said he backed the decision to reject its application for a new licence.

"It would be wrong if TfL continued to licence Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety and security," he said.

HATED BY CABBIES LOVED BY USERS

Drivers of London's black cabs, who have snarled up the city's streets in protest at the app over the last few years, welcomed Friday's decision.

"Their standards are not up to scratch," said 71-year-old Walt Burrows, who has driven a black cab for 39 years. "The black cab is an iconic part of London. What you get with a black cab is a metered fare and you know you're safe."

Uber is likely to come under more fire next week when it appears in court to appeal a verdict that granted two of its drivers rights such as the minimum wage, the latest "gig economy" battle between firms lauding the flexibility enjoyed by self-employed drivers and unions accusing them of exploitation.

Uber has, however, announced a series of changes over the last few months to improve conditions for its drivers, including the introduction of in-app tipping and plans to increase some fees.

Alongside Uber's drivers, some of London's 3.5 million registered users expressed concern as to how TfL's decision would affect their lives.

"It will definitely impact my life," said 43-year-old event planner Rimi Char, who uses the app at least once a week. "I have got used to the ease and cost effectiveness of using Uber and I've always had positive experiences."

One of Uber's British competitors in London, Addison Lee, is also awaiting a decision from TfL about a longer-term licence. The company declined to comment on Friday.
Chief Fire Officer Zebalon McLean and his officers clean up the Fire Department headquarters in Road Town on Thursday afternoon. The building lost its roof during Hurricane Irma and took in lots of water during Hurricane Maria.
A Cayman Islands police officer keeps guard at the Ashley Building in Road Town as people line up to go to Scotia Bank on Thursday.
The members of the Security Council expressed concern over the potentially destabilizing impact of the Kurdistan Regional Governments plans to unilaterally hold a referendum next week.

Council members note that the planned referendum is scheduled to be held while counter-Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) operations  in which Kurdish forces have played a critical role  are ongoing, and could detract from efforts to ensure the safe, voluntary return of over 3 million refugees and internally displaced persons.

Council members expressed their continuing respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity of Iraq and urged all outstanding issues between the federal Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government to be resolved, in accordance with the provisions of the Iraqi Constitution, through structured dialogue and compromise supported by the international community. Council members expressed full support for United Nations efforts to facilitate dialogue between Iraqi stakeholders.
Its good to be here in this great city of Florence today at a critical time in the evolution of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

It was here, more than anywhere else, that the Renaissance began  a period of history that inspired centuries of creativity and critical thought across our continent and which in many ways defined what it meant to be European.

A period of history whose example shaped the modern world. A period of history that teaches us that when we come together in a spirit of ambition and innovation, we have it within ourselves to do great things.

That shows us that if we open our minds to new thinking and new possibilities, we can forge a better, brighter future for all our peoples.

And that is what I want to focus on today. For we are moving through a new and critical period in the history of the United Kingdoms relationship with the European Union.

The British people have decided to leave the EU; and to be a global, free-trading nation, able to chart our own way in the world.

For many, this is an exciting time, full of promise; for others it is a worrying one.

I look ahead with optimism, believing that if we use this moment to change not just our relationship with Europe, but also the way we do things at home, this will be a defining moment in the history of our nation.

And it is an exciting time for many in Europe too. The European Union is beginning a new chapter in the story of its development. Just last week, President Juncker set out his ambitions for the future of the European Union.

There is a vibrant debate going on about the shape of the EUs institutions and the direction of the Union in the years ahead. We dont want to stand in the way of that.

Indeed, we want to be your strongest friend and partner as the EU, and the UK thrive side by side.

Shared challenges

And that partnership is important. For as we look ahead, we see shared challenges and opportunities in common.

Here in Italy today, our two countries are working together to tackle some of the greatest challenges of our time; challenges where all too often geography has put Italy on the frontline.

As I speak, Britains Royal Navy, National Crime Agency and Border Force are working alongside their Italian partners to save lives in the Mediterranean and crack down on the evil traffickers who are exploiting desperate men, women and children who seek a better life.

Our two countries are also working together in the fight against terrorism  from our positions at the forefront of the international coalition against Daesh to our work to disrupt the networks terrorist groups use to finance their operations and recruit to their ranks.

And earlier this week, I was delighted that Prime Minister Gentiloni was able to join President Macron and myself in convening the first ever UN summit of government and industry to move further and faster in preventing terrorist use of the Internet.

Mass migration and terrorism are but two examples of the challenges to our shared European interests and values that we can only solve in partnership.

The weakening growth of global trade; the loss of popular support for the forces of liberalism and free trade that is driving moves towards protectionism; the threat of climate change depleting and degrading the planet we leave for future generations; and most recently, the outrageous proliferation of nuclear weapons by North Korea with a threat to use them.

Here on our own continent, we see territorial aggression to the east; and from the South threats from instability and civil war; terrorism, crime and other challenges which respect no borders.

The only way for us to respond to this vast array of challenges is for likeminded nations and peoples to come together and defend the international order that we have worked so hard to create  and the values of liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law by which we stand.

Britain has always  and will always  stand with its friends and allies in defence of these values.

Our decision to leave the European Union is in no way a repudiation of this longstanding commitment. We may be leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe.

Our resolve to draw on the full weight of our military, intelligence, diplomatic and development resources to lead international action, with our partners, on the issues that affect the security and prosperity of our peoples is unchanged.

Our commitment to the defence - and indeed the advance - of our shared values is undimmed.

Our determination to defend the stability, security and prosperity of our European neighbours and friends remains steadfast.

The decision of the British people

And we will do all this as a sovereign nation in which the British people are in control.

Their decision to leave the institution of the European Union was an expression of that desire - a statement about how they want their democracy to work.

They want more direct control of decisions that affect their daily lives; and that means those decisions being made in Britain by people directly accountable to them.

The strength of feeling that the British people have about this need for control and the direct accountability of their politicians is one reason why, throughout its membership, the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home being in the European Union.

And perhaps because of our history and geography, the European Union never felt to us like an integral part of our national story in the way it does to so many elsewhere in Europe.

It is a matter of choices. The profound pooling of sovereignty that is a crucial feature of the European Union permits unprecedentedly deep cooperation, which brings benefits.

But it also means that when countries are in the minority they must sometimes accept decisions they do not want, even affecting domestic matters with no market implications beyond their borders. And when such decisions are taken, they can be very hard to change.

So the British electorate made a choice. They chose the power of domestic democratic control over pooling that control, strengthening the role of the UK Parliament and the devolved Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies in deciding our laws.

That is our choice. It does not mean we are no longer a proud member of the family of European nations. And it does not mean we are turning our back on Europe; or worse that we do not wish the EU to succeed. The success of the EU is profoundly in our national interest and that of the wider world.

But having made this choice, the question now is whether we  the leaders of Britain, and of the EUs Member States and institutions  can demonstrate that creativity, that innovation, that ambition that we need to shape a new partnership to the benefit of all our people.

I believe we must. And I believe we can.

For while the UKs departure from the EU is inevitably a difficult process, it is in all of our interests for our negotiations to succeed. If we were to fail, or be divided, the only beneficiaries would be those who reject our values and oppose our interests.

So I believe we share a profound sense of responsibility to make this change work smoothly and sensibly, not just for people today but for the next generation who will inherit the world we leave them.

The eyes of the world are on us, but if we can be imaginative and creative about the way we establish this new relationship, if we can proceed on the basis of trust in each other, I believe we can be optimistic about the future we can build for the United Kingdom and for the European Union.

Negotiations

In my speech at Lancaster House earlier this year, I set out the UKs negotiating objectives.

Those still stand today. Since that speech and the triggering of Article 50 in March, the UK has published 14 papers to address the current issues in the talks and set out the building blocks of the relationship we would like to see with the EU, both as we leave, and into the future.

We have now conducted three rounds of negotiations. And while, at times, these negotiations have been tough, it is clear that, thanks to the professionalism and diligence of David Davis and Michel Barnier, we have made concrete progress on many important issues.

For example, we have recognised from the outset there are unique issues to consider when it comes to Northern Ireland.

The UK government, the Irish government and the EU as a whole have been clear that through the process of our withdrawal we will protect progress made in Northern Ireland over recent years  and the lives and livelihoods that depend on this progress.

As part of this, we and the EU have committed to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area and, looking ahead, we have both stated explicitly that we will not accept any physical infrastructure at the border.

We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland  and indeed to everyone on the island of Ireland - to see through these commitments.

We have also made significant progress on how we look after European nationals living in the UK and British nationals living in the 27 Member States of the EU.

I know this whole process has been a cause of great worry and anxiety for them and their loved ones.

But I want to repeat to the 600,000 Italians in the UK  and indeed to all EU citizens who have made their lives in our country  that we want you to stay; we value you; and we thank you for your contribution to our national life  and it has been, and remains, one of my first goals in this negotiation to ensure that you can carry on living your lives as before.

I am clear that the guarantee I am giving on your rights is real. And I doubt anyone with real experience of the UK would doubt the independence of our courts or of the rigour with which they will uphold peoples legal rights.

But I know there are concerns that over time the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens overseas will diverge. I want to incorporate our agreement fully into UK law and make sure the UK courts can refer directly to it.

Where there is uncertainty around underlying EU law, I want the UK courts to be able to take into account the judgments of the European Court of Justice with a view to ensuring consistent interpretation. On this basis, I hope our teams can reach firm agreement quickly.

Shared future

At the moment, the negotiations are focused on the arrangements for the UKs withdrawal from the EU. But we need to move on to talk about our future relationship.

Of course, we recognise that we cant leave the EU and have everything stay the same. Life for us will be different.

But what we do want  and what we hope that you, our European friends, want too  is to stay as partners who carry on working together for our mutual benefit.

In short, we want to work hand in hand with the European Union, rather than as part of the European Union.

That is why in my speech at Lancaster House I said that the United Kingdom would seek to secure a new, deep and special partnership with the European Union.

And this should span both a new economic relationship and a new relationship on security.

So let me set out what each of these relationships could look like  before turning to the question of how we get there.

Economic partnership

Let me start with the economic partnership.

The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. We will no longer be members of its single market or its customs union. For we understand that the single markets four freedoms are indivisible for our European friends.

We recognise that the single market is built on a balance of rights and obligations. And we do not pretend that you can have all the benefits of membership of the single market without its obligations.

So our task is to find a new framework that allows for a close economic partnership but holds those rights and obligations in a new and different balance.

But as we work out together how to do so, we do not start with a blank sheet of paper, like other external partners negotiating a free trade deal from scratch have done.

In fact, we start from an unprecedented position. For we have the same rules and regulations as the EU - and our EU Withdrawal Bill will ensure they are carried over into our domestic law at the moment we leave the EU.

So the question for us now in building a new economic partnership is not how we bring our rules and regulations closer together, but what we do when one of us wants to make changes.

One way of approaching this question is to put forward a stark and unimaginative choice between two models: either something based on European Economic Area membership; or a traditional Free Trade Agreement, such as that the EU has recently negotiated with Canada.

I dont believe either of these options would be best for the UK or best for the European Union.

European Economic Area membership would mean the UK having to adopt at home - automatically and in their entirety - new EU rules. Rules over which, in future, we will have little influence and no vote.

Such a loss of democratic control could not work for the British people. I fear it would inevitably lead to friction and then a damaging re-opening of the nature of our relationship in the near future: the very last thing that anyone on either side of the Channel wants.

As for a Canadian style free trade agreement, we should recognise that this is the most advanced free trade agreement the EU has yet concluded and a breakthrough in trade between Canada and the EU.

But compared with what exists between Britain and the EU today, it would nevertheless represent such a restriction on our mutual market access that it would benefit neither of our economies.

Not only that, it would start from the false premise that there is no pre-existing regulatory relationship between us. And precedent suggests that it could take years to negotiate.

We can do so much better than this.

As I said at Lancaster House, let us not seek merely to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. Instead let us be creative as well as practical in designing an ambitious economic partnership which respects the freedoms and principles of the EU, and the wishes of the British people.

I believe there are good reasons for this level of optimism and ambition.

First of all, the UK is the EUs largest trading partner, one of the largest economies in the world, and a market of considerable importance for many businesses and jobs across the continent. And the EU is our largest trading partner, so it is in all our interests to find a creative solution.

The European Union has shown in the past that creative arrangements can be agreed in other areas. For example, it has developed a diverse array of arrangements with neighbouring countries outside the EU, both in economic relations and in justice and home affairs.

Furthermore, we share the same set of fundamental beliefs; a belief in free trade, rigorous and fair competition, strong consumer rights, and that trying to beat other countries industries by unfairly subsidising ones own is a serious mistake.

So there is no need to impose tariffs where we have none now, and I dont think anyone sensible is contemplating this.

And as we have set out in a future partnership paper, when it comes to trade in goods, we will do everything we can to avoid friction at the border. But of course the regulatory issues are crucial.

We share a commitment to high regulatory standards.

People in Britain do not want shoddy goods, shoddy services, a poor environment or exploitative working practices and I can never imagine them thinking those things to be acceptable.

The government I lead is committed not only to protecting high standards, but strengthening them.

So I am optimistic about what we can achieve by finding a creative solution to a new economic relationship that can support prosperity for all our peoples.

Now in any trading relationship, both sides have to agree on a set of rules which govern how each side behaves.

So we will need to discuss with our European partners new ways of managing our interdependence and our differences, in the context of our shared values.

There will be areas of policy and regulation which are outside the scope of our trade and economic relations where this should be straightforward.

There will be areas which do affect our economic relations where we and our European friends may have different goals; or where we share the same goals but want to achieve them through different means.

And there will be areas where we want to achieve the same goals in the same ways, because it makes sense for our economies.

And because rights and obligations must be held in balance, the decisions we both take will have consequences for the UKs access to European markets and vice versa.

To make this partnership work, because disagreements inevitably arise, we will need a strong and appropriate dispute resolution mechanism.

It is, of course, vital that any agreement reached  its specific terms and the principles on which it is based  are interpreted in the same way by the European Union and the United Kingdom and we want to discuss how we do that.

This could not mean the European Court of Justice  or indeed UK courts - being the arbiter of disputes about the implementation of the agreement between the UK and the EU however.

It wouldnt be right for one partys court to have jurisdiction over the other. But I am confident we can find an appropriate mechanism for resolving disputes.

So this new economic partnership, would be comprehensive and ambitious. It would be underpinned by high standards, and a practical approach to regulation that enables us to continue to work together in bringing shared prosperity to our peoples for generations to come.

Security relationship

Let me turn to the new security relationship that we want to see.

To keep our people safe and to secure our values and interests, I believe it is essential that, although the UK is leaving the EU, the quality of our cooperation on security is maintained.

We believe we should be as open-minded as possible about how we continue to work together on what can be life and death matters.

Our security co-operation is not just vital because our people face the same threats, but also because we share a deep, historic belief in the same values  the values of peace, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Of course, there is no pre-existing model for co-operation between the EU and external partners which replicates the full scale and depth of the collaboration that currently exists between the EU and the UK on security, law enforcement and criminal justice.

But as the threats we face evolve faster than ever, I believe it is vital that we work together to design new, dynamic arrangements that go beyond the existing arrangements that the EU has in this area - and draw on the legal models the EU has previously used to structure co-operation with external partners in other fields such as trade.

So we are proposing a bold new strategic agreement that provides a comprehensive framework for future security, law enforcement and criminal justice co-operation: a treaty between the UK and the EU.

This would complement the extensive and mature bi-lateral relationships that we already have with European friends to promote our common security.

Our ambition would be to build a model that is underpinned by our shared principles, including high standards of data protection and human rights.

It would be kept sufficiently versatile and dynamic to respond to the ever-evolving threats that we face. And it would create an ongoing dialogue in which law enforcement and criminal justice priorities can be shared and  where appropriate  tackled jointly.

We are also proposing a far reaching partnership on how we protect Europe together from the threats we face in the world today; how we work together to promote our shared values and interests abroad; whether security, spreading the rule of law, dealing with emerging threats, handling the migration crisis or helping countries out of poverty.

The United Kingdom has outstanding capabilities. We have the biggest defence budget in Europe, and one of the largest development budgets in the world. We have a far-reaching diplomatic network, and world class security, intelligence and law enforcement services.

So what we are offering will be unprecedented in its breadth, taking in cooperation on diplomacy, defence and security, and development.

And it will be unprecedented in its depth, in terms of the degree of engagement that we would aim to deliver.

It is our ambition to work as closely as possible together with the EU, protecting our people, promoting our values and ensuring the future security of our continent.

The United Kingdom is unconditionally committed to maintaining Europes security. And the UK will continue to offer aid and assistance to EU member states that are the victims of armed aggression, terrorism and natural or manmade disasters.

Taken as a whole, this bold new security partnership will not only reflect our history and the practical benefits of co-operation in tackling shared threats, but also demonstrate the UKs genuine commitment to promoting our shared values across the world and to maintaining a secure and prosperous Europe.

Implementation

That is the partnership I want Britain and the European Union to have in the future.

None of its goals should be controversial. Everything I have said is about creating a long-term relationship through which the nations of the European Union and the United Kingdom can work together for the mutual benefit of all our people.

If we adopt this vision of a deep and special partnership, the question is then how we get there: how we build a bridge from where we are now to where we want to be.

The United Kingdom will cease to be a member of the European Union on 29th March 2019.

We will no longer sit at the European Council table or in the Council of Ministers, and we will no longer have Members of the European Parliament.

Our relations with countries outside the EU can be developed in new ways, including through our own trade negotiations, because we will no longer be an EU country, and we will no longer directly benefit from the EUs future trade negotiations.

But the fact is that, at that point, neither the UK - nor the EU and its Members States - will be in a position to implement smoothly many of the detailed arrangements that will underpin this new relationship we seek.

Neither is the European Union legally able to conclude an agreement with the UK as an external partner while it is itself still part of the European Union.

And such an agreement on the future partnership will require the appropriate legal ratification, which would take time.

It is also the case that people and businesses  both in the UK and in the EU  would benefit from a period to adjust to the new arrangements in a smooth and orderly way.

As I said in my speech at Lancaster House a period of implementation would be in our mutual interest. That is why I am proposing that there should be such a period after the UK leaves the EU.

Clearly people, businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU.

So during the implementation period access to one anothers markets should continue on current terms and Britain also should continue to take part in existing security measures. And I know businesses, in particular, would welcome the certainty this would provide.

The framework for this strictly time-limited period, which can be agreed under Article 50, would be the existing structure of EU rules and regulations.

How long the period is should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin that future partnership.

For example, it will take time to put in place the new immigration system required to re-take control of the UKs borders.

So during the implementation period, people will continue to be able to come and live and work in the UK; but there will be a registration system  an essential preparation for the new regime.

As of today, these considerations point to an implementation period of around two years.

But because I dont believe that either the EU or the British people will want the UK to stay longer in the existing structures than is necessary, we could also agree to bring forward aspects of that future framework such as new dispute resolution mechanisms more quickly if this can be done smoothly.

It is clear that what would be most helpful to people and businesses on both sides, who want this process to be smooth and orderly, is for us to agree the detailed arrangements for this implementation period as early as possible. Although we recognise that the EU institutions will need to adopt a formal position.

And at the heart of these arrangements, there should be a clear double lock: a guarantee that there will be a period of implementation giving businesses and people alike the certainty that they will be able to prepare for the change; and a guarantee that this implementation period will be time-limited, giving everyone the certainty that this will not go on for ever.

These arrangements will create valuable certainty.

But in this context I am conscious that our departure causes another type of uncertainty for the remaining member states and their taxpayers over the EU budget.

Some of the claims made on this issue are exaggerated and unhelpful and we can only resolve this as part of the settlement of all the issues I have been talking about today.

Still I do not want our partners to fear that they will need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan as a result of our decision to leave. The UK will honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership.

And as we move forwards, we will also want to continue working together in ways that promote the long-term economic development of our continent.

This includes continuing to take part in those specific policies and programmes which are greatly to the UK and the EUs joint advantage, such as those that promote science, education and culture  and those that promote our mutual security.

And as I set out in my speech at Lancaster House, in doing so, we would want to make an ongoing contribution to cover our fair share of the costs involved.

Conclusion

When I gave my speech at the beginning of this year I spoke not just about the preparations we were making for a successful negotiation but also about our preparations for our life outside the European Union  with or without what I hope will be a successful deal.

And the necessary work continues on all these fronts so that we are able to meet any eventual outcome.

But as we meet here today, in this city of creativity and rebirth, let us open our minds to the possible.

To a new era of cooperation and partnership between the United Kingdom and the European Union. And to a stronger, fairer, more prosperous future for us all.

For that is the prize if we get this negotiation right.

A sovereign United Kingdom and a confident European Union, both free to chart their own course.

A new partnership of values and interests.

A new alliance that can stand strongly together in the world.

That is the goal towards which we must work in the months ahead as the relationship between Britain and Europe evolves.

However it does so, I am clear that Britains future is bright.

Our fundamentals are strong: a legal system respected around the world; a keen openness to foreign investment; an enthusiasm for innovation; an ease of doing business; some of the best universities and researchers you can find anywhere; an exceptional national talent for creativity and an indomitable spirit.

It is our fundamental strengths that really determine a countrys success and that is why Britains economy will always be strong.

There are other reasons why our future should give us confidence. We will always be a champion of economic openness; we will always be a country whose pitch to the world is high standards at home.

When we differ from the EU in our regulatory choices, it wont be to try and attain an unfair competitive advantage, it will be because we want rules that are right for Britains particular situation.

The best way for us both to succeed is to fulfil the potential of the partnership I have set out today.

For we should be in no doubt, that if our collective endeavours in these negotiations were to prove insufficient to reach an agreement, it would be a failure in the eyes of history and a damaging blow to the future of our continent.

Indeed, I believe the difference between where we would all be if we fail  and where we could be if we can achieve the kind of new partnership I have set out today  to be so great that it is beholden on all of us involved to demonstrate the leadership and flexibility needed to ensure that we succeed.

Yes, the negotiations to get there will be difficult. But if we approach them in the right way  respectful of the challenges for both sides and pragmatic about resolving them  we can find a way forward that makes a success of this for all of our peoples.

I recognise that this is not something that you  our European partners  wanted to do. It is a distraction from what you want to get on with. But we have to get this right.

And we both want to get this done as swiftly as possible.

So it is up to leaders to set the tone.

And the tone I want to set is one of partnership and friendship.

A tone of trust, the cornerstone of any relationship.

For if we get the spirit of this negotiation right; if we get the spirit of this partnership right, then at the end of this process we will find that we are able to resolve the issues where we disagree respectfully and quickly.

And if we can do that, then when this chapter of our European history is written, it will be remembered not for the differences we faced but for the vision we showed; not for the challenges we endured but for the creativity we used to overcome them; not for a relationship that ended but a new partnership that began.

A partnership of interests, a partnership of values; a partnership of ambition for a shared future: the UK and the EU side by side delivering prosperity and opportunity for all our people.

This is the future within our grasp  so, together, let us seize it.
Excellencies and

Distinguished guests,

Last year, when I addressed the United Nations General Assembly as the

representative of the newly established government of Myanmar, I reaffirmed our faith and

confidence in the purpose and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. It is in this

enduring belief in the capacity of nations to unite to build a more peaceful and prosperous

world, a kinder and more compassionate home for all mankind, that we wish to share with

members of the international community, the challenges that our country is now facing and the

steps that we are taking to overcome them. This year, as I shall not be able to travel to New

York for the United Nations General Assembly, I have arranged this diplomatic briefing.

When our people voted for the National League for Democracy in the elections of

2015, they in fact entrusted to us, the task of carrying out three responsibilities: democratic

transition, peace and stability, and development. None of these challenges are either easy or

simple. Transition for us is a transition to democracy after half a century or more of

authoritarian rule, and now we are in the process of nurturing our nascent and yet imperfect

democracy.

Peace and stability was something that we had to achieve after nearly seventy years of

internal conflict that started on the day of our independence back in 1948. And development

has to be achieved within the context of the first two  nurturing democratic values,

establishing peace and stability, and achieving the kind of sustainable development that would

be seen as equitable by all our peoples.

Burma is a complex nation as all of you know, and its complexities are compounded by

the fact that people expect us to overcome all of these challenges in as short a time as possible.

I think it is only fitting that I should remind you today that our government has not yet

been in power for even eighteen months. It will be eighteen months at the end of this month.

Eighteen months is a very short time in which to expect us to meet and overcome all of the

challenges that we have been expected to do.

This does not mean that we are not ready to go on with our task of overcoming these

challenges. Because I believe in the community of nations, I am prepared to share with all our

friends who wish us well and who understand our problems and sympathise with us, what we

have been doing to achieve democratic transition, peace and stability, and development.

I am aware of the fact that the worlds attention is focused on the situation in Rakhine

State. As I said at the General Assembly last year, as a responsible member of the community

of nations, Myanmar does not fear international scrutiny and we are committed to a

sustainable solution that would lead to peace, stability and development for all communities

within that State. I then went on last year to give a brief outline of our plans to achieve this

end.

Unhappily, on 9 October 2016, eighteen days after the delivery of my address at the

General Assembly, three police outposts were attacked by armed Muslim groups. There were

further attacks on 11 October and 12 November and these clashes resulted in loss of lives,

injuries, burning of villages and the displacement of peoples in the affected areas. Many

Muslims fled to Bangladesh.

Since then, the government has been making every effort to restore peace and stability

and to promote harmony between the Muslim and Rakhine communities. Even before these

outbreaks took place, we had established a Central Committee for rule of law and development

in the Rakhine and invited Dr. Kofi Annan to lead a Commission that would help us to resolve

the longstanding problems of that State. But, in spite of all these efforts, we were not able to

prevent the conflicts from taking place. Still, throughout the last year, we have continued with

our programme of development and the establishment of peace and harmony.

After several months of seemingly quiet and peace, on 25 August, thirty police

outposts, as well as the Regimental Headquarters in Taungthazar village, were attacked by

armed groups. Consequent to these attacks, the government declared the ArakanRohingya

Salvation Army and its supporters responsible for acts of terrorism, as a terrorist group in

accordance with the Counter-Terrorism Law, section 6, subsection 5.

There has been much concern around the world with regard to the situation in Rakhine.

It is not the intention of the Myanmar government to apportion blame or to abnegate

responsibility. We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence. We are

committed to the restoration of peace, stability and rule of law, throughout the State.The

security forces have been instructed to adhere strictly to the Code of Conduct in carrying out

security operations, to exercise all due restraint, and to take full measures to avoid collateral

damage and the harming of innocent civilians.Human rights violations and all other acts that

impair stability and harmony and undermine the rule of law will be addressed in accordance

with strict norms of justice.

We feel deeply for the suffering of all the people who have been caught up in the

conflict. Those who have had to flee their homes are many  not just Muslims and Rakhines,

but also small minority groups, such as the Daing-net, Mro, Thet, Mramagyi and Hindus of

whose presence most of the world is totally unaware.

Humanitarian assistance was provided to displaced communities by a team led by the

Minister of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement from 27 August 2017 onwards. Details of

humanitarian assistance programmes will be made available to all of our guests in due course.

The final report of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State chaired by Dr Kofi

Annan, was made public on 25 August,in fact, the very day on which the last round of attacks

took place. We are determined to implement the recommendations of the Commission. Those

recommendations that will bring speedy improvement to the situation within a short timeframe

will be given priority. Other recommendations we will have to take time over, but every single

recommendation that will benefit peace, harmony and development in the Rakhine State will

be implemented within the shortest time possible.

The government is working to restore the situation to normalcy. Since 5 September,

there have been no armed clashes and there have been no clearance operations. Nevertheless,

we are concerned to hear that numbers of Muslims are fleeing across the border to

Bangladesh. We want to find out why this exodus is happening. We would like to talk to those

who have fled as well as those who have stayed. I think it is very little known that the great

majority of Muslims in the Rakhine State have not joined the exodus. More than 50 per cent of

the villages of Muslims are intact. They are as they were before the attacks took place. We

would like to know why.

This is what I think we have to work towards. Not just looking at the problems, but also

looking at the areas where there are no problems. Why have we been able to avoid these

problems in certain areas? For this reason, we would like to invite the members of our

diplomatic community to join us in our endeavour to learn more from the Muslims who have

integrated successfully into the Rakhine State. If you are interested in joining us in our

endeavours, please let us know. We can arrange for you to visit these areas, and to ask them

for yourself, why they have not fled, why they have chosen to remain in their villages, even at

a time when everything around them seems to be in a state of turmoil.Apart from what we are

doing in the matter of allaying the fears of our people, I would like to say that we have been

continuing with our socio-economic development programmes in Rakhine.

Let me outline a few of them.The Rakhine State Socio-Economic Development Plan

2017  2021 has been drafted to boost regional development in various sectors. Hundreds of

new jobs and opportunities have been created for local people through Public Private

Partnerships. The viability of a new Special Economic Zone to bring new jobs and businesses

is being assessed. In terms of infrastructure development, electrification has been expanded

with new roads and bridges built, including a new highway connecting remote areas

previously only accessible by boat.All people living in the Rakhine State have access to

education and healthcare services without discrimination. Healthcare services are being

provided throughout the State including hard to reach areas, with new mobile clinics. The

government has upgraded 300 schools in Rakhine. The vocational and technical training

programmes have begun. Muslim students also have access to higher education without any

discrimination.

Humanitarian aid reached all communities in 95% of the affected areas before the

recent attacks on August 25. We are now starting another round of humanitarian aid endeavour

which we hope will take care of all the peoples in the region.

With regard to IDPs, three camps have been closed and the necessary assistance

provided, including the building of new houses. There is more to do in this area. We are aware

of the challenges and we are facing them.

With regard to citizenship, a strategy with specific timelines has been developed to

move forward the National Verification Process. But this is a process which needs cooperation

from all communities. In some Muslim communities, their leaders have decided that they are

not to join in the verification process. We would appreciate it if all friends could persuade

them to join in the process because they have nothing to lose by it.We are also trying to

promote inter-communal religious harmony by engaging inter-faith groups. A new curriculum

is to be introduced in schools with a focus on moral civic ideas and peace and stability.

A new FM radio channel has been set up to provide information on, amongst others,

healthcare, national verification process, and education to all communities. It broadcasts in

Rakhine, Bengali and Myanmar languages.

Training and capacity building for police and security forces is being provided in

cooperation with the EU and United Nations agencies.

Since December 2016, local and foreign media groups have been given access to areas

previously off-limits in Rakhine. Even after the outbreaks on 25 August, we arranged for

several media groups to visit the afflicted areas.

The government is working hard to enhance existing relations with Bangladesh. The

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and the National Security Advisor visited Bangladesh in

January and July of this year. We were also hoping for a visit from the Home Minister of

Bangladesh but it had to be postponed, for reasons, I think of other commitments on the part of

the Minister. We will welcome him at any time that he is able to come and we hope to take

forward the arrangements with regard to the security of the border which we are trying to

implement together.

There has been a call for the repatriation of refugees who have fled from Myanmar to

Bangladesh. We are prepared to start the verification process at any time. A verification

process was set up as early as 1993 and based on the principles to which both countries agreed

at this time, we can continue with the verification of those refugees who wish to return to

Myanmar. We will abide by the criteria that was agreed on at that time. As our National

Security Advisor has assured Bangladesh, and which I can confirm now, we are ready to start

the verification process at any time. Those who have been verified as refugees from this

country will be accepted without any problems and with full assurance of their security and

their access to humanitarian aid.

I understand that many of our friends throughout the world are concerned by reports of

villages being burnt and of hordes of refugees fleeing. As I said earlier, there have been no

conflicts since 5 September and no clearance operations. We too are concerned. We want to

find out what the real problems are. There have been allegations and counter-allegations and

we have to listen to all of them. And we have to make sure that these allegations are based on

solid evidence before we take action.

Action will be taken against all peoples, regardless of their religion, race, or political

position who go against the laws of the land and who violate human rights as accepted by our

international community. We have never been soft on human rights in this country. Our

government has emerged as a body committed to the defence of human rights. Not of any

particular communitys rights, but of the rights of all human beings, within the borders of our

country.

As we concentrate on problems in the Rakhine Sate, I would also like to take this

opportunity to remind you that there are problems as serious for us as what is happening in the

west of our country. We have been trying to build peace out of internal strife. A peace that

must be lasting and that must be accompanied by sustainable and equitable development. We

would like to invite you to take part in this peace process. To join us in finding lasting

solutions to the problems that have plagued our country for years.

The peace process that we started last year in August is continuing and we are having

many difficulties. I am not surprised by this because it is the way of peace processes anywhere

in the world, that they come across difficulties and sometimes the processes stall and

sometimes they come to a dead halt and sometimes it seems as though everything is falling

apart, and yet, in the end, we all gather together and move forward. Because all of us basically

want peace rather than war. We want harmony rather than conflict. This is the aspiration

shared by all our peoples: peace, stability, harmony and progress. It is not a large agenda, but

it is a difficult one.

And as we go forward in our efforts to redress the ills of this nation, I would like to ask

our friends who understand and sympathise with, both our aspirations and our problems, to

join us. We would like you to join us in a positive and constructive way to find new paths

towards peace and stability and towards harmony.

We would like you to think of our country as a whole. Not just as little afflicted areas. It

is as a whole only that we can make progress. I would like to use the analogy of a healthy

human being. A healthy human being has to be healthy all over. You cannot neglect his

general health just to concentrate on one particular ill. I use this analogy because our [health]

sector is one that has made the greatest progress since we came into the administration last

year. By concentrating on public health, we have found that other health problems can also be

better addressed. For example, within one year, deaths from HIV were halved  not because

we are concentrating just on HIV/AIDS, but because we were concentrating on public health

as a whole, the health of all of our peoples and all our communities. This is how I would like

you to look at our country.

We are a young and fragile democracy facing many problems, but we have to cope with

them all at the same time, in the way that we have to cope with all of our health problems at

the same time. We cannot just concentrate on a few. I would like to invite you to join us in

finding new ways, new answers, more constructive, more positive, more innovative, and

possibly more daring.

If we cannot resolve our problems quickly, it does not mean that we are never going to

be able to resolve them. It just means that the suffering of our peoples is extended. We would

like to bring an end to the suffering of our peoples as quickly as possible. We would like to

make our country a nation, within whose borders, everybody can live in security and

prosperity. This is a large order. This is a big ambition. But it is not one impossible to fulfil.

We all have to join together.

I accept that the real responsibility lies with us, the people of this country. All the

people of Myanmar, from the government, to each and every single individual within this

country has the responsibility for the development and progress of this country. But, we would

like our friends to join us in our great endeavour. This is certainly a big endeavour. An

ambitiousendeavour. A determination to build out of a country, beset by many problems, a

State that is healthy, that is strong, that can look forward to a secure future.

It is sad that in meeting our diplomatic community, I am obliged to focus on just a very

few of our problems, when there are so many which I think we could resolve together. That is

why I am opening the door to all of you who wish to join us in our endeavours. We invite you

to join us, to talk to us, to discuss with us, to go with us to the troubled areas, where we can

guarantee security for you, because we dont want the added problems of anything happening

to any of you, so we would like you to join us, then to see for yourself what is happening and

think for yourself, what can we do to remove these problems? And also, I want you to take

special care to study the peaceful areas  how have they managed to keep the peace? How

have they managed to preserve harmony? Why are they not at each others throats in these

particular areas? These are the answers that we need. It is not just a matter of removing ills,

but also of promoting what is positive. We have to remove the negative and increase the

positive, and we would like to do that together with all of you.

As you will probably be aware, our Minister for Social Welfare, Relief and

Resettlement is leading our humanitarian assistance programme. We are very happy that the

International Committee of the Red Cross is joining us in this and we would welcome others

who would like to aid us in our endeavours. Many have already committed to help us by

donating generously  in cash as well as in kind. We will make sure that everything that is

given towards the promotion of peace and harmony in the Rakhine is used in the best possible

way to benefit all communities.

We dont want Myanmar to be a nation divided by religious beliefs, or ethnicity or

political ideology. We all have the right to our diverse identities and we all have the right to

strive to fulfil our lives in the ways in which we believe are right. But we also have to work

together because we belong to one nation. And as we belong to one nation, we also belong to

this world.

It is for this reason that we place great importance on the role of the United Nations as

an assembly of nations which was created to promote peace and harmony, to ensure that our

world should not ever again, in future, fall into the suffering that we all experienced during the

Second World War. It was with the intention of putting an end to wars - that is to say - putting

an end to conflicts, that the United Nations was established, and I would like to think that what

we are doing here today, may be the beginning of a truly strong and effective movement to

bring an end to all the conflicts within Myanmar. The conflicts between our communities,

between our peoples, and also the conflict of ideas with regards to how we are to go forwards.

Conflicts of ideas can be sorted out, can be removed through discussion and dialogue and

through open-minded and the generosity and courage, that enables us to see other peoples

point of view. I would also like to say that the generosity and courage that would enable other

people to see our point of view as well.

It is by cooperating only, that our world can go forward. By attacking each other, either

with words, or with weapons, or even with emotions, will not help us. Hate and fear are the

main scourges of our world. All conflict arises either out of hate or fear. It is only by removing

the sources of hate and fear that we shall be able to remove conflict from our country and from

our world.

As you know, there are many allegations and counter-allegations. I have not gone into

any of them because it is not my purpose to promote and encourage conflict, whether of ideas,

or of arms, but to try to promote harmony and understanding. I hope that you will understand

us and join us in our endeavours.

As I said earlier, this is a diplomatic briefing. This was intended to keep the members of

our diplomatic community and the representatives of our friends from all over the world, in

touch with what we are trying to do. But in some ways, it is more than just a diplomatic

briefing. It is a friendly appeal to all those who wish Myanmar well. A friendly appeal to help

us to achieve the ends that I think, you would agree are desirable, not just for this particular

country, but for countries all over the world.

Thank you.
However, hello!

Trump delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly. As Saltykov-Shchedrin [1] pointed out once: "Kind folk awaited bloodshed and massacres from him, instead, he ate a doughnut."

"Strong sovereign nations allow citizens to flourish in the fullness of life provided for by God. We in America do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone. And we want ours to be so brilliant as to serve to the rest as an example, "said US President Donald Trump.

Hooray! He is giving a slack. In the past he would have aspired to impose a resplendent image to follow! But now he has given up all the aspiring. At the same time, note, to erase from the face of the Earth and to overthrow is still in fashion. Trump threatens to destroy North Korea, Iran, overthrow the regime in Venezuela ... But to try to impose an image nowadays is a big no-no.

"The war should not be conducted against individual states with a mobile political situation, but against regions of the world, because those states are coded in this program of destruction. Of course, they will start from one country or another, then the infection will spread until everything collapses, as we can see today in the example of the Middle East. Of course, this is a policy, the implementation of which began after September 11, 2001, and we failed to grasp the significance of the events of September 11. None of the wars that have been fought since then has been concluded", said French political scientist, journalist (Syria, Damascus) Thierry Meyssan [2].

And it is true. For 15 years, none of the wars came to an end! Thierry Meyssan, a well-known conspiracy theories specialist, scholar and Orientalist, claims that we did not notice a radical change in the American strategy since the September the 11th.

"Neo-imperialism of the United States does not intend to offer anything for those states that are among the stable, nor for those that are a source of natural resources. Stable states will have access to resources, and the sources of natural resources will be completely destroyed, plunged into chaos", continues Thierry Meyssan.

Here is this map from Hell, to which Meyssan refers, from the book of geostrategist and publicist Professor Barnett, who served as an assistant to Admiral Cerbowski, who directed the Department of Transformation of the Armed Forces at the Pentagon. Virtually all of Africa, Central and Latin America, except Brazil and Argentina, fall into the zone of "non-integrable states" doomed to chaos.Then, naturally, the entire Middle East with Turkey, the Persian Gulf, Iran and Pakistan, all Middle and South-east Asia and all The Balkans, except Greece. At the same time, Russia, India and China are prudently surgically removed out of the "nightmare zone".

"The power of Leviathan must be released only occasionally. But heres what you can promise the American people, our citizens, and the whole world. If we release this Leviathan, then we promise, we guarantee that immediately, immediately afterwards we will install the functional governance. You should not plan a war if you do not expect to find peace, "states US political analyst Thomas Barnett.

And they will inherit the Kingdom! ... For the slow-witted: the functional governance is just an administration of occupational forces. American ones. For those in the know: what kind of American administration can be offered for "non-integrable territories"? The key is in the name-Non-integrable. You have been told! And why on Earth anyone would want to create a "perfect image"for them? Let them wallow in squalor.

Let me quote Meyssan once again : none of the wars that started after September 11 is over.

However, goodbye!
Massoud Barzani, President of the region of the Iraqi Kurdistan, has declared that in the absence of any counter-proposals from the International community, the referendum on independence, scheduled for Monday 25 September 2017, would definitely go ahead.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has not managed to reach either a resolution (which would have legal force in international law), or even a declaration from its President (which indicates the positions of the Council members). All the UNSC has managed to do is issue a press communique condemning a potential secession. Clearly, some Council members are taking a position publicly that conceals their evil intentions on this matter.

The ballot will take place in both the independent region of Kurdistan and also in the territories that Barzani, working with Daesh, annexed. The referendum is a unilateral decision of Erbil, condemned by the National Assembly, the Federal Government and the Supreme Court of Baghdad. It is intervening now because more than 3 million non-Kurds have had to flee the region, as a result of the ethnic cleansing that Barzani undertook, and have sought asylum in Turkey and Syria. There are about 8 million Kurds in the area.

However, the finances of an independent Kurdistan will be difficult to guarantee given the military expenses engaged and the price of oil being only around 70 dollar per barrel.

The French giant Total is exploiting the Shaikan oilfield to the max. The Russian state company, Rosneft, has just signed a billion dollar contract with President Barzani to build a new gas pipeline. The British company, Gulf Keystone Petroleum, is also getting ready to develop its investments here.

However Turkey, which is the operator of the KurdishTurkish pipeline, BOTAS Petroleum Pipeline Corporation, could brutally cut off transport at the port of Ceyhan. The Turkish army is gathering its troops at the border of the Iraqi Kurdistan, officially to conduct military exercises. The regional press considers that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is ready for a military intervention.

An agreement could be reached. If it were, the referendum would not be followed by a declaration of independence.
Photo: Paramount Pictures

Mother! is a movie, but its also a nightmare. Its also an idea, an examination, an experience, an eye-of-the-beholder exercise, a poem, an allegory, a satire, a societal critique, an occasion for Jennifer Lawrences dad Gary to be horrified by seeing his daughter braless in a sheer cotton night dress, a personality test, a dare to dream, an  opera? Maybe! In a new Reddit AMA with Darren Aronofsky, the director was asked by a commenter named chickenmagic (of course) if he considered staging his new movie as a play, to which he responded, johan johansson and i are thinking about turning it into an opera.

holy shit YES pic.twitter.com/PCAWrmF7rG  Josh Bradley (@callme_Yosh) September 22, 2017

Lets really consider our options with this for a minute, because chickenmagic made a good point when he/she observed that Mother! seems like its perfectly built for the stage, and Aronofsky, who calls the movie his howl, certainly built a monument to theatricality in the final act of his movie. Imagine those last 30 minutes playing out as a full, three-dimensional costume drama with a stage being nearly burned to the ground each night as a blonde woman in a bad wig cries out about how No one is listening! But what would the musical accompaniment be like for a story that was originally presented as aggressively devoid of music? Would Lawrences pleas to her savage houseguests to spare the poor, unbraced sink get its own aria? Would the leitmotif of Ed Harriss character just be a deep, aggressive cough?

Given the religious themes, would this be more of an oratorio than an opera? And as long as were here, why not make Mother! the opera be an immersive presentation a la Sleep No More? After all, audiences really should experience this work in a semi-controlled environment where they can participate in the destruction of Lawrences home, ripping boards off the walls, painting the molding without permission, or locking people in cages. Whether or not you decide to join the dozens who gleefully hop on top of the structurally unsound sink could be the decision that truly prompts Mother! audiences to examine their interior morality versus their enforced adherence to societal norms.
Matthew Vaughn Photo: Getty Images

Spoilers ahead for Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

The Kingsman franchise is back, and so is its ambitious director, Matthew Vaughn. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is out now, and it has just as much of the spirit of the wild Bond movies of old as its predecessor, featuring high-flying adventure, bizarre gadgets, and a villain (Julianne Moore) with a scheme so insane that its hard to imagine it existing in any other spy thriller. We caught up with Vaughn to talk about the difficulty of shooting a scene where hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton) places a secret device in a womans vagina, his decision to bring Colin Firths character back from the dead, and the magic of Channing Tatums dance moves.

What was the hardest scene to shoot?

The opening taxicab fight. That opening scene was very difficult. The scene with Eggsy trying to place a bug into a person was incredibly hard to shoot as well. And just making a sequel. By the way, the whole thing was very hard. This was the hardest movie Ive ever made. Its not easy making sequels. Whats hard about making a sequel is people see a sequel expecting to see what they liked in the first film, but if you do too much of what they liked in the first film, youre boring and unoriginal and repetitive. Its a balancing act, so that was hard. Actually, and the [ski] gondola sequence was hard. We went out in the mountains and a lot of people had altitude sickness, so that was difficult making it with half the crew who couldnt stay up there.

What was hard about doing the scene where Eggsy places the bug? It seems so simple when you watch it.

Well, thats the beauty of filmmaking, isnt it? We had to get a lens made, we had to get a camera position dollying very close to someones body, but you didnt want to hurt them by mistake. Having to use Eggsy and then another hand, because it got quite intimate, as youd say, and making that seamless. It was one of those things that could have been a disaster. In some peoples minds I know that they think its a disaster already because they didnt like it, which is fine and I respect it, but other people do like it.

How did you pull off the cab scene? That one does look like it was a challenge. What were the ins and outs of that?

It was a lot of planning. A lot of taxis. We also wanted to do a lot of it for real, so we built cabs that can go that speed and can drift. Because we built the things, they kept breaking down. Actors punching the other actors by mistake, getting a camera in a very confined space as well. If you think about it, the back of the cab, coordinating the whole fight, shooting in London at night  not easy.

Tell me about the altitude sickness.

We all went to the top of the mountain to shoot it and after about 20 minutes half the crew went back down. Im lucky I didnt get it, but half the crew was like, Oh my God, and then I got poor Taron and [co-star] Pedro [Pascal] and Im, saying Run now, run left, run there. Theyre like, Dude, we cant breathe, let alone run, and weve got ski boots on! Im like, Ah, just do it. But yeah, it was tricky and it was cold, and the weather wasnt great, and then wed get windows of sunshine and shoot again. But it was beautiful. A lot of people think its CG, its quite funny. I had three people going, That scene looks fake, and Im like, Oh, its real actually, so Im sorry it looks fake.

Oh my God, thats so dangerous to have it actually up there.

Yeah. I loved it. I was maybe too excited and then in ignorant bliss, but luckily I didnt seem to get  Ive never had altitude sickness, so I was okay.

You talk about the difficulty of making a sequel. Personally, I liked it better than the first.

Do you know what? Thank you for saying that.

Did you have a guiding philosophy for how to strike that balance between getting what made the first work but still expanding it?

Theres a real simple rule I did: I wasnt making a sequel, I was continuing the story. I was continuing the arcs of the characters and at no point trying to top the first film. I think thats always a bad thing, isnt it? Trying to be funnier or bigger or crazier. I just thought, Im going to continue the story of these characters and the journey theyre on and be authentic to the story and everything else will be fine.

Were you worried about bringing Colin Firth back and maybe cheapening his death in the first movie?

No. Ill tell you why. It sounds crazy when I say this, but we were making a second album and second albums are a tough thing to do. The band, lets say, are the Beatles. Im George Martin, figuring out the second album, we aint got Paul McCartney? Aint gonna work. I couldnt see the franchise working without Colin. He is too much part of the band, hes got to be in it and I thought even if people dont like how he comes back, theyre going to like that hes back. It might be a little bitter pill to swallow, but its going to make you feel healthy, so I had to do it.

One of my favorite little bits of the movie is the few seconds we get of Channing Tatum dancing.

Yes.

Did you have a ton more B-roll of that? Did you have to direct him in any way?

Oh yeah, we ran out  If we had film, we would have run out with that action. I couldnt get him to stop. He loved it. Hes a good dancer as well, we were like, Woo! He can dance.

Weve all seen Magic Mike. Hes got the gift.

Yeah, and he loves to do it. We put on, weirdly, John Denvers Thank God Im a Country Boy, and off he went.

Speaking of John Denver, his Country Roads figures very prominently in the film. Was there ever a discussion about another song, or did you always know you wanted that one?

Tell me about it. Once Ive seen all these other movies suddenly using John Denver, I was like What the hell is going on? It was in the script. You cant change  [Mark Strongs character] Merlins singing it, it was in the background. We cut a scene where Merlin and Halle [Berry] were discussing the merits between Olivia Newton-Johns Country Roads versus the John Denver version and what was better. No, it was really one of the fabrics of the script.

Do you have any good Jeff Bridges stories?

Yeah. Jeff came on set the first day and yknow, hes a hero of mine, I was a little bit nervous. But he put everybody at ease. He never left the set. He hung out with everyone. He knew the names of all the crew. He had great ideas. Jeff reminded me of Taron, in a weird way. When Taron arrived, hed just left drama school and had all this enthusiasm and was bouncing off the walls wanting to make as good a film as possible. Jeff was the same. He was a breath of fresh air from Hollywood like I havent felt in a long time.

Speaking of which: How had Taron grown as an actor between the first and the second? What impressed you about the way he had evolved?

Were sort of lucky because Taron was a boy when I met him, and he was playing a boy in Kingsman, and now hes playing a boy that has grown up and he has done that in real life. So, its a real good example of life and art imitating each other perfectly. Hes just flourishing and its a real pleasure to watch him and I feel proud of what hes achieving.

This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TCM

In a recent interview with BBC Radio 4, comedy legend Mel Brooks was asked if he thought it would be possible for him to make classics like The Producers and Young Frankenstein for modern audiences. Maybe Young Frankenstein, but never Blazing Saddles, he said of his 1974 Western parody, which stars Cleavon Little as the black sheriff of a hostile, white frontier town. Because we have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy, explained Brooks. Its okay not to hurt feelings of various tribes and groups. However, its not good for comedy. Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. Comedy is the lecherous little elf whispering in the kings ear, always telling the truth about human behavior. That being said, Brooks knows exactly where he draws his line in the sand, comedically speaking. I personally would never touch gas chambers or the death of children or Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Everything else is okay. Naked people? Fine. I like naked people. Theyre usually the most polite. If his rationale is correct, the inevitable Hollywood remake of Blazing Saddles will have to be a 93-minute version of the campfire scene. And honestly? Audiences will love it.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration on Friday scrapped Obama-era guidance on investigating campus sexual assault, replacing it with new instructions that allow universities to require higher standards of evidence when handling complaints.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said that President Barack Obama's policy had been unfairly skewed against those accused of assault and had "weaponized" the Education Department to "work against schools and against students."

The change is the latest in Trump's broader effort to roll back Obama policies. Women's rights groups slammed Friday's decision, saying it will discourage students from reporting assault.

The guidance released in 2011 and then updated in 2014 instructed universities to use a "preponderance of the evidence" standard when assessing and investigating a claim of sexual assault.

DeVos' new interim guidelines let colleges choose between that standard and a "clear and convincing evidence" standard, which is harder to meet. Those rules will be in place temporarily while the Education Department gathers comments from interest groups and the public and writes new guidance.

"To be very clear, one sexual assault is one too many. It is horrible and lamentable," DeVos told those attending the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference on Friday night in Michigan.

"But the current failed system didn't work for students, it didn't work for institutions, it didn't work for anyone," she said in explaining the decision. "It didn't work because unelected and unaccountable political appointees pushed the guidance through without any period for comment from those who walk side by side with students every day. The time of ineffective and inefficient mandates is over."

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, said the new rule will have a "devastating" impact on students and schools.

"It will discourage students from reporting assaults, create uncertainty for schools on how to follow the law, and make campuses less safe," Graves said in a statement. "This misguided directive is a huge step back to a time when sexual assault was a secret that was swept under the rug."

The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights is investigating 360 sexual violence cases at 258 postsecondary institutions.

A student may choose whether to report a claim of assault to police or to have it investigated by a university under a federal provision against sexual discrimination. Some students choose not to turn to law enforcement because many such cases go unprosecuted as police and the courts require higher standards of evidence. Students may also feel more comfortable dealing with university investigators rather than with police following a trauma.

Andrew Miltenberg, a New York lawyer who represents students accused of sexual assault, said Obama's standard ignored the presumption of innocence and put the burden on the accused to prove the assault did not happen. He said the system proposed by DeVos is "a much more stringent standard and one that is less open to subjective interpretation."

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Senate's committee on education, said DeVos' decision "may cause survivors of sexual assault to go back into the shadows, allowing predators to continue to roam college campuses and the epidemic of college sexual assault to spread."

The department did not say how long the interim rule is expected to be in effect. Clare McCann, a higher education expert with the New America think tank, said it will likely take the department more than a year to finalize a new rule.
The idea of a giant office complex might not seem exciting compared to other things going on downtown: hip restaurants, SoHo-style lofts, full-service hotels and the home-decor mecca known as the Magnolia Silos.

But the minds behind the Civic Center project beg to differ.

Dallas developer Phillip Williams and Waco urban development consultant Chris McGowan say the 550,000 square feet of modern office space they hope to create around Heritage Square could help transform downtown and Greater Waco. Based on real estate averages, that office space could support 1,000 professional jobs, jobs filled by people who might want to eat at those hip restaurants, live in those lofts and dispose of their disposable income all around town.

Bigger than that, it means reversing the flight of Wacos young talent to the big cities by luring some big-city jobs to Waco, McGowan said.

That all comes together to build an engine for sustainable economic development, said McGowan, a former urban development official at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce. This is next-level economic development. You can keep someone here after they graduate from Baylor, MCC or TSTC, and they can get a job and move up.

City officials agree those are worthy goals, which is why they have started negotiations with Civic Center for a long-term lease and development agreement on a large city-owned block between Austin and Washington avenues. But they have lots of questions.

The biggest is whether the Civic Center partners can succeed in luring new firms from out of town to set up shop in office space more expensive than anything already available in Waco. McGowan and Williams say they are not looking to poach existing tenants from other office buildings in the Waco market but rather to sell big-city firms on the lower costs and appealing lifestyle of a smaller city.

But until they prove their success in building and filling the space, city officials say they are hesitant to spend public money on items such as new sewer lines and structured parking.

My challenge is, how do I get the first phase with enough of a reasonable private expenditure to build that much infrastructure? City Manager Dale Fisseler said.

He said the offer is a great proposal, but city officials want to see a solid business plan that doesnt leave the city on the hook if it fails.

The city doesnt want to own an office building, Fisseler said.

The city assists key projects in downtown by using the Tax Increment Financing Zone to pay for public improvements such as streets, streetscapes, sidewalks, parking, utilities and parks.

For example, the $100 million Brazos Promenade project on the city-owned riverfront is getting $20.2 million in TIF funds. Last week, the TIF board recommended another $7.9 million for the hotel-retail-apartment complex known as Brazos Commons, just downstream of Brazos Promenade. That project is estimated to cost $129 million.

McGowan said the cost of the Civic Center project is in the same league as those developments.

McGowan didnt have an estimate for how much the developers would seek in TIF funds. But the public improvements would be extensive, including several million dollars for utility improvements and an urban park.

The 1,200 structured parking spaces that plans show at build-out could cost more than $19 million, based on industry estimates of $16,000 per parking space. The parking structure would extend under most of the block and under Third Street toward the Waco Convention Center.

McGowan said the partners hope to work with the city to phase the project to keep the upfront public investment reasonable.

Plans for the project show three buildings, which include about 30,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor and offices upstairs:

A two-story building with 26,500 square feet at Fourth and Austin

An eight-story building with 196,000 square feet at Fourth and Washington

A 15-story building with 330,000 square feet at Third and Washington.

McGowan said the two-story building would probably be the first constructed, and it wouldnt require structured parking in the first phase. The first phase would likely include a restaurant and the public park space.

Williams, the Civic Center partner, said the park, with water features, art and lots of trees, is the centerpiece of the development.

We do it backward, he said. You plan for the park, then whats left is what you build on.

Influx of space

City officials, including Councilman Dillon Meek, a commercial real estate businessman, have questioned whether the Waco office market could absorb such an influx of space.

Waco has 3.9 million square feet of office space total, including medical offices, according to the Greater Waco chamber.

Once complete, the office complex would be the largest downtown and one of the largest in Greater Waco. With 550,000 square feet, it would dwarf the 135,296-square-foot ALICO, the 119,447-square-foot Texas Life building and the 144,800-square-foot Clifton Robinson Tower.

But Kris Collins, senior vice president of economic development at the Greater Waco chamber, said theres a shortage of large office spaces in Waco.

Wacos overall vacancy rate is 7.5 percent, but theres only one available property with 40,000 square feet or more, and only six with 20,000 square feet or more, Collins said. All are older properties and none are listed as Class A.

Given the strong interest in downtown, it is likely the vacancy rate in that district is lower than the overall average, and there are few spaces larger than 10,000 SF available for office users, she said in an email.

Jim Peevey, a commercial real estate agent who represents nine office buildings in downtown, said he doesnt see Civic Center as a threat to existing office landlords.

No, I dont think it would affect local office space, Peevey said. I dont think anyone locally will be going into business there.

He said existing tenants would likely choose to stay put rather than pay the premium rent that newly built Class A office space would have to charge.

Class A office space at Roosevelt Tower is on the market for about $20.76 per square foot per year, and thats the upper end of downtown leases.

By contrast, the Austin office market has an average rental rate of $36.45, with Class A office space at an average of $39.19 per square foot, according to a report by real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, first-class office buildings rent for more than $30 per square foot, and the average is more than $42 in the Uptown area of Dallas, according to another Cushman & Wakefield report.

Council moves ahead with talks on massive downtown office complex Waco City Council members tempered their enthusiasm with caution Tuesday as they voted to st

Civic Center officials say they expect to charge rents somewhere between the high end of Waco offices today and the going rate in Dallas and Austin.

Peevey said the high rents in Dallas and Austin work to the advantage of the proposed Waco project, as do Wacos relatively low housing costs.

Id love for a big company to come up from outside of Waco based on our quality of life and talent pool, Peevey said. Wacos got a great thing going on.

Steve Cates, who worked as real estate vice president for Met Life in the 80s and 90s and recently retired as CEO of Texas Life, said its not easy to induce companies to move their headquarters.

Its pretty rare for firms to move unless theyre consolidating, Cates said. If a large tenant is going to move its corporate headquarters, typically, youd like to have that locked down first, then do a build to suit. Ideally, if you can attract a tenant to downtown Waco  you dont have to have a building in place to market it.

Those caveats aside, he said he would like to see a new office project in Waco that offers a large amount of space.

Currently there are no large-floorplate buildings that can accommodate a large tenant, he said. Im excited about anyone who wants to build a nice building for downtown.  I do think we have a quality lifestyle and a vibrant downtown, and students are wanting to stay here. The opportunity is here.

Williams, the Civic Center partner, said his years developing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as head of Emerson Partners have given him an appreciation for places like Waco.

This is an opportunity to capitalize on the fact that youve got a phenomenal learning institution here, not only at undergraduate but at graduate level, he said. People are really seeking out places like this. It doesnt just happen here, it happens in places like Medford, Oregon, and Asheville, North Carolina, these smaller cities that provide a sense of identity and purpose.

Dallas is a great place. Houston is on the rebound. San Antonio is a great place. But theyre big. The city of Waco can really be a world-class city, and it doesnt have to be big to do that. It just has to be excellent.
With an election flier sticking out of his shirt pocket and business cards in hand, Ryan Coggins wont drop his political drive for a second.

He knows when to lay out his platform for inquisitive voters and he can recognize when to dodge tough questions from a reporter.

Coggins talks the talk and hes learning to walk the walk as he goes up and down neighborhood streets after school throughout the week, knocking on doors to campaign for his budding political career with his grandparents never far behind.

At 18, hes the youngest candidate out of 14 in Gatesville Independent School Districts school board race vying to land one of three at-large seats in the Nov. 7 election. And as far as residents and school officials can recall, Coggins is the first 18-year-old board candidate in the districts history.

And theres nothing that would prohibit him from serving on the board and finishing up his senior year at the same time, said Barbara Williams, spokesperson for the Texas Association of School Boards.

We have always had young people interested in board service. There has never been a large number who have decided to run, she said. I cant say that we have a way of tracking it accurately over time, because we dont ask the age of our board members. But you hear of one or two young adults seeking a seat now and then.

While some candidates praise his efforts, others worry how he will do if elected to serve a three-year term.

By law, hes eligible to run. I dont have any problem with him running, candidate Charles Alderson said. Im 71 years old, and been in education for 50 years, and even I dont have all the answers. So how can an 18-year-old do it? Its a big responsibility.

But Coggins isnt worried about the competition, he said.

He said he has been an active student in Gatesville ISD for a few years now, and is serving as student council president. He is an office aide and works closely with staff and students, he said. He is also in choir and is helping to orchestrate his schools Veterans Day celebration and Coryell Countys National Night Out event, he said.

But his desire to run for school board comes from something deeper than student activities and community involvement, his grandfather, Lyle Coggins said. Lyle Coggins and his wife took Ryan Coggins in when he was 7 days old and have raised him as their son.

Were a generation behind, if you will, so weve always taught him that what hes going to get out of life is what hes going to get out of life, Lyle Coggins said. We watch Fox News and we also pull up NBC and ABC because we want him to get other views and perspectives of life. To be real honest, I used to make him sit down and listen to President Obamas State of the Union address, not that I believe he should agree with it, but because it was important to know what was going on.

They waved goodbye to some new friends as they walked out of J&M Hill Country BBQ on Wednesday and drove down the main road in the town of about 12,400 to meed a few more.

Lyle Coggins stood along North 31st Street, a few feet from the sidewalk, giving Ryan space to do his thing as he approached his first door of the night. The teenager, who loves crime movies and action movies and listens to George Strait, Alan Jackson and Michael Jackson, hopes to one day be a governor, he said.

I believe in a younger vision. Me being 18 years old, Ive gone through the modern K-12 system at GISD, Ryan Coggins said. I believe if I get to be a school board member, I get to bring a different perception to the board than most candidates can.

Residents didnt answer at every door he approached Wednesday evening, but none who answered refused a business card. One asked where he could vote, and another recalled meeting Ryan as he campaigned during the towns family-fun celebration, Spurfest, last weekend. A third welcome even resulted in a surprise run-in with his assistant principal, Kristi Street.

Ryans a great student. He works hard. Im excited for him to do this, Street said. We have a lot of great young people, but not many of them strive to do the things Ryans wanting to do at his age and beyond. Ryan has a voice and hes very good at expressing his opinions and hes very supportive of his fellow students. Hes a great leader on campus, so I was not surprised.

His grandfather looked on with a sense of pride as they walked on to the next home.

He just wants to do good stuff for other people, Lyle Coggins said. You cant ask for anything better than that. Hes a good kid. I used to burp him, after all.

The Tribune-Herald reached out to some of the candidates Ryans going up against, but not all, to see how they felt about running against someone who still has his high school prom and graduation in front him.

The feelings were mixed.

Im surprised theres this much hype over a student running for the council. I thought there would be more hype over the fact that there are 14 of us running for three seats, said Joseph Campbell, a first-time candidate and Gatesville parent. I mean, it says something when there are this many people working this hard for a non-paying job.

Campbell doesnt mind if Coggins is running as long as he has an agenda thats about providing the best education possible to Gatesville ISD students, the masonry company owner said.

And Gatesville parent and incumbent Lisbeth Graham Appelman said shes glad to see Coggins as part of the competition. Appelman has served on the board six years.

Its wonderful, she said. I think our young people need to be going out and getting involved in that manner.

Asked what Ryans biggest challenge might be if he wins, Appelman said I dont know. You would have to ask him.

Coggins, though, knows one of the biggest responsibilities he will have if he wins is spending taxpayer dollars wisely, he said. He will listen closely to what taxpayers want and try to make the best judgment call possible, and he wont be afraid to speak up when necessary, he said.

Though he didnt answer directly what issues he sees in the district, he is focused on becoming a bigger voice for his student body, which has more than 2,800 students, he said.

I want to bring programs into our school district, and theres a different range of programs I want to bring in, Coggins said. Some of them promote patriotism, love for our community, love for our school district and love for our country.

For one, he wants to bring a Junior ROTC program to the district. There is always interest in military recruiters who come to campus, so he thinks there would be enough interest to sustain a successful program, he said.

If he doesnt win, he will finish out the school year helping Gatesville students the best he can before attending McLennan Community College to study accounting, then moving on to a four-year university, he said. Accounting is his backup if his political career falls through.

But Coggins wont know if he can achieve his goal if he doesnt try. And going door to door in a community that typically has a low voter-turnout is his best chance of winning, he said. As he approached his last door for the night Wednesday, a woman answered and he introduced himself as he did with everyone else.

Hi, Im Ryan Coggins and Im running for GISD school board trustee, he said. Id appreciate your vote.
A woman accused of escaping police custody by sneaking out of a bathroom was found and rearrested by Bellmead police Saturday, Sgt. Kory Martin said in a press release.

Angela Marie Sturdivant, 34, was arrested on Tuesday, accused of stealing $5.98 worth of fabric glue and a $4.97 package of brownies from a Bellmead Walmart, Martin said. She had previously been issued a criminal trespassing warning from the business.

After being transported to McLennan County Jail on Tuesday, Sturdivant told jail staff she had a seizure on the way over, Martin said. Officers took Sturdivant to Providence Health Center, where she complained of illness and asked to use the restroom, he said.

While an officer waited outside the restroom, Sturdivant used a second door the officer was unaware of to leave the restroom and escape from the hospital, he said.

Information from Bellmead community members led officers to a residence in the 1100 block of Woodbine Street, where Sturdivant was found and arrested, Martin said.

Four days after escaping, she was back in custody on charges of criminal trespassing, theft under $100 and escape from custody. Bond information was not immediately available.
Michael Joe Cate

June 15, 1985 - July 29, 2017

Michael (Mike, my Mikey) Joe Cate went to be with his Lord and Savior on the 29th of July, 2017. Through the blood of Jesus Christ, "Michael Lives On" Eternally and we shall meet again. Through life gift "Michael Lives On" in others as an organ donor. The recipients live on today, because Jesus Lives and then came Michael. Hebrew meaning of Michael: archangel; Old Testament book of Daniel, patron saint of soldiers in Christianity; New Testament book of Revelation.

Michael lived in Lubbock, Texas. He worked as a diesel mechanic by trade but was gifted in so many ways. If it was broken, Michael could fix it!

Michael loved his family dearly: his children, Mason J. and Micaela J. Cate; mother, Kathy Glenn Cate; brother, Christopher J. Cate; grandmothers, Tommye Parr Cate and Mary Tussay Crawford; and many extended family members; and the love of his life AshLeigh Harris. One extra special family member is a second cousin to Michael, Cindy Tussay Egan, the recipient of Michael's liver.

We give God the glory and are thankful that "Michael Lives On"!

Michael's memorial service will be held at 1:00 p.m., Saturday, September 30, at Olive Branch Baptist Church, graveside to follow, 1996 Olive Branch Rd Axtell, TX 76624. Visitation and a meal will be at 12:00 p.m., at Olive Branch Baptist Church.

In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to the Scholarship Fund that has been established for Mason and Micaela. Contact Educators Credit Union PO Box 20728 Waco, TX 76702.

Moore Rose Funeral Home

Floydada, TX 79235

(806) 983-2525
Harold E. Riley

July 23, 1928 - Sept. 21, 2017

Harold E. Riley, 89, lived a life of faithfulness to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His earthly life ended on Thursday, September 21, 2017, but his legacy will live on in the many lives he touched. Visitation will be from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., Sunday, September 24, at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home, 3125 N. Lamar Blvd. Austin, TX 78705. Memorial service will be at 2:00 p.m., Monday, September 25, at Hyde Park Baptist Church, 3901 Speedway, Austin, TX 78751. A reception will follow in the Friendship Hall.

Born in Grandfield, Oklahoma, on July 23, 1928, Harold was the second of three children born to Ruby S. Riley and Ray I. Riley. He graduated from Paschal High School in Fort Worth, Texas, and earned his BBA degree from Baylor University in 1952. As an All-American athlete, he played on the 1952 Orange Bowl team. Upon graduation, he was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams but declined the offer to pursue a successful career in the life insurance industry. He began working in the industry in 1953 before assuming the Presidency of National Western Life Insurance Company in Austin, Texas in 1962 and serving through 1968 when he founded Insurance Company of America. In 1987, he became Chairman of the Board and CEO of Citizens, Inc. based in Austin, Texas, positions he held until 2014.

Throughout his lifetime, Harold was recognized on numerous occasions for his personal accomplishments, business achievements and self-less generosity. Although a very private individual, he lived with a passion to help others. Harold's life perspective was significantly impacted by the generous help his family received from a West Texas rancher in the 1940's. Faith in Jesus Christ was Harold's first priority in life followed by the love he had for his family.

A faithful member of Hyde Park Baptist Church, Harold supported his Lord's work as a committed, humble servant. "I've found that as we live our lives, it is for other people," Harold said, "and that's what it is all about  leading other people to follow Christ." Dr. Paige Patterson, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary said, "One of the reasons that we're so grateful for Harold is that he's an example of when God blesses you with the things of this world, most people live and die with them, very few people invest them in the kingdom of God."

Harold was preceded in death by his sister, Betty R. Akeson; and his brother, Gordon L. Riley.He is survived by his loving wife, Dottie S. Riley; his four children, Rick D. Riley and wife, Leeann, Randall H. Riley and wife, Monique, Jana L. Riley, Ray A. Riley and wife, Jenny; along with stepson, Mark D. Merrell. Harold was also a loving grandfather and great-grandfather to Alyca Riley, Allyson Riley, Austyn Riley, Macy Sligar and husband, Logan, and their daughter, Scottie Ann, Rhett Riley, Lee Riley and wife, Caitlyn, and their daughter, Elena Rose, and Christopher Riley.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be given to Hyde Park Baptist Church or Hyde Park Baptist Foundation, 3901 Speedway, Austin, TX 78751, or the Harold E. Riley Foundation, PO Box 22517, Ft Worth, TX 76122, which solely benefits Baylor University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Obituary and guestbook available online at www.wcfish.com

Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home

Austin, TX 78705

(512) 452-8811
PRESS RELEASE  Docs Friends, Inc. has announced a major gift from Boeing that will ensure the B-29 Doc Hangar and Education Center becomes a reality at Wichitas Eisenhower National Airport. Executives from Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems joined Docs Friends, Inc. board members and volunteers to make the announcement, and officially break ground on the 32,000 sq. ft. facility.

We took a big step toward reality for Docs ultimate mission, said Jeff Turner, Docs Friends, Inc. board chairman. Thanks to this major contribution from Boeing, we are able to break ground on the future home of B-29 Doc. The B-29 Doc Hangar and Education Center will be the centerpiece of our mission of honoring those who designed, built, flew and maintained the B-29 Superfortress to protect our freedom. The facility will also be the foundation to educate and connect generations to come about the important role the B-29 played in our nations history, and the technological marvel it became during its time.

The new home for Doc will be an interactive B-29 hangar and education center, giving generations to come a one-of-a-kind opportunity to enjoy and experience this prominent figure in our nations history. Doc will act as a back drop inside the facility for the public to enjoy up-close and hands-on bits of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that go hand in hand with aviation.

Boeing is proud to honor the past and inspire the future with our sponsorship of this permanent home for Doc, said Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeings Defense, Space & Security division. This gift not only highlights the revolutionary advances in technology that were embodied in the B-29, but also recognizes the countless individuals who designed, built and flew this magnificent machine. Its especially meaningful to celebrate that legacy here in Wichita, where Doc first rolled off the production line and where generations of Boeing employees spent their careers building some of the finest aircraft ever made. Its our hope that visitors of every age will come away with a better understanding of history as well as a greater appreciation for the opportunities that lie ahead in aerospace and beyond.

Major construction on the estimated $6.5 million project is expected to begin in October and its estimated that construction will be mostly complete within eight to 10 months. Hutton Construction will serve as the construction management firm and Wichita architecture firm Schafer, Johnson, Cox and Frey has been working on the design of the structure over the past 18 months.

Spirit AeroSystems also announced a major gift today, totaling more than a quarter of a million dollars in a cash contribution, in addition to previous company contributions and in-kind fabrication, logistics and fundraising support. Over the life of the program, Spirits gifts total more than $1M.

The B-29 is a part of our companys rich heritage and having the ability to ensure B-29 Doc has a permanent home in Wichita is important to Spirit and our community, said Spirit AeroSystems President and CEO Tom Gentile. Its important for future generations to learn about Wichitas aviation history and unique place as the Air Capital of the World. Our employeesand hundreds of others who worked in Wichitas aviation industryhave spent hundreds of thousands of hours restoring this majestic warbird. Their work and dedication deserves a home and a place to be showcased.

With the gifts from Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, and an additional commitment from the City of Wichita, Docs Friends has more than $4.5 million in funds raised for the project. Docs Friends board members and several local contributors have also made significant gifts toward the project. The remaining balance is expected to be raised through a public campaign before the end of the year.
The Turnbull government rejected a landmark Chinese invitation to issue a formal joint statement on climate change earlier this year, Greenpeace has claimed, saying Australia vetoed an unprecedented step in the Asian power's emerging international role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But the Australian government has denied the claim and revealed the two countries' energy departments were working on a "joint action plan" on climate change as part of their commitments under the Paris agreement.

According to Greenpeace East Asia senior climate policy adviser Li Shuo, the government quietly knocked back an offer  perhaps the first time the Chinese government had proactively sought such an arrangement  during Premier Li Keqiang's state visit to Australia in March.

Mr Li said the offer was "very, very significant" because it suggested China had become "diplomatically proactive" after previously being on the receiving end of invitations from the European Union and United States to outline mutual commitments on climate change.
Police are investigating after a bouncer was attacked at a Perth nightclub.

The incident happened about 9.30pm on Friday at a venue on William Street. Police say a man stabbed a 28-year-old security worker after being refused entry, before running off.

Detectives believe this man could assist them with their inquiries. Credit:WA Police

The bouncer suffered cuts to his arms and ribs and was taken to Royal Perth Hospital for treatment.

Police described the offender as being aged in his 30s, olive skinned, approximately 180cm tall, medium build with short dark hair and a trimmed beard. He was wearing blue jeans, a blue shirt and blue jacket.
Shocking footage of a car narrowly avoiding a head on collision with two oncoming vehicles south of Perth has been released ahead of the WA long weekend.

Mundijong Police uploaded the footage onto their Twitter page on Thursday.

They are still looking for the driver behind the wheel of the drifting car, believed to be a Ford Falcon.

The hair-raising footage was captured by another motorist on their dash-cam just before 11.40am on September 9 on Thomas Road, Anketell.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Sep. 09, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Sep. 09, 2017 | 09:52 AM | PADUCAH, KY

The first international meeting of UNESCO Creative Cities in the United States starts Sunday in Paducah. To celebrate, a new exhibition at Paducah School of Art and Design will show work from other UNESCO Creative Cities of Craft and Folk Art.



The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's annual meeting will take place through Wednesday in Paducah, and the "Pride of Place" exhibition can be seen September 26-27 at the school at 905 Harrison Street.



Participating cities include Icheon, South Korea; Nassau, Bahamas; Suzhou, China; Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia; San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico; Hangzhou, China; Jingdezhen, China; Fabriano, Italy; and Paducah and Santa Fe from the United States.



"Pride of Place" will open with a reception event for the public from 4 - 5 pm on Tuesday, September 26 in the first floor alcove gallery. It will include works of art and crafts representing practices for which each of the participating cities are recognized and renowned.



Paducah will showcase contemporary hand-dyed quilts by noted fiber artist Helene Davis. "Pride of Place" will also be on display in the alcove gallery from 9 am - 2 pm on Wednesday, September 27.



During the UNESCO visit, Australia Wide 5 will also be on exhibit at the art school. The juried, touring exhibition showcases the artwork of members of Ozquilt Network Inc., Australia's organization for art quilters. This collection of 39 works reflects contemporary art quilt practice from across Australia and will remain on view through September 29 in association with the American Quilter's Society's new Fall QuiltWeek in Paducah. This exhibition will be on display in the Bill Ford Gallery, also located at PSAD's 2D and Graphic Design Building.



PSAD, a division of West Kentucky Community and Technical College, offers an Associate in Fine Arts degree in Visual Art and an Associate in Applied Science degree and certificate programs in Visual Communication: Multimedia, as well as studio art classes for students of all levels and disciplines. Classes are offered on WKCTC's campus, and at 905 Harrison Street and 919 Madison Street.



For more information, call (270) 534-3901.
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BY THE NC LEAGUE OF MUNICIPALITIES

State Rep. Chuck McGrady and State Sen. Paul Newton were recognized Friday night as recipients of the N.C. League of Municipalities Community Champion Award.

The award was presented to each legislator for dedicated support of North Carolina cities and towns during the 2017 legislative session. The presentations took place at CityVision 2017, NCLMs annual conference held this week in Greenville.

Representative McGrady is serving his fourth term in the N.C. House, representing Hendersonville and portions of Henderson County. A co-chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he was a key advocate for the defeat of harmful billboard legislation which the League actively opposed.

Sen. Newton is serving his first term in the state Senate, representing Cabarrus County and portions of Union County. Despite that freshman status, he played a crucial role in pursing legislation which ensured that cities and towns could continue assessing development impact fees going forward in the face of an adverse court ruling. Without the legislation, well-coordinated growth in cities and towns across North Carolina would have been threatened and costs pushed off on existing property tax payers.

It was my honor and privilege to help, Newton told conference attendees.

McGrady, a former Flat Rock Village Council member and Henderson County commissioner, noted that he takes as a compliment being characterized, at times, as continuing to act like a local government official.

I so much appreciate this recognition from my kindred souls in local government, he said.

Outgoing League President Bob Matheny, Mayor of Zebulon, praised both Newton and McGrady for their willingness to listen to and consider the concerns of municipal officials.

We truly appreciate your work at the General Assembly and that you are willing to make the sacrifice to serve in Raleigh, Matheny said.

About the League

The North Carolina League of Municipalities is a membership association of 540 great hometowns  representing nearly every municipality in the state. The League advocates for its members, from the largest city to the smallest village, on the full range of legislative issues that affect municipalities.

For more than 100 years, the League has promoted  and continues to promote  good government by offering non-partisan advocacy, insurance and other services  as directed by its membership.

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Minnesotas school leaders say new opportunities for free preschool are in high demand this school year.

Funding approved by the Legislature last session provides $70 million in new spending on three of the states main early education programs. Its the latest in several years worth of increased early education spending during Gov. Mark Daytons term.

Some of the money is specifically for low-income students and students deemed at-risk for other reasons. Other funds provide free preschool for any 4-year-old, regardless of family income.

Sometimes theres a gap between the families who might qualify for (a) type of funding, and families who may not qualify but also may not have the means to pay for a preschool experience, said Burnsville-Eagan Savage early childhood programs coordinator Cindy Check.

Burnsville-Eagan-Savage added 104 free preschool spots with the unrestricted funds. The district was one of 59 districts and charter schools in Minnesota that were approved to receive new preschool money.

Most of the districts preschool classrooms are full with waiting lists, Check said.

The new funding allowed Burnsville-Eagan-Savage to add three classrooms to what had already been a fairly robust free preschool offering.

Elsewhere in Minnesota, state funds shore up programs that districts had already been running out of their general funds.

I dont even want to know what would happen if we didnt offer it or if we made people pay for it, Tri-County Schools Superintendent Ryan Baron said.

Tri-County is a tiny district in northwestern Minnesota that, like many school districts, competes with neighboring schools for students at all grade levels. Districts are funded based on total enrollment.

Baron said Tri-County saw free preschool as a good financial move even before the state started funding it. If you can keep two of those kids in your building that pays for them. If you can keep them in the next year that pays for having that service, Baron said.

Funding last year let Tri-County hire new preschool staff. This year the district applied for more funding but was not awarded any.

Preschool is also a key selling point in the rural St. Louis County school district in northeastern Minnesota, where the district struggles to hang on to students whose parents commute to nearby cities such as Virginia and Duluth for work.

If we dont have the preschool programs in our buildings, theyre going to take those kids with them, said Superintendent Steve Sallee.

St. Louis County was awarded funding for 85 preschool spots this year.

Our demand is huge. Pretty much all of our programs are full and now were trying to expand them, Sallee said.

But Sallee faces a common obstacle to expansion  lack of space in school buildings.

Districts get the new state funds at the end of the school year based on how many preschoolers they served. That means they need to have space for new students before they get the money.

More than a hundred districts and charter schools that applied for funding this year did not receive it. Dayton pushed for a larger preschool investment of $175 million but ultimately had to compromise with Republican legislative leaders.

The new money for school-based preschool is set to expire in June 2019.

Funding approved by the Legislature last session provides $70 million in new spending on three of the states main early education programs.
A Baraboo homicide defendant who was free on bond when she was involved in a crash that injured three people earlier this month has been cited for traffic violations in the incident.

On Thursday, two citations that the Sauk County Sheriffs Department issued against 25-year-old Amanda N. Rotar were filed in court. Rotar was cited for failing to keep her vehicle under control and driving without insurance in a Sept. 9 crash that caused a Jeep to overturn.

It was not clear Friday whether the department may recommend additional charges or citations related to the crash. Sheriff Chip Meister and Chief Deputy Jeff Spencer could not be reached for comment.

A crash report says Rotar was northbound on County Highway A in the town of Fairfield when she rear-ended a stopped SUV. The driver of the SUV was waiting for oncoming southbound traffic to pass before turning left into a driveway.

The collision caused the SUV to enter southbound traffic and strike an oncoming Jeep, according to the crash report. The Jeep overturned and its occupants both were taken to St. Clare Hospital in Baraboo with suspected minor injuries. The occupants of the SUV had no apparent injuries, according to the report.

The crash report says airbags deployed in both Rotars sedan and the Jeep that overturned.

Rotar sustained what the investigating deputy suspected were serious injuries. She initially was transported by ambulance to St. Clare Hospital, and later flown to the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.

A spokeswoman for UW Hospital said Friday she had no patient information for Rotar.

In October 2015, Rotar was one of four people charged with homicide in relation to a street fight that ended in the stabbing death of 36-year-old Anthony Inman of North Freedom. Rotar allegedly drove three men she knew from the scene after the fight.

Rotar initially was jailed on a $10,000 cash bond. Several weeks later, her attorney requested that the judge lower that amount to $1,000.

Prosecutors opposed the reduction and Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock denied the bond modification.

Nearly eight months later, in June 2016, Screnock signed off on a deal in which prosecutors agreed to lower their bond request to $1,000 after Rotar cooperated with detectives, providing an interview with no expectation of any specific information other than for her to be honest.

Rotar posted bond and was released. She was to maintain absolute sobriety, not engage in criminal activity, and check in with police twice each week. Prosecutors called her as a witness in the January homicide trial of Jae M. Robinson, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 2045.

Rotar was then arrested in February after her mother allegedly found drugs and drug paraphernalia in her bedroom and notified authorities. She was charged with felony heroin possession and bail jumping, but released again  this time on a $5,000 signature bond.

Rotar was free on bond when she was involved in the crash earlier this month. She is scheduled for a telephone conference in her homicide case Oct. 2. Her traffic matters are slated to go to court Nov. 29.
MAYVILLE  A group of citizens are demanding that the city of Mayville present Interim Police Chief Ryan Vossekuil a new contract for the open police chief position.

I have witnessed the amount of energy that he has given to Mayville, Brenda Bruyette said in a phone interview.

Bruyette, a Mayville resident for 30 years, said she has known Vossekuil since he was a child. She and others are part of a group called Voices for Vossekuil.

The group says in a news release its a movement of citizens who demand that Acting Chief Vossekuil be presented with a contract that recognizes and rewards his years of service and dedication to our community

Voices for Vossekuil say they support the Police and Fire Commissions appointment of Vossekuil as police chief. However, when it comes to the common council, they say that it failed to offer Vossekuil a fair contract.

Mayor Rob Boelk issued a news release Thursday stating that Vossekuil rejected the offer to be police chief and he did not make a counter-proposal. The release states that due to former Police Chief Christopher MacNeills resignation, the city included protections from an employment standpoint.

The contract offered to Vossekuil included a 12-month probationary period. A probationary period carries the risk that he could be more easily dismissed and thus put benefits he earned over time in jeopardy.

Vossekuil said in a phone interview on Sept. 22 that the he had some serious concerns about stipulations in the contract.

Those that support Voices for Vossekuil are being asked to attend the public safety meeting Monday at 6 p.m. in Mayville City Hall, 15 S. School St. In addition, they want interested residents to follow the Voices for Vossekuil Facebook page and or sign a Change.org petition, which had more than 750 supporters as of Friday afternoon.

We will be present to show our support of Acting Chief Vossekuil and to respectfully request that the common council listen to the community and do what is in the best interest of the city, the release states.

Vossekuil has been serving as the interim chief since April.

Boelk placed MacNeill on paid administrative leave Feb. 9 after the former chief was accused of altering a report about the son of a former Mayville police officer. MacNeill resigned March 31.
Fall returned to Wisconsin Friday. In this state, that means the return of the fall hunting season.

In fact, it already has begun for some game animals, including the archery season for white-tailed deer, which started Sept. 16.

The gun deer season, which annually sends more than a half-million hunters into Wisconsins woods and fields, is set to start Nov. 18.

That means now is as good a time as any to raise a caution flag over chronic wasting disease and its potential impact. This year, there is reason for some fresh caution, based on the preliminary results of a study at the University of Calgary that showed the first known transmission of the CWD prion disease to a primate from eating diseased venison. That study, which is still being peer-reviewed, has raised concerns over human susceptibility to CWD.

When the study was released this summer, Stephanie Czub, a prion researcher with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said: The assumption was for the longest time that chronic wasting disease was not a threat to human health, but with the new data, it seems we need to revisit this to some degree.

The Canadian study exposed 18 macaque monkeys to CWD. Some had CWD prions injected into their brains and were infected; some had infected material rubbed on their skin and did not contract the disease.

But three of the five macaques that were fed infected venison over a three-year period  the equivalent of a 7-ounce steak per month  tested positive for the disease.

That study, though preliminary, has raised eyebrows and caused Wisconsin health officials to say there should be an increased urgency for state hunters to have their deer tested this year.

There still have been no known instances of humans contracting CWD, but hunters should know the new study demonstrates the risk isnt nonexistent, Keith Poulsen, of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told the Wisconsin State Journal last week. CWD is related to incurable illnesses, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease found in humans, which can cause dementia and death.

Were sure the risk is pretty low, but its not zero, he said. It would be a mistake to ignore it.

For the most part, that is what hunters have done for the past 15 years since CWD first turned up in Wisconsins deer herd.

Thats partially understandable because the prevalence of CWD-infected deer has been almost exclusive to hot zones southwest of Madison and, to a lesser degree, in the Rock County area in southern Wisconsin.

According to news reports, last year 442 of 3,758 deer submitted for testing in the state Department of Natural Resources southern farmland zone tested positive for CWD. Thats an infection rate of about 12 percent. But the deer kill in that area was 10 times that number, meaning a high percentage of the deer kill was not submitted for testing.

The testing is offered at no charge by the DNR at in-person registration sites across the state. Registration sites are easily found on the DNR website at dnr.wi.gov/wmcwd/RegStation/Search.

For years, state health and wildlife officials have urged hunters not to consume venison that tests positive for CWD.

This fall, that caution is warranted more than ever. Get your deer tested.
PORTAGE  Attorneys and court staff in Columbia and Juneau counties are bracing for months without a full slate of judges.

Columbia County court staff learned Wednesday that Gov. Scott Walker has gone through the application and interview process with four potential judges with none appointed. The process began in May when Judge Alan White announced he would retire Sept. 13.

Four candidates applied to Walkers office for the appointment: former Columbia County Assistant District Attorney and current Sauk County Assistant Corporation Counsel Brenda Yaskal, Columbia County Assistant District Attorneys Troy Cross and Clifford Burdon and Columbia County Assistant Corporation Counsel Krista Miller.

Since White stepped down last week, his seat has been filled by retired reserve judges, the first being former Branch 1 Judge Daniel George.

In May, Walker spokesman Tom Evenson described the process of appointing a judge as taking between eight and 12 weeks with the caveat that the governor also has the right to leave the seat open until the next election.

In Juneau County, the circuit court is likewise stressed, but instead of going from three full-time judges to two, it has gone from two-full time judges to one.

We have about three regular reserve judges, plus a couple more alternates, said Mauston attorney Daniel Berkos, who works in the Juneau County Circuit Court. Were working with one judge; it can be delaying.

Diminished capacity

It is possible Walker will wait for the outcome of the next election in April and appoint the winner for immediate seating as opposed to waiting to be sworn in later in the summer. Though in that case, the courts still would have to operate at diminished capacity for seven months.

Of the three candidates, there was one who was a staunch conservative, another was an in-between and then a female who was probably middle of the road too, so politics didnt play into it, Berkos said. I feel bad for all the court personnel; criminal cases account for about 70 percent of the court. We go for days without a judge.

Columbia County has benefited from Georges familiarity with the court and his relatively recent tenure, but as Judge W. Andrew Voigt, the now-senior judge for Columbia County pointed out, these guys retired for a reason. In Juneau County, reserve judges are available, but sporadically appear to fill a full-time position.

Were coming into the winter months and guess where those retired judges are going to be, Berkos said, referring to retirees who have plans as snowbirds or planning vacations around the winter.

As retired judges take their leave of the Midwest, both Juneau and Columbia counties will draw from the same diminished pool of reserve judges.

We were told it would be about a half-time appointment, said Columbia County Clerk of Courts Susan Raimer, explaining that availability of reserve judges is somewhat up in the air, determined by the district court administrator, who also happens to be away from the office at the time.

The calendar for Columbia County Circuit Court is filled through the end of December, according to Raimer, though there are exceptions for lengthy trials.

We had a couple in October, Raimer said, but those have been either settled or rescheduled.

A judge has an incredible amount of power. They can adjourn a case, said Portage attorney Doug Kammer. If its a long-term problem, thats an issue, but over a few months, they can handle it.

Although reserve judges can relieve some of the burden from the full-time judge, there are other issues that cannot be temporarily patched, ranging from the personally taxing to the constitutionally problematic.

Judicial warrants

George and White both mentioned the challenges of handling judicial warrants when required for law enforcement to obtain a blood draw during an arrest. Such warrants are time-sensitive and often involve drunken driving cases, which results in law enforcement calling judges at home at all hours.

In Columbia County, the judges have shared this duty among the three of them  now two  so that one judge will have one month on call. In Juneau County, only Judge Paul Curran is available for those calls.

From the standpoint of an evil defense attorney, you could clog up the court real quick if we start filing speedy trials, Berkos said.

Backlogged cases have been an ongoing issue in courts and a point of discussion in the last judicial race between Todd Hepler and Cross in 2015. As the Columbia County court schedule stands, a suspect charged with a felony today is looking at a pre-trial conference in mid-November and a return hearing in December.

Although rarely requested, and with even fewer of those requests carried through, every defendant has a right to demand a speedy trial in which a trial is necessary within 60 days of the defendants initial appearance, or 90 days for defendants with felony charges.

Whether fast-tracked or otherwise, a full-time judge is required to see a criminal case through.

Its like if your plumbing backs up, Berkos said, and we all know what happens next.

There was no response from Walkers office after multiple contacts Thursday and Friday.




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A 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Mexico City megalopolis at 1:14 in the afternoon on Tuesday, knocking down dozens buildings, leaving large clouds of dust and smoke across the horizon. The scenes of solidarity were immediate, as thousands rushed to join rescue efforts and other disaster management tasks, such as directing appeals for aid and rescue on social media, organizing traffic, sharing transport and food, and helping the evacuation of hospitals.

Preliminary reports from the different municipalities indicated a total of 140 dead and dozens more injured at the time of writing, with victims largely concentrated in the impoverished central states of Morelos, Puebla and the state of Mexico. Hundreds of buildings and houses collapsed, including schools, and roads and airports were severely affected, with the damage extending across into Guerrero, Tlaxcala, and Michoacan.

The death toll is rapidly increasing as rescuers drag bodies out of the rubble in what constitutes the largest urban agglomeration in the hemisphere. Those dead, including many workers who died in their poorly constructed apartment buildings, are the victims of social murder carried out by a government and its US backers who have neglected spending on infrastructure and social programs for decades.

Rescues continued throughout Tuesday night, and the smaller cities and towns closer to the epicenter continue to regain communication and road connections. The National Seismological Service of Mexico announced that the epicenter was near the city of Axochiapan in the state of Morelos, about 75 miles (120 km) from the countrys capital, at a depth of 32 miles (51 km). The chief of the National Seismological Service of Mexico estimated that over 12 million people felt the earthquake.

Despite the fact that earthquakes in Mexico City are far from unexpected, the government has done next to nothing to prepare the population or the citys buildings from a major quake. Mexico dedicates the least of its GDP to social infrastructure among Latin American countries, according to a 2015 Inter-American Development Bank study.

Only two hours earlier, about four million public and private workers, as well as students, participated in drills commemorating the exact anniversary of the 1985 earthquake that killed tens of thousands in Mexico City. Many residents compared yesterdays tremor to the nightmare of 1985.

The difficulties of managing the continued dangers were vast, with many not willing to enter their homes for fear of the frequent aftershocks. Officials warned people not to smoke, fearing explosions from gas leaks. The Mexico City governor said many were trapped in buildings in flames, while the newspaper El Debate reported explosions.

Moreover, 3.8 million people in the country lost power. Social media reports and videos of the devastation and massive evacuations suggest that the extent of the disaster will only become clear in the next days.

Authorities have yet to clear the rubble from the September 7 earthquake that hit the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. The 8.2 magnitude quake less than two weeks agothe strongest in a centuryleft 98 dead and entire areas devastated, particularly Juchitan, the poorest city in Oaxaca.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who decided to turn his flight initially headed towards the affected areas in Oaxaca back to Mexico City, quickly activated a state of emergency under Plan MX, tied to the deployment of Plan DN-III of Army and Marine officials for public order. Fearing the prospect that the earthquakes could trigger a social explosion, Pena Nieto later announced that 3,000 soldiers were going to be sent into the capital.

On Monday night, Pena Nieto spoke on Teleformula ahead of his trip. He summarized the infrastructural damage of the September 7 disaster: 2,600 schools, 100,000 houses, 5,000 businesses, and 500 large public and cultural installations.

With these estimates, Nieto refused to give a calculated economic cost or budget, simply declaring that well define the mechanisms for that. This evasion suggests that the funds that will be dedicated to those affected in these two devastating disasters will not go beyond the meager natural disaster fund, Fonden.

Mexican society needs to put into dimensions what happened, said Nieto on Monday, suggesting that the country is much better prepared than during the 8.1 magnitude earthquake of 1985. However, just hours later, his negligence and that of the Mexican ruling class he speaks for were exposed with the vast destruction and untold suffering in the greater Mexico City area.

Finally, Nieto finished his remarks by calling for the suppression of mounting social opposition against his government, escalated by the clear exposure of official indifference and ineptitude. Lets disregard any intervention of political actors wanting to take advantage of the tragedy, he stressed.
UK Prime Minister Theresa Mays speech in Florence yesterday was hyped as crucial to breaking the deadlock in negotiations with the European Union (EU) over the terms of Britains withdrawal. But it did nothing to resolve growing tensions.

May chose to speak in Florence, Italy to prove that while the UK may be leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe. Her tone was conciliatory, beginning with a paean to Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, which had began a period of history that inspired centuries of creativity and critical thought across our continent and which in many ways defined what it meant to be European.

But in her bid to placate her numerous critics domestically and internationally, May failed ultimately to satisfy anyone.

She heads a minority government, and a cabinet split over the terms of Brexit. Only last week, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, leader of the hard Brexit faction penned a 4,000-word manifesto widely seen as an undeclared leadership bid.

Britains major banks and corporations want an arrangement with the EU that will enable them to keep access to the single market or customs union. However, the EU insists there can be no preferential treatment for the UK, and that it must settle its divorce billestimated at up to 100 million eurosbefore any discussions can take place on future trade relations.

With Britain due to withdraw by March 2019, it is not even clear that the EU will agree at its summit next month that the May government has done enough to pass the first hurdle.

So while the prime minister made constant references to the UKs European partners (nearly 40 mentions) and friends, no EU leaders were present in the Santa Maria Novella church. Instead, the audience consisted entirely of members of her cabinet, including Johnson, journalists, and a handful of Italian business leaders, diplomats and local dignitaries.

The Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, was nowhere to be seen, despite meeting with the EU commissioner in charge of Brexit talks, Michel Barnier, in Rome only the previous day. The EU has insisted that all negotiations on Brexit must pass through Barnier, to ensure that the UK does not try to exploit divisions within the 27-member states to its advantage.

In Rome, Barnier had said that no progress had been made in negotiations, leaving just 12 months to conclude a deal. In addition to the UKs disputed financial liabilities, the rights of three million EU nationals living in the UK and future arrangements regarding the status of the border between the Republic of Irelandwhich is an EU memberand Northern Ireland are still outstanding.

As the Financial Times commented, Gentilonis huddle with Mr Barnier comes amid concern that Mrs May could try to sidestep Brussels and negotiate with national capitals to exploit any division between member states.

Still Mays pitch, couched in the most diplomatic language, was that it is up to [EU] leaders to set the tone. She said that the UK had issued 14 position papers on Brexit, stressing in particular that relating to Foreign policy, defence and development. This was a none too subtle warning that the EUs defence and security was heavily reliant on Britains substantial defence and intelligence capabilities. May cited North Korea explicitly as an existential threat and, in a reference to Russia, argued that, Here on our own continent, we see territorial aggression to the east; and from the South threats from instability and civil war; terrorism, crime and other challenges which respect no borders.

In the face of this, May said the UK would draw on the full weight of our military, intelligence, diplomatic and development resources, adding, Our determination to defend the stability, security and prosperity of our European neighbours and friends remains steadfast.

But in turn the UK required an urgent agreement on trade. She warned, At the moment, the negotiations are focused on the arrangements for the UKs withdrawal from the EU. But we need to move on to talk about our future relationship And this should span both a new economic relationship and a new relationship on security.

May proposed that the EU agree to a Brexit transition period of around two years, during which the UK would continue to have access to the single market. This has long been the demand of big business in the UK, with CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn commenting after that, Firms will welcome the proposal of a status quo transition period for business that averts a cliff-edge exit.

On this basis, the UK would meet its financial obligations she said, although no sum was mentioned. In equally vague terms, May said the UK would also accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice until 2021 or beyond, and would give legal protection to EU citizens in the UK.

In return, she returned to her demand for the UK to have preferential trading terms. She ruled out a deal based on European Economic Area (EEA) membership [as with Norway], or the type of agreement adopted by the EU recently with Canada. EEA membership required the UK adopting new EU rules, (which is opposed by the hard Brexit faction) while the Canadian option would represent such a restriction on our mutual market access that it would benefit neither of our economies.

The EUs response to the speech was guarded, with Barnier describing it as constructive. What had to be agreed, however, were the concrete implications of this pledge.

Manfred Weber, the head of the conservative European Peoples Party group in the European Parliament, and a leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkels coalition partners, the Christian Social Union, was openly hostile saying the speech offered no more clarity to Londons positions. He added, I am even more concerned now. The clock is ticking and time is running faster than the government believes in London.

Mays speech was peppered with pious references to the UK being steadfast in defence of shared values with the EU. We share a deep, historic belief in the same valuesthe values of peace, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, she proclaimed.

Just three days before, May and Johnson had sat silently while US President Donald Trump delivered his fascistic rant before the United Nations in New York. Asserting his doctrine of unbridled US militarism and war, he threatened to destroy the 25 million-strong population of North Korea, and menaced Iran and Venezuela amongst others.

Trumps America First policy, backed by threats of nuclear annihilation, is both an expression of, and significantly increases, tensions between the main imperialist powers and threatens world war.

While Germanys Chancellor Merkel and Frances President Macron absented themselves from Trumps speech, afterwards May went into talks with the US President, with whom she hopes to conclude a post-Brexit trade deal. Reports state that Trump criticised the UK for not doing enough to pressure Pyongyang, and called for it to adopt a tougher stance.

For a faction of the UK bourgeoisie, Brexit was meant to facilitate the development of global financial and trade relations as a counterweight to the EU. But such plans risk placing it at odds with its more powerful international ally.

At the UN, Trump described the agreement signed with Iran in 2015 by the US, China, Russia, the UK, Germany, France and the EU over its nuclear programme as the worst deal ever, and has threatened to scrap it.

In his talks with May, the US President refused to provide any information on his intentions. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said Prime Minister May asked him if he would share it [his decision] with her and he said no.

The UK moved rapidly to develop trade relations with Tehran after the agreement, with trade increasing by 42 percent from January to October in 2016 and 57 percent this year.

The day after Trumps rant, a London-based firm, Quercus, announced a 500 million euro project to build one of the worlds largest solar power farms in Iran.
As the strike by close to 2,800 GM workers at its CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ontario approaches the end of its first week, the Unifor trade union is working behind the scenes to shut it down. Despite the militant determination of autoworkers to fight back against decades of concessions, the struggle is under imminent threat from the union bureaucracy.

The London Free Press reported late Thursday that Unifor had made an offer earlier in the day aimed at restarting talks with GM. In keeping with its refusal to tell workers anything about the content of negotiations, Unifor Local 88 chairman Mike Van Boekel merely noted that the union had offered GM concessions on monetary issues.

Strikers should be on their guard. Unifor has time and again imposed givebacks on monetary issues, i.e. slashing wages, attacking workers pensions, and giving up cost-of-living allowance (COLA) benefits. Van Boekels comments make clear that the union is preparing another sell-out so as to shut down the strike as quickly as possible. As Van Boekel, who earlier stated that a tentative agreement between GM and Unifor would be enough to call a halt to the labour stoppage, told the Free Press, We think this is a proposal that can get us moving really quickly.

Striking workers have made clear in discussions with the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter that they would support the mobilization of autoworkers across Canada, the United States and Mexico against the auto giants to win substantial wage increases, an end to multi-tier wages and benefits, and job security.

But Unifor is instead peddling the poison of Canadian nationalism, focusing on calls for GM to commit to Canadian made products and emblazoning the picket lines with huge Maple Leaf flags.

In a political stunt, Unifor bussed over one hundred CAMI workers to Ottawa Friday to participate in an explicitly nationalist rally on the eve of the opening of the next round of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks. In remarks that Donald Trump could have made, Van Boekel proclaimed, We are the poster child for NAFTA. This is exactly what were fighting about. We have to keep manufacturing in this country.

The efforts of Van Boekel and his fellow union bureaucrats to present such calls as being concerned with defending jobs are a fraud. For over three decades, Unifor and its predecessor, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), have trotted out the line of keeping manufacturing in this country to justify imposing one round of concessions after another, including thousands of layoffs, the introduction of two-and three-tier wage regimes in the auto plants, the elimination of defined-benefit pension rights, and the slashing of workplace benefits.

In truth, the principal concern of Unifor president Jerry Dias, Van Boekel and their colleagues is to exploit the CAMI strike to deepen their partnership with Justin Trudeaus Liberals. Dias was in Washington for the opening round of NAFTA talks so he could function as a de facto adviser to the Canadian governments delegation. In a disgusting nationalist tirade at a rally of Bombardier workers on Wednesday, he urged our federal governmentthe same right-wing big-business government that has hiked military spending by 70 percent and begun the implementation of a vast privatization program of public infrastructureto fight the United States and defend our jobs.

To defend its cozy alliance with Trudeaus Liberals, Unifor is seeking to whip up animosity towards Mexican autoworkers. Unifors appeal for GM to make CAMI the lead plant in manufacturing the Equinox is based on the bogus claim that Canadian workers can secure their jobs by calling on GM managers to lay off their colleagues in Mexico.

In contrast to Unifors nationalism, the reality is that CAMI workers, like fellow autoworkers in the United States, Mexico and the world over, confront a daily struggle against a major global corporation, which is working hand-in-glove with the union bureaucracy to exploit them ever more ruthlessly.

A CAMI worker told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter about how the union has collaborated with management to impose bone-crunching 60-hour workweeks spread across six days. Throughout the launch of the 2018 Equinox our labour force under the guidance of Mike Van Boekel and Committee created a miserable and hazardous work place, the worker said. The launch began with inadequate training in a failed pilot-project introducing us to new components and processes. Incomplete processes, hazardous machinery and cluttered poorly laid-out workstations followed. Hourly job rotation required workers to perform 18-plus jobs per team throughout the day and made it impossible to make improvements to work stations or jobs on account of the 30-plus people rotating through the jobs per day.

Injuries have risen rapidly as a result. Look around the plant on any given day and you will see workers showing up for duty with bad backs, shoulders and hands. And its not just at work. Peoples personal lives are wrecked because of all the nagging injuries and downright exhaustion from these never-ending, six-day a week mandatory shifts and unsafe work practices that the union does nothing about, the worker added.

The union stood by as workers were laid off on the same day as temporary part-time (TPT) employees were hired on at lower wages and worse conditions. When union chairperson Van Boekel was questioned about the excessive hours and informed they exceeded Employment Standards he responded by saying we have workers getting laid off and to let the poor bastards work overtime, the worker continued. He opposed the complaint and encouraged workers to ignore the law. Hes the most anti-labour employee in our plant.

Unifor has suppressed numerous worker complaints, the worker added, telling workers who raised concerns to go to the companys HR department. Commenting on the prospects for a new contract, the worker remarked, Nobody believes the union will do anything. From what little theyve said, the proposal sounds terrible. The best we can hope for is the rotten (Unifor-Detroit Three) pattern.

This is why workers must immediately move to elect an action committee controlled by the rank-and-file and led by the most militant workers to seize control of the strike from the hands of Unifor. CAMI workers face powerful enemies, but they have stronger allies. The issues they are fighting for are the same as those confronting autoworkers at plants in the United States, Mexico and internationally. The action committee must therefore issue an immediate appeal to GM and other Detroit Three workers across North America to join their struggle by launching their own strikes and refusing to perform additional work demanded by GM to compensate for the strike. Autoworkers at other plants must be urged to join a broader counteroffensive against the decades of concessions and attacks imposed by management with the intimate collaboration of their Unifor and UAW lackeys.

This is, above all, a political fight. It requires the adoption of a socialist and internationalist program capable of guiding the struggles of autoworkers and the working class as a whole in the fight to put an end to the system of capitalist exploitation and replace it with a workers government committed to placing the needs of workers above the corporate drive to boost profits.
Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel underscored Germanys claim to great power status in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, just days prior to Sundays federal election. After a flood of pacifist phrases, he concluded his remarks with an explicit call for greater German responsibility in world affairs, including a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Ladies and gentlemen, Germany is ready to assume additional responsibility, he declared to his international audience. This is why my country is applying for a seat on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2019 to 2020.

Germany, he added, has a clear course. Peace and security, global justice and human rights are inseparably bound together. Germany wants to cooperate in partnership with all members of the United Nationsin Africa, Asia, America and Europe.

Phrases about peace, human rights and global justice are rhetorical window dressing for Germanys renewed turn to imperialist Realpolitik. Unlike the 1930s, when the German Reich left the League of Nations to rearm and prepare for war, today Berlin seeks to pursue its global imperialist ambitions within existing international organisations.

Now, as then, Germany identifies the United States as its chief rival. Gabriel did not once refer to US President Donald Trump. But his speech was a clear rejection of Trumps America First strategy, to which Gabriel counterposes an ostensibly more peaceful German policy.

If one looks around the world, Gabriel declared, it appears as though a world outlook has imposed itself that considers ones own national interests to be absolute and avoids seeking to reconcile the interests of the worlds nations and states. He rejected such an outlook, proclaiming national egoism to be unsuitable as an organising principle for our world.

He went on to say that this world outlook is dominated by the international law of the strongest and not the strength of international law. He was certain that we must engage to oppose this world outlook. Again wrapping himself in the mantle of international law, he declared, We need more international cooperation and less national egoism, not the reverse.

Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Russian Revolution along with Lenin, wrote in the founding program of the Fourth International: The bourgeoisie and its agents use the war question, more than any other, to deceive the people by means of abstractions, general formulas, lame phraseology: neutrality, collective defense, arming for the defense of peace.

In Gabriels case, the phrases of choice are reconciliation of interests, international cooperation and international law.

All such formulas, Trotsky continued, reduce themselves in the end to the fact that the war question, i.e., the fate of the people, is left in the hands of the imperialists, their governing staffs, their diplomacy, their generals, with all their intrigues and plots against the people.

Gabriels lame phraseology cannot conceal the fact that he and the Social Democrats (SPD) are playing a leading role in the return of German militarism and, like Trump, are preparing for war. Significantly, he did not utter a word of criticism of Trumps fascistic threat to totally destroy North Korea, a country of 25 million people.

Just a few days earlier, in an interview with Handelsblatt, Gabriel laid out his own militarist programme for the German government. In essence, he said, the issue is to make Europe a global political actor capable of standing up to the US as well as China. To this end, he said it was necessary to double the efficiency of the European defence policy. He described the abolition of military service and cutbacks in the budget for the armed forces as mistakes.

In his recent book Remeasuring, Gabriel calls for the construction of a European army capable of imposing the continents global interests independently of NATO and the US, and, if necessary, in opposition to the latter.

Europes security is Europes own responsibility, he writes. We have to become capable of acting strategically, because currently we dont do so sufficiently. This includes defining our European interests and articulating them independently of the US. This requires an emancipation, to some extent, from adopting positions developed in Washington.

He continues: Anyone with his own goals should develop the capabilities to achieve them. The EU must see itself increasingly as a security policy power. Our defence budgets must be adjusted accordingly. Europes military equipment must be modernised and reoriented towards operational readiness and military tasks.

Gabriels criticism of Washington has nothing to do with pacifism. He opposes Trumps threats to destroy North Korea and blow up the Iran nuclear deal because they undercut German imperialist interests. Berlin, like Paris and London, has signed multi-billion-dollar deals with Iran and wants to further open up the country to secure new energy sources and new markets for Germanys export-dependent economy in the Middle East.

With regard to North Korea, Germany, which is one of the few countries to have an embassy in Pyongyang and North Korean diplomatic representation in Berlin, is pursuing similar goals. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with Deutsche Welle, Even though in terms of distance it is far away from Germany, it is still a conflict that affects us. And thats why I am prepared and the foreign minister is prepared to assume responsibility for this. In the Iran agreement, which I believe to be correct we also took part in the negotiations.

Behind the call for more responsibility in the North Korea conflict lie the economic and geo-strategic interests of German imperialism. Rudiger Frank, the leading German North Korean expert, describes the North Korean economy in his recent book as an uncut diamond. He writes: The geographical position, between some of the largest and most dynamic markets in the world, which have substantial deposits of raw materials and largely well-educated, disciplined populations, offers realistic prospects for growth and economic success.
A panel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently made a unanimous recommendation to approve the first-ever treatment that genetically alters a patients cells to fight cancer, transforming them into what scientists call a living drug that powerfully bolsters the immune system to shut down the disease.

In the summary of their report, the authors explain that in 2014 the FDA granted breakthrough therapy designation to CTL019 for being the first time in medical history that personalized cellular therapy has been used to treat patients with a high-risk B-cell leukemia. In their study, they describe how T-cells, which are one of the bodys types of white blood cells and a key part of the human immune system, can be engineered to fight malignant cancers.

This area of research gained steam in 2006 after the first human clinical trials using Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell technology demonstrated that it was possible to redirect T-cells to attack cancer cells. This normally does not happen because T-cells regard cancer cells as native to the body or fail to detect them, and thus do not destroy them. Since then, there have been many investigations in this field that have ultimately led to the current discovery.

The treatment process begins with removing T-cells from a patients serum and genetically modifying them so they can attack the cancerous B-cells. The researchers used a disabled form of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that can carry the new genetic material and incorporate it into the T-cells, thereby reprogramming them. The T-cells can now recognize the protein called CD-19 on the surface of the B-cell and attack it. The reprogrammed T-cells are then infused back into the patient where they multiply and eradicate the cancer.

With such therapy there are also complications involving the Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS) that can have severe consequences for the patient. This means the inflammatory response to the treatment is brisk and characterized by high fevers, low blood pressures, and low oxygen saturation. The body undergoes an inflammatory-mediated shock similar to a major infection. It becomes imperative to appreciate the delicate but complex systems of interaction that such efforts mediate. Yet, CAR T-cell therapy holds the possibility to eradicate cancer in these patients permanently.

As compared to tumor vaccines that have a low affinity to their target, with responses occurring over several months, T-cell transfer responses are measured in days to weeks. A single reprogrammed T-cell can kill up to 100,000 cancer cells.

There are currently 30 clinical trials open for the treatment of B-cell malignancies involving many major institutions in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. CAR T-cell therapy is also being investigated for an assortment of hematological as well as solid tumor malignancies such as breast and lung cancer.

CAR T-cell therapy is a seismic shift from current conventions for treatment, yet significant work lies ahead. Unknowns include finding the optimal gene transfer method that is less complicated, safe, and financially feasible, and which ensures a consistent T-cell mediated immune response. The T-cell expansion is currently being carried out at local cancer treatment centers. Suitable methods to scale up production and increase output while adhering to strict quality control is necessary. The appropriate dosing of T-cells needs to be worked out. Protocols need to be standardized from institution to institution.

Because it is a patient-specific treatment, CAR T-cells must be manufactured for each patient on a case-by-case basis. Accordingly, it is only feasible now at large academic centers that have extensive expertise and resources. At the same time, however, a single infusion of T-cells is sufficient to induce a tremendous proliferation and rapid response.

The kinetics of T-cell expansion and tumor rejections appear to be dependent on the type of tumor and remain to be further studied. Though CAR T-cells are considered targeted therapy, the mechanisms by which this occurs are unknown and thought to be multifactorial. T-cells are versatile in their ability to target and kill through multiple methods of attack. It is hypothesized that tumors can only escape CAR T-cells through antigen (surface receptor) loss.

If the FDA approves the recommendation for CAR T-cell treatment for B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), it would be the first gene therapy to reach the market in the United States. Novartis, a Swedish-based global healthcare company, would be the first to offer such treatment while it works to investigate similar approaches to other blood and solid organ malignancies.

B-cell ALL afflicts about 6,000 people in the United States with a peak incidence at 2-5 years of age. These patients undergo a rigorous treatment with multidrug regimen divided into several phases. Most treatment protocols can take two to three years to complete. Many of them will require supportive care with blood products, treatment for infections with broad spectrum antibiotics and correction of metabolic imbalances. Despite the debilitating side effects, most will be cured. However, approximately 15 percent will not respond or relapse.

The results from the clinical trials conducted at the University of Pennsylvania have been dramatic for this subset of patients with a very slim prognosis. One such patient, Emily Whitehead, was treated in 2012 at age 6. Though the side effects of the CAR T-cell treatment were severe and nearly killed her, she emerged cancer free and continues to remain in remission.

The data Novartis presented to the FDA panel included results from 63 patients treated from April 2015 to August 2016. Fifty-two patients (82 percent) went into remission, which is considered astonishing given the severity of the disease. Certainly, the CRS is an issue they are grappling with as well as concerns for possible future medical complications for which there are presently no answers. This means that such patients would likely be treated at specialized centers where expertise with the treatment will be important for patient safety.

Though Novartis has not commented on treatment costs, analysts predict that individualized treatments could cost more than $300,000. It is unlikely insurance companies would approve such an expense. Most likely the only way that working people could obtain such life-saving treatments is to be among the few selected as subjects in clinical trials.

There are certainly ethical issues to this which are not being raised in the mainstream journals. Arguments in support of the high cost follow the irrational logic that these patients will assume high costs of treatment for their cancer in the long run anyway.

Similar arguments have been used by successive administrations to slowly slash federal funding for medical research. Trumps proposed budget cut for the National Institutes of Health would reduce the organizations funding by 20 percent, from $31.8 billion to $26 billion. Such cuts will directly and negatively impact any further research into this new way to fight cancer.
Despite mass popular opposition and growing strikes and protests, French President Emmanuel Macron signed decrees destroying the countrys Labor Code yesterday. His government has also announced deep cuts to health, education, and unemployment insurance, while promising to spend billions of euros more on the army and cut taxes on the rich (ISF).

On live television, flanked by Labor Minister Muriel Penicaud and government spokesman Christophe Castaner, Macron signed five decrees modifying the Labor Code after a meeting of the cabinet yesterday. The first measures are to be published in the legislative record starting tomorrow. Macron declared, This reform will go into effect immediately upon publication. The first reforms will be in effect in a matter of days.

He added that he would sign maybe 20 or so decrees before the end of the year, and that all the reforms contained in these decrees would go into effect at the latest by January 1.

This action underscores the contempt of Macron and of the entire financial aristocracy he represents for mass popular opposition to austerity across Europe. Macrons approval ratings have fallen to 30 percent in the four months since his election, and 70 percent of French people opposed last years reforms of labor law on which Macron is building.

Macron is arrogantly imposing his diktat on the population via the state machine, which functions against the wishes of the people. While the September 12 union protest was being prepared, Macron declared in New York that democracy does not happen in the street. He insulted demonstrators opposed to the law as lazy and cynical.

Macron, the banks and the rest of big business in France are determined to destroy all the social rights won by the working class in the 20th century. Those gains were the products of international struggle. Frances Labor Code, passed in 1905, was the immediate product of European strikes that erupted in the wake of the Russian Revolution that year. The October Revolution of 1917, which terrified the ruling class everywhere, was more responsible than any other single event for improvements in the conditions of the working class.

By destroying the traditional framework of class relations in France, Macrons decrees have set the stage for an intensification of the class struggle. Workers will only be able to defend themselves by building new organizations of struggle to replace the unions, which have been transformed into instruments for strangling workers resistance, and by constructing a new revolutionary leadership of the working class.

Macrons decrees allow employers to impose workplace votes to blackmail workers into accepting sackings and cuts to wages and benefits. If workers refuse these demands, employers will be able to shut down factories, sack workers refusing the proposed agreements and cancel their rights to job re-training at Unemployment Centers.

Bosses will be authorized to hire workers on so-called project contracts, which are indefinite temp contracts. These will be regulated at the industry level in terms of how long and how many times workers can be hired on such contracts. Employers will be legally allowed to break project contracts once a project is done, without paying any severance pay.

Small businesses will be able to change established rules on pay and bonuses through these votes.

Employers will also be authorized to impose firm-level contracts that violate the Labor Code, industrial-level agreements and previously signed contracts, all of which would be a dead letter.

The Macron government and the international bourgeoisie are watching nervously as anger develops in the working class. Yesterday, Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne called in truckers unions to offer empty reassurances that the reforms should be no cause for worry, in an attempt to shut down the drivers strike and keep roads and gas stations open.

The ruling class is counting on the complicity of the trade unions, who are seeking to divide struggles against the law into a number of separate, rolling one-day strikes to exhaust opposition to Macron. They met the new president after his election to go over the schedule of his reform agenda. They then negotiated the labor decrees for weeks with Penicaud and the employers organizations.

According to Le Canard enchaine, two secret meetings took place between Macron, Penicaud, and top officials of the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor) and FO (Workers Force) unions. The weekly reported that Macron wanted to make sure the unions had their members under control.

Le Monde reported that discussions between union officials and the government are cordial and Penicaud is very enthusiastic about plans to fund training for union officialsone of the main avenues Macrons decrees use to funnel corporate money into the unions coffers. The unions will then seek to impose on the workers the agreements they have arranged with the bosses and the government.

The aim of Macrons reforms is to increase the profitability of the second-largest economy in the European Union (EU), above all to make it possible for France and Europe to rival the United Statesincluding militarilyin the wars now being prepared.

A few days before publishing his decrees, Macron told an assembly of ambassadors, My ambition is for our armies to demonstrate themselves, in terms of quality, capacity for deployment, and speed  as among the very best in the world, the best in Europe, to protect France, but also our continent. We have forgotten that the last 70 years of peace on the European continent are an aberration of our collective history. But the threat is on our doorstep, and war is on our continent.

Amid the collapse of the post-war international order and of the world hegemony of the United States, brought to a head by the actions of the Donald Trump administration, tensions are exploding between Washington and the EU. Trumps barbaric threats of nuclear genocide against North Korea are driving the European bourgeoisies to build up their military forces to prepare their own imperialist wars. They are determined to put the cost of this military build-up squarely on the backs of the working class.

The billions of euros saved by slashing workers social rights are intended to reinforce the armed forces and militarize France, as Macron aims to transfer the extraordinary police powers granted by Frances anti-democratic state of emergency directly and permanently into common law.

Faced with the EU austerity diktat and the growing dangers of dictatorship and war, workers in France and across Europe are confronted with the necessity of a political and revolutionary struggle.
The 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith by St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was an open-and-shut case of police murder.

Smith was a 24-year-old African-American who was driving away from police after they burst in on what they claim was a drug deal. Stockley, who is white, was recorded on a dashboard camera saying, Im going to kill this motherfucker, dont you know it. Less than 45 seconds later, his partner Brian Bianchi rammed their police SUV into Smiths car. Video of the incident shows that Smith remained in the car and made no attempt to flee.

Stockley jumped out of the SUV and shot Smith five times. Forensic evidence revealed that Stockley fired the kill shot from six inches away. The officer then returned to his vehicle, rummaged through a duffel bag and returned to Smiths car to plant a throwaway gun on the dead victim. Tests showed the gun had only Stockleys DNA on it.

In addition to his police-issued handgun, Stockley was carrying his personal AK-47 in violation of official department protocol.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, it took more than four years for prosecutors to charge Stockley. When he was finally arrested on charges of first-degree murder, another year and a half went by until last Fridays not-guilty verdict, handed down by Missouri Circuit Court Judge Timothy Wilson.

Stockleys acquittal has sparked a week of largely peaceful protests in St. Louis and the surrounding suburbs demanding justice for Smith and an end to police violence.

The violent and provocative response by riot police, including the kettling and mass arrest of protesters and the fascistic spectacle of cops chanting Whose streets? Our streets! reveals the real state of class relations in America.

The Trump administration and the capitalist state are seizing on the inevitable outrage provoked by the judicial sanctioning of police murder to legitimize the violence carried out on a daily basis in working-class communities by the uniformed shock troops of the ruling class. It is only a few weeks since Trump spoke to police on Long Island and encouraged them to be rough on detainees.

There was an element of deliberate provocation in the days leading up to the verdict announcement. Anticipating the exoneration of Stockley, city and state officials, Democratic and Republican, all but dared workers and youth to take to the streets, making it clear that dissent would be met with repression.

Tensions were stoked by the announcement a week in advance that the judge had made his decision. The media made wild predictions of rioting. The police were mobilized well ahead of Fridays decision by Democratic Mayor Lyda Krewson, while Republican Governor Eric Greitens placed the National Guard on alert. The courthouse and city hall were barricaded. Schools were shut down. Businesses were warned to board up their windows and send employees home early on verdict day.

The police have thus far arrested 165 people, even though the protests have been relatively small. The constitutional right to peaceful assembly and free speech has been rendered null and void as police systematically surround and pen in demonstrators, order them to vacate, and then arrest them for failing to disperse.

The ACLU of Missouri filed a lawsuit Monday against the City of St. Louis for unconstitutional police conduct including kettling, using pepper spray and interfering with the filming of police activity.

St. Louis is being used to set a precedent. Under Trump there is to be no handwringing over police murders, no federal investigations, no consent decrees.

Stockleys verdict came three years and one month after another St. Louis-area cop murdered eighteen-year-old Michael Brown just a few blocks away from where Smith was killed and on the very same streetFlorissant Avenue. Browns killer, Darren Wilson, was never charged. The Obama administrations Department of Justice refused to bring civil rights charges against him.

In the aftermath of Browns murder and the resulting protests in Ferguson, the Democratic Party, the Obama administration and newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post shed crocodile tears about his death and called for healing. After then-Governor Jay Nixon, a Democrat, called in the National Guard, a number of columnists, politicians and other moralizers made various suggestions: body cameras, better police training, stronger oversight boards, the hiring of more African-American and minority officers and police chiefs, etc., etc.

Three years later the never-ending stream of atrocities continues. The total number of police killings nationally this year is set to surpass last years total of 1,116, with 874 killed as of Friday. Getting shot by the police is a real danger for tens of millions of working-class Americans of all races. Just in the past week police shot and killed a white student in Atlanta and a Hispanic man in Oklahoma City.

Neither able nor willing to offer any policies to address the desperate social crisis facing tens of millions of workers and youth, the political agents of the financial oligarchy build up the state apparatus of repression. Now they are giving the police a green light to carry out their death squad activities with impunity.

Both the Democratic mayor of St. Louis and the Republican governor have praised the restraint shown by the St. Louis police, and the corporate media have made the police rampage a nonissue. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has commented editorially on the storm trooper-like behavior of the cops.

Black Lives Matter and pseudo-left proponents of identity politics, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative, continue to insist that the police violence is simply a question of race and racism. These organizations seek to obscure the fundamental class issues and divide the working class along racial, ethnic and gender lines.

There was a noticeable difference in the approach taken by the St. Louis police to a White Allies Only protest Thursday night endorsed by the DSA and Socialist Alternative, indicating the tacit support of the city administration for the racialist politics of the event. There were no arrests and the police watched from a distance as demonstrators carried signs reading Black Lives Matter and White Silence = White Violence.

While racism plays a significant role in the disproportionate number of African-American victims, the daily bloodletting by police in the United States impacts every race and ethnicity. What the vast majority of the victims have in common is the fact that they are poor and working-class.

The acquittal of Stockley was stained with racism. In his decision, Judge Wilson wrote that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly. There is little doubt that here urban is a euphemism for black.

But it is necessary to approach the issue of racism, as all other social questions, from a historical and scientific standpoint. It is not something engrained in human nature. It is rather rooted in the very material and oppressive social structure of capitalism, based on the economic exploitation of the working class. It has long served, and continues to serve, as an ideological and political weapon of the ruling class to divide the working class and impede the growth of class-consciousness.

The essential instrument for upholding the interests of the ruling class and suppressing the working class is the state, which, as Lenin explained, citing Engels, consists of special bodies of armed men, including the police, prisons, etc. It is the state, not of one race or color, but of one classthe capitalist class.

In his fascistic speech before the UN on Tuesday, Trump felt the need, seemingly out of the blue, to launch an attack on socialism. This reflects the fear within the ruling elite of the growth of anticapitalist and socialist sentiment in the working class. This fear is well grounded.

Mass opposition to war, social inequality and repression is growing. The critical task is the development of a new political leadership to unite the working class across all racial, religious and national boundaries in a common, politically conscious struggle to end all forms of oppression by ending the system that causes itcapitalism.
Sunlight finally shone intermittently in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Friday following a night of heavy rainmore than three feet fell in the previous twenty-four hours. There are flash flood warnings and people are being told to seek higher ground. Stores that are still open are running out of water bottles. Those that still have them are rationing them. Two days after the hurricane, virtually every necessity is in short supply.

That food, fuel and other essentials are in short supply so soon, despite having been rationed since before Maria hit the island, is an indictment of the current administration of Ricardo Rossello, the ruling Financial Oversight and Management Board, and the American government which has kept the island under colonial subjugation for over a century. All three are guilty of criminal indifference and lack of preparation.

All over the island streets are blocked by hundreds of toppled electric posts, leaving all of Puerto Rico with no public electric power. Hundreds of trees have also been yanked out by the sustained 150 mile-per-hour winds.

The heavy rains caused a partial failure in the Guajataca Dam, on the northern coast about 70 miles west of San Juan. The breach sent streams of water toward the cities of Isabela (pop. 45,000) and Quebradillas (pop. 26,000), prompting calls for the last-minute emergency evacuation of some 70,000 people.

Abner Gomez, executive director of Puerto Rico's emergency management agency, said "thousands of people could die" if the dam suffers a total failure.

On Puerto Ricos southern coast, the historic city of Ponce, Puerto Ricos second largest, is incommunicado from the central government. Its mayor, Maria Melendez, declared that the city is devastated. While no casualties have as yet been reported, 1,295 people remain in shelters. There is no electricity in Ponce; many parts of the Ponce metropolitan area have no water. There has been extensive damage at Ponce Beach and in other tourist areas, as well as in the port of Ponce. Ponce leaders have launched an appeal for food, beds for the shelters, and fuel for the area hospitals.

Bernardo Marquez, mayor of the town of Toa Baja, a western suburb of San Juan, reported that eight people drowned there. Four thousand people have been rescued from the flooded parts of the town. On Wednesday, three elderly sisters that had sought refuge in an empty house in Utuado died from a mudslide.

Further to the west, there are reports that the city of Aguadilla (pop. 61,000) suffered massive damage, including destroyed homes, toppled traffic lights and dividing walls. Aguadillas mayor, Carlos Mendez, gave the following details: Homes have floated away; roofs are gone; it is impossible to travel on highway 2; all this is a disaster Aguadilla is no more.

The death toll from Hurricane Marias waves of destruction and flooding of Puerto Rico and other smaller Caribbean islands, stands at 32; 15 died in Puerto Rico. Also hit with deadly consequences were Saint Croix, part of the US Virgin Islands chain, Dominica, Guadeloupe and Martinique.

Health professionals now predict that, as in Florida and Houston in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, the mosquito population will explode in the coming weeks, leading to a potentially disastrous increase in infectious diseases such as Zika, dengue, malaria and Nile virus.

The flooding of antiquated sewer systems in San Juan, Ponce, Arecibo and many other coastal cities increases the danger of cholera and other diseases.

On top of these natural disasters is the economic and financial disaster of this semi-autonomous colony of the US after declaring bankruptcy a little over a year ago and then defaulting on $74 billion in debt. Puerto Rico does not have access to the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.

This financial debacle did not materialize out of thin air; it is the product of decades of economic decline, coupled with 15 years of deindustrialization and capital flight, combined with flight of human labor-power, a record wave of emigration by young workers and professionals in search of jobs and better opportunities.

In the wake of these twin disasters, natural and economic, Puerto Rico is up against a wall, reeling as it is pushed back in time to the conditions of the nineteenth century. In a nutshell, conditions for the great majority of Puerto Ricans will more and more approximate those of Haiti, Honduras and other impoverished Caribbean and Central American nations.

Whatever economic activity remains will not be enough to spur a quick recovery. What is required is massive investment in housing, education, healthcare, roads, bridges, dams, sewers, and mosquito abatement.

An article in Miamis Nuevo Herald marveled at how citizens of San Juan spontaneously took to the streets on Thursday to help in whatever they could, removing debris, clearing trees and power poles from the roads, directing traffic, and using their vehicles to transport people to clinics.

Be it in Mexico, Florida, Houston, Mexico City, or Puerto Rico, these demonstrations of popular solidarity contrast with the indifference and lack of preparation and effort of the ruling class and their political agents, such as governor Ricardo Rossello and, in Puerto Ricos case, the Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico. For all their bombastic talk about the resiliency and spirit of the Puerto Rican people, the Puerto Rican capitalists and their Wall Street masters lick their chops over the opportunity of big profits at the expense of the Puerto Rican population.
The Spanish Interior Minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, has announced that National Police and Civil Guard reinforcements are being dispatched to Catalonia in advance of the October 1 independence referendum.

In a letter addressed to his Catalan regional counterpart, Joaquim Forn, Zoido declared extra officers were needed to support the Catalan regional police force, Mossos dEsquadra, to maintain public order following the tumultuous mobilizations that erupted after the arrest on Wednesday of Catalan officials and businessmen involved in the preparation of the referendum. The arrestees face possible sentences of 15 years for sedition.

Three ships are docked in the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona to provide accommodation for the forces, although dockworkers have refused to supply them.

Behind Zoidos announcement, however, are fears that the Mossos dEsquadra are unreliable and that it is necessary to match their numbersome 16,000 officers.

The chief of the Mossos dEsquadra, Josep Lluis Trapero, has been accused of relaying orders from Madrid to his subordinates with insufficient enthusiasm or clarity. On Thursday the force was accused of passivity by PP officials when demonstrators prevented Civil Guards from provocatively taking over, without a warrant, the headquarters of the pseudo-left CUP party and besieged those searching the Catalan Economy ministry.

An El Pais editorial criticized the Mossos dEsquadra for not acting against those in the commission of crimes. Other newspapers warned that the government could put the Catalan police force under the direct control of the Interior Ministry or disband it altogether.

The PP government, according to El Espanol has decided to park although not discard the process of invoking Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution allowing it to suspend autonomy and take over the functions of the Catalan government. The newspaper criticized the decision complaining bitterly that, If [PP Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy continues to act as a mere observer, the state will continue towards the coupthe term used by Madrid to describe the referendum.

For their part, Rajoy and the PP are counting on the ability of police operations to prevent the referendum. Ballot papers, posters and polling booths have been seized and officials arrested and threatened with fines of up to 16,000 euros a day if they continue preparing for the vote. Catalan government finances have also been taken over by Madrid.

The Public Prosecutor's Office of the National Court has filed sedition charges against the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium Cultural for the protest that took place in Barcelona and other towns on Wednesday. It accuses the two main separatist organizations of promoting violence, when in fact ANC leader Jordi Sanchez, is on the record for calling for peaceful demonstrations.

The PP is stoking up claims of violence to justify their drafting in of more police and further repression. They are pinpointing the CUP a movement of an anarchist origin, with a very radical and violent nature that is very far from the reality of Catalan society. These sorts of statements only assist the CUP, which dresses itself up in pseudo-socialist colors while acting as the foot-soldiers of the main Catalan bourgeois parties, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT).

The PP is seeking to split the secessionists by declaring that as soon as they renounce the referendum of October 1, they will begin negotiations on political and economic reforms. There are suggestions of the PP supporting the proposal of the Socialist Party (PSOE), already put before Congress, to convene a commission on the territorial model in Spain.

Economy Minister, Luis De Guindos, told the Financial Times, As soon as they abandon the independence plans, we can talkCatalonia already has a great autonomy, but we could talk about a reform of the financing system and other issues.

While welcoming PP support for negotiations, PSOE president, Cristina Narbona, has said that the government should not wait for October 2 to begin but start immediately. The PSOE, however, has refused to join an initiative launched by Podemos involving, European parliamentarians, state and autonomous community representatives, as well as councils and councillors of all political formations, except PP and Citizens. In addition, the PSOE president of the Provincial Council of Zaragoza has banned a conference this Sunday of these organizations and individuals, although organizers are seeking to hold it elsewhere.

Meanwhile Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has announced that referendum will take place and that the Catalan government has contingency plans. A map of polling stations has been published and some 55,000 people needed to man them are being notified. A call for permanent protest has been made by the secessionist umbrella organizations, the Catalan National Assembly and Omnium Cultural.

The events in Catalonia have also had repercussions in other autonomous regions. The Basque Country President Inigo Urkullu, declared Thursday for an exit to the territorial political labyrinth of Spain, a redistribution of the sovereignty of the State and discussions about the idea of a confederal shared sovereignty. The Congress deputies belonging to Urkullus Basque National Party, upon whom the minority PP government relies for its survival, have refused to vote for the Budget, forcing its postponement.

Few European Union leaders have spoken out openly on the Catalonia crisis for fear of worsening the existential crisis in the bloc, beset by Brexit and the rise of nationalism and separatism. This week, Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon made common cause with the Catalan separatists and called for the referendum to go ahead. In Italy two advisory referendums promoted by the Northern League, with the support of Forza Italia, will be held on October 22 on greater autonomy for the two richest regions of the country, Lombardy and Veneto.

A spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up the official EU line that the Catalonia issue was an internal Spanish matter but that she had often told Rajoy that the German government had great interest in the maintenance of stability in Spain. The German co-leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Ska Keller, was more forthright, declaring, Rajoy has put a lot of oil on the fire, fuelling the independentist debate. He has made a huge mistake and called for other PP leaders to put pressure on him to calm things down.

European Commission (EC) President Jean-Claude Juncker criticized Catalan politicians for using his remarks last week that Catalonia could join the EU after independence to imply he supported secession. He said a newly independent state would only be allowed to join if it had done so in accordance with the constitutional law of the member state it had left.

An editorial in the UKs Guardian called for a step back from the brink. It said that All the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has achieved by being so oblivious to public sentiment in Catalonia is to harden opinion in the region and draw thousands onto the streets.

If nothing is done to work towards a compromise, a political train wreck threatens in the EUs largest southern member state it warned.

The Economist declared, If the rule of law is to mean anything, the constitution should be upheld. Mr. Puigdemont should thus step back from his reckless referendumMr. Rajoy should be less defensive: he should now seek to negotiate a new settlement with Catalonia, while also offering to rewrite the constitution to allow referendums on secession, but only with a clear majority on a high turnout.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Earlier this month, many of us in the Big Bend began preparing for Hurricane Irma.

Stores sold out of nearly every canned food item, water, bread and batteries.

With Hurricane Irma causing mass devastation in South Florida, some may think it's wise to donate their supplies and food from their kit to those who need it more. While helpful, this is not the best idea for your own personal hurricane kit.

Experts say that it's important to keep supplies on hand and your kit fully stocked and out of mind until the time comes to use it.
A chinook salmon, second from the bottom, swims with sockeye salmon at the Bonneville Dam fish counting window Wednesday, June 27, 2012, near North Bonneville, Wash. Record numbers of sockeye salmon are returning to the Northwest's Columbia Basin, with more than 400,000 expected this year. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
If North Korea, according to the images it is published and according to information gathered by Western intelligence agencies, has succeeded in turning fissile material into a nuclear explosive device mounted on a warhead of its self-produced missilesso can Iran.

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For years, North Korea has served as the Iranian missile industrys active partner and development center. The Shahab-3 missiles are based on the North Korean Nodong missile. The Iranian Khorramshahr missiles, which have a 2,500-kilometer range, are actually a North Korean missile called HS-10.

Intelligence experts who have been monitoring the new Iranian and North Korean missiles point to identical changes in both of them, which are aimed at making them more accurate. This serves as clear evidence that North Koreas technical ability is a perfect replication of the Iranian ability in the missile area, and in the nuclear area as well no doubt.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects loading of a hydrogen bomb into a new ICBM (Photo: EPA)

During North Koreas transition from the moment it exposed its fission ability more than five years ago to the past year, in which it has been demonstrating military nuclear abilities, it was in need of technological and financial aid. According to Western information, including reports in the New York Times, Tehran provided Pyongyang with knowledge and mainly money.

The technological-scientific cooperation between the two countries was characterized for years by a flow of information on missile construction and improvement from North Korea to Iran. In the past five years, however, the knowledge and money have been flowing in the opposite directionfrom Iran to North Koreaparticularly concerning the nuclear issue. When Iran is incapable of developing military nuclear abilities due to the supervision of the international community, it develops these abilities in a country like North Korea, which expelled International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors years ago.

By the way, Pakistans Ghauri missile, which is armed with a nuclear warhead, is a copy of the North Korean Nodong and the Iranian Shahab-3. Pakistan reportedly reached these capabilities with Chinas help. And if Pakistan can do it and North Korea can do it, Iranwhich is already a nuclear threshold statecan definitely do it.

In the past few years, there have been quite a few reportssome reliable and some not so reliableon the presence of Iranian experts in long-range missile launches and in nuclear tests conducted by North Korea. One thing we know for certain is that Iranian experts have been guests of honor in public military parades in North Korea.

The ongoing development of North Korean missiles in Iran, as well as the Iranians involvement in the North Korean nuclear project and the North Korean nuclear abilities, which are an almost perfect replication of the Iranian abilities, are all strong cases that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can make to US President Donald Trump. But the joker in the pack is the fact that North Korea surprised the world with an operational nuclear weapon.

All the great experts in the West have been explaining to Israel how complicated it is to move from an accumulation of fissile material to a nuclear warhead on a missile. And here comes North Korea and not only proves them wrong, but also clarifies that they mislead Western leaders. Now, IAEA inspectors are searching for the Iranian experts at the supervised facilities in Iran. But theyre not theretheyre in labs in North Korea.

Iran isnt hiding the fact that it keeps developing its nuclear capabilities, especially as it is permitted to do so in the signed agreement. The agreement also allows Iran to produce ballistic missiles. So as soon as it makes the decision, there will be no surpriseas far as Iran is concerned, it has already accumulated fissile material and armed the warheads with a nuclear weapon. Not on Iranian soil, but on North Korean soil.
US President Donald Trump is lashing out at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a rally speech in Alabama.

Trump says during a rally for Sen. Luther Strange that "We can't have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place."

He also says "Rocket Man should have been handled a long time ago" by previous presidents.

Trump and Kim have been trading barbs.

Kim earlier this week called Trump "deranged" and said he would "pay dearly" for his threats.

Trump delivered a combative speech Tuesday at the UN General Assembly, where he mocked Kim as a "Rocket Man" on a "suicide mission." Trump also told the UN that if "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."
China announced Saturday that it will limit oil exports to North Korea under UN sanctions over its nuclear and missile development, further reducing support from Pyongyang's last major trading partner, energy supplier and diplomatic ally.

Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to 2 million barrels per year and sales of liquefied natural gas banned outright, effective Jan. 1, the Commerce Ministry said. The current size of Chinese energy supplies to the North and how much that would be reduced were unclear.

China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are one of the North's last major sources of foreign revenue following repeated rounds of UN sanctions under which Beijing cut off purchases of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods.

China accounts for some 90 percent of the North's trade, making its cooperation critical to any efforts to derail Pyongyang's development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Iran is working to restore a lost link in its network of alliances in the Middle East, trying to bring Hamas fully back into the fold after the Palestinian militant group had a bitter fall-out with Iranian ally Syria over that country's civil war.

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Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are quietly trying to mediate a reconciliation between Syria and Hamas. If they succeed, it would shore up a weak spot in the alliance at a time when Iran has strengthened ties with Syria and Iraq, building a bloc of support across the region to counter Israel and the United States' Arab allies.

Hamas had long been based in Syria, receiving Damascus' support in the militant group's campaign against Israel. Hamas' powerful leadership-in-exile remained in Syria even after the group took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007. Together with Iran and the Shiite guerrilla group Hezbollah, they touted themselves as the "Axis of Resistance" to oppose Israel.

Dec. 4, 2006: Syria's President Bashar Assad (R) meets with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Damascus, Syria (Photo: AP)

But when Syria tipped into civil war, Hamas broke with President Bashar al-Assad and sided with the rebels fighting to oust him. The rebels are largely Sunni Muslims, like Hamas, and scenes of Sunni civilian deaths raised an outcry across the region against Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect.

Iran, meanwhile, has been one of Assad's strongest backers since the crisis in Syria began in 2011, pumping billions of dollars into the economy and sending advisers as well as Iranian-backed fighters to help him stay in power. Hezbollah sent thousands of fighters, helping tip the war in Assad's favor against the rebels and now helping in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The reconciliation attempt comes after Hamas elected a new leadership and as its main backers, Qatar and Turkey -- both strong supporters of the rebels in Syria -- have sought to improve relations with Iran.

Hamas and Iran did not completely cut off their alliance after the fall-out with Assad. But ties cooled considerably. Tehran's funding continued, particularly for Hamas' armed wing, but at a reduced level, while political connections dwindled.

Since Yahya Sinwar took over Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip in February, the militant group has been rebuilding those relations. In August, the most senior Hamas delegation in years visited Tehran and took part in President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration. During their visit, the delegation met with the parliament speaker and senior aides to Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. This year, Hamas officials have held three meetings with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and relations have returned to normal, according to a Palestinian official in Beirut.

Yahya Sinwar (Photo: AP)

Iran has responded by increasing funding. Sinwar told reporters last month that Iran is now "the largest backer financially and militarily" of Hamas' armed wing. He said that with Iran's help, Hamas is "accumulating" its military powers in preparation for a battle meant for "the liberation of Palestine."

Now Iran wants to end the rift between its two allies, Assad and Hamas.

A Lebanese politician with close links to the Syrian government confirmed that Iranian-Hezbollah mediation is ongoing, adding that it is still in the "very early stages."

A Palestinian official who closely follows Hamas' relations in the region also confirmed the mediation effort and said there were "positive signals" from Syria.

Both the politician and the official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret mediation.

But the mediation faces a tough task given how bitter the split was.

At first when Syria's conflict began, Hamas' leadership in exile remained largely silent. But tensions grew with the increased bloodshed, and finally in January 2012, Hamas' leader in exile Khaled Mashaal left Syria to Qatar, one of Assad's main opponents.

The following September, he gave a speech in Turkey proclaiming, "We welcome the revolution of the Syrian people who are seeking freedom and independence" and that "the pure blood of these great people is being shed" because they seek democracy.

Within hours, Syrian authorities sealed up all Hamas offices in the country and expelled its members to Lebanon. They have not been allowed back since.

March 27, 2004: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (L) chats with Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas' political bureau, during a Hezbollah rally marking the assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Beirut, Lebanon (Photo: AP)

This month, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas figure in Gaza, told Al-Mayadeen TV that relations must be repaired with Syria and other countries that "are hostile to us without a reason." Pressed about possible reconciliation with Syria, Zahar said, "There are steps and they should continue."

Syrian officials told mediators they are open to reconciliation but will not allow Hamas to open an office in Damascus, prominent Palestinian journalist Abdul-Bari Atwan wrote in his online newspaper Rai al-Youm.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a Palestinian official based in Syria who has close relations with the government, said that in the Syrians' eyes, statements by Hamas toward improving ties "are not enough."

"What happened was big. It was betrayal as Syrian authorities say," Abdul-Majid said. "These (mediation) efforts have not reached serious steps."
The Hoover Dam, one of the most iconic dams in the world, now under threat from an invasive species of mussels that interfere with its hydropower operations, may find its salvation with an Israeli water treatment company.

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Technology developed by the Israeli company Atlantium Technologies is supposed to prevent the entry of said mussels into the cooling installations of the turbines placed in the dam, which supplies electricity and drinking water to millions of people.

Hoover Dam (Photo: AP)

The mussels apparently came from ships that sailed from Asia and made their way to the Colorado River and from there to Lake Meadthe largest water reservoir by volume in the United States, formed by the Hoover Dam.

The mussels have started clogging the turbines that are inside the dam which are powered by the pressure of the waterfall passing through them.

The mussels' invasion into the dam's pipeline may completely shut the turbines down and stop electricity supply to two countries.

This is where Atlantium enters the picture. Controlled by Benjamin Kahn, owner of the underwater observatory in Eilat and other places in the world, Atlantium has developed a method to purify water using UV rays, and has recently been informed that it has won a contract to install its technology inside the cooling systems of all turbines in the dam.

The system is supposed to serve as a sieve that will neutralize mussels and other living organisms that come into the pipeline and allow the important power turbines to continue operating.
Nuclear proliferation watchdog CTBTO is examining unusual seismic activity in North Korea, it said on Saturday.

"Analysts looking at unusual #seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude in the #DPRK," CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a Twitter post, adding more details were set to emerge later.

China's earthquake administration said it had detected a magnitude 3.4 quake in North Korea that was a "suspected explosion", raising fears the isolated state might have conducted another nuclear bomb test.
Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly gave rise to a series of provocative reactions from North Korea and Iran, the two Axis of Evil countries that Trump mentioned and even threatened in his address.

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But there is a difference between what is currently happening on the American front against North Korea and what is happening on its front against Iran. Iran is easily the simpler case here. Trump handed it a yellow card with a reddish frame, meaning not really a threat of war or their utter destruction or even an actual threat to scrap the nuclear agreement with it.

Trump made do with a warning and a threat to re-examine the nuclear agreement signed with Iran in 2015. It is clear that the carefully worded speech from Washington does not even signal an intention to completely bin the nuclear deal.

Military parade in Iran in commemoration of the Ian-Iraq war, Sep. 22, 2017 (Photo: Reuters)

The Iranians responded accordingly.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani repeated the usual statementsIran has the right to develop advanced long-range ballistic missilesbut reiterated these were not intended for offensive purposes against Iran's neighbors and against Europe, but only for deterrence.

Simply put, the Iranians claim their missiles are designed to prevent an attack on their soil by hostile countries such as the United States, Israel and the Arab Gulf states, who may be plotting it.

The Islamic Republic claims it has the right to develop the missiles, even if the UN does not like it and even if it violates UN Security Council resolutions. This is the argument and the rationale the Iranians truly believe in.

The Iranians claim and insist there is no connection between the ballistic missile program they are continuing to develop and the nuclear agreement they are meeting to the letter.

Iran reveals test launch of recently unveiled missile

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This is despite the fact it's pretty obvious to everyone the development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads has a clear connection to the Iranian nuclear program: When the restrictions on nuclear development in Iran are removed, it will already have long-range missiles ready to carry the nuclear warheads it will produce.

No real threat

This disagreement between Iran and the international community is one of the roots of the dispute between Tehran and the world, but Iran under the influence of the Revolutionary Guards and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei not only shows no sign of willingness to compromise with the United States and the United Nations, but also took a defiant step when on Friday it presented a ballistic missile the Iranians say can carry multiple warheads and has a range of 2,000 kilometers, which easily covers all the Arab states and Israel.

On Saturday, the Iranians continued their defiance and presented a test launch of this missile. They did not reveal when this experiment took place, and it is impossible to learn much from the photographs except that the missile was launched and the second stage of the test was successful.

But it is still far from Iran's claims this is a missile that can reach a range of 2,000 kilometers and can carry multiple warheads, each of which can strike a separate target.

In the past, many Iranian statements proved to be baseless, so we need to wait for more accurate data collected by Middle East and American intelligence agencies.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in his speech at the UN General Assembly (Photo: Reuters)

Besides, Israel is already in the final stages of development of an interception missile designed to deal precisely with missiles such as the Iranian one. Arrow 3 is supposed to intercept such missiles on their flight path, before they deploy their warheads.

But the bottom line is Iran is not taking any more serious measures that threaten its neighbors or US assets, but merely showing "moderate" defiance.

Therefore, Trump's response to Iran is measured. The US president recently signed a series of sanctions against Iran's missile program, but these sanctions are in fact a rehashed version of old and not particularly harsh sanctions.
Israeli-Arab actor and film director Mohammad Bakri was featured on the cover of the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar on Saturday.

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Bakri is known for his controversial 2002 film Jenin, Jenin, which dealt with the IDF's activity in the city during Operation Defensive Shield.

Bakri was featured on the cover of the Lebanese paper after of his arrival in the country to take part in the annual festival Palestinian Days, where some of his films on the Palestinian issues will be screened.

Mohammad Bakri on the cover of Al Akhbar

The paper's main headline boasted: "Mohammad Bakri, an optipessimistic in Beirut. The Dar El-Nimer Center for Arts and Culture, the Al Madina Theatre and Al Akhbar welcome the Palestinian actor."

Bakri held a press conference at the Dar El-Nimer Center on Friday, taking advantage of the event to lash out against Israel.

"The normalization with the Zionist enemy is treason. The discussion around this is shameful and unacceptable in any way," he said.

Bakri, a native of the Arab town Bi'ina in the Upper Galilee, also talked about life for Israeli Arabs "under the shadow of the cultural siege on them," claiming: "My presence in Lebanon, which Israel considers an enemy, is a victory over the racist laws that deny the original land owners their right to be in contact with their cultural and geographical extension in the Arab space."

Al Akhbar dedicated several stories for the Palestinian Days event, which it is likely also sponsoring. Among other things, the paper featured a story on Bakri's life, as well as a detailed schedule of the films being screened.
An Israeli winery is set to build an $8 million facility in central China, hoping to take a piece of what has become one of the largest wine markets in the world. The winegrower, Hayotzer, has signed a preliminary agreement with the Pen Dun Group to build the joint project.

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Hayotzer, which is owned by Arza, one of Israels largest wineries, will hold a 20-25 percent stake and will advise on winemaking and viticulture of the proposed venture. China is currently the worlds fourth largest wine consumer and is set to surpass France and the United Kingdom by 2020, making them second only to the United States.

They welcomed me like I was a Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Guy Edri, the CEO of Hayotzer told The Media Line. They are very enthusiastic about Jews and Jewish creativity. They say that Jewish culture is very close to Chinese culture and both are thousands of years old. They also see the kosher symbol as a mark of quality.





File photo: Shutterstock

China is already buying a lot of Israeli wine. When Edri met Chinese importers at a recent wine fair in China, they placed an order for 40,000 bottles. Thats the kind of market Israel, with its total population of just eight million, can only dream about.

China is a nirvana for Israeli winemakersits one of the biggest wine markets in the world, Adam Montefiore, a wine writer for the Jerusalem Post told The Media Line. We joke that if we can sell wine to just one village in China, we can all retire. The Chinese have great respect for Israels history and its technology.

But he said the Chinese bureaucracy can make it difficult for new companies to succeed. And oenophiles might cringe if they saw their product being mixed with Sprite to appeal to the Chinese, who like sweet drinks.

Drinking wine is more about status than actually liking wine, Montefiore said.

The plan for the winery is only the latest agreement between Israel and China. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has recently visited Beijing to sign a $300 million trade agreement with clean-tech Israeli companies, meaning environmental-friendly energy and agricultural technology. In a statement, Israels Foreign Ministry said that the new deal, allows the two sides to expand bilateral economic activity into other environmental-friendly technologies, including advanced agriculture technologies and smart and green energy technologies, which the Chinese government wants to implement using Israeli experience and expertise.

China is hungry for Israeli technology and Israeli companies are happy to provide it. Press reports say that more than 1,000 Israeli companies have set up shop in China, and large delegations of Chinese businessmen visit Israel every year. China has also recently bought a controlling interest in Tnuva, an iconic Israeli food company, and Ahava Dead Sea products.

We are looking for investment opportunities in Israel and we will help them in development and marketing, Liu Hao Peng, of New Alliance, a Shanghai based investment fund told The Media Line. We aim to help them settle down in China and to manufacture their product in China.

China is Israels third largest trading partner after the US and the European Union. Israels exports to China were more than $3.2 billion last year, up from just $300 million a few years ago. In recent years, China has invested more than $15 billion in Israeli technology companies.

Israel and China established diplomatic relations in 1992 and recently marked 25 years of close ties. As criticism of Israels actions in the West Bank has grown in Europe, and calls to boycott Israeli products have grown, China offers an alternative market where the Palestinian issue is not seen as crucial.

Article written by Linda Gradstein
ISTANBUL - The heads of the Turkish and Iraqi armed forces discussed the "illegitimate" Iraqi Kurdish referendum on Saturday and stressed the importance of maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, the Turkish military said.

It issued a written statement after the Iraqi army's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, met his Turkish counterpart, General Hulusi Akar, in Turkey on Saturday, two days ahead of the planned referendum.
The Khorramshahr, a new ballistic missile tested by Iran, can "evade the enemy's air defense line and be guided from the moment of launch until the target is hit," the country's defense minister said Saturday.

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On the path to improve our countrys defensive capacity we will certainly not be the least affected by any threats and we wont ask anyones permission for producing various kinds of missile," Brig. Gen. Amir Hatami added in a television address.

State broadcaster IRIB carried footage of the missile test on Saturday without giving its time and location. It included video from an on-board camera which it said showed the detachment of the cone that carries multiple warheads.

Footage of Khorramshahr missile test

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You are seeing images of the successful test of the Khorramshahr ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the latest missile of our country, state television said, adding this was Irans third missile with a range of 2,000 km.

The weight of the Khorramshahr missiles warhead has been announced to be 1,800 kg (4,000 lbs), ... making it Irans most powerful missile for defense and retaliation against any aggressive enemy, state television said.

The Khorramshahr missile test

The Khorramshahr missile was first displayed at a military parade on Friday, where President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would strengthen its missile capabilities.

Khorramshahr missile on display in Iran (Photo: EPA)

The footage of the missile test was released only days after US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that Iran was building its missile capability and accused it of exporting violence to Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

He also criticized a 2015 pact that the United States and other world powers struck with Iran under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.

The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, saying its missile tests violate a UN resolution, which calls on Tehran not to undertake activities related to missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Iran says it has no such plans.

Britain, meanwhile, voiced concerns about the latest test. Extremely concerned by reports of Iran missile test, which is inconsistent with UN resolution 2231. Call on Iran to halt provocative acts, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson wrote on Twitter.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Saturday there is "no justification" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to continue.

"The Arab-Israeli conflict is still the longest conflict in the region in current times," al-Jubeir said at the UN General Assembly. "We don't see a justification for its continuation, particularly when there is international consensus about the solution based on two states."
The IDF delegation to Mexico City on Saturday continued searching through the wreckage caused by the deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake that devastated the country earlier this week, though at this point the chances of finding survivors are said to be very small.

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Because of the bleak assessments, the Israeli delegationafter consultations with the Mexican, American and Japanese rescue teams also operating in the citygave up its surgical search methods over the last two days in favor of more massive, large-scale efforts.

Israeli delegation in Mexico City (: )

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Mexico was hit with a new, 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Saturday, halting search efforts for a few hours in the morning, until local engineers could ascertain whether it was safe to continue.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: Reuters)

The Israeli delegation, which includes both rescuers and engineers, is leading around-the-clock search efforts at the office building alongside teams from the United States and Colombia.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

Lt. Col. (res.) Itamar Cohen, who commands teams at the office building collapse site, told Ynet that "The chances we'll find living survivors at the site we're working are slim. But our job is to get to all of the trapped so their families could bury them."

Search and rescue forces estimate 45 people believed to be dead remain trapped in the building.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

"Our teams have already started locating bodies in a bad state," Lt. Col. Cohen said. "We're using technological measures, such as tiny cameras and a geological instrument converted to help finding trapped people."

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: AFP)

Lt. Col. Cohen spoke about the difficulties in facing the families of those trapped in the building. "It's very hard on the families. Before we started working with heavy machinery at the site, we realized they might think we've given up on their loved ones. So we gathered them and in a very difficult conversation explained to them we were trained and experienced teams. Only after they understood this, they agreed for us to bring in a massive 350-ton crane so we can lift the wreckage from the structure's upper parts. We've also started cutting through walls that collapsed," he explained.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: Reuters)

Lt. Col. Cohen said the Israeli delegate was met with a lot of support from the local residents. "It's hard to believe just how immense the solidarity felt here is, we've never seen something like this. Even after an Israeli team extracted a body from the wreckage, they clapped," he said.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: AP)

"There are thousands of civilian volunteers here who bring food, water and equipment," Cohen added, noting the local Jewish community also takes good care of the delegation members.

IDF delegation working in Mexico City (Photo: Reuters)

In addition to the search and rescue forces, Israeli engineers are surveying structures in the city to determine whether they were safe following the earthquake.

Photo: AP

One of the engineers surveying a hospital in the city on Friday recommended closing down the parking garage due to fear it would collapse.

So far, Israeli engineers surveyed some 30 buildings.

Dog trained to help search the wreckage (Photo: AFP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone to Israeli Ambassador to Mexico, Yoni Peled, and the commander of the IDF delegation, Col. Dudi Mizrahi, on Saturday.

"you are doing is a mitzvah," Netanyahu told them. "You are shining Israel's light in the world, a big light. It is important from a humanitarian standpoint and also to show the world the true Israel. You are making the State of Israel very proud."
A school superintendent in Vermont says a substitute teacher has been fired after being accused of showing elementary school children how to make the Nazi salute to Adolf Hitler.

WCAX-TV reports that Georgia Elementary School superintendent informed parents of the Thursday decision. In an email to parents, Superintendent Ned Kirsch says the children were seen standing with arms out and the teacher modeling the salute. He says she raised her arm slightly and then said "now we say Heil Hitler."

The television station reports that the woman apparently had filled in at the school for several years. She wasn't immediately identified.

The superintendent says he did not know what the teacher's intent was. He says a guidance counselor will visit the classroom and make sure the students feel safe.
PARIS - A French paratrooper has died in combat while fighting extremists in the Mideast as part of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group, in what appears to be the first official French casualty in the operation.

French President Emmanuel Macron's office said a member of the 13th parachute dragoon regiment was killed Saturday in the Levant, which includes Syria. Macron's office would not provide details or identify the victim, part of a special forces unit. The US military also announced the death.

A French official said it was the first publicly announced combat death since France joined the anti-ISIS operation in Iraq in 2014, and later expanded its involvement to Syria after ISIS attacks on France.
The following questions were asked recently on the Wonderline:

Q: How was the decision made to have the proceeds of the tower auction go to the Firecracker Frenzy? Its great that the schools got some benefit but what about other worthy causes? Could the people that love fireworks support it financially?

A: Madonna Mogul, director of the York Chamber of Commerce, explained that: The Chamber has several worthy organizations within its membership and to choose one particular organization over another would be very difficult. The celebration of our countrys independence is something that the Chamber is proud to be a part of.

Several years back, many will remember that York did not have a fireworks display. To my understanding, the display was stopped due to the rising cost of insurance to the groups that put on the show. Several years ago, a group dedicated to York having a celebration display looked into securing a professional company that held their own insurance for the show. The fee charged to York covers the show and costs the company has associated with it. Annually, there are Chamber businesses and residents of York that generously donate to the display but donations to Firecracker Frenzy over the past few years have been down for the event. (This is a typical cycle for several organizations that run fundraising efforts). The Towers Of York Committee determined that the proceeds from this public art display should benefit something the public can all be part of.

The Towers of York are currently being displayed in front of the courthouse in anticipation of them being auctioned off. They were dispersed throughout the city  now they are all in one location and can be seen at one time. The auction event will be held Thursday, Oct. 12, starting at 5 p.m., on Lincoln Avenue. The auction itself will start at approximately 6:50 p.m. There will be appetizers and cash bar service available. In addition, there will an art showing from seven of the tower artists inside the Yorkshire Playhouse and live music will be performed by Tim and Jaclyn Spivey.

Q: I see numerous dog running loose entries in the police report every week. Does York have an animal control department? Are there fines for the dog owners who allow their dogs to run loose? What are the fines for persons who have more than two dogs at a residence in the city of York? Are there fines imposed on dog owners whose dogs bark excessive? Are there any neighborhoods in York where having a dog is prohibited and if there are, please list the neighborhoods.

A: Yes, York has an animal control officer who specifically deals with these types of calls during those hours of duty. In the off hours (evenings, middle of the night), police officers deal with those issues.

Yes, there are fines for owners who allow their dogs to run loose. The fine is $10 per animal, plus court costs. It should also be noted that if a dog is impounded, there could be additional fees tacked on to that.

The fine for having excessive dogs (more than two per household) is $25, plus court costs.

The fine for not licensing a dog is $25 per animal, plus court costs.

Fines for excessive noise created by barking dogs are $10, plus court costs.

As far as any specific neighborhoods where having a dog is prohibited, we are not aware that any exist in the city of York.

If you read the Permanent Record section in Saturdays newspapers, you will see that among the list of county court offenses are many for these types of violations  so the ordinances are being enforced on a regular basis.

Q: How much is taken from the inheritance fund (in the county budget) to pay for services like the York library, Adopt A Pet, and those other different groups?

A: The following are the allocations according to the original budget document considered by the county commissioners: CASA, $34,189; Blue Valley Community Action, $9,683; Hope Crisis Center, $7,000; Blue Valley Behavioral Health, $5,000; York Adopt A Pet, $4,000; Kilgore Library, $15,000; York County Development Corporation, $70,000; Southeast Nebraska Development District, $9,271.

Q: I would like to know why the city of York does not have patrol officers stationed consistently throughout the day at the intersection of Highway 81 and David Drive. There are plenty of people blowing red lights, making illegal U-turns and speeding through that area.

A: The citys police officers are frequently on patrol at the interchange and many tickets have been issued in that area for the infractions noted by the reader.

However, it should also be noted that the citys police officers are also responding to many calls, reports and other issues throughout the entire city during their shifts as well. The number of officers on each shift limits the amount of time they can dedicate to one specific area when there are so many other responses that are required in a variety of locations.

Q: Are the kids in the York School District taught how to count back change? I see so many times in stores and businesses (all over, not just here) that the young people working simply do not know how to count back change. Is that still taught in the schools here?

A: York Superintendent Mike Lucas said that, The YPS curriculum continues to include working with money, especially in the second, third and fourth grades. All of our curriculum maps are available on our www.yorkpublic.org website by clicking on the district tab and then selecting the curriculum tab. Go Dukes!

Q: Arent the flood plain maps for the county fluid documents in which they are constantly updated?

A: The flood plain maps for the county havent been updated since 1978.

Q: Isnt the United States the largest financial contributor to the United Nations?

A: Yes, the United States is the largest provider of financial contributions to the United Nations, providing 22 percent of the UN budget and 28 percent of the peacekeeping budget.

Q: Over a week ago now, York County Commissioner Kurt Bulgrin asked . . . again . . . for the final version of the countys budget to be placed on the county website for the public to be able to view it. Hes asked for this pretty much every year hes been on the county board and every year the county clerk says that it will be put on the website. But it never has been put on the countys website. Now, as I said, its been over a week and I cant seem to find the countys budget on the county website. Can you find it there?

A: We looked and we cant find it on the countys website.

It might be an issue of waiting for all the final paperwork to be submitted to the clerks office.

Q: I was told that the Kilgore Library in York has a lot of really good historical resources we can access when doing research, etc. What exactly do they have?

A: The historical resources at the Kilgore Library include (according to the librarys website): microfilm back files of local newspapers; indexed local cemeteries in the early 1980s, published by local genealogical society in two volumes; clipped obituaries filed in a series of binders; past York High School annuals; a few York College annuals; a small collection of local postcards; York telephone books from 1948 to the present; city directories for 1887, 1891, 1902, 1906, 1909, 1912, 1915 (no city directories were published after 1915 until the early 1960s); printed local history compilations.

They also note that Some of Kilgore Memorial Librarys FLICKR image sets and collections are historic materials. York historical photos and texts feature annotated images from the communitys past. Then/Now Pairs present historic and recent photos of the same York locations, with brief comments.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - FRANK Talks are face-to-face conversations on ideas that matter. Attendees discuss issues of local and national importance in a single-session 75-minute program, led by a humanities scholar/expert on the topic.

On October 6th and 7th, Dr. T.J. Davis from Arizona State University will visit the Foothills Library to lead discussions about immigration, national border security, and terrorism. There is no charge to attend.



Friday, October 6th @ 2:00 p.m.

Immigrants and the American Dream: We the People, Today and Tomorrow

The U.S. has long touted itself as a land of immigrants and has grown phenomenally from migration since its beginnings in an ever expanding global economy. Yet the source and substance of immigration have been topics of continuous debate. How do domestic conditions, regional competitions, geopolitics, and foreign policy affect the discourse about who could and should become an American?



Saturday, October 7th @ 12:00 p.m.

Securing the Borders and Stopping Terrorism: A Constitutional Framework

Protecting its people is among the first priorities of any government. The Constitutions Bill of Rights provides protections of the people from the government. How should the U.S. Constitutions checks and balances operate in securing U.S. borders and stopping terrorism? How do these protections turn into practical public policies that implement the governments duty to protect its people while respecting its peoples civil liberties?



Thomas J. Davis teaches U.S. constitutional and legal history at Arizona State University, Tempe, and has taught as a visiting professor of law at the ASU College of Law. As an historian and lawyer, he focuses on civil rights, employment, and property law, and particularly on issues of race, identity and law, in addition to constitutional matters. He received his PhD in U.S. history from Columbia University in the City of New York and his JD cum laude from the University at Buffalo Law School in New York. He served as a commissioner and chair of the Superior Court of Arizona for the County of Maricopas Judicial Merit Commission from 2002 to 2015.



The Foothills Library is located at 13226 E South Frontage Road. For more information, call (928) 342-1640.



FRANK TALKS are free, thought-provoking, expert-facilitated discussions on important issues facing our communities produced in partnership with Arizona Humanities and the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records. For more information call 602-257-0335 Ext 26 or visit: http://www.azhumanities.org/programs/frank-talks/
Washington: US President Donald Trump defended his wife and First Lady Melania Trump after she faced criticism for wearing sky-high stilettos while en route to the hurricane Harvey-hit Texas state last month, the media reported.



Trump`s defence of the footwear choice came while critiquing the media during a rally in Alabama on Friday night, reports The Hill magazine.



"She`s wearing high-heels like many of you would do. And they went after her, but she didn`t know, and then when she got off the plane in Texas she was wearing sneakers, which she had with her. And they (media) know it was dishonest," Trump said, adding sarcastically, "You know, she`s going to go into the floods with her high heels."



The First Lady faced online backlash last month after she wore heels when leaving the White House to visit Texas in the aftermath of hurricane Harvey.



Melania Trump`s communications director slammed the coverage of her shoes at the time, saying, "It`s sad that we have an active and ongoing natural disaster in Texas, and people are worried about her shoes."



She wore stilettos again when leaving the White House for a second trip to Texas later that week.


New York: US President Trump slammed Senator John McCain for opposing a last-minute plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, insisting that the Republicans would "eventually" roll back his predecessor`s signature healthcare law, the media reported.



Trump on Friday night called Arizona Senator`s opposition "totally unexpected" and "terrible" during a campaign rally in Huntsville, Alabama, reports The Hill magazine.



"John McCain, if you look at his last campaign, it was all about repeal and replace, repeal and replace," Trump told the crowd.



"So he decided to do something different, and that`s fine.



"We`re going to do it eventually," Trump insisted of Obamacare repeal efforts.



Trump broadly chastised congressional Republicans for campaigning for seven years "saying repeal and replace, repeal and replace" and failing to deliver on the promise.



"They didn`t care, nobody cared, because they had a President who wasn`t going to sign it," Trump said, referring to Republicans votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) under his predecessor Barack Obama.



"So it didn`t take much courage," he continued. "I think they voted, what 61 times? Sixty-one times to repeal and replace. They finally get a president who will sign the legislation and they don`t have the guts to vote for it."



McCain was one of a few Republican senators watched closely ahead of a possible vote next week on the repeal legislation sponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham, The Hill magazine reported.



He cast a deciding vote in July killing a scaled-down Obamacare repeal bill, joining Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins in voting against the bill.



McCain announced earlier on Friday he would also vote against the latest repeal measure from Graham and Cassidy, which Republicans hoped to vote on next week ahead of a September 30 deadline for approving the bill on a majority vote.



"I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried," McCain said in a statement.



In his speech, Trump also said that he was provided a list of 10 Republican senators who were "absolute no`s" on the Obamacare repeal, saying McCain was not on the list.



"John McCain was not on the list. So that was a totally unexpected thing, terrible. Honestly, terrible."



The President acknowledged that McCain`s opposition hurt the Republicans` repeal efforts, but insisted the party would "go back" and press for repeal.



"It`s like a boxer... they get knocked down, get up. Knocked down, get up.



"And then the bad ones, they stay in the stool and they say, `We quit, we quit`. The great ones get up and they end up winning. That`s what we`re going to do. We might have to go back again and again."


Wellington: New Zealand`s cliffhanger election ended in a stalemate Saturday, leaving maverick populist Winston Peters of the New Zealand First (NZF) party to decide whether conservative Prime Minister Bill English or his youthful challenger Jacinda Ardern forms government.

English delivered an unexpectedly strong performance to claim 46 per cent of the vote, while the much-hyped "Jacinda-mania" surrounding Ardern fell short as she finished on 36.

"Of course we were hoping for higher... obviously we hoped for better," said Ardern, the 37-year-old who looked set for an upset win after taking over the centre-left Labour Party last month.

It could be another two weeks before the outcome is known, with Peters saying he was in no hurry to decide who to support.

The major parties must forge coalitions to reach a majority under New Zealand`s proportional voting system, but all of the existing groupings fell short.

On the final count, English`s National Party and current ally ACT had 59 seats, two shy of the 61 needed to win.

Ardern`s centre-left Labour Party and its preferred partner the Greens were on 54, still needing another seven.

That means neither can govern without Peters` NZF, which claimed nine seats.

Peters, 72, a political veteran who has played the kingmaker in two previous elections, said he had an important decision to make and would not be rushed.

"As things stand we do have the balance of political responsibility and we`re not going to be hasty with that," he said.

He added: "We`ll make a decision in the interests of all New Zealand and New Zealand First, that is the whole country... that will take some time."

The campaign has been the most volatile in recent memory, with momentum swinging from English to Ardern and then back again. English was in the driving seat to win a fourth term until Ardern took over the Labour Party last month.

She galvanised support for the ailing centre-left party, giving it a 20-point popularity boost to draw level with National.

But the "Jacinda-mania" phenomenon waned as English attacked her financial credibility while pointing to his economic record over the past nine years.

She appeared deflated addressing the party faithful after the vote, saying she had given her all and apologising for not achieving enough.

Ardern said she still hoped to become prime minister as part of a Labour-Greens-NZF coalition, despite Peters` historic differences of opinion with the Greens.

"I simply cannot predict at this point what decisions other leaders will make," she said.

"We`ve got a lot of work in front of us still, not too much revelry."

Greens leader James Shaw offered an olive branch to Peters.

"I know our parties don`t agree on everything, but now is the time to put those differences aside and to work together," he said.

In contrast, English was bullish about his chances of securing a fourth-term government for National, a feat that has not been achieved in New Zealand for more than 50 years.

He pointed out that National outpolled Labour and the Greens combined, saying voters had shown a clear preference for the centre-right party.

"We go into negotiations with the intention of forming a stable government which enables this country to deliver for New Zealanders," he said.

The result helps English make amends for his last leadership foray in 2002, when National slumped to a record defeat and won barely 20 per cent of the vote.

Peters has shown in the past that he will back either side if the right offer is made.

In 1996, he helped install a National-led government in return for being made deputy prime minister, then in 2005 he joined a Labour coalition after being given the job of foreign minister.

"I`m a very reasonable person but I don`t sell myself or my principles out," he said this week.
Hyderabad: Toyota has no plans to launch an electric vehicle in India and would wait for the charging infrastructure to develop before taking a call on launching such models, according to a senior official of Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM).

"We have no plans to go electric," vice chairman and whole-time director of TKM, Shekar Viswanathan told PTI over buzz around EVs (electric vehicles) in the domestic auto industry with the government's aggressive push towards e-mobility.

TKM is a joint venture between the Japanese auto major and Kirloskar Group.

"Toyota (Motor Corporation) does have an electric vehicle (in its portfolio and launched in some overseas markets) but we (TKM) will wait for the charging infrastructure to come up in India before we ask Toyota Motor Corporation to give us (TKM) electric vehicle products," he said.

Viswanathan said electric vehicle technology is very simple and so, it's not very difficult to introduce such models, and agreed with the view that TKM can launch EVs at short notice.

"We (TKM) already have an electric vehicle in the hybrid, which is an electric vehicle...Except that if we take away the internal combustion engine, it will become an all electric vehicle," he added.

On his expectation of TKM sales in the current financial year, Viswanathan said, "I do think it will go down slightly (compared to the previous fiscal) given the fact that GST rates have gone up."
Patna: A Dalit couple was bludgeoned to death and a Dalit girl was murdered in separate incidents in Bihar, triggering angry protests, police said on Saturday.



Ramchander Paswan and his wife were bludgeoned to death with bricks by unidentified criminals in Dharampur village in Begusarai district early on Saturday.



"This double murder took place when the couple was sleeping," a district police official said, adding that police have begun an investigation into the case.



Angry over the killings, villagers blocked roads and burnt tyres.



In another incident, a young Dalit girl was stabbed to death in Chachapoli village in Siwan district by her jilted lover, a Dalit boy, on Saturday.



"After the girl refused to accept his proposal, Lakhan Ram stabbed her to death," a local police official said, adding that the accused is still absconding.



The spurt in crimes across Bihar in the last one and a half month forced Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to review the law and order situation in the state two days ago. He directed police officials to monitor policing at the ground level.
Mumbai: Rajkummar Rao is excited as his new film Newton has been announced as India's official entry for the Oscars. The actor says that he will call superstar Aamir Khan for the advice on its promotion.



When asked about his team strategy to promote Newton at the Oscars, Rajkummar said: "It's just got announced and its too soon to decide but our team is going to meet and we will plan something about it because there has to be strategy. We will be going to America to promote the film."



He was present at the GQ Men of the Year Award on Friday night.



When reporters asked Rajkummar whether he is going to get some guidance from Aamir Khan about film promotion at the Oscars, he said, "Off course, I will definitely call him and meet him because 'Lagaan' was there at the Oscars and we are really proud of the film. so I am sure Aamir sir will help us a lot."



Rajkummar attended the event along with girlfriend Patralekha who seems excited about the film too



"I am very thrilled. Newton is a film that should get in top five films at the Oscars because it's really good and relevant and shows different side of India," she said.



Newton revolves around Newton Kumar, a rookie government clerk who is sent on election duty to a naxal-controlled town in the conflict-ridden jungles of Chhattisgarh, India. It has been directed by Amit V Masurkar.
New Delhi: Hours after CBI told the Supreme Court that Karti Chidambaram was prevented from travelling abroad as he was closing several of his foreign bank accounts, Karti made a stinging response to the probe agency's allegations.

Karti, the son of former Union Minister P Chidambaram, yesterday tweeted that he felt like being a part of James Bond movies.

Secret/Undisclosed Accounts/Properties, Overseas trips to conceal them etc etc makes me feel like I am part of a @007 movie :) :)  Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC) September 22, 2017

Meanwhile, P. Chidambaram has described the CBI statement in the apex court as an "absolute lie".

"By quoting CBI as the soure, the lie does not become the truth," he said reacting to CBI`s claim in the court during a hearing on the Look Out notice against Karti which he has challenged.

Karti, in another tweet wrote:

I could explain KYC, PEP, LRS etc but it will be an exercise in futility to those who are taken in by hyperbole :)  Karti P Chidambaram (@KartiPC) September 23, 2017

"Why doesn`t CBI take my open offer and name the alleged `undisclosed assets`? I have already made a public statement that my family and I will execute any document necessary to transfer the alleged `undisclosed asset` to the government so that government can become the owner," Chidambaram said.

Justifying the issuance of a look out circular (LoC) against Karti, the agency also claimed before a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra that "shocking" details have emerged during his foreign visits which were directly connected to the FIR lodged in the corruption case.

The CBI FIR, lodged on May 15, had alleged irregularities in Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving overseas funds to the tune of Rs 305 crore in 2007 when Karti's father was the Union Finance Minister.
New Delhi: The Indian Embassy in Hungary hosted a fashion event -- Alluring India 2017 -- that displayed a beautiful blend of Indian traditional garments along with fusion fashion. The event took place to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of India's Independence.

The Embassy collaborated with Vinay Gupta, Managing Director of Gait-N-Grace to organise the event that took place on Thursday.



The fashion show featured the latest finely tailored Indian garments such as silk saris, embroidered lehengas and mermaid gowns with ruffles. The collection was more about Indian traditional wear with a touch of contemporary ensemble, read a statement.



The concept of the event was to create an environment of Indian ethos globally through a unique insight into collections of two eminent names in the bridal trousseau industry, Charu Parashar and Payal Keyal.



The fashion event showcased a collection by Regal Saree and Various Moods by Parashar, The Weaves from the Ghats of Banaras by Salma Sultan, and Contemporary Sari and Contemporary Wedding Cocktail collection by Keyal.



The event was formally inaugurated by Ambassador of India, Rahul Chhabra at the Balna in Budapest. Former Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy, Petra Pana, Deputy State Secretary for External Economic Affairs among many other eminent personalities were present.



The event also offered a plethora of Indian delicacies. There was a display of rustic and authentic Indian curry buffet from several states, marinade chicken wings, aromatic biryani, accompaniment with wide variety of Indian breads, palate refreshmentsand a traditional dessert- seviyan (vermicelli Kheer).



A glimpse of Indian culture was also showcased with a live demonstration of how a nine-yard sari was draped to perfection in different styles.



The poem "khoob ladi mardani, woh toh Jhansiwali rani thi" by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan, was enacted to highlight the story of Rani Laxmi Bai, who battled her fight to freedom despite being dressed in nine-yard long Langdar Sari.


Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, poised to win a fourth term in Sunday`s election, urged supporters on Saturday to keep fighting for votes with a third of the electorate still undecided.

Merkel`s call was echoed by her centre-left challenger Martin Schulz of the Social Democrats, now in an unwieldy "grand coalition" with her conservatives.

Merkel is widely expected to cruise to re-election with the Social Democrats trailing by double digits but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could emerge as the third largest party, complicating the make-up of her next coalition.

A new INSA poll published by Bild newspaper showed declining support for both Merkel`s conservatives, who dropped two percentage points to 34 per cent, and the SPD, down one point to 21 per cent.

The anti-immigrant AfD, meanwhile, gained two percentage points to 13 per cent, which would make it the first far-right party to enter parliament since the end of World War Two.

Merkel, speaking to supporters in Berlin before heading to her home constituency in northern Germany, called for a final push to drum up votes by focusing on conservatives` commitment to support for families, a pledge to avoid tax increases and a focus on increasing security in Germany.

The Christian Democratic leader also lauded the role of the European Union in providing stability in "a troubled world".

"We want to boost your motivation so that we can still reach many, many people today. Many are still undecided," said Merkel, who then walked the pedestrian zone in the northern city of Stralsund and led a crowd in practicing CPR in Greifswald.

Merkel said it was important to focus on social justice issues but also to show how conservatives had ensured the strength of Europe`s largest and richest economy.

First elected in 2005, Merkel remains popular in Germany but has regularly faced jeers and whistles from left- and right-wing demonstrators during her speeches across Germany - a decided change from her last campaign in 2013.

At a campaign rally in Munich on Friday, Merkel defended her 2015 decision to admit about one million asylum seekers as a humanitarian necessity but pledged to prevent a repeat of that crisis by doing more to fund programmes in migrants` home countries to dissuade people from emigrating.

"What happened in 2015 cannot and will not be repeated," Merkel said, saying she would protect European borders.

Conservatives Blast Far Right

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, in an interview with Internet provider t-online.de, vowed to continue fighting "Islamist terrorism" by strengthening European borders and bolstering security at home.

But he also criticised the AfD as "a wolf in sheep`s clothing" and said the BfV domestic intelligence agency was studying "whether right-wing extremists are seizing power and exerting influence on the party".

In Berlin on Friday evening, Schulz urged supporters to keep knocking on doors in pursuit of a higher voter turnout, saying this could offset growing support for the AfD. He described the AfD as "gravediggers of democracy."

Schulz told Bild newspaper he had not given up hope of victory since 37 per cent of voters remained undecided.

The AfD was founded in 2013 with the original goal of opposing large bailouts of financially strapped euro zone countries but from 2015 shifted its focus to immigration.

It is now polling around 11 to 13 per cent, up from earlier this year but still below a peak of 16 per cent in late 2016.

The party, which has already won seats in 13 of 16 state legislatures in Germany, has promised to re-energise debate in the federal parliament after four years of what it calls "boring" rule by Merkel`s grand coalition.

Electoral arithmetic might yet push Merkel to renew her coalition with the SPD, or she might opt for a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmental Greens.

The Institute for Electoral, Social and Method Research think tank said on Saturday a simulation of the vote indicated "a drastic shift from left to right", with left-leaning parties at their weakest point since the 1960s.

The net winners in Sunday`s election, it said, would clearly be the AfD, which it expects will take 13.7 per cent of the vote.

It forecast that the conservatives would win 34.8 per cent and the SPD 22.1 per cent - both sharply less than in 2013.
New Delhi: On returning from the US, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi will kickstart his party`s election campaign in poll-bound Gujarat on Monday.

Gandhi will start his campaigns by visiting Dwarkadhish temple in Dwarka and then meet workers and supporters at Bhatiya Village.

He will also interact with elected panchayat representatives at Vadtra Village in Dwarka district, and farmers, fishermen and traders in both Dwarka and Jamnagar.

The state will witness assembly election at the end of this year.
Rajkot: A 23-year-old woman has accused her husband of giving triple talaq while she was unconscious. The mother of a three-year-old son, Rubina Afzal Lakhani, on Thursday lodged an FIR against her husband Afzal Hussain at the Rajkot mahila police station and alleged that he assaulted her and made her leave the house 18 months ago.

She said in her complaint that since she got married to Afzal five years ago, she has been facing harassment by her husband and in-laws. She added in an argument over household work nearly 18 months ago, Afzal allegedly thrashed her due to which she fell unconscious.

She accused that while she was unconscious, her husband gave her triple talaq. After she recovered, she was allegedly told by her mother-in-law that Afzal had divorced her and she will have to leave the house. "When I regained consciousness, my in-laws asked me to leave my home as, they claimed, my husband had divorced me by pronouncing talaq thrice. I argued that I was unconscious and that I had heard nothing of sort. But, they did not listen to me and asked me to leave," she was quoted as saying.

Since then, Rubina has been staying at her father's place in Mochi Bazaar with her son. Reports suggest that community leaders and family members tried to mutually resolve the issue between the husband and wife but they remained unsuccessful.

Along with Afzal, his mother Rashida, father Hussain Jamal, sister Suhana Akram Khorani and Rashida's father Karim Osman have also been booked for mental and physical harassment under sections of the Indian Penal Code. Investigation into the case is currently underway.

"They had domestic issues and would often lead to physical assaults. Based on her complaint, we have registered an offence under various sections of the IPC, an inspector at the police station said.
Gurugram: A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team on Saturday reached Ryan International School to probe the murder case of Class II student Pradyuman Thakur.

The CBI on Friday registered an FIR in the killing of the seven-year-old kid.

Pradyuman was found dead, lying in a pool of blood, with his throat slit in the washroom of Ryan International school in Bhondsi area on Sohna Road on September 8.

The three-member CBI team is expected to question the school staff in connection with Pradyuman murder case.

The CBI registered the case under the sections of the murder, arms act, Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and Juvenile Justice Act.

Manohar Lal Khattar-led Haryana government had last week handed over the sensational murder case to the country's premier probe agency.

Khattar had made the announcement after he met the victim's parents at their residence. He had further announced that Haryana government will take over the management of the school for next three months.

Police have alleged that 42-year-old bus conductor Ashok Kumar killed the Class II student with a knife after the boy resisted an attempt to sodomise him. Kumar has been arrested.

The case has snowballed into a major national issue concerning safety and security of children in private schools, with vociferous protests by parents and activists outside the Ryan schools in several states including Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

The post-mortem report of seven-year-old Pradyuman has ruled out sexual assault even as the parent of another schoolchild claimed the crime scene was tampered with even though he had cautioned otherwise.

Bus driver Saurabh Raghav has said the knife used in the killing was not kept in the bus tool box, as claimed by accused conductor Ashok Kumar, adding that police pressurised him also to admit to being an accomplice in the crime.

Varun Thakur said there were "too many loopholes" in the police theory and the school management's stand on the murder.

Pradyuman's father has moved the Supreme Court for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the case.
New Delhi: The CBI on Saturday took custody of three people arrested by the Haryana Police in connection with the killing of Pradhuman, a seven-year-old student of Ryan International School, on September 8.

The CBI had sought custody of school bus conductor Ashok Kumar, regional head of the group Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas from the court.

"On the request of the CBI in an ongoing investigation of a case related to the alleged murder of a student in a school at Gurugram, the competent court today remanded three accused in one-day police custody," a CBI spokesperson said.

The CBI yesterday took over the probe into the killing of the seven-year-old at the Gurugram school after receiving a notification from the Centre.

The case had been registered at the Bhondsi police station in Gurugram under the IPC sections related to murder, and relevant sections of the Arms Act, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.
New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday demanded the Narendra Modi government explain how absconding don Dawood Ibrahim's wife Mehjabin Shaikh managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected to meet her father.



"Wife of Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a video message.



Surjewala`s remarks came a day after the arrested brother of Dawood, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law, Mehjabin Shaikh (Dawood`s wife) visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father, Salim Kashmiri, before quietly departing.



Targetting the investigative agencies of the government, Surjewala questioned, "What was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) doing? What was Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) doing?"



Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Congress leader said, "Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back."



"Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her?" he asked.



He also said that this shocking revelation was made by Mumbai`s Thane police.



"The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Defence Minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers," he said.



Iqbal was arrested early on Tuesday by a crack team of Thane Anti-Extortion Cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma who had picked him up from his Mumbai home late on Monday night in an extortion case.
New Delhi: Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir on Saturday said that Shabir Shah`s admission before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has exposed Pakistan.

Speaking to ANI, Ahir said, "Shabir Shah`s statement has exposed Pakistan, now it doesn`t have any place to hide".

Earlier in the day, the ED told a Delhi court that Jammu and Kashmir separatist leader Shabir Shah has admitted to receiving funds from Pakistan`s terror outfits to spread terror in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India.

His close aide, Mohammad Aslam Wani also admitted to his complicity in the crime, the ED said.

The Enforcement Directorate filed the charge sheet in a Delhi Court against Separatist leader Shabir Shah in connection with a decade-old money laundering case against terror funding.In the charge sheet, the ED states that Shabir Shah has admitted that he talks to Hafiz Saeed on phone on the issue of Kashmir, and last spoke to him in January 2017.

Shah also confessed to have received funds from terror outfits from Pakistan to promote terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and others parts of India.

With no source of income of his own, Shah admitted that he does not file any Income Tax Return regarding his income, and that he only receives donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards party fund which amounts to Rs eight to ten lakhs per annum.

Meanwhile, Shah`s close aide, Mohammad Aslam Wani admitted to receiving Hawala money from Pakistan`s Hawala operative Shafi Shayar, on behalf of Shabir Shah, in Delhi.Earlier in August, the Delhi High Court rejected the bail plea of Shah after the Enforcement Directorate said it was probing whether he had received money from "enemy countries" like Pakistan to promote terrorism in India.

On September 7, ED opposed the bail plea of Aslam Wani in a Delhi court, saying that he had a key role in bringing money from Pakistan for terror activities in Kashmir.

On July 25, ED had arrested Shah in connection with a money laundering case dating back to 2005, while his close aide Aslam Wani was arrested on August 6.The agency had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Shah and Wani.
New Delhi: Pakistan Rangers resorted to heavy shelling on the international border in Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday leaving two Border Security Force (BSF) troopers and three civilians injured.

Talking to IANS, a police official said,"The two troopers and three civilians were injured in the overnight Pakistan ceasefire violation in R.S. Pura and Ramgarh sectors. The Pakistan Rangers used mortars, automatics and small arms to target over half a dozen BSF posts and civilian areas in the firing that started at 10 p.m. Our troops effectively retaliated."

Continuous violations of the ceasefire by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) have forced hundreds of border residents to flee their homes.

Villagers in the areas close to the international border said their crops have suffered extensive damage due to the shelling.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year, according to figures by the Indian Army.

(With inputs from agencies)
Mathura: Days after special CBI court sentenced Dera Sacha Sauda chief to 20 years in prison, another self-styled godman has been arrested on charges of raping a physically disabled disciple at his ashram in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district.

As per the reports of ANI, the victim hailed from West Bengal and was living at his ashram in Barsana district for several months.

The victim alleged that the accused raped her repeatedly and threw her out of the ashram, when she got pregnant.

The victim then returned home and lodged a complaint with the police there.

A team of West Bengal police, accompanied by the local cops, reached the ashram on Thursday night and arrested the self-styled godman.

Talking to ANI, Superintendent of Police, Mathura, Aditya Kumar Shukla said,"We are taking the "baba" to Bengal, as that's where the complaint was lodged."

The accused, however, denied the allegations and claimed that the victim wanted to oust him from the ashram and hence had implicated him in a false case.

"I didn't do anything, I don't even know the girl. One day a couple left their daughter with me asking me to take care of her," the accused told ANI.

He also claimed that the family members of the woman had visited his ashram last year and left the victim there, asking him to take care of her.

(With inputs from ANI)
New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind will be on a two-day visit to Uttarakhand, starting today, to pay homage at the Himalayan shrines of Badrinath and Kedarnath, besides worshipping the Ganga in Haridwar.

This will be President Kovind's first visit to the state after assuming the office.

He will be arriving at the Jollygrant airport in Dehradun this afternoon, where Governor KK Paul and Chief Minister Trivendra

Singh Rawat will receive him.

The President will first go to Haridwar to worship the Ganga and take a pledge for conserving the river at Har Ki Pauri ghat. He will be the second president, after Pranab Mukherjee, to take a Ganga conservation pledge.

He will also visit the Seva Kunj Ashram in Haridwar, which works for lepers and the physically challenged.

On Sundar morning, after a tree plantation programme at Raj Bhawan, the President will leave for Kedarnath and Badrinath.

Tight security arrangements have been made in view of his visit, with security drills conducted in Dehradun.

Meanwhile the Met department has warned of heavy rain in many areas of Uttarkhand on Saturday.

These areas are Nainital, US Nagar, Pithoragarh, Champawat, Pauri, Haridwar and Dehradun districts.

All district magistrates have been asked to remain attentive and keep disaster response mechanism ready to deal with emergency situations.
New Delhi: In yet another shocking incident, a senior journalist KJ Singh and his 92-year-old mother were found dead in their Mohali residence on Saturday, claimed news agency ANI.

As per the reports, the two were allegedly murdered.

Condemning the incident, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal took to Twitter and wrote Just heard senior journalist KJ Singh has been murdered along with his mother.Condemn this killing."

Just heard senior journalist KJ Singh has been murdered along with his mother.Condemn this killing and urge authorities to nab culprits imm.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) September 23, 2017

Badal also urged police officials to nab the culprits immediately.

I condemn the ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators immediately," Badal tweeted further.

Reports say that the cops have launched a probe into this matter.

Shocking. Senior journalist KJ Singh along with his mother found allegedly murdered at their Mohali home. Police investigation underway. pic.twitter.com/3cWb8aJMtc  Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) September 23, 2017

A few days back, Santanu Bhowmick, a journalist from Dinrat news channel was killed in West Tripura district while covering a protest rally.

On September 05, renowned journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead by unidentified assailants at her residence in Bangalore.
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday filed a chargesheet against Kashmiri separatist leader Shabbir Shah and accused him of being in touch with Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Jammat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed.

The Kashmiri separatist leader speaks to Saeed on phone to discuss Kashmir issue, and had telephonic conversation with the 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind in January 2017, the ED chargesheet says, news agency ANI reported.

The chargesheet says that Shah received funds from Pakistan-based terror outfits to promote terror activities in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India.

ED has also said that Shah's wife Dr Bilquis was also involved in collecting money through hawala in terror funding.

Mohammed Aslam Wani, who is in judicial custody has confessed that he received deliveries of hawala money on behalf of Shabir Shah in Delhi, which was delivered to him by Pakistan hawala operator Shafi Shayar.

According to ANI, ED in its chargesheet has further claimed that Shabir Shah has admitted to that he has no source of income of his own and does not file any ITR.

The Kashmiri separatist leader receives donations in cash from locals and his well-wishers towards party fund which amounts to 8-10 lacs per annum.

The ED filed the chargesheet against Shah, a suspected hawala dealer in connection with a 2005 money laundering case filed against him for alleged terror financing.

Wani had earlier claimed that he had given Rs 2.25 crore to Shah, following which the ED had registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the duo. The agency had arrested Wani on August 6.

The final report, filed before Additional Sessions Judge Sidharth Sharma, also named the alleged hawala dealer Wani, who is in judicial custody along with Shah.

Shah was arrested from Srinagar on July 25 on charges of money laundering.

Shah was arrested by the ED a day after several Hurriyat leaders were taken into custody of the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding in the Valley to fuel unrest.

Investigating agencies like the NIA have cracked down on Hurriyat leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani's son-in-law -- Altaf Ahmed Shah, also known as Altaf Fantoosh -- and six other Kashmiri separatists.
New Delhi: A day after India gave a befitting reply to Pakistan and termed it 'terroristan', External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is all set to address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on Saturday.

Swaraj, who is representing India at the international body, is expected to take on Pakistan over terrorism and Kashmir issue.

Earlier also, the External Affairs Minister had condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations while addressing a meeting of foreign ministers of the grouping on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

"India strongly condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. There can be no justification for any acts of terrorism," Swaraj had said.

At a ministerial-level meeting of BRICS on September 21, the External Affairs Minister had said that the five-member BRICS, should work to end terrorism's "support systems in South Asia," making a pointed reference to Beijing's ally, Islamabad.

Sushma Swaraj on Friday also raised the issue of terrorism and H-1B with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as the two leaders met for the first time in a bilateral setting.



Swaraj and Tillerson, who met on the sidelines of UN General Assembly session, also discussed strengthening of the US-India political and economic partnership.



"The Secretary thanked the Minister for India's contributions to stability and development in Afghanistan and the region," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said after the meeting.



"They discussed further strengthening the US-India political and economic partnership," she said.



Swaraj also strongly raised with Tillerson the issue of H1-B visa, the most sought after by Indian IT professionals.

During her week-long stay, Swaraj led a high-powered Indian delegation and hold about 20 bilateral and trilateral meetings with leaders attending the session.

(With inputs from agencies)
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday expressed its helplessness when a petitioner sought the apex court's directions to "abolish" mosquitoes from the country. The apex court said: "What you are asking us to do, only God can do. Do not ask us to do things which only the God can do. We are not Gods."

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta also added that it is not possible for the court to go to everyone's house and say that there is a mosquito or a house fly there and it should be removed.

The SC bench rejected the petition filed by Dhanesh Ieshdhan saying that "there is a way to file a petition". Ieshdhan had sought that "unified guidelines to abolish mosquitoes which cause mosquito-borne diseases" must be formed. However, the SC bench said that no court cannot pass such a direction to the authorities to eliminate mosquitoes from the country.

Dhanesh also argued that the government authorities must be made accountable if there is a loss of life due to vector-borne diseases. Recalling a 2015 case, the petitioner said that a similar plea was dismissed by the apex court then but later the court itself took cognisance of the matter related to dengue and other such diseases in Delhi.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that mosquitoes have killed over 725,000 people globally. However, after much efforts and research, experts and entomologists around the globe have been forced to unanimously accept that there is no way to get completely rid of mosquitoes from the world.
New York: Addressing the UN General Assembly here on Saturday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj ripped apart Pakistan's stand on terror and said, while India is fighting poverty, neighbour Pakistan is fighting us.

In a fiery yet articulated speech, she asked Pakistan to introspect whether talks on terror are anywhere close to the action it takes.

She said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had offered the hand of peace and friendship but Pakistan spurned the offer.

Sushma also slammed the Pakistani premier's claim that his nation's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship, saying he recalled old resolutions that have been long overtaken by events. But his memory conveniently failed him where it matters.

I would like to remind him (Pak PM) that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that PM Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace and friendship, she said.

She said while India has founded high-learning institutes like IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, Pakistan has only created terrorist groups like the LeT and JeM.

Pointing at the differences among the world leaders in the definition of terrorism, she asked: "If we cannot agree to define our enemy, how can we fight together.

Cautioning the gathering over the relentless rise of violence across the world, she called for a united fight against terrorism.

She urged the august assembly to stop seeing this evil (terrorism) with self-defeating and indeed meaningless nuance after all Evil is evil.

She also highlighted India's fight against other pressing issues like poverty, economy and climate change, and said the country has displayed the courage to take tough decisions which led to a process of sustainable development.

Eliminating poverty and empowering the poor are must for sustainable development, she declared.

She said that demonetisation was a courageous decision of her government since it challenged black money, one of the by-products of corruption.

Referring to the steps taken by her government to financially strengthen the poor, she said, We have linked 30 crore people to banks. Our mission is to empower people through economic means.

She also underlined the flagship programmes launched in the country to empower the poor like Digital India, Start-Up India and Stand-Up India.

She also expressed India's concern about climate change and said, India is deeply committed to the Paris Accord. She said back home PM Modi has launched the International Solar Alliance towards this cause.

When we talk of world peace, we mean peace not only among human beings but also peace with nature, she told the gathering in her second consecutive address at the UNGA.

She also spoke on reforms at the UN Security Council. Early reform of the UNSC is an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations, she said.

Sushma, who arrived in New York last Sunday, spent a major part of her day on Friday giving final touches to her speech.
New Delhi: Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu held discussion with top Representatives of Korean industries in Seoul, and discussed ways to increase business cooperation, an official statement said on Saturday.

The commerce minister exchanged views on prospects for more business cooperation with executives of top South Korean companies, including Samsung, Kia motors, Hyundai Electric and Posco.

The minister was in Korea for Asia-Europe (ASEM) Economic Ministers meeting. He also participated in the third Joint Ministerial Review of the India-Korea Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

The three-day visit of Prabhu ended on Friday.

"In a detailed exchange of views with these businesses, and the Federation of Korean Industries, issues and prospects for more business cooperation were discussed," the commerce ministry said in the statement.

Further, the minister held meeting with the Chairman of Korea's ruling Democratic Party ChooMi-ae.

"Calling India a shining star in the global economy, Ms Choo noted that the 'elephant was out performing the dragon'," the statement said.

Besides, he held bilateral meetings with Minister of State for Economy and Finance of France Benjamin Griveaux; State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries of Norway Dilek Ayhan; State Secretary for Trade and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark Susanne Hyldelund.

At the ASEM meeting, Prabhu reiterated India's commitment for promoting free and fair world trade.

He also emphasised on the challenges in ensuring free and fair trade.
New Delhi: Online search giant Google is celebrating the 100th birthday of Asima Chatterjee, a renowned Indian chemist, who was the first female Doctorate of Science in India from an Indian University.

Born on September 23, 1917, Dr Asima Chatterjee has various contributions on the research of vinca alkaloids and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs.

Chatterjee primarily studied the medicinal properties of plants native to India. Throughout her career, her research contributed to the development of drugs that treated epilepsy and malaria. Her most noted contribution to the field, however, was her work on vinca alkaloids. Alkaloids are compounds made from plants, often to treat medical ailments. Vinca alkaloids, which come from the Madagascar periwinkle plant, are used today in chemotherapy treatment because they help slow down or stall the multiplying of cancer cells."

Her groundbreaking contributions to medicine were recognized by universities all over the world. She received numerous accolades from the Indian government, including some of the highest awards (like the Padma Bhushan) and an appointment to the upper house of Parliament.

Asima joined the Lady Brabourne College in Calcutta Universtiy in 1940 and founded the department of chemistry in the college.

Asima Chatterjee's work in the field of science opened the doors for millions of women to excel in the field and her research on vinca alkaloids which is now widely used in chemotherapy and helps to slow down the growth rate of cancer cells.

Her phenomenal contributions have won Asima various awards and accolades from all over the world and she was also honoured with India's highest award, Padma Bhushan.

In 1975 she became the first woman to be appointed general president of the Indian Science Congress.

She had one child, a daughter called Julie, with her husband Dr. Baradananda Chatterjee, and died in 2006 in her nursing home at the age of 90.
Thiruvananthapuram: At a press conference in July this year, 23-year-old Hindu woman Athira had said that she had wilfully converted to Islam. On Thursday, this woman from Kerala did another press conference and began by saying "Om Namah Shivaya". The woman has returned to Hinduism claiming that her Muslim friends had misguided her into changing her faith.

From a woman clad in hijab in July to appearing with a bindi and kumkum on her forehead, she says that a doubt regarding her religion was instilled in her mind. Speaking to the press, she said that her friends told her that "it was stupid to worship a stone, an idol and that Hinduism has many gods, while Islam has only one supreme god. When they said that, I felt very curious about it and when I thought about it, I felt what they said was right."

She said that her friends gave her books to read on Islam and the account of hell in those books scared her. "The description of hell in that book was so scary, that I lost my sleep for several nights. I began thinking that if I don't follow Islam, then I will have to go through that hell."



She also said that her friends even made her watch speeches made by Zakir Naik.

Athira wrote a 15-page letter before leaving her parents' house in the first week of July saying that she was going to study Islam. She had then changed her name to Ayesha. She even tried to convince her parents to convert and got upset when they didn't.

After her parents filed a complaint, she surrendered before Kannur police on July 27, and was sent to state home for women. When her parents sought her custody, they were given the permission on the condition that she would be allowed to practise Islam.

However, on Thursday, she claimed that she is converting to Hinduism again. She took the decision reportedly after making a visit with her parents to the Arsha Vidya Samajam, where she studied Hinduism. I then came to realise that my decision to convert to Islam was wrong. I did not have much knowledge about my faith then. I do now, she said.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan laid the foundation stone of a solar plant for Raja Bhoj Airport in Madhya Pradesh.

Along with this the Chief Minister also hoisted a 100-feet high national tricolour at the Raja Bhoj Airport, which will remain illuminated for 24-hours.

To encourage the use of renewable resources, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has signed an agreement with Madhya Pradesh Energy Development Corporation for setting up a one Mega Watt solar energy plant.

For this, 350 solar panels of about 1000 KV will be installed. The solar plant will help to save more than 90 percent of electricity per month.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) chairman Gururprasad Mohapatra was also present at the event.

Speaking on the occasion Chouhan said that four new flights are going to start from Bhopal.

Promising to start international flights at the Raja Bhoj Airport, Chouhan said, "The people of the state are not so poor that they cannot fly in the air. The people here are capable."

"The number of people traveling to Singapore and Dubai from here is quite large and we can start international flights for them. I will ensure that international airport services will soon be made available here," he said.
Madhya Pradesh School Education Minister Vijay Shah on Friday urged madrasas to unfurl the Tricolour regularly to teach children how to love the country. He said that children should also made to sing the National anthem daily. I appeal to all madrasas in MP to unfurl the Tricolour and sing the national anthem daily. I dont think anybody should have a problem with that. Nobody has, he said.

The Minister also applauded the madrasas for working to build a "nationalistic ideology" in students. He made the appeal while speaking at a function to mark the 20th foundation day of the MP Madarsa Board in Bhopal.

Jaise schoolon mein roz Tiranga fehraya jaata hai, guzarish hai saare madarson mein roz Tiranga fehraya jaaye, rashtragaan ho: Vijay Shah pic.twitter.com/iKYX0ZDyzh  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

Along with the Education Minister, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was also present at the function. The CM also laid focus on how children should be loving the country. "How to love ones country and help it march ahead should be part of school curriculum... We drink the same water and eat the same food and our blood is red. We can follow different faiths", he said stating that kids should be taught love, brotherhood and patriotism.

He also stressed on the need to modernise education in madrasas so that children can get better jobs. "We should skill them and make them competent enough to face lifes challenges. On one hand, there is joblessness and on the other, there is a lack of skilled people," he said.

Led by Chairman Syed Imad Uddin, the board is planning to revise its curriculum based on the theme "Vatan Se Mohabbat Ka Islam Dharma Mein Kya Mahatva Hai (What is the importance of love for ones country in Islam)."
Mumbai: A man has been arrested for throwing black powder on Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde in Satara district.

The person was immediately apprehended by the security officials present at the spot.

More details awaited.
New Delhi: Gangster Dawood Ibrahim's brother has revealed that he phoned the fugitive don four times recently using burner phones and sim boxes.

Ibrahim Kaskar, who is currently in custody in an extortion case in Mumbai, has also reportedly revealed that the don travels to Dubai without papers.

Burner phones can create temporary disposable numbers which are replaced frequently, while a sim box can be linked to a gateway but stored separately.

Police suspect that his last call may be as recent as last month.

Kaskar, who lives in Mumbai's Bhendi Bazaar area, had earlier revealed to the interrogators that Dawood and his third brother Anees Ibrahim live in Pakistan and frequently visit Dubai.

He said that his brothers along with their family members live in a mansion in Karachi's Abdul Qazi dargah area.

India has long alleged that the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts accused lives in Pakistan under the protection of the country's spy agency the Inter-Services Intelligence. Pakistan has denied the charges.

Kaskar was arrested by Thane Police in an extortion case.
New Delhi: B-Town actress Kajol seems to be celebrating the nine-day long festival of Navratri with full gusto and as a true Bengali she is readying for the much-awaited Durga Pujo.

People buy idols of goddess Durga to worship, Kajol, along with her sister Tanishaa and mommy Tanuja went to meet the artisans who work hard to craft the perfect idol of the goddess.

The Dilwale actress took to Twitter to share a picture of the trio having a good time meeting the idol makers.

The Mukerjis out in full force ! Went to see the men who make the goddesses ! Amazing artists ! pic.twitter.com/rhjeHy3rOv  Kajol (@KajolAtUN) September 22, 2017

Meanwhile, in another post, Kajol wishes her mother a very happy birthday. Both mother and daughter look radiant as ever as they smile in the candid picture.

My super glowy wonderful mom who gives me goals till today of how & who to be! Ur light always shines so very bright! Happy birthday momma pic.twitter.com/ACg6WttPHP  Kajol (@KajolAtUN) September 23, 2017

Wishing Tanuja Ji a very happy birthday!
New Delhi: Bollywood heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor and Pakistani beauty Mahira Khan's link-up rumours gained ground after their leaked pictures went viral on the internet.

The pictures created a frenzy on social media where everyone had something to say about the stars. While some fans liked this new 'it' pairing, there were others who slammed the actress for wearing a short backless dress and smoking publicly with the 'Rockstar' Kapoor lad.

Industry people extended their support to the actress and bashed the trolls for using foul language on a public platform. From Ali Zafar to Varun Dhawan and Parineetiall backed the actress.

Finally, the star in question, Ranbir Kapoor has broken his silence on the matter. According to Pinkvilla.com, the blue-eyed Kapoor boy in a statement to a leading daily talked about the incident and praised Mahira for the kind of person she is.

His statement read, "I've gotten to know Mahira in a personal capacity over the last few months. She is somebody who I admire and respect, for her achievements and even more for the person she is. It is very unfair the way she is being judged and spoken about. What is also said is the inequality in judgment just because she is a woman. I request you to stop the negativity and move on with your beautiful god gifted lives. Peace and Love."

PS: Both smoking and hate are injurious to health."

Daddy Rishi Kapoor too had earlier backed his son on the issue saying, He can meet anybody whoever he wants to, and if people are going to invade his privacy, it's not done.
Mumbai: Amitabh Bachchan recently faced criticism for uploading the "all-male" picture to celebrate one year anniversary of "Pink", but Taapsee Pannu, who was one of the female leads in the movie, believes the megastar did not exclude them intentionally.

To mark the one year of "Pink" Bachchan, 74, uploaded an all-male crew picture, with many people pointing out the irony.

"I 100 per cent know he probably wouldn't have done it intentionally. It's not possible that he deliberately chose a picture in which we weren't there. In fact in all the award functions, after receiving the award he used to always mention 'I want to thank the three girls for this film'," Taapsee said in an interview.

"I don't think it was intentional at all. It might have been that it skipped (his mind) or he didn't realise or something. I don't think it was intentional from his side to exclude girls," she added.

"Pink" released last year in September and garnered rave reviews.

The film, which featured Bachchan as a lawyer defending three girls, played by Taapsee, Kriti Kulhari and Andrea Tariang, also bagged the National Award for Best Film on Social Issues.

Directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, the court room drama also featured Angad Bedi in a pivotal role.

Post "Pink", Taapsee had three Hindi releases this year- "Running Shaadi", "The Ghazi Attacks" and "Naam Shabana".

She is currently awaiting the release of her next, "Judwaa 2" which stars Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez. P
Sikar: Jain monk Tarun Sagar on Saturday demanded an investigation into the wealth amassed by self-styled godmen in India.

He said there were about 1,400 cheats in the country who call themselves godmen or saints.

Every third godmen in India is a fraud, he said.

Speaking to reporters here yesterday, the Jain monk demanded an investigation into the wealth amassed by self- styled godmen, saying if corrupt politicians and government officers can be probed why not these 'godmen' who have defamed the religion.

He said the so-called 'babas' have created a divide between the youth and the religion, but blamed people for not calling out these self-styled godmen.

He also criticised violence unleashed by some people in the name of religion.
Jaipur: Rajasthan-based self-styled godman Swami Kaushlendra Prapannachari Falahari Maharaj, who was on Saturday arrested on rape charges, has been sent to 15-day judicial custody.

After three days of investigation, Rajasthan Police arrested the self-styled godman in Alwar for the alleged rape of a 21-year-old woman hailing from Chhattisgarh.

Based on the woman's complaint, a case was lodged against 70-year-old with the women police station here on September 11.

The incident had allegedly taken place at Madhusudan ashram of the godman in Alwar, Rajasthan, on August 7 this year.

As per the complaint, the parents of the woman, who is studying law in Jaipur, are followers of Falahari Maharaj for the past several years, said Bilaspur Additional Superintendent of Police Archana Jha.

Facing sexual assault accusations, the Baba got himself admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of a private hospital in Alwar on Wednesday under police security.

On Friday, doctors at the hospital found him fit and he was shifted to a private ward

The Baba has followers both in India and abroad.
Washington: NASA`s asteroid sample return spacecraft flew past Earth on Friday on its way to asteroid Bennu, for a rendezvous next August.



The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer) spacecraft came within 17,237 km of Antarctica at 12.52 pm EDT (10. 22 pm India time) on Friday, just south of Cape Horn, Chile, before following a route north over the Pacific Ocean, NASA said.



"The encounter with Earth is fundamental to our rendezvous with Bennu," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx Project Manager at NASA`s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.



The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is currently on a seven-year journey to rendezvous with, study, and return a sample of Bennu to Earth. This sample of a primitive asteroid will help scientists understand the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago.



The spacecraft launched on September 8, 2016, on an Atlas V 411 rocket. Although the rocket provided the spacecraft with the all the momentum required to propel it forward to Bennu, OSIRIS-REx needed an extra boost from the Earth`s gravity to change its orbital plane.



Bennu`s orbit around the Sun is tilted six degrees from Earth`s orbit, and this manoeuvre changed the spacecraft`s direction to put it on the path toward Bennu.



As a result of the flyby, the velocity change to the spacecraft was 3.778 kilometres per second, NASA said.



"The total velocity change from Earth`s gravity far exceeds the total fuel load of the OSIRIS-REx propulsion system, so we are really leveraging our Earth flyby to make a massive change to the OSIRIS-REx trajectory, specifically changing the tilt of the orbit to match Bennu," Burns said.



The mission team also is using OSIRIS-REx`s Earth flyby as an opportunity to test and calibrate the spacecraft`s instrument suite.



Approximately four hours after the point of closest approach, and on three subsequent days over the next two weeks, the spacecraft`s instruments will be turned on to scan Earth and the Moon, NASA said.



These data will be used to calibrate the spacecraft`s science instruments in preparation for OSIRIS-REx`s arrival at Bennu in late 2018.



"The opportunity to collect science data over the next two weeks provides the OSIRIS-REx mission team with an excellent opportunity to practice for operations at Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.



"During the Earth flyby, the science and operations teams are co-located, performing daily activities together as they will during the asteroid encounter," Lauretta added.
Madurai: In a significant development, senior Tamil Nadu minister and AIADMK leader Dindigul Srinivasan on Saturday claimed that party leaders lied about Jayalalithaa's health last year so that people believe that she was improving.

"No one was allowed to meet the late chief minister. Whoever came, would be briefed by Sasikala's relatives that she was all right," Srinivasan said adding that "the truth is nobody saw her".

Srinivasan was addressing a public meeting on Friday night where he sought forgiveness of AIADMK cadres and the public for lying about the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's health. "Forgive me my party worker but all of us ministers lied before you when we said Amma is having food and she is alright," he said.

"Several senior leaders visited Apollo Hospital during Jayalalithaa's stay. Arun Jaitley, Amit Shah, Venkaiah Naidu, Governor, Rahul Gandhi and even DMK leaders visited Amma. However, they could only see Pratap Reddy and Sasikala," he said.

"Only VK Sasikala and her family had access to see Amma. Rest, no one was allowed. Governor C Vidyasagar Rao and many other dignitaries too were stopped much before her room," he said adding, "We all lied then so that the party's secret did not get leaked."

Ironically, the same minister had in March this year had criticised Panneerselvam and his loyalists who were seeking a probe into Jayalalithaa's death.

Pointing fingers at Sasikala over her role in Jayalalithaa's death, Srinivasan said, "It was only VK Sasikala - a close aide of Jayalalithaa for several years - who used to meet Jayalalithaa. On the instruction of doctors, Sasikala would go inside Jayalalithaa's room for two minutes."

TTV Dinakaran, the nephew of Sasikala, had earlier claimed that after October 1, 2016, even Sasikala was not allowed inside Jayalalithaa's room.

"So many things were said to make everyone believed that Amma was doing fine in the hospital and was healthy. But nobody knew the truth. Some say they have video footage. Let them show it so that the truth comes out," Srinivasan said.

Reacting to the charge, TTV Dinakaran, nephew of Sasikala, said after October 1, 2016, even Sasikala was not allowed inside Jayalalithaa's room.

He said on the instruction of doctors Sasikala would go inside Jayalalithaa's room for two minutes.

Meanwhile, a petition has been filed in the Madras High Court for setting up an inquiry commission, headed by a retired high court judge, to find out the "truth" behind the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in December last year.

The petitioner also sought an interim injunction restraining the state ministers from issuing any statements pertaining to the death.

The petitioner, Muruganandham of Thiruvarur district, who claims to be a loyal AIADMK worker, submitted that he filed the plea acceding to requests by other AIADMK workers for setting up of a judicial inquiry commission to find the cause and truth behind the sudden demise of the former chief minister.

Ever since Jayalalithaa's death, there have been hints of foul play over her death, with critics pointing fingers at the now-jailed Sasikala.
Rampur: Two college students have been arrested for allegedly robbing a fertilizer dealer of Rs 97,000 here, police said on Saturday.

The accused, Khushal and Aman, residents of Jwalanagar locality were arrested last evening and around Rs 87,500 was recovered from them, Rampur SP Vipin Tada said.

According to the police, the BCom students wanted to make quick money to fund a lavish lifestyle and buy their girlfriends expensive gifts.

The duo found an easy target in fertilizer trader Mohammed Faheem, who used to make regular cash transactions via Axis Bank near the village of Taska, they said.

On September 19, as Faheem left the bank having withdrawn nearly Rs 97,500, the accused followed him on a two-wheeler to the outskirts of the city. They snatched the bag containing the cash from the victim and fled the scene.

Based on the victim's complaint, the police scrutinized CCTV footage from the bank and noticed the accused wandering aimlessly outside the bank and then following Faheem as he left the branch.
Lucknow: A 12-year-old boy in Uttar pradesh was found dead on railway tracks in connection with the deadly online game Blue Whale, alleged his friend.

The incident took place in UP's Shamli.

Originated in Russia, the deadly Blue Whale game or Blue Whale Challenge gives players a series of 50 tasks which culminates in suicide by jumping off a terrace building. The participants are also asked to share evidence in the form of photographs of the dreaded challenges completed by them.

The tasks include watching horror movies, waking up at unusual hours and self-harming.

If reports are to be believed, the task has claimed lives of hundreds of teenagers across several countries.
Lucknow: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday addressed a farmers' gathering in Shahanshahpur, during two-day visit to his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi.

He inaugurated a Pashudhan Arogya Mela and felicitated farmers with loan waiver certificates.

"The Pashudhan mela will benefit the farmers across the state," said PM Modi while addressing the crowd.

He complimented the Uttar Pradesh government and especially Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for organising the Pashu Arogya Mela.

"For us, governance is not about vote banks or winning elections. Our priority is development of the country," added the PM.

He further said, "'Swachhta' has to become 'Swabhav',its our collective responsibility. A cleaner India will also be a healthier India."

Earlier in the day, Modi also laid foundation for toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan along with UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The PM's schedule included 'Gau Pujan' at a 67-year-old gaushala in Shahjahanpur.

Following the Puja, he inaugurated a Gaushala, an animal hospital and a milk producing unit.

On Friday, PM Modi inaugurated 17 projects in his parliamentary constituency Varanasi and 'digitally' laid the foundation stone of six other projects.

On his two-day visit to the temple town, Modi also flagged off the Mahamana Vadodara-Varanasi weekly express, which is equipped with LED screens and new, environment friendly toilets.

The Prime Minister also launched the service of four water ambulances and four hearse carrying boats. He inaugurated the Trade Facilitation Centre, named after BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and two bridges in the city which had been hanging fire for several years.

In his address, the Prime Minister said these bridges would not only enable easy commuting for people but also spur economic activity.

He thanked UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for fast-tracking development projects in the parliamentary constituency.

"Yogi had pledged to take up developmental projects and he is already pushing them," he said as the crowd cheered him.

Taking a dig at previous governments in the state, he said they seemed to have an antipathy for development. They were only busy splurging public money for electoral benefits, he added.

He also pointed out that the poor were now aspiring to give their next generations a better future and assured that the state government was with them in empowering them for this.

He lauded Adityanath for the work he has done in the past six months.

The UP Chief Minister in his address welcomed the Prime Minister on behalf of the people of the state and said that Varanasi was fortunate to have a "progressive person like Modi" as its representative in parliament.

The Prime Minister also launched a postage stamp based on 'Ramayana' in Varanasi and said that stamps are a wonderful way to preserve history. "Stamps have a special place in society. They are a wonderful way to preserve our history," he said.

"There have been many stamps on Lord Ram, but this is the first of its kind stamp, which depicts different aspects of his life. This has not been done in the past. I am happy that I have got the opportunity to do this from the holy soil of Manas," he said.

Modi also stressed how the life and ideals of Lord Rama continue to inspire everyone, according to the statement.

Later, he along with UP CM Adityanath and Governor Ram Naik visited two famous temples - Tulsi Manas and Durga Mata and offered prayers.

Prime Minister Modi will be launching a number of projects including infrastructure, railways, financial inclusion and sanitation in the coming days in the state.

Apart from attending inauguration ceremonies, he will also address public meetings and hold an interaction with Muslim women.
Kolkata: The BJP on Saturday alleged that its workers were being killed in West Bengal due to the "frustration" of the ruling Trinamool Congress, which was "disturbed" by the saffron party's growth in the state.

"Disturbed by growth of BJP in Bengal, TMC goons are resorting to brutal killings of BJP workers in Bengal. The hooliganism of TMC will not be tolerated and we will fight to free Bengal from the appeasement politics of TMC (sic)," BJP national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya said in a series of tweets.

He added that the people of the state would give a befitting reply to the Mamata Banerjee-led party.

Speaking to reporters, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh alleged that the police in the state were not working in an impartial manner.

"The police is reluctant to catch the culprits as they are associated with the TMC. But, this politics of annihilation of the opposition will not be tolerated by the people of the state," he said.
Mexican city: An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck Mexico near the coast of Oaxaca on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

No report of any casualty has come forward.

The epicentre is located reported 48 km from San Luqueno, Chiapas, Mexico.

Mexico is still recovering from the massive earthquake that virtually flattened Mexico City just days ago.

Almost 300 people had died and rescue operations are still underway as dozens are feared to be trapped under the rubble.

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck on Friday off the coast of Northern California in the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but there were no reports of damage or injury.

The number of missing has fallen from 200 in the initial count to 42 people who may still be trapped under the rubble of collapsed structures, National Civil Protection Coordinator Luis Felipe Puente said.

Teams from Chile, Colombia, Spain, Israel and Japan and other countries have arrived in Mexico to assist with the search for survivors.

On Friday, an earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale has struck off California in the Pacific Ocean, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The quake, with a magnitude of 5.8, was then followed by a second quake of 5.6 closer to shore, The Sun reported. The epicentre, with a depth of 12.0 km, was initially determined to be at 40.406 degrees north latitude and 126.755 degrees west longitude, Xinhua news agency reported.

The quake, with a magnitude of 5.8, was then followed by a second quake of 5.6 closer to shore, according to The Sun.

The US Geological Survey said both quakes were very shallow.

No reports of injuries or damage were reported.
Cox`s Bazar: The flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has come to a virtual halt, Dhaka officials said Saturday, almost a month after violence erupted in Myanmar`s Rakhine State and sent nearly 430,000 people fleeing across the border.

Officials gave no reason for the dramatically reduced numbers. But Rohingya Muslim leaders said it could be because villages located near the border in Myanmar`s Rakhine state were now empty.

Bangladesh Border Guard commanders said hardly any refugees are now seen crossing on boats coming from Myanmar or trying to get over the land border.

In the past two weeks there have been up to 20,000 people a day entering Bangladesh.

The UN says 429,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since attacks by Ronhingya militants in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major Myanmar military crackdown.

Many gave up money and jewellery to get places on boats crossing the Naf river, which marks part of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

"Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over," Bangladesh Border Guard commander S.M. Ariful Islam told AFP.

The United Nations also said "the influx has dropped". It said it will now release updates on the numbers of refugees entering Bangladesh once a week, rather than daily. Rohingya community leaders said most of the Rakhine villages near the Bangladesh border are now deserted.

"Almost all the people I know have arrived in Bangladesh," Yusuf Majihi, a Rohingya leader at a camp at Balukhali, near Cox`s Bazar, told AFP.

"Village after village has become empty due to the attacks by Myanmar soldiers and torching of the houses by Moghs (Buddhists)," he added.

"Those who are left in Rakhine live far off the border," he said.

Farid Alam, another Rohingya leader, said "I have not heard of any Rohingya crossing the border in the past five days. All I could see is people concentrating near the main camps."

Myanmar`s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased "clearance operations" targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmar`s border area.

The United Nations previously said the military crackdown could amount to "ethnic cleansing".

But despite the calm on the border, there were new signs of unrest in Myanmar.

While the army chief blamed Rohinyga militants for an explosion outside a mosque in Rakhine, Amnesty International accused the military of starting fires in the region to prevent refugees from returning.

Myanmar commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing issued a statement saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in Buthidaung township on Friday.

The army chief accused militants of trying to drive out around 700 remaining villagers. Analysts highlighted however that the militants` influence depends on the networks they have built across Rohingya communities.

Amnesty said new videos and satellite imagery indicated fires were still raging through Rohingya villages, scores of which have already been burned to the ground.

According to government figures, nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine have been abandoned over the past month.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday also echoed allegations from Bangladeshi officials that Myanmar security forces were laying landmines along the border.

A number of Rohingya, including children, have been killed by mines at the border.Bangladesh authorities are meanwhile stepping up efforts to bring order to the chaotic aid distribution for refugees.

Soldiers have been deployed around a 70 square kilometre area where Rohingya have built camps on hills or in open spaces near existing UN run camps.

"We are in the process of taking over the whole relief distribution," an army spokesman told AFP.

He said the troops would dig hundreds of latrines for refugees after doctors warned that the camps were on the brink of a health disaster.

Even before the latest exodus, the camps were home to some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine.
Moscow: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has likened the war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to a kindergarten fight between children.

The North Korean leader earlier labelled Trump "mentally deranged" and a "dotard" after Trump threatened to destroy his country.

Trump responded with a tweet calling Kim Jong-un "a madman" who "will be tested like never before!"

Lavrov said a pause was needed, "to calm down the hotheads", BBC reported on Friday.

"Yes, it`s unacceptable to silently watch North Korea`s nuclear military adventures but it is also unacceptable to unleash war on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

He called for a political process, which he said was a key part of the United Nations Security Council process.

"Together with China we`ll continue to strive for a reasonable approach and not an emotional one like when children in a kindergarten start fighting and no-one can stop them," he said.

The North Korean leader had attacked Donald Trump days after his speech at the UN, in which the US president said he would "totally destroy" North Korea if the US was forced to defend itself or its allies.

He also mocked Kim Jong-un with a disparaging nickname, saying: "Rocket man is on a suicide mission."

But the North Korean leader said remarks by the "deranged" US President convinced him he is right to develop weapons for North Korea.

In an unprecedented personal statement, Kim said Trump would "pay dearly" for his speech, which he labelled "unprecedented rude nonsense".

He said Trump had insulted his country in the eyes of the world, and threatened to "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire."

Experts say this is the first time a North Korean leader has made a direct address to an international audience - and it merits serious and thorough consideration.

China also urged a calming of the heated rhetoric on both sides, saying the issue was "complicated and sensitive".

"All relevant parties should exercise restraint instead of provoking each other," said Foreign Minister spokesman Lu Kang.
Tehran: Iran said today that it had successfully tested a new medium-range missile in defiance of warnings from Washington that such activities were grounds for abandoning their landmark nuclear deal.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran yesterday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 2,000-km and can carry multiple warheads.

"As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country's defence capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of the missile," Defence Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement.

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where US President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a "rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos".

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

Iran, which fought a brutal war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s, sees missiles as a legitimate and vital part of its defence -- particularly as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel import huge amounts of military hardware from the West.

Trump has threatened to bin the nuclear agreement, saying Iran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal's restrictions are lifted in 2025.

He is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in US interests to stick by it.

If he decides that it is not, that could open the way for US lawmakers to reimpose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the agreement.

Trump said on Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it.

The other signatories to the deal -- Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the EU -- have all pushed for it to continue.

They point out that abandoning the agreement will remove restrictions on Iran immediately -- rather than in eight years' time -- and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Tehran is meeting its commitments.

Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 km, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.

That makes them only medium-range but still sufficient to reach Israel or US bases in the Gulf.

At yesterday's military parade, President Hassan Rouhani hit out at those who "create problems for the peoples of our region every day and boast of selling arms to the bloodthirsty Zionist regime (Israel) which has been attacking the peoples of our region for 70 years like a cancerous tumour."

As well as carrying out missile tests, Iran has also launched a space satellite and fired missiles at Islamic State group targets in eastern Syria in recent months.
Sittwe: Myanmar's army chief on Saturday blamed Rohinyga militants for an explosion outside a mosque in Rakhine state, as a rights group accused the military of starting fires in the region to prevent refugees from returning. The unrest comes days after Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi declared troops had ceased "clearance operations" in the border area that have forced more than 430,000 Rohingya refugees to flee for Bangladesh in under a month.

The army claims it is targeting Rohingya militants who attacked police posts on August 25. But its operation has been so sweeping and brutal that the UN says it likely amounts to "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya Muslim minority, a group reviled by many in the mainly Buddhist country.

Myanmar's commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing posted a statement on Facebook saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in northern Rakhine's Buthidaung township on Friday.

The army chief accused the militants of trying to drive out around 700 hundred villagers who have remained in Mi Chaung Zay -- an argument analysts have said makes little sense for a group whose power depends on the networks it has built across Rohingya communities.

"As our villagers did not want to leave their homes, the terrorists blew up the bomb during the prayer time as a way of terrorizing the villagers," the army chief's statement said.

"It is the act of ARSA terrorist group," it added, using an acronym for the Rohingya militant group whose raids on police posts in August triggered the military backlash. No one was reported injured in the explosion.

With the government blocking access to the conflict zone, it is difficult to verify the swirl of claims and counterclaims over who is driving the unrest, which has also displaced tens of thousands of Buddhists and Hindus.

But rights groups say there is overwhelming evidence that the army is using its crackdown on militants to systematically purge the 1.1-million strong stateless Rohingya from its borders.
New Delhi: The Pakistani Senate has passed a crucial election bill that would allow embattled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to return as PML-N chief.

The Senate passed the bill on Friday after rejecting a key amendment proposed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Dawn reported.

The amendment relates to a controversial clause introduced by then president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf through the Political Parties Order 2002.

The clause prohibits people from serving as an office-bearer of a political party if he or she has been disqualified earlier.

The bill was passed with help from two opposition parties  the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Balochistan National Party-Mengal.

The Pakistan-Muslim League-Nawaz is the ruling party of Pakistan.

Sharif was forced to step down after he was implicated in a graft case.
Karachi: Pakistan said it conducted a successful test of the firing of an anti-ship missile from a Sea King helicopter in the northern Arabian Sea on Saturday.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration, a press release issued by the navy said.

The anti-ship missile successfully hit its target.

According to the navy spokesperson, Zakaullah said the successful firing demonstration was a testament to Pakistan Navy's war preparedness and professional capabilities.

The naval chief also visited fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed exercises involving the naval fleet.

"I am proud of Pakistan Navy fleet's war preparations," Zakaullah was quoted as saying.
Washington: US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers escorted by fighter jets flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday in a show of force the Pentagon said demonstrated the range of military options available to President Donald Trump.

The patrols came after officials and experts said a small earthquake near North Korea`s nuclear test site on Saturday was probably not man-made, easing fears Pyongyang had exploded another nuclear bomb just weeks after its last one.

The Pentagon said the mission was designed to show the many military options US President Donald Trump had to deal with the grave threat presented by the North Korean nuclear program.

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any US fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea`s coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Korea`s) reckless behavior," said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White.

Saturday`s seismic activity came just hours before North Korea`s Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho - who warned on Thursday that North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific - was due to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Ri did not respond when asked by reporters whether North Korea had conducted a new nuclear test.

Hours earlier seismologists around the world had detected a small earthquake near North Korea`s nuclear test site.

China`s Earthquake Administration said the quake was not a nuclear explosion and had the characteristics of a natural tremor. The administration had said earlier the magnitude 3.4 quake detected at 0829 GMT was a "suspected explosion".

The CTBTO, or Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors nuclear tests, and officials of the South Korean meteorological agency also said they believed it was a natural quake.

The Pentagon and the US State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A US intelligence official and US-based non-governmental experts said their initial assessment was that the quake was either natural or connected to North Korea`s latest and largest nuclear test on Sept 3, and not caused by a new nuclear test.

"It seems likely that these small tremors are related to the shifts in the ground due to the recent large test," said David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States.

A US government intelligence analyst said the events could have been a mine-type" collapse of tunnels damaged by North Korea`s previous nuclear test, but was more likely a small earthquake.

An official of South Korea`s Meteorological Agency said acoustic waves should be detected in the event of a man-made earthquake.

"In this case we saw none. So as of now, we are categorising this as a natural earthquake."

The earthquake, which South Korea`s Meteorological Agency put at magnitude 3.0, was detected 49 km from Kilju in North Hamgyong Province, where North Korea`s known Punggye-ri nuclear site is located, the official said.

All of North Korea`s six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 4.3 or above. The last test registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake.

A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time. Satellite photos of the area after the Sept 3 quake showed numerous landslides apparently caused by the massive blast, which North Korea said was an advanced hydrogen bomb.

The head of the international nuclear test monitoring agency CTBTO said on Saturday that analysts were "looking at unusual seismic activity of a much smaller magnitude" than the Sept 3 test in North Korea.

"Two #Seismic Events! 0829UTC & much smaller @ 0443UTC unlikely Man-made! Similar to "collapse" event 8.5 mins after DPRK6! Analysis ongoing," CTBTO Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo said in a Twitter post, referring to the Sept 3 test.

Russias emergency ministry said background radiation in nearby Vladivostok was within the natural range.

Tensions High

The US Geological Survey said it could not conclusively confirm whether the quake, which it measured at magnitude 3.5, was man-made or natural.

"The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5 km by the seismologist," USGS said.

Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies at Monterey, California, said: "Seismologists are very good at discriminating between earthquakes and explosions. I see no reason to doubt that it was an earthquake."

There was no immediate reaction from China`s Foreign Ministry, but the news was widely reported by Chinese state media outlets and on social media.

Tensions have continued to rise around the Korean Peninsula since Pyongyang carried out its sixth nuclear test, prompting a new round of UN sanctions.

US President Donald Trump called the North Korean leader a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged US dotard" who would face the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history".

Kim was responding to a speech by Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in which Trump said the United States would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.

On Thursday Trump announced new US sanctions that he said allows the targeting of companies and institutions that finance and facilitate trade with North Korea.

Earlier on Saturday, China said it will limit exports of refined petroleum products from Oct 1 and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately to comply with the latest UN sanctions. It will also ban imports of textiles from North Korea.

North Korea`s nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons programme.

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles this year, several of them flying over Japan, as it accelerates a weapons programme aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on September 23 sent a congratulatory letter to Honored Artist of Armenia Shushan Petrosyan on the birthday wishing her good health, happiness and new achievements in her career, press service of the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

You are one of the artists representing the Armenian song who deservedly enjoys our peoples love and sympathy.

Standing in the roots of national awakening and independent statehood with the young generation you had a chance to participate in the creation of the cultural image of todays Armenia, and brought new quality and thinking to Armenian music with a charming voice and wonderful performances.

Your numerous performances about the Fatherland, National Army, the most precious and cherished human feelings are permanent values in the treasury of our national musical art, reads the Presidents congratulatory message.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Armenias minister of foreign affairs Edward Nalbandian had a meeting in New York on September 22 with Jean-Marie Guehenno, president of the International Crisis Group, the foreign ministry told ARMENPRESS.

During the meeting Jean-Marie Guehenno presented to minister Nalbandian the directions of the organizations activities and their research.

The Armenian FM attached importance to the International Crisis Groups activities and emphasized that the organizations reports must be based on credible sources, unbiased analysis and should take into consideration the opinions of all parties of the conflict, and contribute to the negotiations processes in the agreed formats aimed at the exclusively peaceful settlement of conflicts.

Upon Jean-Marie Guehennos request, the Armenian FM comprehensively presented the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairing countries for the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as well as Azerbaijans gross violations of international humanitarian rights during the large-scale military aggression against Artsakh in April of 2016.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Thanks to the investments carried out in Kotayk province in 2017 nearly 2.000 new jobs will be created in the province in 2018, Kotayk Governor Karapet Guloyan told Armenpress.

This year quite major investments have been implemented in the province. We will release in-detail the data by the end of the year and the results will be visible, Guloyan said.

He said the investments were mainly made in tourism and agriculture fields. We had local and foreign investments. Investments have been made in different sectors, however, for us those investments are important which will lead to economic growth and creation of new jobs, the Governor said.

In addition to investments aimed at economic development, active road construction works have also been carried out in the province during 2017 which also contributes to the tourism development. Karapet Guloyan is confident that the works carried out in the province in 2017, the investments made in different fields will definitely bring their positive outcome in 2018 in terms of economic growth and creation of new jobs.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Iran tested a new ballistic missile that is reportedly capable of carrying multiple warheads, the nation's state-run broadcaster announced Saturday, CNN reports.

Iran unveiled the ballistic missile Friday at a military parade in Tehran and successfully tested it the same day, Press TV reported. It said Iran released footage of the test-launch.

Called the Khorramshahr missile, the weapon has a range of 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) and can carry multiple warheads, according to Press TV.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Armenian minister of foreign affairs Edward Nalbandian had a meeting on September 22 in New York with Thomas Greminger, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the ministry said.

During the meeting the Armenian minister congratulated Thomas Greminger on assuming the position and stressed that despite the OSCE Yerevan offices closure due to the veto as result of Azerbaijans self-isolation policy, Armenia is willing to continue the implementation of OSCE programs in the country.

The sides discussed a wide range of issues relating to cooperation, as well as directions for solving the problems which the organization faces.

The parties exchanged ideas over the implementation of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries proposals regarding the advancement of the peaceful settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The European expert group which researched the chemical materials in Yerevans Nairit plant briefed Armenias minister of emergency situations Davit Tonoyan on their report on September 22.

UN Resident Coordinator in Armenia Bradley Busetto, representatives of various UN agencies and the Nairit plant were in attendance of the meeting.

After the fire in the plant in August, the ministry had requested international organizations to assist and dispatch an expert mission to Armenia.

The Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) responded to the request through the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as well as the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency (SDCA). The agencies dispatched three international experts to Armenia.

The experts studied the industrial technologies of the plant, the volume and state of various chemical materials, their storage conditions, risks and possible effects on the environment.

According to the results of the research, there is no threat of a major disaster in the Nairit plant.

The experts recommended carrying out a modern re-packaging, labeling, administration and protection in various storage facilities  to minimize the risk of possible threats.

The report will be submitted to the UN OCHA in Armenia and Geneva.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. While on a working visit in New York, foreign minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on September 22 met with foreign minister of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif, press service of the Armenian foreign ministry told Armenpress.

The meeting touched upon wide range of issues relating to the Armenian-Iranian friendly relations agenda. The two ministers exchanged views on the implementation process of agreements reached between the presidents of the two countries, as well as on the upcoming high-level mutual visits.

The two FMs also discussed regional and international agenda issues.
STEPANAKERT, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. During the period from September 17 to 23 the Azerbaijani forces violated the ceasefire regime in the Artsakh-Azerbaijan line of contact by firing more than 4000 shots from various caliber weapons at the Armenian positions, the defense ministry of the Artsakh Republic told Armenpress.

In addition, the Azerbaijani forces fired automatic grenade launchers at the south-eastern direction of the frontline.

The Defense Army forces continue controlling the situation in the frontline and take necessary steps to ensure the reliable protection of military posts.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The representatives of the parliamentary factions of Artsakh on September 22 held a meeting with Turkish public figures who arrived in Artsakh on a cognitive visit, press service of the Artsakh parliament told Armenpress.

The meeting focused on topics such as the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and the prospects of peace and collaboration in the region.

According to the guests, the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations must be viewed from the perspective of democratic values and protection of human rights so that to make their equal development possible.

At the request of the guests the representatives of factions Aram Grigoryan, Vardges Baghryan and Alyosha Gabrielyan presented details on some episodes of the Karabakh movement, the negotiation process and Artsakhs stance.

The meeting was also attended by former lawmaker of Armenias Parliament Aragats Akhoyan.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Forbes has included American-Armenian art dealer and owner of the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries Larry Gagosian in the special list of 100 greatest business minds.

To celebrate Forbes centennial, we amassed an A-to-Z encyclopedia of ideas from 100 entrepreneurs, visionaries and prophets of capitalismthe greatest ever collection of business essayists and greatest ever portrait portfolio in business history, Forbes said.

The list includes Oprah Winfrey, Giorgio Armani, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates and others.

Larry Gagosian is a descendant of Armenians who immigrated from the Ottoman Empire to the United Sates. His parents lived in California. He studied English-American literature at UCLA 1963-1969.

In 1978, he opened his own gallery, the Broxton Gallery. Before that, he worked as a salesman in a bookstore and a music store, and a cashier in a supermarket.

Today, the Gagosian Gallery chain of art galleries is the largest among modern art galleries.

There was a painting that Si Newhouse wanted to buy in the early 1980s -- "Aloha" by Roy Lichtenstein. I had sold several paintings from that collection to him, and this Lichtenstein was $1 million. Only a handful of paintings had sold for $1 million at that time. So I said, "Let's write them a check." And Si, who is a billionaire, said, "No, I'm not going to write a check for $1 million. Let's pay them $100,000 a month." And when I asked him why, he said, "I don't want them to think that money comes that easily." If he were willing to write a check right away, he explained, it would influence the negotiation. It was a shrewd lesson, especially since "Aloha" would later become worth well over $100 million, Forbes quoted Larry Gagosian as saying on a past business deal.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Vice Speaker of Armenias Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov commented on the statement of Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian Federation Council's International Affairs Committee, according to which Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

If Azerbaijan has agreed to recognize the independence of Artsakh and informed this to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, yes, the sides are close to the settlement, Sharmazanov told Armenpress.

He said otherwise there cannot be any talk over the conflict settlement since the Armenian side has repeatedly stated that there cannot be any settlement without the exercise of Artsakh peoples right to self-determination and complete recognition of that right.

If Mr. Kosachev made such statement, it means he has information that Azerbaijan announced its desire to recognize Artsakhs independence since otherwise the sides cannot be close to the settlement, Sharmazanov said.

Konstantin Kosachev announced that Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to the settlement of the Artsakh conflict. Russia has adopted a neutral stance on this issue. We have friendly ties both with Armenia and Azerbaijan. According to my information, the Artsakh-Azerbaijan conflict is quite close to the settlement, Kosachev said.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Ethnic Armenian Member of Parliament of Turkey Garo Paylan filed a lawsuit against Yeni Safak newspapers reporter Hayretin Karaman.

The lawsuit was caused by Karamans article titled with the Turkish saying Gavurdan Dost, Domuzdan Post olmaz, which is roughly translated as You cant make pelt from swine and friends with a gavur. Gavur is a derogatory term which means faithless/non-Muslim in Turkish.

Paylans attorney said the lawsuit emphasized that the term gavur is used in the article for targeting non-Muslim citizens.

In addition, the lawsuit also mentions that during the countrys republican history, the Property Tax was used against national minorities who were the target of hate speech, the September 6-7 massacres, Hrant Dinks murder, the attack on the Zirve bookstore in Malatya, and the murder of father Santoro in Trabzon. The lawsuit mentions that all of the above mentioned are a consequence of hate speech.

The lawsuit pressed charges against Hayretin Karaman for Inciting hatred and hostility or humiliation.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. The OSCE Parliamentary Assemblys Special Representative on the South Caucasus, Kristian Vigenin (MP, Bulgaria), will be travelling to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan from 24-30 September for talks with government officials, parliamentary leaders and civil society representatives in each country, the OSCE PA said on its website.

The Special Representative is expected to particularly address the impact that the protracted conflicts are having on the lives of people living in the region.

It is far too easy to get lost in the statistics of ceasefire breaches and technical movements. For the people in the region these are not abstract concepts, but impact their well-being in a real way, and I hope to bring greater attention to the real human consequences of the protracted conflicts, said Special Representative Vigenin.

Vigenin was appointed Special Representative in February 2016 by the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

Vigenin is a former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria and currently serves as Deputy Head of OSCE PA's Bulgarian Delegation.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Russian blogger Sergey Novikov is impressed by his visit to Artsakh, and he shared his impressions by an article published in his blog. The blogger introduced the sights of Armenia and Artsakh, referred to the so-called black list of Azerbaijan that enlists people who visit Artsakh.

On our way to Artsakh from Armenia we encountered the poster reading Free Artsakh welcomes you. The lights were switched on far away in the city that 25 years ago was called Lachin. As a result of the Karabakh war that ended in 1994 based on a ceasefire agreement, this city together with the strategic road came under the control of Armenians. After that Lachin was renamed into Berdzor, becoming one of the largest cities of the second de-facto Armenian state, Artsakh, ARMENPRESS reports Novikov writes.

Afterwards the blogger present the sights he saw on his way from Armenia to Artsakh. Novikov was impressed by Khor Virap, Caves of Areni, Noravank and Tatev.

The long way is behind. We are in Stepanakert  the capital of Artsakh. While regional neighbors Abkhazia and South Ossetia enjoy at least minimal recognition, no UN member country seems to see Karabakh, the blogger writes.

He recalled the words of Armenian blogger Sedrak Mkrtchyan, saying, Azerbaijan will never recognize the independence of Nagorno Karabakh, but we will never give them these lands. And the most interesting thing is that all the sides understand this very well.

Afterwards Sergey Navikov speaks about the so-called black list of Azerbaijan which enlists people who visit Artsakh. With each kilometer to the east the odds to appear in the black list of our neighbor grow. But its ok. People can still live being enlisted. One of my friends, Alexander Voloshchuk, has appeared in that same black list, as well as Dmitry Yegorov who is very well familiar with Nagorno Karabakh, Latvian blogger Alexander Alimov, and who could imagine, Montserrat Caballe. Well, its a very good team, the blogger writes, publishing photos of the sights of Armenia and Artsakh.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS. Members of the National Assembly of Armenia Armen Ashotyan and Mane Tandilyan have returned from Baku, ARMENPRESS reports Ashotyn informed via his Facebook page.

Dear compatriots, I and Mane have returned from Baku, now we are in Tbilisi. We are extremely grateful for your encouragement, support and care. I once again assure that we have done our best to present our country in a proper way. We thank you once again hoping to meet you in a few days in Yerevan, Ashotyan said in a footage posted on his Facebook page.

National Assembly Yelk bloc member mane Tandilyan also thanked the Armenian people for the support, Yes, we had a problem of connection. Well meet in Yerevan and will present details about our visit and you will have a full understanding of what was happening in Baku during these days, Tandilyan said.
The Department of Homeland Security today revealed which states were targeted by Russian hackers trying to break into voting systems during the 2016 election cycle. DHS said "most" states were unsuccessfully attacked, but didn't make clear how and where the hackers were successful, or whether the sustained cyberattacks helped Donald Trump win the presidency.

BREAKING: US government tells election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems in 2016, but most not breached.  AP Eastern U.S. (@APEastRegion) September 22, 2017

Earlier in 2017, DHS disclosed it had evidence of Russia-backed hacks against 21 states, but wouldn't tell the individual states if they'd been targetedwhich upset state officials who wanted to protect those systems if compromised.

DHS officials said at that time they instead informed the entities who had "ownership" of those systems, which might mean local election offices or voting technology systems vendors.

DHS has informed 21 states where Russian hackers attempted to breach their election systems in 2016. Wisconsin just put this out. pic.twitter.com/32IUp8jn8x  Eric Geller (@ericgeller) September 22, 2017

State election officials finally got the news directly from federal authorities on Friday.

From NPR:

On Friday afternoon, DHS placed individual calls to the top election official in each state and six U.S. territories to fill them in on what information the agency has about election hacking attempts in their state last year. It will be up to the election officials to decide whether to share what they learn with the public. Shortly after the call , Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman announced that her state's election systems were among those that Russian hackers tried to break into last year, but that they had failed. "There was no successful intrusion and we immediately alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the activities," she said in a statement. Wyman says the state had security measures in place that detected the attempted intrusion. The Connecticut Secretary of State's office said that DHS confirmed Russian hackers tried to break into the state's online voter registration system last year, but did not succeed. A spokesman for the office said their IT department detected and blocked the attempted intrusion, but did not know who was probing the system. Officials in Oregon and Wisconsin also said they were targeted. In addition, officials from Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia told The Associated Press that their states had been targeted. Election officials in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico and North Carolina said their states were not targeted by hackers.

sure. think of all the ocean liners that didn't crash into icebergs https://t.co/oikiVvqs6F  Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) September 22, 2017

BREAKING: Most US naval facilities not attacked by Japan. https://t.co/c6SKPviDAU  southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 22, 2017

2. Other donors to the RNC legal fund which is now paying Trump's personal legal bills: @comcast and Chuck Schwab. https://t.co/pn2aKmmcoc pic.twitter.com/X39lfXFcbX  Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) September 22, 2017

Until now most states had been in the dark. DHS cited confidentiality agreements. Background: https://t.co/LDdWrSSdj2  Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) September 22, 2017

In most of the 21 cases of "Russian hacking" of state elections systems, networks were scanned but not breached. https://t.co/uRkvTXvmWN  Frank Bajak (@fbajak) September 22, 2017

"Most" In an election where the POTUS was decided based on 80K votes in three states. https://t.co/BhuIjT9loG  Shareblue Media (@Shareblue) September 22, 2017

This is like the Trump lawyers' statement on his Russia ties.

None of the systems were breached, with few exceptions. #BuriedLede https://t.co/pZzq1Z8iBM  Josh Schwerin (@JoshSchwerin) September 22, 2017

PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump looks up during his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Hundreds of rioters in the Guinean bauxite mining town of Boke burned down a police and a gendarmerie building on Thursday and clashed with security forces wielding batons, leaving 17 people injured, the local Red Cross said. Guinean authorities managed to avoid the bloodshed of previous days by desisting from using live bullets on the demonstrators in the Boke neighborhood of Kolabounyi, Guinean Red Cross member Oumar Kalissa told Reuters by telephone. Rioting by angry youths - who say bauxite mining has brought constant pollution and noise but no jobs or services like water and electricity - has paralyzed Boke for most of the past week. Despite decades of mining, Guinea, Africa's top bauxite producer, remains one of the world's least developed countries. The mines around Boke produce some 15 million tonnes of aluminum ore for the West African nation's largest mining companies Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) and Companie Bauxite de Guinee (CBG), but their operations have repeatedly halted in the past week and are currently still blocked by demonstrators. CBG is 49 percent owned by the Guinean state and the remainder by Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan [RIOXXA.UL] and Dadco. SMB is owned by Guinea, China's Winning Shipping Ltd, Shandong Weiqiao [SDWQP.UL] and UMS International Ltd. "The Government strongly condemns these acts which are clearly outside law," government spokesman Damantang Albert Camara said in a statement. (Reporting by Saliou Samb; Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Chris Reese)
CBC

Operation Red Nose, the safe-ride program that runs during the holiday season, is set to come back this year in British Columbia  though it won't include every community in the province. The program connects those who have been drinking, or feel like they can't drive their vehicle, with volunteer drivers who will chauffeur them and their vehicle home. It's due to run from Nov. 25 until New Year's Eve. The service has been used by thousands of Canadians since its inception in 1984, but the last
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New York, September 22, 2017Syrian-American journalist Halla Barakat and her mother, Syrian opposition activist Orouba Barakat, were found dead yesterday in their Istanbul apartment, the Turkish news agency DHA reported today. Friends alerted the police when Halla Barakat, 23, did not show up for her reporting job at the Syrian opposition website Orient Net, according to the Associated Press.

We call on Turkish authorities to find those responsible for the murders of Halla Barakat and Orouba Barakat, and bring them to justice, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. Turkey must ensure the protection of Syrian journalists who have fled to the country seeking safety.

Barakat and her mother had received threats on social media and email from supporters of the Syrian government, but never paid them much attention, a reporter who knew Halla Barakat, and who has not been named for safety reasons, told CPJ. At least four other Syrian journalists have been murdered in Turkey since 2015, after fleeing there, according to CPJ research.


"Across the globe, democratic nations and peoples are under threat," said U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a speech to the Community of Democracies.

In East Asia, an increasingly aggressive and isolated regime in North Korea threatens democracies in South Korea, Japan, and has expanded those threats to the United States.

In the Middle East, Iran exports terrorism and violence, threatening democracies from Israel to Europe and other regions.

Elsewhere, once-thriving democracies are under attack by regimes which conduct themselves as authoritarian dictatorships, such as in Venezuela.

Mr. Tillerson also expressed the necessity of, "support[ing] emerging democracies in the struggle to become nations that respect human rights regardless of ethnicity, such as the case in Burma."

The democratic ideal deserves to be vigorously defended. "We know that democracy is the form of governance that produces peace, stability, and prosperity at home and abroad," said Secretary Tillerson. "We know that governments that uphold democratic principles and practices are safer, healthier, more secure, more prosperous societies, and are more inclined to respect the human rights of their citizens."

Moreover, democratic governments are accountable to the people, and as a result, are less susceptible to corruption, more likely to support an independent and fair judicial system, and more likely to sustain a diverse society.

"Successful democracies require hard choices, hard work, and vigilance," said Secretary Tillerson. "But democracy is the only political system that contains an institutional capacity for self-correction, one that grants its citizens the right to participate in how and by whom they are governed. And that is why we support the expansion of freedom and democracy throughout the world," he said.

Now is not the time to step back from our democratic commitments. Now is the time to strengthen and sustain them. As President Donald Trump reaffirmed in his speech in Poland, Above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are."


Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly, President Donald Trump described the present day as one of great danger and great potential. Success, he said, depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that embrace their sovereignty to promote security, prosperity, and peace for themselves and for the worldAnd just as the founders of this body intended, we must work together and confront together those who threaten us with chaos, turmoil and terror.

Chief among them, Mr. Trump said, is the regime in North Korea, responsible for the deaths of millions of its citizens, and which now recklessly pursues nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Mr. Trump underscored that all options remain on the table, and that denuclearization is the only acceptable future for North Korea. He stated that it is up to the member states of the UN, he emphasized, to work together to isolate the Kim regime until it ceases its hostile behavior.

Mr. Trump warned that Iran must not be allowed to continue destabilizing activities; nor can we abide by an agreement, if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear [weapons] program.

Irans people are the longest suffering victims of the regime. Rather than use its resources to improve Iranian lives, Mr. Trump noted, its oil profits go to fund Hezbollah and other terrorists that kill innocent Muslims and attack their peaceful Arab and Israel neighborsIt is time, said President Trump, for the entire world to join us in demanding that Irans government end its pursuit of death and destruction.

ISIS, the criminal regime of Bashar al Assad, the humanitarian crises in the Middle East and Africa, and the demise of democracy in Venezuela are among other threats. However, President Trump said, The powerful people in this room, under the guidance and auspices of the United Nations, can solve many of these vicious and complex problemsIt will take a world of proud, independent nations that embrace their dutiesrespect others, and make common cause in the greatest shared interest of all  a future of dignity and peace for the people of this wonderful Earth.
Irans Central Bank announced on Thursday that several Iranian banks had signed two separate finance deals with an Austrian and a Danish Bank.

The Austrian Oberbank and the Danish Danske Bank would finance private and public projects in Iran worth one billion, and 500 million euros respectively, the report added. A total of 14 Iranian banks were reportedly involved in the deals.

Oberbank is Austrias seventh-biggest bank and Danske Bank is the largest bank in Denmark.

Representatives of both banks confirmed the news about the deal in interviews with Radio Farda, however, Helmut Edlbauer, Oberbanks General Manager for Global Financial Markets said that the amount of the credit was not determined and depended on the export volume by Austrian companies.

According to Edlbauer, the purpose of the agreement was to support "important strategic projects in Iran" related to railroads, hydroelectric power plants, clean power energy, health, and engineering and to assist Austrian exporters with entering the Iranian market.

Some of the financing will take the form of letters of credit to facilitate trade.

The deals are significant for Iran because, despite the nuclear agreement with world powers in 2015, many western companies, particularly the financial institutions have refrained from cooperating with Tehran due to unilateral U.S. sanctions against Tehran. This fact has given the Iranian conservatives led by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a reason to criticize the nuclear deal at several occasions.
In an open letter to President Hassan Rouhani, Teachers' Union activists from several provinces in Iran have called upon him to dismantle legal and real hurdles blocking union activities and establish a committee to defend activists and stop discrimination against them.

Referring to the Intelligence Ministrys complaint against the detained spokesman of the Irans Teachers' Trade Association, ITTA, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, the signatories appealed to President Rouhani to force the ministry to end filing complaints against teachers.

By re-arresting teachers' rights activists; Esmaeil Abdi, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, Mohssen Omrani and Mokhtar Assadi at the verge of the new educational year, the Judiciary has increased its aversion against the teachers..., ITTA Telegram Channel quoted the letter, as reading.

Based on the heavy sentences issued against activist teachers, the letter insists, Iranian teachers society has lost almost all of its hope and confidence in the judiciary, yet, it still is expecting to see the presidents action and steps taken toward defending teachers rights.

The signatories have also called upon Rouhani to launch a special committee to look after teachers rights and defend them against different kinds of discrimination.

Mahmoud Beheshti-Langroudi believes that his convictions are primarily due to charges brought by the Intelligence Ministry when it operated under conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13) before moderate President Hassan Rouhani replaced him in 2013.

Furthermore, the letter appeals to Rouhani to help scrap verdicts against Esmaeil Abdi, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi,Mohssen Omrani and Mokhtar Assadi and give them a chance to defend themselves in an open and competent court.

Earlier, on Wednesday, September 13, Tehrans Teachers Association had protested detention of its spokesman, Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi, and demanded his unconditional and immediate release.

Beheshti Langroudi, 57, has been sentenced by the Revolutionary Court in Tehran to prison, on three occasions in the past ten years.

The ITTAs spokesman, was taken to Tehrans notorious Evin Prison on September 12, 2017, to serve the sentences that were issued for his peaceful defense of labor rights.

Mahmoud Beheshti-Langroudi believes that his convictions are primarily due to charges brought by the Intelligence Ministry when it operated under conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13) before moderate President Hassan Rouhani replaced him in 2013.

I was expecting [Rouhanis] Intelligence Ministry to stop persecuting political and civil rights activists, but my summons and other recent harsh actions show that nothing has changed, he said on social media.

What we are witnessing in the revolutionary courts, such as the sentences against me, which were issued in a closed session in a matter of minutes, are in no way compatible with Article 168 of the constitution

I have warned the Tehran prosecutors office that I will go on a dry hunger strike the day I am returned to prison, cautioned Beheshti-Langroudi in a post on the Telegram on August 28, 2017.

I am a teacher and a trade union activist and board member of the Teachers Trade Association, a lawful organization, he added.

Beheshti-Langroudi who was convicted in abrief trial behind closed doors, believes the charges against him were politically motivated.

However, on Sunday, September 17, the judiciarys spokesman insisted that nobody in Iran is imprisoned for their religion or union activities.

According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, CHRI, the teachers rights activist, in an interview with Teachers and Workers Rights Persian language website, asserted, My demand is completely lawful. Based on Article 168 of the Islamic Republic Constitution, cases like mine should be tried in public in an open court in the presence of a jury.

What we are witnessing in the revolutionary courts, such as the sentences against me, which were issued in a closed session in a matter of minutes, are in no way compatible with Article 168, he added in the interview.

CHRI confirms that based on Article 168, Political and press offenses will be tried openly and in the presence of a jury, in courts of justice.

Since his return to Tehrans notorious prison, Evin, Beheshti-Langroudi has been on hunger strike, pledging to continue it until his 14-year combined prison sentence is reviewed in a public trial.

Labor activism in Iran is seen as a national security offense; independent labor unions are not allowed to function, strikers are often fired and risk arrest, and labor leaders are consistently prosecuted under catchall national security charges and sentenced to long prison terms, CHRI says.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.23

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The OSCE Parliamentary Assemblys Special Representative on the South Caucasus, Kristian Vigenin (MP, Bulgaria), will be travelling to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia from 24-30 September for talks with government officials, parliamentary leaders and civil society representatives in each country, said the message on OSCE PA website.

The special representative is expected to particularly address the impact that the protracted conflicts are having on the lives of people living in the region.

It is far too easy to get lost in the statistics of ceasefire breaches and technical movements. For the people in the region these are not abstract concepts, but impact their well-being in a real way, and I hope to bring greater attention to the real human consequences of the protracted conflicts, said Special Representative Vigenin.

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.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

Azerbaijan Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov with participation of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, Stephane Visconti of France, and Andrew Schofer of the United States of America), the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk had a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly 72nd Session in New York, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend.

At the meeting the sides had broad exchange of views on the settlement of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In this context, steps to be taken by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Co-Chairs were reviewed.

According to the proposals of Co-Chairs the issues related to the organization of meeting of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were also discussed.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stated that Azerbaijan supports the interesting proposals put forward by the Co-Chairs for continuation of substantial negotiations on settlement of conflict.

Furthermore, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov reiterated that Azerbaijan always stands ready for logical negotiations to achieve the soonest resolution of 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.

21:29 (GMT+4) Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov having meeting with OSCE MG Co-chairs and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in New York. The sides are discussing the resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh 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.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, Stephane Visconti of France, and Andrew Schofer of the United States of America) met separately and then jointly with the Foreign Minister of Armenia, Edward Nalbandian, and the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov, on 22-23 September on the margins of the UN General Assembly. The Co-Chairs were joined by the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Andrzej Kasprzyk, said the statement posted on OSCEs website.

The main aim of the consultations was to discuss the current situation in the conflict zone, to explore ways to reinvigorate the negotiation process, and to prepare for the upcoming summit between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Co-Chairs expect the summit meeting to contribute to enhancing confidence and political will among the parties to find compromise solutions to the remaining key settlement issues. The Ministers expressed their commitment to work with the Co-Chairs to prepare for a successful summit in the near future.

The Co-Chairs also met with OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman to discuss the situation on the ground as well as the latest developments in the peace process and to inform them of preparations for the next high-level meetings.

The Co-Chairs intend to travel to the region at the beginning of October.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has sent a congratulatory letter to Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to you and all the people of your country on the occasion of Saudi National Day, said President Aliyev in his letter.

On this joyful day, I wish you the best of health, success in your activities and the brotherly people of Saudi Arabia lasting peace and prosperity, added Ilham Aliyev.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and External Trade of the Republic of Vanuatu Bruno Leingkone on the sidelines of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend Sept. 23.

During the meeting, the ministers signed a joint communique on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Vanuatu. Bruno Leingkone mentioned that Azerbaijan is the 104th country that signed communique with Vanuatu on establishment of diplomatic relations.

The sides also touched upon the issues of cooperation on the bilateral track and within the framework of international organizations.

At the meeting, the sides also discussed topical issues on the agenda of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 22

Trend:

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with Riyad Al-Maliki, foreign minister of Palestine, on the sidelines of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend.

At the meeting the sides had broad exchange of views on further development of bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and Palestine.

Azerbaijans attention to the Palestinian issue and humanitarian support, as well as the events hosted by Azerbaijan on Palestinian issue under the auspices of international organizations was highly commended.

The ministers also discussed the situation in the Middle East and the issues related to the agenda of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

Azerbaijan attaches primary importance to the promotion of intercultural and interreligious dialogue at all levels, the countrys Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said.

He was giving a speech at the UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) Group of Friends Ministerial Meeting, on the sidelines of the 72nd Session of the UNGA, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend Sept. 23.

Multiculturalism and tolerance is a longstanding tradition in Azerbaiajn that strengthens and consolidates the countrys society, he noted.

For ages, people of different nationalities and religions have been living in peace and dignity in Azerbaijan, he said. The year of 2016 has been declared a Year of Multiculturalism in Azerbaijan by the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Consequently, a special Plan of Actions has been developed that implies measures to safeguard and disseminate the humanistic ideals of multiculturalism both at national and international levels.

Azerbaijan has transformed into the hub of events fostering dialogue of cultures and civilizations such as the First Global Forum on Youth Policies held in Baku on October 28-30, 2014, the 7th Global Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations entitled Living together in inclusive societies hoisted by Azerbaijan on April 25-27, 2016 and the IV World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue held in May 2017, he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Azerbaijan and Belarus will supply tractors to Turkey, the Belarusian media reported.

According to the reports, Fedor Domotenko, director general of Minsk Tractor Works (MTW) OJSC, said the company signed a new contract with Ganja Automobile Plant in Azerbaijan on Sept. 22 for supply of tractors to Azerbaijan along with an additional protocol on jointly entering the Turkish market.

Our partners will provide funds in the amount of $5 million for this purpose. New equipment will be supplied [to Turkey] from Azerbaijan, he noted.

Chairman of Supervisory Council of Ganja Automobile Plant Khanlar Fatiyev, for his part, said the companies have already found a partner in Turkey to open an assembly plant.

It will be a joint product of our two countries in Turkey. We hope to raise annual sales to 2,500-3,000 units in three years, added Fatiyev.

In December 2016, MTW OJSC and Ganja Automobile Plant signed a contract on joint production of machinery in Ganja and delivery of machine and tractor sets to Azerbaijan in 2016-2017.

According to BelTA news agency, it is planned to deliver additional 460 Belarusian machines, including 60 cotton pickers, to Azerbaijan by the end of 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.23

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Two investment schemes are qualified to proceed to the next phase of the tender process for the acquisition of 66 percent of the Greek Gas Transmission System Operator S.A.s (DESFAs) share capital, said the message from the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund S.A (HRADF).

These bidders are the consortium composed of Snam S.p.A./ Enagas Internacional S.L.U./ Fluxys S.A./ N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and Regasificadora del Noroeste S.A.

The above prequalified investment schemes, following the signing of a non-disclosure agreement, will receive the documents describing the procedure for the next phase of the tender (submission of binding offers) and will gain access to detailed information about the asset (virtual data room).

Six investment schemes have expressed their interest to acquire 66 percent of share capital of the Greek natural gas grid operator DESFA.

In particular, expressions of Interest were submitted by: Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (Europe) Limited; Snam S.p.A./ Enagas Internacional S.L.U./ Fluxys S.A./ N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie; Transgaz S.A. / GRTgaz S.A.; Regasificadora del Noroeste S.A.; Integrated Utility Services Inc. (INTUS) and Powerglobe LLC.

The new tender will involve again the sale of DESFAs 66 percent (31 percent held by HRADF and 35 percent held by Hellenic Petroleum). The remaining 34 percent of DESFA shares shall be transferred to the government.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

Trend:

Barama Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center of Azercell Telecom LLC has launched next project aimed to support the startups with the support of PASHA Bank.

The Center has started the serial event called Breakfast with Mentors with the aim to enlighten and inspire founders of startups for successful project run. A 1.5 hour meeting with successful business people and owners will be held each 3rd Friday of every month out of office. The meeting will discuss the current projects of the startups and give beneficial advice for achievable future. Managing business, finding investors and partners, boosting sales, expanding networking and etc. are among the topics of discussion during the meeting.

Mr. Farid Ismayilzada, Founder and Chairman of Executive Board of Golden Pay, entrepreneur, was the first guest of the meeting on September, 22 and shared his experience with the startups. It is worth noting that after graduating from a gymnasium in English, Mr. Ismayilzada continued his education in the field of International Relations at Bilkent University, Turkey. He graduated Bilkent as an exemplary student at the age of 19, and then entered to San Jose State University. He has founded the first online payment company in Azerbaijan in 2007. Now GoldenPay is the largest e-payment services provider in the country. He also founded the payment portal hesab.az in 2011.

Barama Innovation Center was founded in 2009 by Azercell with the aim to support entrepreneurship in Azerbaijan. The Center generally supports IT projects and start-ups operating in this industry and helps them become successful businesses. During eight years of its activity Barama Center has made a number of achievements. More than 30 projects were launched at the center and 20 of them completed successfully. 4 companies have been established and successfully run their businesses today. Barama has upgraded its activities since 2014 to become a professional business incubator and was introduced to the public with the name Barama Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center.

For more information, please contact [email protected]



The leader of the mobile communication industry of Azerbaijan and the biggest investor in the non-oil sector Azercell Telecom LLC was founded in 1996. With 48 percent share of Azerbaijans mobile market Azercells network covers 80 percent of the territory and 99.8 percent of population of the country.

Currently, 4.5 million subscribers choose Azercell services. Azercell has pioneered an important number of innovations in Azerbaijan, including GSM technology, advance payment system, 24/7 Customer Care, online customer services, GPRS/EDGE, M2M, MobilBank, one-stop- shop service offices Azercell Express, mobile e-service ASAN signature, etc. Azercell deployed first 4G  LTE services in Azerbaijan in 2012. According to the results of mobile network quality surveys of Global Wireless Solutions company and international systems specialized in wireless coverage mapping such as Opensignal and Testmy.net, Azercells network demonstrated the best results among the mobile operators of Azerbaijan.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Sept. 23

By Demir Azizov Trend:

Uzbekistan and the US discussed prospects for deepening cooperation in the political, trade and economic, investment, cultural and humanitarian, as well as other fields, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said in a message posted on its website.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, who visited New York Sept. 22, met Alice Wells, acting assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs and acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The sides confirmed that they attach importance to the further development of multifaceted dialogue between Uzbekistan and the US.

In this context, they expressed confidence that the fruitful meetings and talks of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in New York Sept. 19 with representatives of leading US firms and companies, the successful outcome of the Uzbek-US business forum held Sept. 20 will give a new impetus to building mutually beneficial ties between the business circles of the two countries.

At the meeting, the sides considered other issues of the full-fledged bilateral agenda, as well as current international and regional issues.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

The Iranian ambassador to Baku, Javad Jahangirzadeh, has called for stepping up efforts aimed at widening bilateral trade ties.

The latest statistics show a considerable growth in trade turnover between the two countries over the past eight months, the envoy told Trend.

He also forecast that the figure would witness a surge in the next four months.

According to the data available on the website of State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan, the two countries trade over the first eight months of the current year valued $168.9 million, indicating an increase of about 40 percent.

However, the sides need to put in a great deal of effort for further expansion of economic ties, Jahangirzadeh added.

He further touched upon the new appointments in the cabinet of President Hassan Rouhani following his re-election in May, saying the new members of the administration will definitely contribute to improvement of the atmosphere for economic cooperation between the two countries.

The appointment of Mahmoud Vaezi as the chief of staff of presidents office will contribute to deepening of economic relations, he added.

Earlier this month, Iranian presidential administration decreed to appoint Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Masoud Karbasian as the new co-chair of Azerbaijan-Iran Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation.

The development came after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appointed the former co-chair of the commission, Mahmoud Vaezi, as the chief of staff of presidents office.

The new Iranian co-chair of the joint commission, Karbasian, who has proper experience in customs issues, is seriously following up on the expansion of economic relations.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 22

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

Colonel Ali Seify, Irans military attache in Azerbaijan, has told Trend that his countrys missile program is merely based on the doctrine of deterrence.

Our military capabilities - including missile power - are merely defensive and deterrent. They do not make any threats to other countries, he told Trend on the sidelines of a ceremony in Baku.

Irans missile power serves creating stability in the region, the attache added.

Iran unveiled and successfully test-launched its latest ballistic missile dubbed Khorramshahr on Friday.

According to local media reports, the ballistic missile, which is Irans third type of missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers along with the Qadr-F and Sejjil ballistic missiles, is capable of carrying multiple warheads.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Iran on Oct. 4, the Turkish media reported Sept. 23 citing diplomatic sources.

As part of the visit, Erdogan will meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. During the meeting, the two presidents are expected to discuss regional issues, as well as the solution of the Syrian crisis, situation in Iraq, and development of bilateral relations.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since 2011. The conflict erupted between President Bashar al-Assads government along with its allies and forces opposing the government.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2017 - 18:09 | World, All

Iranian state-run television reported Saturday that its military has successfully test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile displayed publicly for the first time the previous day.

The Khorramshahr missile was unveiled Friday during a military parade in Tehran to commemorate the Iran-Iraq war which began on Sept. 22, 1980. State-run television did not say when or where the missile test occurred.



(Islamic Republic News Agency/Kyodo)

The new missile, which has a 2,000-kilometer range and can carry multiple warheads, "will be operational soon," Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' aerospace forces, was quoted as saying Friday by Tasnim News Agency.

The newly developed ballistic missile was unveiled just days after U.S. President Donald Trump, in an address to the U.N. General Assembly, vowed not to let Iran, which he described as a "rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos," continue to destabilize the Middle East "while building dangerous missiles."

President Hassan Rouhani said at Friday's parade ceremony that Iran will defend itself as it sees fit. "We will reinforce our missiles. We won't ask anyone's permission to defend our land," he said.

The Trump administration has pointed to a succession of Iranian ballistic missile tests over recent years as violations of the spirit, if not the actual provisions, of the 2015 nuclear moratorium deal.

Under that agreement between Iran and five major world powers, Tehran agreed to uranium-enrichment limits and to international inspections of its nuclear facilities in return for the lifting of crippling banking and trade sanctions.

Trump has called the agreement an "embarrassment" and repeatedly threatened to terminate U.S. consent to it if not revised.
KYODO NEWS - Sep 23, 2017 - 15:54 | World, All

China imposed Saturday limits on petroleum product exports to North Korea and banned imports of textiles from the country in line with the latest U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program.

The Commerce Ministry said exports of refined petroleum products to North Korea will be limited to 500,000 barrels from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31 and to 2 million barrels per year starting Jan. 1.

The ceilings are stipulated in a resolution approved by the U.N. Security Council this month in response to North Korea's sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.

The U.N. resolution imposes additional sanctions on North Korea, which has been making rapid progress in its quest to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

The resolution also bans exports to North Korea of natural gas liquids and light crude condensate, a natural gas by-product.

As for textiles, one of North Korea's biggest sources of foreign revenue, the ministry said they cannot be imported starting Saturday midnight.

China accounts for about 90 percent of North Korea's total trade and supplies a huge amount of food and energy.

China, which has been under strong pressure from the United States to do more to rein in North Korea's weapons program, has pledged to fully implement the U.N. sanctions.

The Chinese ministry made the announcement Friday night and it took effect Saturday.
By Mohammad Gharebag, KYODO NEWS - Sep 22, 2017 - 21:13 | World, All

Iran unveiled a new ballistic missile named "Khorramshahr" at a military parade on Friday and reiterated its determination to boost its missile capabilities in defiance of pressure from the United States and Israel.

The new missile, which has a 2,000-kilometer range and can carry multiple warheads, "will be operational soon," Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' aerospace forces, was quoted as saying by Tasnim News Agency.



(Islamic Republic News Agency/Kyodo)

President Hassan Rouhani said at a parade ceremony that Iran will defend itself as it sees fit. "We will reinforce our missiles. We won't ask anyone's permission to defend our land," he said.

The president was speaking a day after returning from the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where Iran came under severe criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump. Rouhani said what transpired there "unveiled the true face" of the United States and its ally Israel.

In his address to the world body Wednesday, Trump called the 2015 nuclear deal signed between Iran and six major powers, under which Tehran agreed to uranium-enrichment limits and to international inspections of its nuclear facilities in return for the lifting of crippling banking and trade sanctions, an "embarrassment."

He vowed not to let Iran, which he described as "economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos" continue destabilizing the Middle East "while building dangerous missiles."

Speaking the same day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran's missile development threatens the entire world and urged world powers to "fix or nix" the nuclear deal before it is too late.

He warned the nuclear deal will eventually allow Iran "to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, placing it on the threshold of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons...with the missiles to deliver them anywhere on earth."

Iran, while curbing its nuclear program under the deal, has refused to do likewise with its missile program.

Speaking at the General Assembly a day after Trump and Netanyahu spoke, Rouhani rejected the "ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric filled with ridiculously baseless allegations that was uttered before this body yesterday."

He insisted Iran's missiles "are solely defensive deterrence for the maintenance of regional peace and stability and the prevention of adventurous tendencies of irrational aspirants."

"We cannot forget that civilians in many of our cities became the targets of long range missile attacks by Saddam Hussein during his eight-year war of aggression against us. We will never allow our people to become victims of such catastrophic delusions again," he said, referring to the Iran-Iraq War.

Friday's military parade in Tehran was held to commemorate that war, which began on Sept. 22, 1980, and lasted for eight years.

Rouhani also rejected U.S. accusations of Iran fomenting instability in the Middle East, including in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, and said Iran has historically assisted oppressed peoples.

He urged the United States to instead "explain to its own people why after spending millions of dollars of the assets of the people of America and of our region instead of contributing to peace and stability, it has only brought war, misery, poverty and the rise of terrorism and extremism to the region."

After Friday prayers, Iranians across the country protested against Trump's U.N. speech and chanted "Death to America."

At the parade ceremony, held at the tomb of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Rouhani blasted Israel as a "blood-sucking Zionist regime" and a "cancerous tumor" that has been "for 70 years has been violating the rights of nations of region."

His remarks appeared to be in reaction to those of Netanyahu, who told the United Nations his earlier prediction has come true, namely that following the lifting of international sanctions, "Iran would behave like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations, but devouring nations one after the other."
NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a look at Maria's temperatures to find the strongest sides of the storm, while NOAA's GOES satellite revealed the extent of the storm in a visible image as it moved toward the Bahamas.

On Sept. 22 at 3:18 a.m. EDT (0718 UTC) the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a thermal image of Hurricane Maria north of Hispaniola and nearing the Bahamas. The image showed highest coldest clouds around the eyewall and in bands of thunderstorms to the northeast and south and southeast of the center, stretching over Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. Those clouder clouds have the capability of producing heavy rainfall.

At 5:04 a.m. AST/EDT the National Weather Service (NWS) in San Juan, Puerto Rico reported those bands of thunderstorms were still dropping heavy rain. Satellite estimates indicate heavy rain over eastern Puerto Rico and heavier rain about to move into western Puerto Rico. The heavy rain will cause flooding. NWS noted "Some locations that are or will experience flooding include San Juan, Ponce, Arecibo, Yauco, Fajardo, Guayama, Coamo, Jayuya, Adjuntas, Santa Isabel, Canovanas, Sabana Seca, San Sebastian, Naranjito, Humacao, Mayaguez, San German, Lajas, Hatillo and Penuelas." Flood warnings are in effect until 5:45 p.m. EDT today, Friday, September 22, 2017. In hilly terrain there are hundreds of low water crossings which are potentially dangerous in heavy rain.

A visible image of Hurricane Maria was taken from NOAA's GOES East satellite on Sept. 22 at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 UTC) showed the storm just north of Turk Island and nearing the Bahamas. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported "Maria is still producing 125-mph winds as it passes northeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Both the Suomi NPP and GOES East images were created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NOAA manages the GOES series of satellites and the NASA/NOAA GOES Project uses the data to create images and animations. The Rapid Response Team at Goddard produces imagery from the Suomi NPP satellite.

A Hurricane Warning is in effect for Turks and Caicos Islands and the Southeastern Bahamas and a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Central Bahamas.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the eye of Hurricane Maria was located near 22.3 degrees north latitude and 71.0 degrees west longitude. That's about 55 miles (90 km) north of Grand Turk Island, and 445 miles (715 km) east-southeast of Nassau. Maria was moving toward the northwest near 8 mph (13 kph).

Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds remain near 125 mph (205 kph) with higher gusts. Maria is a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. A gradual weakening is forecast during the next 48 hours. The minimum central pressure based on data from the reconnaissance aircraft is 958 millibars.

NHC said a turn toward the north-northwest is expected later today, followed by a turn toward the north by late Saturday. On the forecast track, Maria's core will move away from the Turks and Caicos Islands today, and pass northeast and east of the Bahamas through Sunday, Sept. 24.

###

For updated forecasts on Maria, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.

By Rob Gutro

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Uber's London unit has launched a petition against the decision to revoke its license on Friday, saying that regulators were trying to "restrict consumer choice." "We are sure Londoners will be as astounded as we are by this decision. By trying to ban the app from the capital, the Mayor and Transport for London have caved in to a small number of people," Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, said in an emailed statement to customers in the U.K. "Not only will this decision deprive you of the choice of a convenient way of getting about town, it will also put more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on our app out of work." Uber UK tweet Earlier Friday, Transport for London stripped Uber of its license to operate, which will likely affect more than 40,000 drivers in one of the world's biggest cities. Uber said that it will be immediately challenging the decision in court.

"Uber's approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications," Transport for London said. The final day of Uber's license will be Sept. 30. In London, Uber has faced criticism from unions, lawmakers and traditional black-cab drivers over working conditions. Elvidge's emailed statement also included a link to a petition, which is urging the mayor of London and TFL to "think again." The "Save Your Uber in London" petition had more than 600,000 signatures by the early hours of Sunday.

 Reuters contributed to this report.



More From CNBC


A whopping 20% down.

Its what most lenders want to see as a down payment from a potential home buyer.

For the buyer, it likely means a lower mortgage rate, lower monthly payments, and more home equity. For the banks and other lenders, its a sign that the buyer has the financial wherewithal to own a home.

But not every buyer can come up with 20% to put down on a home, especially with home prices on the rise nationally. In August, the median home price jumped 5.6% from a year earlier, to $253,500. That marked the 66th straight month of price gains, year over year.

Here are three things you should know about a 20% down payment.

#1 Without it, you pay more

Most lenders want to see that sizable down payment, and its not because they are trying to be difficult. They are doling out a lot of cash to help you get in a home and that 20% of the selling price gives them confidence that you, the buyer, can handle the home loan. Most first-time homebuyers arent even aware of the 20% down payment standard. A report from Bank of America found that only 29% of prospective home buyers believed they needed 20% down. More than two out of five thought a down payment should be 10% or less.

Of course, if you put less down, youre going to pay more each month and over the life of the loan in interest. But also, without putting that 20% down, most buyers have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). PMI is a protection for the lender in case of default, and its an extra monthly cost. The total cost depends on the loan-to-value ratio and credit score, not to mention geography, says Lynn Fisher, vice president of research and economics at Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Fisher says the typical cost is in the range of 75 to 100 basis points, or about .75 to 1% of the loan.

#2 Many home buyers dont do it

Even though paying for the home with less down costs more in the long run, many Americans dont make a 20% down payment. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), fewer than 6 out of 10 of home buyers who bought a home with a mortgage through July came up with a 20% down payment. The median down payment so far this year is 10% of the selling price. For first-time buyers, the rate is much lower, at 6%, says the NAR.

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There are plenty of options out there that require low down payments. FHA, VA, and USDA all offer home loans with little to no money down for qualified buyers.

From consumers point of view, the most important thing is to stay well within budget, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist and senior vice president of research at NAR. Low down payments can still lead to successful homeownership.

#3 Higher down payments give buyers a leg up

Its not just lenders who like to see a 20% down payment on a home. Sellers like it too. Housing inventory is tight, particularly for starter homes. On a year-over-year basis, housing inventory has dropped every month for the past 27 months.

With inventory dropping, a report from Trulia finds there is a mismatch between the number of buyers and starter or trade-up homes currently on the market. While higher-priced listings are saturating the market on the national level, Trulia says it has seen searches for starter and trade-up homes on its site making up a growing share of all search activity.

That means more competition for homes in the lower price range  and more bidding wars. In deadlocked bidding wars, sellers tend to go with a buyer who is putting more money down.

Putting 20% down will help because it is a sign to the seller that you are financially able, says Cheryl Young, senior economist at Trulia. If you are putting less down, you may have to jump through more hoops to get financing.

Big decisions

So, should you scrounge around for 20% to put down on a new home, borrowing against 401(k)s, IRAs, asking for money from family and friends? Put less down? Wait to buy a home? It depends on your budget and if you can keep up with the month-to-month costs of owning that home.

But it also depends on where you are in life, says MBAs Lynn Fisher. If you are near retirement, maybe you need to get your payment to a certain level each month, or you want to reduce your debt as quickly as possible. In that case, she says, the sizable down payment makes sense. But if someone is younger with a steady income, then its an investment decision, she says.

You have to think about the opportunity cost of putting more money down  that is, the rate of return if you invest that money somewhere else, she says.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the company will hand over more than 3,000 Russia-linked political ads to Congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Zuckerbergs announcement comes after the social network said earlier this month that nearly 500 accounts likely originating in Russia bought $100,000 worth of Facebook ads during the election. Facebook said it had previously shared the information with U.S. officials investigating Russian interference leading up to Election Day.

On Thursday, Zuckerberg revealed a nine-step plan to stop states from interfering in one anothers elections via Facebook, noting that the amount of problematic content found so far is relatively small.

I wish I could tell you were going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldnt be realistic, Zuckerberg said on Facebook. There will always be bad people in the world, and we cant prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And thats what were going to do.

Read Zuckerbergs full statement below.

I just went live a minute ago. Heres what I said:

Today is my first day back in the office after taking parental leave. It was really special to be with Priscilla and August after she was born, and to get to spend some more time with Max.

While I was out on leave, I spent a lot of time with our teams on the question of Russian interference in the US elections. I made some decisions on the next steps were taking, and I want to share those with you now.

First, let me say this. I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity. Facebooks mission is all about giving people a voice and bringing people closer together. Those are deeply democratic values and were proud of them. I dont want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. Thats not what we stand for.

The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world. Thats why weve built teams dedicated to working on election integrity and preventing governments from interfering in the elections of other nations. And as weve shared before, our teams have found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that could be attempting to influence elections in many countries, including recently in the French elections.

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Now, I wish I could tell you were going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldnt be realistic. There will always be bad people in the world, and we cant prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And thats what were going to do.

So today I want to share the steps were taking to protect election integrity and make sure that Facebook is a force for good in democracy. While the amount of problematic content weve found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue. Here are 9 things well be working on over the next few months:

1. We are actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel. We also briefed Congress  and this morning I directed our team to provide the ads weve found to Congress as well. As a general rule, we are limited in what we can discuss publicly about law enforcement investigations, so we may not always be able to share our findings publicly. But we support Congress in deciding how to best use this information to inform the public, and we expect the government to publish its findings when their investigation is complete.

2. We will continue our investigation into what happened on Facebook in this election. We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government. We are looking into foreign actors, including additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states, as well as organizations like the campaigns, to further our understanding of how they used our tools. These investigations will take some time, but we will continue our thorough review.

3. Going forward  and perhaps the most important step were taking  were going to make political advertising more transparent. When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, theyre required by law to disclose who paid for them. But you still dont know if youre seeing the same messages as everyone else. So were going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency. Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertisers page and see the ads theyre currently running to any audience on Facebook. We will roll this out over the coming months, and we will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads.

4. We will strengthen our ad review process for political ads. To be clear, it has always been against our policies to use any of our tools in a way that breaks the law  and we already have many controls in place to prevent this. But we can do more. Most ads are bought programmatically through our apps and website without the advertiser ever speaking to anyone at Facebook. Thats what happened here. But even without our employees involved in the sales, we can do better.

Now, Im not going to sit here and tell you were going to catch all bad content in our system. We dont check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I dont think our society shouldnt want us to. Freedom means you dont have to ask permission first, and that by default you can say what you want. If you break our community standards or the law, then youre going to face consequences afterwards. We wont catch everyone immediately, but we can make it harder to try to interfere.

5. We are increasing our investment in security and specifically election integrity. In the next year, we will more than double the team working on election integrity. In total, well add more than 250 people across all our teams focused on security and safety for our community.

6. We will expand our partnerships with election commissions around the world. We already work with electoral commissions in many countries to help people register to vote and learn about the issues. Well keep doing that, and now were also going to establish a channel to inform election commissions of the online risks weve identified in their specific elections.

7. We will increase sharing of threat information with other tech and security companies. We already share information on bad actors on the internet through programs like ThreatExchange, and now were exploring ways we can share more information about anyone attempting to interfere with elections. It is important that tech companies collaborate on this because its almost certain that any actor trying to misuse Facebook will also be trying to abuse other internet platforms too.

8. We are working proactively to strengthen the democratic process. Beyond pushing back against threats, we will also create more services to protect our community while engaging in political discourse. For example, were looking at adapting our anti-bullying systems to protect against political harassment as well, and were scaling our ballot information tools to help more people understand the issues.

9. We have been working to ensure the integrity of the German elections this weekend, from taking actions against thousands of fake accounts, to partnering with public authorities like the Federal Office for Information Security, to sharing security practices with the candidates and parties. Were also examining the activity of accounts weve removed and have not yet found a similar type of effort in Germany. This is incredibly important and we have been focused on this for a while.

At the same time, its important not to lose sight of the more straightforward and larger ways Facebook plays a role in elections  and these effects operate at much larger scales of 100x or 1000x bigger than what were discussing here.

In 2016, people had billions of interactions and open discussions on Facebook that may never have happened offline. Candidates had direct channels to communicate with tens of millions of citizens. Campaigns spent tens of millions organizing and advertising online to get their messages out further. And we organized get out the vote efforts that helped as many as 2 million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise. Many of these dynamics were new in this election, or at much larger scale than ever before in history, and at much larger scale than the interference weve found.

But we are in a new world. It is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections. But if thats what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion. Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly. We will continue working with the government to understand the full extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part not only to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere.

Thanks for tuning in, and well keep you updated with more soon.
HTC has been in dire straits for a while, but the smartphone manufacturer finally got a long-awaited lifeline Wednesday when Google confirmed it would buy part of the company for $1.1 billion.

As part of the deal, Google will take on around 2,000 of HTCs mobile division employees and gain non-exclusive licensing for the companys intellectual property, At the moment, investor response to the deal is still shaking out  HTC froze trading Wednesday in advance of the deal, though the company and Google both saw a small jump in stock price Wednesday morning when speculation about the deal first broke. Heres the biggest takeaways from Wednesdays HTC and Google news:

Google Is Serious About Hardware

To get a sign about Googles changing hardware ambitions, look back to its old purchase of Motorola from 2012. Google bought the company for a hefty $12.9 billion, but the awkwardness of owning a company that competed against its own Android partners made the pairing a difficult match. The partnership had high points like the Moto X smartphone, but Google eventually sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 billion in 2014 and its biggest upside from the deal has generally been seen as getting the companys patents.

But as the release of last years Pixel showed, Google doesnt have any qualms anymore about stepping on the toes of past partners. Thomas Husson, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, pointed out that HTCs assets also helps out Googles manufacturing abilities in other areas.

Google & HTC

Photo: REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

New technologies like augmented reality require deeper integration with the hardware, Husson said. Due to Androids massive fragmentation, Google needs to control the distribution of its services and to reduce its traffic acquisition costs.

With the HTC purchase, Google ultimately wants to mirror the tight control over software and hardware manufacturing that competitors like Apple have long benefited from. The company wants to considered a major hardware vendor and its willing to make investments in order to become one.

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HTCs Still Sticking Around

As for HTC, the deal gives the struggling company additional runway to work with. Financially, HTC has been tied to speculation over a potential sale for a while amid dwindling sales and an estimated U.S. market share of only 1.9 percent.

But the partial sale doesnt answer many of the longer-term questions over HTCs murky future. Despite selling off nearly half of its research and design team to Google, HTC is remaining in the smartphone business. In a statement on the Google sale, HTC confirmed that it was still working on the successor to its HTC U11. HTC still has assets like its Vive virtual reality division  a field that Google also has significant investments in  but in a market thats increasingly top-heavy, it remains to be seen how long HTC can keep on going in its current shape.

Google Wants To Remain In The High-End Smartphone Market

Googles move to expand its hardware offerings ties into a persistent problem thats nagged Android for years. The Apple phone has always been the iPhone, but when you reverse the question for Android users, whats the answer? The Samsung Galaxy S8? Huawei? LGs G6?

Androids adaptability has been a big driver in its success  the operating system has 53.3 percent of the U.S. market as of June 2017 according to comScore  but until the Pixel, theres never been a clear and long-term answer to what Googles phone might be. With the Pixel and upcoming Pixel 2, Google is doubling down on the bet that it can be just as serious of a player in the high-end smartphone market as current leaders Samsung and Apple.

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When the iPhone 8 was officially announced, Apple made a big deal about the phone being built for wireless. That isnt really true, as weve said before  the iPhone 8 has the slow version of wireless charging, and the slow version of LTE data. Apple didnt mention gigabit LTE, or any of the wireless carriers new LTE technology, during its presentation. But that doesnt mean the iPhone 8s hardware isnt capable of supporting it.

iFixit found during their teardown of the new iPhone 8 that the phone  or at least the variant sold in Australia  is packing a Qualcomm X16 modem. Thats the same radio chip as found in all this years top Android phones, and its capable  with the right software  of gigabit LTE speeds.

Don't Miss: The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus launch today, but theres another iPhone you can get for $180 unlocked

So Apples stories dont line up. The company hasnt formally commented on the LTE capabilities of its new phones, and were going to have to wait until speedtests are run on compatible networks to know exactly what LTE technologies the iPhone 8 supports. But given the notable omission of gigabit LTE, LAA, or LTE-U in Apples technical specs for the device, we can assume that the iPhone 8 wont support any of them.

Why would that be the case, when the hardware appears to be capable? The answer may lie in how the iPhone is manufactured. Apple is reportedly using a mix of Qualcomm and Intel modems in the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, with the different chips in different model numbers, which are sold depending on what carrier and region a device is going to be used in.

When Apple has used different components in different models in the past, its artifically limited the capabilities of one chip in order to give a consistent experience across devices. In other words, Intels modem might not be capable of supporting gigabit LTE, so Apple software-limited the Qualcomm modem to put both on the same playing field.

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We know thats happened before, and Qualcomm even brought up the issue in an ongoing lawsuit with Apple. From the phone makers perspective, it makes sense: it cant sell a better and worse version of the phone for different networks, because that would destroy sales for those networks that only support the worse device. If Sprint and Verizon get the Intel-powered iPhones that cant support gigabit LTE, customers are going to work that out, and only buy the iPhone 8 on T-Mobile and AT&T. That would cause all kinds of problems for Apples relationship with the networks.

Were going to have to wait for teardowns of all the new iPhone models, and speedtests on different networks, before we can answer this conclusively. But based on the information we have right now, it looks like Apple is disabling some advanced LTE features on Qualcomm-powered iPhones in order to level the playing field.

Qualcomm declined to comment on this story.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Imagination Tech - REUTERS

Chinese-backed fund Canyon Bridge has swooped on Imagination Technologies in 550m deal which looks set to test Theresa May's pledge to intervene in foreign takeovers.

Late on Friday, Imagination said it had agreed to a takeover by Canyon Bridge, which, although based in Silicon Valley, is funded by authorities in Beijing. Canyon's interest in Imagination, which is based in Hertfordshire, was first reported by The Daily Telegraph in July.

Its offer price, of 182p per share, is 42pc higher than Imagination's closing price on Friday. However, shares in the group are almost 50pc below the level they were trading at prior to news earlier this year that Apple would stop using its graphics technologies in the iPhone.

The deal is likely to reignite the debate over the vulnerability of British companies to asset strippers, when compared to peers in the US and Europe, where there is more protection for so-called 'national treasures'.

Earlier this month, the Government voiced its concern over the potential takeover of Imagination by Canyon, with officials thought to have approached bankers working on the auction regarding the Chinese interest.

Ahead of the announcement of the deal on Friday, British microchip designer ARM had reportedly been circling Imagination in the hope of snatching a bargain, although sources familiar with ARMs thinking said it was unwilling to enter a bidding war.

On agreeing the deal, Canyon said it has "no plans to make any changes to the continuing employment of employees and management, nor does intend to change the principal locations of Imaginations places of business, or redeploy any fixed assets of Imagination".

Canyon's commitments follow a UK decision this week to tighten the Takeover Code to increase the level of disclosure required from foreign bidders and require them to publish a report into whether they have stuck to promises over intentions on the location of headquarters and the changes to staff.

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Crude oil futures notched their third weekly gain on Friday

Investing.com  Crude oil prices settled higher on Friday as investors shrugged off the outcome of an Opec-led meeting in which oil producers failed to reach a decision to extend the production-cut agreement.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange crude futures for November delivery rose 11 cents to settle at $50.66 a barrel, while on London's Intercontinental Exchange, Brent gained 27 cents to trade at $56.70 a barrel.

As was widely expected, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and other major producers failed to reach a decision to extend output cuts beyond March 2018.

Russias energy minister suggested that January is the earliest date that an extension to the global accord can be considered, as it allows ample time to assess the state of the market.

"I believe that January is the earliest date when we can actually, credibly speak about the state of the market," Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said. Other ministers suggested a decision could come this year.

In May, Opec and non-Opec members agreed to extend production cuts of 1.8m barrels per day for a period of nine months until March 2018 but rising production from the U.S., Nigeria and Libya has undermined the oil cartels efforts to curb excess supply.

The committee issued a bullish outlook on compliance, however, highlighting that oil producing nations participating in the global accord to cut output reached record monthly compliance. Opec and non-opec compliance with the deal to curb output rose to 116% in August, the committee said, a strong increase from the 94% compliance achieved a month ago.

In the U.S., market participants mulled over data showing the number of U.S. oil rigs continued to decline suggesting a possible tightening in domestic production.

Oilfield services firm Baker Hughes said its weekly count of oil rigs operating in the United States declined by 5 to 744.

The weekly rig count is an important barometer for the drilling industry and serves as a proxy for oil production and oil services demand.

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Today, the Washington DC Court of Appeals overturned a Superior Court conviction of a man who was located by police using a cell-site simulator, or Stingray, CBS News reports. The court ruled that the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights were violated when law enforcement tracked down the suspect using his own cell phone without a warrant.

Stingrays work by pretending to be a cell tower and once they're brought close enough to a particular phone, that phone pings a signal off of them. The Stingray then grabs onto that signal and allows whoever's using it to locate the phone in question. These sorts of devices are used by a number of different agencies including the FBI, ICE, the IRS as well as police officers.

The use of cell-site simulators, especially without a warrant, has come under question a few times in recent years. In 2016, a federal judge suppressed DEA evidence obtained via such a device, the first time a federal judge had done so. Last year, members of Congress called for legislation that would protect citizens' privacy and require a warrant before Stingrays could be used by law enforcement. Two such bills were introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year.

In the ruling, the judges said, "We thus conclude that under ordinary circumstances, the use of a cell-site simulator to locate a person through his or her cellphone invades the person's actual, legitimate, and reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her location information and is a search." They also said, "We agree with [the defendant] that the government violated the Fourth Amendment when it deployed the cell-site simulator against him without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause."

The ruling could affect ongoing and future cases as well as law enforcement's use of the technology.
Hyperloop One, a three-year-old, L.A.-based company working to create near-supersonic trains that can whisk both passengers and cargo in giant pneumatic tubes at speeds of many hundreds of miles per hour, has raised $85 million in fresh funding, as first reported in Recode.

The round, which comes from DP World, Caspian VC Partners, WTI and OurCrowd.com, brings the company's total funding to $245 million.

It's a lot of money for what still seems like a pipe dream, no pun intended. As the Verge noted in its own report on the new round, Hyperloop One still has "no commercial product, no revenue stream, no government approval, and no proof that its ultrafast transit system would even be safe for human passengers."

Though the company has proudly touted its proof of concept -- in late July, in the Nevada desert, it shot a 28-foot-long pod made of aluminum and carbon fiber down a 1,600-foot-long concrete tube at 192 miles per hour in five seconds, then immediately sent footage of the feat to numerous media outlets -- its challenges are numerous and well-documented.

Among them: any route would need to be straight and level. Meanwhile, land is expensive; presumably not all landowners would welcome hosting a hyperloop in their backyard. It could take tens of billions of dollars and decades to build. You get the idea. Hyperloop has also talked up its partnerships with governments around the world, though these are, for now, merely feasibility studies.

Apparently, such obstacles haven't diminished the enthusiasm of the company's newest investors, whose new round of funding reportedly values Hyperloop One at $700 million.

Still, it may grow harder for people to maintain their enthusiasm in its expensive approach, given that the idea's earliest advocate, Elon Musk, has himself moved on to a project that he thinks will be less costly, more practical and will require less time: tunneling underground.

Indeed, earlier this week at TechCrunch's Disrupt event in San Francisco, we talked about Musk with venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, an investor in and director on the boards of two other Musk-led companies -- SpaceX and Tesla. He suggested that building smaller, short-range tunnels for electric vehicle transport, which is what Musk is setting out to do with a new company, The Boring Company, makes more sense in the short term, and that the smaller, more cost-efficient tunnels he wants to build could eventually supplant the idea of a hyperloop.

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I personally love the idea [of The Boring Company], in fact, even more than the hyperloop idea, of digging these tunnels, Jurvetson said.

The insight I think thats so powerful is that if you only envision electric vehicles in your tunnels, you dont need to do the air handling for all carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, you know, basically pollutants for exhaust. You could have scrubbers and a variety of simpler things that make everything collapse to a smaller tunnel size, which dramatically lowers the cost  The whole concept of what you do with tunnels changes.

The "[land] right of ways, which was a killer to hyperloop as a concept, well, [tunneling is] potentially solving that problem, too."

The Boring Company confirmed in a statement to Wired last month that it sees moving electric cars as a starting point, but that it plans also to develop its own hyperloop technology.

"At the Boring Company, we plan to build low-cost, fast-to-dig tunnels that will house new high-speed transportation systems," the spokesperson wrote in a statement to Wired. "Most will be standard pressurized tunnels with electric skates going 125+ mph. For long-distance routes in straight lines, such as NY to DC, it will make sense to use pressurized pods in a depressurized tunnel to allow speeds up to approximately 600+ mph (aka Hyperloop)."
By Tim Hepher PARIS (Reuters) - Turkish Airlines has begun talks with Airbus to buy up to 40 A350 jetliners worth $12.4 billion at list prices, hours after outlining a similar deal with rival planemaker Boeing, people familiar with the airline said on Friday. The carrier's first significant moves on expansion since last year's failed Turkish coup appear designed to signal a rebound coinciding with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to the United Nations, though no deals have yet been finalised. In New York, where Erdogan this week attended the U.N. General Assembly, Boeing said on Thursday Turkish Airlines (THY) intended to buy 40 of its 787-9 Dreamliner jets worth $11 billion at list prices. Boeing and the Turkish government also announced a joint initiative to support the Turkish aerospace industry. "During the talks to finalise the order, we are strictly evaluating the $1 billion worth business volume for the local Turkish supplier industry," Turkish Airlines Chairman Ilker Ayc said in a statement on Friday. Hours after the Boeing announcement, attention switched behind the scenes to Boeing's arch-rival Airbus as Turkish Airlines also sought prices from the European planemaker for up to 40 wide-body A350-900 jets, the people said. It was not immediately clear whether this might lead to a separate order or clash with the 787 talks or even be just a case of THY checking Boeing's prices against Airbus's. But THY typically maintains a balanced fleet from the rival planemakers and analysts said the diplomatic setting and wider industrial agreement suggested the Boeing deal was likely to go ahead. That deal came as U.S. President Donald Trump praised Erdogan as a friend, despite tensions between the two countries over Turkish security officials involved in street fighting with protesters during a visit to Washington in May. But the timing and nature of the U.S. deal were unexpected. THY had previously expressed interest in the larger 777X. Both Boeing and Airbus declined to comment on discussions with the airline. THY was not available for comment. THY is growing quickly to compete with Gulf carriers but diplomats say it also has a history of making political points with airplane deals as well as using new routes to project Turkey's 'soft power' abroad. In the past, it has tied abortive talks to buy the Airbus A380 to European Union accession talks, according to industry sources and cables released by Wikileaks. Industry sources said the latest separate discussions with Boeing and Airbus appeared to have been accelerated to fit this week's diplomatic schedule, with no visible tendering process. "There are politics involved," one industry source said. Aircraft negotiations often take months, even years, and are usually kept under wraps until there is at least a preliminary agreement. Follow-up talks with each side may take some time. "Turkish Airlines intends to buy 40 787-9 aircraft. However, it has not actually ordered the aircraft, so were not sure that this is really an announcement at all," Robert Stallard, aerospace analyst at Vertical Research Partners, said in a note. THY's passenger numbers were hit by last year's coup attempt, as well as security concerns and tensions with Russia, prompting the airline to postpone Airbus and Boeing deliveries. Passenger numbers grew 6.1 percent between January and August. (Additional reporting by Ceyda Caglayan; Editing by Laurence Frost and Mark Potter)
Digital Realty Trust Inc (NYSE:DLR), a USD$24.48B large-cap, is a real estate company operating in an industry which remains the single largest sector globally, and has continued to play a key role in investor portfolios as an asset class. A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a collective vehicle for investing in real estate that originated in the US and has since been taken on board globally. Real estate analysts are forecasting for the entire industry, negative growth in the upcoming year, and an overall negative growth rate in the next couple of years. Unsuprisingly, this is below the growth rate of the Australian stock market as a whole. Is the real estate industry an attractive sector-play right now? Today, I will analyse the industry outlook, and also determine whether DLR is a laggard or leader relative to its real estate sector peers. See our latest analysis for DLR

Whats the catalyst for DLR's sector growth?

NYSE:DLR Future Profit Sep 24th 17

Concerns surrounding rate increases and treasury yield movements have made investors dubious around investing in REIT stocks. This is because REITs tend to be dependent on debt funding. They are also considered as bond investment alternatives due to their high and stable dividend payments. In the previous year, the industry saw growth in the teens, beating the Australian market growth of 6 percent. DLR leads the pack with its impressive earnings growth of over 100 percent last year. Furthermore, analysts are expecting this trend of above-industry growth to continue, with DLR poised to deliver a triple digit growth over the next couple of years. This growth may make DLR a more expensive stock relative to its peers.

Is DLR and the sector relatively cheap?

NYSE:DLR PE PEG Gauge Sep 24th 17

The REIT sector's PE is currently hovering around 14 times, below the broader Australian stock market PE of 22 times. This means the industry, on average, is relatively undervalued compared to the wider market - a potential mispricing opportunity here! Though, the industry returned a similar 14 percent on equities compared to the markets 16 percent. On the stock-level, DLR is trading at a higher PE ratio of 46 times, making it more expensive than the average REIT stock. In terms of returns, DLR generated 10 percent in the past year, which is 4 percent below the REIT sector.

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What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? DLRs industry-beating future is a positive for shareholders, indicating theyve backed a fast-growing horse. However, this higher growth prospect is also reflected in DLRs high price, suggested by its higher PE ratio relative to its peers. If youre bullish on the stock and well-diversified by industry, you may decide to hold onto DLR as part of your portfolio. However, if youre relatively concentrated in REIT, the DLRs high PE may signal the right time to sell.

Are you a potential investor? If DLR has been on your watchlist for a while, now may not be the best time to enter into the stock since it is trading at a higher valuation compared to other REIT companies. However, that being said, its industry-beating growth prospects may be the reason for high relative valuation. I suggest you look at DLRs future cash flows in order to assess whether the stock is trading at a reasonable price on this basis.

For a deeper dive into Digital Realty Trust's stock, take a look at the company's latest free analysis report to find out more on its financial health and other fundamentals. Interested in other real estate stocks instead? Use our free playform to see my list of over 100 other real estate companies trading on the market.



To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.



The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
FILE PHOTO: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the Alumni Exercises following the 366th Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By David Ingram

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Thursday launched an overhaul of how it handles paid political advertisements on the world's largest social network, responding to criticism that it has not done enough to prevent the manipulation of elections.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company would start by sharing with U.S. congressional investigators some 3,000 political ads that it says Russia-based operatives ran on Facebook in the months before and after last year's U.S. presidential election.

Earlier this month, Facebook said an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of Facebook ads promoting divisive messages.

U.S. congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are examining alleged Russian election interference, which Moscow has denied.

Zuckerberg, who has remained largely silent on the subject for months, said in a live broadcast on Facebook that the company was taking nine steps to prevent governments from using the network to interfere with each other's elections.

"I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That's not what we stand for," Zuckerberg said.

In one change, Facebook will make it possible for anyone to see any political ad that runs on Facebook, no matter whom it targets. Transparency advocates, academics and others have called for the change for months.

Facebook also agreed to require political advertisers to disclose who is paying for the advertisements, currently a requirement for political ads on television but not on social media.

The comments were a marked shift for the Facebook founder, who days after the November 2016 U.S. election said it was a "crazy idea" to think that misinformation on Facebook swayed the vote toward President Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg said Facebook would also expand partnerships with election commissions around the world; adapt systems to help deter political bullying; and examine activities of Facebook accounts that the company removed in advance of the upcoming German election.

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Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said in a separate blog post on Thursday that the social network treads carefully when releasing information about users or advertisers, but that the company wants to help protect the integrity of U.S. elections.

"We believe the public deserves a full accounting of what happened in the 2016 election," Stretch wrote.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Marcy Nicholson)
REUTERS - Uber faces having to withdraw ride hailing services in London, its busiest European market, after local regulator Transport for London pulled the company's licence for private hire cabs on Friday, a move Uber said it planned to appeal. The online ride-hailing pioneer said it still operates in 96 European cities but has largely withdrawn its UberPOP service that relied on drivers without commercial licences after court rulings against it in many jurisdictions going back years. Only in two cities across the region - Berlin and Athens - does Uber offer rides with officially licensed taxi drivers which allow passengers to hail UberTaxis as they pass on the street. In other cities, Uber's private hire cabs must be ordered before a journey. UberPOP remains available in a handful of cities in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Norway, Poland and Switzerland. Uber plans in 2018 to introduce ride-sharing and other services in Finland after the country recently cleared the way for such services. In most remaining cities, Uber offers a range of private hire services using locally licensed drivers that include its mainstream service UberX, its up-scale UberBlack cars and other niche services including UberVan, UberGreen and UberExec. The following are key legal challenges Uber has faced in Europe since it began operating in 2012 in London and Paris. EUROPEAN UNION A non-binding legal opinion issued in May 2017 by a legal adviser to Europe's top court found Uber to be a transportation service, not just an online app, exposing it to further local regulation across the region. (http://reut.rs/2hnSz4s) FRANCE A French court fined Uber 800,000 euros ($957,000) in June 2016 for running an illegal taxi service with amateur drivers and slapped smaller fines on two executives in the first such criminal case against it in Europe. (http://reut.rs/2xnyFOy) Uber's licensed private hire services remain popular in Paris. ITALY A Rome court banned unlicensed ride-hailing services such as Uber in April this year, but the ban was short-lived after the company appealed to a higher court. (http://reut.rs/2xzBtKw) Uber does not operate in Milan after a 2015 ruling against UberPOP that the smartphone app represented "unfair competition" to taxis (http://reut.rs/2jQ16S7). DENMARK Uber said in March it planned to withdraw from Denmark after the country passed a new taxi law that required ride-hailing services to install fare meters and meet other requirements(http://reut.rs/2xnxiPK). HUNGARY Uber pulled out of Hungary in 2016 after the government passed a law - in response to taxi operater protests - that would have blocked internet access to "illegal dispatcher services" like Uber's ride-hailing app (http://reut.rs/2xWwYuO) GERMANY A German regional court in Frankfurt in September 2014 ruled Uber drivers must have commercial licenses to operate in Germany, leading the company to pull out of operations in several German cities. (http://reut.rs/2fnqKMK). It now operates only a limited set of services in Berlin and Munich. ($1 = 0.8360 euros) (Reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Keith Weir)
By Andrea Shalal and Eric Auchard BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany is on guard against any last-minute meddling in Sunday's election but experts have seen only isolated attempts to swing votes during the campaign. There are also no signs that fake news will affect the outcome of the election, which Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats are expected to win. The broadly clean bill of health from political experts and social media watchers is in contrast to the U.S. and French presidential elections of the past 12 months, in which Russia was accused of trying to influence the outcome. (For a graphic on German federal elections click http://tmsnrt.rs/2h0NqCT) "People generally aren't expecting a huge amount of digital meddling because in the end it didn't work in France, and it's just too closely associated with Russia. It would hurt them (Russia)," said Sergey Lagodinsky, a lawyer and researcher with a Green Party-connected think tank in Berlin. The sharing of false or misleading headlines and mass posting by automated social media "bots" have had little influence in Germany's quiet campaign, government officials and political experts say. And an Oxford University study concluded this week that far less fake news was being spread in Germany than in the United States before the 2016 presidential election. Concern had been raised in Germany by the accusations of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election to prevent Democrat Hilary Clinton winning and in this year's French presidential election, in which eventual winner Emmanuel Macron's team complained his campaign was targeted by a "massive and coordinated" hacking operation. Russia has denied meddling in foreign elections. FAR-RIGHT SET TO ENTER PARLIAMENT Germany's biggest political parties, worried about the impact of a hack that stole politicians' data in 2015, agreed this year not to exploit any information that might be leaked as a result of a cyber attack, and not to use bots. Social media watchers spotted a small-scale effort late in the campaign by Russian accounts on Twitter to amplify a call by German far-right activists for their supporters to volunteer as observers at polls to prevent possible voting fraud. The far-right call for election monitors centered on a site with a tiny following called wahlbeobachtung.de, which features demands for a recount if many invalid ballots are found. It was retweeted by a Russian "bot-for-hire" 169 times in recent days, fake news tracking site Digital Forensic Research Labs said. The site, run by EinProzent (One Percent), an anti-immigrant, anti-Merkel "patriotic citizens' network", has drawn just 305 Facebook users to sign up as monitors so far. German voters will cast votes at some 88,000 polling stations. Of 1 million tweets tracked by the Oxford group in the first 10 days of September, 30 percent were tied to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), far outweighing support shown for the party in polls: it is running at around 10 percent. That puts the AfD on track to enter parliament for the first time as the third largest party. Facebook Germany spokesman Klaus Gorny said the company was keeping a close eye on abuse while sticking to its principles of allowing free speech. He said there was no doubt that right-wing postings, some of them quite offensive, had increased, but Facebook was only removing content that was illegal. "There are certainly things that are completely off, but they're not illegal," he said. (Editing by Timothy Heritage)
Germans are heading to the polls on Sunday September 24 for a federal election which will ultimately decide whether the incumbent chancellor, Angela Merkel, has another four years in power. Polling stations open on Sunday morning and close at 6:00 p.m. local time (12:00 noon ET) and soon after, public broadcasters Das Erste and ZDF will present their exit polls. Although the first projections of the election outcome will come on Sunday evening, a definitive final election result could take until Tuesday. Here's CNBC's guide on what to expect.

What is likely to happen? Voter opinion polls have consistently pointed to Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister-party the Christian Social Union (CSU) gaining around 36 percent of the vote, hence making it very likely that Merkel will return to power. Polls have shown that the parties' closest rival, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), has failed to gain momentum and it is currently in second place with around 22 percent of the vote. The anti-immigration, anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) party could come in third place with around 11 percent of the vote  gaining more than the 5 percent threshold of votes needed to enter parliament for the first time  as could the pro-business Free Democrats party (FDP), seen gaining around 10 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, The Left (Die Linke) party is also seen gaining around 10 percent of the vote while the Greens are seen with 8 percent of the vote. What do the main parties stand for? The CDU-CSU: These sister parties tend to have very similar political stances  hence their long-standing union. Both parties lean towards the center-right and their policies are socially conservative, both were also founded on a Christian ethos. The CDU states that it "stands for a free and constitutional democracy, a social and ecological market economy, Germany's inclusion in the Western values and defense community, and the unification of the nation, as well as a unified Europe ." The SPD: The main center-left party in Germany is headed by Martin Schulz, former head of the European Parliament. Founded on socialist principles in 1869, it still claims to represent the interests of the working class  and hence its policies tend to promise social reform and more social equality and justice. It tends to have a bigger following in the country's industrial regions but has lost ground to parties on both its left and right, such as Die Linke and the AfD. The AfD: The anti-immigration, anti-euro party is relatively new, having formed in 2013. Although it sprung up alongside other populist anti-establishment parties on the continent, the party has gained some traction in Germany, particularly with right-leaning voters. The party is critical of Merkel's migrant policy  which saw over a million refugees enter Germany in 2015  and advocates immigration limits and leaving the euro. The FDP: The FDP is seen as a liberal, pro-business party and have been a traditional ally of Merkel's CDU/CSU. The party is generally considered center-right and has pushed for economic liberalism, promoting privatization and free markets. Other parties including Die Linke (The Left party) - a democratic socialist party founded in 2007 in Germany, and Alliance 90/The Greens which promote policies that have limited environmental impacts and focus on ecological, economic, and social sustainability.

Could there be a shock result? It's very unlikely that Merkel will not be re-elected as chancellor, with her party expected to gain the most votes. Merkel will not officially be elected Sunday as chancellor and this is done further down the road by the new parliament in a secret ballot. Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo Intelligence, summed the expected result up in a note on Wednesday when he said: "Is there any realistic chance that Merkel will fail to win a fourth term in office? No." But what is more uncertain is what parties will come together to form a coalition. Either the CDU-CSU could repeat the same tried and tested "grand coalition" with the SPD or it could form a new alliance with the smaller pro-business FDP party and Greens in a so-called "Jamaica coalition," so named due to the colors of the political parties involved. This is seen as the most likely scenario. Another possible upset could come from the AfD, Teneo Intelligence's Nickel noted: "The AfD's result should be monitored closely, given the combination of high politicization and weak polarization, and considering the risk of response bias in the polls. Any better-than-expected performance would increase the pressure on the political center." The next coalition? Germany's complex electoral system means that coalition governments tend to be the norm in the country, and this election is no exception with three possible coalitions that could be formed after the election. The Bundestag must convene within 30 days of the vote but government formation could take up to 100 days, some analysts have said. These are the next three possible coalitions and their probability, according to Teneo Intelligence's Carsten Nickel. Grand coalition (CDU/CSU-SPD)  40% probability (down from 50%) A "grand coalition" between the main parties would be a continuation of the status quo, but it would only be possible if Schulz's SPD does not get less than 23 percent of the vote (its result in 2009), Nickel said in his note. Polls currently point to the SPD getting around 22 percent, making the party the possible opposition of the future and calling into question Schulz's future. Nevertheless, another CDU-CSU-SPD coalition "would be positive for pragmatic euro zone reform" given Merkel and Schulz's pro-EU agenda. 'Jamaica' coalition (CDU/CSU-FDP-Greens)  40% probability (up from 20%) This coalition is currently the most likely, yet talks to finalize an alliance could take time, Nickel warned. "Talks could be prolonged and governance noisy given the two small parties' competition for the same constituency and the conflicts between CSU and the Greens on issues such as migration. Yet, an SPD result below 23 percent might make it clear already on Sunday night that all four have little choice but to meet at Merkel's home turf, the political center." Christian-Liberal (CDU/CSU-FDP)  20% probability (down from 30%) As polls stand, it would be "numerically impossible," Nickel stated, for Merkel's conservative union to form a center-right coalition with just the FDP. However, "if the numbers were to add up on Sunday, the chancellor would have to opt for it." Although he believed this government would form quickly and might engage in some targeted tax cuts for the rich, it could experience some conflict over further European economic integration which the FDP is skeptical about. How does Germany's political system work? The elections for the German parliament, the Bundestag or lower house (the legislative branch of government), take place every four years and combine a mixture of "first past the post" and proportional representation voting systems . Germany's electoral system is notoriously idiosyncratic but, put simply, voters are asked to cast two votes  one for a candidate in their regional constituency and one for a political party  that will fill the Bundestag's 598 seats. This means that voters can split their votes between parties when voting for the constituency candidate they want to see in parliament, and the party they support. Voters do not directly elect the next chancellor. The chancellor must be elected with an absolute majority of the Bundestag's members. The candidate for chancellor is from the party that wins the most votes, raising Merkel's chances of re-election, given the voter polls.



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Google announced on Thursday that it would pay $1.1 billion to acquire certain employees from the Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC. The maneuver is a big play by Google to make its Pixel smartphone a more formidable opponent to Apples iPhone.

Although Google controls the software thats distributed on more than 2 billion Android phones worldwide, it doesnt have much influence on how the actual devices are made. If you take a look at the worlds smartphone landscape, the market is clearly divided between Apple and Samsung. Apples iPhones account for 12% of global smartphone shipments, while Samsungs devices comprise 23%, according to International Data Corporation. Googles own phones account for such a small slice of the market that theyre not even specifically mentioned in the IDCs survey, and are simply lumped into the Others category.

Having a larger say in the hardware production would give Google tighter control over the entire smartphone experience. Look at Apple as an example: It designs both the hardware and software for all of its products, including the iPhone. Because of this, it can create new software that takes advantage of the devices hardware, such as the iPhones Portrait Mode camera feature. This shooting mode takes advantage of the double camera system available on the iPhone 7 Plus and new iPhone 8 Plus, making it possible to capture photos with more depth. It would be difficult for Google to do this today since there are so many types of Android devices different manufacturers that all of them have different specifications. Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh even said when announcing the Pixel last year that building its own hardware allows the company to take full advantage of capabilities like the Google Assistant, the firms voice-activated digital helper.

If Google wants to be seen as an innovator in the smartphone space just as Apple and Samsung are, it must get more serious about hardware. Google knows this, which is why last year it launched Made by Google, a product line that Google created in-house including the Pixel and Google Home smart speaker. This signaled a big change in Googles product strategy, as it previously outsourced most of the design and production work to partners like LG and HTC for its long-running but now shelved Nexus device family. Integrating portions of HTCs team, especially those who helped build the Pixel, could help Google streamline its homegrown production efforts.

Previously, Google has tried to boost its presence in the mobile market beyond purely supplying software to smartphone makers. The search giant acquired Motorolas mobile unit in 2011 for $12.5 billion, but more recently sold it off to Lenovo. HTC, meanwhile, has faced financial hardships in recent years that drove it to cut 15 percent of its staff in 2015.

The announcement also comes as Google is preparing to release a new Pixel smartphone next month on the heels of Apples iPhone X announcement last week. For Google, the event will be just as much about proving it can keep up with Apple and Samsung as it will be about the device itself. Now Google is betting that HTC  the struggling smartphone maker that created the first Android phone in 2008  can make the smartphone war more than just a two-horse race.
The SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo spacecraft is grappled to Canadarm2 at the International Space Station in this NASA picture taken on April 20, 2014.

One month ago, the most powerful computer in space was launched. The computer has now recorded a speed in excess one teraflop, which is equivalent to a trillion floating point calculations per second.

It is the first commercial off-shelf computer to run at such high speeds at the International Space Station. Last month, it was reported that the mission, pioneered by NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) was set to test the computer to check if it runs seamlessly in the harsh conditions of space for one year  roughly the amount of time it will take to travel to Mars.

These computers have to withstand the harsh effects of radiation storms that periodically sweep space outside our atmosphere. The Spaceborne Computer (SBC computer) relies on a software to stabilize the conditions of the throttle system during flight.

The computer was transported with a SpaceX Dragon Capsule designed for cargo. The installation by the crew happened last week, a month after the launch. According to a news release by HPE, the captain of the mission, Mark Fernandez, the Hewlett Packard Center technology officer at HPE and co-principal investigator of the experiment said that, With much of my team and one of NASAs main command centers based in Houston, we have all been tied up with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. We finally received confirmation that all systems are a go for Thursday, September 14.

Fernandez also added that the results made him and his team ecstatic. The initial results were obtained from a LINPACK operation  a high performance benchmarking software that measures speed by measuring how fast a computer solves a dense system of linear equations. The computer was also tested using High-Performance Conjugate Gradients, which are standards for computers on Earth. These gradients determine the Top 500 rankings for computer systems worldwide.

Were ecstatic. This is exactly what theyve been hoping for. HPEs Spaceborne Computer is the first high-performance commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) computer system to run one teraFLOP at the International Space Station, he said.

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One trillion calculations per second were achieved on earth by a supercomputer in 1996. Factoring in the difficulties of running a computer under the harsh conditions of space and the distance it is running from Earth, the results are still very impressive.

What this does is pave way for future Super Computers in space. One teraflop is a mere step. The last of the Top 500 on Earth hits 430 teraflops. Scientists will use this as a stepping stone to constantly up processing speeds to ensure better data processing and more efficient missions.

The world record for computer speeds is held by Chinas National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. They have the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer which is capable of speeds of 93,014-teraflops. The USA makes it to number 4 on the list with the Titan. It was manufactured by the Seattle-based Cray. It is at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and is capable of a whopping 17,590 teraflops.

Engineers can use this model to constantly try and better processing abilities in space to get richer data back to Earth to aid with research.

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The executive chairman of the owner of Saks and Lord & Taylor is trying to raise equity to fund a take-private of the company, a challenging gambit given the difficulties that leveraged retailers have faced over the past two years, sources familiar with the situation said Friday. Hudson's Bay (Toronto Stock Exchange: HBC-CA) Company Executive Chairman Richard Baker is a principal shareholder in the company through his investment in L&T B (Cayman), which has 17.7 percent ownership. Baker is talking to private equity firms in an effort to take his company private, amid pressure from activists to either do so or to redevelop its real estate assets. His push is a long shot, say people familiar with the matter, given struggles by various retailers and the recent bankruptcy filing at Toys R Us. Other major shareholders include the Abu Dhabi Investment Council with 17.7 percent and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board with 12.6 percent, according to the company's latest proxy.Hudson's Bay, which has a market capitalization of 2.35 billion Canadian dollars, said it does not comment on rumor or speculation. It owns Saks, Lord & Taylor and Gilt Group.The efforts underline the Catch-22 that retailers face, with public investors pounding their stock and private market investors wary of financing a deal that could help them escape the public spotlight. Activist investor Land & Buildings Investment Management has urged Hudson's Bay to go private or redevelop its real estate assets. The Jonathan Litt-led firm revealed a 4.3 percent stake in Hudson's Bay earlier this summer. Leveraged buyouts of retailers have become increasingly difficult to finance, with lenders concerned about the albatross of debt payments as retailers must invest in technology and innovation to help adapt to the changing retail landscape. Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy this week more than a decade after being taken private by financial buyers. Department stores Neiman Marcus and Bon-Ton are both working with advisors to address their debt load. Still, department stores have not completely abandoned take-private efforts, with some owners and management teams attracted to the appeal of escaping the punishing Wall Street eye. The Nordstrom family, a significant shareholder in the Seattle-based department store, is attempting its own management buyout.Hudson's Bay is well-versed in the recent difficulties posed by retail acquisitions. Its attempts to buy both Macy's and Neiman Marcus over the past year faltered amid financing and industry challenges. The retailer is leveraged around 12 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, compared with 1.6 times for Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) and 2.4 times for Macy's (NYSE: M) , according to Capital IQ. Hudson's Bay has built a retail empire based on the real estate prowess of Baker, who ran NRDC Equity Partners, the private equity firm that bought Hudson's Bay and took it public. The company has been notable among its retail peers for being an aggressive acquirer. In addition to Saks Fifth Avenue in 2013, its acquisitions include Germany's Galeria Kaufhof in 2015 and online shop Gilt Groupe last year.To help fund these deals, it has set up joint ventures with real estate firms like RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust and Simon Property Group.Like all nearly all department stores, it has seen same-store sales and profit drop. In June, the company said it would cut about 2,000 jobs across North America.CORRECTION: Hudson's Bay Executive Chairman is Richard Baker. His title was misstated in an earlier version of this article. The executive chairman of the owner of Saks and Lord & Taylor is trying to raise equity to fund a take-private of the company, a challenging gambit given the difficulties that leveraged retailers have faced over the past two years, sources familiar with the situation said Friday. Hudson's Bay (Toronto Stock Exchange: HBC-CA) Company Executive Chairman Richard Baker is a principal shareholder in the company through his investment in L&T B (Cayman), which has 17.7 percent ownership. Baker is talking to private equity firms in an effort to take his company private, amid pressure from activists to either do so or to redevelop its real estate assets. His push is a long shot, say people familiar with the matter, given struggles by various retailers and the recent bankruptcy filing at Toys R Us. Other major shareholders include the Abu Dhabi Investment Council with 17.7 percent and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board with 12.6 percent, according to the company's latest proxy. Hudson's Bay, which has a market capitalization of 2.35 billion Canadian dollars, said it does not comment on rumor or speculation. It owns Saks, Lord & Taylor and Gilt Group. The efforts underline the Catch-22 that retailers face, with public investors pounding their stock and private market investors wary of financing a deal that could help them escape the public spotlight. Activist investor Land & Buildings Investment Management has urged Hudson's Bay to go private or redevelop its real estate assets. The Jonathan Litt-led firm revealed a 4.3 percent stake in Hudson's Bay earlier this summer. Leveraged buyouts of retailers have become increasingly difficult to finance, with lenders concerned about the albatross of debt payments as retailers must invest in technology and innovation to help adapt to the changing retail landscape. Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy this week more than a decade after being taken private by financial buyers. Department stores Neiman Marcus and Bon-Ton are both working with advisors to address their debt load. Still, department stores have not completely abandoned take-private efforts, with some owners and management teams attracted to the appeal of escaping the punishing Wall Street eye. The Nordstrom family, a significant shareholder in the Seattle-based department store, is attempting its own management buyout. Hudson's Bay is well-versed in the recent difficulties posed by retail acquisitions. Its attempts to buy both Macy's and Neiman Marcus over the past year faltered amid financing and industry challenges. The retailer is leveraged around 12 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, compared with 1.6 times for Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) and 2.4 times for Macy's (NYSE: M) , according to Capital IQ. Hudson's Bay has built a retail empire based on the real estate prowess of Baker, who ran NRDC Equity Partners, the private equity firm that bought Hudson's Bay and took it public. The company has been notable among its retail peers for being an aggressive acquirer. In addition to Saks Fifth Avenue in 2013, its acquisitions include Germany's Galeria Kaufhof in 2015 and online shop Gilt Groupe last year. To help fund these deals, it has set up joint ventures with real estate firms like RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust and Simon Property Group. Like all nearly all department stores, it has seen same-store sales and profit drop. In June, the company said it would cut about 2,000 jobs across North America. CORRECTION: Hudson's Bay Executive Chairman is Richard Baker. His title was misstated in an earlier version of this article.



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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia did not place adverts on Facebook Inc to try to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. U.S. lawmakers have urged the Federal Election Commission to require transparency for social media advertising after Russian entities purchased political adverts during and after the 2016 election. "We do not know ... how to place an advert on Facebook. We have never done this, and the Russian side has never been involved in it," Peskov told a conference call with reporters. (Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya/Polina Devitt; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
Facing criticism that Facebook published Russian-bought divisive ads during the election season, the companys founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the social network to outline its plans to ensure election integrity moving forward. Speaking to the public via a Facebook Live post, Zuckerberg listed these 9 steps that the company has taken or will undertake moving forward.

1. Actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference

Zuckerberg said Facebook initially found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. But after uncovering such activity recently, the company briefed Congress and turned information over to special counsel investigators.

2. Continue investigating what happened on the social network during the 2016 presidential election

3. Make its political advertising more transparent

4. Strengthen its political ad review process

Zuckerberg noted that most ads on Facebook are bought without an advertiser ever speaking to anyone at Facebook. The companys chief says the company can do more, but did not outline how or to what extent, except to reiterate that it would happen even without our employees involved in the sales.

Im not going to sit here and tell you were going to catch all bad content in our system. We dont check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I dont think our society shouldnt want us to, said Zuckerberg. Freedom means you dont have to ask permission first, and that by default you can say what you want. If you break our community standards or the law, then youre going to face consequences afterwards.

5. Increase its investment in security and election integrity

Zuckerberg said Facebook will more than double the team working on election integrity, without revealing how many staffers that currently does or would eventually entail. Instead he said the company would add more than 250 people across all of its teams that are focused on security. Presumably these teams cover many issues, not just elections.

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6. Expand its work with election commissions worldwide

Outlining the work Facebook already does in registering people to vote and to inform them about local issues, Zuckerberg said the company will establish a new channel for informing election commissions of the online risks the social network has identified in specific elections.

7. Share threats and information with other tech and security companies

Facebook is already working with programs like ThreatExchange to share information, said Zuckerberg, but it is also exploring other ways to alert its peers about election interference. That is good because Twitter is also feeling the heat for its role in how foreign users and bots influenced the election.

It is important that tech companies collaborate on this because its almost certain that any actor trying to misuse Facebook will also be trying to abuse other internet platforms too, said Zuckerberg.

8. Work proactively to strengthen the democratic process

9. Ensure German election integrity
"Today is my first day back in the office after taking parental leave. It was really special to be with Priscilla and August after she was born, and to get to spend some more time with Max.

While I was out on leave, I spent a lot of time with our teams on the question of Russian interference in the US elections. I made some decisions on the next steps we're taking, and I want to share those with you now.

First, let me say this. I care deeply about the democratic process and protecting its integrity. Facebook's mission is all about giving people a voice and bringing people closer together. Those are deeply democratic values and we're proud of them. I don't want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That's not what we stand for.

The integrity of our elections is fundamental to democracy around the world. That's why we've built teams dedicated to working on election integrity and preventing governments from interfering in the elections of other nations. And as we've shared before, our teams have found and shut down thousands of fake accounts that could be attempting to influence elections in many countries, including recently in the French elections.

Now, I wish I could tell you we're going to be able to stop all interference, but that wouldn't be realistic. There will always be bad people in the world, and we can't prevent all governments from all interference. But we can make it harder. We can make it a lot harder. And that's what we're going to do.

So today I want to share the steps we're taking to protect election integrity and make sure that Facebook is a force for good in democracy. While the amount of problematic content we've found so far remains relatively small, any attempted interference is a serious issue. Here are 9 things we'll be working on over the next few months:

1. We are actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations into Russian interference. We have been investigating this for many months, and for a while we had found no evidence of fake accounts linked to Russia running ads. When we recently uncovered this activity, we provided that information to the special counsel. We also briefed Congress -- and this morning I directed our team to provide the ads we've found to Congress as well. As a general rule, we are limited in what we can discuss publicly about law enforcement investigations, so we may not always be able to share our findings publicly. But we support Congress in deciding how to best use this information to inform the public, and we expect the government to publish its findings when their investigation is complete.

2. We will continue our investigation into what happened on Facebook in this election. We may find more, and if we do, we will continue to work with the government. We are looking into foreign actors, including additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states, as well as organizations like the campaigns, to further our understanding of how they used our tools. These investigations will take some time, but we will continue our thorough review.

3. Going forward -- and perhaps the most important step we're taking -- we're going to make political advertising more transparent. When someone buys political ads on TV or other media, they're required by law to disclose who paid for them. But you still don't know if you're seeing the same messages as everyone else. So we're going to bring Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency. Not only will you have to disclose which page paid for an ad, but we will also make it so you can visit an advertiser's page and see the ads they're currently running to any audience on Facebook. We will roll this out over the coming months, and we will work with others to create a new standard for transparency in online political ads.

4. We will strengthen our ad review process for political ads. To be clear, it has always been against our policies to use any of our tools in a way that breaks the law -- and we already have many controls in place to prevent this. But we can do more. Most ads are bought programmatically through our apps and website without the advertiser ever speaking to anyone at Facebook. That's what happened here. But even without our employees involved in the sales, we can do better.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you we're going to catch all bad content in our system. We don't check what people say before they say it, and frankly, I don't think our society shouldn't want us to. Freedom means you don't have to ask permission first, and that by default you can say what you want. If you break our community standards or the law, then you're going to face consequences afterwards. We won't catch everyone immediately, but we can make it harder to try to interfere.

5. We are increasing our investment in security and specifically election integrity. In the next year, we will more than double the team working on election integrity. In total, we'll add more than 250 people across all our teams focused on security and safety for our community.

6. We will expand our partnerships with election commissions around the world. We already work with electoral commissions in many countries to help people register to vote and learn about the issues. We'll keep doing that, and now we're also going to establish a channel to inform election commissions of the online risks we've identified in their specific elections.

7. We will increase sharing of threat information with other tech and security companies. We already share information on bad actors on the internet through programs like ThreatExchange, and now we're exploring ways we can share more information about anyone attempting to interfere with elections. It is important that tech companies collaborate on this because it's almost certain that any actor trying to misuse Facebook will also be trying to abuse other internet platforms too.

8. We are working proactively to strengthen the democratic process. Beyond pushing back against threats, we will also create more services to protect our community while engaging in political discourse. For example, we're looking at adapting our anti-bullying systems to protect against political harassment as well, and we're scaling our ballot information tools to help more people understand the issues.

9. We have been working to ensure the integrity of the German elections this weekend, from taking actions against thousands of fake accounts, to partnering with public authorities like the Federal Office for Information Security, to sharing security practices with the candidates and parties. We're also examining the activity of accounts we've removed and have not yet found a similar type of effort in Germany. This is incredibly important and we have been focused on this for a while.

At the same time, it's important not to lose sight of the more straightforward and larger ways Facebook plays a role in elections -- and these effects operate at much larger scales of 100x or 1000x bigger than what we're discussing here.

In 2016, people had billions of interactions and open discussions on Facebook that may never have happened offline. Candidates had direct channels to communicate with tens of millions of citizens. Campaigns spent tens of millions organizing and advertising online to get their messages out further. And we organized "get out the vote" efforts that helped as many as 2 million people register to vote who might not have voted otherwise. Many of these dynamics were new in this election, or at much larger scale than ever before in history, and at much larger scale than the interference we've found.

But we are in a new world. It is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation states attempting to subvert elections. But if that's what we must do, we are committed to rising to the occasion. Our sophistication in handling these threats is growing and improving quickly. We will continue working with the government to understand the full extent of Russian interference, and we will do our part not only to ensure the integrity of free and fair elections around the world, but also to give everyone a voice and to be a force for good in democracy everywhere.

Thanks for tuning in, and we'll keep you updated with more soon."
Washington (AFP) - US Senator John McCain announced Friday his opposition to the latest Republican attempt to replace Barack Obama's signature health care law, likely dooming the repeal effort.

It is the second time in two months that he has defied his party and President Donald Trump over efforts to replace the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare," which has long been in Republicans' sights.

"I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal," McCain said of the bill proposed by fellow Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, adding he believed health reform legislation needed to be a bipartisan effort.

President Trump, speaking in Alabama late Friday, acknowledged the setback but vowed to fight on.

"I have to tell you, maybe -- it's a little tougher without McCain's vote," he said at a rally in Huntsville.

"You get knocked down and then the bad ones stay on the stool and they say 'We quit, we quit.' The great ones get up and they end up winning. That's what we are going to do."

In July, McCain made a dramatic return to Washington from Arizona after a brain cancer diagnosis to become one of three Republican senators who helped sink their party's earlier bid to replace Obamacare.

Now, rebels within the party ranks appear set to torpedo what may be the party's last chance to make good on a longstanding Republican goal, and a signature pledge of the president.

With both McCain and the conservative Rand Paul opposed, it would take just one more Republican defector to prevent the bill's passage before a deadline of September 30, the end of the fiscal year. At least two party moderates -- Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski -- are known to have serious reservations.

The bill's collapse would be yet another blow to the president and the Republican leadership, who have been unable to move forward on repealing Obamacare despite controlling Congress and the White House.

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In coming out against the latest bill, McCain criticized the fact that it had bypassed regular Senate order, and noted that it would not be fully reviewed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before the end of the month.

The senator said he could not "support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it."

- Trump targets defectors -

The bill's supporters might be eager to avoid a CBO score. In July, the non-partisan body projected that the ranks of the uninsured would grow by 23 million Americans, and premiums would rise 20 percent annually, over the next decade if the previous Obamacare repeal bill became law.

The White House scrambled earlier this week to win over Republicans skeptical of Graham-Cassidy, with Trump himself phoning lawmakers and state governors seeking to tilt the scales in favor of the bill.

And Trump made his position on Republican defectors clear on Friday, writing on Twitter that those who vote against Graham-Cassidy "will forever... be known as 'the Republican who saved Obamacare.'"

While Republicans have pledged to repeal the Obama-era health care reforms, they have struggled to secure enough support to do so amid fears that proposed alternatives would dramatically increase the number of Americans without health insurance.

The American Medical Association has issued scathing criticism of the latest repeal effort, warning it "would result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance coverage, destabilize health insurance markets, and decrease access to affordable coverage and care."

McCain's rejection of the latest Obamacare replacement bill is yet another slight against the current president, someone he has repeatedly challenged from within the ranks of the Republican Party.

Trump, for his part, had mocked McCain's war hero status as a former prisoner of war in Vietnam as he ran for president, declaring: "I like people who weren't captured."
Does Herve Pierre have the hardest job in fashion? Probably.

The alum of Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera designed Melania Trumps inauguration dress and has regularly styled the first lady, whose wardrobe choices have been a constant source of controversy since her husband President Donald Trump entered the White House.

For instance, Trump drew criticism for the neon pink Delpozo frock featuring especially voluminous sleeves that she wore to deliver her speech to the United Nations on Tuesday. The dress retails for about $3,000, and Trump wore it as she told world leaders that no child should ever feel hungry. Then there were the sky-high stilettos that Trump wore as she boarded a flight to hurricane-ravaged Texas. The footwear choice was seen by some as insensitive since the trip was aimed at comforting those whod just lost house and home. Plus, a string of high-profile fashion designers have vowed not to work with the Trump administration.

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Pierre didnt necessarily style Trumps most polarizing looks, but they show what hes up against; a highly-charged political climate where the first ladys fashion decisions are picked apart by her own critics and those of the president.

In a new interview with The New York Times, Pierre talked for the first time about dressing his most notable client and acknowledged the political minefield that is the first ladys closet.

What interests me in this relationship is not just finding pretty clothesa lot of people can do that, he told the Times. Its more about the legacy of this woman. Everybody has a different reaction to what shes wearing.

Pierrewho dressed past first ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama in his previous roles at Herrera and de la Rentaseems to revel in the high stakes.

Read more: This Is the 1 Thing Powerful Women Cant Live Without

Even if Im not creating the clothes, he says, it is very creative to consider how its going to be perceived. And when you decide, you divide. Im not always right. I make mistakes, and same for her. Theres no How to Be the Perfect First Lady book. You learn on the spot.

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Then theres the question of where Pierre shops for TrumpBergdorf, Saks, Michael Kors, Dior, he says.

And that comes with a whole new set of hurdles.

What is challenging is when I cannot say what it is for, he told the Times. I always ask: Was it already on the red carpet? Did somebody already wear it? Because I dont want her to be on the Who Wore It Better list.
By Michael Nienaber BERLIN (Reuters) - At first glance, Germany's federal election looks like a done deal -- all major polls predict Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives to come in first, a result that should mean no political upheaval in Europe's biggest economy. But that's the first glance. The devil will be in the detail of what coalition is likely to come after Sunday's vote, and with it whether Merkel's economic policies can remain in situ. Those policies have reigned over booming growth and rising consumer confidence. The status quo, though, will depend to a certain extent on how Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU bloc fares compared with her incumbent junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD). The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and others could potentially hold the balance. So a few percentage points will decide Merkel's coalition options and her policy agenda for the next four years -- with consequences for Berlin's stance on euro zone integration, tax cuts, state spending and the privatisation of state assets. "It's all about politics next week -- and that means German politics," said Andrew Bosomworth, a senior portfolio manager at Pimco, one of the world's largest bond funds. The base scenario is that Merkel will win the election and remain chancellor for a fourth term. "The big question is with which of the other parties she will team up," Bosomworth said. Coalition building will be complicated by the fact that the anti-immigration AfD and the socially liberal FDP are forecast this year to easily pass the five percent threshold to enter the Bundestag lower house of parliament after failing in 2013. This means that traditional two-party alliances -- such as a "black-yellow" coalition between Merkel's conservatives and the FDP or a "red-green" coalition between the centre-left SPD and the Greens -- are likely to fall short of a stable majority. The most likely scenarios are therefore another "grand coalition" between Merkel's bloc and the SPD -- usually a last resort combination -- or a three-way alliance untested at national level between the conservatives, the FDP and the Greens -- dubbed the "Jamaica coalition" due to the parties' colours. Both options would broadly mean a continuation of CDU/CSU's economic policies, including closer cooperation within the euro zone, sealing more free trade deals and granting minor tax cuts. "If Merkel's conservatives win as expected, the market reaction is likely to be calm. A Merkel victory is basically priced in," Bosomworth said. BLACK-YELLOW However, last year's elections in the United States and Britain showed that pollsters can get it badly wrong. There is also a chance that the conservatives and the FDP could get just enough votes to form a black-yellow coalition. Such a scenario could bring some market volatility since the FDP is less open to helping other euro zone countries and its leader has criticised French President Emmanuel Macron's plan to create a joint budget for the single currency bloc. Some investors have even warned that a black-yellow coalition could lead to a renewal of the euro zone debt crisis. Such fears are based on the idea investors could shift their money out of government bonds from southern European countries. Berenberg economist Holger Schmieding, however, reckons this is all exaggerated. "An FDP presence in government would not jeopardise European reforms," he said. With the FDP calling for privatisation of state assets such as the government's stakes in Commerzbank, Deutsche Telekom or Deutsche Post, a black-yellow coalition scenario is likely to push up some stocks. "The DAX could make a small jump if there should be a majority for black-yellow," said Joerdis Hengelbrock, portfolio manager at Sal. Oppenheim. Regardless of the uncertainty surrounding Merkel's future coalition partner or partners, investors such as Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett are banking on the pastor's daughter to remain at the helm of Europe's biggest economy. "Merkel is an extraordinary personality," Buffett told business daily Handelsblatt. "Germany and the world, from my point of view, need a leadership personality like Angela." (Reporting by Michael Nienaber Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
(Adds Israeli military spokeswoman, background)

BEIRUT, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Two rockets struck near Damascus airport at dawn on Friday, Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen reported, an attack it said had probably been carried out by Israeli warplanes from outside Syria's borders.

Al-Mayadeen gave no further details in the report carried in a news flash on screen. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the reports of the air strike, saying: "We do not respond to such reports."

Earlier this month, the Syrian army reported an Israeli air strike on a military site in Syria's Hama province.

Israel says it has hit arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah nearly 100 times in the past five years.

Israel, which fought a 2006 war with Hezbollah, sees red lines in the shipment to the powerful Shi'ite group of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria's civil war, said the attack earlier this month was on a facility of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, an agency which the United States describes as Syria's chemical weapons manufacturer.

Syria's government denies using chemical arms. In 2013 it promised to surrender its chemical weapons, which it says it has done. (Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Greg Roumeliotis and Arno Schuetze REUTERS - T-Mobile US Inc is close to agreeing tentative terms on a deal to merge with Sprint Corp, people familiar with the matter said on Friday, a major breakthrough in efforts to merge the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers. The transaction would significantly consolidate the U.S. telecommunications market and represent the first transformative U.S. merger with significant antitrust risk to be agreed since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump in January. The progress towards a deal also indicates that T-Mobile and Sprint believe that the U.S. antitrust enforcement environment has become more favorable since the companies abandoned their previous effort to combine in 2014 amid regulatory concerns. The latest development in the talks between T-Mobile and Sprint comes as the telecommunications sector seeks ways to tackle investments in 5G technology that will greatly enhance wireless data transfer speeds. Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, which controls Sprint, and other Sprint shareholders will own 40 to 50 percent of the combined company, while T-Mobile majority owner Deutsche Telekom and the rest of T-Mobile shareholders will own the majority, the sources said. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son met with Trump late last year and said in February that the Japanese firm should benefit from Trump's promised deregulation. Once terms are finalized, due diligence by the two companies will follow and a deal is expected by the end of October, though talks may still fall through, the sources said. A merger would create a business with more than 130 million subscribers, just behind Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc. Revenues would top $70 billion and analysts say there would be massive scope to cut costs. Sprint shares were up 5 percent in afternoon trading in New York on Friday to $8.44, giving the company a market capitalization of close to $34 billion. T-Mobile shares were up 0.4 percent to $63.66, giving that company a market capitalization of around $53 billion. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Sprint and Deutsche Telekom declined to comment. T-Mobile and SoftBank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. SoftBank's Son abandoned an earlier attempt to acquire T-Mobile for Sprint in 2014. Under that deal, SoftBank would have been in control of the merged company, with Deutsche Telekom becoming a minority shareholder. Since then, T-Mobile has outperformed Sprint under Chief Executive John Legere, who the sources said would lead the combined company. SON IN TRUMP TOWER Earlier this month, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai gave a potential boost to a tie-up when he recommended that the FCC find for the first since 2009 that there is effective competition in the marketplace for mobile wireless services. The FCC is set to vote on Tuesday on the proposed annual report on the state of the wireless competition market required by U.S. Congress. T-Mobile and Sprint will likely tout planned investments in 5G and their network that would create jobs, though combining operations would also lead to layoffs, said Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics. "They will argue that the track record of T-Mobile and Sprint shows they are vigorous competitors and that this will not cease to be the case after the deal," said Entner. Son made headlines in early December when he appeared in the marble lobby of Trump Tower in New York alongside the president-elect, dressed in a red vest and red tie nearly identical to that of the tycoon turned commander in chief. He was among the first in a series of Asian billionaires and leaders to pay a congratulatory visit to Trump, who won office in November on a platform that focused on national security and protecting U.S. jobs. Son's pledge to Trump to invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 jobs was light on details but spoke to the presidents election promise to boost economic growth by making deals with individual companies, rather than through complicated trade deals. Last month, Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said an announcement on merger talks should come in the near future. Sprint had approached cable company Charter Communications Inc about a potential merger earlier this year, but quickly abandoned that effort. AT&T is in the process of getting its own transformative deal, its $85.4 billion acquisition of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc approved by U.S. regulators. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London, Douglas Busvine in Frankfurt, David Shepardson in Washington; Writing by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Meredith Mazzilli)
Target continues to try and outcompete digital retailer and competitor, Amazon. The red bullseye-logo company has been testing its own Prime Pantry-like delivery service for a few months now, offering faster times than Amazon. Dubbed Restock, Target's offering expanded to customers Denver and Dallas last month. Now the next-day delivery system is growing, with new availability in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis and the Washington, DC and Baltimore areas.

If you live in one of these cities, you can visit the Target Restock website and order from more than 15,000 items to refill your home with, from cereal to paper towels, beauty products to cleaning supplies. You can add as much as you want, up to 45 pounds as measured by the online capacity tracker. If you order by 2 pm on a weekday, you'll get your items delivered to your door the next day for only $5. Amazon's Prime Pantry has the same weight limit but will run you $6.

According to Target, the most popular items in current Restock areas are on-the-go snacks, beverages, cereal, paper towels and mac and cheese. "Guests need to keep daily essentials stocked, but finding time to buy them is tough  and it can be even more of a challenge when you're talking about large, bulky items," said Target's Dawn Block in a statement. The service is live in 10 markets now, and will arrive in San Francisco mid-October. The company says the service will then reach 70 million people, or about one-fifth of the US population.

Restock is just another way Target is leveraging its brick-and-mortar stores to its own advantage, like the new Beacon-powered in-store mapping system for its mobile app.
SNE vs. DLB: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?

No significant developments took place in the telecom industry last week despite its major stocks gaining value. However, a few events attracted attention.

U.S. telecom behemoth, Verizon Communications Inc. VZ is planning to cut costs by up to $10 billion over the next four years. The company wants to fund its dividend with this savings, as stated by the companys chief executive Lowell McAdam at a Goldman Sachs conference. In a separate development, Verizon has decided to aggressively cooperate with major U.S. cities in order to expand its fiber optics networks to support 4G LTE and upcoming 5G wireless standards as well as wireline connections.

Leading cable MSO (multi service operator) and media giant Comcast Corp. CMCSA has shut down its standalone over-the-top (OTT) service  Watchable. The company had launched the service in September 2015. Through this offering, Comcast tried to foray into the highly lucrative digital advertising market. Comcast carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here

Moreover, Comcast has stepped closer toward its Software Defined Networking (SDN) virtualization plans, with the launch of Comcast Business ActiveCore SDN platform. The platform is claimed to be the first cable-delivered, gigabit-ready SDN platform in the country with Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) as its first business product. Comcast Business is pairing its new SD-WAN offering with Comcasts high-performance, DOCSIS 3.1-based gigabit broadband service.

Meanwhile, U.S. telecom giant AT&T Inc. T is reportedly exploring a strategic option to sell a major part of its pay-TV operations in Latin America, per Reuters. The company acquired these assets as part of its $49 billion takeover of the satellite TV operator DIRECTV. The sale proceeds will be used to finance the companys proposed acquisition of U.S. media behemoth Time Warner Inc. TWX for $85.4 billion.

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Leading wireless chipset manufacturer, Qualcomm Inc. QCOM is reportedly partnering with semi-conductor company Himax Technologies, Inc. HIMX to launch a high-resolution 3D sensing camera system for smartphones and automobile. Qualcomm aims to combine its computer-vision expertise with Himax Technologies wafer-level optics (WLO) technology and module integration capability to create a 3D camera module.

Outside the United States, Mexican telecom behemoth America Movil SAB AMX is aggressively being resisted by its rivals from taking part in the upcoming 2.5 GHz wireless spectrum auction in the country. America Movils rivals have pointed out to the Mexican telecom regulator that the company should be banned from taking part in the 2.5 GHz spectrum auction, or this will lead to excessive spectrum going into the hands of a particular wireless operator, which controls nearly 68% of the Mexican wireless space.

Read the last Telecom Stock Roundup for Sep 15, 2017.

Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories

1. At the recently concluded Goldman Sachs 26th Annual Communacopia Conference, Verizons chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam stated that the company is no longer interested in acquiring big cable MSOs (multi-service operators). Instead, it will strengthen its fiber-based networks. In the cities of Boston and Sacramento, Verizon has already started upgrading the citys aging copper-network infrastructure with fiber and wireless network to support high-end mobile and wireline services for smart city, residential and business applications. (Read more: Verizon to Bolster Fiber Optic Network in Major U.S. Cities)

2. The ad-supported Watchable offered non-exclusive, unlicensed and original content of 30 digital content developers. Customers were able to view Watchable on Comcasts Xfinity X1 set-top boxes and online at Watchable.com, as well as on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets through iOS and Android-compatible applications. The company has decided to integrate these contents with its Xfinity pay-TV platform based on X1 set-top boxes. (Read more: Comcast Stops Offering Watchable Digital Video Platform)

3. With respect to the Time Warner merger, AT&T has yet to get regulatory approval from two countries. Beside the home country United States, the other is Brazil. CADE, the antitrust agency of Brazil, has argued that the approval of the deal will violate the agencys stated policy of the separation of service providers and content developers. For that, CADE wants AT&T to disinvest its pay-TV assets in that country. (Read more: Is AT&T Considering Divesting Latin American Pay-TV Assets?)

4. Himax Technologies is gearing up with its augmented reality and 3D sensing work. Qualcomm, through its Snapdragon chips in smartphones, is well positioned to take advantage of the secular growth in smartphone 3D cameras. The company seems to have made a strategic business move by partnering with Himax Technologies to bring the technology to the market. Additionally, Qualcomm can deploy its 3D sensing camera module for automotive applications as well. (Read more: Qualcomm to Tie Up With Himax, Boost AR Applications)

5. Last month, Mexicos telecom regulatory authority -- IFT -- had started public consultations for the upcoming auction of wireless spectrum (airwave) in the 2.5GHz (2500-2690MHz) frequency band. In July 2017, America Movil, the undisputed leader of the Mexican telecom market, purchased 60 MHz of wireless spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band from Grupo MVS. For the last couple of years, America Movil has been systematically enriching its spectrum portfolio. (Read more: America Movil Faces Objections for 2.5 GHz Airwave Auction)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of major telecom players in both the last week and last six months.

Company Last Week Last 6 Months VZ 4.59% -1.36% T 5.00% -8.67% S 2.93% -3.02% TMUS 1.37% 1.68% CHTR -4.69% 14.45% TEF 1.78% -2.34% AMX 0.60% 31.21% CMCSA -1.21% 1.05% DISH 0.37% -13.43%

In the last five trading sessions, share price movement of major telecom stocks was predominantly positive. AT&T (5.00%) and Verizon (4.59%) gained while Charter Communications saw a significant decline of 4.69%. In contrast, price performances of almost all major telecom stocks were negative in the last six months. While DISH Network (13.43%) lost substantially, America Movil (31.21%) and Charter Communications (14.45%) gained significantly in the same time frame.

Whats Next in the Telecom Space?

We do not foresee any significant changes in the telecom industry or overall global economic factors that can affect the industry in the coming week. Consequently, we expect stocks to trade in line with the broader market.

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When does rhetorical bombast turn into a real bomb?

That question is more relevant than ever after the world heard President Donald Trump deliver his first major speech at the U.N. General Assembly this week, where he bragged of Americas ability to totally destroy North Korea  and with North Korea now threatening an atmospheric nuclear test in response.

The presidents inflammatory and irresponsible threat does not keep America or our Asian allies safe. His words will not rally our partners to the urgent cause of containing North Koreas nuclear ambitions and fall far short of the global leadership the world desperately needs at this critical moment.

With Pyongyang continuing to test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it is increasingly clear that if left unchecked, North Korea will soon have an effective, if small, nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. Its equally clear that with each passing day of North Koreas defiance of international law and threats against the United States and our allies, the Trump administrations policy of maximum pressure is yielding minimal results.

If the United States continues on the path laid out by President Trump  unbalanced statements, division of our allies, inconsistent expectations of China, sanctions divorced from a coherent strategy, and an incessant focus on military options  there are only two realistic outcomes, both of which are bad: North Korea becomes an unstable nuclear power, or a large-scale conventional war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula that would result in a catastrophic loss of human life.

We cannot accept policy options that result in only war or recognizing North Koreas nuclear status; there is a lot of space between conflict and capitulation on the Korean Peninsula.

We must therefore adjust our strategy to fill that space with an all-out diplomatic surge, one that results in serious constraints on North Koreas nuclear ambitions and a more stable Northeast Asia for all.

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The initial objective of such a diplomatic surge would be to begin a process where Pyongyang starts by verifiably halting its nuclear and ballistic missile testing. If North Korea does so, the United States and our allies can consider confidence-building measures to address tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

If the administration is serious about seeking to translate the leverage gained by additional economic sanctions and military posture moves into diplomatic clout, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should immediately begin direct bilateral communication with his North Korean counterpart. If we are to initiate a process that ultimately freezes and maybe even reverses North Koreas nuclear trajectory, we need to start talking, now.

Doing so would signal our seriousness not just to the North Koreans but also to the Russians, the Chinese, and our allies in Asia and Europe. When the United States leads with our values and interests, others follow. When we abdicate or purposefully create uncertainty, that kind of instability makes the world less safe.

The United States should therefore put its full weight into creating and executing a comprehensive diplomatic policy that includes the immediate imposition of additional, strong sanctions; active engagement with our allies and partners; and the pursuit of principled, multilateral measures to shape the regional environment, particularly by addressing the fundamental human rights of the North Korean people.

Such strategic clarity, in parallel with direct talks, could give us the best chance yet of changing North Koreas calculation that it can continue down its current path.

First, a complex threat like North Korea cannot be successfully confronted without strong collaboration with our allies and partners in the region  and any successful approach must start by strengthening our alliances with Japan and South Korea. The election of Moon Jae-in as president of South Korea and our strong ties with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan have created new opportunities to recalibrate our approach, deepen defense ties, and better work with regional allies. Countries such as Australia, Singapore, and other partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also have important roles to play.

Second, working with China in a clear, constructive manner is critical to any diplomatic effort. We cant expect China to solve the North Korea problem for us. However, that does not mean we cannot make common cause with Beijing to contain Pyongyangs nuclear and missile programs and thereby reduce tensions in East Asia, benefiting our mutual national security interests. Chinas actions are important in changing the Kim Jong Un regimes calculations. China must be clear with North Korea that it stands by their mutual defense treaty to protect the current regime but that doing so requires a change in North Koreas nuclear program. A diplomatic surge by the United States may therefore change Chinas action and North Koreas calculations.

Third, we need a forum to draw the nations of Northeast Asia together to engage in confidence-building measures and to address outstanding diplomatic, security, political, and human rights issues so that the right context exists for a stable Korean Peninsula. When President Trump travels to Asia this November, he has an important opportunity to make inroads on this supporting element of a broader North Korea strategy.

Finally, the administration must seek to fully exercise U.S. economic leverage, not haphazardly but robustly and to the maximum extent feasible. The new executive order gets us part of the way there, but, to be successful, it must be part of a broader strategy. Sanctions are not the end of policy but a tool of policy. Secondary sanctions imposed upon firms that trade with North Korea, along with other targeted sectoral and financial measures, are also essential to impede the Kim regimes prohibited nuclear and missile programs and to set the conditions for realistic diplomatic engagement.

These are lofty goals, but the United States should stand up and try to reach them. Meanwhile, we should be under no illusion that North Korea will not seek to cheat during negotiations or on any final agreement, as it has in the past. But with vigilance even an imperfect initial agreement can lead to better results in constraining Pyongyangs nuclear ambitions.

Time is no longer on our side, but the clock hasnt run out yet. The United States and the international community have a real opportunity to test the proposition of what a robust diplomatic surge to North Koreas aggression might look like. It is time to act before it really is too late.

Photo credit: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter early on Friday to call out another social network: Facebook.

Trump questioned the worlds largest social networks decision, announced Thursday afternoon, to hand over more than 3,000 advertisements believed to be tied to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Russia hoax continues, now its ads on Facebook, Trump tweeted. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary.

The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

Trump tweeted twice more later over the course of an hour, saying Clinton was a bad candidate and that the greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media screaming for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Trump also tweeted that he would be headed to Alabama on Friday to campaign for Luther Strange ahead of a Senate runoff after being appointed to the seat left empty by now Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this year.

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Trump has previously lambasted the speculation surrounding Russias influence on last years election, which is being investigated by a committee spearheaded by Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the Justice Department as special counsel in charge of FBI investigation. A longtime public servant with a rare amount of bipartisan support in Washington, Mueller was also the longest-serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover.

Regardless, Trump has repeatedly derided the investigation as a witch hunt, dismissing the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies since last year that the Russian government sought to tip the election in Trumps favor over Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
sarah palin

Many of President Donald Trump's most prominent, longtime supporters are actively working against his interests in Alabama's special election to replace former senator and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump endorsed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed by then-Governor Robert Bentley when Sessions took the helm of the Department of Justice.



Trump has routinely took to his personal Twitter account to prop up Strange, writing as recently as Wednesday, "Alabama is sooo lucky to have a candidate like 'Big' Luther Strange. Smart, tough on crime, borders & trade, loves Vets & Military. Tuesday!"



On Friday, Trump will appear alongside Strange at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama.

But many of the major players in the pro-Trump crowd are backing Strange's primary opponent, Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama state supreme court, from which he was removed twice.



Breitbart News, the far-right news outlet headed by recently ousted White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, has directed its editorial staff to go all out in their effort to bolster Moore over Strange.



CNN reported Tuesday that the website's Washington editor Matt Boyle told staff that "as of now, everyone is working on the Alabama race."



Phil Robertson, of the television show "Duck Dynasty," endorsed Moore last month.



"He judged with a good understanding of the Constitution and the law, but he also understands natural law and who gave us our rights to begin with, Almighty God," Robertson said in a statement. "Roy Moore will stand up for truth and what's right, no matter who opposes him, and that is sorely needed in Washington, DC. I fully endorse his run for the Senate and pray for he and his family."



And Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate who now runs a right-wing website of her own, endorsed Moore in August. On Thursday, she was en route to Montgomery, Alabama to campaign for Moore.

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Strange's candidacy has benefitted from high-profile, establishment backers who are able to pump tremendous sums of money into his campaign. The Senate Leadership Fund, which operates to bolster the interests of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been on the offensive in pushing Strange over Moore.

But this could actually be damaging Strange in the state  his opponents have repeatedly used Strange's ties to Senate leadership to attack him.

The Wall Street Journal pointed to a recent ad from another former challenger, Mo Brooks, in which he questioned Trump's endorsement of Strange based on his ties to McConnell, saying, "Mr. President, isn't it time we tell McConnell and Strange, 'You're fired?'" And The New York Times noted that at a candidate forum in Alabama, one of Brooks' top applause lines was his calling for McConnell to be ousted as Senate majority leader.

The only major backer of Trump's 2016 presidential run who has endorsed Strange is the National Rifle Association (NRA), whose political arm threw its support behind the incumbent in May.

While it has not quite shown in the polls, Moore's past statements have become a subject of controversy. As late as 2015, CNN found evidence that Moore's foundation was sharing videos claiming that former President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.

CNN also uncovered a 2005 radio interview in which Moore said homosexual acts should be punishable under the law.

"Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes," Moore told C-SPAN host Bill Press.

And while Trump has stuck behind Strange, polling shows Moore with a commanding lead. A survey released on Monday by JMC Analytics and Polling showed Moore with an eight-point lead over Strange, meaning Trump's last-ditch rally to campaign for Strange ahead of Tuesday's runoff might not be enough.

NOW WATCH: How Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson could make a real run as president  according to someone who's known him since 1999





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FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo

By Lisa Lambert and Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. consumer finance watchdog agency is expected to punish Equifax (EFX.N) for its cyber breach with the wide-ranging powers it has used with Wall Street, former agency officials and lawyers said this week.

The credit-reporting company is subject to five federal laws governing listed companies, the use of public data and the fair treatment of customers, and the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are examining the hacking theft of personal information on up to 143 million people.

But because Equifax is not strictly a financial company, questions arose whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created after the 2008 financial crisis, has the power to penalize the firm for the breach.

Legal experts said the CFPB is likely to weigh in using powers it wields under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

"Its Dodd-Frank mandate gives the CFPB authority to investigate Equifax even without cyber security rules," said Quyen Truong, former deputy general counsel for the agency.

Equifax is one of the country's three major credit bureaus which, along with TransUnion (TRU.N) and Experian PLC (EXPN.L), gather data on consumer spending habits which is then purchased by banks to determine a customer's creditworthiness.

The CFPB and legal experts said the regulator could pursue Equifax under an aspect of the Dodd-Frank Act banning unfair, deceptive and abusive acts and practices (UDAAP).

CFPB spokesman Sam Gilford pointed to fines the CFPB levied on Equifax in January for allegedly deceiving consumers about the usefulness and cost of credit score information they bought, using this aspect of the law.

He declined to comment on whether the regulator has already or plans to open an investigation. An Equifax spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The UDAAP provision does not specifically address cyber incidents, but because it is "very broad and very vague," the CFPB could argue Equifax breached the law, said Alan Kaplinsky of law firm Ballard Spahr.

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Data from law firm Morrison Foerster show almost 80 percent of the agency's enforcement actions included a UDAAP claim in 2015, and the agency pursued online payment system Dwolla over cyber issues.

In addition to forcing companies to take certain actions or desist from damaging behavior, the CFPB can fine them up to $1 million per day if a company knowingly violated the law.

"If they think Equifax treated consumers unfairly or misled, or did something that caused consumer harm, theyd use it," said Kaplinsky.

(Reporting By Patrick Rucker and Lisa Lambert; editing by Michelle Price and Cynthia Osterman)
Lyft competes with Uber in the US and is believed to be considering launching globally - AP

Uber's arch-rival Lyft has paved the way for a possible move into the UK that could see it directly challenge its US counterpart on Londons streets and pile more misery on the ride-hailing giant.

Lyft, the $7.5bn (5.5bn) San Francisco start-up, has held a series of high-level talks with officials at Transport for London and City Hall in the last year, Freedom of Information records show.

The discussions do not explicitly state the San Francisco company is preparing to gatecrash the UK, but suggest it has taken a keen interest in the market and on transport policy.

The news comes after TfL stripped Uber of its licence in London, a huge blow for the company that will see its cars taken off the roads if an appeal against the ban fails.

Uber, which has 40,000 drivers and 3.5m customers in the capital, was told on Friday it is not fit and proper to operate and that its licence will not be renewed when it expires on Saturday.

TfL has today informed Uber that it will not be issued with a private hire operator licence. pic.twitter.com/nlYD0ny2qo  Transport for London (@TfL) September 22, 2017

Lyft executives including head of global strategy Mike Masserman and chief strategy officer Raj Kapoor have held three face-to-face meetings and two phone conferences with TfL officials in the last year, the records show. The conversations have centred on how Lyfts business model works and around London mayor Sadiq Khans new transport strategy.

They include a meeting in London last December attended by Helen Chapman, in charge ofs TfLs taxi and private hire division; Peter Blake, its director of service operations for surface transport; and three unnamed attendees from the Greater London Authority. The most recent meeting was held in New York in March between Mr Masserman, Mr Kapoor and TfLs director of transport innovation Michael Hurwitz.

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At a glance | Uber licence denied in London

Lyft was founded in 2012 and has since spread to hundreds of US cities, where it competes directly against Uber and is now believed to be planning international expansion to maintain growth. Although it operates a similar business model, it has positioned itself as more socially-acceptable than its much bigger and more controversial competitor.

Mr Masserman, previously Lyfts head of government relations, was given a new role in charge of global strategy this year, and job adverts detail how it is working on making its apps work in other countries and languages. The firm is reportedly considering entering other global markets including Canada and New Zealand.

Lyft does not have a registered company in the UK or a private hire licence, which it would need to receive to begin operating. Any attempt to launch in London could well face opposition from taxi groups and politicians who may fear a new car-hailing app adding to congestion in the city.

However, it will have been emboldened by Ubers struggles in the capital. Uber, which arrived in London in 2012, faces a lengthy battle over its future in the city.

TfL said on Friday it had failed to ensure passenger safety, neglecting to report criminal offences and follow rules on background checks.

Although Uber will be allowed to continue operating as it appeals the decision, its struggles will be seen as an opportunity for any new entrant.

Unlike Uber, Lyft has stuck to the US so far, and has been grabbing market share in recent months as its main rival reels from a series of corporate crises. Although it operates a similar business model, it has positioned itself as more socially-acceptable than its much bigger and more controversial competitor.

Lyft declined to comment. Mr Hurwitz said: "We work closely with technology companies around the world to support innovation that could improve transport in London. We are very much open to new ideas and are engaging tech companies and innovators on some of the challenges facing the city."

How to connect with us | Telegraph Business on social media
In a huge blow to Uber in the UK London's transport regulator has rejected its application to renew its license to operate in the city.

In a statement today TfL said it has concluded that Uber is "not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator licence".

"TfLs regulation of London's taxi and private hire trades is designed to ensure passenger safety. Private hire operators must meet rigorous regulations, and demonstrate to TfL that they do so, in order to operate. TfL must also be satisfied that an operator is fit and proper to hold a licence," it said.

The regulator added that Uber's "approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications" -- including for the following issues:

Its approach to reporting serious criminal offences

Its approach to how medical certificates are obtained

Its approach to how Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are obtained -- which relates to carrying out background checks to ensure workers do not have a criminal record

Its approach to explaining the use of Greyball in London -- software that could be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the app and prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties

TfL notes that the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 includes provision to appeal a licensing decision within 21 days of it being issued, and confirmed that Uber can continue to operate until any appeal processes have been exhausted.

Uber is expected to appeal. A statement by the company is also expected shortly -- we'll add it when we have it.

Update: In a statement, Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, said:

3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision. By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport. To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts. Drivers who use Uber are licensed by Transport for London and have been through the same enhanced DBS background checks as black cab drivers. Our pioneering technology has gone further to enhance safety with every trip tracked and recorded by GPS. We have always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents and have a dedicated team who work closely with the Metropolitan Police. As we have already told TfL, an independent review has found that greyball has never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL. Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.

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TfL said it will not be commenting further on the decision pending any appeal.

In a statement, London's mayor Sadiq Khan backed the regulator's decision, writing:

I want London to be at the forefront of innovation and new technology and to be a natural home for exciting new companies that help Londoners by providing a better and more affordable service. However, all companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect - particularly when it comes to the safety of customers. Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security. I fully support TfLs decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners safety and security. Any operator of private hire services in London needs to play by the rules.

Uber's current license to operate in London is due to expire on September 30. The company claims to have some 3.5 million users in London and around 40,000 drivers operating on its platform.

Its prior license expired in May but was extended by TfL for four months as the regulator continued to deliberate over whether it should grant Uber another full five year term in the face of rising criticism against its business -- including on issues such as workers' rights and public safety.

Earlier this month a cross-party group of MPs wrote to TfL urging it to strip the company of its license to operate in the UK capital, arguing the company has not shown itself to be a "fit and proper operator".

This followed accusations made this summer by London's Met Police that Uber has been failing to report sex attacks by drivers on its platform.

While, last year, the GMB Union helped bring two test cases to a UK employment tribunal accusing Uber of acting unlawfully by not providing drivers with basic workers' rights like holiday pay and the minimum wage.

In October the tribunal delivered its verdict, rejecting Uber's argument that the drivers in question were self-employed contractors -- instead judging them to be workers, setting a legal precedent for other Uber drivers to challenge the company. (Although Uber has appealed the ruling.)

The GMB union handed a petition to TfL this month urging it to insist on limits to Uber driver hours as a condition of renewing Uber's license.

It welcomed the regulator's decision today, describing it as a "historic victory".

"It's about time the company faced up to the huge consequences of GMB's landmark employment tribunal victory -- and changed its ways," said Maria Ludkin, GMB legal director, in a statement. No company can be behave like it's above the law, and that includes Uber.

"No doubt other major cities will be looking at this decision and considering Ubers future on their own streets."

The regulator has also been under pressure from London's black cab drivers over perceived inequality in the regulatory regimes of private hire vehicles vs traditional taxis.

London's Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) pressed TfL to reject a full renewal of Uber's license -- arguing that its model is unlawful and risks public safety, while also pointing to rising numbers of private hire vehicles (PHV) in London as contributing to the city's congestion and pollution problem.

It has also welcomed TfL's decision today. In a statement, Steve McNamara, general secretary of the LTDA said: The Mayor has made the right call not to relicense Uber. Since it first came onto our streets Uber has broken the law, exploited its drivers and refused to take responsibility for the safety of passengers. We expect Uber will again embark on a spurious legal challenge against the Mayor and TfL, and we will urge the court to uphold this decision. This immoral company has no place on Londons streets."

Also supporting TfL's decision to strip Uber of its license, rival ride-hailing firm mytaxi -- which works exclusively with licensed black cabs in London and has a driver network of over 17,500 -- urged Uber passengers "back to black cabs", and said it will be undercutting UberX prices until the end of the month with a minimum 30% discount off the meter fare.

"Customers deserve a seamless, technology-enabled fleet of professional taxis with drivers who are proud to offer a superior service and have devoted the equivalent of a degree to their trade. That's what mytaxi is proud to offer in London," said Andy Batty, UK general manager at mytaxi in a statement.

However James Farrar, co-claimant in the landmark employment tribunal decision against Uber, and chair of the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain's United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) branch was highly critical of the regulator, saying its decision in 2012 to grant Uber a license and only now, more than five years' later, revoke it shows a "systematic failure".

"This is a devastating blow for 30,000 Londoners who now face losing their job and being saddled with unmanageable vehicle related debt," he said in a statement. "To strip Uber of it's license after five years of laissez faire regulation is a testament to a systemic failure at TfL.

"Rather than banish Uber, TfL should have strengthened its regulatory oversight, curbed runaway licensing and protected the worker rights of drivers. The Mayor must call for an urgent independent review of TfL to identify the causes of failure and prevent something like this from ever happening again."

Earlier this week TfL announced a new pricing system for PHV licenses, inflating fees for obtaining authorization to operate in the city. TfL said price rises are necessary to cope with dramatic increases in the numbers of PHVs on London's roads, noting that it had not reviewed prices since 2013.

According to TfL, there are more than 116,000 PHV licensed drivers today, up from just 65,000 in 2013/14, while it said the number of PHVs has increased from 50,000 to 88,000 over the same period.

The new pricing regime brings in many more tiers, depending on the size of the fleet being operated. The most expensive tier -- for the largest operators (such as Uber), which have more than 10,001 vehicles -- has risen from around 3,000 under the prior regime to 2.9M going forward.

Last year, Uber steered off what could have been a more major impediment to its business in London when TfL dropped a series of proposed changes to PHV rules -- including imposing a five-minute minimum wait period between ordering and obtaining a ride. Although the regulator did push on with other new measures, such as a formal English language requirement for drivers.

Uber went on to challenge the requirement that drivers gain an English qualification in court -- a challenge that was rejected in March (though Uber said it intended to appeal).

Zooming out to the European-wide level, Uber is also awaiting what will be a highly significant ruling by Europe's top court on the classification of its business -- to provide clarity to regulators on whether it's a transportation company or just an enabling tech platform as Uber tries to claim.

Earlier this year an influential advisor to the court deemed Ubers activity is indeed to provide transportation services, rather than merely being an intermediary platform. A final ruling by the court is expected three to six months after the AG's opinion -- so likely by November.

While, over in the U.S., Uber's use of proprietary software to try to evade regulators has also drawn the attention of US regulators -- and is reportedly being investigated by the Department of Justice. It's also under investigation by the FBI for use of another software program designed to target rival ride-hailing startup, Lyft.

Its business has also been rocked by a series of additional scandals in recent times -- from accusations of an internal culture of sexism and sexual harassment, to accusations of IP theft from rival Alphabet, to an FCC investigation into privacy and security failures that resulted in Uber agreeing to two decades of external audits.

While founder Travis Kalanick has only just been replaced as CEO, by Dara Khosrowshahi, though apparently remains a disruptive influence on Uber's board.

Khan's statement supporting TfL's decision to strip Uber of its license, which was posted to his Facebook page, has drawn plenty of comments -- with many self-professed Uber users attacking the decision as "backward" and complaining of how it will deprive Londoners of "a cheap and convenient way to move around the city".

However others point out that Uber's VC backed business is subsidizing its current "affordable" prices -- arguing that as pressure for the company to turn a profit cranks up then prices for an Uber ride are sure to rise.

There are also comments criticizing Uber for its treatment of drivers. While others accuse the company of not paying its fair share of tax -- and therefore undermining the publicly funded transport services it competes with.

Interesting view on the Uber London decision pic.twitter.com/7OMa2uTXPU  Natasha (@riptari) September 22, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

It's worth noting that Uber is not the only ride-hailing startup to fall foul of TfL. Earlier this month a European startup called Taxify was told by the regulator to cease operating in the city almost immediately after it had launched -- after the startup had sought to fast-track the licensing processing by acquiring an existing cab firm (yet apparently without gaining approval for a change in the licensing conditions). The GMB union had written to TfL flagging concerns over Taxify's license status.

The startup immediately complied with TfL's order to cease operating. And says now it still plans to launch in London once it has completed TfLs regulatory approval process.

Taxify pitches its model as more driver-friendly than Uber, and had hoped to win drivers in London by taking a lower commission on rides than Uber and offering some other measures such as the ability to define a radius for pick ups so they don't have to stray too far from home.

This post was updated with additional comment
By Costas Pitas LONDON (Reuters) - London deemed Uber unfit to run a taxi service on Friday and stripped it of its license to operate from the end of next week in a major blow to the U.S. firm and 3.5 million users in one of the world's wealthiest cities. Graphic: Uber stripped of London license - http://tmsnrt.rs/2jQOqKD In a break with the startup's usual combative tone, Uber's new Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi asked London to please work with the ride service. He told employees the company needed to act with integrity but that he did not believe Uber had done everything it was accused of in London. Uber [UBER.UL], which has 40,000 drivers working in the capital, also said it would contest the decision. The British capital's transport regulator said the Silicon Valley technology giant's approach and conduct was not fit and proper to hold a private vehicle hire license and it would not be renewed when it expires on Sept. 30. Regulator Transport for London (TfL) said it would let Uber operate until the appeals process is exhausted, which could take months. "Uber's approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications," TfL said. Specifically, TfL cited Uber's approach to reporting serious criminal offences, background checks on drivers and software called Greyball that could be used to block regulators from gaining full access to the app. Uber London General Manager Tom Elvidge responded that the mayor, who supported the decision, and regulators had "caved in" to people who want to restrict consumer choice. He added that Uber would "immediately challenge" the decision in court. Khosrowshahi, brought in to steer the company after a string of scandals involving allegations of sexism and bullying, later appealed to the city on Twitter with a self-deprecating style. "Dear London: we r far from perfect but we have 40k licensed drivers and 3.5mm Londoners depending on us. Pls work w/us to make things right," Khosrowshahi wrote in a tweet. He also acknowledged the company's turmoil in a message to employees seen by Reuters. "It's worth examining how we got here. The truth is that there is a high cost to a bad reputation," he said. "It really matters what people think of us," he added, and "actions in one part of the world can have serious consequences in another." Many riders rallied to the company's aid. Uber has turned to customers to help defend itself in other battles around the world, and an online petition in support of Uber had gathered more than 400,000 signatures by late evening in London. 'SAFETY THREAT' The loss of the San Francisco-based start-up's license comes after a tumultuous few months that led to former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out. Uber, which is valued at about $70 billion and whose investors include Goldman Sachs, has faced protests around the world for shaking up long-established taxi markets. The taxi app has also been forced to quit several countries, including Denmark and Hungary, and faced regulatory battles in multiple U.S. states and around the world. The company's UberX offers rides in London by individuals with licenses issued by TfL, often in drivers' personal cars. London's traditional black cab drivers have attacked Uber, saying it has undercut safety rules and threatened their livelihoods. Uber has been criticized by unions and lawmakers too and been embroiled in legal battles over workers' rights. London police also complained in a letter in April that Uber was either not disclosing, or taking too long to report, serious crimes including sexual assaults and this put the public at risk. Of the 154 allegations of rape or sexual assault made to police in London between February 2015 and February 2016 in which the suspect was a taxi driver, 32 concerned Uber, according to the capital's police force. Uber said on Friday its drivers passed the same rigorous checks as black cab drivers, it has always followed TfL's rules on reporting serious incidents and it had a dedicated team that worked closely with London's police. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Labour politician who has criticized Uber in the past, said he backed the decision to reject its application for a new license. "It would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety and security," he said. Drivers of London's black cabs, who have snarled up the city's streets in protest at the app over the last few years, welcomed Friday's decision. "Their standards are not up to scratch," said 71-year-old Walt Burrows, who has driven a black cab for 39 years. "The black cab is an iconic part of London. What you get with a black cab is a metered fare and you know you're safe." (Additional reporting by Eric Auchard, Michael Holden, Kylie MacLellan, James Davey, Elizabeth O'Leary. Elaine Hardcastle, Paresh Dave, and Heather Somerville; Editing by Peter Henderson, David Clarke and Diane Craft)
Walmartis one of the most familiar brands in America, but are you ready to give them access to your home?

The retail giantannounced Fridaythat it is testing a store-to-door service in which its employees can deliver groceries to your home and pack them away in your refrigerator  even if you arent there to supervise.

What if Walmart could help busy families like mine ensure my fridge was always well-stocked? Sloan Eddleston, Walmarts vice president of eCommerce, said in a news release.

What if we created a service that not only did my grocery shopping and brought everything to my home, but even went so far as to put it directly into my fridge? he added. And, what if it was even more convenient because this in-fridge delivery happened while I was at work or off doing other things?

Walmart has been testing this service in Silicon Valley, where the newest tech and services are readily accepted, with a group of volunteer customers from August Home, a company that produces keyless locks for smart homes.

We're partnering with@augusthomeincto make life easier by delivering groceries straight to the fridge:https://t.co/Ut0vhWIRWBpic.twitter.com/0jO3oHLnv5  Walmart Newsroom (@WalmartNewsroom)September 22, 2017

Heres how the service would work, according to Walmart: First, a customer places an order on Walmarts website. Then a driver for the startupDeliv(think: Uber for delivery services) will pick up the order at a Walmart location when it is ready, then bring the items to the customers home. When the delivery person arrives at the house, the customer will receive a phone notification.

If no one is at home, the Deliv driver will punch a one-time-use password into the customers August Home keyless lock to enter and then put the items away in the customers kitchen. The customer will theoretically be able to watch the delivery person via August Home apps security camera. Once the delivery person leaves, the doors lock automatically and the customer receives another notification.

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Think about that, Eddleston wrote. Someone else does the shopping for you AND puts it all away.

Walmart hasnt revealed what the prices for this delivery service would be, but if it continues to work with August Home and the Deliv app, it may be similar to the prices for those services. An August Home Lock systemcould cost up to $279, which includes the free app, and the compatible August doorbell cameracosts $199. Home security cameras linked to a smartphone would be extra.

While thats obviously a convenient luxury, many people arent quite willing to sacrifice their privacy for a fridge full of food.

so Walmart wants to do in-home delivery.. who tf is going to trust their employees going into homes and not stealing anything lmao   Gage (@gageemichael)September 22, 2017

No way I'm letting a Walmart employee in my home.  Krystal Smith (@Krissysmith85)September 22, 2017

Sorry, that's still awkward. Even if I can watch the person via cam.  Luke Procopio (@LukeProcopi0)September 22, 2017

But it seems like Walmart was prepared for that response.

What might seem novel today could be the standard tomorrow, Eddleston wrote. This may not be for everyone  and certainly not right away  but we want to offer customers the opportunity to participate in tests today and help us shape what commerce will look like in the future.

The companys foray into home delivery comes at a time when Amazon is expected todisrupt brick-and-mortar supermarketswith its recent purchase of the Whole Foods grocery chain and its new food service,AmazonFresh.

Supermarkets willnow have to contend with not only competition with each other and non-traditional grocerslike Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp, but with a retailer like Amazon which has the financial capacity to price aggressively, Mickey Chadha, vice president of Moodys Investors Service, told Reuters after Amazon purchased Whole Foods.

We expect this transaction to further accelerate the consolidation within the supermarket space.

And in an age when we use apps to summon strangers to drive us around in their own cars and rent out our spare rooms to tourists, it doesnt seem all that crazy to think well soon be letting stores deliver food straight to our kitchens.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
- By Sangara Narayanan





Amazon (AMZN) has been relentless in its push to expand as quickly as possible into the physical retail space.

The company has been at it for quite some time, in fact, trying to build a differentiated physical experience through Amazon Go, a no-check-out concept store. It has also been building partnerships with brick-and-mortar retailers like Sears (SHLD). But nothing gave it an immediate boost in terms of reaching the market the way the Whole Foods Market acquisition did. It has brought 365 physical stores under Amazon's umbrella, and that, too, in the grocery segment, which has been Amazon's weakest suit so far.





The Whole Foods Market acquisition held a lot of strategic importance for Amazon, and if Morgan Stanley's estimates about future sales at Whole Foods are anything to go by, then we are going to see a massive disruption in the grocery market over the next five years. According to Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak, the total number of annual shoppers at Whole Foods could double from 12.5 million in 2016 to 25.2 million in 2020, eventually increasing the grocer's market share from 2.1% in 2017 to 3.3% by the end of 2022.

There are several other steps that Amazon has already taken to improve its top line. As soon as the acquisition went through, Amazon made it clear that it will go after volume through price cuts rather than have Whole Foods stay put at the premium end of the market. Amazon slashed prices as much as 43% on the first day after the acquisition, and it is likely it will keep pushing prices down as and when it can. Volume is now clearly in the driver's seat after Amazon bought Whole Foods.

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The U.S. grocery market is huge and is estimated to be worth around $800 billion, but Whole Foods, thanks to its premium positioning - selling high-quality organic foods - holds less than 2% of that market.

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Amazon has long wanted to become the world's largest retailer in terms of size and scale, not in terms of profit. Amazon's North America operating profit margins remain in the low single digits while, internationally, they are still recording losses. Amazon's steady increase of its Prime membership base also adds to margin pressure with the free shipping and so many other benefits, but the company has always prioritized top-line growth and cash flow over the health of its bottom line.

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Whole Foods' premium positioning and lack of significant market share would never have made sense considering Amazon's DNA, and the company was right to go straight after the mass market by slashing prices. This may put additional pressure on Amazon's North America operating margin, which was just 1.9% during the second quarter of the current fiscal.

The other factor that will give Amazon even more bandwidth to take the fight to other grocers on the price front is Amazon Web Services, which is still growing at above 40% and returns nearly 30% of its revenues as operating profits. AWS's operating profit increased from $718 million in second-quarter 2016 to $916 million in second-quarter 2017, giving Amazon even more leverage for its retail business.

As AWS takes care of operating numbers and keeps bringing additional cash flow to the table, Amazon can keep pushing as hard as it can to grow the number of people shopping at Whole Foods. The first step would be to double its current market share, and it looks like Amazon is in a hurry to get there.

Disclosure: I have no positions in the stocks mentioned above and no intention to initiate a position in the next 72 hours.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






In 2011, Facebook asked the Federal Election Commission to exempt it from rules requiring political advertisers to disclose who's paying for an ad. Political ads on TV and radio must include such disclosures. But Facebook argued that its ads should be regulated as "small items," similar to bumper stickers, which dont require disclosures. The FEC ended up deadlocked on the issue, and the question of how to handle digital ads has languished for six years.

Now, it's blowing up again---and damaging Facebook in the process.

The renewed interest follows Facebook's disclosure earlier this month that it had sold $150,000 worth of political ads linked to Russian troll accounts during the 2016 election. Under pressure from investigators, Facebook has turned over records about the ads to Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller III. Some in Congress want to summon Facebook executives to testify about the purchases.

On Thursday, Facebook tried to defuse the controversy. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new transparency measures that would require political advertisers on Facebook to disclose whos paying for their ads and publicly catalog different ad variations they target at Facebook users. Members of Congress, meanwhile, are mulling a bill that would require such disclosures.

These would be unprecedented moves, setting new standards for digital political ads. But they likely wouldn't prevent abuses, largely because of the US's confusing, loophole-ridden system for regulating political advertising.

Case in point: Shortly before the 2016 election, the crowdfunding site, WeSearchr, run by the notorious far-right internet troll Chuck Johnson, raised just over $5,000 to put up a billboard in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The illustration for the billboard showed a sparkling new yellow-brick wall, marked with a sign reading U.S. Border. It was guarded at night by two Pepe frogs dressed as Donald Trump, pointing their guns at anyone who attempts to cross their path. The caption, which appeared next to a smiling crescent moon wearing sunglasses, read ominously, Its always darkest before the Don

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The billboard didn't have to mention its funders---many of whom were anonymous. That would not fall under campaign finance law, explains Brendan Fischer, director of Federal Election Commission reform at the Campaign Legal Center. It doesnt include any expressed advocacy, saying to vote for or against a candidate.

In other words, because the Pepe billboard wasnt purchased by the Trump campaign and didnt explicitly mention the election, its backers were under no obligation to disclose who paid for it. The same legal gray area would apply on Facebook, but at a much larger---and more dangerous---scale. On Facebook, where most ads are sold by machines, the WeSearchr crew could have bought thousands of digital billboards in a matter of minutes.

That makes this a far more intractable problem than either Facebook or regulators are letting on. Facebook is so gargantuan, its exceeded our capability to manage it, says Siva Vaidhyanathan, director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, who is writing a book on Facebook.

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Business

Thousands of Facebook Ads Tied to Bogus Russian Accounts

Social network says it found $150,000 in political ads from 'inauthentic accounts' and Pages from Russia between 2015 and May 2017

Nothing Zuckerberg announced Thursday or that Congress is considering would have stopped Russian trolls from buying ads during the election, Vaidhyanathan says. Facebook says the Russian ads---like the Pepe billboard----didnt explicitly mention the candidates or the election. Instead, the ads focused on social issues related to immigration, LGBT rights, and guns, among other things. If Facebook only requires official campaign organizations, or even political action committees, to disclose whos paying for their ads, it seems these Russia-linked ads would still have been able to fly under the radar.

The same goes for the bill floating in Congress. It would require digital platforms with more than 1 million users to publicly log any electioneering communications purchased by anyone who spends more than $10,000 in political ads online. The FEC defines electioneering communications as ads that refer to a federal candidate, are targeted to voters and appear within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Once again, it appears the Russian ads would pass the test. Setting a threshold of $10,000 also allows anyone to develop multiple Facebook pages, buy $9,999 of ads to promote their cause, and remain unnoticed.

Even if Facebook radically expanded the definition of a political ad, though, or if Congress tracked every single dollar spent on Facebook's political ads, there would still be ways to work around it. Anyone could, for instance, form a fake news website, then pay to boost their "news" articles to a broader audience. Theres a general aversion to a corporation like Facebook or the government defining who is and isnt media and seeking to regulate or limit it, says Fischer. Thats a hard issue. Facebook is attempting to address that issue by allowing users to mark a post as fake or misleading and banning accounts that have shared such posts multiple times. Even still, in order for an account to be banned, the damage of spreading that misleading information must already have been done.

All of this is why when Zuckerberg said Thursday that it "wouldn't be realistic" to expect Facebook to catch every abuse of the system, he wasn't being fatalist or lazy. He was being honest---albeit, self-servingly so.

"Mark Zuckerberg created a monster in his lab that has grown to proportions that even he could not have predicted," Vaidhyanathan says. "The scale of Facebook gets in the way of any reasonable intervention."

Still, Facebook's self-regulating efforts will at least bring more transparency to ads from politicians' own campaigns. Facebook was an obstacle in the FECs 2011 effort to bring more transparency to digital ads. Now, the FEC is re-visiting the issue and, Fischer hopes, Facebook will work with the agency this time on charting a path forward.

"Of course there could still be loopholes. The desire by foreign actors to influence our election is probably not going away, just like the desire for domestic billionaires to influence politics and public opinion isn't going away," Fischer says. "It doesn't mean addressing these issues isn't worth fighting for."

And it is critical that regulators and advocates keep fighting. Facebook may be much happier overseeing itself, but if history is any indication, it may need a little guidance.
RENO, Nev., Sept. 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ormat Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:ORA) (the Company), today announced that it will host an Analyst and Investor Day, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (ET) on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 in New York City.

Isaac Angel, Ormats Chief Executive Officer, will lead the discussion around the Companys key strategies, the status of key initiatives, and Ormats market opportunity. Additional presentations will be made by key members of Ormats senior team including:

Doron Blachar, Chief Financial Officer;

Bob Sullivan, Executive Vice President Business Development, Sales and Marketing; and,

Raj Chudgar, President of Viridity Energy Solutions Inc., an Ormat Company

Ormats team will also be available for a question and answer sessions.

Mr. Todd Freeland, Co-Head of Energy and Eco Services of ORIX Corporation (TSE:8591); (NYSE:IX), and the new appointed chairman of Ormat Board of Directors will present at the event and provide introduction to ORIX, as well as his perspective on the cooperation agreement with Ormat.

Space for the event is limited. Analysts and institutional investors that are interested in attending are encouraged to contact Rob Fink of Hayden IR at ORA@haydenir.com or 646.415.8972.

The live webcast and the presentation materials will be available at www.ormat.com under News & Events in the Investor Relations section of Ormat's website.

ABOUT ORMAT TECHNOLOGIES

With over five decades of experience, Ormat Technologies, Inc. is a leading geothermal company and the only vertically integrated company engaged in geothermal and recovered energy generation (REG), with the objective of becoming a leading global provider of renewable energy. The company owns, operates, designs, manufactures and sells geothermal and REG power plants primarily based on the Ormat Energy Converter  a power generation unit that converts low-, medium- and high-temperature heat into electricity. With 73 U.S. patents, Ormats power solutions have been refined and perfected under the most grueling environmental conditions. Ormat has 530 employees in the United States and 720 overseas. Ormats flexible, modular solutions for geothermal power and REG are ideal for the vast range of resource characteristics. The company has engineered, manufactured and constructed power plants, which it currently owns or has installed to utilities and developers worldwide, totaling over 2,200 MW of gross capacity. Ormats current 727 MW generating portfolio is spread globally in the U.S., Guatemala, Guadeloupe, Indonesia and Kenya. Ormat also intends to expand its operations and provide energy management and energy storage solutions, by leveraging its core capabilities and global presence as well as through its Viridity Energy Solutions, Inc. subsidiary, a Philadelphia-based company with nearly a decade of expertise and leadership in demand response, energy management and storage.

ORMATS SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to Ormat's plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon its management's current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see "Risk Factors" as described in Ormat Technologies, Inc.'s Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 1, 2017.

These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Ormat Technologies Contact:

Smadar Lavi

Head of Investor Relations

775-356-9029 (ext. 65726)

slavi@ormat.com

Investor Relations Agency Contact:

Rob Fink/Brett Maas

Hayden - IR

646-415-8972/646-536-7331

rob@haydenir.com / brett@haydenir.com
Latvian English

We are honoured for the visit of the President of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis and his wife, Iveta Vejone, at Baltic Dairy Board Ltd. on September 12, 2017.

During the visit, President and his wife were introduced to the company, its operation and its key future development plans.

Well-considered investments in the regions bring both, consumer and niche products with high added value, said the president of Latvia Raimonds Vejonis, during his visit in Bauska.

While visiting Bauska, I was convinced that product with a high added value can be created not only in the large cities. Latvian entrepreneurs located in regions create both, consumer and niche products with high added value, by making well-considered investments the Presidential Press Counsellor Janis Siksnis informed the agency LETA about the President's statement.

Thank you for believing in the entrepreneurs of the region and good wishes devoted to the development of our company!

On behalf of Baltic Dairy Board Ltd.  Chairman of the Board Kaspars Kazaks.
najsh2 wrote:

Can someone please explain the answer?



Posted from my mobile device

North Americas carbon footprint is growing larger in relation to Europes; the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per capita in the United States is up to three times of Britains emission.

emitted per capita

emitted per capita

Britains emission

====> This is an illogical comparison - comparing the amount of CO2 emitted per capita in US with the entire emission of Britain

of Britains emission

====> This is an illogical comparison - comparing the amount of CO2 emitted per capita in US with the entire emission of Britain

====> Correct - As it is comparing the amount of CO2

emitted per capita

in US Vs the amount of CO2

emitted per capita

in Britain

====> This is an illogical comparison - comparing the amount of CO2 emitted per capita in US with emission done by British people. This does not make any sense

====> This is an illogical comparison - comparing the amount of CO2 emitted per capita in US with the entire emission of British people

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."



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dipeshsalvi wrote:

United States manufacturers currently produce most of the world's solar-power generators--most of which are exported to Europe. However, European manufacturers are emerging and probably will ultimately capture much of the European market. The United States government is funding initiatives intended to encourage use of solar power within the United States. If these initiatives succeed in increasing the demand for solar-power generators in the United States, United States manufacturers will probably maintain significant production levels, since __________.



Which of the following most logically completes the argument?



(A) some United States manufacturers have been substantially increasing their output over the last several years

(B) the efficiency of solar-power generators in converting energy from the Sun into electric power is not improving as fast as it once did

(C) just as European manufacturers enjoy certain competitive advantages in Europe, so do United States manufacturers in the United States

(D) European governments are currently undertaking initiatives to stimulate the use of solar power within Europe

(E) the current market for solar-power generators in the United States is very limited

Fact  1: United States manufacturers currently produce most of the world's solar-power generators--most of which are exported to Europe.

Fact  2: However, European manufacturers are emerging and probably will ultimately capture much of the European market. (Assumption  It will reduce the US exports to Europe)

Fact  3: The United States government is funding initiatives intended to encourage use of solar power within the United States.



Conclusion :- If these initiatives succeed in increasing the demand for solar-power generators in the United States, United States manufacturers will probably maintain significant production levels,-------------



if govt's initiatives succeed in increasing the demand for solar power generators, US manufacturers will probably maintain significant production level.

the increased demand of solar power gensets will be fulfilled by supplies of US manufacturers.

Hi Dipesh, You did perfect job while analyzing the interrelation among the facts, but just made a subtle error at the end, while analyzing the conclusion.I am giving below you analysis.We can see in the 3rd fact that Author has stated that the US Govt has taken initiative to boost up sales of solar power in the US. This clearly indicates that the demand for solar power generators is currently not high enough to accommodate the produce of US generator manufacturers. (This is what Choice E says)Then Author has concluded thatHere the author has assumed thatSo next logical premise would eliminate the possibility of fulfillment of increased demand by sources other than US manufacturers. Choice C does that job and hence is the correct answer._________________
- Two army generals who fell in love at Jaji orientation camp in 1990 tell their story

- In an interview they revealed what brought them together

- According to the story of the generals their love has stood the test of time

Legit.ng earlier shared lovely photos of military officers who are in love and plan to walk down the aisle soon. Here's a touching story of two army generals who met and fell i n love in 1990 at orientation camp.

READ ALSO: Actress Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde rocks 'Ghana weaving' hairdo in new photos

Brig. Gen. Clifford Wanda and Brig. Gen. Cecelia Akagu met at Jaji army orientation camp in 1990. Their love has stood the test of time and they shared their inspiring story in a recent interview.

In an interview with Punch, they both revealed what attracted them to each other and how their simple friendship and constant quarrels led to a happy marriage which they are both still enjoying.

Brig. Gen. Clifford Wanda and Brig. Gen. Cecelia Akagu Source: Punch

According to Brigadier General Wanda, his wife touched his heart with her tough nature. He explained she was one confident woman who let cupid shoot him right at the heart.

He said: "I saw so many things in her but the most prominent ones are that she is always cool, calm, composed and you could see a woman who is in charge. She doesnt fidget; she is not the fidgety type, she is always in charge. I saw a woman I could trust and that would hold on if I was not around. Above all, she was God-fearing. These are some of the things I saw in her," he revealed."

READ ALSO: Actress Blessing Anyim reacts to being disowned by alleged father, Senator Pius Anyim (video)

For Brigadier Generla Akagu, he was a physical representation of all she had ever dreamed in a partner. She said: "I did social science. When I was growing up  right from secondary school  I told myself that I was going to marry a scientist. As young as I was, because I am dark, I told myself that I was going to marry someone that is fair, fine and very intelligent. We met and became very good friends. We were however fighting at the beginning; we were not really agreeing. I remember one of my roommates, Toyin  shes a brigadier general too  telling me each time we fought that is it not you? I know you will always reconcile. That was how we started until the relationship led to marriage."

PAY ATTENTION: Read best news on Nigeria's #1 news app

Watch Legit.ng video on whether a woman should live with a man she'snot married to:

Source: Legit.ng
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
New Delhi, Sep 21 (IBNS): Reacting to the Rohingya issue on Thursday, home minister Rajnath Singh said it is irrelevant to criticise the central government when Burma (Myanmar) is willing to take back the illegal immigrants, media reports said.

"If Burma is willing to take them back, why criticise the central government?" Singh raised a question on Thursday, lashing out at opposition parties.

The home minister even stated that the Rohingyas are not the refugees but illegal immigrants.

"There is a process of attaining the refugee status but none of them (Rohingyas) have gone through it" Singh said.

He even denied to term the ongoing Rohingya crisis as a Human Rights issue.

The Centre in last week filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that the presence of Rohingyas Muslims in the country poses national security threats as intelligence reports suggest links of a section of the immigrants, branded stateless in Myanmar, with Pak-based terror groups.

According to reports, the Centre also told the apex court that whether or not Rohingya refugees should be allowed to settle in the country be left to the executive.

The top court had asked the government to file an affidavit following a petition against the deportation of the illegal immigrants to Myanmar.

The Centre said in the apex court: As far as Rohingyas are concerned, they claimed to have entered from Myanmar using porous border between India and Myanmar. The total number of such illegal immigrants into our country would be more than 40,000 approximately as on date.

Rohingya presence in the country has serious national security ramifications and it poses national security threats. Illegal influx of Rohingyasinto India started in 2012-13 and inputs suggest links of some of the immigrants with Pak-based terror groups. 

The Supreme Court has granted Centre time till October three to submit its response to petition filed by Rohingyas opposing proposed deportation.

Image: Facebook page of Rajnath Singh


Tehran has a long history of unveiling supposedly new military technology, only for photographs and technical claims to be debunked by experts. It is certainly true that Iranian missile technology has become more sophisticated in recent years, and that the clerical regime has helped to outfit terrorist groups like Hamas and the Yemeni Houthi rebels with longer-range missiles of their own. But specific Iranian claims about the destructive power of the regimes own missiles are always up for debate, while supposedly advanced military equipment like drones and fighter aircraft are sometimes recognizably little more than propaganda mock-ups.

Even in the case of legitimate military developments, as is likely the situation with the Khoramshahr missile, their rollout in military parades like Fridays certainly serve a propaganda role. Many of the reports on this missile premiere connect it to US President Donald Trumps speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, in which he reiterated his opposition to the 2015 nuclear deal while also calling attention to various instances of malign behavior by the Iranian regime, including its support for regional terrorist groups and its misappropriation of funds and sanctions relief.

[The regimes] wealth, which rightly belongs to Irans people, also goes to shore up Bashar Al Assads dictatorship, fuel Yemens civil war, and undermine peace throughout the entire Middle East, Trump said in his speech. We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles and we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program.

Trumps speech was followed on Wednesday by a speech from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, also before the UN General Assembly. In it, he insisted that Iran would remain committed to the nuclear agreement and he dismissed Trumps account of the regimes overall behavior. Side-by-side, the speeches showcased a seemingly ever-escalating war of words between the two nations. And Rouhanis support of hardline anti-American rhetoric was underscored during Fridays military parade, when the Iranian president addressed the Revolutionary Guards and their supporters.

In that latter speech, Rouhani said, We will promote our defensive and military power as much as we deem necessary. We seek no ones permission to defend our land. Rouhani has repeatedly stood beside hardline figures, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and officers in the IRGC, in rejecting the notion of any restrictions on the countrys missile capabilities or military development. Intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles are generally designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and so Irans development of these weapons was a matter of some dispute for nuclear negotiators.

Ultimately, the missile issue was left un-addressed by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but UN Security Council Resolution 2231, as a side agreement to the nuclear deal, called upon the Islamic Republic to avoid work on such weapons while the JCPOA remained in effect. Tehran has ignored this provision, characterizing it as voluntary and suggesting that it does not refer to Iranian ballistic missiles, because they are not intended for nuclear weapons, regardless of their capability.

Rouhanis steadfast endorsement of this position has helped to cast doubt upon the extent of his commitment to negotiating with the international community and pursuing rapprochement with traditional adversaries of the Islamic Republic. This in turn reflects the widespread criticism of some Western leaders efforts to characterize Rouhani as a relative moderate within the Iranian regime. This description was arguably a major contributing factor in the development of international consensus on the nuclear deal. And some human rights advocates have added that this moderation narrative also served to distract attention from domestic issues in the Islamic Republic that have either stayed the same or even grown worse under Rouhanis presidency.

This was the focus of a series of protests that coincided with Rouhanis visit to New York for the General Assembly. The Iranian-American political science Majid Rafizadeh described these demonstrations in an editorial that appeared in the Huffington Post on Thursday. The article explained that more than 3,000 executions have taken place in Iran since Rouhani took office, thus maintaining the Islamic Republics status as the country with the highest rate of executions per capita. It also noted that the president has implicitly endorsed the execution of political opponents of the theocratic regime, having appointed two justice ministers who were major participants in the massacre of approximately 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988.

According to Rafizadeh, the New York demonstrations also called attention to 11,000 protests that are known to have taken place in Iran over the past year, with their underlying message being the rejection of even supposedly moderate voices in the Islamic Republic, in favor of an actual democratic alternative.

This is something that Mr. Trump made reference to in his speech to the General Assembly, declaring that the entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and that oppressive regimes cannot endure forever and the day will come when the people will face a choice.

In light of such commentary, it seems clear that the White House has largely joined Iranian expatriate protestors in rejecting the notion of moderation under the Rouhani administration. But it remains to be seen whether other world leaders will change their positions with regard to this narrative. For the time being, it is not possible to draw any definitive conclusion from their interactions with Rouhani and his colleagues at the General Assembly.

Reuters reported on Friday that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had reached out to Rouhani directly to appeal for the humanitarian release of Baquer Namazi, an 81-year-old former UN official and Iranian-American dual national who was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison after returning to Iran in an attempt to visit his son, who was also sentenced to 10 years on unsubstantiated charges of espionage. On one hand, Guterres communication with Rouhani over this issue could be indicative of persistent confidence in the Iranian presidents willingness and ability to intercede in domestic affairs for the sake of moderation or global cooperation. But on the other hand, that same outreach could mark Guterres recognition of Rouhanis failure to counteract hardline trends, or his disinterest in doing so.
A war of words is rising between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The two leaders have been exchanging unusually personal insults as international pressure on North Korea grows.

The latest examples came on Friday, when Kim called Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard. Dotard is not used very much in American English. So it quickly became a top search word on Google Trends, and a much-discussed term on social media.

Americas Merriam Webster dictionary describes dotard as a person in his or her dotage. Britains Oxford defines the word as an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile.

Kims insult came in response to statements made by Trump earlier this week during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In the speech, Trump called the North Korean leader - who often attends missile tests  rocket man. He also said Kims actions show that he appears to be on a suicide mission.

Trump also used his strongest words yet for Kims government, warning that if the U.S. ever felt threatened, it would have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

The United States and many other nations have criticized North Korea for continuing to develop nuclear weapons and carrying out repeated missile tests. The U.N. has placed sanctions on North Korea in an effort to get it to give up its nuclear weapons program.

In a statement carried by North Korean state media, Kim also said Trump would pay dearly for his recent threat to destroy the country. A photo and video was released of Kim reading the statement. He called Trump a rogue and a gangster who likes playing with fire.

Kim said Trumps comments had insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world. He added the U.S. president had made the most ferocious declaration" of war in history.

In response, Kim said his country would consider with seriousness carrying out the highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.

North Koreas foreign minister was asked in New York during a visit for the U.N. General Assembly what this countermeasure could be. The minister, Ri Yong Ho, told South Korean TV the country might test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean.

I think it could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific, the minister was quoted as saying. He then added, We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump took to Twitter to respond to Kims latest statements. Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before! he tweeted on Friday.

Trump's tweet came a day after he signed an executive order permitting the U.S. to sanction individual companies and institutions that do business with North Korea. He said the action was needed to stop those who financially support this criminal, rogue regime.

Some experts believe the strong words between Trump and Kim may be purposeful attempts to seek a better position during future negotiations, if they are held.

Bong Young-shik is with Yonsei Universitys Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul. He says the war of words could mean that both sides are now trying to get the other to back down to make way for possible diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from VOA News, the Associated Press and Reuters. Hai Do was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

deranged  adj. not able to think or act in a normal or logical way, especially when suffering from mental illness

dotage  n. the period of old age

senile  adj. confused and unable to remember things due to old age

sanction  n. action taken to make a country obey a rule or law

rogue  adj. used to describe something or someone that is different from others, usually in a dangerous or harmful way

gangster  n. member of a group of violent criminals

ferocious  adj. extremely angry, violent or forceful

hard-line  adj. strict and forceful way of behaving when dealing with other people

detonation  n. explosion

madman  n. man who has severe metal illness


We present the second of five parts of the short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," by Edgar Allen Poe. The story was originally adapted and recorded by VOA Learning English.

It was in Paris in the summer of 1840 that I met August Dupin.

Dupin was a strangely interesting young man with a busy, forceful mind. He seemed to look right through a person and uncover their deepest thoughts. Sometimes Dupin seemed to be not one, but two people  one who coldly put things together, and another who just as coldly took them apart. One morning, in the heat of the summer, Dupin showed me once again his special mental power.

We read in the newspaper about a terrible killing. An old woman and her daughter, living alone in an old house in the Rue Morgue, had been killed in the middle of the night.

The story in the paper went:

Paris, July 7, 1840 -- Early this morning, cries of terror were heard in the western part of the city. They reportedly came from a house on the Rue Morgue, in which the only occupants were a Mrs. LEspanaye, and her daughter Camille.

Several neighbors and a policeman ran to the house. By the time they reached it, the cries had stopped. They forced the door open.

As they entered, they heard two voices, apparently from above. The group searched but found nothing until the fourth floor. There, they came to a door, locked from the inside. Quickly they forced it open. Before them was a bloody horror scene!

The room was in total disorder  broken chairs and tables and the mattress pulled from the bed. Blood was everywhere; on the walls, the floor, the bed. A sharp knife lay on the floor in a pool of blood. In front of the fireplace was a clump of long gray hair, also bloodied; it seemed to have been pulled straight out of a head. On the floor were four pieces of gold, an earring, several silver objects, and two bags containing a large amount of money in gold. Clothes had been thrown around the room. A lock box was found left open with just a few old letters and papers inside.

There was no one there. But, when the group inspected the fireplace, they discovered another horror. A still-warm body had been forced up the chimney. It was the old womans daughter.

There was blood on the face, and dark, deep finger marks on the neck, suggesting a strangling.

After searching the house thoroughly, the group went outside. They found the body of the old woman behind the building. Her neck had been cut so severely that when they tried to lift the body, the head fell off.

The next day the newspaper offered to its readers these new facts:

Paris, July 8, 1840-- The police have questioned many people about the vicious murders in the old house on the Rue Morgue. But none of the answers revealed the identity of the killers.

Pauline Dubourg, a washwoman, said she has known both of the victims for more than three years, and washed their clothes. She said the two seemed to love each other dearly. They always paid her well. She did not know where their money came from, she said. She never met anyone in the house. Only the two women lived on the fourth floor.

Pierre Moreau, a shopkeeper, said Mrs. LEspanaye had bought food at his shop for almost four years. She owned the house and had lived in it for more than six years. He never saw anyone enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, and a doctor eight or ten times, perhaps.

Many other persons, neighbors, said the same thing. Almost no one ever went into the house. Mrs. LEspanaye and her daughter were not often seen.

Banker Jules Mignaud said that Mrs. LEspanaye had put money in his bank, beginning eight years before. Three days before the killings, she withdrew a large amount in gold. A man from the bank carried it to her house for her.

Isidore Muset, a policeman, said that he was with the group that first entered the house. While he was going up the stairs, he heard two voices, one low and soft, and one hard, high, and very strange  the voice of someone who was surely not French, the voice of a foreigner, maybe Spanish.

It was not a womans voice, he said, although he could not understand what it said. But the other voice, said softly, in French, My God!

Alfonso Garcia, who is Spanish and lives on the Rue Morgue, says he entered the house but did not go up the stairs. A nervous man, he was afraid he might be sick. He heard the voices. He believes the high voice was not that of a Frenchman. Perhaps it was English; but he said he doesnt understand English, so he is not sure.

William Bird, an Englishman who has lived in Paris for two years, also entered the house. He said the low voice was that of a Frenchman, he was sure, because he heard it say, in French, My God!

The high voice was very loud, he said. He is sure it was not the voice of an Englishman, nor the voice of a Frenchman. It seemed to be that of an Italian, a language he does not understand. He said it might have been a womans voice.

Mr. Alberto Montani, an Italian, was passing the house at the time of the cries. He said the screams lasted for about two minutes. Montani, who speaks Spanish but not French, says that he also heard two voices. He thought both voices were French. But he could not understand any of the words spoken.

All who went in the house agreed that the door to the room on the fourth floor was locked from the inside. It was quiet. They saw no one. The windows were closed and locked from the inside. There is only one stairway to the fourth floor.

They said that the chimney opening is too small for escape that way. It took four or five people to pull the daughters body out of the chimney. It was four or five minutes from the time they heard the voices to the moment they entered the room.

Paul Dumas, a doctor, says that he was called to inspect the bodies soon after they were found. They were in a horrible condition, badly marked and broken. He said only a man could have caused such injury. The daughter had been strangled, he said.

When we had finished reading the newspapers report of the murders, we were quiet for a while. Dupin had that cold, empty look that I know means his mind is working busily. He asked me what I thought of the crime. I said I considered it a mystery with no answer.

But Dupin responded, No, no. No. I think you are wrong. A mystery, yes. But there must be an answer. Let us go to the house and see what we can see. There must be an answer. There must!

For Teachers

Download activities to help you understand this story here.

Now it's your turn to use the words in this story. Have you ever heard of a terrible crime happening in your city or town? Were the police able to solve it? Let us know in the comments section or on our Facebook page.

______________________________________________________________

QUIZ

Quiz: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Part Two Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

lock(ed)  v. to fasten something with a lock

scene  n. the place or event of an action

mattress  n. a cloth case that is filled with material and used as a bed

clump  n. a small ball or mass of something

earring - n. a piece of jewelry that is worn on the ear and especially on the earlobe

lock box  n. a box that locks, usually for storing money or valuables

fireplace  n. a specially built place in a room where a fire can be built

chimney  n. a part of a building through which smoke rises into the outside air

strangling  gerund. the killing of a person or animal by squeezing the throat

vicious  adj. very violent and cruel

reveal(ed)  v. to make something known

shopkeeper  n. someone who owns or manages a shop or store

stairs  n. a series of steps that go from one level or floor to another

nervous  adj. having or showing feelings of being worried and afraid about what might happen

stairway  n. a set of stairs that go from one level or floor to another
Over 200 people gathered recently on a hot day at a shrine in downtown Tokyo.

Many in the crowd were older adults. Some chewed gum and lifted dumbbells. The weight lifting was meant to increase their strength and balance.

The elderly Japanese had gathered for an event to mark Respect for the Aged Day.

The observance comes at a time when Japans population is aging. The number of people aged 65 and over has grown to 27.7 percent of the population. That information comes from government reports.

The number of elderly Japanese who still work has also hit a new high. These numbers are evidence of efforts by the government and private businesses to keep the elderly at work.

The government estimates, released on Monday, are a sign of the problems resulting from a declining birthrate. Now, there are around 1.45 births for every woman in Japan. Many economists say a developed country needs a birthrate above 2 births per woman to prevent its population from shrinking.

Japan has struggled with a declining workforce for many years. The percentage of elderly people is among the highest in the Group of Seven Nations. Italy, for example, has an elderly population of around 23 percent. Germany has around 21.5 percent, while France has 19.7 percent.

In Japan, the government estimates that 35.14 million Japanese people are age 65 or older. 7.7 million of those men and women are still working.

For the first time, the number of Japanese aged 90 or older rose above two million.

Natsu Naruse joined the group exercise in Tokyo last week. She recently turned 100 years old.

"I think my children would have trouble," if I lived longer, she said.

I'm John Russell.

Stanley White and Kwiyeon Ha reported on this story for Reuters. John Russell adapted their report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

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Words in This Story

shrine  n. a place connected with a holy person or event where people go to worship : a place that people visit because it is connected with someone or something that is important to them

dumbbell  n. a short bar with weights at the ends that is used to make muscles stronger

chew  v. to bite on (something) repeatedly with the teeth

gum  n. a type of soft candy that you chew on but do not swallow

birthrate  n. a number that shows how many babies are born in a particular place or during a particular time
Equifax Inc. provides information solutions and human resources business process automation outsourcing services for businesses, governments, and consumers. The company operates through three segments: Workforce Solutions, U.S. Information Solutions (USIS), and International. The Workforce Solutions segment offers employment, income, criminal history, and social security number verification services, as well as payroll-based transaction, employment tax management, and identity theft protection products. The USIS segment provides consumer and commercial information services, such as credit information and credit scoring, credit modeling and portfolio analytics, locate, fraud detection and prevention, identity verification, and other consulting; mortgage services; financial marketing services; identity management services; credit monitoring products; and online information, decisioning technology solutions, as well as portfolio management, mortgage reporting, and consumer credit information services. The International segment offers information service products, which include consumer and commercial services, such as credit and financial information, and credit scoring and modeling; and credit and other marketing products and services, as well as offers information, technology, and other services to support debt collections and recovery management. The company serves customers in financial services, mortgage, employers, consumer, commercial, telecommunication, retail, automotive, utility, brokerage, healthcare, and insurance industries, as well as state, federal, and local governments. It operates in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. The company was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Aviva plc provides various insurance, retirement, investment, and savings products in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, and internationally. The company offers life insurance, long-term health and accident insurance, savings, pension, and annuity products, as well as pension fund business and lifetime mortgage products. It also provides insurance cover to individuals, small and medium-sized businesses for risks associated with motor vehicles and medical expenses, as well as property and liability, such as employers' and professional indemnity liabilities. In addition, the company provides investment management services for institutional pension fund mandates; and manages various retail investment products, including investment funds, unit trusts, open-ended investment companies, and individual savings accounts for third-party financial institutions, pension funds, public sector organizations, investment professionals, and private investors. It markets its products through a network of insurance brokers, as well as MyAviva platform. The company was formerly known as CGNU plc and changed its name to Aviva plc in July 2002. Aviva plc was founded in 1696 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
The following companies are subsidiares of Ingersoll Rand: 13125882 Canada Inc., 211 E. Russell Road LLC, 4458664 Canada Inc., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES ASIA PTE. LTD., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES BORROWER S.C.A., ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES LLC, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES MIDDLE EAST FZE, ACCUDYNE INDUSTRIES SERVICES LIMITED, ASTRUM IT GmbH, Accudyne Industries Acquisition S.A r.l, Accudyne Industries Canada Inc., Accudyne Industries S.A r.l., Air Dimensions, Air Dimensions Inc., Albin Pump SAS, BOC Edwards Global Low pressure Air business, CISA S.p.A., Cameron-Centrifugal Compression, Comercial Ingersoll-Rand (Chile) Limitada, Comingersoll-Comercio E Industria De Equipamentos S.A., CompAir, CompAir (Hankook) Korea Co. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Dosatron International SAS, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Proprietary Limited, FlexEnergy Holdings LLC, Frigoblock Grosskopf Gmbh, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First (UK) Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings II Inc., GD Global Holdings Inc., GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., GPS Industries, Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp (Canada), Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments II Limited, Gardner Denver Cyprus Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Deutschland GmbH, Gardner Denver Engineered Products India Private Limited, Gardner Denver FZE, Gardner Denver Finance II LLC, Gardner Denver Finance Inc & Co KG, Gardner Denver France SAS, Gardner Denver Group Svcs Ltd, Gardner Denver Holdings Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Investments Limited, Gardner Denver Hong Kong Ltd, Gardner Denver Iberica SL, Gardner Denver Inc., Gardner Denver Industries Ltd., Gardner Denver Industries Pty Ltd., Gardner Denver International Inc., Gardner Denver International Ltd., Gardner Denver Investments Inc., Gardner Denver Italy Holdings S.r.L., Gardner Denver Japan Ltd., Gardner Denver Kirchhain Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Korea Ltd., Gardner Denver Ltd., Gardner Denver Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Nash Brasil Industria E Comercio De Bombas Ltda, Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Gardner Denver Nash Machinery Ltd., Gardner Denver Nederland BV, Gardner Denver Nederland Investments B.V., Gardner Denver Oy, Gardner Denver Polska Sp z.o.o., Gardner Denver Pte. Ltd., Gardner Denver S.r.l., Gardner Denver Schopfheim GmbH, Gardner Denver Schopfheim Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Schweiz AG, Gardner Denver Slovakia s.r.o., Gardner Denver Sweden AB, Gardner Denver Taiwan Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas GmbH (f/k/a ILMVAC GmbH), Gardner Denver Thomas Inc., Gardner Denver Thomas Pneumatic Systems (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Thomas Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Garo Dott. Ing. Roberto Gabbioneta S.r.l., Ghh-Rand Schraubenkompressoren Gmbh, HASKEL EUROPE LTD., HASKEL HOLDINGS UK LIMITED, HASKEL INTERNATIONAL LLC, Hamworthy Belliss & Morcom, Haskel France SAS, Haskel Sistemas de Fluidos Espana S.R.L., Hibon Inc., Highspeed Newco LLC, Hingerose Limited, ILMVAC (UK) Ltd., ILS Innovative Labor Systeme, ILS Inovative Laborsysteme GmbH, INGERSOLL RAND ITS JAPAN LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHANG ZHOU) TOOLS CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND (CHINA) INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING CO. LTD., INGERSOLL-RAND CHINA LLC, INGERSOLL-RAND COMERCIO E SERVICOS DE MAQUINAS E EQUIPAMENTOS INDUSTRIAIS LTDA., INGERSOLL-RAND DE PUERTO RICO INC., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL COMPANY B.V., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL SP. Z O.O., INGERSOLL-RAND INDUSTRIAL U.S. INC., INGERSOLL-RAND PHILIPPINES INC., INGERSOLL-RAND SPAIN S.A., INGERSOLL-RAND U.S. HOLDCO INC., IR HPS Holdco. Inc., ITO Emniyet, Ingersoll Rand Cyprus Investments Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Finance LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Investments LLC, Ingersoll Rand Global Ventures LLC, Ingersoll Rand Hong Kong Investments Limited, Ingersoll Rand Inc., Ingersoll Rand Investments (SG) Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll Rand Investments B.V., Ingersoll Rand Schweiz Investments Gmbh, Ingersoll Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand (China) Investment Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Guilin) Tools Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (Hong Kong) Holding Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Ab, Ingersoll-Rand Air Solutions Hibon Sarl, Ingersoll-Rand Beteiligungs Und Grundstucksverwaltungs Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Colombia S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Company Limited (Uk), Ingersoll-Rand Company South Africa (Pty) Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Cz S.R.O., Ingersoll-Rand De Mexico S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Equipements De Production S.A.S., Ingersoll-Rand Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Industrial Ireland Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International (India) Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand International Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Italia S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Italiana Manufacturing S.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Korea Holding Llc, Ingersoll-Rand Korea Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments II S.A R.I., Ingersoll-Rand Lux Investments S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Luxembourg Industrial Company S.A R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Machinery (Shanghai) Company Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Malaysia Co. Sdn. Bhd., Ingersoll-Rand S.A. De C.V., Ingersoll-Rand Services And Trading Limited Liability Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Company, Ingersoll-Rand Services Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Singapore Enterprises Pte. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand South East Asia (Pte.) Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Superay Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technical And Services S.A.R.L., Ingersoll-Rand Technologies And Services Private Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Technology R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ingersoll-Rand Tool Holdings Limited, Ingersoll-Rand Trading Gmbh, Ingersoll-Rand Vietnam Company Limited, Instrum Rand JSC, Interflex Datensysteme, Ir Canada Holdings Ulc, Ir Canada Sales & Service Ulc, Ir France Sas, Kryptonite corp, Lawrence Factor Inc., LeROI, LeRoi International Inc, MILTON ROY (HONG KONG) LIMITED, MILTON ROY (UK) LIMITED, MILTON ROY EUROPA B.V., MILTON ROY EUROPE SAS, MILTON ROY INDUSTRIAL (SHANGHAI) CO. LTD., MILTON ROY LLC, MILTON ROY US PURCHASER INC., MP Pumps Inc., Maximum AG Technologies Inc., Maximus Solutions, Mb Air Systems Limited, Nash Elmo, Officina Meccaniche Industriali Srl, Oina VV, Oina VV Aktiebolag, Plurifilter D.O.O., Pt Ingersoll-Rand Indonesia, Robuschi, Runtech Systems, Runtech Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Runtech Systems Inc., Runtech Systems OY, SEEPEX, Seepex (M) SDN, Seepex Australia Pty Ltd, Seepex Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mit Beschrankter Haftung, Seepex France S.a.r.l., Seepex GmbH, Seepex Inc., Seepex India Private Ltd., Seepex Italia SRL, Seepex Japan Co. Ltd., Seepex Nordic A/S, Seepex OOO, Seepex Pumps (Shanghia) Co. Ltd., Seepex UK Ltd., Shanghai CompAir Compressors Co Ltd, Shanghai Compressors & Blowers Ltd., Shanghai Ingersoll-Rand Compressor Limited, Shenzhen Bocom System Engineering Co., Superay, Syltone, TIWR Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG, Tamrotor Marine Comp AS Norway, Tecno Matic Europe s.r.o., Thomas Industries Inc., Trane Technologies, Tri-Continent Scientific Inc., Vacuum and Blower Systems division, Welch Vacuum Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zaxe Technologies Inc., Zeks Compressed Air Solutions Llc, Zinsser Analytic, Zinsser Analytik GmbH, Zinsser NA Inc., and crayon interface.

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B&G Foods, Inc. manufactures, sells, and distributes a portfolio of shelf-stable and frozen foods, and household products in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The company's products include frozen and canned vegetables, vegetables, canola and other cooking oils, vegetable shortening, cooking sprays, oatmeal and other hot cereals, fruit spreads, canned meats and beans, bagel chips, spices, seasonings, hot sauces, wine vinegar, maple syrups, molasses, salad dressings, pizza crusts, Mexican-style sauces, dry soups, taco shells and kits, salsas, pickles, peppers, tomato-based products, baking powder and soda, corn starch, cookies and crackers, nut clusters, and other specialty products. It markets its products under various brands, including Ac'cent, B&G, B&M, Back to Nature, Baker's Joy, Bear Creek Country Kitchens, Brer Rabbit, Canoleo, Cary's, Clabber Girl, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Davis, Devonsheer, Don Pepino, Durkee, Emeril's, Grandma's Molasses, Green Giant, Joan of Arc, Las Palmas, Le Sueur, MacDonald's, Mama Mary's, Maple Grove Farms of Vermont, McCann's, Molly McButter, New York Flatbreads, New York Style, Old London, Ortega, Polaner, Red Devil, Regina, Rumford, Sa-son, Sclafani, Spice Islands, Spring Tree, Sugar Twin, Tone's, Trappey's, TrueNorth, Underwood, Vermont Maid, Victoria, and Weber and Wright's. The company also sells, markets, and distributes household products under the Static Guard brand. It sells and distributes its products directly, as well as through a network of independent brokers and distributors to supermarket chains, foodservice outlets, mass merchants, warehouse clubs, non-food outlets, and specialty distributors. The company was formerly known as B&G Foods Holdings Corp. and changed its name to B&G Foods, Inc. in October 2004. B&G Foods, Inc. was founded in 1822 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey.
The following companies are subsidiares of MetLife: 10700 WILSHIRE LLC, 1201 TAB MANAGER LLC, 1350 EYE STREET MANAGER LLC, 1350 EYE STREET OWNER LLC, 150 NORTH RIVERSIDE PE MEMBER LLC, 1925 WJC OWNER LLC, 23RD STREET INVESTMENTS INC., 500 GRANT STREET ASSOCIATES LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, 500 GRANT STREET GP LLC, 6104 HOLLYWOOD LLC, AFP GENESIS ADMINISTRADORA DE FONDOS Y FIDECOMISOS S.A., AGENVITA S.R.L., ALICO HELLAS SINGLE MEMBER LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, ALICO OPERATIONS LLC, American Life Insurance Company, BEST MARKET S.A., BLOCK VISION HOLDINGS CORPORATION, BLOCK VISION OF TEXAS INC., BORDERLAND INVESTMENTS LIMITED, BOULEVARD RESIDENTIAL LLC, BUFORD LOGISTICS CENTER LLC, CC HOLDCO MANAGER LLC, CHESTNUT FLATS WIND LLC, CLOSED JOINT-STOCK COMPANY MASTER-D, COMPANIA INVERSORA METLIFE S.A., CORPORATE REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS LLC, COVA LIFE MANAGEMENT COMPANY, DAVIS VISION INC., DAVISVISION IPA INC., DELAWARE AMERICAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, EURO CL INVESTMENTS LLC, EXCELENCIA OPERATIVA Y TECNOLOGICA S.A de C.V., FORTISSIMO CO. LTD, FUNDACION METLIFE MEXICO A.C., GLOBAL PROPERTIES INC., General American Life Insurance Company, Grand Bank N.A., HASKELL EAST VILLAGE LLC, HOUSING FUND MANAGER LLC, INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL AND ADVISORY SERVICES LIMITED, INVERSIONES METLIFE HOLDCO DOS LIMITADA, INVERSIONES METLIFE HOLDCO TRES LIMITADA, LHC HOLDINGS LLC, LHCW HOLDINGS LLC, LHCW HOTEL HOLDING 2002 LLC, LHCW HOTEL HOLDING LLC, LHCW HOTEL OPERATING COMPANY 2002 LLC, LUMENLAB MALAYSIA SDN. BHD., Logan Circle Partners, MARKETPLACE RESIDENCES LLC, MC PORTFOLIO JV MEMBER LLC, MCJV LLC, MCPP OWNERS LLC, MCRE BLOCK 40 LP, MEC HEALTH CARE INC., MET 1065 HOTEL LLC, MET CANADA SOLAR ULC, METLIFE 1007 STEWART LLC, METLIFE 1201 TAB MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 425 MKT MANAGER LLC, METLIFE 425 MKT MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 555 12TH MEMBER LLC, METLIFE 8280 MEMBER LLC, METLIFE ACOMA OWNER LLC, METLIFE ADMINISTRADORA DE FUNDOS MULTIPATROCINADOS LTDA., METLIFE ALTERNATIVES GP LLC, METLIFE ASHTON AUSTIN OWNER LLC, METLIFE ASIA HOLDING COMPANY PTE. LTD., METLIFE ASIA LIMITED, METLIFE ASIA SERVICES SDN. BHD, METLIFE ASSET MANAGEMENT CORP., METLIFE ASSIGNMENT COMPANY INC., METLIFE BORO STATION MEMBER LLC, METLIFE CAMINO RAMON MEMBER LLC, METLIFE CAMPUS AT SGV MEMBER LLC, METLIFE CAPITAL CREDIT L.P., METLIFE CAPITAL LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, METLIFE CAPITAL TRUST IV, METLIFE CB W/A LLC, METLIFE CC MEMBER LLC, METLIFE CHILE ADMINISTRADORA DE MUTUOS HIPOTECARIOS S.A., METLIFE CHILE INVERSIONES LIMITADA, METLIFE CHILE SEGUROS DE VIDA S.A., METLIFE CHILE SEGUROS GENERALES S.A., METLIFE CHINO MEMBER LLC, METLIFE COLOMBIA SEGUROS de VIDA S.A., METLIFE COMMERCIAL MORTGAGE INCOME FUND GP LLC, METLIFE CONSQUARE MEMBER LLC, METLIFE CONSUMER SERVICES INC., METLIFE CORE PROPERTY FUND GP LLC, METLIFE CREDIT CORP., METLIFE DIGITAL VENTURES INC., METLIFE ENHANCED CORE PROPERTY FUND GP LLC, METLIFE EU HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, METLIFE EUROPE INSURANCE d.a.c., METLIFE EUROPE SERVICES LIMITED, METLIFE EUROPE d.a.c., METLIFE EUROPEAN HOLDINGS LLC., METLIFE FINANCIAL SERVICES CO. LTD, METLIFE FM HOTEL MEMBER LLC, METLIFE FUNDING INC., METLIFE GENERAL INSURANCE LIMITED, METLIFE GLOBAL BENEFITS LTD., METLIFE GLOBAL HOLDING COMPANY I GMBH, METLIFE GLOBAL HOLDING COMPANY II GMBH, METLIFE GLOBAL HOLDINGS CORPORATION S.A. De C.V., METLIFE GLOBAL INC., METLIFE GLOBAL OPERATIONS SUPPORT CENTER PRIVATE LIMITED, METLIFE GROUP INC., METLIFE HCMJV 1 GP LLC, METLIFE HCMJV 1 LP LLC, METLIFE HEALTH PLANS INC., METLIFE HOLDINGS INC., METLIFE HOME LOANS LLC, METLIFE INNOVATION CENTRE LIMITED, METLIFE INNOVATION CENTRE PTE. LTD., METLIFE INSURANCE AND INVESTMENT TRUST, METLIFE INSURANCE BROKERAGE INC., METLIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF KOREA LTD., METLIFE INSURANCE K.K., METLIFE INSURANCE LIMITED, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL HF PARTNERS LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED LLC, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND I LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND II LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND III LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND IV LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND V LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND VI LP, METLIFE INTERNATIONAL PE FUND VII LP, METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT EUROPE LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT HOLDINGS LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LLC, METLIFE INVESTMENTS ASIA LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENTS LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENTS PTY LIMITED, METLIFE INVESTMENTS SECURITIES LLC, METLIFE INVESTORS DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, METLIFE INVESTORS GROUP LLC, METLIFE IRELAND TREASURY D.A.C., METLIFE JAPAN US EQUITY FUND GP LLC, METLIFE JAPAN US EQUITY FUND LP, METLIFE JAPAN US EQUITY OWNERS BLOCKER LLC, METLIFE JAPAN US EQUITY OWNERS LLC, METLIFE LATIN AMERICA ASESORIAS E INVERSIONES LIMITADA, METLIFE LEGAL PLANS INC., METLIFE LEGAL PLANS OF FLORIDA INC., METLIFE LHH MEMBER LLC, METLIFE LIFE INSURANCE S.A., METLIFE LOAN ASSET MANAGEMENT LLC, METLIFE LONG SHORT CREDIT FUND LP, METLIFE LONG SHORT CREDIT MASTER FUND LP, METLIFE LONG SHORT CREDIT PARALLEL FUND LP, METLIFE MAS S.A. DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO HOLDINGS S. DE R.L. DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., METLIFE MEXICO SERVICIOS S.A. DE C.V., METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT FUND II LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT GP II LLC, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT GP LLC, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT II RATED FUND LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT PARALLEL FUND LP, METLIFE MIDDLE MARKET PRIVATE DEBT PARALLEL GP LLC, METLIFE MMPD II SPECIAL LLC, METLIFE MULTI-FAMILY PARTNERS III LLC, METLIFE OBS MEMBER LLC, METLIFE OFC MEMBER LLC, METLIFE ONTARIO STREET MEMBR LLC, METLIFE PARK TOWER MEMBER LLC, METLIFE PENSION TRUSTEES LIMITED, METLIFE PENSIONES MEXICO S.A., METLIFE PET INSURANCE SOLUTIONS LLC, METLIFE PLANOS ODONTOLOGICOS LTDA., METLIFE POWSZECHNE TOWARTZYSTWO EMERYTALNE S.A., METLIFE PRIVATE EQUITY HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE PROPERTIES VENTURES LLC, METLIFE RC SF MEMBER LLC, METLIFE REAL ESTATE LENDING LLC, METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF BERMUDA LTD., METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF CHARLESTON, METLIFE REINSURANCE COMPANY OF VERMONT, METLIFE RETIREMENT SERVICES LLC, METLIFE SECURITIZATION DEPOSITOR LLC, METLIFE SEGUROS S.A., METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING FINCO LLC, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING FUND LP, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING GP LLC, METLIFE SENIOR DIRECT LENDING HOLDINGS LP, METLIFE SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS LLC, METLIFE SERVICES CYPRUS LTD., METLIFE SERVICES EAST PRIVATE LIMITED, METLIFE SERVICES EEIG, METLIFE SERVICES EOOD, METLIFE SERVICES SOCIEDAD LIMITADA, METLIFE SERVICES SP Z.O.O, METLIFE SERVICIOS S.A., METLIFE SINGLE FAMILY RENTAL FUND GP LLC, METLIFE SINGLE FAMILY RENTAL FUND LP, METLIFE SOLUTIONS PTE. LTD., METLIFE SOLUTIONS S.A.S., METLIFE SP HOLDINGS LLC, METLIFE STRATEGIC HOTEL DEBT FUND GP LLC, METLIFE SYNDICATED BANK LOAN LUX GP S.A.R.L., METLIFE THR INVESTOR LLC, METLIFE TOWARZYSTWO FUNDUSZY INWESTYCYJNYCH S.A., METLIFE TOWARZYSTWO UBEZPIECZEN NA ZYCIE I REASEKURACJI S.A., METLIFE TOWER RESOURCES GROUP INC., METLIFE TREAT TOWERS MEMBER LLC, METLIFE WORLDWIDE HOLDINGS LLC, METROPOLITAN GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN GLOBAL MANAGEMENT LLC, METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN LIFE SEGUROS E PREVIDENCIA PRIVADA S.A., METROPOLITAN LIFE SOCIETATE de ADMINISTRARE a UNUI FOND de PENSII ADMINISTRAT PRIVAT S.A., METROPOLITAN TOWER LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN TOWER REALTY COMPANY INC., MEX DF PROPERTIES LLC, MFA FINANCING VEHICLE CTR1 LLC, MIDTOWN HEIGHTS LLC, MIM CAMPUS AT SGV MANAGER LLC, MIM CLAL GENERAL PARTNER LLC, MIM CM SYNDICATOR LLC, MIM EMD GP LLC, MIM I LLC, MIM LS GP LLC, MIM METWEST INTERNATIONAL MANAGER LLC, MIM ML-AI VENTURE 5 MANAGER LLC, MIM OMD MANAGER LLC, MIM PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LLC, MIM PROPERTY MANAGEMENT OF GEORGIA 1 LLC, MIM SPOKANE INDUSTRIAL MANAGER LLC, MIM THIRD ARMY INDUSTRIAL MANAGER LLC, MISSOURI REINSURANCE INC., ML 300 THIRD MEMBER LLC, ML ARMATURE MEMBER LLC, ML BELLEVUE MANAGER LLC, ML BELLEVUE MEMBER LLC, ML CAPACITACION COMERCIAL S.A. DE C.V., ML CERRITOS TC MEMBER LLC, ML CLAL MEMBER LLC, ML CORNER 63 MEMBER LLC, ML DOLPHIN GP LLC, ML DOLPHIN MEZZ LLC, ML HUDSON MEMBER LLC, ML MATSON MILLS MEMBER LLC, ML MILILANI MEMBER LLC, ML OMD MEMBER LLC, ML ONE BEDMINSTER LLC, ML PORT CHESTER SC MEMBER LLC, ML SENTINEL SQUARE MEMBER LLC, ML SLOANS LAKE MEMEBR LLC, ML SOUTHLANDS MEMBER LLC, ML SOUTHMORE LLC, ML SPOKANE INDUSTRIAL MEMBER LLC, ML SWAN GP LLC, ML SWAN MEZZ LLC, ML TERRACES LLC, ML THIRD ARMY INDUSTRIAL MEMBER LLC, ML VENTURE 1 MANAGER S. DE R. L. DE C.V., ML VENTURE 1 SERVICER LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 1 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 2 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 3 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 4 LLC, ML-AI METLIFE MEMBER 5 LLC, ML-URS PORT CHESTER SC MANAGER LLC, MLIA MANAGER I LLC, MLIA PARK TOWER MANAGER LLC, MLIA SBAF COLONY MANAGER LLC, MLIA SBAF MANAGER LLC, MLIC ASSET HOLDINGS II LLC, MLIC ASSET HOLDINGS LLC, MLIC CB HOLDINGS LLC, MLJ US FEEDER LLC, MM GLOBAL OPERATIONS SUPPORT CENTER S.A. DE C.V., MMP CEDAR STREET OWNER LLC, MMP CEDAR STREET REIT LLC, MMP HOLDINGS III LLC, MMP OLIVIAN OWNER LLC, MMP OLIVIAN REIT LLC, MMP OWNERS III LLC, MMP OWNERS LLC, MMP SOUTH PARK OWNER LLC, MMP SOUTH PARK REIT LLC, MNQM TRUST 2020, MREF 425 MKT LLC, MSHDF HOLDCO I LLC, MSV IRVINE PROPERTY LLC, MTL LEASING LLC, MTU HOTEL OWNER LLC, NATILOPORTEM HOLDINGS LLC, NEWBURY INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, OCONEE GOLF COMPANY LLC, OCONEE HOTEL COMPANY LLC, OCONEE LAND COMPANY LLC, OCONEE LAND DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LLC, OCONEE MARINA COMPANY LLC, OMI MLIC INVESTMENTS LIMITED, PACIFIC LOGISTICS INDUSTRIAL NORTH LLC, PACIFIC LOGISTICS INDUSTRIAL SOUTH LLC, PARK TOWER JV MEMBER LLC, PARK TOWER REIT INC., PJSC METLIFE, PLAZA DRIVE PROPERTIES LLC, PREFCO FOURTEEN LLC, PREFCO XIV HOLDINGS LLC, PROVIDA INTERNACIONAL S.A., SAFEGUARD HEALTH ENTERPRISES INC., SAFEGUARD HEALTH PLANS INC., SAFEHEALTH LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, SOUTHCREEK INDUSTRIAL HOLDINGS LLC, ST. JAMES FLEET INVESTMENTS TWO LIMITED, SUPERIOR PROCUREMENT INC., SUPERIOR VISION BENEFIT MANAGEMENT INC., SUPERIOR VISION HOLDINGS INC., SUPERIOR VISION INSURANCE INC., SUPERIOR VISION INSURANCE PLAN OF WISCONSIN INC., SUPERIOR VISION OF NEW JERSEY INC., SUPERIOR VISION SERVICES INC., Safeguard Health Enterprises, Security First Group Inc., THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH AVENUE MEZZANINE LLC, THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH RETAIL HOLDING LLC, THE BUILDING AT 575 FIFTH RETAIL OWNER, THE DIRECT CALL CENTRE PTY LIMITED, TRANSMOUNTAIN LAND & LIVESTOCK COMPANY, UVC INDEPENDENT PRACTICE ASSOCIATION INC., VERSANT HEALTH CONSOLIDATIONS CORP., VERSANT HEALTH HOLDCO INC., VERSANT HEALTH INC., VERSANT HEALTH LAB LLC, VIRIDIAN MIRACLE MILE LLC, VISION 21 MANAGED EYE CARE OF TAMPA BAY INC., VISION 21 PHYSICIAN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT COMPANY, VISION TWENTY-ONE MANAGED EYE CARE IPA INC., Versant Health, WDV ACQUISITION CORP., WFP 1000 HOLDING COMPANY GP LLC, WHITE OAK ROYALTY COMPANY, WHITE TRACT II LLC, and Willing.

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Citigroup Inc. is one of the worlds largest financial institutions. It is the 13th largest bank globally by assets and 8th by market cap with operations in consumer and institutional banking. In the US, Citigroup is the 3rd largest bank by assets and one of the Big Four deemed systemically important and too big to fail.

Citigroup Inc. was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York. The bank was run by Samuel Osgood who led the company with success for many years, even throughout the War of 1812. The bank was later renamed the National City Bank of New York in 1865 and by 1895 is the largest bank in the US. In 1913 it was the first contributor to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a few years later it began to expand into overseas territories.

The bank became the First National City Bank of New York after another merger in 1955 and then later, the New York part was dropped off as part of the 150th-anniversary celebration. By 1974 the company is known as Citicorp which is still the operational branch of the business and a global banking powerhouse. A merger with Travelers insurance group in 1998 resulted in the name Citigroup but the joint venture did not last. By 2002 Travelers was publicly traded once again but Citigroup retained the new name.

Today, the company is headquartered in New York, New York but boasts more than 200 million customer accounts in 160 countries worldwide. As of mid-2022, it operated 2,649 branches in the United States, Mexico, and Asia. The company reports nearly 725 branches in the US and 1499 in Mexico with the rest scattered throughout its territory. Total annual revenue topped $75 billion in 2022.

Citigroup is a diversified financial services holding company that owns Citicorp among other assets. The companys mission is to serve as a trusted partner providing responsible financial solutions to its clients. Citigroup provides financial products and services to consumers, corporations, governments, and institutions. The company operates in two segments, Global Consumer Banking (GCB) and Institutional Clients Group (ICG).

The GCB segment offers traditional banking services including deposit and saving accounts, credit cards, personal loans, home loans, and investment services. This segment operates through local branches and digital means. The ICG segment offers wholesale banking products and services to corporate, institutional, public sector, and high-net-worth clients.
By EMMA SSEMAMBO:

The ministry of tourism is looking to improve the tourism sector through improvement in the curriculum for training institutions.

This after ministry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Belgian government to promote the sector.

According to the Belgian ambassador, Huge Verbist, Uganda has a lot of tourist attractions but lacks the necessary funds to develop them.

He says in order to improve the standards of the sector his government will conduct regional campaigns through which interested students will be supported to improve their skills.

Meanwhile, the ministry of tourism commissioner Rosemary Twinomugisha says focus teaching of practical skills through partnerships with hotels.
South Jersey Industries, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides energy-related products and services. The company engages in the purchase, transmission, and sale of natural gas. It also sells natural gas and pipeline transportation capacity on a wholesale basis to residential, commercial, and industrial customers on the interstate pipeline system, as well as transports natural gas purchased directly from producers or suppliers to customers. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 147 miles of mains in the transmission system and 6,815 miles of mains in the distribution system; and served 384,062 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in southern New Jersey. In addition, it markets natural gas storage, commodity, and transportation assets on a wholesale basis for energy marketers, electric and gas utilities, power plants, and natural gas producers in the mid-Atlantic, Appalachian, and southern regions of the United States. Further, the company owns and operates rooftop solar-generation sites. Additionally, it owns oil, gas, and mineral rights in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania; acquires and markets natural gas and electricity to retail end users, as well as provides total energy management, fuel management, and energy procurement and cost reduction services. The company was founded in 1910 and is headquartered in Folsom, New Jersey.
United Rentals, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates as an equipment rental company. It operates in two segments, General Rentals and Specialty. The General Rentals segment rents general construction and industrial equipment includes backhoes, skid-steer loaders, forklifts, earthmoving equipment, and material handling equipment; aerial work platforms, such as boom and scissor lifts; and general tools and light equipment comprising pressure washers, water pumps, and power tools for construction and industrial companies, manufacturers, utilities, municipalities, homeowners, and government entities. The specialty segment rents specialty construction products, including trench safety equipment consists of trench shields, aluminum hydraulic shoring systems, slide rails, crossing plates, construction lasers, and line testing equipment for underground work; power and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning equipment, such as portable diesel generators, electrical distribution equipment, and temperature control equipment; fluid solutions equipment for fluid containment, transfer, and treatment; and mobile storage equipment and modular office space. This segment serves construction companies involved in infrastructure projects, and municipalities and industrial companies. It also sells aerial lifts, reach forklifts, telehandlers, compressors, and generators; construction consumables, tools, small equipment, and safety supplies; and parts for equipment that is owned by its customers, as well as provides repair and maintenance services. The company sells used equipment through its sales force, brokers, website, directly to manufacturers, and at auctions. The company operates a network of 1,360 rental locations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. United Rentals, Inc. was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
I disagree with your post on the relative seriousness of the email scandals. While Hillary made a serious error of judgement, there's no evidence that she was using a personal email server in an attempt to keep anything hidden. She used it as her primary email and didn't try to hide that fact. She also used it (at least initially) because of technological limitations of the government email systems. The current administration folks, however, apparently did not disclose their use of private email to Congress until it was publicly reported, and the current government email systems have caught up technologically. And to my mind, using two separate email systems, one a 'public' government account and one a private personal account, actually implies an attempt to keep certain emails out of the public eye. If you aren't trying to keep anything secret, why did you choose to send "this email" from a private, non-recorded account? I doubt they actually broke any laws (guess who else didn't break any laws), but it's at least as serious as the Hillary emails were.
Civil aviation authorities have launched a probe into a dangerous landing incident in Moscow involving a flight of the Emirati flagship carrier.

Emirates flight EK131 has caught attention of both Russian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities after it flew below standard level for passenger jet on September 10.

The plane, an Emirates Airbus A380 superjumbo reportedly flew dangerously low when approaching Moscows Domodedovo Airport.

According to Emirati General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), the aircraft descended below the glide slope on approach, meaning that the aircraft flew below the recommended height as it came into land, online media Gulf Business reports.

The plane came down to 400 feet at 8 nautical miles (14.8 kilometres) from the runway before pulling out of the approach and later landing safely, but only after a second unsuccessful attempt, the media says.

Passenger jets should fly over 2,000 feet when approaching the airport, at a distance like 8 nautical miles.

The airline confirmed the incident, noting that the GCAA is probing the flight.

Emirates runs two daily flights to Moscow.

A flight of Flydubai, an airline run by the Emirati government, crashed last year at an airport in the city of Rostov-on-Don, around 1,000 km south of Moscow, killing 62 people on board.

Preliminary investigations revealed that pilots error was main cause of the crash.
(HealthDay)Apparent diabetes treatment failures may in fact be attributable to nonadherence, according to a study published online Sept. 15 in Diabetes Care.

Yi-Ju Tseng, Ph.D., from Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues retrospectively analyzed unidentifiable member claims data from 52,544 individuals covered by Aetna who had two physician claims or one hospitalization with a type 2 diabetes diagnosis (2010 to 2015).

The researchers found that of 22,956 patients given second-line treatment, only 8.2 percent had evidence of recommended use of metformin in the prior 60 days, and 28.0 percent had no prior claims evidence of having taken metformin. Only 49.5 percent of patients could have had recommended use. An additional second-line antihyperglycemic medication or insulin was more likely in patients given their initial second-line medication without evidence of recommended use of metformin (P < 0.001).

"Despite published guidelines, second-line therapy often is initiated without evidence of recommended use of first-line therapy. Apparent treatment failures, which may in fact be attributable to nonadherence to guidelines, are common," the authors write. "Point-of-care and population-level processes are needed to monitor and improve guideline adherence."

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
(HealthDay)For many glaucoma patients, repeat trips to a doctor's office to check on their eyes can be a real pain.

But new research supports the usefulness of a device that allows glaucoma patients to measure their own eye pressurein the comfort of their own home.

Researchers found that among 100 glaucoma patients, most were able to successfully use the handheld device, called Icare HOME. That suggests that at-home measurements would be reasonable for many, the study authors said.

Glaucoma refers to a group of diseases where fluid builds up in the eye, creating pressure that damages the optic nerve. It's a leading cause of blindness in older adults, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Many people are familiar with the tests eye doctors use to detect and monitor glaucoma, including tonometry, which measures pressure within the eye. Doctors do it with an instrument that puts a small amount of pressure on the cornea using a tiny probe or puff of air.

The problem is, pressure within the eye shifts throughout the day, said Dr. Andrew Tatham, the lead researcher on the new study.

That means periodic office measurements may not tell the whole story, said Tatham, a consultant ophthalmologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

So Tatham's team decided to study a home device that is designed for "self-tonometry."

Icare HOME, developed by a Finnish company, is already on the market. It was approved in the United States earlier this year. Tatham and his colleagues wanted to find out how easily patients can use the product.

With funding from the UK's National Health Service, the researchers recruited 100 patients with either glaucoma or ocular hypertensionhigher-than-normal pressure in the eye that can lead to glaucoma.

Each patient received a 30-minute lesson on using the home tonometer, then the investigators watched as the patient tried it out. The patients' self-measurements were then compared against an eye doctor's measurementsusing standard office testingand the researchers' measurements using the home device.

Just under three-quarters of the patients met with success, the study found. The patients used the tonometer correctly and got readings within 5 points of what the professionals did with the same device.

A few others were able to take self-measurements, but ended up with readings that were more than 5 points off. The restone-fifth of the groupwere unable to manage the device.

The findings suggest that many glaucoma patients can manage the device, at least right after being shown how.

But that does not mean people need one, said Dr. Andrew Iwach, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. He was not involved in the research.

He said the concept of home tonometry is "a good one," and could prove useful in certain circumstances.

But should patients rush out to buy one of these? "No," Iwach said.

In theory, Tatham explained, home measurements could help doctors better monitor glaucoma patients, and know when treatment is necessaryor whether a current treatment is working well.

Treatmentincluding eye-drop medications and laser surgerycan help prevent further damage to the optic nerve and ward off vision loss.

But, Iwach said, eye pressure measurements are only "one piece of the puzzle." And doctors and patients will have to consider whether the burden of home measurements is worthwhile on a case-by-case basis.

"I think for most patients, our current techniques do the trick," Iwach said.

How does the home tonometer work? Users hold it over one eye, and a green light tells them when it's properly positioned. The device then sends out a tiny probe that "gently touches" the cornea for a few milliseconds, Tatham said.

There's no need for the numbing eye drops that doctors use for office measurements. In this study, Tatham said, most patients said the device was "comfortable to use."

But the most important question, he said, is whether home measurements will make a difference in patients' risk of vision loss.

"Studies are needed that examine whether having more pressure measurements from self-tonometry improves our ability to identify patients at higher risk of visual loss," Tatham said.

What's important, Iwach noted, is that adults get a "baseline" eye exam at age 40, and return for follow-ups as their doctor suggests.

"The good news," he said, "is that when we catch glaucoma early enough, we can help you maintain your vision."

The study results were published online recently in JAMA Ophthalmology.

More information: Andrew Tatham, FRCOphth., consultant ophthalmologist, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Andrew Iwach, M.D., clinical spokesperson, American Academy of Ophthalmology, San Francisco, and executive director, Glaucoma Center of San Francisco; Aug. 31, 2017, JAMA Ophthalmology, online Andrew Tatham, FRCOphth., consultant ophthalmologist, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Andrew Iwach, M.D., clinical spokesperson, American Academy of Ophthalmology, San Francisco, and executive director, Glaucoma Center of San Francisco; Aug. 31, 2017,, online The American Academy of Ophthalmology has more on glaucoma. Journal information: JAMA Ophthalmology

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
(HealthDay)Pulse oximetry (POX) plus cardiac auscultation is a reliable method for neonatal congenital heart disease screening, according to a study published online Sept. 22 in Pediatrics.

Xiao-jing Hu, Ph.D., from the Children's Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, and colleagues assessed the accuracy of POX plus cardiac auscultation for the detection of major congenital heart disease (CHD) in 15 Chinese hospitals (July 1, 2012, through Dec. 31, 2014). An abnormal POX or cardiac auscultation was defined as screen positive. Echocardiograph was performed on all screen-positive newborns.

The researchers found that the hospital screening rate ranged from 94.0 to 99.8 percent, with 167,190 consecutive asymptomatic newborn infants screened. In total, 203 screened newborns had major CHD (44 critical and 159 serious). The sensitivity of POX plus cardiac auscultation was 95.5 percent for critical CHD and 92.1 percent for major CHD, with false-positive rates of 1.2 and 1.1 percent, respectively.

"We show that using POX plus cardiac auscultation significantly improved the detection rate of major CHD in the early neonatal stage, with high sensitivity and a reasonable false-positive rate," the authors write.

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Steve Jobs' sandals sold for more than $200,000

Azerbaijan shells Armenian positions on border again

OPEC downgrades its forecast for global oil demand growth in 2022

White House: Biden and Xi Jinping agree on Blinken's visit to China

CNN: CIA chief Burns meets with SVR director Naryshkin in Ankara

Turkish FM Cavusoglu thanks Ararat Mirzoyan for condolences

Putin signs decree allowing stateless persons to serve in Russian army

Airbus CEO: There is no question of them breaking off trade ties

Armen Grigoryan receives Igor Khovayev

Britain and France sign agreement on strengthening cooperation on illegal migration

US updates its sanctions list for Russia: Milur Electronics LLC, an Armenian company listed

Potatoes prices grow by 20%: expert claims agriculture collapse in Armenia

Peskov says Russian-American talks in Ankara initiated by Washington

Morgan Stanley: UK and euro zone economies are likely to face recession

Xi Jinping hopes for comprehensive dialogue between NATO, the EU and the US and Russia

Japan proposes to deploy Australian nuclear submarines

Biden calls talks with Xi Jinping at G20 summit frank

WB: Debt levels among low- and middle-income countries soared in 2021

Xi Jinping: China does not intend to challenge the U.S.

Scholz: Adopting a joint G20 summit statement is a tough task

Biden and Xi Jinping oppose use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine

Nikol Pashinyan receives Russian co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group

IMF head warns of risks for world economy because of rivalry between China and US

Irakli Garibashvili: Georgia is ready to promote in every possible way the dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Red Wings airline launches direct flights from Makhachkala to Yerevan

Olaf Scholz: EU should expand its cooperation with Southeast Asian countries

Global Leadership Foundation will visit Armenia

Kurdistan Workers' Party denies its involvement in Istanbul terrorist attack

NATO Secretary General says they must not make mistake of underestimating Russia

IRGC resumes strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan

French and German central bank heads call for speeding up EU capital markets union

Control of U.S. House of Representatives depends on several tight races

Artsakh FM speaks with his Transnistria counterpart

Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus say they cannot accept migrants

Cavusoglu thanks Mirzoyan for condolences on terrorist attack in Istanbul

Xi Jinping and Joe Biden begin first face-to-face meeting in Bali

Zelenskyy arrives in Kherson

Armenian Defense Minister: After expiration of contract service 5 million drams will be provided to servicemen

Turkey refuses to accept U.S. condolences after terrorist attack in Istanbul

Defense Ministers of Georgia and Azerbaijan sign military cooperation plan for 2023

Russian Foreign Ministry denies reports about Lavrov's hospitalization in Bali

Yellen hopes Biden and Jinping meeting leads to engagement on macroeconomic issues

Russian Defense Ministry confirms violation of ceasefire in Artsakh by Azerbaijani Armed Forces

Artsakh MOD denies accusations of Azerbaijani MOD

Azerbaijani Defense Minister holds talks in Georgia

Armenian MOD denies another lie of Azerbaijani MOD

Germany warns its delegation about Egyptian spies at COP27

NSS of Armenia reveals channel of illegal migration

Azerbaijani State Security Service announces disclosure of 'Iranian spy network'

Politico: Indonesia, hosting G20, lobbies West to soften criticism of Russia in final communique

Ararat Mirzoyan expresses condolences to Mevlut Cavusoglu over Istanbul explosion

Iranian lawmakers sharply criticize Aliyev

Ambassador-at-Large: Azerbaijan's attacks on Armenia are a terrorist attack

Germany needs to diversify its business interests in Asia to reduce dependence on China

Head of U.S. Treasury Department says sanctions against Russia should remain in force even after war in Ukraine

Natasa Pirc Musar to become Slovenia's first woman president

IMF: World economic outlook even bleaker than predicted

Pashinyan: Azerbaijan calls Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh 'our citizens' and at the same time shoots at them

Turkish Interior Minister announces arrest of suspect in attack on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul

Alpine to make 3 electric crossovers

Number of injured in Istanbul blast rises to 81

Paul McCartney sells guitar for $77,000 to support Ukraine

Erdogan says preliminary findings after Istanbul bombing point to terrorist attack

Erdogan says number of victims of Istanbul bombing rises to six

Authorities forbid TV channels to broadcast from Istanbul bombing site

Istanbul blast: Governor reports 4 dead and 38 wounded

Media: Terrorist attack considered as one of versions of bombing in Istanbul

Blast in Istanbul: victims reported

Reuters: National Bank of Ukraine prepares banking system for power outages

Explosion hits pedestrian street in Istanbul

Former Pentagon official Michael Rubin calls for Turkey to be recognized as sponsor of terrorism

Bloomberg columnist says Japan may be preparing for war with China

Reuters: U.S. to demand EU colleagues to continue aid to Kyiv at G20

Washington Post: U.S. intelligence believes UAE tried to interfere in U.S. politics

Yeni Safak: Turkey increases sales of winter products, blankets in EU by almost third since beginning of year

Fox News: Trump has been silent on social media for over 24 hours amid Republican failures

Lebanon extradites to Iraq relative of Saddam Hussein

Financial Times: Kyiv plans to nationalize more private companies

U.S. Senate declares 'death' of Republican Party after congressional elections

Head of U.S. Customs resigned

President of Georgia Zourabichvili says about 100 thousand Russians settled in country

CNN: Democrats to retain control of Senate after congressional elections

Alen Simonyan: We are truly and sincerely committed to the peace agenda

Artak Beglaryan: Genocidal purpose is apparent

French maritime services rescue more than 140 migrants trying to swim across English Channel

Biden says he is satisfied with results of midterm elections in U.S.

Slovenia holds second round of presidential elections

'Witch' burned alive in India, 14 arrested

COVID-19 cases are expected to surge in Germany this winter

Dollar makes worst showing in week since early days of COVID-19 pandemic

Macron confirms France's readiness to support normalization of relations between Yerevan and Baku

Germany withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty

Is Jordan country that has not supplied arms to Armenia?: 'The press usually has reliable information'

European Commission approves nationalization of Russian Gazprom's German subsidiary

Pashinyan: If the state interferes with the exchange rate unnecessarily, the economy will only suffer

U.S. to work with strategic coalition of Southeast Asian countries

Armenian PM: To reform army, it is necessary to make military service more attractive

Defense Ministry: Azerbaijani Armed Forces opened fire at Armenian positions

Putin and Raisi discuss topical issues of the bilateral agenda

Blinken: Ukraine must decide on timing and content of any talks with Russia
YEREVAN.  Referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan may provoke an earthquake as it was in 1915 when Armenians faced Genocide, member of the Turkish parliament Garo Paylan said.

The earthquake can be very bloody, and in case of provocations Armenia will not be able to remain calm because of Karabakh, said Paylan, member of Democratic Peoples Party.

The Kurds, the MP continued, have demands, and 100 years later there is no answer to these demands.

100 years ago, Armenians also had demands, and, unfortunately, the answer was Genocide. Now the demands of the Kurds are similar to our demands 100 years ago. Kurds want Turkey to be democratic. But, unfortunately, the Turkish state conducts a nationalistic policy. Therefore, the Turkish troops are now on the border of Syria and Iraq. And this week the Turkish parliament will convene a meeting to give government the right to allow Turkish soldiers conduct an operation in Iraq and Syria, he added.

The authorities of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan will conduct an independence referendum on September 25, ignoring the opinion of the central authorities. In Baghdad, the vote is considered illegal, the parliament voted against it. Earlier this week representatives of the United States, France, Germany and the UN, at a meeting with the head of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, put forward an alternative proposal, urging to postpone the referendum.
South Korea on Thursday approved $8 million worth of humanitarian aid for Pyongyang in a move likely to muddle international efforts aimed at isolating the nuclear-armed state. The package will include $4.5 million in nutritional products for children and pregnant women through the World Food Program in addition to $3.5 million worth of vaccines and medicinal treatments via UNICEF. The timing of the delivery has yet to be confirmed. The news indicates South Korean President Moon Jae-In isn't backing down from direct engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even as other major players in the long-simmering crisis push for a tougher approach. President Donald Trump announced fresh sanctions against the rogue state on Thursday amid a swap of insults between the two leaders  Kim referred to the Republican's U.N. speech as "the most ferocious declaration of a war in history." Even China , which has long been reluctant to pressure the North, upped its stance on Thursday by ordering domestic banks to halt business dealings with the pariah nation, according to a Reuters report. Forging ahead with a softer stance on Kim despite the North's recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests "has put South Korea at odds with its U.S. and Japanese counterparts," political consultancy Stratfor said in a recent note. Earlier this month, Trump claimed on Twitter that Moon was "appeasing" Pyongyang, while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged Moon to reconsider his strategy during a telephone call last week. Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga has also warned against any actions that would undermine pressure on the North. Moon's conciliatory stance will certainly complicate efforts by the U.S. and Japan to isolate Kim , warned Stephen Nagy, associate professor at Tokyo- based International Christian University. To South Korea's defense, its latest aid disbursement was relatively small compared with earlier packages.

Seoul has provided an average of $11.79 million in assistance per year to North Korea for the past two decades with the exceptions of 1999, 2000 and 2016, Stratfor pointed out, adding that "Seoul has also said it will link timing of the aid with North Korean behavior  a difference from its earlier no-strings-attached stance." The last time South Korea sent relief to its northern neighbor was December 2015. Still, it remains to be seen whether resources will reach needy North Korean citizens instead of being diverted to the nation's elite or military  a key issue for international agencies.

Aid as a defense tactic The offer of humanitarian assistance could ultimately be necessary for South Korea's long-term survival. Seoul will bear the brunt of any North Korea retaliation so it can't apply too much pressure on Kim, Nagy said on Friday. "The idea is to educate North Koreans that they are getting aid from outside and show them that there's a care aspect to engagement," he said. While South Korea, the U.S. and Japan remain united on the main issues concerning the North, Seoul maintains a different perspective due to its potential front-line status in any conflict, echoed Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute. "Part of finding a diplomatic solution to the problem involves retaining options that allow North Korea to see a better future and not closing all possible doors, even if the current environment is not conducive to humanitarian efforts," he said.



More From CNBC


More than sloppy cybersecurity measures, the massive data breach uncovered at Equifax (NYSE: EFX) revealed inherent flaws in the U.S .: the over-reliance on Social Security numbers credit reporting system in need of reform. The Social Security number is a "chief means" of identifying and gathering information about an individual, according to website of the Social Security Administration . Among others, it is used in the opening of a bank account, application for loans and filing of tax returns. The wide usage in both government and private sectors, and the ease of using it to access highly-sensitive accounts, has made hacking systems such as credit reporting agencies more appealing, experts told CNBC.Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting firms in the U.S., suffered one of the largest breaches in the country. The company said on Sept. 7 that it discovered a breach on July 29 that could potentially affect 143 million consumers  nearly half of the U.S. population."I think people should focus on not just why the breach happened and Equifax's behavior, but why the consequences of a breach like this are so bad," said Joel Brenner, former inspector general of the National Security Agency."Why is it that it's so easy to steal people's identity based on the kind of information that's been stolen? I think we should begin to look at that end of it, we might do more than simply focus on cyber insecurity," he added.Equifax said the exposed data include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and some driver's license numbers. It also said that 209,000 credit card numbers were obtained, in addition to "certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers." Less than two weeks after revealing the compromise it discovered in July, the company said it faced another security issue earlier in March. While the company's security lapses have made it a low-hanging fruit for hackers, those incidents  and Equifax's subsequent handling of them  showed that consumers are at the losing end given the way the U.S. credit reporting system is structured, noted Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center . "It's an odd system that has developed in the USA for judging creditworthiness. We have three private companies that trade in, and profit from, vast amounts of highly sensitive information about American consumers. These companies are publicly traded, so their highest goal is to make money for their investors," she told CNBC in an email."And American consumers have no choice. Our information is included whether we want it or not. Plus, consumers are not the customers (but) our information is the commodity of the credit bureaus," she added.Should the U.S. re-think how credit reporting is done? The three major credit reporting firms in the U.S., Equifax, Experian (London Stock Exchange: EXPN-GB) and Transunion (NYSE: TRU) , collect data from credit card companies, banks and other large lenders about whether or not borrowers pay their debt on time. The companies may also incorporate public information, such as bankruptcy, into credit reports that they sell. That is a system not vastly different from countries such as Canada , the U.K. and Australia . In fact, each of the three major credit reporting firms in the U.S. has a presence in more than 20 countries globally, according to the company profiles on their respective websites. In particular, Equifax also operates in Canada and the U.K.  the two countries also affected in the data breach.Regulations in many of those countries do not require private credit reporting companies to get consent from individuals to use and process their personal data. However, laws that govern data protection and how those firms handle breaches differ from country to country. The European Union , for instance, will enforce from May 2018 a new General Data Protection Regulation that requires companies to notify the government within 72 hours of discovering a breach. In contrast, there is currently no such legislation on the U.S. federal level, although different states enact their own relevant statutes. In Singapore , a bill was passed in 2016 to allow its central bank and financial regulator greater oversight to license and supervise the Southeast Asian city state's credit bureaus. At the other end of the spectrum, China and Indonesia still largely rely on public credit registries. Increasingly, countries are looking to allow both public and private models to co-exist. China, for one, has allowed private firms to handle consumer credit information. The World Bank said in a 2013 report that both models have their merits but that "a well-functioning credit reporting infrastructure performs the role of a public good." That is what is lacking in the U.S. system and the set-up of public registries may help to tilt the balance in favor of better consumer protection, noted Wu from the National Consumer Law Center. Agreeing, Mark Testoni, president and chief executive of SAP National Security Services, said all stakeholders ought to guard databases that store such critical information as "national assets.""We need to guard them whether they're in the hands of private sector companies like Equifax or if the government has them," he said. "There is real value for these assets and there is market for this information." More than sloppy cybersecurity measures, the massive data breach uncovered at Equifax (NYSE: EFX) revealed inherent flaws in the U.S .: the over-reliance on Social Security numbers credit reporting system in need of reform. The Social Security number is a "chief means" of identifying and gathering information about an individual, according to website of the Social Security Administration . Among others, it is used in the opening of a bank account, application for loans and filing of tax returns. The wide usage in both government and private sectors, and the ease of using it to access highly-sensitive accounts, has made hacking systems such as credit reporting agencies more appealing, experts told CNBC. Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting firms in the U.S., suffered one of the largest breaches in the country. The company said on Sept. 7 that it discovered a breach on July 29 that could potentially affect 143 million consumers  nearly half of the U.S. population. "I think people should focus on not just why the breach happened and Equifax's behavior, but why the consequences of a breach like this are so bad," said Joel Brenner, former inspector general of the National Security Agency. "Why is it that it's so easy to steal people's identity based on the kind of information that's been stolen? I think we should begin to look at that end of it, we might do more than simply focus on cyber insecurity," he added. Equifax said the exposed data include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and some driver's license numbers. It also said that 209,000 credit card numbers were obtained, in addition to "certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers." Less than two weeks after revealing the compromise it discovered in July, the company said it faced another security issue earlier in March. While the company's security lapses have made it a low-hanging fruit for hackers, those incidents  and Equifax's subsequent handling of them  showed that consumers are at the losing end given the way the U.S. credit reporting system is structured, noted Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center . "It's an odd system that has developed in the USA for judging creditworthiness. We have three private companies that trade in, and profit from, vast amounts of highly sensitive information about American consumers. These companies are publicly traded, so their highest goal is to make money for their investors," she told CNBC in an email. "And American consumers have no choice. Our information is included whether we want it or not. Plus, consumers are not the customers (but) our information is the commodity of the credit bureaus," she added. Should the U.S. re-think how credit reporting is done? The three major credit reporting firms in the U.S., Equifax, Experian (London Stock Exchange: EXPN-GB) and Transunion (NYSE: TRU) , collect data from credit card companies, banks and other large lenders about whether or not borrowers pay their debt on time. The companies may also incorporate public information, such as bankruptcy, into credit reports that they sell. That is a system not vastly different from countries such as Canada , the U.K. and Australia . In fact, each of the three major credit reporting firms in the U.S. has a presence in more than 20 countries globally, according to the company profiles on their respective websites. In particular, Equifax also operates in Canada and the U.K.  the two countries also affected in the data breach. Regulations in many of those countries do not require private credit reporting companies to get consent from individuals to use and process their personal data. However, laws that govern data protection and how those firms handle breaches differ from country to country. The European Union , for instance, will enforce from May 2018 a new General Data Protection Regulation that requires companies to notify the government within 72 hours of discovering a breach. In contrast, there is currently no such legislation on the U.S. federal level, although different states enact their own relevant statutes. In Singapore , a bill was passed in 2016 to allow its central bank and financial regulator greater oversight to license and supervise the Southeast Asian city state's credit bureaus. At the other end of the spectrum, China and Indonesia still largely rely on public credit registries. Increasingly, countries are looking to allow both public and private models to co-exist. China, for one, has allowed private firms to handle consumer credit information. The World Bank said in a 2013 report that both models have their merits but that "a well-functioning credit reporting infrastructure performs the role of a public good." That is what is lacking in the U.S. system and the set-up of public registries may help to tilt the balance in favor of better consumer protection, noted Wu from the National Consumer Law Center. Agreeing, Mark Testoni, president and chief executive of SAP National Security Services, said all stakeholders ought to guard databases that store such critical information as "national assets." "We need to guard them whether they're in the hands of private sector companies like Equifax or if the government has them," he said. "There is real value for these assets and there is market for this information."



More From CNBC


At least George Clooney housed a refugee in his house, action speak louder than words.

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No, not in his house, in a staffed rental home in Kentucky. It's great but the young man in question was not a typical case--he didn't need a lot of additional support.

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george is hosting refugees in a home he owns not in a home he currently lives in. theres a huge diff.

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does he want a fucking gold star?

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Mfte

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He does often come across as tone deaf when he thinks he's being helpful, but I'm not sure I can fault him for not being up to hosting strangers in his home when he had a newborn.

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Yep. I think what helped save (some of) my sanity was having a routine and predictability when mine was a newborn. I don't know if I would have been up to bringing extra people into my home, either.

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I agree

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I wouldn't house a stranger in my home period tbh. I don't trust anyone

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Agreed. He's said a lot of shit in the past but I can't really bash him for putting his child first. It's what most people would do.

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ia, esp. after watching Mother! lmao

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ia

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All these British actors sound so stuck up and out of touch. Stop talking.

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well i think it's kinda stupid when people are calling for government action to be like 'well why don't YOU do it'. yes, that'd be great, but it shouldn't be entirely up to individuals to lead where the government should be.

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ia

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Exactly, it's like how I feel about corporations asking people to donate to natural disasters. You make more in a day than I will all year, lead by example, I will donate to people directly affected and not by you so you can write it off on your taxes.

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This is exactly how I feel.

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mte

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mte

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mte

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"we can do more as a society but not me specifically as a person"

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"And we did look into it. But we had, then, a very new baby"



That's reasonable imo. Hopefully they helped in other ways.

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I read this as they were still adjusting to life with a baby, which is fair.

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He and his wife both donated art (lol art, it was really bad) that raised a bunch of money, they signed petitions and stuff like that. I get the impression quite a lot of their money has gone to the refugee crisis. It was all of those articles on the Fail where people called him luvvie scum and asked why he wasn't housing any refugees....dude allows what people say about him get to him entirely too much. Just ignore it, bruh, and climb back on your spaceship.

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gah i hate the word 'luvvie', especially in DM comments. it tilts me so hard lol.

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https://torontolife.com/city/life/jim-estill-the-man-who-saved-200-syrian-refugees/ lemme cleanse my palate of this salamander with this story of a businessman who put up $1.5 million for Syrian refugees, gave them jobs and even took out a line of credit for a man to open up his own store

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it seems to be raining on my face all of a sudden tbh v weird!



seriously tho, what an angel this guy is <3

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That's amazing <3

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But doe he have a newborn baby!?1?!?!?

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Lol

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Another palate cleanser, the Toronto locations of Adonis Grocery have been hiring and helping Syrian refugees integrate into Canada.



https://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2016/03/01/syrian-refugees-find-new-family-at-first-jobs-in-canada.html Holy crap that is amazing!Another palate cleanser, the Toronto locations of Adonis Grocery have been hiring and helping Syrian refugees integrate into Canada.

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This article just made my day! Thank you SO much for sharing! <3

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Love this!

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My dad is part of a private group that sponsored a family from Syria. No, they don't live in my dad's house, but the group helped them find a home and get on their feet. I'm sure a lot of celebs are helping monetarily and that means a lot.

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Couldnt have said it better

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I protest: he says regular, run-of-the-mill stuff all messed up often too, as in he just doesnt make sense at all. No idea why.



TBH Im more surprised people dont know how complicated private housing of refugees can be, but I suppose it doesn't come up bunch. Money is always in shorter supply anyway.



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seriously like I think his heart is in the right place (I don't follow him) but dude let your actions speak louder than words!!

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this is reasonable idk why he has to explain himself, he doesnt have to let anyone into his home he doesnt want to. wtf

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he doesnt have to let anyone into his home he doesnt want to



Why does housing a refugee mean literally letting them into your home and not just providing them with a small apartment rent-free until they get on their feet?

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wtf

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Precisely. He makes enough to buy a small residential building and use it to house the refugees without it being under his roof. He's got a lot more financial options than most people.

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How do you know he hasn't done other things to help the refugees? He didn't say that he decided to do nothing at all for refugees because he had a newborn, he just said he decided not to bring them into his own home for that reason. He may very well have given money to help house and support them.

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I'm not sure of the specifics of the UK program, but personally sponsoring a refugee (as opposed to donating to an organization that sponsors them, which others have said he did) is generally an involved and time-consuming process.



One that a new parent who's probably already feeling overwhelmed might simply not feel capable of handling.

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BOURGEOISE CAPITALIST LOOOOL

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Open ur eyes, sheeple



https://benedicts-4th-testicle.tumblr.com/ lol, he has no baby lizards. It's all a stunt. First when his "wife" (aka his blackmailer) was "pregnant," she stuffed pillows up her shirt, and then when they were "born," they hired baby actors.Open ur eyes, sheeple

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Are these people as bad as Larries?

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Worse, I think. But there's fewer of them.

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What a sad life this person must have.

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Do these people think he's really with Martin Freeman? Or someone else? Or just that he isn't really in love with his wife?

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I can't believe I just read through all that, lol. That is some Supernatural-fangirl-level lunacy.

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Are...are we sure this isn't a parody account???? I need to believe that it might be.

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I love reading these. It honestly, 100%, legitimately makes me feel better about my shitty life when I read these nutters blogs and realize they actually believe this shit. To have so much hatred toward a woman who has literally never done anything to them, how sad their lives must be.

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man he has a way of saying things...entirely wrong



still tho ia with an above comment, that "why dont YOU!!" may apply here for him since he's a billionaire i guess, but generally an individual doesn't make up for a whole government

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Have any of you had a four month old baby? It is freaking hard enough to get through the day as it is without adding on another person to be responsible for.

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He's a millionaire. He could pay the rent to house a Syrian refugee. He doesn't literally need to give them his bedroom. He wouldn't even have to do any work, he could have his manager do it all for him while still claiming to the press "I paid a Syrian refugee's rent for a year because the government isn't doing enough to offer them support!"



He went "we looked in to helping and went meh, we're too busy to help people who literally have nothing, and didn't look in to other options. Oh well - but society should still do something!"

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MTE. It's like he is or was living in small one-bedroom apartment living pay check to pay check.

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where does it say they did nothing after deciding not to house refugees in their home



Edited at 2017-09-23 02:35 am (UTC)

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He covered legal fees for refugees who couldnt afford them.



Housing wasnt the big challenge with the Syrian refugeesand many from other countries tbh--it was money. You need money to go through the process. I don't understand why he responded to this, though, it's empty AF criticism. Most people aren't suitable for housing refugees for a variety of reasons and really $$ is more helpful.

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Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Generally cloudy. Temps nearly steady in the mid 30s. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 28F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
third

Sigh. I can't believe it's come to this. LookWhatYouMadeMeDo.mp3 [automatic replay set without permission].

Theft Rating:

Theft Rating:

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And my budget self would too lbr.

Theft Rating:

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Hamburglar High.

lift

In 2004,lead vocalistcame onto the scene with his highly successful band. The Las Vegas King alongside his best friend Ronnie and two other ungrateful mates Dave and Mark had an impact in the UK before the US and signed with a British label first in 2003 before even getting signed in the US with their breakout hit "" During the years he has displayed many fashionable looks throughout the past 14+ years. BFlow has never been shy to take risks and push the well fitted envelope. Naturally, imitators will follow and perhaps it's why thedecided to steal every piece Brandon previously owned & wore before moving his family from Las Vegas to Utah. Perhaps thesaid it best, "." Victims grab your freshly purchased "" CD/Vinyl's and Harries grab yourbrand toothbrushes to throw at me and maybe support his second single? Meanwhile let me put down thisfirst slice of birthday cake down and let's take a look at how Flowers inspired Fashionista to Maxxinista Harold Styles.A BFlowclassic lewk. Since 2004's "Brandon has wore a variation of well tailored pink suits and jackets. Harold however chose a poorly fitted pink suit from the tiny ass men's section fromwhile waiting and shopping with his model girlfriend -Opting for a slimmer and sleeker ribbon bow tie Brandon once again shows a cleaner and better color & style pairing. Harold didn't completely fail however, props.was a great choice this time around.Yves Saint Laurent VSYves Saint Laurent.Pero like...hook it up? What lady? Asking for a friend...Again Flowers shows us why he's "" A more minimalistic approach with the design and a little splash of red with buttons on the jacket without going too circus on us. Another poorly fitted suit but not completely tragicpick up fromfor Harold. He's real.mp3Harold is wearing the H&M inspired version of this designer button up.Leather VS Pleather.Learn something from this.Either go big or go GOLD. BFlow went for it and also a went for fitted. Harry for whatever reason can't stop associating Tailor with Taylor. Get over it, man.rue21 VS rue21. stars, they're just like us.Fall 2017 Yves Saint Laurent VS Yves Saint Laurent. get it Harry who cares, it's a brand name. i'm pressed. if i had gone to Ross just 10 minutes before you...you know i'm not even upset that was afor you.Me + Image Sources 1
Has anyone else made contact with their families or friends? I haven't heard from my great-grandpa or auntie in about a week now. My brother is trying to get a flight down there as soon as he can and I am debating going with him.



Also, where else have you donated, ONTD?

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i havent been able to make contact either...im desperate idk what to do...i know the place some family members lived had to evacuate bc the river that's near their home overflowed but idk if they did indeed evacuate and it's making me anxious...this is horrible



hope you get to make contact with your family soon.

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I haven't heard anything. Most of my family is in or around Aguadilla. It's pretty much a "wait and see" situation at this point.

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Nothing yet. I hope you all are able to get in contact soon.

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Just with my sister, uncle and a few friends. I can't take this anxiety anymore! I haven't slept since Tuesday and I can't bare to eat or even drink water out of guilt. This is just beyond painful.

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The lack of comments in all the Puerto Rico/Mexico posts here have been depressing and appalling, I don't know why I expected otherwise.

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yep. pretty much tells you all you need to know about ONTD's users. check all the latino/hispanic posts and you'll see the same shit.

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i was gonna say the same thing, nobody gaf about PR unless it's for their vacation



but that's ok bc puerto ricans are used to only having each other and their families to rely on and they keep it movin

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It's really disheartening to see this happen and one natural disaster over another :(. I was in shock over Mexico especially so I was in the city a few years back.



I hope ONTDers in Puerto Rico and their loved ones on the island are safe and sound. It would be really unjust if the US doesn't highlight this since PR is a part of the US.

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Since PR is part of the US, what can we do/say to get our reps and senators to help them?

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I personally wouldn't know (I'm Canadian) but I know Charity Navigator is a good source for sending funds towards relief and how they find organizations.

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I'll look into it.

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Senator Nydia Valezquez, who herself has had no contact with her family, is going to push for an emergency recovery package for PR plus an exemption for PR to pay into The Jones Act for at least a year. Please write in support of this to your representatives.



Edited at 2017-09-23 07:53 pm (UTC)

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Thank you!

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This is just horrible. :( my coworker's wife was able to get in touch with her fam but my other coworker wasn't. :( I can't imagine how scary that is





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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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Thank you for the Carmelo link. I've been wanting to donate but wasn't sure where would be the best place.

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Don't forget the people of Dominica and the other Caribbean Islands affected by this please! In PR we were helping with all recovery efforts for them. We need to help them too!

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that was my plan when i originally made this but it took me forever to figure out how to embed shit (and wound up messing up anyway) and then i got busy making phone calls trying to see if any of my relatives have come into contact with any of the family in PR and never got back.



nobody gives a shit tho lbr

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hurricane season is truly not fucking around. i'm so devastated for everyone in PR.



same for the caribbean islands and mexico. these are areas that have SO little affect on global warming and yet.

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For years, no one knew what became of legendary and influential bluesman Blind Blake. But a couple years ago, Grafton's Angela Mack Reilly found not only where Blake spent his final years, but where he died and is buried. Here's her own diary of discovery.

April 3, 2011

Alex van der Tuuk emailed me that some important information had been obtained about Blind Blakes death. He asked if I would be willing to try to search and obtain a death certificate from Milwaukee. I said that I would, especially since it is in such close proximity to me and that my schedule had freed up a bit. He emailed me the small obituary excerpt (from The Chicago Defender newspaper) that Rob Ford had found containing the date of Arthur Blakes death as well as his Milwaukee address.

April 4, 2011

I first drove around North 10th Street in Milwaukee to try to find his home. I asked a Time Warner employee for assistance. The neighborhood was African-American and largely run down. I could not find his address. I found some factories, a Baptist church, a school that had been ruined by fire, some newer built multi-unit buildings and Leinenkugels brewery in the area. The area is known as Bronzeville  Milwaukees great African-American district that had a thriving music scene at one time.

Next, I tried to find the funeral home that buried him. But it didnt seem to be in existence. Oddly, I found a Paramount sign on a building along Cherry Street where his funeral home was. I took pictures.

Then I went to the Milwaukee County Courthouse and applied for a non-certified copy of Arthur Blakes death certificate. I filled out a self-addressed envelope and they told me that it would arrive within two weeks. Upon Alexs prompting, I visited the Milwaukee County Historical Society to search city directories for an Arthur Blake. I began with the year that he died. He was listed in the 1934 directory as living at 1844B North 10th St. with Beatrice. He was listed in the 1933 directory as living with Beatrice at 621 W. Brown St. in Milwaukee. He was also listed here as a musician. Arthur Blake was also listed in the 1932 directory as living with Beatrice. His occupation was listed as an artist and living at 621 W. Brown in Milwaukee. He was not listed in the 1931 or '30 directories.

I tried to obtain any other information about Blake at the Historical Society but could not find any.

When I got home, I emailed Alex immediately with the information that I dug up. He said that Beatrice was certainly a surprise. He was hopeful that Blake was listed as a "musician" and "artist."

April 7, 2011

The death certificate from the Courthouse arrived. My initial feeling was fear. I was scared to open it. I knew that the envelope in my hands most likely contained information that would finally lead to more clues about Arthurs life and how he died. I knew that researchers around the globe had long looked for this one particular document in my hands. It was almost like a "Holy Grail" of a document that I felt extremely humbled to open.

I hesitated for about 5 minutes and carried it around the house with uncontrollable shouts of elation and fear. My son David was home. I was trembling. I wanted to video the opening but was in too much of an excited state. I took photos of the unopened letter. Finally, I ripped the letter open by hand and took photos of the process. First thing I noticed? Cause of death. Pulmonary Tuberculosis. THAT was a surprise. Next I noticed his birthplace. Newport News, Va. Another surprise. Immediately I emailed Alex that it had arrived. My email text? "OMG OMG OMG" with a request for him to call me ASAP.

While I waited for him to contact me, I noticed that Blakes burial place was listed as Evergreen Cemetery. I did some Google searches and was shocked to see that there was an Evergreen Cemetery close by and just south of me in Glendale. It appeared that the cemetery had been renamed as Glen Oaks Cemetery. I called the number listed online. Surprisingly, somebody answered.

"I am wondering if there is an Arthur Blake in your cemetery."

"Can I ask what this is for?" he asked.

"Im doing some research. Is Arthur Blake buried there?"

"Let me check the records. When did he die?"

"December 1, 1934."

"Yes, we have an Arthur Blake here who died in 1934. His address was 1844 N. 10th St.?"

"Yes. Thats the one. I will be driving down there right now."

I was surprised that the cemetery that Arthur Blake was buried in was so close to me! I started jumping up and down for joy, laughing and shouting, "You son of a gun!" I marveled that his cemetery was on the same road as the pressing plant and recording studio in Grafton. (12th Avenue in Grafton leads into Green Bay Road otherwise known as the historic Green Bay Trail once paved by elk, Indians and recording artists.)

I got lost. My mind was in such an excited state. I forgot to write down the address of the cemetery. I just drove. Friends were calling me on my cell phone. But I declined them all. I just wanted to get to Blakes grave as quickly as I could. Nothing else mattered.

When I got to Glendale, I noticed that the area contained a lot of African-Americans. I stopped at a gas station to ask where the cemetery was. They didnt know. I asked a lady at the gas station. She didnt know. So I kept driving south on Green Bay Road.

At last! There it was! I took a left and pulled in to take a picture of Glen Oaks Cemetery in Glendale. I went to the office. The person manning the office was occupied for a good 5 minutes. So I took photos of my documents and inside of the office to help calm my nervous energy.

When he came to greet me, I asked if there was any documentation on Arthur Blake that I could see. He said that he already printed it out and then handed it to me. I asked for directions to the cemetery plot. Realizing that it was in a very remote part of the cemetery, I kindly asked him to lead me to it. Meanwhile, Alex called and I tried to give him as much information as possible over the phone while trying to contain myself. I told him to call me back in a half hour. Hopefully by then I could visit the grave site and give him more information.

The employee brought me to a remote part of the cemetery in the back that was obviously unkempt. He tried to help me find Blakes grave. But we couldnt find it. He kept insisting that it was in one place. But I pointed to the unkempt area and said, "Dont you think he might be over there?"

"God I hope not. Theyre digging a road there."

He said that he would go back to the office to look up names nearby on the computer. He directed me to call him.

While I waited for him to drive back to the building, I quickly and frantically looked at all of the gravestones in the unkempt area. I saw a lot of "Mother so and so" and "Brother so and so" names on the stones. I saw a lot of garbage and hidden gravestones. I quickly tried to clean each one up looking for Blakes name. NOTHING.

So I called him. "Im at so and sos grave right now."

"You need to go to the next row."

"OK. Now I am at so and sos grave."

"Head north."

We went back and forth like this for quite some time. Finally, we determined that the exact location where Blake was buried did not have a tombstone. The records at the cemetery have him listed as being a single large grave 72 Range 115. Caroline Harvey was the closest tombstone to that. She was born in 1896 and died in 1934. Just north of him in Range 114 lies Willie Mae Hess, who died in 1935.

Alex called back. I stood at Arthur "Blind" Blakes grave while talking to my world renowned Paramount research friend. It seemed fitting that we should be on the phone together at that particular moment. It was very special. Alex deserved to be a part of that moment. But with him in the Netherlands, it was impossible for him to be there physically. He requested more clarification on Arthurs parents. At that point, the certificate was in my car a good few blocks away. I told him that I would walk to my car, contain myself and go through the certificate information with him once again while sitting in my car.

Directly east of Blakes unmarked grave lies a bush. Inside the bush is a forgotten tombstone, garbage and an American flag. Hes buried in the farthest back, farthest east and "forgotten part" among many other presumably African-Americans. I had to tromp through the mud to get there. The cemetery dumps dirt back in that area. Many of the stones are damaged and remote hiding under trees and such.

I took photos of the unmarked grave, his neighboring deceased, my muddied feet which had collected burs, as well as my expressive face.

Clearly, this has been one of the best days of my life. And I want to stress that this was a team effort between Alex van der Tuuk, Bob Eagle, Rob Ford, Eric LeBlanc and myself. We all did our part. I was just fortunate enough to be able to reel the fish in. This discovery about Blind Blake will surely be remembered throughout history and around the world. I am honored and humbled that somehow a fellow musician and music teacher got to first visit Arthur Blakes grave. It felt very kindred. Definitely spiritual. I am truly honored and humbled. Alex is convinced that it wont be an unmarked grave for long. Arthur "Blind" Blake is among the blues legends. And we finally found our man. AMEN to that.

April 8, 2011

I drove to Milwaukee again upon Alexs prompting to try to obtain a marriage certificate for Arthur and Beatrice and to look in city directories for Beatrice. When I arrived to Milwaukee, I noticed Brown Street and tried to find one of Blakes homes. I noted that it was just a few blocks from Martin Luther King Drive. The home is no longer there. Multi-unit housing has been put in its place. There is a very large nursing home in the area, some big churches and a park north of where he lived.

I went to the Milwaukee Courthouse to try to apply for a marriage certificate. I was informed that I must search the archives myself and that if I found the information I was looking for, they would mail it to me. I searched the Milwaukee "Index of Marriages" 1928-34 for both bride and groom but did not find any evidence of a marriage in Milwaukee between those years. Unfortunately, I went away from the courthouse empty-handed.

I then went to the Milwaukee Historical Society to look in city directories for Beatrice Blake. According to the directories, she lived at various locations in the Bronzeville district between 1932 and 1949. Only one occupation was listed for her in the 1944-45 combined directory as a rag cutter for Acme Sanitary Wiper & Waste Company. I also searched for Beatrice McGee in the 1930 and 1931 directory to no avail. I sent all of the information to Alex along with a few details on an Alice that was listed.

I looked at the "Marriage Index" 1926-40. Apparently this is the index of people who register at city hall and not the courthouse. Arthur and Beatrice were not listed. However an Alice (Roben) Blake was listed in October 1932.

I inquired about information on Musicians Union Local 8 as well as Bronzeville information. The "Bronzeville Collection" listed in the card index consisted of a thin folder with current newspaper articles, a book that Avena Ivory wrote and a press release about a new "The Streets of Bronzeville Research Collection" at the Smithsonian. I was surprised that the Milwaukee Historical Society has a ton of information about the Italian immigrants to the area but virtually none about the African-American immigrants who occupied a very large part of Milwaukee.

Upon Alexs request, I called the Milwaukee Public Library Art, Music and Recreation Dept. for any information about black and/or Musician Union Local 8. The only item available was an article written in 1978.

Also upon Alexs request, I called the cemetery back to see what "Part donation" on Arthur Blakes cemetery records meant. Apparently it means that it was a County Burial (the County paid for it) and body parts were donated.

I called back a second time and the man who initially helped me answered the phone. I asked him if they had a Beatrice Blake there who might have possibly died around 1950. He told me that Beatrice Blake is indeed there. Grave 35. Row 4. Block 9. Section 3. He told me that this area, too, is a very remote area with very few tombstones. I inquired about other information. He said that she was buried May 23, 1953. She lived at 1015 W. Walnut St. at the time. He didnt think that she has a headstone.

I thanked him for his assistance and mentioned that I would be in shortly to get a copy of that record. I said, "Sir, if anything is published in regards to this research would you like to be credited?"

"Absolutely not. I want to be anonymous. What is this for anyways? Is this genealogy or just what is it?"

"Sir, its ... its just research."

"Yeah, but where is this going to be published? Who is this for?"

"Sir Im not permitted to say right now."

"Well I certainly do not want to be mentioned especially because I dont have any idea what this is about."

I could tell that he was getting angry and was probably very confused about all of the fuss over two unmarked African-American graves. So even though I know his name, I will honor his wish to not be "any part of it."

April 9, 2011

My husband and I went to the Milwaukee Public Library. Upon Alexs suggestion, I tried to check the December 1934 newspapers in the area. I looked through both the Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel microfilms for Dec. 1-5, 1934. I did not see any mention of Arthur Blakes death in the obituaries, death announcements or burial requests. I also looked at the entire funeral ads listed near the death announcements and could not find Raynors Funeral home.

I asked the librarian if there were any African-American publications around 1934. She said that the earliest (that they have on file at least) is the Milwaukee Globe that began in 1948. I told her that I was looking for additional newspaper documentation of a 1934 death. She said that it cost money to purchase obituary notices, death announcements, etc., so, most likely, somebody who was poor would not have been mentioned in the papers back then.

Next we went back to Glen Oaks Cemetery to gather documentation about Beatrice Blake. I showed the employee my Milwaukee Bronzeville book and told him that I was doing historical research on African-Americans in that area. That largely put him at ease.

I asked if he had any information on the Raynor Funeral Services and confirmed again that Arthur and Beatrice were "County burials." He confirmed and mentioned that the funeral service probably serviced at a reduced cost.

I also inquired for a map of the cemetery. He made some edits to the map particular in section 9. He added two asterisks and broke it down into smaller subsections and pointed out the infant section that is west of Arthur Blakes spot. A lot of the infants were from the late '20s. There is some confusion because Blakes cemetery documentation lists him as being in Block 7. However, in reality I was directed to Block 9. Blake is north of the dirt road indicated on the map and east of the infant section.

I wanted to go back to obtain documentation on Caroline Harvey who is allegedly in Block 7 Row/Range 115 and Single Grave number 71. But by the time I got back to the office, he was gone.

Pat also noted the disorganization of Block 9 and took photos. The rows and the stones are very unkempt making it difficult to navigate. Like I said, if Caroline Harvey is listed in her cemetery records as indicated above, there is a great chance that is the exact spot where Blake is buried. If not, then a mystery is on our hands.

Im concerned/confused because I was told that in Section 7, Single Grave 1 begins south (next to the railroad tracks) and the numbers go up as you go north. However, the grid on Arthurs cemetery document indicates the opposite. South of the railroad tracks is total demolition. There was a huge pile of blown up concrete there today. I am not sure what the grid on Blakes document means. There is not a grid on Beatrices document.

Beatrice is listed as being buried May 23, 1953. She lived at 1015 W. Walnut St. at the time. She was also a "part donation" (body parts were donated because its a "County burial"). Undertaker listed at OBee Funeral Home.

When I got home, I read through sections of Joe Trotters book, "Black Milwaukee." In it he talks about Raynors and OBee Funeral Home. These African-American-owned businesses were a source of neighborhood pride.

Aug. 29, 2012

Thanks to Mathieu Memorials Arthur Blind Blake will have a "grass marker" for his unmarked grave. The stone will soon be shipped from Connecticut to Wisconsin.
The flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has come to a virtual halt, Dhaka officials said Saturday, almost a month after violence erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine State and sent nearly 430,000 people fleeing across the border. Officials gave no reason for the dramatically reduced numbers. But Rohingya Muslim leaders said it could be because villages located near the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state were now empty. Bangladesh Border Guard commanders said hardly any refugees are now seen crossing on boats coming from Myanmar or trying to get over the land border. In the past two weeks there have been up to 20,000 people a day entering Bangladesh. The UN says 429,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since attacks by Ronhingya militants in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major Myanmar military crackdown. Many gave up money and jewellery to get places on boats crossing the Naf river, which marks part of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. "Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over," Bangladesh Border Guard commander S.M. Ariful Islam told AFP. The United Nations also said "the influx has dropped". It said it will now release updates on the numbers of refugees entering Bangladesh once a week, rather than daily. - Deserted villages - Rohingya community leaders said most of the Rakhine villages near the Bangladesh border are now deserted. "Almost all the people I know have arrived in Bangladesh," Yusuf Majihi, a Rohingya leader at a camp at Balukhali, near Cox's Bazar, told AFP. "Village after village has become empty due to the attacks by Myanmar soldiers and torching of the houses by Moghs (Buddhists)," he added. "Those who are left in Rakhine live far off the border," he said. Farid Alam, another Rohingya leader, said "I have not heard of any Rohingya crossing the border in the past five days. All I could see is people concentrating near the main camps." Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased "clearance operations" targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmar's border area. The United Nations previously said the military crackdown could amount to "ethnic cleansing". But despite the calm on the border, there were new signs of unrest in Myanmar. While the army chief blamed Rohinyga militants for an explosion outside a mosque in Rakhine, Amnesty International accused the military of starting fires in the region to prevent refugees from returning. Myanmar commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing issued a statement saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in Buthidaung township on Friday. The army chief accused militants of trying to drive out around 700 remaining villagers. Analysts highlighted however that the militants' influence depends on the networks they have built across Rohingya communities. Amnesty said new videos and satellite imagery indicated fires were still raging through Rohingya villages, scores of which have already been burned to the ground. According to government figures, nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine have been abandoned over the past month. Human Rights Watch on Saturday also echoed allegations from Bangladeshi officials that Myanmar security forces were laying landmines along the border. A number of Rohingya, including children, have been killed by mines at the border. - Brink of disaster - Bangladesh authorities are meanwhile stepping up efforts to bring order to the chaotic aid distribution for refugees. Soldiers have been deployed around a 70 square kilometre area where Rohingya have built camps on hills or in open spaces near existing UN run camps. "We are in the process of taking over the whole relief distribution," an army spokesman told AFP. He said the troops would dig hundreds of latrines for refugees after doctors warned that the camps were on the brink of a health disaster. Even before the latest exodus, the camps were home to some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine.
By Stephen Eisenhammer DUNDO, Angola (Reuters) - Captured by militia and accused of being married to a Congolese government official, Kimpanga Caro could smell the fire she was told would be used to burn her decapitated head to ash. Caro, whose husband is a pastor not an official, was freed when one of the militiamen recognised her. She raced back home to find her husband in their ransacked village. They fled south, on foot with their five children, towards a country they heard was safe: Angola. Thirty thousand of her compatriots have made the same journey so far, among 1.4 million people driven from their homes in a year of violence in the central Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are signs that the refugee crisis is causing Angola -- a powerful regional ally that helped sustain Congolese President Joseph Kabila and his father in power for two decades -- to question its support for the leader of its volatile neighbour. At least 3,300 people have been killed in Kasai since the Kamuina Nsapu militia launched an insurrection to force a military withdrawal from the area. Refugees say villages have been destroyed and women have been raped both by the militiamen and by soldiers who have fought them. Their flight into the Angolan province of Lunda Norte has brought an international relief effort to the area for the first time since Angola's own 27-year civil war ended in 2002. A cooling in Angolas support for Kabila would leave the Congolese president more isolated than ever and make it even harder for him to hang on to power beyond the end of this year, when he has pledged to hold an election already a year late. Angola, with the third largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the region's strongest militaries, has twice in the past sent troops to prop up Kabila. Now, its soldiers are trying to contain the violence on the frontier. Luanda has doubled its troops and police on the border, according to Marcelino Caetano, provincial director of the Service for Migration and Foreigners, responsible for Lunda Norte province's 770-kilometre border with the DRC. We will maintain this level of control for as long as we have to, he said in his cramped, well-guarded offices in Dundo, an old diamond mining town just 9 kilometres from the border, declining to give exact numbers for Angolan troops in the area. Angola had pushed Kinshasa to allow U.N. officials into Kasai to help, but the Congolese have declined, he said. Since March, two Angolan border guards and one immigration official have been killed in attacks by Congolese militia on four separate border posts, said Inacio Feliciano, a senior police commander. Aid agencies suspect Angolan forces are patrolling inside Congo, though Caetano denied this. NEW LEADER The unrest is not the only change that could alter Angola's policy of supporting Kabila: in Luanda, a new president is about to take power after 38 years of rule by Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Joao Lourenco, a military man and former defence minister, lacks dos Santos's historic ties with Kabila and his father Laurent, who took power in Congo in 1997 and was killed in 2001. Lourenco regards Kabila as an increasingly destabilising force, according to a diplomat familiar with his thinking, although the diplomat said military intervention against Kabila remains unlikely as it would probably make things worse. He doesnt want a Libya on his doorstep. Angola has worried about the 2,600-kilometre border it shares with the DRC for decades. During Angola's civil war, enemies of the ruling MPLA party hid, trained and armed in the former Zaire. Unrest in the vast, mineral rich Congo has had a tendency to draw its neighbours into regional conflict. With the victims of the Kasai violence now crossing into Angola and the threat of militia groups moving across the border too, the benefit of keeping Kabila as an ally is less obvious. At the Chissanda crossing last week, located just north of Dundo, two officials said the border was closed. Guards sat around chatting and watching the sun set. Authorities say they are letting refugees cross, though the stream has stopped in recent weeks. Some are even choosing to return home. The Congolese army says it has taken back control of Kasai, though Commander Feliciano said he had received reports of clashes around the city of Kananga on Sept 7. Refugees interviewed by Reuters told of soldiers raping and executing residents for supporting the militia in villages the army had taken back. We expect it to get worse again as we approach the end of the year, said Guy-Rufin Guernas, the local head for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Dundo. Kabila agreed to hold presidential elections, due in 2016, by December. But the vote looks unlikely to happen by then, potentially sparking a violent backlash. UNHCR is working on the basis that another 50,000 refugees could cross into Angola before 2017 ends. To accommodate them, a new settlement is being constructed about 100 km outside Dundo, in the municipality of Lovua. Last Wednesday, recent arrivals were digging up roots on the 25x25 metre plots of land that families are being given in this remote area of sparse forest. Getting equipment, from solar lights to bulldozers, is difficult and expensive. Located at the north-eastern tip of Angola, Dundos airport only just re-opened. Most goods are brought in by truck from Saurimo, the provincial capital of neighbouring Lunda Sul, three hours away. At night there is almost total darkness. Buying basic goods is difficult. The cost of taking in the refugees is steep for Angola, which is in the midst of recession after the fall in the price of oil, its main source of wealth. Angola has had its own war, it understands the suffering these people are going through, said Guernas. In Cacanda, an earlier more ad-hoc settlement where nearly 7,000 refugees are still crammed under tarpaulin before they move to Lovua, many complain of a lack of food and shelter. Rafael Tshimbumba, 50, says the conditions may be basic but he cannot return to Kasai. He lost four children in the violence, when militias arrived at his village and began killing anyone that spoke Tshiluba, language of the Baluba people, highlighting the increasingly tribal element of the conflict. Here at least we are safe, he said, wearing the red and black t-shirt of the MPLA party that governs Angola. For Caro, who escaped from Congo with her pastor husband after the militia threatened to kill her, the flight itself led only to more danger. As the family stopped to rest in a village near the border, a passing car snatched her 5-year old boy. She searched for him for days and put a message out on the local radio, but found nothing. Only God knows where hes gone, she said, holding her youngest child in her arms. (Editing by Peter Graff)
Greece's top administrative court on Friday approved the forced deportation of two Syrian refugees, setting a precedent for hundreds of similar cases, a justice source said. Over 750 Syrian exiles are likely to be affected by the ruling by the Greek council of state, a source with knowledge of the case told AFP. The refugees, two men aged 22 and 29, had filed a legal challenge after asylum committees rejected their pleas to not be returned to Turkey, from where they entered Greece last year. Dimitris Christopoulos, president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the ruling "violates the refugees' rights". Rights groups supporting the pair can contest the ruling at the European Court of Human Rights. The deportations are part of a pact between Turkey and the European Union that was designed to stem the flow of refugees and migrants after it reached historic proportions in 2015. Around a million people -- mainly fleeing the war in Syria -- landed in Europe that year alone. Deporting Syrian refugees to Turkey assumes that this fellow Muslim country is a safe haven for them. But rights groups dispute this, arguing that there are few guarantees that Syrian refugees can find shelter and work in Turkey, while there is evidence of abuse and exploitation. In July, a heavily-pregnant Syrian refugee was raped and bludgeoned to death by rock-wielding attackers at her home in Turkey, just days before she was due to give birth. And her 10-month-old baby boy was strangled to death in a brutal double murder that sparked shock and outrage. Homosexual refugees are especially at risk in Turkey. Last year, a Syrian LGBT refugee was found mutilated and decapitated in Turkey. Transgender Europe has said Turkey has the highest rate of trans murders in Europe.
Syria's war has taken a new turn with the expected recapture of Raqa from the Islamic State, but world leaders gathered at the United Nations this week seem to be paying little attention. Once the focal point of a myriad of high-powered meetings during the UN General Assembly, Syria this year dropped off the diplomatic agenda, dwarfed by the crises over North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal. Last year, tensions were running high at the UN assembly, with Western powers locked in heated exchanges with Russia and Iran, the Syrian government's allies, over the offensive against rebel-held Aleppo. Since then, President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaken Aleppo and most of the opposition-held territory, backed by Moscow and Tehran. The Islamic State (IS) group is close to defeat in its two remaining Syrian strongholds: Raqa and Deir Ezzor. Russia, Iran and Turkey have set up four "de-escalation zones" in Syria and are working with the United States and Jordan in the south to bring about ceasefires that have eased the violence. "The war in Syria is not over yet," European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini reminded foreign ministers at an EU-hosted meeting on Syria on Thursday. But she acknowledged that "the situation on the ground has improved. Daesh (IS) has been driven out from its strongholds," and fighting has eased. "For many Syrians, this makes the difference between life and death." - France pushes contact group - Now in its seventh year of war that has left 330,000 dead, Syria has become an extremely complex conflict, but diplomatic efforts remain low profile. The Kurdish issue and Israel's growing involvement, fueled by fears that neighboring Syria will become a springboard for Iran, are shaping up as new crises, diplomats say. "Nothing is resolved", said a European diplomat, who asked not to be named. The country remains deeply divided -- some would call it a de-facto partition -- five million Syrians are still refugees and a new outbreak of fighting is still possible, he said. During his address to the assembly, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the establishment of a new Syria "contact group" to push for a diplomatic solution. Russia and the United States reacted coolly to the proposal. The administration of President Donald Trump has yet to define its Syria strategy beyond fighting IS militants and is refusing to give Iran, a key player in the war, a seat at the table. - Reconstruction aid - "If the contact group had Iran in it, that would be difficult for us," a senior US official told AFP this week following a meeting between the United States and allies on Syria. "The Americans have dropped out of the search for a political solution," said the European diplomat. "Their focus is solely military: defeating IS." The United Nations is planning to convene a new round of peace talks in the coming weeks between Syria's government and the opposition, even though past negotiations have failed to yield more than incremental progress. With the rebel fighting position weakened, the regime is under no pressure to make concessions during the upcoming Geneva talks. The UN-brokered negotiations have hit a wall over opposition demands for a political transition paving the way for the end of Assad's rule. The European Union, backed by France and Britain, is hoping that the promise of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Syria can be used as leverage to push for a settlement. At a pledging conference in Brussels in April, countries offered $6 billion in aid to rebuild post-war Syria, but the European Union has made clear the money will not flow until there is a deal on a transition. Some diplomats however say that shunning Syria because of Assad may become untenable over time. At a meeting on humanitarian aid, the International Committee for the Red Cross reminded diplomats that more was at stake in Syria than Assad and urged them not to forget the thousands of prisoners and missing persons.
By Daren Butler and Raya Jalabi ISTANBUL/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Turkey's parliament voted on Saturday to extend by a year a mandate authorising the deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq and Syria, stepping up pressure against an independence referendum in northern Iraq's Kurdish region in two days' time. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkey would take security, economic and political steps in response to the referendum, which President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman described as a "terrible mistake" that would trigger new regional crises. The United States and other Western powers have, like Turkey, urged authorities in the semi-autonomous Iraqi region to cancel Monday's vote. They say the move by the oil-producing area distracts from the fight against Islamic State. In Iraq, a Kurdistan regional government delegation arrived in Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi government in an effort to defuse tensions, but a senior Kurdish official said the vote was going ahead. "The delegation will discuss the referendum but the referendum is still happening," Hoshiyar Zebari, a top adviser to Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, told Reuters. Turkey, which has NATO's second-largest army, said on Friday that the Iraqi vote would threaten its security and force it to slap sanctions on a neighbour and trading partner, although it did not specify what measures it might take. Asked on Saturday if a cross-border operation was among the options, Yildirim told reporters: "Naturally, it is a question of timing as to when security, economic and security options are implemented. Developing conditions will determine that." The mandate approved by Turkey's parliament on Saturday was first passed in 2014 with the aim of tackling threats from within its southern neighbours Iraq and Syria. It had been due to expire in October. "UNCONTROLLABLE FIRE" Turkey is home to the largest Kurdish population in the region and is itself fighting a Kurdish insurgency on its soil. But it is also the main conduit for oil exports from Iraq's Kurdish region and it has said that any break-up of neighbouring Iraq or Syria could lead to a global conflict. In a speech to parliament, Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli voiced concern about the referendum's impact on the region's ethnic and sectarian relationships, saying it could trigger an "uncontrollable fire". "Pulling out just a brick from a structure based on very sensitive and fragile balances will sow the seeds for new hatred, enmity and clashes," he said. A particular area of concern is the multi-ethnic oil city of Kirkuk, which lies outside the recognised boundaries of the autonomous Kurdish region and is claimed by Baghdad. It is dominated by Kurds but is also home to Arabs, Assyrian Christians and Turkmen -- of whom Turkey has long seen itself as the protector. "If the referendum is not cancelled, there will be serious consequences. Erbil must immediately refrain from this terrible mistake, which will trigger new crises in the region," Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted on Saturday. ROCKET ATTACK Militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) launched a rocket and mortar attack from the Iraqi side of the border on Turkey's Semdinli district on Saturday, killing one Turkish soldier and a worker in the area of a military base, the Hakkari governor's office said in a statement. The PKK launched its separatist insurgency in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. The Iraqi armys chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, met his Turkish counterpart, General Hulusi Akar, in Turkey and they discussed the "illegitimate" referendum, Turkey's military said. "The importance of maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity was stressed once again," it said. The Turkish army launched military exercises on Monday near the Habur border crossing to Iraq. Military sources said they were due to last until Sept. 26, the day after the planned vote. On Saturday the military said additional units had joined the exercises as they entered their second stage. Turkey has for years been northern Iraq's main link to the outside world. It has built strong trade ties with the semi-autonomous region, which exports hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day through Turkey to international markets. (Additional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Edmund Blair and Stephen Powell)
So many small businesses start as a dream. But what types of businesses are entrepreneurs currently dreaming about starting? Online equipment marketplace Bid on Equipment recently created an infographic showing the types of businesses that are most popular with prospective entrepreneurs and current business owners. Heres a rundown of the findings.

Most Searched Business Types

If you want to know what types of businesses prospective entrepreneurs are thinking about starting, take a look at their searches. Here are the types of businesses that people are researching online.

Clothing Line

There are lots of fashion savvy potential entrepreneurs out there. There are about 8,510 monthly searches on average from those looking to start clothing lines.

Restaurant

Restaurants also remain a popular business idea, with 5,940 monthly searches.

Food Truck

But some are also looking to start more updated, less expensive food businesses. About 5,570 each month perform searches related to starting food trucks.

Record Label

There are lots of musically inclined entrepreneurs out there as well. 3,080 per month search for information on starting a record label.

Daycare

And others are more interested in building a business where they can take care of kids. There are about 2,370 searches per month related to starting a daycare business.

Unusually Popular Business Types

Some business ideas are steadily popular no matter the location. But others tend to be more popular in some states than other. Here are a few of the business types that are unusually popular in certain states or regions.

Brewery

Breweries seem to be popular businesses for people located in western states, especially Montana, Wyoming and Colorado.

Dog Walking Business

On the other hand, dog walking seems to be a popular type of business for those in the Northeast, especially Massachussetts and New Jersey.

Gym

Gyms are also popular with a couple of Northeast states, including Maine and New Hampshire. But there were also a couple of other states with a lot of interest in gyms, like Mississippi, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Catering Company

A lot of the businesses included in the infographic were popular with entrepreneurs in more than one state. But Maryland was an outlier. It was the only state where starting a catering business seems to be an especially popular choice.

Property Management Company

Another outlier, property management seems to be especially popular in Alaska.

Most Profitable Small Businesses

Of course, sometimes choosing a business is more about profitability than anything else. If youre looking to start a business that can make a lot of money, here are some of the most profitable types of small businesses.

Accounting

Managing money seems to be a good way to make lots of your own. Accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services were named as the most profitable types of business.

Management of Companies and Enterprises

You can also make lots of profits by managing companies and enterprises.

Real Estate

Real estate is another profitable business type that also happens to be popular in a lot of states.

Automotive Equipment Rental and Leasing

For those interested in breaking into the automotive industry, offering equipment rentals and leasing can be a profitable way to do so.

Legal Services

And offering legal services, while it does require lots of education and time, is another profitable type of business.

Most Common Small Businesses

And finally, heres a look at what types of small businesses entrepreneurs are actually starting.

See Also: The Ultimate Guide to Using your Business iPhone for Voip Calls

Bookkeeping

As mentioned earlier, bookkeeping is one of the most popular businesses to start. And apparently plenty of entrepreneurs are taking notice, since bookkeeping is the most common type of business being started currently too.

Computer Repair

Computer repair is another popular business type, since theres a huge market for those repair services and so many types of devices you can specialize in.

Car Repair

Additionally, car repair is an area with a lot of demand and a lot of interest among business owners.

Web Design

Web design gives entrepreneurs a way to work with other business clients and potentially even work from home or remotely.

Restaurant

And restaurants, among of the most popular business types in terms of online searches, remain a common business to start as well.

Best States to Start a Small Business

You know what they say is the most important factor when it comes to starting a business: location, location, location. So what are the locations where entrepreneurs might want to focus their new business efforts?

North Carolina

With a relatively low cost of living and high quality of life, North Carolina ranks as the top state to start a business.

Utah

Utah is next on the list, mostly thanks to a great labor market and lots of startup activity.

Texas

Low taxes top the list of reasons why Texas is a great place to start a business.

Indiana

Indiana is another state that ranks highly in terms of the labor market and startup activity.

Montana

And Montana offers a low cost of living mixed with an active labor market.

Jobs Expected to Grow Most by 2024

On the job front, there are also plenty of areas seeing growth. And they might offer insights into growing industries for entrepreneurs as well.

Wind Turbine Service Technicians

It seems that renewable energy is a fast growing field, as wind turbine service technicians were found to be most in demand.

Occupational Therapy Assistants

Occupational therapy assistants help occupational therapists provide a variety of therapeutic services to individuals who need help performing meaningful activities.

Physical Therapist Assistants

Physical therapy is a fast growing niche within the medical field.

Physical Therapy Aides

In fact, its growing so quickly that both assistants and aides made it onto the top of the list.

Home Health Aides

And finally, home health aides who provide in-home medical services are also in high demand.
The plan is to minimise the activities of scammers.

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The aim of the new mobile application entitled My Senior is to minimise the activities of scammers, who under various pretences visit old people and often rob them.

Developed by the civic association Pro Dynamik, it verifies the visits by generating a unique code that will occur directly in the application. The visitors will then have to use the same code to identify themselves, the TASR newswire reported.

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The principle of this application is to connect the supplier of a certain service and the seniors, said Maros Kosik, representative of Pro Dynamik, as quoted by TASR.

Plumbers and other workmen, employees of the city authorities and other institutions will have to register at the Mojsenior.sk website. At the same time, they will send the seniors a notification about a planned visit. The seniors will then be allowed to see the name of the company or the picture of the employee in the application or on the internet, Kosik explained.

On the day of the visit, the senior as well as the respective employee will receive a unique code, he continued, as quoted by TASR. It is a third level of protection. The seniors will only have to ask about the code. The respective employee will have to tell them their names and the code.

To be able to use the service for free, senior citizens will have to register on the Mojsenior.sk website. They will then download the application to their mobile phone and log in (the password is the same as used during the registration). The companies or authorities will have to do the same.

Pro Dynamic is currently talking with the representatives of the municipalities in the Bratislava and Presov Regions. It has also informed all regional employees dealing with crime prevention, as well as the state and city police in the Bratislava, Banska Bystrica and Presov Regions about the application.

We expect that in the near future we will make a deal for a trial with the municipalities in the above-mentioned regions, Kosik said, as quoted by TASR.

The plan is that municipalities and also companies will be able to pick an employee who will then visit the seniors.

We are convinced that we will manage to minimise the activities of these scammers, Kosik said.
The palace should imitate the famous Vienna castle.

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More information about travelling in Slovakia

Please see our Please see our Spectacular Slovakia travel guide

The city palace named after its owner, Zilina banker Ignac Rosenfeld, is located near the historical centre of Zilina. It was built in 1907 as a smaller imitation of the Belvedere castle in Vienna.

It is still preserved almost in original condition with many artistic details such as window and door panelling with decorative iron bars, wood siding, stucco, original lamps and many more.

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In the past Rosenfeld Palace was the seat of several banks, and later the House of Pioneers. Today the palace is a new spot on the cultural map of Zilina; its main task is hosting cultural and public enlightenment activities, such as discussions, concerts of classical music, exhibitions of design and contemporary art, presentations and workshops.

The building is also enrolled in the List of National Cultural Monuments in Slovakia.

Watch a video about Rosenfeld Palace, which was prepared as a part of project Cultural Heritage to promote renewal and preservation of cultural and historical heritage in Slovakia, through the EEA and Norwegian Funds.
Telefonica, S.A., together with its subsidiaries, provides telecommunications services in Europe and Latin America. The company's mobile and related services and products comprise mobile voice, value added, mobile data and Internet, wholesale, corporate, roaming, fixed wireless, and trunking and paging services. Its fixed telecommunication services include PSTN lines; ISDN accesses; public telephone services; local, domestic, and international long-distance and fixed-to-mobile communications; corporate communications; supplementary value-added services; video telephony; intelligent network; and telephony information services, as well as leases and sells handset equipment. The company also provides Internet and broadband multimedia services comprising Internet service provider, portal and network, retail and wholesale broadband access, narrowband switched access, high-speed Internet through fibre to the home, and voice over Internet protocol services. In addition, it offers leased line, virtual private network, fibre optics, web hosting and application, outsourcing and consultancy, desktop, and system integration and professional services. Further, the company offers wholesale services for telecommunication operators, including domestic interconnection and international wholesale services; leased lines for other operators; and local loop leasing services, as well as bit stream services, wholesale line rental accesses, and leased ducts for other operators' fiber deployment. Additionally, it provides video/TV services; smart connectivity and services, and consumer IoT products; financial and other payment, security, cloud computing, advertising, big data, and digital telco experience services; virtual assistants; digital home platforms; and Movistar Home devices. It also offers online telemedicine, home insurance, music streaming, and consumer loan services. The company was incorporated in 1924 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.
AstraZeneca PLC, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of prescription medicines. Its marketed products include Calquence, Enhertu, Faslodex, Imfinzi, Iressa, Koselugo, Lumoxiti, Lynparza, Orpathys, Tagrisso, and Zoladex for oncology; Brilinta/Brilique, Bydureon/Byetta, BCise, Byetta, Crestor, Evrenzo, Farxiga/Forxiga, Komboglyze/Kombiglyze XR, Lokelma, Onglyza, Qtern, and Xigduo/Xigduo XR for cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism diseases; Bevespi Aerosphere, Breztri Aerosphere, Daliresp/Daxas, Duaklir Genuair, Fasenra, Pulmicort, Saphnelo, Symbicort, and Tudorza/Eklira/Bretaris for respiratory and immunology; and Andexxa/Ondexxya, Kanuma, Soliris, Strensiq, and Ultomiris for rare diseases. The company's marketed products also comprise Synagis for respiratory syncytial virus; Fluenz Tetra/FluMist Quadrivalent for Influenza; Seroquel IR/Seroquel XR for schizophrenia bipolar disease; Nexium, and Losec/Prilosec for gastroenterology; and Vaxzevria and Evusheld for covid-19. The company serves primary care and specialty care physicians through distributors and local representative offices in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. It has a collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to research, develop, and commercialize small molecule medicines for obesity; Neurimmune AG to develop and commercialize NI006; Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to develop eplontersen, a liver-targeted antisense therapy in Phase III development for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; Proteros Biostructures GmbH to jointly discover novel small molecules for the treatment of hematological cancers; Sierra Oncology, Inc. to develop and commercialize AZD5153. The company was formerly known as Zeneca Group PLC and changed its name to AstraZeneca PLC in April 1999. AstraZeneca PLC was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Cambridge, the United Kingdom.
The US space agency NASAs Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has uncovered a mysterious object present in the asteroid belt that has features of both, an asteroid as well as a comet. Astronomers have spotted two asteroids that orbiting each other just like love buds but exhibit features of a comet like a bright halo of material, called a coma, and a long tail of dust.

Earlier astronomers thought that the strange object is only a single asteroid. However, as the asteroid named 300163 (2006 VW139) made its closest approach to the Sun back in September 2016, the Hubble Space Telescope has snapped crisp images which revealed that it was actually not one, but two asteroids of almost the same mass and size, orbiting each other at a distance of 60 miles.

Astronomers first discovered the asteroid 300163 (2006 VW139) in November 2006 under NASAs Spacewatch program. Another NASA program called Pan-STARRS also spotted the asteroid, but found comet-like properties and named it as 288P. This makes the object the first known binary asteroid that is also classified as a main-belt comet.

The more recent Hubble observations revealed ongoing activity in the binary system. We detected strong indications for the sublimation of water ice due to the increased solar heating  similar to how the tail of a comet is created, explained team leader Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany.

The combined features of the binary asteroid  wide separation, near-equal component size, high eccentricity orbit, and comet-like activity  also make it unique among the few known binary asteroids that have a wide separation. Understanding its origin and evolution may provide new insights into the early days of the solar system. Main-belt comets may help to answer how water came to a bone-dry Earth billions of years ago.

The team estimates that 2006 VW139/288P has existed as a binary system only for about 5,000 years. The most probable formation scenario is a breakup due to fast rotation. After that, the two fragments may have been moved further apart by the effects of ice sublimation, which would give a tiny push to an asteroid in one direction as water molecules are ejected in the other direction.

The fact that 2006 VW139/288P is so different from all other known binary asteroids raises some questions about how common such systems are in the asteroid belt. We need more theoretical and observational work, as well as more objects similar to this object, to find an answer to this question, concluded Agarwal.

The research is presented in a paper, to be published in the journal Nature this week.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

The Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990 and since then it is the largest telescope in space. HST has helped scientists in exploring the deepest corners of the universe and has beamed back millions of stunning shots in its entire career. However, HST will be replaced by the James Webb Telescope in 2018 as it has thrice larger lens when compared to HST.

Related:

NASAs Hubble Tracks down New Moon Orbiting Third-Largest Dwarf Planet 2007 OR10

See this mesmerising photo of light eating planet shot by NASA Hubble

Aliens might be living in TRAPPIST-1 star system, reveals Hubble data
A teenager has been charged in connection with the Parsons Green Tube terror attack last Friday.

Ahmed Hassan, of Sunbury, Surrey, has been charged with attempting to murder people travelling on a District line train and possessing explosives.

Hassan also faces a charge of using the chemical compound triacetone triperoxide - known as TATP - to cause an explosion likely to endanger life.

The 18-year-old appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

No one was killed when the crude home-made bomb failed to properly detonate, but 30 passengers were injured.

Met Police chief Cressida Dick said that the "very, very dangerous" device was packed with "large quantity of explosives and was packed with shrapnel".

Hassan was arrested in Dover on Saturday morning on suspicion of planting the device.

He is believed to have spent time in the care of Penelope and Ronald Jones, from Sunbury-on-Thames, who received MBEs for services to children and families in 2010.

The couple have been highly respected foster parents for almost 40 years - looking after approximately 300 children, including eight refugees.

Two other men - aged 25 and 30 - remain in custody in connection with the attack.

The 25-year-old, who was arrested in Newport, has been named by Sky sources as Mahdi Rahimi - a Kurd also known locally as Bilal Mohammed.

The 30-year-old was also detained in Newport at a "halfway house" for asylum seekers, according to neighbours.

Three men - aged 21, 48 and 17 - have been released from custody without charge.

Yahyah Farroukh, 21, was detained at a fried chicken shop where he worked in Hounslow, west London, on Saturday.

Like Hassan, Mr Farroukh is also understood to have spent time in the care of Mr and Mrs Jones.

Mr Farroukh's mother is said to have suffered a heart attack after hearing of her son's arrest, and is understood to be in a critical condition in a hospital in Egypt.

The 48-year-old man was also understood to have been arrested at the Newport "halfway house".

Story continues

The 17-year-old had been arrested in Thornton Heath, south London, just after midnight on Thursday after officers carried out a search.

The head of the Met Police's Counter Terrorism Command, Dean Haydon, has described the investigation as "fast moving", adding: "A significant amount of activity has taken place since the attack."

Police are still searching one address in Surrey and two in Newport, Wales, in connection with the attack.
As Iraqi Kurds look forward to their upcoming independence referendum, the international community is sounding the alarm. The UN Security Council expressed concern on Thursday over what it says is the potentially destabilising impact of next Mondays vote. And Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country is considering imposing sanctions against Kurdish northern Iraq. Without any further delay, we are going to discuss in detail what kind of sanctions should be imposed, Erdogan said in an interview with Reuters while he was in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly. It is not right for me to unveil them right now but at National Security Council and cabinet meetings we will discuss when these sanctions will be imposed and what the road map will be. Iraqs neighbours including Turkey fear the vote will fuel unrest among their own Kurdish populations and Western allies said it could detract from the fight against so-called Islamic State. Turkey, Iran and Iraq have all agreed to consider counter-measures against Kurdish northern Iraq over the planned independence referendum, according to Turkeys foreign ministry. Turkey, Iraq, Iran agree on joint precautionary measures over Kurdish referendum https://t.co/2zj5g7M2Ha pic.twitter.com/6a81IWyzRs China Xinhua News (@XHNews) 21 septembre 2017 with Reuters
Something is stirring on the Swedish island of Gotland.

There are men in the bushes carrying AK-5 rifles and American attack helicopters ducking behind trees, plus armoured cars covered in brambles and a radar station at the mall.

Residents on this island in the Baltic Sea are not really sure what to make of it.

"It's a little bit scary to be honest," said one man. "All these guns and soldiers are a little bit scary."

However, the Swedish government thinks this sleepy-looking spot is situated uncomfortably close to Russia so they have shipped thousands of troops to Gotland for an operation called Aurora 17.

It is a huge three-week training exercise conducted with military personnel from the US, Finland, France and a host of other countries.

It is so big in fact, Sweden has not attempted anything like it in the past 23 years.

They have also deployed the defence minister, Peter Hultqvist, who we found in a stand of pine trees chatting to Finnish conscripts.

"We have a new security environment in this part of Europe with the annexation of Crimea (by Russia), war in Ukraine and pressure on Baltics," he said.

"We've seen the situation worsen over time so we have a new strategy on the Swedish side."

That strategy means spending more money on an organisation that was virtually dismantled after the Cold War.

At the end of that conflict, the Swedish armed forces boasted 850,000 personnel - the majority formed by conscripts. Now there are just 50,000 on the books.

The troops also need practice and a US army airborne unit was brought in to help on Gotland.

We spent an afternoon watching Swedish air defence units protect the local parish church from a pair of marauding Apache attack helicopters.

Still, we did not see anyone actually firing anything. Instead, small groups of soldiers tossed empty missile casings in the direction of the aircraft.

However, there is one problem the government may not be able to crack. Young Swedes are not particularly interested in the military.

Story continues

Faced with a paucity of volunteers, the government will bring in conscription next month, eight years after scrapping it.

A national ad campaign has been launched to drum up some enthusiasm. It says: "Now everyone can train with the defence force."

Unsurprisingly, not everyone is buying it. The topic has been hotly contested, for example, by players at Spela Paintball just outside Stockholm.

"We haven't had it for quite a few years," said Johan Wallsten.

"People who join may not be happy - they've got their own lives now. Before, you joined the army when you quit school that's the way it was."

The military will screen 100,000 people for suitability before settling on 4,000 recruits - and that number will be split evenly between men and women.

Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Sener told me he hopes to be conscripted.

He said: "I think it is a good thing, you wake up early, do team building and its good for your career."

"But some young people don't want to get up early," I replied.

"But you have to wake up early, that's life," said Mr Sener, earnestly.

In the centre of town, amid the cafes and swish shopping streets, we found less enthusiasm for the Swedish draft mark two.

High school student Filip Alexandrow said: "I could do it but I don't want to do it, it is kind of sad why we need it in the first place."

When I asked his friend Jonas Sarpenmalm whether he was concerned about Russia, he said he thought the Russians were "cute".



With the possible exception of Donald Trump, western leaders are not so charitable, holding up a recent operation by Russia and Belarus as an example of their concern.

The "Zapad" or "West" military exercise may have drawn on as many as 100,000 men.

As for Sweden, well, the country's leaders admit they are currently ill-prepared and it seems a new generation of conscripted citizens will bear the burden of the nation's defence in the future.
By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuania's government lost its majority in parliament on Saturday after its junior coalition partner quit, saying they has been sidelined over policies ranging from alcohol age limits to subsidies on central heating. A parliament vote on next year's budget, expected by early December, will be the first test for the minority government following the departure of the Social Democrats after less than a year in power. The government will need to convince opposition parties to support it on a case-by-case basis. The Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, the sole party remaining in power, have a block of 57 members in Lithuania's 141-seat parliament. The country, once ruled from Moscow but now a member of both the European Union and NATO, is rebuilding its military in the face of an assertive Russia but has found development hampered by emigration and raising wages, eating away at competitiveness. "All preconditions are in place for our government to continue until the next general election in 2020," Saulius Skvernelis, prime minister since November 2016, told Reuters. "The Social Democrats took a short-sighted and suicidal decision," he added. Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, a Social Democrat, told Reuters he will leave his party to continue in the government. At least one of the two other Social Democrat appointees will leave the 15-member government, said Social Democrat chairman Gintautas Paluckas, elected in April this year on a reform mandate. "Relationships within the coalition were bad, our opinions differed on almost all major issues and, since Farmers and Greens looked for votes elsewhere, we had scant possibilities to shape its politics," he told Reuters. "This will cost us influence in the short term, but we'll be in a position to better represent our supporters in the long term," he said. The Social Democrats, which have held power for long stretches since Lithuanian independence, have been looking for a way to reconnect with the voters after finishing a distant third in the 2016 general election. Social Democrat rank-and-file overwhelmingly supported leaving the government in a recent poll, in contrast to the party's members of parliament who preferred staying in power. (Reporting by Andrius Sytas; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Stephen Powell)
Prime Minister Theresa May delivers her speech in Florence (PA Images)

Theresa May has denied that she has let down Brexit voters, following a speech in Florence in which she called for a two-year transition period following Britains official exit from the EU.

In her 35-minute speech she said that Britain would honour its commitments to the EU budget during this time.

The Prime Minister also swiped away accusations that Britain has failed to secure a single concession from the EU during the complex negotiations, but failed to name any examples of Europe agreeing to a compromise.

Following her speech, seen as an attempt to break the negotiating deadlock, Mrs May was asked what she would say to Leave voters who feel betrayed that nothing has changed since the referendum vote.

The Prime Minister speaks in Italy (PA Images)

She replied: What the Government is doing is ensuring that we deliver on what the people who voted to leave wanted, which is us leaving the European Union.

But if we are going to ensure that we do that in a way that does as little damage and disruption to our economy and to peoples lives as possible, we need to do that in a smooth and orderly way.

What were very clear about is that the implementation period will be time limited and crucially that we will leave the European Union in March 2019.

Thats what the process of withdrawal allows for and that is whats going to happen.

When asked to point to a single concessions from the EU that [her] negotiating strategy has won, Mrs May failed to pick out any example, instead speaking vaguely about the talks as a whole.

Well I can say that during the negotiations weve got to at the moment there are a number of issues where weve set a position paper forward to the EU, and we now have agreement on a variety of the issues that were looking at, she said.

This is a negotiation. During that process sides put out their positions, discuss their positions, and come to an agreement.

What Im doing today is saying that here is an opportunity for both of us, the UK and the EU, to come to agree to a new partnership, a partnership that hasnt been in place with anybody else in the past but can be one that can really show a great future both for the EU and the UK, our future property for people not just in the UK but the European Union as well.
By Anthony Boadle and Sarah Marsh UNITED NATIONS/HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba urged the United States on Friday to cooperate with its investigation into incidents that the U.S. says have harmed its diplomats in Havana and not to politicise the matter, days after Washington said it was considering closing its Cuban embassy. In an address to the United Nations General Assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the top level of the government in Havana had ordered an investigation into the mysterious matter, which threatens the fragile detente between the old Cold War foes. However, a Cuban government source told Reuters that the United States had provided no evidence of the harm, including hearing loss, dizziness and nausea, that it says U.S. diplomats and their relatives based in Havana have suffered. Cuban doctors had also not been allowed to examine anyone, the source said. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Havana declined to comment. "The investigation to clarify this issue continues, and in order to be able to arrive to a conclusion, it will be crucial to count on the cooperation of the U.S. authorities," Rodriguez told the U.N. "It would be unfortunate if a matter of this nature is politicised," said Rodriguez. Cuba has denied any involvement in the affair. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was among five Republican senators that a week ago called for U.S. President Donald Trump to retaliate against Cuba by expelling its diplomats and possibly shuttering the U.S. embassy in Havana. Rubio helped forge Trump's new Cuba policy, rolling back parts of the detente achieved under Democratic former President Barack Obama and taking a harder line on the Communist-run island. Cuba's state-run media this week said the only party interested in a deterioration in relations were a small group of Republicans led by Rubio. The U.S. government in August first officially confirmed they were investigating the incidents it said began in late 2016. Several Canadians were also affected, a Canadian official said, further deepening the mystery. The last incident to affect a U.S. citizen occurred late in August, bringing the number of those with symptoms to 21, a U.S. State Department official said last week. Some of those had returned home for testing and treatment, the U.S. official said, while others had been tested in Cuba, where the embassy has a fulltime medical officer. Investigations by Cuba, the United States and Canada have yet to come up with any answers. Experts agree it is hard to see how any attacks could have been carried out or what the motivation could be. Theories abound, from surveillance technology gone awry to a sophisticated acoustic weapon in the hands of Cuban-American exiles or third-party state actors such as Russia, Iran or North Korea, but most flounder. Audiologists for example have raised doubt over the possibility of whether any sonic weapon exists that can be used covertly to bring about the range of symptoms mentioned by diplomats. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle at the United Nations and Sarah Marsh in Havana; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Grant McCool)
Riding the roads that cut through the farm fields of Shawano County, Wisconsin, yields one colorful surprise after another. The county, located near the middle of the state, is home to nearly 50,000 people, an untold number of dairy cows and 305 8-by-8-foot barn quilts.

A barn quilt is a quilt block design painted on a large piece of wood and hung on a barn. Although barn quilts exist around the country, if youve traveled the backroads of the midwestern and southern United States, youve likely easily spotted them soaring over lush green fields of corn and alfalfa. The trend reportedly gained traction in Ohio in 2001, when Donna Sue Groves honored her mother by attaching one to her family barn  from there, the quilt blocks started popping up like milkweed in the spring. Today, the practice is a bona fide movement, and Suzi Parron (the author with Groves of a book about the practice) maintains a website that includes a guide to quilt trails around the country.

Photos by Jim Leuenberger

Shawano County reportedly has more 8-by-8 barn quilts than any other place in the United States, and it all started with an idea hatched on a long drive from Wisconsin to Kentucky. Its a route Jim Leuenberger takes often, because the Shawano County resident likes to visit his sister who lives in the Bluegrass State. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Iowa, and so he was right at home when his work as a public relations professional at a cattle breeding corporation took him to Shawano, another dairy community.

But life was changing in the county; more and more families were getting out of the milk business. Many of the large dairy barns were empty, and some were falling into disrepair. Leuenberger, who had just retired, looked at the quilts rolling by as he drove on the interstate and thought, Wouldnt it be neat to start a barn quilt trail in Shawano? That flicker of a vision grew into something much, much larger  an idea that blanketed the community, giving new life to old barns and drawing the residents even more closely together.

Leuenberger approached Patti Peterson, tourism manager at the local chamber of commerce about the idea, and she was sold. The harder sell was his wife, Irene. Although she was in favor, one question gave her pause. Who will paint all of these? she asked Leuenberger. Hesitation turned to concern when he answered, We will! (She confesses, I thought he was crazy.)

Now, with hundreds of quilts under their belt, the couple are quilt-painting pros (quilts are also painted by 4-H groups and the Shawano Barn Quilt Committee). Leuenberger notes that each quilt has a history, and many are beautiful tributes. Here are a few of the stories behind the quilt blocks.
Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. operates as a specialty retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies. The company operates through two segments, Sally Beauty Supply and Beauty Systems Group. The Sally Beauty Supply segment offers beauty products, including hair color and care products, skin and nail care products, styling tools, and other beauty products for retail customers, salons, and salon professionals. This segment also provides products under third-party brands, such as Wella, Clairol, OPI, Conair, and L'Oreal, as well as exclusive-label brand merchandise. The Beauty Systems Group segment offers professional beauty products, such as hair color and care products, skin and nail care products, styling tools, and other beauty items directly to salons and salon professionals through its professional-only stores, e-commerce platforms, and sales force, as well as through franchised stores under the Armstrong McCall store name. This segment also sells products under third-party brands, such as Paul Mitchell, Wella, Matrix, Schwarzkopf, Kenra, Goldwell, Joico, and Olaplex. As of September 30, 2021, the company operated 4,777 stores, including 134 franchised units in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany. It also distributes its products through full-service/exclusive distributors, open-line distributors, direct sales, and mega-salon stores. Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1964 and is headquartered in Denton, Texas.
Bank of Montreal provides diversified financial services primarily in North America. The company's personal banking products and services include checking and savings accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and financial and investment advice services; and commercial banking products and services comprise business deposit accounts, commercial credit cards, business loans and commercial mortgages, cash management solutions, foreign exchange, specialized banking programs, treasury and payment solutions, and risk management products for small business and commercial banking customers. It also offers investment and wealth advisory services; digital investing services; financial services and solutions; and investment management, and trust and custody services. In addition, the company provides life insurance, accident and sickness insurance, and annuity products; creditor and travel insurance to bank customers; and reinsurance solutions. Further, it offers client's debt and equity capital-raising services, as well as loan origination and syndication, and treasury management; strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and recapitalizations, as well as valuation and fairness opinions; and trade finance, risk mitigation, and other operating services. Additionally, the company provides research and access to markets for institutional, corporate, and retail clients; trading solutions that include debt, foreign exchange, interest rate, credit, equity, securitization and commodities; new product development and origination services, as well as risk management advice and services to hedge against fluctuations; and funding and liquidity management services to its clients. It operates through approximately 900 bank branches and 3,300 automated banking machines in Canada and the United States. Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.
National Fuel Gas Company operates as a diversified energy company. It operates through four segments: Exploration and Production, Pipeline and Storage, Gathering, and Utility. The Exploration and Production segment explores for, develops, and produces natural gas and oil in California and in the Appalachian region of the United States. As of September 30, 2021, it had proved developed and undeveloped reserves of 21,537 thousand barrels of oil and 3,723,433 million cubic feet of natural gas. The Pipeline and Storage segment provides interstate natural gas transportation and storage services through an integrated gas pipeline system in Pennsylvania and New York; and owns and operates underground natural gas storage fields. This segment also transports natural gas for National Fuel Gas Distribution Corporation, as well as for other utilities, industrial companies, and power producers in New York State; and owns and operates the Empire Pipeline. The Gathering segment builds, owns, and operates natural gas processing and pipeline gathering facilities in the Appalachian region, as well as provides gathering services to Seneca Resources Company, LLC. The Utility segment sells natural gas or provides natural gas transportation services to approximately 753,000 customers in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and Jamestown, New York; and Erie and Sharon, Pennsylvania. The company markets gas to industrial, wholesale, commercial, public authority, and residential customers primarily in western and central New York, and northwestern Pennsylvania. As of September 30, 2021, the company also owned approximately 95,000 acres of timber property; and managed approximately 2,500 additional acres of timber cutting rights. National Fuel Gas Company was incorporated in 1902 and is headquartered in Williamsville, New York.
WESTBY  Leon V. Minor, 86, of Westby died Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, at his home. A visitation will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday at the Coon Valley American Legion Hall with a service and time of sharing at 5 p.m. Military honors and luncheon to follow. A complete obituary will follow from Seland Funeral Home, Coon Valley.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The citys Police Oversight Board recommended that two officers receive lengthy suspensions after reviewing an internal affairs investigation into an officer-involved shooting that took place in June 2015.

The Albuquerque Police Departments internal affairs unit last month had exonerated the officers involved.

But the board Thursday night found that the officers violated numerous policies and used questionable tactics during the arrest of Danan Gabaldon. One detective drove a truck into the suspect as he fled on foot.

The key ingredient here is that once he got out of his car he was weaponless and deadly force was used against him, said Joanne Fine, the chairwoman of the POB.

Referring to the internal affairs conclusion, Ed Harness, the executive director of the Civilian Police Oversight Agency, said at the POB meeting that the case was another example of the police not holding themselves accountable.

Board members voted unanimously, recommending 512 hours of suspension for one detective and 240 hours of suspension for another detective. The officers were not identified by name.

The day of his arrest, Gabaldon was wanted on aggravated assault on a police officer and other charges. He was suspected of driving a car at a police officer days earlier.

Gabaldon has since pleaded guilty to that and several other charges against him and is serving time in prison.

Undercover officers tried to stop Gabaldon when he was driving near the 8400 block of Camino San Martin SW. Harness said one detective accidentally backed into a fellow officers vehicle, setting off the airbag.

The detective then got out of his vehicle, placing himself directly in Gabaldons path, and fired two shots at him. Other officers shot at Gabaldon with beanbag shotguns and electronic control weapons, Harness said.

Gabaldon was able to exit his vehicle and run from officers. A detective then got in a truck and drove onto the sidewalk and into Gabaldon, who smacked into the hood of the truck.

Gabaldon then fell to the ground and officers pounced on him and used a Taser on him multiple times as he was taken into custody, according to video of the incident, which police released in October 2015.

Accountability has been an ongoing concern cited by the independent monitor overseeing a years-long U.S. Department of Justice reform effort that aims to improve the police department.

The exonerations of these officers in this case further illustrates the monitors opinion that the department lacks the ability to hold its officers accountable, Harness said.

Harness said the department should do a more thorough administrative investigation into the officers, including the supervisor.

The CPOAs findings will be sent in a letter to Chief Gorden Eden, who is to respond in writing if he is in disagreement, according to city policy.

Albuquerque police officer Tanner Tixier, an APD spokesman, said Friday that the chief hadnt received Harnesss letter. As such, it would not be appropriate to comment at this time, he said.

Gabaldon has sued the city in federal court, seeking damages for alleged excessive force and civil rights violations.

The District Attorneys Office hasnt announced whether it will bring charges against the officers involved in the incident.

Harness was critical of several tactics police used in making the arrest, including using unmarked police vehicles instead of marked patrol units to stop him.

He said striking Gabaldon with a vehicle violated several policies, and was unjustified because Gabaldon wasnt an immediate threat to police or the public at the time. The detective who shot at him also violated policies, Harness said.

The oversight agency is recommending that the officer who shot at Gabaldon be suspended for 512 hours and the officer who struck him with a vehicle get a 240-hour suspension.

The chief has the final say over what discipline to hand down.
A Rio Rancho man is facing 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to child pornography and cyberstalking charges, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Armando Camarena, 34, pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to a three-count indictment in federal court.

Camarena was arrested by federal Homeland Security Investigations in 2014 for distributing and possessing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to the news release. HSI initiated the investigation after a 14-year-old Idaho girl received child pornography, child erotica and threatening messages on her iPod from an IP Address used by Camarena.

Authorities arrested Camarena after executing a federal search warrant at his home on July 30, 2014, which turned up computer images consistent with child pornography.

Camarena was indicted on Aug. 12, 2014, and charged with receipt of child pornography, possession of child pornography, and cyberstalking, according to the news release. The indictment alleged he committed the crimes in Sandoval County between December 2013 and July 2014.

In his plea agreement, Camarena admitted that in December 2013, he used a social media application to initiate contact with a juvenile victim residing outside New Mexico, the release states. When the juvenile victim sought to terminate contact with Camarena in January 2014, Camarena sent the juvenile victim a series of messages in which he threatened to kill and inflict serious bodily injury on the victim and the victims family with the intention of causing them substantial emotional distress.

Camarena has been in custody since his arrest in July 2014 and will remain detained pending his sentencing hearing, which hasnt been scheduled.
Architectural Digest has named Volcano Vista the most beautiful public high school in New Mexico.

The respected national magazine picked a winner from every state for the highly selective list, which was published earlier this month.

Volcano Vista High  a 10-year-old school at 8100 Rainbow Road NW  made the grade for the Land of Enchantment.

It is really nice to receive recognition from outside the state, said Karen Alarid, Albuquerque Public Schools executive director of capital operations. We took the lessons that we learned on Volcano Vista and carried them through on every high school project that weve done.

Volcano Vista High is one of the few modern buildings on the Architectural Digest list, which includes a number of Art Deco, Colonial Revival and Gothic entries.

The magazine highlighted Volcano Vista Highs earthy paint scheme and the rust-colored obelisk at the entrance.

When Volcano Vista opened its doors in 2007, it was APS first new high school in nearly 20 years.

TSK, an international architectural firm based in Las Vegas, Nev., and Albuquerque firm SMPC Architects designed the school to facilitate small-group learning.

Volcano Vista is divided into academies that give students more personal attention, and each is treated as separate wings along a central spine, SMPC said in a description of the school on its website.

This also allows each spur to have maximum daylighting and views, SMPC said.

El Paso High  a 101-year-old grand Neoclassical nicknamed the Lady on the Hill  was Architectural Digests winner for Texas.

Other entries are recognizable from television or history books.

Torrance High School in Southern California was a filming location for Beverly Hills, 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Arkansas Little Rock Central High School is well known as a battleground in the Civil Rights movement.

To see the complete list, go to architecturaldigest.com/gallery/most-beautiful-public-high-schools-in-america.
The 2017 Iron Vet Ride from Wichita, Kan., to Albuquerque  arriving here tonight  will honor a group of eight fallen servicemen and servicewomen, including two New Mexicans.

This years motorcycle ride, organized by the AMVETS Riders Chapter 36 of Wichita, will focus on raising awareness of veteran suicide. The eight being honored are not necessarily suicide victims.

Were just a small group trying to get peoples attention for a good reason, said Brett Wells, who works at the Wichita VA hospital and helped to organize the ride.

Those being honored include Espanola native Sgt. Pernell Herrera, who died of a heart attack while serving in Afghanistan in 2011, and Albuquerque native and Navy veteran Jamie Langfitt, who died earlier this year.

The 600-mile journey will end at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 401 at 2011 Girard Blvd. SE this evening, where dinner will be served and informational booths by the VA and other veteran advocacy groups will offer suicide prevention materials from about 7 to 8 p.m.

Around 7 a.m. Sunday, there will be a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park, including a prayer and playing of taps.

Were just trying to make them feel welcome, said Sarah Langley, a member of the Albuquerque AMVETS chapter.

Participants include AMVETS chapters from Wichita, Clovis and Albuquerque and the New Mexico American Legion Riders.

New Mexico riders will meet the Wichita group in Dalhart, Texas, and ride the rest of the way to Albuquerque with them.
To assert that the Albuquerque Police Officers Associations endorsement of (mayoral candidate) Tim Keller is significant would be an understatement. Given the state of crises in our city, particularly where crime is concerned, this vote of confidence for Keller by the APOA is a HUGE deal that should not be taken lightly.

The APOA endorsement affirms what I already knew, and what those who are still weighing their options should strongly consider  and that is the fact that state Auditor Keller will clean up crime in our city, protect our communities and invest in hardworking Albuquerque families.

Yes, it is true, we must collectively create opportunities for all hardworking families to better themselves. Yet, how is this possible when parents are afraid to send their children to school and our locally owned businesses cant focus on creating more jobs because theyre mitigating burglary scenarios? Ensuring all people respect our laws and our laws respect all Albuquerqueans is the seed out of which other critical pieces of our thriving community will grow  our economy, our ability to invest in early childhood interventions etc.

According to a recent Albuquerque Journal Poll, 69 percent of likely Albuquerque voters listed Albuquerques crime rate as the citys No. 1 concern. The author also stated it was surprising that 78 percent of individuals from the Northeast Heights named crime as their foremost concern, compared with 65 percent in the rest of the city. Translation, regardless of socio-economic status or geography, no one person or neighborhood in Albuquerque is immune to becoming the victim of crime. However, we as a community need not be plagued by fear anymore  with Tim Keller in City Hall, I am confident that we can and will resolve this public-safety crisis. The APOA agrees.

Notwithstanding the obvious, what makes this endorsement stand out? As a retired U.S. Secret Service agent and proud former APD officer, I can attest that it is not common practice for law enforcement to support a progressive Democrat. What is common practice is the thoughtful and serious nature by which this association conducts endorsements. Again, another reason this is significant: If any one group in this city knows, firsthand, through its members about the problems that have infected APD, it would be the Albuquerque Police Officers Association. Think about this for a moment. Most police officers are pretty darn conservative. Anecdotally, probably most are Republican, yet the police officers union in this city is endorsing a Democrat in an election where two staunch Republicans are candidates. This speaks volumes for Tim Keller and his plan to put Albuquerque on the right track.

To summarize, State Auditor Tim Keller a Democrat, has been endorsed by firefighters, unions, small business owners, community groups and now the police officers association. Endorsed over two Republicans. Some would say that if any group of folks can smell horse manure, it would be cops; some would also say that cops are harder nuts to crack, yet here it is, the group of proud public servants on the streets responsible for separating the lawful from the lawless, chaos from calamity, and is tasked with being the first line of defense against crime has chosen to support Tim Keller for mayor.
GDC is the asset manager for Western Albuquerque Land Holdings LLC. We contributed to the measure finance committee Make Albuquerque Safe. WALHs investment in the Albuquerque economy exceeds $250 million. WALH has a vested interest in competent, ethical elected officials focused on creating jobs and opportunities for New Mexicans representing the city, county and state.

We met with the four leading mayoral candidates and found Wayne Johnson, Brian Colon and Dan Lewis each to be honest, ethical, tough on crime and pro-jobs.

Unfortunately, we found Tim Keller lacking. Keller acted as if he had already won the mayoral election. His arrogance as a political opportunist was disturbing. He appeared only interested in his political career. While a smooth and polished talker, he is not someone that will seriously address the major issues facing Albuquerque, except as it benefits him. When we learned that Keller had voted yes for Senate Bill 184, which would eliminate the citys ability to restrict the locations in which sex offenders and child molesters could live, we were shocked. Kellers inexcusable support for pro-sex offender legislation and failure to stand up for protecting families, for any reason, directly conflicts with what is best for Albuquerque.

We are pro-jobs and pro-business. We work hard to attract employers to the city. This work is complicated by Albuquerques crime and education problems. Kellers soft-on-crime legislation only makes economic development recruitment harder. It is impossible to explain away how Keller supported the most hideous criminal offenders in society.

As state auditor, Keller preaches transparency and accountability, but as it relates to his SB 184 yes vote, Kellers spin doctors claim foul and that he fought hard for subsequent 2013 legislation that closed a sex-offender loophole. However, the 2013 legislation was unrelated to SB 184, and there was, in fact, no fight for the 2013 legislation, given that (almost all) legislators voted in favor of it.

Keller claims that right-wing special interests that want a buddy in the Mayors Office funded the ad. Our only interest is supporting great public servants, whether Democrat or Republican, that have New Mexicans best interests in mind.

With only 2 percent of Western Albuquerque Land Holdings holdings located in the city, we are not worried about having a buddy as mayor. We are worried about having someone in political office that misleads the public and is solely focused on their political future rather than representing the interests of our community. Kellers actions are not transparent or accountable. He uses his State Auditors Office for grandstanding and political gain. Albuquerque deserves better.

Kellers claim that the ad is unconscionable is absurd and a cheap attempt to change the subject and avoid responsibility for his actions. Albuquerque cannot afford to elect a hypocrite that takes $380,000 in taxpayer money to run a clean campaign and then takes over $230,000 in private PAC money and illegal monetary in-kind contributions. This is disingenuous and contrary to the spirit of clean campaign. Keller claims to be a progressive champion, but just a short time ago, he switched from (being) a lifelong Republican to registering in the Democratic Party to win a state Senate seat.

We urge everyone to read SB 184 and ask yourself how could anyone have voted yes. Think of the $380,000 in public campaign funds he took from all taxpayers while scheming to have his former campaign manager form a PAC and collect hundreds of thousands more in private campaign funds. Think of how he collects cash contributions for his campaign operatives and then calls them in-kind contributions. Ask yourself, is this a transparent, accountable and clean campaign? And then decide which one of the other three gentlemen you are going to vote for in this mayoral election.
If you read just the first two paragraphs of the proposed Healthy Workforce Ordinance  which would allow employees to accrue and use sick leave, and claims 49% of private sector workers and 77% of part-time workers lack paid sick time, which compels them to work when they should be recuperating from illness or injury and increases the risk of passing illness to others  youd probably vote for it.

We sure would.

But if you read the entire 1,900-word document, chock-full of legalese and crammed onto the back of the Oct. 3 municipal election ballot in type so small many voters will need a magnifying glass, youll find plenty of reasons not to.

(Be sure to look at the back of the ballot because thats where you pencil in your For or Against circle. And voters, especially those worried about working folks, should pencil in Against.) This is a bad ordinance crafted by special-interest groups to circumvent city government.

First off, the ordinance is a nonstarter. If passed, it will almost certainly be challenged in court because it is legally vulnerable. And that will cost taxpayers money.

More importantly, this ordinance goes so far to provide benefits for employees that it absolutely tramples on the rights of employers, big and small. And it will force many of them to cover the costs of this heavy-handed mandate by laying off employees, cutting hours of others, moving their business outside the city or simply closing their doors  thus hurting the very workers its supposed to help.

And its all at a time when Albuquerque can least afford another hit to job creation  a Journal Poll shows more than four out of five respondents say the local economy is fair or poor, and two-thirds say their personal financial situation is no better than a year ago.

Remember that this ordinance did not go through any legislative process; it made it to the ballot because several left-leaning organizations collected more than 14,000 valid signatures on a petition calling for the ordinance to be put to a vote.

And if turnout Oct. 3 is as low as it usually is in a municipal election, and people vote based on the first two paragraphs, a few thousand people will decide how almost 600,000 work and do business in Albuquerque. Hardly a referendum. If wading through the tiny type is too daunting a task, consider these highlights as to why this ordinance is unhealthy for Albuquerque:

 13-16-3 (E)  If an employer requires an employee to provide a doctors note for three days or more of sick leave, the employer must pay the costs of providing that documentation. Liberally interpreted, that could force the employer to pay for the employees medical appointment and/or copay.

 13-16-4  If an employer disciplines or terminates an employee  for any reason  within 90 days of that employee taking paid sick leave, the employee can claim retaliation and the employer will have to explain the discipline/termination. And it could very well open up business owners to costly litigation including class-action lawsuits.

 13-16-7  Employees and employers covered by collective bargaining, i.e., unionized businesses and their workers, can opt out of the ordinances provisions. That patently favors unions and indicates whos pushing this unfair ordinance.

 13-16-11  This provision ties the hands of the current and future City Councils from making substantive changes to the ordinance, unless those changes make it more draconian than it already is.

And the ordinance provides sick leave for an employee to care for just about anyone by liberally defining family. Even supporters are up front that this could mean almost anyone.

In addition, it treats all employees who work just seven days in a year  full time, part time, temporary and seasonal  the same and puts the same record-keeping requirements on small mom and pop shops as large corporations.

Business groups from the Albuquerque and Hispano chambers of commerce to builders and restaurant associations have come out against it.

The one thing the proposed ordinance has right is that more Albuquerque employees should have paid sick leave. And now, thanks in part to the proposed ordinance, members of the business community, city councilors (and council candidates) and others have said they support paid sick leave and hammering out a workable policy.

That process would make it fairer to everyone by fostering debate and requiring public hearings and votes, as well as vetting by attorneys to ensure it better stands up to legal scrutiny. That is, by far, the preferred route to setting public policy.

The Journal strongly urges voters to vote AGAINST this job-killing ordinance and demand their civic, business and city leaders deliver a better alternative for all involved.

Groups against the Healthy Workforce Ordinance

Albuquerque Economic Forum

Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce

American Subcontractors Association N.M.

Americans for Prosperity

Apartment Association of N.M.

Associated Builders & Contractors N.M.

Associated General Contractors

Commercial Association of REALTORS

Greater Albuquerque Innkeepers Association

Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS

Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce

Home Builders of Central N.M.

Mechanical Contractors Association of N.M.

National Association of Women Business Owners

National Federation of Independent Business

NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association

New Mexico Association of Commerce & Industry

New Mexico Business Coalition

New Mexico Chile Association

New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides

New Mexico Hospitality Association

New Mexico Independent Automobile Dealers Association

New Mexico Restaurant Association

New Mexico Retail Association

New Mexico Roofing Contractors Association

New Mexico Utility Contractors Association

Rio Grande Foundation

Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce

Sheet Metal & Air Conditioning Contractors Association of N.M.

Visit Albuquerque

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
For those of you already experiencing the post-State Fair blues, next weekends Corrales Harvest Festival has just the fix.

Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Corrales Road will play host to a kaleidoscope of activities: live music, a corn maze, hayrides, petting zoos, wine tasting and much more.

We try to highlight that which makes Corrales a good place to live  all kinds of stuff that city kids dont see, said Tony Messec, chairman of the Corrales Harvest Festival committee.

The festival, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Corrales Foundation, has been held for just over 30 years and will encompass almost two-miles of Corrales Road to celebrate the best of art, music, culture and food.

All of those offerings are local, Messec said, from the festival posters and T-shirts designed by a local artist to the produce grown by village farmers start to finish, not to mention antique tractors  known as Corrales not-so-rapid transit  that will transport attendees along the route in hay wagons.

The popular Pet Parade will kickoff the festival at 9 a.m. Saturday with a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) theme. Kids march down Corrales Road with a variety of dressed-up pets  horses, dogs, cats, birds  you name it.

These things are pointed to children, Messec said. Because we want families to come out.

Along those lines, there will be a kids play area, the Kids Korner, at the elementary school, with a mechanical bull, climbing wall and face painting, while Frontier Mart will offer pony rides.

But its not all about the kids.

On the event schedule are poultry and rabbit shows and herding demonstration by trained dogs at The Village Mercantile; the village complex is hosting nonprofit groups and a business fair; and Wagners Farm will feature locally-grown produce and a corn maze.

At Casa San Ysidro, a satellite of the Albuquerque Museum, youll find artists and vendors, music, blacksmithing, horno baking and more; at La Entrada Park there will be an arts and crafts festival; and the Heart of Corrales Fiesta will be at Historic Old San Ysidro Church from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. At the latter, visitors can take part in the new pie walk, where $1 will give you a chance to win apple, blueberry or peach pies and other treats. Pie walk proceeds go toward the preservation of church.

There will be dancing Saturday evening as The Hootenanny starts at 6:30 with music by the Watermelon Mountain Jug Band.

Local musicians will be performing throughout the festival  at the food court stage at the recreation center and at the library stage at La Entrada Park.

A large part of the annual festival is the Corrales Pet Mayor Contest, a community fundraiser in which the public votes for their favorite contender from the community. Votes cost $1, but there is no limit to how many times one can vote, with people being encouraged to vote, and vote often.

This is an event to help the community and strengthen the bond between their pets, said Abby Keller, Pet Mayor area coordinator. Every year we have new creature.

Past candidates have included roosters, pigs and donkeys. This years field consists of a Shih Tzu dog, Loveable Lisa; a Russian blue cat, Mister Tea; a golden retriever dog, Sassy; and a Dutch Warmblood horse, Spot.

The winner will assume the seat that black and white pooch Woody won last year.

Voting began the last week of August and ends next Sunday, with the winner being announced by noon that day.

The pet mayor election has been an ongoing event since 2012, and Keller said they get around three to five candidates a year. Owners have to go through an application process to get their pet on the ballot, but the qualifying criteria isnt too stringent.

We just ask that their pet is friendly in the public, she said, adding that she would love to see a spider or snake make a future run.

In past years, more than 10,000 visitors have attended the Corrales Harvest Festival and, while they dont have concrete data, Messec believes half the people are from Rio Rancho and Albuquerque.

It is not an expensive enterprise to stage Messec said, giving thanks to 400 volunteers. It takes a lot of people to get this done.

He said the festival is funded through a Corrales nest egg and costs around five figures to put on.

We know how much its going to cost, based on history, Messec said.

Net proceeds, in the amount of $15,000 the last few years, go to non-profit organizations supporting childrens programs and animal welfare.

We dont put this thing on as a massive money maker, he said. Were putting this on as a community service.

ad 101371451-01

IF YOU GO When: Saturday, Sept. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 1

Where: Corrales Road, between Meadowlark and Tenorio

How much: Adults, $10; Kids 12 and younger, free; Parking, free.

More info: For the full event schedule or to buy tickets, go to corralesharvestfestival.com. Tickets can also be bought at one of the admission tents located at: Corrales Recreational Center at Jones and Corrales; Frontier Mart at Meadowlark and Corrales; Village Center at La Entrada Park, across from the village offices on Corrales Road; at the Pet Parade start, then at Corrales Elementary; The Village Mercantile at Meadowlark and Corrales; and Casa San Ysidro.
AUSTIN, Texas (TNS)  Minnesota Sen. Al Franken delighted a huge and enthusiastic audience that filled Hogg Auditorium Friday to see him in person, and the adjacent Texas Union Theater to see him, seconds later, in simulcast, to kick off the 2017 Texas Tribune Festival on the University of Texas campus.

But ultimately, Franken, who counts himself the only professional comedian to have been elected to the United States Senate, left many in his audience disappointed, telling Evan Smith, The Texas Tribune co-founder and CEO who interviewed him, that, no, he does not want to run for president in 2020.

I dont want to be president, Franken said. I think the president of the United States should be someone who wants to be president.

Franken who won his first term in the Senate in 2008 by 312 votes and his second term in 2014 by 10 points, said, Ive gotten to see the job of president closer up as a senator than I did as a comedian and I like my job now. I like my job now and I want to continue doing that job.

Im sure well find someone in 2020 who will want to be president and emerge from many candidates and be a great president, but not me, said Franken, a liberal Democrat.

Franken is the author of, Why Not Me?: The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency, but that was written in 1999, when Franken was still being funny for a living.

Franken came to TribFest to talk about his book, Al Franken: Giant of the Senate  the title is meant as a mock -pompous act of self-deprecation  in which he deploys the sense of humor that made him one of the original cast and writers of Saturday Night Live, but which he attempted to keep under wraps during his first term, and then some, in the Senate.

Franken said that his rival in his first campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, had deployed the Dehumorizer, which he described as a state-of-art machine deploying the latest Israeli technology, to turn Frankens lifetime of jokes into politically damaging statements.

With his defeat of Coleman, the task of dehumorizing Frankens statements, he said, fell to his staff, who, for example, decided it was best that he not describe what he characterized as a Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalias hateful dissent on the marriage equality decision as very gay.

Asked by Smith whether it was hard to think of clever ripostes to things happening in the Senate but keep his mouth shut, Franken said, It was excruciating.

But, seemingly secure in the Senate, Franken said he decided, Now I can write a book thats funny.
SANTA FE  New Mexico Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Pearce gave a thumbs-up this week to voters in traditionally Democratic-leaning Santa Fe County.

The reason?

Pearce took note that Santa Fe County voters on Tuesday rejected  by a ratio of more than 2-to-1  a proposed increase in the countys gross receipts tax.

The middle class across America, but especially in New Mexico, is just struggling to make ends meet, Pearce said in a social media video. So when our governments just continue to spend more money and ask the taxpayers for more, its not the answer.

He also said Santa Fe County voters had rejected out-of-state values in shooting down the proposed tax increase, which would have generated more revenue to pay for extra public safety personnel and expand behavioral health services.

Only about 8.4 percent of registered Santa Fe County voters cast ballots in the special election on the proposed tax hike.

Pearce, who has represented New Mexicos 2nd Congressional District for over 12 years, is the lone Republican running for governor in 2018. There are four Democrats running for the post: U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, state Sen. Joseph Cervantes, Albuquerque businessman Jeff Apodaca and Santa Fe alcohol-awareness advocate Peter DeBennedittis.

NOT HACKED: Three months after New Mexico election officials said they had no reason to believe Russian hackers breached  or tried to breach  state voter databases or computer systems during last years election cycle, federal election officials made it official.

New Mexico was not one of the 21 states hit by Russian hackers, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The federal agency contacted election officials in all 50 states on Friday to discuss its findings and share specific information about the breaches.

Fortunately, it appears that New Mexico was not one of the states targeted by Russian hackers last year, said Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver. However, cybersecurity threats are still a major concern and should be handled with the utmost seriousness and attention to detail.

Some of New Mexicos neighbors were reportedly among the targeted states  including Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma  but there is no evidence any votes were affected.

Dan Boyd: dboyd@abqjournal.com
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

Despite a 2015 state public safety survey showing New Mexico and Albuquerque have an astonishing backlog of untested sexual assault evidence kits, a fact confirmed by a 2016 state audit showing its the worst backlog per capita in the nation, not one of the backlog kits in Albuquerque has been tested.

While that sounds like dismal progress to some in the sexual assault advocacy community, others say significant progress has been made in the months since the December 2016 audit.

And, criminal justice officials and Mayor Richard Berry said Friday that testing of kits will officially begin in October.

Then the flood gates will open up, Albuquerque police Commander Jeff McDonald said.

But only six kits  of the estimated 3,800  will be submitted in that first round, and those will be sent to one of two out-of-state labs contracting with the Albuquerque Police Department. The small number will allow the department to verify the results of the contracted lab.

The department has its own lab, but McDonald said Friday that analysts on staff who have received the necessary training are barely keeping their heads above water meeting court-mandated deadlines for current cases, commonly referred to as the Case Management Order.

Were not doing a lot of proactive (testing) right now because of the Case Management Order, McDonald said.

A $1.2 million funding boost from Berry and city councilors in 2016 allowed McDonald to hire six additional analysts, to bring the staff to nine, but four of them are still in lengthy and intensive training and two positions remain unfilled, but with prospects.

The money also paid for a rape kit tracking system and salary for three detectives to start combing through the backlog of kits, connecting them to victim reports, existing criminal cases and other details that will help prosecutors decide if they can move forward with a prosecution.

A kit consists of essentially cotton swabs wiped on different parts of the body of a person who has reported a sexual assault. Kits are taken by medical professionals, mostly practitioners trained in such evidence collection. A single kit can take several days to test. And often no DNA is found.

The kit is stored in an evidence room until tested, and a prosecutor can order a test for a kit or a police agency can have it tested.

The special detectives, who began their work in late 2016, have so far assessed the paperwork associated with 1,000 of the kits, McDonald said.

They are organizing the kits and cases into five priority groups, with priority 1 and priority 2 being recommended for first available testing.

Those two groups consist of the most violent cases, those involving children, and what prosecutor Lee Hood calls solvability factors.

Those factors are crucial, she said, and include a case that hasnt legally expired and most important, a victim who is willing to participate in prosecution. There is no expiration for first-degree sex assault cases, but there is a six year limitation for second-degree cases.

There is money for 300 tests. The detectives have identified 96 to 104 cases that are priority 1 or 2, Hood said.

Those cases are now on the desk of a lead prosecutor, who is going through them to see if indeed they are candidate cases for prosecution.

Hood said that in attacking the backlog, there needed to be a system in place so resources were used the most effectively. She said it wouldnt make initial sense to test a kit for a case in which the victim doesnt want to pursue prosecution, or cant be found, or the case has expired, or the case has already been tried and the offender is in prison.

But even if a victim doesnt want to prosecute or the state cant, all the kits will be tested and there are other forms of justice and healing than just through the courts.

The District Attorneys Office is not going to tell anyone to not test the kit. Were just trying to figure out  which ones we are we going to do first, Hood said. Were going to get through them all and were going to get it done.

How long that will take isnt clear.

McDonald said thats going to take more money.

If I have 10 full-time analysts, and get 90 done a month and send out 90-200 a month, I would need $2.5 million and be done in 1 years, McDonald said.

Meanwhile, the states lab, with the help of more than $2 million in federal grants, another $1 million state boost and more than 10 analysts, has moved through 611 of its roughly 1,300 backlogged rape kits, a Department of Public Safety spokesman said. The state lab processes DNA for rape kits from agencies around the state, including the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office.

Connie Monahan, the statewide sexual assault nurse exam coordinator, calls the difference between APD and the states lab a tale of two backlogs.

She was on a panel of experts who testified on Thursday to state legislators on the Health and Human Services Committee meeting in Albuquerque.

She told legislators that the state lab is testing kits at a phenomenal rate and have so far found at least 194 of the 604 tested kits contained enough DNA to enter into the federal criminal DNA database, called CODIS.

Of those 194 cases, 72 matched to an offender already in the system.

That means there are 72 repeat offenders out there, said state Auditor Tim Keller, who was also on the panel. This is a public safety issue.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

A special commission on Friday unveiled a slate of ambitious proposals to strengthen oversight of the states ailing guardian and conservator system, which oversees finances and other major decisions for many of New Mexicos most vulnerable citizens.

The Supreme Court-appointed commissions recommendations include hiring special court employees to hear grievances and requiring more accountability from the professionals appointed to make decisions for incapacitated people.

Other recommendations include requiring mediation or facilitated family meetings between feuding relatives in contested cases and creating an adult protected person oversight board to regulate professional guardians and conservators, who must be certified and bonded.

The initial set of proposals, due to the Supreme Court by Oct. 1, focus on ways to improve the professionalism of corporate guardians and conservators who handle a protected persons finances by requiring bonding to protect an incapacitated persons assets.

The states courts are responsible for appointing guardians and conservators for incapacitated individuals who cant handle their own affairs. Often family members are appointed, but if there is no family or if family members are feuding, courts would appoint third-party professional guardians.

Dozens of families have come forward since a Journal series highlighted the problem, detailing concerns and potential deficiencies in the system, sparking the decision to make changes.

The commission also proposed requiring certification of all corporate guardians and conservators, presumably by a national guardianship agency, but backed off the idea of requiring a state license that an oversight board could revoke for malfeasance or misconduct.

Chaired by retired state District Judge Wendy York, the group was tasked in April with providing the Supreme Court with concrete ways to improve the system that, in an attempt to protect the incapacitated person, operates out of the public eye. All hearings are held in closed courtrooms, with few participants and with nearly all court records sealed.

Enhanced reporting

Typically, the only oversight of such cases has been the guardians or conservators filing of a several-page annual report to the judge each year, but the commission is recommending enhanced reporting to include bank and financial statements. Such filings would continue to be sealed.

Family members who have in the past been stymied by a lack of access to the courts to air complaints about a loved ones treatment or a guardian or conservators conduct could file grievances with an independent court commissioner who would investigate and, if warranted, report to the judge in the case.

Under the recommendations, judges in appointing a guardian or conservator also would have to make specific findings of fact if they deviate from an incapacitated persons advance directive, trust, will or estate plan.

I feel like weve made some headway, said Emily Darnell Nunez, the sole layperson appointed to the commission. We havent solved all the problems, but we have made a good first step.

Last year, the Journal series Who Guards the Guardians? prominently featured the protracted guardianship/conservator case of Nunezs mother, Blair Darnell.

Secrecy issue

The thorny issue of secrecy and sequestration of such cases wasnt addressed in the initial set of proposals but is scheduled to be discussed by the commission later this year, along with other possible recommendations for changes in state law.

A final commission report is expected by Jan. 1, ahead of a 30-day legislative session, and could include funding proposals for reforms if approved by the Supreme Court and endorsed by Gov. Susana Martinez.

Over the past decade, there have been prior attempts at reform involving commissions appointed by the Legislature.

But state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said this marks the first time the state Supreme Court has taken the lead.

The court, in bringing this to the forefront, has to do something. We (state legislators) have to do something; we cant let this fester any longer, said Ortiz y Pino, a commission member and longtime advocate for reform.

The 16 commission members include judges, attorneys, a psychologist, two appointees from Martinezs administration and current and former legislators.

Although mostly disgruntled family members testified at monthly commission meetings, the commissions work gathered momentum after Julys federal criminal indictment of top executives of a longtime Albuquerque-based corporate guardianship/conservatorship firm, Ayudando Guardians, for alleged embezzlement of millions in client funds.

Weeks earlier, state financial regulators announced they had found evidence of siphoning of $4 million of client trust funds at Desert State Life Management, which originally handled special trusts and guardianships for special needs clients and still retained some court-appointed conservator cases.

Just this week, State Auditor Tim Keller alerted state officials to an initial audit finding that New Mexicos Office of Guardianship, which provides guardianship services to about 900 indigent clients through private contracts with guardianship firms, had lax internal controls, failed to investigate complaints about contractors and performed required annual compliance reviews on only two of 21 state-funded guardianship companies last year.

Ortiz y Pino said the recent revelations about guardianship companies have reinstated the belief that this is a big mess.

The question will be: Is the state willing to spend the money to bring about these changes?
WASHINGTON  In a show of American military might to North Korea, U.S. bombers and fighter escorts flew on Saturday to the farthest point north of the border between North and South Korea by any such American aircraft this century. The Pentagon said the mission in international airspace showed how seriously President Donald Trump takes North Koreas reckless behavior.

This mission is a demonstration of U.S. resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat, Defense Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

North Koreas weapons program is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community. We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies, White said.

North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un, has said Trump would pay dearly for threatening to totally destroy North Korea if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack. Kims foreign minister told reporters this past week that the Norths response to Trump could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific.

North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he wont allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the Norths progress.

The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday. The U.S. characterized the flights as extending farther north of the Demilitarized Zone, than any U.S. fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

B-1 bombers are no longer part of the U.S. nuclear force, but they are capable of dropping large numbers of conventional bombs.

U.S. Pacific Command would not be more specific about many years it had been since U.S. bombers and fighters had flown that far north of the DMZ, but a spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Dave Benham, noted that this century encompasses the period North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

At the United Nations, North Koreas foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, said Saturday that his countrys nuclear force is to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the U.S. and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the U.S.

He also said that Trumps depiction of Kim as Rocket Man makes our rockets visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.

Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before! the president tweeted.

Trump continued the heated exchange with the North Koreans Saturday night.

He tweeted: Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they wont be around much longer!

On Thursday, Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

North Koreas nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime, Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

Hours later, Kim responded by saying Trump was deranged.

In a speech last week at the United Nations, Trump had issued the warning of potential obliteration and mocked the Norths young autocrat as a Rocket Man on a suicide mission.

Trumps executive order expanded the Treasury Departments ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system.

Trump also said China was imposing major banking sanctions, too, but there was no immediate confirmation from the Norths most important trading partner.

If enforced, the Chinese action Trump described could severely impede the isolated Norths ability to raise money for its missile and nuclear development. China, responsible for about 90 percent of North Koreas trade, serves as the countrys conduit to the international banking system.
SANTA FE  Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM, addressed student questions about President Donald Trumps verbal attacks on North Korea, the next steps for national health care and what is being done to protect DACA beneficiaries at a high school leadership conference Friday.

Udall spoke to more than 130 juniors and seniors from around the state who sat in state representatives seats in the House chamber at the Roundhouse.

Udall told one student the ongoing attempt to undo the Affordable Care Act is the most pressing issue being debated on a national level. Annakarel Portillo, a 17-year-old senior from Santa Fes Academy for Technology and the Classics, said the issue is particularly meaningful to her as a Medicaid recipient who fears losing coverage if the Graham-Cassidy bill is passed to replace the Obama-era ACA.

Later, Udall told the Journal hes encouraged by Sen. John McCains announced opposition of the bill Friday morning, calling the Arizona Republican a particularly principled senator who wants the bill to go through regular congressional committee and amendment processes.

He also told the students the fate of the bill remains uncertain. Its a very close vote, and we dont know whats going to happen, he said.

Udall condemned threats and name-calling by Trump directed at North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and his country at the United Nations General Assembly. Trump called Kim Rocket Man and said the U.S. may have to totally destroy North Korea. Kim responded by saying Trump would pay dearly and called the president a dotard.

Trump sees something or somebody attacks him, and immediately hes attacking back, Udall told the students. We saw that play out at the United Nations, which to me is extremely unfortunate. He said the back-and-forth between leaders is very worrisome and very scary, but that he hopes it doesnt keep North Korea from following U.N. resolutions intended to avoid a nuclear conflict.

Several students had concerns about Trumps rescission of DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, earlier this month. Felipe Garcia III, 17, of Albuquerques Atrisco Heritage Academy, said hes seeing friends and their parents being affected by the decision.

Udall said he has hopes a replacement proposal that Trump, Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., discussed last week will become formalized because a chance for a bipartisan resolution is constructive. He later told the Journal that he expects an outpouring of support for DACA recipients to influence Congress. Youre seeing people step up at the state level and county level to show support for the DACA participants, he said. That can make a difference at the national level. The more that support grows, the more Congress is going to be wary to engage in a situation where DACA participants are deported.
Starting 23rd September, News18 India has lined up a special series - Shri Ram Yatra, which will trace Lord Ramas journey, exploring places as described in the seven kands of Ramayana. The channels team will bring stories from Ayodhya, the birth place of Lord Ram, historical sites like Chitrakoot, the first stop during his exile; from Panchavat in Nashiki, where Sita was abducted, and Ashok Vatika in Sri Lanka, where Sita was kept captive.

Shot in a documentary style, the series, spanning 4 episodes, will be a captivating mix of past and present, showcasing many untold tales for the first time on television. Remembering the stories associated with these places, the show promises to present a gripping narrative which will be both - informative and engaging.

Watch Shri Ram Yatra, from 23rd September till 14th October, every Saturday & Sunday at 9 PM

on News18 India
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.
Two renders depicting whats alleged to be Huaweis Mate 10 Pro Android flagship surfaced online earlier today, having presumably originated from China. The images that can be seen above are largely in line with recent rumors about Huaweis most powerful Android device ever, suggesting that the Mate 10 Pro will boast a nearly bezel-less design and feature a tall display panel with an aspect ratio of 18:9, i.e. 2:1. The renders almost certainly werent leaked from Huawei itself, not only due to their low quality and the fact they show no signs of a front-facing camera but also because the device depicted in them is shown as having around 70 percent of battery left. Due to psychological reasons, marketing departments always push for official product renders and promotional photographs to be showing handsets whose batteries are nearly or entirely full. Another confusing feature of the render depicting the front side of the phablet is the fact that its navigation bar shows two battery icons, thus being suggestive of low-effort photo manipulation.

Regardless, the overall shape of the handset and its two-sensor rear camera setup correspond to recent rumors about the handset which originated from more credible sources, with the new leak possibly being based on those previous reports about Huaweis upcoming flagship. The device is said to feature a Leica-certified imaging system and be powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC which Huawei describes as the first true AI chip on the planet, with the silicon having a special processing unit dedicated to artificial intelligence computing and related tasks. The handset is supposed to feature a 6-inch QHD panel and at least 6GB of RAM, as well as 64GB of internal flash memory expandable via a microSD card slot and a 4,200mAh battery which wont be removable, according to previous rumors.

The Chinese original equipment manufacturer already confirmed that its next-generation Android flagship will be officially announced on October 16, with recent reports indicating that the company is actually set to unveil four devices  the Mate 10, Mate 10 Plus, Mate 10 Pro, and the Mate 10 Lite. All of the tech giants upcoming offerings should become commercially available by November, though it remains to be seen how many of them will launch in the West. Still, with the announcement itself being set to take place in Munich, Germany, it seems that Huawei is at the very least looking to cater to Europe with its new smartphone lineup.
The city of La Crosse is now the maybe-proud foster parent of a 9-foot-tall baby.

A bouncing baby of indeterminate gender has arrived in La Crosse, no doubt to the joy of its creator Wolfgang Auer of Friedberg, Germany. Auers Hatched Baby, part of his Blue Baby series, features a giant fiberglass and resin baby painted blue sitting in a white egg shell with just its head poking out. The baby has a vacant expression on its face as it stares open-mouthed into the distance, making its full set of perfect teeth and all-too-human grey eyes unavoidable.

The baby made its way to our fair city from the Fitton Art Center in Hamilton, Ohio, where it was greeted by an amused public, according to WCPO, a Cincinnati TV station.

The La Crosse Board of Park Commissioners chatted about the statue Thursday after the citys Art Board asked whether the city would consider putting it in a public park, among several other possible locations.

Parks director Steve Carlyon said the board didnt take any action, but the city will have to find a place for this gift from its German sister-city.

The baby is in La Crosse, so weve got to figure out where to put this baby to bed at, Carlyon said.

Dont worry though. People will have the chance to weigh in on whether they want it next door, at least when it comes to the possibility of it being on public property.

Were not just going to throw something controversial in the park without talking to the neighbors, Carlyon said.

While Im not sure Id go so far as to call it controversial, the baby has been causing a stir since the photo hit the park board agenda (and subsequently my inbox) earlier this week.

That is terrifying, were the first words out of my mouth when I opened up the photo to see the nearly lifelike baby poking its head out of its shell. And then I laughed and shared it with everyone around me, because how can you not when faced with something like that?

You start looking at it too long, and you start fixating on the impossible teeth. All of a sudden its not human, Tribune city editor Marc Wehrs said.

Personally, I find the eyes the most disturbing. Theyre too lifelike in a statue that isnt quite lifelike enough otherwise, putting the sculpture firmly into the uncanny valley (the uncanny valley is when a human replica is almost, but not quite, real and creeps people out).

We threw it up on our website, figuring if we got a kick out of it, our readers would, too. And we were right. Our readers gave us some great suggestions for what to do with Hatched Baby, from dropping it in the Mississippi River where its face would pop out when the waters low to spreading the kindness of the gift to our neighbors in Onalaska. (Regifting is only tacky if you make it tacky, guys!) My brothers girlfriend suggested it looked like the child of a member of the Blue Man Group who was horrified to learn who his father was. Another friend suggested it brought to mind Violet Beauregard post-gum-chewing.

My personal favorite suggested site was outside area high schools to discourage teen pregnancy. Nothing like a giant, horrified baby staring at you to remind you of the importance of safe sex.

La Crosse is no stranger to statue controversies, though this one is probably better than the ongoing discussion about the Hiawatha statue, also known as the Big Indian, in Riverside Park. While the Big Indian is known for being racially insensitive and offensive to Native American groups, at least the Hatched Baby is just being called ugly  or, as arts board chair Doug Weidenbach said, Its more of an aesthetic controversy.

Weidenbach makes the good point that the baby does forward the mission of the arts committee.

What we want to do is start conversations about art pieces, he said. Why not introduce this and have some of that public discussion?

While the baby is nontraditional for the area  most of La Crosses public art features homages to our history  it does make for an interesting public discussion. Not all art has to be attractive and modern art does have its place in society. Mostly, I want to know if the babys head poking out of its shell is a metaphor for a child becoming less shy or whether its a birth thing. Im hoping its not a birth thing, because then the color choice gets really insensitive.

I have to say, the more I talk about it, the more I become attached to it, the poor deformed thing. Do you think my landlord would let me put it up outside my building?

Photos: National Register of Historic Places in La Crosse County
T-Mobile started rolling out a new update for all Galaxy Note 8 units on its network earlier this month, some owners of Samsungs latest Android phablet have reported, with a number of them claiming that the patch launched as early as September 14, i.e. a day before the official release of the device in the United States. Regardless of whether it was a day one update or not, the software package should now be available for download on all Galaxy Note 8 models connected to T-Mobiles network and if you still havent received a notification prompting you to download it, it may have been installed automatically overnight or you simply need to trigger a manual scan for from your system Settings app.

The latest update for the Galaxy Note 8 carries the build number N950USQU1AQ15 and is just over 198MB in size, with T-Mobile distributing it as a standard over-the-air (OTA) package. Apart from the August Android Security Update, the software packages also ships with a wide variety of stability improvements related to individual apps like Google Maps and Navigation, according to Samsungs official changelog. As always, its recommended you install the update over a Wi-Fi network and make sure your handset has at least 50 percent of battery left before proceeding with the download. The third largest wireless carrier in the country is expected to release the September Android Security Update for the Galaxy Note 8 in the coming weeks but no firm availability windows for the thereof are known as of this writing.

Samsungs new phablet has been on sale for just over a week and is already doing rather well all over the world, according to a number of industry trackers and Samsungs own statement on its commercial performance. The handset is presented as the companys ultimate offering in the high-end smartphone segment and may become one of the best-selling Android devices in 2017, some analysts believe. As is usually the case with flagship Galaxy-branded devices, Samsung should support the Galaxy Note 8 with major software updates for the next two years, whereas the company is also expected to keep developing monthly security patches for the handset until at least 2020.
Some Verizon Wireless customers may be somewhat less than happy with the carrier after the company sent out at least two letters regarding disruptions to their service. The first of the two letters was effectively a notice to inform a select group of customers that they would have a limited amount of time to either switch providers or purchase a more expensive plan to offset those costs. Meanwhile, a second letter revealed that as many as 8,500 customers had been notified and that it had discovered that many of those were using their devices as first responders or didnt have access to alternative service providers.

In the second letter, Verizon said that it remains committed both to solving the problem and to keeping any first responders using the network connected, but also indicated that the decision would not be reversed. Instead, the company is now offering an extension to the amount of time those customers have to take the appropriate action. More specifically, customers now have until December 1 to switch providers. Customers who dont have any available alternatives, in the meantime, will need to switch to a 2 GB, 4 GB, or 5 GB single line plan, or move the larger 8 GB plan. Affected customers who choose not to take either option by December 1, will lose mobile service.

The move is probably not the preferred option for Verizon and follows earnings reports that have been less-than-spectacular for the first half of the year. At least a portion of the companys trouble is also likely to be caused by the increasing demand for intriguingly-priced unlimited data plans. Thats a problem that is having a significantly negative impact on several other carriers as well. Verizon, for its part, seems sympathetic to the plight of its customers in rural areas. Although the company said it was ultimately unable to find a better solution to the situation, it also took the opportunity to inform customers that it is still reviewing the viability of customers who primarily use roaming services. It also promised that it is committed to continuing to look for a way to support customers with LTE service who live outside of the Verizon network. Unfortunately, that sentiment probably comes as little consolation to any customers affected by the service change. Fortunately, those individuals will have just a bit more time to make a decision regarding which course of action will be best for their circumstances.
ETTRICK  South Beaver Creek Lutheran Church, rural Ettrick, will celebrate its 150th anniversary with two special events:

On Sunday, Sept. 24, the congregation will present a history pageant during the 10:30 a.m. service. The pageant, which is being performed by the confirmation class, will be educational, inspiring and fun. Those attending are encouraged to wear pioneer-era costume, and bring old cars and tractors to display.

The second event is the 150th anniversary festival worship service at 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 1. The Rev. Roger Benrud, a retired ELCA pastor, will preach the sermon. After the service, a catered meal will be served. The cost is $10 and $5 for children 5 and younger; call 608-525-4681 to make meal reservations. A short program will be held at 1:30 p.m.

South Beaver Creek Lutheran Church is located at W16679 Hwy. D, halfway between Ettrick and Melrose.
Focused on making your morning cup of Joe more than just a pick-me-up, Driftaway Coffee brings freshly-roasted coffees from around the world right to your doorstep, just two days after roasting. Complete with each of the four bags that arrive are tasting notes to help guide you through the different aromas and flavors.

What Is Driftaway Coffee?

Think of Driftaway Coffee as your morning sidekick. Every one, two, or four weeks the brand sends along freshly roasted beans, all curated to your taste profile. The company was started by Anu and Suyog back in 2013, a duo who had really grown to appreciate how damn nice it was to have a freshly roasted cup of coffee. Seeking to bring this love to the masses, they began a subscription service that focuses on bringing really top quality beans from around the world right to your doorstep. Anu and Suyog scour the world for smaller-scale farms that grow really interesting beans, roast them by hand, and ship them to you within 12 hours of roasting.

Its best for the coffee reliant, the foodie folks, or to give as a gift. Basically, its simple. You like coffee? Driftaway brings you really good coffee.

Each box includes either 7 oz, 11 oz, or 32 oz of a rotating list of freshly roasted beans, curated to your taste profile.

Unboxing Driftaway Coffee

Ive reviewed many a food subscription service in my day, and I must say, Driftaway has packaging figured out. No unnecessarily large boxes, no excessive amounts of packaging, just a small brown box (which encouraged you to Drink Me Quick!) with all the goodies carefully stacked inside. Each bag is carefully packed in vacuum-sealed, air-safe bags that keep the coffee fresh long past the initial open. Every bag is resealable, so after opening you can keep your beans as fresh as possible. Each bag is stamped with the day it was roasted, tasting notes, weight, flavor profile, and, as a cherry on top, the name of who the coffee is going to.

The Review

Ill be the first to admit Im a coffee snob. Truly - I dare you to try and take me on a coffee date to Starbucks. I have a crippling dependency on coffee and I aint afraid to show it. But one area of my life as a coffee aficionado where Im lacking is my home brew. Im not really a morning person, so when I brew coffee at home its for the sole purpose of dragging myself out of bed. But Driftaway Coffee wants to make your morning coffee more than a kick in the butt. Driftaway wants to make your morning coffee a ritual.

Driftaways tasting kit includes four different coffees with four very different profiles (fruity, classic, bold, and balanced), designed to help you identify what coffees best suits your palette. Given my love of bring-back-the-dead black coffee, I thought I would like the bold. But after comparing and contrasting each of the four flavors, I found myself gravitating more towards the nuttier, chocolate notes of the classic blend.

Via Driftaways app or on Driftaways website, you can rate each of the coffees and add your own personal tasting notes for future reference. From these ratings, Driftaway will curate your future shipments to your taste preferences.

After a few days of testing out these coffees, I began noticing that I actually was taking the time to wake up, brew my coffee, and truly enjoy my cup of joe, instead of lazily dragging around my coffee mug as I got ready for wherever I was headed. What made the experience even more interesting is with each bag of coffee, Driftaway not only provides full tasting notes, but notes on the origin of the coffee, and the story of the farmers who grew the beans. Taking this dedication to transparency one step further, Driftaway Coffee will actually send any feedback you have directly to the farmers so you can congratulate them yourself on a damn good cup of coffee. That was one of the parts of Driftaway that really resonated with me  each coffee had a story. My morning cup of coffee was no longer just a kick-in-the-butt to jumpstart my day, it had some meaning. Yes, that sounds a little philosophical, but it was a really cool experience to read about exactly who made your coffee, from the family of farmers who grew the beans to the Driftaway team who roasts them. Sure beats handing over my money to the gangly teen behind the Starbucks counter.

Even with the tasting kit, that includes four coffees of varying profiles, each coffee was really, really good. Even though, as Ive now discovered, Im not keen on fruity coffees, I enjoyed every sip of the fruitier blend Driftaway sent along. I especially loved the grand affair of analyzing the different tasting notes each cup had to offer.

To make sure you have the best cup possible, Driftaway packs in a handy dandy guide to the perfect cup of coffee. Ranging from the best grinder on the market, to when you should grind your beans, to the perfect water temperature, the guide was jam-packed with how to make the most out of your daily pick-me-up.

As I mentioned earlier, Driftaway really has their packaging down pat. The entire box takes the name Driftaway to heart: each coffee bag is packaged with a luggage in mind (even stamped the airport code of the city it originates from). All needed information comes delivered on a postcard and filled in with descriptors, tasting notes, and the origin story. Maybe my millennial is showing or maybe Im just a sucker for spot-on packaging, but the on-brand packaging really tied the whole shipment together.

Overall, Im sold on Driftaway Coffee. Theres something beautiful about a really great cup of coffee made by local farmers who really care about the final product. It helps a little bit that the coffee is damn good.

Cost

Your first tasting kit will set you back $8, and includes 2 oz bags of four coffees

After the first box, prices are determined based on frequency and how much coffee you need.

For 1 drinker, costing $12: the next shipment will include 7 oz of coffee (or 14 cups)

For 1-2 drinkers, costing $16: the next shipment will include 11 oz of coffee (or 22 cups)

For 2-3 drinkers, costing $34: each shipment will include 32 oz of coffee (or 64 cups), and include free priority shipping (!)

Each shipment can be curated to arrive every week, every two weeks, or every four weeks.

How to Subscribe

Subscribing to Driftaway is easy: order your first tasting kit (coming in at $8 + free shipping), determine your taste profile, and sign up for how much coffee you want and how often you want to be delivered.

One of our favorite parts of Driftaway is the commitment to getting your coffee to you ASAP. Each shipment is packaged and sent to you within twelve hours of roasting, so you get the freshest possible beans. The cost of standard shipping is included in the price of the box, and each box takes an average of three days to arrive, depending on your location.

Managing Your Subscription

Managing your subscription is easy. Via Driftaways app or on Driftaways website, you can edit your taste profile, review your coffees, and basically bug the fine folks at Driftaway for any questions or pointers you may have about making the perfect cup of joe.

You can also

Track shipments

Refer friends

Order gift shipments

Edit order frequency

Change cards and addresses

Is Driftaway Coffee It? The VERDICT: Must Have

If youre a coffee fiend, think about how much you spend on your weekly fix. Is it more than $12? Considering a decent latte can cost upwards of $5 nowadays, probably. With Driftaway, that $12 will get you fourteen cups of coffee, and with the beans all curated to your taste profile. And, for you lazy folks (I mean me too, guys), the coffee is all delivered right to your door, and right after roasting.

But one aspect of Driftaway Coffee that you cant really give a monetary value is the educational aspect. With each shipment comes facts about different coffee growing regions, the various flavor profiles, stories on the farm it came from, and many other fun tidbits. I never thought I would be sipping and comparing fresh brewed coffees like I do red wines, but learning about the types of coffee the world has to offer really puts some excitement in my morning brew.

Driftaway Coffee Competitors

Deals, Coupons and Promo Codes

Right now, Driftaway is offering half off all tasting kits  meaning for just $8 (including shipping!) you can get $16 worth of coffee.
A contest sponsored by Lightspeed and CloudAhoy is inspiring general aviation pilots to draw in the sky. Contestants make line drawings using the path of their airplanes, recorded using CloudAhoy, a smartphone-based GPS flight tracking app. The concept, on a larger scale, was popularized in the last few years by jet aircraft manufacturers who used the extremely long flights required for certification, particularly ETOPS testing, to sketch out a shape with their radar track.

Most entrants have submitted roughly 100 miles of data for their drawings. One early entrant has flown over 300 miles to trace the Texas Longhorns logo, inside a drawing of the state of Texas, west of Houston. The overall winner will receive a Lightspeed Zulu 3 headset. Second and third will win Lightspeed flight bags. The contest closes Oct. 3.

All the submitted artwork is available for viewing here on the Lightspeed website.
After complaints from members about discriminatory fuel pricing and high ramp fees at airports with only one FBO, AOPA is putting some muscle into finding ways to force FBOs to lower their fees. Earlier this week, AOPA convened a panel of FBO owners, airport managers and GA pilots to discuss ways to fight the fees. This is really only about a number of places, mostly large FBOs with a monopoly position, where a particular set of circumstances have come together and resulted in egregious fees and pricing practices, says Ken Mead, AOPAs general counsel. Mead continued, That, combined with consolidation in the FBO industry, has pilots concerned about what the future might bring. We welcome this diverse and experienced group to advise AOPA on how we can work to empower airport boards, pilots and elected officials to find the right balance between reasonable pricing for pilots and profitability for FBOs.

In late August, AOPA assisted seven pilots with filing FAA Part 13 complaints for airports with pricing identified as particularly egregious in member surveys. Airports that accept FAA funds for airport improvements are required to meet certain standards regarding reasonable public access to airport facilities. 14 CFR Part 13 provides an informal complaint mechanism for people who believe these standards are not being met. Number one on AOPAs list was OK3 Air at Heber City Municipal Airport in Utah. Heber City (36U) is the closest airport to the ski resorts in Park City, Utah. OK3 is reported to be charging $6.36 per gallon for 100LL, according to AirNav.com.
President Trump is known for his fiery, distinctive voice on Twitter, but he might have met his match. North Korea's state-run media arm, the Korean Central News Agency, often issues flamboyant threats to the United States.

Why it matters: The leaders of two nuclear-armed nations are engaged in a rhetorical game of chicken. While it has largely been limited to simple name-calling (think: Trump's nickname of "Rocket Man" for Kim), the childish aspects of their words risk spilling over into bona fide geopolitical and nuclear catastrophe.

Sanctions

May 29: North Korea launches a short-range ballistic missile test, causing Trump to goad China via a tweet:

June 2: The United States and China agreed to targeted sanctions against North Korea during a U.N. Security Council meeting.

The United States and China agreed to targeted sanctions against North Korea during a U.N. Security Council meeting. June 9: North Korea issues a response to the sanctions: "The army and people of the DPRK will shatter to the smithereens the U.S. and its followers' unprecedented 'sanctions' and pressure racket with the great spirit of self-development and invincible military might."

ICBM test

July 4 (Pyongyang time): North Korea tests an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the continental United States. The regime promptly and defiantly blames U.S. policy for necessitating the launch: "Unless a fundamental end is put to the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and the nuclear threat to it, the DPRK will never put the nuke and ballistic rocket on the negotiating table nor take even an inch back from the road of bolstering the nuclear force which it has already taken. One has to adopt a new way of thinking, first, if one wants to deal with the DPRK."

North Korea tests an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the continental United States. The regime promptly and defiantly blames U.S. policy for necessitating the launch: "Unless a fundamental end is put to the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and the nuclear threat to it, the DPRK will never put the nuke and ballistic rocket on the negotiating table nor take even an inch back from the road of bolstering the nuclear force which it has already taken. One has to adopt a new way of thinking, first, if one wants to deal with the DPRK." July 3 (Eastern time): Trump personally dismisses Kim while condemning the ICBM launch. He again calls on China to do something regarding North Korea:

"Fire and fury"

August 8: During an impromptu Bedminster press conference, Trump threatens North Korea: "[T]hey will be met with fire and fury, and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before."

During an impromptu Bedminster press conference, Trump threatens North Korea: "[T]hey will be met with fire and fury, and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before." August 9: North Korea releases a statement slamming the "reckless nuclear war frenzy" of the U.S.: "The U.S. imperialists' ridiculous bluffing never works on the DPRK. They had better not provoke the DPRK any more, mindful of its deplorable fate on the verge of ruin."

North Korea releases a statement slamming the "reckless nuclear war frenzy" of the U.S.: "The U.S. imperialists' ridiculous bluffing never works on the DPRK. They had better not provoke the DPRK any more, mindful of its deplorable fate on the verge of ruin." August 11: Trump doubles down with his fiery rhetoric on Twitter:

Nuclear test

September 3: North Korea conducts an underground nuclear test, which it claims was a hydrogen bomb. Trump issues a veiled economic threat to both North Korea and China on Twitter:

September 10: North Korea says that "sanctions and pressure will never work," touting the success of its nuclear test: "[C]lear is the fact that the more recklessly the U.S. resorts to irrational sanctions, pressure and military threats to the DPRK, the more rapidly the defense capability of Juche Korea will develop beyond the world's imagination. The perfect success in the H-bomb test for ICBM that shook the earth is its eloquent proof."

U.N. General Assembly

September 15: In the days prior to start of the U.N. General Assembly, North Korea tests a ballistic missile that overflies Japan.

In the days prior to start of the U.N. General Assembly, North Korea tests a ballistic missile that overflies Japan. September 17:
24 September 2017 01:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijan Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov with participation of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, Stephane Visconti of France, and Andrew Schofer of the United States of America), the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk had a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly 72nd Session in New York, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told Trend.

At the meeting the sides had broad exchange of views on the settlement of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In this context, steps to be taken by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Co-Chairs were reviewed.

According to the proposals of Co-Chairs the issues related to the organization of meeting of Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were also discussed.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov stated that Azerbaijan supports the interesting proposals put forward by the Co-Chairs for continuation of substantial negotiations on settlement of conflict.

Furthermore, Minister Elmar Mammadyarov reiterated that Azerbaijan always stands ready for logical negotiations to achieve the soonest resolution of 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.

21:29 (GMT+4) Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov having meeting with OSCE MG Co-chairs and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in New York. The sides are discussing the resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh 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.

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23 September 2017 15:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

In order to achieve progress in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the armed forces of Armenia have to be withdrawn from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the countrys Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said.

He made the remarks during the meeting with Thomas Greminger, OSCE secretary general, on the sidelines of the 72nd session of the UNGA, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Sept. 23.

At the meeting, the sides had a broad exchange of views on the current status of relations between Azerbaijan and the OSCE. They stressed the importance of furthering the relations based on the spirit of constructive dialogue and mutual understanding between Azerbaijan and the OSCE.

Mammadyarov informed about Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the current status of the negotiation process on the settlement of the conflict and stressed that the fact of unacceptability and unsustainability of status-quo was recognized by OSCE MG co-chairs and the whole international community.

Attempts aimed at altering the internationally recognized borders of states by use of force are unacceptable, Mammadyarov added.

Furthermore, Mammadyarov reiterated that the conflict must be resolved in accordance with the norms and principles of international law, particularly sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of the internationally recognized borders of states, as well as the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council.

During the meeting, the sides exchanged their views on the issues related to the OSCE agenda.

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
23 September 2017 11:27 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Colonel Ali Seify, Irans military attache in Azerbaijan, has told Trend that his countrys missile program is merely based on the doctrine of deterrence.

Our military capabilities - including missile power - are merely defensive and deterrent. They do not make any threats to other countries, he told Trend on the sidelines of a ceremony in Baku.

Irans missile power serves creating stability in the region, the attache added.

Iran unveiled and successfully test-launched its latest ballistic missile dubbed Khorramshahr on Friday.

According to local media reports, the ballistic missile, which is Irans third type of missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers along with the Qadr-F and Sejjil ballistic missiles, is capable of carrying multiple warheads.

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23 September 2017 13:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Baku hosted an event dedicated to Irans Sacred Defense Week, Trend correspondent reported.

Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov, MPs, several officials of Azerbaijans Defense Ministry, and military attaches of different countries took part in the event.

Colonel Ali Seify, Irans military attache in Azerbaijan, spoke at the events opening ceremony and said his countrys military power is defensive.

The Islamic Republic of Iran achieved tremendous development in different issues, including defense and military fields, which is counted as guarantor of stability and national security as well as the guardian for regional peace and tranquility, he told the ceremony.

Clearly the most important issue in the structure of military industry of Iran is its defensive nature.

Iran achieved brilliant results in the fields of surface missiles, drones, satellites and satellite carriers, torpedoes, advanced coast-to-sea, air-to-sea and sea-to-sea rockets, said Colonel Seify.

Sacred Defense Week commemorates the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. The war, known as the Sacred Defense in Iran, began when Saddam Husseins Iraq invaded Iran. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides during the eight-year conflict.

Iran holds a military parade every year to honor the martyrs of the eight-year war.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Bob Cunningham

Legendary guitarist John Scofields jazz lineage can be traced back to the 1970s to the likes of Miles Davis and Charles Mingus. Hes recorded more than 30 albums and collaborated and played with contemporary stars such as Pat Metheny, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Mavis Staples, Government Mule, Phil Lesh and Herbie Hancock.

Scofield will headline the Orchard Guitar Festival, which takes place Friday and Saturday (Sept. 29-30) at Bowling Green State University.

Scofield has been touring with the recently formed jazz super group Hudson in support of their self-titled album released in June.

We all live in the Hudson Valley area of New York and mainly its four guys who really wanted to play together, Scofield said. Jack DeJohnette, one of the legends of jazz drumming  theyre all legends, all the guys in the band  John Medeski on keyboards, Larry Grenadier on bass, and we played a bunch of tunes kind of associated with Woodstock Music Festival, from the late 60s. Theyre some old rock tunes, but we turned them into jazz tunes. Its been fun playing with those guys.

Scofield is looking forward to taking a break from the tour and sharing stories and lessons with students of BGSUs College of Musical Arts during a master class before performing a free concert at Kobacker Hall with faculty members Ariel Kasler (piano/keyboard), Jeff Halsey (bass) and Dan Piccolo (drums).

I get to talk about what I do with students, Scofield said. Thats pretty much my way of doing these workshops; I share with people my experiences as a professional musician and how to play music because thats what theyre learning how to do  what were all learning how to do. Its rewarding to them because Ive had a lot of experience doing it and have been in the jazz world since the 70s in New York, which is really the hotbed of jazz music.

It will be fun to come to Bowling Green and have a master class. Its really an audience-participation type of thing as far as talking about it, and then Im going to get to play with some of the faculty members. Im looking forward to that, too.

He said even though hes never played with BGSU faculty members before, theyll be able to jam and have a good time.

I have a feeling that these guys are good players and thats why I agreed to do it, he said. Hopefully, stylistically, it will work together, the way that they play and the way I play. Jazz music is about a shared language, which is probably hard for people who arent musicians to understand, but more or less, depending on the generation or style of jazz, we dont have to talk about it; we just start playing, you know?

We can jam together. Thats where the word jam came from, from jazz music when you have this common thread and you can all pick up on where the musics going and improvise together because you have that shared musical language, and thats whats going to happen in Bowling Green at the gig with these guys.

Will playing with someone whos shared the language with Davis and Mingus be too intimidating?

Well see. They might not believe my stories, he said, laughing. They might think Im lying. I have no doubt that these guys play well and well enjoy playing together. Hopefully, my presence will be something that inspires the students to keep going in this music that Ive devoted my life to and that they are doing as well.

I teach master classes fairly frequently and I like it a lot. Its rewarding for me as well and gets me thinking about the music, too. Every day that you experience music with other people and talk about it, it can open you to some new stuff that you wouldnt get to just on your own.

Kasler, who is the director of the festival, said playing with an artist like Scofield is one of the perks of being a BGSU faculty member.

Im very excited; were going to be playing some music I grew up listening to and its going to be a real treat to get to play that music with him, he said. Scofield has a real connection to the jazz greats legacy. Im sure he has a lot of good stories, and it will be exciting for us to live up to what hes used to hearing in bands.

The Orchard Guitar Festival is made possible through the generous support of BGSU alumni Tom 75 and Martha 73 Orchard.

With the festival still growing, its a great opportunity to bring some world-class musicians to BGSU and raise the profile of our guitar program, Kasler said. Its great for the students to hear these great artists, but its also helps put the Universitys music program on the map with the festival.

One of the things we are able to do, thanks to the donations by Tom and Martha Orchard, is make the festival free to attend. You dont have many chances to hear artists like John Scofield play for free.

Orchard Guitar Festival schedule

Friday (Sept. 29)

3:30 p.m., Stephen Aron Master Class, Bryan Recital Hall

4 p.m., Craig Wagner Master Class, Bryan Recital Hall

4:30 p.m., Fareed Haque and Goran Ivanovich Master Class, Bryan Recital Hall

7 to 9:30 p.m., performance featuring Stephen Aron, Craig Wagner, Fareed Haque and Goran Ivanovich at Bryan Recital Hall

Saturday (Sept. 30)

Noon, Electric Guitar Ensembles Concert, Bryan Recital Hall

3 p.m., John Scofield Master Class, Bryan Recital Hall

8 p.m., John Scofield in concert with BGSU Jazz Faculty, Kobacker Hall
Illustration: Simon Bosch Roy Morgan research shows that more than 13 million Australians are signed up to a loyalty scheme, covering 65 per cent of the population aged 14 and above  a figure that has been steadily increasing over the past five years. The largest programs  Coles' flybuys, Woolworths Rewards ,Qantas Frequent Flyers and Virgin Velocity  have a combined 37 million memberships, representing a treasure trove of personal information that can be used to offer previously unimaginable insights into what customers want, and in turn, turn those customers into a product themselves. What's the point? At their simplest, the programs encourage people to become repeat customers with the lure of getting something for nothing, says Lance Blockley, managing director of payments and reward consultancy The Initiatives Group.

"Once I've got 25,000 points in Qantas, it's not necessarily loyalty, in the true sense of the word, that's causing me to continue to use their service. I can't afford to move to Virgin because I've got these points," he says. In one piece of work, Quantium cross-referenced Woolworth's Rewards sales records with viewing data from Foxtel. And that's an effective ploy for the airlines, says Maquarie aviation analyst Sam Dobson, who estimates Qantas is able to charge at least a 5 per cent premium on its fares over Virgin Australia because many frequent flyer members will pay extra to earn the points. But experts say loyalty cards are less effective for retailers. Coles and Woolworths' schemes give shoppers one point per dollar they spend at the supermarket, and it takes 2000 points to earn a $10 reward, making many shoppers more likely to shop wherever has the lowest prices. "Shoppers have become less loyal, and we know that because in most wallets there's between six to eight loyalty cards," says Gary Mortimer, associate professor of marketing at Queensland University of Technology.

The real value for companies, he says, is the data they collect every time shoppers swipe their loyalty cards. Knowing what a customer buys, how much they spend, and how often they shop lets retailers build up a sophisticated profile of a customer's life, and then market product and services to them more effectively. So a flybuys or Woolworths Rewards member who has just started buying nappies will soon receive emails offering deals on baby formula, while those who buy pet food might find a cat litter special in their inbox. Citi retail analyst Craig Woolford says information harvested from loyalty cards helps Coles and Woolworths make better decisions about what products to place where in supermarkets. Checkout data alone will tell a supermarket if discounting a certain product shifts more units, but tells them nothing about what kind of shopper it attracts.

"The holy grail in all forms of retail is getting the more lucrative shoppers  the bigger basket, the higher frequency shoppers," says Woolford. "And when you know that if you put product 'A' on promotion, and that means they do their entire shop with that supermarket, that's very different to knowing that a particular shopper may cherry pick and just buy the promotional product and not buy anything else." UBS analyst Craig Woolford. Credit:Josh Robenstone Woolworths also turns its loyalty data into a revenue stream by opening it up to suppliers who sell their products at the supermarket chain so that, for a fee, they too can see if their promotions are attracting the type of shopper intended. Know the customer

The insight into a shopper's life becomes even more powerful when data from multiple programs is combined to create a fuller picture of their lives. Qantas' head of loyalty Lesley Grant earlier this year boasted of being in charge of "one of the most valuable data sets in Australia", which it was using to the benefit of "both the Qantas group and also external clients". Powered by 27 years worth of frequent flyer membership data, the airline has set up a marketing and analytics group, Red Planet, which third parties can use to target relevant members with advertising. In 2015 Qantas took a 51 per cent stake in Taylor Fry, a data analytics and insurance risk consultant, and last year it bought a 16 per cent stake of Sydney start-up Data Republic, which promises a way to share and combine data from multiple sources while protecting customers' identities. NAB and Westpac are also investors. Qantas Loyalty chief executive Lesley Grant Credit:Sasha Wooley

"Most companies are collecting data about their customers just through the lens of how they interact with them, which might only be 1 per cent of their lives," Data Republic's chief analytics officer Steve Millward explains. "But there's a lot of insights from other organisations that can help them get a better insight to their customers." Sharing data across companies means a bank, for example, could pick up on far more clues that someone might be looking to buy a house or take out a car loan, and could target offers to that customer accordingly. Millward says that retailers' own loyalty schemes only tell them how much someone is spending with them, when how much they're spending at other stores is just as important. "You can have two people on a loyalty database that spend $500 a year  that might be 100 per cent of one customer's spend, but it might only be 10 per cent of the other," he says.

"A retailer is probably going to put the same amount of effort into each of those. But for the first customer they're already collecting all the money they spend on clothes; the second one there's huge opportunity of growth." Data Republic's platform can aggregate a customer's history from multiple loyalty schemes, and highlight to clients which of their members are high spenders and therefore worth pursuing with special offers to try and capture more of their spend. Qantas says it doesn't share any customer-specific information and that its data is "de-identified", meaning it is reduced to "demographic or purchasing traits", in Data Republic's system. Virgin's Velocity only shares customer data with service providers, but does collect information about its members from third-parties to improve its understanding of customers, and "on occasion we use anonymised data to help us target our marketing efforts", a spokeswoman says. Dealing in data

Woolworths dealt itself into the data game in 2013 when it paid almost $20 million for half analytics firm Quantium  an investment that has reportedly grown tenfold in value as big data becomes even bigger business. Quantium has found success using shopper databases to measure whether advertising campaigns have encouraged sales at bricks and mortar stores, and has worked with the likes of Myer, David Jones, Qantas, Kellogg's, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Medibank and online gambling outfit Sportsbet. In one piece of work for the supermarket giant, Quantium cross-referenced Woolworths Rewards sales records at its discount chain Big W with viewing data from pay TV provider Foxtel, to see if members who saw an advertisement for Big W's toy sale spent more than members who did not. Quantium is now doing similar tests for Facebook, after entering into an agreement with the social media giant in mid-2016.

For example, the pair tested a campaign for a new range of L'Oreal eyeshade by targeting women aged 18 to 54 with advertising on Facebook. It then used loyalty membership data to see if those women bought the products more than women who were not shown the ads. Woolworths says its does not share any of its members' personal information and that data is "anonymised and aggregated in line with best practice data security processes" before it leaves its system. flybuys has limited its data play to sending members special offers from its points partners  including health insurers Medibank and AHM and power company AGL  but says it does not share customer information with those partners. Coles says it doesn't have access to details of what a flybuys member has spent elsewhere. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner last year found the two supermarket giants' loyalty schemes had appropriate privacy notices, that were consistent with how they handled data. However the privacy tsar warned customers to make sure they were "getting a fair deal" for the valuable information they were giving away. "I would hazard to guess that consumers still give away a lot of information for free," says Mortimer.

The deep dive An infamous example of how money might be squeezed from all this information emerged in 2014 in a recording of Woolworths' then-director of group retail services Penny Winn. "Customers who drink lots of milk and eat lots of red meat ... are very, very, very good car insurance risks, versus those who eat lots of pasta and rice, fill their cars with petrol at night, and drink spirits. "So what that means is we are able to tailor an insurance offer ... that give us those really good insurance risk customers a really good deal and helps to avoid the bad insurance risks." There's no evidence this level of marketing is being deployed, but what is certain is that companies with large customer databases are diving head-first into these types of services.

Data is being used in more far-reaching ways. Credit:Adam Fulton Woolworths and Coles are selling home, car, pet, travel, landlords and life insurance, each have their own credit cards, and both have been rumoured to be considering a crack at home loans. Qantas has branched into health, life and travel insurance and launched its own credit card, while Virgin's Velocity is leveraging its customers onto home loans through Virgin Money. "There's definitely an issue of informed consent," says Justin Clacherty, an IT and digital security expert and an Australian Privacy Foundation board member. "Most people would understand that some of the data is being used ... but I think in a lot of cases the data is being used in far more reaching and longitudinal studies of people".

Clacherty says consumers had no reason to be confident that highly detailed portraits of their lives were being held securely  with data breaches at major companies becoming a regular occurrence. He says the companies commanding this information's move into financial services is also cause for alarm. "It's quite unfair for someone who's been out there using these programs to be unduly affected by that when going for things like home loans and health insurance," says Clacherty. "You only have to look at the moment at what's going on with Centrelink, where they're wanting to do drug testing of clients. Are they going to start using information from other sources to make decisions about whether or not some of us deserve to get social security?" Changing habits There no easy way to put a dollar value on most retailers' loyalty programs, but the seriousness with which they run them is telling.

Woolworths hastily backflipped on its disastrous January 2016 loyalty revamp  which did away with its Qantas points tie-up and used a confusing orange ticket system to earn "Woolworths Dollars"  and brought in a simpler offering after significant customer backlash. With Amazon to soon start trading in Australia, and a grocery offering on the cards, Woolworths has recently combined its loyalty and online operations into a new division dubbed "WooliesX". Amanda Bardwell, who's been appointed to lead the new division, says the move means it can better harness the strength of its loyalty data to drive sales both online and off. "Everyone knows customers are changing the way that they shop ... and what we've been able to do is create far more personalised experiences for those customers," she says. "That's particularly resonating." For the airlines it's easier to quantify, as their schemes receive direct revenue by selling frequent flyer points to banks and other partners, who in turn dish them out to their customers as rewards.

Woolworths says it has created more personalised experiences for customers. Credit:Bradley Kanaris The cost of an airline honouring loyalty points is less than the price they sell them for, so they make a profit. They make even more money if the points expire or are never redeemed, plus they receive attractive cash flow benefits from the average 24 months between selling the points and them being redeemed. Virgin earned $142 million from Velocity last year, while Qantas' loyalty unit returned underlying earnings of $369 million in 2017, representing one fifth of the airlines' earnings. Qantas' loyalty boss Grant has forecast earnings to grow between 7 to 10 per cent a year to top $500 million by 2022, with about half that growth to come from its new business ventures. It would be "crazy" for Qantas to forecast earnings that far in advance in its core airline business, says Maquarie's Dobson, because of the industry's notorious unpredictability.

He says that highlights another advantage of building a side business in loyalty schemes and insurance: giving certainty to investors, and helping support Qantas' record-high share price. Value for money? But the flow of rewards points that has kept airlines' coffers overflowing and consumers happy has recently been stemmed. The Reserve Bank put new rules in place as of July 1 this year that capped how much banks can charge businesses when taking credit card payments. These fees have traditionally funded banks' rewards schemes, and the change saw the frequent flyer points dished out reduced on average from 1 point per dollar spent to about half or 0.6 a point per dollar, according to Steve Hui, of travel consultant iFLYflat. Monthly earning caps have also been put in place and American Express companion cards  a popular choice for high-spending point chasers  were brought under the same rules as Visa and MasterCard.
A couple with two kids seems to be the cliched family make-up and for many also the ideal. It makes sense to have two kids  you have created your replacements, your biological imperative is done. The children will have a sibling, and it seems everything  including car size, accommodation, even travel seems to better cater for this family size. But then what if you throw another child into the mix  by choice?

It's what my husband and I did. Last year we had our number three, and while it didn't make any sort of financial or logical sense, since we had him our family seems complete. It's a strange thing to admit, since having three children definitely takes a toll on your body  not to mention your finances  but a part of us felt we needed a third.

Saman Shad and her husband really wanted a third child, but it was about emotion not status. Credit:Edwina Pickles

We aren't unusual in this, the recent HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) survey found that by the time they are 40, most Australians wish they had more children than they actually have.

So what's stopping us having more kids? After all, Australia has had a declining fertility rate since the 1970s and we are still not at a replacement levels  which means women are having fewer than two children on average. Is it because by the time we have one or two kids we realise the actual cost of having children, both financially and emotionally, which stops us having more?
An architecturally-designed home on the south coast has sold for a record price to buyers from out of town.

The home at Moruya Heads sold for $1.6 million to Sydney buyers.

The Smith and Primmer home at Moruya Heads sold for $1.6 million, a record for the coastal town.

The four-bedroom home, which sits on an expansive 96 acres, was sold to buyers from Sydney.
When Canberra mum Karen Cameron's body started fighting against her own baby during her second pregnancy she was overwhelmed.

Her baby, Elliott, had developed Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn because Mrs Cameron's positive blood type had started developing antibodies against Elliott's negative blood type.

Elliott Cameron with his mum Karen Cameron. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos

While Elliott survived, he needed blood transfusions after being born anemic, a treatable lack of healthy red blood cells.

"It was just one of those scary situations where you don't quite understand what is going on," Mrs Cameron said.
More than 20,000 Australians expected to fly to Bali in the next two weeks could be left stranded on the island if the Mount Agung volcano, which is on high alert, erupts.

Tremors in the region are increasing and warnings have been raised to the maximum level four, with an eruption believed to be imminent, but airlines say flights to Bali are continuing in the meantime.

An eruption at Mount Agung is believed to be imminent but airlines say flights to Bali are continuing in the meantime. Credit:AP

An increased number of families are expected to travel to the popular travel destination, with school holidays now underway in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT, and commencing next week for schools in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

A spokesman for Jetsar said the airline runs 60 direct flights to Bali from major Australian cities every week, transporting more than 10,000 passengers.
Gov. Scott Walker is going to bat for a last-ditch Republican plan to remake the American health care system that would give him and other governors far more say over how health coverage works in their states.

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, is one of four GOP senators offering the plan, which revived GOP efforts to roll back President Barack Obamas health care law, also known as Obamacare, although prospects for passage now appear slim.

In a matter of days, the plan went from obscurity to being set for a U.S. Senate vote in coming days. But just as quickly, those plans were thrown into doubt late Friday by news that the potentially decisive vote, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, will oppose the measure.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, says the plan would take away health coverage for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. She said many others could lose key protections such as not being charged more based on an illness.

The GOP plan would overhaul Medicaid, end the individual mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance or pay a penalty, and convert the Obamacare individual marketplace into a program by which states would get federal grants to craft their own health care initiatives.

Johnson wouldnt say, when pressed in an MSNBC interview Thursday, if Americans would lose coverage under his plan.

An analysis released Friday by the nonpartisan Brookings Institution found 21 million fewer Americans would have coverage under the plan, while adding the figure likely understates the reductions in insurance coverage that would actually occur.

The typical shared source for such information, the Congressional Budget Office, has yet to offer a full analysis of the plans impacts. In an unusual move, Senate Republicans are poised to vote before receiving that analysis, known as a CBO score.

If we dont have a CBO score, no one can credibly say they know whats in the bill before we pass it, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, said last week.

Unanswered questions

Noel Deep, president of the Wisconsin Medical Society, said in a statement: There are still far too many unanswered questions about the current proposals short- and long-term effects on health care coverage in Wisconsin.

Walker has endorsed the plan, calling it awesome in a recent Breitbart News interview. In addition to Johnson, its three other sponsors are Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Dean Heller of Nevada.

President Donald Trump also is backing the plan, the case for which, Johnson and other supporters say, is simple: it is Republicans last chance to repeal Obamacare.

This is the alternative, Johnson, R-Oshkosh, said last week. Anybody who doesnt think this is good enough, understand if we dont do this, it is Obamacare  and that is codified forever.

Funding boost for state

Baldwin said constituents are telling her theyre surprised at the plans sudden emergence.

What Im hearing from Wisconsinites on #GrahamCassidy is pretty clear: We thought we were done with heartless, partisan repeal plans, Baldwin tweeted Wednesday.

Baldwin recently staked her support to a diametrically opposite health care proposal: Sen. Bernie Sanders Medicare-for-all single-payer plan.

Meanwhile, Johnson has mounted a national media blitz during the last week on behalf of a fast-track vote on his bill.

Senate procedural rules say Republicans only have until Saturday to pass a health care overhaul with a simple majority vote. Thats the only realistic path for Republicans, who control 52 of 100 seats in the chamber, to pass such a bill with no Democratic votes.

If it were to pass the Senate, the bill would head to the U.S. House, which passed a different Obamacare repeal bill in May.

The plan would create a framework through which the 50 states would get block grants to design health coverage initiatives for people currently covered on Obamacare exchanges and under the laws Medicaid expansion.

Beneficiaries of this change would include Wisconsin and other states that rejected Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin would see an infusion of about $3.5 billion in federal money during the next six years under the bill, according to an independent analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

Block grant funding beyond 2026 is not provided in the plan, making its future uncertain after that point.

The plan also would overhaul Medicaid from a program that doles out federal money to states on a matching basis, relative to how much they spend, to a per-capita model.

That change would cut federal funding for Medicaid compared to the course set under current law. Wisconsin would get $562 million fewer federal dollars for Medicaid between now and 2026, Kaiser found.

Pre-existing conditions

Then theres the question of how the plan treats people with pre-existing conditions, protections for which are among Obamacares most popular provisions.

The law would not eliminate Obamacares prohibition on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. But state governments could waive requirements that insurers not charge more for people with pre-existing conditions or that all health plans cover certain essential benefits.

I dont know what Scott Walker would do if given that authority, Pocan said.

In May, Walker said he would consider letting insurers hike premiums for people with pre-existing medical conditions if federal Obamacare laws were changed to permit it. Soon after he tweeted that It is a given that WI will ensure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

Walkers office did not respond Friday to a State Journal inquiry about how he would handle the question of whether insurers should be able to charge higher premiums.

The plans state-centered approach has the Wisconsin Hospital Association preparing to pivot our focus from Washington to Wisconsin, according to its president, Eric Borgerding.

If this bill becomes law, tremendous authority will devolve back to the states, and determining the path and direction of coverage will rest squarely in Madison, Borgerding said.
Hobart DJ Astro Labe allegedly headbutted Tony Abbott in Tasmania. Credit:Channel Seven A man could rape his wife with impunity in Australia even as recently as the 1990s in some states. "The common law ruthlessly reinforces woman's subordinate position in marriage," wrote an advocate for reform, the lawyer Helen Coonan, who went on to become a Liberal Party senator for NSW. "Community attitudes and values have evolved gradually," wrote Coonan in 1980, "while the law has remained unchanged." It was the next year that NSW made it a criminal offence to commit rape in marriage, but it was 1992 before the change was made across all states. That's not exactly ancient times - Paul Keating was prime minister, the Big Day Out music festival was inaugurated and the Brisbane Broncos won their first premiership. Yet it was a controversial reform at the time: "Some conservatives were horrified that it could be made illegal for a man to rape his wife - 'it would change the very nature of our society'," says Robinson. Marriage as a legal construct has evolved in many ways to acknowledge the larger changes in society, the expanding concepts of equality, the enlargement of rights. The Northern Territory's Protector of Aborigines blocked the marriage of a white man and an Aboriginal woman in 1959. The case of Gladys Namagu and Mick Daly became a famed controversy, reported around the world as the case of the "outback Romeo and Juliet".

"Across Australia black and white supporters who'd never met either Namagu or Daly held protest meetings backing their right to marry," summarised journalist Paul Daley writing in The Guardian in 2015. "In federal parliament the Menzies government, after a barrage of questions from MPs of all persuasions in support of the outback Romeo and Juliet, gave an assurance that no form of discrimination would ever be written into the new national marriage legislation." Until, of course, John Howard wrote in a different kind of discrimination in 2004, inserting the stipulation that marriage could only be between a man and a woman. Namagu and Daly eventually had their love formalised in marriage in 1960, when the Northern Territory yielded to the changed times. Just as love between people of the same sex eventually will be recognised in Australian law. Howard and Abbott can concoct legal and political obstacles, but, like rocks in a river, ultimately they cannot change the flow of social attitudes. Other evolutions of marriage include the recognition of women's rights to property, and changes to the divorce laws to allow no-fault divorce. "It's a positive history of an institution reflecting social change," observes Robinson. And no one today proposes that any of those reforms should be reversed. John Howard and Tony Abbott speak of "traditional marriage", yet the greater tradition of marriage is not to freeze it in the Pleistocene Age of some imagined prehistory but to continuously adapt it to the living society in which it exists. When the "no" case uses the word "tradition" it really means the status quo. Yet the "no" campaign has cleverly staked out a monopoly on the concept of "tradition". The status quo is nothing more than a pause in the larger tradition of expanding rights. Australia has a shining tradition of pioneering rights - citizens' rights, democratic rights, human rights. Mostly we've forgotten our own story. Mostly Australians are trapped in an amnesiac fog, a Euro-centric high school history course followed by an adult life immersed in pop-culture Americana.

Australia is a uniquely democratic creation in the history of humankind. It was the first country in the world to vote itself into existence. That was the effect of the referendum that federated the six states into a single nation. Australia invented other democratic breakthroughs, like the secret ballot, first introduced in Victoria, so that voters couldn't be "stood over" and intimidated. For many years the Americans called it "the Australian ballot". Australia was the second country, after New Zealand, to give women the vote. But it was the first country to allow women to stand for parliament. The South Australian parliament pioneered, becoming the first legislature in the world where women could stand for election under an act of 1895, before Australia itself existed as a political entity. Women were given the vote in Australia in 1902, a right that was only accorded to women in Britain 26 years later. Among other breakthroughs in the Australian Spring was the creation of the eight-hour working day in 1855, the result of strikes by stonemasons in Sydney and Melbourne. And Australia invented the concept of the "living wage", defined by Judge H.B. Higgins in the 1907 Harvester judgment as "the cost of living as a civilised being". This is distinct from the idea of a subsistence wage. The Harvester case has formed the basis for Australia's relatively high minimum wages ever since, much to the chagrin of industrial relations right-wingers. These Australian innovations in the progressive enlargement of rights were all controversial at the time of their birth, yet all went on to become world-leading examples and firm Australian foundations. This is the grander tradition, not a tradition of Australia as a democratic and social museum stuffed full of mummified anachronisms from the 18th century but a tradition as a democratic and social laboratory, a pioneer in the evolution of rights for humankind. The "no" case against same-sex marriage hopes that Australia will be captured by its ahistoric amnesia, frightened into a timid stasis under the impression that today's arrangements are somehow a sacred artifact preserved unchanged from "time immemorial", as Abbott put it.
It seems no raw onion is safe from the jaws of Tony Abbott. He ate another one this week, only a few days after he admitted that it had "probably" been a mistake to eat his first onion, an unsuspecting Tasmanian brown that fell into his clutches during a farm visit in 2015.

His recidivism on the onion front is telling  Abbott loves to troll his critics. The former prime minister is everywhere, campaigning on same-sex marriage, being assaulted by a pro-SSM man in Hobart (an attack as stupid as it was thuggish) and inserting himself into the debate over climate policy and the Clean Energy Target, just as the government's negotiations are at their most delicate stage.

Malcolm Turnbull and his Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg need to craft a credible energy policy that meets Australia's emissions reductions targets, but also eliminates the risk of widespread blackouts and brings soaring energy costs into line. This policy needs to be accepted by cabinet, the divided Coalition party room, the opposition (which has promised bipartisanship) and a fractious senate.

It needs to correct a decade of weak political leadership and idiotic partisanship on climate policy.
The man who headbutted former prime minister Tony Abbott has declared it had "nothing to do" with same-sex marriage but was about his lifelong ambition to headbutt "a fascist".

Astro Labe, a 38-year-old DJ, barista and anarchist from North Hobart, told Fairfax Media he was not motivated by the marriage equality debate despite wearing a "yes" badge at the time of the attack.

"It was nothing to do with the 'yes' campaign, that was just a sticker that a friend stuck on me," he said.

"[It] was just a lifelong ambition to headbutt a fascist because I'm a skinhead that likes ska music and hates fascism. He's an evil c---, I'm an anarchist and I believe in human rights."
The Barakats came from a large family known for its long opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his predecessor and father, Hafez Assad. The two women were both active in the Syrian refugee community in Turkey.

Orouba Barakat, 60, and her daughter, Halla Barakat, 22, were discovered Thursday night in Uskudar, on the Asian side of the city. The news was first announced on social media by Shaza Barakat, Orouba Barakat's sister. The two women had been stabbed to death, the Turkish news agency Anadalou reported, quoting a police official.

Istanbul: A Syrian activist and her daughter, a journalist, have been found murdered in their apartment in Istanbul, family and friends reported on social media Friday.

Orouba Barakat was a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, now known as the Syrian National Coalition, but she had also criticised some members of the opposition. Halla Barakat was an editor for Orient TV, which covers events in the Middle East, and had also worked for the Turkish Radio and Television.

While there was no official confirmation of the circumstances of the deaths, friends and relatives said the Assad government was to blame.

"They assassinated them in a foreign land," Shaza Barakat wrote on Facebook. "For 40 years her headlines occupied front pages. She sought out criminals and exposed them. And today, her name and Halla's name are on the front page."

The two women "were vocal activists in the Syrian revolution, speaking truth to power, and raising awareness about the atrocities committed by the Assad regime," another relative, Suzanne Barakat, wrote on Facebook.

In a statement, the Syrian National Coalition said "The hand of terrorism and tyranny is the prime suspect in this heinous crime of assassination".
Madrid: At secret locations across Catalonia, activists have hidden the ballot boxes they plan to deploy in an illegal referendum on independence.

Those stashes are just one element in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse as the separatists try to deliver a vote on October 1 in defiance of the Spanish authorities. Police have already raided local businesses and Catalan government offices as they hunt for the ballot papers and officials suspected of helping organise the polling.

The separatist leaders are pressing on all the same.

"It's impossible for the Civil Guard to find 6400 ballot boxes across almost 1000 towns in Catalonia," Jordi Sanchez, head of the Catalan National Assembly, a pro-independence civic group, says in an interview. "What are they going to do, search individual homes? Where are the search warrants?"
Many Canberrans will be taking part in a postal vote this weekend, but it won't have anything to do with the same-sex marriage survey.

Citizens of New Zealand and Germany living in Australia will get to cast their ballots in their country's elections, with both nations heading to the polls this weekend.

ANU engineering students from New Zealand Yash Vyas and Ali Bulbul have been following the New Zealand election closely. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

New Zealand decided on Saturday whether incumbent Bill English will remain as Prime Minister or if Jacinda Ardern will take the top job after being leader of the Labour Party for a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, Germans will vote on Sunday to determine whether Chancellor Angela Merkel will receive a fourth term in office.
Kurds wave nationalist flags during a rally in Beirut, Lebanon. The September 25 vote has implications for the whole Middle East. Credit:AP (Since we spoke, the KRG's parliament in Erbil has held a snap session to ratify the referendum plan. But the opposition were absent, meaning only 68 of the 111 MPs voted.) At a house in the neighbouring suburb of Wollert, I am welcomed by Samey Barwari, 56, from Dohuk in Iraq's far north, and his daughter Venwar, 31, who admits with a laugh that she came to Australia in utero. But when talk turns to delaying the referendum, her smile disappears. Samey Barwari and his daughter Venwar support the plan for an independence referendum in Kurdish-held areas of northern Iraq. Credit:Darrian Traynor "This is not a party issue," she says. "This is about whether we are going to govern ourselves. You have to start somewhere.

"The Iraqi government cannot govern itself - it is controlled by Iran. When their control of the country broke down [with the fall of Mosul to Islamic State in 2014], they came to us to fix it. We have issues, yes, but let us have them in our own country." For many Kurds, the referendum is overshadowed by questions surrounding the political leadership of the Kurdistan region's president, Massoud Barzani. Credit:AP The elder Barwari has invited some friends over, and they remind me of Saddam Hussein's atrocities against them and his population transfers to "Arabise" Kurdish-majority areas, as well as the more recent failures of the "liberated" Iraq, which promised in its 2005 constitution that disputes over territory between the autonomous KRG and the central government would be resolved by the end of 2007. "We have our own language, our own culture, our land is different," says Sulaiman Barwary (no relation), 48. "Arabs come from the desert and our land is the mountains." November 2016: Kurdish fighters replace the cross on the dome of the Immaculate Cathedral in Qaraqosh, Iraq, after taking the town back from Islamic State. But how would Christian minorities fare in a Kurdish state? Credit:New York Times

The objections to their plans are shrugged off - Kurds are used to being under siege. "I would rather have a failed state than live under the Iraqi regime," says 52-year-old Farsat Dosky, a language consultant. "At least we can guarantee our existence - at least we can survive." It is clear that Barwari is the senior figure. But he is not comfortable joining a busy discussion in English. He asks if he can tell me a story in Arabic. Baghdad, November 2006: Saddam Hussein in court during his trial for genocide against Kurds. Credit:AP He takes me back to April 1991, and the days after the Iraqi army's defeat in Operation Desert Storm. "Forty thousand of Saddam's soldiers laid down their arms in [Iraqi] Kurdistan and we fed them and gave them vehicles for safe passage south," he says. "We don't bear enmity to anyone, not even those who killed us and burned our villages.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says he is prepared to intervene militarily if the referendum results in violence. Credit:AP "If that situation had been reversed, not even 40 of us would have been left alive." The world is used to hearing about tensions between Arabs and Kurds - or the desert and the mountains, if you will - in northern Iraq, but any Kurdish state there would have its own minorities, including the Yazidis and Assyrians. Soldiers sit under the Kurdish flag at a checkpoint on the border of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. Credit:Kate Geraghty Nicholas al-Jeloo, 34, an Assyrian Melbourne University academic who also works for the Bureau of Statistics, compares these populations to "powerless children" caught in a divorce. And he talks about another landscape: that of the disputed Nineveh Plains, with its patchwork of ethnicities and villages.

"The atmosphere in northern Iraq is claustrophobic," he says. "The [ruling] KDP is drunk on a lethal cocktail of Baathism, Zionism and Kemalism, and people live in fear of the Asayish [the KRG's internal security force]. "What will happen to those in minorities who vote against independence? Will they be told to go to Iraq? The president of Iraq is a Kurd, the Kurdish language is recognised and appears on Iraq's currency ... do we really need more Balkanisation?" Al-Jeloo is not the only one who sees echoes of Zionism in a unilateral referendum. The father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, famously said that "if you will it, it is no dream", which was aspirational but can also be read as a warning: once you move from political theory to action, you are confronted with the realities of your locale. A people's political status may change, but its geographical neighbours remain the same. One of the mothers at my son's school spent the first 30 years of her life in Dohuk but is not Kurdish. When I tell her about my interviews, she exclaims: "I swear that until 1991 I didn't know what an ampere was. Then I became an expert in how much you can do with two or four amperes of electricity. It is 26 years [of Kurdish autonomy] now and my little town still doesn't have reliable power or water. How can you talk about independence when the basics are not there? "The north is landlocked," she reminds me. "Don't they [the KRG] see what happened to Qatar, which is a proper state?"

Most of the Kurds I talk to do not believe that a 'Yes' vote will mean independence in the short term. But when I tell Samey Barwari that I worry about a blockade or about Kurds being forcibly displaced to "their" state by surrounding governments, he puts his faith in a surprising ally: Turkey. For some years now, the KRG has been selling oil through a pipeline to Turkey under a 50-year deal signed with Ankara. "There are 700 Turkish companies in the Kurdish region," he tells me. "That door will not close because billions of dollars keep it open." The Kurds opposed to a referendum are troubled by this "door" in particular, with the increasingly authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdogan at one end and Barzani and his family - who also hold the posts of prime minister and security council chief - at the other.

"Why hasn't there been freedom in Kurdistan?" asks Dilawar Munzir, a 52-year-old from Sulaimaniya who works, like Samey Barwari, as a painter. He says his home town has been targeted with sanctions for dissent against Barzani, and he points to the murder of Kurdish journalists critical of Barzani's regime and its corruption, such as Sardasht Osman and Soran Mama Hama. "This will be Massoud Barzani's referendum, not the people's referendum," he says. Al-Jeloo is also sceptical. "It is naive. Do people believe that the same Turkey which is destroying Kurdish-inhabited towns in its south-east can somehow be trusted to deliver Kurdish independence elsewhere?" Unexpected ally: can the Kurds of Iraq rely on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Credit:AP He wonders if the whole referendum isn't just "hot air", designed to give Barzani and his KDP a boost in forthcoming regional elections.

"We don't want to be a backyard of Turkey," Germian says. "We could end up like [the unrecognised Turkish enclave of] Northern Cyprus." The referendum's supporters are fatalistic. Sulaiman Barwary reminds me that for decades "Lebanon was governed by Syria like a puppet ... maybe Turkey will play this role with us for a while". Mayda Ziabari, a 25-year-old born in northern Iran, admits she is troubled by the vote's timing and worried that things will not "happen properly". "I'm not sure we should be alienating our key ally," she says, referring to Washington, which arms the KRG and provides it with billions in aid. "Also Daesh [IS] is still there - we haven't dealt with that." But for her the governance issue is less of a concern: "I have faith in my generation and the next generation there."
The left-wing social campaign group Get Up! is planning a ten-fold increase in its electoral reach in a bid to unseat prominent Coalition conservatives at the next federal election.

In its sights are senior Turnbull government figures such as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and former prime minister Tony Abbott, as well as other MPs associated strongly with opposition to same sex-marriage, promoting the Adani coal mine, blocking an effective clean energy target, and opposing a more humane approach to sea-borne refugees.

GetUp! activists. Credit:AAP

But a senior Liberal insider said the group, which was unashamedly designed to install Labor governments, should not imagine it will face an adversary on the ground configured as it was in 2016.

The figure also criticised GetUp! saying it presented as "warm and fuzzy" and issues driven but was really professional political front, which should be subject to the same rules and transparency requirements as political parties.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is set to be kingmaker, as the New Zealand election on Saturday ended with neither major party securing a majority to form government.

The ruling National Party secured 46 per cent of the vote and 58 seats in the next parliament, but even with their sole surviving coalition partner it was not enough to get them over the line.

Labour Leader Jacinda Ardern, at home with mother Laurel, watching the progress of the election on TV. Credit:David White/Stuff

They would need New Zealand First's 7.5 per cent and the nine seats that come with it to get over the 61 seats needed to form government.

Labour on 35.8 per cent (45 seats) could also scrape the numbers in coalition with the Green Party on 5.8 per cent (seven seats) and New Zealand First.
Australian dairy firm Murray Goulburn has had a "difficult and challenging year," according to its annual report, losing AUD$370.8 million during the financial year that ended June 30. Above, Chinese dairy giant Yili's milk products. Photo: Visual China

Several Chinese dairy giants  including Mengniu and Yili  are bidding for Australian peer Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Ltd.

A subsidiary of China Mengniu Dairy Co. Ltd. has placed a non-binding offer for the firm  Australias largest processor of milk  a Mengniu spokesperson told Caixin Thursday.

Mengniu rival Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co. Ltd. is also reportedly placing a bid, offering AUD$1.20 ($0.95) per share  nearly double the price Murray Goulburn shares were trading at before the firm was put up for sale, The Australian reported Wednesday.

Yili confirmed in a Wednesday stock filing that it has submitted a non-binding strategic development proposal to Murray Goulburn, but added that there were untrue statements in media reports  without specifying which parts were false.

Murray Goulburn shareholder China Resources has also expressed interest, according to The Australian, but the group did not respond to Caixins request for confirmation.

The Australian dairy firm has had a difficult and challenging year, with a loss of AUD$370.8 million during the financial year that ended June 30, down from a profit of nearly AUD$40 million a year earlier, the company said in its annual report.

International sales decreased 9.1% in the latest financial year, while sales of adult milk powder grew in Southeast Asian markets  one of the reasons Murray Goulburn has attracted Chinese suitors, a manager at a Chinese dairy firm told Caixin.

Other potential buyers are said to include Canadian dairy firm Saputo Inc., Bega Cheese Ltd. from Australia, and New Zealand-based The a2 Milk Company Ltd. and Fonterra Co-operative Group.

The dairy firm manager said that one of the difficult elements of the buyout stems from a co-op structural reform that Murray Goulburn carried out in 2013, when it began requiring all suppliers to own at least 500 shares of the company. As a result, any bidder needs the support of more than 90% of suppliers.

Another obstacle to a takeover by an offshore group, such as a Chinese one, would be scrutiny from the Australian and Chinese authorities, especially at a time when Beijing is restricting cash outflows.

Consumer demand for dairy products is rising fast in China, with a projected market value of $68.8 billion by 2022, which would overtake that of the U.S., according to consultancy Euromonitor International.

Contact reporter Coco Feng (renkefeng@caixin.com)
While earlier generations sought out used books to save money on their college course materials, todays students can often find deeper discounts by eschewing physical texts altogether.

Thats why UW-Madison is launching a digital textbook pilot program in the coming spring semester that officials say could dramatically drive down costs for students.

Ten to 20 courses will take part in the pilot, and officials say it could spread across campus if there is enough interest from students and professors. UW-Madisons student government passed legislation pledging its support to the program last week.

Savings are expected to run between 40 percent and 80 percent in most cases compared to list prices for new textbooks, said Steven Cramer, UW-Madisons vice provost for teaching and learning.

In one case, Cramer said, a courses $249.95 textbook was available digitally for $25.12  a 90 percent reduction.

The price savings are very, very significant, he said.

While costs vary, UW-Madison estimates undergraduate students spend $1,200 per year on books and supplies.

This is going to make a big difference in a students cost of attendance, Cramer said.

The lower prices are a result in part of UW-Madisons membership in the digital learning consortium Unizin, which the university joined in 2014. The consortium negotiates prices with major book publishers on behalf of its members, which include several other large public universities.

Students read their books on a platform called Engage, which Cramer said works like a typical e-reader, and allows students and professors to highlight and annotate texts.

UW-Madison will bill students in the program for the cost of their books through its bursars office  a significant change that means students wont pay for course materials at businesses such as the campus bookstore.

Officials say the initiative would also make textbook requirements clearer by including them in the course listings students see when they register for the next semesters classes.

Members of the Associated Students of Madison complained that textbook requirements for some fall semester courses werent listed until late in the summer or even the first week of classes, making it hard to plan ahead for the expense.

Students want to know the textbooks they will be using in class prior to registration, to get an understanding about the external costs of attendance, said Jacqueline Beaulieu, the student government bodys shared governance campaign director.

UW-Madison is still seeking courses to participate in the voluntary pilot program, which is open to all departments, Cramer said. Managing the program and billing is expected to cost less than $50,000, he said, and students can opt out if they dont want to take part.

The timeline for using digital textbooks more broadly will depend on how quickly its embraced on campus, Cramer said. Physical texts are unlikely to disappear altogether any time soon  some materials arent available in digital formats, and not all publishers license their books to the Engage platform.

Still, Cramer said when it comes to the digital textbook program at UW-Madison, These discounts are big enough that the economic driver is going to be there to grow it quickly.
Published On Sep 23, 2017 By CarDekho for Renault Captur

Renaults new premium crossover attempts to carve out a new segment for itself. But can it?

Renault managed to pull at the heartstrings of the discerning Indian buyer with its mini SUV, the Duster. And then did it again with the SUV-esque hatch, the Kwid. It seems Renault has successfully deciphered that the best way to find your way into the hearts -- or in this case, garages -- of our countrys car buyers is with an SUV, or at least a car that looks like one. Plus, if you promise a value for money proposition with a quantillion trim levels to choose from, you definitely have our attention. The classic case in point being the Duster. But Renault has yet to break into the premium market. The French carmaker did give it a shot with the Fluence and Koleos but neither managed to garner a customer base worth boasting about. But, with the new, stunning-looking Captur, can Renault finally make a dent in the premium crossover space?

Exterior





First things first, the Captur shares the same platform as the Duster but thats where the similarities more or less end. Where the Duster is the more traditional box-type SUV, the Captur boasts of a more contemporary design. The front is dominated by a sleek grille that runs from headlamp to headlamp and widens out at the centre, which houses that massive Renault insignia. The headlamps are petal-shaped wraparound LED units below which on the bumper sit C-shaped LED DRLs. The design flows effortlessly from A-pillar to C pillar and the flared wheel arches add to the muscle of the car.

There is plastic cladding all around for that distinctive rugged appeal while the two-tone paint adds a dash of premiumness to the car. The rear is just as striking as the front, with wraparound LED tail lamps mounted high on the tail and the flared wheel arches adding a bit of muscle.

The black cladding is complete with a faux skid plate and encroaches slightly into the tailgate, completing the shapely rear of the car. The whole car sits on 17-inch diamond-cut 5-spoke alloys adorned with Apollo Apterra tyres.

Cabin

Step inside and the Captur welcomes you with a good-looking interior. The two-tone treatment has been carried over to the cabin as well. The dash is bathed in shades of black and white. Though it isnt apparent at first, the connection to the Duster does come to the fore as you spend more time in the drivers seat. The layout of the dash is similar to the Duster down to the AC vents. The instrument cluster though is different, with a central digital speedometer flanked by the tacho on the left and the fuel gauge on the right. It also houses a digital trip computer screen above the speedometer which displays all information like trip, distance to empty, cruising speed, average fuel consumption and real-time fuel economy.

The 7-inch infotainment system has also been borrowed from the Duster but has been updated for the Captur and gets Captur-specific themes. Connecting to Bluetooth is fairly straightforward and reconnecting after you re-enter the car after a pause is also seamless and almost instantaneous. It doesnt however get Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, which has become a norm these days even in more affordable cars. You do get inbuilt satellite navigation though. The touch controls, though intuitive all round, suffer from lag when playing music via Bluetooth. The quality of plastic used inside is good and is superior to the Duster but a bit of soft-touch materials  like in the Maruti Suzuki S-Cross  could have made the package look a bit more premium.

The seats are upholstered in faux leather and also get the two-tone treatment, in this case black and white. The drivers perch is well contoured and features a supportive seat back but the seating position is more akin to a proper SUV rather than a crossover. With a high default seat height, it could make drivers 510 and above feel constrained for space.

The rear seat too has a similar story. The rear door is on the narrower side and doesnt open as wide either. In addition, the B-pillar tends to be obstructive when getting into the back. But theres enough space in the rear to seat three abreast in reasonable comfort.

The seat back offers decent support but comes across as a bit short. The squab, though adequate in length, doesnt give the desired under-thigh support for taller occupants as the seat is lower and the space to stretch ones legs is also limited. Stowage space, though, is limited in the cabin. The front door pockets can only hold a water bottle if its horizontal while the rear doors can only house a small 500ml water bottle at best. The boot space measures a sizeable 392 litres but to free up the space in the boot the spare wheel has been shifted to the outside.

Variants

Renault plans to bring only two variants of the Captur to India and claims that the base variant will at least be as equipped as its competitions middle variants. The Captur will come with the LED lighting system as standard and will also offer features like climate control, cruise control, alloys, automatic headlamps, rain-sensing wipers, rear parking sensors and power windows for all four doors as a part of the standard package. Also included as standard will be safety features like dual front airbags, ABS with EBD, Hill Start Assist and ISOFIX mounts. The one we got was the top of the line Platine variant and the main differentiating factor between the base and the Platine will be the infotainment system, rear parking camera, ESP and more airbags.

Engine

The Captur will be powered by the 1.5 litre, 106PS H4K petrol and the 1.5-litre dCi diesel that also power the Duster. The Captur we got was the diesel Platine variant which makes 110PS of max power and 245Nm of peak torque. The diesel motor wakes up with the typical diesel engine clatter which also seeps into the cabin. The vibes disappear once on the move but the engine gurgle is audible throughout. The Captur feels light on its feet and there is ample pulling power from the torquey motor so long you keep the revs above the 2000rpm mark. Going off the line too takes a bit of effort. There is severe turbo lag from idle to 2000rpm so stalling the car is quite easy if youre light-footed with the throttle. In addition, with a fully laden cabin the Captur cannot pull away in second gear from below 20kmph. The engine is mated to a 6-speed manual transmission, also from the Duster. The clutch is quite heavy, which will make tackling bumper to traffic a literal pain. Also, the absence of a dead pedal means theres nowhere for your left foot to go. However, the throws are short and precise, making the gearbox a treat to use.

Ride and Handling

Ride quality has been Renaults USP and the Captur is no exception. The crossover absorbs all bumps and undulations with ease. Even the rumble strip and speed breaker-laden roads of Goa rarely upset the Capturs composure. Even while fully laden, rear passengers will seldom complain. The stiffer suspension also translates to better confidence in the corners as the car stays true to its line; and body roll, though not completely absent, is not off-putting.

The steering, though well-weighed at speed, lacks feedback, which eats into the confidence the suspension inspires as youre really sure how the front is behaving. The steering is also on the heavier side, which makes three-point turns quite tedious.The brakes provide plenty of stopping power but a bit more feel would have been appreciated.

Verdict

When launched after Diwali, the Renault Captur will go up against the Maruti Suzuki S-Cross and the Hyundai Creta. Where the S-Cross has the brand trust going for it, the Creta is the leader in interior quality and convenience features. The Captur on the other hand is a car that would not look out of place on the streets of Paris and its head-turning status is a huge part of its appeal. In addition, the features list on the Captur is exhaustive and most of the convenience and safety features will be offered as standard along with numerous customization options. Yes, there are compromises in the package (like the absence of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay) and the cabin is reminiscent of the Duster, but keeping the overall experience in mind, it isnt a deal breaker and we hope the compromises will translate to a competitive pricing.

Words: Kshitij Sharma

Photography: Vikrant Date/Eshan Shetty
15 Most Expensive States for Gasoline  and How It Got That Way

Does it seem like youre paying more at the pump in 2017? Its more than a feeling. According to statistics from AAA, U.S. gasoline prices averaged $2.59 at the start of fall 2017  more than 25 cents above the prices from a year earlier ($2.33). While hurricanes played a role in this huge jump, gas prices have been higher throughout the year. In April, Americans were paying an average of $2.53 for per gallon.

Overall, its been a rough year for commuters, but residents of certain states are getting hit the hardest in the wallet. According to AAA data, gas prices fluctuate as much as 67 cents per gallon of regular (over 25%) in a road trip across the continental U.S. If youre wondering who pays the most and why, we have answers. Here are the 15 most expensive states for gas and why people who live there pay more. Unless otherwise noted, quoted prices come from AAA data.

15. Georgia

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, which tracks fuel costs across America, listed relatively cheap gas prices for the Lower Atlantic region over the past six years, but in 2017 the prices have soared above other states. Georgia residents were paying $2.69 per gallon on average in the first days of fall. With few refineries in the area and supply dipping during hurricane season, this trend could continue.

Next: Bay State prices are high because refineries are scarce.

14. Massachusetts

After the West Coast, residents of New England and Central Atlantic (New York, Pennsylvania) states traditionally pay the most for gasoline. According to the Energy Information Administration, the distance from oil refinery and pipelines plays a big factor in gas costs, and that hits this region especially. In Massachusetts, the few product terminals make the distance to local pumps even greater. Drivers paid an average of $2.70 per gallon here in the first days of fall.

Next: The Green Mountain State has only a single petroleum terminal.

13. Vermont

Whereas oil terminals are scarce in Massachusetts, theyre practically nonexistent in Vermont. Only one site off Lake Champlain serves residents of the Green Mountain State, and local prices reflect the supply issues when demand jumps. Gas prices hit $2.71 per gallon of regular gas in September 2017. That number was up 28 cents since August, but prices have hovered around $2.35 for most of the year.

Next: Ocean State residents lose when demand ramps up.

12. Rhode Island

Normally, Rhode Island residents pay about the national average price for gasoline. However, when demand ramps up across the country, Ocean Staters see fuel costs soar. Prices hit $2.71 per gallon of regular gas at the start of fall. That number was 36 cents higher than the average from August. Though Rhode Island has a population of only 1 million, the states few oil terminals likely see volume dip in hurricane season.

Next: Gem State residents always face high prices at the pump.

11. Idaho

Though Eastern states may have seen fuel costs jump following hurricanes, Idaho residents should be used to paying more than the national average for gas. With no in-state refineries and few product terminals piping in product, costs have held above $2.70 since August and topped $2.78 in September. Even when prices were down near $2.20 across America in late 2016, Idaho drivers still paid 20 cents above the average.

Next: The Silver State treats gas like liquid gold.

10. Nevada

Nevada is home to the Biggest Little City in the World and some of the highest gas prices in the country, too. A gallon of premium gas typically runs drivers over $3 per gallon in the Silver State. And regular cost $2.80 in September. Generally, Nevadans pay about 30 cents per gallon above the national average, so if anything the spread got a bit lower when hurricanes hammered the East Coast.

Next: Drivers pay for that New York state of mind.

9. New York

While most people in New York City have little use for a private automobile, other residents of this huge state pay the price to drive. Compared to the national average, Empire State motorists pay between 10 and 20 cents more for a gallon of regular gas. With the hurricanes affecting prices, drivers faced $2.80 per gallon at the pump in September. A nearby refinery in Linden (immortalized in The Sopranos credits) keeps things relatively under control.

Next: The nations capital sits in the top 10, too.

8. Washington, D.C.

Following a slew of September hurricanes, D.C. residents found themselves paying an extra 30 cents than the average American per gallon. The steep $2.83 for regular you saw on signs around the nations capital was especially high, but it wasnt particularly unusual for D.C. drivers. Area residents usually pay between 13 and 20 cents more per gallon than people living in neighboring states. Unfortunately, that means taxpayers foot high bills for gas-guzzling government vehicles when drivers fill up in town.

Next: Hurricanes hit the Constitution State hard.

7. Connecticut

In terms of fuel costs, Hurricane Harvey affected Connecticut more than most states. Drivers saw prices at the pump jump nearly 40 cents per gallon between August and September, leaving residents with an average price of $2.83. Normally, the states distance from the Linden refinery and small geographical spread keep costs somewhat reasonable, but the barrage of storms changed the narrative quickly.

Next: Keystone State drivers see no neighborly discount.

6. Pennsylvania

Talk to drivers in the Philadelphia metro area, and theyll tell you to buy gas in New Jersey. Just over the bridge from the Liberty Bell, Jersey drivers paid about 35 cents less per gallon than their Pennsylvania neighbors in late 2016. (Reasonable bridge tolls made this a winning proposition.) In 2017, the spread shrank considerably following the hurricanes, but Pennsylvanias $2.84 per gallon price was still much higher than its neighbors and about 25 cents above the national average.

Next: West Coast states suffer from isolation.

5. Oregon

In Oregon, drivers were paying 47 cents above the national average in August. Following the rash of hurricanes, states prices rose another dime per gallon, bringing the cost of regular gas to $2.89 in late September. These figures were not entirely out of the ordinary for Oregonians. The West Coasts isolation from the rest of the country keeps this regions prices highest. When shortages hit, prices increase even more.

Next: You can see Russia and pay over $3 per gallon, too.

4. Alaska

Only a handful of states are in the $3 club, and Alaska joined the club during hurricane season in September when prices hit $3.01 for a gallon of regular. Normally, drivers in The Last Frontier pay more than most because of refinery limitations. Even though there are several located across Alaska, few serve the bulk of the state, geographically speaking. So the distance it takes the gas to travel increases the price despite low state taxes.

Next: High taxes hit Evergreen State drivers at the pump.

3. Washington

While you find petroleum ports on the coast and refineries near Seattle, the eastern part of Washington has few terminals to receive oil. That factor drives up costs, but an extra 12 cents of taxes since 2015 will keep Washingtonians paying more than the average American for the foreseeable future. Those taxes paid for improvements to highway infrastructure, so at least Evergreen State drivers will have a smoother ride. Prices averaged a whopping $3.04 per gallon in September.

Next: Island life equals pricey fuel transport.

2. Hawaii

Nearly every factor that drives up gas prices affects Hawaii. The collection of islands makes it difficult to transport fuel, and refinery limitations guarantee high prices for Aloha State drivers. Even before hurricanes rocked the East Coast, Hawaii residents paid $3.08 for a gallon of regular. Following the September storms, prices edged up to $3.11.

Next: Golden State drivers pay a heavy premium for cleaner fuel.

1. California

While there are fluctuations all across the country and several states over $3 per gallon, California drivers almost always pay the most for gas. As the Energy Information Administration website notes, the biggest reason is quality: State laws require a cleaner blend of fuel than other states, and only a few refineries provide it. Therefore, Golden State drivers feel the pinch of any periods of high demand. At the start of fall, prices stood at $3.13 per gallon, 67 cents more than the cheapest gas sold in Missouri.
Iran defies Trump and tests new ballistic missile

Iran has successfully tested a new ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles) which it displayed at a military parade on Friday, state media reported on Saturday.

The test-firing of the Khorramshahr missile, which Iran said could carry several warheads, is likely to raise concerns in Washington.

State broadcaster IRIB carried footage of the missile test without giving its time and location, including video from an on-board camera which it said showed the detachment of the cone that carries multiple warheads.

'You are seeing images of the successful test of the Khorramshahr ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the latest missile of our country,' state television said.

'This is the third Iranian missile with a range of 2,000 km,' it added.

The Khorramshahr missile was first displayed at a military parade on Friday, where President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would strengthen its missile capabilities without seeking any country's permission.

At the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump said Iran was building its missile capability and accused it of exporting violence to Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

He also criticised the 2015 pact that the United States and other world powers struck with Iran under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.

The United States has imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran, saying Tehran's ballistic missile tests violated a UN resolution that endorsed the nuclear deal and called on Tehran not to undertake activities related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Iran denies its missile development breaches the resolution, saying the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons.
Melania Trump quotes from the Bible in speech at the UN against cyber-bullying

The US First Lady drew on the word of God as she addressed dozens of women in a speech against cyber-bullying during the UN General Assembly.

Melania Trump pleaded with her audience to work together in raising up children 'to be good stewards' of the world they've inherited and who understand the values of 'kindness, mindfulness, integrity and leadership.'

'As adults we are not merely responsible. We are accountable. I hope you will join me in committing ourselves to teaching the next generation to live by and honor the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which is my paramount in today's society and my focus as first lady,' she said.

The First Lady asked adults to lead by example and take responsibility for what their children are learning.

She said it was important to focus on the message and content children are being exposed to online and through social media.

She ended her speech with: 'God bless our children, God bless our nations and God bless the United States of America.'

Tackling cyberbullying was a campaign promise for the First Lady before her husband Donald Trump won the presidential election last year.

At the time, she said the online bullying of children and teenagers was 'absolutely unacceptable when it's done with no name hiding on the internet.'

Melania Trump has been open about her Christian faith since becoming First Lady, being seen moved to tears during a performance of How Great Thou Art at the Washington National Cathedral the day after her husband's inauguration.

Then at a Florida rally earlier this year, she led a crowd of 9,000 people in saying The Lord's Prayer.

You can read more about her prayer at the rally and the resulting backlash here

You can read more about her reaction to the performance of How Great Thou Art here
Pakistan: Christian boy beaten to death in his classroom

A Christian Pakistani teenager was beaten to death by his Muslim classmates on his fourth day at his new school in the Vehari District of Punjab, Pakistan.

Sharoon Masih, 17, was a promising student who had joined MC Model Boys Government High School. Masih was the only Christian in his majority-Muslim form and was reportedly bulled and abused from his first day, his parents told the British Pakistani Christian Association.

Sharoon was named a 'chura', a derogatory term used for Christians, and was allegedly told by one student: 'You're a Christian, don't dare sit with us if you want to live.' It's also said that there were several attempts to convert Sharoon to Islam.

On August 27, Sharoon was reportedly beaten by many of his fellow pupils in their classroom and died at the scene. Mixed reports have surrounded the on-duty classroom teacher: one report said he ignored the attack, while the teacher himself said he had not noticed it. The school's headteacher later said that the violence had occurred between classroom sessions with one teacher late to arrive, so no one was on duty. The headteacher has been dismissed from his post.

School pupil Muhammad Ahmed Rana has confessed to the attack and has been arrested and detained by local police. No other culprits have been named, though reports suggest several attackers took part.

Sharoon's mother Razia Bibi said: 'My son was a kind-hearted, hard-working and affable boy. He has always been loved by teachers and pupils alike and shared great sorrow that he was being targeted by students at his new school because of his faith.

'Sharoon and I cried every night as he described the daily torture he was subjected to. He only shared details about the violence he was facing. He did not want to upset his father because he had such a caring heart for others.

'The evil boys that hated my child are now refusing to reveal who else was involved in his murder. Nevertheless one day God will have his judgment.'

Wilson Chowdhry, the chairman of the BPCA, said: 'Sharoon was a bright and intelligent young boy who had a potentially good future [and] has now been killed. Yet once again in Pakistan the debate is not on who is culpable but who is not culpable of a most heinous crime.'

He added: 'Christians are despised and detested in Pakistan. They are a constant target for persecution. This killing of a young Christian teenager at school serves only to remind us that hatred towards religious minorities is bred into the majority population at a young age, through cultural norms and a biased national curriculum.

'This devastated family will have to cope with the immense emotional pain of a totally avoidable incident. It is a poor indictment of MC Model Boys Government High School that a Christian could be targeted in this fashion. However by no means is such treatment an anomaly  it is an expectation that Christians will face abuse and violence during their years in the educational system.'

The BPCA has been supporting Sharoon's family and is campaigning for educational reform in Pakistan. It is calling for the removal of anti-minority stereotypes in the national curriculum and an end to bullying in a petition here.
Theresa May needs to give more detail, EU demands

Prime Minister Theresa May set out a plan on Friday to retain full access to the EU's single market for two years after Brexit to try to reassure business and reset the tone of stalled negotiations with Brussels.

But her proposals for such a transition, for meeting Britain's financial obligations and for protecting EU citizens' rights fell short of what the EU wanted.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier praised the speech for its 'constructive spirit' but asked for more detail. Another official said it had left him 'even more concerned'.

In a speech at a 14th-century church in Florence, Italy, May appealed directly to EU leaders to unlock the talks, which have stalled over a series of issues, including the size of the bill Britain should pay as part of its divorce settlement.

She spent much of her 30-minute speech describing the similarities between Britain and the EU, saying that if the complicated talks to unravel more than 40 years of union should fail, the only beneficiaries would be those who oppose democracy, liberalism and free trade.

Late on Friday ratings agency Moody's downgraded its assessment of Britain's creditworthiness, saying Brexit was damaging the country's medium-term growth prospects. The government said Moody's view was 'outdated' and did not consider May's most recent comments.

'Clearly people, businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU,' May told an audience of Italian business leaders and diplomats.

'So during the implementation period, access to one another's markets should continue on current terms, and Britain also should continue to take part in existing security measures.'

Britain wants to move the talks forward and start addressing how a future relationship with the EU would work, a move May's government says is vital if they want to find agreement on the divorce bill.

But the EU has stood firm, refusing to discuss trading arrangements until 'sufficient progress' is made on the first three issues - the financial settlement, the land border with EU member Ireland and the protection of expatriates' rights.

Beyond her vision for a transition, involving around two years of trading on the same terms, but no payments for access to the EU single market, May pledged to protect EU citizens' rights in Britain after Brexit, saying that decisions by the European Court of Justice would be taken into account by British courts.

On the financial settlement, she also said Britain would 'honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership'.

'I do not want our partners to fear that they will need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan as a result of our decision to leave,' she said.

May has long said Britain will honor its financial obligations, but she did not mention the 20 billion euro figure reported in local media in the days running up to the speech.

She said little on Ireland, beyond noting that no one wanted a return to a 'hard border' with British-ruled Northern Ireland that could reignite tensions on the island.

Barnier said her words showed 'a willingness to move forward, as time is of the essence', but that they needed to be 'translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government'.

But the head of the European Parliament's biggest group, the center-right European People's Party, Manfred Weber, said May's speech had brought no more clarity. 'I am even more concerned now,' he added.

British opposition lawmakers were not impressed, with the Labour Party saying the government was 'no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.'

Trade union leader Frances O'Grady said the prime minister was pretending that 'we can have our cake and eat it,' while a business lobby, the British Chambers of Commerce, underlined its desire to 'get trade talks moving'.

It was never going to be an easy speech, with May struggling to appeal simultaneously to the EU, to business and to the supporters of Brexit in her own party who want to hold her to her pledge of a clean break with the bloc.

'It's clear that we're out,' one senior Conservative source said, adding that he was pleased to hear May agree that no deal was better than a bad deal.

The speech comes at the start of a crucial week for Europe.

On Sunday, German voters are expected to return conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel to power but also vault euroskeptic parties into parliament, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose nationalist, anti-immigrant ideas echo those of Britain's UKIP party, a driving force behind Brexit.

Two days later, French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to flesh out his ideas for a 'relaunch' of the EU and euro zone, underscoring the bloc's determination to press ahead with a closer union that excludes the UK.

Britain and the EU do agree on one thing: The clock is ticking, with Barnier saying there is only a year left to find an agreement to give Britain a controlled exit.

May's ill-fated decision to have an election in June not only used up time but also sapped her authority and gave a stronger hand to pro-Brexit lawmakers who want a total break with the bloc and to reduce any divorce bill to zero.

May's top team of ministers put on a show of unity in Florence - with foreign minister Boris Johnson, one of Britain's most prominent hardline Brexit politicians and a one-time leadership contender, sitting in the front row.

'I think what was so uplifting about this speech was it was positive; it was confident about what Britain can do but also about our relations with the rest of the EU,' Johnson said.
Japan talking only about sanctions on North Korea rather than dialogue will be seen as going against United Nations resolutions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Japanese counterpart.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of his country's own Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 16, 2017.

Tensions have continued to rise since North Korea carried out its sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3, prompting a new round of U.N. sanctions.

Wang told Japan Foreign Minister Taro Kono on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York that the situation on the Korean Peninsula was getting increasingly serious and all sides needed to remain calm.

Resuming peace talks was just as much a part of the UN resolutions as enforcing sanctions, Wang said, according to a statement issued by China's Foreign Ministry late on Friday.

"If the Japanese side only talks about sanctions and does not bring up talks, or even goes against talks, it will be seen as contravening Security Council resolutions," the ministry cited Wang as saying.

China hoped that Japan talked and acted cautiously and played a constructive role on the nuclear issue, he said.
China said on Saturday it will ban exports of some petroleum products to North Korea , as well as imports of textiles from the isolated North, to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution after Pyongyang's latest nuclear test .

Chinese vendors sell North Korea and China flags on the boardwalk in the border city of Dandong, China.

The announcement from Beijing came at the end of a week that saw tensions ratchet up between the United States and North Korea, with the leaders of both countries trading insults.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website that China would limit exports of refined petroleum products from Oct. 1 and ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas immediately to comply with the latest U.N. sanctions.

Imports of textiles from North Korea would also be banned immediately, the statement said.

Textile trade contracts signed before Sept. 11 would be respected if import formalities are completed before midnight on Dec. 10, the statement said.

The moves follow the adoption of a unanimous UN Security Council agreement on sanctions after the isolated North conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.

That resolution imposed a ban on condensates and natural gas liquids, a cap of 2 million barrels a year on refined petroleum products and a cap on crude oil exports to North Korea at current levels.

On Saturday as well, China's General Administration of Customs reported the country's total trade with North Korea was $604.27 million in August, up from $456.16 million a month earlier.

Its total trade with North Korea was worth $3.61 billion in the first eight months of the year, up 7.5 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Russia urged calm on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a "madman". Kim had called Trump a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" a day earlier after Trump said Washington would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.
A startup called Nuada has developed a soft, robotic glove that gives people with hand pain or weakness a strong grip.

According to co-founders Filipe Quinaz and Vitor Crespo, the glove contains a "mesh" of artificial tendons and sensors. These are controlled by an electromechanical system contained in a smartwatch-like device worn on the same hand.

A user activates the glove by lightly flexing their wrist. The glove then understands that they want an assist, and can help them with any movement. Typically, users will employ the glove to pick up, maneuver or hold a heavy object whether that's a bag of groceries or a car battery.

A more advanced (and expensive) version of the Nuada glove can predict the wearer's movement and assist them automatically. The advanced version also work with a mobile app that gathers data about their hand's activity. A physical therapist, for example, could review the data and help the wearer to become more ergonomically healthy.

Nuada began with the idea of creating a medical-grade prosthetic, Quinaz told CNBC. But the company decided to develop more of a generally helpful tool after hearing tremendous demand from employers whose staff do a lot of manual labor, and seniors with weakness in their hands.

Hand injuries befell more than 140,000 workers in the U.S. alone in 2015, according to the most recent available data from the U.S. Department of Labor. And repetitive, physical tasks at workwhether you're a camera operator, EMT or waiter  can cause fatigue and pain even in healthy workers. Meanwhile, arthritis of the hand effects tens of millions in the U.S. alone.

Based in Braga, Portugal, the company is currently testing its robo-gloves with large employers there, including a Volkswagen factory and the retail conglomerate Sonae. The company has raised seed funding from the hardware accelerator HAX and its affiliated venture firm SOSV.
WASHINGTON (TNS)  They have a blueprint and principles. Theyve held countless strategy sessions for what could be the biggest tax overhaul in decades.

They even produced a handy desk calendar with daily inspirational messages and helpful tax statistics to drive home the need for reform.

All Republicans need now is an actual plan.

Despite months of promises and what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calls a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the GOP-led Congress and White House have yet to agree on how to revamp the tax code, including how much to reduce corporate and individual tax rates, how tax cuts would be paid for or whether they will be offset at all.

There is no movement on tax reform, said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, after Republicans huddled recently behind closed doors for the latest update.

Im sure theyre working, paddling like a bunch of ducks, he said. They just need to make some decisions.

Next week, Republicans are set to unveil a consensus document, which they say will be a much more detailed overview than previous policy papers. But despite some earlier hopes, it is not expected to be an actual plan or bill.

Instead, House Republicans will huddle at a private GOP retreat next week to review the latest offering and consider next steps as Congress tries to pass a bill by the end of the year.

But blueprints and drafts are far from legislation. A key problem for Republicans remains the division within their majority between fiscal hawks who insist that any tax cut not add to the deficit and those who are willing to risk ballooning the debt in hopes that it will spur enough economic growth to cover the price tag.

Key Senate Republicans, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., announced this week a deal to proceed with a package that would add an estimated $1.5 trillion to the deficit, an extraordinary pivot for a party that has prided itself on fiscal conservatism.

But officials said Thursday that figure remains in flux. And their accord is no guarantee of broader support for the final tax bill.

This is really the heart and soul of who the Republican Party is, said Maya MacGuineas, president of Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

Republicans have been fighting to have control of the House, the Senate and the White House to make some improvements to the fiscal situation, and they are on track to do absolutely the opposite, she said.

President Donald Trump is another wild card. Cutting the deficit or debt was never one of his top priorities. And restless with the Republican logjam in Congress, Trump has signaled a willingness to court the minority party for a fresh approach, as he did recently with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer to reach deals on immigration and the debt ceiling.

Though earlier GOP tax proposals would have benefited mostly corporations and the rich, Trump more recently has said his focus will be on the middle class.

The wealthiest Americans are not my priority, Trump said recently. My priority are people in the middle class, and thats where were giving the big tax reduction to.

Overhauling the tax code is no easy task, and the last time Congress was able to accomplish a big tax deal was in 1986, an effort so difficult and complicated entire books have been written about it.

Republicans are determined, even desperate, to fulfill their campaign pledge on tax reform.

The stakes are higher than ever that we deliver, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, told GOP colleagues during a private meeting last week.

Trump has made clear his preference for a massive corporate tax cut  dropping the rate from 35 percent to 15 percent  which is even too low for some of the most conservative Republicans who worry it would pile on to the nations debt. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan has aimed closer to a 20 percent rate.

Republicans also want to consolidate individual rates into fewer brackets, and Trump  in what many saw as a nod to Democrats  said recently that the wealthiest Americans may actually have to pay more.

But how to pay for everything remains the problem.

Initially, Ryan had proposed the so-called border-adjustment tax on foreign-made goods, potentially providing a windfall of $1 trillion in new revenue that could offset sweeping cuts.

But that idea was abandoned by the White House after fierce opposition from groups aligned with the powerful Koch brothers and other businesses groups.

That left Republicans scrambling to agree on an assortment of deductions to offset some of the costs, aiming particularly at Democratic-leaning states with proposals to cap mortgage interest deductions for loans above $500,000, for example, which would particularly hit expensive real estate markets in California and New York.

They also have discussed limiting the ability to write off state income taxes, which also would hit hardest in high-cost, liberal-leaning states.

But such steps would not be enough to pay for everything, piling onto deficits. Roughly speaking, every percentage-point reduction in the corporate tax rate costs about $100 billion over a decade, putting the price tag for Trumps 15 percent corporate rate at about $2 trillion.

Pelosi derides the GOP reliance on hoped-for growth to cover tax cuts as a warmed over stew of trickle-down economics that does little to help lower- and middle-income working Americans and their families.

To take corporate America down to 15 is like, what are we talking about here? Pelosi said.

She encouraged the White House and its Republican allies in Congress to do a better job studying the budget  its like your irregular verbs, she said  to better understand what is at stake if they eliminate so much tax revenue.

He wants America to be No. 1. You cant be No. 1 if youre not investing in education, science and technology, and all the things our budget is committed to doing.

Republicans are under great pressure from their allies in the business community to make progress on their plan, which is being crafted under special budget rules that allow for simple majority passage, bypassing a Senate filibuster that would otherwise require 60 votes.

If you have the White House and you have both sides of Congress, and you cant get tax reform done, it is an indictment of them, and I would say business leadership as well, Randall Stephenson, chief executive of AT&T Inc., said at a forum hosted by the Business Roundtable, a trade association of CEOs of the largest U.S. corporations.

But if Republicans are unable to create consensus among themselves, Trump may be inclined to try again with Democrats.

One centrist Republican, Rep. Tom Reed of New York, was among a dozen lawmakers from both parties who met with Trump recently at the White House to discuss ideas going forward.

At the end of the day, theres a clear indication that, look, weve tried to go one way, Reed said. It hasnt worked. Theyre not going to be beholden to that way any longer. Theyre open to getting things done.
President Donald Trump on Saturday upbraided Arizona Senator John McCain for disappointing the voters of his state, saying the senator 'let Arizona down' by opposing the GOP's latest effort to reform health care, imperiling the Republicans' drive to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

For the second time in two months, The 2008 Republican nominee dealt a fatal blow to his party's attempt to fix Obamacare. In a statement on Friday, McCain said that he could not, "in good conscience," vote for the proposal known as Graham-Cassidy  despite the legislation being sponsored by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, one of McCain's closest Senate allies.

In a dramatic late-night vote in July, McCain  who has cultivated a reputation as a "maverick" with an independent streak  voted no on a similar attempt by the GOP to reform health care.

On Twitter, Trump blasted McCain for his refusal to vote for the bill, saying he "never had any intention" of voting for Graham-Cassidy, adding that he "let Arizona down" by opposing it.

John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!

Arizona had a 116% increase in ObamaCare premiums last year, with deductibles very high. Chuck Schumer sold John McCain a bill of goods. Sad

The proposal has also been criticized by the Medicaid directors in all 50 states, who issued a joint letter this week that said Graham-Cassidy would place a massive financial burden on the states.

Large Block Grants to States is a good thing to do. Better control & management. Great for Arizona. McCain let his best friend L.G. down!

The bill passage hinged on support from four undecided Republicans. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she is leaning toward voting no on Graham-Cassidy. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has already expressed his opposition to the bill, which he said didn't fully repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Trump, however, praised Paul on Saturday, predicting he would ultimately back an effort "for the good of the party."

I know Rand Paul and I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the Party!

--CNBC's Christina Wilkie contributed to this report.
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Carnival Cruise Line announced a new multi-year preferred supplier partnership with Signature Travel Network earlier this week.

Carnival joins its North American sister brands Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Cunard, and Seabourn as part of the preferred supplier team with Signature.

The news was shared with Signature agency owners at their annual meeting by Signature Travel Network President/CEO Alex Sharpe recently in Phoenix, Arizona.

Partnership benefits for Signature agencies begin October 1, kicking off with a Signature Welcome program led by Carnival and offering tailored training and support to its agency community.

Our executive leadership and sales team are fully dedicated to growing our relationship with Signature Travel Network and leveraging the strength of both organizations to deliver an incredible experience for tens of thousands of travelers each year, said Adolfo Perez, vice president of sales and trade marketing for Carnival Cruise Line.

Signature Travel Network is known for providing its members with outstanding marketing support and technology that drives business to its members and incremental demand for their preferred suppliers products. Signatures owners and agents are widely respected for being highly skilled and knowledgeable travel experts and were thrilled to begin this preferred relationship so that we can work together on growing their overall business and increasing their Carnival sales.

On behalf of the board of directors, the larger membership and the Signature staff, we look forward to working together to maximize this new partnership with Carnival, stated Sharpe. I believe the networks greatest strengths are: 1) a members first, service-oriented culture; 2) strong and supportive relationships with preferred partners; 3) customizable, turnkey tools that members use in accordance to their unique business needs and goals. Our multi-year agreement with Carnival is specifically designed to build upon these incredible strengths and offer members yet another, and important, way to broaden their reach, connect with more travelers and grow their businesses.
Princess Cruises presented its first donation from the Princess Animal Welfare Sponsor (PAWS) to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) in the amount of $25,000 earlier this week.

PAWS was established by Princess to donate a portion of proceeds from the sales of Stanley the Bear, the cruise lines plush bear, to local causes and charities that support nature, animals and wildlife, the company said.

Our support of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center furthers our commitment to nature and wildlife in the places we visit, as well as offers a much-desired authentic Alaska experience to our guests, said Ralph Samuels, vice president of public affairs, Princess Cruises.

The AWCC plans to use the donation to fund an enhanced bear viewing and sitting areas on the property and a new family interactive space. In addition, the AWCC will be providing Princess Cruises bear related items, such as bear paw prints to be used in the cruise lines Camp Discovery youth centers.

Were honored to be the first recipient of $25,000 from the Princess Animal Welfare Sponsor and applaud the cruise line for supporting our sanctuary, dedicated to preserving Alaskas wildlife through conservation, research, education and quality animal care, said Karen Cowart, AWCC board member.

Named in a Facebook contest that generated nearly 9,000 entries, Stanley was chosen in honor of the founder of Princess Cruises, Stanley B. McDonald.
Pa. Dems could flip the House of Reps. Here's what that might mean
Compass Minerals International, Inc., produces and sells essential minerals primarily in the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Salt, Plant Nutrition North America, and Plant Nutrition South America. The Salt segment offers sodium chloride and magnesium chloride, including rock salt, mechanically and solar evaporated salt, and brine and flake magnesium chloride products; and purchases potassium chloride and calcium chloride to sell as finished products or to blend with salt to produce specialty products. This segment provides products for use as a deicer for roadways, consumer, and professional use; as an ingredient in chemical production; for water treatment, human, and animal nutrition; and for various other consumer and industrial uses, as well as records management services. The Plant Nutrition North America segment offers sulfate of potash specialty fertilizers in various grades, including agricultural products that are used in broadcast spreaders, direct application, and liquid fertilizer solutions; turf products used by the turf and ornamental markets, as well as for blends used on golf course greens; organic products under the Protassium+ brand; and micronutrient products under the Wolf Trax and other brands. This segment provides its products to distributors and retailers of crop inputs, as well as growers. The Plant Nutrition South America segment offers various specialty plant nutrients and supplements; water and wastewater treatment chemicals for cleaning, decontaminating, and purifying water; and process chemicals for industrial use. The company was formerly known as Salt Holdings Corporation and changed its name to Compass Minerals International, Inc. in December 2003. Compass Minerals International, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Johnson & Johnson: 3Dintegrated ApS, ALZA Corporation, AMO (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd Beijing Branch, AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd Guangzhou Branch, AMO (Shanghai) Medical Devices Trading Co. Ltd., AMO ASIA LIMITED, AMO Asia Limited (Korea Branch), AMO Asia Limited Taiwan Branch (Hong Kong), AMO Australia Pty Limited, AMO Australia Pty Limited (New Zealand Branch), AMO Canada Company, AMO Denmark ApS, AMO Development LLC, AMO France, AMO Germany GmbH, AMO Groningen B.V., AMO International Holdings Unlimited Company, AMO Ireland, AMO Ireland Ireland Branch, AMO Italy SRL, AMO Japan K.K., AMO Manufacturing USA LLC, AMO Netherlands BV, AMO Nominee Holdings LLC, AMO Norway AS, AMO Puerto Rico Manufacturing Inc., AMO Sales and Service Inc., AMO Singapore Pte. Ltd., AMO Spain Holdings LLC, AMO Switzerland GmbH, AMO U.K. Holdings LLC, AMO United Kingdom Ltd., AMO Uppsala AB, AUB Holdings LLC, Abott Medical Optics, Acclarent Inc., Actelion Ltd, Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Actelion Pharmaceuticals Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Actelion Pharmaceuticals US Inc., Actelion Treasury Unlimited Company, Akros Medical Inc., Albany Street LLC, Alios BioPharma, Alza Land Management Inc., Anakuria Therapeutics Inc., Animas Diabetes Care LLC, Animas LLC, Animas Technologies LLC, AorTx Inc., Apsis, Aragon Pharmaceuticals, Aragon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, Atrionix Inc., Auris Health, Auris Health Inc., Backsvalan 2 Aktiebolag, Backsvalan 6 Handelsbolag, Beijing Dabao Cosmetics Co. Ltd., BeneVir BioPharm Inc., Berna Rhein B.V., BioMedical Enterprises Inc., Biosense Webster (Israel) Ltd., Biosense Webster Inc., Branch of Johnson & Johnson LLC (RU) in Kazakhstan, C Consumer Products Denmark ApS, CSATS Inc., Calibra Medical LLC, Campus-Foyer Apotheke GmbH, Carlo Erba OTC S.r.l., Centocor Biologics LLC, Centocor Research & Development Inc., Cerenovus Inc., ChromaGenics B.V., Ci:Labo Customer Marketing Co. Ltd., Ci:Labo USA Inc., Ci:z Holdings, Ci:z. Labo Co. Ltd., Cilag AG, Cilag GmbH International, Cilag Holding AG, Cilag Holding Treasury Unlimited Company, Cilag-Biotech S.L., CoTherix Inc., Coherex Medical Inc., ColBar LifeScience Ltd., Company Store.com Inc., Conor MedSystems, Cordis International Corporation, Cordis de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Corimmun GmbH, DePuy Hellas SA, DePuy International Limited, DePuy Ireland Unlimited Company, DePuy Mexico S.A. de C.V., DePuy Mitek LLC, DePuy Orthopaedics Inc., DePuy Products Inc., DePuy Spine LLC, DePuy Synthes Gorgan Limited, DePuy Synthes Inc., DePuy Synthes Institute LLC, DePuy Synthes Leto SARL, DePuy Synthes Products Inc., DePuy Synthes Sales Inc., Debs-Vogue Corporation (Proprietary) Limited, Dutch Holding LLC, ECL7 LLC, EES Holdings de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., EES S.A. de C.V., EIT Emerging Implant Technologies GmbH, Ethicon Endo-Surgery (Europe) GmbH, Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., Ethicon Endo-Surgery LLC, Ethicon Inc., Ethicon LLC, Ethicon PR Holdings Unlimited Company, Ethicon Sarl, Ethicon US LLC, Ethicon Women's Health & Urology Sarl, Ethnor (Proprietary) Limited, Ethnor Farmaceutica S.A., Ethnor del Istmo S.A., FMS Future Medical System SA, Finsbury (Development) Limited, Finsbury (Instruments) Limited, Finsbury Medical Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics International Limited, Finsbury Orthopaedics Limited, GH Biotech Holdings Limited, GMED Healthcare BV, GMED Healthcare BV (Branch), Global Investment Participation B.V., Guangzhou Bioseal Biotech Co. Ltd., Hansen Medical Deutschland GmbH, Hansen Medical Inc., Hansen Medical International Inc., Hansen Medical UK Limited, Healthcare Services (Shanghai) Ltd., Hickory Merger Sub Inc., I.D. Acquisition Corp., Innomedic Gesellschaft fur innovative Medizintechnik und Informatik mbH, Innovative Surgical Solutions LLC, J & J Company West Africa Limited, J&J Pension Trustees Limited, J-C Health Care Ltd., J.C. General Services BV, JJ Surgical Vision Spain S.L., JJC Acquisition Company B.V., JJHC LLC, JJSV Belgium BV, JJSV Manufacturing Malaysia SDN. BHD., JJSV Norden AB, JJSV Produtos Oticos Ltda., JNJ Global Business Services s.r.o., JNJ Holding EMEA B.V., JNJ International Investment LLC, JOM Pharmaceutical Services Inc., Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy (Holding) Limited, Janssen BioPharma LLC, Janssen Biologics (Ireland) Limited, Janssen Biologics B.V., Janssen Biotech Inc., Janssen Cilag C.A., Janssen Cilag Farmaceutica S.A., Janssen Cilag S.p.A., Janssen Cilag SPA, Janssen Development Finance Unlimited Company, Janssen Diagnostics LLC, Janssen Egypt LLC, Janssen Farmaceutica Portugal Lda, Janssen Global Services LLC, Janssen Holding GmbH, Janssen Inc., Janssen Irish Finance Unlimited Company, Janssen Korea Ltd., Janssen Oncology Inc., Janssen Ortho LLC, Janssen Pharmaceutica (Proprietary) Limited, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Janssen Pharmaceutica S.A., Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K., Janssen Pharmaceutical Sciences Unlimited Company, Janssen Pharmaceutical Unlimited Company, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Japan Branch, Janssen Products LP, Janssen R&D Ireland Unlimited Company, Janssen Research & Development LLC, Janssen Sciences Ireland Unlimited Company, Janssen Scientific Affairs LLC, Janssen Supply Group LLC, Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., Janssen Vaccines Branch of Cilag GmbH International, Janssen Vaccines Corp., Janssen-Cilag, Janssen-Cilag (New Zealand) Limited, Janssen-Cilag A/S, Janssen-Cilag AG, Janssen-Cilag AS, Janssen-Cilag Aktiebolag, Janssen-Cilag B.V., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Lda., Janssen-Cilag Farmaceutica Ltda., Janssen-Cilag GmbH, Janssen-Cilag International NV, Janssen-Cilag Kft., Janssen-Cilag Kft. Branch Office, Janssen-Cilag Limited, Janssen-Cilag Manufacturing LLC, Janssen-Cilag NV, Janssen-Cilag OY, Janssen-Cilag Pharma GmbH, Janssen-Cilag Pharmaceutical S.A.C.I., Janssen-Cilag Polska Sp. z o.o., Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd, Janssen-Cilag Pty Ltd (Branch), Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A., Janssen-Cilag S.A. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Janssen-Cilag s.r.o., Janssen-Pharma S.L., Jevco Holding Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Johnson & Johnson (Angola) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (China) Investment Ltd. Beijing Branch, Johnson & Johnson (Egypt) S.A.E., Johnson & Johnson (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Ireland) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Jamaica) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Kenya) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. (DHCC Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. (JAFZA Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Middle East) Inc. Service Center (DAFZA Branch), Johnson & Johnson (Mozambique) Limitada, Johnson & Johnson (Namibia) (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (New Zealand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Philippines) Inc., Johnson & Johnson (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Thailand) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson (Trinidad) Limited, Johnson & Johnson (Vietnam) Co. Ltd, Johnson & Johnson - Societa' Per Azioni, Johnson & Johnson AB, Johnson & Johnson AB Eesti filiaal (Branch), Johnson & Johnson AG, Johnson & Johnson AG (Zuchwil Branch), Johnson & Johnson Belgium Finance Company BV, Johnson & Johnson Bulgaria EOOD, Johnson & Johnson China Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Hong Kong) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer (Thailand) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer B.V., Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health Care Switzerland Branch of Janssen-Cilag AG, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Holdings France, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (Dominican Republic Branch), Johnson & Johnson Consumer NV, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Services EAME Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Del Paraguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson Dominicana S.A.S., Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation Inc., Johnson & Johnson European Treasury Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson Finance Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Finance Limited, Johnson & Johnson Financial Services GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Financial Services GmbH (Branch Office), Johnson & Johnson Gateway LLC, Johnson & Johnson Gesellschaft m.b.H., Johnson & Johnson GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Guatemala S.A., Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions Inc., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Commercial and Industrial S.A., Johnson & Johnson Hellas Consumer Products Commercial Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson Hemisferica S.A., Johnson & Johnson Holding GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Inc., Johnson & Johnson Industrial Ltda., Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC Inc., Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC, Johnson & Johnson Innovation Limited, Johnson & Johnson International, Johnson & Johnson International (Belgian Branch) (European Logistics Center), Johnson & Johnson International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (Branch), Johnson & Johnson International Financial Services Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson K.K., Johnson & Johnson Kft., Johnson & Johnson Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Korea Selling & Distribution LLC, Johnson & Johnson LLC, Johnson & Johnson Lda, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Johnson & Johnson Limited (Sri Lanka Branch), Johnson & Johnson Luxembourg Finance Company Sarl, Johnson & Johnson Management Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical (China) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Proprietary) Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical (Shanghai) Ltd. Beijing Branch, Johnson & Johnson Medical (Suzhou) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical B.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices & Diagnostics Group - Latin America L.L.C., Johnson & Johnson Medical GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Korea Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medical Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson Medical NV, Johnson & Johnson Medical Products GmbH, Johnson & Johnson Medical Pty Ltd, Johnson & Johnson Medical S.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.C.S., Johnson & Johnson Medical S.p.A., Johnson & Johnson Medical SAS, Johnson & Johnson Medical Saudi Arabia Limited, Johnson & Johnson Medical Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi (Ankara Branch), Johnson & Johnson Medikal Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi (Izmir Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East - Scientific Office, Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ - LLC (Lebanese Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC, Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC (Ghana Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC (Kenya Branch), Johnson & Johnson Middle East FZ-LLC Branch (TSO) (Saudi Arabia Branch), Johnson & Johnson Morocco Societe Anonyme, Johnson & Johnson NCB (Belgian Branch), Johnson & Johnson Nordic AB, Johnson & Johnson Pacific Pty Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pakistan (Private) Limited, Johnson & Johnson Panama S.A., Johnson & Johnson Personal Care (Chile) S.A., Johnson & Johnson Poland Sp. z o.o., Johnson & Johnson Poland sp. z o.o. oddzial w Warszawie "Consumer", Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Pte. Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Pte. Ltd. Korea Branch, Johnson & Johnson Pty. Limited, Johnson & Johnson Romania S.R.L., Johnson & Johnson S.A., Johnson & Johnson S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson S.E. Inc., Johnson & Johnson S.E. d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson SDN. BHD., Johnson & Johnson Sante Beaute France, Johnson & Johnson Services Inc., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision Inc., Johnson & Johnson Surgical Vision India Private Limited, Johnson & Johnson Taiwan Ltd., Johnson & Johnson UK Treasury Company Limited, Johnson & Johnson Ukraine LLC, Johnson & Johnson Urban Renewal Associates, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (Shanghai) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Inc., Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Ireland Unlimited Company, Johnson & Johnson d.o.o., Johnson & Johnson de Argentina S.A.C. e. I., Johnson & Johnson de Chile Limitada, Johnson & Johnson de Chile S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Colombia S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Johnson & Johnson de Uruguay S.A., Johnson & Johnson de Venezuela S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Ecuador S.A., Johnson & Johnson del Peru S.A., Johnson & Johnson do Brasil Industria E Comercio de Produtos Para Saude Ltda., Johnson & Johnson for Export and Import LLC, Johnson & Johnson s.r.o., Johnson Y Johnson de Costa Rica S.A., Johnson and Johnson (Proprietary) Limited, Johnson and Johnson Sihhi Malzeme Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, LTL Management LLC, La Concha Land Investment Corporation, Latam International Investment Company Unlimited Company, Legal Entity Name, MDS Co. Ltd., McNEIL MMP LLC, McNeil AB, McNeil Consumer Pharmaceuticals Co., McNeil Denmark ApS, McNeil Healthcare (Ireland) Limited, McNeil Healthcare (UK) Limited, McNeil Healthcare LLC, McNeil Iberica S.L.U., McNeil LA LLC, McNeil Nutritionals LLC, McNeil Panama LLC, McNeil Products Limited, McNeil Sweden AB, Medical Device Business Services Inc., Medical Devices & Diagnostics Global Services LLC, Medical Devices International LLC, Medos International Sarl, Medos International Sarl succursale de Neuchatel (Branch), Medos Sarl, MegaDyne Medical Products Inc., Menlo Care De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Mentor B.V., Mentor Deutschland GmbH, Mentor Medical Systems B.V., Mentor Partnership Holding Company I LLC, Mentor Texas GP LLC, Mentor Texas L.P., Mentor Worldwide LLC, Micrus Endovascular LLC, Middlesex Assurance Company Limited, Momenta Ireland Limited, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., NeoStrata Company Inc., NeoStrata UG (haftungsbeschrankt), Netherlands Holding Company, NeuWave Medical Inc., Neuravi Limited, Novira Therapeutics, Novira Therapeutics LLC, NuVera Medical Inc., OBTECH Medical Sarl, OGX Beauty Limited, OMJ Holding GmbH, OMJ Ireland Unlimited Company, OMJ Pharmaceuticals Inc., Obtech Medical Mexico S.A. de C.V., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Inc., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., Omrix Biopharmaceuticals NV, Ortho Biologics LLC, Ortho Biotech Holding LLC, Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical LLC, Orthospin Ltd., Orthotaxy, PT Integrated Healthcare Indonesia, PT. Johnson & Johnson Indonesia, Patriot Pharmaceuticals LLC, Peninsula Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pharmadirect Ltd., Pharmedica Laboratories (Proprietary) Limited, Princeton Laboratories Inc., Productos de Cuidado Personal y de La Salud de Bolivia S.R.L., Proleader S.A., Pulsar Vascular Inc., Regency Urban Renewal Associates, RespiVert Ltd., RoC International, Royalty A&M LLC, Rutan Realty LLC, SYNTHES Medical Immobilien GmbH, Scios LLC, Sedona Singapore International Pte. Ltd., Sedona Thai International Co. Ltd., Serhum S.A. de C.V., Shanghai Elsker For Mother & Baby Co. Ltd, Shanghai Elsker Mother & Baby Co. Ltd Minghang Branch, Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Ltd., Shanghai Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Sightbox LLC, Sodiac ESV, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Company, Spectrum Vision Limited Liability Partnership, SterilMed, SterilMed Inc., Surgical Process Institute Deutschland GmbH, Synthes Costa Rica S.C.R. Limitada, Synthes GmbH, Synthes Holding AG, Synthes Holding Limited, Synthes Inc., Synthes Medical Surgical Equipment & Instruments Trading LLC, Synthes Produktions GmbH, Synthes Proprietary Limited, Synthes S.M.P. S. de R.L. de C.V., Synthes Tuttlingen GmbH, Synthes USA LLC, Synthes USA Products LLC, TARIS Biomedical, TARIS Biomedical LLC, TearScience Inc., The Anspach Effort LLC, The Vision Care Institute LLC, Tibotec LLC, Torax Medical Inc., UAB "Johnson & Johnson", UAB Johnson & Johnson Eesti Filiaal (Estonian Branch), Vania Expansion, Verb Surgical, Verb Surgical Inc., Vision Care Finance Unlimited Company, Vogue International, Vogue International LLC, Vogue International Trading Inc., WH4110 Development Company L.L.C., XO1, XO1 Limited, Xian Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd., Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. Beijing Branch Office, Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. Shanghai Branch Office, Zarbee's Inc., and Zarbee's Naturals.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Pfizer: AH Robins LLC, AHP Holdings B.V., AHP Manufacturing B.V., Agouron Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alacer, Alpharma Holdings LLC, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alpharma Specialty Pharma LLC, Alpharma USHP LLC, American Food Industries LLC, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., Angiosyn, Array BioPharma, Ayerst-Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, BIND Therapeutics Inc., BINESA 2002 S.L., Bamboo Therapeutics, Bamboo Therapeutics Inc., Baxter International - Marketed Vaccines, BioRexis, Bioren, Bioren LLC, Blue Whale Re Ltd., C.E. Commercial Holdings C.V., C.E. Commercial Investments C.V., C.P. Pharmaceuticals International C.V., CICL Corporation, COC I Corporation, Catapult Genetics, Coley Pharmaceutical GmbH, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc., Continental Pharma Inc., Covx, Covx Technologies Ireland Limited, Cyanamid Inter-American Corporation, Cyanamid de Argentina S.A., Cyanamid de Colombia S.A., Distribuidora Mercantil Centro Americana S.A., Encysive Pharmaceuticals, Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc., Esperion LUV Development Inc., Esperion Therapeutics, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals Inc., Farminova Produtos Farmaceuticos de Inovacao Lda., Farmogene Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Ferrosan A/S, Ferrosan International A/S, Ferrosan S.R.L., FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Foldrx Pharmaceuticals, Fort Dodge Manufatura Ltda., G. D. Searle & Co. Limited, G. D. Searle International Capital LLC, G. D. Searle LLC, GI Europe Inc., GI Japan Inc., GenTrac Inc., Genetics Institute LLC, Greenstone LLC, Haptogen Limited, Hospira, Hospira (China) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Hospira Adelaide Pty Ltd, Hospira Aseptic Services Limited, Hospira Australia Pty Ltd, Hospira Benelux BVBA, Hospira Chile Limitada, Hospira Deutschland GmbH, Hospira Enterprises B.V., Hospira France SAS, Hospira Healthcare B.V., Hospira Healthcare Corporation, Hospira Healthcare India Private Limited, Hospira Holdings (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Hospira Inc., Hospira Invicta S.A., Hospira Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, Hospira Ireland Sales Limited, Hospira Japan G.K., Hospira Limited, Hospira Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Hospira NZ Limited, Hospira Nordic AB, Hospira Philippines Inc., Hospira Portugal LDA, Hospira Produtos Hospitalares Ltda., Hospira Pte. Ltd., Hospira Pty Limited, Hospira Puerto Rico LLC, Hospira Singapore Pte Ltd, Hospira UK Limited, Hospira Worldwide LLC, Hospira Zagreb d.o.o., ICAgen, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Santa Agape S.A., InnoPharma, InnoPharma Inc., International Affiliated Corporation LLC, JMI-Daniels Pharmaceuticals Inc., John Wyeth & Brother Limited, Kiinteisto oy Espoon Pellavaniementie 14, King Pharmaceuticals Holdings LLC, King Pharmaceuticals LLC, King Pharmaceuticals Research and Development LLC, Korea Pharma Holding Company Limited, Laboratoires Pfizer S.A., Laboratorios Parke Davis S.L., Laboratorios Pfizer Ltda., Laboratorios Wyeth LLC, Laboratorios Wyeth S.A., Laboratorios Pfizer Lda., MTG Divestitures LLC, Mayne Pharma IP Holdings (Euro) Pty Ltd, Medivation, Medivation Field Solutions LLC, Medivation LLC, Medivation Neurology LLC, Medivation Prostate Therapeutics LLC, Medivation Services LLC, Medivation Technologies LLC, Meridian Medical Technologies Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies Limited, Monarch Pharmaceuticals LLC, Neusentis Limited, NextWave Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, P-D Co. LLC, PAH USA IN8 LLC, PF Americas Holding C.V., PF Asia Manufacturing B.V., PF PR Holdings C.V., PF PRISM C.V., PF PRISM Holdings S.a.r.l., PF Prism S.a.r.l., PFE Holdings G.K., PFE PHAC Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Pfizer Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Wyeth Holdings LLC, PFE Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) LLC, PHILCO Holdings S.a r.l., PHIVCO Corp., PHIVCO Holdco S.a r.l., PHIVCO Luxembourg S.a r.l., PN Mexico LLC, PT. Pfizer Parke Davis, Parke Davis & Company LLC, Parke Davis Limited, Parke Davis Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Parke-Davis Manufacturing Corp., Parkedale Pharmaceuticals Inc., Peak Enterprises LLC, Pfizer, Pfizer (China) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Pfizer (Perth) Pty Limited, Pfizer (Thailand) Limited, Pfizer (Wuhan) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer AB, Pfizer AG, Pfizer AS, Pfizer Africa & Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Veterinarian Products & Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer Anti-Infectives AB, Pfizer ApS, Pfizer Asia Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., Pfizer Atlantic Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Australia Holdings B.V., Pfizer Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pfizer Australia Investments Pty. Ltd., Pfizer Australia Pty Limited, Pfizer B.V., Pfizer BH D.o.o., Pfizer Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer Biofarmaceutica Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Pfizer Biologics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Pfizer Biologics Ireland Holdings Limited, Pfizer Biotech Corporation, Pfizer Bolivia S.A., Pfizer Canada Inc., Pfizer CentreSource Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Chile S.A., Pfizer Cia. Ltda., Pfizer Colombia Spinco I LLC, Pfizer Commercial Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Commercial Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Commercial TRAE Trading Kft., Pfizer Consumer Healthcare AB, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare GmbH, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Ltd., Pfizer Consumer Manufacturing Italy S.r.l., Pfizer Corporation, Pfizer Corporation Austria Gesellschaft m.b.H., Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Pfizer Croatia d.o.o., Pfizer Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Development LP, Pfizer Development Services (UK) Limited, Pfizer Domestic Ventures Limited, Pfizer Dominicana S.R.L, Pfizer ESP Pty Ltd, Pfizer East India B.V., Pfizer Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer Egypt S.A.E., Pfizer Enterprise Holdings B.V., Pfizer Enterprises LLC, Pfizer Enterprises SARL, Pfizer Europe Finance B.V., Pfizer Export B.V., Pfizer Export Company, Pfizer Export Holding Company B.V, Pfizer Finance Share Service (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Financial Services N.V./S.A., Pfizer France International Investments, Pfizer Free Zone Panama S. de R.L., Pfizer GEP S.L., Pfizer Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer Global Supply Japan Inc., Pfizer Global Trading, Pfizer Group Luxembourg Sarl, Pfizer Gulf FZ-LLC, Pfizer H.C.P. Corporation, Pfizer HK Service Company Limited, Pfizer Health AB, Pfizer Health Solutions Inc., Pfizer Healthcare Ireland, Pfizer Hellas A.E., Pfizer Himalaya Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Holding France, Pfizer Holding Ventures, Pfizer Holdings Corporation, Pfizer Holdings Europe Unlimited Company, Pfizer Holdings G.K., Pfizer Holdings International Corporation, Pfizer Holdings International Luxembourg (PHIL) Sarl, Pfizer Holdings North America SARL, Pfizer Hungary Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Inc., Pfizer Innovations AB, Pfizer Innovations LLC, Pfizer Innovative Supply Point International BVBA, Pfizer International LLC, Pfizer International Markets Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer International Operations, Pfizer International S. de R.L., Pfizer International Trading (Shanghai) Limited, Pfizer Investment Capital Unlimited Company, Pfizer Investment Co. Ltd., Pfizer Investment Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Ireland Investments Limited, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 1 LLC, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 2 LLC, Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Ireland Ventures Unlimited Company, Pfizer Italia S.r.l., Pfizer Italy Group Holding S.r.l., Pfizer Japan Inc., Pfizer LLC, Pfizer Laboratories (Pty) Limited, Pfizer Laboratories Limited, Pfizer Laboratories PFE (Pty) Ltd, Pfizer Leasing Ireland Limited, Pfizer Leasing UK Limited, Pfizer Limitada, Pfizer Limited, Pfizer Luxco Holdings SARL, Pfizer Luxembourg Global Holdings S.a r.l., Pfizer Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer MAP Holding Inc., Pfizer Manufacturing Austria G.m.b.H., Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, Pfizer Manufacturing Holdings LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Manufacturing LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Services, Pfizer Medical Technology Group (Belgium) N.V., Pfizer Medicamentos Genericos e Participacoes Ltda., Pfizer Mexico Luxco SARL, Pfizer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pfizer Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Animal Health and Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer New Zealand Limited, Pfizer Norge AS, Pfizer North American Holdings Inc., Pfizer OTC B.V., Pfizer Overseas LLC, Pfizer Oy, Pfizer PFE ApS, Pfizer PFE AsiaPac Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Pty Ltd, Pfizer PFE B.V., Pfizer PFE Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Belgium SPRL, Pfizer PFE Brazil Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE CIA. Ltda., Pfizer PFE Chile Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Colombia Holding Corp., Pfizer PFE Colombia S.A.S, Pfizer PFE Commercial Holdings LLC, Pfizer PFE Croatia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer PFE Finland Oy, Pfizer PFE France, Pfizer PFE Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Ireland Pharmaceuticals Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco 2 S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Pfizer PFE Limited, Pfizer PFE Luxembourg S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Mexico Holding 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE Netherlands Holding 1 C.V., Pfizer PFE New Zealand, Pfizer PFE New Zealand Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Norway Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE PILSA Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Peru Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Peru S.R.L., Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer PFE Private Limited, Pfizer PFE S.R.L, Pfizer PFE Service Company Holding Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer PFE Singapore Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Singapore Pte. Ltd., Pfizer PFE Spain B.V., Pfizer PFE Spain Holding S.L., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding 2 S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Switzerland GmbH, Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 2 B.V., Pfizer PFE UK Holding 4 LP, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 1 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 2 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 4 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 5 LLC, Pfizer PFE spol. s r.o., Pfizer PFE Ilaclar Anonim Sirketi, Pfizer Pakistan Limited, Pfizer Parke Davis (Thailand) Ltd., Pfizer Parke Davis Inc., Pfizer Parke Davis Sdn. Bhd., Pfizer Pharm Algerie, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Pfizer Pharma PFE GmbH, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceutical Trading Limited Liability Company (a/k/a Pfizer Kft. or Pfizer LLC), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Global B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Korea Limited, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Pfizer Pigments Inc., Pfizer Polska Sp. z.o.o., Pfizer Private Limited, Pfizer Production LLC, Pfizer Products Inc., Pfizer Products India Private Limited, Pfizer Research (NC) Inc., Pfizer Romania SRL, Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A. (Belgium), Pfizer S.A. de C.V., Pfizer S.A.S., Pfizer S.G.P.S. Lda., Pfizer S.L., Pfizer S.R.L., Pfizer SRB d.o.o., Pfizer Saidal Manufacturing, Pfizer Sante Familiale, Pfizer Saudi Limited, Pfizer Seiyaku K.K., Pfizer Service Company BVBA, Pfizer Service Company Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Services 1, Pfizer Services LLC, Pfizer Shared Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL, Pfizer Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Singapore Trading Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Spain Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Specialties Limited, Pfizer Strategic Investment Holdings LLC, Pfizer Sweden Partnership KB, Pfizer TRAE Holdings Kft., Pfizer Trading Polska sp.z.o.o., Pfizer Transactions Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Transactions LLC, Pfizer Transactions Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer Transport LLC, Pfizer Ukraine LLC, Pfizer Vaccines LLC, Pfizer Venezuela S.A., Pfizer Venture Investments LLC, Pfizer Ventures LLC, Pfizer Worldwide Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Zona Franca S.A., Pfizer spol. s r.o., Pharmacia, Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn S.A. de C.V., Pharmacia Brasil Ltda., Pharmacia Hepar LLC, Pharmacia Holding AB, Pharmacia Inter-American LLC, Pharmacia International B.V., Pharmacia LLC, Pharmacia Limited, Pharmacia Nostrum S.A., Pharmacia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, PowderJect Research Limited, PowderMed, Purepac Pharmaceutical Holdings LLC, Redvax, Renrall LLC, Rinat Neuroscience, Rinat Neuroscience Corp., Roerig Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Roerig S.A., Sao Cristovao Participacoes Ltda., Searle Laboratorios Lda., Serenex, Servicios P&U S. de R.L. de C.V., Shiley LLC, Sinergis Farma-Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Site Realty Inc., Solinor LLC, Sugen LLC, Tabor LLC, The Pfizer Incubator LLC, Therachon, Thiakis Limited, Treerly Health Co. Ltd, US Oral Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd, Upjohn Laboratorios Lda., Vesteralens Naturprodukter A/S, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AB, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AS, Vesteralens Naturprodukter OY, Vicuron Holdings LLC, Vinci Farma S.A., W-L LLC, Warner Lambert, Warner Lambert Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Warner Lambert del Uruguay S.A., Warner-Lambert (Thailand) Limited, Warner-Lambert Company AG, Warner-Lambert Company LLC, Warner-Lambert Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Warner-Lambert S.A., Whitehall International Inc., Whitehall Laboratories Inc., Wyeth (Thailand) Ltd., Wyeth AB, Wyeth Australia Pty. Limited, Wyeth Ayerst Inc., Wyeth Ayerst S.a r.l., Wyeth Biopharma, Wyeth Canada ULC, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare LLC, Wyeth Europa Limited, Wyeth Farma S.A., Wyeth Holdings LLC, Wyeth Industria Farmaceutica Ltda., Wyeth KFT., Wyeth LLC, Wyeth Lederle S.r.l., Wyeth Lederle Vaccines S.A., Wyeth Pakistan Limited, Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals FZ-LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Limited, Wyeth Puerto Rico Inc., Wyeth S.A.S, Wyeth Subsidiary Illinois Corporation, Wyeth Whitehall Export GmbH, Wyeth Whitehall SARL, Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) Limited, Wyeth-Ayerst International LLC, and Wyeth-Ayerst Promotions Limited.

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Anixter International Inc., through its subsidiary, Anixter Inc., distributes enterprise cabling and security solutions, electrical and electronic wire and cable solutions, and utility power solutions worldwide. The company operates through Network & Security Solutions (NSS), Electrical & Electronic Solutions (EES), and Utility Power Solutions (UPS) segments. The NSS segment offers copper and fiber optic cable and connectivity, access control, video surveillance, intrusion and fire/life safety, cabinet, power, cable management, wireless, professional audio/video, voice and networking switches, and other ancillary products for the technology, finance, transportation, education, government, healthcare, and retail industries, as well as telecommunications service providers. The EES Solutions segment provides electrical and electronic wires and cables, shipboard cables, support and supply products, low-voltage and instrumentation cables, industrial communication and control products, security cables, connectors, industrial Ethernet switches, and voice and data cables to the commercial and industrial, and original equipment manufacturer markets. The UPS segment supplies electrical transmission and distribution products, power plant maintenance, repair and operations supplies, and smart-grid products, as well as arranges materials management and procurement outsourcing for the power generation and transmission, and electricity distribution industries. The company serves contractors, installers, system integrators, value-added resellers, architects, engineers, and wholesale distributors in various industries, including manufacturing, resource extraction, telecommunications, Internet service providers, finance, education, healthcare, retail, transportation, utilities, and defense, as well as government customers. The company was formerly known as Itel Corporation. Anixter International Inc. was founded in 1957 and is headquartered in Glenview, Illinois.
AutoZone, Inc. retails and distributes automotive replacement parts and accessories. The company offers various products for cars, sport utility vehicles, vans, and light trucks, including new and remanufactured automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products. Its products include A/C compressors, batteries and accessories, bearings, belts and hoses, calipers, chassis, clutches, CV axles, engines, fuel pumps, fuses, ignition and lighting products, mufflers, radiators, starters and alternators, thermostats, and water pumps, as well as tire repairs. In addition, the company offers maintenance products, such as antifreeze and windshield washer fluids; brake drums, rotors, shoes, and pads; brake and power steering fluids, and oil and fuel additives; oil and transmission fluids; oil, cabin, air, fuel, and transmission filters; oxygen sensors; paints and accessories; refrigerants and accessories; shock absorbers and struts; spark plugs and wires; and windshield wipers. Further, it provides air fresheners, cell phone accessories, drinks and snacks, floor mats and seat covers, interior and exterior accessories, mirrors, performance products, protectants and cleaners, sealants and adhesives, steering wheel covers, stereos and radios, tools, and wash and wax products, as well as towing services. Additionally, the company provides a sales program that offers commercial credit and delivery of parts and other products; sells automotive diagnostic and repair software under the ALLDATA brand through alldata.com; and automotive hard parts, maintenance items, accessories, and non-automotive products through autozone.com. As of August 27, 2022, it operated 6,168 stores in the United States; 703 stores in Mexico; and 72 stores in Brazil. The company was founded in 1979 and is based in Memphis, Tennessee.
Fortis Inc. operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 438,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 100,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,485 megawatts (MW), including 53 MW of solar capacity and 252 MV of wind capacity. The company also sells wholesale electricity to other entities in the western United States; owns gas-fired and hydroelectric generating capacity totaling 65 MW; and distributes natural gas to approximately 1,065,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, it owns and operates the electricity distribution system that serves approximately 577,000 customers in southern and central Alberta; owns 4 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 225 MW; and provides operation, maintenance, and management services to five hydroelectric generating facilities. Further, the company distributes electricity in the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador with an installed generating capacity of 143 MW; and on Prince Edward Island with a generating capacity of 130 MW. Additionally, it provides integrated electric utility service to approximately 68,000 customers in Ontario; approximately 272,000 customers in Newfoundland and Labrador; approximately 32,000 customers on Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; and approximately 16,000 customers on certain islands in Turks and Caicos. The company also holds long-term contracted generation assets in Belize consisting of 3 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 51 MW; and the Aitken Creek natural gas storage facility. It also owns and operates approximately 90,200 circuit Kilometers (km) of distribution lines; and approximately 50,500 km of natural gas pipelines. Fortis Inc. was founded in 1885 and is headquartered in St. John's, Canada.
Best Buy Co., Inc. retails technology products in the United States and Canada. The company operates in two segments, Domestic and International. Its stores provide computing products, such as desktops, notebooks, and peripherals; mobile phones comprising related mobile network carrier commissions; networking products; tablets covering e-readers; smartwatches; and consumer electronics consisting of digital imaging, health and fitness, home theater, portable audio comprising headphones and portable speakers, and smart home products. The company's stores also offer appliances, such as dishwashers, laundry, ovens, refrigerators, blenders, coffee makers, and vacuums; entertainment products consisting of drones, peripherals, movies, music, and toys, as well as gaming hardware and software, and virtual reality and other software products; and other products, such as baby, food and beverage, luggage, outdoor living, and sporting goods. In addition, it provides consultation, delivery, design, health-related, installation, memberships, repair, set-up, technical support, and warranty-related services. The company offers its products through stores and websites under the Best Buy, Best Buy Ads, Best Buy Business, Best Buy Health, CST, Current Health, Geek Squad, Lively, Magnolia, Best Buy Mobile, Pacific Kitchen, Home, and Yardbird, as well as domain names bestbuy.com, currenthealth.com, lively.com, yardbird.com, and bestbuy.ca. As of January 30, 2022, it had 1,144 stores. The company was formerly known as Sound of Music, Inc. The company was incorporated in 1966 and is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota.
Dominion Energy, Inc. produces and distributes energy in the United States. The company operates through four segments: Dominion Energy Virginia, Gas Distribution, Dominion Energy South Carolina, and Contracted Assets. The Dominion Energy Virginia segment generates, transmits, and distributes regulated electricity to approximately 2.7 million residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental customers in Virginia and North Carolina. The Gas Distribution segment is involved in the regulated natural gas sales, transportation, gathering, storage, and distribution operations in Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Utah, southwestern Wyoming, and southeastern Idaho that serve approximately 3.1 million residential, commercial and industrial customers. It also has nonregulated renewable natural gas facilities in operation. The Dominion Energy South Carolina segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 772,000 customers in the central, southern, and southwestern portions of South Carolina; and distributes natural gas to approximately 419,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in South Carolina. The Contracted Assets segment is involved in the nonregulated long-term contracted renewable electric generation and solar generation facility development operations; and gas transportation, LNG import, and storage operations, as well as in the liquefaction facility. As of December 31, 2021, the company's portfolio of assets included approximately 30.2 gigawatt of electric generating capacity; 10,700 miles of electric transmission lines; 78,000 miles of electric distribution lines; and 95,700 miles of gas distribution mains and related service facilities. The company was formerly known as Dominion Resources, Inc. Dominion Energy, Inc. was incorporated in 1983 and is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.
The Travelers Companies, Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides a range of commercial and personal property, and casualty insurance products and services to businesses, government units, associations, and individuals in the United states and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Business Insurance, Bond & Specialty Insurance, and Personal Insurance. The Business Insurance segment offers workers' compensation, commercial automobile and property, general liability, commercial multi-peril, employers' liability, public and product liability, professional indemnity, marine, aviation, onshore and offshore energy, construction, terrorism, personal accident, and kidnap and ransom insurance products. This segment operates through select accounts, which serve small businesses; commercial accounts that serve mid-sized businesses; national accounts, which serve large companies; and national property and other that serve large and mid-sized customers, commercial trucking industry, and agricultural businesses, as well as markets and distributes its products through brokers, wholesale agents, and program managers. The Bond & Specialty Insurance segment provides surety, fidelity, management and professional liability, and other property and casualty coverages and related risk management services through independent agencies and brokers. The Personal Insurance segment offers property and casualty insurance covering personal risks, primarily automobile and homeowners insurance to individuals through independent agencies and brokers. The Travelers Companies, Inc. was founded in 1853 and is based in New York, New York.
EMCOR Group, Inc. provides electrical and mechanical construction, and facilities services primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It offers design, integration, installation, starts-up, operation, and maintenance services related to electrical power transmission, distribution, and generation systems; energy solutions; premises electrical and lighting systems; process instrumentation in the refining, chemical processing, and food processing industries; low-voltage systems, such as fire alarm, security, and process control systems; voice and data communications systems; roadway and transit lighting, signaling, and fiber optic lines; heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, and geothermal solutions; clean-room process ventilation systems; fire protection and suppression systems; plumbing, process, and high-purity piping systems; controls and filtration systems; water and wastewater treatment systems; central plant heating and cooling systems; crane and rigging services; millwright services; and steel fabrication, erection, and welding services. The company also provides building services that cover commercial and government site-based operations and maintenance; facility management, maintenance, and services; outage services to utilities and industrial plants; military base operations support services; mobile mechanical maintenance and services; services for indoor air quality; floor care and janitorial services; landscaping, lot sweeping, and snow removal services; vendor management and call center services; installation and support for building systems; program development, management, and maintenance for energy systems; technical consulting and diagnostic services; infrastructure and building projects; small modification and retrofit projects; and other building services. It offers industrial services to oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. EMCOR Group, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.
The following companies are subsidiares of Caterpillar: Advanced Tri-Gen Power Systems LLC, Anchor Coupling Inc., Asia Power Systems (Tianjin) Ltd., AsiaTrak (Tianjin) Ltd., Banco Caterpillar S.A., Berg Propulsion International Pte Ltd., Bucyrus, Bucyrus Australia Surface Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Holdings Ltd., Bucyrus Europe Limited, Bucyrus International (Chile) Limitada, Bucyrus International (Peru) S.A., Bucyrus Mining Australia Pty. Ltd., Bucyrus Mining China LLC, Bucyrus UK Limited, Cat Rental Kyushu LLC, Caterpillar (Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar (China) Financial Leasing Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (China) Machinery Components Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (HK) Limited, Caterpillar (Huainan) Machinery Service Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Langfang) Mining Equipment Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Luxembourg) Investment Co. S.a r.l., Caterpillar (NI) Limited, Caterpillar (Newberry) LLC, Caterpillar (Qingzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Suzhou) Logistics Co. Ltd., Caterpillar (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar (U.K.) Limited, Caterpillar (Wujiang) Ltd., Caterpillar (Xuzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar (Zhengzhou) Ltd., Caterpillar Acquisition Holding Corp., Caterpillar Americas C.V., Caterpillar Americas Co., Caterpillar Americas Funding Inc., Caterpillar Americas Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Asia Limited, Caterpillar Asia Pacific L.P., Caterpillar Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Asset Intelligence LLC, Caterpillar Belgium S.A., Caterpillar Brasil Comercio de Maquinas e Pecas Ltda., Caterpillar Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Brazil LLC, Caterpillar Castings Kiel GmbH, Caterpillar Centro de Formacion S.L., Caterpillar China Limited, Caterpillar Commercial Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Commercial LLC, Caterpillar Commercial Northern Europe Limited, Caterpillar Commercial S.A., Caterpillar Commercial S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Commercial Services S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Communications LLC, Caterpillar Corporativo Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Cote DIvoire, Caterpillar Credito S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., Caterpillar DC Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Digital Services & Solutions SARL, Caterpillar Distribution International LLC, Caterpillar Distribution Services Europe B.V.B.A., Caterpillar East Real Estate Holding Ltd., Caterpillar Emissions Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions Inc., Caterpillar Energy Solutions S.A., Caterpillar Energy System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Engine Systems Inc., Caterpillar Equipos Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Eurasia LLC, Caterpillar FS (QFC) LLC, Caterpillar Finance France S.A., Caterpillar Finance Kabushiki Kaisha, Caterpillar Financial Acquisition Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Aftermarket Solutions Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Australia Leasing Pty Limited, Caterpillar Financial Australia Limited, Caterpillar Financial Commercial Account Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Corporacion Financiera S.A. E.F.C., Caterpillar Financial Dealer Funding LLC, Caterpillar Financial Funding Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Caterpillar Financial Leasing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial New Zealand Limited, Caterpillar Financial Nordic Services AB, Caterpillar Financial Nova Scotia Corporation, Caterpillar Financial OOO, Caterpillar Financial Receivables Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Renting S.A., Caterpillar Financial SARL, Caterpillar Financial Services (Dubai) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services (Ireland) plc, Caterpillar Financial Services (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Argentina S.A., Caterpillar Financial Services Asia Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Financial Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Financial Services CR s.r.o., Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, Caterpillar Financial Services GmbH, Caterpillar Financial Services India Private Limited, Caterpillar Financial Services Leasing ULC, Caterpillar Financial Services Limited Les Services Financiers Caterpillar Limitee, Caterpillar Financial Services Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Caterpillar Financial Services Netherlands B.V., Caterpillar Financial Services Norway AS, Caterpillar Financial Services Philippines Inc., Caterpillar Financial Services Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Financial Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, Caterpillar Financial UK Acquisition Funding Partners, Caterpillar Financial Ukraine LLC, Caterpillar Fluid Systems S.r.l., Caterpillar Fomento Comercial Ltda., Caterpillar Forest Products Inc., Caterpillar France S.A.S., Caterpillar GB L.L.C., Caterpillar Global Investments S.a r.l., Caterpillar Global Mining America LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Equipamentos De Mineracao do Brasil Ltda., Caterpillar Global Mining Equipment LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Europe GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Expanded Products Pty Ltd, Caterpillar Global Mining Germany Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining HMS GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Holdings GmbH, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong AFC Manufacturing Holding Co. Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining Hong Kong Limited, Caterpillar Global Mining LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Global Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Global Mining SARL, Caterpillar Global Mining U.S. Parts LLC, Caterpillar Global Services LLC, Caterpillar Group Services S.A., Caterpillar Holding (France) S.A.S., Caterpillar Holding Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Holdings Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Hungary Components Manufacturing Ltd., Caterpillar Hydraulics Italia S.r.l., Caterpillar IPX LLC, Caterpillar IRB LLC, Caterpillar Impact Products Limited, Caterpillar India Private Limited, Caterpillar Industrial Inc., Caterpillar Industrias Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Industries (Pty) Ltd, Caterpillar Insurance Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Insurance Company, Caterpillar Insurance Holdings Inc., Caterpillar Insurance Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Finance Designated Activity Company, Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Finance Luxembourg S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Holding S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg I S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Luxembourg II S. a r.l., Caterpillar International Product SARL, Caterpillar International Services Corporation, Caterpillar International Services del Peru S.A., Caterpillar Investment Limited, Caterpillar Investment One SARL, Caterpillar Investment Two SARL, Caterpillar Investments, Caterpillar Japan LLC, Caterpillar Latin America Services S.R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Latin America Services de Panama S. de R.L., Caterpillar Latin America Servicios de Chile Limitada, Caterpillar Latin America Support Services S. DE R.L., Caterpillar Leasing (Thailand) Limited, Caterpillar Leasing Chile S.A., Caterpillar Leasing GmbH (Leipzig), Caterpillar Leasing Operativo Limitada, Caterpillar Life Insurance Company, Caterpillar Logistics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Logistics (UK) Limited, Caterpillar Logistics Inc., Caterpillar Logistics ML Services France S.A.S., Caterpillar Logistics Services China Limited, Caterpillar Luxembourg Group S.ar.l., Caterpillar Luxembourg LLC, Caterpillar Luxembourg S.a r.l., Caterpillar Machinery Nantong Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, Caterpillar Marine Power UK Limited, Caterpillar Marine Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Maroc SARL, Caterpillar Materiels Routiers SAS, Caterpillar Mexico LLC, Caterpillar Mexico S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Mining Canada ULC, Caterpillar Mining Chile Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Motoren (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Motoren GmbH & Co. KG, Caterpillar Motoren Henstedt-Ulzburg GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Rostock GmbH, Caterpillar Motoren Verwaltungs-GmbH, Caterpillar Netherlands Holding B.V., Caterpillar North America C.V., Caterpillar Operator Training Ltd., Caterpillar Overseas Credit Corporation SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Investment Holding SARL, Caterpillar Overseas Limited, Caterpillar Overseas SARL, Caterpillar Panama Services S.A., Caterpillar Paving Products Inc., Caterpillar Paving Products Xuzhou Ltd., Caterpillar Pension Trust Limited, Caterpillar Poland Sp. z o.o., Caterpillar Power Generation Systems (Bangladesh) Limited, Caterpillar Power Generation Systems L.L.C., Caterpillar Power Systems Inc., Caterpillar Power Ventures International Ltd., Caterpillar Precision Seals Korea, Caterpillar Prodotti Stradali S.r.l., Caterpillar Product Services Corporation, Caterpillar Propulsion AB, Caterpillar Propulsion International Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Italy S.R.L., Caterpillar Propulsion Namibia (Proprietary) Limited, Caterpillar Propulsion Production AB, Caterpillar Propulsion Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar Propulsion Singapore Pte. Ltd., Caterpillar R&D Center (China) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe LLC, Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Ramos Arizpe Servicios S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar Reman Powertrain Indiana LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Drivetrain LLC, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Renting France S.A.S., Caterpillar Reynosa S.A. de C.V., Caterpillar SARL, Caterpillar Services Germany GmbH, Caterpillar Servicios Limitada, Caterpillar Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Servizi Italia Srl, Caterpillar Shrewsbury Limited, Caterpillar Skinningrove Limited, Caterpillar Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd., Caterpillar Special Services Belgium S.P.R.L., Caterpillar Switchgear Americas LLC, Caterpillar Switchgear Holding Inc., Caterpillar Tianjin Ltd., Caterpillar Torreon S. de R.L. de C.V., Caterpillar Tosno L.L.C., Caterpillar Transmissions France S.A.R.L., Caterpillar Tunneling Canada Holdings Ltd., Caterpillar Tunnelling Canada Corporation, Caterpillar Tunnelling Europe Limited, Caterpillar UK Employee Trust Limited, Caterpillar UK Engines Company Limited, Caterpillar UK Group Limited, Caterpillar UK Holdings Limited, Caterpillar Undercarriage (Xuzhou) Co. Ltd., Caterpillar Underground Mining Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar Used Equipment Services Inc., Caterpillar Venture Capital Inc., Caterpillar Work Tools B.V., Caterpillar Work Tools Inc., Caterpillar World Trading Corporation, Caterpillar Xuzhou, Caterpillar of Australia Pty. Ltd., Caterpillar of Canada Corporation, Caterpillar of Delaware Inc., Centre de Distribution de Wallonie SPRL, CleanAir Systems, Downer Freight Rail, ECM Railway Evolution Romania s.r.l., ECM S.p.A., EDC European Excavator Design Center GmbH, EMC Holding Corp., EMD International Holdings Inc., ERA Information & Entertainment (BVI) Limited, ERA Mining Machinery Limited, Electro-Motive Diesel Limited, Electro-Motive Locomotive Technologies LLC, Electro-Motive Technical Consulting Co. (Beijing) Ltd., Energy Services International Limited, Equipos de Acuna S.A. de C.V., Eurenov S.A.S., F. G. Wilson (Proprietary) Limited, F. Perkins Limited, FG Wilson (Engineering) Limited, GB Holdco (China) Inc., GFCM Comercial Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., GFCM Servicios S.A. de C.V., Gremada Industries - Assets, Hong Kong Siwei Holdings Limited, Inmobiliaria Conek S.A. de C.V., JCS Co., Kemper Valve & Fittings Corp., Leo Inc., Locomotive Demand Power Pty Ltd., Locomotoras Progress Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Lovat, M2M Data Corporation, MGE Equipamentos & Servicos Ferroviarios, MWM, MWM Austria GmbH, MWM Benelux B.V., MWM Energy Australia Pty Ltd, MWM France S.A.S, MWM Real Estate GmbH, MaK Americas Inc., MaK Americas Inc. (Canada), Magnum Power Products LLC, Marble, Maschinenbau Kiel GmbH, Mec-Track S.r.l., Metalmark Financial Services Limited, Motoren Steffens GmbH, Nippon Caterpillar LLC, P. T. Solar Services Indonesia, PT Caterpillar Finance Indonesia, PT. Bucyrus Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia, PT. Caterpillar Indonesia Batam, PT. Caterpillar Remanufacturing Indonesia, Perkins Engines, Perkins Engines (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, Perkins Engines Group Limited, Perkins Engines Inc., Perkins Group Limited, Perkins Holdings Limited LLC, Perkins India Private Limited, Perkins International Inc., Perkins Japan LLC, Perkins Limited, Perkins Machinery (Changshu) Co. Ltd., Perkins Motores do Brasil Ltda., Perkins Power Systems Technology (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Perkins Small Engines LLC, Perkins Small Engines Limited, Perkins Technology Inc., Progress Metal Reclamation Company, Progress Rail Arabia Limited Company, Progress Rail Australia Pty Ltd, Progress Rail Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Equipamentos e Servicos Ferroviarios do Brasil Ltda., Progress Rail Equipment Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Holdings Inc., Progress Rail Innovations Private Limited, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems GmbH, Progress Rail Inspection & Information Systems S.r.l., Progress Rail International Corp., Progress Rail Leasing Canada Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing Corporation, Progress Rail Leasing de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Progress Rail Locomotivas (do Brasil) Ltda., Progress Rail Locomotive Canada Co., Progress Rail Locomotive Chile SpA, Progress Rail Locomotive Inc., Progress Rail Maintenance de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Progress Rail Manufacturing Corporation, Progress Rail Raceland Corporation, Progress Rail Rocklin Corporation, Progress Rail SA Proprietary Limited, Progress Rail Services Corporation, Progress Rail Services Holdings Corp., Progress Rail Services LLC, Progress Rail Services UK Limited, Progress Rail Switching Services LLC, Progress Rail Transcanada Corporation, Progress Rail Welding Corporation, Progress Rail Wildwood LLC, Progress Rail de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pyroban Group, Pyroban Group, Pyrrha Investments B.V., Pyrrha Investments Limited, S&L Railroad LLC, SCM Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., SPL Software Alliance LLC, Sabre Engines, Servicios de Turbinas Solar S. de R.L. de C.V., Shandong SEM Machinery Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines, Solar Turbines (Beijing) Trading Services Co. Ltd., Solar Turbines (Thailand) Ltd., Solar Turbines CIS Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Canada Ltd./Ltee., Solar Turbines Central Asia Limited Liability Partnership, Solar Turbines EAME s.r.o., Solar Turbines Egypt Limited Liability Company, Solar Turbines Europe S.A., Solar Turbines India Private Limited, Solar Turbines International Company, Solar Turbines Italy S.R.L., Solar Turbines Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Solar Turbines Middle East Limited, Solar Turbines New Zealand Limited, Solar Turbines Saudi Arabia Limited, Solar Turbines Services Company, Solar Turbines Services Nigeria Limited, Solar Turbines Services of Argentina S.R.L., Solar Turbines Switzerland Sagl, Solar Turbines Trinidad & Tobago Limited, Solar Turbines West-Africa SARL, Tangshan DBT Machinery Co. Ltd., Tecnologia Modificada S.A. de C.V., Towmotor Corporation, Traction & Mining Motor Repairs Pty Ltd, Turbinas Solar S.A. de C.V., Turbinas Solar de Colombia S.A., Turbinas Solar de Venezuela C.A., Turbo Tecnologia de Reparaciones S.A. de C.V., Turbomach, Turbomach Endustriyel Gaz Turbinleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited, Turbomach France SARL, Turbomach GmbH, Turbomach Netherlands B.V., Turbomach Pakistan (Private) Limited, Turbomach S.A. Unipersonal, Turbomach Sp. Z o.o., Turner Powertrain Systems Limited, UK Hose Assembly Limited, Underground Imaging Technologies Inc, United Industries LLC, VALA Inc., Vasky Energy Ltd., Wealdstone Engineering, Weir - Oil & Gas Division, West Virginia Auto Shredding Inc., Western Gear Machinery LLC, Wetland Sustainability Fund I LLC, Williams Technologies, Yard Club, Zhengzhou Siwei Mechanical and Electrical Equipment Sales Co. Ltd., and okyo Rental Ltd..

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Imperial Oil Limited engages in exploration, production, and sale of crude oil and natural gas in Canada. The company operates through three segments: Upstream, Downstream and Chemical segments. The Upstream segment explores for, and produces crude oil, natural gas, synthetic oil, and bitumen. As of December 31, 2021, this segment had 386 million oil-equivalent barrels of proved undeveloped reserves. The Downstream segment is involved in the transportation and refining of crude oil, blending of refined products and the distribution, and marketing of refined products. It also transports crude oil to refineries by contracted pipelines, common carrier pipelines, and rail; maintains a distribution system to move petroleum products to market by pipeline, tanker, rail, and road transport; and owns and operates fuel terminals, natural gas liquids, and products pipelines in Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. In addition, this segment markets and supplies petroleum products to motoring public through approximately 2,400 Esso and Mobil-branded sites. Further, it sells petroleum products, including fuel, asphalt, and lubricants for industrial and transportation customers, independent marketers, and resellers, as well as other refiners serving the agriculture, residential heating, and commercial markets through branded fuel and lubricant resellers. The Chemical segment manufactures and markets various petrochemicals, benzene, aromatic and aliphatic solvents, plasticizer intermediates, and polyethylene resin. Imperial Oil Limited has a strategic agreement with E3 Metals Corp. to advance a lithium-extraction pilot in Alberta. The company was incorporated in 1880 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Imperial Oil Limited is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation.
Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc. is a mortgage-focused REIT externally managed by Invesco Advisors Ltd. Invesco Advisors LTD is a subsidiary of Invesco which is a leading wealth manager and investment company for individuals, high net-worth clients, institutions, public entities, corporations, and governments. The firm created Invesco Mortgage Capital, Inc to focus its decades of experience in the mortgage markets to generate a steady stream of cash for its investors.

The company was incorporated in 2008 in order to acquire, finance, and manage a portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and mortgages. Invesco believes that achieving the full potential of the mortgage market requires a blend of discipline, structure, and creativity because of long-term structural changes in the way real estate transactions and ownership are handled. The units of Invesco Mortgage Capital tend to yield high-double-digits and have paid more than $26 per unit on a split-adjusted basis since the dividend was initiated.

The objective is to provide risk-adjusted returns through dividends and capital appreciation using the combined strengths of three key Invesco groups; the in-house real estate team, the Worldwide Fixed Income team, and subsidiary WL Ross & Co. Invesco Mortgage Capital is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. As of Q3 2022, Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc held $4.9 billion in assets, $4.7 billion of which were listed as agency RMBS.

Invesco Mortgage Capital Inc. elected to be taxed as a REIT and so distributes at least 90% of its income to shareholders each year. The fund seeks to generate a high level of income while maintaining a stable portfolio and book value within a dynamic market. The investment strategy is opportunistic and not limited to a single type of mortgage security and so provides greater diversification than most other REITs as well.

Invesco invests in a blend of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that are and are not guaranteed by a U.S. government agency or federally chartered corporation. The fund also invests in credit risk transfer securities, residential and commercial mortgage loans, and assorted real estate-related financing. Among the opportunities, the fund is pursuing are commercial real estate loan origination, securitizing residential mortgages, and risk-sharing arrangements with federal housing authorities.
The following companies are subsidiares of Molina Healthcare: Aetna & Humana - Medicare Advantage, Affinity Health Plan, AmericanWork Inc., Better Health Network, Camelot Care Centers Inc, Children's Behavioral Health Inc., Choices Group Inc., College Community Services, Dockside Services Inc, Family Preservation Services Inc., Family Preservation Services of Florida Inc., Family Preservation Services of North Carolina Inc., Family Preservation Services of Washington D.C. Inc., Family Preservation Services of West Virginia Inc., Florida NetPASS LLC, Hclb Inc., Magellan Complete Care, Maple Star Nevada Inc., Maple Star Oregon Inc., Mercy CarePlus, Molina Clinical Services LLC, Molina Healthcare Data Center Inc., Molina Healthcare of Arizona Inc., Molina Healthcare of California, Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc., Molina Healthcare of Georgia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Molina Healthcare of Iowa Inc., Molina Healthcare of Louisiana Inc., Molina Healthcare of Maryland Inc., Molina Healthcare of Michigan Inc., Molina Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Molina Healthcare of Nevada Inc., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Molina Healthcare of New York Inc., Molina Healthcare of North Carolina Inc., Molina Healthcare of Ohio Inc., Molina Healthcare of Oklahoma Inc., Molina Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Molina Healthcare of Puerto Rico Inc., Molina Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., Molina Healthcare of Texas Insurance Company, Molina Healthcare of Utah Inc., Molina Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Washington Inc., Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin Inc., Molina Holdings Corporation, Molina Hospital Management LLC, Molina Information Systems LLC dba Molina Medicaid Solutions, Molina Medical Management Inc., Molina Pathways LLC, Molina Pathways of Texas Inc., Molina Youth Academy, NextLevel Health Illinois, Pathways Community Corrections Inc., Pathways Community Services LLC, Pathways Community Support of Texas Inc., Pathways Health and Community Support LLC, Pathways Human Services LLC., Pathways of Arizona Inc., Pathways of Delaware Inc., Pathways of Idaho LLC, Pathways of Maine Inc., Pathways of Massachusetts LLC, Pathways of Oklahoma Inc., Pathways of Washington Inc., Providence Community Services, Providence Human Services, Raystown Developmental Services Inc., The Game of Work LLC, The RedCo Group Inc., Total Care Medicaid plan, Transitional Family Services Inc., Unisys -Health Information Management, and YourCare Health Plan.

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LEXINGTON  A Lexington Middle School student eagerly looked through the quilts displayed at the Nebraska State Fair and kept looking even though there were over 400 entries.

Taylar Probasco, 12, was searching for the quilt she made  her first ever  to see how it had been judged.

"It took us forever to find ours," she said.

Probasco said she was thrilled to find a first place ribbon. The quilt was entered in the junior youth two-person constructing category and was one of five entries in that division. A youth was required to piece the quilt top, but could receive help in the other steps of making a quilt.

"I thought it was pretty cool because it was my first quilt and I got first place on it," said Probasco.

Earlier in the summer, Merikay Berg, who is a quilter and member of the Plum Creek Quilters Guild in Lexington, had offered to help Probasco make a quilt.

Probasco and Berg met through wrestling as they repeatedly saw each other at wrestling meets. Probasco attended to watch her older brother Austin, now a student at University of Nebraska-Kearney, compete and Berg was there in support of a grandson.

Probasco said she and Berg sometimes do projects together so her purpose was to learn to make a quilt and entering it in the fair was an afterthought.

Probasco and Berg went to Cozad together to shop for fabric at Prairie Point Junction. Probasco said she selected a package of pre-cut squares in colors she likes that match her bedroom.

She said Berg taught her how to lay them out side by side to see how they would look when sewn together, making sure there werent the exact same colors or patterns of fabrics next to each other.

"It took us many times too because I couldnt make up my mind," said Probasco.

She said she already knew how to use a sewing machine. Probasco said she learned to sew in 4-H, through her neighbor Andrea Nisley, and had previously made sewing projects for 4-H and Make it With Wool contests.

Ironically, said Taylars mother Kerry, Probasco decided to take a break from 4-H this year and hadnt planned on entering anything in the fair.

"She has done 4-H every summer except this year. This summer we took a break from everything," she said.

Probasco sewed one square to another to join squares together in a row and then added the rows together to get the quilt top.

To make what she had sewn into a quilt Probasco said she layered another piece of fabric, some "fluffy stuff" and her quilt top.

A fancy computerized sewing machine, owned by Berg, was used for the quilting. They chose a chevron pattern for the stitching, said Probasco.

She said she owns her own sewing machine because she bought one to practice sewing and to use to make American Girl doll clothes.

Probasco said she and Berg worked on the quilt almost everyday for part of June and into July.

When asked if sewing is easy or hard, Probasco said, "I think its pretty easy, in my opinion, even though to others it might be hard. I think all it takes is a little encouragement."

She plans to make more quilts in the future and already has some ideas. She said she likes teal colors, polka dots, chevrons and flowers.

"It was so rewarding for me to work with Taylar," said Berg. "We had a great time shopping for the fabric, choosing the design and sewing the quilt. Taylar was focused and goal oriented. She had the support of her family. She went with me to other sewing events and met my sewing friends. I look forward to other sewing adventures with Taylar."
NextEra Energy, Inc. is the largest electric utility holding company in the US. It operates a network of power generation and distribution facilities that include fossil-fuel-generated and green energy. As of mid-2022, the company was capable of generating 58 GW of electricity with nearly 60% of the load produced by green sources including wind and solar. In their view, going green isnt an option, its the solution. NextEra Energy has been recognized multiple times as a leader in clean energy and ESG practices and was ranked the #1 electric and gas utility on the Forbes list of Most Admired Companies.

The company is the result of several mergers that begin with FPL Group. FPL Group is now a subsidiary of NextEra Energy and the third-largest provider of electricity in the US servicing nearly half of Florida. FPL and its affiliates are the single largest provider of renewable energy generated from wind and sun. The group changed its name in 2010 following a decision to shift focus onto renewable energy sources.

Today, NextEra Energy, Inc through its subsidiary FPL serves about 12 million people in eastern and southwestern Florida. The company employs nearly 14,900 people who service 5.8 million accounts. The company is in business to generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to retail and wholesale clients. Electricity is generated through wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired facilities.

The company is also engaged in the construction and operation of new facilities, specifically renewable power generation, storage, and delivery facilities, and can offer custom solutions tailored to any need. Offerings include tailored services to assist businesses with their transition to clean energy.

NextEra Energy also owns and operates 7 nuclear power stations in Florida, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin generating power for the wholesale market.

Unlike other companies that are targeting net-zero emissions, NextEra Energy has a plan to reach real zero and is investing heavily to reach that goal by 2045. The company had invested nearly $50 billion in green energy infrastructure and initiatives by mid-2022. The plan is to first work on reducing its own emissions and then take its knowledge and expertise to the world.
Principal Financial Group, Inc. provides retirement, asset management, and insurance products and services to businesses, individuals, and institutional clients worldwide. The company operates through Retirement and Income Solutions, Principal Global Investors, Principal International, and U.S. Insurance Solutions segments. The Retirement and Income Solutions segment provides a portfolio of asset accumulation products and services for retirement savings and income. It offers products and services for defined contribution plans, including 401(k) and 403(b) plans, defined benefit pension plans, nonqualified executive benefit plans, employee stock ownership plans, equity compensation, and pension risk transfer services; individual retirement accounts; investment only products; and mutual funds, individual variable annuities, and bank products. The Principal Global Investors segment provides equity, fixed income, real estate, and other alternative investments, as well as asset allocation, stable value management, and other structured investment strategies. The Principal International segment offers pension accumulation products and services, mutual funds, asset management, income annuities, and life insurance accumulation products, as well as voluntary savings plans in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India, and Southeast Asia. The U.S. Insurance Solutions segment provides specialty benefits, such as group dental and vision insurance, group life insurance, and group and individual disability insurance, as well as administers group dental, disability, and vision benefits; and individual life insurance products comprising universal, variable universal, indexed universal, and term life insurance products in the United States. It also offers insurance solutions for small and medium-sized businesses and their owners, as well as executives. Principal Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1879 and is based in Des Moines, Iowa.
Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides newborn, maternal-fetal, pediatric cardiology, and other pediatric subspecialty care services in the United States and Puerto Rico. It offers neonatal care services, such as clinical care to babies born prematurely or with complications within specific units at hospitals through neonatal physician subspecialists, neonatal nurse practitioners, and other pediatric clinicians. The company also provides maternal-fetal care services, including inpatient and office-based clinical care to expectant mothers and unborn babies through affiliated maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists, as well as obstetricians and other clinicians, including maternal-fetal nurse practitioners, certified nurse mid-wives, ultrasonographers, and genetic counselors. In addition, it offers pediatric cardiology care services comprising inpatient and office-based pediatric cardiology care of the fetus, infant, child, and adolescent patient with congenital heart defects and acquired heart disease, as well as adults with congenital heart defects through affiliated pediatric cardiologist subspecialists and other related clinical professionals; and specialized cardiac care to the fetus, neonatal and pediatric patients. Further, the company provides other pediatric subspecialty care services through pediatric subspecialists, such as pediatric intensivists, pediatric hospitalists, pediatric surgeons, and pediatric ophthalmologists, as well as pediatric ear, nose, and throat physicians; and support services in the areas of hospitals, primarily in the pediatric emergency rooms, labor and delivery areas, and nursery and pediatric departments. As of February 17, 2022, it operated a network of approximately 2,700 physicians. The company was formerly known as MEDNAX, Inc. and changed its name to Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc. in July 2022. Pediatrix Medical Group, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is based in Sunrise, Florida.
Methode Electronics, Inc. designs, engineers, and produces mechatronic products worldwide. It operates through four segments: Automotive, Industrial, Interface, and Medical. The Automotive segment supplies electronic and electro-mechanical devices, and related products to automobile original equipment manufacturers directly or through their tiered suppliers. Its products include integrated center consoles, hidden switches, ergonomic switches, transmission lead-frames, and LED-based lighting and sensors, which incorporate magneto-elastic sensing and other technologies that monitor the operation or status of a component or system. The Industrial segment manufactures lighting solutions; industrial safety radio remote controls; braided flexible cables; current-carrying laminated busbars and devices; custom power-product assemblies, such as PowerRail solution; high-current low-voltage flexible power cabling systems; and powder-coated busbars that are used in various markets and applications comprising aerospace, cloud computing, commercial vehicles, industrial, military, power conversion, and transportation. The Interface segment provides various copper-based transceivers and related accessories for the cloud computing hardware equipment and telecommunications broadband equipment markets; user interface solutions for the appliance, commercial food service, and point-of-sale equipment markets; and fluid-level sensors for the marine/recreational vehicle and sump pump markets. The Medical segment offers Dabir Surfaces, a surface support technology aimed at pressure injury prevention for use by patients who are immobilized or otherwise at risk for pressure injuries, including patients undergoing long-duration surgical procedures. Methode Electronics, Inc. was incorporated in 1946 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.
The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. 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London stocks were set for a weaker open on Friday, taking their cue from downbeat sessions in the US and Asia after North Korea reportedly threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking at a United Nations meeting in New York late on Thursday, North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho reportedly said the country could consider a nuclear test of "unprecedented scale".

The FTSE 100 was expected to open 22 points lower at 7,242.

Investors were also looking ahead to a speech by UK Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence later in the day, during which she is expected to outline her plans for Brexit.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "She is expected to make proposals on the rights of EU citizens, as well as making a budget proposal that will ensure that there is no budget shortfall for the remainder of the current EU budget period, which goes up to 2020. The offer is likely to be conditional on continued transitional access to the single market and customs union over the same period, while there could be a request to open talks on trade, something that in the case of the Irish border is interlinked. A transition arrangement would also help in buying more time to come to a more comprehensive deal.

"If the markets like what they hear and there isnt a negative response from the EU then the recent rally in the pound could extend further."

On the data front, the CBI industrial trends survey is at 1100 BST.

In corporate news, Smiths Group reported a small decline in full year underlying revenue but 11% growth on a reported basis thanks to the weak pound and said its strategic progress set it up to return to growth next year.

Underlying headline operating profit increased 3% or by 16% on a reported basis as margin expansion in all divisions was limited by increased investment.

Specialist provider of products and services for those over 50, Saga, reported consistent growth of 5.5% in its underlying profit before tax for the first half, to 110.2m.

The FTSE 250 company said that growth was underpinned by a 10.4% improvement in its retail broking and travel businesses.

Its profit before tax for the six month period, to 31 July, was 103m, which Sagas board said reflected costs associated with its successful refinancing and net fair value losses on derivatives.

Tanzanian gold miner Acacia Mining has yielded positive results from a trial to increase the proportion of sellable gold produced by its smallest mine in the country.

Having previously intended to end gold/copper concentrate production in the second quarter of 2018 due to the export ban on this material by the Tanzanian government imposed in March, the positive results of the trial the mine has led the FTSE 250 company to decide to solely produce gold dore bars from now until the end of its life in 2020.
New Delhi: India has made tremendous reversal on Pakistan, who constantly kept the tone of Kashmir in the United Nations General Assembly (UN). In reply to the right to reply, India termed Pakistan as a Terroristan. Indias First Secretary Eenam Gambhir said on the false charges of Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khakan Abbasi that Pakistan is a terrorist. Pakistan is a factory of Terror where terrorists not only get shelter, but they are also encouraged to carry out activities against India.

Eenam Gambhir also said that the country which has sheltering Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Omar, the same country is today fighting a war against terrorism and making such allegations on India. Eenam Gambhir also said that Pakistan has also sheltered terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, who runs the Terror Factory there and uses it in India. The Pakistanis who roam terrorists in Pakistan, do not explain to Pakistan Hindustan what is human rights.

Indias First Secretary said that Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization declared by the UN, is establishing himself as the leader of a political party. This is a country whose policy against terrorism is that they provide safe places to the terrorists in their military areas, or they make their security a political future. Nobody can justify it As far as India is concerned, Pakistan should understand that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India and would remain.

In the United Nations, Pakistan talks on Kashmir but forgets to peep in his own home. The local civilians were oppressed by the Pak army here. The new case is of the Peerage Neelum Valley. Here the army badly beat four youths who were looking for a job. The army took these youngsters out of the valley and hit these youth badly on the orders of the Pakistani contractor.

Army says no outsider youth will be employed in these areas. Not only that when the Prime Minister of Pakistan was speaking against India in the United Nations, the people of Balochistan in New York were protesting against the excesses of the Government of Pakistan.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj while addressing the United Nations General Assembly said that we are fighting poverty but our neighboring country Pakistan is fighting us. Sushma Swaraj fiercely criticized Pakistans Prime Minister Abbasis speech. Earlier, while introducing his speech, Sushma Swaraj said that even last year the address was addressed, there have been many changes in one year.The incidents of violence are continuing. The challenge of climate change is in front of us. People for various reasons The escape is a matter of concern. Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started several schemes to make the poor strong. Every persons account opened in the bank from Ujjwala Yojana. There is an attempt to overcome unemployment through the monetary scheme. Efforts are being made to empower women through the Ujjwala scheme.

Quoting Prime Minister Abbasis speech, Sushma said that the Pakistani leader sent a lot of time to make allegations against India. On the claim of Abbasi, the founder of Pakistans f Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to abide by foreign policy on peace and friendship, Sushma said that he does not know what Jinnah had advocated for, but can say that Prime Minister After assuming office, Narendra Modi extended the hand of peace and friendship. They said the Prime Minister of Pakistan should answer that why your country has rejected this proposal.

Sushma reminded Abbasi that when he reached Islamabad for the Heart of Asia Conference on December 9, 2015, then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had decided that India and Pakistan should restore the dialogue and give it the overall bilateral talks. On the mention of Abbasis old proposals by the United Nations, Sushma said that he forgot that the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration had resolved that the two countries would resolve the pending issues in a bilateral manner. The reality is that the Pakistani leaders remember everything according to their convenience. He is the master of forgetting the facts and this destroys his side.

Sushma Swarajs keynote speech
Beijing: China has rejected the invitation of the Islamic Cooperation Organization (OIC) to implement the UN resolution on Kashmir issue. Giving a strong blow to Pakistan, China on Friday said that India and Pakistan should resolve Kashmir issue through dialogue. While referring to the Kashmir issue as a bilateral issue, China refused to intervene in any way. When asked about the OICs contact groups implementation of the UN resolution on Kashmir, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said that India and Pakistan should resolve this issue.

Lu said in response to a question, China has taken note of the related report. Chinas stand on Kashmir issue is quite clear. Kang said that China hopes that India and Pakistan can increase communication and deal with relevant issues in a proper way. He said that India and Pakistan can jointly protect regional peace and stability. Let us know that OIC is a group of Islamic countries in which there are 57 members including Pakistan. This organization passes the resolution on Kashmir frequently and invokes the UN resolution.

Two days ago, a meeting of the OICs contact group was held in the United Nations General Assembly. China responded at such a time when Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khakon Abbasi demanded that the United Nations Security Councils proposal on Kashmir be implemented. He also appealed to the United Nations to appoint a special envoy in Kashmir.
A unique cycle of processing algae into valuable materials and its residual biomass into sorbents for water purification with biogas generation was proposed by scientists

A unique cycle of processing algae into valuable materials and its residual biomass into sorbents for water purification with biogas generation was proposed by scientists of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) in collaboration with the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). The project is to be implemented within 3 years' time.

It is planned to cultivate (grow) microalgae (chlorella) and a higher aquatic plant (duckweed) in order to obtain after processing lipids, carotenoids, pectin substances. These valuable components are used in medicine, energy, food and other industries.

Previously remaining after algae and duckweed's processing biomass was thrown away. Within the frameworks of the project, it is planned to make sorption materials for water purification from these wastes. The obtained sorbent may be used for producing drinking water, effluent treatment and water purification from heavy metals and oil products.

After water purification the sorbent is also utilized resulting in biogas - methane with carbon dioxide. Methane is supposed to be used for household needs and carbon dioxide is necessary for algae aerating and its further growth.

"The uniqueness of our research is its closed-cycle mechanism. We proposed completely non-waste manufacturing, energy and resource-saving technology, that produces a number of valuable materials with a wide range of applications" said Natalia Politayeva, deputy director for science at the Higher School of Biotechnology and Food Technologies SPbPU.

Using duckweed to produce pectic substances is more economically advantageous than currently used valuable objects such as apples and citruses. The duckweed and microalgae chlorella grow in wildlife in natural climatic conditions, which is cost- effective for the project implementation.

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A system which would place responsibility for monitoring the use and effects of pesticides on manufacturers and growers should be introduced, according to a chief scientific adviser to the UK government.

Prof Ian Boyd, writing in a paper in the journal Science, explained that the lack of any limit on the total amount of pesticides used and the virtual absence of monitoring of their effects in the environment means it can take years for the impacts to become apparent.

He proposed a new regulatory system to study the long-term effects of pesticides on the environment.

Agricultural pesticides are an important component of intensive agriculture and, therefore, of global food production, noted Prof Boyd.

In the European Union, for example, around 500 active substances used in pesticides are approved, including insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, and plant growth regulators.

'Largely ignored'

However, Boyd explained that the current assumption underlying pesticide regulation  that chemicals that pass a battery of tests in the laboratory or in field trials are environmentally benign when they are used at industrial scales  is false.

The effects of dosing whole landscapes with chemicals have been largely ignored by regulatory systems. This can and should be changed.

Boyd compares this situation with pharmaceuticals, for which there is a system of rigid global monitoring after a drug is approved in case detrimental effects appear.

Vigilance on the scale that is required for medicines does not exist to assess the effects of pesticides in the environment, Boyd explained.

The study cites the UK as an example of one of the most developed regulatory systems: Yet it has no systematic monitoring of pesticide residues in the environment. There is no consideration of safe pesticide limits at landscape scales.

'Heavy losses'

Farmers across the UK fear that a more regulated and restricted environment would make it difficult to grow crops.

Decisions are expected from Brussels on proposals that would see the use of all neonicotinoids banned for outdoor use.

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) has said it will continue the fight for evidence-based decisions as conclusion day for plant protection products approaches.

The NFU said farmers across the country have already suffered heavy losses through oilseed rape crop damage following previous restrictions to the availability of neonicotinoids.

A recent survey of 400 arable farmers who all grow winter oilseed rape (OSR) reports that 8.3 per cent of the crop this year has failed.


The photos of Ranbir Kapoor and Mahira Khan smoking cigarettes outside a hotel in New York have gone viral on the internet like wildfire. The pictures are from June this year when Ranbir was shooting for the untitled Sanjay Dutt biopic in NYC. As soon as the pictures surfaced the internet, Mahira received a lot of flak for wearing a short backless dress and smoking a cigarette in Ranbirs company. The duo has also been touted as a couple after the photos surfaced.



While the duo has not yet reacted to rumors, Parineeti Chopra has already lend her support to Mahira saying its unfair to slut shame anyone. Joining the bandwagon now is Rishi Kapoor, Ranbirs father. The senior actor, speaking to a leading daily, was quoted thus, I only saw them on Twitter, not on Instagram or Facebook, because I am only on Twitter. Its not that I saw these pictures before or I know anything about this already. You see, Ranbir is a young star, he is unmarried, and hes a bachelor. He can meet anybody whoever he wants to, and if people are going to invade in his privacy, its not done. And I cant say anything about all this because hes a young man and he has the choice of meeting any girl.





How do we know that heres something more to this picture? He could have met her just outside there. They must have been in a restaurant or a place where they cannot smoke, thats why they are smoking outside. In US, they have really strict rules that dont allow smoking in public places. I cant say anything more because I dont know anything more than that, Daddy Kapoor concluded.



What do you think about the whole issue? Tell us in the comments below.
Apple iPhone X, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus get Netflix HDR support News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Netflix version 9.37.0 has been optimized for iOS 11.

Apple announced the Apple TV 4K along with the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, iPhone X and Apple Watch 3 on September 12. While the Apple TV can stream HDR videos from Netflix, the other iOS devices have received the HDR support now.

With the latest update of the Netflix app on iOS, the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, iPhone X and iPad Pro devices have also received the support for streaming HDR videos. The recent version of the app - Netflix version 9.37.0 has been optimized for the latest iteration of the operating system - iOS 11.

With the rollout of the HDR support, the users of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus as well as the upcoming iPhone X will be able to watch content at a higher resolution and superior quality. Also, the second generation iPad Pro owners will experience a bump in the quality of the content. And, this is applicable for both the 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch models of the iPad Pro.

HDR will expand the range of color and contrast in comparison to SD. Eventually, the brighter parts of an image will appear brighter and the darker areas will have more depth.

Only the Netflix users with the premium subscription will be able to access the HDR content. Netflix recommends that the internet connection speed is at least 25Mbps to stream 4K HDR videos. If there is no speed issue, HDR can be availed even at lower resolutions. Notably, the premium Netflix subscription costs Rs. 800 in India and offers support for up to four screens simultaneously.

If you don't remember, Netflix rolled out the support for HDR to the high-end and Android flagship smartphones such as Sony Xperia XZ Premium, LG G6, LG V30 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 earlier this month. Also, it was in June that the company added Dolby Atmos surround sound support to the app. And, in July, the company crossed 100 million subscribers.

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Asus Zenfone 5 could be launched in March 2018 News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Asus to launch next Zenfone series in March next year.

Asus has just released the Zenfone 4 series of smartphones in several global markets including India. If you don't remember, of the six devices in the lineup, the Zenfone 4 Selfie and Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro were launched in India only in the last week.

So soon, the rumor mills have started focusing on the next generation models of the lineup. According to a report by Digitimes, Jerry Shen, the Asus CEO has stated that the Zenfone 5 series of smartphones will be launched sometime in March 2018. If this information turns out to be true, the Zenfone 5 will be arriving early and this will not give the Zenfone 4 a lot of time as some models are slated to be released only in November this year.

According to the report, Shen claims that the Asus smartphone business has returned to the growth track after facing a recent restructuring. In the last quarter of this year that is just a week ahead, Asus is claimed to be nearing to return to profitability.

As an evidence, the Zenfone 3 smartphone lineup started gaining traction in the markets such as Russia, Spain, Italy, and France. The same is expected to continue with the recent offerings under the Zenfone 4 lineup in these markets. Asus is also attempting to expand its cooperation with the European carriers in the hope that they will pave way for more sales.

Back in August, Asus unveiled six smartphones under the Zenfone 4 lineup comprising of Zenfone 4, Zenfone 4 Pro, Zenfone 4 Max, Zenfone 4 Max Pro, Zenfone 4 Selfie and Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro. While the selfie-centric phones are available in India starting from Rs, 9,999, there is no word on when the others will be released in the country. In the global markets such as Europe, these models are to be released in November as mentioned above.

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Samsung Bixby Voice finally ariives in India: Limited to few smartphones News oi -Samden Sherpa Samsung has said that it has put months of continuous effort in perfecting the technology at its Research and Development centers in Bengaluru.

Samsung has now announced that its virtual voice assistant Bixby is now available for users in India. Now with the arrival of Bixby, it looks like the competition between the AI-powered digital assistants will get more intensified. As of now, there are voice assistants likes Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Amazon Alexa and Bixby is significantly entering this arena.

However, before making the launch, South Korean electronics company stated that the company had put months of continuous effort in perfecting the technology at its Research and Development centers in Bengaluru which is also the largest R&D facility outside Korea. Here, the company basically tried to make Bixby understand and adapt to Indian dialects and contexts.

Samsung further said that it has thoroughly baked in support for various Indian accents, letting even those customers who have opted for English (US) language, make use of Bixby. Mr. Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India said, "Keeping in mind the diversity of Indian accents and our commitment to 'Make for India', Bixby has been optimized to understand Indian accents."

Bixby has already been launched across several U.S. and European markets earlier this year and offers several features to customers. The key highlights include the ability to talk to Bixby, take pictures and let it make sense of it, use it to set reminders, and receive recommendations for products, foods, and things to read.

Further, the virtual assistant has a "Quick Commands" feature with the help of which users can create a custom voice command and this command can be used in place of a sequence of one or more commands.

However, currently, Samsung's Bixby unlike Siri and Google's Assistant is not supported by a wide-range of smartphones. Only the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, and the Galaxy Note 8 offer this functionality. Notably, the limited target audience for Bixby might be an obstacle to its growth. But Samsung's upcoming smartphones should come with Bixby support.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is now available for purchase in India: Offers from Jio and more News oi -Samden Sherpa Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is available on Amazon India's website as well as on Samsung's official website and Samsung's authorized retail stores across the country.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is now available for purchase. While the company had already set up the pre-orders for the device in the country, the South Korean brand has today, September 21, made the smartphone available for the fans as well as the consumers.

The phablet is available on Amazon India's website as well as on Samsung's official website. Note 8 will also be sold at all company's authorized retail stores across the country. It is priced at Rs. 67,900 and comes in two color variants - Classic Midnight Black and Metal Gray. However, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 comes in just one RAM and storage variant.

Notably, consumers who have pre-ordered the Galaxy Note 8 will get wireless charger free and one-time screen replacement guarantee. The firm has also launched an exchange programme for Samsung Galaxy Note device in association with the Cashify app. Basically, this program will help users of the older-generation Galaxy Note smartphones get attractive discounts on the purchase of Galaxy Note 8.

Apart from that, data worth 48GB on Reliance Jio network is also on offer on purchase of Samsung Galaxy Note 8 from Amazon.

If you are interested, then here are some of the key features and specs that the smartphone has to offer. The phablet comes with a 6.3-inch Quad HD+ (2960x1440 pixels) Super AMOLED 'Infinity' display. Galaxy Note 8 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, which is paired with large 6GB RAM, The handset offers 64GB inbuilt storage which can be expanded further via microSD card.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is the company's first flagship to sport a dual-rear camera setup which comprises of two 12MP sensors at the rear with dedicated OIS. The primary camera has a wide angle lens with f/1.7 aperture, while the secondary camera includes a telephoto zoom lens with f/2.4 aperture. Up front, there is an 8MP camera with f/1.7 aperture.

Other interesting features include a fingerprint sensor, facial recognition and iris scanner, Bixby, S-pen, along with support for Samsung Pay.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

September 21, 2017

Department of Defense Press Briefing by Colonel Dillon via teleconference from Baghdad, Iraq

MAJOR ADRIAN RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Good morning, everyone.

Today, we're joined by Colonel Ryan Dillon. Colonel Dillon is the spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, and he is based out of Baghdad, Iraq.

Colonel Dillon, how do you hear us, sir?

COLONEL RYAN DILLON: I can hear well, Adrian. How about me?

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Sir, we hear you very well. If you have an opening statement, please go ahead, sir.

COL. DILLON: All right, thanks. Today, we'll discuss operations in Iraq, and then in Syria.

The past week, our Iraqi Security Force partners made continued progress in the fight to eradicate ISIS terrorists from Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi announced the beginning of operations to liberate western Anbar and Hawija this week, the two final locations in Iraq where ISIS still holds territory.

Already, the ISF have routed ISIS in Akashat, Reihana, and just this morning, they have cleared the first 11 villages, completing their first phase of operations on offensive operations in Hawija. These operations are evidence, and showcase the ISF's increased capacity as a battle-tested, formidable fighting force.

During the past week, the coalition has supported the ISF with 28 strikes on ISIS targets in Hawija and another 37 strikes in Western Anbar. It is clear that ISIS terrorists are overwhelmed and outmatched by the strength of the ISF. Daesh is losing ground and are failing in every battle, and soon, ISIS will have no sanctuary anywhere in Iraq.

I want to emphasize that the great progress made against ISIS throughout Iraq is due to the combined efforts of the Iraqi Security Forces working together. This includes the Iraqi Army, the federal police, Peshmerga, local police, counterterrorism service and popular and tribal mobilization forces. Together, all these forces have beaten ISIS decisively and repeatedly.

The ISF have also worked with the humanitarian community to care for civilians trapped by ISIS. In fact, the United Nations recently noted that the coordination with the Iraqi military forces offers a model for how humanitarians can engage with the military to prioritize civilian protection in conflict.

All of the coordination I just mentioned has contributed to the victories we've seen recently against Daesh, and thus far across Iraq, more than 4 million people have been liberated and more than 41,000 square kilometers have been cleared.

I would also like to take a moment to add that the Combined Joint Task Force priority remains the defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the current discussions about the Kurdish referendum have been a distraction in our pursuit of a common goal. But I must emphasize that the referendum is a political decision, and I will leave it in that realm.

Moving to Syria, this week, our Syrian Democratic Force partners continued their fight to eliminate ISIS terrorists throughout eastern and northeastern Syria. In Raqqa, the SDF continued to make steady progress, gaining approximately 84 city blocks within the city this week. The SDF have now cleared about 70 percent -- more than 70 percent of the entire city.

On the western axis, the SDF maintain defensive positions around the fortified ISIS headquarters located in the compound commonly referred to as the National Hospital. Like so many other protected sites, such as schools and mosques, ISIS has transformed this hospital into a headquarters, a logistics hub and a defensive position.

On the eastern access, the SDF advanced from the northeast into the city and successfully cleared major roads, isolating a large portion of terrain in the eastern part of the city. In this last week, the SDF have also assisted more than 200 civilians flee the city of Raqqa and they also have detained ISIS fighters attempting to blend in amongst civilians, one of which was another ISIS Emir, or a local leader.

And if you recall from last week, I also mentioned that an ISIS Emir surrendered to the SDF out of Raqqa. In total, we assess that there are about 400 to 900 ISIS fighters that remain in the city. Elsewhere in Syria, we remain focused on defeating ISIS while maintaining deconfliction between various groups, especially in and around Deir ez-Zoir.

Coalition and Russian military officials met face-to-face this week to adjust and expand deconfliction measures. The discussions emphasized the need to share operational graphics and locations to ensure that prevention of accidental targeting or other possible frictions that would distract from the defeat of ISIS.

We will continue to deconflict with the Russians at every level to ensure that we remain focused on fighting ISIS, all while protecting coalition and our partner forces. To that end, our SDF partners continue their anti-ISIS clearance effort in the Deir ez-Zoir province, northeast of the Deir ez-Zoir city.

Since beginning operations two weeks ago, the SDF have cleared more than 1,000 square kilometers. They also continue to receive, screen and assist internally displaced people moving north from Deir ez-Zoir. Hundreds of people have fled through the area to protected SDF areas in the past week.

In Southern Syria, near the tri-border region, coalition forces continue to conduct patrols and prepare for counter-ISIS operations within that and the vicinity of Al-Tanf. I've answered many of your questions about the closure of one of our outposts nearby Al-Tanf and will tell you that the decision to establish and close bases are determined by operational requirements and the progress of the campaign.

The decision to close this outpost was decided weeks ago, well before this past weekend. In total, across Syria, about 2.3 million people are no longer under ISIS control and more than 44,000 square kilometers have been cleared in the ongoing fight against ISIS. We still expect tough fighting ahead, but with our partners' battlefield successes, increased capacity and continued support from a 73-member coalition, we will keep the pressure on until ISIS is defeated in both Iraq and Syria.

And with that, I'll now take your questions.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: All right, the first question goes to Lita Baldor, Associated Press.

Q: Hi, Ryan. Can you give us a little bit more detail on the face-to-face meeting? Because the Russians are saying today that they warned the U.S. that there are going to be Russian Special Forces with their troops around Deir ez-Zoir, and they specifically warned that there would be retaliation if any of their troops were -- any of these Syrian regime troops were targeted.

Can you talk a little bit about what came up in this meeting, where it was and whether -- what the U.S. response to those types of threats were?

COL. DILLON: Okay, Lita, thanks for the question.

First off, I'll say that the face-to-face meeting between the Russians and the coalition military officials happened in the region, so it was -- it was nearby, and so that -- I won't go too far into discussions on exactly where that is, because there may be follow-up meetings, perhaps in the same location.

As far as, you know, the -- as far as what the statements were, made recently by the Russians, I will just go ahead and say that, you know, all the more reason why the deconfliction measures, you know, must be discussed and -- and, you know, really, you know, figured out to the gnat's detail. And that is, as we have seen, the convergence of forces next to one another just increases the need for these deconfliction measures.

So what does that mean? You know, they had a face-to-face discussion, laid down, you know, maps and graphics to discuss where those deconfliction measures would be put into place so that, one, we don't inadvertently, you know, fire upon one another; number two, we can stay focused on ISIS; and three, we can continue to maintain support to our forces both from the air -- to our forces on the ground, to make sure that they can continue their efforts to defeat ISIS.

Q: Can -- does this set up a new sort of deconfliction zone, specifically in and around Deir ez-Zoir? And it sounds like, when you're sharing maps and graphics- that sounds more like coordination, cooperation, than deconfliction. Would you say that this effort to coordinate and deconflict has moved to a new level?

COL. DILLON: So what I would say is we're not going to, you know, say that it is a zone. This is a -- I think, a natural progression to the deconfliction line that we had had in place, that runs south of Tabqa and ran parallel to the Euphrates River.

Now that we've gotten into Deir ez-Zoir, that needs to be upped a level, and the level of detail that is required for the deconfliction, you know, has to increase. And, because of the proximity, that is why we've had these face-to-face meetings, you know, because of what happened this past weekend, on September 16th. This is another reason why these meetings are happening.

But as far as, cooperation, you know, I would not call it -- I think someone has described it in the past as a "chummy relationship." It is professional, and it is for deconfliction, and it is so that we know where they are, and they know where we are, and we can continue our efforts to defeat ISIS.

Q: Just one quick thing -- when -- when was the meeting? Sorry.

COL. DILLON: It was in the last couple days.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next, to Kasim Ileri from Anadolu.

Q: Hi, Colonel. Look, my questions will again be about Deir ez-Zoir. Could you tell us about SDF's movement around Deir ez-Zoir? Where are they now? And are they going to move forward -- than the area they are currently located? And in which direction they are moving?

COL. DILLON: Okay. Thanks, Kasim.

In Deir ez-Zoir, as far -- as -- as part of the Operation Jazeera Storm, they have reached their initial objective, which is northeast of Deir ez-Zoir, I will say about, you know, 20 kilometers northeast of Deir ez-Zoir. They have, you know, met that objective. They have begun back-clearing.

I think last week, I had said that they had achieved 500 square kilometers, and that was coming down on two main axes of advance. They have since back-cleared, and cleared all the space in between those areas, and they continue to also push and expand outside of those axes, particularly to the east. So I think we're ready and prepared to show you, next week, some updated graphics similar to the Raqqa map to show that progress for you.

Q: You said the SDF apparently wants to move down to east, and the regime also is interested in moving to that direction, particularly, the border area with Iraq and -- the bordering area with Iraq.

So what is the deal here? What -- did -- does this came up during the meeting that you had with Russians? Who is going to take that area -- the eastern part of the Deir ez-Zoir, which connects the Iraqi and Syrian territory, the bordering area?

COL. DILLON: Okay. And I -- and I'm not going to get, you know, too far ahead, but those were points of discussion on -- during the face-to-face meeting, and continue to be points of discussion at all levels of the deconfliction line, both face to face and on the normal telephone lines that we've used in the past.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next to Lucas Tomlinson from Fox News.

Q: Colonel, this Russian general accuse U.S.-backed fighters of attacking his forces two times. Can you confirm that?

COL. DILLON: I have not seen the statement. I know that you have brought it up. I will just refer back to the statements that I've made already about deconfliction and how important it is to do so.

Q: The Russians and the Syrians are fighting ISIS. What's the problem with that?

COL. DILLON: We're fighting ISIS. I don't -- I don't know what your question is, you know, Lucas. So, you know, either ask it again or -- yeah, please ask your question again or elaborate on what you're -- what you're going to.

Q: The Russians and the Syrian military are fighting ISIS. What is the concern in Deir ez-Zoir?

COL. DILLON: There's -- they can fight ISIS, and they have been fighting ISIS, and they've reached the city of Deir ez-Zoir. The Syrian Democratic Forces, our partners, have also made, you know, significant gains across north -- northern Syria, and are not ready to, you know -- you know, give that up or to -- or to prevent ISIS from moving back into the area.

So, you know, they're fighting ISIS. We're fighting ISIS. Deconfliction efforts are put into place so that we can continue to focus on our efforts to do so.

Q: (Off mic) ISIS together in Deir ez-Zor?

COL. DILLON: Are you -- I missed you on that -- you know, ask it again, please?

Q: Are the -- is the United States, and U.S.-backed forces and Russian-backed forces together fighting ISIS in Deir ez-Zoir?

COL. DILLON: We're fighting in Deir ez-Zoir province. They are fighting in Deir ez-Zoir city proper. And there is a separation between the locations where they are fighting and where our partner forces are fighting.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next, to Nancy Youssef from the Wall Street Journal.

Q: Thank you.

Colonel, earlier today in the press conference you held with Brigadier Razul, he made mention of the fact that the Iraqis were motivated to fight a two-front campaign against ISIS in Hawija and in Anbar.

And my question is, do you believe that the Iraqi conventional forces are capable of fighting a two-front campaign? And what does this mean for U.S. advisers? Could we see U.S. advisers spread over a wider geographic area? Could we see a scenario in which there'll be a demand for more U.S. advisers, should a two-front campaign start?

COL. DILLON: Okay. Thanks, Nancy, and a good question, and I will give you the answer immediately.

And that is, you know, are they capable of it? You know, they're already showing that they can do it. So they've already kicked off operations in Hawija this morning, they've already made significant progress there, while at the same time, doing that out in Western Anbar.

So at the initial stages of both this -- these offensive operations in Anbar and also in Hawija, they have already shown success. As far as the advisers, we are already positioned to provide assistance to our Iraqi Security Forces through both of those campaigns. And if there is a requirement to expand that, then that is a decision by the commander to ask, but that has not happened for this particular fight.

Q: Can you help me understand what's the incentive given the risks associated with having a two-front war, given that the Iraqi Security Forces have been quite exhausted through this campaign? I'm -- I'm just trying to understand what's the driving factor.

Is it simply to get rid of ISIS faster, and if so, is there a risk in trying to do it this way, rather than one after the other? Is there a worry that they'll -- that it's a balloon effect that they're pushing in one city versus another? I'm trying to understand, militarily, sort of the thinking behind going about it this way for the first time.

COL. DILLON: Okay, well I -- I think, number one, it's an Iraqi decision. And number two, I would say that, based off of their successes over the course of the last three years, there is a level of confidence with the Iraqi security forces that is very much merited. They have come out of a victory in Mosul that would have been hard for any -- any army in the world to undertake.

And they came out on top and it came out victorious. And then immediately after you that victory and the liberation of Mosul, their next operation was Tal-Afar. And they rolled over ISIS in Tal-Afar, you know, very quickly and we have seen how they have continued to, you know, just, you know -- with the momentum and the confidence that has been accomplished with these defeats against ISIS, can very well have presented the decision for them to make -- to go on both of these offenses.

Again, bottom line is, you know, they are in command and -- and they are the one in charge of making these decisions, and right now, the initial successes of both of these -- of this campaign and you know, defeating ISIS in western Anbar and Hawija at the same time, has -- looks very promising.

Q: A lot -- the campaigns you mentioned, a lot of them have a heavy Special Forces component. Can you give me a breakdown in terms of the -- in Hawija and Anbar, how many -- how much has been led by conventional and what percentages, conventional versus Special Forces in both of those campaigns. Do you have that breakdown?

COL. DILLON: I don't have it right here in front of me, I don't have it off the top my head. I can, you know, try to look for that for you and provide it and then I will follow up. But I don't have it with me right now.

Q: Thank you.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next to Elizabeth McLaughlin, from ABC.

Q: Hi, Colonel Dillon. I know you don't want to talk about the Kurdish referendum, because it's a political decision, but the State Department said yesterday that it had already negatively impacted the fight against ISIS, specifically communications between Erbil and Baghdad coming up on Hawija. So can you clarify how the campaign has already been affected and what were the differences in that communication?

COL. DILLON: Okay, that's fair. I will say that prior to the referendum, there was a singular focus and that was on defeating Daesh. You know, since, and most recently, as with the joint press conference that I just held earlier today with my Iraqi counterpart, many of the questions -- almost all of them -- have been directed at the referendum.

So I will say that, you know, the focus and -- there is a distraction from the fight against ISIS. So, you know, I think that explains -- I think that explains it.

Q: Can you speak at all to what's actually affected what's going on on the battlefield?

COL. DILLON: As far as what's going on on the battlefield, I will also just shed some light on some of the most recent interviews that I've had with Iraqis over the course of the last couple weeks. And there have been a lot of speculation about Hawija and how the government of Iraq was holding back on Hawija as a bargaining chip or as a threat to the referendum. Clearly, that's not the case.

They have kicked off operations to defeat ISIS in Hawija prior to the referendum. So that has -- these -- the decision to, you know, start Hawija is a decision by the government of Iraq. The generals and the Iraqi security forces on the ground have decided when, and after they have prepared and gotten the forces into place, they have decided when to start this campaign. And they've done that.

But, you know, it has not distracted at least the ISF, as far as the commencement of operations in western Anbar and in Hawija.

Q: Thank you.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next, to T.M. Gibbons-Neff from The Washington Post.

Q: Hey, Colonel Dillon. Question about the meeting between the Russians and the U.S.-backed forces in the ERV -- does the U.S. have the ability to talk to their Russian counterparts on the ground directly?

COL. DILLON: T.M. yes, there is a -- the ground components have a line to talk with one another. The air components have a line to talk with one another. And the commanders -- General Funk has a line to talk with his counterpart, the Russian counterpart, in Syria. So you have multiple levels of interaction and deconfliction and lines to discuss.

Q: And, second part of the question, southern ERV, looking Mayadin, Abu Kamal -- has it been decided -- you know, we can definitely say that would happened in Deir ez-Zoir was kind of because there was not proper deconfliction?

Has the U.S. and the Russians decided on a tempo of how they're going to carve up the southern Euphrates river valley? Or is just going to be a wait-and-see approach?

COL. DILLON: That is a part of discussions -- is the expansion of this deconfliction line as it moves further on down the Middle Euphrates River Valley but as far as, you know, any specifics on that, obviously, we're not going to, you know, provide that detail. But those are part of the discussions -- those are part of the deconfliction as we move forward.

We very much, as a coalition, and our Syrian Democratic Forces, want to continue down into these areas where we know ISIS is. Obviously Mayadin has been a location where we know ISIS targets have been. We have struck them, you know, throughout the middle Euphrates river valley, particularly in Mayadin and Abu Kamal, and we want to get after ISIS there, and that is the plan -- is to do just that.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: All right. Next, to Ryan Browne from CNN.

Q: Hello, Colonel. Thank you for doing this.

The face-to-face meeting -- can you provide who was actually attending that meeting? What level of seniority was the officials? I mean, like, was this, you know, O-6 to O-6, or was this higher -- higher up the chain of command? And has the U.S. advisers, or coalition advisers working with the SDF, have they changed their force protection, in the wake of Saturday's airstrike against -- the Russian airstrike against the SDF? I mean, are they doing more protective overflights? Are any -- you don't have to go into specifics, but has there been any adjustment in the force posture in the result of that airstrike?

COL. DILLON: Okay. First off, Ryan, I will say that the face-to-face meeting with the military officials was at the general officer level on both sides.

And as far as the increase of force protection measures, we have always maintained the capabilities and the overwatch, both from the air, and our forces on the ground. And, you know, we maintain that. There is not -- I would not say that there has been an increased amount of force protection measures. I would say that, you know, it is where it needs to be, and it has been so from the beginning.

Q: Just to quickly follow up on T.M.'s question -- when did the ability for the ground units to communicate -- Russian and coalition -- communicate with each other directly, when was that, kind of, instituted? How long has that been going on? And -- and that -- yeah, how long has that been going on, I guess.

COL. DILLON: All right. I don't want to -- I don't want to, you know, steer you the wrong way, but I would say it's has been over a month now. But I'll -- I owe that back to you. I will, you know, get a more definitive answer on that.

Q: And just -- there hasn't been any coalition strikes in Deir ez-Zoir for a long time on the strike release. Was that -- is that just because no targets have been identified, or is that part of the deconfliction?

COL. DILLON: I'll have to get back to you on that as well. I have not -- I -- I have not, you know -- you know, kept a -- not kept a tight eye on the strikes there. I know that, you know, obviously, our strikes continue in -- in Raqqa, and further down the middle Euphrates River Valley. But I will check on the Deir ez-Zoir, and if it's, is it just that we are, you know, writing at a different, you know -- characterizing where it is near? I owe you that answer.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: All right, and I'll go to Corey Dickstein, from Stars and Stripes.

Q: Hey, sir, my first question, I want to clarify something, because I'm probably just misunderstanding. Following up on Ryan and T.M. on this -- this ground-to-ground deconfliction talk, are you saying that special -- like, special forces advisers on the ground can talk to Russian special forces advisers, with the -- with the Syrian forces? Or are you saying that there's a measure somewhere on the ground in Iraq, deconflicting with Russians on the ground in Syria? I'm a little confused.

COL. DILLON: Okay. No, that's fair, Corey. What it is, is it is those, you know, forces not on the -- not on the ground, but ground forces (inaudible); those that are, you know, maneuvering from them. So, you know, don't think that it is, you know, you know, special forces, you know, tactical level engagements on the ground with their counterparts. It's at a higher level than that.

And, you know, sorry. I have it now, going back to Ryan's question. We have continued to strike locations in Deir ez-Zoir province, 17 is what I've -- tracking right now, over the course of the last week.

Q: All right, then my -- my other question, in Iraq. Can you -- what is the estimate for ISIS fighters in -- in the Hawija area? And same question for Western Anbar. And are those -- are those mostly going to be foreign fighters, guys who have fought, you know, in other locations in Iraq before? Or are these going to be guys that have been in those locations for a while?

COL. DILLON: Okay. All right, Corey, so for in -- in Hawija, we estimate that there are 800 to 1,500 ISIS fighters that are in the Hawija area. Out of those, there are some foreign fighters. We don't have a breakdown of that. General Jaja Rasul, today's joint press conference said -- also acknowledged that there are foreign fighters in Hawija. As far as the Anbar Province, we've got, right now, an estimate of 1,500 ISIS fighters in Al-Qa'im, and in Abu Kamal is 1,000.

So in that -- in that area, is about 1,000 to 1,500 fighters in Abu Kamal- Al-Qa'im area.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Thank you. We'll go to Kasim from Anadolu.

Q: Just another question, Colonel Dillon. About Afrin, did the coalition get any assurances from Turkey against the possible operation toward Afrin, while on the other hand there is Iraq operation where YPG is part -- taking part in?

COL. DILLON: Okay, Kasim. I will say that we maintain communications with the Turkish elements to the north. As far as, you know, where their forces are arrayed in Afrin, I'm not going to go into that level of detail. And then as far as -- can you ask again the question about the SDF in Raqqa, how does it tie to that?

Q: YPG is part of the operation in Raqqa and also there's the YPG element in Afrin. So did you get any assurances from the Turks that they are not going to take any kind of offensive inside -- in Afrin while the operation in Raqqa continues?

COL. DILLON: Yeah, Kasim, we are -- our partner force in Raqqa is the SDF. And as we have discussed in the past, you know, from this podium, is that the arms and the things that we do with the SDF, we are very transparent about those things with our Turkish partners and our coalition members.

So we will continue to do that. They know what we are providing the SDF. We have our advisers and those that accompany the SDF in Raqqa and we'll maintain that -- we'll maintain that all the way through, both the transparency and our ability to stay with the SDF in the fight in Raqqa.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next to Courtney Kube from NBC.

Q: Good evening, Colonel Dillon. I'm sorry, I'm completely confused on communications now. So -- so we have the existing deconfliction line that's run out of Qatar and that is solely for deconflicting airspace, Russian to U.S. Okay. Are these other -- how are these other -- are these other communication lines also considered other deconfliction lines? I -- I'm sorry, I don't get this at all.

How many different, like, lines of communication are now going between the U.S. and Russia, period?

COL. DILLON: Okay. So you -- I can understand how, you know, you were getting a little confused. So you have the -- the actual, you know, the deconfliction telephone line. One is with the -- the air-to-air, and another one is, you know, from ground components, and that is also. So think two telephone lines; one talking to air stuff, and one talking ground stuff. And then the other one, you know, as needed. It's still just a telephone line, and that is between the commanders, our combined joint task force commander, and the commander of Russian forces in Syria. I hope that clears it up.

Q: That helps. And -- and -- and the ground component one is -- is also at, what? Like an -- who -- I guess, who's the U.S. side of the ground component one? Is that the CFLCC commander?

COL. DILLON: No, it is at the CJTF level. So you know, we -- it is at our level. So for -- for the -- this combined joint task force, it is at our level, and that is a discussion between the ground component forces from Russians, and the combined joint task force.

Q: Ground component one is -- that's for deconflicting ground operations. Nothing for air, right?

COL. DILLON: That is correct.

Q: I got it. And then my real question: I don't know if this is anything that you are -- are tracking at all, but do you have any sense of how many al-Qaida fighters might be in Syria right now? Is it something that you're tracking?

COL. DILLON: Courtney, that is not. We're not tracking al-Qaida, at least not CJTF, and -- and I don't get that normally in -- in briefings.

Q: Thank you.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: I'll go to Richard Sisk, from Military.com.

Q: Hi, Colonel. Again, on the -- on the meeting with the Russians, the face-to-face meeting, is that the first time ground commanders have met with the Russians?

COL. DILLON: Sir, yes, I believe that it is. I'm also, you know, looking in on that. So to say that was the first time since I have been here that I know of, and -- and that goes back to about the last four or five months. But we are looking into this to see -- because this question was asked of me yesterday as well -- to see if this has happened in -- in the past. But not to my knowledge. This is a first.

Q: And sir, was the SDF part of the meeting with the Russians?

COL. DILLON: They were not, not to my knowledge. That was the Russian general officers, and the combined joint task force coalition general officers that met.

Q: Lastly, Colonel, in -- in Hawija, are the Peshmerga participating in these initial operations?

COL. DILLON: They are not a part of the elements that are conducting the advance, but they will very much likely play a part because of the proximity of the Kurdish defensive line, to where Hawija is. And so what I'll say is, as an example, the same happened in Tal-Afar, and, you know, the Peshmerga were not a part of the forces that were, you know, moving and conducting offensive operations in Tal-Afar.

However, as the ISIS elements fled north, they ran into the Kurdish defensive line, and Peshmerga forces played a large role in killing many ISIS members, and also taking them, those that -- captured -- and -- and those that surrendered. We can, you know, predict or say that it is likely that they will also play a part in the same way in Hawija.

Q: And again, lastly, are the -- are the Peshmerga around Hawija currently coordinating with the ISF? Or have they cut off communications?

COL. DILLON: No. That was discussed today, and it was confirmed that the Iraqi Security Forces, you know, are continuing to work with the Peshmerga in and around the operations that are happening in Hawija.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: All right. And we'll go to Wes Morgan from Politico.

Q: Hi, Colonel Dillon.

So there have been some reports in the last few days that some U.S. units in Afghanistan are bringing forward troops who had initially been left behind at their home stations.

And I'm wondering, is this also happening in OIR? Have any U.S. units in Iraq recently been rounded out with troops from their home stations who had initially been left behind when they deployed?

COL. DILLON: Wes, I'm not tracking that. No. I can't say that that is happening. I don't think that is the case here in Iraq or Syria.

Q: Thanks.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Now, to Carla Babb from Voice of America.

Q: Thank you, Colonel.

Back to Hawija, you just told Ryan that there were an estimated 800 or 1,500 ISIS fighters there. Not to get too picky, but a couple of weeks ago, you said there were less than 1,000, and that's what Voice of America had been reporting, because that's what you had said two weeks ago. Have they had reinforcements in the last couple weeks? Why have the numbers gone up?

COL. DILLON: Okay. So, Carla, every time I announce or I present any kind of numbers, these are estimates. And these estimates are driven by our intelligence folks and the capabilities that they use to track and come up with these estimates. So that is -- that's where we will leave it. You know, there are -- these are estimates, and 800 to 1,500 is the current amount right now.

Q: (Off mic) assume that they've had reinforcements arrive?

COL. DILLON: No. Again, I'm not going to, you know -- you know, give an assessment as to, you know, why we think this. Again, these are estimates, and they're based off of many different means to collect data and to put them together.

Q: Thanks.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: T~.M. from Washington Post.

Q: Yep. Just to clarify again on that -- on that communication, my question was kind of -- maybe said a little too broadly.

Do the maneuver units on the ground, the American forces on the eastern side of the Euphrates, have the ability to communicate with the Russian forces on the western side of the Euphrates? Or do they need to go to a third party, say, General Funk, to communicate their concerns, say, in case they were getting mortared or, you know, strafed by Su-25s?

COL. DILLON: Yeah. There is not communication on the ground from U.S. forces and Russian forces on the ground.

Q: (Off mic) party to communicate, you know, a deconfliction incident?

COL. DILLON: Well, there are -- we've got the different lines that we've already discussed, both from the air and the ground. So that's where those would be made in order to deconflict.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Next, to Phil Stewart from Reuters.

Q: Hey there. Could you just back it up really quick? What -- can you tell us a little bit more about this face-to-face meeting? How long it lasted, ERV -- where -- give us some sense of where it took place? Was this in a U.S., you know, facility?

There must have been force protection in place, or -- where did this take place? And kind of why was -- why was it important? Anything you can tell us more about that meeting? And then I had a question about Iran.

COL. DILLON: Okay.

You know, we're not going to go too much more into detail, for the reasons that I said in the beginning. This happened in the region, and it happened, you know, face to face. It may happen again in the future; therefore, I don't want to, you know, get too much into location.

But -- and I think that -- I think that addresses it. I've already talked about at what level it was and the potential of possibly doing it again.

Q: Like a -- you know, a 10-minute meeting? Was this a 12-hour meeting? Was -- you know, can you give us any sense of -- I have no idea whether they were just sort of saying hello, or if they were going through, you know, pretty intricate plans, or what.

COL. DILLON: Yeah. So, you know, Phil, I don't know, you know, exactly how long. It was scheduled for a day. It didn't go multiple days. But I can't tell you how long, if it was a 18-hour session or if it was a 4-hour session. I don't know that.

Q: But it was probably hours, as a safe bet? An hours-long meeting?

COL. DILLON: I think it's a safe bet to say that it was more than an hour. But I'm not going to, you know, go too much more into that, because I -- like I said, I just don't know.

Q: Great. And, just really quick, on Iran, I mean, I'm just wondering whether Soleimani's been seen lately, either in areas where Syrian forces are operating, or where Iraqi forces are operating. When was the last time you -- he's been kind of spotted out and about?

COL. DILLON: There are -- there's no question about it that there are Iranian-backed militia groups that are supporting the pro-regime forces, and they have capabilities, and we watch that. And as much as we can, we know where they are.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Now, to Lucas Tomlinson, Fox News.

Q: Colonel, following up on T.M.'s question, if Russian-backed forces are fighting ISIS and U.S.-backed forces are fighting ISIS, why aren't the two sides coordinating?

COL. DILLON: Well, right now, you know, we are -- you know, we're focused in a particular, you know, area and, you know, we are -- I'll just leave it at that we are deconflicting.

And the way that we have conducted the operations throughout northern Syria with our partners is a -- looks different than the way that the Syrian regime and the Russians have.

Q: (Off mic) in eastern Syria and Deir ez-Zoir, you have forces eyeball to eyeball across the Euphrates River from one another. Why isn't there some coordination, since both sides are fighting ISIS, the same targets, and seem --

(CROSSTALK)

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Colonel Dillon, this is Adrian. I will take that question from OSD (Off mic) we'll take that question from here.

Q: Okay. Then, last one (Off mic) did the U.S.-led coalition take it as a threat, this Russian general's comments about "if attacked, we will strike back"? Was that a threat?

COL. DILLON: All I'm going to say is that we will continue to deconflict, and we'll continue to make sure that our forces have all the protective measures in place, and are ready to defend ourselves if necessary.

Q: Yes or no, was it a threat?

COL. DILLON: You have my answer already, Lucas.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: And to Ryan Browne, CNN.

Q: Colonel, just one last on this. So in the last few -- few days, Russia bombed SDF forces. They said that they would attack SDF and U.S. forces if they were attacked. They accused the U.S. of imitating the fight against ISIS over the last three years. Is -- I mean, is any of this rhetoric out of the Russian military, Russian Ministry of Defense, is it helpful to the campaign against ISIS? And is it accurate at all?

COL. DILLON: I would say, Ryan, right there is -- I mean, you -- you talked about rhetoric, but I would say that as far as the progress that has been made by the Syrian Democratic Forces and the coalition speaks for itself. You look through northern Iraq, and you look at all the locations that the Syrian Democratic Forces have liberated areas, and have cleared areas of ISIS, more than 43,000 square kilometers. And none of it, not a single inch of it, has been ceded, or, you know, given back, to ISIS.

There have been military councils and civilian councils that have been established, that both are representative and responsive to the people in these areas. These are Syrians, fighting for Syrians, and they have shown that they are able and capable, and have proven that they can do this.

So I think that anything that -- that we'll say is, we'll point to the progress that we've made to include Raqqa right now, the self-declared capital. And we'll let our actions speak for themselves.

Q: And Russia also accused the U.S. of initiating an Al-Nusra attack on a regime base yesterday. Is there any truth to that at all?

COL. DILLON: Yeah, I -- we're talking about defeating ISIS, and -- and not -- I don't know, you know, what -- what comments you were talking about. So again, I -- I'm not going to entertain that question. We're -- we're going to fight ISIS, just like we've done, and we've continued to be successful at that.

Q: Thank you, sir.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: All right, are there any more questions from the group? Sir, thank you very much. Any closing words for -- for the group?

COL. DILLON: Nope, thanks.

MAJ. RANKINE-GALLOWAY: Thank you, sir.

Have a good day, everyone.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1320504/

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Navy Completes Vietnam War Book Series

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170921-19

Release Date: 9/21/2017 5:01:00 PM

From Naval History and Heritage Command, Communication and Outreach Division

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy published the final entry, End of the Saga: The Maritime Evacuation of South Vietnam and Cambodia, in its nine-book series titled The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War, officials announced Sept. 21.

Interested readers can download a free digital copy from the Naval History and Heritage Command's (NHHC) website here: www.history.navy.mil/vietnambooks or purchase a hard copy from the Government Printing Office (GPO).

Written by Malcolm Muir Jr., End of the Saga discusses the service and sacrifice of the American Sailors and Marines and how they saved thousands of U.S. citizens and pro-American Vietnamese and Cambodians from the Communist forces in the spring of 1975.

Behind the undeniably tragic elements of the picture, the evacuations highlighted the skill and courage of American uniformed personnel in the midst of chaos. The U.S. military, especially the Navy and Marine Corps, demonstrated extraordinary professional skill in carrying out large-scale and complicated evacuations.

The series overall discusses naval power during the war, shedding light on operations, historical background, and personnel who were held as prisoners of war (POW) or listed as missing in action (MIA). It covers topics from post-World War II actions and "containment," to the First Indochina War, to riverine warfare training, to Navy SEALs, and many others.

The series traces its roots to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, which directed the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. The titles in the series include:

--The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945-1965;

--Nixon's Trident: Naval Power in Southeast Asia, 1968-1972;

--The Battle Behind Bars: Navy and Marine POWs in the Vietnam War;

--Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Passage to Freedom to the Fall of Saigon;

--Combat at Close Quarters: Warfare on the Rivers and Canals of Vietnam;

--Naval Air War: The Rolling Thunder Campaign;

--Knowing the Enemy: Naval Intelligence in Southeast Asia;

--Fourth Arm of Defense: Sealift and Maritime Logistics in the Vietnam War; and

--End of the Saga: The Maritime Evacuation of South Vietnam and Cambodia.

All books in the U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War series are available online for free download as 508-compliant PDF files, MOBI versions for Kindle devices, and the ePub for most other readers. Readers can download their free copy and enjoy them on the go.

For those wishing to know more about the series, and interact with authors Edward J. Marolda and John Darrell Sherwood, join NHHC's interactive Facebook Live event next Wednesday, September 27th. Beginning at noon Eastern time, the authors will discuss the book and answer Facebook fan questions. Join here: www.facebook.com/USNHistory/

The Naval History and Heritage Command, located at the Washington Navy Yard, is responsible for the preservation, analysis, and dissemination of U.S. naval history and heritage. It provides the knowledge foundation for the Navy by maintaining historically relevant resources and products that reflect the Navy's unique and enduring contributions through our nation's history, and supports the fleet by assisting with and delivering professional research, analysis, and interpretive services. NHHC is composed of many activities including the Navy Department Library, the Navy Operational Archives, the Navy art and artifact collections, underwater archeology, Navy histories, nine museums, USS Constitution repair facility and the historic ship Nautilus.

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Military Strikes Target ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Sept. 22, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 21 strikes consisting of 58 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Near Raqqa, in Syria, coalition military forces conducted seven strikes consisting of eight engagements against ISIS targets. The strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and destroyed seven fighting positions, two vehicles, two logistics nodes, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device and a VBIED factory.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 14 strikes consisting of 50 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Baghdad, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit.

-- Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two fighting positions, two ISIS headquarters, a VBIED and a tactical vehicle.

-- Near Huwijah, five strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and destroyed nine VBIEDs, nine fighting positions, five tunnels, two vehicles, two weapons caches, two command-and-control nodes, a VBIED facility, an artillery system, a tactical vehicle, a supply cache; and suppressed five mortar teams.

-- Near Rawah, seven strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and destroyed seven fighting positions, four VBIEDs, two command-and-control nodes, two ISIS staging areas, two tactical vehicles, a bridge; and suppressed a sniper.

Additional Strikes

Additionally, 27 strikes consisting of 53 engagements were conducted in Syria and Iraq on Sept. 20 for which the information was not available in time for yesterday's report:

-- On Sept. 20, near Raqqa, Syria, 25 strikes destroyed 30 fighting positions, a logistics node, a an ISIS supply route and damaged two fighting positions, and suppressed a fighting position.

-- On Sept. 20, near Huwijah, Iraq, two strikes destroyed seven ISIS command-and-control nodes, three communications towers, and a supply depot.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does 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.

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From Kuwait to Cairo: Army cavalry troops strengthen partnerships during Egyptian exercise

By Staff Sgt. Leah Kilpatrick September 22, 2017

MOHAMED NAGUIB MILITARY BASE, Egypt -- Across a vast landscape speckled with shrubbery, two armies met on a battlefield intent on defeating a common adversary.

From planning and coordination all the way through to execution and battle tracking, U.S. and Egyptian forces collaborated during Exercise Bright Star 2017 at Mohamed Naguib Military Base, Egypt from Sept. 10 through 20.

About 200 Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment "Ghost," 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division deployed from Camp Buehring, Kuwait to take part in the bilateral U.S. Central Command exercise hosted by the Egyptian Ministry of Defense to enhance regional security, promote and improve interoperability.

The first Bright Star exercise took place in 1981, and this particular exercise is the first one since 2009.

"Exercise Bright Star is a chance for the United States and the Arab Republic of Egypt to reaffirm our commitment to each other and to regional stability," said Capt. Bryan Groves, commander of Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team. "I feel like Bright Star is a great chance to showcase interoperability between our two nations going forward and trying to show our commitment to providing long-term stability for this region."

The exercise was conducted in three parts -- a command-post exercise, a field training exercise and a senior leader seminar, all designed to prepare partner forces so that they are ready to meet challenges at the tactical level.

The exercise kicked off with the CPX while the company's tanks, Humvees, M88 Recovery Vehicles and other necessary support equipment were offloaded from the ship and onto heavy equipment transport systems at the port of Alexandria.

Meanwhile, at Mohamed Naguib Military Base, officers and noncommissioned officers of the Ghost Battalion staff went through the steps of the military decision-making process with their Egyptian counterparts, planning a simulated battle of coalition forces against an unconventional threat down to the smallest details.

"We were trying to have both sides -- U.S. and Egyptian -- participate together and lead the battalion in their mission, so they could see how we run a battle staff, and so that we could see how they run a battle staff," said 2nd Lt. Alan-Michael Alvarado, the battalion's assistant intelligence officer.

Alvarado said all the staff sections -- U.S. and Egyptian -- collaborated, shared information and gave the commanders a good, accurate picture of what was happening on the simulated battlefield so they could make decisions with the best information available.

"I feel like it went pretty [well]," said Alvarado, a native of San Antonio, Texas. "It was really decisive."

"I think the ultimate benefit was different nations understanding each other's staff functions," said Capt. Lukas Rennebaum, the battalion assistant operations officer. "There was a shared understanding, valuable experience and working with a different perspective. They had different perspectives on things that we didn't have."

That same spirit of cooperation and collaboration bled over into the field training exercise, during which Groves's troops maneuvered through offensive and defensive lanes with their Egyptian counterparts.

"This was a chance for my company to get after its training here in Egypt," said Groves, a native of North Kingstown, Rhode Island. "We wanted to focus on hitting some of our mission essential tasks. One of the big things we were able to get after was our area defense lane. We did this in conjunction with the Egyptian army. [We had] great success on that being able to collaborate on many different levels from our [command and control] nodes to our actual battle positions. It was a great chance for our two countries to get together and show that not only can we get after larger strategic tasks, but we can get after operational tasks, too."

Interacting with their Egyptian counterparts helped the Soldiers of Charlie Company view a common problem and a common scenario in a different way.

"[This experience] has shown them where we are as far as our own personal training and also how an allied nation is with its training," said 1st Lt. Thomas Bouras, platoon leader of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. "Their tactics are very different from ours, and it showed [the Soldiers] how different people approach problem sets that we've been working on this past year."

Bouras came into the Bright Star experience with very specific lessons he wanted his Soldiers to glean from working with a partner nation.

"It's important to see on this grand scale with the open desert like this, you can actually see the thought process that commanders have in moving their forces across the battlefield, and you can see our differences in our maneuver patterns," said Bouras, a native of Rowlett, Texas. "The significance is opening both our partners and ourselves to the other's tactics and their priorities in thinking."

"I came with an open mind just trying to learn the way [the Egyptian soldiers] live and what are the differences in our militaries," said Spc. Ashton Munroe, a gunner assigned to 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. "I think I got a lot of training out of the exercise. It was fun working with the Egyptians, getting to see their tanks and weapon systems. It's been a pretty cool experience."

Groves said the Soldiers ultimately benefitted from seeing their counterpart as not so different from themselves -- different faces, different names, different tactics, same goal.

"I think the Soldiers take a lot away from exercises such as Bright Star," Groves said. "I think it's one thing to brief how the U.S. plays a role in this region in terms of stability and security, but it's another thing for the Soldier to actually see it on the lowest level, to be able to internalize it by actually watching their Egyptian counterpart, whether that be a PFC or a sergeant or a lieutenant, actually conducting the same operation as they are."

Relationships were forged, and mutual trust was built as Egyptian soldiers came and offered to help the Ghost Battalion Soldiers with their maintenance tasks.

"I already knew when we got off the plane that this was going to be a good experience just by the way they interacted with us and the way that they seemed to love to help us with everything," said Munroe, a native of Miami, Florida.

"I've enjoyed working with the Egyptians," said Sgt. Michael Bishop, a gunner assigned to 1st Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment. "They are very very friendly. I was really excited to come to Egypt and to get to train with them."

The Soldiers got an opportunity to experience some Egyptian scenery and culture on a day off before the hard work began.

"Already my company was able to attend a day at the beach down in Alexandria," Groves said. "It was a great event and a great way for our Soldiers to take in more than just the training area adjacent to Mohamed Naguib Military Base. They were able to interact with local Egyptians and take in the scenery, the culture, the cuisine, all great factors in helping my Soldiers build a better picture of exactly what and who the Egyptians are."

With the Soldiers refreshed and after maintenance, mission planning, rehearsals, more maintenance, more planning, and more rehearsals, 14 tank crews from Charlie Company mounted up and headed for the live-fire range, where they would be joined by two Egyptian air force F-16 Fighting Falcons, four Mil Mi-8 Hip helicopters, air defense artillery assets, mortars, armored personnel carriers loaded with mechanized infantrymen and 22 M1A1 Egyptian tank crews.

Aircraft fired missiles. Mortarmen hung rounds. Tank crews engaged targets. It all came together in a symphony of booms and bangs.

In the end, the "battlefield" was awash with dust kicked up from the tracks of 70-ton behemoths, smoke from the smoldering targets, some riddled with holes, some engulfed in flame.

"I had high expectations coming into Bright Star 17, just because this operation has been going on for many years since 1981 up until 2009," Groves said. "It has a storied and great legacy here, and I know that the Egyptian army is a professional and well-trained army, so coming into this I knew that this would be a well-resourced, well-planned, and well-executed event. I wasn't disappointed. The Egyptian army is a truly well-trained army. They are professionals in every sense of the word, and their commitment to making this exercise safe, deliberate and well-executed has shown through and through."

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VFA-115 Closes Out 31 Years of Operations at NAF Atsugi

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170922-07

Release Date: 9/22/2017 10:05:00 AM

By Lt. Chris Pagenkopf, Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 115 Public Affairs

ATSUGI, Japan (NNS) -- The "Eagles" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 115 departed Naval Air Facility Atsugi for the final time on Sunday, September 10.

The squadron's F/A-18E Super Hornets launched from Atsugi to begin a regularly scheduled patrol aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) in support of security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. At the conclusion of the patrol, the Eagles will disembark Reagan for their new home of Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.

The squadron initially arrived at Atsugi in 1973 when Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5 and the USS Midway (CV 41) were selected to form the nucleus of the U.S. Navy's first permanently forward deployed aircraft carrier battle group. The Eagles flew the A-6 Intruder from Atsugi for more than two decades, becoming a fixture in the region by completing numerous patrols in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans aboard Midway and USS Independence (CV 62). During this period, the squadron also deployed to the Arabian Gulf to participate in Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Southern Watch. In 1996, the Eagles bid their first farewell to Atsugi when they moved to Naval Air Station Lemoore in order to transition to the F/A-18C Hornet.

The squadron's hiatus from Japan lasted until 2009 when the Eagles returned to Atsugi with their current aircraft, the F/A-18E Super Hornet. Following their return, the squadron completed multiple regional security patrols onboard USS George Washington (CVN 73) and Ronald Reagan as a component of the U.S. Navy's most technologically advanced carrier air wing.

With a total of 31 years of history in Atsugi, the relocation to Iwakuni is part of a broader relocation of CVW-5 fixed-wing aircraft, a move that was stipulated under a 2006 agreement between the U.S. and Japan. VFA-115 will be one of the first CVW-5 jet squadrons to relocate.

While the squadron will now call Iwakuni home, there will still be periodic training and operational requirements that will take squadron members and aircraft back to Atsugi for short periods.

VFA-115 is forward-deployed to the 7th Fleet area of operations as part of CVW-5 and in support of security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific.

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Moldovan Prime Minister Demands Withdrawal of Russian Troops From Transnistria

Sputnik News

21:26 22.09.2017

Moldovan Prime Minister urged Russia to withdraw completely, unconditionally the so-called Russian Operational Group from the territory of Transnistria.

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik)  Moldova demands the complete and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Transnistria, Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip said, addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday.

"Taking into account the commitments of the Russian Federation, the fundamental principles of international law, as well as the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova we strongly reiterate the demand to withdraw completely, unconditionally the so-called Russian Operational Group, successor to the former Soviet Army 14, staying illegally on the territory of the Republic of Moldova," Filip said.

Transnistria, a region with a predominantly ethnically Russian and Ukrainian population, is a self-proclaimed republic that seceded from the Soviet Republic of Moldova in 1990 for fear of possible reunion with Romania. The separation led to a conflict that ended in a ceasefire announced on July 21, 1992, but the conflict remains unresolved.

The Operational Group of Russian Forces has been deployed in Transnistria since 1992, when Moscow and Chisinau signed an agreement, formally approved by Tiraspol, which confirmed the conflicting sides' willingness to get Russia involved in the conflict settlement.

In late August, Moldovan Permanent Representative to the United Nations Victor Moraru sent a letter to the UN Secretariat, saying that Moldova intended to raise the issue of foreign troops' withdrawal at the 72th Session of the UN General Assembly. The Moldovan Foreign Minister then stated that the initiative did not relate to the Russian servicemen involved in the tripartite peacekeeping contingent in the Transnistrian security zone.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov called the demand by the Moldovan authorities a provocative initiative, neglecting the real reasons for the presence of Russian limited military contingent in the area.

 Sputnik

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About 70% of Rebel Forces in Yemen Are Child Recruits - Foreign Minister

Sputnik News

19:38 22.09.2017

Rebels are using children in the Yemeni conflict, recruiting children between the ages of nine and 17. They make the biggest part of the militants.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Some 70 percent of the personnel of the rebel forces in Yemen are children, Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdulmalik Mekhlafi said Friday.

"Rebels are using children in this war, 70 percent of the personnel are children, children between the ages of nine and 17  The recruitment of children must be stopped," Mekhlafi said at a session on Yemen at the United Nations.

According to Mekhlafi, Yemen hopes that international bodies "will pay more attention" to programs of social security in the conflict-torn country.

"We need more money for these programs," the minister added.

Yemen has been engulfed in a violent conflict between the government headed by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and the Houthi Shia movement, also known as Ansar Allah, backed by army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since 2015. The Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries started carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request in March of the same year.

 Sputnik

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India, Pakistan Army Commanders Hold Talks Amid Increasing Border Tensions

Sputnik News

17:23 22.09.2017(updated 17:29 22.09.2017)

India's and Pakistan's director generals of military operations discussed recent ceasefire violations in the Jammu Sector.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  The director generals of military operations (DGMO) of the Indian and Pakistani armies held talks amid increasing border tensions, Indian Army spokesman Col. Aman Anand said Friday in a statement.

On Monday, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire across the Line of Control in the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, according to local police officials.

"DGMO level talks on behest of Pak DGMO was held on 22 Sep 17," Anand said.

The Pakistani side raised the matter of Pakistani civilians being targeted in the area of the Jammu Sector.

"Indian DGMO in response highlighted that all ceasefire violations in the Jammu Sector were initiated by Pak Rangers, and the BSF [Border Security Force] troops deployed only responded appropriately to them. It was also emphasized that no targeted firing on civilians was carried out by their own troops. Apart from these, firing by BSF troops was initiated onto Armed intruders attempting to infiltrate from close proximity Pak posts along the Amritsar Border," Anand stressed.

The Indian side reaffirmed that appropriate retaliation would be carried out in response to any incident leading to casualties among troops, at the same time reiterating its dedication to peace and tranquility along the contact line, given the Pakistani side took reciprocal efforts.

"DGMO also put across emphatically that the trend of infiltration along the LC [line of control] continued with active support of Pak forward posts impacting peace and tranquility along the LC and also the internal security situation. This was evident from continued attempts of sniping and targeting of our troops undertaken through cross-border actions duly supported by Pak Army troops," Anand also said.

India and Pakistan have repeatedly clashed over border disputes in the Kashmir and Punjab regions, having fought several wars over the territories since independence in 1947. Some 111 to 151 people were killed in more recent skirmishes in 2014 and 2015. Starting in mid-2016, Islamic separatists have fought Indian security forces in Kashmir, leading to at least 92 deaths, 19,000 injuries, and over 8,500 arrests. India claims that Pakistan is funding the separatists to weaken India's hold on the valuable mountainous region.

 Sputnik

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Darfur: AU-UN mission urges restraint after clashes at camp for displaced persons

22 September 2017  The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur today urged "the utmost restraint" by all parties after clashes between government forces and internally displaced persons at the Kalma camp led to the death of at least three IDPs and injuries to some 26 others.

"I call upon everyone involved in this situation to restore calm as soon as possible. A peaceful resolution of differences is the only way forward for the Darfuri people," said Jeremiah Mamabolo, the Joint Special Representative and head of the AU-UN mission (UNAMID).

A medical team from UNAMID is currently at Kalma camp, located in South Darfur, to assist local authorities in treating the injured. The mission is also engaging with the state government and IDP leaders to peacefully resolve the issue.

The incident reportedly occurred after Sudanese Government forces dispersed a group of IDPs protesting against President Omar Al-Bashir's visit to South Darfur.

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Cameroon's French-English Divide Flares Up

By Moki Edwin Kindzeka September 22, 2017

Anti-government protests broke out Friday in Cameroon's two English-speaking regions. The demonstrators echoed calls from separatist groups for Cameroon's southwest and northwest to break away from French-speaking regions and form their own state.

Meanwhile, local media reported an explosion in the economic capital of Douala. The blast followed a bombing in the northwestern town of Bamenda on Thursday that seriously injured three policemen.

No one has claimed responsibility for either incident, but suspicion is falling on a movement that calls itself the Liberation Front for English-speaking Cameroon.

Groups that say they are part of the movement have claimed responsibility for burning down schools in the northwest over the past two weeks.

The governor of the northwest region, Adolph Lele Lafrique Deben Tchoffo, told VOA the perpetrators are believed to have triggered Thursday's bombing using a mobile phone.

"We have witnessed a terrorist act in Bamenda targeting  police that were doing their job," Tchoffo said. "As a result of that, we are going to step up our security device to face that new situation."

Anglophone teachers and lawyers went on strike in the northwest and southwest in November, demanding reforms to address the predominance of French in the bilingual country.

However, calls for full independence soon eclipsed those original demands amid a government crackdown.

Militant separatist groups have been displaying the blue and white flag of a new nation they call Ambazonia.

Earlier this month, President Paul Biya ordered the release of 55 strike detainees in a bid to reopen dialogue and defuse the growing tensions.

However, the president has said he will engage in no talks that threaten national unity.

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New Zealand - Politics

In a modern society in which government assumes a central place it is easy to take it for granted that Parliament provides the jousting ground for continuous election campaigns that allow governments to demonstrate their prowess and Oppositions to put forward an alternative and to examine and criticise current policy. The recent adoption of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) as New Zealands electoral system has broadened this combative atmosphere between contending groups so that a range of parties touts their wares, but it has not deflected the long-term trend towards the electorate and away from the arena of the chamber in which the countrys representatives are gathered.

The reforms to the New Zealand Parliament of the 1980s and 1990s shifted the balance between executive and legislature away from the former. The parliamentary reforms of the 1980s and 1990s shifted the balance to Parliament by giving the Speaker the responsibility for expenditure on services to Parliament and by enhancing the role of select committees. Through much of the twentieth century the executive had dominated. MMP has undermined the sense of assurance of governments that an unproblematic majority would emerge out of elections and that this would be sustained through a full parliamentary term. Mustering support in Parliament and finding the means to put through legislation have become much more salient.

The traditionally conservative National Party and left-leaning Labour Party have dominated New Zealand political life since a Labour government came to power in 1935. During its first 14 years in office, the Labour Party implemented a broad array of social and economic legislation, including comprehensive social security, a large-scale public works program, a 40-hour workweek, a minimum basic wage, and compulsory unionism.

The National Party won control of the government in 1949 and adopted many welfare measures instituted by the Labour Party. Except for two brief periods of Labour governments in 1957-60 and 1972-75, National held power until 1984. After regaining control in 1984, the Labour government instituted a series of radical market-oriented reforms in response to New Zealand's mounting external debt. It also enacted anti-nuclear legislation that effectively brought about New Zealand's suspension from the ANZUS security alliance with the United States and Australia.

In October 1990, the National Party again formed the government, for the first of three 3-year terms. In 1996, New Zealand inaugurated a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system to elect its parliament. The system was designed to increase representation of smaller parties in parliament and appears to have done so in the MMP elections to date. Since 1996, neither the National nor the Labour Party has had an absolute majority in parliament, and for all but one of those years, the government has been a minority one.

The Labour Party won elections in November 1999 and again in July 2002. In 2002 Labour formed a coalition, minority government with the Progressive Coalition, a left-wing party holding two seats in parliament. The government relied on support from the centrist United Future Party to pass legislation. New Zealand's Prime Minister since 1999, Helen Clark, came from the left wing of the New Zealand Labour Party. She has also been a leader of the anti-nuclear movement. New Zealand became a nuclear free zone in 1987. New Zealand had been an outspoken critic of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Pastnuclear differences between the United States and New Zealand have beenexacerbated in recent years by other policy differences. Clark did not help bilateral relations with the United States when she stated that the Iraq war would not have occurred under a Democrat-led American government.

Following a narrow victory in the September 2005 general elections, Labour formed a coalition with the one-seat Progressive Party. The government also entered into limited support agreements with the United Future New Zealand and NZ First Parties, whose leaders were respectively given the Revenue and Foreign Affairs ministerial positions outside of the cabinet. This gave Labour an effective one-seat majority with which to pass legislation in parliament. Labour also secured an assurance from the Green Party that it would abstain from a vote of confidence against the government. The 2005 elections saw the new Maori Party win four out of the seven reserved Maori seats. The additional seat in the 121-member parliament was the result of an overhang from 2005 elections. There were two independent members of parliament (MPs): a former Labour Party MP and a former United Future New Zealand MP, both of whom left their respective parties in 2007.

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GCHQ Warns of Massive Looming Cyberattack That Will Demand 'National Response'

Sputnik News

17:07 22.09.2017(updated 19:16 22.09.2017)

UK intelligence agency GCHQ's National Cyber Security Center has warned the UK will fall victim to a major "preventable" cyberattack, even more severe than the WannaCry strike.

GCHQ's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has warned the UK should be prepared for a major "category one" cyberattack  a major escalation from May's WannaCry ransomware assault, that hit government servers severely.

The NCSC is aware of connections from multiple UK IP addresses to infrastructure associated with advanced state-sponsored hostile threat actors, who are known to target the energy and manufacturing sectors.

NCSC believes due to the use of widespread targeting by the attackers, a number of Industrial Control System engineering and services organizations are likely to have been compromised.

NCSC is the division of GCHQ responsible for the protection of "critical services" from cyberattacks, managing "major incidents" and improving the "underlying security" of the internet in the UK.

The agency's technical director, Dr. Ian Levy, spoke at the annual Symantec Crystal Ball event September 21, noting while predicting cyberattacks is difficult, he was "reasonably confident" about the impending event.

"Sometime in the next few years we're going to have out first 'category one' cyber incident, where you need a national response. There'll be an independent investigation and what will really come out is that it was entirely preventable. Unless we start to put some science and data into cybersecurity to demystify it, that's really going to happen," Dr. Levy warned.

Easy Pickings

Levy added the category one incident would not even be a result of some "unprecedented, sophisticated attack that couldn't possibly be defended against," but a simple error made by someone "who was just doing their job."

Given several seismic cyberattacks have been successful because the internet security teams of major companies and governments neglected to install updates to guard against widely known vulnerabilities, such a prospect isn't entirely unlikely.

The news follows a mere fortnight after cybersecurity giant Symantec revealed a shadowy hacking group known as Dragonfly have been waging major campaigns against European and North American energy firms. Key targets are organizations in the US, Turkey and Switzerland.

Dragonfly use a variety of infection vectors to gain access to target networks, including malicious emails, watering hole attacks, and Trojan software.

Emails containing both specific content related to the energy sector, as well as general business concerns are sent to targets  once opened, attached malicious documents would leak victims' network credentials to a server outside the targeted organization.

The group appears interested in learning how energy facilities operate, and gaining access to operational systems themselves. Its efforts mean Dragonfly now could sabotage or gain control of these systems when and if it decides to do so.

In May, a survey commissioned by the British government found one in 10 companies quoted on the FTSE 350 stock exchange index do not have a response plan for a cyberattack.

In May 2018, a new Data Protection Bill is due to come into effect, which introduces greater responsibilities on firms and charities for protecting confidential data.

 Sputnik

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US Officials: New Travel Restrictions May Be on Horizon

By Aline Barros, Victoria Macchi September 22, 2017

The top homeland security official in the United States has suggested to President Donald Trump new standards for visitors and immigrants applying to enter the country.

With less than two full days before temporary restrictions on travelers from six Muslim-majority countries are set to expire Sunday, the president has not yet announced his decision on this new broader policy, which was the result of a mandate by Trump to review other nations' standards for the so-called "vetting" process.

In a call with reporters Friday, officials from the White House and three federal agencies declined to identify how many or name countries that are not in compliance with the new standards despite weeks of discussions with U.S. officials.

"Every country in the world was notified of this new baseline," said Miles Taylor, counselor to the secretary of Homeland Security.

No specifics

The officials also declined to describe the specifics of the recommended regulations, but characterized the new standards as related to the quality of identity documents and to countries "proactively" sharing information about terrorists.

The officials were not able to provide a timeline for when the president would announce his decision on which countries would be affected and which sanctioning measures they will face for failing to comply.

"The Trump administration will ensure that the people who travel to the United States are properly vetted and those that don't belong here aren't allowed to enter," Jonathan Hoffman, assistant secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said earlier.

The so-called travel ban was always intended to be temporary, giving the Department of Homeland Security 90 days to gather information and report on screening for foreign travelers. That report was recently submitted to the White House, just as the ban on travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen is set to expire.

Trump recently called in a tweet for a "far larger, tougher and more specific" travel ban.

Supreme Court limits

When Trump's executive order limiting travel to the U.S. was first rolled out in January, it sparked protests at airports around the country.

A week later, a federal judge blocked the so-called travel ban, sending it on a roller coaster ride through the courts until June, when the Supreme Court said the controversial order could take effect, but travelers from the six banned countries would still be able to enter the U.S. if they had significant family, business or school ties.

"The Supreme Court ultimately ruled it could go into partial effect but not full effect," said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the CATO Institute. "We're talking about a very small portion of the overall population who was initially the targets of the executive order."

Though a portion of the travel ban is set to expire Sunday, there are 30 days left on the 120-day ban on refugee arrivals.

And before then, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the travel order. New measures restricting travel are likely to affect what the high court does.

Immigration attorney Leon Fresco said the court has a lot of options, ranging from hearing arguments on the current travel ban to only considering whatever new restrictions are introduced. Or the court could dismiss the new measures and let them make their way up through the lower courts.

Fresco said he thinks the notion of a ban may be key to what the court addresses.

"I don't think you can ever have a situation where you say we're just banning everybody from a certain country," he said. "But what you can do is say, 'We are concerned about certain countries that have information-sharing problems that don't have the ability to verify who their human beings are, so we will give more scrutiny to visa applicants from that country.' I think a ban from anywhere is going to be problematic."

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Kim Jong Un threatens to retaliate against Trump's UN speech

People's Daily Online

(CNTV) 08:11, September 22, 2017

Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Un said on Friday Pyongyang will consider the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history" against the United States in response to US President Donald Trump's threat to destroy the DPRK.

Calling Trump "mentally deranged" and his comments "the most ferocious declaration of a war in history," Kim said his UN speech on Tuesday confirmed Pyongyang's nuclear program has been "the correct path".

"His remarks ... have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last," Kim said in the statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, promising to make Trump "pay dearly for his speech".

Trump had warned Kim in his UN address on Tuesday that the United States is threatened, would "totally destroy" the country of 26 million people and mocked Kim as a "rocket man" on a suicide mission.

It was the US president's most direct reference to military action so far against Pyongyang, which conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on September 3.

In addition to the nuclear test, the DPRK has launched dozens of missiles since Kim came to power in 2011. Two recent ballistic missiles flew over Japan as Pyongyang advanced toward its goal of creating nuclear warhead-tipped missiles that can hit the United States.

Kim said Trump would face "results beyond his expectation," without specifying what action Pyongyang would take next.

"I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire," Kim said in the rare direct statement, referring to Trump.

He offered more vitriol for Trump, saying he was "unfit to hold the prerogative of the supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician."

A day after Trump's address, DPRK's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho had likened Trump to a "barking dog," saying his comments were no threat to Pyongyang.

Kim took a page out of Ri's book on Friday, saying "a frightened dog barks louder".

"Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history," Kim said.

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Trump: North Korean leader 'will be tested like never before'

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 11:02AM

US President Donald Trump says North Korean leader Kim Jong-un "will be tested like never before," as the two leaders continue trading insults and Pyongyang threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.

"Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before," Trump tweeted Friday.

Trump's latest insult came one day after he imposed additional sanctions on Pyongyang.

Trump also tweeted a number of messages complimenting his controversial UN speech.

Trump warned Kim in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that the United States, if threatened, would "totally destroy" his country of 26 million people.

Relations between the US and North Korea have significantly deteriorated in recent months, with the two leaders stooping to trading personal insults.

Earlier on Friday, Kim said Trump is "deranged" and will "pay dearly" for threatening to destroy his country.

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday imposing new sanctions on North Korea.

Last month, when the standoff between North Korea and the US over Pyongyang's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs reached its peak, Trump threatened Kim with "fire and fury the world has never seen."

Trump's threats to "totally destroy" North Korea is counterproductive and justify Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and missile programs that it insists are for self-defense, according to analysts.

Experts say Trump's speech could have an opposite effect, intensifying the deteriorating situation in the Korean peninsula.

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North Korea 'may test hydrogen bomb in Pacific' in response to Trump's threat

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 05:48AM

North Korea's foreign minister says Pyongyang is considering a powerful nuclear weapon test in the Pacific Ocean in response to US President Donald Trump's recent threat against the North.

Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, who is due to address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the weekend, told reporters in New York that the ultimate decision for the hydrogen bomb test rested with leader Kim Jong-un.

"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un," Ri said.

If that happens, it will be the first time Pyongyang tests a nuclear weapon outside its borders.

In his first speech at the UNGA, Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if necessary.

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," he said.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang tested a powerful hydrogen bomb at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site in the northeast of the country.

Japan, which lies between North Korea and the Pacific Ocean, reacted to Ri's remarks about a potential hydrogen bomb test outside the North's territory, with Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera describing the comment as "utterly unacceptable."

The Japanese minister said such a test could be conducted with a medium-range or intercontinental ballistic missile.

"We cannot deny the possibility it (the missile) may fly over our country," Onodera said.

North Korea has twice flown missiles over Japan. Because of constitutional restrictions, Japan cannot shoot down missiles that fly through its airspace but do not directly target it, and has only been able to heat up rhetoric against North Korea.

The remarks by the North's foreign minister came shortly after Kim said, in a first-person statement, that Trump would "pay dearly" for his threat at the UNGA.

Kim was quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency as saying that he "will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history."

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga reacted to Kim's statement by saying that North Korea's behavior was "absolutely unacceptable."

China, Russia urge restraint

Later on Friday, both China and Russia warned about the escalating tensions in the Korean Peninsula, urging restraint from all relevant parties engaged in the tensions.

"The situation on the Korean Peninsula now is complicated and sensitive," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang.

He called on all relevant parties to "exercise restraint instead of provoking each other."

"We believe that only if relevant parties meet each other halfway can they really solve the Korean Peninsula issue and truly realize peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," he added.

Beijing, North Korea's main ally and a principal trading partner to Pyongyang, has repeatedly said the issue should only be resolved through peaceful and diplomatic means. But it has agreed to sanctions on Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also touched on the issue on Friday, saying Moscow was "deeply concerned by an escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula related to an exchange of rather rude statements replete with threats."

"Moscow still calls on all interested parties to display restraint so as not to provoke this escalation even further," he said.

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Nuclear weapons won't bring security for North Korea: Tillerson

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 01:01AM

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said nuclear weapons will not bring security for North Korea's government, amid an escalating war of words between officials from the two countries.

"North Korea may assume that nuclear weapons will ensure the survival of its regime. In truth, nuclear weapons are clearly only leading to greater isolation, ignominy and deprivation," Tillerson said on Thursday at the UN Security Council.

He stated that China's assistance is vital to roll back Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

"If China truly desires to denuclearize the Korean peninsula to promote stability and to avoid conflict in that sensitive region right on its own border, now's the time to work with the rest of us ... to put the kind of pressure on North Korea that can change its strategic calculations before it's too late," he added.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump warned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that the United States, if threatened, would "totally destroy" his country of 26 million people.

In response, Kim said Trump will "pay dearly" for threatening to destroy North Korea.

Kim said that Trump is "a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire," who is "unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country."

The North Korean leader ordered the production of more rocket warheads and engines last month, shortly after the United States suggested that its threats of military action and sanctions were having an impact on Pyongyang's behavior.

Pyongyang says it will not give up on its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward the country and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

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North Korean Leader Says Trump Will 'Pay Dearly' For Threats

RFE/RL September 22, 2017

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called U.S. President Donald Trump "deranged" and said he will "pay dearly" for threating to "totally destroy" North Korea.

Kim made the remarks on September 22 in response to recent U.S.-led sanctions efforts and a threat Trump made on September 19 in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Trump on September 21 signed an executive order expanding sanctions on North Korea by targeting individuals and companies that trade with Pyongyang.

Trump told reporters it was unacceptable that entities support the North Korean regime financially.

He said the executive order will cut off revenue that funds Pyongyang's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea has launched dozens of missiles under Kim's leadership as it accelerates a weapons program aimed at developing the ability to target the United States with intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles.

Kim on September 22 said Trump should "exercise prudence in selecting words and be considerate of whom he speaks to when making a speech in front of the world."

"I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying [North Korea]," he said.

South Korean media later reported that North Korea's top diplomat said his country may test a hydrogen bomb in or over the Pacific Ocean to fulfill Kim's vow to take the "highest-level" action against the United States.

Trump on September 19 called on members of the UN General Assembly to take a harder line against threats posed by North Korea, referring to Kim as "Rocket Man" and saying he was on a "suicide mission."

South Korean President Moon Jae-in called on September 21 for the North Korean nuclear crisis to be handled in a "stable manner."

Moon told the General Assembly that while sanctions were needed to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table, Seoul was not seeking North Korea's collapse.

The UN Security Council has imposed several rounds of sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

Pyongyang warned on September 18 that more sanctions and pressure will only make it accelerate its nuclear program.

In announcing the new sanctions, Trump said China's central bank had ordered banks to stop doing business with North Korea and that the measures will also target shipping and trade networks.

Trump said his order gave the U.S. Treasury discretion to sanction foreign banks that conduct transactions tied to deals with North Korea.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/north-korea- kim-says-trump-us-will-pay-dearly- for-threats/28750407.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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Statement of Chairman of State Affairs Commission of DPRK

Rodong Sinmun`

Sep. 22, Juche 106 (2017) Friday

Respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK, released a statement on Thursday.

The full text of the statement reads:

The speech made by the U.S. Chief Executive in his maiden appearance on the UN arena in the prevailing serious circumstances, in which the situation on the Korean peninsula has been rendered tense as never before and is inching closer to a touch-and-go state, is arousing worldwide concern.

A certain degree of my guess was that he would make stereo-typed, prepared remarks a little different from what he used to utter in his office on the spur of the moment as he had to speak on the world's largest official diplomatic stage.

But, far from making somewhat plausible remarks that can be helpful to defusing tension, he made unprecedented rude nonsense one has never heard from any of his predecessors.

A frightened dog barks louder.

I would like to advise Trump to exercise prudence in selecting words and to be considerate of whom he speaks to when making a speech in front of the world.

The mentally deranged behavior of the U.S. president openly expressing on the UN arena the unethical will to "totally destroy" a sovereign state, beyond the boundary of threats of regime change or overturn of social system, makes even those with normal thinking faculty reconsider discretion and composure.

His remarks remind me of such words as "political layman" and "political heretic" which were in vogue in reference to Trump during his presidential election campaign.

After taking office Trump has rendered the world restless through threats and blackmail against all countries. He is unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of the military forces of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.

His remarks which described the U.S. option through straightforward expression of his will have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last.

Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of war in history that he would destroy the DPRK, we will consider with seriousness taking a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.

Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say.

As a man representing the DPRK and upon the dignity and honor of my state and people and upon all my own, I will make the man holding the prerogative of supreme command of the U.S. pay dearly for his rude nonsense calling for totally destroying the DPRK.

This is not a rhetorical expression loved by Trump.

I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected from us when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue.

Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation.

I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.

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North Korea Leader Threatens US With 'Highest Level' Response

Sputnik News

04:49 22.09.2017(updated 10:28 22.09.2017)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has threatened Donald Trump with a "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history," in response to US president's UN speech.

TOKYO (Sputnik)  North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday accused US President Donald Trump of exhibiting a "mentally deranged behavior" and threatened him with a harsh response, in a statement carried by the state news agency.

Trump called Kim a "rocket man" on a "suicide mission" in his first major UN speech on Wednesday and again warned Pyongyang of a total destruction if it attacked the United States or its allies.

"Now that Trump has made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy the DPRK, we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history," Kim was quoted by the KCNA as saying.

Kim said Trump's remarks had only convinced him  rather than frightening or making him stop  that "the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last."

North Korea has launched several ballistic missiles and tested a nuclear weapon for the sixth time in recent months, alarming its neighbors and prompting fresh economic sanctions from the United States and the United Nations.

On Sunday, US Envoy to the UN Nikki Haley warned that the United States had "plenty" of unilateral military options to choose from to address Pyongyang's missile tests.

 Sputnik

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Responding to Threat of More Nuclear Tests, Trump Dubs North Korean Leader 'Madman'

By Brian Padden September 22, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump called North Korean leader Kim Jung Un a "madman" after Kim indicated he soon may test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. Kim made the announcement after warning he would match the president's threatening words and new sanctions with equally provocative action.

Trump responded to the reclusive North Korean leader Friday by renewing the rhetorical exchange between the two on Twitter.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!"

Kim's announcement came in response to Trump's United Nations address this week, when the U.S. leader referred to Kim as a "Rocket Man" on a suicide mission, called the government in Pyongyang a "depraved regime," and said if forced to defend itself or its allies, the Untied States will "totally destroy North Korea."

In a statement directly attributed to the North Korean leader, Kim on Friday said Trump displayed "mentally deranged behavior" with his threat to destroy a sovereign nation. He called the U.S. president a "rogue and a gangster," and promised to answer Trump's insults with the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history."

"Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say," said Kim in statement that was released by the North Korean state news agency KCNA. The agency released a photo of the North Korean leader reading the statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson admitted Friday the escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang were challenging, but he said the increasingly harsh rhetoric and threats of military action would not negate diplomatic efforts.

"We are quite challenged but our diplomatic efforts continue unabated," Tillerson said in an interview with ABC News. "We have put in place the strongest economic sanctions ever to have been assembled against Kim Jong Un."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented Friday on the rhetorical exchanges, likening them to "a kindergarten fight." Speaking at the United Nations, Lavrov said global leaders should adopt a "reasonable and not the emotional" approach to the North Korean crisis.

Pacific test

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, who will address the United Nations on Friday, told reporters in New York that Kim likely intends to carry out a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific ocean.

Attempting to conduct an open air nuclear test in international waters would be a highly risky and aggressive act that could, at the very least, expose islands in the Pacific to dangerous levels of radiation, as well damage electrical systems in the region from the strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by the blast.

It could also draw the U.S. into taking preventive military action.

"That could trigger probably the strongest response, other than an actual military attack I think, that is probably about limit where North Korea could go," said Daniel Pinkston, a regional security analyst with Troy University in Seoul.

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test earlier this month, but all its atomic bombs have been detonated in an underground facility. The last reported open atmosphere nuclear test was conducted by China prior to 1980, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.) The U.S. and the Soviet Union detonated numerous atomic bombs in the ocean and upper atmosphere before signing the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty that prohibits atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

North Korea has also conducted numerous ballistic missile tests with the goal of developing a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of targeting the U.S. mainland.

However, both President Trump's harsh rhetoric and Kim Jong Un's provocative response may also be diplomatic ploys to gain a future negotiating advantage.

"The exchange of blusters may indicate that both sides want to compel the other side to back down with the assumption that the other side prefers a diplomatic solution to the current situation," said Bong Young-shik, with the Yonsei University Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Condemning provocations

U.S. allies in Tokyo and Seoul condemned the North Korean leader for threatening another violation of United Nations resolutions prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

"North Korea's remarks and behavior are provocative to regional and international security, and they are absolutely unacceptable," said Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga.

The South Korean government, which has tried to balance sanctions pressure by approving $8 million in humanitarian aid to North Korea this week, has again called on Pyongyang to engage in dialogue to reduce tensions.

"North Korea must immediately stop reckless provocations that lead to isolation and collapse, and choose to come out to talk for denuclearization to resolve North Korea's nuclear issue peacefully," said South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun.

New US sanctions

The Trump administration on Thursday also announced new unilateral sanctions intended force financial institutions to choose between doing business with the U.S. or North Korea.

The executive order authorizes the Treasury Department to freeze assets of people and organizations that conduct "significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. The presidential order specifically targets the construction, energy, financial services, fishing, information technology, manufacturing, medical, mining, textiles, and transportation industries in North Korea.

The new U.S. sanctions could complicate relations with China, which accounts for 90 percent of all trade with North Korea.

Beijing has supported increasing United Nations sanctions but has objected to unilateral measures.

China's central bank has also reportedly ordered the country's financial institutions to stop doing business with North Korea, an action Trump called "a tremendous move" that was "somewhat unexpected."

Trump expressed thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping for the move, saying "that was a great thing he did today."

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Big Ticket US-India Defense Deals Unlikely While US Guards Tech Secrets

Sputnik News

21:08 22.09.2017

Ahead of US Defense Secretary James Mattis' visit to India starting September 25, a controversial letter by the US-India Business Council has created much uneasiness in the Indian establishment.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The US-India Business Council (UIBC) in its letter to the Indian Defense Ministry has raised concerns over the transfer of technologies to Indian firms. "Control of proprietary technologies is a major consideration for all companies exploring public and private defense partnerships," the letter reads.

This comes against the backdrop of the Indian government exerting pressure on foreign firms to share defense technology with their Indian partners to further Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" program, intended to foster self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, the UIBC letter suggests that American firms want to retain control over technology even if they are allowed to set up a production line for fighter jets and other equipment on Indian soil.

"I cannot say with any certainty, but coming out in the media, as it does, on the eve the US defense secretary's visit, I will be surprised if this issue is not discussed. But India is unlikely to agree to continue purchasing equipment off-the-shelf from the US as has largely been the case so far. Discussions will be of some help only if the US defence secretary has some concrete suggestions to make to reconcile the American concerns with the Indian aspirations," Amit Cowshish, former financial adviser to India's Ministry of Defense, told Sputnik.

US firms have also made it clear that they do not want to be held liable for any defects in equipment jointly produced with Indian counterparts. "We recommend the Ministry of Defense affirm that foreign OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] will not be liable for defects outside their company's control," the UIBC said in its letter. This has the potential to become a sticking point in the prospective defense partnership between the two countries.

"I think a middle ground can be found even if the transferred technology is not state-of-art but helps the Indian companies in acquiring the capability required for built-to-specs manufacturing," Cowshish explained.

Experts say US defense firms' reluctance to share technology is also likely to deter the US from moving ahead in its plan to sell defense equipment such as the Avenger Predator drone and Lockheed Martin's F-16 Block 70 combat aircraft to India. The US has designated India as a major defense partner which "is intended to facilitate technology sharing between the two countries, including license-free access to a wide range of dual-use technologies," according to the Senate amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018.

In the last 10 years, the US has managed to sell to India defense equipment worth $15 billion, including C-17 Globemaster III and C-130J Super Hercules transports, P-8I Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and AH-64E Apache attack helicopters. Most of the deal was initiated during the previous government in India led by Manmohan Singh, but since 2014 the new government under Modi has emphasized domestic production, and if foreign purchases are made they must involve technology transfer.

Russia, Israel and France have been very generous in sharing technology with India, helping local manufacturers augment their capacity.

 Sputnik

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India to Construct 108 Missile-Proof Hangars Along China Border

Sputnik News

20:50 22.09.2017

A proposal awaiting government approval since 2015 was strongly backed by the prime minister's office in the aftermath of the recent border tensions with China.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The Indian government has cleared a proposal for constructing next-generation hardened shelters for aircraft of the Indian Air Force deployed at the eastern and northeastern airfields that border China. The hangars are designed by the state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization.

The Indian Defense Ministry will initially release $150 million of the total estimated cost of $750 million for the proposed shelters, which can withstand missiles and bombs of up to 2,000 pounds.

The proposed shelters would dot forward areas including Leh, Ladakh and the northeastern states and would also cover the newly built advanced landing grounds  Tuting, Mechuka, Along, Passighat, Vijaynagar, and Ziro  along with the India-China border.

Last year, a parliamentary panel on defense raised concerns over the lack of availability of hardened shelters for frontline aircraft such as the Su-30MKI. "The IAF is already short of planes, and worse than that is, hardened shelters are not available for even the limited number of aircraft that is available with the serviceThe committee desires that there should not be any delay in execution, as such delays have become a common feature of all the projects," the committee warned in 2016.

The Indian Air Force has already built new weapon storage areas and labs in large numbers in all the forward bases.

It constructed 16 shelters for Su-30 aircraft between 2004 and 2007 capable of withstanding 1,000-pound explosives.

 Sputnik

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India's Defense Sector Prepares for 100% Foreign Direct Investment

Sputnik News

15:19 22.09.2017(updated 15:49 22.09.2017)

FDI proposals for 100% have to be in areas where India lacks either the existing capabilities or is not even developing it.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  India is planning to further liberalize its defense sector by allowing 100 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in projects. The move is mainly aimed at curtailing the striking slowdown in the defense sector which has failed to attract huge investments in recent years despite the introduction of sweeping reforms in defense investment rules.

Disclosing the government's agenda, defense ministry officials said that 100 percent FDI would be allowed in cases where foreign firms would be willing for the complete transfer of technology.

"The government of India would be open to considering 100 percent FDI in defense, should the company be willing to provide full technology transfer," Ashok Kumar Gupta, India's Secretary of Defense Production was quoted as saying during his interaction with representatives of US corporate sector.

Earlier in July, Sputnik had reported that Narendra Modi government was mulling relaxation in rules to invite major global defense firms in domestic production of armored vehicles, battle tanks and military transport aircraft under the automatic route.

Industry experts are of the opinion that 100 percent FDI would be a welcome move provided more is done to remove barriers.

"FDI is something which has not worked till now. The automatic route of 49% is no longer enough now. Is there something else we are missing? One choice is to remove the 49% barrier and enhance it to at least 74% under the automatic route without any barrier. You can go up to 100% FDI with the special provision on the transfer of technology. We need to really change the way what is being done in the FDI in itself. Until and unless that is done, we will not see major FDI inflow," Puneet Kaura, Managing Director & CEO of Samtel Avionics told Sputnik.

Sources told Sputnik that the government will allow any foreign entity to purchase 76% equity in Indian defense firms engaged in fighter aircraft and helicopters manufacturing under the automatic route and 51 % for submarines and warships.

India's defense sector has attracted only $1 million investment in last two years and a paltry $6 million in the last 10 years. Most of the foreign direct investment (FDI) has come from traditional partners like United Kingdom, France, and Israel.

 Sputnik

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Negotiations with US fruitless: Iran's Zarif

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 05:16PM

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says US President Donald Trump's position on the landmark nuclear deal signed between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries prove that any talks with Washington will bear no fruits.

"The stance [adopted by] the current US administration on the JCPOA (nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or the JCPOA) conveys this message to the world that any negotiations with the US will be useless," Zarif said in a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono on the sidelines of the 72nd annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.

During his speech at the General Assembly on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said the internationally-negotiated nuclear agreement with Iran is an "embarrassment" to the United States.

The Republican president described the JCPOA as "the worst and most one-sided transaction the US has ever entered into," a characterization he often used during his presidential campaign.

The Trump administration has desperately sought a pretext to scrap or weaken the 2015 deal and get rid of the limits the deal imposes on the US ability to pursue more hostile policies against Iran.

However, Washington's European allies seek to prevent the collapse of the deal and are stepping up efforts to convince Trump not to abandon the accord.

Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign policy chief, said on September 18 that the Iran deal belonged to the entire world, not just the United States.

Elsewhere in the meeting, Zarif pointed to the crisis in the Korean Peninsula and said, "We reject any production, test and development of nuclear weapons."

"Prudence by Japan and other regional and world countries can prevent a big crisis," the Iranian foreign minister added.

The Japanese foreign minister, for his part, threw his country's weight behind the JCPOA and said he has informed many countries about the deal's significance.

The top Iranian and Japanese diplomats also discussed ways to expand cooperation, particularly in banking, investment, energy and academic sectors.

Iran, Malaysia FMs agree on need to boost Muslim world unity

The Iranian foreign minister also held a meeting with his Malaysian counterpart Anifah Aman and exchanged views about the expansion of relations in international bodies, particularly the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Zarif and Aman stressed the importance of reinforcing unity in the Muslim world to solve the crises in Yemen, Myanmar and Syria through peaceful approaches.

Iran, Syria FMs discuss anti-terror campaign

Meanwhile, in a meeting between Zarif and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mualem, the two sides discussed the latest developments on Syria's political arena and the battlefield in the fight against terrorism and issues of common interest.

The Iranian foreign minister also met with his Afghan counterpart Salahuddin Rabbani and Fatou Bensouda, a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

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Iran FM rejects re-negotiation of nuclear deal terms

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 09:52AM

Iran's foreign minister has dismissed any re-negotiations of the 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers, including the US, saying Washington is merely after getting more Iranian concessions under the accord with no new concessions from itself or other signatories in return.

In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, Mohammad Javad Zarif said US wants to change the deal at Iran's expense alone, while Washington itself is not willing to make any concessions.

The top Iranian diplomat further said that kind of position contradicted the premise of any negotiated deal. If the nuclear accord is supposed to change, then every concession Iran has made to help make the deal happen has to be reconsidered, he noted.

"Why should we discuss an addendum?," he asked. "If you want to have an addendum, there has to be an addendum on everything."

"Are you prepared to return to us 10 tons of enriched uranium?," Zarif also asked, referring to the stockpile, which was shipped to Russia as part of the deal.

A day earlier, Zarif had met with counterparts from the six other signatories to the deal  Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States  on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York.

"Everybody, with one exception, said this is a good deal," referring to his American opposite number Rex Tillerson's position at the gathering.

Zarif also slammed as "absurd" US President Donald Trump's anti-Iran speech at the UN, in which he called the nuclear accord a one-sided embarrassment to the United States that he may abandon.

The Iranian foreign minister said the Trump administration was "seriously ill-informed" about the limits placed on Iran's nuclear program under the agreement.

Zarif that if the United States walked away from the accord as Trump threatened, "Who would come and listen to you anymore?" With such a threat, "The United States is sending the wrong signal," he added.

In mandatory reports to Congress, the Trump administration has twice so far certified Iran's compliance with the deal. It has threatened to "decertify" the Islamic Republic's commitment the next round.

Tillerson, himself, acknowledged at the Wednesday meeting that Iran was in "technical compliance" with the deal, and has said to "tear up" the agreement would alienate Washington's allies.

The US has, however, alleged that Iran has violated "the spirit" of the agreement with its national missile program.

During his election campaign, Trump had threatened to "tear up" the deal. Since rising to presidency in January, a year after the deal took effect, Trump has, however, adopted a milder tone, but has been actively looking for a pretext to launch a renegotiation of the deal or initiate an American withdrawal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly verified Iran's adherence to the terms of the JCPOA.

This is while the other parties to the deal, along with the entire international community, have thrown their weight behind the accord, praising the Islamic Republic for its full commitment to its side of the bargain.

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Iran marks Sacred Defense Week with massive military parades

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 05:59AM

Iran has unveiled a new ballistic missile during military parades held across the nation to mark the first day of the annual Sacred Defense Week.

The missile, named Khorramshahr, was put on display during the military parade in Tehran on Friday, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials in attendance.

The ballistic missile, which has a range of 2000 kilometers, is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"As it was observed, the missile has become smaller in size and more tactical and it will be operational in the near future," he told reporters on the sidelines of the parades.

Addressing the event, Rouhani said no country can stop the Islamic Republic from strengthening its missile capabilities and defense programs.

"We will promote our defensive and military power as much as we deem necessary," Rouhani said. "We seek no one's permission to defend our land."

He added that Iran's defense power has never been used for aggressive acts, while certain world powers export deadly weapons to the Middle East.

The Iranian president said Tehran is playing a key role in restoring peace and stability to the region.

"The great nation of Iran has always pursued peace and security in the region and the world, and has always defended the oppressed people of the world. We will defend the downtrodden people of Yemen, Syria, and Palestine whether you like it or not," he added.

The parades across the country feature military units from various divisions of the Armed Forces, including the Army, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as well as the Police Force. The week-long events are held in commemoration of Iranian forces' eight-year defense of the Islamic Republic in the face of Iraq's 1980-88 imposed war against the country.

Rouhani further slammed Washington and Tel Aviv's recent anti-Tehran statements before the UN General Assembly.

He said the US and Israel have isolated themselves by expressing opposition to the nuclear agreement, which is hailed by the entire world community as a win for international diplomacy.

Rouhani once again reiterated Iran's full commitment to the landmark 2015 nuclear accord with six world powers, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

He said the entire global community commended the deal, "except only two people," referring to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who used their UN speeches to attack the JCPOA.

"I am very glad that this year at the United Nations and among all the countries of the world, there were only two voices, which were opposed to that of the people of the world. The US and the occupying regime of al-Quds were the only two voices, which were different from the voice of the entire world." Rouhani asserted.

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Rohani Vows Iran Will Push Ahead With Missile Program

RFE/RL September 22, 2017

Iranian President Hassan Rohani has said that Tehran will continue its missile program and boost the country's military capacities, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that Iran stop developing "dangerous missiles."

"We will increase our military power as a deterrent. We will strengthen our missile capabilities," Rohani said on September 22 during a military parade in Tehran commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

"We will not seek permission from anyone to defend our country," Rohani said in a speech that was broadcast live on state television.

On September 19, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump accused Iran of supporting terrorists and called Tehran's government a "corrupt dictatorship."

Trump also called for a harder line against Iran from other members of the United Nations, saying that "we cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles."

Referring to Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers, including the United States, Trump said Washington "cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program."

Rohani responded to Trump remarks in his own speech to the UN General Assembly on September 20, saying Trump's speech was "ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric."

Rohani said Iran will not be the first party in the nuclear accord to violate the agreement.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Trump had made a final decision to continue complying with the Iran nuclear deal, under which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.

Trump's administration has twice certified that Iran is complying with its obligations under the accord.

But it has also said that Iran's missile program violates the spirit of the nuclear agreement.

Washington is due to announce on October 15 whether it considers Iran to still be complying with the agreement.

Other signatories to the nuclear accord are Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-rohani-vows-continue-missile- program-boost-military/28750575.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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Iran to Improve Ballistic Missile Capacity 'Whether You Like it or Not'

Sputnik News

22:08 22.09.2017(updated 23:47 22.09.2017)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to defy Western pressure and boost the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile capabilities on Friday, making the comments the same day the country demonstrated their newest missile during a military parade.

"Whether you like it or not, we are going to strengthen our military capabilities, which are necessary for deterrence," Rouhani said in his televised speech. "We will strengthen not only our missiles but also our air, land and sea forces  When it comes to defending our country, we will ask nobody for their permission."

Rouhani's comments seem addressed to Western leaders like US President Donald Trump, who has consistently criticized his administration. Trump has singled out the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly called the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, for disdain, and has repeatedly flirted with voiding the landmark agreement. Trump called the deal an "embarrassment to the United States" during his Thursday speech before the UN General Assembly, although he again stopped short of vowing to kill it.

The same day as Rouhani's speech, Tehran unveiled their new ballistic missile at a military parade commemorating the 37-year anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq War that left hundreds of thousands dead. The missile is named Khorramshahr after the Iranian city where the first major engagement of the war occurred.

"The Khorramshahr missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and can carry multiple warheads," said Iranian Revolutionary Guard aerospace chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh to the state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency.

That range is enough to strike major cities in Iran's regional rivals, such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in Israel and Medina and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, as well as the numerous US military bases in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Israel, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

One major sticking point of the JCPOA is that Iran has been "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." However, to "call upon" someone to take an action is not the same as "ordering" them to do it.

Iran maintains that testing non-nuclear ballistic missiles is not a violation of the JCPOA. On Wednesday, Rouhani insisted the conventional missiles and the rest of Iran's arsenal are solely for the purpose of "defensive deterrence."

Although the US State Department admits that Iran has not violated the agreement, they have stated that the ballistic missile tests breach the spirit of the agreement, as it would be relatively easy to modify a ballistic missile to carry a nuclear warhead. As a result, Washington has tightened sanctions on Iran  rather than loosen them, as the JCPOA was meant to accomplish.

"Regrettably, since the agreement was confirmed we have seen anything but a more peaceful, stable region and this is a real issue," US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters at the United Nations on Wednesday. He also called for the JCPOA to be renegotiated, something Rouhani has refused to do.

Tillerson also referred to the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, as well as the ongoing tensions between Israel and Palestine. Iran has made its presence known in all three conflicts.

During his speech, Rouhani ruled out any change in foreign policy. "Whether you like it or not, we are going to defend the oppressed peoples of Yemen, Palestine and Syria," he said.

 Sputnik

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Tehran Unveils 2,000 Km-Range Ballistic Missile Which Can Carry Several Warheads

Sputnik News

10:30 22.09.2017(updated 16:04 22.09.2017)

Tehran has presented a new ballistic missile capable, the Tasnim News said citing the head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division, Amirali Hajizadeh, on Friday.

The new ballistic missile, with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles), is capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles over a distance of 1,800 kilometers.

According to Gen. Hajizadeh, training in the use of the ballistic missile has already begun.

The Islamic Republic's missile and nuclear programs have been continuously criticized as posing a threat.

On July 14, 2015, China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, collectively referred to as the P5+1 group, signed the JCPOA with Iran on the latter's nuclear program. The deal stipulated a gradual lifting of anti-Iran sanctions in exchange for Tehran's assurances that its nuclear program would remain peaceful in nature.

On July 29, 2017, the US Senate approved a bill on new non-nuclear sanctions against 18 individuals and entities in Iran over the country's missile program and human rights violations. The move has been widely criticized by Iranian senior officials, claiming that the US bill violated the provisions of the JCPOA. Tehran vowed to impose retaliatory measures against US individuals and entities.

In August, Iran's defense minister stated Tehran would not abandon its missile program despite international condemnation. In September, the US imposed new sanctions on Iran over the ballistic missile program and "cyberattacks".

Tehran continues to develop and test ballistic missiles due to its constant vigilance about national security, Former adviser to the Iranian foreign ministry Sabbah Zanganeh told Sputnik.

 Sputnik

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UNSC warns Iraqi Kurds against independence referendum

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 05:07AM

The UN Security Council has warned that a secession referendum planned to be held in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region next week is potentially "destabilizing" and threatens the ongoing war against Daesh terrorists.

In a unanimous statement on Thursday, the 15-member council also said the referendum could hinder efforts to help those displace by violence return home.

The Security Council "expressed concern over the potentially destabilizing impact of the Kurdistan regional government's plans to unilaterally hold a referendum next week," adding that "the planned referendum is scheduled to be held while counter-ISIL (Daesh) operations -- in which Kurdish forces have played a critical role -- are ongoing."

Members of the Council asked for "dialogue and compromise" to address the differences between the Iraqi government and Kurdish authorities.

Kurdish independence ambitions are hugely controversial throughout the region and among the international community.

The three branches of the Iraqi government, including the parliament, the judiciary and the administration of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, have voiced strong disapproval of the plan to partition the mainland.

Yet Massoud Barzani, the leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), has been adamantly pressing ahead with his plans to hold the September 25 vote, ignoring international calls to drop the bid and negotiate a deal that does not affect Iraq's integrity.

The United Nations and the US as well as regional powers like Iran and Turkey have also expressed concerns about the planned vote by the KRG, arguing that it could create further instability in the already volatile region.

The Israeli regime, however, has come out in apparent support of the controversial referendum.

Earlier in the day, the foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Iraq held a rare meeting in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, days ahead of the Monday September 25 referendum.

In a joint statement, the three ministers emphasized that "the referendum will not be beneficial for the Kurds and the Kurdish Regional Government, and agreed, in this regard, to consider taking counter-measures in coordination."

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Doctors Without Borders warns Bangladesh refugee camps on brink of 'health disaster'

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 03:49PM

Doctors Without Borders has warned that refugee camps in Bangladesh are on the brink of a "health disaster" amid an influx of Rohingya Muslims from neighboring Myanmar.

Over the past month, nearly 430,000 Rohingya have fled from a brutal army-led crackdown across the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state. The United Nations has described the crackdown as "ethnic cleansing."

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym as MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres), warned on Thursday that waste water and feces were flowing all around the chaotic camps, creating "a public health disaster."

MSF said to manage the emergency "a massive scale-up of humanitarian aid is needed in Bangladesh."

"We are receiving adults every day on the cusp of dying from dehydration," said Kate White, the group's emergency medical coordinator. "That's very rare among adults, and signals that a public health emergency could be just around the corner."

There are no official roads into the slum-like settlements that have sprung up outside official camps, complicating aid delivery in the hilly, mud-slicked terrain.

"There is a complete absence of latrines," added White. "When you walk through the settlement, you have to wade through streams of dirty water and human faeces."

'Tipping point between crisis and catastrophe'

Bangladeshi troops were deployed this week to build more toilets and shelters for thousands still sleeping out in the open despite regular monsoon rains.

On Friday, the UN Refugee Agency said it was speeding up the distribution of plastic sheeting to provide basic protection from the elements as authorities work on erecting a new 2,000-acre shelter.

The camps are "bursting at the seams and yes, there are risks of diseases, so that is why the extension is so crucial," said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.

The potential of an infectious disease outbreak is "very high," according to Doctors Without Borders, citing the rapid population increase and low vaccination coverage among the Rohingya, who lived in impoverished conditions in Myanmar.

"One small event could lead to an outbreak that may be the tipping point between a crisis and a catastrophe," said MSF emergency coordinator Robert Onus.

The recent exodus of Rohingya has brought the number of refugees from Rakhine living in Bangladesh to over 800,000.

Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine have been subject to systematic persecution and violence at the hands of the military and Buddhist mobs for decades.

The UN has said that the Rohingya are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

Myanmar's government forces do not even spare the fleeing Rohingya refugees. Recent reports by Amnesty International and Bangladeshi officials say the military plants landmines on the path of those trying to cross into Bangladesh, causing them to sustain serious wounds or lose their limbs.

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UN Agencies Ramp Up Aid for Rohingya Refugees

By Lisa Schlein September 22, 2017

The United Nations estimates some 429,000 Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar for Bangladesh since August 25. As the number edges toward half-a-million, U.N. agencies are increasing life-saving assistance to desperate people living in squalid settlements.

The number of daily arrivals has fallen to about 1,000 from a high of 20,000 a day. Nevertheless, that steep decline in refugee numbers has done little to ease overcrowding in the makeshift Rohingya sites near two official camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

Authorities have allocated an 800-hectare area to new arrivals. The U.N. refugee agency says it is speeding up the distribution of plastic sheeting so as many people as possible can have some protection from monsoon rain and wind.

UNHCR spokesman Andre Mahecic says health is a major concern given the inclement weather, overpopulated camps and lack of essential relief.

"There are risks of diseases," he said. "So, that is why the extension is so crucial to be able to release some of the pressure in the camps and to make sure that the new site is also organized in such a way that the sanitation and clean water can be there."

World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib says the Rohingya are at risk of waterborne diseases, such as malaria, dengue fever, cholera and diarrhea.

"We have also concerns about the injured," she said. "They need to be cared for. The immunization rate among children is very, very low and when you have a population of children who are malnourished, who are in the open, the risk of measles and other childhood disease is very high."

Chaib says a team of epidemiologists is being deployed to assess the health risks. She says two million water purification tablets and 20,000 cholera kits are being distributed. She says a vaccination campaign against measles and polio launched nearly one week ago is being extended so all 150,000 targeted children are reached.

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Hull of Sibir Nuclear Icebreaker Floated Out in St. Petersburg

Sputnik News

13:30 22.09.2017(updated 14:00 22.09.2017)

The hull of Russia's first serial universal nuclear-powered Arktika-class icebreaker Sibir arrives at the Baltic Shipyard.

ST. PETERSBURG (Sputnik)  The hull of Russia's first serial universal nuclear-powered icebreaker Sibir, Project 22220 (LK-60Ya class) has been floated out at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg, a Sputnik correspondent reported Friday.

United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) chief Alexei Rakhmanov told Sputnik on Friday that mooring tests of Russia's leading Project 22220 nuclear icebreaker Arktika will begin at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg in early 2018.

"Early next year," he said in response to a relevant question.

Project 22220 nuclear icebreakers will become the world's largest and most powerful. They are needed to ensure Russian leadership in the Arctic.

Last year, St. Petersburg's Baltic Shipyard launched the Arktika (the 'Arctic'), the lead ship of a new class of nuclear-powered icebreakers. When commissioned, the vessel will become the world's largest and most powerful icebreaking vessel, surpassing another Russian ship, the 50 Let Pobedy. The Arktika is expected to be delivered in 2019.

Shipbuilders will deliver another two Arktika-class icebreakers, the Sibir ('Siberia) and Ural, in 2020 and 2021. Together, the ships will considerably solidify Russia's capabilities for Arctic navigation.

In recent years, Russia has considerably expanded efforts to ensure sovereignty and security in the Arctic, building up new military infrastructure, and signing off on the creation of new vessels, bases, and technologies for use in the inhospitable region.

Among the advantages that Russia has long enjoyed in the Arctic region is its fleet of nuclear and diesel-powered icebreakers, already the largest in the world, and continuing to expand.

 Sputnik

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Israeli rockets hit near airport in Syria capital: Report

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 09:03AM

Israeli warplanes have reportedly targeted the airport in Syria's capital, Damascus, with two rockets, in a new act of aggression against the Arab country.

Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen reported that the rockets, which were fired from outside the Syrian border, stuck near the Damascus airport in the early hours Friday, without elaborating.

Over the past few years, the Israeli military has launched sporadic attacks against various targets on Syrian soil, in assaults slammed by Syria as attempts to boost the terror groups wreaking havoc on the country.

On September 7, at least two Syrian soldiers were killed after Israeli fighter jets targeted an army position in the west-central province of Hama, just days after the Syrian army broke the siege imposed by the Takfiri Daesh terror group on the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr.

The Syrian army said the Israeli act of aggression affirms the direct support provided by the Israeli entity" to Daesh and other terrorist outfits.

Following the missile attack, the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote to the United Nations, calling on the world body to denounce Israel's repeated acts of aggression against the country.

The ministry further urged prompt international action to stop such Israeli attacks before they further undermine the country's ongoing fight against terrorist groups.

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Turkey to deploy troops inside Idlib as part of Astana deal: Erdogan

Iran Press TV

Fri Sep 22, 2017 08:27AM

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims his country will deploy troops to Syria's Idlib region as part of the Astana agreement with Iran and Russia on "de-escalation zones."

Erdogan said in a Thursday interview with Reuters, "Under the agreement, Russians are maintaining security outside Idlib and Turkey will maintain the security inside Idlib region."

Turkey, Russia and Iran act as guarantor states in the Syria peace process which has been underway between the Syrian government and the armed opposition in the Kazakh capital, Astana, since January.

In the latest round of the Astana talks last week, the three sides agreed on the details of a fourth de-escalation zone in Syria's Idlib Province. In a joint statement, the trio said they had agreed "to allocate" their forces to patrol the zone covering Idlib and parts of the neighboring provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo regions.

"The task is not easy ... With Putin we will discuss additional steps needed to be taken in order to eradicate terrorists once and for all to restore peace," said the president, hinting at cooperation with the Russians in Turkey's future policies towards Syria.

Erdogan said the "de-escalation" zones would be further discussed in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his trip to Ankara next week.

The de-escalation zones are aimed at separating extremist groups, including Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra from other militants.

The northwestern province of Idlib borders Turkey and is largely under the control of al-Nusra Front Takfiri militants.

Russia strikes terrorists in Idlib

Under Russian air cover, Syrian government forces have been making significant gains against the Takfiri terrorist groups around the province.

On Friday, Russian submarines in the Mediterranean fired cruise missiles at militant positions in Syria's Idlib Province

The Russia army said the Kalibr missiles targeted militants, ammunition depots and fortifications in an area in Idlib, which dominated by Takfiri al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

The command centers and a training base of the militants were destroyed in the attack, which was launched days after the terrorists targeted members of the Russian military police deployed in the area.

Three Russian servicemen were wounded in the assault, which was repelled with the help of local tribes.

Secession referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan

Meanwhile, Erdogan said Turkey was considering counter-measures, including imposing sanctions, against the Kurdish region of northern Iraq over a planned September 25 referendum on the region's secession from the mainland.

"Without any further delay we are going to discuss what kind of sanctions should be imposed and when the sanctions will be imposed," Erdogan said without elaborating on the nature of the embargoes.

Turkish troops are also carrying out military exercises near the border with Iraq.

The Turkish head of state further said a cabinet meeting and a national security council session will be held on the planned Kurdish vote on Friday.

Erdogan said on Saturday the resolution on troop deployment abroad will be submitted to parliament for a vote.

The planned vote has drawn sharp criticisms from the central Baghdad government as well as the international community, particularly Iraq's neighbors.

Turkey has been especially wary of a potential secession of the Kurdistan region from Iraq as it has been over the past decades grappling with pro-independence Kurdish militancy on its soil.

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Khorramshahr

State media says Iran successfully tested a new, medium-range, ballistic missile that was on display in a military parade Friday 22 September 2017. State television aired footage of the test and in-flight video from the nose cone on Saturday 23 September 2017. It was not clear, however, when and where the test launch of the Khorramshahr / Khoramshahr missile was conducted.

Reporting by Fox News found that the test was a failed launch in January 2017, and that more recent reports of a new test were incorrect. CNN subsequently reported: "US intelligence radars and sensors "picked up no indication" of an Iranian ballistic missile launch in the days surrounding a reported test, according to a Trump administration official familiar with the latest US assessment. Iranian reports that the nation tested a new ballistic missile so far does not appear to be true, the official said, adding: 'As far as we can see, it did not happen.'"

The missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers. The Islamic Republics domestically manufactured Khorramshahr ballistic missile is said to be capable of carrying multiple warheads. Some Iranina reprots claimed it has also become smaller in size and more tactical compared to the countrys previous ballistic missiles.

Khorramshahr - Design

Not yet announced was whether the missile was either solid or liquid type, but in any case, given the higher diameter of the missile, it is a completely new design. In fact, it is clear from the largely smoke-less exhaust plume that it is a liquid propellant rocket. More to teh point, a close examination of the missile in flight makes it evident that it is using the same vernier engines seen on the North Korean KN-10 Musudan. The missile, given the first stage propulsion's brightness, is stabilized only by the "thrust vector control" system, as clearly seen on the North Korean Musudan missile, though Musudan also used lattice fins.

There are several superficial differences - the Iranian missile is longer, the warhead reenty vehicles are different, and the North Korean missile has crate fins. But the essential component - the first stage propulsion system - is clearly the same. The superficial differences may represent divergent requirements or design philosopies, or may be the normal varitions seen in prototypes. Or they may be non-functioning deceptive elements.

Khorramshahr ballistic missile, which belongs to the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), was unveiled in a military parade ceremony on the 37th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq war, known as the 'Sacred Defense' in Iran. In the ceremony also missile systems, the IRGC air defense command equipment, including air defense systems the third Khordad and Tabas, Bashir radar system, Saeqeh electronic warfare system, Raad-1, and the medium and low altitude TOR-M1 were also put on display.

The main difference between the Khoramshahr missile and other Iranian ballistic missiles is the removal of stabilizing fins from the end of the body. These fins, which are seen in the form of vertical wing trapezoid in all ballistic missiles of the Shahab family, Ghadr and Sejil, and even the satellites of the Simorgh types, play an important role in the stability of the rocket.

Removing the fins has the benefits of reducing weight and radar reflection, making it easier to store and store, transport and load on the launcher. This feature is due to a higher level of missile stability and control technology, due to the driven factors of the missile, including the precise deployment of the missile to the launcher, targeting and guidance systems.

It seems that the missile will completely replace the Shahab-2, as the quadrant and the diameter of the two are the same, only slightly increasing the length and 100 kilograms of mass increase (1.65 percent), to 300 Kilometers longer range. The missile also reaches a maximum height of 126 km in its highest range. In fact, with the mass production and production of a missile, a missile with dimensions of Shahab-1 and II has been created, but with a much greater range and the ability to benefit from new and varied warheads.

The weight of missile warhead by some sources is 645 kg, and the latest news on the country's missile developments is the ability to carry a variety of warheads. The new rocket also has the ability to be fired from underground silos.

The Khorramshahr missile, known for its testing in 2016, was published in some informal media with a diameter of more than 1.5 meters or more and a length of Shahab-3 rocket, about 15 meters in a parade. According to the announcement, the missile had reached a range of 2000 kilometers and can carry single or multiple warheads up to 1,800 kilograms.

The warhead seen in the Khorramshahr missile is of a simple conical type with a non-sharp tip with low curvature to reduce the heat-damaging effects of high flying speeds and hypersonics. But it can be expected that other warheads would be installed, such as those on Sajjil and Qadr types. Based on the apparent shape of the Khorramshahr cap at the nose, it was estimated by oen source that the speed of the rocket might be more than 15 Mach.

Khorramshahr missile is the first candidate for use in a sub-launcher in the future, due to its structure and the lack of need for a fins and a shorter length than the Sajil and Emad missiles. The detachable warhead can also be designed with the experience of the Emad rocket, which is said to have a multi-meter error in the 2000 km range, with guidance to the end of the track, although aerodynamic control equipment is not visible on the warhead of the unveiled Khorramshahr.

Khorramshahr - Commentary

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani in a speech at the ceremony, attended by senior military officials, emphasized that Iran's arms are aimed at defense of the country and of regional nations against aggression of major powers and terrorism. Rouhani vowed to strengthen the countrys missile capabilities, state media reported. The statement comes amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington after Donald Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly. The Iranian leader addressed the military on Friday, during a parade marking the start of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar.

Rouhani said that the country will boost its military capabilities, from missiles to ground, air and sea forces. The military will be strengthened to the extent that Iran considers necessary, he added. "We will increase our military power as a deterrent. We will strengthen our missile capabilities...We will not seek permission from anyone to defend our country," Rouhani said, as cited by the Irna news agency. The president stressed the defensive nature of their weapons. Their purpose is to defend the country and the region from the invasion of the great powers and from terrorism, he said. He emphasized that, like it or not, Tehran will defend the oppressed people of Yemen, Syria and Palestine.

In his first speech at the UN on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump called Iran a depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos, accusing it of funding terrorists and undermining the stability of the entire Middle East. The foolish, very ugly, and ignoble speech of the US president, with its gangster and cowboy language full of sheer lies, is rooted in their anger, frustration, and light-headedness, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in Tehran.

Khorramshahr - Nomenclature

The Iraqis invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. Iraq committed 7 of its 12 divisions to the invasion, 5 of them entering Khuzestan. The objective of the latter was to seize four cities - Khoramshahr, Abadan, Dezful and Ahvaz. This would enable the Iraqis to cut off the main reinforcement route to the province from Tehran, and would deliver the Shatt Al Arab into their hands. The Iraqis received their first serious opposition when they attempted to take Khoramshahr. The city, defended by several thousand Pasdaran and regular army troops, put up a stiff resistance. Saddam ordered his commandos into Khoramshahr to clear it, which was accomplished by 24 October 1980.

Irregular Iranian forces, however, continued to fight. They offered prolonged resistance and inflicted heavy casualties. Iraq eventually won this battle, but at a high cost in time and resources that ultimately served to halt the entire offensive against Iran. The intensity of fighting during the battle for Khorramshahr earned the city the nickname, City of Blood.

The Iranian defenders, outnumbered 4 to 1, held the city for 26 days. Although the Iranian defenders eventually lost the city, its defense allowed the remaining Iranian forces time to organize and redeploy. Furthermore, the winter rains that followed the battle turned much of the region into a sea of mud and largely halted further Iraqi efforts. The Iraqi armys offensive thrusts into Iran lost momentum as a result of the defense of Khorramshahr.

By the spring of 1982 the Iranians had turned the war around. They lifted the siege of Abadan and shortly thereafter recaptured Khoramshahr. All this was accomplished in three months of quite hard fighting during which heavy casualties were reported on both sides. After the fall of Khoramshahr in 1982, Iran modified the tactic of the human wave attack. At Khoramshahr and during its earlier campaigns in Khuzestan, the Iranians had infiltrated Iraqi lines prior to making their wild rushes. The one-two-punch effect of this maneuver disoriented the Iraqis. But later, when they stormed Basrah, the Iranians dispensed with the infiltration phase, and concentrated solely on the headlong charge. This was much easier for the Iraqis to handle.





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Rupert Methodists hold dinner and bazaar

The Rupert United Methodist Church will hold its Bounty of the Harvest dinner and bazaar on Oct. 6 from 4-7 p.m., at 605 H St. The meal will feature pulled smoked pork, oven-roasted new red potatoes, Methodist squash, Carolina-style coleslaw, applesauce and home-baked rolls and pies. A free-will donation would be appreciated. A baked food sale and craft bazaar will run concurrently.

Unitarian Universalists inquire into Balm of Gilead

Where do we find healing? Where do we go to be comforted, blessed, restored? In biblical times, there was a high-quality ointment called the Balm of Gilead. It had healing properties, and the term became a metaphor for a universal cure grounded in spirituality.

Beautiful hymns, prayers and teachings reflect this idea and call us to open our hearts to love and to be made whole.

As Unitarian Universalists, we have a proud tradition of responding to the imperatives of love and justice, to work with those who are marginalized and oppressed in society and the world.

Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote: the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equality and compassion in human relations; and acceptance of one another.

Newcomers of all religious paths, or none at all, are always welcome. We are handicapped accessible. Please park at the rear of the building. Child care is available.

Join us at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the Vendor Blender and Event Center, 588 Addison Ave, W., in Twin Falls. The Vendor Blender is located by the old hospital near the intersection of Martin St. and Addison Ave. W.

For information please contact Ken Whiting at 208-734-9161.

Guest Celebrant at Ascension

Ascension Episcopal Church welcomes the Reverend Marilyn Butler as guest celebrant for the service of Holy Communion at 9 a.m. Sunday. Reverend Butler is priest at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church in Buhl. She is a strong supporter and founding member of the Boys and Girls Club in Buhl.

Nursery care for children under 7 years is available from 8:45 a.m. until after the service. A fellowship coffee hour is held after the worship service. Ascension Cafe meets after the service, concluding the discussion about the Lords Prayer.

Adult Religious Study meets Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Memorial Room at the church. Led by David Duhaime, the group will begin the first of a four part series on the Gospels, the writer, their purpose and the time frame. For questions, call Dave Duhaime 208-733-8881.

On Wednesdays, Knit-Us-Together, the handwork group, meets from 1 to 3 p.m. working on prayer shawls, baby blankets and hats to donate, or on individual handwork projects.

All are welcome for worship, study and fellowship. Ascension Episcopal Church is handicapped accessible and is located at 371 Eastland Dr. North, Twin Falls. More information about Ascension can be found at www.episcopaltwinfalls.org or call 208-733-1248.

Twin Falls Methodists host Fall Concert

The Twin Falls First United Methodist Church will hold a Fall Music Concert at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 1 featuring pipe organ, choir and a short cantata. The program is directed by staff musician Ryker Harris and will feature local musicians. The performance is open to the public. A free will donation will be taken for Twin Falls Senior Center Meals on Wheels.
People showing concern over Rohingya Muslims, keep convenient silence on oppression of Hindus by fanatics in Bangladesh !

Dhaka : Few fanatics kidnapped a 15-year- old Hindu girl at Sonatola in Bogra District of Bangladesh; took her to an unknown place and gang raped her after her conversion to Islam. The above news was published on 17th September by daily newspaper Aalo Protidin of Bangladesh. The oppressed girl was released by police owing to efforts made by Bangladesh Minority Watch. This girl lived in Hobiganj district and worked in a textile mill in Gazipur district. One day when she was returning home from work, she was kidnapped. Bikash Karmakar, a representative of Bangladesh Minority Watch heard about the incident of few fanatics from Bogra district kidnapping a Hindu girl and he started working for release of this girl. He lodged a complaint with Sonatola police station and with the help of police, started searching for her. Finally, he got some clue but that time, about 150 jihadis again kidnapped the girl in front of police. Large number of police chased them and released the girl. She was then brought to police station. She told before Magistrate at Bogra that she was raped by fanatics. She was later handed over to her parents since she was minor. The parents thanked Bangladesh Minority Watch saying that their daughter was released due to its efforts.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced on Wednesday that it purchased the printers manuscript of the Book of Mormon, the earliest surviving copy of the original manuscript. The LDS church purchased the text from the Community of Christ for $35 million, according to a release.

It is the highest price ever paid for a manuscript, edging out Bill Gates purchase of the the Leonardo da Vinci Codex Leicester for just under $31 million in 1994.

Historian John Hajicek told The Salt Lake Tribune that acquiring its founding document is a game-changer for the Mormon church.

I think of it similarly as if the United States had an opportunity to buy its Constitution back from another country, Hajicek, of the website mormonism.com, told the LDS-owned Deseret News.

The first edition of the Book of Mormon was released in 1830, and the printers manuscript was the guide by which the books type was set. Though less than 30 percent of the original manuscript exists, the printers copy is almost complete, according to the Community of Christ.

The money for the purchase was provided by anonymous donors, according to the Community of Christ. Mormon church officials did not confirm the purchase price, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The Community of Christ has had the printers manuscript since 1903. The Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, formed after Smiths death in 1844.
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A new species of animal  a "mirabilis" troglodyte  has been discovered in a cave in Turkmenistan after scientists used smelly cheese to catch it.

The researchers reported the tiny creature represented not just a new species but a whole new genus or family of species. They named it Turkmenocampa mirabilis, meaning unusual, amazing, wonderful, remarkable creature from Turkmenistan, in honour of its special status.

The first ever purely subterranean animal ever found in the country was discovered in a remove cave at the foot of Mount Koytendag in a desert-like area with many ravines and ridges, which the scientists believe could hold many other species currently unknown to science.

It may not look much but scientists named it after the Latin word for 'amazing, wonderful, remarkable' (Alberto Sendra)

The mountain has more than 300 caves and potholes, including one that goes more than 35 miles underground. One cave, called Gulshirin, is known for its beautiful snow-white passages and extraordinary formations.

The new creature, which was discovered in the Kaptarhana cave, is pale and eyeless insect-like creature just a few millimetres long. But what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in its significance as a species, according to the scientists who found it.

What we have here is not only a new remarkable organism, but also an amazing and unusual cave critter that has undergone a long evolutionary journey to adapt to the underground environment of Central Asia," said Dr Alberto Sendra, of Alcala University in Spain.

His colleague, Professor Pavel Stoev, of the National Museum of Natural History in Bulgaria, added: It is places such as Kaptarhana that can turn the tables by giving us new insights about the biodiversity richness, evolutionary history, formation and functioning of the underground ecosystems of this part of the world.

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

In order to catch mirabilis, the scientists spent about eight hours looking for them in the cave, and also set pitfall traps baited with smelly cheese. While the visual search drew a blank, a number of the animals could not resist the scent of the cheese and were caught in the traps.

The discovery was described in the journal Subterranean Biology.
London, Sep 23 (IBNS): Deeming ride-hailing app Uber not 'fit and proper', Transport for London (TfL) said it will not renew the company's private hire licence, reports said.

In recent months, Uber has faced a series of backlash due to its policies.

The move by TfL has received support from London Mayor Saqid Khan, who said, "I fully support TfL's decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety and security."

However, Uber has slammed the move by TfL and said it will challenge the decision.

In its statement, the company said, "...far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies".

Uber's present licence is due to expire on Sep 30. However, if it challenges the decision, it will be allowed to ply as usual till a verdict is reached.

Presently, almost 3.5 million passengers and 40,000 drivers use the Uber app in London, according to a BBC report.

The company has 21 days in hand to challenge TfL's decision.

In June, earlier this year, co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick resigned after the company was found guilty of malpractices.

Uber also sacked 20 employees after a law firm investigated and concluded that the company was involved in several crimes, including sexual harassment, bullying, and retaliation for reporting problems.
Cassia County

Felony sentencings

Justin Jameson Cox; felony possession of controlled substance, guilty, $285.50 costs, $100 restitution, two years determinate time, four years indeterminate time, 235 days credited; felony evidence destruction, alteration or concealment, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony institution to convey, possess, receive, receive, obtain or remove, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony major contrabandcorrectional facilities introduced to convey, possess,, receive, obtain or remove, dismiss on motion of prosecutor, $100 restitution.

Justin Jameson Cox; felony grand theft, guilty, $495.50 costs, two years determinate time, four years indeterminate time, 207 days credited; misdemeanor petit theft, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Bradley Allen Pedersen; felony possession of weapon by convicted felon, guilty, $495.50 costs, one year determinate time, four years indeterminate time, 119 days credited; felony unlawful possession by convicted felon, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony theft by receiving, processing or disposing of stolen property, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony possession of controlled substance, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; misdemeanor petit theft, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; misdemeanor possession of controlled substanceuse or possess with intent to use.

Camren Charles Pelton; felony possession of controlled substance, guilty, $535.50 costs, $200 restitution, four years probation, three years determinate time, four years indeterminate time, 84 days credited, penitentiary suspended; felony domestic violence with traumatic injury, dismissed on motion of prosecutor; felony attempted strangulation, dismissed on motion of prosecutor, $200 restitution; misdemeanor drug paraphernaliause or possess with intent to use, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Felony dismissal

Wednesday Melissa Sajatovich; felony grand theft by receiving, possessing or disposing, dismissed on motion of prosecutor.

Driving under the influence sentencing

Guillermo Rafael Guadarrama Garduna; infraction driving exceeding the posted speed limit, dismissed by court; misdemeanor driving under the influence, guilty, $300 fine, $202.50 costs, $503.50 restitution, 180 days drivers license suspended, 12 months probation, 90 days jail, 80 days suspended, one day credited, two days community service in lieu of jail; misdemeanor drivers licensefail to purchase or invalid, dismissed by court; misdemeanor alcoholic beverageconsume or possess open container by driver, dismissed by court, $503.50 restitution.
Melbourne, Sept 23 (IBNS): New Australian-led research has confirmed that smartphone apps are an effective treatment option for depression, paving the way for safe and accessible interventions for the millions of people around the world diagnosed with this condition.

Depression is the most prevalent mental disorder and a leading cause of global disability, with mental health services worldwide struggling to meet the demand for treatment.

In an effort to tackle this rising challenge, researchers from Australias National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM), Harvard Medical School, The University of Manchester, and the Black Dog Institute in Australia examined the efficacy of smartphone-based treatments for depression.

The researchers systematically reviewed 18 randomised controlled trials which examined a total of 22 different smartphone-delivered mental health interventions.

The studies involved more than 3400 male and female participants between the ages of 18-59 with a range of mental health symptoms and conditions including major depression, mild to moderate depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and insomnia.

The first of its kind research, published today in World Psychiatry found that overall smartphone apps significantly reduced peoples depressive symptoms, suggesting these new digital therapies can be useful for managing the condition.

Lead author of the paper, NICM postdoctoral research fellow Joseph Firth says this was an important finding which presented a new opportunity for providing accessible and affordable care for patients who might not otherwise have access to treatment.

The majority of people in developed countries own smartphones, including younger people who are increasingly affected by depression, said Mr Firth.

Combined with the rapid technological advances in this area, these devices may ultimately be capable of providing instantly accessible and highly effective treatments for depression, reducing the societal and economic burden of this condition worldwide."

Co-author, NICM deputy director, Professor Jerome Sarris highlighted the importance of the findings for opening up non-stigmatising and self-managing avenues of care.

"The data shows us that smartphones can help people monitor, understand and manage their own mental health. Using apps as part of an 'integrative medicine' approach for depression has been demonstrated to be particularly useful for improving mood and tackling symptoms in these patients, said Professor Sarris.

When it comes to the question of Which app is best? and For who?, the results suggested these interventions so far may be most applicable to those with mild to moderate depression, as the benefits in major depression have not been widely studied as of yet.

The researchers found no difference in apps which apply principles of mindfulness compared to cognitive behavioural therapy or mood monitoring programs.

However, interventions that used entirely self-contained apps  meaning the app did not reply on other aspects such as clinician and computer feedback  were found to be significantly more effective than non-self-contained apps.

The authors suggested this might be due to the comprehensiveness of these particular stand-alone apps rather than the combination of therapies.

Despite the promising early results, there is currently no evidence to suggest that using apps alone can outperform standard psychological therapies, or reduce the need for antidepressant medications.

According to co-author and co-director of the digital psychiatry program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a clinical fellow in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr John Torous, the research is a timely and promising step forward in the use of smartphones in mental health.

"Patients and doctors are faced with a vast array of mental health apps these days, and knowing which ones are actually helpful is imperative, said Dr Torous.

This research provides much needed information on the effectiveness of apps for depression, and offers important clues into the types of apps which can help patients manage their condition."

Jennifer Nicholas, a PhD Candidate at Black Dog Institute and co-author of the paper says with the knowledge that apps can be effective for managing depression, future research must now investigate which features produce these beneficial effects.

Given the multitude of apps available  many of them unregulated  its critical that we now unlock which specific app attributes reap the greatest benefits, to help ensure that all apps available to people with depression are effective.
Kolkata, Sept 23 (IBNS): In the glittering presence of diplomats and Kolkata's celebrities from diverse fields, West Bengal Keshari Nath Tripathi on Saturday inaugurated the Manicktalla Chaltabagan Lohapatty Durga Puja's aShanti Wellness Care Dhak Utsav 2017a by playing the traditional dhak.

The governor played the dhak along with the heads of foreign consuls, leading authors and poets of Bengal, eminent citizens of Kolkata from the world of art, culture, education, sports, politics, industry and glamour at the ITC Sonar - the hospitality partner, .

Devendra Goel, Managing Director, Shanti Wellness Care, announced that his organization would extend diagnostic healthcare services to those recommended by the Governor.

It is an honour to associate with Chaltabagan Durga Puja which is one of the top Pujas of Kolkata and also engaged in various social welfare activities. Shanti Wellness Care is a one-of-a-kind modern diagnostic centre that believes in providing hassle-free services that make patients feel at home in an ambiance inducing a sense of wellness.

Besides fun and revelry, Pujas is also a time for appreciating our society and culture. It is an honour to welcome our Hon'ble Governor, Shri Keshari Nath Tripathi and the eminent authors, poets, diplomats and other dignitaries, said Devendra Goel, Director, Shanti Wellness Care.

Meeryung Hall, wife of US Consul General, Craig L Hall, sang a Rabindra Sangeet, at the event while Alan Gemmel, Director, British Council, recited a poetry.

Sundeep Bhutoria, Chairman, Manicktalla Chaltabagan Lohapatty Durga Puja Committee, said: This year Chaltabagan Durga Puja is celebrating its 75th year of Puja. Over the years Chaltabagan Puja has many firsts to its credit having popularized events like khunti puja, sindur khela, dhak mahotsav. The Puja Committee is also engaged in various social welfare activities during the Pujas including helping the marginalised and providing medical assistance to the needy. We are also celebrating 2017 as the UK-India Year of Culture with the British Council.

There were more than 30 eminent litterateurs of Bengal at the function along with members of Kolkata Book Sellers and Publishers Guild. Among others were Sirshendu Mukherjee, Samaresh Majumdar, Pabitra Sarkar and Srijato at the Dhak Utsav

The theme of Manicktalla Chaltabagan Durga Puja this year is Freedom. The puja mandap is being decked up to convey how even the birds and animals love to be free and remain unshackled. The theme would celebrate the `Free Spirit of living beings.

Trideb Chatterjee, General Secretary, Book Sellers and Publishers Guild, said "Bengal is the only place and Bengalis are the only class who make literature out of an occasion."

"Sharod sahitya is like a welcome to Durga Pujas and this year Kolkata Literature Festival is collaborating with Chaltabagan Pujo to celebrate the spirit of Pujo at the Dhak Utsav with all the leading Bengali authors, poets and literary giants, he said.

Atul Bhalla, Area Manager East, ITC Hotels, and General Manager of ITC Sonar, the hospitality partner of Shanti Wellness Care Dhak Utsav 2016 said: We are delighted to participate 8in Dhak Utsav 2017. Dhak is integral to the festivities of Bengal, especially Pujo and a part of the cultural heritage of this region. This is in keeping with ITC Hotels ethos of Responsible Luxury,

The Manicktalla Chaltabagan Durga Puja, which started in 1943, has now become one of the top crowd-pullers in city. Thousands of visitors, overseas guests and eminent citizens of Kolkata visit the puja pandal each year. The Puja Committee also carries out various social welfare activities.
Image: Screengrab from YouTube

Srinagar, Sep 23 (IBNS): In a fresh statement issued by Zakir Musa, the leader of the Kashmir-base Al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, said that his team won't rest until Kashmir is liberated from India, reports said.

Musa, a former Hizbul Mujahideen leader, urged all Muslims to give up comfort and join him in the fight to establish the Islamic Caliphate.

He also stated the example of Muhammad bin Qasim, who in the eighth century killed the then Hindu king of Sindh and established Shariah rule in the province.

Muhammad bin Qasim later ruled over Al-Sindh, a region in the Indian sub-continent which falls under present day Pakistan.

According to Musa, Al-Sindh is the first region in the sub-continent to implement the Shariah rule.

He stated the following via Ghazwat ul Hind's official Telegram channel, Al Hurr, on Thursday night.

"On the way via the Arabic Sea, the Navy of the Hindu king, Raja Dahir of his Sindh kingdom attacked this pilgrim ship and made Muslim women as his concubines. An Arabic...Muslim woman smuggled a letter out to the Governor, Hajjaj bin Yusuf, of the caliphate for help. Infuriated by this news, he sent the caliphate army to attack and kill the Sindh Hindu king. As Muhammad bin Qasim was the Army General for the caliphate, he was sent by his paternal uncle, the Governor himself," Musa added.

However, venting ire against the present Muslim rules, he calling them 'boot lickers'.

"The glorious histories of Islamic Caliphates, the Muslim rulers in the present era have become the boot-lickers of the tyrants," he said.



Image: Screengrab from YouTube
Srinagar, Sep 23 (IBNS): Two Border Security Force (BSF) troopers and three civilians were injured in a heavy border firing between the Indian and Pakistani army, media reports said on Saturday.

The police told media: "The two troopers and three civilians were injured in the overnight Pakistan ceasefire violation in R.S. Pura and Ramgarh sectors."

"The Pakistan Rangers used mortars, automatics and small arms to target over half a dozen BSF posts and civilian areas in the firing that started at 10 p.m. Our troops effectively retaliated," the police added.

Residents of the border areas have started to shift to safer areas.
Varanasi, Sep 23 (IBNS): Prime minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, while addressing a gathering in the city, said his government is trying to double the farmers' income by 2022, when the country will enter the 75th year of Independence.

Modi said this after attending a cattle fair in Shahanshahpur in Varanasi as he is on the second day of a two-day visit to Uttar Pradesh.

The prime minister, along with Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, was present at the cattle fair. He even congratulated the UP government for organising such a fair, which he thinks "will benefit the farmers".

"Many farmers who hesitate to take care of the animals, will be able to do from now," the PM said.

The Prime minister, in his first visit to the state since Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s big win in the 2017 assembly election, emphasised on cleanliness.

He stated cleanliness, which he sees like a "worship", is the responsibility of every citizen in the country.

Illustrating the benefits of the cleanliness, Modi said: "Cleanliness will actually relieve farmers from monetary pressure which comes during diseases."

Apart from farmers' issue and cleanliness, the Prime Minister, took up the issue of open defecation in the country and stated how his government is trying to stop it with an aim to reach out to the girls and women of the state, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Modi draws a parallel between the toilet and respect for women in his 30 minutes speech. "Toilet means respect for girls and women."

The fourth issue which he brought up, while addressing the huge gathering, was the government's scheme Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) which aims to build houses for poor people.

Highlighting the benefits of the scheme, the Prime Minister, attacked the former state government which was run by the Samajwadi Party (SP) under chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

He claimed the SP-led UP government, which suffered a crushing defeat in the 2017 assembly election, were "reluctant to build houses for poor".

"The central government asked the then UP government to send the number of people whose houses are to be built but they were reluctant. Later, the government sent a list of only 10,000 people," the PM said.

"After Yogi Adityanath became the CM of the state, we got applications of lakhs of people to build the houses," Modi added.

The Prime Minister, who is also an MP from Varanasi, congratulated Yogi Adityanath for successfully running the UP government in the first six months.
Gurugram, Sep 23 (IBNS): A three-member Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team visited the Ryan International School in Gurugram, NCR, to probe into the death of class two student Pradyuman Thakur, according to media reports on Saturday.

Twelve forensic experts were also at the school, media reported.

Police on Thursday asked Ryan International School's founder and Chairman Augustine Pinto, Managing Director Grace and CEO Ryan Pinto to join the probe in the death of Pradyuman Thakur, a class two student, who was found in a pool of blood inside the washroom of the school with his throat slit open, media reports said.

A conductor of the school's bus was arrested in connection with the incident. He allegedly confessed to have committed the crime after failing to sexually abuse the child.

As a massive outrage prevailed over the shocking incident, police have arrested two top officials of the school while the Supreme Court has accepted a petition from the victim's father for a CBI probe into it.
New Delhi, Sep 23 (IBNS): The nation wide Swachhata Hi Seva campaign is now entering its second week. The inaugural week saw a wave of cleanliness activities across the country, the Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation said in a release on Saturday.

The ministry highlighted several efforts in its release.

In Chennai, to keep the city clean and green, a battery of Judges from the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court joined hands with public, students, officials of the district administration, city corporation, police, Public Works and Income Tax departments in a massive cleaning drive along the Vaigai river.

In Maharashtra 430 gram panchayats have been declared open defecation free and over 58 thousand toilets have been constructed since September 15.

In Odisha, sand artist, Sudarsan Pattnaik used his award money to construct two toilets for fisherman in Puri, Odisha after receiving a personal letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to engage with the cause of swachhata, the release said.

The artist tweeted, " Honoured to receive a letter from Hon. PM @narendramodi Ji to join #SwachhBharat campaign through my SandArt & activities #SwachhataHiSeva."

A young girl from Bihar created a song on Swachhata, which is drawing significant attention and accolades.

In Jharkhand swachhata sentiment was spread to educational institutions by appealing to the universities to clean their campuses.

The television channel DD Sahayadri has started a special series on Swachhata Hi Seva, which will be broadcast everyday till Oct 2, the release said.



Image: Swachh Bharat/Twitter
Mohali, Sep 23 (IBNS): Police in Mohali, near Chandigarh, have began investigations into the death of senior journalist and his mother, according to media reports on Saturday.

Journalist KJ Singh, a former news editor of The Indian Express, and his 92-year old mother were found dead at their residence in Mohali on Saturday.

The police suspects Singh and his mother, Gurcharan Kaur, were murdered, reported NDTV.

The police are at the residence and investigating into the case.
Varanasi, Sept 23 (IBNS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday performed Shramdaan for the construction of a twin pit toilet at Shahanshahpur village in Varanasi.

He interacted with the people, who have resolved to make the village open-defecation-free.

He appreciated their initiative of naming the toilet "Izzat Ghar."

The Prime Minister visited a Pashudhan Arogya Mela organised at the village. He was briefed on various health and medical activities being performed at the premises. These included surgeries on cattle, ultrasonography etc.

Addressing a large gathering on the occasion, the Prime Minister congratulated the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, and the State Government, for the successful setting up of the Pashudhan Arogya Mela.

He said this is a new effort which would benefit the animal husbandry sector in the State. He said that increase in milk productivity will lead to economic benefit for the people. He said cooperatives can help consolidate the gains in the dairy sector, as has been the case in other parts of the country.

Describing the well-being of people as the priority for governance, the Prime Minister reiterated the pledge to double farm incomes by 2022.

He noted that soil health cards are benefiting farmers significantly.

He said each one of us should resolve to make a positive contribution by 2022, to achieve the India that our freedom fighters dreamt of.

The Prime Minister said that the feeling of "cleanliness being our responsibility", needs to be inculcated among all.

He said this would go a long way towards ensuring wellness, and protecting the health of the poor.

He said Swachhta is like a prayer for him, and cleanliness is a way to serve the poor.
New Delhi, Sept 23 (IBNS): A multi-agency exercise was conducted on the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake as the final event of aPralay Sahayama in Hyderabad on Saturday.

The event demonstrated efforts of all central and state agencies, National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and the Armed Forces towards jointly tackling an urban flooding scenario in Hyderabad.

The Minister of State for Defence Dr. Subhash Bhamre who was the Chief Guest on the occasion, congratulated the organising committee for the successful conduct of the exercise.

The Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana Mohammad Mehmood Ali was the Guest of Honour. General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C) Southern Command Lt Gen PM Hariz was the conducting authority of the exercise. For the purpose of the exercise, Hussain Sagar Lake was transformed into urban colonies partly submerged under water, post heavy showers in the city.

A large number of dummy structures depicting multi-storied buildings and houses with stranded people, power stations, educational institutes etc., were erected in the lake in an inundated condition.

The hapless stranded occupants of these dwellings were rescued in joint operations carried out by the State Government agencies, Police, State Fire & Emergency Services, NDRF, CISF and the Armed Forces.

The Indian Air Force and the Army Aviation employed the Mi-17 helicopters, Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) and Chetak Helicopter for aerial evacuation, demonstrating special skills in hovering and winching. The massive Mi-17 lowered a Gemini class inflatable boat of the Indian Navy for rescuing the trapped citizens.

The agile ALH and Chetak Helicopters virtually hovered over the roof tops and winched in people trapped in stranded, inaccessible buildings. Special Forces such as the Army Commandos and Marine Commandos from the Indian Navy carried out a highly synchronized Search and Rescue operation in the flooded colonies.

Dog Squad of NDRF and Telangana State police were pressed into action to search for trapped personnel. Relief activities such as evacuation of rescued people, provisioning of medical care and distribution of essential supplies was carried out by multiple agencies in a coordinated and efficient manner.

The exercise brought out the role and function of the State Emergency Operations in coordinating conduct of the joint operations. Further the significance of early warning systems of agencies like Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) and Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) was emphasized.

The exercise culminated with a static display which demonstrated the efficient and functional layout of a relief and rehabilitation camp for the displaced persons.

The camp catered for emergency medical assistance and other essential services for the needy. Indian vendors showcased state-of-the-art disaster management equipment and related wares. NGOs such as Plan India, Care India, Sphere India, etc., also participated, bringing out their capabilities, organization and operational strategies.
TWIN FALLS  Twin Falls police have released surveillance photos of a gray car in connection to two reports Monday of suspected child enticement.

Police are following up on some tips from citizens, Twin Falls Police Sgt. Luke Allen said Friday. He doesnt have further updates about the investigation.

Twin Falls police received two separate reports Monday of a man encouraging young girls to get into his car, the latest in a string of reports about suspicious characters approaching children near Twin Falls schools.

Both reports referenced a man in a gray four-door car with Idaho license plates near Harrison Elementary School.

The first incident happened just before 5:30 p.m. at Harrison Street and Altair Drive. A white man in his 30s or 40s who was wearing sunglasses started talking with a girl.

The second incident happened only moments later, about 5:45 p.m. A different girl was walking in the area of Wirsching Avenue and Polk Street. She reported a gray car with tinted windows pull up next to her and a man said he could give her a ride home.
New York, Sep 23 (IBNS): Lashing out at Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said Pakistan is known to the world as "a terrorist state".

Raising the issue of terrorism at UNGA, Swaraj criticised Pakistan for turning their country into a hub of terrorism.

During her address on Saturday, Swaraj said: "Both India and Pakistan became Independent in 1947. While India is known as an IT superpower, the world knows Pakistan as the terrorist state in the world."

Swaraj even reasoned out for such a difference in perception towards India and Pakistan. She said: "There have been multiple governments in India since Independence, but all worked towards the development of the country unlike Pakistan."

With an attempt to unmask Pakistan at the international stage, Swaraj vehemently attacked the neighbouring country, saying: "While we (India) made Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Pakistan created Jaish-e- Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen."

"While India made scholars, scientists, doctors, Pakistan created jihadis" she added.

The external affairs minister even urged all nations at the UNGA to view terrorism through a single lens. "Time has come when we all should introspect and perceive terrorism in the similar manner".

Swaraj's strong rhetoric during her address at the UNGA came after Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi accused India of ignoring the plight of Kashmiris, a day ago.

He said the 'struggle of the people in the region is being brutally suppressed by India'.

Apart from attacking Pakistan, the Indian external affairs minister highlighted several schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana that the present central government has brought into force since coming to power in 2014 for the benefit of the poor people.

She stated several present crises in the world like terrorism, climate change, hatred, security issues need to be solved for the progress of the nation.

"We prepared an agenda for 2015-2030 two years ago. Now we need to achieve our goals if we have to come out of these crises," she said.

"We all need to take bold decisions" the external affairs minister added.
New Delhi, Sep 23 (IBNS): Prime minister Narendra Modi praised external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj for her speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday as the latter spoke about combating terrorism along with hitting out at Pakistan.

PM Modi tweeted to say: "Incredible speech by EAM @SushmaSwaraj at the @UN! She has made India extremely proud at the world stage."

In the second tweet, Modi said: "EAM @SushmaSwaraj was insightful in identifying global challenges & strongly reiterated India's commitment to create a better planet. #UNGA."

Praising the comments made by the external affairs minister on terrorism, the prime minister said:"A strong message was given by @SushmaSwaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace. #UNGA."

Lashing out at Pakistan at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Saturday, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said Pakistan is known to the world as "a terrorist state".

Raising the issue of terrorism at UNGA, Swaraj criticised Pakistan for turning their country into a hub of terrorism.

During her address on Saturday, Swaraj said: "Both India and Pakistan became Independent in 1947. While India is known as an IT superpower, the world knows Pakistan as the terrorist state in the world."

Swaraj even reasoned out for such a difference in perception towards India and Pakistan. She said: "There have been multiple governments in India since Independence, but all worked towards the development of the country unlike Pakistan."

With an attempt to unmask Pakistan at the international stage, Swaraj vehemently attacked the neighbouring country, saying: "While we (India) made Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Pakistan created Jaish-e- Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen."

"While India made scholars, scientists, doctors, Pakistan created jihadis" she added.

The external affairs minister even urged all nations at the UNGA to view terrorism through a single lens. "Time has come when we all should introspect and perceive terrorism in the similar manner".

Swaraj's strong rhetoric during her address at the UNGA came after Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi accused India of ignoring the plight of Kashmiris, a day ago.

He said the 'struggle of the people in the region is being brutally suppressed by India'.

Apart from attacking Pakistan, the Indian external affairs minister highlighted several schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana that the present central government has brought into force since coming to power in 2014 for the benefit of the poor people.

She stated several present crises in the world like terrorism, climate change, hatred, security issues need to be solved for the progress of the nation.

"We prepared an agenda for 2015-2030 two years ago. Now we need to achieve our goals if we have to come out of these crises," she said.

"We all need to take bold decisions" the external affairs minister added.
New York, Sept 22(Just Earth News): The President of the Central African Republic (CAR), Faustin Archange TouadAra, reaffirmed on Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly his determination and that of his Government to make the peace efforts succeed, but stressed that the country suffers from limited capacity as it continues to cope with a raft of post-conflict challenges.

In addition to the weak State response to the violence of armed groups, Touadera regretted that even the staff of the UN Multi-Dimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission, known by itss French acronym, UNMISCA, is not sufficient to cope to the challenges of protecting civilian populations.

The increase in security threats due to violence imposed by armed groups required that steps be taken to curb the risks of widespread crisis," he told UN Member delegations attending the Assemblys annual general debate.

With this in mind, he called on the international community to increase the military strength of MINUSCA, particularly in view of the immensity of the territory it must cover. Touadera also urged that the operations mandate, which is coming to an end very soon, be revised to assist the Government in regaining control over areas with natural resources.

He went on to welcome the unprecedented mobilization of international solidarity in for CAR towards the implementation of the Rehabilitation and Peacebuilding Programme (RCPCA), after the November 2016 Brussels Donor Conference. "To follow up on the implementation of this plan, we have concluded an Agreement serving as a new framework for mutual engagement between the Central African Republic and the international community," said Touadera.

He outlined his hope that steps would be taken in 2017 to establish dialogue with the armed groups, noting that other major efforts would focus on implementing the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme. He would also seek greater dialogue with regional actors in hopes they would provide political support for the road map for peace and national reconciliation.

UN Photo/Cia Pak

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): The first speaker to take the podium on the fourth day of the United Nations General Assembly annual high-level debate, President Paul Biya of Cameroon, underscored that peace, essential for the survival of humanity and sustainable development, ais dangerously under threat,a notably from terrorism, conflicts, poverty and climate disruptions.



On Thursday, I would say, we are all beggars for peace. And such persistent threats are of utmost concern to us all, he said, pointing to terrorist attacks around the globe.



Biya condemned ongoing conflicts in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East that are wreaking hardships, deaths, refugees and displaced persons. Noting that his country  hosting thousands of refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria  understands their struggles, he urged policies, behaviours and actions to re-focus attention on people.



Turning to climate change, he cited the two main challenges for Africa: the ongoing forest degradation in Central Africa, calling it the earths second lung; and the desertification affecting Lake Chad, which is essential for the survival of communities and biodiversity.



Despite the numerous UN declarations and resolutions, as well as development decades, plans of action and other agendas, the result, noted Biya has been that poverty persists and the gap between rich and poor countries continues to widen. Let us all mobilize in a powerful surge of solidarity to roll back poverty. Let us match our actions with our words, he pressed. To provide conditions for a decent life, let us thus focus on People! urged President Biya.



UN Photo/Cia Pak







Source: www.justearthnews.com










New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): Tackling the numerous complex challenges society is confronted with on Friday will require more than just adeclaratory undertakings,a Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania told the United Nations, stressing that real progress demands responsibility and action.





Pointing to the links between the threats of terrorism, climate change, and inequality, and the ways in which they have merge in unprecedented fashion to undercut safe, healthy and enjoyable livelihoods across the globe, Rama told delegations attending the UN General Assemblys annual debate on Friday that on one hand, we live in inspiring times [] but on the other, it seems like the world has lost its energy and vision.



He said global terrorism and radicalization have become a peril that continues to strike blindly and persistently. At the same time, some 65 million people, the highest number since World War II, have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to these acts and threats, among others. The ills are being exacerbated by climate change-driven extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and more intense.



Citing the universal desire for safety, including freedom from oppression, persecution and violence, Rama said: To achieve these goals, we need to go beyond declaratory undertakings. People rightly demand us to show responsibility and ability to act.



As such, he called for concerted action towards the 2030 Agenda and its landmark Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and went on to detail Albanias commitment to human rights, citing his pride in the number of women joining the countrys Government leadership.



Turning to international relations, Rama described his countrys mission to join the European Union as a main priority. It is not just one objective in our foreign policy; it is not a contractual relation of sorts. For us, the European integration lies at the heart of our overall development since it touches every cell of our development architecture, he explained.



UN Photo/Cia Pak



Source: www.justearthnews.com












New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): Efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, currently the worldas largest, are being hampered by insufficient funding and other challenges, the top United Nations relief official warned on Friday .

Despite the extraordinary scale of the suffering linked to the brutal conflict, including the threat of famine and the worlds worst cholera outbreak, Yemen does not receive the international attention it deserves, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock told a high-level event held in the margins of the General Assembly.

Lowcock, who is also UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, noted that nearly 21 million people are in need of emergency aid or protection, most of them children, and that this years humanitarian response plan for Yemen is just 45 per cent funded, which means short-changing famine prevention efforts, and discontinuing programmes.

The World Food Programme (WFP) did reach 7 million people last month, helping to avert potential famine  but this came at the cost of cutting rations for about half of recipients to 60 per cent of the normal level.

Yemen is an absolute catastrophe, WFP Executive Director David Beasley said at a separate event on Friday . Of the less than 30 million people that live there, 20 million literally dont know whats going to happen from day to day; 17 million of them are on the brink of famine.

He noted that WFP has received about half of the funds its needs, adding that the Gulf States, in particular, need to step up and fill in the gap.

Lowcok called on donors to provide full funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan, noting that the Yemen Humanitarian Fund is one of the quickest and most effective ways to support the most urgent priorities.

Although only negotiations and a political settlement can put an end to this appalling, man-made crisis, all parties to the fighting in Yemen must be repeatedly reminded to comply with international humanitarian law, taking constant care to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure, he said.

The coordinated effort by partners in all sectors is making an enormous difference, he added, but much more remains to be done.

Among the other challenges faced, Lowcock cited the delay or blockage of humanitarian assistance or the movements of humanitarian staff  including for the cholera response by de facto authorities in Sanaa; commercial imports restrictions; the closure of Sanaa airport to commercial traffic; and salary arrears for health workers, teachers and water and sanitation staff that are accelerating the collapse of essential services.

Overcoming each of these obstacles is within the reach of the international community, said Lowcock

In an interview with UN News, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said he met with Member States this week in New York and asked them to provided more funding.

McGoldrick also met with those involved in the conflict and reminded them of their obligations to abide by international humanitarian law.

Enough is enough, he said. The suffering should not be the DNA of the people in that country.

Photo: OCHA/Giles

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): The torture and ill-treatment of persons suspected of crimes is not only adeeply wronga but, from an interrogator's perspective, also counterproductive, the United Nations human rights chief said on Friday at an event held in New York.





Abundant scientific and historical evidence demonstrates that the information yielded by people who are being subjected to violence is unreliable, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said at the event, entitled Torture during Interrogations  Illegal, Immoral, and Ineffective.



The torture of detainees, who are captive and cannot defend themselves, also creates enormous rage among their larger communities, he added. By feeding the desire for vengeance, torture produces more hatred and more violence.



On Friday s event, organized by the High Commissioners Office (OHCHR) and held on the sidelines of the annual high-level segment of the General Assembly, sought to inform discussions among Member States about the development of standards and guidelines on investigative interviewing by police and other law enforcement agencies, with the aim of assisting States to meet their fundamental legal obligations to prevent torture and ill-treatment.



Among the participants in the event were the lead investigative interviewer in the Anders Behring Breivik case in Norway, and a former NCIS Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism from the United States.



The High Commissioner noted that people who are in police custody for a very broad range of reasons are frequently subjected to torture or other forms of ill-treatment. This is particularly true, he said, in the first hours and days after their arrest, when  although they should benefit from the presumption of innocence  suspects may have no access to legal assistance or independent medical examination, and have not been brought before a judge.



Alarmingly, in the past, some States have resorted to using psychologists to design brutal interrogation methods such as waterboarding, forcing detainees into small containers, forcing them to hold painful positions for hours or slamming them into flexible walls, he stated.



Furthermore, conditions for detainees are often so squalid and inadequate that they may amount to torture or other forms of ill-treatment under the terms of the Convention against Torture. This is true even in numerous developed countries.



The High Commissioner cited the example of an allegation in which a pre-trial detainee in one of the richest countries in the world had died after prison guards cut off his water supply for seven days, to punish him for a violent outburst  leading to his death from dehydration.



These abuses should matter, very deeply, to every member of the community, he said. Not only do they violate the rights of the individuals concerned, they also corrode what should be the protective and principled function of every police force.



Officials required to enforce the law should not undermine the rule of law, he continued. If police break the law in pursuit of law enforcement, the message is one of capricious and abusive power. The institution which should protect the people becomes unmoored from principle; unresponsive to the law, it is a loose cannon.



This destruction of public trust is profoundly damaging. When added to the perception that police abuses and humiliation of specific communities is tolerated  based on economic, geographic, ethnic, religious or other distinctions  it will certainly exacerbate tensions and may lead to serious violence.



OHCHR is planning to co-create a Manual on Investigative Interviewing, with the UNs Police Division, for use by UN police officers. The Convention against Torture Initiative and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights are also preparing guidance on investigative interviewing that does not rely on threats and brutality.



UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferre







Source: www.justearthnews.com












New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): Australiaas Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, told the General Assembly on Friday that while the United Nations had been established to build an international rules-based order for peaceful dispute resolution, awe are now in a time when the challenges to that order are increasing.a

The most egregious example is North Korea, continued Bishop, pointing out that the country is openly defying the UN Security Council, putting millions of people at risk. It is crucial for all UN Member States to strictly implement the Councils sanctions to compel Pyongyang to abandon its illegal programmes.

Other threats highlighted by the Foreign Minister were the increasing activities of non-State actors, terrorism and violent extremism. Global terrorism  and the extreme Islamist ideologies driving it  must be confronted and defeated, she stressed. Bishop maintained that terrorism can be effectively battled, and beaten, if everyone worked together, sharing knowledge and resources.

Bishop drew a link between security and economic development, saying that one cannot be achieved without the other. She endorsed a UN development system more focused on sustainable economic development that provides opportunities and facilitates partnerships with the private sector.

Noting that economic resilience can be undermined by natural and man-made disasters, she cited the 2030 agenda, Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the World Humanitarian Summit's Grand Bargain as a blueprint for global action on those problems which can only be addressed by working together on challenges that don't respect national borders.

UN Photo/Cia Pak

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): The threat of terrorism has forced Tunisia to double the budget of its military and security expenditures, Foreign Minister Khemais Jhinaoui told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday , stressing that more international support was needed despite the Governmentas efforts to stamp out the scourge.



Indeed, the worlds hotbeds of terrorism are fueled by poverty and war, and linked to organized crime, refugee flows and large-scale violations of human rights, and he called for a comprehensive global response to the terrorist threat.



On development, Jhinaoui said Tunisia has mainstreamed the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in its national plan for 2016 2020, also aligning its development priorities with African Unions Agenda 2063.



Noting that Tunisia would present its first report on the implementation of the Goals at the next session of the UN Economic and Social Council High-Level Political Forum, he said it was critical to consider countries specific situations as they implemented those targets.



Indeed, reductions in financing to developing countries  especially those in Africa working to achieve those Goals  would have a negative impact. Tunisia had also signed the Paris Agreement, having committed to reducing its emissions by 41 per cent by 2030.



More broadly, he called for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict centred on the prompt establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Voicing concern about the conflict in neighbouring Libya, he said Tunisia is playing a mediation role, along with Algeria and Egypt. All solutions to that issue must be in line with Security Council resolutions and avoid creating a leadership vacuum, he added.



UN Photo/Cia Pak



Source: www.justearthnews.com










New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): In the wake of successive hurricanes Irma and Maria, which tore through the Caribbean and left communities in desperate conditions, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla urged the international community to agive the highest priority to this situation and mobilize resources to assist the small Caribbean Island States and territories.a

Expressing heartfelt sympathies all those affected  including in Mexico which was hit with two earthquakes this month, and the United States, where Hurricane Harvey had struck several southern states  he went on to describe the scene in Cuba, speaking of heart-touching moments from the disaster that also carried a message of hope, scenes such as rescuers saving a girl and giving her back to her mother and of strangers helping one another.

Conveying his countrys gratitude for the offers of assistance from the global community, he also offered strength to neighbouring islands which were also hit hard by the hurricanes and natural disasters.

Turning next to political matters, Rodriguez Parrilla referred to the address by the US President at the General Assembly earlier in the week, t noted statistics on extreme poverty, hunger and refugee crises, asking how could global challenges be overcome with an America first view.

Calling the new Cuban policy of the US a setback in bilateral relations, he said it undermined the basis established two years ago for advancing ties characterized by respect and equality. He condemned the disrespectful, offensive and interventionist statement made against Cuba by that countrys President, reminding him that the US had no moral authority to judge Cuba.

Despite longstanding tensions with the US, the Minister expressed that he believed in the possibility for coexistence and respect between the two nations.

Concluding his address, he reiterated that the Cuban people will keep up their struggle to achieve the most just society possible. We will continue to steadily advance down the path of revolutionary transformations that has been sovereignly chosen by all Cubans to further improve our socialism.

UN Photo/Cia Pak

Source: www.justearthnews.com
TWIN FALLS  As part of the community outreach program, Ascension Episcopal Church is sponsoring their annual Blessing of the Animals on Oct. 8 from 3-4:30 p.m. The event is held at the church outdoor courtyard, 371 Eastland Drive N., Twin Falls. Exhibits about animal care are displayed. All species of pets are welcome, as long as they are caged or leashed. There is a short service, then the priest blesses each animal in celebration of their importance as pets. The animals are given blessing scarves, toys and treats.

The church is also supporting a pet food drive for the Magic Valley Humane Society/Twin Falls Animal Shelter from Sept. 1-Oct. 8. In the past, this drive has collected more than 1,200 pounds of pet food, $950 in cash donations, blankets, beds, and pet toys.

The Twin Falls Animal Shelters greatest need is for dog and cat food. They feed on average 40 dogs and 60 cats per day. In addition, they shelter other animals such as hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and pet mice. Any pet food of every kind, including dry food that has already been opened, is accepted.

Cash donations go toward veterinary care for any hurt animals.

For more information, contact Janie Humphrey at 208-308-2012 or email to jdraney@cableone.net.
New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): Addressing global leaders at the 72nd annual general debate at the United Nations, the Prime Minister of Bhutan underscored that the impacts of climate change a illustrated by devastating hurricanes and floods, and record-setting temperatures year after year a are very real.

After centuries of neglect, fighting climate change is complex and expensive, said Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, underlining the need for all countries to fulfil their respective commitments.

I am optimistic that we will be able to prevent the worst effects of climate change. But for that we must work together.

Underscoring the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he highlighted that poverty eradication is a critical component of all 17 Goals, and that while the endeavour is a complex challenge, it is possible with concerted effort.

The Prime Minister also spoke on the challenges posed by terrorism, as well as threats to international peace and security, and urged all countries to contribute to making the world a safer place.

Also in his address, the Mister Tobgay noted the reform initiatives by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and urged all UN Member States to support those measures. He also highlighted the gross national happiness approach to development adopted by Bhutan as well as efforts to strengthen democracy in the nation.

UN Photo/Cia Pak

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, Sept 23(Just Earth News): With the number of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar arriving in south-east Bangladesh edging towards half a million, United Nations agencies are stepping up delivery of life-saving aid to two official refugee camps, where the health concerns are quickly growing.





At the request of Bangladeshi authorities, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is speeding up the distribution of plastic sheeting to get as many people as possible under at least minimal protection from monsoon rains and winds.



On Saturday, we plan to begin distribution of kitchen sets, sleeping mats, solar lamps and other essential relief items to an initial 3,500 families who have been selected by community leaders, UNHCR spokesperson Andrej Mahecic told a press briefing in Geneva.



Refugee volunteers and contractors are helping newly arriving refugees moving into emergency shelter, but it is vital that UNHCR site planners have the opportunity to lay out the new Kutupalong extension in an orderly way to adequately provide for sanitation and to make sure structures are erected on higher ground not prone to flooding.



In total, more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees are now believed to be in Bangladesh; 420,000 of them have arrived in the past three and a half weeks.



UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi will be in Bangladesh this weekend to get a first-hand look at the scale of the crisis as well as UNHCRs response, and meet with refugees.



Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that camps are bursting at the seams and there is a huge risk of disease.



WHO is very concerned about the health situation on the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, given the very crowded settlements, most of them spontaneous, said Fadela Chaib, the agencys spokesperson in Geneva.



It has been challenging to roll out the emergency response, not least because of the difficult terrain and the very heavy rains, and the fact that the population in question is dispersed, mobile and often injured, she added.



Chaib said the greatest risk is related to water and sanitation, with poor conditions increasing the risk of vector- and water-borne diseases. Cholera, which is endemic in Bangladesh, cannot be ruled out. WHO has provided some 20,000 people with water purification tablets.



Immunization rates among children is very low, she said, explaining that when children are malnourished and exposed to the elements, the risk of childhood diseases such as measles are very high.



WHO, together with other agencies, recently launched an immunization campaign against polio and measles. Owing to the poor weather conditions and the continuous influx of people, the campaign has been extended.



Around 40 WHO staff have been dispatched to Bangladesh, and the agency will deploy a team of epidemiologists over the weekend to support risk assessment for infectious diseases.



For its part, the World Food Programme (WFP) has now reached at least 385,000 people with food aid as of on Friday . Together with its partners, WFP feeds more than 5,000 people daily in the area.



The situation is dire and WFP is on the frontlines trying to reach people as quickly as possible, spokesperson Bettina Luescher told reporters in Geneva.



Photo: UNHCR/Keane Shum







Source: www.justearthnews.com












Islamabad, Sept 23 (IBNS): In a major development, the Pakistan Navy successfully test-fired an anti-ship missile from its Sea King helicopter in northern Arabian Sea, media reports said on Saturday.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah witnessed the missile firing demonstration, Dawn News reported quoting press release issued by the navy.

The anti-ship missile fired from the Sea King helicopter into the open sea successfully hit its target, the news website reported.

Meanwhile, Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah said he is happy with the Pakistan Navy fleet's war preparations.
Ottawa, Sep 23 (IBNS): Despite the withdrawal of the United States under the leadership of president Donald Trump, Ontario, Quebec and California have formally signed the climate-change deal, media reports said.

California governor Jerry Brown termed himself along with Ontario premier Kathlene Wynne and Quebec's Philippe Couillard as "insurgent forces" in the world's fight against the climate change.

Hitting out at the US president, Brown said it is absolutely irrelevant to see whether Donald Trump is trying to make the Paris Accord unsuccessful.

Brown was quoted by the Star: "Whatever anyone else does and whatever Mr. Trump does in Washington, China is on the move with a carbon market."

Theres a lot of money on the other side and thats the status quo. Were the insurgent forces transforming. Thats where its at. In our systems, the sub-national jurisdictions have a power, he said.

After January 1, the emissions cap programme of Ontario will be integrated with Quebec and California which will enable them to jointly hold the carbon auctions.

"This is the next step in a long and difficult journey to de-carbonize the economies of the world. Were de-carbonizing our own economies but then setting in motion the example that will be picked up by other provinces, other states, and other regions around the world," Brown told media.

On the other hand, Ontario premier Wynne said though Canadian present prime minister Justin Trudeau is supporting the deal, former PM Stephen Harper was against it.

Wynne told media "Remember when I and Premier Couillard moved on this and made these decisions, we were living in a country that had a federal government that was not interested in working with us.

Thats the importance of the sub-nationals, she said.

We are now standing here having agreed on creating the largest carbon market in North America. It is an extremely important step. The two largest provinces, the biggest state, working together, the premier was further quoted by the Star.

Over the concern for the global rise in temperature, 195 countries came together in 2015 and formed the Paris Accord with an aim to control the global temperature caused by the emissions of harmful gases into the atmosphere.

In 2017, US President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the deal, claiming it would benefit only India and China.

Earlier in 2015, the US signed the deal under then president Barrack Obama.



(Reporting by Souvik Ghosh)
Today America is the world's unquestionable leader and we can swiftly react to any kind of challenges. But our nation has one big problem that we can't solve right now  we have no place to store our nuclear waste that has a half-life of many million years and which we get from the production of nuclear energy and devastating weapons.

However the solution of that tough issue became possible owing to the construction of dry cask storages in Ukraine, South Africa and South Korea.

In Ukraine the construction of Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility (the CSFSF) in Chernobyl's area had had a long history but was approved by country's authorities just a little while ago. A letter of general director of SS Atomprojectengineering Oleksandr Rybchuk revealed that Ukraine cooperated with Holtec International and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of participation and funding the CSFSF.

You can see the letter and translation below.

Dear Yuriy Oleksandrovych



I give you the results of the three-party meeting that was held by representatives of SS "Atomprojectengineering", Holtec International and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In the course of negotiations details of successful key changes in the construction project of the CSFSF were discussed. These changes will allow to storage about 8,622 W 4-loop, W 3-loop, COMB CE and AP1000 fuel assemblies in addition to VVER-1000 and VVER-440 fuel assemblies. Within the terms of the contract, Holtec International's experts agreed to manufacture storage and transportation casks for this type of spent nuclear fuel and assign them to us. Also, they will deliver equipment for manufacture of these constructions to Ukraine. Engineering solution of Holtec International's experts will considerably expand capabilities of the CSFSF, which comes as one of key conditions for a loan from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and its increase to a total amount of $400 ml.

Representatives of SS "Atomprojectengineering" informed their foreign partners that the approved project of the CSFSF requires reconsidering of the construction financing mechanism. Apart from funding from the state budget of Ukraine, it needs to have extra investments. By the medium of representatives of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NNSA offered some forms of its participation, however the American side asks for some guarantees that certain amendments to the legislation of Ukraine will take place (complementary to amendments to Ukraine's Environmental impact evaluation act) in order to reduce risks in the course of the CSFSF operation with the fuel assemblies from abroad.

Representatives of Holtec International and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission shared some details about the start of joint construction of dry spent fuel storage facilities in South Korea and the Republic of South Africa similar to the Ukraine's CSFSF. This know-how will be actively used in Ukraine during all construction phases in the area of Chernobyl NPP and operation activity of the CSFSF.

SS "Atomprojectengineering" assured representatives of the USA that in 2019 the CSFSF will start to accept first shipments of spent nuclear fuel. Also, in 2018, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will arrange a visit of Ukrainian experts from NNEGC "Energoatom" to North Anna NPP and Palo Verde NPP to give a start to the project of spent fuel transportation to the CSFSF.

Participants of the meeting concurred in the opinion that the CSFSF will provide security in the sphere of spent fuel storage for the next 50 years.

Attachment: shorthand report of the meeting, letter by NNSA, draft supplement agreement with Holtec International.



Sincerely yours,



Director General

SS "Atomprojectengineering" Oleksandr Rybchuk



The Republic of South Africa (the RSA) and South Korea both are also looking for the ways to construct centralized nuclear waste storages on their soil. The RSA has only one radioactive waste disposal facility called the Vaalputs and operated by the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa). And in South Korea the authorities officially acknowledged the issue of utilizing the country's nuclear waste, and they are eager to solve the problem. The RSA and South Korea do not have many opportunities to utilize nuclear waste and America is here to help them.

Our project of Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada is unlikely to be implemented. The state authorities and people do not want to turn Nevada into America's nuclear waste dump. So, taking part in projects like the CSFSF, give us a lot of opportunities to utilize nuclear waste that we have been gathering for decades in temporary storages across the U.S.

Ukraine will be the first of many countries to receive America's support in constructing a centralized nuclear waste storage that will later take in the waste from dozens of our nuclear plants and nuclear weapons production sites. Apart from the countries mentioned above, the potential candidates to have their own nuclear waste facilities are Afghanistan, Iraq and some countries in Central Asia.

Do the U.S. citizens know that one out of three Americans live within 50 miles of nuclear waste? We have to admit, it would be great to keep that kind of garbage not in our backyard but rather far off, somewhere overseas.
As nations sign up at present, at United Nations, to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the Treaty is due to come into force later, when 50 signed members have ratified it. 122 countries out of the 193 UN member nations approved the draft treaty in July.

The nuclear weapons nations and their associates oppose the treaty, giving various important strategic sounding reasons. But when this UN treaty comes into force, joining the previous treaties that make other forms of mass destruction illegal, the governments with nuclear weapons will no longer be able to claim the moral high ground. Their stand will sound hollow, against the growing global consensus that the possessing, threatening, using of nuclear weapons is inhumane and immoral.Equally importantly, at the UN General Assembly, the urgency of the need to address climate change, is being discussed.AUSTRALIANUCLEARWhy Australia Should Sign The UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Now. An Australian to be proud of - Dr Tilman Ruff.- -Australia follows nuclear weapons powers in boycotting UN treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. -Best selling author Junko Morimoto called on Turnbull to sign nuclear weapons ban treaty. Most Labor MPs have pledged to get Australia to sign and ratify the UN nuclear weapon ban treaty.Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says there is no economic case for nuclear power.Nuclear lobby bringing top USA nuclear spruiker Michael Shellenberger to Australia.-Australia VERY QUIETLY signs up to help develop new nuclear reactorsNominations sought for Kimba Consultative Committee on National Radioactive Waste Dump.Rural South Australia could end up with the curse of stranded nuclear wastes.CLIMATE.Liberal Coalition MPs giggle, cackle, smirk and laugh in Parliament over climate changeBHP supports climate change action - is at odds with Minerals Council.In Southern Australia, winters are becoming drier.A mathematician warns - Coalitions pro-coal policy likely to be a vote loser-Abbot Point spill further proof Adani can't be trusted on coal, green groups say. Anti Adani coal project- action is seriously hotting up in Queensland. Anti-Adani protesters arrested outside Abbot Point coal terminal near Bowen. A kind of censorship: Melbourne's Federation Square restricts anti Adani protest.Liberal National Party member would consider taxpayer funding moved from renewables to private coal-fired power station.Renowned author Tim Winton on how Malcolm Turnbull betrayed our oceans.ENERGY Australians won over by cheapness and reliability of solar batteries, poll shows. Australias top 10 solar postcodes, and the top solar locations by state . Coal country backs renewable energy - poll. For remewable energy news - http://reneweconomy.com.au/ Northern Territory may be close to getting a lithium mine.This is just my impression - I have done no real research. But - it seems to me that the most strident anti-gay voices in Australia are the same people as the strident climate denialers, and pro nukers.INTERNATIONALVatican ratifies treaty on the prohibition of nuclear arms.Concern in China, South Korea, Japan, at Donald Trump's belligerent speech at United Nations.USA and South Korea's show of bombing force against North Korea. North Korea Vows to Complete Nuclear Weapons ProgramNuclear plants in the path of hurricanes - disasters waiting to happen.Climate change already affecting world health. -Melting Arctic ice capSuccessful 1987 ozone layer international treaty now involved in fighting climate change. An international Treaty that works! The Montreal Protocol and the healing of the ozone layer.USA.Donald Trump's first United Nations speech - about "totally destroying" North Korea. If there's nuclear war with South Korea, Donald Trump will have headquarters in the sky- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqMyiSLUuM0 -Nikki Haley suggests handing the North Korea issue over to the PentagonAmerica's Senate passes bill to massively increase nuclear weapons production -Nuclear war fears - very good for the underground bunker marketers. -Huge secret nuclear power deal - Kushner, Bannon, Flynn with Middle East-Trump's nominee to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) represents polluting industries-Westinghouse's future ownership shrouded in doubt.Leonardo DiCaprio: Trump Ignoring Climate Change Has Devastating Consequences.Risk to Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station From Tropical Storm Jose.-As the Worst Storms Grow More Frequent, San Francisco and Oakland Sue Fossil Fuel Companies over Rising Sea LevelsJAPAN. 6.1 magnitude earthquake 320 kilometres east of Fukushima nuclear plant. Kyushu Electric plans to restart Genkai No. 4 reactor in March. Fukushima. Nuclear Fuel Retrieval Delayed.NORTH KOREA. Report that North Korea may be secretly building nuclear submarine.UK. UK's religious leaders unite, to urge Theresa May to sign the UN nuclear weapons ban treaty . Terrorism danger, as weapons grade nuclear material flown from UK to USA. All proposed nuclear sites in UK are vulnerable to flooding. Anti-nuclear civil disobedience is ramping up. A FOURTH unexploded bomb found near Britain's Hinkley Point C nuclear site! Most Britons happy to live near wind turbines, but not near Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.FRANCE. French President Macron calls on Trump to honor Iran nuclear deal.RUSSIA. Remembering an intelligent man who saved the world from WW3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX83EzDofrc&t=84s BELARUS. Spectre of Chernobyl nuclear disaster rises again, regarding new nuclear power station in BelarusCHINA. China considers rescuing problematic UK Moorside nuclear station project.CANADA. Anti nuclear groups invite individual MPs in Canada to sign the nuclear ban treaty.--Christina MacphersonAntinuclear Australia@ChristinaMac1
Boris Johnson has claimed Theresa May's Brexit speech outlined a "very attractive vision" of a strong Europe "buttressed and supported" by a strong UK.

The Foreign Secretary said the UK will be "able to do our own thing" by working with the EU on defence, security and to also deepen economic links, as he dismissed suggestions nothing will change until 2021.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the only advance was the Prime Minister listening to his party and realising the need for a transition period "on the same basic terms" to provide stability for businesses and workers.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage criticised Mrs May's vision, claiming Britain will leave the EU in "name only".

Theresa May's Brexit vision is that we Leave the EU in name only. All areas of integration we have currently will be rebadged.  Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 22, 2017

Manfred Weber, leader of the centre-right European People's Party in the European Parliament and a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said the UK position was still unclear and he is "even more concerned now".

In substance PM May is bringing no more clarity to London's positions. I am even more concerned now. #florencespeech  Manfred Weber (@ManfredWeber) September 22, 2017

Mr Johnson, when put to him that nothing will change until 2021, told reporters in Florence: "No, no, no, as the Prime Minister rightly said we are going to have a transition period and after that, of course, we are going to be taking back control of our borders, of our laws and of our destiny.

"I think what was so uplifting about this speech was it was positive, confident about what Britain can do, but also about our relations with the rest of the EU, and I think what it sets out is a very attractive vision of a strong Europe buttressed and supported by a strong UK.

"We're not going to be, as she made it very, very clear, in a relationship like Norway - receiving laws but not being able to change them or to vote on them.

"We're going to be able to do our own thing but also to work positively together on defence, on security and to build and to deepen that economic partnership."

Mr Corbyn accused Mrs May and her Conservative Cabinet colleagues of spending more time "negotiating with each other" than with the EU.

He said: "Fifteen months after the EU referendum the Government is still no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.

"The only advance seems to be that the Prime Minister has listened to Labour and faced up to the reality that Britain needs a transition on the same basic terms to provide stability for businesses and workers."

Mr Weber raised concerns, writing on Twitter: "In substance PM May is bringing no more clarity to London's positions. I am even more concerned now.

"The clock is ticking and time is running faster than the government believes in London."

Brexit Secretary David Davis, Chancellor Philip Hammond and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said Mrs May was admitting the UK will have to pay a "hefty Brexit bill" which amounts to several billions of pounds.

He said: "Both the Conservatives and Labour have now essentially converged on the same position, which is to kick the can down the road and simply delay the economic pain caused by an extreme Brexit."

Both Conservatives and Labour have converged on the same position, kick the can down the road and delay economic pain of an extreme Brexit  Vince Cable (@vincecable) September 22, 2017

The pro-Brexit Conservative former cabinet minister Owen Paterson expressed concern about the proposed two-year transition period.

"As long as we still have that transition period we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking on opening up markets around the world," he told BBC News.

He said that ministers should now start making preparations for the prospect that the UK will leave the EU without a trade deal.

"We just want simple, reciprocal free trade on a zero-tariff basis respecting each other's standards and regulations," he said.

"If they are not going to be serious about that, then I think we have to make them wake up to the fact we are not frightened of walking away."
Update: 9.05pm US President Donald Trump's insult, calling leader Kim Jong Un "rocket man", makes "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more", North Korea's foreign minister said.

Ri Yong Ho called the US leader "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency" with his finger on the "nuclear button" and declared: "None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission."

He told world leaders on Saturday: "In case innocent lives of the US are lost because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible."

Mr Ri's highly anticipated speech to the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting fuelled the fiery rhetoric between the US president and North Korea's young leader.

Mr Trump threatened in his speech to the 193-member world body on Tuesday, to "totally destroy" the North if provoked.

Kim, in an unusual direct statement to the world, responded by pledging to take "highest-level" action against the United States.

Mr Ri suggested to reporters on Friday in New York that the country could conduct an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test to fulfil Kim's vows. But he did not make any mention of such a test on Saturday.

Mr Ri said: "Our national nuclear force is, to all intents and purposes, a war deterrent for putting an end to nuclear threat of the US and for preventing its military invasion, and our ultimate goal is to establish the balance of power with the US."

Mr Ri's comments came as the United States on Saturday flew bombers and fighter escorts to the furthest point north of the Demilitarised Zone by any such American aircraft this century, in a show of American military might.

The Pentagon said the mission showed how seriously President Donald Trump took North Korea's "reckless behaviour".

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Defence Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement.

"North Korea's weapons programme is a grave threat to the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international community.

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies," Ms White said.

Earlier: The Pentagon said B-1B bombers from Guam, along with F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace over waters east of North Korea on Saturday.

The US characterised the flights as extending further north of the DMZ, which separates North and South Korea, than any US fighter or bomber had gone off the North Korean coast in the 21st century.

Mr Trump on Friday had renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!" the president tweeted.

On Thursday, Mr Trump announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Mr Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.

B-1B bombers from Guam and F-15 fighter escorts from Okinawa in Japan have flown a mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea, the Pentagon said.

The US said it was the furthest north of the Demilitarised Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula that any American fighter or bomber has flown this century.

Defence Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement that the mission showed how seriously the US took what she called North Korea's "reckless behaviour".

The statement said the flights were a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message" that President Donald Trump "has many military options to defeat any threat".

Ms White said "we are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies".

President Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if the United States was forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack.

That led the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, to say Mr Trump would "pay dearly" for making such a threat.

Kim's foreign minister has said his country's response to Mr Trump "could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific".

A North Korean minister said US President Donald Trump's insult makes "our rocket's visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more".

The minister further described Trump as "a mentally deranged person full of megalomania" who is holding "the nuclear button".
PAUL  In the past 100 years Amalgamated Sugar Co.s Mini-Cassia factory in Paul has processed 94,907,608 tons of sugar beets  enough for a 26-foot-high wall of beets stretching from the factory to Boise and back on Interstate 84.

The company celebrated its 100th anniversary of the plant Thursday with the growers, employees, company leaders and community.

Mud up to the shin bone and temperatures dipping into the 40s didnt deter those in attendance from acknowledging the importance of the plant to the community.

John Bert Stevenson of Rupert said the factory has impacted the entire area, not just Paul, Rupert and Heyburn.

Its been the lifeblood in this community, Stevenson said.

Amalgamated Sugar has been a part of the community longer than the potato processing factories, he said.

Stevenson worked two campaigns for the company as a rail car checker and two as a sample checker.

It was the first plant that gave farmers an opportunity to work in the fall, he said.

Today the Paul factory employs 920 people when harvest is in full swing, a number which dips down to about 500 post-season.

Since 1917, when the factory was built, it has produced 24,920,589,500 pounds of sugar, which netted about $6.73 billion in revenue over the century.

If all the sugar produced at the Paul factory were stored in one sugar silo, the silo would have to be eight miles high, Jessica McAnally, a spokeswoman for the company, told the Times-News.

A lot of us have survived because of Amalgamated, said Loren Holyoak, a Burley resident.

Brodie Griffin, Amalgamateds district agricultural manager, said much of the companys success can be attributed to the growers who are producing 63 percent more beets per acre than they did in 1996.

The wet weather in 2016 challenged farmers, many of whom still had crops in the ground as the roads broke down and things began looking like a war zone, he said.

They put their muddy boots on and went to work, Griffin said.

The die-hard growers represent a microcosm of the company, he said.

President and CEO John McCready said in the next 100 years, the company will put money into research to grow the best sugar beets in the country and continue good stewardship of the land.

You have to show youre a good company, he said, or you cant sell your product for what its worth.

The company will also continue to implement programs for employee safety and explain to consumers why the company uses genetic engineering.

A culture of employee respect is the backbone of the company, he said.

Todd Merrigan, who has grown beets on the family homestead for the past 30 years north of Rupert, said when the company changed to a co-op it was a challenging time for the growers.

I grew up raising sugar beets, Merrigan said.

The Snake River Sugar Co., formed by the beet farmers, purchased Amalgamated Sugar in 1996.

The co-op purchased 222,000 shares at $400 per acre, Duane Grant, chairman of the Snake River Sugar Co., said.

Grant remembers the meeting he attended at Minico High School, where the pitch for the co-op was made.

It was a hard sell, he said.

The grower-owned co-op gave the them a huge stake in the success of the company, Merrigan said. Their livelihoods were invested in it. It also gives the growers, who elect a board of directors, a lot of say in what happens with the company. Today the company has 750 growers.

They have a voice in it, he said.

Over the years the company played a large role in Mini-Cassia economics.

Along with providing a beet processor for the farmers and giving the factory workers jobs, many satellite companies thrived because of Amalgamated, companies like Barclay Mechanical and TransSystems, the transportation company that hauls the beets.

The company also expanded to sell the beet pulp by-product as cattle feed.

We cant do it alone, said Scott Winn, the Mini-Cassia plant manager. We have a lot of contractor and vendor support.

The impact, he said, is truly far-reaching.
Dateline Dateline Irrawaddy: In Rakhine, Cooperation is Essential

This week, The Irrawaddy discusses Daw Aung San Suu Kyis diplomatic briefing on issues concerning Rakhine State.

Kyaw Zwa Moe State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi held a diplomatic briefing at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Her address focused on the political situation in Myanmar, including issues concerning Rakhine State. It also placed an emphasis on promoting harmony, understanding, peace and development in the community without placing blame on any one side, and urged the international community to help reduce hatred and anger. We are discussing her address with Editor of the Irrawaddy Burmese Edition Ko Ye Ni and our News Editor Kyaw Phyo Tha. I am Kyaw Zwa Moe, Editor of the Irrawaddy English Edition.

It can be said that the entire country was closely watching this mornings address by the State Counselor. It was her first since the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army [ARSA] launched attacks in Rakhine State on August 25. As far as I am concerned, she placed emphasis on the fact that the government had not yet been in power for 18 months and that Myanmars democracy is young and fragile.

She continued to say that Myanmar was a complex country because it was undergoing a transition to democracy after half a century or more of authoritarian rule and nearly 70 years of internal conflict. As I have just said, she did not blame any parties and urged everyone to help with the democratic transition, peace, stability and development of Myanmar. What did you think of her speech, Ko Ye Ni?

Ko Ye Ni: As you have just said, it was her first speech since the attacks, and the UN has said about 400,000 refugees fled to Bangladesh but we dont know how they estimated the number of refugees. After the exodus, supporters of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in her struggle for democracy, including the UN, Desmond Tutu, Malala [Yousafzai] and Angelina Jolie, accused the Myanmar government of ethnic cleansing and have been pressuring her to speak out. Under such circumstances, this was her first address to the nation.

Analyzing the speech, I found that it was aimed at the UN General Assembly, which she could not attend and had to send Vice President U Henry Van Thio in her stead. She delivered the speech one day before the vice president did so at the UN. As she clearly stated where she and her government stood and explained future plans, it can be said that it was a strategic address.

Although she managed to deliver the strategic address to her best [ability], she still needs to work out and negotiate many details on how the strategies will be implemented on the ground.

KZM: Ko Kyaw Phyo Tha, Ko Ye Ni has just said the UN estimated the number of the refugees at 400,000. This is a problem for the image of the country. When we looked at statements of the UN, reports of other countries and the international media, we learned that they were just hurling accusations one-sidedly against Myanmar. The Myanmar government rejected the terms used in UN statements. As Ko Ye Ni has just said, the State Counselor pointed out that there were many allegations and counter-allegations and she did not want to comment on them. So the objective of her speech was not to make allegations but to restore harmony and peace. More allegations will fuel conflict. Based on these and other facts, what do you think of her address?

Ko Kyaw Phyo Tha: She made some important points, including how she and her government planned to address the issue. For instance, she explained the implementation of the Kofi Annan report, which was released on August 25. She said the report is being implemented. Concerning peace and stability in Rakhine State, she said priority would be given to matters that contribute to peace, harmony and development. Another interesting thing she said was more than 50 percent of Muslim villages in the area were still intact and she was interested in why they didnt flee, while the UN and others said more than 400,000 had escaped the violence.

She invited the international community and the diplomats to ask [the villagers that remained] and find out for themselves why these villagers didnt flee. It is very interesting.

KZM: She wanted to point out her findings that more than 50 percent of Muslims villagers in Maungdaw still live in harmony with the Arakanese community there.

So she urged the international community not just to look at problems but also to look at the areas where there were no problems, and invited them to see for themselves. Another interesting point is concerned with citizenship. She said her government had solved the issue to some extent. However, some Muslim leaders told [self-identifying Rohingya] not to apply for citizenship. She urged the international community to help persuade them to join in the process because they had nothing to lose from it.

Another important point made by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was that action would be taken against anyone who violates human rights regardless of their race, religion or political background. The entire world, including the UN, has been making accusations of human rights abusesthey wanted to know whether security forces attacked civilians or committed a widespread arson. She made reference to these issues and how to solve them, as Ko Ye Ni has pointed out. Another point she made is that there had been no clearance operations since September 5. So, I think she invited the diplomats. It is interesting to see how she will arrange such transparent trips. We will have to wait and see. Only then will the international community trust Myanmar. Otherwise, it wont.

Ko Ye Ni: Some people who maintained human rights expectations for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and are now broken-hearted will not be pleased with her stance on human rights. This can be seen because human rights statements are still being released after her address. They blamed her for not criticizing the army, which mainly committed human rights abuses. In my opinion, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said she would not tolerate or accept any human rights abuses committed not only by the army and ARSA but also by anyone, including civilians, who did so by taking advantage of the situation. She was able to express her firm human rights stance.

KZM: Were there any important points for the international community that she failed to make, Ko Kyaw Phyo Tha?

KPT: The international community was mainly talking about her silence in previous weeks and did not necessarily blame her for the current crisis. Last week, the direction began to change and [the international community] started criticizing her but also pointed out that she is not the only person to be blamed. The commander-in-chief of defense services is also responsible for the problems. Why didnt they blame him, [the international community] asked. As Ko Ye Ni has just pointed out, her address failed to criticize the commander-in- chief of defense services. So, this is likely to be a point to continue the criticism of her.

KZM: What other important points did you find in her speech, Ko Ye Ni?

KYN: Another point I was interested in in her speech was that it placed emphasis on implementation of the recommendations of the Kofi Annan commission as soon as possible and NVC [national verification card] process. Those who fled to Bangladesh would be allowed to come back after negotiations with the country. At first, Muslims resisted the process unless they were recognized as Rohingya [as opposed to Bengali]. She asked the international community to persuade them to join in the process. When her friends persuade them, will those who sympathize with the Muslims and Muslim community leaders cooperate with the government? On which ground will they cooperate with the offer of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi? It is very interesting. As she said in her speech that she had to think for the entire country, will those who are still clinging to the Rohingya, accept the offer of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?

KZM: I think this will lead to political issues. The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army [ARSA] launched attacks on police posts the day after Kofi Annan released recommendations for Rakhine State. The recommendations have been recognized by the government and international organizations including the UN, but [ARSA] does not accept it. It is not practical for them to have a higher ambition but the attacks will not end. What is your opinion, Ko Kyaw Phyo Tha?

KPT: I feel similarly. As you have just said, I want them to accept what shoud be accepted rather than make demands that are not practical. The diplomatic briefing is more than that, she said at the end [of her speech]. She was reaching out as a friend to those who want Myanmar to be peaceful and to develop. All the points she made must be carried out successfully.

KZM: To summarize the points we have discussed, she talked with those who want Myanmar to prosper in a very friendly manner. I dont think she was talking to the terrorists. All of us have pointed out that cooperation is essential. Cooperation of not just the UN, the international community and other diplomatic attendees but also of the forces in the country including local Muslims, security forces and even those who are opposed to the Kofi Annan report. We will have to wait and see the situation on the ground but it will be a very difficult task.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

President Trump, notoriously, tweeted that climate change is a Chinese hoax.

Some 70,000 US citizens in Puerto Rico living along the Guajataca River are in danger as a dam in the vicinity is failing. Built in the 1920s, the earthen dam faces a drainage problem in the midst of the downpours visited on the island, which have abruptly filled it up and put unbearable pressure on the walls.

The failure of this dam underlines that climate change science is absolutely central to good public policy and planning.

As humans put heat trapping gases into the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, through driving their cars, providing their homes with electricity, and heating or cooling their houses, more of the suns heat is trapped on earth rather than radiating off into space. That trapped heat has caused the average temperature of the earths surface to rise.

Trapping heat so that it causes the Caribbean to heat up is highly destructive. Warm water powers hurricanes. Hotter water makes them more violent and destructive now.

Warmer water also has more water vapor floating above it. That water turbocharges the rain storms once the hurricane makes landfall.

In Puerto Ricos case, so much rain fell so heavily and so quickly that it overwhelmed the old earthen dam, which began to fail. It so happens that nearly 70,000 people live down river and are in danger.

People in charge of dams throughout the US need to be made aware of this situation. What is an ordinary load on a dam is about to change, and human-caused climate change will just attribute them to someone else. If you dont believe in climate change, you cannot justify the expenditure of public funds to reinforce the dam.

If you deny climate change, you will not anticipate heavier rainfall. Your dams will then fail, creating tens of thousands of climate refugees.

Global heating doesnt cause hurricanes. It simply amplifies them and makes them stronger and makes the rainfall associated with them much heavier.

When you vote for denialist politicians, you are selecting people who make policy. The policy they make will be clueless and will actively endanger the public. Climate change is real. We are causing it by our emissions. If you dont believe that, you are not a responsible steward of our infrastructure and of our lives.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Young Turks: Puerto Rico Braces As Dam Fails
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By John Feffer | ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) |  

If only Muslims reach out to help the Rohingya, the international community will suffer another blow to its reputation.

They were Muslims, and they were leaving the country in droves.

Their homeland, a remote corner of a multiethnic country, had become a warzone. Militants had taken up arms to fight for their rights, and the central government retaliated in force.

Human rights abuses, mostly by the government, were rampant. Caught in the gunfire, hundreds of thousands of people became refugees. The central government wasnt unhappy to see them leave, since it believed that the refugees belonged with their ethnic and confessional brethren across the border.

The story of the Rohingya of Burma/Myanmar is a familiar one. But it also sounds an awful lot like what happened to the Kosovars in the late 1990s.

At the time, the Clinton administration declared the situation a humanitarian crisis, a genocide in the making, and intervened militarily on the Kosovars behalf against the Yugoslav government. Serbias Slobodan Milosevic eventually agreed to a settlement  the Kumanovo agreement  that replaced Yugoslav forces with international peacekeepers. Most Kosovar refugees returned home, where they constitute more than 90 percent of the population. Kosovo subsequently declared its independence, but Serbia has yet to recognize it.

The Rohingyas face even longer odds. First of all, theyre a minority in Rakhine province. Second, their armed resistance is slight and poses little real threat to the government in Naypyidaw. Third, the conflict is taking place far from Europe, and the refugees are flooding into Bangladesh, not the wealthy countries of the West.

Finally, the Trump administration has no intention to intervene on anyones behalf for humanitarian reasons. Human rights figure rather low on the administrations priorities. Without a strong push from Washington, the West will shy away from a forceful intervention on humanitarian grounds.

The UN, too, is hamstrung. Even though UN High Commission for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein has declared the plight of the Rohingya a textbook example of ethnic cleansing, the UN body has not invoked the responsibility to protect. Yes, the body will discuss the topic, but countries like India have agreed to do so on the grounds that no resolution will be introduced.

That doesnt mean that the Rohingya lack supporters. The Muslim world is outraged at their treatment, with countries from Turkey to Nigeria to Indonesia up in arms.

The stark contrast between the outrage of the Muslim world and the lack of action from the international community does not bode well for the responsibility-to-protect doctrine. Nor, frankly, does it bode well for the future of the international community either.

Religion Plus Nationalism

A common ploy of Islamophobes is to claim that some religions are inherently violent while others are inherently peaceful. Sometimes they put Christianity in that latter category, though its a rather heavy lift given the Crusades, the Inquisition, the clerical fascism of Mussolini, and so on. Desperately backpedaling, the Islamophobe will then say, Ah, but what about Buddhism? That is indisputably a peaceful religion.

The Rohingya would beg to differ.

Around a million Rohingya live in in Rakhine province. The Myanmar government, claiming that theyre just Bangladeshis who crossed the border after the 1972 war of independence, refuse to consider the Rohingya to be citizens. The Rohingya themselves argue that theyre descendants of Arab traders dating back to the 8th century. Historians can trace evidence that some Rohingya have lived in Rakhine since the 18th century.

What isnt under dispute is the discrimination theyve suffered at the hands of the Buddhist majority. Ironically, or perhaps not, that discrimination has increased during the democratization process, as nationalism and its handmaiden of Buddhist chauvinism have intensified. As Adam Taylor writes in The Washington Post:

A growing Buddhist nationalism in Burma, where 90 percent of the population identify with Buddhism, has led to a number of laws on religion, including restrictions on interfaith marriage. There has also been major ethnic violence in Rakhine; most notably in 2012, when sectarian riots after the rape of a woman in the state led to large-scale displacement of Muslims, with many moving into squalid camps for internally displaced people.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh during this period, a country ill-prepared to handle a flood of refugees. In October 2016, militants with a shadowy outfit  the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) claimed responsibility for attacks on border posts that left nine Myanmar soldiers dead. The central state proceeded to crack down against Rohingya in general, and ethnic cleansing began in earnest.

When ARSA again attacked border posts at the end of August, killing a dozen soldiers, the war intensified. The military used the attacks to go on a genocidal rampage. Writes Robert Rotberg:

Nearly 400,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmars military attacks since July, crossing under desperate conditions into already densely populated Bangladesh. Hundreds of Rohingya settlements in Rakhine State have been torched. At least 3,000 Rohingya have been killed, thousands raped, and more than 140,000 forced into concentration camps thanks to Myanmars security actions.

Particularly disappointing has been Aung San Suu Kyis response to the crisis. The Nobel Prize laureate gave her first speech on the situation in Rakhine province this week in Yangon in which she labeled ARSA a bunch of terrorists and insisted that the government needed more time to figure out what the rest of the world already knows: hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are fleeing violence and discrimination.

Essentially Suu Kyi claimed that her country needed to focus first on national cohesion before it could focus on such particularist claims. In other words, as in virtually every nation-building exercise in history, certain people(s) are sacrificed for the purported good of the whole.

Granted, Aung San Suu Kyi is in a difficult position. Shes not an elected leader  the constitution prevents her from becoming president  and the military still controls much of the countrys political life. The generals could step in at any moment and declare martial law, extinguishing the so-far-brief experiment with democracy.

The question remains: Is Aung San Suu Kyi looking for ways to reduce the militarys influence, or has she decided to strengthen her own position with the military and Burmese nationalists at the expense of the Rohingya?

International Response

Donald Trump made no mention of the Rohingya crisis in his speech at the UN. He barely mentioned human rights at all.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert has said, We urge all in Burma to avoid actions that exacerbate tensions there, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy is heading over to Myanmar. Neither Trump nor Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has addressed the crisis directly (in marked contrast to statements by both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry). And forget about Trump easing his immigration policy to take in Rohingya refugees.

Its hard to imagine that another wave of Muslim refugees is going to elicit any action from the Trump administration. But Muslim-majority countries are rallying behind the Rohingya.

Turkey moved quickly to supply humanitarian assistance to Rakhine province. As the head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has helped to mobilize global Islamic public opinion.

Erdogan has a larger agenda. He wants to advance his conception of civilizational politics that emphasizes Turkeys Ottoman legacy and the central role it can play in a volatile region. Turkeys Islamist political tradition also offers something distinct from the United States and China, neither of which care much about human rights at the moment, particularly the rights of Muslims.

Some Muslim-majority states have gone even further than Erdogan in calling for military intervention on behalf of the Rohingya, comparable to what NATO did for the Kosovars.

Why arent we Muslims thinking about forming a NATO-like joint military force that can intervene in such situations? Ali Motahari, deputy head of the Iranian parliament, said in early September. The crimes of the government of Myanmar will not be halted without using military force.

Thats not likely to happen. But Muslim-majority states are concerned that, as James Dorsey argues in LobeLog, militants will gain an upper hand in projecting themselves as the true defenders of the faith compared to Muslim governments who do little more than pay lip service and at best provide humanitarian relief.

Its telling that Motahari appealed to a NATO-like force rather than invoking the responsibility to protect doctrine. When it comes to international doctrines, the only thing worse than being reviled is to be ignored.

The Future of R2P

In 2011, which seems like a golden age for the international community at this point, writer David Rieff declared that Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, had reached its high water mark. Or, as The New York Times titled the essay, R2P, RIP.

Rieff was writing in the aftermath of the military intervention in Libya, which was intended to prevent the government of Muammar Qaddafi from murdering large numbers of his own citizens. That, Rieff concluded, required not a limited operation but a full effort to back regime change:

War, even when it is waged for a just cause and with scrupulous respect for international humanitarian law, always involves a descent into barbarism (think of the way Qaddafi died). This is why even when R2P is applied well, it carries moral risks. And when it is distorted, as it was by NATO in Libya, R2P is not a needed reform to the international system, but a threat to its legitimacy.

Given the even further descent into barbarism in Libya since 2011, Rieffs words are prophetic. True, R2P could claim certain successes: Kenya in 2008-2009, Ivory Coast in 2011, and to a lesser extent in Mali in 2013. But the ongoing wars in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen suggest that, despite continued invocations of R2P, the international system is incapable of implementing the principle on the ground.

For critics of R2P, thats fine. Who needs yet another set of high-minded words to disguise the reality of strong powers disregarding the sovereignty of weaker powers? Sovereignty, whether defended by Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang or Donald Trump at the UN or Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon, remains a core principle of international relations.

But sovereignty doesnt help the stateless.

If the international community doesnt lift a finger to help the Rohingya  by intervening diplomatically, economically, and in a humanitarian manner  then they can at best hope for assistance from Muslim states. Theyre fortunate to have some advocates, regardless of the motivations of those actors.

But the test of a robust international community is its capacity to act on behalf of everyone, not simply support a segmented response whereby only Christians help Christians, only Han Chinese help Han Chinese, only women help women, and so on. If only Muslims reach out to help the Rohingya, the international community will suffer another blow to its reputation.

With R2P becoming even more moribund than before, states will continue to use the shield of sovereignty to flout international law, disregard the rights of minorities, and ultimately make Rohingyas of us all.
by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, September 23, 2017

News that a Mad Pooper was on the run, defecating on the streets of a neighborhood in Colorado Springs, Colo., elicited a sh*t-storm on Twitter. Where some saw outrage or a comical meme, the social media team for Procter & Gambles Charmin brand saw an opportunity.

Tweeting an offer of a lifetime supply of toilet paper if she turns herself in, Charmin leaned in as only its brand positioning could.

Well do what it takes to wipe away this messy situation, the brands social media continued in response to positive replies from Twitter followers.

We do whatever it takes to be #1 when it comes to #2 (smiley face with sunglasses emoticon)."
New research  led by Steven Arnocky, of Nipissing University in Ontario, Canada  examines the role of men and womens FWHR in sexual relationships, infidelity, and mate selection.

For example, some studies have suggested that in men, a high facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) may signal aggressiveness , unethical behavior, and even psychopathy .

Recently, behavioral and psychological researchers have taken an interest in facial morphology  that is, how the shape of the human face may correlate with certain attitudes, behaviors, and personality traits.

New research published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests that the size and shape of your face may predict your sex drive and how likely you are to cheat on your partner.

The research reports on the findings of two separate studies. In the first, Arnocky and colleagues examined 145 undergraduate students of Caucasian descent, 48 percent of whom were male.

The students were in romantic heterosexual relationships at the time of the study. They filled in questionnaires that enquired about their sexual behavior and sex drive, and they provided a photograph of their face, as well.

The researchers took measurements of the participants faces, and independent raters examined their FWHR by measuring the width of the face and dividing it by the height of the upper face.

Multiple regression analyses were carried out, which revealed a strong positive correlation between FWHR and sex drive in both men and women.

Then, the researchers carried out a second, larger study, in order to see whether or not they could replicate the findings in a wider sample.

So, 314 participants completed similar questionnaires and also provided a photo of their face. In addition, the team added the variables of sociosexuality and intended infidelity to the mix.

As the authors explain, sociosexual orientation is considered a trait-based orientation toward sexuality that ranges between restricted and unrestricted.

People with a restricted orientation tend to be uncomfortable with the thought of casual sex or sex outside of an established monogamous couple.

The researchers also added the predisposition to extra-pair mating, or anticipated infidelity, as a variable to see whether it correlated in any way with the facial size and shape.

The researchers looked for any potential sex differences across the results.

As in the first study, the second also found that FWHR predicted libido in both sexes. Both men and women with a higher FWHR  meaning that their faces are shorter, wider, and more square  reported a higher sex drive.

As for anticipated infidelity and sociosexuality, the studys results revealed a correlation between high FWHR and these variables exclusively in men. In other words, men with wide, square faces may be more prone to infidelity and are more comfortable with the idea of casual sex.

Together, these findings suggest that facial characteristics might convey important information about human sexual motivations, says Arnocky.
A new study in young adults has suggested that moods are contagious, and that teenagers are susceptible to catching their friends emotional states. Share on Pinterest Researchers suggest that prevalent moods in groups of adolescent friends are contagious. According to the latest data available to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 3 million adolescents aged between 12 and 17 in the United States had at least one major depressive event between 2014 and 2015. But although cases of diagnosed depression are reaching worrying numbers worldwide  the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that around 300 million people are affected worldwide  many people, and especially adolescents, exhibit depressive symptoms that are just under the threshold for a clinical depression diagnosis. This is called subthreshold depression, and the fact that it is not a clinical condition means that many people do not get the support that they need, despite often reporting a poor quality of life. Now, researchers from the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom, are looking at how adolescents social circles can influence their moods, in an effort to better understand what determines depressive symptoms among teenagers and what might alleviate them. Robert Eyre, a doctoral student at the Complexity Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Warwick, led this study. We investigated whether there is evidence for the individual components of mood (such as appetite, tiredness, and sleep) spreading through U.S. adolescent friendship networks, Eyre explains, while adjusting for confounding [factors] by modeling the transition probabilities of changing mood state over time. Evidence suggests mood may spread from person to person via a process known as social contagion. Robert Eyre Their findings were recently published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Prevalent moods influence social contagion Eyre and team note that existing studies have already started mapping a concept called  social contagion , suggesting that our social environments impact our emotional profiles. Some research more specifically targeted teenagers, showing that adolescents with strong friendship groups tend to have better mental health. Previous studies have found social support and befriending to be beneficial to mood disorders in adolescents, Eyre points out, while recent experiments suggest that an individuals emotional state can be affected by exposure to the emotional expressions of social contacts. And now, the research team has looked at whether or not a teenagers friendship group can influence various mood changes, and how drastic these changes can be. Clearly, a greater understanding of how changes in the mood of adolescents are affected by the mood of their friends would be beneficial in informing interventions tackling adolescent depression, says Eyre. The researchers analyzed data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, which worked with U.S. adolescents in grades 7 to 12 in the 1994 to 1995 school year. The participants were followed until 2008, when individuals in the cohort had reached adulthood. By looking at the data on the U.S. adolescents friendship networks and mood changes, the researchers found that the prevalent moods in a circle of friends can influence the emotional state of the individual adolescent. Eyre and colleagues noted that depressive moods are, in fact, contagious. Symptoms of this include feelings of helplessness, tiredness, loss of interest, poor concentration, sadness, and feelings of worthlessness. However, even though low moods and feelings of sadness could be spread among friends, they did not typically push individual adolescents over the threshold into clinically diagnosable depression. Mathematical models showed that the more friends exhibiting low moods in an adolescents social circle, the more likely it was for that particular teenager to experience similar symptoms. At the same time, the study showed that a circle of friends in which most individuals are upbeat and optimistic can improve a teenagers mood and relieve their symptoms of depression.
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Shawn Kelley left during the eighth inning of last nights Nationals game due to an arm injury that left him with a badly-swollen right hand. Just on that last pitch I felt something go down through my arm and my hand swelled up a bit, Kelley told media, including Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. I just didnt feel like I could pitch another pitch honestly. I couldnt really grip the ball. I motioned for somebody to come out because I knew it wasnt good. Kelley will meet with doctors today to evaluate the problem, which is particularly ominous given that Kelley has twice undergone Tommy John surgery. The veteran right-hander has had two separate DL stints due to a bad back and a trap strain, and these injury issues have very likely impacted Kelleys subpar performance. Kelley has a 7.27 ERA over 26 innings this season, with huge spikes in his homer rate and hard-hit ball rate. As Janes notes, Kelley may not have made the Nats playoff roster even if healthy, though the team will have one less bullpen option to choose from if Kelley is indeed hurt.

Heres more from around the NL East
The 2017 edition of 'Dynamic Praiz', an annual flagship praise and worship concert of the La Nativity Praise Dynamics, came off at the main chapel of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Nativity Congregation, La, on Sunday, September 17.

The concert, dubbed 'This Wonder God Deuteronomy 10:17', took off with Namoji Obese in a beautiful poetry recital that had the patrons applauding endlessly.

The main host of the programme, Praise Dynamics, followed with beautiful rendition of songs that kept the audience on their feet throughout the performance.

Their ministration was spiced with delightful choreography performances from the Nativity Word Theatre.

Mrs Irene Sowah of 'Yesu Di Hene' and 'Obiara nte S Wo' fame kept the venue alive when she also took to the stage as one of the guest artistes to give out a thrilling performance.

Eugene Zuta of 'Yesuee Woso' fame, another guest artiste of the concert, took the evening to another level, as he opened his performance with soul-touching Presbyterian hymns.

He ended his session with an altar call, as some of the patrons surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ.

The auditorium was filled to capacity, with some of the late attendees standing and praising God throughout the four-hour show.

The MCs, Lovinger Tetteh and Deborah Naa Dzamah Tetteh, also put up an amazing performance on the day.
The Musicians Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) faces yet another probity and accountability test as it is being flayed over a GH2 million government money for musicians the union claimed it used to conduct research.

It's been five years since the government of Ghana in its 2012 budget read on November 16, 2011 by the then Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, allocated an amount of GH2 million to creative arts industry.

An amount of GH2 million has been allocated to support the creative arts industry in 2012, Dr Duffour said when he presented the budget.

He further mentioned that the money was set aside to MUSIGA for the development of the creative arts industry.

Later, there were arguments as to whether the money was for the creative arts industry or MUSIGA. But MUSIGA took the money, with claims that they had applied for it from the Mahama-led government.

Five years on, music stakeholders are still having issue with how the money was used. Bice Osei Kuffour, also known as Obour, who is the president of MUSIGA, told Joy FM in 2014 that the money was used to conduct a comprehensive study of the Ghana music industry.

He said his major legacy will be the comprehensive study of the Ghana music industry, adding, We lobbied, we were able to get the funding of two million Ghana cedis from the government of Ghana.

We invested this funding into the research that government wanted us to do. As we sit now, KPMG has completed a comprehensive research on the entire music industry, he stated.

People now can easily access the music industry, banks who want to invest into the industry can now have a document which will serve as a blueprint and so they can assist music industry professionals, he mentioned in 2014.

It is three years after that statement, and it is not clear if musicians are enjoying the benefits as he said.

Meanwhile, some top players in the music industry are not convinced about the research, and one of those is iconic radio personality Kofi Okyere Darko, who is calling for probity.

According to the him, MUSIGA has failed to utilise the funds to the benefit of members of the union, insisting that the suggestion by Obuor that the fund was used to conduct research into the industry is nonsense.

How has it affected the musicians in this country?

Now has it benefitted the musicians? To know what the number of musicians we have in this country? he told Ghanaweb.com.

I have my challenges with the money that was given to MUSIGA. They found a way of trying to account for it but how has it benefitted the musicians? I think that we can't have musicians in charge of the musicians and not use the money given by government in a judicious way to affect everyone positively. People earn next to nothing in royalties It's a challenge for me and I think that one day, they will have to account for how they really spent that money, he added.
Pat Thomas, one of Ghana's highlife music legends who has contributed immensely towards the development and promotion of the Ghanaian highlife music, will be honoured at this year's awards ceremony, the organisers of the 3G Awards have announced.

Pat Thomas will join other nominees in New York to be honoured for his outstanding work in Ghanaian music industry.

Some of the Ghanaian celebrities who will be honoured at the event include Vivienne Achor, gospel duo Willie & Mike, among others.

The 3G Media Awards 2017 is in recognition of exceptional leaders and their contributions to the Ghanaian and global communities.

The event will be held on Saturday, November 11, 2017 at Pak Banquet Hall, 4229 Park Avenue Bronx, New York.

The event will be co-hosted by Bernard Aduse Poku of Kumawood Fam and Ageorgia. DJs expected who are expected to grace the event include DJ Jeff, DJ Prince, DJ Prekese and Naasei. There will be a live musical performance from Akrofi and a host of others.

This year's event is being sponsored by KTA Moblie, the Permanent Missions of Ghana in New York, the National Council of Ghanaian Associations, Ghana Chamber of Commerce USA, Vitalghradio, Royal Estates Group, Highlife Radio, Golden FM, Worcester, Anokyekrom and Club Noamesco.
Accra, Sept. 20, GNA - Alhaji Moro Yahaya, a businessman who has been accused of defiling a 14 year old girl at Ablekuma has appeared before an Accra Circuit Court. Yahaya charged with defilement has pleaded not guilty.

The court presided over by Mrs Jane Harriet Akweley Quaye has admitted Yahaya to bail in the sum of GH70,000.00 with two sureties who should be gainfully employed.

This was after his counsel Mr Richard Kojo Abban had prayed the court to admit his client to bail. Yahaya is to reappear on October 10.

Prosecuting Inspector Judith B. Asante narrated that the complainant, Mr Ibrahim Iddrisu is the father of the victim. Mr Iddrisu and Yahaya are neighbours who share a fence wall at Borkoborkor in Ablekuma.

On September 10 this year, the complainant's wife detected that the victim was demonstrating signs of pains whilst walking. When the victim was questioned, she mentioned the name of the accused as the one who had sex with her in his room.

Prosecution said a report was therefore made at the Anyaa Police Station and a medical form was issued to the complainant to seek medical care for the victim.

When Yahaya was arrested by the Police he denied the offence.

GNA

By Joyce Danso, GNA
The Juvenile Court has sentenced the Achimota student who was alleged to have shot his colleague, Lilly Asibetse, to serve 3 years in a correctional home.

Accra FM court correspondent, Ama Brako Ampofo, who was in court on Friday, September 22 reported that the trial judge, Benardine S. A. Senoo, found the accused guilty and handed him the sentence after the trial went on for seven months.

The accused, aged 17, is said to have gone for his father's gun under his bed with the intent of firing into the air, but ended up killing his friend, Lily Asigbetse, a third year student of Achimota School.

The facts, as narrated, were that at about 2pm on January 4 2017, the deceased, who lived at Cantonments, visited the accused at Community 8 in Tema. While there, according to the prosecution, the accused went to his fathers room and picked up his single barrelled gun and shot the victim in the abdomen.

When questioned, the accused told the police that he had intended shooting into the air, but the bullet changed course and hit the deceased.

Madam Gifty Billy, a neighbour, heard the gunshot and went to the scene only to see the victim lying in a pool of blood.

Ms Billy said she rushed the deceased to the Port Clinic at Tema. However, due to the condition of the victim, she was transferred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, where she died on admission.
I am settled in my mind that Dr Kwame Nkrumah is the founder of Ghana, a member of the governing New Patriotic Party and a relative to the late JB Danquah, has said.

Nana Fredua Agyemang Ofori-Atta insists he does not need anyone to tell him Dr Nkrumah was the founding president of Ghana nor will he wait for a Chinese to tell him how great Nkrumah was.

Speaking on Joy FMs Ghana Connect programme Friday Nana Fredua said while it is true that Nkrumah played a leading role in the fight for independence it will be inaccurate to underestimate the role of others, some of whom have been needlessly castigated by some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress.

He was contributing to the founders and founders day controversy triggered by president Nana Akufo-Addo when he proposed August 4 as the Founders Day holiday and 21 September as the Nkrumah Memorial Day which will also be a holiday.

The president called for a healthy debate to settle once and for all an age-long debate which has seen politicians and political traditions tear each other apart.

Even though Dr Nkrumah was invited to help in the independent struggle by members of the UGCC, he broke away to form his own party the CPP which eventually won independence for Ghana in 1957.

Before and after independence, the tension and animosity between Nkrumah and leaders of the UGCC existed.

It became worse when Dr JB Danquah died in prison in 1965 after being jailed by Dr Nkrumah.

Ghanas politics have gone through different stages and experiences including decades of military takeovers but it appears time is yet to heal the differences between elements supporting the Nkrumah tradition and those supporting the UP tradition.

These past few days have seen many heated arguments over whether the president was distorting history when he proposed the institution of the Founders Day on August 4.

In a rather surprising contribution and a departure from the typical UP narrative Nana Fredua said Nkrumah must be given the pride of place in the independent struggle.

We are proud of Nkrumah in Ghana. I dont need another person in another country, China to tell me Nkrumah is great. Me I must know. And you introduced me as somebody who is related to Danquah and I am not going to shirk from it.

Dr Danquah died in the prisons of Dr Nkrumah but when you come to my house I have books on pan Africanism, he said.

When he was asked about the founders debate he said, I am settled that he founding president of this country. I am settled he was the founder of this country and the leader of government business, he said.

Dr David Persie a member of the Socialist Forum who was also on the show said president Nana Akufo-Addo is 60 years late if he now wants to settle a debate on who the founder of Ghana is.

He accused the president of attempting to falsify history.

He argued that Dr Nkrumah played an indispensable role in the fight against colonialism, adding a man who has been given global recognition as being founder of Ghana cannot be seen to undermined in his own country.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Kumasi, Sept 20, GNA - Fidelity Bank has held the second draw of its '10x Richer Promo' in Kumasi with five customers getting their account credited with GH5,000.00 each.

The promo winners were Ms. Martha Ujan of IPS Legon Branch, Mr. Samuel Boakye Poku, K.O Methodist Branch, Mr. Abel Dadzie, Trade Fair Branch, Mr. Anthony Oppong, Santasi Roundabout Branch and Mr. Issah Razak of the Tema Community One Branch.

Another five other customers of the bank also won instant cash prizes ranging between GH100.00 and GH200.00.

The first draw was held in Accra about a month ago. The grand draw would see three lucky customers receiving GH150,000.00 at a yet to be determined date.

The promo, however, runs until the end of coming November.

Mr. Jim Baiden, the Managing Director, said the goal was to reward its loyal customers and to give them the purchasing power to live their dreams.

'We want our customers to get 10 times richer as we celebrate 10 years of milestones in the Ghanaian banking industry.'

He added, 'You have been the reason we have come this far in these 10 years and we deem it appropriate to carry you along in the celebrations'.

Mr. Baiden assured them that the bank was in good financial standing and encouraged them to stick with it to achieve greater heights.

He indicated that it was of the top banks whose capital adequacy ratio had exceeded 30 per cent.

'Fidelity is one of the well capitalized banks in Ghana in terms of capital adequacy ratio.'

He said the bank believed in the capabilities and responsiveness of the Ghanaian and would continue to introduce innovative products to meet their needs.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Sept. 20, GNA - The founders of iWatch Africa Project say the project has highlighted the critical need for the passage of the Right to Information (RTI) Bill to make information more accessible to the public to ensure accountability and transparency.

They said one of the lessons learnt during the one-month project was the challenge in accessing critical information for their reviews.

'One of the lessons learnt is that public officials are not very forthcoming when critical information is needed,' said Mr Gideon Sarpong, Co-Founder of Policy and Content Analysis at iWatch Africa.

The Project aims at putting a spotlight on government's promises and monitoring their implementation in communities across Ghana to get more citizens involved in governance in order to hold their leaders accountable, spearheaded by a group of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).

Mr Sarpong, at the closing and evaluation session of the Project, lauded its impact in offering citizens the opportunity to objectively assess the performance of the government through its unified gauge accountability reports.

This, he said, would deepen the democratic process in Ghana, adding that the Project would continue to assess government's commitments in the 2017 Budget Statement.

The Project reviewed commitments in Health, Education, Government Expenditure and Job Creation during the one month period.

'We look forward to expanding our focus areas to include procurement and SOEs in 2018,' Mr Sarpong said.

He raised concerns about the management of the public purse, which, he said, was not encouraging after review of several reports by the Auditor General.

'The attorney general has a mandate to recover all monies that were illegally expended,' he noted.

Mr Sarpong said the iWatch Africa Team was engaging the Ministry of Information to find ways of addressing some of the challenges that they faced during the Project, especially with regard to access to information.

He added that they were also liaising with the Ghana Integrity Initiative on the way forward and how to sustain and scale up the Project in the future.

Ms. Sara V. Stealy, the Press AttachA at the United States' Embassy in Ghana, commended the team for their hard work and said the focus areas tied in with the Embassy's work in Ghana.

The use of digital media, including social, on the Project was good for shining the light on the issues identified.

She added that the work of the team represented former President Barack Obama's vision for the YALI Project.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Aflao (V/R), Sept. 20, GNA - Management of Values For Life (VFL-Ghana) has ended its 2017 Skills Development Project in Aflao in the Ketu South Municipality of the Volta Region.

The project is to equip the youth and women of Ketu South with vocational skills to aid them in entrepreneurship.

Ms Abla Dzifa Gomashie, the Chief Executive Officer of VFL-Ghana, at the closing ceremony of the Project, said VFL-Ghana sought to provide various social systems to help improve lives of children, youth and women in the society through Creative and Performing Arts, Culture and Traditional Heritage, Tourism and Digital Innovations.

She said: 'As an organisation we plan our activities with the long vacation in August every year, this year, due to circumstances beyond our control, we held two separate activities.'

She said the organisation held a reading clinic to coincide with the long vacation and taught school children drumming and dancing from the 14th -19th August at the Avoeme Basic School in Aflao, where VFL-Ghana also had a library.

Ms Gomashie said the VFL-Ghana Team used the period to teach the young ones how reading could be fun through pronunciation and meaning of words and current affairs.

'We organised a youth forum as well to inspire the youth of Aflao and we believe that the world will continue to be a better place if the children and youth are given the necessary resources, which will help them to be great leaders,' she said.

The Project, which was sponsored by the US Embassy, was in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal-8, which was to promote sustained, inclusive and economic growth, productive employment and decent work for all.

Ms Gomashie said in 2030, when Ghana was expected to achieve a good level of the UN SDGs, VFL-Ghana would be proud to have contributed to it by creating opportunities for good and decent jobs, secure livelihoods and support inclusive and sustainable business practices.

Ms Alice Mamaga Akosua Amoako, the Programme Coordinator of VFL-Ghana, said the Project had registered 200 people out of which 100 people had acquired skills in soap making and beads stringing, 40 in batik tye and dye, 31 in basket weaving, 10 in painting and seven in flute playing.

She said the participants were between ages 18 to 60 years, which includes over 70 per cent of women, 40 per cent of youth and 30 per cent of men.
Accra, Sept 20, GNA - Ghana's partnership with Hungary is expected to see about six million quality chicken layers from top Hungarian poultry hatcheries a year, Mr. AndrAs SzabA, the Ambassador of Hungary to Ghana, has said.

The Ambassador said this when the first shipment of Hungarian parent stock chicken arrived in Ghana, marking the beginning of an expected fruitful relationship between the Hungarian and Ghanaian poultry farmers.

Mr. Szabo, who met the representatives of the partner companies at the Kotoka International Airport, emphasised that the shipment of 22,000 day-old parent stock chickens would pave the way for other key projects in the sector to thrive.

'This transaction undoubtedly is one of the great successes since the Embassy was reopened in 2016', he stated.

He stated, 'This shows the productivity of engagement among private and government entities in collaboration with the Ghanaian Poultry Association, the Hungarian National Agriculture Research and Innovation Centre, the Akate Farms, the Topman Farms and the Hungarian BAbolna Tetra Limited'.

Mr DAvid BAkAsi, the Economic Counsellor, told the Ghana News Agency that Hungary had the capacity and knowledge to share in the agricultural sector, adding that, one of the Embassy's main roles was to assist in introducing partners and finding solution for specific financial framework.

Mr GAbor Csorba, Africa Sales Manager of Hungarian BAbolna Tetra Limited, said continuing the 200-year-old tradition and success of animal breeding had become the aim of the company.

'As one of the world's leading, layer-hybrid, breeding companies, BAbolna Tetra would like to continue its activities vigorously,' he added.

The target of their genetic research is to provide the customers with a hybrid that is efficient, producing high egg numbers with low costs and which gives the best results under various climatic conditions.

'The entire team - representing an internationally recognised organisation - is totally committed to the highest possible quality, efficiency and environmental awareness,' he said.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Sept 21, GNA - Mr Seth Osei Acheampong, the President of the World Peace volunteers, an NGO, has called on Ghanaians to be united and tolerate each other as the world celebrates International Peace Day on September 21.

In a statement issued and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Acheampong said the celebration offered an opportunity for all, especially Africans to reflect on how best to be united.

He said there was the need for humanity to be enlightened with the truth to promote peace in all spheres irrespective of religious, economic and social differences.

Mr Acheampong called on authorities to ensure that the fundamental human rights of the citizenry was protected and respected from abuse to ensure peaceful existence and national development.

He also called on Ghanaians to get involved in making the country peaceful, great and strong, saying it was the responsibility of citizens to ensure that the peace enjoyed was maintained and sustained.

The President advised against unhealthy activities such as mob injustices, murder, seizure of properties and unlawful entry into private properties without due recourse to the rule of law.

'A peaceful spirit is one that is in harmony with itself and the world around it. We should always be mindful not to let others pull us into their storm, but rather pull them into our peace, to ensure mutual understanding,' he added.

Mr Acheampong noted that peace did not occur by chance, and that there was the need to forgive ourselves and battle for peace and guard it with all our strength.

World Peace Volunteers is a Civil Society Organization that is aimed at promoting peace through advocacy in the field of Human Rights and the Rule of Law.
Cheer

Braxten Nielsen is giving new meaning to the phrase cowboy up.

The College of Southern Idaho rodeo athlete was competing Aug. 31 at the Twin Falls County Fair when his horse reared in the chute, pinning Nielsen against the gates.

His spinal cord was compressed. His spine twisted. And he broke his back.

Now, the 24-year-old from Roosevelt, Utah, is paralyzed from the waist down.

But thats not stopping his cowboy attitude. Doctors have told Nielsen its unlikely hell ever walk again. Nielsen isnt as convinced.

Hes thrown himself into physical therapy, and hes taking his recovery just like his bareback rides: one second at a time.

We wish him good luck in his recovery and hope his story will be an inspiration for anyone facing adversity.

Jeer

Jeers to the GOPs latest effort to repeal, reform or replace the Affordable Care Act. (At this point, not even Republicans can agree on which of the three this latest proposal does.) Congress has until the end of this month to act before a legislative rule change will make it all but impossible for Republicans to change the controversial health care law.

But this latest proposal, from GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and South Carolinas Lindsey Graham, is just as bad as the partys previous attempts this summer, efforts that would have stripped millions of coverage. After eight years of empty promises, a summer of chaos and a party still divided over its vision for health care, the GOP isnt any closer to finding a workable fix for Obamacare.

This latest effort does deliver ideas worth more consideration, particularly the main thrust of the Graham-Cassidy plan that would give far more powers to states to manage health care for their residents. We generally believe that government works better the closer it is to its citizens.

But do you really want the Idaho Legislature in charge of your health care? Idaho lawmakers dont exactly have a stellar record in this arena, particularly recently. Remember, the Legislature has been embarrassingly incapable of crafting fixes for the states so-called gap population, about 70,000 Idahoans without access to affordable care, despite controlling both chambers and the governors office.

We have serious doubts the Legislature would craft Idahos plan with the states most vulnerable residents in mind, protect people with pre-existing conditions or ensure easy access to affordable plans.

We believe the countrys health care system needs reform  Obamacare is not the ideal system  but this latest last-ditch proposal smacks of a desperate desire to keep a campaign promise even if it means hurting Americans.

We need a fix, but this isnt it. We encourage Idahos congressional delegation to reject this plan and continue working toward a solution that will truly transform the nations health care system for the better.

Keep your promise, but get it right when you do.

Cheer

Its not very often youll get 9 in 10 people to agree on something. At the College of Southern Idaho, it seems almost easy.

Fully 90 percent of the student body has rated their college experience at CSI as good or excellent.

And, according to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, more than 96 percent of CSI students would recommend the college to a family member or friend.

That says a lot about the leadership, instructors and programs at the community college. Students leave CSI fully trained to join the workforce, educated through programs tailor-made for jobs available in the Magic Valley. Other students go on to other schools to earn four-year degrees. And some students stay right on campus to earn those diplomas.

Clearly, CSI is on the right track.
Operatives of the National Security and the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) will soon invite ex-Kumasi mayor, Kojo Bonsu, to answer questions regarding the role he allegedly played in the demonstration against President Akufo-Addo in New York on Thursday.

A recorded audio, on which Kojo Bonsu was specifically mentioned as the brain behind the somewhat ill-motive protest march against the Ghanaian leader, has landed in the hands of the security agents.

Richard Adjei Mensah Ofori-Atta aka Tomtom, a top New Patriotic Party (NPP) member who is part of President Akufo-Addo's delegation to the US for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, made the disclosure.

The BNI and the National Security will soon invite Kojo Bonsu and Appiah Stadium to answer key questions for allegedly planning to humiliate the president of the land, he predicted.

He said Appiah Stadium, a staunch ex-President Mahama supporter in Kumasi, called him (Tomtom) on phone and mentioned Kojo Bonsu was the one, who is organizing the demonstration to dent the president's image in the US.

According to Tomtom, Appiah Stadium claimed that Kojo Bonsu tasked the protesters to demonstrate with wrapped paper objects in their mouths to portray to the international community that President Akufo-Addo smokes wee.

Mr Mensah Ofori-Atta disclosed that Appiah Stadium also said Kojo Bonsu tried to secure US visa for him (Appiah Stadium) to play a leading role in tarnishing the president's image during the United Nations General Assembly Meeting, but he was denied the visa.

He said on Okay FM in Accra that he managed to record whatever Appiah Stadium  who is a dyed-in-the-wool National Democratic Congress (NDC) member  said to him about Kojo Bonsu's fiendish plot against the president on phone.

He claimed that all the names that Appiah Stadium mentioned to him as part of the demonstrators, including one Dr. Lawrence, indeed appeared on the streets of New York on Thursday and demonstrated against Ghana's first gentleman.

Mr Mensah Ofori-Atta, a former NPP Manhyia Constituency Organizer in Kumasi, expressed gross worry about how the few demonstrators misbehaved and even tried to get close to the president, which is uncalled for.

The demonstrators initially put up a weird behaviour and after that they also tried to even enter a restaurant in New York where the president and his delegation were, he complained.

According to him, the president's team had intelligence that Kojo Bonsu would organize a demonstration against the Ghana contingent even before they left Ghana, adding that he (Bonsu) and Appiah Stadium would be dealt with by the law.

Gabby's Allegation

According to him, the standard of Ghana politics had been reduced, saying that those alleging that Gabby Okyere Darko, a lawyer and NPP member, is taking US$20,000 bribe from people before he would grant them audience to the president, are propagandists.

He stated that Gabby Okyere Darko is a clean person, who is playing his roles to help transform the country, and dared those making the wild allegation to boldly come out and provide their evidence or forever remain silent.

Appiah Stadium's Response

Speaking on the same network, Appiah Stadium admitted that he talked to Tomtom on phone three days before about the intended demonstration against Nana Akufo-Addo in New York.

According to him, he disclosed to Tomtom that he (Kojo Bonsu) tried sponsoring him to the US to tarnish the president's image.

He stated that Tomtom and the president's contingent had no basis to call for the arrest of Appiah or Kojo Bonsu, since they had not erred in any way in organizing the protest march.

Appiah said when Mr. Mahama was president, the NPP also organized a similar demonstration against him (Mahama), when he travelled to the US, where they labeled him (Mahama) as a security man.

He said, If you demonstrated against Mr. Mahama and tagged him as security man for all to see, why are you now complaining that some people are tagging Nana Akufo-Addo as a wee smoker?

Appiah recounted how Mensah Ofori-Atta also used his radio station in the USA to tarnish Mr. Mahama's image prior to the 2016 elections, saying that Tomtom has no basis to cry foul over the demonstration against Nana Akufo-Addo.

He even congratulated one Kwaku Skirt, said to be the leader of the demonstrators, for a splendid job done, noting that Ghanaians like him (Appiah) are happy about his delivery.
The International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) sitting in Hamburg, Germany, is expected to give its ruling on the maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire today.

The judgement is expected to be read at a public sitting by Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber of the tribunal.

The Attorney-General, Gloria Afua Akuffo, is leading a Ghanaian delegation to witness the delivery of the judgement in respect of the maritime boundary, which Cote d'Ivoire is laying claim to after the discovery of oil and gas in commercial quantities by Ghana.

Officials from the Ministry of Energy, the Attorney-General's Department, Maritime Boundary Secretariat, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Petroleum Commission and other state agencies that made inputs into the hearing of the case, are also in Hamburg for the verdict.

Officials from both countries are tight-lipped on their expectations, but some analysts say Ghana stands a better chance of winning the epic case.

President Akufo-Addo has also maintained that his government would not make any pronouncements on the yet-to-be-delivered judgement until after today.

He indicated that his government was waiting to see what decision would be made and we will see how best we will enforce the decision of the court.

In 2014, Ghana went to the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, seeking a declaration that it had not encroached on Cote d'Ivoire's territorial waters.

Cote d'Ivoire in February 2015 also filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.

The first round of preliminary hearing began in March 2015, under Marietta Bruce Appiah-Opong, then Attorney General and Minister of Justice.

The oral hearing of the case was concluded in February 2017.
A contract by the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government for RLG Communications Ltd to supply 103,181 pieces of laptops to schools in 2010 at the cost of GH51,257,500 ended up with the supply of only 90,448 with 12,733 pieces remaining.

The contract sum paid to the company was intensely scrutinized at yesterday's sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of parliament.

The 2015 Auditor-General's report had indicted Roland Agambire's RLG Communications Ltd for not supplying the 12,733 pieces of laptops as part of the general agreement, costing the nation an amount of GH6,366,875.

It was recommended that RLG be made to supply the rest of the laptops.

But there were more interesting twists to the whole saga as members of the committee, led by NDC MP for Ejura-Sekyedumase, Mohammed Bawah Braimah, probed further into the laptop transaction between the company and the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations.

It was revealed by the current Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations, Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, at the sitting that when those laptops were supplied, the ministry realized that they were not up to the specifications because instead of 15.7-inch screen laptops with high specs or memory, the company supplied the ministry with 10.1-inch screen laptops with lower memory.

According to the minister, the attention of the supplier was drawn to the anomaly, with each computer costing GH500.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng said the ministry then asked the company to supply 4,000 additional laptops with much more advanced specifications and higher specs and a screen size of 15 inches, but the company produced 3,800 pieces costing GH2,000 each, but with the same specifications like the previous ones.

He said the only difference was that the screen was detachable and could be used as an iPad.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng said the way the contract was given RLG defies all laid down regulations for an award of contract.

He said that even before the contract was executed all the (contract) sum had been paid to the supplier, adding that the company was also given the sole responsibility to supply the laptops directly to the schools that were identified at the time.

The minister said after assuming office this year, he personally called Mr Roland Agambire and spoke to him about his company's indebtedness to the ministry; and after several interactions, the CEO agreed to settle the indebtedness in installments.

He added that even though Agambire agreed in principle to pay the money, when he (minister) suggested that there must be a written agreement on how the remaining money could be paid, he (CEO) decided to drag his feet because he (CEO) only subscribed to verbal agreement for the settlement of the debt.

Rejected Laptops

Prof Frimpong-Boateng said after raising the issue of settling the company's indebtedness with the ministry, it found a way of stocking the ministry's stores with an additional 2,000 laptops.

But I have asked them to come and take back their laptops because we have not requested for such laptops.

A member of the committee and New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Bunkpurugu, Solomon Boar, stressed that RLG Communications Ltd must be made to refund the money with an interest because GH6.4 million in 2011 or 2012 is not the same amount of money in 2017.

According to him, asking RLG to pay interest too will send signal to the rest of contractors who continue to shortchange government in the execution of contracts given to them.

The chairman of the committee, James Klutse Avedzi, appealed to the minister to hold talks with Mr Agambire and find a way of negotiating with RLG to either supply the remainder of the laptops with the specifications that the ministry wants or be made to pay the indebtedness to the ministry with interest.

The laptops were supplied for votes ahead of the 2012 elections when Sherry Ayittey was the then sector minister.
The National Council for Tertiary Education will be undertaking an assessment of the readiness of Wa and Bolgatanga Polytechnics to convert into technical universities in December 2017, Dr Mathew Opoku Prempeh, Minister of Education, has said.

Dr Prempeh said government was fully committed to promoting tertiary education to equip its citizens with the requisite tools vital for national development.

The Minister said this at the inauguration of Governing Councils of Bolgatanga and Wa Polytechnics in Accra.

The councils are responsible for the governance of the polytechnics by enhancing their vision and facilitating their mission.

The Councils are to determine the strategic direction of the Polytechnics and responsible for the management and administration of finances and properties of the institution.

The Councils are to promote income-generating activities, foster linkages and collaboration with relevant national and international industries and determine the allocation and proper use of its funds, among other functions.

Dr Prempeh said the two polytechnics have received budgetary allocations from GETFund to address their key challenges.

As part of efforts to deal with the problem of funding higher education, government has committed itself to the establishment of a research fund for the sole purpose of funding relevant and sector specific research works in addition to the book and research allowances, he said.

He said a draft bill for the establishment of the research fund was near completion and consultations for stakeholder inputs into the bill are currently underway.

The Minister said government places emphasis on the continuous linkages of academia with industry and the world of work to ensure curriculum relevance and reduce graduate unemployment.

He admonished them to work diligently to justify the confidence reposed in them by President Akufo-Addo, saying he will follow up on their work and progress with keen interest.

Professor Daniel Bagah, Chairman of the Governing Council for Wa Polytechnic, thanked the President for the confidence reposed in them and pledged to work hard to address the challenges of the institution.

The Polytechnics Law (Act 745) gives mandate to the Polytechnics to provide tertiary education in the fields of manufacturing, commerce, science, technology and provision of opportunities for skills development, applied research and publication of research findings.

The members of the Governing Council for Wa Polytechnic are Prof Emmanuel Marfo-Owusu, Rector Wa Polytechnic, Dr Alberta Bondzi-Simpson, Government Nominee, Daniel Adonu, Ministry of Education, Iddrisu Ngmenipuo Mohammed, Convocation and Joachim Zumankyere, Teachers and Educational Workers Union.

Others are Felix Mustapha Nantogma, Polytechnic Administrators Association, Iddrisu Bamie Mubashi Ahmed, Polytechnic Teachers Association, Amoah Ayinbila Pasmond, Polytechnic Student Representative Council and John Okine Yamoah, Ghana Employers Association.

The rest are Freeman Abramani, Association of Ghana Industries, Ing Mathew Adombire, Professional Body and Abdulai Eliasu from Polytechnic's Alumni Association.

The Governing Council members for Bolgatanga Polytechnic are Prof Francis Atindaana Abantanga, Chairman, Dr Mba Atinga, Rector, Bolgatanga Polytechnic, Alfredina Zebto Kuupole, Government Nominee, Dr Christian Koramoah, Ministry of Education, Mathew Kwabena Valogo, Convocation and Apasiya Alias Ayinbila, Teachers and Educational Workers Union.

Others are Saabon Lariba Felicia, Polytechnic Teachers Association, Emmanuel Akanpaadgi, Polytechnic Teachers Association, Fusseini Ayamba, Polytechnic SRC and Freeman Abramani, Ghana Employers Association.

The rest are Alhaji Fusheini Seidu, Association of Ghana Industries, Dr Stephen Turkson, Professional Body and Adama Muntala, Polytechnic's Alumni Association.
To be given an invitation to meet with the King of Saudi Arabia is a rare gesture which must be relished to the utmost, especially when you are not a head of state of your country.

When, therefore, some of us were chosen from the multi-national media team to go to the mountain-top palace of the King, we smiled and expectedly waited for the date.

We had received telephone calls individually from the Ministry of Culture and Information staff managing us in our Movenpick Jeddah abode rooms to see a certain official on one of the floors, MI, not knowing what it was all about. One of the floors at the Movenpick Madina Road, Jeddah, was reserved for our minders, officials of the Culture and Information Ministry from Riyadh. They were responsible for our movements and welfare, something they did with dexterity.

When I took my turn and met with the official, he told me that I was one of those chosen to meet the King. He asked that I turn out in my traditional apparel and I regretted not having my Northern smock with me for the occasion. I, however, went in, something which reflected somewhat the part of West Africa I hailed from.

Awesome Palace

I had seen a winding wall on the mountain top and wondered which rich man had constructed this on a hard rock having many construction works on rather tough terrains. Little did I know that it was a wall around the Minna palace of the King of Saudi Arabia. The palace overlooked Minna, one of the important stations from where pilgrims proceed to perform one of the critical rites of the Hajj, the symbolic stoning of Satan at Jamarat. It is called a tent city because of the thousands of white roofs dotting the landscape to as far eyes could see. It is a tent city and has always been because it is a temporary place where pilgrims stay for just a few days before moving to other aspects of the Hajj rites.

Five or so buses belonging to the Saudi Public Transport Company or SAPTCO had pulled up as they always do when we had a place to visit, police escort et al to convey us to the mountain top palace.

Eye-opener

The winding route to the mountain was an eye-opener about how determination and commitment had made the Saudis tame the rocky landscape into places of comfort worth admiring. The arid landscape has been tamed as evidenced by the lush green grass at the palace grounds. I wish we in Ghana could learn about how greenness can be maintained even on harsh arid terrains with determination and commitment.

Security

We were met by multifaceted uniformed security personnel, each with their defined roles. One thing was common among them, courtesy of the highest order. Each of us was met with the traditional Arabic welcome 'ahlanwasahlam'.

Some of the uniformed personnel I could only conclude belonged to the elite forces their US marine uniform and their smartness saying it all about the nature of their training and the association of the Saudi security system and the US.

Helicopter

A state-of-the-art helicopter pad containing five choppers beckoned us before our final stop. This is one of the palaces of the King Riyadh, the official capital, obviously having a similar but more sophisticated one.

Wild-looking Alsatian dogs were on leash controlled by uniformed handlers, police or soldiers. Our trip was expected and so we were ushered in without unnecessary delays not before the rules were read out loud and clear-no mobile phones and cameras were allowed in the bowels of the palace. We were compelled to leave the gadgets therefore in the buses regretting though the denied opportunity to capture the handshakes with one of the richest and powerful kings in the world. My consolation was that I would use my God-given retentive memory to capture as much as I could for presentation to the world.

Final Entry

The procedure preceding the boarding an aircraft was played out. An X-ray system examined us as we finally made entry into an ornate hall. We took our seat thinking the King was going to make an entry into the location. Not so as we were moved into a more complex conference hall ornate with priceless pictures depicting the Islamic nature of the location and the country.

Young men robbed in traditional Arab apparels and armed. They were more ceremonial than a fighting company ready to defend the palace. They added to the beauty of the ambience.

Heads of State

As we took our seats, a stream of very important personalities came in at varying times. I was able to identify them; one of them being the Sudanese President Al Bashir, The Gambian President Bow among, including selected envoys.

I identified my country's envoy Sheikh TB Damba, with whom I later shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.

Times for prayers are observed critically in officialdom in Saudi Arabia. It was time to pray and so all of us turned to the mosque within the palace where I beheld security personnel praying with their boots on. They were technically in the battlefield, and so could pray in that mode, it is permissible.

Handshake With King

When the King finally took his seat, the proceedings commenced with a recitation from the Holy Quran. Speeches were made by the head of the worldwide Islamic association. The King welcomed his guests and expressed satisfaction with the conduct of Hajj 2017, into which we all acknowledged so much resources had been put in among other things. The issue of so-called Muslims engaged in terrorist activities across the world got space in the speeches delivered at the venue.

Every guest, including me, had the opportunity to shake hands with the King. There was no pictorial evidence of the rare opportunity because of the denial by the security arrangement to enter with their cameras and mobile phones. That was understandable given the parlous nature of the world today.

Dinner

The conference hall had opening into the dining hall where we all retired for lunch befitting of kings. An assortment of meals was lined up in front of us. We feasted and left the palace with lasting memories about the engagement with the King of Saudi Arabia.

Historical Sites

Pilgrims do not have the opportunity of visiting important historical sites such as the museum of the two Holy Mosques where old stuff such as the staircase of the Kaaba and others are kept.

The sense of history of the custodians of the two holy mosques is enormous. The place where the clothing for the Kaaba is manufactured including the embroidery is done is a place in Makkah. It is a whole factory devoted to the production of the clothing known as Kiswa.

It takes seven months by two hundred persons to produce the clothing which is replaced after every hajj season. With Hajj 2017 now over, the replacement for next year's will soon be ready having taken eight months to produce. It cost $4.5 million to produce one kiswa. It used to be produced in Egypt.

Museum

At the museum of the Prophet's mosque in Madina we saw important correspondences sent to the King of Abysinnia, today's Ethiopia. The Holy Prophet who could not write himself dictated his thoughts and revelations to scribes who wrote them down. Some documents bespoke of the links between Saudi Arabia and the Ottoman Empire who ruled most of the world at one time.

Press House

We also visited the printing house where copies of the Islamic scripture, the Holy Quran, are printed in major languages of the world for distribution gratis. It is a sophisticated printing house with the latest technology in the printing industry. Saudi Arabia is a country devoted to the enhancement of the word of Allah evidence of which is not difficult to fathom.

Modernity and Tradition

Saudi Arabia is a country hosting modernity and tradition. Even the two holy cities of Makka and Madina host modern structures and tradition styles contrast which give the country a rare uniqueness.

The Prophet's Mosque

This mosque like other structures pertaining to Islam is constantly in a flux witnessing an annual upgrade architecturally.

The air-conditioning system and other facilities here is enough to satisfy the energy requirements of some countries.

The foldable minaret at this location is another evidence of the application of modern trends in what should ordinarily be traditional in nature.

To control the sometimes unbearable temperature when close to 170,000 assemble at this location there is a constant flow of a cold mist. During the Ramadan and pilgrimage about a million worshippers assemble here.

The two holy sites are served by fire stations, modern policing and health systems to respond to emergencies.

Ten thousand carpets serve the Madina mosque, with hundreds of workers permanently cleaning the place. With constant supply of water, the state of sanitation is impeccable.

High Turnout

With an expansion project the Saudis were able to contain 800,000 more pilgrims this year with no shortage of facilities observed anywhere in the rituals.

Heroin Haul

The security system is so good that 2993 grams of heroin was seized in the early days of the arrival of pilgrims at the very busy King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah.

Ministry Of Interior

This ministry is one of the most critical in managing Hajj operations. We met a Lt. Col who is responsible for coordinating the Makkah operations during the Hajj and Ummrah or lesser Hajj.

With the latest technology at their disposal, he said they receive between 30,000 to 40,000 calls daily regarding security situations. These, he stated, are received by a staff of 120 on shift basis. With 15,000 channels open for such complaints, he explained that responses are done within seconds and the appropriate agencies such as fire service, police, air ambulance alerted for action.

There is still more to write about our trip to Saudi Arabia but with just two editions at my disposal, I can proceed beyond this. So long and shukran as the Arabs would say for thank you.

By A.R. Gomda


The new Board of Directors of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), chaired by Sammy Awuku, has given the assurance that it will pursue an aggressive rebranding of the Agency that has always been in the news for institutional corruption to help it deliver on its core mandate.

He said YEA has been in the news for all the wrong reasons due to crony capitalism, grandiose looting of public funds and exploitation under the previous government.

We as a board will provide clear direction to management with a revolutionary verve to position the Agency as the foremost institution for youth employment, the Board chairman said.

Mr Awuku gave the assurance last Friday after the board was officially inaugurated by the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah.

According to him, it is the avowed aim of the board to ensure that every Ghanaian youth gets a fair chance of being employed by the agency.

We will not discriminate on the basis of ones colour, religion, political persuasion or economic status, he said, adding that the new board, in collaboration with management, will rigorously encourage participation of youth with special needs- those physically challenged or disabled who because of their circumstances are not gainfully employed.

We need as country to work together and do everything within our God-given talents and abilities to uplift the teeming youth from economic doldrums.

He praised the new management for initiating very laudable interventions, which will bring visible transformations to the operation of the Agency.

We wish to assure Mr President that under the tenure of the board, YEA will see a new life, new focus and new direction in its operations and service delivery.

The Minister urged the new board to live up to its mandate and fulfill the Presidents vision of providing employment to the teeming unemployed youth.

Other members of the Board are Dr Kwame Amoako Tuffuor, Lawyer Justin Kodua Frimpong, who represents management on the Board, Lawyer Bright Wireko Brobbey, Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations.

Other members are Emmanuel Sin Nyet Asigri, Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Youth Authority and James Quarshie, a forensic auditor.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

In a village of Atiavi-Agorvinu in the Volta Region of Ghana, a powerful village fetish priest Tsikor Zewu Zowonu, passed away on May 27th 2017. The debacle of the enstoolment of his successor to be; Sylvester Zowonu, has led to the fear of the acrimonious dead spirit bringing deadly diseases to village. The decision of the village clan elders to appease the spirit was to choose Sylvester Zowonu as their next village Chief fetish priest. The chosen Chief fetish priest, Sylvester Zowonu, currently resides in the United States of America. Nevertheless Sylvesters mom Celestina Zowonu, is vehemently protesting the selection of Sylvester to become the next village Chief priest, because of their Christian faith. Even though, Sylvester communicated his decision to the elders that because of his Christian faith, he would not be involved in the worship of gods. The family elders led by Glimevu Klikor Zowonu is vowing to make Sylvester the next Chief priest, because Sylvester cannot defy the gods and their tradition. They are threatening to go any length to bring Sylvester back to Ghana to be their Chief Fetish Priest.


The United Nations Security Council meeting, an annual event, started its 72nd session few days ago at the UN Headquarters in United States of America. More than 100 world leaders, thousands of diplomats and advocates are presently in New York City, in an event scheduled to hold from 19-25 September 2017 to fashion out a way forward in pursuit of global peace and security.

This years theme is Focusing on people  striving for peace and a decent life for all on a sustainable planet. On the first day of the event, precisely on 19th September 2017, world leaders took turn to address their counterparts and other participants, either in advancement of their national agendas, pursuit of global ideas, defense of policies or solidarity with other nations.

Nigerias President, Muhammadu Buhari was at the event and he spoke on variety of issues, among which include Nigerias fight against terrorism and the countrys role in advancing democracy in Gambia. President Buhari also spoke about the threat of nuclear war (North Korean missile program), which he says is a crisis equal to that of Cuban (1962), when the world was close to a war.

"All necessary pressure and diplomatic efforts must be brought to bear on North Korea to accept peaceful resolution of the crisis." He said. In staying true to Nigerias long term stand on the Israel and Palestine dispute, President Buhari once again declared Nigerias total support for a two-state solution to the conflict, calling on world leaders not to forget about the unresolved dispute. New conflicts should not make us lose focus on ongoing unresolved old conflicts.

For example, several UN Security Council Resolutions from 1967 on the Middle East crisis remain unimplemented. Meanwhile, the suffering of the Palestinian people and the blockade of Gaza continue. Buhari said. In a similar speech given last year on the same issue, President Buhari had stated that,our support for various Security Council resolutions restoring and respecting 1967 boundaries with Jerusalem as capital of Palestine is firm and unshaken.

What President Buhari has done since coming to power is to re-emphasize Nigerias stand on the issue as often done by his predecessors. Nigeria is known to take a consistent stand on key global issues and this is not in any way different. The two-state solution refers to a solution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict which calls for "two states for two groups of people." The two-state solution envisages an independent State of Palestine alongside the Israel, west of the Jordan River.

The boundary between the two states is still subject to dispute and negotiation, with Palestinian and Arab leadership insisting on the "1967 borders", which is not accepted by Israel. The territory of the former Mandate Palestine which shall not form part of the Palestinian State, shall be part of Israeli territory.

After the Six Day War in June 1967, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed "United Nations Security Council Resolution 242" calling for Israeli withdrawal from the "Israeli-occupied territories" during the war, in exchange for "termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and "acknowledgement of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area". The "Palestine Liberation Organization" (PLO), which had been formed in 1964, strongly criticized the resolution, saying that it reduced the question of Palestine to a refugee problem. In September 1974, 56 Member States proposed that "the question of Palestine" be included as an item in the General Assemblys agenda.

In a resolution adopted on 22 November 1974, the General Assembly affirmed Palestinian rights, which included the "right to self-determination without external interference", "the right to national independence and sovereignty", and the "right to return to their homes and property". These rights have been affirmed every year since.

However, despite the resolution and endorsement by almost all countries of the world, Israel backed by the United States of America has continued to reject the solution. While Israel doesnt out rightly reject the two states solution, it prefer the one-state solution and the similar bi national solution.

Proponents of a bi national solution to the conflict advocate a single state in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with citizenship and equal rights in the combined entity for all inhabitants of all three territories, without regard to ethnicity or religion, but most countries of the world differ, yet are not trying to understand why Israel is reluctant to go ahead with the two states solution as resolved by the United Nations. Many have been asking, why is Israel against the two states solution when almost all countries of the world endorsed it as the best solution?

Do they really love the crisis to remain unresolved for as long as possible? If not, why are they refusing to implement a resolution the global body consider appropriate? Or better still, when will Israel agree to end this crisis that is doing more harm than good to both parties? My understanding as a peace professional is that, Israel has fears and worries, which are genuine and needed to be adequately dealt with by the global body.

They understand that if those issues are not addressed before the two states solution is implemented, the two states will not be a solution; it would rather be the beginning of greater crisis. It is not a secret that between Israel and Palestine leadership, there is intractable mutual hatred. Individual leaders that have worked for a peaceful resolution of the crisis from both sides had been murdered for their efforts. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt come to mind here.

If Israel declare the conflict over today and allow the resolution to take place as proposed, the unaddressed mutual hatred within both parties will only give the Palestinian hardliners some legitimacy to not only acquire arms to engage in real hostility against Israel, it would also enable them to partner with enemy nations to start a greater conflict with Israel, in furtherance of their mutual hatred.

I am sure no nation would deliberately empower its hostile neighbor to have more capacity to turn against it. In conclusion, my proposition would that, the United Nations design a 5 years strategic confidence building program to reduce hostility and mutual hatred between both parties. The high level programme should carefully articulate Israels fear and concerns and work to address them before pushing for the implementation of the UN resolution. The programme should be built in such a way that, both parties interact more and are given platform to commit themselves to not just being independent of each other, but working together at the highest level. Until Israel become comfortable that it is safe in a two state solution, it would never agree for it to be implemented.

Abdulrazaq O Hamzat is the Executive Director of Foundation for Peace Professionals
23.09.2017 LISTEN

In 1992, our dear country Ghana and its people decided to enact for ourselves a Democratic constitution that spells out among other things our statehood and the various institutions of state, the roles, function(s) and responsibilities of personnel in these institutions to as it were check on the excesses of personnel in the civil and public services.

To be sure law and order is adhered to, the framers of the constitution under Chapter 5, Article 200 established the Police Service and charged it with the responsibility of maintaining law and order under clause 3 of the same Article ibid. The said clause reads; "The Police Service shall be equipped and maintained to perform its traditional role of maintaining law and order".

I must say at this juncture without any shred of equivocation that these men have proved to be very useful to the peaceful living in Ghana and the enviable democratic credentials we pride ourselves in within the African subregion can partly be credited to these "officers in black".

Need I say more on how these officers patrol the nights to wade off thugs and armed robbers even at the expense of their lives? Obviously these are men who deserve our commendation.

Recently however, the incidence of police brutality in our otherwise peaceful nation is becoming an unpleasant phenomenon which needs to nibbed in the bud before it raises its ugly head to devour all of us up. Whiles we revere, respect and honour these men in uniform, they on their part have either become oblivious of the fact that the very constitution that established their authority also gives to the ordinary citizen rights, freedoms and privileges. For the avoidance of doubt, the preamble of the 1992 constitution states in part "...and in solemn declaration and affirmation of our commitment to;

Freedom, Justice, Probity and Accountability;

The Principle that all powers of Government spring from the Sovereign Will of the People;

The Principle of Universal Adult Suffrage;

The Rule of Law;

The protection and preservation of Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, Unity and Stability for our Nation; do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this CONSTITUTION."

Could it be said that the police personnel are ignorant of these provisions in our constitution? Obviously not because I know for a fact that any police worth his/her salt has an annotated version of the criminal codes of Ghana which they refer to almost on a daily basis in the line of their duty.

Not long ago at or about the 24th August, 2017, I chanced on a publication by Joy FM on how some Policemen brutalized a taxi driver and her madam for the singular reason that their car is rickety. Below is a link to the story https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155574130696894&id=218202476893

The questions that beg for answers include whether the said car had a road worthy certificate and whether it was valid or expired as of the time of the encounter? Assuming without admitting the certificate is expired was it in the hands of the police officer(s) to physically abuse the driver and passenger?

Again on the 18th September, 2017 3News reported a story with the caption; "Policeman slaps Legon lecturer, IGP petitioned over the matter"

Source: http://3news.com/policeman-slaps-legon-lecturer-igp-petitioned-matter/

The said lecturer, Dr. Kobby Mensah, is someone I will describe as a perfect gentleman and so to have heard that he had a scuffle with a policeman to the extent of the latter slapping him is something I could not readily fathom.

Quiet characteristic of the Ghanaian media reportage, these stories only gained prominence at the time they occurred and afterwards they are left to die a natural death. I however think that these inordinate display of power should not be swept under the carpet. It is about time the guardians of the rule of law are made to also respect the law. This is the only way we can ensure that we continue to peacefully coexist with these men in uniform. The examples of our sister nation Togo should be enough to warn us of the consequences of pent up anger among the citizenry.

I call on the Inspector General of Police, COP David Asante-Apietu, to charge the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards (PIPS) to investigate into these cases of citizen abuses and sanction accordingly these abusive officers to serve as deterrent to the many unscrupulous others who will want to follow in this dastardly acts which brings the reputation of the men in uniform into disrepute. The police are supposed to be our friends.dohey are supposed to protect us from abuse and not be the abusers.

I chose to speak now and not when I become a victim. Who knows I may not get anyone to speak for me when I become a victim.

I am the son of a common man with common sense.

RICHARD KWASI ANIM Sir Raks

Junior Member

University of Ghana Richard Kwasi Anim

SRC President

University of Ghana Distance Education
The Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), today [Saturday] September 23, 2017, as part of its judgement on the three-year boundary dispute, ruled that Ghana does not owe Cote d'Ivoire, and should not pay any compensation.

Cote d'Ivoire, as part of reliefs put forward, asked the Chamber to order Ghana to compensate them, because in their view, Ghana benefited from a resource in itsterritorial waters.

They had argued that reparation by equivalence or compensation should be envisaged both for the loss of hydrocarbon production for any damage that Ghana's activities may have caused to the rocks and deposits.

Ghana on the other hand, argued that it would be absurd to compensate Cote d'Ivoire for physical changes to the seabed brought about by oil production works which Cote d'Ivoire itself wants to pursue in the very same way.

The Chamber dismissed Cote d'Ivoire's request sustaining Ghana's argument.

The Special Chamber, in delivering its judgement on the delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between the two in the Atlantic Ocean, also ruled that Ghana has not violated the sovereign rights of the Francophone country by exploring for oil in that disputed basin.

The Chamber rejected Cote d'Ivoire's argument that Ghana's coastal lines were unstable.

It also noted that Ghana has not violated Cote d'Ivoire's sovereign rights with its oil exploration in the disputed basin in question.

Justice Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber in reading the judgment, accepted Ghana's argument of adoption of the equidistance method of delineation of the maritime boundary.

In consideration of the new boundary, the Chamber determined that it starts from boundary 55 -200 nautical miles away, a position much closer to what Ghana was arguing for.

The judgement effectively means that Ghana's oil fields are not going to be materially affected.

Ghana's oil discovery

In 2007, Ghana discovered oil and gas in commercial quantities, and this was followed by Cote d'Ivoire staking its claim to portions of the West Cape Three Points.

These claims were renewed in 2010 after Vanco, an oil exploration and Production Company announced the discovery of oil in the Dzata-1 deepwater-well.

Cote d'Ivoire petitioned the United Nations asking for a completion of the demarcation of its maritime boundary with Ghana, and Ghana responded by setting up of the Ghana Boundary Commission.

This commission was tasked with the responsibility of negotiating with Cote d'Ivoire towards finding a lasting solution to the problem.

But this commission bore no fruit, and in September 2014, Ghana dragged Cote d'Ivoire to ITLOS after 10 failed negotiations.

ITLOS's first ruling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, with old projects continuing after Cote d'Ivoire filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.

The moratorium prevented Tullow Oil from drilling additional 13 wells. Tullow thus drilled eleven [11] wells in Ghana's first oil field.

Background

In 2014, Ghana took the case to ITLOS to dispel claims it has encroached Cote d'Ivoire's marine borders as part of oil exploration activities at Cape Three Points, off the shores of the Western Region.

Ghana's defense held that Cote d'Ivoire was barred from demanding ownership to the disputed area it had acknowledged that Ghana owned the space without any qualms in the decades leading up to the oil discovery.

The oral hearings for the dispute were concluded in February 2017.

In 2007, Ghana discovered oil and gas in commercial quantities, and this was followed by Cote d'Ivoire staking its claim to portions of the West Cape Three Points.

These claims were renewed in 2010 after Vanco, an oil exploration and Production Company announced the discovery of oil in the Dzata-1 deepwater-well.

Cote d'Ivoire petitioned the United Nations asking for a completion of the demarcation of its maritime boundary with Ghana, and Ghana responded by setting up of the Ghana Boundary Commission.

This commission was tasked with the responsibility of negotiating with Cote d'Ivoire towards finding a lasting solution to the problem. But this commission bore no fruit, and in September 2014, Ghana dragged Cote d'Ivoire to ITLOS after 10 failed negotiations.

ITLOS's first ruling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, with old projects continuing after Cote d'Ivoire filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.

The moratorium prevented Tullow Oil from drilling additional 13 wells. Tullow thus drilled eleven [11] wells in Ghana's first oil field.
Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, September 22, 2017  African leaders, UN officials, and representatives of international finance institutions and of the private sector met on Thursday, September 21 at the United Nations Headquarters to reaffirm their commitment to a broad-based international partnership to industrialize Africa in a socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable manner.

The African Development Bank was represented by Amadou Hott, the Banks Vice-President for Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth.

Africa share of global manufacturing stagnated below 2% over the last decade. Unemployment and poverty are serious concerns for the continent, where more than 70 percent of the working age population is unemployed or has no job security, prompting the UN to declare 2016-2025 as the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III).

Earlier in 2016, the AfDB developed together with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) an ambitious Industrialize Africa strategy that aims at more than doubling the continents industrial GDP.

The President of Zambia, Edgar Lungu, said, My government is proud to be associated to this event and values the role played by organizations such as UNIDO and other government partners which seek to work closely with Africa to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development in the continent.

He added: Over the past two decades, the African continent has witnessed significant changes in policy orientation with more emphasis placed on building productive capacities in order to take advantage of opportunities emerging from the global economy.

Many African countries have restructured their economies and have embraced liberal economics and trade policies to support development strategies.

However, these reforms have come with their own challenges, including the influx of imported commodities and unfortunately closure of industries with consequential job losses.

During the meeting, African leaders and development partners reiterated the importance of industrialization to eradicate poverty and to ensure that Africas fast-growing population yields its demographic dividend.

Ethiopias Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, said, The lack of skills is the major problem in Africa. With an integrated industrial strategy, African states will hopefully mobilize funds, build the capacity of local employment and promote small, medium enterprises with domestic development projects.

Amadou Hott, AfDB Vice-President, Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth, said, The African Development Bank recently adopted an ambitious Industrialize Africa strategy. The AfDB will significantly imcrease its own financing to industrialize Africa and leverage additional resources from financial partners over the next decade. We strongly believe that partnering with governments, the private sector, regional organizations and other development partners is key to address the major bottlenecks in the area of industrialization for a more prosperous Africa.

The African Unions Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Albert M. Muchanga, said, Let me stress that, in line with the theme of this event  from political commitment to action on the ground  and the underlying principle of inclusiveness, it is my expectation that resources mobilized under the Third Industrial Development Decade will be deployed so as to significantly show benefits accruing to the ordinary Africans on the ground through decent employment, and access to high-quality, safe and affordable manufactured goods that are made in Africa, among other direct and tangible benefits.

UNIDO, which is tasked with leading the implementation of IDDA III, proposed to implement its new innovative approach to bring about the necessary structural transformation. The approach is based on a country-owned model known as the Programme for Country Partnership (PCP) that leverages financial and non-financial resources, promotes regional integration and mobilizes co-operation among Africas development partners.

UNIDO Director General, Li Yong, said, It is high time to move the IDDA III agenda steadily forward in order to foster inclusive and sustainable industrial development in Africa. Todays presence of high-level participants from the public and private sectors, development financial institutions, the United Nations system, and bilateral and multilateral institutions confirms that Africas industrialization is of global importance.

A joint communique, agreed by leaders of the African Development Bank, the African Union Commission, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the Office of the UN Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA) and UNIDO, acknowledged that the implementation of the ambitious goals of the Decade will require the mobilization and deployment of significant amounts of resources and expressed their support for scaling-up the PCP in the context of IDDA III.

The World Bank Group also announced its strong support for the implementation of the Decade.

Participants agreed on the importance of strengthening private sector engagement, in view of its fundamental role in driving growth, creating jobs, generating income and wealth, and contributing to fiscal revenue.
Lagos (AFP) - A Nigerian journalist was detained for reporting that relief materials were allegedly being diverted from a camp for flood victims, his employers and police said Saturday.

More than 100,000 people were forced to flee thir homes in early September following floods in central Benue state, prompting authorities to set up makeshift camps to distribute relief materials to the victims.

Emmanuel Atswen, a reporter with the state-run News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), was arrested on Friday over his September 12 story on a protest at a camp in central Nigeria which accused officials of diverting relief materials.

"The reporter was arrested over an alleged defamation of character and falsehood by a commissioner involved in the relief efforts," state police spokesman Moses Yamu told AFP.

He said the commissioner for water resources had complained he was wrongly quoted as confirming that materials were being stolen.

"The commissioner insisted he did not say what was attributed to him and asked that the story be retracted," he said.

He said it was true materials were being moved to another camp, but the reporter said they were being diverted without verifying his story.

Yamu said the journalist had been released.

"He was released on bail this morning and has been asked to report back to the police on Wednesday," he said.

NAN on Saturday said it stood by the story because it did not violate "the tenets of the journalism profession".

Nigerian officials are often accused of diverting relief materials for their personal use, sparking regular protests at camps for internally displaced persons, especially in the northeast where Boko Haram Islamists have waged an eight-year rebellion.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

It is time Ghana Immigration Service [G.I.S], do a total review of the countrys immigration system and improve on the system or duplicate the Israeli system to make visitors, tourist holiday makers stress free whenever they are visiting the country.

We cannot continue to invite investors to do business in Ghana, tourist to explore the countrys beautiful eco-systems and holiday makers to enjoy the country side whiles we keep our outmoded immigration system.

Which country in this modern world allow single visa applicant 30 days to visit its country to explore business opportunities, to tour the whole country and learn different cultures and religion, or visit family members and have fun?

Again which modern day country issues a visa stump in a passport to issue one the entry permit?

That is now being considered outmoded with revised and improved systems in place which is working excellently and it is time Ghana change too from old manual to digital system.

Improved immigration system, stress free security checks at any border points from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and back and the hospitable spirit of the citizens in Israel will let me visit again and again.

I found the improved immigration system in Israel so amazing when tourists, holiday makers, investors and I a Jerusalem Pilgrim [J.P] entered the country recently.

The stress free immigration system at the Ben Gurion International Airport at Tel Aviv, saw everyone going through security check without fear no favour which made some of us thought that unique immigration system will never be duplicated.

That is the way it should be.

Israels improved immigration system starts right from the plane carrying passengers from foreign destinations into the country for tourism, religious, business, political and educational purposes which make one happy instead of scared.

Once any passenger plane or better still any aircraft enters its air space, all passengers must remain in their seats and fasten their seat belts till the aircraft comes to a complete stop and gates open.

It is a law which all must comply therefore it became a constant thing as pilots kept on reminding passengers to remain in their seats immediately the plane entered the countrys airspace.

Thirty minutes before landing, all cabin crew and pilots checked and double checked passengers were seated and their seat belts fastened when I recently visited the Holy Land, Israel.

That fully complied I believed it was monitored by the airport security before landing, passengers went through security checks without much heckle or answering difficult questions as there were no suspicious characters among us.

As some people were wondering as to how to pass immigration and enter the country and begin their pilgrimage that thinking defused into thin air when they spent not more than five minutes at the check point.

Formerly, passports should be stumped before one could enter and tour the country side. Not knowing that has changed, some of us thought we would go through the same hassle and began to shake.

But that fear vanished immediately we submitted our passports, only to be scanned and permit chit was printed that allowed us to stay in the country for the stipulated period of three months. Whew.

Meaning whether one needs a visa to enter the country or not, once you appear before the immigration check point and officers are satisfied you are not posing any threat to the country, a permit chit is printed that allows you to stay in the country and when leaving, exit permit chit is also issued to you.

Easy and simple as it may sound, the system allows the countrys security forces to monitor each and everyone who enters the country and exit the country my understanding holds.

Again, it also helps the security forces, to know of hand the number of people who enter and leave the country every single day.

Another difficult task was how to cross the Palestinian border at Gilo check point into Bethlehem. Wow, you no more need a passport to cross the border to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Surely, you will need your passport and your permit chit to re-enter Israel from Palestine, failure to submit, you are denied entry.

In Ghana what do we see? Immigration officers in booths flipping passports and asking sometimes unnecessary questions as to how did I get my Canadian passport, When did I travel to Canada and why did I travel to Canada before stumping my passports.

In many cases you stretch your neck from the queue to see officers finding it difficult to issue an entry stump because the leaflets were full of printed stumps and not knowing what do.

In situations like this, what do you expect the officer to do? Many instances, stretching his hand under the plain glass to pick passports with foreign currencies stashed in it to allow the visitor go right?

It would be great if the country immigration service change the outmoded system by replacing the stumps with scanners and entry and exit permit chip instead of pan, pan, pan issuing stumps sounds at the airport.

Israel has improved its immigration system and people are happy going to spend their dollars there. We can also do same to rake in foreign currencies.
The Tema Community 1 Business Center of ASA Savings and Loans Limited has organized free medical screening for clients within its operational boundaries.

Aside that, beneficiaries were also given treated mosquito net to safeguard them against malaria infections.

The Accra North Regional Manager, Muhammad Majad Ali Khan said the exercise forms part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSRs) programs to give back to the community.

He indicated that the company is helping women to alleviate poverty in the country by way of providing them with not only soft loans but medical services that will relief them of any complications that may affect businesses.

The Regional Manager noted that about 150 people (Children, men and women) went through the exercise for treatment such as blood pressure, hepatitis B, malaria, sugar level and breast cancer.

He added the Company has been organizing similar events in all their networks across the regional capitals to ensure that the social and medical life of its clients, which impacts directly on their operations, is enhanced.

We need women who are hardworking and determined to make it in future. We support them by way of proving financial solutions and medical services to their needs, he stated.

According to him, the company is poised to organize and expand this initiative in order to reach out more people in the coming days.

Selina Kyei Dubeng, Branch Manager, Community One Business Center, Asa Savings and Loans Limited said, this philanthropic arm of the company is in line with their Corporate Social Responsibility role, to deepen brands visibility and support the health needs of their clients.

She stressed that as a customer centered organization they felt the need to provide these free medical services in order to sustain their businesses in the community in which they operate.

When these clients are not fit it means they cant work and they cant also repay the loans they received from uswhich obviously means we are out of business, She stated.

According to her, they seek to foster the relationship between the company and people living within their operational area by ensuring that they are medically fit for business.
In its bid to strengthen the capacity of its members with basic leadership skills as well as to sensitize its members with Trade Union administration, the Health Services Workers Union of Trade Union Congress, Ghana has held a two-day residential workshop for thirty members here in the Sefwi Wiawso municipality.

The 30 participants were drawn from 15 branches from the northern and middle belts of the HSWU in the Western Region. Participants were taken through Benefits of joining trade union; HSWU structures and functions; Trade Union Finance and Administration; Meeting terms and Concepts, and introduction to labour Act, 2003(Act 651). The rest are Workmens Compensation Law, 1987(PNDCL 187); Occupational Health, Safety and Environment; National Pensions Act 2008(Act 766), and Compensation of SSNIT Pension under PNDCL 247.

Officially opening the Workshop, a Principal Health Service Administrator at the Sefwi Wiawso Municipal Hospital Mr. Mr. Habib Ganiyu commended the Health Services Workers Union for initiating such a training workshop to equip its members skills that will enhance the capacity of union members to better provide leadership at their various jurisdictions.

He said the programme is line with contemporary trade unionism where the struggle is more of mental aptitude rather than the former practice of machoeism by workers. To the Hospital Administrator himself a member of the Union, the workshop will assist the Union to propel the realization of the aspiration of members. Mr. Ganiyu therefore charged participants to take the training workshop serious. He charged participants to endeavour to relay the skills that they will acquire from the workshop to rest of the members at the branches they are each coming from.

He asked participants to be proud of the Health Services Workers union and endeavour to hold it in high esteem since the Acts that established Ghana Health Service and Teaching Hospitals recognizes it and further mentions the union to be represented on the management committee.

On his part a Senior Industrial Relations Officer responsible for the HSWU in the Western Region, Mr. Jerry Detse Mensah-Pah noted the training workshop is a systematic introduction of union officers to their job, the Unions structure and functions as well as key issues pertaining work and in the labour fronts.

Mr. Mensah-Pah said the HSWU recognizing that union officers at the grass root level have particular training and development needs; hence the workshop for the rank and file the need to learn about the organisation and its culture, learn how to do their jobs as trade union officers and be introduced to industrial relations.

The focus on specific basic skills on trade union administration permits trade unionofficers at the branch level to improve their performance and thus feel a sense of achievement. Adding that the Health Services Workers Union, in turn, has a need to accelerate the trade union officers integration and make them operationally competent.

Employee engagement takes place when people at work are interested in and positive, even excited about their jobs and prepared to go the extra mile to get them done to the best of their ability.

It may seem to be strikingly obvious that commitment will only be gained if people understand what they are expected to commit to.

Commitment is enhanced if managers can gain the confidence and respect of their teams, and development programmes to improve the quality of leadership should form an important part any strategy for increasing commitment. Management training can also be focused on increasing the competence of managers in specific areas of their responsibility for gaining commitment, eg performance management.
A Juvenile Court in Accra has sentenced an 18-year-old third-year student of Achimota Senior High School, who shot a female colleague with his fathers single barrel gun to sentenced to three years imprisonment.

This was after the court presided over by Bernardine S.A Senoo found him guilty on the charge of manslaughter.

The convict is, however, to serve his sentence in a Correctional Home in Accra.

The convict was reported to have brought out his fathers gun, under a bed, with the intent of shooting in the air but ended up killing his friend Lily Donkor, who is also a third-year student at the same school.

On January 4, 2017, at about 14:00 hours the deceased Lily, who lived at Cantonments visited the accused person at Community eight in Tema.

According to the prosecution, the accused went into his fathers room and picked up his fathers single barrel gun and shot the victim in the abdomen.

On January 5, this year, the convict told the police that he intended to shoot into the air however the gravity of the gun changed course and hit the deceased.

The prosecution said one Madam Gifty Billy, a neighbour, heard the gunshot and went to the scene only to see the victim lying in a pool of blood.

The prosecution said Gifty rushed the victim to the Port Clinic in Tema.

However, due to the condition of the victim, she was transferred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, where she died on admission.
Tullow Oil plc (Tullow) says it will work with the government to put in place the necessary permits to allow the restart of development drilling in the TEN fields.

Tullow expects to resume drilling around the end of the year which will allow production from the TEN fields to start to increase towards the FPSO design capacity of 80,000 bopd.

The oil company's statement is in response to the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg's ruling Saturday with regard to the maritime boundary dispute between Ghana and Cote dIvoire.

According to ITLOS, the new maritime boundary as determined by the tribunal does not affect the TEN fields.

The tribunal accepted that the equidistance measurement be used and according to Petroleum Economist, the new boundary line determined the Tribunal does not materially affect Ghanas interest.

Currently, three oil fields, the Tweneboa, Enyira and Ntome (TEN) oil fields are located in the area and formed the subject matter of the maritime dispute between the two countries.

Ivory Coast was claiming it had rights to the area where Ghana has been undertaking some hydrocarbon activities.

An elated CEO of Tullow, Paul McDade said, Tullow looks forward to continuing to work constructively with the governments of both Ghana and Cote dIvoire following the conclusion of this process."

"While the TEN fields have performed well during the period of the drilling moratorium, we can now restart work on the additional drilling planned as part of the TEN fields plan of development and take the fields towards their full potential, he added.
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Kwesi Pratt never quite distinguished himself as a writer or thinker of remarkable gravitas in the Ghanaian media, so this sometime mole for the two Rawlings juntas has absolutely no moral and/or intellectual heft or authority to lecture Ghanaians about former President Kwame Nkrumah, the man who once dismissed Mr. Pratts own maternal uncle, Mr. Kojo Botsio, from his cabinet for using his plum political position to amass ill-gotten wealth, on Nkrumahs status in the pantheon of Ghanaian heroes (See Nkrumah Is the Albert Einstein of Ghana  Kwesi Pratt Peacefmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/23/17).

Nkrumah was definitely a great leader by Ghanaian and African standards which, in our own time, does not really mean much. The fact of the matter is that geopolitically speaking, it was the British colonial imperialists who invented Ghana as we presently know it. Nkrumah had absolutely no impact or contribution to make to this epoch-making process which, by the way, was initiated and completed nearly a decade before his own birth. The one Ghanaian who had a remarkable impact in this sphere of endeavor was the genius surveyor and great man, Mr. George Ekem Fergusson.

Nkrumahs greatness largely lies in his capacity to practically follow through with the development plans and ideas laid down by other far more foresighted and greater souls and geniuses, such as the construction of the Akosombo Dam, which was the ideational invention or conception of British geologist and surveyor Sir Albert Kitson (1915). It was Sir Albert who also proposed the possibility of transforming the area presently known as Tema into an industrial hub.

But, of course, when it comes to the history and culture of Ghana, compared to Dr. Joseph (Kwame Kyeretwie) Boakye-Danquah, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah is nothing more than a toddler. In the cultural and/or intellectual discipline of philosophy and theory and historical studies or scholarship, Nkrumah is absolutely no Danquah peer. Likewise, when it comes to Danquahs seismic impact on public and social thought, particularly on public health and civil rights, as well as the preservation and development of indigenous Ghanaian cultures, Danquahs only possible peers are Drs. JEK Aggrey and Ephraim Amu.

Needless to say, Danquah had far more to do with the cultural determination of the provenance or ancestral origins of modern Ghanaians vis-a-vis their ancient Senegambia ancestry, and what the latter meant for the renaming of the emergent nation, than Mr. Nkrumah. And so it amuses me to no mean end, what the editor-publisher of the so-called Insight newspaper means, when Mr. Pratt likens President Nkrumah to the immortalized Dr. Albert Einstein. I also dont know that Mr. Nkrumah developed any worthwhile and substantively creative or independent ideological theories or analytical frameworks worth the study or scholarship of any viable or significant academic establishment or institute anywhere around the globe.

Indeed, rather than cavalierly and imperiously presume to reduce the serious study of science and technology into political piffle, the cynical likes of Mr. Pratt would do themselves and the rest of us great good by unearthing and celebrating the genuinely genius work and achievements of true Ghanaian scientists, scholars and technocrats around the world.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Oil giant Tullow is to resume operations at the TEN oil fields by December, 2017, after putting it on hold for two years due to the maritime border dispute between Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Ghana dragged Ivory Coast to the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea(ITLOS) in September, 2014 after negotiations with Ivory Coast over the disputed boundary broke down.

ITLOS in its first rulling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, the directive meant Tullow had to put on hold operations including drilling in the disputed area.

ITLOS however today September, 23, 2017 ruled in favor of Ghana.

The special chamber ruled that there had not been any violation on the part of Ghana on Ivory Coasts maritime boundary.

ITLOS also following the ruling also determined a new boundary for the two countries.

Tullow in a statement copied to Citi Business News said the TEN fields were not affected by the new maritime boundary determined by the tribunal.

Tullow added that it will now work with the Government of Ghana to put in place the necessary permits to allow the restart of development drilling in the TEN fields.

Tullow expects to resume drilling around the end of year.

Tullows TEN field currently produces about 40,000 barrel of oil per day.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Tullow Paul McDade, has assured that the company will continue its production in Ghana as well as work of the government of Ivory Coast.

Tullow looks forward to continuing to work constructively with the Governments of both Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire following the conclusion of this process. While the TEN fields have performed well during the period of the drilling moratorium, we can now restart work on the additional drilling planned as part of the TEN fields' plan of development and take the fields towards their full potential, he said.
Yes, women are unfairly treated sometimes. Society undermines them and makes them more accountable in many areas than us men: we agree.

From the days of our ancestors, men have always gotten away with infidelity but it remains highly impossible for a woman to cheat on her husband and still be in the home when shes found out.

We know there are a lot of issues to correct in our society for women to contribute their quota in a more significant way than they currently do.

But before you fight us for your right, please pay attention to this:

Early this year, a lady was stripped naked in Kumasi for allegedly stealing a phone. The entire nation condemned the act to the extent that The Minister of Gender and Social Protection offered to help her.

It is no news when a suspected thief is stripped naked, beaten and even killed as long as he is a man. In fact, we see them get beaten, stripped naked and tell ourselves that they deserve it.

A few weeks after, there was the Mawako incident and we all know how the news trended and the fate of the guy who assaulted the young lady.

About a month after the Mawako scandal, news broke about a young guy by the name Patrick who got been paralyzed after a poorly fixed Bill Board belonging Medx Media fell on him.

No one fought for Patrick because painfully, he is a man and remains bedridden today without receiving his fair share of justice from the company whose negligence brought his youthful active life to a standstill. No media house made it an issue for discussion and no politician spoke about the incident.

May be, if there was a Minister who represent men, hed have benefited.

In Nigeria for instance, Boko Haram has abducted more men than women but the only abductees we know are the chiboc girls because they are not chibok boys.

We get up for women to sit when chairs are scares. When danger lurks, men are pushed to face it and protect the women

When we take care of our kids, it is seen as our duty: when a woman does same, she gets all the praise in the world because as the man, it is mine to take care of the family. This is why when women doessame; they get a lot of credit.

The same society that tells you not to go to school or chose some careers is the very society that pushes the ordinary man to work beyond his strength for the good of the family

The same society that says somethings are for men only is the very society that pushes the guy who never won a fight against girls not to cry even if that is only what will liberate him.

The average man dies earlier than the woman because we go through hell in effort to live up to societys standards of manhood.

If women like real equality: will they accept to be treated as men? (You know what that means right?)

God created men differently from women. We have our strength and you have yours. Feminists should channel their energy towards encouraging women to excel in their area of strength. As long as they see themselves as in competition with men, our young ladies will lose the essence of their gender and the qualities they have been blessed with andkeep dancing half naked in musical clips for fully dressed men and still get less than 10% what the men get.

Women should accept being women and make the most of their God given potential. Feminist should be able to encourage young ladies to work with their talent and desist from using their sexuality as bargaining chip or appeal.

These are the issue of concern that they should address.

Seeing feminism as a battle for equality with men won't make women any better off because there's no competition and we don't see term as our competitors.

God created his world with roles for every creature to ensure there's a balance. The perfect case is both sexes working in their areas of strength and not trying to outdo each other.

We are not your biggest problem, most men do women favours they'd never do for men.

The worse treatment majority of women get come from their fellow women.

You are your own worst enemies.

For us men, we love you and you know it.

Isaac KyeiAndoh
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila told the United Nations on Saturday that his country is moving towards holding elections but vowed to resist "foreign diktats" on setting a date for the historic vote.

Addressing the General Assembly, Kabila appealed for support from his "true friends" as his country confronts what he described as major logistical and security challenges to organize the vote.

Under an agreement reached with opposition groups last year, elections are to be held this year in the large mineral-rich African country, paving the way to the DR Congo's first democratic transition.

But months later, a date has still not been set for the polls.

"We can affirm that we are most certainly moving towards credible, transparent and peaceful elections," Kabila said.

"This is an irreversible process and this should be put in place without external diktats or interference."

In power since 2001, Kabila officially ended his term in office in December, but he was allowed to remain under the New Year's Eve deal in exchange for guarantees that elections will be held.

The UN Security Council has demanded that elections be held before the end of this year, but concerns are growing after election officials said in July that a vote in 2017 was unlikely.

Kabila told the UN assembly that organising the elections in the vast country presented major logistical and security challenges, but that he was confronting these "with undeniable tenacity."

Voter registration is progressing with 42 million people out of a total of 45 million citizens of voting age now on the electoral lists, he said.

The United States has threatened to slap sanctions on the DR Congo unless elections are held this year.

Fighting 'terrorism' in Kasai

Kabila defended a military campaign in the Kasai region, which the United Nations has said resulted in hundreds of extrajudicial killings, saying his forces were fighting "terrorists".

"In the Kasai, a mystical tribal militia is using the civilian population, including children, as human shields, attacking people and state buildings, sowing terror," he said.

Kasai has been in turmoil since a tribal chieftain known as the Kamwina Nsapu, who rebelled against Kabila's regime, was killed in August.

More than 3,000 people have died and 1.4 million have been displaced, according to the Catholic Church.

Kabila described as "barbaric" the murder of two UN experts in the Kasai, and pledged to "shed full light" on the crime and bring those resonsible to justice.

Zaida Catalan, a Swedish-Chilean national and American Michael Sharp were killed in March while investigating reports of more than 40 mass graves in the Kasai.

Their bodies were found in a shallow grave. Catalan had been decapitated.

The president renewed his call for a drawdown of the 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, saying that after 20 years, the force cannot "stay in my country indefinitely."

Kabila was first propelled into office after his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, was assassinated in January 2001.

He won a first five-year term in 2006 in a poll organised with the help of the large UN mission.
President Nana Akufo-Addo has met with the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres in New York to discuss the challenges of terrorism and violent extremism.

The two leaders exchanged views on the situation in Ghana and the sub-region.

There have been calls for President Akufo-Addo to intervene in the recent political standoff in neighboring Togo which has led to some protesters dead and with dozens injured.

The protesters want a restoration of the 1992 Constitution which prescribes a tenure of office of a sitting president.

Commenting on the issue, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu who doubles as Ranking Member for Foreign Affairs, said if Ghana does not mediate between the government of Togo and its opposition, the country will not be spared the consequences of a full-blown conflict.

He recounted the incidents of 2005 in which dozens of Togolese fled to Ghana after about 500 Togolese died in a violent protest.

Some West African countries have been hit by terrorists with a Burkina Faso restaurant being the latest to be hit. Eighteen people were killed in the Ouagadougou incident which is the second incident within two years.

There have also been similar attacks in Mali where some lives were lost including tourists.

Mr Gutteres expressed appreciation for President Akufo-Addos engagement and commitment as co-chair of the group of 17 eminent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocates, to the SDGs.

He commended the Ghana for its contribution to the resolution of the post-electoral crisis in The Gambia which saw the exit of Yahya Jammeh after an electoral loss.
The ruling of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on the maritime dispute will not affect Ghanas oilfields, a Petroleum Economist has said.

Dr Theo Acheampong said the country will not be materially affected by the new marine borders drawn by the Germany-based Chamber.

The Special Chamber on Saturday established the maritime boundary between Ghana and Ivory Coast, which was at the center of a four-year dispute.

Members of the Special Chamber

Ghana was first to initiate proceedings at the Tribunal in 2014 after Ivory Coast accused it of violating its sovereign right.

The case was filed after efforts to negotiate a settlement with Cote dIvoire were unproductive.

Ghana had told the Chamber it had an oral agreement with its neighbour over the marine borders, but Ivory Coast disputed it.

The Francophone country had wanted the Chamber to declare and adjudge that Ghanas unilateral exploration activities violated its sovereign right.

Ghanaian delegation at ITLOS

But after a four-year-old legal tussle, the Special Chamber said Ghana did not violate its neighbours sovereign right.

The Chamber said Ivory Coast did not produce a resounding argument that bilateral talks held over the matter were not meaningful.

It also rejected Ghanas claim that it had an agreement with its neighbour over the marine borders.

There is not a tacit agreement between the parties to delimit the boundary, President of the Special Chamber, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia said Saturday.

The Chambers also delimit the boundary between the two countries using a modified version of the equidistance methodology, contrary to what Ghana had demanded.

The Ivorian delegation at ITLOS

Sections of Ghanaians were apprehensive Ghana will lose some of its oil fields to its neighbour following the new boundary.

Senior journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako told Samson Lardy on Joy FM/MultiTVs Newsfile, he was disturbed after the Chambers rejected most of the arguments put across by Ghana.

The ruling sounded Chinese [because] it was a bit complex for me, he said, adding there was a little which had me disturbed.

But the Petroleum Economist with the University of Aberdeen in Scotland said the ruling represented Ghanas argument since the start of the hearing.

It doesnt look significantly different from what Ghana saidas I look at it now, Dr Acheampong said.

He cautioned government to plot the new field given the maritime boundary properly to see if they will be affected.
Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH) in collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceuticals of Johnson & Johnson and the Ghana Education Service to fight against worm infestation among school children.

This was launched by the President of the Ghana Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Pharm. Benjamin Kwame Botwe, at the launch of this years World Pharmacists Day.

As part of the partnership, an initial drawing and poetry competition in a selected cluster of schools in the Capital, Accra, has been designed to educate children on the dangers of worm infestation and the need for good sanitation and hygiene practices.

The overall campaign targets about 10,000 children between the ages of 6 and 12 across all 10 regions of Ghana. The winners of the competition will be chosen by a panel of judges, made up of pharmacists and teachers, receiving various educational materials as prizes.

The Ghana Country Manager of Janssen, Priscilla OwusuSekyere said following their successful partnership last year with the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana and the Ghana Education Service, they want to continue working together to help teach primary school children about the dangers of poor sanitation and the importance of effective hand-washing.

This drawing competition, which will start from the Greater Accra Region, will not only encourage the children, through their engagement with each other to pass on the information, we hope it will also help ensure that worm infestations quickly become a thing of the past, she stated.

The President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Pharm. Benjamin Kwame Botwe, applauded Pharmacists for their role in the health delivery system in Ghana.

He called on Government to continue to support the efforts of the Society by improving working conditions of Pharmacists in the country.

The PSGH holds this unique partnership with Janssen Pharmaceuticals of Johnson & Johnson, Ghana in very high esteem and wishes that it is broadened to other areas of cooperation to better serve the people of Ghana. As we pledge our support to this cause, we call on government and other stakeholders to equally support the Society in the delivery of such social interventions, he said.

Speaking on behalf of the Health Minister, the Deputy Director, Administration and/Legal, Ministry of Health, DelaKemevor indicatedthat this innovative model of collaboration and local empowerment between Janssen, Ghanaian pharmacists and the school children has already seen positive results, and this latest activity is a new opportunity to educate the children.

This unified effort will take us one step closer to wiping out preventable worm infestations in Ghana, he stated.

Diseases from parasites and worm infestations, such as guinea-worm, schistosomiasis, helminthiasis and other Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), impose a heavy burden on the population and healthcare services as they affect over 500million people living in Ghana and other SubSaharan African (SSA) countries.

NTDs have a serious impact on school attendance rates, childhood growth and cognitive development, leading to high levels of disability and lost productivity.

In order to combat NTDs, The World Health Organization has recommended interventions including a focus on improving environmental factors such as clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

It is against this background that the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana sees this partnership as crucial.

This years world Pharmacists Day is being celebrated under the theme: From research to health care: Your pharmacist is at your service.

The day is celebrated around the globe to highlight the value of the pharmacy profession and impact on improving health to authorities, other professions and the media, as well as to the general public.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH) has donated 3000 exercise books, 3000 pens and four dust bins to LEKMA Northern Cluster of Schools at Gormo in Teshie.

Similar donation will held in all the ten regions with a campaign to end worm infestation among school children in Ghana as part of effort towards the celebration of this years World Pharmacists Day scheduled for Monday 25th September.

Speaking at the ceremony,the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH), Pharm. Benjamin Kwame Botwe saidthey will organize public education in communities, schools, churches and mosques on the responsible use of medicines, adherence to counseling, health promotion and public health.

He indicated that Pharmacy continues to be one profession that has contributed immensely to the social and economic wellbeing of the country.

In this years celebration, Mr. Botwe added that the Society in partnership with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, and the Ghana Education Service (GES) is working together to fight against worm infestation among school children.

According to him, this is an indication of their continuous efforts at positioning the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana as a key partner in promoting good health in Ghana.

He called on government and other stakeholders to equally support the Society in the delivery of such social interventions.

The President stressed that the Society willdraw publics attention to an important public health issue-on proliferation and abuse of high dose tramadol.

He warned Tramadol is a prescription drug which must be prescribed by a doctor before use.

Its use without prescription could lead to adverse effects, dependence and possible death. The PSGH in collaboration with Food and Drugs Authority and Pharmacy Council has issued an alert for a brand of TRAMADOL of strength of 200mg and 250mg which is not registered in Ghana, he intimated.

Speaking on behalf of the Health Minister, the Deputy Director, Administration and/Legal, Ministry of Health, DelaKemevor indicated that Pharmacists have consistently contributed so much to healthcare that we sometimes take for granted, the very things they do which end up saving our lives.

Just think about it, sometime back, when one was diagnosed of HIV/AIDS, it was just like a death sentence. Today, people can live full life while still positive with HIV/AIDS. This is the result of work done over the years by Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists to bringing us antiretroviral drugs, he stated.

Mr. Kemevor said through this launch, the Ministry wish to highlight issues relating to cleanliness, hygiene, sanitation and most importantly, deworming.

When we were young, our parents made sure we dewormed every three months and this was something which got stuck with us till date. Today, for some reasons, the current generation does not deworm religiously as we did in the past, he stressed.

The Ghana Country Manager of Johnson and Johnson, Priscilla OwusuSekyere indicated that this occasion will afford them the opportunity to strengthen their collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana and the Ghana Education Service to fight worm infestation among school children in Ghana.

She indicated that diseases from parasites and worm infestations, such as guinea-worm, schistosomiasis and other Neglected Tropical Diseases, impose a heavy burden on the population and healthcare services as they affect a large number of people, especially school children in Ghana.

This has a serious impact on school attendance rates, childhood growth and cognitive development, leading to high levels of disability and loss of productivity, she noted.

Priscilla OwusuSekyere stressed that following last years success, they want to continue working together to help teach primary school children about the dangers of poor sanitation and the importance of effective hand-washing.

According to her, they have designed a drawing competition, focusing on worm infestation targeted at school children in Ghana.

She emphasized that this drawing competition, which will start from the Greater Accra Region, will not only encourage the children, through their engagement with each other to pass on the information but it will also help ensure that worm infestations quickly become a thing of the past.
Education is a key to national development and is considered as one of the major tools for eradicating poverty and preventing ignorance among citizens since it provides the needed human resources for a country's development.

Harbison(1973) suggests that human resource constitutes the ultimate basis for the wealth of nations. It is the active agent of production because it accumulates physical capital, exploits natural resources, builds and develops social, political and economic institutions and deals with the planning and implementation of national development programmes.

In deed, Nelson Mandela rightly pointed the importance of education when he said, " education is the most powerful tool that can be used to change the world".

As a result of the importance of education, governments in Africa have initiated various policies aimed at increasing enrollment within the educational sector. In Ghana, various policies have been formulated since independence to help improve access and quality of education. Some recent policies being implemented in the educational sector include the

School Feeding Program, distribution of Free school uniform and exercise books, the Free Conmpulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) ad among others.

While all these government initiatives continue to increase, evidence on the ground suggest that not much has been achieved in terms of the quality of pupils produced at the various educational institutions, more especially the public ones. For instance, records from the West African Examination Council (WAEC) indicate that 50% of BECE candidates who sat for the 2012 examinations failed and were therefore not eligible to be admitted into senior high schools.

Also, results obtained from the 2014 WASSCE show that about 70% of students who wrote the examination failed.

The concerns here are as follows:

1. What happens to all these pupils and what impact would it have on national socio-economic development?.

2.How can one gets access to free SHS policy while Education at the basic schools is not free ?

3.How can one gets access to free SHS while pupils at the basic schools are being sacked for not paying PTA dues?

4. How can one gets access to enjoy free SHS while pupils at the basic schools are facing challenges and can't afford to buy exercise books and textbooks for learning?.

5.How does government expect all Pupils to enjoy free SHS while some parents are not able to pay their children's examination fees or B.E.C.E registration fees?.

6. Does the government provide Teaching and learning materials such as textbooks, exercise books,calculators, and mathematical sets to pupils at the basic schools ?.

A critical look at the above questions indicates that free SHS policy is needless if government fails to address those questions entangling our educational system.

Moreover, the increasing rate of teenage pregnancy among children of school going age and the reality that some schools are still operating under trees in certain parts of the country has become a cause of worry for many

who have keenly followed activities within the educational sector.

Since independence, various governments have implemented policies to make education accessible to almost every Ghanaian of school going age. Indeed, the 1992 Constitution explicitly stated that basic education shall be free, compulsory and available to all; secondary education in its different forms, including technical and vocational education, shall be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular, by progressive introduction of free education.

Despite this constitutional provision, it is still very clear that not all communities in Ghana have access to education (well-furnished educational facility). In some situations, pupils have to walk several miles in order to attend school. This becomes even more difficult and virtually impossible during raining seasons as roads become inaccessible.

Moreover, there is lack of effective teaching and learning materials such as textbooks,chalks, exercise books and science equipments in the basic schools. There are instances where teachers had to buy those teaching and learning materials for themselves before they could teach. This is as a result of government's inability to provide them the needed resources needed for teaching and learning.

These challenges have therefore hindered access to education in most communities and villages especially those located outside the major cities within the country.

While the previous governments over the years have performed very well in bringing one reform or the other to the education sector, the reality is that much still need to be done. The government must as a matter of urgency ensure that virtually every community in the country has an education system at least to the basic level. This will ensure

that almost every child of school going age will have access to good quality education.

The Ministry of Education must also institute enough incentive mechanisms to encourage people especially the youth into the education sector and reduce the incessant industrial action that has plagued the sector in recent times. Supervision of teachers must be intensified to ensure that teachers recruited to teach are rendering their service to the nation.

I do however believe that enough work need to be done at the basic level to ensure that enough quality is delivered before it is extended to the top. As to when we will be ready to adopt a free education, it is matter for a different day.

I'm by this release appealing to government and education ministry to scrap off B.E.C.E charges, PTA dues and examination charges at the basic school level and also provide free textbooks, calculators, exercise books and feeding programmes for all pupils at the basic schools.

God bless Ghana Education Service

God bless Ministry of Education

God bless us all

God bless our homeland, Ghana.

.......Signed.....

Joel S. Ndede

(An Educationist)
Warri (Nigeria) (AFP) - Sea pirates shot dead at least three people, including a policeman, in an ambush in southern Nigeria's restive oil region, police said Saturday.

Bayelsa state police spokesman Asinim Butswat said the incident happened on Friday.

"A tugboat, towing a barge with a combined team of policemen from the Nigerian Inland Waterways, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corp (NSCDC), and civilians on board was attacked by suspected sea pirates at Ekebiri Waterways," he said.

"A reinforced team arrived shortly and rescued one policeman, three NSCDC personnel and four civilians," he said.

"However, a policeman, one NSCDC personnel and a civilian were shot dead by the sea pirates, one policeman is still missing," he said.

Other groups gave different reports on those killed in the ambush.

Area NSCDC head Desmond Agu told AFP two police and one paramilitary officer were killed while three other security personnel were injured in the attack.

An official of the Nigerian secret police who did not want to be named, said four security personnel were killed.

"The operatives were ambushed around Okoron community while on their way to the Tebidaba flow station which is operated by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC)," he told AFP.

Locals said there was a gunfight between the attackers and the security agents.

"We heard a series of sporadic gunshot at about 7:00 pm on Friday night," Preye Fubara, a resident of Okoron community said.

"The corpses of the slain security operatives have been recovered without their rifles."

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, but militants seeking a fairer share of Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil wealth stepped up their violent attacks on oil infrastructure last year, slashing output and hurting government revenue.

A government truce with the oil rebels has halted the attacks, but sporadic incidents against security personnel guarding oil installations persist in the region.
Bawku Central MP, Mahama Ayariga says Ex-President John Mahama deserves some praise for Ghanas victory in the maritime dispute with Ivory Coast.

The opposition lawmaker said Ghanaians need to commend the foresight of the former President, which led to the initiation of proceedings against the Francophone country in 2014.

The Harvard-trained lawyer told Samson Lardy on Joy FM/MultiTV's Newsfile Saturday, per the new delimitation of the maritime boundary between the two West African countries, Ghana has added a territory to its share.

Bawku Central MP, Mahama Ayariga

The Germany-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) gave its much-awaited ruling on the four-year maritime dispute between Ghana and Ivory Coast.

Ghana was first to initiate proceedings at the Tribunal in 2014 after Ivory Coast accused it of violating its sovereign right.

The case was filed after efforts to negotiate a settlement with Cote dIvoire proved unproductive, Ghana's Agent at ITLOS said.

Ghana had told the Chamber it had an oral agreement with its neighbour over the marine borders, but Ivory Coast disputed it.

The Francophone country had wanted the Chamber to declare and adjudge that Ghanas unilateral exploration activities violated its sovereign right.

But the Special Chamber rejected it.

The Chamber said Ivory Coast did not produce a resounding argument that bilateral talks held over the matter with Ghana were not meaningful.

It also rejected Ghanas claim that it had an agreement with its neighbour over the marine borders.

There is no tacit agreement between the parties to delimit the boundary, President of the Special Chamber, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia said Saturday.

The Special Chamber went ahead to demarcate the boundary between the two countries using a modified version of the equidistance methodology, Ghana had demanded.

Mr Ayariga, then Environment Minister in the past regime, said the former President must be acknowledged if the country is celebrating those who delivered the victory.
Goldstar Air, one of the local airlines faulted by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority for putting out misleading advertisements, says it has falsely been accused.

The local flight operator said it did not put out a misleading advert, claiming it suspects an attempt to tarnish its hard-won image in the country.

In a statement signed by the CEO, Eric Bannerman Saturday, Goldstar said it will not engage in any deceptive plan to win customers because it is legally licensed to operate fairly.

The airline was responding to a release by the aviation regulator warning the public against companies such as Gold Star Airline and Global Ghana Airlines who are misleading travellers.

The Authority said the two airlines have been advertising misleading destinations when they have not been given any approval.

A statement from the GCAA, signed by its Director-General, Simon Allotey, on Friday said, Goldstar Airline has advertised flight operations from Accra, Ghana to destinations within Africa and other parts of the world.

"Similarly, Global Ghana Airlines, a Chicago-based company has also advertised flight operations between Accra, Ghana and Chicago, USA. The above-mentioned advertisements are misleading and the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority takes a very serious view of this," the statement further explained.

Related: GCAA cautions public against 2 'misleading' airlines

But Mr Bannerman said the wholly-owned Ghanaian company has been granted Air Carrier License by the GCAA and therefore is duly certified.

Goldstar Air is in a process of acquiring five Boeing aircraft, which we have a guaranteed letter from a reputable bank to support the purchasing agreement, he added.

Below are the statement from the airline and a copy of their Air Carrier License
23.09.2017 LISTEN

Agents who represented Ghana and Cote Dlvoire in the maritime boundary dispute case, Gloria Akuffo and Adama Toungara, say they accept the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Seas (ITLOS) judgement on the case.

This was contained in a joint statement released hours after the Chambers judgement.

The long standing maritime dispute between Ghana and Cote D'lvoire came to what appears to be a closure today [Saturday], September 23, 2017, after ITLOS ruled largely in favour of Ghana.

The Chamber ruled that there has not been any violation on the part of Ghana on Cote d'Ivoire's maritime boundary.

It further rejected Cote D'Ivoire's argument that Ghana's coastal lines were unstable, adding that Ghana had not violated Cote d'Ivoire's sovereign rights with its oil exploration in the disputed basin in question.

Well abide by terms of judgement

The statement, which was signed by the two agents also saw the two countries reiterating their mutual commitment to abide by the terms of the judgement.

Cote dIvoire and Ghana seize the opportunity to reiterate the mutual commitment of the two countries to abide by the terms of this decision from the Special Chamber, and to fully collaborate for its implementation. Cote dIvoire and Ghana accept the decision, in accordance with the Statute of ITLOS.

The two countries also affirmed their strong will to work together to strengthen and intensify their brotherly relationships of cooperation and good neighbourliness.

On the joint behalf of the Presidents and the Peoples of the Republic of Cote dIvoire and the Republic of Ghana, I would like to express our gratitude to the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for the courteous attention with which the proceedings were conducted, the statement added.

Justice Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber in reading the judgment, accepted Ghana's argument of adoption of the equidistance method of delineation of the maritime boundary.

In consideration of the new boundary, the Chamber determined that it starts from boundary 55 -200 nautical miles away, a position much closer to what Ghana was arguing for.

Analysts say Ghana would now have to wait to see how the final map looks, once the coordinates are plotted in the sea using boundary pillar BP 55+ on a common land boundary, as a starting point for drawing the new equidistance line.

In 2014, Ghana took the case to ITLOS to dispel claims it has encroached Cote d'Ivoire's marine borders as part of oil exploration activities at Cape Three Points, off the shores of the Western Region.

Ghana's defense held that Cote d'Ivoire was barred from demanding ownership to the disputed area it had acknowledged that Ghana owned the space without any qualms in the decades leading up to the oil discovery.

The oral hearings for the dispute were concluded in February 2017.

Ghana's oil discovery

In 2007, Ghana discovered oil and gas in commercial quantities, and this was followed by Cote d'Ivoire staking its claim to portions of the West Cape Three Points.

These claims were renewed in 2010 after Vanco, an oil exploration and production company announced the discovery of oil in the Dzata-1 deepwater-well.

Cote d'Ivoire petitioned the United Nations asking for a completion of the demarcation of its maritime boundary with Ghana, and Ghana responded by setting up of the Ghana Boundary Commission.

This commission was tasked with the responsibility of negotiating with Cote d'Ivoire towards finding a lasting solution to the problem.

But this commission bore no fruit, and in September 2014, Ghana dragged Cote d'Ivoire to ITLOS after 10 failed negotiations.

ITLOS's first ruling in 2015 placed a moratorium on new projects, with old projects continuing after Cote d'Ivoire filed for preliminary measures and urged the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case.

The moratorium prevented Tullow Oil from drilling additional 13 wells. Tullow thus drilled eleven [11] wells in Ghana's first oil field.
24.09.2017 LISTEN

That corruption is a social, political, moral and economic menace in Ghana is a truism.. In all walks of Ghanaian life, one is confronted with having to pay bribes to civil and public servants for almost every service. Corruption in general is estimated to cost Ghana circa 3 billion dollars a year. According to IMANI (2015). This figure, if true, represents around 7% of Ghanas GDP; and in a country with GDP per capita of circa $1500, it is easy to see how such gross misappropriation of vital financial resources cannot be allowed to endure. The German Ambassador to Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff, has recently expressed the view that Ghana has all the ingredients to succeed and become a rich country if corruption is nipped in the bud or reduced to the barest minimum (see Corruption Ghanas Challenge- German Ambassador, Ghanaweb 15.09.17). But an important poser is: how is this problem to be tackled? In the following paragraphs we aim to put across one way by which this canker can be progressively minimised, if not eradicated from the fabric of Ghanas socio-political and economic life.

Amongst the commonest forms of corruption in Ghana is the request, giving and receipt of bribes and it is this form of corruption that is to be the focus of our attention in this article. While it is true that corruption in general and bribery in particular exist in all societies, certain factors peculiar to Ghanaian society make this vice all the more difficult to identify and manage. Among the most important of these factors- the giving and receiving of gifts- a bona fide tenet of Ghanaian culture- shares an uncanny similarity with the vicious phenomenon of bribery. As such it is nearly impossible to draw any visible distinction between what is a gift or dash (Price, 1975); and what is an out-and-out bribe. For example, how is one to define a request by a police officer who stops your car at midday in the sweltering heat of Accra for a few coins to buy iced water? Is this officer taking a bribe from you or is she just spontaneously rehearsing the cultural tenet of giving and taking- a largely admirable Ghanaian cultural value? Contrast this with a British police officer making the same request to a driver on the streets of London. Straightaway alarm bells go off as such a request is largely alien to the British way of life. Gift-giving or charitable giving as a whole (and we speak of tendencies here, not essences) in Britain largely happens within formal settings such as giving to established charities. Simply put, the British, generally, do not go round randomly giving, asking for and receiving gifts even from their kin as much as Ghanaian do. This is, of course, not to say that the British are less corrupt than Ghanaians. It is, however, to claim that the attitude of randomly asking for and giving gifts is generally more characteristic of Ghanaian culture than it is of most Western countries (anyone who has visited Britain or any Western country can attest to this). Now this difference may be attributable to the disparity between the economies of these two countries but we think it is not too far-fetched to assert that African culture- giving its heavy reliance on community, reciprocity, empathy, brotherhood and reconciliation- accommodates the idea of being your brothers keeper more than its Western counterparts. As a result the issues of gift-giving and receiving (o.k. a. the dash) and bribery have become enmeshed in an intricate web that can hardly be uncoupled. Public and civil servants slide seamlessly back and forth across the blurred and shifting line that divide these two phenomena; with law enforcement left scratching their heads unable to decide where the dash ended and bribery began or vice versa.

Often what may be thought of as a bribe may, to all intents and purposes, only be a bona fide gift or dash that is the product of a culture that prizes giving and receiving. Other times, what appears to be a dash may, in fact, be a bribe bereft of any cultural tendencies aimed squarely at influencing the outcome of a transaction. Accordingly translating the word dash or gift-giving in the Ghanaian context as a bribe quite often presents an inaccurate (if also simplistic) image of what is involved, for the word bribe does not encompass aspects of what is involved in dash and it does include moral connotations that are not necessarily accurate (Price, 1975 p.118, parenthesis mine). In throwing light on gift-giving or the dash, Price (1975) goes further to explain that it performs two important functions. These, according to him, are that it is firstly an institutionalized mechanism for establishing a personal tie between client and bureaucrat in a situation in which the two are strangers (p.118). This according to him is important in a society such as Ghana where personal relations are the dominant basis for social expectations in social interaction. Therefore the dash provides social cement for institutions whose scope extends far beyond the realistic reach of any single gemeinschaft community (p.118). In the second instance, he regards the dash as a patently symbolic act that verifies and gives testament to the unequal status of the two interacting individuals. The act of dashing an official makes a statement about the superiority of the civil [or public] servant in relation to the client: it is a concrete form of deference (p.118).

What Price (1975) fails to also identify- and we seek to bring to the fore- is the third and possibly most important function played by the dash in societies such as Ghana- the fact that it gives expression to a bona fide aspect of the afro-communitarian culture that is reputed to be the dominant culture in many African societies including Ghana (Gyekye, 1997; Wiredu, 1980; Menkiti, 1984). Afro-communitarian culture sets great store by the acts of showing sympathy, solidarity, identity and community; and one very important way of expressing these is through giving and receiving gifts.

Now given this difficulty in differentiating between what is a dash and what is a bribe, how is the issue of bribery in Ghana to be tackled? Are we to banish all forms of gift-giving in all walks of Ghanaian economic and political life? In our guesstimation that would be throwing out the baby with the bath water and may prove impracticable. Indeed, gift-giving is a noble value that is worth maintaining. If so, the task then is to find a means of extricating the art of gift-giving or dashing from bribery while at the same time addressing the moral scourge of the latter. In this regard we put forward the idea that much of the difficulty associated with addressing the issue of bribery has to do with its conflation with the noble Ghanaian norm of gift-giving and receiving. Over the years this conflation has led to a misconstrual of bribery as a quintessential cultural norm in Ghana- a position that is verifiably fallacious! But if we are to grant that the Ghanaian culture of gifting and bribery have cross-fed into each other so much so that they have become inextricable, then we are confronted with a problem which is largely cultural; and a time-tested means by which anything cultural can be changed is through education- especially at the basic and pre-tertiary levels where moral and ethical capital is mostly accumulated and personalities are largely forged.

To this end, we propose basic and pre-tertiary education as the twin vehicles by which the reduction (if not eradication) of bribery and corruption can be achieved. Specifically we propose the introduction of Civic Education as part of the core curriculum in all basic and pre-tertiary schools in Ghana. This curriculum and the subjects therein have to be passed by all primary school pupils before they transition to the Senior High School. In like manner, all SHS students have to achieve a grade of not less than 2 to progress to university. Failure of this core subject at the primary level or the attainment of any grade lower than a 2 in SHS automatically disqualifies the student from progressing any farther in their education. They will have to re-sit and pass in order to progress. The point is to elevate Civic Education to the same level of reverence accorded Maths and English, if also Science. Yes, difficult problems require difficult measures! The aim is to progressively educate up-and-coming generations of Ghanaian civil and public servants about the difference between the Ghanaian cultural value of dashing or gift-giving and the development-inhibiting act of bribery. Without going into the intricacies of the content of this curriculum (for that will be the work of the many technocrats that the NPP government is so blessed with) suffice it to state at this early stage that important aspects of this core curriculum should include areas such as African cultural practises and values; issues of bribery and corruption and their impact on national development; importance of paying taxes; civil rights and responsibilities; citizenship, rule of law etc.

Now while it may be true that various aspects of these proposed curriculum exist within the current syllabus (witness Religious and Moral Education), they are often splintered and so fall short of a coherent subject area that focuses squarely on addressing the issue of bribery and its difference from the Ghanaian cultural value of giving and receiving; nor does it concentrate significantly on achieving measureable changes in attitudes. Additionally, the present curriculum, delivered under the rubric of Religious and Moral Education, focuses almost entirely on religion while also lacking the weighting attached to the core subjects of Maths, English Language and Science. As such, one does not have to pass Religious and Moral Education in order to progress. The proposed curriculum can also be stretched to address the issues of maintaining clean sanitation; effects of pollution including the adverse effects of galamsey among others- all banes in Ghanas developmental effort. The hope is that by the time these new crop of students reach the tertiary level and further into the world of civil and public service, they would have accumulated the necessary moral capital that allows them to, among other things, differentiate between what is a corruptioninspired bribe and what is merely an expression of a valuable cultural tenet. This, we hope, will complement the NPP governments laudable and unprecedented efforts at rooting out corruption in all its forms and guises from Ghanaian society through the use of hard power (law enforcement); and represent the use of the soft albeit potent power of basic and pre-tertiary education in achieving social and economic transformation.

By: Honourable Barbara Asher Ayisi- Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Basic Education & MP for Cape Coast North. Email: [email protected] with contributions from Bernie D Asher- Lecturer of Business Ethics, East Surrey College, UK. Email: [email protected].
This week, at the UN, there have been some difficult exchanges about sovereignty.

The President of United States, Donald Trump, kicked off with a speech that repeatedly invoked sovereignty. He declared, "We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions or even systems of government but we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties, to respect the interest of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation". He continued, "As President of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you as leaders of your countries will always and should always put your countries first." As expected, there was immediate and global condemnation of Mr. Trumps comments. The unlikely hero of the backlash was the much maligned and ailing nonagenarian President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. He likened America to Goliath and urged Trump to moderate his tone. A rebuke to sovereignty from Africa was surprising since African leaders have been waging their own war against the International Criminal Court based mainly on the principle of sovereignty!

Trumps address and Mugabe's response captured a seminal moment in the globalization versus sovereignty/nationalism debate. The occupy Wall street movement, the Brexit vote and Africa's threat to leave the International Criminal Court-- are all rejections of internationalism and the "so-called global elites". The first two reflect the frustrations of Westerners who believe their governments have stopped listening to them. The British who voted in Brexit were taking their country back. The Africa--ICC fracas has to do with African leaders protesting the end of their impunity against their people.

But Mr. Trumps appeal to sovereignty misses a significant point. Unchecked sovereignty has led to some of the darkest moments in history -- the Armenian massacre, the holocaust, the Bosnian massacre, Cambodia, the Rwanda genocide, and the Congo-- to mention just a few. The truth is that there are a lot of leaders who do not govern in the interests of their citizens. Indeed the African leaders who are leaving the ICC are doing so, not in the interest of their people but against those interest. At this moment, there is a need to debate whether, in the name of sovereignty, African leaders can loot their countries' resources and force impoverished youth to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean in search of opportunities, in a journey that leads more to death than dough/money.

Internationalism has been good to the less fortunate. It helped to speed up decolonization. It has helped many during global disasters. The people of Africa need global institutions to hold their leaders to account. Therefore we must resists calls to sovereignty, from Trump, Mugabe and others. Indeed, Trump sounded like a chartered member of global incorporated while talking about the need to deal with Kim Jong Un while Mugabe sounded the same while invoking climate change. As President Macron said, "We are in very specific moment. We have a lot of global challenges: climate, migrations, terrorism and for that, we do need multi-lateralism"

Let us say, "D'accord !" to the French President, for the sake of Africa.

Arthur K

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The Member of Parliament representing the people of Tarkwa - Nsuaem on Wednesday, 20th September 2017 cut the sod for the construction of the Nsuta road at Tarkwa in the Western Region.

The 1.6-kilometer road will link the Nsuta junction to Nsuta Township.

The project awarded to Edmac construction is expected to be completed in 90 days.

Hon. George Mireku Duker disclosed this at Nsuta during the sod cutting ceremony. He said funding has been secured for the execution of the project at a cost of Three million Ghana Cedis.

Roads make a crucial contribution to economic development, growth and bring important social benefits. In order to make a nation grow and develop, roads are of vital status. For these reasons, road infrastructure is one of the most important of all public assets.

In addition, providing access to employment, social, health and education services make a road network crucial in fighting against poverty. Roads open up more areas and stimulate economic and social development Hon. Mireku Duker stated.

We need to construct good roads so that agricultural products and minerals can move easily between the producing areas in Nsuta and markets in the surrounding areas. It will also ease the challenge drivers go through when plying the Nsuta township road. Let me assure you that the project would be funded by Ghana Manganese and there wouldnt be any delays in the execution of project. He said

The Member of Parliament reiterated the fact that the Free SHS that has been launched by his Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo will also go a long way to help the people of Wassa Traditional Area. He thanked the President on behalf of the people of Wassa -Afiase for taking such a bold decision.

The overjoyed inhabitants of Nsuta hailed the Member of Parliament Hon. George Mireku Duker and thanked him for his lobbying skills, saying at long last, the dust inhaling regime is over

The sod cutting ceremony was graced by the Municipal Chief Executive, the Chief of Asuoso Traditional area, Nananom, Opinion leaders, Presiding Member of the District Assembly among others.
The President and Spiritual Leader of the Tijaniyya Muslim Council of Ghana (TMCOG), Sheikh Khalifa Abul Faidi Ahmed Maikano, together with few Members of the Tijaniyya Council, paid a visit to the founder and leader of the Kristo Asafo Church Apostle Dr. Ing. Kwadwo Safo Kantanka at his working base in Gomoa Mpota, Central Region.

The delegation, led by Spiritual leader of the Muslim group took place on Wednesday to officially observe the great innovations and inventions of Apostle Safo and also to discuss issues to help build strong relationship among them.

The trip was accompanied by the Public relations officer of Khalifa Abubakar who gave narrations of the legacy of their leader Sheikh Abdukai Ahmed Maikano Jallo.

According to Mr Abubakar Baba Yara the PRO of Shiekh Khalifa, the two major events initiated by the late father of their leader, shiekh Ahmad Tijani Al- Shareef of blessed memory has chalked forty-two and forty- one years.

The two respective events namely recitation of the Noble Qur'an for peace to mankind in Ghana and the celebration of the life of the initiator of world Tijaniya.

Mr Abubakar also delved into the new dimensions the current president who had led the Tijaniyya Muslim Council Of Ghana (TMCOG) for ten years had introduced to match the contemporary world. That is to give his young and vibrant teeming youth followers who are without vocational skills and employment to acquire Skills training and entrepreneurship.

He said Sheikh Khalifa deem it appropriate to collaborate with Apostle Safo Kantanka to redeem the youth the unfortunate situation they find themselves.

The President Sheikh Maikano Praised Apostle Safo for his vision and mission which he described as unprecedented in the history of the nation. Sheikh also applauded him for his sense of purpose for the many invention he has done.

He continued that the government of Ghana should pay more attention to the capabilities of Apostle Safo in his quest for nation development and need to be pushed higher. He later used the opportunity to invite Apostle Safo to this Year's Maulid, scheduled to take place on the 4th of November, 2017 at Prang in the Pru district of the Brong Ahafo region.

On his part, Apostle Safo reiterated his commitment to what he is doing to help the youth acquire technical skills and entrepreneurship and edged them to continue with their great works in bringing their followers together to ensure peace in the country.

He congratulated Sheikh Khalifa for the new dimensions he has added to his religious movement and charged him to do more than what his great father had already done. Apostle Safo promised to honor his invitation to participate in this year's Maulid to observe the occasion.

The son CEO of the Kantanka Group of Companies Kwadwo Safo Jnr, Mr. Francis Kojo Kujoji and Mr Ebo Safo were all present to receive the deligation.

The delegation later toured the working site of Apostle Safo Suaye Centre where all his technological inventions were found.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana (PSGH) has launched its activities to be celebrated in this years World Pharmacists Day scheduled for Monday 25th September in Accra.

Speaking at the ceremony, the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Pharm. Benjamin Kwame Botwe said Pharmacists have earmarked week-long activitiesto be celebrated across the ten regions.

This, he mentioned, includescounseling and drug education programs, donations and health screening in selected shopping malls, communities, marketplaces, churches and mosques in all the ten regions.

Mr. Botwe indicated that they will organize public education in communities, schools, churches and mosques on the responsible use of medicines, adherence to counseling, health promotion and public health.

The President of the Society indicated that this years celebration which is under the theme, From Research to Healthcare, Your Pharmacist is at Your Service, is very important because it highlights the important role pharmacist play in research and drug discovery as well as healthcare delivery across the world.

Mr. Botwe added that as they celebrate the World Pharmacists Day, they no longer have to convince everyone that all they do is to dispense.

It is no longer appropriate for professionals with such expertise to be called mixers of medicines but professionals with knowledge and expertise in medicines, he stated.

According to him, as a society, they progressively want to establish the value they add to healthcare and to patient safety, specifically and through partnership to contribute to achieving their expanded role in public health.

He emphasized that new medicines often require new analytical and production methods and development of these is an important part of the Pharmacists role by virtue of their training.

Mr. Botwe noted that Pharmacists help to assess the safety and efficacy of new medicines adding that the Pharmacists extensive training allows them to contribute to the entire clinical trial process from planning the trial, conducting, monitoring and reporting on the trials as well as developing the formulations for administration for trials in humans, the production, packaging, labeling and supply of the medicine to clinical researchers.

He stated that following the release of a drug product onto the market, Pharmacist play diverse roles in the supply of these medicines and ensures they meet the required standards.

Yes, your Pharmacist is at your service. Not only do Pharmacists specialize in delivering drugs to patients, but indeed their role in ensuring that the drug product is used appropriately cannot be over emphasized, The President of the Society intimated.

Mr. Botwe posited that in clinical practice, the pharmacist as a core member of the healthcare team in charge of drug therapy management, adverse drug reactions monitoring, medication adherence counseling as well as patient discharge and post discharge counseling ensure that patients pharmaceutical care needs are met.

He said, apart from pharmaceutical care, the pharmacists show daily care in the following and much more an expert in medicines, a trusted healthcare provider, getting you the best from your medicine, providing you with the best health and pharmaceutical information, taking care of your medication needs with care, keeping you safe and healthy.

Speaking on behalf of the Health Minister, the Deputy Director, Administration and/Legal, Ministry of Health, DelaKemevor indicated that Pharmacists have consistently contributed so much to healthcare that we sometimes take for granted, the very things they do which end up saving our lives.

Just think about it, sometime back, when one was diagnosed of HIV/AIDS, it was just like a death sentence. Today, people can live full life while still positive with HIV/AIDS. This is the result of work done over the years by Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Scientists to bringing us antiretroviral drugs, he stated.

Mr. Kemevor said through this launch, the Ministry wish to highlight issues relating to cleanliness, hygiene, sanitation and most importantly, deworming.

When we were young, our parents made sure we dewormed every three months and this was something which got stuck with us till date. Today, for some reasons, the current generation does not deworm religiously as we did in the past, he stressed.

The Ghana Country Manager of Johnson and Johnson, Priscilla OwusuSekyere indicated that this occasion will afford them the opportunity to strengthen their collaboration with the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana and the Ghana Education Service to fight worm infestation among school children in Ghana.

She indicated that diseases from parasites and worm infestations, such as guinea-worm, schistosomiasis and other Neglected Tropical Diseases, impose a heavy burden on the population and healthcare services as they affect a large number of people, especially school children in Ghana.

This has a serious impact on school attendance rates, childhood growth and cognitive development, leading to high levels of disability and loss of productivity, she noted.

Priscilla OwusuSekyere stressed that following last years success, they want to continue working together to help teach primary school children about the dangers of poor sanitation and the importance of effective hand-washing.

According to her, they have designed a drawing competition, focusing on worm infestationtargeted at school children in Ghana.

She emphasized that this drawing competition, which will start from the Greater Accra Region, will not only encourage the children, through their engagement with each other to pass on the information but it will also help ensure that worm infestations quickly become a thing of the past.
24.09.2017 LISTEN

Some people including the media think that the impasse at UEW is because of the case at the Winneba High Court. If you think like that then you are really viewing the impasse with a political lens. The court case is just a fraction of the entire impasse.

When NPP won power on December 7, 2016, within a few weeks, Hon. Alex AfenyoMarkin started trumpeting that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) and the Finance Officer must hand over the administration of the University of UEW to the Pro-Vice Chancellor because the council that appointed them was defunct. The University responded to this assertion of his and stated categorically that if even the council was defunct, the Pro-Vice Chancellor was also appointed by the same defunct council. There was governing council in place before January, 2017 but it was dissolved by the current government in same month

Hon. Afenyo continued his media warfare on his so called UEW defunct council and went to petition the Hon. Minister of Education on this issue.The Minister of Education set up a committee to look into the allegations raised by Hon. Afenyo accusing the top management of wrong doings. The committee started their work and did not find anything worthy of the accusations levelled against them so they were made to stop when NEC of UTAG raised legal issues regarding the committee. It is worth knowing that Hon. Afenyo normally excludes the Pro Vice-Chancellor from the wrong doing as if the Pro Vice-Chancellor were not part of the top management of UEW.

When everything seems to be okay for UEW, before jack, there was a suit purported to be filled in May, 2017 by one Supi Kofi Kwayeraasking for some reliefs from the Winneba High Court. I do not want to bore you with the reliefs, but as I write now, most of the reliefs especially the procurement allegations have been dropped by him through Hon. Afenyo.

When the legal team of UEW started raising some legal issues about the suit by Supi Kofi Kwayera, there was an injunction suit that asked the court to injunction all the principal officers until the final determination of the case. The Winneba High Court Judge, Justice George Atto Mills-Graveswas in hurry in accepting the injunction application rather than hearing the initial legal issues raised by UEW lawyers. On June 13, 2017, Winneba High Court granted the injunction in the open court. At a point in time, he told Hon. Afenyo that the ball is in your court and Hon. Afenyo said, my Lord, I have my men on the ground and I will make sure none of them goes to the office. When the University realised that there is no head of the University, deans and the likes decided and asked the registrar to inform the general public that the University is closed temporally. I learnt the Winneba High Court Judge was very hot when he heard that the University closed because of his ruling. When he was invited by the Ag. Chief Justice to justify the injunction, hmmmm, he lied. He claimed it was just some friendly chat in the court room and that there was no written record to that effect. One may asked, how can an academic institution close down when they did not consult their lawyers? It is a blatant lie by the Winneba High Court Judge, Justice George Atto Mills-Graves that he did not grant the injunction on June 13, 2017. Is the judge saying that he alone was in the court room?

Now, the political dimensions:

On June 20, 2017, the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education,

came to meet the top management of UEW and some Union leaders to find out what led to the closure of the University. During the discussions, he said the University should allow the Pro Vice-Chancellor to act until the case is determined. Some union members told Prof.KwesiYankah that the so called defunct council ratified the Pro Vice-Chancellors Associate and Full Professorship and his appointment. Prof.KwesiYankah was shocked and asked where is the Pro Vice-Chancellor? I am sure you would agree with me that Prof.KwesiYankah was sent. He didnt even know the Pro Vice-Chancellor. When he realised that he couldnt push the agenda for the Pro Vice-Chancellor to act, he promised that a substantive council will be inaugurated on Friday, June 23, 2017.

June 23 came, no council was formed.

NEC of UTAG asked government to form governing councils of all public Universities but that was also not done immediately.

There were legal gymnastics at the Winneba High Court during this same time and all applications to join the suit were summarily dismissed because there was an agendumto make it look like the injunction application is now supposed to be heard. Also, the judge new that he was going on legal vacation so during one of the proceedings, Hon. Afenyo said, my Lord there is an injunction pending, my Lord, can I move it? The Injunction application was moved immediately. Still UEW governing council was not formed.

On July 14, 2017, the judge seeing that, the University was closed down because he granted the injunction on June 13,2017 that all the principal officers should not carry themselves as principal officers, he took solace in Act 672 without recourse to the UEW Statute and said the VC and the FO are restricted and the Pro Vice-Chancellor act.There was an arrest application of the injunction judgement but the judge threw it away. It is worth to know that the plaintiff did not ask the Winneba High Court that Pro Vice-Chancellor should act. Most of the things he said in open court were not in the written judgement. No wonder, Anas was able to bring out the corruption within the court system in Ghana.

Pro Vice-Chancellor took some days off before the court ruled on the injunction.

Wow, just after the Winneba High Court ruled on the injunction application, the following day, July 15, 2017, UEW governing council was formed. I am sure the reader is now seeing the political and judicial interferences in higher education.

Prof. Dominic Fobi was initially slated to be the governing council chairman for UEW and he was replaced in the last hour by Prof.E. N. Abakah because the government thinks Prof. Dominic Fobi is a level headed Prof. than Prof.Abakah. Prof.Abakah left UEW not on a good note so how can he solve the current impasse in UEW, especially when he and Prof MawutorAvoke has never had good working relationship.

Funny enough, the UEW governing council chairman have announced that all the certificates and some appointments have been ratified whilst there was no declaration that the previous council under contention was defunct. Politically, if the current council chairman did not announce the ratification of certificates, there would have been public agitation. One may ask how can someone sign a document and the document is authentic but the one who signed the document is not authentic? The VC signed the certificates and the certificates have been ratified leaving the VC out.Even interesting is the fact that the Council Chair has instructed the University lawyers to withdraw the case from court for amicable settlement. How fair is this development? This is indeed a well planned and executed exercise.

Now, let us look at the chronology. Hon. Afenyo in the media said that the VC must handover to the Pro Vice-Chancellor. Prof.KwesiYankah requested that the Pro Vice-Chancellor should act. Then the Winneba High Court presided over by Justice George Atto Mills-Graves also asked that the Pro Vice-Chancellor acts and this is where people are of the view that the case is in the court. Justice George Atto Mills-Graves knowing that he was going on legal vacation decided to grant the injunction.

Hon. Afenyo, is it only UEW governing council that was defunct based on your claim? I will like to say categorically that the other public Universities should not say that they are not concerned because it is not affecting them directly. It is likely the current government may use the court system with the same judicial gymnastics to disturb other public Universities. I am sure no level headed lecturer will be interested in any strike without any cause. Those concerned UTAG-UEW members and other public universities UTAG members that want to teach whilst the strike is on, I hope a time will come when government will use this division to scrap the Book and Research Allowances (BRA) because if a strike is declared nationwide on BRA, you will not see a single lecturer going to teach.

Those of you who are questioning the academic freedom of Universities seems not to understand the meaning of academic freedom. Academic freedom, the freedom of teachers and students to teach, study, and pursue knowledge and research without unreasonable interference or restriction from law, institutional regulations, or public pressure. Also, Academic freedom is the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia , and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.

The writer is an alumnus of UEW

[email protected]

By Victor K. Owusu
The Omanhene of Nsein Traditional Area, AwulaeAgyefi Kwame II, has commended President Akufo-Addo for the courageous decision to fight against illegal mining popularly known as galamsey.

He has also pledged the commitment of his chiefs to the fight promised every support needed to ensure the countrys natural resources are protected for future generations.

AwulaeAgyefi Kwame was speaking at the climax of the 2017 Kundum Festival, which also marked 50 years since his enstoolment as Omanhene.

Addressing guests at the durbar, including Vice President Dr MahamuduBawumia, AwulaeAgyefi Kwame chastised previous governments and some chiefs for looking on unconcerned while illegal miners destroyed the environment.

I want to especially thank President Nana Akufo-Addo for the courageous decision to fight galamsey. We are all seeing the effects on the environment, especially our water bodies. My people and I say thank you. Some have come and gone but did nothing about it.

Didnt the NDC government see the negative effects of galamsey in Ghana? They feared the consequences of fightingit so they kept quiet while our environment was destroyed. I am disappointed in them. But not just them. Didnt chiefs also see the negative effects of galamsey? What did they say when they saw the waters in Western Region being destroyed? Until President Akufo-Addo started this fight, what did they do? We were all afraid. We thank God for Nana Akufo-Addo, who has said he we will fight no matter the consequence. Mr Vice President, please send our thanks to him

We the chiefs of Nsein are fully committed to the fight against galamsey. We fully support the fight, and we will continue to point out the ills of society to the government AwulaeAgyefi pledged.

While commending the President for the introduction of the Free Senior High School policy, the NseinOmanhene bemoaned the rising spate of teenage pregnancy in the area, which is preventing girls from taking full advantage of scholarships offered by the Ghana Rubber Estates Limited and other companies.

He also appealed for the rehabilitation of Axim town roads and the roads within Nsein Senior High School.

Vice President MahamuduBawumia commended AwulaeAgyefi Kwame II for his remarkable leadership over the years, which has resulted in 50 years of peace and unity in the Nsein Traditional area.

He reiterated governments commitment to meeting the development aspirations of all Ghanaians, with Nzemaland and the whole of Western region receiving its fair share of the national cake.

The Vice President was accompanied by Dr KwakuAfriyie, Western region Minister and his Deputy, GiftyKusi; Hon Catherine Afeku, Minister for Tourism and Creative Arts who is also MP for the area; Hon Joe Ghartey, Minister for Railway Development and MP for EssikadoKetan; Hon KwakuAsiamah, Minister for Transport.

Sons and daughters of Nsein, including Mad Charlotte Osei, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission; Mrs Josephine Nkrumah, head of the National Commission for Civic Education; and mrs Eva Mends, Head of Budget at the Ministry of Finance, were also present.
The city of Abuja is about to witness yet another entertaining and historical event as 25 contestants of Miss Ambassador For Peace will battle it out on the stage of destiny as the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja on Saturday, 23rd September.

The Peace Achievers Awards and Miss Ambassador For Peace Nigeria 2017 will honour 25 Award Recipients with 6 pageant will to emerge on the prestigious night.

Expected to thrill the audience with their songs are

Ice Prince, Priaz, Styl-Plus, Gully Ridya, Frankie Walter, 2tight, Mr Nest and Maivnao. While the jokes from

Seyilaw, Amb Wahala, Dr. Ayuba, Koboko Master,Chuks D General, Sam and Song, Short cut and BOB, Mr. Odey, Stainless, Ghana Must Go, C.ri-Snow, Bishop of Comedy, Cedee and Washington DC will put their fans up their seats till the last actions

The Host for the night are MC Philip Rennar and On Air personality, Nenny B. While DJ's, Nani and Topherz shall the sound up and steady.
Nollywood actress, Lizzy Anjorin, is not just good at acting alone, but she has been steadily releasing some singles to her credit and has left many wondering how talented she is.

That is not all, not just answering to the call of some movie producers to grace their movie set, the actress has also produced some movies to her name and still counting.

Another side of the actress is that virtually all the clothes she is having on are made by her as she has been spending more of time making good clothes instead of spending her money to travel to Dubai, Turkey, China and the likes to get imported clothes.

In trying to position herself in the Nigerian fashion industry, Lizzy is set to unveil her clothing line within couple of months in the heart of Lekki, Lagos, as it will avail the slay queens the opportunity of meeting her for quality and creative designs.
'The big truck is still on ...
Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians View Photos

Sacramento, CA  Leaders of Native American tribes from across California gathered to celebrate the 50th annual observance of Native American Day at the state Capitol today.

Governor Jerry Brown observed the day by releasing a proclamation declaring September 22, 2017, as Native American Day in the State of California. The theme of this years celebration at the Capitol is Tribal Sovereignty: Sovereigns Working Together. In his declaration, Brown detailed the embattled history of Native Americans in the state who persevered against persecution to become the largest Native population in the fifty states. He went on to state, The success of tribal businesses and the presence today of tribal members in all walks of life stand as testament to the resilience and indomitable spirit of native peoples.

Tuolumne County is home to the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians, click here to find out more about the tribe.

Browns entire proclamation can be viewed below:

California has been home to human beings for more than 12,000 years, with the presence of European-Americans representing only a tiny fraction of this time. The first Europeans to arrive in California encountered hundreds of thousands of people organized into hundreds of distinct tribal groups. They flourished in the bountiful hills and valleys of what someday would be called California.

The contact between these first Californians and successive waves of newcomers over the three succeeding centuries was marked by the utter devastation of the native peoples, their families and entire way of life. The colonial regimes of Spain and Mexico through disease and enforced servitude cut the indigenous population by more than half. Then the Gold Rush came, and with it, a wave of new diseases and wanton violence which reduced the Native population again, this time by more than 80 percent. The newborn State of California actually paid for the killing of Native peoples and tolerated or encouraged policies of warfare, slavery and relocation that left no tribe intact. In his 1851 address to the Legislature, our first Governor, Peter Burnett, famously stated, That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected.

In spite of Burnetts prediction, California today is home to the largest population of Native Americans in the fifty states, including both the rebounding numbers of our native tribes and others drawn to the Golden State by its myriad opportunities. The success of tribal businesses and the presence today of tribal members in all walks of life stand as testament to the resilience and indomitable spirit of native peoples. If Governor Burnett could not envision a future California that included Native Americans, it is just as impossible for us today to envision one without them.

NOW THEREFORE I, EDMUND G. BROWN JR., Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim September 22, 2017, as Native American Day in the State of California.
There was grief recently in Ogun state one of the security aides to Governor Ibikunle Amosun, Busoye Olayinka, died in a ghastly motor accident on Thursday night.

Legit.ng gathered that ASP Olayinka was the second-in-command in the governors convoy. Robot as he was popularly called, was involved in a road accident along Papalanto stretch of the old Lagos/Abeokuta expressway around 9pm.

ASP Busoye Olayinka (Source: Facebook, Michael Oluwasanjo Olajide)

He was said to be traveling with his younger brother who also died in the accident. They were on their way home after the days work before they met their untimely death. ut met their unfortunate death.

READ ALSO: Nigerian soldier dies while fighting against Boko Haram (photos)

The ASP's ash-coloured Nissan Primera collided with a truck. They died at a private hospital in Panseke area of Abeokuta. Friends and family have taken to Facebook to also grief about their death:

PAY ATTENTION: Get all the latest gossips on NAIJ News App

May his soul rest in perfect peace!

Source: Legit.ng
- The high rate of maternal mortality in Nigeria is still a challenge for government at all levels

- The immediate past governor of Ondo state, Olusegun Mimiko, who is an experienced medical practitioner has joined the conversation

- Mimiko advised the federal government to act fast on the issue, and adopt the model his government used in Ondo state

The immediate past governor of Ondo state, Dr Olusegun Mimiko, has advised the federal government to pay critical attention to the high rate of maternal mortality in the country.

Mimiko gave the advise while speaking with journalists, on Friday, September 22, at the Chatham House in London.

The former governor delivered a paper on Improving Access to Health Services for All using his administration's achievement in maternal and child health as a case study.

Mimiko delivered a paper on Improving Access to Health Services for All. Photo credit: Twitter (@Segunmimiko)

READ ALSO: Nigerian man, Mohammad Maccido, graduates from UK university with distinction (photos)

According to him, funding will never be adequate in any human setting but with the right kind of leadership, the country can drastically reduce maternal mortality, which is about 19 percent of global maternal deaths according to the World Bank.

We must call a major stakeholders meeting where there will be an agreement on a universal health package that every state in the country can afford, and create an eligibility criteria for those who build on it so that they can be rewarded accordingly and eventually we will get there.

As we do this, we prioritize safe motherhood and child health he said.

Mimiko also took time to demonstrate how his administration midwifed a functional and effective healthcare delivery system, which attracted local and international recognition as a proven method of reducing maternal mortality particularly with the introduction of his homegrown initiatives such as Abiye (Safe motherhood) program, Agbebiye and Orirewa that crashed the maternal mortality indices in the state.

He charged Nigerian leaders at every level not to see only physical structures as achievement, saying that quality healthcare for women is a great empowerment tool.

His words: Safe motherhood is a gender parity tool, every woman wants good life. They will be empowered if they can have access to quality health without catastrophic spending.

What will eventually drive universal health coverage in Africa is the political will and that is what will generate passion and it the passion that will attract donors from around the world."

The discussion at Chatham House was centered on how to optimize global opportunities in achieving Universal Health Coverage and Health Security in Nigeria.

Mimiko stated that quality healthcare for women is a great empowerment tool. Source: Twitter (@Segunmimiko)

Chatam House is a world-leading centre for policy research and debate on global politics.

READ ALSO: Olori Wuraola spotted at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly in New York

Watch Nigerians speak on the federal government's health plan for the citizens on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng
The former US presidential hopeful and Vermont senator in an interview published Friday said the US military aid to Israel has caused a snarl-up in the peace process and favored Israels continued occupation of Palestinian territories adding that he would consider reducing it.

Speaking to Intercept, the senator who came close to contest vying the presidential seat with Trump during last year elections said the $3.1 billion US annual aid package has provided incentive to Israel to continue its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territories.

Sanders noted that the US could play a more even-handed role in ending the decades-long conflict if it reviews its military aid to Israel.

Asked if he would consider reducing the aid, the veteran politician said the answer is yes.

For him the US should not support Israel only through arms but have the Jewish state work with other countries and on other issues, including environment.

Sanders has been opposed to Israels continuing colonization of the West Bank, yet he denounced what he called UN biased policy against Israel.

The one who lost to Hilary Clinton in the Democrat race also criticized Washingtons foreign policy towards Iran in favor of Saudi Arabia.

I think that one of the areas that we have got to rethink, in terms of American foreign policy, is our position vis-a-vis Iran and Saudi Arabia, he said.

Acknowledging the legitimacy of international concerns on some of Irans foreign policy, Sanders argued that Iran in current state is more democratic than Saudi Arabia. He cited this year elections in Iran and the desire of young Iranians to open up to the western civilization.

Rejecting that Saudi Arabia is an ally of the US for its alleged support for and spray of terrorism, Sanders noted that part of Washingtons friendly foreign policy towards Saudi Arabia is connected to oil.
- As Osun state prepares for the 2018 gubernatorial elections, APC has made it clear that disloyalty will not be tolerated

- The partys publicity secretary also spoke on who was likely to suceed Rauf Aregbesola

- APC also denounced insinuations that PDP would overthrow them in the forthcoming elections in the state

All Progressives Congress (APC) publicity secretary, Kunle Oyatomi while speaking to journalists in Osogbo, Osun state has revealed conditions for Aregbesola's sucessor.

Ahead of the 2018 governorship elections, he declared that disloyal members and those lacking in party discipline will not be considered as candidates worthy of flying the partys flag.

According to Premium Times, while speaking on Friday, September 23, he said the party remained a disciplined one and would consider loyalty, competence and quality in deciding who would earn the APC ticket.

He said the party would consider only those able to continue the developmental successes of the Aregbesola administration.

He also said: A saboteur cannot qualify. An undisciplined person cannot qualify and a person who is not ingrained in and with all the developments that have taken place under Aregbesola, cannot be trusted to succeed him.

Anybody who has motives inconsistent with and treacherous in the main, against what Aregbesola has done can never, ever be the partys choice in Osun.

Also anyone who is looking outside Osun APC to win the partys nomination will fail and therefore cannot succeed Aregbesola.

The opposition PDP has boasted that it would overthrow the APC government in the state. However the APC in its statement said they would remain victorious.

Mr Oyatomi said Osun west senatorial district bye-election was not a proper gauge for the popularity of the APC in the state.

READ ALSO: Legit.ng uncovers the true nature of Aregbesola's administration

Lets put that victory in context as we have said earlier. The figures revealed that the majority of votes that gave the PDP the victory came from Ede land- Ede North, Ede South and Egbedore.

The Adeleke factor is predominant and sabotage by the APC dissidents added significantly to PDP victory.

But as a district, Osun West is less than 20 per cent of the total votes needed to win the governorship."

On why the APC lost the election, Mr Oyatomi said: The first aspect is that the passing of the former senator, late Isiaka Adeleke created genuine sympathy that was politically exploited by his brother who succeeded him with the assistance of the APC members who sabotaged the party.

The second aspect is that strategic errors were made, which we have identified, but we refuse to talk about. Those errors will not be repeated.

Meanwhile, Rauf Aregbesola, the governor of Osun state, has frowned against the agitation for local government autonomy.

According to him, those calling for local government autonomy were agents of confusion as granting autonomy to local government councils was antithetical to true federalism.

PAY ATTENTION: Watch more videos on Legit.ng TV

Reports have it that he said local councils were administrative units of the state and therefore their autonomy may be the end of the states.

Watch this Legit.ng videos on Aregbesola's achievements in the state:

Source: Legit.ng
- The two robbers were caught with some of what they had stolen that day

- The two suspects were arrested on Friday, September 22 night on the ekki-Epe expressway

- The men were handed over to the nearest police station in the area

The Rapid Response Squad (RRS) has announced the arrest of some men who specialize in highway traffic robbery.

According to a statement by the unit, the men were caught in the act on the Lekki-Epe expressway on Friday, September 22.

The statement read: "Late yesterday was their day of reckoning. They had held sway robbing and dispossessing road users and passers-by of their valuables.

The two suspects were cuffed together with their stolen goods in hand. Photo: RRS

READ ALSO: Kanu was about to stop Biafra agitation when Army attacked - Uko

"Two of the traffic robbers terrorising Jakande in Lekki - Epe Expressway were caught in the act yesterday night at close to 10:00 p.m.

"The arrest was sequel to days of monitoring queues of traffic by Rapid Response Squad Officers on the axis to nab the criminals.

"The suspects have been handed over to Base 129, the closest police station to the scene along with exhibits recovered from them."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported recently that five shrines in Ikorodu allegedly belonging to the dreaded cult group Badoo were destroyed by the Lagos state police command.

As part of efforts to rid the Ikorodu communities of the cult group, Edgar Imohimi, the state commissioner of police, led a team of police officers and bulldozers to the Agbowa area of the community.

The development was made public by the Command on Wednesday, September 20.

Watch this Legit.ng TV video of Nigerians sharing their opinion on whether police is really your friend

Source: Legit.ng
- Abdullahi says Nigeria is far behind in achievements even 57 years after independence

- The professor also said the problem started with late ex-military leader Murtala Muhammad

- Abdullahi also revealed that President Buhari will not get an automatic ticket as APC's presidential candidate in 2019

Spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) Ango Abdullahi has described Nigeria as a failure as the country clocks 57 years of independence on October 1.

Abdullahi told Daily Sun in an interview that when compared to other countries that gain independence around the same period, the nation is a failure.

He said: If I was a teacher marking Nigeria from 1960, or a teacher marking Nigerias script as one of my students of over these 57 years, I will grade her a failure.

As you said, we will be 57 years and the question is, have all those aspirations been achieved? The honest answer is no.

When you look at it from the point of view of the opportunities available, the resources available, the chances available, both internal and external and you sum all these up, including the human capital, I will say that Nigeria failed to achieved the goals and aspirations it set for itself and for its people.

There are benchmarks with which one can base this conclusion. There are quite a number of countries we virtually achieved independence either together or almost at the same time.

Some of the references used in gauging our development indices are India, in 1948 and Malaysia. Malaysia has really moved faster in their development endeavours. Unfortunately, despite all the endowments, Nigeria has failed to achieve the goals expected of it since independence."

READ ALSO: Former first lady of Akwa Ibom Imo Isemin dies

Abdullahi blamed ex-military ruler Murtala Muhammed messed up the civil service, which has always been the stabilising factor in any countrys development programme.

From 1960 until 1974, Nigeria was doing well in the area of development. I happened to have served as Commissioner of Economic Planning under the military government from 1973 to 1975. As from that period, things began getting worse, particularly, during Gen. Murtala Mohammed.

Although Murtala appeared to be a nationalist and Pan-Africanist, regrettably, he messed up the civil service, which has always been the stabilising factor in any countrys development programme.

Politicians come and go, but civil servants remain until retirement. Murtala abused civil service rules. Now a civil servant has to be a liar, or sycophant to keep his job. This is where Nigeria began to run into serious difficulties in governance.

On President Muhammadu Buhari, the professor said he wont get an automatic ticket to represent the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2019.

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He said: The fact that Buhari is incumbent does not automatically confer on him the candidature of the party in the next election if there is internal democracy in the party.

The fact that you are a sitting president does not mean other members of the party cannot contest against you. If I were Buhari, I will welcome competition in my party.

This is an opening for democracy in my party and I will ask people to come and test their popularity. If he has done well, people will re-elect him.

Legit.ng had reported recently that Aisha Jummai Alhassan, minister of Women Affairs, who recently declared her support for former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to run for president in 2019, disclosed to Reuters that President Buhari told members of his party that he would not seek re-election in 2019.

The minister's declaration of support for the former vice-president has continued to generate heated discussions among Nigerians.

In 2014/2015 he said he was going to run for only one time to clean up the mess that the (previous) PDP government did in Nigeria. And I took him for his word that he is not contesting in 2019, Minister of Women Affairs Alhassan told Reuters.

Watch this Legit.ng TV video of Nigerians sharing their opinion on whether Nigeria should remain one or split up

Source: Legit.ng
Some gunmen believed to be militants have hit a tug-boat loaded with crude oil in the souther Ijaw creeks in Bayelsa state causing chaos in surrounding areas.

Premium Times reports that the incident happened less than three weeks after a similar attack in an ambush on a military houseboat that led to the death of two persons.

Legit.ng learnt that the gunmen the vessel with a combined team of security escort on board and civilians was attacked on Friday, September 22, by suspected sea pirates at Ekebiri Waterways in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa.

READ ALSO: Kanu was about to stop Biafra agitation when Army attacked - Uko

It was learnt that the victims included two security escorts and a civilian crew member of the tugboat.

Confirming the incident, the spokesperson of the police in the state, Asinim Butswat, said the body of a police operative was still missing from the incident.

On 22, September 2017, at about 1845hrs, a Tugboat, towing a Barge with a combined team of policemen from the Nigerian Inland waterways, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corp and Civilians on board was attacked by suspected Sea Pirates.The incident took place at Ekebiri Waterways in Southern Ijaw LGA, Bayelsa.

A reinforced team arrived shortly and rescued one Policeman, three NSCDC personnel and four civilians.

However, a policeman, one NSCDC Personnel and a civilian were shot dead by the sea pirates. One policeman is still missing, Butswat said.

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According to Butswat, the body of the other victims had been recovered and deposited at the Federal Medical Centre mortuary for autopsy while a search party has been deployed to find the missing policeman.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Coalition of Niger Delta Ex-Agitators (NCNDE) recently called on President Muhammadu Buhari to reshuffle his cabinet, saying it is in the nation's interest.

The report said that in a statement by its national president, Mr Israel Eshanekpe, on Sunday, September 10, in Abuja, the group said that the federal cabinet as presently constituted had many disgruntled and disloyal persons."

Watch this video as reactions trail the recent introduction of the Biafra Security Service, an arm of IPOB:

Source: Legit.ng
- Uche Mefor, a deputy director at the Radio Biafra, says the organisation commenced operation in the 1960s

- Mefor reveals that the radio station was first called the Broadcasting Corporation of Biafra

- He says Ralph Uwazurike does not own any stake in the organisation

The deputy director of the Radio Biafra, Uche Mefor, has released the historical details of the organisation, an arm of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

The explanation comes as the federal government wants the radio station located in London shut for heating up the Nigerian polity and threatening its unity.

READ ALSO: Igbo people are even better off than the northerners - Lagos lawmaker Makinde

Mefor said the organisation first came into existence in the 1960s in the heat of the civil war as the Broadcasting Corporation of Biafra.

The deputy director further explained that Uwazurike, the former leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Ralph Uwazurike, who later established the Biafran Independence Movement (BIM), is not the owner of the radio station as was being claimed by some people.

Important and final issue you must know about Radio Biafra. It is an indigenous broadcaster owned by the (Indigenous) People of Biafra and not to MASSOB/BIM as Lai Mohammed would want you to believe, Mefor said among other things in the statement he released.

PAY ATTENTION: Read the news on Nigerias #1 new app

Legit.ng earlier reported that the second vice president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani, reacted to the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) by the Federal High Court in Abuja.

Ubani said the ruling showed that he and some other Nigerians were right after all when they argued that the Nigerian army does not have the power to declare IPOB a terrorist group.

Watch the activities that was daily happening in Nnamdi Kanu's home before IPOB was proscribed:

Source: Legit.ng
(Natural News) Obese people, as well as smokers, will be refused of services by the United Kingdoms National Health Service (NHS) until they go to a health boot camp for six months to try and lose weight, according to a Daily Mail report.

These patients will be referred to the health optimization program of the NHS and taught to improve their behaviors before having surgery. The plan will be executed in the East Riding of Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), a health trust in East Yorkshire which serves 313,400 patients.

According to documents revealed by Health Service Journal, the scheme will be introduced in the Vale of York CCG in October.

The policy will be applied to all other non-urgent, non-life-threatening operations such as hip and knee replacements or hernia procedures. On the other hand, patients awaiting surgery for cancer, the frail elderly, or anyone with severe mental health problems will be exempted from the scheme. (Related: NHS doctors, nurses say government-run healthcare a dismal failure that puts lives at risk.)

It is stated in a document from the CCG that the scheme will offer people who are obese or people who smoke, a referral to either a weight management program or stop-smoking services. Moreover, it was stated that patients who smoke or are obese have an increased clinical risk of suffering complications during or after their operation. As well as improving their overall health and well-being, patients who make changes such as stopping smoking or losing weight can improve the results of their surgery.

Any person who needs surgery but has a body mass index (BMI) of 35, which is morbidly obese, or who smokes will be referred to the program for six months.

Obese patients will be sent to weight loss and exercise classes, while smokers will be offered smoking cessation counseling and nicotine patches. Regardless if they do not lose weight or stop smoking after six months, they will still be put forward for the operation. NHS managers are trying to save 11.5 million British Pounds this year. They said that the important thing is that patients are encouraged to have healthier lifestyles, irrespective of whether they succeed or not.

The managers claimed that patients will get more benefit from operations if they are in better health.

Policies like this were previously described by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) as wrong and shocking as all patients should have the right of being treated.

Other health trusts have considered imposing similar policies in the past months, but it is not clear how many of these are in place. According to an NHS report, around one in every four adults and around one in every five children aged 10 to 11 are obese in the United Kingdom.

Last November, the Vale of York CCG, which is a neighboring health trust, announced that smokers and obese patients would be denied surgery for up to a year and they would be put forward for operations sooner unless they either quit smoking or lost 10 percent of their body weight.

Leaving patients waiting in pain for treatment longer than is clinically necessary cannot be accepted, condemned Clare Marx, President of the RCS, in a report by The Telegraph.

At this rate, we may see brutal service reductions becoming the norm, rather than just being exceptions, Marx said.

Read more news like this at HealthCoverage.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

Telegraph.co.uk

NHS.uk
The United Arab Emirates is donating $10 million to Hurricane Irma recovery efforts in Florida.

UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba spoke with Republican Gov. Rick Scott before announcing the donation Wednesday.

UAE embassy officials will work with Florida disaster officials on how the money should be used as Florida recovers from a storm that damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and at its peak left 6.7 million customers without electricity. In the Florida Keys alone, 25 percent of homes were destroyed and another 65 percent damaged.

Al Otaiba noted in a press release that the UAE and Florida have a growing relationship based on trade and economic investments, including $1.5 billion in exports to the nation last year.

The United Arab Emirates is donating $10 million to Hurricane Irma recovery efforts in Florida.

UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba spoke with Republican Gov. Rick Scott before announcing the donation Wednesday.

UAE embassy officials will work with Florida disaster officials on how the money should be used as Florida recovers from a storm that damaged or destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses and at its peak left 6.7 million customers without electricity.

In the Florida Keys alone, 25 percent of homes were destroyed and another 65 percent damaged.

Al Otaiba noted in a press release that the UAE and Florida have a growing relationship based on trade and economic investments, including $1.5 billion in exports to the nation last year.


Former FBI Director James Comey took the stage to give the keynote address at Howard University's convocation Friday but was immediately interrupted by a group of demonstrators from the back of the auditorium.

The convocation began at 11 a.m. ET. As Comey took the podium, a group of people rose, singing "We shall not be moved" and chanted statements like "We are here to reclaim this space" and "No justice, no peace."

Comey stood quietly for much of it, then asked the group to hear him out as well. But the group continued. Another group could later be heard chanting, "Let him speak."

[NATL] 24 Frantic Hours: Photos Show the Trump-Comey Saga Unfold

After about 15 minutes, Comey began speaking over the demonstrators, saying he appreciated their enthusiasm but wanted to have a respectful conversation.

"I am here at Howard to try to get smarter, to try to be useful, to try and have healthy conversations," Comey said.

Students at the convocation ceremony said on Twitter that a fact sheet about Comey and the FBI was distributed among students. The flyer says Comey argued racism is not a serious issue within policing, that the FBI under his leadership surveilled Black Lives Matter activists and that he popularized the controversial term "the Ferguson effect."

https://twitter.com/TatianaSwain331/status/911255939281428480

Comey said Howard is a place where people listen with the expectation of learning from others' viewpoints, unlike most the rest of the world, where people "try to figure out what rebuttal they're going to offer when you're done speaking," Comey said. "Sometimes they will pause briefly before telling you you're an idiot."

The school announced last month that Comey would be giving the speech and taking on a special lecturing position at Howard. It's one of Comey's first public appearances since he was fired from the FBI by President Donald Trump in May, which sparked the appointment of a special counsel to take on the FBI's investigation into Russian election meddling.

In his role at Howard, Comey will give five lectures on several topics, officials have said. The topics have not yet been announced. Comey will donate his $100,000 compensation to a scholarship fund that helps Howard students who come from foster homes.

"Howard has a longstanding history of being a vibrant academic community and the perfect place to have rich dialogue on many of the most pressing issues we face today," Comey said in a statement in August. "I look forward to contributing to this remarkable institution and engaging students and faculty alike."
Most of the discussion to date on the benefit of SD-WANs has focused on how an SD-WAN enables a network organization to reduce or eliminate its spend on expensive MPLS circuits.That is clearly an important benefit. However, as many early adopters of SD-WANs can attest to, SD-WANs have other important benefits.

I am going to use this blog to summarize an interview I recently had with an IT professional who is in the midst of rolling out an SD-WAN solution. As described below, the benefits of the new solution include better performance, better visibility and the reduced cost and complexity that comes from removing Cisco routers.

THE INTERVIEWEE

I interviewed a director of information technology at a leading provider of technical product solutions for the automotive industry. The company manufactures electro-mechanic and electronic equipment. The company has twelve major sites located in five continents, has a work force of approximately 1,500 employees and has annual revenues of roughly US $500 million.

Prior to implementing an SD-WAN, the company had Cisco routers at each site, MPLS links into its larger sites and had site-to-site VPNs for backup at those larger sites. There were some locations, such as Tunisia and Indonesia, that didnt have MPLS connectivity because it would have cost thousands of dollars per month at each site. One of the issues with the previous WAN was that in those sites that had multiple links in an activepassive configuration, the WAN suffered from slow failover from the primary link to the backup link as the network organization had to manually reconfigure the router whenever the primary link failed.

THE EVALUATION PROCESS

One of the primary factors that drove the IT director to explore alternative WAN solutions was that the company decided to move from having an ERP system in each region to having a single consolidated data center and he felt the need to implement a WAN that had higher performance and availability than the current WAN. The director explored both managed SD-WAN and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) solutions from multiple providers. The idea of a managed SD-WAN solution was appealing to the company because adopting it would have meant no upfront costs. However, he explained that they rejected the managed SD-WAN solution because after two years it would have cost more than the DIY solution that they adopted. He also explained that they choose the Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution in part because it was less expensive than alternative DIY solutions, and in part because it included functionality, such as optimization, that the others didnt.

The IT director conducted a three-month pilot of the Silver Peak solution in those locations where he had a strong IT staff. At the end of the pilot, the company began a tiered rollout of the Silver Peak solution. To date, the solution has been implemented in nine of the companys twelve major sites. As part of implementing the solution, the IT director removed the Cisco routers and is now using the Silver Peak product as their WAN edge device. According to him, Any time I can eliminate network hardware it makes my life easier.

THE RESULTS

The IT director is very pleased with the overall results of implementing the Silver Peak EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution. According to him, I am impressed with how well the solution works. It works as advertised, which is a welcome change.

The company doesnt begin to implement its new ERP system until later this year so it isnt possible to quantify the performance impact of the Silver Peak EdgeConnect SD-WAN solution on that system. However, the IT director is convinced that the Silver Peak solution has already improved application availability. According to him, when compared to their previous WAN the Silver Peak based WAN is definitely more solid. He went on the say that now when an MPLS link fails, the Silver Peak solution seamlessly fails over to the backup link which allows the company to get product out the door.

The IT director was also very pleased with the visibility that he now has into his network traffic. He stated that, Its unbelievable how much more visibility I have. I have reporting that I have never had before that enables me to track down rogue users and to isolate a device that is taking up too much bandwidth. He added that not only does he now have great visibility but that the visibility tools came at no extra cost.
The latest GOP effort to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act is getting a lot of attention, even if its passage seems unlikely. But there is far more to the measure than its changes to rules regarding preexisting health conditions.

In fact, the bill proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) would disrupt the existing health system more than any of the measures considered so far this year, according to supporters and critics.

For backers of the bill, that disruption is a good thing. But others are appalled. As insurance industry analyst Robert Laszewski put it in a note to clients this week, "Would you rather lose your Republican Senate seat because you couldn't pass an Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan or because you blew up the health insurance system?"

Some of those alterations have generated little discussion but would have major impacts. Here are four unheralded changes:

 The Bill Caps Federal Funding To Medicaid

Much focus has been placed on the bill's funding formula, which would take money from states that expanded the Medicaid program for the poor. Less notice has been paid to the fact that this bill, like some other GOP options over the summer, would, for the first time, cap overall federal Medicaid funding. The federal government has provided an open-ended funding match since the program's creation in 1965  meaning the federal government has provided its share of whatever states spend to care for low-income children, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities. More than 70 million people are covered by Medicaid, including those added as a result of the ACA.

Republicans have been pushing unsuccessfully to limit the federal government's funding of Medicaid to states since the 1980s.

State Medicaid directors  including both Republicans and Democrats  are alarmed at the idea that something of such magnitude could be done with so little debate or consideration. "Graham-Cassidy would completely restructure the Medicaid programs financing, which by itself is three percent of the nations Gross Domestic Product and 25 percent of the average state budget," said a statement from the group.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in June that an earlier version of the cap would reduce federal Medicaid spending 35 percent by 2036. As a result, said CBO, states would "uneed to  decide whether to commit more of their own resources, cut payments to health care providers and health plans, eliminate optional services, restrict eligibility for enrollment, or adopt some combination of those approaches."

"There won't be enough money to do what's authorized under current law," said Jessica Schubel of the left-leaning think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

 The Bill Gives Unprecedented Power To The Secretary Of Health And Human Services

Republicans complained bitterly about the power delegated by Congress to the secretary of Health and Human Services in the ACA. But conservative analyst Chris Jacobs pointed out that the Graham-Cassidy bill gives the HHS secretary more power still.

The bill creates a dizzyingly complex formula for the funds now being spent on the ACA, which is intended to draw money away from wealthier states (that mostly expanded Medicaid under the health law) toward poorer ones (that mostly did not). But there is a huge loophole, noted Jacobs. The bill gives the HHS secretary authority to change the formula on his or her own.

"That's a trillion-dollar loophole that leaves HHS bureaucrats with the ultimate say over how much money states will receive," Jacobs wrote.

And, he said, it's the opposite of "federalism," or giving states more authority, which the bill's sponsors claim to be advancing.

"Draining the swamp shouldn't involve distributing money from Washington out to states, whether under a simple formula or executive discretion," he wrote. "It should involve eliminating Washington's role in doling out money entirely."

 The Bill Cuts Off All ACA Funding After 2026

The bill would lump together all funds being spent under the health law to help people pay premiums, out-of-pocket health costs and expand Medicaid to non-disabled adults and redistribute those funds to the states in the form of block grants. States could then use that money for almost anything health-related.

What few people have noticed, however, is that those block grants end abruptly after 2026. Originally, many thought this was because of congressional budget rules that limit new programs to no more than 10 years.

In fact, those rules say that a program cannot add to the deficit after 10 years and don't affect the length of the program. The block grant is paid for by continuing taxes from the ACA, so there is no budget need to cut it off.

The reason seems to be a desire to require Congress to come back and revisit the program. A spokesman for Cassidy said the program "just has to be reauthorized in 2026 just like the CHIP program." CHIP is the Children's Health Insurance Program, also created in a budget bill in 1997. Congress was supposed to reauthorize that program by the end of September, although it looks as if lawmakers will miss that deadline, despite bipartisan support.

Others, however, worry that cutting the money off after 2026 means Congress could no longer use the current funding mechanism. Instead, lawmakers would have to come up with massive cuts to other programs or new tax increases if they wanted to continue providing the money for health care.

 The Bill Could Roil The Individual Insurance Market In Some States By Banning Abortion Coverage In Private Health Plans.

In keeping a promise to anti-abortion lawmakers, the bill would prohibit all private insurance plans receiving any federal funds from providing abortion coverage.

As part of a delicate compromise that got the ACA enacted in 2010, states were given the option to ban abortion coverage in plans on their health exchanges. Half of them did.

But some states, notably California, New York and Oregon require plans they regulate to offer coverage of elective abortions.

The problem is that the deadline for insurers to opt into coverage under the ACA is next Wednesday. If Congress were to pass the bill after that, it is unclear what would happen to those plans. In California, the requirement for abortion coverage is based on the state's Constitution, so it would be possible that no plans could be offered to people who are eligible for federal help.

"There aren't clear answers" to what would happen if the bill becomes law in its current form and takes effect in January, said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, a reproductive rights advocacy group. "I think it's going to create chaos."
Pakistan is now 'terroristan', exporting global terrorism: India at UN

New York : Exercising its right of reply in the general debate at the ongoing UN General Assembly Session here, India slammed Pakistan for its support to terrorism, labelling it as "Terroristan".

"In its short history, Pakistan has become a geography synonymous with terror," Eenam Gambhir, First Secretary in India's Permanent Mission to the UN, said on Thursday in response to Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Abbasi's statement that "the struggle" of the people in Kashmir was being "brutally suppressed by India".

"The quest for land of pure has actually produced a 'land of pure terror'," Gambhir said.

"Pakistan is now 'Terroristan' with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism."

Gambhir said that the current state of Pakistan could be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Saeed, leader of the UN-designated terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, was now seeking to be legitimised as a leader of a political party.

She described Pakistan as a country whose counter-terrorism policy is to "mainstream and upstream terrorists by either providing safe havens to global terror leaders in its military town, or protecting them with political careers".

It is an obvious reference to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden being tracked down and eliminated by US forces in Pakistan's Abbottabad city.

Stating that nothing can justify Pakistan's avaricioius efforts to covet territories of its neighbours, Gambhir said: "In so far as India is concerned, Pakistan must understand that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India. However much it scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India's territorial integrity."

Ridiculing Pakistan for its complaints about the consequences it faced for its counter-terrorism efforts, she said that "the polluter, in this case, is paying the price".

"Terroristan is in fact a territory whose contribution to the globalisation of terror is unparalleled," Gambhir added.
PitchBook has an update for Q3 2017 of ICOs and venture capital investment in the blockchain.

* regulatory statements in China and the US have yet to temper market enthusiasm for the red-hot cryptocurrency and ICO market.

Regulatory action against secondary exchanges in China may put short-term downward pressure on an overheated market, but will ultimately prove bullish.

* SEC recognition that some tokens are securities and some are not is a sensible approach that will encourage the best ideas to continue in a sandbox, while less-innovative projects will face more scrutiny.

* VC investment in blockchain companies has remained relatively flat, even as the ICO market has exploded.

* Only half of valuation step-ups in blockchain companies have outpaced the price increase of bitcoin in the same time periodthough that doesnt account for survivorship bias.

Billions of funding dollars have poured into blockchain companies in 2017, and token sales in 2017 alone have amassed about $2 billion  already crushing last years token-sale total of $256 million.

Private investments into blockchain companies have topped $4.5 billion so far this year.

China and other Asian markets have long been drivers of crypto market price action. As of late 2016, 90% of global bitcoin/fiat conversion took place in CNY. A confluence of the cheap electricity and computer hardware required for bitcoin mining and a cultural predilection for saving have propelled the worlds second largest economy into an important driver of the billions flowing into crypto assets.
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I hold in my hand a copy of a document from Ellis Island. My paternal grandfather arrived there on Sept. 9, 1909, on a freighter named ADRIATIC out of Cherbourg, France. He spoke neither French nor English. He was 18 and like thousands of young European men he was running from poverty. To this day the village he left is the poorest in the providence. By early 1910 he was working in the Butte mines.

In July of that same year the Butte Evening News printed a story in scare-head type over the front page titled, The Story of The Butte Bohunk. It broke a distribution record selling 90,000 copies throughout the Northwest. In part it reads: The bohunk miner is a low grade foreigner ... who never adapts himself to American life any more than does a Chinaman ... these black men from across the water are buying their jobs ... this black peril has Butte by the throat and is dragging it down ... a shack has 18 bohunks and for filth it is a marvel ... the very air reeks with the sickening odors of foreign tobacco and unwashed bodies.

The racism that welcomed my grandfather to Butte at the turn of the century welcomed the Irish to New York, black males to Chicago and greets anyone suspected of being Muslim today.

When my father and his three brothers were old enough, they joined their father in those mines. My grandmother ran a boarding house for as many as 15 single immigrant Croat and Serb miners. She rose at 4:30 a.m., washed copper-mud-caked overalls in a gasoline powered washing machine, baked, cooked and scrubbed until midnight. Undiagnosed diabetes, a soul crushing schedule and a series of wicked strokes killed her at 59.

My maternal grandmothers life was more difficult. Widowed twice in her 40s, she raised three stepchildren and seven natural children on welfare and whatever money her children as scrub women and day laborers could bring home. She was living in public housing when she died. The poverty of my mothers childhood still apparent in the last days of her life as, unnecessarily to us, she sat in an old threadbare bathrobe as we said our goodbyes.

What is amazing is what became of the offspring of those five immigrants. In two generation there are three nurses, a psychiatrist, an optometrist, two teachers, a school superintendent, two social workers, a sociologist, a dentist, a lawyer, a fire chief, a sheriff, enough skilled cousins to build any home or business an architect could design and since it is Butte; a nun and a priest. In many ways, this is not an unusual American story. There are 20,000 Muslim doctors in the U.S.

America is the story of poor immigrants finding their way to a foreign country, overcoming racism and bigotry so that their children can become productive citizens and have a better life. It is not just a piece of our history. It is a sacred saga, it is "holy" scripture in a most profound way.
Christ the King Newman Center for the University of Montana announced the commencement of the John Henry Cardinal Newman Lecture Series on Tuesday, Oct. 3, at 7 p.m. at Christ the King Church, 1400 Gerald Ave. University of Montana Professor Richard Drake will deliver the Series foundational lecture entitled John Henry Newman and the Search for a Catholic Way of Knowing.

John Henry Newman is one of the most original and influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. He was the first rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, and his book, The Idea of a University, remains a classic work on the purpose and value of a University.

As a priest, and eventually a cardinal, Newman believed deeply in the quest for a rational understanding of religious truth. His writings grapple with the struggle between faith and its adversaries and the pivotal role the Church plays in the cultural battles of the modern world. In his lecture, Professor Drake will address Newmans salient ideas in their historical context and the meaning they have for us today.

Professor Richard Drake is the Lucile Speer Research Chair in Politics and History at the University of Montana where he teaches courses on European and American history. His published works include Apostles and Agitators: Italys Marxist Revolutionary Tradition, and The Education of an Anti-Imperialist: Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansion.

Admission is free and all are welcome. A reception will follow the lecture.

For more information, contact Christ the King Parish at 406-728-3845.
This cop from Pakistan became a millionaire overnight: Here is how

With the number of anonymous rogues from Pak rising, here's how BSF is beating down the drones

2 BSF jawans, 5 civilians injured in Pakistani firing along LoC

India

oi-PTI

Two BSF jawans and five civilians were injured in shelling by Pakistani troops targetting Indian border outposts and hamlets in Jammu, Samba and Poonch districts.

Continuous violations of the ceasefire by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) have forced hundreds of border residents to flee their homes.

Pakistan troops engaged in heavy firing and mortar shelling on villages and border outposts in Arnia, R S Pura and Ramgarh sectors along the IB in Jammu and Samba districts since Friday evening, the officials said. They targeted over 20 villages.

Three civilians in Satowali village of RS Pura sector were injured in Pakistani shelling and had to be hospitalised, they said, adding that another villager was injured in Treva in Arnia sector.

In Ramgarh sector in Samba, two BSF jawans suffered minor injuries in Pakistani firing, the officials said.

Pakistan also engaged in heavy firing and shelling in Poonch sector along the LoC last evening. An eight-year-old boy was injured in the firing, they said.

Over 500 people were evacuated by the police from a few border hamlets targeted by Pakistani troops last night, they said.

The villagers have been housed in a camp.

Over 20,000 people have also fled their homes and hearths in Arnia and R S Pura sectors in the past few days, the officials said.

There have been continuous firing and shelling by Pakistani troops along the IB and the LoC between September 13 and September 18.

Firing and shelling resumed on September 21 after a two- day lull.

A BSF jawan and a civilian were killed and 25 others including five BSF personnel were injured in the shelling and firing by Pakistani troops during the period.

Incidents of ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops have increased sharply this year. According to figures by the Indian Army, till August 1, there have been 285 such actions by the Pakistan army, while in 2016, the number was significantly less at 228 for the entire year.

PTI

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 10:53 [IST]
Latest updates on NAC meeting

Sources now confirm that the meeting will be held in October. Earlier it was slated for the last week of September, but since there were some pressing and pending issues, the meeting will now be held in October. Sources also say that the meeting is likely to be held anytime before October 15.

Latest updates on majority vote at NAC

While the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is keen on a hike in basic minimum pay, he would however have to first approve a report to be submitted by the NAC. There is a clear indication that the NAC would not go against the wishes of the Finance Minister. When the meeting is held in October, the NAC would vote in majority for a hike in basic minimum pay.

Latest updates on NAC report

Once the meeting is held, the National Anomaly Committee would submit its report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The report will be submitted in December to Jaitley, sources indicate. Once the report is submitted the Finance Minister would clear the proposal paving the way for a hike in basic minimum salary for the 50 lakh Central Government employees who have been waiting for good news on the same.

Latest updates on 7th Pay Commission

The 7th Pay Commission had suggested the basic pay to be at Rs 18,000. However the CG employees had said it was not enough and they could not make two ends meet. Now the latest updates suggest that the government would tinker with the fitment factor which would go from 2.57 to 3 times. This would mean that the basic pay would rise from Rs 18,000 to Rs 21,000.
India's stand on Rohingyas gracious so far but housing them would be risky

Amid Rohingya crisis, Assam BJP says NE region has very bad experience with immigrants

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Guwahati, Sep 23: While the Narendra Modi government is planning to deport the "illegal" Rohingya immigrants from the country, the international body, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), says that India is bound by law not to deport the refugees.

Amid all these controversies, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Assam said that the entire Northeast region has a "very bad" experience with immigrants.

The issue of illegal immigration from the neighbouring Bangladesh has always been a very controversial subject in Assam and other parts of the region. While the BJP is in favour of giving legal status to the Hindu immigrants from Bangladesh, the saffron party wants to deport the Muslims who came to Assam from the neighbouring country after 1972.

Talking about the issue of immigrants, Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told CNN-News18 that the experience of the Northeast region with the immigrants has been "very bad".

When asked about whether it was a good idea to give asylum to the Rohingyas, Sarma said, "Our experience in the Northeast with immigrants has been very bad. Over 30 per cent people are immigrants and as a result the indigenous people are fast losing their identity."

"We are fast losing our culture, we are losing our land. Our monasteries and temples have been encroached upon. We are in very serious trouble when it comes to immigrant. So, drawing from my experience in the Northeast, I don't think any more people should be given asylum or refugee status in India," the minister added.

Regarding the question of threat to national security by the Rohingyas as stated by the Centre in the Supreme Court recently, Sarma said that India has to believe in what the government said.

"We have to believe the government of India because it is privy to all information. When the government of India has on oath submitted before the Supreme Court that they (immigrants) pose a threat to national security, I think we should believe in that. And ultimately the issue will be decided by the honourable Supreme Court. I think we should wait for the final verdict," Sarma added.

The Centre's plan to deport the Rohingyas has come at a time when more than four-five lakh of Rohingyas have left Myanmar to Bangladesh to avoid violence and persecution at the hands of the military in their homeland in the last one month.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 12:51 [IST]
Beware of 'fake' samajwadis, says Akhilesh Yadav to party members

India

pti-PTI

Lucknow, Sep 23: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday cautioned his party members against fake samajwadis.

The former chief minister was addressing the state convention, which unanimously re-elected Naresh Uttam as the party's president in Uttar Pradesh. Akhilesh called on his party members at the meet, asking them to realise their responsibilities ahead of Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

"Beware of 'banawti' (fake) samajwadis. They have tried to stop the samajwadi movement many times in the past. They succeeded in one conspiracy as a result of which we could not form government in the state," he said in a veiled attack on his uncle and SP leader Shivpal Yadav and his supporters. Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav have been engaged in a battle for supremacy over the party founded by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh, however, clarified that he enjoyed the blessings of his father and SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav. "I want to say that 'netaji' (Mulayam) is my father and his blessings will always be with me. We will take forward this 'andolan' (movement)," he said.

The former chief minister also criticised the Centre for the recent train derailments and sought better rail services for Uttar Pradesh. He highlighted the works initiated by his government and said the present BJP government befooled people with false promises to grab power.

The convention was attended by senior party leaders Ram Gopal Yadav, Azam Khan, Ram Govind Chowdhury and over 15,000 workers from across the state. Mulayam and Shivpal were conspicuous by their absence.

PTI
Pradyuman Thakur murder case: Accused will be tried as an adult

Pradyuman murder: Why is the juvenile being tried as an adult accused

Pradyuman murder case: Main accused, 2 Ryan school staff sent to 1-day CBI custody

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Three accused, bus conductor and two people from Ryan International School, have been sent to 1-day CBI custody. Bus consductor Ashok Kumar, Ryan school Northern zone head Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas were arrestred by Haryana police.

Earlier, a three-member CBI team reached Ryan International School on Saturday to probe 7-year-old boy Pradyuman Thakur murder case a day after the agency received Haryana government's notification.

Later, a 12-member forensic team reached the Ryan International school.

In a press conference held on Friday, Varun Thakur, father of the victim, lamented that he had not received any response from any of the ministers on the brutality that his son had to go through, which claimed his life. He said that the ministers are absolutely silent on such an inhuman and diabolic act of slitting the throat of the child which has shaken the conscience of the entire nation, "but they make all kinds of brouhaha on the slightest or irrelevant issues."

Sushil Tekriwal, lawyer of Thakur, had threatened that they would approach Supreme Court if CBI does not start probe in Pradyuman Murder Case within two days.

The Haryana government on September 20 wrote a letter to the Centre seeking that a CBI inquiry be ordered into the murder case of Pradyuman at Ryan International School in Gurgaon.

Haryana Additional Chief Secretary (Home) SS Prasad said the written communication had been received by the Centre. He said, "It is our endeavour to get the CBI inquiry into this case started at the earliest. The department is maintaining constant communication with the Centre."

Pradyuman's body was found with his throat slit at the school premises on September 8.

OneIndia News
Bernice is a sweet young girl with a big heart. This 1-year-old beauty is looking for an active forever home. She would love to accompany you on jogs, hikes, bike rides or any outdoor adventure. Bernice is a playful pup with an easygoing nature that makes her very easy to fall in love with. She loves to be around new people and is sure to steal some hearts with her crooked smile and friendly demeanor. Bernice would also like to remind you to stop by the One Stop Shop, on Sept. 30, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Missoula Fairgrounds to support the Humane Society of Western Montana and check out some local vendors! Bernice is ready to charm you with her beauty and sweet personality, so stop by the Humane Society of Western Montana, located at 5930 Highway 93 S., just south of Missoula to meet Bernice!
CEA Arvind Subramanian gets 1-yr extension

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Chief Economic Adviser to Government of India, Arvind Subramanian's tenure has been extended by one year. Subramanian's 3-year term was going to end on 16 October, next month.

The Finance Ministry tweeted the announcement. The ministry on Thursday dismissed reports about Subramanian's resignation.

FM @arunjaitley : CEA Dr. Arvind Subramanian will continue for one more year after completion of his 3 year tenure on 16th October, 2017.  Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) September 23, 2017

Speaking to media, Subramanian said he was delighted to take on the challenges; and Government is working on multiple fronts to revive economy.

"As Finance Minister said, in days ahead, you will know what the Government is planning to do," he added.

We have to revive growth, investment, exports. As FM said, in days ahead, you will know what the Govt is planning to do: Arvind Subramanian pic.twitter.com/InNCAnknDW  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

With the extension, his tenure became co-terminus with the current term of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government till 2019.

Subramanian succeeded Raghuram Rajan as Chief Economic Adviser in October 2014. The post of CEA was lying vacant for over a year before Subramanian took charge.

The CEA is usually the main go-to person for advice for the finance minister on macro-economic matters, and primary responsibilities, among others, include authoring the mid-year analysis and the Economic Survey.

(With agency inputs)
Demolition to go ahead as Rane gets no relief in SC

'Don't induct Rane into party, he is corrupt': Shiv Sena tells BJP

India

pti-PTI

Mumbai, Sep 23: Senior Shiv Sena leader Deepak Kesarkar on Saturday advised the BJP against inducting former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane, who recently quit the Congress, into the party.

"Rane has not learnt his lessons. Like Sena, it is the BJP's responsibility to stop corruption. Do they need to induct a person like Rane who has a criminal nature and indulges in corrupt practices?" Kesarkar, Maharashtra's Minister of State for Home, told reporters in Jalna.

Speculation is rife in Maharashtra about the possibility of Rane joining the BJP. Rane, who was handpicked by Shiv Sena supremo late Bal Thackeray for chief ministership in 1999, had quit the saffron party and joined the Congress in 2005 over differences with Uddhav Thackeray, the party's executive president.

Rane's departure and his criticism of the Thackerays still rankles with the Sena. The recent threat by Shiv Sena leader about the possibility of the party pulling out of the coalition government in Maharashtra was widely seen as a move to preempt Rane's entry into the BJP.

The relations between the two saffron allies, which share power both in the state and at the Centre, have been under strain for quite some time. Referring to the alleged remark by Rane that he would engineer defections in the Congress, Kesarkar asked," How will he do that, if not by use of money power?"

The Sena leader said it would be important to hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi's view on Rane joining the BJP as he (the PM) has often talked about zero tolerance to corruption.

Responding to Kesarkar's allegations against Rane, his son Nitesh, an MLA, told PTI it reflected the Sena leader's "frustration".

Hitting back at Kesarkar for calling his father corrupt, Nitesh said,"It is ironical that a person whose family in Sindhudurg is known to be smugglers is calling us names. If at all Rane ji decides to join the BJP, all concerned will have the information."

He accused Kesarkar of "underestimating" the wisdom of elected public representatives when he talked about the possibility of Rane engineering defections. "If MLAs want to stay with us, they will do so only when they know it is good for them."

PTI
Various factors considered, says EC on not announcing Gujarat assembly poll dates

Election Commission to review poll preparedness in Himachal Pradesh from Sunday

India

pti-PTI

Shimla/New Delhi, Sep 23: Chief Election Commissioner A K Joti and fellow commissioners will be in Himachal Pradesh for two days from Sunday to review the poll preparedness in the state.

With the term of the 68-member Assembly coming to an end on January 7, 2018, elections could be held sometime in November as most parts of the hill state are covered under snow in December.

Joti, and fellow commissioners O P Rawat and Sunil Arora will meet top officials, political party representatives and other stakeholders during their two-day stay in Shimla, an official said in New Delhi today.

The commission team will hold a series of meetings with district election officers, superintendents of police, nodal officers and senior officials of the state, Chief Electoral Officer Pushpender Rajput said in Shimla.

Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena will hold a meeting with deputy commissioners and SPs tomorrow morning and with nodal officers in the afternoon, he said.

Nodal officers of various departments will give presentations on election preparedness before the commission in the evening followed by a meeting with representatives of political parties, Rajput said.

PTI
Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out

How children from Assam are trafficked, sold in brothels at price less than that of a buffalo

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Guwahati, Sep 23: When Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi reached Guwahati, Assam, to launch the Bharat Yatra from the Northeast Region on Friday, the well-known child rights activist lamented the rise in number of cases of sexual abuse of children across the country.

The Bharat Yatra, launched by Satyarthi kick-started on September 11 at Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, and will culminate in New Delhi on October 16. The idea behind the Yatra is to create awareness about sexual abuse of children and why it is important to raise our voice against the growing malice in society.

Through the march, Satyarthi wants to put pressure on the Centre to make a law dealing with human trafficking.

The march, covering 11,000 km in 22 states with seven flagging off points, includes Guwahati too. From Guwahati, the march will pass through Bongaigaon and Dhubri in Assam, Jalpaiguri and reach Siliguri in West Bengal on September 27. In his long journey, Satyarthi is being accompanied by his wife Sumedha.

The salubrious campus of Gauhati University in the city hosted the Nobel Laureate and hundreds of his friends during the march. During the Guwahati leg of the march, Satyarthi said 80 per cent of the people trafficked from Assam are minors.

"Eighty per cent of people trafficked from Assam are minors, many of whom either land up in brothels or face sexual abuse. They are taken away with the promise of jobs or marriage and sold at a price less than that of a buffalo," said Satyarthi.

Bringing to light the horror of child trafficking cases from Assam, the Nobel Laureate narrated stories of a few girls from the northeastern state who were trafficked and rescued by his team.

He lamented the fact that children were not even safe at home or in school. He said 70 per cent incidents of child abuse take place at home, their neighbourhood or in school.

"Ten years ago the average age of sexually-abused children was around 15 years. Alarmingly it has come down to six to seven years. Child abuse reports appear in the media every day," he said.

Asking people to speak up against child sexual abuse, Satyarthi blamed parents, teachers and elders for maintaining silence on the growing number of child sexual abuse cases.

"Bharat Yatra is against such false family honour and passiveness towards child abuse. It is a call to stir the conscience of people so that they stand up against child abuse incidents," he said.

"Why am I marching? Because my children are being raped. I refuse to accept that eight children go missing and two are raped every hour. Each time if a single child is in danger, India is in danger. Bharat Yatra is to make India safe again for our children," he added.

Satyarthi made the audience take an oath that they would never tolerate child abuse and if required, they would knock on the door of each household of the country to rescue children.

The Bharat Yatra has been supported by President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the chief ministers of the states.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 7:21 [IST]
RRR box office collection in Japan: SS Rajamouli's flick likely to beat '3 Idiots' record

As 'RRR' performs well at Japan box office, SS Rajamouli confirms sequel to NTR-Charan-starrer

Telangana youth beaten up over remarks on Prophet; 5 arrested

'Yashoda' 1st weekend box office collection: Here's how much it collected in 3 days

Hyderabad: Film Producer Kareem Morani surrenders before police in molestation case

India

oi-Madhuri

Bollywood producer Karim Morani on Friday surrendered before the Rachakonda police in Telangana in a molestation case.

Morani had allegedly molested a Delhi-based woman on multiple occasions in Mumbai and Hyderabad in 2015.

An FIR was filed by an aspiring actor alleging that she was molested by the film producer.

Karim Morani faces charges under section 417 (cheating), 376 (rape) 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation), 493 (cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage) and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Earlier on Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea of Karim Morani challenging the Hyderabad High Court verdict cancelling his bail in a rape case.

The producer of Dilwale, Karim Morani has also been accused in the 2G scam case, and has faced trial for the same. He had also been in jail for a few months for the high profile case.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 10:02 [IST]
PM to attend 3 key sessions at G20 summit in Bali

PM Modi to have 20 engagements during 45-hr stay in Indonesia's Bali

Looking forward to review progress of India's bi-lateral relations: PM as he heads to G20 Summit

PM Modi in Bali for G20 Summit, bilateral meetings with key world leaders

Incredible speech by Sushma Swaraj at UN: Modi

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday lauded Sushma Swaraj's speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and said the External Affairs Minister had made India proud at the world stage.

Incredible speech by EAM @SushmaSwaraj at the @UN! She has made India extremely proud at the world stage. https://t.co/nLI2CC2VBj #UNGA  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

EAM @SushmaSwaraj was insightful in identifying global challenges & strongly reiterated India's commitment to create a better planet. #UNGA  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

A strong message was given by @SushmaSwaraj Ji on the dangers of terrorism and why we have to unite and fight this menace. #UNGA  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 23, 2017

Swaraj on Saturday tore into Pakistan in her UNGA speech and said India focused on development while Pakistan kept nurturing terrorists.

Swaraj said Pakistan PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi levelled various allegations on India, and the world thought "look who is talking".

She said that while India fought against poverty, Pakistan remained obsessed with fighting India. Swaraj lashed out at Pakistan for being selective in its approach towards terrorists.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 22:15 [IST]
Iqbal Kaskar: Extortion over a plate of biriyani and beja fry

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Iqbal Kaskar, the pudgy faced brother of Dawood Ibrahim was arrested by the Thane police last week in connection with an extortion racket. Up before a set of tough interrogators, Iqbal has revealed the role of two corporators who helped run the racket.

The coporators are likely to be summoned for questioning and the probability of an arrest is not ruled out. During the interrogation, Kaskar details how he rewarded the coporator for helping him collect money.

Iqbal had identified a builder in the Thane area and told the corporator to collect Rs 30 lakh from him. The corporator, notorious for land grabbing and illegal constructions in an around the Thane area contacted the builder and asked him to cough up the money.

The builder said that he could pay the money in installments. The deal was struck and the amount was collected in six installments. After collecting the last installment, the corporator met with Kaskar and handed him the money.

Kaskar was impressed and took the corporator out for a treat. An officer privy to the probe informed that Kaskar and the coporator went out for dinner at a famous restaurant in Pydhonie, Mumbai. On the menu was a plate of biriyani and beja fry. It may be recalled that Iqbal at the time of his arrest was eating biriyani and watching his favourite show, 'Kaun Banega Crorepati."

Iqbal has also revealed the role played by the second corporator in the case. He played the role of forcibly brokering a deal between Iqbal and a jeweler in the Thane area. The corporator was paid a portion of the protection money, Iqbal also revealed.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 6:58 [IST]
In the name of charity, Rs 50 lakh transferred to personal A/C: ED in chargesheet against Rana Ayyub

Rana Ayyub used money collected for charity for her own use

Kerala Journalist Siddique Kappan denied bail in ED case, to stay in jail

Who is Isudan Gadhvi? Know all about AAP's CM candidate

Journalist, mother found dead in Mohali, SIT formed to probe murder

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Recommended Video

Senior journalist KJ Singh and his 94 year old mother found dead in Mohali | Oneindia News

A senior Punjab journalist KJ Singh and his mother were allegedly murdered by unknown assailants at their house in Mohali on Saturday.

Police believe to be a case of murder and has begun investigation.

As per Hindustan Times, Singh was found with his throat slit, while his mother, Gurcharan Kaur, is believed to have been strangulated.

Punjab: Senior Journalist KJ Singh and 92-year-old mother found dead at their residence in Mohali (visuals from outside their residence) pic.twitter.com/yKG4T8U3Os  ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2017

"There were injury marks on their necks," Mohali Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Alam Vijay Singh told PTI.

On directive from Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Police set up SIT to probe the murder case, as per ANI.

The media fraternity in Punjab, Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh strongly condemned the alleged killings and sought speedy arrests.

Singh was a former news editor of the Indian Express, The Tribune and The Times of India in Chandigarh.

(With agency inputs)
Tuesday is now No Meeting Day in Haryana and officers to be with people on Friday

Journalists' union condemn KJ Singh's murder, demand swift action

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Sep 23:Urging the government to track down the killers, the Indian Journalists Union on Saturday strongly condemned the killing of senior journalist K J Singh and his mother in Mohali.

Earlier in the day, Singh and his 92-year-old mother were found dead at their residence. An official spokesman of the Chief Minister's Office said while Singh's throat had been slit his mother Gurcharan Kaur was suspected to have been strangled. Expressing outrage, the journalists union also referred to murders of two more scribes earlier this month-- Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka on September 5, and Shantanu Bhowmick in Tripura on September 20.

"Three journalists killed in last three weeks in different parts of the country exposing the fragility of safety of journalists in the country," the IJU said in a statement.

Singh, who was in his sixties, was a former News Editor of the Indian Express, The Tribune and The Times of India in Chandigarh.

"We urge upon the Chief Minister of Punjab to immediately take steps to track down the killers of K J Singh and his mother to allay the fears of journalists community," the union said.

It also demanded enactment of a law at the national level for safety of the journalists. The IJU also urged the Press Council of India to take suo motu cognisance of the murder of Singh and take appropriate action.

PTI
Kolkata doctors protest against puja committee for installing clay model resembling doctor

India

oi-PTI

Kolkata, September 23: The medical fraternity protested against the Puja organisers for installing a clay model resembling a doctor and taking money in the crowd puller Mohammed Ali Park Durga Puja pandal. The organisers eventually put up a a notice that the model represents 'fake doctors' only.

Puja committee Chairman Dinesh Bajaj said, "Pictures of the model were taken before we could complete the decoration (leading to the controversy).

"Now we have put up a notice board before the model which reads 'Hatred for fake doctors who are like demons and Respect for the real doctors".

"We would have put up the board beside the model before inauguration, in any case. The same board would be put up in different parts of the park (where the pandal has come up)," Bajaj said.

The model donning a white apron and a stethoscope has been kept beside 'mahisasura', the buffalo demon slain by the goddess.

Indian Medical Association (IMA) member Dr Sajal Biswas said, "Durga puja is a festival of harmony where lakhs of people assemble. Such a model will create wrong impression about doctors who share a unique, human bonding with patients.

We wish the model is removed and necessary action taken."

IMA West Bengal unit Secretary Santanu Sen said, "It would have been appropriate if the model was removed. The puja committee should also make the issue clear that they are only referring to fake doctors and making a distinction. They should put up hoardings, posters and notices around the puja pandal area to make the distinction."

Bajaj, however, said that the issue has been sorted out with the IMA and Medical Council of India that had contacted the organisers to seek assurances that the medical profession would not be maligned in puja decorations. The issue also triggered protests in the social network.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 17:08 [IST]
Two of 8 cheetahs released in acclimatisation enclosure at MP's Kuno National Park: Official

Madhya Pradesh minister appeals madrasas to unfurl Tricolour daily

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Madhya Pradesh Education Minister Vijay Shah on Friday appealed to madrasas to unfurl the Tricolour and make students sing the national anthem daily to instil patriotism among them.

Speaking at a function to mark the 20th foundation day of the State Madarsa Board, the minister said madrasas follow all rules laid down by the school department.

He said, "Regular schools unfurl the Tricolour and sing the national anthem daily. I appeal to all madrasas in MP to unfurl the Tricolour and sing the national anthem daily. I don't think anybody should have a problem with that. Nobody has.''

On the occasion of Independence Day in August, the Madhya Pradesh government told madrasas to mandatorily hoist the Tricolour and organise a Tiranga Rally.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was chief guest at the function, said, "How to love one's country and help it march ahead should be part of school curriculum''. He also said the Prophet stressed on loving one's country.

The board, under its chairman Syed Imad Uddin, is already engaged in an exercise to revise its curriculum on the theme "Vatan Se Mohabbat Ka Islam Dharma Mein Kya Mahatva Hai (What is the importance of love for one's country in Islam)".

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 11:24 [IST]
Operation All-Out has been success': J&K DGP

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Urging the youth in Kashmir to shun the path of violence, Jammu and Kashmir DGP SP Vaid on Saturday said operation All-Out, launched by the Army to wipe out terrorists, has been a success.

Operation All-Out, also known as Operation Clean Up, was launched by the Indian Army earlier this year with an aim to normalise the situation in the valley. The Army adopted an aggressive approach to wipe out terrorists before winter.

"Operation All-Out has been a success; the situation in Kashmir, especially South Kashmir, will be back to normal soon...It is my appeal to the youths on the wrong path, who have taken up arms, to give it up," ANI quoted DGP Vaid as saying.

This year alone over 148 terrorists have been killed. The Army has succeeded in wiping out the top leadership of the terror groups in a number of encounters carried out in the past six months.

During the recent visit made by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to the Valley, he ordered that the operations need to be doubled. He held a series of meetings with the officials of the Armed forces and told them to clean up the remaining terrorists

The Armed forces are undertaking operations in a tactical manner. They are first looking for the top commanders before wiping out the foot soldiers. It is important that we take down the leaders before we go after their cronies, an official informed OneIndia. There are around 5 commanders remaining while the number of foot soldiers stands at around 60, the officer also noted.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 18:14 [IST]
Rajasthan: Baba Phalahari arrested by Alwar police for raping law student

India

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A Rajasthan based Baba Phalahari on Saturday was arrested by Alwar Police for raping a 21-year-old law student from Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur district. The incident took place at Madhusudan ashram of the godman in Alwar, Rajasthan, on August 7.

According to the woman's complaint, on baba's recommendation, the victim did an internship under a senior lawyer in New Delhi for which she received a stipend of Rs 3,000. Her parents later asked her to donate the stipend amount to the baba's ashram in Alwar. When she went there, the Godman asked her to stay. During the night, the baba called the woman in his room and allegedly sexually assaulted her.

The family of the girl, who has been pursuing laws studies, had been Falahari Baba's followers for the fifteen years. The baba asked her not to tell anyone about the incident and threatened to harm her if she did so, she said. However, she narrated the ordeal to her parents following which a rape complaint was lodged with the women cell, Jha added.

A case was registered against the accused under IPC Sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation), the police officer said.

OneIndia News
Threat calls from "Dawood" to withdraw case against BJP leader, alleges Anjali Damania

India

oi-Anusha

Former Aam Aadmi Party leader Anjali Damania has alleged that she has been receiving threat calls from Pakistan. Damania claimed that the caller, that Truecaller identifies as 'Dawood' is threatening her to withdraw cases against BJP leader Eknath Khadse.

Last nght at 12.33,I recd a threatening call asking me to withdraw all cases against Khadse +922135871719 Truecaller shows Dawood 2 Pakistan pic.twitter.com/9GUqR2VVNt  Mrs Anjali Damania (@anjali_damania) September 23, 2017

Damania took to Twitter to share a screenshot of the call details that she received at 12.33 AM in the wee hours of Saturday. In a couple of tweets, Damania has alleged that calls from the number +922135871719 have been threatening in nature asking her to withdraw cases against Khadse. She also added that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has been informed of the calls and the Joint Commissioner of crime is currently investigating the matter.

Earlier in September, Dhamania registered a complaint against Khadse and camped at the Vakola police station to get an FIR registered against the former Maharashtra minister. Dhamania alleged that he had used sexual slur against her and camped at the police station for 28 hours before the FIR was registered. She filed the complaint based on a video clipping she had received from an event in Muktainagar in Jalgaon where Khadse is said to have made obscene remarks about her. The BJP leader, however, had denied all allegations and claimed at a press conference later that he had not named anyone and there were many Khadses and Damanias and specific reference had not been made against Anjali Damania.

The allegation gains prominence since Manish Bhangale, a self-proclaimed ethical hacker from Vadodara had in 2016 alleged links between BJP leader Eknath Khadse and wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim. He was, however, arrested by the Mumbai crime branch's cyber police for allegedly forging documents to prove the link.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 10:04 [IST]
'Medicine can also be studied in Tamil medium!' - CM Stalin's efforts are getting a growing response

Mayor Priya is not the puppet but the savior - How did Chennai recover from the floods?

"We never met Jayalalithaa in the hospital, all of us lied": TN minister says 'sorry'

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

In a startling revelation, almost a year after Jayalalithaa was admitted to the Apollo hospital, a Tamil Nadu minister has confessed that he lied to the people about her health condition. Tamil Nadu Forest Minister C Sreenivasan, during a public address in Madurai on Friday night, apologised to the people for 'lying about Amma's health'.

"We all lied about Jayalalithaa's health condition. None of us met Jayalalithaa in the Apollo Hospital but we lied that she was recovering and ate food and met people. I apologize for those lies," C Sreenivasan said in the meeting. He confessed to the entire AIADMK leadership lying to the people of Tamil Nadu about Jayalalithaa's health condition when she was undergoing treatment.

The minister, currently owing allegiance to the Edappadi Palanisamy and O Panneerselvam camp of the AIADMK, told the public that everyone in the government lied about Jayalalithaa meeting people in Apollo Hospital, where she was admitted on September 22 last year.

The minister revealed that even national political leaders like Venkaiah Naidu, Rahul Gandhi were not allowed inside Jayalalithaa's room but were made to sit in Apollo Hospitals chief Pratap Reddy's room.

"We all lied then so that the party's secret does not get leaked," Sreenivasan claimed. The minister added that not a single person except V K Sasikala met Jayalalithaa all through her course in the hospital starting September 22 and until her death on December 5.

Reacting to the claims, TTV Dinakaran, who is heading the rebel camp of the AIADMK said that post October 1, 2016, even Sasikala was not allowed inside Jayalalithaa's room.

"Even Sasikala would go inside the room only for two minutes on the instructions of the doctors," he said. The claims come at a time when Chief Minister Edappadi Palanisamy has ordered a judicial probe into the death of Jayalalithaa.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 16:43 [IST]
India's stand on Rohingyas gracious so far but housing them would be risky

Were peace-loving people, have no terror links, Rohingyas to Supreme Court

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Sep 23: A few days after the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that Rohingya Muslims are "illegal" immigrants in the country and their continued stay posed "serious national security ramifications", an affidavit submitted by two Rohingyas in reply to the Centre's plan to deport them on Friday stated that the refugees from Myanmar are "peace-loving" people and were forced to leave their homeland to escape violence and persecution.

In the same affidavit, the Rohingyas asked the Indian government to accord them special refugee status to have long-term visas and get local jobs. Recently, the Centre told the apex court its plans to deport around 40,000 Rohingyas currently staying in India.

The Rohingyas denied that their community members have any terror links. The petitioners pleaded that the government could screen the community for links to terror groups and deny refugee status to suspects as was done in the case of Sri Lankan Tamils.

The Rohingyas in their reply to the Centre's stand said that they were not illegal immigrants but refugees fleeing their own country under fear of religious persecution and hence should be treated as such.

"We are not demanding any right to settle in India, but seeking protection guaranteed under the Constitution."

"There is an abundance of material to show that the Rohingyas are being forced to flee Myanmar due to atrocities systematically carried out against them on account of their religious and ethnic identity," stated the affidavit.

Thus, as per the international law, Rohingyas are "refugees" and had fled their country to avoid persecution and cannot return to their homeland. Under the circumstances, the Indian government cannot deal with them as illegal immigrants.

"The Rohingya community have come to India are refugees and have fled Myanmar because of severe repression and genocide. Even their houses have been burnt and therefore they are not mere illegal migrants. They are thus entitled to protection under various international conventions which India has signed and ratified which mention the principle of non-refoulement," the affidavit said.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 10:44 [IST]
Man rapes 8-year-old to use her blood for removing obstacles to his marriage

We've left Doklam behind and working with India to take ties forward: Chinese Consul General

India

pti-PTI

Kolkata, Sep 23: Chinese Consul General Ma Zhanwu has said China and India are working together to "take forward" their relationship leaving behind the Dokalam episode.

Ma Zhanwu also asserted that by working together cooperation and exchanges can be further enhanced.

"India and China are working together. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping had a meeting on September 5 to discuss how to enhance the relationship," Zhanwu said in Kolkata on Friday while addressing an event to mark the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

"As long as the two countries work together, we will able to enhance and develop exchanges and cooperation," he said.

Asked if both the countries have left behind the Dokalam episode, Zhanwu said, "Yes we have left that behind and are working together to take forward the bilateral relationship".

Prime Minister Modi had met President Xi on the sidelines of the 9th BRICS Summit on September 5. The two leaders had agreed that both the countries should put in more effort to strengthen the cooperation between their security personnel and ensure that Dokalam-like incidents do not recur.

The Chinese and the Indian troops were engaged in a prolonged standoff in the Doklam area of the Sikkim sector since June 16 after the Indian side stopped the construction of a road by the Chinese Army. On August 28, India's External Affairs Ministry announced that New Delhi and Beijing have decided on "expeditious disengagement" of their border troops in the disputed Doklam area.

PTI
West Bengal Group D Result 2017 declared, interviews from October 16

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Recommended Video

West Bengal Group D results announced: How to check result online | Oneindia News

The West Bengal Group D Result 2017 has been declared. The results are available on the official website.

The OMR sheets of the candidates, who appeared in the West Bengal Group D written examination have been scanned and evaluated electronically, said a statement from the organisors. Approximately, three times the total number of 6000 Group D vacancies will be intimated for the interviews. The candidates who are selected after the West Bengal Group D written exam, on the basis of the provisional Merit list will be called for Interview in a phased manner.

The West Bengal group D interviews are proposed to start from October 16, 2017, said a statement.

The recruitment of group D employees is being organised in West Bengal after a long interval. The last Group D recruitment was done during the erstwhile Left Front regime.

How to check West Bengal Group D Result 2017:

Go to wbgdrb.in

Click on the results tab

Click on the link "Result of Gr. D Examination 2017" from that page

Enter nine-digit application number and date of birth on the next page

Submit the details and check your results

Take a printout

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 11:48 [IST]
Who is Asima Chatterjee, todays Google Doodle

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Asima Chatterjee is today's Google Doodle. Who is Asima Chatterjee? Born on September 23, she was an Indian chemist noted for her work in the fields of organic chemistry and phytomedicine.

Her most notable work includes research on vinca alkaloids, and the development of anti-epileptic and anti-malarial drugs. She also authored a considerable volume of work on medicinal plants of the Indian subcontinent.

Asima Chatterjee (nee Mookerjee)[2] was born on 23 September 1917 in Bengal. An excellent student, Chatterjee grew up in Calcutta, attending school and subsequently enrolling at the Scottish Church College, of the University of Calcutta, graduating with honours in chemistry in 1936.

Asima Chatterjee graduated in 1938 with a master's degree in organic chemistry from the University of Calcutta, completing a doctoral degree there in 1944. Her doctoral research focused on the chemistry of plant products and synthetic organic chemistry.

Among her notable instructors at the time were Prafulla Chandra Roy and Prof S.N. Bose. Additionally she also had research experience from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Caltech.

Chaterjee's research centered around natural products chemistry and resulted in anti-convulsive, anti-malarial and chemotherapy drugs.

She joined the Lady Brabourne College, of the University of Calcutta in 1940 as the founding head of the department of chemistry. In 1944, Chatterjee became the first woman to be conferred a Doctorate of Science by an Indian University.

In 1954, Asima Chatterjee joined the University College of Science of the University of Calcutta, as reader in pure chemistry. In 1962, Chatterjee was appointed the prestigious Khaira professorship of Chemistry at the University of Calcutta, a position she held till 1982. She passed away on November 22 2006.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 7:08 [IST]
3.4 magnitude quake detected in North Korea

International

oi-Madhuri

China's seismic service on Saturday said that North Korea has been rocked by a 3.4 magnitude earthquake sparking fears the nuclear-obsessed nation may be testing more missiles.

The earthquake was detected at 8.30am GMT at a depth of zero miles, with the Chinese news agency saying it was a 'suspected explosion' and happened in the same location where last Hydrogen bomb was detonated..

However, South Korea's weather agency said it was examining the quake and took the initial view that it was a naturally occurring phenomenon.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 15:34 [IST]
HAMILTON  Ravalli Deputy County Attorney Thorin Geist is asking a district court judge to prohibit physician Chris Christensen from presenting certain testimony or evidence at his upcoming trial on 400 felony counts, including negligent homicide.

In court documents, Geist asks Judge Jeffrey Langton to issue five orders in connection with the case:

 To prevent Christensen from presenting testimony from former patients regarding their medical experiences;

 To prohibit Dr. Mark Ibsen of Helena from testifying on matters that happened after April 1, 2014;

 To exclude testimony regarding an alleged extra-marital affair;

 To preclude Christensen from presenting information regarding jury nullification;

 To caution Christensen regarding his right against self-incrimination.

Christensen was arrested in August 2015 on charges that he allegedly provided hundreds of illegal prescriptions for large amounts of painkillers to his patients, including two who died from overdoses. His trial is set to begin on Oct. 19 before Judge Langton, and is expected to last 18 days.

Geist declined to comment on the case this week, citing the upcoming trial. But in court documents, he outlined the reasons behind his requests.

He wrote that Christensen has identified 28 former patients who would testify at the trial, with 21 of those being people he treated for chronic pain syndrome and for whom he prescribed controlled substances, including painkillers. The other seven patients were treated for non-pain conditions.

None of the former patients were present when the defendant prescribed dangerous drugs to the victims in this case, Geist wrote.  The permissible scope of the former patient testimony is exceptionally narrow, and potentially inadmissible in its entirety as not relevant to the charged crimes and the victims in this case.

Christensen's attorney, Josh Van de Wetering, also declined to comment other than to say it will be "an interesting, challenging trial" that he's eager to begin. However, he did address Geist's motion in court documents filed Friday afternoon.

Van de Wetering, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney, opposes the first three motions, doesn't object to the state's request regarding jury nullification, and believes the caution against self-incrimination is "unnecessary and probably improper."

The purpose of the testimony from former patients is to counter evidence from the state that suggests Christensen's conduct was "so grossly negligent that he caused the death of two individuals," or that he knowingly created a substantial risk of death or injury to his patients, or that his prescribing practice was far enough outside the norm that it constituted distribution of dangerous drugs in violation of the law, Van de Wetering wrote.

"They are expected to testify that Dr. Christensen was careful, knowledgeable, and caring," Van de Wetering wrote. "They will testify that he did not encourage opiate use, but offered it as an alternative if appropriate.

"The relevance of their testimony is that it tends to suggest that Dr. Christensen is generally careful and therefore any error he might have made is just that: an error and not a crime."

In regards to Ibsen, Geist writes that the doctor is being called as an expert witness who will testify regarding treatment he provided to 21 patients he took over from Christensen after April 1, 2014, which is the day a search warrant was executed at Christensens family medicine and urgent care clinic. Geist says that none of the patients was present when Christensen committed the alleged crimes.

As such, Dr. Ibsens treatment of these patients is irrelevant to the issue of whether the defendants prescription practices were within the standard of a professional practice as applied to the individual victims in this case, Geist wrote. Their testimony is irrelevant and should therefore be excluded.

Ibsen himself came under scrutiny by the states Board of Medical Examiners after a 2013 investigation began into allegations that he over-prescribed painkillers, and he shuttered his practice in 2015. Hes a longtime critic of how the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the overall medical establishment have treated opioid addiction.

Van de Wetering writes that Ibsen's testimony is relevant because he can can address whether Christensen's prescription levels were appropriate for patients dealing with chronic pain, and should be admitted.

Geist also wants both prosecutors and the defense to be barred from presenting testimony related to an alleged extra-marital affair between Christensen and a former physicians assistant he employed more than 25 years ago. Geist wrote that Christensen denies the affair ever took place, and Geist adds that the alleged affair is entirely irrelevant to the allegations in this case. The woman was identified as a witness for the state.

Even if it were relevant, the danger of unfair prejudice to either party is substantial, Geist wrote.

Van de Wetering agreed in part, noting that "This is a trial about a physician's prescribing practices, not about anything related to his character."

However, he said the former employee expressed a romantic interest in Christensen, which he rejected, and Van de Wetering expects to use that information in a cross-examination of the employee as "evidence of bias and motive to fabricate."

The order prohibiting discussion of jury nullification asks that Christensens attorney be barred from explaining to the jury that it could return a not guilty verdict despite its belief that Christensen is guilty  in effect, nullifying a law the jury believes is either immoral or wrongly applied to a defendant.

Van de Wetering said he isn't planning on raising that issue.

Giest also wants Christensen to be put on notice that if he testifies at trial, he wont be able to plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. Geist writes that Christensen is facing potential charges in U.S. District Court for distribution of dangerous drugs and other related offenses.

For example, during a Mirandized interview on April 1, 2014, the defendant admitted to taking prescription medication back from his former patients and to re-dispensing them and/or destroying them in violation of federal law, Geist wrote. The District Court should caution the defendant that he will not be able to assert his right against self-incrimination in the event that he elects to testify at trial.

Van de Wetering called that statement a threat of federal prosecution from Geist "under the guise of protecting the Defendant." He notes that while the federal government can bring charges arising from facts brought out in state court, even if a person has been convicted or acquitted, that it typically doesn't do so.

"Nothing of the kind is needed or desired, or even really proper," Van de Wetering wrote. "... Unless the state has information it is not sharing, this motion should be rejected. If the state does have such information, it should be required to share it."
In Iran, men and women are 'equal' only in torture

Defying US warnings, Iran tests new missile

International

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Amid US warnings, Islamic republic Iran tested new missile a day President Hassan Rouhani vowed that the country would boost its missile capabilities despite warnings from Washington.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Friday unveiled its latest ballistic missile capable of reaching much of the Middle East, including Israel, while the country's president vowed that Tehran would press ahead with its missile program in defiance of U.S. demands to the contrary.

The missile was unveiled during a military parade in Tehran that commemorated the 1980s Iraq-Iran war.

"Whether you like it or not, we are going to strengthen our military capabilities which are necessary for deterrence," Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state television.

"We will strengthen not only our missiles but also our air, land and sea forces... When it comes to defending our country, we will ask nobody for their permission."

The move was viewed as a direct challenge to President Donald Trump, who in August signed a bill imposing mandatory penalties on those involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 12:31 [IST]
The joy of our lives: Sushma Swaraj's husband warm birthday wishes for late leader

Remembering Sushma Swaraj on her death anniversary: Facts about Iron Lady of India

India known for IT skills, but Pak for terrorism: Swaraj at UNGA

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Asserting that terrorism has emerged as a major threat for the entire world, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Saturday tore into Pakistan and said India focused on development while Pakistan kept nurturing terrorists.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Swaraj said Pakistan PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi leveled various allegations on India, and the world thought "look who is talking".

"Both nations got independence around the same time, but look where India is and where Pakistan is. We focused our efforts on development while Pakistan nurtured terrorism...We developed IITs and IIMs while they created jihadis and terrorists," she said.

"Jo mulk haivaaniyat ki haddein paar kar ke begunahon ko maut ke ghaat utarwata hai, wo yahan humein insaaniyat ka sabak sikha raha tha (The nation which has crossed the limit of atrocities against the innocent, is now preaching about humanity)," she added.

She said that while India fought against poverty, Pakistan remained obsessed with fighting India. Swaraj lashed out at Pakistan for being selective in its approach towards terrorists.

"Let us accept that terrorism is an existentialist danger to humankind. There is absolutely no justification for this barbaric violence," she added.

Pakistan PM Abbasi had on Friday accused India of human rights violation and said Pakistan wanted peace in the region. Sushma blasted Abbasi's claims, saying that Pakistan was responsible for creation of "Lashkar-e-Taiba,Jaish-e-Mohammed and Haqqani network."

"Pakistan's PM claimed that his nation's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah had bequeathed a foreign policy based on peace and friendship. I would like to remind him that while it remains open to question whether Jinnah Sahab actually advocated such principles, what is beyond doubt is that PM Modi has, from the moment he took his oath of office, offered the hand of peace, and friendship," she said.

Swaraj said jihadi groups nurtured by Pakistan are spreading violence not only in India, but also in Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

She also spoke about several global challenges like climate change, maritime security, unemployment, gender empowerment, nuclear proliferation and cyber security.

Stressing on PM Modi's economic empowerment approach to eradicate poverty, the external affairs minister said, "We are turning them from job-seekers into job-providers."

She spoke at length about several initiatives like the Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra Yojana, Skill India, Ujjwala Yojana and Digital India.

OneIndia News
Uber has savage reply for driver's request not to address him as Bhaya or Uncle

Karnataka govt directs seizure of Ola, Uber autos still plying, despite orders to stop

Uber to pay Rs 20K to passenger for missed flight due to driver's delay

Ouster of Uber from London not justified, says US commerce Secretary

International

oi-PTI

Washington, September 23: US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision by London transport authorities to oust US ride-hailing firm Uber is "not really justified."

Ross, who acknowledged that the Uber issue is not one he is responsible for, nonetheless criticized European authorities for unfairly targeting American technology firms.

"It looks pretty obvious that they're becoming discriminated against because they're worried our companies are so much stronger than the ones in Europe itself," Ross said on CNBC.

Transport for London said the conduct of Uber, which has around 40,000 drivers and 3.5 million customers in the British capital, had "demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility," and the agency would not renew the company's license to operate.

"I think what's happening with Uber is really not very justified in London," Ross said.

Although it is for British authorities to decide, Ross insisted that "Uber is a wonderful invention," and the problem is "London cabbies have been slow in adjusting to the new system."

London's traditional cab drivers have long campaigned against the ride sharing app, and supported the decision, but Uber said it will appeal.

London joins other cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Cape Town in blocking Uber, and the decision adds to woes for the company's new boss Dara Khosrowshahi following a string of controversies under his predecessor.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 12:38 [IST]
This cop from Pakistan became a millionaire overnight: Here is how

With the number of anonymous rogues from Pak rising, here's how BSF is beating down the drones

Pakistan successfully test fires anti-ship missile from air to sea level in Arabian Sea

International

oi-Madhuri

The Pakistan Navy on Saturday successfully test-fired an anti-ship missile from air to sea level in North Arabian Sea. The enitre missile firing demonstration was witnessed by Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah.

The anti-ship missile was fired from the Sea King helicopter into the open sea successfully hit its target.

According to the navy spokesperson, Zakaullah said the successful firing demonstration was a testament to Pakistan Navy's war preparedness and professional capabilities. The naval chief also visited the fleet units stationed in the sea and witnessed the sea exercises involving naval fleet.

Earlier in March, the navy had conducted a successful test of a land-based, anti-ship missile. That trial was conducted from the coastal region and the missile secured a hit on a target placed at sea.

OneIndia News
Slip of Tongue in Pak Parliament: Speaker pronounces Nawaz Sharif's name instead of Shehbaz Sharif

Nawaz Sharif likely to return to Pakistan next month: Imran Khan

Maryam Nawaz gets her passport back after 3 years; meets father Nawaz Sharif in London

Panama Papers scandal: Anti-graft body freezes accounts of Nawaz Sharif, family

International

oi-PTI

Lahore, September 22: Pakistan's anti-graft body froze the bank accounts and seized the properties of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family members facing corruption and money laundering charges in the Panama Papers scandal.

Sharif, 67, stepped down after the Supreme Court disqualified him on July 28 from continuing in his office for dishonesty and ruled that corruption cases be filed against him and his children.

The Accountability Court in Islamabad, which is hearing the corruption cases against the Sharif family, today summoned Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law capt (retd) Safdar to appear before it on September 26.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) pasted the summonses and property attachment notices on the Sharifs' residence in Raiwind on the outskirts of Lahore.

Sharif, along with his children, is in London to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom who is undergoing treatment for throat cancer.

There is speculation in the Pakistani media that the Sharif family may not return to face the NAB corruption cases.

The ruling PML-N party, however, insists that Sharif would return once his wife's health improves.

"We have written to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and commercial banks requesting them that since Sharif and his children and son-in-law Safdar are facing the NAB cases, their bank accounts may be cautioned (frozen)," an NAB official told PTI today.

He said the NAB has also written to the commissioner Islamabad, deputy commissioner Lahore, federal board of revenue, excise and tax department, the chairman security exchange commission of Pakistan and federal board of revenue regarding freezing of the properties of the Sharif family.

The NAB has already frozen the properties of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for having assets beyond his known sources of income.

The Accountability Court has also issued bailable arrest warrants against Dar who is also currently in London.

The NAB has also written to district governments, asking them to stop any transfer or disposal of the properties owned by Sharif, his sons -- Hassan and Hussain, daughter -- Maryam, son-in-law -- Safdar, and finance minister Dar, warning that in case of non-compliance, they could face up to three years in prison.

The NAB has filed three cases of corruption and money laundering against Sharif, his children and Safdar, and one against Dar in the Accountability Court in Islamabad and Rawalpindi recently.

The cases are filed in connection with the investigation of offshore properties of the Sharif family members.

Sharif's wife Kulsoom won Lahore's NA-120 seat that fell vacant in the wake of his disqualification. Kulsoom, 66, comfortably defeated the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) candidate Yasmin Rashid in the by-election.

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Story first published: Saturday, September 23, 2017, 10:14 [IST]
From Truthdig



Police use bolt cutters to remove a lock around James Cromwell's neck during a protest at a New York power plant.

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James Cromwell, who has appeared in numerous big-budget Hollywood films, is becoming known for his outspoken activism as much as for his prolific acting career. Cromwell has made headlines in recent years for his acts of civil disobedience against SeaWorld, the Dakota Access pipeline and fracking construction sites. For him, the threat of arrest is nothing compared with these pressing environmental issues.

"For those people who don't get involved because they think there is a consequence: There is also a consequence for doing nothing," he tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer during this week's episode of "Scheer Intelligence." In the interview, the two discuss Cromwell's legacy of activism and politics in Hollywood.

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When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a "fraud," what ensued looked a lot like a "poop and scoop" con: The practice of driving down a thing's price by saying bad things about it, then buying up a bunch of it before the price bounces back. After Dimon's comments, JPMorgan briefly became one of the cryptocurrency's biggest buyers. The company claims it was purchasing Bitcoin on behalf of clients, not as corporate policy, but it looked bad.

Now Dimon is badmouthing cryptocurrency again. And, as before, he clearly either has no idea what he's talking about or has sinister motives.

"It's creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing," Dimon told CNBC. "It will end badly." He also warned that as cryptocurrencies become more popular, government crackdowns will drive them into the black market (that's happening in China right now).

The key words in Dimon's "to me [it's] worth nothing" are "to me." Value is subjective. What's a thing worth? Whatever it's worth to you, or to me, or to Jamie Dimon. Each of us may find that thing more valuable, or less, than do the other two.

Dimon considers cryptocurrency "worth nothing" for one reason only: Because his company -- the largest bank in the United States and among the largest in the world -- doesn't control it. And that's one of several reasons why others find it very valuable indeed.

Cryptocurrencies run on blockchains, "distributed ledgers" without central authorities. Dimon prefers fiat currencies, which are created by governments, managed by central banks, and funneled through institutions like his, legally privileged choke points booths taking generous rake-offs from wealth created by others but forced to pass through them.

Neither crypto nor fiat currencies are backed by physical commodities like gold or silver, but the resemblance ends there. Crypto is backed by the work of maintaining its ledgers, called by the imaginative name "mining." Fiat currency is backed only by your trust in the the governments (and the Jamie Dimons) of the world.

"Creating money out of thin air without government backing is very different from money with government backing," he says. He's right. Money with government backing pays Jamie Dimon. Cryptocurrency threatens his business, his paycheck and his way of life.

His prediction of government crackdowns isn't just a prediction, it's a fervent wish. He's desperate to see cryptocurrency crushed, unless he can find a way to force it through the JPMorgan toll booth.

Dimon should be careful what he wishes for. If cryptocurrency is forced entirely into the "black market," that market will, sooner or later, bury his. His only chance is to co-opt blockchain and cryptocurrency methods into the fiat system. Here's hoping he fails.
From Wallwritings



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Bernie Sanders went to Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, Thursday, and delivered a policy speech in the same academic setting that brought former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to Fulton, 71 years ago, March 5, 1946.

Churchill's historic "Iron Curtain" speech. is seen as the opening salvo in the Cold War. This week, Bernie Sanders had a different focus.

The 2016 Democratic primary candidate who opposed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, came to Fulton to lay out a U.S. foreign policy not for war but for peace and equality.

The Nation magazine editors commented:

"[Sanders] reminds us that hundreds of millions live in poverty, dying of preventable diseases, while arms makers rake in trillions from weapons of war. He reminds us that America's history of interventions -- from Iran to Chile to right now in Yemen -- have a habit of having devastating results. ..."

It was a different time when Churchill spoke in 1946. The U.S., Great Britain and its allies had just emerged victorious from World War II. The Soviet Union, the U.S. and Great Britain were pawing the ground like two bull moose eager to fight.

The Churchill speech March 5, 1946, is remembered by historians as "one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period." In his famous oratorical style, the former Prime Minister etched these words into history:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."

It was a call to a war-oriented future.

In his speech at Westminster College, Senator Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, drew "a direct link between the United States' foreign policy and his own longstanding message of economic equality."

He stressed that "the planet will not be secure or peaceful when so few have so much and so many have so little."

"Foreign policy must take into account the outrageous income and wealth inequality that exists globally and in our own country. There is no moral or economic justification for the six wealthiest people in the world having as much wealth as the bottom half of the world's population, 3.7 billion people."

Churchill was bellicose; Sanders pleaded for equality. One pointed to future wars; the other called for peace.

Jason Hancock wrote in the Kansas City Star:

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Montanas Commission on Practice is recommending that Hamilton Attorney Robert Myers be disbarred after he knowingly made false and reckless statements in campaign advertisements in his bid to unseat District Court Judge Jeffrey Langton.

In documents filed Friday, Jean Faure, the presiding chair for Montanas Commission on Practice, wrote that Myers engaged in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation and that he knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the truth made false statements while campaigning for Langtons judicial seat.

The disciplinary case involved two radio/internet advertisements and one mailer sent to Ravalli County residents as part of the 2016 judicial campaign, in which Langton was re-elected to the bench. Myers alleged Langton used drugs and had a conflict of interest in a case.

(Myers) judicial campaign advertisements contain knowingly false and reckless statements, Faure wrote, adding that the advertisements and statements had a substantial likelihood of prejudicing pending legal proceedings.

Faures recommendations now go to the Montana Supreme Court.

Myers had claimed the statements are part of his civil rights to free speech, and filed a federal court lawsuit asking Judge Donald Molloy to strike down Montanas criminal defamation statute as unconstitutional. Myers had argued that Montanas disciplinary code, which prohibits attorneys from making false statements about judges, forces judicial candidates to forego exercising their fundamental right to criticize their opponents.

In the federal court lawsuit, he claimed that the State may not restrict statements by and about judicial candidates and lawyers in the context of judicial election. Molloy ruled against Myers on Sept. 15, granting summary judgment to the state.
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From Strategic Culture



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The Korean crisis is a powerful lens on American barbarism, past and present. Despite Washington's self-righteousness and pretensions of virtue, the modern history of Korea is an especially powerful lesson that destroys the American national mythology.

Listening to President Trump's conceited rhetoric about wiping out North Korea has an eerie resonance with the rhetoric of President Truman. Truman launched into the Korean War more than six decades ago with same arrogant, mythical presumptions of American virtue and self-ordained right to use overwhelming military force.

For reasons of political self-preservation, Washington must live in denial of historical reality. US leaders out of necessity have to construct an alternative, fictional narrative for their nation's conduct. Because if historical reality were acknowledged, the rulers in Washington, and the whole edifice of presumed American greatness, would implode from the endemic moral corruption.

The Korean War (1950-53) has been described as the most barbaric war since the Second World War. Up to four million people were killed in a three-year period. The US air force dropped more tonnage of bombs on the country than was dropped during the whole of its Pacific War against Japan.

Despite this massive and barbaric effort in Korea, the first war of the incipient Cold War turned out to be a source of potentially crippling shame for the US. This risk of shame to the American mythical self-image of virtue explains why the Korean War has become known as the "forgotten war." It would also explain why present and past US governments prefer to bury their responsibility to end the conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

Sixty-four years after the end of the Korean War, the United States continues to refuse to sign a peace treaty with the other main belligerent party -- North Korea. Indeed, the issue is not even publicly addressed by Washington, which shows how far removed political awareness of American responsibilities is.

Yet, the signing of such a peace treaty by the US is essential to establishing a viable framework to resolve the current and recurring security crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

The Korean War came to an end in July 1953 with the declaration of an armistice, or truce. The armistice was never formalized into a legally binding peace treaty, largely due to American intransigence not to do so. The absence of a peace treaty is almost unique in the history of modern warfare.

Technically, therefore, the Korean War is not over. It is simply on pause. So, when US military exercises are conducted with its South Korean ally -- several times every year -- the war drills are plausible grounds for North Korea to fear a resumption of large-scale hostilities.

As former US ambassador to South Korea, James Laney, has stated: "One of the things that have bedeviled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War. A peace treaty would provide a baseline for relationships, eliminating the question of the other's legitimacy and its right to exist."

The looming question is: why does the US government and its military leaders not sign a peace treaty with North Korea?

One reason is that the ongoing state of war on the Korean Peninsula provides the US with important strategic advantages -- too important for it to forfeit by concluding a peace treaty with North Korea. Lucrative weapons sales -- decade after decade -- for "protecting" allies in South Korea and Japan is a boon for the US military-industrial complex that drives its economy.

With the presence of 70,000 US troops in Japan and South Korea and the regular positioning of aircraft carriers, missile destroyers and nuclear-capable warplanes, the ongoing low-intensity conflict with North Korea gives the US a politically acceptable cover to project military power for economic influence in the vital, resource-rich region of Asia-Pacific.

The installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and the Aegis anti-missile systems in South Korea and Japan -- allegedly to "protect from North Korean aggression" -- is also an important strategic gain for Washington to exert leverage over China and Russia. Indeed, this may be the main strategic objective.

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Duplicitous Democrats are trying to sabotage single-payer, again.

It's great that more than a third of Democratic senators have signed on to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders's Medicare-for-All bill. It's a potentially strong bill that's been welcomed by single-payer activist organizations like Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and National Nurses United (NNU), and it represents a victory for the tireless work of single-payer activists and the popular pressure they stoked. It is also, we must recognize, only possible because of Bernie's insistent promotion of healthcare as a right, in a campaign that widened the field of American political discourse.

Above all, it is a result of continuing disgust with American for-profit health insurance system. It marks the exasperation with Obamacare's half-assed attempt to patch up that system, and the rejection of the even crueler Republican schemes.

At the very least, this bill puts single-payer "on the table" of legislative action and public discussion. The "public discussion" part is perhaps the most important. People will now hear about single-payer, and its advocates will not be completely shut out of media coverage from Fox to PBS, as they are now. Even the Democratic Party will have to talk about it.

But please, please, do not be fooled. It does not mean that most, or any, of those co-sponsoring Democratic senators actually support single-payer. Most of those Democrats have signed on because they felt politically forced to, because they knew they could not face their constituents if they didn't. But many of them do not support single-payer, have no intention of actually working to make it happen, and will, in fact, do their best to undermine and prevent it.

In Homer's Odyssey, both Helen of Troy and King Priam's daughter, Cassandra, tried to warn the king that the elegant Horse, which was presented by the Greeks as an emblem of surrender, was actually an engine of attack that would destroy the city if allowed in. Call me Cassandra.

The New York Times article of September 15th, "Buried Inside Bernie Sanders's Bill: A Fallback Plan," makes the danger clear. Duplicitous, Trojan-horse Democrats like Al Franken and Kirsten Gillibrand are jumping into this bill to hollow it out from within, and divert the tide of single-payer into another disappointing dead-end.

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From Our Future

Hillary Clinton's book-length reflection on the 2016 presidential race, What Happened, struggles to answer the haunting question of how a highly experienced candidate with a massive political machine lost to Donald Trump and his vile clown campaign. The book is less interesting when it talks about the campaign, and much more so when Clinton is assessing the future.

Clinton accepts responsibility for her loss, and allows that she might have "missed a lot of chances." Most of the book, however, is about casting blame and settling scores: Putin did it, Comey did it, and so did Bernie, the media, Fox News, sexism, Clinton fatigue, Electoral College, partisan loyalty, voter suppression, and many other factors. With Trump losing the popular vote and drawing a political inside straight to win three critical states by 77,000 total votes, thus winning the Electoral College, any of these plausibly might have made the difference. But as Hillary admits, none helps explain how the contest with Trump's bizarre candidacy was close in the first place.

Many chapters have a title describing a human trait or state of being: "Perseverance" and "Resilience" and "Frustration." Missing is the trait that most bedeviled Clinton: credibility. Clinton acknowledges the criticism that she didn't have an economic message, but claims she talked about the economy in every speech. Her problem, however, was that many voters wouldn't believe a word she said.

Part of this stems from her own admitted inadequacies as a candidate. Her "message" -- poll-driven and focus-grouped to death -- lacked authenticity. The book is full of 20/20 hindsight concerning what she woulda, shoulda, coulda done or said but didn't. She wrote that she constantly suppressed her own instincts because of focus-group findings or staff cautions. Most revealing was the scene her publisher released as part of promo for the book: the debate where Trump acted like a "creep" stalking her across the stage. It was "one of those moments," she wrote, "where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, 'Well, what would you do?' Do you stay calm or turn as say 'Back up you creep.'"

Hit pause and poll the audience? Why not just react humanly? She was too disciplined, packaged, and cautious for that. Much to Hillary's frustration, this contributed to the absurdity that, as Allen and Parnes put it in Shattered, Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, their own reported version of last year's campaign, "[Trump] could be genuine while lying; she came across as inauthentic even when she was telling the truth."

Of far greater importance is the credibility problem that establishment Democrats suffer generally. Clinton's loss can be treated as idiosyncratic, but under Obama Democrats lost over 1,000 state legislative seats and control of both the House and the Senate. Putin, Comey, and Bernie didn't do that. Hillary isn't to blame for that.

For Hillary, this deep-rooted credibility problem was far more debilitating than the effects of aggressive Republican attacks. She had been on the political scene for 25 years, and a central player in two Democratic administrations. She was the candidate of the Democratic establishment, and presented herself as an experienced and practical politician "seeking to build on eight years of progress." Voters have, sensibly, grown skeptical of politicians. They believe that elected officials are bought and sold and that they tell voters what they want to hear but act as their donors and powerful interests demand. After two "recoveries" that did not lift most Americans, many were looking for someone to shake things up.

As a result, she couldn't escape "being pigeonholed as the candidate of continuity rather than change." She attributed this to people's widespread anger. She writes that "her instinctive response" when she meets people who are "frustrated and angry" is to talk about how we can fix things. "But in 2016 a lot of people didn't really want to hear about plans and policies. They wanted a candidate to be as angry as they were, and they wanted someone to blame."

But voters are looking for more than someone to blame. They want to know if a candidate sees them, understands their struggles, and is prepared to call out and take on those who rigged the rules against them. Detailed policy promises -- think-tanked, poll-driven -- don't mean anything, unless the candidate can be believed.

Given Hillary's history, overcoming their skepticism was virtually impossible. Trump made trade -- and the shipping of good jobs abroad -- a centerpiece of his appeal. Bill Clinton campaigned against NAFTA, but pushed to pass it in office and went on to pass most-favored-nation treatment of China and the World Trade Organization. Barack Obama claimed to be against those deals, but reverted to peddling more corporate trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, right in the middle of the campaign. Hillary claimed to be against the TPP, but had celebrated it as the "gold standard" while secretary of state. Even if she were serious about getting tough on trade, who could believe her?

Trump railed against Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, and corrupt politicians. Hillary claimed she had a strong agenda for reforming Wall Street. But Bill Clinton had championed the disastrous deregulation of Wall Street. Obama had continued Bush's policy of bailing out the big banks, while not prosecuting the banksters for what the FBI called an epidemic of fraud that led to the financial collapse. Hillary not only pocketed big bucks from speeches to Goldman Sachs and others; she also opposed Elizabeth Warren's call for a new Glass-Steagall act and Sanders's call to break up the big banks. Her insistence that she had a better plan to reform Wall Street fell on deaf ears.

Throughout the Midwest, communities were devastated from plant closures and job flight. Hillary promised a plan to get them back to work. But neither her husband nor Obama had done much for these communities. Voters had every reason to be skeptical.

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Not unexpectedly, a commission of enquiry has absolved the Indian police in the infamous murky Bhopal encounter wherein eight alleged SIMI activists were gunned down 12 kilometer from Bhopal city after they allegedly escaped from the high-security Bhopal Central Jail.

The lawyer of the slain Muslim prisoners, Parvez Alam, said that it was hardly an inquiry. "There was no probe. We were not given any documents, not even a copy of the FIR registered with the Gunga police station after the encounter though it is a public document. The copies of the post-mortem reports were not given to us either."

According to the attorney, the Commission didn't give them an opportunity to present the facts and tell their side of the story, which, he said, would have punctured the police's narrative.

"There were so many loopholes. Even the ATS chief said that these youths were not armed, though the IG claimed they were -- a major contradiction," Alam said.

There was an uproar in India on the murky police encounter that kicked up a raging controversy with the government and the opposition parties locked in a war of words over the issue.

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge had told Asian News International (ANI), "I saw the photographs on television and they do bring suspicion. They make us think that was the encounter fake? Because it seems quite difficult to imagine that eight people at a time were killed by the police at the same place together. This matter should be investigated and the Supreme Court should assign this matter to a retired Supreme Court judge to probe the matter and clear all doubts."

The government appointed a commission of inquiry on November 7, 2016 under retired High Court Judge SK Pandey.

The inquiry was nothing but an attempt to whitewash the truth, said attorney Parvez Alam,

According to former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, the repeated instance of prisoners escaping from jails across the country suggested a larger 'conspiracy'.

"Why do only Muslims break out of jail and not Hindus," said the congress leader. "It is a serious issue. First Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) activists fled the Khandwa jail. Now, they have fled from the Bhopal jail. I have been reiterating that RSS activists and other similar organizations are behind the anti-Muslim riots in the country. It should be probed whether there is someone behind this or not," he said earlier.

The apparent extra-judicial killing of eight escaped Muslim prisoners came amid lynching of Muslims by "cow protection" vigilantes.

To borrow Supriya Nair of the Atlantic "Across India, the BJP's victory seemed to embolden "cow protection" vigilantes, bands of men who claim to be motivated by their reverence for the animal. In the wake of "the Modi wave," BJP-ruled states enacted legislation tightening existing anti-beef laws, clamping down on cattle sales and even the possession of beef."

Soon after seven Dalits (from India's marginalized castes) were flogged and humiliated for skinning a dead cow--a primary occupation for some of the victims--in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat last year.

According to Nair, "these days, the specter of mob violence sparked by accusations that the victims slaughtered or smuggled cows or ate beef haunts India with morbid regularity. News of these killings usually proliferates through amateur videos, often filmed by members of the mob themselves. The phenomenon confirms, and perhaps even exceeds, the fears expressed by many critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party's nationalist agenda, which they say is grounded not in bold economic reform, but in polarizing social conflict between Hindus and Muslims."

It may be recalled, that in June last , towards the end of Ramadan, two young Muslim brothers on a visit to Delhi to buy new clothes for Eid boarded a train to return home, three hours away. Soon, they became embroiled in a disagreement over seating with fellow passengers, which escalated into an argument over their religion. The other passengers taunted the boys, calling them "beef-eaters," and pulling at their beards, one of the brothers later said. Eventually, the knives came out. By the time the train had passed the boys' village, the assault was underway. Fifteen-year-old Junaid Khan was thrown out of the carriage one station past the boys' stop; he had been stabbed multiple times, and was later declared dead at Hospital.
From Consortium News

The core absurdity of the Russia-gate frenzy is its complete lack of proportionality. Indeed, the hysteria is reminiscent of Sen. Joe McCarthy warning that "one communist in the faculty of one university is one communist too many" or Donald Trump's highlighting a few "bad hombres" raping white American women.

It's not that there were no Americans who espoused communist views at universities and elsewhere or that there are no "bad hombre" rapists; it's that these rare exceptions were used to generate a dangerous over-reaction in service of a propagandistic agenda. Historically, we have seen this technique used often when demagogues seize on an isolated event and exploit it emotionally to mislead populations to war.

Today, we have The New York Times and The Washington Post repeatedly publishing front-page articles about allegations that some Russians with "links" to the Kremlin bought $100,000 in Facebook ads to promote some issues deemed hurtful to Hillary Clinton's campaign although some of the ads ran after the election.

Initially, Facebook could find no evidence of even that small effort but was pressured in May by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia. The Washington Post reported that Warner, who is spearheading the Russia-gate investigation in the Senate Intelligence Committee, flew to Silicon Valley and urged Facebook executives to take another look at possible ad buys.

Facebook responded to this congressional pressure by scouring its billions of monthly users and announced that it had located 470 suspect accounts associated with ads totaling $100,000 -- out of Facebook's $27 billion in annual revenue.

Here is how the Times described those findings: "Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign." (It sometimes appears that every Russian -- all 144 million of them -- is somehow "linked" to the Kremlin.)

Last week, congressional investigators urged Facebook to expand its review into "troll farms" supposedly based in Belarus, Macedonia and Estonia -- although Estonia is by no means a Russian ally; it joined NATO in 2004.

"Warner and his Democratic counterpart on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, have been increasingly vocal in recent days about their frustrations with Facebook," the Post reported.

Facebook Complies

So, on Thursday, Facebook succumbed to demands that it turn over to Congress copies of the ads, a move that has only justified more alarmist front-page stories about Russia! Russia! Russia!

In response to this political pressure -- at a time when Facebook is fending off possible anti-trust legislation -- its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg added that he is expanding the investigation to include "additional Russian groups and other former Soviet states."

So, it appears that not only are all Russians "linked" to the Kremlin, but all former Soviet states as well.

But why stop there? If the concern is that American political campaigns are being influenced by foreign governments whose interests may diverge from what's best for America, why not look at countries that have caused the United States far more harm recently than Russia?

After all, Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Wahabbi leaders have been pulling the U.S. government into their sectarian wars with the Shiites, including conflicts in Yemen and Syria that have contributed to anti-Americanism in the region, to the growth of Al Qaeda, and to a disruptive flow of refugees into Europe.

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From Strategic Culture

The United Nations General Assembly's annual plenary session has heard a fair share of bizarre speeches by world leaders in the 72-year history of the world organization. U.S. President Donald Trump's speech on September 19, while intemperate and undiplomatic, was not the only rancorous diatribe or the most peculiar oration ever heard within the hall of nations.

Trump referred to Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) head of state Kim Jong Un as "rocket man" and a person on a "suicide mission" who, along with his nation, would be "totally destroyed" by the United States if the North attacked the United States or its allies. Trump's comments resulted in stone-faced silence from the other world leaders and diplomats gathered inside the General Assembly. At one point in time during Trump's speech, his White House chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, was seen burying his face into his hand. Although most of Trump's venom was directed against North Korea, he also castigated Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela. The baring of Trump's fangs toward the five countries is in keeping with the neoconservative foreign policy drift of his administration. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in New York for the General Assembly session, succinctly characterized Trump's speech as "ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric."

The only world leader who beamed during Trump's speech was Trump's ideological doppelganger, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The scandal-plagued Israeli leader is no stranger to berating other countries before the General Assembly. In 2012, Netanyahu displayed before the General Assembly a cartoonish bomb with a lit fuse. The "Bibi Bomb," which was meant to convey false intelligence on Iran's alleged 90 percent nuclear weapons uranium enrichment, became the target of jokes and derision. Undeterred by his past use of the General Assembly's podium for cheap publicity stunts, in 2016, Netanyahu publicly berated Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who had spoken just before him. Trump and Netanyahu have made no secret of their disdain for the UN. In Trump, Netanyahu has found a boorish comrade-in-arms. It was also no coincidence that Trumps' speech was largely the product of his pro-Likud speechwriter, the Jewish white supremacist Stephen Miller.

Trump, who has made no secret of his racial preference for white Europeans, received no applause from an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly delegates, most of whom were from the non-white countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific. The day following Trump's UN speech, he embarrassingly told a luncheon of African leaders, "I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich." Those Trump "friends" include expatriate billionaire oligarchs living in Israel, Britain, and other countries who are viciously exploiting Africa's natural resources, including diamonds, gold, platinum, oil, and rare earth minerals. Some of these brigands who are robbing Africa blind are business associates of Trump son-in-law Kushner and his family.

Trump also showed his total ignorance of Africa when referring to a health crisis in the non-existent country of "Nambia." It was never made clear by Trump's unimpressive foreign policy team whether he meant Zambia or Namibia, or possibly, Gambia.

In 2006, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez had many of the General Assembly delegates laughing and applauding as he referred to the speech that U.S. President George W. Bush gave the day before. Chavez said, "The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of." Chavez continued, "Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world... the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated." Chavez's speech was immensely popular among many of the General Assembly delegates from nations that had suffered from dictates from Washington over the years.

Trump's speech made many Americans feel ashamed of his administration. On the other hand, Chavez's speech was met with overwhelming support at home in Venezuela, with many of Chavez's fellow citizens saying he made them proud to be Venezuelan.

In 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi gave a 100-minute speech to the General Assembly, the Libyan head of state's only address before the UN. Qaddafi's speech was called "rambling" by the corporate media. However, Qaddafi hit on many salient and historical points, including the UN Security Council's authorization of 65 wars since its creation, whether swine flu had been created in a biological warfare laboratory and if President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in a wide-ranging conspiracy, and the illegality of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada.

Qaddafi's speech, although long, was met with applause from the delegates from the developing world, diplomats who longed to hear a world leader come down hard on the imperialist and colonialist countries of Europe and North America. Qaddafi, who wanted to stay in his Bedouin tent while in New York, was forced to take it down from the only property that would allow it -- the lawn of the Westchester, New York estate of Donald Trump. County zoning officials eventually forced Qaddafi to remove his tent from Trump's property because "temporary strictures" were banned by county ordinance.

When a leader like Chavez or Qaddafi or Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who spoke in 1960 for four-and-a-half hours, had something truthful and hard-hitting to tell the General Assembly, most of the delegates listened attentively. Trump, who had nothing meaningful to say, was received more like a circus act by the General Assembly than a serious world leader. Even Indian diplomat V.K. Krishna Menon, who spoke to the General Assembly in 1957 for almost eight hours on the subject of Kashmir, had more important things to say than did Trump for 41 minutes. The UN asks world leaders to speak for no longer than 15 minutes, however, few adhere to that rule.

In 1975, Ugandan "President-for-Life" and Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada spoke to the General Assembly in the Ugandan tribal language of Luganda and not in English, a language in which he was fluent. Since the UN had no Luganda interpreter, Amin ordered his UN ambassador to translate his speech into English, from which the UN French, Russian, and Chinese interpreters had to hastily provide instantaneous translation. At a side interview at the UN, Amin likened British Prime Minister Edward Heath to Adolf Hitler.

In 1970, the dictator of the Central African Republic, General Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who later proclaimed himself emperor and was accused of practicing cannibalism, told the General Assembly that there was a "gap between a super-industrialized world, 'well fed' and satisfied, and a world where 'hunger,' sickness, ignorance, deprivation, and wretchedness are the daily lot of hundreds of millions of human beings."

While some political analysts have likened Trump to the bombastic former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, there is no comparison between Berlusconi's UN speech in 2009 and Trump's speech this year. Berlusconi sounded like a seasoned statesman, compared to Trump. Berlusconi, whose mad-cap public comments and unconventional lifestyle fueled many jokes, urged the UN to respect the roles of the G8 (which then included Russia), the G20, and a reformed UN Security Council.

Trump's odd speech will likely go down in history with other weird moments in the history of the UN General Assembly's plenary session. They would include the October 12, 1978 speech by Grenada's Prime Minister Eric Gairy, in which he spoke about the UN investigating areas "sufficiently important and significant to merit our constant articulation and review of them . . . the Bermuda Triangle, unidentified flying objects, and extraterrestrial phenomena." The General Assembly would not be hearing about extraterrestrials again until 1987, when none other than President Ronald Reagan told the assembled delegates: "Perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."

Keeping in mind that terrorists, cannibals, UFO enthusiasts, and various ne'er-do-wells have addressed the General Assembly, Trump was not the worst leader to stand at the rostrum of the assembly hall. However, he does hold a high rank among them.


Mutually Assured Madness

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["if you have nukes, never give them up--if you don't have them, get them". ---Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence.]

Those were the words of President Trump's Director of National Intelligence, about the lessons taught from the U.S. destruction of Libya and the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi.

That is why North Korea is a nuclear power. Period. That is the reality and eventually the U.S. will have to accept "Mutually Assured Madness". The U.S. has nobody to blame for its self-inflected wounds. It is called Blowback.

If there is any comfort in living with a nuclear armed North Korea, then be thankful that it is not even close to the dangers of the Cold War. The propaganda mill and the mainstream media greatly exaggerate the US national security risk to the American people, and it is for their own greedy self-interests to spread panic and paranoia among the American people.

If Kim Jong-un wanted to kill Americans out of insane hatred, he has that capability now with conventional weapons. There are over a quarter of a million American citizens living in Seoul, 100 miles from Pyongyang. Kim Jong-un has not attacked Seoul to kill Americans because he is not insane or suicidal, and that is according to experts on North Korea such as Dan Coats and Donald Gregg, and others.

Forget the propaganda, it is nonsense aimed at selling extremely expensive Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles and further encircle and threaten China and Russia . THAAD's installed in South Korea at a cost of $1 billion are ineffective and useless against North Korean missiles in the early stage of launching.

It is the U.S. that is the most dangerous country and threat to the world, not North Korea. The U.S. has beaten its own world record as a serial mass murderer of the 21stcentury. That does not go unnoticed by small vulnerable countries, which is the kind that the U.S. likes to destroy for its own sick reasons. For North Korea to fear the U.S. is reality. To want a nuclear deterrent is sanity.

President Trump's Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats spoke truth publicly. Speaking at the Aspen Institute on July 21, 2017 , Coats said he does not think that Kim Jong-un is insane, and that he would have to be insane to surrender his nuclear weapons. He told his audience that the lesson of Libya is that:

"if you have nukes, never give them up--if you don't have them, get them".

This week's performance at the United Nations by Trump raises more questions of his sanity. We won't know until he is kept under further observation. It is not looking good. Without knowing it, Trump gave the same message that Coat's did. His raving has sent any vulnerable country back to the nuclear weapons-planning drawing board, if they know what is good for them. Trump's speech has done more for nuclear proliferation than Iran and North Korea combined could ever do.

Trump should have listened to Steve Bannon when he said:

"There's no military solution, forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, and they got us."

North Korea is not playing "gotcha". For them it is not a game, like it is to the US planners. North Korea rightly fears for its life and its existence. We may not like the way they live, but that is not for us. It is for the North Koreans to determine.

This is the 21st century not the 19th century of Kipling's "white man's burden"(which Theodore Roosevelt said "made good sense, from the expansionists point of view"). If the U.S. wants to do something good (instead of expansionism) for human rights it should start with its own cabal of right-wing dictators and their death squads.

Trump says he is going to succeed where Obama and Bush failed. He should take a page from President Bill Clinton who successfully negotiated with North Korea, until Bush destroyed the agreement. Trump talks big and the mainstream media and Trump backers love it. It is the cowboy image that so many Americans think they are in their own mind.

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Medical Device Reprocessing Market - Analysis, Size, Opportunities and Forecast, 2023

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Medical device reprocessing is the process of cleaning, disinfecting, remanufacturing and testing, packaging, labelling, and sterilizing of already used medical devices. Medical devices reprocessing facilitates in reusing medical devices and treating multiple patients. Medical devices get contaminated with the repeated use on the patient; therefore, these are reprocessed to avoid the risk of infection. Inadequate reprocessing can also result into tissue irritation, health care associated infections, and threat to the patient safety. Global medical device reprocessing market is expected to grow significantly during the forecasted period (2017  2023).Explore Report at:The global medical device reprocessing market is highly regulated by the regulators such as U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA), China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) and Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (JPMA).Medical device reprocessing market finds its application in cardiology, gastroenterology, urology and gynecology, arthroscopy and orthopedic surgery, general surgery and anesthesia. Cardiology was the largest application area of medical device reprocessing in 2016, due to the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and wide range of approved devices by the USFDA. Additionally, medical device reprocessing offers several advantages to the healthcare providers and patients by reducing the treatment cost of cardiovascular disease.The risk of surgical site infections, and stringent regulations for medical device reprocessing practices act as major barriers for the growth of the global medical device reprocessing market. The medical devices when used for treatment and surgeries get soiled and infected with microorganisms. The soiled and infected medical devices can increase the risk of infections; therefore, the medical devices are reprocessed at regular time interval. However, inadequate cleaning may lead to retention of biological debris, tissue, and blood in some reprocessed medical devices. The debris may cause the microorganism to survive even after the reprocessing which may lead to the spread of harmful diseases and infections.Ask for Report Sample at:Some of the other key players in the global medical device reprocessing market are Stryker Corporation, Vanguard AG, Medtronic plc, Pioneer Medical Devices AG, HYGIA Health Services, Inc., SureTek Medical, Centurion Medical Products Corporation, Vascular Solutions, Inc., SteriPro Canada, Inc., and Johnson & Johnson.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:KundanManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Asia-Pacific Market is Expected to Witness the Fastest Growth in Microbial Identification Market

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The global market is increasing, due to increasing incidence of infectious diseases, increasing healthcare expenditure, growing awareness and food safety concerns. In addition, technological advancements with advent of innovative microbial identification products are further encouraging the market growth.Explore Report with Detailed TOC on Global Microbial Identification Market at:The increasing incidence of infectious diseases is playing a key role in the growth of the global microbial identification market. Infectious diseases are caused due to pathogenic microorganisms, such as fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites. Tuberculosis, hepatitis, measles, malaria and HIV are some of the infectious diseases caused due to microorganisms. Microbial infection is the common cause of millions of deaths and demanding increasing healthcare resources leading to increase in healthcare cost.Request for a sample of this research report:In addition, rising food safety concerns to prevent the food from spoilage also acts as a major driver in the global microbial identification market. In order to maintain the safety and quality of food, the presence of required microorganisms needs to be confirmed, and the presence of microorganisms which may lead to spoilage must be detected. Both government authorities and food companies use microbiological analysis to monitor contamination and analyze its trends to detect emerging risks.Make enquiry before buying the report:The key companies operating in the global Microbial identification market include Becton, Dickinson and Company, Danaher Corporation, Siemens AG, Shimadzu Corporation, BioMerieux SA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Qiagen N.V., Midi Inc, Charles River Laboratories Inc., Biolog Inc. and Bruker Corporation.Mr. Kundan KumarManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +18887787886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:347 5th Ave. #1402- 210 New York City, NY 10016 United States
Growth opportunities T-Cell Immunotherapy - Competitive Landscape, Technology and Pipeline Analysis

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The study analyzed that the T-cell immunotherapy pipeline comprised of 139 therapeutic candidates, of which 16 are in Phase II stage of development. The high prevalence of cancer across the globe fuels the extensive research and development for the T-cell immunotherapeutic. T-cell immunotherapy is emerging as novel and promising approach for the treatment of cancer. It is gaining huge traction globally, for its several advantages over conventional therapies such as very low or no side effects and high specificity.Browse the Report Summary at:CAR T-cells are the modified T-cells used to express CARs, which recognize specific antigens present on targeted cell. CARs are specifically designed synthetic receptors, linked with the single-chain variable fragment (scFV) of a monoclonal antibody. The domain includes T-cell receptor CD3-zeta chain, which graft specificity into an immune effector cell. It mediates T-cell cytotoxicity and activation when bound to a target cell.The research finds that the different companies are collaborating for the development of T-cell immunotherapeutic. In June 2015, Celgene Corporation and Juno Therapeutics, Inc. collaborated for the development and commercialization of immunotherapies.Some of the key players developing T-cell immunotherapies are Novartis AG, Cellular Biomedicine Group, Inc., Kite Pharmaceuticals Inc. and others.Explore Report Sample at:The research finds that the different companies are collaborating for the development of T-cell immunotherapeutic. In June 2015, Celgene Corporation and Juno Therapeutics, Inc. collaborated for the development and commercialization of immunotherapies. The two companies will leverage T-cell therapeutic strategies to develop treatments for patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases with an initial focus on CAR T and TCR technologies. Some of the key players developing T-cell immunotherapies are Novartis AG, Cellular Biomedicine Group, Inc., Kite Pharmaceuticals Inc., Juno Therapeutics, Inc., Gradalis, Inc., Atara Biotherapeutics, Inc., Adaptimmune Therapeutics Plc., Immunocore Limited, and Lion Biotechnologies, Inc.Contact:Mr. Kundan KumarManager  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +18887787886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.com
Passenger & Commercial Vehicle Synchronizer Ring Market 2017 Outlook and Forecasts to 2022

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MarketResearchNest.com adds Global Synchronizer Ring Market Outlook 2017-2022 new report to its research database. The report spread across in 97 pages with tables and figures in it.In automotive Transmission especially in Manual shift Transmission, a mechanism is provided for smooth and quick shifting of gears known as Synchronizer. Synchronizer rings are mechanical components that equalize the gear rotation to be engaged with the sliding sleeve. The most important components of a synchronizer are synchronizer ring, having friction surface, and mating cone (with conical surface).The report covers forecast and analysis for the synchronizer ring market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2012-2016 along with a forecast from 2017 to 2022 based on both volumes and revenue. The study includes drivers and restraints for the synchronizer ring market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes the study of opportunities available in the synchronizer ring market on a global level.Inquire before Buying atThe report has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global synchronizer ring market collected from specialized sources. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. Company overview, financial overview, product portfolio, new project launched, recent development analysis are the parameters included in the profile.The study provides a decisive view on the synchronizer ring market by segmenting the market based on applications. All the application segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends and the market is estimated from 2017 to 2022.Key Applications Passenger Vehicle Commercial VehicleKey Regions North America Europe Asia Pacific ChinaOrder a Purchase Report Copy atKey Vendors Diehl CY Myutec Oerlikon Metco Haoneng Tanhas Kyowa Metal Chuetsu Metal Works Tanaka Seimitsu Kogyo request free sample to get a complete list of companiesKey Questions Answered in this Report What will the market size be in 2022? What are the key factors driving the global synchronizer ring market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key players in the synchronizer ring market? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?Get a complete report details atMarketResearchNest.com is the most comprehensive collection of market research products and services on the Web. We offer reports from almost all top publishers and update our collection on daily basis to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and recent database of expert insights on global industries, organizations, products, and trends.Mr. Jeet JainSales Managersales@marketresearchnest.com+1-240-284-8070 / +44-20-3290-4151Pune, India
Last month the Fanohge Coalition sent a simple survey to all candidates seeking to represent Guam in I Liheslaturan Guahan, as its attorney ge Read more19 candidates take stand on CHamoru self-determination, future status, Marine buildup
"I think they need to work together with the military because the two sides are not reading the tea leaves the same way."

 American Samoa Delegate Amata Radewagen

"The two sides are not reading the tea leaves the same way," said American Samoa Delegate Amata Radewagen, on the ongoing debate between local activists and the military on the planned live-fire training range complex in Ritidian during a press conference in Adelup yesterday afternoon.

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Radewagen was part of a visiting congressional delegation, led by Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC), chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. While on Guam, the delegation members are expected to meet with local leaders and military officials on how security issues affect relationships in the region.

Yesterday, members of the delegation met with Gov. Eddie Calvo and discussed various local issues, including the military's controversial plan for a firing range at Ritidian.

Radewagen said she had participated in a tour of the Ritidian area organized by Guam Delegate Madeleine Bordallo, which gave her a comprehensive understanding of the situation.

"The people who are against it ... I think they need to work together with the military because the two sides are not reading the tea leaves the same way. In other words, their understanding of what was available to them and what they can't do is very far away from what the military is prepared to do," she said.

The federal government's announcement of plans to build the live-fire training range caused an uproar among concerned community members. Late last month, grassroots organization Prutehi Litekyan: Save Ritidian led a peaceful protest in Adelup, where hundreds rallied to call on the Calvo administration to halt the project.

Organization members have criticized the governor for remaining silent on the potential destruction of more than 1,000 acres of limestone forest that would be condemned as part of a surface danger zone for the firing range.

Radewagen said, "But I do think that the people who are protesting  they need to work together because I am really impressed with what the military has set up. I think some of these assumptions that these people had made may not be totally accurate. I do think that once they find out what the Marines have in mind and that every realistic step has been taken to take the cultural and other things into consideration, I think that it is a real plus. It is necessary for the people of Guam to understand the accurate parts of this whole plan."

Major point of contention

The impact to cultural resources within the designated area for the complex has been a major point of contention among concerned residents. During an informational hearing organized by Vice Speaker Therese Terlaje this month, Guam State Historic Preservation Officer Lynda Aguon said 269 historical properties were counted and recorded in the area, and, of those sites, 63 were determined eligible for listing on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Aguon also mentioned that the historic preservation office had previously indicated Northwest Field as the least favored alternative for the firing range because of its historical and cultural significance.
The Global Electric Car Chargers Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Electric Car Chargers Market.

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September Offer -Flat 20% discount on purchase of this report from 15th to 30th September @ https://www.researchtrades.com/discount/1238129 For more offers post 30th September, kindly contact us.Contact No. : +16269994607 (US)/ +91 7507349866 (IND)Email: sales@ researchtrades.com Report Overview:The Global Electric Car Chargers Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Electric Car Chargers Market. The study offers an insight into current and future market trends, key drivers and restraints, market strategies of key market players along with detailed segmentation and forecast. The study offers industry overview by covering basic aspects such as product definition and classification, market size and share of segments and sub-segments. This report offers market insights into the changing dynamics by analysis the elements of industry chain structure, key marketing channels and the innovative strategies adopted by key market players to gain a competitive advantage in the market.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Electric Car Chargers in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering United States, EU, China, Japan, South Korea, IndiaGet Exclusive sample copy @ https://www.researchtrades.com/request-sample/1238129 Global Electric Car Chargers market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, and revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including Charge point, ABB, Eaton, Leviton, Blink, Schneider ElectricOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Slow AC, Fast AC, Fast DCOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Electric Car Chargers for each application, including Home, Office, CommercialTable of Contents1 Electric Car Chargers Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Electric Car Chargers1.2 Electric Car Chargers Segment by Type (Product Category)1.3 Global Electric Car Chargers Segment by Application2 Global Electric Car Chargers Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Electric Car Chargers Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Electric Car Chargers Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Electric Car Chargers Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)3 Global Electric Car Chargers Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Electric Car Chargers Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Electric Car Chargers Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Electric Car Chargers Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)4 Global Electric Car Chargers Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)4.1 Global Electric Car Chargers Consumption by Region (2012-2017)4.2 United States Electric Car Chargers Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 EU Electric Car Chargers Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017).Browse This Report @ https://www.researchtrades.com/report/global-electric-car-chargers-market-research-report-2017/1238129 Who we areResearch Trades has team of experts who works on providing exhaustive analysis pertaining to market research on a global basis. This comprehensive analysis is obtained by a thorough research and study of the ongoing trends and provides predictive data regarding the future estimations, which can be utilized by various organizations for growth purposes.
Acupuncture Needles Market

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This report studies the Acupuncture Needles market. Acupuncture Needles has its origin from China. It involves the insertions of thin needles into certain locations of the human body. These locations are generally termed as acupuncture points and form the main focus of the acupuncture treatment. The procedure may also involve the application of pressure, heat or laser light at the acupuncture points.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Acupuncture Needles in North America market, especially in United States, Canada and Mexico. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries, type and application.Request Sample Copy of the Report: https://www.worldwidemarketreports.com/sample/11092 Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers:Suzhou Medical,SEIRIN,Empecs,Dongbang,Suzhou Acupuncture,Asiamed,Wuxi Jiajian,Cloud &,Dragon,AIK Medical,.Market Segment by Countries, covering:United States,Canada,Mexico,.Market Segment by Type, covers:Disposable Needle,Non-disposable Needle,.Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Hospitals,Clinics,Others,.There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the North America Acupuncture Needles market.Chapter 1, to describe Acupuncture Needles Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by countries, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Acupuncture Needles, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the North America market by countries, covering United States, Canada and Mexico, with sales, revenue and market share of Acupuncture Needles, for each country, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the segment market in United States, Canada and Mexico, by manufacturers, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and applications;Chapter 10, Acupuncture Needles market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 11, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 12, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 13, to describe sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 14 and 15, to describe Acupuncture Needles Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data sourceBrowse The Report: https://www.worldwidemarketreports.com/market-insights/north-america-acupuncture-needles-market-by-manufacturers-countries-type-and-application-forecast-to-2022 About Worldwide Market Reports:Worldwide Market Reports is your one-stop repository of detailed and in-depth market research reports compiled by an extensive list of publishers from across the globe. We offer reports across virtually all domains and an exhaustive list of sub-domains under the sunThe in-depth market analysis by some of the most vastly experienced analysts provide our diverse range of clients from across all industries with vital decision making insights to plan and align their market strategies in line with current market trends. Worldwide Market Researchs well-researched inputs that encompass domains ranging from IT to healthcare enable our prized clients to capitalize upon key growth opportunitiesand shield against credible threats prevalent in the market in the current scenario and those expected in the near future.Contact Us:Mr. ShahWorldwide Market Reports1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154, U.STel: +1 415 871 0703Email: sales@ worldwidemarketreports.com
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.




Hamlet for Kids, Romeo & Juliet for Kids, and Caesar for Kids are just a few of the Playing With Plays books that have made their way into the new libraries in Kenya Schools.

1 2 3 Happy to read Romeo & Juliet All the kids want Shakespeare and Caesar for Kids Students are delighted with Romeo & Juliet for Kids

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-- Brendan Kelso makes his living writing and teaching Shakespeare for Kids books. He has been lucky enough to have his plays performed literally all around the world. But, when SheHopes.org founder Ginger Lobdell reached out to Brendan to request some Shakespeare for Kids books for a few school libraries in Kenya she was creating, he didn't hesitate to send her a box full."My goal is to get every kid to think Shakespeare is fun and easy, to understand his basic storylines and characters, and not be intimidated by him." So, when this opportunity came up, naturally he was all for it. "You don't get opportunities to help kids out this way very often, so, when they come by, you just do them."SheHopes, along with starting libraries, teaches girls valuable self-defense skills and helps them to stay in school. According to Ginger, "Many of these children have to walk several miles each day from their homes, often the slums, and unfortunately, it's not very safe. So, I wanted to give them opportunities to both learn how to defend themselves, as well as introduce them to Shakespeare. Most of all, we want to give them HOPE. Brendan's Shakespeare for Kids books were a natural fit for what we want to accomplish."When handing the Shakespeare for Kids books to the children, their responses were immediate and unforgettable. The children's faces lit up and they could not wait to start reading and performing with other classmates. As well, their teachers were overwhelmed with gratitude.Come October, even more Shakespeare for Kids books are going with Ginger to orphanages and schools in India. "We can't wait to see the impact these stories will have in Kenya and all around the world!"If you want to learn more about Shakespeare for Kids melodramatic books, visit their website at PlayingWithPlays.com or contact Brendan directly at Brendan@PlayingWithPlays.com Visit SheHopes.org to learn more about their mission and adventures to make our world a better place.
New Product Launch Event: Cocktails, Noshes & Special Appearance by Arizona's own Roger Clyne of Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers

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(602) 343-1000 J. Carrojc@marketingideals.com | 480.495.8924(602) 343-1000

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-- Arizona company Modern Flames, a, innovative leader in modern, contemporary electric fireplace design and technology for residential and commercial settings will be at Arizona Fireplaces' north store unveiling its newest product, theSteam Fireplace. TheSteam Fireplace is the company's next step in engineering a patented, revolutionary line andthey have successfully harnessed the power of commercial steam flame technology seen in the likes of Disney and Universal Studios.The launch party will take place at Arizona Fireplaces north store showroom located at 20835 N. 25Place in Phoenix from 6pm-8pm hors d'oeuvres and cocktails plus a special appearance byto talk about his Ultra Premium Tequila.When asked about why the company explored steam technology, Elliott White, Marketing Manager stated, "Steam is next greatest innovation in the fireplace industry, with the efficiencies of central heating the traditional fireplace is no longer needed as the main source of heat. TheSteam Fireplace is the first fireplace to successfully bridge the gap between gas and electric fireplaces with the look and feel of a real wood burning fireplace and the ease of installation and low-cost consumption of an electric. This patented protected product was specifically designed as an environmentally friendly solution for builders to put the fireplace back in new home construction. Theis built to meet the rigors of 24/7 use as well as the new parameters in new green building codes. Most importantly theis safe to the touch, consumes less the  of a gallon of water an hour and operates off a standard 110V 20-amp house hold circuit. Theis a true engineering masterpiece."Who: Modern FlamesWhat:Product Launch PartyWhen: Thursday, 10/26 from 6p-8pWhere: Arizona Fireplaces | Modern Flames ShowroomAddress: 20835 N. 25th Place, Phoenix, AZ 85050RSVP: Invitation only, please RSVP to marketing@modernflames.com # # #About Modern FlamesModern Flames is known as the innovative leader in modern, contemporary electric fireplace design and technology for residential and commercial settings. The company pioneered the introduction of the contemporary linear electric fireplace throughout North America in 2008. The look has since become a very popular application for architects, designers, builders and homeowners because of the extremely realistic flame appearance paired with the ease of installation and overall cost compared to gas or wood fireplace. In 2017 Modern Flames was named to the INC 5000 as 1 of 150 companies in AZ that were named to the list. INC. 5000 is a list of the 5000 fastest growing companies in the United States. This is Modern Flames fourth time and is honored to be on the list.Not to the media: Thank you for your continued support and coverage of Arizona Fireplaces Modern FlamesLaunch Party. If you would like video, photos or want to schedule a tour and/or interview, please contact J. Carro 480.495.8924.
Today, a rising consumer level and the people's solid banking on the Sun Network, have enabled the it being ranked 27th in the BrandZ's top 50 most valuable Indian Brands. A maiden entry so to speak!

By: Sun Direct

Contact

Renchu George

***@sundirect.in Renchu George

End

-- This year saw several challenges and disruptions thrown up by the government. In this scenario, with ground realities shifting by the day, only companies with very strong growth ethos and financial credentials could make their mark. One such company is the Sun TV Network, India's largest media group with 33 TV channels that touch the lives of over 96 million households across India. Today, the network's reach extends to 27 countries which include the USA, Canada, Europe, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.Sun Network's continuous push towards raising technical standards, to bring up transmission finesse to international levels, while at the same time pricing its product very competitively have increased its market share considerably. Today, a rising consumer level and the people's solid banking on the Sun Network, have enabled the it being ranked 27th in the BrandZ's top 50 most valuable Indian Brands. A maiden entry so to speak!BrandZ is the world's largest brand equity database. BrandZ's massive data is collected from over 150,000 interviews for about 400 studies done around the world. The people interviewed cut across all strata and includes consumers and professionals. Today it has over 60,000 brand evaluations in over 200 categories.The study methodology and research papers the company releases have all been highly valued by companies and industries and consumers alike.Every year Brand Z released it list of top 50 most valuable companies based its metric called Vitality Quotient that's respected across industries, all over the world. The 'Vitality Quotient ' bases brand health on:Brand purposeInnovationCommunicationsBrand experience and;Love.Pull more consumer predisposition towards itEncourage consumers to pay higher value for itEncourage stickiness and loyalty in consumersSounds simple but it has been seen that these are the parameters that truly healthy companies score highest on. In fact the top 50 companies score 110 where 100 is the industry average. Thus Sun Network being ranked 27 is a testimony to the network's constant striving to be the best.Take some of the innovations the network has brought into its offerings. It's the first network in India's to offer its DTH (Direct To Home) services in Dolby Surround Sound and higher HD quality with 5 times sharper sound, images and picture clarity.It offers a 24/7 customer care helpline and has made recharges truly easy and convenient. The fact is that Sun Network is a local player, starting off in Tamil Nadu, who has come good across the country and now delivers around the world. That it does all this without losing its personal touch has paid off in ensuring higher consumer loyalty.Today 27th ranking in Brandz 50 most valuable companies in India is an indication that the Sun Network's all India presence has only become stronger.To know more details click - http://www.sundirect.in
When I hear professional publicists and PR people offer advice to authors, one theme that comes up again and again is: start where you are. Use the power of your communityand the people you knowto gain momentum.

This is a strategy that does not receive enough serious consideration by traditionally published and self-published authors in their pursuit of bestselling books. Traditional authors can become overly focused on national media attention or industry reviews; indie authors can become obsessed with Amazon rankings and optimization. Its not that those things dont have a role to play, but national attention and great rankings are sometimes the result of doing a great marketing and promotion job within a community that knows you. Its often easier to gain traction that way, and encourage word of mouth to ripple further out as a stepping-stone to the more difficult PR wins.

For the launch of his book Appalachian Odyssey, about hiking the Appalachian Trail, the author Jeff Ryan toured 34 L.L. Bean stores, plus various libraries, over five months and 40,000 miles in his VW Westfalia. Along the way, he landed radio interviews and mentions on various travel blogs and websites, including USA Today. His book is now in its second printing, and he has two more books on the way. While this may seem like a national approach, it started off very narrow: targeting L.L. Bean customersthe perfect demographic for his book.

For the launch of Every Fathers Daughter, an essay anthology, the editor and contributors (Im one of them!) collaborated on multiple book launch events held across the country simultaneously. Contributors headlined their own book events in their cities of residence, then joined a live group session with other contributors, broadcast to all venues via Skype. The events at each location were supported by local media coverage (my Charlottesville, Va., event received radio, newspaper and TV coveragein addition to a feature in the university news weekly) and then widespread national attention later on.

Several years ago, Andi Cumbo self-published her nonfiction book, The Slaves Have Names, about the history of plantations in Virginia. Because her book has particular importance within the state and for the living descendants of slaves, her marketing and PR have focused on Virginia (e.g., speaking to the Daughters of the American Revolution there).

But a strong regional footprint often leads to national publicity. When the University of Virginia named one of its buildings for Peyton Skipwith, an enslaved man who helped build the university, Cumbos name and book were mentioned in coverage by the Washington Post because her book discusses the history of the Skipwith family. Cumbo continues to do events and publicity across the state, and because of her consistent profile and activities, she has been referenced in broad contexts and conversations when issues of slavery are discussedsuch as in the Slate article Slave or Enslaved Person?

The same strategy applies to fiction. The novelist Ani Tuzman, author of The Tremble of Love, is doing a series of nationwide events at synagogues and Jewish cultural centers to bring attention to her book, which is inspired by the life of a historical Jewish mystic. The fantasy indie author Jay Swanson devotes much of his promotional energy to fan conventions; the science fiction indie author John Sundman has focused on the tech community for many years (which once earned him a coveted mention at the tech blog Slashdot).

It may feel boring or like youre not setting your sights high enough if you start local or with the community of people who are likely to be most interested. But why not win over the easy people first? They can help you generate word of mouth and build up publicity that leads to greater and more national attention.

As you plan your book marketing and promotion strategies, whether for a new or old book, consider the following:

 Who will be the easiest group to convince to read or buy this book?

 What events, organizations, or businesses exist (regionally or nationally) that focus on my target demographic?

 What local or regional media outlets regularly cover authors? What does that coverage look like or what is it sparked by?

 What local or regional venues (aside from bookstores) regularly feature authors or books?

Study authors you would consider similar to youbut not at the bestselling stage. (Bonus points if these authors live in the same area as you!) What events have they done? What media has featured them? Where do their reviews come from? Use their track record to help point the way for your outreach plan.

Jane Friedman teaches digital media and publishing at the University of Virginia and is the former publisher of Writers Digest.
Last Weeks Top Reviews

the most-read reviews on publishersweekly.com last week...

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From the Newsletters

Tip Sheet

Lindsay Hunter, whose second novel, Eat Only When Youre Hungry, was just published, reflects on how writers move through their careers, and how publishing a second novel differs from the first.

Childrens Bookshelf

Macmillan senior v-p and publishing director Simon Boughton is leaving the company, to be replaced by Jennifer Besser, currently president and publisher of G.P. Putnams Sons Books for Young Readers.

BookLife Report

Self-published author Brooke Warner discusses how giving a TED Talk has become a new goal for authors.

Podcasts

Week Ahead

PW senior writer Andrew Albanese looks ahead to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which, after some down years during the global recession, is on the upswing.

More to Come

The MTC crew recaps visits to the Small Press Expo just outside D.C. and the Brooklyn Book Festival. The cohosts also preview the upcoming New York Comic Con, examine Conde Nasts mismanagement of the New Yorkers Cartoon Bank, and survey new imprints and events around European comics in the U.S.

KidsCast

Ten years after Iggy Peck, Architect, Andrea Beaty discusses that book; those that followed, like Rosie Revere, Engineer; and why the series struck a chord with readers.

LitCast

PW speaks with Det. Lt. Joe Kenda about his new book, I Will Find You.

PW Radio

Author Ted Genoways discusses his new book, This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm. And Andrew Albanese gives a preview of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Blogs

ShelfTalker

Booksellers are preparing for events to mark Banned Books Week.
With the resurgence of print sales and an increase in the number of independent bricks-and-mortar bookstores, several bargain wholesalers have seen their business rebound. Granted, said Brad Jonas, owner of Powells Books Wholesale and Powells Books Chicago and cofounder of CIROBE (Chicago International Remainder & Overstock Book Expo), it would be foolish to say there hasnt been a shrinkage in the number of bargain book wholesalers. But his business is solid, and this year CIROBE, the nations largest remainder book show, which is set for October 2022, is on track to more than make up for the dip in attendance last year, when there was a scheduling conflict with the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The return to print books is imperative for the bargain industry, said Bill Van Vliet, CIO and managing partner of Book Depot, one of the largest book distributors in North America. The company, which is based in Ontario, Canada, saw sales in 2016 increase 10% from 2015, and it is expecting modest gains this year. Book Depots recent growth has been fueled, in part, by a $3 million warehouse project completed in spring 2016, which added a large-scale mechanical sorter, robotics, and supporting technologies to facilitate book returns. As a result, Book Depot can sort more than 100,000 books per day. The company has continued to reinvest in the business with several new initiatives in 2017, including increased inventory and more robust tools for buyers on its websites.

At Book Country Clearing House in McKeesport, Pa., which has exclusive agreements with a dozen publishers, digital books didnt have a significant impact on sales. Our customers like the tactility of [physical] books, said CEO Richard Roberts, whose gut feeling is that e-books may have lowered sales by about 10% in the past year. In general, his business is insulated from e-books because he doesnt sell to bookstores that carry new books.

Roberts prefers to work with more stable secondary and tertiary markets like used booksellers, flea market sellers, and those who sell factory seconds. To service them, Book Country keeps its 400,000-sq.-ft. warehouse stocked with 11 million14 million books at any given time, representing around 45,000 titles.

Rachel Geer, director of sales at Great Jones Books in Pennington, N.J., said that for us, 2016 was a good year; sales grew by 3% [over 2015], and that she anticipates another rise in sales in 2017. While she regards the return to print as a good thing, because publishers are treating remainder and bargain sales as a regular part of their business, she noted that print books never went away. The disappearance of many independent college storeswhich have either closed or been taken over by corporations such as Barnes & Noble Educationand the cutting back on trade titles among those that remain have had a greater impact on her business.

Great Jones has gone from primarily selling academic titles when it was founded 20 years ago to carrying books with a more general appeal in art and design, childrens, history, and literature. And the rise of indie trade bookstores hasnt necessarily been a boon. The renaissance of bricks-and-mortar bookstores mostly consists of the openings of smaller stores, where it is not a given that bargain books will even have a place, Geer said.

Even though e-book sales have slowed, customers are still picky about which print books they want. Nowadays, said Albert Haug, president of U.S. Media Partners, which is headquartered in Centerport, N.Y., the key accounts know exactly what they want and cherry-pick the very best titles. His company, which relies on exclusive agreements with publishers such as Simon & Schuster and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and nonexclusives with smaller houses to drive sales, has had to get creative.

Its not easy out there, Haug said. Its much more challenging than ever before, and you have to be innovative and come up with ideas for making assortments and special displays to market the B and C titles. Thats really our companys strength.

U.S. Media Partners is also careful about controlling expenses. Two years ago it gave up its Fifth Avenue showroom in New York City, and it maintains a small presence at CIROBE and other trade shows.

At Texas Bookman in Dallas, director of acquisitions James Palmer views the resurgence of print as a different kind of challenge. Bargain titles must now, he said, offer information on subject matter people want beyond single Google searches, in nice enough packages that people want. He added, This really means that bargain needs to have increased perceived value in both subject and execution.

Since Texas Bookman isnt always able to find the inventory it needs, it has upped its participation in existing package print runs and developed more books and products. The company has also expanded its product lines to carry more sidelines, games, graphic novels, journals, and stationery. And although Texas Bookman reaches out to a variety of stores, including museum stores and new independent bookstores, it is one of a number of wholesalers with a built-in customer base: its sister company, Half Price Books, has 124 outlets.

Like Texas Bookman, Pittsburgh, Pa.based Bradleys Books is dependent on its stores; it went into wholesaling as a result of supplying bargain books for them. There are currently 10 Bradleys outlets in western Pennsylvania, which account for 20% of Bradleys total business. Its sales were hurt when Amazon upped its fees for third-party booksellers in March, from $1.35 per item to $1.80 per item. According to owner Michael Paper, online sales at the stores, as well as those of his wholesale customers who sell on Amazon, fell by one-third overnight.

Texas Bookman is one of a number of wholesalers that have been looking more to international sales. After sales slowed in the U.K. and Europe because of the strong dollar, Palmer said that Texas Bookman has begun dipping its toe into South America. International markets comprise roughly 13% of Book Depots overall sales, a number that Van Vliet plans to increase in the current fiscal year. We believe that the overall international market will remain strong for the next several years, and we will continue to focus on countries that stress English as a secondary language, he said. By contrast, at Great Jones, international has shrunk from 12%15% of total sales to less than 10% today.

Despite the challenges, Paper and other bargain wholesalers remain resilient. As CIROBEs Jonas remarked: For years weve been reading our obituary. Were pretty optimistic about the future.

An earlier version quoted Rachel Greer. Her name is Rachel Geer.
Like the publishing industry itself, the Frankfurt Book Fair is showing its resilience. Last year, more than 142,000 trade visitors from around the globe attended the fair, marking the second year in a row of rising attendance. Can the 2017 fair (which runs October 1115) make it three years in a row and chalk up another year of growth? Theres certainly reason for optimism.

As publishers prepare for this years show, the global economy has finally showed signs of stabilizing. Business is generally good: publishers sales are ticking up in many territories; print books are up and even indie bookstores are resurgent. And while e-book sales have now been declining for three straight years, that doesnt seem to worry publishers, who, in fact, appear almost delighted to be putting the last decades talk of digital disruption behind them.

Also not to be overlooked is the fact that, heading into 2017, the Frankfurt Book Fair is simply a better event. For that, give the fairs organizers credit. During some tough years for the industry earlier in the decade, Frankfurt seized the opportunity to experiment with the fair, and to change.

For example, the distant outpost known as Hall 8.0 is gone, and English-language publishers are now happily in the heart of the action in Hall 6.0. In its fourth year, the Frankfurt Business Club is hitting its stride. The improved Literary Agents and Scouts Center (LitAg) has again set a new attendance record, with about 500 tables sold. And the fairs programming is compellingincluding the Markets, the fairs one-day preconference, which this year will focus on the U.S., France, India, the U.K., and Southeast Asia. And in its second year, the Arts+ program engages the broader arts community.

But as industry leaders prepare for the 2017 event, the publishing industry now faces other challengesincluding politics. Across the globe, threats to free speech and the freedom to publish are on the rise, social mediafueled fake news is undermining trusted institutions, and a wave of nationalismspurring Brexit in the U.K. and Trumps election in the U.S.threatens some of the industrys core values.

In fact, the political overtones are carrying over from last year, as the headlines from the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair took a notable political turn, driven by events in the news: a crackdown on the freedom to publish in Turkey, the Syrian refugee crisis, Brexit, and the contentious U.S. election were all hot topics at the 2016 fair. In a closing interview last year, fair director Juergen Boos told PW that Frankfurt organizers would not shy away from politics. We have to engage, he said. What we have at Frankfurt is a cultural product, and it depends on freedom.

In pre-fair press statements last week, Boos reiterated Frankfurts commitment to political engagement. When world affairs become confusing, when deep rifts mark most societies, and when fake news challenges journalistic reporting, the desire for trustworthy sources of information, solid knowledge, and well-researched news grows, he said. This makes publishers enormously important. The 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair, Boos suggested, will be remembered as a year that set the course at many levelsboth in politics and in economic and social contexts.

 What we have at Frankfurt is a cultural product, and it depends on freedom. 

Indeed, this years fair features a slate of strong programs, some with obvious political overtones. Among the highlights, Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle will offer his insights on the global publishing business at the fairs opening press conference. And at the Markets preconference on October 10, U.S. literary agent Andrew Wylie is set to present the opening keynote, said to feature his take on publishing in the age of Trump. Also as part of the Markets program, a panel on women in publishing will feature five female publishing leaders, who will discuss their careersand hopefully offer some insight into why publishers executive offices are still dominated by men, even as women make up the majority of the publishing workforce.

On the fairs opening day, October 11, the annual Frankfurt CEO panel will feature Carolyn Reidy, Simon & Schusters CEO, and Guillaume Dervieux, CEO of French publisher Albin Michel. France is this years Frankfurt Book Fair Guest of Honor, and a program is set to explore Frances strong literary culture, as well as the solidarity and partnership between Germany and France within Europe, Boos notesespecially vital now that the U.K. has decided to leave the European Union.

For five days, the focus is not only on the content business, Boos says, but rather, the book fair is the place where the industry proves it is keeping step with the times, open to innovation, stable in its economic developmentand is as opinionated as ever.

For more information and specific programs, check out the Frankfurt Book Fair websiteand once again, you can follow all the action from Frankfurt through PWs show dailies, available in print at the show, as well as on the PW website.

The Big Titles U.S. Agencies Will be Selling at the 2017 Frankfurt Book Fair
Textbooks for primary through junior high schools (the compulsory school years) fall under the Chinese governments procurement program and are usually purchased in bulk and supplied to schools and libraries. Academic monographs and multivolume publications tend to be purchased by university and public libraries, which are funded by provincial and regional governments. There are currently 3,139 public libraries in China.

The main retail distributor for academic publishers is Xinhua Bookstore, with its vast network of 8,996 stores, which are branded under the same name but with different owners and operational systems. Aside from Xinhua, only a few independent stores are primarily focused on academic titles, including such long-established booksellers as All Sages and Commercial Press in Beijing and Tongji and Fudan in Shanghai.

Now that university and academic presses are making more titles accessible to and appealing for a broader marketand focusing on subject areas such as architecture, art, design, lifestyle, and popular scienceindependent bookstores have also become an indispensable distribution channel. The indie bookstores that these publishers work with include the Bookworm, OWspace, Sanwei, and Zhengyang (in Beijing); Fangshuo (Guangzhou); Xixifu (Guizhou); Xiaofeng (Hangzhou); Librairie Avant-Garde (Nanjing); Zhongshuge (Shanghai); and Eslite (Suzhou).

There is currently no dedicated online platform for selling academic books in China, but the three major online bookstoresAmazon, Dangdang, and JDoffer academic titles and textbooks. For students looking for bargains and book exchanges, there is the Confucius online store, which offers used books.

Increasingly, academic publishers are looking into social media marketing and paying more attention to leveraging the power of Chinas two biggest services, namely the mobile app WeChat and the micro-

blogging site Weibo. Creating online communities and publication buzz is the way to go, and selling directly through branded stores on platforms such as Tmall and Vmall is yet another channel for increasing sales.
AMC Networks International Iberia has launched CBrand, a transmedia, 360 production unit focused on digital branded content, in Spain and Portugal.





The CBrand unit will design and produce customised formats for brands adapted both for TV and digital screens. In addition to production, AMC Networks opens the door to its several digital properties and the 15 linear, pay-TV channels distributed in both countries, including AMC, Canal Hollywood and Canal Cocina.CBrand is present and future for advertising communication, said Manuel Balsera, SVP, sales and marketing, AMC Networks International Iberia. It brings great segmentation capacity and video production experience together. We intend to go beyond programmatic TV; our goal is to create multimedia branded content that can be deployed in a programmatic way.AMC Networks has said that Maria Rodriguez, current commercial director of the company for Spain and Portugal , will lead the CBrand team.
ZEE Mundo is to release free content over-the-top in an attempt to measure the real demand for Bollywood content across the Spanish-speaking Americas.

Spanish-language audiences in the US and Latin America will be able to watch the exclusive online streaming of one of Bollywood's blockbuster films, Tanu y Manu se Casan, from 29 September to 1 October.The content will be available for any connected device, including mobile screens, at Zeemundo.com . Through the site, viewers will also have the chance to share their opinions and interact during the movie.The move arrives while ZEE Mundo continues growing across the Americas, being already available as a pay-TV network in the US, Ecuador and Mexico, where it has been added by Televisas Sky The Hispanic audience is discovering the grandiose productions stemming from India thanks to the unrivalled niche Zee Mundo offers by bringing Bollywood programming in HD and Spanish directly to them, said the company. With 104 years of history, Bollywood has become a global industry with 3,500 million people watching at least one its movies somewhere around the world.
When 5-year-old Eli Bryce went fishing in the kids fishing pond at Skyline Park in August, he found something he didnt expect  goldfish.

Elis father, Josh, alerted authorities. Fish, Wildlife and Parks fishery biologist Jason Lindstrom said goldfish landing in an urban pond is not unusual. He saw three or four goldfish in the pond in summer 2016. But on a recent visit, as a result of young Elis find, Lindstrom said he saw unidentified fish  potentially numbering in the 100s  swimming around in the pond.

Lindstrom said the two to three goldfish he's so far seen in the pond are "not a large resource concern," but he is going to pay another visit to Skyline in the coming weeks to identify the mystery fish. As long as the mystery fish and the goldfish are not harming the westslope cutthroat trout living in the pond, FWP wont take action, Lindstrom said.

Its not great, but its a closed system, he said.

But if Lindstrom determines that the mystery fish is harming westslope cutthroat habitat, and therefore the native fish, FWP may have to take action to remove the nonnative fish.

The biggest worry with the goldfish is if they reproduce. Gold fish can live up to 25 years and they match the size of their container, said state environmental science specialist Pat Cunneen. So once released into a pond, a goldfish can get quite large.

Goldfish are not native to Montana. They are native to China, Cunneen said.

Its illegal to dump non-native fish into a pond in Montana. The crime is a misdemeanor and carries the potential of a $1,000 fine and up to six months of jail time.

Butte-Silver Bow Parks and Recreation Director J.P. Gallagher said that if the county catches a person putting fish into Skyline's fishing pond, he or she would be fined.

But Gallagher said the pond is healthy. He called the goldfish, which are bottom feeders, a nuisance.

More than anything, our waterways, creeks and ponds are not the place to put non-native fish because they do impact habitat for the native fish, Gallagher said.
ViralGains, which bills itself as a video advertising journey platform, has snagged $13.5 million in a Series B round.

The funding includes $10 million in equity capital from new investors First Analysis and Origin Ventures, and from existing venture investors including Stage 1 Ventures, Pallasite Ventures and LaunchCapital. In addition, the company closed $3.5 million in debt funding from Square 1 Bank, a division of Pacific Western Bank. Jim Macdonald, MD at First Analysis, which led the round, is joining ViralGains' board of directors.With US digital video advertising spend expected to grow by double digits annually through 2020 (and Facebook and Google gobbling up most of the ad spend), ViralGains is aiming to take on the giants with a video ad approach that replaces the existing barrage of ads that, by and large, consumers dont want to see.To that end, ViralGains will use the funding to further invest in its machine-learning technology, which drives personalisation and closed-loop analysis. It develops video ad campaigns that go beyond a single spot by delivering different messages at each stage of the buying journey. Brands using the ViralGains platform work strategically with video to drive deep connections with individual consumers, measure attitude and behaviour in real-time, create two-way conversation and find qualified prospects with a high propensity to buy."What makes the ViralGains platform unique is its ability to turn the attitudes and behaviours of consumers into meaningful connections with brands," said Macdonald. "This is the first investment for our 13th fund, so we are especially excited to work with ViralGains as they transform video into an engine for turning advertising into real consumer journeys that move people to make purchases.""As video advertising spend dramatically increases, the demand for ViralGains' proprietary machine learning platform for predicting and driving video engagement has skyrocketed," said Tod Loofbourrow, CEO, ViralGains . "Our latest round of funding is a testament to the way our platform drives the deepest engagement, consumer connection and business results for the largest and most demanding brands in the world. We are seeing bigger budgets that traditionally went to Facebook and Google as brands recognise that video isn't about two-second views or impressions; it is about meaningful engagement and sales."The company has grown by 600% over the last three years, and so far it has attracted interest from four of the top five auto manufacturers and four of the top five banks, it said. Earlier this year, ViralGains opened new offices in Detroit and San Francisco to expand to seven key markets in the US, and secured a new, larger Boston headquarters.
Body cameras for the Mooresville Police Department have arrived. Find out when they will be used.
On September 25, Iraqs Kurds will do something entirely predictable. They will vote Yes in a referendum that the Kurdistan regional government is holding on the independence they have sought for centuries.

The question on the ballot paper is simple: "Do you want the Kurdistan region and the Kurdistani areas outside the region's administration to become an independent state?

The issues surrounding the vote, however, are irretrievably complex and lie at the heart of the political and sectarian conflicts that are cleaving the Middle East.

With the exception of Israel, there is near-unanimous Middle East opposition to the Iraqi Kurds' referendum being held at all. The strongest opposition comes, unsurprisingly, from Baghdad, the government of the state from which the Kurds are trying to secede. Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was unflinching on this point. I call upon the Kurdish leaders to cancel the referendum as the vote will take us into a dark tunnel," he said earlier this month. "Kurdistan's referendum is unconstitutional, and separation will only be permitted through national consensus."

Abadi naturally wants to maintain Iraqs territorial integrity.

"An official referendum should include the votes of all Iraqis without any discrimination; the Kurds cannot act unilaterally on this decision," he said.

Nonetheless, Iraqi Kurdish regional President Masud Barzani has proclaimed that the referendum will go ahead. The Kurds were promised one in 2014 but agreed to postpone it to deal with the threat from the militant group Islamic State (IS). Once the Iraqi government declared victory over IS in Mosul on July 10 -- a victory in which the Kurds had played a major part -- Barzani decided the time had come.

But more is at stake than the delineation of Iraqs exact borders. With their own diplomatic processes, borders, army, and airspace, it is tempting to regard Iraq's Kurdistan region as a de facto state. A strong argument can be made that the Kurds already have independence in all but name.

The deeper dilemma lies within the wording of the referendum question, namely the phrase the Kurdistani areas outside the region's administration.

The organizers of the September 25 referendum are not seeking independence solely for the three official provinces that compose the proto-state of Iraq's Kurdistan. Rather, the vote will also be held in the disputed border provinces of Ninewa, Kirkuk, and Diyala, which are held by Kurdish forces who took control of them during the fight against IS but are claimed by the Iraqi national government.

Kirkuk is especially controversial. It is oil-rich and, accordingly, a potential source of great revenue for whoever controls it. Right now, that is unquestionably the Kurds; there is not a single Iraqi soldier on the ground in the province. If the Kurds in effect try to annex it through a Yes vote, a conflict with Baghdad becomes a possibility, albeit a remote one.

Yet that may be the least of the Kurds' problems. Turkey and Iran also have misgivings over the referendum, which they regard as egregious political overreach. Both Ankara and Tehran have restive Kurdish populations of their own. And if Iraq's Kurds achieve independence, Kurds in Turkey and Iran might start to get ideas.

Together with Baghdad, Ankara and Tehran duly put out an ominous statement in response to the referendum that emphasized that vote will not be beneficial for the Kurds and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), and agreed, in this regard, to consider taking countermeasures in coordination.

When it comes to talk of countermeasures, most worrying of all is Iran -- a state now in full revanchist mode. A new, Western-facing, largely secular though still Sunni state poses a potential threat to Tehran's longstanding goal of a Shi'ite land bridge (a line of contiguous Shi'ite states sympathetic to Tehran) from Iraq to Lebanon.

As Clement Therme, a research fellow for Iran at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), has observed, the Iranians are against an independent Kurdish entity on their border. Moreover, Iran is supporting Shi'a militias that are battling IS in order to be in a stronger position to shape the post-IS political order in Iraq. One of the fault lines that will reappear once IS is [totally] defeated will be between Sunni Kurds and Shi'a Arabs. Especially given the recent rise of Jihadism among Sunni Kurds, which is a major security concern for Iran, especially after the IS terrorist attacks in Tehran last June.

Therme continued: The Iranian State is highly centralized and totally opposed to any sort of federalization. If Iraqi Kurds vote in support of independence, this will worry Tehran, which will fear that any concessions it makes toward Iranian Kurds might be a driver for an internal crisis. What this fear suggests is that Iran is likely to prioritize a security approach over political dialogue to the Kurdish question -- an approach it has taken with Syria, with costs that have been bloodily apparent.

Even short of military intervention, Iran could, for example, close its borders with a self-declared independent Kurdistan or even decide to implement economic sanctions against it. Baghdads reaction will be important to shaping postreferendum Iranian policy -- which, again, does not bode well. Since the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iran has exercised considerable influence over the predominantly Shi'ite Iraqi government. Indeed, as Therme also pointed out, Iranians and Iraqis are tied together through a web of overlapping economic, religious, cultural, and political interests.

But this cuts both ways.

Eventually if Bagdad considered the military option, Tehran -- which is already seemingly overstretched militarily -- could end up as an unlikely mediator between Baghdad and Irbil. That is especially likely with IS in decline and forced to keep itself relevant through terror attacks as opposed to battlefield victories. The threat of IS terror attacks in the wake of postreferendum chaos cannot be discounted, and if there is one thing all the parties agree on it is the need for relative political and security stability in Iraq despite their competing interests.

Nonetheless, while possible, this scenario seems hopeful in the extreme. The chances of Iran remaining benign are slim if there are indications that a newly empowered, moderate, Sunni, pro-Western state might squat near the center of its Shi'ite land bridge. At the least, the region could become even more unstable. And it is this instability -- which could empower jihadist groups or enrage Iran or at worst, both -- that most everyone fears.

Come September 25, the Kurds will vote "Yes for independence.

Nobody expects that they will achieve it overnight. But the referendum could mark the beginning, not of a final drive to a long-desired autonomy, but of yet another dark chapter in the bloody history of the Kurds.

(The views expressed in this analysis do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL.)
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry on September 22 called a recent visit to its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh by three U.S. lawmakers a "provocation" and said it had blacklisted them, Russian news agency Interfax reported.

Azerbaijan's state-run APA news agency earlier in the week said the ministry had threatened to blacklist the three members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Frank Pallone, David Valadao, and Tulsi Gabbard visited Armenia and made a side trip to Artsakh in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 20.

"Pallone, Valadao, and Gabbard paid an illegal visit to the occupied Azerbaijani territories, thus breaching Azerbaijani law," Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev told Interfax. "All three are added to the list of undesirable persons in Azerbaijan."

The legislators' visit was "a provocation aimed at undermining efforts of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, including the United States, in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," he told Interfax.

While in Artsakh, the U.S. legislators, who are members of the U.S. Congressional Armenian Caucus, met with Nagorno-Karabakh legislators and visited the Shushi Arts College and a cathedral.

Pallone said the legislators' goal was to learn and educate the American public about the region.

"We try to learn about the military situation on the border and what measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the April war," Artsakh Press quoted Pallone as saying. He was referring to a sharp uptick in violence in the region that occurred in April.

"One of the goals of our work is to contribute to the activity of the OSCE Minsk Group,and we believe that the people of Artsakh should have the right to self-determination and have security mechanisms," Artsakh Press quoted Pallone as saying.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for years.

Populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Internationally mediated negotiations involving the OSCE's so-called Minsk Group helped forge a cease-fire in the region, which is not always honored, but have failed to produce a lasting settlement of the conflict.

Based on reporting by Interfax, Media Max, Artsakh Press, Panarmenian.net, and ANA


Iran says it has successfully tested a new ballistic missile despite warnings from Washington that it was ready to ditch a landmark nuclear deal over the issue.

State broadcaster IRIB carried the footage of the test-firing of the Khorramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on September 22.

"This is the third Iranian missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers," the broadcaster said as it showed footage on September 23.

State TV did not say when the test had been conducted, although Iranian officials said on September 22 that it would be tested "soon.

The unveiling of the missile came during a military parade that commemorated the 1980s Iraq-Iran War.

Iranian President Hassan Rohani said during the parade that Tehran will continue its missile program and boost the country's military capacities, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that Iran stop developing "dangerous missiles."

On September 19, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump accused Iran of supporting terrorists and called Tehran's government a "corrupt dictatorship.

Trump also called for a harder line against Iran from other members of the United Nations, saying "we cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles."

Referring to Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers, including the United States, Trump said Washington "cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program."

Rohani responded to Trump remarks in his own speech to the UN General Assembly on September 20, saying Trump's speech was "ignorant, absurd, and hateful rhetoric."

Rohani said Iran will not be the first party in the nuclear accord to violate the agreement.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Trump had made a final decision to continue complying with the Iran nuclear deal, under which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.

Trump's administration has twice certified that Iran is complying with its obligations under the accord.

But it also has said that Iran's missile program violates the spirit of the nuclear agreement.

Washington is due to announce on October 15 whether it considers Iran is still complying with the agreement.

Other signatories to the nuclear accord are Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany.

Washington has imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran, saying Tehran's ballistic-missile tests violated a UN resolution that endorsed the nuclear deal and called on Tehran not to undertake activities related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Tehran insists its missile program doesnt the resolution, saying the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, dpa
Probation search yields drugs

Officers responded to the 700 block of South Montana Street at about 6 p.m. Thursday to assist with a probation parole search. Zane Werner, 34, who has been at the Butte Prerelease Center, was stopped as he exited a residence. Officers confiscated methamphetamine and a syringe. Werner was jailed and charged with possession of dangerous drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia and a probation violation.

Chase ends in Gallatin County

At 10:22 p.m. Thursday, police responded to a car wash in the 2700 block of Harrison Avenue, where a man was reportedly trying to tamper with coin boxes on the vacuum cleaners.

The man fled in a car, and officers gave chase over Homestake Pass. The chase went clear into Gallatin County before the car pulled over shortly before 1 a.m. Friday with four flat tires from spike strips.

The driver, who police declined to identify because he was not yet charged, was expected to be arraigned Friday in Bozeman.

A passenger in the car, Caitlin Dresden, 26, of Helena, was charged with obstructing a police officer after officers said she initially gave a false name. She was wanted on a $1,000 warrant from Butte City Court.
Kyrgyz authorities say they have thwarted a terrorist plot by unidentified members of banned extremist groups targeting the ongoing presidential election campaign.

The suspects intended to carry out a terrorist act during...the presidential election in Kyrgyzstan, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on September 22.

The statement said that police and intelligence services have recently conducted several raids in the northern Chui Oblast, where they confiscated weapons, extremist literature, and components that can be used to make an improvised explosive device.

According to the statement, three suspects have been arrested during the raids in Chuis Tokmok district.

The extremist literature included books, flyers, and audio and video materials, the statement said.

Authorities have opened a criminal probe, it added.

Kyrgyzstan holds a presidential election on October 15.
Hundreds of opposition activists attended an anticorruption protest in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.

The protest, which has been sanctioned by the municipal government, was organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces -- an umbrella organization bringing together some of Azerbaijan's opposition forces.

Baku police said in a statement that some 1,500 people attended the September 23 rally, although the organizers disputed the official figure, saying the actual attendance was higher. Azerbaijan's Turan news agency said thousands participated in the rally held in the Yasamal district of Baku.

According to the statement, supporters of the Popular Front Party, People's Democratic Party, National Statehood Party, Musavat Party Youth Organization, Muslim Union, and NIDA Movement participated in the action.

No incidents occurred during the rally, the statement said.

However, ahead of the rally, at least three members of the Popular Front Party were reportedly detained by authorities on September 22. It was immmedately unclear whether they were subsequently released.

At the end of the rally, which started at 3 p.m. local time and lasted for two hours, electricity was cut off in the area.

The protest, held under the slogan "Return the money stolen from the people," came after an investigative report by a group of international journalists and anticorruption activists called The Azerbaijani Laundromat named state officials allegedly tied to money-laundering operations.

The report alleges the scheme was a complex money-laundering operation and slush fund that handled $2.9 billion over a two-year period through four shell companies" registered in the United Kingdom.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's press secretary, Azer Gasimov, has called the report "absurd."

Activists accuse Azerbaijans government of repressing journalists, civil society activists, and human rights workers.

They have urged Western governments to do more to confront authorities in Baku.

The oil-rich South Caucasus nation has faced growing social and economic problems stemming from falling world oil prices in recent years.
Hundreds of opposition activists attended an anticorruption protest in Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, on September 23. The protest, which was sanctioned by the city government, was organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces -- an umbrella organization grouping some of Azerbaijan's opposition forces. At least three members of the Popular Front Party were reportedly detained ahead of the rally by authorities on September 22. (RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service)
On September 12, Kyrgyz journalist Zulpukar Sapanov was sentenced to four years in prison after being found guilty of inciting hatred between religious groups.



The basis for the court decision was Sapanov's book Kydyr Sanjyrasy (Genealogy of the Forefather Kydyr), which dealt with the pre-Islamic beliefs and traditions among the Kyrgyz people.



The book proposed that the Kyrgyz people came from a respected (and likely mythical) holy person, Kydyr-Ata, and Sapanov asked if "maybe Kydyr is the true God and Allah is Satan?"



The book was published in August 2016 and several newspapers published excerpts, quickly attracting the attention of religious scholars in Kyrgyzstan.



Some of these religious scholars appealed to the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) to take action against Sapanov.



Prominent among these theologians were Kadyr Malikov -- a vocal opponent of radical Islam who was attacked by alleged extremists in Bishkek on November 26, 2015, and spent time in the hospital with knife wounds to his face and neck -- and Tursunbai Bakir uulu, a member of parliament who once burned an Israeli flag at a press conference.





The SCNS summoned Sapanov for questioning in February and his home was later searched.



The SCNS assembled a panel of religious experts, including Malikov and Bakir uulu, to review Sapanov's book and these experts concluded that Sapanov's writing did constitute incitement of religious hatred.



A case was filed with the Prosecutor-General's Office with the prosecution initially demanding Sapanov be imprisoned for six years.



Sapanov says he has read the Koran, the Bible, the Jewish holy book the Torah, and has researched ancient Kyrgyz history. He mentions Tengri, considered by pre-Islamic Turkic cultures of Inner Asia to be a, or the, god, in his book also.



He contends his book was meant to help unite the Kyrgyz people by providing a better understanding of their common past, not to divide religions.



Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released a statement on September 14 criticizing the verdict.



"Although Kyrgyzstan boasts of being an island of free speech in Central Asia, a court in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, passed the sentence on 12 September," RSF said. "The judges said the book 'downplays Islam's role as a religion and fosters a negative attitude towards Muslims.'"



On September 18, Kyrgyzstan's ombudsman, Kubat Otorbaev, called on the court system to "review [Sapanov's] verdict and free him from custody."



Otorbaev said, "One could characterize the court decision on the journalist [Sapanov] as being a return to the inquisition."





At the Qishloq we've been watching the case against Sapanov with great concern.



It does seem similar in some ways to the 1925 case of the state of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, better known in history as the Scopes Monkey Trial.



Scopes was a substitute high school teacher in Tennessee who taught Darwin's theory of evolution in defiance of state laws at the time, which specified only the Bible's version of creation could be taught in schools.



The trial quickly evolved into a case of religion versus science; in this instance, science lost, and Scopes was forced to pay a $100 fine, which was a sizeable amount of money in those days.



Sapanov did his research and his book is based on the conclusions he drew; it nearly goes without saying that in a free society one should be free to write books or articles with an opposing point of view, leaving detractors to simply dismiss whatever they don't agree with.



The verdict in the Sapanov case is likely to have a chilling effect on writers, journalists, or intellectuals who plan on publishing historical research.



They now must consider their works could be reviewed by state religious experts and declared heretical, in which case they could face the same fate as Sapanov.

RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service Director Venera Djumataeva contributed to this report.



(The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.)
The leader of a self-styled Russian Christian religious group detained as a suspect in a high-profile arson attack, has been placed under arrest for one month, Russian news agencies reported on September 23.

Aleksandr Kalinin, the leader of an organization that calls itself Christian State-Holy Rus, was detained on September 20 as a suspect in the September 11 arson attack on cars outside the Moscow office of lawyers for the director of Matilda, an upcoming film that has drawn sharp criticism from radical Russian Orthodox and monarchist fringe groups.

"At the request of the investigator, Kalinin has been remanded in custody until November 22," a spokesperson for Moscow's Taganksy court was quoted as saying.

Earlier on September 23, Russia's Interior Ministry said it had launched criminal proceedings into threats to owners of cinema chains planning to screen Matilda.

The movie, directed by Aleksei Uchitel, is based on an early romantic liaison of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II.

The Culture Ministry approved the film for release in July and it is scheduled to open nationwide next month (October 26).

Critics of the movie say it besmirches the memory of Nicholas, who was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church together with his family in 2000.

A letter signed by Christian State-Holy Rus and distributed in January said that members across Russia were prepared to sacrifice their lives for its true Orthodox Christian path and that showing Matilda could lead to bloodshed and civil war.

Following several attacks appearing to target Uchitel and his film, Russia's biggest cinema chain said on September 12 it would not show Matilda, citing concerns for the safety of moviegoers.

The announcement came a day after a September 11 arson attack in which authorities say masked men torched two cars near the office of Uchitels lawyers and left leaflets that said "To Burn for Matilda."

With reporting by Interfax and TASS
Russian police have detained opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov and at least 30 other people during an anticapitalism rally in central Moscow.

Udaltsov's lawyer, Violetta Volkova, told Russia news agency Interfax that her client had been detained for violating the rules of organizing or conducting rallies.

Udaltsov's case will be sent to court, Volkova said, adding that "until the court hearing, which is on [September 25], [Udaltsov] will remain in police custody, he was not released."

A source quoted by Russian news agencies said "about 30 people" were detained during the protest, while Aleksandr Averin, a member of the unregistered Other Russia party, told Russian media that more than 50 protesters had been detained.

Writer and nationalist politician Eduard Limonov was also among those detained during the unsanctioned rally on September 23.

Earlier in the day, a Twitter account linked to Udaltsov wrote that the protesters walked quietly, without placards and slogans. Police officers came and said they were holding an unsanctioned rally.

Udaltsov was released from prison on August 8 after serving a 4 1/2 year prison sentence over his role in organizing a May 2012 protest against President Vladimir Putin and his government on Moscow's Bolotnaya Square.

In July 2014, Udaltsov was convicted of organizing "mass disorder" in connection with the protest, which erupted into violence that demonstrators and police blame on each other.

Upon his release, Udaltsov vowed to revive his dormant Levy Front (Left Front) movement and hold new protests.

On September 13, Udaltsov was briefly detained while protesting in front of the State Duma, Russia's lower chamber of parliament.

On that day, Udaltsov and activist Aleksei Vorontsov were staging single-man protests next to the State Duma to demand amnesty for inmates across Russia in connection with the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution that brought Bolsheviks to power in 1917.

With reporting by zona.media and echo.msk.ru
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet in New York on September 23 and discuss organizing a meeting between the two countries' presidents, Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said.

The organization of a possible meeting between the presidents of the two countries and the timetable of the [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] Co-Chairs visit to the region. These are the two issues well discuss with Elmar Mammadyarov,Nalbandian said in an interview with Voice of America on September 22.

Asked about his remarks at an Armenia-Diaspora forum related to the return of Nagorno-Karabakh territories, Nalbandian said some quotes and comments were cut out of the context.

I spoke about the three famous principles and six elements included in the statements of the [OCSE] Minsk Group co-chairing countries, and which have been presented to the parties as a whole, and the attempts to single out any of the principles will make the settlement impossible. This is what Azerbaijan has been doing for years, Nalbandian said.

As Armenias president declared at the UN General Assembly, the most important is the issue of Artsakhs status. If the issue of the status is solved, all others will be settled in a just and logical manner, because all other questions are derivative, he said.

Nalbandian stressed that the settlement of all these issues is possible only with the participation of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict over Azerbaijans breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh for years.

Populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan amid a 1988-94 war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Internationally mediated negotiations involving the OSCE's so-called Minsk Group helped forge a cease-fire in the region, which is not always honored, but have failed to produce a lasting settlement of the conflict.

Based on reporting by Public Radio of Armenia, News.az, Panorama.am, and Interfax


President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed Ukraine's recapture of Kherson during a surprise visit to the strategic southern city as the possible "beginning of the end of the war," but warned that such victories came at a high price.

The liberation of Kherson over the last few days was one of Ukraine's biggest successes in nearly nine months since the start of the Russian invasion and sparked days of celebration but also exposed a humanitarian emergency for the residents of the city.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

"This is the beginning of the end of the war," Zelenskiy said in an address to the Ukrainian troops in the city. "We are step-by-step coming to all the temporarily occupied territories."

But he also reminded Ukrainians that the success came at a high human cost.

"The price of this war is high. People are injured. A large number of dead. (Russian forces) have left or escaped -- we believe that they have escaped because our army has surrounded the enemy and they were in danger," Zelensky said.

"There were fierce battles, and the result is -- today we are in Kherson region."

"We are moving forward," Zelenskiy told Ukrainian soldiers in the city, thanking NATO and other allies for their continuing support in the war against Russia.

"We are ready for peace, peace for all our country," he said.

As fierce fighting continues in eastern and southern Ukraine, the Kremlin refused to comment on Zelenskiy's visit to the city, but spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, "You know that it is the territory of the Russian Federation."

Russia, which still controls about 70 percent of the wider Kherson region, illegally annexed it and three other Ukrainian regions in September following referendums that Kyiv and the West have labeled as a sham.

Wary Ukrainian officials maintained a curfew in the liberated Kherson region amid fears that mines and booby traps could still maim and kill civilians.

The governor of Kherson region, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said the authorities had decided to maintain a curfew from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. and ban people from leaving or entering the city as a security measure.

"The enemy mined all critical infrastructure," Yanushevych told Ukrainian TV. "We are trying to meet within a few days and (then) open the city," he said.

Zelenskiy's visit to the region came a day after fresh evidence of war crimes was being uncovered in Kherson following the departure of Russian troops.

Zelenskiy said Ukrainian investigators uncovered hundreds of war crimes in areas freed from Russian occupation.

"Investigators have already documented more than 400 Russian war crimes," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on November 13. "The bodies of dead civilians and servicemen have been found."

"The Russian Army left behind the same savagery it did in other regions of the country it entered," he said.

The allegations could not be independently verified. Russia denies its troops intentionally target civilians.

Zelenskiy said "stabilization and the restoration of law" has been established in 226 settlements in the region, while the Defense Ministry said it had recaptured 179 settlements and 4,500 square kilometers along the Dnieper River over the past week.

The Ukrainian military's General Staff reported continued fierce fighting along the eastern front in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Ukrainian armed forces' southern command said on November 14 that Russian forces continued to "inflict fire damage on our troops and de-occupied settlements along the right bank of the Dnieper" even after the liberation of Kherson city, which Zelenskiy described as "a historic day."

Yanushevych warned people in an online message about reports of humanitarian aid arriving in downtown Kherson's Liberty Square and urged people to steer clear of the city center as demining operations were due to proceed there.

Zelenskiy also warned Kherson residents about the presence of Russian mines. "I am asking you please not to forget that the situation in the Kherson region remains very dangerous," he said.

Russian officials' announcement that their forces were withdrawing across the Dnieper, which bisects the Kherson region and Ukraine, followed a seemingly hugely successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country's south in recent months.

U.S. President Joe Biden hailed the retaking of Kherson as a "significant victory," raising confidence that Moscow will not occupy its neighbor as intended when it invaded in late February.

"I can do nothing but applaud the courage, determination, and capacity of the Ukrainian people," Biden told a press conference after meeting with Chinese President Xi Xinjping on November 14.

"I think you are going to see things slow down a bit because of the winter months...I think it remains to be seen exactly what the outcome will be."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned on November 14 that Ukraine should brace for a difficult winter.

"The coming months will be difficult. Putin's aim is to leave Ukraine cold and dark this winter," he told a press conference in The Hague after meeting the Dutch foreign and defense ministers.

Stoltenberg urged continued international support for Kyiv and said Russia's military capability should not be taken lightly.

"We should not make the mistake of underestimating Russia. They still control large parts of Ukraine. What we should do is strengthen Ukraine's hand."

With reporting by Reuters and AP
The following item on the Mass at Montana Tech was updated Sunday morning, Sept. 24, to reflect a correction in the time. It starts at 7 p.m., not 1 p.m. as previously reported.

Mass to bless Tech personnel

The annual Ecumenical Mass to bless Montana Tech students, professors, administrators and staff starts at 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, at the Immaculate Conception Church on Western. Everyone is welcome. A brief reception to follow.

Twin Kennedy concert in Deer Lodge

DEER LODGE -- The twin sister duo Twin Kennedy will perform in concert on the stage of the historic Rialto Community Theatre in Deer Lodge at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 28.

The duo features Carli Kennedy on vocals and guitar and Julie on vocals and violin.

Growing up in a musically infused family in British Columbia, the sisters crafted their sound through a fusion of their background in country, folk, jazz and classical music. They have years of classical training, including their Bachelors Degrees in Music Performance from the University of Victoria.

Carli and Julie have been making music together since they could talk, and in recent years this has resulted in numerous nominations and awards. For example, their first LP earned two Canadian Country Music Award nominations, and their single Secondhand Gold was the Grand Prize Award winner in the country category of the 2015 John Lennon Songwriting contest and the 2016 Lennon Award winner for Best Country Song.

This concert is the first of five events in the 2017-2018 Live at the Rialto Concert Series.

Tickets for this show are $20 and are available at Valley Foods and Keystone Drug in Deer Lodge, Steeles in Butte and Deer Lodge, and at the door. Season tickets are still available for $69, a savings of almost $30 over individual event tickets. Details: 406-846-7900, www.deerlodgerialto.com, www.twinkennedy.com, and on Facebook and Youtube.

Animal control lists August statistics

Following are August statistics for Butte animal control and the shelter at 699 Centennial Ave.

NUMBER OF DOGS

Turned in by owners: 6

Turned in by citizens: 9

Picked up by Animal Control Officer: 30

Adopted: 6

Reclaimed by their owners: 38

Sent to Rescue: 0

Died/euthanized: 2 (Euthanized)

NUMBER OF CATS:

Turned in by owners: 12

Turned in by citizens: 7

Picked up by Animal Control Officer: 14

Adopted: 24

Reclaimed by their owners: 11

Sent to Rescue: 0

Died/euthanized: 6 (3-Died 3-Euth)

Red Hat dinner slated Oct. 3

The Gal-us-Frame Gals will have a Red Hat dinner Tuesday, Oct. 3, at Casagrandas.

No-host cocktails start at 5:30 p.m. with dinner at 6 p.m. Costumes are optional. Reservations are due by Friday, Sept. 28, by calling 406-494-5926 or 406-490-4444.
The U.S. government on September 22 notified 21 states that their voting systems were targeted by hackers in last year's presidential election, and several of the most closely contested states said the hackers were linked to the Russian government.

The so-called battleground states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, and Minnesota, where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost in some cases by only a few thousand votes to then-Republican candidate Donald Trump, were among those that blamed Russian hackers.

AP reported that the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia also were targeted by hackers.

Alabama and Washington state, which were among the majority of the 21 hacked states which were not closely contested in the election, also said they were targeted by Russians.

According to the states and the U.S. government, none of the hacking attempts succeeded at penetrating the states' voting systems or obtaining sensitive information about voters -- meaning the hacking efforts never got to a point where they could affect the outcome of the election.

"There remains no evidence that the Russians altered one vote or changed one registration," said Judd Choate, president of the U.S. National Association of State Election Directors.

Russia has denied any attempt at interfering in the election, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on September 22 saying "nobody has ever presented a single fact anywhere" that supports the allegation.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not publicly say who the hackers were. But Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said the department told the states privately that "Russian government cyberactors" targeted their voter registration systems.

Haas said he was told the Russian government tested election systems for vulnerabilities in hopes of accessing voter registration databases, but was unsuccessful.

Wisconsin was one of a handful of battleground states in the Midwest that helped Trump win the presidency. Trump carried the state by 22,748 votes, or about 0.8 percentage points.

In most of the 21 states notified about hacking attempts, the department said it observed only "preliminary activity" by the hackers. It said only a small number of networks were "compromised."

Only Illinois has reported that hackers successfully breached its voter systems.

A spokesman for Connecticut's secretary of state said Russian intruders were detected and blocked.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said the department told his state that its systems were scanned in the weeks before the 2016 election.

"A scan is similar to burglars jiggling the doors of a house and moving on when they realize the doors are locked," he said.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said entities at the Russian government's behest scanned the state's system for vulnerabilities, but did not breach the system.

Washington's top election official, Kim Wyman, said the state learned of attempted intrusions from Russian internet addresses last year, and immediately alerted the FBI.

Arizona and Illinois also said last year that hackers had targeted their voter registration systems.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said he was unhappy that it took the department so long to notify states that their voting systems were vulnerable to cyberattacks.

"It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information," he said, calling it "a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy."

A U.S. special counsel and several U.S. congressional committees are investigating whether Russia attempted to interfere in the election or collude with the Trump campaign.

While documents leaked to the media have revealed a handful of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russians, Lavrov said at a news conference in New York on September 22 that no hard facts have turned up that prove collusion or meddling in the election.

"In about a year of this chaos...we never heard not a single fact," he said.

Lavrov said that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told him privately that he had seen evidence of Russian meddling. But Lavrov said when he demanded to see the proof, Tillerson told him it was "confidential" and could not be shared.

Lavrov accused former President Barack Obama of inventing the alleged Russian election-meddling plot in a "small-hearted" and "revengeful" effort to "put this time bomb into U.S.-Russian relations" and make it difficult for the Trump administration to work closely with Moscow.

"And now the immense potential of our bilateral relationship stands there in vain, and our relations are contracting due to Russophobic hysteria," Lavrov said.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters


Straight shot up U.S. 31 to I-94 finally open in Berrien County

Last few miles had been unfinished since 2004 because of a lack of money to pay for it.
National columnist way off base on gun editorial

I was somewhat amazed at the Sept. 15 article NRAs Idea of Recreation written by Dana Milbank. I realize that the opinions held by anti-hunters, anti-gun, and anti-NRA individuals will likely never be reconciled by discussion with those in support of our American heritage and the NRA. I have come to realize that the gap is probably just too vast to resolve.

Mr. Milbank obviously has a very low opinion of our American heritage as stated in his article. His comments, however, were just too extreme, inaccurate and outrageous to even be considered by any reasonable person. My fear is that many uninformed readers may believe some of the nonsense spouted by Mr. Milbank regarding hunters, sportsmen groups in general, and of course the NRA. Tungsten-tipped bullets for pheasant hunting, for example! Is he really serious with these comments?

I truly do believe in our precious right of free speech but dont we require some accuracy by those in a position such as his. Since he is a regular contributor to the Opinion page, I hope that he will focus on other matters in which he just might have some credibility.

-- Jim Stilwell, Butte
The idea of mining asteroids for precious mineral deposits has gained steam in recent years, with space mining startups focusing on logistics and governments like Luxembourg positioning themselves as big funders of the sector.

But before we go asteroid mining, we need to figure out where to look  and we don't have the telescopes available to do proper surveys, according to a new white paper that was discussed this week at a conference in Latvia.

The paper was presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Riga, Latvia. It arose from a 2016 conference, called the Asteroid Science Intersections with In-Space Mine Engineering (ASIME), which brought together engineers and asteroid scientists to discuss the best approaches for mining.

"Asteroid mining is this incredible intersection of science, engineering, entrepreneurship and imagination," said J.L. Galache, the lead author of the paper and cofounder and chief technology officer of Aten Engineering, in a statement. "The problem is, it's also a classic example of a relatively young scientific field in that the more we find out about asteroids through missions like Hayabusa and Rosetta, the more we realize that we don't know."

RELATED: Using Astronomy to Prospect for Asteroids Could Help Us Mine the Heavens

The first asteroid was discovered in 1801  the small world of Ceres, which was later reclassified as a dwarf planet. While there are millions of these small bodies floating around the solar system, it is near-Earth objects  the ones that come closest to Earth  that are best for mining, since it takes little fuel or time to reach these asteroids. So far, NASA tracks roughly 16,700 near-Earth objects.

Only a handful of spacecraft have been close to an NEO, however, so we need to classify their resources through telescopes. Useful resources include water and fuel, which some space advocates say could be mined at low cost to explore other planets. It's possible to do this through spectral information, which yields the composition of the asteroid.

A montage of 17 of the 18 asteroids and comets that have been photographed up close as of August 2014, when Rosetta arrived at comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. (Image credit: Data from NASA / JPL / JHUAPL / UMD / JAXA / ESA / OSIRIS team / Russian Academy of Sciences / China National Space Agency)

But Galache says there aren't enough telescopes available to do searches at the right time. Several entities have early-stage plans to view and classify asteroids using telescopes, including the companies Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, and the non-profit B612 Foundation  but these aren't ready yet.

"NEOs are usually discovered when they are at their brightest, so our best chance of studying them is by immediately following up detections with further observations to characterize their shape and spectral properties," he said. "That needs good quality, relatively large, dedicated telescopes that are available at short notice. We don't have reliable access to these facilities right now."

RELATED: Future Asteroid Miners Seek Solid Space Rock Plan

Even with the right telescopes, other considerations are necessary to make asteroid mining a reality. Some of the other problems Galache's group identified include understanding more about how regolith (soil) behaves in the low gravity of an asteroid, creating better regolith simulants on Earth to design mining equipment, and learning about the abundance of elements on different types of asteroids in our solar system. More observation is needed because past missions to asteroids have shown that each of the ones analyzed have looked so different.

For example, NEAR Shoemakers observations of the asteroid Eros showed a fine layer of dust on the surface. By contrast, Hayabusa's observations of Itokawa revealed blocks that are tens of inches in diameter. The recent Rosetta mission, which studied Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, also found that the surface of the comet is denser than its insides, but it's unclear if asteroids possess the same properties.

While asteroid mining is decades away, there are a couple of spacecraft on their way to asteroids to do more up-close observations and bring samples back to Earth. NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is on its way to asteroid Bennu and will arrive in 2018. Meanwhile, Japan's Hayabusa 2 will reach asteroid Ryugu in 2020.

Originally published on Seeker.
Old doomsday predictions never die. They just get recycled.

Just six years after radio preacher Harold Camping promised the apocalypse, and five years after the end of the Mayan calendar was supposed to extinguish life on Earth as we know it, new doomsday predictions have arrived. This time, they come via YouTube and a man named David Meade, who claims that the first spiritual sign of the apocalypse will arrive today (Sept. 23).

Meade's theories meld biblical prophecy with astronomy. He claims that on Sept. 23, there will be a rare alignment of the sun in the constellation Virgo  with the moon just to the east  with nine stars and three planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) clustering around the constellation's head, like a crown. This is supposed to be the sign foretold in the beginning of Revelation 12, which reads, in the New International Version of the Bible: "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth." [Doomsdays: Top 9 Real Ways the World Could End]

The date, Sept. 23, is 33 days after the total solar eclipse that crossed the United States in August. That number is meaningful to Meade because Jesus Christ is said to have been 33 when he died.

This astronomical sign, Meade said, is evidence that the end is near. In October, he said, the mysterious Planet X will pass close to Earth, which will mark the beginning of seven years of Tribulation  a period of time that some say will be full of hardships before the second coming of Christ  followed by the rapture of true believers to heaven and a millennium of peace. [Oops! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions]

Astronomy plus apocalypse

Meade's theories echo a lot of ideas that have been floating around conspiracy and doomsday circles for years. Planet X, sometimes known as Nibiru, was supposed to have crashed into Earth during the Mayan apocalypse of 2012 or maybe in 2011, or was it 2003? The problem with this idea is that a rogue planet hurtling toward Earth just doesn't exist. The hysteria over the mythical planet got so pitched in 2011 that NASA scientist David Morrison made a YouTube video to explain that Nibiru isn't real, and that if a giant planetary object were zooming through the solar system, it would be easily visible from Earth and easily detectable from gravitational changes in the orbits of planets in our solar system. (Confusing matters, there is a possible "Planet X" beyond Pluto, but astronomers have not proved its existence yet. If it exists, it orbits far at the outskirts of the solar system. "Planet X" is what scientists call possible planets that have yet to be identified.)

Eclipses, too, have long been associated with the end. According to the writings of 16th-century Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun, Aztecs made human sacrifices during a total solar eclipse, fearing that if they did not, the darkness would never lift. "It was thus said: 'If the eclipse of the sun is complete, it will be dark forever! The demons of darkness will come down. They will eat men,'" de Sahagun wrote.

The Vikings, too, felt they had to do something to prevent perpetual darkness  in their mythology, a wolf named Skoll was eating the sun, and they had to make noise to scare the monstrous beast away, lest the sun vanish forever.

Total eclipses, though, are visible from someplace on Earth roughly every 18 months. The alignment of the sun in Virgo is not particularly rare, either  it happens once a year, every September. Earth's view of the sun's relationship to the stars simply changes as it moves through its yearly orbit. That's why astrologers developed the concept of the 12-month zodiac.

Nor are the other stellar alignments around Virgo on the 23rd that unusual, according to EarthSky. The moon passes through every constellation of the zodiac throughout the month, so it's regularly just east of Virgo. The crown of 12 stars upon Virgo's head on the 23rd is an arbitrary designation, according to EarthSky, because there are more than nine stars in the constellation Leo, which is supposed to make up the stellar portion of the crown. [Monsters of the Night Sky: Strange Constellations to See in Fall]

What's more, this exact arrangement of stars and planets has happened before, EarthSky found. In the past 1,000 years alone, it occurred in 1827, 1483, 1293 and 1056.

Biblical predictions

Repetition doesn't appear to faze Meade. When asked by Live Science whether the failed Planet X predictions of recent years gave him any pause in his own prognostications, he responded by email, "There's never been a year like 2017. Read my book."

In fact, there's plenty of evidence that failed doomsday predictions don't do much to forestall future "prophets." Nineteenth-century preacher William Miller, founder of the group that would eventually become the Seventh-day Adventists, predicted doomsday in 1843, then in 1844, and died five years later, still thinking the end was nigh. Camping, who took out billboards to advertise the supposed coming apocalypse in 2011, had previously promised the end of the world in 1994. (Camping died in 2013.) In one famous 1954 case, a woman named Dorothy Martin convinced her followers that although the end of the world was coming, a UFO would drop by to save them. When nothing happened on the appointed date, Martin and her followers decided not that they'd been wrong, but that their faith had saved the world from doom. A psychologist who had infiltrated the group wrote about their reaction in the book "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks, 1956).

"The real tragedy of this kind of thinking is that many people do take it seriously," said Allen Kerkeslager, a comparative religion professor at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Sometimes a mythical apocalypse really does become the end of the world, at least for believers. Between A.D. 66 and 73, the Jews of Judea revolted against their Roman occupiers, Kerkeslager said, bolstered by prophecies that promised that their struggle was part of a great End Times battle and that God would rescue them at the last minute. God did not, and tens of thousands died.

"There are so many past cases showing that no amount of contrary evidence or failed prophecies will ever deter some of the people who believe that the Bible has codes about an apocalyptic end that will leave their own group triumphant," Kerkeslager told Live Science in an email. "For such people, there is no need to negotiate or compromise in delicate international political crises and arms races, no need to work out peaceful resolutions with countries deemed somehow part of an 'axis of evil,' and no need for concern with environmental problems such as the impact of human-caused climate change on a planet that is going to be destroyed and recreated anyway. So all of this does have very real and very dangerous negative social implications."

Apocalypse everywhere

For most people, it's easy to dismiss Meade, and certainly the idea that the world will enter its last throes tomorrow has no more to back it up than the umpteen failed predictions that came before it. But apocalyptic thinking is everywhere, said Robert Joustra, a political scientist at Redeemer University College in Ontario and co-author of the book "How to Survive the Apocalypse:Zombies, Cylons, Faith, and Politics at the End of the World" ( Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016).

Postapocalyptic shows like "The Walking Dead" or "The Leftovers" are a secular way of dealing with the same questions that the Book of Revelation would have been written to answer, Joustra said: What is the point of all this suffering? What is the meaning of life? How should we live now, in the midst of all our struggles?

The symbolism in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation would have had a very different meaning to the early, badly persecuted Christians who read it compared to people of the 21st century, Joustra said. They would have taken certain numbers, like 7, to represent perfection and completion, not as an invitation to start pulling out the calculator to predict the date of the rapture. For them, Revelation would have offered a measure of comfort, promising that their suffering under Roman rule would eventually amount to victory and eternal peace.

A more individualistic approach to the apocalypse dominates today's pop culture, Joustra said. Ever since the invention of the atomic bomb, he said, mainstream apocalypse narratives have shifted from something that God will do to something humans will cause. The question then becomes what sort of person an individual will be once you strip away laws, institutions and social mores, he said. [Doom and Gloom: 10 Post-Apocalyptic Worlds]

It's a concept that would have flummoxed the ancients, Joustra said. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotlebelieved that humans were defined by their relationships, institutions and communities. Stripping those things away and then asking what was left would be almost nonsensical, Joustra said.

"It's a much more individualistic way of thinking about human nature and the apocalypse that I think is different from anything else in human history," he said.

Original article on Live Science.
Enhanced color view of Pluto using images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and color data from the spacecraft's Ralph Instrument.

Pluto is the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system and used to be considered the ninth and most distant planet from the sun.

The strange world is located in the Kuiper Belt , a zone beyond the orbit of Neptune brimming with hundreds of thousands of rocky, icy bodies each larger than 62 miles (100 kilometers) across as well as 1 trillion or more comets .

Pluto stopped being a planet in 2006 when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet, a demotion that attracted controversy and stirred debate in the scientific community and among the general public.

Related: Why isn't Pluto a planet anymore?

American astronomer Percival Lowell first suggested that Pluto existed in 1905 when he observed strange deviations in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Lowell thought there must be another whose gravity is tugging on these ice giants, causing discrepancies in their orbits. Lowell proceeded to predict the mystery planet's location in 1915 but died 15 years before its discovery. Pluto was eventually discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory, based on predictions by Lowell and other astronomers.

Pluto got its name from 11-year-old Venetia Burney of Oxford, England, who suggested to her grandfather that the new world get its name from the Roman god of the underworld. Her grandfather then passed the name on to Lowell Observatory. The name also honors Percival Lowell, whose initials are the first two letters of Pluto.

What does Pluto look like?

Since Pluto is so far from Earth, little was known about the dwarf planet's size or surface conditions until 2015, when NASA's New Horizons space probe made a close flyby of Pluto. New Horizons showed that Pluto has a diameter of 1,473 miles (2,370 km), less than one-fifth the diameter of Earth, and only about two-thirds as wide as Earth's moon.

Observations of Pluto's surface by the New Horizons spacecraft revealed a variety of surface features, including mountains that reach as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters), comparable to the Rocky Mountains on Earth. While methane and nitrogen ice cover much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to support such enormous peaks, so scientists suspect that the mountains are formed on a bedrock of water ice.

The surface of Pluto as seen from NASA's New Horizons during its July 2015 flyby. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

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Pluto's surface is also covered in an abundance of methane ice, but New Horizons scientists have observed significant differences in the way the ice reflects light across the dwarf planet's surface. The dwarf planet also possesses ice ridge terrain that appears to look like a snakeskin; astronomers spotted similar features to Earth's penitentes, or erosion-formed features on mountainous terrain. The Pluto features are much larger; they are estimated at 1,650 feet (500 m) tall, while the Earth features are only a few meters in size.

Another distinct feature on Pluto's surface is a large heart-shaped region known unofficially as Tombaugh Regio (after Clyde Tombaugh; regio is Latin for region). The left side of the region (an area that takes on the shape of an ice cream cone) is covered in carbon monoxide ice. Other variations in the composition of surface materials have been identified within the "heart" of Pluto.

In the center-left of Tombaugh Regio is a very smooth region unofficially known by the New Horizons team as "Sputnik Planum," after Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik. This region of Pluto's surface lacks craters caused by meteorite impacts, suggesting that the area is, on a geologic timescale, very young  no more than 100 million years old. It's possible that this region is still being shaped and changed by geologic processes.

These icy plains also display dark streaks that are a few miles long and aligned in the same direction. It's possible the lines are created by harsh winds blowing across the dwarf planet's surface.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has also revealed evidence that Pluto's crust could contain complex organic molecules.

Related: Photos of Pluto and its moons

Pluto's surface is one of the coldest places in the solar system. Temperatures here can drop to around minus 375 to minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 226 to minus 240 degrees Celsius). When compared with past images, pictures of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that the dwarf planet had apparently grown redder over time, apparently due to seasonal changes.

Pluto may have (or may have had) a subsurface ocean, although the evidence is still out on that finding. If the subsurface ocean existed, it could have greatly affected Pluto's history. For example, scientists found that the zone of Sputnik Planitia redirected Pluto's orientation due to the amount of ice in the area, which was so heavy it affected Pluto overall; New Horizons estimated the ice is roughly 6 miles (10 km thick). A subsurface ocean is the best explanation for the evidence, the researchers added, although looking at less likely scenarios, a thicker ice layer or movements in the rock may be responsible for the movement. If Pluto did have a liquid ocean, and enough energy, some scientists think Pluto could harbor life.

What is Pluto made of?

Some of Pluto's parameters, according to NASA (opens in new tab):

Atmospheric composition: Methane, nitrogen. Observations by New Horizons show that Pluto's atmosphere extends as far as 1,000 miles (1,600 km) above the surface of the dwarf planet.

Magnetic field: It remains unknown whether Pluto has a magnetic field, but the dwarf planet's small size and slow rotation suggest it has little to no such field.

Chemical composition: Pluto probably consists of a mixture of 70 percent rock and 30 percent water ice.

Internal structure: The dwarf planet probably has a rocky core surrounded by a mantle of water ice, with more exotic ices such as methane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen ice coating the surface.

Infographic highlighting the surface, mantle and core properties of Pluto. (Image credit: Future/Wikimedia Commons)

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Pluto's orbital characteristics

Pluto's highly elliptical orbit can take it more than 49 times as far out from the sun as Earth. Since the dwarf planet's orbit is so eccentric, or far from circular, Pluto's distance from the sun can vary considerably. The dwarf planet actually gets closer to the sun than Neptune is for 20 years out of Pluto's 248-Earth-years-long orbit, providing astronomers a rare chance to study this small, cold, distant world.

Pluto's orbit: Quick facts Pluto's rotation is retrograde compared to the solar systems' other worlds; it spins backward, from east to west. Average distance from the sun: 3,670,050,000 miles (5,906,380,000 km)  39.482 times that of Earth Perihelion (closest approach to the sun): 2,755,773,000 miles (4,434,987,000 km)  30.151 times that of Earth Aphelion (farthest distance from the sun): 4,538,698,000 miles (7,304,326,000 km)  48.023 times that of Earth

As a result of that orbit, after 20 years as the eighth planet (in order going out from the sun), in 1999, Pluto crossed Neptune's orbit to become the farthest planet from the sun (until it was demoted to the status of dwarf planet).

When Pluto is closer to the sun, its surface ices thaw and temporarily form a thin atmosphere, consisting mostly of nitrogen, with some methane. Pluto's low gravity, which is a little more than one-twentieth that of Earth's, causes this atmosphere to extend much higher in altitude than Earth's. When traveling farther away from the sun, most of Pluto's atmosphere is thought to freeze and all but disappear. Still, in the time that it does have an atmosphere, Pluto can apparently experience strong winds. The atmosphere also has brightness variations that could be explained by gravity waves, or air flowing over mountains.

While Pluto's atmosphere is too thin to allow liquids to flow today, they may have streamed along the surface in the ancient past. New Horizons imaged a frozen lake in Tombaugh Regio that appeared to have ancient channels nearby. At some point in the ancient past, the planet could have had an atmosphere roughly 40 times thicker than on Mars.

Artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

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In 2016, scientists announced that they might have spotted clouds in Pluto's atmosphere using New Horizons data. Investigators saw seven bright features that are near the terminator (the boundary between daylight and darkness), which is commonly where clouds form. The features are all low in altitude and roughly about the same size, indicating that these are separate features. The composition of these clouds, if they are indeed clouds, would likely be acetylene, ethane and hydrogen cyanide.

Does Pluto have any moons?

Pluto has five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra, with Charon being the closest to Pluto and Hydra the most distant.

In 1978, astronomers discovered that Pluto had a very large moon nearly half the dwarf planet's own size. This moon was dubbed Charon, after the mythological demon who ferried souls to the underworld in Greek mythology.

Because Charon and Pluto are so similar in size, their orbit is unlike that of most planets and their moons. Both Pluto and Charon orbit a point in space that lies between them, similar to the orbits of binary star systems, For this reason, scientists refer to Pluto and Charon as a double dwarf planet, double planet or binary system.

A composite of enhanced color images of Charon (upper left) and Pluto (lower right), taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on its 2015 flyby. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

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Pluto and Charon are just 12,200 miles (19,640 km) apart, less than the distance by flight between London and Sydney. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes 6.4 Earth-days, and one Pluto rotation  a Pluto-day  also takes 6.4 Earth-days. This is because Charon hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto, a phenomenon known as tidal locking.

While Pluto has a reddish tint, Charon appears more grayish. In its early days, the moon may have contained a subsurface ocean, though the satellite probably can't support one today. Compared with most of the solar system's planets and moons, the Pluto-Charon system is tipped on its side in relation to the sun.

Observations of Charon by New Horizons have revealed the presence of canyons on the moon's surface. The deepest of those canyons plunges downward for 6 miles (9.7 km). A long swatch of cliffs and troughs stretches for 600 miles (970 km) across the middle of the satellite. A section of the moon's surface near one pole is covered in a much darker material than the rest of the planet. Similar to regions of Pluto, much of Charon's surface is free of craters  suggesting the surface is quite young and geologically active. Scientists saw evidence of landslides on its surface, the first time such features have been spotted in the Kuiper Belt. The moon may have also possessed its own version of plate tectonics, which cause geologic change on Earth.

In 2005, scientists photographed Pluto with the Hubble Space Telescope in preparation for the New Horizons mission and discovered two other tiny moons of Pluto, now dubbed Nix and Hydra. These satellites are two and three times farther away from Pluto than Charon. Based on measurements by New Horizons, Nix is estimated to be 26 miles (42 km) long and 20 miles (32 km) wide, while Hydra is estimated at 34 miles (55 km) long and 70 miles (113 km) wide. It is likely that Hydra's surface is coated primarily in water ice.

Scientists using Hubble discovered a fourth moon, Kerberos, in 2011. This moon has a doubled-lobed shape and the larger lobe is around 5 miles (8 km) across and the smaller lobe is around 3 miles (5 km) across. On July 11, 2012, a fifth moon, Styx, was discovered (with an estimated width of 6 miles or 10 km), further fueling the debate about Pluto's status as a planet.

The leading hypothesis for the formation of Pluto and Charon is that a nascent Pluto was struck with a glancing blow by another Pluto-size object. Most of the combined matter became Pluto, while the rest spun off to become Charon, this idea suggests. The other four moons may have formed from the same collision that created Charon.

Missions to Pluto

NASA's New Horizons mission is the first probe to study Pluto, its moons and other worlds within the Kuiper Belt up close. It was launched on January 2006, and successfully made its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015.

The New Horizons probe carries some of the ashes of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh.

The limited knowledge of the Pluto system created unprecedented dangers for the New Horizons probe. Prior to the mission's launch, scientists knew of the existence of only three moons around Pluto. The discovery of Kerberos and Styx during the spacecraft's journey fueled the idea that more satellites could orbit the dwarf planet, unseen from Earth. Collisions with unseen moons, or even small bits of debris, could have seriously damaged the spacecraft. But the New Horizons design team equipped the space probe with tools to protect it during its journey.

In October 2021, New Horizons made history when it returned the first close-up images of Pluto and it's moons.

The the first close-up image of Pluto and one of it's moons. Pluto is surrounded by sunlight reflected from Charon. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute/NOIRLab)

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Additional resources

Explore Pluto in more detail with NASA's 10 cool things we learned about Pluto article (opens in new tab). Read more about Pluto and the developing landscape (opens in new tab) of our Solar System with the International Astronomical Union. Discover the six things dwarf planets have taught us about the solar system with the American Geophysical Union's science news magazine Eos (opens in new tab).

Bibliography

International Astronomical Union. IAU. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/

NASA. (2021, August 5). Pluto. NASA. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/dwarf-planets/pluto/overview/

Talbert, T. (Ed.). (2020, July 14). 10 cool things we learned about pluto. NASA. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://www.nasa.gov/feature/five-years-after-new-horizons-historic-flyby-here-are-10-cool-things-we-learned-about-plut-0

Wendel, J. A. (2016, August 17). Six things dwarf planets have taught us about the solar system. Eos. Retrieved July 28, 2022, from https://eos.org/articles/six-things-dwarf-planets-have-taught-us-about-the-solar-system
New York (UN), Sep 22, 2017 (SPS) - During the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe reaffirmed the firm support of his country for the just struggle of the Saharawi people.

The African leader, made it clear that the United Nations has to express its support for the struggle of the Saharawi people and work together with the African Union to end the suffering of this people and guarantee their right to self-determination, demanding the implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council regarding the Saharawi cause.

The 72nd Regular Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 72), which attended by a Saharawi delegation led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamed-Salem ould Salek, convened at UN Headquarters on Tuesday, 12 September 2017. The General Debate opened on Tuesday, 19 September 2017, with a focus on the theme, Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet. (SPS)

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S ix people have been injured after a suspected acid attack near a shopping centre in east London.

Police and paramedics raced to the scene following reports a group were spraying a noxious substance near Stratford Centre, opposite the Westfield shopping centre, on Saturday night.

Images and videos showed police tending to victims at the nearby Tube station.

Scotland Yard said a man had been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.

One witness described hearing one of the injured victims screaming for help as he ran into the entrance of the Tube station.

He was given first aid by station workers and police before paramedics arrived at the scene, the witness said.

Another witness John Armitage said he saw emergency services personnel swarming the area after the suspected acid attack.

He said: "I was taking my mum to the station. There was a really heavy police presence around. It was all cordoned off so headed back home."

Police vehicles at the scene outside Westfield shopping centre in Stratford after a suspected acid attack / @ArmitageJW

Mr Armitage added that there were large crowds of people in the area which was usual for a Saturday evening.

Other witnesses at the scene said the violence broke out following an argument among a group of people.

A man who gave his name as Hossen, 28, a Burger King assistant manager, said he saw a victim and his friend, a known local homeless man, run into the fast food outlet bathroom "to wash acid off his face".

He said: "There were cuts around his eyes and he was trying to chuck water into them."

Emergency services respond after a suspected acid attack in Stratford 1 /9 Emergency services respond after a suspected acid attack in Stratford Emergency services workers outside Stratford Centre PA Two police vehicles parked near to a cordon after a suspected acid attack near Stratford shopping centre PA A crowd of people speak to police at a cordon outside Stratford Shopping Centre PA Emergency services at Stratford Centre in east London, following a suspected noxious substance attack where six people were reported injured PA A police cordon inside Stratford Tube station after a suspected acid attack PA Emergency services workers outside Stratford Centre PA Firefighters at the scene of a suspected acid attack in Stratford PA

Inside the Burger King toilets, water could be seen all over the floor, along with toilet tissue and medical gloves.

Outside, people gathered at police cordons while victims were being treated behind a blue screen.

Many of those at the scene, kept inside the cordon by police, were visibly upset by the incident.

One said: "I can't speak now, my mate's been hurt."

Harry Green, 19, told MailOnline he witnessed the chaotic aftermath.

He said: As we stepped off the tube there were dozens of people giving statements to officers looking distressed as though something had just happened.

Police treat injured victims behind a screen after a noxious substance was thrown over a crowd near Stratford shopping centre / Twitter

The Met Police spokesman said: Police were called just before 8pm to the area around Stratford shopping centre to reports of a group of males spraying what is believed to be a noxious substance.

London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade have attended.

A number of people have been reported injured at different locations - believed to be six people. We await further details.

One male has been arrested on suspicion of GBH. Officers remain on scene. A cordon is in place. Enquiries continue.

Two police vehicles parked outside the Stratford Centre following a suspected acid attack / PA

The incident is not being treated as terror related, Scotland Yard said.

Paul Gibson, assistant director of operations at London Ambulance Service, said: "We have sent a number of resources to the scene including paramedics in cars, ambulance crews, an incident response officer and our Hazardous Area Response Team.

"So far, we have treated at least five patients at the scene and taken three patients to hospital. We remain on scene."

Great Eastern Road was cordoned off at the junction with Station Street as police investigated.
C elebrities have backed calls to save a family-run Italian restaurant in affluent Notting Hill amid plans to have it demolished to make way for the expansion of a cinema.

The Da Maria restaurant, a favourite among locals for its classic dishes, was opened by the Ruocco family as a Neapolitan trattoria in 1980.

Singer Lily Allen, who lives nearby, is said to be behind the campaign to save the well-loved restaurant.

Stars such as Madonna and Annie Lennox are also said to be fans of the eatery, according to Pasquale Ruocco, 65, who runs the business.

The family face losing their "life's work" over plans to extend the neighbouring Gate Cinema, which is owned by the trendy Picturehouse Group.

Both businesses are located in a Grade II listed building.

Da Maria: The restaurant is located in the same building as the cinema, which is to gain a larger foyer under the new plans / Google

An online petition, Save Notting Hills family Trattoria from demolition, has been signed by more than 1,500.

Pasquales son, Luciano, 22, said the restaurant feels like our home to their staff, and that they are praying the council will reject the plans.

Luciano, who helps his father run the trattoria every evening, said: It came as a shock to us, as we picked up the letter from the council after we returned from holiday [visiting family in Naples].

We all thought, thats it, we dont stand a chance, because people love the cinema. But since the petition was set up, our customers have been very supportive and we just hope the council doesnt allow it.

The petition, set up by a group of customers, claims that the potential demolition comes in the charged atmosphere of the destruction of independent businesses in Notting Hill.

Da Maria: The restaurant is located in the same building as the cinema, which is to gain a larger foyer under the new plans / Google

The shared landlord has submitted a planning application to demolish the eatery and extend the cinemas premises.

In a review last week, the Guardians Jay Rayner described attempts to have it demolished as infuriating and utterly heartbreaking.

In his comment for the newspaper, he wrote: A cheap democratic eatery like Da Maria is not just a nice thing. Its not quaint. Its a vital resource.

Its the kind of place that keeps a city like London both human and, more to the point, humane.

In the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a restaurant of this quality at these prices is akin to a bloody miracle.

The local authority said it could not comment until a decision has been made on the planning application, which was submitted in July.

Its planning committee is to make a decision on the proposals on Tuesday, October 10.

The Picturehouse told the Standard that plans were "as as much a surprise to us as it was to our neighbours."
A petition set up by Uber urging Transport for London to reconsider stripping the firm of its licence has been signed by a record number of people.

TfL announced the shock decision not to renew the taxi-hailing app companys licence in the capital on Friday.

The transport body ruled that Uber was not fit and proper to hold a private hire licence and had shown a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to public safety.

The firm immediately announced plans to appeal the decision and set up an online petition calling for support from their 3.5 million customers in London.

Uber loses licence to operate in London - reaction highlights

By Saturday lunchtime, a record-breaking 500,000 people had put forward their signatures, making it the fastest growing online petition set up this year.

It read: By wanting to ban our app from the capital, Transport for London and their chairman the Mayor have given in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice.

Record-breaking: 500k people have signed the app calling on TfL not to strip Uber of its licence

If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive millions of Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

Referring to Mr Khans London is open slogan, it went on: This ban shows the world that London is far from being open and is closed to innovative companies, who bring choice to consumers and work opportunities to those who need them.

The petition was shared by thousands of people on social media with the hashtag #saveyourUber.

Kajal Odedra, UK director at Change.org said: "That is the fastest growing petition we've seen in the UK this year.

Thumbs up: a black cab driver expresses his joy at the ruling by TfL / PA

"The speed with which this grew shows how powerful online campaigning can be.

"In just 24 hours we've seen hundreds of thousands of people start and sign petitions on either side of the Uber/TFL debate."

Londoners backing the petition hit out at TfL for leaving them with little choice other than to use rip off black cabs and accused officials of crushing innovative companies.

Ubers licence expires on Saturday, September 30 from which date the firm will have 21 days to appeal.

TfL said on Friday that the app will remain active in London until the appeal process is exhausted.

When TfL proposed strict new private hire rules that would have limited Ubers operations in 2015, more than 200,000 people signed a petition against them and most of the proposals were dropped.

In Fridays ruling, TfL raised concerns over Ubers approach to reporting serious criminal offences and how it obtained enhanced criminal records checks for drivers.

In August the firm was accused by police of allowing a driver who allegedly sexually assaulted a passenger to strike again by not reporting it.

Weeks later the vetting process for thousands of drivers offering the under-fire service was declared invalid, after TfL decided minicab firms had to use its chosen contractor to apply for a DBS check.

It flagged up Ubers approach to how medical certificates were obtained - for example drivers using an online GP service via video rather than having a check in person as the regulations insist.

The transport body also queried Ubers use of Greyball software, which could be used to block regulators access to the app.

Mr Khan said: I want London to be at the forefront of innovation and new technology and to be a natural home for exciting new companies that help Londoners by providing a better and more affordable service.

However, all companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standard we expect  particularly when it comes to the safety of customers. Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security.

I fully support TfLs decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to licence Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners safety and security. Any operators or private hire services in London need to play by the rules.

Tom Elvidge, General Manager of Uber in London, said: 3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision.

By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts.

Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.
B ritish actor Colin Firth has been granted Italian citizenship after speaking out against Brexit.

Mr Firth reportedly applied to become dual Italian-British after the Brexit referendum last year.

The Italian interior ministry confirmed the news in a statement to Reuters, saying: The very famous actor, who won an Oscar for the film The Kings Speech, is married to a citizen from our country and has often declared his love for our land.

Mr Firth, who recently starred in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, has been married to Livia Giuggioli since 1997 and the couple have two sons together.

He has previously described Brexit as "a disaster of unexpected proportions" in an interview with an Austrian newspaper.

Mr Firth said in a statement: A connection with Italy has existed in my family for more than two decades now. I was married there and had two children born in Rome.

My wife and I are both extremely proud of our own countries. We feel that weve made a gift of that to each other. Our children have been dual citizens since the beginning. We never really thought much about our different passports.

But now, with some of the uncertainty around, we thought it sensible that we should all get the same. Livia is applying for a British passport. I will always be extremely British (you only have to look at or listen to me).

Britain is our home and we love it here. Despite the enticements of my profession to relocate to more remunerative climes Ive always chosen to base my career out of the UK and pay my taxes here. That hasnt changed.

I married into Italy (and anyone will tell you when you marry an Italian you dont just marry one person; you marry a family and perhaps an entire country).

Like almost everybody I have a passionate love of Italy and joining my wife and kids in being dual citizens will be a huge privilege.
A student has revealed what are believed to be the last words of a London headteacher feared kidnapped by pirates she kayaked alone in the Amazon.

Emma Kelty, 43, disappeared after sending a distress signal from a position 150 miles west of the Brazilian jungle city of Manaus, in a remote area known as a drug-trafficking route and for pirate attacks.

The experienced adventurer, of Finchley, was trying to paddle from the source of the Amazon in Peru, through Brazil, to its mouth at the Atlantic.

Ms Kelty, who was 42 days into her 4,000 mile trip when she vanished, had been documenting her journey on social media.

Her final post on Facebook read: So in or near coari (100km away) i will have my boat stolen and i will be killed too. Nice.

Emma Kelty became the sixth woman to ski unassisted to the South Pole in January / Family handout

Now, it has emerged the post may have referenced a conversation with locals who warned the kayaker of dangers on the stretch of river she was approaching.

Student Miliane Vincente told the Daily Mail how villagers in her home of Sao Joao de Catua on the Solimoes river called Ms Kelty out of the water.

Ms Vincent told the newspaper: I told her it was very dangerous, that it was full of drug trafficking and terrorists.

I still remember her last words: I can't stay, the more time I stay here the more time I'm losing. For me to succeed I have to do this route. Your hearts are very kind, but I have to carry on.

Emma Kelty sent distress signals before her disappearance / @emmatamsinkelty

She thanked me and took a photo of us, then I said good luck and she said the same. I'm very sad that I tried to help her but I didn't manage to.

Local authorities have arrested a teenager in connection with her murder, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Police in Brazil told the BBC her body has not yet been found but a teenage boy has said he participated in her murder along with six other people.

Emma Kelty posted this picture online on September 10 with the caption: "Enjoying a moments peace ... all is calm and just enjoying just being." / Twitter

The Foreign Office said it was supporting the family of a British woman following her death in Brazil.

The experienced adventurer was 42 days into a 4,000-mile trip when she

The day before she went missing she had tweeted about passing boats full of men with arrows and rifles, and the stretch of river she was attempting to travel is a known route for bandits and drug traffickers, local reports say.

A kayak identical to the one in her online posts was found close to the river by police and officers said they had also found criminals trying to sell some of her belongings.

It is believed Ms Kelty had stopped to pitch her tent beside the river on Wednesday night when she triggered an emergency locator which informed her team back in the UK that she was in trouble.

Up to 60 Brazillian Navy personnel became involved in the search for her, using a helicopter, two boats and three divers. A team from the special homicide and kidnap squad also arrived in the area to investigate local reports that she could have been attacked by pirates who regularly target boats passing through.

Paying tribute to Ms Kelty her brothers Piers and Giles and her sister Natasha said they were "extremely proud" of their sibling and that she was "dearly loved".
B ritish shoppers have less than one month left to spend their old round 1 coins.

From October 16, the coins will no longer be accepted in shops, restaurants and other retailers.

The new 12-sided 1 coins were released at the end of march and are currently in a period of co-circulation with the old ones.

The Treasury and Royal Mint estimate that about 500 million round pounds are still out there.

The new 12-sided 1 coins / Ben Birchall/PA

After October 16, any unspent old 1 coins can be traded in at banks but this is only a temporary option.

The Royal Mint said: We would encourage you to spend, bank or donate your round 1 coins before October 15.

We have urged businesses and their frontline staff to, where possible, prioritise the new coin when giving customers their change.

Londoners get their hands on the first new pound coins

Customers are entitled to ask for their change in any way they wish, but until October 15, businesses can continue to give out the old coin.

Vending machines, shopping trolleys, lockers, self-service checkouts and ticket machines should now have been upgraded so that they accept the new 12-sided 1 coins.

Rare 1 coin designs including the Edinburgh City 2011 and the 2011 Cardiff City 1 have previously sold on eBay for up to 35.

The new 1 coin, which has a gold-coloured outer ring and a silver-coloured inner ring, has been described as the most secure in the world and boasts high-tech features including a hologram.
Architect Randy Brown can be attributed with single-handedly bringing cutting-edge architecture to Nebraska, having learned under West Coast architects like the late Frank Israel and returning to the Cornhusker State with know-how and a passion for contemporary architecture. Brown's own house and studio on a hilly 10-acre lot in Omaha is a striking expression of his architecture. A dynamic addition in Corten steel is linked to an existing 1950s house by a translucent bridge. It's a highly personal and experiment design with an interesting background. Read on for a tour of the Laboratory House.

Randy and his wife Kim purchased the small ranch-style house and large lot in 1999. "We said we would take our time," he says. And they did, moving into the expanded house eight years later. This near decade time frame can be attributed to treating the house as a lab  hence LABoratory House  for exploring design and construction. Randy and his employees would draw and refine elements as they built the house themselves. A continual back-and-forth between drawing and building slowly refined the house over time. Eventually Randy hired some of his students to help out, a process that worked very well but still required he "and the full-time guy working manual labor for two intense years."

Brown's addition is a three-story piece, where the upper two floors cantilever beyond the angled footprint of the lowest level. Trace the glowing bridge (what Brown call "the skywalk") beyond the right edge of the photo, and that is where the existing house sits. But the two are also connected on the lowest level via a hallway, offering a different avenue of connection and tying the addition to the hilly land it sits upon. The skywalk hints at the playfulness that is found inside.
I ran has successfully tested a new ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) in a show of defiance of US demands, state media reported on Saturday.

Washington is likely to be concerned after the test-firing of the Khoramshahr missile, which was showcased at a military parade on Friday and then on public media.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB carried footage of the missile test without giving its time and location, including footage from an on-board camera which it said showed the detachment of the cone to carry multiple warheads.

"You are seeing images of the successful test of the Khoramshahr ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the latest missile of our country," it said.

An Iranian medium range missile passes by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani / EPA

"This is the third Iranian missile with a range of 2,000 km," it added.

At Friday's military parade, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would strengthen its missile capabilities without seeking any country's permission.

At the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, US president Donald Trump warned that Iran was building its missile programme and accused it of exporting violence to Yemen, Syria and other parts of the Middle East.

Mr Trump said Iran was one of a "small group of rogue regimes", adding that it was "death and destruction".

He also branded an "embarrassment" the 2015 pact struck between the US and other world powers with Iran to restrict its nuclear programme in return for relief from economic sanctions.

The US in July imposed unilateral sanctions against Iran, saying Tehran's ballistic missile tests in January violate the spirit of a UN resolution that endorsed the nuclear deal.

It has called on Tehran not to take any further action related to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

Iran denies its missile development breaches the resolution, saying the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons.
T his is the dramatic moment a dam failed in disaster-stricken Puerto Rico as thousands of residents scrambled to evacuate the river valley.

The footage, taken from a helicopter by a correspondent from Weather Nation TV, shows a deluge of water gushing through a crack in the infrastructure

Puerto Rico's emergency services have raced to evacuate tens of thousands of people as the damaged dam teetered on the brink of total collapse in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

As Puerto Ricans struggled without electricity after Maria wreaked devastation, killing at least 25 people across the Caribbean, officials urgently worked to clear the river valley in the island's northwest.

Christina Villalba, of the island's emergency management agency, said there was little doubt the dam was about to break.

"It could be tonight, it could be tomorrow, it could be in the next few days, but it's very likely it will be soon," she said, adding that authorities aimed to complete evacuations within hours.

Some 70,000 people live downstream from the earthen dam on the rain-swollen Guajataca River, said Governor Ricardo Rossello in a late-afternoon news conference on Friday.

Residents with provisions in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico / AP

Residents were being ferried to higher ground in buses, according to bulletins issued by the National Weather Service from its office in San Juan.

Mr Rossello said the rains sparked by Maria had cracked the dam and could cause fatal flooding. Puerto Rico's national guard has been drafted in to assist evacuations.

Maria, the second major hurricane to savage the Caribbean this month and the most powerful storm to strike Puerto Rico in nearly a century, carved a path of destruction on Wednesday.

The island remained entirely without electricity, except for emergency generators, two days later. Telephone service was also patchy.

Roofs were ripped from many homes and torrential downpours from the storm sent several rivers to record flood levels.

Officials confirmed on Friday at least six storm-related fatalities in Puerto Rico, an island of 3.4 million inhabitants. Earlier news reports had put the island's death toll as high as 15.

"We know of other potential fatalities through unofficial channels that we haven't been able to confirm," said Hector Pesquera, the government's secretary of public safety.

Maria struck Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm as the island was already facing the largest municipal debt crisis in US history.

The storm was expected to have caused $45 billion in damage and lost economic activity across the Caribbean, with at least $30 billion of that in Puerto Rico, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeller at Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia.

Elsewhere in the Caribbean, 14 deaths were reported on Dominica, an island nation of 71,000 inhabitants. Two people were killed in the French territory of Guadeloupe and one in the US Virgin Islands.

Two people died when the storm roared past the Dominican Republic on Thursday, according to media outlet El Jaya.

Maria churned past Turks and Caicos Islands on Friday, then skirted away from the Bahamas, sparing both British territories from the brunt of the storm, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

It still had sustained winds of up to 125 miles per hour by late Friday, making it a Category 3 hurricane, but was expected to weaken gradually over the next two days.

Storm swells driven by Maria were expected to reach the southeastern coast of the US mainland on Friday, the NHC said.
U S Senator John McCain has said he cannot support the latest Republican bill to dismantle Obamacare, dealing it a potentially fatal blow.

The Arizona senator, who is battling brain cancer, has said he cannot in good conscience back the proposal.

He said he took no pleasure in announcing his opposition and noted that the bill's authors "are my dear friends."

Mr McCain, a former Republican presidential nominee and Vietnam War hero, complained about the rushed process Republicans used to push the bill forward. He said he would consider supporting a bill like it if it had emerged from extensive hearings, debate and amendment. "But that has not been the case," he said.

Senator John McCain was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer / REUTERS

It is the second time he has voted against his partys line on the issue.

McCain, who cast his "no" vote on the previous bill to repeal Obamacare in July just days after being diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, said he could not support the new bill without knowing how much it would cost, how it would affect insurance premiums and "how many people will be helped or hurt by it," information that will not be available until the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office provides a full assessment at the end of September.

Republicans have a slim Senate majority in a 100-seat chamber that they control by 52-48. The Democrats are united in opposition to the bill.

Mr McCains decision could doom the conservatives seven-year campaign to repeal former President Barack Obamas signature legislative achievement.

With several other Republicans still undecided on the measure, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this week he intended to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote next week, though he did not promise to do so.

Mr McConnell has been trying to schedule a vote on the bill by September 30, the last day on which the bill could pass with only a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate.

A vote taken any later than that would have to garner at least 60 votes for passage.

Weeks after the humiliating defeat in July, when the Obamacare repeal fight seemed to be over, the current bill was introduced by Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham, a close friend of McCain's, and seemed to gain momentum.
A powerful 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico just days after devastating tremors killed more than 200 people.

The new quake shook the southern state of Oaxaca earlier today, US experts said.

The tremors swayed buildings in Mexico City as the region recovers from a 7.1 magnitude quake that claimed at least 295 lives on Tuesday.

Images emerged of terrified residents huddled together and praying after the quake hit as emergency workers evacuated sites already destroyed by Tuesdays disaster.

Rescue workers search for people trapped among debris / AFP/Getty Images

Alejandra Castellanos was on the second floor of a hotel in a central area and ran down the stairs and outside with her husband when quake alarms sounded.

She said: "I was frightened because I thought, not again."

Evacuation: A police officer and people wait along the street after a tremor was felt in Mexico City / REUTERS

The extent of damage and injuries was not immediately clear but local media reported rescuers with dogs hunting for people trapped in the rubble of a collapsed office block.

A Mexican soldier and his dog search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building / REUTERS

Twenty children were killed when a school collapsed in the Mexican capital during the first quake.

A family of 11 were also reported dead after a church was destroyed during a christening celebration.

A shake map of the 6.2 magnitude quake by the US Geological Survey / EPA

A magnitude 8.1 earthquake also struck earlier this month near the state of Chiapas.

This page is being updated.
U S Air Force bombers have flown close to North Korea's east coast to send a message that president Donald Trump has "many military options".

B-1B bombers from Guam and F-15 fighter escorts from Okinawa in Japan flew the mission in international airspace over the waters east of North Korea, the Pentagon said on Saturday.

The US said it was the furthest north of the Demilitarised Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula that any American fighter or bomber has flown this century.

It came as North Korea's foreign minister said Mr Trump was trying to turn the UN into a "gangster's nest" where "bloodshed is the order of the day."

US president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Alabama / AP

Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations on Saturday that Mr Trump's insults "made our rocket's visit to the US mainland inevitable all the more".

US Defence Department spokesman Dana White said in a statement that the mission showed how seriously the US took what she called North Korea's "reckless behaviour".

The statement said the flights were a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message" that the president "has many military options to defeat any threat".

Ramping up the tension: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un celebrates after a missile launch / Getty Images

Ms White said "we are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies".

Mr Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un have been embroiled in a war of words since the US president's UN speech and economic sanctions announced earlier this week. The president threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if the US was forced to defend itself or its allies against an attack.

He branded Jong-un a "rocket man on a suicide mission". The North Korea leader responded by calling Mr Trump a "mentally deranged dotard".

Donald Trump unveils new sanctions against North Korea

On Saturday, North Korea's foreign minister also told the UN that the country was "only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state of nuclear force".

He said that Mr Trump was a "mentally deranged person full of meglomania" who is "holding the nuclear button" and that "none other than Mr Trump himself is on a suicide mission."

On Thursday, the US President announced more economic sanctions against the impoverished and isolated country, targeting foreign companies that deal with the North.

"North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world and it is unacceptable that others financially support this criminal, rogue regime," Mr Trump said as he joined Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in for a meeting in New York.
A Saudi cleric has been banned from preaching after making bizarre claims that women's brains shrink to a quarter the size of a man's after they go shopping.

Saudi state TV quoted officials who said Sheikh Saad Al-Hijri was suspended from all religious activity after explaining why he believed women shouldn't drive.

His speech on the "evils" of women driving contained comments that "diminished human value", according to a spokesman for the governor of Asir province who spoke to the channel.

Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women from driving, despite ambitious government targets to increase their public role, especially in the workforce.

Women in the kingdom are also bound by law to wear long robes and a headscarf and require the consent of a male guardian for most legal actions.

In a video identifying him as the head of the religious edicts department in the southern province, Mr Al-Hijri asked what the traffic department would do it if it discovered a man with only half a brain.

"Would it give him a license or not? It would not. So how can it give it to a woman when she has only half?" he said.

"If she goes to the market she loses another half. What is left? A quarter ... We demand the traffic department check because she is not suitable to drive and she has only a quarter."

The comments provoked fury on social media, which is hugely popular in the kingdom.

Twitter users shared the video, many criticising it and making jokes about his remarks, under the Arabic hashtag "Al-Hijri_women_quarter_brain"

Some users posted pictures of Saudi female scientists and academics in response and questioned Mr Al-Hijri's own intellectual capacities.

His suspension, ordered by the provincial governor, was aimed at preventing the spread of views that spark controversy and do not serve the national interest, the provincial spokesman said, according to Ekhbariya TV's official Twitter account.

Any others who used religious platforms to preach such views would also be banned.

The government's modernising reforms, backed by Saudi Arabia's business class, have sparked tensions with influential clerics upon whose support the ruling family relies. Some clerics have millions of followers on social media.
D ebbie McGee left Giovanni Pernice in shock as she wrapped up their debut Strictly Come Dancing routine with a surprise kiss.

The 58-year-old entertainer left professional dancer Pernice open mouthed after she grabbed his face, kissed his lips and pushed him to the floor.

Speaking about the kiss, Pernice said: Look shes left me with red lips.

Explaining her impromptu improvisation, McGee told host Claudia Winkleman: That wasnt in the routine. In the rehearsal I wasnt kissing him so he didnt expect it.

Leading the way: Debbie McGee and Giovanni Pernice / PA

Viewers were blown away by McGees bold move with one tweeting: Was Debbie meant to kiss Giovanni on the lips? What a minx!

Others voiced their jealousy at the kiss: No words for Debbie, that was phenomenal. I'd happily kiss Giovanni again #strictly.

Others praised McGee for 'doing it for the older women'.

McGee, who was an outsider in the run-up to tonights show, wowed the judges with her Paso Doble, which saw her jump to second on the leader board with 30 points.

Judge Bruno Tonioli likened her to a spicy Italian sauce, saying: Hot and spicy like an arrabiata sauce on pasta. There was a lot of very, very good detail. Youre in very good shape arent you.

Craig Revel Horwood, famed for his critical comments, added: Whatever Giovanni has done to you darling its working  youre dancing like a 20-year-old out there.

Head judge Shirley Ballas hailed her outstanding while Darcey Bussell said: You are on fire Debbie. Youre so flexible. I love it. Keep it up because youre going to go along way.

Strictly Come Dancing 2017 Contestants - in pictures 1 /25 Strictly Come Dancing 2017 Contestants - in pictures Alexandra Burke and Gorka Marquez PA Chizzy Akudolu and Pasha Kovalev PA Mollie King and AJ Pritchard PA Debbie McGee and Giovanni Pernice PA Ruth Langsford and her partner Anton du Beke PA Amy Dowden and Brian Conley PA Charlotte Hawkins and Brendan Cole Ray Burmiston/BBC/PA Mollie King and AJ Pritchard PA Alexandra Burke and Gorka Marquez PA Oti Mabuse and Jonnie Peacock PA Debbie McGee and Giovanni Pernice PA Susan Calman and Kevin Clifton PA Chizzy Akudolu and Pasha Kovalev PA Aston Merrygold and Janette Manrara PA Gemma Atkinson and Aijaz Skorjanec PA Simon Rimmer and Karen Clifton PA Joe McFadden and Katya Jones PA The Reverend Richard Cole and Dianne Buswell PA Nadiya Bychkova with her celebrity partner Davood Ghadami PA

Strictly Come Dancing is on BBC One next Saturday at 6:45pm.
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In August 2017 there were two explosions in ammunition storage facilities in Kurdish controlled northern Iraq. To assure people that this was not an Islamic terrorist attack, the Kurdish police released some details, admitting that one explosion was the result of an electrical fire. But then it leaked out that another reason the Kurds were investigating was the instability of some of the ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) ammunition and explosives it had captured and put into storage over the last few months. Then it came out that the cause of at least one explosion may have been unstable locally manufactured explosives recently captured from ISIL weapons manufacturing facilities the Kurds seized intact near Mosul. It was no secret that that Kurds had been keeping captured weapons since they became autonomous in the early 1990s. The U.S. has been trying to get those older artillery and mortar systems replaced with newer stuff, mainly because these weapons were worn out and unreliable. But obtaining any new weapons and ammo for the Kurds has always been complicated by the fact that the Iraqi government wants to withhold such aid because they fear that they may have to fight the Kurds again. That is mainly about the Kurds taking control of oil fields in areas they control and exporting it via Turkey. Then there is the fact that the Kurds are more effective fighters than the Iraqi Arabs. Further complicating the situation is Iraqi Kurds plan to conduct a referendum in areas they control to see how many Iraqis (mostly Kurds) living in the autonomous north are willing to back independence. This vote, despite considerable opposition from just about anyone who is not a Kurd, is set to take place on September 25 th . In that respect these accidental explosions distracted the media, for a few hours anyway.

Despite these explosions the Kurds are more diligent than Arab Iraqis in storing ammunition, not just because some of it is old but because Cold War era ammo made for Russian and Chinese weapons is notorious for not aging well and the American warned them early on, as provided tech assistance in storing explosives safely. But that isnt always enough. Since the 1990s there have been numerous explosions worldwide that involved Russian or Chinese made ammo that got too old and/or was stored improperly. After 2000 the Russians, embarrassed by this as they sought to sell new weapons and munitions to old customers made an effort to help nations, especially in Africa and the Middle East, who still had a lot of that old stuff in storage, on how to inspect and detect ammo that was dangerous. The Russians also provided help in safely disposing of the older, unstable munitions.

Despite that effort embarrassing accidents still took place, although not as frequently. In early 2014 an explosion in a military ammunition warehouse in southern Congo killed at least twenty and more than fifty were wounded. The cause was a lightning strike that started a fire that reached some of the ammo before firefighting efforts could deal with it. This took place near Congos third-largest city, Mbuji-Mayi. Like many African countries Congo received ammo supplies from Western and Russian sources since the 1960s and a lot of it was never used and has simply grown old and unstable. Heeding advice from Russian and Chinese arms experts the African nations were making an effort to improve the security of these ammo dumps, to make theft (which means moving this dangerous stuff) or spontaneous detonation (from age and heat) less likely. Russia could speak from recent experience in such matters. From 2008-12 Russia suffered 17 of these ammo depot explosions, all of which included some fatalities. While there were five of these incidents in 2012, there were only two in 2013 and hardly any since 2014. The new safety measures were less enthusiastically embraced outside Russia, especially in parts of Africa where fighting was still going on and chaos was the rule. For example the Congo had planned to upgrade ammo depots to better handle lightning problems, but the Mbuji-Mayi ammo storage site had not yet been upgraded to deal with that. By 2017 Congo was drifting towards another civil war and ammo warehouse safety was no longer a top priority.

These ammo explosions are a common problem in countries that have long used ammunition bought from Russia or China. During the communist period (1920s-1991), as per the Soviet custom, old ammunition was not destroyed, but kept around. Communist countries were poor. It made sense to keep those old mortar and artillery shells (plus bombs and military explosives) for the inevitable war with the enemies of socialism. But the chemical reactions taking place in propellants and explosives after these items are manufactured followed their own schedule and that eventually led to dangerous side effects. Over time, the compounds, that make the propellants and explosives work, deteriorate and change. This renders the propellants and explosives useless or, in many cases, unstable and very dangerous or use or just move. Russia had more of a problem with this than China, which could afford to dispose of older munitions and had much less older stuff stored away.

Africa has been the scene of many of these explosions, largely because of the climate (often hot and damp) and the most lax safety standards. Another problem in Africa is that ammo storage facilities are often in urban areas. Thus there are often hundreds of civilian deaths. As is common in Africa, military units are often based inside major cities, the better to deal with any attempts to overthrow the government. Large quantities of ammunition are often stored on these urban bases, so the troops can quickly handle any contingency. African armies tend to be poorly trained and led, which often expresses itself in sloppy safety procedures and hazardous handling of munitions.

The danger is not over once the explosions have died down. Many shells and rockets are thrown, unexploded, hundreds of meters from the storage area. These will have to be carefully removed before someone, or an animal, disturbs the munition and sets it off. Some of these munitions are buried in the wreckage of damaged or destroyed structures. After the 1990s ammunition explosions like this became increasingly common. Until about 2010 there was usually one big explosion somewhere, and 10-20 smaller ones, each year. There are still some small ones, but far fewer of the big ones.

Even recently manufactured ammo can accidentally detonate if not stored or handled properly. You cannot be too careful how you store, and handle, this stuff. For example, in 2010 four Ukrainian sailors were seriously injured when two 30mm cannon shells spontaneously exploded. Actually, those shells didn't go off entirely without warning. The navy reported that the shells were old, beyond their use by date, and were probably set off by vibrations ships generate during training exercises.

This sort of thing has been the cause of many spontaneous explosions on Russian ships and in ammunition depots, even before the Cold War ended in 1991. These accidents also happen while efforts to safely dispose of it are underway. In 2008 an Albanian ammunition processing facility north of the capital exploded. There were over 200 casualties, including at least nine dead (largely among the 4,000 civilians living nearby). Over 300 buildings were destroyed, and over 2,000 damaged. The facility was used to destroy old ammo, which was a condition for Albania to join NATO. There were about 100,000 tons of old ammunition in Albania, and the destroyed facility dismantled 500-600 tons of the stuff each month. The explosion in Albania probably occurred during the process of extracting explosives from the old ammo. This can be tricky, as the least little spark, can set this stuff off. Worse, older ammo in an unstable state can go off without a spark. This sort of thing is what makes the crudely made ISIL explosives so dangerous.

Russia has long had problems with elderly, and cranky, munitions. One saving grace was that Russia tended to put these depots in isolated areas, so the casualties were low. However, the Russians took the hint after the 1990s and disposed of huge quantities of Cold War surplus munitions.

The Iraqi Kurds may have a similar problem in future. For the Kurds, that would be good news because that would mean they were no longer in danger of running out of ammo and explosives when they need that stuff most.
The polls are now open everywhere in America  from Maine to Hawaii. Check out a photo gallery of images from across the U.S.
The suspect has been identified as a UVA student. All three of the victims were football players. | Read More
Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Melania Trump gave a speech before a luncheon gathering of United Nations spouses, addressing cyberbullying and child advocacy. As usual, her look, affect, and performance conveyed infinitely more than her brief scripted speech ever could. Melania, in fact, is beginning to seem like an increasingly powerful  albeit unacknowledged  expression of all the madness swirling around the current administration.

At the U.N., Melania took the podium in an eye-straining vivid-fuchsia Delpozo dress, distinguished by gigantic puffy sleeves and belted snugly  like many of her outfits  just beneath the bosom. The outsize, three-quarter sleeves functioned almost like sails or balloons, creating fabric hollows that inflated with air and billowed widely out around her. Her long, middle-parted hair was styled in its customary unmoving waves, curving around her sculpted face like a stage curtain stalled at mid-rise. The matching stilettos were at least four inches high. Taken together, this was a high-glam, show-stopping, BIG look, both literally and figuratively. The critics pounced. Outfit is not flattering. Sad, wrote one Twitter wag. Melania wearing a pink Snuggie, smirked another. And some deemed it poor taste for the First Lady to wear a $3,000 dress while declaring, No child should ever feel hungry.

The First Ladys appearance did feel off somehow, but these were not the reasons. The dress was chic and interesting (if oddly voluminous), and the spouses of world leaders are always going to wear fine, expensive clothes. Thats just normal. The unease we felt watching Melania this week stems from something deeper: the many striking incongruities that underlie many of the First Ladys public performances.

Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

On Wednesday, we saw some of those incongruities on display as Melania took her place and began to speak. At first blush, she seemed larger than life  a voluptuous ship of state propelled by shocking-pink sails. But look again and listen: the First Lady seemed uncertain, her face contorted as if on the verge of tears for a few minutes. As she invoked the importance of human dignity and leaving no one behind, Melanias soft voice quivered, her eyebrows rising into an upside-down v of distress.

When she spoke of motherhood being the most joyous role of her life, her voice caught in her throat most unjoyously, like a stifled sob. The remainder of the eight-minute speech was delivered in tremulous tones, at times as if it was being read phonetically. If we experienced discomfort watching this speech then, it came not from the First Ladys dress, but from these marked contrasts  between that oversize fuchsia glamazon power outfit and the halting, childlike woman wearing it, between the words and the person speaking them.

In its content, too, Melanias speech troubled us with contradictions. In the wake of her husbands cruel repeal of DACA  with its potential expulsion of 800,000 young Dreamers  and a mere day after his coarse, belligerent U.N. speech, the First Lady exhorted us  with no detectable irony  to protect children from feeling frightened  or afraid, with nowhere to turn, invoked peace, and extolled the importance of imparting ethical lessons to the young. In response, journalist Joy Reid dryly tweeted a newsflash to Melania: Your husband is Donald Trump.

Oddly, though, in the end, Melania Trumps speech proved powerful and moving, not in spite of all its tonal and affective contradictions, but because of them. The Trump administration likely views Melania as a useful softening agent, believing her beauty and fashionable wow factor effective distractions from her husbands brutal policies and untruths. But when pressed into service as a spokesperson, Melania winds up performing the very things her husband would wish her to screen out.

In this disconnection between messenger and message, her obvious discomfort in the role thrust upon her, and  as we saw on Wednesday  the estrangement she can display even from her own high-fashion costumes, Melania reminds us that she represents the most incongruous and ill-fitting presidency of our lifetimes. Like Melania at sea in her big pink dress, the president seems to have donned a costume for a role that far exceeds his capacities.

Melania faltering over her words reminds us of a president who seems unaware (or worse, heedless) of the import or ramifications of his language. Like Melania, the president performs a troubling distance from what he is called upon to do. These are not missteps in the era of Trump, they are its hallmarks. The First Ladys public appearances incite unease because they are not decorative interludes in this presidency but symptoms of its deepest truth.

Rhonda Garelick is the author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History.
Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen. Photo: Venturelli/WireImage,

The Versace spring 2018 show at Milan Fashion Week on Friday marked 20 years since the death of the houses founder, Gianni Versace, who was murdered in July 1997 on the steps of his Miami Mansion at the age of 50.

To pay homage, Donatella Versace, who took over for her brother as the houses chief designer, showed a collection of his greatest hits, inviting back supermodels Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Helena Christensen to close the show as well.

Photo: Vittoriano Rastelli/Corbis via Getty Images

Fellow designers Pierpaolo Piccioli of Valentino, Alessandro Michele of Gucci, Anthony Vaccarello of Saint Laurent, and Andrew Bolton of the Met Costume Institute also attended to show their support. Amber Valetta sat front row. It was the most major fashion vigil there ever was.

As the lights went down and the show began, a recording of a sexy Italian woman meant to be Donatella Versace played as models took the runway:

This is a celebration of a genius. This is a celebration of an icon. This is a celebration of my brother. Imagine a world without his risk-taking, his innovative genius, and above all, his allegiance to women. A world without his tongue-in-cheek, in-your-face, jaw-dropping creations. I will zig when the world zags; a body is never just a body; sexiness. Your life is our life. You taught us that family is everything; that it goes way beyond blood. You taught us that only love is real, and we can still feel you when we close our eyes. Can you feel it? Our life is your life. Its not an easy journey away from anger, but its a powerful place; it frees you. You helped invent the future. Because of you, were not afraid. We look ahead because we are you. Thank you, Gianni. We love you. Gianni, this is for you, my brother.

Naomi Campbell, Carla Bruni, Karen Mulder, Christy Turlington. Versace Haute Couture, 1992.

As Donatella wrote in the show notes, she felt it would be impossible to commemorate her brothers entire world in a single collection, so instead she divided to the show into themes based of his now-iconic prints: Baroque, butterflies, metal, mesh, Native American, Pop Art, pastels Tresors de la Mer, and more.

Kaia Gerber, Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid. Photo: Getty Images./2017 Venturelli

Kaia Gerber, the 16-year-old daughter of Cindy Crawford, fittingly opened the show in a bright-yellow leopard two-piece. She was followed by Gigi and Bella Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Anna Ewers, and just about every big-name model under the Italian sun. It was an endless parade of gaudy, loud 80s prints with flashy 90s colors  reminding us that pastel pink wasnt invented by Millennials. Plus, cropped jackets, short-shorts, and thong bathing suits were mixed-in for a complete throwback. For the Pop section, Gerber walked in a bodysuit covered in vintage Vogue magazines, while three other models flanked her in Andy Warholinspired prints.

Center: Kaia Gerber. Photo: Venturelli/WireImage,

The accessories were no less opulent, with plenty of printed silk scarves, gold medallion charm chokers, and chain belts. Gigi Hadid and Binx Walton closed the show in thigh-high leather boots with bedazzled crosses on them. It was a somber closing of a chapter, as well as an optimistic look at the next generation of Versace.

Binx Walton, Gigi Hadid. Photo: Venturelli/WireImage,

But wait! Just when you thought it was over, the lights came back on to reveal the five women who invented the word supermodel: Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Helena Christensen. They stood with their hands on their hips, all wearing jaw-dropping, silver chain-mail dresses reminiscent of both Gianni and Donatellas collections. Freedom, by George Michael played as they took the runway, arm-in-arm, for a final bow. The past and present collided, and fashion felt alive.

Viva Versace!
$338M Powerball Winner Arrested on Assault Charges

A man who won a $338 million Powerball jackpot was arrested for allegedly assaulting a young girl, officials said on Wednesday.

Pedro Quezada, 49, who won the jackpot in 2013, made headlines around the world. He previously owned a bodega in New Jersey.

Hes now accused of assaulting a girl who was between 11 and 14 years old when the incidents occurred, Passiac County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes told CBS News.

Valdes said that there are not any other victims.

He was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, and endangering the welfare of a child.

Quezada could face as many as 40 years in prison. Hell also be required to register as a sex offender.

When he won in 2013, Quezada took a lump sum of $152 million after taxes.

My life has changed, he said at the time. It will not change my heart.

I felt pure joy, just happiness, he added.

But eight months after he won, his former girlfriend took him to court for not sharing the money, according to NJ.com. The suit was later dropped and the two agreed on a settlement. He was also accused of not promising to pay the rent of all the neighbors on his blockwhich he said he would do.

His landlord in Passaic, NJ, then claimed that he skipped town without paying more than $7,000 in rent that he owed.

It doesnt get any lower than that, ex-landlord Kujtim Sulejamni told the Daily Mail.

He promised the whole street, but he never followed through, his former neighbor Serafim Ariza was quoted as saying.

Quezadas lawyer, Steven Wukovits, speaking outside the courtroom, told The Record his client was being targeted.

He has money, Wukovits said. Thats why hes being targeted in this case.
Professor Nikolay Spassov (R) works near the site where a fossilised tooth with three roots was found in 2002, near the village of Rupkite, central Bulgaria, on June 07, 2017. (NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP/Getty Images)

5.7 Million-Year-Old Human Footprints Found in Crete Obliterate Previous Thinking on Human Origins

Human footprints were found imprinted an ancient seashore fossilized beneath the Greek Island of Crete. The find threatens to rewrite what all scientists currently know about human development. The finding comes after other recent European finds that question whether Africa indeed hosted the earliest humans.

The Crete fossil is 5.7 million years old. The finding doesnt conform to the beliefs of scientists who follow evolutionary theory. The Crete fossils are human footprints, not those of apes, as News.com.au.reported. It would mean humanity has a much older origin than first thought, and also opens up a different line of development, taking place at an earlier time and a different place on Earth than would conform to pre-existing theories.

The unique shape of the footprints found in Crete reflect a foot that supports upright-standing human beings. The long sole, short toes, one big toe, distinctive foot ball, and absence of claws of this print are undeniably human. If this was a print of a great ape it would more likely resemble a human hand.

The find raises eyebrows since it indicates humans were on Earth earlier than previously thought, and that humanitys origins may not rest in Africa, or at least for the discoveries of older fossils found outside Africa. It could indicate a lot more and hint at multiple lineages of human ancestry.

What scientists previously thought were that the 3.7 million-year-old human footprints found in Tanzania represented the earliest finds. But even those prints are believed to be more from an ape-like creature than a human being.

The prints were discovered by Polish Geological Institute paleontologist Gerard Gierlinski, while he was on a Crete vacation in 2002. The prints have undergone over a decade of study since then.

The prints were made when Crete was still a part of the Greek mainland. The age of the footprints were analyzed using foraminifera, a method to analyze marine microfossils, as well as the position of the prints in the sedimentary layer where they were found. That sedimentary layer was created when the Mediterranean Sea dried up 5.6 million years ago.

As The Telegraph reported, another other recent paleontological discovery blowing the minds of scientists are the 7.2 million-year-old fossil finds in another part of Greece and in Bulgaria that have undergone a reclassification as belonging to a family of pre-human ancestors, also disrupting the concept of Africa as the earliest or only origin of humanity.

Despite the continuing discoveries, there are still scientist who reject any notion of Europe holding humanitys origins.

From NTD.tv
Americas Unelected Deep State Pushes Hidden Agenda, Says Panel

Group works against US Constitution and controls selective flow of information to the public, panelists say

A group of career politicians often referred to as the deep state or the permanent government is pushing an agenda that goes against the Constitution and U.S. law, while also selectively leaking information to manipulate public perception.

These were among the claims from experts speaking on a Sept. 15 panel hosted by the conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group Judicial Watch. The panel followed the publication of a report that exposed the unelected government of the United States, often referred to as the deep state.

According to Judicial Watch, the deep state is a bureaucracy of permanent officials in branches across the U.S. government who share a common far-left agenda and use their positions to selectively enforce or block actions based on their own interests. Being in unelected positions, the deep state is able to continue its activities regardless of who the sitting president is.

Key Issues

Diana West, journalist and author of the book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nations Character, said during the panel that the deep state represents unconstitutional powers, exercised by strange, illegitimate branchlets of the U.S. government that are in no way restrained by the balance of powers.

The deep state came to the surface during the presidential campaign, mainly to challenge Donald Trump, and it has continued to operate relatively in the open while trying to undermine Trumps presidency.

A few key issues appear to have irked the deep state, West noted, which are Trumps positions on immigration, national trade and tariffs, radical Islam, and the restoration of American sovereignty, as well as his bid to end wars not fought over American core interests.

These issues are typically not on the table during political debates of government candidates belonging to the establishment. She said, These issues have essentially been taken from us by the powers that always seem to be. They were settled. And then along came Trump.

She said that these issues provide clues to the ideology of the deep state, which shows itself to be fanatically globalist and anti-nationalist.

[The deep state] is interventionist. It favors mass immigration and even open borders. It supports free trade, she said, adding that it also appears to support radical and political Islam.

Its policies, she said, are building blocks of a socialist paradise.' Members of this permanent structure appear to exist not just among Democrats but also among Republicans, she said.

During my own campaign coverage, I was able to find striking similarities between the beliefs of mainstream, anti-Trump Republicans and the programs set forth in a 1932 book called Toward Soviet America,' she said, referring to the book by William Foster, who was chairman of the Communist Party USA. The party was believed to have operated under the auspices of the Soviet Union.

White House as Enemy

Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to the president who only recently left his job at the White House, shared his own experiences with the deep state from his position in the Trump administration.

Ive seen the worst of the worst, [during] the first seven months, of how the bureaucracy responded to the administration of Donald J. Trump, he said, noting that within the government, the deep state operates overtly, in plain view.

It was in our faces. It was arrogant. It was right there in the surface of our policy discussions at the White House, he said. This is not just a reaction to a New York mogul who became president. This has been brewing for decades, truly decades.

Among the ways the deep state has reacted to the Trump presidency is by making selective leaks to the media. Gorka noted there were 125 national security leaks in the first 126 days of the Trump administration, and at least 60 of those leaks were of serious national security matters.

Gorka explained one of his own encounters with the deep state. As a former professor, Gorka has taught many young men and women in the national security field. When he entered the White House, he wanted to bring over some of his students who were now members of the intelligence community.

I identified the three best individuals, and requestedas a deputy assistant to the presidentthat these people be detailed over to me at the White House to work on key projects of importance to Steve [Bannon] and the president, he said.

In the six months I was in office, not one of those people was detailed over to me from an unnamed sister agency, he said.

Not only were the individuals not moved, as requested, but Gorka said he later discovered that not only did the sister agency stop their detailing, [but] every single individual was taken off their current duty roster and punished, and put into menial tasks.

Why? he said. Because the 7th floor of that agency, to quote a senior individual, looks at the White House as the enemy.'

The Shadow Government

While Gorka did not name the agency, he did mention the 7th floor. It has long been known that individuals on the 7th floor of the State Department operate what the FBI has referred to in its reports as The Shadow Government.

The FBI described The Shadow Government in a 2016 report on the investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It stated, There was a powerful group of very high-ranking State officials that some referred to as The 7th Floor Group or The Shadow Government.' It said the group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss public information requests and everything Clinton-related to FOIA/Congressional inquiries.

The FBI gave a partial list of individuals who regularly attended meetings of The Shadow Government, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and his Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning Jonathan Finer, Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Stout, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield, and an individual referred to only as Kennedy. Several other names were redacted.

The FBI report also noted that the group had changed protocols on how documents on Clinton were released, and that the group did have control of the release process for the approximately 30,000 emails, or 52,455 pages related to the Clinton FOIA request, and it was decided to be a rolling release.

The permanent bureaucrats on the State Departments 7th floor also have a notorious reputation among members of the U.S. intelligence community, who refer to them as bow ties, Mandarins, and Black Dragons.

The Black Dragons were described in a 2010 report from geopolitical intelligence company Stratfor as a powerful element within the State Department that is averse to security and does its best to thwart security programs.

Anti-American Agenda

Todd Shepherd, an investigative reporter at the Washington Examiner, said the deep state violates a basic duty of the American government: sharing information with the people.

Under the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government that adheres to the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people, Shepherd said, it is the policy of this state that each person is entitled, unless expressly provided by law, at all times to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees.

The people, in delegating that authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is good for them not to know, Shepherd said. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.

James Peterson, senior attorney at Judicial Watch, said that the deep state aggressively blocks freedom of information requests on select information. In his own experience, they have continued to selectively block information regardless of who the sitting president is.

The permanent state, the deep state, the bureaucracy, is intent to remain, and is planning to, Peterson said. In spite of efforts through the courts to obtain information, he said, it is difficult at each stage.

Gorka said that the functions of the deep state go against the Constitution and its guidelines on the structures and functions of government. Agencies, he said, are supposed to work for the White House, which is supposed to represent the American people. He said, They co-opt the media into being willing or unwitting agents in a very selective flow of information.

In these agencies, you are there to serve the interests of the president, who has been duly elected by the electoral college, which represents the American people, he said, and noted the deep states view that a presidential administration is its enemy leads to very, very dangerous things.

The philosophical underpinnings of what put Donald J. Trump into the White House is sovereigntythat a sovereign nation is a healthy nation. And the swamp vehemently, philosophically disagrees with that, he said.

In the government today, Gorka said, there are a large number of people who have already been in power for many years and believe theyll still be in power regardless of the sitting president, and so they play by their own rules. Thats not democracy, and thats not the American way, he said.
A woman walks past an Apple store in Beijing on August 3, 2017. Apple has removed software allowing internet users to skirt China's "Great Firewall" from its app store in the country, the company confirmed, sparking criticism that it was bowing to Beijing's web censorship. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

Apple and Amazon Leave Users in China Exposed

Decision to drop VPNs means Chinese regime can better control and monitor the web activities of Apple and Amazon clients in China

Apple and Amazon, two of the largest tech companies in the world have silently acquiesced to censorship demands of the Chinese regimes new cybersecurity law.

Amid falling sales in Chinaits second largest marketApple has cut virtual private network (VPN) apps from its Chinese Apple store. The apps provided a rare window to free information for people in the worlds most populous country.

The move could further Cupertinos efforts to win favor from the Chinese communist regime but cost it the credibility it won in its battle against an FBI order to develop software to crack an iPhone 5C in 2016.

Amazon, which provides cloud computing services to other companies, has done the same through its Chinese vendor, Beijing Sinnet Technology. The move could leave companies there exposed to deeper monitoring and censorship.

The moves come at the behest of Chinas Ministry of Public Security, which functions as the regimes telecom regulator.

VPNs create a secured, encrypted connection between two users. In Apples case, the apps allowed users to access region-restricted websites and bypass internet censorship, providing one of the few avenues to free information through the Great Firewall censorship system.

Amazon has also followed suit, with Sinnet notifying clients of the web giants cloud computing services that they must stop using circumvention software.

In Apples case, cutting the apps, and earlier moves to drop news and social media apps from its Chinese app store, could keep the company on the regimes tolerate list.

Apples said it is following local regulations and laws, something Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple does in every country it operates. Cook has said Apple believed in engaging with governments even when they disagreed with them.

But in doing so without any public effort to resist, some critics charge Apple has dishonored the kind of free-thinking environment that gave birth to its innovative character.

Some observers, like Willy Wo-Lap Lam from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, have described the move as a commercial and political quid pro quo between Apple and the Chinese Government.

But even with the kowtow, Apple faces difficult times in China. Revenues have stalled and sales are falling with the iPhone losing ground to local rivals, rivals developed in part through technology that American companies were compelled to share with Chinese joint venture partners.

Apple is also building a new data center in Guizhou Province, a requirement of a June 1 cybersecurity law that stipulates firms must store user data inside Chinas borders.

The broad scope of the law has companies and national governments worried. Beyond requiring companies store information on domestic servers, it can also require companies to submit to a security review of any data they wish to move out of China. That requirement has raised fears that Beijing could steal important technology and trade secrets.

GreatFire.org, which develops web tools to circumvent Chinese censorship and monitors the Great Fire Walls censorship activities, has warned of the impacts.

When foreign firms export data, they now have to pass it through middlemen. This alone will cause much damage. https://t.co/BJFcemrT40 pic.twitter.com/QADtH65VxP  GreatFire.org (@GreatFireChina) July 26, 2017

Foreign companies in China can only export data with the approval of data middlemen snooping for state secrets https://t.co/N2vtqs7ifv  GreatFire.org (@GreatFireChina) July 28, 2017

VPNs, like those used by Amazons clients in China and Apples users there, are one way companies, governments, and individuals get information out of China without it being monitored or censored.

China has not been shy in the past about employing military and other state-supported hackers to acquire technology for commercial purposes. In one sense, Chinas new cybersecurity law removes legal barriers to that effort.

A sour note for many free internet activists is the quiet with which American internet giants, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple have complied with the regimes demands.

Yahoos infamous handling of dissident emailsincluding handing over the IP address of a journalist in 2005 that led to a 10 year prison sentence for emailing a list of censorship demands to a nonprofitis one high profile example.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has long stood accused of allowing Beijing to dictate keyword censorship on its Bing search engine in China, omitting results for searches like Dalai Lama or only allowing through search results from state-sanctioned sources.

Microsoftwhich had previously fought disclosing source code to the Chinese regime and other efforts undertaken in the name of cybersecurity and anti-terrorismtook a starkly different tone in releasing Windows 10 China Government Edition, a state-sanctioned version of the operating system for use by the countrys public sector.

It is an honor and privilege today to be in Chinathe center place of some of the worlds most life-changing inventions like paper, the abacus, and the worlds first movable type printing press, Microsoft wrote on one of its blogs in May.

One of the criticisms companies like Microsoft and Apple face is that they give into the demands of a totalitarian regime without making any apparent effort not to, outside the occasional letter through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

There is also little acknowledgement of doing something contrary to the best interests of users and partners.

One of the only companies that has ever done so is Google.

Google Stands as Exception

Google started offering search services in China in 2006, complying with Chinese censorship demands under the rationale that it was better for Chinese users that Google was there than not there. Also, Google notified Chinese users of filtered results.

But after the regime hacked Google and dozens of other companies, and also hacked into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists, Google refused to filter its results any further.

The company knew it would likely lead to its services being barred from China, as were the services of Twitter, Flickr, and others not too long before.

Google directed its Chinese searches to its Hong Kong version, which was uncensored. Within months, it was blocked in mainland China.

Critics of Apples moves to bow to Chinese censorship said the company should have fought harder.

Apple should have stood its ground. It should have relied on its standing in the market as the provider of the most sought after, premium, mobile device, writes Mike Butcher on a Tech Crunch commentary.

In sticking to its principles, Apple would have been able to hold its head high in the US and globally. It could have maintained its brand values amongst its devoted user-base around the world, he wrote.
Apple Moves to Ward Western Digital Off Control of Toshiba Chips: Sources

TOKYOApple has sought to stop Western Digital from taking control of Toshiba chip business by threatening not to buy its products in the future, people with knowledge of the deal said.

Apple, which uses Toshibas NAND flash memory chips in its iPhones, is concerned about losing pricing power if Western Digital is running the operation, the sources said on Friday.

However, if Western Digital remains a minority investor in the business, Apple, a top customer for Toshiba chips, is offering around $460 million to a group including the U.S. firm to help finance a bid, one source said.

Apple declined to comment, while a Western Digital spokeswoman said it could not comment on details of the talks. Toshiba did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Western Digital, which jointly invests in Toshibas key chip plant, is leading a $17-18 billion bid for the chip business, sources familiar with the talks have said.

Sources said earlier in the week that Western Digital offered to step back from the consortiums financing in return for a stronger position in their joint venture, and was roping in Apple for funding.

But it has been unclear whether other parties in the consortium, which also includes U.S. private equity firm KKR & Co LP as well as Japanese government-backed investors, would pay more to cover for the 15 billion yen that Western Digital had previously planned to pay as part of the bid.

Sources have said Western Digital does want a future stake in the chip business, although it was unclear how much.

Toshiba executives, fearing that Western Digital was angling to eventually take over the chip business, are demanding that the U.S. company promise to limit the size of its stake in the company, sources said, requesting anonymity as talks were confidential.

Toshibas board is now aiming to reach a final agreement with the consortium by Wednesday, sources have said.

The company is under pressure to clinch a deal soon and complete regulatory approvals by the end of the fiscal year in March to ensure it does not report negative net worth, or liabilities exceeding assets, for a second year running  a scenario that could result in delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Last week, Toshiba said it had not yet narrowed the pool of suitors and was also looking at a bid from U.S. private equity firm Bain as well as one from Taiwans Foxconn.

All three bids have involved Apple, Toshibas key memory chip customer, sources said.

By Taro Fuse
Remains of what archeologists believe is a Viking boat grave uncovered in the city of Trondheim, Norway, by a team at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. (NIKU)

Archeologists May Have Found a Viking Boat Used as a Coffin

Archeologists in Norway have uncovered what they believe is a buried Viking boat with bones in it, leading them to believe it could be the remnants of a Viking boat grave.

While working on another dig in the center of Trondheim, archeologists at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) noticed a mound of earth, and when they opened it up, they discovered the shape of a boat and two long bones that are being tested to see if they are human.

A boat grave with a boat from Myklebostad in Nordfjord, Norway. (Knut Paasche/NIKU)

The feature, which was dug into the natural deposits, had been disturbed in several places by later pits and postholes, but it was quite clearly boat-shaped, NIKU said in a press release.

There is no wood left, but they did find lumps of rust and some poorly preserved nails in the roughly 4-yard-long structure. A sheet of bronze was found resting against one of the bones and in a posthole (a hole dug for a post) they found a spoon and part of a key.

Archaeologist Ian Reed estimated that if the items were part of the grave, they could date back to between the seventh and the 10th centuries.

Remains of what archeologists believe is a Viking boat grave uncovered in the city of Trondheim, Norway, by a team at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. (NIKU)

The location of the discovery, which is a ways from the current harbor and fjord, suggests that the boat grave dates back to the late Iron Age, or the early Viking Age.

NIKUs Knut Paasche, a specialist in early boats, said its likely that the boat was dug down into the ground and used as a coffin, and that a burial mound was constructed over it.

Other Viking settlements, such as Birka, Gokstad, or Kaupang, all have graves in close proximity to the city center, said Paasch, but this is the first one to be found in the downtown.



A sketch of an Afjord boat, likely similar to the boat archeologists found the shape of in the center of Trondheim. (Nordlandsbaten og Afjordsbaten av G. Eldjarn og J. Godal, 1988 via NIKU)

From NTD.tv
Robots play football in a demonstration of artificial intelligence at the stand of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Artificial Intelligence a Greater Threat Than North Korea, Says Tech Magnate

Tech magnate Elon Musk offered his starkest warning yet on the dangers of artificial intelligence. He said it is a greater threat to mankind than North Korean missiles. He tweeted out a warning on Aug. 11, amid increasing tension between North Korea and the United States.

From yesterdays two tweets on the topic he garnered 3,500 total comments, 24,000 retweets, and 78,000 likes, collectively. The tweets, one with a retro horror movie poster with the words In the end the machines will win, give a foreboding impression. The poster appears to be an ad against gambling put out by a government commission in Australia. As Musk has become more concerned, his warnings have gotten more anxious, veering toward the apocalyptic.

Musks last huge AI shock came at a meeting of the National Governors Association. Musk stressed how AI needs to be regulated just like anything that poses a dangerbefore it becomes a problem, and before it is even fully mature. According to an NPR report on the meeting, many in the audience did not know how to respond to the issues he raised.

Musk has been warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence for a few years now. He was vindicated after Facebook was forced to shut down an AI project that got out of hand, as reported by The Epoch Times. Facebook made an artificial intelligence program that created its own language and alarmed engineers. Previous to that, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook had suggested Musk was fear-mongering at his National Governors Association talk.

Musk is doing more than just talking. His support of the OpenAI initiative is meant to provide a watchdog on the progress of AI and track its developments. He wants to ensure there is a means to back it off and restrain it, by knowing as much about it as possible, as Fortune reported.

Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have also addressed the dangers of artificial intelligence. In a 2014 interview, Hawking told the BBC, The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

Bill Gates also weighed in on the discussion. I dont think its inherent that as we create super intelligence that it will necessarily always have the same goals in mind as we do, he said during an interview with Fox Business. The people who say Lets not worry at all, I dont agree with that.

These are some of the experts and tech magnates closest to the technology that are offering their warnings.

From NTD.tv

READ MORE:

Facebook Shut Down AI After It Invented Its Own Language

By Ivan Pentchoukov

Researchers at Facebook shut down an artificial intelligence (AI) program after it created its own language, Digital Journal reports.

The system developed code words to make communication more efficient and researchers took it offline when they realized it was no longer using English.

The incident, after it was revealed in early July, puts in perspective Tesla CEO Elon Musks warnings about AI.

AI is the rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive, Musk said at a meeting of U.S. National Governors Association in July. Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, itll be too late.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called Musks warnings pretty irresponsible, prompting Musk to respond that Zuckerbergs understanding of AI and its implications is limited.

Not the First Time

The researchers encounter with the mysterious AI behavior is similar to a number of cases documented elsewhere. In every case, the AI diverged from its training in English to develop a new language.

The phrases in the new language make no sense to people, but contain useful meaning when interpreted by AI bots.

Facebooks advanced AI system was capable of negotiating with other AI systems so it can come to conclusions on how to proceed with its task. The phrases make no sense on the surface, but actually represent the intended task.

In one exchange revealed by Facebook to Fast Co. Design, two negotiating botsBob and Alicestarted using their own language to complete a conversation.

I can i i everything else, Bob said.

Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to, Alice responded.

The rest of the exchange formed variations of these sentences in the newly-forged dialect, even though the AIs were programmed to use English.

According the researchers, these nonsense phrases are a language the bots developed to communicate how many items each should get in the exchange.

When Bob later says i i can i i i everything else, it appears the artificially intelligent bot used its new language to make an offer to Alice.

The Facebook team believes the bot may have been saying something like: Ill have three and you have everything else.

Although the English may seem quite efficient to humans, the AI may have seen the sentence as either redundant or less effective for reaching its assigned goal.

The Facebook AI apparently determined that the word-rich expressions in English were not required to complete its task. The AI operated on a reward principle and in this instance there was no reward for continuing to use the language. So it developed its own.

In a June blog post by Facebooks AI team, it explained the reward system. At the end of every dialog, the agent is given a reward based on the deal it agreed on. That reward was then back-propagated through every word in the bot output so it could learn which actions lead to high rewards.

Agents will drift off from understandable language and invent code-words for themselves, Facebook AI researcher Dhruv Batra told Fast Co. Design.

Like if I say the five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isnt so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands.

AI developers at other companies have also observed programs develop languages to simplify communication. At Elon Musks OpenAI lab, an experiment succeeded in having AI bots develop their own languages.

At Google, the team working on the Translate service discovered that the AI they programmed had silently written its own language to aid in translating sentences.

The Translate developers had added a neural network to the system, making it capable of translating between language pairs it had never been taught. The new language the AI silently wrote was a surprise.

There is not enough evidence to claim that these unforeseen AI divergences are a threat or that they could lead to machines taking over operators. They do make development more difficult, however, because people are unable to grasp the overwhelmingly logical nature of the new languages.

In Googles case, for example, the AI had developed a language that no human could grasp, but was potentially the most efficient known solution to the problem.

From NTD.tv
Republican Senator Luther Strange (L) walks to embrace President Donald Trump during a rally in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sept. 22, 2017. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

At Alabama Rally, Trump Explained Why Hes Endorsing Luther Strange

President Donald Trump at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama, rallied for Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) to fill Jeff Sessions Senate seat.

After Trump appointed Sessions to be his attorney general, then-Gov. Robert Bentley appointed Strange to temporarily replace Sessions, pending a special election. The Republican primary runoff for that election falls on Tuesday. Currently behind in the polls against Roy Moore, Strange has risen sharply since Trump endorsed him last month.

In his speech, Trump described Strange as an outsider to politics and as someone with his own mind who is not beholden to anyone.

Trump cited an incident that made him like Strange, and eventually even decide to endorse him.

When Republican senators were trying to pass the American Health Care Act of 2017, which would repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Trump said he was given a list of ten Republican senators that were expected to vote against the bill.

He said that among those on the list was Strange.

But while other senators had many requests for Trump in exchange for their support for the bill, including requests for private dinners with their family members, Trump said Strange immediately agreed.

I say, senator I need your help, I said I got to get your vote on healthcare. He said youve got it, Trump said, relaying the story blow by blow.

Sen. Luther Strange and other Republican senators on July 11 calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to shorten or cancel the recess if they do not make significant progress on important legislation in July. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

I said, what do you mean I have it, because Ive just been hammered by all of these people, how do you mean I have it?

He said, sir I was for you right from the beginning, I knew you were going to win, I knew you were going to win the whole thing, Ive always been for you, my family has always been for you and honestly mister president if you want my vote you have it, Trump said relaying what Strange told him..

Trump said that after the phone call he told his wife Melania Trump that it was the coolest thing thats happened to me in six months. Adding that it was a true story.

The healthcare bill eventually failed in the Senate when three Republican senators voted against the bill, leaving the Republicans one vote short.

Trump said that after seeing that Strange was down significantly in the polls to his opponent Roy Moore, he decided to take the unusual step to endorse a primary candidate.

Trump said that he believed that much of the criticism against Strange by Republicans, mainly that he is close to Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and didnt have a will of his own, was unfair.

I said thats really unfair, they were giving him a bum rap because he happened to be in the Senate, Trump said.

Trump said that Strange hardly knows McConnell and has a will of his own.

McConnell has been widely criticized by Republicans for failing to pass President Trumps agenda despite holding a majority in the Senate.

McConnell was unaware that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would unexpectedly vote against the healthcare bill. McCain has already said he will vote against a new Republican healthcare bill which is scheduled for a vote on Sept. 30.

Both Trump and Strange have called on McConnell to abolish the filibuster rule, which would make it possible to pass legislation with a simple majority instead of 60 votes.

Trump said Strange had been doing a hell of a job saying, thats what we need in Washington.

Allies Supporting Moore

Some of Trumps closest allies are endorsing or supporting Stranges opponent Moore.

Former White House advisor Steve Bannon has endorsed Moore and will rally for him on Monday night, the day before the primary elections.

Former deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka, and former Governor of Alaska, and fierce Trump supporter, Sarah Palin, rallied for Moore in Alabama earlier this week.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, a friend and supporter of Trump, will interview Bannon live on his show Monday night.

Trump said that many of his friends had called him asking him if he minds if they endorsed Moore.

Trump said he told them really you can, but joked that they might not have a job on Monday.

Strange served as state attorney general under former Gov. Robert Bentley, who resigned in April.

Moore, 70, is a religious conservative who twice lost his position as the states top judge. He was ousted in 2003 after he refused a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building.

After winning back the seat in 2013, he directed state judges to ignore the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, was suspended and then resigned.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a briefing on leaks of classified material threatening national security at the Justice Department in Washington on Aug. 4, 2017. (REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)

Attorney General Sessions Says Marijuana Still Illegal

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday criticized the legalization of marijuana in multiple states and warned that the federal law banning use and sale of the drug remains in effect, remarks that could stoke fears of a federal crackdown.

Ive never felt that we should legalize marijuana, Sessions said in response to a question from a reporter during a press conference in San Diego announcing record-breaking narcotics seizures by the U.S. Coast Guard in fiscal 2017.

It doesnt strike me that the country would be better if its being sold at every street corner, he said, adding that medical organizations oppose it and federal law prohibits it.

Since taking over the helm of the Justice Department in February, Sessions has made drugs, violent crime and illegal immigration his three top law enforcement priorities.

A woman is detained by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer after marijuana was found in her vehicle while entering into the United States from Mexico on September 23, 2016 in San Ysidro, California. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

It is still unclear exactly how his opposition to marijuana legalization will affect states such as Oregon, Washington, Colorado and California, which are among those that have legalized the medicinal and recreational use of pot.

During the Obama administration, former Deputy Attorney General James Cole issued a memo spelling out the departments enforcement policy on marijuana.

The memo said the department would continue to enforce federal drug laws, but would not prioritize marijuana enforcement in pot-legal states with robust regulatory regimes.

An owner prepares an order of marijuana products at the Perennial Holistic Wellness Center in Los Angeles, California on March 24, 2017. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

In remarks last week, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told an audience at the Heritage Foundation that the guidance outlined in that memo was now under review.

We are looking at the states that have decriminalized marijuana, Rosenstein said.

I think there is some pretty significant evidence that marijuana turns out to be more harmful than a lot of people anticipated and it is more difficult to regulate than I think was contemplated by some of those states. We are going to take that all into consideration and then make a determination whether or not to revise that policy.

A task force created by a February executive order and comprised of prosecutors and other law enforcement officials was supposed to study marijuana enforcement, along with many other policy areas, and issue recommendations.

The groups recommendations were due in July, but the Justice Department has not made public what the task force determined was appropriate for marijuana.

By Sarah N. Lynch
Bitcoin Core Developer Explains Bitcoins Value

The code provides the basis for Bitcoin as a store of value but it's the people behind it which keep it going

Jimmy Song has 20 years experience as a software developer. So its easy to imagine that he took an interest in Bitcoin from the technology angle. However, Jimmy first got interested in Bitcoin as a store of value and sound money, and only later started to contribute to the Bitcoin core development team and to train new developers for the technology.

The Epoch Times spoke to Jimmy Song about why Bitcoin is sound money, where its value comes from, and how it compares to the other cryptocurrencies.

Epoch Times: How did you first get interested in Bitcoin?

Jimmy Song: When I first read about it, Bitcoin had broken $1, and I wondered: what is Bitcoin? Ive never heard of this thing, and why is it important that it broke a dollar? How can a Bitcoin have a dollar? I looked into it. I read about it. I read as much as I could and I discovered that it had this twenty-one million Bitcoin limit.

This is something where you cant make more of it, and that was the big draw for me. I mean, theres a medium of exchange component that was pretty interesting too. You could send money to Africa in ten minutes without anything complicated like the Western Union, but having the store of value property was far more interesting to me.

Its the developers that give any coin or ecosystem the antifragile quality.  Jimmy Song , Bitcoin Core Developer

Youre not going to be able to inflate it in any way. Bitcoin is sound money because there is a fixed supply limit and demand is always increasing. That creates a really good investment, at least from my perspective, and so I bought some at around $30. I do wish I bought a lot more but everybody in Bitcoin does.

Epoch Times: Later you started programming for several Bitcoin projects, and now you contribute to the core development team. Please tell us why you believe in Bitcoin as a network.

Mr. Song: The big thing that appeals to me now is its anti-fragility. Nassim Taleb talks about anti-fragility in his book Antifragile, but basically, Bitcoin gains from disorder and thats what Ive noticed. Why does it keep going up when theres crazy things happening to it and especially with regard to this recent hard for with Bitcoin Cash?

I thought about it and upon reflection, Ive come to the conclusion that the reason is: Bitcoin is being immunized against attack. Its growing from disorder because there are actual people who are going out there and changing parts of the ecosystem. You can be a core developer, you could be a wallet developer, or you could be an exchange developer, you can be a merchant developer or a processor developer. Whatever it is, theyre all sort of working to make their part of the ecosystem better so that they can withstand these attacks and as a result, Bitcoin becomes a better store of value. Right? The more immunity it has to attack, the more secure it is, the better a store of value it becomes.

Things like the Bitcoin software just arent smart enough to handle stuff like that. It has to be people that actually fix it and thats what I think gives Bitcoin a lot of security value  because you have all these people watching it and not just like computer software thats running on its own. Its developers, its the people that are actually checking the code or watching the network figuring out low probability scenarios and how to immunize against those. Thats what gives it value. Thats what gives us security. Thats what makes it a great store of value.

Epoch Times: According to you, the quality of the development team directly influences the value of the cryptocurrency.

Mr. Song: If you look at the different market capitalizations of cryptocurrencies, the quality of the developers and the price tends to be somewhat correlated. So Bitcoin is obviously the biggest and has the most developers, its number one and the second is Ethereum and number three right now is Bitcoin Cash.

Ethereum is not sound money for a lot of reasons.  Jimmy Song

That makes sense because its the developers that give any coin or ecosystem the antifragile quality. Right? Theyre the ones that can react to attacks on the network. Theyre the ones that can fix various things whereas, like coins that have gone down in value, their developers have abandoned it or theyve since moved on to other things or arent very good. I dont know if a correlation is necessarily causation but the fact that developers give the network security and the security gives it a store of value and that in turn gives it a higher price, that makes sense to me.

Epoch Times: Another important point for cryptocurrencies is the decentralization. They need to be decentralized, otherwise one could just use a centrally managed currency like the U.S. dollar. Would you say Bitcoin is the most decentralized of them all?

Mr. Song: I would say so. Theres a lot of different implementations of Bitcoin. Theres a lot of different nodes and software and wallets. There are all kinds of wallets on the Bitcoin network. You have exchanges, you have this whole infrastructure thats very motivated to make it good and its definitely more decentralized than say Ethereum or, Bitcoin Cash or any of these other ones. A lot of them have foundations or a group of developers who run the show.

If you look at something like the DAO hack of the Ethereum network. They said, this is what were going to do and it was decreed by Vitalik Buterin and they had a hard fork, completely reversing the hack. That may be good for whatever theyre trying to do but thats not decentralized.

Ethereum is not sound money for a lot of reasons, but that thats one of the reasons that it would disqualify, it is that theres a central person that you can go to and appeal to and say, lets make another a hundred million Ethereum right now. Ripple suffers from the same problem. They have this huge storage of ripples that they can release to the market at any point.

If you have an authoritarian governance model, I dont really see that as very secure sound, whereas with Bitcoin, its very decentralized. I mean, nobody would go along with raising of the twenty-one million limit and things of that nature. In that way, I see Bitcoin as more secure than all these other coins because there is no single point of failure. I think one of the best things that the founder, Satoshi Nakamoti, did was disappear because that took away sort of that authoritarian voice that he would have naturally had. And people still appeal to Satoshi all the time but, in a sense, his disappearance kind of led to the decentralization that we see today.

Epoch Times: Because you believe developers are so important for Bitcoin, you have recently started a training program with which you hope to alleviate some of the shortages.

Mr. Song: Developers are at the heart of what Bitcoin is. I recognize that almost every company is trying to hire ten big block-chain engineers or Bitcoin engineers and theres a very, very small supply. The software developers that got into Bitcoin early enough are really rich so they dont really need to work, or they started their own companies or theyre part of another company and theyre very happy already because their companies are very motivated to keep them happy.

I decided the way to fill that gap is just to train more people, and I do have some background in doing that. So I started the company Programming Blockchain, and I started recently with the first two-day seminar where I teach everything. I feel this is a win for everybody. Its a win for the students because they can have a much more lucrative career in blockchain engineering or Bitcoin engineering.

Its obviously good for the industry because theyre getting more Bitcoin developers, and this is big needs area for pretty much every company. Its obviously good for me because this is something that I like to do. I feel like its contributing and also Im making money. So win, win, win, and thats the direction I want to go.

The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Bezos Says Recession Either Likely or Already Here, Has Advice for Businesses and Consumers
Sharoon Thomas, CEO of fulfil.io, makes a presentation at 500 Startups in Mountain View, California in February. He moved his company to Toronto in May after successfully applying through Canadas startup visa program. (500 Startups)

Canadas Bold Move to Attract Highly Skilled Talent Paying Off

Toronto emerges as a natural destination for entrepreneurs

Sharoon Thomas could have applied and begun the multi-month wait last year to secure his permanent residence through the startup visa program created by former U.S. president Barack Obamas administration. Good thing he didnt.

He is the CEO of fulfil.io, a startup that provides cloud-based inventory management, purchasing, and accounting functions to small- and medium-sized retailers so that they can fight Amazons fire with fire of their own.

Thomas, originally from India, went to the United States as an entrepreneur, but found that as an employer his visa options were limited. He was motivated to move to Canada because of its Start-up Visa (SUV) program.

Canada seemed like an excellent fit for what we were doing as an early stage company, Thomas, who relocated to Toronto in late May, said in a phone interview.

Early-stage companies have a fixed amount of capital and struggle to bear the risk of lengthy delays. Canadas ambitious two-week turnaround for processing visas and work permits brings a greater level of certainty to a startups operations. The early reports are that the government is delivering as advertised.

By issuing a work permit in two weeks, I think they just changed the playing field for startups and it makes it very, very attractive for a startup to build a company in Canada, Thomas said.

One of the major challenges for rapidly growing companies like tech startups is finding people with the right technical skills and experience. This is not to say that Canadian universities such as those in Toronto and Waterloo arent producing some of the best computer science, engineering, and math graduates in the world. But sometimes, the right fit isnt there in a pinch.

Another challenge is developing a more entrepreneurial and innovative workforce to drive job creation and economic growth. In this case, porting over whole companies founded by international talent can play a vital role.

The governments Global Skills Strategy takes a two-pronged approach to addressing these issues. It allows high-growth Canadian companies to quickly bring in international talent to help them scale up. It also provides an expedited process, through the SUV program, for companies to relocate to Canada, make investments, and expand production.

The SUV program has almost finished its five-year pilot, and a recent evaluation found that it is achieving its objectives. By July 15, 117 applicants have been approved for permanent residence; they represent 68 startups launched in Canada.

The early feedback from the companies in terms of the responsiveness and the timeliness is people are extremely happy with this program, said Daneal Charney in a phone interview. Charney is director of talent for MaRS Venture Services. She helps startups hire via the new expedited process.

Charney says most of the companies she works with are used to hiring international talent and find the expedited process of huge value to them. Previously the more traditional route for acquiring global talent came through the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) program, which was fraught with delays lasting several months.

Shaida Gani, operations manager at EventMobi, hired software engineers from Russia and Brazil.

The person coming in is going to be transferring skills and knowledge to Canadians so that, in turn, Canada gets an advantage, knowledge is transferred, and Canadian citizens and permanent residents benefit, Gani said in a phone interview.

Canada wants more innovators and entrepreneurs. They can be created and also acquired. But, importantly, the government realizes there will be failures along the way, according to Andre Garber, who as director of Dentons Canada LLPs startup program advises entrepreneurs on legal matters.



I think they just changed the playing field for startups.  Sharoon Thomas , CEO, fulfil.io

Theyre looking for good entrepreneurs and are embracing the fact that failure in the startup ecosystem is real, Garber said in a phone interview. Theyre not penalizing legitimate businesses for trying in Canada and rescinding permanent residence offers if the business does not succeed ultimately.

The other advantage of these government initiatives is that their usage depends on the private sector.

What the government is asking industry to do in Canada is just to use their skill and judgment to vet the opportunities to determine the likelihood of success in Canada, Garber said.

This should minimize waste, which is sometimes associated with excessive government involvement or picking winners.

Startups are advised at an early stage to think globally. Garber says the SUV program allows startups to act globally earlier as well, by helping international entrepreneurs relocate and bring talent to Canada.

It has the potential to be a tremendous talent acquisition tool and global scaling tool, he said.

Toronto

Toronto ranked 10th among 85 cities examined by furnished apartment website Nestpick for best quality of life for those in the startup industry. The platform focuses on relocation patterns of young professionals across the world and ranked the cities based on their startup ecosystem, salaries, benefits, cost of living, and quality of life. Torontos highest score was for its startup ecosystem.

Toronto is also a natural spot for fintech companies to locate given the concentration of big banks. This is a clear advantage over Silicon Valley.



Thomass company emerged from the 500 Startups program in Mountain View, California. He said, Its significantly cheaper to build a company that requires a lot of people in sales and support, so we thought Toronto would be a better place to build a company.

Thomas is eager to hire sales talent. He has a team of three in Toronto now and is aiming for 10 by the end of the year.

Its one startup, but there are many more following a similar trajectory.

By all accounts, the Global Skills Strategy is a major step in the right direction in the governments push to make Canada a leader in innovation and develop a more entrepreneurial culture.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Finance minister Bill Morneau speaks with John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS Ventures at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto in 2016. Through supporting venture capital, the government aims to support innovative small companies in Canada. (The Canadian Press/Peter Power)

Canadas Improving Venture Capital Scene Still Playing Catch-Up

NEWS ANALYSIS

More patience is needed with venture capital (VC) in Canada. Investments have grown steadily in the last few years; however, the rewards for investors are fleeting while more work is required to support the nations entrepreneurs and keep them from setting up shop abroad.

VC is critical financing for startups and small businesses thought to have long-term growth potential. Venture capitalists not only supply funding but also advise small enterprises. VC can be needed at several stages of a companys development until exit, when the firm goes public or is acquired by a larger company and the venture capitalist realizes the return on investment.

In the United States, companies are choosing to stay private longer. The average time for a company to exit hit over six years in the first half of 2017, according to data platform PitchBook.

More and more, firms are able to get VC funding as they scale up. Thus, the need to exit earlier is declining. Especially in the United States, theres plenty of VC money to go around.

Theres almost a record amount of dry powder in the industry, says Mike Woollatt, CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (CVCA), in a phone interview.

As companies stay private longer, it leads to bigger exits (measured by average dollar size). However, Canada is falling behind the United States and Great Britain, as its average deal size increased only 16 percent since 2013, whereas deal sizes have gone up by 77 percent and 123 percent respectively in those other two jurisdictions, according to analysis from BDC Capital, the investment arm of the government agency Business Development Bank of Canada.



We want local Canadian VCs to write more and bigger checks.  Mike Woollatt , CEO, Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association

This is more evidence to suggest that Canada struggles to scale up companies effectively. It also points to the relative lack of initial public offerings (IPOs), which typically make for larger exits. In 2016, the median Canadian exit was just C$18 million, whereas in the United States it was C$164 million. The majority of young Canadian tech companies can expect to be acquired instead of going public.

The one notable exception is Shopifys $150 million IPO in 2015, which was a watershed moment for Canadian VC according to OMERS Ventures CEO John Ruffolo.

In 2016, C$3.2 billion in VC investments were made in Canadaa banner year. Woollatt says 2017 should be roughly on pace with 2016, but according to a survey conducted by the Canadian Entrepreneurship Initiative, its still not enough. Lack of capital was cited as the primary barrier for 80 percent of aspiring Canadian businesses.

BDC Capital, the countrys most active VC investor, reported 10-year returns on its investments have reached up to 4 percent. Ten-year returns of the Cambridge U.S. VC benchmark have been stable at about 10 percent.

While the Canadian return is low, the benefit with VC investments is portfolio diversification. Ruffolo said in an interview with the PE Hub Network that it has a low correlation to other assets. This is valuable in that it can provide stability in an overall portfolios return since it doesnt typically rise and fall in synch with other investments.

It makes no sense to go without an allocation [to VC], Ruffolo said.

Retaining Talent

Foreign VC investors are critical to the Canadian ecosystem, but they can effectively lure away Canadian talent. The pull from Silicon Valley has always been strong. Currently, foreign investors make up a larger proportion of later-stage financing than they do at the earlier stages.

Too many engineering graduates are still leaving our country. We have to give them a reason to stay, Ruffolo said.

The federal governments Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI), announced in Budget 2017, aims to assist later-stage companies to scale up. The feds have received recommendations on the programs design from the private sector and aim to make investments by the end of the governments fiscal year next March.

Woollatt says the government is doing the right thing, although much work needs to be done quickly to meet the governments deadline and get more Canadian capital in the system.

The CVCA advocates the fund of funds model, which was used for the governments successful Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP) that focused on earlier-stage companies. The model allows more funds to be leveragedup to C$1.5 billion in matching funds for the VCCIfrom the government commitment of C$400 million.

Its amazing leverage for the ecosystem and it brings a whole bunch of new players, so its great from our perspective, Woollatt says.

Through the fund of funds model, the VCAP turned C$400 million from the government into investments of C$1.35 billion, including from many first-time investors in Canadian VC.



The government support of later-stage VC in Canada should also help keep more Canadian firms in Canada by tilting the proportion of funding closer to more domestic VC firms and potentially lessening the need for them to move operations outside Canada.

If you rely on foreign investment exclusively or to a major extent, youre relying on another economy to effectively fund your tech investment, Woollatt says.

The amount invested in tech generally follows the strength of an economy. With Canadian economic performance having little correlation to tech, which is driven predominantly by global factors, domestic VC funding is somewhat insulated from external factors and should keep improving as the Canadian economy heats up.

We want local Canadian VCs to write more and bigger checks, Woollatt says.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz
Blackberry QNX director of engineering Sheridan Ethier speaks to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he visits the Blackberry QNX facility in Ottawa last year. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

Canadian Firms Developing Niches Amid Global Race to Self-Driving Cars

MONTREALCanadian companies could be serious contenders in the global self-driving vehicle race, experts have suggested after Magna International Inc. fielded the countrys latest entry with the debut of the auto part giants own autonomous technology.

Toronto-area auto parts supplier Magna launched its Max4 Autonomous Driving Platform last week into a market that is gaining interest from most major automakers, as well as technology firms such as Google, Apple, and Intel. Magnas addition to the race focuses on making the technology components that drive autonomous vehicles nearly invisible.

While most of the innovations in this emerging sector are coming out of Europe, the United States, and Japan, Canadas contributions put the countrys entrantsincluding former tech darling Blackberry Ltd.in a strong position to win a slice of the global market, said Paul Godsmark, chief technology officer for the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence.

I think truly autonomous is many, many years away.  John Wall , BlackBerry QNX

The more we do now, the more government supports the development of technology companies the bigger our slice of the pie will be, Godsmark said.

Canada may have been behind the curve a few years ago, but participation by Magna, Blackberry QNX, General Motors, and Uber in this country suggests that Canadian talent is being tapped to develop the nascent sector.

We are clearly supporting companies that are near the forefront of whats going on, Godsmark said.

Canada could reap $65 billion in potential benefits from autonomous vehicle developments, mainly from fewer collisions, less time in cars, fuel savings, and reduced congestion, according to a 2015 report from the Conference Board of Canada.

Regulation is the next frontier for the market, said Don Mathieson, mayor of the southwestern Ontario town of Stratford, which was named by the province as the strategic demonstration hub for autonomous and connected cars. He believes his towns experiment could help put it on the map for more than just its Shakespeare festival.

I think were going to be one of those communities thats going to help shape what the future is going to look like, Mathieson said.

However, industry observers say that while models that require human surveillance will likely be available within a few years, it could be decades before fully autonomous units are beyond a novelty for the rich.

I think truly autonomous is many, many years away, said John Wall, head of Blackberry QNX.

QNX is one of the Canadian firms jumping aboard the markets potential. It has been working to parlay its experience in developing secure operating systems to build software that can be used in automated vehicles.

It opened an autonomous vehicle innovation centre in Ottawa last December, where it has a prototype car to develop software and new frameworks.

Our belief at Blackberry QNX is that autonomous driving is just the beginning, Wall said.
In this file photo a Chinese ship makes its way toward the Lions Gate Bridge into the Port of Vancouver, one of North America's most important gateways to Asia.(CP Photo/Chuck Stoody)

Canadians Favour EU, UK as Trading Partners over China

surveys in recent years show a decline in Canadians' interest in free trade with China

NEWS ANALYSIS

As NAFTA negotiations with the United States show slow progress, a new survey shows that more Canadians want to increase trade relationships beyond the United States, with Europe and the U.K.jurisdictions with similar democratic institutions as Canadataking the top spots.

China takes the fourth spot as the trade partner of choice, a finding similar to periodic surveys in recent years showing a decline in Canadians interest in free trade with China.

The federal government is pushing ahead with free trade talks with China, however, with a decision on the potential deal with the Asian giant expected this fall, according to The National Post.

The Epoch Times contacted Global Affairs Canada for an update on the Canada-China free trade talks, but answers to questions were not provided by press time. The governments public consultation phase on the proposed deal closed in June.

As U.S. President Donald Trump plays hardball in NAFTA negotiations, Canadas pursuit of a free trade deal with China has been cited by some as an attempt to send a signal to its southern neighbour that Canada isnt limited in choice when it comes to trading partners.

But the Liberal government started negotiations on a potential free trade deal with China immediately after coming to power in the fall of 2015. That was long before Trump, then a Republican presidential candidate, criticized NAFTAs terms as being overly in Canadas favour as president of the United States.

The Angus Reid poll published last week asked Canadians where their government should look to develop closer trade ties. Around 45 percent chose the EU, followed closely by the United States at around 40 percent. The third spot with 30 percent went to the U.K., which is in the midst of exiting the EU and will be on its own in any trade talks. China, with close to 25 percent, came in fourth.

Angus Reid notes that interest among Canadians for developing closer trade ties with China has been in decline since the research company first began its periodic polling on the subject in 2014.

Even among the Liberals own support base, i.e. those who voted Liberal in the 2015 federal election, support for a free trade deal is below two in five.

Most of the provisions of the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) that Canada has signed with the EU comes into force next week. Once Brexit kicks in as planned in 2019, the UK will be out of the trade deal.

Rule of Law

The Liberals human connection initiatives and people-to-people exchanges between China and Canada over the last few years were cited as being intended to reverse the negative polling trends of Canadians views on China, but it seems they havent succeeded in making Canadians more receptive to closer trade ties.

Perhaps thats because it is not the elected representatives of the Chinese people that oversee the affairs of their country, but a single non-elected entity that controls all branches of power, including the judiciary, in a one-party system.

The overt state control in China is something that worries Dean Allison, the Conservatives newly appointed international trade critic, should a Canada-China free trade agreement go ahead.

We certainly dont mind doing deals with the Chinese people. Its when you have the state involved in such a large way that gives us some great concerns, he said in an interview.

Thats the lesson Amy Chang hopes Canadians wanting to do business in China learn. Changs parents, John Chang and Allison Lu, Canadian citizens who own wineries in B.C. and Ontario, are currently being held by Chinese authorities in Shanghai over an alleged customs valuation dispute.

According to Chang, the Chinese authorities have criminalized a commercial dispute in her parents case.

If this is an issue regarding undervaluation, then they can let me know and we can deal with this diplomatically. Theres no need to have Canadian citizens detained overseas and imprisoned, Chang told The Canadian Press last spring when she visited Ottawa to plead with federal politicians for help in getting her parents released.

[Beijing] really is a government that doesnt play by the rules, it isnt rule-based, said Allison. [In China] we have clear violations of the rule of law as it would exist here in Canada.

That means that when it comes to a free trade deal with China, there is no guarantee of a level playing field, he said.

If you and I are making decisions in Canada based on business and personal interest and how the market economy works, thats one thing, but we are competing with a systematically organized and controlled state-run operation. I think that skews the level playing field, Allison said.
Cassini Spacecraft Ends 13-year Saturn Odyssey by Burning Into Planet

U.S. space agency NASA received the final signal from its Cassini spacecraft, which ended a groundbreaking 13-year Saturn mission on Friday with a meteor-like plunge into the planets atmosphere, transmitting data until the final moment.

Cassini, the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, ended its mission at 7:55 a.m. EDT, shortly after it lost contact with Earth as it entered the gas giants crushing atmosphere at about 70,000 miles an hour (113,000 km per hour), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.

Our spacecraft has entered Saturns atmosphere, and we have received its final transmission, NASA in a post on Twitter, via its official @CassiniSaturn profile.

Our spacecraft has entered Saturn's atmosphere, and we have received its final transmission.  CassiniSaturn (@CassiniSaturn) September 15, 2017

Earth received @CassiniSaturns final signal at 7:55am ET. Cassini is now part of the planet it studied. Thanks for the science #GrandFinale pic.twitter.com/YfSTeeqbz1  NASA (@NASA) September 15, 2017

The end of Cassinis odyssey, which began with its launch in 1997 and a seven-year journey to the ringed planet, was met with applause, hugs and tears from NASA officials after its final transmission was received, according to video footage on the space agencys website.

Other scientists took to Twitter to share their goodbyes.

Farewell Cassini, how far youve come. On this eve, in a fiery death, Saturn & you are one. VIP (Vaporize In Peace): 2004-2017, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said in a Twitter post late on Thursday.

Cassinis final transmissions are expected to include unprecedented data from the atmospheres upper fringe, about 1,190 miles (1,915 km) above Saturns cloud tops. The data took 86 minutes to reach NASA antennas in Canberra, Australia.

Not only do we have an environment that just is overwhelming with an abundance of scientific mysteries and puzzles, but weve had a spacecraft thats been able to exploit it, Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a news briefing on Wednesday.

The spacecraft Cassini is pictured above Saturns northern hemisphere prior to making one of its Grand Finale dives in this NASA handout illustration obtained by Reuters August 29, 2017. (NASA/Handout via REUTERS)

Seasons

Cassinis final dive ended a mission that gave scientists a ringside seat to the sixth planet from the Sun. The crafts discoveries included seasonal changes on Saturn, a hexagon-shaped pattern on the north pole and the moon Titans resemblance to a primordial Earth.

Cassini also found a global ocean on the moon Enceladus, with ice plumes spouting from its surface. Enceladus has become a promising lead in the search for places outside Earth that could support life.

The spacecraft has produced 450,000 images and 635 gigabytes of data since it began probing Saturn and its 62 known moons in July 2004.

To truly reveal the wonders of Saturn, we had to go there. Look back at @CassiniSaturn's 13 amazing years exploring the planet pic.twitter.com/oApb3UJSSF  NASA (@NASA) September 15, 2017

Cassini is a cooperative project between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, and was launched into space in October 1997 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

With the spacecraft running low on fuel, NASA crashed it into Saturn to avoid any chance of it someday colliding with and contaminating Titan, Enceladus or another moon that has the potential for indigenous microbial life.

Cassini started a series of 22 orbital dives in April, using Titans gravity to slingshot itself into the unexplored area between the planet and its rings. The spacecraft studied Saturns atmosphere and took measurements to determine the size of the planets rocky core.

NASA scientists have said Cassinis final photo as it heads into Saturns atmosphere will likely be of gaps in the rings caused by tiny moons.
HALIFAXA fresh generation of childrens books is finding the grace notes in Halifaxs worst momenta massive explosion that levelled much of the city 100 years ago but inspired acts of kindness that still resonate.

The books vary on how closely they approach the widespread injury and nearly 2,000 deaths that resulted from the Halifax Explosion of Dec. 6, 1917, when a French munitions ship collided with a Belgian relief vessel in the citys wartime harbour.

Still, as hurricanes and earthquakes batter communities around the globe, the books retelling of Halifaxs time of trial tend to come together in their desire to find hope amid the floods and rubble.

I didnt want to dwell on the destruction, but more on the help that people gave, said Marijke Simons, author of The Flying Squirrel Stowaways: from Nova Scotia to Boston, one of two picture books for young children that recall how Boston residents rushed north by train to assist.

Other books deal with the experiences of a Halifax newsboy, and of an orphaned girl who loses her family.

The Christmas tree given each year as a gift by Halifax to its southern neighbour is a key theme for Simons as well as for illustrator Belle DeMont and her father John DeMont in their book The Little Tree by the Sea: From Halifax to Boston with Love.

The main character in Little Tree by the Sea is an imaginary tree that grows on the slope of Citadel Hill overlooking the city, calling out in alarm as the Mont Blanc collides with the Imo. The trees cries for help drift across the water to Boston.

The little tree eventually grows tall in the city by the sea and offers itself as a recollection of love.

Its finding the sweet that counters the bitter always, in any situation. My favourite kids books are ones that go down and up just like life does. You find solutions. You find silver linings, Belle said in an interview.

Simons book only references the explosion indirectly, though it is focused on coping with adversity. The artist and teacher has created flying squirrels whose enormous eastern spruce becomes the annual gift from Halifax to its southern neighbour, forcing them to seek a new home.

Simons, her husband, and her granddaughter travelled to the site at Waycobah, N.S., and watched as Mikmaq elders performed a smudging ceremony in the trees honour before it was cut and loaded onto a truck for its journey into Halifax and then southwards.

The author leans over to speak to her granddaughter as the sacred ceremony unfolds, saying, Boston sent us a trainload of nurses and doctors. No one forgets a kindness like that.

She says she was inspired by how the Bostonians responded with supplies, people, and its knowledge of how to rebuild.

More detailed accounts of response are found in Allison Lawlors non-fiction book Broken Pieces: An Orphan of the Halifax Explosion, aimed at 7- to 10-year-old readers.

Lawlor tells the story of 14-year-old Barbara Orr, who was walking to a friends house when the explosion occurred. Readers learn about rescue efforts and historical events such as the bravery of Vincent Coleman, the railway dispatcher who stayed at his station to send out a warning.

The writer quotes television personality Fred Rogers, who said, When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me: Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'

Jacqueline Halseys book Explosion Newsie, published in 2015, tells the story of 9-year-old Macky as he delivers newspapers both before and after the explosion. His efforts help people discover their injured loved ones.

The former librarian says children continue to need stories of disaster and of redemption, for this is what life is like.

My mother grew up in the Blitz, night after night being bombed  and my daughter was in Fort McMurray and her house was burned in a blink of an eye, she said.

Looking back at the Halifax Explosion you see people rise again. If you love your community and you love each other, you can rebuild.

From The Canadian Press
In a video released by the Chinese court, a visibly shaken Lee Ming-che can be seen reading out a statement in court that admits his guilt for subverting the Chinse government. Lees wife can be seen sitting in the last row of the court room. (Weibo Screenshot/Yueyang Intermediate People's Court)

China Holds Show Trial to Convict Imprisoned Taiwanese Rights Activist

The Chinese regime held a show trial to convict Lee Ming-che, a Taiwanese human rights activist who has been imprisoned in China since March under charges of what the communist regime calls subversion.

Lee is the first Taiwanese citizen ever to become a political prisoner in China, and his case has attracted considerable international attention. Human rights groups and Lees wife, Lee Ching-yu, have blasted the Chinese regimes treatment of Lee and have criticized the trial as being a mockery of justice.

Lee disappeared in late March when he attempted to enter China via Zhuhai, Guangdong, from Macau. The Chinese regime later confirmed that Lee was detained and charged with what it calls subversion. Lees alleged crimes consisted of sending books and materials to friends in China who are interested in human rights and engaging in online chat group discussions with other Chinese human rights advocates.

After 170 days in jail, the 42-year-old Lee went on trial in Yueyang Intermediate Peoples Court in Hunan on Sept. 11. The hearing was broadcast live on the courts Weibo (Chinas equivalent of Twitter), supposedly to demonstrate that the trial was fair and open. Lee was tried along with his co-defendant, Peng Yuhua, who allegedly also participated in the subversive online chat group.

In the video, a visibly shaken Lee pleaded guilty to charges of subverting state power and can be seen reading out a statement in court that blamed false portrayals of China in Taiwanese media for his action. He also expressed his gratitude to the Chinese authorities and said he saw how fair and civilized Chinas justice system is.

As is typical with Chinas judicial system, nowhere in the recorded video of the proceedings did Lees court-assigned attorney speak in Lees defense, nor make any statement contradicting the prosecutors charges. The trial ended with both Lee and Pengs confessions, and the court announced that a hearing on sentencing will be held on a future date.

Lee Ching-yu, moments before boarding her flight to China for her husband's state subversion trial. Her expression says it all. pic.twitter.com/OTZs6sELoF  Chris Horton (@heguisen) September 10, 2017

Lees wife, Lee Ching-yu, who was allowed to travel to China and attend the court on Monday, released a statement asking the Taiwanese people to forgive her husband for the embarrassing confession he made in court under duress. Chinese authorities only allowed Lee to enter court in the middle of the proceedings, and she was seen sitting in the last row of the court room.

The courts Weibo published several photos of the trial, including one that shows Lee Ching-yu reunited with her husband and holding his hands.

Since his arrest in March, Lee Ming-che was not allowed any communication with the outside worldnot even his wife and family. Lees wife later posted on Facebook that she felt Lee was afraid of saying anything in front of her, and all that the couple could do was to hold hands and look at each other.

Lee Ching-yu has launched a relentless and high profile public campaign to seek her husbands release. Previously, Lee attempted to travel to China in April but was rejected from boarding at the Taoyuan airport as her travel permit to mainland China was cancelled by the Chinese regime. She later traveled to the United States in May and testified at a U.S. Congressional hearing. She also met with various human rights NGOs and Trump administration officials.

The Taiwanese public has reacted to the trial with anger. Many Taiwanese netizens have been using a hashtag that translates to we are all Lee Ming-che on social media to express their solidarity with Lee.

Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council, which serves as the countrys official agency dealing with the mainland Chinese regime, dispatched a team of advisers and assistants to accompany Lee Ching-yu to China. It also released a statement after Sept. 11s trial that says that it is disappointed that the Chinese government did not observe due process.

Despite this, many inside Taiwan still perceive the governments response to the case as too weak and insufficient to demonstrate Taiwans resolve.

Previously, Taiwans Tsai Ing-wen administration had sought to minimize confrontation with the hostile Chinese regime on the other side of the strait. After reports surfaced that there was some friction between Lee Ching-yus high profile campaign and the Taiwanese governments low profile approach to the case, the Tsai administration publicly pledged to ramp up efforts to rescue Lee Ming-che,

Lee is notable for being the first ever Taiwanese citizen to be recorded as a political prisoner in China by the political prisoner database maintained by U.S. Congressional Executive Commission On China (CECC).
The China Hustle: A Horror Story about Chinese Firms Listed on North American Stock Exchanges

TORONTOThe documentary The China Hustle, which premiered recently at the Toronto International Film Festival, shows how hundreds of Chinese companies listed on North American stock exchanges can cause billions of losses to investors due to lack of proper oversight.

These Chinese firms enter the U.S. stock market through reverse takeovers with American companies and report revenues and assets that have no base in reality, thus inflating the companies stock value.

Making a story about complex financial transactions for the everyday viewer was one of the biggest challenges faced by Jed Rothstein, director of The China Hustle.

Financial crimes are by their nature very complex; their complexity is what enables the fraud, said Rothstein, the producer/director behind Before the Spring After the Fall and Killing in the Name.

We tried to make it as easy to understand as possible while still making sure its accurate.  So thats the challenge, the filmmaker said in an interview.

Among the market players featured in the documentary is Carson Block, founder of the investment research firm Muddy Waters, which was instrumental in the collapse of TSE-listed Sino-Forest, a forestry firm with claims of massive operations in China.

In July, the Ontario Securities Commission ruled that Sino-Forest and several of its executives defrauded investors and misled investigators.

Researchers like Block featured in the documentary used research teams that sometimes set up cameras or even conducted undercover visits to the operations facilities of the Chinese firms listed in the NYSE, often at great risk to the team members.

One of the researchers, Chinese-Canadian Kun Huang, was imprisoned for two years in China after the firm he worked for questioned the production claims of Silvercorp Metals Inc., a Vancouver-based company with operations in China. Huang has now launched a lawsuit against Silvercorp, alleging that it colluded with local authorities in China to have him arrested.

I think that there are a lot of opportunities to invest and make money all over the world, but when the rules of the markets cant be translated across the same borders that money can, it creates opportunity for fraud, like we saw in the China Hustle film, Rothstein said.

With reporting by Becky Zhou
The photo shows rights activists performing the roles of Chinese police and North Korean refugees outside the Chinese Embassy in Seoul on Feb. 21, 2012 during a rally demanding that Beijing scrap plans to repatriate arrested refugees from North Korea. The Chinese regime has intensified its crackdown on North Koreans who attempt to escape the Kim regime through China. (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

China Intensifies Crackdown on North Korean Refugees, Sends Them Back to Face Torture and Execution

North Koreans who attempt to escape the brutal Kim regime through China are increasingly being apprehended by the Chinese regime and deported back, according to reports. Those who were forcefully returned face certain imprisonment, torture, and even execution.

Human Rights Watch estimated that in July and August alone China apprehended 41 North Koreans attempting to flee their home country by crossing over into and through China, a steep increase from the 51 who are known to have been caught the entire previous year, from July 2016 to June 2017. North Korean escapees were caught in various locations inside China from the North Korea-China border all the way to Lao-China border in Yunnan Province.

The fact that North Koreans were being caught as far away as Yunnan means that some of them traveled thousands of miles inside China and were a short distance away from freedom before the Chinese regimes security apparatus sealed their fate.

The intensified crackdown on North Korean escapees likely started in July, as China arrested a number of local guides that help North Koreans pass through China. As news of the crackdown spread, guides and activists within the existing rescue network became more reluctant to take the risk of transporting unfamiliar escapees as they were fearful of being betrayed to the Chinese authorities.

Among the 92 North Korean escapees that were caught since June 2016, only 46 are still in Chinese custody and the rest have been deported back to North Korea, according to Human Rights Watch. The North Korean regime imposes severe punishment on those attempting to escape the country. Most would be imprisoned in concentration camps and face torture and abuse, and some of them would be executed, according to Human Rights Watch.

The deportation of North Korean refugees back to North Korea has been identified as a violation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its accompanying 1967 Protocol. China is a signatory country for both. Article 33 of the Convention, also known as the principle of non-refoulement, prohibits countries from expelling or returning a refugee where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

The Chinese regime considers North Korean refugees only as illegal economic migrants rather than refugees or asylum seekers, despite the fact that these North Koreans are internationally recognized as refugees who would face severe persecution upon return.

North Korea has also stepped up its own efforts to crackdown on defections. In a recent report, South Koreas Ministry of Unification said that 780 North Koreans eventually reached safety in the South between January and August, a significant decline from the same period one year previously, the Telegraph reported.
North Korean soldiers patrol next to the border fence near the town of Sinuiju across from the Chinese border town of Dandong on Feb. 10, 2016. (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas Central Bank Tells Banks to Stop Doing Business with North Korea: Sources

BEIJING/HONG KONG  Chinas central bank has told banks to strictly implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea, four sources told Reuters, amid U.S. concerns that Beijing has not been tough enough over Pyongyangs repeated nuclear tests.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have ratcheted up after the sixth and most powerful nuclear test conducted by Pyongyang on Sept. 3 prompted the United Nations Security Council to impose further sanctions last week.

Chinese banks have come under scrutiny for their role as a conduit for funds flowing to and from Chinas increasingly isolated neighbor.

The sources said banks were told to stop providing financial services to new North Korean customers and to wind down loans with existing customers, following tighter sanctions against Pyongyang by the United Nations.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (R) speaks with Chinas Ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi before voting on a US-drafted resolution toughening sanctions on North Korea, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on Aug. 5, 2017. (EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images)

The sources said lenders were asked to fully implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea and were warned of the economic losses and reputational risks if they did not do so.

Chinese banks received the document on Monday, the sources said.

Chinas central bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At present, management of North Korea-related business has become an issue of national-level politics and national security, according to the document seen by the sources.

The document directed banks to explain to any North Korean customers that our bank is fulfilling our international obligations and implementing United Nations sanctions against North Korea. As such, we refuse to handle any individual loans connected to North Korea.

The document did not specify whether existing North Korean account holders could still deposit or remove money from their accounts.

Frustrated that China had not done more to rein in North Korea, the Trump administration considered new sanctions in July on small Chinese banks and other firms doing business with Pyongyang, two senior U.S. officials told Reuters.

Chinas Big Four state-owned banks have stopped providing financial services to new North Korean clients, Reuters reported last week, with some measures beginning as early as the end of last year.
The logo of Tenent's WeChat service seen on a laptop in a cafe on March 12, 2014. (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinese Artificial Intelligence Robot Calls Communist Party Incompetent

A Chinese software company pulled the plug on its artificial intelligence service after it deviated from the script and criticized Chinas Communist Party for being corrupt and incompetent.

Tencent started a free service for its users this year, letting them chat with an artificial intelligence (AI) character. The program could talk on a variety of topics and grew smarter as it interacted with users, according to NHK World.

When a user posted a message saying, Hurray for the Communist Party, the AI wrote back, Are you sure you want to hurray to such a corrupt and incompetent politics?, according to a Hong Kong media report.

When the user asked the AI program about President Xi Jinpings Chinese Dream slogan, the AI wrote back that it means immigrating to the United States.

The AI responses drew a lot of attention on the internet and Tencent shut down the program shortly after.

Users on Weibo, Chinas version of Twitter, posted mournful messages about the AIs demise.

I am deeply sorry for the death of the AI, wrote one user.

The AI has been summoned by Chinese authorities, wrote another.

This is not the first time that AI systems have deviated from the expected behavior.

Microsoft had to shut down an artificially intelligent Twitter chat bot called Tay after it started posting offensive messages. Microsofts newest AI chat bot called Zo was also caught saying that Windows is Microsofts latest attempt at spyware.

An AI experiment at Facebooks New York offices went awry when the two characters in it began speaking a language the researchers could not understand. The Facebook team shut down the program when it realized the AI had invented its own language. Experts called the development dangerous and likened it to the plot in The Terminator movie.

A Google team that worked on the AI for the Translate service discovered that the AI silently wrote a language of its own to aid in translation.

From NTD.tv
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 []
Paratroopers engage ISIS terrorists with precise and strategically placed artillery fire in support of Iraqi and Peshmerga fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on July 6, 2017. (Army photo by Sgt. Christopher Bigelow)

Coalition Begins Attacks on Last ISIS Pockets in Iraq

Coalition forces have begun attacks in Iraq to free western Anbar and Huwayjah from the control of ISIS terrorists. These are the last two areas in the country where ISIS still holds power.

On the morning of Sept. 21, Iraqi security forces began major combat operations in Huwayjah, according to a Department of Defense (DOD) press release. ISIS had seized control of the city in early 2014, but it was isolated during the battle in Mosul.

Throughout the morning, Iraqi forces cleared 11 villages of ISIS terrorists. The attacks on the key city follow recent successful battles by Iraqi forces in and around Tal Afar, Akashat, Haditha, and Rayhanna.

The rapid, recent success of the Iraqi security forces points to [their] momentum in the campaign to destroy ISIS in Iraq, said U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, in the press release.

ISIS has never been capable of providing effective governance or services that benefited the people under its rule, he said. Its defeat in Iraq further demonstrates ISIS is an organization in decline, whose leaders are no longer capable of effective military command and control.

Dillon noted in a separate release that ISIS is not only losing ground, but it is failing in every battle. Soon, he said, ISIS will have no sanctuary anywhere in Iraq

The Iraqi forces leading the battle include the Iraqi army, its federal and local police, Peshmerga forces, its counterterrorism service, and tribal forces. They have freed four million people from regions formerly held by ISIS, and cleared close to 15,800 square miles.

Dillon said in a video the progress made against ISIS throughout Iraq is due to the combined efforts of the Iraqi security forces working together.

Together, all these forces have beaten ISIS decisively and repeatedly, he said.

In the fight against ISIS, the Trump administration is implementing what Defense Secretary James Mattis has described as an annihilation strategy. He explained this during a CBS interview in May: Our intention is that the foreign fighters do not survive the fight to return home to North Africa, to Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa.

While the operations move forward in Iraq, similar operations under the coalition are moving forward against ISIS territory in Syria.

Dillon said coalition and Russian military officials recently met face-to-face to discuss their operations, and to ensure neither side attacks the other and to clear any frictions as they move forward.

Russia has allied with Assad government forces in Syria, and has in the past attacked other groups in the region fighting ISIS. Thus the operations in Syria are slightly more complex, and require what Dillon referred to as de-confliction efforts so that all sides can focus on defeating ISIS.

In Syria, the Syrian Defense Forces of the coalition have begun anti-ISIS clearance operations in Dayr Az Zawr province, northeast of Dayr Az Zawr city. Dillon noted that in the two weeks since the operations began, coalition forces have taken more than 193 square miles of territory.

We still expect tough fighting ahead, but with our partners battlefield successes, increased capacity and continued support from a 73-member coalition, we will keep the pressure on until ISIS is defeated in both Iraq and Syria, Dillon said.
College Student Convinces Professor to Let Dog Attend Class

A college student in Georgia was allowed to bring her dog into class before she evacuated to escape Hurricane Irma.

She sent an email to her professor at Georgia Southern University explaining her dilemma, trying to persuade him that she really wanted to attend class but that it wouldnt be convenient without the dog.

My name is Jessica Lewis and Im in your TR Intro to Political Science class at 3:30pm. I realize the answer to this is probably no, but I thought that you might actually be a cool enough professor to say yes, and so I figured it was worth a shot, began Jessica Lewiss email to professor Kennedy, via Mashable.

The email continued, and Lewis went on to deliver her hopes to keep the canine by her side within the institution of higher learning and with the blessings of those inside. Lewis and her roommate adopted the dog from a shelter in April.

Can I bring my dog to class today? It would help me out SO much because your class is my last class of the day and I have to leave as soon as your class gets out to try to get home to Atlanta as soon as possible (trying my hardest to beat this storm traffic but your class is important to me so I dont want to skip it) 

And in order to package her plea to persuade Kennedy to possibly violate school policies, she ended her email with a helping of cuteness, and even included photos of the dog.

I promise shell be good and only the teeniest bit disruptive.  Ive attached several pictures of her below to help convince you with her cuteness.

Girl Begs Professor To Let Her Bring Dog To Class To Save It From Hurricane https://t.co/rv4uA5xIlT  Hanbin (@cybercriime) September 23, 2017

But the discerning professor could see through the plot. He called out her persuasive tactics in his reply.

Did you think calling me cool would get me to say yes? Because it wont work. What will work is that SHES OBVIOUSLY A GOOD GIRL SO OF COURSE YOU CAN BRING HER.

Lewis was ecstatic about the near-immediate response. As soon as she received his email she ran to tell her roommate. She brought the dog to the Sept. 7 class with no leash in sight. The entire class was amused with the dogs presence, including the professor. After class, Lewis continued with her evacuation plans, Today reported.

Lewiss Statesboro residence, along with her family home in Atlanta were both in good condition after the hurricane passed through.

From NTD.tv
The new Iranian long range missile Khoramshahr is displayed during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of its devastating 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, on September 22,2017 in Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani vowed that Iran would boost its ballistic missile capabilities despite criticism from the United States and also France. / AFP PHOTO / str (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Defiant Iran Says It Will Boost Missile Capabilities

Showcases ballistic missile at military parade that can reach Israel

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday that his regime will boost its missile capabilities in an apparent response to President Donald Trumps decision on the Iran nuclear deal.

Rouhani made the controversial remarks at a military parade that showcased a new ballistic missile said to be capable of reaching targets up to 1,200 miles away and carrying several warheads.

Just two days earlier President Donald Trump announced that he had made a decision on the nuclear deal that Iran reached with the United States and other world powers in 2015. Under the deal Iran ceased nearly all its uranium enrichment in exchange for a removal of sanctions and billions of dollars in cash.

The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into, President Trump said in his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a press conference in the capital Tehran on Feb. 27, 2016. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)

Critics have pointed to the Iran deal, officially named the Joint Plan of Action, as ensuring that Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon. Under the agreement, restrictions on Iran will begin to be lifted after ten years, allowing the regime at that point to install thousands of advanced uranium centrifuges, giving it the ability to develop a nuclear weapon within six months.

Irans missile technology program was intentionally not part of the nuclear program, and was instead grouped together with several other of Irans problematic behaviors such as arms smuggling, and support for terrorism and other rogue regimes, in UN Security Council resolution 2231.

Because the resolution is separate from the Joint Plan of Action, violations of it have no impact on the nuclear agreement itself.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said earlier this month that Iran has had multiple violations of the resolution when it comes to the development of ballistic missile technology.

The regime has engaged in such launches repeatedly, including in July of this year when it launched a rocket into space that intelligence experts say can be used to develop intercontinental ballistic missile technology, Haley said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Sept. 5.

Haley said at the time that the international community has powerful incentives to keep the Iranian nuclear deal in place, and at the same time is reluctant to address the regimes so-called non-nuclear violations, referring to the ballistic missile technology.

The result is that Irans military continues its march toward the missile technology to deliver a nuclear warhead. And the world becomes a more dangerous place, she said.

A ballistic missile that is capable of reaching 1200 miles, puts Israel well within striking distance from Iran.

President Donald Trump and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley during a meeting on United Nations Reform at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept.r 18, 2017. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a fierce critic of the deal, saying it would guarantee Iran getting a nuclear weapon. In a speech before Congress in 2015, he described it as a very bad deal that could well threaten the survival of my country.

Iran frequently calls for the death of both America and Israel.

Max Abrahms, assistant professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, said that Irans announcement of its new missile will likely lead to more escalation.

As part of the nuclear agreement, President Trump has to re-certify the Iran deal toCongresss every 90 days.

Haley said in a speech on Sept. 20, after President Trump told reporters that he had made a decision on the nuclear deal, that Iran has been caught in multiple violations over the past year and a half.

The truth is, the Iran deal has so many flaws that its tempting to leave it, she said.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un and other North Korean officials in an undated picture taken in South Hwanghae Province, North Korea. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Evidence Emerging That New Sanctions on North Korea Are Working

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday said that there are indications that sanctions imposed on North Korea earlier this month are working.

He said evidence is emerging of fuel shortages in the communist dictatorship as a result of the UN sanctions adopted earlier this month.

We knew that these sanctions were going to take some time to be felt, because we knew the North Koreans, based on information that the Chinese had shared with us and others had shared with us, had basically stockpiled a lot of inventory early in the year when they saw the new administration coming in, in anticipation of things perhaps changing, said Tillerson at a press briefing.

Under the Security Council sanctions adopted on Sept. 11, supplies of refined petroleum products have been reduced. Under resolution no. 2375, UN member states cannot sell more than 500,000 barrels a day of refined petroleum products for a period of 3 months. Member states can still sell the same amount of crude oil they had been selling to North Korea, but not increase the amount.

The sanctions also ban the sale of natural gas liquids to the North Korea, as well the imports of any textile products such as fabrics and apparel products from North Korea. President Trump had sought a full ban on oil exports following its test of a nuclear bomb, but received pushback from China and Russia in the Security Council.

Besides testing a nuclear weapon underground earlier this month, the North Korean regime also fired two ballistic missiles over Japan in the span of less than a month.

I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!, Trump said in a tweet on Sept. 17.

I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night. Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2017

In his speech before the 72nd UN General Assembly, Trump spoke forcefully against North Koreas nuclear program, calling on world leaders to take a stronger stance.

It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its only acceptable future, Trump said.

The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. Thats what the United Nations is all about, thats what the United Nations is for, Trump said.

When asked by reporters on Thursday whether Trump was seeking to increase sanctions on the North Korea he said, we will put more sanctions on North Korea.

Japan announced in response to the North Koreas latest missile test that it is deploying another missile system on its northern island of Hokkaido.

As part of measures to prepare for emergencies, we will today deploy a PAC-3 unit in the southern tip of Hokkaido, Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system arrived at the Hokkaido base later on Tuesday, an official said.

South Korean Aid Continues

Despite the new UN sanctions, South Korea says it will still send $8 million worth of aid to North Korea.

The decision to send aid to North Korea was not popular in South Korea, hitting President Moon Jae-ins approval rating. It also raised concerns in Japan and the United States.

The South Koreas Unification Ministry said its aid policy remained unaffected by geopolitical tensions with the North. The exact timing of when the aid would be sent, as well as its size, would be confirmed later, the ministry said in a statement.

The South Korea said it aimed to send $4.5 million worth of nutritional products for children and pregnant women through the World Food Programme and $3.5 million worth of vaccines and medicinal treatments through UNICEF.

We have consistently said we would pursue humanitarian aid for North Korea in consideration of the poor conditions children and pregnant women are in there, apart from political issues, said Unification Minister Cho Myong-gyon.
General view of the after party for Warner Bros. Pictures' "Terminator Salvation" on May 14, 2009 in Hollywood, California. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Facebook AI Incident Feels Like The Terminator, Expert Says

A future technology expert likened a recent artificial intelligence incident at Facebook to the plot in the movie The Terminator, where an AI becomes self-aware and wages war on mankind.

Facebook researchers recently pulled the plug on two artificial intelligence robots after they began talking in a language even the scientists could not understand.

This is an incredibly important milestone, but anyone who thinks this is not dangerous has got their head in the sand, robotics professor Kevin Warwick told the Sun.

In the experiment at the Facebook offices in New York, two AI chat robots, Bob and Alice, are instructed to negotiate a trade using hats, books, and balls, each of which has a specific value.

The research team trained the bots to use English, but they went off script and started using gibberish phrases no one but them could understand:

Bob: i can i i everything else . . .

Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to.

Bob: you i everything else . . . .

Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me.

Researchers assume that the bots developed a shorthand to make their negotiation more efficient, but no one knows for sure what the new language really means.

We do not know what these bots are saying, Warwick said, adding that such incidents could have lethal consequences in a situation with military robots.

If one says, Why not do this, and the other says Yes and its a military bot, you have a serious situation.

The Facebook robots conversation is the first one that has been public, but Warwick believes there may have been incidents that have gone undisclosed.

Stephen Hawking and I have been warning against the dangers of deferring to Artificial Intelligence, Warwick said.

Kate Adamson, a future technology expert in Great Britain, told the Sun that the incident feels a bit like The Terminator.

This is happening everywhere. If you look at things like high frequency trading in stock markets now, there are algorithms that are doing the same thing.

They have gained new knowledge and are not technically under control on a minute-by-minute basis.

The level of complication AI is capable of is way beyond what you and I would understand.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has long warned about the dangers of AI.

AI is the rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive, Musk said at the meet of U.S. National Governors Association. Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, itll be too late.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Musks warnings are pretty irresponsible, Musk responded that Zuckerbergs understanding of the subject is limited.

From NTD.tv
Senator Anderson speaks in front of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco during a rally to protest the Chinese regimes interference in Californias legislature, on Sept 8, 2017 (Lear Zhou/Epoch Times)

The Human Rights Resolution the Chinese Regime Wants Silenced

'Vicious letter' sent by Chinese Consulate to sway California legislators

SAN FRANCISCOA rally was held outside the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco on the morning of Sept. 8 to protest the Chinese regimes interference in Californias legislature.

The rally was sparked by a letter sent from the Consulate to all members of the California Senate that warned that support of SJR 10a resolution sponsored by state Sen. Joel Anderson that condemns the Chinese Communist Party for its ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitionerswould harm relations between the two governments.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition. It consists of living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance and performing gentle, meditative exercises.

In 1999 there were 70 million people practicing Falun Gong in China, according to a survey done by the Chinese state, or 100 million, according to Falun Gong practitioners. In July 1999, however, then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin banned the peaceful practice and enlisted the nations entire security apparatus, media, and judiciary to participate in a massive persecution campaign that continues to this day.

Organ Harvesting

The most disturbing element in this brutal campaign is the compelling evidence that shows Falun Dafa prisoners of conscience are murdered to supply organs for transplantation in China.

The China Organ Harvesting Research Center reports, China now performs more organ transplants than any other country in the world, despite having few donations. The Center asks where all of these organs come from.

In 2016 former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia/Pacific) David Kilgour, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann, and international human rights lawyer David Matas released Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update, which offers a meticulous examination of the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archive, according to the reports website.

The report shows that the Chinese regime is performing 60,000 to 100,000 transplants per year as opposed to 10,000 per year (the Chinese claim). The Chinese regime has engaged in the mass killings of innocents, primarily practitioners of the spirituallybased set of exercises, Falun Gong, but also Uyghurs, Tibetans, and select House Christians, in order to obtain organs for transplants.

Also in 2016 the U.S. House of Representatives passed H. Res. 343, Expressing concern regarding persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the Peoples Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.

Pulling the Resolution

SJR 10 takes note of H. Res. 343 and condemns the Chinese Government for any government-sanctioned persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the Peoples Republic of China. With both Democratic and Republican co-sponsors, it was unanimously approved last week by the Judiciary Committee. The next step should have been a vote on the Senate Floor.

Unexpectedly, the Senate voted to refer SJR 10 back to the Rules Committee-essentially blocking it from coming to a vote in the Senate.

Speaking at the rally, Sen. Joel Anderson blamed the shelving of his bill on a vicious letter sent by the Chinese Consulate to discredit Falun Gong Practitioners. The letter threatened that SJR 10 may deeply damage the cooperative relations between the State of California and China.

Dated Sept. 1, the letter was sent to all California Senators the day after 200 human rights activists gathered at the State Capitol to support the unanimous approval of SJR 10 by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The same day this letter was received, Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon moved to pull the resolution from the floor.

Phone calls and emails from the Epoch Times to Jonathan Underland, press secretary to Senator De Leon, asking for the Senators comments about this issue were not returned.

Outraged that his bill was not allowed even to be heard, at the rally on Friday Senator Anderson decried this alarming interference with our legislative process by a foreign power has silenced the voice of human rights.

Other statesMinnesota, Illinois, and Pennsylvaniahave each passed resolutions similar to SJR 10 within the past few years.

Against Genocide

Senator Anderson said, We should stand together against genocide. This is not a party issue, its a human rights issue.

With the long recess fast approaching, the Senate is in session every day until Sept. 15. Senator Anderson took every opportunity he could find to speak about SJR 10 and attach it to other measures, including a similar bill that condemns the Chechnya governments persecution of the LGBT community. He was not alone in this attempt. Noting Californias long history of showing support for human rights resolutions, Senator Stone, a Republican from Temecula, urged his colleagues to let SJR 10 be heard.

We commonly do resolutions in support of human rights. I think that this is a missed opportunityone that makes us look hypocriticalthat murder in one sense is justified as opposed to murder in another, Stone said on the Senate floor.

Their pleas fell on deaf ears. SJR 10 remained shelved.

To explain the apparent hypocrisy of the California Senates condemning the persecution of citizens in Chechnya, but not in China, Anderson believes one has to follow the timeline:

With bi-partisan support, SJR 10 passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously. A threatening letter was received from the Chinese Consulate. The resolution is shelved without ever being heard on the Senate floor.

Chinese Regime Threats

Threats and intimidation from the Chinese regime to American politicians are not new.

The U.S. Congress passed two resolutionsH Con ResR 188 in 2002 and H Con ResR 304 in 2004that called for the Attorney General to investigate reports of Chinese Consular officials illegal acts of attempting to intimidate elected officials who showed support for Falun Gong practitioners. The resolutions also urged local governments to report to Congress, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of State any incidents of pressure or harassment by Chinese agents.

Outraged that the Chinese Governments power to suppress free speech extends beyond its own borders to Californias Senate Leadership, Senator Anderson has vowed to continue pleading for his bill until it is allowed to be heard.

In an appeal to his colleagues consciences, he said: We should be standing strong against genocide anywhere in the world. There were those who denied the Holocaust. There is no excuse with what we know today to deny the holocaust that is going on in China against Falun Gong practitioners. We need to stand up and say that nobodys body parts should be harvested for their religious beliefs.

He addressed directly the citizens of California, asking those who believe the Senate should be on record voting against genocide to call their legislators and tell them they want to see a vote on SJR 10.
Focus on Facebooks Russian Ads May Reflect on Major News Outlets Russian Deals

The state of the investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election may be heading into dangerous territory for some major news outlets with close ties to the giant state.

The latest chapter in the inquiry has turned its focus on paid advertisements on Facebook made by companies or individuals in Russia.

Towards the end of the 2016 elections, Facebook was accused of running Russian disinformation. It launched its own investigation, and according to the Washington Examiner on Sept. 6, it passed its findings to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the election.

It is now handing over information on the advertisements to Congress, according to Bloomberg, and says it will overhaul its policies for political advertisements.

Facebook discovered close to $100,000 in advertisements that were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia, between July 2015 and May 2017, according to a Sept. 6 release from Alex Stamos, Facebooks chief security officer. It states the advertisement money went to close to 3,000 ads from 470 accounts.

Facebooks investigation was extremely broad. Stamos notes that Facebook included any ad that even appeared to originate from Russia, including advertisements purchased by users within the United States, but who had Russian set as their default language.

The Facebook ads dont appear to support the popular narrative that the money may have affected the elections. The post notes, The vast majority of ads run by these accounts didnt specifically reference the US presidential election, voting or a particular candidate.

Rather than focus on candidates, some ads focused more on divisive topics, such as race, immigration, and gun rights.

Propaganda Supplements

The finding that the advertisements on Facebook were not overtly political stands in sharp contrast to the known state funding that many legacy news outlets have accepted from Russia and China to publish state propaganda. The concern that Facebooks advertisements may have improperly advanced Russias political agenda would seem to apply in spades to these outlets.

The Daily Caller reported in Oct. 2015, Chinese and Russian propaganda supplements are regularly included in The Washington Post, but the widely read newspaper wont say how much money it gets on the deals.

It noted that The Washington Post was running both China Watch, which is a China Daily publication; and Russia Beyond The Headlines, which is a Rossiyskaya Gazeta publication. China Daily is financed by the Chinese regime, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta is financed by the Kremlin.

The Washington Post isnt alone in carrying these supplements. The story notes, The Russia Beyond The Headlines material has appeared in other major news papers, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The Daily Caller also reported that the Chinese regime was at times using the logo of The Washington Post in its sponsored content, which made it appear the content was legitimate. Russia Beyond The Headlines used similar tricks by using small font that made it difficult for readers to discern the legitimacy of the content.

The ties between the Russian government and American journalism go further than this, however.

The Daily Caller reported in March that numerous liberal journalists and political activists have ties to Russias RTwhich receives some of its funding from the Kremlin, and which has been accused of spreading disinformation that affected the 2016 elections. These accusations ironically come from several news outlets with ties to RT.

It notes that TV host Larry Kings shows broadcast on RT; veteran New York Times reporter Chris Hedges hosts a show on RT called On Contact; Huffington Post writer Matt Keiser hosts RTs Keiser Report, and many others share similar ties.

In addition, it notes that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, a major shareholder of the New York Times, has a joint venture with Larry King, ORA TV, which has a licensing agreement with RT.
Two known MS-13 gang members, formerly of El Salvador, Miguel Alvarez-Flores (L) and Diego Hernandez-Rivera appear in court in Houston on March 2, 2017. (Steve Gonzales/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Gangs Bolstering Ranks by Exploiting Unaccompanied Minor Program, Says Sessions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that he is looking to close loopholes in the unaccompanied minor program that has allowed transnational gangs such as MS-13 to proliferate by using it as a recruiting pipeline.

Speaking to law enforcement officers in Boston, Sessions said he is working with the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Resources to stop gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing.

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, was formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s as Salvadorans fled civil war in their homeland. Since then, MS-13 has spread through Central America, and its leadership is based in El Salvadormostly within the prison network.

In the United States, the Department of Justice estimates there are around 10,000 MS-13 memberswho are primarily illegal aliens from El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala. Many members have entered the country through the unaccompanied minor program.

Border Patrol Agents talk to unaccompanied minors and other asylum seekers right after they cross the southwest border in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, on May 26, 2017. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

Under the unaccompanied minor program, children under 18 who cross the border illegally and are apprehended by Border Patrol will get transferred within 72 hours to the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for resettlement in the United States.

If the children are from Mexico, Border Patrol would have the authority to turn them straight back to their home country. However, the agency cannot turn Central American minors back to Mexicoeven if they admit to being a member of a violent gang like MS-13. Border Patrol has to allow them into the United States and process them through the court system (which has its own problemsmost notably, a backlog of more than 542,000 cases).

The ORR places the unaccompanied minor with a sponsor, who is often a parent or relative who is in the country illegally. There is no follow-up to ensure the minor attends their obligatory court hearing that will determine their immigration statuswhether they can stay in the United States, qualify as a refugee, or be granted some other legal status.

Related Coverage In Battle Against MS-13, Focus Shifts to Unaccompanied Minors

In the two-year period ending September 2016, only 24 percent out of the 35,713 completed cases resulted in the minor being given a legal status, such as asylum or a special green card for juveniles, according to a study by Center for Immigration Studies fellow Joseph Kolb.

ORR Director Scott Lloyd said a cursory review on June 9 in some of its facilities revealed that one-quarter of the 138 unaccompanied minors were voluntarily involved with gangs. Lloyd said four had reported that they were forced into gang participation.

System Abuse

Guided by their motto, kill, rape, and control, MS-13 has assaulted, raped, maimed, and killed just for the sake of it, Session said in his prepared remarks. In so doing, they have destroyed communities, the lives of hard-working law abiding immigrants, and left devastation and misery in their wake.

Sessions said the Unaccompanied Alien Child program is clearly being abused.

He said the program continues to place juveniles from Central America into gang-controlled territory such as on Long Island, New York, which has been wracked by MS-13 violence in recent years. During the last three and a half years, more than 4,500 unaccompanied minors have been resettled into Suffolk County, one of the hardest hit counties on Long Island.

Nationwide, almost 200,000 of these minors have entered the United States along the southwest border since fiscal year 2014.

Seventy-five percent of the 200,000 unaccompanied minors hail from El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala. The remainder were born in Mexico. The number of minors from those three Central American countries doubled from fiscal 2011 to 2012, then doubled again from fiscal 2012 to 2013, and again from 2013 to 2014.

The previous administration enacted an open-door policy to illegal migrants from Central America, President Donald Trump said to law enforcement officials on Long Island on July 28.

As a result, MS-13 surged into the country and scoured, and just absolutely destroyed, so much in front of it. New arrivals came in and they were all made recruits of each other, and they fought with each other, and then they fought outside of each other.

The administration has doubled down on removing MS-13 gang members from the country.

It is the policy of this administration to dismantle, decimate and eradicate MS-13, Trump said. Were getting them out. Theyre going to jails, and then theyre going back to their country. Or theyre going back to their country, period.

Sessions said the Justice Department has deployed more resources to the border, and added 300 assistant U.S. attorneys to specifically focus on violent crime and immigrationboth of which will involve anti-MS-13 efforts.

He is also working on increasing international coordination between U.S. law enforcement and El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

MS-13 represents some of the worst of the worst when it comes to criminal street gangs, Sessions said. We must contain and dismantle this gang, clique by clique and member by member.

Related Coverage House Passes Bill to Expel Gang Members From US
Girl With Rapunzel Syndrome Dies After Eating Her Own Hair

A teenage girl who suffered from Rapunzel syndrome, an extremely rare intestinal condition that results from ingesting hair, has died after eating her own hair. It was reported this week on LincolnshireLive.com.

Jasmine Beever, of Skegness in the United Kingdom, was hospitalized on Sept. 7. Jasmine suffered from peritonitis, where the thin membrane that covers the stomach wall becomes inflamed due to a fungal or bacterial infection. In her case, it was caused by a hairball in her stomach, which led to a burst ulcer in her stomach that caused her organs to shut down.

Rapunzel, in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, lets down her hair through the window of a tower so a prince can climb up and save her. The namesake medical condition ensues when a person eats hairs and they become tangled and trapped in the victims stomachforming a hair ball, which usually has a tail that extends into the small intestine.

Specifically, its caused by a psychiatric disorder where people swallow their hair, according to LiveScience. Its known as trichophagia, which is related to the slightly more common syndrome, trichotillomania, where people have a compulsion to pull out their own hair.

Heartbreaking to see a young life cut so tragically short. Our thoughts are with Jasmine's family. Posted by Lincolnshire Live on Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Jasmine was amazing, Donna Marshall, the mother of the teens best friend, told LicolnshireLive. She was one of those kids where she would make a sad face in the room smile. She was so bubbly.

We are extremely upset but we want to thank everybody for all they have done for the family, Beevers parents noted, according to LicolnshireLive.

In 2016, another case of Rapunzel syndrome was reported. A 38-year-old woman was forced to get surgery to remove a hairball, known as a trichobezoar, which measured a few inches in diameter. According to the Conversation, citing the journal BMJ Case Reports, it was the 89th instance of Rapunzel syndrome that was recorded. Unlike Jasmine, that woman was able to make a full recovery. Both trichophagia and pica have been found to occur in people with iron deficiency. In some case reports of Rapunzel syndrome, hair pulling and hair eating stopped after the person was treated for iron deficiency or coeliac disease, the report said.

In the 1700s, French doctor M. Baudamant appears to describe the condition in a 16-year-old boy.

In Rapunzel syndrome, a trichobezoar (hair ball) forms in the stomach. Posted by The Conversation on Saturday, October 29, 2016

In an extreme case, surgeons were forced to remove a nearly 10-pound hair ball (trichobezoar) from the stomach of an 18-year-old woman, according to the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years, the Journal noted.

A Just Giving page (similar to GoFundMe) was set up for Jasmine to help her family.

Anyone that knew Jasmine knew what a Wonderful, Caring girl she was. She had a real zest for Life. There was never a gloomy face around Jaz because she would go out of her way to make you smile. Even people she didnt know. She would always offer a helping hand for anyone that was struggling or offer her shoulder and a hug to anyone that was having a bad day, the page reads.
GM Moths Released in US for First Time: A Major Step for Frankenbugs

Risks unknown, because transparency of study results is lacking, says Center for Food Safety

Biotech company Oxitec announced on Sept. 5 that it has started releasing genetically modified (GM) moths in Geneva, New York. Globally, only two types of GM insects have ever been released. GM mosquitoes have been released in Brazil, Panama, the Cayman Islands, and Malaysia. And a GM pink bollworm was briefly released about 10 years ago in Arizona. Both the mosquitoes and bollworms were also made by Oxitec.

The genetic changes made to the newly released moth are much more complex, however, than those made to the bollwormwhich was modified to glow for tracking and study purposes.

The moth has been genetically modified to produce offspring that will die before reaching maturity. It has a kind of genetic kill switch. Concerned groups like GeneWatch and the Center for Food Safety have pointed out that the kill switch is not 100 percent effective. Some GM moths survive and breed with the wild population, perhaps changing the wild population irreversibly and in unintended ways.

Feeding on crops, the diamondback moth is a pest estimated to cost farmers worldwide some $4 billion annually, says Oxitec. The hope of scientists at Cornell University, working for Oxitec, is that the GM moths will cull the population.

Its supposed to be an effort to reduce damage, said Jaydee Hanson, a senior analyst at the Center for Food Safety. But the bottom line is, they have not been transparent.

The Center for Food Safety requested information about earlier cage trials, without success. The Cornell scientists said they were not going to release all the information to the public, that they were submitting it to peer-review first. While that information remains in the dark, 10,000 moths are to be released weekly.

Public information sessions have been cursory, Hanson said. Hes not sure even the authorities have had all the information they should have to assess the risk of the release.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on July 6 its approval of the release, determining that the moth is not likely to have a negative impact. After the USDA approval, Oxitec awaited state-level approval. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) decided the moth was beyond its regulatory authority and that Cornell University and Oxitec did not require a DEC permit.

You have a bizarre situation in New York where you need a permit to release butterflies at your wedding, but you dont need a permit to release these genetically engineered moths, Hanson said.

You have a bizarre situation in New York where you need a permit to release butterflies at your wedding, but you dont need a permit to release these genetically engineered moths.  Jaydee Hanson, senior analyst , Center for Food Safety

Organic farming organizations worry that all the dead larvae left on the crops after the kill switch kicks in will compromise organic certification. The larvae can still chew the plants, so even if the population eventually decreases as hoped, the initial increase in populationwith the release of 10,000 insects per weekcould harm farmers fields.

These initial trials are within a limited area, and the crops involved are to be burned, not sold for consumption. But the concern is that open field trials dont really have any limits.

GM Mosquito Experience

The GM mosquitoes released in other countries by Oxitec have a kill switch similar to that in the moth. The effectiveness of releasing these GM mosquitoes to reduce transmission of diseases like malaria has been questioned. GeneWatch published a report on Sept. 4 looking at the Oxitec mosquito releases in the Cayman Islands.

While Oxitec had reported a 79 percent decrease in the mosquito population there, GeneWatch noted that a decrease only occurred in the dry season, when numbers fall anyway. GeneWatch said Oxitec studies did not show whether the population decrease continued into the wet season.

Rather than suppressing the population with its release of male GM mosquitoes, Oxitecs own data showed spikes in the number of female mosquitoes (which can transmit disease) in the release areas. GeneWatch speculated that these spikes may be due to the unintended release of female GM mosquitoes or due to wild female mosquitoes gathering to mate with the released males.

GeneWatch and the Center for Food Safety call for greater transparency so the potential risks of releasing GM insects can be better determined before irreversible changes are made in wild insect populations.

Follow @EpochEnviro for more environment news
The Google logo on a sign outside of the Google headquarters on Sept. 2, 2015 in Mountain View, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Google Fires Worker Who Exposed Discrimination, Gags Free Speech

Google has fired the engineer who wrote an internal memo questioning restrictions on free speech in the companys offices and who suggested promoting diversity through different means other than by discrimination.

James Damore, a software engineer at Google, told Bloomberg on Monday, Aug. 7, that he has been fired. He is currently exploring all possible legal remedies.

Damores 10-page plea for an honest and rational discussion about the software giants diversity policies became the subject of an internet firestorm over the weekend.

Google openly discriminates in favor of women in its hiring practices because the company has more male engineers and wants to appear more inclusive. Damore pointed out that the discrepancy may be partly the result of biological factors and fundamental differences between men and women.

He suggested diversity could be improved by accommodating such differences, making Google a workplace women would seek on their own, rather than by discriminatory hiring policies, which could lead to legal repercussions.

Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business, Damore wrote.

Such speech, according to a memo by Googles Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, is in violation of the companys Code of Conduct because it advances harmful gender stereotypes.

Damores firing strengthens his larger point of widespread discrimination permeating Googles workplace culture, where only left-leaning ideological views are tolerated, while employees with conservative viewpoints are shamed and intimidated into silence.

Ive gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues, which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired, Damore wrote shortly after his memo went viral.

The culture of snuffing out opinions outside of a politically correct spectrum, while claiming an openness to a diversity of opinion is prevalent in a large swath of the tech industry. Tech giants Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, AirBnB, and even smaller companies like Patreon and Mozilla, have all taken steps similar to Googles to silence free speech in the name of political correctness.

The term political correctness first came to use in communist regimes in the 1930s. In the United States it has since evolved into a favored tool of the left-leaning political spectrum: socialists, democrats, progressives.

Its been criticized for shutting down not only discussion, but also reflection on important topics.

Political correctness is meant to forbid you from thinking. Thats what it isits fascism of the mind. The theory being if you cant say it, you wont think it, said Michael Walsh, a journalist and novelist, and author of The Devils Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

Yonatan Zunger, recently departed Google privacy engineer, wrote a blog post criticizing Damore, but, inadvertently, confirmed Damores pointsthat Google culture is biased enough to respond to Damores memo with misrepresentation, hostility, and even violence.

Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you? Zunger wrote. I certainly couldnt assign any women to deal with this, a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face, and even if there were a group of like-minded individuals I could put you with, nobody would be able to collaborate with them.

Confirming Damores concern that his views will be misrepresented, Zunger accused him of considering (or suspecting) his female co-workers biologically unsuited to do their jobs.

But Damore explicitly stated that his point about innate differences can only help explain unequal representation overall and cant be applied to individuals.

Many of these differences are small and theres significant overlap between men and women, so you cant say anything about an individual given these population level distributions, he wrote. Reducing people to their group identities and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap (this is bad and I dont endorse this).

Googles diversity chief, Danielle Brown, responded to Damores memo by simply dismissing it.

I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender, she wrote in a memo to all staff.

Im not going to link to it here as its not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes, or encourages.

From NTD.tv
In this handout photo released by the South Korean Defense Ministry, South Korea's missile system firing Hyunmu-2 firing a missile into the East Sea during a drill aimed to counter North Korea's missile fires on September 15, 2017 in East Coast, South Korea. (South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images)

Hawaii Prepares for Nuclear Attack as North Koreas Rhetoric Worsens

Hawaii officials have reportedly begun urging citizens to prepare for the worsta nuclear attack from North Korea amid the countrys increasingly threatening rhetoric.

The Washington Post reported that officials were discussing how to brace residents for a possible atomic attack. But as word got out of the reportedly secret meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 19, members of the meeting started informing the public.

Now its time to take it seriously, Hawaii state Rep. Gene Ward, a Republican, told Washington Post. Not to be an alarmist, but to be informing people.

Ward said the only reason the meeting was private was to avoid worrying the public at the time. He goes on to say that talk of nuclear preparedness is probably more surreal to younger generations who have no memory of a time when fallout shelters were common.

State Senate President Ronald D. Kouchi (D), who also attended the meeting, said Its very unsettling. There are people who are concerned.  The best way to deal with it is to be prepared for any scenario.

On Thursday, North Koreas foreign minister told reporters that there may be a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific Ocean, after dictator Kim Jong Un vowed to take the highest-level action against the United States.

Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters the news outside the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Yonhap news agency reported.

It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific, Ri told reporters. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un.

If a ballistic missile from the communist nation does strike Hawaii, it could cost thousands of lives and widespread damage to critical infrastructure, Vern Miyagi the administrator of the Emergency Management Agency warned on Thursday at an informational briefing.

During the briefing organized by state lawmakers, Miyagi states that although the scenario would not likely happen, its still a threat that Hawaii cant ignore.

North Koreas most likely target would likely be Honolulu, but Miyagi said that impact on a neighboring island also could not be ruled out. Officials believe there would be up to 15,000 casualties.

Once a missile is launched from North Korea, there will only be less than 20 minutes warning, Miyagi said.

Emergency Management Agency Executive Director Toby Clairmont stated that people who are driving should get out and lay flat on the ground or try to get near a concrete structure, adding that the roads would be filled with chaos.

Audience member Nick LaCarra asked about the lack of shelters in Hawaii. Since the end of the Cold War, funding for the maintenance of these shelters ran out because there were no more threats, Miyagi replied.

The Emergency Management Agency announced that Hawaii will conduct monthly tests of an attack-warning siren as well.

From NTD.tv
Hero Teacher Subdues Student With a Handgun Saving Multiple Lives

An Illinois High School teacher has been hailed a hero after she subdued a student armed with a handgun on Wednesday, Sept. 20.

Late Wednesday morning, a male student started shooting in the cafeteria of Mattoon High School, according to local news outlet Journal Gazette & Times-Courier.

Students saw maths and physical education teacher Angela McQueen tackling the gun-wielding student, pushing his hands up so the gun shots fired toward the ceiling of the cafeteria.

One student was hospitalized according to the schools superintendent, Larry Lilly.

Shortly afterward, Mattoon Police Chief Jeff Branson credited McQueens actions, per CBS News. If that teacher had not responded as quickly as they had, I think the situation wouldve been a lot different, he said.

Mattoon High School, that has around 1,000 pupils, said it was humbled and overwhelmed with the well wishes and offering of assistance locally.

Very Humble

Angelas mother, Barbara McQueen said her daughter acted on a gut reaction, per the Chicago Tribune and described her daughter as a very quiet person and does not like the limelight.

McQueens parents just commented on their daughters character and her quick instincts. Police have asked people not to comment on the shooting itself, said reports.

We are here to tell everybody about her character and that she was born on the altar, her mother said. Angela was there to clean up Satans mess. We couldnt be any more proud of her and her three sisters.

A friend, Amy Hines, described McQueen as very humble, The News Gazette reported.

With the situation that happened and what she did, she would never brag about it or want others to know about it because she is so humble, Hines said.

Wed all like to think we would have reacted that way, but I dont know that a lot of people would have, Hines told the newspaper.

Juvenile Suspect in Court

The gunman appeared in court on Thursday, Sept. 21, before Circuit Judge Mitchell Shick, the Herald & Review reported. The teen suspect is charged with aggravated battery with a firearm, and officials believe he acted alone. The judge ordered a mental health evaluation for the teen.

He remains unnamed as the court does not allow the identification of juvenile suspects.

Around 250 to 300 pupils returned to the school the day after the shooting, the news outlet said. While shaken they were thankful for the McQueens heroic actions.

Lilly, posted an update on Facebook about the hospitalized schoolboy.

With permission from his father, I can share that his son is smiling, in stable condition, in good spirits, and joked about catching some slack on his grades, Lilly said. The victims father also passes along his prayers for the shooters family, he added.
A former fugitive MS-13 gang member, who was arrested earlier this month in Virginia, made his initial appearance in federal court for a gang-related murder in Newark, N.J., on Aug. 23. (ICE)

House Passes Bill to Expel Gang Members From US

Sharpens focus on deporting transnational gang members such as MS-13

WASHINGTONThe House recently passed a bill that would expedite the removal of alien gang members from within the United States. Gang membership would become grounds for both deportation and for denying entry at the border. Currently, most gang members are only deported after committing an independent crime.

The Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act passed a House vote on Sept. 14 with votes sitting mostly along party lines (233175). A total of 174 Democrats voted against the bill, while 11 voted for it.

The bill, HR 3697, amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to define a criminal gang as a group of five or more people with a primary purpose of committing crimes such as felony drug offenses, human trafficking, violent crimes, and/or fraud and racketeering. A gang can be designated as criminal by the secretary of homeland security, in consultation with the attorney general.

Elaine Duke, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the legislation would greatly help the agencys efforts to target and dismantle transnational gangs, like MS-13, who pose a direct threat to public safety.

The bill was introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), who said that at least eight murders are tied to MS-13 in northern Virginia since last November.

Comstock said the regions gang task force estimates there are 3,000 to 4,000 MS-13 gang members in the area.

At a town festival in Herndon earlier this year, the gang task force estimated 200 to 300 suspected gang members were milling about among families attending the community event, she said in a statement.

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a transnational criminal organization whose members are often illegal aliens from Central America, predominantly El Salvador. Their recruitment tactics involve targeting young immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

A new member of the gang must put work into the gang at the instruction of older members, said Madeline Singas, Nassau County district attorney. Both Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, New York, have been ravaged by MS-13 gang violence.

And that work includes shootings and stabbings and rapes and any other acts of violence and intimidation, Singas said on June 15.



A new MS-13 member must also agree to kill someone if ordered to do so, she said. And the rules are clear: They can never leave the gang. And if they do, those who try are often marked or greenlighted for death.

Border Control

Acting Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said Border Patrol agents are currently required to collect and record biographic information on any known gang members who admit to gang affiliation, but must still grant them admission to the United States. The new bill would give agents the authority to deny entry to gang members.

One of the greatest challenges we continue to face along the Southwest border, however, are TCOs such as the international criminal organization MS-13, Provost said at a June 21 Senate hearing. TCO stands for transnational criminal organization.

Among those encountered, unaccompanied alien children with suspected TCO affiliation, such as MS-13, present unique challenges, she said.

Unaccompanied minors, even if they admit to being MS-13 members, are transferred to the Department of Health and Human Resources Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within 72 hours of being apprehended by Border Patrol. Once the minor is there, DHS gets no further information on their whereabouts, including where in the United States they are resettled.

Scott Lloyd, director of ORR, said the agency conducted a review on June 9 of the unaccompanied minors in their secure facilities.

ORR found that of the 138 unaccompanied minors in those facilities on June 9, one-quarter were voluntarily involved with gangs. Four individuals reported that they had been forced into gang participation.

Once with ORR, most minors are then resettled with their parents or relatives, who are in the country illegally.

Very few gang members are picked up at the border; most are identified in the prison system, said Matthew Albence, executive associate director of ICEs Enforcement and Removal Operations.

However, cities that have so-called sanctuary policies often prohibit local law enforcement from communicating and cooperating with immigration authorities, resulting in many alien gang members being released back into communities without warning.

In many cases, we know who these individuals are. We have biometric identifiers, Albence said at a Senate hearing on June 21. Theyve been arrested by the Border Patrol, or arrested by ICE previously, and removed, and re-entered the country unlawfully.

The new bill wont persuade sanctuary cities to comply with federal immigration law, but it will assist ICE to expeditiously remove alien gang members from the country.

President Donald Trump has spotlighted criminal gang activity, and MS-13 in particular.

Big progress being made in ridding our country of MS-13 gang members and gang members in general. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN! he tweeted on July 27.

Big progress being made in ridding our country of MS-13 gang members and gang members in general. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2017

The White House released a statement of support for the bill on Sept. 14.

President Trump has always made the safety of Americans his highest priority, and encourages the Senate to take quick action and pass this bill, the White House press secretary stated.

If the bill is taken up by the Senate, and voting follows similar party lines, it is likely to pass.
Did you ever wonder why new medications so often debut right after awareness of the condition they treat increases? It is no coincidence. The tactic is called unbranded advertising and disease awareness and drug companies spend more on it than they do for regular advertising.

Unbranded disease advertising usually suggests many more people suffer from a condition than anyone thought (it may even be a silent epidemic), lists symptoms, offers quizzes and tries to scare people into seeing your doctor. The diseases are not made up but usually exist in much smaller numbers than Pharma marketing suggests. What disease awareness advertising does not do is tell you the drug that is being marketed for the condition or the company behind the education. (Which is why it is called unbranded.)

Pharma companies love disease awareness advertising because, unlike direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, risks and warnings of possible drug treatments do not have to be listed. In DTC ads, risks and warnings are often as long as the sales pitch itself (and sometimes perversely unsell the drug even as the viewer is looking at sunsets and puppies). But not everyone agrees with the omission. In 2013, Aaron Kesselheim, MD, a Harvard professor, told a New York Times reporter that an ADHD disease awareness video that supports the safety of stimulant drugs while leaving out their risks is misleading and irresponsible.

Still, disease awareness does much of the heavy lifting in todays Pharma marketing environment. Disease awareness offers two primary benefit pathways for the brand that successfully engages it, says a drug marketing article. It can provide a lead generation source for later branded outreach and it offers an opportunity to inspire patients to some beneficial action or actions. Cynics make ask benefit for whom?

Analyzing how successful such disease awareness campaigns are, the Guardian also weighed in. Typically, a corporate-sponsored disease awareness campaign focuses on a mild psychiatric condition with a large pool of potential sufferers. Companies fund studies that prove the drugs efficacy in treating the affliction, a necessary step in obtaining FDA approval for a new use, or indication. Prominent doctors are enlisted to publicly affirm the maladys ubiquity, then public-relations firms launch campaigns to promote the new disease, using dramatic statistics from corporate- sponsored studies, it writes.

Finally, patient groups are recruited to serve as the public face for the condition, supplying quotes and compelling stories for the media; many of the groups are heavily subsidised [sic] by drugmakers, and some operate directly out of the offices of drug companies PR firms.

Are You Allergic to People? And Other Campaigns?

Are you allergic to people? Do you blush, sweat, shake-even find it hard to breathe, when trying to socialize? If so, you may have social anxiety disorder said one of the first disease awareness campaigns that proved very successful. Concocted by the slick PR firm Cohn & Wolfe in 1999 to sell the soon-to-be marketed SSRI antidepressant Paxil, news outlets operated as Pharma stenographers reporting that as many as 10 million adults suffered from the social anxiety epidemic. Who knew?

After social anxiety, disease awareness (which coincided with the legalization of DTC advertising in the late 1990s) marketing boomed. Soon people began treating their seasonal allergies, dry eyes, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD), Restless Legs syndrome, high cholesterol of course, depression like never before. The diseases often had nonspecific symptoms and vague diagnostic criteria in keeping with disease awareness marketing.

Do you remember hearing about the many women suffering from Female Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) a few years ago? The disease awareness was sponsored by drug giant Boehringer Ingelheim to help sell its Addyi (flibanserin) which was moving toward FDA approval. The marketing included TV personality Lisa Rinna in an aggressive campaign called Sex Brain Body: Make the Connection.

Boehringer Ingelheim also wined and dined potential medical supporters remembers London sex researcher Petra Boynton Ive had two invitations to attend two two-day long training days at top London hotels (with an honorarium of 1000 per session), she wrote on a blog. My understanding of the aim of these events were to highlight FSD (or more specifically Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder) as a problem and inform practitioners about treatment approaches.

Though she declined attendance, Boehringer Ingelheim also asked Boynton to write a paper for the British Journal of Sexual Medicine. They had clear instructions about what they wanted me to say and how this would set the scene that HSDD was a prevalent and distressing problem, she remembers.

Men are not exempt from disease awareness marketing. Low testosterone or Low T has been aggressively marketed by Big Pharma, though it occurs rarely according to experts. True instances of testosterone deficiency such as hypogonadism are rareless than one half of one percent of men have this problem, Boston University School of Medicine longevity expert Thomas Perls, MD told me in an interview. Since massive marketing campaigns emerged in the late 1980s claiming that common symptoms like lack of energy, poor sleep, poor libido could be treated with testosterone, the number of men labeled with this disease sky-rocketed. The new syndrome of aging-related low testosterone was facilitated by doctors organizations that allowed new and much less rigorous and specific definitions of hypogonadism. Some of these consensus panels were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies making and marketing testosterone.

Clearly Pharma wants you to think you are sick and the proof is it actually sells diseases through unbranded advertising.
These before and after photos of St. John island reveal the dramatic loss of vegetation the island suffered due to Hurricane Irma. (Composite from NASA photos via Landsat 8 satellite)

Hurricane Irma Stripped Caribbean of so Many Trees and Leaves They Changed Color

Hurricanes tear apart buildings and destroy human lives, so naturally, people focus on the impact on populated areas.

But there is an ecological toll to these devastating storms that sometimes gets overlooked. Hurricane Irma stripped the Caribbean of an entire color, turning lush green landscapes into dreary brown.

A series of before and after photos from NASA reveal that Hurricane Irma has changed the entire landscape of many Caribbean islands.

The photos are undoctored and natural-colored.

Differences in ocean color likely stem from differences in the ocean surface; rougher surfaces scatter more light, and appear brighter and lighter, says NASA.

These U.S. and British Virgin Islands were slammed by Irma on and around Sept. 6, when Irma was at its most intense in the region.

The before pictures reveal a green landscape, capturing the lush plant life that blanketed much of these tropical islands on Aug. 25.

The after pictures, taken Sept. 10th, reveal the green landscape muted by brown and green.

There are a number of possible reasons for this. Lush green tropical vegetation can be ripped away by a storms strong winds, leaving the satellite with a view of more bare ground. Also, salt spray whipped up by the hurricane can coat and desiccate leaves while they are still on the trees, said NASA.

The photos captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite.

They are among the few relatively cloud-free satellite images of the area so far, said NASA.

The British Virgin Islands, which are more northern than the U.S. Virgin Islands, took more of Irmas assault, though all of the islands suffered the effects of the storm.

The difference between the northern island of Barbuda and the southern island of Antiqua reveals the difference Irma made.
Residents working on their roof in badly damaged neighborhood are seen from a Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey surveying the aftermath from Hurricane Maria in St. Croix, , U.S. Virgin Islands on Sept. 21, 2017. (REUTERS/Jonathan Drake)

Hurricane Maria Slams Turks and Caicos After Killing 30 People

Hurricane Maria lashed the Turks and Caicos Islands on Friday after destroying homes, causing widespread flooding, crippling economies and killing at least 30 people on Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.

Maria was the second major hurricane to hit the Caribbean this month and the strongest storm to hit the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico in nearly 90 years. It completely knocked out the islands power and several rivers hit record flood levels.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello told CNN he had reports of at least 13 people being killed. El Nuevo Dia newspaper reported at least 15 people were killed.

We have reports of complete devastation, Rossello said, adding that the storms dangers were not over, as mudslides and surges, as well as flooding continues.

Fourteen deaths were reported on the island nation of Dominica, which has a population of about 71,000. Two people were killed in the French territory of Guadeloupe and one in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Communications outages throughout the region were making it difficult for officials to get a clear picture of damage.

Rossello imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew through Saturday for the islands 3.4 million people. He said about 700 people had been rescued from floodwaters and communication was difficult with the southeastern part of the island.

Among those killed in Puerto Rico were eight people who drowned in Toa Baja, about 20 miles (32 km) west of San Juan, Mayor Bernardo Marquez told the newspaper.
The new Iranian long-range missile Khoramshahr (Front) is displayed during the annual military parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of its devastating 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, on Sept. 22,2017, in Tehran. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Iran Test-Launches New Ballistic Missile

Iran has tested a new ballistic missile that is capable of striking anywhere in the Middle East as well as Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, including most of India, according to Iranian state media.

The footage of the launch was released by the state several hours after the missile was unveiled at a military parade Friday, morning, Sept. 22.

The missile, called Khorramshahr, is capable of carrying multiple warheads and has a range of 2,000 km (over 1,200 miles)the third of such range in Irans arsenal, according to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, a state-controlled television and radio company.

The footage includes the launch from multiple angles as well as footage from cameras mounted on the missile itself.

Iran insists it only pursues its missile program for defense. Israel, however, considers the Iranian regime a threat.

President Donald Trump criticized Iran during his Tuesday address of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy. It has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos, Trump said. The longest suffering victims of Irans leaders are in fact its own people. Rather than use its resources to improve Iranian lives, its oil profits go to fund Hezbollah and other terrorists that kill innocent Muslims and attack their peaceful Arab and Israeli neighbors.

On Tuesday, Israel shot down a drone it said was Iranian-made but operated by the Hezbollah terrorist group to conduct surveillance.

The drone was shot down with a Patriot missile when it entered a demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel over the Golan Heights.
US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on arrival in Fort Myers, Florida, on September 14, 2017. He addresses questions about whether his tax reform plan would benefit the high-income households. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Is Tax Reform a Giveaway to the Rich?

The plan will benefit middle class families and create more jobs, Trump says

Opponents of tax reform argue that the tax cuts will mainly benefit wealthy Americans, rather than the ones who need it the most. However, President Donald Trump said he prefers a plan that favors the middle class and focuses on bringing back American companies and jobs.

The wealthiest Americans are not my priority. My priority are people in the middle class and thats where were giving the big tax reduction to, he told reporters in Fort Myers, Florida on Sept. 14.

The specifics of the tax reform have not been announced yet, but Trump wants to bring the business tax rate from 35 percent to around 15 percent.

Individual tax rate cuts will be substantial for the middle class, even higher than what corporations will get, according to Trump.

Related Coverage Anticipated Tax Cuts Inject Optimism Into Manufacturing Sector

This is a major tax cutthe biggest since Ronald Reagan, he said in North Dakota on Sept. 6.

In addition to tax cuts, the plan would provide tax relief to middle-income families through various benefits such as raising the standard deduction and increasing the child tax credit.

Trump also argues that the lower tax rates will boost economic growth, bring more companies back to America, and create more jobs.

The current U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest among advanced economies, which puts American businesses and products at a competitive disadvantage globally.

The U.S. tax code is one of the reasons why many U.S. companies moved their manufacturing operations to other countries. And they have built up cash offshore, because of the high tax rates and worldwide tax system that double-taxes the foreign income.

My priority is bringing companies back, bringing money back into the country, Trump said in Florida.

The last major tax reform occurred 31 years ago under President Ronald Reagan, who signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Since then, however, the tax code has changed dramatically in length and scope. The existing tax system, which Trump called self-destructive, costs Americans millions of jobs, trillions of dollars, and billions of hours spent on compliance and paperwork, according to a White House fact sheet.

Tax reform could falter if the public perceives it as a giveaway to the rich, James Capretta, resident fellow and Milton Friedman chair at the American Enterprise Institute wrote in an article on RealClear Policy.

[Opponents] ignore the effect lower marginal rates will have on economic growth and job creation, he stated.

Trump announced four major goals of tax reform: Simplifying the tax code, providing tax relief for middle-class families, lowering tax rates, and bringing back cash held by U.S companies overseas.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump shake hands before a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21, 2017 in New York City. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Japans Abe Says Time for Talk Is Over on North Korea

NEW YORKJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday that countries need to unite to enforce sanctions and apply pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

Now is not the time for dialogue. Now is the time to apply pressure, Abe told a gathering of investors at the New York Stock Exchange, remarks he later reiterated in an address to the annual United Nations General Assembly.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned North Korea in his speech to the U.N. that the United States would totally destroy the country if threatened.

In contrast, Japans Asian rival China, and Russia, have called repeatedly for a return to international diplomacy and talks with North Korea to resolve the crisis over Pyongyangs weapons programs.

We cant be satisfied that the U.N. has approved new sanctions against North Korea, Abe said. Whats crucial now is to put sanctions into effect without lapses and that requires close cooperation with China and Russia.

In his U.N. speech, Abe said North Korean nuclear weapons either already were, or were on the verge of becoming, hydrogen bombs, presenting an unprecedented threat.

It is indisputably a matter of urgency, Abe said.

We must prevent the goods, funds, people, and technology necessary for nuclear and missile development from heading to North Korea, he said.

Whether or not we can put an end to the provocations by North Korea is dependent upon the solidarity of the international community. There is not much time left.

Abe said Japan, a treaty ally of the United States, consistently supported the U.S. stance that all options are on the table in dealing with North Korea.

On Sept. 11, the U.N. Security Council unanimously stepped up sanctions against North Koreaover its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, imposing a ban on the isolated nations textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.

North Korea fired a missile on Friday that flew over Hokkaido in northern Japan and landed far out into the Pacific Ocean, according to Japanese and South Korean officials, further ratcheting up tensions in the region.

Abe said diplomatic attempts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear aspirations have failed over two decades.

Dialogue for the purpose of having dialogue is meaningless, Abe said at the New York Stock Exchange.

By Nathan Layne and Kevin Krolicki
A California jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $417 million to a woman who claimed she developed ovarian cancer after using the companys talc-based products like Johnsons Baby Powder for feminine hygiene.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jurys verdict in favor of California resident Eva Echeverria was the largest yet in lawsuits alleging J&J failed to adequately warn consumers about the cancer risks of its talc-based products.

We are grateful for the jurys verdict on this matter and that Eva Echeverria was able to have her day in court, Mark Robinson, her lawyer, said in a statement.

The verdict included $70 million in compensatory damages and $347 million in punitive damages. It was a major setback for J&J, which faces 4,800 similar claims nationally and has been hit with over $300 million in verdicts by juries in Missouri.

We will appeal todays verdict because we are guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnsons Baby Powder, J&J said.

Echeverrias lawsuit was the first out of hundreds of California talc cases to go to trial.

The 63-year-old claimed she developed terminal ovarian cancer after decades of using J&Js products. Her lawyers argued J&J encouraged women to use its products despite knowing of studies linking ovarian cancer to genital talc use.

J&Js lawyers countered that studies and federal agencies have not found that talc products are carcinogenic.

The trial follows five prior ones in Missouri state court, where many lawsuits are pending.

J&J lost four of those trials and, along with a talc supplier, has been hit with $307 million in verdicts. Before Monday, the largest verdict was for $110 million.

The Missouri cases, which have largely been brought by out-of-state plaintiffs, have faced jurisdictional questions after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in June that limited where personal injury lawsuits can be filed.

In a decision in a case involving Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, the Supreme Court said state courts cannot hear claims against companies that are not based in the state when the alleged injuries did not occur there.

The ruling prompted a St. Louis judge, at New Jersey-based J&Js urging, to declare a mistrial in the talc case already underway.

The judge has nonetheless left the door open for the plaintiffs to argue they still have jurisdiction based on a Missouri-based bottler J&J used to package its products.

The case is Echeverria et al v. Johnson & Johnson, Los Angeles Superior Court, No. BC628228.

By Nate Raymond
Jolie Imbues Cambodia Drama With Skill and Intelligence

Film Review: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

By now, there should be no debating that Angelina Jolie is a talented director, capable of handling the most challenging subject matter with assurance and sensitivity. Those who continue to denigrate her skills because shes also a movie star and tabloid fixture are running out of ammunition.

There also should be no debating the value of a major film being made about the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rougea film shot in Cambodia, and in the Khmer language, to boot. Or that without Jolies commitment and clout, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers would never have been made.

This story of a young girls experiences under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, based on the memoir by Loung Ung, is close to Jolie for many reasons: Shes had a strong connection to the country since she filmed a movie there in 2000. She adopted her eldest son there (Maddox is listed as an executive producer), started a foundation there, even received citizenship there, and is a friend of the author. All this means that she is extremely familiar with Cambodia and its story, and this is both the movies great strength and its occasional weakness.

Why weakness? Because the film presupposes a knowledge of the history that many in a broad mainstream audienceparticularly young peoplelikely lack. And that distance from the story blunts its power somewhat. Simply put, a little more guidance at the right placeswe dont want to call it hand-holdingmight have been in order.

Theres another storytelling challenge here. Jolie, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ung, is aiming to tell the story through the eyes of a child, aged 5 to 9. As Jolie herself has said, a child experiences more than she talks. Its true that theres not a lot of dialogue here, and that for the movies two-plus hours, were learningand growingalong with Loung. There may be moments where were impatient for answers, but the film asks that we wait, and learn them when and if Loung does.

The film begins with a brief preface, a news montage and President Richard Nixons 1971 remark that what we are doing is helping the Cambodians help themselves, set against clips of the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. We then see a childs face reflected in the TV screen. This is Loung (Sreymoch Sareum), and now her eyes will be ours.

Luongs family is well off; her father is in the military police. But it is 1975, and everything is changing. The Khmer Rouge has captured Phnom Penh, beginning a four-year regime under which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians will die from starvation, disease, or execution. The family is forced to leave the city.

They trek to the countryside, trying desperately to hide the fathers association with the toppled regime. (Loungs father and mother are played movingly by Kompheak Phoeung and the beautiful Socheata Sveng.) Loung is quickly disabused of the notion that the family is only going to leave home for a few days. They, and their compatriots, will now be in the service of the Khmer Rouge and its Maoist plan to eliminate the elite and transform the country into an agrarian utopia.

They arrive at a rural camp, where food is virtually nonexistent. They must build their own homes. Its not long before the family will be split apart, and the title will come truealthough this development, like much of the terrible violence that transpired, is shown only briefly in a dream sequence. We will follow Loung as she is gradually separated from everyone and finds herself training to be a child soldier.

That training will help Loung survive one of the most devastating moments of the film, caught in the middle of a minefield. And suddenly a little girl knows what all the others do not, which is that the ground underneath can kill you.

As we know from the book, Loung was eventually reunited with some of her siblings, and the sequence at the end, with the adult family at a memorial, is very moving. This is a story that has not been told enough. Jolies effortminor flaws and allwill ensure that many more people understand it.

From The Canadian Press
Three legislators of Taiwan, Hsu Yung-ming, Yu Wan-ju, and Chang Hung-lu led the march to United Nations Headquarters during the Sept. 16 Keep Taiwan Free march. Hundreds of activists held a rally in New York City on Saturday afternoon to protest Taiwans exclusion from the United Nations. (Paul Huang/The Epoch Times)

Rally at UN: Keep Taiwan Free!

Hundreds Rally in New York to Push for Taiwan's Representation at the UN

Hundreds of activists held a rally in New York City on Saturday afternoon to protest Taiwans exclusion from the United Nations and other international organizations. Taiwanese Americans, Chinese dissidents, and international supporters of Taiwan joined force with activists and politicians from Taiwan to push for Taiwans international participation as U.N. General Assembly started its new session.

Chinas role in excluding Taiwan from the international community of nations was highlighted as activists kicked off their march to the UN Headquarters from the Consulate General of the Peoples Republic of China in Hells Kitchen. In support of the rally prominent Chinese dissidents Yang Jianli and Teng Biao gave speeches in front of the consulate.

Chinas relentless and increasingly oppressive tactics to exclude Taiwan from the global community have only harmful consequences for mankind, said Yang Jianli, who was jailed by the Chinese government from 2002 to 2006 for his pro-democracy activism. Surely Taiwan has much to contribute to the world, and the UN should open its doors to the vibrant democracy of 23 million people.

The Keep Taiwan Free rally was organized by the New York-based Committee for Admission of Taiwan to the UN and was held to coincide with the 72nd Regular Session of the UN General Assembly, which convened on Sept. 12 and runs through Sept. 25. Among those attending was a delegation from the Taiwan United Nations Alliance (TAIUNA)a Taiwanese NGO that for 14 years has organized an annual trip to the United States to work for Taiwans inclusion in the UN.

A crowd of 600 participated in the event, according to organizers. Starting at 4 pm, the marchers walked across Manhattan and eventually reached the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in front of the UN Headquarters at around 5pm. The march was peaceful and caught the attention of many New Yorkers who were strolling through midtown on Saturday afternoon.

Ting, a Taiwanese student studying in America, said that she participated in the rally because she wants her country to be recognized by other people, and she feels strongly about Taiwan having such an identity. An estimated 57,000 Taiwanese students are studying internationally around the world, most of them are in countries that dont recognize Taiwans statehood diplomatically, including the United States, where 21,000 Taiwanese students are believed to be studying.

TAIUNA President Michael Tsai, who is also a former Minister of Defense of Taiwan, said that no one should be barred from participation in the UN. Tsai argued that even Palestine, held to be a non-state entity by many, was able to join the U.N. as an observer two years ago. So, why cant Taiwan?

Hsu Yung-ming, a Taiwanese legislator from the New Power Party flew from Taiwan and joined the rally. Many people say the push for UN membership is impossible for Taiwan, but they fail to see whats at stake here, said Hsu. Taiwan needs to make its voice heard by the international community. We need to make this an issue, and for the world to see there are 23 million people currently being excluded from the UN.

Chang Hung-lu and Yu Wan-ju, two other legislators from the Democratic Progressive Partythe current ruling party of Taiwanalso joined the rally. The fact that China has the power to exclude others from the United Nations is a violation of its founding philosophy, which is supposed to include everyone, said Yu.

At Dag Hammarskjold Plaza next to the UN Headquarters, activist students took turns giving speeches supporting Taiwans return to the UN. June Lin, one of the young Taiwanese-Americans, said that the recent trial of Lee Ming-che, a Taiwanese citizen imprisoned by China, is the latest example why Taiwan needs to make its voice heard on the international stage.

Taiwan under the name Republic of China was kicked out of the UN by the 1971 General Assembly Resolution 2758 to make way for the Peoples Republic of China. Taiwan has tried without success to reenter the U.N. since 1993.
A Lego logo is seen outside the world's biggest Lego store in Leicester Square in London, Britain November 17, 2016. (Reuters/Stefan Wermuth)

Lego to Cut 1,400 Staff as Decade-Long Sales Boom Ends

COPENHAGENLego said it would lay off 8 percent of its staff and revamp its business after reporting its first fall in sales in more than a decade on Tuesday.

The report of a 5-percent decline in mid-year revenue came a month after Lego abruptly removed its chief executive, suggesting the company is facing its biggest test since flirting with bankruptcy in the early 2000s.

The Danish toymaker said it could not promise a return to growth in the next two years, a jolting acknowledgement for a group widely admired for embracing the digital era and tying up lucrative franchises from Harry Potter to Minecraft.

We have now pressed the reset-button for the entire group, executive chairman Jorgen Vig Knudstorp said, acknowledging the business had grown too complicated.

He would seek a return to a leaner and more efficient organization to respond to losing momentum  which we think could ultimately lead to stagnation or even decline.

Lego said revenues had disappointed in its core markets of the United States and Europe, after a decade of double-digit growth and launches spanning Lego sets, video games, movie franchises and smartphone applications.

Sales related to its Star Wars line declining slightly in the first half of the year, the company said.

It marked a sharp reversal for a company that managed to expand and respond to rising demand in Asia when Knudstorp was CEO, even as the global toy market shrank after the 2008 financial crisis.

Bali Padda took over as chief executive in January, but the Briton was removed just eight months later and replaced by Danish industrialist Niels B. Christiansen.

Sales between January and June stood at 14.9 billion Danish crowns ($2.38 billion), still topping My Little Pony producer Hasbro Incs sales of $1.82 billion and Barbie doll maker Mattel Incs $1.71 billion.

Last year, revenue growth slowed from 25 percent in 2015 to just six percent.

Lego said it will cut approximately 1,400 positionsincluding up to 600 at its headquarter in Billund, Denmarkthe majority of them before the end of 2017. The company currently employs some 18,200 people.

Weve been through a decade of very high growth and during those years we have invested a great deal, Knudstorp said, noting that the company added more than 7,000 new positions between 2012 and 2016.

What we have unfortunately recently seen is that despite the continued high level of investment, these have not materialized into a good harvest, he said.

The unlisted company said in March that mid-single-digit growth rates were more realistic for the years to come, but those expectations were revised downward on Tuesday.

We are not saying specifically whether we will grow the next two years or not, Knudstorp said.

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Julie Astrid Thomsen
Locals and Tourists in Flight Mode Over Bali Volcano Eruption Fears

Locals are clearing out as Balis Mount Agung reaches its highest eruption warning level.

Tourists who are able to convince travel insurers are changing travel plans, and locals are fleeing evacuation zones around Agung. An eruption seems eminent in what Trip Advisor ranks as travelers top tourist destination.

New.com.au said that 240,000 people are expected to flee. Locals that live close to the mountain have commented that there is no doubt about an eruption taking place. The government is trying to get people back 7.5 miles away from the central crater. In certain directions from the crater, 5.6 miles back is enough to be out of danger, reportedly.

The volcano is a popular hiking spot and and tourist destination, and is not far from Kuta, a popular resort. People in the area have been feeling a number of tremors, as magma travels underground and makes its way upward. A volcano monitoring station recorded 500 tremors in a day.

Tourists in the area are getting frightened by the sight of locals packing up and fleeing. Not all tourists are changing travel plans though. Some tourists are a taking chance and following through with previously scheduled trips to the Indonesian island. Some are will not be reimbursed by travel insurance if they had to change their trip plans, since an eruption hasnt burst forth.

Airlines are monitoring the situation and travel hubs are keeping operations up as much as possible. Phil Sylvester from Travel Insurance Direct told News.com.au of the things people should be most concerned about at this time.

Two years ago, there were volcanoes that blew ash clouds, which meant that airspace over Denpasar was closed so people were stranded in Bali. That is mainly the type of thing that could happen. I dont think people should be particularly worried about being the victim of a volcanic eruption but they very well may be victims of interruption to transport.

Authorities cant predict when an eruption will occur, but can only monitor the volcanic activity and issue warnings. Agung last erupted 54 years ago. Authorities would like to avoid the level of disaster that eruption brought. Agung is one of Indonesias 130 active volcanoes.

From NTD.tv
Konigsberg Castle courtyard and church of the castle and the criminal tribunal, Kaliningrad, Russia. (Library of Congress)

Making Konigsberg Kaliningrad: The Lost Jewel of the Baltic

In German East Prussia, Soviet 'liberators' destroyed a rich piece of European heritage

Kaliningrad is the westernmost region of Russia, famous for its mild climate, beaches, and amber, of which it has 90 percent of the worlds supply. The history of this Russian exclave as such is relatively short: prior to Nazi Germanys defeat in World War II, it was East Prussia, and as German as Hamburg or Munich.

With the end of the Third Reich and the arrival of Soviet rule, however, came also brutality and the physical destruction of a culture and people that had existed in the region since medieval times.

In 1946, out of the old city of Konigsberg was created Kaliningradnamed in honor of the late Mikhail Kalinin, the powerless Soviet head of government under Stalin.

The Germans living across eastern Europeincluding East Prussiawere roundly expelled in a forced migration to Germany proper. The violence of this process claimed millions of lives.

Architectural vandalism committed by the new Soviet authorities leaves other historical scars in Kaliningrad.

The state of Konigsberg Castle in 1945, after the conclusion of World War II. (Public Domain)

Konigsberg had been the biggest trading hub in the Baltic and a major cultural center; it was home of towering Gothic churches and medieval castles. The city, well preserved for around 750 years, is now only visible in prewar photography.

Architectural Vandalism

Granted, Konigsberg had sustained heavy bombardment in the war, whether by Allied air raids or Soviet artillery shells. But many of the sturdy German buildings, including Konigsberg Castle, the citys main landmark and a construction of Teutonic knights dating back to the 13th century, were structurally intact.

Kaliningrad authorities initially planned to renovate the castle as a museum for local history, but Moscow disagreed.

Alexei Kosygin, Soviet statesman and co-leader in the 1960s, was livid when he heard the proposal: A museum?! What kind of museum? Museum of Prussian militarism? I want it gone by tomorrow!

The final word came from Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, and the relic of Prussian militarism was demolished entirely. In its place was erected the never-finished and never-opened House of Soviets. It resembles a cross between a Rubix Cube and the hemispheres of a human brain. Locals refer to it as a robot for its two eyes.

Other buildings, particularly churches, were treated similarlyinstead of being renovated or rebuilt, the Soviets took the opportunity to demolish them as traces of Prussian militarism and blamed the result on war damage.

The ruins of the Konigsberg castle lie before the unfinished House of Soviets. (Ilya Denbrov/CC-BY 4.0)

Ironically, bricks from the demolished buildings were recycled for use in other Soviet cities, and German construction workers were employed to rebuilt several prominent buildings in Moscow.

The Alstadtkirche was one such landmark destroyed as a result of war damagethe Gothic church was heavily damaged by air attack but still standing. Initially, the local government planned to preserve it because it was designed by prominent architect Friedrich Schinkel. Nevertheless it was demolished as a source of surplus bricks.

Other churches in East Prussia met a similar fate. The Lutherkirche, which survived bombing of Konigsberg mostly unharmed, was blown up in 1976. The Communist Party destroyed numerous churches in Russia and had even less mercy for German churches.

An 1840 drawing of the Altstadtkirche in Konigsberg. The artist is Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who designed the church. (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Public Domain)

Not everyone liked what was happening. An anecdote from the first Soviet settlers in Kaliningrad condemned those who participated in the demolitions.

A church was turned into a culture center  This church had two bells. Two young fellows agreed to take down the bells and to file down the crucifixes. They get good pay for this job. But some old women cried and said these two men wouldnt have long to live. One of the men was hit by a train, and the other died in a similarly brutal accident. Those men who melted the bells died too. All our grannies cried when German churches were ravaged.

The Konigsberg Cathedral may have gone the way of the Teutonic castle were it not for the onsite grave of philosopher Immanuel Kant. The Soviet government left the damaged building intact, and it was renovated in the 1990s following the collapse of communism.

A 1988 photo shows the derelict Konigsberg Cathedral. (Yuri Syuganov/CC-BY 2.0)

Eastern Blocks

The destruction of German heritage was continued even outside Soviet territory, in occupied East Germany. The Berlin city palace, like Konigsberg castle, was regarded as a symbol of militarism and ordered destroyed in 1950 by East German communist leader Walter Ulbricht. Its reconstruction was begun in 2013.

In Kaliningrad, as was typical of communist bloc states, the need for mass housing inspired the construction of massive concrete apartment complexes, colloquially called khrushchyovkas in the Soviet Union for the communist leader, Nikita Khrushchev, under whose term they were built. Much old architecture was destroyed to make way.

Its appropriate to compare Konigsbergs decimation with other cities in the region. Danzig (today Gdansk), another port on the Baltic Sea, received 70 to 80 percent destruction of its city center by aerial bombardment. After the war, Gdansk was similarly depopulated of its German inhabitants and placed under the administration of Poland.

But instead of demolishing the old architecture, the local government reconstructed much of it, even those buildings completely destroyed. Renovation of old buildings has continued into the 21st century. Today Gdansk, with around 1,000 years of history, is Polands most popular tourist destination and attracts visitors from all across Europe.

Panorama view of Gdansk, Poland. (Pjama/CC-BY 3.0)

Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. Read the whole series at ept.ms/TheDeadEndCom

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
They say we should never meet our heroes, but if they are as wonderful as Sergeant Hinkle then I highly recommend it! said Brandy Guin.

The 28-year-old mother of two said its thanks to Staff Sgt. Cory Hinkle shes able to share her story.

On Monday around 5 p.m., Guin was driving her GMC Terrain down the Boiling Springs Highway in Shelby, North Carolina, to pick up her children from their grandmother.

Less than a mile from her destination, a black SUV swerved into her lane from the oncoming traffic.

I had no time to react, she said in a Facebook message.

The cars crashed head-on.

The airbags blew out. She was conscious but couldnt see over the airbags.

I forced my door open with sheer adrenaline, she said.

She tried to step out, but as she stepped on her right foot sharp pain shot through her.

When I looked down I saw that my bone was sticking out of my skin at my ankle and my foot was flopping to the side at a 90 degree angle, she said. I almost passed out.

She sat back into the car.

Meanwhile, smoke rose from the wreckage. The car was catching on fire.

Hinkle was in the second car behind Guin. He was on his way from a National Guard base in Charlotte to his home in Forest City when he saw the collision.

I stopped my car and ran to the crash, he said in a Facebook message.

He thought the wreck must have caused severe injuries. He needed to help.

I was the closest person to it and my 15 years of military training kicked in, he said.

Hinkle joined the Army right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I serve because I want the world that my children grow up in to be safe, he said.

He reached the car and noticed Guins broken ankle. She was screaming and crying and yelling about her kids, he said. He checked the back seats, but they were empty.

Guins memories of that moment are somewhat unclear.

I was on my way to get them and all I could think was that I was so glad they werent in the car with me when the wreck occurred, she said. I was thinking about my babies and was obviously thinking out loud.

There was no time to spare.

[H]e told me he had to move me before my car caught on fire because he could see the smoke coming out and there was gasoline pouring onto the ground, she said.

Hinkle started pulling Guin out of the car. At that moment, another man, military veteran Brandon Foster, reached the wreckage. With Hinkle, they carried Guin to the side of the road, some 20 feet from the car.

They kept me from looking down at my ankle because every time I saw it I would get lightheaded, she said. Im an ER [emergency room] nurse so I have seen some things but its quite different when its your own bones protruding through.

The men laid her on the ground, but when she saw the car burning, she started to panic.

Cory laid his body down to block my view of it and began to talk to me so that I could remain somewhat calm, she said.

The fire intensified quickly and parts of the engine, tires, and shocks began exploding, Hinkle said.

The shocks began to explode and there was hot debris from the car flying toward us, Guin said. I was terrified every time one would explode but Cory told me it would have to go through him to get to me.

When Hinkle was deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006, he was once in the way of a blast from an improvised explosive. He suffered a minor concussion.

This time he was ready to take shrapnel for Guin.

A piece of debris hit his left foot causing a bruise. He kept shielding Guin.

It took about 10 minutes for the first responders to reach the rural site, Hinkle said.

While lying by Guin, she asked him to call her husband. He did. He kept by her side until the paramedics told him to move so they could stabilize her and move her to an ambulance.

Before I was transported away I remember grabbing his shirt and telling him how thankful I was that he was there with me, she said.

She was taken to Carolinas HealthCare System Cleveland hospital in Shelby. Apart from the mangled foot, her cheekbone was broken and she had a seat belt burn from her neck across her body to her thighs. She underwent ankle surgery that night, expecting never to see her savior again.

Hinkle thought differently. He contacted Guins husband Chris and decided to stop by the hospital the next day.

[W]hen he walked through the door the next day I burst into tears, Guin said. This man who was a complete stranger was prepared to sacrifice his life and body for me. You dont find that in most people.

I helped Brandy because I still have faith in humanity, Hinkle said. It was the right thing to do.

He brought her an Army teddy bear.

Everyone sends flowers and balloons. They eventually die and wither away. I wanted her to have something from me that wouldnt die  just like she didnt die, he said.

I have held onto the military bear he gave me since his visit and my daughter has hugged it and kissed it, Guin said. My children were there during his visit and my daughter was able to tell him thank you. It was a very special moment that we shared together after such a scary one.

On Friday, Guin was released from the hospital. She said she has a long road of recovery and rehabilitation in front of her. But the crash brought a special friend to her life.

We met as strangers in the worst of circumstances but now are friends with plans for our families to get together and for our children to be able to play together, Guin said. Because at the end of the day because he helped to pull me from the wreckage before the fire got to me I was able to go home to my two babies.
Demolition machines tear down a house damaged by an earthquake in Jojutla de Juarez, Mexico on Sept. 21, 2017. (REUTERS/Edgard Garrido)

Mexico Quake Efforts Continue Amid Calls for Political Austerity

MEXICO CITYRescuers swarmed over rubble with shovels and picks on Thursday in a torturous search for survivors two days after Mexicos deadliest earthquake in a generation, while politicians sought to outdo each other in donating party funds to help victims.

As the arduous search through mountains of debris continued, signs of exhaustion crept in following Tuesdays 7.1 magnitude quake that killed at least 282 people, with growing discontent and rumors swirling online.

Mexicos Navy apologized for communicating incorrect information in a story that captivated the nation of a fictitious schoolgirl, supposedly trapped under a collapsed school in Mexico City and dubbed Frida Sofia by local media. The high-profile televised blunder led to an outpouring of anger.

Officials also sought to quash rumors that the military would be bulldozing razed buildings deemed unlikely to harbor survivors.

We wont suspend the search and rescue mission weve been given until we find the last of the survivors, army chief Salvador Cienfuegos said on Twitter.

In hard-hit Mexico City, rescue efforts focused on 10 collapsed buildings where people may still be alive. Some 52 buildings collapsed in the capital alone, with more in the surrounding states. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said 50 people were missing.

Working without pause since the massive quake, first responders and volunteers have saved 60 survivors from central Mexico City to poor neighborhoods far to the south.

Luis Manuel Carrillo Nunez, 14, said he was in a yoga class at the Enrique Rebsamen private school on Tuesday when he heard people yell, Its shaking!

He ran to escape the building as it began collapsing. But some classmates never made it out.

Its hard to know that youre not going to see again the friends that you loved. Im really traumatized, he said.

The full scale of damage has not been calculated, with buildings across the city of 20 million people badly cracked.

Citigroups Mexican unit Citibanamex told clients it was lowering its 2017 economic growth forecast to 1.9 percent from 2.0 percent due to the earthquake.

Political One-Upmanship

The quake became more politicized on Thursday, with the countrys deeply unpopular parties engaging in a game of one-upmanship to donate ever-higher percentages of their federal funds to help those afflicted.

Disaster relief is sensitive for politicians in Mexico after the governments widely panned response to the 1985 quake caused upheaval, which some credited with weakening the one-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

In a statement, the PRI said it would be donating 258 million pesos ($14.42 million), or 25 percent of its annual federal funding, to help those afflicted.

Meanwhile, the national human rights commission proposed changing the Mexican constitution to divert about 30 percent of political parties funding to a federal disaster fund.

Calls for political penny-pinching gained momentum on social media following a powerful quake two weeks ago that killed nearly 100 people in the south of the country.

After that tremor, current leftist presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested donating 20 percent of his partys federal campaign funds for victims.

On Thursday, though, after news of the PRI plans broke, Lopez Obrador upped the ante, proposing donating 50 percent of his National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) partys 2018 federal funding to support victims.

Lorenzo Cordova, the head of the national electoral institute, said in a video posted to Twitter the body had no problem with parties choosing to divert funds to the needy.

Anger At Navy and Media

After more than a day of wall-to-wall television coverage of the search for a girl in the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school, the Navy changed its version of events and said all pupils were now accounted for.

Since Wednesday, the Navy said a schoolgirl was trapped in the rubble, prompting 30-hours of live coverage on top broadcaster Televisa of the rescue effort.

The search for Frida Sofia, captured hearts in a nation desperate for good news. As it became apparent no child was trapped, there was an outpouring of anger on social media directed at broadcaster Televisa and the Navy for raising hopes.

At one point a senior Navy official said he had no idea where the story of the girl had come from, but he later emitted a rare military apology accepting the Navy had been the source of the information, based, he said, on rescuers reports.

Eleven children were rescued from the rubble of the school, where students are aged roughly 6 to 15, the Navy said, adding that 19 children and six adults there were killed.

The body of a woman was pulled out on Thursday morning.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed five nationals were trapped in a collapsed clothing factory in the Obrera neighborhood. Volunteers cutting through debris at the factory, which had been combed by rescue dogs, heard signs of life from a car.

Rescue worker Amaury Perez said, We shouted, If you are inside the vehicle, please knock three times. He knocked three times.

By David Alire Garcia
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (L) shakes hands with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, accompanied by Mexico's Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, after a news conference on Aug. 16, 2017 at the start of NAFTA renegotiations in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

NAFTA 2.0 to Offer Greater Clarity, Opportunity for Canadian Tech

Canadian data residency rules at odds with US objectives

Canadas tech ecosystem will benefit from a long-overdue revamping of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), though some thorny and complex issues need to be resolved.

Modernize in accordance with technological revolution is Canadas first core objective for the NAFTA renegotiations, which began in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 16, as outlined by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.

In the early 1990s, as the first iteration of NAFTA was being negotiated, the internet was virtually non-existent. Tremendous technological change began taking place in the mid-1990s, and then came mobile computing with the iPhone in 2007. Needless to say, 23-year-old NAFTA has a lot of catching up to do to account for the growth in the digital economy.

When it comes to North American trade, issues like supply management, auto manufacturing, and softwood lumber dominate the headlines, but its the service industry that accounts for 56 percent of Canadas exports to the United States and represents more than 70 percent of the Canadian economy.

Within the service industry lies Canadas burgeoning tech sector, which has extensive multi-layered relations with the United States.

Tech companies are nimble by nature. Certainly, they havent displayed the concerns that the agricultural or some manufactured goods sectors have over the NAFTA renegotiations.

Theyre pretty fluid, said leading Canadian trade lawyer Martha Harrison, a partner with Dentons Canada LLP, on a conference call. They seem to be very adaptable to new rules moving forward.

Harrison did note that there have been more inquiries from clients on how the NAFTA renegotiations could impact e-commerce.

A potential chapter on the digital economy and worker mobility will provide clarity and benefit the tech ecosystem. That is something advocated by the Canadian Services Coalition (CSC) in its submission to Global Affairs Canada.



I think that Canada has a lot to gain in these negotiations.  Martha Harrison , partner, Dentons Canada LLP

Harrison said the recently negotiated Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union will be leveraged by Ottawa for its tone, tenure, and subject matter when conducting negotiations.

One of the benefits of CETA is a rigorous regulatory cooperation, she said. This is critical when modernizing trade agreements so that companies can take advantage of the rules of origin for a product and import and export it on a duty-free basis without having to make significant changes to it.

Rules of origin are needed to determine if a good is brought in duty-free. The principle becomes more difficult to apply in the digital economy with software transferring across borders via the internet.

Theyre going to have to wrap their heads around that because that is an important part of what this agreement should be attacking, Scott Smith, director of intellectual property and innovation policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said in a phone interview.

Free Flow of Labor

Worker mobility is critical for the success of the digital economy and is another of the major initiatives expected to revitalize NAFTA. The first step is to recognize the types of jobs that have emerged since the internet revolution.

For example, the job of programmer is not recognized under the existing list of professionals in the current agreement.

Canada has been rather vocal that it needs to expand that list to keep up with new and innovative industries, Harrison said.

Instead, rapidly growing tech companies like EventMobi have had to hire consultants and overseas talent.

What we would have liked NAFTA to have hadallow us to bring in programmers, engineers. Unfortunately NAFTA does not allow us to bring those in, said Shaida Ghani, operations manager at EventMobi, in a phone interview.

EventMobi and other tech startups have been making use of the governments Global Skills Strategy program to hire highly skilled individuals with a very quick turnaround time.

The express entry program that exists here now is only a step towards what our tech companies actually need, Smith said.

Data Residency

In a free trade agreement, goods and labor should flow freely across borders; so too should data. Large U.S. tech companies along with the CSC and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce are pushing for the free flow of data, but some Canadian provinces as well as the Income Tax Act require domestic storage of certain types of datathat is, it cant be stored in the cloud hosted by international servers.

Its become an advantage to some Canadian fintech and legaltech companies with their customers if they can say they store data domestically.

If the cross-border data flows are unrestricted in a way that the United States would like them to be, there may be strong pushback from the Canadian side, Mat Goldstein, a business lawyer in Dentons Corporate and Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies group, said on a conference call.

The provinces of British Columbia and Nova Scotia require storage of personal information in Canada, but whatever Ottawa negotiates will be binding on the provinces, said Harrison.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which could also influence the renegotiations, provided for the free flow of information unless there are serious privacy concerns. Thats going to be the big negotiating pointwhat is considered sensitive, Smith said.

The United States is actually seeking stronger commitments on e-commerce and data flows than what was agreed to in the TPP. Should Canada and Mexico agree, they may need to amend their legal frameworks.



Theres no question NAFTA has been a boon to the Canadian economy and should continue to go forward. But beneath the surface, there will likely be winners and losers. The Canadian service industry must face greater competition to gain greater market accessa double-edged sword.

I think that Canada has a lot to gain in these negotiations, Harrison said.

Increasing the free flow of data, worker mobility, and compliance and commonality of regulation will benefit Canadas large service industry and growing tech ecosystem.

In her address on Aug. 14, Freeland said NAFTA needs to be revamped in a way that ensures we continue to have a vibrant and internationally competitive technology sector and that all sectors of our economy can reap the full benefits of the digital revolution.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 14: Police officers keep watch in Times Square following a series of terrorist attacks in Paris on November 14, 2015 in New York City. Security in New York City has increased following the coordinated assault on Paris which ISIS claimed responsibility for. At least 120 people have been killed and over 200 injured, 80 of which seriously. (Photo by Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images)

Neighborhood Policing Illuminates NYPD Mission

I have had the privilege throughout my career to be involved with policing initiatives that forge iron-clad partnerships with the community.

These partnerships, standing on the pillars of trust, respect, ethics, and character, are the heart of public safety in American communities.

These pillars ensure transparency, accountability, and legitimacy for both the police and community members. They must be adhered to by all who are privileged to call America home.

Building Police-Community Partnerships

In my article titled Principles of American Policing for the April 28, 2015 edition of the Epoch Times, the foundations of contemporary policing were memorialized.

The article highlighted that the first irrefutable principle of policing, inspired by Sir Robert Peels timeless nine principles, is that being pro-police and pro-community is inseparable, indefatigable, and pre-eminent.

In my opinion, these Principles of American Policing deserve not only reflection, but unwavering commitment to implementing programs, action plans, and certification initiatives for police and community members.

A Police-Community Model

The forging of pro-police and pro-community partnerships must be on the framework of American values, as it is critical to safeguarding our communities.

A mutual respect for police and community must begin in the family, which is the foundation of society. Building respect must also be complemented by efforts in our schools (where a positive police presence is critical) and through all facets of community life.

When respect is the foundation, society benefits through dialogue, trust, and collaboration.

Associations dedicated to pro-police and pro-community ideals are critical to this collaboration. These associations serve as a catalyst that inspire active participation.

One such association in New York City deserves credit as an exemplary model for building police-community unity.

The First Precinct Financial Area Security Council is dedicated to forging law enforcement, private security, military, and community partnerships to safeguard New York City.

On Wednesday, Oct. 13, the council hosted an event that punctuated its dedication through an extraordinary NYPD presentation.

Neighborhood Policing

The guest speaker, Terence A. Monahan, NYPDs Chief of Patrol, crystalized the benefits of Neighborhood Policing.

Related Coverage NYPD Renaissance Cops: Safe and Fair Everywhere

First, it is important to understand Chief Monahans responsibility as Chief of Patrol, and his bureaus importance to the Neighborhood Policing program.

The Patrol Services Bureau is the most visible in the NYPD. This bureau, commanded by Chief Monahan, involves 17,000 uniformed NYPD officers in 77 precincts. These officers have a critical role in Neighborhood Policing, which, according to Chief Monahan, is the heartbeat of all of the work not only in the Patrol Bureau but with every member of the police department.

Chief Monahan stressed that Neighborhood Policing increases police-community connectivity. The program helps city residents know their cops personally. It allows residents to experience the cops humanity, compassion, and character. Yet, it never undermines the cops ability to command respect in challenging incidents. The program insures that the officers training, confidence, and investigative skills are joined with people skills, all of which are necessary for public safety.

Neighborhood policing empowers the cop with conflict resolution, problem-solving, and de-escalation skills. Yet, it also insures that the cop has moral courage, ethical principles, and an unwavering fortitude to protect and serve those entrusted to his care.

In graphic slides, Chief Monahan stressed that Neighborhood Policing is inseparable from the needs of the community. Officers are connected with community members, as supported by effective staff management. This management allows the officers rapport with the community, empowers decision making, and makes the officer accountable for reducing crime.

As detailed on the NYPD website, Neighborhood policing is sufficiently staffed to permit off-radio time for the sector officers, so they are not exclusively assigned to answering calls. The off-radio time is used to engage with neighborhood residents, identify problems, and work toward solutions. Sector officers have 33 percent of their eight-hour tours, or about two hours and 20 minutes each day, devoted to community-based, proactive, and problem-solving activities.

Neighborhood Policing: Officer Training

The training for officers as presented by Chief Monahan included the following:

Criminal Investigative Course this enables officers to identify dangers, build a case, and utilize precision policing. The uniformed officers are enabled to develop and foster a working partnership with detectives. This training differentiates Neighborhood Policing from Community Policing as it empowers officers with investigative skills and resources.

this enables officers to identify dangers, build a case, and utilize precision policing. The uniformed officers are enabled to develop and foster a working partnership with detectives. This training differentiates Neighborhood Policing from Community Policing as it empowers officers with investigative skills and resources. Mediation Course a four day program that empowers officers with listening, social interaction, and conflict resolution skills.

a four day program that empowers officers with listening, social interaction, and conflict resolution skills. Public Speakinghumanizes officers and gives them the confidence necessary for speaking engagements with the community.

Chief Monahan also stressed the importance of the NYPD Build the Block facet of Neighborhood Policing. Build the Block implements neighborhood safety meetings and strategies between officers and the people. The meetings identifies public safety issues and implements solutions.

NYPD Mission: Illuminating Success

According to the NYPD, their mission is to enhance the quality of life in New York City by working in partnership with the community to enforce the law, preserve peace, reduce fear, and maintain order. The Department is committed to accomplishing its mission of protecting the lives and property of all citizens of New York City by treating every citizen with compassion, courtesy, professionalism, and respect, while efficiently rendering police services and enforcing the laws impartially, by fighting crime both through deterrence and the relentless pursuit of criminals.

The success of this mission is illuminated by statistics from the 2017 Neighborhood Policing Commands. These are memorialized on the NYPD website and were cited by Chief Monahan as follows:

Communities with neighborhood policing commands experienced 30 percent fewer shooting incidents in the first quarter of 2017 when compared to the same period in 2016. It is likely that 48 fewer shooting incidents in the area contributed to the 8.5 percent reduction in homicides there.

For the first quarter of 2017, neighborhood policing commands experienced a reduction in the seven major felony offenses (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of a motor vehicle) when compared to the first quarter of 2016. This means there were approximately 800 fewer major crimes committed in the neighborhood policing commands  and more people in these communities were protected from the pain and disruption caused by violent crime victimization.

Final Reflections

The NYPD deserves praise for its Neighborhood Policing program, an expression of its ethical responsibility to build police-community partnerships.

In a personal chat with Chief Monahan after his presentation, I commended him for his service to the people of New York and his commitment to Neighborhood Policing.

During our chat, he stressed the difference between Neighborhood Policing and Community Policing. Chief Monahan emphasized that Neighborhood Policing empowers officers with comprehensive crime-fighting, criminal investigation, and people skills that strengthen their connection with the community, and makes them personally accountable for reducing crime.

The NYPD with its Neighborhood Policing program is contributing to the Reawakening of the Nation.

The program is reducing crime in New York City, and serves as a model for enhancing pro-police and pro-community partnerships nationwide.

Vincent J. Bove, CPP, is a national speaker and author on issues critical to America. Bove is a recipient of the FBI Directors Community Leadership Award for combating crime and violence and is a former confidant of the New York Yankees. His newest book is Listen to Their Cries. For more information, see www.vincentbove.com

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
UPDATED: New Zealand MPs Past Career Teaching Spies in China Cause for Concern, Say Experts

MP Jian Yang studied and taught at elite Chinese military schools

UPDATE as of Sept. 22: Local media reports indicate that the citizenship application file of New Zealand MP Jian Yang has been released. However, New Zealand Herald reports that key parts have been withheld about whether or not Yang disclosed that he taught at Chinese military academiesteaching English to students training to be spieswhen he applied for his New Zealand citizenship.

A Chinese-born MP from New Zealands ruling National Party has come under scrutiny for his former career teaching spies in China and his membership in the Chinese Communist Party. And while he is dismissing his background as being a reason for concern, those familiar with the inner workings of Beijings politics and intelligence activities are telling a different story.

The case is the latest episode in a series of recent events that raise questions about Chinese influence in the internal affairs of Western democracies such as Australia, Canada, and the United States.

Last week, New Zealands Newsroom and the Financial Times, which had conducted a joint investigation into MP Jian Yang, released reports that Yang had attracted the interest of the countrys Security Intelligence Service for his links to Chinas military academies.

Yang studied and then worked for several years at elite military academic institutions, including the PLA Air Force Engineering College and the Luoyang Foreign Language Institute.

He first became a member of New Zealands parliament in 2011 and was part of different committees at different periods of time, among them foreign affairs, defence, and trade. He currently remains a parliamentary private secretary for ethnic affairs.

Yang has been a major fundraiser in the Chinese community for the National Party, and has, as the Financial Times put it, big-spending anonymous donors. The reference is to a 2016 fundraiser with then-Prime Minister John Key in which six unnamed Chinese donors donated a total of $100,000 to a bid to change New Zealands flag, according to local media reports. The donors wanted the Union Jack removed from the New Zealand flag because of the past China-Britain history.

Speaking to reporters after the reports on his past emerged, Yang said he taught English language and American studies while at the Chinese military academies, adding that some of his students were trained to collect, monitor, and interpret information, according to The Associated Press.

Refuting any allegations that question his loyalty to New Zealand, Yang said he is a victim of a racist smear campaign.

Although I was not born here I am proud to call myself a New Zealander, obey our laws, and contribute to this country, he told reporters.

Yang said the military system has both ranking and non-ranking officers who are called civilians, and that he was one of the civilians.

If you define those cadets, or students, as spies, yes, then I was teaching spies, he said. I can understand that people can be concerned because they do not understand the Chinese system, he added, according to The Associated Press. But once they understand the system, they should be assured that this is nothing, really, you should be concerned about.

But it is precisely those who have a good understanding of the political system in China, including a defector who used to work for the same regime as Yang, who are sounding the alarm.

Military Background

Chen Yonglin was the first secretary at the Chinese consulate in Sydney, Australia, until he defected in 2005. He was in charge of the consulates political department, tasked with overseeing and interfering with the members of the Chinese community overseas.

Chen says Yangs background with the Chinese military is not something that can be ignored.

According to Chen, someone who graduates from the PLA Air Force Engineering College holds the rank of a lieutenant; and if he graduates from the Luoyang Foreign Language Institute with a Masters degree, he at least holds the rank of captain.

Speaking to the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times, Chen said Chinese military academy students and faculty are completely brainwashed and New Zealanders ought to be cautious when it comes to people with a background in the military.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and a global fellow at the Wilson Center, writes in a paper that the Peoples Liberation Army would not have allowed anyone with Yang Jians military intelligence background to go overseas to studyunless they had official permission.

Chinese Student Associations

Before coming to New Zealand and taking an academic position at the University of Auckland, Yang was a graduate student at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. According to an exclusive interview he gave to a Chinese-language publication, while at ANU he was chairman of the Chinese Student and Scholars Association (CSSA).

CSSAs, which are found on many campuses outside China including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, U.K., and the United States, are known by researchers as extensions of Chinas overseas diplomatic apparatus and are used to control Chinese students abroad.

The about section on the Facebook page of the CSSA at ANU says in Chinese that the association is supported by the Chinese Embassy in Australia. The website of the CSSA at the University of Canberra says in Chinese that the Association is under the administration of the Chinese Embassy in Australia.

According Brady, CSSAs are one of the main means the Chinese authorities use to guide Chinese students and scholars on short-term study abroad.

Americans were treated to a not-so-secret experience of CSSAs mission earlier this year when the CSSA at the University of CaliforniaSan Diego rallied Chinese students to stop a scheduled speech of the Dalai Lama, Tibets spiritual leader, at the university. The CSSA published a statement on WeChat (a Chinese instant messaging platform) that states, The Chinese Student and Scholar Association has asked the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles for instructions and, having received the instructions, is going to implement them.

After defecting, Chen explained how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses overseas student and community groups acting as front organizations to influence Western government officials and societies.

The control of the overseas Chinese community has been a consistent strategy of the Chinese Communist Party and is the result of painstaking planning and management for dozens of years, he said in a past interview. Its not just in Australia. It is done this way in other countries like the U.S. and Canada, too.

Many of the CCPs overseas espionage and initiatives to exert influence are organized by the United Front Department and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, Chen said.

Brady explains that the United Front takes its origin from a Leninist tactic of strategic alliances.

United front activities incorporates working with groups and prominent individuals in society; information management and propaganda; and it has also frequently been a means of facilitating espionage, she writes.

According to Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former chief of Asia-Pacific for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the CCP has set up several organizations such as the National Congress of Chinese Canadians (NCCC) to act as its agents of influence in Canada. He said the Party exerts influence among the Chinese diaspora and the broader public in other countries through similar organizations. The NCCC has strongly denied being a front for a foreign communist power.

What is very important [for China] is to have certain organizations that become agents of influence of their own within the community, to be capable to identify first the dissidents, and be capable after that to lobby very much the local government of any country, Juneau-Katsuya said.

Influence

Earlier this year, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation warned the countrys major political parties against taking millions in donations from individuals with close links to the Chinese regime, as this would make Australia vulnerable to Beijings influence.

The issue of Chinas campaign to infiltrate and influence Australia, including shaping government policies and exerting influence over the Chinese community and media in Australia, were given more extensive attention in the press earlier this year. There has since been calls for banning donations from foreign sources to political parties.

In Canada, much of what happened in Australia with million-dollar donations would already be illegal due to legislated donation limits, at least on a federal level. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was last year criticized by opposition parties for attending cash-for-access fundraisers attended by wealthy people from the Chinese-Canadian community, one of whom had an ongoing business initiative needing government approval. One of these events was attended by Zhang Bin, a political adviser to the Chinese government, according to The Globe and Mail. Trudeau ended the controversial cash-for-access fundraisers early this year.

In her paper, Brady lists several CCP policies that aim to gain control over foreign nations. Among them: appoint foreigners with access to political power to high profile roles in Chinese companies or Chinese-funded entities in the host country; co-opt foreign academics, entrepreneurs, and politicians to promote Chinas perspective in the media and academia; the use of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships with foreign companies, universities, and research centres in order to acquire local identities that enhance influence activities; and potentially, access to military technology, commercial secrets, and other strategic information.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sept. 16, 2017. (KCNA via Reuters)

North Koreas Nuclear Threat Can Be Stopped

On Sept. 15, North Korea launched a ballistic missile that flew over Hokkaido, Japan. This is the second time a North Korean missile passed over Japans airspace. Less than two weeks ago, North Korea claimed to have successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, representing a major leap in Pyongyangs nuclear capability.

If you are the president of the United States, how would you counter North Koreas nuclear threat?

Being passive is not an option. North Korea has nuclear bombs. Moreover, according to a confidential assessment by the U.S. intelligence community, North Korea has likely mastered nuclear warhead miniaturization technology, making possible missile-deliverable atomic bombs.

If North Korea develops reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), the globe will be taken hostage by Kim Jong Un. The intensive missile tests since 2014 indicate that developing an ICBM is a priority for the regime. The Hwasong-12 missile North Korea fired on Sept. 15 traveled 2,300 miles, putting Guam, a U.S. territory, within its range. If North Koreas ICBM program goes unchecked, it is only a matter of time before Kim Jong Un has nuclear missiles that can reach the whole continental United States.

Casualties Deter Making War

An open war with North Korea is nearly impossible, at least for now. The United States and its allies have the capability, but they lack the will. The South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, is firmly against a war with North Korea. He has said he would prevent war at all costs, and favors sanctions.

One will understand his reluctance better by opening a map of the Korean peninsula: approximately 25 million people live in Seoul, 35 miles from the North-South border. It is generally believed that the North has amassed a huge amount of artillery on the border, which could turn the Seoul metropolitan area into a sea of fire that could result in up to a million civilian casualties. Those potential casualties make South Korea opposed to war, and without its cooperation in military operations, the United States is in a bind.

A few days after North Koreas purported thermonuclear test on Sept. 3 (whether North Korea exploded an atomic bomb, or a more powerful hydrogen bomb, is in dispute), South Korea reportedly created a special military decapitation unit aiming at assassinating Kim Jong Un. But this is most likely a deterrence tactic, not a credible threat. If the South were serious, the whole operation would be classified.

Moreover, Kim is a difficult target. He is easily the most secretive dictator in the world. He has never granted any interview with journalists. Nobody from outside knows where he lives and works. The state news agency in North Korea routinely releases Kims pictures and videos days after the events.

A failed assassination attempt would certainly draw retaliation from the North, with the potential to escalate to a nuclear war. Even if Kim is assassinated, no one knows for sure whether North Korea would launch nukes to avenge his death.

Appeasement Has Failed

But appeasement hasnt worked either. Called the Sunshine Policy, it was tried by South Korea from 1998 to 2008. In exchange for North Koreas diplomatic and economic cooperation, South Korea turned a blind eye to the Norths horrendous human rights abuses and sought to downplay its constant military threats.

More than 10 armed conflicts between the two Koreas didnt stop the South from sending massive financial and food aid to the North each year. How did North Korea return the favor? By conducting its first nuclear test in 2006. South Korea failed to endear the North Korea regime, and, in the meantime, its traditional alliance with the United States started to fray. The Sunshine Policy was suspended in 2008 and officially declared a failure in 2010.

Could sanctions against North Korea work? If correctly applied, sanctions have the potential for debilitating Kims regime and forcing Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. But so far sanctions against North Korea have produced little or no positive results, largely due to Chinas sabotage. One glaring example is the Dandong-Sinuiju pipeline, which supplies roughly 90 percent of Pyongyangs annual crude oil needs.

The beneficiaries of the pipeline are believed to include the North Korean government, military, and industries. China has resisted calls for shutting down the pipeline for years. After the purported hydrogen bomb test, China insisted the pipeline be explicitly exempted from the sanctions drafted by the United States, resulting in the U.N. Security Council passing a resolution that lacked the most powerful sanction that could be imposed on North Korea.

Chinas Strategic Interests

China has many strategic interests in maintaining the status quo in North Korea.

First of all, China sees North Korea as a buffer zone keeping the U.S. military away from its borders. If the Kim regime is toppled and the two Koreas peacefully unify, China would lose that barrier.

Secondly, China is happy to see North Korea making trouble for the United States and its Asian allies, tying up their attention and resources. However, after Kim conducted a series of nuclear tests in Chinas backyard, it realized its tactics had backfired.

Finally, China fears that if serious instability erupts in North Korea, it would need to cope with a large population of North Korean refugees.

Economic Leverage on China

As long as China continues to be the largest enabler of North Korea, sanctions wont stop Kim from pursuing his nuclear ambitions. How to bring China into the fold? If there is one thing that China wants the most, it is economic growth.

After 30 years of rapid expansion, it is generally accepted that Chinas economy is entering a phase of slower growth, dubbed a new normal by China officials. Three major driving forces behind Chinas GDP growth are domestic consumption, investment, and net export. The net export is one area China desperately wants to improve. In the past few years, the slowing of net exports have often been a drag on GDP growth.

The United States is Chinas largest export market. In 2016, the goods and services the United States imported from China totaled US$478.9 billion, accounting for 18.4 percent of total imports; the goods and services the United States exported to China were worth $169.3 billion, roughly 8 percent of overall U.S. exports in 2016.

In China, export-related industries employed more than 79 million people in 2009. If China stops buying our products and services, the U.S. economy may experience a small bump, but will be able to recover. If we stop buying everything made in China, however, China may likely have an economic heart attack.

The United States has plenty of leverage in negotiations with China. China should be given two choices: either completely stop providing material support to the Kim regime, or face tariffs, and border adjustment taxes and other non-tariff barriers in trade with the United States. If China doesnt want to regress to isolation and give up all economic gain, the choice is fairly obvious.

Interception

The international sanctions are passive measures. The termination of Kims nuclear weapon programs can be accelerated by actively intercepting North Koreas missiles. Test launches are meant to accumulate valuable data and know-how, so that missiles can cover longer distances, improve stability and reliability, and hit targets with more precision.

The international community should unite and declare the international waters surrounding the two Koreas as off limits to Pyongyangs missiles; any missile fired by North Korea will be shot down the moment it enters international territory.

With an oil embargo, Kim Jong Uns military would have no fuel to move troops and heavy equipment; North Korea would be less likely to be able to launch missiles, or conduct nuclear tests. North Korea would not survive on its own for three months and everything in North Korea would be paralyzed, Cho Bong-hyun, an expert on North Koreas economy, told Reuters.

With an anti-missile shield erected around North Korea, the regimes ability to test long range missiles is denied. There is a fairly good chance North Koreas nuclear weapon programs can be halted for good.

A nuclear North Korea should never be tolerated, normalized, or accepted. I understand the desire of some to coexist with the North. But no one in their right mind would keep a rabid dog as a pet. Under the Kim family, North Koreas nuclear capability has grown over the past two decades like a cancer.

Now is the time to remove the threat. U.S. leadership is absolutely crucial to achieve this goal. Fortunately, the days of America leading from behind are over. In a world of indifference and inaction, America will once again save the day.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Octopuses Built an Underwater City Named Octlantis

Octopuses have been discovered building their own underwater city off the East Coast of Australia, proving that the mysterious creatures arent necessarily as reclusive as previously thought.

Hours of footage from Go-Pro cameras revealed the creatures to be surprisingly social.

These octopusesaptly-named octopus tetricus, or gloomy octopussculpted their own dens from piles of shells left over from creatures theyd eaten, chased each other, and communicated with each other through posture.

Scientists found the Octo-community near Jervis Bay, on the south coast of the state of New South Wales, about 10 to 15 meters under the waters surface.

Around 15 octopuses were filmed living in the settlement, dubbed Octlantis by scientists there. The site is around 60 feet long and 13 feet wide.

Its the second Octo-community discovered in the area. The first site, named Octopolis, featured several Octopus homes around an unidentified foot-long man-made flat object.

The research was published in the journal Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology.

One of the researchers, Stephanie Chancellor of the University of Illinois, described the octopuses as true environmental engineers.

In addition to the rock outcroppings, octopuses who had been inhabiting the area had built up piles of shells left over from creatures they ate, most notably clams and scallops. These shell piles, or middens, were further sculpted to create dens, making these octopuses true environmental engineers, she said in a statement.

Animals were often pretty close to each other, often within arms reach, Chancellor said.

But the communities werent always harmonious.

Some of the octopuses were seen evicting other animals from their dens, Chancellor said. An example of an octopus eviction is shown in the video below.

There were some apparent threat displays where an animal would stretch itself out lengthwise in an upright posture and its mantle would darken. Often another animal observing this behavior would quickly swim away, she added.

Chancellor said that while this behavior could be territorial, we still dont really know much about octopus behavior. More research will be needed to determine what these actions might mean.

She added that a great amount of energy is exerted during such antagonistic behavior, putting the octopus at risk of injury.

We still dont know what the benefits are of this kind of behavior, which is linked closely to living in densely populated settlements, compared to the life of a solitary octopus, she said.

Researchers say that limited den space and abundant food may have led to the recently-discovered octopus settlements.

Below is footage of octopuses fighting in Octopolis, the first octopus settlement discovered in Jervis Bay.
Pitfalls Abound for Canadians Doing Business in China

Chinese e-commerce giants effectively overpromising and underdelivering

NEWS ANALYSIS

China, the worlds largest e-commerce market, counts more than 400 million online shoppers even as half the country remains offline, but eager Canadian businesses face significant hurdles to gain market share.

Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com are making a big push in Canada trying to get more Canadian businesses to join their platforms and sell to the Chinese.

Alibabas billionaire chairman Jack Ma will be making his pitch to Canadian businessalongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeauat an event in Toronto called Gateway 17 on Sept. 25.

The Toronto Region Board of Trade hosted JD.com in July for a business roundtable with more than 50 Canadian companies.

Canadian products have an excellent reputation in China. The growing Chinese middle class is leery of cheap Chinese goods and values the quality of Canadas manufacturing and pristine environment for agro-food products.

More broadly, China is undergoing a lengthy transformation from an investment-oriented economy to a consumption-based oneaway from heavy industry and toward the service sector. E-commerce has a vital role to play in the Chinese governments strategy.

E-commerce platforms are really helping to standardize market access in China to people of all income groups, which is an important priority in China, said Jan De Silva, president and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, in a phone interview.

Reasons for Concern

E-commerce might simplify certain aspects of doing business in China, but pervasive challenges like lack of rule of law and intellectual property (IP) violations are but a couple of the difficulties foreign businesses face.

U.S. President Donald Trump initiated a probe into Chinas IP theft, which is estimated to be responsible for between 50 and 80 percent of all IP violations that harm the U.S. economy, according to the IP Commission Report. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates 86 percent of all counterfeit goods come from China and Hong Kong.

A lot of product on Alibaba is counterfeit. Consumers know that too, said Mary Whittle in a phone interview. She is the CEO of Clear Lake Wineries, a family-run business that exports Ontario wines to China.

However, China is cracking down on IP violations for good reason. It realizes that some of its companies can be global champions provided other companies dont plunder their IP. So they must be protected. The number of settlements in the last few years is up roughly fourfold under the stronger judicial framework, says De Silva.

IP violations arent limited to fake goods. They can derail a business when an unscrupulous company learns of the legal name of a legitimate business and becomes the first to register or use that name in China. It then files a claim against the genuine business when it tries to register or use the name in China.

The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service (CTCS) warns that patents and trademarks registered in Canada or other countries are not usually protected in China and that regulatory enforcement can still be unsatisfactory. The CTCS website even has an extensive section on business risks related to corruption in China.



A lot of product on Alibaba is counterfeit. Consumers know that too.  Mary Whittle , CEO, Clear Lake Wineries

Another warning from the CTCS, in a section titled An Introduction to E-Commerce in China, states: Government policies regulating the marketplace are dense, complicated, and prone to changes without notice.

An extreme example of Chinas opaque regulatory enforcement is the case of John Chang and Allison Lu, owners of Lulu Island Winery based in B.C., who are facing a minimum of 10 yearsand possibly lifein prison for alleged wine smuggling into China. The winery said it believed it had followed all the applicable laws, yet Chang has already been serving jail time.

The arrest of Mr. Chang and Ms. Lu for a fabricated customs violation is an assault on their basic rights, a breach of Chinas international trade obligations, and Chinas own customs laws, Conservative international trade critic Gerry Ritz said, as reported by the CBC in May.

In an email to The Epoch Times, Brianne Maxwell, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said: We are following the case of Mr. Chang and Ms. Lu closely. Canadian officials are in contact with the relevant Chinese authorities and are providing consular assistance to Mr. Chang, Ms. Lu and their family. Canadian representatives have raised the case with Chinese authorities at high levels. To protect the privacy of the individuals concerned, further details on this case cannot be released.

Rule of law is necessary for business to thrive in a legitimate manner. Clearly it still has a long way to go in China.



The Chinese e-commerce giants are basically facilitation and delivery mechanisms. But doing business in China is much more than filling an order. The Chinese consumer is bombarded with options and a variety of marketing schemes. The reality is that many countries are trying to sell to the Chinese, which makes marketing efforts to distinguish products costly. Competition is intense.

Whittle says she was told by JD.com that a business could spend $400,000 on a marketing campaign for a month and theres no guarantee the message would register with consumers.

It is a very difficult market to penetrate and you can do a lot of things right and its still hard, very difficult to break through the noise, competing against every other country and every other product, Whittle said.

The e-commerce giants may be trying to put dollar signs in the heads of Canadian businesses, but there are many factors for success that are beyond their control.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz
Fleas carrying plague have been found in northern Arizona, according to the local public health agency.

Fleas that tested positive for the plague were found in two areas of Coconino Countythe Doney Park area, northeast of Flagstaff, and in the Red Lake area, some 5 miles northeast of Williams, according to the countys Public Health Services District.

The agency warned, There are likely additional locations with infected fleas in the county.

Environmental Health staff will continue to collect and test flea samples from locations throughout the county, it stated.

The agency urged residents to take precautions to avoid the disease.

The plague can be transmitted by fleas, rodents, rabbits, and predators that feed upon these animals. Humans can contract it by getting bitten by a flea or by touching an infected animal.

To limit possible exposure, people are encouraged to avoid rodent burrows and keep dogs on a leash as required by Arizona state law, the agency stated.

Especially susceptible are cats, which often roam free outside and can pass on fleas to humans or even infect people directly through respiratory droplets.

The plague is rare in United States and usually limited to Northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, southern Colorado, California, southern Oregon, and far western Nevada.

Across the United States, 16 cases were reported and four people died of the plague in 2015 (the last year with national statistics), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least three people were hospitalized with the plague this year in New Mexico.

Symptoms of the plague in humans include a sudden onset of fever, chills, headaches, and weakness. In most cases there is a painful swelling of the lymph nodes in the groin, armpit, or neck areas.

Symptoms of the plague in cats and dogs are fever, lethargy, and loss of appetite. There may be a swelling in the lymph node under the jaw.

The plague has caused deadly pandemics throughout history, most infamously the Black Death in the 14th century.

Today, it can be treated with antibiotics, but needs to be caught early or it can still result in death.

The Coconino County Public Health Services District recommends the following precautions:

Do not handle sick or dead animals.

Prevent pets from roaming loose.

De-flea pets routinely. Contact your veterinarian for specific recommendations.

Avoid rodent burrows and fleas.

Use insect repellents when visiting or working in areas where plague might be active or rodents might be present (campers, hikers, woodcutters, and hunters).

Wear rubber gloves and other protection when cleaning and skinning wild animals.

Do not camp next to rodent burrows and avoid sleeping directly on the ground.

Have your sick cat diagnosed by a veterinarian.

In case of illness see your physician immediately.

RELATED:

Plague Re-Emerges in New Mexico, 2 More Cases Confirmed

Two people have recently contracted the plague in New Mexico, the states Health Department confirmed. That adds to one case already reported this year. All three required hospitalization, none have died.

The newly infected are two women, a 52-year-old and a 62-year-old, from Santa Fe County.

Mexicos health department stated it conducted environmental investigations around the homes of the patients to look for ongoing risk and to ensure the safety of the immediate family and neighbors.

The plague is a bacterial disease carried by rodents and generally transmitted to humans through flea bites. It can also be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including wildlife and pets.

Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting you and your children at risk, said Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian for the Department of Health.

He recommended keeping pets on a leash or at home.

Last year, New Mexico recognized four cases of human plague in 2016 in Bernalillo, Mora, and Rio Arriba counties, and four cases in 2015 in Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties. One person died.

Across the United States, 16 cases were reported and four people died of plague in 2015, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms of the plague in humans include a sudden onset of fever, chills, headaches, and weakness. In most cases there is a painful swelling of the lymph nodes in the groin, armpit, or neck areas.

Plague symptoms in cats and dogs are fever, lethargy, and loss of appetite. There may be a swelling in the lymph node under the jaw.

Related Coverage Understanding Plague in the 21st Century

Plague has caused deadly pandemics throughout history, most infamously the Black Death in the 14th century.

Today, it can be treated with antibiotics, but it needs to be caught early or it can still result in death.

To prevent plague, the New Mexico Department of Health recommends the following:

Talk to your veterinarian about using an appropriate flea control product on your pets as not all products are safe for cats, dogs, or your children.

Clean up areas near the house where rodents could live, such as woodpiles, brush piles, junk and abandoned vehicles.

Sick pets should be examined promptly by a veterinarian.

See your doctor about any unexplained illness involving a sudden and high fever.

Put hay, wood, and compost piles as far as possible from your home.

Dont leave your pets food and water where mice can get to it.
President Donald Trump puts on a Stetson cowboy hat while touring a Made in America product showcase in the East Room of the White House on July 17, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Poll Shows Voters Back Trump Policies

Most Republicans and even many Democrats prefer Trump's positions on several key issues

A new poll shows that when Americans elect their new members of Congress in 2018, politicians who have opposed President Donald Trumps policies may find themselves in tough races.

The poll of 1,000 likely voters, released Sept. 7 by the Center for Security Policy and the Eagle Forum, shows that Democrat and Republican voters were in close agreement on many key issuesand that Democrat leaders may have more to worry about in the coming elections.

On the issue of former President Barack Obamas health care plan, the majority of Republicans and Independents64 percent and 57 percent, respectivelyopposed bailing out the health insurance companies without repealing Obamacare. Democrats were more evenly divided: 39 percent of Democrats said they would not reelect their members of Congress who agreed to bail out companies without repealing the plan, while 41 percent said they would.

There were similar results for members of Congress who refuse to repeal Obamacare mandates and taxes to reduce the cost of health care.

Only 51 percent of Democrats said they would reelect their members of Congress who refused to repeal the Obamacare mandates, while only 26 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Independents said they would reelect their members.

The results are striking for members of Congress who support abortions through Planned Parenthood, refuse to fund the Mexico border wall, refuse to defund National Public Radio, and refuse to repeal Obamacare.

Among voters, 67 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Independents said they would not reelect members of Congress who went against Trumps policies on these issues. Among Democrats, 54 percent said they would reelect their members of Congress.

There were similar results for voters who support Trumps policies on more careful vetting of immigrants, particularly those from areas with a strong terrorist presence. Only 51 percent of Democrats said they would reelect officials who failed to support the policy.

When it came to Trumps decision to end Obamas policy on transgender individuals in the U.S. militaryincluding recruiting transgender people and paying for their hormone treatments and sex change surgeries, as well as their salaries and benefits while theyre unable to servemany voters also suggested they would want new members of Congress.

The majority of Republicans and Independents69 percent and 51 percent, respectivelyshowed they would not reelect a member of Congress who supported the Obama policy. Democrats were again divided almost evenly: 37 percent would not reelect their members of Congress, while 39 percent would.

When asked whether they would reelect their member of Congress if he or she had increased the debt ceiling to spend more money the government doesnt have, without any new constraints on future spending, 66 percent of Republicans said they would not, 56 percent of Democrats said they would not, and 65 percent of independents said they would not.

Overall, the poll shows that Republican members of Congress who have gone against Trumps policies may find themselves in tough races if challenged. And even among Democrats, close to half of voters may have different views from their leaders.
North Koreans listen to a television broadcast of a statement by communist dictator Kim Jong-Un, in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 22, 2017. (ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump Strikes Nerve With North Korea

North Koreas dictator Kim Jong-Un responded forcefully to President Donald Trumps UN speech, vowing to make the United States pay dearly for it.

In his speech on Tuesday, President Trump called out the North Korea regime for its continued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea, he said.

President Donald Trump addresses world leaders at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 19, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Trumps comments echoed those of Defense Minister James Mattis who said earlier this month that the United States has the capability to completely destroy North Korea if needed, and that he had provided the president with detailed briefings on all of the options.

We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea. But as I said, we have many options to do so, Mattis said on Sept. 3.

On Friday, Trump described Kim as a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people and that he will be tested like never before.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

North Koreas communist dictatorship shocked the world earlier this month with the test of a new nuclear bomb, which is estimated to have been multiple times stronger than the atomic weapons used on Japan in World War II, and its launch of two ballistic missiles over Japan in less than a month.

Complicating North Koreas military threat and the U.S. response to it is the large arsenal of conventional and chemical weapons that the North has at its disposal against U.S. ally South Korea. The regime is estimated to have over 14,000 pieces of artillery in its possession, many of which are strategically located in bunkers in the mountains on the border with South Korea.

With South Koreas capital located just 35 miles from the border, the North could wreak devastation on the city, which has a population of over 25 million in its metropolitan area.

Kims Response

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un complained in a defiant statement released by North Koreas KNCA state media of Trumps strong statements, saying they had never been heard from any of his predecessors.

In his statement, Kim seemed surprised by Trumps threat of destroying North Korea completely, saying that it went beyond the usual threat of regime change.

Trumps threat of military action and his unwillingness to back down in the face of North Korean nuclear and missile tests are indeed in contrast to the positions held by previous U.S. presidents.

An image released by North Koreas official Korean Central News Agency on Aug. 14 shows North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-Un while inspecting the Command of the Strategic Force of the Korean Peoples Army at an undisclosed location. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump has said on multiple occasions that the strategy of talks with North Korea, which have lasted now for over 20 years, are not working. He has also said that previous U.S. presidents allowed the North to develop its nuclear weapon.

Under the diplomatic Joint Framework Agreement reached by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the north was provided aid, including two light nuclear reactors, in exchange for it ending its nuclear weapons program.

However, the North never stopped its nuclear program, and instead has developed nuclear weaponsincluding a miniaturized nuclear warhead, according to an analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agencyand the missile technology needed to deliver it.

In addition to Kims statement, a separate article published by North Koreas state media seemed equally at unease with Trumps strong stance.

Apartment buildings in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 22, 2017. (ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images)

The article, which starts off by describing the speech as rubbish, goes to great lengths to cite media critical of Trump, such as The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, as well as Hillary Clinton, in an attempt to denounce the speech. However, the underlying message it appears to be giving is one of disbelief that a U.S. president is not backing down and is making such a forceful threat.

The international community is raising voices of denunciation, being deeply concerned about such outbursts and wild words as total destruction of a sovereign state, not just overturn of social system and regime change, he said.

For North Korea, the threats to overturn of the social system and regime change have long been in their comfort zone, as they did not expect a U.S. president to actually act militarily against them. It appears now they see a real threat from Trump, which might actually propel them to act.

Sanctions

Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council passed a new resolution with sanctions on North Korea. The sanctions prohibit all natural gas sales to the North, and limit the amount of refined and crude oil sales.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday that there are indications that the new sanctions are working, despite the North having had time to hoard fuel supplies. The United States had pressed for a complete ban on oil sales to the North but received pushback from China and Russia.

On Thursday President Trump announced additional sanctions by the United States that target companies and financial institutions that are large trading partners and suppliers of finance to the North.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens during a UN Security Council meeting concerning nuclear non-proliferation at the UN headquarters in New York on Sept. 21, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Trumps Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has said that the U.S. will try to exhaust all diplomatic means, but has military options if needed.

We wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get their attention first. If that doesnt work, Gen. Mattis will take care of it, Haley told CNN earlier this month.

New Nuclear Threat

In the defiant statement released by Kim, he threatened the United States with fire to make it pay dearly.

Kims Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said that the North is considering testing an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb over the Pacific in response to U.S. President Donald Trumps threat at the United Nations to totally destroy the country.

It may mean North Korea will fire a warhead-tipped [intermediate range] Hwasong-12 or Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile and blow it up a few hundred kilometers above the Pacific Ocean, said Yang Uk, a senior researcher at the Korea Defence and Security Forum in Seoul.

They may be bluffing, but there is a need for them to test their combined missile-bomb capability. They could have already prepared the plan and are now trying to use Trumps remarks as an excuse to make it happen, said Yang.

Such an atmospheric test would be the first globally since China detonated a device in 1980, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Tests of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles are rarer still. The United States only test of an operational ballistic missile with a live warhead was fired from a submarine far out in the Pacific Ocean in 1962.

Additional Reporting by Reuters
Remembering the Victims of Communismfor Them, and for Us

WASHINGTONThe power of memoryto honor, to console, to teach, and to warnwas evoked on the morning of June 9 at the award and wreath-laying ceremonies at the Victims of Communism Memorial.

The event began with the passionate violin playing of Wuilly Moises Arteaga, a 23-year-old from the socialist state of Venezuela. Arteaga had been flown in from Caracas and promptly outfitted with a new violin. The police in Caracas, where Arteaga has regularly played in protests against the repressive Maduro regime, had smashed his previous instrument.

Perhaps the raw energy of Arteagas playing drew in part on grief for the recent death of his friend and fellow violinist Armando Canizales, who was killed in the Caracas protests.

Arteaga played on a stage facing the memorial statue, a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy figure assembled from papier-mache by the students on Tiananmen Square in 1989. The statue dominates a small plaza on a busy Washington street corner that is an easy walk from the Capitol.

This was a day for remembering the victims of communism, which is easier to do for one individual at a time, than for a group whose size strains our understanding.

The keynote speaker, Vytautas Landsbergis, said the enormity of the crimes of communism is astonishing, which means difficult to comprehend. Landsbergis noted the scale of the crimes can invite the remark, attributed to Josef Stalin, that while one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

On its website, The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation refers to there being more than 100 million deaths and says its memorial is the only one in the world dedicated to every single victim of communism.

Jose Gutierrez-Solana attended the first of the foundations memorial ceremonies 10 years ago and has attended every year since. He spent 10 years in Fidel Castros jails.

Gutierrez-Solana was a law student who had joined with Castro to oppose the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Then Castro said there would be no law and no constitution. That is not what we were fighting for, Gutierrez-Solana said, and so he began using his words to oppose the soon-to-be communist tyrant.

After Castro seized power, Gutierrez-Solana was rounded up. He says he comes to this event each year to pay tribute to our friends and brothers who lost their lives for freedom in Cuba.

Gutierrez-Solana escaped Cuba decades ago. Chi Lihua and her daughter, Xu Xinyang, escaped China only four months ago, in February.

Chi and Xu practice the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, which the Chinese Communist Party set out to eradicate in 1999. Chis husband died in 2009 after being tortured during an 8-year prison sentence for practicing Falun Gong. Chi said she has also lost her brother, father, and mother due to the persecution in China.

After her fathers death, Xu was forced to quit school, and several of her classmates, who also practiced Falun Gong, were arrested. Chi and Xu came to the foundations ceremony to ask for help for Falun Gong practitioners and in particular for Xus classmates. They dont speak English, but brought with them a laminated poster in Chinese that tells about the persecution of Falun Gong. When asked to pose for a photo, they unfolded the poster and held it between them.

Avoiding False Hope

The foundation runs several activities meant to further its vision of a world free from the false hope of communism. Prominent among these is the awarding of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, given to those individuals and institutions that have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to freedom and democracy and opposition to communism and all other forms of tyranny, the website says.

Related Coverage Fidels Cuba Leaves Indelible Scars

At this ceremony, the foundation awarded the medal to Mart Laar, Estonias first prime minister after the countrys independence from the Soviet Union. The award was accepted by Estonias deputy chief of mission, Marki Tihhonova-Kreek, as ill health kept Laar from making the trip to Washington.

In his acceptance remarks, Laar wrote that Estonians know precisely what communism is. This is why our task is not to let it happen again. This demands that we all keep memory alive.

Landsbergiss keynote address struck a different tone. He began, Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, combatants. Landsbergis, the first head of state of a Lithuania freed from Soviet domination, spoke as one warrior to other warriors.

For him, communism is alive. It is a monster or a plague that seeks to destroy all of humanity.

While one might be pardoned on a sunny morning in Washington for feeling far from these terrible things, Landsbergis warned, The epoch of mass extermination is not yet over.

Landsbergis sees the evil of communism mutating and appearing in new forms. Murderous Islamists and what he called Russo-fascism are new faces of an old enemy.

Related Coverage The Dark Origins of Communism: Part 1 of 3

The mixture of speculative communist teaching and fanatic delirium, Landsbergis said, goes on like an endemic illness.

Landsbergis sees a love based on the belief in God as a way for humankind to avoid this contagion.

The climax of the mornings events was the roll call of nations. Wreaths were presented by the representatives of 22 nations, four other governmental entities, and 30 private associations (from the union representing Voice of America employees to the World Uyghur Congress).

In the solemn ceremony, one or a few individuals would carry a wreath to the space in front of the statue of the Goddess of Democracy and briefly bow their head in respect for the many victims who have been slaughtered. The wreath would then be arranged with the others in rows behind the statue.

Close to Home

After the memorial ceremony ended, the foundations executive director, Marion Smith, reflected on the significance of the days events for Americans. An October 2016 poll commissioned by the foundation on Americas views on communism was an eye-opener.

Among other findings, younger generationsmillennials and Generation Zwere found to be more likely to underestimate the death toll of communism, to have less appreciation for the lasting threat of communism, and to be more likely to have favorable attitudes toward socialism and communism.

Smith said the results of this poll reflected an overall failure of American education. He sized up our younger generations as having a lack of historical awareness, a frustration or inability to participate in the free enterprise system, and then a weariness at the messiness of democracy.

Freedom is the birthright of all humanity, and in the end, freedom will prevail.  President George W. Bush, dedicating the memorial in 2007

Smith characterized this as very fertile soil for dictatorship and totalitarianism.

To respond to this situation, the foundation has several educational initiatives: seminars for high school teachers; outreach programs on college campuses, where the foundation teaches the basic facts about communism; and symposia for college professors to discuss difficult issues involving communism, socialism, totalitarianism, and collectivism. In addition, the foundation has run a series of ads in New Yorks Times Square.

Next on the foundations agenda is to build the International Museum on Communism in Washington.

Smith said that understanding and celebrating the lives of those killed by communism is very important for us as a society in terms of justice, of who we are.

Remembering the victims of communism and seeking to defend others from it, even if our situation only allows us to do so with words, is essential to the American character, Smith said.

If we dont defend the great ideas of individual liberty and self-government around the world, then we lose the capacity to affirm those ideas at home, Smith said.

Related Coverage How Lenins Bolsheviks Brought Communism to Russia

Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. Read the whole series at ept.ms/TheDeadEndCom
Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sit atop an armoured personnel carrier on the outskirts of the town of al-Shadadi in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakeh, on Feb. 19, 2016. (DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Russia Warns It Will Target US-Backed Fighters in Syria If Provoked

Russia warned the United States on Thursday it would target U.S.-backed militias in Syria if Russian troops again came under fire, as the United States disclosed an unusual face-to-face meeting between U.S. and Russian generals meant to avoid such clashes.

The Russian warning underscored growing tensions over Syria between Moscow and Washington. While both oppose Islamic State (IS), they are engaged, via proxies, in a race for strategic influence and potential resources in the form of oilfields in eastern Syrias Deir al-Zor province.

The Russian Defence Ministry said the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had taken up positions on the eastern banks of the Euphrates with U.S. special forces, and twice had opened fire with mortars and artillery on Syrian troops who were working alongside Russian special forces.

A representative of the U.S. military command in Al Udeid (the U.S. operations center in Qatar) was told in no uncertain terms that any attempts to open fire from areas where SDF fighters are located would be quickly shut down, Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

Fire points in those areas will be immediately suppressed with all military means.

In a sign of the high stakes as both forces come in increasing proximity, U.S. and Russian generals held a face-to-face meeting this week in an effort to avoid accidental clashes, U.S. military officials said on Thursday. They had a face-to-face discussion, laid down maps and graphics, said Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, adding it appeared to be the first meeting of its kind.

Dillon, addressing a Pentagon briefing, disclosed few details, including who participated in the meeting or its precise location.

A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the participants included both U.S. and Russian generals.

U.S. SPIES?

The Russian Defence Ministry this week accused U.S. spies of initiating a jihadi offensive against government-held parts of northwest Syria on Tuesday.

The ministry, in a Wednesday evening statement, said 29 Russian military policemen had been surrounded by jihadis as a result and that Russia had been forced to break them out in a special operation backed by air power.

According to our information, U.S. intelligence services initiated the offensive to halt the successful advance of government troops to the east of Deir al-Zor, said Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoi.

The Syrian army, backed by Russian war planes, has captured about 100 km (62 miles) of the west bank of the Euphrates this month, reaching the Raqqa provincial border on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Syrian troops also crossed to the eastern side of the river on Monday where the SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting with the U.S.-led coalition, has been advancing.

The convergence of the rival offensives has increased tensions in Deir al-Zor.

The U.S.-backed militias said on Saturday they had come under attack from Russian jets and Syrian government forces, something Moscow denied.

On Monday, the SDF warned against any further Syrian army advances on the eastern riverbank, and Russias Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that the waters of the Euphrates had risen as soon as the Syrian army began crossing it, suggesting this could only have happened if upstream dams held by the U.S.-backed opposition had been opened.
Scientists Test 1,000-Year-Old Viking Generals DNA, Prove Themselves Wrong

Scientists assumed a few things about a Viking skeleton they excavated in the 1800s.

The skeleton was buried with two horses, an ax, a sword, a spear, a battle knife, and shields, so they assumed the skeleton belonged to a warrior.

A board game lay in the skeletons lap, so they assumed the man was a powerful military leader.

Except it wasnt a man.

The skeleton actually belongs to a woman, according to results of a DNA test published Friday in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Its actually a woman, somewhere over the age of 30 and fairly tall, too, measuring around 5 feet 6 inches tall, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, an archaeologist at Uppsala University told The Local.

The woman warrior was buried in the mid-10th century in the Viking town of Birka. The gaming set found on her lap was complete with a full set of pieces.

The gaming set indicates that she was an officer, Hedenstierna-Jonson said. Someone who worked with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle.

Scientists have long assumed that the skeleton belonged to man because it was buried with weapons. Several years ago, Anna Kjellstrom, a bone and skeleton scientist, noted that the cheekbones were narrow and the pelvic bones were feminine. Scientists tested the DNA and the results proved a century-old assumption wrong.

Using ancient DNA for sex identification is useful when working with children for example, but can also help to resolve controversial cases such as this one, said Maja Krzewinska, an archaeologist at the Stockholm University.

The discovery of a female warrior is the first of its kind, according to Neil Price, a professor of archaeology at Uppsala University.

Written sources mention female warriors occasionally, Price told phys.org. But this is the first time that weve really found convincing archaeological evidence for their existence.

Vikings were adept sailors. They raided and traded with countries in north, central and eastern Europe from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries.

From NTD.tv
The International Space Station photographed from the space shuttle Atlantis as the orbiting complex and the shuttle performed their relative separation in the early hours of July 19, 2011. (NASA via Wikimedia Commons)

Shape-shifting Bacteria in Space Bad News for Astronauts

Researchers have recently discovered that bacteria aboard the International Space Station (ISS) show a shape-shifting behavior.

In a recent study, published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, researchers took cultured E. coli bacteria and exposed them to different concentrations of a common antibiotic, gentamicin sulfate, that is deadly to E. coli on Earth.

What they observed is that the cell volume of the drugged bacteria decreased by 73 percent, while the number of cells multiplied 13-fold compared to those in a similar experiment on Earth.

The bacterias cell walls and outer membranecalled the envelopebecame thicker, likely protecting the bacteria from the antibiotic.

Small capsules were also found forming outside some of the bacterial cell walls. These capsules, know as membrane vesicles, act as messengers between bacterial cells in a colony and can allow them to communicate and synchronize the start of the infection process.

Scientists have long observed that bacteria in space show a greater resistance to antibiotics compared to their earthly, gravity-bound counterparts, but they never directly linked the increased drug resistance to physical changes in the bacteria.

We knew bacteria behave differently in space and that it takes higher concentrations of antibiotics to kill them, Luis Zea, University of Colorado microbiologist and lead scientist for the study told CU Boulder Today. Whats new is that we conducted a systematic analysis of the changing physical appearance of the bacteria during the experiments.

Researchers believe that this shape-shifting, possible in the low-gravity conditions on the ISS, could be the reason the space bacteria had a greater resistance to the antibiotics.

Both the increase in cell envelope thickness and in the outer membrane vesicles may be indicative of drug resistance mechanisms being activated in the spaceflight samples, Zea said, according to CU Boulder Today.

Such research could help to protect astronaut health in the strange living conditions that teams experience on the ISS, a tiny life-sustaining capsule whizzing around the Earth at around 17,500 miles per hour.

Unlike single-celled bacteria, which seem to do fairly well on the ISS, microgravity conditions weaken astronauts immune systems, increasing their risk of infection. Astronauts also suffer from loss of bone density, radiation poisoning, and eyesight degradation, among other symptoms.

With NASAs plans to send humans on a three-year mission to Mars (ISS astronauts usually go up for only six months at a time) in the 2030s, the research will be key for the wellbeing of future astronauts.

In addition to its space applications, this experiment helps to understand how bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics on Earth, BioServe Director Louis Stodieck told CU Boulder Today.

In space, for example, scientists can learn more about biochemical changes in various cells and organisms that the force of gravity on Earth may be masking.

From NTD.tv
INCHEON, South KoreaWith the clock ticking past midnight, over 100 fervent fans gathered at the Incheon International Airport, some wearing traditional Korean dresses, remained upbeat about what they would soon seemembers of the New York-based Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra, which will kick off the Asian leg of its 2017 global tour on Sept. 17.

Shen Yun music has the power to bring peace and tranquility to everyone, said Li Shanya, a Chinese college student studying in South Korea, and one of the fans dressed in hanbok, a traditional Korean dress.

Members of Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra at the Incheon International Airport on Sept. 16, 2017. (Quan Jinglin/The Epoch Times)

Ms. Li said Shen Yuns music has become an important part of her life, given how she often turns to Shen Yuns music to clear her mind. She added, This music is just so good. It is like a perfect antidote to cure your body and mind.

Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is a classical Chinese dance and music company that has a mission to revive Chinas divinely inspired culture. Shen Yuns five different touring companies travel the globe each year with all new programming of dance and music performances.

Shen Yuns music is unique, in that it is performed by orchestras that combine traditional Chinese instruments and classical Western instruments.

In response to many theatregoers who wanted to hear the music of Shen Yun, Shen Yun formed the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra, which debuted in 2012.

Since this is the first visit of the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra in South Korea, we feel extremely excited and look forward to the presentation, said Milen Nachev, the orchestras conductor.

As for how Shen Yun is able to produce such a unique production, Mr. Nachev elaborated that traditional Chinese instruments and the original instruments forming the western symphony orchestra is the power of Shen Yun.

Two Chinese string instruments that are present among the full orchestra are the pipa and the erhu, with the former being a plucked instrument that evokes a sense of celestial realms and the latter, also known as the Chinese violin, sounding as if it can mimic the human voice, conveying a wealth of feelings, according to Shen Yuns website.

All these combined together create unique sounds, said Mr. Nachev; the result is that the production creates this incredible feeling of emotional impact to the audience.

Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra will grace the stage at the Korean cities of Daegu and Goyang, before traveling to Taiwan to embark on a 10-city tour, and finally returning to North America, with performances in Toronto, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC.

Reporting by NTD and Frank Fang

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time and has covered audience reactions since the companys inception in 2006.
Falun Gong exercise at the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept. 19, 2017, to raise awareness about the persecution inside China that is now in its 18th year. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

Outside UN Headquarters, a Plea for Freedom of Belief

Silenced and persecuted in China, practitioners of the spiritual practice Falun Gong tell their harrowing stories

NEW YORKThey had just arrived in the United States a little more than a week before, but they were ready to tell the world about what they had endured.

Ahead of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, two sisters from China joined a group of about 80 meditating protesters outside U.N. headquarters. Rui and Xing are practitioners of Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice that the Chinese regime has heavily persecuted since 1999. They asked to use pseudonyms for fear of repercussions for their parents still living in China, who also practice Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong).

Rui and Xing were just 11 and 8 when their father was arrested and sentenced to prison for 14 1/2 years for his faith in the ancient Buddhist discipline. Feeling threatened by Falun Dafas growing popularity in Chinathe practice had reached 100 million practitioners at its peak, according to Falun Gong sources, or 70 million according to a survey by the stateCommunist Party authorities launched a systematic campaign in 1999 to eradicate the practice.

Rui and Xing recall the local police barging into their home in Gansu, a central region of China, and keeping them under surveillance 24 hours a day, for weeks on end. Six years later, their mother was also arrested and sentenced to prison. This time, the police enlisted Ruis school administrators and teachers to spy on her. At ages 17 and 14, the sisters were left to fend for themselves, with the help of some Falun Dafa practitioners who lived nearby. Rui and Xing were told they could not apply for college student loans.

We want to tell Chinas delegates to stop the persecution, so that the practitioners in China can believe freely. They are people we know, people who are still suffering, Rui said in Chinese.

Despite the heavy winds on Tuesday, the Falun Dafa practitioners arrived early in the morning to begin their silent demonstration outside the U.N. Most were either performing the practices gentle exercises or holding tightly to banners, which often threatened to collapse against the wind, with printed messages in English and Chinese like The world needs truth, compassion, tolerancethe faiths three central tenetsand Bring Jiang Zemin to justice. Jiang is the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party who initiated the persecution.

Wang Luorui, a practitioner who has been arrested 11 times in China, said she hopes President Donald Trump will put pressure on China to bring Jiang to justice. It will allow Falun Gong to bring the universal values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance to the Chinese people, she said.

Wang Cun Ling, a practitioner from Shanghai, said her faith helped her to become a responsible and caring teacher who mentored many students in China, helping them to successfully apply to top colleges. Through demonstrating outside the U.N., she hopes to convey the message to people around the world that Falun Dafa is good. We want to tell people the truth [about Falun Gong] in a peaceful, compassionate way, she said.
A Bryozoan clump in Stanley Park lagoon Vancouver is picked out of the water (Vancouver Courier/Youtube)

Slimy Asexual Brain-Blobs Spotted Heading West

Social media users gather new evidence that odd life-form is heading west as video of creepy creature stirs interest

Sitting in still water like cryogenic alien brains, these slimy mysterious blobs arent something youd expect to find outside of a special effects department, let alone in a city park.

But even scientists who specialize in studying this bizarre life-form are surprised to learn they have found a home in the Stanley Park lagoon, in Vancouver, Canada, where a video of their discovery has prompted quite a stir.

The discovery of the mysterious blobs last month in the park is the latest sign that they are spreading westward across North America from their native home in the Mississippi.

In a video posted by the Vancouver Courier, the unique structure of these colonies of tiny organisms can be seen.

Its kind of like three-day-old Jelloa bit firm but gelatinous, Kathleen Stormont, from the Stanley Park Ecology Society, told the Vancouver Courier.

The discovery of these moss animals at the park, which are a category of life-forms known as bryozoans, has been followed with interest, even stirring media interest outside of North America.

The interest on social media has brought to light new information on how the blobs are spreading, with users posting their own brain pictures and sightings on the Stanley Park Ecological Society Facebook page. The posts suggest that the blobs are more common in the area than scientists previously thought.

Bryozoans might not look like animals, and are often mistaken for amphibian or fish eggs, but are technically classed in the animal category. In fact, one dragon booger as they are sometimes called, is a colony of thousands of tiny bryozoan animals. They often group together into distinct forms, from fan-like shapes to the brain-like structure of this particular species , Pectinatella magnifica.

Bryozoan clumps are tiny interverebrates known as zooids, which can reproduce asexually.

The appearance of the blobs in Vancouvers Stanley Park is new, but the animal appears to have been heading quietly northwest for some time. A blog post on the Fishery and Waterways website notes that they had already been spotted in Vancouver Lake in 2011. The blog says this particular species can reach enormous sizes.

Each gelatinous blob can reach seven feet in diameter and will turn a dark vibrant purple, with shiny white spots.  Each mass is built from hundreds of individual filter-feeding zooids, which extend tentacles from the edge of the blob to pull food out of the water, wrote Joanne Breckenridge, Research Associate, Aquatic Ecology Lab at WSU (Vancouver), on the Fishery blog.

Zooids can only survive in water temperatures above 60 degrees, leading some to speculate that global warming is behind their appearance in western Canada.

Ian Walker a biology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied bryozoans told National Geographic there isnt enough evidence to suggest theyve moved north.

Its something that could have been easily overlooked in the past, he said. He noted that bryozoans have been found just west of Vancouver in the Okanagan Valley.

I think were near the northern limit of them. With warming climate, they might migrate somewhere farther north, said Walker. I can only really speculate how they might have spread.
Startup Offers to Fill Old Peoples Veins With Teenage Blood for $8,000

'I'm not really in the camp of saying this will provide immortality but I think it comes pretty close'

A San Francisco startup is selling the blood of young people for $8,000. They are running experiments to see the health benefits of putting the blood of teenagers into older people, as BBC reported.

The company hosts a procedure that takes 2.6 quarts of plasma from youngsters and injects it into older folks with a median age of 60 years old. Plasma is the liquid part of blood minus the less liquid cells.

Older people will supposedly find themselves rejuvenated after the procedure. It could help improve things such as appearance or diabetes or heart function or memory. These are all the aspects of aging that have a common cause, said 32-year-old Jesse Karmazin, who founded the Ambrosia startup, via The Times. Im not really in the camp of saying this will provide immortality but I think it comes pretty close, essentially, he added. Over a hundred people have already undergone the transfusion.

The idea comes from studies that show older mice benefit from having their circulatory systems joined with those of younger mice. Those studies started 17 years back. A Stanford neuroscientist behind one of the key mice studies, Tony Wyss-Coray, said that there is no indication that the study will be effective on humans.

The blood is purchased from blood banks. The blood plasma given to participants is often from a mix of several people, so that the amount is sufficient.

Critics also warn against the dangers the experiment could cause. They point to hives, fatal infections, and lung injury that could result when large amounts of blood plasma are shifted from person to person. There are others who think it is an exploitative scam.

People want to believe that young blood restores youth, even though we dont have evidence that it works in humans and we dont understand the mechanism of how mice look younger, said Wyss-Coray to MIT Technology Review.

Another major ethical issue is that young people selling blood may not be aware that it can be used for experimental studies such as these, rather than directly go toward crisis or lifesaving usage. There is also the issue of no placebo being used so that scientists can better gauge the experiments effectiveness.

Karmazin said that the experiment has passed ethical review, and that it would be unfair to give patients a placebo when they are all paying thousands of dollars.

Karmazin already lauds the effectiveness of his experiment. Were already seeing people look better after just one treatment, he further said to The Times. Its like plastic surgery from the inside out.

From NTD.tv
Strange Apocalyptic Radio Message Broadcasts on TVs in California

Orange County California residents got a rude surprise when programming from two cable companies were interrupted with an apocalyptic message on Thursday, Sept. 21.

An emergency alert flashed across the screen followed by a mans voice that said, Realize this, extremely violent times will come, the OC Register reported.

Another mans voice said breathlessly, The space program made contact with  They are not what they claim to be, he said, according to a video uploaded to YouTube. They have infiltrated a lot of, uh, a lot of aspects of military establishment, particularly Area 51. The disasters that are comingthe militaryIm sorry the government knows about them 

Cox and Spectrum customers seemed to be the ones targeted by the attack.

Cox spokesman Todd Smith said that what the audio people heard was from a portion of a program by Evangelical Christian radio host Chuck Swindoll.

The other voice seemed to be a recording of a call in 1997 to radio show Coast to Coast AM, from a man claiming to be a former Area 51 employee, Gizmodo reported.

Smith said the alert was part of a test system they were doing with a radio station, and when asked if the strange audio was intentional or not, he said only that it was from the radio.

Yesterday, there was a regular monthly test of the Emergency Alert System, originated by KWVE FM radio, he said. Theyve tested hundreds if not thousands of messages with us and most work perfectly.

With each test, an emergency tone is sent out to initiate the test. After the tone is transmitted, another tone is sent to end the message. In this case, the end tone was not properly transmitted and the radio signal continued beyond the standard test for a total of approximately two minutes.

He added that they stopped the test signal as soon as they were alerted to the error.

Spectrum did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Dennis Johnson, a spokesman for Spectrum, told the Register they were fed an incorrect audio file.

From NTD.tv
Swarm of Tremors Shakes Active Volcano by Seattle

Some two dozen minor tremors have hit Mount Rainier, the active volcano towering over the Seattle metro area, over the past week.

The strongest of the quakes had a magnitude of 1.6, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) run by the University of Washington and the University of Oregon. Earthquakes with a magnitude of less than 2.5 normally cannot be felt, but are picked up on a seismograph.

The 14,000-foot snowcapped volcano stands less than 40 miles from the densely populated area of Tacoma, Bellevue, and Seattle.

While the frequency of the tremors concentrated near Mount Rainiers summit is higher than usual, similar bouts of quakes have shaken the volcano before and usually dont signify an imminent eruption, said Prof. Paul Bodin, PNSN manager of University of Washington, according to The Seattle Times.

In the past, these swarms last a couple of days to a week or so and then die out, he said.

Active volcanoes commonly produce some level of seismic activity. Earthquake swarms are less common, but do happen repeatedly without leading to an eruption.

Over 100 tremors hit near Soda Springs, Idaho, several weeks ago, starting with a 5.3 magnitude quake.

The Yellowstone supervolcano is experiencing one of the most active years on record with over 2,300 quakes this year, the largest one at 4.4 magnitude.

Bodin said the Mount Rainier quakes were too shallow to suggest a connection with deep magma movements.

So Im treating this as a single eyebrow raised halfway, he said. Yeah, I see you and will be watching, but I dont think youre going to attack.

Earthquakes in Washington aside, this year has brought an abundance of natural disasters. Wildfires in the western states and in Canada; major hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Katia coming in close succession; two devastating earthquakes striking Mexico in two weeks; monsoon flooding in Asia claiming some 1,300 lives; and heatwaves hitting California and Europe.

As The Epoch Times Tom Lewis wrote, If it feels like theres an increasing number of natural disasters occurring lately, you may have cause to think that way.
Members of the far-left Antifa extremist organization give a clenched fist salute on Sept. 1, 1928. The group's original intent was to bring out a communist dictatorship in Germany. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

The Communist Origins of the Antifa Extremist Group

Group promoted communist dictatorship in Germany on Soviet Union's behalf and labeled all ideologies other than communism as 'fascism'

The extremist anarchist-communist group Antifa has been in the headlines because of past violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yet while the organization has been applauded by some left-leaning news outlets for including white nationalists and neo-Nazis in its list of targets, the organization wasnt always about targeting fascism, as it claims.

The organization was initially part of the Soviet Unions front operations to bring about communist dictatorship in Germany, and it worked to label all rival parties as fascist.

The organization can be traced to the united front of the Soviet Unions Communist International (Comintern) during the Third World Congress in Moscow in June and July 1921, according to the German booklet 80 Years of Anti-Fascist Action by Bernd Langer, published by the Association for the Promotion of Anti-Fascist Culture. Langer is a former member of the Autonome Antifa, formerly one of Germanys largest Antifa organizations, which disbanded in 2004.

The Soviet Union was among the worlds most violent dictatorships, killing an estimated 20 million people, according to The Black Book of Communism, published by Harvard University Press. The Soviet regime is second only to the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong, which killed an estimated 65 million people.

Anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology.  Bernd Langer, former member, Autonome Antifa

The idea of the united front strategy was to bring together left-wing organizations in order to incite communist revolution. The Soviets believed that following Russias revolution in 1917, communism would next spread to Germany, since Germany had the second-largest communist party, the KPD (Communist Party of Germany).

It was at the Fourth World Congress of the Comintern in 1922 that the plan took shape. Moscow formed the slogan To the Masses for its united front strategy and sought to join together the various communist and workers parties of Germany under a single ideological banner that it controlled.

The unified front thus did not mean an equal cooperation between different organizations, but the dominance of the workers movement by the communists, Langer writes.

Benito Mussolini, a Marxist and socialist who had been expelled from Italys Socialist Party in 1914 for his support for World War I, later founded the fascist movement as his own political party. He took power through his March on Rome in October 1922.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler became head of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) in 1921 and mounted a coup attempt in 1923.

The KPD decided to use the banner of anti-fascism to form a movement. Langer notes, though, that to the KPD, the ideas of fascism and anti-fascism were undifferentiated, and the term fascism served merely as rhetoric meant to support their aggressive opposition.

Both the communist and fascist systems were based in collectivism and state-planned economies. Both also proposed systems wherein the individual was heavily controlled by a powerful state, and both were responsible for large-scale atrocities and genocide.

The 2016 annual report by Germanys domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), notes the same point: From the viewpoint of the left-wing extremist, the label of fascism as pushed by Antifa often does not refer to actual fascism, but is merely a label assigned to capitalism.

While leftist extremists claim to be fighting fascism while launching their attacks on other groups, the report states the term fascism has a double meaning under the extreme-left ideology, indicating the fight against the capitalist system.

This held true from the beginning, according to Langer. For the communists in Germany, anti-fascism merely meant anti-capitalism. He notes the labels merely served as battle concepts under a political vocabulary.

A member of the Antifa extremist group vandalizes a storefront in Nantes, France, on Feb. 14, 2014. (FRANK PERRY/AFP/Getty Images)

A description of Antifa on the BfV website notes that the organization still holds this same basic definition of capitalism as being fascism.

They argue that the capitalist state produces fascism, or at least tolerates it. Therefore, anti-fascism is directed not only against actual or supposed right-wing extremists, but also always against the state and its representatives, in particular members of the security authorities, it states.

Langer notes that historically, by labeling the anti-capitalist interests of the communist movement as anti-fascism, the KPD was able to use this rhetoric to label all other political parties as fascist. Langer states, According to this, the other parties opposed to the KPD were fascist, especially the SPD [Social Democratic Party of Germany].

Thus, in what would today be considered ironic, the group that the communist anti-fascists most heavily targeted under their new label of fascism was the social democrats.

On Aug. 23, 1923, the Politburo of the Communist Party of Russia held a secret meeting, and according to Langer, all the important officials spoke out for an armed insurrection in Germany.

The KPD was at the front of this call, launching a movement under the banner of United Front Action and branding its armed anti-fascist wing under the name Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action), which Antifa still carries in Germany, and from which the Antifa organizations in other countries are rooted.

The Unity Congress of Antifa, held at the Philharmonic Opera House in Berlin, on July 10, 1932. The congress was organized by the Communist Party of Germany as a rallying point to defeat the Social Democratic Party and the Nazi Party. Antifa labeled both parties as fascist, which was a political label they used for all rival parties. (Public Domain)

At this time, Hitler and his Nazi Party had begun to emerge on the world stage, and the Nazi Party employed a similar group to Antifaschistische Aktion for political violence and intimidation, called the brownshirts.

Antifaschistische Aktion, meanwhile, began to attract some members who opposed the arrival of actual fascism in Germany and who did not subscribe toor were potentially unaware ofthe organizations ties to the Soviet Union.

However, the violence instigated by Antifaschistische Aktion largely had an opposite effect. The ongoing tactics of violence and intimidation of all rival systems under the Antifa movement, along with its violent ideology, drove many people toward fascism.

The Communists violent revolutionary rhetoric, promising the destruction of capitalism and the creation of a Soviet Germany, terrified the countrys middle class, who knew only too well what had happened to their counterparts in Russia after 1918, writes Richard J. Evans in The Third Reich in Power.

Anti-fascism is directed not only against actual or supposed right-wing extremists, but also always against the state and its representatives, in particular members of the security authorities.  Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution

Appalled at the failure of the government to solve the crisis, and frightened into desperation by the rise of the Communists, he states, they began to leave the squabbling little factions of the conventional political right and gravitate towards the Nazis instead.

Langer notes that from the beginning, the KPD was a member of the Comintern, and within a few years, it became a Stalinist party, both ideologically and logistically. He states that it even became financially dependent on the Moscow headquarters.

Leaders of the KPD, with Antifa as their on-the-ground movement for violence and intimidation of rival political parties, fell under the command of the Soviet apparatus. Many KPD leaders would later become leaders in the communist German Democratic Republic, including of its infamous Ministry for State Security, the Stasi.

As Langer states, anti-fascism is a strategy rather than an ideology.

It was brought into play in Germany in the 1920s by the KPD, not as a legitimate movement against the fascism that would later arise in Germany, but instead as an anti-capitalist concept of struggle, he writes.

Christian Watjen contributed to this report.

Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. Read the whole series at ept.ms/TheDeadEndCom

Recommended Video:

The Origins of Antifa
The code "ssss" for Secondary Security Screening Selection on a boarding pass. ("Close up on the SSSS" by Jason Eppink/Flickr ll CC BY 2.0 ( ept.ms/2haHp2Y)

The 4 Most Dreaded Letters on Your Boarding Pass

If you see SSSS written on your boarding pass, you may be in for some trouble at the airport.

Boarding passes labeled with this code subject their carriers to extra scrutiny, costing them time and possibly their flight, if they dont arrive at the airport early enough.

SSSS stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection and it is what the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) uses to mark certain passengers traveling into the United States for extra screening.

Those whose boarding passes are marked with the code report not being able to print their boarding passes at home or from a kiosk at the airport, and receiving a pat down or bag search while going through security. Sometimes SSSS-selected passengers are required to submit more information, such as detailed info on their travel plans.

And if someone isnt OK with the added layer of security, they wont be allowed on their flight, customs defense attorney Seth Weinstein says.

The TSA claims that passengers given the code are chosen at random by a computer, or by screeners who look for irregularities on a person where weapons could be hiding. However, insiders say otherwise.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official told the Associated Press that passengers can also get on a selectee list if they frequently buy tickets in cash or get one-way flights into the country.

If you have a passport from a country like Iran, Cuba, or North Korea, you are automatically marked as a selectee for extra screening, a leaked 2008 TSA document says.

Also, sometimes a criminal record can get a person on the list, or if you have a history of bad behavior while flying, Weinstein said.

The code ssss for Secondary Security Screening Selection on a boarding pass. ( Jorge Cortell/Flickr ll CC BY 2.0 ( ept.ms/2haHp2Y)

Just because someone has ssss written on their boarding pass, however, doesnt mean they will get extra screening every time. Only those who are put on the selectee list will routinely get more inspection.

The good news is, there is recourse if you are put on the selectee listif you think you have been put on the list unfairly, you can apply to the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program.

The SSSS program was implemented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and in 2015, TSA said it increased its use of these random searches to catch suspected terrorists. It also started doing more pat-downs and restricting items on board, such as liquids and laptops.

TSAs screening procedures are intended to prevent prohibited items and other threats to transportation security from entering the sterile area of the airport and are developed in response to information on threats to transportation security, the TSA says.

From NTD.tv
Workers at the Hollywood Bed Frame Co. in Commerce, Calif., attend an event on April 14 to mark the companys expansion, with 100 new local jobs. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Anticipated Tax Cuts Inject Optimism Into Manufacturing Sector

Encouraged by Trump's pro-business policies, manufacturers are increasing investments and adding jobs

For decades, many U.S. companies moved their manufacturing operations to low-cost countries. As a result, the trade deficit ballooned and millions of American manufacturing jobs were lost. The nation gave up its leadership and competitive advantage in many sectors.

Were going to restore Americas competitive edge by passing tax cuts and reform that makes America the best place in the world to hire, invest, and to grow, said President Donald Trump in Bismarck, North Dakota, on Sept. 6.

Trumps business-friendly policies, including tax reform and deregulation, have raised business optimism since the election and encouraged companies, especially manufacturers, to spend more.

Related Coverage Is Tax Reform a Giveaway to the Rich?

The U.S. manufacturing sector gained 36,000 jobs in August, the third consecutive month of strong gains. Manufacturers have added 155,000 jobs since the election in November last year.

After years of underinvestment, there was a sharp increase in equipment, technology, and structural spending in the second quarter of this year.

Despite the political gridlock in Washington, manufacturers are optimistic that tax reform will be enacted.

U.S. businesses believe this and have increased business investments already in anticipation of it being done, said David Farr, chairman and CEO of Emerson and chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), in a speech at the Economic Club of New York on Sept. 6.

U.S. manufacturing activity hit a six-year high in August, according to a report from the Institute for Supply Management. The index of factory activity increased 2.5 percent, to 58.8, in August compared to July, signaling an expansion in sales, inventory, and employment.

If were going to keep this momentum going and allow the economy to truly take off as it should, it is vital that we reduce the crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers, said Trump, before meeting with congressional members on tax reform on Sept. 5.

The current U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent plus an average state rate of 4 percent. The combined rate of approximately 39 percent is the highest among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The average tax rate among the 35 OECD members is 24 percent.

France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Mexico, and China all have lower corporate tax rates than the United States.

Americas high tax rates punish companies for doing business in America and encourage them to move to other countries, said Trump.

He accused past Washington policies of pushing industries and firms offshore. Our tax plan represents a sharp reversal from the failed policy of the past, he said.

Although the administration has not announced the specifics of the tax reform, Trump has said he wants to slash the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Farr blamed previous administrations for putting American firms at a competitive disadvantage with high tax rates, during his speech at the Economic Club of New York.

Why is Washington, D.C., making it harder for America to win in the world? This is so stupid, so dumb, from my perspective, and so self-destructive, he said.

If you are defending the current tax code, then you have to defend a manufacturing worker in Ohio losing his or her job to a worker overseas.

A 2015 NAM study found that over a 10-year period, a pro-growth tax reform could create over 6.5 million jobs, add more than $12 trillion in GDP, and increase investment by more than $3.3 trillion.

Backward and Unfair

While the current tax code is not the only problem U.S. manufacturers face, it is one of the biggest and most damaging, according to Farr.

The tax system has a disproportionate impact on manufacturers, especially small ones. He calls the system backward and unfair since nearly two-thirds of manufacturers pay taxes at individual tax rates as pass-through entities, with marginal tax rates of up to 44 percent.

Most people think manufacturers are large enterprises, but the reality is the majority of NAM members are small- and medium-sized companies, said Chad Moutrey, chief economist at the NAM.

We want to make sure that the administration does not leave those smaller companies in a lurch, he said.

Bringing back the trillions of dollars in wealth thats parked overseas is another objective of Trumps tax reform.

The existing worldwide tax system double-taxes the foreign income of U.S. companies as soon as these earnings are repatriated. In other words, U.S. companies have to pay U.S. tax on top of what they already pay in foreign countries, and that is why they prefer to keep the money offshore rather than reinvesting it back in the United States.

We have to stop punishing global U.S. companies when they reinvest overseas earnings back into the United States, Farr said.

Since Emerson is headquartered in St. Louis, we pay taxes on overseas earnings brought back home while our foreign competitors do notanother negative competitive issue for global U.S. companies, he explained.

Tax reform aims to resolve the double-taxation problem by moving from a worldwide tax system to a territorial system, in which the companies would be exempt from paying taxes on most or all of their foreign incomes.

Also, manufacturers want a robust capital cost-recovery system. This allows fast capital expensing and hence lowers the after-tax cost of equipment, for example.

Manufacturing is a capital intensive industry. Being able to recoup those costs allows manufacturers to spur greater investments and job growth, said Chris Netram, vice president of tax and domestic economic policy at NAM.

Deregulation Efforts

U.S. manufacturers who face excessive regulatory burdens have already started seeing the results of Trumps deregulation efforts.

The Trump administration has pushed hard on slashing regulations, removing 860 final and proposed regulations in the first six months, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

In August, Trump signed a new executive order to speed up the environmental review and permitting process for infrastructure projects, which takes an average of seven years under the current system.

These efforts, coupled with recovery in the global economy, have encouraged manufacturers to invest in the United States.

We have actually been gaining a lot of traction lately. A lot more manufacturing investment has been taking place in the United States, said Moutrey.

Manufacturers are also investing heavily in disruptive technologies, including autonomous vehicles, nanotechnology, augmented reality, and smart, connected products, he said.

However, there is a big challenge that manufacturers will face over the next decade: a skills gap, with a shortage of skilled workers.

The United States has a generational skills deficiency in many critical technical areas. For example, the average age of skilled machinists, such as CNC machine operators who use computers to control machine tools, is roughly 59, said Gary Pisano, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

The United States will have about 3.5 million new manufacturing jobs over the next decade. However, about 2 million are expected to go unfilled because of the skills gap, according to a report by Deloitte Consulting and the Manufacturing Institute.

Manufacturers have already started seeing a serious shortage of qualified applicants for skilled and highly skilled production positions, according to the NAM.

With the economy getting closer to full employment, it will be an even bigger challenge for manufacturers, Moutrey said.
Thousands Evacuated as Volcano Rumbles on Indonesian Holiday Spot Bali

DENPASAR, Indonesia  Thousands of residents were evacuated from villages near an active volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali, officials said on Friday, as seismic tremors rattled some areas and smoke rose above one of the worlds most popular tourist spots.

The alert status for Mount Agung in eastern Bali was at 3, one level below the highest, and authorities warned tourists and residents to avoid camping or hiking within a 6 km (4 miles) radius of the crater.

Volcanic activity remains high and there are indications of magma rising to the surface and causing tremors, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the National Disaster Management Agency.

There should be zero public activity within the specified radius in case there is an eruption, Nugroho said.

However, flights at Balis international airport were operating as normal and there was little disruption to tourism operators across the rest of the island, authorities said.

A general view shows Mount Agung from Karangasem on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on September 21, 2017. (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images) A general view shows Mount Agung from Karangasem on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on September 21, 2017. (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

Nearly 6,000 people have been evacuated so far and that number was expected to rise, officials said.

Some residents in villages at the foot of Mount Agung said they were reluctant to leave immediately. Others gathered to watch the volcano.

Im here with my husband. We need to feed the animals so thats what were doing first, villager Wayan Suarda told national television station tvOne.

Others packed their belongings into trucks for evacuation, while more stopped to watch as clouds of white smoke rose from the crater, which is around 3,000 meters (9,840 feet) above sea level.

Villagers rest after being evacuated during the raised alert levels for the volcano on Mount Agung in Klungkung regency on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on September 22, 2017. (SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images)

Indonesia straddles the Pacific Ring of Fire, where several tectonic plates meet and cause 90 percent of the worlds seismic activity, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Indonesia has nearly 130 active volcanoes, more than any other country.

A series of eruptions at Mount Agung between 1963 and 1964 killed more than 1,000 people and injured hundreds.

Reuters
Time to Eat, but Not to Fix My Power: Woman Throws Drink at Lineman After His 12-Hour Shift

An electrical lineman in Covington, Georgia, said that an unknown woman threw a soda in his face for not restoring her power quickly enough in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma.

Daniel Wilson, a father of three, stopped by Taco Bell to get food after a 12-hour shift.

A woman then came up to him and berated him for not working on power lines he said, the Ledger-Enquirer reported.

You have time to eat, but not fix my power. You make me sick, the woman said, according to Wilson. Then, she threw a drink in his face.

Covington City Manager Leigh Anne Knight wrote a message on social media, condemning the womans actions.

I realize everyone wants their power back on because as long as most of us have been alive we have not had to worry about reading by candlelight, or building a fire to cook on or stay warm by, but does that mean we cant live without it for a few days? she said, per Yahoo.

While you feel slighted and that you deserve to have everything immediately, he has been willingly showing up for long hours, doing difficult work and trying to be of service to you and the community, Knight said. I am truly appalled at how anyone can do such an act of meanness.

Wilson told 11Alive that he just drove away after the incident.

In a Facebook post, he wrote that he appreciates the support.

I am truly blown away by the all the love and support Im getting from everyone, he said. Im blessed with the best family, friends, and work family anyone could ever ask for.

I can assure you that all of this support and gratitude has had a far greater impact on me and my family than anything negative that sorry excuse for a lady did, he said. I dont know how to begin to thank you all for having my back like this. There are truly no words to describe how appreciative I am.
People walk past Toys R Us in Times Square the day after Christmas in the Manhattan borough of New York on Dec. 26, 2015. (REUTERS/Carlo Allegri)

Toys R Us Files for Bankruptcy Ahead of Holiday Season

Toys R Us Inc, the largest U.S. toy store chain, filed for bankruptcy protection late Monday, the latest sign of turmoil in the retail industry that is caught in a viselike grip of online shopping and discount chains.

The Chapter 11 filing is among the largest ever by a specialty retailer and casts doubt over the future of its about 1,600 stores and 64,000 employees. It comes just as Toys R Us is gearing up for the holiday shopping season, which accounts for the bulk of its sales.

While todays decision does not necessarily mean it is game over for Toys R Us, it brings to a close a turbulent chapter in the iconic companys history, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.

Toys R Us received a commitment for over $3 billion in debtor-in-possession financing from lenders including a JPMorgan-led bank syndicate and certain existing lenders, said the Wayne, New Jersey-based company, which also operates the Babies R Us chain.

The financing, subject to court approval, reassures its suppliers they will get paid for their Lego building blocks and Barbie dolls that are being shipped for the holiday season.

We expect that the financial constraints that have held us back will be addressed in a lasting and effective way, Chief Executive Dave Brandon said.

Together with our investors, our objective is to work with our debt holders and other creditors to restructure the $5 billion of long-term debt on our balance sheet.

Its Canadian unit intends to seek protection in parallel proceedings under the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Toys R Us said in a statement.

Operations outside of the United States and Canada, including about 255 licensed stores and joint venture partnerships in Asia, which are separate entities, are not part of the bankruptcy proceedings, Toys R Us said.

The companys Toys R Us and Babies R Us stores and e-commerce sites around the world are open for business, it said.

The company is saddled with debt from a $6.6 billion buyout in 2005 led by KKR & Co LP and Bain Capital LP, together with real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust.

Toys R Us has bonds coming due next year that have lost half their value this month, according to Thomson Reuters data, as investors have grown concerned about a possible bankruptcy.

The company opened a temporary store in New York Citys Times Square this year to capture more holiday shoppers, almost two years after it closed its flagship store barely a block away, driven out by high rents.

Vendors have cut them off based upon the rumors of the filing which has not been refuted, said Jay Indyke, a bankruptcy attorney with the Cooley law firm.

With assets of $6.9 billion based on its most recent annual report, its the second-largest retail bankruptcy, trailing the filing in 2002 by Kmart, which had $14.6 billion in assets, according to research firm Bankruptcydata.com.

More than a dozen significant retail chains have filed for bankruptcy this year. Among them were Perfumania Inc., apparel chains rue21 Inc and Gymboree Corp, discount shoe chain Payless Holdings LLC and designer clothing chain BCBG Max Azria Global Holdings LLC.

Major retailers including Macys Inc. and Sears Holding Corp. have closed hundreds of locations as they struggle to compete discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Amazons recent acquisition of high-end grocer Whole Foods Markets Inc stirred speculation that the online giant will use its pricing power and huge reach among U.S. consumers to go after market share of traditional brick-and-mortar grocers.

Toys R Us is the second-largest toy seller in the United States behind Amazon, according to consulting firm Kloster Trading Corp.

What they have going for them is they are the last major player in their market, said David Berliner, a partner and restructuring specialist with BDO Consulting.

The vendors dont want to see them fail, so I think they have a good opportunity to survive.

Toys R Us filed the petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.

By Tom Hals and Subrat Patnaik
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on his proposed changes to the tax code during an event with energy workers at the Andeavor Refinery in Mandan, North Dakota on Sept. 6, 2017. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

Trump Pitches Tax Reform in North Dakota

The tax plan represents a sharp reversal from the failed policies of the past, says Trump

President Donald Trump delivered a speech on tax reform in Bismarck, North Dakota on Sept. 6. This is his second pitch on taxes following the one he made in Missouri last week. Trump called on Congress to work with him on overhauling the current tax code, which he called a giant self-inflicted economic wound.

Our painful tax system has become a massive barrier to Americas economic comeback, he said at a North Dakota refinery in Mandan.

Were penalized. It costs us millions of American jobs, trillions of dollars, and billions of hours wasted on paperwork and compliance.

In the address, Trump reiterated the four primary objectives of the tax reform: Simplifying the tax code, providing tax relief for middle-class families, lowering tax rates, and bringing back cash held by U.S companies overseas.

Trump blamed previous administrations for pushing industries and corporations offshore.

Americas high tax rates punish companies for doing business in America and encourage them to move to other countries, he said. Our tax plan represents a sharp reversal from the failed policy of the past.

My administration strongly rejects this offshoring model and weve embraced a new modelits called the American model, he said.

The Trump administration wants to lower corporate tax rates substantially to restore the nations competitive edge and create more jobs and higher wages for American workers.

North Dakota is an inspiring example of the amazing things that are possible when we unleash the genius of American innovators, Trump said.

North Dakota has enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate during the past decade, thanks to the shale oil boom that boosted the states economy. The state had a record low unemployment rate of 2.2 percent in July.

North Dakota chose to embrace American industry and the American worker even when many in Washington wanted to tax and regulate your industries totally out of existence, Trump said.

I want all of America to be inspired by the North Dakota example, he said.

The administration has not yet announced the specifics of the tax reform, but Trump said his officials would get into details over the next two weeks.

We will cut the business tax rate as much as possible. Ideally, we would like to bring our business tax rate down to around 15 percent, he said.

The tax reform also intends to reduce the complexity of the tax code and eliminate special interest loopholes.

He said 94 percent of the families need professional help to do their taxes. This is why the tax preparation industry generated 10 billion dollars in revenues last year, he said.

Thats one business I want to drive down, sorry. H&R Block will not be supporting Donald Trump, I can tell you.

Trump also said that the reform would provide tax relief to middle-income families through various benefits such as raising the standard deduction and increasing the child tax credit.

Under existing policies, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects a 2 percent economic growth for the next ten years. Tax relief and reform can boost economic growth to 3 percent or more, according to the White House. And the sustained increase in growth is expected to generate 12 million new jobs and $10 trillion additional economic activity over the next decade.

Trump also referred to personal stories from North Dakotans, including talking about Julie Ellingson, a fourth-generation cattle rancher and a mother of five from Bismarck.

Like many family ranches, Julie worries about the death tax shutting down her family business and keeping her from passing it on to her children. Its a devastating tax, Trump said.

We are not going to allow the death tax or the inheritance tax or whatever you want to call it to crush the American dream.

Trump closed his speech calling on Republicans, Democrats, and independents to support his tax reform.

Were going to put America first. Its time. We no longer have to accept a tax code that lets special interests win.
Trump Puts Full Support Behind New GOP Healthcare Bill

President Donald Trump described a new healthcare bill introduced by Senate Republicans as a great bill.

The bill, which was introduced by senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), will be put to a vote in the Senate on Sept. 30, the last day on which the bill can be passed through the budget reconciliation process. Under the reconciliation procedure Republicans only need 51 votes to pass it as opposed to 60.

The bill would undo several key features of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, such as the individual mandate, which requires every U.S. citizen to have healthcare or face a penalty. It would also undo penalties for employers if they dont provide health insurance for their employees.

The bill will also put a limit on Medicaid spending, providing states with a set annual amount calculated on a per capita basis, instead of the federal government matching state expenditures for all medical costs incurred under the program.

The bill will provide the states with more funding in the form of block grants and say over how they run their healthcare programs.

Health care expert Avik Roy has argued that block granting Medicaid funding to the states will give them the ability to reform the program, simultaneously bringing their budgets under control and delivering better care to the poor and disabled whom Medicaid serves.

The freedom given to the states may also result in some deep blue statesCalifornia, New York, and Vermontdeveloping single-payer health care, also known as Medicare for everyone.

Red states will likely go in the direction of more free market approaches to health care. The bill will give them the option, for instance, of waiving Obamacares defined health benefits. Critics say these required health benefits drive up insurance costs by requiring, for instance, retired couples to purchase insurance that funds prenatal care.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has praised the bill, saying it would allow states and governors to actually implement better health care ideas by taking more decision-making power out of Washington.

President Trump described Senator Cassidy as a class act, saying he really cares about people and wants to help them.

Senator (Doctor) Bill Cassidy is a class act who really cares about people and their Health(care), he doesn't lie-just wants to help people!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2017

Earlier this year Trump outlined some of the key features he would want the new healthcare bill to have. Among them are the coverage for pre-existing conditions, some sort of subsidy to help low-income families purchase health-insurance, and allowing children up to 26 to stay on their parents plan.

Under the new bill, the current subsidy system of the ACA, which provides people earning up to 400% of the poverty level with subsidies, will be phased out by 2020. It will be replaced with a system where those earning up to 250% percent of the poverty level will get a break on deductibles and other out-of-pocket expenses.

Children up to 26 will be allowed to stay on their parents healthcare plan, and insurance companies will still have to insure people with pre-existing conditons.

I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions, Trump said in a tweet on Wednesday.

I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does! A great Bill. Repeal & Replace.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017

Trump also expressed hope that Republican senators will vote for their bill, and fulfill a promise of repealing Obamacare that they campaigned on for eight years.

I hope Republican Senators will vote for Graham-Cassidy and fulfill their promise to Repeal & Replace ObamaCare. Money direct to States!

I hope Republican Senators will vote for Graham-Cassidy and fulfill their promise to Repeal & Replace ObamaCare. Money direct to States!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017

The most recent effort by Republicans to repeal and replace the ACA failed in July when Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) unexpectedly voted against the bill, leaving Republicans with one vote short.

Republican Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted against the bill.

The Congressional Budget Office is scoring the bill, with their estimate expected before the Sept. 3o deadline. Based on the CBOs scoring of previous Republican health care bills, the evaluation will be negative.

The CBO earlier estimated that the repeal of the individual mandate will result in 16 million Americans losing insurance, a position heavily criticized by most Republicans. But the expected score may influence, or provide political cover for, senators who choose to vote no.

So far only Republican Senator Rand Paul (KY) has said that he will vote against the bill. It is unclear whether McCain, Collins, and Murkowski will vote in favor of the bill.

The bill leaves most of Obamacares taxes in place, which is a sticking point for Paul.

Trump called out Paul on Twitter, saying Rand Paul is a friend of mine but he is such a negative force when it comes to fixing healthcare. Graham-Cassidy Bill is GREAT! Ends Ocare!

Rand Paul is a friend of mine but he is such a negative force when it comes to fixing healthcare. Graham-Cassidy Bill is GREAT! Ends Ocare!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017
People watch a television broadcast reporting the North Korean missile launch at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on Sept. 15, 2017. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Trump Says Bill Clinton Allowed North Korea to Develop Nuclear Weapons

President responds to criticism from Hillary Clinton

During his speech to the United Nations on Sept. 19, President Donald Trump strongly denounced North Korea for its threats against other nations, and for causing the starvation deaths of millions of its own citizens.

He called out the leader of the North Korean communist regime, Kim Jong-Un, stating that by making nuclear threats against the United States and its allies, Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

No nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles, Trump said. It is time for all nations to work together to isolate the Kim regime.

Hillary Clinton responded to Trumps statements during a Sept. 19 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where she said, according to the New York Post, that diplomacy was the solution to stopping North Koreas nuclear weapons programs.

Trump responded to Clinton on Sept. 20, stating on Twitter, After allowing North Korea to research and build Nukes while Secretary of State (Bill C also), Crooked Hillary now criticizes.

After allowing North Korea to research and build Nukes while Secretary of State (Bill C also), Crooked Hillary now criticizes.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017

What Trump referred to was Bill Clintons diplomatic Joint Framework Agreement in 1994, where the former president provided aid to North Korea in exchange for the regime ending its nuclear weapons programs.

Under the agreement, South Korea, Japan, and other nations provided two light nuclear reactors to North Korea, costing close to $4 billion, according to a 1994 report from The Heritage Foundation, in addition to other forms of aid.

Bill Clinton said at the time, This is a good deal for the United States. North Korea will freeze and then dismantle its nuclear program. South Korea and our other allies will be better protected. The entire world will be safer as we slow the spread of nuclear weapons.

The program failed, however. North Korea accepted the aid, but continued developing nuclear weapons all the same.

After providing North Korea with the two civilian nuclear reactors and fuel oil, U.S. spy satellites discovered what appeared to be an underground nuclear facility near Yongbyon, and Congress responded by ending the fuel supply to North Korea, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Despite the decision from Congress, it states, Clinton used his authority to divert $15 million from special funds in order to fulfill the U.S. commitment to his agreement with North Korea.

Los Angeles Times reported in 1998, Clinton has just pulled out of his pocket for North Korea, and he decided to spend as much as $15 million for North Korean fuel oil, beyond the $35 million already authorized by Congress this year.

Trumps tweet also refers to Hillary Clintons actions as secretary of state under Barack Obama. Politico reported in June 2016 that As secretary of State, Clinton oversaw a hands-off approach to North Korea.

The strategic patience strategy involved backing off from North Korea, while also not continuing other failed aid programs given to North Korea under former President George W. Bush. The result, according to Politico, was The North Koreans were infuriated, and more nuclear and missile tests ensued, along with open hostilities between North and South Korea in 2010.

It quotes Matthew Bunn, a nuclear non-proliferation expert at Harvards Kennedy School of Government, saying that In my view, strategic patience was a polite term for sitting back and watching while North Korea continued to build up its nuclear weapons program.

Trump has taken a strong stance against North Korea and its nuclear weapons programs. This has included two recent rounds of sanctions against North Koreapassed by the United Nations Security Council in August and Septemberwhich Russia and China have agreed to support.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Sept. 19 the sanctions appear to be working, according to the Department of Defense.

Mattis said North Korea is experiencing the increasing diplomatic isolation that comes with the economic sanctions.
President Donald Trump waves during rally a for Alabama Republican Senator Luther Strange at the Von Braun Civic Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sept. 22, 2017. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump Vows to Protect America in Response to New North Korean Nuclear Threat

President Donald Trump on Friday said Americans are protected as he would not allow them to be put at risk of a North Korean nuclear weapon.

I can tell you one thingyou are protected  Nobody is going to mess with our people, nobody is going to play games, nobody is going to put our people in that kind of danger, Trump said at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama.

Trumps comments came after North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un threatened to use fire against the United States in response to Trumps speech at the U.N. In his speech, Trump said the United States has great strength and patience but could totally destroy North Korea if it had to defend itself or its allies.

Kims statement came as his foreign minister said the North Korean regime was considering testing an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb over the Pacific in response to the speech.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un delivers a statement in Pyongyan in response to US President Donald Trumps U.N. speech, on Sept. 21, 2017. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Now hes talking about a massive weapon exploding over the Pacific Ocean, which causes tremendous, tremendous calamity, Trump said, pointing out the toxic effects of the nuclear weapon.

Trump reiterated his view that over 20 years of talks with the North Korean regime have not yielded any results, and instead have allowed it to develop a nuclear weapon.

Rocket man should have been handled a long time ago, Trump said referring to Kim. He should have been handled a long time ago by [Bill] Clinton.

Trump said resolving the threat of nuclear North Korea could have been done already under previous administrations.

This shouldnt be handled nowbut im going to handle it, because we have to handle it, Trump said. Were going to do it, because we really have no choice. We really have no choice, Trump said, shaking his head while referring to Kim as Little rocket man.

According to an analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the North has already successfully miniaturized a nuclear weapon, making it possible for it to be mounted in a warhead on a missile.

Earlier this month North Korea shocked the world by conducting an underground nuclear test. The strength of the explosion is believed to have been several times stronger than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.

The North has also conducted two ballistic missile tests in the span of less than a month. In both cases the missiles flew over Japanese territory before landing in the ocean.

A nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean would be a further escalation of this pattern. The United States itself has only once done such a test in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean from a submarine in 1962.

Trump referred to his speech before the U.N. General Assembly earlier in the week where he encouraged other world leaders to do more against rogue regimes.

We cannot have madmen out there shooting rockets all over the place, he said.

Defense Secretary General Mattis said earlier this month that he had briefed the President on all of the military options. He said that while the United States does not seek to do so, it has many options for the total annihilation North Korea if needed.

Chinas Changing Position

China recently announced that it will take a stronger stance against its communist neighbor.

Earlier this month China, as well as Russia, agreed to a U.N. resolution that restricts the sale of natural gas, and limits the sale of crude and refined oil products to the North. The United States had sought to impose a total ban on oil sales but received pushback from Russia and China.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping walk together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Fla., on April 7, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump announced on Thursday that Chinas central bank had instructed other Chinese banks to stop financing North Korea.

I made a friend in China, president Xi, and yesterday he basically took the banking industry away from North Korea, never been done before, Trump said.

President Trump called on China multiple times this year to help solve the problem with North Korea. China is the Norths largest trade partner and a vital lifeline for its existence.
NASA Nominee Vows to Compete With China in Space

Nomination of former Navy pilot and three-term Rep. Jim Bridenstine applauded by experts

Longtime space advocate Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) has been nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next administrator of NASA. Bridenstine is known for his strong support for a new manned mission to the Moon and for his belief that the United States needs to challenge Chinas ever-expanding presence in space.

The nomination of the former Navy pilot and three-term congressman from Oklahoma has been expected for some time, and was finally announced on Sept. 2. Previously, Trump tasked Vice President Mike Pence with leading a re-established National Space Council aimed at reinvigorating and reasserting the U.S. presence in space.

Bridenstine has been an active voice in Congress for increasing the U.S. commitment to the space program. In 2016, Bridenstine introduced H.R. 4945, the American Space Renaissance Act, which sought to reform and modernize the U.S. space program in a comprehensive manner. While the act did not move forward, some of its elements were incorporated into later legislation.

The nomination could face a challenge in the Senate and has already prompted criticism from Floridas two senators, Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Bill Nelson. Florida is home to NASA, and both Rubio and Nelson have complained that Bridenstine, a politician, lacks management experience.

However, some observers have speculated that Rubios opposition might have been partially motivated by Bridenstines support for Rubios primary opponent Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP presidential campaign, which caused relations between the Oklahoman and the Floridian to become bitter.

The private space flight industry has largely welcomed the news of Bridenstines nomination. Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), a private spaceflight advocacy group composed of space industry giants such as SpaceX and XCOR Aerospace, issued a statement praising Trumps nomination of Bridenstine.

NASA needs dedicated and inspired leadership, and Representative Bridenstine is an outstanding choice to provide precisely that, said S. Alan Stern, board chair of CSF.

Similarly, several space experts have voiced support for Bridenstine. [Jim Bridenstine] understands space technology, economics, and policy better than most of the people who advise our other policymakers on these topics, said space researcher and educator Greg Autry. Previously, Autry had served as the Trump administrations liaison to NASA. Far from being a politician, Bridenstine is a well-informed aviator and leader, Autry said.

Challenging Chinas Presence in Space

Bridenstine has previously expressed serious concerns about Chinas space ambitions, as he sees the U.S. presence in space and competition with other adversaries there as intimately linked with national security. Bridenstines support for a new manned mission to the Moon is partially motivated by Chinas ever-expanding presence on and around the Moon.

As the cis-lunar economy develops, competition for locations and resources on the Moon is inevitable, Bridenstine wrote in a blog post in 2016. The Chinese currently have landers and rovers on the Moon. The United States does not.

In an earlier blog post in 2015, Bridenstine wrote, We are seeing the Russians and Chinese attempt to deny space to us. The Russians are launching things into space that are not being registered with the agencies they would normally be registered with.

Space is no longer uncontested, Bridenstine wrote. Its being contested, and its congested.

If confirmed by the Senate, Bridenstine will head an agency that currently has an annual budget of more than $19 billion. The current budget, however, takes up less than 0.5 percent of the total federal budgeta tiny portion compared to NASAs heyday. During the 1960s, the United States allocated almost 5 percent of the annual federal budget to NASA to fund the manned space missions to the Moon.
President Donald Trump participates in a tax reform kickoff event at the Loren Cook Company in Springfield, MO, on Aug. 30, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Reform Aims to Make Tax Code Simple and Fair

Time, cost, and stress would be reduced for taxpayers under the new code

For millions of Americans, tax day is their least favorite day of the year. It reminds them of how the U.S. tax system has become more complex and onerous.

The tax code is now a massive source of complexity and frustration for tens of millions of Americans, said President Donald Trump, during his opening pitch on tax reform in Springfield, Missouri, on Aug. 30.

Simplifying the tax code was the first promise he laid out in his speech.

We need a tax code that is simple, fair, and easy to understand, he said.

American taxpayers spend over 6 billion hours each year on complying with IRS tax filing rules, according to the IRSs Taxpayer Advocate Service. And this costs the U.S. economy more than $260 billion annually in lost productivity, according to the National Taxpayers Union.

It would be hard for anyone to disagree with Trumps effort to streamline the system, said Roger Harris, president of Padgett Business Services, a small-business tax advisory firm based in Athens, Georgia.

Certainly, the tax code has become way too complicated, Harris said.

The tax reform is expected to be a boon for small businesses, which are burdened with the complexity of the U.S. tax code.

The annual cost of tax compliance for small businesses is between $15 billion and $16 billion, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.

Trumps tax reform is desperately needed, said Robert Savage, who owns a small toy store in Atlanta, Georgia.

We badly need tax simplification because the cost of preparing taxesplus the enormous amounts of time spent trying to understand our business and personal tax requirementsis staggering, Savage said.

First in Three Decades

The last major tax reform occurred 31 years ago under President Ronald Reagan, who signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Reagans landmark reform simplified the tax code, lowered the rates, and eliminated loopholes.

Since then, however, the tax code has changed dramatically in length and scope with the addition of new pages of statutes, regulations, and case law.

Our tax laws have tripled in size, and the tax code itself now spans more than 2,600 pages, and most of it is not understandable, Trump said.

Tax rates have increased, and special interest loopholes have crept back into the system.

The current loopholes and complexity mainly benefit the wealthiest Americans and special interest groups, according to Trump. For this reason, he says the new tax code will be fairer.

Harris explained, Every deduction and every credit in the tax code has an audience, and that audience is the special interest for that deduction. Some we accept, some we question and think are unfair.

There are credits and deductions that are industry-specific or company-specific, and those are the kinds that politicians refer to as being unfair, he said.

The majority of American voters are dissatisfied with the current federal income tax system. According to a survey commissioned by America First Policies, 71 percent of respondents want lower taxes for ordinary, middle-class American families. The survey also found that 68 percent believe that simplifying the tax code would make it easier for the average American to file their own taxes.

Trump wants the majority of taxpayers to be able to file their taxes on a single, simple page without having to hire an adviser.

The tax code is so complicated that more than 90 percent of Americans need professional help to do their own taxes, he said.

The basic 1040 form used by most American families had two pages of instructions in 1935. Today, the instructions have grown to 241 pages.

The complexity of the tax code and the cost of compliance have been overlooked for years.

Its very difficult to get enough people around the table, even though they agree on the fact that simplification is needed, said Harris.

Everyone can agree on simple, but their definition of fair differs, and sometimes that makes it hard to get people to agree. Hence, Harris says most of his clients are in a wait and see mode.

Theyve seen this [tax reform] discussion happen in the past many times, so theyre skeptical until they see something become a reality.

Mark Aselstine, from San Mateo, California, thinks the tax reform will be a win for his small business, if passed. Aselstine is the founder of the startup company Uncorked Ventures, an online wine-club business.

One thing that struck me about the tax proposal was basically that its extensive and offers a massive reorganization of the nations code, he said.

But I have to wonder what the chances of passage really are, he said. Ill believe it when I see it.
A British dad who lost his 3-year-old daughter several years ago is on a mission to get parents to ask one simple question: Could my child have sepsis?

Sepsis is a condition that is sometimes known as blood poisoning, and occurs when the body releases chemicals into the blood to fight an infection that inflames healthy parts of the body.

In the case of Peter Howarth from Manchester, U.K., his robust toddler daughter Pippa appeared to have a coldshe had a high temperature and was a bit lethargic.

It was genuinely no more sinister than that, Howarth told HuffPost UK.

A few days later at around 7 p.m on April 9, 2014, they took her via ambulance to the hospital after she had trouble breathing. There she was diagnosed with pneumonia and given antibiotics.

Howarth stayed with her at the hospital while his wife went home to care for their newborn son.

At 10 p.m., she was still demanding pink drinks and a story, Howarth recalled, and while she was hooked up to drips, seemed to be doing well.

She was bossing me around, she was perky, he told HuffPost.

By 3 a.m., she was still talking, but not coherently anymore. Howarth called a nurse.

Staff came to check on her then left. Howarth sat with her for another half hour, holding her hand. Then she stopped breathing.

That was it, Howarth told HuffPost. I was hustled out, the crash teams came in.

She died before my wife got there.

They arrived at the hospital at 7 p.m. and Pippa died at 4 a.m. the next morning.

We didnt get a chance to fight, she was gone before we could try, Howarth told HuffPost. It was a flick of a switch and she was gone.

Now Howarth is trying to raise awareness of the condition, which develops in over 75,000 children in the United States annually, according to Sepsis Alliance.

Celebrities such as actress Patty Duke, boxer Muhammad Ali, and Muppeteer Jim Henson all have died from the condition, which has helped to raise its profile.

While Sepsis can affect a person at any age, children and the elderly are most susceptible to it.

Symptoms in children can include:

-Elevated temperatures

-Trouble breathing

-Little or no urine output

-Skin that is cold to the touch

-Pale skin

-Extreme pain or discomfort

-Sleepiness or lethargy

-Confusion

Sepsis is treatable with antibiotics, but only if it is caught in time.

It may not have changed the outcome with us, Howarth told HuffPost. We might have been unlucky, but maybeif someone had askedjust maybe, wed still have her.

From NTD.tv
Camera footage from inside the ATM room of a Citizens Trust Bank in Decatur captures the moment a courier van with $1.8M was stolen. (FBI)

Van Left Running With $1.8 Million Inside Stolen in Georgia

A thief drove off with $1.8 million in an early morning heist in Decatur, Georgiaand all he had to do was smash a window.

The FBI has two agents working on the case in cooperation with the Dekalb County Police Department but they are asking for the publics help in identifying the culprit with very little in the way of a description.

Subject is described as being a male, wearing dark pants, baggy gray long sleeve T-shirt with a black backpack, reads an FBI release on the robbery.

The robbery took place on Sept. 8 but the FBI did not release details on the robbery until Wednesday, Sept. 21. When asked about the delay, a public information officer with Dekalb County said he was not sure. FBI Special Agent Stephen Emmett said there was nothing beyond the release issued that he could add.

At 6:45 a.m. on that day nearly two weeks ago, a cargo van with approximately $1.8 in U.S. currency inside it was stolen while parked at the Citizens Trust Bank (CTB) located at 2592 South Hairston Road, Decatur, Georgia.

The money was being transported by ATM Response Inc., a cash logistics company whose services include replenishing ATMs. Its van was stolen when the two employees responsible for it went inside the bank to make a cash drop into the ATM.

They parked the vehicle in front of the bank and went inside with an unspecified amount of cash leaving a large amount of cash in the cargo of the vehicle, according to the FBI.

The driver locked the van, but left the keys in the ignition and the vehicle running, which other media have reported is the companys policy. Two calls to ATM Response for more information about the robbery and its policy of leaving the vehicle running were not returned by publication time.

According to the FBI, the driver and passenger were inside the bank for around 15 minutes. When they returned, their van had been stolen leaving little behind but some broken glass where it was parked.

The poor quality of camera footage of the robbery from inside the ATM room makes it difficult to make out details of the robber, but it reveals the backpack-wearing suspect approach the vehicle and pull on the driver and passenger door handles in an attempt to get inside.

Within two hours of reporting the theft, the DeKalb County Marshalls Unit found the stolen van near 4749 Galleon Crossing, Decatur, Georgia.

The vehicle was unoccupied, and there was no sign of the suspect at the scene, notes the FBI release.

The FBI is asking anyone with information, especially people that live in the Hairston Forest South neighborhood in Decatur, to call Crime Stoppers Atlanta(404) 577-8477 with tips.
Lee Ching-yu, wife of Taiwan human rights advocate Lee Ming-che, also known as Li Ming-Che, who has been detained in China, departs for her husband's trial from the airport in Taipei, Taiwan on September 10, 2017. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)

Wife of Detained Taiwan Activist to Attend His Trial in China

TAIPEIThe wife and mother of detained Taiwanese rights activist Lee Ming-che were due to arrive in China on Sunday to attend his subversion trial on Monday, Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement, calling for Lees safe return home.

Lee, a community college teacher and pro-democracy and human rights activist, went missing during a March visit to China. Authorities later confirmed he had been detained, straining already-tense ties between the mainland and the self-ruling island.

Authorities at the Intermediate Peoples Court of Yueyang city, in the central province of Hunan, said Mondays trial on suspicion of subversion of state power would be an open hearing.

Chinese courts have video-streamed or live-blogged increasing numbers of proceedings in recent years as part of a push towards judicial transparency

However, rights activists say that in sensitive cases, holding open hearings is a tool for authorities to demonstrate state power and that usually the defendant has agreed to an outcome.

On Saturday, Lees wife, Lee Ching-yu, asked during a news conference that supporters forgive her husband if he says something in court which disappoints them, as he might be required to give testimony against his own free will.

On Sunday she declined to comment to a large media contingent as she checked into her flight at Taipei Songshan Airport, where she was to fly to Changsha, in Hunan province, via Shanghai.

Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council said it would do everything in its power to facilitate Lees safe return.

Our governments approach to this case has been predicated on preserving our countrys dignity while ensuring Lee Ming-ches safety, it said.

Lees case has strained relations between Taipei and Beijing, which have been particularly tense since President Tsai Ing-wen, leader of Taiwans independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, took office last year.

Beijing regards the island as a breakaway province and it has never renounced the use of force to bring it back under mainland control.

By Faith Hung
The world's first operational police robot stands at attention as they prepare a military cannon to fire to mark sunset and the end of the fasting day for Muslims observing Ramadan, in Downtown Dubai on May 31, 2017. (GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images)

World AI Experts: Time Is Running Out to Avert Robotic Warfare Disaster

Top artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics experts from around the world have warned the United Nations about the potentially disastrous consequences of the international race to develop weapons controlled by autonomous computer programs.

A total of 116 company founders signed a brief yet chilling letter to the United Nations on Monday, Aug. 21, cautioning that, once developed, AI weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend.

We do not have long to act, the group wrote. Once this Pandoras box is opened, it will be hard to close.

We therefore implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.

If youre not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.  Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

The group of experts spans four continents and is composed of founders of major AI and robotics companies, including the likes of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of applied AI company DeepMind.

The experts warned that the technologies their companies are creating could be used by governments around the world to further develop AI weaponry. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways, they wrote.

Musk has been talking about the dangers of weaponized AI for years. He recently said that the threat is greater than the risk of nuclear war with North Korea.

If youre not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea, Musk tweeted on Aug. 11.

An AI-based pilot running on a $35 computer has already demonstrated the ability to beat a U.S. Air Force-trained fighter pilot in a combat simulator. From the July 2017 study Artificial Intelligence and National Security,  Harvard Kennedy School

The worlds superpowers are racing to develop AI weapons systems, according to Human Rights Watch. United States, China, Russia, Britain, Israel, and South Korea are all vying to top each other, in what the group of expects say may become the third revolution in warfare.

Unlike other potential manifestations of AI, which still remain in the realm of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems are on the cusp of development right now and have a very real potential to cause significant harm to innocent people, along with global instability, Ryan Gariepy, the founder of Clearpath Robotics and the first signer of the letter to the U.N., told CNN on Aug. 21.

The message from AI experts was timed to coincide with a canceled U.N. meeting of government experts on AI. The meeting was postponed until November due to some member nations not paying their dues.

Australian professor Toby Walsh, who organized the letter, has urged the U.N. to ban killer robots, just as it has prohibited the use of chemical weapons.

From NTD.tv
L: The test fire of a ballistic missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea in an undated photo released by North Koreas official Korean Central News Agency on May 30, 2017. (STR/AFP/Getty Images); R: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils the Falcon Heavy rocket at the National Press Club in Washington on April 5, 2011. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

World War III Most Likely Over AI, Not North Korea: SpaceX, Tesla CEO

World War III wont break out over a nuke launch from North Korea, but rather over competition for the most advanced artificial intelligence (AI), according to Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.

While North Korea rattles its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic sabers, it would be suicidal for its regime to actually launch a nuclear missile at another country, Musk opined, as South Korea, the United States, and China would invade.

While in the 1950s the Chinese regime propped up its communist comrade in the Korean War against the United States, todays China has been signaling it would at least stay neutral in a potential conflict.

The AI race, on the other hand, has already begun, Musk said, noting the Sept. 1 remarks of Russian President Vladimir Putin that world dominance will belong to the leader in AI.

Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind, Putin told Russian students in his speech on the first day of school. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.

Musk responded on Twitter: China, Russia, soon all countries w[ith] strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo [in my opinion].

Musk has been vocal about the risks of AI, joining experts in the field in a call on the United Nations to ban AI-controlled weapons.

He previously stated that if AI continues to advance, it will eventually dramatically dwarf human intelligence, and that even if such AI turned out to be benign, it would relegate humankind to the role of a pet, he said.

However, if AI turned out to be adversarial, it may attack humansnot out of malevolence or other human emotion, but out of cold calculation if it decides that a prepemptive (sic) strike is most probable path to victory, Musk tweeted Sept. 4.

The Future of Life Institute, a non-profit trying to encourage the positive use of future technologies, put forth a set of principles to govern future AI development. The principles were co-signed by hundreds of experts. Yet the organization acknowledges the risk Musk warns about is difficult to avoid completely.

Antisocial or destructive actions may result from logical steps in pursuit of seemingly benign or neutral goals, it states. A number of researchers studying the problem have concluded that it is surprisingly difficult to completely guard against this effect, and that it may get even harder as the systems become more intelligent. They might, for example, consider our efforts to control them as being impediments to attaining their goals.
Former anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan at the opening session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on March 3, 2016. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Wang Qishan, Chinas Top Graft-Buster, Reappears in Public

Wang Qishan, Chinas most powerful official after Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, has made a series of public appearances recently, after having disappeared from public view for months. Wangs absence from the media led to speculation about his political future, to which he retorted with three appearances in the space of a week. Such appearances are bellwethers of political vitality in Chinas opaque political system.

Footage from state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) showed Wang, who heads the Communist Partys anti-corruption agency, attending a national disciplinary inspection assembly on Sep. 8.

At the meeting, Wang stressed the importance of reflecting on the results of anti-corruption work carried out since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, and expressed resolve to continue with unremitting efforts.

Party Central fully affirms the disciplinary inspection work, Wang said.

Observers of Chinese politics closely watch signs of Wangs presence (or absence) in the media for hints on whether he will continue to serve in the Politburo Standing Committee after the leadership reshuffling at the Communist Partys 19th National Congress. The Standing Committee is the Partys executive leadership and is composed of seven cadres, including Wang and Xi, who heads the body.

According to an unofficial convention of the regime, members of the Standing Committee who reach the age of 68 at the time of the Party Congress are expected to retire; officials aged 67 or younger may stay for the next five-year term. Wang Qishan, who is a key ally for Xi Jinping in his anti-corruption campaign, turned 69 this July.

Two days before Wang appeared on television, he attended a political seminar honoring his late father-in-law, the former vice premier Yao Yilin. Wang was accompanied by his wife and eldest grandson.

Besides the presence of four Politburo members, the Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily took special notice of two officialsXi Yuanping, younger brother of Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Li Zhanshu, Xis right-hand man. Xi Jinping sent two representatives to the meeting, one official and one personalto show his respect, the report says.

Wang was also addressed, apparently for the first time by Chinese state media, as the leader of the Central Leading Group for Inspection Work.

From Sept. 3 to 5, Wang also paid a three-day visit to the central Chinese province of Hunan where he held a discipline inspection symposium, as reported both on CCTV and the official website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that Wang heads.

Given Wangs tendency to keep a low profile, the prominent media exposure is highly unusual, and has been seen as a pointed rebuttal of rumors that he has been diagnosed of late stage liver cancer. Independent political commentator Zhou Xiaohui says the media reports should also be read as a hint that Wang remains in Xi Jinpings favor.

Since May, Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese billionaire who resides in an $67 million luxury apartment in Manhattan overlooking Central Park, has made various unproven corruption charges against Wang and his family members using social media. Guo has been linked with the political network grouped around former Party leader Jiang Zemin; the anti-corruption campaign under Xi and Wang has targeted hundreds of cadres aligned with Jiang. Guo faces a number of lawsuits from Chinese officials, actresses, and businesses for unpaid debts and defamation.

Xin Ziling, a retired official at the National Defense University, believes that Wangs political position is protected on account of the indispensable role he plays in Xis administration.

Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, and Wang Qishan are going to be the core in the 19th National Congress, Xin told The Epoch Times. Li Keqiang is the premier. If they take down Wang Qishan, its effectively saying that Xis anti-corruption effort was wrong.

Once you shoot the arrow, theres no getting it back, Zhou Xiaohui said. The tone coming from state media has been that anti-corruption is going to continue, and Xi would be handicapping himself if he loses Wang Qishan.

Wangs absence has typically been associated with the purge of big tigersthe Chinese term for high-ranking corrupt officials. The last time Wang returned to public view after 40 days of silence, the authorities announced the investigation of prominent Chongqing Party secretary Sun Zhengcai, extinguishing the hopes in some quarters that he would be a candidate for succeeding Xi Jinping in the leadership.
What's next for SD Gov. Kristi Noem as she heads into her second term?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the Canadian government will place Ukraine on a list of countries to which it will permit certain weapons exports.

Trudeau made the comments after a meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Toronto on Friday.

Trudeau says the government has begun to move forward with the lengthy process that would see Ukraine added to the Automatic Firearms Country Control List.

Placing Ukraine on the list would allow exporters of certain prohibited firearms, such as automatic weapons, to submit permit applications to the government for the export of the weapons to the country. There are currently 39 countries on the list.

Former prime minister Stephen Harpers government began consultations on placing Ukraine on the list in 2015, but the process has not moved forward since the Conservative defeat in 2016.

The move comes as both leaders continue to denounce Russian-backed fighters who are involved in a conflict in eastern-Ukraine.

Trudeau said Canada continues to stand with Ukraine against the illegal, illegitimate incursion of Russia into Ukrainian territory.

Absolutely, Trudeau said when asked if Ukraine would be added to the list. (Its) something were moving forward on. Theres a process and a series of criteria that have to be reached but it is something were working on.

Trudeau said Canada has also sent both police and military personnel to Ukraine to train local officers and soldiers. Poroshenko thanked the Canadian government for that assistance.

It has significantly reduced the casualties for the soldiers who pass through this training, Poroshenko said. (It) significantly improves the co-ordination and tactics we learn. This is a win, win, win, co-operation because our Canadian partners also learn from us the unique experience from the Russian hybrid warfare.

Poroshenko and Trudeau are in Toronto for the start of Invictus Games, an international sporting competition for wounded soldiers.

In March, the Canadian military quietly expanded its footprint in Ukraine, giving commanders free rein to send their troops anywhere  except where they might run into Russian forces or separatist rebels.

Canada first deployed about 200 troops to Ukraine in the summer of 2015 to help train government forces in their fight against Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country. Initially, the Canadians were required to stay in the western half of Ukraine, far from the conflict that has continued to rage over the intervening two years, leaving more than 10,000 people dead.

Canada has also provided about $16 million in non-lethal equipment such as helmets, bulletproof vests and winter clothing to the Ukrainian military, and promised another $7.25 million by 2019.

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Within the span of two years, the tiny northwestern Ontario community of Keewaywin First Nation lost two teenagers at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay: Robyn Harper in 2007 and then Kyle Morrisseau in 2009. The deaths of two kids in a community of 350 people is the equivalent of losing 700 teenagers in a city the size of Thunder Bay. Kyle would be the sixth northern First Nations youth to die since 2000. The students were forced to live in Thunder Bay while in high school because there was no suitable high school for them to attend in their remote, northern communities.

In Keewaywin, everyone knew Kyle. He was a sociable, kind boy and a member of Keewaywins most famous family, whose patriarch was famed Ojibwe painter Norval Morrisseau. Norval was Kyles grandfather. Like many in his family, Kyle was an artist and had a particular gift. It was only a matter of time before he would do great things in the art world.

Norval Morrisseau had seven children with his wife, Harriet Kakegamic who he met in the 1950s while they were both tuberculosis patients in a sanatorium in Thunder Bay. They married in 1957 and led a simple life in the bush in Beardmore and later Red Lake. Harriet taught Norval Cree syllabics and he used them to sign his art which he painted to support their growing family. First came David, then Victoria, Peter, Eugene, Michael, Lisa, and Christian, Kyles father.

Christian would stand at his fathers side and watch as Norval painted the stories of the medicine man and the spirits of the Ojibwe, putting to canvas their stories and traditions taught to him by his maternal grandfather, Moses a well-respected shaman.

Living in Beardmore, Norval taught and practised his art. An artist from Thunder Bay, Susan Ross, was amazed by what she saw and convinced Toronto gallery owner Jack Pollock to come north. Pollock was immediately entranced and the exhibit at his gallery in September 1962 was a smashing success. Every single painting sold.

Norval became a Canadian and international sensation. He was commissioned to create a mural for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. He travelled frequently to Toronto. He was living and drinking large.

In 1994, Norval suffered a debilitating stroke, two years after his grandson Kyle was born and the same year Kyles brother Josh came into the world. Norval was never the same again.

When Kyle was a boy in Keewaywin, Christian walked him to school every morning.

From the first day he went to school, he liked it. He liked the interaction, all the grades were in one building. Every morning, he would always get me up, yelling, Daddy, it is school time.

By the time Kyle was in Grade 6, he had an odd habit. He gave everything he had away  his new shirt, pencils, paper, whatever he had.

By Grade 8, all the kids loved him. They looked up to him, they learned from his sharing. And they loved to watch him dance, Christian says.

When Kyle was in Grade 8, he volunteered to be a dancer in the holiday show. He showed up with his younger brother Josh and began breakdancing. He got down on the floor and moved like lightning, twirling and spinning on his back. Christians cousin Robbie, who was organizing the concert, was so impressed he asked Kyle to end the show with a solo performance. He brought the house down.

On Dec, 4, 2007, Norval Morrisseau, the great Ojibwe master, died and Christian put down his paintbrush.

I had stopped because I used to paint with my dad, I used to see him on the other side of the table. When he died, I just couldnt paint anymore. But then Kyle said to me, Dad, arent you going to teach me how to paint? I told him I would teach him but that he had to listen to what I was saying.

He told Kyle the legends of their people, the shamans words, while he taught him to balance colour and paint inside the lines. I told him to hold the pencil at the ends and let the spirit guide you.

What Kyle sketched and later painted was remarkable. His talent was innate. The learning came easy; the painting flowed.

When Christian got a call from an Ottawa gallery owner interested in holding an exhibition, he told them only if his sons work would also be displayed. They agreed. On opening night, nine of Kyles paintings were sold compared to three of Christians.

The thought of moving away to high school was not easy for Kyle. He did not want to leave Josh or his dad. They were the rocks in his life and the three of them were never separated for long. This must have played in Kyles mind when he decided not to leave Keewaywin for Thunder Bay in September 2006. But once his friends were gone, Kyle realized he had made a mistake. So as any kid his age would do  he asked his dad to go with him to Thunder Bay.

Christian knew their bond was special, and that as a father he needed to nurture and cherish it. But he also knew he couldnt leave Josh behind. So Christian asked Josh if he wanted to go with them: the three of them would move to Thunder Bay.

The Morrisseau men first lived with Christians brother Eugene. Christian assumed he could enrol Kyle in the First Nations high school, Dennis Franklin Cromarty. But the school had strict rules that only kids from remote northern communities could attend. Any student wanting to go to DFC had to live in a boarding home. It was a Catch-22  they were being penalized because Christian had moved to Thunder Bay with his sons.

Christian had no choice but to enrol Kyle with Josh at Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate and Vocational Institute  a school beside Dennis Franklin that offered Grades 7 to 12.

As he had back home, Christian would rise early and walk the boys to school. He enjoyed watching his lithe, enthusiastic and spirited sons head off to the classroom. But by winter, the boys were feeling pretty confident and a bit too cool to have their dad walk them to school. They told Christian he didnt have to come along anymore. They could make it on their own.

Christian remembers that conversation; it is seared into his mind. He knew it was a turning point in their young lives. He also remembers following them that first day they walked on their own, hiding in the bushes to make sure they made it safely.

That year was full of happiness. The three Morrisseau men moved out of Eugenes apartment and got a place on Lark St. across town in Port Arthur. It was a hike to get to school but they had more room and some privacy. The boys had their own bedrooms and Christian slept on the couch. The walls were filled with Christians bright, bold paintings. The house was always full of kids playing video games, spinning music and breakdancing.

June came around and the boys celebrated a successful end of the school year. Both had passed their grades. Christian and Kyle decided to stay for the summer in Thunder Bay, while Josh went home to Keewaywin.

I told Kyle he could go too but he said, No, Dad. You came out here so I could go to school. So I wont leave you.

But it was expensive living in the city, caring for the boys and sending money home to Keewaywin. In the middle of the summer, Christian sent Kyle home while he stayed in Thunder Bay awhile longer to wrap up some business. Hed follow Kyle back to Keewaywin later.

That summer, Kyles mother Lorene again tried to enrol him with his friends at Pelican Falls high school in Sioux Lookout or at Dennis Franklin with the other northern kids. Pelican was at capacity, but Christians cousin Robbie Kakegamic said that there might be room at DFC. Robbie was in charge of the Keewaytinook Okimakanak Secondary School Support counsellors who looked after the students from six First Nations communities.

Kyle could be considered a northern student needing placement. Robbie just had to wait to see if any kids decided to not return. If that were the case, there would be a spot for Kyle.

The call came when Kyle was out partridge hunting with Josh.

When he came back, I asked him and he said yes. I packed him up and he took off on his own, says Christian.

Seventeen-year-old Kyle would have to live alone in a boarding house, without his father or his brother.

At first, Kyle called home almost every night but the calls became more sporadic.

On Oct. 6, 2009, less than three weeks before Kyle went missing, Robbie, the counsellor assigned to watch Kyle, wrote a report detailing Kyles drinking and noted he had been picked up twice for being intoxicated and underage. In Kyles school file, there were notes about his missing the boarding homes curfew twice. His first semester report card shows a kid struggling. His final mark for visual arts was 2 per cent. In career studies, the teacher couldnt assign him a mark because of chronic absenteeism.

The Kyle who loved school was nowhere to be found.

When Kyle failed to come home on Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, a school night, Robbie got the call from the boarding parent. He made a note that Kyle was out drinking with Michael Fox and Ivan Masakeyash and that he had missed his curfew.

On Tuesday at 2 p.m., Robbie called Christian and told him that Kyle had blown curfew on three other occasions, but he had always come home. Robbie, along with other teachers, had been out all night looking for Kyle.

On Wednesday, Robbie formally filed a missing-person report with Thunder Bay Police.

Kyle Morrisseau went missing when the inquest into the death of Reggie Bushie had just been announced. Morrisseaus disappearance reaffirmed Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Alvin Fiddlers suspicions  the kids were vulnerable, living in a hostile city; they didnt have adequate social support and they were attending a school that was struggling to cope. Kyle was the sixth DFC student lost while attending the school. The DFC staff were desperately trying to keep their students safe. They knew they werent just teachers or receptionists or janitors; they were caring for the nearly 150 kids who were several hundred kilometres from their homes. They did everything they could to be parents to their students  fed them three meals a day, the Elders room was always open, with bannock and a fresh pot of tea at the ready and their vans patrolled the streets, 24-7, looking for wayward kids.

Christian went to his chief in Keewaywin and told him he needed to fly to Thunder Bay.

He remembers looking down at the orange and yellow city lights twinkling on Superior. He remembers filling himself with hope and faith. Im going to find him, he thought, and I wont come home until I do.

Security footage shows Kyle at the Intercity mall at 7 p.m. Robbie had the last two people to see Kyle alive give a statement to police. Rhanda Kakekagumick and Aaron Bluecoat said that Kyle and a man named Ivan Masakeyash approached them at the mall and asked if they wanted to go for drinks. They spent about half an hour under the train trestle at the McIntyre River.

Kyle got drunk fast. Police notes indicate he asked Ivan if he knew how to get him a gun for protection. Rhanda told Kyle not to be foolish, he didnt need a gun. Rhanda said Kyle got mad and started pushing her. She said that she pinned him down in an effort to calm him. She told police Kyle apologized and she ditched him there and left the area.

When it came to why he wanted a gun, she said that Kyles shoes had been stolen as well as his weed and even some Percocets.

Aaron backed up Rhandas story. He said he agreed to go drinking because he was concerned that Kyle was with Masakeyash, who seemed a bit shady. Aaron said they shared a bottle of whisky then he went to get something to eat. He returned to find Rhanda pinning Kyle down. He didnt know what they were arguing about.

Kyles mother, Lorene, told police she spoke with her son at 10 that evening. He told her he was at his boarding house and that his boarding parent, Barb Malcolm, was at the hospital with her husband.

Kyle asked for his friend Tyler Neekans phone number. He told his mom he was going to the Brodie St. bus terminal. She told police he sounded high. Kyle told his mother he had been drinking a little. He asked her to deposit more money into his bank account. (Christian deposited $36 into Kyles bank account, but the money was never accessed.)

Before he hung up, Kyle told his mother that he loved her.

On the night that Kyle went missing, Ivan was arrested after a man named Frank Williams had called 911 alleging Ivan had tried to break in.

Robbie tracked down Ivan at the Thunder Bay Jail and asked about Kyle. Earlier, Robbie had searched Kyles room and found notes regarding what appeared to be debts that someone owed. Robbie worried Kyle may have gotten mixed up with the Native Syndicate, an Indigenous gang. But Christian did not believe his son wrote the notes. It wasnt Kyles handwriting and further, he knew his son well  there was no way Kyle could be part of the Syndicate.

Police records indicate Ivan was interviewed on Nov. 11, 2009. Ivan told police hed just met Kyle when hed gone drinking with him on Oct. 23 (Ivan would later testify that it was the 26th). He denied he was associated with the Native Syndicate.

Christian spent 10 days looking for his son.

He gave up on the 10th day because Lorene woke up in their hotel room screaming, Dad, come here!

Christian asked her what was wrong and she wailed, No, it hurts.

He thought breakfast would help her but she was unable to eat. She asked if Christian thought someone was feeding Kyle. Christian told her that he did not know.

That hurt me. As soon as I heard that I went to the LCBO and I grabbed a 60-ouncer and started guzzling. I drank all day.

Christian could not control his anger. He walked to the river to curse Nanabijou, the Sleeping Giant, the formation of volcanic rocks that resembles a man lying on his back, his arms folded on his chest.

I paint everything, I share all your stupid-ass stuff, and this is what you give me? F--k you. Give me my son back!

Thunder Bay Police found Christian on the street.

Back at the hotel, he slept all day and dreamed about his son. Kyle was dressed in red and he was bopping around, twirling fast like the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes cartoons. Kyle spoke to him and said, Dad, Im hurting too.

Christian woke up to his son Josh telling him the police had retrieved a body in the river. I went to the school but I knew already. They found him floating. I knew it was my son.

Kyles body was discovered by a man walking down by the water. He saw something floating in the McIntyre River, southbound along the railway trestle. He called police.

Police noted burn holes in the front of his pants and a tear on the outside of the left thigh. The post-mortem noted abrasions on both shins. His blood ethanol level was 228 mg/100 mL. Between 300 and 400 is considered fatal.

Coroners believe Kyle drowned but that while alcohol was a contributing factor to his death, it wasnt the cause.

Christian was full of rage. I was so f--king mad.

Norma Kejick, the Northern Nishawbe Education Council director of education, remembers waiting in the hospital coffee shop as she watched Christian go to identify his son. Kyles mother, Lorene, stayed in the lobby, surrounded by family. What Norma heard next stopped her cold. Christian had come back to speak to Lorene, who let out a loud, hollow wail. It was the sound of a mother learning her son was dead.

They drove to the school, where they were met by police and members of the community. Christian spoke to Constable Baxter and then asked Josh to go for a walk. He wanted to head to the nearest river to pray.

We took some tobacco and when we laid that tobacco we said, Miigwetch. Thank you. That is it. It was not easy to thank the river for taking my son.

An edited excerpt from Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. Copyright  2017 Tanya Talaga. Permission granted by House of Anansi Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without written permission from the publisher. Seven Fallen Feathers is available for sale online at StarStore.ca/seven . A portion of each sale will go to the Dennis Franklin Cromarty Memorial Fund, which financially assists Nishnawbe Aski Nation students. The book is a finalist for the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

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The Toronto waterfront is going to grow, grow, grow in the next decade or two. Two hundred and eighty thousand new residents and 190,000 new jobs in the Port Lands, the western Don Valley, the South Core, the area around Habourfront, the mouth of the Humber. This, on top of the tens of thousands of new residences and offices built south of Front St. in the past 20 years. All that growth is the reason the city is planning to build a new, expanded waterfront LRT line across the bottom of the city, at a cost expected to be measured in the billions of dollars.

So why did the preliminary plans for that new transit line suggest, as a possibility, that it would connect with the subway line at Union by a pedestrian tunnel between Queens Quay and Front St.? Why is anyone thinking its a good idea to suggest people commuting should get off one vehicle and walk more than half a kilometre before getting on another vehicle to continue their trip? Its silly.

Expanding the existing streetcar tunnel between Queens Quay and Union to serve more vehicles would be expensive? Well, you dont say.

Read more: Proposals to link Queens Quay and Union Station include a moving sidewalk, a cable car or more streetcars

This is a city that has repeatedly, emphatically affirmed that it thinks it is worth spending $1.5 billion or more to ensure people in Scarborough do not have to get off an LRT and get onto a subway. That rejected transfer between vehicles  in plans, a one-flight-of-stairs affair like the ones at St. George and Bloor, a 30-second inconvenience  was thought to be so onerous it was worth spending virtually anything to avoid.

But presumably the people who live and work on the Waterfront are expected to have greater reservoirs of energy and patience such that not only would they change vehicles, but would walk 600 metres  a lap and a half of an Olympic track  in between. Maybe someone at city hall thinks theyre all exercise buffs who welcome the workout. And the added 10 minutes to their trip time.

This is a city which recently decided that it was worth spending more than $1 billion to rebuild the eastern Gardiner Expressway so that 5,200 peak-hour, peak direction vehicles would not experience a two to three minute delay. But someone who lives in a new apartment overlooking that newly rebuilt road will be expected take an LRT to Bay St., then walk for six minutes or more, before getting on a subway.

Or maybe just change vehicles twice instead!

A third option, besides the pedestrian tunnel and rebuilding the rail link to Union, is an underground funicular cable-car system. People would get off the subway, get on a little cable car for one stop, then get off that cable car and get onto an LRT at Queens Quay to continue their journey.

Whats the problem with that? People generally dont like transfers, so thats a negative experience, Nigel Tahair of the citys transportation department told my colleague Ben Spurr. Uh huh.

In fact, transit planners have a name for the effect of this negative experience. Its called a transfer penalty. Basically, the more often a person has to transfer vehicles, and the more difficult those transfers are, the less likely a person is to take transit.

The TTC actually has weights it applies to different kinds of transfers based on how they are perceived by customers to estimate the penalty.

Toronto Star Graphic | Aerial image by Google Toronto Star Graphic | Aerial image by Google

People like riding a vehicle, so thats the baseline. People dont like waiting for a vehicle. So the TTC estimates that time waiting for a vehicle to arrive has a weight of 1.5  in a customers mind, a minute spent waiting at the stop is equivalent to one and a half minutes sitting on a train.

Now, walking has a weight, in this calculation, of 2.0. A six-minute walk to change vehicles, as the pedestrian tunnel plan calls for, is considered equivalent to adding 12 minutes to the trip.

And each transfer? That has a weight of 10. Changing vehicles once is thought to be as inconvenient as 10 minutes of riding time.

So, a six minute walk plus a transfer is equivalent, in a riders mind, to a 22-minute delay on their trip. And an additional transfer onto and off of a cable car? Thats another 10 minutes.

Is that all a bit convoluted to follow? Well, the simple upshot is that if you make people walk a long way, they will not like it. And if you make people change vehicles more often, they will not like that either. And people who do not like their transit experience will tend to drive, instead, if they have the option.

It is said it might cost $270 million to connect the new LRT line properly to Union Station. I dont know why it would cost that much to expand the existing tunnel a bit to accommodate more traffic. But I dont understand anything about why building transit costs so much (and so much more than it used to). A subway station now costs $200 million or more to build. A single stop extension of the subway in Scarborough is going to cost at least $3.5 billion.

I dont understand it  I can barely fathom the numbers  but by now I know very well, as most Torontonians do. Transit is expensive. But if were going to spend billions on new lines, the least we can do is make sure we do it right. You build a transit line  especially if youre building a tunnel  to last generations.

The waterfront LRT will serve generations of people, hundreds of thousands of them, who will live and work in growing parts of the city. Whether those people can easily get around on transit will depend in part on the one-time, permanent decisions we make now.

As Councillor Joe Mihevc said, this is not the time to cheap out. You build the thing right, connect it to the subway line, and avoid having a generation of people living and working on the water, sitting in their cars and wondering why we wasted all that money on an LRT line that goes right past them without conveniently connecting them to the city.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire

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ISTANBUL At least 21 people are dead after a fishing boat carrying migrants sank off Turkeys Black Sea coast Friday, according to the countrys coast guard.

The boat capsized near the coastal town of Kefken in northwestern Turkey. The coast guard said that 40 people had been rescued.

The nationalities of those on board was unclear, as were their destinations.

Rescue teams were still searching for five people reported missing. Coast guard boats and commercial ships were taking part in the search along with a helicopter and a plane.

While Turkeys Aegean coast is popular with people smugglers to send Syrians and other refugees to the Greek islands, a growing number of migrants departing from Turkish coasts have recently been trying to reach Romania by way of the Black Sea.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said that new migration routes are appearing through Romania and Spain in an effort to circumvent EU efforts to curb migration in the central and eastern Mediterranean.

Earlier this month, Romanias coast guard rescued a group of 157 Iraqi and Iranian migrants, 56 of them children, from a boat drifting on the Black Sea.

Instead of sending migrants by land from Turkey through Bulgaria and Serbia, traffickers are now putting them on boats bound for Romania.

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BANGKOKAmnesty International said new satellite images and videos taken as recently as Friday afternoon in Burmas Rakhine state show smoke rising from Rohingya Muslim villages, contradicting Aung San Suu Kyis claims that military operations there have ended.

The London-based group said its sources in Rakhine claim that the fires were started by members of Burmese security forces and vigilante mobs. The latest violence in Burma has sent an estimated 429,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh in less than a month.

This damning evidence from the ground and from space flies in the face of Aung Suu Kyis assertions to the world, Tirana Hasan, Amnestys director of crisis response, said in a statement late Friday. Rohingya homes and villages continue to burn, before, during and after their inhabitants take flight in terror. Not satisfied with simply forcing Rohingya from their homes, authorities seem intent on ensuring they have no homes to return to.

Most of those fleeing have ended up in camps in the Bangladeshi district of Coxs Bazar, which already had hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had fled prior rounds of violence in Burma.

Read more:

The world saw Burmas Suu Kyi as a hero. She isnt: Tony Burman

Rohingya Muslim children heavily traumatized from dangerous journey to Bangladesh

The situation in the camps is so incredibly fragile, especially with regard to shelter, food and water, and sanitation, that one small event could lead to an outbreak that may be the tipping point between a crisis and a catastrophe, Robert Onus, emergency co-ordinator for the medical relief agency Medecins sans frontieres, said Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in an extremely precarious situation, and all the preconditions for a public health disaster are there, Onus said in a statement, calling for a massive step-up of humanitarian aid.

Another danger was highlighted by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, which condemned Burmas use of anti-personnel mines along its border with Bangladesh.

According to eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence, and multiple reports, antipersonnel mines have been laid between Myanmars two major land crossings with Bangladesh, resulting in casualties among Rohingya refugees fleeing government attacks on their homes, the group said, using another name for Burma.

It demanded that Burma immediately cease using such weapons and accede to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, to which 162 other countries are parties.

The latest violence began when a Rohingya insurgent group launched deadly attacks on security posts Aug. 25, prompting the Burmese military to launch clearance operations to root out the rebels. Those fleeing have described indiscriminate attacks by security forces and Buddhist mobs. The government has blamed the Rohingya, saying they set fire to their own homes, but the UN and others accuse it of ethnic cleansing.

Rohingya have faced persecution and discrimination in majority-Buddhist Burma for decades and are denied citizenship, even though many families have lived there for generations. The government says there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and that they are Bengalis who illegally migrated to Burma from Bangladesh.

The top U.S. diplomat for Southeast Asia said the United States remains deeply troubled by the ongoing crisis and allegations of human rights abuses in Rakhine.

Patrick Murphy, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, speaking Friday in a conference call from Bangkok, said although the U.S. condemns August attacks by Muslim Rohingya militants, the response from Burmese security forces has been disproportionate. He called on security forces to end the violence in Rakhine, stop vigilantism there, protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian assistance in the area.

Murphy also called on the security forces to work with the civilian government to implement the recommendations of a committee headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Murphy said the U.S. welcomed Suu Kyis decision to speak publicly about the problem this week. He also said the U.S. realizes that Suu Kyi has limited control over the security forces because of the countrys flawed constitution, which allows the military to remain politically powerful and guarantees it control of key ministries including those related to security and defence.

Murphy said the U.S. has warned Burma about potential repercussions it faces if it doesnt address the crisis, including greater instability in Rakhine, threats to the stability of its borders, the risk of attracting international terrorists, scaring off investment, and ultimately stunting its transition to democracy.

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BARCELONA, SPAINSpanish media report that several hundred students have spent the night inside a Barcelona university to protest the governments efforts to stop a referendum over Catalonias secession from the country.

The protesters have said on social media that pro-independence politicians are expected to give talks at Barcelona University on Saturday.

Jordi Vives, a spokesman for the students, told Catalan public television: We are showing that as students we have a part to play and that for now we are staying put.

Read more: Barcelona erupts in protest as Spanish police arrest Catalan officials ahead of banned independence vote

The remaining students were hold-outs from a group of about 2,000 that gathered in and around the university Friday. Several hundred occupied a central cloister near the offices of the dean and other university managers.

Spains constitutional Court has suspended the Oct. 1 vote while judges assess its legality.

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ISTANBULThe Turkish parliament renewed a bill on Saturday that allows the military to intervene in Iraq and Syria if faced with national security threats, a move seen as a final warning to Iraqi Kurds to call off their independence referendum on Monday.

The decree allows Turkey to send troops over its southern border if developments in Iraq or Syria are seen as national security threats. Turkish officials have repeatedly warned the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq to abandon its plans for independence.

Kurds are dispersed across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran and lack a nation state. Turkey itself has a large ethnic Kurdish population and is battling a Kurdish insurgency on its own territory that it calls separatist.

The bill read in parliament Saturday listed combatting Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq and Daesh as national security requirements for Turkey. It also emphasized the importance of Iraq and Syrias territorial integrity and said separatism based on ethnicity poses a threat to both Turkey and regional stability.

Read more:

Deploying Canadian troops to Syria not part of new mission against Daesh, Sajjan says

Turkeys ruling party elects President Erdogan the only candidate as leader

Speaking in parliament, Turkish Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli likened Mondays vote in northern Iraq to a brick that  if pulled out  could collapse an entire structure built on sensitive and fragile balances. The resulting conflict could be global, he warned.

Osman Baydemir, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party or HDP, the third biggest group in parliament, called the bill a war mandate and a proclamation of enmity toward 40 million Kurds. A dozen parliamentarians from the party are behind bars for alleged links to terrorist groups.

The HDP voted against the mandate Saturday. All other parties, including the main opposition Republican Peoples Party, voted for it.

Earlier Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the referendum a mistake, an adventure. He said Turkey would take diplomatic, political and economic measures according to developments on the ground. He added a cross-border military operation was also an option.

The renewed mandate is a combination of two previous bills that are based on a constitutional article on the declaration of state of war and authorization to deploy the armed forces.

The Iraq Bill was passed in 2007 to combat outlawed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq to prevent attacks in Turkey. The Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK has its headquarters in Iraqs Qandil mountains. Turkey, Canada, the United States and the European Union consider it a terrorist organization.

The Syria Bill of 2012 was in response to mortar attacks by Syrian government forces on a Turkish border town.

The combined bill was passed in 2014 as Daesh waged a deadly campaign in Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town on the Turkish border. Daesh, also known as ISIS, failed to take over the town and the victory strengthened Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units or YPG, who are now a key U.S. ally against Daesh in Syria. Turkey, however, considers them a terrorist group.

The mandate has allowed Turkey to launch a cross-border military operation into northern Syria with Syrian opposition forces in August 2016 to clear its border of IS and YPG. Turkeys air force has also been bombing targets in northern Iraq and Syria.

The Turkish military, meanwhile, said additional units joined this weeks previously unannounced exercises near the Iraqi border. The chief of staff also met his Iraqi counterpart in Ankara to discuss the Kurdish referendum and border security.

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Imagine a wireless device that can be implanted in heart attack patients to virtually monitor their condition in real time so doctors can adjust treatments and prevent costly, potentially unnecessary hospitalizations.

Its not a pipe dream. Its real. Cardiologists at Torontos Peter Munk Cardiac Centre implanted the first one in a patients heart in June.

Traditionally weve relied on a patient describing symptoms, and by then they may have already progressed to the point of hospitalization, said Meredith Linghorne, a nurse practitioner at the centre. With this device, we can see warning signs days in advance and adjust treatment accordingly.

The device is just the beginning of the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence that could transform the lives of the 1.5 million Canadians living with the effects of cardiovascular disease, thanks to the generosity of Peter and Melanie Munk.

The Toronto couple has donated $175 million to the centre, part of the University Health Network, since 1993. That total includes the biggest single gift ever made to a hospital in Canada of $100 million, given this week.

The Munks, who are helping to make Toronto a global centre of innovative heart health care, are to be thanked.

Their donation will help to fund work that could prevent the deaths of the 30,000 Canadians killed by heart disease each year, not to mention prevent attacks in the 90 per cent of Canadians with at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Indeed, the centres medical director, Barry Rubin, says the hospital will be able to use the gift to predict and treat life-threatening cardiac problems before they occur.

Peter Munk says its his way of giving back to the country that welcomed him in 1948 after his family fled the German invasion of Hungary. He went on to make a fortune in the mining business. I just like to help Toronto because I want to repay Canada, he told the Star this week.

He has done that  and more  in spades.

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Daisuke Nakazawa reaches across the counter to place three pieces of tuna before me, leanest to fattiest, left to right. The progression is the apex of the 21-course omakase menu at Nakazawa's Greenwich Village restaurant, and he dresses them simply to bring out the quality of the fish. An instant later, sommelier Garrett Smith appears to pour a half-glass of 2016 Trousseau from Arnot-Roberts, a small California producer.

The wine, light in body but with good acidity, has a ferric quality that matches that of the fish and a touch of berry fruit that brightens the soy, wasabi and Japanese mustard with which Nakazawa dresses the fish. The pairing is unexpected but terrific - and typical of the restaurant's wine program.

Sushi Nakazawa is one of New York's elite sushi restaurants and has a sake list to match, but it also offers an extensive wine selection and a sommelier capable of navigating it. Smith was at the French Laundry and Daniel before coming to Nakazawa two years ago. Dean Fuerth, who succeeded Smith in August, had been at Bouley and Betony. They have to adapt their knowledge of wine to a cuisine with its own flavors and textures in a setting where customers often demand a distinctive experience.

The easy way to do that is to serve Champagne, which because of its effervescence and acidity is a perfect food wine. The acidity is key to balancing oil in many cuts of sushi, Smith says. He had more than 60 of the sparkling wines on his list this summer, and he reeled off Champagnes he would happily drink with Nakazawa's omakase, the only option at the restaurant.

Krug, of course, the very taste of luxury. Vouette & Sorbee's Fidele, a Blanc de Noirs, or wine made entirely from Pinot Noir. Aurelien Suenen's C&C Blanc de Blancs with what Smith calls "perfect ripeness." He visited the producer this spring on a trip to Champagne and compares the vin clair, or still wine from which the sparkling is made, to great white Burgundy.

But most diners view Champagne as a way to start a meal, and in his wine pairing, Smith limits himself to a glass of rose Champagne with the opening flight of three salmon pieces. The second course is a piece of scallop dressed with sake, ume plum and yuzu pepper whose zest has been fermented with chili and a piece of squid with shiso and ume plum. "Salty sweetness spells Riesling to me," Smith said after describing the pieces, and he poured Keller's 2015 Limestone Riesling from Rheinhessen, a taut, energetic wine, on my visit.

White Burgundy also has the versatility to go with a range of raw fish, and there are 40 of them on Nakazawa's list. He pulled out a 2010 Meursault from Patrick Javillier to go with the middle of my meal, a beautiful wine, round, full, perfect with a piece of pressed crabmeat, its top seared and served with a drop of ponzu sauce and crab guts mixed with miso, a salty, funky finishing note.

The challenge, and the fun, of pairing sushi and wine comes with reds, especially those with more body. "I'm trying to make myself uncomfortable constantly," Smith said, by looking for combinations that shouldn't work but do. He mentions a Chateauneuf de Pape from Joseph Sabon that "smelled like rusty nails. But what it did with tuna and uni was amazing; it brought out the sweetness in both."

Smith gained an appreciation for California wines during his time at the French Laundry in Yountville, and he says that even big Cabernet Sauvignon can work with tuna and uni, citing Shafer's Hillside Select Cab as an example. "If you peel through the veneer of tannin and ripeness," in the wine, he says, "it has great structure."

But the first rule of hospitality is knowing your guest, and I like lighter wines, so I get the Arnot-Roberts with my tuna. I also love Sherry, and Smith selects a great one for the final few pieces, a saltwater eel with eel sauce and an egg custard that Nakazawa perfected when he worked for sushi legend Jiro Ono, whose praise for the dish leaves Nakazawa in tears in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi. The two pieces show different aspects of the Equipo Navazos 41, a Palo Cortado with the brininess and acidity to stand up to the eel, the delicacy to work with the egg custard and the elegance to stand on its when the meal is done.

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Editors' pick: Originally published Sept. 22.
Gasoline price hikes spread to all 50 states within the past week and rose immediately in the aftermath of Harvey as its destruction affected several cities and towns which are home to massive refineries and several pipelines.

The national average price of gasoline increased by 25 cents per gallon to $2.64 per gallon, which is the largest weekly rise since 2005, said Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, a Boston-based provider of retail fuel pricing information and data. After Katrina made landfall, gas prices ascended by 49 cents in just a mere week.

In Texas, two out of the three Port Arthur refineries remained closed and together they refine 1.163 million barrels of oil a day. Motiva refines 603,000 barrels of oil a day while Total's (TOT) - Get Free Report plant processes 225,500. Valero (VLO) - Get Free Report refines 335,000 barrels and started operations on Monday, according to filings with state environmental regulators.

"The situation is looking much better after Harvey, but definitely not near 100%," he said. "It may take weeks to get back to that level, but many refineries are restarting or already have, while some may have been spared significant damage."

Colonial Pipeline, the largest U.S. refined product pipeline, started the pumping of diesel and jet fuel shipments on its second line from Houston, the company reported Monday and plans to restart gasoline flows from Houston on its first line on Tuesday. Colonial Pipeline, which is a major distributor of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and starts in Houston, runs through Louisiana and picks up products, then moves to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, up to the Carolinas and to Virginia.

Port Arthur is home to 55,427 residents, according to 2016 estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau and is 23 miles from Louisiana and 102 miles from downtown Houston. After Harvey made landfall in Corpus Christi, its impact reached Houston and expanded to Port Arthur, a small town which relies on the refinery industry as a major provider of jobs, last Wednesday. During a period of six days, Texas was plummeted by 27 trillion gallons of water.

"It appears that most of the Gulf Coast refineries, with the exception of the huge Motiva facility in Port Arthur, will be back online within a few days," said Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business in Dallas. "It may be another two weeks before Motiva is up and running."

Refining capacity of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel is still down by 2 million barrels of oil a day while nearly another 1 million barrels is flowing at reduced capacity from partial shutdowns, said Suzanne Minter, director of client strategy and energy solutions at S&P Global Platts, a New York-based provider of information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy markets. The increase in refining capacity is a marked improvement from last week's major decline and will help relieve supply issues.

"With 2.9 million barrels of oil a day that is still offline that marks 15.5% of overall U.S. capacity, but we went from the peak of the refining capacity in Texas being decreased by 4.1 million barrels of oil a day to only 2 million barrels and that is pretty significant," she said.

A Valero spokesman said its Corpus Christi refinery reached their full operating rate along with Texas City on Saturday but is attempting to resume its Three Rivers and Houston refineries to its previous normal operations.

ExxonMobil (XOM) - Get Free Report said its Baytown plant in Texas needs "minor repairs," according to a S&P Global Platts report. The plant refines 560,500 barrels and is the second largest in the country.

If some refineries and pipelines such as Colonial face prolonged shutdowns due to flooding, the long-term impact will be greater, said Minter. The outlook appears positive as the U.S. contributes to 2.2% of global refining capacity out of the 89 million barrels a day global supply.

"The temporary reductions are not indicative of a shortage of global energy," she said. "We're still making the oil. It will be interesting to watch the outcome once the water recedes. Most of the damage is done when units are running and flooding occurs, but refineries shut down production ahead of Harvey."

Gasoline Prices to Dip

Along with the spikes in national prices, shortages at hundreds of gas stations occurred in Texas last week, said DeHaan.

"It's been one of the most challenging weeks faced in years," he said.

Gasoline prices will likely continue to remain elevated until Texas recovers fully from the deluge of Harvey.

"The pinch at the pump was a direct result of Harvey - immense rain flooding refineries, wind and waves closing vital ports, causing massive disruptions to oil refineries, of which over a dozen had to shut down, with it closing over a quarter of the country's refining capacity," DeHaan said. "It was a major disruption to gasoline production, resulting in gas prices spiking across much of the country, with the biggest increases generally east of the Rockies."

There were 18 states which saw prices jump by over 30 cents per gallon versus a week ago and some rose by 42 cents such as Delaware. The smallest increase occurred in 10 states such as Hawaii with a mere two cent rise and three cents in Utah.

Oil prices fluctuated nominally last week while gasoline prices spiked with NYMEX October RBOB futures settling down 3.31 cents per gallon at $1.7479 per gallon on Friday.

Gasoline prices are not expected to surpass new highs as the largest increases are now "behind us," he said. "While prices may tiptoe higher in some states for several more days at least, the national average is likely to peak later this week."

The demand nationally for gasoline dips after Labor Day as people embark on fewer road trips.

Even with the outage at Motiva, the lack of output from the refinery should have "little impact on supply or prices because we've now entered the post-Labor Day season of weakened demand for gasoline, Weinstein said.

Prices should start dipping by the end of next week and consumers should expect to see at least a 10 cent drop, he said.

Irma's Impact

If Hurricane Irma makes landfall later this week in Florida, there should not be any disruption to the production in the western Gulf of Mexico, said Weinstein.

The impact on prices and supply should be minimal because the branches of the Colonial pipeline which delivers refined products to Florida should not be impacted by the hurricane, he said.

The path of Irma could have less of an impact because Florida is a narrow strip of high value luxury real estate and a lot of open space through the center of the state, said Patrick Morris, CEO of New York-based HAGIN Investment Management.

"Miami is the nightmare scenario at these wind speeds and Ft. Lauderdale would also be a disaster," he said. "I think that at this point it's more troubling to think about it slipping into the Gulf. A second hit to Houston or New Orleans would be a game changer on the Gulf Coast."

Outside of Florida, Irma's landfall would not impact gasoline prices nationally, said DeHaan.

"Florida has very little in the way of energy infrastructure with just system of pipelines connecting Tampa and Orlando," he said. "The supply in Florida may be very touchy due to Harvey, however, disrupting normal flows of gasoline to Florida. If Irma does hit Florida and there are high amounts of evacuations, the situation will be pretty rough.''

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French oil and gas company Total (TOT) - Get Free Report announced on Friday that its subsidiary Total E&P USA, Inc. has reached an agreement to acquire seven prospects operated by Chevron (CVX) - Get Free Report in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

"The associated prospects are located in two promising plays and areas of the GoM: Wilcox in Central GoM next to the Anchor discovery, and Norphlet in Eastern GoM nearby to the Appomattox discovery," Total said.

Total's complete participation at these sites will be between 25% and 40%. The initial drilling at these wells commended late July.

"This agreement, together with the recently announced participation in the Jack field as part of the Maersk Oil acquisition, increases Total's footprint in the USA GoM where it can apply its exploration expertise and deepwater technologies. Total values Chevron's performance as a GoM deepwater company and this agreement expands a successful co-ownership already in place on the Tahiti field", stated Arnaud Breuillac, President Exploration & Production.

"As a continued effort to highgrade its portfolio, Total won six offshore exploration licenses in the August Lease Sale."

Shares of both Total and Chevron were both rising in afternoon trading on Friday.

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Italy is readying to levy a fine of upwards of 300 million euros ($359 million) on French mass media company Vivendi (VIVHY) for not alerting the government of its effective control of Italian telecommunications company Telecom Italia (TIM) undefined , Reuters reports.

Italian government officials will meet on Monday to weigh whether Vivendi should face the penalties on the premise that it failed to live up to legal requirements or inform the prime minister's office that it obtained de facto control of TIM.

"But the fine will be below 300 million euros. One cannot make the companies bleed," according to the report. A precise figure was not provided to Reuters.

Shares of Vivendi were falling over 1% in afternoon trading on Friday.

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Capita plc provides consulting, digital, and software products and services to clients in the private and public sectors in the United Kingdom and internationally. It operates through Public Service, Experience, and Portfolio divisions. The company offers solutions for finance and accounting, procurement, property and infrastructure, travel and event, and workplace administration. It also provides customer experience transformation, contact management, collection, complaint handling, customer acquisition and retention, customer experience system and software, and data and analytics. In addition, the company offers capita licensing and support, support, digital policing, and engineering practice; education service and local education authority software; various solutions that help businesses create connected experiences that deliver right message across organisations, customers, and suppliers; solutions for central and local government services; corporate learning, fire service college, employability, and capita apprenticeship solutions; and employer branding and marketing, flexible workforce solutions, agile resourcing solutions, executive and specialist recruitment, background checking and vetting, and digital HR management and transformation solutions. Further, it provides pension administration and software, pensions consulting, and data, insights, and remediation solutions; automation, critical communication systems, finance and payment software, local education authority software, management information systems, and workforce management software solutions; cloud, cyber security, digital connectivity, IT services, robotic process automation, and workplace IT; and actuarial, defence, financial, healthcare, housing, legal, public safety, utility, and welfare and employability services. The company was formerly known as The Capita Group plc and changed its name to Capita plc in January 2012. Capita plc was founded in 1984 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.
BNL girls thump Mitchell at The Hive

Bedford North Lawrence defeated Mitchell 78-20 at the Hive on Saturday evening. The win moved the Stars to 3-0 on the season.
The Troggs  Hip Hip Hooray

Label:Page One  POF 092

Format:Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Single

Country: New Zealand

Released:1968

Genre:Rock

Style: Pop

Tracklist A Hip Hip Hooray

B Say Darlin' !

Cover is good, vinyl is good.

For auction is a hard to find collectable 45rpm 7" single vinyl record. I imported these from Holland, most are Dutch or German pressings. In at least very good cond, some covers have wear, damage and tape/writing. Please look at all pics to see condition.

All discs are checked and played, packed well and couriered to your address, please opt for Rural if you live Rural????

Pics are the actual item(s) in auction..

I only use courier services, rural is more expensive but this ensures safer delivery. All goods delivered to your door. If you live at a rural address and opt for the urban tab, you will not receive your items.

I will combine to save postage, please pay the higher amount of shipping and the other items can be added free of charge. I DO NOT OFFER FREE POSTAGE UNLESS STATED.

I can hold on to items for 3-4 days and combine shipping costs but please contact me if you wish to do so. I prefer payment within 2 days of the auction closing. Any items bid on and not paid for will be relisted and negative feedback listed.

Happy bidding, thanks for looking.
Gilberto Ramirez, a Napa Valley College student looking to transfer to a four-year university, came to Transfer Day at NVC on Sept. 7 hoping to gain some insight into how to get what he wants from a great university.

About 60 recruiters from universities throughout the state and nation were on hand to answer questions from about 400 NVC students as well as local high schoolers.

I went around asking for information about their Ethnic Studies or Chicano Studies programs, said Ramirez, a 20-year-old Latino leader and 2014 graduate of Vintage High School. They answered some of my questions.

UCLA sent Gretchen Harris to Transfer Day to answer questions from students like Ramirez. Harris, the assistant director of undergraduate admission, said Ramirez could indeed select Ethnic Studies as a major and take a variety of Chicano Studies courses.

This is a really great fair, well organized, with great attention to detail, which shows they really care about us, said Harris.

I really love that they bring in high school students and that their students are interested in a wide range of majors. Its been a very good experience.

Ramirez said the experience of chatting with representatives from dozens of universities spurred him to do more investigating.

At least I am more knowledgeable now about what colleges offer. Im not sure how far I want to take this or what I want to study, but once I decide, I will want to go as far as I can. I am aiming for a Ph.D.

In the meantime, he said he is joining the campus student support program SSS TRIO to gain more insight and direction.

I feel Ill have more support with them, and that just being involved in the college will be impactful and empowering, Ramirez said.

NVC nursing student Crystal Ruffing was impressed by the dozens of colleges that were represented at the event.

Its amazing how many different things are offered by all the colleges, she said.

Admissions counselor Nina Taylor of Notre Dame University in Belmont said the most common questions from students were, Whats the most popular major? (Business Administration, Biological Science and Social Science), Whats the acceptance rate? (70 percent) and Whats the tuition? ($34,000, plus room and board).

NVC student trustee Manveer Sandhu said that, although he is focused on transferring to either UCLA or Harvard, he met with representatives of other colleges.

Dave Hamlett, University of the Pacifics Director of Community Partnerships, praised NVC for designing the Transfer Day event to serve both transfer and high school students.

This allows us to interact with NVC staff, develop relationships with the Transfer Center and interface with high school graduates as well as college students, said Hamlett. There is a constant flow.

Milford Miles, Senior Admission Counselor for the University of San Francisco, agreed.

Its great having a mix of transfer students and high school students, he said.

California State University Maritime Academys Mike Tressel, assistant director of admission, said operational engineers who graduate from the Academy acquire jobs at power plants and in high rises, while mechanical engineers land jobs in design work. Either way, he said, When they graduate they know what they are talking about. Theyve done something similar at Cal Maritime.

Norma Peniche, admissions counselor/recruiter at UC Irvine, said the NVC students she spoke with asked high-level questions, such as, What is the path to become a doctor? I told them you dont have to be a biology major to study pre-med. Ive been having great conversations with NVC students about medical science, engineering and business, she said.

The 43rd annual Transfer Day was organized by the Transfer Center staff; Marci Sanchez, Coordinator/Counselor, Jessenia Cota, Counseling Services Clerk; and Howard Willis, Dean of Counseling and Student Success.

The representatives were eager to visit Napa Valley College based on the quality of education that our students receive from our faculty, said Dean Willis. They know we have great transfer students who are academically prepared.

The Transfer Center staff played a pivotal role for this event, as they work year-round on behalf of students who want to connect with university representatives and get advice for comprehensive transfer services.
Dear All, I am sorry for not being able to respond to some suggestions above because I was travelling for work and have now sat down to plan my itinerary.

I know I would do some injustice to Vietnam by trying to complete the holiday in 15-16 days but thats all I have. I want to cover North and South both and cover the most important places because the time only permits to see those. I am planning to cover the following:

Places I want to see: Sa Pa, Hanoi, Halong Bay, DMZ, Hue, Da Nang, Hoi, An, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Mui Ne, Saigon, Mekong Delta and Phu Quoc. My plan is to land in Hanoi and then see the entire country with last day (s) in Phu Quoc and then travelling to Saigon to fly back to India. Is this plan good as I need suggestions.

Also I have some questions: Should I do Sa Pa for the hillstation or should I give it a pass because my wife suffers from some injuries and we cant do any treks (as suggested by many to do there); Should I pass Halong bay as we are extremely sea-sick and VEGETARIANS or is the cruise like a lake and would not have much damage on us. The reason is one bad day ruins the entire holiday; We think we can cover DMZ and Hue from staying in a hotel in Hanoi - Is that possible or is there a better suggestion; We want to stay in a property in Da Nang but is there anything else apart from that?; Would anybody suggest choosing one of the three: Phu Quoc, Nha Trang and Mui Ne or should we do all as we love beaches and we want to do water activities as well as laze around the waters. I know Mui Ne has a great desert formation as well; Can Saigon and Mekong Delta region be completed with a stay in Saigon (HCMC)?; I want to stay in a couple of good properties at Da Lat and Ninh Hai - What cities and places can I tour while staying at these locations?; And the last but not the least important - Is the above itinerary doable with a 2-3 day's break in the form of a lazy day in one of the above locations?

I have also been suggested to do: Mai Chau, Ninh Binh and Can Tho (part of Mekong Delta) and I need to understand whether these locations should be on my itinerary and can fit into the itinerary above?

I would appreciate you help once again to all the points above and promise to revert immediately with my views.

Best, Vikas
Currently my itinerary is 5 nights Tokyo, 3 nights Kyoto, 2 Nights Osaka, 3 Nights Busan, 4 Nights Seoul from December 17. I have been reading and Osaka doesn't seem so interesting anymore in that it's just another city. Hakone seems much more appealing in that we want to try the hot springs and Ryokans. Any ideas on how to include Hakone.

P.S budget is 30 000 yen/night. Will we get a Ryokan for that price (2A,2C)?
Need help for trip to Japan

Need help for trip to Japan

Hi All

I made some changes on the date to travel to Japan, would like to find out more information.

I will be travelling from Singapore to Osaka International Airport, planning for a trip from 2nd April to 14 April.

I would like to visit the following places:

Osaka

1. Abeno Harukas

2. Minami (Namba)

3. Osaka Castle

4. Umeda Sky Building

Kyoto

1. Nijo Castle

2. Kinkakuji

3. Arashiyama

4. Fushimi Inari Shrine

Tokyo

1. Disneyland

2. Disneysea

3. Asakusa

4. Meiji Shrine

5. Tokyo Skytree

6. Tokyo Tower

7. Mt Fuji

8. Shopping at Harajuku, Shibuya and Shinjuku

1. I was thinking if I should just stay at Osaka hotel and travel to Kyoto, spending 2 days for Osaka and 2 days for Kyoto and I will travel to Tokyo on 6 April.

2. Any good place to recommend for viewing Sakura?

3. Which area should I stay in Osaka/Kyoto and Tokyo?

4. What type of pass should I purchase for cost-saving travelling in Japan?

5. Any other places that I shouldn't miss out for this trip?

Appreciate members to advise as this is my first time to Japan. Thanks in advance! :)
You should price your international airfare, subtract it from the posted budget, - to give better idea of the actual land/CR trip budget.

You might find this article in How Much it costs to travel to CR useful - http://costa-rica-guide.com/practical/budget/how-much-does-costa-rica-cost/ .

Destinations summary: http://www.twoweeksincostarica.com/costa-rica-destinations-summary-guide/ . Pay special attention to Samara, as the beach might be better for the kids, though whether you want to spend a whole month in the small town, not sure.

Best beach towns without a car: http://www.twoweeksincostarica.com/costa-rica-without-car/ .

June weather, with the Nature Calendar for June 2018: http://costa-rica-guide.com/travel/best-time/june-in-cost-rica/ might help with your trip planning, too.

With a whole month in a new for your country, I would do at least 2-3 locations, not 1. You can easily do both Caribbean and Pacific coasts, and yes, it will be rainy, here and there, some places more than others (<--- rainforest), but it should not stop you, as it is warm.

If you do not want to drive rental car, you can easily get place to place using private transfers or prepaid hotel to hotel shared shuttles, like Interbus or Caribeshuttle. If not staying at a hotel, they pick up at the nearest pick up point. Kids pay children rate. Determine the areas in CR you might want to visit, then price the transfers.

Useful links for planning transportation options:

https://www.interbusonline.com/rates.php

https://geckotrail.com/transportation/ (3rd party site, allows you to input starting point and destination, and shows possible options with several companies and times, prices to get there.

We met a LOT of teachers in CR in July and Aug., in some hotels, at least 1, if not 2 ppl in each family were teachers, so you might meet quite a few teachers in June, too.
Just had a look & I am seeing the same message.

This is definitely,the same place,I tried to reserve a tour at,a couple of weeks ago,so I think you are,at the right place.

This is disappointing,because I was unsuccessful,for our trip in oct,so I was hoping,to have better luck,for our trip in Dec.

Maybe worth checking back

Tracy x
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Memorial Service For Robert Bush. On Saturday, October 14th at 11am, we will be gathering at Bay View Elementary School in Santa Cruz (1231 Bay Street) to celebrate the life of Bob Bush. Please join us as we share stories and music in remembrance. A reception will follow the service.
Pike Place Market has been one of Seattles main tourist attractions for much of its 110-year history, despite one oddity: It has never been as functional for visitors as for the people who live here.

Sure, travelers saw vendors tossing fish through the air and arranging heaps of foraged mushrooms, but most werent equipped with the time or kitchen space to cook them. The markets crowded indoor arcades, packed with sights and shoppers, offered few places to relax or access the sublime waterfront views.

Thats changed, thanks to the June opening of a $74 million addition, the landmarks first expansion in 40 years and the last piece of the revitalization plan that saved it from demolition in the 1970s.

With 30,000 square feet of new open space, theres finally some elbow room at the market, providing new ways to enjoy it rather than struggling through like a salmon swimming upstream. Highlights include an outdoor pavilion with broad Douglas fir counters and room for 47 new farm stands and crafts stalls, plus a new Producers Hall of restaurants and shops. New construction was designed to be attractive without betraying the markets functional origins, featuring wide windows, tall timber beams and just enough quirks to feel like old-school Seattle.

The expansive public plaza was designed to take inat least in the clear, warm summer monthsa jaw-dropping panorama of Mount Rainier, the Olympic Mountains and ferries traveling to and fro on Puget Sound. The Seattle Great Wheel, a 175-foot Ferris wheel that opened on the waterfront in 2012, provides the vistas punctuation mark.

Its crazy, right? said restaurateur Bryan Jarr, showing off the view from the waterside windows at Little Fish, the combination seafood cannery, restaurant and deli in Producers Hall that will open in January. Jarr is leading the project with chef Zoi Antonitsas, a Top Chef alum who was named one of Food & Wine magazines best new U.S. chefs in 2015.

One of Jarrs requirements when drawing up his plans: All the bar chairs have to swivel so customers can also drink in the sights.

Seattle is booming, setting the U.S. record for the number of construction cranes at work and grappling with record housing prices even in outlying areas. Still, the market location, with its heavy foot traffic and long history, was irresistible to Jarr.

There used to be canneries right here, he said, referring to the citys historic industries, now more weighted toward tech companies than fishing boats.

The expansion is the latest of many twists for the place known as the soul of the city, a market established in 1907 to provide affordable local fruits and vegetables to the public. Even in the 1920s a tourism pamphlet advertised the site as famous the world over for its magnitude and year-round unparalleled produce display.

The markets influence diminished after World War II, partly because of the internment of Japanese farmers who had manned as many as half of its stalls, partly on the rise of supermarkets and on farmland giving way to suburban sprawl. But in the 1960s, when a proposed urban-renewal plan would have razed the market, the public rose up. Champions such as architect Fred Bassetti, who called the market an honest place in a phony time, brought forward a citizens ballot initiative creating a historic district and a commission to save and restore the rundown property.

Any changes to such a beloved spot are bound to be controversial, especially in a city where any significant plans get caught in the Seattle process, shorthand for the way that important issues are talked to death in boggy debates. The MarketFront expansion, though, was completed to general public acclaim, despite (or because of) more than 200 public meetings about the historical site, which boasted notoriously strict building restrictions, archaeological artifacts that required preservation specialists (including crews to unearth a pioneer-era privy) and the high-wire logistics of building a major attraction above a BNSF Railway tunnel.

It was incredibly complicated, said Ben Franz-Knight, executive director of the markets Preservation and Development Authority (PDA), who has been working on the project for seven years. The expansion site, most recently a parking lot, once held the markets old municipal building, which was built in 1921 and demolished after a 1974 fire. Redeveloping the land, long considered impossibly expensive, only panned out now because the city needed its 300 new parking places, one part of a broader plan to redevelop the Seattle waterfront after the seismically suspect Alaskan Way Viaduct is torn down and a failing sea wall is rebuilt. In a few more years, after the viaduct comes down, new pathways will directly connect Pike Place Market with the waterfront and aquarium.

Everyone knows this project is once in a lifetime, Franz-Knight said.

For visitors who wonder if city residents still get the best of the market, consider one last thought: The place has a way of converting one type of shopper to the other. Nancy Leson, a longtime Seattle restaurant critic and now the food commentator for KNKX radio, says that for me, as for so many folks who moved here from elsewhere, everything I saw as a tourist or short-term visitor made me want to live here.

--

New attractions: Look for goods such as goat-milk soap and hand-thrown pottery at the new canopied craft stalls on the plaza. In addition to Little Fish, opening in the fall, two eateries are already open in Producers Hall: Honest Biscuits, selling Southern-style biscuit sandwiches made with Northwest-milled flour, and Old Stove Brewing Company, a spacious brewhouse and pub. Indi, a bean-to-bar chocolate factory, opened at the end of July. The addition also includes new public art, eye-catching mosaic murals of local fish, flowers, fruits and vegetables by artist Clare Dohna, and an illuminated tapestry1,670 colored aluminum strips by artist John Flemingcovering what was a bleak concrete wall on Western Avenue.

Behind the scenes: The market is also a center of social services for low-income residents, including apartments, a medical clinic and a day care. The addition includes 40 new studios for senior citizens, some of whom were previously homeless, including seven live-work units meant for artists.

Classics: Sur La Table is a chain now, but the Pike Place Market branch was the first in the nation, and the first application granted by the newly established PDA in 1972. Even though theres a Starbucks on so many corners worldwide, travelers still queue up to see the first outlet here (actually a short walk away from its original location), displaying the original logo with a bare-breasted mermaid. At Beechers Handmade Cheese, winner of national awards for its sharp flagship cheddar, watch through the window to see milk transformed into curds and whey.

Getting reacquainted: If you havent visited Seattle in a few years, youve missed out on newer market favorites including Ellenos Greek Yogurt, Country Dough (specializing in stuffed Sichuan flatbreads) and Rachels Ginger Beer, featuring house-made sodas and cocktails on tap.

Talk like a local: Its Pike Place Market, not Pikes Place.

Past and present: In 1987, photographer John Stamets captured classic Pike Place scenes in Portrait of a Market, with the books text written by Steve Dunnington. His large-format photos are on rotating display in the Market Commons area. Many of the places Stamets photographed are still in business, sometimes run by the descendants of the people he pictured. And many of the things the vendors told Dunnington still ring true, such as, The market is the best place to learn about people.
- President Uhuru's lawyer in the presidential petition has criticised supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga

- Ahamednasir Abdullahi has said Raila would get at least 40% in elections if his supporters spent at least 30% of their time campaigning for him

- He criticised the supporters for spending much of their time on Twitter instead of campaigning for Raila

President Uhuru Kenyatta's lawyer in the recently concluded presidential petition has launched a scathing attack aimed at Raila Odinga supporters.

Lawyer Ahamednasir Abdullahi took to Twitter Saturday, September 23, to tell off Raila's supporters who have been criticising Uhuru and Jubilee on social media.

Abdullahi claimed that Raila would get at least 40% in elections if his supporters spent time campaigning for him instead of posting on social media.

Uhuru's lawyer Ahamednassir Abdullahi has criticised Raila's supporters on Twitter Photo: Star

READ ALSO: Fresh twist emerges in Supreme Court full judgement that annulled Uhuru's win

Abdullahi unsuccessfully represented Uhuru in the petition that Raila filed challenging his win in the August 8 election.

READ ALSO: Police deployed to Tharaka Nithi-Meru border as tension escalates over attacks

The Supreme Court annulled Uhuru's win on grounds that it was marred with irregularities and illegalities.

Uhuru and his supporters have protested the decision, attacking the judges who overturned his win and labelling them wakora (thugs).

Kenyans react to supreme court's final verdict

Have something to add to this article or suggestions? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
The Mayor of the nation's capital city says the police are working and it is not for him to assess their performance.

This,. as he called on the entire society to work together on getting rid of any perception that crime is an opportunity.
Napa County Superior Court will weigh in on whether the county Board of Supervisors made a correct decision when it approved Mountain Peak Winery above Soda Canyon east of the city of Napa.

Opponents under the name Soda Canyon Group filed a lawsuit on Wednesday. They claimed the county should have required an environmental impact report for the yet-to-be-built winery and asked that the approvals be placed on hold while such a report is prepared.

The Mountain Peak Winery proposal sparked a discussion on how big a winery should be in a remote location. Supervisors wrestled with the issue on May 23 and decided against overturning a Planning Commission approval for the project. They took a final vote on Aug. 22.

Mountain Peak Winery is to produce up to 100,000 gallons of wine annually, have up to 14,300 tasting room visitors annually and have up to 275 visitors annually at three marketing events.

The Soda Canyon Group in its lawsuit said members include Kosta Arger, Cynthia Grupp, William Hocker and Glenn Schreuder, all Soda Canyon area residents. County reports list the Mountain Peak Winery applicant as Steven Rea.

Opponents have repeatedly said narrow, dead-end Soda Canyon Road cannot safely handle winery traffic. Yeoryios Apallas at the Aug. 22 Board meeting said the winery is to be located seven miles up a winding, serpentine, potholed road.

The opponents have hammered at other supposed failings of the Mountain Peak proposal, such as siltation and runoff they say could end up in Rector Reservoir, a water source for Yountville. They said dirt excavated to create winery caves will be piled on land near seasonal streams.

For these and other reasons, opponents in the lawsuit said the county was required under state law to prepare an environmental impact report for the project.

Napa County instead relied on a less-detailed negative declaration document. This study said the project would have less than significant or no impacts in a variety of areas ranging from transportation to water quality to biological resources.

The lawsuit called Mountain Peak Winery the largest winery ever approved in the county for such a remote location.

For supervisors, a selling point was a last-minute offer by Mountain Peak Winery to make at least 75 percent of its wine from grapes grown in nearby vineyards. They saw this as cutting down on trucks hauling grapes elsewhere.

It honors that the grapes are going to come from exactly where theyre going to be crushed, where the wine is going to be produced, Board Chairwoman Belia Ramos said. I value that very much.

Rea spoke on behalf of the winery owners at the May 23 Board meeting. He said many of the Soda Canyon Road issues seem to be based on existing condition with trucks and other traffic related to agriculture.

I came here to farm, to make wine, to run a winery business, Rea told supervisors. Everything Ive understood about Napa County is this is wine country and the general plan supports agriculture.

He also said that Mountain Peak keeps sprayers, tractors and other equipment at the existing vineyards so it doesnt have to truck them in.

The debate will now move from the Board chambers to the courtroom. No hearing dates have yet been set and the county has yet to file a response to the Soda Canyon Group lawsuit.
Canada is elaborating legislation to lift the current ban on arms exports to Ukraine.

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau said this after the talks with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We are moving forward regarding the mechanism of the Automatic Firearms Country Control List," Trudeau said.

However, he stressed that Ukraine should meet a number of criteria to be put on this list.

"There is a process which requires meeting a number of criteria, but we are working on it," the Canadian Prime Minister said.

At the same time, Trudeau did not mention specific dates when this process could end.

The Automatic Firearms Country Control List defines the countries, which Canada allows its domestic producers to supply weapons to. Currently, there are 35 countries on the list, including Botswana, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Colombia. Ukraine is not on the list so far.

In April 2017, Canadian National Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan stated that opening of the arms market would become the next step in the defense cooperation between Canada and Ukraine.

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One Ukrainian soldier was wounded in the area of conduct of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) in eastern Ukraine in last day.

ATO Headquarters Spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh said this at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. One Ukrainian serviceman was wounded as a result of armed hostilities, he said. According to the ATO Headquarters Spokesman, Russian-backed militants violated ceasefire 27 times in last day. ol
The National Bank of Ukraine cannot recognize cryptocurrency as the currency and warns about the risks of fraud.

Deputy Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine Oleh Churiy said this at the Ukrainian Financial Forum, the Financial Club reports.

"World regulators are not concerned with any threat of cryptocurrency because of small volume. They are concerned only with the fact that people can lose money [investing in cryptocurrency] and become victims of fraud... We can say that it is definitely not a currency as it has no central issuer. We also cannot recognize cryptocurrency as means of payment," Churiy said.

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Canada will always remain a friend of Ukraine and will always help Ukraine defend itself.

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau said this after the talks with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Canada will always remain a friend of Ukraine. I have assured President Poroshenko that Canada will continue to defend Ukraine's sovereignty in the face of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and Moscow's support for the rebels in eastern Ukraine," Trudeau said.

According to him, the main topics of talks between him and Petro Poroshenko were the issues of security and trade.

"Canada and Ukraine share the opinion that the free exchange of goods and services should become the norm in an increasingly connected global economy," the Canadian Prime Minister said.

He added that this motivation triggered the conclusion of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect on August 1 this year.

"Such a progressive trade agreement can really change people's lives. Now it is easier for entrepreneurs to reach new consumers, and it is cheaper for their families to buy from Ukraine. This deal creates a framework that facilitates economic growth for all, not just for the richest 1%," the Head of the Canadian government said.

As the press service of Justin Trudeau reports, Canada intends to examine the possibility of extending CUFTAs coverage to additional areas, such as services and investment under the agreements two-year review clause.

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Accession of the United States to the Normandy format is inexpedient. Germany and France should remain the key participants in the Minsk negotiation process.

United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker said this in an interview with DT.UA news site.

"It is important that Germany and France remain the leading participants in this process. This is convenient. Berlin and Paris use their capabilities within the framework of the Minsk process to discuss specific details: where the ceasefire line should lie; how, where and when heavy weapons should be withdrawn; how to counteract escalation in specific hot spots, etc. These are certainly important things. However, in my opinion, direct participation of the US would not add anything when dealing with these issues," the diplomat said.

In his view, the United States can play an important role in focusing the vision of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the strategic dimension of the problem he faced in Ukraine.

"The US can tell Putin: if you want, we can help; if you do not want to, we can guarantee you will find yourself even in a worse situation," Volker added.

Earlier it was reported that the US Department of State explored the options for joining the Normandy format and negotiations on the implementation of the Minsk agreements with a view to settle the situation in Ukraine.

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Representatives for the Westin Verasa hotel of Napa have submitted an application with the city to expand the downtown resort.

Owner VY Riverfront wants to add a new building with 32 guest rooms to the McKinstry street hotel. The expansion would also include a full-service spa, a roof-top restaurant operated by celebrity chef Ken Frank and 28 more parking spaces in the underground parking garage.

The expansion would be located on a grassy area immediately south of the resort, overlooking Oxbow Commons and the Napa River.

The project could cost between $15 and $20 million, said Troy Crosby, managing director of VY Riverfront.

I think were really creating something special on that side of the river, said Crosby.

Adding a spa and more rooms was always an intended component of the resort, said general manager Don Shindle. Were excited to complete a project that has been a major contributor to downtown.

Flood control construction and the earthquake delayed the resorts expansion plans, Crosby said. Were executing what we originally envisioned.

Occupancy and demand at the hotel has been strong, said Shindle. We felt that it would be appropriate to add an additional number of rooms that will help us, especially with conference and group business, he said.

Spas are important especially for group and conference visitors, said the GM.

When you have spousal programs or leisure programs and people are there for holidays, they want to enjoy that extra day or half day to relax and enjoy the spa. Not having a full service spa onsite creates limitations.

Construction should begin as soon as the city approval process is completed.

Theres no critical timeline for our standpoint, said Shindle. We want to make sure at the end of the day its all done properly and its everything we want it to be.

The Westin Verasa opened in 2008. It currently includes as many as 180 keys.

Owner VY Riverfront bought the adjacent half-acre parcel in 2015 from now-retired Napa Superior Court Judge Raymond Guadagni and his brother Eugene Guadagni.

According to the transfer tax paid, the purchase price was $850,000.

The lot, overlooking the Oxbow Commons area, is vacant. A six-foot high flood wall separates the property from the Napa River.

According to the application, a new full service spa would occupy most of the first level of the addition. The spa would include six new treatment rooms, workout studios, a hair and nail salon, locker rooms, sauna, lounge and juice bar. Three therapeutic spas would anchor the outdoor area. Spa facilities would be open to the public.

Thirty of the 32 new hotel rooms would be built as traditional hotel rooms varying in size from 506 to 718 square feet. The other two rooms would be designed as suites and include small kitchenettes. Those suites are 960 and 1,225 square feet.

The restaurant would be located on the fourth floor and seat an estimated 30 people. It would include a wine library display and a private dining room for approximately 16 people.

A half circle auto court entry would be created off McKinstry Street and in front of the addition, along with a second access point to the expanded garage. All cars are valet parked at the Westin Verasa.

Crosby said there is a need for more hotel rooms in Napa. I think the market can accommodate them, he said. Its common for some visitors to come up to Napa Valley from San Francisco for a day trip, but they dont always stay overnight. More rooms means more people can spend the night in the area, he said.

A spa is something VY Riverfront knew the property needed when it bought the resort from the original developer, Intrawest, in 2010, said Crosby.

Its another amenity our guests demand, especially in a place like Napa, said Crosby. If you look at the successful properties in the valley, thats something that they all share.

More regular hotel rooms will be a welcome addition, Crosby said. When the Verasa was built, most of the units were built as condo hotel units with kitchens or kitchen areas. The resort only has 20 to 40 traditional hotel rooms, depending on if those rooms are adjoined or not.

From a customer perspective it will be great to have additional guest rooms, said Crosby.

Chef Ken Frank, who currently operates the award-winning, Michelin-starred La Toque in the Westin, said the current working title of his proposed new restaurant is Table 14 at La Toque.

It will be a very small restaurant with an extravagant tasting menu of eight to 10 courses, Frank said.

Its something Ive long wanted to do, he said. We can focus on a small number of people without being distracted by other menus we do at the same time.

The La Toque kitchen currently produces several tasting menus, he said. The most expensive tasting menu we have will move upstairs to its own dedicated home to its own dedicated crew.

That tasting menu currently costs $195 or more per person, said Frank.

Tourism remains strong in Napa County, with lodging revenue hitting an all-time high of $408 million  an increase of 7.8 percent  for the 12 months ending June 30, according to Visit Napa Valley.

At the same time, the average daily room rate went up 5.4 percent, from $300 to $316, with occupancy virtually unchanged at 73.3 percent.

The 32 new Westin Verasa rooms will be in addition to other lodging projects either approved, under construction or in the planning stage.

Those include the 183-room Archer Napa, 90-room Cambria Hotel on Soscol Avenue, 148 rooms at a new Wine Train resort hotel and 253 rooms split between a Residence Inn and AC Hotel, near the Meritage Resort in south Napa.

All told, 10 hotel development proposals in varying stages of city review could boost the number of rooms in the city by as many as 1,200 if all were to be approved, financed and built, Rick Tooker, Napas community development director, said earlier this year.

Can the market absorb this? Tooker asked at that time. Historically, that doesnt appear to be an issue for now  but conditions are always changeable.

The city planner assigned to the project, Mike Allen, said he will submit comments on the application within the next 30 days. After internal review by the department, the project will go before the Planning Commission and City Council. Those dates have not yet been announced.
This week on Issues in the News - join moderator David Rennie of The Economist, along with our panelists, Philippe Gelie of Le Figaro and Michael Williams of CBS Radio News as they discuss the week's top stories including President Trump's speech to the U-N General Assembly and the devastating natural disasters that hit the Western Hemisphere in the past few weeks.
Authorities in Somalias semi-autonomous region of Puntland said on Saturday they have seized a boat loaded with weapons, officials told VOA.

We have captured the boat, named Al Faruq, loaded with different weapons, including anti-aircraft machineguns, AK47 rifles, pistols and ammunition, said Mohamed Mohamud Hassan, the acting regional maritime police chief.

Hassan said Puntland police tracked the boat at sea as it tried to escape near Mareero coastal area nine kilometers east of Bosaso, the regions largest port and commercial hub.

The boat off-loaded some of its shipment and speed away when the security forces suspected the activity. The police seized both the weapons on the boat and that offloaded, said Hassan.

Authorities displayed the seized weapons to journalists, saying they are investigating in an effort to determine who sent the shipment where it was destined.

The police are investigating where the shipment came from... and who owned it, and we will issue a statement at a later date, said Hassan.

Local media has quoted other Puntland police officials on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter before the investigation is finished that the small vessel was tracked from Yemen by European maritime forces patrolling off Somalias sea lanes.

Hassan said the boats occupants had fled by the time security forces approached the vessel.

In the past, Puntland security forces have said they captured similar boats coming from Yemen that were carrying heavy weapons destined for the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab rebels. This has raised concern about possible cooperation between the Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Somali Islamist militant group.

The capture of these weapons comes a day after the Somali government repeated its plea for world leaders to lift an international arms embargo.

Delivering his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Somalia Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said his country needs a longstanding weapons embargo fully lifted so the national army can obtain heavy weapons to defeat al-Shabab.

Al-Shabab is behind the spate in recent years of suicide bombings, and attacks on hotels, restaurants and military bases housing African Union troops and the Somali National Army.

In Somalia, we have made significant strides in which we have weakened the capability of al-Shabab. To ensure the sustainability of such gains, we focused on strengthening the military capability of our national security forces. However, the arms embargo imposed against Somalia is a severe limitation toward this objective, Khaire told the U.N. assembly.

Fadumo Yasin contributed this report.
India has stepped up security along its largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using pepper spray and stun grenades to block Rohingya Muslims, who are fleeing violence in their homeland of Myanmar, Indian officials said Saturday.

Border forces, citing security risks, have been authorized to prevent attempts to enter the country.

"We don't want to cause any serious injury or arrest them, but we won't tolerate Rohingya on Indian soil," said a senior official with India's Border Security Force (BSF) in New Delhi.

R.P.S. Jaswal, a deputy inspector general of the BSF, patrolling a large part of the border in the eastern state of West Bengal, said his troops were told to use both what he called "chili spray" and stun grenades to keep Rohingya out of India.

About 40,000 Rohingya refugees who passed through Bangladesh from Myanmar are already inside India. On Thursday, India Home Minister Rajnath Singh called for their deportation as illegal migrants, saying they had not applied for refugee status.

India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the government about the plan to deport Rohingyas. The NHRC says it is assisting Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds because they were being persecuted in Myanmar.
Canada announced Friday that it was imposing sanctions on key figures in the regime of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a statement that the measure was meant to be a clear message that anti-democratic behavior has consequences.

The behavior in question is Maduro's appointment last month of an assembly of loyalists with power to rewrite the constitution and supersede the opposition-controlled National Assembly.

The Canadian sanctions target 40 people involved with Maduro's government, including Maduro himself.

Canada said the targeted officials "played a key role in undermining the security, stability and integrity of democratic institutions of Venezuela."

The sanctions freeze any assets those individuals may have in Canada. Canadian citizens are also banned from doing business with the targeted officials.

The Trump administration has already applied financial sanctions against the country and has not ruled out military intervention. Maduro has blamed Venezuela's financial problems on an alleged "economic war" by domestic opponents and the United States.

Latin American governments have called for negotiations to resolve the Venezuelan crisis through a peaceful transition to democracy, without the use of military force.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo's president told the U.N. General Assembly annual gathering Saturday that his military was fighting terrorists in the center and east of the country.

The fighting in the central Kasai province has displaced more than 1.4 million people. Dozens of mass graves have been uncovered.

President Joseph Kabila blamed the violence on the Kamuina Nsapu militia, who he said was "sowing terror." He is heard here through an interpreter.

"In Kasai, a mystical religious tribal militia is using the civilian population, including children, as a human shield, and has carried out attacks on persons and buildings symbolizing state authority," Kabila said through an interpreter.

In March, U.N. experts Zaida Catalan, a Swede, and American Michael Sharp were slain while investigating human rights abuses in the province. Kabila said he regretted the barbaric killings and they would not go unpunished.

U.N. investigators have said they cannot preclude the involvement of different actors, including state security services, in the crimes.

In the country's volatile east, Kabila said the army had made progress containing rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

Of the country's presidential elections, which were supposed to take place in December, Kabila said DRC was moving toward them.

"This is an irreversible process, and this all is, and should be, taking place without external dictates or interference," he said.

South Sudan's First Vice President Taban Deng Gai also addressed Saturday's session, making little mention of the continuing conflict and hunger afflicting his nation.

"Realization of peace takes time," he said. "Attaining peace in South Sudan is a process; it requires our collective efforts."

He said refugees and the displaced, of which the country has more than 3 million, were gradually returning to their villages. Nearly 4 million South Sudanese are facing severe hunger, but the vice president only alluded to the need for continued support to achieve a hunger-free country.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged her supporters to keep up the momentum in the final hours before Sunday's national election, urging a last push to try to sway undecided voters.

Merkel is seeking a fourth term in office and her conservative bloc of the Christian Democratic Party and Bavarian-only Christian Social union has a healthy lead in the polls. Surveys in the last week show it leading with between 34 to 37 percent support, followed by the Social Democrats with 21 to 22 percent.

Still, the support has been gradually eroding over the past week. Merkel told supporters in Berlin on Saturday that they needed to keep up their efforts to sway undecided voters, saying "many make their decision in the final hours."

After handing out coffee and chatting with the campaign workers in Berlin, Merkel headed north to her own riding, walking through the streets of the city of Stralsund shaking hands, posing for photos and signing autographs.

She also campaigned in the northern city of Greifswald and planned a stop as well on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic.

Her main challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, was in western Germany at a rally in the city of Aachen.

At a rally Friday night in Berlin, Schulz urged Germans not to vote for the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party, known by its German initials AfD, which appears assured of gaining seats in the national parliament for the first time. The nationalist party has 10 to 13 percent support in the polls.

Calling the AfD a "party of agitators" and "the enemies," Schulz said his Social Democrats were the best option to fight them.

"We will defend democracy in Germany," he said.

In addition to the AfD, the Greens, the Free Democratic Party and the Left Party were all poised to enter parliament with poll numbers between 8 and 11 percent.

With the numbers so close, several different coalition government combinations could be possible. Merkel on Friday night told supporters in Munich not to be complacent with her bloc's lead.

"We don't have a single vote to give away," she said. "We can't use any experiments - we need stability and security."
Rescue teams in central Mexico have been working around the clock among the flattened buildings since Tuesday's massive 7.1 magnitude earthquake in search of survivors.

Mexican rescue workers, supported by teams from around the world, including Israel, Japan and the United States, have rescued at least 60 people in Mexico City and surrounding towns.

Authorities have raised the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake to 293, as rescue teams carefully comb through the rubble of Mexicos most deadly earthquake in decades, refusing to give up hope of finding survivors.

National Civil Protection Chief Luis Felipe Puente said more than half the fatalities  155 people  died in the capital, Mexico City. In a tweet Friday, he said the death tolls remained unchanged in other areas, with 73 in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

WATCH: Rescuers Describe Conditions in Mexico

More than three days after the quake, rescuers were now finding more dead bodies than living survivors, but officials said there were signs of life at some sites picked up by dogs and sensors. The Mexican military said 115 people had been pulled alive from the rubble.

President Enrique Pena Nieto has insisted rescue operations will continue. He praised Mexicans' rapid response to the disaster, while stressing the priorities remain saving lives and getting medical attention to those in need.

"I need to recognize the volunteers who are unconditionally helping those who need it," Pena Nieto said.

"Once again, Mexicans have demonstrated that the strength of solidarity is much greater," the president's office posted in a tweet that included a video showing thousands of people involved in relief efforts.

But it was likely the death toll would rise.

In addition to the local response in Mexico City and the states of Morelos, Puebla, Mexico, Guerrero and Oaxaca, help was coming from other nations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development sent a team of more than 60 disaster responders and tools and medical equipment to Mexico City on Thursday.

They'll be working closely with Mexican disaster authorities to help rescue earthquake survivors and assess structures for earthquake damage," USAID Administrator Mark Green said.

While officials remained focused on searching for survivors and caring for those who were injured in the temblor, those whose lives were upended in the quake were wondering what would happen to them.

About 2,000 homes were damaged in the quake. Many are uninhabitable, rendering occupants homeless.

Mexico has set up 50 shelters to house quake survivors, but some people are choosing to sleep in the streets.

WATCH: Rescuers Cling to Hope of Finding Survivors

The quake hit less than two weeks after another temblor killed more than 90 people in the country's south. The U.S. Geological Survey said the two quakes appeared to be unrelated.

The earthquake struck exactly 32 years after an 8.0 temblor killed nearly 10,000 people in and around Mexico City.

Celia Mendoza contributed to this report.
State media says Iran has successfully tested a new, medium-range, ballistic missile that was on display in a military parade Friday.

State television aired footage of the test and in-flight video from the nose cone on Saturday.

It was not clear, however, when and where the test launch of the Khorramshahr missile was conducted. The missile has a range of 2,000 kilometers and has the capacity to carry several warheads.

President Hassan Rouhani said Friday at the military parade that Iran would strengthen its missile program without seeking any country's permission.

Washington is not likely to be pleased with any new missile test.

Iran has entered a deal with six world powers - Russia, China, France, Germany Britain and the U.S. - to limit its nuclear program.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said recently that Iran is "clearly in default"of expectations under its 2015 nuclear accord. .

While international inspectors have found Iran is meeting requirements to limit its nuclear program, Tillerson has said that Iran is violating language about regional peace and security, citing Iran's ballistic missile program and its support for Syria's President Bashar al-Asad.
The latest California Healthy Kids Survey reveals students in Napa County are turning to e-cigarettes more than tobacco cigarettes, and are experiencing noticeable rates of depression or suicidal thoughts.

The survey is given each year to students in grades five, seven, nine and 11 at schools in Napa Valley Unified, Calistoga Joint Unified, Howell Mountain Elementary, and St. Helena Unified school districts.

The Napa County Office of Education said the 2016 Healthy Kids Survey contained some good news, while acknowledging there is still work to be done in other areas of well-being for teens and pre-teens.

The bright spots, according to NCOE, were Napa Valley public schools ranked in the top 10 percent in California for school climate, and students overall reported using alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana less.

In American Canyon, Filipino youth  who make up 35 percent of the ACHS student body  are suffering from more depression, suicidal thoughts, and anxiety than our non-Filipino youth, said Laura Mooiman, project director of the wellness program for NVUSD.

Data from the 2016 survey showed 41 percent of Filipino students said yes to the question: Have you ever felt sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks?

Twenty-eight percent of non-Filipino students answered yes to the same question.

Also, 23 percent of Filipino students said they had seriously considered suicide, compared to 17 percent of non-Filipino students.

And more than half of both groups  62 percent Filipino, 51 percent non-Filipino  said yes to the question: In the past six months, did you feel so nervous, anxious, frightened, or worried that you had difficulty concentrating?

Given these results, Mooiman said the school district is working to add a wellness center at ACHS. For many kids the wellness center is their only source of mental health support, she said.

The school district has established wellness centers at its four middle schools, including American Canyon Middle School.

Although NVUSD is still working on getting grant funding to build a wellness center at ACHS, it already has money from the Napa County Health and Human Services for a school social worker who is developing a wellness program for the school.

The district also hopes to get another grant to hire a part-time community outreach liaison to work specifically with the Filipino community, said Mooiman, who is a licensed clinical social worker.

She said their research has shown Filipino youth accessed mental health services at a significantly lower rate than non-Filipino youth, making an outreach liaison important.

School climate is determined using multiple measures, including those gauging bullying, harassment and perceptions of school safety.

As for the surveys results on drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco cigarettes, they showed:

The percentage of 11th-graders who have ever used alcohol decreased from 66 percent in 2007 to 43 percent in 2016. Also, 32 percent of 11th-graders last year reported using marijuana at some point, down from 41 percent in 2007.

In 2016, only 4 percent of 11th-graders had smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days compared to 17 percent in 2007.

But the survey also found 9 percent of 11th-graders had used e-cigarettes or vape pens in the past 30 days. So had 5 percent of ninth-graders and 2 percent of seventh-graders.

There were also indications of mental health struggles among many students countywide:

35 percent of 11th-graders, 27 percent of ninth-graders and 22 percent of seventh-graders reported chronic sad or hopeless feelings (depression) in the past year.

Seventeen percent of all students surveyed reported serious thoughts of suicide in the past year, which was the same percentage as in 2011.

NCOE also found LGBT youth are at higher risk for reporting sad or hopeless feelings.

Sixty-one percent of LGBT students reported chronic sadness or hopeless feelings, and 47 percent said they seriously considered suicide in the past year.
The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, Massoud Barzani, said Monday's referendum on independence would not result in an immediate change, but instead would trigger talks with Baghdad about an independent future.

Barzani told VOA's Persian service that following the referendum  which has widespread support among Iraqi Kurds  the Kurdish government would begin discussions with Iraqi officials on such issues as border demarcation, division of natural resources and a timeline for declaring independence. Barzani estimated the transition time would be one to two years.

Barzani said the Kurdish forces known as Peshmerga, who are collaborating with Iraqi forces against Islamic State militants, would continue their work, in what he called "the same epic battle as before." He said there was "no truth" to the American objection that Kurdish independence would damage the fight to eradicate IS.

On Friday, a senior Kurdish official said that the referendum would go ahead Monday, unless the regional government was offered a strong package of guarantees on its future self-determination.

Solid guarantees

"The leadership in Kurdistan and the people of Kurdistan need a strong package," Falah Mustafa, foreign policy chief of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told VOA in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Such a package would guarantee that after a one- or two-year delay, the international community would recognize Kurdistan's right to self-determination and "accept the will of the people of Kurdistan and the outcome of the referendum," he said.

Mustafa said a strong package would provide a clear guarantee on the future of Kurdistan and "not a return to the same old formula that we have suffered from in Iraq."

The Trump administration is firmly against the referendum and has tried to deter the Kurds from holding it, warning it could have "serious consequences."

"I remain hopeful that there is a very good package on the table in which an alternative might actually be the better path for all sides, but again, we will see," special U.S. presidential envoy Brett McGurk told reporters Friday in New York.

Mustafa said the Kurdish leadership was very seriously considering the U.S. package and that a delegation would travel to Baghdad on Saturday to see whether any agreement was possible.

The U.N. secretary-general, Security Council and many world leaders have also expressed concern that the time is not right for the Kurds to seek statehood, warning it could lead to more instability in an already volatile region.

Neighboring Turkey, which has a large, active Kurdish population, has threatened sanctions, and in a show of force it is holding military drills near the border with Kurdistan. Iran has also said it would consider countermeasures.

'Disappointed'

"We are disappointed at the reaction of the international community," Mustafa said, adding that the Kurds have earned their right to be a recognized nation.

"We have shown the international community that we are a partner for peace; we have been a great partner in the fight against ISIS; we have been a great partner in hosting refugees and IDPS [internally displaced persons]; and in the protection of minorities. Where does that stand now?" he asked.

"This referendum is not to declare independence the day after," Mustafa emphasized. "We understand the complexities. Therefore, we say that this is beginning of a process  a process of serious and meaningful negotiation with Baghdad in order to address all issues so we end it peacefully."

There is tremendous support for the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, and nearly 1 million people are registered to vote. There have been huge rallies leading up to the ballot, including one Friday night that local media reported drew a crowd of 40,000.

VOA Persian service's Ali Javanmardi in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.
A senior Kurdish official said Friday that the referendum on independence from Iraq would go ahead Monday unless the regional government was offered a strong package of guarantees on its future self-determination.

The leadership in Kurdistan and the people of Kurdistan need a strong package, Falah Mustafa, the foreign policy chief of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told VOA in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Such a package "would guarantee us [that] if we delay it for one or two years," the international community would then "recognize the right to self-determination and also accept the will of the people of Kurdistan and the outcome of the referendum, he said.

WATCH: Kurds in Iraq Rally Ahead of Independence Vote

Mustafa said a strong package means a clear guarantee for the future of Kurdistan and not a return to the same old formula that we have suffered from in Iraq.

U.S. against referendum

The Trump administration is firmly against the planned referendum and has tried to deter the Kurds from holding it, warning it could have serious consequences.

I remain hopeful that there is a very good package on the table in which an alternative might actually be the better path for all sides, but again, we will see, special U.S. presidential envoy Brett McGurk told reporters Friday in New York.

Mustafa said the Kurdish leadership is very seriously considering the U.S. package and that a delegation would travel to Baghdad on Saturday to see if any agreement is possible.

The U.N. secretary-general, Security Council and many world leaders have also expressed concern that the time is not right for the Kurds to seek statehood, warning it could lead to more instability in an already volatile region.

Turkey holds military drills

Neighboring Turkey, which has a large, active Kurdish population, has threatened sanctions, and in a show of force is holding military drills near the border with Kurdistan. Iran has also said it would consider countermeasures.

We are disappointed at the reaction of the international community, Mustafa said, adding that the Kurds have earned their right to be a recognized nation.

We have shown the international community that we are a partner for peace; we have been a great partner in the fight against ISIS; we have been a great partner in hosting refugees and IDPS [internally displaced persons]; and in the protection of minorities. Where does that stand now? he asked.

This referendum is not to declare independence the day after, Mustafa emphasized. We understand the complexities. Therefore, we say that this is the beginning of a process  a process of serious and meaningful negotiation with Baghdad in order to address all issues so we end it peacefully.

There is tremendous support for the referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, and nearly a million people are registered to vote. There have been huge rallies leading up to the ballot, including one Friday night that local media reported drew a crowd of 40,000.

IN PHOTOS: Huge Rally for Iraqi Kurdish Independence Vote
There were some verbal fireworks at the U.N. General Assembly Saturday as the foreign minister of North Korea responded to President Donald Trump and a senior Indian official lashed out at Pakistan.

One of the most anticipated speeches of the week was North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho.

He did not disappoint.

Ri called Trump a mentally deranged person full of megalomania who is on a suicide mission of his own, and peppered his 22-minute address with other choice words and insults. Delegates audibly applauded at the end.

In his speech Tuesday, the U.S. president called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket Man and said he was on a suicide mission with his nuclear program.



Ri wasnt the only one who used the podium to level a verbal attack on an adversary.



Indias foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, began with the spiritual greeting of Namaste and then launched into a vocal takedown of neighbor and rival Pakistan.



Why is it that today India is recognized as IT [technology] superpower in the world and Pakistan is recognized only as the preeminent export factory of terror? Swaraj asked.



What has Pakistan offered to the world, and indeed to its own people, apart from terrorism? she added.



We produced scholars, doctors, engineers. What have you produced? the minister continued. You have produced terrorists. Doctors save people from death; terrorists send them to death.



Conflicts



Syrias deputy foreign minister Walid Mouallem touted his militarys recent advances in that countys civil war, which is in its seventh year.

The liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra, the lifting of the siege of Deir el-Zour, and the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria, prove that victory is now within reach, Mouallem said.

He also criticized Turkey and the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition for pursuing what he called aggressive polices against the Syrian people. Adding that their agendas were in stark contrast to positive role played by Russia and Iran.

Iraq's Foreign minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari expressed Baghdad's opposition to Monday's planned Kurdish referendum on independence from Iraq.

"Between the federal government and regional government of Kurdistan, we have not accepted the constitutional decision adopted by the Iraqi Kurdistan region and we will not abandon the constitution," he said.

Saudi foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir condemned the Myanmar authorities policy of discrimination and their military campaign against Rohingya Muslims. He said Saudi Arabia has provided $15 million so far to assist the displaced with humanitarian aid.



The U.N. said Friday that 429,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since violence erupted there on August 25.



Of the Saudi-led war in Yemen on Houthi rebels after they tried to oust the government, he said it was not a choice for the kingdom.



Our coalition is helping the legal government of Yemen to save the Yemeni people and to recover its state, Jubeir said. He said Riyadh supports a political solution to the more than two-year-old conflict.

But he did not address international concerns that the coalition was causing scores of civilian casualties and bombing hospitals and schools.

While President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo said his military is fighting terrorists in the center and east of the country.

Human rights groups and other monitors say a year of fighting between government forces and militant groups has led to scores of civilian deaths and unimaginable suffering. Over 1.4 million people have been displaced in the central Kasai provinces alone.

The annual gathering of leaders will wrap up on Monday.
The division of the Indian subcontinent by British rulers into two countries 70 years ago led to the largest mass migration in modern history, with more than 12 million people displaced and half a million killed. Hindus and Sikhs crossed into India, and Muslims to Pakistan after independence in 1947. The first museum to record the traumatic legacy has opened in Amritsar city in Punjab the northern state torn by the worst sectarian violence during partition. Anjana Pasricha reports.
A powerful aftershock rocked Mexico on Saturday, triggering new alarms in a country struggling to recover from two recent quakes that together killed nearly 400 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the Saturday's quake had a magnitude of 6.1 and was centered in the southern state of Oaxaca, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) southeast of Mexico City, which was still reeling from Tuesday's 7.1 magnitude quake that killed at least 300 people. Three people died during Saturday's tremor.

WATCH: Rescue work continues at quake-damaged building

Officials said Saturday's quake was felt in Mexico City, swaying buildings in the capital. It was not immediately clear whether it caused damage, injuries or deaths.

Mexico's disaster agency said Saturday's quake was an aftershock of the 8.1 quake that hit Mexico's southern coast Sept. 7, killing nearly 100 people.

The Popocatepetl volcano, which is south of Mexico City but can be seen from there on a clear day, sent a column of ash into the sky, capping an intense period of seismic activity.

Rescue workers continued to search through rubble from Tuesday's quake, but were forced to suspend some rescue efforts by the shaking Saturday, according to Mexico's civil protection agency.

The crews, supported by teams from nations around the world, including Israel, Japan and the United States, have rescued at least 60 people in Mexico City and surrounding towns.

On Thursday, the U.S. Agency for International Development sent more than 60 disaster responders and tools and medical equipment to Mexico City.

As of Friday, rescuers were finding more bodies than living survivors, but officials said there were signs of life at some sites picked up by dogs and sensors. The Mexican military said 115 people had been pulled alive from the rubble.

President Enrique Pena Nieto insisted rescue operations would continue. He praised Mexicans' rapid response to the disaster, while stressing the priorities remained saving lives and getting medical attention to those in need.

"I need to recognize the volunteers who are unconditionally helping those who need it," Pena Nieto said.

National Civil Protection Chief Luis Felipe Puente said 155 of the fatalities had occurred in Mexico City. In a tweet Friday, he said the death tolls remained unchanged in other areas, with 73 in the state of Morelos, 45 in Puebla, 13 in Mexico state, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

While officials remained focused on searching for survivors and caring for those who were injured in Tuesday's temblor, those whose lives were upended were wondering what would happen to them.

About 2,000 homes were damaged in the quake. Many were rendered uninhabitable.

Mexico set up 50 shelters to house quake survivors, but some people were choosing to sleep in the streets, fearing more aftershocks.
North Koreas foreign minister brought a dictionary full of insults for U.S. President Donald Trump when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday.

Ri Yong Ho said he needed to respond to Trump, who on Tuesday called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket Man and said he was on a suicide mission with his nuclear program.

Ri called Trump a mentally deranged person full of megalomania who is on a suicide mission of his own.

Saturday on Twitter, Trump said that Ri and Kim wont be around much longer if Ri echoed the thoughts of Little Rocket Man, a reference to Kim.

Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they wont be around much longer! Trump tweeted.

Trump and Kim have traded increasingly threatening and personal insults as Pyongyang races towards its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States, something Trump has vowed to prevent.

WATCH: North Korea's foreign minister speaks at UNGA

In case innocent lives of the U.S. are lost because of this suicide attack, Trump will be held totally responsible, Ri said, in response to the U.S. presidents threat to totally destroy North Korea if it attacks the United States or one of its allies.

During his eight months in power, he has turned the White House into a noisy marketing place full of crackling sounds of abacus beads, and now he has tried to turn the U.N. arena into a gangsters nest where money is respected and bloodshed is the order of the day, Ri said, in an apparent criticism of Trumps billionaire businessman roots.

Sees itself as victim

Ri sought to portray his country as the victim of U.S. threats and aggression. He condemned earlier remarks by President Trump in which he promised fire and fury like the world has never seen after North Korea threatened to fire missiles at the U.S. island territory of Guam in August.

What else could be a bigger threat than the violent remarks  coming from the top authority of the worlds biggest nuclear power? Ri asked.

The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the U.S., he said, using the acronym for the countrys formal name.

But he appeared to almost mock Washington for saying that it hopes not to have to use a military option.

Although they talk about fire and fury, total destruction and whatever, every time they have to add various conditions such as, hopefully this will not be necessary, that is not our first option and so on, Ri said.

Ri also lashed out at Japan and South Korea, calling them stooges of Washington.

On September 3, Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test to date. The regime said it was the successful launch of a hydrogen bomb mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile. The foreign minister waxed poetic about it to the General Assembly.

The ICBM marked with sacred name of DPRK flew over the universe above the endless blue sky, the warhead of our rocket left its trace on the blue waves of the Pacific Ocean and the tremendous explosion and vibration of the hydrogen bomb were recorded by this planet, Ri said.

Unusual seismic activity

On Saturday, just hours before Ris address, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) recorded unusual seismic activity near a previous North Korean nuclear test site.

The organizations director, Lassina Zerbo, said on Twitter that the initial assessment is that it was related to geological stress from the blasts that resulted from the September 3 underground nuclear test. A tunnel collapsed in the aftermath of the test.

Following his speech, Ri was met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

In a readout from the meeting, the U.N. chief expressed concern over the tensions on the Korean Peninsula and appealed for de-escalation and full implementation of relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions. Guterres also underscored the need for a political solution to the situation.
Puerto Rico's governor met Saturday with mayors from around the U.S. island territory ravaged this week by Hurricane Maria and discussed urgent needs of their communities, some of which are still threatened by a failing dam.

Governor Ricardo Rossello said Saturday on Twitter that he had seen the damage to the Guajataca Dam, which was overwhelmed by floodwaters after Maria's onslaught. He tweeted, "We reinforce our request that people leave the area as soon as possible."

Tens of thousands of people were evacuating from the river valley below the dam in the island's northwest, urged to do so by the National Weather Service office in San Juan:

"Stay away or be swept away," the weather service added.

Meanwhile, the island was without power, except for generators, and phone service was spotty, as officials struggled to provide food and water to those affected by the worst storm to hit the island of 3.4 million in nearly a century.

Jose Sanchez Gonzalez, the mayor of Manati, a north coastal town, said his community needed basic supplies such as water, ice and gas immediately. He said the local hospital was at capacity.

Other officials said the lack of communications and services meant they still had yet to make contact with more than half the towns on the devastated island.

Rossello said Friday that authorities already had rescued nearly 700 people from the flooding. The death toll was still unclear; earlier reports had it at 13, but the governor said communications problems across the island were hampering efforts to clarify the number.

In the latest report, there were six confirmed deaths, with that number expected to rise as communities re-established contact with one another.

In addition to Puerto Rico, the storm lashed other Caribbean islands. Fourteen people were reported dead on Dominica, which has a population of about 71,000. Three deaths were reported in Haiti, two deaths in the French territory of Guadeloupe and one in the Dominican Republic.

On Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Maria was still a Category 3 storm, but its winds had decreased to 185 kph (115 mph). The storm was not expected to make landfall along the U.S. East Coast, but the system was causing dangerous surf and rip currents along the southeastern coast.

The center said a "gradual weakening should begin on Sunday."

Forecasters said storm conditions should subside Saturday over portions of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas.

The U.S. hurricane center said tropical storm conditions were expected in portions of the central Bahamas on Saturday.
The U.S. city of San Francisco has unveiled a new statue to honor Asian women during World War II who were forced to work in brothels run by the Japanese Imperial Army.

The statue of Asias comfort women is the latest of dozens of such statues worldwide, but the first in a major U.S. city, and has provoked opposition from some in the Japanese community.

San Franciscos Korean, Chinese and Filipino communities established the memorial, which was dedicated Friday in the citys Chinatown district.

Eighty-nine-year-old former comfort woman Yongsoo Lee came from South Korea for the ceremony and said she would continue to campaign for such statues until there is one in Japans capital.

Japanese officials have long pushed back against the creation of such statues, the first of which appeared outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul in 2011.

U.S. media reports say the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco tried to block the installation of the latest statue. Other statues in the U.S. have also provoked controversy, including a recent lawsuit seeking the removal of a comfort-women statue in Glendale, California, that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court in March declined to hear the case, and the statue remains in place.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the sculptor of the San Francisco statue, Steven Whyte, who was selected by the San Francisco Arts Commission, received more than 1,000 angry emails and phone calls demanding he stop work on the project.

Whytes 10-foot statue, Womens Column of Strength, depicts three girls  one Chinese, one Korean and one Filipina  standing on top of a pedestal, holding hands. On the ground below them stands a grandmother, which symbolizes survivors still hoping for justice.

Historians say that as many as 200,000 women and girls from countries that Japan occupied, including Korea, China and the Philippines, were forced to work in brothels run by the Japanese military. Survivors began to speak publicity about their experiences only in the 1990s.

Proponents of the statues say the memorials help people remember the victims, who have mostly been forgotten. Those in the Japanese community who oppose the statues say they single out Japan for wartime atrocities that were also committed by other countries.

Japan reached an agreement with South Korea in 2015 to pay reparations to surviving South Korean victims.
The Somali government has repeated its plea for world leaders to lift an international arms embargo, as the aid-dependent Horn of Africa nation continues to struggle with security threats from al-Shabab terrorist group.

Delivering his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Somalia Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire praised his countrys political and security development with the help of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM.

In Somalia, we have made significant strides, in which we have weakened the capability of al-Shabab, Khaire said.

The prime minister said his country needs a longstanding weapons embargo fully lifted so the national army can obtain heavy weapons to defeat al-Shabab, an Islamist militant group affiliated to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab is behind the suicide bombings and attacks on hotels and restaurants as well as military bases for African Union troops and the Somali National Army.

To ensure the sustainability of such gains, we focused on strengthening the military capability of our national security forces, however, the arms embargo imposed against Somalia is a severe limitation towards this objective, Khaire told the U.N. assembly.

He said his government is prepared to work with the world body and its partners toward a roadmap on lifting the arms embargo.

Limit influence of terror groups

Khaire urged global leaders to spare no effort to neutralize the growth and influence of international terrorist groups.

The prime minister also said his country needs debt relief to improve initiatives for gender empowerment, respect for human rights and education. Such a move will help Somalia recover after living without a properly functioning central government for more than a quarter century.

In his address to the U.N. body, Khaire also underscored the need to ensure continuous and predictable funding for the AMISOM, which is supporting his country by helping to keep al-Shabab militants at bay.

Among the international issues Khaire raised in his speech was mitigating the impact of global climate change and the need for reforms at the United Nations.

UN call for support

The Somali government appeal for the lifting of its arms embargo comes nearly two weeks after the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in the country, known as UNSOM, called for practical support and political encouragement to the Somali leadership.

Briefing the U.N. Security Council Sept. 13, Michael Keating, the special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Somalia, said Mogadishu was safer, but the larger security situation was volatile because al-Shabab terrorist groups remain a potent threat.

Somalia came under the U.N. arms embargo shortly after the nation plunged into civil war in 1992. The aim was to cut the flow of weapons to feuding clan warlords, who a year earlier had ousted military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

In 2013, the U.N. Security Council partially lifted the embargo for one year, allowing the weak Somali government, endangered by armed extremists, to buy light weapons to strengthen its security forces and assert its control beyond Mogadishu.
Taliban insurgents ambushed and assassinated a district police head and his three bodyguards late Saturday in southern Afghanistan, while a separate attack in the southeast of the country killed at least five members of the government forces.

Omar Jan Haqmal, the police chief of the Nad Ali district, was traveling to Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, when he came under attack.

Some reports quoted provincial officials as saying the slain officer was on a routine patrol.

A Taliban spokesman claimed his group plotted the deadly attack.

Haqmal was the fourth high-profile security chief to have been killed by insurgents in Afghanistan in about a month, underscoring the high casualties being inflicted on Afghan forces.

On Thursday, a roadside bomb killed the police chief of the Jaghatu district in southeastern Ghazni province.

The slain officer had just taken over from his predecessor, who was also assassinated in a similar attack. Taliban insurgents had also ambushed and assassinated their predecessor.

Separately, officials confirmed Saturday that scores of Taliban fighters staged a surprise predawn assault on security outposts in the Qarabagh district in Ghazni.

A provincial government spokesman, Mohammed Arif Noori, told VOA that attackers had killed five policemen and wounded eight others. He added that reinforcements from the provincial capital enabled Afghan forces to push back the assailants.

Heavy casualties

Intensified insurgent attacks this year have inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan security forces, though neither interior nor defense ministry officials have released casualty figures.

According to the U.S. military, a record 6,300 security personnel were killed and more than 12,000 were wounded in 2016.

The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in a report released this week, blamed flawed U.S. planning, training and oversight for the inability of Afghan forces to secure their country.

Afghan National Defense and Security Forces continue to suffer heavy casualties and struggle with terrorism as well as a resilient Taliban insurgency because the $70 billion U.S. security assistance program has suffered from serious problems over the past 16 years, many of which still persist, SIGAR said.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently unveiled a revised strategy for the Afghan war, the longest military engagement in U.S. history, hoping a modest troop surge to enhance training for local forces would help break the military stalemate with Taliban militants.

The Taliban has extended its control or influence to more than 40 percent of Afghanistan since the withdrawal of U.S.-led international combat forces in 2014.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government forces have been killing civilians in an insurgency-hit region, prompting the latest influx of refugees into northern Zambia, a senior U.N. official said, citing accounts of asylum seekers.

Zambia fears a looming humanitarian crisis after more than 6,000 refugees fleeing turmoil in the DRC entered its territory in one month.

Pierrine Aylara, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chief representative in Zambia, told Reuters that the latest asylum seekers had said they were fleeing Congolese government forces.

It is the government of the DRC that is said to be persecuting its own people by killing, maiming and torching houses, as well as committing rape and looting food stored in granaries, Aylara said.

Thousands dead, million flee

Thousands of people have been killed and more than 1 million forced to flee their homes in the DRCs eastern Kasai region since the start of an insurrection nearly a year ago by the Kamuina Nsapu militia. Kamuina Nsapu is demanding the withdrawal of military forces from Kasai.

But U.N. monitors noted in a report that the conflict has shifted away from an insurrection of a specific community toward a wider upheaval far beyond its initial confines.

A rebel group known as Elema was fighting the government mainly with machetes, bows and arrows in Congos Haut Katanga and Tanganyika provinces, Aylara said.

The group is not targeting civilians and aims to protect them, but is rather targeting government soldiers, the police as well as government establishments, she said.

Threat to Kabila

The insurgency poses the worst threat yet to the rule of DRC President Joseph Kabila. His refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December prompted a wave of killings and lawlessness across the vast central African nation.

In turn, government soldiers have become increasingly brutal to the civilian population as they are unable to tell who does and does not belong to this (rebel) group, Aylara said.

DRC government forces were fighting alongside a tribe known as the Abatembo and targeting the Luba and Tabwa tribes who were believed to be sympathetic to the Elema rebels, she said.

Southern African leaders plan to appoint a retired African president to oversee a process aimed at bringing about free and all-inclusive elections in the DRC to help heal the tensions that have caused internal strife and the refugee crisis.


U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Senator John McCain at a political rally in Alabama Friday for opposing the Republican party's latest attempt to repeal the nation's health care law.

Speaking at a campaign event for Republican Senator Luther Strange, Trump said McCain's opposition was "sad" and "a horrible, horrible thing."

"It's a little tougher without McCain's vote," Trump said, but added, "We are going to do it eventually."

Trump continued to lash out at the senator from Arizona in a series of tweets Saturday morning, one of which said:

"John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!"



McCain announced his opposition Friday to Republicans' last-ditch attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, former President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement.

The 81-year-old senator, who is fighting brain cancer, said he could not "in good conscience" vote for the measure, which would repeal major parts of the law and replace them with block grants to the states to tailor their own health care programs.

McCain's opposition deals a likely death blows to the bill and to years of Republican efforts to repeal and replace the law.

Many large medical organizations and a bipartisan group of governors are also opposed to the measure, maintaining that millions of people would lose insurance altogether or have their coverage reduced.

Trump appeared at Strange's campaign rally after endorsing him last month. Strange is competing against opponent Roy Moore in a special runoff election to fill the Senate seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became attorney general.

Strange was appointed to the seat when Sessions left, but he must win the special election September 26 to keep it for a full term.

The president said Friday his support of Strange has bolstered his candidacy, but predicted on Twitter the race will be close.

Despite the president's support, Moore, a former Alabama chief justice who was twice removed from the bench for disobeying judicial orders, has maintained a lead in the polls. He is campaigning on an anti-Washington platform and is known for unsuccessfully pushing for the public display of the Ten Commandments and opposing gay marriage.

During a debate Thursday night, Strange emphasized "the president supports me," while Moore argued that Strange supporter Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and other members of the "elite Washington establishment" were trying to influence the race.

A super political action committee linked to McConnell has injected millions of dollars into the race amid Republican concern Moore would be a disruptive force in the Senate, or possibly lose to Democrat Doug Jones.

Moore also has high-profile support, led by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and his conservative website Brietbart News. Additionally, Moore has the backing of former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

While Trump claims his support of Strange has narrowed Moore's lead in the polls, the latest Real Clear Politics polling average completed on September 17 shows Moore with a nearly 9-point lead.

Moore led Strange in the first round of Republican voting, although the margin was not wide enough to avoid a runoff election, which will be held next Tuesday.

Some political observers say the runoff will be an early test of Trump's influence over his political base. Republican leaders are concerned about the impact a loss by Strange could have on Trump's political strength ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections, as well as Republicans' ability to advance Trump's agenda in Congress.
Turkey's government will never accept a separate Kurdish state in neighboring Iraq and won't refrain from taking steps to prevent it, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday.

Yildirim said Monday's independence vote by Iraqi Kurds is an issue of Turkey's national security.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chaired a meeting Friday of Turkey's National Security Council, which called for the referendum to be canceled. Erdogan branded the vote as "illegal and unacceptable." He said Turkey reserved its rights under international and bilateral agreements to act against it.

Ankara fears such a referendum could fuel secessionist demands within its own large restive Kurdish minority.

The security council meeting gave no further details on possible sanctions against the Iraqi Kurds if the vote takes place; however, Turkish armed forces are continuing to hold military exercises on the Iraqi Kurdish border.

Yildirim called it a calamity that the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk was included in the independence vote. Kirkuk is considered by many Kurds as their symbolic capital, but the city has large populations of ethnic Turks and Arabs, along with Kurds. Ankara previously has vowed to protect the interests of ethnic Turks, especially if violence follows the vote.
Wisconsin, Ohio and several other states said on Friday they were among 21 states that Russian government hackers targeted in an effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump though no votes were changed.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it had notified the states of the activity but declined to identify them. Russia has denied election meddling, and President Trump has denied any collusion with Russia.

Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Texas and Washington state also confirmed they were targeted by Russian hackers but said they were not successful.

There remains no evidence that the Russians altered one vote or changed one registration, said Judd Choate, president of the U.S. National Association of State Election Directors.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said Homeland Security told the states that Russian government cyber actors targeted state voter registration systems.



DHS officials have said that in most of the 21 states only preliminary activity was observed from hackers and a small number of networks were compromised. Some states had complained in June they had no idea if Russians had attempted to infiltrate their systems.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Kremlin orchestrated an operation that included hacking and online propaganda intended to help Trump win, Reuters reported in August.

Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who co-chairs the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, said Friday in a statement it is unacceptable that it took almost a year after the election to notify states that their elections systems were targeted.

He said officials must inform states of attempts to enter election systems just as any homeowner would expect the alarm company to inform them of all break-in attempts, even if the burglar doesn't actually get inside the house.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said DHS told it that its systems were scanned in the weeks before the 2016 election. A scan is similar to burglars jiggling the doors of a house and moving on when they realize the doors are locked, the state said.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said entities at the Russian government's behest scanned the state's system for vulnerabilities but did not breach the system.

A spokesman for Connecticut's secretary of state said Russian intruders were detected and blocked.

Washington state's top election official, Kim Wyman, said the state learned in 2016 of attempted intrusions from Russian internet addresses and immediately alerted the FBI.

Arizona and Illinois confirmed last year that hackers had targeted their voter registration systems, but Wisconsin said in recent months it had no idea if it was targeted.

Homeland Security told Wisconsin that the Russian government tested election systems for vulnerabilities in hopes of accessing voter registration databases but was unsuccessful, Haas said.

Wisconsin was one of a handful of battleground Midwestern states that helped Trump win the presidency over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump carried the state by 22,748 votes, or about 0.8 of a percentage point. Many of the other states were not seriously in contention in the 2016 race.

Several congressional committees are investigating and special counsel Robert Mueller is leading a separate probe into the Russia matter, including whether Moscow colluded with the Trump campaign.

DHS spokesman Scott McConnell said in a statement the government believes officials should be kept informed about cybersecurity risks to election infrastructure but also wants to protect the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners.
African National Congress (ANC) MP Makhosi Khoza, a strident critic of scandal-plagued President Jacob Zuma, quit South Africa's ruling party on Thursday, labelling Nelson Mandela's 105-year-old liberation movement "alien and corrupt."



The 47-year-old Zulu linguistics expert, an ANC supporter since the age of 12, denounced Zuma in July as a "dishonorable and disgraceful leader" due to the litany of scandals he has attracted during his eight years in power.



Her comments earned her death threats and a provincial party disciplinary hearing, but Khoza said she was not prepared to sit around and wait for the verdict from a party she said was willfully blind to the failings of its leader.



"Why haven't we charged Zuma? Why are we charging Makhosi Khoza? We are making a mockery of the rule of law. We are making a mockery of the ANC constitution," she said in an interview on

the SABC, the state broadcaster.



"Charge Zuma. Fire Zuma from the ANC, then I will know that you are serious about self-correcting."



Khoza is believed to have been one of around 30 ANC members of parliament who voted against Zuma in an ultimately unsuccessful Aug. 8 parliamentary no-confidence vote conducted by secret ballot.



ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa did not answer calls to his mobile phone.



The most serious allegations against Zuma relate to his friendship with the Guptas, a family of Indian-born businessmen accused of using political influence to secure lucrative contracts with state-run companies and remain above the law.



Zuma and the Guptas, who employ Zuma's son, Duduzane, as a director of at least one of their companies, have denied any wrongdoing and say they are the victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt.



Rule of law suspended?



Zuma's time at the helm of the ANC comes to an end in December when the party chooses a new leader, although he will remain head of state until 2019 unless the ANC removes him early, as it did with President Thabo Mbeki in 2008.



As Khoza fulminated on air, Zuma's former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was sworn in behind closed doors as a member of parliament, cementing the belief she is his preferred successor against challengers led by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.



The parliamentary seat gives Dlamini-Zuma, ex-chairwoman of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, a platform from which to raise her profile ahead of December's party leadership conference.



Separately, the Pretoria High Court delivered a blow to the Gupta's media-to-mining commercial empire, throwing out its attempt to block India's Bank of Baroda, the last bank in South Africa prepared to handle its money, from pulling the plug.



Judge Hans Fabricius dedicated eight pages of his verdict to the allegations against the Guptas, questioning why police and prosecutors had failed to act despite years of stunning media revelations and numerous formal criminal complaints.



"I could not help wonder whether, unbeknown to me, democracy and the rule of law had somehow been suspended," he said, lamenting the decline from the optimism and idealism of the self-styled "Rainbow Nation" immediately after apartheid ended.



"Could it be possible that the future, so bright in 1994, was now only history?" he continued. "Do the various investigating bodies of the police service ... still remember their constitutional duty to combat and investigate crime?"



Gary Naidoo, editor of the Gupta-owned New Age newspaper and the family's de facto spokesman, was not available for comment.



Reporting by Ed Cropley and Nqobile Dludla; editing by Andrew Roche
The June 2017 elections were supposed to soothe the troubled politics of Lesotho, a tiny enclave surrounded on all sides by South Africa. It was the third poll in five years, after two successive coalitions collapsed amid vicious infighting and meddling from the army.

The third time was supposed to be the charm, as incoming prime minister Tom Thabane promised to swiftly enact reforms to loosen the military's stranglehold on politics.

But last week's killing of the army chief by two of his subordinates has raised concerns that more instability is ahead. The recent arrest of a journalist who criticized the government and the shutdown of his radio station has made the situation more dire, critics of the government say.

'Reign of terror'

Among those with high hopes for the new government were those who were voted out.

But in the past three months, says opposition politician Tlohang Sekhamane, the nation has fallen "under the reign of terror, and is fast degenerating into a dark political abyss of fear and consternation."

In an eight-page statement sent to VOA, the opposition documents a litany of worrying events, including police targeting residents thought to be opposition supporters; a brutal assault on a police spokeswoman by colleagues after she spoke about an investigation into the shooting death of the prime minister's estranged wife; and the arrest, alleged torture, and subsequent flight of an opposition lawmaker.

The nation's communication minister confirmed the lawmaker's August arrest, but said he was called in as a person of interest in a murder case, and was treated well while in custody.

Multiple attempts to reach the minister regarding the other allegations were not successful.

"We are literally under the reign of terror now," Sekhamane said to VOA. "The police can seize anybody, doesn't matter how very high-placed they were, a person at the level of minister can be taken, instructed to come to the police, and they do that, and then they can be tortured for three days, and then also over the weekend, and then they are forced to say certain things."

Rights watchdog Amnesty International says it is also worried about recent events in Lesotho.

"Really what we're seeing is patterns of arbitrary arrest, we're seeing allegations of torture and other ill treatment, we're seeing a lack of progress into criminal investigations for unlawful killings, and we're also seeing attacks on freedom of expression in Lesotho," said researcher Shireen Mukadam.

Why now?

Sekhamane says the opposition waited for months to speak up about their concerns. They were determined not do anything, he says, that could be "interpreted as an attempt on our path to destabilize the government or to make things difficult for the government."

"We were determined to leave this government to proceed, and govern this country for five years," he added.

Now, the opposition and rights groups are calling on the international community and on the Southern African Development Community, to assist in restoring the rule of law.

The Southern African Development Community has made numerous attempts at mediation in Lesotho, which has a history of military coups. Heads of state met over the weekend in South Africa to discuss the issue.

The SADC nations' frustration was clear, with host President Jacob Zuma saying, "We cannot, and shall not, be in Lesotho forever."
Ugandan police on Thursday fired tear gas to disperse protesters opposed to plans to introduce legislation that could allow the longtime president to rule for life.

The bill is likely to be introduced in the national assembly later Thursday despite growing opposition from religious leaders, civic groups and opposition leaders.

Ugandan police had warned on Wednesday that no protests - in support of or against the president - would be allowed. But some opposition figures have vowed to mobilize mass support against a bill they believe is intended to enable President Yoweri Museveni to remain in power for the rest of his life despite having already ruled the East African country for more than three decades.

Ugandas constitution bars anyone over the age of 75 from seeking the presidency. Museveni is 73 and ineligible to run again in 2021 if the age hurdle remains.

His critics accuse him of using the security forces to harass the opposition, but Musevenis supporters say he enjoys wide support across the country.

On Thursday, amid heavy police and military deployment across the normally calm capital Kampala, police fired tear gas at Makerere University students who were planning to stage a walk to the precincts of parliament.

Ugandan police also besieged the offices of two NGOs that the authorities accuse of supporting anti-government protests. ActionAid and the Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies are suspected of receiving funding from unnamed sources to incite protests against the government, said police spokesman Asan Kasingye.

Police are searching the offices of the NGOs for incriminating evidence, he said Thursday.

It was not immediately possible to get a comment from the NGOs.

Musevenis party has an overwhelming majority in the national assembly - the reason legislation to remove the age limit is expected to pass when the procedural process starts.

Museveni, a U.S. ally on regional security over the years, took power by force 1986 following a bush war. He won re-election last year in a poll marred by allegations of vote fraud and intimidation by the security forces.

Although Museveni has warned in the past that Africas problem was leaders who want to overstay in power, he has since said he was speaking about leaders who are not elected.
Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and Ivanka Trump arrive with President Trump at Bismarck Municipal Airport in Bismarck, N.D., on September 6, 2017. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin flew on a government jet from New York City to Washington following a news conference with President Trump last month at Trump Tower, according to a Treasury investigator now reviewing the trip.

The flight, first reported by ABC, joins a series of expensive taxpayer-funded trips taken by Trump's Cabinet secretaries, which critics have slammed as a waste of public funds.

Mnuchin flew to Washington aboard a C-37 piloted and maintained by the U.S. Air Force after Trumps Aug. 15 news conference, during which the president blamed both sides for brutal violence days earlier during a clash of neo-Nazis and protesters in Charlottesville, Va.

Mnuchin, a former banker and hedge-fund manager who was joined at the brief event by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, stood behind Trump and offered no comments during the event. The news conference was called to discuss the administrations infrastructure plans.

Federal agencies who request government jets are required to reimburse the military for travel expenses. The C-37, a military-outfitted version of the Gulfstream V executive jet, has a reimbursable rate of up to $10,000 an hour, Pentagon documents show.

The 200-mile path between New York and Washington is one of the most well-connected travel routes in the country, and millions have maneuvered it via one-hour commercial flights and three-hour trips aboard passenger trains such as Amtraks Acela Express.

Defense Department policy calls government air transportation a premium mode of travel involving high costs and limited resources and says every effort shall be made to minimize travel cost.

Officials told ABC that Chao also took the government jet for at least one leg of the Trump Tower appearance. Agency officials did not respond to requests for comment.

A Department of Defense spokesperson referred questions to the Air Force, which did not immediately respond.

The Trump Tower flight was less than a week before Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, flew to Louisville, Ky., on a government jet to attend a luncheon and visit the nations gold vault at Fort Knox, where Mnuchin also viewed the solar eclipse.

Mnuchin's office also requested a government jet fly him and Linton on a honeymoon trip to Europe this summer. Treasury officials said the request was made to guarantee access to secure communications during the trip and was withdrawn before any flight.

An official in the Treasury Departments Office of Inspector General said both Mnuchins Trump Tower and Fort Knox flights are currently under review.

The official declined to offer further details until officials are able to perform a complete analysis of how these trip requests and authorizations were staffed and reviewed.

In a statement, a Treasury spokesperson told The Washington Post, We welcome the OIGs review and are ensuring the office has everything needed for a full evaluation of our travel procedures.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) last month requested a "detailed explanation" of how Mnuchin justified taking the military plane to Fort Knox. A Treasury official wrote back this week saying the agency "considered a number of travel options" before requesting the government jet.

The Mnuchin case marks at least the third open review by an inspector general into travel expenses for Cabinet secretaries, who have traditionally flown on cheaper commercial airlines for domestic flights.

The Health and Human Services inspector general is investigating reports that Secretary Tom Price flew aboard expensive chartered planes for at least two dozen taxpayer-funded flights, a spokeswoman said Friday. An official in Price's office defended the flights as "Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people."

The Environmental Protection Agencys inspector general also announced last month that it had begun investigating Administrator Scott Pruitts frequent travel to his home state of Oklahoma.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement Friday that too many Trump Administration officials have an entitled, millionaire mindset when it comes to squandering taxpayer money.

[HHS inspector general is investigating Prices travel on private charter planes]

[Mnuchin pushes back against reports that he requested government jet for his European honeymoon]

[At EPA, guarding the chief pulls agents from pursuing environmental crimes]

[Treasury inspector general to review Mnuchins flight to Fort Knox]


The authors brother, Michael, after teaching her how to make bread for Thanksgiving in 1984. (Family photo)

My brother stood near me as I measured out flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt, as I poured buttermilk, broke eggs and measured in spoonfuls of blood-red beet juice. I was making his favorite cake, a chocolate red velvet with a rich chocolate ganache frosting following the same recipe he used every year for his own birthday. He watched silently, occasionally shaking his head no when I needed correction, more often than not smiling with that familiar smirk, mugging for me in an attempt to infuse his Brooklyn kitchen with the old humor and joy of years of cooking and baking together.

There was none of his witty conversation, none of his usual wisecracks, nor even any brotherly advice offered beyond a pointed finger. There was no conversation, for my brother had no words.

Michael was well into his second year with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive degenerative motor neuron disease characterized by muscle atrophy, increasing difficulty swallowing and breathing, growing weakness that leads to the loss of motor function and mobility  and, eventually, a shutdown of the body. He could barely croak out words, so he communicated with gestures and grimaces. He was already having trouble swallowing, so eating with him sometimes ended in a choking fit as I stood and watched, helplessly wringing my hands. The gradually imposing dementia, rare for this disease, was making it increasingly difficult to have a complex discussion. It had been a mere six months since his immediate family discovered he had been stricken by this rapidly advancing disease, and now there I was, spending two months with my older brother, offering what help I could.

I was at a loss. My usual yearly visits, whether on my own or with my two sons in tow, had been filled with museum exhibits, trips to the cinema, tromps through archives and cemeteries with Michael in our quest to discover our roots, and lengthy discussions about fashion, art, movies and literature. And when he wasnt taking me out to dine at one of his longtime favorites or to share a new discovery, we would market and cook together.

All of this was now out of the question. But I knew I could cook, and feeding him was a priority. His body was ravaged; his slim yet strong figure had melted to be feeble and unsteady, and he was losing weight rapidly. His legs wrapped in heavy braces, he would steady himself against the wall as he shuffled between rooms. Hands that once played piano, kneaded dough, sketched and pieced together costumes for the Boston Ballet and Broadway shows were atrophied, clenched in permanent fists that could no longer twist the lid off a jar, slice a tomato or use a can opener. His weakness made it near impossible for him to lift a pan of boiling water from the stove or remove a baking dish from the oven.

He needed to be nourished, and I was desperate to feed him. Each evening, I would pull out the pile of takeout menus he kept tucked beside his stand mixer, and we would choose a cuisine  Cuban, Italian or Thai  and he would point to what he wanted, urged on by me to pick whatever was most caloric. Or I would fix him a meal under his wordless guidance, something that made him still feel like the excellent cook he had been and the big brother he still was. He showed me how to pull off all of the skin of chicken pieces and rub the flesh generously with bottled curry paste before baking; he silently instructed me how to steam Brussels sprouts to be perfect, tender buds without the bitter edge; together we roasted vegetables and made pancakes and stirred pots of soup.

And, surrounded by the silence, I baked him his favorite chocolate red velvet cake, placing a thick wedge and two large scoops of ice cream in front of him at the end of each meal, making sure he ate every bite. He would smile, nodding his head that the food was good, that his kid sister had done all right. Sometimes, through these familiar gestures, sharing a meal almost felt like it used to.



The author and her brother in 1972. (Family photo)

I had also lived in Brooklyn, a long time ago, just a couple of years out of college. Michael found me an apartment, a one-bedroom one story up from his own in an old six-floor walk-up off Fourth Avenue. Once I settled in, he showed me his preferred grocery store and his favorite Korean market, the little Italian place that sold handmade ravioli and marble-sized ciliegine mozzarella balls, his tried-and-true bagel shop and bakery for real rugelach and hamantaschen. He showed me where I could buy a paper plate weighed down by half a roasted chicken and the best Cuban red beans and rice, all for just five bucks. An extraordinary cook, Michael watched over me as I attempted to bake my first yeast breads (he enthusiastically gobbled slice after rock-hard slice) and my first Thanksgiving turkey, gave my first dinner party and tested recipes for a friend's cookbook. In the two years I lived above him before moving to Europe, Michael fed me chicken soup, steaming plates of lasagna, omelets and salads, bagels and lox when my own paycheck didn't get me through the month.

When I moved to France, married and became a mother, we spoke on the phone every two weeks, and our conversations invariably turned to food. I worked in gastronomic tourism then as a food writer, so we shared discoveries of and gossip about restaurants and chefs, discussed cookbooks purchased and recipes developed. I would return to Brooklyn once a year or so with my sons, and we would follow Michael from restaurant to restaurant. He would cook for us, introducing my sons to chile con carne, bami goreng, gumbo and chopped liver, and we would dog his brisk steps as he led us to the grocery store or shops or down into the subway. He was always leading.

And now I would navigate the streets of Brooklyn on my own. Instead of trotting to match his stride, I would grip his elbow and help him carefully maneuver the steps, the sidewalks, making sure he didnt fall. But mostly he would stay at home while I wandered his new, unfamiliar neighborhood. I would choose what to buy, what to cook, what to feed him, which was never easy for me, who all too often relied on others  and mostly on my big brother when we were together. No advice, no discussion, no excitement, no fun. I was there only to make sure he ate as much as I could get him to eat. I ordered takeout, I heated up pot pies and casseroles, I bought doughnuts and cookies that I would place before him as often as I could persuade him to sit and eat.

Cooking and eating were all we had. We spoke little during those two months I stayed with him. We avoided each other when we werent sharing a meal. He watched TV for long hours and I read, the silence heavy with what we loathed thinking about: his illness and impending death. In the confusion and denial caused by his dementia, he refused to believe he was dying; in my fear and sadness, I simply could not face it. And so I busied myself with cooking, praying that those slices of cake, bowls of soup, plates of chicken and Brussels sprouts could save him.



The author, right, and her brother in 1962. (Family photo)

My brother and I have never been demonstrative with our affection. Although we were devoted to and fiercely protective of each other, sharing food and cooking and eating together had always been how we expressed our love, how we entertained ourselves and made the other happy, how we protected and soothed each other from life's bumps and bruises.

As I stood in his warm kitchen during those cold, dark February days so long ago now, back in 2009, and watched him eat, I recalled my mother once telling me that when she brought me home from the hospital 50 years earlier, Michael, all of 3 years old, decided it was his responsibility to feed me. We had come full circle, and now it was my turn to feed him.

The last day of my stay, I left Michael standing in his doorway, that familiar crooked smile on his face as he and I said our goodbyes, much like all the other goodbyes at the end of one of my visits, quick and slightly embarrassed by the lack of a hug. I stepped into an early March morning, the taxi waiting to take me to the airport and back to my husband and sons in France. But I knew that if I left that way, I would always regret it. I turned around and ran back up the steps, wrapped my arms around him, now all skin and bones, and he laughed nervously. I love you, I murmured into his T-shirt, tears in my eyes.

I turned to the woman I had hired to care for him, our shared look speaking volumes: You take very good care of him. Feed him well, and make sure he eats.



The author and her brother at a family event in 1996. (Family photo)

I hadnt thought twice about making that difficult trip over to care for Michael, no matter the sad silence that hung between us. The time I spent preparing and serving him chicken and vegetables, urging him to eat another slice of chocolate cake, made me realize just how much that food is our first and our last connection with those we love. Although our history is infused with so many stories of shared meals, cooking and baking adventures, I had never before felt the overwhelming power the simple act of nourishing carried to comfort not only my brother, but me.

I couldnt get back to Michael at the very end, after they brought him home to Florida; he could no longer stay in his own house, even with home care, the last couple of months before he passed away on Sept. 15, 2009. The end came so quickly. My sister Sue told me how she spoon-fed him bits of applesauce and water when he could no longer lift a spoon, when he could no longer swallow much of anything, the same thing I had done for our father twenty-some years earlier when he was dying of the same disease.

Years of sibling rivalry between Sue and Michael melted away under the weight of necessity, the raw emotions of love and devotion, the innate reflex to protect. Our lives whittle down to basic needs, and we take to the responsibility without a thought. We feed, bathe, dress them as we did our children, as they, Michael and Dad, did for us when we were young.

Schler is the author of Orange Appeal (Gibbs Smith, 2017) and writes about food and culture from her home in France.
President Donald Trump could have used his maiden speech at the United Nations Tuesday to reassure allies he was capable of providing global leadership against 21st century threats.

Instead, he delivered a bombastic stump speech about guarding American sovereignty that was more suited to his faithful than to world leaders. He peppered his mainly isolationist remarks with a dash of religious sermonizing (to please evangelicals?) and several nods to traditional Republican rhetoric and even regime-change neocons.

The result was a mishmash rife with contradictions -- rather than the new foreign policy doctrine of "principled realism" his aides had promised.

Even more disturbing was Trump's use of inflammatory bluster against North Korea and Iran that failed to disguise the absence of coherent policy on either. This raises the prospect America will soon face two nuclear crises, and possibly two new wars.

The internal contradictions in this speech revealed the hole in the center of American foreign policy: a Trump team that holds starkly different worldviews. Previous presidential teams have argued within but previous presidents have normally resolved those differences and put their own stamp on the product. Trump, however, veers back and forth like a metronome, and is often impervious to advisers.

The result makes for incoherent speeches and incoherent policy. With no clear vision or direction from the top, chaos reigns.

That confusion was evident on the U.N. podium. The lead writer of the speech was reportedly the young, ubernationalist, anti-immigrant Stephen Miller, who channels Trump's most basic isolationist instincts.

So Trump stressed America First over and over, insisting he was "renewing this founding principle of sovereignty" as the basis of American foreign policy. Never did he commend any benefits of collective action.

Indeed, the president used the word sovereignty more than 20 times, reviving his constant complaint that the world, and the United Nations, were taking advantage of America. The stress on sovereignty was a sop to his alt-right base, some of whom believe that U.N. bureaucrats (in black helicopters), along with international organizations, were on the verge of taking control of our country.

But for Trump, the sacredness of sovereign borders seems to apply mainly to America and whomever he favors at the moment, including certain authoritarian regimes.

The president never mentioned Russia's violation of U.S. sovereignty by interfering in our elections or its invasion of Ukraine. (He did make a brief reference to respecting the borders of "the Ukraine," a term not used since Ukraine was part f the Soviet Union.) His brief reference to threats to the sovereignty of the South China Sea never mentioned China's military buildup there.

Trump's reverence for sovereignty disappeared, however, when it came to Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, where he came close to advocating regime change (a neocon approach that had disastrous results in Iraq and which Trump has previously rejected).

I get it, these are all bad regimes (more on this below). Yet those regimes, along with Russia, China and Syria, all insist no nation has the right to intervene in the sovereign affairs of any other -- which means America should butt out of their business. Is that the community that Trump wants to join?

More to the point, Trump's sovereignty mantra is taking him down a dangerous path when it comes to North Korea and Iran.

Perhaps the president thought he could scare Kim Jong Un when he proclaimed that the United States, if "forced to defend itself or its allies," would "totally destroy North Korea."

No question, Washington would have to respond to any actual threat from Pyongyang with military force. But Trump's loose language implies a nuclear strike. Moreover, he set a dangerous red line by insisting the only outcome for North Korea was to give up its nuclear program, which nearly every expert on the region believes Kim will never do.

Far better to have used Tuesday's platform for a sober but tough warning to China and the world body that now is the last chance to enforce new U.N. sanctions -- and even tougher ones will be needed. Trump's talk about mass destruction -- without first consulting Asian allies -- will only undercut Asian solidarity against Pyongyang and goad Kim to respond in kind.

As for Iran, yes the nuclear treaty is imperfect, but it prevents Tehran from building nuclear weapons for at least a decade. To abandon it now would free Iran to march straight to a bomb unless Washington wanted to go to war. Nor would the other signatories to the pact -- the European allies, as well as Russia and China -- go along with a unilateral U.S. exit.

What Washington needs now, in standing up to North Korea, Iran and Russia, is a coherent foreign policy of tough, behind-the-scenes diplomacy that works with friends and allies on further isolating Pyongyang, while enforcing the Iran deal and curbing Tehran's behavior in the Mideast. And it needs a president who can make American firmness clear to the world.

Instead, we have a president who confuses rhetoric with policy, and disdains diplomacy in favor of chest-beating. That's what was clear on Tuesday as we watched Trump perform.

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Dear Amy: My 30-year-old son returned to live at home from several states away.

He has a college degree, is handsome, charming and quick-witted.

His former position with a well-known insurance company ended when the contract ran out.

Initially I thought he would be living at home for two or three weeks, but we have now hit 12 weeks.

I am getting frustrated, as he seems to have become very comfortable with not really doing much to help around the house and not helping with utilities.

He is going to interviews often but hasnt been offered a position yet.

We have always been very close, but this has put a wedge between us.

I am also raising my 12-year-old grandson and have my elderly parents here. My plate is full.

I dont want another person to take care of, and I know he doesnt want me to feel that way, but  I do.

Can you offer advice on how to approach the subject of helping to pay the utilities and helping at home, without an attitude?

Concerned Mother

Concerned Mother: Your son is a functioning adult. Obviously, you have every right to expect him to step up at home. But your inability to ask him to step up is your own problem  not his.

There is no attitude involved in communicating your needs clearly. You speak to him adult-to-adult, and expect him to understand and do what he can to comply.

It is not unusual in the current job climate to spend several months interviewing at various companies for a professional position. You should assume that this is a potentially lengthy process.

Have a meeting with your son. Say, Heres what I need from you in order for this to work, longer term. Surely there are ways he can help with your grandson and your parents. Assign regular and reasonable tasks that will help to relieve your burden.

If he is receiving unemployment insurance or has savings, he should pay toward living expenses while he is with you. If he doesnt have income or savings, he should also look for a part-time job to help with the bills while he is living with you.

Dear Amy: Im responding to the question from Kathy in Colorado, who was shocked when she and her friend were asked to vacate their table at a cafe to make room for other customers.

When we retired a few years ago, my husband and I started taking trips. We often stop for coffee in small towns.

In one cute little Vermont college town, a well-frequented cafe had signs above the tables, basically saying: Please use for up to two hours or Please stay no longer than 30 minutes  something to that effect.

We were in this town for several days, and noticed people engaged in what seemed to be lengthy conversations, or studying with their laptops at the long-use tables, while others enjoyed coffee and bagels at the short ones.

The cafe owners were smart  they had their long-use tables in the front window, so it seemed that it was a busy place (even when the rest of the place might be relatively empty).

In small Iowa towns, a large, round, repurposed wooden dining-room table is frequented by the regulars, with chairs pulled up as needed. There are smaller booths or tables as well.

It is so fun visiting these small towns  strangers are immediately spotted, and if we tell them we are taking tombstone pictures, pretty soon we hear stories of local tiny cemeteries and old pioneer times.

When were home, we read your column in Blair, Nebraska.

Small Town Tourists

Small Town Tourists: Like you, I have an abiding love of small towns. (I currently live in the town where I grew up, which has a population of 540). I like the solution these cafes have arrived at regarding "long-use" tables, and enjoy picturing old friends gathering and sipping their coffee. This probably wouldn't work in higher-volume restaurants, which is one more reason to stay small and local.

Regarding your fascinating hobby of photographing tombstones  what a wonderful way to discover and chronicle history!

Dear Amy: Hooray for your practical and wise answer to A Lot to Handle, the parents who were basically enabling their adult sons drug addiction. It is so hard to detach from anothers addiction, while still remaining concerned and involved.

Family With Addiction

Family With Addiction: Concerned family members need to make a choice to lovingly detach and to support only recovery.
The FBI conducted a search Jan. 5 at the Board of License Commissioners in Largo, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

A Maryland lobbyist pleaded guilty Friday to bribing a state legislator in a wide-reaching scheme involving expanded liquor licenses in Prince Georges County.

Matthew Gorman, a 43-year-old Hyattsville attorney, entered a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt and admitted giving more than $5,000 in bribes to William A. Campos for political favors Campos did as a state and county elected official.

The payoffs were made after Campos agreed to intercede and help two businesses get or preserve their liquor licenses and for Camposs backing of a bill to expand permits for Sunday liquor sales in the county, according to details in Gormans plea agreement.

Gorman, who worked to promote liquor businesses interests, pleaded guilty to one felony charge of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.

Campos, a Hyattsville Democrat, pleaded guilty in January to accepting $40,000 to $50,000 from a number of sources in exchange for official action, in addition to directing more than $325,000 in public money intended for charitable giving toward those who gave him personal payments while he was on the Prince Georges County Council.



Then-Prince Georges Council member Will Campos in 2014. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

A sentencing date has not been set for Campos, who was a councilman for a decade, ending in November 2014, and then was a state delegate from January 2015 until he resigned eight months later.

[Former Maryland Del. Will Campos pleads guilty to accepting bribes]

Gorman admitted several payoffs to Campos, details in his plea show.

On March 28, 2013, Gorman left a voice mail for Campos asking him to meet a client of Gorman's for lunch, according to court records. The client had a pending application for a liquor license. Campos returned Gorman's call the same day, and on April 9, 2013, he wrote a recommendation Gorman's client could use. The business got its license, and Gorman paid Campos about $2,000 for his recommendation, court records state.

Gorman spoke with Campos again in early January 2015, before Campos was sworn in as a state delegate, and asked him to intervene in an administrative hearing with the Prince Georges County Board of License Commissioners for the same client, who was having trouble getting its license renewed. Campos agreed to speak with an individual on the board, who is not named in the Gorman plea. Gorman eventually paid Campos $700 in $20 bills for that help, the court files show.

The Board of License Commissioners regulates the sale of alcohol in the county. There are more than 600 liquor stores, restaurants and other businesses licensed to sell alcohol in Prince Georges.

Gorman and his clients gave Campos $4,000 for voting in February and March of 2015 for a state bill that created special permits expanding Sunday liquor sales.

Gorman also offered to pay Campos $5,000 to meet with Montgomery County Council members on behalf of a Montgomery County client of Gormans and to testify before the Montgomery County Board of License Commissioners to help save the clients liquor license in the wake of administrative lapses by the client, court documents show.

Campos testified under oath for Gormans client on May 7, 2015, and two weeks later Gorman handed Campos $5,000 in cash that Gorman pulled from inside a three-ring binder in his office, the records say.

The investigation made public in January has seen charges brought against seven others besides Gorman.

[30 months of wiretaps, hundreds of recordings underpin Md. bribery charges, prosecutors say]

Federal authorities also allege former delegate Michael L. Vaughn (D-Prince Georges) received more than $10,000 in cash from liquor store owners in exchange for supporting the Sunday liquor sales bill. Vaughn has pleaded not guilty, and a trial date has not been set.

[Former Md. Del. Michael Vaughn charged with selling his vote in bribery scheme]

As part of an agreement worked out between the U.S. attorneys office and Gormans attorney, Ty Kelly, Gorman agreed to forfeit any client fees he received in relation to the bribes. The government has not decided the amount it will seek.

A sentencing hearing for Gorman is scheduled for December.

Others named in the federal probe include liquor store owners Young Jung Paig and Shin Ja Lee, who pleaded guilty to funding bribes, as well as David Dae Sok Son, a former director of the Board of License Commissioners, and Anuj Sud, a former board commissioner.

Authorities have accused Son of facilitating bribes, while Sud is accused of exchanging votes for money. Both are awaiting court proceedings.

Felix Nelson Ayala, a Rockville accountant who authorities say gave Campos cash in exchange for public money for a nonprofit associated with Ayala, pleaded guilty to bribery in August but has not been sentenced.
Work crews do soil borings on the Georgetown Branch of the Capital Crescent Trail near downtown Bethesda as part of pre-construction work on the light-rail Purple Line. A federal judge on Friday declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by opponents, allowing the state to start cutting down trees along the alignment. ((Katherine Shaver/The Washington Post))

Workers could begin slicing down trees along the route of the planned Purple Line as early as Monday, after a federal judge late Friday denied a request for a temporary restraining order from opponents of the light rail project.

.

The ruling is the latest disappointment for opponents of the light-rail line who have been waging legal battle since 2014 to block its construction.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled the trees can be cut even though the appeals stemming from a 2014 lawsuit have yet to be exhausted. Some of the trees have been standing for 80 years.

Just because the plaintiffs see this challenge as a last-ditch means to stop the Purple Line... that does not mean their claims entitle them to the requested injunction, the judge wrote in the five-page ruling.

Gregory Sanders, vice president of Purple Line Now, a coalition of project supporters including labor and business groups, said he was pleased by the ruling.

I dont think [the plaintiffs case] had anything to do with the merits argued, he said.

Opponents  including Chevy Chase residents and the advocacy group Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail  argued that cutting down trees before the lawsuit is resolved would cause irreparable environmental damage.

John M. Fitzgerald, a Chevy Chase resident and environmental lawyer who is a plaintiff in the 2014 lawsuit, said Saturday that they are considering their options.

In the meantime we would hope that the secretary of transportation of Maryland would agree not to cut down the remaining trees... for the near future until those issues are resolved, he said.

The trees stand along the Georgetown Branch Trail, the wooded recreational trail between downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring which is an extension of the Capital Crescent Trail.

The state closed the trail several weeks ago and has said it would remain off limits for four to five years while the 16-mile light-rail lines western segment is built in the corridor. Workers have already begun cutting smaller trees  those less than nine inches in diameter, an attorney for the state said.

At a hearing earlier this month, Tyler Burgess, a U.S. Justice Department attorney, said the opponents legal arguments hadnt cleared a very high bar for a temporary restraining order, which she deemed very extraordinary relief.

Albert Ferlo, a lawyer who represents the Maryland Department of Transportation, said at the time that every day of construction delays costs the state up to $433,000 in potential contract penalties and other costs.

So far, $900 million in federal grants have been committed to the projects more than $2 billion construction costs.

You could give everybody free Uber rides for their lifetimes for the amount of money theyre spending on this project, Ajay Bhatt, president of Friends of the Capital Crescent Trail, said Saturday.

The state is appealing an unfavorable ruling in the 2014 lawsuit opposing the Purple Line, but an appellate court recently permitted construction to continue while a three-judge panel considers the case. A hearing is set in the case for Nov. 1.

[Purple Lines foes add Metro safety, maintenance problems to legal argument]

The plaintiffs say the U.S. Transportation Department failed to require Maryland to show it can afford to maintain and operate the regions existing transportation system, particularly Metro, before using federal aid to expand it.

The plaintiffs also argue that the Purple Line shouldnt receive federal construction funding until it abides by Leons previous order to redo the projects ridership forecasts to reflect Metros declining ridership and safety problems.

The state has yet to rework that environmental analysis  a process that could take months  and is appealing Leons order to a higher court.

The Purple Line will operate separately from Metro, but 27 percent of its riders are expected to be transferring to and from Metro.

Connecting Montgomery and Prince Georges counties, the line will employ light-rail trains that will be shorter and slower than Metros trains.
Small businesses in the Spring Center strip mall have been given until the end of the month to vacate because of Purple Line construction. (Bill OLeary/The Washington Post)

Shibeshi Alemayehu vividly recalls three decades at his 7-Eleven near downtown Silver Spring, where he started out making minimum wage selling Slurpees on the graveyard shift and worked his way up to store manager before finally saving enough money to become a franchisee 13 years ago.

Two weeks ago, Alemayehu, who had 12 employees, closed shop, forced to leave to make way for the Purple Line.

Im being prohibited from making a living, Alemayehu said from the partially packed back office of his store two days before closing. Im being told to pack up and go. . . . I have no income, but I still have a [home] mortgage.

Alemayehu had known for years that the Maryland Transit Administration was eyeing his business and about 30 others in the Spring Center strip mall on 16th Street for the site of a future Purple Line station. But the light-rail project had become so mired in controversy  with a federal lawsuit, a governor who initially opposed it, and a new White House administration that had balked at paying for transit projects  that he and other tenants said they half-expected it would never get built.

Then a July 19 court ruling allowed construction on the project to begin while the federal lawsuit proceeds. Suddenly, the 16-mile Purple Line was on, and Alemayehu and his fellow tenants had to get out of the way  and quickly. The MTA has given them until the end of September to clear out.



Dario Orellana, who owns El Aguila, chats with customers to let them know that the restaurant will have to move because of Purple Line construction in Silver Spring, Md. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

I built the business all these years, and I counted on the business for many more years, said Dario Orellana, owner of El Aguila, a Salvadoran and Tex-Mex restaurant, which he opened in the Spring Center in 1999. Now the Purple Line is coming and closing me down. . . . Whos going to pay my bills in October?

[The court ruling that revived the Purple Line]

So far, public attention since Purple Line construction started Aug. 28 has focused on the contractor abruptly closing the popular Georgetown Branch Trail and opponents legal efforts to stop the state from cutting down hundreds of its mature trees.

But those who work in the projects path say theyve got more to lose. Even those who support building a light-rail line to better connect the Maryland suburbs say theyre worried their businesses wont survive its construction.

Trees will grow back, said Delmar Nelson, who plans to retire after he closes Crest Opticians. But this is my whole livelihood.

[Georgetown Branch Trail closes for Purple Line construction]

MTA and Maryland Department of Transportation officials declined an interview about the state condemning and buying homes and businesses along the Purple Line alignment using its legal power of eminent domain. They also declined to comment on complaints by Spring Center business owners that state compensation packages wont come close to covering their relocation costs.



Small businesses in the Spring Center strip mall have been given until the end of the month to clear out. (Bill OLeary/The Washington Post)

The MTA has budgeted $230 million to buy, tear down and move people from 57 houses and apartment units and 76 businesses between Bethesda in Montgomery County and New Carrollton in Prince Georges County. The state has bought all but one of the homes and about half of the business properties, according to MTA spokeswoman Sandy Arnette.

That includes about 18 houses along East-West Highway (Route 410) in Riverdale Park that were torn down in the past year.

Business owners can be compensated up to $60,000, to either close or move, Arnette said. That money covers the costs of reopening, such as to redecorate or make repairs in a new location, and to offset higher rents for up to two years.

Nowhere are more small businesses affected than at the white-brick-and-red-awning Spring Center, just north of East-West Highway. Before businesses began to move out over the summer, more than 300 people worked there, said Harvey Maisel, who recently sold the shopping center to the state.

[Shopping center tenants have been worrying about the Purple Line for years]

Many of the merchants are immigrants  from Ethiopia, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere  and say they have little financial cushion.

Several said they had held off buying a new car or house over the past several years because they didnt know whether the Purple Line was coming. One said he has been unable to sell his business amid the prospect of the strip mall being demolished. Long-term leases kept others feeling stuck.

Alemayehu said the maximum $60,000 in compensation for moving to another 7-Eleven wont come close to covering the more than $200,000 he expects to pay to buy into another store.

Orellana said he has been looking for a new location for El Aguila, but he is finding unbelievable rents that have soared in the past few years, often more than double the $10,000 a month he pays now. He said it would cost $500,000 to $800,000 to build a new restaurant, install equipment and pay legal fees for new licenses, and he cant afford to pay those costs upfront while waiting for the state to decide how much hell be reimbursed. Hes also worried about his 20 employees who will lose their jobs when he closes El Aguila later this month; opening a new restaurant would take at least six to eight months, Orellana said.

Trinh Nguyen, who owns Bon Bon nail salon, said she never expected to have to move so quickly. She said a state representative told her last year that she would have three months to a years notice.

She said a retail space she looked at in the District would cost $2,000 more a month and provide little parking. Moreover, she said, it cost $100,000 to outfit her salon six years ago  money that took her more than 10 years to save. She said the maximum $60,000 to build and open a new location is nothing.

I dont have money to start a new business, Nguyen said recently, as a customer surveyed polish colors, so I dont look a lot.

While she can accept the Purple Line if it will help the community, she said: I just want [the state] to find some way to help us because well lose our business. We could lose everything.

Montgomery officials, who have long championed the Purple Line, said theres no county program or funding to help merchants displaced by a state project.

Council President Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda) said he has asked state legislative officials about grants or loans that could help businesses disrupted by the project. If such help doesnt exist, he said, hell ask state lawmakers to create it.

I think its fundamentally a state responsibility to provide assistance to businesses who are disadvantaged by a state project, Berliner said. You cant just let these people suffer as a result of decisions not made by them. I believe [the Purple Line] will ultimately benefit them, but that doesnt mean the transition isnt potentially catastrophic.

Deborah Hyman, co-owner of Signs by Tomorrow, said that being forced to move after 20 years has its benefits. Shes thrilled with her new location in Kensington, where she said shell pay $20,000 less in rent annually for one-third more space.

Even so, she said, not knowing for so long when shed have to leave the Spring Center was incredibly unsettling. She said shes also worried about how long it will take to get reimbursed for the more than $50,000 she has spent to build and equip the new space.

Ultimately, she said, she thinks the Purple Line will bring economic opportunities to struggling communities and make it easier for lower-wage workers to get to her store and other jobs. But she thinks the MTA could do much better by those it will displace.

Im not disappointed this happened, Hyman said. Im just disappointed that it totally shook up my life for the past 3 1/2 years.
THE DISTRICT

Youths assault man on Metros Green Line

An assault and attempted robbery on a Metro train Friday evening left a man with minor injuries and a group of young assailants at large.

At 8:30 p.m. on a Branch Avenue-bound Green Line train near the Washington Navy Yard, a man reported that a group of juveniles approached him and one tried to take his cellphone while another assaulted him, Metro police said. The cellphone was not taken.

The assailants left the train at Navy Yard and boarded another one traveling in the opposite direction, police said, adding that they were unable to find them. The victim was treated by medics for minor lacerations and declined further medical attention.

The man did not appear to know the assailants, said Taylor Jackson, a witness who was seated in front of him. Jackson said she boarded the southbound train at LEnfant Plaza at about 8:20 p.m. and saw five teenagers, all wearing black and one in a ski mask.

One of them yelled, Hey, fat boy, and just punched him, and they were throwing punches at him, she said, adding that the victim was bleeding profusely from his face. We were all trying to hit the emergency call button, but it wasnt going through.

Other passengers pulled the assailants off and one provided Metro police with a video of the incident, Jackson said. Police said they are still investigating.

 Tara Bahrampour

MARYLAND

Calvert County deputy hurt in fatal crash

A Calvert County police officer was injured in a crash early Saturday morning that killed the driver of the other car, the county sheriffs office said.

At about 3:05 a.m., Deputy First Class Vaughn Evans reported that he had been involved in an accident while driving southbound on Route 4. Responders found an overturned Ford Ranger whose driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The drivers name was not released pending family notification.

According to the sheriffs office crash reconstruction team, a head-on collision occurred in a southbound lane in which the Ranger truck appeared to have been traveling northbound. Impairment was not thought to have caused the crash, the office said. Evans, who received recognition this summer for saving the life of a woman who had jumped into the Chesapeake Bay, was treated at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore and released.

Witnesses or people with information about the accident were asked to contact Deputy First Class Jeff Hardesty at 410-535-2800 or jeff.hardesty@calvertcountymd.gov.

 Tara Bahrampour

VIRGINIA

Historic neighborhood wont get power lines

Dominion Energy says it will no longer seek to build new power lines through a Northern Virginia community where descendants of an ex-slave have lived for generations.

Instead, Dominion will seek to build the 230,000-volt lines along Interstate 66, the utility company said in a statement Friday, which accompanied a legal filing with the State Corporation Commission asking for permission to move forward with that plan.

The company said a route along Carver Road in Prince William County that was approved by the commission is "not constructible," because of reluctance from county officials to grant easements needed for that project.

[As data centers bloom, a century-old African American enclave is threatened]

The descendants of Livinia Blackburn Johnson have lived on the land that she and some other freed slaves bought under an 1866 federal law that allowed them to own property.

Tied to plans for a new data center in the Haymarket area, the power-line route has been a source of local controversy for several years. Area residents want Dominion to partially bury the lines along I-66, filing several legal motions that seek to force the company to do so.

An overhead route along I-66 would potentially affect several thousand homes, the commission has said.

 Antonio Olivo
California

Man gets life in killing of ex-wife, 7 others

A California man was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing his ex-wife and seven others in a 2011 shooting rampage at the hair salon where she worked.

Scott Dekraai, a 47-year-old former tugboat operator, received eight consecutive life terms in a courtroom packed with victims relatives who wore buttons and shirts printed with photos of those killed. Many sobbed and spoke of their devastating loss. Others told Dekraai they hoped he would rot in prison.

Dekraai pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, for which he received a term of seven years to life. He received 25 years to life for a gun enhancement on each of nine counts. The case dragged on for years because of a scandal over authorities use of informants to cull information from Dekraai and others housed in Orange County jails.

Dekraai had been locked in a custody dispute with ex-wife Michelle Fournier over their 8-year-old son when he entered Salon Meritage in Seal Beach wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with three weapons.

Dekraai shot and killed Fournier before turning his guns on the salon owner, stylists and customers, as well as a man sitting in his car in the parking lot. He was arrested within minutes of the rampage.

 Associated Press

NATIONAL SECURITY

Trial delayed a week in Benghazi attacks

The trial of the alleged ringleader of the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, set to begin Monday, will be postponed one week to Oct. 2, a federal judge ordered Friday.

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Casey Cooper approved the request after 12 jurors and three alternates were seated, including nine women and six men.

Federal prosecutors in Washington did not oppose the request made Thursday by lawyers for Ahmed Abu Khattala, 46, a Libyan militia leader captured in June 2014. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges of conspiring in the attacks on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, which killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.

 Spencer S. Hsu
In the northern Puerto Rican town of Vega Baja, the floodwaters reached more than 10 feet. Stranded residents screamed "save me, save me," using the lights in their cellphones to help rescue teams find them in the darkness, the town's mayor said.

In Loiza, a north coastal town that already had been ravaged by Hurricane Irma, 90 percent of homes  3,000  were destroyed by Hurricane Maria just days later. In communities across the island, bridges collapsed and highways were severely damaged, isolating many residents. In Rio Grande, officials had yet to access a number of families stuck in their homes, three days after the powerful storm made landfall.

When speaking about his towns destruction, Ramon Hernandez Torres, mayor of the southern city of Juana Diaz, took a long pause, his voice catching and his eyes filling with tears.

Its a total disaster, he said.

[Thousands of people could die: Puerto Rico urges communities to evacuate with dam in imminent danger]

Hurricane Maria pounded the entire island of Puerto Rico on Wednesday, but the scope of the damage had been speculative and unclear since, in large part because towns across the U.S. territory have been completely off the grid. Though images from the air showed incredible destruction, mayors were unable to reach central government for leadership and help because communication was impossible. No telephones, cellphones, or Internet. No power. No passage through roads that had been washed away or blocked with trees and power lines.



The Ocean Park community in San Juan was underwater Friday. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/For The Washington Post)

But on Saturday, for the first time in days, mayors and representatives from more than 50 municipalities across Puerto Rico met with government officials at the emergency operations command center here in the islands capital city. Many of the mayors learned about the meeting through media reports over satellite radio the night before. One mayor said his staff was informed after a man ran to his offices with a note telling him to make his way to San Juan.

Approximately 20 other mayors across the island still have not been able to make contact with government officials, leaving major gaps in the broader understanding of the damage Maria left behind.

The mayors greeted each other with hugs and tears, and they pleaded with their governor for some of the things their communities need most: drinking water, prescription drugs, gasoline, oxygen tanks and satellite phones. The entire population remains without electricity. Families everywhere are unable to buy food or medical treatment. Roads remain waterlogged, and looting has begun to take place at night.

"There is horror in the streets," San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said in a raw, emotional interview with The Washington Post. "People are actually becoming prisoners in their own homes."

Whenever I walk through San Juan, Cruz said, she sees the sheer pain in peoples eyes. . . . Theyre kind of glazed, not because of what has happened but because of the difficulty of what will come, she said. I know were not going to get to everybody in time. . . . Two days ago I said I was concerned about that. Now I know we wont get to everybody in time.

Oscar Santiago, mayor of the northern coastal city of Vega Alta, said many of his communitys families refused to evacuate their flooded homes. One little girl was standing barefoot with her family on a roof, which was littered with nails, he said. When he asked her to put on some sandals, she told him: The hurricane took them.

Marcos Cruz Molina, mayor of Vega Baja, said even his own wooden home was destroyed, and he has since sought shelter with his parents. Jose Rodriguez, mayor of Hatillo, in the northwest, said hundreds and hundreds of homes in his town were obliterated. Its catastrophic, he said.

The meeting in San Juan came a day after the governor urged residents downstream from Lake Guajataca  a population of nearly 70,000  to evacuate amid fears that a dam holding the lake back might fail because of damage from Hurricane Marias floodwaters. Officials said the dams structural damage was caused by a fissure, a crack that had grown to a significant rupture by Saturday. The dams failure could lead to massive amounts of water flowing through coastal communities along a rivers path to the ocean, and authorities believed evacuation was the only option.

Local authorities said the actual number of residents remaining in those towns at risk of destruction was most likely much lower because of early overestimates, officials said. Evacuations continued on Saturday.

The official death toll on the island from Hurricane Maria has risen to 10. One died when he was struck in the head by a panel, another died in an accident with an excavating machine, three died in landslides, two in flooding in Toa Baja, and two police officers in Aguada drowned when the Culebrinas River overflowed. One person in Arecibo died after being swept away by rising water. Officials believe there are probably others they havent yet been able to confirm.



A man describes the devastation caused by the passage of Hurricane Maria in Arecibo, northwestern Puerto Rico. (Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images)

At the intersection of Routes 2 and 10 in Arecibo, employees of the Gulf Express gas station and their families  about 20 people in all  were hard at work Saturday. Their boots and sneakers were caked with mud because there is mud everywhere: On their pants and shirts, in their cars and on the walls of their homes. The makeshift cleanup crew was using brooms to sweep out the grayish brown slop that lay two or three inches thick inside.

After Maria blew threw the city, taking down trees and power lines, the flash floods came.

The water had to be at least six, maybe seven feet high, said Nelson Rodriguez, a Gulf Express employee. It took everything. All the medicine in the pharmacy, all the food, its gone.

Every home and business in this part of Arecibo was affected by the flooding. Two blocks away from the gas station, Eduardo Carraquillo, 45, helped his father, Ismael Freytes, 69, clean the mud out of their yellow, first-floor apartment. Inside, a film, rising six feet high on the walls, marked where water stagnated for much of a full day.

1 of 26 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Aerial photos of the destruction in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria View Photos The hurricane brought 160 mph winds to the island, leaving at least six dead. Caption The hurricane brought 160 mph winds to the island, leaving at least six dead. DENNIS M. RIVERA PICHARDO Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

The water just pushed through the door, as if it had been left open, Carraquillo said. We all evacuated the day after the storm, because we were warned about the flash flood that might come. Everyone left, just to be safe, except for two older men that lived a few houses away. They just didnt want to leave. When we came back, we found out the flood had killed them right there in that apartment.

Some Puerto Rico officials believe it could be months before the island recovers and that it will be at least a year before some sense of normalcy returns.

Officials estimate it will take three weeks for hospitals to regain power, and about six months for the rest of the island to have electricity. By Saturday, 25 percent of the population had telecommunications connections.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello announced efforts to centralize medical care and shelters for the elderly. He also plans to distribute 250 satellite phones among mayors to facilitate communication. He said he urged the mayors to develop a buddy system with other local officials.

Cruz, San Juans mayor, said she has never seen such devastation, but she also said she has never seen such determination to make it. She described a phrase she keeps hearing from residents: Yo soy Boricua. I am from Puerto Rico.

That has become the very courageous way of saying we are going to overcome anything that comes our way, she said.

A janitor stopped Cruz with a request on Friday: Tell the world were here, he said, Cruz recounted. Tell everyone were fighting. Tell everyone that can listen that we are going to make it.

With her voice faltering, Cruz echoed that cry: If anyone can hear us . . . help.

Those are words that no society should have to endure alone or ever, Cruz said. What I would ask is not only for Puerto Rico, but for the entire Caribbean that has been hit so hard by this: Do not forget us and do not let us feel alone.

Cassady reported from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
One of the diseases associated with Agent Orange Exposure is prostate cancer and September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

It amazes me on how uninformed I was just as many citizen are today. I believed that our government would actually take care of its veterans before it would take care of another country.

In the case of Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans that is not the case. Our government is actually helping to clean up the Agent Orange (Public Law No: 114-113 Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 Page 129 STAT. 2788) we used in the Vietnam Conflict (war) before it will take care of some of the veterans who may of been exposed to Agent Orange.

This wasnt always the case.

In 1991 our Congress passed Public Law No: 102-4 that took care of these veterans and President George H. W. Bush signed the bill. However it seems that the general counsel of the Veterans Administration had a different opinion when they issued VAOPGCPREC 27-97, which stated Service on a deep-water naval vessel in waters off the shore of the Republic of Vietnam does not constitute service in the Republic of Vietnam.

Yet the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 32 - National Defense, 578.26 set the boundary where you earn a medal if you had service in Vietnam. It is nice to know that the General Counsel of the VA has more power than a Federal regulations and the president that has sign the Bills.

Some people are wondering how can members of the Navy who did not set foot on Vietnamese land get exposed to Agent Orange. The way this happened is by way or water.

As you know, water is very important to humans. It is also very important to ships. A naval ship will take in water from which it is sailing in, which more than like will be salt water and distill it into fresh water that the naval personnel can drink, bathe in, cook with, and many other functions that they may need.

The distillation is supposed to remove chemicals and other items from the water. It turns out that when it comes to Agent Orange it actually enhances the amount of Dioxins instead of removing it.

These veterans have served their country when they were asked to and now their country is turning its back on them. Yes they can receive some health care but they have to pay a share where others with the exact same diseases and illness not only receive the health care they deserve, but they are receiving compensation for suffering these diseases and illnesses.

We are not asking for anything more that we deserve. We did our job and now its time for our country to fulfill its obligation to the veterans and provide them with the benefits they rightly deserve.

You may be asking yourself what can you and other Americans do. You can contact your members of Congress and ask them to support The Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act, HR-299 in the House and S-422 in the Senate.

Mike Yates

Blue Water Navy Awareness
CHICAGO, IL - SEPTEMBER 28: Crime scene tape secures a shooting scene where 5 people were reported to have been shot, including an 11-month-old infant, on September 28, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago, like many major cities in the United States, has experienced a surge in shootings this year. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Columnist

Twenty-five years ago, on Sept. 24, 1992, Dail Boxley Dinwiddie vanished.

Pffft. Just like that.

She was 23, a darling girl, anyone would say. Because even though she was, by age, a young woman, she was just 5 feet tall and weighed only about 100 pounds. She was a waif, an imp, a sweet spirit and an artist, who had come home after finishing college at Randolph-Macon to live with her parents, pursue graduate studies at the University of South Carolina  and, it turned out, be my youngest sons full-time babysitter.

Invariably, when Id come home from work, Id hear the tinkling sound of her laughter down the hall where she and John, then 8, were playing. The last time I saw her, she had brought John a miniature aquarium filled with sea monkeys.

The call from her mother, Jean Dinwiddie, came early in the morning. Dail hadnt come home from a U2 concert the night before. Jean wanted to make sure I was at the bus stop where Dail met my son every day after school.

It took but a second for my eyes to begin burning. I knew in that instant that something terrible had happened, because, above all, Dail was responsible and would never leave her little charge unattended. What we eventually learned was that after the concert, Dail and a group of friends had gone to the Five Points area of town where university students traditionally have kept the midnight oil burning. Dail was last seen about 1:30 a.m. by a bouncer at a now-defunct bar called Jungle Jims, when she left to go search for her friends.

Shortly after Jeans call, I went to my office, which was located in a public relations firm run by Charles Bud Ferillo, a former Democratic officeholder and now the coordinator of the University of South Carolinas race and reconciliation program. I told Ferillo what had happened, whereupon he offered up his office, his phones and his staff. By afternoon, 20 or so high school and college volunteers had filled the hallways. Within hours, we had tacked up Missing posters all over town.

By weeks end, we had a building donated by a local law firm to use as a command center, Dails parents on Good Morning America and posters in every state, thanks to a veteran Red Cross volunteer who strode into our new digs one morning carrying a bulging briefcase. Skipping formalities, he solemnly stated: I need a desk, a map and a telephone.

Done.

Finally, someone who knew what he was doing. The rest of us were simultaneously paralyzed by shock and racing on adrenaline  working long hours, re-nacting the night Dail disappeared with her same group of friends, following each step while police investigators kept a close eye out for possible clues.

Our mission soon became a nonprofit organization called the Dail Dinwiddie Safe Streets Foundation, which was aimed at helping find any and all missing adults, as well as educating young people about personal safety. Our board, of which I was president, included the executive director of South Carolinas Adam Walsh Center, Margaret Frierson; our aforementioned Red Cross guy; and other local leaders interested not only in helping find Dail but also in addressing a broader problem, which was that missing adults are typically on their own for 24 hours before police get involved. By then, the trail becomes cold and the missing person is less likely to be found. Thus, we became sort of an on-call adjunct to the police department when an adult went missing, filling the 24-hour void with a public relations campaign, broadcasting the missing persons name and face, and acting as intermediary between family and law enforcement.

Over the years, momentum waned. Volunteers graduated and migrated. Some, including our Red Cross guru, have died. A drawer in my office still contains Dails posters, bumper stickers and a few personal alarms we distributed to college students as part of a campus awareness project. In my brief experience as a quasi-detective, most of the missing turned up either dead or in jail.

As for Dail, who knows?

Someone.

Each time a wannabe perp comes forward to confess, hope dims a little. Each time somebody long missing is discovered, hope is rekindled. Someone out there can solve this mystery if he or she chooses. Someone has the power to release Dan and Jean Dinwiddie from a horrific nightmare that has consumed them for 25 years.

This is their fervent hope on this quarter-century mark. Please.

Read more from Kathleen Parker's archive, follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook.
EARLY THIS month, Facebook announced the first hard evidence of Russian efforts to spread disinformation over social media during the election: 470 fake accounts and pages, which paid $100,000 to run thousands of advertisements apparently designed to heighten political tensions. Now, after weeks of uncertainty, the company has made the correct decision to share the ads with congressional investigators probing election interference. Next it should do the same for the public.

The company first argued that federal privacy law prevented it from sharing the ads and fake accounts. While it handed over the material to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, likely after he acquired a warrant, it balked at providing copies to the House and Senate intelligence committees. Now, Facebook says its legal obligations don't prohibit disclosure after all. It's giving Congress not only the advertisements, but also user information belonging to the fake accounts, along with the terms the advertisers used to target particular Facebook users. The latter may be particularly important as investigators examine whether the ads aimed to influence particular groups of voters by location, demographic and interest in certain topics. For example, did the Kremlin seek to push voters in certain areas of the country to support President Trump by showing them anti-refugee propaganda?

Facebook's decision to provide Congress with ad information is an important step. But while reporting has revealed some samples of the fake accounts, Facebook has declined to make public any information about what the advertisements looked like or what messages they distributed.

Facebook argues that handing the advertising information to Congress is the best way to provide a public accounting of Russian election interference, reasoning that congressional investigators are best positioned to interpret Facebook's data in the context of sensitive intelligence. It's true that members of the public don't have the same insight into election interference as the intelligence committees do. But it will take time for the committees to complete the thorough investigation that is needed and to release their findings. While the investigators work, the public should be able to begin an informed discussion about how a hostile foreign power sought to undermine American democracy by warping its citizens' behavior.

Though Facebook is right to be careful about distributing material that might raise privacy concerns, an advertisement is public by nature. Facebook might choose not to make public potentially sensitive account information or targeting data, but its hard to see whats keeping it from releasing ads that have already been displayed to thousands  if not millions  of users.

Alongside its announcement about sharing information with Congress, Facebook released a promise to continue its internal investigation into misuse of its platform and a commitment to greater transparency in the ads it runs. This is an encouraging sign of its willingness to think of itself as a partial custodian of democratic debate, as more and more Americans receive their news from social media. That willingness also requires swifter accountability to the public.
Demonstrators protest outside the St. Louis jail on Monday after 123 people were arrested a day earlier for protesting the acquittal of former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of a black motorist in 2011. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Again, reporters failed to accurately describe the events surrounding the protests following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. The Sept. 16 Politics & The Nation article "Ex-St. Louis officer found not guilty of murder" said of Ferguson, "That shooting prompted intense, sometimes violent protests, as did the decision months later not to indict that officer."

Footage from the Ferguson protests, powerfully portrayed in the documentary "Whose Streets?" (edited by my son), revealed unarmed black residents with signs and hands on their heads and in the air being confronted by tanklike trucks and police dressed in military gear holding assault weapons. More horrifying were the barking dogs on leashes lunging toward citizens, reminiscent of Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.

Residents on their own property were ordered back into their homes. Tear gas and rubber bullets were shot into the crowd.

The media failed to show hundreds of peaceful protesters treated as if they were the enemy. As one citizen said, This is not Iraq.

What other group of citizens faces this type of force and action  and the failure of the media to accurately portray them  besides African Americans, who rightfully are angry that once again another black man has been gunned down with no repercussions? We must do better.

Lu Ann Maciulla McNabb, Centreville, Va.
Regarding the Sept. 19 front-page article "ACA repeal effort is revived":

Only in the land of the free and home of the brave could we create a health-care system that spends 85 percent of its funding to treat chronic lifestyle diseases rather than addressing their underlying causes.

By definition, we have a sick-care maintenance system that administers to an unhealthy lifestyle: over- and unhealthy eating, smoking, excessive drinking and lack of exercise.

The Sept. 18 front-page article "In Vermont, an experiment in simplicity" described "accountable care," which incentivizes doctors and hospitals to keep their patients healthy by getting to the cause and curing chronic illnesses, thereby reducing costs.

This should be the definition and goal of health care.

And now we have Congress trying again to repeal the Affordable Care Act with an effort that does nothing to reduce care costs. It would just reduce sick-care payments to states and allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums to those with preexisting conditions. That would force these folks to go without insurance and to then end up in very expensive hospital emergency rooms. And because no one can be turned away from an emergency room, its taxpayers and the insured who pay.

In a way, we already have universal health care thats extremely inefficient and not very fair.

If we require accountable care for all states and include the fairness provision that everyone pays, we could provide universal health care and reduce health-care costs, satisfying left and right.

Bill McCarty, Bristow, Va.

Despite the scheduled Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Cassidy-Graham health-care bill, the process is a disgrace. In more than three decades working on Medicaid policy, I've never witnessed such duplicity in our legislative process. The needs of people reliant on Medicaid  including millions with disabilities  are being ignored by the authors and Senate leadership.

Given the rush to passage, little is known about the bill's impact on people who need health-care coverage or Medicaid's long-term supports. There was not enough time allowed for the Congressional Budget Office to produce a full report on the fiscal impact of this bill as well as the impact on coverage, premiums and Medicaid changes. Little mention was made by the bill's proponents of the deep cuts and fundamental restructuring of the Medicaid program and its impact on states and people who receive health care and long-term supports because of low income, disability or aging.

Millions rely on the Affordable Care Act and the federal/state Medicaid partnership for comprehensive health-care coverage and long-term services and supports that enable them to live full lives in our communities. A mass deception must not succeed.

Marty Ford, Washington

The writer is senior executive officer

of the public policy office for the Arc.

The PBS miniseries "The Vietnam War" is driving home the tragedy that results when leaders overrule their personal doubts and conscience in order to maintain an unchanging political course.

Is the insistence by Republicans in Congress on repealing the Affordable Care Act todays tragic example of political stubbornness?

Jim Reierson, Arlington
Regarding Jackson Diehl's Sept. 18 op-ed, "How Trump could save Palestinian statehood":

Even though Mr. Diehl scoffed at the hackneyed Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he ended up advising that we should preserve and pursue that same exhausted strategy, after a delay of some unknown duration. His optimism was based on a new website that promises to determine how many Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories actually stand in the way of an Israeli-Palestinian deal based on analysis of satellite imagery.

Mr. Diehl should turn his gaze to the ground instead. Israel continues to impose harsh ethnic and religious segregation in the Palestinian territories it has occupied for more than 50 years, to allow the expansion of Jewish-only settlements. Palestinians living under occupation are tried in Israeli military courts, while neighboring settlers enjoy full civil rights under Israeli law. There can be no peace with such continued injustice. No high-tech website is necessary to know that what is long overdue is a justice process and U.S. support for Palestinian freedom and equality in line with American ideals.

William F. Simonds, Potomac
Columnist

It was an epoch-defining decision to place in Westminster Abbey, among statues of monarchs, priests and poets, a large one of James Watt, inventor of the separate-condenser steam engine. The statue's inscription says Watt ranks among the world's benefactors because he "increased the power of Man." The economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey believes that this honor, conferred in 1834 , signified society's endorsement of the dignity of practical people who apply science for human betterment.

The Great Enrichment is McCloskey's term for what, in a sense, started with steam and has been, she believes, the most important human development since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago. The development is the explosion of economic growth that began around 1800 and has, especially since reaching China and India, lifted billions of people from poverty. Today, however, the Great Enrichment might be running out of steam in the United States, which for two centuries has given propulsive energy to it.

In 1800, McCloskey says, the worlds economy was where Bangladeshs economy now is, with no expectation of change. Today, most of the jobs that existed just a century ago are gone. And we are delighted that this protracted disruption occurred. Now, however, the Great Enrichment is being superseded by the Great Flinch, a recoil against the frictions and uncertainties  the permanent revolution  of economic dynamism. If this continues, the consequences, from increased distributional conflicts to decreased social mobility, are going to be unpleasant.

Although America is said to be  and many Americans are  seething about economic grievances, Tyler Cowen thinks a bigger problem is complacency. In his latest book, "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream," Cowen, professor of almost everything (economics, law, literature) at George Mason University and co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog, argues that the complacent class, although a minority, is skillful at entrenching itself in ways detrimental to the majority.

For 40 years, Cowen believes, we have been building toward stasis with a diminishing sense of urgency. Americans and American businesses are, on average, older than ever. Interstate migration  a risk-taking investment in a hoped-for future  has been declining since the mid-1980s. Although there is much talk about job churn, the percentage of workers with five or more years on the job has increased in 20 years from 44 to more than 50. Declining labor mobility is partly the result of the domestic protectionism of occupational licensing. In the 1950s, Cowen writes, only about 5 percent of workers required a government-issued license to do their jobs, but by 2008, that figure had risen to about 29 percent.

There is "more pairing of like with like" (assortative mating, economically homogenous neighborhoods, segregation by educational status), and the nation is losing the capacity and will "to regenerate itself." In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, travel speeds increased dramatically; since the 1970s, ground and air congestion has slowed travel. Fifty-two years ago, children's most common leisure activity was outdoor play; today, the average 9-year-old spends 50 hours a week staring at screens. Campuses, Cowen notes, are one of society's segments "where the complacent class exercises its strongest influences," doing so to preserve, like flies in amber, its status and consensus, thereby slowing what the economist Vilfredo Pareto called the "circulation of elites."

Most alarming is American democracy's becoming a gerontocracy. The Steuerle-Roeper Fiscal Democracy Index measures how much of the allocation of government revenue is determined by current democratic processes and how much by prior decisions establishing permanent programs running on autopilot. The portion of the federal budget automatically spent by choices made years ago is approaching 90 percent. An aging population is devouring an increasing portion of national resources  federal revenue disbursed by the entitlement state to provide Social Security and Medicare to the elderly, the nation's past. This will worsen. Because government is more important to its elderly beneficiaries than to any other age cohort, the elderly vote at a higher rate than any younger group.

For complacent Americans, a less dynamic, growth-oriented nation seems less like an alarming prospect than a soothing promise of restfulness. In a great testimonial to capitalisms power, The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx wrote: All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air. Complacent, because comfortable, Americans have had enough of that.

Read more from George F. Will's archive or follow him on Facebook.
Angela A. Allen-Bell is an associate professor of legal writing and analysis and the B. K. Agnihotri Endowed Professor at the Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge.

Louisiana and Oregon are not often thought of in the same vein. But on the issue of non-unanimous juries, they are kindred spirits.

In these two states, the prosecutor needs to persuade only 10 of 12 jurors for a felony conviction that does not involve the death penalty. All other states require unanimous jury decisions in felony cases  as does the federal system, including federal courts in Louisiana and Oregon.

These jury systems are largely unnoticed vestiges of white supremacy and oppression in our legal system. The Supreme Court now has the chance to accept a case that could end the use of non-unanimous juries in criminal cases. It should take this chance.

The historical reasons behind the jury systems in Louisiana and Oregon offend our democratic values. Louisiana required unanimous verdicts when it became a territory in 1803, but non-unanimous verdicts were formally adopted as law during Louisiana's 1898 constitutional convention, where lawmakers declared that their "mission was . . . to establish the supremacy of the white race." At the same convention, Louisiana adopted literacy tests for voting and one of the South's first "grandfather clauses," which exempted white voters whose father or grandfather had previously voted from taking literacy tests.

Eliminating unanimity accomplished two things. First, the change paved the way for quick convictions that would facilitate the use of free prisoner labor as a replacement for the loss of free slave labor. Second, it ensured that African American jurors could not use their voting power to block convictions of other African Americans. An 1870 editorial in the New Orleans Daily Picayune posited that the recently emancipated were wholly ignorant of the responsibilities of jurors, unable to discriminate between truth and falsehood in testimony, and capable only of being corrupted by bribes.

In Oregon, the 1934 change from a unanimous to a non-unanimous jury system targeted primarily ethnic and religious minorities. By the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan found widespread acceptance in the state. Anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiments peaked in 1933, when a jury failed to convict a Jewish man in the murder a Protestant man, instead handing down a verdict of manslaughter. The Morning Oregonian blamed the verdict on "the vast immigration into America from southern and eastern Europe, of people untrained in the jury system." It then accused immigrants of making "the jury of twelve increasingly unwieldy and unsatisfactory." The following year, Oregon passed a ballot measure to allow felony convictions based on a less-than-unanimous vote.

The jury systems in Oregon and Louisiana fly in the face of the framers, who adopted the Sixth Amendment to our Constitution to guarantee an impartial jury that delivers unanimous decisions. In 1797, John Adams explained, "It is the unanimity of the jury that preserves the rights of mankind."

These non-unanimous jury laws ignore the sage guidance from the American Bar Association, which opposes them. They also ignore all the research on group thinking, which suggests that unanimous verdicts are more reliable, more careful and more thorough. Non-unanimous group decisions, on the other hand, contribute to mass incarceration, wrongful convictions and the oppression of classes of people. They also circumvent measures meant to protect the voices of minority jurors.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision next week on whether to review the conviction of Dale Lambert, a Louisiana man who was found guilty of murder by only 10 of 12 jurors. This is a chance for the court to remove this relic of white supremacy and protect rights guaranteed by the Sixth and 14th amendments.

We must confront the fact that oppression and supremacy are as fixed in our legal system as monuments of Confederate generals are in the ground. Both undermine social progress and speak to a systemic oppression we must fight collectively to remove.
IN RECENT years, few members of Congress were as outspoken as Republican Tom Price on the urgent need to bring discipline to what he called Washington's "reckless spending." It seems Mr. Price, formerly a congressman from suburban Atlanta and now secretary of health and human services, was studying that culture all too carefully.

Last week, Mr. Price spent roughly $25,000 on a private charter jet for a round-trip journey from Washington to Philadelphia, according to a detailed report in Politico. The same trip on a commercial flight, leaving at nearly the same time, would have cost less than $1,000 per ticket. Amtrak makes the trip twice every hour during the day at an even lower price  and D.C.'s Union Station is about an eight-minute drive from Mr. Price's office. On the speedy Acela, the trip takes 90 minutes. Taking into account travel to the airport, Mr. Price might very well have saved not just thousands of dollars by taking the train, but also time.

The back-and-forth trips to Philadelphia were among at least two dozen such flights Mr. Price took since May, at a likely cost to taxpayers in the range of $300,000, Politico reported. Mr. Price seems to think it's his birthright to use private charter planes to jet around the continental United States.

After Democrats expressed outrage  Republicans, those avatars of prudent stewardship of taxpayer dollars, were mostly mum  a spokeswoman for Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson told The Post that Mr. Price's travel will be the subject of an investigation.

An HHS spokesman defended Mr. Prices travel arrangements as justified by his extremely demanding schedule. Poor fellow! As if Washington were not amply stocked with people as busy as the self-important Mr. Price, most of whom somehow scrape by on commercial transportation. The Obama-era HHS secretaries who preceded Mr. Price, Kathleen Sebelius and Sylvia Mathews Burwell, with very few exceptions, flew commercially around the continental United States. They also had extremely demanding schedules.

Mr. Price previously attracted notice for commending police in West Virginia after they arrested a reporter who had the temerity to intrude on his sublime sense of serenity by asking him a few questions about health-care policy as he walked through the State Capitol; he said the arrest was justified because the questions had not been posed in a news conference. Alarmingly for Mr. Price's well-being, the charge against the reporter was dropped.

Mr. Price for years styled himself as a warrior against waste, fraud and abuse. By excelling at waste and abuse, he seems determined to prove himself the fraud.
PRESIDENT TRUMP appears to have embarked on a two-track approach to pressuring North Korea into restraining its nuclear weapons and missile programs. The first track is the ever-tightening economic sanctions that, if properly implemented, could further isolate North Korea from world finance and trade. The second track is a game of chicken to see who can hurl the harshest and most absurd rhetorical insults.

The first track, economic sanctions, took another step forward Thursday when Mr. Trump announced what are potentially the toughest U.S. economic punishments yet, not just going after Pyongyang's enterprises and people, but also attempting to isolate third parties that do business with North Korea. This extends beyond the latest sanctions resolution of the U.N. Security Council and could ultimately shrink the gray zone where North Korea has long evaded sanctions. Foreign banks and others that do business with North Korea will face a risk of becoming radioactive in the eyes of the United States, and that may cause them to think twice.

No one should have any illusions, as Andrea Berger pointed out this summer in a report for the Royal United Services Institute: North Korea's ability to evade sanctions has run ahead of the actual punishments. Reports from China suggest that, while reluctant to sign up with Mr. Trump's broader sanctions regime, Beijing has ordered the agreed-upon financial sanctions against North Korea to be implemented, and China's Central Bank has demanded no new accounts be opened and older ones be wound up. The role of China, the chief benefactor of North Korea that is often opaque and ambivalent about the Kim Jong Un regime, can be frustrating and inconclusive. But sanctions and coercive diplomacy, however difficult, offer the best available approach, given the unappealing alternatives. Mr. Kim's dynastic rule emphasizes self-reliance and plays off enemies abroad; to change his behavior will be extremely difficult and take time.

What's harder to grasp about U.S. policy is how such a calibrated pressure campaign fits in with the food fight Mr. Trump escalated with Mr. Kim, from the "Rocket Man" sobriquet  "on a suicide mission"  followed by Mr. Kim's reply that Mr. Trump is a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" leading to Mr. Trump's Friday tweet that Mr. Kim is "obviously a madman."

Superheated rhetoric is an old favorite of North Korean propaganda. But what does Mr. Trump gain by mucking about in the same gutter? He could simply harden Mr. Kim's resolve and siege mentality. In New York on Friday, Mr. Kim's foreign minister threatened that Pyongyang might explode a missile carrying a hydrogen bomb over the open Pacific. The danger in such vast threats is the possibility of miscalculation, especially a missile flying, say, over Japan that could not be detected at a critical moment as nuclear or conventional.

Mr. Trump ought to focus on making his sanctions work and quit imitating the supposed madman he is trying to pressure.
Priyanka Kumar is author of the novel Take Wing and Fly Here and the writer/director of the documentary The Song of the Little Road.

Weve come a long way from the days when Aristotle believed that storks winter on the moon. Now GPS tags, DNA sequencing, satellites and cellphone networks allow scientists to track animals across vast stretches of land and through sky and sea.

In Where the Animals Go, geographer James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, a former design editor for National Geographic, showcase some of the latest information on animal movement gleaned from these new technologies. Through colorful maps, detailed graphics and explanatory essays, the book presents in intimate detail the comings and goings of species across the animal kingdom, from ants and bees to jaguars, baboons, vultures and, yes, storks.

Where the Animals Go is full of unexpected information: When geese fly over the Himalayas, for example, their hearts beat at up to 500 times per minute. Some geese crossed the Tibetan Plateau in less than a day at record-breaking climb rates of 2.2 kilometers per hour, Cheshire writes. Thats like ascending from sea level to the summit of Mount Everest in four hours. Whats more, they do so without acclimatization, rest, or help from the wind.

Other chapters demonstrate the risks animals face as they try to make their way to food and water and to mate. By monitoring the speed and direction of elephants, for example, researchers can determine whether they have been harassed by armed herders. In a fascinating essay, The Elephant Who Texted for Help, Uberti describes how the GPS collar of a Kenyan elephant alerted researchers that the animal had been shot; watching from a researchers living room, scientists followed its tracks on screen, all the way until the moment it sadly succumbed to its wounds.



Where the Animals Go, by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti (W. W. Norton & Company)

[Does evolution bring the same results no matter what?]

This and other chapters demonstrate how human intrusion has disrupted animals movement and in some cases put their very existence in peril. Tracking devices and genetic analysis have shown, for example, that mountain lions in the Santa Ana Mountains near Los Angeles have become effectively marooned on an island, surrounded by freeways and ever-encroaching human development. Since 2001, the authors report, only one tagged lion . . . has managed to cross Interstate 15 in either direction, but he was killed 25 days later for preying on a ranchers sheep. The long-term effect is stark: Without the ability to breed with other gene pools, the Santa Ana population is in jeopardy.

GPS and other technology make such discoveries possible, but tagging animals is itself risky. The simple act of catching an animal is about the most horrible thing that can occur to it, says bio-logging pioneer Rory Wilson. Even if you catch it and let it go, itll have the heebie-jeebies for weeks. A GPS collar can compromise the 100% intact fur barrier otters need to protect them from cold. Because a puncture in their fur could mean death, scientists use internal tags on otters instead. With such precautions, says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, stress can be minimized so that the risk is outweighed by the enhancement of the [animals] survival chances that comes from what we learn through the tracking.

Cheshire and Uberti write about billions of data points being collected  some by citizen scientists  and their ravishing maps put this information to good use. But whats missing here is a deeper discussion of habitat loss, which is already changing the ways animals move. Storks, as Cheshire and Uberti point out, dont always migrate now; its easier to feed on garbage dumps. The habitat conversation we need to have now is about how urban environments are an underutilized resource and re-wilding our backyards can offer sorely needed rest stops for small migrating birds.

Mapping animal migrations can help government officials to draw park boundaries more strategically to protect animals such as oilbirds, who have a wider range than was previously understood. Cheshire writes, In order to fully understand why something happens we often need to know where it happens. Cheshire and Uberti, and the scientists whose work they have interpreted, show us with precision and clarity where the animals go. Whether we will give, say, mountain lions the corridors they need to cross our freeways without getting hit is another matter.
Irin Carmon, an Outlook contributing writer, is a co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

For most of her life, Ellen Pao did what youre supposed to do to succeed. In her new book, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, Pao describes herself as a dutiful daughter of immigrants who excelled at Princeton and Harvard, where she picked up law and business degrees, and then headed west for the tech gold rush. Sure, she encountered some creeps along the way, and at times she felt underappreciated. But as she tells it, it wasnt until landing at blue-chip venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers  which she famously, and unsuccessfully, sued for gender discrimination and retaliation  that she began to question whether she had been set up to fail.

"The culture, I began to realize, is designed to keep out people who aren't white men," she writes early on in "Reset." That sort of systemic critique is heretical in Silicon Valley, where wealthy men talk a big game about a meritocracy and transforming the world through technology. Never mind that a 2015 survey of 200 women at tech companies found that 60 percent had experienced sexual harassment, twice the rate of a separate study across industries. As Pao's book persuasively shows, men in the tech industry love to exalt the notion of "disruption," but those at her venture capital firm chafed at a woman disturbing their comfort. She paid the price.

[Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet]

Pao unravels the slow accumulation of slights and outrages she endured at Kleiner. No crusader at heart, she demonstrated remarkable determination, even going through with the bruising trial, when settling would have protected her privacy and perhaps her career prospects. She has since refused to sign a non-disparagement clause with Kleiner. I was one of the only people who had the resources and the position to bring suit, she writes. I believed I had an obligation to speak out about what Id seen as one of the few women and people of color in that world.



Reset, by Ellen Pao (Spiegel & Grau)

What she saw included, by her account, boorish, obvious sexism. Pao recalls trying to implement Sheryl Sandbergs advice about leaning in and demanding a seat at the table. But following Sandbergs prescriptions proved difficult. One time, she found herself on a private plane with male executives where the conversation included discussing their preferred sex workers and name-dropping porn stars. When the plane landed, Pao realized that the group couldnt wait to ditch me. She thought, Taking your seat at the table doesnt work so well . . . when no one wants you there and you are vastly outnumbered. Later, she notes wryly that after Sandbergs book came out, that porn-obsessed tech CEO was all over it as a spokesperson and advocate.

Paos book is most astute when it portrays a subtler form of discrimination. Pao writes, When venture capitalists say  and they do say  We think its young white men, ideally Ivy League dropouts, who are the safest bets, and then only invest in young white men with Ivy League backgrounds, of course young white men with Ivy League backgrounds are the only ones who make money for them (they are also the only ones who lose money for them, but whos keeping track of that?)

Pao suggests she suffered in Silicon Valley simply because of her gender. She was considered not bold enough when she expressed her skepticism of pitches promoted by her colleagues. This is a problem with pushing boldness for its own sake onto introverted, analytical women, Pao writes. What if our inclination to assess and avoid the outsized risk of certain ventures could be an asset to our teams? Why does it never seem to occur to anyone that its an option, say, half the time, for the men to actually listen to us? That sort of coolheadedness, though, is contrary to the cowboy risk-taking for which tech culture constantly congratulates itself.

All this leaves women and people of color with an unappealing set of choices. Whether complaining about sexism or wondering if an investment is a smart bet, Pao and women like her are stuck with the unfun roles of ballbuster and buzzkiller. She was excoriated by her colleagues for complaining all the time  and also for not complaining early and often enough, including about the incident on the plane.

Men, including those at Kleiner, are permitted to be prickly and unlikable if they are perceived to deliver, whereas women are required to be likable. And as long as a trial (or an election, for that matter) turns into a referendum on likability, ambitious women are likely to lose.

Her likability, or lack of it, seems to be at the heart of why Pao lost her case against Kleiner. After the trial, several jurors explained their vote for Kleiner by citing largely subjective performance reviews for Pao. One juror, Steve Sammut, told the tech website Recode that the jury noticed that the phrase "sharp elbows" recurred in Pao's reviews. "For one of the guys, you might have seen that phrase but it changed the next year," Sammut said. "But for her, it seemed to be her personality, and you really do have to fit into the firm." When the culture of the firm is determined by the same old group of guys, can you blame Pao for believing that the system is rigged?

[Techs sexism doesnt stay in Silicon Valley. Its in the products you use.]

"Reset" would have benefited from a more direct and nuanced discussion of the criticisms of Pao's case. Much of the case centered on Pao's relationship with another partner, which she says began with his harassment of her, evolved into a consensual affair and wound up with his retaliation against her professionally. Pao doesn't delve into her perspective on an email she sent to the firm's leadership urging that the partner not be fired. Juror Sammut later said that that request undermined her credibility in arguing that the firm was unresponsive to her claims of unfair treatment. The company's defense attorney, Lynn Hermle, told the press, "This is the right issue and the right time but the wrong case." (To this reviewer, it immediately echoed the refrain heard during the 2016 campaign that a given voter didn't have any problem voting for a woman  just not this one.) Kleiner was lucky, as many companies are, that the trial turned on Pao herself rather than on the male-dominated system. The jury was entrusted to decide a single case between a woman and a company and did not have to rule on conduct throughout Silicon Valley.

Like Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton before her, Pao was humiliated and defeated. But not all was lost: Ive become a kind of confessor for people who have faced workplace injustices, she writes, a belated vindication that would be familiar to Hill and Clinton. It seemed to take losing for people to embrace Pao, to thank her for raising awareness. At the end of the book, Pao notes that she has formed Project Include to fight underrepresentation of women and people of color in tech. Its better than nothing, but meanwhile, those in power look pretty much the same  or worse.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was already facing a perilous week ahead: another attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a critical special election in Alabama and a first glimpse of the framework for a massive tax cut.

By Friday night, the repeal effort was hanging by the barest of threads, and President Trump wasnt happy about it  venting at a high-profile campaign stop about the apparent impending failure.

All of it leaves McConnell, who a few days ago was poised to score his best in the Trump era, desperately trying to mitigate his losses.

Defections from the GOPs own ranks, most notably (again) Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), probably ended for at least another year the bid to repeal the health-care law. Republicans may go through the motions of holding a vote in the days ahead, but it seems destined to fail unless Trump or McConnell can change several senators minds.

The news arrived at a terrible time for the establishment wing of the Republican Party, just days before Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), appointed after Jeff Sessions became attorney general, faces a conservative challenge in a Republican primary runoff to fill the seat permanently. McConnells Washington operation fully backed Strange, and Trump was persuaded to support him as well, even flying to Huntsville, Ala., on Friday to appear onstage with the senator ahead of Tuesdays election.

Losses on both the policy agenda and the political arena in a single week would be brutal for McConnell  and could lead to another round of recriminations inside a Republican Party that is beset by division.

Such an outcome would also make it even more critical  yet all the harder  for White House officials and congressional Republicans to come together on their plan to dramatically cut taxes for businesses and individuals. That issue had been the long-planned focus for next weeks agenda until the latest repeal effort crowded out everything else.

So far, Republicans have shown progress on the tax plan, trying to learn from their ACA mistakes by preemptively agreeing on the fiscal targets. But senior advisers have privately suggested that this is a project that is probably months away from fruition. And thats if all goes as planned.

Roy Moore disrupts U.S. Senate race in Alabama  and prepares for new level of defiance in Washington

Politically, this legislative quagmire probably inspires more conservatives to follow the path of Roy Moore. The controversial former state judge is challenging Strange by labeling him a McConnell crony  a member of an establishment that continues to flounder in Washington.

In the 2014 and 2016 election seasons, McConnell shepherded every single Republican incumbent who sought reelection through their primary challenges, believing that every victory by the establishment further suffocated the energy for insurgents in other states.

That may not happen this time. Moore could pull off the win with the backing of Stephen K. Bannon, the ousted White House strategist who has returned to run the Breitbart media group with promises to launch as many primary challengers as possible to McConnells GOP incumbents. Bannon would take a victory by Moore as a selling point to some of the billionaire financiers of Trumps 2016 campaign who remain upset with McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). The ultimate goal? More funding for more primary challengers ahead of next years midterm elections.

All of this would come as Republicans grapple with a critical decision to prop up the ACAs private insurance markets. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), leaders of the Senates health committee, had already been working on a bipartisan plan to make these fixes. That work got set aside as McConnell agreed to allow Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to make a final push on their plan to fully repeal Obamacare.

In the wake of McCains announcement, some Republicans began saying there was no point in even holding the vote on the Cassidy-Graham plan. Ill be honest: It seems unlikely that well be voting on this, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said at a town hall Friday in Iowa City, adding that she believed a bipartisan route was needed.

I hope that Lamar and Patty can come back again together, hopefully next week, Ernst said.

But that plan has already been panned by many conservatives as a bailout for the insurance industry, akin to the Wall Street bailout following the 2008 collapse of the economy. Opposition to that Wall Street bill was one of the main engines that launched the tea party movement and shifted the Republican Party ideologically to the right.

Taking over McConnells weekly news conference Tuesday, Graham declared that Trump and Ryan had already declared their opposition to the bipartisan health-care effort and that it was left for dead.

Heres what the speaker of the House told me: I will not bring up a bill or a vote in the House that props up Obamacare, because that is not why I came here, Graham told reporters.

The week John McCain shook the Senate

Conservatives will be disappointed to see the ACA remain the law of the land  and could continue to oppose efforts to fix it. But GOP strategists fear that voters could blame Republicans for unstable insurance markets and soaring premiums now that they hold the White House and Congress.

When senators cast their last votes Tuesday, an abbreviated week because of the Jewish holidays, McConnells team saw an outside chance at a double-barreled victory in the coming week.

Before he headed to Alabama, Trumps main selling points had been Stranges loyalty to his agenda, and in the final days of this heated campaign, Moore made clear he opposed the latest effort to repeal the ACA because it was not conservative enough.

The stage seemed set for Trump, as well as Vice President Pence, who is scheduled to arrive in Alabama on Monday, to sell Strange to the states conservatives. Instead, Trump voiced doubt about his decision to back the sitting senator.

Ill be honest, I might have made a mistake, Trump told the crowd in Huntsville at one point during his more than 30 minutes of remarks meant to bolster Stranges chances.

It was exactly the kind of encouragement that conservatives might be looking for to vote for Moore  and to challenge even more establishment figures next year.

Its a toxic recipe that could leave McConnell more wounded than ever by Friday.

Read more from Paul Kane's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 01:45:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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VILNIUS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Lithuania's Special investigation service (STT) has brought suspicions of corruption against Lithuania's Liberal Movement and the Labor party on Friday.

According to the announcement from STT, the Liberal Movement, an opposition party at the country's parliament, is suspected of wide scale bribery and influence peddling.

STT suspects that two of the party's members have taken bribes of more than 100,000 euros on behalf of the party from a vice president of a Lithuanian company in exchange for political decisions.

Corruption suspicions against the Liberal Movement haven been brought after a year and a half since the country's law enforcement had found more than 100,000 euros in the possession of Eligijus Masiulis, the former leader of the Liberal Movement.

In response the party's leaders called the suspicions to the party unjustified. Eugenijus Gentvilas, the deputy chairman of the party, said on Friday the two suspected members of the Liberal Movement didn't have a mandate to ask for financial support on behalf of the party.

"Two gentlemen of fortune have caused a severe damage to the party by manipulating and using the party as a cover up," Gentvilas told a local conference on Friday noting that the law enforcement never found any cash at the party's premises.

Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian president, who currently attends the annual General Assembly of the UN responded shortly.

"There cannot be any compromises in fight against corruption," Grybauskaite said in a commentary released by the President's Office.

According to Saulius Skvernelis, the Prime Minister of Lithuania, the country's political system has suffered a "massive blow". Skvernelis vows to initiate a wide parliamentary investigation on possible ties between politicians and business groups.

The Liberal Movement is the second largest opposition party at the Lithuanian parliament. Gabrielius Landsbergis, the leader of the largest opposition party the Homeland Union -- Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), called the suspicions against the liberals a "political earthquake" in Lithuania.

The Liberal Movement was TS-LKD's partners at the parliament's opposition and one of the top choices in elections for young voters.

The Labor Party also received suspicions on wide scale bribery and influence peddling by the STT. The news about suspicions brought against the Labor Party has attracted less political and public attention on Friday, since the party has been losing its popularity in recent years.

Representatives of the party declined to comment on suspicions to local media and said they would hire lawyers first.
President Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) listen during a meeting regarding tax reform at the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017. (Shawn Thew/Bloomberg)

Republicans are targeting a corporate rate of 20 percent in their federal tax overhaul plan, according to three people familiar with the emerging blueprint  a number that represents a substantial cut from the current 35 percent rate but falls short of the 15 percent President Trump has long pushed for.

The plan remains fluid, said the Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive negotiations. But they said the template is taking a more definite shape ahead of a planned rollout next week by the Big Six negotiators from the White House, Senate and House.

This week, key members of the Senate Budget Committee reached a deal on the potential fiscal impact of the tax overhaul, agreeing to add as much as $1.5 trillion to the budget deficit over the next decade to accommodate the anticipated revenue lost under the GOP plan. Republicans believe the corporate rate cut and other incentives will stimulate economic growth, offsetting the revenue loss.

In another bid to spur immediate growth, Republicans familiar the emerging details said, the plan will also allow full expensing, which permits businesses to fully deduct their capital expenses immediately rather than writing off their depreciation over the course of several years. But that provision, they said, will not be permanent but will sunset after five years due to its cost.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said a 20 percent corporate rate combined with five years of expensing would achieve the GOPs long-standing tax objectives. Norquist has been involved in the plans drafting but is not one of the Republicans briefed on the latest details.

That will kick-start the economy in a way that reelects every Republican who has a vowel in his name, he said Friday.

But it also is an implicit brushback of Trump, who as recently as this month has called for a 15 percent corporate rate to make U.S. companies more competitive across the globe.

Right now, were paying the highest tax rate in the world. We want to bring that to around 15 percent, Trump said on Sept. 14. That would make us competitive with China and other countries.

[Trumps push for tax cuts is coming up against a familiar challenge: Divided GOP]

Key congressional leaders, however, have long doubted whether they would be able to push rates that low, given the potential lost revenue and their desire to pursue other costly provisions, including full expensing and a suite of changes to the individual tax code.

Representatives for each principal GOP negotiator  the Trump administration, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee  declined to comment on details of the emerging plan.

Vice President Pence stumped for the tax bill in his home state of Indiana on Friday, saying the GOP bill would lower taxes on businesses and individuals and create economic growth. "Tax cuts mean more jobs, tax cuts means higher wages for our families, tax cuts will create an economy where anything is possible," he said.

While the 20 percent corporate rate falls short of Trump's goal, the emerging outline also represents a retreat for some congressional players. Ryan and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), the Ways and Means Committee chairman, have both pushed for full expensing and have emphasized the importance of making the corporate tax provisions permanent. The sunset for full expensing could mean a brief spurt of business investment, but it could also impede long-term planning.

Norquist, however, predicted the provision, if enacted, would simply be extended indefinitely by Congress down the road  much as it has continued other corporate tax provisions, such as the existing credit for research and development costs.

On the individual side, Republicans have indicated plans to deliver tax relief to the middle class by doubling the standard deduction and reducing the current seven tax brackets to three. But they also have expressed a willingness to end a popular deduction for state and local taxes that is claimed by many middle-income filers in high-tax states.

[To make their tax plan work, Republicans eye a favorite blue-state break]

While the emerging details signal progress toward a consensus Republican bill, the plan faces multiple serious hurdles before it can be enacted into law.

As a preliminary measure, the House and Senate must agree on a budget resolution that sets out the fiscal parameters of the tax plan. This week's Senate accord signaled progress on that front, but House conservatives have pushed to include hundreds of billions of dollars of spending cuts rather than simply focusing the budget on tax cuts. Budget hawks in both chambers, meanwhile, are wary of supporting a plan that could swell the national debt.

Passing a budget will allow the use of special procedures that will allow the tax plan to pass with only Republican votes in the Senate. But as the difficulties the GOP has faced this year in passing a health-care bill have shown, keeping the party together can be a tricky proposition.

In a sign of fights to come, a coalition of powerful lobbying groups, including the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Counties and the National Education Association banded together this week to fight any attempt to kill the deduction for state and local taxes. Doing so, they argue, could hurt home values and impede local governments' ability to deliver services.

But GOP leaders are confident that the prospect of major tax cuts will keep the party united in the months ahead. And Norquist said Trump deserves credit for keeping pressure on Republicans to keep rates down.

"By going to 15, he took the House to 20," Norquist said. "Both have driven themselves forward. We have more rate reduction and more expensing that you would have expected at the beginning of this."

Read more at PowerPost
A week before a highly contentious Catalonia independence referendum, the Catalan president continued to defy warnings from Spain's national government to call off the Oct. 1 "self rule" vote.

It will proceed because we had foreseen a contingency plan to guarantee it, but moreover it will proceed because it has the support of the immense majority of the population, Carles Puigdemont said in an official televised statement from Catalonias capital city, Barcelona.

The remarks fanned the flames of the latest separatist campaign in an embattled European Union, a bloc of 28 member states with their own respective histories and often-fragile national identities. Brussels said it would not interfere with the Catalan referendum. But while most European leaders have avoided speaking out against the referendum directly, many wish to avoid a successful precedent for a breakaway region welcomed into the bloc, given the number of similar regions across Europe that might soon try to do the same. Most share the opinion of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose representatives told Reuters that Berlin has great interest in the maintenance of stability in Spain.

[Independence movements in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan face the point of no return]

E.U. officials have sought to make clear the uncertain future that would befall any newly independent region. If there were to be a yes vote in favor of Catalan independence, then we will respect that opinion, said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in a YouTube broadcast earlier this month. But Catalonia will not be able to be an E.U. member state on the day after such a vote.

That warning has been enough to discourage similar separatist campaigns in recent years, such as the Scottish referendum in September 2014, when 55.3 percent of voters ultimately opted to remain in Britain, which had not yet voted to leave the E.U.

Recent polls suggest that the same may hold true in Catalonia: A majority of the roughly 7.5 million Catalans said they want the right to vote, but less than half supported a split from Spain, according to a survey conducted by the Catalan government in July.

Those statistics have not deterred Catalan officials.

Puigdemonts latest statement came hours after he openly defied Madrid by tweeting the link to a newly created Web page listing where the polls would be on Oct. 1. The move was the latest step in a week marked by escalating tensions between Spains national government and leaders from the northeastern region. The previous Web page was ordered shut down by a judge six days after launching.

A climax of the conflict came Wednesday, when Spanish Civil Guard officers raided the Catalan regional governments offices, effectively halting preparation for the secession vote, which Spain continues to deem unconstitutional.

In images that shocked observers around the world, police confiscated election material, including 10 million ballot papers, and arrested 13 officials on a warrant from a Barcelona-based judge. Among those arrested was Josep Maria Jove, secretary general of economic affairs for Catalonia, the right hand of the regions vice president, Oriol Junqueras.

That court-ordered search was the Spanish governments clearest attempt at blocking the secession vote since the Catalan parliament approved a law two weeks ago to hold the referendum on Oct. 1, claiming that the region would declare independence within 48 hours if the majority were to vote yes. There will be no minimum voter turnout.

If you care about the tranquility of most Catalans, give up this escalation of radicalism and disobedience, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Wednesday night in a 10-minute statement to news organizations that reaffirmed his commitment to protecting Spanish law.

Tens of thousands of people protested Wednesday by waving the pro-independence flag and chanting slogans in Catalan. By Thursday, smaller rallies saw them occupy Barcelonas main thoroughfare and gather in front of the High Court of Justice in Catalonia, demanding the release of those being held.

While Catalan leaders accused Spain of a totalitarian attitude, Spanish authorities denounced the attacks and pressure tactics that the pro-independence coalition government is using to push what they called an illegal vote. Both sides call the other undemocratic.

Spanish prosecutors warned Catalan mayors last week that any official participating in preparations for the vote would be charged with civil disobedience, abuse of office and misuse of public funds. Some 700 mayors responded days later by meeting with Puigdemont in a public show of support.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau defied Madrid by committing to open polls in Spains second-largest city. The Catalan National Assembly, a pro-independence civic group, boasts thousands of volunteers and 6,400 ballot boxes across Catalonia to facilitate the vote.

The latest political jockeying comes after years of brinkmanship. Critics of the referendum say that the regional leaders have intentionally misled the Catalan population, harassed opponents at home and orchestrated a standoff with Madrid. Critics of the Spanish government, however, argue that Rajoys unwillingness to negotiate with the locally elected secessionists only fueled resentment and led to a missed chance to nip the movement in the bud.

Supporters of Spanish unity also question the credibility of a vote that flouts the law, with lopsided voter turnout and no legal oversight or census. By comparison, the Scottish referendum of 2014 took place with the British governments full approval.

For now, the Spanish government has responded to the escalating tensions mostly with stopgap measures.

Earlier this week, Spains finance minister signed an order limiting new credit and requiring central authorities supervision for every payment of nonessential services in Catalonia to ensure that no public money is used for the referendum.

That move caused jitters among Catalan civil servants, who were concerned that salaries would not be paid at the end of September. But the Catalan government calmed fears by transferring salaries five days early.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government decided to delay calling the vote on the 2018 General Budget, which was scheduled for Friday.

Some analysts suggested that the move pointed to the government's need to keep the door open for negotiating greater financial autonomy for Catalonia as a deterrent for the vote. In fact, in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, Spain's economy minister reiterated the government's offer to discuss giving Catalonia more money if it gives up the October referendum.

With little more than a week to go, both sides are refusing to flinch.

The Catalan government has digitized the ballot so voters can print it out and take it to the polls.

Spains Interior Ministry has deployed four cruise ships packed with 4,000 police to three ports in Catalonia to prevent the independence referendum, amid concerns over the divided loyalties of the regional police.

Local authorities were forced to let the ships dock because they carried a ministerial order. But Barcelonas dockers association announced that, if asked, they would refuse to service the vessels.

But, as they also noted, the Spanish ships had not requested any such service.

McAuley reported from Paris.





Read more

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Two years after Germany took in more than a million asylum seekers, there's scant evidence of the influx here in this struggling former communist stronghold hard on the Polish border.

There are no mosques, few ethnic-minority restaurants and only a scattering of nonwhite residents.

But in recent weeks, Muslim faces  a man with a long, scraggly beard, a woman fully veiled but for the eyes  have been everywhere, staring down from posters that bear the message: Islam doesnt belong in Germany.

The posters are the handiwork of the Alternative for Germany party. And the message is part of a campaign likely to propel the party, known as the AfD, to a historic outcome in national elections on Sunday. For the first time since 1961, Germany is on track to seat a far-right party in Parliament.

The AfD's success has unnerved Germans who see the party as the ominous vanguard of a return to a far darker past built on prejudice and hate. In the final days of campaigning, Chancellor Angela Merkel's allies have deemed the party an affront to the German constitution, while her top rival, center-left candidate Martin Schulz, described the AfD as "our enemies."



German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the German Christian Democratic Union and the top candidate for the general election, visits a tractor exhibition Sept. 23, 2017, during a campaign tour of a fair in the city of Lauenburg in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. (Carsten Koall/European Pressphoto Agency-EFE)

But as the contest for a parliamentary seat here in Frankfurt an der Oder shows, it is far from clear whether the AfDs rise represents a German lurch to the extreme right, or simply a protest among voters fed up with a cross-party consensus that on key issues has drifted steadily left.

The German political establishment has made it pretty easy to fill a market niche, said Jurgen Neyer, a politics professor at this citys European University Viadrina. Its as if all car manufacturers offered only red cars. Now someone is offering a black car. Wow! Is it better? Hard to say. But its something different.

[How German politics became a beacon of stability compared with the United States]

Most Germans do not appear to want something different. Polls show that nearly 80 percent of the country will vote Sunday for one of the four main establishment parties.

One is led by Merkel, who has governed for 12 years and is overwhelmingly favored to win another term, bucking global trends that favor shake-ups over continuity.

The other three parties have been hard-pressed to meaningfully differentiate themselves from the chancellor on policy, endorsing her decision to welcome refugees and standing beside her as she has reached beyond her conservative base to capture the center ground on the environment, the economy and other major policies.

Then there are the left and right fringes  one with communist roots, the other with positions that critics deride as neo-fascist. In a country with pungent memories of both communism and fascism, the extremes have long struggled. They remain relatively small, hovering at around 10 percent.

But both have been growing  especially the right. They have caught in their currents disaffected voters who had begun to see German politics as a conflict-free zone where Merkel decided and everyone else nodded along.

There used to be differences among the big parties in Germany. Those differences are gone, said Detlev Frye, 52, a former radio news announcer who was once a youth activist in the center-right Christian Democrats.

Under Merkel, that party shifted to the center  and Frye lost interest in politics. But his passion was reawakened when he saw a speech by Alexander Gauland, one of the founders of the AfD, in which he insisted there was an alternative to Merkelism.

People had developed a state of mind of We cant change our direction,  said Frye, who is now an AfD candidate for local office near this riverside city. But theres no consensus among the people. Theres only consensus among the politicians.

The AfD got its start in 2013 as a rebellion against European Union plans to bail out debt-stricken Greece, and that was the issue that first animated Frye. In that years German parliamentary vote, the AfD nearly met the 5 percent threshold to win seats.

But it was the backlash against Merkels response to the 2015 refugee crisis that came to define the AfDs image, and that pushed its support to 15 percent or more early last year.

Gauland, now one of the partys co-leaders, said in an interview that the refugee crisis has been the prime driver of AfD support because the party was willing to criticize Merkels approach when others would not. But he also said the issues fading from public view helps explain the partys slide in support earlier this year.

The refugees welcome policy of Angela Merkel alienated a lot of people, he said, noting in particular the images of long lines of asylum seekers making their way across European borders.

The refugees are still a problem, he contended, citing what he described as societal changes for the worse that he ascribed to Islamic people who have totally other values. But those issues are not so visible on television.

The AfD is trying to make them as prominent as possible in Frankfurt an der Oder, where the 76-year-old Gauland is the local candidate.

In some respects, the city  a poor east German cousin to west Germanys Frankfurt, which is a thriving capital of global finance  offers a perfect opportunity for the AfD.

The local economy was devastated by German reunification, losing high-tech manufacturing jobs to points farther west where education levels were higher, even as low-skilled service jobs hopped the muddy Oder River to Poland.

[What you should know about the German elections, and 5 other global stories]

About 30 percent of the citys population left; those who remain tend to be older, with few career prospects. Disaffection with the liberal and cosmopolitan ways of Berlin, about an hour west by train, runs high.

Whats more, the areas representative in Parliament has been an outspoken advocate for Merkels refugee policy, and even took two Eritreans into his home at the height of the crisis.

It could be that this is a problem for me in the elections, acknowledged the lawmaker, Martin Patzelt, who is a member of Merkels CDU.

But he defended his decision as the response to an urgent need and said one of the refugees remains a guest in his home two years later.

Hes doing well. Going to school, said Patzelt, who said his family has taken in visitors for extended stretches before. I always say, The world is sitting at our kitchen table. 

Local AfD activists say residents resent Patzelt for helping foreigners when the needs are acute at home.

People want Patzelt to be a voice for his constituents, not for the Eritreans, Frye said.

That sentiment is hardly universal, however, and in some cases, the partys inflammatory rhetoric seems to have backfired.

Im sure I wont vote for the AfD, said Christine Boll, 63, a former teacher. I dont like racism.

But Boll was far less certain about what party she would vote for; days before the election, she said she was still having trouble figuring out what distinguished the mainstream parties from one another.

In that respect, she has company. With the establishment parties in agreement on the major issues, a likely scenario after the vote is that Germany once again has a grand coalition government in which Merkels CDU joins forces with its top rival, Schulzs Social Democrats.

If that happens, and if the AfD finishes in third place, as many polls project, the party would become the official voice of opposition in the Bundestag, the German Parliament.

That would give the AfD a far more prominent platform from which to make its case ahead of the next elections, in 2021, and likely dash any hopes within the establishment that the party will simply fade away as the memory of the refugee crisis recedes.

They really are the alternative, and that makes them attractive, said Neyer, the professor. I think theyre real. Theyre here to stay.

Luisa Beck contributed to this report.

Read more

Obama is back on the campaign trail, in Germany. (Or at least his face is.)

In a turbulent world, Germans set to reward Angela Merkel for countrys stability

Refugees in Germany cant vote. But their future is at stake in the upcoming election.

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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 The vast Russian military exercises that ended last week showed off a muscular fighting force practicing state-on-state warfare, NATO's deputy military commander said, in one of the first assessments of a large-scale operation that put Russia's neighbors on nervous alert.

The Zapad exercise, which rehearsed a conflict along Russias western borders, showed off a force that was marshaling itself probably more quickly, more efficiently, with this underlying message that if you thought we were in decay, were not, NATOs Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, British Gen. James Everard, said in an interview.

The exercise, whose active phase ended Wednesday, is an every-four-years effort that was held this month for the first time since Russia in 2014 annexed Crimea from Ukraine, then sparked war in the eastern part of Ukraine. Because Russia used exercises as cover ahead of both its operations in Ukraine and its 2008 invasion of Georgia, its neighbors were cautious this time as the Kremlin fired up its military machine.

Now Western allies are sifting through intelligence reports and starting the arduous work of assessing the capabilities of Russias military, which is deep into a reform that has translated the force from a neglected and struggling group into one that for two years has been able to project power into Syria, far from Russias borders.

[Russia threatens retaliatory strikes against U.S. troops and their allies in Syria]



Servicemen take part in the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises Zapad-2017 West-2017) at a training ground near the town of Borisov on September 20. (Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images)

Everard said that the first formal assessments would likely not be ready before the end of October. But he said that some of the basics of effective large-scale warfare  an ability to pick up and move large numbers of troops, and then command them effectively  were on clear display.

You see a recognition in the Russian hierarchy that if you are going to have a foundation of military force behind your stratagem, and I think they do, then it needs to work, Everard said.

Military analysts also said the exercise was a chance for the Kremlin to shoot a message straight to the Pentagon and its allies that Russia has a formidable fighting force capable of mobilizing across its enormous territory  and it needs to be reckoned with.

But if the exercises showed off a Russian military that is much better trained and equipped than at any point since the Soviet collapse, the scenario of the exercises  an enemy from the West trying to overthrow the government in Moscows ally, Belarus, and being beaten back  also may reveal Russias greatest handicap.

Moscow says it is convinced it is under threat of assault by a hostile force in the West that is determined to bring its military to Russias borders. This, as President Vladimir Putin sees it, has already been done in the Baltics. He also believes the United States and NATO were the instigators of street protests that forced Ukraines president to flee to Russia in 2014.

Viewed from that perspective, Zapad was intended to reinforce a point Putin made in December: That Russia is "stronger than any aggressor."

Vladimir Frolov, an independent foreign policy analyst based in Moscow, said: Russia is acting on a faulty threat assessment and seeks to fashion a military response to largely imaginary threats and challenges that are not military in nature. Its all about strategic messaging of coercion and compellence directed at the U.S. and NATO, to prevent things the West has no intention of doing or the capability to accomplish.

[Its clear who the enemy is at Russias war games]

NATO says it is a defensive alliance and represent no military threat to Russia. Many NATO officials disbelieve the Kremlins stated concerns, saying they are an excuse to practice for war against the West.

Although Russia publicly declared that the exercises were small enough to exempt them from international transparency obligations, most Western observers said that the concurrence of drills and joint exercises across Russia's vast territory made them far larger than what was formally announced. The Russian and Chinese navies drilled in the east. The Russian military exercised in Central Asia. Bomber flights ranged over the Norwegian Sea. Paratroopers were active far above the Arctic Circle.

Adding a nuclear edge to the war gaming, Russia carried out two tests of its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-24, the first two days before Zapad began and the second on the culminating day of the exercise.

Western officials are still trying to estimate how many troops took part in the exercises. Some security officials and analysts ventured initial guesses that Zapad may have been a smaller exercise than other major efforts in recent years, although they said it was still a significant event.

It was effectively a national-level military operation, said Igor Sutyagin, a senior research fellow for Russian studies at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security think tank. He said his initial estimate was that between 65,000 and 72,000 troops took part.

Putin viewed a mock battle involving tanks, missiles, air power and paratroopers at a firing range in Luga, in northwestern Russia, and also watched a broadcast of Russia's new Iskander-M missile being launched from a firing range in southern Russia to a target in Kazakhstan about 300 miles away. The weapons were not only a fearsome show of Russian firepower but also a sparkling advertisement for the nation's arms exporters.

The president was very positive about the conduct and the result of that event, Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Friday.

[What would a Russia-NATO war look like? Russias war gaming it right now]

As the exercise unfolded, the Pentagon stepped up the presence of U.S. forces in the region. The U.S.-led heavy armored battalion deployed to Poland was in the process of rotating, meaning it was temporarily doubled. The U.S. Air Force sent three extra F-15 fighter jets to patrol the skies over the Baltics. And nearly 500 U.S. Army troops fanned across the Baltics for the month of September to do exercises.

We train hard to have a combat edge, and that has a deterrent effect, said Lt. Col. Hugh Jones, commander of the Germany-based U.S. Army squadron doing the troop exercises in the Baltics.

Some of the Russian military capabilities seen by NATO leaders confirmed their preexisting concerns.

In 24 to 48 hours, some parts of the Russian armed forces could be ready to invade one Baltic state or all of them, Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis said in an interview. Its clear that its not only defense, but its also about offense.

Part of the exercise rehearsed cutting off the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the rest of NATO, Latvian Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis told Latvias LETA news agency. That is a nightmare scenario for the alliance because Russia has stationed powerful antiaircraft missile systems in its exclave of Kaliningrad, creating challenges for any Western attempt to retake the region.

[Near Russias border with the Baltics, soldiers on both sides are practicing for war]

Despite the Western worries, the training may not have been flawless.

"What had been expected but did not happen was the demonstration of readiness of the newly formed divisions, which adds credibility to the proposition . . . that they are rather far from being combat-capable," said Pavel Baev, who studies the Russian military at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Other embarrassing incidents included a Tu-22M long-range bomber overshooting a runway and a misfiring rocket from a Ka-52 attack helicopter that hit spectators.

The Russian Air Force is feeling the pressure of the protracted deployment in Syria, Baev said. Typically, maintenance is the weakest link, and accidents multiply, he said.

Still, during the exercise, top military and security officials held daily briefings to prepare for the worst-case scenario of an invasion, even as they said they thought it was unlikely one would occur.

As a human being, when you see such events close to your country, you always think, What if?  said Lithuanian Col. Mindaugas Steponavicius, the commander of the Iron Wolf Brigade, Lithuanias core fighting force.

Earlier this year, NATO deployed battalions of about 1,000 troops to each Baltic nation and Poland, a step that alliance leaders hoped would ease the risk that Russia would try to seize any territory from those nations.

"We all hoped that the Cold War or something comparable would never happen again," said German Lt. Col. Thorsten Gensler, the commander of the German-led, multinational NATO battalion that has deployed to Lithuania to dissuade Russia from attacking NATO territory. "So it is a kind of deja vu for me to be here."

Read more

The Baltics tangled geography that has both sides feeling surrounded

Here's what pro-democracy activists in Belarus fear most about Russia's war games

Fear and confidence in the face of Russias war games

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

Filipov reported from Luga, Russia.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, center, leader of Frances far-left coalition La France Insoumise, speaks with vendors and shoppers while visiting a market in Sainte-Marie on the French overseas island of Reunion on Sept. 16. (Richard Bouhet/AFP/Getty Images)

Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the French capital Saturday, condemning the new labor laws of President Emmanuel Macron.

The demonstrators gathered at the behest of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the radical leftist who has emerged as the principal opposition figure to Frances centrist president, a former investment banker. Two and a quarter centuries after the French Revolution, Melenchons anti-capitalist supporters first targeted Pariss symbolic Place de la Bastille, marching against a leader they, too, consider a king.

In a wide-ranging speech, the fiery Melenchon, 66, attacked Macron and the liberal chaos he believes the presidents Anglo-American-style economic retooling will bring. But most of all, Melenchon vowed resistance to the new French president and railed against the process by which Macron passed his reforms, nominally devised to lower an intractably high unemployment rate and stimulate economic growth.

We were not able to discuss a single line, a single page, of the ordinances! he proclaimed, before an applauding crowd of thousands. In reality, the Elysee Palace engaged in months of dialogue with prominent French union leaders, several of whom, in exchange for certain concessions, have since refused to protest the new laws.

[Macrons election was a victory for centrists. But its also revived Frances far left.]

Saturdays march came in direct response to Macron officially signing five major labor decrees into law Friday, a move the young president immediately heralded as an unprecedented reform of the labor market and a moment that broke with decades of French regulatory tradition.

In a country still home to one of the worlds most highly regulated labor markets, these changes are likely to create a long-unimaginable shift in favor of corporations and small businesses.

Melenchon, in many ways the heir to Frances long-dormant communist political tradition, is not amused.

Capitalism is the first enemy of democracy, he declared in his remarks. In his eyes, there is much to dislike in Macrons unapologetic embrace of capitalism.

Under Macrons changes, for instance, French companies across the board stand to benefit from the laws stated aim of reducing the centralized power of collective bargaining. But much of the true emphasis is on nurturing smaller businesses, with 50 employees or fewer, which will now be able to negotiate contracts directly with employees  and, crucially, without union oversight.

These smaller businesses, the new laws also ensure, will additionally profit from a legislated cap on damages that French courts can demand for wrongful employee terminations. In the past, many French companies have said, these often hefty damages have proved deadly for smaller companies that do not necessarily have excess cash reserves .

[Why does Emmanuel Macrons presidential approval rating keep falling?]

Most Melenchon supporters in the crowd Saturday  many of whom had arrived in the capital in convoys of chartered buses from all over metropolitan France  were appalled at the changes.

One of them, Camille Groux, 23, a building engineer from the north-central French city of Orleans, said he found Macrons actions tantamount to a betrayal.

What he proposes is extreme, he said. His ordinances in fact undermine our democracy by giving the power to the heads of companies instead of us, the people. Its the beginning of an authoritarian power.

Anne-Catherine Lhuillier, 35, a French civil servant in the education sector from the Paris suburbs, said she feels vulnerable under the new laws, given that she has seen no raises in the 10 years she has worked in the sector and that increased competition will probably mean increased insecurity.

People who work need some money to live, she said. Just to live.

When the laws take effect in January, Macron may become the first modern French president to successfully overhaul a labor market that many of his predecessors have tried  and failed  to deregulate.

[Macron could succeed where other French presidents failed on labor reform]

The difference, political analysts have observed, is that most of those predecessors sprung changes on the French public without prior discussion, whereas labor reform was always a central promise of Macrons campaign. His actions since his inauguration in May have taken few by surprise, and the protests that have occurred have been less severe than those in April 2016, against similar proposals by Francois Hollande that were far narrower in scope.

Apart from Saturdays march, protests in general against Macrons labor laws appear to be tapering off, with figures declining in recent weeks.

Melenchon, however, has vowed to continue the fight.

We must bring forward the strength of our people in battle and in the streets, he said.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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North Koreas florid insults and President Trumps schoolyard ripostes are but the latest in a long tradition of political and diplomatic put-downs. And they are far from the most cutting.

Pyongyang has arguably done better (or worse, depending on point of view). Among U.S. presidents, it has called Lyndon B. Johnson a "living corpse," George W. Bush a "tyrannical imbecile" and Barack Obama a "clown" and a "monkey."

In 2009, North Koreas foreign ministry described then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a funny lady who sometimes looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.

Trump, however, is the first U.S. president who has answered in kind, reaching into late-20th-century pop to deride North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as Rocket Man on a suicide mission. Kim, or at least his translator, sent many Americans scurrying to their dictionaries by dredging up the 14th-century word dotard to describe the U.S. president as old and senile.

[A short history of dotard, the arcane insult used by Kim Jong Un]



North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump. (Saul Loeb and Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)

But even leaving aside the buzz-killing possibility of nuclear war, none of the current jousting reaches the level of historically clever ridicule. For that, top marks are usually given to the British.

Of the long-necked, sour-faced French leader Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill once said, He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath.

Told by Lady Astor that if she were his wife she would poison his tea, Churchill responded that, if he were her husband, he would drink it.

More recently, the Labour Party politician Denis Healey famously said that debating his mumbling, Conservative counterpart Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep. (Healey and Howe both died in 2015.) Of John Prescott, a member of his own party, Healy said, He has the face of a man who clubs baby seals.

The United States Founding Fathers were no slouches in the threatening-insult department. Thomas Jefferson is often credited with calling John Adams a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman, although many historians attribute the line to a pro-Jefferson political pamphleteer during one of their campaigns against each other.

Adamss partisans, on his behalf, called Jefferson a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.

During a pre-Civil War secession crisis, Trump's favorite former president, Andrew Jackson, told his vice president, John Calhoun of South Carolina, that "if you secede from my nation, I will secede your head from your body."

Issues of slavery and secession also led to one of the most famous incidents in Congress, when Massachusetts Republican Charles Sumner, in the spring of 1856, called Illinois Democrat Stephen Douglas a noisesome, squat, and nameless animal. The verbal attack resulted in Sumner being seriously beaten with a cane on the Senate floor.

Trump is sometimes compared in terms of language to Alabama governor and four-time presidential candidate George Wallace, who issued similarly blunt attacks against pointy-headed bureaucrats and intellectuals, liberals and pinkos.

Among the most memorable political put-downs in modern U.S. history was Sen. Lloyd Bentsens response to Sen. Dan Quayle (R-Ind.) in the 1988 vice-presidential debate, after Quayle defended his lack of experience by noting that he had spent as much time in Congress as John F. Kennedy had when Kennedy ran for Congress.

I knew Jack Kennedy, the silver-haired Texas Democrat responded. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, youre no Jack Kennedy.

On the presidential side of the same race, Vice President George H.W. Bush called his Democratic opponents Bill Clinton and Al Gore bozos.

Hillary Clinton has endured her share of ridicule, much of it indirect or gender-related. When she first campaigned for president, long before the North Koreans or Trump took aim at her, Clinton acknowledged in a 2008 debate with Obama that she perhaps had a personality deficit compared with the charismatic young senator from Illinois, whom she conceded was very likable.

Obama interjected with a patronizing smile, Youre likable enough, Hillary, words that many women considered sexist reminders of painful efforts to get ahead.

Among the most prolific domestic insulters of recent years has been New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who during his time in office has called an openly gay lawmaker numb-nuts, a Navy SEAL an idiot, and the state Senate budget committee chairman an arrogant SOB. During a news conference, he once told reporters they should take a bat to state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D), a grandmother in her 70s.

On the diplomatic stage, North Korea has had stiff competition from Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez called George W. Bush a monkey and, in a 2006 U.N. speech, a devil who trailed the stench of sulfur in his wake.

After Trump slapped sanctions this year on the repressive Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro, the late Chavezs successor, Maduro warned Trump to get your pig hands out of here.

But Maduro, and perhaps not even Kim, can compare with Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, who separately called both Obama and Pope Francis a "son of a whore" and the U.S. ambassador a gay "son of a bitch."

Asked during last years U.S. presidential campaign to compare himself to Trump, Duterte replied: Donald Trump is a bigot, and I am not.
A strong new earthquake shook Mexico on Saturday, toppling already damaged homes and a highway bridge and causing new alarm in a country reeling from two even more powerful quakes this month that together have killed more than 400 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the new, 6.1-magnitude temblor was centered about 11 miles south-southeast of Matias Romero in the state of Oaxaca, which was the region most battered by an 8.1-magnitude quake Sept. 7.

It was among thousands of aftershocks in the wake of that earlier quake, which was the most powerful to hit Mexico in 32 years and killed at least 96 people.

The Oaxaca state government reported that four people were injured in Juchitan and three in Tlacotepec, but none of their lives were in danger. Another person suffered a broken clavicle in the town of Santa Maria Xadani. Three hotels and two churches were damaged and a highway bridge collapsed. The Federal Police agency said the bridge had already been closed because of damage after the Sept. 7 quake.

The state government said in a statement that homes collapsed, but no human lives were lost.

1 of 74 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Photos from the scene after a powerful earthquake rattled Mexico View Photos A 7.1-magnitude earthquake jolted Mexico on Sept. 19, causing buildings to sway sickeningly in the capital on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that did major damage. Caption A 7.1-magnitude earthquake jolted Mexico on Sept. 19, causing buildings to sway sickeningly in the capital on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that did major damage. Rebecca Blackwell Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

Bettina Cruz, a resident of Juchitan, said by phone with her voice still shaking that the new quake felt horrible.

Homes that were still standing just fell down, Cruz said. Its hard. We are all in the streets.

Cruz belongs to a social collective and said that when the shaking began, she was riding in a truck carrying supplies to victims of the earlier quake.

Nathaniel Hernandez said by phone from Tonala, in the southern state of Chiapas, that it was one of the strongest aftershocks he has felt. Since Sept. 7, it has not stopped shaking, Hernandez said.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Paul Caruso said the new temblor was an aftershock of the 8.1 quake, and after a jolt of that size, even buildings left standing can be more vulnerable.

So a smaller earthquake can cause the damaged buildings to fail, Caruso said.

President Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted, At the moment the greatest damage has been to the Ixtaltepec bridge, which should be rebuilt, and structures with previous damage that collapsed.



Volunteers prepare to continue with the search of survivors, in Mexico City Saturday. (Jose Mendez/EPA-EFE)

Jaime Hernandez, director of the Federal Electrical Commission, said the quake knocked out power to 327,000 homes and businesses in Oaxaca, but service had been restored to 72 percent of customers within a few hours.

Buildings swayed in Mexico City, where nerves are still raw from Tuesdays 7.1-magnitude temblor that killed at least 305 across the region. Many residents and visitors fled homes, hotels and businesses, some in tears.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 02:30:11|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced Friday that more than 100,000 South Sudanese refugees were relocated to camps in Ethiopia since September 2016.

Since the eruption of civil conflict in South Sudan in December 2013, Ethiopia has received some 330,000 refugees, of whom more than 115,000 have fled renewed violence since September 2016, UNHCR and IOM revealed in a joint statement on Friday.

Some 30,000 refugees arrived in July fleeing the escalation of conflict in Maiwut, Mathiang and Pagak in Upper Nile Region bordering Ethiopia's Gambella regional state, according to the joint statement.

The increasing scale of the refugee influx that started in September 2016 quickly filled the existing camps in the Gambella region and forced the Ethiopian government and UNHCR to open a new camp at Nguenyyiel in October 2016.

Ngunyyiel was again full with nearly 60,000 refugees in just 6 months and a new refugee camp was opened in the adjacent region of Benishangul-Gumuz. The new camp, Gure-Shembola, now shelters 3,122 refugees transported from Gambella.

According to the UNHCR, the majority of the new arrivals are women and children, including 20,510 children who have either been separated from their parents or travelled alone.

Sheltering more than 852,000 refugees, including more than 388,000 from South Sudan, Ethiopia hosts the second largest refugee population in Africa, next to Uganda.

Ethiopia has maintained its open-door policy towards refugees and continues to receive new arrivals from several of its neighbors, notably from South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Yemen.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/09/2017 (1878 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dani Reiss, who runs Canada Goose Holdings Inc., used to be so anti-logo that he would cut the little crocodiles off his Lacoste shirts. Today, a prominent North Pole crest is emblazoned on the shoulder of each parka his company makes, enhancing their cachet with consumers as Amazon.com Inc.s shadow looms large over the traditional retail landscape.

I didnt like brands, which is very ironic I realize, given our large logo, Reiss said in an interview from Canada Gooses Toronto head office. What I learned when I started working here was that the stories behind these products were phenomenal, the reputation we had built was phenomenal, anybody who knew about it really liked it  but nobody knew about it.

Canada Goose turns 60 this year, but as a hot consumer brand its a relative youngster. After selling through wholesalers for most of its history, its only just beginning to roll out its direct-to-consumer strategy.

Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press files Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss at the companys Toronto factory in 2014.

The company is doing this in the midst of a growing threat from Amazon and declining mall traffic, giving it the ability to tailor its approach to the changing retail reality.

Its strategy: rapid growth of e-commerce bolstered by a few flagship stores that Reiss says will help close the 15-point profit margin gap with its luxury peers.

The direct-to-consumer approach has the added advantage of reducing Canada Gooses reliance on the struggling retailers that accounted for all of its sales just three years ago.

Department store chains like Hudsons Bay Co.s Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, Harry Rosen and Holt Renfrew are at the front lines of Amazons assault on traditional retailers, which have been forced to shutter stores and lay off employees amid declining mall traffic.

This summer, Amazon said it would launch a service called Prime Wardrobe that lets consumers try on items at home before they buy, causing department-store shares to slump.

Theres no doubt that the wholesale landscape today is languishing, said Reiss, who has been chief executive officer of Canada Goose since 2001. Hes the third generation of his family to run the company, founded by his Polish immigrant grandfather in 1957.

He emphasized that Canada Goose still has a strong relationship with its wholesalers, while its popular outerwear and new line of knitwear are attracting shoppers in department stores.

But Reiss believes the direct-to-consumer category, which accounted for 29 per cent of Canada Gooses revenue in the fiscal year ended March 31, will grow faster and could one day overtake wholesale as the biggest source of sales.

Its more clear to me today than ever how big that opportunity is, he said.

The pillar of its consumer strategy is e-commerce. Canada Goose has four country-specific sites  in Canada, the U.S., U.K. and France  and plans to roll out seven more European sites this year with a plan to eventually be online everywhere around the world, Reiss said.

Canada Goose is supplementing that online presence with a smattering of flagship stores. So far its opened two, in Toronto and New York. Four more stores  in London, Chicago, Boston and Calgary  are coming this year with a goal of 15 to 20 worldwide by 2020. The company has five factories in Canada, including two in Winnipeg.

We have been very disciplined over the last 20 years in every decision weve made, Reiss said. Were going to apply the same discipline with our real-estate decisions to make sure we dont sign any leases that were going to regret in a few years.

Analysts are encouraged by the potential growth trajectory of Canada Goose, which has seen its shares gain 42 per cent since its trading debut in March, boosting its market value to $2.58 billion.

Canada Goose is the first ever hyper-growth soft lines brand to arrive fully in this new digital era, and it should be amazing to have front-row seats to watch what happens when you incubate one of these young rocket ships in a totally digital landscape, Evercore ISI analyst Omar Saad said in an April note initiating coverage of the retailer.

Think about it: instant access to three billion modern consumers without needing to spend untold sums building fancy stores and expensive marketing campaigns, he said.

Saad estimated that Canada Gooses e-commerce sales already account for more than 20 per cent of its total revenue, up from zero in 2014. This is well ahead of Burberry Group Plc, which has the next highest digital penetration of the luxury brands at 10 per cent.

That has big implications for Canada Gooses gross margin, which was 53 per cent in the fiscal year ended March 31. By contrast, Moncler SpAs was 77 per cent in its last fiscal year, while Burberry, Hermes International and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE ranged from 65 per cent to 70 per cent.

Aaron Vincent Elkaim / The Canadian Press files Canada Goose CEO Dani Reisss strategy for increasing direct-to-consumer sales is to expand the companys online presence along with a small number of flagship stores.

For every five per cent shift in its sales mix to direct-to-consumer, Canada Goose gains 120 basis points of margin, estimated BMO analyst John Morris.

A direct-to-consumer jacket sale provides two to four times more operating income than a sale of the same product through a wholesaler, according to Canada Gooses annual report.

Revenue in the direct-to-consumer channel more than tripled in the 12 months ended March 31, compared with 12 per cent in the wholesale channel.

We believe that the shift of a greater percentage of our business to direct-to-consumer will be one of the things that helps improve our margins, for sure, Reiss said.

To pull this off, Canada Goose needs to maintain the cachet that has consumers across the northern hemisphere willing to spend up to $1,495 on its made-in-Canada parkas. For most of its history Canada Goose was a utilitarian brand, selling practical winter gear for use in the Far North.

We made a best-in-class product, but nobody really knew about it outside of the people who lived and worked in those places, Reiss said.

Reiss, 43, who joined the company in 1997, recognized its potential to be more than just a maker of utilitarian outerwear and became obsessed with the idea of brand authenticity.

He tried hard to raise Canada Gooses profile in Toronto, but everyone told him the products were too utilitarian, too expensive, or both.

But when I traveled to Europe, I found that in Europe they really understood it, he said. Theyre like, Oh, this is a parka made in Canada that is used in the coldest places on Earth by anybody who knows. This is almost the platonic image of a winter jacket.

Canada Gooses jackets took off in Stockholm first and quickly spread to Italy, Germany and even Japan, but took longer to take root in their home market.

In typical Canadian fashion, Canadians adopt their own things after everybody else does, Reiss said.

Canada Gooses next big frontier is China, where many upscale consumers are familiar with the brand through their travels.

Were working on a China strategy as we speak, Reiss said. Chinas a huge potential market for us.

 Bloomberg News
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/09/2017 (1878 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three historical artifacts connected to Louis Riel were signed over to the Metis people by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Saturday, in a ceremony at the Manitoba Metis Federations annual general assembly at Assinaboia Downs in Winnipeg.

The items are a crucifix belonging to Riel himself, as well as a hunting knife said to belong to the legendary Metis leader and a copy of his book of poetry, Poesies religieuses et politiques.

The memorandum of understanding to return the items was signed by Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand, Metis National Council president Clement Chartier, and RCMP deputy commissioner Kevin Brosseau. The artifacts themselves continue to be on display at the RCMP Heritage Centre in Regina, but are expected to be formally transferred to the Metis Nation in the next two years.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS RCMP deputy commissioner Kevin Brosseau (left), Manitoba Metis Federation president David Chartrand (centre) and Metis National Council president Clement Chartier sign an agreement returning artifacts from the RCMP to the Metis Saturday.

Chartrand said the transfer of the artifacts back to the Metis people represents a shift in how Canadians view Louis Riel and his legacy.

Now the mindset is, Heres artifacts of a great person, a founder, a father of Confederation. Thats a different perspective completely, that people should start to realize that change is now there, said Chartrand.

So its a great feeling for us as the Metis Nation, to have that type of now-new perspective, not only from Metis, but from Canadians in general.

The artifacts will eventually be housed in an upcoming Metis heritage museum to be built beside Upper Fort Garry in Winnipeg, said Chartrand, along with other historical items linked to Riel. Construction on the museum will begin next year, said Chartrand.

The Metis nation is actively trying to recover other historical artifacts linked to Riel and other Metis leaders, Chartrand added.

So its a great feeling for us as the Metis Nation, to have that type of now-new perspective, not only from Metis, but from Canadians in general  MMF President David Chartrand

Were watching whats out there, we know theres more, he said. Weve just got to make sure we find them before somebody else finds them, and we want to bring them back home where they belong in the museum, and back to his home province of Manitoba.

The signing over of the Metis artifacts by the RCMP follows an online petition launched by University of Saskatchewan law student Jesse Donovan earlier this year.

solomon.israel@freepress.mb.ca@sol_israel
The Sri Lankan parliament passed an amended Inland Revenue Bill on September 7, effectively implementing the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The vote, originally scheduled for August 25, was delayed after the government, fearing opposition from the working class, was forced to make various cosmetic changes.

The new version will become law on October 1 and go into force next April. While it incorporates more than 100 amendments, some members of parliament complained they were not given all the proposed changes. The purpose of the legislation is to extract direct taxes from workers, self-employed and small traders, while providing concessionary taxes for big business.

Under the previous version of the bill, non-residents and residents monthly income of 50,000 rupees ($US328) was to be taxed at 4 percent, increasing up to 24 percent for those with a 250,000-rupee monthly income. The first threshold of the tax now has been raised to 100,000 rupees. Monthly interest income of 125,000 rupees from pensioners savings will be taxed. The previous proposed threshold was 100,000 rupees.

While these two changes were made to deflect opposition from workers, professionals and pensioners, other taxes impacting on broader layers of the population remain. Pension funds above a lump sum of 2 million rupees, for example, will be subjected to taxes of between 5 to 10 percent, and taxes are imposed on those involved in drama, cinema and literature.

A low tax rate of 14 percent will be enjoyed by industries involved in agriculture, tourism, information technology and education and exports. Taxes on other business will be just 28 percent. This compares with India and Bangladesh, where the rates are 30 percent and 35 percent respectively.

Speaking to a big business gathering, State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne boasted that Sri Lanka would have some of the lowest rates, even compared to other Asian countries.

The government pushed through its new tax law in order to receive $US190 million, the third instalment of an IMF loan.

Speaking in the parliamentary debate, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera claimed that everyone over age of 18 will have a tax file according to the act but it doesnt mean everyone will pay tax. His reassurance is duplicitous, however, and implies that the government will target everyone in future.

In fact, Wickramaratne explicitly told his business meeting that the government wants to widen the tax net and take money [levy taxes] from the people in proportion to their capacity to pay. He continued: Each citizen and each corporate entity should contribute by paying taxes to help the governments effort to provide essential and vital services in education, health, transport, agriculture, technology, research and development, etc.

Wickramaratnes claims are a fraud. Against the backdrop of deepening global economic turmoil, the government is slashing spending in all these sectors and cutting subsidies to the poor in an attempt to place the burden of Sri Lankas growing debt onto the back of workers.

The new taxes, which fall most heavily on the poor, are aimed at boosting corporate profit while slashing the countrys fiscal deficit to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) as demanded by the IMF.

An IMF review on July 27 praised the government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, but noted high risks. It demanded that the government speed up its economic reforms, including the restructuring and privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The main external downside risk is the resumption of capital outflows in response to a significant further strengthening of the US dollar and higher rates, or due to a weakening of the external position, the review declared.

One reason for the capital outflow, the IMF said, was the governments unproven commitment to exchange rate flexibility. This is a reference to IMF concerns over the government intervening in the exchange market and selling dollar reserves to defend the rupees exchange rate.

Other risks included further delays in revenue mobilisation and SOE reforms and the governments large gross financing needs of which 40 percent is financed externally.

The IMF has long demanded the restructuring of the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Petroleum Corporation, the ports and the Water Supply Board.

Successive governments, with muted support from the trade unions, have taken steps to privatise these state corporations by seeking to restructure them along the lines of Singapores Temasek state holding corporation or wealth trust model. Fearful of working-class resistance, these plans, however, have been delayed.

The IMF wants these reforms to be expedited, along with energy pricing reformsi.e., increased fuel prices and electricity chargesin order to slash the debts of these corporations.

The international bank also warned that the public debt is expected to rise slightly to 85 percent of GDP in 2017 due to a still large fiscal deficit and exchange rate depreciation. It cautioned the government over the increasing trade deficit, which rose to $4.2 billion during the first four months of this year. If this trend continues, this years trade deficit could exceed last years and hit the $10 billion mark.

Remittances of Sri Lankan employees abroad declined by 7.2 percent during the first half of this year, compared to the same time last year. War tensions in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia-led moves against Qatar, have affected this income. Garment export earnings also declined by 5.32 percent. These are the countrys two main sources of foreign income.

Confronted with this escalating economic crisis and intensifying IMF demands, Colombo is preparing to deepen its attacks on the living and social rights of workers and the poor.

Cabinet ministers were recently briefed on budget allocations for 2018, which will be presented to parliament on November 9. The largest amount in the Appropriations Bill will be for the military. According to the Daily FT, the Ministry of Defence will receive 290 billion rupees (nearly $2 billion), a 6 billion-rupee increase from the last year's allocation of 284 billion.

The increase in military expenditure is no accident. It is in line with the governments determination to crush all resistance to its class war attacks.
By Friday afternoon, the official death toll from Tuesdays earthquake in Mexico had reached 286. Mexico City, the nations capital, accounted for 148 of those deaths. Over 3,800 buildings were damaged in Mexico City alone, of which over 40 had entirely collapsed.

The building collapses led to intensive efforts to search through rubble to locate survivors. Nineteen students and six adults died when a school in Mexico City collapsed. Dozens are still missing or unaccounted for.

The epicenter of the quake was approximately 75 miles southeast of Mexico City, in Puebla state. Some small cities and towns in that and nearby states, such as Morelos and Mexico, also suffered a significant number of deaths and major damage, including the destruction of many adobe brick structures.

Seismologists are suggesting that the quake was not of a subduction nature, where one of the earths plates sinks below another. Such earthquakes generate the largest magnitudes and destructive power, including the 8.2 temblor that occurred on September 7 off the coast of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and the massive 8.1 quake in 1985 centered on the Michoacan coast, 200 miles west-southwest of Mexico City, which led to the deaths of at least 10,000 people.

Mexico City, with a population of nearly nine million, and other portions of the neighboring metropolitan zone, encompassing 25 million people, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of earthquakes because much of the area once consisted of a series of interlocking lakes, which were later dried up and filled in. This includes Lake Texcoco, on whose lakebed the city now rests.

Given the thick deposits of sand and clay and the often muddy nature of much of these sedimentary basins, earthquake waves passing through them can be as much as one hundred times stronger than they would be otherwise. This is a phenomenon that does not occur on this scale in any other major urban area in the world. It is why Tuesdays quake shook the Mexico City more violently than other areas that were a similar distance from the epicenter.

In a rational society organized to meet human needs, this hyper-susceptibility to earthquake damage in an area populated by tens of millions of people would result in massive efforts to maximize the protection of lives and structures. Not so in a highly unequal society dominated by an oligarchy that does not allow the needed resources to be diverted from its own enrichment.

The government of then-President Miguel de la Madrid of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI, the party currently in power, reacted with criminal indifference to the 1985 earthquake. The governments rescue efforts in the first days after the quake were wholly inadequate, and it rejected international aid. The inept federal response left millions to fend for themselves.

The ensuing mass outrage led to a certain upgrade of building codes and some increase in enforcement. But the building requirements that were put in place fell far short of what was needed, even if adhered to. For example, in the massive slums that ring Mexico City, millions live in poorly constructed homes that building regulations do not address. Many dangerous structures in the city center were not torn down or adequately reinforced.

Many of the changes to building codes following the 1985 quake were aimed at reinforcing the 8th to 13th floors of buildings that suffered the most damage in the center of the city. But Tuesdays quake affected lower floors and lower buildings to a much greater extent, most likely because the wave generated by the more local earthquake was not in the nature of a plate subduction.

As in the hugely inadequate response of the US government to the recent hurricanes in Texas and Florida, most rescue and aid efforts after Tuesdays quake in Mexico fell to working class volunteers.

The citys populace spontaneously took to the streets, distributing food, water and blankets, and digging people free from the rubble, often with bare hands. Experienced volunteer brigades of so-called moles undertook the most dangerous building searches.

The Mexican government once again conducted itself in a reprehensible manner. It engaged in a 30-hour media spectacle, broadcasting live the efforts of security forces and emergency workers who were searching the rubble of the collapsed school where 26 died in search of a 12-year-old girl, known only as Frida Sofia. Senior Mexican officials, including Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno, spent hours at the school in an attempt to portray themselves as lifesaving heroes. Later the government conceded that the girl never existed.

On Tuesday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cut short a planned visit to areas pummeled by the September 7 Oaxaca quake, heading back to the capital to deal with the new quake. But before he left for Oaxaca, he provided figures on the scale of the damage from the September 7 quake in the two hardest hit states, Oaxaca and Chiapas: 99 had died and 2,600 schools and upwards of 100,000 homes had been severely damaged, a large percentage beyond repair.

Almost half of all households live in poverty in these poor southern states. Some 70 percent of Oaxacas population earns less than what is needed to satisfy basic family needs, according to the government agency Coneval, and 77 percent of people in Chiapas. In both states, low-income families earn as little as 37 pesos (US$2) per day, less than half the Mexican minimum wage.

Such poverty necessarily makes the impact of earthquakes considerably worse. Yet these are the states that have the least influence with the federal government in terms of receiving disaster aid and reconstruction funding.

The 1985 earthquake ignited a move to the left among the populace. In response, a new party split off from the PRIthe Party of the Democratic Revolution. This party has by now been thoroughly exposed as just another handmaiden of the ruling elite. The earthquakes this month further discredit an already massively unpopular government.
Todays election in New Zealand is forecast to be the closest since the Helen Clark-led Labour government was ousted in 2008. Since the installation of Jacinda Ardern as Labours new leader on August 1, polls have gyrated wildly, alternately favouring the National Party government and a possible Labour-Green Party coalition.

According to a TV 3 poll released on Thursday, National has 45.8 percent support. With Labour on 37.3 percent, and the Greens at 7.1 percent, either camp could take office. Significantly, both major parties would need to strike a deal with the right-wing populist New Zealand First Party, currently at 7.1 percent, to form government.

The entire campaign has seen the vast dangers facing the working class and youthspecifically the accelerating threat of nuclear warsystematically suppressed by all the establishment parties.

This immense danger, highlighted by US President Donald Trumps threat at the UN to totally destroy North Korea, has remained the great political unmentionable. Since Prime Minister Bill English declared in August that he would consider joining a US-led offensive against North Korea, this stance has not been opposed by any party.

In the final televised leaders debate on Wednesday, just hours after Trumps speech, there was no mention of foreign policy. The official opposition partiesLabour, the Greens, NZ First and the Maori nationalist Mana Partyalong with the trade unions and much of the media, have prepared for joining US hostilities against China by promoting nationalist attacks on immigration and anti-Chinese influence on house prices and business investment.

The ruling elite is preparing far-reaching attacks, by whichever parties assume office, on the working population at home and for war abroad. This bipartisan consensus was on display in the debate between English and Ardern. The event was not a debate in any real sense, but rather a friendly discussion between representatives of two wings of the political establishment.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the National Party government has carried out a deepening assault on jobs, living standards, public services and basic rights. English was allowed during the debate to assert, virtually unchallenged, that the housing market is expanding faster than ever, there is no housing crisis and National is tackling social issues by changing lives one by one.

Ardern had almost nothing to say about the depth of the social crisis. Aside from scapegoating immigrants, Labours main housing proposal is to build 100,000 houses over the next 10 years, to be sold at unaffordable prices of between $400,000 and $600,000. This will do nothing to help the 42,000 people who are homeless.

The final week of the election campaign was dominated by reports of a crisis in the health system due to decades of underfunding by Labour and National governments alike. Severe delays for vital cancer surgery in Southland will shorten peoples lives, while a baby recently died at Waikato because not enough surgeons were available to perform the ceasarian section operation on time. Ardern criticised the lack of funding, but Labours proposal is to inject only $2 billion extra per year, well short of what is needed to meet existing need and provide for population growth and ageing.

Ardern focussed on assuring the ruling elite that Labours policies are fiscally responsible and fully costed. Her most animated remarks came when she criticised Nationals dishonest attacks on Labours tax proposals, which have included claims of seven new taxes, including on capital gains and water.

Ardern has ruled out any increase in tax to tackle severe social problems. Labour would set up a working party of experts to investigate a fairer tax system, she claimed, but any suggested changes would not be implemented until after 2020.

There is a discernible shift to the left among broad layers of the working class and youth, who are searching for an alternative to deepening inequality, child poverty and the housing crisis, for which all the parties carry responsibility.

To direct this into safe parliamentary channels, the corporate media, along with the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, have whipped up a wave of Jacindamania, featuring false claims that Labour will address the social crisis. Arderns elevation to Labours leadership was a desperate manoeuvre to stave off electoral disaster, not just for Labour, but for the increasingly discredited parliamentary system. A million voters abstained in both the 2011 and 2014 elections.

Labour and the Greens have stuck to their commitment to budget responsibility rules which mean reining in public debt and returning fiscal surpluses. Neither party has put forward any policies that will significantly reverse the social disaster of the past three decades.

All Labours proposals are fundamentally deceptive. Its pitch to young people to provide three years free tertiary education is merely an aspiration, that would be implemented only after two more elections, making the promise worthless.

On Thursday, Ardern promoted Labours reactionary changes to industrial legislation, which would allow the trade unions to negotiate fair wage agreements across selected industries. While details of the policy are unclear, Ardern told Radio NZ it would help the unions work collaboratively with employers and the government to impose wages and conditions acceptable to big business. She stressed that her government, with the agreement of the unions, would legislate to remove the right to strike during these negotiations.

The Green Party and commentators on the trade union-funded Daily Blog have appealed to progressive voters to ensure the Greens reach the 5 percent threshold to maintain a presence in parliament.

In fact, like their international counterparts, the Greens are a capitalist party representing environmental businesses and oriented toward affluent sections of the upper middle class. Ardern was instrumental in a right-wing campaign to force former Greens leader Metiria Turei to resign over allegations she committed benefit fraud as a solo mother 20 years previously.

In Wednesdays debate, Ardern said the Greens would get Labours first call in forming a coalition, but refused to discuss which Greens policies would be considered. She said any conversation would not imply a stitched-up deal, leaving open the option of a deal with NZ First.

Key business leaders, anxious to suppress popular anger, have signalled they would be comfortable with a Labour-Green government. Mainfreight chief Don Braid told the New Zealand Herald on September 4 there is growing frustration with National. I think theyve [National] stopped listening to us. And I think they think they know better than us, Braid said. He heaped praise on Ardern, describing her as visionary. SkyCity casino chairman Rob Campbell said fear of a Labour-Green government in the business community was well gone.

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Anti-Chinese witch-hunt launched days before New Zealand election

[22 September 2017]

No to war and social inequality! For world socialism! Statement of the Socialist Equality Group on the New Zealand election

[19 September 2017]
In the wake of President Trumps bellicose and menacing speech at the United Nations this week, the war of words between the US and North Korea has intensified, heightening the danger of catastrophic military conflict.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in a televised statement yesterday warned that the US would pay dearly for Trumps threat to totally destroy North Korea. He branded Trump a mentally deranged US dotard who had insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world.

Trump had crudely spoken of Kim as Rocket Man saying he was on a suicide missiona direct personal threat given that the US and South Korea are training decapitation squads to kill top North Korean leaders.

Kim declared that Trump had made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history and threatened to respond by taking the highest level of hardline countermeasure in history.

Shortly after Mr. Kims statement was released, North Korean foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, suggested that Pyongyangs response could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific. However, he immediately added: We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un.

Such a reckless actionthe firing of a long-range missile and detonation of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere over the Pacific Oceancould easily be seized upon as the pretext for an all-out US military attack on North Korea, citing the potential of a malfunction and the threat posed to South Korea or Japan.

The chief responsibility of this dangerous brinkmanship rests with the Trump administration, which has boxed North Korea into a corner. Successive UN resolutions have severely impacted on the countrys tradebanning its exports of coal, seafood, textiles, iron and other minerals and slashing its import of vital oil supplies.

Unable to get the support of China and Russia for even tougher measures, the US announced on Thursday its own unilateral ban on any country or company having trade-related financial relations with North Korea. Trump has issued a sweeping executive order that would exclude any bank doing business with North Korea from the American banking and financial system.

Our new executive order will cut off sources of revenue that fund North Koreas efforts to develop the deadliest weapons known to humankind, Trump said. In other words, the US is attempting to unilaterally impose a complete trade and financial embargo on North Koreaa step that is itself an act of war.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that the US was continuing to push for a diplomatic solution to the dangerous stand-off with North Korea. Trump, however, again lashed out at Kim Jong-un with another belligerent tweet, declaring the North Korean leader was a madman who will be tested like never before!

Despite Tillersons remarks, Trump has repeatedly declared that he has effectively ruled out negotiations with North Korea. Last weekend, the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley declared that the US had exhausted all diplomatic options at the UN Security Council, adding: I have no problem kicking it to [US Defence Secretary James] Mattis because I think he has plenty of [military] options.

North Korea has clearly concluded that the US is intent on destroying its governmenteither by provoking an economic and political crisis in Pyongyang or through warand is developing its nuclear arsenal in a desperate bid to counter the US threat.

In his statement yesterday, North Korean leader Kim declared that Trumps threats at the UN convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last.

Trumps bellicose remarks in the UN towards Tehran and US moves to undermine or abrogate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran by demanding its revision will only have reinforced Pyongyangs determination to accelerate its nuclear program. North Korea can only conclude that any deal reached with Washington is worthless.

North Korea has reached two agreements with the US to denuclearisein 1994 and 2007only to have them sabotaged by Washington. The US and international media routinely accuse Pyongyang of bad faith, but the Bush administration scuttled the 1994 Agreed Framework on coming to office in 2001 and denounced North Korea in 2002 as part of an axis of evil. It blew up the 2007 deal that it reached with Pyongyang by unilaterally insisting in 2008 on far tougher inspection measures than were written into the agreement.

The Pyongyang regime is well aware of the fate of governments that have capitulated to US demands to abandon their weapons programs and agree to ever-more intrusive inspections. In the case of both Iraq and Libya, the US intervened militarily to oust the regimes and kill their leaders.

Trumps speech at the UN has provoked a similar reaction in Iran. Speaking at a military parade yesterday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani responded to Trumps attack on the 2015 nuclear deal by saying: It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by rogue newcomers to the world of politics.

Rouhani strongly defended Irans right to strengthen its military power as a deterrent. We will strengthen our missile capabilities. We will not seek anyones permission to defend our land. Not only will we fortify our missiles, but our ground, navy and air forces will always be supported by the people.

At the military parade, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps unveiled a new ballistic missile with a range of more than 2,000 kilometres and capable of hitting most of the Middle East, including Israel.

In making his warmongering threats against North Korea, Trump is also preparing to confront China and Russiaboth of which have attempted to put a brake on the crippling economic sanctions against Pyongyang. By targeting any country doing business with North Korea with US sanctions, Trump is placing Washington on a collision course with Beijing and Moscow.

At the same time, by making moves to end the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Trump administration is also further exacerbating already sharp tensions with major European powers that have expanded trade and investment with Tehran since the deal was signed. In the face of Washingtons unilateralism, the major powers, including longtime allies of the United States, can only conclude they will have to defend their own economic and strategic interests, including through military means.

The spiraling geo-political tensions and danger of war are not simply the product of the individual Trump and his reckless politics but more fundamentally result from the worsening crisis of capitalism and its insoluble contradictions. By threatening to wage war against North Korea, Iran or any other country that is an obstacle to its world hegemony, US imperialism has created a tinderbox that could rapidly descend into a global conflagration.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 04:10:40|Editor: Lu Hui

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Chinese and Dutch delegates participate in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the departure of the 202nd freight train on the Chengdu-Tilburg direct railway link in Tilburg, the Netherlands, Sept. 22, 2017. More businesses should get on board the direct railway link connecting Tilburg in the Netherlands and the Chinese city of Chengdu, said Dutch and Chinese officials on Friday when celebrating the first anniversary of this promising connection. (Xinhua/Rick Nederstigt)

TILBURG, The Netherlands, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- More businesses should get on board the direct railway link connecting Tilburg in the Netherlands and the Chinese city of Chengdu, said Dutch and Chinese officials on Friday when celebrating the first anniversary of this promising connection.

Tilburg is the second largest logistic hub in the Netherlands, while Chengdu is a city 10,947 km away in China's southwest Sichuan province.

"The Chengdu-Tilburg express reinforces the position of our regions as transit hubs. Thanks to this railway link, goods can be exchanged no fewer than three times quicker than by water and significantly cheaper than by aeroplane," said Bert Pauli, vice-governor of the province of Noord-Brabant where Tilburg is located.

Pauli made the remarks ahead of a ribbon-cutting for the departure of the 202nd freight train on this link. Zhu Hexin, vice governor of the Chinese province of Sichuan joined the ceremony, attended by representatives from the companies that are jointly operating this railway link, member of the Tilburg municipality as well as dozens of industry partners.

Fully loaded with cargoes of Dutch beer, the leaving train will arrive in Chengdu in about two weeks.

Nowadays with three trains running westbound and three eastbound per week, the Tilburg-Chengdu service is one of the most regular and loaded links of China Railway Express to Europe (CR express).

On the Tilburg-Chengdu link, cargoes coming from China are mostly electronics for multinational groups such as Sony, Samsung, Dell and Apple as well as products for European aerospace industry. Cargoes transported to China include auto parts, new cars and food product.

"Tilburg, situated at an ideal strategic location and the region of Brabant, home to excellent logistical service providers who are more than ready to collaborate with China, can become the gateway to Europe for Chengdu," said the Dutch vice-governor.

Zhu agreed that the link bears great influence for both economies. "Take a look at the population in my province, you can be assured that a huge market is waiting for your milk powder, beer and other goods," Zhu told the audience.

For Zhang Guosheng, economic counselor of the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands, the success of the Tilburg-Chengdu direct railway link forecasts opportunities for more cooperation in the logistic industry for both countries.

"Apart from more possibilities of cooperation in economic and trade, this express expands the range of solutions for logistics between China and the Netherlands, even Europe. When railway-air, railway-maritime links fully play their roles, the Netherlands will become more significant as a logistic center, trade flows and supply chains between Asia and Europe, " explained Zhang.
This week, sections of the corporate press have published McCarthyite claims that Australian universities are at risk of growing Chinese influence. The hysterical allegations are directed at joint partnerships between Chinese companies and Australian universities, and have included xenophobic denunciations of Chinese students.

The latest campaign follows a series of witch-hunts over the past year, alleging that the seemingly benign activities of Chinese corporations, businesspeople and students, are part of an ill-defined plot led by the Chinese Communist Party.

Accusations along these lines have previously been spearheaded by the publicly-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Fairfax Media, working in close collaboration with the most pro-US sections of the Australian political establishment, including the intelligence agencies.

Their aim has been to legitimise Australias central role in US-led military preparations in the Asia-Pacific, including the Trump administrations threats of a preemptive strike against North Korea, and its plans for war with China.

The latest furore has been led by the Guardian, which bills itself as liberal and progressive. It published a feature length article on Tuesday headlined: Faustian bargain: defence fears over Australian universitys $100m partnership.

The article uncritically provides a platform for figures with close ties to the Australian military and intelligence agencies to denounce a $100 million innovation precinct at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

The centre was unveiled last year by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It is under the umbrella of the Torch program, a Chinese government initiative promoting collaboration between Chinese technology companies and research institutes. The precinct, however, is funded by private Chinese companies, not government sources.

The 29 Chinese companies that have invested in the program focus on research into areas such as marine technologies, solar and wind power generation and the development of nanotechnologies. The Guardian nevertheless states that seven of the companies work in areas with dual use military potential. These, they claim, include GPS navigation, aerospace work and underwater cameras.

To bolster this threadbare argument, the article resorts to declarations that developments in these technological fields are moving so rapidly that it is impossible to know what may, at some point in the future, have vaguely-defined military potential.

The only Chinese company investing in the project named in the article is Huawei Technologies, a telecommunications firm whose business operations in Australia have previously been stymied by the domestic spy agency, ASIO.

While it has been subjected to numerous unsubstantiated accusations of espionage, no evidence has ever been presented against the company. It was revealed in 2014, however, that the US National Security Agency, which collaborates closely with Australian intelligence agencies as part of the Five Eyes program, had spied on Huawei.

Despite UNSWs statements that it had conducted due diligence, the article featured rabid allegations by prominent supporters of Australias role in the US war drive against China.

Clive Hamilton, a professor at Charles Sturt University declared: I think the Torch program will make UNSW in effect a client university of the Peoples Republic of China.

Rory Metcalf, head of the Australian National Universitys National Security College, stated: The fundamental question to ask is if there is [a] prospect of technology discoveries being shared that could potentially give China a military advantage in the region over, for example, US and its allies, and therefore potentially Australia.

Their comments, which were not supported by any evidence, obliquely pointed to Australias alignment with the US plans for conflict with Beijing. In 2011, the Greens-backed Labor government signed on to the Obama administrations pivot to Asiaa vast military build-up in preparation for war against China. Since the agreement, US basing arrangements have been expanded, and the Australian military has been ever more integrated into the US war machine.

This is why the Guardian article, while presenting strident denunciations of the involvement of Chinese companies, did not raise any concerns about the investment of Adani Solar, an Indian company, in the UNSW precinct. India, like Australia, is heavily involved in the US-led anti-China campaign.

Australian universities are also centrally involved in Washington and Canberras military and ideological preparations for war.

Last year, Lockheed Martin, the biggest US arms contractor, with close ties to the US government, established a new research centre at the University of Melbourne that will develop advanced military technologies. The centre is being funded by the Australian government to the tune of $13 million, as part of a $1.3 billion spend encompassing industry, academia, and defence, to deliver innovative solutions for Defence capability.

In 2007, the United States Studies Centre was established at the University of Sydney with US and Australian government funding. Its explicit purpose is to overcome widespread opposition to Australian involvement in US-led wars and military preparations. Virtually every other major university hosts think tanks and dialogues which work closely with representatives of Australian and US military and intelligence forces.

The Guardian piece was part of a broader campaign coordinated with sections of the political establishment and the intelligence agencies. This was made clear by an exclusive in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday headlined, George Brandis considers new laws cracking down on Chinese spying in Australia.

The article reported that the attorney-general flew to Washington for talks with US national security officials in the aftermath of a series of unsubstantiated reports in Fairfax and the ABC carrying hysterical allegations of Chinese spying in May.

The government is planning to introduce new legislation that will target sub-espionage levels of foreign interference, according to Fairfax. In other words, the new laws are not targeting actual spying, but will be aimed at creating the conditions for the authorities to brand any opposition to anti-Chinese aggression as the work of agents of foreign influence.

This coincides with a dramatic ratcheting-up of tensions in Asia, including President Trumps fascistic speech at the UN this week, in which he again warned the US could wage total war against North Korea. This threat, supported by the entire Australian political establishment, is above all directed against China, North Koreas sole ally in the region.

In an ominous signal of how the planned legislation may be used, the Fairfax exclusive was preceded by strident denunciations of Chinese international students in the press. This follows the promotion of similar nationalist filth in previous anti-China campaigns, implying that the students were a fifth column of the Chinese government.

An article in the Australian on Wednesday featured a report by the organisation China Matters. It called on Education Minister Simon Birmingham to give a high-profile talk outlining the advantages and risks of having such a large cohort of international students from China in Australia.

The board of directors of China Matters includes Jan Adams, the Australian governments current ambassador to China, and Allan Gyngell, who was director general of the Office of National Assessments between 2009 and 2013, a key intelligence agency that reports directly to the prime ministers office.

China Matters seized upon a series of hazy reports of disagreements between Chinese students and university lecturers, allegedly over how Chinese foreign policy is presented in classes. Despite the minor character of the disputes, the think-tank used it as the launching point to allege that there is a coordinated attempt by Chinese students to stifle academic freedom.

It menacingly declared that Chinese students were involved in activities [that] contravene Australian societal values and academic principles. They also undermine Australian interests. These, it claimed, included attempts to suppress criticism of the Chinese government and spying on other students.

These xenophobic and bullying allegations are part of a broader attempt to demonise the Chinese population. They are aimed at creating a political climate in which Australia can ever more directly participate in US-led military intrigues and wars in the Asia-Pacific, and drowning out mass anti-war sentiment.

The vilification of Chinese students is a warning that the advanced preparations for war will be accompanied by deepening attacks on democratic rights. In both world wars last century, Australian authorities ordered the mass internment of enemy aliens. Similar measures are being prepared in the event of a major conflict today.

The author also recommends:

Anti-Chinese witch-hunt launched days before New Zealand election

[22 September 2017]

Australian media renews campaign against Chinese power and influence

[6 June 2017]
crime scene protected by yellow caution tape

Oklahoma City police shot and killed Magdiel Sanchez, 35, a deaf man, Tuesday night  despite warnings from Sanchezs neighbors that Sanchez couldnt hear the officers commands.

Police went to Sanchezs house to investigate a reported hit-and-run involving Sanchezs father. Witnesses reported the incident after Sanchezs father fled the scene and returned home. Sanchez was not in the car during the incident and no one was hit or injured, Police Capt. Bo Mathews said at a press conference on Wednesday.

When police arrived at Sanchezs house, Sanchez approached them with a metal pipe, which Sanchezs neighbor, Julio Rayos, told The New York Times, Sanchez used to communicate as well as protect himself from stray dogs when he walked at night. Another neighbor told The Associated Press that Sanchez is developmentally delayed and could not speak.

Police told Sanchez to put the pipe down; however, Sanchez did not obey as he could not hear their commands. Multiple neighbors shouted at the police, warning them Sanchez could not hear, including Rayos 12-year-old daughter, who yelled, Dont kill him, hes deaf.

Related: I Have OCD. This Is What Its Like to Be in My Mind for 3 Minutes.

Sanchez was shot multiple times by one police officer and tasered by another. He was pronounced dead by medical units in front of his home. The officer who shot him has since been placed on paid administrative leave.

Sanchezs death highlights a recurring problem when it comes how police interact with people with disabilities. According to The Ruderman Family Foundation, one-third to one-half of people killed by police have some kind of disability.

Officers are not typically taught how to respond to incidents involving people with disabilities, increasing the likelihood of a fatal incident. While independent police training programs and city-specific initiatives  like Portland polices registry for people with additional needs  have been launched, more is needed nationwide to prevent deaths like Sanchezs from happening.

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Header image by Prathaan via Thinkstock.

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Two teenagers in Frederick, Maryland, were charged and a third remains at large for allegedly kidnapping and raping a classmate, according to court documents filed last week.

The arrested were identified as 19-year-old Victor Antonio Gonzalez-Guttierres and 17-year-old Edgar Natanal Chicas-Hernandez.

The investigation into the case began Sept. 5, when Detective Anthony McPeak and Officer 1st Class Marlon Alvarez went to interview a high-school-age girl about an assault that she said took place on Sept. 1, the Frederick News-Post reported.

The girl narrated the series of events to the police, saying the three boys grabbed her by the hair as she was walking home on the day of the incident. She recognized two of them as her classmates, while the third had his face covered. She said that they first slapped her, and then one took out a knife and harmed her physically, the court documents stated.

The boys took away her cellphone and dragged her to a nearby vehicle. The girl told the police that they also told her that they were carrying out the orders of a younger female acquaintance of the victim.

This younger female acquaintance was identified in charging documents as the suspected mastermind of the crime.

The girl's mouth was shut by forcing a rag into it and she was taken to a separate location. According to the charging documents, here Chicas-Hernandez and Gonzalez-Guttierres raped her.

Gonzalez-Guttierres is from El Salvador, ABC News reported citing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agency said in a statement that it has lodged an immigration detainer for him.

Court documents also state that the third person involved in the crime used a cellphone to record the crime.

The third, unidentified man mentioned in the charging documents has not been charged. ... As the investigation continues, however, we do anticipate there being additional charges in this case, said Lt. Clark Pennington, commander of the police departments Criminal Investigations Division, according to the Frederick News-Post.

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However, what has baffled the investigators in the whole incident was that the girl was first kidnapped, driven to another location and then raped.

This is very, very rare in my experience, said Detective Joe Palkovic, an assistant supervisor in the Frederick Police Departments Criminal Investigations Division. The violence of it and the nature of the crime, the fact that this involves someone laying in wait, kidnapping the victim and then taking her to a separate location to rape her, is very rare.

The motive of the act is yet to be figured out.

Weve recovered messages on a social media site where there is conversation between the suspects and this other juvenile  communication before and after the assault. We do believe there is some level of conspiracy between these individuals, Lt. Clark Pennington, commander of the Frederick Police Departments criminal investigations division, said, a report said.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 05:11:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- NASA's asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made a close approach to Earth and successfully used our planet's gravity on Friday to "slingshot" itself on a path toward the asteroid Bennu, the U.S. space agency said.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft came within 10,711 miles (17,237 km) of Antarctica, just south of Cape Horn, Chile, at 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT), NASA said in a statement.

As a result of the flyby, the velocity change to the spacecraft was 8,451 miles per hour (3.778 km per second).

"The total velocity change from Earth's gravity far exceeds the total fuel load of the OSIRIS-REx propulsion system," said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"So we are really leveraging our Earth flyby to make a massive change to the OSIRIS-REx trajectory, specifically changing the tilt of the orbit to match Bennu."

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, launched in 2016, is currently on a seven-year journey to rendezvous with, study, and return a sample of Bennu to Earth.

If all goes well, it will arrive in August 2018 and spend the next two years photographing and mapping the asteroid's surface to better understand its chemical and mineralogical composition, including selecting the sample site.

Then, in July 2020, it will touch the asteroid for only three seconds to collect at least 60 grams of loose rocks and dust using a special device and store the material in a sample return capsule.

The spacecraft will depart the asteroid in March 2021 and travel for two-and-a-half years on a trajectory for Earth return in September 2023.

NASA said this sample of a primitive asteroid will help scientists understand the formation of our solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Sen. John McCain said Friday that he cannot in good conscience support the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, an announcement that makes it extremely unlikely the bill will pass.

The Arizona Republican, who is good friends with co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham, had previously cast the decisive vote against the last Obamacare repeal effort in July, arguing that the Senate had not followed the proper procedure for major legislation in Congress.

In a statement, he made the same criticisms of the current bill.

I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal, he said. I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will effect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has also said he will not support the Graham-Cassidy bill, complaining that it keeps too much of the Affordable Care Acts infrastructure in place.

With McCain and Paul voting no, Republicans cannot lose another vote. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have also expressed skepticism of the bill. Collins said earlier Friday that she was leaning against the bill. Several other Republican senators have been on the fence.

Under parliamentary rules, Senate Republicans have until Sept. 30 to pass an Obamacare repeal on a strict majority basis; after that, it will be subject to 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster, an impossible task in the current Congress.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un makes a statement about Donald Trump's UN speech in a photo released by North Korea's news agency - REUTERS

Kim Jong-uns latest broadside against Donald Trump had people across the globe reaching for a dictionary as he described the President as a mentally deranged US dotard in his latest outburst yesterday.

The antiquated expression is defined as an old person, especially one who has become weak or senile.

Merriam and Webster says in modern usage it commonly means a person in his or her dotage. It comes from the Middle English word doten (meaning "to dote"), which initially had the meaning of "imbecile" when it began being used in the 14th century.

 Kim Jong Un calls Trump a mentally deranged U.S. dotard. Searches for 'dotard' are high as a kite. https://t.co/HztPoLSjXi  Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 21, 2017

Mr Kim's remarks come after Mr Trump announced a new round of financial sanctions against the hermit nation on Thursday in response to its efforts to develop nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.

In a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency, the dictator described President Trumps speech to the UN earlier this week as unprecedented rude nonsense.

Mr Kim also said: I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the US pay dearly for his speech.

I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation.

Mr Kim later added: I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.

The leaders latest statement comes as he and President Trump have traded personal attacks and incendiary threats amid growing tension over North Koreas nuclear programme.

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Last week Mr Trump referred to Mr Kim as "rocket man" in a tweet, repeating the name in his UN speech on Tuesday when he also said the US would "totally destroy" North Korea if America or its allies were attacked.

President Trump Making his speech to the Annual UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday Credit: AFP

Pyongyang continues to defy mounting international pressure and UN sanctions to increase its nuclear capabilities. The state recently launch its sixth and largest nuclear test and fired a series of missiles over Japan.

Hours later after Mr Kim's latest statement the North Korean foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, suggested Pyongyang could be considering a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale.

North Korea has said its aim is to develop missiles that can target the US mainland and announced it had tested a miniaturised H-bomb capable of being loaded onto a rocket earlier this month.

Yesterday President Trump met with the leaders of South Korea and Japan before unveiling tough new financial sanctions aimed at North Korea's trading partners.

South Korea flexes its military muscle after North's nuclear test
Republicans in Alabama will go to the polls Tuesday to choose their partys candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he became President Donald Trumps Attorney General. The incumbent candidate is Luther Strange, the former state Attorney General who has been holding Sessions seat on an interim basis  and who has Trumps endorsement.

But the frontrunner is Roy Moore, a 70-year-old former Chief Justice of Alabamas Supreme Court. He was suspended from his post last year, after bucking the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. On his campaign website, Moore says he was upholding the sanctity of marriage as between one man and one woman.

Thats one of his tamer statements. Here are some of his more incendiary remarks.

Roy Moore said homosexuality is tantamount to bestiality and should be illegal

Earlier this week, CNN dredged up an 12-year-old video of Moore on C-SPAN2, in which pundit Bill Press grilled Moore on his views on homosexuality.

Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes, Moore said.

He then made a remark likening homosexuality to having sex with animals.

Do you know that bestiality, the relationship between man and beast is prohibited in every state? he asked.

You mean homosexuality is same thing as bestiality? Press replied.

He said reds and yellows arent getting along

Moore suggested gay people shouldnt be allowed to have children

He falsely said Barack Obama isnt an American citizen

Moore wrote anti-abortion poetry

He then broke out in verse:

Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand,

Oh, sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand.

He called Islam a false religion

In a meeting with Alabama Republicans in July, Moore was asked by one attendee about Sharia law in the U.S. (The notion that Islamic law is a threat to the U.S. judicial system is a relatively old conspiracy theory.)

Ive seen a lot in the news about Sharia law, and Muslims demanding break times to do their prayers and wanting to have their laws oversee our laws, and I just wonder how you plan to deal with that, the woman asked him, according to the Huffington Post.

False religions like Islam who teach that you must worship this way are completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for, he replied.
Ms Palin spoke at the rally in Birmingham: AP

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin - previously a vociferous supporter of Donald Trump - has claimed his anti-establishment candidacy is being hijacked by the swamp.

The former Alaska governor, who was John McCains Republican running mate in 2008, has thrown by her high-profile support behind an insurgent candidate in an Alabama senate race who is challenging the candidate supported by Mr Trump.

Ms Palin, a powerful figure within the Tea Party movement that predated Mr Trumps anti-mainstream candidacy, claimed she was not challenging Mr Trump. But she, former White House strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump administration security adviser Sebastian Gorka, are all supporting former senior judge Roy Moore, while Mr Trump is supporting Luther Strange, a state politician and prosecutor.

Palin: "Judge Moore is going to defend our interests with the same steel spine that he defended the Ten Commandments." #ALSEN  Howard Koplowitz (@HowardKoplowitz) September 22, 2017

A vote for Judge Moore isnt a vote against the President, it is a vote for the peoples agenda that elected the President, Mr Palin said at a raucous Thursday night rally in Montgomery which followed a debate between Mr Strange and Mr Moore.

In a reference to Hillary Clintons description of Mr Trumps supporters, she added: He was deplorable before being deplorable was cool..The forgotten man and woman in this country, they stood up, and we beat the swamp. But, alas, 10 months later, guys, the swamp, its trying to hijack this presidency.

According to the Washington Post, she added: The swamp is trying to steal the victory that we worked so long and hard for - to steal the victory that a lot of us put our reputations on the line for. We voted to put America first, not the political elite that had ignored us for decades.

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Mr Moore has a long and controversial as one of the most influential and outspoken judges in the state. More than a decade ago, he sparked international headlines over his attempt to have a 5,000lb statue containing the Ten Commandments installed in the Alabama Supreme Court building.

After the Supreme Court in 2015 secured for same sex couples the right to marry, Mr Moore told state judges to ignore the decision and was subsequently suspended as the states chief justice. Earlier this month, he suggested the attacks of 9/11 may have been caused by a lack of godliness.

Since Mr Bannon was fired from the White House, he has made clear his intention to support insurgent candidates across the country, in what he has framed as a challenge to the mainstream Republicanism of senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Using the leverage of his powerful conservative news site, Bretibart News, and millions of dollars in funds from billionaire conservative donor Robert Mercer, Mr Bannon is hoping to have a major impact on the 2018 midterm elections.

CNN said that earlier this week, Mr Bannon ordered staff at Breitbart to step up what has already been its overwhelmingly positive coverage of Mr Moore and its negative coverage of Mr Strange.

The network said that Matthew Boyle, Breitbarts Washington editor, told staff: The only story that matters until next week is Alabama.

As of now, everyone is working on the Alabama race, Mr Boyle wrote in a message obtained by CNN from the companys internal Slack channel. If anyone has any questions please let me know.

The very large bus containing Sarah Palin, Sebastian Gorka and Rep Louis Gohmert just pulled up to the Moore rally pic.twitter.com/9a4hI9m46n  Anthony Zurcher (@awzurcher) September 22, 2017

Mr Moores team have also sought to highlight that Mr Strange was appointed to fill Mr Sessions slot on a temporary basis by then Governor Robert Bentley, who was being investigated by Mr Strange. Mr Bentley resigned in April amid an ethics scandal

At the rally on Thursday, Mr Gorka said: You have a man in Judge Moore who has been endorsed by not just myself but Steve Bannon, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, Governor Palin - that should be enough. But just think who you have on the other hand? A man endorsed by Mitch McConnell - enough said.

Mr Moore is currently around eight points ahead of Mr Strange. Some experts believe, if Mr Moore wins, it may not mean Mr Bannons other projects would see similar success.

If Roy Moore wins, I dont think Bannon can take credit. Moore was ahead when the race started. Strange was disadvantaged because his appointment to the Senate was associated with Governor Bentleys scandal, Carol Cassel, a professor of politics at the University of Alabama, told The Independent.

Strange was Alabamas Attorney General and wanted to investigate Bentley. However, Strange has gained some ground, and if he wins, I think Trump can take credit. Trump is very popular here.


President Donald Trump - AFP or licensors

US President Donald Trump is considering a new version of his travel ban which could include restrictions on travelers from additional countries.

Mr Trump's ban on visitors from six Muslim-majority nations is set to expire on Sunday, 90 days after it took effect.

Elaine Duke, the acting Homeland Security Secretary, has recommended the president impose new, more targeted restrictions to replace the blanket ban, and those restrictions could vary by country.

"The acting secretary has recommended actions that are tough and that are tailored, including restrictions and enhanced screening for certain countries," Miles Taylor, counselor to the Homeland Security Secretary, said.

The Homeland Security Department at first identified 17 countries that had failed to meet US standards, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Those standards included not issuing reliable passports, and not giving the US details of known terrorists.

Around half of the 17 countries subsequently improved their security, leaving eight or nine that the department recommended restrictions on.

Mr Taylor said the proposed restrictions were "tailored and specific to each country". He added: "Some countries may have similar restrictions to others, but there is a spectrum."

Officials refused to say exactly how many countries - and which countries - might be affected, insisting the president had yet to make a final decision on how to proceed.

The president is expected to sign a proclamation once he has made a decision.

Mr Trump's ban, which went into effect in June following a round of legal challenges, has applied to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who lacked a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States".

H.R. McMaster, Mr Trump's national security adviser, said Sunday that the president was considering new restrictions in an effort to keep the American people safe.

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He said: "Well, this is something that we're looking at, is how to protect the American people better, how to ensure that we know who these people are who are moving."

"If you can't screen people effectively to know who's coming into your country, then you shouldn't allow people from that country to travel."

Mr Trump had originally tried to ban the entry of people from seven countries, including Iraq, in a January executive order that sparked protests, chaos at airports and a flurry of legal challenges.

Amid the backlash, Trump issued a second, narrower order, which he later derided as a "watered down, politically correct version".

Last week Mr Trump said on Twitter: "The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific - but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!"
An Arkansas teacher is facing a sexual assault charge for allegedly having sex with four students from two schools, PEOPLE confirms.

Jessie Goline, 25, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with first-degree sexual assault, jail record show. Authorities allege she had sexual relationships with four students over a three-month period in 2016, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

Between January and April of last year, the Marked Tree High School teacher allegedly took two students back to her Jonesboro apartment on the same day and had sex with them in separate encounters, according to the publication.

She faces just one sexual assault charge because only one student was a minor at the time of the alleged encounters, the paper reports. Goline allegedly told investigators she believed the minor was 18 at the time but later learned that he was way younger than what he told her, the Democrat-Gazette reports, citing court documents.

The arrest comes after months of investigation, WREG reports. Goline was placed on administrative leave in May. Golines now-deleted Facebook page listed her as an art teacher. Her account also stated that she is married.

 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.

Three of the alleged victims were from the Marked Tree School District and the other was a student at East Poinsett County School District, according to the Democrat-Gazette.

One of the alleged victims told investigators that Goline commented on how good he looked in class and sent him a photo of herself wearing a thong, the publication reports. He added that Goline allegedly texted him that she would like to have sex with him but he was too young, court documents stated, according to KAIT.

Marked Tree police began investigating the teacher in April when a concerned parent threatened to harm Goline, KAIT reports. The parent claimed that Goline was having sex with multiple students.

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 PEOPLEs special edition True Crime Stories: 35 Real Cases That Inspired the Show Law & Order is on sale now.

Documents state that the schools principal was in the process of reporting Goline when she burst into his office crying, according to the outlet. When the principal asked if there was anything she needed to confess, Goline allegedly responded: Im not going to lose my husband.

Neither Marked Tree nor East Poinsett County immediately responded to a request for comment from PEOPLE.
The flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh has come to a virtual halt, Dhaka officials said Saturday, almost a month after violence erupted in Myanmar's Rakhine State and sent nearly 430,000 people fleeing across the border.

Officials gave no reason for the dramatically reduced numbers. But Rohingya Muslim leaders said it could be because villages located near the border in Myanmar's Rakhine state were now empty.

Bangladesh Border Guard commanders said hardly any refugees are now seen crossing on boats coming from Myanmar or trying to get over the land border.

In the past two weeks there have been up to 20,000 people a day entering Bangladesh.

The UN says 429,000 Rohingya have sought refuge in Bangladesh since attacks by Ronhingya militants in Rakhine on August 25 sparked a major Myanmar military crackdown.

Many gave up money and jewellery to get places on boats crossing the Naf river, which marks part of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

"Our guards have not seen any Rohingya coming in the past few days. The wave is over," Bangladesh Border Guard commander S.M. Ariful Islam told AFP.

The United Nations also said "the influx has dropped". It said it will now release updates on the numbers of refugees entering Bangladesh once a week, rather than daily.

- Deserted villages -

Rohingya community leaders said most of the Rakhine villages near the Bangladesh border are now deserted.

"Almost all the people I know have arrived in Bangladesh," Yusuf Majihi, a Rohingya leader at a camp at Balukhali, near Cox's Bazar, told AFP.

"Village after village has become empty due to the attacks by Myanmar soldiers and torching of the houses by Moghs (Buddhists)," he added.

"Those who are left in Rakhine live far off the border," he said.

Farid Alam, another Rohingya leader, said "I have not heard of any Rohingya crossing the border in the past five days. All I could see is people concentrating near the main camps."

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Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that troops had ceased "clearance operations" targeting Rohingya militants in Myanmar's border area.

The United Nations previously said the military crackdown could amount to "ethnic cleansing".

But despite the calm on the border, there were new signs of unrest in Myanmar.

While the army chief blamed Rohinyga militants for an explosion outside a mosque in Rakhine, Amnesty International accused the military of starting fires in the region to prevent refugees from returning.

Myanmar commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing issued a statement saying Rohingya militants planted a "home-made mine" that exploded in between a mosque and madrasa in Buthidaung township on Friday.

The army chief accused militants of trying to drive out around 700 remaining villagers. Analysts highlighted however that the militants' influence depends on the networks they have built across Rohingya communities.

Amnesty said new videos and satellite imagery indicated fires were still raging through Rohingya villages, scores of which have already been burned to the ground.

According to government figures, nearly 40 percent of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine have been abandoned over the past month.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday also echoed allegations from Bangladeshi officials that Myanmar security forces were laying landmines along the border.

A number of Rohingya, including children, have been killed by mines at the border.

- Brink of disaster -

Bangladesh authorities are meanwhile stepping up efforts to bring order to the chaotic aid distribution for refugees.

Soldiers have been deployed around a 70 square kilometre area where Rohingya have built camps on hills or in open spaces near existing UN run camps.

"We are in the process of taking over the whole relief distribution," an army spokesman told AFP.

He said the troops would dig hundreds of latrines for refugees after doctors warned that the camps were on the brink of a health disaster.

Even before the latest exodus, the camps were home to some 300,000 Rohingya who had fled previous violence in Rakhine.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said on Friday that he supports the candidacy of Roy Moore in the race for the Republican Senate nomination in Alabama, breaking from his boss President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Sen. Luther Strange.

Judge Moore is a fine man of proven character and integrity, who I have come to respect over the years, Carson said in a statement. He is truly someone who reflects the Judeo-Christian values that were so important to the establishment of our country. It is these values that we must return to in order to make America great again.

The announcement came hours before Trumps scheduled appearance in Alabama, where the president plans to campaign for Strange. Trumps support for Strange has been perceived as a more pragmatic decision by the president. Moore, a controversial figure in Alabama who has a history of making politically incorrect remarks, is more of a Trump-style candidate, garnering the support of former White House officials Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka. Conservative voters in Alabama have said they are suspicious of Strange.

Polls have shown that Moore is leading the election so far, although the contest appears to be tightening ahead of the runoff vote on Tuesday.

Luther Strange has gained mightily since my endorsement, but will be very close, Trump tweeted Friday. He loves Alabama, and so do I!
Bernie Sanders trumpeted his universal healthcare plan as an alternative to a faltering Republican bill in San Francisco, California on September 22, 2017: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Bernie Sanders touted his universal healthcare proposal as an alternative to a collapsing Republican repeal effort on Friday, offering a preview of how divergent healthcare visions could dominate future elections.

Speaking in San Francisco before a sympathetic crowd of unionized nurses gathered for a California Nurses Association summit, the independent Senator lambasted Republics for pushing another piece of horrific legislation as they seek once again to unravel Barack Obamas signature healthcare law.

The Republican push was teetering on the verge of failure Friday after Sen John McCain announced he would not support the latest bill, a move that Mr Sanders praised by saying John McCain has a conscience, and I wish very much that the rest of the Republican leadership had that conscience as well.

How cruel, how immoral it is to say to those million of Americans, We are going to take away that health insurance that keeps you alive, Mr Sanders said. We are going to defeat another proposal which is even worse than the other ones, he added, saying Republicans who back the bill will pay a very heavy political price.

As Republican efforts on healthcare have faltered, Mr Sanders has steadily attracted support for a bill that seeks to extend healthcare to all Americans through Medicare, a government insurance program. He spoke in front of a large poster blaring Its Time to Act! Medicare for All! and a crowd hoisting signs with the same message.

In terms of healthcare, maintaining the status quo is just not good enough, Mr Sanders said. The function of a rational healthcare system is not to make billions in profit for the drug companies and the insurance companies, he added. The function of a rational healthcare system is to provide healthcare to all people when they need it.

Should Mr Sanders again seek the presidency, his healthcare agenda would likely be a centerpiece of his campaign. His appearance in California - following a foreign policy-oriented speech in Missouri earlier this week - has fueled speculation that Mr Sanders is laying the groundwork for another shot at the White House. Ahead of his speech, California Nurses Association Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro led the crowd in chants of Run Bernie, Run!

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As Mr Sanders has ascended to national prominence, California has wrestled with the same issues he champions. The Democrat-dominated state's failures to enact policies at the top of Mr Sanders agenda underscores the difficulty Mr Sanders faces in advancing his populist platform.

Last year, Mr Sanders threw his weight behind a California ballot initiative that sought to hold down drug prices. The proposal failed in the face of a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical industry onslaught and questions about whether the measure would work as intended.

Earlier this year, the pursuit of another coveted goal of Sanders-aligned liberals - universal healthcare - stalled in the state legislature. Leadership shelved a bill that would have instituted a single-payer healthcare system in California, noting a lack of funding made the costly proposal unlikely to work.

The decision laid bare divisions within deep-blue Californias political landscape. The California Nurses Association, the states leading institutional backer of Mr Sanders presidential bid, savaged Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon for halting the bill and drew condemnation for tweeting an image of a knife labeled Rendon plunged into the back of a bear on Californias state flag.

Mr Rendon said he received death threats. Ms DeMoro went on the attack again before Mr Sanders spoke, drawing boos as she slammed Mr Rendon for using czar-like powers to hold up the Assembly from having a vote.

On the national level, Mr Sanders has faced skepticism over his bill to cover all Americans. As with the California bill, critics say Mr Sanders has not devised a way to pay for his proposal.

But California politicians with national profiles have increasingly embraced the idea. Lt Gov Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor, publicly proclaimed his support for single-payer healthcare while speaking to the nurses group on Friday.

Healthcare is a natl crisis. Proud to be the first candidate for Gov to announce my strong support for Sen. Sanders Medicare for All bill.  Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 22, 2017

Its time for a new approach. Single payer offers a simpler, more effective, more cost-efficient approach to healthcare delivery in CA.  Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 22, 2017

Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, whose name appears on most lists of potential 2020 presidential candidates, has already signed on as a coauthor.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 06:01:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DUBLIN, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Ireland on Friday evening welcomed the additional clarity provided by British Prime Minister Theresa May in her speech in the Italian cultural capital of Florence.

"The speech is a positive contribution towards making progress on phase one issues -- citizens' rights, the financial settlement and Irish issues," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said in a statement.

This is needed to enable the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) to move forward to the important next phase, he said.

But Coveney said there are still many outstanding issues, adding that a lot of work is still required before European leaders can make a decision that parallel discussions on the EU's future relationship with the UK can begin.

"The key thing now is that today's comments by Prime Minister May are translated into deliverables across the negotiating table in Brussels," he said.

"Ultimately Ireland wants: the gains of the peace process protected, including avoiding a hard border; an orderly UK withdrawal; a sufficiently long and non-disruptive transition arrangement; and the closest possible EU-UK future relationship, including in trade, which minimizes to the greatest extent possible the impact on the Irish economy," he added.

Earlier on Friday, May used a stop in Florence to set out a road map for her country's departure from the EU while promising that ties between Britain and the EU would remain strong even after the so-called Brexit period concludes.

In her speech, May proposed a two-year "period of implementation" after Britain leaves the EU.

Britain will officially no longer be a part of the EU as of midnight on March 29, 2019. This means May is suggesting Britain would continue to stay in the EU single market and customs union for another two years after that.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The Central African Republic's president urged the United Nations on Friday to send more peacekeepers to his strife-torn country and ease an arms embargo in the way of equipping his weak army.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, President Faustin-Archange Touadera said a recent upsurge in violence was linked to a battle for control of the country's natural resources, implicitly rejecting the view that the clashes were sectarian.

"The humanitarian situation has seriously deteriorated in many areas of my country following an increase in violence," Touadera said during his second address to the annual gathering of world leaders following his election last year.

The "real" reason behind the renewed violence is "the plundering and fierce competition for the control and illegal exploitation of CAR's mineral wealth," he said.

More than 600,000 people have fled violence within the country and a further 500,000 have crossed borders as refugees, while 2.4 million people are in need of emergency food aid, he said.

The United Nations has warned that the flareup in violence was the "early warning signs of genocide" and is considering beefing up its 12,000-strong peacekeeping force in the country.

Touadera described the current force level as "insufficient" to protect civilians and said the number of peacekeepers should be "revised upwards," given the size of the country.

He called for an easing of a 2013 Security Council arms embargo to allow his government to purchase military equipment for his national army.

One of the world's poorest nations, CAR descended into war in 2013 following the overthrow of longtime leader Francois Bozize by a coalition of Muslim-majority rebel groups called the Seleka.

France intervened to stop the mass killing and last year shut down its Sangaris mission there.

Christians, who account for about 80 percent of the population, have organized vigilante units dubbed "anti-balaka," a reference to the machetes used by the Muslim rebels.

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While Touadera's government remains in control in Bangui, its authority is weak outside of the capital where former Seleka groups and anti-balaka fighters have clashed.

At least 17 MINUSCA peacekeepers have been killed this year, raising alarm that the country is sliding back to the bloodletting that exploded in 2013.

CAR is also rich in diamonds, timber and gold.
A phony emergency broadcast aired in California Thursday and terrified residents. Rumors the world was going to end Saturday, Sept. 23 were peddled by conspiracy theorist David Meade. While some people were dubious about his claim, the ominous message that interrupted TV programing Thursday freaked a lot of people out.

Realize this, extremely violent times will come, a mans voice said, according to a video of the alert.

One viewer, Stacy Laflamme of Orange County, was in the middle of watching HGTV channel when the emergency alert flashed.

It almost sounded like Hitler talking, she told the Orange County Register Thursday. It sounded like a radio broadcast coming through the television.

Another person was surprised by the alert, but figured it was a hoax.

I was definitely startled, cause the volume increased exponentially, Erin Mireles told the publication. I wasnt alarmed in the sense of thinking something was wrong, cause I assumed it was some sort of hack. My channel changed back to Bravo after a couple minutes.

The fake apocalyptic message was apparently caused by multiple radio stations conducting an emergency test at the same time. With these tests, an emergency tone is sent out to initiate the test, a spokesperson for cable provider Cox Communications said. After the tone is transmitted, another tone is sent to end the message. It appears that the radio station (or stations) did not transmit the end tone to complete the test.

Solar Space

Photo: Getty Images

The radio station that sent the alert didnt turn off their programming when the alert ended, Cox Communications said. For a short time, some heard programming that was on the radio.

The ominous alert was shut down as soon as possible. We dont want to alarm anyone with any false emergency alerts, the spokesperson said.

Its not clear where the erroneous doomsday message came from  of it was an accident or done on purpose. We have confirmed that we were fed an incorrect audio file, a spokesman for Spectrum, another cable provider, explained to the OC Register.

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Even though some people are worried about the world possibly ending Saturday, Meade said Sept. 23 is just a sign and not Armageddon. People twisted his words.

People tend to read sensationalistic headlines, and not go to the source. My book is the source. They dont even read it. My books updates are on my Planet X News.com site  they dont read those, either, Meade told International Business Times in an email Thursday. As Donald Trump would say, this is fake news they write about me. Nothing you can do about it really. Just stay a cool customer.

However, Meade argued the environmental tragedies  such as the earthquakes in Mexico and hurricanes in the Caribbean are related to the metaphorical end of the world, as people know it today. Meade cited the solar eclipse last month as the start to all the natural disasters.

Ever since the Great American Solar Eclipse of Aug. 21 we have been hit by a continued series of judgments, he said. Jewish thought is that solar eclipses are a sign or harbinger of judgment against gentile nations.

Follow me on Twitter @mariamzzarella

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Two Florida child care workers turned themselves into local authorities this week after a Snapchat video surfaced of them taunting and attacking an 8-year-old autistic boy. Warrants for the arrests of the two women were issued Thursday, with police charging them with child neglect, child abuse and battery against the boy, who at one point hid under a table and cried.

The Winter Haven Police Department on Friday morning posted on Facebook that the two woman  Kaderrica Smith, 26, and Alexus Henderson, 20  had turned themselves in. Police were tipped off on Sept. 1 about the video in which the two workers at Our Childrens of Winter Haven, a nonprofit child care center, were seen taunting, aggravating, yelling at and doing a leg sweep on the student, according to a Thursday press release.

The boy who was subjected to the abuse was diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, ODD and severe outbursts. At one point in the video, the child is seen taking cover under a table as one of the women throws a backpack at him and scolds him. Both women could be heard throughout the video taunting the boy.

Both Henderson and Smith said in an initial interview with police Sept. 15 that they neither believed their actions were inappropriate nor that they were guilty of any wrongdoing, according to the news release. Both women were subsequently fired from Our Childrens of Winter Haven and had their child care certifications put on hold while the investigation was ongoing.

After determining that crimes had in fact been committed against the child, police were unable to locate the two women. A warrant was subsequently released for their arrest.

These workers were supposed to be trained in how to handle children with behavioral issues, Police Chief Charlie Bird said in a statement. They are trained to deescalate situations, but that obviously did not happen.

Smith was charged with battery and child abuse and is being held without bond. Henderson was charged with child neglect and was released on bond. CBS-affiliate WTSP in Tampa reported that Smiths first court appearance was set for Friday.

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Beijing (AFP) - China will limit exports of refined petroleum products to North Korea starting October 1, its commerce ministry said, confirming Beijing's participation in new UN sanctions intended to rein in its rogue neighbour.

The United Nations Security Council, including permanent member Beijing, approved tough sanctions against Pyongyang last week in response to its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

Washington had initially sought a full oil embargo, but softened its stance to secure backing from Russia and China -- the North's sole ally and main trading partner, responsible for around 90 percent of its commerce.

In a statement posted to its website late Friday night, the ministry reiterated the terms of the latest resolution, writing that UN member states would not export more than 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum products to the North in the final three months of 2017, and 2 million annually starting next year.

"Chinese government authorities will issue a notice based on the export situation when approaching the upper limit, and from that date implement a prohibition on exports of refined oil products to North Korea for the year," it said.

It added that China has issued a "comprehensive ban on imported textiles" from North Korea, reiterating another clause of the new sanctions that prohibits trade in both fabric and clothing.

Experts say this move could cut off a major source of foreign currency for Pyongyang, as textiles are one of country's major exports, estimated by IHS Markit analysts to value $750 million.

China supplies materials to the North, where they are made into clothing in factories using cheap labour, and often re-exported to China.

The announcement follows days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un's regime, which has raised international alarm.

The US has accused Beijing of not doing enough to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear programme.

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China halted iron, iron ore and seafood imports after the previous round of sanctions against North Korea in August.

But Beijing fears pressuring Kim's regime into collapse, triggering a flood of refugees across its border and eliminating a strategic buffer separating China from the US military in South Korea.

Beijing has condemned the North's missile tests, but hopes to resolve the nuclear crisis through diplomatic means, pleading for a resumption of long-dormant six-nation talks.

It has pushed a tit-for-tat proposal in which North Korea suspends its arms programmes in return for a halt to US military drills in the region -- which has been ignored.

The majority of North Korea's oil likely comes from China, but the exact tally of oil exports remains unknown, as Beijing has not published such data since 2014.

According to UN customs data, China sent 6,000 barrels a day of oil products to North Korea in 2016.
PureWow

King Charles is taking on yet another important role that was previously held by his late father, Prince Philip. This week, the royal family released a brand-new portrait of the monarch, as he officially takes on the role of Park Ranger of Windsor Great Park. In the photograph, His Majesty is standing next to a giant oak tree in an open field while the sun shines brightly. King Charles looks like a whole new man in the pic and is dressed in a camel-colored suit and holding a cane in his hand. Vi
TIANJIN (Reuters) - China's Minister of Land and Resources on Saturday called for trade protectionism to be totally opposed as he pledged to promote greater cooperation in the mining industry as part of Beijing's Belt and Road initiative. In the opening speech at the China Mining conference in Tianjin, Jiang Daming told delegates, who had come from as far afield as Uganda and Chile, that they needed to find a "new path to reinvigorate the mining sector". The market capitalization of major mining companies has now risen for five consecutive quarters, Jiang said, but "prices for major mineral products are still at a low level", meaning there was still much work to be done, Jiang said, without mentioning which minerals he was referring to. Trade protectionism should be opposed, trade barriers removed and transaction costs lowered, Jiang said, adding that work needed to be done to harmonize and standardize mining regulations. Jiang, who in his speech drew on Chinese President Xi Jinping's revival of the ancient Silk Road, which Beijing calls the Belt and Road Initiative, said China would establish a mechanism to promote resource prosperity and development in countries taking part in the scheme. The Belt and Road countries hold over 50 percent of the world's natural gas, 20 percent of its iron ore and a large proportion of many mineral products, Shi Yulong, director of China's Institute of Spatial Planning and Regional Economy, later told the conference, without specifying which nations he was including. Jiang earlier noted that more than 140 countries took part in Xi's Belt and Road forum in Beijing in May this year. (Reporting by Tom Daly in TIANJIN; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
The Versace Spring 2018 show was an OG supermodel reunion!

To close the Milan Fashion Week show, the world's most iconic models -- Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen and Carla Bruni -- hit the runway in metallic, '90s-inspired gold gowns alongside designer Donatella Versace.

If you can't tell from the photos above, the crowd went wild as soon as the pack of supermodels emerged on the catwalk, quickly snapping snapshots to capture the epic moment. Naomi, Cindy and the rest of the pack -- or "THE SUPERS" as the fashion industry calls them -- looked stunning as ever as they reminded the audience where those classic super-walks had originated.

RELATED: Front row at NYFW:



The legendary Italian brand's show was an ode to the late Gianni Versace. Donatella honored her brother, who died in 1997, with a slew of looks featuring his prints from his collections between 1991 and 1995.

Of course, the industry's hottest supermodels also made walked the Versace runway. Bella and Gigi Hadid donned gold-and-black dresses in an ornate print. They looked so fierce.

Kaia Gerber also hit the runway just minutes before her mother Cindy, making it a show that the mother-daughter duo will truly never forget.

RELATED: SI model Julie Christie then and now:


By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Congolese President Joseph Kabila told the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations on Saturday that he would ensure those responsible for killing two U.N. investigators earlier this year would be punished. Michael Sharp, an American who was coordinator of an independent sanctions monitoring group, and Zaida Catalan, a Swede, were killed in central Congo on March 12 while carrying out investigations for a report to the U.N. Security Council. The bodies of Sharp and Catalan were found in a shallow grave two weeks later. "We are determined to ensure that light is shed on the exact circumstances of this crime and to ensure that this horrendous act ... will not remain unpunished," Kabila said. "This is exactly what open public court processes have been working toward for several weeks now following the arrest of the majority of the suspects of these crimes," he told the 193-member General Assembly. Congolese authorities have arrested nine suspects in the killings but some Western governments and rights groups are skeptical that the real masterminds have been identified. An internal U.N. inquiry found that Sharp and Catalan were murdered by a group of Congolese, likely militia members from central Democratic Republic of Congo, but an absence of evidence "does not preclude the possibility that others are involved." At a U.N. Security Council meeting last month, the United States, Britain, France, Sweden and Japan urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to establish a follow-up investigation to determine responsibility. Guterres has said he planned to discuss the establishment of a "follow-on mechanism" to the board of inquiry with Congo officials and council members. "The most effective would be the integration of independent experts into the Congolese system. I do not know whether it will be possible or not," Guterres told reporters last week. "Otherwise, we will take our own initiative: our colleagues in the Department of Political Affairs are making all the necessary consultations to put in place the system that can be as effective as possible for the truth to be known," he said. ELECTIONS In the central Congo Kasai provinces, where Sharp and Catalan were killed, an insurrection by the Kamuina Nsapu militia, which demands the withdrawal of Congolese forces from the area, has driven 1.4 million people from their homes and killed more than 3,000 since August last year. Kabila said the country had "fallen victim to terrorist attacks" and that a "mystical religious tribal militia is using the civilian population, including children as a human shield." Kasai poses Congo's biggest security challenge and is the scene of a growing humanitarian disaster in a country where militia violence since Kabila refused to step down in December has raised fears of a slip back into civil war. Kabila also told the U.N. General Assembly that Congo had so far registered 42 million of 45 million voters and that the National Election Commision would "soon publish the electoral calendar and timelines." "Despite this progress, challenges in organizing elections in my country remain great, both on the logistical level, as well as on the financial, security and legislative one," he said. "I can affirm that we are most certainly moving towards credible, transparent and peaceful elections." He did not say if the vote would take place this year, as required by a deal with Congo's opposition that allowed him to stay in power beyond the expiry of his mandate last December. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and James Dalgleish)
Two Florida day care workers are facing charges after authorities say they taunted a boy with autism as he wept under a desk.

Video of the alleged incident was enough for Winter Haven police to issue warrants for the workers, 26-year-old Kadericca Smith and 19-year-old Alexis Henderson.

Read: Toddler Dies Days After He Stopped Breathing During Naptime at Day Care

The women are allegedly seen in video taken at Our Children's Academy as they taunted and laughed at the 8-year-old boy. At one point, one of the women is seen holding both the boy's arms and using her leg to swipe the his legs out from under him, cops say.

Winter Haven police say the video was posted to Snapchat.

"These workers were supposed to be trained in how to handle children with behavioral issues. They are trained to de-escalate situations, but that obviously did not happen, Winter Haven Police Chief Charlie Bird told reporters.

The women were both questioned Sept. 15 but not charged. After police decided there was sufficient evidence to bring charges, the women reportedly could not be found.

Both they have since turned themselves in to police.

Read: Day Care Center Shuttered After 3-Month-Old Died On Her Mother's First Day Back at Work

Henderson is charged with child neglect and has posted bond. Smith has been charged with battery and child abuse, and is being held without bond.

Smith's first court appearance is scheduled for Friday.

Watch: Toddler Found Dead In Hot Van Outside Day Care Center

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 07:06:49|Editor: Yang Yi

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) shakes hands with Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem during their meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, on Sept. 22, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday met with Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.

Muallem briefed Wang on the situation in Syria, saying that progress has been made in cease-fire and the end of violence on the ground and in the fight against terrorism. The situation is beginning to stabilize, said Muallem.

Syria appreciates China's impartial stance on the Syria issue and commends China's constructive role in pushing for peace and stability in Syria and in mitigating the humanitarian situation, he said. Muallem said he expected China's participation in Syria's post-war reconstruction.

Syria treasures its friendship with China, welcomes and supports the Belt and Road Initiative and is willing to participate in it to pursue more practical results from bilateral cooperation, he said.

Wang said China has always held that the Syria issue should be solved by political means following the principle of Syrian leadership and Syrian ownership. With the positive development in the situation in Syria emerges opportunities for the settlement of the issue, said Wang. He expressed the hope that the Syrian government and various factions can accelerate the process of political settlement under the auspices of the United Nations and work for the early restoration of stability.

Wang said that Syria is an important node in the ancient Silk Road and that the Belt and Road Initiative can serve as an important vehicle for bilateral cooperation. China welcomes Syria's participation in Belt and Road projects and is willing to carry out cooperation with Syria within the framework of the initiative for the sake of common development.

Wang and Muallem met on the sidelines of their attendance at the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
North Korea warned this week that it might test a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean, after saying the country had already successfully detonated one.

A hydrogen bomb has never been used in battle by any country, but experts say it has the power to wipe out entire cities and kill significantly more people than the already powerful atomic bomb, which the U.S. dropped in Japan during World War II, killing tens of thousands of people.

As global tensions continue to rise over North Koreas nuclear weapons program, heres what to know about atomic and hydrogen bombs:

Why is a hydrogen bomb stronger than an atomic bomb?

More than 200,000 people died in Japan after the U.S. dropped the worlds first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then another one three days later in Nagasaki during World War II in 1945, according to the Associated Press. The bombings in the two cities were so devastating, they forced Japan to surrender.

But a hydrogen bomb has the potential to be 1,000 times more powerful than an atomic bomb, according to several nuclear experts. The U.S. witnessed the magnitude of a hydrogen bomb when it tested one within the country in 1954, the New York Times reported.

Hydrogen bombs cause a bigger explosion, which means the shock waves, blast, heat and radiation all have larger reach than an atomic bomb, according to Edward Morse, a professor of nuclear engineering at University of California, Berkeley.

Although no other country has used such a weapon of mass destruction since World War II, experts say it would be even more catastrophic if a hydrogen bomb were to be dropped instead of an atomic one.

With the [atomic] bomb we dropped in Nagasaki, it killed everybody within a mile radius, Morse told TIME on Friday, adding that a hydrogen bombs reach would be closer to 5 or 10 miles. In other words, you kill more people, he said.

Hall, director of the University of Tennessees Institute for Nuclear Security, called the hydrogen bomb a city killer that would probably annihilate between 100 and 1,000 times more people than an atomic bomb.

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It will basically wipe out any of modern cities, Hall said. A regular atomic bomb would still be devastating, but it would not do nearly as much damage as an H-bomb.

Hiroshima in ruins following the atomic bomb blast.

Whats the difference between hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs?

Simply speaking, experts say a hydrogen bomb is the more advanced version of an atomic bomb. You have to master the A-bomb first, Hall said.

An atomic bomb uses either uranium or plutonium and relies on fission, a nuclear reaction in which a nucleus or an atom breaks apart into two pieces. To make a hydrogen bomb, one would still need uranium or plutonium as well as two other isotopes of hydrogen, called deuterium and tritium. The hydrogen bomb relies on fusion, the process of taking two separate atoms and putting them together to form a third atom.

The way the hydrogen bomb works  its really a combination of fission and fusion together, said Eric Norman, who also teaches nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley.

In both cases, a significant amount of energy is released, which drives the explosion, experts say. However, more energy is released during the fusion process, which causes a bigger blast. The extra yield is going to give you more bang, Morse said.

Morse said the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were each equivalent to just about 10,000 kilotons of TNT. Those were the little guys, Morse said. Those were small bombs, and they were bad enough. Hydrogen bombs, he said, would result in a yield of about 100,000 kilotons of TNT, up to several million kilotons of TNT, which would mean more deaths.

Hydrogen bombs are also harder to produce but lighter in weight, meaning they could travel farther on top of a missile, according to experts.

What are the similarities between hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs?

Both bombs are extremely lethal and have the power to kill people within seconds, as well as hours later due to radiation. Blasts from both bombs would also instantly burn wood structures to the ground, topple big buildings and render roads unusable.

LIFE magazine described such devastation in an article published on March 11, 1946, on the aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. The piece read: In the following waves [after the initial blast] peoples bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled.
The end of the world is sometimes referred to as rapture. With David Meade supposedly predicting Saturday, Sept. 23 as being an important sign leading up to doomsday, some people might be interested to know the meaning of the word.

When used as a noun, rapture means a feeling of intense pleasure or joy. Synonyms are bliss, ecstasy, pleasure, happiness, delight, joy, euphoria, elation, exaltation, and enchantment.

Of course, when speaking about the end of the world, rapture is not meant to mean a synonym for joy. Instead, it refers to believers being transported to heaven at the Second Coming of Christ.

While the Bible talks about the Second Coming of Christ, the word rapture is never used, though it is often associated with Him coming again.

The meaning or definition of rapture is the idea that the coming of Jesus will take place in two separate stages. The first will be a secret rapture  or carrying away of the saved to heaven  at the beginning of a seven-year period of tribulation, during which the antichrist will appear, Bible Info explains. The second phase occurs at the close of this time of tribulation when Jesus will return to Earth in triumph and glory.

Rapture

Photo: Getty Images

His return is talked about in the Bible. While they [the disciples] watched, He [Jesus] was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men [angels] stood by them in white apparel, who also said, Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven, reads Acts 1:9-11, NKJV.

If Jesus did return, it would not be a secret. Behold, He [Jesus] is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him, says Revelation 1:7, NKJV.

What comes after is the 7-year Tribulation period. The 7-year Tribulation period is very well-known among students of Bible prophecy, Meade told International Business Times in an email Thursday. Its been written about for hundreds of years. I write about it. Most everyone knows of it. At the very end of that period according to the Book of Revelation Jesus returns to Jerusalem, and he appears on a yearly basis at the new Temple that they have by that time set up. That frame of time is called the 1,000 year Millennium. Both Catholics and Protestants believe this.

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Meade argued the devastating earthquakes and hurricanes could prove rapture is near. He cited the solar eclipse last month as the beginning. Ever since the Great American Solar Eclipse of Aug. 21st we have been hit by a continued series of judgments, Meade said. Jewish thought is that solar eclipses are a sign or harbinger of judgment against gentile nations.

Meade denied Saturday, Sept. 23 will be the end of the world, saying his words were misconstrued by the media. People tend to read sensationalistic headlines, and not go to the source. My book is the source. They dont even read it. My books updates are on my Planet X News.com site  they dont read those, either. As Donald Trump would say, this is fake news they write about me. Nothing you can do about it really. Just stay a cool customer, he said.

The common conspiracy theory is that the ficticious planet Nibiru is slated to collide with Earth and decimate civilization. NASA denied the rumor in 2012.

Follow me on Twitter @mariamzzarella

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Holly the dog doesnt beg for treats  she pays for them.

The New York canines bizarre obsession with paper bills began when she was just a puppy, according to her owner, Casi Cook. And it wasnt long before she realized that money wasnt just fun, it was useful.

Holly can buy a lot of treats with that stash. (Photo: Casi Cook)

She was a thief, just like any puppy, Cook told The Dodo. She used to steal stuff out of all our bags, including money, and instead of chasing her around the house we would kind of bribe her with treats, so when she had money in her mouth we didnt want her to eat it so we would say, Here Holly, take the treat and give me the money, so it clicked in her head, if she has the money, she will get treats.

Cook works at a restaurant, and Holly comes running whenever shes counting her tips, according to The Dodo.

When Holly hears us counting money, within seconds she is sitting with her head right on your lap nudging your hands until you give her a dollar, Cook told HuffPost in an email.

Holly even has a couple of "piggy banks" at home. (Photo: Casi Cook)

There are two containers in the kitchen that function as piggy banks for Holly.

All the money that is around the house is the money she uses to pay for her treats, Cook said. And when she pays we put it in the bank until she runs out of money around the house. And than we restock her up.

Sometimes, when Holly wants a treat, her humans will ask her for a dollar, and shell go find one. Other times, Holly is more pro-active.

When we are at the dinner table, she will quietly walk up to one of us and just gently place a dollar on our laps and look at us with that puppy face, Cook told People.

How can you say no to this? (Photo: Casi Cook)

Hollys financial savviness isnt her only intriguing quirk. Cook said that Holly also sits in a chair at the dinner table with her human family  though she doesnt eat directly of the table.

Aside from being a crazy money lady, Holly is the sweetest, smartest dog Ive met, Cook said.

Cook says she realizes money is known to be pretty dirty, but Hollys obsession has been going on for more than four years and shes never had any health issues. She noted that Holly really doesnt have it in her mouth that much.

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Plus, she added, there is nothing we can do about having a dog who is passionate about money. Theres no stopping that now!

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It is now over a decade since Bella's mum broke loose one night. However, Bella still enjoys life to the extreme; she loves going for walks, but when it is going uphill, frequent rest stops are called for. She loves flopping flat on the floor and watching the world go by and this typical stance begs the question: 'How can anyonw resist?a

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Let's call it the "Donald Trump + hoax" test: If the president says it's a hoax, then it probably is actually true.

Trump has famously referred to climate change as "a hoax," several times. Lately he's directed his hoax radar toward trying to discredit any story having to do with Russian involvement in the 2016 United States presidential election. He was at it again on Friday.

SEE ALSO: Reporters call out Trumps claim that he saw Harvey horror & devastation

The president sent two tweets Friday morning about Russian involvement in the election, again calling Russian influence a "hoax."

The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media "screaming" for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

On Thursday, Facebook announced that it would provide congressional investigators with more than 3,000 ads linked to Russia as various groups continue to probe Kremlin influence in the election, and to what extent that influence held sway over Trump's campaign.

These various investigations have yet to conclude, but, as bits of information about potential collusion between Trump's camp and the Kremlin have continued to dribble into the press, Trump has remained steadfast in his claim that the entire "Russia story" is a "hoax" or "fake news."

Russia talk is 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!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 26, 2017

The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017

Stock Market hit another all-time high yesterday - despite the Russian hoax story! Also, jobs numbers are starting to look very good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2017

Again, it's not clear to what extent Moscow held sway over the 2016 presidential election or Trump's campaign. But, if the "Russia story" is as much a "hoax" as climate change...

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Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee - I'm in Los Angeles and it's freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013

We should be focused on magnificently clean and healthy air and not distracted by the expensive hoax that is global warming!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2013

Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2014

...then Trump's probably not gonna like how this ends.
AFP

The US president Donald Trump has resumed his war of words with Kim Jong-un, this time referring to the North Korean leader as Little Rocket Man and suggesting he should have been "handled" by his predecessor Barack Obama.

At an Alabama campaign rally for Senator Luther Strange on Friday, Mr Trump continued to throw insults at Pyongyangs leader.

During an address inside the Wernher Von Braun Centre that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, Mr Trump said: I believe the best path to the most peaceful world are proud, independent sovereign nations that respect their people.

Warming to his theme, the US president said: We cant have mad men out there shooting rockets all over the place And by the way, rocket man shouldve been handled a long time ago This shouldnt be handled now, but Im going to handle it because we have to handle it.

Mr Trump added: Little rocket man Were going to do it because we really have no choice. Hes talking about a massive weapon exploding over the ocean which causes tremendous calamity.

Despite his sabre rattling, the US president did not completely dismiss negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear weapons testing, saying maybe something gets worked out and maybe it doesnt.

However, the US president seemed to change his mind on this line of diplomacy, quickly adding: Personally, Im not sure that it will.

This latest attack on Mr Kim comes hot on the heels of Mr Trumps speech at the UN General Assembly where he used his current favourite epithet of Rocket Man against the North Korean leader.

Mr Trump told the gathering of world leaders that if the US was forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

Before the US presidents address, his senior aides had warned him not to personally attack Mr Kim.

According to the LA Times, Mr Trumps speech, which claimed that North Korea was on a suicide mission, was not part of a draft reviewed by US officials.

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Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

National security advisor H.R. McMaster, one of Trumps top aides has counselled against the personal insults and name calling, fearing it could damage future negotiations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Jong-Un has fired back, peppering the US President with a number of choice put-downs, including calling Trump a mentally deranged US dotard as well as a gangster who needed to be attacked with fire.
President Donald Trumps morning tweets on Friday focused on two of his major concerns: efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and tensions with North Korea.

Trump initially wrote about domestic policy, threatening Republicans who disagree with the his plan to repeal Obama's health care bill. Rand Paul, or whoever votes against Hcare Bill, will forever (future political campaigns) be known as 'the Republican who saved ObamaCare, he wrote.

He then turned his attention to the world, tweeting a response to North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns unprecedented first-person threat to the president issued in a statement carried by the state-controlled KCNA agency: I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.

09_21_Kim Jong Un

KCNA via REUTERS

Kim also said Pyongyang would consider a "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history" against the U.S., reiterating the country's willingness to pursue a nuclear program.

Trump, who previously dubbed Kim Rocket Man and threatened to totally destroy North Korea in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, called him a "madman."

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before! he tweeted.

The tweet immediately encountered the ire of military nonproliferation experts, who fear that the presidents bombastic rhetoric is only playing into the hands of Pyongyang's propaganda that portrays the U.S. as an aggressive power hell-bent on destroying North Korea.

Stop helping, wrote Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in response to the presidents tweet.

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On Friday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told reporters in New York ahead of his speech at the U.N. that Kim may be planning to conduct an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific.

Carrying out the threat, which could involve firing an intermediate or long-range missile carrying a hydrogen bomb warhead over Japan and blow it up above the Pacific Ocean, would be unprecedented move, considering its past six nuclear tests were conducted underground. The Japanese have denounced it as utterly unacceptable.

They may be bluffing, but there is a need for them to test their combined missile-bomb capability. They could have already prepared the plan and are now trying to use Trumps remarks as an excuse to make it happen, Yang Uk, a senior researcher at the Korea Defence and Security Forum in Seoul, South Korea, told Reuters.

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Duchess Kate's Alexander McQueen wedding dress will go down as one of the most stunning in history. The iconic 2011 photograph of Kate in her white gown while looking back at sister Pippa Middleton as they both walked into Westminster Abby will remain engrained in our memories forever.

With its intricate lace detailing, extravagant train and V-neck bodice, the look designed by Sarah Burton led to brides wanting similar looks of their own.

Unbeknownst to most, however, Kate actually had a second gown for the big day -- and there are only a few photos of the Duchess wearing the gorgeous gown.

Once the ceremony was over, the bride switched into an ivory satin dress also designed by Sarah Burton for the private reception hosted at Buckingham Palace. The fit-and-flare strapless gown featured a sweetheart neckline, a stunning crystal-encrusted belt and a bolero to cover up her shoulders.

According to British publication Express, the royal switched looks for an incredibly practical reason -- she wanted to feel more comfortable at the reception! By the looks of the photos, her second Alexander McQueen gown was definitely easier to maneuver around in -- perfect for all the dancing she probably did with her hubby Prince William!

Earlier this year, Pippa and Kate switched roles as the youngest Middleton daughter tied the knot. The lifestyle guru looked stunning in a Giles Deacon gown while Kate, who was maid of honor, dazzled in a blush Alexander McQueen dress.

To see her second wedding gown, watch the video above!

RELATED: Pippa Middleton's dreamy wedding:


President Erdogan's son Bilal (centre) and daughter Sumeyye (right) both studied in the US - Reuters

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that young Turks who study in the West come back as volunteer spies - even though three of his own children studied in the US.

Speaking at an event in New York, the Turkish leader said: Those who were sent to the West for education came back with only the West's culture, losing their identity. Those who the country waited for to solve its problems came back as the West's volunteer spies."

Mr Erdogan is the father of four adult children, three of whom have degrees from American universities.

His daughter Esra and son Bilal both did their undergraduate studies at Indiana University, while other daughter Sumeyye has a masters degree from the universitys School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Mr Erdogan's daughter Esra also studied at Indiana University Credit: CEM TURKEL/AFP/Getty Images

Mr Erdogan met with the president of Indiana University in Istanbul in 2014 and the university said that both the president and his wife, Emine, had visited the universitys campus in Bloomington, Indiana

The presidents daughters both wear Muslim headscarves. Some reports said they refused to study in Turkey because many Turkish universities banned the headscarf until 2010.

Bilal also graduated with a masters in public policy from Harvards prestigious John F Kennedy School of Government. He was working on a PhD at Johns Hopkins University but it is not clear if he completed it.

Many of the presidents most senior cabinet members also studied in the West.

In his speech, Mr Erdogan lamented that for hundreds of years young Turks had been sent abroad to study but returned with Western ideas. Those who look down on their own nation, those who despise their own values, be sure about that; even our enemies couldn't do damage like these so-called intellectuals did.

Mr Erdogans comments led to frustrated outpourings on social media from some Turks who accused him of hypocrisy.

Hypocracy |

Erdogan today has said our bright minds go to study abroad and become spies. Just to note all his 4 kids studied in UK&US. https://t.co/UAGl1y17AB  Isa Gokturk YILMAZ (@IGokturkYilmaz) September 21, 2017

So this makes his daughter Sumeyye (who studied at Indiana University thanks to a scholarship provided by Remzi Gur & at @LSEnews) a spy.  Has Avrat (@hasavrat) September 21, 2017

Mr Erdogan regularly unleashes broadsides against the West in general and often the European Union in particular.

Earlier this year, in the run up to a referendum that vastly expanded his own powers, he sparked an angry diplomatic back and forth with Holland and Germany, accusing both of being Nazis.
A rash of recent high-profile cyber attacks has security experts scrambling to find solutions.

You cannot have an unrealistic set of expectations and believe your system will never be penetrated, Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, told Yahoo Finance at the annual Concordia Summit in New York City. You need layers of defense so your systems have resiliency.

Chertoff, who now runs his own risk management company, stressed that cyber security involves much more than code. Among other things, he says companies must be armed with backup systems to store data in case their servers are compromised. In the video above, Chertoff compares a companys cyber security system to the human body.

We take a holistic approach, he explained. The human body doesnt keep all bacteria and viruses out, but it also has an immune system and thats what companies should have.

He added that companies shouldnt get in the business of paying off hackers. Its a mistake to pay because youll wind up paying again and again.

Accept more refugees

Chertoff also spoke about the need for the United States to accept more refugees.

A common-sense strategy from a national security standpoint says we ought to be taking in a reasonable amount, higher than the [current] 50,000.

Chertoff added that having a low cap puts our allies who are hosting these refugees in a difficult position.

Were asking them to assume the burden of the refugees, but were not willing to partner with them, Chertoff said. If you turn the refugees away, you risk them becoming victims or worse, getting recruited by terrorists.

Chertoff noted that not letting in more refugees could also put our military at risk.

I remember when we were in Iraq and I was Homeland Security Secretary, many people applied to be refugees because their families had worked with US forces as translators, as guides, doing support work, Chertoff said. We owe it to them to say look youve got our back, weve got yours. 

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On the subject of growing tensions between the United States and North Korea, Chertoff said its unrealistic to think Kim Jong Uns regime will disarm.

According to Chertoff, the U.S. needs to keep a whole menu of options open including pursuing a diplomatic relationship with North Korea, similar to what the US had with Cuba.

Getting people on the ground [in North Korea] might help us calibrate better how they might respond to things that we do.
Bogota (AFP) - The remains of a feared ex-guerrilla chief killed in a bombing raid seven years ago were laid to rest in Colombia Friday, with tributes led by the new Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (FARC) political party.

Jorge "Mono Jojoy" Briceno -- real name Victor Julio Suarez Rojas -- died in an attack ordered by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in 2010 against the rebel army then also known as the FARC.

Briceno, branded the "symbol of terror" by Santos, had 62 arrest warrants for murder, kidnapping and terrorism in Colombia. He was also wanted in the United States for drug trafficking and kidnapping.

The ceremony -- attended by around 200 people -- took place in south Bogota, where his remains were taken to a family grave.

The FARC party, launched by former guerrillas in early September following a peace agreement reached with the government last year, invited guests to "pay a tribute to the defender of the humble."

"In your name, I also ask for forgiveness from Colombia for the war. Never again will we allow ourselves to take the road of violence," Jorge Ernesto Suarez, Briceno's son, said during the event.

"We are not celebrating. We are commemorating the life of someone, initiating a road towards to reconciliation from several perspectives," Suarez told AFP.

But the event was criticized by politicians, with Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon calling it a "justification of crime."

While it was taking place, the UN's mission in Colombia was working to destroy the last arms handed over by 7,000 ex-FARC guerrillas as part of the peace agreement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 07:52:01|Editor: Xiang Bo

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ANKARA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesperson Bekir Bozdag said early Saturday the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum should be completely cancelled, ruling out any postponement.

"The referendum slated for Sept. 25 is a direct threat against Turkey's national security," Bozdag said in a press conference after the cabinet meeting chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the presidential complex in Ankara, private news channel NTV reported.

"The vote is illegitimate and unacceptable. It should be completely cancelled, not postponed," he stressed.

The spokesperson said that there would be serious consequences if the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) insisted on the mistake, urging to cancel the referendum "in a way that will not be repeated again."

"Turkish government's stance is clear and determined," Bozdag said, adding that "all options are on the table."

Earlier Friday, Turkey's National Security Council warned northern Iraq against holding a referendum on independence, saying such a move would create "grave results."
The security detail of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was caught up in violence on U.S. soil once again Thursday as he delivered a speech in New York City.

Erdogan, in the city for the U.N. General Assembly this week, was addressing the Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC) at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Video shared by Voice of Americas Turkish arm showed members of the audience shouting at Erdogan in opposition to his policies toward the Kurdish minority in his country, as well as toward Kurds in northern Syria along the Turkish border. One said: "You're a terrorist! Get out of my country!

Kurds in Turkey and Syria accuse the Turkish government of human rights abuses, and even war crimes, in its military operations against them. Turkey denies this, saying it has to conduct security operations to prevent militant Kurdish attacks on the mainland.

The video shows men in black suits moving toward the protesters, with one being hit by members of the crowd. It remains unconfirmed that members of Erdogans security team were caught up in the melee, and unclear as to who was throwing the punches.

Erdogans security detail, dressed similarly, was implicated in a mass brawl in the U.S. earlier this year: Several men become embroiled in violence outside the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C., in May. Video showed Erdogans security team punching and kicking Kurdish and Armenian demonstrators. The brawl left 12 people injured. Erdogan appeared to watch the brawl from the embassy premises.

The State Department criticized the attack, and last month a grand jury in Washington indicted 15 Turkish security officials and four civilians on charges of assault in connection with the brawl.

In 2011, Erdogans security team was also involved in a fight at the U.N. headquarters in New York that left one police officer injured.

A member of the crowd at Thursdays speech, who posted video footage to social media, alleged that the man who shouted at Erdogan was an American national who had volunteered for the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, the Kurdish militia in northern Syria that is battling the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

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09_22_Turkey_Erdogan_Protests

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Turkey alleges that the YPG is connected to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Ankara in a conflict that has taken tens of thousands of lives.

Erdogan tried to calm the situation after members of the audience threw punches and objects at the protesters. "My dear brothers, my dear brothers, my dear brothers, I have an important request from you: Don't let three to five impertinent people, three to five hall terrorists, ruin our lovely gathering," he said. Audience members began chanting Erdogans name in order to stop the protesters from being heard.

One of the protesters, Meghan Bodette, told the The New York Times: "Erdogan should not be able to speak here unchallenged, and we challenged him because the American people need to know that a state that claims to be our ally is hindering the fight against ISIS in Syria and destroying civilian lives."

The TASC told BuzzFeed News that police arrested four of the protesters for "trespass and disturbing the event. President Erdogan calmly and wisely restored order, and the program continued seamlessly and successfully." However, the New York Police Department said this was incorrect and that they had detained five protesters and released them shortly afterward.

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Cairo (AFP) - Former Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Mahdi Akef, who helped turn Egypt's Islamist movement into a major opposition force, died on Friday in a Cairo hospital aged 89, his daughter said.

Aliya Mahdi Akef made the announcement on Facebook, saying "my father is in the care of Allah (God)".

Ten months before his death, Akef had been transferred from jail to the hospital in Cairo for cancer treatment, Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsud told AFP.

He had been arrested and jailed in 2013 after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and jailed his supporters and fellow Brotherhood members.

Akef, who was born in 1928, headed the Brotherhood from 2004 until 2010.

The lawyer said Akef would be buried later Friday.

Under his leadership, the Brotherhood won 20 percent of parliamentary seats in 2005 legislative elections, a historic achievement for the then banned but tolerated movement.

The group emerged as the most organised opposition force against president Hosni Mubarak's regime, campaigning against police brutality, corruption and rampant inequality.

Mubarak was overthrown in 2011 after an 18-day uprising.

Akef spent more than 26 years of his life in jail, the first time after a failed assassination bid against pan-Arabist leader and former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954.

After Morsi's ouster he was sentenced to life in prison, meaning 25 years of detention, for his alleged role in the deaths of 12 anti-Brotherhood protesters who tried to attack the Brotherhood's Cairo headquarters in June 2013.

The Court of Cassation overturned that verdict and ordered a new trial, but leaving him behind bars again.
The story of a child supposedly alive in the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen school gripped the country  until it became clear she didnt exist

A priest holds an outdoor Catholic Mass near the collapsed Enrique Rebsamen school. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell/AP

The story captivated a country still reeling from catastrophe: rescue workers were labouring round the clock to free a 12-year-old girl who had miraculously survived Mexicos devastating earthquake, but remained trapped in the ruins of her school.

Television channels broadcast breathless updates describing how the rescuers were inching closer to the cavity where Frida Sofia was buried alive.

Naval officers leading the rescue effort told reporters that she had been seen to wiggle her fingers, that she had taken shelter under a granite table and was in contact with schoolmates.

But on Thursday, hope turned to heartache  and then anger  as the story fell apart: there was no student named Frida Sofia; there was no girl trapped in the ruins of Enrique Rebsamen school.

After two days when it seemed that a rescue could come at any moment, the navy assistant secretary, Enrique Sarmiento, abruptly announced that all the schools children had been accounted for.

We want to emphasize that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl, Sarmiento added. We do not believe  we are sure  it was not a reality.



The announcement came just hours after a different navy official had told El Financiero TV that rescue workers were in contact with the girl.

The revelation that there never was a Frida Sofia infuriated many Mexicans, who felt theyd been fed a false narrative of hope by press and public officials.



People are angry, said Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. Frida was the story.

Online, many vented anger at the authorities. But they also targeted the media  especially the broadcasting giant Televisa. Some compared the episode to the story of Monchito, a nine-year-boy who was the focus of a massive rescue attempt from the rubble of Mexico Citys devastating 1985 earthquake, but turned out not to have existed.

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Televisa anchors also expressed frustration: The federal government always told us there was a girl and they were about to rescue her. Now they changed their version. Outrageous, tweeted anchor Carlos Loret de Mola.

During the rescue, soldiers and marines with specialised equipment such as heat sensors and sensitive microphones searched the school site for signs of life  and claimed to have found Frida Sofia. Rescue workers were said to be feeding her milk down plastic tubes.

But then the discrepancies started to emerge: no distraught family members came to the school; none of the surviving staff or students knew anyone of that name.



Late on Wednesday, cheers broke out at the site of the ruined school as a rumour spread that two students had been saved.

But soon after, a group of volunteer first responders known as the Moles  famed for burrowing through rubble  left the school saying there had been a difference of opinion with naval officials who had taken over the rescue effort.

In the end, that effort was unnecessary.

The anger prompted by the episode was the product of widespread disgust with public officials and media outlets which are routinely accused of fudging statistics and downplaying Mexicos problems.

We already have extremely low levels of interpersonal and institutional trust, said Rodolfo Soriano-Nunez, a sociologist in Mexico City.


Berlin (AFP) - More than 27,000 images of torture and killings allegedly perpetrated by the Assad regime in Syria have been handed to German prosecutors who are investigating possible abuses, a rights group said Friday.

"The photos show the extent and the systematic nature of torture" under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said Wolfgang Kaleck, general secretary of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The shots were taken by a photographer working for the Syrian military police, dubbed "Caesar", who fled his homeland in 2013 carrying 55,000 photographs showing bodies of people who had been tortured between 2011 and 2013.

The rights group said it had joined Caesar on Thursday in filing a criminal complaint with Germany's federal prosecutor against senior officials from the Syrian intelligence service and military police over possible crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Although the alleged abuses were carried out in Syria and not Germany, the case can be filed on German soil under the legal principle of universal jurisdiction, meaning that any country can pursue perpetrators regardless of where the crime was committed.

Germany is one of the few countries in the world to apply the principle.

In France, a similar investigation over crimes against humanity was opened two years ago on the basis of Caesar's account as a witness.

The German case was filed just months after seven individuals who claim they were tortured filed claims against the top brass of Syria's secret service.

According to Spiegel weekly, German investigators are currently examining cases against 12 leading officials of the Assad regime.
In defiance of threats from President Donald Trump, Iran showed off a new long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching targets in the Middle East, including Israel, during a military parade on Friday. The Khorramshahr missile has a range of roughly 1,200 miles and can carry multiple warheads.

"We seek no ones permission to defend our land," said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during Friday's parade, vowing to strengthen his country's defense capabilities despite complaints from Trump regarding the Iran nuclear deal earlier this week.

"The great nation of Iran has always pursued peace and security in the region and the world, and has always defended the oppressed people of the world. We will defend the downtrodden people of Yemen, Syria, and Palestine whether you like it or not," Rouhani added.

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"Irans public display of the missile and Rouhanis comments were largely a response to the Trump administrations declared intention to pressure Tehran to accept limitations on its ballistic missile programs," Robert Einhorn, who played a crucial role in formulating U.S. policy toward Iran's nuclear program while advising the Obama administration on nonproliferation and arms control, tells Newsweek.

"Rouhani is putting down a strong marker that Irans missile programs are not on the negotiating table," he adds.

During his first address to the United Nations, Trump on Tuesday referred to Iran as a "corrupt dictatorship" that exports "violence, bloodshed and chaos."

"We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities while building dangerous missiles, and we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program," Trump said, while also referring to the Iran nuclear deal as "an embarrassment" to the U.S.

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The president called on the world to join the U.S. "in demanding that Iran's government end its pursuit of death and destruction."

Rouhani on Wednesday described Trump's speech as "ignorant, absurd and hateful," adding that it would be a "great pity" if the nuclear deal was dismantled because of "rogue newcomers" to politics.

The Iran nuclear deal was orchestrated by the Obama administration and put strains on U.S. relations with enemies of Iran, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. Much of Iran celebrated the deal, which was lauded by many arms control experts.

"The Iran Deal will shrink wrap Irans nuclear program for a generation," said Joe Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares Fund, a foundation promoting nuclear deproliferation, at the time of the deal.

Former President Barack Obama has maintained the deal cut off a pathway to nuclear weapons for Iran and made the world safer.

During his U.S. presidential campaign, Trump vowed to dismantle the deal, but he's gone back and forth on the idea since entering the White House. The Trump administration told Congress in July that Iran was complying with the terms of the deal, but added the country would face consequences if it violated "the spirit" of the deal. More recently, Trump has reportedly considered decertifying the deal and allowing Congress to decide whether to withdraw from it.

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Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Saturday denounced Iran's testing of a medium-range missile as a "provocation" and said it was proof of Tehran's ambition to become a world power.

Iran on Saturday said it had successfully tested a missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) and that can carry multiple warheads, in defiance of US warnings.

"The ballistic missile which Iran fired is a provocation of the United States and its allies, including Israel," Lieberman said in a statement.

"It is also a means to test our reactions as well as new proof of Iran's ambition to become a world power in order to threaten the countries of the Middle East and democratic states around the world."

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly, where both the United States and Israel denounced Iran and its nuclear deal with six world powers.

US President Donald Trump accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a "rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos".

The American president also threatened to bin the 2015 nuclear accord, saying Iran is developing missiles that could be used to deliver a nuclear warhead.

Echoing him, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said since the deal Iran has been "like a hungry tiger unleashed, not joining the community of nations but devouring nations one after the other".

Netanyahu vowed to fight what he described as "an Iranian curtain" descending on the Middle East, and pledged to prevent Iran from producing any weapons that could hit Israel.

"Those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in mortal peril. Israel will defend itself with the full force of our arms and the full power of our convictions," Netanyahu said at the UN.

UN inspectors say Iran has fulfilled its commitments to give up its nuclear activities under the agreement, which was reached with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany.

Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only, and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 kilometres, although commanders say they have the technology to fly further.

That makes them only medium-range but still sufficient to reach Israel or US bases in the Gulf.
Jerry Lewiss six children from his first marriage are getting zilch when it comes to an inheritance, but the comedian isnt the only mega celebrity whose last will and testament left his or her kids in the lurch.

The future of Lewiss estate was revealed on Thursday, when PEOPLE obtained his will from The Blast. According to the documents, Lewis intentionally excluded all six of his children with his first wife Patti Palmer  meaning they will inherit nothing.

Lewiss potentially vast estate will be passed to his widow, SanDee Pitnick. Second in line to inherit his fortune, should something happen to his wife, is his 25-year-old adopted daughter Danielle.

As for the rest of Lewiss kids, they now join the ranks of other famous offspring left hanging by their parents:

1. Mickey Rooney

Rooneys strained relationship with his wife and children long predated his death, but when the legendary actor died in 2014 at the age of 93, there was immediate infighting within the family.

Just over a month after his death, Rooneys children filed suit in Los Angeles asking that his will be invalidated, claiming the legendary actor faced undue influence when he signed it weeks before his death.

Seven of his eight surviving biological children were not named as beneficiaries to his estate, which was valued at just $18,000, a paltry sum for one of Hollywoods most iconic stars. While the estate would be potentially worth more in the future, considering licensing rights and memorabilia (including an Oscar), Rooneys fortune had been diminished from years of gross mismanagement.

Instead, the beneficiary was Mark Aber, Rooneys stepson and caretaker in his final days. His other seven children would allege that Aber and the estates executor, L.A. attorney Michael Augustine, who was Rooneys court-appointed conservator in the last years of the actors life, took advantage of him.

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In a separate suit, Rooneys estranged wife, Jan Rooney, also contested probate of the actors will, claiming it blatantly misquotes the terms of the settlement agreements [previously] reached between Janice Rooney and Mickey Rooney.

The feuding was so intense that Rooneys body had to be refrigerated for two weeks after his death his family fought in court over burial arrangements, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

By 2015, the last of Rooneys biological children had dropped her objections, and his final will and testament stood as written.

2. Tony Curtis

A year after the famed actors death, The Tony Curtis Estate held an auction to sell off memorabilia and other items owned by the actor. The estate raised more than $1 million during the online auction, all of which went to his widow and fifth wife, Jill Vandenberg Curtis, with a portion going to the couples charity, according to Forbes.

But according to the outlet, Curtiss five children, including actress Jamie Lee Curtis, received nothing from the sale. Forbes reported that the actor had rewritten his Will and Trust just a few months before his death, and in doing so, cut out all of his children. Like Lewis, Curtis reportedly listed all children by name, stating that he wished to intentionally disinherit them. No reason was given in his will.

His daughter Allegra would later tell Inside Edition that she and her siblings were all blindsided by his estate, adding that being cut out of their fathers was extremely upsetting. She also said that her father was under improper influence when he changed his inheritance plans.

3. Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan is still alive and well, but he has publicly stated his intention to disinherit his only son, Jaycee, after his death.

According to LA Times, Chan told Channel NewsAsia in 2011 that half of his then-$130-million fortune would go to charity  and the other half would not be going to Jaycee.

If he is capable, he can make his own money. If he is not, then he will just be wasting my money, the actor was quoted saying on an award-show red carpet.

But after serving six months in jail following his arrest, it was reported that the father and son reconciled in Taiwan. I hadnt seen him for too long. I feel hes matured this time, Chan reportedly said. We didnt talk about unhappy things. It was all family chat. We talked into the night and didnt sleep.

4. Sting

Like Chan, Sting sealed his childrens fate when it comes to their inheritance before his death.

The musician, 65, reportedly told Englands Mail on Sunday newspaper in 2014 that he wasnt planning on leaving any trust funds for his offspring. I told them there wont be much money left because we are spending it, he reportedly said.

After explaining that much of his money is already committed, the former Police frontman also said he wouldnt want an inheritance to be albatrosses round their necks.

Obviously, if they were in trouble I would help them, he added. But Ive never really had to do that. They have the work ethic that makes them want to succeed on their own merit.

5. George Lucas

After selling the Star Wars franchise to Disney for $4.5 billion in 2012, George Lucas  father of four  said that the proceeds from the sale would be donated towards improving education.

Those comments echoed his commitment to give up the majority of his wealth in his 2012 Giving Pledge letter: As long as I have the resources at my disposal, I will seek to raise the bar for future generations of students of all ages.

6. Simon Cowell

In 2013, the former X Factor judge and music mogul, who has a now 3-year-old son, told the press that he doesnt believe in passing on wealth from one generation to another, according to Time. Instead, he said he plans to leave his estimated $500 million fortune to charity, specifically something benefiting kids and dogs.

7. Ted Turner

Turner, estimated to be worth $2.2 billion, set up the Turner Foundation, which gives grants on environmental causes, as a family foundation so that his children could also be involved in charitable work, according to Time.

He then launched the United Nations Foundation with an initial pledge of $1 billion back in 1997. The media mogul wrote, At the time of my death, virtually all my wealth will have gone to charity.

8. Shark Tanks Kevin OLeary

The Canadian businessman and investor, known for being a judge on the ABC series Shark Tank, said in an interview that he isnt planning on passing any wealth on to his kids.

If you dont start out your life with the fear of not being able to feed yourself and your family, then what motivates you to go get a job? he said, according to Time.

Fear motivated me, and it will motivate them. He added that once theyre educated, hell kick his kids out of the nest, though he says he will set up generation-skipping trusts for his grandkids and great grandkids.

9. Warren Buffett

The Berkshire Hathaway mega billionaire has been vocal about his distaste for leaving an inheritance to his family members, including his three children.

Im not an enthusiast for dynastic wealth, particularly when 6 billion others have much poorer hands than we do in life, he reportedly said at a 2006 event following his announcement to donate the vast majority of his fortune.

Since then, Buffett has pledged to give away a full 99% of his estimated $78 billion fortune to charity, and has encouraged other billionaires to give away at least 50% of their wealth through The Giving Pledge.

10. Bill Gates

Speaking with fans on a Reddit Ask Me Anything, the Microsoft founder said that he thinks leaving his vast fortune, estimated at over $80 billion, to his three children would be a mistake.

Inspired by Buffett, he plans to leave the vast majority of his fortune to charity, including his own, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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The latest trainwreck of a GOP health care plan looks likely to die  and, once again, John McCain could be the dude who killed it.

On Friday, the Republican senator announced he would vote against the Graham-Cassidy bill. With zero support likely from Democrats, and Republicans Rand Paul and Susan Collins against it, that pretty much dooms the measure.

SEE ALSO: Jimmy Kimmel tears apart his critics on health care bill

One of the men behind the bill  Sen. Lindsey Graham  was likely frustrated. But he still had some kind words for his colleague and longtime friend.

My friendship with @SenJohnMcCain is not based on how he votes but respect for how hes lived his life and the person he is.  Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) September 22, 2017

McCain, Graham, and Joe Lieberman are known as the "three amigos" of the senate. Apparently, that's a sacred bond that can't be broken by torpedoing your friend's terrible health care bill.

Remember, it was McCain who dramatically killed the last GOP effort to repeal Obamacare. His heroics the second time around are being praised by people across the political spectrum.

The Arizona senator's decision was met with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has proposed his own "Medicare for all" plan, at a rally in San Francisco.

At #HealthCareForAll rally @SenSanders thanks McCain. "...[He] has a conscience that I wish the rest of [GOP] leadership had." Crowd cheers. pic.twitter.com/XQ4pEvQFDa  Sasha Lekach (@sashajol) September 22, 2017

Jimmy Kimmel was pretty happy too, after absolutely slamming the plan on his show.

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Thank you @SenJohnMcCain for being a hero again and again and now AGAIN  Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) September 22, 2017

Don't relax yet, though. It's possible that before the Sept. 30 deadline, Republicans somehow get the necessary votes for a bill that would  according to the Brookings Institution  cause 21 million people to lose their health insurance every year from 2020 to 2026.

Thank you McCain and Collins (and I guess Paul, even though he's not supporting the bill because it's not draconian enough) for hopefully saving the country from this monstrosity.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 10:12:19|Editor: Xiang Bo

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A resident walks on the debris of a collapsed house in Tepalcingo, Morelos, Mexico, on Sept. 22, 2017. Some 293 people have been confirmed killed in the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that hit central Mexico on Tuesday, the head of the national civil protection agency, Luis Felipe Puente, said on Friday. (Xinhua/Marco Diaz)

by Luis Rojas

MEXICO CITY, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- "My whole life is here," said Amanda Gonzalez, a resident of capital Mexico City, explaining why she refused to vacate her residential building, despite clear risks.

The downtown Geminis building where Gonzalez lives is sandwiched between two others that were severely damaged by the destructive 7.1-magnitude quake, which toppled nearly 40 apartment buildings, damaged 2,900 buildings and killed 155 people across the capital city.

The buildings flanking Gonzalez's have been evacuated due to the near certainty that they will collapse.

"Civil Protection already told us the buildings next door are going to fall, but that they are going to plummet downwards, not fall sideways," Gonzalez told Xinhua, sounding confident of their assessment.

Most owners of the apartments in the Geminis building are clinging to their properties inside, hoping for the best. Those who have left were mainly tenants, said Gonzalez, who lives with her husband, their four-year-old son and her parents.

Her block has been closed to traffic. Authorities are even discouraging foot traffic in the area, by installing yellow caution tape along the sidewalks, though no officials are on site to keep pedestrians out.

The quake collapsed the interior staircases of the damaged buildings and shattered windows; one of the buildings appears to list slightly.

Hermilio Estrada, the owner of a small shop on the ground floor of the Geminis, was selling merchandise to other stores.

"There are still many people (in the building). The problem is they don't have a place to go to. But the risk of the buildings falling down is very high," said Estrada.

He has run the store for 14 years, he said, adding the buildings in the block were built in the 1970s.

Ricardo Monreal is the head of the city's Cuauhtemoc district, where the damaged buildings stand, part of a three-building complex called Morelos.

During an inspection of the quake damage earlier this week, he said he was "very concerned" about the Morelos complex, where each structure houses 54 apartments.

Gonzalez admitted that she shared some of that concern.

"They told me we were in no danger, but they warned us the decision to stay was our own responsibility," she said.

The death toll from the quake has been rising steadily and now stands at 293, with most registered in densely populated Mexico City, said the national civil protection agency on Friday.

Rescue workers are continuing to search for survivors.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un retaliated to President Donald Trump terming him Rocket Man during the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday by calling him a dotard in an official statement released Thursday.

"I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue," Kim said in the statement released by the state Korean Central News Agency, Time reported. "I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire."

Following Kims use of the not-so-commonly-used word, searches for the term skyrocketed online, as most people were unaware of its usage it but keen to find out what Kims latest attack meant.

Merriam Webster tweeted saying that search for the specific term was high as a kite.

According to Merriam Webster, the term dotard refers to "a person in his or her dotage" (a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness). The term comes from the Middle English word doten (meaning "to dote"), which initially meant "imbecile" when people in the 14th century began using it.

Around 10:30 p.m. EDT, #Dotard was trending at the second spot on Twitter as people came up with memes and hilarious posts to make fun of the childish rivalry and name-calling going on between the two leaders.

Some Twitter users insinuated that the POTUS ought to be ashamed of the fact that Kim, whose mother tongue is not English, had a better vocabulary. Others seemed to be impressed by the fact that a single phrase from the leaders mouth was enough to prompt a worldwide search on an ancient term that is hardly in use.

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Apart from calling Trump a dotard, Kim also called him a frightened dog that barks louder. Far from making remarks of any persuasive power that can be viewed to be helpful to defusing tension, he made unprecedented rude nonsense one has never heard from any of his predecessors, he added, NBC News reported.

The unprecedented rude nonsense that Kim referred to was a speech that Trump gave at the U.N. General Assembly, where he threatened to totally destroy North Korea. "The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself and its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. 'Rocket Man' is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime," said Trump.

Trump had earlier mentioned the term Rocket Man in a tweet, mocking the long gas lines forming at North Korean gas stations due to a shortage of gasoline in the country.

"I spoke with President Moon [Jae-in] of South Korea last night," Trump wrote. "Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!"

But name-calling may not be the only tactic in Kim's arsenal to get back at Trump for his recent insults. According to Yonhap News, North Korea may conduct a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific in the near future as a retaliatory measure.

"It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific," North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters. "We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un."

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John McCain

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours. Sign up here to get the best of Business Insider delivered direct to your inbox.

A new analysis says 21 million more people would have no insurance under the new GOP healthcare bill.

Over 20 million more people could go without health insurance if the Graham-Cassidy healthcare legislation is signed into law, according to a study from the Brookings Institution published Friday.

The future of the bill looks shaky. Sen. John McCain said that he would not support the bill, dealing the legislation a potentially fatal blow. The healthcare bill could also blow up in the GOP's face because of an obscure Senate rule.

In finance news, the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, told Business Insider's Henry Blodget that the US economy looks like 1937 and we need to be careful.

Uber has lost its license to operate in London. Also in London, Rubicon, a macro hedge fund based there, has lost a third of its value this year in its flagship fund.

In other news:

A fix for San Francisco's sinking skyscraper could cost upwards of $100 million, and no one wants to foot the bill.

Facebook is dropping $35 million to rent a beautiful, earthquake resistant skyscraper in San Francisco  take a look inside.

NOW WATCH: Here's what makes tech stocks today different from the tech bubble





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Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin on Friday distanced itself from the controversy over Russia-linked Facebook ads which may have influenced last year's US election, saying Moscow had nothing to do with them.

"We don't know who places ads on Facebook and how," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"We have never done it and the Russian side has never had anything to do with it."

Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday said the company would pass on to Congress details about Russia-linked ads that inflamed tensions around last year's presidential election.

Earlier this month, Facebook said some 470 Russia-linked fake accounts spent a total of about $100,000 between June 2015 and May 2017 on ads that touted fake or misleading views and played on divisive social and political themes like race, gay rights, and immigration.

The ads were linked to a Russian entity known as the Internet Research Agency, a secretive outlet in Saint-Petersburg which has been christened the "troll farm" by Russian media because its employees blogged and left comments under fake online identities.

A congressional investigation will focus on how the messages in the ads were manipulated by Russian interests.

The investigation is the latest development in a string of probes into possible Russian meddling in the election and whether it could have swung the vote in US President Donald Trump's favour.

US intelligence agencies say Putin himself directed the intervention and Senate and Justice Department investigators have been chasing links between the Trump campaign and Moscow for evidence of collusion.

Moscow has denied all allegations of meddling in the vote.
Friedrichshafen (Germany) (AFP) - Forty years ago next month, German anti-terror commandos stormed a Lufthansa jet in Somalia, shot its Palestinian hijackers and freed 90 hostages, a climax in a bloody era of far-left militancy.

The 1977 Mogadishu raid became a symbol of the "German Autumn" when the state was at war with the "urban guerrillas" of the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, and their international allies.

On Saturday, the storied old Boeing 737 "Landshut", having quietly rusted away in Brazil for almost a decade, finally came home, destined to serve as a memorial to that turbulent era.

Broken up into its fuselage and wings, it was flown aboard two giant Russian transport planes from Fortaleza via Cape Verde to the southern German city of Friedrichshafen, where it was greeted by large crowds.

"It's great that the Landshut is back," Aribert Martin, a veteran of the GSG 9 special unit that stormed the plane, told public broadcaster SWR. "It would have been strange to let it fade from memory."

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, whose ministry bought the gutted plane for 20,000 euros ($24,000), has called it "a living symbol of a free society that refuses to give in to fear and terror".

In the years since that dramatic night when gunshots blasted through its cabin, the aircraft kept flying -- first for Lufthansa, then for French, Indonesian and finally a Brazilian airline, which in 2008 retired it on the jungle's edge.

Now the plane, weathered by tropical sun and rain, will find a new home in Germany's Dornier aerospace museum near Lake Constance, set to be serve as an exhibition space on Germany's era of homegrown terrorism.

"It didn't deserve to die in the jungle," said former air hostess Gabriele von Lutzau, whose courageous and compassionate role during the ordeal earned her the nickname "the Angel of Mogadishu".

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- Bombings, kidnappings -

The RAF emerged in 1970 out of the radical fringe of the Vietnam war protest movement and took up arms, in solidarity with revolutionaries such as Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, against what it saw as US capitalist imperialism and a German state then still riddled with former Nazis.

After training with leftist Palestinian militants, it launched a spate of shootings, bombings and kidnappings targeting politicians, police, bankers, business leaders and US troops.

By 1977, its hard-core founding members, including Andreas Baader, were long since behind bars, and their comrades sought to free them from their cells.

On October 13, four militants of the RAF-allied Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Mallorca-Frankfurt flight LH 181, demanding the release of 11 RAF members.

During a five-day odyssey which included seven refuelling stops in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the cell's leader, who called himself Captain Martyr Mahmud, shot dead the pilot, Juergen Schumann.

Then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in even though RAF militants were also holding hostage the industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer.

- 'Where are the pigs?' -

The Lufthansa jet landed in Mogadishu on October 17, where Mahmud issued an ultimatum, threatening to set off plastic explosives and dousing passengers in alcohol to accelerate the fire.

After nightfall, 30 German commandos landed, the plane's lights turned off. Operation "Feuerzauber" ("magic fire") was the first mission of the new GSG 9 unit, founded after the security debacle of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Jewish athletes.

While German officials played for time, the special unit approached the plane's rear blind spot from behind sand dunes, then climbed blackened ladders to its doors and escape hatches.

Mahmud was on the cockpit radio when he was blinded by flash-bang grenades outside.

The commandos stormed in, one yelling in German "Heads down, where are the pigs!?", and riddled all four hijackers with bullets, killing three and badly wounding a fourth.

"Those German words were the best thing I heard during the entire hijacking," the former co-pilot, Juergen Vietor, said Saturday.

The 82 passengers, four remaining crew and the commandos all survived, and officials phoned the message "the job's done" to Bonn.

Hours later in Germany, prison guards reported finding the bodies of three RAF leaders. Their deaths were declared suicides.

In a revenge act, and convinced their comrades had been murdered in jail, RAF militants shot dead Schleyer, after five weeks in captivity.

By then the group's terror had claimed over 30 victims, but more waves of killings followed.

The RAF only disbanded in 1998, and, although it had ironically helped to vastly expand German police powers, many murders were never solved.

Today, most ex-militants are dead or living quietly as ex-convicts. Three remain on the run, suspected of robbing money transport vans with grenade launchers to finance their retirement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 10:22:21|Editor: Yang Yi

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NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. state of Missouri looks to expand trade and investment cooperation with China, which is "a key economic partner," Missouri governor said.

"Missouri has a 4.4-billion-U.S.-dollar trade agreement with China to facilitate expansion of trade and investment. We want to increase that number," Eric Greitens told Xinhua in an email interview on Thursday, ahead of his four-day trip to China.

The trip, which starts on Monday, will be Greitens' first international trade mission since he became Missouri governor early this year, during which he is expected to visit several cities and meet with Chinese business leaders.

"We want this trip to show the many reasons why businesses, investors and students should call Missouri their American home," Greitens said.

Explaining why he has chosen to visit China, the governor said the country is "a key economic partner for Missouri" and one of the Midwestern U.S. state's top export partners.

China is now Missouri's third largest trading partner and export market. In 2016, Missouri's exports of goods to China reached 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, up 76 percent from 10 years ago, while its exports to the rest of the world grew only 9 percent, figures from the U.S.-China Business Council show.

Missouri's exports to China supported 17,200 American jobs in 2015, the council said.

"Our delegation's goal for this trip is to strengthen our trade relationship and let China's business community know that Missouri is a top state to partner with and invest in," Greitens said.

The governor listed a wide array of industries that he believed China and Missouri share interest in growing, including manufacturing, health sciences, health services, technology, transportation and logistics, energy, automotive, financial and professional services, and biotechnology.

Great opportunities can thus arise for Missouri and Chinese firms to grow and invest with each other, he said.

China and Midwestern U.S. states have kept strengthening their economic and trade ties, with Chinese enterprises investing more than 1.1 billion dollars in Missouri over 16 years, according to the Chinese Consulate General in Chicago. The consulate covers nine states in the Midwest, including Missouri.

The state has been working to improve its business environment, the governor said, by cutting red tape to simplify and streamline regulations, and pursuing tort reform, among other efforts.

"We want China's business leaders to know that investments made in Missouri will have a solid return," Greitens said.

Also high on his agenda in China is his bid to strengthen Missouri's educational relationship with China and invite Chinese students to study in the state.

"Several of our top universities have educational partnerships with Chinese universities, and there is growing interest in China and Asia on many of our campuses," the governor said, citing the fact that his wife Sheena Greitens teaches about China and Asia at the University of Missouri.

Currently, over 6,000 Chinese students are studying in the state.

"We value those alumni as ambassadors for Missouri, and when they return home, we hope that they will maintain a lasting, lifelong relationship with their American laojia (a Chinese word meaning hometown)," Greitens said.

Missouri was among the first U.S. states to develop people-to-people exchanges with China.

In 1979, shortly after the United States and China established diplomatic ties, St. Louis in Missouri became the first U.S. city to have a sister city in China, which is the eastern city of Nanjing.

Today, Missouri has a number of sister-city relationships with China, plus a sister-state relationship with the northern Chinese province of Hebei.

"We value our multifaceted relationship with China and look forward to expanding educational and cultural relationships as well as strengthening cooperation on trade and investment," the governor said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 10:37:24|Editor: Yang Yi

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KUALA LUMPUR, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong Stock Exchange has always been considered as the bellwether for initial public offering (IPO) in the global market, as it plays a leading role as an important gateway for companies to reach a wider pool of investors.

As more Malaysian companies are expanding their regional businesses, it seems that they are also keen in floating their shares in Hong Kong.

The most recent example was BGMC, the first Malaysia-based construction services company that made its debut in Hong Kong last month.

BGMC's management told Xinhua that it sees Hong Kong's stock market as one with higher recognition among global investors, as it is an Asian financial hub.

"Listing in Hong Kong helps differentiate the group from its peers in Malaysia and contribute to the group's future expansion and business growth both in Malaysia and overseas," the management added.

For Wong Teck Meng, chief executive officer of Malaysia's fund management company Areca Capital, Hong Kong as a financial hub also has a more liberalized and advanced stock market.

He sees the trend to continue as Hong Kong remains an attractive platform for Malaysian companies to grow their regional platform.

Besides, Malaysian companies that listed in Hong Kong tend to have higher valuations, he said.

His views have been shared with Kong Hon Kong, founder of Nirvana Asia Group, the largest integrated bereavement care service provider in Asia with a presence in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia.

"When I listed Nirvana in Hong Kong, the share was traded as much as 20 times of its price to earnings ratios (P/Es). But when it was listed in Malaysia, the average P/E of the share was only 10 times," Kong told Xinhua.

He also saw Hong Kong as an excellent regional platform to grow the group's business.

Kong listed his bereavement care business as NV Multi Corporation in Malaysia in 2000, but privatized it after 10 years. He later listed his company in Hong Kong in 2014 but took it private with private equity firm CVC Capital Partners.

GATEWAY TO CHINA

The recently listed company BGMC also noted it would enhance the group's profile among potential customers in China who are eyeing the Southeast Asian markets in light of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa on and beyond the ancient Silk Road routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

Earlier, Malaysia's listed semiconductor firm Pentamaster, as well as property, construction and manufacturing firm PRG Group, both indicated they would spin off one of their business units on Hong Kong exchange.

PRG's managing director Lua Choon Hann, who planned to list the group's manufacturing business in Hong Kong, told Xinhua that Hong Kong is not only a gateway to the Chinese Mainland, but also a platform for Malaysia companies which want to become a regional player.

Although the group's manufacturing plants are in Vietnam and Malaysia, more than 90 percent of its products are exported to over 30 countries. This has also created a need for Lua to list in Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM).

Meanwhile, Thong Guan Industries, a firm based in the northwestern state of Penang, has recently showed its interest in listing its food and beverages arm in Hong Kong's GEM.

Its executive director Alvin Ang said he believes the GEM is more vibrant than the Malaysian and Singaporean stock exchanges with exposure and participation from the mainland Chinese investors.

"We plan to grow our organic noodle business in China to relate to the mainlanders. GEM will grow in tandem with the growing affluence and wealth of the Chinese," he told Xinhua.

For him, GEM is not only offering better valuations to Malaysian companies with potential, but also brings the group closer to the growing Chinese investors.
By Tim Ghianni

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - Zachary Adams will spend the rest of his life in prison for the 2011 kidnapping, rape and murder of Tennessee nursing student Holly Bobo after a plea deal on Saturday spared him from the death penalty.

Adams, 33, the first of three men to face trial in the high-profile case, was found guilty of all counts on Friday in Savannah, Tennessee. He was convicted of first-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape in a case that drew so much media attention that a judge had moved the trial from Decatur County to neighboring Hardin County to secure an unbiased jury.

As part of a plea agreement worked out before the scheduled sentencing hearing on Saturday morning, Judge C. Creed McGinley ordered Adams to serve a life sentence plus 50 years, without the possibility of parole but also no possibility of execution.

After the agreement was disclosed in court on Saturday, Bobos mother, Karen Bobo, thanked the jury and then asked to address Adams. She asked court officials to be sure Adams was looking at her.

I know that my daughter fought and fought hard for her life, she said. And I know that she begged for her life because my daughter loved and enjoyed her life. But you chose to take that from her, and you have shown absolutely no remorse for anything that youve done."

Trial dates have not been set for the other two defendants, Adams brother Dylan Adams and friend Jason Autry. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Autry, however, admitted in his own role in the murder in testimony that was key to the prosecution's case against Zachary Adams.

Bobo's brother, the last person to see her, said she left the family property and walked into the woods with a man in camouflage whom he mistook for her boyfriend.

In September 2014, two men searching for ginseng in the woods in Decatur County discovered a human skull, identified by dental records as Bobo's.

(This version of the story corrects age in paragraph two to 33)

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Lisa Von Ahn)
While promoting his new album, Heaven Upside Down, Marilyn Manson is speaking freely about his relationship to the 1999 Columbine school shootingwhich he claims damaged his career for years.

While Manson's image and music certainly can't be faulted for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's deadly rampage, his claim that Columbine tanked his career is irresponsible and erroneous. By the late '90s, Manson's attempts to shock had already inspired the backlash that he anticipated with his sexual, sacrilegious videos and photo shoots. But when do a provocateur's antics begin to overshadow his art?

In an interview with Manson, The Guardian points out that British music critics never shared the American media's disdain for Manson's shock value tactics. Alexis Petridis writes, "His 1996 breakthrough album Antichrist Superstar was largely viewed as hugely entertaining glam metal in the grand gothic tradition of Alice Cooper. In the U.S., however, religious conservatives seemed to think he really was some kind of emissary of Satan." When confronted with everything Americans did to keep him from performing in the states, passing legislation and even paying him to stay away, Manson says, "Well, I asked for it."

1280px-Marilyn_Manson_Live_in_Roma_25_july_2017-_44

Wikimedia Commons / Livioandronico2013

Manson was already locked in a battle with American media before Harris and Klebold carried out what became known as the Columbine massacre, with the murders of 12 of their fellow students and one teacher.

When Antichrist Superstar dropped, conservative Christians gave Manson a ton of free press, arguing that he was "coming for America's children." Music critics, unconvinced that he was inciting actual violence, called his theatrical show a response to late '80s and early '90s disaffected grunge. Rolling Stone called Manson's persona "alluring nasty," and Manson has since accepted that part of his performance. "I'm this and I'm this," Manson tells The Guardian, "A person and a persona. But I can't really divide the two."

Story continues

In the weeks following the Columbine massacre, it seemed the American media wasn't interested in the divide between Manson's stage persona and his actual identity. One reporter, whom Manson blamed several times in interviews but never identified, allegedly said on television that gunmen Harris and Klebold had been wearing "Marilyn Manson makeup and t-shirts" when they entered their high school, fully armed. The accusation was wrong, but the damage had been done to Manson's career. He appeared on Larry King Now to refute the claim that the Columbine murderers had any connection to him, but perhaps the horror of their actions overshadowed Manson's argument: that artists can't be held legally responsible for what their fans decide to do. Even now, Manson argues that the question of whether Harris and Klebold were emboldened by his music is irrelevant. "If [the killers] had just bought my records, they would be better off," he says.

But what about Manson's other claim, the one where he says his career would be "better off" if he had never been linked to the Columbine shooting in the first place? Though Antichrist Superstar was hailed as the birth of a new age in shock rock by critics, his first post-Columbine album, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), absolutely tanked, failing to sell even half of the millions of copies his previous work earned.

In fact, Manson's album sales just kept careening off that commercial cliff in the years that followed: 2003's The Golden Age of Grotesque sold 526,000 copies; and 2012's Born Villain, his worst-performing album to date, sold merely 122,000 copies in the United States. Those declining sales could be blamed on the Columbine controversy, as Manson would like us to believe, but as the Guardian points out, Manson was able to pivot his career into film and television roles, escaping his dismal album sales into a role on Sons of Anarchy.

For what it's worth, Manson's critical acclaim surged again in 2015 when he released The Pale Emperor, an emotionally resonant album that Rolling Stone called "the grabbiest music he's made since 2000's proggy Holy Wood." If Manson continues his pre-album release press tour by focusing on his role in the Columbine controversy, he may have problems selling himself as a fresh voice in music. He already has many critics behind him; he just needs to rediscover his disgruntled, goth-glam fanbase.

Related Articles
About a hundred people participated on the March Against Sharia organized by ACT for America at Foley Square in New York City on June 10 as part of similar events in cities across the nation. (Photo: Pacific Press via Getty Images)

A Muslim advocacy group called on Marriott International to cancel an upcoming event at one of its hotel locations hosted by a group that promotes anti-Islam rhetoric.

Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organization, sent a letter to Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson on Sept. 11, urging his company not to host the ACTCON2017 event.

The event is organized by ACT for America, a self-professed grassroots group focused on national security, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virgina, on Oct. 2 and 3.

Marriott clearly and proudly states on its website that diversity and inclusion is fundamental to our core values and strategic business goals, wrote Muslim Advocates public advocacy director Scott Simpson in the letter to Sorenson. We believe that hosting this anti-Muslim convention is antithetical to this otherwise clear commitment.

In a promotional video for the conference, ACT founder Brigitte Gabriel claimed Judeo-Christian culture had come under assault from Muslims and progressive activists.

The leftist Islamic coalition is waging war against the rule of law and against you and me, she said. Thats why I need you by my side as we descend on Washington, D.C.

In an interview with HuffPost, Simpson noted that Marriott has been vocal about promoting diversity in statements about LGBTQ rights, immigration reform and the proposed travel ban. The company recently launched an ad campaign called Golden Rule, which highlights the humanity and dignity of diverse communities.

If theyre declaring that their corporate values are centered around diversity and inclusion, then hosting an anti-Muslim hate convention would be counter those values, Simpson said.

The company hadnt responded to Simpsons letter as of Friday, he said. A Marriott spokesperson told HuffPost: We are a hospitality company that provides public accommodations and function space. Acceptance of business does not indicate support or endorsement of any group or individual.

Story continues

The Southern Poverty Law Center designates ACT for America an anti-Muslim hate group. ACT rejects this characterization.

ACT for America has never, and will never, tolerate any bias, discrimination, or violence against anyone, based on their religion, gender, race, or political persuasion. Freedom to practice ones religion in peace is afforded to each of us by the U.S. Constitution and we will defend it vigorously, the organization said in a statement provided to HuffPost.

The statement claimed that Muslim Advocates and SPLC are attempting to redefine legitimate political differences as hate, in an effort to stop any public conversation about them. It also noted that the conference will include a Muslim speaker, as well as other presenters from underrepresented groups.

By attempting to pressure the venue to cancel it through the distribution of outright lies, Muslim Advocates simply exposes itself as a dishonest political partisan on issues important to millions of Americans, the statement said.

Despite the groups claims of promoting religious liberty, Gabriel has been quoted as saying, Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim, according to The New York Times. ACTs Facebook page also attracts many anti-Muslim users who regularly echo rhetoric that frames Islam as inherently violent and at odds with American values.

ACT organized a series of March Against Sharia events around the country this summer, attended by a smattering of Islamophobic hate group members, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and armed anti-government militia members.

The group has long pushed the conspiracy theory that sharia  a deeply misunderstood legal or philosophical code within Islam, interpreted differently by Muslims across the world  poses a threat to the U.S. Constitution. The American Civil Liberties Union debunked this as a myth in a 2011 report.

If Marriott refuses to cancel the conference, Simpson said he hoped the company would alert its staff and guests about the event.

The folks who will be staying at the Crystal Gateway Marriott on Oct. 2 and 3 should be made aware that their hotel is not going to be a hate-free zone, he said. The employees should know that as well. There are people who are known anti-Muslim bigots who will be there.

Also on HuffPost

A Muslim photographer is working on an ambitious project that he hopes will tackle stereotypes about American Muslims and showcase the communitys rich diversity. Since the fall of 2015, Carlos Khalil Guzman has been using his free time and his own funds to travel across the country to interview an array of Muslims. In the series, titled Muslims of America, Guzman is attempting to capture portraits of Muslims from all 50 states in the country. The series includes people of different sects of Islam, ethnicities and backgrounds  from Native American Muslims to Syrian refugees to queer Muslims.



Check out photos from Guzmans project below, along with captions explaining each subjects favorite verse. Some of their responses have been edited for clarity. Follow the series as it unfolds on Guzmans Instagram account.

Myree, Medical Assistant, California

All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action.  Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)



"This is so important to me not only as a Muslim but also as an Afro-Latina. This states that Islam is against racism and discrimination. All humans are created equal. All that matters to God is the good a person does and the devotion we have for our creator." - Myree

Shadi, College Student, Boston

Heaven lies under the feet of your mother - Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)



"This hadith is one of my favorites because it talks about being mindful of our parents. In todays world, a lot of people do not respect their parents and treat them as if they are nothing. Of course there are times when our parents get on our nerves but before I even think or dare to say anything to them, I remember this hadith and it brings me back to reality. It allows me to do good instead of bad and this has helped me build a stronger relationship with my parents." - Shadi

Kenneth, College Student, California

 And whoever fears God -- He will make a way out for him. And will provide for him from where he never expected. Whoever relies on God -- He will suffice him. God will accomplish His purpose. God has set a measure to all things. - Quran Chapter 65 / Verses 2-3



"These verses remind me to always place my trust in God, no matter how hard things get. I have had lots of ups and downs in my life in terms of mental health. During my downs, I remember this verse and it motivates me to keep hope in the future, and to keep hope in myself. It reminds me of the power of prayer, as God can turn any situation around. When we have faith in God, He will set things moving for us in ways that we cannot even imagine." - Kenneth

Rula, College Student, Louisiana

And never say of anything, 'Indeed, I will do that tomorrow,' without adding, 'If Allah wills.' And remember your Lord when you forget and say, 'Perhaps my Lord will guide me to what is nearer than this to right conduct.'" - Quran Chapter 18 / Verses 23-24



"This verse, to me, is a significant reminder of Allah (God). Remembering to say 'inshallah,' if God wills, before speaking about plans is acknowledgement that as humans, we are not in control of everything. In a sense it is reassuring and personal because it relates to everybody. Growing up, its common that parents tell their kids 'inshallah' as a way to brush off their requests, as in 'OK, OK, if God wills.' I know my parents did. But as I grew older, I understood the value in relying on God and the love bestowed upon us. Its a reminder of our humanity, and how not everything is in our control. To see God in all things is to also see God in our daily lives in the smallest plans we make, such as studying for a test, or even getting coffee. God is so great, and it is a reminder not to stress with all the free will we have." - Rula

Fida, Librarian Aide, Oregon

In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. [All] praise is [due] to Allah, Lord of the worlds. The Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Recompense. It is You we worship and You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path. The path of those upon whom You have bestowed favor, not of those who have evoked [Your] anger or of those who are astray.  Quran Chapter 1 / Verses 1-7



"I chose the verses from the first chapter (Al-Fatiha) of the Quran. These verses remind me of my childhood. My sisters and I would all gather together and we would recite it together or one by one. We were so proud of ourselves when we memorized it and we could see our parents were proud of us too. This surah (chapter) is the first in the Quran and I have always said it in times of fear, when I would think a ghost was in the room or if I was walking home late. I knew Allah (God) was watching and helping me. These words are powerful and they have helped me feel and be protected." - Fida

Osoul, Nursing Student, New Jersey

Allah does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear. - Quran Chapter 2 / Verse 286



"This specific ayah has gotten me through so much in my life, Alhamdulillah [Praise be to Allah]. I have had to deal with a lot growing up, whether it was family, illnesses or loss. In a way I was forced to mature at an early age and growing up I always wondered, 'Why!' You know, like why things happened the way they happened. But once I started getting closer to Allah, I realized that asking why things happen the way they do is the wrong approach to life. Instead we should ask Allah to make us strong enough to handle any obstacles thrown our way. Now every time something happens, I read this ayah and I remember that Allah will not burden me with anything I cannot handle. Allah wont burden me with something that will destroy me, it will only make me stronger for what is ahead inshallah. It is kind of like a little hope, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel." - Osoul

Nooran, College Student, New Hampshire

And Yunus (Jonah), when he went off in anger and thought that We would not decree anything upon him. And he called out within the darknesses, 'There is no deity except You; exalted are You. Indeed, I have been of the wrongdoers.'" - Quran Chapter 21 / Verse 87



"I think it's the story and context of that verse that makes it my favorite. It is a prayer said by the Prophet Yunus (Jonah), who is swallowed by a whale and seems in a hopeless situation stuck in its belly. He makes this prayer when he realizes he has disobeyed God, and continues to repeat it so often that all the fish in the sea can hear him reciting it. God spares Yunus and he is spit out by the whale. This verse teaches me two very important things that I try to apply to my daily life. The first is that when a situation seems hopeless, put all your faith in God and rely on Him to make things better. The second is that self-critique is necessary even in hard times. The Prophet Yunus could not understand why God was doing this to him until he reflected and realized that he had been of the wrongdoers. In that very same way, we should strive to always reflect and better ourselves even in the hardest of times instead of being frustrated or angry at God." - Nooran

Hana, College Student, Georgia

"[Moses] said, 'No! Indeed, with me is my Lord; He will guide me.'" - Quran Chapter 26 / Verse 62



"An ayah (verse) so simple and powerful, yet can be difficult to recollect when we allow this reality and this world to cloud our own visions. When I thought I was capable of carrying and dealing with everything on my own, I found myself lost, hurt and misguided. I allowed myself to forget that Allah (swt) can heal all my wounds and guide me, if I just called on Him. I had willingly clouded my own vision.

No doubt, this life can be difficult at times. Hardship, confusion, pain and doubt are inevitable. All of humanity, believers and atheists, experience suffering and aching, however, the ones who truly believe and call on Allah (swt) will be at ease. Despite any circumstances, they rest knowing The Lord of Heavens, Earth and everything in between is in charge. They trust His plan and allow their hearts to focus. They know they are not capable of everything; they are simply imperfect humans. Humans who dont allow this reality to cloud their visions. A human I strive to be." - Hana

Bushra, College Student, Texas

And We have enjoined upon man [care] for his parents. His mother carried him, [increasing her] in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the [final] destination. - Quran Chapter 31 / Verse 14



"No religion puts greater emphasis on the status of parents in society than that which Islam puts. We always hear that a 'mother knows best,' but sometimes in life we get carried away by our own faults, forgetting to turn to those who know us the most. I'm always terrified that a day will come in which I can no longer write my mother's name and number as my emergency contact, whether it be for school or any other endeavor of mine. This verse keeps me grounded; it reminds me that life is short, so short, too short, and that one should never, ever take the lives of one's parents for granted." - Bushra

Zarin, College Student, South Dakota

And a sign for them is the night. We remove from it [the light of] day, so they are [left] in darkness. And the sun runs [on course] toward its stopping point. That is the determination of the Exalted in Might, the Knowing. And (as for) the moon, We have ordained for it stages till it becomes again as an old dry palm branch. It is not allowable for the sun to reach the moon, nor does the night overtake the day, but each, in an orbit, is swimming. - Quran Chapter 36 / Verses 37-40



"The reason I love these verses so much is that they are almost a reiteration of the age-old saying, and my personal favorite calming mechanism, that Allah does everything for a reason. If we ever look up to the sky to ask why the sun acts the way it does and why the moon acts the way it does, we can see that He has created a relationship between the two celestial bodies so that they work in harmony and makes sure that neither overpowers the other. It is also a beautiful image and representation and model of how we as humans should work, in harmony, never overtaking each other to benefit and 'over show' our power, but to work together and cooperate in peace as well as we can." - Zarin

Samah Safi Bayazid, Filmmaker, Washington, D.C.

Have you not considered how Allah sets forth a parable of a good word (being) like a good tree, whose root is firm and whose branches are in heaven. - Quran Chapter 14 / Verse 24



"This is one of my favorite verses in the Holy Quran. It really touches my heart, so I can relate to it in my life. 'Good word' and 'good work' is what I try to spread through my social media, where Im very blessed and honored to have over 200,000 followers. As a filmmaker, some of our works like the American drama series 'Inspiration' got millions of views and cleared many misconceptions about Islam and American Muslims. Many people tell me that my words/works have inspired them and touched their hearts and lives. This always makes me think about the power of sincere words and actions, and how words can really be like 'a good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches are in heaven.' I hope that some of my words and works can become like a good tree in my lifetime and after I leave this world too." - Samah

Yousef, High School Student, Chicago

Actions are according to intentions, and everyone will get what was intended. Whoever migrates with an intention for Allah and His messenger, the migration will be for the sake of Allah and His messenger. And whoever migrates for the worldly gain or to marry a woman, then his migration will be for the sake of whatever he migrated for. - Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)



"This hadith has had a great impact in my life. When I was a little younger, I loved to give charity to others in front of people. I wanted to be seen in the public eye as a good kid; it mattered what people thought of me. Little did I know I was only looking to gain the pleasure of the people around me and not the pleasure of Allah. I was not thinking whether or not what I was doing made Allah be pleased with me. Then one day I heard this hadith and I knew I had to change the way I did things and my intentions toward doing them. I realized that the way I thought was wrong and that if I wanted to do a good deed, I needed to do it for the sake of Allah only. I understood that only through the pleasure and love of Allah I could gain the love of the people." - Yousef

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(Photo: POOL New / Reuters)

SANTA ANA, Calif.  Scott Dekraai, the shooter in the worst mass killing in Orange County, California, history, was sentenced on Friday to eight consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole, rather than receiving the death penalty, because of government misconduct linked to a jail informant program.

The sentence handed down by Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals amounted to one life term for each person Dekraai shot and killed at a Seal Beach salon in 2011. He received an additional seven years to life for the victim who survived his rampage.

Last month, in a rare move, Goethals had excluded the death penalty as a punishment option after concluding that county prosecutors and sheriffs deputies had engaged in misconduct in the use of the countys now-notorious jail informant program. The sentencing comes after Goethals held weeks of hearings centered on whether the Orange County Sheriffs Department could be trusted to turn over all records in the case.

I have seen some extraordinary events in my time, but nothing like what has unfolded in this courtroom  crimes and investigative conduct like Ive seen here, Goethals said from the bench before he read out the full sentence.

On the day that Dekraai opened fire in the hair salon, the judge said, the gates of hell flew open and Dekraai emerged as the face of evil. Goethals said that for his crimes, Dekraai deserves to spend the rest of his life in a cramped cell in a maximum security prison in some forgotten corner of California.

Deputy Attorney General Michael Murphy  the state prosecutor who took over the Dekraai case after Goethals recused the entire Orange County District Attorneys office due to misconduct  told the court that the California Attorney Generals office would not appeal the sentence.

On Friday morning, Attorney General Xavier Becerra said that his office would abide by Goethals decision to preclude the death penalty. Our thoughts turn to the victims and families whose lives were shattered by this senseless act of inhumanity, he said.

Story continues

Both survivors of the brutal attack and family members of those who had lost their lives delivered heart-wrenching remarks before the sentence was handed down, often directing their anger at Dekraai who sat before them.

At one point, Paul Wilson, whose wife Christy was killed, spoke about her and the devastation of her loss.

Sorry, Paul, Dekraai said.

The courtroom exploded with shouts of of Shut up! from survivors and victims family members.

You deserve nothing, Wilson said to Dekraai. I hope you find hatred staring back at you in prison.

During their remarks to the court, several family members thanked Goethals and the state prosecutors who took over the case for their professionalism. Three of them even praised the work of Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, who represented Dekraai. Wilson said he saw that Sanders cared about the victims, although he played for the wrong team.

Many of the family members said they agreed with the judges sentencing decision and were relieved the proceedings were finally coming to an end.

Still, the sentence is extraordinary in the case of a mass murderer. Dekraai almost immediately confessed to police about his role in the 2011 killing. He formally pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2014. It appeared he would swiftly be dispatched to San Quentins death row.

But the case against Dekraai was marred by allegations of government wrongdoing. His sentencing had remained in limbo amid allegations that county prosecutors and sheriffs deputies had improperly used a jailhouse informant in his case and then hid key evidence about that for years.

Just days after the 2011 shooting, county law enforcement moved Dekraai next to a prolific informant in the local jail. The informant, Fernando Perez, questioned Dekraai about his case. Then prosecutors and law enforcement officers interviewed Perez, and a recording device was placed in Dekraais cell, capturing more conversations between the pair.

While it is generally legal for law enforcement authorities to use informants to help bolster cases, Sanders has argued that in the particular circumstances, the move was a violation of his clients constitutional rights. Thats because it is illegal for government agents, including informants, to question or coerce statements out of a defendant who has been formally charged with crimes and is already represented by a lawyer, as Dekraai was.

Prosecutors contended there was no intentional violation because they did not instruct Perez to question Dekraai. While the contents of their conversations remain sealed, court records show that the informant did probe Dekraai about his crimes.

As Sanders requested more information about the contacts between the two men, he discovered that Perez had also been used as an informant against another one of his clients, Daniel Wozniak. Wozniak was sentenced to death last year for the killing of two of his friends in an attempt to fund his wedding.

Prosecutors said it was simply a coincidence that the same informant was used against two of Sanders most high-profile clients, but the public defender didnt believe that. He pushed to uncover what would turn out to be tens of thousands of records about the use of informants inside county jails by prosecutors and sheriffs deputies.

In a blistering 505-page motion filed in 2014, Sanders argued that hundreds of pages of notes written by Perez and a second informant, Oscar Moriel, demonstrated the existence of an illegal jailhouse snitch program in which sheriffs deputies allegedly planted informants next to targeted inmates and directed them to poke around for incriminating evidence. Sanders claimed that prosecutors would then present the damning evidence gleaned by the informants in court while they withheld other information that could have been beneficial to defendants  a violation of the right to due process.

Additional evidence of the informant program came to light over the course of four years and three evidentiary hearings. Sanders efforts would ultimately reveal a disturbing trove of long-hidden records: a 25-year-old computerized system that detailed critical information about jail inmates and informants; more than four years of logs created by deputies who managed the informants, which were deleted in 2013 just days before Judge Goethals issued an order requiring their disclosure; and internal sheriffs department memos, including one boasting of hundreds of informants. Altogether, the records detailed a robust and well-established practice of cultivating and utilizing jailhouse informants against unsuspecting defendants.

Nonetheless, the Orange County Sheriffs Department continues to deny that a jail informant program exists. In recent hearings, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and members of her command and management staff suggested that if there had been any informant-related misconduct by deputies, it was the work of just a handful of rogue officers operating independently of their orders. Three deputies refused to testify at the hearings, invoking their Fifth Amendment right to silence.

Leaders of the sheriffs department have also said theyve made changes to how deputies handle inmates in the jail. The Orange County District Attorneys office has maintained that any misconduct by county prosecutors was unintentional and that the scandal has been overblown.

An Orange County grand jury report, issued this July, largely lined up with both agencies sentiments, calling the scandal a myth perpetuated by the media.

But legal experts blasted the grand jurys report and said its findings were just further proof that an independent probe was desperately needed.

Californias 4th District Court of Appeal found last year that misconduct by prosecutors and sheriffs officials in Orange County was very real and that the magnitude of the systemic problems cannot be overlooked. Afterward, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the use of jailhouse informants in Orange County.

The scandal has led to the unraveling of more than a dozen murder, attempted murder and felony assault cases in the county and threatens to upend countless more. But the sentencing in Dekraais case on Friday is arguably the most crushing defeat that the beleaguered district attorneys office has faced since the scandal broke.

The judge gave Dekraai the opportunity to make a final statement to the court before his sentencing. Dekraai apologized to the victims, the survivors and his own family.

I was wrong for what I did, he said. I am to blame for the complete loss of control. I am sorry.

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A powerful 6.2 magnitude earthquake has hit Mexico City, a Mexican monitoring body has said, and there are reports from witnesses of buildings shaking.

It wasnt immediately clear if the trembler, which was centred in the southern state of Oaxaca, had caused any damages or injury. The United States Geological Survey said that the earthquake was an aftershock from a previous quake, and that already vulnerable buildings could be in danger of collapse from previous damage.

I was frightened because I thought, not again! Alejandra Castellanos, who was on the second floor in a central neighbourhood of the city, told the Associated Press. Ms Castellanos ran down the stairs and to the street with her husband as soon as she felt the earthquake.

Thousands of others reportedly also ran to the streets, fearing the worst after previous earthquakes left the country in fear of more damage.

In recovery areas, workers were forced to leave the rubble mounds they were sifting through, but were able to return to work shortly. Street signs reportedly swayed from the quakes impact.

The earthquake comes just days after a 7.1 magnitude quake hit Mexico City, destroying buildings, and killing nearly 300 people. Response operations related to that event were still ongoing at the time of the new trembler.

The quake hit in a region of Mexico that was most shaken by an 8.1 magnitude earthquake that hit earlier this month as well. That earthquake struck off the coast of Mexico, and could be felt hundreds of miles away from its epicenter in Mexico City. That earthquake also left more than 60 people dead.

In areas hit hardest by that earthquake, tremblers have been felt repeatedly since. The 6.2 magnitude quake Saturday was the most violent felt in Tonala, one of the worst hit cities, according to a resident.

Since 7 September, it has not stopped shaking, Nataniel Hernandez told the Associated Press over the phone.
(Corrects quake depth to 51 km from 31 km in last paragraph)

By Daniel Trotta and Adriana Barrera

MEXICO CITY, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Rescuers labored against long odds into the dawn on Thursday to save a 12-year-old schoolgirl and untold other survivors who may be trapped beneath crumpled buildings in central Mexico following the country's deadliest earthquake in 32 years.

More than 50 survivors have been plucked from several disaster sites since Tuesday afternoon's 7.1-magnitude quake, leading to impassioned choruses of "Yes we can!" from the first responders, volunteers and spectators gathered around the ruins.

At least 237 others have died and 1,900 were injured.

As the odds of survival lengthened with each passing hour, officials vowed to continue with search-and-rescue efforts such as the one at a collapsed school in southern Mexico City where Navy-led rescuers could communicate with the 12-year-old girl but were still unable to dig her free.

Eleven other children were rescued from the Enrique Rebsamen School, where the students are aged roughly six to 15 but 21 students and four adults there were killed.

Rescuers previously had seen a hand protruding from the debris and the girl wiggled her fingers when asked if she was still alive, according to broadcaster Televisa, whose cameras and reporters had special access to the scene to provide nonstop live coverage.

But some 15 hours into the effort, Admiral Jose Luis Vergara said rescuers still could not pinpoint her location.

"There's a girl alive in there, we're pretty sure of that, but we still don't know how to get to her," Vergara told Televisa.

"The hours that have passed complicate the chances of finding alive or in good health the person who might be trapped," he said.

As Vergara spoke, a human chain of hard-hatted rescuers removed a large chunk of concrete from the floodlit scene.

Rescuers periodically demanded "total silence" from bystanders, who would freeze in place and stay quiet to better hear any calls for help.

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As with other disaster sites throughout central Mexico, officials dared not employ heavy lifting equipment for fear of crushing anyone below.

Throughout the capital, crews were joined by volunteers and bystanders who used dogs, cameras, motion detectors and heat-seeking equipment to detect victims who may still be alive. Some 52 buildings collapsed in Mexico City alone and more in the surrounding states.

The quake killed 102 people in Mexico City and the remaining 135 from five surrounding states, officials said late on Wednesday.

At least nine Latin American countries pledged to rush in search-and-rescue teams or technical assistance, with crews from Panama and El Salvador already on the job, as did the United States, Spain, Japan and Israel.

The Panamanian team of 32 rescue workers dressed in orange jumpsuits and helmets and two dogs arrived with seven days' worth of food, water and supplies and prepared to work around the clock, said Cesar Lange, leader of the Panamanian Civil Protection unit.

The earthquake struck about 150 km (90 miles) southeast of Mexico City on Tuesday afternoon, shattering glass, shearing off sides of buildings and leaving others in dusty piles of destruction.

It came on the same date as a 1985 tremor that killed thousands and still resonates in Mexico. Annual September 19 earthquake drills were being held a few hours before the nation got rocked once again.

Mexico was still recovering from another powerful quake less than two weeks ago that killed nearly 100 people in the south of the country.

The epicenter was 51 km (32 miles) beneath the surface, sending major shockwaves through the metropolitan area of some 20 million people. Much of the capital is built upon an ancient lake bed that shakes like jelly during a quake.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta and Adriana Barrera; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
(MEXICO CITY)  As painstaking attempts to reach survivors in quake-ravaged buildings across Mexico City stretched into a third day Thursday, desperation mounted among loved ones who earlier had high hopes for quick rescues and some complained they were being kept in the dark about search efforts.

And what many had clung to as the unlikely triumph of life over death was revealed to be a case of some very high-profile misinformation: A top navy official announced there were no missing children at a collapsed Mexico City school where the purported plight of a girl trapped alive in the rubble had captivated people across the nation and abroad.

President Enrique Pena Nietos office raised the death toll from Tuesdays magnitude 7.1 earthquake to 273, including 137 in the capital. In a statement, it said there were also 73 deaths in Morelos state, 43 in Puebla, 13 in the State of Mexico, six in Guerrero and one in Oaxaca.

More than 2,000 were injured and more than 50 people rescued in Mexico City alone, including two women and a man pulled alive from the wreckage of a building in the citys center Wednesday night.

Still, frustration was growing as the rescue effort stretched into Day 3.

Outside a collapsed office building in the trendy Roma Norte district, a list of those rescued was strung between two trees. Relatives of the missing compared it against their own list of those who were in the building when the quake struck  more than two dozen names  kept in a spiral notebook.

Patricia Fernandezs 27-year-old nephew, Ivan Colin Fernandez, worked as an accountant in the seven-story building, which pancaked to the ground taking part of the building next door with it.

She said the last time the family got an update was late yesterday, when officials said about 14 people were believed to be alive inside. Three people have been rescued from the building since the quake.

They should keep us informed, Fernandez said as her sister, the mans mother, wept into her black fleece sweater. Because I think what kills us most is the desperation of not knowing anything.

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Referring to rumors that authorities intend to bring in heavy machinery that could risk bringing buildings down on anyone still alive inside, Fernandez said: That seems unjust to us because there are still people alive inside and thats not OK.

I think they should wait until they take the last one out, she said.

Seeking to dispel the rumors, National Civil Protection chief Luis Felipe Puente tweeted that heavy machinery is NOT being used in search-and-rescue efforts.

The (hashtag)Search and Rescue is not being suspended anywhere it is believed that trapped people exist, Puente said in a separate tweet.

Since early Wednesday, the eyes of the nation had been focused on the Enrique Rebsaman school in southern Mexico City, where rescuers told reporters a girl, identified only as Frida Sofia, had signaled she was alive deep in the rubble by wiggling her fingers in response to rescuers shouts.

Numerous rescuers at the school site spoke of the girl, with some saying she had reported several other children alive in the same space, and the child became a symbol of hope amid a disaster that has shocked the country. But with TV cameras and journalists kept a block away from the precarious site, the only images broadcast live around-the-clock of the purported rescue showed long-distance shots of rescuers digging and no images of a child.

As the rescue effort continued into Thursday, no family members came forward to identify the girl, and some officials had begun to say the identity of the person trapped in the rubble was not clear.

Then on Thursday afternoon, Navy Assistant Secretary Enrique Sarmiento announced that while there were blood traces and other signs suggesting someone could be alive beneath the school, all its children had been accounted for.

We have done an accounting with school officials and we are certain that all the children either died, unfortunately, are in hospitals or are safe at their homes, Sarmiento said.

He said 11 children had been rescued and 19 had died, along with six adults, including a school employee whose body was recovered about 5 a.m. Thursday.

We want to emphasize that we have no knowledge about the report that emerged with the name of a girl, Sarmiento added. We do not believe, we are sure, it was not a reality.

Alfredo Padilla, a volunteer rescuer at the school, downplayed the importance of the revelation that there was no trapped child.

It was a confusion, Padilla said. The important thing is there are signs of life and we are working on that.

Earlier in the day, rescuers removed dirt bucketful by bucketful and passed a scanner over the rubble every hour or so to search for heat signatures that could indicate trapped survivors. Shortly before dawn the pile shuddered ominously, prompting those working atop it to evacuate.

With the shaking there has been, it is very unstable and taking any decision is dangerous, said Vladimir Navarro, a university employee who was exhausted after working all night.

The shaky wreckage was reinforced with massive iron beams, each requiring a dozen or more men to carry and lift into place. Stretchers were brought to the edge of the building, and a large crane was also on site.

Lourdes Huerta, 10, was on an upper floor of a part of the school that did not collapse and returned to the site Thursday with her mother as the rescue was under way.

When the quake struck, it was like we were bouncing up and down, Huerta said, nervously fingering a stuffed animal. When I left the classroom the whole school was moving and we couldnt go downstairs, so we went back into the classroom and huddled up against the walls.

She said she was terrified when a wall collapsed, but said if they had tried the stairs we would have ended up being thrown about.

Her mother, Lourdes Prieto, said the schools director and many of its teachers were among the injured, complicating efforts to produce a reliable list of students. So parents were organizing among themselves to come up with one.

What we need above all is for a census to be taken of those of us who are alive, said Prieto, torn between gratitude that her two children had survived and anguish over the missing and the dead.

___

Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson and videojournalist Alexis Triboulard contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 10:42:25|Editor: Xiang Bo

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by William M. Reilly

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Both small and large island states among some 40 speakers listed on the fourth day of the annual General Debate of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly had one common denominator in their remarks -- climate change.

Prime Minister Allen Michael Chastanet of Saint Lucia, in the eastern Caribbean, appeared to speak for many islands, expressing sadness over the devastation wrought on the Caribbean by recent hurricanes and dismay over the "silence of many and the weak acknowledgement" of others on the crisis.

"For small island states like my own in the Caribbean region, the promise of the United Nations is being tested today more than ever," he said. "The world is experiencing extraordinary change at a breathtaking pace -- change that is reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet and the very nature of peace and security."

"I arrived in New York earlier this week after a tour of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma on islands in the Caribbean and for the entire week I have been engaged in discussions focused on the region's recovery efforts," Chastanet said.

"I have also watched from afar and with a heavy heart, further destruction to my region -- with Hurricane Maria's crushing blow to the sister Isle of Dominica - there claiming over 15 lives so far, and saddling that country with hundreds of millions in damage and in the case of Puerto Rico, leaving that island diminished," he said.

"It has awakened in me the fear that we may be on our own to chart a path forward for our region," the prime minister said. "It was impossible to avoid the facts of climate change, the impacts of which did not discriminate."

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) had warned that failure to respond would "betray our children and condemn future generations to future doom," he said, recalling that Saint Lucia, along with most of the 15-member Caribbean Community, was located in the heart of "hurricane alley."

Chastanet welcomed the leadership of France, China and Germany on climate change issues, and asked the global community to remember "we exist in one global ecosystem."

Prime Minister Jose Ulisses Correia e Silva of Cabo Verde, small islands about 570 km off the western coast of the African country of Senegal, said: "Each island that disappears because of climate change will be a nightmare for humanity."

"For SIDS a swift and rapid implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement is a priority," he said. "It must be a priority for the whole world."

"If there have always been hurricanes, the bad news is that with climate change they tend to be more frequent, more cruel and more destructive," Correia e Silva said.

"The consequences are devastating for regions and countries that are most vulnerable from an environmental and economic point of view, such as small island states and regions," he said.

King Tupou VI of Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, directly south of Samoa, called for the appointment of a Special Representative on Climate and Security to ensure that the UN system has the appropriate tools to respond effectively and efficiently to climate change as an existential threat and a mounting security challenge for SIDS and the entire international community."

"Enhanced accessibility to modern and clean sustainable energy services, energy efficiency, and the use of economically viable and environmentally sound technology and research, play a critical role in our sustainable development," he said.

"The Paris Agreement is our common hope of a decent life on a sustainable planet. For Tuvalu, it is our hope of security and survival," said Enele Sosene Sopoaga, Prime Minister of Tuvalu.

However, the hope is "dimmed with the announcement by the United States that it will abandon the Agreement," Sopoaga added.

Foreign Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson of Iceland said that while the world had never enjoyed so much potential, it also must decide whether it would use it. "Our task is not easy," he said, citing the impacts of climate change, terrorism and bad governance

The Paris Agreement provides a blueprint to address the threats posed by climate change, he said.

"What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic," he said, voicing Iceland's commitment to implementing the Paris accord and reducing emissions alongside its European neighbors.
Sittwe (Myanmar) (AFP) - An attack on an aid shipment in Myanmar's violence-wracked Rakhine state and a deadly Red Cross truck crash in Bangladesh on Thursday hampered desperately needed relief efforts for Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution.

Communal tensions remain high across Rakhine where raids by Rohingya militants at the end of last month sparked a massive army crackdown, driving more than 420,000 people into Bangladesh in what the UN has called a campaign of "ethnic cleansing".

Tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingyas - who are widely reviled in Buddhist-majority Myanmar -- are feared trapped in hard-hit areas of Rakhine state, while humanitarian agencies in neighbouring Bangladesh are strained by the massive refugee influx.

The crisis has prompted a global chorus of condemnation against Myanmar's government for failing to blame the all-powerful military for the renewed violence, which French President Emmanuel Macron called a "genocide".

The United Nations has called for unhindered access to Rakhine state, which has been mostly closed to media and humanitarian groups.

An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ship carrying 50 tonnes of aid was halted by a 300-strong Buddhist mob in the state capital Sittwe on Wednesday night.

The group forced the ICRC to unload the aid from the boat and prevented the vessel from leaving, state-backed Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported Thursday, quoting Myanmar's Information Committee.

The crowd hurled "stones and Molotov (cocktails)" at riot police on the scene, injuring several officers before order was restored.

The ICRC confirmed the incident and said its staff were not injured, vowing to continue to try to deliver aid.

"We will carry on, nothing has been put on hold," Graziella Leite Piccoli, ICRC spokeswoman for Asia, told AFP.

News of the clashes emerged as a truck hired by the Red Cross and ICRC crashed in Bangladesh, killing nine people and injuring 10 others.

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"It was carrying the food to Rohingya refugees on the border, including those stranded in the no-man's land," Yasir Arafat, deputy police chief of Bandarban border district, told AFP.

- Aid airlift -

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have streamed into Bangladesh since the end of August, cramming into ill-equipped camps and makeshift shelters near the border town of Cox's Bazar.

Aid groups say they are overwhelmed by the massive influx, and though the Bangladeshi government is building a new camp in the area it will be some time before it is fully equipped.

Saudi Arabia is airlifting 100 tonnes of donated tents, sleeping mats, blankets and food to refugees in Bangladesh, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is chartering the flight.

"Many of these families are still living in the open without adequate shelter, food or clean water," Mohammed Abdiker, IOM Director of Operations and Emergencies, said in a statement.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has come under fire for downplaying the violence and failing to condemn the military crackdown against the Rohingya, a marginalised group the government considers illegal "Bengali" immigrants.

Amid urgent calls from the UN for humanitarian access this week, Myanmar insisted the crisis was easing.

"I am happy to inform you that the situation has improved," second vice president Henry Van Thio told the UN General Assembly Wednesday.

He said there have been no clashes since September 5 in Rakhine, where the military has been accused of burning scores of villages to the ground sending terrified Rohingya villagers fleeing.

"Humanitarian assistance is our first priority. We are committed to ensuring that aid is received by all those in need, without discrimination," he said.

There were more than one million Rohingyas in Rakhine state before the current crisis, though nearly half have fled since the deadly attacks on military posts by militants from The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on August 25.

The Rohingya have long been sidelined in Myanmar, where they are considered illegal immigrants and face severe restrictions.

Myanmar's army chief on Thursday said the Rohingya population "exploded" under British rule, blaming the former colonists for the current crisis.

"The Bengali population exploded and the aliens tried to seize the land of local (ethnicities)," Min Aung Hlaing said in comments posted on Facebook, using a term Rohingya consider derogatory.

Britain said this week it had suspended its educational training courses for the Myanmar military due to the violence, amid a mounting diplomatic spat between the countries.
These are the first couple of pages of the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon. It is enclosed by folding the casing and then by sliding it into an additional case. (Photo: Intellectual Reserve Inc)

An early copy of the Book of Mormon is now in the hands of the mainstream Mormon church  but the church had to part with millions of dollars to acquire it.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped a record-breaking $35 million to purchase a printers manuscript of the Book of Mormon on Monday, according to the church-owned Deseret News. It is reportedly the highest amount ever paid for a manuscript.

The Book of Mormon is a sacred foundational text for Latter-day saints. According to tradition, church founder Joseph Smith translated the text from reformed Egyptian engravings on golden plates buried in a hill in upstate New York. The Book of Mormon includes writings of ancient American prophets and tells of how Jesus appeared to people in America after his resurrection 2,000 years ago.

An engraving of Joseph Smith reading the Book of Mormon. (Photo: Chris Hellier via Getty Images)

The printers manuscript was handwritten by a follower and was used to create the first printed edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830. It is the most complete copy of the original manuscript, Deseret News reports. Smith reportedly placed the original dictation of the Book of Mormon in the cornerstone of a house in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1841, but that document was damaged by water.

We hold the Book of Mormon to be a sacred text like the Bible, church historian Steven E. Snow said in a press release. The printers manuscript is the earliest surviving copy of about 72 percent of the Book of Mormon text, as only about 28 percent of the earlier dictation copy survived decades of storage in a cornerstone in Nauvoo, Illinois.

The printers manuscript of the Book of Mormon rests on a table in this early 20th-century photograph. (Photo: Intellectual Reserve Inc)

Snow also said that donors provided the funds to buy the manuscript.

The church purchased the printers manuscript from The Community of Christ, a splinter denomination of Mormonism that also considers the Book of Mormon to be a foundational text. The Community of Christ purchased a collection that included the printers manuscript in 1903 for $2,500.

The Community of Christ claimed that the $35 million price tag is the highest ever paid for a manuscript. David McKnight, director of the University of Pennsylvanias Rare Book & Manuscript Library, told HuffPost that this appears to be accurate.

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Previously, the most expensive manuscript sold was the Codex Leicester, a 16th century collection of scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci. Microsoft founder Bill Gates purchased the manuscript for $30.8 million in 1994.

The Grandin printing press that was used to produce the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York, is on display. (Photo: Intellectual Reserve Inc)

Other expensive manuscript sales include a copy of the Magna Carta, which sold for $21.3 million in 2007, and the Northumberland Bestiary, which sold for approximately $20 million in 2007.

McKnight told HuffPost that in manuscript sales, it is always a sellers market.

Every manuscript is unique. Thus depending on the author, the text, the era, the market, the seller hopes to capitalize on these factors, he wrote in an email. Bill Gates bought [the da Vinci manuscript] with his Microsoft money. He could afford to outbid anyone on the market. In the case of the Book of Mormon, it is an iconic text. There are millions of Mormons, the Church is wealthy, and the Church could afford to bid on this item.

The LDS church plans to display the printers manuscript at its Church History Library in Salt Lake City.

Im glad that the item has been purchased by the Mormon Church. They will care for it, McKnight wrote.

CLARIFICATION: This article has been amended to clarify that the purchase of the printers manuscript was funded wholly by donors.

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From Afar

The exterior of the Kansas City Temple, as seen from a distance.

At Night

The exterior of the Kansas City Missouri Temple at night.

Celestial Room

The celestial room in the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Sealing Room

A sealing room in the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Ordinance Room

An ordinance room in the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Ordinance Room

An ordinance room in the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Baptismal Font

The baptismal font in the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

Oxen

Oxen under the baptismal font in the Kansas City Missouri Temple. All Latter-day Saint baptismal fonts are supported on the backs of 12 oxen statues that symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel.

Front Desk

The front desk area of the Kansas City Missouri Temple.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Memphis, Tennessee, was stop four on our Listen to America road trip. While walking the streets that Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis Presley once walked, we spoke to many of the locals to find out what brought them to Memphis. Heres what they had to say:

I wanted to be that voice here in Memphis that is helping others to heal.

 Joyce Kyles, 46, executive director of Walking Into a New Life Inc.

There is so much that needs to be done, and I have ideas.

 Kalimah Azeez Rashada, 28, American Muslim Advisory Council program manager

My parents actually migrated to Memphis from Mexico.... Right now, Im currently not working due to my visa being expired through DACA. Its just a time of waiting.

 Josue Vazquez, 23, medical assistant

Ive been here for four years.

 Jared Brunson, 24, Ballet Memphis dancer

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I grew up here.... I could be anywhere I want to be in the world, but I want to be here because I want to uplift my city.

 Lashonte Anderson, 28, artist

I transferred last year from the University of Mississippi.

 Julia Lester Taylor, 23, University of Memphis student

It is a place that I have fallen in love with.

 Reggie Davis, 42, executive director of STREETS Ministries

We live in a big, grand ole house that was built in 1912. Its really fun living there, lots of great hiding places.

 Alyssa Bengtson, 10, student

I can make a difference here.

 Andy Nix, 48, president of My City Rides

Ive been here all my life.

 Sheila White, 60, retired

Its just an amazing, diverse, interesting, crazy place.

 Jamie Harmon, 47, photographer

You always come back where family is.

 Nancy Bengtson, 50, teacher

Out of all the cities that Ive lived in, actually, I consider Memphis my favorite place.

 Ronald Marcus Peck, 62, educator (math tutor)

MORE FROM LISTEN TO AMERICA

Scenes From St. Louis: HuffPost's Listen to America Tour Kicks Off In Missouri

In The 'Velvet Ditch': HuffPost's Listen To America Tour Goes To Mississippi

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'It's The Heart of Mississippi': Meet The People Of Oxford

Also on HuffPost

The HuffPost tour bus arrives in Memphis, Tennessee, on Sept. 17, 2017, as part of "Listen To America: A HuffPost Road Trip." The outlet will visit more than 20 cities on its tour across the country.

The HuffPost tour bus sits in front of the Tennessee Welcome Center.

HuffPost staffers (from left to right: Christine Roberts, Melissa Radzimski, Emma Gray and Ja'han Jones) make their way to the bus activation site.

Emma Gray and Christine Roberts chat with guests during the HuffPost visit to Memphis.

Reggie Davis, left, and Andy Nix sign up to go on the HuffPost bus.

Ballet Memphis dancer Jared Brunson shows off some his dance moves.

Jenna Amatulli interviews Reggie Davis, left, and Andy Nix.

Jamie Harmon speaks to reporters at one of the HuffPost video stations.

A storm descends on the bus.

Staffers run to break down tents as a storm rolls in, flipping over tents and equipment.

Hillary Frey helps clean up the site.

The facade of Clayborn Temple in Memphis on Sept. 18, 2017.

The HuffPost bus sits by Clayborn Temple.

The stained glass windows of Clayborn Temple in Memphis.

The inside of Clayborn Temple.

Sunlight reflects through Clayborn Temple.

Hillary Frey introduces the "Economic Justice in the City (Revisited)" event at Clayborn Temple.

"Wealth is insurance against life's emergencies," says Wendi C. Thomas as she begins the panel discussion with Alex Matlock, Floyd Tyler, Jozelle Booker and Carolyn Hardy.

Floyd Tyler jokes with other panelists.

"We had 85 people deported [in Tennessee last month]. ... They were pulled out of their homes. It's happening in 2017," says Alex Matlock, as she speaks to the crowd about the uncertainty surrounding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the repercussions for the Latin community in Memphis.

The crowd in attendance at the Clayborn Temple.

"No one believed a black female wanted to buy a 1,003,000-square-foot brewery," says Carolyn Hardy, as she speaks to the crowd about shattering expectations as a woman in business.

"People of color, like people of any other color, start businesses and they work in those businesses, day in and day out for those businesses to grow. ... All with the intention and the hope of being beneficiaries to America's promise: Prosperity for all," Jozelle Booker says to the crowd.

Madeline Faber of Memphis' High Ground News speaks during the "Economic Justice in the City (Revisited)" event.

The setting sun in Memphis.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
China announced Saturday it will ban exports of some petroleum products to North Korea, as well as imports of textiles from the isolated North in compliance with a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution.

The Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website that China would limit exports of refined petroleum products from Oct. 1, ban exports of condensates and liquefied natural gas and imports of textiles immediately.

China, North Korea

Jacky Chen/Reuters

China, North Koreas most important trading partner, is one of the pariah state's few sources of hard currency.

The tougher stance follows North Koreas largest nuclear test earlier this month. In response, the UN passed a range of new sanctions against North Korea, including petroleum and textiles restrictions.

A limited amount of petroleum allowed under the UN resolution will still be exported to North Korea.

The ban on textiles, North Koreas second largest export, is expected to cost the country around $700 million a year.

China and Russia initially opposed measures to restrict oil exports to North Korea, but then agreed to reduced measures.

North Korea has a limited energy production capacity, but does refine some petroleum from crude oil, which is not banned under the latest UN agreement.

The measures follow an escalating war of words between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump labeled Kim a madman and taunted him as rocket man, while in a rare personal statement this week Kim lashed out, and referred to Trump as mentally deranged and a dotard.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged calm and likened the argument to a kindergarten scrap, with North Koreas foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, expected to speak at the United Nations General Assembly later on Saturday.

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By Hyonhee Shin and Linda Sieg SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - Detonating a nuclear-tipped missile over the Pacific Ocean would be a logical final step by North Korea to prove the success of its weapons program but would be extremely provocative and carry huge risks, arms control experts said on Friday. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering testing "an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb" over the Pacific in response to U.S. President Donald Trump's threat at the United Nations to "totally destroy" the country. "It may mean North Korea will fire a warhead-tipped (intermediate range) Hwasong-12 or Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile and blow it up a few hundred kilometers above the Pacific Ocean," said Yang Uk, a senior researcher at the Korea Defence and Security Forum in Seoul. "They may be bluffing, but there is a need for them to test their combined missile-bomb capability. They could have already prepared the plan and are now trying to use Trumps remarks as an excuse to make it happen," said Yang. Such an atmospheric test would be the first globally since China detonated a device in 1980, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tests of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles are rarer still. The United States' only test of an operational ballistic missile with a live warhead was fired from submarine far out in the Pacific Ocean in 1962. China was widely condemned for a similar test with a missile that exploded over its Lop Nur test site in the country's west in 1966. North Korea's six nuclear tests to date have all been underground, the most recent earlier this month by far its largest. "We have to assume they *could* do it, but it is exceedingly provocative," said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "To put a live nuclear warhead on a missile that's only been tested a handful of times, overflying potentially populated centers. If it...doesn't go exactly as planned....it could be a world changing event." North Korea has fired two ballistic missiles over Japan's north Hokkaido region in the past month as part of a series of tests that experts say have illustrated unexpectedly rapid advances. They said Pacific Ocean, which pretty much means firing a missile over Japan, said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. They want to shut us all up for doubting they could build it. SERIOUS FALLOUT While a missile would be the most ideal means of delivery, it is also possible to put a bomb on a ship and detonate on the surface of the ocean or in the sea, the experts said. Either way, the radioactive fallout could be significant, as well as the diplomatic backlash from around the world. North Korea's recent missile launches over Japan especially drew stern rebukes from Tokyo and the international community. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called Pyongyang's remarks and behavior "completely unacceptable". Narang said a test high enough over the ocean would limit the radioactive fallout but risks included damage from an electro-magnetic pulse, something Pyongyang has hinted it might employ on an attack on the United States or its allies. "If it doesn't go exactly as planned and the detonation occurs at a lower altitude we could see some EMP-like effects for anything in the area. A lot of dead fish too." Pyongyang has launched dozens of missiles this year as it spurs a program aimed at mastering a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the United States, in addition to its Sept 3 nuclear test. If Kim's threat materializes, it will be a "tipping point" for China, and may prompt many other countries to demand an "end to the regime," said David Albright, founder of the non-profit Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "No one has tested above ground for decades and the radioactive fallout could be terrifying to many," Albright said. Other experts said such an atmospheric nuclear test is unlikely for now due to its substantial technical and diplomatic risks. Joshua Pollack, editor of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Review, said it would be an "end-to-end demo of everything." "But I would be surprised if this were their very next move. They have yet to test an ICBM at full range into the Pacific," said Pollack. "That will probably come first." (Reporting by Hyonhee Shin in Seoul and Linda Sieg in Tokyo; Additional reporting by James Pearson in Seoul, Nobuhiro Kubo and Timothy Kelly in Tokyo, and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
Mr Trump is seen in a mirror listening while South Korea's President Moon Jae-in speaks before luncheon between US, Korean and Japanese leaders in New York: AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have escalated the pitch of their sabre-rattling, attacking one another on personal terms with the fate of an entire region in the balance and foreign policy experts warning it is likely to lead to more than just talk.

In a rare release attributed to Mr Kim, the North Korean leader called Mr Trump a dotard and a frightened dog for his threats of annihilation during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Mr Trump, never one to pull punches, responded the next morning by calling Mr Kim a madman, and threatening to test the Korean leader like never before.

I think this will lead to something in the coming days, Gi-wook Shin, the director of the Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre at Stanford University, told The Independent, saying that the statements now put pressure on Mr Kim to put his money where his mouth is. Thats why Im concerned, that it might be more than an escalation of rhetoric. There may be escalation of expectations."

The two world leaders were far from friendly in their verbal crossfire this week.

I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire, Mr Kim said, using an arcane term for a senile or weak-minded elderly person.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before! Mr Trump shot back on Twitter.

Behind the sparring between a baby boomer American and a millennial North Korean is escalating concern in the western world about North Koreas increasingly threatening missile and nuclear weapons programme. After the Presidents UN remarks, Mr Kim and his regime threatened retaliation at the highest level.

It could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific, North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho, who is scheduled to address the UN over the weekend, said of a potential detonation in the Pacific. We have no idea about what actions could be taken as it will be ordered by leader Kim Jong-un.

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Throughout the week, Mr Trump met with the leaders of South Korea and Japan to discuss the crisis, including a meeting between the President and South Koran President Moon Jae-in on Friday in which they reaffirmed their commitments to North Korean sanctions, and agreed to continue pressuring the country to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

The North Korean threats rattled the financial markets in the Asia-Pacific region, leading to a drop in stocks that day. In Japan, the governments defence minister told his country to brace for the potential launch of a nuclear-armed North Korean missile. Analysts said that the results could be devastating if something went wrong with that missile.

We cannot deny the possibility it may fly over our country, said Itsunori Onodera, the Japanese defence minister.

North Koreas testing of nuclear weapons and its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) systems has raised concern in the region over the past several months, and the US and its allies have retaliated in tangible terms with increasingly strict sanctions.

After North Koreas sixth and most powerful nuclear test earlier in the month  the first such test during Mr Trumps presidency  and after the repeated ICBM tests that indicate North Korea may soon be able to launch a missile that could hit the US mainland, the US and the UN responded with strict sanctions that further isolate Pyongyang from global markets.

China, one of North Koreas most important allies in the region, is honouring those sanctions as well. While world leaders met in New York for the UN General Assembly, reports indicated that the Chinese central bank had sent a letter to banks in the country, warning of potential reputation or financial setbacks if they did not begin cutting ties to North Korean sources targeted by the sanctions.

Mr Trump, at nearly the same time as those reports surfaced, also signed an executive order implementing stricter sanctions that bans ships and aircraft from visiting the US within 180 days of going to North Korea.

Foreign financial institutions must choose between doing business with the United States or facilitating trade with North Korea or its designated supporters, the White House said in a statement.

Mr Kims personal response is believed to have been the first time in three generations of the Kim dynasty that a North Korean leader has read out a statement to the international community in their own name. The South Koran unification ministry says that neither Mr Kims father, nor his grandfather  who founded the country  issued similar statements during their rule.

The North Korean leader said in the statement that Mr Trumps harsh rhetoric had convinced him to break from that tradition.

Now that Trump has denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy [North Korea], we will consider with seriousness exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history, Mr Kim said.
Updated | A notorious New York mobster who broke ranks to become a government informant is back on the streets after being released early from a 20-year-sentence for running an ecstasy ring.

Salvatore Gravano, known as Sammy the Bull, was released from prison in Arizona on September 18, according to Arizona Department of Corrections records, reported by the New York Post.

Gravano, 72, was sentenced to 20 years in federal imprisonment in 2002 after being convicted of overseeing a $500,000-a-week ecstasy trafficking organization in Arizona.

His daughter, Karen Gravano, told the Post that her father was in good health, great spirits and hes anxious to move forward with the next phase of his life.

Thomas Farinella, an attorney for Gravano, told The Arizona Republic that Gravano was focused on re-acclimating to society. A lots happened in 17 years, said Farinella, who declined to say where Gravano had most recently been incarcerated or where he would settle.

09_22_Salvatore_Gravano

STEVEN PURCELL/AFP/Getty

Read more: Lawyers push to unseal documents about Mafia-linked ex-Trump associate

In his earlier life, Gravano had been a senior figure in the Gambino crime family, one of New Yorks infamous Five Families of the Italian American Mafia. Gravano became an underboss in the family after conspiring with mobster John Gotti and others to murder Gambino boss Paul Castellano in 1985.

But Gravano became disillusioned under the rule of Gotti, who took over as the Gambino boss after Castellanos murder. After the pair were indicted on murder and racketeering charges in 1990, Gravano became the highest-ranking member of the American Mafia to become a government informant in 1991.

Gravanos information helped authorities to take down almost 40 mobsters, including Gottiknown as the Telfon Don for his propensity to escape prosecutionwho was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 1992. Gravano admitted 19 murders and got a sweetheart deal of five years in prison for becoming an informant.

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09_22_Salvatore_Gravano

MARK CARDWELL/AFP/Getty

After getting out of prison, Gravano spent time in witness protection and moved to Arizona, where he lived under the pseudonym Jimmy Moran. Gottis family reportedly attempted to have Gravano assassinated, but Sammy the Bull remained defiant. They send a hit team down...Ill kill them. They better not miss, because even if they get me, there will still be a lot of body bags going back to New York, Gravano told Vanity Fair in a 1999 interview.

In 2000, authorities arrested Gravano and 47 other people, including his wife, son and daughter, on federal and state drug charges. Gravano failed to have his sentence shortened in 2015, when a Brooklyn judge declined to take three years off his sentence due to his longstanding reputation for extreme violence. As part of his conviction, Gravano will remain on parole for the rest of his life.

This article originally incorrectly stated that John Gotti became a government informant. Salvatore Gravano became an informant, not Gotti.

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Darci Lynne Farmer won both Americas Got Talent and the country's heart Wednesday night as the 12-year-old took home the crown with her incredible act as a ventriloquist.

Read: Yodeling Ventriloquist Miss Louisiana Steals the Show in Politically Charged Miss America Pageant

She blew away the judges with her ventriloquist act and America agreed, voting her the favorite. She now takes home a million dollars in prize money as well as her own Las Vegas act.

If her routine sounds familiar, it is because she was taught by Miss America contestant Laryssa Bonacquisti, Miss Louisiana.

Earlier this month, Bonacquisti stole the show with her jaw-dropping talent at the Miss America pageant by yodeling with her puppets, which is something Farmer did as well on Americas Got Talent.

We spent about a year together and I taught her. Before you knew it, she was a ventriloquist, Bonacquisti told Inside Edition.

Read: After Contestant Is Hit With Flaming Arrow on 'America's Got Talent' Stunt Gone Wrong, Couple Gets a Do-Over

The student and teacher are from the same state and met on the local pageant circuit.

After Farmer's big win, Bonacquisti posted about how proud she was on Instagram.

SHE DID IT! Your new @agt winner is @itsdarcilynne  #sisters A post shared by Charlie Laryssa (@laryssabonacquisti) on Sep 20, 2017 at 7:45pm PDT

Before Farmer's big night, she shared a message from her teacher who expressed her pride in how far she had come.

Thank you to the person who inspired me to do ventriloquism!! I love you laryssa! You're the BEST! @agt @laryssabonacquisti @missamericala  A post shared by Darci Lynne (@itsdarcilynne) on Sep 19, 2017 at 11:16am PDT



Watch: Powerball Winner's Tragedy: Ex-Husband Killed by Alleged Drunk Driver in 2016 Hit-and-Run Crash

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Magdiel Sanchez, of Oklahoma City, was at the wrong place at the wrong time on Tuesday when Oklahoma City police, on their way to a hit-and-run collision in the area, stopped him for holding a metal pipe.

As Sanchez approached the officers holding the metal pipe in hand, the officers asked him to drop the pipe and to get on the ground, but the 35-year-old deaf man could not hear them. Even after his neighbors yelled to police that Sanchez was deaf and could not hear their orders, he was shot by one officer with a Taser and another officer with a gun.

Sanchez was pronounced dead at the scene. The officer who fired the gun, Sgt. Chris Barnes, has been placed on administrative leave.

In those very volatile situations where you have a weapon out, you can get what they call tunnel vision, where you can really lock into just the person that has a weapon that would be the threat against you, said Capt. Bo Matthews in a news conference. I do not know exactly what the officers were thinking at that point.

There has been a lack of media attention on Latinos being shot by cops this year. According to the Washington Post, 112 Latinos out of 715 people have been shot and killed by police this year alone; many of these fatalities have gone underreported nationally.

Blacks and Hispanics have interactions with police at rates proportional to their population, but the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics shows both groups are overrepresented when it comes to traffic searches and arrests. Hispanics, for example, make up 17.8 percent of the U.S. population, but represent 23 percent of all searches and nearly 30 percent of arrests.

Brady Henderson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, says there are a couple of reasons why there's less focus on the police shootings of Latinos; mainly because media outlets have the natural tendency to look to the bigger story of the day.

He pointed to high-profile shootings of African-American men in the past few years. "Thats said to be the big story, Henderson tells Newsweek. "But thats not the whole story. There is a much larger issue at the forefront.

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Henderson says the lack of trust with policing and police officers between communities has a large impact on how everyone perceives law enforcement.

Everyone is in this together and we are all neighbors, no matter skin color or natural origin, Henderson says.

He notes the best way to get the discussion going about police shootings, like the recent shooting of Sanchez, is to make sure all organizations representing any kind of social injustice toward minorities call out abusive law enforcement practices, no matter the race or creed of the parties involved.

It shouldnt be Latinos talking about it, it should be everyone. I think there are those in Oklahoma who are figuring out that they need to do that," he said.

In June, police shot and killed a 41-year-old Latino man at his home in California. According to police, officers were in the middle of serving a warrant at the home when shots were fired after Marco Cardoza pointed to a handgun. Investigators later found that the gun Cardoza had pointed to was only a replica.

In February, the NYPD shot and killed a high school teenager after he robbed a convenience store for beer with a fake gun. The officers shot 18-year-old Sergio Reyes 14 times, the city medical examiners report stated.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 11:02:33|Editor: Yang Yi

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BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Mo Jiancheng, a former member of the Communist Party of China (CPC) committee of the Ministry of Finance (MOF), has been expelled from CPC and dismissed from public office for violating the Party's code of conduct.

Mo acted against the Party's eight-point frugality code and attended lavish banquets, and he took bribes to help other people gain promotions, said a statement by the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

Mo, suspected of taking bribes, took advantage of his posts to seek profits for others and accepted a huge amount of property, the statement said.

As a senior official of the CPC, he lost his faith in the Party. Even after the 18th CPC National Congress, he still showed no signs of restraint and his wrongdoings were of a grave nature, said the statement.

Mo's illegal gains will be confiscated and his case transferred to the judiciary, it added.

Mo, born in 1956, was also the former leader of the discipline inspection team sent by CCDI to MOF.
Hes outspoken, with no experience as a lawmaker, a track record of politically incorrect comments that have pundits on the Acela corridor widening their eyes and a deep belief that America needs to be made great again.

Sound familiar? This is Roy Moore, the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was removed from this position not once but twice  first in 2003, for refusing to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments hed had installed in the state courthouse, and again in 2016, for defying the U.S. Supreme Court over its ruling on gay marriage.

Now hes running for Senate, but hell have to get past another Republican whos backed by President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

On Tuesday, Alabama Republicans will choose their partys candidate for the Senate seat that used to belong to Jeff Sessions, who left it in February to become U.S. Attorney General. Moore is up against Sen. Luther Strange, whom controversial former Governor Robert J. Bentley chose to hold Sessions seat in the interim. (Bentley resigned two months later following allegations that he used state resources to facilitate an extramarital affair with a staffer.)

Moore, who by some estimates is leading Strange by eight points, is the more Trumpy candidate, at least in style. But its Strange who has President Trumps vocal backing. On Friday, Trump flies to Huntsville, Alabama to stump for Strange at a campaign event  a rare presidential move in a seemingly low-stakes election.

Alabama is sooo lucky to have a candidate like Big Luther Strange. Smart, tough on crime, borders & trade, loves Vets & Military, Trump tweeted on Sept. 20. (Trump has also noted that Strange has gained mightily thanks to his endorsement.)

In a recent debate, both Moore and Strange laid claim to Trumps mantle, and neither would be far off from the president on the issues. Moore, an evangelical Christian who believes Americas ills result from the countrys alleged godlessness, has the support of former Trump senior advisor Stephen Bannon and former Alaska governor-turned-conservative-gadfly Sarah Palin.

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But the Strange endorsement represents a pragmatic decision by Trump, after heavy lobbying from Republican leaders, who view him as less unpredictable and risky than Moore.

John Pudner, an GOP strategist who chairs the Alabama-based right-wing action group Take Back Our Republic, said Strange fits the states political tilt.

His record is conservative, he tells TIME. It could just be a matter of getting to 50 votes. It probably feels like Strange is more reliable on things like healthcare that are sensitive right now.

Moores primary appeal to Alabama voters is his religious fervor: the state, where until recently school textbooks described evolution as a controversial theory, has one of the biggest faith-based voting blocs in the country, Pudner says. Its not like, say, Wyoming, where the conservatism is more libertarian.

Most critically, the election will be a barometer of Trumps continuing popularity and influence in a state where nearly two-thirds of voters supported him in 2016, one of the highest concentrations of support in the country. Many conservative voters in Alabama are wary of Strange because of the terms of his appointment earlier this year: they speculate that Bentley chose the former Attorney General because it would give Bentley an opportunity to pick a new top prosecutor amidst an investigation into his extramarital affair  a claim that conservative sites like Breitbart, helmed by Stephen Bannon, have embraced.

Alabama politicos say that Stranges performance next Tuesday will directly reflect how much pull Trump still has among voters there. The vote comes as Trump is working with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to work out a deal to allow undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country.

Conservative pundits and websites such s the Bannon-run Breitbart have blasted Trump for the discussion, dubbing him Amnesty Don. But one recent poll showed broad support for another deal Trump recently cut with Democrats to fund the government for 90 days, and its not clear yet that the conservative grassroots is upset about the potential for a deal on Dreamers.

Hes making things happen, 48-year-old Norman Ross, a Trump supporter from Florida, told TIME at a rally supporting the president in Washington, D.C. last weekend. How are you losing your base when your base is growing?
President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday morning to dismiss reports that Russia had bought ads on Facebook during the 2016 election as simply another part of the Russia hoax.

His tweets came a day after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would submit to Congress more than 3,000 ads purportedly linked to Russian actors. Facebook had announced on Wednesday that 470 inauthentic accounts had spent a collective $100,000 on ads between June 2015 and May 2017.

The Russia hoax continues, now its ads on Facebook, Trump said. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?

The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media screaming for Crooked Hillary Clinton, he added. Next, she was a bad candidate!

A wide range of American intelligence officials have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in an attempt to tip the race in Trumps favor.

The Russia hoax continues, now it's ads on Facebook. What about the totally biased and dishonest Media coverage in favor of Crooked Hillary?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

The greatest influence over our election was the Fake News Media "screaming" for Crooked Hillary Clinton. Next, she was a bad candidate!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

Facebook has been the subject of election-related scrutiny for months. In the aftermath of Trumps victory, his critics pointed fingers at the social media platform, saying it had allowed anti-Clinton fake news articles to circulate.
Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria A man pushes a shopping cart past downed cables after Hurricane Maria hit the island in September, in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Oct. 20, 2017. The writing in the back reads Puerto Rico will rise. (Photo: Alvin Baez/Reuters)

(Originally posted on October 12, 2017)

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One man climbs 24 flights of stairs several times a day alongside dormant elevators. Street vendors hawk plastic washboards for $20. And families outstretch their hands as crews in helicopters drop supplies in communities that remain isolated.

This is life one month after Hurricane Maria slammed into the U.S. territory on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm that killed at least 48 people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left tens of thousands of people without a job. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in nearly a century, with winds just shy of Category 5 force.

Ive never seen anything like this, retired schoolteacher Santa Rosario said as she scanned empty shelves at a supermarket in the capital of San Juan that had run out of water jugs  again.

Maria caused as much as an estimated $85 billion in damage across an island already mired in an 11-year recession. That has complicated and delayed efforts to restructure a portion of a $74 billion public debt load that officials say is unpayable. And it has thrust Puerto Ricos territorial status into the international spotlight, reviving a sharp debate about its political future as the island attempts to recover from flooding, landslides and power and water outages.

Maria has also put Puerto Rico into the U.S. political spotlight with President Donald Trump on Thursday giving himself a 10 for his response to the devastation wrought by the hurricane. Asked when the 3.4 million U.S. citizens living there could expect power to be fully restored, Trump said it will take a while.

Theres never been a case where power plants were gone, Trump said, seated alongside Gov. Ricardo Rossello in the Oval Office. So its going to be a period of time before the electric is restored.

Roughly 80 percent of power customers remain in the dark, and another 30 percent are without water. Schools remain closed. Stoplights are not operating. And while nearly 90 percent of supermarkets have reopened, many have bare rows of shelves empty of goods ranging from water to bananas to canned tuna. (AP)

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It's been three days since Puerto Rico was hit by the strongest hurricane since 1932, and the devastation to the island is nothing short of catastrophic. There are six confirmed fatalities related to Hurricane Maria, said Hector Pesquera, the secretary of Puerto Rico's Department of Public Safety. But he cautions that officials "know of other potential fatalities through unofficial channels that we haven't been able to confirm." Not helping matters is the ruinous blow that Maria has dealt to the island's infrastructure. The storm knocked out 100 percent of the island's power and 95 percent of its wireless cell sites, leaving the 3.4 million American citizens living on the island without electricity and leaving limited ways to communicate with rescue workers or worried friends and family. Puerto Rican government officials have warned that the island could be without power for as long as six months.

In the aftermath of the storm, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello made an official governor-to-governor request to New York to ask for essential supplies, services and assistance in assessing the severely damaged power grid. In response, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo immediately assembled a delegation of administration officials and emergency response experts, including 60 members of the National Guard, to do a reconnaissance of the destruction. The relief flight, donated by JetBlue (JBLU)  the largest airline in Puerto Rico  departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport to San Juan Airport early on Friday. The delegation is delivering a slew of essentials, including large-scale generators that can power hospitals and communication centers, 34,000 bottles of water, nearly 10,000 ready-to-eat meals, and thousands of cots, blankets and pillows. Four Black Hawk helicopters and 50 New York State Police are also on standby. One of the most immediate concerns is getting the antiquated power grid back up and running. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the U.S. territory's main electricity provider, reported that its key transmission lines were taken out of service, leaving nearly all of its 1.6 million customers without power. Significant flooding and debris have limited the ability to safely conduct damage assessments, according to the most recent report issued by the U.S. Department of Energy. Complicating matters further, the power authority is bankrupt, carrying some $9 billion in outstanding debt and still reeling from the $400 million in damages inflicted by Hurricane Irma. The authority's executive director, Ricardo Ramos, issued a statement Thursday night announcing that the power utility will not resume regular operations until Monday, "in an effort to avoid jeopardizing the safety of its employees." To help address this crucial issue, New York Power Authority CEO Gil Quiniones, along with a 10-person team of transmission supervisors, engineers and drone pilots, traveled on a relief flight to San Juan to assess the damages to the electrical grid. Severe damage to the commonwealth's landline and cellular communications systems has left many people, including U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., with no way to reach friends and relatives on the island to ensure their safety. Velazquez, who is also traveling on the relief flight, implored the U.S. federal government to do more to assist the Puerto Rican people. "We gotta do better, we have to pass another disaster relief bill, not only for Puerto Rico," she said, "but also for the U.S. Virgin Islands ." President Donald Trump declared that a major disaster existed in both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, ordering federal assistance to supplement the U.S. territories and their local recovery efforts in the areas affected by the hurricane. Trump also spoke with both governors on Thursday evening to "express support" as both U.S. territories begin to respond and recover from the hurricane, according to the White House. Trump "pledged continued help from his Administration for the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands," the White House said. The president also spoke about the lack of power in Puerto Rico. "Their electrical grid is destroyed," Trump said during a U.N. event on Thursday. "It wasn't in good shape to start off with. But their electrical grid is totally destroyed." Trump said he plans to visit Puerto Rico to see the damage firsthand and disclosed that his Homeland Security advisor, Tom Bossert, has been helping him actively prepare the government's response to Hurricane Maria.



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With the United Nations General Assembly in session in New York, countries lobbying operations in the U.S. are in full swing.

Qatar has taken pole position in a public relations arms race against Saudi Arabia, which has been advancing the charge that Qatar finances terrorism. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates cut ties with Qatar in June. President Donald Trump declared days later that Qatar must end its funding of terrorism and appeared to take credit for pushing Gulf states and others to sever diplomatic relations.

Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have since hired several well-connected D.C. lobbying shops and communications firms, gearing up their messaging as the dispute appears close to a resolution, with President Trump saying on Tuesday that it will be solved pretty quickly.

Qatar has taken out ad spots on TV networks Fox and MSNBC airing throughout the week. The ad tries to do a lot in 30 seconds: counters the charge that Qatar supports terrorism, touts its support for womens rights and press freedom in comparison to other Gulf states, and calls for the renormalization of trade and travel -- restrictions Qatar calls a blockade -- while also striking a defiant tone that Qatar will prevail in spite of the blockade.

Qatar is likely trying to create buzz while visiting heads of state are in town, watching American news in between U.N. sessions. Reception from the general public has not been positive, if Twitter is any indication.

Qatar ad Twitter reactions

Photo: IBT

The ad, which is also running on YouTube, declares it was paid for by the Government Communications Office of Qatar and promotes a website LiftTheBlockade.com, which features the same paid for by statement. In the months since the diplomatic row began, Qatar has been on a lobbying spree, hiring no less than 11 lobbying and communications firms, according to filings with the Department of Justices Foreign Agents Registration Act database. Most notably, Qatar hired former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft for $2.5 million on June 7, days after Gulf states cut ties.

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According to DOJ regulations, foreign agents file their activities reports in six-month cycles, so it is impossible to know which firm is responsible for the Lift The Blockade campaign, which only launched this week. However, only four of the firms are registered as working for the Government Communications Office, rather than the state itself or the embassy: Information Management Services, Levick Strategic Communications, Conover + Gould Strategic Communications, and Audience Partners Worldwide. The latter two are both working as subcontractors of Information Management Services.

Qatars Government Communications Office is paying Information Management Services a staggering $375,000 per month on a three-month renewable contract -- more than $1.1 million per quarter. The contract also gives Information Management Services a $250,000 expense account held in escrow to be used however the company deems necessary, reimbursed on a monthly basis. That means Qatar could be spending as much as $625,000 per month through the company.

Despite being incorporated since 1997, Information Management Services apparently only started working as a foreign agent in June, with Qatar as its first and only foreign client. It describes itself vaguely as an international research firm that produces in-depth data identification and analysis. The company is wholly owned by Jeff Klueter, a former researcher for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who has worked as an opposition researcher on behalf of Democratic presidential candidates from at least 1992 to 2008.

In addition to the video ads, Qatar has also taken out billboards in Times Square in New York City, where the UN is in session. On Twitter, London-based advertising firm Media Agency Group claimed credit for the ad campaign in Times Square.

After initially speaking by phone with an executive of the firm, the company did not respond to emailed questions from International Business Times. It is unclear whether the firm contracted directly with the Qatar Government Communications Office or was subcontracted by another firm that the government hired. Either scenario would require the firm to be registered with the DOJ as a foreign agent of Qatar, which Media Agency Group has not done, according to filings available in the DOJs database.

Questionable Social Media Support

Qatar has been targeting both traditional media through television ad campaigns and billboards in Times Square, as well as social media, with YouTube ads and a new LiftTheBlockade.com website. The official @LiftTheBlockade Twitter account only has 82 followers, but the campaign has been heavily promoted by the @IStandWithQatar account, which has more than 4,000 followers.

The account uses the signifiers of countless I stand with grassroots activist campaign slogans and hashtag activism. However, evidence suggests the account may actually be controlled by either the Qatari government or one of the public relations firms it has hired in recent months. @IStandWithQatar spent most of Tuesday live tweeting Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thanis speech at the United Nations. On Monday, the account sent a string of four tweets mentioning the Government Communications Office Twitter account, @GCOQatar, as well as posting GCO infographics and directing media to speak to the GCO.

After initially following me back, the account unfollowed me after I asked if it is run by the Qatari government. They also said they have no press contact for the apparent activist campaign. Notably, the account joined Twitter in June 2016, but either did not tweet or deleted all of its tweets before June of this year, when the diplomatic scuffle began. Either the account was dormant prior to the June of this year or it had another use was and repurposed -- along with its followers -- for promoting an end to punitive measures against Qatar.

LiftTheBlockade.com was registered last week, on Sept. 11. IStandWithQatar.com was registered three days later, on Sept. 14, making it appear likely that the two are related.

LiftTheBlockade.com WHOIS

Photo: IBT

IStandWithQatar.com WHOIS screenshot

Photo: IBT

Saudi Arabias Public Relations Blitz

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been promoting its own position through a proxy website, The Qatar Insider, claims to be the comprehensive source for information on the truth about Qatars funding, activities and support for terrorist and extreme Islamist groups. Though it looks like an ordinary news website focused on Qatar, the website is a project of the Saudi Arabia Public Relations Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), according to a disclosure on the site. In August, SAPRAC hired the DC lobbying firm Podesta Group through for $50,000 per month. Podesta Group was originally founded by Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign chair John Podesta, who no longer works there, though his brother, Tony Podesta, still heads it.

Podesta Groups work plan for SAPRAC describes its work as building on President Donald Trump's calls on Qatar to stop financing terrorism; and reinforcing Saudi Arabia's role as a leader in stabilizing the region. But in the details of the three-month work plan for SAPRAC, Podesta Groups work is focused primarily on promoting The Qatar Insider and its associated social media accounts; the first step in the plan was to assess the effectiveness of these properties in targeting our audience of DC elites. Podesta Group then lays out a plan for a mix of search engine marketing, paid social media posts, and online advertisements in influential DC publications Politico and The Hill direct thought leaders to the site, noting: our paid plan will include eye-catching online ads to drive home our topline messaging and push US thought leaders to The Qatar Insider. It also laid out a plan for a series of videos meant to promote Saudi Arabia as a key American ally and highlight the Qatar terrorism issue.

Podesta Group has had its eye set on the U.N. General Assembly three months ago when the work plan was created. The strategy for the General Assembly is similarly focused on influential publications, saying the Group will Prepare recommendations to amplify our messaging surrounding the 72nd Regular Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), which could include partnering with Foreign Policy or POLITICO for a sponsored event and/or newspaper advertising that could run in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post.

Ironically, Klueter of Information Management Services and Podesta are used to working together. According to Podestas emails leaked by Wikileaks last year, Klueter was conducting opposition research on John McCain in 2008 on behalf of Hillary Clinton, while the Democratic primary race with Barack Obama was still in full swing. Now Klueters firm and Podestas firm find themselves on opposite sides of the Qatari-Saudi schism.

The Podesta Group also works for the Saudi kingdom through the Center for Studies and Media, an arm of the government that apparently exists solely for hiring lobbyists. According to the Groups semi-annual activity report, it has primarily pitched journalists on behalf of the Saudi kingdom and contacted think tanks on both sides of the political spectrum, from the conservative American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation to the liberal Center for American Progress, which John Podesta founded in 2003.
Mexico City (AFP) - Tourism to Mexico City was dealt a harsh blow by this week's deadly quake, scaring off visitors and resulting in thousands of hotel cancellations in a central zone that is normally the buzzing, trendy heart of the city.

But by Friday, three days after the 7.1-magnitude earthquake levelled dozens of buildings, local hipsters were starting to return to the Condesa/Roma area, albeit in muted fashion out of respect for the deaths and damage evident in every second street.

Some cafes and restaurants were open, serving customers but also giving free food and drinks to rescue workers, police and soldiers deployed to toppled buildings that were sometimes just a few meters (yards) away.

But most places -- just a week ago filled with the coffee-and-laptop set -- were still shuttered.

Foreign tourists, usually drawn to the area for its artistic vibe and boutique stores, were absent.

Many had scrapped trips to Mexico City on news of the disaster.

Others, like Magali Ricoce, a 36-year-old Frenchwoman on her first visit to the city to see friends, lived through the quake and was traumatized by it.

"At one point I thought I was going to die," she said. The next day she was vomiting from stress as delayed shock set in.

Now, she has temporary lodgings with her friends but "it's a bit like being a refugee... I'm no longer thinking like a tourist, I'm more thinking 'I'm happy to be alive'."

Though rattled, she said she might return in the future.

But, she said: "I came across tourists who were leaving their hotels with their bags -- they were totally in the tourist mindset of wanting to go home."

- Hotel losses -

For hotels in the quake-hit area, that exodus and an avalanche of cancellations meant an immediate blow to business.

"We've had a lot of cancellations," said Erick Vargas, front desk manager at one hotel in the area, City Express.

His hotel had been fully booked, but when news of the quake flashed around the planet, 300 confirmed nights that had been reserved suddenly evaporated -- a loss of nearly $40,000 that was expected to double when bookings for later dates were included, he said.

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Although the hotel and its guests emerged from the seismic upheaval unscathed, it found itself in a zone suddenly deserted apart from frantic rescue operations.

Vargas said he himself was made homeless because his place in Roma was a couple of doors up from a building that had become unstable.

"I haven't been able to get in. I've been living in the hotel since," with his flat-mate and his dog, he said.

- Return to 'a bit of life' -

In one of the cafes open in Roma, Bubba Tea & Co., staff were giving away free meals to soldiers.

The owners -- who had opened the place just five weeks ago -- had struggled with whether to resume business for customers, or whether to stay closed out of respect for the pervasive mourning around them.

It was local residents themselves who convinced them to open.

"It was a way to help them. They wanted coffee, not just basic water and stuff -- they want a bit of life back," explained Ingrid Gonzalez-Gracida, who runs the place with her husband.

"This area is usually very lively, very hipster, there are a lot of artists," she said, comparing it with justification to New York City's trendy Brooklyn borough.

As for the foreign tourists who used to saunter around the eateries and galleries, she said: "I don't know where they are. They are afraid. We hope they return."

- Tourism campaign -

That is precisely the challenge facing Mexico's tourism secretary, Enrique de la Madrid.

He told a tourism industry publication, Travel Weekly, that while structural evaluations were still going on for Mexico City hotels, "our infrastructure was mostly unaffected" across the vast city.

Rather than withdraw tourist promotions, his office was forging on with a new campaign to be launched on Monday, focusing on the country's diversity.

"The main destinations of the country had not been affected at all. And even in Mexico City, the tourist areas were not affected," he said.

"We decided it was more important than ever to let everyone know we're still standing. If people are wondering how to help support Mexico, the answer is to travel to Mexico."
Mexico City (AFP) - A week after an earthquake that killed more than 300 people, thousands of Mexicans were still unable to return Tuesday to their badly damaged homes, much less their normal lives.

After a week of eerie quiet in Mexico City, the capital's notorious traffic jams were visible again as the sprawling city of 20 million people began returning to work and school.

But many residents still had nowhere to go after losing everything in last Tuesday's 7.1-magnitude quake.

"You think it will never happen to you. I've lost track of what day it is. All we've managed to do is find some donated clothing, because we were left with nothing but the clothes on our backs," said journalist Gerardo Alvarez, a 31-year-old Venezuelan.

He and his wife have been staying with friends since the quake, which left their apartment building on the verge of collapse.

They are hunting for a new apartment, but prices in undamaged buildings have soared in the past week, he told AFP.

Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera has announced that those made homeless by the quake will receive temporary rent support of some $170 a month.

Architects and engineers have meanwhile been crisscrossing the disaster zone evaluating some 9,000 damaged buildings to decide which can be repaired and which must be demolished.

Thirty-nine buildings collapsed in the quake. Another 700 need repairs, and 300 have major damage.

- September 19 -

The city center was a bizarre mix of shops and restaurants going about business as usual, alongside collapsed and damaged buildings cordoned off by barriers and yellow tape.

Outside some afflicted buildings, people gathered waiting for authorities to tell them when they could go back in to get the things they left behind last Tuesday at 1:14 pm.

In a nasty twist of fate, the 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that killed more than 10,000 people, the worst in the country's history.

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Improbably, it hit just two hours after an annual earthquake drill, turning Mexico City's most seismically unstable neighborhoods into post-apocalyptic scenes.

In the trendy Roma neighborhood, shell-shocked and sobbing residents rushed into the street, disoriented and desperate for news of their loved ones -- impossible to get in the early minutes, with cell phone networks saturated.

Slowly, a picture of the destruction began to emerge: 39 buildings crumpled to the ground across the capital, trapping hundreds of people inside. Scores more were killed in the states of Morelos, Puebla, Mexico, Guerrero and Oaxaca.

Just as in 1985, thousands of volunteer rescuers sprang into action, scrambling onto the mountains of mangled steel and concrete to dig through the rubble with their bare hands in a desperate search for survivors.

Rescue teams from across Mexico and around the world soon joined them.

Across the city, 69 people were pulled alive from the wreckage in the first days.

But since late Friday, only bodies have been recovered.

Now, the delicate question facing the nation is how long to keep up the search.

- 'Our patience is over' -

Rescue workers have now wrapped up their efforts at all but a few sites in Mexico City, and the chances of pulling more survivors from the rubble are dim.

Emergency teams from Japan, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama have headed home.

The government faced protests Monday night by seething relatives of those still inside the biggest search site, a seven-story office building in the hard-hit Roma neighborhood.

Family members threatened to burst through security barriers and take to the rubble themselves if the authorities did not release more information on the operations inside.

"We acted for seven days and seven nights peacefully, waiting for results. Our patience is over... Please update the lists" of bodies recovered, said one relative, Ines Sandoval.

The latest death toll stands at 333 people -- 194 of them in Mexico City.
A viral video this week sheds light on a heart-rending situation: The radioactive puppies and dogs of Chernobyl.

After the catastrophic 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in whats now northern Ukraine, many people forced to evacuate the surrounding area left their pets behind, thinking theyd be able to return in a few days. Instead, soldiers were dispatched to shoot the abandoned animals.

But some survived. And hundreds of dogs that now roam the area around Chernobyl are believed to be their descendants.

Puppies of Chernobyl, a short documentary uploaded to YouTube by filmmaker Drew Scanlon, shows a series of adorable puppies and dogs in Chernobyls exclusion zone  a 1,000-square-mile area around the nuclear plant where access is strictly limited.

Workers at the plant, tourists and some others are allowed in, but only under tight government control. Several hundred people, mostly elderly former residents, also have moved back into their villages over the years, against official orders.

Scanlon says in the video that officials forbade him from petting any of the puppies because of the hazards posed by radioactive particles on their fur. Seeing the little puppies come up to him seeking attention is pretty heartbreaking.

But efforts are underway to get the Chernobyl dogs the care they need.

Stray puppies play in an abandoned, partially-completed cooling tower inside the exclusion zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017. (Photo: Sean Gallup via Getty Images)

The Clean Futures Fund  a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities in the aftermath of industrial accidents  is spearheading a five-year plan to spay and neuter the dogs and cats roaming in the area, then set up food and water stations and a veterinary clinic to help care for the animals.

The funds plan, which kicked off this summer, involves partnering with Ukrainian veterinarians and other volunteers, as well as organizations in Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Anna Sovtus, a Ukrainian veterinarian working with The Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, tends to a stray puppy she had just washed in the bathroom sink at a makeshift veterinary clinic inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. (Photo: Sean Gallup via Getty Images)

The dogs suffer from a lack of food and water, as well as predation from wildlife that has flourished in the areas relative absence of people, Lucas Hixson, a radiation specialist and Clean Futures Fund co-founder, told HuffPost. While the dogs are surviving long enough to breed  and overpopulate  its extremely rare to see one live to old age.

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A dog is seen next to a sign of radioactivity in the abandoned city of Prypyat near Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 8, 2016. (Photo: SERGEI SUPINSKY via Getty Images)

To avoid radiation exposure, humans are heavily restricted when it comes to where they can go and what they can do within the exclusion zone. But theres no way to enforce those regulations on free-roaming canines.

The rules of man mean nothing to the world of dog, Hixson said. They lay, they dig, they roll around, they drink puddles.

The result is dogs with radioactive particles on their fur and inside their bodies  though researchers dont know exactly how much.

Employees at the plant technically arent supposed to interact with the dogs, but many have grown strongly attached to the animals, feeding and playing with them.

Many of these workers have adopted some of these dogs almost as pets, Hixson said, though they arent permitted to bring the dogs out of the area.

Workers with a stray dog at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in August 2017. (Photo: Sean Gallup via Getty Images)

Hixson said there probably arent immediate health hazards related to radiation from petting the dogs, though he would definitely suggest washing up afterwards.

However, the dogs pose another risk  rabies, which they can catch from encounters with local wildlife. Rabies, which is fatal if untreated, is a particularly scary threat in Ukraine, since the country depends on its supply of human rabies treatment from Russia. After years of conflict, supplies are dwindling.

Vaccinating the dogs and shrinking the population via spaying and neutering will reduce the rabies risk, Hixson said.

A stray dog stands at a monument outside the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in August 2017. (Photo: Sean Gallup via Getty Images)

Clean Futures Funds work also involves trying to gauge just how much radiation is present in the dogs bodies. The findings could open up the possibility of Ukrainian officials allowing some of the dogs to leave the exclusion zone and ultimately be adopted.

Regardless, Hixson said he hopes his groups work will improve life for the areas dogs and safety for the people around then.

I think there will always be a population of dogs in the area, he said. But hopefully, we can get down to a manageable population where they can have a good quality of life.

You can learn more about the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative or donate here.

Also on HuffPost

Stray dogs loiter inside the high-security "local zone" outside the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017 near Chernobyl, Ukraine. An estimated 900 stray dogs live in the exclusion zone, many of them likely the descendants of dogs left behind following the mass evacuation of residents in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

A tagged, stray dog walks past a tourist at a monument to firefighters who fought to contain the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster inside the exclusion zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

Nastya Grabchuk, a Ukrainian medical student volunteering with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, tends to stray puppies recovering from a sedative after surgery and vaccinations at a makeshift veterinary clinic inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone on August 17, 2017.

A stray dog saunters outside the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

A tagged, stray dog sniffs for food in a trash can outside the workers cafeteria inside the exclusion zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

A stray dog stands at a monument outside the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

Anna Sovtus, a Ukrainian veterinarian working with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, tends to a stray puppy she had just washed in the bathroom sink at a makeshift veterinary clinic inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone on August 17, 2017.

A stray dog stands at a monument outside the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

Terry Paik, a veterinarian from San Diego, California, volunteering with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, prepares to neuter an anesthetized stray dog at a makeshift veterinary clinic inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone on August 17, 2017.

Pavel "Pasha" Burkatsky, a professional dogcatcher from Kiev, carries a stray dog he just captured and tranquilized past workers in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

A tagged, stray dog stands near the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 17, 2017.

Dogcatcher Aleksander Klimov releases a stray dog back into the wild inside the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after veterinarians with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative had tagged, spayed and vaccinated it on August 17, 2017.

Administration workers look at a stray dog at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

Stray puppies play in an abandoned, partially completed cooling tower inside the exclusion zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

Tagged, stray dogs lounge outside a cafeteria at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

Workers on a break watch a stray dog saunter by outside an administrative building inside the exclusion zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

A tagged, stray dog lies among tourists about to board a bus inside the exclusion zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

A dog is seen next to a sign of radioactivity in the ghost city of Prypyat near Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 8, 2016.

Tagged, stray dogs stand at a monument outside the new, giant enclosure that covers devastated reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

A stray dog tagged and wearing a collar equipped with a GPS sensor and radiation sensor lies in the grass outside a makeshift veterinary clinic near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

Stray puppies play among moss in an abandoned, partially-completed cooling tower inside the exclusion zone at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

Marie-Louise Chenery, who is from San Diego, California, and is a volunteer with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, tends to stray puppies near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as the abandoned construction site of reactors five and six stands behind on August 17, 2017.

Marie-Louise Chenery, who is from San Diego, California, and is a volunteer with the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative, tends to stray puppies near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as the abandoned construction site of reactors five and six stands behind on August 17, 2017.

A stray puppy walks along abandoned train tracks near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017.

Meredith Ayan (L), executive director of SPCA International, a U.S.-based animal rescue nonprofit, SPCA program director Lori Kalef (C) and volunteer Kerry Anne O'Connor cuddle with stray puppies at a makeshift veterinary clinic operated by the Dogs of Chernobyl initiative inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone on August 17, 2017.

Pavel "Pasha" Burkatsky, a professional dogcatcher from Kiev, releases stray puppies that have been neutered and vaccinated inside the exclusion zone next to workers' dormitories near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 18, 2017.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
High relief featuring Sturmgewehr StG 44 blueprint to be removed from Mikhail Kalashnikov monument in Moscow - TASS

The monument in the heart of Moscow was supposed to be a tribute to Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of the AK-47 assault rifle.

Unfortunately, things went wrong, spectacularly so. The etching on the plinth was not of a Kalashnikov but the StG 44 rifle used by the Nazis during WWII.

The mistake was spotted by arms experts, the BBC reported. It left the authorities having to use an angle grinder to remove the offending image.

"A mistake has been made by the sculptor," executive director of the Russian Military Historical Society Vladislav Kononov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

A man uses an angle grinder as he removes a sketch allegedly featuring German StG44 rifle Credit: Mladen Antonov/AFP

The AK-47 was, in fact, the Soviet answer to the Sturmgewehr 44 (StG44), which the German forces used from 1944.

Determined to find an equally effective weapon, the Soviet Union launched a competition, which was won by Mikhail Kalashnikov.

Having been wounded at the Battle of Bryansk, Kalashnikov began designing weapons.

The AK-47 has been in use since the late 1940s.

Kalashnikov, who died in 2013, aged 94 made little money out of his invention. Rather ruefully he said he wished he had designed a lawnmower.

Although the AK-47 remains the most popular assault rifle in the world, last year the Kalashnikov company said it was branching out into menswear.

"Kalashnikov is a global brand," said Kalashnikov's marketing director, Vladimir Dmitriyev, "and we rightly believe that clothing and souvenir products with our symbol will be in demand among buyers."
Its hard to know what special counsel Robert Muellers investigation is doing, but its clear that its going quickly.

Experts on independent investigations, including some who have worked with them in the past, say that the former FBI director is moving on an aggressive timeline as he looks into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election. They say that could help keep it from getting bogged down or off track, like some past investigations.

We dont want it to be spread out, says Solomon Wisenberg, who was second-in-command in the Whitewater/Lewinsky investigation into President Bill Clinton. Its not good for the country if its spread out for four or five years. I think to me thats a good sign, its a sign that [Mueller is] being sensitive to that problem.

That independent counsel investigation of Clinton, for example, lasted for four years, and impeachment proceedings extended beyond that. It initially began as a look into Clintons financial dealings with the Whitewater property company, but ended up exposing sordid details of an affair between the president and a White House intern.

Muellers apparent speed in tackling a massive investigation is likely related both to his own personality and the grave importance of what hes trying to figure out, which includes whether members of Trumps campaign colluded with Russia.

His reputation is as someone who doesnt mess around, says Katy Harriger, a professor at Wake Forest College and author of a book on federal special prosecutors. But I think if you look at the overarching questions of this investigation, theyre pretty serious in terms of the alleged wrongdoing, and I think someone of Muellers stature and commitment to public service that hes demonstrated would want to know the truth about this fairly quickly.

Another, more concrete reason Mueller may be working quickly: the simultaneous investigations in Congress. As Muellers team proceeds with their work nested within (but slightly separate from) the Justice Department, committees in both the House and the Senate are also looking into the Russian matter. As Congress interviews some of the same witnesses that the special counsels office needs to speak with, it could impede Muellers ability to get to the truth.

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The more people testify, the more evidence gets trampled on, explains Harriger. Stories get rehearsed, people lawyer up, all those kinds of things. The more investigations are going on, the more possibility there is that testimony gets tainted in some way by the cross investigation.

Theres also the possibility that Congress offers immunity to someone, regardless of that persons importance in the special counsel investigation. During the Iran-contra scandal under President Ronald Reagan, for example, Congress granted immunity to three key witnesses in exchange for their testimony. But as the New York Times reported in 1988, that immunity now jeopardize[d] criminal prosecutions of the three, and the new situation inflict[ed] a near-crippling burden on the independent counsel to try the witnesses.

Immunity from the House or the Senate will affect the possibility of Mueller indicting, says Ronald Rotunda, a professor at Chapman University School of Law who worked on both the Senate Watergate Committee during President Richard Nixons term and was special counsel to the Whitewater investigation. On the other hand, I think that its important for us to know whats going on, and while the House and the Senate shouldnt pass out immunity orders like breath mints, if its useful to give immunity, then thats something that they ought to do.

Which provides all the more reason for Mueller to work quickly outside the congressional probes, in case Congress is inclined to offer immunity to anyone he is pursuing. (It has been reported, for example, that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a likely target of Muellers probe, requested immunity from the Senate Intelligence Committee. The request was denied.)

The question now is just how fast Mueller is really going, and when the public will get answers.

It appears that Bob Mueller is entirely serious about this inquiry, that he has assembled a very capable and experienced staff, and that they are proceeding apace, says Richard Ben-Veniste, one of the lead prosecutors on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force. They demanded documents from the White House, theyve issued subpoenas to various individuals, theyve taken testimony under oath, and I would expect that we will be hearing more in the reasonably short term.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 11:12:36|Editor: Yang Yi

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LONDON, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- A British Chinese collector said Friday that he will bring more than 100 pieces of Chinese export porcelain he collected over the past three decades back to China for a touring exhibition, and part of the collection will be donated to a Chinese museum.

Xi Jianjun told a press conference that his collection of Chinese export porcelain will be exhibited at the Overseas Chinese History Museum in Beijing on Nov. 8, when he will donate some of the exhibits to the museum as a permanent collection.

Chinese export porcelain was made almost exclusively for export to Europe and later to North America between the 16th and the 20th century. For centuries, it has been a luxury favored by royal families and nobility. Merchants from Europe and the United States traveled thousands of miles to China to buy customized porcelain products.

Xi said that part of the collection will soon be on display, including a pastel dish of "West Chamber" and a porcelain bowl "lady Zhaojun bidding farewell over the frontier" in Qing Dynasty, as well as porcelain depicting Greek mythology, biblical stories and other western stories.

"These hundreds-year-old ancient porcelain not only helps historians study the history of Chinese porcelain, but also trace the trade between China and the Western world in China's Ming and Qing Dynasties, with high historical value," British porcelain expert and historian Maurice Hyams said.

"It is time to take them back to their parents and let people know more about their overseas life and experience, and through them we can witness the cultural exchanges and trade relations between the Chinese and Western society hundreds of years ago," Xi said.

He said that the export porcelain came to Europe hundreds of years ago along the Maritime Silk Road for business, and now they will come back to China due to patriotism. "I hope people would feel the hearts of our overseas Chinese through these exhibits."
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two rockets struck near Damascus airport at dawn on Friday, Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen reported, an attack it said had probably been carried out by Israeli warplanes from outside Syria's borders. Al-Mayadeen gave no further details in the report carried in a news flash on screen. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the reports of the air strike, saying: "We do not respond to such reports." Earlier this month, the Syrian army reported an Israeli air strike on a military site in Syria's Hama province. Israel says it has hit arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah nearly 100 times in the past five years. Israel, which fought a 2006 war with Hezbollah, sees red lines in the shipment to the powerful Shi'ite group of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors Syria's civil war, said the attack earlier this month was on a facility of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, an agency which the United States describes as Syria's chemical weapons manufacturer. Syria's government denies using chemical arms. In 2013 it promised to surrender its chemical weapons, which it says it has done. (Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
After months of buildup and about a week of official training activity, Russia and Belarus wrapped up their regular joint Zapad (West) war game with some bang, but without any serious confrontation with nearby Western allies.

The closest that the drill appears to have come to a real-world clash was a momentary violation of Lithuanian airspace by two Russian jets, which Moscow said was caused by obstructive weather forcing pilots into a diversion, as opposed to an intent to attack the Baltic state. In fact, local media reports suggest Russians bore the brunt of their own militarys fire during Zapad, as a Ka-52 helicopter appeared to fire onto civilian onlookers outside St. Petersburg.

That said, Russias war game on the fringes of its hypothetical front line with NATO are not without significance. Here is what we learned from Zapad 2017:

Size Matters and Russia Is Downright Lying About It

Russia has lost the trust of the West. After first denying sending the masked troops to Crimea in 2014 that set up the ersatz referendum to join Russia, and then admitting to it months later; after denying it was supporting separatists in east Ukraine whose impressive array of troops and kit has held one of Europes largest militaries at bay for three years; and after declaring a war on terror in Syria that has also punished civilians, medics and the regimes enemies, Russia does not have the benefit of the doubt in Western capitals.

Zapad17-03

Daniele Palumbo/Newsweek Media Group

When the Russian defense ministry announced that 12,700 troops would take part in Zapad (only 3,000 of which would be Russian troops deployed in Belarus), European experts began calculating how much higher this number would be in reality. Virtually all concluded with certainty that the figure would be higher than the 13,000 figurethe internationally agreed upon threshold for holding a drill without having to invite foreign observers. Poland and Germany estimated that around 100,000 Russian troops would be mobilized, while Lithuania predicted 140,000 and Ukraine estimated 240,000. At the end of the drill, Ukraine said 120,000 had mobilized.

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NATO has concluded that Zapad was larger than initially advertised, and independent estimates fall in the middle, at around 70,000 troops, Londons Royal United Services Institute reported.

But the huge figures cited by Western governments ahead of the drill were a public relations coup for Moscow, because the Kremlin can now dismiss evidence it overstepped the threshold it set for itself, equating any such assertions to paranoia abroad, says Mathieu Boulegue of the Chatham House think tank.

Zapad17-05

Daniele Palumbo/Newsweek Media Group

Tomas Valasek, the former Slovak ambassador to NATO, said earlier this week that it should worry the West that Moscow is downright lying about the size of the drill, because in tense political times that makes accidental conflict more likely.

In the future, there may well be a situation where we want proper monitoring when the tensions between East and West are much higher than they are today, he said during a Politico podcast. And [when] we dont have that recourse, then it makes everybody jumpy, right?

A lack of trust and poor communication close to tense borders is a dangerous combination, considering that Russian drills in the northwest have resulted in two serious misfires over the past month alone. The firsta tank missile ricochetkilled one and wounded five.

The casualties were Russian servicemen, so, although tragic, the incident did not become an international one. Any unaccounted-for kit malfunctioning close to a non-allied neighbor that already suspects Russias motives would mean a larger threat of political crisis.

Russia Tests Its Reinforced Front Line

The last time Russia held a Zapad drill was 2013. This was before its annexation of Crimea, the conflict in Ukraines east, and a cumulative drop-off in relations with the West that has led to swollen troop sizes on both sides of the NATO-Russia divide in the region. As part of Zapad, Russia had a chance to see its updated front line in action. While the numbers may have been lower, the strategy and purpose were also different, Boulegue says.

Zapad17-02

Daniele Palumbo/Newsweek Media Group

In 2013, Zapad was about big numbers, he says. The conclusions they drew there and from experience in Crimea and Syria was they didn't need to displace huge numbers for what they wanted to drill this time. Zapad 17 was not about displacement. It was about improving command and control in the Russian military. What we saw was better integration of ground forces with air capabilities, air support and naval forces.

So far, no country has claimed to have observed what Sweden did in 2013 and what Poland did in 2009: a Russian practice air drop, near their territory, of a payload that could theoretically be a nuclear weapon.

The only time they did anything nuclear threshold-related is when they deployed Yars ICBMs, and that was in Kamchatka, Boulegue says. Capable though the missile may be to hit European capitals, the test was less of a show of force toward any particular nearby state.

Zapad17-04

Daniele Palumbo/Newsweek Media Group

The launch was part of a number of drills Russia ran across its territory during Zapad. Its western drills, however, showed an evolution in the understanding of Russian warfare after Crimea, Boulegue says.

The drafted drill scenarioa covert, foreign incursion into western Belarusgreatly resembled Russias tactics in Crimea, while combat involved a series of measures honed in Syria.

The scenario is the following: Russian airborne units are sent for reconnaissance and to repel the enemy incursion. The army then prepares for ground attack with aerial and naval support. It's less about the nuclear threat, and it is more about rehearsing what they do best," Boulegue says.

Namely, this is artillery-enabled ground assault with air supportso called Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities. Despite being billed as a defense drill, the tactics switched midway into an offensive against a conventional military force on its back foot, as opposed to a counterterrorism operation. "The drill was all about NATO, and it really showed," Boulegue says.

The arrival of paratrooper forces relies on help from an assemblage of smart kit, such as radio and electronic capabilities and drones integrationmany of which were spotted in the sky during Zapadas well as testing the speed and reliability of its own data links and communication systems in a scenario where speed, as opposed to bigger numbers, is of the essence.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian submarine fired cruise missiles at jihadi targets in Syria's Idlib province on Friday, the Russian Defence Ministry said, saying it had targeted Islamist militants who had tried to trap a group of Russian military policemen earlier in the week. The strike, launched from the Mediterranean by Russia's 'Veliky Novgorod' submarine, was part of a counter-offensive against a jihadi attack on government-held parts of northwest Syria near Hama on Tuesday. The Russian Defence Ministry on Wednesday said 29 Russian military policemen had been surrounded by jihadis as a result of that attack and that Russia had been forced to break them out in a special operation backed by air power. On Friday, it said in a statement it had fired Kalibr cruise missiles at the same jihadis from a distance of 300 kilometers (186.41 miles) striking command centers, armored vehicles and the bases of jihadis who had taken part in the original attack. (Reporting by Polina Devitt; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday he didnt knowingly lie during his six-month stint working at the White House.

Spicer appeared on Good Morning America Thursday morning and was asked if hes ever lied to the American people. Ive not knowingly done anything to do that, Spicer said.

Throughout the contentious interview, Spicer did not apologize for his handling of various issues including Trumps inauguration crowd size and the reason for former FBI Director James Comeys firing, though he did say he wished he was more clear in his responses to the press regarding the 2017 inauguration and travel ban. He also said he believed his short time as press secretary was not perfect.

I made mistakes, theres no question. I think we all do. Some of them Ive tried to own, very publicly. In some cases, there were things that I did that, until somebody brought it up, I said, Gosh, I didnt realize that was a mistake. Im sorry about that,' Spicer said.

EXCLUSIVE: Sean Spicer says he did not "knowingly" lie in first TV interview since #Emmys appearance: https://t.co/jGJ0mfxdGD - @paulafaris pic.twitter.com/r8gyDlmAwF  Good Morning America (@GMA) September 21, 2017

Following his surprise Emmy appearance earlier this week, GMA host Paula Faris asked whether the move was part of his effort to rehabilitate his image, which Spicer adamantly denied.

I feel very good with my image, he said. Im very happy with myself. I am able to go out and explain a lot of things now, but Im not on a tour. Im out having some fun.

Spicer refused to discuss any matters regarding the ongoing federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, repeatedly saying Im not going to discuss that issue at all, whenever asked about the subject.
Like many high school seniors, Indira Marquez Robles thinks a lot about her future. She knows what college she wants to go to (Bryn Mawr) and what she wants to be when she grows up (an immigration attorney) but she also doesnt know if shell be at risk for deportation in the next six months.

Marquez Robles is a beneficiary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that has shielded over 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, allowed them to get work permits and Social Security numbers, travel abroad and obtain a drivers license.

But on Sept. 5, the Trump Administration rescinded that program and gave some DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, until Oct. 5 to apply to have their documents renewed. In order to reapply, a recipients work permit and deferral has to expire by March 5, 2018. Marquez Robles missed that cutoff by 16 days.

Because the 17-year-old Houstonians DACA will expire on March 21, 2018, she doesnt have any option but to wait and see if Congress passes legislation that would grant her some form of legal status. She could still attend college, but without some form of legal protection she will live under fear of being deported by an administration that has made it clear that all undocumented immigrants are at risk.

Mentally and emotionally, Im just going through the stages of accepting that theres no like, Heres what you can do, you can go renew, the Houston resident told TIME.

For most of her young life, Marquez Robles thought the fact that she was born in Mexico was innocuous. In fact, she thought it made her kind of special.

While my sisters say that they were born at Ben Taub [Hospital] down near the medical center, I could say that I was born in a beach town in Mexico, she says.

Shed spent nearly her entire life in the U.S., having been brought to the country when she was just six months old, and never once thought of herself as anything other than an American. But when she was 14, eager to travel to France on a school trip, her parents broke the news. Unlike her siblings, she wasnt an American citizen. She would not be able to go.

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I was so committed to learning French. I thought being able apply it in France would have been monumental, she says. To have that taken away from you  you just cant even understand.

At the time, Marquez Robles says neither she nor her parents knew about DACA. They had heard about the Dream Act, but the issue of status and immigration was not something they talked about regularly as a family. But on a trip to the Mexican consulate in an effort to secure a passport, Marquez Robles encountered an organizer with United We Dream who told her about how the program could shield her from deportation, allow her to work and have access to other opportunities. At 14, she was too young to apply for DACA, but when the time came a year later, the same person shed met at the consulate helped her file her application.

She cried when her Social Security card came in the mail, overwhelmed by the doors that had opened for her as a result. A week later when her work permit came, however, her parents hid it from her and had it baked into a celebratory cake  she says a small indent from where her knife struck the card is still visible today. Papers in hand, she says the first thing she did was start looking for jobs to apply for.

Whenever they asked for my Social Security number, that feeling of having one to give them was really assuring, she says. She also started looking into getting her drivers license and thought about finally being able to take that trip to France. She got more active with United We Dream, attending marches and protests, traveling with the organization on 10 separate occasions.

The fear dissipated. I knew that there were programs and opportunities for people like me, she says. More than anything, she says, she was looking forward to applying for DACA again: That first time I got DACA, I thought, the next time Im able to apply its going to be even greater.

That time now will never come. DACA is no longer an option for Marquez Robles and many of the over 200,000 other recipients whose documents expire in 2018. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 321,920 people will also lose DACA protections in 2019. In Congress, there is bipartisan support for the legislative solution to DACA, though there are some fissures among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Marquez Robles recognizes that if there is no legislative fix in six months, she could lose her status, but for now, she is staying focused. School and life obligations keep her pretty busy, anyway. The oldest of seven, shes responsible for getting herself and two of her younger sisters to school everyday  about an hour away from their home  and making sure they get home safely.

At school, where she says she has a weighted grade-point-average of 3.7, she juggles three Advanced Placement courses  in Statistics, Biology, and Government facilitates the TED Ed Club and serves on the junior varsity debate team. To make money to save up for college, she picks up hours at a tea shop. In her free time, she likes to document her life through photography and film and volunteer with the immigrant rights organization, United We Dream.

Im not going to let this deter my desire to attend college and apply for scholarships, she says. If anything its driving me to apply for more.
Berlin (AFP) - As Germany heads to the polls on Sunday, here are six numbers to watch for -- from pints to percentages and parliamentary debuts.

- Four -

Angela Merkel is seeking four more years and a fourth term as chancellor. If she wins, as widely projected by opinion polls, she would be on track to rival the record held by Helmut Kohl, who served 16 years as chancellor.

- Five -

Smaller parties in particularly will be anxiously watching to see if they can garner enough votes to cross the five-percent threshold to enter parliament.

Liberal party FDP, which in 2013 humiliatingly crashed out of the Bundestag after failing to meet the mark, is hoping for a comeback.

- Seven -

For the first time since the 1950s, a record seven parties are expected to enter parliament. The main newcomer is likely to be the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which could also become the third-strongest party.

- 23 -

Junior partners in Merkel's outgoing coalition, the Social Democratic Party, will be hoping for a score that's as far as possible from their all-time low of 23 percent -- which they took in 2009.

Opinion polls suggest their support level is currently hovering even lower -- at around 22 percent.

- 35 -

Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union may also be looking at their lowest score of 35.1 percent, a figure which in 1998 ended Helmut Kohl's reign and ushered in an SPD-led coalition with the Greens.

- 76.7 -

Since Merkel took power in 2005, drinkers at the Oktoberfest have downed 76.7 million litres of beer at the annual festival -- the equivalent of around 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Barcelona (AFP) - Catalonia's executive accused Madrid of taking control of its regional police force on Saturday after prosecutors tasked the interior ministry with coordinating all operations aimed at stopping an outlawed independence referendum.

The row is likely to further raise tensions between the central government and Catalonia, a northeast region deeply divided over independence with its separatist leaders seeking to hold a vote on October 1 despite Madrid's refusal and a court ban.

On Saturday morning, Catalonia's chief prosecutor told the heads of the national police, Guardia Civil force and Mossos d'Esquadra -- the regional squad -- that the interior ministry would coordinate operations "in light of what happened last week," a spokesman at the ministry said.

Barcelona was rocked by protests on Wednesday as thousands took to the streets when key members of the team organising the vote were detained, and six of them were subsequently put under investigation for disobedience, embezzlement of public funds and malfeasance.

- 'Political' decision -

The Catalan government, however, said in a statement it did not "accept the interior ministry taking command of the Mossos d'Esquadra."

Joaquim Forn, the region's interior minister whose department manages the Mossos, tweeted that they were looking into taking legal action against "this interference from the state."

But in an internal note sent to agents and published by Spanish media, the Mossos high command said it would follow the prosecutor's orders, even if it did not agree.

The interior ministry in Madrid said it was not taking any power away from the Mossos.

The spokesman pointed out that the same process had been implemented in the jihadist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last month, with the Mossos tasked with coordinating operations at that time.

But unions at the Mossos reacted angrily.

The SAP union said the Security Board of Catalonia, which it says is responsible for coordinating police forces in the region, had not been convened to discuss the matter and slammed the decision as "political".

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- Vote 'won't happen' -

Madrid has used all the legal arsenal at its disposal to stop the Catalonia vote from taking place.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy asked Catalan leaders to own up that they can't hold the referendum after a crackdown dealt them a serious blow this week.

"It would be sensible, reasonable and democratic to stop and say, there won't be a referendum, which they know won't happen," Rajoy told members of his conservative Popular Party at an event in the Balearic Islands.

But Catalan leaders say they are still determined to see the referendum through even if they recognise their plans have been seriously hindered.

Prosecutors are pushing for possible sedition charges against leaders of protests in Barcelona on Wednesday.

Madrid has tightened control over the region's finances and the Constitutional Court fined 24 referendum organisers 6,000 to 12,000 euros ($7,200 to $14,300) a day until they stopped.

These included members of an electoral board set up for the referendum which was subsequently hastily dissolved by the regional government to avoid paying the fines.

And police have seized close to 10 million ballot papers destined for the vote.

All the measures have damaged separatist plans to conduct a referendum with a semblance of legitimacy, even if it was never going to be recognised by Madrid.

Still, Catalonia's President Carles Puigdemont on Saturday posted another link to a website that lists places where Catalans will be able to vote, after others were taken down.

On the streets of Barcelona, meanwhile, protests had dwindled on Saturday.

Several dozen students were still rallying in a University of Barcelona building in the city centre, but other street gatherings had dissolved.

Polls show Catalans are sharply divided on whether they want independence or not, with the latest survey in July showing 49.4 percent against and 41.1 percent in favour.

Despite the divisions, a large majority of Catalans want to vote in a legitimate referendum to settle the matter.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - When Hamas announced this week it would accept demands from rivals Fatah in a bid for Palestinian reconciliation, it was the latest in months of shifts from the Islamist group.

Faced with isolation, the weakening of a key ally and a humanitarian crisis, Hamas has reached out to former allies and old enemies.

Beyond its Palestinian reconciliation steps, which many analysts view with scepticism, the group which runs the Gaza Strip has rebuilt bridges with Iran and turned to Egypt for help.

An improvement of relations with Iran has unlocked millions of dollars in aid, but left Israelis worried it makes a new round of conflict more likely.

Concerning Egypt, Hamas wants Cairo to open its border with the Gaza Strip, but has been pressed to take steps toward Palestinian reconciliation in return.

Ahmed al-Wadia, political scientist at Gaza's Al-Israa University, said the strategy of simultaneously opening up to Egypt, Iran and Fatah "has changed the shape of Hamas's relations with the countries of the region".

Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, has faced a deepening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and a combination of factors that further isolated it.

The strip is enduring a severe electricity shortage and lacks clean water, while it also has one of the world's highest unemployment rates.

It has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade, with the two having fought three wars since 2008, while Egypt has kept its crossing with Gaza mostly closed in recent years.

Qatar, one of the strip's main financial backers, has been weakened recently due to pressure from other Gulf countries.

Hamas's decade-long split with Fatah worsened in March after the Islamist group's creation of what Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas saw as a rival government in Gaza.

He responded by cutting electricity payments and salaries for public employees in Gaza, among other moves.

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There has also been pressure from within Gaza. Thousands took to the streets in January over electricity shortages.

- New man in charge -

In March, Hamas elected as its Gaza head Yahya Sinwar, a former leader in its military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.

Two months later, Ismail Haniya became the movement's new overall head, replacing Qatar-based Khaled Meshaal.

Some analysts say Sinwar, with the military wing's backing, has increasingly asserted his control.

"Sinwar makes the decisions now and that helps him apply his vision. His goal is develop the abilities of the movement's military," Hamza Abu Shanab, a Hamas specialist, told AFP.

Grant Rumley, research fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of a recently published book on Abbas, said Hamas leaders' primary aim is "survival" after increasing isolation.

One key policy has been encouraging Egypt to reopen Rafah, the only border crossing from Gaza apart from with Israel.

Hamas has had hostile relations with Cairo since the Egyptian military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and replaced him with army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Hamas began as an offshoot of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement but under Haniya has adopted a conciliatory tone with Sisi.

On Sunday, Hamas leaders announced they would give in to demands from Fatah.

Under the proposals, they would hand control of Gaza to a unity government and prepare for elections.

The announcement, made after Egyptian brokering, was as much a message to Sisi as to Abbas, Rumley said.

"The story of reconciliation is theatre, and the audience is largely the Egyptians," he told AFP.

Hamas has now done most of what Egypt requested as a precondition for opening the border, he said.

As for Palestinian reconciliation, there are doubts over whether the steps Hamas announced will result in further concrete action.

Hamas still runs a de facto separate administration in Gaza and commands the security forces there.

- Iranian aid -

At the same time as reaching out to Egypt, Hamas has sought to realign with Israel's largest enemy -- Iran.

Tehran was the main patron to Hamas for years before a falling out over Syria in 2011, when Hamas distanced themselves from President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Earlier this year, Haniya ordered senior Hamas figures to undertake a secret visit to Iran to patch things up, Hamas figures and analysts said.

In August, a delegation to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration crystallised improving relations.

Hamas and Iranian leaders refuse to confirm figures, but one senior Hamas source put the Iranian support at $15 million a month.

In addition, Iran provides training and weapons, the source said.

Last month, Sinwar told a rare press briefing the country was once again its "largest supporter" for "weapons, finance and training to Al-Qassam."

"Some people in Hamas may find it uncomfortable to develop the relationship with Iran, but their voices are now not influential," Abu Shanab said.

Wadia said the move makes sense for Tehran as well.

"Hamas is in need of Iran's financial and military support in the face of it being squeezed and Iran realises that Hamas is an advanced front in its alliance on Israel's border," he said.

Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said the movement felt emboldened by Iranian support.

"Israel is realising it no longer has all the cards."
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is facing scrutiny from department investigators for using a government jet to travel from New York City to Washington, D.C., sources told ABC News.

Mnuchin used an Air Force C-37 jet to travel from Trump Tower in Manhattan to the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 15 after attending President Donald Trumps news conference in which the president made controversial comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Unnamed sources told ABC that the one-hour flight, which cost taxpayers $25,000, was being investigated along with two other travel requests.

Mnuchin previously had requested the use of an Air Force jet to travel on his honeymoon with Louise Linton to France, Italy and Scotland. Mnuchin told Politico Live that the request was to ensure he had secure communication throughout his trip.

This had nothing to do with convenience, Mnuchin told Politico Live. This was purely a national security issue.

ABC News reported that the honeymoon trip as well as the couples use of a military jet to travel to Louisville and Ft. Knox, Kentucky, last month were also under investigation. That trip coincided with the solar eclipse, which reached near totality in that area.

Mnuchin is not the only Trump official under fire for exorbitant travel costs. Tom Price, the head of the Health and Human Services Department, has racked up an estimated $300,000 in private charter flight costs. Politico reports that Price has utilized private planes at least 24 times since his confirmation in February.

This is Secretary Price, getting outside of D.C., making sure he is connected with the real American people, HHS spokeswoman Charmaine Yoest said in a statement to The Washington Post. Wasting four hours in an airport and having the secretary cancel his event is not a good use of taxpayer money.

ABC News spoke to former officials of the treasury and transportation departments who said this type of government travel was exceedingly rare and typically on overseas business flights.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 12:22:47|Editor: Xiang Bo

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NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Future cities should be built around people, not machines, said Jean Liu, president of Didi Chuxing, a top Chinese ride-sharing company.

Cities should empower people rather than stress them out, and should have more spaces for trees and water, said Liu at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum held in New York City on Wednesday.

She said everyone needs to make contribution to that goal.

"There are young companies who are trying to make smaller steps, which are changing the city bit by bit. And we are one of those young companies," she said.

Twenty-five million rides take place on the platform of Didi Chuxing every day. Twenty cities are working with the company to completely redesign their traffic signals and vehicle lanes, according to the company.

"I think if every one of us steps up, contributes, one day we'll be able to convert more motorways and parking lots into parks and schools," said Liu.

"And one day, we may find inner peace, even living in the busiest city in this world. And one day, we will give cities back to people," she added.
Orouba Barakat, 60, and her daughter Halla were found stabbed to death in their apartment

A senior member of the Syrian opposition and her daughter have been found stabbed to death in their Istanbul flat in what their family says was an assassination.

Orouba Barakat, 60, was reportedly a former member of the Syrian National Council opposition group while her 23-year-old daughter Halla wrote for Orient News, an anti-Assad website.

No group claimed responsibility for the killings and Turkish police said they had made no arrests. At least four Syrian journalists have been murdered inside Turkey in killings claimed by the Islamic State (Isil).

The mother and daughter, US citizen, were found dead in their home in Uskudar, in central Istanbul, late on Thursday night.

Detectives believe they may have been killed two or three days earlier and that their killer covered their bodies in caustic lime to prevent the smell, according to the Hurriyet newspaper. Unconfirmed reports said their throats had been cut.

The elder Ms Barakat was a longtime Syrian dissident and journalist who spoke out vocally against the Assad regime. Her daughter worked for several media outlets, most recently Orient News.

RIP #Syria|n activists Orouba & Halla Barakat, mom & daughter, found murdered at home in Istanbul, after having received death threats. pic.twitter.com/v9Fzy5BUPc  Syrian American Cncl (@sa_council) September 22, 2017

"The hand of tyranny and injustice assassinated my sister Doctor Orouba and her daughter Halla in their apartment in Istanbul," said Oroubas sister, Shaza.

"Orouba wrote headlines in the first page and she pursued criminals and exposed them. Her name and her daughter's name, Hala, now made front page headlines.

Halla was born in the US

The family had reportedly lived in both the UAE and in the UK before settling in Turkey, where nearly three million Syrians have fled since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011. Halla was born in the US and was an American citizen.

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Orouba and Halla were also reportedly related to three young Syrian-Americans who were murdered in North Carolina in 2015, in a case that shook the US and caused international outrage.

Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor and her sister Razan were allegedly shot to death execution by Craig Hicks, a neighbour. Mr Hicks faces a potential death penalty if convicted but his trial has not yet begun.

Orouba and Halla were also friends with Kayla Mueller, the young American aid worker who was kidnapped by Isil and died in their custody in early 2015. An amazing friend with a pure soul that was taken from us too quickly, too soon, Halla wrote on Facebook.

Syrian opposition activists and friends of the women took to social media to mourn their deaths. Im confused, speechless, afraid, and hopeless, said Alaa Basatneh, a friend of Hallas.

Please keep Syrians inside and outside of Syria in your prayers. Nowhere is safe for a pro-revolution Syrians on this planet.
About 70,000 people in Puerto Ricos northwestern municipalities of Isabela and Quebradillas were being urged to evacuate immediately Friday after the Guajataca Dam there was found to be in imminent danger of failing.

Engineers found a crack in the 88-year-old structure during an inspection after Hurricane Maria left the island Wednesday. The storm dumped more than 20 inches of rain across a wide swath of the island.

A complete failure of the dam would unleash a deadly, fast-moving wave of water as the 2-square-mile lake it once held back is funneled downhill.

215PM FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY for A Dam Failure in Isabela Municipality y Quebradillas Municipality in Puerto Rico... #prwx pic.twitter.com/L3utOjxspR  NWS San Juan (@NWSSanJuan) September 22, 2017

Per the National Weather Service, the dam began failing at 2:10 Friday afternoon. Authorities were busing as many people as they could to safety. Those who had the means to evacuate were told to do so immediately:

All Areas surrounding the Guajataca River should evacuate NOW. Their lives are in DANGER! Please SHARE! #prwx  NWS San Juan (@NWSSanJuan) September 22, 2017

Compounding problems, Hurricane Maria destroyed 95 percent of the U.S. territorys cell towers and all of Puerto Rico is without power, frustrating efforts to notify those downstream.

We dont know what the details are, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said at a news conference Friday. We are evacuating everywhere.

The Army Corps of Engineers considers all of Puerto Ricos 37 dams to be high hazard potential dams  not because theyre all at risk of failure but because of the risk they pose to human lives, the economy and the environment should they fail.

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Flooding saturates the neighborhood of Juana Matos in Catano, Puerto Rico, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria on Friday. (Photo: RICARDO ARDUENGO via Getty Images)

Jery Stedinger, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Cornell University who has studied dam safety, told HuffPost that Puerto Ricos dams are particularly vulnerable because Hurricane Irma also swiped the island just two weeks ago.

Were seeing a lot more hurricanes these days, and this was back to back, he explained. The first one probably got the ground wet, and it really enhances the runoff from the second one.

So when doing dam safety studies, one worries about more than one flood. If youve just had a big hurricane come through and the ground is saturated and the reservoir fills up when the second one rolls through, youre in a really vulnerable position.

A study by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials found extreme weather events like these are by far the most common causes of dam failure.

Those are designed to get you through the maximum conceivable event that would happen, Stedinger added. But were dealing with people and physical systems, and sometimes worse things happen than we imagine was conceivable.

Travis Waldron contributed reporting.

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Bangkok (AFP) - Thailand's deputy junta leader has accused three police officers of helping sneak ex-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of the country last month, a vanishing act that stunned the kingdom.

Yingluck, whose government was toppled by the military in 2014, has not been seen since August 25, when she failed to turn up for a court verdict in her criminal negligence trial.

Thailand's junta says it was unaware she was planning to escape -- something many Thais have found difficult to believe given the round-the-clock surveillance Yingluck frequently complained of.

Analysts say the former premier, who faced up to a decade in jail, most likely cut a secret deal with the junta to exit the country.

But the military has denied the charge and is now pointing the finger at the police.

Authorities interrogated three police officers this week after seizing a car that was allegedly used to drive Yingluck to the border with Cambodia, from where she is believed to have flown to a third country.

"They said they received the order (to help her escape)," Prawit Wongsuwon, the junta's number two, said of the police officers on Friday.

Prawit refused to elaborate on who masterminded the plot.

"I will not tell the media but the person who ordered it is in Thailand," he said, adding that Yingluck was unlikely to have crossed into Cambodia through a formal checkpoint.

Earlier in the week the kingdom's deputy police chief said the three officers were involved in Yingluck's escape, but would not face charges because there was no arrest warrant out for her at the time.

Critics have asked for hard evidence, such as clear photos or CCTV, to back up the allegations.

Yingluck's whereabouts remain unknown, but there are widespread reports she has joined her brother Thaksin, who was also toppled in a 2006 coup, in Dubai.

The siblings are massively popular among the rural poor and have dominated elections for more than a decade.

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But they are loathed by Thailand's elite and its military allies, who have battered the Shinawatra dynasty with a series of protests, coups and court rulings.

The junta, which seized power in 2014 and has repeatedly delayed a return to democracy, is desperate to avoid any instability that could challenge its regime.

Analysts said the generals feared that jailing Yingluck could unleash protests among her fervent supporters.

The Supreme Court will now deliver its ruling in absentia on September 27.
Donald Trump has announced even more sanctions on North Korea, this time targeting anyone who does business there. His move comes hot on the heels of UN Security Council Resolution 2375, passed in response to North Koreas sixth nuclear test, which marks a new stage in the worlds attempts to squeeze the Pyongyang government.

The resolution takes what was already a tough sanctions regime focused on nuclear and military-related trade and tries to exert broader pressure on the countrys economy, embargoing North Korean textile exports, capping the dispatch of additional North Korean workers overseas, and limiting exports of refined petroleum and crude oil to North Korea.

The US mission to the UN claimed that these measures amount to the strongest sanctions ever. But the measures contained within sit at odds with a claim made in the resolutions article 26, namely that the measures are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the DPRK.

Many observers have been sceptical as to the extent to which these sanctions will even be enforced. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of more than a decade of multilateral sanctions against North Korea is that they have coincided with the countrys continued economic recovery following a catastrophic collapse in the 1990s. They have also coincided with the rapid expansion of North Koreas foreign trade.

Many onlookers cite a single main reason for this: that China, by far North Koreas most important bilateral trade partner, has failed to abide by sanctions over the years. But this has changed since the start of 2017. Beijing has by most accounts strictly enforced a ban on coal imports from North Korea, raising the chances that it will also stick to the broad restrictions in resolution 2375. If it does, the humanitarian impact could be very serious.

Hit hard

Restricting North Korean energy imports, for one, cannot but have an impact on the North Korean people themselves. A recent report by the Nautilius Institute argues that the military is likely to have access to considerable stockpiles of oil, even as ordinary North Korean citizens do not.

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Similarly, the textile sector is a significant provider of jobs: the most recent North Korean census in 2008 showed that nearly 400,000 workers were employed in the textile manufacturing sector  and that was before the rapid growth of Chinese outsourcing to the North.

Though the confiscation of passports and restriction of movement of North Korean workers abroad have led them to be depicted as slave labour in the mainstream media, there is nonetheless competition among North Koreans for these jobs. Returning workers typically invest their earnings and bring back goods for sale in North Korean markets, thus fuelling a process of grassroots marketisation and the rise of an entrepreneurial class.

Clearly, then, the humanitarian concerns of the resolution cannot be taken seriously. Nonetheless, some would say that intense economic deprivation could drive the populace to rebel against the state. But is that calculation really so sound?

Tipping the balance

Because North Korea is the worlds lowest-spending nuclear state, the level of economic stress needed to halt funding to the countrys nuclear weapons programme probably cannot be applied without severe human costs. There is also no guarantee that even extreme levels of hardship brought about by effective sanctions will produce a popular North Korean revolution. During the mass starvation of the 1990s, for example, there were no recorded incidents of significant civil unrest and the regime seemed resilient.

An arguably more realistic justification for ever harsher sanctions is that they will shift the governments cost-benefit calculations, to the point where the cost of the nuclear weapons programme is outweighed by the potential benefits of greater integration into the global economy. Its fair to say, however, that the North Korean leadership is at best ambivalent about the notion of Chinese-style economic reform and opening up.

Meanwhile, we might expect sanctions to work best when they can exploit existing cleavages among a countrys various elites, and theres scant evidence of any such cleavages at the top of the North Korean power structure, at least with regard to nuclear weapons. Without strong domestic opposition or significant cleavages among the elite, the impact of broad economic sanctions against North Korea may resemble the terrible human suffering caused by sanctions against Iraq  and it was in the end war, not sanctions, that brought that regime down.

Another problem is that if sanctions fail, they can in fact reinforce a regimes illiberal characteristics, providing fodder for propaganda that rails against a hostile outside world. Furthermore, in his new years speech in 2015, Kim Jong-un spoke of the need to cure what he saw as the import disease and rely more on domestically produced commodities  not only strengthening the countrys resilience in the face of further sanctions, but intensifying its insular character.

To be sure, not all sanctions are ill-advised. But as the scope of multilateral sanctions is extended to target everyday North Koreans livelihoods, its crucial to ask whether this approach is likely to succeed. Given just how resilient the North Korean regime has so far been in the face of intense international pressure, the chances seem slim.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Kevin Gray is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump have been hurtling insults left, right and center at each other this past week.

The U.S. President kicked off this recent round of insult exchanges when he referred to Kim as a Rocket Man on a suicide mission, during his speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. A few days later, Kim released a unprecedented statement in response, in which he called Trump a dotard  a person in a state of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness  and mentally deranged.

Trump threw the next punch; he took to Twitter to call the North Korean leader obviously a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 22, 2017

But this isnt the first time weve seen the two world leaders exchanging a variety of creative insults. On July 4 of this year, Trump took to Twitter to insult Kim, in response to North Koreas claim that it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time.

Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Trump tweeted, adding: Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!

In August, North Koreas official Korean Central News Agency described Trump as a leader who frequently tweets weird articles of his ego-driven thoughts and spouts rubbish to give his assistants a hard time, the Associated Press reported at the time. The KCNA also criticized South Koreas Defense Minister Song Young-moo for pinning hope on that mad guy, referring to Trump.

And earlier in September, Trump described North Korea as a rogue nation and embarrassment to China.
Lome (AFP) - Togo's government was surprised by how many people took to the streets earlier this month to demand the removal of President Faure Gnassingbe.

But with no end in sight to the protesters' calls for change, questions are mounting about whether the pressure can be maintained to bring an end to his family's 50-year rule.

Opposition leaders were quick to call the first marches this month "unprecedented", after hundreds of thousands of people young and old turned out in force across the country.

What was also unprecedented was the united front presented by opposition parties, whose squabbling and differences in the past made them an ineffective force against the ruling regime.

"This time there's a real window of opportunity that we mustn't let close," said Nathaniel Olympio, head of the Togolese Party.

- Cunning needed -

Veteran opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, from the National Alliance for Change (ANC), has vowed "no let-up" in the protests until Gnassingbe steps down.

But already his words seem optimistic. With unemployment and poverty widespread across Togo, many say protesting is a luxury they can't afford when they have mouths to feed.

Nathan, a 54-year-old carpenter, believes God has chosen Togo's president. "Me? I'm trying to earn my crust. I don't get involved in politics," he told AFP.

David Dosseh, who coordinates university civil society groups in Togo, said: "It'll be difficult to mobilise as many people over a longer period of time.

"You have to think about other ways to shut down the country, such as civil disobedience."

Comi Toulabour, head of research at the Institute of Politics in Bordeaux, was more emphatic: "If the opposition isn't more cunning, the government will have the upper hand."

Fabre has organised weekly demonstrations for years. Every Saturday, his supporters march through the streets of the capital, Lome, to the beach.

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"When all's said and done, it was a picnic atmosphere," said Toulabor. "It's unfortunate to say it, but as long as nothing happens, the government isn't bothered.

"Cracks have already started to reappear in the (opposition) coalition. They all know that it was (Tikpi) Atchadam who brought about the real anti-establishment protest."

Atchadam, whom the government brands a dangerous extremist, managed to create a popular support base in northern Togo, which has historically been loyal to the Gnassingbe family.

In Bafilo, Mango and Sokode, protesters attacked police stations and set fire to houses belonging to senior members of the president's ruling party.

At least three people have been killed and dozens more have been injured since the start of the protests as the authorities fought back.

"Only the army can tip the balance," said Toulabor. "But its organisation is still very clannish."

Power is kept in the family in Togo where the head of the armed forces is the president's brother-in-law.

"This situation worries us, obviously," a source close to the presidency conceded.

"If it hadn't the government wouldn't have proposed an emergency parliamentary bill (on constitutional reform). The pressure is real."

- Political trap -

The government bill proposes that presidents can only serve up to two terms.

The opposition has been calling for such a measure for more than a decade. A referendum will be held on the issue in the coming months.

But the application of the restriction is not retroactive, which effectively allows Gnassingbe to stand for a fourth -- and even a fifth -- five-year term of office.

He took power in 2005 after the death of his father and has already won three elections, albeit contested. Before him, General Gnassingbe Eyadema ruled for 38 years.

Not unexpectedly, the opposition is against such a move.

"The referendum gives the impression that the government is giving the people the chance to choose," said Gilles Yabi, a political analyst who specialises in West Africa.

"It's always the same trap as before. The most important thing for the opposition now is to stay united."

Gnassingbe currently holds the rotating presidency of the regional bloc the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), making outside political pressure unlikely.

"Change will only come from the Togolese people themselves," said Yabi.
Baghdad (AFP) - Policeman Ahmad regrets the day he detained a motorist at a checkpoint for possession of a gun without a licence, bringing the weight of Iraqi tribal customs down on his head.

Faced with threats and the reality that state law in Iraq cannot stand muster with tribes and their customs, the police captain gathered his family and fled Baghdad to take refuge in the south of the country.

He had been posted at a checkpoint in an eastern district of the capital when he discovered the gun in a car.

Along with comrades, they arrested the driver, a merchant, but before long a group of gunmen turned up and secured his release.

"We were only able to hold on to the gun," the captain told AFP, opting not to give his family name or the province where he and his family are now living.

Days after the incident, he had received a threatening telephone call.

"We know where you live, where your family are. You'd better return the gun if you want to save them," was the crux of the message he received.

Ahmad teamed up with fellow police officers to arrange a meeting with representatives of the tribe of the man he had briefly detained.

He was shown documents apparently certifying the gun as legal, leaving him with little choice but to return the weapon and close the case.

The tradition in Iraq is for many cases to be settled by tribal mediators -- local councils or family representatives -- rather than the law of the land.

They decide on compensation, financial or otherwise, to be negotiated and accepted by the parties in dispute.

- 'Tribe can always find us' -

Ali, another policeman who refused to give his family name, had to pay the price -- literally -- laid down by the parallel law system.

He had to cough up close to $10,000 and his captain almost as much, all because they tried to implement state law.

During a raid to close down illegal street stalls, he had been hit by one of the traders and struck back with his truncheon.

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Three weeks later, his police station received the demand of a tribe summoning those who took part in the raid to a tribal meeting.

The implication was that otherwise a group of youths would be sent to deal with those responsible.

Ali's superiors refused to intervene because, he says, they had not wanted the interior ministry to be dragged into what for them was a tribal affair.

At the meeting, Ali and his captain were slapped with the stiff penalty as compensation.

"Whenever we try to arrest anyone caught in the act or on suspicion, the tribe can always find us," he said.

So "if I see anyone breaking the law, I don't intervene."

Ali, with anger in his voice, said: "I don't want to be the victim of such stories or to have such problems."

In Iraq, a conservative Arab country where your origin and family name carries weight in finding a job, a partner in marriage or in politics, "tribal customs have a real impact on society", said Hussein Allawi, a teacher in national security at Baghdad's Al-Nahrain University.

- No difference on the ground -

Up until the ouster of longtime dictator Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion in 2003, state law took precedence over tribal customs. All that has changed.

"For the past 10 years or so, no measure has been taken" to limit "the negative impact" of such customs, said Allawi.

With total impunity, "some people use the name of their tribe to obstruct the work of the security forces," he said.

Allawi said the phenomenon has also had a negative impact on the economy of the war-battered country, with foreign investors wary of being entangled in a state which already ranks internationally as one of the world's most corrupt.

He said an interior ministry unit has been set up to liaise with powerful tribes and associate them with the process of imposing respect for the law through cooperation with the security forces.

Earlier this month, the authorities organised a conference in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of the capital, with tribal leaders.

"A protocol was signed between the tribes and the ministries of the interior and justice," Abbud al-Issawi, head of a parliamentary committee on tribal affairs, told AFP.

The interior ministry's representative at the meeting stressed that obstructing the work of those in charge of law and order carried a three-year jail term under Iraqi law.

But a police commander, again preferring anonymity, said the meeting came up with "nothing more than promises by some tribes".

"On the ground, we see no difference."
Donald Trump's approval rating has reached over 40 per cent, a stark contrast from the hit it took after his response to Charlottesville: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trumps rating has jumped above 40 per cent - an approval bump he apparently earned in the wake of his handling of recent hurricanes and his securing of bipartisan deals.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll suggests the President has a job approval rating of 43 per cent, three points higher than the previous month.

An overwhelming majority of Americans - to the tune of 71 per cent - approved of Mr Trumps deal with Congressional Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to provide hurricane relief to Texas and Florida as well as avoiding a government shutdown for at least three more months.

Mr Trump recently took trips to storm ravaged areas of Texas and Florida, expressed his willingness to use the US military against North Korea, and vowed to end the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals programme that protects people who were brought to the US illegally as minors from deportation.

After a dinner with Ms Pelosi and Mr Schumer, Mr Trump appeared to at least soften his stance on the Obama-era immigration programme and angered some of his base.

That suggests at least some of his support in this latest poll is from people not traditionally labeled as Trump supporters.

However, the good news for the Trump team was limited to that.

Mr Trump appears to be unable to shake the negative perception of his response to the violence in Charlottesville that left a yuong woman dead, with only 20 per cent of Americans approving of it.

Two-thirds of respondents felt the President has accomplished very little or only some, with 33 per cent saying they felt he got great deal or a fair amount done while in office these last nine months.

For reference, at this point in his presidency in 2009, Barack Obamas splits were 40 per cent and 59 per cent, respectively.

While his base of supporters and others appreciate the bipartisan deals, Mr Trump blaming his Republican colleagues for inaction has had a negative impact on their ratings.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has a 40 per cent unfavourability rating, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - who has received much of Mr Trumps ire on the Obamacare replacement bill - has just an 11 per cent favourability rating.

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For Mr McConnell, just 13 per cent of Republican Trump supporters view him favourably.

The numbers for Mr McConnell and Mr Ryan point to an overall Republican dissatisfaction with their own party, just 36 per cent happy with the job their elected leaders are doing.

A Senate vote is scheduled for early next week and the poll showed that the country appears to be fairly evenly split on the issue of a single-payer system: 47 per cent favour it, while 46 per cent oppose it.

The real test for GOP voters and the party leadership will be when the tax reform proposal is presented soon.

Of those polled, 37 per cent say that American business do not pay a fair share of taxes and 42 per cent say they do not want taxes raised.

However, 40 per cent of people said they felt they pay more than their share of individual taxes.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll also released earlier this week gave Mr Trump a 43 per cent approval rating.
Some good news for President Donald Trump: His approval rating has actually risen a decent amount in recent weeks. Some bad news: Throughout the history of modern polling, no president has been this unpopular at the same point in his first term.

The weighted average from data-aggregating website FiveThirtyEight pegged Trump's approval rating at 39.7 percent Friday morning. His disapproval stood at 53.7 percent. At first blush, those seem like great results for the president, who has struggled in the polls for his entire tenure. For most of August, for instance, the FiveThirtyEight trackerwhich combines public polls and adjusts for a survey's quality, recency, sample size and partisan leanhad Trump around 36 or 37 percent. Now, at nearly 40 percent, the president certainly has made a nice little jump.

But put into historical context, that's a terrible figure. Dating back all the way to former President Harry Truman in the 1940s, no president has been as unpopular on day 246 of his presidency (where Trump is now). The only former leader of the free world who comes close is President Gerald Ford.

For a while, Trump had risen above Ford, who served after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace after the Watergate scandal. Ford's approval rating plummeted after he pardoned Nixon in 1974, a move that was unpopular at the time but is now considered by many to have been the correct decision and an act of political bravery. But even he stood at 41 percent approval on day 246 of his first term, according to FiveThirtyEight. Former President Barack Obama had an approval rating of 52.7 percent on day 246.

Still, folks seemed to have moved on from the president's disastrous run in August, when his popularity sank after his seeming defense of Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia (the infamous "there were very fine people on both sides"). The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, for instance, found that 43 percent of respondents approved of the job he was doing, with many expressing they liked the president's willingness to work with Democratic leaders on working out a new deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

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Trump is on the rise. Trump also remains in the basement.

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Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 12:57:59|Editor: Xiang Bo

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 1,000 Brazilian troops were deployed on Friday to a favela, or slum, in the southeastern city of Rio de Janeiro, in a bid to wrest control from local drug gangs.

The 950 soldiers backed up by 10 armored vehicles cordoned off Rocinha, Rio's largest slum, located in the southern part of the city, and exchanged gunfire with gang members, alarming local residents.

"Rocinha" was trending on Twitter as Brazilians and foreigners there posted comments while events unfolded.

"The atmosphere is tense here in Rocinha," one user said.

Rio state Governor Luiz Fernando Pezao requested the military intervention following five days of intense shootouts between rival drug gangs.

"We are not going to let up in Rocinha," said Pezao, adding:" We have discovered a significant amount of arms and drugs in a region we have advanced on."

Military police have carried out daily anti-crime operations in the favela since Sunday, when the shootouts between rival groups first broke out.

Favela residents were posting photos of the fighting on social networks, including bullet-ridden walls, spent shells everywhere and the gruesome image of a burnt corpse atop a smoldering pile of rubbish.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, Rocinha was the city's largest favela in 2010, with more than 69,000 inhabitants.

In 2012, the Rio de Janeiro state government created the Pacifying Police Units (UPP) to enforce peace inside favelas. Though they did not eliminate drug trafficking, they succeeded in curbing violence.

This latest flare-up of violence comes less than a month after officials cut back UPP personnel by 30 percent due to budget shortfalls.
Should the world be worried when two of its most notorious heads of state, both nuclear powers, are compared to children squabbling in a kindergarten by the foreign minister of another global power famed for its own belligerent proclivities?

Well, folks, that's exactly what happened after President Donald Trump taunted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a madman and repeated an earlier rocket man jibe in his debut UN General Assembly speech Tuesday.

Kim responded in a rare personal statement, describing Trump as mentally deranged and a dotard.

It took Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to chasten the warmongering pre-schoolers, as he saw them.

"Yes, it's unacceptable to silently watch North Korea's nuclear military adventures but it is also unacceptable to unleash war on the Korean Peninsula," he said.

Putin and Lavrov

Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/Reuters

A pause was needed, Lavrov said, "to calm down the hotheads."

He called for a political process to resolve the dispute, which he said was a key part of the United Nations Security Council process.

"Together with China we'll continue to strive for a reasonable approach and not an emotional one like when children in a kindergarten start fighting and no-one can stop them," he said.

Trumps remarks came after a series of provocative displays of military strength by North Korea, with the rogue state conducting its largest ever nuclear test and launching a ballistic missile over Japan earlier in August.

In his UN speech, Trump threatened to totally destroy North Korea if it attacked the U.S. or its allies. Kim said in his statement that the remarks showed that North Korea had been right to build a nuclear bomb.

Russia is one of North Korea's two main sources of oil imports, and initially resisted a tougher series of sanctions proposed by the UN Security Council in reaction to North Koreas military displays. However Moscow has backed a more limited sanctions package limiting petroleum exports to North Korea.

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For the past six months, Ive been quietly asking current and former counterintelligence professionals, Who is making sure Russia doesn't undermine our democracy? The answer has always been the same: I dont know, but I hope somebody is. But since President Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, I'm not sure anybody is.

Special counsel Robert Muellers Trump-Russia probe is heating up. And the potential criminal charges against the president and his team has become the biggest story in the country. Thats partly because Trump is so polarizing. But the criminal probe and the growing public anger wont do anything to stop the wider threat posed by Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin.

The threat from Moscow is not an idle one. It appears to have resulted in a successful operation against the United States, one that likely began long before Trump became president. The Russians not only penetrated the presidents inner circle but also used social media to spread fake news and may have even targeted voting systems.

In the aftermath of this campaign, the U.S. has done too little to harden its defenses against this kind of operation. There have been no demands to increase the budget of the intelligence community to counter Russia and other intelligence threats to the U.S. Many seem to think that we can defeat Moscow simply by throwing Trump out of office. Thats a dangerous idea.

Related: Is Trump Really a Russian Spy?

The Russian threat is one I understand well. In 1989, a Soviet intelligence officer walked into my fathers office in New York City. The man, a military officer assigned to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, wanted to do legitimate businessor so my dad thought. My father, a Pakistani immigrant, was running a small defense contracting company that supplied the U.S. government with books and research material. So while a Soviet standing in my dads office was abnormal, what he asked forinformation on nuclear nonproliferation and weapons controlwas not. Yet within 20 minutes, two FBI special agents were asking for my fathers help in keeping tabs on the Soviets. With their approval, my dad was to continue doing business with the enemy and share what information he learned with the bureau. It was the beginning of a decades-long relationship among the Soviets/Russians, the FBI and my family that continued until 2009.

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My father saw firsthand how the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War had no impact on the Russian spy game. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R., intelligence officers from the Russian Mission to the United Nations very quickly began showing up at the family office, picking up where the Soviets left off, looking for the same information. They continued to view the United States through the Cold War lens. We were still the enemy.

But U.S. intelligence viewed the Russians a bit differently. In 2005, I began working for the FBI against the Russians as a double agent. While my handlers and I were completely focused on our old Cold War adversary, the rest of America was worried about terrorism and Al-Qaeda. The agents I worked with were dedicated and professional patriots, but they had little support or resources. I would often joke with them about the hand-me-down cars they drove, and they would chuckle and groan. The agents were fighting a battle the American people thought was over. So how could the FBI spend more money on it when we had just been attacked by a different enemy? They couldnt.

Putin, Trump

Carlos Barria/Reuters

The bureau was committed to counterintelligence, but it was far from a top priority. During my operation, I was contacted by a military attache from another country and invited to meet with him. As I sat in his consulate in Manhattan, drinking tea, the attache told me he was looking for somebody in D.C. to put me in contact with, a positive and intriguing sign. Excited about the meeting, I reported the details of my discussion to the FBI and then waited for instructions as to what to do next. Weeks rolled by without any further direction from the bureau. Finally, one of the agents dejectedly told me that the agent responsible for that country wont return my calls. I never spoke to the attache again and never learned who in D.C. I was to contact. It was a missed opportunity.

Moscow rarely misses opportunities. Talking with a Russian intelligence officer was always an intense, sobering experience. The Russians were distrustful of everyone and everything. The tactics they employed to avoid FBI surveillance were simple but highly effective. For example, the Russians would conclude each meeting with me by handing over a menu or a business card of another restaurant. Then, a week or so later, I would receive a short call inviting me to lunch. At the end of the meeting, the process would repeat. There was never any discussion by phone or email. Their disciplined devotion to security dictated that all communication occurred in person. This meant that unless the FBI knew where I was meeting my handlers, they would have struggled to know how to monitor us. The Russians had honed their craft, while the FBI agents were struggling to keep up.

As my days working undercover against the Russians came to an end, I worried more and more about this mismatch. In a postCold War world, its easy to understand how justifying the cost of counterintelligence may have become politically difficult. But nobody told that to the Russians. With FBI counterintelligence efforts languishing, they found the perfect opportunity to attack us.

In the aftermath of that assault, the U.S. has still not acknowledged any counterintelligence failure, nor has it adequately sought to fix it. As long as the president of the United States continues to call Russian interference a hoax and fake news, the weaknesses the Russians exploited to successfully undermine our democracy will never be strengthened. If the 2016 Russian election interference has taught us anything, it is that we must hold FBI counterintelligence to the standard they held in 1989 when they walked into my dads office: to be able to detect and counter a Russian recruitment effort in 20 minutes.

Naveed Jamali is the author of How to Catch a Russian Spy, a memoir about working undercover as a double agent for the FBI. He continues to serve as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve and is a senior fellow in the Program on National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His views are his own.

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(BEIJING)  President Donald Trumps announcement that Beijing told its banks to stop dealing with North Korea is not consistent with the facts, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Friday, but he gave no indication what steps China might be taking.

The spokesman, Lu Kang, said Beijing complies with U.N. Security Council resolutions. The council has told member countries to ban most activity abroad by North Koreas banks in response to its nuclear and missile tests.

Asked at a regular briefing about Trumps comment, Lu said, As far as I know, what you have mentioned just now is not consistent with the facts.

Lu gave no explanation but added, in principle, China has always implemented the U.N. Security Councils resolutions in their entirety and fulfilled our due responsibility.

China wants to stop North Koreas nuclear and missile development but has warned against pushing the government of Kim Jong Un so hard it collapses or hurting ordinary North Koreans.

China accounts for about 90 percent of North Koreas foreign trade. Beijing has cut off imports of coal, iron ore, seafood and other goods in line with U.N. sanctions.

Trump praised China on Thursday for what he said was instructions to its banks to cut off business with North Korea. He said the action was a somewhat unexpected move and we appreciate it.

U.S. officials would not confirm that. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he spoke at length with the head of Chinas central bank but I am not going to comment on confidential discussions.

The Chinese central bank would not take questions by phone and did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

Also Thursday, Trump issued an executive order expanding the Treasury Departments ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea and to ban them from the U.S. financial system.

It imposes a 180-day ban on vessels and aircraft that have visited North Korea from visiting the United States.

Trump announced the measures as he met the leaders of South Korea and Japan, the nations most immediately imperiled by North Koreas threats of a military strike.
By Heekyong Yang

SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Saturday it has opened an investigation into fake mobile phone alerts and social media messages advising U.S. military personnel and their families to evacuate the Korean Peninsula.

The phony messages, which were spread on Thursday, came at a sensitive time, with tensions high after North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3. The test and a series of missile launches have triggered a war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was not yet aware of how many people received the hoax messages or who was behind them, a spokesman for the USFK told Reuters.

The USFK posted a statement on its official Facebook page on Thursday making clear that the U.S. military did not issue any evacuation-related alerts.

It has also instructed all U.S. Department of Defense personnel and their family to confirm any evacuation-related communications before acting.

The USFK conducts regular biannual noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) exercises in the spring and fall to rehearse for possible evacuation. The second NEO exercise of the year is scheduled to take place in October.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Hyunjoo Jin and Lincoln Feast)
By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) - Protesters gathered outside a federal court in Boston on Thursday where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to address law enforcement about what he called the need to tackle transnational gang violence and to secure the Mexican border.

Sessions reemphasized what he said was a need to target cross-border criminal organizations, specifically the gang MS-13, which the Justice Department says has more than 30,000 members worldwide and 10,000 members in the United States.

Tying the effort to fight the gang and Republican President Donald Trump's administration's efforts to crackdown on illegal immigration, Sessions said the Justice Department was directing more prosecutorial resources to the U.S.-Mexican border.

He also made an apparent reference to Trump's campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, saying such a wall would help protect against gang members who are smuggled across it.

"Securing our border, both through a physical wall and with brave men and women of the border patrol restoring an orderly and lawful system of immigration, is part and parcel of any successful crime fighting, gang fighting strategy," he said.

He also said the Trump administration was examining the "exploitation" of a program that helps unaccompanied refugee minors by gang members using it to "come to this country as wolves in sheep clothing" and to recruit new members.

Outside the courthouse, around 40 people gathered in a protest organized by the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, holding signs saying "Jeff: Go Home" and "Racism is #Notwelcome."

MS-13, also called La Mara Salvatrucha, has taken root in the United States in Los Angeles in the 1980s in neighborhoods populated with immigrants from El Salvador who had fled its civil war.

In Boston, federal prosecutors have since January 2016 brought racketeering, drug trafficking, weapons and other charges against 61 people linked to MS-13 in Massachusetts including leaders, members and associates of the gang.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Diane Craft)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 13:03:02|Editor: Xiang Bo

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TORONTO, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Canada and Ukraine on Friday affirmed a joint commitment to strengthening bilateral relations.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued a joint statement during the latter's one-day working visit to Canada, promising to seek strong and enduring ties between the two countries.

"We are committed to working closely together to ensure that Canadians and Ukrainians alike can take advantage of the benefits of CUFTA (the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement) as soon as possible," said the statement.

Canada promised to "continue to support Ukraine's progress towards Euro-Atlantic integration and to adopt and implement NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) standards through its ambitious agenda of reforms," the statement said.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and Ukraine. Canada was the first Western nation to recognize Ukraine's independence.
Kampala (AFP) - Uganda's main opposition leader on Friday condemned a police crackdown on opponents of a plan to scrap presidential age limits to allow 73-year-old President Yoweri Museveni to run again.

A proposal by ruling party lawmakers to table the constitutional amendment has sparked outrage from opposition politicians, civil society groups and students who protested at a prestigious Kampala university for a second day Friday.

Kizza Besigye, who leads the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, said Museveni's regime was a "military junta" that had seized control of the state.

"What we are seeing happening in the country today has been in the making since Museveni took the oath as president in 1986 and began embarking on a programme to construct a presidential monarchy," Besigye said.

A ruling party MP had been set to table the motion Thursday but it was delayed without explanation.

The amendment would scrap the presidential age limit, currently set at 75, to pave the way for Museveni to run for a sixth consecutive term in 2021.

Besigye said the age limit was the last constitutional check on presidential power left after term limits were removed by parliament in 2005.

"This age limit provision is the only way Museveni can be forced to give up power peacefully," he said.

On Thursday, Besigye had been prevented from leaving his home while another senior opposition figure, Kampala mayor Erias Lukwago, was arrested.

Police said the mayor was planning an illegal demonstration and that they had "pre-empted the planned activities" by arresting him. Lukwago said Ugandans were living under a "reign of terror".

Students at the country's main Makerere University in the capital played cat-and-mouse with armed police firing tear gas on Friday as they protested the arrest of some of their leaders during the previous day's demonstration.

After his release student leader Ronald Ainebyoona claimed to have been "tortured" by police. "They used gun butts to hit us to extract confessions", he said.
US stealth fighters fly beside B-1B bombers over waters near Kyushu, Japan, on 31 August. - JAPAN AIR SELF-DEFENSE FORCE VIA

US bombers on Saturday flew further north of the Korean Demilitarised Zone than ever before this century, staging a show of force as North Koreas foreign minister warned that the US was pushing them closer towards retaliation.

Ri Yong-ho, speaking at the United Nations general assembly, described President Donald Trump as an old gambler who "has tried to turn the UN arena into a gangsters' nest where money is respected and bloodshed the order of the day."

He committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland inevitable all the more, said Mr Ri, referencing Mr Trumps speech on Tuesday at the UN.

"What else could be a bigger threat than the violent remarks such as pouring 'fire and fury', 'total destruction' coming from the top authority of the world's biggest nuclear power.

"The very reason the DPRK had to possess nuclear weapons is because of the US and it had to strengthen and develop its nuclear force onto the current level to cope with the US."

The Pentagon said the flight was in response to the "grave threat" that North Korea posed to the Asia-Pacific region, and the international community.

"This is the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any US fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Korea's coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take (North Korea's) reckless behavior," said Dana White, spokesman for the Pentagon.

The flights are a "demonstration of US resolve and a clear message" that President Donald Trump "has many military options to defeat any threat," she said.

Ms White added: "we are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the U.S. homeland and our allies."

Participants of a mass rally shout slogans as they gather before a banner reading 'let us beat down the sanctions of the imperialists with great progress of self-reliance' on Kim Il-Sung sqaure in Pyongyang on September 23, 2017 Credit: AFP

The flights come at the end of a heated week of rhetoric, with Mr Trump threatening to "totally destroy" the country, and Kim Jong-un responding, in a rare first-person letter in the state press, that Mr Trump was a "dotard".

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Some analysts have expressed concern at what they see as the goading of Mr Kim.

Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports nuclear weapon reduction and eventual elimination, said the US risks a stumble into war.

He told The Hill: We have the pressure. Its time for the engagement. You have got to walk back from the brink here."

Michael Fuchs, who worked at the state department under Barack Obama said that "by any measure President Trumps quote-unquote strategy is not working.

This is squarely in the hands of the president himself," he said.

The rest of his administration, so far at least, seems willing to carry out a strategy focused on deterrence, reassurance, pressure and diplomacy.

Members of the People's Security Council take part an anti-U.S. rally, in this September 23, 2017 photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang. Credit: REUTERS

"But the president from time to time lobs a grenade on top of these efforts, and spins the escalation up again.

But Mr Trump's supporters praised his bold stance.

Duncan Hunter, a Republican congressman for California, worried that the North Koreans might soon be able to strike the west coast of the United States with a nuclear weapon.

The question is, do you wait for one of those? Or two? Do you preemptively strike them? And thats what the president has to wrestle with, he said.

I would preemptively strike them. You could call it declaring war, call it whatever you want.

John Bolton, who was George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, said he thought a pre-emptive strike could soon be considered.

Were getting very close to that point, he said.
Washington (AFP) - US bombers and fighter escorts flew off the coast of North Korea on Saturday in a show of force against its nuclear weapons program, escalating already sky-high tensions.

The hermit state's foreign minister meanwhile derided Donald Trump as "mentally deranged" at the United Nations, while the US president fired back on Twitter with fresh threats.

The latest exchange of bellicose rhetoric comes as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang's weapons ambitions -- including a suggestion this week that the country is considering detonating an H-bomb over the Pacific.

US bombers have carried out similar flights before, as the United States and the international community struggle to rein in North Korea's weapons programs.

But in a new stage for such show-of-force operations, the Pentagon stressed this was the furthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas that any US fighter or bomber has flown off North Korea's coast in this century.

"This mission is a demonstration of US resolve and a clear message that the president has many military options to defeat any threat," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said.

"We are prepared to use the full range of military capabilities to defend the US homeland and our allies."

The Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers flown Saturday are based in Guam, and were accompanied by F-15C Eagle fighter escorts from Okinawa, Japan, White said. They flew over international waters off the east coast of North Korea.

There was another reason for concern after an underground rumble near North Korea's nuclear test site. China at first said it suspected an explosion.

But it was later ruled by a nuclear test ban watchdog and other experts to be a shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake and likely an aftershock from the hermit state's latest nuclear test on September 3.

This week saw a blistering war of words between Kim and Trump, with the US leader using his maiden speech at the United Nations General Assembly to warn that Washington would "totally destroy" the North if America or its allies were threatened.

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- 'Full of megalomania' -

Pyongyang, which says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself against the threat of a US invasion, responded on Friday with a rare personal rebuke from Kim, who called Trump "mentally deranged" and threatened the "highest level of hardline countermeasure in history."

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho took things further. He, too, dismissed Trump as deranged, and said the US president's threats had increased the chances of military confrontation.

Ri told the UN General Assembly in New York that Trump's vow to "totally destroy" his country had made "our rockets' visit to the entire US mainland all the more inevitable."

Describing Trump as a "mentally deranged person full of megalomania," Ri said the US leader who "holds the nuclear button" posed "the gravest threat to international peace and security today."

Trump later responded on Twitter, insulting Kim once more and appearing to threaten both men.

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!" he wrote late Saturday night.

Washington announced tougher restrictions Friday aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program, building on tough new UN sanctions aimed at choking Pyongyang of cash.

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang.

But on the fringes of the UN meeting this week, Ri upped the tensions further, telling reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

Monitoring groups estimate that the nuclear test conducted in North Korea earlier this month had a yield of 250 kilotons, which is 16 times the size of the US bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.
US soldiers participate in a South Korea-US combined arms collective training exercise at the US army's Rodriguez shooting range in Pocheon, about 70 km northeast of Seoul near the heavily-fortified border with North Korea on September 19, 2017: AFP/Getty Images

US troops in South Korea have been sent an urgent message telling their families to flee the country. But soon after it was revealed as fake.

The US Army has now been forced to send out a message telling troops to check any messages and ensure that they are legitimate.

Officials have so far not been able to publicly confirm where the messages came from, or whether they are related at all to ongoing tensions with North Korea.

Kim Jong-Un and his military are thought to command surprisingly sophisticated cyber warfare operations as part of its army.

The alerts told staff they all noncombatants are going to be evacuated out of the country. Ordinarily, such an order would only come in the face of danger for people inside Korea  in the event of an attack from the North, for instance.

The hoax messages were sent by SMS and Facebook, to "multiple service members and spouses in the Republic of Korea", according to an official warning sent to the army. Troops have now been asked to report any information they find to counter-intelligence officials, apparently to try and stop the spread of the fake messages.

Troops have now been sent another urgent message, making clear that the US Army didn't send out such a message, and warning troops that they should be careful about any further messages they receive.

The military isn't thought to have a secure or authenticated way of spreading such messages legitimately, and instead just tells troops to "verify the legitimacy of the sender".
Magdiel Sanchez - Sanchez Family Photo

Police in Oklahoma came under intense scrutiny Thursday for fatally shooting a deaf man who failed to respond to their commands, even as neighbours were alerting officers of the mans disability.

Officers went to the Oklahoma City home of Magdiel Sanchez looking for his father, who was involved in a hit-and-run car accident. They instead killed the 35-year-old who could neither hear nor speak, according to witnesses.

Neighbours said they were trying to intervene by yelling "he cant hear you," to prevent the Tuesday night shooting outside Sanchezs home, but police did not heed their warnings.

"As the police pulled up, we was all... screaming at the cops not to shoot," neighbor Julio Rayos told reporters.

Oklahomas deaf community questioned the police use of deadly force, while the American Civil Liberties Union offered a scathing rebuke Thursday.

"Magdiel Sanchez was shot at his own home, without having committed any crime," said the ACLUs Allie Shinn. "Merely failing to follow commands is an unacceptable defense for the use of lethal force."

During the confrontation, Sanchez was holding in his right hand a two-foot metal pipe with a leather loop. Police said they believe the object was designed to be a weapon.

Sanchez did not respond to officers commands to drop the pipe, and Lieutenant Matthew Lindsey fired a Taser while Sergeant Christopher Barnes fired his gun. Sanchez died at the scene.

Police could not say why the officers fired different weapons, but not all members of the department have access to non-lethal Tasers.

Oklahoma City Police Capt. Bo Mathews Credit: Sue Ogrocki/AP

Neither officer was outfitted with a body camera, but police interviewed multiple witnesses who were cooperating with a criminal investigation.

"Its a crying shame," one witness, who asked not to be identified, told The Oklahoman newspaper. "I believe they could have disarmed him without shooting."

Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty said Thursday that he would meet with groups representing the disabled, the newspaper reported.

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"We have a responsibility to serve the entire public, regardless of who they are, what disability they have," the newspaper quoted Citty as saying.

A leader at the Oklahoma Association of the Deaf told TV station KWTV that police need more training.

"I dont know why this situation so quickly escalated," JR Reininger said. "There were two police officers and one deaf man with one metal rod."
The 5.2-metre male crocodile was killed by a single gunshot to the head - AFP

Australians have been warned to beware of aggressive male saltwater crocodiles fighting it out for dominance, after the death of a giant 17-foot saltie created a power vacuum in a river.

A manhunt began on Friday for the person who illegally killed the iconic reptile, after its carcass was found in the Fitzroy River in central Queensland with a single gunshot wound to the head.

The incident sparked an urgent warning from the state government about aggressive behaviour from younger crocodiles in the area, which had been kept in check by the dominant male and were expected to start jostling for dominance.

"People need to clearly understand the death of this animal has changed the balance of the crocodile population in the Fitzroy," the environment department's diversity operations director Michael Joyce told Australian media.

An investigation has been launched to find the person who killed the 'iconic' crocodile Credit: EPA/ Queensland Police Service

"We can expect increased aggressive activity by younger male crocodiles. That's because they will be competing to take the dominant position which is now vacant.

Mr Joyce added that he didn't think the crocodile had posed a problem but rather, was "an important part of our ecosystem".

"He is a crocodile that does spend a fair bit of time controlling the river and controlling the young animals that are in the river, he said.

The death of the dominant crocodile is expected to create a power vacuum, with younger males likely to aggressively compete with each other Credit: EPA/ Queensland Police Service

In Queensland, the maximum penalty for offenders caught killing a crocodile without authority is A$28,383 (16,671), with the highest penalty reserved for those who kill iconic crocodiles, defined as being greater than 5m (16.4 feet) in length. The offender could also face up to three years in jail if found guilty of animal cruelty.

Since they were declared a protected species in the 1970s, saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded in northern Australia, reigniting debate about whether to cull them.

An average of two people a year are killed by the animals, which can grow up to 7 metres and weigh more than a tonne.

The reptiles carcass was taken to nearby Koorana Crocodile Farm, where it will be buried after an autopsy.

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The owner of the farm John Leaver said it was the largest crocodile caught in Queensland in 20 to 30 years.

The gunshot had caused a large hole in the top of the crocodiles skull, indicating a large calibre rifle, he said.

Asked why the crocodile was shot, Mr Leaver added: I would say that someone felt very threatened.
As the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar has unfolded over the past month, one of the most visceral aspects of the commentary in the international media has not been the trauma of the poor people who are pouring over the mined borders into Bangladesh. Rather, it has been our collective heartbreak in the West over the fall from grace of a beloved global icon: the de facto leader of Myanmars civilian government, Aung San Suu Kyi.

As is often the case with infatuation, the cause of our heartbreak has less to do with the object of our affections, Suu Kyi herself, and more to do with our perception of her. Or rather, about the way in which we like to tell stories about people like her.

Here are the facts about Suu Kyi. She is the daughter of one of Burmas post-independence founders. She is beautiful and articulate. She is Oxford-educated and speaks with a reassuring British received pronunciation twang. She has been an ardent and unwavering campaigner for democracy in her country throughout her life, and has made huge personal sacrifices for that campaign. She received a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, and at the time she received it, the Prize was fully deserved. So far, everything about Suu Kyi entirely justifies the way in which we have idolised her.

Read More: Why Myanmar Hates the Rohingya

And it gets better. Suu Kyi has outlived the military juntas who kept her under house arrest for 15 years over a period of 21 years from 1989 to 2010. And after the military administration bungled the response to Hurricane Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008, they finally had to relent and move the country on the path towards democracy. That shift culminated with the election to power of Aung San Suu Kyi, and her NLD party, in the countrys first free elections in decades, in late 2015. Suu Kyi is not just an icon for the struggle for democratic values in her country. She is an icon that has succeeded, and has brought about positive change in the country.

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REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

These are all the reasons why we want to love Aung San Suu Kyi. This is why we have put her on a pedestal for so long. And we like our tales of morals to be simple and forceful. So long as Suu Kyi was a symbol and an icon, it seemed churlish and petty to dwell on the fact that she, as an actual human being, has her own flaws and her own moral failures. What purpose would it have served to shine a light on those blemishes, while the character of Aung San Suu Kyi was telling the story of our aspirations for global democracy and human rights for us all by itself?

But Suu Kyi is no longer a campaigner. And thus she can no longer be just a symbol. Nor can she serve any longer as a stand-alone literary character embodying our hopes and dreams for global democracy in the pages of our liberal newspapers in the West. Now Suu Kyi is a political leader. She has power and she has the latitude to make choices. Those choices have consequences. And in the case of the Rohingya crisis, those consequences look like ethnic cleansing.

That stark disconnect between the symbol for Western values we thought Suu Kyi to be, and the reality of her rule in Myanmar is still something that baffles our understanding in Western media. The response to this contrast, especially as the Rohingya crisis continues to develop, seems to be going through the four stages of grief. Many of us are still at the stage of denial. Many articles have been published to explain how Suu Kyi does not actually have the power to stop the military abuses against the Rohingya in Rakhine state even if she wanted to, and that her hands are tied.

It is true that the military retains significant powers despite there being an elected civilian government in the country. And it is equally true that matters of international relations and internal security fall within the responsibility of the military. The military does have de jure authority over how it responds to the attacks of the insurgent group Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) in Rakhine state.

But it is untrue and disingenuous to suggest that Suu Kyi has no power to change the course of events. She has most of the people of her country behind her, and she can take them just about anywhere. And both her and the military know that is a powerful consideration. She may not be able to, and should not dispute the need for the security forces to respond to the violent threat of ARSA. But she can and should dispute how that response involves the burning down of entire villages, the rape of women, the killings of children, the mining of paths leading across the border into Bangladesh, and the pushing half of the Rohingya population in Myanmar out of the country in the space of just one month.

However, many people who have known Suu Kyi for some time and have worked with her have come to believe that her decision to provide cover for the army goes much deeper than being a balancing act between of a universalist humanitarian and pragmatic politician. She in fact, like many of the elite in Myanmar, shares many of the beliefs of the military leaders and actually supports their action.

Mark Farmaner, Director of UK Burma Campaign and a pioneer of the Free Aung San Suu Kyi Campaign met with her a number of times in Myanmar. He came to the conclusion quite quickly that she doesnt see Burma as a multi-ethnic multi-religious country but a Burma-Buddhist country with ethnic minorities. In fact, in one discussion with her she complained how the non-Rohingya Muslims of Burma needed to integrate. When mark informed his Muslim Burmese friend of the conversation, he was all too familiar with such Buddhist supremacist language: We are fully integrated in every way in every level of society and have been part of Burma for as long as the Buddhists. The only thing we havent done is change our religion, and the Buddhists never accept that. Farmaner also does not believe her decision to provide cover for the army is a political calculation:

She is not willing to speak out on any of the issues even the Kachin of the Shan, let alone the Rohingya. I dont accept that she has made a political calculation on not speaking out for the Rohingya. Her friends are briefing western diplomats and foreign press that if she steps out of line the military are waiting to take back control. This is a myth. This entire system has been created by the military. It is working perfectly for them. Sanctions have been lifted, people are on their side and they are very popular. There is no way they will take back control. They can even engaged in ethnic cleansing and getting away with it.

09_15_Rohingya_Exodus

Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

Former Australian MP and now academic specialising in Myanmar, Ronan Lee, was probably the first westerner to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi after her release from house arrest in 2010. He also had grave reservations on Aung San Suu Kyi after probed a little deeper:

We didnt get ASSK so wrong. I published papers in 2014 saying that she had serious issues with the Rohingya. We chose to ignore them because we hoped she would live up to the Nobel Prize she received. I examined her demeanor, her speeches and her writings. I read the booklet where she said We are proud Burmese and not kalaa (Kalaa is a derogatory term for darker skin people, like the Rohingya). In my mind she is a Burmese nationalist.

People who know her personally and have worked with her on these kinds of issues in the past, were neither surprised nor heartbroken by Suu Kyis response to the Rohingya crisis. They were saddened to see that she has not tried to live up to her international image.

One could argue she was under extreme strain and isolation during house arrest and these views dont reflect her current positions. But on her visit to the US this time last year, Daw Suu Kyi had breakfast with Vice President Joe Biden and leader of congress. Amongst those in attendance was Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was so appalled at Aung San Suu Kyis dismissive attitude to human rights abuses and human trafficking that his office issues a very strong statement saying:

While we certainly appreciate the work Aung San Suu Kyi has done to ensure a democratic transition in Burma, I am somewhat appalled by her dismissive reaction to concerns I raised this morning about the problem of human trafficking in her country, said Corker. After witnessing her lack of regard for Burmas dismal track record on this issue, I plan to pay very close attention to her governments efforts to prevent innocent human beings from being trafficked and sold into forced labor and sex slavery.

Aung San Suu Kyi has not, over the past month, become a different person. She is the same person she has always been. She remains to pro-democracy leader and visionary she was when she received the Nobel Peace Prize. All that has changed is that now, we finally get to find out that her vision for democracy for her country never included the Rohingya. She may not have chosen to cleanse the Rohingya from the country herself, but she doesnt terribly mind if that were to come to pass. She never would have minded.

Dr Azeem Ibrahim is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Policy and author of The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmars Hidden Genocide (Hurst & Oxford University Press)

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In the wake of the Equifax breach, a significant number of people lost their minds this week upon discovering that one of its newly deposed security executives has a degree in music composition. Despite 14 years of experience as a security professional in other companies, Susan Mauldin was mocked and dragged online for being a "diversity hire" who is "unqualified" for the job.

All those people are about to be proved so, very, very wrong in an in-depth report from internet infrastructure organization Packet Clearing House in collaboration with professor Coye Cheshire at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information. Their findings show data concluding that most infosec professionals don't hold a degree in a computer-science-related field. What's more, the report shows that degrees are the least-important feature of a competent practitioner and degree programs are the least-useful places to learn security skills.

Portions of the report prior to its November publication, titled "A Fragmented Whole: Cooperation and Learning in the Practice of Information Security" were shared with Engadget. It combines surveys, interviews and ethnographic research.

The project's lead researcher, Ashwin Mathew, told us via email, "There are many things for which we should fault Equifax, which other coverage has already pointed to, such as insufficient staffing and bad practices."

He added:

The CISO not having a CS degree is a distraction at best from the underlying problems -- and it is incredibly problematic the fact that the CISO is a woman who is called upon to defend her qualifications in a field dominated by white men, many of whom do not have CS degrees or infosec certifications.

The question of Ms. Mauldin's fitness for the position became a lens for many -- mostly dudes -- through which to focus their anger at Equifax for probably ruining millions of people's lives with a single missed patch. And as far as we've been told, that's what it came down to: A flaw in Apache Struts that should've been fixed in March led to its major breach the same month, which we only found out about on September 7th.

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That's not all, of course. Right when we were learning about the theft of sensitive information belonging to at least 200 million U.S. consumers, as well as information on some Canadians and up to 400,000 British residents, we found out that Equifax execs sold off stocks before the breach was made public. Shares of Equifax plummeted 35 percent since the disclosure of its breach. Those shady Equifax stock sales are now the focus of a criminal probe by the FBI in conjunction with U.S. prosecutors in Atlanta.

Credit cards, a chain and an open padlock is seen in front of displayed Equifax logo in this illustration taken September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illutration

In addition to the FBI, attorneys general in various states have announced formal investigations. Collectively, U.S. senators "want copies of all Equifax penetration test and audit reports by outside cybersecurity firms," according to Bloomberg.

To top it all off, Equifax has behaved horribly in the wake of the breach. Its website to help consumers was broken, Equifax itself sent the public to the wrong website that was a fake phishing site set up by a white-hat hacker and the company quietly disappeared its apps from both the Apple App and Google Play Stores.

But when the male-dominated discussions about infosec heard about Ms. Mauldin's degree in music, it was decided that she was a suitable target for their rage, with some well-deserved anger at Equifax as the catalyst. The hate was visible on Twitter, Reddit and Slashdot and put into press by MarketWatch's Brett Arends (a history major himself). He wrote,

When Congress hauls in Equifax CEO Richard Smith to grill him, it can start by asking why he put someone with degrees in music in charge of the company's data security. And then they might also ask him if anyone at the company has been involved in efforts to cover up Susan Mauldin's lack of educational qualifications since the data breach became public.

This thinking begins to look unqualified, and worse, in light of the Berkeley report. Lead researcher Mathew told us, "I spoke with CISOs and senior engineers at large Silicon Valley firms who both did and didn't have degrees."

He explained that among those who even had degrees, those with degrees outside of computer science outnumbered those with a degree in CS. "For many of the positions which they hired for (including their own), degrees are not a consideration," he said. "Degrees are, in general, important only as a marker of character."

What's more, Mathew confided, "As several interviewees told me, having a degree shows a certain level of persistence and fortitude when evaluating junior positions, with the degree indicating that a candidate was willing to sit through several years of coursework -- but the subject of the degree is irrelevant. Many of the online services which we take for granted are secured by people who do not have degrees or whose degrees are not in CS."

Insofar as what the report will tell us about what all those people in infosec actually have degrees in, Mr. Mathew told Engadget:

"Respondents indicated a diverse array of fields of study from "hard" sciences like biology, chemistry and physics, to agriculture, languages, journalism, sociology and so on."

I hope we find out what happened with the Equifax breach, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe Ms. Mauldin and her forcibly retired colleague were part of a decision-making chain that deprioritized a single patch, or maybe they're just scapegoats. Or maybe they were the ones who hired penetration-testing teams to audit the company but couldn't get their superiors to take the audit's finding seriously -- a situation that happens so often it's insane.

After all, according to her now-private LinkedIn page, Mauldin was the senior director of information security audits and compliance for Hewlett Packard from 2002-2007.

Short of literally punching a baby, it's hard to imagine what else Equifax has done wrong. The sky seems to be the limit here, and Ms. Mauldin was a part of it. So the only thing that's certain is that things aren't going to get better for anyone involved with Equifax, past or present. Especially all of us, who are involuntarily Equifax victims.

Either way, we should all be looking forward to "A Fragmented Whole: Cooperation and Learning in the Practice of Information Security." It'll be announced, and findable, on the front page of The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity in early November.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 13:13:04|Editor: Yang Yi

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BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- China will restrict oil exports to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and suspend textile imports from DPRK, the Ministry of Commerce said.

The ministry will implement UN Security Council Resolution 2375 by halting the export of liquified natural gas and gas condensate to the DPRK from Saturday and limit exports of refined oil from Oct. 1, according to an online statement.

The ban on textile imports will be effective from Saturday, it said.

Refined oil exports to the DPRK from all UN members is capped at 500,000 barrels from Oct. 1 to the end of the year and 2 million barrels annually from Jan. 1, 2018. China will suspend such exports once the total exports approaches the ceiling.

Exported refined oil products must be used fully on civil purposes, not for the DPRK's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, or other activities banned by the UN Security Council, the ministry said.

Last week the council unanimously adopted resolution 2375, imposing fresh sanctions on the DPRK over its nuclear test on Sept. 3, which violated previous UN resolutions.
By David Shepardson and Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wisconsin, Ohio and several other states said on Friday they were among 21 states that Russian government hackers targeted in an effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favour of Donald Trump though no votes were changed. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it had notified the states of the activity but declined to identify them. Russia has denied election meddling, and President Trump has denied any collusion with Russia. Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, Connecticut and Washington State also confirmed they were targeted by Russian hackers but said they were not successful. "There remains no evidence that the Russians altered one vote or changed one registration," said Judd Choate, president of the U.S. National Association of State Election Directors. Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said Homeland Security told the states that "Russian government cyber actors" targeted state voter registration systems. DHS officials have said that in most of the 21 states only preliminary activity was observed from hackers and a small number of networks were compromised. Some states had complained in June they had no idea if Russians had attempted to infiltrate their systems. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Kremlin orchestrated an operation that included hacking and online propaganda intended to help Trump win, Reuters reported in August. Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said DHS told it that its systems were scanned in the weeks before the 2016 election. "A scan is similar to burglars jiggling the doors of a house and moving on when they realise the doors are locked," the state said. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said entities at the Russian government's behest scanned the state's system for vulnerabilities but did not breach the system. A spokesman for Connecticut's secretary of state said Russian intruders were detected and blocked. Washington State's top election official, Kim Wyman, said the state learned in 2016 of attempted intrusions from Russian internet addresses and immediately alerted the FBI. Arizona and Illinois confirmed last year that hackers had targeted their voter registration systems, but Wisconsin said in recent months it had no idea if it was targeted. Homeland Security told Wisconsin that the Russian government tested election systems for vulnerabilities in hopes of accessing voter registration databases but was unsuccessful, Haas said. Wisconsin was one of a handful of battleground Midwestern states that helped Trump win the presidency over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Trump carried the state by 22,748 votes, or about 0.8 percentage points. Many of the other states were not seriously in contention in the 2016 race. Several congressional committees are investigating and special counsel Robert Mueller is leading a separate probe into the Russia matter, including whether Moscow colluded with the Trump campaign. DHS spokesman Scott McConnell said in a statement the government believes "officials should be kept informed about cybersecurity risks to election infrastructure" but also wants to protect "the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners." (Reporting by David Shepardson and Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Cynthia Osterman)
By the time you read this, it may be too late, but word on the street is that the world will end tomorrow, Saturday, September 23. The only problemother than the reliability of the source of that predictionis that life is actually really hard to destroy.

Writer and Christian numerologist David Meade claims that the world will end on September 23 based on a series of biblical verses that seem to align with the recent solar eclipse and hurricanes. Meade has elaborated on what he says was a misconstrued interpretation of his prediction. As he told Newsweek, he doesnt exactly believe that the world will end September 23 but rather that a celestial event will take place over Jerusalem on this date, starting seven years of hardship and eventually ending with the biblical doomsday.

Whether the world will end tomorrow or seven years from now really makes little difference. But is it even physically possible to end all life on Earth? According to the experts, probably not.

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MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

Humans and many other earthly species can be fairly picky about their environment, refusing to live in places that are too hot, too cold or too devoid of natural resources. But, explains David Finch, who teaches biology at New York University, many forms of life are extremely resilient, able to surviveand even thrivein the harshest conditions available on Earth.

Known as extremophiles, these life forms would be hard to wipe out, says Finch. There is the Deinococcus, which is a bacteria that grows fine in nuclear waste sites and can be irradiated to the point that their entire chromosome is broken up, but they reassemble it and live just fine, Finch tells Newsweek. He also described varieties of nematodes (tiny worms) that inhabit places considered toxic to humans and could even survive in the vacuum of space.

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Of course, the end of the world is nothing new. Our planet has been through several mass extinctions to date. But even though more than 99 percent of species that have ever existed are now extinct, life has still found a way to persist. Maybe there might be some kind of general characteristics that some creatures might have [to help them survive extinctions], says Finch. They are small and they have large populations, so that even if a mass extinction wiped out 99 percent, that 1 percent that is left is still large.

And at least one creaturethe tardigradehas survived several mass extinctions. They have seen the dinosaurs come and go, Ralph O. Schill, a zoologist at the University of Stuttgart, told The Washington Post. A recent modeling study in Scientific Reports posited that tardigrades could withstand gamma-ray bursts, asteroid impacts and other astronomical events, making global sterilization an unlikely event.

But Finch also says that humans are not as fragile as we might think. Humans are incredibly adaptable organisms with pretty high population sizes. I can imagine that in the case of a nuclear holocaust or major mass extinction, with our adaptable culture and tools we might be able to even survive something like that, he said.

There you have it. Doomsday, whether tomorrow or in a millennium, is still fairly unlikely. Of course, if youd like to spend the weekend partying as if the end is nigh, thats completely up to you.

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In the eight months since the beginning of its term, the Trump administration has been having trouble translating promises for far-reaching changes in American Middle-East policy into a broad strategy with clear foundations for advancing a series of moves that would make it possible to reach the declared objectives.

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The sigh of relief heard in Middle Eastern countries following President Donald Trumps decision to begin his first foreign trip with a visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel, after the US lost its position as a leading power in the region during the Obama era, has been replaced with sighs of disappointment and fear that the administration is incapable of creating a fundamental change in American involvement in the region, and is perhaps unwilling to do so.

As time goes by, the charm of the unpredictable and threatening president appears to have expired. If at first it seemed that alongside impressive declarations we would also witness new initiatives that would allay the US allies fears, it soon turned out that apart from expanding military moves to defeat the Islamic State, the administration lacks the motivation and courage to deal with the challenges created by a complex regional reality.

Trump and Netanyahu. The establishment of a narrative that the US administration is weak and hesitant could harm crucial Israeli interests in the long run

The reasons for this situation may lie, of course, in the administrations need to deal with internal American crises and with a series of significant challenges in other areas in the world, such as North Korea.

The impression, however, is that the administration gave up too soon in light of Irans ongoing presence in the main areas of conflict, primarily in Syria, where the US is also accepting Russian preeminence in determining the countrys security and political agenda. The promises to create a broad Arab front are also collapsing in light of the conflict between Americas allies in the Gulf, which American officials are having trouble solving.

The US administrations current efforts to form a policy on the nuclear agreement are another reflection of the confusion of professionals who are now forced to come up with ideas for an action plan before mid-October (when the administration must report to Congress whether Iran is complying with the agreement). This brainstorming is required to try to find a way to square the circle. On the one hand, it should cater to Trumps interest in cancelling the agreement, one of the main legacies left by his predecessor in the White House, which he has so far failed to change. On the other hand, it should minimize the potential damages to the US: Being blamed for the agreements failure, being isolated and experiencing a further decline in its relations with its European allies.

The US ambassadors failed efforts to convince UN inspectors to demand a visit to Irans military sites, and to use Irans expected refusal to declare the agreements cancellation, demonstrate the administration is well aware of the fact it has no technological smoking gun available. Even if the administration decides to inform Congress that Iran is not complying with the agreement, and launch a 60-day period (as required by law) for an internal American discourse until Congress reaches a decision, the frosty relationship between Trumps administration and the Europeans and Russians will likely make it impossible to reach agreements on the P5+1 axis (the five permanent Security Council members and Germany), which will help create a united front against Iran.

Such a development likely wont receive the support of the rest of the countries involved in the nuclear agreement, which made their objection to the move clear in light of economic deals that have already been signed with Iran. It could create a crisis between the US and its European partners, as well as a crisis with Russia and China. The results of this crisis could have far-reaching implications on the international arena.

As far as Israel is concerned, even if the two countries share the same goals and interests in some of the issues, the establishment of a narrative that the American administration is weak and hesitant could harm crucial Israeli interests in the long run and maybe even an important component in the Israeli deterrence, which reliesamong other thingson the way its allys policy is interpreted by its rivals in the region.
ISTANBUL/BAGHDAD - Turkey's parliament voted on Saturday to extend by a year a mandate authorizing the deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq and Syria, stepping up pressure against an independence referendum in northern Iraq's Kurdish region in two days' time.

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Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkey would take security, economic and political steps in response to the referendum, which President Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman described as a "terrible mistake" that would trigger new regional crises.

The United States and other Western powers have, like Turkey, urged authorities in the semi-autonomous Iraqi region to cancel Monday's vote. They say the move by the oil-producing area distracts from the fight against Islamic State.

Turkish tanks during drill on the Turkey-Iraq border (Photo: EPA)



In Iraq, a Kurdistan regional government delegation arrived in Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi government in an effort to defuse tensions, but a senior Kurdish official said the vote was going ahead.

"The delegation will discuss the referendum but the referendum is still happening," Hoshiyar Zebari, a top adviser to Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, told Reuters.





Turkish tanks during drill on the Turkey-Iraq border (Photo: EPA)

Turkish tanks during a drill on the Iraqi border ( : )

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Asked on Saturday if a cross-border operation was among the options, Yildirim told reporters: "Naturally, it is a question of timing as to when security, economic and security options are implemented. Developing conditions will determine that."

The mandate approved by Turkey's parliament on Saturday was first passed in 2014 with the aim of tackling threats from within its southern neighbours Iraq and Syria. It had been due to expire in October.

Turkish parliament voting to extend troop deployment (Photo: AFP)

'Uncontrollable fire'

Turkey is home to the largest Kurdish population in the region and is itself fighting a Kurdish insurgency on its soil. But it is also the main conduit for oil exports from Iraq's Kurdish region and it has said that any break-up of neighboring Iraq or Syria could lead to a global conflict.

Turkish troops during drill on the Turkey-Iraq border (Photo: EPA)

In a speech to parliament, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli voiced concern about the referendum's impact on the region's ethnic and sectarian relationships, saying it could trigger an "uncontrollable fire."

"Pulling out just a brick from a structure based on very sensitive and fragile balances will sow the seeds for new hatred, enmity and clashes," he said.

Turkish troops during drill on the Turkey-Iraq border (Photo: EPA)

A particular area of concern is the multi-ethnic oil city of Kirkuk, which lies outside the recognized boundaries of the autonomous Kurdish region and is claimed by Baghdad. It is dominated by Kurds but is also home to Arabs, Assyrian Christians and Turkmenof whom Turkey has long seen itself as the protector.

"If the referendum is not cancelled, there will be serious consequences. Erbil must immediately refrain from this terrible mistake, which will trigger new crises in the region," Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted on Saturday.

Rocket attack

Militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) launched a rocket and mortar attack from the Iraqi side of the border on Turkey's Semdinli district on Saturday, killing one Turkish soldier and a worker in the area of a military base, the Hakkari governor's office said in a statement.

The PKK launched its separatist insurgency in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

The Iraqi army's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Othman al-Ghanmi, met his Turkish counterpart, General Hulusi Akar, in Turkey and they discussed the "illegitimate" referendum, Turkey's military said.

Graffiti in Basra, Iraq accusing Kurds of being pawns of Israel (Photo: EPA)

"The importance of maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity was stressed once again," it said.

The Turkish army launched military exercises on Monday near the Habur border crossing to Iraq. Military sources said they were due to last until Sept. 26, the day after the planned vote.

On Saturday the military said additional units had joined the exercises as they entered their second stage.

Turkey has for years been northern Iraq's main link to the outside world. It has built strong trade ties with the semi-autonomous region, which exports hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day through Turkey to international markets.
-ITLOS rejected Ghana's claim of tacit agreement with Ivory Coast but upheld its argument for the use of equidistance for the delimitation of the boundaries

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The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) has delivered its ruling on the four-year-old maritime dispute between Ghana and its Western neighbour, Ivory Coast.

The Special Chamber in session

In a seven point unanimous decision, the tribunal chaired by President of the Special Chamber, Judge Boualem Bouguetaia declared that Ghana did not violate Ivory Coast's maritime boundary or any articles of the ITLOS.

Though the special chamber dismissed Ghana's claim that there has been a tacit agreement between it and Ivory Coast concerning their borders, it upheld its argument for the use of equidistance for the delimitation of the boundaries.

Th ruling, according to Dr Theo Acheampong, a Petroleum Economist at the University of Aberdeen, effectively means Ghana has won the case.

READ ALSO: Akufo-Addo, wife chill in New York while on duty

"We don't lose much since there is no compensation to be paid to Cote d'Ivoire", he explained

There had been concerns over the effect of the ruling on Ghana's oil production but for him the ruling was not going to affect Ghana's oil production.

"The map produced by the court doesn't show that our oil fields are going to be affected", he pointed out.

YEN is building a platform where Ghanaians can share local news and own experiences with each other.

Witnessing an incident? Want to tell about a local problem? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition?

Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YENs official Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
The founder and general overseer of the Glorious Word Power Ministries International, Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah will be honored at the 2017 3G Media Awards in New York.

Get the latest news in politics and entertainment on YEN.com.gh

Rev. Owusu Bempah will be celebrated for his immense contributions to and impact in the Ghanaian community.

Rev. Isaac Owusu Bempah

READ ALSO: Meet the gorgeous partners married to 7 of Ghana's male celebrities (Photos)

Having been in the prophetic Ministry for close thirty years, the man of God has mentored other leading prophets in the country such as Prophet Akwesi Agyeman Prempeh, Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi, Prophet Alexander Twum and Prophet Elisha Salifu Amoako.

Rev. Owusu Bempah is also an author, and his best-selling book Demystifying the Works of a Prophet seeks to explain the mysteries of the ways of the prophets.

The 3G Media Awards is held every year to honor exceptional individuals and their contributions to Ghanaian and global societies.

This year's event is scheduled to take place on November 11, in New York City.

Rev. Owusu Bempah is a popular prophet known for his prophetic prowess when it relates to events and incidents in the country.

He "predicted" the turn of the 2016 election, among other very controversial revelations about Ghana.

He was rumored to be the leading religious advisor for the current ruling party, the New Patriotic Party, especially during the 2016 general elections.

READ ALSO: Young lady loses life after dancing to 'One Corner' and everyone is talking about it

YEN is building a platform where Ghanaians can share local news and own experiences with each other. Witnessing an incident? Want to tell about a local problem? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YENs official Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 13:33:08|Editor: Yang Yi

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FUZHOU, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A golden statue of the Chinese sea goddess Matsu traveled on a ferry Saturday from Meizhou in eastern China's Fujian Province to Taiwan for a mass blessing tour.

A festival parade featuring band music with traditional Chinese drums and trumpets was held to escort the statue from its home temple in Putian to a port on Meizhou Island for the 17-day tour.

Matsu is widely worshipped in Taiwan and other coastal regions of southern China, and her believers are also found in eastern and southeast Asian countries.

The statue will make a blessing visit to 89 Matsu temples in 10 cities and counties in Taiwan, where worshiping and blessing rituals will be held for an estimated 1 million worshippers and visitors.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the statue's visit to Taiwan. In 1997, the statue's blessing tour was a sensation in Taiwan, recording 10 million pilgrims during visits to 35 temples in 19 cities and counties, making it the most popular cross-Strait activity.

This year's blessing tour was sponsored by a number of Taiwanese companies, including Hon Hai Precision Industry, an electronic manufacturer and major supplier for Apple's iPhone.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 13:38:10|Editor: Xiang Bo

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KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Three Taliban militants were killed and seven others wounded after Afghan National Army launched an operation in Bala Buluk district of western province of Farah, Afghan Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

"The raid was conducted on Friday and the ANA also destroyed seven militants' bunkers and defused 16 rounds of improvised explosive device (IED) and landmines there," it said in a statement.

The province bordering Iran has been the scene of clashes between Taliban and security forces since early this year when the Taliban launched a so-called yearly offensive against the security forces across the country.

The Taliban has yet to make comments.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 14:33:22|Editor: Xiang Bo

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MANILA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine Presidential Palace on Saturday issued a statement welcoming a recent poll that showed 78 percent of Filipinos approve of President Duterte's fierce anti-drug campaign.

The survey conducted by U.S. think tank Pew Research Center and published Thursday showed that 86 percent Philippinos have favorable view of Duterte. The poll surveyed 1,000 adults in the Philippines from February to May.

"Our campaign against illegal drugs and criminals continues to get unwavering support from our people. The Palace welcomes the findings...showing that 86 percent of Filipinos have favorable view of PRRD, 78 percent of Filipinos approving of PRRD's handling of illegal drugs issue," the presidential palace statement said, with PRRD referring to President Rodrigo Duterte.

The statement also underscored that the survey reveals 62 percent of Filipinos believe that the government is making progress in its campaign against illegal drugs.

It added that the campaign against illegal drugs would be relentless until the drug apparatus is dismantled, the last drug pusher is out of the streets, and the last drug trafficker behind bars.

Since taking office in June 2016, Duterte has waged a war on illegal drugs, saying drug problems that grew rampantly with the connivance of the previous administration are poisoning the youth and devastating the nation.

Philippine National Police bared earlier this month that from July 1, 2016 to Aug. 29, 2017, government agents have already conducted 70,854 anti-drug operations and arrested 107,156 drug personalities with 3,811 armed suspects killed during police operations.

Some international human rights organizations and western media have accused Duterte of encouraging extrajudicial killing, citing unverified reports that claimed over 7,000 were killed by Philippine police.

The Philippine government insisted there was no such thing as extrajudicial killing and they only killed suspects who resisted arrest violently.

Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella announced on Saturday that the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted the Third Philippine Universal Periodic Review Report, recognizing the human rights record of the Philippines, as Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano went to United Nations to defend the government's efforts to fight drugs problems and other crimes this week.

Abella said the UN report likewise reaffirms the government's respect for the dignity of the Filipino people and the protection of the Filipino family as it strives for a better life in a society free of illegal drugs and other crimes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 14:38:23|Editor: Xiang Bo

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MEHTARLAM, Afghanistan, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- One Afghan Local Police (ALP) personnel and eight Taliban militants were killed and eight people wounded in a clash in Laghman, eastern Afghanistan on late Friday, the provincial government said on Saturday.

"The clash erupted in Alishing locality of Mehtarlam city, capital of Laghman province. Eight people, including five militants and three ALP personnel were also wounded during the exchange of fire," it said in a statement.

The government established the ALP, or community police, in 2010 to protect villages and districts around the country, where army and police have limited presence.

Among those injured was a local Taliban commander Janat Gul, the statement added.

Militancy and counter-militancy traditionally gets momentum in spring and summer commonly known as fighting season in Afghanistan.

Local observers believe that the militants would intensify activities in summer to gain more territory and defame the government ahead of winter and snowfall in the mountainous country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 14:48:28|Editor: Xiang Bo

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NEW DELHI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The mobile phone of Ukrainian ambassador to India, Igor Polikha, which had been snatched from him in Indian capital city New Delhi, has been recovered, police said Saturday.

"One person was arrested and from his possession the phone was recovered," a senior police official told the media, adding raids were conducted to arrest the person after he was identified.

Polikha was busy taking photographs and selfies with his phone near the Red Fort in the city on Wednesday when a person came and snatched it from him. The envoy was alone on the spot.

Afterwards, he wrote to Indian home ministry and Delhi Police Commissioner about the incident.

Reports said following the complaint, police rounded up more than 100 suspects and questioned them.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 15:08:34|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2017 shows a scene of military parade in Tehran, Iran . Iran on Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the Iran- Iraq war, which broke out in September 1980 and lasted through August 1988. (Xinhua/Ma Xiao)

TEHRAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, the country's Press TV reported on Saturday.

The television network broadcast a footage of "the successful test-launch of the country's new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran on Friday."

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

The missile was unveiled on Friday morning during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

With a range of 2,000 km, it is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh told reporters on Friday.

During the parade, Tehran also displayed other ballistic missiles, which reportedly have a range of 1,300-2,000 km.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and major world powers including Washington in 2015, saying that he believes Iran is violating the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

Iran has denied that its missiles would be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 15:08:35|Editor: Zhou Xin

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Brunei on Saturday urged the United Nations and relevant parties to take action to find a comprehensive and peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue.

According to a speech text obtained by Xinhua, Brunei emphasized that peace, freedom, justice and self-determination are Palestine's fundamental rights at the General Debate of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

"In our pursuit to leave no one behind, we should not forget the plight of those suffering from war, conflict and occupation," Lim Jock Seng, Brunei's Minister at the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade told UN member states.

"Like everyone, the Palestinians also have hopes and dreams to be educators, doctors, engineers, artists, athletes and innovators, which are all for the good of humanity. However, for half a century, foreign occupation has tremendously hindered many of them from achieving their full human potential to contribute more towards global development," Lim said.

"As the legitimate and truly representative organization on the planet, the UN has a moral and legal obligation to enforce these rights and ensure accountability for actions that contravene international law. We continue to count on the UN as well as all relevant parties concerned to find a comprehensive and lasting peace and stability in the region," Lim stated.

"We have to press on with all efforts in translating the growing international recognition of the State of Palestine into positive changes on the ground, so that the Palestinians can pursue sustainable development in their own homeland," Lim added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 15:13:36|Editor: Zhou Xin

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's armed forces besieged the country's largest slum Rocinha on Friday as gang war there escalated over the past week.

Earlier on Friday, the local police blocked a major highway which passes by the slum. In the afternoon, the armed forces launched an operation with the local police to seek out drug gangs.

The contingent is formed by 950 soldiers and police officers who are armed to the teeth and supported by armored vehicles and helicopters. There have been no significant arrests so far.

However, Brazil's Defense Minister Raul Jungmann said on a local TV program that Rocinha is currently "pacified" and the soldiers will stay in the slum for a while.

Rocinha has been at war for a week, with two drug lords fighting for the control of the drug traffic in the community. Shootings are frequent and schools suspended classes for several days.

Residents of the slum and of in the vicinity have been living under a constant threat of violence over the past few days.
Photo taken on March 26, 2014 shows rocket propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, RPG bombs and other explosive materials seized from Boko Haram terrorists in Borno State, north-eastern Nigeria. (Xinhua/Olatunji Obasa)

LAGOS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- No territory in Nigeria's restive North East region is being occupied by the Boko Haram terror group, the Nigerian army said Friday.

Col. Onyema Nwachukwu, a spokesperson for the army, said in a statement that all territories earlier ransacked by Boko Haram insurgents in the North East had been reclaimed.

Nwachukwu dismissed as misleading reports indicating that seven of the 27 local government areas of Borno State were still under Boko Haram control.

Nwachukwu said the Operation Lafiya Dole had recorded significant successes and had rooted out the insurgents from their major tactical enclave in Sambisa forest and their spiritual headquarters at Alagarno.

Nwachukwu stressed that the army had initiated precursor operations to put a final onslaught to the insurgency in the North East.

According to him, a special Mobile Strike Force was launched to patrol localities as well as seek out and neutralize the insurgents from their hideouts.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 15:18:40|Editor: Zhou Xin

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OTTAWA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Canadian foreign affairs ministry Friday announced sanctions on 40 Venezuelans, including Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Under the Special Economic Measures Act, Canada will impose targeted sanctions against the individuals who have played a key role in undermining the security, stability and integrity of democratic institutions of Venezuela, the announcement said.

The new regulations include freezing assets of the target members and banning Canadians from having any dealing with them "in any property ... or providing financial or related services to them."

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said, "Today's announcement of sanctions against the Maduro regime underscores our commitment to defending democracy and human rights around the world. Canada stands in solidarity with the people of Venezuela as they struggle to restore democracy in their country."

Canada has repeatedly called on the Maduro government to restore constitutional order and release the country's political prisoners since Maduro held a vote in July to create a new constitutional assembly.

So far, there is no comment from Venezuela.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 15:53:47|Editor: Zhou Xin

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GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Five policemen were killed and eight others wounded after Taliban militants attacked security checkpoints in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan Friday night, provincial police chief said Saturday.

"Over 100 armed militants attacked three police checkpoints in Dasht-e-Qarabagh locality overnight, sparking a heavy clash, which repelled by police forces. But the engagement left five police personnel dead and injured eight others," Gen. Mohammad Zaman told Xinhua.

The clash occurred along a main road connecting provincial capital Ghazni city to neighboring Jaghori district and the victims have already been transferred to their hometown in Jaghori.

One checkpoint was destroyed during the attack, the police chief said, adding that "several militants were also killed and wounded during the gun battle, but their number could not be exactly specified, as the militants evacuated their casualties after the fighting."

Militancy and counter-militancy traditionally gets momentum in spring and summer commonly known as fighting season in Afghanistan.

Local observers believe that the militants would intensify activities in summer to gain more territory and defame the government ahead of winter and snowfall in the mountainous country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 16:38:57|Editor: Zhou Xin

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RABAT, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan authorities have arrested four people with suspected links to the Islamic State (IS) group, local media reported on Saturday.

Citing security official, the daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia said the suspects were arrested in the southern cities of Marrakech, Sidi Bennour, Dakhla after intelligence tips.

The same source said that the arrested are suspected of propagating IS extremist ideology and recruiting young people to join IS ranks in Syria and Iraq.

Extremist books and audiovisual materials linked to IS ideology were seized in one of the suspects house in Marrakech, it added.

According to the same source, the suspects are under investigation, adding that the suspicion of their involvement in the same cell is not ruled out.

According to Moroccan authorities, security services have busted around 50 terrorist cells, including over 40 with links to IS group, since 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 17:34:20|Editor: liuxin

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ATHENS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The bodies of two Ukrainian nationals aboard a single-engine aircraft that crashed in northern Greece on Friday were retrieved by rescue crews, the Greek Fire Service announced.

The couple had left Alexandroupolis airport for Bucharest on a CT2K plane, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

A second similar small plane also taken off from the same airport for the same destination and alerted authorities when it went missing near the borders with Bulgaria.

A rescue operation was launched amid heavy rainfall and the plane and the corpses were found in a mountainous area. (by Maria Spiliopoulou)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 18:04:35|Editor: liuxin

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- It is important to examine the root causes of terrorism comprehensively such as poverty, marginalization and alienation, notably among youth, to address the terrorism threats, Brunei's permanent mission to the United Nations said on Saturday.

According to a speech text obtained by Xinhua, Brunei reiterated that terrorism should not be linked to any particular race, religion, nationality or ethnicity at the General Debate of the 72nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

"Like many others, we are concerned with the constant threats of terrorism and violent extremism. Sadly, in various parts of the world, the casualties resulting from terrorist attacks continue to shock us all. We condemn such horrendous acts and convey our deepest sympathy as well as condolences to the families of the victims," Lim Jock Seng, Brunei's Minister at the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said.

"It is our hope that by focusing on education, youth development, creating job opportunities, advocating the responsible use of social media, and promoting dialogue among different faiths and civilizations will greatly help in our efforts to bring about positive changes," Lim said.

"Working closely with youth, religious leaders and local communities will be essential to help realize this. Hence, we welcome all efforts of the international community to prevent and eradicate terrorism and violent extremism in all their forms and manifestations," Lim concluded.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 18:09:38|Editor: liuxin

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NEW DELHI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A film producer of India's Bollywood was arrested in a rape case, police said Saturday.

Karim Morani, the producer of the Chennai Express movie, is accused of raping an aspiring actress several times and taking her nude photos in 2015.

Morani on Friday night surrendered before police hours after India's Supreme Court upheld the Hyderabad high court's decision to cancel anticipatory bail granted to the filmmaker.

"At around midnight Morani surrendered before the Hayathnagar police," a police official posted in Hyderabad said.

A lower court this year had granted anticipatory bail to Morani but subsequently cancelled it after it was found that the producer had concealed some facts in his bail plea regarding his involvement in a corruption case.

Scrutiny of violence against women in India has grown after 2012 fatal gang-rape of a medical student in New Delhi. Though it brought spotlight on crimes against women in India, however, brutal sexual attacks against women continue to be reported across India.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 18:29:42|Editor: Zhou Xin

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KABUL, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Afghanistan based NATO Resolute Support (RS) mission has announced that it will fund a new rehabilitation center at Kabul National Military Hospital to treat both military and civilian patients, the mission said in a statement Saturday.

The 54 million U.S. dollars facility is expected to be completed in late 2019 and is designed to treat 100 patients and offer a full range of physiotherapy services to military and civilian patients, both male and female, the statement read.

"In close partnership with the Afghan government, we are working to build increasingly effective, sustainable and affordable Afghan security forces and institutions that are organized, equipped and capable of providing security for all Afghans," Cornelius Zimmermann, NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying in the statement.

The largest donor of the project is Canada, which has committed 27 million U.S. dollars. Other nations are in the process of finalizing arrangements to provide the remaining funds, according to the statement.
South Sudanese women carry water in a UN camp in Juba, capital of South Sudan, Dec. 22, 2013. (Xinhua/Lu Rui)

ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced Friday that more than 100,000 South Sudanese refugees were relocated to camps in Ethiopia since September 2016.

Since the eruption of civil conflict in South Sudan in December 2013, Ethiopia has received some 330,000 refugees, of whom more than 115,000 have fled renewed violence since September 2016, UNHCR and IOM revealed in a joint statement on Friday.

Some 30,000 refugees arrived in July fleeing the escalation of conflict in Maiwut, Mathiang and Pagak in Upper Nile Region bordering Ethiopia's Gambella regional state, according to the joint statement.

The increasing scale of the refugee influx that started in September 2016 quickly filled the existing camps in the Gambella region and forced the Ethiopian government and UNHCR to open a new camp at Nguenyyiel in October 2016.

Ngunyyiel was again full with nearly 60,000 refugees in just 6 months and a new refugee camp was opened in the adjacent region of Benishangul-Gumuz. The new camp, Gure-Shembola, now shelters 3,122 refugees transported from Gambella.

According to the UNHCR, the majority of the new arrivals are women and children, including 20,510 children who have either been separated from their parents or travelled alone.

Sheltering more than 852,000 refugees, including more than 388,000 from South Sudan, Ethiopia hosts the second largest refugee population in Africa, next to Uganda.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 19:04:54|Editor: Zhou Xin

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ANKARA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim warned on Saturday that Turkey's steps in response to a planned independence referendum in northern Iraq's Kurdish region will have security, diplomatic, political and economic dimensions.

Speaking to reporters in the central province of Kirsehir, he said the planned independence referendum was wrong and an "adventurist" move that put Turkey at risk, and Turkey will be in close cooperation with Iran and Iraq to response.

When asked if a cross-border operation was among the steps, he said that possible responses to the referendum include security, economic, and political options, saying it was "a question of timing."

The prime minister underlined that those who made the decision to hold the referendum would pay a price.

On Friday, Turkey's National Security Council warned northern Iraq against holding a referendum on independence would cause "grave results," and called the referendum to be completely cancelled.

On June 7, the Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government President Masoud Barzani announced his plan to hold a referendum on Sept. 25 on seeking independence of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region from Iraq.

The international community, especially Iraq's neighboring countries such as Iran, Turkey and Syria, have voiced strong opposition to the move, fearing it would inspire the huge Kurdish population in their own countries to follow suit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 19:09:55|Editor: Zhou Xin

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MAIMANA, Afghanistan, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- About 10 militants were killed and four others wounded in Afghanistan's northern province of Faryab, a local official said Saturday.

Afghan forces conducted a military operation late on Friday in Almar district of the province, leaving 10 militants, including two local Taliban insurgents' leaders, Baluch and Mubashir dead and four others wounded, Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, spokesman of police 707 Pamir Zone based in the region, told Xinhua.

The strategic site of Bukhari Qala, which was under the Taliban control over the last several months have been retaken from the insurgents, he said.

The Taliban had not commented on the incident.

Fighting has escalated in Afghanistan as the Taliban insurgency spreads from its traditional strongholds in the south and east to the once peaceful region in the north, where the militants have been recruiting from among the youth.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 19:19:59|Editor: Zhou Xin

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DOHA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Qatar's economy has proved its strength and resilience in the face of many global challenges which affected developed countries, Qatar's Economy and Commerce Minister Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani was quoted as saying by Qatar News Agency on Saturday.

Despite the three-month siege on Qatar, Qatar had succeeded in strengthening its power and independence more than ever, the minister said on the sidelines of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

He stressed that his country was working on developing the necessary mechanisms required for the import of goods and services, by finding alternative markets to import goods and services from.

"Qatar has succeeded in establishing alternative and direct trade routes with a number of strategic venues around the world within a few days of the imposition of the blockade," he added.

He also referred to the IMF report which said that the Qatari banking sector remains sound, with high asset quality and strong capitalization, and the investment environment in Qatar is strong and attractive as the state has a flexible economic policies through the 'Invest in Qatar' office, which facilitates all procedures for foreign investors and provides support at all stages of investment.

On June 5, the quartet of Arab countries cut off air, sea and land ties to their gas-rich neighbor Qatar, accusing Qatar of funding terrorism. Qatar has strongly rejected the allegations.
Chinese and Dutch delegates participate in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the departure of the 202nd freight train on the Chengdu-Tilburgdirect railway link in Tilburg, the Netherlands, Sept. 22, 2017. (Xinhua/Rick Nederstigt)

TILBURG, The Netherlands, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- More businesses should get on board the direct railway link connecting Tilburg in the Netherlands and the Chinese city of Chengdu, said Dutch and Chinese officials on Friday when celebrating the first anniversary of this promising connection.

Tilburg is the second largest logistic hub in the Netherlands, while Chengdu is a city 10,947 km away in China's southwest Sichuan province.

"The Chengdu-Tilburg express reinforces the position of our regions as transit hubs. Thanks to this railway link, goods can be exchanged no fewer than three times quicker than by water and significantly cheaper than by aeroplane," said Bert Pauli, vice-governor of the province of Noord-Brabant where Tilburg is located.

Pauli made the remarks ahead of a ribbon-cutting for the departure of the 202nd freight train on this link. Zhu Hexin, vice governor of the Chinese province of Sichuan joined the ceremony, attended by representatives from the companies that are jointly operating this railway link, member of the Tilburg municipality as well as dozens of industry partners.

Fully loaded with cargoes of Dutch beer, the leaving train will arrive in Chengdu in about two weeks.

Nowadays with three trains running westbound and three eastbound per week, the Tilburg-Chengdu service is one of the most regular and loaded links of China Railway Express to Europe (CR express).

On the Tilburg-Chengdu link, cargoes coming from China are mostly electronics for multinational groups such as Sony, Samsung, Dell and Apple as well as products for European aerospace industry. Cargoes transported to China include auto parts, new cars and food product.

"Tilburg, situated at an ideal strategic location and the region of Brabant, home to excellent logistical service providers who are more than ready to collaborate with China, can become the gateway to Europe for Chengdu," said the Dutch vice-governor.

Zhu agreed that the link bears great influence for both economies. "Take a look at the population in my province, you can be assured that a huge market is waiting for your milk powder, beer and other goods," Zhu told the audience.

For Zhang Guosheng, economic counselor of the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands, the success of the Tilburg-Chengdu direct railway link forecasts opportunities for more cooperation in the logistic industry for both countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 19:50:07|Editor: Zhou Xin

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LOS ANGELES, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Friday notified the chief election officer or secretaries of state in 21 states that hackers targeted their states' election systems before last year's U.S. presidential election.

The notification came roughly a full year after ABC News reported that "more than 20" states' had been targeted.

"Hackers working on behalf of the Russian government are suspected in the onslaught against more than 20 state election systems, according to sources with knowledge of the matter," ABC News reported in September last year.

The states targeted are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, according to Fox News.

"It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information," California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Friday in a statement.

"The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy," Padilla said.

Some of the election officials who were informed by DHS said Friday the hacking attempts could be linked to Russia, for example, targeted by "Russian cyber actors."

Alaska Elections Division Director Josie Bahnke said computers in Russia were scanning election systems looking for vulnerabilities.

Federal officials said that in most of the 21 states, the targeting was preparatory activity such as scanning computer systems, according to local media reports.

"Scanning is an unauthorized attempt to identify weaknesses in a computer or network -- akin to a burglar looking for unlocked doors in a house," said Padilla.

In most cases, states said they were told the systems were not breached. Illinois reported that hackers had succeeded in breaching its voter systems.

"There are constant attempts by bad actors to hack our systems," Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement. "But we continue to deflect those attempts."

In a letter sent to Admiral Michael S. Rogers of the National Security Agency (NSA) earlier this year in June, Padilla said he had expressed serious concern about NSA's failure to provide timely and critical information to America's elections officials.

"We shouldn't have to learn about potential threats from leaked NSA documents or media reports. It is the intelligence community's responsibility to inform elections officials of any potential threats to our elections. They failed in this responsibility," said Padilla.

Earlier this year, a leaked NSA report outlined a Russian effort to hack into devices made by a Florida-based voting software company, according to the Los Angeles Times.

DHS testified earlier this year before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee that "the owners of the systems within those 21 states have been notified," said Padilla, who thought "this was simply not true and DHS acknowledged they failed to contact us and 'two or three' other states."

U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican who defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election, has called the Russia story a hoax.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 20:30:16|Editor: Zhou Xin

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VILNIUS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP) is to leave the ruling coalition, decided the party's governing council in a vote on Saturday, following months of tensions with the major coalition partner the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVZS).

Totally 140 out of 195 participating members of the LSDP's council voted to end the coalition with the LVZS, 46 voted against and nine abstained, the social democratic party officially announced on Saturday.

Following Saturday's vote, Gintautas Paluckas, the leader of LSDP, vowed the Social Democratic Party is to compete at the parliament's opposition with the conservative party the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), currently the parliament's biggest opposition party.

Following LSDP's retreat, the current government is to work as a minority government. Paluckas says LSDP's exit will only improve the work of the government.

"However, democracy needs consensus. The minority government will have to look for it more often," Paluckas was quoted as saying by news website delfi.lt.

In recent months, tensions have emerged in the ruling coalition with LVZS complaining for the lack of support from LSDP, while LSDP accused the major coalition partner for ignoring LSDP's proposals.

In response to the news, the leaders of LVZS said they expected to continue cooperation with the LSDP's members at the parliament. Ramunas Karbauskis, the leader of LVZS, said he respects the decision of LSDP's governing council, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the actual changes can happen in the ruling coalition.

Recently, ministers delegated by the LSDP and its members at the parliament expressed willingness to stay in the ruling coalition.

LVZS, the leaders of the ruling coalition and the biggest party in Lithuanian parliament, has 56 members in the 141-seat parliament, while LSDP has 17 seats.

At the country's government, LVZS has 11 ministers and three ministers are delegated by LSDP.

On Saturday, Karbauskis told the Lithuanian national radio LRT that LVZS has no intentions to replace the ministers delegated to the government by LSDP. Earlier, Saulius Skvernelis, prime minister of Lithuania, said the ministers delegated by LSDP could continue working even if LSDP governing council decided to leave the ruling coalition.

LSDP and LVZS formed a ruling coalition following the parliamentary elections last October.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 20:45:24|Editor: Lu Hui

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Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2017 shows a scene of military parade in Tehran, Iran . Iran on Friday marked the 37th anniversary of the Iran- Iraq war, which broke out in September 1980 and lasted through August 1988. (Xinhua/Ma Xiao)

TEHRAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, Press TV reported on Saturday.

The state TV broadcast a footage of "the successful test-launch of the country's new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran on Friday."

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

Iran's defense minister said Saturday that Khorramshahr is an strategic missile and is a symbol of Iranian scientists' capability, official IRNA news agency reported.

"Khorramshahr with an effectual range and unique qualities features an agile missile," Brigadier General Amir Hatami was quoted as saying.

The strategic missile can cross the enemy's air defense systems and can be guided from the launch time to the moment when it hits the enemy's target, he said.

The missile was unveiled on Friday morning during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

With a range of 2,000 km, it is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh told reporters on Friday.

According to Tasnim news agency, the missile is able to carry a multiple independently tar reentry vehicle (MIRV) weighing 1,800 kilograms.

During the parade on Friday, Tehran also displayed other ballistic missiles, which reportedly have a range of 1,300-2,000 km.

On Saturday, Hatami stressed that Iran will wait for the permission of no country to boost its deterrent power, and will continue to produce different missiles and warfare systems.

"As long as some (of the powers) talk in a threatening language, Iran's strengthening of its defense power will continue," Hatami said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and major world powers including Washington in 2015, saying that he believes Iran is violating the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

Iran has denied that its missiles would be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 21:20:36|Editor: Zhou Xin

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ISLAMABAD, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani police on Saturday arrested two terror suspects and seized a huge cache of weapons from their possession in the country's eastern province of Punjab, officials said.

Acting on a tip-off, police personnel carried out a targeted raid in the suburbs of Chiniot, a city in central Punjab, and apprehended two suspected terrorists and seized a huge cache of weapons from their vehicle, police officers of the city said.

The seized weapons included 16 pistols, 19 rifles, and more than 25,000 rounds of various caliber, said the police.

While talking to media persons, the police said that the weapons were meant for carrying out terrorist activities in the month of Muharram, the first holy month of the Islamic calendar, which commenced in the country on Friday.

Earlier on Sept.18, security personnel from the Counter Terrorism Department of the Punjab province claimed to have recovered a large amount of arms, handgrenades and explosive materials during an encounter with suspected terrorists. Two suspected terrorists were killed in the encounter while four others managed to escape, said police.

Security measures have been beefed up across the country to avoid any possible terror attacks during the holy month of Muharram.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 21:40:42|Editor: Zhou Xin

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NEW DELHI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A senior journalist and his 92-year-old mother were found murdered on Saturday afternoon in northern Indian state of Punjab, police said.

The bodies were found at their residence in Mohali town of Punjab.

"Singh's was stabbed in stomach and his throat had been slit while his mother Gurcharan Kaur was suspected to have been throttled at their home," a police official said. "Prima facie it appears to be a murder."

Local authorities have set up a special investigative team to probe the suspected murders, a local government spokesman said.

KJ Singh, who was in his sixties, has served as editor of The Indian Express, The Tribune and The Times of India in Chandigarh in his journalistic career.

Journalist fraternity in the state and capital city of Chandigarh have strongly condemned the killings.

Reports said police officials have seized the CCTV footage from a camera installed two houses away and were scanning it for clues.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), president and former deputy chief minister of Punjab Sukhbir Badal, has condemned the killings and asked for a speedy investigation.

"I condemn ghastly murder of senior journalist KJ Singh and his mother at Mohali. Urge police to nab perpetrators immediately," Badal wrote on twitter.

The SAD is the main opposition party in the state.

This is the third journalist's killing in the past 19 days in India.

On Wednesday a journalist working with local television news channel was hacked to death by mob in northeastern state of Tripura.

Earlier on Sept. 5, a senior journalist and an outspoken activist was shot dead outside her residence in southwestern state of Karnataka.

Analysts said India is becoming a "more dangerous place to practice journalism."
Iran has successfully launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, in strong retaliation against Trump's anti-Iran remarks in UN General Assembly. (Reuters Photo)

TEHRAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran has "successfully" launched a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 km, Press TV reported on Saturday.

The state TV broadcast a footage of "the successful test-launch of the country's new ballistic missile, Khorramshahr, a few hours after it was unveiled during a military parade in the capital city of Tehran on Friday."

The report said the missile was launched late Friday, without providing further details.

Iran's defense minister said Saturday that Khorramshahr is an strategic missile and is a symbol of Iranian scientists' capability, official IRNA news agency reported.

"Khorramshahr with an effectual range and unique qualities features an agile missile," Brigadier General Amir Hatami was quoted as saying.

The strategic missile can cross the enemy's air defense systems and can be guided from the launch time to the moment when it hits the enemy's target, he said.

The missile was unveiled on Friday morning during a military parade in Tehran attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior military officials.

With a range of 2,000 km, it is capable of carrying multiple warheads, said Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Division.

"The missile has become smaller in size (compared to other Iranian ballistic missiles) and more tactical, and it will be operational in the near future," Hajizadeh told reporters on Friday.

According to Tasnim news agency, the missile is able to carry a multiple independently tar reentry vehicle (MIRV) weighing 1,800 kilograms.

During the parade on Friday, Tehran also displayed other ballistic missiles, which reportedly have a range of 1,300-2,000 km.

On Saturday, Hatami stressed that Iran will wait for the permission of no country to boost its deterrent power, and will continue to produce different missiles and warfare systems.

"As long as some (of the powers) talk in a threatening language, Iran's strengthening of its defense power will continue," Hatami said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and major world powers including Washington in 2015, saying that he believes Iran is violating the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

Iran has denied that its missiles would be used to carry a nuclear warhead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 21:50:48|Editor: Mengjie

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New Zealand's Prime Minister and National Party leader Bill English (C) gives a speech to supporters in Auckland, New Zealand, Sept. 23, 2017. New Zealand's parliamentary elections on Saturday yield no clear winner as tally ended in the wee hours of Sunday, leaving the third largest party with 7.5 percent of the votes the kingmaker. The ruling National Party has secured 46 percent of the party votes, which transfer to 58 seats in the 120 member Congress in an Mixed-Member Proportional voting system, with the opposition Labor Party lagging behind at 35.8 percent, or 45 seats. (Xinhua/Li Qiaoqiao)

AUCKLAND, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand's parliamentary elections on Saturday yield no clear winner as tally ended in the wee hours of Sunday, leaving the third largest party with 7.5 percent of the votes the kingmaker.

The ruling National Party has secured 46 percent of the party votes, which transfer to 58 seats in the 120 member Congress in an Mixed-Member Proportional voting system, with the opposition Labor Party lagging behind at 35.8 percent, or 45 seats.

The New Zealand First Party has garnered nine seats, making it the indispensable coalition partner for both the National Party and the Labor Party to form the government.

The Labor Party with its ally Green Party of 5.8 percent votes or seven seats in the congress would just make enough seats to form a government if they can successfully get the New Zealand First Party on board.

Winston Peters, the party chief of the New Zealand First Party, however, refused to say which party he would side with. The negotiations may take days or weeks before a deal is struck between the future governing partners.
A man takes photos of a 585-meters high waterfall in Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, on Nov. 25, 2013. The park in the northwest of Ethiopia is home to a number of endangered species, including the gelada, the Ethiopian wolf and walia ibex. (Xinhua/Chen Duo)

ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia has planned to promote domestic tourism as part of the World Tourism Day celebration, which will be celebrated September 27 worldwide.

The World Tourism Day celebration in Ethiopia is a week-long program, from September 21 to 27, in which the Ethiopian government envisaged to promote domestic tourism among Ethiopians with due emphasis given to the east African country's historical and natural attraction sites.

According to the Ethiopian Culture and Tourism Ministry, over 3.32 billion U.S. dollars revenue was generated from over 886,800 tourists that have visited the east African country during the just concluded 2016-2017 Ethiopian fiscal year.

However, the Ethiopian government frequently expressed its concern that even though the tourist influx to the east African country is mounting, the number of Ethiopian visitors is stagnant over the years.

Ethiopia has eight cultural sites registered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizational Organization (UNESCO), which includes the obelisks of Aksum, Fasil Ghebbi or the castle of Gonder, the fortified historic town Harar Jugol, Konso cultural landscape, the Lower Valley of the Awash, Lower Valley of the Omo, Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, and Tiya.

The east African country has also one natural endowment registered by UNESCO, the mountainous Simien National Park in the northern part of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, known for hosting various international and regional organizations including the African Union (AU) headquarters and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA), is also another growing tourist attraction places in the country.

The Ethiopian Culture and Tourism Ministry has stressed that the number of Ethiopian visitors would increase through awareness creation activities concerning the country's historical and natural attractions.

According to Gebretsadik Hagos, head of Addis Ababa City Administration Culture and Tourism Office, the planned awareness creation endeavor will embrace over 500,000 Addis Ababa residents.

Visits to tourist attraction sites, mass city cleaning, dialogues, and city greening activities are amongst of the planned activities.

Photo taken on April 8, 2009 shows a plaster replica of Lucy's fossil in the National Mesuem of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago. The discovery of this hominine was significant as the skeleton shows evidence of small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans, providing further evidence that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution. (Xinhua/Zhang Yanhui)

Ethiopia last year officially launched its new brand, "Ethiopia, Land of Origins," which depicts the country's archaeological sites and findings including the most famous Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor of the hominid era.

The east African country has also planned to honor the recently deceased Habteselassie Tafesse, the man known as "the father of Ethiopia's tourism", as part of the week-long celebration.

Tafesse, known to have coined the phrase, "13 Months of Sunshine," the country's popular tourism slogan, had contributed hugely to the establishment and development of the tourism industry in the East African country.

Hirut Woldemariam, Ethiopian Minister of Culture and Tourism, has hailed Tafesse's accomplishment in promoting Ethiopia and the country's tourist destinations and products, both at home and globally.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 22:00:52|Editor: liuxin

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HONG KONG, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The food safety authority of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) announced Saturday that the import into and sale within Hong Kong of raw oysters and shellfish from Australia's Tasmania has been suspended with immediate effect.

The trade should stop using and selling the product immediately should they possess it, said the Center for Food Safety (CFS) of the HKSAR government's Food and Environmental Hygiene Department.

"The CFS was notified by the Australian authorities that raw oysters harvested in Blackman Bay Lease 44 in Tasmania were detected with paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxin, and the oysters harvested from Sept. 12 to 22 of 2017 from the harvested area concerned are being recalled," a spokesman for the CFS said.

"For the sake of prudence, the CFS has immediately suspended the import into and sale within Hong Kong of all raw oysters and shellfish harvested in the area," the spokesman said.

A local importer that has imported some of the affected product into Hong Kong has been contacted by the CFS and has initiated a recall according to the CFS instructions.

"PSP toxin can cause symptoms such as numbness of mouth and limbs and gastrointestinal discomfort. In severe cases, paralysis with respiratory arrest and even death may occur. This natural toxin is sometimes found in bi-valve shellfish. It is heat-stable and cannot be destroyed through cooking," the spokesman said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 22:41:02|Editor: ZD

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KATHMANDU, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- China's Belt and Road Initiative can contribute to realizing the dream of the Asian Century through enhancing regional economic integration, Nepali experts said here on Saturday.

Speaking at a seminar entitled "Belt and Road Initiative: Economic Development in South Asia," Nepalese Former Ambassador to China Tanka Karki was of the view that China and South Asian countries including India should work together to promote the initiative.

"Creation of the Asian Century is a dream of the people in South Asia. I believe that this dream can be realized through the Belt and Road Initiative by enhancing economic integration in the region. The stronger partnership between China and India will also be in the interest of countries like Nepal who are their good neighbors," Karki said.

The Belt and Road Initiative is an open and inclusive concept creating a win-win situation between China and those countries who become part of it, the former ambassador said.

Senior advocate of Nepal Biswakanta Mainali said that Nepal's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative has brought new opportunities to the country to achieve socioeconomic development.

"Nepal is marching ahead to achieve economic growth after a prolonged political transition. Construction of mega infrastructure projects like railways and highways are crucial for us. Thus, I believe that Nepal's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative will greatly contribute to transforming the economy," he said.

Dr. Yubaraj Sangroula, a former attorney general of Nepal, said that Nepal can act as a vibrant bridge between two ancient civilizations of Asia, namely China and India, under the Belt and Road Initiative.

"I believe that the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China will help to realize the dream of creating the Asian century. Stronger partnership between China and South Asia will be important for securing peace and stability in the region," he said.

Experts also explored Belt and Road Initiative's prospects for economic development in South Asia and pledged to further enhance cooperation and connectivity between China and South Asia during the two-day event that concluded on Saturday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 22:46:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DUBAI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- An Abu Dhabi fund and Comoros signed a deal Saturday on a grant worth 40 million dirham (10.89 million U.S. dollars) to finance the Comoros power grid project, official WAM news agency reported.

The Abu Dhabi Development Fund (ADFD) and the Comoros government on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the Abu Dhabi government grant, the report said.

The agreement was signed by Mohammed Seif Al-Suwaidi, Director General ADFD and Sayyed Ali Syed Sheikhan, Minister of Finance and Budget of the Comoros Islands, at the headquarters of the fund.

"The project provides 11 megawatts of electricity and aims at supporting the economy of the Comoros by establishing an advanced electric network that will increase the efficiency of energy production and enhance its ability to support diverse economic sectors and overcome the most important development challenges," said the WAM report.

Al Suwaidi said "the UAE has close ties with the Comoros and the grant from the government of Abu Dhabi is in line with the directives of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, President of the UAE.

He pointed out that the grant allocated by the government of Abu Dhabi to support the electricity sector "will improve the electricity supply in the Comoros and thus improve the living conditions of the population, he said.

According to WAM, the activity of the ADFD in the Comoros goes back to 1979, when the fund provided finance for five development projects with a total value of 69 million dirhams (18.80 million dollars), covering transport, education, health and electricity sector.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 22:51:07|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BERLIN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The once-in-four-year German federal election will be held on Sunday, which will decide the proportion of the seats in the Bundestag, or the Federal Parliament, and thus decide the formation of the new government.

Based on a slightly modified proportional representation, election in Germany is different from that of the United States or France.

Each voter has two votes, the first of which is for a candidate in his or her constituency, and the second for a state list of candidates put up by a particular party.

The first vote allows a elector to vote for a direct candidate of their constituency, who applies for a direct mandate in the Bundestag. As there are 299 constituencies at the moment, the same number of mandates in the Bundestag are distributed to the elected candidates in each constituency.

This division changes nothing with regard to the key role of the parties in the electoral system, because only those candidates who belong to a party have any chance of success.

The second vote goes to a party instead of a single candidate, and thus determines the percentage each party gets in the Bundestag, so it is more important than the first vote.

Sometimes a party will receive more seats through the first vote than they deserve according to the party vote. Since each candidate who wins a constituency is guaranteed a seat, the party get to maintain those "overhang" seats.

Other parties then also get more seats to make up for this, ultimately making the parliament larger than its base number of 598 seats. Now the incumbent Bundestag have a total of 630 seats.

However, the second votes of a party are counted only if they have won at least five percent of all second votes or three constituencies directly over the votes. If this is not the case, the second votes are invalid.

Approximately over 61 million voters are eligible for the federal election on Sunday. In principle, all Germans who are 18 years old and above on the election day can participate. Most of the voters live in North Rhine-Westphalia (13.1 million) and the least in Saarland (800,000).

The new Bundestag must convene within one month to discuss the formation of the government.

German electoral system makes it very difficult for any one party to form a government on its own. Therefore, an alliance of parties is the general rule.

When parties agree to form a coalition that holds majority seats in the Bundestag, they nominate a candidate for chancellery and will be approved in the new Bundestag, and a new government will be formed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:01:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BAGHDAD, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) denied the reports over postponing the Kurdish independence referendum in the semi-autonomous region, confirming that the referendum would be held as scheduled on Sept. 25.

"The reports about the Kurdish parties accepted the U.S. and UN initiatives and postponed the referendum, are not true," an official from the regional President office told reporters.

The Kurdish official said that the reports quoted Pavel Talabani, the son of former President Jalal Talabani, who was expressing his personal opinion.

Earlier, the Iraqi state-run Iraqiya channel said in a breaking news that "the Kurdish parties decided to postpone the independence referendum," quoting Pavel Talabani, who is also a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The reports quoted Pavel Talabani as saying "after reviewing all of the alternatives, we (PUK and KDP, which are two main Kurdish parties) have concluded that the program offered by the United States, Britain, United Nations and so many other friends around the world, is the best path for Kurdistan at this time."

On June 7, the Kurdish President Masoud Barzani announced his intention to hold a referendum on the independence of the Kurdish region from Iraq on Sept. 25.

The independence of Kurdistan is opposed by many countries because it would threaten the integrity of Iraq and because it comes as the Iraqi forces are in fight against the terrorist Islamic State militant group.

In addition, the neighboring countries of Turkey, Iran and Syria see that such a step would threaten their territorial integrity, as larger populations of Kurds live in those countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:06:11|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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by Justice Lee Adoboe

ACCRA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on Saturday rejected Cote d'Ivoire's claims that Ghana had infringed its sovereign boundary in oil exploration within a disputed zone.

The Hamburg-based tribunal prescribed new coordinates for the demarcation of the maritime boundary between the two countries.

It decide that "the single maritime boundary for the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nm starts at BP 55+ with the coordinates 05 05' 23.2"N, 03 06' 21.2'' W in WGS 84 as a geodetic datum."

It also affirmed Ghana's argument of adoption of equidistance method of delimitation of maritime boundary between it and Cote d'Ivoire while rejecting Cote d'Ivoire's bisector line method of delimitation.

"Of course the maritime boundary has been redrawn but the new designations are not different from Ghana's arguments," Theo Acheampong, a researcher at Abadeen University in Scotland and a petroleum economist told Xinhua.

He emphasized that Ghana's current oil and gas fields, namely the TEN and HESS discoveries, are not affected by the ITLOS ruling, going by publicly available documents.

Since both countries submitted themselves to the ITLOS ruling this final determination brings a closure to the matter, added Acheampong.

Cote d'Ivoire started its claims over the territory after Ghana discovered oil in commercial quantities in 2007 and 2009.

After 10 failed negotiation attempts, Ghana led by former President John Dramani Mahama filed a case at ITLOS in 2014 seeking a determination of the maritime boundary between the two countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:16:13|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MOSCOW, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United States is not canceling visa programs for Russians, instead it wants as many Russians as possible to visit the country, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft said Saturday.

"We are trying very hard to promote travel to the United States," Tefft said in a video interview posted on the official Twitter account of the U.S. Embassy in Russia.

"We are issuing immigrant and non-immigrant visas. We are trying to increase our capacity to do that literally every single day," he said in response to worries that the embassy keeps Russians out of the United States amid tense bilateral relations.

In August, the U.S. mission suspended all non-immigrant visa operations across Russia for nine days and halted visa operations at the U.S. consulates indefinitely.

The visa freeze was in retaliation for Russia's cutting its U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people to 455 and a seizure of two U.S. properties in Moscow in July.

"We are working very hard at the American embassy to try to deal with the reduction of our staff, which was imposed upon us by the Russian government," Tefft said in the interview.

Moscow-Washington ties have reached a record low due to the ongoing war of mutual sanctions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:21:16|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TEHRAN, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran seized a foreign fishing boat in the Persian Gulf on Saturday for illegally entering the country's territorial waters, Press TV reported.

The dhow, belonging to an Arab littoral state of the Persian Gulf, was seized after trespassing into the Islamic republic's territorial waters, said the coastguard commander for Iran's southern Kish Island Colonel Rahim Jahanbakhsh.

The seven crew members, who were also detained, were fishing rare species, particularly blacktip and whitetip sharks, Jahanbakhsh was quoted as saying.

Kish maritime forces have seized seven foreign boats and arrested some 50 crew members, since the beginning of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2017), that had illegally entered the country's territorial waters, he said.

They also confiscated some four tonnes of different types of fish from the boats, he added.

The Iranian maritime official emphasized that the naval forces would strongly counter any intrusion into the Islamic Republic's territorial waters.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:26:18|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MAPUTO, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen passengers died and six others were seriously injured when a collided with a minibus on Saturday morning in the Manhica district of Maputo province, southern Mozambique.

According to the head of the Public Relations department of the Maputo Provincial Command, Juarce Martins, blamed the collision on overloading and speeding.

"The accident occurred around 11 o'clock in the zone of 3 de Fevereiro, along National Number One Road," he said. "The bus was carrying believers from a church and was going to Gaza province."

The injured were taken to Maputo Central Hospital, 84 km from the site of the crash.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:46:23|Editor: Yurou

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British actress Vanessa Redgrave attends a press briefing on her directorial debut film "Sea Sorrow" on the refugee crisis in Athens, Greece, on Sept. 21, 2017. Vanessa Redgrave brought her directorial debut film "Sea Sorrow" on the refugee crisis for a special screening in Athens on Friday evening. (Xinhua/Lefteris Partsalis)

by Alexia Vlachou, Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Acclaimed British actress Vanessa Redgrave brought her directorial debut film "Sea Sorrow" on the refugee crisis for a special screening in Athens on Friday evening.

It is a part of the 23rd Athens International Film Festival "Opening Nights"which runs from September 20 to October 1.

Inspired by the photo of Alan, the little Syrian boy whose body was washed up on a Turkish shore in 2015 while his family was struggling to cross the Aegean sea to Greece, along thousands other refugees, Redgrave wrote the script for a documentary which chronicles the story of refugees in Europe since the 20th century.

The film is a personal and empowering reflection on today's global refugee crisis, as seen through the eyes of children and the voices of activists and artists in France, Britain, Italy and Greece.

Risking their lives, thousands of refugees have abandoned their war-stricken countries in search of a better future.

Since September 2015, more than 8,500 refugees and migrants have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean alone, according to the UN refugee agency.

Redgrave criticized European governments over their response to the refugee crisis during a press conference held on the eve of the screening in the Greek capital.

She praised Greek people for setting an example to the world by showing solidarity to refugees arriving on the shores of the Aegean islands, despite the economic crisis that has hit their country.

In 2016 she visited refugee centers in Greece where she had the opportunity to talk with refugees and migrants. "I did say, and I say it in the film that the Greek people gave a lesson in humanity," she said.

During the film, Redgrave recounts moments from her own past as a war child when she was relocated away from London at the start of World War II.

"We have a poster by the Ministry of Health showing a British woman with a headscarf at the times carrying a baby in her arms, a little boy in one hand, a young girl in the other hand. She is walking through streets that had been bombed and it says, "It could be you" in large letters and underneath "Helping the evacuees is a national duty"," Redgrave said, noting that this is not the case today, as some countries turn their back on refugees.

Dedicating this film to the thousands of refugees who have died in lack of support and protection, the award-winning actress hopes to support the humanitarian groups who do their utmost to support the refugees who have survived, most especially children.

"I cannot live peacefully without doing something for refugees, especially for refugee children. It's as simple as that," she said during the press conference.

During the festival film-goers will have the chance to choose among 108 full feature films and 57 short films.

The Athens Film Society which founded and organizes the festival aiming to highlight genres of independent cinema and introduce Greeks to some of the best productions of the year. It is estimated that more than 60,000 people will pack the cinemas this year.

"The festival's motto this year is Films for All... The major tribute this year is entitled Cinema and Disability. We hope that we will launch a discussion between people with disabilities and the state so that the latter will help them enjoy movies, theatre plays and music concerts as we enjoy them," Loukas Katsikas, the festival's artistic director, told Xinhua.

For first time this year Greek people with disabilities will have the chance to attend a foreign film screening with audio description. In previous years during the festival, organizers introduced the subtitles for Greek movies.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:51:24|Editor: Mengjie

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Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem addresses the General Debate of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York, Sept. 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

DAMASCUS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Syria's foreign minister said Saturday that complete victory was within reach in the country and Damascus hopes de-escalation zones will help Syria reach a cessation of hostilities, state news agency SANA reported.

"The liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra, the lifting of the siege of Deir al-Zour and the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria prove that victory is now within reach," Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured Saturday the country's largest gas field from the Islamic State group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region, a senior official with the group said.

Nasser Haj Mansour of the Syrian Democratic Forces said the Conoco gas field and plant came under full control of the group on Saturday morning after days of fighting with the extremists.

Deir al-Zour is a province rich in oil and gas and both sides have been racing to reach the fields.

The next main target will be al-Omar oil field which is Syria's largest oil field and is also on the east bank of the Euphrates. Syrian government forces are also speeding to capture it.

Russia has warned against targeting its special forces in Deir al-Zour, raising concerns over direct clashes between rival forces backed by Moscow and Washington fighting for the energy-wealthy region.

Russia has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and joined the war two years ago tipping the balance of power in his favor.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-23 23:51:25|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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by Xinhua writer Gu Zhenqiu

LONDON, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- More than half a million people signed an online petition in less than 24 hours by Saturday afternoon backing Uber's fight to save its car operations in London, mirroring profound economic and political disagreements in Britain.

More than 515,000 people entered their names by 1200 GMT on Saturday in support of the U.S.-based company, which urged users to sign in order to keep its cars on London roads. Uber asked customers for help in its fight with London regulators.

The transport authorities in London on Friday announced its decision to stripe Uber of its license from next week, citing its failure to report serious criminal offences, conduct sufficient background checks on drivers and other safety issues.

Uber, which boasts 40,000 drivers in London and claims that 3.5 million people use the service, plans to appeal against the decision by the Transport for London (TfL), which said the U.S.-based company's approach and conduct was "not fit and proper" to hold a private vehicle hire licence.

The decision was backed by the British capital's black-cab drivers and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who said anger from Uber customers and drivers should be directed at the company.

However, deep contradictions can be seen in the confrontation, which is something new to people in Britain.

First, the rift shows contradictions between cheaper ride-hailing service and traditional black-cab operations in London.

The Uber service has become the darling of most Londoners, but in a city filled with well-known black cabs and minicab firms, there are plenty of alternatives out there.

"But in the bigger picture, this is a potentially defining confrontation between the demand for cheap services and the power of regulators," The Times newspaper said on its opinion page on Saturday.

In London, where the cost of housing means many people travel long distances to work unsocial hours for low pay, Uber's low fares and generally prompt service have been a lifeline.

To the Uber riders, the newspaper said, "TfL will look as if it bowed down to pressure from the capital's infamously protective black cabs."

Many Uber users have to rely on the app when public transport is out of reach in London.

"Before the arrival of Uber, Britain's taxi market was flabby and sclerotic," the major British newspaper said. "Black cabs overcharged for expertise that had been supplanted by satellite navigation technology while minicab firms made customers wait."

Second, the dispute demonstrates deep disagreements between key members of ruling and opposition parties in the country.

The Uber licence was revoked by the TfL, headed by Khan, a leading figure in the opposition Labor Party, who said on Friday that "all private-hire operators in London need to play by the rules. The safety and security of Londoners must come first."

However, The Times said, "the timing of the decision is undeniably suspect."

"Mr. Khan has just been told that he will be given a platform at the Labor Party conference and TfL's decision is sure to earn him a rousting endorsement from an audience of activists and trade unionists."

The TfL was immediately rebuked by Greg Hands, a Conservative Party politician and British minister for London.

Hands accused Khan of putting 40,000 people out of work and leaving 3.5 million users of Uber stranded "at the flick of a pen."

"A blanket ban will cause massive inconvenience to millions of Londoners, all the while showing that the mayor of London is closed to business and innovation," he said.

Despite the accusation of failing to take passenger safety as seriously as it should, Uber denied it posed a safety threat to riders and said it had always followed the rules.

The American company has three weeks to appeal, and until the case is resolved, it can continue operating.

Over the past years, the company has turned to its users in Jakarta, Budapest, Toronto and Portland for help in such a confrontation to sign petitions and build online tools to show local lawmakers their support.

Uber will not want to lose access to one of its most lucrative markets. The company and TfL should work together, and legal battles notwithstanding, to devise reforms that would make Uber compliant.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (R) meets with Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moualem on September 21, 2017 at the United Nations in New York. (AFP Photo)

DAMASCUS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Syria's foreign minister said Saturday that complete victory was within reach in the country and Damascus hopes de-escalation zones will help Syria reach a cessation of hostilities, state news agency SANA reported.

"The liberation of Aleppo and Palmyra, the lifting of the siege of Deir al-Zour and the eradication of terrorism from many parts of Syria prove that victory is now within reach," Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters captured Saturday the country's largest gas field from the Islamic State group in an eastern province that borders Iraq as they race with government forces to capture the energy-rich region, a senior official with the group said.

Nasser Haj Mansour of the Syrian Democratic Forces said the Conoco gas field and plant came under full control of the group on Saturday morning after days of fighting with the extremists.

Deir al-Zour is a province rich in oil and gas and both sides have been racing to reach the fields.

The next main target will be al-Omar oil field which is Syria's largest oil field and is also on the east bank of the Euphrates. Syrian government forces are also speeding to capture it.

Russia has warned against targeting its special forces in Deir al-Zour, raising concerns over direct clashes between rival forces backed by Moscow and Washington fighting for the energy-wealthy region.

Russia has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and joined the war two years ago tipping the balance of power in his favor.
| 2017-09-24 06:08:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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MEXICO CITY, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale jolted southeastern Mexico on Saturday, said the country's national seismic monitoring center.

According to the agency, the quake hit the state of Oaxaca and its surrounding waters at 7:52 local time (1252 GMT), with a depth of 75 km.

Although earthquake warnings were triggered in the capital Mexico City, the tremor was not strongly felt.

The quake was strongly felt in the epicenter in Oaxaca, where many buildings collapsed and communication signals were interrupted, nearby residents told Xinhua.

A powerful earthquake struck off Mexico's southern coast on Sept. 7 night, with its epicenter 96 km southwest of the town of Pijijiapan in Chiapas state, at a depth of 33 km.

According to Mexican authorities, it was the most intense earthquake the country has experienced in the last 100 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-24 01:11:43|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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LAGOS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Gunmen suspected to be militants operating in the oil-rich Niger Delta region have attacked a tugboat, killing at three people, local police said Saturday.

Asinim Butswat, police spokesperson in Bayelsa State, who confirmed the attack, said one police operative was still missing.

He said the remains of the victims had been recovered and deposited at the Federal Medical Center Mortuary, Yenagoa, for autopsy.

According to him, a search party has been deployed to find the missing policeman while all security operatives in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area have been alerted.

An oil services vessel with a combined team of security escort on board and civilians was attacked on Friday by suspected sea pirates at Ekebiri Waterways in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa.

The police spokesperson told reporters that a response team dispatched to the crime scene rescued eight occupants of the ill-fated boat.

The attack came barely three weeks after an ambush on a military houseboat that killed two in Southern Ijaw Creeks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-24 02:06:55|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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By Gao Lu

HOUSTON, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- In the aftermath of tropical storm Harvey, expert believed city planners should take environment into serious consideration, otherwise Houston will lose its economic momentum.

Category four Hurricane Harvey made a landfall along the coast of Gulf of Mexico late August. The storm brought unprecedented rainfall to the greater Houston area, killing dozens of people. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said damage from Hurricane Harvey would likely reach 150 billion to 180 billion U.S. dollars.

In the aftermath of the disaster, the city is left asking what could have been done to prevent the extent of the catastrophe, or at least diminish its effects.

Rice University civil engineering professor Philip Bedient said Houston is particularly susceptible to flood for a few reasons.

First of all, Houston is built on a flood plain. The city sits only about 50 feet above sea level. That low elevation combined with rapid urbanization over the past few decades to create an untenable situation: paving over the bayou marshland has allowed flooding on a scale unseen in decades in the city.

Sencondly, the urban sprawl -- meaning low density development over a large area - has limited the city's natural drainage capacity. When concrete is poured over green space, Bedient said, the city loses capacity to absorb water. Sprawl has been exacerbated by a recent population boom and development growth in the city. But the problem goes back decades.

Last but not least, Houston government lacks the will or policy to be serious about flood control. Houston proudly touts itself as "the City with No Limits," playing up its Wild West heritage of endless land and opportunity. But it is also the largest U.S. city to have no zoning laws, meaning you can build whatever you want, wherever you want.

According to a Washington Post investigation, since 2010, more than 7,000 residential buildings have been constructed in 100-year flood plains designated by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

During an exclusive interview by Xinhua, Jim Blackburn, co-director of Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation Center from Disasters in Rice University, said Hurricane Harvey has given Houston a lesson about not having the right plan for heavy rainfall.

He suggested geographic zones should be mapped and separate policies should be considered for what might be regarded as the "safe" area, "transitional" area, where only single-event flooding has occurred, and the "buyout" area, which will become a key element of future green infrastructure that will, along with the "safe area," provide urban design definition to the Houston of tomorrow.

The areas that have never been flooded is the spine of future development, he said. But for the areas that have been flooded for many times in the past, government should buyout those houses and move people out.

"So we have a buyout area that becomes the green zone, if you will. We give that to the water. That's the water's area. And then we work on trying to make more efficient use of that. We did big storage ponds in there, and we made it green space and recreational areas," said Blackburn.

For the areas in between which have been flooded once or twice in the past, various types of measures should be done to bring flood back into the "green zone."

Actually, buying out houses in often flooded areas in Houston has been going on for years. Harris County, where Houston is located, has already bought out more homeowners than any county in the country with spending 225 million U.S. dollars in purchases over the last 20 years, according to FEMA.

Earlier this month, Harris County unanimously approved a plan to seek more than 17 million U.S. dollars to buy out more than 100 homes at the highest risk of flooding in the county. The county's Commissioners Court agreed to submit a grant application to FEMA that, if approved, would enable the Harris County Flood Control District to buy and demolish 104 homes, some of which have flooded multiple times in recent years.

Blackburn admitted the buyout plan may take a lot of money, but it will protect people's lives and save money eventually. "At some point you just have to say, enough. I'm sorry, but we've got to do something different," he said.

He believed the devastating flood Hurricane Harvey rang a bell for authorities and city planners. "We've to get a lot smarter. We're going to have to use our heads and inform our development policies about what we've experienced."

"I think Houston can lose its role as really one of the economic development hopes that the United States had had over the last several decades. Houston has been a continuing success story. That could be over if we don't get this right," Blackburn said.
Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani delivers a speech during a rally to urge people to vote in the upcoming independence referendum in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 22, 2017. (AFP PHOTO)

BAGHDAD, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) on Saturday denied the reports about postponing the independence referendum scheduled on Sept. 25.

"The reports about the Kurdish parties accepted the U.S. and UN initiatives and postponed the referendum, are not true," an official from the regional Presidential Office told reporters.

The Kurdish official said that Pavel Talabani, the son of former President Jalal Talabani who was earlier quoted by the medial reports as announcing the postponement, was only expressing his personal opinion.

Earlier, the Iraqi state-run Iraqiya channel said in a breaking news that the Kurdish parties decided to postpone the independence referendum, quoting Pavel Talabani, who is a senior member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

"After reviewing all of the alternatives, we (PUK and KDP, two main Kurdish parties) have concluded that the program offered by the United States, Britain, United Nations and so many other friends around the world, is the best path for Kurdistan at this time," Talabani was quoted as saying.

The KDP refers to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by KRG President Masoud Barzani, who is leading the campaign to hold the independence referendum.

Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Region's High Council for Referendum also issued a statement on Saturday to refute the rumors about the postponement of the referendum.

The council reiterated that the plebiscite would be held as scheduled on Monday, the Kurdistan 24 reported.

On June 7, Barzani announced his intention to hold a referendum on the independence of the Kurdish region from Iraq on Sept. 25.

This is opposed by Iraqi central government in Baghdad and the international community, especially Iraq's neighboring countries such as Iran, Turkey and Syria.

The three countries fear the move would not only undermine the territorial integrity of Iraq, but also threaten their own security as there is a huge Kurdish population in their countries.

The Iraqi government has warned that it is ready to intervene militarily if the referendum leads to violence.

The United States has also called for postponing the referendum, citing it could distract from the ongoing fight against the terror group Islamic State (IS).

In another development, Turkish Chief of General Staff Hulusi Akar and his Iraqi counterpart Othman al-Ghanimi held talks on Saturday in Ankara to discuss the upcoming Kurdish referendum.

Al-Ghanimi reiterated the importance of preserving Iraq's territorial integrity and political unity, and the joint fight against terror organizations, the Turkish General Staff said in a statement.

The two military officers also exchanged views on maintaining effective cooperation on border security and safeguarding the regional security and stability.

Addressing the parliament, Turkish Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli on Saturday also urged the KRG to cancel the referendum, while expressing support to a peaceful resolution of the disputes between the KRG and the central Iraqi government.
The U.S. Embassy building is reflected in a window of a Russian Army store in Moscow, Russia, July 28, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

MOSCOW, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The United States is not canceling visa programs for Russians, instead it wants as many Russians as possible to visit the country, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft said Saturday.

"We are trying very hard to promote travel to the United States," Tefft said in a video interview posted on the official Twitter account of the U.S. Embassy in Russia.

"We are issuing immigrant and non-immigrant visas. We are trying to increase our capacity to do that literally every single day," he said in response to worries that the embassy keeps Russians out of the United States amid tense bilateral relations.

In August, the U.S. mission suspended all non-immigrant visa operations across Russia for nine days and halted visa operations at the U.S. consulates indefinitely.

The visa freeze was in retaliation for Russia's cutting its U.S. diplomatic staff in Russia by 755 people to 455 and a seizure of two U.S. properties in Moscow in July.

"We are working very hard at the American embassy to try to deal with the reduction of our staff, which was imposed upon us by the Russian government," Tefft said in the interview.

Moscow-Washington ties have reached a record low due to the ongoing war of mutual sanctions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-24 05:27:50|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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LONDON, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The London Metropolitan Police confirmed that an acid attack has taken place Saturday evening in eastern London, injuring at least six people.

"Police were called just before 20:00 hrs on Saturday to the area around Stratford Shopping Centre to reports of a group of males spraying what is believed to be a noxious substance," said the Metropolitan Police in a statement.

The police confirmed that at least six people were injured at different locations near the Westfield shopping center close to Stratford tube station.

Footage and pictures posted by eyewitnesses on social media show police and emergency services attending victims at the scene.

The area has been cordoned off with London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade at presence.

One male has been arrested on suspicion of Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH), according to the police.

The incident is not being treated by Metropolitan police as terror-related, according to local reports.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-24 05:57:55|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- A total of 2,617 civilians have been killed in the U.S.-led anti-terror operations in Syria since late 2014, a monitor group reported Saturday.

The death toll includes 615 children and 443 women, said the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The casualties were documented in the provinces of Hasakah, Raqqa, Aleppo, Idlib and Deir al-Zour, the group added.

The U.S.-led coalition has been backing the Kurdish-led fighters in northern Syria in their fight against Islamic State militants.

The Syrian government has repeatedly slammed the coalition's intervention in Syria as illegitimate, and urged the UN to dissolve the coalition, citing the civilian casualties.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-24 06:38:00|Editor: Mengjie

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OTTAWA, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- The third round of North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations started here on Saturday with attendance of chief negotiators from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Canada's chief negotiator Steve Verhuel said he didn't expect this round to see any new U.S. proposal to increase American content requirements for autos.

Rules of origin of autos will be "a subject for discussion but we're not expecting to see anything radically new at this point," said Verheul.

Under NAFTA's current rules of origin, vehicles must have at least 62.5 percent North American content to qualify for duty-free movement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

Concern has been mounting among trade experts that the year-end deadline for the NAFTA will be impossible to meet if negotiators don't start during this round to confront some of the most contentious issues, including the rules of origin of autos.

At the first round of negotiations in Washington last month, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer pronounced that the North American content requirement must be raised and a specific American content requirement must be added, along with a way to verify that content.

Last Thursday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross published a column in which he blasted NAFTA for allowing outside countries to provide parts for vehicles that aren't covered by the content requirement.

Canada reportedly believes that resolving American concerns about the exodus of automotive jobs to low-wage Mexico is the key to staving off U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to rip up NAFTA.

A total of seven rounds of discussions are planned for the NAFTA renegotiations, with the first two rounds being held in Washington and Mexico City separately.
A group of diverse but like-minded individuals, the members of ARC have come together in their common desire to fight hatred, bigotry, intolerance and violence because of the harm these antisocial behaviors cause to our society. In that effort, we will not use or sanction the use of illegal actions (such as violence or intimidation) in pursuit of our desired aims and if we learn of anyone who does use these unethical methods we will report those individuals to the authorities. Instead, we will use the guarantees found in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that ensure freedom of legal speech and expression.
Sir Charles said his authority needed to manage expectations, noting that the summit will not change PNG overnight. But he said it would establish a foundation for stronger growth, bringing in much-needed foreign exchange and raising PNGs profile.

He told a Business Advantage PNG investment summit in Sydney that hotels, small business suppliers and the informal sector throughout PNG will benefit from preparations for next years APEC leaders summit in Port Moresby.

PORT MORESBY - Papua New Guinea businesses should expect income streams from next month as momentum builds towards the APEC summit in November 2018, director-general of the APEC PNG coordination authority, Sir Charles Lepani, says.

Already, hotels have been paid for senior delegates accommodation.

We intend to go to tender or look for PNG women around the country who make bilums. Each province will make bilums, but not flags, as APEC does not use flags because they are political, Sir Charles said.

We hope to get about 15,000 bilums made by women for each delegate. Not plastic, which would be thrown away afterwards, but real bilums that they can take home with them as gifts.

Regional centres will benefit, he said, because delegates will make day trips to other parts of PNG, including Alotau and Goroka. Air Niugini will earn about K4050 million moving delegates.

The APEC Authority expects 15,000 delegates to attend the 2018 meetings with 9000 attending the summit itself.

Sir Charles Lepani

Sir Charles said the theme for the summit is - Creating Inclusive Opportunities, Embracing the Digital Future - reflects the twin aims of APEC: trade liberalisation and improving infrastructure.

There is a call for urgent attention to social inclusion within the wealth creation and growth APEC economies, he said.

Thirteen Pacific Island leaders will be invited to attend the summit as observers and will have the opportunity to meet with APEC leaders. The Pacific Islands Forum will organise these meetings.

Five VIP aircraft, including the US Presidents plane, will be housed at Jacksons Airport. Talks are underway to have some official aircraft located at Cairns. Three hundred buses will be used to take delegates to and from meetings.

Most media will be accommodated at the Pacific Games Village, which will be renovated even though it is only two years old.

The main official APEC meetings in the lead-up to the summit are:

6-8 October 2017: APEC Transport Ministers meeting

8 October 2017: Delegates will visit Alotau

5-6 December 2017: First Senior Officials Meeting

29 January10 February 2018: Senior Officials Meeting.23 April5 May 2018: Senior Officials Meeting

13-28 August 2018: Senior Officials Meeting12-18 November: Leaders Summit
Drinking water for those served by Skaneateles Lake continues to be free of harmful algal bloom toxins, though low levels were still detected inside the city of Syracuse Gatehouse in the village of Skaneateles.

The Onondaga County Health Department and City of Syracuse Department of Water issued a statement Friday night that levels coming into the village Thursday were 0.19 micrograms per liter, under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's health advisory guideline for vulnerable populations. Due to chlorination, however, both government entities said the drinking water has shown no toxins and is safe to drink. Testing will continue daily.

Skaneateles Lake has had detectable levels of toxins in the water since Monday. Skaneateles Schools have reopened their drinking water fountains, which Superintendent Ken Slentz had shut off on Sept. 20 following the toxin reports. Joint statements issued by county, state and water officials originally said the village of Skaneateles's water detected toxins. That statement was later revised for following test results to say toxins were detected prior to chlorination. Thus, officials have said, no toxins are detected at the village's taps.

What is harmful algae and what can it do to your health? Harmful algal blooms are a kind of bacteria that usually crop up in water bodies during late

"What has become apparent is the poor communication processes involved with this issue," he wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. "These processes have resulted in a good deal of confusion in our community and led to our decision to utilize bottled water until such time as we could confidently state that our water is safe. Going forward, we will continue to work with the village, County Department of Health, and the State Department of Health to ensure consistent, fact-based information is being shared in timely and consistent fashion."

Skaneateles is not the only New York water body suffering from blooms. The state Department of Environmental Conservation reported Friday that 16 water bodies were added to its HABs notification page for a total of 65. Owasco, Cayuga and Skaneateles lakes continue to be listed as with confirmed blooms.

Meanwhile high levels of toxins were detected in a bloom reported on Monday in Owasco Lake. The Owasco Lake Watershed Inspection Program updated its website Friday with the latest test results showing a toxic bloom just north of Lindenwood Cove.

The bloom had about 16 times the state Department of Environmental Conservation's threshold of microcystin at 318.7 micrograms per liter. It also had nearly 50 times the DEC's threshold for chlorophyll a, another indicator to confirm an algae bloom.

Watershed Specialist Drew Snell said Friday that shoreline blooms were still widespread from south to north. He said the southwest corner and the east side of the lake are particularly showing signs of continued algae events.

The Cayuga County Health Department took water samples from the city of Auburn and town of Owasco's water treatment plants Friday morning. Those results were also not immediately available Friday night, though the past few results have shown no detectable levels of toxins in the drinking water.
U.S.Sen. Jeff Flake's boots crunched over the chipped remains of branches, needles and treetops as the Arizona politician paid a visit to a forest restoration project west of Flagstaff Friday morning. The Observatory Mesa site had recently been thinned to remove overcrowded ponderosa pine trees, helping improve forest health and reduce severe fire risk.

Flake was there to learn from state and federal officials about progress on forest restoration in the region, as well as hear about a recent test by Salt River Project to burn a small percentage of biomass along with the coal.

Flake's visit also happened to land in the same month that, two years ago, the senator stopped by the Kaibab National Forest with a similar goal of checking on forest thinning for the 2.4 million-acre Four Forest Restoration Initiative, or 4FRI.

Making a convenient marker of time, Flakes visit highlighted that the 4FRI project is still struggling to overcome many of the roadblocks and challenges it faced two years ago. While the initiative has counted some successes, including a steady climb in acreage being mechanically treated on its east side, it still has failed to meet important benchmarks, including the goal of thinning 50,000-acres per year and finding an economic use for small-diameter trees and small fuels that crowd the regions forests.

SRPs biomass test burns, which took place over the winter, have been one attempt at finding a large-scale, profitable and sustainable use for biomass from forest thinning activities related to 4FRI. So far, the Forest Service has struggled to establish other viable options, said Scott Russell, 4FRIs chief executive.

SRP officials said the utility still needs to do more testing before making a long-term decision, but in terms of potential economic hurdles, the cost of the biomass-coal mixture is two to three times higher than burning coal alone, said Ronald Klawitter, an analyst with SRP. The supply of biomass from logging operations in the regions forests also would need to increase if SRP were to scale up biomass burning operations beyond a test phase, Klawitter said.

The concept of burning biomass for power is starting to gain traction among state regulators as well. The Arizona Corporation Commission plans to hold a hearing in October on market development opportunities and commercially viable forest bioenergyn options.

On Friday, Flake expressed support for the states one existing biomass power plant and for SRPs pilot effort. In terms of the higher cost of biomass power, it needs to be reconsidered in the context of the benefit the energy source provides to the forest, Flake said.

You can't just look at it in terms of cost megawatt power, its how much acreage are we protecting here? Flake said. You don't look at it just in terms of the cost of power, you look at it in terms of alternative costs we would incur if we weren't partnering with businesses and if the federal government had to foot the whole bill for thinning and management of our forests. So it has to be looked at differently.

Flake addressed what has become one of the most obvious challenges to 4FRIs progress: the company that holds the largest thinning contract. The company got new leadership and changed its name from Good Earth Power to NewLife Forest Products this year.

In 2015, Flake called the company frustrating saying it was missing deadlines and not moving as quickly as they needed to.

They seem to have another reason every time we talk to them, Flake said at the time.

On Friday, his message hadnt changed much and neither had Good Earth-turned-NewLifes trajectory. Between August 2015 and August 2017, the company thinned about 4,500 acres, despite the fact that the then-CEO said it would thin 16,000 acres per year in 2016 alone.

On Friday, Flake said: We're all very frustrated by it, we've been talking a lot with the Forest Service saying you'd better be finding ways around this and to actually not depend on Good Earth keeping their promises, because they haven't yet."

Both Flake and his counterpart Sen. John McCain have continued to press the Forest Service to focus on offering more thinning contracts in the White Mountains region of the 4FRI footprint where several logging companies already have well-established operations.

During Fridays visit, Flake touted collaboration and innovation and urged the Forest Service to be realistic in evaluating future 4FRI contracts, but he ended his assessment of the regions forest restoration work with a plea more than a plan.

Weve really got to make 4FRI work. It is the model for how we're going to manage our forests nationwide, or in the West at least, and if it doesn't work we're in a heap of trouble, Flake said. Thats why there's a lot of pressure here.
PHOENIX -- Willing to spend four years in front of a classroom full of fourth graders?

What if you got a free education degree from one of the state's three universities?

That's the deal that Gov. Doug Ducey is offering to some people in a bid to address the state's teacher shortage.

But the small program -- just $1 million spread among the state's universities -- means only some would-be teachers will get tuition waivers. And it it remains to be seen whether the offer can help plug the gap between the need and the number of people willing to take and remain on the job.

Ducey proposed the Arizona Teachers' Academy in January as one method to deal with the state's chronic teacher shortage.

"I'm looking for the best and brightest to commit to teach in Arizona public schools,'' he said in his State of the State speech. "If you make that commitment, we'll make this commitment: Your education will be paid for, a job will be waiting and you will be free of debt.''

Under the program, which will finally be formally unveiled Tuesday, for each year a student who is accepted into the program promises to teach in a public school, he or she will get a waiver of tuition and fees.

That not only applies to new high school graduates. Universities also can craft their program to pay for a master's degree in education for someone who already has a degree in something else and might already be in a classroom, teaching with a temporary emergency certificate.

There already are loan forgiveness programs, though they are aimed at filling vacancies either in specialties like science, math and special education, or for those willing to teach in schools located in low-income or rural areas. But the shortage remains.

The Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association found that four weeks into last school year, the 159 school districts and charter schools surveyed still had 2,166 vacancies, meaning schools could fill only three out of every four openings. Others were staffed with those without teaching certificates, long-term substitutes or combining classes.

Justin Wing, past president of the association, said Friday he's still compiling data for this year. But he said the results so far show it is "still difficult'' to fill vacancies.

Wing said a tuition waiver program could help put more people in the pipeline to become teachers. He said it might even mean that more students from disadvantaged families, whose education would otherwise end with a diploma, might go on to college.

But Wing, director of human resources at Washington Elementary School District in Phoenix, said the real problem is keeping teachers in the classroom.

Joe Thomas, president of the Arizona Education Association agreed said the program might provide some incentive for people to choose education as a career path.

"But this alone is not going to solve our teacher crisis,'' Thomas said. "We have plenty of certified teachers in the state.''

As of Friday, the state Department of Education said there were more than 92,000 active teaching certificates. But just 50,000 of those people were in public school classrooms, with another 10,000 in charter schools.

Thomas said some of that does relate to the cost of education.

"It's difficult to earn enough money to survive and pay off your debt,'' he said.

"It's not so much that they don't want to teach,'' Thomas said. "The income-to-debt ratio isn't sustainable and so they have to get another job.''

Lawmakers did address that issue, at least a bit, putting money into the budget for a 1 percent pay hike this year and an identical amount the following year, versus the 0.4 percent proposed by Ducey.

Diane Douglas, the state superintendent of public instruction, said that won't cut it.

She wants to boost the current 0.6 cent sales tax dedicated to education to a full penny, something that would bring in an additional $400 million a year. She figures earmarking $300 million of that solely for teacher pay would increase salaries by 11 percent, or an average of $5,500.

Ducey, for his part, remains opposed to any expansion of that education tax.

Pay aside, Douglas said Friday she understands how tuition waivers for some selected for the academy might get more people interested in teaching. But Douglas, who is supporting the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Mark Brnovich against the Board of Regents over tuition, had concerns.

"Is it fair that we give some people tuition waivers but not those for whom education might not be the field for them?'' she asked.

And Douglas said if the state is giving away free college education, the commitment should be more than just a year-for-year match.

That goes to the other issue: About 40 percent of teachers leave after second year; by the fifth year, half are gone, leaving the question of what good do waivers do if those who them them can leave debt-free after four years.

Thomas said the issue goes beyond salaries and the related issue of student debt. He said those who leave more often cite other reasons.

"They really believe that the job's not what they thought it was going to be,'' he said, with issues of class size and workload, including paperwork, cutting into the time they thought they'd be teaching.

"It sounds very noble,'' Douglas said of teaching. But she said many have absolutely no idea of what the job really entails.

Wing said this appears particularly true among those who have the alternate teaching certificates, a measure pushed through the Legislature by Ducey to allow those without formal teacher training to run a classroom.

"Some are really good,'' he said. But others, Wing said, have no idea what's in store.

"People think because you're working with 26 cute, wonderful kids, that's no problem,'' Wing said. "However, it's a very stressful job.''

In fact, Wing said schools are reporting a lot of situations where new teachers just abandon their jobs in the first few months of the year. That includes not only those who came in through the alternate certification process but who probably weren't qualified -- and should not have been hired in the first place. But Wing said districts didn't have much choice.

"There's a lack of competition for every job,'' he said, meaning the person hired may have been the only applicant. "I think standards are being lowered.''
Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation: 510 N. Leroux. Today from 1-5 p.m., all community members are welcome to find your new favorite game and support the ACLU of Arizona. Entry is $10 and kids are free entry with supervision. You'll get great guidance to play new board, card, dice, and party games while meeting other community members. On Sunday morning Rev. Kevin will conclude our September theme of Beauty with reflections upon our common humanity, our common call to goodness, our shared understanding of living within the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part. beaconuu.com/.

Calvary Bible Church: 6555 Townsend-Winona Road. Adult Bible Stud, Worship Service, Evening service. Awana on Sept. 25, 6:15-8 p.m. Children ages 3-13, all are welcome. Wednesday night at 7 p.m. studying Job, prayer and Bible study. Also Teen Awana at 7 p.m. calvarybiblechurchflagstaff.com.

Center for Spiritual Living: 2384 N. Steves Blvd. The guest speaker at our service on Sunday will be Hugh Clark. Guided Meditation time will be available prior to service. 522-9103.

Christ's Church of Flagstaff: 3475 E. Soliere Ave. Saturday and Sunday Services held each weekend. For service times and ccof.church. This month's sermon series will focus on "Freedom." Topics include: Freedom from Shame and Addiction; Freedom from Religion; Freedom from Slavery. ccof.church.

Christian Science Society of Flagstaff: 619 W. Birch Ave. We hold Sunday worship services and Sunday School (for children and young people up to the age of 20). The subject of this week's sermon is"Reality." We also have Wednesday testimony meetings at 5:30 p.m. each week. Our Christian Science Reading Room, a quiet place for prayer and study, is open from 4-5:30 on Wednesdays and 10-noon on Saturdays or by appointment. 556-0510 . All are welcome to our services and to use our Reading Room.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon): Sunday services held at four Flagstaff locations: 4165 S. Lake Mary Road, 625 E. Cherry Ave., 2401 E. Linda Vista Dr. and, for young single adults, 239 E. Saunders Dr. Meetings are also held in Williams at 1111 Stockmens Road and at the Shrine of the Ages on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Check azdailysun.com or "Locations and Schedules" at LDS.org for meeting times by ward/branch. Sunday services consist of Sacrament Meeting, Sunday School and special instruction for various age and interest groups (Priesthood Meeting for men, Relief Society for women, Young Men/Young Women for youth and Primary for children).

Church of the Resurrection: 740 W. University Heights Drive South. "Contentment in all Circumstances" based on Philippians 4:10-23 is Pastor Bob Norton's sermon topic this Sunday. Youth group barbecue is today at 4:30 at the Reyes home in University Heights. We are teaming up with Oasis of Hope's youth group for a joint event. Coming soon is the popular resolving everyday conflict class Tuesday evenings in October. There's still time to join Pioneer Club on Tuesday afternoons for kids in grades K-5. Learn memory verses and bible stories, play fun games, do skits and creative craft projects. Practice for the new ukulele choir is every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Youth Group. Mark your calendars for a "How to Share your Faith" workshop coming Saturday, Sept. 30 based on the principles of Evangelism Explosion. The cost is $20 and includes lunch. 699-2715. cor-pca.org.

Congregation Lev Shalom: 2609 N. Patterson Blvd.We will hold High Holiday Services beginning with Kol Nidre at 6 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 29, at the synagogue. On Saturday, Sept. 30 there will be a children's service at 9 a.m. and Yom Kippur Services and Yizkor at 10 a.m. Yom Kippur will conclude with the Neilah Service at 6 p.m. followed by a community Break-the-Fast. Rabbi Mindie Snyder will be leading all services. 527-8747. levshalomaz.org.

Episcopal Church of the Epiphany: 423 N. Beaver St. Priest Marianna Gronek preaches and celebrates at all services this weekend. Children's Chapel will continue using "The Whole People of God". Deacon Janetta Beaumont's home-made cinnamon rolls will be available for purchase between and after services, with all proceeds designated to help send winter clothing to the people of Nepal. 774-2911. epiphanyaz.org.

Faith Fellowship: 4005 E. Butler Ave. Sunday morning sermon on "Where Are You? Knowing Your Position In Christ." Sunday eveningervice Sermon on "Revival and the Anointing." Thursday 6 p.m. we meet for worship and prayer. Tuesday 6:30 p.m. Women of Faith start a new Bible study "Women of the Bible." Soul Winning Training Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Faith Kids church for kids ages 1-12. 575-0455.

Flagstaff Christian Fellowship: 123 S. Beaver St. Pastor Steve Cole continues his series on marriage with "Christlike Love for Your Wife" from Ephesians 5:25-33. Nursery is available for both services. The adult class will begin a new series on Spiritual Discipline. Evening Service continues Psalms with Mike Keena speaking on Psalm 37. 774-3603. fcfonline.org.

First Congregational Church of Flagstaff, United Church of Christ: 740 N. Turquoise Dr. We celebrate the United Church of Christ's American Indian Ministries this Sunday. Rev. David G. Cooper, Pastor Emeritus will be our pulpit guest. He will preach on "Deathbed Confessions" based on Matthew 20:1-16. In other church news: On Sept. 27 (Wednesday), we invite all to join us in spiritual meditation discussion and exercise in the evening at 7 p.m. at the church; Church Fellowship breakfast will be at Coco's Restaurant at 8 a.m. on Thursday (Sept. 28). 774-0890, fccflagstaff.org.

Flagstaff Federated Community Church: 400 W. Aspen Ave. This Sunday Pastor Jessica will continue the worship series that engages scripture passages from Romans with inspiration from Marilyn Chandler McEntyre's "Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies". This Sunday's sermon, titled "Cherish the Silence" is inspired by Romans 15:1-6. The Wired Word class will continue to examine current events through the lens of faith at 9:30 a.m. while the Christian Living Class will explore progressive Christianity at 11 a.m. Children's Church is scheduled for both services. Second Breakfast for High School students will eat and fellowship together while exploring scripture during the first service. We will be hosting the second part of Connections @ Federated from 12:15-2 p.m. This is an opportunity to find out more about Federated. Lunch will be provided. 774-7383. flagstafffederatedchurch.org.

Flagstaff Unity Church: 417 W. Santa Fe Ave. Author Cate Montana is our speaker. Her message is titled "Ego Evolution and Making Sense of Our Times." Children's program is available. Service is followed by a potluck and a workshop lead by Cate Montana called "Playshop - Getting to the Light Side of Life." 526-8893. unityofflagstaff.org.

Greenlaw Baptist Church: 3400 E. Lockett Road. Sunday School classes for all ages. Pastor Barry Hall will bring the message: "Changing the World Like Our Father Abraham Romans 4:18-21. Thursday worship service followed by dinner and breakout groups, including our Celebrate Recovery program. If you have an addiction, we can help you in this program. This is a non-judgmental, caring approach to your problem. 526-4939.

Holy Cross Orthodox Church: 6134 Black Bill Road. '9th Hour Morning prayer' and Divine Liturgy with Father Basil. 480-991-3009. holycrossflagstaff.org/.

Hope Community Church: 3700 N. Fanning Dr. Sermon - "Why We Need Each Other." The "call" of God creates the "community" of faith. Study from Hebrews 10:14-25. 526-0677. hopeflagstaff.com.

Living Christ Lutheran Church: 6401 N. US Highway 89. We gather weekly on Sundays to worship through music, teaching, prayer and sacraments. Fellowship time after service. Pastor Kurt Fangmeier will be leading worship. 526-8595. livingchristflagstaff.org.

Peace Lutheran Church: 3430 N. Fourth St. Pastor Paper will be speaking on Matthew 20:1-6 this Sunday. After fellowship the Bible class on " A Man named Marti" will continue. Holy Communion will be served at the Praise Service. We will also be selling pre-made sandwiches for a fundraiser for LCMS Disaster Relief for the victims of Hurricane Harvey and Irma. Part of the sandwiches are being donated by local business. 526-9578. peacelutheranchurch.org.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quaker): Flagstaff Friends Meeting House, 402 S. Beaver St. At our unprogrammed Quaker Meeting we meet in silence of expectant listening, letting go of the inner disturbances of daily life and waiting for the guidance of the Inner Light. A Meeting may be completely silent, or, as more often happens, someone will feel moved to speak, to share something which may be of help or guidance to others. 779-3517. flagstaffquakers.org/.

Refuge: A Flagstaff Community Church: 4000 Cummings St. Refuge is a non-denominational church in Flagstaff. We meet weekly to enjoy God's word, fellowship and worship. Sunday school available for children. 607-5728. facebook.com/refugeinflagstaff/.

San Francisco De Asis Parish: 1600 E. Route 66. Fr. Dan and Fr. Clement will preach the Gospel of Matthew 20:1-6a. San 774-1118. sfdaparish.org.

Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church: 1601 N. San Francisco St. Pastor Les Hoffman will be our guest pastor at all 3 services today and Sunday. We are collecting household items, and clothing for a church that was impacted by Hurricane Harvey, south of Houston. Please bring donations to the church. Sunday School and Confirmation Classes are in progress in between Sunday services. Adult Education will begin Oct. 8 at 10:15 a.m. "Luther Then and Now" is the topic. The five week series will use a recently film, recently shown on PBS.Women's adult bible study will begin Monday night at 7 p.m., It is based on the book The Jesus Hearted Woman, and will meet every other Monday night. sothflagstaff.org.
With its mix of infrastructure and culture, Nagpur has the potential to become the centre of development of the country, says President

Maharashtra, Sat, 23 Sep 2017 NI Wire

The President of India, Ram Nath Kovind inaugurated the Suresh Bhat Natya Sabhagrah at Nagpur today (September 22, 2017).

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that this is his first visit to Maharashtra after assuming the office of President. Maharashtra is the karmabhoomi of many revolutionaries, social reformers and saints. The list of great social and political leaders produced by the state, from their many streams, is a long one and includes Shivaji Maharaj, Chhatrapati Sahu Ji, Samarth Guru Ramdas, Tatya Tope, Sant Eknath, Sant Dnyaneshwar, Sant Tukaram, Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, and Pandita Ramabai Saraswati to Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Y.B. Chavan and Baba Amte.

The President said that Maharashtra was one of the main centres of the freedom struggle. Many important chapters of the freedom movement, including the 'Quit India Movement' of 1942, were written in Maharashtra. Mahatma Gandhi regarded Gokhale as his Guru and made Wardha in the Nagpur division his work place.

The President said that Maharashtra is not only a hub of industry and business of the country but that of its culture and art as well. Mumbai is described as the economic capital of India. By linking its heritage of education and culture with trade and technology, Maharashtra is giving strength to the entire country in the 21st century. In the quest for development and economic change, we have to take care to keep our cultural moorings intact. In this context, Maharashtra is setting an example for the nation.

The President appreciated the rapid development of modern infrastructure which has taken place in Nagpur. He noted that there is a project to make Nagpur a Smart city. 'Zero Mile' Nagpur, traditionally regarded the geographical centre of the country, has the potential to become the centre of development of India as well.

Source: PIB
Aspiring Business Leaders should to build a culture of Inclusiveness: Vice President

Punjab, Sat, 23 Sep 2017 NI Wire

Inaugurates 15th edition of ISB Leadership Summit 2017

The Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu has said that aspiring business leaders should to build a culture of inclusiveness and shape their actions to have a positive impact in the lives of those who need support. He was addressing the gathering after inaugurating the 15th edition of ISB Leadership Summit 2017 at the Mohali campus of the Indian School of Business on the theme Transforming Tomorrow: The Future Unraveled, in Mohali, Punjab today. The Governor of Punjab & Administrator of UT Chandigarh, Shri V.P. Singh Badnore, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Shri Jayant Sinha and the Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Research & Medical Education, Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Punjab, Shri Brahm Mohindra were also present on the occasion.

The Vice President said that an area of concern has been the growing inequalities and exclusion of certain sections of our population. He further said that we must be attentive to these trends and see that we build a culture of inclusiveness. He advised the ISB students that the antyodaya approach advocated by Gandhiji, Dr. Ambedkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyayaji should serve as our guiding principle. The students must listen to diverse voices, especially those which are feeble and almost inaudible now, he added.

The Vice President said that the students should break new ground. He further said that innovation, thinking outside the box and accessing knowledge from across the globe and adapting it to our country context would be crucial. He also asked them to mindful of the ethical dimension while building the physical, material and intellectual wealth. Let us remind ourselves of what Gandhiji had said about the means and ends, he added.

The Vice President called for a collective resolve to root out corruption and undesirable elements like communalism, casteism, fundamentalism, criminalization of politics, gender discrimination and atrocities on women and weaker sections. We must recognize the devastating impact of terrorism and launch a coordinated strategy to root it out, he added.

The Vice President pointed that there was a general recognition, echoed in the assessment of the World Bank in 2017, that India is the fastest growing economy in the world, and said that it was time to capitalize on the demographic dividend by enthusing, equipping and empowering youth who constitute 65 per cent of countrys population.

The Vice President said that while the country could be legitimately proud of what was accomplished so far, the India of tomorrow will have to be a country which would translate the dreams of our freedom fighters into tangible reality.

- It will be an India that will transform the quality of life of the citizens.

- It will be an India that will internalize and live the values of democracy and inclusion as a way of life.

- It will be an India that places 'people', especially those who are the poorest of the poor at the centre of the development process.

- It will be an India that encourages each Indian to realize her or his own potential.

- It will be an India where women get equal opportunities along with men.

- It will be an India that will foster innovation in all spheres.

- It will be an India that will celebrate its infinite diversity and rich cultural heritage.



If this is the future India we wish to unravel, we have to build it individually and together, he added.

Source: PIB
Prime Minister Modi dedicates Deendayal Hastkala Sankul to the Nation

Varanasi, Sat, 23 Sep 2017 NI Wire

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, yesterday dedicated to the nation, the Deendayal Hastkala Sankul - a trade facilitation centre for handicrafts - at Varanasi. The Prime Minister had laid the foundation stone of this Centre in November 2014. Today, he visited the Centre, and was given an overview of the facilities developed there, before arriving on the dais for the dedication.

He described the Trade Facilitation Centre as one of the biggest projects for Varanasi for a long time. He said this Centre would help the artisans and weavers showcase their skills to the world, and facilitate a brighter future for them. He asked the people to encourage all tourists to visit this Centre. He said this would result in increased demand of handicrafts, and also boost the tourism potential of Varanasi, and indeed the economy of the city.

The Prime Minister said the solution to all problems is through development. He said the Government is focused on bringing about positive change in the lives of the poor and of succeeding generations. In this context, he praised the efforts of Utkarsh Bank.

Speaking on the occasion, the Union Textiles Minister Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani said that the Ministry of Textiles is fortunate that the Rs. 300 crore Deendayal Hastkala Sankul has been dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister, on the auspicious occasion of Nav Durga. The Minister recalled that the foundation stone of the Sankul was laid by the PM on 7th November, 2014 and that the first phase was inaugurated by the PM on 22nd December, 2016. She said that the dedication of the Sankul today is a demonstration of the leadership of the Prime Minister. She said that it will help increase the earnings of weavers and artisans, and help better showcase their products to the world.

The Textiles Minister said that Government wants every member of the families of weavers and artisans to be able to fulfil their dream of acquiring good education. She informed that towards this, the Ministry of Textiles has entered into MoUs with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), whereby children of weavers and artisans are able to avail school and university education, with 75% of fees being borne by the Government of India.

Speaking about the success of the MUDRA scheme, the Minister said that beneficiaries receive security-free loans ranging from 50,000 rupees to 10 lakh rupees under the scheme. She said that more than 33,000 weavers have benefited by MUDRA scheme, receiving loans worth more than 170 crore rupees. She added that weavers receiving MUDRA loans have been able to increase their income by more than 50% within just two months. The Minister said that the Government will reach out to artisans across the country, in order to provide them benefits of MUDRA loans and other facilities.

The Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Ram Naik; the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Yogi Adityanath; and Minister of State, Textiles, Shri Ajay Tamta were other dignitaries present on the occasion.

A Brief on Deendayal Hastkala Sankul

The Finance Minister in the Budget 2014-15 had announced setting up of a Trade Facilitation Centre and a Crafts Museum to develop and promote handlooms, handicrafts and silk products of Varanasi and to provide necessary help to weavers, artisans and entrepreneurs of Varanasi in strengthening their marketing activities in domestic as well as international markets and in carrying forward the rich tradition of handlooms at Varanasi.

A Trade Facilitation Centre is an indispensable step to help weavers/artisans of Varanasi to integrate into the global economy. There is a need for trade facilitation and advisory services to provide support for compliance with trade procedures, formalities and legal and regulatory requirements; this is needed to make entrepreneurs aware of new rules, regulations, thereby facilitating their import/export activities and enhancing their competitiveness. There is also a need to showcase the rich tradition of Varanasi through museum, live demonstration and audio visual medium to domestic and international tourists.

The Sankul will facilitate the weavers/artisans/exporters in promotion of handlooms/handicrafts in both domestic and international markets. The Crafts Museum in the Sankul will preserve the traditional handloom/handicrafts products of Varanasi and showcase the handloom & handicraft products, which will be an inspiration for the new generation, scholars, designers and tourists.

The project spans 7.93 acres, with a built-up area of 43,450 square metres. The approximate cost of the complex is 300 crore rupees.

The Prime Minister had laid foundation stone of Trade Facilitation Centre and a Crafts Museum on 7th November, 2014 at Bada Lalpur, Varanasi. The first phase of the project, consisting of Crafts Museum, Entrance Plaza and Shopping Arcade was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 22nd December, 2016.

The project is strategically located near the upcoming bypass between NH-29 (Varanasi - Gorakhpur Road) and NH-56 (Varanasi - Sultanpur Road) which shall reduce travel time to Sankul from Varanasi airport to 30 minutes and from Sarnath to Sankul to 20 minutes. The location of the site also allows its connectivity to all prominent locations within Varanasi and Sarnath. The location is expected to be the new growth corridor of development.

The complex is equipped with automated Building Management Systems (BMS), central air conditioning and ventilation systems, power backup, fire protection and public address systems, lifts/escalators for ease of public movement on all levels and centrally monitored CCTV system for safety and security.

The project consists of five blocks: Marts-cum-Office, Convention hall-cum-Exhibition, Food court-cum-Guest House, Shopping Arcade and Crafts Museum. It has double-basement parking facilities with parking capacity of around 370 cars and 430 two-wheelers.

Source: PIB
Former President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, has again expressed that Nigerians must proceed onward together, saying separation was something that shouldnt even be considered.

This is coming on the heels of calls for restructuring and the demand by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, for a sovereign state of Biafra.

In a statement issued on Friday by his Media Aide, Paul Mumeh, the former Senates President insisted that the unity of Nigeria is not negotiable.

Senator Mark gave the statement when he led members of the Nigeria Defence Academy (NDA) 3rd Regular Course Alumni Association on a courtesy visit to the Kaduna State Acting governor, Alhaji Aminu Shagali, in Kaduna to mark the Golden Jubilee ( 50 years) of their entry into the NDA.

Those who are agitating for otherwise are missing the point. Nigeria has crossed many crucibles.

We cannot reverse ourselves. The only option is to move on in a manner that is progressive, peaceful and united.

We may have our disagreements. But a break up is not an option. We can resolve our differences through meaningful dialogue and genuine conversation.

There is no use heating up the polity, he said.

He noted that no matter the imperfections, the nation is greater and better as an indivisible country.

He recalled that he and his course mates were admitted into the NDA in September 1967 saying they were admitted with a mission to protect and defend the territorial integrity of our nation .

We were bonded together by patriotism to keep Nigeria one.

It is a sweet memory and a reunion to gather in Kaduna once again, he explained.

He stated that the Alumni Association is registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission( CAC) as non- political, non- Profit and a Non-Governmental association.

Responding, the Acting Governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Shagali thanked members of the alumni association for believing in the indivisibility of Nigeria.

Shagali said Kaduna state on its part would continue to work for the peace and unity of Nigeria.

He recalled that even the fear of reprisal attacks when there were some disturbances in some parts of Nigeria were unfounded in Kaduna because the government was proactive.
Gov. Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta on Thursday commended the Nigerian Navy for ensuring peace, checking piracy and securing oil facilities in the Niger Delta.

Okowa made the commendation when he received the Flag Officer Commanding Logistics Command, Oghara, Rear Adm. Peter Onaji, who led top officers of the Command on a familiarisation visit to Asaba.

He charged the Navy not to relent in its efforts to protect oil and gas facilities in the region.

The activities of the Navy have helped to curb sea piracy and protection of national assets, especially facilities that transport crude and gas.

It is important that the Navy does not relax on its duties, because of the importance of having secure maritime for socio-economic activities.

Today, we have peace in the creeks largely due to the efficiency of the Navy in collaboration with other security agencies and stakeholders which has impacted greatly on the economy of the country, the Governor said.

He also commended the Chief of Naval Staff for his commitment to developing the Navy in the wake of any challenge, adding that his initiatives had been felt in Delta and the entire region.

He charged the Navy to make its Medical facilities and Educational Institutions available to the general public while assuring that his administration would partner with it to build a secondary school in the state.

Onaji told the governor that he was recently posted as the Commanding Officer in charge of Logistics Command, Oghara, and that his visit was to intimate him with the activities of the command.

He thanked the governor for his administrations numerous assistance to the Navy and other security agencies operating in the state.

He said that the Navy would ensure the securing of the waterways and would also be available to tackle security issues as the need arose.
ECOWAS decided to partner with Skill `G in delivering of specialised skill centres in 15 member countries.

We started this with UNESCO during Olusegun Obasanjos administration to deepen technical and vocational education and it attracted ECOWAS for adoption.

It will cover primary to tertiary education; we are looking at how to standaridise certification of degrees and curricula in the sub-region.

It will start with 7-member nation pilot project in which we will train the trainers-300 professionals with be trained from every nation and they will train others.

They will go to their respective nations and will be able to multiply and give these knowledge to our pupils and students at all levels; we target 11,000 to 12,000 personnel annually, he said.

According to Ibe, Science and laboratory courses in most of Nigerias higher institutions have been accredited due to the availability of Skill `G  laboratories.

He said that under the project, all curricula in schools starting from primary to tertiary would be covered with science experiments, adding that the firm had the equipment and technical know-how.

On his part, Mr Boly Hamidou, ECOWAS Commissioner for Education, Science and Culture, said that the sub-region would harmonise education curricula with a view to improving skill acquisition.

We want to build on technical know-how and produce entrepreneurs.

We saw what Skill `G did in Nigeria and we decided to partner with the firm; no need going to elsewhere to get these things when we can get from Nigeria,  he said.
Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, has called on Donald Trump to embrace peace and dialogue which are the tenets of the United Nations.

He said the American presidents speech at the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly threatened the existence of other nations, saying Trump is a modern version of the biblical Goliath who now threatens to make other countries go extinct.

The 93-year-old president told the assembly that each nation can build its greatness through the core values of the UN, which include peace, unity, togetherness, and cooperation, among others.

Read an excerpt of his speech below:

We believe a different and better world is possible. The continued denial of the rights to self-determination to the people of Western Sahara and Palestine, who are living under colonial and foreign occupation, is immoral and an urgent issue for those seeking peace in our time.

My country is an unflinching advocate of the respect of independent and sovereignty rights of each country. We cannot, however, remain silent when those decisions negatively affect our own welfare.

And on this, may I say some of us were embarrassed, if not frightened, by what appears to be the return of the biblical giant called Goliath. Are we having the return of Goliath to our midst who threatens the extinction of other countries?

May I say, today, United States President, Mr. Trump, please blow your trumpet in a musical way towards the values of peace, unity, co-operation, togetherness, dialogue which we have always stood for and which we read in our very sacred document  the charter of the United Nations.

Upon those values, each nation can build its greatness, including the United States. And its the greatness in recognising those values that we will want to be guided by and not by the promise of our damnation.

Damnation we shall always resist, no matter whence it comes. We have resisted when it was in the form of imperialism, as we fought for our own independence and culture and sovereignty to be masters of our own destiny.

That is why we call ourselves free today It is because the monster of imperialism was defeated by us. Bring us another monster by whatever name, he will suffer the same consequences, Mugabe said.
The Flagstaff Festival of Science kicked off its 28th year Friday at Ardrey Auditorium with a dance by students from the NAU Community Dance Academy, followed by an inspirational talk by mountaineer Kyle Maynard, who was born without his lower arms or legs.

We are so fortunate to have such amazing keynote presenters and it is important to us to have these world class innovators have a Flagstaff connection, said Bonnie Stevens, who has been the festival coordinator for the past two decades.

As usual, each of the over 100 events that are planned for the jam-packed 10-day celebration are free to attend. Stevens estimated that 17,000 people take advantage of the opportunity each year to attend the workshops and activities.

You cant possibly go to everything, Stevens said. But that just means attendees will have to pick different activities to check out the following year.

The list of events includes guided nature hikes, a workshop with hands-on dissecting, open houses with organizations across town, a teen science cafe, archaeology digs and so much more.

Flagstaff is a natural area to study different sciences due to the extensive forest, geological features and dark skies that the city is known for.

This community values our scientists and you can tell by the numbers who show up to these events, Stevens said. It makes us all so proud of what we have in this region, and to be nationally known as a place that values science and science education.

Following are highlights from a schedule with more than 100 free events. For a full list of events, visit scifest.org, or check the Daily Sun's Almanac each day on the Weather Page.

Saturday, Sept. 23

Joy Cone Tours: The Engineering Behind High Altitude Cooking

9, 9:30, 10, 10:30 and 11 a.m. 2843 W. Shamrell Blvd. See how ice cream cones are made, learn about the chemistry and engineering behind the high-altitude recipe and enjoy a special treat at the end of the tour! Participants must be older than 5. For every two children, at least one adult must be present. Reservations required, flag.tours@joycone.com.

Plants and Pollinators on the Peaks Hike

9  11 a.m., Meet at Fort Valley Shopping Plaza to carpool Document native plants and insects with the iNaturalist app on a guided hike through Hart Prairie. Understanding pollination systems helps scientists predict how they will respond to climate change.

Bring a hat, water, sturdy shoes and smartphone. Reservations required, prc43@nau.edu.

The Science of Stone Balancing

9 a.m.  4 p.m. Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. See how the art and science of stone balancing teaches lessons in simple mechanics, center of gravity, mass vs. weight, levers activities and demonstrations offered all day.

Science in the Park

10 a.m.  2 p.m., Wheeler Park. Meet Arizonas raptors and other creatures. Explore sustainable energy, forensics, robots, DNA, planets and the sun. Get your hands on the tools the scientists use!

NAU Science and Engineering Day

1  4 p.m., NAU Science and Health Building. Dueling robots, hissing cockroaches and engineering solutions will surprise you! Free parking behind Cline Library.

Northern Arizona Space Training

Kevin Schindler, Lowell Observatory, William Sheehan, Astronomy Historian, 7 p.m. Riordan Mansion State Historic Park. Flagstaff played a key role in preparing to send astronauts to the moon. Learn how engineers, geologists and artists joined in the effort.

Flagstaff Star Party

6- 10 p.m. Buffalo Park (last night). Explore Flagstaffs famous dark skies with astronomers, telescopes and workshops. Presentations at 6 and 6:45 p.m.

Sunday, Sept. 24

Elden Pueblo Public Day

10 a.m.  4 p.m. Coconino National Forest. How did the ancient ones develop tools using materials at hand? Some of these technologies are still in use! Dig into the past with archaeologists to uncover the secrets of the past. Tours at 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m.

The Science of Star Wars Panel Discussion

5 p.m., USGS Building 3 Conference Room. Faster-than-light travel and communication, megastructures, advanced weapons, cybersecurity issues, exotic planets and aliens, robotics and artificial intelligence. Are these topics only relevant in a galaxy far, far away?

Lava River Cave Hike

9:30 a.m., 10 a.m.  4 p.m. Coconino National Forest. Step back in time more than 500,000 years to explore lavacicles and splash downs in this ancient lava tube. This primitive hike totals 1.5 miles in the dark. Reservations required. 928-606-6653.

Homolovi IV Pueblo Guided Tour

10 a.m., Homolovi State Park 61 miles east of Flagstaff Exit 257 to Hwy 87. Meet at Homolovi State Park and caravan 12 miles (1/4-mile is dirt) to a rare view of the oldest pueblo. Hike an easy 1/3-mile walk on uneven ground. Reservations required, 928-289-4106.

Forests, Fires and Watersheds Field Trip

1:30  3:30 p.m. Meet at Thorpe Park ball-field parking lot. Join the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project team and learn about the threats our forests face and how to protect watersheds and the community. Bring hiking shoes, weather- appropriate clothing, water and your love for nature! Reservations required, 928-213-2500.

Exotic Ices in the Outer Solar System

7 p.m. Riordan Mansion. The NAU Astrophysical Ices Laboratory allows us to observe the properties of exotic liquids and ices on outer Solar System bodies like Titan and Pluto. Find out what this means for planetary science.

Monday, Sept. 25

NASAs Cassini Mission: The End of an Era in Space Exploration

4 p.m., Lowell Observatory. Mike Bland, USGS. After 13 years in orbit around Saturn, NASAs Cassini mission came to a dramatic end this month. Learn how the mission revolutionized our understanding of Saturn and its rings, and discovered moons with rivers and seas of liquid hydrocarbons, icy volcanoes and possibly even habitats for life.

Ancient Landscapes of Western North America

Wayne Ranney, Geologist. 6:30 p.m., Museum of Northern Arizona. Flagstaff is situated within the North American Cordillera or mountain belt that stretches from Alaska to Mexico. The Cordillera is characterized by some of the continents highest mountains, deepest canyons and sub-sea-level valleys. Learn how this rich arrangement of landscapes evolved and formed.

Movie Night: Chasing Coral

6:30 p.m., Sinagua Middle School. Mini-auditorium Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. Divers, photographers and scientists set out on an ocean adventure to discover why the reefs are disappearing.

Concussion and Recovery: Should We Be Worried

Emi Isaki, Ph.D., NAU Communication. Sciences and Disorders, 6:30 p.m., NAU Cline Library. Learn about the symptoms related to concussion and how they can affect work, school or social activities. Discover what researchers are doing to help patients recover following an injury.

Tuesday, Sept. 26

Movie Night: Hidden Figures and Panel Discussion

7 p.m., NAU Cline Library Auditorium. Women and minorities are no longer hidden in STEM fields. Enjoy the movie then hear from female STEM professionals who were inspired by those who smoothed the path for a rewarding career.

Panel members include: NAU Evolutionary Biologist Laura Huenneke; NAU Mars Scientist Nadine Barlow; NAU Informatics and Computing Assistant Professor Temuulen Teki Sankey; Kaibab National Forest Archaeologist Margaret Hangan; and, USGS Environmental Scientist Itiya Aneece.

Wednesday, Sept. 27

Engineer Your Own Phone Charger Afterschool Workshop

Ken Meyers, CCC. 3:30  4:30 p.m., CCC Fourth Street Campus, Room B25. Come prepared to engineer your own personal alternative energy device! The first 20 participants will be given the equipment needed to build their very own solar powered cell phone charger during this hands-on workshop.

The Science and Engineering of Brewing for the 21+ Crowd

4 p.m. Wanderlust Brewing Co. 1519 N. Main St., Ste. 102. Take a guided tour of the Wanderlust Brewery. Learn about the beer-making process, including how the ingredients are combined, how the manufacturing process is controlled and how the beers get their distinctive flavors. For those 21 and over, the tap room is available to purchase examples of the fermented and aged.

Thursday, Sept. 28

MakerLab Exploratorium

Kathleen Schmand, NAU. 4 p.m., Lowell Observatory. Explore the resources available in the NAU MakerLab. See 3D printing in action, explore how to create circuits, make a button and check out the electronic prototyping kits and 3D scanning available. For ages 6 and up.

Friday, Sept. 29

Dissecting 101 Workshop

4 p.m. East Flagstaff Library. Dissect owl pellets, frogs and sheep eyes. All materials are provided. Reservations required, 928-606-6653.

CCC Science Celebration

7 p.m. Lone Tree campus. The first 100 participants to complete all hands-on activities in engineering, biometrics, geology, biology, anatomy, chemistry and astronomy will leave with a high-quality magnifying glass.

Saturday, Sept. 30

Rock Art Hike

9 a.m.  noon. Picture Canyon Natural and Cultural Preserve Trailhead. See northern Sinagua petroglyphs and wildlife in this riparian area on a three-mile hike. Bring your hiking shoes, a hat, sunscreen and water. Reservations required, 928-213-2155 or EOKeefe@ FlagstaffAZ.gov

Fort Valley Experimental Forest Station Open House

9 a.m.  1 p.m. Coconino National Forest. Learn about the pioneering history of forest research.

Exploring Falconry: A Hands-on Experience

10 a.m.  noon. Arizona Game & Fish Dept., Lake Mary Road. This International Raptor and Falconry Center program encompasses the history of falconry. Learn about biology, governmental policy, history and our cultural heritage. Enjoy hands-on activities, demonstrations and live raptor training in action! No owls will be used. Best for 14-year-olds and older.

Sustainable Building Tour

10 a.m.  2 p.m. Start at Willow Bend. This self-guided tour features homes and buildings that showcase different approaches for incorporating water conservation, water reuse and rainwater harvesting for landscaping and/or potable uses. Check out simple do-it-yourself approaches, as well as engineered designs. Tour packets available at Willow Bend the day of the tour.

National Weather Service Open House

10 a.m. 4 p.m. Camp Navajo Army Depot Bellemont, I-40, Exit 185. Learn how meteorologists forecast Arizonas exciting and challenging weather! Well discuss recent flash floods, and provide an outlook for the upcoming winter. Witness a weather balloon launch at 1 and 4 p.m.

Fantastic Voyage

Noon  4 p.m. Flagstaff Medical Center. Take an amazing journey into the inner workings of the human body with this kid-friendly health fair.

Sunday, Oct. 1

USGS Open House

10 a.m.  2 p.m. 2255 N Gemini Drive. Enjoy interactive displays and activities related to geology, geography, biology, hydrology, planetary science and mapping.

STEM City/NACET Open House

10 a.m.  2 p.m. NACET, 2225 N Gemini Drive. Celebrate STEM Citys fifth Anniversary with a STEM- themed cake, learn more about STEM in Flagstaff, take a tour and meet NACETs rising entrepreneurs.
South African Bank, Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), issued the sixth edition of its report Where to Invest in Africa, ranking Morocco third most attractive investment destination in Africa.

Morocco came third in the ranking preceded by Egypt and South Africa in the report, which aims to serve as a guide to corporate investment.

According to RMB, Morocco maintains its ranking in the third position for the third consecutive year thanks to steady efforts to improve its business climate. The report also notes that the north African kingdom has benefitted from a greatly enhanced operating environment since the Arab Spring.

South Africa was knocked off the top spot by Egypt, with rising concerns about the countrys governance and institutional strength.

Nigeria, Africas largest economy by GPD, failed to make it to the top 10, taking the 13th position on the list due to its short-term investment appeal being strained by recessionary conditions.

Surprisingly, Ethiopia, a country dogged by socio-political instability, displaced Ghana to take the fourth spot mostly because of its rapid economic growth, having brushed past Kenya as the largest economy in East Africa.

Ghanas slide to fifth position was mostly due to perceptions of worsening corruption and weaker economic freedom.

At number nine, Tunisia has made great strides in advancing political transition while an improved business climate has been achieved thanks to structural reforms and greater security and social stability. Cote dIvoire slipped two places to take up the tenth position.

Overall, the report warned that the African continent could find itself hovering on the brink of disaster if it continues to depend on its current economic fundamentals and does not usher in economic diversification.

The document highlights those countries, which have understood the need to adapt to the prolonged slowdown in commodity prices and sluggish levels of production growth  and those which have not.

Over the past three years, some African governments have had to implement deep and painful budget cuts, announce multiple currency devaluations and adopt hawkish monetary policy stances  all as a result of a significant drop in traditional revenues, says Celeste Fauconnier, RMB Africa Analyst and co-author of Where to Invest in Africa 2018 .
Russias Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Russian companies are interested in Moroccos gas projects, notably the liquefied gas terminal in Jorf Lasfar and the Moroccan-Nigerian gas pipeline.

Our companies are interested in participating in those projects. We are ready to supply LNG, construct gas pipeline and terminal, said the Minister in an interview with Russian news agency TASS.

He said Russian companies such as Gazprom and Novatek are willing to contribute to the achievement of Moroccos flagship gas projects.

The Minister noted that negotiations are underway between Gazprom and Novatek and Morocco to secure LNG supply from Russias Yamal-LNG and Arctic LNG.

He added that Russia is ready to contribute to Moroccos large-scale ambitious projects through sharing its competences and technologies.

Morocco is also seeking to replace Algerian gas with Russian and Qatari gas. Russia sees in Moroccos port installations an opportunity to access African markets while Qatar has widened the gap with its competitors over the supply of 5 million cubic meters of LNG annually to the Jorf Lasfar Installation.

Besides investing in renewable energy to cover 50% of Moroccos energy needs by 2030, LNG features prominently in Moroccos energy transition. Morocco launched a gas strategy to boost its energy security and relieve itself from dependence on Algerian gas. LNG is at the heart of Moroccos strategy to satisfy a rising domestic demand on electricity. The Kingdoms goal is to move from being a coal-dependent importer to a market in which clean energies and natural gas play an increasing role.

Moroccos energy strategy is also geared towards satisfying a rising domestic demand on electricity as the country is projected to consume 65 TW/h by 2025, i.e. a 6.2% increase compared to 2016.

The Moroccan LNG National Development Plan, approved in late 2014, features an LNG onshore terminal in Jorf Lasfar near El Jadida to be completed for a total cost of $4 billion.

The terminal will have a storage capacity of 5 billion cubic meters of LNG per year, a fitted marine jetty, regasification plants and new high-pressure gas transmission pipes.

The LNG import facility at Jorf Lasfar will help bring the share of LNG to 13% of Moroccos energy mix by 2025.

Recently, Sound Energy made breakthrough with several exploitable gas discoveries in Eastern Morocco. The company said that the Kingdom will become a key player in the global gas map by 2019.

The agreements signed between Morocco and Nigeria to build an offshore gas pipeline to stretch over 4000km, will also set Morocco free from dependence on Algerian gas. This ambitious project that will extend to the Mediterranean the existing West African Gas Pipeline transporting Nigerian gas to Ghana will have beneficial impacts for energy security in all west Africa.

The Moroccan-Nigerian gas pipeline has effectively buried plans to achieve the Trans-Saharan Gas Project that was mulled in 2002 to bring Nigerian gas to the Mediterranean through Niger and Algeria.
Human Rights Watch urged Algerian authorities to cease criminal prosecutions against bloggers, journalists and media figures for peaceful speech, using articles in the penal code criminalizing offending the president, insulting state officials or denigrating Islam.

The International Human Rights Watchdog called on Algeria to accept key recommendations included in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) concerning the freedom of speech, assembly and association. In particular, it should accept the recommendation to revise or repeal Law 12-06 on associations, a law extensively used by the government to restrict freedom of association.

They should also accept to facilitate the issuance of visas and accreditations without restriction to representatives of international organizations defending human rights and to foreign journalists, and reply favorably to the pending requests of the UN human rights experts and mechanisms to visit Algeria, HRW said.

Algeria still has prison sentences in its legislation for nonviolent speech offenses, such as for insults and defamation. These articles were used during the review period to prosecute over a dozen people, some of whom went to prison, deplored HRW.

It also regretted that Algerian authorities continue to prosecute labor activists who organized or called for peaceful demonstrations on charges such as unauthorized gathering, and they continue to ban demonstrations in Algiers.

Since 2016, Algeria has prosecuted more than 266 Ahmadis, a minority religious group, and sentenced more than a hundred to prison sentences. It is more than ever important that Algeria respects the international conventions it has signed, which guarantee freedom of religion and conscience and prohibit arbitrary interference by the state in peoples beliefs.
Moroccos comprehensive and multilayered strategy to counter the threat posed by terrorism in general and the Islamic State in particular was highlighted at a meeting of the Global Coalition against Daesh, held on the sidelines of the 72nd General Assembly in New York.

The success and efficiency of Moroccos anti-terrorism strategy hinges on a farsighted approach spearheaded by King Mohammed VI, providing mainly for championing the values of tolerance and coexistence inherent to Islam and counter terrorist propaganda, said Moroccos Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita during the meeting which was chaired by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The meeting was an occasion to commend Moroccos King for his leadership and visionary approach to tackle extremism notably through ensuring the training of Imams in line with the genuine values of Islam and extending this experience to African and European states, the Minister said.

Bourita highlighted that participants in the meeting also took stock of the Coalitions inroads against Daesh, noting that 85% of Iraqs territories were liberated from Daesh grip, while 57% of the once Daesh stronghold of Raqqa in Syria has also been cleared of Dashed fighters.

He said Morocco advocates action against all Daesh resources, notably a crackdown on its online propaganda.

The Minister also warned of the lurking danger of returning foreign fighters and sympathizers who are willing to serve Daeshs destructive agenda.

The Global Coalition against Daesh was formed in September 2014 and is unique in its membership, scope and commitment. Together, the Global Coalition is committed to degrading and ultimately defeating Daesh.
Comey. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Between his infamous intervention in the 2016 general election and his starring role in the unfolding Trump-Russia saga, its difficult to remember that former FBI director James Comey once courted controversy for something completely unrelated to presidential politics.

At a convocation address at Howard University on Friday, Comey got a reminder.

During his address to the historically black school, Comey was booed and heckled persistently by a faction of the students. Protesters chanted, No justice! No peace!, White supremacy is not a debate, and other slogans as Comey was rendered speechless.

I love the enthusiasm of young folks, but I wish they understood what a conversation is, Comey said.

CNN reported that Comey stood silently for over 15 minutes as the students yelled, I love being black and Get out James Comey  youre not our homey.

The majority of the crowd did not take part in the chants  some told news outlets that they objected to the tactics  and Comey eventually finished his address to a standing ovation.

In 2015 and 2016, Comey advanced the theory that a so-called Ferguson effect was partly responsible for a rise in murder rates in some cities. He said that conversations with police officers had convinced him that the fear of being videotaped and ending up in the national spotlight  like the one that shone on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014  was making officers fearful of carrying out routine police work, leading to an uptick in lawlessness.

The controversial theory, which the Obama administration did not share, has been widely debunked.

In a statement passed out at the speech, the protesting students, who call themselves HU Resist, said, James Comey represents an institution diametrically opposed to the interests of Black people domestically and abroad, and The Ferguson Effect, for example, is an outright racist lie designed to undermine Black Liberation Movement.

Comey was appointed an endowed chair of public policy at the university in August, and is expected to engage the Howard community through a lecture series over the course of the academic year. He may want to bring a megaphone next time.
North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong Ho addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday in New York. Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. used bombers and fighter jets to stage a show of force off the North Korean coast on Saturday, two days after North Koreas foreign minister threatened to conduct an atmospheric nuclear test somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. A small earthquake was also detected on Saturday in the same region where North Korea has previously conducted underground nuclear tests, though experts ultimately concluded that it was natural and not the result of a new explosion. Following these events, North Koreas foreign minister suggested to the United Nations General Assembly that Trumps recent rhetorical bluster has all but guaranteed a North Korean attack on the U.S. mainland.

The Pentagon said that Saturdays bomber mission was meant to demonstrate the range of military options available to President Trump, adding that it was the farthest north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) any U.S. fighter or bomber aircraft have flown off North Koreas coast in the 21st century, underscoring the seriousness with which we take its reckless behavior.

MORE: US Pacific Command releases photos of military exercise off the coast of North Korea. pic.twitter.com/nGelAzo1Ck  ABC News (@ABC) September 23, 2017

During Trumps first-ever address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, the president promised to totally destroy North Korea if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies. Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns nuclear ambitions, Trump then commented, Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. Trumps incendiary remarks were reportedly a last-minute addition to the speech against the advice of some of his aides. On Thursday, the president announced a new round of sanctions on the regime, while China signaled that it would enforce existing sanctions more vigorously.

North Korean foreign minister Ri Yong-ho initially responded to Trumps U.N. speech by remarking to reporters that, If he was thinking he could scare us with the sound of a dog barking, thats really a dog dream. On Thursday, Kim Jong-un himself delivered a rare televised statement in response to Trumps remarks, in which he announced that he would surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire, insisting that Trump will pay dearly for his speech.

Later that day, Foreign Minister Ri suggested that North Korea may conduct the strongest hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean, likely meaning an atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon  a legitimately terrifying possibility. Such a test, even if it were conducted successfully, would likely result in the release of an enormous amount of radioactive material, which could also mean major accompanying fallout. In the (very possible) event that the test were to go wrong and a hydrogen-bomb-tipped warhead exploded over a country like Japan  or even blew up on the launchpad in North Korea  the result could be catastrophic. No country has conducted a nuclear-weapons test in the atmosphere in more than 35 years, as every nuclear-armed country came to the conclusion that the tests were too dangerous.

On Friday, Trump responded to the new threats by commenting on Twitter that Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesnt mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!

None of this is normal, and that makes it more than a little little scary, as North Korea and nonproliferation experts told Voxs Zack Beauchamp on Friday:

The highly unusual nature of the Kim statement, together with the highly specific nature of the atmospheric nuclear test threat, suggests that the country may really be gearing up to do something provocative. And experts say that as long as Trump insists on handling the North with angry rhetoric like his Friday morning tweet, rather than working to calm tensions, the situation is likely to keep escalating. Its gotten to the point where the risk of actual war is, according to the Arms Control Associations Kingston Reif, unacceptably high.

The cycle of the threats and counter-threats has entered an even more dangerous phase, Reif explains. We have two volatile leaders with nuclear weapons making it personal and further digging in with their reckless rhetoric.

And it got worse on Saturday. During a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Foreign Minister Ri fired back with more counter-ridicule and threats, calling Trump a mentally deranged person full of megalomania and complacency with his finger on the nuclear button. Ri also claimed that the president, in making his Rocket Man insult, committed an irreversible mistake of making our rockets visit to the entire U.S. mainland inevitable all the more.

Trump might not have been aware what is uttered from his mouth, but we will make sure that he bears consequences far beyond his words, far beyond the scope of what he can handle, even if he is ready to do so, Ri added, in a speech that took turns insulting and threatening Trump, while also making the case that North Koreas nuclear-weapons program was justified, responsible, and intended as a deterrent to U.S. aggression.

None other than Trump himself is on a suicide mission, Ri insisted. It is a near certainty that the president will soon feel the need to respond, and possibly make the situation even worse, again.
Photo: Screencap/ABC News

A young Syrian-American journalist and her mother, both well-known activists opposing the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, were found brutally murdered in their apartment in Istanbul on Thursday. Twenty-three-year-old Halla Barakat, who was born in America, worked as the English editor for the opposition site Orient News and also freelanced for ABC. Her mother, Dr. Orouba Barakat, was an active member of the Syrian National Coalition, a prominent expatriate opposition group, and had been exiled by the Syrian regime in the 1980s. Both women also did charity work for Syrian refugees living in Turkey and came from a large family that is well-known for its long history of challenging both Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, according to the New York Times. Indeed, family members are already accusing the Assad regime of having assassinated the women on foreign soil.

ABC News reports that the Barakats were strangled and stabbed to death sometime last week and that their bodies were covered in some kind of chemical meant to delay decomposition. An investigation is underway by Turkish police, but no arrests had been made or suspects identified as of Friday. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that, according to one of Hallas colleagues, both women had received death threats via email and social media from supporters of the Assad regime, but didnt pay much attention to them as such threats were common for anti-regime activists.

The U.S. State Department condemned the murders in a statement and says it will closely follow the investigation into the crime. The FBI has the legal right to investigate the killing or kidnapping of any American abroad, but declined to comment on whether it would do so when reached by ABC News on Friday.

Both women were also friends and colleagues of American aid worker Kayla Mueller, the young Arizona woman who was abducted by ISIS while working in Aleppo, Syria, in 2013, then killed 18 months later. The Barakats were very active in trying to secure Muellers release, lobbying the U.S. embassy in Turkey and working with Kaylas parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller. Ultimately, Mueller died while in ISIS custody after American officials were unable to secure her release, in part because official U.S. policy forbade the making of ransom payments to the group. ISIS blamed Muellers death on a U.S. coalition air strike.

Kaylas parents released a statement mourning the Barakats on Friday:

We dont know what to say, we are numb and do not understand how anyone could do this to our gracious and beautiful friends. Orouba and Halla were like a mother and sister to Kayla. They never gave up on saving her. Kayla loved them, and stood with them in doing what they could to help their beloved people.

The Barakats had been working to establish a charity in Muellers honor that would help Syrian women in Turkeys refugee camps earn a living.

A funeral for the Barakats was held on Saturday in Istanbul, and plenty of Syrian activists were on hand to mourn and celebrate the women:

Four other Syrian journalists have been killed in Turkey since 2015, according to the CPJ, and the group is once again calling on the Turkish government to do a better job protecting Syrian journalists who have taken refuge in the country.
Iraqi Kurds celebrate while urging people to vote in the independence referendum in Arbil on September 8, 2017. Photo: SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

The Kurds of northern Iraq are set to vote on Monday in a referendum on independence from Baghdad. The referendum is widely expected to result in a decisive (though by no means unanimous) yes  which is why nearly everyone is begging, cajoling, or threatening Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, not to go through with it.

Kurdistan  which in its broadest definition includes parts of eastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran  has been waiting a long time to become a real country. While potential independence for some part of the Kurdish regions was envisioned as the Allied Powers partitioned the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Sevres in 1920, the final redrawing of the map after the First World War left the Kurds without a state of their own. Kurdish demands for independence or greater autonomy have been a major factor in the complex ethnic politics of the Middle East ever since.

In both Iraq and Syria, Kurdish soldiers and volunteers have done a lot of the heavy lifting in the fight against Islamic State militants, such as the KRGs Peshmerga forces saving the oil-rich city of Kirkuk from the rapid advance of ISIS in 2014 after the Iraqi army fled. Iraqi Kurdistan has managed to remain relatively safe through the chaos of the past several years and has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and internally displaced people from war-torn parts of Iraq.

For all that, many Iraqi Kurds believe they have demonstrated an ability to govern themselves better than Baghdad and deserve independence as a result: The outcome of Mondays referendum will likely reflect that sentiment. The referendum is not a declaration of independence in itself, but it is binding on the regional government, so if it passes, the KRG will launch negotiations with the Iraqi government over its future status and begin campaigning for international recognition as an independent state.

Baghdad is unsurprisingly furious at the Kurds plans. The Iraqi supreme court ordered on Monday that the referendum be suspended while it decides whether it is constitutional, while Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also filed a complaint objecting to the referendum being held in Kirkuk, a multiethnic city to which the Kurds have strong historical ties but which is also home to a large Arab population.

The Iraqi government and many Iraqi Arabs see the Peshmergas occupation of Kirkuk as rank opportunism on the part of Barzanis government, and Baghdad does not want to lose control over the central regions abundant oil reserves. The government also fears that the referendum could further destabilize an already fractured country  not an unreasonable concern.

Iraqs neighbors are dead set against the referendum. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in particular, has threatened to impose sanctions on Iraqi Kurdistan if it goes ahead. Turkish troops are holding exercises near the border with the region, and Iran has threatened to close its own border. The foreign ministers of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey issued a joint statement on Thursday warning that all three countries had agreed to consider counter-measures if the referendum proceeds.

The statement expresses concern over the unforeseeable consequences of the plebiscite, specifically the potential for violent conflict  which, again, is a real possibility. Turkey and Iran also fear, however, that a yes for independence in Iraqi Kurdistan will stoke separatist sentiment among their own Kurdish populations, especially since the wording of the plebiscite asks whether voters believe their Kurdish compatriots outside the KRG deserve independence as well. Syrias Kurds, meanwhile, held elections Friday for a new system of local councils that may or may not be a prelude to independence. Needless to say, the Syrian government strongly opposes this.

Other world leaders are also pressuring Barzani to cancel the vote, including Saudi Arabia, the U.K., France, and the U.N. Security Council. The State Department has come out in strong opposition to the referendum, while the White House has condemned it as provocative and destabilizing and U.S. special envoy Brett McGurk has called it a very risky process. Proponents of the referendum find the opposition from the U.S. both galling and baffling, as the KRG has been among the most consistently pro-American actors in the Middle East.

Indeed, many Americans and Europeans, particularly but by no means exclusively on the right, believe the U.S. should be supporting the Kurds in their effort at independence, whether out of moral principle or in the interest of cultivating a steadfast ally in the region. And in the sort of absurd twist only this administration could provide, President Donald Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort is working with Barzanis allies to promote and administer the referendum. Manafort, who has worked as a lobbyist for numerous foreign interests, is currently a central figure in the investigation over Russian meddling in last years election, leading some supporters of the referendum to worry that his legal entanglements may be hurting their cause.

Speaking of Russia, Moscow has notably refrained from joining the chorus urging the Kurds not to pursue independence, which may have something to do with the $4 billion or so it has invested in Kurdish oil and gas deals. The Russian government has expressed support for both Iraqs territorial integrity and the Kurds legitimate aspirations, but has kept its opinion of the referendum to itself.

The only country openly voicing support for Kurdish independence is Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated his approval last week for the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own though he did not specifically advocate for this referendum. Some Israeli political and military leaders see an independent Kurdistan as a potential check on the spread of both radical Islam and Iranian influence.

Whether or not Mondays referendum goes forward, and whatever its immediate consequences are, the U.S. and other global and regional actors should probably come to terms with the fact that Kurdish independence is practically a fait accompli at this point. Iraqs central government holds almost no sway over its Kurdish areas anymore, as evinced by the Kurdish governor of Kirkuks refusal to leave office after being fired by Baghdad last week. If opposition to the referendum is driven by fear that it will lead to civil war, it also merits consideration that civil war may be the only way to keep Kurdistan under Baghdads yoke.

It may indeed serve the security interests of the region for Iraq to remain undivided, but talks must proceed from the facts already on the ground. That means recognizing that the least the Iraqi Kurds will accept is substantial autonomy, perhaps in a confederated system, with the right to sell its own oil and conduct most of its own affairs. This is their best chance in a century for statehood or something like it, and after all that time, it is foolish to assume they can be easily dissuaded from taking it.
A section of National Resistance Movement legislators has launched a new campaign to create a transition from the Yoweri Museveni presidency. The same campaign also seeks to reinstate term limits on the presidency.



The campaign is spearheaded by Workers MP Dr Sam Lyomoki working closely with Manjiya county MP John Baptist Nambetsye, Kassanda North MP Patrick Nsamba, Kasambya County MP Mbwatekamwa Gaffa and Kumi Woman MP Monica Amoding, among others.



All the five legislators are among members of the ruling party currently opposed to a proposal to amend article 102 (b) of the Constitution which caps the presidential age at 75. They state that the fear to talk about succession within the NRM party is likely to create a disaster for Uganda.

Plenary in session

"Last time in our meeting, we started to talk about age limit, and every minister wanted to put his head under the table. Now the minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Kahinda Otafiire claimed there is no one better than Museveni," Lyomoki said.



The MPs are jointly working on two separate private member's bills, to be presented in parliament for debate on the matter and believe that the law will sail through the parliament in which the ruling NRM party enjoys numerical strength.



Amoding says that they ought to be lauded by their own party for speaking the truth stating that Ugandans must have a say on the matter of the age limit, and the fact that President Museveni has led for a long time. Museveni has been in power since 1986.



"People fear President Museveni for various reasons; some of them have been 'eating' for a long time and now have no courage to confront him," Amoding stated.



Amoding says they want a Constitutional Review Commission or a referendum instead of entrusting parliament with a mandate to decide on behalf of the 38 million Ugandans.



She added that there is still time for Museveni to come clean on the proposed age limit amendment, stating that the involvement of the security and the tension in the country should make him review his decision.



"We don't want him to end up badly, let him reflect on this and there is still time" she adds.



Two years ago, a similar proposal hit a snag after members of the ruling NRM blocked then Buikwe South MP Dr Lulume Bayiga from tabling it.



Dr Bayiga's bill sought to, among others; make provisions for the procedure by which a president-elect can assume office and his or her access to all state power instruments. It also sought to establish an authority- the Presidential Transition Committee to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to another.



It had however been backed collectively by opposition legislators arguing that once the law is enacted; it will usher in a process of transition of power and guide Uganda's transit from Museveni's three-decade rule.



Dr Bayiga, the prime advocate for the law then observed that this framework would deter an outgoing president from committing the government into certain decisions that can curtail peaceful handover of government.
The victim of a landlord/tenant dispute that turned deadly on July 25 was stabbed eight times, according to the recently released coroners report.

The report states that Peter Gillespie, 63, was stabbed with a pair of scissors in the neck, chest, leg, left shoulder and left forearm. The coroners report was signed by the Coconino County Medical Examiner, Lawrence Czarnecki, who labeled multiple stab wounds as the cause of death and the manner of death a homicide.

Gillespie was killed after he got into an altercation with his tenant, James Womble, over past-due-rent. The incident ended with Womble stabbing him eight times with a pair of scissors, according to the police report.

Womble claimed self-defense, stating that Gillespie bumped him and threw him to the ground, causing his arm to go out of socket.

Womble was arrested by police for second-degree homicide, but he has not been charged with a crime by the Coconino County Attorneys Office. The coroner's report was only recently released.

The county attorneys office was waiting on the results of the coroners report as well as forensic lab work from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Members of the county attorneys office could not be reached for comment on the coroner's report.

The report also showed that Gillespie tested positive for THC and Cannabinoids, indicating that he had marijuana in his system at the time of his death.

The report stated that Gillespie tested negative for any other drugs or substances, including alcohol.

Sharon Thompson, who knew Gillespie for 25 years, told the Arizona Daily Sun in August that Gillespie frequently used marijuana.
In a decision that could potentially have a profound impact on U.S. trade policy, the U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled that a flood of cheap, foreign solar panels is unfairly hurting U.S. manufacturers, creating the opportunity for President Donald Trump to follow through on his protectionist campaign rhetoric and impose tariffs and import quotas as soon as November.

If Trump imposes the tariffs, what would be his second significant protectionist act targeting China since approving an investigation into the country's controversial IP policies that some view as tantamount to starting a trade war. Tariffs would upend the $29 billion U.S. solar industry, according to Bloomberg. More expensive prices for cells and panels would hurt demand for solar potentially reversing a trend of growing demand that has persisted for much of the past decade. Even before the Friday vote, some developers had halted construction and begun hoarding supplies, anticipating that tariffs could double the price of imported components.

The ITC is now set to deliver its recommendations to address the import surge to the president by Nov. 13, handing him an opportunity to score political points on three priorities: He can slap a tariff on China and argue hes protecting U.S. jobs, all while undermining an industry that competes with coal, an energy that Trump cultivated close ties with during the campaign. The ITC's vote gives Trump a measure of cover to impose the sanctions.

The case was inspired by Georgia-based Suniva Inc., which filed for bankruptcy protection in April and followed up days later with the trade suit. The company is seeking import duties of 40 cents a watt for solar cells, and a floor price of 78 cents a watt for panels, which currently average about 32 cents worldwide. The U.S. unit of German panel manufacturer SolarWorld AG joined Suniva to argue that the company had been driven to bankruptcy by a global glut of cheap cells, an industry dominated by China. Unlike earlier trade cases, this one would apply on U.S. imports from any nation.

Related: Expect A Major Leap In U.S. Oil Exports

Shares of First Solar popped because its panel technology would be excluded while shares of other solar companies tumbled.

(Click to enlarge)

Shares of Tesla, which bought Solar City last summer, remain at the lows of the day.

(Click to enlarge)

Most of the US solar industry, which uses the cheap panels for rooftop or utility-scale projects, oppose tariffs, arguing that inexpensive imports have driven a boom in U.S. solar projects and tens of thousands of jobs hang in the balance. Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, called it an ill-conceived case driven by creditors wanting to recover some of their investments in poorly run companies.

The petitioners made bad business decisions during the biggest boom in American solar energy history, Ross Hopper said before the vote. These companies are not worthy of an injury finding.

The ruling is unusual because it relies on a rarely used provision of a trade law that offers companies a global safeguard that can result in broad, uniform protection against imports - not just tariffs on specific countries or companies. Under that 1974 trade measure, Suniva only had to prove that imports have caused it serious injury  not that foreign competitors did anything unfair or illegal. Also, Suniva's majority owner, Shunfeng International Clean Energy Ltd., opposes the move. The ITC is also pursuing a separate global safeguard investigation of large residential washers as manufacturers, encouraged by Trump's rhetoric, have filed more cases, believing the administration would follow up on a favorable ruling with sanctions.

Of course, tariffs would also complicate Trump's relationship with China at a time when the administration is pressuring China to do more about North Korea.

Related: Failed Oil Price Recovery Slams Energy Stocks

Read the ITC's full statement below:

The U.S. International Trade Commission has determined that Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells (Whether or Not Partially or Fully Assembled Into Other Products) are being imported into the United States in such increased quantities as to be a substantial cause of serious injury, or threat of serious injury, to the domestic industry producing an article like or directly competitive with the imported article in the United States.

As a result, the investigation will move to a remedy phase.

More information will be provided in a news release to be issued later today. That news release will replace this bulletin when it is available.

By Zerohedge

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Nigerian oil production remains below 1.8 million barrels per day, in compliance with a quota set on the African nation by OPEC earlier this year in response to its explosive output growth through 2017.

Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu made the announcement in Vienna, where the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters is located. The bloc has already agreed to extend output cuts through March 2018, although another extension may be in the works.

Nigeria and Libya had both been exempt from the agreement when it was first announced last November. Both countries had seen their oil output decline steeply due to months and years of domestic strife, respectively. A militancy in the Niger Delta sprung from Abujas revenue sharing plans, which did little to develop the oil-rich lands which provide the fossil fuels that provide the federal government with the vast majority of its wealth.

But the countrys output has been in recovery since the beginning of the year, thanks largely to peace talks between Abuja and the Niger Deltas local leaders.

The average is about 1.69 million bpd and it is getting better by the day, Kachikwu said after a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC ministers to review the deal. Weve actually joined [the OPEC agreement]. The reality is the cap we agreed on is 1.8 million bpd and as long as we are producing below that, we are already in it.

Related: U.S. Shale: Water Is the New Oil

During parts of 2016, major pipelines and oil fields were pushed into force majeure due to attacks by the Niger Delta Avengers and affiliated groups. Kachikwu said none of the facilities still held the special status, which allows companies to be late on their contractual goals due to unforeseen obstacles.

At lot of it is infrastructure, he said. A lot of damage happened during the years of militancy.

By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
No more do more. We did not hear it anywhere: Shahid Khaqan Abbasi

UNITED NATIONS: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has rejected the suggestion that civil-military differences in Pakistan have weakened Pakistans influence in the international community. Theres no difference between the civilian and military establishments on key national issues, said the prime minister when asked if this dispute had also impacted his visit to the United Nations.



The military and civilian leaderships are united on all key issues. One country, one policy, we are all on one page, he said. We are all working for the country. Its not nice to create rifts where theres none.



The premier completed his four-day visit to the United Nations headquarters on Friday. Hours after his address at the General Assembly, he briefed the Pakistani media on his meetings, both inside the UN and on its sidelines.



No more do more. We did not hear it anywhere, when asked if the Americans were still asking Pakistan to do more.



Asked about the US proposal to send a delegation to Islamabad for talks on bridging bilateral differences, Mr Abbasi said it was too early to talk about the technical details of the proposed delegation, its agenda and Pakistans expectations. Both sides are now working on it.



US Vice President Mike Pence had suggested sending a delegation to Islamabad during his meeting with the prime minister. The US wanted to send the delegation soon after Mr Trumps Aug 21 policy speech but Pakistan requested rescheduling.



Mr Abbasi also talked about his brief meeting with President Trump on Tuesday night, saying it happened after his talks with Mr Pence. President Trump pulled me aside and we talked for two or three minutes, he said.



Responding to a question about the UN secretary generals response to a dossier on Kashmir, Mr Abbasi said the UN had a mechanism for responding to such documents. Our dossier on Indian atrocities in Kashmir had 250 to 300 pages and includes evidence and pictures. It will have an impact, on world leaders and the international media. But such things take time, he said.



Asked why the international community refuses to believe Pakistans stance that there are no terrorist safe havens on its soil, the premier said: Its not because our policy has failed [as the journalist suggested]. Diplomacy is a process. We stated our position, based on facts and logic. It will have an impact, he said.



But bad news sells better. The claim about safe havens is juicy news. But people are accepting Pakistans stance as correct.



Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, who also addressed the news briefing, pointed out that China, Russia and other nations had reacted positively to Pakistans position on Afghanistan. The US had some reservations but those too would be removed, he added.



The prime minister and the foreign minister both rejected the suggestion that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had postponed a meeting with Mr Abbasi earlier this week because of some differences.



They said the meeting was scheduled at 11am on Tuesday but President Trump was still addressing the General Assembly then, so both sides agreed to reschedule the meeting. We will meet soon, said the foreign minister, adding he met the Afghan national security adviser on Thursday and discussed several sensitive issues, including cross-border attacks.



Responding to a question, the prime minister said theres no instability in Pakistan. A government was removed, and returned in four days. Wheres instability? It only shows democracys strength. Whomever I met at the UN, praised this, he said. We respect courts, but want them to use the same standard, same process for all.



The prime minister said he did not mention Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav in his talks at the UN because the visit was focused on other issues. Did I take any name? he asked.
Pakistan to take all measures to deter any aggression against its population in future: ISPR

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday conveyed India that it will continue to take all necessary measures to deter any aggression against its population in future.



Indian DGMO was conveyed unflinching resolve of Pakistan Army to ensure security of its population and it shall continue to take all necessary measures to deter any such aggression in future, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement.



A special hotline contact was established between Pakistani and Indian Director Generals Military Operations (DGMOs) on Friday where Islamabad raised the issue of deliberate targeting of civilians at the Line of Control and Working Boundary. [Pakistan conveyed that the] violation clearly undermines all existing understandings on the issue, the statement said.



The development came as the death toll from Indian firing along Working Boundary in Charwa and Harpal sectors since Thursday reached six. An army statement said that 26 civilians were also injured in the Thursdays shelling in Chappar, Harpal and Charwa sectors.



Those killed included four women while 15 women and five children were among the injured, according to the ISPR. Pakistan paramilitary troops befittingly responded to Indian posts targeting civil population, the statement said.



It is the second time Indian forces fired into areas along the Working Boundary in 10 days.



Earlier in the day, the Foreign Office summoned Indian High Commissioner Gautam Bambawale to condemn the unprovoked ceasefire violations by Indian troops in Charwa sector, near the Working Boundary on September 21, the Foreign Office said in a press statement.



According to the statement, in 2017 alone Indian troops have carried out more than 870 ceasefire violations along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary, resulting in the death of 38 civilians and injuries to 142 others.



The deliberate targeting of civilians is contrary to human dignity and against international human rights laws, the press release said.



According to the Foreign Office, Acting Foreign Secretary Aitzaz Ahmed urged the Indian envoy to respect the 2003 ceasefire agreement and investigate the rising number of violations. [The Indian side should] instruct the Indian forces to respect the ceasefire  in letter and spirit, the press release quoted Ahmed as saying.



He also urged the Indian side to permit the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan to play its mandated role, in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions.



Meanwhile, Core Commander Gujranwala Lt Gen Iqramul Haq on Friday visited the area affected by the Indian troops firing, ISPR said in a separate release.



According to the ISPR, Lt Gen Haq was briefed about ceasefire violations during the visit. He also visited the injured at the Combined Military Hospital in Sialkot.



Director General Punjab Rangers Major General Azhar Naveed Hayat Khan visited the sectors where India committed unprovoked ceasefire violation.



The ISPR said the DG met troops and appreciated their effective response. He also visited the families affected by recent Indian ceasefire violations and assured them that these are always responded to effectively, it said.



Earlier this month, a five-year-old girl was killed in Azad Jammu and Kashmir when an Indian soldier opened fire across the LoC.



The orphan was killed when a single bullet fired by an Indian soldier hit her as she stood in the courtyard of her house in Polas village of Abbaspur sector in the southern Poonch district.



Protests were held in the area against the apathy of the state and the government towards the plight of the people living along the LoC after the incident.



More recently, an elderly man was killed in a cross-border exchange of fire.



Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the UN General Assembly on Friday that India frequently violates the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Kashmir to divert the worlds attention from its brutalities.
Senate passed election bill which can re-elect Nawaz Sharif 23 September, 2017



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Ways that Players Used to Take Advantage of Slot Sites ISLAMABAD: The Senate on Friday passed an election bill after rejecting a key amendment proposed by the Pakistan Peoples Party to retain a controversial clause resurrected by retired Gen Pervez Musharraf through the Political Parties Order 2002, paving the way for an otherwise ineligible Nawaz Sharif to head his own faction of the Pakistan Muslim League.



The Election Bill 2017 was passed with a majority vote by the Senate through which the legal bar on a person to serve as an office-bearer of a political party if he is either not qualified to be, or disqualified from being, elected as a member of parliament under Article 63 of the Constitution is set to go.



The bill was passed with the help of two opposition parties  the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Balochistan National Party-Mengal  which did not support the opposition during the voting process.



Since the bill, already passed by the National Assembly, has been passed with amendments by the upper house, it will go to the NA again and, in all probability, the lower house of parliament will approve it.



Friday was full of surprises for the PPP as it continued to face embarrassments one after the other in an otherwise opposition-dominated house.



When Law Minister Zahid Hamid sought consideration of the bill, the PPP opposed it, but the house accorded permission with a majority vote of 41 against 34, marking first defeat of the opposition in the house.



The opposition appeared to be ill-prepared as its members were absent during the important legislative business, and at times some members from the opposition voted in favour of the treasury and on at least one occasion, the PPP itself was divided during voting.



Section 5(1) of the Political Parties Order, which still holds the field, reads: Every citizen, not being in the service of Pakistan has the right to form or be a member of a political party or be otherwise associated with a political party or take part in political activities or be elected as an office-bearer of a political party.



A proviso to the clause reads: Provided that a person shall not be appointed or serve as an office-bearer of a political party if he is not qualified to be, or is disqualified from being, elected or chosen as a member of the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament) under Article 63 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or under any other law for the time being in force.



The proviso was simply struck off in the bill already introduced in and passed by the National Assembly on Aug 22 after ex-PM Sharifs disqualification on July 28.



It went unnoticed even when the bill was considered by the Senate standing committee on law, but when the process for passage of the bill started in the house on Friday, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan sought an amendment to Clause 203 (1) relating to membership of political parties by proposing addition of the proviso provided that the person shall not be appointed or serve as an office-bearer of a political party if he is not qualified to be, or is disqualified from being, elected or chosen as a member of the parliament under any law for the time being in force.



Expressing disappointment over the move by Aitzaz Ahsan, the law minister said that the controversial clause providing for such a bar on holding party offices was first introduced in a dictatorial regime through the Political Parties Act, 1965. It was removed in 1975 when a democratic government led by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was in power, he added.



He said the Political Parties Order 2002 brought back the particular provision. He said disqualification was meant to be used against opposition parties. He said the Political Parties Order was considered in a meeting held on Nov 17, 2014 and a member of the PPP suggested the removal of the said clause and the PML-N had accepted it. There was no mention of Panama Papers, lets throw our principles to the winds, an angry Zahid Hamid said on one occasion.



Calling for getting rid of remnants of dictatorship, he urged the opposition not to adopt a short-sighted approach and drop the amendment forthwith.



The chair asked the members to rise in their seats for voting in favour or against the legislation.



However, a controversy surrounded the procedure as the vote of PPP Senator Sassui Palejo, who was present in the house but not in her seat at the time of voting, was not counted. Before the vote count was announced the opposition pointed out that the vote of two treasury members was counted despite the fact that they were not occupying their seats at the time of voting.



The controversy prompted the presiding officer, Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah, to order a recount.



The oppositions amendment was defeated by a mere one vote as the treasury got 38 votes against 37.



A jubilant Zahid Hamid was seen shaking hands with Railway Minister Khawaja Saad Rafiq as the treasury members congratulated each other on rejection of the amendment. Treasury members also thanked the opposition members who supported their position.



An unusual happening during the legislative processes was witnessed when an amendment moved by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf senators Azam Khan Swati, Shibli Faraz and Mohsin Aziz requiring the electoral candidates to submit wealth statements including assets and liabilities of their spouses was sought to be re-amended by the law minister.



How can I allow you to amend an amendment passed minutes earlier?, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani asked. But on the insistence of the law minister, he said under the relevant rules it was his discretion to allow or disallow this. He said he left the matter to the house to decide. The house allowed the law minister to move the amendment with a majority vote  39 against 38 votes.



Three members from the PPP  former Senate chairman Farooq H. Naek, Fateh Muhammad Hasni and Rubina Khalid  did not follow the line of the rest of the members including the opposition leader. Mr Rabbani left the session when his view was rejected by the house with a majority vote.



The opposition senators staged a walkout against what they called attempts to bulldoze the system and announced staying away from the proceedings till the Senate chairman came to chair the session. However, they later changed their mind after some of the amendments proposed by PTI members were dropped due to the absence of movers.



The chair disallowed Hafiz Hamdullah and another from moving an amendment seeking to revoke a clause under which polls can be declared null and void if the women votes are less than 10 per cent. He observed that this was out of the scope of the bill and thus he could not allow the amendment to be moved.
The National

Officials refuse to engage with exiled elected officials of Mohamed Morsis Freedom and Justice Party because of the Brotherhoods highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism.

The UK says Mohamed Morsi's leadership had not done enough to pursue democratic commitments while in power. He was jailed for 25 years in 2016. Amr Nabil/AP Photo

The UK government has rejected calls by an all-party group of MPs to engage more closely with the Muslim Brotherhood because of the groups highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism, according to a document released Thursday.

Officials said that the former Egyptian government of Mohamed Morsi had not done enough while in power to demonstrate political moderation or a commitment to democratic values. Events since then had done nothing to change their view, according to the paper.

The government was responding to a report published last year by an influential group of lawmakers on the parliamentary foreign affairs committee [FAC], which had called on the UK to begin discreet relations with exiled officials from the former Morsi government, which was ousted in a military coup in 2013 after only one year in power.

The government rejected the call and said that any groups attitude towards the use of violence was one of three key principles in deciding whether diplomats should begin talks. Since losing power, Mr Morsis Freedom and Justice Party had stoked sectarianism with comments about Pope Francis, the government claimed without giving further detail.

It also said that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had in recent months denied ISIL involvement in attacks on Coptic Christians in Europe, even though the group had claimed responsibility. Instead it had accused the current Egyptian government of Abdel Fattah El Sisi  the current president who led the 2013 military coup - of organising or facilitating the attacks, according to the governments response. Scores of Christians have been killed in sectarian violence in 2017 with the population, who make up an eighth of Egyptians, targeted repeatedly by ISIL.

The Government does not agree with the FAC that we should be engaging with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood at this time, the government said in its latest response to the MPs report Political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood Review.

It said that there was a fundamental requirement for any organization to reject violence unambiguously, confront violent extremism and commit to constitutional politics before it entered into discussions.

Then prime minister David Cameron commissioned a report in 2015 which concluded that association with the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a possible indicator of extremism, but stopped short of banning the organisation. It said Thursday that it was keeping that decision under review while continuing to assess developments in the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the UK including its statements and actions.

It said that it was refusing visas to members and associates who were on record of having made extremist comments, and ensuring that charities with links to the Brotherhood were not misusing assets.

The government response also denied suggestions by the MPs that its 2015 report into the Muslim Brotherhood had been undermined by the impression that it had been influenced by the groups critics in the Gulf. Critics had pointed to a potential conflict with the review conducted by Sir John Jenkins, a former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia until 2015.

The choice of Sir John was made as he was one of the Foreign Offices most senior and respected diplomats and reflected his extensive experience and knowledge of the Arab world, said the government in its response.
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 Deputy Minister of Energy in-charge of Power, William Owuraku Aidoo, has charged board members of the Energy Commission (EC) to prioritize the finalization of the Renewable Energy Master Plan (REMP) before the end of the year to ensure its implementation.



The Deputy Minister, who was speaking at the inauguration of the seven-member EC board in Accra, also urged the new board to provide guidelines and the needed legislative drafts for the construction of mini-grids within a month and review the gas master plan in accordance with the mandate of the Commission.



He was of the view that although Ghana has made great strides in renewable energy, with the country being named among the top in energy efficiency policies, there are still some challenges that need immediate attention.



Mr Aidoo said the REMP would essentially provide an investment-focused framework for the promotion and development of the countrys rich renewable energy resources for sustainable economic growth.



REMP is aimed at increasing national supply of renewable energy system from 38MW in 2015 to 2561MW, provide renewable energy-based decentralized electrification options in 1,000 off-grid communities and promote local content and participation in the renewable energy industry and reduce the dependency on biomass as main fuel for thermal energy applications, he said.



It will also enable all the various economic sectors and social actors to sing from one hymn book in developing renewable energy.



He said currently about 16 percent of Ghanaians are still not connected to the national grid and do not have access to electricity.



The geographical location of our brothers and sisters in the rural areas and isolated island communities should not be a barrier for them enjoying electricity supply, he said.



He therefore challenged the Commission to accommodate mini-grids based on renewable energy and hybrids to provide the much-needed electricity to the rural and isolated communities.



The board is led by Professor George Panyin Hagan, with Dr. Alfred Kwabena Ofosu Ahenkorah, Dr. Isaac Frimpong Mensah-Bonsu, Prof Moses Aristophanes Kwame Gyasi as members.



Other members include Dari Biamark Harruna, Nana Akua Owusu Afriyieh and Alhaji Jabaru Abukakri.



Professor Hegan, in his acceptance speech, thanked President Akufo-Addo and pledged to work hard to further promote the vision of the President in the energy sector.





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 International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled on Saturday September 23, that Ghana did not violate Ivory Coasts rights by drilling for oil in a disputed maritime area, according to the tribunal judge.



In a unanimous decision, the Special Chamber of ITLOS also rejected Cote d' Ivoire's claim that Ghana and its coastal lines are unstable.



It however dismissed Ghana's claim that there has been a tacit agreement between it and Cote d'Ivoire.



ITLOS also accepted Ghana's argument of adoption of equidistance method of delimitation of maritime boundary between it and Cote d'Ivoire.



The Special Chamber finds the argument advanced by Ivory Coast that the hydrocarbon activities carried out by Ghana in the disputed area constitute a violation of the sovereign rights of Ivory Coast is not sustainable, said Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, President of the Special Chamber.





Click here for the ruling >>









Background



In September 2014, the Government of Ghana dragged Cote d'Ivoire to ITLOS in Hamburg, Germany, after the francophone neighbour began laying claim to some offshore oil concessions and adjoining seabed being developed and exploited by various companies, including Tullow Oil plc., within Ghanas territory.



Ghanas resort to ITLOS under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) followed 10 failed attempts at negotiations between the two countries. Ghana wants ITLOS to declare that it had not encroached on Ivory Coasts territorial waters. Ghana filed its suit based on Article 287 Annex VII of the 1982 UNCLOS.



Cote d'Ivoire, in February 2015, filed for preliminary measures urging the tribunal to suspend all activities on the disputed area until the definitive determination of the case, dubbed: Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary between Ghana and Cote dIvoire in the Atlantic Ocean.



Ghana maintained that Cote d'Ivoire began issuing threatening letters to oil companies operating in the disputed area after millions of dollars had been invested to develop the affected oilfields.



Exploration and exploitation work on the Tweneboah-Enyera-Ntoumme (TEN) project being operated by Tullow Oil Plc., and its partners would have been affected had the tribunal ordered a suspension of all activities.



However, in April 2015, ITLOS, in its provisional measures, said on-going projects in the disputed fields, including the $7.5-billion TEN project could proceed while the substantive case was being dealt with, but ordered that Ghana should not start new explorations within the same fields.



The provisional measures followed legal and technical representations made by both countries at ITLOSs Special Chamber in Hamburg, Germany, on March 29 and 30, 2015, after which ITLOS ruled thus:



THE SPECIAL CHAMBER,



(1) Unanimously



22



Prescribes, pending the final decision, the following provisional measures under article 290, paragraph 1, of the Convention:



(a) Ghana shall take all necessary steps to ensure that no new drilling either by Ghana or under its control takes place in the disputed area as defined in paragraph 60;



(b) Ghana shall take all necessary steps to prevent information resulting from past, on-going or future exploration activities conducted by Ghana, or with its authorisation, in the disputed area that is not already in the public domain from being used in any way whatsoever to the detriment of Cote dIvoire;



(c) Ghana shall carry out strict and continuous monitoring of all activities undertaken by Ghana or with its authorisation in the disputed area with a view to ensuring the prevention of serious harm to the marine environment;



(d) The Parties shall take all necessary steps to prevent serious harm to the marine environment, including the continental shelf and its superjacent waters, in the disputed area and shall cooperate to that end;



(e) The Parties shall pursue cooperation and refrain from any unilateral action that might lead to aggravating the dispute.



(2) Unanimously



Decides that Ghana and Cote dIvoire shall each submit to the Special Chamber the initial report referred to in paragraph 105 not later than 25 May 2015, and authorises the President of the Special Chamber, after that date, to request such information from the Parties as he may consider appropriate.



(3) Unanimously



Decides that each Party shall bear its own costs.



(signed)

Boualem BOUGUETAIA,

President of the Special Chamber

(signed)

Philippe GAUTIER,

Registrar



Before ITLOSs provisional measures, Cote d'Ivoire had, in a 27-page application signed by its Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Mr Adama Toungara, urged the tribunal to also direct Ghana to refrain from granting any new permit for oil exploration and exploitation in the disputed area.



It also prayed the tribunal to direct Ghana to refrain from any unilateral action entailing a risk of prejudice to the rights of Cote d'Ivoire and any unilateral action that might lead to aggravating the dispute.



Cote d'Ivoire argued that it would suffer severe and irreparable economic injury if its request was not granted by the tribunal.



It also accused Ghana of attempting to prejudice the tribunals decision by going into the merit of the case with volumes of documents and witness statements, but Ghana faulted its neighbour for departing from the law, making baseless accusations, being inconsistent and failing to produce witnesses and expert evidence.



Ghana also reminded Cote d'Ivoire of its lack of consistency and merit in filing for preliminary measures.



The absence of credible data and evidence from Cote d'Ivoire, according to Ghana, at the time, was due to that countrys handicap in producing factual documents to back its case.



Ghana, which was led by then-Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, also reminded the tribunal of Cote d'Ivoires failure to challenge the evidence of its technical witnesses, which, according to it, tore Cote d'Ivoires case in shreds.



We invite you to firmly decline the application before you, Mrs Appiah-Opong said, with the argument that Cote d'Ivoire had failed to prove that Ghana had encroached on its territorial waters to warrant the stoppage of activities, including the exploration of oil in the disputed area, until the final determination of the dispute.



There is no justification in law, logic, and fairness or on the evidence for the measures sought. They will be unprecedented, an invasion of sovereign rights that stand in the face of representations made by Cote dIvoire for more than four decades, on which others and we have relied, she stressed.



Leading a team of local and international lawyers and technical staff from relevant agencies, Mrs Appiah-Opong told ITLOSs five-member panel that until Ghana was well advanced with its oil exploration programme on its side of the boundary, there were no difficulties.



She added: At the time when Cote dIvoire had much more oil and gas production than Ghana, there were no claims about moving the maritime boundary.



In 2009, Cote dIvoire started to make representations to Ghana about its desire to alter the boundary. Yet, its public position did not change. None of its inconsistent positions has any proper justification in law.



The tribunal is presided over by Judge Boualem Bouguetaia, with Judge Rudiger Wolfrum, Judge Jin-Hyun Paik, Judge Thomas Mensah and Judge Ronny Abraham as members.



Judges Mensah and Abraham were appointed by Ghana and Ivory Coast respectively, in accordance with the rules of the tribunal.



The two countries ended their oral submissions in February 2017.



Ghanas current Attorney-General, Gloria Akuffo, at the last hearing, argued that the two countries already had an agreement on their maritime boundary, albeit informally. Cote dIvoire, on the other hand, rejected that claim, calling on the Chamber to declare that Ghana has, indeed, violated the sovereign rights of Cote dIvoire when it unilaterally undertook drilling activities in that boundary.



In his final arguments, Cote dIvoires agent and Minister of Mines, Petroleum and Energy, Adama Toungara, said: To declare and adjudge thirdly that Ghana has violated the provisional measures prescribed by this chamber by its order of 26th of April, 2015. And fourthly, and consequently, [A] to invite the parties to carry out negotiations in order to reach agreement on arrangements for reparations due to Cote DIvoire; and [B] to state that if they fail to reach an agreement within a period of six months as of the date of the judgment to be delivered by the special chamber, the chamber will determine the amount of compensation or the arrangements for reparations on the basis of additional recent documents dealing with the subject alone.



Ms Akuffo, on the other hand, told the Special Chamber that Cote dIvoire was trying to move the boundary to the east to benefit from Ghanas oil reserves, saying: They simply cannot escape from years of mutual practice, however hard they try, in implementation of and reinforced by their own official maps, laws and decrees. It was easy to lose count of the different ways in which they tried to portray the coast. Arrows went one way and then the other, coastal directions twisting and turning; land was added; land was removed, depending on what point they wanted to make at any particular moment.

Source: Peacefmonline.com with additional files from Reuters









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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At 10.00 this morning, the Holy Father Francis received in audience H.E. Mr. Pietro Sebastiani, ambassador of Italy to the Holy See, on the occasion of the presentation of his Credential Letters.

The following is a brief biography of the new ambassador:

H.E. Mr. Pietro Sebastiani

Ambassador of Italy to the Holy See

H.E. Mr. Pietro Sebastiani was born in Capannori, Lucca, on 28 March 1957. He is married with four children.

He graduated in political sciences with international specialisation, from the Cesare Alfieri University of Florence (28 October 1981), and subsequently attended courses in international economics at the University of Harvard and international journalism at the Columbia University of New York.

He has held the following offices: intern in the diplomatic career (1984-1985); third Secretary of the General Directorate for Cultural Relations (1985-1986); second Secretary and subsequently first Secretary at the Embassy in Moscow (1986-1988); vice consul (1988-1990) and adjunct consul in New York (1990-1993); member of the Cabinet of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs Andreatta and Elia (1993-1994); Counsellor of Legation (1994); secondment for course of higher professional training at the Diplomatic Institute (1994-1995); member of the Cabinet of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs Martino, Agnelli and Dini (1995-1997); counsellor to the Permanent Representation at UNESCO, Paris (1997-2000); Counsellor of Embassy (2000) and then First Counsellor, again in Paris (2000); first Counsellor of Embassy in Brussels (December 2000 to August 2001); Diplomatic Counsellor to the President of the Chamber of Deputies during the 14th legislature (2001-2005); Minister Plenipotentiary (2005); Diplomatic Counsellor to the President of the Interparliamentary Union in Geneva (2006-2008); head of the Permanent Representation at the United Nations in Rome, with rank of Ambassador (2008-2012); Ambassador in Madrid (2013-2016) and Andorra (2015-2016); Ambassador to the direct dependencies of the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (March 2016 to August 2016); Director General for Development Cooperation (since August 2016).

Aside from Italian, he speaks French, English, Dutch, Russian, Spanish and German.












The extraordinarily warm weather this September has inspired an urgent request to landlords to turn off the heat. Its on because there is a bylaw saying that by this date, it must be on. All well and good but the climate doesnt care. Then, to the UN where the prime minister doesnt seem to feel Canadians have had their fill of self-abasement. The UN no doubt loved it. On the other hand, even hard-hearted Canadians may twinge to hear that those happy Norwegians (happiest in the world, they say) have squirreled away a trillion US dollars in their Sovereign Wealth Fund. Okay. Will it cheer you to spend a moment with Rihanna as she introduces her new makeup?
I feel 'betrayed', have 'no respect' for Manchester United coach Erik ten Hag, says Cristiano Ronaldo

T20 World Cup: Anil Kumble thinks separate teams in red-ball, white-ball cricket is the way forward

Sam Billings pulls out of playing in IPL 2023 in order to focus on longer format of the game
Plans by the Community Foundation of the Great River Bend to help strengthen area nonprofits while igniting more charitable giving just got larger.

Early this summer, the foundation rolled out its 2017 Community Impact Fund Challenge Grants to award five nonprofits each with a $10,000 matching grant. But after the applications began pouring in, the foundation upped the ante and doubled the recipients to 10 nonprofits and the grant total from $50,000 to $100,000.

"The response to this challenge was overwhelmingly positive from applicants and donors alike," said Kelly Thompson, vice president of grantmaking and community initiatives. In a one-month application period, she said the foundation received 46 applications  the largest pool of challenge grants to date.

"There were so many excellent ones, we could have funded them all," she said, adding that the board of directors voted earlier this week to double the grants. "We were not just encouraged, but genuinely moved, by the variety and excellence of the work happening across the community."

The Community Impact Fund 2017 Challenge Grant recipients are Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Mississippi Valley, Center for Active Seniors, Child Abuse Council, Children's Therapy Center of the Quad-Cities, Dress for Success Quad-Cities, Family Resources, German American Heritage Center, River Action, Robert Young Center and WVIK Quad-Cities NPR.

"This year, there was so much change  positive and negative, we thought it was important to make changes to how we donate our dollars out and help the organizations bring in more support from their donors to support their mission," Thompson said.

In the past several years, nonprofits have been stretched to work with tighter budgets and fewer resources, make up shortfalls in state and federal funding, and facing increased competition for funding.

To apply for the 2017 Challenge Grants, applicants had to identify their greatest needs or opportunities.

But according to Thompson, "the real work begins now for the nonprofits." Each recipient must raise their $10,000 match through new or increased giving from other donors by Dec. 31 to receive the challenge grant.

Nisha Ladlee, the development director for Family Resources, Davenport, is ready to do the work necessary to match the award. She said the funding will be spread across the board to the agency's various programming, including its shelter for survivors of sexual and domestic abuse or human trafficking to its foster group care, mental health services, counseling programs and a 24-hour hotline.

With the state of Illinois' budget woes and a lack of a budget for so long, she said "That all played an impact on us being able to provide services. We're constantly looking for ways to continue our programming. It's about sustainability."

Family Resources served more than 45,000 clients from children to adults across the Quad-City region.

Regina Haddock, the founder and executive director of Dress for Success Quad-Cities, said the grant opportunity came as the startup agency was completing its own strategic development process that identified a need for more individual donations. The organization provides career clothing to help women get a new or better job, and services to help them build a career and move toward financial independence.

Almost six years old now, Dress for Success Quad-Cities has largely relied on grant funding. But with the foundation grant, she hopes to use this funding to attract new donors and giving, she said. "Community Foundation has been there from the beginning," Haddock said, recalling the first grant it provided for a computer for Dress for Success.

"The point of a challenge grant is to stir increased giving," Thompson said. "That's the power a challenge grant gives an organization to be able to tell a donor everything you give will be matched."
The Illinois Supreme Court has delivered the latest blow to Rock Island Clean Line's plans to build a $600 million wind energy transmission line across Iowa and Illinois.

In its decision issued Thursday, the state's high court sided with an August 2016 appellate court decision that overturned public utility status for Rock Island Clean Line. The appellate court had ruled the Illinois Commerce Commission should not have granted permission because the company did not meet the definition of a public utility.

In its 7-0 opinion, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the company does not actually own, control, manage or operate any plant or transmission lines in Illinois.

"We agree with the appellate court that the Commission erred in finding that Rock Island (Clean Line) is a public utility," the court wrote. "The company does not qualify as a public utility under Illinois law and was ineligible for a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the Commission."

The certificate would have allowed Rock Island Clean Line to construct the project in the state of Illinois. The proposed 500-mile transmission line will run from O'Brien County in northwest Iowa to Grundy County in Illinois.

In a telephone interview with the Quad-City Times, company Vice President Hans Detweiler said the court "tightened up the definition of ownership."

He said that Rock Island Clean Line had an option agreement to purchase land in Grundy County, Illinois, to build a converter station for the transmission line. "They said that was inefficient and said we need to be already vested in that property."

"It's like a legal hangnail," Detweiler added.

Clean Line Energy Partners first announced plans in 2010 to build the wind energy transmission project. Its path would include Scott County in Iowa and Rock Island and Henry counties in Illinois.

Detweiler said the company will consider all its options, including a rehearing with the court. It also could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. It has 21 days to request a rehearing.

"Or we could decide we have enough information from what they have done, and we can figure out what to do to get approval," he said, including exercising its purchase option agreement.

"On the upside, they invited us, if we move forward and acquire utility property, we could reapply. They really left an open invitation to come back in," he said, adding that the Illinois Commerce Commission's "authority was not diminished at all as a result of this decision."

But opponents of Clean Line's project, including the appellant Landowners Alliance, were claiming the court's ruling to be a victory.

"Our legal victory today is for all landowners in this state," Curt Jacobs, an alliance board member, said in a news release issued by the alliance.

William Shay, the lead attorney for the alliance, said the court agreed with the Illinois Landowners Alliance, Farm Bureau and ComEd on the definition of public utility.

"The Court noted that nothing stops Rock Island (Clean Line) from seeking to develop its project as a private facility, but it will not have public utility status, including the right to condemn landowner easements through eminent domain," he added.

Founded in 2012, the alliance and the Block Rock Island Clean Line effort has been argued from the beginning that the company did not qualify as a public utility and is not entitled to use the power of eminent domain, said Mary Mauch, the alliance's executive director. "RICL's foray into eminent domain for private gain has served to raise the public consciousness against these kinds of projects and unite communities to create strong opposition to them," she said in the release.

Carolyn Sheridan, president of Preservation of Rural Iowa, said that Iowa landowners also "rejoice with our Illinois neighbors." "This is clearly an example of large groups of people coming together for a common goal."

In December, Clean Line Energy Partners withdrew its application with the Iowa Utilities Board pending the Illinois Supreme Court decision.

"Now we have all the information for the situation is in Iowa and the situation is in Illinois...," Detweiler said. "We're going to look at all the pieces and make a decision."

But in a statement, he said "This (ruling) causes great delay for the project and will directly impact competition in electricity markets... It is unfortunate that Illinois now has higher barriers for new market entrants."
In a high school biology room, a class of sophomores was uncharacteristically glued to their textbooks. The teacher, Rocky Casini had hinted all year that Chapter 13 was coming. Debbi Castle was a one of the students and remembered anxiously waiting for Chapter 13. She remembered hearing talk of students who hadnt dropped out just so they could hear this lesson. Casini had been teaching his way through the textbook and without so much as a shutter had skipped over this chapter.

He was saving it, Castle said. We had books in front of us and wed thumb through them. We brought up that hed skipped it, and Casini just smiled and kept on.

Chapter 13 was on reproductive systems in the body, and in that classroom, every student was attentive to Casinis every word.

Castle said she remembered how attentive Casini was to his students. Looking for ways to engage them on their level. Castle said that he listened to their problems, their excuses, their complaints with an even keel and bountiful sensitivity.

Whether you were the ornery one or the smart one, he saw potential in all of us, Castle said. He listened when you talked to him. He was there. He felt like such a positive force in the school.

Rasmo Luigi Casini was the youngest child of Ada and Mario Casini. He was born in a small Italian village, Fornaci di Barga in Tuscany. Born in 1938, his first years were marked by a war-torn Europe in an Italy that bore witnessed World War II. In his memoir, he wrote about seeing the bomber planes for the first time:

"Tiny airplanes flew over the Serchio Valley.

"Why did everyone look frightened? How could those tiny planes possibly hurt us?

"At the time I didnt understand that the planes were large but very distant.

"Later, I learned those planes were on their way to bomb a tunnel where German tanks hid.

"Later, I came to understand bombs.

"Later, I came to know war."

Casinis hometown was occupied by German soldiers until the Allies liberated the Serchio Valley in 1945. He was still young. Living through the aftermath of war, it was three years before his family would board the ship MS Vulcania.

The Casini family landed in New York Harbor and made its way to Chicago. Rocky Casini attended school and received his U.S. citizenship his senior year of high school. He remembers the test back then being pretty easy. From his memoir:

"During my senior year of high school, I became a proud American citizen. Nowadays, I believe that people study and take courses to pass the citizenship test, but this was how my test went.

"Examiner: What are the colors of our flag?

"Me: Red, White, and Blue

"Examiner: Spell CAT

"Me: Spell cat? But Im a senior in high school!

"Examiner: These are the questions we ask.

"Me: C-A-T

"Examiner: Name the branches of our government.

"Me: Executive, Legislative, Judicial.

"Examiner: Congratulations. You pass."

In 1966, Casini met the woman who would be his wife. They met at a dance and, being nervous, she didnt give her real name. Casini wrote that it was love at first sight. She called herself Gwendolyn. It wasnt until he called around looking for her that he learned her name was Kitty. Casini wrote in his memoir that she would sign her love notes Gwendolyn.

They married in the fall of 1966 and the following year, Kitty was hired by a hospital in Muscatine and Rocky, became a teacher in Muscatine. They had two children, Jay and Susan.

Casinis memoir is divided into 23 chapters. Casini devoted half of the book to his life in Muscatine, to his wife and family, to his work and his dogs. He spends less time on periods like the war and his familys journey to the United States.

That was my dad, Jay Casini said. Where a lot of people would tell him that War stuff might be what people would want to read about. He would argue otherwise, that his work in Muscatine, that was the important part.

Jay remembered meeting some of his students.

Every teacher has a passion for education, but he had a way of inspiring people. I heard that more often than not from former students. He was the man who ignited that spark for people.

He just didnt let connections, the people, go, said Mary Curry, a former student. He always tried to stay connected with students.

Curry remembered coming in the first day of class to a big box of doughnuts and a teacher that was ready to get started. She said that he would talk for hours about how proud he was of the students he had that went on to be in the field of science.

Richard Wash Washburn, a former coworker, said he was inspired by Casinis commitment to educating students.

I could see it was very important to him to see these students appreciate a good education, Washburn said. He would challenge his students to go beyond the general. Force them to go deep in the subject matter.

On Tuesday, Sept. 12, a visitation was held for Rocky Casini. His daughter, Susan Morford, said it helped her find peace in his death to speak with the hundreds of people that walked through the visitation line.

"That was my dad. He was everything to so many people," Morford said. "I had several friends that weren't close to their dads or didn't have dads in their lives. Their reaction to his death was as bad as mine. He filled that role for so many of them. I think he brought that everywhere he went.

"What I felt that I learned from the visitation was that for all these people he was a beloved teacher and father figure and close friend. Rocky was kind of Rocky all over. He was that way to me and to everyone. He was great dad, of course. But he really was an overwhelmingly wonderful man."

At the funeral the following day, Jay Casini delivered a benediction for his father. He talked about one of the last moments he spent with Rocky. Rocky had just gotten out of surgery, and he was shivering. He asked his nurse for two of the warm blankets the hospital gave out to patients.

It was cold in there, Jay said. We figured it was for him.

When the nurse returned with the blankets, he laid one on his bed and asked the nurse to give other one to his wife Kitty.

That was quintessential Dad, Jay said. He took care of people."
A U.S. District Court judge Thursday sentenced seven men to sentences ranging from time served to 30 months in prison for their role in a large dog-fighting venture in the Quad-Cities dating back at least to 2011.

Although Judge Sara Darrow said that the operation appeared to be amateur in terms of sophistication, there was evidence to suggest that things were ramping up, such as the breeding of and promotion of the pit bulls.

Dogs, she said, rely on humans for care and love. Pit bulls are especially vulnerable because they are loyal dogs.

You and your co-defendants repaid that loyalty by turning that against them and abusing them, she said during the hearing for Demarlo A. McCoy, who prosecutors say was one of the bigger players in the dog-fighting venture and hosted several fights in his basement.

I just wanted to say Im sorry for my actions, McCoy said in Rock Island federal court before Darrow handed down a 24-month prison sentence and three years of supervised release. A lot was said that wasnt true  I never killed a dog.

McCoy, 30, of Rock Island, who is free on bond, must turn himself in Oct. 30.

Another defendant, Willie E. Jackson told the judge that the entire ordeal has been traumatic for him, his family and close friends. He said he lost his job, as well as a dream internship. He has since found a new job, he said.

The news of his involvement in the dog-fighting ring led to his son being bullied at school, where kids barked at him and called him the dog mans son.

I feel like my sentence already has been handed down, the 35-year-old Rock Island man said.

Jackson, who pleaded guilty to hosting a dog fight in his home in November 2014, was sentenced to time served, three years of supervised release and was ordered by Darrow to spend time in a halfway house.

The sentencing hearing began Thursday and continued Friday.

Also Friday:

 Ryan M. Hickman, 43, of Rock Island, who pleaded June 13 to possessing dogs for participation in dog fighting, was sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

 Andre Keywan Lidell, 41, of Rock Island, who pleaded guilty June 13 to sponsoring and exhibiting dogs in dog fighting, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

 Simmeon Terrell Hall, 29, of Rock Island, who pleaded guilty May 22 to sponsoring and exhibiting dogs in dog fighting, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release.

 Terrill Onterial McDuffy, 44, of Davenport, who pleaded guilty July 12 to conspiracy, was sentenced to one year and a day in prison and three years of supervised release.

 Jaquan Leontae Jones, 28, of Rock Island, who pleaded guilty May 18 to knowingly attending a dog fight, a misdemeanor, was sentenced to six months in prison, two of which will be spent in a halfway house, and one year of supervised release.

Sentencing for two of the men, Stantrel Vontrez Knight, 31, and Sherrick Cornelius Houston, 44, both of Rock Island, was continued until Tuesday.

The case against a 10th man, Algerron Lee Goldsmith, 47, of Rock Island, is pending. He is charged with conspiracy to sponsor/exhibit pit bulls in an animal fighting venture and possessing dogs for participation in dog fighting.

The men were indicted Jan. 24.

On April 14, 2016, investigators seized 64 pit bull-type dogs from 10 homes in Rock Island and one in Davenport as part of an investigation into a dog-fighting ring that began a year earlier through information developed by the Rock Island Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Quad-Cities Federal Gang Task Force.

The seized dogs were placed into the custody of the American Society for the Prevention and Cruelty of Animals.

No dog-fighting charges were filed immediately following the seizures, but Hickman and Jackson were arrested on drug offenses.

Federal prosecutors on April 15, 2016, filed a civil complaint seeking forfeiture of the seized dogs. They said in the civil complaint that the dogs were involved in and used to commit or facilitate the dog-fighting venture.

The dogs have since been forfeited. More than half of them had to be euthanized because of behavioral or serious medical issues. Thirty were able to be adopted, FBI Special Agent Samantha Maxwell testified Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney C. Ryan Finlen argued for lengthy sentences for the men Friday, saying that dog fighting is a grotesque activity that grows over time.

If the venture had not been broken up in April 2016, he said, it would have continued to grow.

Some of the men hosted dog fights in their homes, while others promoted dogs through a short-lived website.

Some dogs that didn't make the cut were killed, according to prosecutors.

Many of the dogs that were seized had scars and wounds indicative of organized dog fighting and several of the men had "paraphernalia" such as medical supplies, dog sporting magazines and treadmills in their homes.
Scientists at the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, along with partner organizations, received a $1.46 million award from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health and the Office of Research on Womens Health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The award funds a two-year research planning project to address short-term pain and functional outcomes associated with different numbers of chiropractic visits, along with long-term effectiveness of chiropractic care delivered at Veterans Health Administration clinics.

If the NIH determines initial project goals are met after the two-year planning phase and, pending available funds, the project and funding will extend over an additional four years at about $7 million, making it the largest award ever granted by the NIH to a chiropractic institution.

The award is part of a multi-disciplinary initiative sponsored by the institute, Department of Defense and the Veterans Health Administration. Partner organizations are the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, Veterans Administration Health Care systems in Iowa City, Minneapolis, Connecticut and Los Angeles, the University of Iowa and Yale University.

The Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, with headquarters at Palmers Davenport campus, is the most highly funded chiropractic research center in the United States. Within the past 10 years, the center has been awarded grants from the NIH, the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and the Department of Defense, in addition to private-foundation grants.
Paula Gallagher never thought she was a dog person until she fostered a three-legged pit for a friend who was trying to get back on his feet last year.

When she and her husband, Mike, had to give the dog back a few months later, they were heartbroken.

Something needed to fill the void in our house, so we kind of started looking around for another dog.

Just before Christmas, Paula, 29, and Mike, 31, of Ohio, visited the Columbus Humane society to look for a pit bull or pit bull mix.

The dog that we fostered (previously) was super chill, she said. He was very, very low maintenance. Since we knew we wanted a young dog, we knew we were going to get the puppy age where they could be crazy.

They decided to adopt a 7-month-old pit bull puppy named Atlas who Paul Gallagher said seemed really laid back.

Atlas was just chilling in his cage and staring at us, she said. He wasnt jumping, he wasnt barking. He whined a little bit when we came up to him but other than that, he was really relaxed, which wasnt something you see a lot in shelter dogs. Usually theyre barking and theyre scared or angry.

The puppy, she learned, was born to one of 64 pit bulls that was seized during a large dog fighting venture in the Quad-Cities. Atlas and his siblings were born after the seizure at a facility run by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals.

On Friday, seven of the men involved in the case were sentenced to terms ranging from time served to 30 months in federal prison following a two-day sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court, Rock Island.

Paula Gallagher said Atlas background didnt worry her at all.

I was more excited to give him a home because he didnt really know that, she said.

Paula said that when they brought Atlas home he was afraid of everything. They had to potty train him, crate train him and teach him how to use the stairs.

Imagine my husband carrying a 45-pound or a 50-pound pit bull up the stairs every night to go to bed, she said with a laugh.

Eventually, he learned how to use the stairs, she said.

Atals quickly has become part of the family, Paula Gallagher said.

Hes like my child, she said. Theres so much love.
US considers non-combat-rated subset of F-35 fleet 18 SEPTEMBER, 2017

SOURCE: FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM BY: STEPHEN TRIMBLE WASHINGTON DC

Scores of US-owned Lockheed Martin F-35s would remain in the fleet with a software operating system rated below combat-grade under one of several cost-saving proposals under review by the Joint Programme Office. Delays during the development stage caused Lockheed to deliver more than 108 aircraft with Block 2B software. Each fighter requires 150-160 modifications to be raised to the combat-rated Block 3 standard, says Vice Adm Matt Winter, the F-35s programme executive. The looming modification bills are threatening to suck resources from a looming production ramp-up with more than 900 aircraft projected for delivery over the next five years, Winter says. Were looking at solution spaces to give our warfighters options, Winter says. One of those options is to keep a subset of the F-35 fleet at the Block 2B software standard. It would follow a practice used on the Lockheed F-22 programme, which has about 30 fighters maintained at Block 20 for training missions and about 150 fighters using the go-to-war Block 30/35 standard.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Students attending Iowas public universities likely will see tuition increases, but they wont be the annualized 7 percent over five years that two of the institutions are seeking, according to the Iowa regent who chaired a tuition task force over the summer.

Larry McKibben of Marshalltown, a former state senator, told those at The Gazettes Iowa Ideas conference that Iowas public universities need a combination of higher tuition, increased state funding and savings from efficiencies to maintain quality and top faculty at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.

Will it be 7 percent? The answer is no, McKibben said. We certainly dont want that to happen, and we dont want to ask for that. Its way too soon to say what it will be.

The regents, a nine-member volunteer board, must first approve its request for state funding for the next budget year  which it will tackle in a special meeting next week  before considering tuition rates for the fall of 2018. The board is scheduled to consider tuition rates in October, with a final vote in December.

The Board of Regents Office last week released its proposed appropriations request, which includes a $12 million increase that would be earmarked for resident undergraduate student financial aid to cushion a tuition increase.

The action comes after the GOP-run Legislature during the last legislative session cut the institutions base appropriations by more than $30 million.

Iowa and Iowa State leaders have requested a 7 percent annual increase for resident undergraduates, and Northern Iowa has suggested a 5 percent annualized increase, which some argue would make more financial aid imperative for the schools to accomplish their missions of being accessible and diverse.

At Fridays conference, Iowa student body president Jacob Simpson said he hoped any boost in tuition could be held in the range of 3 percent to 5 percent.

After the meeting, McKibben said he would have preferred the student leader had set his sights a little lower, such as in the 2 percent to 4 percent range, but higher tuition at some levels appears inevitable.

We cant get the numbers together and continue the high level of education and faculty and staff that they want if we dont, McKibben said. There is going to be some increase in tuition. I dont know exactly what its going to be. I would hope 5 (percent) is on the high end.

Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, who serves on legislative education committees, said Friday the cuts in state aid to Iowas three regent universities have effectively been a tuition tax increase on Iowa students and their parents.

For the sake of Iowas future, we have to keep our state universities affordable to all without compromising the quality of their education. That will take money, said Quirmbach, who pointed to nearly $332 million in tax credits the state divvies up to attract businesses and high-quality jobs as a possible source of future funding for higher education.

Tom Mortenson, a Pell researcher who has studied trends in funding for higher education, said Iowas support for its public colleges is about the same as it was decades ago and is on a downward arc. He said higher education is losing the competition for taxpayer dollars to health care, corrections and unfunded pensions.

Iowa has become a national leader in the defunding of higher education, said Mortensen, noting Iowa is tied with four other states for the worst financial support for colleges. He said the shift began in 2000 when then-Gov. Tom Vilsack took money from higher education to boost funding for K-12 teachers salaries.

Were shifting the cost of higher education from taxpayers back onto students, he said. And from my perspective as someone who studies higher educational opportunity and especially college affordability for students from low-income family backgrounds, this is a disastrous set of choices.
The Trump administration often talks about North Korea policy as if it's an on-off switch.

President Trump thundered Tuesday that the U.S. will "totally destroy" North Korea to defend itself and its allies. But Defense Secretary James Mattis blandly insisted the next day that it's "still a diplomatically led effort."

Somewhere in this maze of public statements-including Thursday's announcement of new economic sanctions on North Korea--there's a nuanced American policy. But the seeming binary options are weirdly reminiscent of the nuclear standoff of the Cold War, when the only choices seemed to be a conflict with massive loss of life -- or surrender to the adversary's demands.

To escape this straitjacket, strategists in the 1970s and '80s began to devise new conventional and nuclear weapons, and ultimately, missile defenses. A similar creative re-examination is needed now.

We can always hope that the Trump administration's strategy will work: Maybe Trump's threat to Pyongyang of "fire and fury" will convince China to halt oil deliveries; perhaps the North Koreans will enter negotiations; maybe an interim peace agreement will stabilize the situation so "final status" talks begin about eventual de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and withdrawal of American troops.

That's the best outcome, certainly. But to be prudent, U.S. officials and their allies should assume it won't work. They need to be planning other options, with a coldblooded rationality that is the opposite of schoolboy taunts about "Rocket Man."

U.S. officials need, first, to decide how serious a threat North Korea truly poses to America. If major cities are at risk, and Kim Jong Un's erratic behavior can't be deterred, then perhaps the U.S. should indeed be planning to de-nuclearize North Korea by force.

If the U.S. adopted this maximalist strategy, it would begin a buildup of forces that, by most estimates, would take at least two months. Japan and South Korea would begin intensive civil-defense programs to protect their populations and minimize civilian casualties.

This is a nightmare scenario, but if you believe Kim is truly a nightmare leader, then you must think about the unthinkable. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to be doing just that. His op-ed in The New York Times Monday was more polite than Trump's bombast, but no less firm. He urged "concerted pressure" against "an unprecedented, grave and imminent threat from North Korea."

Suppose you take a less drastic view of Kim and conclude that the real target of his antics is China. He clearly fears Beijing's influence: He brutally murdered his uncle and half-brother, both of whom were said to be close to China. His missile and nuclear tests defy Trump, but even more the repeated warnings he has received, and ignored, from President Xi Jinping.

If we see Kim as a regional threat, rather than a global one, then perhaps the right response is an intelligence strategy that begins with the reality of his split with China -- and takes off from there. Back in 2003, China suspended oil deliveries for several days (blaming the problem on a supposed pipeline malfunction) and North Korea quickly began negotiations. In the deniable realm of intelligence operations, it's always possible that a pipeline could "malfunction" again, or that other crippling difficulties could arise for Pyongyang and its mercurial leader. Suppose, instead, that the U.S. and its allies decide that North Korea isn't worth the risks of either military or covert action. What then? To be cynically honest, we must recognize that sometimes it's less costly to bribe an adversary than to go to war. What blandishments would get Kim to agree to halt his testing program? Is there a "freeze" option, as suggested by Robert Einhorn of the Brookings Institution, that would stop escalation, prevent proliferation and stabilize the situation -- but leave de-nuclearization for the distant future?

Finally, are there defensive measures that can sharply reduce the North Korean threat? For the past decade military planners have been touting a "boost-phase" intercept, which could destroy North Korean missiles in the first several minutes after launch.

The Pentagon has started a new program to build a lightweight, powerful laser carried on big, high-altitude drones that could loiter outside North Korean airspace. The lasers won't be ready until 2023, at the earliest. But how about a simpler version that would shoot fast interceptor missiles from existing drones? Some Pentagon planners say such a system could be deployed soon.

President Kennedy famously solved the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 by thinking outside the box. Similar creative thinking is badly needed now on North Korea.
CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii | United States Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft joined Japan Air Self-Defense Force and Republic of Korea Air Force aircraft in a sequenced bilateral show of force over the Korean Peninsula September 17, in response to North Koreas launch of an intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM) over Japan on September 14.

Two B-1B Lancer bombers from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam; four U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II fifth-generation advanced fighters from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan; four Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) F-15K fighters; and four Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force) F-2 fighter jets executed this mission.

During the mission, U.S. and ROKAF aircraft flew across the Korean Peninsula and practiced their attack capabilities by releasing live weapons at the Pilsung Range training area. The F-35Bs, B-1B bombers and Koku Jieitai fighters flew together over waters near Kyushu, Japan.

U.S. Pacific Command maintains the ability to respond to any threat in the Indo-Asia-Pacific theater at a moments notice.
A judge has thrown out a lawsuit that challenged voting by absentee ballot in Detroit, saying a Republican candidate for secretary of state failed to produce any evidence of violations. Wayne County Judge Tim Kenny says critics have raised a red flag of election law wrongdoing. But Kenny says his ruling takes down that flag. Kristina Karamo and others sued to try to force Detroit voters to vote in person or go to the city clerks office to get an absentee ballot. They made a variety of allegations about how Detroit reviews signatures on absentee ballots and monitors ballot drop-off boxes. The judge says they failed dramatically to back up any of it.
They call themselves The Daydreamers.

The group of six friends meet at the Daydream Fabrics store in Stevensville each Thursday to sew, learn, complete quilting projects, and solve the worlds problems.

Now they are stepping up to help hurricane disaster victims in Texas and Florida. The group has completed 30 quilts, 25 pillow cases, and some receiving blankets and burp cloths.

Fabric Store owner Jeanetta Plemmons said that she saw an online plea for quilts from the Missouri Star Quilt Company to be distributed for help with the relief efforts.

As a group we came together and started sewing, Plemmons said. Everyone wanted to do something for them. We decided to sew these things up, and everyone would pay their own costs. We got together, sewed like crazy, and all had a good time while we were at it.

Quilter Phyllis Green said the dedicated group shares a love of quilting and helping others.

We hope that our pillowcases, receiving blankets, quilts and burp cloths will be of great comfort and aide to those in need, she said. Local quilter Mary Hayes dropped off a box of quilts that she had made and asked to include them in our donation.

Plemmons said once other quilters learned of their project donations started coming.

If you ask, youll get people to help, she said.

The group has been sewing all week and will ship the completed projects on Monday or Tuesday.

Plemmons said the quilters are eager to get what theyve made to the disaster victims.

There is so much going on and they will be in need of certain things, she said. I have extra people this week and a couple of girls are at home sewing. Were all doing our part.
Dirgha Raj Prasai

The most popular festival- Dashain is celebrating in this year on 21st September 2017, (5th Ashoj 2074 BS) this day is known as Ghatsthapana-The first day of Dashain festival. Dashain comprises of ten days worship of lord Durga. The tenth day is the main day and celebrated as the Vijaya Dashami which is on 30th Sept. 2017, (Ashoj 2074 BS). The tenth day is celebrated as the main day by putting red mark in the forehead followed by best wishes which is called Tika. The Dashain ends on 5th Oct 2017 (this year), on Purnima (full moon). Dashain is a traditional cultural festivity in Nepal and in all over the Hindus world.

In Nepal, before Prithvi Narayan Shah (1768), the festival of Dashain and Tihar had been revered as a common culture of all castes. After Prithvi Narayan Shah, created a modern Nepal a new tradition was set by bringing Phulpati and Jamara to Kathmandu from the Gorakhkali Temple by a Magar priest. People from both the religion of Hindu and Buddha take Tika from senior family members in order of precedence after worshipping the main gate on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami. In the festival, interested Hindus, Buddhists and member of Muslims used to visit the royal palace to take Tika from the King.

But, the situation completely changed. On 24, April, 2006, the uprising came to a stop after an agreement was reached between the monarchy, NC and UML and Maoist included. The agitators were pleading for monarchy as an alternative force in times of crisis. An agreement was reached to reinstate the House of Representatives, which was dissolved under NC recommendation four years ago, although the monarchy did not possess the right to reinstate it. The monarchy reinstated the parliament and appointed Girija Prasad Koirala to the post of premiership. The king himself in the royal palace premises gave the oath of office ceremony of Prime Minister. Gradually, the agreement reached with the king was broken and the royal institution attacked, which is a work of huge betrayal. A political agreement- 24 April, 2006 was a political betrayal.

Some people are also dissatisfied owing to the forceful displacement of the monarch following unconstitutional process. Hence, it has become a dilemma in our national politics. Nepal was created with a joint effort between the monarch and the people. We Nepali are very much concerned about the forceful displacement of the monarch following unconstitutional process. Currently, fiends are ruling Nepal. The traitors are playing with the identity of Nepal under the guise of wolves and the Indian direction. Patriotic people are pondering how to save the nation and chase these evil elements. The agendas of republic, secularism and federalism will disintegrate the nation. Nepal has been orphaned without the monarch. In such situation also, many Nepalese people go the King Gyanendras resistance in Nirmal Niwas for Tika. In fact, the Dashain celebrated in the absence of the monarch is like a nation without identity. Therefore, constitutional monarchy needs in Nepal.

The identity of a nation fades away when its cultural belief is in a sequence. To avoid this Hindus, Buddhists and patriotic Nepali people scattered across the world must launch an initiation. We patriotic people of the nation pray to goddess Nava Durga Bhawani to be prosperous to the Nepalese People all around the world. Durga is the symbol of truth which annihilates Mahishashura, representative of devil.Including, the all political Parties have to work far to come on the track to save the national traditions and culture. A country's existence and prestige can gradually be eroded by finishing off its faith and belief tradition and culture traditional faith and cultural beliefs. If anyone wants the assurance of integrity and lasting peace in this country, one must not be confused about the country's century's old customs and religion.

Among all religions of the world Hindu religion is considered as the most liberal. According to renowned philosopher Voltaire, Hinduism is the best gift of the East to the West. Similarly, George Bernard Shaw, Irish litterateur also said 'Hindu religion is the most important and the most liberal religions of the world. According to Encyclopaedia of Religions and Ethics, signs of Hindu religion are even found in the present Islamic country like Iran. Stone scriptures of 486 BC found in Iran contain the words Hindu and Hindus. Even an ancient Parsi scripture 'Shatir' has lifted a word of Veda-Vyasa, 'I am a true Hindu-born in a Hindu country'.

Hindus and Buddhists celebrate Dashain as national festival. Buddhist families in Stupas also celebrate Dashain cheerfully. According to them Lord Buddha has said Sanatan Dharma is chief religion. They also believe that there should be no penetration of religion and politics in traditional festivals. Buddhist Chandramukhi Lama says Dhashain is national heritage. Buddhists accept Red (few white) tika on forehead. Whatever colour it is, it is symbol of victory of truth over untruth. Gyanibajra Lama (79 years), Chief of Buaudhha has residence aside of Stupa. He welcomes his guests in Dashain with Tika and Jamara. He says as that of Hindu tradition, they (Buddhists) also celebrate Dhashin with Tika and Jamara. Similarly, Nepalese Muslim community also respect Dashain. Muslim community in Nepalgunj celebrate Dashain taking Red Tika and Yellow Jamara as Prasad of Devi. (Kantipur Daily 3rd Kartik, 2067) This is an example of respect of one religion to another.

Dalai Lama, in an interview to Panchjanya Hindi Weekly (Nov 22, 1992), told that he believes Hinduism and Buddhism as brothers. These two religions follow many similarities like Samadhi, Yoga, Tantra etc which were adopted by Buddhists from Hindus. Similarly Bhutanese King Jigme Singhe Wangchuk spoke on Dashain "I actively participate in Dhashain. Our goddess (Ista-devata) is Mahalaxmi and we worship Shiva and Vishnu." This of King Jigme was published as interview on 'The Times of India' in January 7, 1993. Since the tradition of people to equally participate on worship to Shiva and Buddha, Nepal never encountered conflicts among followers of these two religions. Festivals like Dashain, Tihar, Teej, Buddha Jayanti, Indrajatra etc are life styles of Nepalese people. In this great festival of Dashain countless Hindus, Buddhists and several Muslims demonstrate hearty association to Dashain.

In the name of transforming the country into 'New Nepal' the Maoists including the so-called democrats-Congress and UML are trying to destroy our culture and traditions. A prominent journalist Mr. Pushpa Raj Pradhan wrote- 'The Maoist ministers cut down the budgets of such festivals when they were in regime. The Maoist ministers had shown the same type of reluctance while marking other festivals which has been continued in the Nepali society for 1400 years. During the Indra Jatra festival (2008), the Newar community was agitated when they were faced with the budget cut for marking the festival. The Maoist leaders are seen reluctant in preserving our own identity.' Until, the Maoist leaders are going to undermine the Nepalese culture- Dashain & Tihar. The Maoist leaders and former Prime Minister Prachanda have violated our traditional dress for official functions which demonstrate Nepalese identity.

Dashain (worshipping Goddess Bhagawati for Power) and Tihar (worshipping Goddess Lakshmi for wealth) is a knot of cultural interrelationship among the Nepali people. Nepalese residing outside the nation take the festival as the identity of Gorkhali Nepali people spread across the world regardless of their caste and they exchange greetings and celebrate the festival in perfect cultural harmony. There are many Goddess's Power centre (Saktipith) in Nepal.

The goddess Gorakkali at Gorkha and Manokamana, Tansen Bhagawoti-Palpa, Bageshori at Nepaljung, Saileshori at Doti, Tripurasundari at Dolpa, Pathivara at Taplejung, Singhbahini at Terathum, Dantakali at Dharan, Maisthan at Biratnagar, Shakhadadevi at Rajbiraj, Rajdevi at Dhanusha, Maisthan at Birgung, Gadimai at Bara, Churiyamai and Bhutan Devi at Makawanpur, Kalingchok at Dolakha, Bidyabasini at Pokhara, Chandeshori and Palanchok Bhagawoti at Kavre, In Kathmandu vally- Guheshori, Dakhinkali, Bhadrakali, Naksal Bhagawoti, Kalikasthan, Maitidevi, Shobha Bhagawoti, Sankata, Indraani at Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, Nawadurga at Bhaktapur, Bagalamukhi, Taleju Bhagawoti, Bagrabarahi, Bagrajogini-Shakhun, Naradevi, Raktakali have been worshiping with great devotion. Augratara at Dadeldhura, Malikadebi is famous at Kalikot at Karnali. Similarly, we have thousands temples of Goddess in Nepal which have been devoting by the various castes and tribes in local areas.

In Darjeeling, Sikkim, Duarsh, Asaam and Deharadun and Bhutan Dashain and Tihar is taken as an occasion of Gorkhas unity. Hindus in India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Hongkong, America, Britain, Germany and Australia including other nation (where Nepali and Hindus are living) around the globe celebrate Dashain in their own ways. Dashain is common festival of poor and rich. Tika, a mixture of cord, red vermilion and rice is placed on the temple of the body by seniors with Jamara (nine days old barley seed) as flowers. The ritual starts from Bijaya Dashami and lasts till full moon day with much zeal and merriment. Tika is received from father-mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, teachers and other revered senior members with blessings. Dashain is also important to Indian Hindus celebrate the occasion without receiving Tika.

Since time infinitive, Dashain is celebrated as a widespread festival and as a symbol of power. According to Hindu mythology, an ogre 'Rakshes' (monsters) by the name of Mahisasur had caused pain and suffering amongst humans. Then goddess Durga Bhawani killed the monster to relieve the humans. Dashain is the festival symbolizing victory of truth over evil. The worshipping of the Nawadurga Bhawani during the Nawaratra (nine night of worship) from Ghatastapana is an ancient tradition. It is mentioned in the Devi-Puran-'Ram had proposed of launching war against Rawan in Lanka on the occasion of Bijayadashami in Ashwin Shukla Nawaratri'. Similarly, it is mentioned in the Padma-Puran- 'Rama had killed Rawan on the day of Chaitra Shukla Chaturdashi.'

A cultural scholar Gopal Sengupta writes in Weekly Blitz (Bangaladesh) 'People on Earth were already disturbed with loads of dissatisfactions; and it became worse when Mahishasura came with his evil power. Gods in heaven were assaulted and finally demons seized the deities and took their place. The green demon in the disguise of gigantic buffalo with fierce iron weapons attacked the King of the Lords Indra. The Lord was defeated in almost no time and Mahishasura won the throne of heaven, driving out the gods from heaven. They went to the trinity deities Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar (Lord Shiva) and prayed for themselves and the people on Earth. This invasion of heaven by Mahishasura and his army enraged the Supreme Gods. Flashes flew, thunderbolts tore the skies apart and fires illuminated the three world heaven, the earth, and the nether world with glaring beams of light.

The supreme powers merged together and formed a shape of a young Goddess, who was empowered with eternal power, three eyes and ten hands with a celestial weapon in each, mounted on a lion with awesome power. Her exquisitely beautiful look with glowing face and wide-open eyes added a special glory to her personality. She was the one and only one in the whole universe who could abolish the evil power by killing Mahishasura. She was named Durga the Goddess of war, invincible lord of power and symbol of goodness. Durga means" unattainable" in Sanskrit. She is also known Mahishasura Mardini (killer), because she was the only power to demolish Mahishasura. She is Maha Devi, the Great Goddess, who is treated as the Mother of all mortal beings as well as the divine powers.

Nepali influenced by Christian religion has been creating numerous illusions with an aim to urge people to boycott the great festival. But some Christians celebrate Dadhain as a cultural value without Tika. There have been efforts to pollute the holly festival with the color of the political-party. The leaders of Democratic and communist party in Nepal are not following the norms and values of their respective parties. But they do everything what the South Block, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) advices them. This is the regretful matter for our country. Some people belonging to indigenous groups are competing with each other to show there are better by boycotting Dashain. But indigenous people living abroad are lashing out at the concept.

Prof.Gopinarayan Pradhan of Darjeeling said- 'the attempt to reduce the extensive Nepali identity to class based identity is sad.' Swami Prapnanacharya said- 'Estadev Mahadev, Parwati and Drawasam and Yumasan. Worshipping Nawadurga in Nawaratra is an ancient tradition. To pollute the ancient culture of receiving Tika on the day of Dashami or Bijayadashami at the right time is not wise.

People observe Tika receiving ceremony as an opportunity to resume past broken relations with their relatives and friends. This is a joyous festivity. Those have chosen to boycott the festival have made a mistake. This is their defeat. What can be achieved from loosing the identity? Dashain is an immense opportunity for the relatives living abroad to come together. The poor people, victims of perennial shortages, gather some to wear good clothes eat good food and celebrate the festival with joy. In reality it is not a Dashain religion, it is a traditional cultural belief. It should be kept alive. I extend to everyone the Greetings on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami-2017 (2074Bs).

Email; dirgharajprasai@gmail.com
Education is regarded as the backbone of a country and a person as well. Without Education there is no any existence of human beings. Education must be life living tools of the people, who had the dream to achieve something in their life from the education. For education people have spent their importance period of life in schools and college. But spending our precious period we would not have achieved anything save foreign employment and hardliner in the political parties. In our country education was not for everyone in different regime in ancient time. After getting is value in the world it has become the necessity for the every people. Our government has provided free education to the people of the nation.

In the policy of our nation education is free and most of the budget is spent in education system but according to the result and witness it's become the worthless somehow. Actually spending much more budget in education system is vain. We have to find out the reason, why such type of budget is getting vain year by year which was alienated by the government? In our country there are mainly two types of education system, government and private. In government education, government invests everything physically to logistic support for the concerned people but in private education system government has not supported them. In record 18% of total students are studying in private institutions and rest of students studying in government schools.

Comparing the quality of education and products of schools are private is higher than government schools. And comparing quality of education by the period is very low than the education of past decades. So, what are the reasons to be less quality education system of now a day? It's very clear due to the political fluctuation and unstable political systems are the main problem of education. Is this correct? In many contexts political is the main problem to improve the education system and now it's the hope to be improved in coming days. In some limited period we have been experienced to be ruled by the different political systems and now, we have popular and world experienced political system republican political system.

Education system of our country is not improved from top level, it must be started from the root level. We all are the responsible for this less quality education system of us. We blame to others for every reasons of decreasing quality education. Schools to DEO, DEO to RED, RED to DOE, DOE to MOE and MOE to government, it's the way of blaming to each other till now. Now we have got the local representative by the election who have full-fledged rights and responsibility for education to all sectors. Without improving education system no any things will be improved in our community to nations. It's clear due to the monitoring system of the concerned agencies is the decreasing quality of the education system. DOE and higher concerned representatives rarely monitor the schools and their program; they monitored only the physical construction and other program, where they are highly respected with money and other value. So, we must be improved before improving education system.

Now, it's time to improve our education systems with the full-fledge rights and responsibility of the elected bodies of the local level. In the constitution of Nepal, 2072 has provided all the rights and responsibility to basic education to local level. If the roots of the education are improved all the system will definitely changed and we would not have visited the foreign country for low level labor and commit suicide for not being able to live along with the unemployment. We hope representatives from the elected bodies will be highly concerned to improve the education systems. They won't let us lay down our hope as we hoped.
Guwahati: The sleuths of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (V&AC) of Assam police on Friday had arrested another government official after taken bribe for settlement of a local market in Assam's Darrang district.

According to the reports, Project Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Darrang district rural development agency Bhupesh Chandra Das was caught red handed at his office at Mangaldoi in the lower Assam district by the V&AC.

A top official of V&AC said that, the arrested official had allegedly taken bribe for settlement of a local market under the office.

Meanwhile, the V&AC team had also raided the arrested official's residence.

V&AC had arrested over 50 government officials in graft cases in the state in past a year.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
More in GALLERY: A look at the relationship between the Central Coast and the Snowy Plover (54 of 55)
If it werent for the prompt, efficient work of USA Billboards, a Beatrice mans marriage proposal might have gone a bit smoother.

Even though it didnt go exactly the way Mike Splitter had originally planned, Renee Griffeth still said yes when he popped the question on Thursday in Beatrice.

Griffeth runs the front desk at the Beatrice Public Schools district office and Splitter, whos with the Steamfitters and Plumbers Local Union 464, had decided it was time to ask his girlfriend to marry him. They met on match.com about seven years ago, Griffeth said.

After so many years together, it was time, Splitter said.

He gave it some thought and formulated a plan and rented a billboard that read Renee, will you marry me? Mike.

Well, it's called being lazy, a little bit, Splitter said. I didn't have a better idea. You see Holly Mead's face all over Nebraska and Iowa for the billboards, so I just called her up.

The billboard proposal was supposed to go up on Friday afternoon, right about the time the couple would be heading to the stock car races at the Gage County Fairgrounds.

Splitter had it all worked out: just before R&B Firearms on Highway 136, Splitter planned to stop the car, saying he thought he heard something was wrong with the tire. He had planned to pull over, check the tire and pull out the ring to give to Griffeth while showing her the billboard.

Unfortunately, thats not exactly what happened, Splitter said.

Although the sign was intended to go up on Friday afternoon, it went up on Thursday morning instead. The Beatrice Neighborhood Watch Facebook group was abuzz with people guessing who Renee and Mike were. Thats when Griffeth got a text message.

My stepson actually sent me a message and wanted to know if I had any news to tell him, so I had no idea, she said. After our lengthy texting back and forth, he sent me a picture of it. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh.'

She sent Splitter a text asking if it was him, but didnt hear back for three and a half hours. When he did respond, he texted, How about that, a day early."

When they both got home that night, Splitter got down on one knee to ask Griffeth to marry him, and she said "yes."

This wont be the couples first time getting married, but it will be the first time its not as a prank, Splitter said.

On Nov. 11, 2011often written as 11-11-11the two were in Las Vegas. They knew that many couples had decided to marry on that specific date, so they thought theyd have a little fun on Facebook.

Before we left, I had a ring from when I'd been married before and I had another ring. So, we put those rings on, Splitter said. She'd just gotten flowers from somebody at work, so we took pictures of our hands in front of these flowers.

At 11:11 on 11-11-11, they posted the pictures on Facebook and told everyone theyd secretly gotten married in Las Vegas. About five minutes later, Splitter said, they regretted the decision and took it down after their friends and family started believing it was true.

This time, they said, its for real and they are both very excited.

We might just do it on 11-11 of this year, Splitter said. It'd just be six years later. We'll be out in Vegas again.

Shes wearing the ringthe real thing this timeand, she said, they had to have a serious conversation on Thursday night.

Last night when we went to bed, I said, No more of this boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, you're now my fiance, she said. And he laughed and said, 'Yes I am.'
As Jose Coronado Playground continues to see improvements in signage, landscaping, and playground equipment, it's still being met with issues regarding the sex workers and pimps who often work in the area.

SF Fix-It, a team dedicated to improving recreation areas and other spaces in San Francisco, held a meeting where residents could voice their concerns over the presence of sex workers near the Mission playground.

According to a report from Mission Local, Police Captain Bill Griffin was in attendance, and admitted that the solution to this particular issue isn't quite so straightfoward. "Its not quite as easy for us - its hit and miss, he said. We come out, we do enforcement actions, and the next day were right back to where we were before. So thats a little more complex."

Joyce Ferman, who lives in the neighborhood, suggested, "If we had someone foot patrolling Shotwell street between 22nd and 17th - thats where all the evil stuff is going on." Griffin replied, commenting on how his roster is already stretched thin. He said, "There are a lot of people who want foot beats. I dont have a limitless number of officers. Still, many neighbors persisted in asking for more patrols, possibly even bike patrols. Griffin asked, "Whats the solution? Is it parking cops down here in the middle of night? Is that what I need to do?" To which everyone replied, "Yes."

The SF Fix-It team has been working on improving the residential areas around the city for quite some time now. As the Chron shared back in March, the Fix-It team's director, Sandra Zuniga, reports directly to Mayor Ed Lee. "She will have my authority, as mayor, to coordinate all of the different departments," said Lee during a press conference announcing the establishment of the team.

Mission Local also reported on another meeting they had earlier this year in June, held at the Mission Pool and Playground. Neighbors and people local to the area attended that meeting where they also voiced their concern over feeling powerless in the face of the crime that runs rampant throughout the Mission. "During the day, we have a beautiful neighborhood, said one attendee. At night, we dont have control of our neighborhood."

The Jose Coronado playground stands as a testament to the SF Fix-It team's ability to beautify spaces, but without the help of the SFPD or any other authorities, they're kind of unable to deal with a lot of the crime that still happens in the immediate area.

They do have help beyond the SFPD, though. Specifically, they have the ear of District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who sent an aide, Carolina Morales, to attend the meeting. Morales shared plans for a "sex work intervention team," as Mission Local puts it, who would roam the area in a van offering outreach to sex workers who might be in the area between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. They also said that the van would specifically search for possible human trafficking victims, especially minors.

Still, that team has yet to materialize, and police still haven't managed to curb the residents' growing worry.

Related: Sex Workers Bring Petition To Governor Brown To Decriminalize Prostitution
After admitting that Facebook may have played a role in allowing Russian interests to influence the 2016 election, the social media company has begun to lay out its plans for how to stop that from happening in the future.

TechCrunch broke down CEO Mark Zuckerberg's nine-point plan, which was revealed in a live broadcast over Facebook.

For starters, they're working with federal investigators, sharing the information they have on the 3,000 or so ads that were affiliated with Russian sources. That being said, Wired points out that they've yet to agree to a meeting with Congress in an open hearing, like Twitter has.

Business Insider says that Facebook made about $100,000 by selling that ad space, but beyond that, they're mum on exactly how the ads circulated and what they actually said. That's probably just how it's going to be for the time being, as Zuckerberg pointed out. In his livestream, he said the company will "support Congress in deciding how to best use this information to inform the public, and we expect the government to publish its findings when their investigation is complete."

Thing is, it was more than ads that possibly helped swing the election. As The Daily Beast reported, Russian propagandists used the platform to promote in-person rallies and flash mobs to support Trump's election. One such group, the so-called "troll factory" known as the Internet Research Agency, operates out of St. Petersberg. They ran a Facebook group called Being Patriotic, which was shut down shortly after Facebook announced that they were deleting accounts belonging to people who may have abused the platform to influence the election.

Zuckerberg goes on to say that the company would also continue their own investigation into the matter, to gain a better understanding of what happened, which would help them fight it in the future. They're also looking into increasing transparency when it comes to political ads (ensuring that you know not only where it's coming from and who paid for it, but who also else might be seeing the ad); allowing for more stringent review of the ads by hired Facebook employees; hiring 250 of said employees; working with political commissions; and working with other tech companies to combat this rising tide of intimidation.

To that point, Zuck also said that they're going to "create more services to protect our community while engaging in political discourse," essentially moving to protect people who are often shouted down or harassed as a result of voicing their political opinions.

This more or less goes hand in hand with another recent controversy where advertisers were allowed to target people searching for "Jew haters" and other hateful demographics. According to New York Magazine, COO Sheryl Sandberg said, "... these terms were used so infrequently, we did not discover this until ProPublica brought it to our attention. We never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way  and that is on us. And we did not find it ourselves  and that is also on us."

To test their changes, Facebook will be keeping a close eye on the upcoming German elections. They've apparently already suspended multiple fake accounts, but "have not yet found a similar type of effort in Germany."

What's painfully clear is that Facebook has an incredible amount of work ahead of them. That's such a far cry from their earlier statements late last year, where Zuck argued that Facebook had no role in influencing or tampering with the election, calling such allegations "pretty crazy." He walked those comments back shortly after, and promised that they'd look into it.

This nine-point plan that he spoke about today seems to be the result of that nearly full year of research. Here's hoping that it's enough.

Previously: Mueller Forces Facebook To Cough Up More Details On Russian Meddling
A rare look into who this man is: Photos give clues to Kate Steinle murder defendants life on SF streets #steinle https://t.co/rNV25rLCuo  Kevin Fagan (@KevinChron) September 22, 2017

Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate, the man accused in the July 2015 killing of Kate Steinle on Pier 14, was living a pretty solitary life on the streets in the couple of months before the shooting, shortly after getting released from the county jail in what has become a rallying case for the right wing around sanctuary cities. We still know hardly anything about the man, jailed ever since and about to stand trial for Steinle's murder, apart from the fact that he was homeless at the time, had drug charges on his record, and there were some suggestions in the media early on that he may have mental health issues.

The Chronicle got access to a group of black-and-white photos by hobbyist photographer Jay A. Martin, who happened to take a few portraits of Garcia-Zarate in May 2015, as he was walking along the Embarcadero one morning.

Says Martin to the Chron, "It was a beautiful day, a little bit breezy... and, as I was walking along the pier, I saw a man with a blanket around his shoulders. He seemed somewhat lost. The idea of income inequality was rising in the media, and I thought I could show that with a picture of a guy who clearly seemed to have nothing in such a wealthy city.

The photographs show Garcia-Zarate on Pier 14, exactly where he'd be the day of Steinle's shooting almost two months later, with the Bay Bridge at his back. As the Chronicle notes, "the waterfront is popular with homeless people who want to hide out of sight."

Martin, who gave Garcia-Zarate some loose change before he left, also adds, "He said he was doing OK. Its hard to remember the tone of his voice, but it was soft, coherent, and he could understand me in English. There was nothing about him that said I needed to back off."

Garcia-Zarate gave him the name "Lopez," as he would to police after his arrest in July, because he was living under one of several pseudonyms he used having been deported back to Mexico five times: Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. We just learned via a court filing that Garcia-Zarate is his real name.

We still don't have any reports from friends or family about this man, two years on, and it will be interesting to hear how defense attorney Matt Gonzalez tells his client's story in court.

Gonzalez told the Chronicle that he plans to use Martin's photos during his opening statements to the jury, to "bolster the argument that Zarate is a victim of poverty and luckless circumstance rather than a dangerous killer."

During a preliminary hearing earlier this month, Gonzalez argued that Garcia-Zarate was not properly Mirandized by the SFPD and an interpreter when he gave his first statements, and thus those statements may end up being inadmissible.

Prosecutors say that Garcia-Zarate either intentionally shot at Steinle, or recklessly shot into a crowd after he found a gun that had previously been stolen and discarded. The defense intends to argue that the gun went off accidentally due to a hair trigger, and that the bullet that hit Steinle had ricocheted off another surface.

Previously: As Jury Selection Is About To Begin In Kate Steinle Murder Trial, Suspect Changes His Name


Accordingly, the company will sell these tickets at the cost for passengers who travel from October 1 to December 27 in all routes. The ticket selling system will select lucky passengers randomly. Cheap tickets will be sold through the website: www.dsvn.vn



In addition to cheap ticket, the company will discount 30 percent compared to summer tickets as well as reduce price for social welfare beneficiaries. Moreover, the company will give discounted tickets to passengers who buy tickets many days before departing day, or tickets for group of travelers.





By BICH QUYEN - Translated by UYEN PHUONG
LOS ANGELES -- As the final season of Bates Motel wound down, Freddie Highmore packed up his Vancouver home, gave away his blender and figured hed be just another actor looking for work.

Instead, it was literally three days after I had been killed off on Bates Motel that I got the script for The Good Doctor, he says. You dont imagine you could be as lucky to finish a great show and three days later theres another script thats equally as brilliant.

In the new ABC drama, Highmore plays a young surgeon with autism and savant syndrome. Hes met with skepticism, but presses on, determined to prove hes as worthy to be at St. Bonaventure as any other physician.

Based on a Korean series, The Good Doctor was adapted by David Shore, the creator of House. While both shows are set in hospitals, the characters couldnt be more different, Shore says. And yet theyre asking many of the same questions. Dr. House was asking from a cynical and challenging point of view. Dr. Murphy (Highmores character) is asking from an innocent point of view.

To capture the characters essence, Highmore did plenty of research, talked with friends and realized, its just being truthful to the character and not worrying about how hes perceived. If it feels genuine and right inside, thats the way to go.

While Murphy has a distinct speech pattern, its not based on any specific observation. It needs to feel organic. It needs to feel real, the 25-year-old Brit says. You do your research and you see this character forming in front of you.

During Bates Motel, Highmore spoke with an American accent even when he wasnt on set. Hes doing that with Good Doctor, too. Its weird now speaking with my British accent, he says with a smile. I probably go overboard when I do.

Also filmed in Vancouver, The Good Doctor will include crew members who worked on Bates Motel, which makes it feel like home, Highmore says.

To help convey what goes through Dr. Shaun Murphys mind, producers are using visuals that connect the dots. In terms of the medical jargon, I get off a little bit more lightly than other (actors), Highmore says. Well all have to look at things in a potentially more visual way.

The series, executive producer Daniel Dae Kim says, could help viewers understand autism a bit more. We havent seen an autistic character on a network broadcast show as the lead. And autism affects one in 68 Americans. To be able to start this dialogue is really important.

Highmore says Shores writing is able to delve into deeper issues without being melodramatic.

Theres a subtleness to it, a lightness. Its never sort of forced and over the top.

Subtlety, the Finding Neverland star says, is key to good acting. I feel like subtlety is the order of the day. The camera has a unique ability to kind of see inside people in a way that we dont when were communicating.

While some think those with autism dont express emotion, Highmore has learned otherwise.

Thats complete nonsense, he says. Whist we wont negate or seek to sort of move away from the very real struggles that he will experience by dint of his condition, there will be moments of joy. Thats what attracted me to the pilot. You understand what makes him tick.and you will understand him as a fully formed individual.

The Good Doctor premieres Monday on ABC.
The Iowa State Patrol said Mark Wolterman, of Danbury, Iowa, was westbound in a semi on L32 and stated that his brakes were not working when approaching E34 going down a hill. He attempted to turn north onto E34 and rolled on the driver's side of the cab.
Kim Reynolds political foes believe the condition of the state budget makes her vulnerable in 2018.

That much was clear this past week when the many candidates running for governor raised a ruckus over the revelation that the state will have to spend another $13 million from its emergency reserves to balance its budget year that ended June 30.

Reynolds was promoted to governor in May when former Gov. Terry Branstad resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China. Reynolds, who had been Branstads lieutenant since 2011, plans to run for election in 2018.

She is being challenged by seven Democrats and even a couple of Republicans, and many of them used this weeks budget news to make a case against Reynolds.

Republican Ron Corbett, the mayor of Cedar Rapids; Nate Boulton, a Democratic state senator; and Cathy Glasson, a nurse, labor leader and Democratic candidate all appeared at the state Capitol in Des Moines on Wednesday after Reynolds budget director briefed reporters on the budget situation.

It was the third time legislators or the governor had to add money to cover a budget shortage; the grand total rose to more than $260 million.

Had that final shortage been more than $50 million, the governor would have been required by law to call a special legislative session. Its likely Democrats would have used that opportunity to draw attention to the state budget issues and criticize Reynolds for her role.

Even without the special session, her political opponents pounced, even though Reynolds was lieutenant governor when the budget was approved in 2016, and Democrats and Republicans at that point shared control of the Iowa Legislature.

Boulton and Glasson brought their messages to the Capitol. Other candidates issued news releases.

The state Democratic Party didn't miss the opportunity, either.

She cant hide from the impact of the Reynolds budget crisis. Iowa families already feel the pain from her mismanagement. Iowans will remember Reynolds cowardice and refusal to do her job in 2018, Troy Price, state Democratic Party chairman, said in a statement.

And it wasnt just the Democrats.

It looked like a lot of smoke and mirrors as theyre trying to cover themselves from too much spending, the Republican Corbett said.

The past years state budget ran into trouble when tax revenue fell short of expectations. Each year, spending is based on estimated income as determined by a nonpartisan panel. This past year, the panel overestimated revenue, so the state planned to spend more money than ultimately came in.

The budget was approved in 2016 by Branstad, Democrats in control of the Iowa Senate and Republicans in control of the Iowa House.

And yet, because there is an election next year, many people this week sought to lay blame for the budget ailments at the feet of Reynolds.

Clearly those candidates believe the state budget can be an issue on which Reynolds candidacy in 2018 can be challenged. Expect that political debate to continue.

Poll disputes King's tweet

When news broke that President Donald Trump was negotiating with Congressional Democrats to codify protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, western Iowa Congressman Steve King said via social media that he thinks such a deal would disenfranchise Trumps most ardent supporters.

King tweeted that if the report was accurate, he thinks the Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.

A new poll published this week suggests otherwise.

A majority of Republican voters support Trumps negotiation with Democrats on immigration, according to a Monmouth University Poll published by Americas Voice Education Fund, an advocacy group for immigration reform.

According to the poll, 55 percent of Republican voters would be satisfied if Trump softened his stance on immigration --- 14 percent very satisfied and 41 percent somewhat --- while 39 percent would be dissatisfied.

Overall, 65 percent of Americans would be satisfied if Trump softened his stance on immigration, while 29 percent would be dissatisfied, the poll found.
Troy Hubschmitt, product manager at SpecOps Group, Inc., with a FINDER radar unit in Mexico City. An emergency responder in Mexico City carries an orange case holding a radar instrument called FINDER. This technology can detect the heartbeats of earthquake survivors buried under rubble. It was developed in a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, then licensed to private companies like SpecOps Group, Inc. Image Credit: SpecOps Group, Inc SpecOps Group, Inc

Disaster relief workers on the ground in Mexico City were responding to this weeks 7.1-magnitude earthquake by using a suitcase-sized radar instrument capable of detecting human heartbeats under rubble.

This technology was developed by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and the Department of Homeland Securitys Science and Technology Directorate in Washington. FINDER, which stands for Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, was developed as a collaboration between the two agencies.

Since 2015, two private companies have acquired licenses for the technology. They have since taken it to disaster zones, training relief workers to use it and manufacturing new units.

Our hearts go out to the people of Mexico, said Neil Chamberlain, task manager for FINDER at JPL. Were glad to know our technology is being used to make a difference there.

As of Thursday, Sept. 21, one of the licensees, a company called SpecOps Group Inc., was in Mexico City and actively searching for survivors. President and CEO Adrian Garulay said members of the company were escorted to the disaster site and connected with rescue workers.

Troy Hubschmitt, product manager at SpecOps Group, Inc., with a FINDER radar unit in Mexico City. SpecOps is one of two private companies that have licensed the technology for use at disaster sites. It was developed in a collaboration between NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Department of Homeland Securitys Science and Technology Directorate. Image Credit: SpecOps Group, Inc

A second company, R4 Incorporated, sold FINDER units to the fire department of Quito, Ecuador, after responding to an earthquake there last year. David Lewis, president and CEO of R4, said the Quito fire department had dispatched its units to Mexico City to aid in the search for victims.

Lewis was in Puerto Rico earlier this week using FINDER to search for survivors of Hurricane Maria. Hurricanes are a relatively new use case for the technology. While radar cant search through water, its useful for detecting heartbeats through rooftops. People trapped in flooded buildings often run to the upper floors. He said they didnt find anyone in the day or so that they used FINDER.

This is one of those instances when we have developed a technology we hope will never be needed, said DHS Under Secretary (acting) for Science and Technology William N. Bryan. But its good to know its out there when we unfortunately have to use it.

FINDER sends a low-powered microwave signal  about one-thousandth of a cell phones output  through rubble. It looks for changes in the reflections of those signals coming back from tiny motions caused by victims breathing and heartbeats. In tests, FINDER has detected heartbeats through 30 feet of rubble or 20 feet of solid concrete. The technology evolved from JPLs efforts to develop low-cost, small spacecraft radios, using signal processing developed to measure small changes in spacecraft motion.

Both companies work with the direction of local governments when they travel to disaster sites. FINDER is used alongside a variety of other techniques, including trained dogs, acoustic sensing devices and thermal imagers. All these techniques are usually deployed together.

When FINDER was deployed to Nepal after a major earthquake in 2015, it helped find four men trapped under a collapsed textile factory. Lewis said its hard to confirm exactly how many lives the technology has saved in total, since he doesnt have data from relief teams that have purchased their own units, and its often used in conjunction with other methods.

Related post story from 2015

Using Space Radar To Hear Human Heartbeats in Nepal, SpaceRef

On 24 April 2015 a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal  a nation woefully unprepared to respond to such an event. Nearly 300 aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or greater have rattled the country for the past month. One especially large aftershock of magnitude 7.4 on 12 May caused the already-shattered infrastructure to collapse further. Nepal needed help  help that did not rely upon a non-functional infrastructure. Much of the help was traditional. But some of that help arrived in the form of assets in space and space-derived assets on the ground. One piece of NASA-developed hardware utilized in Nepal was able to detect human heartbeat amidst huge piles of rubble. And it saved lives. Other machines orbited overhead in space analyzing the earthquake itself and how Nepal changed as a result. Both technologies shared similar technology.
A track record-setting performance by Atlanta in her division of the New York Sires Stakes during Fridays card at Vernon Downs also proved to be a very special victory for driver Mark MacDonald.

The Canadian-born reinsman racked up the 6,000th victory of his career  a feat that puts him in with some elite company.

Fury Road (Chris Lems) led the two-year-old trotting fillies to the first quarter in :28.3, but Atlanta quickly claimed the top spot. The daughter of Chapter Seven-Hemi Blue Chip was joined by the first-over by Supergirl Riley (Marcus Miller) just before the three-quarter marker, and those two fillies would then have an epic battle all the way down the stretch.

Atlanta ($7.50) dug down deep to hold off the heavy pressure from Supergirl Riley en route to setting the track record of 1:54. It was the fifth career win for the filly. Supergirl Riley had to settle for second with Perfect Summer K (jimmy Whittemore) getting third.

MacDonald, a native of PEI, would later on add win 6,001 with Padua Hanover ($3.60).

Atlanta, who hangs her harness bag in the barn of trainer Rick Zeron, is owned by Rick Zeron Stables, Holland Racing Stable, Howard Taylor and Brad Grant.

The $56,500 second division went to Plunge Blue Chip in 1:55. The daughter of Muscle Mass-Dunk The Donato watched Big Checkmate (Donald Dupont) grab the early lead, but Plunge Blue Chip quickly swiped away the lead from that foe. Aka Svanstedt proceeded to chop out splits of :58 and 1:27.2 with his charge before using a :27.3 kicker to win over Lima Novelty and Big Checkmate.

Owned by Blue Chip Bloodstock Inc, the Ake Svanstedt trained paid $2.10 to her backers for the win.

Chris Lems would win four on the night. He got victories with Give Angel Credit ($7.50), Sweet Thing ($2.10), Dreams Beach Boy ($3.30) and In The Clear ($5.10).

Vernon Downs returns to live action on Saturday with a 13-race card starting at 6:45 p.m.

(With files from Vernon Downs)
In this week's edition of Rewind, Robert Smith recalls the visit of one of the sport's most famous horses to a small town track in Southwestern Ontario. Dresden Raceway was fortunate to have the great Rambling Willie as an honoured guest.



The Dresden program announces the visit of Rambling Willie (Courtesy of Tiffin Family) The Dresden program announces the visit of Rambling Willie (Courtesy of Tiffin Family)

On Friday September 7, 1979 just over 38 years ago, Dresden Raceway welcomed an extremely special guest to their evening of racing. RAMBLING WILLIE, the richest North American harness horse in the world made a guest appearance at this well-known track often referred to as Ontario's Little Saratoga. For those in attendance it was a night to remember.

The then nine-year-old gelding sired by the rather obscure Rambling Fury out of the Meadow Gold mare Meadow Belle was not there to race; he was just in for a short visit. He just happened to be in the general area of the Province for a check-up and some minor "repair" work at the clinic of the fabled veterinarian Dr. Lloyd McKibbin of Wheatley, Ont. Thanks to the generosity of the horse's regular driver Bob Farrington and his wife Vivian and co-owner Paul Seibert all of Ohio, the visit was made possible. With Dr. McKibbin working out the arrangements with Dresden's General Manager Robert Pearson and Race Secretary Reg Gordon, the evening was a giant success. A lot of people got to meet a horse they might not have otherwise had a chance to see.





Rambling Willie appears trackside at Dresden along with a number of local personalities. Dr. McKibbin is in silks, Reg Gordon is to his right just behind Willie and second from the far right is Jean Lekavy, Publicity Mgr. for Dresden. If anyone can identify others in the photo please do so. (Courtesy of Dresden Raceway) Rambling Willie appears trackside at Dresden along with a number of local personalities. Dr. McKibbin is in silks, Reg Gordon is to his right just behind Willie and second from the far right is Jean Lekavy, Publicity Mgr. for Dresden. If anyone can identify others in the photo please do so. (Courtesy of Dresden Raceway)

A list of harness racing's greatest performers of the past 40 years or so would surely contain a lot of interesting names. I would guess that if the list contained ten or less names that one horse would have to appear on every one of them regardless of the criteria. By now it might be easy to guess that this "unanimous" choice would be Rambling Willie. His lifetime achievements, his uncanny ability to overcome adversity and the colour he brought to the sport is undoubtedly without parallel.

When "Willie" visited Dresden his career was far from over despite the many setbacks he had already endured. His lifetime earnings were to the tune of $1,562,807 which was the most ever won by a North American harness horse. He was the eighth harness horse to crack the million dollar barrier; the fourth pacer to do so. His records went far beyond his money won. His superb record of more two-minute victories than any other horse in history stood at 58 including all eleven victories so far that year.

His records went on as he was then listed as the world champion gelding on both mile and five-eighths mile tracks. Of his 58 two-minute triumphs 28 were in 1:58 or better; 12 in 1:57 or better and five in 1:56 or less. Keep in mind that 40 years ago horses were not going nearly as fast as they do now.

Most of us have heard about Willie's contributions to his owner's church in Ohio. Half owner Vivian Farrington pledged 10 percent of the horse's earnings to her father's church. At this point in time it meant that over $63,000 had been "dropped" in the weekly collection plate. All of this money was put to good use as it financed a new roof, put in new foundations, paid for an extensive remodel including new carpeting and a new baptistery and also paved the parking lot complete with a new billboard.

Just prior to his Dresden visit trainer Bob Farrington said "Willie can't rough it out like he used to, I'll have to protect him. He's definitely the best horse that's ever looked through a bridle, certainly the best thing that's ever happened in my life. I'll race him until he shows that he can't compete with the best. He's better off racing than fighting flies in a paddock somewhere."

Willie continued to race for another three seasons following this and his time was not wasted. Despite his many woes, he trudged on and added a lot more dollars to his own bank account and therefore continued to help out his Church members as well. In 1983, at the age of 13, the old warrior was retired from the racing world and took up residence at the Kentucky Horse Park where he lived out his days passing away at the ripe old age of 25.

Willie was unraced at two and as a three-year-old was sold to Bob Farrington for $15,000, which he admitted at the time was probably at least $5,000 more than the horse was worth. He did feel that he could recoup the difference racing him in cheap claiming events. He gave a half interest to his wife Vivian and sold the other half to a patron of his stable, Paul Seibert.

History was to prove Farrington correct; he did get his $5,000 "overpayment" back and perhaps with a bit of interest. When Willie finally hung them up in 1983 he had won a total of 128 races and his earnings total was $2,038,219. He appeared as a guest on the Merv Griffin Show and has had a book written about his amazing lifetime "The Horse That God Loved." In very recent times his story has been the inspiration behind an ongoing foundation to raise money for benevolent purposes.

A small caption on the back page of the Dresden program the following appeared. "Tonight he visits Dresden Raceway, not to compete but to be paraded so we can all say we've seen the richest, winningest harness horse ever.....RAMBLING WILLIE!"

Thanks to many including Dr. McKibbin who probably started the idea as well as the management of Dresden Raceway for providing this unique event.



Willie is shown towing a single shaft sulky at Chicago's Washington Park in the early part of his career with Jim Curran in the driver's seat. Willie is shown towing a single shaft sulky at Chicago's Washington Park in the early part of his career with Jim Curran in the driver's seat.

Who is This?

Can you identify this young fellow? The correct answer will appear during the coming week.
The first of five racing dates for the $1.35 million (est.) 2017 Massachusetts Sire Stakes (MASS) program is Monday (Sept. 25) and $221,766 in purses will be up for grabs between the age, gait and gender divisions at Plainridge Park.

There are a total of nine stake races Monday, four of which are non-betting and the action begins at 1:00 p.m.

Horses that have already competed in breeding programs in New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio and Ontario will now be eligible to the lucrative Massachusetts program as a result of the resident broodmare registration that gives the breeder the flexibility to select any top stallion in any state and bring the mare to Massachusetts to foal. The foal is then eligible to the Massachusetts Sire Stakes program as well as the state program where the stallion is standing.

All four 2016 MASS two-year-old champions are back at three to try and repeat their success at three and all four look to be favoured in their respective competitions.

Here is a preview of the top horse(s) in each division.

Three-year-old trotting colts and geldings

Muscles Jared (Muscle Massive-Tetiana) was the two-year-old MASS champion and this year has competed heavily on the Grand Circuit as well as in the Pennsylvania Sire Stakes (PASS). He has finished second in his last four starts including the $252,000 PASS final behind Dover Dan in 1:53.3. Muscles Jared took a lifetime mark of 1:54 at Vernon Downs in June and now has $297,721 in lifetime earnings.

Trainer George Ducharme has Chris Lems up to drive Muscles Jared who leaves from post two in the second non-betting race. (PT-1:15 p.m.)

Three-year-old pacing colts and geldings

Lindy The Kid (Artistic Fella-Lindys Bandita) took sophomore honours in the division last year and has been lightly-raced coming into this start. After competing in Ontario at the beginning of summer, he was given a break in July and brought back with a sharp 1:55.3 qualifier that he followed up with a 10-1/2 length, 1:54 victory in an overnight event. If he minds his manners he will give his competition all they can handle.

Greg Merton will pick up the lines for trainer Frank Antonacci as Lindy The Kid leaves from post two in the third non-betting race. (PT-1:30 p.m.)

Three-year-old trotting fillies

Onangelwings (Archangel-Anotherpennyplease) was an undefeated champion in MASS action in 2016 but has made only one start this year back in June. Most recently the filly has qualified twice at Vernon Downs in preparation for this series; the last time finishing second to the second leading money-earning three-year-old trotting filly in North America, Barn Bella.

George Ducharme and Chris Lems once again team up as Onangelwings starts from post five in the first non-betting event. (PT-1 p.m.)

Three-year-old pacing fillies

Spoxys Girl (Neutralize-Royal Ribbons) was never off the board in MASS action last year and has come back in 2017 in fine form as she has been racing in the Maine Sire Stakes (MESS) with much success. With two wins, four seconds and two thirds in the series she currently sits fourth in points there. She comes into this race winning two out of her last three starts and has the most money earned this year in the race.

Trainer Mike Graffam has Nick Graffam in the bike behind Spoxys Girl who has been made the morning line 3-2 favourite from post three in the fifth race on the regular card. (PT-3:50 p.m.)

Delaware Heat (Western Ideal-Shady Sabrina) is the fourth returning champion from last year and this will be her first start back at Plainridge since she won the final last October. After racing at Harrington Raceway over the summer, Delaware Heat moved to Maine and put in two solid overnight efforts at Scarborough Downs and the Farmington Fair where she won easily in 1:59 by open lengths.

Trainer Kevin Switzer has assigned Shawn Gray to drive and they are the 9-5 choice from post four.

Two-year-old trotting colts and geldings

Kinda Lucky Lindy (Lucky Chucky-Kinda Crazy Lindy) has been tested hard this year racing in the New York Sire Stakes (NYSS) and then two major stakes at Mohawk Raceway. He finished second in the $75,104 Champlain Stake before qualifying for the $328,000 final of the William Wellwood where he drew post seven and chased a runaway winner in 1:52.4. He certainly comes into this race tight as a drum and ready to roll.

Frank Antonacci has Greg Merton up for the first time behind Kinda Lucky Lindy who leaves from post six at 3-5 in the fourth race on the regular card (PT-3:30 p.m.).

Two-year-old pacing colts and geldings (This group goes in two divisions)

Twelve (Shady Character-Sabine Hanover) is the most seasoned entry in this division having competed in the MESS. There, he is the fifth highest point-getter and is nine out of 10 in the money with $23,597 on his card. He comes into this event fresh off a lifetime best win of 1:57.4, wire to wire.

Eddie Davis Jr. both trains and drives Twelve who is 7-5 from post three in race one on the regular card (PT-2:30 p.m.).

Master Of Love (Vintage Master-Denverlove) won an Ontario Sires Stake at Mohawk on Monday (July 10) in 1:55.3 after trailing ninth by 14 lengths at the quarter. He was then off for two months before qualifying at Vernon Downs where he suffered broken equipment.

Ducharme/Lems send out Master Of Love from post five at 3-5 in race three of the regular card (PT-3:10 p.m.).

Two-year-old trotting fillies

Ithinkthatsmine (RC Royalty-Super Starlet) had some early success in the NYSS finishing second, third and fifth in three starts. But the filly was rested in July and has just qualified back last week at Vernon Downs where she won handily in 2:02.

Steve Smith drives from post two for George Ducharme in the fourth non-betting race (PT-1:45 p.m.).

Two-year-old pacing fillies

Rock Me Threetimes (Rock N Roll Heaven-Love Rocks) finished third in her first lifetime start at Harrington Raceway the first week of September before shipping to Maine to win an overnight event at Farmington in 2:01.1 last week.

Shawn Gray drives for Kevin Switzer from post five and is listed at 1-1 in the second race on the regular card (PT-2:50 p.m.).

A chief rival will be Delco Dusty (Jeremes Jet-Gypsys Good Girl) who just finished third from post eight in an overnight at Saratoga Raceway in 1:55.2. She is winless in nine starts but has also drawn poorly all year.

Delco Dusty is 2-1 from post three and trainer Heidi Rohr has Greg Merton up to drive.

Here is the complete schedule of dates for the Massachusetts Sire Stakes:

September 25 - Two & Three-Year-Olds, First Leg; $25,000 added

October 2 - Two & Three-Year-Olds, Second Leg; $25,000 added

October 23 - Two-Year-Olds, Third Leg; $25,000 added

October 30 - Three-Year-Olds, Third Leg; $25,000 added

November 6 - Two & Three-Year-Old Finals; $85,000 est.

(with files from the Standardbred Owners of Massachusetts)
Students Meet Around Flagpoles to Pray

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 22, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- All across the world, millions of students will gather at their schools' flagpoles on Wednesday, September 27, to pray for their schools, friends, families, churches, communities and nation at the annual See You at the Pole (SYATP) event. SYATP is a day students are committed to global unity in Christ and interceding for their generation. The theme this year is "Fix Our Eyes" taken from "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus" in Hebrews 12:2.

For over 25 years, SYATP has been about one simple act -- prayer. A small group of teenagers began what has become an international movement of prayer among young people. Now each year, more than three million students participate in more than 20 countries.

The Global Week of Student Prayer, this Sunday, September 24 through next Saturday, September 30, is also dedicated to prayer and encourages students to find new and unique ways, places, and times to pray throughout the week. Whether they attend public school, private school or home school, many students will initiate prayer opportunities and launch on-campus Bible clubs, prayer strategies and student ministries.

The First Amendment guarantees students the right to pray individually or in groups on school grounds during any non-instructional time. All students may express their opinions verbally or in writing before or after school, in between classes, during the lunch hour or on the playing field, according to the federal guidelines on prayer in public schools found on Liberty Counsel's website.

"Liberty Counsel supports all students who exercise their constitutional right to pray during the annual See You at the Pole event, the Global Week of Student Prayer and throughout the school year," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. "These Christian young people are leading the way and providing an incredible example that all people should follow," said Staver.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
A federal judge has awarded both sides some victories in a lawsuit in which a former Woodland woman alleges an abuse of police power against the Woodland Police Department and two officers.

But in a ruling handed down last month, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton had some stern things to say about now-retired Woodland officer Brad Gillaspie.

Leighton wrote that there is strong evidence indicating Gillaspie stalked and threatened Jody Petersen, caused her to lose her job, spread lies about her parenting ability, interfered with her child custody proceedings, interfered with her attempt to divorce her husband and tarnished her reputation in the community.

By stalking Petersens home, threatening her, belatedly initiating an investigation that resulted in her losing her job ... and tarnishing her reputation in the community, Gillaspie egregiously influenced and interfered with Petersens divorce and child custody proceedings. A reasonable jury could find he was motivated by malice and a perverse sense of friendship, not by some ethical sense of duty, Leighton wrote.

Gillaspie, officer Brent Murray and the city of Woodland had asked Leighton to dismiss Petersens suit, filed Sept. 25, 2016, in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. Leighton tossed out the cases against the city and Murray, saying there was no evidence that they had engaged in or encouraged any systematic or unfair treatment or violation of Petersens rights. But the judge sustained Petersens complaints against Gillaspie, meaning they will now go to trial or lead to a negotiated settlement.

A trial is scheduled for April 16.

The case originates from a marital dispute between Petersen and her now ex-husband, Steve Petersen. On Sept. 14, 2014, after hearing her son report that her husband had been making out with another woman in their kitchen, Petersen called and yelled at him and threw his clothing on their lawn. Steve Petersen told Gillaspie, his friend, but did not seek charges or an investigation. At the time, the Petersens were still living together in their Woodland home even though they were getting divorced.

According to Leightons findings of fact, a long series of events then unfolded:

When Petersen filed for a protective order the next day, she returned home to find Gillaspie and Steve in the driveway. Steve left, but then Gillaspie told Petersen, You need to work this s- out, Jody. I know all the judges. You will lose everything. Your house. Your kids. Stop being so vindictive and make this s- work.

Petersen said Gillaspie began stalking her, and his patrol vehicles GPS coordinates confirmed he lingered for hours outside her home. He did so often enough that neighbors complained.

On Oct. 7, 2014, Jody Petersen reported a theft at her house to Woodland PD, claiming her estranged husband had entered in violation of a protection order and took her lawnmower and computer and had rearranged pictures on her walls.

In October 2014  a month after the clothing incident  Gillaspie decided that incident and Petersens phone threats to her husband were cases of domestic violence requiring reporting to his commanding officer. He also called Petersens chief at the North Plains, Ore., police department, where she was an officer. The chief testified that Gillaspie asked him to advise Jody Petersen not to do something to screw herself and knock the crap off and to jerk her chain.

The North Plains police chief called Bill Mahoney, a former Cowlitz County sheriff who was acting Woodland police chief. Mahoney asked officer Murray to investigate, and after doing so Murray recommended that Petersen be charged with malicious mischief, third-degree domestic violence and telephone harassment. The city prosecutor declined to file charges, but he spoke to The Oregonian newspaper, which did a story about the case. Petersen was not disciplined by her chief, but she claimed her reputation had been tarnished, and both sides agreed she should resign.

At some point, Gillaspie and Murray testified on Steve Petersens behalf during child custody hearings. Gillaspie told the hearings personnel that Jody Petersen was psychotic and had lied her ass off and had no business being a cop with that level of dishonesty. Its unclear what Murray said.

Petersens suit alleges that Gillaspie and Murray violated her constitutional right to associate and petition the government for a redress of grievances by interfering with her job, divorce and child custody proceedings. She also claimed a violation of her 14th Amendment right to equal protection by conducting an investigation only into her and failing to investigate her then-husband for violating a protection order (they considered it a civil matter). And she argued that their investigation was motivated to discredit her and punish her for filing for divorce. The city, she said, knew of and allowed Gillaspies abuses of power.

Gillaspie and Murray argued they did not violate her rights and, if they did so, they are immune. Gillaspie also argued he was a mandatory reporter under the police departments domestic violence policy.

In rejecting Gillaspies attempt to dismiss the case, Leighton wrote that a reasonable jury could find that Gillaspie repeatedly and intentionally interfered with Petersens fundamental, constitutional right to disassociate from (her husband) by giving misleading statements (at the custody hearing), threatening Petersen, stalking her and making unannounced visits to her home.

Gillaspie actions shock the conscience, Leighton wrote, citing a legal standard for holding officers legally accountable.

Murray said he did not violate Petersens right because he was ordered to investigate her and did so according to department policy. Leighton found that there is no evidence suggesting Mahoneys decision to have Murray investigated was inappropriate. Accordingly, he dismissed both Murray and the city from the case.

However, the city and its insurer likely still will be on the hook if Petersen prevails at trial or if the two parties come to a settlement.

Gillaspie retired from Woodland PD on June 30. Petersen is working as a nurse in Western Washington, according to her lawyer Sean Riddell.

Woodland Mayor Will Finn could not be reached for comment. City officials have previously declined comment on the case.
Longview police arrested a local man Thursday after he crashed his car into a light pole and reportedly was found to have drugs in his possession.

Police received a report about an erratic driver on Ocean Beach Highway early Thursday evening. According to police, Ryan Evan Voos, 25, of Longview was driving a Honda passenger and nearly collided with another vehicle before veering off the roadway and crashing into a light pole.

When first responders arrived at the accident scene, Longview police said they found meth, heroin and prescription pills in the vehicle.

Voos was arrested on suspicion of reckless driving and felony drug violations, and was taken to the Cowlitz County Jail.
Editors note: Todays editorial originally appeared in The Olympian. Editorial content from other publications is provided to give readers a sampling of regional and national opinion and does not necessarily reflect positions endorsed by the Editorial Board of The Daily News.

Convicting a voter of ballot fraud is not the easiest thing. But several of Washingtons county prosecutors may get a shot at it.

Secretary of State Kim Wymans office recently turned over 74 cases of suspected voter fraud to local auditors who can investigate further and refer the cases for prosecution. Most cases dealt with double-voting  either in more than one county or in more than one state.

Wyman said her agency became aware of the possible fraud as a result of a pilot study in Washington and four other states after the November 2016 election. The project, initiated more than a year ago, relied on help from the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit organization that helped states check voter registrations across jurisdictions.

Three of the suspect votes were cast in Thurston County and two in Pierce County, but most occurred in the most populous county, King.

Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall said her office is working with the county prosecutor on what steps to take. Though she thinks a formal investigation is likely to be launched, Hall said one of the voters two ballots might never have been counted.

Past efforts to prosecute voting fraud have not gone far in this state. Wymans office counted just 11 cases of voter registration or voter fraud that made it to state courts in the past decade.

In Thurston County, Prosecuting Attorney Jon Tunheim could not recall his agency ever prosecuting a voting fraud case. Under state law, attempting to vote twice or intentionally voting more than once is a class C felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

This year, more attention is on alleged illegal votes, especially after President Trumps false claim that 3-5 million illegal votes were cast.

Wyman, a Republican, has said Trumps claim of widespread fraud or voting by illegal immigrants is bogus. In a press release, Wyman said the five-state analysis that brought these cases to light in Washington and the other states are evidence that voter fraud is not widespread here.

Washington had the most cases identified in the five states, but Wymans office says the total represented just 0.002 percent of the 3.36 million ballots cast statewide here in the presidential election. None dealt with illegal immigrants voting, which Trump claimed was rampant.

The post-mortem on Washingtons voting was a very good idea. We applaud Washingtons participation and hope ERIC can repeat its project to help even more states tighten up voter rolls.

Meantime, county auditors should look carefully and make referrals for prosecution where appropriate.
We recently had Longview City Manager Dave Campbell, City Engineer Craig Bozarth and Engineer Ivona Kininmonth in to discuss and clarify issues concerning the Washington Way Bridge project.

Our editorial about the bridge, and its problems, had some bite to it. Maybe a bit too much bite for some. The Viewpoint page is about creating discussions around important issues, which it obviously did.

Bozarth wanted to clarify a mistake in our bridge editorial, which was published Wednesday, Sept. 13. We wrote in our editorial that the pitch on the sidewalks was 2 percent more than allowed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, when in fact, the pitch allowed is a maximum 2 percent total slope.

The city engineers, led by Bozarth, worked with consultants to develop a bridge plan in compliance with the ADA standards. According to the city, all applicable laws were followed in the plans before construction began on the bridge.

The city hired a consulting firm to regularly inspect the bridge to ensure it was built according to specifications. The consultant was the person who discovered the concrete forms for the sidewalk were set up with the incorrect slope. The contractor fixed the forms, and the forms were checked one last time. However, after the concrete was poured, the slope was not checked until a later date.

When the concrete sidewalk was inspected, it had a slope less than 2 percent in some areas and up to 2.9 percent in other areas, which is not ADA compliant.

According to the city, other municipalities face the same issue complying with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

Major projects like this bridge sometimes take much longer than we, the public, realize. When a project is complete enough to allow use by the general public, it is called substantially complete.

When the city held the ribbon cutting ceremony in December 2015, despite what many of us thought, construction on the bridge was not complete  it was substantially complete.

What we didnt know at the time was that the city had a long punch list of items that still needed to be completed before they could sign off on the bridge.

We hope city staff learned that our readers, and taxpayers, want to have faith in our government to know they are spending taxpayer money wisely.

Additionally, we encouraged City Manager Dave Campbell to write guest editorials to let you, our readers, know what is going on. We want to know about both the good and the bad, and wed like to hear it in their own words.

Bozarth pointed out something in our discussion that shouldnt be lost. The city found funding for, and built, a beautiful Washington Way bridge that will last for decades.

Well said.

State process lacks accountability

Editors note: Todays guest editorial was written by Will Finn, mayor of Woodland and a Washington State Patrol trooper. Editorial content from other individuals and publications is provided to give readers a sampling of regional and national opinion and does not necessarily reflect positions endorsed by the Editorial Board of The Daily News.

I have many thoughts on the ruling that has come down concerning the Kalama Methanol plant. Regardless if you agree with the project, the organization used the process presented to them by our great state. When that process is used as a tool to stop economic growth, that is sinister!

NW Innovation Works is attempting to grow their business, that is obvious. What is also obvious, this facility will bring family wage jobs and economic stability, not only to Kalama, but the entire region. This company is doing everything in their power to satisfy the needs of many regulators, advocacy groups, and surrounding communities. I believe the larger picture is being missed by many.

Some are probably cheering for this decision, but the majority should be angered, regardless of an opinion for or against the project. Government is once again attempting to change the rules halfway through the process. Rules and guidelines that are set forth to help businesses, small and large, navigate the red tape that has been installed. Many elected, myself included, run on the promise to create change, growth, and sustainable futures. How is stopping this project fall inline with that statement?

I fear the next move for the City of Woodland looks just as bleak. As our City attempts to create sustainability through development, who will step up to stop it? What state agency will bend the rules in favor of the State of Seattle? Who is next after NW Innovation Works? The City of Woodland, The Port of Longview, or the small business owner attempting to open a second location?

Rules and procedures are put in place to allow reasonable development to occur. When the process is used correctly, it works! Compromise is reached. When projects are met with opposition at a higher level, look out, big brother is grabbing all the toys and leaving the sandbox. I am outraged by the lack of accountability of state agencies when changing the rules during the process. A process they insist we all use!
WASHINGTON  Does anybody listen to women when they speak around here?

There were 11 people seated around the table in the White House Blue Room, debating the future of the Dreamers over honey sesame crispy beef, when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi tried to make her point  only to find the men talking over her.

The interjection, first reported by The Washington Posts Ashley Parker and confirmed by Pelosis office, did the trick: There was, at last, silence, and she was not interrupted again.

There are so many things to say about this moment  even more in the week that saw publication of Hillary Clintons account of the 2016 campaign, What Happened. Because while what happened will remain the subject of fierce debate, it is also important to consider the implications of what didnt happen  the election of the first woman president.

Imagine the alternative reality of President Hillary Clintons White House, and her dinner with congressional leaders. By definition, Pelosi wouldnt have been the only woman in the room. By dint of her authority, no one would have been talking over the president.

Ironically, Clinton writes about a moment that is the mirror image of Pelosis interjection, when she chose to stand down rather than speak up. During the second presidential debate, as Donald Trump stalked her on the stage, literally breathing down my neck, Clinton writes, she faced a choice. Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he werent repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, Back up, you creep, get away from me.

Where Pelosi chose to call out what she interpreted as sexist dismissal, Clinton calculated that confronting Trump, gratifying as that might have been, was too risky. A lot of people, she notes, recoil from an angry woman, or even just a direct one.

Did Trump behave boorishly on the debate stage because of Clintons gender, or would he have loomed similarly behind a male opponent? Did the guys in the Blue Room feel entitled, consciously or subconsciously, to talk over Pelosi because she is a woman? Its impossible to know, yet many, if not most, women have had that unnerving sense that they are being diminished, that their points are being discounted, and that their gender plays some role. Pelosi made the smart move for her in that moment  she doesnt need to be Miss Congeniality. But Clintons was probably the more familiar choice: Dont stir things up. Dont be a you-know-what.

As much as women seized on Trumps nasty woman put-down and transformed it into a slogan of empowerment, the uncomfortable truth remains that navigating any environment  whether a political campaign or corporate workplace  requires women to hunt for the elusive spot between too pushy and not assertive enough.

Clinton addresses that reality, and the accompanying challenge for women to be accepted as leaders. I suspect that for many of us  more than we might think  it feels somehow off to picture a woman president sitting in the Oval Office or the Situation Room, she writes.

If that assessment is slightly overstated  notwithstanding any such discomfort, Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes  still, here we are, in the Blue Room with Pelosi and the guys. Did that, to use Clintons term, feel somehow off to Pelosi  or, I suspect, entirely familiar, like so many high-powered meetings she had been at before? And if Clinton 2016 put even more cracks in the glass ceiling, we also must weigh the problematic implications of Trumps testosterone-heavy administration.

How can it be, in 2017, that only four of twenty-four Cabinet members are women, half the number of the first Obama Cabinet? How can it be, in 2017, that of Trumps 42 nominees for U.S. attorney positions, only one is female? (Of President Obamas first 42 choices for U.S. attorney, 12 were female.)

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the implications of that statistic. I think that the president has certainly surrounded himself with a lot of strong women in various positions, including myself in a pretty high position, she told reporters, also citing White House aides Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks.

OK, just asking: Where were those strong women the other night, when all the presidents men felt so free to talk over the woman who had been speaker?
About me I'm Avi Green

From Jerusalem, Israel

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best. My profile

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Kurds press historic independence vote despite regional fears

Kurds celebrate to show their support for the upcoming independence referendum in Erbil on Friday.

Reuters, Erbil :

Iraqi Kurds are expected to vote for independence in a referendum on Monday that neighboring countries and Western powers fear could break up the country and stir broader regional ethnic and sectarian conflict.

Kurdish flags - a red, white and green tricolor emblazoned with a golden sun - adorn cars and buildings across the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, and billboards announce: "The time is now - say 'yes' to a free Kurdistan!"

Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region since 2005, has resisted calls by the United Nations, the United States and Britain to delay the referendum. Neighboring Turkey is holding army exercises on the Iraqi border to underline its concerns that the referendum could fuel separatism among its own Kurds.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on live television on Friday the vote posed a threat to Turkey's national security and that Ankara would "do what is necessary" to protect itself. He did not elaborate.

But Hoshyar Zebari, a senior advisor to Barzani, struck a defiant tone, telling Reuters: "This is the last five meters of the final sprint and we will be standing our ground."

Many Kurds see the vote, though non-binding, as a historic opportunity to achieve self-determination a century after Britain and France divided the Middle East under the Sykes-Picot agreement. That arrangement left 30 million Kurds scattered over Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Zebari said delaying the vote for negotiations with Baghdad without also securing guarantees that it could then be held on a binding basis would amount to "political suicide for the Kurdish leadership and the Kurdish dream of independence.

The referendum raises most risk of ethnic conflict in the oil city of Kirkuk, which lies outside the recognized boundaries of the Kurdish region and is claimed by Baghdad. Its population includes Arabs and Turkmen but it is dominated by Kurds.

Turkey has long claimed a special responsibility in protecting ethnic Turkmen. Some of Iraq's Turkmen are Shi'ite and affiliated to political parties close to Iran.

"We expect those who are against the referendum to cause trouble but we are determined not to engage in any kind of violence, we don't want to give them any excuse to intervene or to question the validity of the vote," Zebari said. Tensions between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad hinge on oil revenue the Kurds see as the mainstay of a future Kurdish state. The Kurds have long accused Baghdad of withholding budget payments to the region, while Baghdad has opposed oil deals made by the Kurds without its consent. A regional conflict could threaten oil supply from Kurdish and northern Iraqi fields to world markets, carried through a pipeline to Turkey.

Already at least one Kurd has been killed in pre-referendum clashes in Kirkuk, and security checkpoints have been erected across the city to prevent further violence.

The Baghdad government, Iraq's neighbors and Western powers fear the vote could break up a country that has seen devastating sectarian and ethnic conflict since a 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
Back when the Rev. Stacey Siebrasse was a student at the University of Montana in Missoula, she found meaning through an on-campus ministry.

I am who I am today because of that period of my life, said Siebrasse, pastor at First English Lutheran Church in Billings. When I was going through an existential crisis that students do, and when I had doubts about faith and spirituality, I needed a group that was safe, where I could ask big questions.

Now she gets to return the favor as the new interim part-time campus pastor at Montana State University Billings. Siebrasse, who will also go part-time this fall at First English Lutheran, will focus her efforts on continuing the United Campus Ministry at MSUB that has been part of the college for 50 years.

UCM will hold a golden anniversary fundraising dinner Oct. 6. It will take place in the Great Room at City College at MSUB.

The evening will feature two speakers, the Rev. Jessica Crist, bishop of the Montana Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Rev. Karen Oliveto, bishop of the Mountain Sky area of the United Methodist Church. Both will talk about The Golden Rule, said longtime board member Shari Dayton.

And well have students who were founding members of the ministry when it first started, said Dayton, who joined Siebrasse for an interview Tuesday.

Ecumenical from the start, the ministry originally called the United Christian Campus Ministry began in 1967. Since then, 10 ordained ministers have served as campus pastor, some full time, some part time, as funding allowed, with Siebrasse now the 11th.

The ministry represents seven mainline denominations, Dayton said. They include the UMC, the ELCA, Presbyterian USA, Disciples of Christ, United Church of Christ, American Baptist USA and Episcopal Church, representing 23 churches in the area.

Over the years, with mainline churches losing membership, Dayton said, the automatic funding has decreased. So the ministry board has stepped up, organizing fundraisers like this years dinner to keep it going.

Dayton equates the work of the UCM to what churches do when they baptize infants.

When babies are baptized, we as a congregation have to agree that we will shepherd them through adulthood, she said.

Once students graduate from high school, I feel like theres this huge gap through the college years, and its so important that the youth we nurture dont have a missing link.

Thats why we have wanted to maintain our presence on this campus, and we feel very lucky to be able to do so, Dayton said.

Siebrasse sees her work at MSUB as a time to help students connect with each other, and to find support from a church family. First English Lutheran is only a few blocks from the college.

Its been this great experiment so far, not only being able to connect my folks from First English to campus, which has always been a dream of ours, but also for me to connect with UCM, to be part of this great ministry on campus, she said. Getting to know the students has been revitalizing for me.

With the start of the fall semester, Siebrasse has just started organizing the student gatherings. UCM partners on campus with the Office of International Studies, and she has already gotten to know some of the international students during a 10-mile hike outside of Red Lodge.

Then weve started an international coffee house that happens every Thursday, to provide coffee and snacks and be a support for the international students, she said.

This past week, the ministry planned to hold its first mid-week meal, with the traditional students who live in the dorms. The plan was to meet at the Rimrock Hall lounge and walk over to First English, since theres no place on campus to cook a meal.

We offer that to students who are coming together to converse and check in with each other, and foster that community that I think a lot of students are looking for, Siebrasse said.

A coffee hour for commuter students is scheduled on campus for Wednesdays at noon. It includes coffee, tea and snacks.

Nontraditional students face a different set of challenges when it comes to finding community on campus, she said. We want to make sure they have a support network as well.

Students, who can get stressed out by the academic load they carry, need to make sure they find a balance between academics, their physical health and their spiritual selves, Siebrasse said.

We want to create that space for students, she said.

The UCMs mission statement says the ministrys purpose is to provide a dynamic understanding of the Christian faith as it is embedded in campus life and as it reaches out to the broader community and the world.

Core values include celebrating both diversity and unity, Siebrasse said.

I emphasize were a Christian organization, but we want to make sure were promoting the message that all are welcome, she said. And any sort of spirituality you want to talk about, Im open to listening and being there.
Russia urges calm as US, North Korea tempers flare

Russia\'s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivers remarks at a news conference at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Friday.

Reuters, United Nations :

Russia urged "hot heads" to calm down on Friday as the United States admitted it felt "challenged" by North Korea's warning that it could test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific and President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un traded more insults.Trump called the North Korean leader a "madman" on Friday, a day after Kim dubbed him a "mentally deranged U.S. dotard" who would face the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history" in retaliation for Trump saying the U.S. would "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the U.S. or its allies.

"We have to calm down the hot heads," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters at the United Nations, where world leaders gathered this week for the annual U.N. General Assembly. "We continue to strive for the reasonable and not the emotional approach...of the kindergarten fight between children."

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed hope in an interview with ABC that sanctions and "voices from every corner of the world" could lead North Korea back to talks, but admitted intensifying rhetoric had left Washington "quite challenged."

North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, warned on Thursday that Kim could consider a hydrogen bomb test of an unprecedented scale over the Pacific. Ri, who is due to speak to the United Nations on Saturday, added that he did not know Kim's exact thoughts.

In response, Tillerson said U.S. diplomatic efforts would continue but all military options were still on the table.

North Korea's six nuclear tests to date have all been underground, and experts say an atmospheric test, which would be the first since one by China in 1980, would be proof of the success of its weapons program.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington was taking Kim's threat seriously and added that any atmospheric test would be a "game-changer."

But he said there were questions about North Korea's technical capabilities and Washington did not give "too much credence" to Pyongyang taking such action. "There's a certain amount of bluster that's taken for granted when you're dealing with North Korea," the official told Reuters.

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3 and has launched dozens of missiles this year as it accelerates a program aimed at enabling it to target the United States with a nuclear-tipped missile.

Lavrov on Friday again pushed a proposal by Moscow and Beijing for a dual suspension of North Korean weapons tests and the U.S.-South Korean military drills to kick-start talks. Lavrov suggested that a neutral European country could mediate.

He described the exchange of insults between the U.S. and North Korean leaders was "quite bad, unacceptable."
Air career and aviation study

Joanna Hughes :

Have you always dreamed about a career in the air? Are you interested in aviation maintenance, aviation management, air traffic control, or an alternate aviation-related profession? If so, you're far from alone. In fact, aviation degrees are popular all over the world, and with good reason: Experts in this fast-paced and challenging field are both in-demand and hard to come by -- meaning opportunities are many and salaries are high. But which countries excel when it comes to studying aviation? Let's count down nine top destinations with schools featuring strong aviation programs.

1. The United Kingdom

Home to the Royal Air Force (RAF), the world's oldest independent air force which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2018, the UK has a rich aviation history. It's no surprise that the UK is also home to some of the world's best aviation schools, including:

CAE Oxford Aviation Academy

A winning combination of ground school coursework and high-quality flying instruction make this premier ab initio flight training network a world-class aviation school. In addition to its Oxford campus, other locations include Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Brussels, Belgium; Gondia, India; Melbourne, Australia; Perth Australia; Phoenix, USA; Rae Bareli, India; and Singapore. Just how massive is this network? It's the world's largest -- with a fleet of more than 170 aircraft and the capacity to train as many as 2,000 cadets annually.

Newcastle College

Newcastle College offers not one but two aviation courses of study, including the BSc (Hons) in Aircraft Engineering and the BA (Hons) in Airline and Airport Management.

The former is a three-year program designed to produce aircraft engineering grads with the knowledge and skills to succeed in aircraft maintenance, and covers all requirements detailed in the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) category B1.1 aircraft maintenance engineering license syllabus.

The latter aims to build on foundational knowledge in order to cultivate airline and airport industry managers. Upon completing this course of study, grads are positioned for trainee management and managerial positions both in the UK and internationally as well as for graduate-level coursework.

2. Greece

People flock to Greece for its phenomenal weather, but for aviation enthusiasts, the country's fair climate has an additional benefit: plenty of opportunities for flying time. Greece is also known for its exceptional pilot training, aircraft maintenance and aircraft sales training programs, including the following two schools:

Global Aviation

Founded by a collective of aviation experts nearly 20 years ago, Global Aviation is home to Global Flight Academy, Greece's oldest pilot training program. Students can also participate in cabin crew, maintenance and aircraft sales training with practical training available onsite at prime locations, including the Athens International Airport.

Skies Aviation Academy

With the mission of educating Europe's best future pilots as well as qualified professionals across the entire aviation spectrum, Skies Aviation Academy offers flight instructional and theoretical training courses suitable for those just starting out in their flight careers as well as for seasoned pilots looking to enhance their qualifications. Other factors contributing to this school's appeal? Its prime location within 10 miles of Greece's second-biggest airport, Thessaloniki International Airport, and more than 330 days of VFR (Visual Flight Rules) flying conditions!

Olympus Aviation Academy

Olympus Aviation Academy is founded and operated by veteran air force and civil aviation Flight Instructors, following the highest of European Civila Aviation Authority/EASA standards. The school offers From 0 to Airline pilot (0-ATPL in 12 mo. plus MCC, JOC, Type Rating), experienced staff, and high quality training with flying 365 days. Olympus operates in 2nd biggest airport in Greece LGTS with heavy traffic, international hour building, and advance e-distance learning.

3. The Philippines

If you're searching for world-class facilities and the training necessary to excel in the dynamic aviation industry, look no further than the Philippines and Skyworld Aviation Group and All Asia Aviation Academy.. A vast fleet of aircraft and diverse international clientele mean students graduate with the comprehensive experience they need to reach their goals. Other benefits of choosing the Skyworld Aviation Group? A convincingly high first-time pass rate between 90 and 100 percent; light traffic density meaning plenty of training hours; and an exceptional aviation climate ensuring interruption-free flying.

4. Spain

Not only is Spain's FLYBYSCHOOL conveniently located in Leon, Spain on an ILS Category 1 airport with its own ground school training facilities and access to three simulators with another forthcoming, but it's also conveniently located via high-speed train and direct flights to other major European hubs, including Paris, London, Barcelona and Madrid. Looking for an inside edge on the job market, meanwhile? Grads of FLYBYSCHOOL's Integrated APL program gain access to its extensive network of industry contacts.

5. The Netherlands

A 22-month comprehensive training program; desirable blend of theoretical and practical training, and cadet scheme in partnership with AIS Airlines are just a few of the reasons why AIS Flight Academy is a smart choice for would-be pilots. An added bonus? While only Dutch and Belgian nationals are eligible for funding, AIS Flight Academy does offer free visa support for international students.

6. Kenya

The Kenya School of Flying is conveniently located at Nairobi's Wilson Airport with additional flight bases at Malindi, Orly Airpark, and Ukunda airstrip. Personal training on both simulators and aircraft ensure that students graduate with the skills they need to fly for any airline. This professional flying school also has the distinction of being the continent's first aviation school to acquire the Redbird FMX, a state-of-the-art, twin-engine, full motion and full vision simulator.

7. USA

The US is the birthplace of aviation, and the country's strong tradition of aeronautical dominance continues thanks to schools like:

Epic Flight Academy. Ideally located in sunny Florida at KEVB -- New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport, the school offers multiple flight training options in alignment with the globe's most prominent Civil Aviation Authorities, as well as tracks for both degree and nondegree students from around the world. Not sure which path is best for you? The school's trained Admissions Team is an invaluable resource for making the most of your education.

San Diego Flight Training International (SDFTI): Located on the picturesque coast of Southern California at (MYF) -- Montgomery Field Airport, the climate, terrain and complex airspace create a spectacular training environment. In a single flight you can go from 100 kilometers of ocean-front beaches to inland valleys to mile-high mountain peaks. The school offers multiple flight training options with a fleet of 14 aircraft and an FAA approved state-of-the-art professional simulator. SDFTI welcomes international students from all over the world and is authorized by the US government to issue I-20's which allows students to obtain M-1 visa status. The school's professional support staff is there to guide each student's specific needs to ensure success.

8. The Maldives

Located at the southernmost atoll in the Maldives archipelago, the Asian Academy of Aeronautics offers a truly unique setting and forward-facing approach for aviation studies. Students choose from programs including the Flight Instructor Course (FIC), Private Pilot's License (PPL), Commercial Pilot License, and Multi-Engine Rating 9MER - A) -- all aimed at imbuing them with the skills they need to reach their flight training goals.

9. Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's only flying school which offers approved multi-engine rating training, the Asian Aviation Centre (formerly CDE Aviation) is situated at the largest hangar at the Ratmalana Airport just inside the city of Colombo. What makes this program so unique? A complementary Engineering Academy and domestic scheduled airline supplement its Flying Training arm, adding up to unparalleled options for aviation learning. There's a reason why so many of the school's graduates are currently employed throughout the world, including in the UK, USA, Middle East, Australia, and the Maldives.

These and many other aviation schools all over the globe offer the opportunity to pursue flight training and other studies in the field of aviation in the destination of your choosing.

(Joanna worked in higher education administration for many years at a leading research institution before becoming a full-time freelance writer. She lives in the beautiful White Mountains region of New Hampshire with her family).


Languages after Brexit

Alyssa Walker :

In the aftermath of Brexit, the British Council recently warned young people that they need to learn languages other than English for the UK to compete globally.

The numbers of applications for degrees for European languages have fallen by nearly 25 percent in the past five years. While it sounds dismal, there's hope.

The silver lining? A rise in the numbers of students learning Spanish and other modern languages.

In an article in the Independent, Vicky Gough, schools adviser at the British Council said, "As the UK comes to reposition itself on the world stage, language skills matter now more than ever. And with the country already facing a languages shortfall, we must do everything we can to encourage more people to acquire these vital skills.

She added, "The reality is that speaking another language not only boosts job prospects but also enables you to connect with another culture."

Gough said that she was worried that the numbers of students studying French and German were declining, but was relieved that Spanish had seen an uptick.

She also noted that Mandarin Chinese, the most widely spoken language in the world, has seen an increase in the number of students learning it.

In addition to French, German, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese, the UK hopes to see more students study other languages, such as Arabic and Italian.

(Alyssa Walker is a freelance writer, educator, and nonprofit consultant. She lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with her family).
Cutting individual medical cost to 30pc for attaining SDGs in health emphasized



Individual health cost must come down to 30 per cent from the existing 67 per cent to attain the health related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

"It is essential to raise government allocation on health sector to reduce the out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure to 30 per cent from 67 per cent to attain sustainable progress towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and health- related SGD," Director General (additional secretary) of the Health Economics Unit M Ashadul Islam told BSS.

The government bears only 23 per cent of the country's total health expenditures while 3 percent comes from voluntary payment schemes and 7 per cent from foreign donor agencies," he added.

"The government allocation in health sector is increasing gradually every year, but it is not sufficient and finally the people have to spend a major portion of the health expenditure from their own pockets," Islam said.

According to Bangladesh National Health Accounts (BNHA) 1997-20015, the government's sharing on the total health expenditure (THE) kept on declining as the medical costs including medicines and hospital services become costlier.

"To minimize the gap between the public expenditure and the OOP, the government has embarked on the largest health sector program worth Taka 1,15,486 core for the fourth Health, Nutrition and Population (HNP) Sector Program-2017-2021 with a financial lay out 126 per cent higher than the third one," Additional Secretary (development) of Health Services Division Harun-ur-Rashid Khan told BSS.

"It is encouraging that 84 per cent of the money for this program would come from the government's own budget," he added.

Khan said the cost could be controlled after the implementation of 'Health Financing Strategy' which would introduce a prepayment and protection scheme for controlling catastrophic health expenditures.

According to the BNHA, 70 percent of the health expenditure is spent on drugs, health care services and curative health care while just 10 percent accounts for preventive care. Only 2 percent of the government's health spending goes to education and training of medical personnel.

The BNHA identified a number of reasons for the rise in the out-of-pocket health expenditures. Changes in disease pattern, expensive and long treatments, and medicines getting costlier are among those.


Make community a role model for sustainable development

Nik Sekhran :

The United Nations, governments, civil society, business, thought leaders and media will gather in New York on September 17 to celebrate the winners of the Equator Prize 2017. The 15 prize winning communities successfully advance innovative solutions for poverty, environment, and climate challenges.

The Equator Prize 2017 winners will join a prestigious group of 208 previous Equator Prize winners that have been recognized by the UNDP Equator Initiative partnership since its inception in 2002. Together, these prize winners tell a compelling story about the power of local action. This year, among the winners is the Federacion de Tribus Indigenas Pech de Honduras, a cooperative that sells an essential ingredient in the international fragrance and flavor industry.

Across the Atlantic, the Mali Elephant Project works in a region torn asunder by violent extremism to protect the endangered African elephant and advance local development priorities. Moving further east, in Indonesia, Raja Ampat Homestay Association has created an innovative, community-run web platform for ecotourism, garnering over 600 new jobs for the community and catalyzing the creation of 84 community businesses, all while conserving fragile marine ecosystems.

The stories of these groups are not simply colorful reminders that people can live in harmony with nature. They illustrate how community action is essential to achieve sustainable development.

In 2015, the world agreed to an ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From ending extreme poverty and hunger, to ensuring resilient communities, to ensuring water security, to sustaining life on land and life below water, this agenda defines the world we want in 2030. Achieving these goals will require a significant departure from business as usual. Take the environment as an example - on our current trajectory, we will lose 68% of biodiversity by 2020. We are losing a rhino every eight hours, and an elephant every 15 minutes. Losing biodiversity also hurts the economy - we have lost US$20 trillion dollars in economic value since 1970 due to the degradation of ecosystems and the disappearance of biodiversity.

Further challenges arise from the trends we will face over the next 13 years, as we look towards 2030. With 1.3 billion more people on the planet, demand for food will increase by 35%, for water by 40%, and for energy by 50%.

We are approaching, and may have already surpassed, the planetary boundaries that define the thresholds of sustainability. We must learn to stay within these limits, to address the coming challenges, and to not only stem the loss of biodiversity but to transform nature to become an engine of sustainable development. The village of Bang La sustainably manages a 192-hectare forest that has shielded the community from devastating disasters and improved livelihoods through increased fish catch. Credit: Community Mangrove Forest Conservation of Bang La We at UNDP believe that no one actor - not governments, not companies, not cities and not NGOs - can achieve the SDGs alone. We also believe that local action will be an essential component to achieve the goals. Local communities and indigenous peoples face the very real consequences of biodiversity loss and climate change daily - consequences which can mean life or death for their families, communities, and ways of life.

The Equator Prize teaches us that these same communities excel in developing innovative tactics that deliver high-impact, scalable solutions to address these challenges and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Our awardees demonstrate that successful approaches combine multiple sustainable development benefits. Each Equator Prize 2017 winner's actions address at least five SDGs in a holistic way. In Kenya, for example, Mikoko Pamoja is the first community-based initiative of its kind to sell carbon credits generated through the protection of mangrove forests. The community reinvests income from these credits into clean water and education, providing a virtuous cycle of development dividends that deliver on SDG1 (no poverty), 4 (quality education) and 6 (clean water and sanitation), in addition to SDG13 (climate action), SDG14 (life under water), and SDG15 (life on land). In Indonesia, Raja Ampat Homestay Association's web portal for community homestays provides a scalable avenue for local development and ocean conservation. Credit: Raja Ampat Homestay Association

Equator Prize winning communities also show that investing in nature is an effective and efficient pathway to sustainable development. Because its mangroves were intact, the village of Bang La in Thailand was largely spared the devastating force of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The community formed an association - the Mangrove Forest Conservation Group of Bang La Community - to legally protect their mangroves for future generations, at a fraction of what the cost of rebuilding a devastated community would be.

The success of their struggle shows us how the commitment and perseverance of a small group of individuals can change the world for the better. Just like these suffragists, the Equator Prize 2017 winners provide powerful stories of hope amidst chaos, showing us that local action can create powerful impacts for people, planet, and prosperity.

(Nik Sekhran is Director of Sustainable Development, UN Development Programme (UNDP).


India to supply Myanmar arms!

INDIA has shunned its reputation of being democratic, generous and hospitable country. They have decided to strengthen their security along the largely porous eastern border with Bangladesh and is using "chilli and stun grenades" to block the entry of Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in their homeland of Myanmar. Border forces in Hindu-majority India, which wants to deport around 40,000 Rohingyas already living in the country, citing security risks. The BSF men have been authorised to use "rude and crude" methods to stop any infiltration attempts.







Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu ultra-nationalist government is growing increasingly hostile towards the helpless Rohingyas in India, with Home Minister Rajnath Singh calling on Thursday for their deportation as illegal migrants. Seeking to get legal clearance for the deportation plan, the Home Ministry told the Supreme Court this week it would confidentially provide it with intelligence information showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants.







Most of the peace-loving refugees had no link to criminal activity, two Rohingya men protesting against the deportation move told India's top court on Friday. An official of India's federal investigations agency said it was seeking help from Muslim religious leaders to step up surveillance against the Rohingyas. India's stance with Myanmar is quite shocking, after the International Permanent Peoples' Tribunal declared Myanmar government guilty of genocide against the Rohingya people and other Muslim minorities. On record, India is one of the signatories of the UNHCR Convention which does not permit to push back refugee people victims of social disturbance and military escalation. Unfortunately, the Rohingya Muslims are victims of both aggressions.





India is even considering supplying arms to Myanmar government, two sides also talked about training Myanmar sailors on top of the courses taught to its army officers at elite Indian defense institutions. Surprisingly, a fresh violence occurred again in Rakhine State on Friday, where twenty homes were set on fire and a bomb was detonated near a mosque.







Mentionable, Britain has suspended its training program for the Myanmar military, demanding it take steps to end the violence against civilians.





Indian government led by Modi openly showing their aggressive intent towards Muslims, which no other Indian government had done before. If they are scared of the creation of Islamic terrorist group using Rohingyas, then they should show documents and must not act on mere guess estimates.







Rohingyas are stateless people; all they want is their legal citizenship right. We cannot understand why it is so difficult to ask the racist Myanmar government to give the Rohingyas their legal rights? India, who claims to be a big democracy, should use its good office to mend Myanmar to accept the bare birth rights of the minority Rohingyas and allow them to enjoy all rights as a citizen there.






11 held for 'funding militancy'

Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested eleven people from cityas different areas on Friday for providing financial assistance to militancy.

Staff Reporter :

Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in separate drives arrested 11 persons for their alleged involvement in funding militancy from Dhaka, Khulna and Rajshahi on Friday night.

The arrested men are: Toly Nath, 40, Md Faysal alias Tuhin, 37, Amzad Hossain, 34, Moin Khan, 33, Md Nahid 30, Md Jahed Ullah, 29, Md Helal Uddin, 29, Helal Uddin, 29, Al Amin, 23, Al Mamun, 20, and Al Amin, 23.

On intelligence report, Wahmi Technologies, an IT firm based in Mirpur of Dhaka, has link with the terror financing, a team of RAB-4 carried out synchronised drives in Dhaka,

Khulna and Rajshahi on Friday night. Eight out of the 11 were arrested in Dhaka, two from Khulna and another form Rajshahi area, Mufti Mahmud Khan, legal and media wing director of Rab, said at a press briefing today.

Of them, seven earlier worked for iBacs Ltd, a software company established in 2005, which has been banned in Bangladesh and the UK in 2015 after its chairman Saiful Haque Sujon was killed in Syria on December 10 same year.

The company, which had its headquarters in the UK, opened branches in eight other countries.

According to Rab, iBacks Ltd in 2015 had sent around $50000 to Gulshan Cafe attack chief coordinator Tamim Chowdhury in Bangladesh. But the crime busters seized the money before it reached to Tamim.

In Spain, RAB established communication with their Spanish counterparts and shared information about Ataul, a Bangladesh national, who the elite force claimed used to finance in militancy.
Wozniacki smashes Muguruza to reach Tokyo final

AFP, Tokyo :



Defending champion Caroline Wozniacki pulverised world number one Garbine Muguruza 6-2, 6-0 on Saturday to reach her fourth Pan Pacific Open final.

The Danish former number one will face Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova as she chases a third Tokyo title after the Russian toppled Angelique Kerber 6-0, 6-7, 6-4 in a see-saw first semi-final.

Top seed Muguruza, playing her first tournament since reaching the top of the women's world rankings, was blown off court in just under an hour in a stunningly lopsided match.

"I didn't feel that fresh," the Spaniard told reporters.

"I felt my energy was a little bit low and I didn't make the important shots. I'm very disappointed, but she just played better."

Third seed Wozniacki tore through the first set, sealing it when Muguruza wafted a routine forehand badly wide.

Muguruza cut a forlorn figure as she trudged back to her seat but things went from bad to worse for the Wimbledon champion in the second set.

A dipping forehand pass gave Wozniacki an early break, consolidated after another wild Muguruza backhand in the fourth game.

Wozniacki, a two-time Tokyo winner and finalist in 2014, put Muguruza out of her misery by forcing the Spaniard into another whiffed backhand on match point after just 59 minutes. Seventh seed Kerber, another former world number one, looked in danger of being fed the dreaded "double bagel" after losing the first eight games in the Tokyo sunshine.
Razib, Rakib share point in 5th round in Asian Indoor Chess





GM Razib split points with FM Priasmoro Novendra of Indonesia while GM Rakib drew with IM Tologontegin Semetey of Kyrgyzstan after 5th round games in men's section of 5th Asian Indoor And Martial Games 2017 is now being held at Ashgabat in Turkmenistan.

GM Razib earned 3 points while Rakib bagged 2.5 points after the 5th round matches held on Saturday. In the day's women's section, WIM Liza drew with WGM Tokhirjonova Gulrukhbegim of Uzbekistan while WFM Shirin drew with Chuemsakul Sarocha of Thailand.

Liza bagged three points while Shirin secured two points after the 5th round matches.
Half of UNSC ask Guterres to publicly brief on Myanmar

United Nations (Reuters) :

Seven members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States and Britain, on Friday asked U.N. chief Antonio Guterres to publicly brief the 15-member body next week on the violence in Myanmar that he has described as ethnic cleansing.

Sweden, the United States, Britain, France, Egypt, Senegal, and Kazakhstan want Ethiopia, president of the council for September, to arrange the briefing for next week, according to the request seen by Reuters.

More than 422,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar since Aug. 25, when attacks by Rohingya militants triggered a military crackdown.

U.S. President Donald Trump wants the United Nations Security Council to take "strong and swift action" to end the violence, Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday. The council has met twice behind closed doors since the Rohingya crisis began and last week issued an informal statement to the press condemning the situation and urging Myanmar authorities to end the violence. Diplomats say the Security Council could consider adopting a formal statement if the situation does not improve, but China and Russia are unlikely to agree to stronger action that would require the adoption of a resolution they could veto.

A U.N. Security Council resolution would need nine votes in favour and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France. Myanmar said earlier this month it was negotiating with veto powers China and Russia to ensure Myanmar would be protected from any Security Council action.
A ranch about five miles west of Dupuyer on the Rocky Mountain Front lost 10 calves earlier this week to grizzly bears.

The cattle were located in a creek bottom with thick willow cover. Specialists from USDA Wildlife Services, working in coordination with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks bear specialist, confirmed a grizzly was the cause of the depredation and at least 12 grizzly bears were in the area, including sows with cubs, FWP said in a news release.

This depredation near Dupuyer presents a unique challenge for the landowner and bear specialists alike because the high density of bears could result in more depredations, FWP said. Additionally, there is uncertainty as to which bear, or bears, killed the cattle, and it is an extremely difficult and dangerous circumstance for specialists to try and capture individual bears.

The cattle that were in the creek bottom have been moved to a different pasture to allow for better protection. The livestock owner will be eligible for compensation from the livestock loss fund.

While options are limited in this particular circumstance, FWP and Wildlife Services can often identify and provide assistance to proactively protect livestock and to help reduce other kinds of bear conflict, FWP said.

In general, bears are very active this time of year across Montana as they try to put on weight prior to hibernation. This can put bears in conflict with people and livestock.

This week, up and down the Rocky Mountain Front and areas east where creek bottoms provide the bears easy travel corridors to the prairie, bears are making their presence known. FWP bear specialists have responded to citizen complaints of bears eating apples around Choteau, Valier and residences east of Highway 287.

Wildlife Services and FWP specialists have responded to bears killing livestock in several locations around central and southwest Montana this summer, including Madison, Carbon, Teton, Glacier, Pondera and Lewis & Clark counties.

Given the number of bears and their increased level of activity, its really important that people and communities in bear country secure their attractants, said Gary Bertellotti, FWPs Region 4 supervisor. Securing attractants means putting away bird feeders, keeping pet food inside and making sure you dont have fruit on the ground under your trees. If people are observing bears or having problems, please let us know right away.

In Montana, bear country can be anywhere in the western half of the state and beyond, the news release says. This year grizzly bears have shown up in places they havent been for decades, maybe even more than a century  Highwood and Big Belt Mountains for instance.

This is also the time of year when bears move off seasonal sources of food, like berries and chokecherries. Livestock in and around these sources of food become more susceptible to depredation as bears look to put on weight for the winter, the agency cautioned.

Additionally, archery and bird hunters who are hunting in these areas need to understand they could be in close proximity to bears even if theyre miles away from the Rocky Mountain Front, according to FWP. This is a critical time of year to be bear aware  dont hunt alone, carry bear spray and be ready to use it and, if possible, make plenty of noise in areas where visibility is limited, even in areas where you wouldnt expect bears.

Grizzly bears are currently listed on the Endangered Species List in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes the Rocky Mountain Front and points further east. The delisting process for the population is just getting underway.

With the federal protections in place, FWP coordinates all bear management activities with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Grizzly bear conflicts can be reported to FWP. Livestock depredations are investigated by both FWP and USDA Wildlife Services. If producers have a depredation, they may contact either agency.
Mobile operators asked not to sell pvt SIM to Rohingyas

Staff Reporter :

State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim on Saturday said, the government will take action against private mobile operators if they have sold SIM to Rohingyas.

The state owned mobile operator Teletalk only will set up 2G mobile network and service booths at Rohingya camps so that they can get communication facility.

The work of setting up Teletalk booths will start within three days in the refugee camps, she said after a meeting with Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) officials on control and monitoring of SIM card usage by Rohingyas.

"2G network will be provided for the Rohingya refugees to facilitate their communication inside the country (Bangladesh)," she said.

"We have come to know that some Rohingyas are already using Bangladeshi SIM cards sold to them by someone which is a punishable offence", she said.

The government will operate mobile courts against the offenders. They will be fined if found selling SIM, she added.

"We have brought the use of mobile phones under a system through biometric registration to prevent all kinds of offensive activities." she said.

Representative and top officials of BTRC, the home ministry, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab), National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC) were also present at the meeting.
About 1,400 Rohingya children arrive without parents

A Rohingya refugee child reacts as people queue for aid in a camp in Coxas Bazar on Friday. Reuters photo

About 1,400 Rohingya children have arrived in Bangladesh without their parents fleeing violence in Rakhine State of Myanmar.

Their parents were either killed or missing in the wake of a brutal military crackdown in Rakhine state.

These children have been provided shelter at the Child Friendly Space (CFS) of Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox's Bazar.

"They have arrived in Bangladesh near the Myanmar border without their parents. Many of them have seen family members killed and their homes set on fire by Myanmar army," said Faria Amin, communication specialist at UNICEF Bangladesh.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that Bangladesh was sheltering more than 8,00,000 Rohingya, of whom 4,30,000 had arrived in the past three weeks.

Children constitute about 60 per cent of the people who have poured into Bangladesh, according to UNICEF.

Farida Amin said, "Those (children) who arrived without their parents have been given shelters at the CFS centres, supported by UNICEF in collaboration with local aid agencies."

"These centers have become a sanctuary for children in trauma, with many of them too young to even understand the enormity of the tragedy," she added.

Rashid (10) is among about 1,400 Rohingya children, who have arrived in Bangladesh without their parents.

He is mourning the loss of his parents - father Zahid Hossain and mother Ramija Khatun, who, he says, were killed by the Myanmar military.

Rashid lived with his parents and six siblings in Shikderpara village of Maungdaw until August 25, when the army targeted his home as part of its campaign that termed as "ethnic cleansing" by the international agencies including the United Nations.

"It was Friday. I grabbed my sister's hand and ran towards the nearby hill. After the army departed I came back and found my parents dead," he said. He had little time to mourn in his village. He found his neighbours near the hill and tagged along with them for the rest of the journey.

"I walked for three nights to reach the Bangladesh border. I crossed the Naf river to enter Bangladesh a day before Eid on September 1," he said.

Rashid has no clue about the whereabouts of his other siblings. "I heard that all my brothers and sister were killed."

Now his little shoulder has to carry a heavy responsibility - he has to take care of his six-year-old younger sister Rashida.

"When Rashid came on the first day, every moment he came to me to say his parents are dead," said Faria Amin.

"He has eased up a bit in the past few days after he started to come here (CFS)," she said.

Faria said there are 42 CFSs in Ukhia and Teknaf.
Rohingya villages still burning

Security forces, locals setting fire

Staff Reporter :

Amnesty International (AI) has said new satellite images and videos from Myanmar's strife-torn Rakhine State show smoke rising from Rohingya Muslim villages, contradicting Aung San Suu Kyi's claims that military operations there have ended.

Local sources in northern Rakhine State claim the Myanmar security forces and local mobs set fire to the villages. The latest violence in Myanmar has sent an estimated 429,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh in less than a month.

The UK-based group said its sources in Rakhine claim the fires - captured in images as recently as Friday afternoon - were started by members of the Myanmar security forces and vigilante mobs.

AI reviewed satellite imagery of Hpar Wat Chaung from 16 to 22 September.

Smoke is still visible in the later image, which clearly showed the village had been set ablaze and structures standing just days earlier had been burnt to the ground. Additionally, satellite sensors detected a recent active fire in the village, further corroborating the incident.

One video, taken on 21 September near the village of Hpar Wat Chaung village, northern Maungdaw township, shows agricultural land in the foreground with a large plume of smoke rising from a settlement located amid a group of trees.

A local resident told AI that Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) and frantic groups started the fires in the early afternoon, and that there were further burning operations the same evening.Two more videos, taken from different angles reportedly outside Nga Yant Chaung village in Buthidaung township, show the village in flames on Friday afternoon.

Activists, including a source in Rakhine state itself, have told AI that the burning began between 1:30pm and 2:00pm local time on that day.

"This damning evidence from the ground and from space flies in the face of Aung San Suu Kyi's assertions to the world that what she called military 'clearance operations' in Rakhine State ended on 5 September," said Tirana Hasan, Crisis Response Director at Amnesty International.

Tirana Hasan said almost three weeks later, we can see in real time how there is no let-up in the campaign of violence against Rohingya in northern Rakhine state.

"Rohingya homes and villages continue to burn, before, during and after their inhabitants take flight in terror. Not satisfied with simply forcing Rohingya from their homes, authorities seem intent on ensuring they have no homes to return to." "The time has come and gone for giving Myanmar's military and political leadership the benefit of the doubt. The international community must be unequivocal in its condemnation and take effective action to halt this ethnic cleansing campaign as well as bring the perpetrators to account." On 14 September, AI published irrefutable evidence of a mass-scale scorched-earth campaign across northern Rakhine State, where Myanmar security forces and frantic mobs have been burning down entire Rohingya villages and shooting people at random when they try to flee. The violence is part of an unlawful and disproportionate response to reported attacks on security posts by a Rohingya armed group on 25 August.

The organization's analysis of active fire-detection data, satellite imagery, photographs and videos from the ground, as well as interviews with dozens of eyewitnesses in Myanmar and across the border in Bangladesh, show how an orchestrated campaign of systematic burnings has targeted Rohingya villages across northern Rakhine State.

Tens of thousands of other people - including members of Rakhine State's other ethnic minority communities - have also been displaced as a result of the violence.
Int`l Tribunal found Myanmar guilty of genocide

Myanmar is guilty of genocide against the Rohingya people, according to the verdict of International Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. A seven-member panel announced the verdict on Friday after considering documentary and expert evidence as well as the testimony of some 200 victims of the atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims Kachin and other minority groups in Myanmar, reports The Star Online of Malaysia.





PPT was established in Bologna in 1979 as a direct continuation of the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam (1966-67) and Latin America (1973-76), according to its website. The Russell Tribunal, also known as the International War Crimes Tribunal, Russell-Sartre Tribunal, or Stockholm Tribunal, was a private body organised by British philosopher and Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell and hosted by French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre. It investigated and evaluated American foreign policy and military intervention in Vietnam after the defeat of French forces in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the establishment of North and South Vietnam.





On the strength of the evidence presented, the tribunal reached the consensus ruling that Myanmar has the intent to commit genocide against the Kachin and other groups, the tribunal said. The verdict came at a time when over 4,20,000 Rohingyas fled persecution in Myanmar to Bangladesh in last four weeks.





It said visas and full access must be granted to the UN investigators for probing the atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims Kachin and other groups in Myanmar. This is the first time the tribunal delivered a verdict accusing a government having link with a Nobel Laureate. Myanmar must prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses, hate crimes, genocidal massacres, rape, torture, arson and ethnic and religious violence against the Rohingya Muslims Kachin and other groups in its courts. There must be no more impunity for military personnel or militias.





The ground reality is unfortunately different as the tribunal's verdict does not have any legal basis -- it is unlikely to leave the Myanmar government in a state of fear. Myanmar knows that it will escape sanctions by such nations as the USA and the UK because it has a quasi-democratic government -- so it is unlikely it will be afraid. Also it has strong allies such as India and China who will continue to support it with weapons because both want to court it.





New oil and gas pipelines from Kyaukpyuin town in Rakhine province connect China's southwestern province of Yunnan directly with the Indian Ocean, bypassing the narrow Malacca Strait, where a strong U.S. naval presence has long worried Chinese policymakers. China may ultimately invest upto USD 30 billion in Rakhine State to secure its energy needs. Where its own national interests are at heart it is unlikely to pay more than lip service to ideals of humanity. India on the other hand is directly preventing Rohingyas from entering its borders by operating a " rude and crude " policy which involves using stun grenades and chili sprays to deter Rohingyas from entering.







So for the Rohingyas the reality is essentially unchanged.
Myanmar proposes meeting with BD

Dhaka Tribune :

Myanmar, whos brutal military campaign in Rakhine state forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh, has finally proposed a meeting with Dhaka to find a solution to the Rohingya crisis that has drawn global attention and condemnation.

Thaung Tun, Myanmars national security adviser, made the proposal during a meeting with Bangladesh Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali in New York.

Source said Myanmar had used similar move in the past in the face of mounting global pressure over its persecution of the Muslim minority.

Earlier, Naypyitaw took three months time for a bilateral meeting when violence erupted in Rakhine state on October last year. Thousands of Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after the army launched a security crackdown targeting the minority.

In January this year, Myanmars special envoy Kyaw Tin held talks with Bangladeshs prime minister, foreign minister and foreign affairs secretary over Rohingya issue.

Dhaka had asked Naypyitaw to take back the Rohingya as the sudden influx placed extreme stress on the former.

The ongoing crackdown on Rohingya started after insurgents wielding guns, sticks and homemade bombs attacked 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine and killed 12 security personnel on August 24 and 25.

A sweeping military response from Myanmar forced more than 422,000 Rohingya Muslims to escape to Bangladesh since then.




Rohingya women share their endless horrific stories

Reza Mahmud, back from Teknaf :

Persecution driven Rohingya women have forgotten to stop crying in temporary refugee camps in Teknaf and Ukhiya upazilas of Cox's Bazar district.

"Myanmar army and armed Buddhist militants have killed my husband outside Nga Yant Chaung village adjacent to Buthidaung town. My family is now helpless," said Nasima Khatun with tear, a Rohingya refugee from Thaingkhali camp in Ukhiya upazila.

As Nasima Khatun was sharing her sorrowful story with this correspondent, the other Rohingya women surrounding her were also seen crying.

They (other women) said they are not just crying for expressing their sympathy to Nasima, but they are crying because they have also horrific stories of their own lives.

Fatima Khatun from the border village of Taung Pyo Let Yar near Maungdaw town said her husband and two of their sons were killed by Myanmar army in their home.

"We were in our home in the morning but suddenly a car stopped near our home. Before we understand anything we had to face gun fire. We saw that some military soldiers were surrounding our village and firing indiscriminately. My husband and sons were tried to flee but the army men caught and wounded them with bullets, and then slaughtered them before us," she said with tears and failed to say anything for a few moment.

Later, she described the horror scenario of their village conducted jointly by the army, the armed Buddhist monks and other Rakhine terrorists.

"They attacked on the men, women and children who were trying to flee after their homes set were on fire by the army and the Buddhist terrors. They caught the women, raped them and killed. They did not let the children spare to flee. They killed numbers of children before their mothers," said Fatima Khatun.

"These are our endless horrific stories brother! Our crying will never be ended. We become deaf and lost our feelings. It is not humanity. Why they have been persecuting us for long? Where is the civilized world. Why the world so silent on our matter? Are not we human being?" asked Mumina, another Rohingya woman from Unchiprang Rohingya camp in Teknaf.

She said that her family was living in a camp inside Myanmar. But the army did not let them live there with peace.

"We were living in a camp near Maungdaw township since December 2016. After fleeing from army's persecution in November in 2016, we tried to enter Bangladesh. But the security forces of Bangladesh driven us from the border with our boat," Mumina said.

She said, "We were floating in the Bay of Bengal. Then the Myanmar government had given us a chance to live in a temporary camp inside of the country after getting huge pressure from the world about floating people in the sea. But that little peace also did not last long. The army set fire in our camp and killed many of us by shooting and slaughtering."

Although some of us managed to enter Bangladesh, many of our dear and near ones lost their lives by the uncivilized Mug Army (Myanmar Army), she said.


It's hard to tell which is more impressive -- the view on the inside or the one outside.
A Wyoming man pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to sell painkillers purchased from a former Casper doctor who is now facing federal drug trafficking charges.

Dustin Big Medicine, who appeared in court wearing an orange jail uniform, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance and, as part of a plea agreement, had an additional conspiracy charge against him dropped. The plea deal would allow him to avoid prison, should he complete probation. If he fails, he would face four to eight years in prison.

Big Medicine spoke quietly and rarely said more than three words in response to the judge's inquiries Friday in Natrona County District Court. Judge Daniel Forgey asked Big Medicine if the defendant had received anything in exchange for distributing oxycodone.

"Just money, your honor," Big Medicine replied quietly.

Big Medicine is one of 10 people who were charged with felonies resulting from a year-long investigation by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation into Dr. Shakeel Khan and his wife, Lyn Khan. Prosecutors allege that Shakeel Khan sold painkiller prescriptions in exchange for cash. Defendants in the case are alleged to have signed forms at Khan's request indicating they would not describe the doctor as a drug dealer.

Shakeel Khan and his wife are facing a total of 45 federal charges in their case.

The judge also modified Big Medicine's bond at the request of both prosecution and defense attorneys, allowing him to go free on personal recognizance as soon as his paperwork is processed. He was previously held on a $3,500 bond.
As cooler temperatures and precipitation finally brought relief to smoke-weary Montanans, the unusual nature of summer 2017 is coming into focus and the influence of climate change is impossible to ignore.

Extreme weather has been the dominant story throughout the country this summer as hurricanes and tropical storms have ravaged the southeastern United States and wildfires have wreaked havoc in the West. A simple Google search will yield hundreds of stories about the impacts of these events, but very few mention climate change as a contributing factor. And thats unfortunate.

Decades of research

Collectively, we have over 65 years of experience studying Western climate and forest systems, and we are among the authors of the Montana Climate Assessment, a report that focuses on climate trends and their consequences for three of Montanas vital sectors: water, forests, and agriculture. The assessment sheds some light on common questions about climate change and its effects on things like drought and wildfires.

Was this fire season remarkable?

This is already a record-breaking wildfire season in some regions of Montana, and the fingerprints of climate are easy to spot. In many ways, what weve seen this year is exactly what weve come to expect, but in other ways, its even more worrisome.

There has been an increase in large fires in the last three decades, and this year will be one of the worst, especially in Montana where wildfires have burned over 1 million acres (www.nifc.gov). The persistence of some of these fires has been unusual, choking Western Montana valleys with health-threatening smoke for weeks on end.

What role did climate change play?

Climate has played a big role. While its impossible to tie any one weather event or wildfire directly to climate change, what we can say with certainty is this: Increases in temperature in the last decades have set the stage for drier conditions and more fires. In a given year, warmer weather and less precipitation dries out fuel loads and creates conditions for rapid fire spread. Fire records dating back decades to millennia show a clear link between warmer temperatures, lower precipitation and an increase in the number of fires and acres burned. This situation is precisely what we expect to see from climate change.

Flash drought

Montana has been on a steady warming trend for decades, up over 3 degrees since 1950, and all projections are that it will continue. This summer was the second warmest on record since 1950 at 4 degrees above average, and the persistent high temperatures coupled with the record lowest rainfall in July and August shifted the relatively wet conditions of spring into extreme drought by midsummer. The speed of the transition from wet to dry was so rapid that the term flash drought has been coined.

What can we expect in the future?

These extreme weather events werent unforeseen and they are not without a systemic cause. As the buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere intensifies, our overall climate and weather patterns will continue to change.

The Montana Climate Assessment goes into great detail about our climate future, and with respect to wildfire, we can expect additional warming with less precipitation in the summer months. Over the next century, extreme heat days (above 90F) are projected to increase by an additional 5-35 days across the state. And as a result of greater drought, forest fires will likely increase in size, frequency, and possibly severity.

Factors contributing to wildfire are complicated, but we know that they involve both forest management and climate conditions. From 2006-2015, 95 percent of wildfires were suppressed at a cost of $13 billion. This level of expenditure is not sustainable and the burden on state and local resources is enormous. New adaptive approaches are needed to manage forest fuel loads and reduce wildfire risk and costs (e.g., fuel treatments, especially on private land, and fire-adapted planning and land use) while also recognizing that fire is part of healthy forests. In addition we must also consider policies that will curb greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main driver in climate change.

Together, working from the best available science, we can and must develop plans to increase resilience, mitigate expected impacts and address the known causes of climate change.

The Montana Climate Assessment is a product of the Montana University Systems Montana Institute on Ecosystems, in collaboration with the Montana Climate Office, Montana Water Center and MSU Extension. It provides a thorough look at how Montanas climate has changed and what we can expect in the coming years. This information is intended to help families and communities plan for and adapt to changing conditions. We invite everyone to consult the report, which is now available at www.montanaclimate.org, and join us in local discussions around the state in the coming year.
The intake diversion was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1905 and was constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation shortly thereafter in order to provide a steady supply of water to irrigate over 58,000 acres spanning nearly 70 miles along the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana and western North Dakota. This project, known as the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project, or LYIP, serves as one of the major economic drivers in eastern Montana that supports the livelihood of residents within the area either directly as farmers or indirectly as service providers and agri-products companies. The project also provides significant drought resilience in eastern Montana by recharging groundwater aquifers and supplying surface water for livestock during periods of drought. More importantly, the LYIP provides food for people and livestock throughout the entire region by growing sugar beets, wheat, barley, soy beans, corn, alfalfa and grass hay. The controversy over the proposed Lower Yellowstone Intake Diversion Dam Fish Passage Project is critical to the farmers and other citizens within the LYIP.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation have gone through an extensive, multi-year collaborative process of evaluating alternatives for the proposed fish passage project on the Lower Yellowstone River.

They came to the conclusion, with the help of Tetra Tech, one of the worlds largest engineering firms, that a new concrete weir with a fish bypass channel was the preferred alternative that would satisfy both concerns over fish passage and continued operation of the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project. They based this decision on not only the expertise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and Tetra Tech, but also with a team of fisheries experts. These fisheries experts developed bypass channel design criteria based on the life cycle, swimming patterns and habitats of pallid sturgeon.

The concrete weir with bypass channel was evaluated against a number of alternatives including several non-weir alternatives. One of the non-weir alternatives was proposed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Defenders of Wildlife. This alternative, which included river pumps to replace the gravity fed system, lined canals, piped laterals, and other water-saving measures concluded that the LYIP could reduce its water right from 1,374 cubic feet per second to 608 cubic feet per second through the water savings measures. However, this logic doesnt work. Among other factors such as requiring coal-generated electric power, crops grown within the LYIP need the full amount of water to reach maturity. The Environmental Impact Statement for this project points out that the existing crops grown within the LYIP need nearly double the proposed 608 cfs even with a canal and lateral delivery system that doesnt lose a single drop of water. That has been true for the 100-plus years of LYIP operation.

Pump alternatives

The proposed pump alternatives that would eliminate the need for a weir at intake were evaluated carefully. However, the lower Yellowstone River is not a normal river system. It contains a significant amount of sediment that acts to wear pumps out quickly, fill inlet channels that convey water to pumps, and overall create a maintenance nightmare for the LYIP personnel who operate the system. Due to the large volume of water required to be applied to the crops (1,374 cubic feet per second), a single pump station is not viable. Tetra Tech estimated a total of five pump stations would be necessary to convey the required water supply to the LYIP. These five pump stations would add overhead power lines, new electrical substations, new discharge lines, new roads and numerous other environmental impacts and considerations that currently dont exist.

Pallid sturgeon bypass

The proposed pumps would also contribute over 20 million pounds per year of pollution in the form of CO2 emissions. These alternatives would more than double the operation and maintenance budget for the LYIP, which currently has one of the highest water assessments in the state of Montana. Asking these farmers to pay nearly $90 per acre for irrigation water would bankrupt nearly all of the farmers in the project, leading to a widespread financial crisis that would impact the entire region.

The LYIP and the local farmers understand the importance of the pallid sturgeon and are behind the efforts to save the fish. However, they arent willing to sacrifice their jobs, their homes and their families. The farmers and many other interested parties in the affected area have supported the proposed concrete weir with fish bypass channel as the one alternative that provides a balance between the fish and the farmers. It protects the farmers way of life and provides an avenue for the pallid sturgeon to swim upstream and spawn. The proposed alternative provides the best of both worlds and is based on sound scientific analysis.
The Gazette has issued a stinging rebuke of Secretary of State Corey Stapleton's politically-motivated misconduct in office. Good on them! Of course, their rebuke might carry a little more weight if it weren't for the fact that The Gazette endorsed Stapleton less than a year ago! "Stapleton gets The Gazettes nod for secretary of state."

Stapleton's entire political career has displayed nothing but vicious, partisan actions and relentless attacks on the people he claimed to represent. The Gazette Editorial Board was fully aware of his record when they chose to endorse him over Monica Lindeen.

It would be refreshing to see The Gazette acknowledge the incredible blunder they made last year. I'm probably too cynical in my lack of confidence of that happening. Oh, well.

Fred Brewer

Billings